CHAPTER III.THE PLOTTER.An old gentleman and a tall girl were walking in the secluded grounds of a great house that had once belonged to an unhappy Prince. The place was very near London, yet that suggestive hum of the City never seemed to pierce the deep glades of the park; the rooks talked and held councils, and tried culprits, and stole, and quarrelled as freely as they might have done in the wilds of Surrey or Wiltshire; the rabbits swarmed, and almost every south-country species of wild bird nested and enjoyed life in the happy, still woods and shrubberies. Modern--very modern--improvements had been added to the body of the old house, but there was nothing vulgar or ostentatious. Everything about the place, from the old red palace to the placid herd of Alderney cows that grazed in a mighty avenue, spoke of wealth--wealth solid and well-rooted. There was no sign of shoddy anywhere; the old gentleman had bought the place at an enormous price, and he had left all the ancient work untouched; but he would have stables, laundry, tennis-court, and so on through the offices and outside buildings, fitted out according to rational principles of sanitation, and, if the truth be told, he would rather have seen healthy ugly stables than the most quaint and curious of living-rooms that ever spread typhoid.Mr. Cassall was a man of peculiarly modern type. From his youth upward he had never once acknowledged himself beaten, though he had known desperate circumstances; he saw that, as our civilization goes, money is accounted a rough gauge of merit, and a man's industry, tenacity, sobriety, self-control, and even virtue, are estimated and popularly assessed according to the amount of money which he owns, and he resolved that, let who will fail, he at least would have money and plenty of it. He bent his mind on one end for forty years; he was unscrupulous in all respects so long as he could keep within the law; he established a monopoly in his business on the ruins of scores of small firms which he crushed by weight of metal; he had no pity, no consideration, no remorse, in business hours; and he succeeded just as any other man of ability will succeed if he gives himself up body and soul to money-making. He never was proud; he was only hard. To his niece, whom he passionately loved, he would say, "Never be ashamed, my dear, to tell people that your uncle was a wholesale draper and hosier. Your mother was a little ashamed of it, and I had some trouble to cure her. Don't you be so silly. People think all the more of you for owning frankly that you or your relations have risen from the ranks, as they call it."When he retired his wealth was colossal. Smart men would say that Bob Cassall's name was good for a million anywhere; and indeed it was good for two millions, and more even than that. He never felt the burden of great riches; as soon as he was safe he seemed to change his nature, and became the most dexterously benevolent of men. He abhorred a cadger; he abhorred the very sight of the begging circulars which so appreciably increase the postman's daily burden. He was a sensible reader, and, when he heard of a traveller who was something more than a mere lion, he would make his acquaintance in the most respectful and unobtrusive way, and he managed to learn much. His shrewd innocence and piquant wit pleased those whom he questioned, and as he was always willing to place his house, horses, boats, and game, at the disposal of any traveller who pleased him, he was reckoned rather a desirable acquaintance. His prejudice against missions to the lower tribes was derived solely from men who had lived and worked among the negroes, and, like all his other prejudices, it was violently strong. He would say, "Have we not good white men here who are capable of anything? I don't want to assist your Polish Jew in the East, nor Quashee Nigger in Africa. Show me a plucky fellow that is ready to work at anything for any hours, and I'll help him. But instead of aiding our own kindly white race, you fool away millions on semi-baboons; you send out men at £300 a year and ask them to play at being St. Paul, and you don't convert a hundred niggers a year--and those who are converted are often very shady customers. Your Indian men drive about in buggies, and the 'cute natives laugh at them. Do you know what a Bengali Baboo or a Pathan is really like? The one is three times as clever as your missionary; the other is a manly fanatic and won't have him at any price. You're a maritime nation, and you've got ten thousand good British seamen out of work. Why not assistthem?"So this quaint and shockingly heterodox millionaire would rave on, for he was a most peppery old person. One dark and terrible legend is current concerning him, but I hardly dare repeat it. An affable gentleman from a foreign mission called on him one day, and obtained admission (I am bound to add without any subterfuge). Bob heard the visitor's story, and knitted his beetling bushy brows. He said: "Well, sir, you've spoken very fairly. Now just answer me one or two questions. How much money have you per year?""Half a million.""Good. Does any one supervise your missionaries?""We have faith in their integrity, and we credit them with industry.""You trust them five hundred miles up country?""Certainly, sir.""How many missionaries' wives died in the last ten years?""I think probably about eighty.""Eighty sweet English girls condemned to death. Good."The grizzled old fellow rose in dignified fashion, and said:"You will perhaps lunch alone, and I shall be pleased if you will be good enough to make this your final visit."Then the story goes on to say that Mr. Cassall placed a kennel on the lawn with a very large and truculent brindled bulldog as tenant; over the kennel he coiled a garden hose, and above the bulldog's portal appeared the words, "For Foreign Missions."This seems too shocking to be true, and I fancy the whole tale was hatched in the City. Certainly Mr. Cassall was scandalously unjust to the missionaries--an injustice which would have vanished had he personally known the glorious results for God and humanity achieved by self-denying missionaries and their devoted wives who carry the gospel of Christ to far-off heathen lands--but then where is the man who has not his whims and oddities?This man, according to his lights, spread his benefactions lavishly and wisely on public charities and private cases of need. He liked above all things to pick out clever young men and set them up in retail businesses with money lent at four per cent. Not once did he make a blunder, and so very lucky was he that he used to tell his niece that with all his enormous expenditure he had not touched the fringe of his colossal capital. If he assisted any advertised charity he did so in the most princely way, but only after he had personally held an audit of the books. If the committee wanted to have the chance of drawing ten thousand pounds, let them satisfy him with their books; if they did not want ten thousand pounds, or thought they did not deserve it, let them leave it alone.This was Robert Cassall, who was Marion Dearsley's uncle. His grim, grizzled head was stooping a little as he bent towards his niece on this soft winter day, and he himself looked almost like the human type of a hard, wholesome, not unkindly Winter. His high Roman nose, penthouse brows, quick jetty eye, square well-hung chin, and above all his sturdy, decided gait--all marked him: for a Man every inch, and he did not belie his appearance, for no manlier being walks broad England than Robert Cassall.He was listening a little fretfully to his niece, but her strength and sweetness kept him from becoming too touchy. The deep contralto that we know, said--"Well then, you see, uncle dear, these men cannot help themselves. They are--oh! such magnificent people--that is the country-born ones, for some of the town men are not nice at all; but the East Coast men are so simple and fine, but then, you know, they are so poor. Our dear Mr. Fullerton told me that in very bad weather the best men cannot earn so much as a scavenger can on shore.""Yes, yes, my girl. You know I listen carefully to everything you say. I value your talk immensely, but don't you observe, my pet, that if I help every one who cannot help himself I may as well shorten matters by going into the street and saying to each passer-by, 'Please accept half a crown as your share of my fortune'?""But the reasons are peculiar here, uncle. Oh! I do so wish Mrs. Walton could see you. She has logic, and she reasons where I dream.""Hah! Would you? What? Turn Mrs. Walton loose at me? No ladies here, miss, I warn you.""Now, please be good while I go on. I want to repeat Dr. Ferrier's reasoning if I can. You have fish every day--mostly twice?""Yes, but I don't give charity to my butcher. The rascal is able to tipme, if the truth were known.""True, uncle, and you don't need to give anything to your fishmonger. Why, you silly dear, you think you are a commercial genius, and yet the fishmonger probably charges you ever so much per cent, over and above what the fishermen receive, because of the great expense of railway carriage and distribution of the fish. I know that, because Mr. Fullerton told me; so you see I've corrected you, even you, on a point of finance."How prettily this stern, composed young woman could put on artful airs of youthfulness when she chose! How she had that firm, far-seeing old man held in position, ready to be twirled round her rosy finger!Which of us is not held in bondage by some creature of the kind? Unhappy the man who misses that sweet and sacred slavery.Mr. Cassall wrinkled his grim face not unpleasantly. "Go on; go on. You're a lawyer, neither more nor less. By the way, who is this--this what's-the-name--the Doctor, that you mentioned?""Oh! he is a very clever young man who has chosen to become a surgeon instead of being a university professor. He's now out on the North Sea in all this bad weather. He was so much struck with the need of a hospital, that he made up his mind to risk a winter so that he may tell people exactly what he has seen. He doesn't do things in a half-hearted way."What a long, pretty description of Mr. Ferrier. You seem to have taken a good deal of notice of the fortunate youth. Well, proceed."Marion was a little flushed when she resumed, but her uncle did not observe anything at all unusual."Where was I?--Oh, yes! You hold it right to give money in charity to deserving objects. Now these men out at sea were left for years, perhaps for centuries, to live as a class without hope or help. Dear good creatures like my own uncle actually never knew that such people were in existence. They were far worse off than savages who have plantains and pumpkins and cocoanuts, and they were our own good flesh and blood, yet we neglected them.""So we do the East Enders, and the Lancashire operatives and the dock labourers.""True. But we are doing better now. Then you see the East End has been discovered a long time, and visitors can walk; but the poor North Sea men were left alone, until lately, by everybody.""Still, we haven't come to whyIshould help them.""Oh! uncle, you are a commercial man. Look at selfish reasons alone. You know how much we depend on sailors, and you often say the country is so very, very ill-provided with them. And these men are--oh! such splendid seamen. Fancy them staying out for two months with a gale of wind per week, and doing it in little boats about eighty feet long. You should see a hundred of them moving about in mazes and never running into any trouble. Oh! uncle, itiswonderful. Well, now, these men would be all ready for us if we were in national danger. I heard Mr. Fullerton say that hundreds of them are in the Naval Reserve, and as soon as they learned their way about an ironclad, they would take to the work by instinct. There is nothing they don't understand about the sea, and wind and weather. Would any negro help us? Why, Lord Wolseley told your friend Sir James Roche that a thousand Fantees ran away from fifty painted men of some other tribe; and Lord Wolseley said that you can only make a negro of that sort defend himself by telling him that he will die if he runs away. You wouldn't neglect our own men who are so brave. Why they might have to defend London, where all your money is, and they would do it too." (Oh! the artful minx!) "And we send missions to nasty, brutal Fantees who run away from enemies, and we leave our own splendid creatures far worse off than dogs.""Well, if I'm not having the law laid down to me, I should like to know who ever had. But I'm interested. Let's go round by the avenue, through the kitchen garden, and then round to the front by road, and make the walk as long as you can. Why on earth didn't Blair tell me something of this before? Most wonderful. He talks enough, heaven knows, about anything and everything, but he never mentioned that. Why?""Now don't be a crusty dear. I don't know what good form is, but he told me he thought it would hardly be good form to bring up the subject in your company, as it might seem as though he were hinting at a donation. Now that's plain.""Good. Now never mind the preaching. I understand you to say that's done good.""Perfectly wonderful. You remember how we were both insulted and hooted at Burslem, only because we were strangers! Well, now, in all the time that we were away we never heard one uncivil word. Not only they were civil, and so beautifully courteous to us, but they were so kindly among themselves, and it is all because they take their Christianity without any isms."That wicked puss! She knew how Robert Cassall hated the fights of the sects, and she played on him, without in the least letting him suspect what she was doing. He snorted satisfaction. "That's good! that's good! No isms. And you say they've dropped drink?""Entirely, uncle, and all through the preaching without any isms. It is such a blessed, beautiful thing to think that hundreds of men who used to make themselves and every one about them wretched, are now calm, happy fellows. And they do not cant, uncle. All of them know each other's failings, and they are gentle and forgiving to each other.""What a precious lot of saints--much too good to live, I should fancy.""Don't sneer, you graceless. Yes it's quite true. Do you know, dear, the Early Christian movement is being repeated on the sea.""Umph. Early Christians! The later Christians have made a pretty mess of it. Now, just give me, without any waste words, all you have to say about this hospital business. Don't bring in preachee-preachee any more.""Very good, dear. Stop me if I go wrong. I'm going round about. You know, you crabby dear, you wouldn't neglect an old dog or an old pony after it had served you. You wouldn't say, 'Oh, Ponto had his tripe and biscuit, and Bob had his hay;' you would take care of them. Now wouldn't you? Of course you would. And these fishers get their wages, but still they give their lives for your convenience just as the dog and the pony do.""Yes, yes. But come to the hospital ship. You dance round as if you were a light-weight boxer sparring for breath.""Hus-s-sh! I won't have it. The fishermen, then, are constantly being dreadfully hurt: I don't mean by such things as toothache, though many hundreds of them have to go sleepless for days, until they are worn out with pain;--I mean really serious, violent hurts. Why, we were not allowed to see several of the men who came to Dr. Ferrier for treatment. The wounds were too shocking. Nearly eight thousand of them are already relieved in various ways every year. Just fancy. And I assure you I wonder very much that there are no more.""What sort of hurts?"Then Marion told him all about the falling spars, the poisoned ulcers, the great festers, the poisoned hands caused by venomous fishes accidentally handled in the dark, wild midnights; the salt-water cracks, the thousand and one physical injuries caused by falls, or the blow of the sea, or the prolonged fighting with heavy gales. The girl had become eloquent; she hadseen, and, as she was eloquent as women generally are, she was able to make the keen old man see exactly what she wanted him to see. Then she told how Ferrier stuck to the sinking smack and saved his patient, and Robert Cassall muttered, "That sounds like a man's doings;" and then with every modesty she spoke of Tom Betts's mistake. There never was such a fluent, artful, mock-modest, dramatic puss in the world!"Hah! mistook you for an angel. Eh? Not much mistake when you like to be good, but when you begin picking my pocket, there's not much of the angel about that, I venture to say."So spoke the old gentleman; but the anecdote delighted him so much that for two or three days he snorted "Angel!" in various keys all over the house, until the servants thought he must have turned Atheist or Republican, or something generally contemptuous and sarcastic. The girl had him in her toils, and the fascination was too much for him. She could look grand as a Greek goddess, calm and inscrutably imposing as the Venus of Milo; but she could also playPerdita, and dance with her enslaved ones like a veritable little witch. Robert Cassall was captured--there could not be much error about that. He asked, with a sudden snap of teeth and lips which made his niece start: "And how much do you want to coax out of me, Miss Molly. Give me an idea. Of course I'm to be the uncle in the play, and 'Bless you, me chee-ill-dren,' and the rest. Oh yes!""Oh, one vessel could be kept up for £30,000.""What! Per year?""No. The interest on £30,000 in North Western Railway stock would support a vessel well. You could easily support two.""This girl's got bitten by a money-spending tarantula. Why you'd dance a million away in no time.Why, in the name of common sense, why should I support two vessels and their hulking crews--who chew tobacco, of course, don't they? To be sure, and hitch their slacks! Why should I support all these manly tars!""Now! I'll be angry. I'll tell you why. You know you have more money than you can ever spend. You promise me some, and you're very good, but I'd almost rather live on my own than have too much. Well, I can't bear to think of your dying--but you must die, my own good dear, and you will have to divide your money before you go. There will be a lot of heart-burning, and I'm afraid poor me won't come off very lightly if I am left behind you. You will want a memorial.""You remember me and do as I would like you to do, and we sha'n't trouble our minds much about memorials. I thought of almshouses, though.""Oh! uncle dear, and then the Charity Commissioners may come in, and give all your money to fat, comfortable tradesmen's children, or well-to-do professional men, instead of to your old people, and the clergyman will be master of your money; and the old people will not be grateful, and all will go wrong, and my dear uncle will be forgotten. Oh! no.""I say, come, come; you're too knowing. You're trying to knock a pet scheme of mine on the head."The old man was genuinely concerned, and he felt as if some prop had been knocked away from him. But his sweet niece soon brought him round. She had scared his vanity on purpose, and she now applied the antidote."Supposing you give us two ships, you give yourself a better memorial than poor Alleyn of Dulwich, or Roan of Greenwich. Dear uncle, a charity which can be enjoyed by the idle is soon forgotten, and the pious founder is no more than a weed round the base of his own monument; he has not even a name. But you may actually see your own memorial working good long, long before you die, and you may see exactly how things will go on when your time is over. When you make out your deed of gift, exact the condition that one vessel must always be called after you, no matter how long or how often the ships are renewed. Sir James Roche can advise you about that. Place your portrait in the ship, and make some such provision as that she shall always carry a flag with your name, if you want to flaunt it, you proud thing! Then something like, at any rate, three thousand sufferers will associate your name with their happiness and cure every year; and they will say in every port in England, 'I was cured on theRobert Cassall,' or 'I should have lost that hand,' or 'I was dying of typhoid and our skipper thought I needed salts, but they cured me on theRobert Cassall.' And the great ships will pass your beautiful ship, and when people ask 'What is that craft, and who is Cassall?' they will say that Cassall gave of his abundance during his lifetime, so that seamen might be relieved of bitter suffering; and those brave men will be so very grateful. And oh! uncle, fancy going out to sea in your own monument, and watching your own wealth working blessedness before your eyes. Why, you will actually have all the pleasures of immortality before you have lost the power of seeing or knowing anything. Oh, uncle dear, think if you can only see one sailor's limbs saved by means of your money! Think of having a hundred living monuments of your goodness walking about in the beautiful world--saved and made whole by you!"The girl frightened the plucky old gentleman. His voice trembled, and he said, "Why, we must send you to Parliament! You can beat most of those dull sconces. Why, you're a no-mistake born orator--a talkee-talkee shining light! But if you go in for woman's rights and take to short hair, I shall die, after burning my will! And now you kiss me, my darling, and don't scare me any more with that witch's tongue." Was ever millionaire in such manner wooed? Was ever millionaire in such fashion won? The gipsy's eyes glowed, and her heart beat in triumph. Was this the Diana of Ferrier's imagination? Was this the queen of whom that athletic young gentleman was silently dreaming as he swung over the pulsing mountains of the North Sea? This slyboots! This most infantile coax!I wish some half-dozen of the most charming young ladies in England would only begin coaxing, and coax to as good purpose! I would go out next summer and willingly end my days in work on the water, if I thought my adorable readers would only take Marion Dearsley's hint, and help to blot out a little misery and pain from this bestained world.While Mr. Cassall was standing, with his teacup, before the glowing wood fire, he said, "Be my secretary for half an hour, Molly, my pet. Write and ask Blair, and that other whom I don't know--Fullerton. Yes; ask them to dinner. And, let me see, you can't ask Mr. Phoenix the Sawbones?""Who, uncle?""Why, the young doctor that performs such prodigies, of course.""He's out on the sea now, dear, and I expect that he's in some abominable cabin----""Catching smallpox to infect cleanly people with?""No, dear. He is most likely tending some helpless tatterdemalion, and moving about like a clever nurse. He is strong--so strong. He pulled a man through a wave with one hand while he held the rigging with the other, and the man told me that it was enough to tear the strongest man to pieces----""Here, stop the catalogue. Why, Sawbones must be Phoebus Apollo! If you talk much more I shall ask him a question or two. Go on with your secretary's duties, you naughty girl."So ended the enslavement of Robert Cassall, and so, I hope, began his immortality. Oh! Marion Dearsley; sweet English lady. This is what you were turning over in your maiden meditations out at sea. Demure, deep, delicious plotter. What acoup! All the mischievous North Sea shall be jocund for this, before long. Surely they must nameonevessel afteryou! You are a bloodless Judith, and you have enchanted a perfectly blameless Holofernes. I, your laureate, have no special song to give you just now, but I think much of you, for the sake of darkened fishers, if not for your own.Mr. Cassall invited Sir James Roche to meet the other men. Sir James was the millionaire's physician and friend, and Cassall valued all his judgments highly, for he saw in the fashionable doctor a money-maker as shrewd as himself; and, moreover, he had far too much of the insular Briton about him to undervalue the kind of prestige which attaches to one who associates with royal personages and breathes the sacred atmosphere of money. Sir James was an apple-faced old gentleman, who had been a miser over his stock of health and strength. He was consequently ruddy, buoyant, strong, and his good spirits were infectious. He delighted in the good things of the world; no one could order a dinner better; no one could better judge a picture; no one had a more pure and hearty liking for pretty faces;--and it must be added, that few men had more worldly wisdom of the kind needed for everyday use. He could fool a humbug to the top of his bent, and he would make use of humbugs, or any other people, to serve his own ends; but he liked best to meet with simple, natural folks, and Cassall always took his fancy from the time of their first meeting onward.Sir James spent the afternoon in driving with his host, and they naturally chatted a great deal about Mr. Cassall's new ideas. The physician listened to his friend's version of Miss Dearsley's eloquence, and then musingly said, "I don't know that you can do better than take your niece's advice. The fact is, my dear fellow, you have far too much money. I have more than I know how to use, and mine is like a drop in that pond compared with yours. If you leave a great deal to the girl, you doom her to a life of anxiety and misery and cynicism; she will be worse off than a female cashier in a draper's shop. If she marries young, she will be picked up by some embarrassed peer; if she waits till she is middle-aged, some boy will take her fancy and your money will be fooled away on all kinds of things that you wouldn't like. This idea, so far as it has gone in my mind, seems very reasonable. I'm not thinking of the fishermen at all; that isn't my business at present. I am thinking of you, and I fancy that you may do a great deal of good, and, at the same time, raise your position in the eyes of your countrymen. The most modest of us are not averse to that. Then, again, some plutocrats buy honours by lavishing coins in stinking, rotten boroughs. Your honours if they should come to you, will be clean. At any rate, let us both give these men a fair hearing, and perhaps our worldly experience may aid them. An enthusiast is sometimes rather a fiddle-headed chap when it comes to business.""I don't want my money to be fought over, and I won't have it. If I thought that people were going to screech and babble over my money, I'd leave the whole lot to the Dogs' Home.""We'll lay our heads together about that, and I reckon if we two can't settle the matter, there is no likelihood of its ever being settled at all."The harsh, wintry afternoon came to a pleasant close in the glowing drawing-room. Sir James had coaxed Marion until she told him all about the gale and the rest of it. He was very much interested by her description of Ferrier."I've heard of that youngster," he said. "He began as a very Scotch mathematician, and turned to surgery. I heard that he had the gold medal when he took his fellowship. He must be a fine fellow. You say he is out at sea now? I heard a little of it, and understood he wasn't going to leave until the end of December. But it never occurred to me that he was such a friend of yours. You must let me know him. We old fogies often have a chance of helping nice young fellows."Mrs. Walton and Miss Ranken arrived with Blair and Fullerton, and everybody was soon at ease. Sir James particularly watched Fullerton, and at last he said to himself, "That fellow's no humbug."The dinner passed in the usual pleasant humdrum style; nobody wanted to shine; that hideous bore, the professional talker, was absent, and the company were content with a little mild talk about Miss Ranken's seclusion at sea during the early days of the autumn voyage. The girl said, "Well, never mind, I would go through it all again to see what we saw. I never knew I was alive before."Instinctively the ladies refrained from touching on the business which they knew to be nearest the men's minds, and they withdrew early.Then Cassall came right to the point in his usual sharp, undiplomatic way."My niece has been telling me a great deal about your Mission, Mr. Fullerton, and she says you want a floating hospital. I've thought about the matter, but I have so few details to go upon that I can neither plan nor reason. I mean to help if I can, merely because my girl has set her mind on it; but I intend to know exactly where I am going, and how far. I understand you have twelve thousand men that you wish to influence and help. How many men go on board one vessel?""From five to seven, according to the mode of trawling.""That gives you, roughly, say two thousand sail. Marion tells me you have now about eight thousand patients coming on board your ships yearly. Now, if you manage to cover the lot, you must attend on a great many more patients.""We can onlydabbleat present. We have little pottering dispensaries, and our men manage slight cases of accident, but I cannot help feeling that our work is more or less a sham. People don't think so, but I want so much that I am discontented."Sir James broke in, "Your vessels have to fish, haven't they?""They did at first. We hope to let them all be clear of the trawl for the future."Mr. Cassall looked at Sir James. "I say, Doctor, how would you like one of your men to operate just after he had been handling fish? Do they clean the fish, Mr. Fullerton? They do? What charming surgeons!""We have gone on the principle of trying to do our best with any material. Our skippers are not first-rate pulpit orators, but we have been obliged to let them preach. Both their preaching and their surgery have done an incredible amount of good, but we want more.""Exactly. Now, I'm a merchant, Mr. Fullerton, and I know nothing about ships, but I understand your vessels are all sailers. Is that the proper word? You depend on the wind entirely. How would you manage if you took a man on board right up, or down, the North Sea?--I don't know which is up and which is down; but, any way, you want to run from one end to the other. How would you manage if you had a very foul wind after your man got cured?""We must take our chance. As a matter of experience, we find that our vessels do get about very well. The temperatures of the land on each side of the sea vary so much, that we are never long without a breeze.""Still, you depend on chance. Is that not so? Now I never like doing things by halves. Tell me frankly, Mr. Fullerton, whatwouldyou do if you took off a small-pox case, and got becalmed on the run home?"Fullerton laughed. "You are a remarkably good devil's advocate, Mr. Cassall, but if I had ever conjured up obstacles in my own mind, there would have been no mission--would there, Blair? And I venture to think that the total amount of human happiness would have been less by a very appreciable quantity." Besides, it is absolutely against rules to take infectious cases on board the mission vessels."Cassall isn't putting obstacles in your way," interposed Sir James. "I know what he's driving at, but strangers are apt to mistake him. He means to draw out of you by cross-examination the fact that quick transport is absolutely necessary for your hospital scheme. Take an instance. Miss Dearsley tells me the men stay out eight weeks, and then run home. Now suppose your cruiser meets one of the home-going vessels, and the captain of this vessel says, 'There's a dying man fifty miles N.W. (or S.W., or whatever it is) from here. You must go soon, or he won't be saved. What are you going to do if you have a foul wind or a calm?""But that dying man would probably be in afleet, and what I wish to see is not a single cruising hospital, but thatallour mission vessels in future should be of that type, i.e., one with every fleet."Cassall broke in, "Yes, yes, by all means but, I say, could you not try steam as well? Why not go in at once for a steamer as an experiment, and then you can whisk round like a flash, and time your visits from week to week."Blair rose in his seat wearing a comic expression of despair and terror."Why, we're driven silly now by people who offer us ships, without saying anything about ways and means for keeping the ships up. My dear Cassall, you do not know what a devourer of money a vessel is. Every hour at sea means wear and tear somewhere, and if we are to make our ships quite safe we must be constantly renewing. It's themaintenancefunds that puzzle us. If you give us a ship without a fund for renewals of gear, wages, and so on, it is exactly as though you graciously made a City clerk a present of a couple of Irish hunters, and requested him not to sell them. The vessel Fullerton has in his mind will need an outlay of £1,200 a year to keep her up. Suppose we invest the necessary capital in a good, sound stock, we shall get about 4 per cent. for money, so that we require £30,000 for a sailing ship alone. As to the steamer, whew-w-w!""A very good little speech, Blair, but I think I know what I'm talking about. After all, come now, the steamer only needs extra for coal, engineers, and stokers. You don't trust to chance at all; you don't care a rush for wind or tide, and you can go like an arrow to the point you aim at. Then, don't you see, my very good nautical men--Blair is an absolutely insufferable old Salt since he came home--you can always disengage your propeller when there is a strong, useful wind, and you bank your fires. Brassey told me that, and he said he could always get at least seven knots' speed out of his boat if there was the least bit of a breeze. Then, if you're in a hurry, down goes your propeller, and off you go. The wards must be in the middle--what you call it, Blair, the taffrail?--oh, amidships. The wards must be amidships, and you must be able to lay on steam so as to work a lift. You shove down a platform in a heavy sea, lower a light cage, put your wounded man in it, and steam away. There you are; you may make your calls like the postman. Bill Buncle breaks his leg on Sunday; his mates say, 'All right, William, the doctor's coming to-morrow.' You take me? Tell me, how will you manage if you have a vessel short of hands to work her?""We propose to have several spare hands on board our hospital vessels. Hundreds will be only too glad to go, and we shall always have a sound man to take the place of the patient.""Exactly. Well, with steam you can deposit your men and take them off with all the regularity of an ordinary railway staff on shore.""But the money. It is too colossal to think of."The falcon-faced old merchant waved his hand. "Blair and I, and you too, Mr. Fullerton, not to mention Roche, are all business men, and we don't brag about money. But you know that if I fitted out and endowed ten steamers, I should still be a fairly comfortable man. If you can't keep a steamer going with £4,000 a year, you don't deserve to have one, and if I choose to put down one hundred thousand, and you satisfy mo as to the management, why should I not gratify my whimsy?""And I don't mean to be behindhand if I satisfy myself as to the quality of the work to be done," added Sir James. "Cassall and I will arrange as to how many beds--Roche beds, you understand--I shall be permitted to endow."Fullerton sat dumb; a flush came and went over his clear face, and his lips moved.Cassall proceeded: "My idea is to have a sailing vesselanda steamer. You have told us, Mr. Fullerton, that you must, in time, fit up half a dozen cruisers, if you mean to work efficiently, and our preliminary experiment will decide whether sail or steam is the better. Now, Blair, you must let me fit up your boat for a cruise.""And pray why, Croesus? You talk as if you meant going a-buccaneering.""I don't know what you call it, but I'm going round among those fleets with my niece, and I shall start in a week. If I'm satisfied, you shall hear from me.""And I'm going to play truant and go with you, Cassall," said Sir James."All right; that being so, we'll join the ladies."Henry Fullerton and Blair walked to the station together that night, and the enthusiast said, "I pray that my brain may be able to bear this.""Your fiddlestick, bear this! I wish some one would give me £150,000 to carry out my pet fad. I'd bear it, and go on bearing it, quite gallantly, I assure you, my friend."A very happy pair of people were left to chat in Cassall's drawing-room as the midnight drew near. Sir James had retired early after the two good old boys had addressed each other as buccaneers and shellbacks, and made all sorts of nautical jokes. The discussion as to who should be admiral promised to supply a month's fun, but Cassall pretended to remember that Phoenix Sawbones would certainly wish to be commander, on account of the young puppy's experience.Marion whispered to her uncle, "I do believe you will make yourself very happy;" and the old gentleman answered, "It really seems to be more like a question of makingyouhappy, you little jilt."The little jilt, who was not much shorter than her uncle, looked demure, and theséanceclosed very happily.Next day, Mr. Cassall began fitting out in a style which threatened an Arctic voyage of several winters at least; he was artfully encouraged by the little jilt, and he was so intensely pleased with his yachting clothes that he wore them in the grounds until he went away, which proceeding raised unfeigned admiration among the gardeners and the maids.CHAPTER IV.THE DENOUEMENT.The stout-hearted old gentlemen ran out from the Colne in Blair's schooner, and Freeman had orders to take the Schelling, Ameland, Nordeney, and all the other banks in order. I need not go over the ground again in detail, but I may say that Sir James was never unobservant; he made the most minute notes and sought to provide against every difficulty. The bad weather still held, and there were accidents enough and illness enough, in all conscience. Cassall proposed to hang somebody for permitting the cabins of the smacks to remain in such a wildly unsanitary state; but beyond propounding this totally unpractical suggestion he said little, and contented himself with steady observation. One day he remarked to Sir James, "A lazy humbug would have a fine time in our cruiser if he liked. Who, among us landsmen, durst face weather like this constantly?""Yes; I've been thinking of that. You must have a regular masterful Tartar of a surgeon, and make him bear all responsibility. Pick out a good man, and give him a free hand; that seems the best thing to be done."The two observers saw all that Ferrier had seen, and suffered a little of what he had suffered. Before they had their vessel's head pointed for home, Cassall remarked: "That young Sawbones must have a reasonable pluck, mind you, Roche. I find it hard enough to keep my feet, without having to manage delicate operations; and you notice that we've heard at least fifty of the men talk about this Ferrier's skill with his hands.""That's your man, Cassall, if you only knew it. I shall make a point of meeting him. You haven't seen my plans, have you? Well, I've employed myself since we came out in trying to design every kind of fitting that you're likely to need. I used to be very good at that kind of thing, and I'm very glad my hand hasn't forgot its cunning. I shall test young Ferrier's judgment over my drawings, and that will be a good pretext for meeting him.""The spring is on us now, Roche. We must use that youngster to get at people. He must have some kind of personal magnetism. Did you notice how that fellow choked and sobbed when he told us how the youngster refused to leave him during the gale? A good sign that. We must have parties to meet him, and let him do the talkee-talkee lecturing business. I shouldn't wonder if my girl found the nerve to speak. If you had only heard her oration delivered for my private gratification, you would have been pretty much amazed. She shall spout if she likes.""I see you've set up a new hobby, my friend, and I can back you to ride hard. Seriously speaking, I never knew any cause that I would assist sooner than this. That fellow Fullerton was once described to me by a Jew as 'hare-brained.' It needed a curious sort of hare-brain to build up such an organization as we have seen. I may tell you a little secret, as we are alone. When I was fighting my way up, I was very glad to attend a working man, and I starved genteelly for a long time in a big fishing-port. I assure you that in those days a fisherman was the most ill-conditioned dog on God's earth. He knew less of goodness than a dog does, and I think you could see every possible phase of hoggishness and cruel wickedness on a Saturday night in that town. It used to be a mere commonplace to say that no one should venture into the fishermen's quarter after dark. There is a big change. You snarl at parsons a good deal, I know, but you can't snarl at what we have seen. You are quite right, and I mean to help spur your new hobby as hard as I can."
CHAPTER III.
THE PLOTTER.
An old gentleman and a tall girl were walking in the secluded grounds of a great house that had once belonged to an unhappy Prince. The place was very near London, yet that suggestive hum of the City never seemed to pierce the deep glades of the park; the rooks talked and held councils, and tried culprits, and stole, and quarrelled as freely as they might have done in the wilds of Surrey or Wiltshire; the rabbits swarmed, and almost every south-country species of wild bird nested and enjoyed life in the happy, still woods and shrubberies. Modern--very modern--improvements had been added to the body of the old house, but there was nothing vulgar or ostentatious. Everything about the place, from the old red palace to the placid herd of Alderney cows that grazed in a mighty avenue, spoke of wealth--wealth solid and well-rooted. There was no sign of shoddy anywhere; the old gentleman had bought the place at an enormous price, and he had left all the ancient work untouched; but he would have stables, laundry, tennis-court, and so on through the offices and outside buildings, fitted out according to rational principles of sanitation, and, if the truth be told, he would rather have seen healthy ugly stables than the most quaint and curious of living-rooms that ever spread typhoid.
Mr. Cassall was a man of peculiarly modern type. From his youth upward he had never once acknowledged himself beaten, though he had known desperate circumstances; he saw that, as our civilization goes, money is accounted a rough gauge of merit, and a man's industry, tenacity, sobriety, self-control, and even virtue, are estimated and popularly assessed according to the amount of money which he owns, and he resolved that, let who will fail, he at least would have money and plenty of it. He bent his mind on one end for forty years; he was unscrupulous in all respects so long as he could keep within the law; he established a monopoly in his business on the ruins of scores of small firms which he crushed by weight of metal; he had no pity, no consideration, no remorse, in business hours; and he succeeded just as any other man of ability will succeed if he gives himself up body and soul to money-making. He never was proud; he was only hard. To his niece, whom he passionately loved, he would say, "Never be ashamed, my dear, to tell people that your uncle was a wholesale draper and hosier. Your mother was a little ashamed of it, and I had some trouble to cure her. Don't you be so silly. People think all the more of you for owning frankly that you or your relations have risen from the ranks, as they call it."
When he retired his wealth was colossal. Smart men would say that Bob Cassall's name was good for a million anywhere; and indeed it was good for two millions, and more even than that. He never felt the burden of great riches; as soon as he was safe he seemed to change his nature, and became the most dexterously benevolent of men. He abhorred a cadger; he abhorred the very sight of the begging circulars which so appreciably increase the postman's daily burden. He was a sensible reader, and, when he heard of a traveller who was something more than a mere lion, he would make his acquaintance in the most respectful and unobtrusive way, and he managed to learn much. His shrewd innocence and piquant wit pleased those whom he questioned, and as he was always willing to place his house, horses, boats, and game, at the disposal of any traveller who pleased him, he was reckoned rather a desirable acquaintance. His prejudice against missions to the lower tribes was derived solely from men who had lived and worked among the negroes, and, like all his other prejudices, it was violently strong. He would say, "Have we not good white men here who are capable of anything? I don't want to assist your Polish Jew in the East, nor Quashee Nigger in Africa. Show me a plucky fellow that is ready to work at anything for any hours, and I'll help him. But instead of aiding our own kindly white race, you fool away millions on semi-baboons; you send out men at £300 a year and ask them to play at being St. Paul, and you don't convert a hundred niggers a year--and those who are converted are often very shady customers. Your Indian men drive about in buggies, and the 'cute natives laugh at them. Do you know what a Bengali Baboo or a Pathan is really like? The one is three times as clever as your missionary; the other is a manly fanatic and won't have him at any price. You're a maritime nation, and you've got ten thousand good British seamen out of work. Why not assistthem?"
So this quaint and shockingly heterodox millionaire would rave on, for he was a most peppery old person. One dark and terrible legend is current concerning him, but I hardly dare repeat it. An affable gentleman from a foreign mission called on him one day, and obtained admission (I am bound to add without any subterfuge). Bob heard the visitor's story, and knitted his beetling bushy brows. He said: "Well, sir, you've spoken very fairly. Now just answer me one or two questions. How much money have you per year?"
"Half a million."
"Good. Does any one supervise your missionaries?"
"We have faith in their integrity, and we credit them with industry."
"You trust them five hundred miles up country?"
"Certainly, sir."
"How many missionaries' wives died in the last ten years?"
"I think probably about eighty."
"Eighty sweet English girls condemned to death. Good."
The grizzled old fellow rose in dignified fashion, and said:
"You will perhaps lunch alone, and I shall be pleased if you will be good enough to make this your final visit."
Then the story goes on to say that Mr. Cassall placed a kennel on the lawn with a very large and truculent brindled bulldog as tenant; over the kennel he coiled a garden hose, and above the bulldog's portal appeared the words, "For Foreign Missions."
This seems too shocking to be true, and I fancy the whole tale was hatched in the City. Certainly Mr. Cassall was scandalously unjust to the missionaries--an injustice which would have vanished had he personally known the glorious results for God and humanity achieved by self-denying missionaries and their devoted wives who carry the gospel of Christ to far-off heathen lands--but then where is the man who has not his whims and oddities?
This man, according to his lights, spread his benefactions lavishly and wisely on public charities and private cases of need. He liked above all things to pick out clever young men and set them up in retail businesses with money lent at four per cent. Not once did he make a blunder, and so very lucky was he that he used to tell his niece that with all his enormous expenditure he had not touched the fringe of his colossal capital. If he assisted any advertised charity he did so in the most princely way, but only after he had personally held an audit of the books. If the committee wanted to have the chance of drawing ten thousand pounds, let them satisfy him with their books; if they did not want ten thousand pounds, or thought they did not deserve it, let them leave it alone.
This was Robert Cassall, who was Marion Dearsley's uncle. His grim, grizzled head was stooping a little as he bent towards his niece on this soft winter day, and he himself looked almost like the human type of a hard, wholesome, not unkindly Winter. His high Roman nose, penthouse brows, quick jetty eye, square well-hung chin, and above all his sturdy, decided gait--all marked him: for a Man every inch, and he did not belie his appearance, for no manlier being walks broad England than Robert Cassall.
He was listening a little fretfully to his niece, but her strength and sweetness kept him from becoming too touchy. The deep contralto that we know, said--
"Well then, you see, uncle dear, these men cannot help themselves. They are--oh! such magnificent people--that is the country-born ones, for some of the town men are not nice at all; but the East Coast men are so simple and fine, but then, you know, they are so poor. Our dear Mr. Fullerton told me that in very bad weather the best men cannot earn so much as a scavenger can on shore."
"Yes, yes, my girl. You know I listen carefully to everything you say. I value your talk immensely, but don't you observe, my pet, that if I help every one who cannot help himself I may as well shorten matters by going into the street and saying to each passer-by, 'Please accept half a crown as your share of my fortune'?"
"But the reasons are peculiar here, uncle. Oh! I do so wish Mrs. Walton could see you. She has logic, and she reasons where I dream."
"Hah! Would you? What? Turn Mrs. Walton loose at me? No ladies here, miss, I warn you."
"Now, please be good while I go on. I want to repeat Dr. Ferrier's reasoning if I can. You have fish every day--mostly twice?"
"Yes, but I don't give charity to my butcher. The rascal is able to tipme, if the truth were known."
"True, uncle, and you don't need to give anything to your fishmonger. Why, you silly dear, you think you are a commercial genius, and yet the fishmonger probably charges you ever so much per cent, over and above what the fishermen receive, because of the great expense of railway carriage and distribution of the fish. I know that, because Mr. Fullerton told me; so you see I've corrected you, even you, on a point of finance."
How prettily this stern, composed young woman could put on artful airs of youthfulness when she chose! How she had that firm, far-seeing old man held in position, ready to be twirled round her rosy finger!
Which of us is not held in bondage by some creature of the kind? Unhappy the man who misses that sweet and sacred slavery.
Mr. Cassall wrinkled his grim face not unpleasantly. "Go on; go on. You're a lawyer, neither more nor less. By the way, who is this--this what's-the-name--the Doctor, that you mentioned?"
"Oh! he is a very clever young man who has chosen to become a surgeon instead of being a university professor. He's now out on the North Sea in all this bad weather. He was so much struck with the need of a hospital, that he made up his mind to risk a winter so that he may tell people exactly what he has seen. He doesn't do things in a half-hearted way.
"What a long, pretty description of Mr. Ferrier. You seem to have taken a good deal of notice of the fortunate youth. Well, proceed."
Marion was a little flushed when she resumed, but her uncle did not observe anything at all unusual.
"Where was I?--Oh, yes! You hold it right to give money in charity to deserving objects. Now these men out at sea were left for years, perhaps for centuries, to live as a class without hope or help. Dear good creatures like my own uncle actually never knew that such people were in existence. They were far worse off than savages who have plantains and pumpkins and cocoanuts, and they were our own good flesh and blood, yet we neglected them."
"So we do the East Enders, and the Lancashire operatives and the dock labourers."
"True. But we are doing better now. Then you see the East End has been discovered a long time, and visitors can walk; but the poor North Sea men were left alone, until lately, by everybody."
"Still, we haven't come to whyIshould help them."
"Oh! uncle, you are a commercial man. Look at selfish reasons alone. You know how much we depend on sailors, and you often say the country is so very, very ill-provided with them. And these men are--oh! such splendid seamen. Fancy them staying out for two months with a gale of wind per week, and doing it in little boats about eighty feet long. You should see a hundred of them moving about in mazes and never running into any trouble. Oh! uncle, itiswonderful. Well, now, these men would be all ready for us if we were in national danger. I heard Mr. Fullerton say that hundreds of them are in the Naval Reserve, and as soon as they learned their way about an ironclad, they would take to the work by instinct. There is nothing they don't understand about the sea, and wind and weather. Would any negro help us? Why, Lord Wolseley told your friend Sir James Roche that a thousand Fantees ran away from fifty painted men of some other tribe; and Lord Wolseley said that you can only make a negro of that sort defend himself by telling him that he will die if he runs away. You wouldn't neglect our own men who are so brave. Why they might have to defend London, where all your money is, and they would do it too." (Oh! the artful minx!) "And we send missions to nasty, brutal Fantees who run away from enemies, and we leave our own splendid creatures far worse off than dogs."
"Well, if I'm not having the law laid down to me, I should like to know who ever had. But I'm interested. Let's go round by the avenue, through the kitchen garden, and then round to the front by road, and make the walk as long as you can. Why on earth didn't Blair tell me something of this before? Most wonderful. He talks enough, heaven knows, about anything and everything, but he never mentioned that. Why?"
"Now don't be a crusty dear. I don't know what good form is, but he told me he thought it would hardly be good form to bring up the subject in your company, as it might seem as though he were hinting at a donation. Now that's plain."
"Good. Now never mind the preaching. I understand you to say that's done good."
"Perfectly wonderful. You remember how we were both insulted and hooted at Burslem, only because we were strangers! Well, now, in all the time that we were away we never heard one uncivil word. Not only they were civil, and so beautifully courteous to us, but they were so kindly among themselves, and it is all because they take their Christianity without any isms."
That wicked puss! She knew how Robert Cassall hated the fights of the sects, and she played on him, without in the least letting him suspect what she was doing. He snorted satisfaction. "That's good! that's good! No isms. And you say they've dropped drink?"
"Entirely, uncle, and all through the preaching without any isms. It is such a blessed, beautiful thing to think that hundreds of men who used to make themselves and every one about them wretched, are now calm, happy fellows. And they do not cant, uncle. All of them know each other's failings, and they are gentle and forgiving to each other."
"What a precious lot of saints--much too good to live, I should fancy."
"Don't sneer, you graceless. Yes it's quite true. Do you know, dear, the Early Christian movement is being repeated on the sea."
"Umph. Early Christians! The later Christians have made a pretty mess of it. Now, just give me, without any waste words, all you have to say about this hospital business. Don't bring in preachee-preachee any more."
"Very good, dear. Stop me if I go wrong. I'm going round about. You know, you crabby dear, you wouldn't neglect an old dog or an old pony after it had served you. You wouldn't say, 'Oh, Ponto had his tripe and biscuit, and Bob had his hay;' you would take care of them. Now wouldn't you? Of course you would. And these fishers get their wages, but still they give their lives for your convenience just as the dog and the pony do."
"Yes, yes. But come to the hospital ship. You dance round as if you were a light-weight boxer sparring for breath."
"Hus-s-sh! I won't have it. The fishermen, then, are constantly being dreadfully hurt: I don't mean by such things as toothache, though many hundreds of them have to go sleepless for days, until they are worn out with pain;--I mean really serious, violent hurts. Why, we were not allowed to see several of the men who came to Dr. Ferrier for treatment. The wounds were too shocking. Nearly eight thousand of them are already relieved in various ways every year. Just fancy. And I assure you I wonder very much that there are no more."
"What sort of hurts?"
Then Marion told him all about the falling spars, the poisoned ulcers, the great festers, the poisoned hands caused by venomous fishes accidentally handled in the dark, wild midnights; the salt-water cracks, the thousand and one physical injuries caused by falls, or the blow of the sea, or the prolonged fighting with heavy gales. The girl had become eloquent; she hadseen, and, as she was eloquent as women generally are, she was able to make the keen old man see exactly what she wanted him to see. Then she told how Ferrier stuck to the sinking smack and saved his patient, and Robert Cassall muttered, "That sounds like a man's doings;" and then with every modesty she spoke of Tom Betts's mistake. There never was such a fluent, artful, mock-modest, dramatic puss in the world!
"Hah! mistook you for an angel. Eh? Not much mistake when you like to be good, but when you begin picking my pocket, there's not much of the angel about that, I venture to say."
So spoke the old gentleman; but the anecdote delighted him so much that for two or three days he snorted "Angel!" in various keys all over the house, until the servants thought he must have turned Atheist or Republican, or something generally contemptuous and sarcastic. The girl had him in her toils, and the fascination was too much for him. She could look grand as a Greek goddess, calm and inscrutably imposing as the Venus of Milo; but she could also playPerdita, and dance with her enslaved ones like a veritable little witch. Robert Cassall was captured--there could not be much error about that. He asked, with a sudden snap of teeth and lips which made his niece start: "And how much do you want to coax out of me, Miss Molly. Give me an idea. Of course I'm to be the uncle in the play, and 'Bless you, me chee-ill-dren,' and the rest. Oh yes!"
"Oh, one vessel could be kept up for £30,000."
"What! Per year?"
"No. The interest on £30,000 in North Western Railway stock would support a vessel well. You could easily support two."
"This girl's got bitten by a money-spending tarantula. Why you'd dance a million away in no time.Why, in the name of common sense, why should I support two vessels and their hulking crews--who chew tobacco, of course, don't they? To be sure, and hitch their slacks! Why should I support all these manly tars!"
"Now! I'll be angry. I'll tell you why. You know you have more money than you can ever spend. You promise me some, and you're very good, but I'd almost rather live on my own than have too much. Well, I can't bear to think of your dying--but you must die, my own good dear, and you will have to divide your money before you go. There will be a lot of heart-burning, and I'm afraid poor me won't come off very lightly if I am left behind you. You will want a memorial."
"You remember me and do as I would like you to do, and we sha'n't trouble our minds much about memorials. I thought of almshouses, though."
"Oh! uncle dear, and then the Charity Commissioners may come in, and give all your money to fat, comfortable tradesmen's children, or well-to-do professional men, instead of to your old people, and the clergyman will be master of your money; and the old people will not be grateful, and all will go wrong, and my dear uncle will be forgotten. Oh! no."
"I say, come, come; you're too knowing. You're trying to knock a pet scheme of mine on the head."
The old man was genuinely concerned, and he felt as if some prop had been knocked away from him. But his sweet niece soon brought him round. She had scared his vanity on purpose, and she now applied the antidote.
"Supposing you give us two ships, you give yourself a better memorial than poor Alleyn of Dulwich, or Roan of Greenwich. Dear uncle, a charity which can be enjoyed by the idle is soon forgotten, and the pious founder is no more than a weed round the base of his own monument; he has not even a name. But you may actually see your own memorial working good long, long before you die, and you may see exactly how things will go on when your time is over. When you make out your deed of gift, exact the condition that one vessel must always be called after you, no matter how long or how often the ships are renewed. Sir James Roche can advise you about that. Place your portrait in the ship, and make some such provision as that she shall always carry a flag with your name, if you want to flaunt it, you proud thing! Then something like, at any rate, three thousand sufferers will associate your name with their happiness and cure every year; and they will say in every port in England, 'I was cured on theRobert Cassall,' or 'I should have lost that hand,' or 'I was dying of typhoid and our skipper thought I needed salts, but they cured me on theRobert Cassall.' And the great ships will pass your beautiful ship, and when people ask 'What is that craft, and who is Cassall?' they will say that Cassall gave of his abundance during his lifetime, so that seamen might be relieved of bitter suffering; and those brave men will be so very grateful. And oh! uncle, fancy going out to sea in your own monument, and watching your own wealth working blessedness before your eyes. Why, you will actually have all the pleasures of immortality before you have lost the power of seeing or knowing anything. Oh, uncle dear, think if you can only see one sailor's limbs saved by means of your money! Think of having a hundred living monuments of your goodness walking about in the beautiful world--saved and made whole by you!"
The girl frightened the plucky old gentleman. His voice trembled, and he said, "Why, we must send you to Parliament! You can beat most of those dull sconces. Why, you're a no-mistake born orator--a talkee-talkee shining light! But if you go in for woman's rights and take to short hair, I shall die, after burning my will! And now you kiss me, my darling, and don't scare me any more with that witch's tongue." Was ever millionaire in such manner wooed? Was ever millionaire in such fashion won? The gipsy's eyes glowed, and her heart beat in triumph. Was this the Diana of Ferrier's imagination? Was this the queen of whom that athletic young gentleman was silently dreaming as he swung over the pulsing mountains of the North Sea? This slyboots! This most infantile coax!
I wish some half-dozen of the most charming young ladies in England would only begin coaxing, and coax to as good purpose! I would go out next summer and willingly end my days in work on the water, if I thought my adorable readers would only take Marion Dearsley's hint, and help to blot out a little misery and pain from this bestained world.
While Mr. Cassall was standing, with his teacup, before the glowing wood fire, he said, "Be my secretary for half an hour, Molly, my pet. Write and ask Blair, and that other whom I don't know--Fullerton. Yes; ask them to dinner. And, let me see, you can't ask Mr. Phoenix the Sawbones?"
"Who, uncle?"
"Why, the young doctor that performs such prodigies, of course."
"He's out on the sea now, dear, and I expect that he's in some abominable cabin----"
"Catching smallpox to infect cleanly people with?"
"No, dear. He is most likely tending some helpless tatterdemalion, and moving about like a clever nurse. He is strong--so strong. He pulled a man through a wave with one hand while he held the rigging with the other, and the man told me that it was enough to tear the strongest man to pieces----"
"Here, stop the catalogue. Why, Sawbones must be Phoebus Apollo! If you talk much more I shall ask him a question or two. Go on with your secretary's duties, you naughty girl."
So ended the enslavement of Robert Cassall, and so, I hope, began his immortality. Oh! Marion Dearsley; sweet English lady. This is what you were turning over in your maiden meditations out at sea. Demure, deep, delicious plotter. What acoup! All the mischievous North Sea shall be jocund for this, before long. Surely they must nameonevessel afteryou! You are a bloodless Judith, and you have enchanted a perfectly blameless Holofernes. I, your laureate, have no special song to give you just now, but I think much of you, for the sake of darkened fishers, if not for your own.
Mr. Cassall invited Sir James Roche to meet the other men. Sir James was the millionaire's physician and friend, and Cassall valued all his judgments highly, for he saw in the fashionable doctor a money-maker as shrewd as himself; and, moreover, he had far too much of the insular Briton about him to undervalue the kind of prestige which attaches to one who associates with royal personages and breathes the sacred atmosphere of money. Sir James was an apple-faced old gentleman, who had been a miser over his stock of health and strength. He was consequently ruddy, buoyant, strong, and his good spirits were infectious. He delighted in the good things of the world; no one could order a dinner better; no one could better judge a picture; no one had a more pure and hearty liking for pretty faces;--and it must be added, that few men had more worldly wisdom of the kind needed for everyday use. He could fool a humbug to the top of his bent, and he would make use of humbugs, or any other people, to serve his own ends; but he liked best to meet with simple, natural folks, and Cassall always took his fancy from the time of their first meeting onward.
Sir James spent the afternoon in driving with his host, and they naturally chatted a great deal about Mr. Cassall's new ideas. The physician listened to his friend's version of Miss Dearsley's eloquence, and then musingly said, "I don't know that you can do better than take your niece's advice. The fact is, my dear fellow, you have far too much money. I have more than I know how to use, and mine is like a drop in that pond compared with yours. If you leave a great deal to the girl, you doom her to a life of anxiety and misery and cynicism; she will be worse off than a female cashier in a draper's shop. If she marries young, she will be picked up by some embarrassed peer; if she waits till she is middle-aged, some boy will take her fancy and your money will be fooled away on all kinds of things that you wouldn't like. This idea, so far as it has gone in my mind, seems very reasonable. I'm not thinking of the fishermen at all; that isn't my business at present. I am thinking of you, and I fancy that you may do a great deal of good, and, at the same time, raise your position in the eyes of your countrymen. The most modest of us are not averse to that. Then, again, some plutocrats buy honours by lavishing coins in stinking, rotten boroughs. Your honours if they should come to you, will be clean. At any rate, let us both give these men a fair hearing, and perhaps our worldly experience may aid them. An enthusiast is sometimes rather a fiddle-headed chap when it comes to business."
"I don't want my money to be fought over, and I won't have it. If I thought that people were going to screech and babble over my money, I'd leave the whole lot to the Dogs' Home."
"We'll lay our heads together about that, and I reckon if we two can't settle the matter, there is no likelihood of its ever being settled at all."
The harsh, wintry afternoon came to a pleasant close in the glowing drawing-room. Sir James had coaxed Marion until she told him all about the gale and the rest of it. He was very much interested by her description of Ferrier.
"I've heard of that youngster," he said. "He began as a very Scotch mathematician, and turned to surgery. I heard that he had the gold medal when he took his fellowship. He must be a fine fellow. You say he is out at sea now? I heard a little of it, and understood he wasn't going to leave until the end of December. But it never occurred to me that he was such a friend of yours. You must let me know him. We old fogies often have a chance of helping nice young fellows."
Mrs. Walton and Miss Ranken arrived with Blair and Fullerton, and everybody was soon at ease. Sir James particularly watched Fullerton, and at last he said to himself, "That fellow's no humbug."
The dinner passed in the usual pleasant humdrum style; nobody wanted to shine; that hideous bore, the professional talker, was absent, and the company were content with a little mild talk about Miss Ranken's seclusion at sea during the early days of the autumn voyage. The girl said, "Well, never mind, I would go through it all again to see what we saw. I never knew I was alive before."
Instinctively the ladies refrained from touching on the business which they knew to be nearest the men's minds, and they withdrew early.
Then Cassall came right to the point in his usual sharp, undiplomatic way.
"My niece has been telling me a great deal about your Mission, Mr. Fullerton, and she says you want a floating hospital. I've thought about the matter, but I have so few details to go upon that I can neither plan nor reason. I mean to help if I can, merely because my girl has set her mind on it; but I intend to know exactly where I am going, and how far. I understand you have twelve thousand men that you wish to influence and help. How many men go on board one vessel?"
"From five to seven, according to the mode of trawling."
"That gives you, roughly, say two thousand sail. Marion tells me you have now about eight thousand patients coming on board your ships yearly. Now, if you manage to cover the lot, you must attend on a great many more patients."
"We can onlydabbleat present. We have little pottering dispensaries, and our men manage slight cases of accident, but I cannot help feeling that our work is more or less a sham. People don't think so, but I want so much that I am discontented."
Sir James broke in, "Your vessels have to fish, haven't they?"
"They did at first. We hope to let them all be clear of the trawl for the future."
Mr. Cassall looked at Sir James. "I say, Doctor, how would you like one of your men to operate just after he had been handling fish? Do they clean the fish, Mr. Fullerton? They do? What charming surgeons!"
"We have gone on the principle of trying to do our best with any material. Our skippers are not first-rate pulpit orators, but we have been obliged to let them preach. Both their preaching and their surgery have done an incredible amount of good, but we want more."
"Exactly. Now, I'm a merchant, Mr. Fullerton, and I know nothing about ships, but I understand your vessels are all sailers. Is that the proper word? You depend on the wind entirely. How would you manage if you took a man on board right up, or down, the North Sea?--I don't know which is up and which is down; but, any way, you want to run from one end to the other. How would you manage if you had a very foul wind after your man got cured?"
"We must take our chance. As a matter of experience, we find that our vessels do get about very well. The temperatures of the land on each side of the sea vary so much, that we are never long without a breeze."
"Still, you depend on chance. Is that not so? Now I never like doing things by halves. Tell me frankly, Mr. Fullerton, whatwouldyou do if you took off a small-pox case, and got becalmed on the run home?"
Fullerton laughed. "You are a remarkably good devil's advocate, Mr. Cassall, but if I had ever conjured up obstacles in my own mind, there would have been no mission--would there, Blair? And I venture to think that the total amount of human happiness would have been less by a very appreciable quantity." Besides, it is absolutely against rules to take infectious cases on board the mission vessels.
"Cassall isn't putting obstacles in your way," interposed Sir James. "I know what he's driving at, but strangers are apt to mistake him. He means to draw out of you by cross-examination the fact that quick transport is absolutely necessary for your hospital scheme. Take an instance. Miss Dearsley tells me the men stay out eight weeks, and then run home. Now suppose your cruiser meets one of the home-going vessels, and the captain of this vessel says, 'There's a dying man fifty miles N.W. (or S.W., or whatever it is) from here. You must go soon, or he won't be saved. What are you going to do if you have a foul wind or a calm?"
"But that dying man would probably be in afleet, and what I wish to see is not a single cruising hospital, but thatallour mission vessels in future should be of that type, i.e., one with every fleet."
Cassall broke in, "Yes, yes, by all means but, I say, could you not try steam as well? Why not go in at once for a steamer as an experiment, and then you can whisk round like a flash, and time your visits from week to week."
Blair rose in his seat wearing a comic expression of despair and terror.
"Why, we're driven silly now by people who offer us ships, without saying anything about ways and means for keeping the ships up. My dear Cassall, you do not know what a devourer of money a vessel is. Every hour at sea means wear and tear somewhere, and if we are to make our ships quite safe we must be constantly renewing. It's themaintenancefunds that puzzle us. If you give us a ship without a fund for renewals of gear, wages, and so on, it is exactly as though you graciously made a City clerk a present of a couple of Irish hunters, and requested him not to sell them. The vessel Fullerton has in his mind will need an outlay of £1,200 a year to keep her up. Suppose we invest the necessary capital in a good, sound stock, we shall get about 4 per cent. for money, so that we require £30,000 for a sailing ship alone. As to the steamer, whew-w-w!"
"A very good little speech, Blair, but I think I know what I'm talking about. After all, come now, the steamer only needs extra for coal, engineers, and stokers. You don't trust to chance at all; you don't care a rush for wind or tide, and you can go like an arrow to the point you aim at. Then, don't you see, my very good nautical men--Blair is an absolutely insufferable old Salt since he came home--you can always disengage your propeller when there is a strong, useful wind, and you bank your fires. Brassey told me that, and he said he could always get at least seven knots' speed out of his boat if there was the least bit of a breeze. Then, if you're in a hurry, down goes your propeller, and off you go. The wards must be in the middle--what you call it, Blair, the taffrail?--oh, amidships. The wards must be amidships, and you must be able to lay on steam so as to work a lift. You shove down a platform in a heavy sea, lower a light cage, put your wounded man in it, and steam away. There you are; you may make your calls like the postman. Bill Buncle breaks his leg on Sunday; his mates say, 'All right, William, the doctor's coming to-morrow.' You take me? Tell me, how will you manage if you have a vessel short of hands to work her?"
"We propose to have several spare hands on board our hospital vessels. Hundreds will be only too glad to go, and we shall always have a sound man to take the place of the patient."
"Exactly. Well, with steam you can deposit your men and take them off with all the regularity of an ordinary railway staff on shore."
"But the money. It is too colossal to think of."
The falcon-faced old merchant waved his hand. "Blair and I, and you too, Mr. Fullerton, not to mention Roche, are all business men, and we don't brag about money. But you know that if I fitted out and endowed ten steamers, I should still be a fairly comfortable man. If you can't keep a steamer going with £4,000 a year, you don't deserve to have one, and if I choose to put down one hundred thousand, and you satisfy mo as to the management, why should I not gratify my whimsy?"
"And I don't mean to be behindhand if I satisfy myself as to the quality of the work to be done," added Sir James. "Cassall and I will arrange as to how many beds--Roche beds, you understand--I shall be permitted to endow."
Fullerton sat dumb; a flush came and went over his clear face, and his lips moved.
Cassall proceeded: "My idea is to have a sailing vesselanda steamer. You have told us, Mr. Fullerton, that you must, in time, fit up half a dozen cruisers, if you mean to work efficiently, and our preliminary experiment will decide whether sail or steam is the better. Now, Blair, you must let me fit up your boat for a cruise."
"And pray why, Croesus? You talk as if you meant going a-buccaneering."
"I don't know what you call it, but I'm going round among those fleets with my niece, and I shall start in a week. If I'm satisfied, you shall hear from me."
"And I'm going to play truant and go with you, Cassall," said Sir James.
"All right; that being so, we'll join the ladies."
Henry Fullerton and Blair walked to the station together that night, and the enthusiast said, "I pray that my brain may be able to bear this."
"Your fiddlestick, bear this! I wish some one would give me £150,000 to carry out my pet fad. I'd bear it, and go on bearing it, quite gallantly, I assure you, my friend."
A very happy pair of people were left to chat in Cassall's drawing-room as the midnight drew near. Sir James had retired early after the two good old boys had addressed each other as buccaneers and shellbacks, and made all sorts of nautical jokes. The discussion as to who should be admiral promised to supply a month's fun, but Cassall pretended to remember that Phoenix Sawbones would certainly wish to be commander, on account of the young puppy's experience.
Marion whispered to her uncle, "I do believe you will make yourself very happy;" and the old gentleman answered, "It really seems to be more like a question of makingyouhappy, you little jilt."
The little jilt, who was not much shorter than her uncle, looked demure, and theséanceclosed very happily.
Next day, Mr. Cassall began fitting out in a style which threatened an Arctic voyage of several winters at least; he was artfully encouraged by the little jilt, and he was so intensely pleased with his yachting clothes that he wore them in the grounds until he went away, which proceeding raised unfeigned admiration among the gardeners and the maids.
CHAPTER IV.
THE DENOUEMENT.
The stout-hearted old gentlemen ran out from the Colne in Blair's schooner, and Freeman had orders to take the Schelling, Ameland, Nordeney, and all the other banks in order. I need not go over the ground again in detail, but I may say that Sir James was never unobservant; he made the most minute notes and sought to provide against every difficulty. The bad weather still held, and there were accidents enough and illness enough, in all conscience. Cassall proposed to hang somebody for permitting the cabins of the smacks to remain in such a wildly unsanitary state; but beyond propounding this totally unpractical suggestion he said little, and contented himself with steady observation. One day he remarked to Sir James, "A lazy humbug would have a fine time in our cruiser if he liked. Who, among us landsmen, durst face weather like this constantly?"
"Yes; I've been thinking of that. You must have a regular masterful Tartar of a surgeon, and make him bear all responsibility. Pick out a good man, and give him a free hand; that seems the best thing to be done."
The two observers saw all that Ferrier had seen, and suffered a little of what he had suffered. Before they had their vessel's head pointed for home, Cassall remarked: "That young Sawbones must have a reasonable pluck, mind you, Roche. I find it hard enough to keep my feet, without having to manage delicate operations; and you notice that we've heard at least fifty of the men talk about this Ferrier's skill with his hands."
"That's your man, Cassall, if you only knew it. I shall make a point of meeting him. You haven't seen my plans, have you? Well, I've employed myself since we came out in trying to design every kind of fitting that you're likely to need. I used to be very good at that kind of thing, and I'm very glad my hand hasn't forgot its cunning. I shall test young Ferrier's judgment over my drawings, and that will be a good pretext for meeting him."
"The spring is on us now, Roche. We must use that youngster to get at people. He must have some kind of personal magnetism. Did you notice how that fellow choked and sobbed when he told us how the youngster refused to leave him during the gale? A good sign that. We must have parties to meet him, and let him do the talkee-talkee lecturing business. I shouldn't wonder if my girl found the nerve to speak. If you had only heard her oration delivered for my private gratification, you would have been pretty much amazed. She shall spout if she likes."
"I see you've set up a new hobby, my friend, and I can back you to ride hard. Seriously speaking, I never knew any cause that I would assist sooner than this. That fellow Fullerton was once described to me by a Jew as 'hare-brained.' It needed a curious sort of hare-brain to build up such an organization as we have seen. I may tell you a little secret, as we are alone. When I was fighting my way up, I was very glad to attend a working man, and I starved genteelly for a long time in a big fishing-port. I assure you that in those days a fisherman was the most ill-conditioned dog on God's earth. He knew less of goodness than a dog does, and I think you could see every possible phase of hoggishness and cruel wickedness on a Saturday night in that town. It used to be a mere commonplace to say that no one should venture into the fishermen's quarter after dark. There is a big change. You snarl at parsons a good deal, I know, but you can't snarl at what we have seen. You are quite right, and I mean to help spur your new hobby as hard as I can."