An hour later word came to Hester—it was Shake who brought it—that Mr. Benny would be glad to see her in the office. She obeyed at once, albeit with some trepidation when she came to mount the steps and tap at the door. She had learnt, however, from Nuncey that certain nights were set aside for tattooing. Doubtless this would not be one of them.
Four seamen sat within by the stove and under the light of the swinging lamp, smoking, patiently awaiting their turn. In the fog of tobacco smoke, which almost took Hester's breath away, they rose politely and saluted her. Big, shy boys they seemed to her, with the whites of their eyes extraordinarily clear against their swarthy complexions. Somehow she felt at home with them instantly, and no more afraid than if they had been children in her school.
One of them called Mr. Benny from the tiny inner office, or cupboard, where he conducted his confidential business, and the little man came running out in a flurry with one hand grasping a handkerchief and the other nervously thrust in his dishevelled hair.
"You will forgive me, my dear, for sending? The truth is, I am at my wits' end to-night and cannot concentrate myself. I have heard news to-day—no, nothing to distress me—on the contrary."—He gazed round helplessly. "It has upset me, though. I was wondering if you will be very kind and help me?"
"Help you?" echoed Hester. "Oh, Mr. Benny, you surely don't ask me to write your letters for you!"
"Not if you would find it distasteful, my dear."
"But I don't know; I assure you I haven't an idea how to do it!"
"You would find it come easy, for that matter." Mr. Benny drew a quill pen from behind his right ear, eyed its point dejectedly for a moment, and replaced it. "But, of course, if you feel like that, we'll say no more about it, and I'm sorry to have troubled you."
"If it's merely writing down from dictation—"
"You will find it a little more thanthat," Mr. Benny admitted.
Hester looked around on the faces of the seamen. They said nothing; they even watched her with sympathy, as though, while dumbly backing Mr. Benny's petition, they felt him to be asking too much; yet she divined that they were disappointed.
"I will try," she said with sudden resolve, and their approving murmur at once rewarded her. "Only you must be patient, and forgive my mistakes."
"That's a very good lass," said one of them aloud, as Mr. Benny shook her by the hand and led her triumphantly to the little inner office. Hester heard the words, and in spite of nervousness was glad that she had chosen to be brave.
The inner office contained a desk, a stool, and a deal chair. These, with a swinging lamp, a shelf of books, and a Band of Hope Almanack, completed its furniture. Indeed, it had room for no more, and its narrow dimensions were dwarfed just now by an enormous black-bearded seaman seated in the chair by the window, which stood open to the darkness. Although the month was December, the wind blew softly from the southwest, and night had closed in with a fine warm drizzle of rain. Beyond the window the riding-lights of the vessels at anchor shone across the gently heaving tide.
The black-bearded seaman made a motion to rise, but realising that this would seriously displace the furniture, contented himself with a 'Good-evening, miss,' and dropped back in his seat.
"Good-evening," answered Hester. "Mr. Benny here has asked me to take his place. I hope you don't mind?"
"Lord bless you, I like it."
"But I shall make a poor hand of it, I'm afraid."
The man eyed her solemnly for five or six seconds, slowly turned the quid of tobacco in his cheek, and spat out of window. "We'll get along famous," he said.
"He likes the window open," explained Mr. Benny, "because—"
"I see." Hester nodded.
"But I'll run and fetch a cloak for you." Without waiting for an answer, Mr. Benny hurried from the office.
To be deserted thus was more than Hester had bargained for, and for a moment she felt helplessly dismayed. A sheet of paper, half-covered with writing, lay on the desk, and she put out a hand for it.
"Is this your letter? Perhaps you'll allow me to read it and see how far you and Mr. Benny have gone."
"That's the way. Only you mustn' give me no credit for it: I sits and looks on. 'Never take a hand in a business you don't know'—that's my motto."
Hester wished devoutly that it had also been hers. She picked up the paper and read—
"Dear Wife,—This comes hoping to find you in health as it leaves me at present, and the children hearty. We made a good passage, and arrived at Troy on the 14th inst., a romantic little harbour picturesquely situated on the south coast of Cornwall. Once a flourishing port, second only to London and Bristol, and still retaining in its ivy-clad fort some vestiges of its former glories, it requires the eye of imagination to summon back the days when (as Hals tells us) it manned and sent forth more than forty ships to the siege of Calais, A.D. 1347—"
"Dear Wife,—This comes hoping to find you in health as it leaves me at present, and the children hearty. We made a good passage, and arrived at Troy on the 14th inst., a romantic little harbour picturesquely situated on the south coast of Cornwall. Once a flourishing port, second only to London and Bristol, and still retaining in its ivy-clad fort some vestiges of its former glories, it requires the eye of imagination to summon back the days when (as Hals tells us) it manned and sent forth more than forty ships to the siege of Calais, A.D. 1347—"
"Dear Wife,—This comes hoping to find you in health as it leaves me at present, and the children hearty. We made a good passage, and arrived at Troy on the 14th inst., a romantic little harbour picturesquely situated on the south coast of Cornwall. Once a flourishing port, second only to London and Bristol, and still retaining in its ivy-clad fort some vestiges of its former glories, it requires the eye of imagination to summon back the days when (as Hals tells us) it manned and sent forth more than forty ships to the siege of Calais, A.D. 1347—"
Hester glanced at her client dubiously.
"That's all right, ain't it?" he asked.
"Ye—es." "Far as I remember, it tallies with the last letter he fixed up for me. Something about 'grey old walls' there was, too."
"Yes, that comes two sentences below—
"Confronted with these evidences of decay, the visitor instinctively exclaims to himself, 'If these grey old walls could speak, what a tale might they not unfold!'—"
"Confronted with these evidences of decay, the visitor instinctively exclaims to himself, 'If these grey old walls could speak, what a tale might they not unfold!'—"
"Confronted with these evidences of decay, the visitor instinctively exclaims to himself, 'If these grey old walls could speak, what a tale might they not unfold!'—"
"So he've put that in again? There's what you might call a sameness about Benny, though hedowrite different to anybody else."
"And here are more dates, and an epitaph from one of the tombstones in the churchyard! Indeed, Mr."—
"Salt. Tobias Salt—andby natur'."
"Indeed, Mr. Salt, I can't write a letter like this. To begin with, I haven't the knowledge."
"The Lord forbid!"
"But I suppose your wife likes to read about these things?"
"She can't read a word, bless you. She gets the parson to spell it out to her, or the seamen's missionary. Yarmouth our home is."
"She likes to hear about them, then?"
"What? Sarah? Lord love ye, miss, you should see the woman!" Mr. Salt chuckled heavily, and wound up by sending a squirt of tobacco-juice out into darkness. "Mother of eight children, she is, and makes 'em toe the mark at school and Sunday school. A woman like that don't bother about grey old walls."
"You are proud of her, I see."
"Ought to be, I reckon. Why, to-day she can pick up two three-gallon pitchers o' water and heft 'em along for a mile and more without turning a hair."
"And the children? How old are they?"
"Eldest just turned eleven."
"Why, then he must be able to read?"
"'Tisn't a he, 'tis a her. Ay, I reckon 'Melia Jane should read well before this."
Hester took a fresh sheet of paper and began to write.
"Listen to this, please," she said after a few sentences, "and tell me if it will do—"
"Dear Wife,—This comes hoping to find you in health, as it leaves me at present, and the children hearty. I am sending this from Troy, and I daresay you will take it to some friend to read; but tell Amelia Jane, with my love, that in future she shall read her father's letters to you. She must be getting a scholar by this time; and if there's anything she can't explain, why you can take it to a friend afterwards. We reached this port last Tuesday (the 14th) after a good passage—"
"Dear Wife,—This comes hoping to find you in health, as it leaves me at present, and the children hearty. I am sending this from Troy, and I daresay you will take it to some friend to read; but tell Amelia Jane, with my love, that in future she shall read her father's letters to you. She must be getting a scholar by this time; and if there's anything she can't explain, why you can take it to a friend afterwards. We reached this port last Tuesday (the 14th) after a good passage—"
"Dear Wife,—This comes hoping to find you in health, as it leaves me at present, and the children hearty. I am sending this from Troy, and I daresay you will take it to some friend to read; but tell Amelia Jane, with my love, that in future she shall read her father's letters to you. She must be getting a scholar by this time; and if there's anything she can't explain, why you can take it to a friend afterwards. We reached this port last Tuesday (the 14th) after a good passage—"
"Now tell me about your passage, please."
At first Mr. Salt could only tell her that the passage had been a good one, as passages go. But by feeding him with a suggestion or two, as men feed a pump with a little water to make it work, by and by she found herself listening to information in a flood. Now and then she interposed a question, asking mainly about his wife and the home at Yarmouth. She had picked up her pen again, and he, absorbed in his confidences, did not perceive at what a rate she was making it travel over the paper.
The door opened, and Mr. Benny reappeared with a shawl on his arm. He glanced around nervously. "Mr. Salt, Mr. Salt! I put it to you, this isn't quite fair. A fine talk I can hear you're having; but our friends outside are getting impatient, and want to know when you'll let Miss Marvin begin."
"All right, boss. I've had a yarn here that's worth all the money. Here's your shilling for it, and the letter can stand over till to-morrow."
"But I've written it!" Hester exclaimed.
"Written it!" Mr. Salt's jaw dropped in amazement.
"I don't know if it will do. Shall I read it over?"
"Well, but this beats conjuring!" The reading ended, Mr. Salt slapped his massive thigh.
"You have done very well, my dear," said Mr. Benny; "very well indeed. You have caught, as I might say, the note. Now I myself have great difficulty in being literary and at the same time catching the note."
There was something in the little man's confession—so modest, so generous withal—which drew tears to her eyes, though her own elation may have had some share in them.
"Though there's one thing she've forgotten," said Mr. Salt, with a twinkle. "My poor Sarah will get shock enough over this letter as 'tis; but she'll get a worse one if we leave out the money order."
The order having been made out in form, ready for him to take to the post office, Mr. Salt bade farewell. They could hear him extolling, on his way through the outer office, the talent of the operator within.
"I feel like a dentist!" whispered Hester, turning to Mr. Benny with a smile. The little man was looking at her wistfully.
"Shall I call in the next?" he asked. "I am afraid, my dear, you are finding this a longer job than you bargained for."
"But I am enjoying it," she protested. "That is, if—Mr. Benny, you are not annoyed by his foolish praises?"
"My dear," he answered gravely, "they say that all literary persons are jealous. If I were jealous it would not be because Mr. Salt praised you, but because my own sense tells me that you do better than I what I have been doing for twenty years."
"If you feel like that, I won't write another letter," declared Hester.
"That would be very foolish, my dear. And now I will tell you another thing. Suppose that this discovery hurt me a little, yet see how good God is in keeping back all these years until a moment when my heart happens to be so full of good news that it forgets the soreness in a moment; and again, how wise in gently correcting and reminding me of weakness when I might be puffing myself up and believing that all my good fortune came of my own merit."
"What is your good news, dear Mr. Benny?"
"You shall hear later on when I have told my wife."
More than an hour later, having dismissed her clients (for the last of whom she had to compose a love-letter, the first she had written in her life), Hester stepped across to the cottage to announce that her work was over and ask if she might now turn down the lamps and rake out the stove.
The Bennys' kitchen at first glance was uninhabited; and yet, as she opened the door, she had heard voices within. Dropping her eyes to a lower level, she halted on the threshold and would have withdrawn without noise. In the penumbra beyond the circle of the lamp and the white tablecloth Mr. and Mrs. Benny, Nuncey, and Shake were kneeling by their chairs on the limeash, giving thanks.
While Hester hesitated, the little man lifted his head, and, catching sight of her, sprang to his feet. "Step ye in, my dear, and join with us! For you, too, have news to hear and be thankful for."
"But tell me your own good news and let me first be thankful for that."
"Do'ee really feel like that towards us?" asked Nuncey, rising and coming forward with joy and eager love in her eyes.
"I ought to, surely, after these months of kindness."
"Well, then—but first of all I must kiss 'ee, you dear thing!—well, then, Dad's been offered Damelioc stewardship, and you're to be Mistress of the Widows' Houses, and we're all going to be rich as Creases for ever and ever, Amen!"
"Croesus, my dear—besides, we're going to be nothing of the sort," protested her father.
Nuncey swept down upon him, caught him in her strong embrace, implanted a sound kiss on the top of his head, and held him at arms' length with a hand on either shoulder.
"You're a dear little well-to-do father, and the best in the world. But oh! you've come nigh breaking my heart these three months—for a worse regrater there never was, an' couldn' be!"
"Upon my word," said Mr. Benny, glancing over her shoulder at Hester with a twinkle, "I seem to be getting good fortune with a heap of chastening."
The post of 'Mistress' to the Widows' Houses was a somewhat singular one. The hospital itself had been founded in 1634 by an ancestor of Sir George Dinham's, and dedicated to St. Peter, as a retreat for eleven poor women, widows of husbands drowned at sea. From a narrow cobbled lane, behind the parish church and in the shadow of its tower, you passed into a quadrangle, two sides of which were formed by the lodgings, twelve in number (the twelfth occupied by the caretaker, or Mistress), the other two by the wash-house and store-buildings. In the centre of this courtyard stood a leaden pump, approached by four pebbled paths between radiating beds of flowers—Provence roses, Madonna lilies, and old perennials and biennials such as honesty, sweet-william, snapdragon, the pink and white everlasting pea, with bushes of fuchsia, southernwood, and rosemary. Along the first floor of the alms-buildings ran a deep open gallery, or upstairs cloister, where in warm weather the old women sat and knitted or gossiped in the shade.
The rule restricting admission to the widows of drowned mariners had been gradually relaxed during the last fifty years, and was now a dead letter; aged spinsters even, such as Aunt Butson, being received in default of applicants with better title. Also Sir George's father, having once on a time been called upon to depose a caretaker for ill-using the inmates, had replaced her by a gentlewoman; and thinking to safeguard them in future by increasing the dignity of the post, had rebuilt and enlarged the new Mistress's lodgings, and increased her salary by endowment to £eighty per annum.
All this Sir George explained very delicately to Hester, on the morning of Nicky Vro's funeral, having called at the school to seek an interview on his way back from the churchyard.
"But I am not a decayed gentlewoman," Hester objected; "at least, not yet. I shall be standing in the way of someone who really wants this post, while I am strong and able to earn my living. Also—please do not think me ungrateful or conceited—to teach is my calling, and I take a pride in it."
"From all I hear, you have a right to take pride in it. But may I say that these objections occurred to me and that I have a scheme for removing them—a very happy scheme, if you will help. Now, in the first place, will you put the personal question out of sight and consider my scheme on its merits? And next, will you, in advising me, take account of my ignorance?"
Hester smiled. "I know," she said, "that kindness can be cunning. I am going to be on my guard."
"Well, but listen at any rate," he pleaded, with an eager stammer. "Won't you agree with me that the education you give these children here is dreadfully wasteful?"
She glanced at him keenly. "If you are taking the ordinary ratepayer's view—" she began.
"I am not taking the ordinary ratepayer's view, except to this extent— that I think the ratepayers' and taxpayers' money should be spent to the best advantage. But is it?—either here or in any parish in England?"
"No, it is not."
"Will you tell me why, Miss Marvin?"
"Because," answered Hester, "we do a little good and then refuse to follow it up. If we were to take a child and say, 'You shall be a farm labourer,' or 'You shall be a domestic servant, and in due time marry a labourer and rear his family; 'and if, content with this, we were to teach these children just enough for their fate—the boy to plough and work a threshing machine and touch his cap to his betters, the girl to cook and sew and keep house on sixteen shillings a week—why, then there might be something to say for us. We have not the heart to do this, and yet in effect we do more cruelly. We are not tyrants enough to take a child of eight and label him for life: we start him on a kind of education which seems to offer him a chance; and then, just as the prospect should be opening, we suddenly lose interest in him, wash our hands of him, turn him adrift. Some few—a very few—have the grit to push on, unhelped by us, and grasp their opportunity. But for one of these a thousand and more fall back on their fate, and of our teaching the one thing they keep is discontent. We have built a porch, to nowhere. We invest millions; and just as our investment begins to repay us splendidly, we sell out, share by share. That is why I think sometimes, Sir George, in my bitterness, that education in England must be the most wasteful thing in the world."
"If, in this corner of England, someone were to set himself to fight this waste, would you help?"
"As Mistress of the Widows' Houses?"
Sir George laughed. "As Mistress of the Widows' Houses—and of a school attached. I am thinking of a Charterhouse or a Christ's Hospital in a small way; a foundation, that is, to include the old charity and a new and efficient school; modern education worked on lines of the old collegiate mediæval systems—eh, Miss Marvin? To me, a high Tory, those old foundations are still our best models."
"Three or four of them have survived," said Hester gravely, and with as little of irony as she could contrive. "Forgive me, Sir George—once more I am going to speak ungratefully—but though neglect be our chief curse just now, a worse may follow when rich folks wake up and endow education in a hurry."
"You condemn me offhand for a faddist?"
"If you would only see that these things need an apprenticeship! Take this very combination of school and hospital. Three or four have survived, and are lodged in picturesque buildings, where they keep picturesque old customs, and seem to you very noble and venerable. So indeed they are. But what of the hundreds that have perished? And of these survivors can you tell me one in which either the school or the alms-house has not gone to the wall? The school, we will say, grows into an expensive one for the sons of rich men; the almshouse dwindles from a college for poor gentlemen down to a home into which wealthy men job their retired servants. I grant you that our modern attempts to combine almsgiving with teaching are not much better as a rule—are, perhaps, even a little worse. If you have ever walked through one of our public orphanages, for instance—"
Sir George's face fell. "I have never visited one, Miss Marvin, and I subscribe perhaps to half a dozen—out of sheer laziness, and because to subscribe comes easier than to say 'No.' Yes; I am an incurable amateur, and you are right, no doubt, in laughing at my scheme and refusing to look at it."
"But I don't, Sir George. I even think it may succeed, as it deserves, and reward your kindness. Yes, and I have been arguing against myself as much as against you, to warn myself against hoping too much. For there must be disappointments."
"What disappointments?"
"Well, to begin with, you rich folks are impatient; you expect your money to buy success at once and of itself. And then you expect gratitude."
"I do not," Sir George asserted stoutly.
"At least," said Hester, "it is only too plain that you are not getting it." She dropped him a small deprecatory curtsey and laughed. "And yet Iamgrateful."
"Yes," he answered gravely; "I understand. But since you do not quite despise my scheme, will you come and discuss it with me, believing only that I am in earnest?"
So it was arranged that Hester should call on him next evening and go through the plans he had been preparing for a week past. That such an interview defied convention scarcely crossed her mind or his, Sir George being one of those men who can neglect convention because their essential honour stands above question. He received her in his library, and for an hour they talked as might two men of business in friendly committee for some public good.
"By the way," said he, glancing up from his papers, "you were talking yesterday of public orphanages. Have you heard that your little friend Clem—the blind child—has been packed off to one?"
"To an orphanage?" Hester echoed. "The children were not at school to-day, but I had not heard a sound of this."
"It is true; for I happened to call in at the station this morning, and there on the platform I met Rosewarne with the child. The man was taking his ticket to Paddington—a single ticket half-fare; and overhearing this as we stood together by the booking-office, I made bold to ask him a few questions. The child was to travel alone, in charge of the guard; to be met at the journey's end, I suppose, by an official, and taken out to the orphanage—I forget its name—an institution for the blind somewhere out in the south-eastern suburbs."
"Poor Myra!"
"'Poor Clem!' I should rather say. He was not crying over it, but he looked pretty forlorn and white, and his blindness made it pitiable. I call it brutal; the man at least might have travelled up for company. A journey of three hundred miles!"
Nevertheless, Hester chiefly pitied Myra. As for Clem, the news relieved her mind in part; since after witnessing Mr. Sam's outburst, she had more than once shivered at the thought of child and uncle continuing to live under one roof.
Poor Myra had spent the day pacing up and down her room like a caged beast. The fate decreed and overhanging Clem had been concealed from her. Had it been less incredible, instinct surely would have wakened her suspicions before the last moment. At the last moment Susannah, having to dress the child for his journey, met inquiries with the half-hearted lie that he was bound on a trip to Plymouth with his uncle, to meet Aunt Hannah, and return after a day or two in theVirtuous Lady. Susannah— weak soul—had furthered the conspiracy because she too had begun to fear for Clem, and wished him well clear of his uncle's roof. She acted 'for the best,' but broke down in the act of tearing the children asunder, and told her lie shamefacedly. The result was that Mr. Sam, hearing Myra's screams overhead as he paced the hall, had rushed upstairs, caught her by both wrists as she clung to her brother, forced her into her own bedroom, and turned and pocketed the key.
Four times since, in that interminable day of anguish, Susannah had come pleading and whimpering to the door with food. Mr. Sam, on returning from the station, had given her the key with instructions to release the girl on a promise of good behaviour.
"Be sensible, Miss Myra—now, do! 'Tis to a home he's gone, where he'll be looked after and taught and tended, and you'll see him every holidays. A fine building, sure 'nough! Look, I've brought you a picture of it!"
Susannah, defying instructions, had unlocked and opened the door. Myra snatched the paper from her—it was, in fact, a prospectus of the institution—crumpled it up and thrust it in her pocket. With that, the last gust of her passion seemed to spend itself. She turned, and walking straight to the window-seat, coiled herself among the cushions with face averted and chin upon hand. To Susannah the traitress she deigned no word.
Thrice again Susannah came pleading, each time with a tray and something to tempt Myra's appetite. Myra did not turn her head. Departing for the fourth time, Susannah left the door ajar. The siege, then, was raised, the imprisonment over. Myra listened to her footsteps descending the stairs, walked to the door, shifted the key from the outer to the inner keyhole, and locked herself in. By this time the wintry dusk had begun to fall. Resuming her seat by the window, she fell to watching the courtyard again, her body motionless, her small brain working.
Dusk had deepened to darkness in the courtyard when she heard a footfall she recognised. It was Archelaus Libby's, on his way home from school to his loft, to deposit his books there and wash before seeking his tea in the kitchen.
Myra straightened her body, and opened the window softly.
"Archelaus!" she called as loudly as she dared.
"Miss Myra?" The footsteps halted.
"Hush, Archelaus, and come nearer. I want you to do something for me."
"Yes, Miss Myra."
"It may get you into trouble. I want you to fetch the short ladder from under the linhay, and fix it against the window here, without making a noise."
For a moment he made no answer. But he had understood; for she heard him walking away toward the linhay, and by and by he returned panting, and sloped the ladder against the sill as she bade him. By this time Myra had found a plateful of biscuits, and crammed her pocket full, and was ready to descend.
"But what is the meaning of it?" asked Archelaus, as she clambered down to him.
"They have stolen away Clem, and this morning they locked me in. Now take the ladder back and hang it in its place, and I will thank you for ever and ever."
"But I don't understand!" protested Archelaus. "Stolen away Master Clem? Who has stolen him? And what are you going to do?"
"I am going to find him—that's all," said Myra, and ran off into the darkness.
She could reckon on two friends in the world—Mr. Benny and Tom Trevarthen. Aunt Hannah was far away, and Miss Marvin (though now forgiven, and indeed worshipped for having interfered to protect Clem from his flogging) could not be counted on for effective help.
Tom Trevarthen and Mr. Benny—it was on Tom that she pinned her hope; for Tom (she had heard) was shipped on board theOne-and-Allschooner; and theOne-and-Allwas ready to sail for London; and somewhere near London—so the paper in her pocket had told her—lay the dreadful place in which Clem was hidden. She could find the vessel; theOne-and-Allwas moored—or had been moored last night—at the buoy under the hill, ready for sea. But to find the vessel and to find Tom Trevarthen were two very different things. To begin with, Tom would be useless unless she contrived to speak with him alone; to row straight to the schooner and hail her would spoil all. Moreover, on the night before sailing he would, most likely, be enjoying himself ashore. But where? Peter Benny might be able to tell. Peter Benny had a wonderful knack of knowing the movements of every seaman in the port.
She ran down the dark street to the alley over which poor Nicky Vro's signboard yet glimmered in the light of the oil lamp at the entrance. The cottage still lacked a tenant, and it had been nobody's business to take the board down. On the frape at the alley's end his ferryboat lay moored as he had left it. Myra tugged at the rope and drew the boat in.
As it drew alongside out of the darkness she leapt on board and cast off. The paddles, as she laboriously shipped them between the thole-pins, were unconscionably heavy; she knew little of rowing, and nothing of double-sculling. But the tide helped her. By pulling now one paddle, now another, she worked the boat across and down towards the ladder and the quay-door at the end of Mr. Benny's yard.
Nearing it, she found herself in slack water, and the boat became more manageable, giving her time between the strokes to glance over her shoulder and scan the dark shadow under the longshore wall, where each garden and alley-way had its quay-door and its ladder reaching down into the tide. Now the most of these quay-doors were painted green or blue, but Mr. Benny's a light grey, which in the darkness should have made it easily discernible. Yet for some while she could not find it.
Suddenly, as she threaded her way along, scarcely using her paddles now except to fend off the boats which, lying peaceably at their moorings, seemed to crowd around with intent to impede her, a schooner's masts and spars loomed up before her high against the inky night. Then she understood. The vessel—her name, theOne-and-All, in white letters on her forward bulwarks, glimmered into sight as Myra passed—lay warped alongside the wall, with her foreyard braced aslant to avoid chafing the roof of Mr. Benny's office, and her mainmast and standing rigging all but entirely hiding Mr. Benny's quay-door, the approach to which she completely obstructed. A little above her forestay a small window, uncurtained and brightly lit, broke the long stretch of featureless black wall. This was the window of Mr. Benny's inner office, and within, as she checked her way, catching at the gunwale of one among the tethered boats, Myra could see the upper half of a hanging lamp and the shadow of its reflector on the smoky ceiling.
Mr. Benny would be seated under that lamp, no doubt. But how could she reach him?
TheOne-and-Alllay head-to-stream, and so deep in the water that the tide all but washed her bulwarks, still grey with the dust of china-stone as she had come from her loading. Nowadays no British ship so scandalously overladen would be allowed to put to sea; but the Plimsoll-mark had not yet been invented to save seamen from their employers.
She lay so low that Myra, peering into the darkness, could almost see across decks to the farther bulwarks; and the decks were deserted. She mounted no riding-lamp, and no glimmer of light showed from hatchway, deckhouse, or galley.
Minutes passed, and, as still no sign of life appeared on board, Myra grew bolder and pushed across for a nearer view. Yes; the deck was deserted, and only the deck intervened between her and Mr. Benny's quay-door, by the sill of which the tide ran lapping and sucking at the crevices of the wall. She hardened her heart. Even if her footstep gave the alarm below, she could dash across and through the doorway before being seized or even detected. She laid both hands on the clay-dusted bulwarks and hoisted herself gently. The boat—she had done with it—slipped away noiselessly from under her and away into darkness.
She had meant to clear the ship with a rush; but as her feet touched the deck her courage failed her, and she tiptoed forward stealthily, gaining the shadow of the deckhouse and pausing there.
And there, in the act of crouching to spring across the few remaining yards, she drew back, crouching lower yet; for, noiseless as she, the dark form of a man had stepped forward and framed itself in the grey glimmering doorway.
For an instant she made sure that he was about to step on board. But many seconds passed, and still he waited there—as it seemed to her, in the attitude of a man listening; though to what he listened she could not guess. She herself heard no sound but the lapping of the tide.
By and by, gripping the ladder-rail and setting one foot against theOne-and-All'sbulwarks to steady himself, the man leaned outboard and sideways until a faint edge of light from the office window fell on his upturned face.
It was the face of her uncle.
Fascinated by terror, following his gaze—by instinct seeking for help, if any might be found—Myra lifted her face to the window. That too was darkened for the instant by a man's form; and as he crossed the room to the chair beside the desk, she recognised Tom Trevarthen.
Mr. Salt must have been preaching Hester's talent at large among seamen of the port, for when she returned from her interview with Sir George Mr. Benny met her at the kitchen door with news that no less than six sailors awaited her in the office, and that two or three had been patiently expecting her for an hour at least.
"Tis a great tax on you, my dear, and I tried to reason wi' them; but they wouldn't take 'No' for an answer. What's more, when I retire from the business I shan't be honestly able to sell you the goodwill of it, for they won't have my services at any price."
Hester laughed. "You won't even get me to bid," she assured him. "We shall soon be too busy for letter-writing, and must close the office; but to-night I suppose we cannot disappoint them."
So, with a sigh of resignation and an envious glance at the cosy fire, she turned and stepped briskly down the courtyard to the office. There, as Mr. Benny had promised, she found six expectant mariners, and for an hour wrote busily, rapidly. Either she was growing cleverer at the business, or her talk with Sir George had keyed her to this happy pitch. She felt—it happens sometimes, if rarely, to most of us—in tune with all the world; and in those illuminated hours we feel as if our fellow-creatures could bring us no secret too obscure for our understanding, no trouble hopeless of our help. "The light of the body is the eye; if, therefore, thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." Hester found herself divining without effort what her clients wished her to write, and as easily translating the inarticulate message into words. It was superfluous for them to thank her as they did; her own inner voice told her she had done well.
At length they were gone, and she followed them so far as the outer office, to rake out the fire and tidy up for the night. As she stooped over the stove she was startled by a noise from the inner room—a noise as of someone moving the window-sash. But how could this be? Perhaps the sash-cord had parted, letting the pane slip down with a run—
It did not occur to her, though startled for the moment, to be afraid, or even to suspect any cause for fear. Her mind was still busy with this practical explanation when she opened the door and her eyes fell on Tom Trevarthen.
His back was turned towards her as he closed the window by which he had just entered; but he faced about with a smile, ignoring the alarm in her face and the hand she put out against the door-jamb for support.
"Good-evenin', miss! You'll excuse my coming by the shortest way—"
"But—buthowdid you come?" she gasped.
He laughed. "Easy enough: I swung myself up by the schooner's forestay. Eh? Didn't you know theOne-and-All'smoored here just underneath? Then I must ha' given you a rare fright."
"Yes," said Hester, slowly getting back her composure, "you certainly frightened me; and I call it a very silly trick."
She said it with a sudden vehemence which surprised herself. It brought the colour back to her face, too. The young sailor stared at her.
"Well," he said admiringly, "you have a temper! But there's times whenyoumake mistakes, I reckon."
She supposed him to allude to her unhappy intrusion upon the tattooing. Her colour deepened to a hot and lively red, and between shame and scorn she turned and walked from him into the outer office.
"Nay, now!" He followed her, suppliant. "Nay, now!" he repeated, as one might coax a child. "Simme I can't open my mouth 'ithout angering you, Miss Marvin; an' yet, ignorant as I be, 'tis plain to me you don't mean no hurt."
Now Hester had meant to walk straight out of the office and leave him. It would be hard to say precisely on what second thought she checked herself and, picking up the poker, sedulously resumed her raking-out of the stove. Partly, no doubt, she repented of having taken offence when he meant none. He had been innocent, and her suspicion of him recoiled back in self-contempt. It was a relief to hear him in turn accusing her unjustly. It gave her fresh ground, on which she really could defend herself.
"Hurt?" she echoed half defiantly, stooping and raking at the cinders.
"Why, of course, you hurt," he insisted. "'Tis so queer to me you can't see it. Just reckon up all the harm this Rosewarne have a-done and is doing: Mother Butson's school closed, and the poor soul bedridden with rheumatics, all through being forced to seek field-work, at her time o' life and in this autumn's weather! My old mother driven into a charity-house. Nicky Vro dead in Bodmin gaol. Where was the fair play? Master Clem, I hear, parted from his sister and packed off this very day to a home in London—lucky if 'tis better'n a gaol—"
"Do you accusemeof all these wrongs?"
"No, I don't. But in most of 'em you've been mixed up, and in all of 'em you might have used power over the man. Where have you put in an oar except to make matters worse?"
It was on her lips to tell him that she had resigned the teachership; but she forbore.
"Do you know," she answered quietly, "that half-truths may be worse than lies, and a charge which is half-true the most cruelly unjust? We will agree that I have done more harm here than good. But do you accuse me of doing it wilfully, selfishly?"
"That's where I can't make you out," he said. "I can't even make out your doing wrong at all. Thinks I sometimes, ''Tis all a mistake. Go, look at her face, all made for goodness if ever a face was; try her once more, an' you'll be sorry for thinkin' ill of her.' That's the way of it. But then I come and find you mixed up in this miserable business, and all that's kind in you seems to harden, and all that's straight to run crooked. There's times I think you couldn't do wrong if you weren't so sure of doing right; and there's times, when I hear of your being kind to the school-children, I think it must be some curst ill-luck of my own that brings us always ath'art-hawse."
Beneath the lamplight his eyes searched hers appealingly, as a child's might; yet Hester wondered rather at the note of manliness in his voice—a new note to her, but an assured one. Whatever the cause, Tom Trevarthen was a lad no longer.
"Why should you suppose," she asked, "that I have power over Mr. Rosewarne?"
"Haven't you?"
The simple question confounded her, and she blushed again, as one detected in an untruth. It was as Tom said; some perverse fate impelled her at every turn to show at her worst before him.
"Good Lord!" he said slowly, watching her face. "You don't tell me you're going to marry him!"
She should have obeyed her first impulse and said 'No' hotly. The word was on her lips when a second wave of indignation swelled within her and swept over the first, drowning it, and, with it, her speech. What right had he to question her, or what concern with her affairs? She threw back her head proudly, to look him in the face and ask him this. But he had turned from her.
His disgust angered her, and once more she changed her impulse for the worse.
"It seems," said she contemptuously, "that you reserve the right of making terms with Mr. Rosewarne."
He turned at the door of the inner office and regarded her for a moment with a dark frown.
"What do you mean by that?" His voice betrayed the strain on his self-command.
"Mr. Rosewarne owns theOne-and-All, does he not? If, after what has happened, you accept his wages, you might well be a little less censorious of other folk's conduct."
If the shaft hit, he made no sign for the moment. "I reckon," he answered, with queer deliberateness, "your knowledge of ships and shipowners don't amount to much, else you wouldn't talk of Rosewarne's doing me a favour." He paused and laughed, not aloud but grimly. "TheOne-and-All'sinsured, Miss Marvin, and pretty heavily over her value. I'd take it as a kindness if you found someone fool enough to insuremefor a trip in her."
"I don't understand."
"No, I reckon you don't. They finished loading her last night, and we moored her out in the channel, ready for the tug this morning. Before midnight she was leaking there like a basket, and by seven this morning she was leaking worse than a five-barred gate. The tug had just time to pluck us alongside here, or she'd have sunk at her moorings; and when we'd warped her steady and the tide left her, the water poured out of a hole I could shove my hand through—not the seams, mark you, though they leaked bad enough—but a hole where the china-stone had fairly knocked her open; and the timber all round it as rotten as cheese. All day, between tides, they've been sheathing it over, and packing the worst places in her seams; and to-night the crew, being all Troy men, are taking one more sleep ashore than they bargained for. They want it, too, after their spell at the pumps."
"Then why are you left on board?"
"Mainly because I've no home to go to; and somebody must act night-watchman. The skipper himself has bustled ashore with the rest. I reckon this morning's work scared him a bit, hand-in-glove though he is with Rosewarne; but he must be recovering, because just before stepping off he warned me against putting up the riding-light. There's no chance of anyone fouling us where we lie, and we can save two-penn'orth of oil."
"But you don't tell me Mr. Rosewarne sends his ships to sea, knowing them to be rotten?"
He hunched his shoulders. "Maybe he does; maybe he don't. It don't matter to me, the man's going to hell or not. But you seem to think I take his wages as a favour."
"Then why do you take them at all, at such a risk?"
"Because," he burst out, "you've come here and driven my mother to an almshouse, and I must earn money to get her out of it. If I'd a-known you was coming here with your education, I'd have picked up some of it and been prepared for you. A mate's certificate doesn't mean much in these days. Men like Rosewarne want a skipper who'll earn insurance-money and save oil. Still, I could have tried. But, like a fool, I was young and in a good berth, and let my chances slip; and then you came along and spoilt all."
"Did you seek me out to-night to tell me this?" she steadied herself to ask.
He lowered his eyes. "I want you to write a letter for me," he said, and added, after a pause. "That's what comes of wanting education."
Another and a very awkward pause followed. This discovery of his illiteracy shocked and hurt her inexpressibly. She could not even say why. Good sense warned her even in the instant of disappointment that a man might not know how to read or write and yet be none the less a good man and trustworthy. And even though the prejudice of her calling made her treat the defect too seriously, why in Tom Trevarthen should that shock her which in other seamen she took as a matter of course?
Yet in her shame for him she could lift her eyes; and he still kept his lowered upon the floor.
"To whom do you want me to write?" she asked.
"It's to a girl," he answered doggedly; and the words seemed to call up a dark flush in his face, which a moment before had been unwontedly pale— though this she did not perceive.
"A girl?"
"That's so; a girl, miss, if you don't mind—a girl as it happens I'm fond of."
"A love-letter? Is that what you mean?"
"If you don't mind, Miss Marvin?"
"Why on earth should I mind?" she asked, with a heat unintelligible to herself as to him.
A suspicion crossed her mind that the young woman might not be over-respectable; but she dismissed it. If the message were such as she could indite, she had no warrant to inquire further; and yet, "Is it quite fair to her?" she added.
The question plainly confused him. "Fair, miss?"
"You told me a minute ago that you found it hard to earn money for your mother; and now it seems you think of marrying."
"No, miss," said he simply; "I can't think of it at all. And that's partly what I want to tell her."
Hester frowned. "It's queer you should come to me, whom you accuse of interfering to your harm. If I am guilty on other counts, I am guilty too of coming between you and this young woman."
He smiled faintly. "And that's true in a way," he allowed; "but you'll see I don't bear malice. The letter'll prove that, if so be you'll kindly write it for me."
He said it appealingly, with his hand on the doorhandle. She bent her head in consent. Flinging the door open, he stood aside to let her pass.