Chapter Four.A New Character Introduced.The gale was a short-lived one. On the following morning the wind had decreased to a moderate breeze, and before night the sea had gone down sufficiently to allow the boat of Mr Jones’s sloop to come alongside of the floating light.Before Jim Welton bade his friends good-bye, he managed to have an earnest and private talk with each of them. Although he had never been connected with the Gull, he had frequently met with the men of that vessel, and, being one of those large-hearted sympathetic men who somehow worm themselves into the affection and confidence of most of their friends and comrades, he had something particular to say to each, either in reference to wives and families on shore, or to other members of that distracting section of the human family which, according to Mr Welton senior, lay at the foundation of all mischief.But young Welton did not confine himself to temporal matters. It has already been hinted that he had for some time been in the habit of attending prayer-meetings, but the truth was that he had recently been led by a sailor’s missionary to read the Bible, and the precious Word of God had been so blessed to his soul, that he had seen his own lost condition by nature, and had also seen, and joyfully accepted, Jesus Christ as his all-sufficient Saviour. He had come to “know the truth,” and “the truth had set him free;” free, not only from spiritual death and the power of sin, but free from that unmanly shame which, alas! too often prevents Christians from taking a bold stand on the Lord’s side.The young sailor had, no doubt, had severe inward conflicts, which were known only to God and himself, but he had been delivered and strengthened, for he was not ashamed of Christ in the presence of his old comrades, and he sought by all the means in his power to draw them to the same blessed Saviour.“Well, good-bye, Jim,” said Mr Welton, senior, as his son moved towards the gangway, when the boat came alongside, “all I’ve got to say to ’ee, lad, is, that you’re on dangerous ground, and you have no right to shove yourself in the way of temptation.”“But I don’tshovemyself, father; I think I am led in that way. I may be wrong, perhaps, but such is my belief.”“You’ll not forget that message to my mother,” whispered a sickly-looking seaman, whose strong-boned frame appeared to be somewhat attenuated by disease.“I’ll not forget, Rainer. It’s likely that we shall be in Yarmouth in a couple of days, and you may depend upon my looking up the old woman as soon after I get ashore as possible.”“Hallo! hi!” shouted a voice from below, “wot’s all the hurry?” cried Dick Moy, stumbling hastily up on deck while in the act of closing a letter which bore evidence of having been completed under difficulties, for its form was irregular, and its back was blotted. “Here you are, putt that in the post at Yarmouth, will ’ee, like a good fellow?”“Why, you’ve forgotten the address,” exclaimed Jim Welton in affected surprise.“No, I ’aven’t. There it is hall right on the back.”“What, that blot?”“Ay, that’s wot stands for Mrs Moy,” said Dick, with a good-natured smile.“Sure now,” observed Jerry MacGowl, looking earnestly at the letter, “it do seem to me, for all the world, as if a cat had drawed his tail across it after stumblin’ over a ink-bottle.”“Don’t Mrs Moy live in Ramsgate?” inquired Jim Welton.“Of course she do,” replied Dick.“But I’m not going there; I’m goin’ to Yarmouth,” said Jim.“Wot then?” retorted Dick, “d’ee suppose the clerk o’ the post-office at Yarmouth ain’t as well able to read as the one at Ramsgate, even though the writin’dobe done with a cat’s tail? Go along with ’ee.”Thus dismissed, Jim descended the side and was quickly on board the sloop Nora to which he belonged.On the deck of the little craft he was received gruffly by a man of powerful frame and stern aspect, but whose massive head, covered with shaggy grey curling hair, seemed to indicate superior powers of intellect. This was Morley Jones, the master and owner of the sloop.“A pretty mess you’ve made of it; I might have been in Yarmouth by this time,” he said, testily.“More likely at the bottom of the sea,” answered Jim, quietly, as he went aft and looked at the compass—more from habit than from any desire to receive information from that instrument.“Well, if I had been at the bottom o’ the sea, what then? Who’s to say that I mayn’t risk my life if I see fit? It’s not worth much,” he said, gloomily.“You seem to forget that in risking your own life you risk the lives of those who sail along with you,” replied Jim, with a bold yet good-humoured look at the skipper.“And what if I do risk their lives?—they ain’t worth much, either,I’msure?”“Not to you, Morley, but worth a good deal to themselves, not to mention their wives and families and friends. You know well enough that if I had wished ever so much to return aboard last night your boat could not have got alongside the Gull for the sea. Moreover, you also know that if you had attempted to put to sea in such weather, this leaky tub, with rotten sails and running gear, would have been a wreck on the Goodwin sands before now, and you and I, with the two men and the boy, would have been food for the gulls and fishes.”“Not at all,” retorted Jones, “there’s not much fear of our lives here. The lifeboat crews are too active for that; and as to the sloop, why, she’s insured you know for her full value—for more than her value, indeed.”Jones said this with a chuckle and a sly expression in his face, as he glanced meaningly at his companion.“I know nothing about your insurance or your cargo, and, what’s more, I don’t want to know,” said Jim, almost angrily. “You’ve been at Square-Tom again,” he added, suddenly laying his hand upon the shoulder of his companion and looking earnestly into his eyes.It was now Jones’s turn to be angry, yet it was evident that he made an effort to restrain his feelings, as he replied, “Well, what if I have? It’s one thing for you to advise me to become a teetotaller, and it’s quite another thing for me to agree to do it. I tell you again, as I’ve often told you before, Jim Welton, thatI don’t mean to do it, and I’m not going to submit to be warned and reasoned with by you, as if you was my grandfather. Iknowthat drink is the curse of my life, and I know that it will kill me, and that I am a fool for giving way to it, but it is the only thing that makes me able to endure this life; and as for the next, I don’t care for it, andI don’t believe in it.”“But your not believing in it does not make it less certain,” replied Jim, quietly, but without any approach to solemnity in his tone or look, for he knew that his companion was not in a mood just then to stand such treatment. “You remember the story of the ostrich that was run down? Finding that it could not escape, it stuck its head in the sand and thought that nobody saw it. You may shut your eyes, Morley, but facts remain facts for all that.”“Shutting my eyes is just what I amnotdoing,” returned Jones, flinging round and striding to the other side of the deck; then, turning quickly, he strode back, and added, with an oath, “have I not told you that I see myself, my position, and my prospects, as clearly as you do, and that I intend to face them all, and take the consequences?”Jim Welton flushed slightly, and his eyes dilated, as he replied—“Have you not the sense to see, Morley Jones, that my remonstrances with you are at least disinterested? What would you think if I were to say to you, ‘Go, drink your fill till death finds you at last wallowing on the ground like a beast, or worse than a beast; I leave you to your fate?’”“I would think that Jim Welton had changed his nature,” replied Jones, whose anger disappeared as quickly as it came. “I have no objection to your storming at me, Jim. You may swear at me as much as you please, but, for any sake, spare me your reasonings and entreaties, because they only rouse the evil spirit within me, without doing an atom of good; and don’t talk of leaving me. Besides, let me tell you, you are not so disinterested in this matter as you think. There is some one in Yarmouth who has something to do with your interest in me.”The young man flushed again at the close of this speech, but not from a feeling of anger. He dropt his eyes before the earnest though unsteady gaze of his half-tipsy companion, who burst into a loud laugh as Jim attempted some stammering reply.“Come,” he added, again assuming the stern aspect which was natural to him, but giving Jim a friendly slap on the shoulder, “don’t let us fall out, Jim you and I don’t want to part just now. Moreover, if we have a mind to get the benefit of the tide to-night, the sooner we up anchor the better, so we won’t waste any more time talking.”Without waiting for a reply, Mr Jones went forward and called the crew. The anchor was weighed, the sails were set, and the sloop Nora—bending over before the breeze, as if doing homage in passing her friend the Gull-Light—put to sea, and directed her course for the ancient town and port of Yarmouth.
The gale was a short-lived one. On the following morning the wind had decreased to a moderate breeze, and before night the sea had gone down sufficiently to allow the boat of Mr Jones’s sloop to come alongside of the floating light.
Before Jim Welton bade his friends good-bye, he managed to have an earnest and private talk with each of them. Although he had never been connected with the Gull, he had frequently met with the men of that vessel, and, being one of those large-hearted sympathetic men who somehow worm themselves into the affection and confidence of most of their friends and comrades, he had something particular to say to each, either in reference to wives and families on shore, or to other members of that distracting section of the human family which, according to Mr Welton senior, lay at the foundation of all mischief.
But young Welton did not confine himself to temporal matters. It has already been hinted that he had for some time been in the habit of attending prayer-meetings, but the truth was that he had recently been led by a sailor’s missionary to read the Bible, and the precious Word of God had been so blessed to his soul, that he had seen his own lost condition by nature, and had also seen, and joyfully accepted, Jesus Christ as his all-sufficient Saviour. He had come to “know the truth,” and “the truth had set him free;” free, not only from spiritual death and the power of sin, but free from that unmanly shame which, alas! too often prevents Christians from taking a bold stand on the Lord’s side.
The young sailor had, no doubt, had severe inward conflicts, which were known only to God and himself, but he had been delivered and strengthened, for he was not ashamed of Christ in the presence of his old comrades, and he sought by all the means in his power to draw them to the same blessed Saviour.
“Well, good-bye, Jim,” said Mr Welton, senior, as his son moved towards the gangway, when the boat came alongside, “all I’ve got to say to ’ee, lad, is, that you’re on dangerous ground, and you have no right to shove yourself in the way of temptation.”
“But I don’tshovemyself, father; I think I am led in that way. I may be wrong, perhaps, but such is my belief.”
“You’ll not forget that message to my mother,” whispered a sickly-looking seaman, whose strong-boned frame appeared to be somewhat attenuated by disease.
“I’ll not forget, Rainer. It’s likely that we shall be in Yarmouth in a couple of days, and you may depend upon my looking up the old woman as soon after I get ashore as possible.”
“Hallo! hi!” shouted a voice from below, “wot’s all the hurry?” cried Dick Moy, stumbling hastily up on deck while in the act of closing a letter which bore evidence of having been completed under difficulties, for its form was irregular, and its back was blotted. “Here you are, putt that in the post at Yarmouth, will ’ee, like a good fellow?”
“Why, you’ve forgotten the address,” exclaimed Jim Welton in affected surprise.
“No, I ’aven’t. There it is hall right on the back.”
“What, that blot?”
“Ay, that’s wot stands for Mrs Moy,” said Dick, with a good-natured smile.
“Sure now,” observed Jerry MacGowl, looking earnestly at the letter, “it do seem to me, for all the world, as if a cat had drawed his tail across it after stumblin’ over a ink-bottle.”
“Don’t Mrs Moy live in Ramsgate?” inquired Jim Welton.
“Of course she do,” replied Dick.
“But I’m not going there; I’m goin’ to Yarmouth,” said Jim.
“Wot then?” retorted Dick, “d’ee suppose the clerk o’ the post-office at Yarmouth ain’t as well able to read as the one at Ramsgate, even though the writin’dobe done with a cat’s tail? Go along with ’ee.”
Thus dismissed, Jim descended the side and was quickly on board the sloop Nora to which he belonged.
On the deck of the little craft he was received gruffly by a man of powerful frame and stern aspect, but whose massive head, covered with shaggy grey curling hair, seemed to indicate superior powers of intellect. This was Morley Jones, the master and owner of the sloop.
“A pretty mess you’ve made of it; I might have been in Yarmouth by this time,” he said, testily.
“More likely at the bottom of the sea,” answered Jim, quietly, as he went aft and looked at the compass—more from habit than from any desire to receive information from that instrument.
“Well, if I had been at the bottom o’ the sea, what then? Who’s to say that I mayn’t risk my life if I see fit? It’s not worth much,” he said, gloomily.
“You seem to forget that in risking your own life you risk the lives of those who sail along with you,” replied Jim, with a bold yet good-humoured look at the skipper.
“And what if I do risk their lives?—they ain’t worth much, either,I’msure?”
“Not to you, Morley, but worth a good deal to themselves, not to mention their wives and families and friends. You know well enough that if I had wished ever so much to return aboard last night your boat could not have got alongside the Gull for the sea. Moreover, you also know that if you had attempted to put to sea in such weather, this leaky tub, with rotten sails and running gear, would have been a wreck on the Goodwin sands before now, and you and I, with the two men and the boy, would have been food for the gulls and fishes.”
“Not at all,” retorted Jones, “there’s not much fear of our lives here. The lifeboat crews are too active for that; and as to the sloop, why, she’s insured you know for her full value—for more than her value, indeed.”
Jones said this with a chuckle and a sly expression in his face, as he glanced meaningly at his companion.
“I know nothing about your insurance or your cargo, and, what’s more, I don’t want to know,” said Jim, almost angrily. “You’ve been at Square-Tom again,” he added, suddenly laying his hand upon the shoulder of his companion and looking earnestly into his eyes.
It was now Jones’s turn to be angry, yet it was evident that he made an effort to restrain his feelings, as he replied, “Well, what if I have? It’s one thing for you to advise me to become a teetotaller, and it’s quite another thing for me to agree to do it. I tell you again, as I’ve often told you before, Jim Welton, thatI don’t mean to do it, and I’m not going to submit to be warned and reasoned with by you, as if you was my grandfather. Iknowthat drink is the curse of my life, and I know that it will kill me, and that I am a fool for giving way to it, but it is the only thing that makes me able to endure this life; and as for the next, I don’t care for it, andI don’t believe in it.”
“But your not believing in it does not make it less certain,” replied Jim, quietly, but without any approach to solemnity in his tone or look, for he knew that his companion was not in a mood just then to stand such treatment. “You remember the story of the ostrich that was run down? Finding that it could not escape, it stuck its head in the sand and thought that nobody saw it. You may shut your eyes, Morley, but facts remain facts for all that.”
“Shutting my eyes is just what I amnotdoing,” returned Jones, flinging round and striding to the other side of the deck; then, turning quickly, he strode back, and added, with an oath, “have I not told you that I see myself, my position, and my prospects, as clearly as you do, and that I intend to face them all, and take the consequences?”
Jim Welton flushed slightly, and his eyes dilated, as he replied—
“Have you not the sense to see, Morley Jones, that my remonstrances with you are at least disinterested? What would you think if I were to say to you, ‘Go, drink your fill till death finds you at last wallowing on the ground like a beast, or worse than a beast; I leave you to your fate?’”
“I would think that Jim Welton had changed his nature,” replied Jones, whose anger disappeared as quickly as it came. “I have no objection to your storming at me, Jim. You may swear at me as much as you please, but, for any sake, spare me your reasonings and entreaties, because they only rouse the evil spirit within me, without doing an atom of good; and don’t talk of leaving me. Besides, let me tell you, you are not so disinterested in this matter as you think. There is some one in Yarmouth who has something to do with your interest in me.”
The young man flushed again at the close of this speech, but not from a feeling of anger. He dropt his eyes before the earnest though unsteady gaze of his half-tipsy companion, who burst into a loud laugh as Jim attempted some stammering reply.
“Come,” he added, again assuming the stern aspect which was natural to him, but giving Jim a friendly slap on the shoulder, “don’t let us fall out, Jim you and I don’t want to part just now. Moreover, if we have a mind to get the benefit of the tide to-night, the sooner we up anchor the better, so we won’t waste any more time talking.”
Without waiting for a reply, Mr Jones went forward and called the crew. The anchor was weighed, the sails were set, and the sloop Nora—bending over before the breeze, as if doing homage in passing her friend the Gull-Light—put to sea, and directed her course for the ancient town and port of Yarmouth.
Chapter Five.More New Characters Introduced.If it be true that time and tide wait for no man, it is equally true, we rejoice to know, that authors and readers have a corresponding immunity from shackles, and are in nowise bound to wait for time or tide.We therefore propose to leave the Gull-stream light, and the Goodwin sands, and the sloop Nora, far behind us, and, skipping a little in advance of Time itself proceed at once to Yarmouth.Here, in a snug parlour, in an easy chair, before a cheerful fire, with a newspaper in his hand, sat a bluff little elderly gentleman, with a bald head and a fat little countenance, in which benignity appeared to hold perpetual though amicable rivalry with fun.That the fat little elderly gentleman was eccentric could scarcely be doubted, because he not only lookedoverhis spectacles instead of through them, but also, apparently, read his newspaper upside down. A closer inspection, however, would have shown that he was not reading the paper at all, but looking over the top of it at an object which accounted for much of the benignity, and some of the fun of his expression.At the opposite side of the table sat a very beautiful girl, stooping over a book, and so earnestly intent thereon as to be evidently quite oblivious of all else around her. She was at that interesting age when romance and reality are supposed to be pretty equally balanced in a well-regulated female mind—about seventeen. Although not classically beautiful—her nose being slightly turned upward—she was, nevertheless, uncommonly pretty, and, as one of her hopeless admirers expressed it, “desperately love-able.” Jet black ringlets—then in vogue—clustered round an exceedingly fair face, on which there dwelt the hue of robust health. Poor Bob Queeker, the hopeless admirer above referred to, would have preferred that she had been somewhat paler and thinner, if that had been possible; but this is not to be wondered at, because Queeker was about sixteen years of age at that time, and wrote sonnets to the moon and other celestial bodies, and also indulged in “lines” to various terrestrial bodies, such as the lily or the snowdrop, or something equally drooping or pale. Queeker never by any chance addressed the sun, or the red-rose, or anything else suggestive of health and vigour. Yet his melancholy soul could not resist Katie,—which was this angel’s name,—because, although she was energetic, and vigorous, and matter-of-fact, not to say slightly mischievous, she was intensely sympathetic and tender in her feelings, and romantic too. But her romance puzzled him. There was something too intense about it for his taste. If he had only once come upon her unawares, and caught her sitting with her hands clasped, gazing in speechless adoration at the moon, or even at a street-lamp, in the event of its being thick weather at the time, his love for her would have been without alloy.As it was, Queeker thought her “desperately love-able,” and in his perplexity continued to write sonnets without number to the moon, in which efforts, however, he was singularly unsuccessful, owing to the fact that, after he had gazed at it for a considerable length of time, the orb of night invariably adopted black ringlets and a bright sunny complexion.George Durant—which was the name of the bald fat little elderly gentleman—was Katie’s father. Looking at them, no one would have thought so, for Katie was tall and graceful in form; and her countenance, except when lighted up with varying emotion, was grave and serene.As Mr Durant looked at it just then, the gravity had deepened into severity; the pretty eyebrows frowned darkly at the book over which they bent, and the rosy lips represented a compound of pursing and pouting as they moved and muttered something inaudibly.“What is it that puzzles you, Katie?” asked her father, laying down the paper.“’Sh!” whispered Katie, without lifting her head; “seventeen, twenty-two, twenty-nine, thirty-six,—one pound sixteen;—no, Ican’tget it to balance. Did you ever know such a provoking thing?”She flung down her pencil, and looked full in her father’s face, where fun had, for the time, so thoroughly conquered and overthrown benignity, that the frown vanished from her brow, and the rosy lips expanded to join her sire in a hearty fit of laughter.“If you could only see your own face, Katie, when you are puzzling over these accounts, you would devote yourself ever after to drawingit, instead of those chalk-heads of which you are so fond.”“No, I wouldn’t, papa,” said Katie, whose gravity quickly returned. “It’s all very well for you to joke about it, and laugh at me, but I can tell you that this accountwon’tbalance; there is a two-and-sixpence wrong somewhere, and you know it has to be all copied out and sent off by the evening post to-morrow. I really can’t understand why we are called upon to make so many copies of all the accounts and papers for that ridiculous Board of Trade; I’m sure they have plenty of idle clerks of their own, without requiring us to slave as we do—for such a wretched salary, too!”Katie shook her curls indignantly, as she thought of the unjust demands and inadequate remuneration of Government, and resumed her work, the frowning brows and pursed coral lips giving evidence of her immediate and total absorption in the accounts.Old Mr Durant, still holding the newspaper upside down, and looking over the top of it and of his spectacles at the fair accountant, thought in his heart that if the assembled Board, of which his daughter spoke in such contemptuous terms, could only behold her labouring at their books, in order to relieve her father of part of the toil, they would incontinently give orders that he should be thenceforth allowed a salary for a competent clerk, and that all the accounts sent up from Yarmouth should be bound in cloth of gold!“Here it is, papa, I’ve got it!” exclaimed Katie, looking up with enthusiasm similar to that which might be expected in a youthful sportsman on the occasion of hooking his first salmon. “It was the two-and-sixpence which you told me to give to—”At that moment the outer door bell rang.“There’s cousin Fanny, oh, I’msoglad!” exclaimed Katie, shutting up her books and clearing away a multitude of papers with which the table was lumbered; “she has promised to stay a week, and has come in time to go with me to the singing class this afternoon. She’s a darling girl, as fond of painting and drawing almost as I am, and hates cats. Oh, I do so love a girl that doesn’t like cats. Eh, pussy, shall I tread on your tail?”This question was put to a recumbent cat which lay coiled up in earthly bliss in front of the fire, and which Katie had to pass in carrying her armful of books and papers to the sideboard drawer in which they were wont to repose. She put out her foot as if to carry her threat into execution.“Dare!” exclaimed Mr Durant, with whom the cat was a favourite.“Well, then, promise that if Mr Queeker comes to-night you won’t let him stay to spoil our fun,” said Katie, still holding her foot over the cat’s unconscious tail.As she spoke, one of the rather heavy account-books (which ought to have been bound in cloth of gold) slipped off the pile, and, as ill luck would have it, fell on the identical tail in question, the cat belonging to which sprang up with a fierce caterwaul in rampant indignation.“Oh, papa, youknowI didn’t mean it.”Mr Durant’s eyes twinkled with amusement as he beheld the sudden change of poor Katie’s expression to intense earnestness, but before he could reply the door was thrown open; “cousin Fanny” rushed in, the cat rushed out, the two young ladies rushed into each other’s arms, and went in a species of ecstatic waltz up-stairs to enjoy the delights of a private interview, leaving Mr Durant to sink into the arms of his easy chair and resume his paper—this time with the right side up!Let it be understood that the old gentleman was employed in Yarmouth under one of the departments of the Board of Trade. We refrain from entering into particulars as to which department, lest the vindictive spirit which was accredited to that branch of the Government by Miss Katie—who being a lady, must of course have been right—should induce it to lay hold of our estimable friend and make an example of him for permitting his independent daughter to expose its true character. In addition to his office in this connection Mr Durant also held the position of a retired merchant and ship-owner, and was a man of considerable wealth, although he lived in a quiet unostentatious way. In fact, his post under Government was retained chiefly for the purpose of extending his influence in his native town—for he counted himself a “bloater”—and enabling him to carry out more vigorously his schemes of Christian philanthropy.Cousin Fanny Hennings was a “darling girl” in Katie’s estimation, probably because she was her opposite in many respects, though not in all. In good-humour and affection they were similar, but Fanny had none of Katie’s fire, or enthusiasm, or intellect, or mischief; she had, however, a great appreciation of fun, and was an inordinate giggler. Fat, fair, and fifteen, with flaxen curls, pink cheeks, and blue eyes, she was thebeau-idéalof a wax-doll, and possessed about as much self-assertion as may be supposed to belong to that class of the doll-community which is constructed so as to squeak when squeezed. As Katie Durant squeezed her friend pretty often, both mentally and physically, cousin Fanny squeaked a good deal more than usual during her occasional visits to Yarmouth, and even after her return home to Margate, where she and her widowed mother dwelt—as Queeker poetically said—“in a cottage by the sea.” It was usually acknowledged by all her friends that Fanny had increased her powers amazingly while absent, in so much that she learned at last to squeak on her own account without being squeezed at all.After the cousins had talked in private until they had made themselves almost too late for the singing-class, they issued from the house and betook themselves to the temple of music, where some amazing pieces were performed by some thirty young vocalists of both sexes to their own entire satisfaction, and to the entire dissatisfaction, apparently, of their teacher, whose chief delight seemed to be to check the flow of gushing melody at a critical point, and exclaim, “Try it again!” Being ignorant of classical music we do not venture to give an opinion on these points, but it is important to state, as bearing on the subject in a sanitary point of view, that all the pupils usually left the class in high spirits, with the exception of Queeker, who had a voice like a cracked tea-kettle, knew no more about music than Katie’s cat—which he adored because it was Katie’s—and who went to the class, which was indebted for its discord chiefly to him, wholly and solely because Katie Durant went to it, and thus afforded him an opportunity of occasionally shaking hands with her.On the present evening, however, being of a shy disposition, he could not bring himself to face cousin Fanny. He therefore left the hall miserable, and went home with desperate intentions as to the moon. Unfortunately that luminary was not visible, the sun having just set, but from his bedroom window, which commanded a view of the roadstead, he beheld the lantern of the Saint Nicolas Gatt floating-light, and addressed the following lines to it with all the fervour incident to a hopeless affection:—“Why blaze, ye bright benignant beaming star,Guiding the homebound seaman from afar,Lighting the outbound wand’rer on his way,With all the lightsome perspicuity of day?Why not go out at once! and let be hurl’dDark, dread, unmitigated darkness o’er the world?Why should the heavenly constellations shine?Why should the weather evermore be fine?Why should this rolling ball go whirling round?Why should the noise of mirth and music sound?Why should the sparrow chirp, the blackbird sing,The mountains echo, and the valleys ring,With all that’s cheerful, humorous, and glad,Now that my heart is smitten and my brain gone mad?”Queeker fetched a long deep-drawn sigh at this point, the agony of intense composition being for a moment relaxed. Then, catching his breath and glaring, he went on in a somewhat gentler strain—“Forgive me, Floating-light, and you, ye sun,Moon, stars, and elements of Nature, every one;I did but vent my misery and spleenIn utt’ring words of fury that I hardly mean.At least I do in part—but hold! why not?Oh! cease ye fiendish thoughts that rage and plotTo bring about my ruin. Hence! avaunt!Or else in pity tell me what you want.I cannot live, and yet I would not die!My hopes are blighted! Where, oh whither shall I fly?’Tis past! I’ll cease to daily with vain sophistry,And try the virtue of a calm philosophy.”The effect of composition upon Queeker was such that when he had completed his task he felt greatly tranquillised, and, having shut up his portfolio, formed the sudden resolution of dropping in upon the Durants to tea.Meantime, and before the love-sick youth had begun the lines above quoted, Katie and her cousin walked home by a road which conducted them close past the edge of those extensive sandy plains called the Denes of Yarmouth. Here, at the corner of a quiet street, they were arrested by the sobbing of a little boy who sat on a railing by the roadside, swaying himself to and fro in an agony of grief.Katie’s sympathetic heart was instantly touched. She at once went up to the boy, and made earnest inquiries into the cause of his distress.“Please, ma’am,” said the boy, “I’ve lost a shillin’, and I can’t find it nowheres. Oh, wot ever shall I do? My mother gave it me to give with two other bobs to my poor sick brother whom I’ve comed all this way to see, and there I’ve gone an’ lost it, an’ I’ll ’ave to lay out all night in the cold, for I dursn’t go to see ’im without the money—boo, hoo!”“Oh, howveryunfortunate!” exclaimed Katie with real feeling for the boy, whose soul was thus steeped to all appearance in woe unutterable, was very small, and very dirty and ragged, and had an extremely handsome intelligent face, with a profusion of wild brown curls. “But I can make that up to you, poor boy,” she added, drawing out her purse, “here is a shilling for you. Where do you live?”“At Ramsgate, ma’am.”“At Ramsgate?” exclaimed Katie in surprise, “why, how did you manage to get here?”“I come in a lugger, ma’am, as b’longs to a friend o’ ourn. We’ve just arrived, an’ we goes away agin to-morrow.”“Indeed! That will give you little time to see your sick brother. What is the matter with him?”“Oh, he’s took very bad, ma’am. I’m sorry to say he’s bad altogether, ma’am. Bin an’ run’d away from ’ome. A’most broke his mother’s ’eart, he has, an’ fall’d sick here, he did.”The small boy paused abruptly at this point, and looked earnestly in Katie’s kind and pitiful face.“Where does your brother live?” asked Katie.The small boy looked rather perplexed, and said that he couldn’t rightly remember the name of the street, but that the owner of the lugger “know’d it.” Whereat Katie seemed disappointed, and said she would have been so glad to have visited him, and given him such little comforts as his disease might warrant.“Oh, ma’am,” exclaimed the small boy, looking wistfully at her with his large blue eyes, “wota pity I’ve forgot it! The doctor ordered ’im wine too—it was as much as ’is life was worth not to ’ave wine,—but of course they couldn’t afford to git ’im wine—even cheap wine would do well enough, at two bob or one bob the bottle. If you was to give me two bob—shillins I mean, ma’am—I’d git it for ’im to-night.”Katie and her cousin conversed aside in low tones for a minute or two as to the propriety of complying with this proposal, and came to the conclusion that the boy was such a nice outspoken honest-like fellow, that it would do no harm to risk that sum in the circumstances. Two shillings were therefore put into the boy’s dirty little hand, and he was earnestly cautioned to take care of it, which he earnestly, and no doubt honestly, promised to do.“What is your name, boy?” asked Katie, as she was about to leave him.“Billy—Billy Towler, ma’am,” answered the urchin, pulling his forelock by way of respectful acknowledgment, “but my friends they calls me Walleye, chiefly in consikence o’ my bein’ wery much the rewerse of blind, ma’am, and niver capable of bein’ cotched in a state o’ slumber at no time.”This reply had the effect of slightly damaging the small boy’s character for simplicity in Katie’s mind, although it caused both herself and her companion to laugh.“Well, Billy,” she said, opening her card-case, “here is my card—give it to your sick brother, and when he sends it to me with his address written on the back of it I’ll call on him.”“Thankee, ma’am,” said the small boy.After he had said this, he stood silently watching the retiring figure of his benefactress, until she was out of sight, and then dashing round the corner of a bye-street which was somewhat retired, he there went off into uncontrollable fits of laughter—slapped his small thighs, held his lean little sides with both hands, threw his ragged cap into the air, and in various other ways gave evidence of ecstatic delight. He was still engaged in these violent demonstrations of feeling when Morley Jones—having just landed at Yarmouth, and left the sloopNorain charge of young Welton—came smartly round the corner, and, applying his heavy boot to the small boy’s person, kicked him into the middle of the road.
If it be true that time and tide wait for no man, it is equally true, we rejoice to know, that authors and readers have a corresponding immunity from shackles, and are in nowise bound to wait for time or tide.
We therefore propose to leave the Gull-stream light, and the Goodwin sands, and the sloop Nora, far behind us, and, skipping a little in advance of Time itself proceed at once to Yarmouth.
Here, in a snug parlour, in an easy chair, before a cheerful fire, with a newspaper in his hand, sat a bluff little elderly gentleman, with a bald head and a fat little countenance, in which benignity appeared to hold perpetual though amicable rivalry with fun.
That the fat little elderly gentleman was eccentric could scarcely be doubted, because he not only lookedoverhis spectacles instead of through them, but also, apparently, read his newspaper upside down. A closer inspection, however, would have shown that he was not reading the paper at all, but looking over the top of it at an object which accounted for much of the benignity, and some of the fun of his expression.
At the opposite side of the table sat a very beautiful girl, stooping over a book, and so earnestly intent thereon as to be evidently quite oblivious of all else around her. She was at that interesting age when romance and reality are supposed to be pretty equally balanced in a well-regulated female mind—about seventeen. Although not classically beautiful—her nose being slightly turned upward—she was, nevertheless, uncommonly pretty, and, as one of her hopeless admirers expressed it, “desperately love-able.” Jet black ringlets—then in vogue—clustered round an exceedingly fair face, on which there dwelt the hue of robust health. Poor Bob Queeker, the hopeless admirer above referred to, would have preferred that she had been somewhat paler and thinner, if that had been possible; but this is not to be wondered at, because Queeker was about sixteen years of age at that time, and wrote sonnets to the moon and other celestial bodies, and also indulged in “lines” to various terrestrial bodies, such as the lily or the snowdrop, or something equally drooping or pale. Queeker never by any chance addressed the sun, or the red-rose, or anything else suggestive of health and vigour. Yet his melancholy soul could not resist Katie,—which was this angel’s name,—because, although she was energetic, and vigorous, and matter-of-fact, not to say slightly mischievous, she was intensely sympathetic and tender in her feelings, and romantic too. But her romance puzzled him. There was something too intense about it for his taste. If he had only once come upon her unawares, and caught her sitting with her hands clasped, gazing in speechless adoration at the moon, or even at a street-lamp, in the event of its being thick weather at the time, his love for her would have been without alloy.
As it was, Queeker thought her “desperately love-able,” and in his perplexity continued to write sonnets without number to the moon, in which efforts, however, he was singularly unsuccessful, owing to the fact that, after he had gazed at it for a considerable length of time, the orb of night invariably adopted black ringlets and a bright sunny complexion.
George Durant—which was the name of the bald fat little elderly gentleman—was Katie’s father. Looking at them, no one would have thought so, for Katie was tall and graceful in form; and her countenance, except when lighted up with varying emotion, was grave and serene.
As Mr Durant looked at it just then, the gravity had deepened into severity; the pretty eyebrows frowned darkly at the book over which they bent, and the rosy lips represented a compound of pursing and pouting as they moved and muttered something inaudibly.
“What is it that puzzles you, Katie?” asked her father, laying down the paper.
“’Sh!” whispered Katie, without lifting her head; “seventeen, twenty-two, twenty-nine, thirty-six,—one pound sixteen;—no, Ican’tget it to balance. Did you ever know such a provoking thing?”
She flung down her pencil, and looked full in her father’s face, where fun had, for the time, so thoroughly conquered and overthrown benignity, that the frown vanished from her brow, and the rosy lips expanded to join her sire in a hearty fit of laughter.
“If you could only see your own face, Katie, when you are puzzling over these accounts, you would devote yourself ever after to drawingit, instead of those chalk-heads of which you are so fond.”
“No, I wouldn’t, papa,” said Katie, whose gravity quickly returned. “It’s all very well for you to joke about it, and laugh at me, but I can tell you that this accountwon’tbalance; there is a two-and-sixpence wrong somewhere, and you know it has to be all copied out and sent off by the evening post to-morrow. I really can’t understand why we are called upon to make so many copies of all the accounts and papers for that ridiculous Board of Trade; I’m sure they have plenty of idle clerks of their own, without requiring us to slave as we do—for such a wretched salary, too!”
Katie shook her curls indignantly, as she thought of the unjust demands and inadequate remuneration of Government, and resumed her work, the frowning brows and pursed coral lips giving evidence of her immediate and total absorption in the accounts.
Old Mr Durant, still holding the newspaper upside down, and looking over the top of it and of his spectacles at the fair accountant, thought in his heart that if the assembled Board, of which his daughter spoke in such contemptuous terms, could only behold her labouring at their books, in order to relieve her father of part of the toil, they would incontinently give orders that he should be thenceforth allowed a salary for a competent clerk, and that all the accounts sent up from Yarmouth should be bound in cloth of gold!
“Here it is, papa, I’ve got it!” exclaimed Katie, looking up with enthusiasm similar to that which might be expected in a youthful sportsman on the occasion of hooking his first salmon. “It was the two-and-sixpence which you told me to give to—”
At that moment the outer door bell rang.
“There’s cousin Fanny, oh, I’msoglad!” exclaimed Katie, shutting up her books and clearing away a multitude of papers with which the table was lumbered; “she has promised to stay a week, and has come in time to go with me to the singing class this afternoon. She’s a darling girl, as fond of painting and drawing almost as I am, and hates cats. Oh, I do so love a girl that doesn’t like cats. Eh, pussy, shall I tread on your tail?”
This question was put to a recumbent cat which lay coiled up in earthly bliss in front of the fire, and which Katie had to pass in carrying her armful of books and papers to the sideboard drawer in which they were wont to repose. She put out her foot as if to carry her threat into execution.
“Dare!” exclaimed Mr Durant, with whom the cat was a favourite.
“Well, then, promise that if Mr Queeker comes to-night you won’t let him stay to spoil our fun,” said Katie, still holding her foot over the cat’s unconscious tail.
As she spoke, one of the rather heavy account-books (which ought to have been bound in cloth of gold) slipped off the pile, and, as ill luck would have it, fell on the identical tail in question, the cat belonging to which sprang up with a fierce caterwaul in rampant indignation.
“Oh, papa, youknowI didn’t mean it.”
Mr Durant’s eyes twinkled with amusement as he beheld the sudden change of poor Katie’s expression to intense earnestness, but before he could reply the door was thrown open; “cousin Fanny” rushed in, the cat rushed out, the two young ladies rushed into each other’s arms, and went in a species of ecstatic waltz up-stairs to enjoy the delights of a private interview, leaving Mr Durant to sink into the arms of his easy chair and resume his paper—this time with the right side up!
Let it be understood that the old gentleman was employed in Yarmouth under one of the departments of the Board of Trade. We refrain from entering into particulars as to which department, lest the vindictive spirit which was accredited to that branch of the Government by Miss Katie—who being a lady, must of course have been right—should induce it to lay hold of our estimable friend and make an example of him for permitting his independent daughter to expose its true character. In addition to his office in this connection Mr Durant also held the position of a retired merchant and ship-owner, and was a man of considerable wealth, although he lived in a quiet unostentatious way. In fact, his post under Government was retained chiefly for the purpose of extending his influence in his native town—for he counted himself a “bloater”—and enabling him to carry out more vigorously his schemes of Christian philanthropy.
Cousin Fanny Hennings was a “darling girl” in Katie’s estimation, probably because she was her opposite in many respects, though not in all. In good-humour and affection they were similar, but Fanny had none of Katie’s fire, or enthusiasm, or intellect, or mischief; she had, however, a great appreciation of fun, and was an inordinate giggler. Fat, fair, and fifteen, with flaxen curls, pink cheeks, and blue eyes, she was thebeau-idéalof a wax-doll, and possessed about as much self-assertion as may be supposed to belong to that class of the doll-community which is constructed so as to squeak when squeezed. As Katie Durant squeezed her friend pretty often, both mentally and physically, cousin Fanny squeaked a good deal more than usual during her occasional visits to Yarmouth, and even after her return home to Margate, where she and her widowed mother dwelt—as Queeker poetically said—“in a cottage by the sea.” It was usually acknowledged by all her friends that Fanny had increased her powers amazingly while absent, in so much that she learned at last to squeak on her own account without being squeezed at all.
After the cousins had talked in private until they had made themselves almost too late for the singing-class, they issued from the house and betook themselves to the temple of music, where some amazing pieces were performed by some thirty young vocalists of both sexes to their own entire satisfaction, and to the entire dissatisfaction, apparently, of their teacher, whose chief delight seemed to be to check the flow of gushing melody at a critical point, and exclaim, “Try it again!” Being ignorant of classical music we do not venture to give an opinion on these points, but it is important to state, as bearing on the subject in a sanitary point of view, that all the pupils usually left the class in high spirits, with the exception of Queeker, who had a voice like a cracked tea-kettle, knew no more about music than Katie’s cat—which he adored because it was Katie’s—and who went to the class, which was indebted for its discord chiefly to him, wholly and solely because Katie Durant went to it, and thus afforded him an opportunity of occasionally shaking hands with her.
On the present evening, however, being of a shy disposition, he could not bring himself to face cousin Fanny. He therefore left the hall miserable, and went home with desperate intentions as to the moon. Unfortunately that luminary was not visible, the sun having just set, but from his bedroom window, which commanded a view of the roadstead, he beheld the lantern of the Saint Nicolas Gatt floating-light, and addressed the following lines to it with all the fervour incident to a hopeless affection:—
“Why blaze, ye bright benignant beaming star,Guiding the homebound seaman from afar,Lighting the outbound wand’rer on his way,With all the lightsome perspicuity of day?Why not go out at once! and let be hurl’dDark, dread, unmitigated darkness o’er the world?Why should the heavenly constellations shine?Why should the weather evermore be fine?Why should this rolling ball go whirling round?Why should the noise of mirth and music sound?Why should the sparrow chirp, the blackbird sing,The mountains echo, and the valleys ring,With all that’s cheerful, humorous, and glad,Now that my heart is smitten and my brain gone mad?”
“Why blaze, ye bright benignant beaming star,Guiding the homebound seaman from afar,Lighting the outbound wand’rer on his way,With all the lightsome perspicuity of day?Why not go out at once! and let be hurl’dDark, dread, unmitigated darkness o’er the world?Why should the heavenly constellations shine?Why should the weather evermore be fine?Why should this rolling ball go whirling round?Why should the noise of mirth and music sound?Why should the sparrow chirp, the blackbird sing,The mountains echo, and the valleys ring,With all that’s cheerful, humorous, and glad,Now that my heart is smitten and my brain gone mad?”
Queeker fetched a long deep-drawn sigh at this point, the agony of intense composition being for a moment relaxed. Then, catching his breath and glaring, he went on in a somewhat gentler strain—
“Forgive me, Floating-light, and you, ye sun,Moon, stars, and elements of Nature, every one;I did but vent my misery and spleenIn utt’ring words of fury that I hardly mean.At least I do in part—but hold! why not?Oh! cease ye fiendish thoughts that rage and plotTo bring about my ruin. Hence! avaunt!Or else in pity tell me what you want.I cannot live, and yet I would not die!My hopes are blighted! Where, oh whither shall I fly?’Tis past! I’ll cease to daily with vain sophistry,And try the virtue of a calm philosophy.”
“Forgive me, Floating-light, and you, ye sun,Moon, stars, and elements of Nature, every one;I did but vent my misery and spleenIn utt’ring words of fury that I hardly mean.At least I do in part—but hold! why not?Oh! cease ye fiendish thoughts that rage and plotTo bring about my ruin. Hence! avaunt!Or else in pity tell me what you want.I cannot live, and yet I would not die!My hopes are blighted! Where, oh whither shall I fly?’Tis past! I’ll cease to daily with vain sophistry,And try the virtue of a calm philosophy.”
The effect of composition upon Queeker was such that when he had completed his task he felt greatly tranquillised, and, having shut up his portfolio, formed the sudden resolution of dropping in upon the Durants to tea.
Meantime, and before the love-sick youth had begun the lines above quoted, Katie and her cousin walked home by a road which conducted them close past the edge of those extensive sandy plains called the Denes of Yarmouth. Here, at the corner of a quiet street, they were arrested by the sobbing of a little boy who sat on a railing by the roadside, swaying himself to and fro in an agony of grief.
Katie’s sympathetic heart was instantly touched. She at once went up to the boy, and made earnest inquiries into the cause of his distress.
“Please, ma’am,” said the boy, “I’ve lost a shillin’, and I can’t find it nowheres. Oh, wot ever shall I do? My mother gave it me to give with two other bobs to my poor sick brother whom I’ve comed all this way to see, and there I’ve gone an’ lost it, an’ I’ll ’ave to lay out all night in the cold, for I dursn’t go to see ’im without the money—boo, hoo!”
“Oh, howveryunfortunate!” exclaimed Katie with real feeling for the boy, whose soul was thus steeped to all appearance in woe unutterable, was very small, and very dirty and ragged, and had an extremely handsome intelligent face, with a profusion of wild brown curls. “But I can make that up to you, poor boy,” she added, drawing out her purse, “here is a shilling for you. Where do you live?”
“At Ramsgate, ma’am.”
“At Ramsgate?” exclaimed Katie in surprise, “why, how did you manage to get here?”
“I come in a lugger, ma’am, as b’longs to a friend o’ ourn. We’ve just arrived, an’ we goes away agin to-morrow.”
“Indeed! That will give you little time to see your sick brother. What is the matter with him?”
“Oh, he’s took very bad, ma’am. I’m sorry to say he’s bad altogether, ma’am. Bin an’ run’d away from ’ome. A’most broke his mother’s ’eart, he has, an’ fall’d sick here, he did.”
The small boy paused abruptly at this point, and looked earnestly in Katie’s kind and pitiful face.
“Where does your brother live?” asked Katie.
The small boy looked rather perplexed, and said that he couldn’t rightly remember the name of the street, but that the owner of the lugger “know’d it.” Whereat Katie seemed disappointed, and said she would have been so glad to have visited him, and given him such little comforts as his disease might warrant.
“Oh, ma’am,” exclaimed the small boy, looking wistfully at her with his large blue eyes, “wota pity I’ve forgot it! The doctor ordered ’im wine too—it was as much as ’is life was worth not to ’ave wine,—but of course they couldn’t afford to git ’im wine—even cheap wine would do well enough, at two bob or one bob the bottle. If you was to give me two bob—shillins I mean, ma’am—I’d git it for ’im to-night.”
Katie and her cousin conversed aside in low tones for a minute or two as to the propriety of complying with this proposal, and came to the conclusion that the boy was such a nice outspoken honest-like fellow, that it would do no harm to risk that sum in the circumstances. Two shillings were therefore put into the boy’s dirty little hand, and he was earnestly cautioned to take care of it, which he earnestly, and no doubt honestly, promised to do.
“What is your name, boy?” asked Katie, as she was about to leave him.
“Billy—Billy Towler, ma’am,” answered the urchin, pulling his forelock by way of respectful acknowledgment, “but my friends they calls me Walleye, chiefly in consikence o’ my bein’ wery much the rewerse of blind, ma’am, and niver capable of bein’ cotched in a state o’ slumber at no time.”
This reply had the effect of slightly damaging the small boy’s character for simplicity in Katie’s mind, although it caused both herself and her companion to laugh.
“Well, Billy,” she said, opening her card-case, “here is my card—give it to your sick brother, and when he sends it to me with his address written on the back of it I’ll call on him.”
“Thankee, ma’am,” said the small boy.
After he had said this, he stood silently watching the retiring figure of his benefactress, until she was out of sight, and then dashing round the corner of a bye-street which was somewhat retired, he there went off into uncontrollable fits of laughter—slapped his small thighs, held his lean little sides with both hands, threw his ragged cap into the air, and in various other ways gave evidence of ecstatic delight. He was still engaged in these violent demonstrations of feeling when Morley Jones—having just landed at Yarmouth, and left the sloopNorain charge of young Welton—came smartly round the corner, and, applying his heavy boot to the small boy’s person, kicked him into the middle of the road.
Chapter Six.The Tempter and the Tempted.“What are ye howlin’ there for, an’ blockin’ up the Queen’s highway like that, you precious young villain?” demanded Morley Jones.“An’ wot are you breakin’ the Queen’s laws for like that?” retorted Billy Towler, dancing into the middle of the road and revolving his small fists in pugilistic fashion. “You big hairy walrus, I don’t know whether to ’ave you up before the beaks for assault and battery or turn to an’ give ’ee a good lickin’.”Mr Jones showed all his teeth with an approving grin, and the small boy grinned in return, but still kept on revolving his fists, and warning the walrus to “look hout and defend hisself if he didn’t want his daylights knocked out or his bows stove in!”“You’re a smart youth, you are,” said Jones.“Ha! you’re afraid, are you? an’ wants to make friends, but I won’t ’ave it at no price. Come on, will you?”Jones, still grinning from ear to ear, made a rush at the urchin, who, however, evaded him with such ease that the man perceived he had not the smallest chance of catching him.“I say, my lad,” he asked, stopping and becoming suddenly grave, “where d’you come from?”“I comes from where I b’longs to, and where I’m agoin’ back to w’en it suits me.”“Very good,” retorted Jones, “and I suppose you don’t object to earn a little money in an easy way?”“Yes, I do object,” replied Billy; “it ain’t worth my while to earn alittlemoney in any way, no matter how easy; I never deals in small sums. A fi’ pun’ note is the lowest figur’ as I can stoop to.”“You’ll not object, however, to a gift, I daresay,” remarked Jones, as he tossed a half-crown towards the boy.Billy caught it as deftly as a dog catches a bit of biscuit, looked at it in great surprise, tossed it in the air, bit its rim critically, and finally slid it into his trousers pocket.“Well, you know,” he said slowly, “to obleege afriend, I’m willin’ to accept.”“Now then, youngster, if I’m willing to trust that half-crown in your clutches, you may believe I have got something to say to ’ee worth your while listenin’ to; for you may see I’m not the man to give it to ’ee out o’ Christian charity.”“That’s true,” remarked Billy, who by this time had become serious, and stood with his hands in his pockets, still, however, at a respectful distance.“Well, the fact is,” said Mr Jones, “that I’ve bin lookin’ out of late for a smart lad with a light heart and a light pocket, and that ain’t troubled with much of a conscience.”“That’s me to a tee,” said Billy promptly; “my ’art’s as light as a feather, and my pocket is as light as a maginstrate’s wisdom. As for conscience, the last beak as I wos introdooced to said I must have bin born without a conscience altogether; an’ ’pon my honour I think he wos right, for I never felt it yet, though I’ve often tried—’xcept once, w’en I’d cleaned out the pocket of a old ooman as was starin’ in at a shop winder in Cheapside, and she fainted dead away w’en she found it out, and her little grand-darter looked so pale and pitiful that I says to myself, ‘Hallo! Walleye, you’ve bin to the wrong shop this time; go an’ put it back, ye young dog;’ so I obeyed orders, an’ slipped back the purse while pretendin’ to help the old ooman. It wos risky work, though, for a bobby twigged me, and it was only my good wind and tough pair o’ shanks that saved me. Now,” continued the urchin, knitting his brows as he contemplated the knotty point, “I’ve had my doubts whether that wos conscience, or a sort o’ nat’ral weakness pecooliar to my constitootion. I’ve half a mind to call on the Bishop of London on the point one o’ these days.”“So, you’re a city bird,” observed Jones, admiringly.“Ah, and I can see that you’re a provincial one,” replied Billy, jingling the half-crown against the silver in his pocket.“What brings you so far out of your beat, Walleye?” inquired Jones.“Oh, I’m on circuit just now, makin’ a tower of the provinces. I tried a case just before you came up, an’ made three shillins out of it, besides no end o’ promises—which, unfort’nately, I can’t awail myself of—from a sweet young lady, with such a pleasant face, that I wished I could adopt her for a darter. But that’s an expensive luxury, you see; can’t afford it yet.”“Well, youngster,” said Jones, assuming a more grave yet off-hand air, “if you choose to trust me, I’ll put you in the way of makin’ some money without much trouble. It only requires a little false swearing, which I daresay you are used to.”“No, I ain’t,” retorted the urchin indignantly; “I never tells a lie ’xcept w’en I can’t help it.Then, of course, a fellermustdo it!”“Just so, Walleye, them’s my sentiments. Have you got a father?”“No, nor yet a mother,” replied Billy. “As far as I’m aweer of, I wos diskivered on the steps of a city work’us, an’ my first impressions in this life wos the knuckles of the old woman as banged me up. The governor used to talk a lot o’ balderdash about our bein’ brought up; but I knows better. I wos banged up; banged up in the mornins, banged to meals, and banged to bed; banged through thick and thin, for everything an’ for nothin’, until I banged myself out o’ the door one fine mornin’, which I banged arter me, an’ ’ave bin bangin’ about, a gen’lem’n at large, ever since.”“Ha! got no friends and nothin’ to do?” said Morley Jones.“Jis so.”“Well, if you have a mind to take service with me, come along an’ have a pot o’ beer.”The man turned on his heel and walked off to a neighbouring public-house, leaving the small boy to follow or not as he pleased, and apparently quite indifferent as to what his decision might be.Billy Towler—aliasWalleye—looked after him with an air of uncertainty. He did not like the look of the man, and was about to decide against him, when the jingle of the half-crown in his pocket turned the scale in his favour. Running after him, he quietly said, “I’m your man,” and then began to whistle, at the same time making an abortive effort to keep step with his long-limbed employer, who said nothing in reply, but, entering a public-house, ordered two pots of beer. These, when produced, he and his little companion sat down to discuss in the most retired box in the place, and conversed in low tones.“What was it brought you to Yarmouth, Walleye?” asked Mr Jones.“Call me Billy,” said the boy, “I like it better.”“Well, Billy—and, by the way, you may call me Morley—my name’s Jones, but, like yourself, I have a preference. Now, then, what brought you here?”“H’m, that involves a story—a hanecdote, if I may so speak,” replied this precocious youngster with much gravity. “You see, some time arter I runn’d away from the work’us, I fell’d in with an old gen’lem’n with a bald head an’ a fat corpus. Do ’ee happen to know, Mr Morley, ’ow it is that bald heads an’ fat corpuses a’most always go together?”Morley replied that he felt himself unable to answer that difficult question; but supposed that as good-humour was said to make people fat, perhaps it made them bald also.“I dun know,” continued Billy; “anyhow, this old gen’lem’n he took’d a fancy to me, an’ took’d me home to his ’otel; for he didn’t live in London—wos there only on a wisit at the time he felled in love with me at first sight. Well, he give me a splendacious suit of noo clo’es, an ’ad me put to a school, where I soon larned to read and write; an’ I do b’lieve wos on the highroad to be Lord Mayor of London, when the old schoolmaster died, before I’d bin two year there, an’ the noo un wos so fond o’ the bangin’ system that I couldn’t stand it, an’ so bid ’em all a tender farewell, an’ took to the streets agin. The old gen’lem’n he comed three times from Yarmouth, where he belonged, for to see me arter I wos put to the school, an’ I had a sort o’ likin’ for him, but not knowin’ his name, and only been aweer that he lived at Yarmouth, I thought I’d have no chance o’ findin’ him. Over my subsikint career I’ll draw a wail; it’s enough to say I didn’t like either it or my pals, so I made up my mind at last to go to Yarmouth an’ try to find the old gen’lem’n as had adopted me—that’s what he said he’d done to me. W’en I’d prigged enough o’ wipes to pay my fare down, I comed away,—an’ here I am.”“Have you seen the old gentleman?” asked Morley, after a pause.“No, only just arrived this arternoon.”“And you don’t know his name, nor where he lives?”“No.”“And how did you expect to escape bein’ nabbed and put in limbo as a vagrant?” inquired Morley.“By gittin’ employment, of coorse, from somerespectablegen’lem’n like yourself, an’ then runnin’ away from ’im w’en I’d diskivered the old chap wi’ the bald head.”Morley Jones smiled grimly.“Well, my advice to you is,” he said, “to fight shy of the old chap, even if you do discover him. Depend upon it the life you would lead under his eye would be one of constant restraint and worry. He’d put you to school again, no doubt, where you’d get banged as before—a system I don’t approve of at all—and be made a milksop and a flunkey, or something o’ that sort—whereas the life you’ll lead with me will be a free and easy rollikin’ manly sort o’ life. Half on shore and half at sea. Do what you like, go where you will,—when business has bin attended to—victuals and clothing free gratis, and pocket-money enough to enable you to enjoy yourself in a moderate sort of way. You see I’m not goin’ to humbug you. It won’t be all plain sailin’, but what is a man worth if he ain’t fit to stand a little rough-and-tumble? Besides, rough work makes a fellow take his ease with all the more zest. A life on the ocean wave one week, with hard work, and a run on shore the next week, with just enough to do to prevent one wearyin’. That’s the sort o’ thing for you and me, Billy, eh boy?” exclaimed the tempter, growing garrulous in his cups, and giving his small victim a pat on the shoulder, which, although meant to be a facetious touch, well-nigh unseated him.Billy Towler recovered himself, however, and received it as it was meant, in perfect good humour. The beer had mounted to his own little brain, and his large eyes glowed with more than natural light as he sat gazing into his companion’s rugged face, listening with delight to the description of a mode of life which he thought admirably suited to his tastes and capabilities. He was, however, a shrewd little creature. Sad and very rough experience of life had taught him to be uncommonly circumspect for his years.“What’s your business, Morley?” he demanded eagerly.“I’ve a lot of businesses,” said Mr Jones with a drunken leer, “but my principal one is fishcuring. I’m a sort of shipowner too. Leastwise I’ve got two craft—one bein’ a sloop, the other a boat. Moreover, I charter no end of vessels, an’ do a good deal in the insurance way. But you’ll understand more about these things all in good time, Billy. I live, while I’m at home, in Gravesend, but I’ve got a daughter and a mother livin’ at Yarmouth, so I may say I’ve got a home at both places. It’s a convenient sort o’ thing, you see,—a town residence and a country villa, as it were. Come, I’ll take you to the villa now, and introduce ’ee to the women.”So saying, this rascal paid for the poison he had been administering in large doses to himself and his apprentice, and, taking Billy’s dirty little hand in his large horny fist, led him towards the centre of the town.Poor Billy little knew the nature of the awful gulf of sin and misery into which he was now plunging with a headlong hilarious vivacity peculiarly his own. He was, indeed, well enough aware of the fact that he was a thief, and an outcast from society, and that he was a habitual breaker of the laws of God and man, but he was naturally ignorant of the extent of his guilt, as well as of the certain and terrible end to which it pointed, and, above all, he had not the most remote conception of the almost hopeless slavery to which he was doomed when once fairly secured in the baleful net which Morley Jones had begun to twine around him.But a higher Power was leading the poor child in a way that he knew not—a way that was little suspected by his tempter—a way that has been the means of snatching many and many a little one from destruction in time past, and that will certainly save many more in time to come—as long as Christian men and women band together to unite their prayers and powers for the rescue of perishing souls.Traversing several streets with unsteady gait—for he was now much the worse of drink—Mr Jones led his willing captive down one of those innumerable narrow streets, or passages, termed “rows,” which bear some resemblance to the “closes” of the Scottish capital. In width they are much the same, but in cleanliness there is a vast difference, for whereas theclosesof the northern capital are notorious for dirt, therowsof Yarmouth are celebrated for their neat tidy aspect. What the cause of the neatness of the latter may be we cannot tell, but we can bear the testimony of an eye-witness to the fact that—considering the class of inhabitants who dwell in them, their laborious lives and limited means—therowsare wondrously clean. Nearly all of them are paved with pebbles or bricks. The square courts opening out of them on right and left, although ridiculously small, are so thoroughly scoured and swept that one might roll on their floors with white garments and remain unsoiled. In each court may be observed a water-bucket and scrubbing-brush wet, usually, from recent use, also a green painted box-garden of dimensions corresponding to the court, full of well-tended flowers. Almost every door has a wooden or stone step, and each step is worn and white with repeated scrubbings—insomuch that one is irresistibly led to suspect that the “Bloaters” must have a strong infusion of the Dutch element in their nature.Emerging at the lower end of the row, Mr Jones and his small companion hastened along the centre of a narrow street which led them into one of much wider dimensions, named Friar’s Lane. Proceeding along this for some time, they diverged to the right into another of the rows not far from the old city-wall, at a place where one of the massive towers still rears its rugged head as a picturesque ruin. The moon sailed out from under a mass of clouds at this point, giving to objects the distinctness of daylight. Hitherto Billy Towler had retained some idea of the direction in which he was being led, but this last turn threw his topographical ideas into utter confusion.“A queer place this,” he remarked, as they emerged from the narrowest passage they had yet traversed into a neat, snug, and most unexpected little square, with a garden in the middle of it, and a flagstaff in one corner.“Adam-and-Eve gardens, they call it,” said Mr Jones; “we’re pretty nigh home now.”“I wonder they didn’t call it Eden at once,” observed Billy; “it would have been shorter and comes to the same thing.”“Here we are at last,” said Mr Jones, stumbling against a small door in one of the network of rows that surrounded this Yarmouth paradise. “Hope the women are in,” he added, attempting to lift the latch, but, finding that the door was locked, he hammered at it with foot and fist violently.“Hallo!” shouted the deep voice of a man within.“Hallo, indeed! Who mayyoube?” growled Mr Jones with an angry oath. “Open the door, will you?”The door was opened at once by James Welton, who stood aside to let the other pass.“Oh! it’s you, is it?” said Mr Jones. “Didn’t recognise your voice through the door. I thought you couldn’t have got the sloop made snug so soon. Well, lass, how are ’ee; and how’s the old ooman?”As the man made these inquiries in a half-hearty voice, he advanced into a poorly-furnished apartment, so small and low that it seemed a couple of sizes too small for him, and bestowed a kiss first upon the cheek of his old mother, who sat cowering over the fire, but brightened up on hearing his voice, and then upon the forehead of his daughter Nora, the cheerfulness of whose greeting, however, was somewhat checked when she observed the intoxicated state of her father.Nora had a face which, though not absolutely pretty, was intensely winsome in consequence of an air of quiet womanly tenderness which surrounded it as with a halo. She was barely eighteen, but her soft eyes possessed a look of sorrow and suffering which, if not natural to them, had, at all events, become habitual.“Who is this little boy, father?” she said, turning towards Billy Towler, who still stood in the doorway a silent but acute observer of all that went on.“Oh, that? why—a—that’s my noo ’prentice just come down from Gravesend. He’s been helpin’ for some time in the ‘hang’” (by which Mr Jones meant the place where his fish were cured), “and I’m goin’ to take him to sea with me next trip. Come in, Billy, and make yourself at home.”The boy obeyed with alacrity, and made no objection to a cup of tea and slice of bread and butter which Nora placed before him—supper being just then in progress.“You’d better get aboard as soon as may be,” said Jones to Jim Welton somewhat sternly. “I didn’t expect you to leave the sloop tonight.”“And I didn’t intend to leave her,” replied Jim, taking no notice of the tone in which this was said; “but I thought I’d come up to ask if you wished me to begin dischargin’ early to-morrow morning.”“No, we’re not going to discharge,” returned Jones.“Not going to discharge!” echoed Jim in surprise. “No. I find that it’s not worth while discharging any part of the cargo here. On the contrary, I mean to fill up with bloaters and run over with them to the coast of France; so you can go and stow the top tier of casks more firmly, and get ready for the noo ones. Good-night.”The tone in which this was said left no excuse for Jim to linger, so he bade the household good-night and departed.He had not gone far, however, when he was arrested by the sound of a light footstep. It was that of Nora, who had followed him.“Nora!” exclaimed the young sailor in surprise, returning quickly and taking one of the girl’s hands in both of his.“Oh, Jim!” said Nora, with a look and tone of earnest entreaty, “don’t, don’t forsake him just now—if the love which you have so often professed for me be true, don’t forsake him, I beseech you.”Jim protested in the most emphatic terms that he had no intention of forsaking anybody, and made a great many more protestations, in the midst of which there were numerous ardent and more or less appropriate references to hearts that never deserted their colours, sheet-anchors that held on through thick and thin, and needles that pointed, without the smallest shadow of variation, to the pole.“But what makes you think I’m going to leave him?” he asked, at the end of one of those flights.“Because he is so rough to ’ee, Jim,” replied the girl, leaning her head on her lover’s shoulder; “he spoke so gruff even now, and I thought you went away huffed. Oh, Jim, you are the only one that has any influence over him—”“Not the only one,” returned Jim, quietly smoothing the fair girl’s hair with his hard strong hand.“Well, the onlyman, at any rate,” continued Nora, “especially when he is overcome with that dreadful drink. Dear Jim, you won’t forsake him, will you, even though he should insult, even though he shouldstrikeyou?”“No, never! Because he is your father, Nora, I’ll stick by him in spite of all he can say or do to me, and try, God helping me, to save him. But I cannot stick by him if—”“If what?” asked the girl anxiously, observing that he hesitated.“If he does anything against the laws,” said Jim in a low voice. “It isn’t that I’m afraid of my good name—I’d even let that go, foryoursake, if by so doing I could get him out of mischief; and as long as I know nothing against himfor certain, I’ll stand by him. But if he does fall, and I come to know it, Imustleave him, Nora, because I won’t be art and part in it. I could no longer go on my knees to pray for him if I did that, Nora. Moreover, if anything o’ that sort should happen, I must leave the country, because he’d be sure to be caught and tried, and I will never stand witness againstyourfather if I can avoid it by fair means.”Poor Nora hung her head as she asked in a low voice if Jim really thought her father was engaged in illegal practices.“I can’t say that I do,” replied the youth earnestly. “Come, cheer up, dearest Nora. After all, it is chiefly through reports that my suspicions have been aroused, and we all know how easy it is for an enemy to raise an evil report. But, Nora, I wish you had not bound me to secrecy as to my reason for sticking by your father. Why should I not say boldly that it’s all for love of you?”“Why should you wish to give any reason at all, Jim, and above all,thatreason?” asked Nora, looking up with a blush.“Because,” said the youth, with a perplexed look, “my secrecy about the matter has puzzled my father to such an extent that his confidence in me is entirely shaken. I have been all my life accustomed to open all my heart to him, and now, without rhyme or reason, as he thinks, I have suddenly gone right round on the other tack, and at the same time, as he says, I have taken up with doubtful company. Now, if—”The sound of approaching footsteps here brought the interview to an abrupt close. Nora ran back to her poor home, and Jim Welton, directing his steps towards the harbour, returned on board the little sloop which had been named after the girl of his heart.
“What are ye howlin’ there for, an’ blockin’ up the Queen’s highway like that, you precious young villain?” demanded Morley Jones.
“An’ wot are you breakin’ the Queen’s laws for like that?” retorted Billy Towler, dancing into the middle of the road and revolving his small fists in pugilistic fashion. “You big hairy walrus, I don’t know whether to ’ave you up before the beaks for assault and battery or turn to an’ give ’ee a good lickin’.”
Mr Jones showed all his teeth with an approving grin, and the small boy grinned in return, but still kept on revolving his fists, and warning the walrus to “look hout and defend hisself if he didn’t want his daylights knocked out or his bows stove in!”
“You’re a smart youth, you are,” said Jones.
“Ha! you’re afraid, are you? an’ wants to make friends, but I won’t ’ave it at no price. Come on, will you?”
Jones, still grinning from ear to ear, made a rush at the urchin, who, however, evaded him with such ease that the man perceived he had not the smallest chance of catching him.
“I say, my lad,” he asked, stopping and becoming suddenly grave, “where d’you come from?”
“I comes from where I b’longs to, and where I’m agoin’ back to w’en it suits me.”
“Very good,” retorted Jones, “and I suppose you don’t object to earn a little money in an easy way?”
“Yes, I do object,” replied Billy; “it ain’t worth my while to earn alittlemoney in any way, no matter how easy; I never deals in small sums. A fi’ pun’ note is the lowest figur’ as I can stoop to.”
“You’ll not object, however, to a gift, I daresay,” remarked Jones, as he tossed a half-crown towards the boy.
Billy caught it as deftly as a dog catches a bit of biscuit, looked at it in great surprise, tossed it in the air, bit its rim critically, and finally slid it into his trousers pocket.
“Well, you know,” he said slowly, “to obleege afriend, I’m willin’ to accept.”
“Now then, youngster, if I’m willing to trust that half-crown in your clutches, you may believe I have got something to say to ’ee worth your while listenin’ to; for you may see I’m not the man to give it to ’ee out o’ Christian charity.”
“That’s true,” remarked Billy, who by this time had become serious, and stood with his hands in his pockets, still, however, at a respectful distance.
“Well, the fact is,” said Mr Jones, “that I’ve bin lookin’ out of late for a smart lad with a light heart and a light pocket, and that ain’t troubled with much of a conscience.”
“That’s me to a tee,” said Billy promptly; “my ’art’s as light as a feather, and my pocket is as light as a maginstrate’s wisdom. As for conscience, the last beak as I wos introdooced to said I must have bin born without a conscience altogether; an’ ’pon my honour I think he wos right, for I never felt it yet, though I’ve often tried—’xcept once, w’en I’d cleaned out the pocket of a old ooman as was starin’ in at a shop winder in Cheapside, and she fainted dead away w’en she found it out, and her little grand-darter looked so pale and pitiful that I says to myself, ‘Hallo! Walleye, you’ve bin to the wrong shop this time; go an’ put it back, ye young dog;’ so I obeyed orders, an’ slipped back the purse while pretendin’ to help the old ooman. It wos risky work, though, for a bobby twigged me, and it was only my good wind and tough pair o’ shanks that saved me. Now,” continued the urchin, knitting his brows as he contemplated the knotty point, “I’ve had my doubts whether that wos conscience, or a sort o’ nat’ral weakness pecooliar to my constitootion. I’ve half a mind to call on the Bishop of London on the point one o’ these days.”
“So, you’re a city bird,” observed Jones, admiringly.
“Ah, and I can see that you’re a provincial one,” replied Billy, jingling the half-crown against the silver in his pocket.
“What brings you so far out of your beat, Walleye?” inquired Jones.
“Oh, I’m on circuit just now, makin’ a tower of the provinces. I tried a case just before you came up, an’ made three shillins out of it, besides no end o’ promises—which, unfort’nately, I can’t awail myself of—from a sweet young lady, with such a pleasant face, that I wished I could adopt her for a darter. But that’s an expensive luxury, you see; can’t afford it yet.”
“Well, youngster,” said Jones, assuming a more grave yet off-hand air, “if you choose to trust me, I’ll put you in the way of makin’ some money without much trouble. It only requires a little false swearing, which I daresay you are used to.”
“No, I ain’t,” retorted the urchin indignantly; “I never tells a lie ’xcept w’en I can’t help it.Then, of course, a fellermustdo it!”
“Just so, Walleye, them’s my sentiments. Have you got a father?”
“No, nor yet a mother,” replied Billy. “As far as I’m aweer of, I wos diskivered on the steps of a city work’us, an’ my first impressions in this life wos the knuckles of the old woman as banged me up. The governor used to talk a lot o’ balderdash about our bein’ brought up; but I knows better. I wos banged up; banged up in the mornins, banged to meals, and banged to bed; banged through thick and thin, for everything an’ for nothin’, until I banged myself out o’ the door one fine mornin’, which I banged arter me, an’ ’ave bin bangin’ about, a gen’lem’n at large, ever since.”
“Ha! got no friends and nothin’ to do?” said Morley Jones.
“Jis so.”
“Well, if you have a mind to take service with me, come along an’ have a pot o’ beer.”
The man turned on his heel and walked off to a neighbouring public-house, leaving the small boy to follow or not as he pleased, and apparently quite indifferent as to what his decision might be.
Billy Towler—aliasWalleye—looked after him with an air of uncertainty. He did not like the look of the man, and was about to decide against him, when the jingle of the half-crown in his pocket turned the scale in his favour. Running after him, he quietly said, “I’m your man,” and then began to whistle, at the same time making an abortive effort to keep step with his long-limbed employer, who said nothing in reply, but, entering a public-house, ordered two pots of beer. These, when produced, he and his little companion sat down to discuss in the most retired box in the place, and conversed in low tones.
“What was it brought you to Yarmouth, Walleye?” asked Mr Jones.
“Call me Billy,” said the boy, “I like it better.”
“Well, Billy—and, by the way, you may call me Morley—my name’s Jones, but, like yourself, I have a preference. Now, then, what brought you here?”
“H’m, that involves a story—a hanecdote, if I may so speak,” replied this precocious youngster with much gravity. “You see, some time arter I runn’d away from the work’us, I fell’d in with an old gen’lem’n with a bald head an’ a fat corpus. Do ’ee happen to know, Mr Morley, ’ow it is that bald heads an’ fat corpuses a’most always go together?”
Morley replied that he felt himself unable to answer that difficult question; but supposed that as good-humour was said to make people fat, perhaps it made them bald also.
“I dun know,” continued Billy; “anyhow, this old gen’lem’n he took’d a fancy to me, an’ took’d me home to his ’otel; for he didn’t live in London—wos there only on a wisit at the time he felled in love with me at first sight. Well, he give me a splendacious suit of noo clo’es, an ’ad me put to a school, where I soon larned to read and write; an’ I do b’lieve wos on the highroad to be Lord Mayor of London, when the old schoolmaster died, before I’d bin two year there, an’ the noo un wos so fond o’ the bangin’ system that I couldn’t stand it, an’ so bid ’em all a tender farewell, an’ took to the streets agin. The old gen’lem’n he comed three times from Yarmouth, where he belonged, for to see me arter I wos put to the school, an’ I had a sort o’ likin’ for him, but not knowin’ his name, and only been aweer that he lived at Yarmouth, I thought I’d have no chance o’ findin’ him. Over my subsikint career I’ll draw a wail; it’s enough to say I didn’t like either it or my pals, so I made up my mind at last to go to Yarmouth an’ try to find the old gen’lem’n as had adopted me—that’s what he said he’d done to me. W’en I’d prigged enough o’ wipes to pay my fare down, I comed away,—an’ here I am.”
“Have you seen the old gentleman?” asked Morley, after a pause.
“No, only just arrived this arternoon.”
“And you don’t know his name, nor where he lives?”
“No.”
“And how did you expect to escape bein’ nabbed and put in limbo as a vagrant?” inquired Morley.
“By gittin’ employment, of coorse, from somerespectablegen’lem’n like yourself, an’ then runnin’ away from ’im w’en I’d diskivered the old chap wi’ the bald head.”
Morley Jones smiled grimly.
“Well, my advice to you is,” he said, “to fight shy of the old chap, even if you do discover him. Depend upon it the life you would lead under his eye would be one of constant restraint and worry. He’d put you to school again, no doubt, where you’d get banged as before—a system I don’t approve of at all—and be made a milksop and a flunkey, or something o’ that sort—whereas the life you’ll lead with me will be a free and easy rollikin’ manly sort o’ life. Half on shore and half at sea. Do what you like, go where you will,—when business has bin attended to—victuals and clothing free gratis, and pocket-money enough to enable you to enjoy yourself in a moderate sort of way. You see I’m not goin’ to humbug you. It won’t be all plain sailin’, but what is a man worth if he ain’t fit to stand a little rough-and-tumble? Besides, rough work makes a fellow take his ease with all the more zest. A life on the ocean wave one week, with hard work, and a run on shore the next week, with just enough to do to prevent one wearyin’. That’s the sort o’ thing for you and me, Billy, eh boy?” exclaimed the tempter, growing garrulous in his cups, and giving his small victim a pat on the shoulder, which, although meant to be a facetious touch, well-nigh unseated him.
Billy Towler recovered himself, however, and received it as it was meant, in perfect good humour. The beer had mounted to his own little brain, and his large eyes glowed with more than natural light as he sat gazing into his companion’s rugged face, listening with delight to the description of a mode of life which he thought admirably suited to his tastes and capabilities. He was, however, a shrewd little creature. Sad and very rough experience of life had taught him to be uncommonly circumspect for his years.
“What’s your business, Morley?” he demanded eagerly.
“I’ve a lot of businesses,” said Mr Jones with a drunken leer, “but my principal one is fishcuring. I’m a sort of shipowner too. Leastwise I’ve got two craft—one bein’ a sloop, the other a boat. Moreover, I charter no end of vessels, an’ do a good deal in the insurance way. But you’ll understand more about these things all in good time, Billy. I live, while I’m at home, in Gravesend, but I’ve got a daughter and a mother livin’ at Yarmouth, so I may say I’ve got a home at both places. It’s a convenient sort o’ thing, you see,—a town residence and a country villa, as it were. Come, I’ll take you to the villa now, and introduce ’ee to the women.”
So saying, this rascal paid for the poison he had been administering in large doses to himself and his apprentice, and, taking Billy’s dirty little hand in his large horny fist, led him towards the centre of the town.
Poor Billy little knew the nature of the awful gulf of sin and misery into which he was now plunging with a headlong hilarious vivacity peculiarly his own. He was, indeed, well enough aware of the fact that he was a thief, and an outcast from society, and that he was a habitual breaker of the laws of God and man, but he was naturally ignorant of the extent of his guilt, as well as of the certain and terrible end to which it pointed, and, above all, he had not the most remote conception of the almost hopeless slavery to which he was doomed when once fairly secured in the baleful net which Morley Jones had begun to twine around him.
But a higher Power was leading the poor child in a way that he knew not—a way that was little suspected by his tempter—a way that has been the means of snatching many and many a little one from destruction in time past, and that will certainly save many more in time to come—as long as Christian men and women band together to unite their prayers and powers for the rescue of perishing souls.
Traversing several streets with unsteady gait—for he was now much the worse of drink—Mr Jones led his willing captive down one of those innumerable narrow streets, or passages, termed “rows,” which bear some resemblance to the “closes” of the Scottish capital. In width they are much the same, but in cleanliness there is a vast difference, for whereas theclosesof the northern capital are notorious for dirt, therowsof Yarmouth are celebrated for their neat tidy aspect. What the cause of the neatness of the latter may be we cannot tell, but we can bear the testimony of an eye-witness to the fact that—considering the class of inhabitants who dwell in them, their laborious lives and limited means—therowsare wondrously clean. Nearly all of them are paved with pebbles or bricks. The square courts opening out of them on right and left, although ridiculously small, are so thoroughly scoured and swept that one might roll on their floors with white garments and remain unsoiled. In each court may be observed a water-bucket and scrubbing-brush wet, usually, from recent use, also a green painted box-garden of dimensions corresponding to the court, full of well-tended flowers. Almost every door has a wooden or stone step, and each step is worn and white with repeated scrubbings—insomuch that one is irresistibly led to suspect that the “Bloaters” must have a strong infusion of the Dutch element in their nature.
Emerging at the lower end of the row, Mr Jones and his small companion hastened along the centre of a narrow street which led them into one of much wider dimensions, named Friar’s Lane. Proceeding along this for some time, they diverged to the right into another of the rows not far from the old city-wall, at a place where one of the massive towers still rears its rugged head as a picturesque ruin. The moon sailed out from under a mass of clouds at this point, giving to objects the distinctness of daylight. Hitherto Billy Towler had retained some idea of the direction in which he was being led, but this last turn threw his topographical ideas into utter confusion.
“A queer place this,” he remarked, as they emerged from the narrowest passage they had yet traversed into a neat, snug, and most unexpected little square, with a garden in the middle of it, and a flagstaff in one corner.
“Adam-and-Eve gardens, they call it,” said Mr Jones; “we’re pretty nigh home now.”
“I wonder they didn’t call it Eden at once,” observed Billy; “it would have been shorter and comes to the same thing.”
“Here we are at last,” said Mr Jones, stumbling against a small door in one of the network of rows that surrounded this Yarmouth paradise. “Hope the women are in,” he added, attempting to lift the latch, but, finding that the door was locked, he hammered at it with foot and fist violently.
“Hallo!” shouted the deep voice of a man within.
“Hallo, indeed! Who mayyoube?” growled Mr Jones with an angry oath. “Open the door, will you?”
The door was opened at once by James Welton, who stood aside to let the other pass.
“Oh! it’s you, is it?” said Mr Jones. “Didn’t recognise your voice through the door. I thought you couldn’t have got the sloop made snug so soon. Well, lass, how are ’ee; and how’s the old ooman?”
As the man made these inquiries in a half-hearty voice, he advanced into a poorly-furnished apartment, so small and low that it seemed a couple of sizes too small for him, and bestowed a kiss first upon the cheek of his old mother, who sat cowering over the fire, but brightened up on hearing his voice, and then upon the forehead of his daughter Nora, the cheerfulness of whose greeting, however, was somewhat checked when she observed the intoxicated state of her father.
Nora had a face which, though not absolutely pretty, was intensely winsome in consequence of an air of quiet womanly tenderness which surrounded it as with a halo. She was barely eighteen, but her soft eyes possessed a look of sorrow and suffering which, if not natural to them, had, at all events, become habitual.
“Who is this little boy, father?” she said, turning towards Billy Towler, who still stood in the doorway a silent but acute observer of all that went on.
“Oh, that? why—a—that’s my noo ’prentice just come down from Gravesend. He’s been helpin’ for some time in the ‘hang’” (by which Mr Jones meant the place where his fish were cured), “and I’m goin’ to take him to sea with me next trip. Come in, Billy, and make yourself at home.”
The boy obeyed with alacrity, and made no objection to a cup of tea and slice of bread and butter which Nora placed before him—supper being just then in progress.
“You’d better get aboard as soon as may be,” said Jones to Jim Welton somewhat sternly. “I didn’t expect you to leave the sloop tonight.”
“And I didn’t intend to leave her,” replied Jim, taking no notice of the tone in which this was said; “but I thought I’d come up to ask if you wished me to begin dischargin’ early to-morrow morning.”
“No, we’re not going to discharge,” returned Jones.
“Not going to discharge!” echoed Jim in surprise. “No. I find that it’s not worth while discharging any part of the cargo here. On the contrary, I mean to fill up with bloaters and run over with them to the coast of France; so you can go and stow the top tier of casks more firmly, and get ready for the noo ones. Good-night.”
The tone in which this was said left no excuse for Jim to linger, so he bade the household good-night and departed.
He had not gone far, however, when he was arrested by the sound of a light footstep. It was that of Nora, who had followed him.
“Nora!” exclaimed the young sailor in surprise, returning quickly and taking one of the girl’s hands in both of his.
“Oh, Jim!” said Nora, with a look and tone of earnest entreaty, “don’t, don’t forsake him just now—if the love which you have so often professed for me be true, don’t forsake him, I beseech you.”
Jim protested in the most emphatic terms that he had no intention of forsaking anybody, and made a great many more protestations, in the midst of which there were numerous ardent and more or less appropriate references to hearts that never deserted their colours, sheet-anchors that held on through thick and thin, and needles that pointed, without the smallest shadow of variation, to the pole.
“But what makes you think I’m going to leave him?” he asked, at the end of one of those flights.
“Because he is so rough to ’ee, Jim,” replied the girl, leaning her head on her lover’s shoulder; “he spoke so gruff even now, and I thought you went away huffed. Oh, Jim, you are the only one that has any influence over him—”
“Not the only one,” returned Jim, quietly smoothing the fair girl’s hair with his hard strong hand.
“Well, the onlyman, at any rate,” continued Nora, “especially when he is overcome with that dreadful drink. Dear Jim, you won’t forsake him, will you, even though he should insult, even though he shouldstrikeyou?”
“No, never! Because he is your father, Nora, I’ll stick by him in spite of all he can say or do to me, and try, God helping me, to save him. But I cannot stick by him if—”
“If what?” asked the girl anxiously, observing that he hesitated.
“If he does anything against the laws,” said Jim in a low voice. “It isn’t that I’m afraid of my good name—I’d even let that go, foryoursake, if by so doing I could get him out of mischief; and as long as I know nothing against himfor certain, I’ll stand by him. But if he does fall, and I come to know it, Imustleave him, Nora, because I won’t be art and part in it. I could no longer go on my knees to pray for him if I did that, Nora. Moreover, if anything o’ that sort should happen, I must leave the country, because he’d be sure to be caught and tried, and I will never stand witness againstyourfather if I can avoid it by fair means.”
Poor Nora hung her head as she asked in a low voice if Jim really thought her father was engaged in illegal practices.
“I can’t say that I do,” replied the youth earnestly. “Come, cheer up, dearest Nora. After all, it is chiefly through reports that my suspicions have been aroused, and we all know how easy it is for an enemy to raise an evil report. But, Nora, I wish you had not bound me to secrecy as to my reason for sticking by your father. Why should I not say boldly that it’s all for love of you?”
“Why should you wish to give any reason at all, Jim, and above all,thatreason?” asked Nora, looking up with a blush.
“Because,” said the youth, with a perplexed look, “my secrecy about the matter has puzzled my father to such an extent that his confidence in me is entirely shaken. I have been all my life accustomed to open all my heart to him, and now, without rhyme or reason, as he thinks, I have suddenly gone right round on the other tack, and at the same time, as he says, I have taken up with doubtful company. Now, if—”
The sound of approaching footsteps here brought the interview to an abrupt close. Nora ran back to her poor home, and Jim Welton, directing his steps towards the harbour, returned on board the little sloop which had been named after the girl of his heart.