Chapter Thirty Two.
Success and Future Plans
Punctual to the minute Zook presented himself to Mrs Butt next morning and demanded audience.
Mrs Butt had been forewarned of the impending visit, and, although she confessed to some uncomfortable feelings in respect of infection and dirt, received him with a gracious air.
“You’ve come to breakfast, I understand?”
“Well, I believe I ’ave,” answered the little man, with an involuntary glance at his dilapidated clothes; “’avin’ been inwited—unless,” he added, somewhat doubtfully, “the inwite came in a dream.”
“You may go in and clear up that point for yourself,” said the landlady, as she ushered the poor man into the parlour, where he was almost startled to find an amiable gentleman waiting to receive him.
“Come along, Zook, I like punctuality. Are you hungry?”
“’Ungry as a ’awk, sir,” replied Zook, glancing at the table and rubbing his hands, for there entered his nostrils delicious odours, the causes of which very seldom entered his throat. “W’y, sir, I know’d you was a gent, from the wery first!”
“I have at least entered my native shell,” said Charlie, with a laugh. “Sit down. We’ve no time to waste. Now what’ll you have? Coffee, tea, pork-sausage, ham and egg, buttered toast, hot rolls. Just help yourself, and fancy you’re in the lodging-house at your own table.”
“Well, sir, that would be a stretch o’ fancy that would strain me a’most to the bustin’ p’int. Coffee, if you please. Oh yes, sugar an’ milk in course. I never let slip a chance as I knows on. W’ich bread? well, ’ot rolls is temptin’, but I allers ’ad a weakness for sappy things, so ’ot buttered toast—if you can spare it.”
“Spare it, my good man!” said Charlie, laughing. “There’s a whole loaf in the kitchen and pounds of butter when you’ve finished this, not to mention the shops round the corner.”
It was a more gratifying treat to Charlie than he had expected, to see this poor man eat to his heart’s content of viands which he so thoroughly appreciated and so rarely enjoyed. What Zook himself felt, it is impossible for well-to-do folk to conceive, or an ordinary pen to describe; but, as he sat there, opposite to his big friend and champion, stowing away the good things with zest and devotion of purpose, it was easy to believe that his watery eyes were charged with the tears of gratitude, as well as with those of a chronic cold to which he was subject.
Breakfast over, they started off in quest of the old woman with teetotal proclivities.
“How did you come to know her?” asked Charlie, as they went along.
“Through a ’ouse in the city as I was connected with afore I got run over an’ lamed. They used to send me with parcels to this old ’ooman. In course I didn’t know for sartin’ w’at was in the parcels, but ’avin’ a nose, you see, an’ bein’ able to smell, I guessed that it was a compound o’ wittles an’ wursted work.”
“A strange compound, Zook.”
“Well, they wasn’t ’zactly compounded—they was sometimes the one an’ sometimes the other; never mixed to my knowledge.”
“What house was it that sent you?”
“Withers and Company.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Charlie in surprise. “I know the house well. The head of it is a well-known philanthropist. How came you to leave them? They never would have allowed an old servant to come to your pass—unless, indeed, he was—”
“A fool, sir, or wuss,” interrupted Zook; “an’ that’s just what I was. I runned away from ’em, sir, an’ I’ve been ashamed to go back since. But that’s ’ow I come to know old Missis Mag, an’ it’s down ’ere she lives.”
They turned into a narrow passage which led to a small court at the back of a mass of miserable buildings, and here they found the residence of the old woman.
“By the way, Zook, what’s her name?” asked Charlie.
“Mrs Mag Samson.”
“Somehow the name sounds familiar to me,” said Charlie, as he knocked at the door.
A very small girl opened it and admitted that her missis was at ’ome; whereupon our hero turned to his companion.
“I’ll manage her best without company, Zook,” he said; “so you be off; and see that you come to my lodging to-night at six to hear the result of my interview and have tea.”
“I will, sir.”
“And here, Zook, put that in your pocket, and take a good dinner.”
“I will, sir.”
“And—hallo! Zook, come here. Not a word about all this in the lodging-house;—stay, now I think of it, don’t go to the lodging-house at all. Go to a casual ward where they’ll make you take a good bath. Be sure you give yourself a good scrub. D’ye hear?”
“Yes, sir.” He walked away murmuring, “More ’am and hegg an’ buttered toast to-night! Zook, you’re in luck to-day—in clover, my boy! in clover!”
Meanwhile, Charlie Brooke found himself in the presence of a bright-eyed little old woman, who bade him welcome with the native grace of one who is a born, though not a social, lady, and beautified by Christianity. Her visitor went at once straight to the point.
“Forgive my intrusion, Mrs Samson,” he said, taking the chair to which the old woman pointed, “but, indeed, I feel assured that you will, when I state that the object of my visit is to ask you to aid in the rescue of a friend from drink.”
“No man intrudes on me who comes on such an errand; but how does it happen, sir, that you think I am able to aid you?”
To this Charlie replied by giving her an account of his meeting and conversation with Zook, and followed that up with a full explanation of his recent efforts and a graphic description of Isaac Leather.
The old woman listened attentively, and, as her visitor proceeded, with increasing interest not unmingled with surprise and amusement.
When he had concluded, Mrs Samson rose, and, opening a door leading to another room, held up her finger to impose silence, and softly bade him look in.
He did so. The room was a very small one, scantily furnished, with a low truckle-bed in one corner, and there, on the bed, lay the object of his quest—Isaac Leather! Charlie had just time to see that the thin pale face was not that of a dead, but of a sleeping, man when the old woman gently pulled him back and re-closed the door.
“That’s your man, I think.”
“Yes, that’s the man—I thank God for this most astonishing and unlooked-for success.”
“Ah! sir,” returned the woman, sitting down again, “most of our successes are unlooked for, and, when they do come, we are not too ready to recognise the hand of the Giver.”
“Nevertheless you must admit that some incidents do seem almost miraculous,” said Charlie. “To have found you out in this great city, the very person who had Mr Leather in her keeping, does seem unaccountable, does it not?”
“Not so unaccountable as it seems to you,” replied the old woman, “and certainly not so much of a miracle as it would have been if you had found him by searching the lodging-houses. Here is the way that God seems to have brought it about. I have for many years been a pensioner of the house of Withers and Company, by whom I was employed until the senior partner made me a sort of female city-missionary amongst the poor. I devoted myself particularly to the reclaiming of drunkards—having special sympathy with them. A friend of mine, Miss Molloy, also employed by the senior partner in works of charity, happened to be acquainted with Mr Leather and his family. She knew of his failing, and she found out—for she has a strange power, that I never could understand, of inducing people to make a confidant of her,—she found out (what no one else knew, it seems) that poor Mr Leather wished to put himself under some sort of restraint, for he could not resist temptation when it came in his way. Knowing about me, she naturally advised him to put himself in my hands. He objected at first, but agreed at last on condition that none of his people should be told anything about it. I did not like to receive him on such conditions, but gave in because he would come on no other. Well, sir, you came down here because you had information which led you to think Mr Leather had come to this part of the city. You met with a runaway servant of Withers and Company—not very wonderful that. He naturally knows about me and fetches you here. Don’t you see?”
“Yes, I see,” replied Charlie, with an amused expression; “still I cannot help looking on the whole affair as very wonderful, and I hope that that does not disqualify me from recognising God’s leading in the matter.”
“Nay, young sir,” returned the old woman, “that ought rather to qualify you for such recognition, for are not His ways said to be wonderful—ay, sometimes ‘past finding out’? But what we know not now, we shall know hereafter. I thought that when my poor boy went to sea—”
“Mrs Samson!” exclaimed Charlie, with a sudden start, “I see it now! Was your boy’s name Fred?”
“It was.”
“And he went to sea in the Walrus, that was wrecked in the Southern Ocean!”
“Yes,” exclaimed the old woman eagerly.
“Then,” said Charlie, drawing a packet from the breast-pocket of his coat, “Fred gave me this for you. I have carried it about me ever since, in the hope that I might find you. I came to London, but found you had left the address written on the packet, and it never occurred to me that the owners of the Walrus would know anything about the mother of one of the men who sailed in her. I have a message also from your son.”
The message was delivered, and Charlie was still commenting on it, when the door of the inner room opened and Isaac Leather stood before them.
“Charlie Brooke!” he exclaimed, in open-eyed amazement, not unmingled with confusion.
“Ay, and a most unexpected meeting on both sides,” said Charlie, advancing and holding out his hand. “I bring you good news, Mr Leather, of your son Shank.”
“Do you indeed?” said the broken-down man, eagerly grasping his young friend’s hand. “What have you to tell me? Oh Charlie, you have no idea what terrible thoughts I’ve had about that dear boy since he went off to America! My sin has found me out, Charlie. I’ve often heard that said before, but have never tally believed it till now.”
“God sends you a message of mercy, then,” said our hero, who thereupon began to relieve the poor man’s mind by telling him of his son’s welfare and reformation.
But we need not linger over this part of the story, for the reader can easily guess a good deal of what was said to Leather, while old Mrs Samson was perusing the letter of her dead son, and tears of mingled sorrow and joy coursed down her withered cheeks.
That night however, Charlie Brooke conceived a vast idea, and partially revealed it at the tea-table to Zook—whose real name, by the way, was Jim Smith.
“’Ave you found ’er, sir?” said Mrs Butt, putting the invariable, and by that time annoying, question as Charlie entered his lodging.
“No, Mrs Butt, I haven’t found ’er, and I don’t expect to find ’er at all.”
“Lawk! sir, I’m so sorry.”
“Has Mr Zook come?”
“Yes, sir ’e’s inside and looks impatient. The smell o’ the toast seems a’most too strong a temptation for ’im; I’m glad you’ve come.”
“Look here, Zook,” said Charlie, entering his parlour, “go into that bedroom. You’ll find a bundle of new clothes there. Put them on. Wrap your old clothes in a handkerchief, and bring them to me. Tea will be ready when you are.”
The surprised pauper did as he was bid, without remark, and re-entered the parlour a new man!
“My own mother, if I ’ad one, wouldn’t know me, sir,” he said, glancing admiringly at his vest.
“Jim Smith, Esquire,” returned Charlie, laughing. “I really don’t think she would.”
“Zook, sir,” said the little man, with a grave shake of the head; “couldn’t think of changin’ my name at my time of life; let it be Zook, if you please, sir, though in course I’ve no objection to esquire, w’en I ’ave the means to maintain my rank.”
“Well, Zook, you have at all events the means to make a good supper, so sit down and go to work, and I’ll talk to you while you eat,—but, stay, hand me the bundle of old clothes.”
Charlie opened the window as he spoke, took hold of the bundle, and discharged it into the back yard.
“There,” he said, sitting down at the table, “that will prove an object of interest to the cats all night, and a subject of surprise to good Mrs Butt in the morning. Now, Zook,” he added, when his guest was fairly at work taking in cargo, “I want to ask you—have you any objection to emigrate to America?”
“Not the smallest,” he said, as well as was possible through a full mouth. “Bein’ a orphling, so to speak, owin’ to my never ’avin’ ’ad a father or mother—as I knows on—there’s nothin’ that chains me to old England ’cept poverty.”
“Could you do without drink?”
“Sca’sely, sir, seein’ the doctors say that man is about three parts—or four, is it?—made up o’ water; I would be apt to grow mummified without drink, wouldn’t I, sir?”
“Come, Zook—you know that I mean strong drink—alcohol in all its forms.”
“Oh, I see. Well, sir, as to that, I’ve bin in the ’abit of doin’ without it so much of late from needcessity, that I don’t think I’d find much difficulty in knocking it off altogether, if I was to bring principle to bear.”
“Well, then,” continued Charlie, ”(have some more ham?) I have just conceived a plan. I have a friend in America who is a reformed drunkard. His father in this country is also, I hope, a reformed drunkard. There is a good man out there, I understand, who has had a great deal to do with reformed drunkards, and he has got up a large body of friends and sympathisers who have determined to go away into the far west and there organise a total abstinence community, and found a village or town where nothing in the shape of alcohol shall be admitted except as physic.
“Now, I have a lot of friends in England who, I think, would go in for such an expedition if—”
“Are they all reformed drunkards, sir?” asked Zook in surprise, arresting a mass of sausage in its course as he asked the question.
“By no means,” returned Charlie with a laugh, “but they are earnest souls, and I’m sure will go if I try to persuade them.”
“You’re sure to succeed, sir,” said Zook, “if your persuasions is accompanied wi’ sassengers, ’am, an’ buttered toast,” remarked the little man softly, as he came to a pause for a few seconds.
“I’ll bring to bear on them all the arguments that are available, you may be sure. Meanwhile I shall count you my first recruit.”
“Number 1 it is, sir, w’ich is more than I can say of this here slice,” said Zook, helping himself to more toast.
While the poor but happy man was thus pleasantly engaged, his entertainer opened his writing portfolio and began to scribble off note after note, with such rapidity that the amazed pauper at his elbow fairly lost his appetite, and, after a vain attempt to recover it, suggested that it might be as well for him to retire to one of the palatial fourpence-a-night residences in Dean and Flower Street.
“Not to-night. You’ve done me a good turn that I shall never forget” said Charlie, rising and ringing the bell with needless vigour.
“Be kind enough, Mrs Butt, to show Mr Zook to his bedroom.”
“My heye!” murmured the pauper, marching off with two full inches added to his stature. “Not in there, I suppose, missis,” he said facetiously, as he passed the coal-hole.
“Oh, lawks! no—this way,” replied the good woman, who was becoming almost imbecile under the eccentricities of her lodger. “This is your bedroom, and I only ’ope it won’t turn into a band-box before morning, for of all the transformations an’ pantimimes as ’as took place in this ’ouse since Mr Brooke entered it, I—”
She hesitated, and, not seeing her way quite clearly to the fitting end of the sentence, asked if Mr Zook would ’ave ’ot water in the morning.
“No, thank you, Missis,” replied the little man with dignity, while he felt the stubble on his chin; “’avin left my razors at ’ome, I prefers the water cold.”
Leaving Zook to his meditations, Mrs Butt retired to bed, remarking, as she extinguished the candle, that Mr Brooke was still “a-writin’ like a ’ouse a fire!”
Chapter Thirty Three.
Sweetwater Bluff
We must now leap over a considerable space, not only of distance, but of time, in order to appreciate fully the result of Charlie Brooke’s furious letter-writing and amazing powers of persuasion.
Let the reader try to imagine a wide plateau, dotted with trees and bushes, on one of the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, where that mighty range begins to slide into union with the great prairies. It commands a view of mingled woodland and rolling plain, diversified by river and lake, extending to a horizon so faint and far away as to suggest the idea of illimitable space.
Early one morning in spring, five horsemen, emerging from a belt of woodland, galloped to the slope that led to the summit of this plateau. Drawing rein, they began slowly to ascend. Two of the cavaliers were young, tall, and strong;—two were portly and old, though still hearty and vigorous; one, who led them, on a coal-black steed, was a magnificent specimen of the backwoodsman, and one, who brought up the rear, was a thin little man, who made up for what he wanted in size by the energy and vigour of his action, as, with hand and heel, he urged an unwilling horse to keep up with the rest of the party.
Arrived at the summit of the plateau, the leading horseman trotted to its eastern edge, and halted as if for the purpose of surveying the position.
“Here we are at last,” he said, to the tallest of his comrades; “Sweetwater Bluff—and the end of our journey!”
“And a most noble end it is!” exclaimed the tall comrade. “Why, Hunky Ben, it far surpasses my expectations and all you have said about it.”
“Most o’ the people I’ve had to guide over this trail have said pretty much the same thing in different words, Mr Brooke,” returned the scout, dismounting. “Your wife will find plenty o’ subjects here for the paintin’ she’s so fond of.”
“Ay, May will find work here to keep her brushes busy for many a day to come,” replied Charlie, “though I suspect that other matters will claim most of her time at first, for there is nothing but a wilderness here yet.”
“You’ve yet to larn, sir, that we don’t take as long to fix up a town hereaway as you do in the old country,” remarked Hunky Ben, as old Jacob Crossley ambled up on the staid creature which we have already introduced as Wheelbarrow.
Waving his hand with enthusiasm the old gentleman exclaimed, “Glorious!” Indeed, for a few minutes he sat with glistening eyes and heaving chest, quite unable to give vent to any other sentiment than “glorious!” This he did at intervals. His interest in the scene, however, was distracted by the sudden advent of Captain Stride, whose horse—a long-legged roan—had an awkward tendency, among other eccentricities, to advance sideways with a waltzing gait, that greatly disconcerted the mariner.
“Woa! you brute. Back your tops’ls, won’t you? I never did see sitch a craft for heavin’ about like a Dutch lugger in a cross sea. She sails side on, no matter where she’s bound for. Forges ahead a’most entirely by means of leeway, so to speak. Hallo! woa! Ketch a grip o’ the painter, Dick, an’ hold on till I git off the hurricane deck o’ this walrus—else I’ll be overboard in a—. There—” The captain came to the ground suddenly as he spoke, without the use of stirrup, and, luckily, without injury.
“Not hurt I hope?” asked Dick Darvall, assisting his brother-salt to rise.
“Not a bit of it, Dick. You see I’m a’most as active as yourself though double your age, if not more. I say, Charlie, this is a pretty look-out. Don’t ’ee think so, Mr Crossley? I was sure that Hunky Ben would find us a pleasant anchorage and safe holding-ground at last, though it did seem as if we was pretty long o’ comin’ to it. Just as we was leavin’ the waggins to ride on in advance I said to my missus—says I—Maggie, you may depend—”
“Hallo! Zook,” cried Charlie, as the little man of the slums came limping up, “what have you done with your horse?”
“Cast ’im loose, sir, an’ gi’n ’im leave of absence as long as ’e pleases. It’s my opinion that some the ’osses o’ the western prairies ain’t quite eekal to some o’ the ’osses I’ve bin used to in Rotten Row. Is this the place, Hunky? Well, now,” continued the little man, with flashing eyes, as he looked round on the magnificent scene, “it’ll do. Beats W’itechapel an’ the Parks any ’ow. An’ there’s lots o’ poultry about, too!” he added, as a flock of wild ducks went by on whistling wings. “I say, Hunky Ben, w’at’s yon brown things over there by the shores o’ the lake?”
“Buffalo,” answered the scout.
“What! wild uns?”
“There’s no tame ones in them diggin’s as I knows on. If there was, they’d soon become wild, you bet.”
“An’ w’at’s yon monster crawlin’ over the farthest plain, like the great sea-serpent?”
“Why, man,” returned the scout, “them’s the waggins. Come, now, let’s to work an’ git the fire lit. The cart wi’ the chuck an’ tents’ll be here in a few minutes, an’ the waggins won’t be long arter ’em.”
“Ay, wi’ the women an’ kids shoutin’ for grub,” added Zook, as he limped after the scout, while the rest of the little band dispersed—some to cut firewood, others to select the best positions for the tents. The waggons, with a supply of food, arrived soon after under the care of Roaring Bull himself, with two of his cowboys. They were followed by Buttercup, who bestrode, man-fashion, a mustang nearly as black as herself and even more frisky.
In a wonderfully short time a number of white tents arose on the plateau and several fires blazed, and at all the fires Buttercup laboured with superhuman effect, assisted by the cowboys, to the unbounded admiration of Zook, who willingly superintended everything, but did little or nothing. A flat rock on the highest point was chosen for the site of a future block-house or citadel, and upon this was ere long spread a breakfast on a magnificent scale. It was barely ready when the first waggons arrived and commenced to lumber up the ascent, preceded by two girls on horseback, who waved their hands, and gave vent to vigorous little feminine cheers as they cantered up the slope.
These two were our old friends whom we knew as May Leather and Mary Jackson, but who must now be re-introduced to the reader as Mrs Charlie Brooke and Mrs Dick Darvall. On the same day they had changed their names at the Ranch of Roaring Bull, and had come to essay wedded life in the far west.
We need hardly say that this was the great experimental emigrant party, led by the Reverend William Reeves, who had resolved to found a colony on total abstinence principles, and with as many as possible of the sins of civilisation left behind. They found, alas! that sin is not so easily got rid of; nevertheless, the effort was not altogether fruitless, and Mr Reeves carried with him a sovereign antidote for sin in the shape of a godly spirit.
The party was a large one, for there were many men and women of the frontier whose experiences had taught them that life was happier and better in every way without the prevalent vices of gambling and drinking.
Of course the emigrants formed rather a motley band. Among them, besides those of our friends already mentioned, there were our hero’s mother and all the Leather family. Captain Stride’s daughter as well as his “Missus,” and Mr Crossley’s housekeeper, Mrs Bland. That good woman, however, had been much subdued and rendered harmless by the terrors of the wilderness, to which she had been recently exposed. Miss Molloy was also there, with an enormous supply of knitting needles and several bales of worsted.
Poor Shank Leather was still so much of an invalid as to be obliged to travel in a spring cart with his father, but both men were rapidly regaining physical strength under the influence of temperance, and spiritual strength under a higher power.
Soon the hammer, axe, and saw began to resound in that lovely western wilderness; the net to sweep its lakes; the hook to invade its rivers; the rifle to crack in the forests, and the plough to open up its virgin soil. In less time, almost, than a European would take to wink, the town of Sweetwater Bluff sprang into being; stores and workshops, a school and a church, grew, up like mushrooms; seed was sown, and everything, in short, was done that is characteristic of the advent of a thriving community. But not a gambling or drinking saloon, or a drop of firewater, was to be found in all the town.
In spite of this, Indians brought their furs to it; trappers came to it for supplies; emigrants turned aside to see and rest in it; and the place soon became noted as a flourishing and pre-eminently peaceful spot.