“I—I’ve been robbed, by a—dreadful man—so awfully gruff, a sailor I think, and—oh!” Ruth became suddenly much calmer. “It did not occur to me till this moment—it is the watch—papa’s little silver watch that Captain Bream brought him as a sort of curiosity from abroad long ago. Oh! I am so sorry! It was such a favourite with dear papa, and he told me to take such care of it when he gave it to me, for there was a romantic little history connected with it.”
“What was it, dear?” asked Jessie, glad to find that the sudden diversion of her thoughts to the lost watch had done more to calm Ruth than all their demonstrative comfort.
Ruth at once proceeded to relate the story of the watch, but we will not inflict it on the reader, as it has no particular bearing on our tale. It had something to do, however, with detaining Ruth far later than she had intended to remain, so that she jumped up hastily at last, saying she must really go home.
“Are you sure the robber was a sailor?” asked Kate; “sailors are such dear nice men that I can hardly believe it.”
“I’m almost quite sure,” returned Ruth; “at all events he was dressed like one—and, oh! he was so gruff!”
From this point Ruth diverged into further and more minute details of the robbery, over which the three gloated with a species of fascination which is more frequently associated with ghost stories than true tales. Indeed we may say that four gloated over it, for Liffie Lee, unable to restrain her curiosity, put her head in at the door—at first with the more or less honest intention of asking if “hany think was wanted,” and afterwards let her head remain from sheer inability to withdraw it.
At one point in the thrilling narrative she became intensely excited, and when Ruth tried in sepulchral tones to imitate John Gunter’s gruff voice, she exclaimed, “Oh! lawks!” in such a gasp that the three ladies leaped up with three shrieks like three conscience-smitten kittens caught in a guilty act! Liffie was rebuked, but from pity, or perhaps sympathy, was allowed to remain to hear the end.
When that point was reached, it was found to be so late that the streets were almost deserted, and the particular part in which their lodging stood was dreadfully silent.
“How am I ever to get home?” asked Ruth.
“It is not more than twenty doors off,” said Kate, “and Liffie will go with you.”
“Lawks, ma’am,” said Liffie, “what could the likes o’ me do if we was attacked? An’ then—I should ’ave to return alone!”
“That is true,” said the tender-hearted Jessie; “what is to be done? Our landlady goes to bed early. It would never do to rouse her—and then, she may perhaps be as great a coward as we are. Oh! if there was only a man in the house. Even a boy would do.”
“Ah! I jist think ’e would,” said Liffie. “If little Billy was ’ere, I wouldn’t ax for no man.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Kate with a bright look of decision, “we’ll all go together. Get on your bonnet, Jessie.”
There was no resisting Kate when once she had made up her mind. She put on her own bonnet, and her sister quickly returned ready, “with a heart,” as Byron says, “for any fate?”
“Now don’t speak, any of you,” whispered Kate. “If we are attacked, let us give a united shriek. That will raise some one to our aid.”
“I should think it would, ma’am. It would a’most raise the dead,” said Liffie, who also prepared herself for the ordeal.
Dark and deserted streets at late hours, with dangerous characters known to be abroad, have terrors to some small extent, even for the averagely brave; what must they have, then, for those tender ones of the weaker sex whose spirits are gentle, perhaps timid, and whose nerves have been highly strung by much converse on subjects relating to violence?
The first shock experienced by our quartette was caused by the door. From some inscrutable impulse Liffie Lee had locked it after Ruth had rushed in.
“Open it gently,” whispered Jessie, for the party had now got to the condition of feeling very much as if they were themselves burglars, engaged in some unholy enterprise, and feared to arouse sleepers. But they need not have feared, for their landlady was one of the “seven sleepers” of Yarmouth.
Liffie exerted her little strength with caution, but the lock was stiff; it would not move. She screwed up her mouth, and put-to more strength; still it would not move. Screwing up her eyebrows as well as her mouth, she tried again. It would not budge. She even screwed up her nose in a stupendous effort, but all in vain. If there had been no need for caution, the thing would have been easy, but Jessie kept whispering, “Softly, Liffie, softly!” and Ruth echoed “Softly!” At last Liffie screwed herself up entirely, body and soul, in one supreme effort; she agonised with the key. It yielded, and the bolt flew back with a crack like a pistol-shot.
“Oh!” burst in four different keys—not door-keys—from the party—under their breath however.
“Open,” whispered Jessie.
Liffie obeyed, and when the half-opened door revealed intense darkness outside, a feeling of horror caused their very flesh to creep.
“How I wish I hadn’t stayed! I’ll never do it again!” whispered poor Ruth in the tones of a child about to be punished.
“What’s that!” exclaimed Jessie, with a start that caused Ruth almost to shriek.
“Cats!” said Liffie Lee.
“Impossible!” said Kate.
But it was not impossible, for there, in a corner not far off, were dimly seen two intensely black objects, with backs and tails arranged on the moorish-arch principle, and a species of low thunder issuing from them, suggestive of dynamite in the stomach.
Relieved to find it was nothing worse, the party emerged into the street. The cats were too much enraged and engaged with each other to observe them. They, like the ladies, were evidently cowards, for they continued to threaten without attacking.
Liffie was left on guard with strict injunctions to stand inside, hold tight to the door-handle, let in the returning sisters, and then slam the door in the face of all the world beside.
A run was now made for the Dotropy residence. We could not call it a rush, for the three ladies were too light and elegant in form to proceed in such a manner. They tripped it—if we may say so—on light fantastic toe, though with something of unseemly haste. Ruth being young and active reached the door first, and, as before, went with a rebounding bang against it. The anxious Mrs Dotropy had been for some time on the watch. She opened the door.
“Ruth!”
“Mamma!”
“Your daughter!” exclaimed the Miss Seawards in needless explanation, as they pushed her in, and then, turning round, fled homeward with so much noise that the attention of a night watchman was naturally attracted. The sisters heard his approaching foot-falls. They put on, in sporting language, a spurt. Just as the door was reached the two cats, becoming suddenly brave, filled the night-air with yells as of infants in agony. An irrepressible shriek burst from the sisters as they tripped over each other into the passage, and the faithful Liffie slammed the door in the face of the discomfited policeman.
It was a crucial test of friendship, and the Miss Seawards came to the conclusion that night, before retiring to rest, that nothing on earth would ever induce them to do it again.
Chapter Twenty One.
A Hopeful Club Discovered
When Captain Bream, as before mentioned, was obliged to hurry off to London, and forsake the Miss Seawards, as well as his theological studies, he hastened to that portion of the city where merchants and brokers, and money-lenders, and men of the law do love to congregate.
Turning down Cheapside the captain sought for one of the many labyrinths of narrow streets and lanes that blush unseen in that busy part of the Great Hive.
“Only a penny, sir, only a penny.”
The speaker was an ill-conditioned man, and the object offered for sale was a climbing monkey of easily deranged mechanism.
“Do you suppose,” said the captain, who, being full of anxious thought was for the moment irascible, “do you suppose that I am a baby?”
“Oh! dear no, sir. From appearances I should say you’ve bin weaned some little time—only a penny, sir. A nice little gift for the missus, sir, if you ain’t got no child’n.”
“Can you direct me,” said the captain with a bland look—for his tempers were short-lived—“to Brockley Court?”
“First to the left, sir, second to the right, straight on an’ ask again—only a penny, sir, climbs like all alive, sir.”
Dropping a penny into the man’s hand with a hope that it might help the monkeys to climb, Captain Bream turned into the labyrinth, and soon after found himself in a dark little room which was surrounded by piles of japanned tin boxes, and littered with bundles of documents, betokening the daily haunt of a man-of-law.
The lawyer himself—a bland man with a rugged head, a Roman nose and a sharp eye—sat on a hard-bottomed chair in front of a square desk. Why should business men, by the way, subject themselves to voluntary martyrdom by using polished seats of hard-wood? Is it with a view to doing penance for the sins of the class to which they belong?
“Have you found her, Mr Saker?” asked Captain Bream, eagerly, on entering.
“No, not got quite so far as that yet—pray sit down; but we have reason to believe that we have got a clue—a slight one, indeed, but then, the information we have to go upon in our profession is frequently very slight—very slight indeed.”
“True, too true,” assented the captain. “I sometimes wonder how, with so little to work on at times, you ever begin to go about an investigation.”
The lawyer smiled modestly in acknowledgment of the implied compliment.
“We do, indeed, proceed on our investigations occasionally with exceeding little information to go upon, but then, my dear sir, investigation may be said to be a branch of our profession for which we are in a manner specially trained. Let me see, now.”
He took up a paper, and, opening it, began to read with a running commentary:—
“Fair hair, slightly grey; delicate features, complexion rather pale, brown eyes, gentle manners.”
“That’s her—that’s her!” from the captain.
“Age apparently a little over thirty. You said, I think, that your sister was—”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted the captain in some excitement, “she was considerably younger than me, poor girl!”
“Let me, however, caution you, my dear sir, not to be too sanguine,” said the man-of-law, looking over his spectacles at his client; “you have no idea how deceptive descriptions are. People are so prone to receive them according to their desires rather than according to fact.”
“Well, but,” returned the captain, with some asperity, “you tell me that this woman has fair hair slightly grey, delicate features, pale complexion, brown eyes, and gentle manners, all of which are facts!”
“True, my dear sir, but they are facts applicable to many women,” replied the solicitor. “Still, I confess I have some hope that we have hit upon the right scent at last. If you could only have given us the name of her husband, our difficulty would have been comparatively slight. I suppose you have no means of hunting that up now. No distant relative or—”
“No, none whatever. All my relations are dead. She lived with an old aunt at the time, who died soon after the poor girl’s foolish elopement, leaving no reference to the matter behind her. It is now fifteen years since then. I was away on a long voyage at the time. On my return, the old lady, as I have said, was dead, and her neighbours knew nothing except that my sister was reported to have run away with a seafaring man. Some who had seen him about the place said he seemed to be beneath her in station but none knew his name.”
“Is it not strange,” asked the solicitor, “that she has never in all these years made inquiries about you at the mercantile house which employed you?”
“Well, not so strange as it would seem, for my sister’s memory for names was a bad one. She used constantly to forget the name of the ship I commanded, and, as far as I can remember, did not trouble herself about the owners. I have no doubt she must have made many efforts to discover me—unless she was ashamed of having made a low match. At all events,” added the captain, with a weary sigh, “I have never ceased to make inquiries about her, although I have not until now made the attempt through a lawyer. But where is this person you have heard of to be found?”
“On board of an emigrant ship,” said the solicitor.
“Where bound for?” demanded the captain in peat surprise.
“For Australia, and she sails the day after to-morrow, I am told.”
“Her name!” cried the captain, starting up.
“Calm yourself, my dear sir. I have made all needful arrangements for your going off to-morrow. It is too late to-day. Sit down and let me explain; and, above all, bear in mind that this may turn out to be a wrong scent after all. Of course you may surmise that we lawyers obtain our information from many and various sources. The source whence the information concerning your matter has come is peculiar, namely, a lay-missionary who is going to visit the ship to-morrow—having some friends on board. Happening to meet the man the other day, I mentioned your matter to him. He is a very sharp-witted man, and one whose accuracy of observation I should trust implicitly, even if his own interests were involved. Well, he said that on board of the steam-ship Talisman, now lying off Gravesend, he saw that very day a woman among the steerage emigrants who answered to my description exactly, and added that he had heard her spoken of as the wife of a somewhat dissipated man, who had all the appearance of a seafaring person, named Richards. Of course I attach no importance to the name, as you say you never knew it, but his being a sailor-like man, and the fact that he was probably beneath his wife in station, coupled with the correct description of the wife, while it does not justify our being too sanguine, raises our hopes, you see—”
“I see, I see—yes. I beg that you will give me the agent’s name and address,” cried the captain, whose hopes, despite the guarded and cautious statements of the solicitor, had been raised to the highest point.
“Here is his name, with the part of the river where you are to meet him,” said the calm man of law, handing his client a slip of paper; “but let me, my dear sir, impress on you the advisability of not allowing yourself to become too sanguine. Disappointments are invariably more severe in cases where expectations have been too high; and I fear that you may be already building too trustfully upon the very slender foundation supplied by this information.”
Admitting the force of this truism, and putting the slip of paper in his purse, Captain Bream bade his solicitor good-bye, with many protestations of undying gratitude, and left the room with the highest possible hopes of success.
Chapter Twenty Two.
In the Mission Boat on the Thames—The Damping of the Body cannot damp the Ardent Spirit
Next morning Captain Bream accompanied the lay-missionary to Gravesend, where they took a boat and put off to the emigrant ship.
Great was the captain’s satisfaction to find that his companion had been a sailor, and could talk to him—in nautical language too—about seafaring matters and distant climes.
“It is a good work in which you are engaged,” he said; “are you going to preach to ’em?”
“No, only to distribute Testaments, tracts, and good books—though I may preach if I get the chance. My work lies chiefly among emigrants and boat and barge men, but I also do a good deal among regular sailors.”
“Ah! That’s the work that I’m fond of,” said the captain, with enthusiasm. “Of course I don’t mean to say that the soul of a sailor is of more value than that of any other man, but I lean to sailors naturally, havin’ been among ’em the greater part of my life. I’ve done a little myself in the way of preachin’ to ’em.”
“Have you?” exclaimed the missionary, with a pleased look.
And from this point the two men went off into a confidential and animated talk about their varied experiences on the sea of spiritual work on which they had both been launched, while the boatman—an old and evidently sympathetic man—pulled them to the vessel which lay at some distance from the place of embarkation.
While the two friends—for such they had become by that time—were chatting thus with each other, a little accident was in store for Captain Bream, which not only disarranged his plans, but afterwards considerably affected his career.
Having reached the age of sixty years, our captain was not quite as active in body as he had once been. He was, however, quite as active in heart and mind, besides having much of the fire of youth still burning in him. Hence he was apt at times to forget his body in the impulsive buoyancy of his spirit. An instance of this forgetfulness occurred that day. The missionary paid a passing visit to a vessel on their way to the emigrant ship. Having run alongside, Captain Bream put his foot on the first step of the ladder, with intent to mount the vessel’s side.
“Have a care, sir,” said the old boatman, who was assisting him with some anxiety.
It may be that the captain’s too youthful spirit spurned assistance, or that he had miscalculated the powers of his too ancient body, for at the moment his foot slipped while as yet his hold of the man-ropes was not secure, and he fell with a lion-like roar that might have shamed the stoutest king of the African forests.
It was not a cry of fear, still less was it a shout for help. It seemed rather like an effervescing roar of indignant surprise.
The boatman held up his arms to catch the unfortunate man, but his strength availed nothing against such a weight. He was hurled into the bottom of the boat for his pains, and the captain went into the water feet first as deep as the waist. Here, however, the disaster was checked, for his strong arms caught the boat and held on.
The missionary, meanwhile, sprang forward and laid hold of him, while his man rose with wonderful agility and lent his aid.
“Heave—ahoy!” cried the missionary, grasping a waist-band.
“Yo, heave, ho!” shouted the boatman, seizing a leg. Another moment and the captain was safe in the bottom of the boat, which by that time was floating quietly down the Thames!
Great was the regret expressed by the missionary at this unfortunate event, and loud was the laughter with which it was treated by the captain himself, on being re-seated in the stern sheets.
“We must go ashore and get a change of dry clothes for you, sir.”
“Not a bit of it,” cried the captain. “Row back to the ship; I’ll mount that ladder yet. If I didn’t I’d keep dreaming of my discomfiture for a twelve-month to come.” They ran alongside the vessel a second time, and went up the side in safety.
But, arrived on deck, the skipper, who happened to be a hospitable man and friendly to the missionary, insisted on having Captain Bream down into his cabin.
“Now you’ll put on a suit of my clothes,” he said, “till your own are dry.”
The captain would not hear of it.
“Just let me wring my own out,” he said, “and I’ll be all right.”
“Have a glass of wine then, or brandy?”
“Impossible; thank’ee, I’m an abstainer.”
“But you need it to prevent catching cold, you know. Take it as physic.”
“Physic!” exclaimed the captain. “I never took physic in my life, and I won’t begin wi’ the nasty stuff now. Thank’ee all the same.”
“Some coffee, then? I’ve got it all ready.”
“Ay—that’s better—if you’re sure you’ve got it handy.”
While the captain and the skipper were discussing the coffee, the wet garments were sent to the galley and partially dried. Meanwhile the missionary made the most of his opportunity among the men. By the time he had finished his visit, the captain’s nether garments were partially dried, so they continued their voyage to the emigrant ship. When they reached her the poor captain’s interest in other people’s affairs had begun to fail, for his anxiety about his long-lost sister increased, as the probability of finding her at last became greater.