Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series

Jack nodded. These special interpositions of God’s good care are not rare, though we do not always recognize them. And yet, but for that return back, the miserable calamity so soon to fall, would not have had the chance to take place.

Captain Tanerton caused himself to be rowed ashore, first of all ordering the door of his prisoner to be unfastened. I got into the waterman’s wherry with him, for I had nothing to stay on board for. And a fine ending it was to my day’s pleasuring!

“Never mind, Johnny,” he said, as we parted. “You can come with us again to-morrow, and I hope we shall have a more lucky start.”

Captain Tanerton went straight to the brokers’, saw Mr. James Freeman, and told him he would not take out Edward Pym. If he did, the man’s fate would probably be that of irons from Gravesend to Calcutta.

And James Freeman, a thorough foe to brandy-and-water when taken at wrong times, listened to reason, and gave not a word of dissent. He there and then made Ferrar chief mate, and put another one second in Ferrar’s place; a likely young man in their employ who was waiting for a berth. This perfectly satisfied Captain Tanerton, under the circumstances.

The captain was then rowed back to his ship. By that time it was five o’clock. He told Ferrar of the change; who thanked him heartily, a glow of satisfaction rising to his honest face.

“Where’s Pym?” asked the captain. “He must take his things out of the ship.”

“Pym is not on board, sir. Soon after you left, he came up and went ashore: he seemed to have pretty nearly slept off the drink. Sir Dace Fontaine is below,” added Ferrar, dropping his voice.

“Sir Dace Fontaine! Does he want me?”

“He wanted Mr. Pym, sir. He has been looking into every part of the ship: he is looking still. He fancies his daughter is concealed on board.”

“Oh, nonsense!” cried the captain; “he can’t fancy that. As if Miss Fontaine would come down here—and board ships!”

“She was on board yesterday, sir.”

“What!” cried the captain.

“Mr. Pym brought her on board yesterday afternoon, sir,” continued Ferrar, his voice as low as it could well go. “He was showing her about the ship.”

“How do you know this, Mr. Ferrar?”

“I was here, sir. Expecting to sail last week, I sent my traps on board. Yesterday, wanting a memorandum-book out of my desk, I came down for it. That’s how I saw them.”

Captain Tanerton, walking forward to meet Sir Dace, knitted his brow. Was Mr. Pym drawing the careless, light-headed girl into mischief? Sir Dace evidently thought so.

“I tell you, Captain Tanerton, she is quite likely to be on board, concealed as a stow-away,” persisted Sir Dace, in answer to the captain’s assurance that Verena was not, and could not be in the ship. “When you are safe away from land, she will come out of hiding and they will declare their marriage. That they are married, is only too likely. He brought her on board yesterday afternoon when the ship was lying in St. Katharine’s Dock.”

“Do you know that he did?” cried Jack, wondering whence Sir Dace got his information.

“I am told so. As I got up your ladder just now I inquired of the first man I saw, whether a young lady was on board. He said no, but that a young lady had come on board with Mr. Pym yesterday afternoon to see the ship. The man was your ship-keeper in dock.”

“How did you hear we had got back to-day, Sir Dace?”

“I came down this afternoon to search the ship before she sailed—I was under a misapprehension as to the time of her going out. The first thing I heard was, that the Rose of Delhi had gone and had come back again. Pym is capable, I say, of taking Verena out.”

“You may be easy on this point, Sir Dace,” returned Jack. “Pym does not go out in the ship: he is superseded.” And he gave the heads of what had occurred.

It did not tend to please Sir Dace. Edward Pym on the high seas would be a less formidable adversary than Edward Pym on land: and perhaps in his heart of hearts Sir Dace did not really believe his daughter would become a stow-away.

“Won’t you help me to find her? to save her?” gasped Sir Dace, in pitiful entreaty. “With this change—Pym not going out—I know not what trouble he may not draw her into. Coralie says Verena is not married; but I—Heaven help me! I know not what to think. I must find Pym this night and watch his movements, and find her if I can. You must help me.”

“I will help you,” said warm-hearted Jack—and he clasped hands upon it. “I will undertake to find Pym. And, that your daughter is not on board, Sir Dace, I pass you my word.”

Sir Dace stepped into the wherry again, to be rowed ashore and get home to his dinner—ordered that evening for six o’clock. In a short while Jack also quitted the ship, and went to Pym’s lodgings in Ship Street. Pym was not there.

Mr. Pym had come in that afternoon, said his landlady, Mrs. Richenough, and startled her out of her seven senses; for, knowing the ship had left with the day’s tide, she had supposed Mr. Pym to be then off Gravesend, or thereabouts. He told her the ship had sprung a leak and put back again. Mr. Pym had gone out, she added, after drinking a potful of strong tea.

“To sober him,” thought the captain. “Do you expect him back to sleep, Mrs. Richenough?”

“Yes, I do, sir. I took the sheets off his bed this morning, and I’ve just been and put ’em on again. Mr. Saxby’s must be put on too, for he looked in to say he should sleep here.”

Where to search for Pym, Jack did not know. Possibly he might have gone back to the ship to offer an apology, now that he was sobered. Jack was bending his steps towards it when he met Ferrar: who told him Pym had not gone back.

Jack put on his considering-cap. He hardly knew what to do, or how to find the fugitives: with Sir Dace, he deemed it highly necessary that Verena should be found.

“Have you anything particular to do to-night, Mr. Ferrar?” he suddenly asked. And Ferrar said he had not.

“Then,” continued the captain, “I wish you would search for Pym.” And, knowing Ferrar was thoroughly trustworthy, he whispered a few confidential words of Sir Dace Fontaine’s fear and trouble. “I am going to look for him myself,” added Jack, “though I’m sure I don’t know in what quarter. If you do come across him, keep him within view. You can tell him also that his place on the Rose of Delhi is filled up, and he must take his things out of her.”

Altogether that had been a somewhat momentous day for Mr. Alfred Saxby—and its events for him were not over yet. He had been appointed to a good ship, and the ship had made a false start, and was back again. An uncle and aunt of his lived at Clapham, and he thought he could not do better than go down there and regale them with the news: we all naturally burn to impart marvels to the world, you know. However, when he reached his relatives’ residence, he found they were out; and not long after nine o’clock he was back at Mrs. Richenough’s.

“Is Mr. Pym in?” he asked of the landlady; who came forward rubbing her eyes as though she were sleepy, and gave him his candle.

“Oh, he have been in some little time, sir. And a fine row he’s been having with his skipper,” added Mrs. Richenough, who sometimes came off the high ropes of politeness when she had disposed of her supper beer.

“A row, has he!” returned Saxby. “Does not like to have been superseded,” he added to himself. “I must say Pym was a fool to-day—to go and drink, as he did, and to sauce the master.”

“Screeching out at one another like mad, they’ve been,” pursued Mrs. Richenough. “He do talk stern, that skipper, for a young man and a good-looking one.”

“Is the captain in there now?”

“For all I know. I did think I heard the door shut, but it might have been my fancy. Good-night, sir. Pleasant dreams.”

Leaving the candle in Saxby’s hands, she returned to her kitchen, which was built out at the back. He halted at the parlour-door to listen. No voices were to be heard then; no sounds.

“Pym may have gone to bed—I dare say his head aches,” thought Saxby: and he opened the door to see whether the parlour was empty.

Why! what was it?—what was the matter? The young man took one startled look around and then put down the candle, his heart leaping into his mouth.

The lamp on the table threw its bright light on the little room. Some scuffle appeared to have taken place in it. A chair was overturned; the ivory ornament with its glass shade had been swept from its stand to the floor: and by its side lay Edward Pym—dead.

Mr. Alfred Saxby, third mate of that good ship, the Rose of Delhi, might be a sufficiently self-possessed individual when encountering sudden surprises at sea; but he certainly did not show himself to be so on shore. When the state of affairs had sufficiently impressed itself on his startled senses, he burst out of the room in mortal terror, shouting out “murder.”

There was nobody in the house to hear him but Mrs. Richenough. She came forward, slightly overcome by drowsiness; but the sight she saw woke her up effectually.

“Good mercy!” cried she, running to the prostrate man. “Is he dead?”

“He looks dead,” shivered Mr. Saxby, hardly knowing whether he was not dead himself.

They raised Pym’s head, and put a pillow under it. The landlady wrung her hands.

“We must have a doctor,” she cried: “but I can see he is dead. This comes of that quarrel with his captain: I heard them raving frightfully at one another. There has been a scuffle here—see that chair. Oh! and look at my beautiful ivory knocked down!—and the shade all broke to atoms!”

“I’ll fetch Mr. Ferrar,” cried Saxby, feeling himself rather powerless to act; and with nobody to aid him but the gabbling woman.

Like mad, Saxby tore up the street, burst in at Mark Ferrar’s open door and went full butt against Mark himself; who was at the moment turning quickly out of it.

“Take care, Saxby. What are you about?”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake do come, Mr. Ferrar! Pym is dead. He is lying dead on the floor.”

The first thing Ferrar did was to scan his junior officer narrowly, wondering whether he could be quite sober. Yes, he seemed to be that; but agitated to trembling, and his face as pale as death. The next minute Ferrar was bending over Pym. Alas, he saw too truly that life was extinct.

“It’s his skipper that has done it, sir,” repeated the landlady.

“Hush, Mrs. Richenough!” rebuked Ferrar. “Captain Tanerton has not done this.”

“But I heard ’em screeching and howling at one another, sir,” persisted Mrs. Richenough. “Their quarrel must have come to blows.”

“I do not believe it,” dissented Ferrar. “Captain Tanerton would not be capable of anything of the kind. Fight with a man who has served under him!—you don’t understand things, Mrs. Richenough.”

Saxby had run for the nearest medical man. Ferrar ran to find his captain. He knew that Captain Tanerton intended to put up at a small hotel in the Minories for the night.

To this hotel went Ferrar, and found Captain Tanerton. Tired with his evening’s search after Pym, the captain was taking some refreshment, before going up to Sir Dace Fontaine’s—which he had promised, in Sir Dace’s anxiety, to do. He received Ferrar’s report—that Pym was dead—with incredulity: did not appear to believe it: but he betrayed no embarrassment, or any other guilty sign.

“Why, I came straight here from Pym,” he observed. “It’s hardly twenty minutes since I left him. He was all right then—except that he had been having more drink.”

“Old Mother Richenough says, sir, that Pym and you had a loud quarrel.”

“Say that, does she,” returned the captain carelessly. “Her ears must have deceived her, Mr. Ferrar.”

“A quarrel and fight she says, sir. I told her I knew better.”

Captain Tanerton took his cap and started with Ferrar for Ship Street, plunging into a reverie. Presently he began to speak—as if he wished to account for his own movements.

“When you left me, Mr. Ferrar—you know”—and here he exchanged a significant glance with his new first mate—“I went on to Ship Street, and took a look at Pym’s room. A lamp was shining on the table, and his landlady had the window open, closing the shutters. This gave me an opportunity of seeing inside. Pym I saw; but not—not anyone else.”

Again Captain Tanerton’s tone was significant. Ferrar appeared to understand it perfectly. It looked as though they had some secret understanding between them which they did not care to talk of openly. The captain resumed.

“After fastening the shutters, Mrs. Richenough came to the door—for a breath of air, she remarked, as she saw me: and she positively denied, in answer to my questions, that any young lady was there. Mr. Pym had never had a young lady come after him at all, she protested, whether sister or cousin, or what not.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ferrar: for the captain had paused.

“I went in, and spoke to Pym. But, I saw in a moment that he had been drinking again. He was not in a state to be reasoned with, or talked to. I asked him but one question, and asked it civilly: would he tell me where Verena Fontaine was. Pym replied in an unwilling tone; he was evidently sulky. Verena Fontaine was at home again with her people; and he had not been able, for that reason, to see her. Thinking the ship had gone away, and he with it, Verena had returned home early in the afternoon. That was the substance of his answer.”

“But I—I don’t know whether that account can be true, sir,” hesitated Ferrar. “I was not sure, you know, sir, that it was the young lady; I said so–”

“Yes, yes, I understood that,” interrupted the captain quickly. “Well, it was what Pym said to me,” he added, after a pause: “one hardly knows what to believe. However, she was not there, so far as I could ascertain and judge; and I left Pym and came up here to my hotel. I was not two minutes with him.”

“Then—did no quarrel take place, sir?” cried Ferrar, thinking of the landlady’s story.

“Not an angry word.”

At this moment, as they were turning into Ship Street, Saxby, who seemed completely off his head, ran full tilt against Ferrar. It was all over, he cried out in excitement, as he turned back with them: the doctor pronounced Pym to be really dead.

“It is a dreadful thing,” said the captain. “And, seemingly, a mysterious one.”

“Oh, it is dreadful,” asserted young Saxby. “What will poor Miss Verena do? I saw her just now,” he added, dropping his voice.

“Saw her where?” asked the captain, taking a step backwards.

“In the place where I’ve just met you, sir,” replied Saxby. “I was running past round the corner into the street, on my way home from Clapham, when a young lady met and passed me, going pretty nearly as quick as I was. She had her face muffled in a black veil, but I am nearly sure it was Miss Verena Fontaine. I thought she must be coming from Pym’s lodgings here.”

Captain Tanerton and his chief mate exchanged glances of intelligence under the light of the street gas-lamp. The former then turned to Saxby.

“Mr. Saxby,” said he, “I would advise you not to mention this little incident. It would not, I am sure, be pleasant to Miss Verena Fontaine’s friends to hear of it. And, after all, you are not sure that it was she.”

“Very true, sir,” replied Saxby. “I’ll not speak of it again.”

“You hear, sir,” answered Ferrar softly, as Saxby stepped on to open the house-door. “This seems to bear out what I said. And, by the way, sir, I also saw–”

“Hush!” cautiously interrupted the captain—for they had reached the door, and Mrs. Richenough stood at it.

And what Mr. Ferrar further saw, whatever it might be, was not heard by Captain Tanerton. There was no present opportunity for private conversation: and Ferrar was away in the morning with the Rose of Delhi.

After parting with Captain Tanerton on leaving the ship, I made my way to the Mansion House, took an omnibus to Covent Garden, and called at the Tavistock to tell Mr. Brandon of the return of the ship. Mr. Brandon kept me to dinner. About eight o’clock I left him, and went to the Marylebone Road to see the Fontaines. Coralie was in the drawing-room alone.

“Is it you, Johnny Ludlow!” she gaily cried, when old Ozias showed me in. “You are as welcome as flowers in May. Here I am, without a soul to speak to. You must have a game at chess with me.”

“Your sister is not come home, then?”

“Not she. I thought it likely she would come, as soon as the ship’s head was turned seaward—I told you so. But she has not. And now the ship’s back again, I hear. A fine time you must have had of it!”

“We just had. But how did you know?”

“From papa. Papa betook himself to the docks this afternoon, to assure himself, I presume, that the Rose of Delhi was gone. And my belief is, Johnny, that he will work himself into a nervous fever,” Coralie broke off to say, in her equable way, as she helped me to place the pieces. “When he got there, he found the ship was back again. This put him out a little, as you may judge; and something else put him out more. He heard that Vera went on board with Pym yesterday afternoon when the ship was lying in St. Katherine’s Docks. Upon that, what notion do you suppose he took up? I have first move, don’t I?”

“Certainly. What notion did he take up?” The reader must remember that I knew nothing of Sir Dace’s visit to the ship.

“Why, that Vera might be resolving to convert herself into a stowaway, and go out with Pym and the ship. Poor papa! He went searching all over the vessel. He must be off his head.”

“Verena would not do that.”

“Do it?” retorted Coralie. “She’d be no more likely to do it than to go up a chimney, as the sweeps do. I told papa so. He brought me this news when he came home to dinner. And he might just as well have stayed away, for all he ate.”

Coralie paused to look at her game. I said nothing.

“He could only drink. It was as if he had a fierce thirst upon him. When the sweets came on, he left the table and shut himself in his little library. I sent Ozias to ask if he would have a cup of tea or coffee made; papa swore at poor Ozias, and locked the door upon him. When Verena does appear I’d not say but he’ll beat her.”

“No, no: not that.”

“But, I tell you he is off his head. He is still shut up: and nobody dare go near him when he gets into a fit of temper. It is so silly of papa! Verena is all right. But this disobedience, you see, is something new to him.”

“You can’t move that bishop. It leaves your king in check.”

“So it does. The worst item of news remains behind,” added Coralie. “And that is that Pym does not sail with the ship.”

“I should not think he would now. Captain Tanerton would not take him.”

“Papa told me Captain Tanerton had caused him to be superseded. Was Pym very much the worse for what he took, Johnny? Was he very insolent? You must have seen it all?”

“He had taken quite enough. And he was about as insolent as a man can be.”

“Ferrar is appointed to his place, papa says; and a new man to Ferrar’s.”

“Ferrar is! I am glad of that: very. He deserves to get on.”

“But Ferrar is not a gentleman, is he?” objected Coralie.

“Not in one sense. There are gentlemen and gentlemen. Mark Ferrar is very humble as regards birth and bringing-up. His father is a journeyman china-painter at one of the Worcester china-factories; and Mark got his learning at St. Peter’s charity-school. But every instinct Mark possesses is that of a refined, kindly, modest gentleman; and he has contrived to improve himself so greatly by dint of study and observation, that he might now pass for a gentleman in any society. Some men, whatever may be their later advantages, can never throw off the common tone and manner of early habits and associations. Ferrar has succeeded in doing it.”

“If Pym stays on shore it may bring us further complication,” mused Coralie. “I should search for Verena myself then—and search in earnest. Papa and old Ozias have gone about it in anything but a likely manner.”

“Have you any notion where she can be?”

“Just the least bit of notion in the world,” laughed Coralie. “It flashed across me the other night where she might have hidden herself. I don’t know it. I have no particular ground to go upon.”

“You did not tell Sir Dace?”

“Not I,” lightly answered Coralie. “We two sisters don’t interfere with one another’s private affairs. I did keep back a letter of Vera’s; one she wrote to Pym when we first left home; but I have done so no more. Here comes some tea at last!”

“I should have told,” I continued in a low tone. “Or taken means myself to see whether my notion was right or wrong.”

“What did it signify?—when Pym was going away in a day or two. Check to you, Johnny Ludlow.”

That first game, what with talking and tea-drinking, was a long one. I won it. When Ozias came in for the tea-cups Coralie asked him whether Sir Dace had rung for anything. No, the man answered; most likely his master would remain locked in till bed-time; it was his way when any great thing put him out.

“I don’t think I can stay for another game,” I said to Coralie, as she began to place the men again.

“Are you in such a hurry?” cried Coralie, glancing round at the clock: which said twenty minutes to ten.

I was not in any hurry at all that night, as regarded myself: I had thought she might not care for me to stay longer. Miss Deveen and Cattledon had gone out to dinner some ten miles away, and were not expected home before midnight. So we began a fresh game.

“Why! that clock must have stopped!”

Chancing to look at it by-and-by, I saw that it stood at the same time—twenty minutes to ten. I took out my watch. It said just ten minutes past ten.

“What does it signify?” said Coralie. “You can stay here till twenty minutes to twelve if you like—and be whirled home in a cab by midnight then.”

That was true. If–

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Coralie.

She was looking at the door with surprised eyes. There stood Verena, her bonnet on; evidently just come in.

Verena tripped forward, bent down, and kissed her sister. “Have you been desperately angry, Coral?” she lightly asked, giving me her hand to shake. “I know papa has.”

“I have not been angry,” was Coralie’s equable answer: “but you have acted childishly, Verena. And now, where have you been?”

“Only in Woburn Place, at Mrs. Ball’s,” said Verena, throwing off her bonnet, and bringing her lovely flushed face close to the light as she sat down. “When I left here that evening—and really, Johnny, I was sorry not to stay and go in to dinner with you,” she broke off, with a smile—“I went straight to our old lodgings, to good old Mother Ball. ‘They are frightful tyrants at home,’ I said to her, ‘I’m not sure but they’ll serve me as Bluebeard did his wives; and I want to stay with you for a day or two.’ There’s where I have been all the time, Coral; and I wondered you and papa did not come to look for me.”

“It is where I fancied you might be,” returned Coral. “But I only thought of it on Saturday night. Does that mean check, Johnny?”

“Check and mate, mademoiselle.”

“Oh, how wicked you are!”

“Mrs. Ball has been more careful of me than she’d be of gold,” went on Vera, her blue eyes dancing. “The eldest daughter, Louise, is at home now: she teaches music in a school: and, if you’ll believe me, Coral, the old mother would never let me stir out without Louise. When Edward Pym came up in the evening to take me for a walk, Louise must go with us. ‘I feel responsible to your papa and sister, my dear,’ the old woman would say to me. Oh, she was a veritable dragon.”

“Was Louise with you when you went on board the Rose of Delhi yesterday afternoon?” cried Coralie, while I began to put away the chessmen.

Verena opened her eyes. “How did you hear of that? No, we tricked Louise for once. Edward had fifty things to say to me, and he wanted me alone. After dinner he proposed that we should go to afternoon service. I made haste, and went out with him, calling to Louise that she’d catch us up before we reached the church, and we ran off in just the contrary direction. “I should like to show you my ship,” Edward said; and we went down in an omnibus. Mrs. Ball shook her head when we got back, and said I must never do it again. As if I should have the chance, now Edward’s gone!”

Coralie glanced at her. “He is gone, I suppose?”