Two Years Ago, Volume I

"Will the gentleman see the corpses?" asked Brown; "we have fourteen already;"—and he led the way to where, along the shingle at high-water mark, lay a ghastly row, some fearfully bruised and mutilated, cramped together by the death-agony; others with the peaceful smile which showed that they had sunk to sleep in that strange water-death, amid a wilderness of pleasant dreams. Strong men lay there, little children, women, whom the sailors' wives had covered decently with cloaks and shawls; and at their heads stood Grace Harvey, motionless, with folded hands, gazing into the dead faces with her great solemn eyes. Her mother and Captain Willis stood by, watching her with a sort of superstitions awe. She took no notice either of Thurnall or of the Lieutenant, as the doctor identified the bodies one by one, without a remark which indicated any human emotion.

"A very sensible man, Willis," said the Lieutenant apart, as Tom knelt awhile to examine the crushed features of a sailor; and then looking up said simply,—

"James Macgillivray, second mate. Cause of death, contusions; probably by the fall of the main-mast."

"A very sensible man, and has seen a deal of life, and kept his eyes open; but a terrible hard-plucked one. Talked like a book to me all the way; but, be hanged if I don't think he has a thirty-two pound shot under his ribs instead of a heart.—Doctor Thurnall, that is Miss Harvey,—the young person who saved your life last night."

Tom rose, took off his hat (Frank Headley's), and made her a bow, of which an ambassador need not have been ashamed.

"I am exceedingly shocked that Miss Harvey should have run so much danger for anything so worthless as my life."

She looked up at him, and answered, not him, but her own thoughts.

"Strange, is it not, that it was a duty to pray for all these poor things last night, and a sin to pray for them this morning?"

"Grace, dear!" interposed her mother, "don't you hear the gentleman thanking you?"

She started, as one awaking out of a dream, and looked into his face, blushing scarlet.

"Good heavens, what a beautiful creature!" said Tom to himself, as quite a new emotion passed through him. Quite new it was, whatsoever it was; and he was aware of it. He had had his passions, his intrigues, in past years, and prided himself—few men more—on understanding women; but the expression of the face, and the strange words with which she had greeted him, added to the broad fact of her having offered her own life for his, raised in him a feeling of chivalrous awe and admiration, which no other woman had ever called up.

"Madam," he said again; "I can repay you with nothing but thanks: but, to judge from your conduct last night, you are one of those people who will find reward enough in knowing that you have done a noble and heroic action."

She looked at him very steadfastly, blushing still. Thurnall, be it understood, was (at least, while his face was in the state in which Heaven intended it to be, half hidden in a silky-brown beard) a very good-looking fellow; and (to use Mark Armsworth's description) "as hard as a nail; as fresh as a rose; and stood on his legs like a game-cock." Moreover, as Willis said approvingly, he had spoken to her "as if he was a duke, and she was a duchess." Besides, by some blessed moral law, the surest way to make oneself love any human being is to go and do him a kindness; and therefore Grace had already a tender interest in Tom, not because he had saved her, but she him. And so it was, that a strange new emotion passed through her heart also, though so little understood by her, that she put it forthwith into words.

"You might repay me," she said in a sad and tender tone.

"You have only to command me," said Tom, wincing a little as the words passed his lips.

"Then turn to God, now in the day of His mercies. Unless you have turned to Him already."

One glance at Tom's rising eyebrows told her what he thought upon those matters.

She looked at him sadly, lingeringly, as if conscious that she ought not to look too long, and yet unable to withdraw her eyes.—"Ah! and such a precious soul as yours must be; a precious soul—all taken, and you alone left! God must have high things in store for you. He must have a great work for you to do. Else, why are you not as one of these! Oh, think! where would you have been at this moment if God had dealt with you as with them?"

"Where I am now, I suppose," said Tom quietly.

"Where you are now?"

"Yes: where I ought to be. I am where I ought to be now. I suppose if I had found myself anywhere else this morning, I should have taken it as a sign that I was wanted there, and not here."

Grace heaved a sigh at words which were certainly startling. The Stoic optimism of the world-hardened doctor was new and frightful to her.

"My good madam," said he, "the part of Scripture which I appreciate best, just now, is the case of poor Job, where Satan has leave to rob and torment him to the utmost of his wicked will, provided only he does not touch his life, I wish," he went on, lowering his voice, "to tell you something which I do not wish publicly talked of; but in which you may help me. I had nearly fifteen hundred pounds about me when I came ashore last night, sewed in a belt round my waist. It is gone. That is all."

Tom looked steadily at her as he spoke. She turned pale, red, pale again, her lips quivered: but she spoke no word.

"She has it, as I live!" thought Tom to himself. "'Frailty, thy name is woman!' The canting, little, methodistical humbug! She must have slipped it off my waist as I lay senseless. I suppose she means to keep it in pawn, till I redeem it by marrying her. Well I might take an uglier mate certainly; but when I do enter into the bitter bonds of matrimony, I should like to be sure, beforehand, that my wife was not a thief!"

Why, then, did not Tom, if he were so very sure of Grace's having the belt, charge her with the theft? because he had found out already how popular she was, and was afraid of merely making himself unpopular; because, too, he took for granted that whosoever had his belt, had hidden it already beyond the reach of a search warrant; and, because, after all, an honourable shame restrained him. It would be a poor return to the woman who had saved his life to charge her with theft the next morning; and more, there was something about that girl's face which had made him feel that, if he had seen her put the belt into her pocket before his eyes, he could not have found the heart to have sent her to gaol. "No!" thought he; "I'll get it out of her, or whoever has it, and stay here till I do get it. One place is as good as another to me."

But what was Grace saying?

She had turned, after two or three minutes' astonished silence, to her mother and Captain Willis—

"Belt! Mother! Uncle! What is this? The gentleman has lost a belt?"

"Dear me!—a belt! Well, child, that's not much to grieve over, when the Lord has spared his life and soul from the pit!" said her mother, somewhat testily.

"You don't understand. A belt, I say, full of money—fifteen hundred pounds; he lost it last night. Uncle! Speak, quick! Did you see a belt?"

Willis shook his head meditatively. "I don't, and yet I do, and yet I don't again. My brains were, well-nigh washed out of me, I know. However, sir, I'll think, and talk it over with you too; for if it be in the village, found it ought to be, and will be, with God's help."

"Found?" cried Grace, in so high a key, that Tom entreated her to calm herself, and not make the matter public.—"Found? yes; and shall be found, if there be justice in heaven. Shame that west-country folk should turn robbers and wreckers! Mariners, too, and manners' wives, who should be praying for those who are wandering far away, each man with his life in his hand! Ah, what a world! When will it end? soon, too soon, when west-country folk rob shipwrecked men! But you will find your belt; yes, sir, you will find it. Wait till you have learnt to do without it. Man does not live by bread alone. Do you think he lives by gold? Only be patient; and when you are worthy of it, you shall find it again, in the Lord's good time."

To the doctor this seemed a mere burst of jargon, invented for the purpose of hiding guilt; and his faith in womankind was not heightened when he heard Grace's mother say, sotto voce to Willis, that—"In wrecks, and fires, and such like, a many people complained of having lost more than ever they had."

"Oh ho! my old lady, is that the way the fox is gone?" quoth Tom to that trusty counsellor, himself; and began carefully scrutinising Mrs. Harvey's face. It had been very handsome: it was still very clever: but the eyebrows, crushed together downwards above her nose, and rising high at the outer corners, indicated, as surely as the restless down-dropt eye, a character self-conscious, furtive, capable of great inconsistencies, possibly of great deceits.

"You don't look me in the face, old lady!" quoth Tom to himself. "Very well! between you two it lies; unless that old gentleman implicates himself also, in his approaching confession."

He took his part at once. "Well, well, you will oblige me by saying nothing more about it. After all, as this good lady says, the loss of a little money is not worth complaining over, when one has escaped with life. Good morning; and many thanks for all your kindness!"

And Tom made another grand bow, and went off to the Lieutenant.

Grace looked after him awhile, as one stunned; and then turned to her mother.

"Let us go home."

"Go home? Why there, dear?"

"Let me go home; you need not come. I am sick of this world. Is it not enough to have misery and death (and she pointed to the row of corpses), but we must have sin, too, wherever we turn! Meanness and theft:—and ingratitude too!" she added, in a lower tone.

She went homeward; her mother, in spite of her entreaties, accompanied her; and, for some reason or other, did not lose sight of her all that day, or for several days after.

Meanwhile, Willis had beckoned the Doctor aside. His face was serious and sad, and his lips were trembling.

"This is a very shocking business, sir. Of course, you've told the Lieutenant."

"Not yet, my good sir."

"But—excuse my boldness; what plainer way of getting it back from the rascal, whoever he is?"

"Wait awhile," said Tom; "I have my reasons."

"But, sir—for the honour of the place, the matter should be cleared up; and till the thief's found, suspicion will lie on a dozen innocent men; myself among the rest, for that matter."

"You?" said Tom, smiling. "I don't know who I have the honour to speak to; but you don't look much like a gentleman who wishes for a trip to Botany Bay."

The old man chuckled, and then his face dropped again.

"I'm glad you take the thing so like a man, sir; but it is really no laughing matter. It's a scoundrelly job, only fit for a Maltee off the Nix Mangeery. If it had been a lot of those carter fellows that had carried you up, I could have understood it; wrecking's born in the bone of them: but for those four sailors that carried you up, 'gad sir! they'd have been shot sooner. I've known 'em from boys!" and the old man spoke quite fiercely, and looked up; his lip trembling, and his eye moist.

"There's no doubt that you are honest—whoever is not," thought Tom; so he ventured a further question.

"Then you were by all the while?"

"All the while? Who more? And that's just what puzzles me."

"Pray don't speak loud," said Tom. "I have my reasons for keeping things quiet."

"I tell you, sir. I held the maid, and big John Beer (Gentleman Jan they call him) held me; and the maid had both her hands tight in your belt. I saw it as plain as I see you, just before the wave covered us, though little I thought what was in it; and should never have remembered you had a belt at all, if I hadn't thought over things in the last five minutes."

"Well, sir, I am lucky in having come straight to the fountain head; and must thank you for telling me so frankly what you know."

"Tell you, sir? What else should one do but tell you? I only wish I knew more; and more I'll know, please the Lord. And you'll excuse an old sailor (though not of your rank, sir) saying that he wonders a little that you don't take the plain means of knowing more yourself."

"May I take the liberty of asking your name?" said Tom; who saw by this time that the old man was worthy of his confidence.

"Willis, at your service, sir. Captain they call me, though I'm none. Sailing-master I was, on board of His Majesty's ship Niobe, 84;" and Willis raised his hat with such an air, that Tom raised his in return.

"Then, Captain Willis, let me have five words with you apart; first thanking you for having helped to save my life."

"I'm very glad I did, sir; and thanked God for it on my knees this morning: but you'll excuse me, sir, I was thinking—and no blame to me—more of saving my poor maid's life than yours, and no offence to you, for I hadn't the honour of knowing you; but for her, I'd have been drowned a dozen times over."

"No offence, indeed," said Tom; and hardly knew what to say next. "May I ask, is she your niece? I heard her call you uncle."

"Oh, no—no relation; only I look on her as my own, poor thing, having no father; and she always calls me uncle, as most do us old men in the West."

"Well, then, sir," said Tom, "you will answer for none of the four sailors having robbed me?"

"I've said it, sir."

"Was any one else close to her when we were brought ashore?"

"No one but I. I brought her round myself."

"And who took her home?"

"Her mother and I."

"Very good. And you never saw the belt after she had her hands in it?"

"No; I'm sure not."

"Was her mother by her when she was lying on the rock?"

"No; came up afterwards, just as I got her on her feet."

"Humph! What sort of a character is her mother?"

"Oh, a tidy, God-fearing person, enough. One of these Methodist class-leaders, Brianites they call themselves. I don't hold with them, though I do go to chapel at whiles: but there are good ones among them; and I do believe she's one, though she's a little fretful at times. Keeps a little shop that don't pay over well; and those preachers live on her a good deal, I think. Creeping into widows' houses, and making long prayers—you know the text."

"Well, now, Captain Willis, I don't want to hurt your feelings; but do you not see that one of two things I must believe,—either that the belt was torn off my waist, and washed back into the sea, as it may have been after all; or else, that—"

"Do you mean that she took it?" asked Willis, in voice of such indignant astonishment that Tom could only answer by a shrug of the shoulders.

"Who else could have done so, on your own showing?"

"Sir!" said Willis, slowly. "I thought I had to do with a gentleman: but I have my doubts of it now. A poor girl risks her life to drag you out of that sea, which but for her would have hove your body up to lie along with that line there,"—and Willis pointed to the ghastly row—" and your soul gone to give in its last account—You only know what that would have been like—And the first thing you do in payment is to accuse her of robbing you—her, that the very angels in heaven, I believe, are glad to keep company with;" and the old man turned and paced the beach in fierce excitement.

"Captain Willis," said Tom, "I'll trouble you to listen patiently and civilly to me a minute."

Willis stopped, drew himself up, and touched his hat mechanically.

"Just because I am a gentleman, I have not accused her; but held my tongue, and spoken to you in confidence. Now, perhaps, you will understand why I have said nothing to the Lieutenant."

Willis looked up at him.

"I beg your pardon, sir. I see now, and I'm sorry if I was rude; but it took me aback, and does still. I tell you, sir," quoth he, warming again, "whatever's true,—that's false. You're wrong there, if you never are wrong again; and you'll say so yourself, before you've known her a week. No, sir! If you could make me believe that, I should never believe in goodness again on earth; but hold all men, and women too, and those above, for aught I know, that are greater than men and women, for liars together."

What was to be answered? Perhaps only what Tom did answer.

"My good sir, I will say no more. I would not have said that much if I had thought I should have pained you so. I suppose that the belt was washed into the sea. Why not?"

"Why not, indeed, sir? That's a much more Christian-like way of looking at it, than to blacken your own soul before God by suspecting that sweet innocent creature."

"Be it so, then. Only say nothing about the matter; and beg them to say nothing. If it be jammed among the rocks (as it might be, heavy as it is), talking about it will only set people looking for it; and I suppose there is a man or two, even in Aberalva, who would find fifteen hundred pounds a tempting bait. If, again, some one finds it, and makes away with it, he will only be the more careful to hide it if he knows that I am on the look-out. So just tell Miss Harvey and her mother that I think it must have been lost, and beg them to keep my secret. And now shake hands with me."

"The best plan, I believe, though bad, is the best," said Willis, holding out his hand; and he walked away sadly. His spirit had been altogether ruffled by the imputation on Grace's character: and, besides, the chances of Thurnall's recovering his money seemed to him very small.

In five minutes he returned.

"If you would allow me, sir, there's a man there of whom I should like to ask one question. He who held me, and, after that, helped to carry you up;" and he pointed to Gentleman Jan, who stood, dripping from the waist downward, over a chest which he had just secured. "Just let us ask him, off-hand like, whether you had a belt on when he carried you up. You may trust him, sir. He'd knock you down as soon as look at you; but tell a lie, never."

They went to the giant; and, after cordial salutations, Tom propounded his question carelessly, with something like a white lie.

"It's no great matter; but it was an old friend, you see, with fittings for my knife and pistols, and I should be glad to find it again."

Jan thrust his red hand through his black curls, and meditated while the water surged round his ankles.

"Never a belt seed I, sir; leastwise while you were in my hands. I had you round the waist all the way up, so no one could have took it off. Why should they? And I undressed you myself; and nothing, save your presence, was there to get off, but jersey and trousers, and a lump of backy against your skin that looked the right sort."

"Have some, then," said Tom, pulling out the honey-dew. "As for the belt, I suppose it's gone to choke the dog-fish."

And there the matter ended, outwardly at least; but only outwardly. Tom had his own opinion, gathered from Grace's seemingly guilty face, and to it he held, and called old Willis, in his heart, a simple-minded old dotard, who had been taken in by her hypocrisy.

And Tom accompanied the Lieutenant on his dreary errand that day, and several days after, through depositions before a justice, interviews with Lloyd's underwriters, and all the sad details which follow a wreck. Ere the week's end, forty bodies and more had been recovered, and brought up, ten or twelve at a time, to the churchyard, and upon the down, and laid side by side in one long shallow pit, where Frank Headley read over them the blessed words of hope, amid the sobs of women, and the grand silence of stalwart men, who knew not how soon their turn might come; and after each procession came Grace Harvey, with all her little scholars two and two, to listen to the funeral service; and when the last corpse was buried, they planted flowers upon the mound, and went their way again to learn hymns and read their Bible—little ministering angels to whom, as to most sailors' children, death was too common a sight to have in it aught of hideous or strange.

And this was the end of the good ship Hesperus, and all her gallant crew.

Verily, however important the mere animal lives of men may be, and ought to be, at times, in our eyes, they never have been so, to judge from floods and earthquakes, pestilence and storm, in the eyes of Him who made and loves us all. It is a strange fact, better for us, instead of shutting our eyes to it because it interferes with our modern tenderness of pain, to ask honestly what it means.

CHAPTER V.

THE WAY TO WIN THEM

So, for a week or more, Tom went on thrivingly enough, and became a general favourite in the town. Heale had no reason to complain of boarding him; for he had dinner and supper thrust on him every day by one and another, who were glad enough to have him for the sake of his stories, and songs, and endless fun and good-humour. The Lieutenant, above all, took the new-comer under his especial patronage, and was paid for his services in some of Tom's incomparable honey-dew. The old fellow soon found that the Doctor knew more than one old foreign station of his, and ended by pouring out to him his ancient wrongs, and the evil doings of the wicked admiral; all of which Tom heard with deepest sympathy, and surprise that so much naval talent had remained unappreciated by the unjust upper powers; and the Lieutenant, of course, reported of him accordingly to Heale.

"A very civil spoken and intelligent youngster, Mr. Heale, d'ye see, to my mind; and you can't do better than accept his offer; for you'll find him a great help, especially among the ladies, d'ye see. They like a good-looking chap, eh, Mrs. Jones?"

On the fourth day, by good fortune, what should come ashore but Tom's own chest—moneyless, alas! but with many useful matters still unspoilt by salt water. So, all went well, and indeed somewhat too well (if Tom would have let it), in the case of Miss Anna Maria Heale, the Doctor's daughter.

She was just such a girl as her father's daughter was likely to be; a short, stout, rosy, pretty body of twenty, with loose red lips, thwart black eyebrows, and right naughty eyes under them; of which Tom took good heed: for Miss Heale was exceedingly inclined, he saw, to make use of them in his behoof. Let others who have experience in, and taste for such matters, declare how she set her cap at the dapper young surgeon; how she rushed into the shop with sweet abandon ten times a-day, to find her father; and, not finding him, giggled, and blushed, and shook her shoulders, and retired, to peep at Tom through the glass door which led into the parlour; how she discovered that the muslin curtain of the said door would get out of order every ten minutes; and at last called Mr. Thurnall to assist her in rearranging it; how, bolder grown, she came into the shop to help herself to various matters, inquiring tenderly for Tom's health, and giggling vulgar sentiments about "absent friends, and hearts left behind;" in the hope of fishing out whether Tom had a sweetheart or not. How, at last, she was minded to confide her own health to Tom, and to instal him as her private physician; yea, and would have made him feel her pulse on the spot, had he not luckily found some assafoetida, and therewith so perfumed the shop, that her "nerves" (of which she was always talking, though she had nerves only in the sense wherein a sirloin of beef has them) forced her to beat a retreat.

But she returned again to the charge next day, and rushed bravely through that fearful smell, cleaver in hand, as the carrier set down at the door a huge box, carriage-paid, all the way from London, and directed to Thomas Thurnall, Esquire. She would help to open it: and so she did, while old Heale and his wife stood by curious,—he with a maudlin wonder and awe (for he regarded Tom already as an altogether awful and incomprehensible "party"), and Mrs. Heale with a look of incredulous scorn, as if she expected the box to be a mere sham, filled probably with shavings. For (from reasons best known to herself) she had never looked pleasantly on the arrangement which entrusted to Tom the care of the bottles. She had given way from motives of worldly prudence, even of necessity; for Heale had been for the greater part of the week quite incapable of attending to his business: but black envy and spite were seething in her foolish heart, and seethed more and more fiercely when she saw that the box did not contain shavings, but valuables of every sort and kind—drugs, instruments, a large microscope (which Tom delivered out of Miss Heale's fat clumsy fingers only by strong warnings that it would go off and shoot her), books full of prints of unspeakable monsters; and finally, a little packet, containing not one five-pound note, but four, and a letter which Tom, after perusing, put into Mr. Heale's hands, with a look of honest pride.