Two Years Ago Volume I Part 17

"Was any one else close to her when we were brought ash.o.r.e?"

"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, G.o.d-fearing person, enough. One of these Methodist cla.s.s-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 G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+p 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 ash.o.r.e 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sist 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.safoetida, 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.

The Mumpsimus men, it appeared, had "sent round the hat" for him, and here were the results; and they would send the hat round again every month, if he wanted it; or, if he would come up, board, lodge, and wash him gratis. The great Doctor Bellairs, House Physician, and Carver, the famous operator (names at which Heale bowed his head and wors.h.i.+pped), sent compliments, condolences, offers of employment--never was so triumphant a testimonial; and Heale, in his simplicity, thought himself (as indeed he was) the luckiest of country doctors; while Mrs. Heale, after swelling and choking for five minutes, tottered into the back room, and cast herself on the sofa in violent hysterics.

As she came round again, Tom could not but overhear a little that pa.s.sed. And this he overheard among other matters:--

"Yes, Mr. Heale, I see, I see too well, which your natural blindness, sir, and that fatal easiness of temper, will bring you to a premature grave within the paupers' precincts; and this young designing infidel, with his science and his magnifiers, and his callipers, and philosophy falsely so called, which in our true Protestant youth there was none, nor needed none, to supplant you in your old age, and take the bread out of your grey hairs, which he will bring with sorrow to the grave, and mine likewise, which am like my poor infant here, of only too sensitive sensibilities! Oh, Anna Maria, my child, my poor lost child!

which I can feel for the tenderness of the inexperienced heart! My Virgin Eve, which the Serpent has entered into your youthful paradise, and you will find; alas! too late, that you have warmed an adder into your bosom!"