Rivers of Ice Part 33

"Left! D'you mean gone from Chamouni, mother?" exclaimed Lewis, with a start and a look of anxiety which he did not care to conceal.

"Yes, they went yesterday. Nita had recovered sufficiently to travel, and the medical man who has been attending her urged her removal without delay. She and her father seemed both very sorry to leave us, and left kind messages for you. The Count wanted much to see you, but we would not allow it."

"Kind messages for me," repeated Lewis, in a tone of bitterness, "what sort of messages?"

"Well, really, I cannot exactly remember," returned Mrs Stoutley, with a slight smile, "the kind of messages that amiable people might be expected to leave in the circ.u.mstances, you know--regret that they should have to leave us in such a sad condition, and sincere hope that you might soon recover, etcetera. Yes, by the way, Nita also, just at parting, expressed a hope--an earnest hope--that we might meet again.

Poor dear thing, she is an extremely affectionate girl, and quite broke down when saying good-bye."

"D'you know where they have gone to, mother?"

"No. They mean to move about from place to place, I believe."

"Nita said nothing about writing to you, did she?"

"Did they leave any address--a _poste restante_--anywhere, or any clew whatever as to their whereabouts?"

"None whatever."

So then, during the weary days of suffering that he knew full well lay before him, poor Lewis had no consolatory thought in regard to Nita save in her expressed "earnest hope" that they might meet again. It was not much, but it was better than nothing. Being an ingenious as well as daring architect, Lewis built amazing structures on that slight foundation--structures which charmed his mental eyes to look upon, and which, we verily believe, tended to facilitate his recovery--so potent is the power of true love!

"Captain Wopper," said Mrs Stoutley one morning, towards the end of their stay in Switzerland, Lewis having been p.r.o.nounced sufficiently restored to travel homeward by easy stages, "I have sent for you to ask you to do me a favour--to give me your advice--your--"

Here, to the Captain's amazement, not to say consternation, Mrs Stoutley's voice trembled, and she burst into tears. If she had suddenly caught him by the nose, pulled his rugged face down and kissed it, he could not have been more taken aback.

"My dear madam," he stammered, sitting down inadvertently on Mrs Stoutley's bonnet--for it was to the good lady's private dressing-room that he had been summoned by Gillie White--"hold on! don't now, please!

What ever have I done to--"

"You've done nothing, my dear Captain," said Mrs Stoutley, endeavouring to check her tears. "There, I'm very foolish, but I can't help it.

Indeed I can't."

In proof of the truth of this a.s.sertion she broke down again, and the Captain, moving uneasily on his chair, ground the bonnet almost to powder--it was a straw one.

"You have been a kind friend, Captain Wopper," said Mrs Stoutley, drying her eyes, "a very kind friend."

"I'm glad you think so, ma'am; I've meant to be--anyhow."

"You have, you have," cried Mrs Stoutley, earnestly, as she looked through her tears into the seaman's rugged countenance, "and that is my reason for venturing to ask you now to trouble yourself with--with--"

There was an alarming symptom here of a recurrence of "squally weather,"

which caused the Captain to give the bonnet an "extra turn," but she recovered herself and went on--

"With my affairs. I would not have thought of troubling you, but with poor Lewie so ill, and Dr Lawrence being so young, and probably inexperienced in the ways of life, and Emma so innocent and helpless, and--in short I'm--hee!--that is to say--ho dear! I _am_ so silly, but I can't--indeed I can't--hoo-o-o!"

It blew a regular gale now, and a very rain of straw _debris_ fell through the cane-bottomed chair on which the Captain sat, as he vainly essayed to sooth his friend by earnest, pathetic, and even tender adjurations to "clap a stopper upon that," to "hold hard," to "belay", to "shut down the dead-lights of her peepers," and such-like expressive phrases.

At length, amid many sobs, the poor lady revealed the overwhelming fact that she was a beggar; that she had actually come down to her last franc; that her man of business had flatly declined to advance her another sovereign, informing her that the Gorong mine had declared "no dividend;" that the wreck of her shattered fortune had been swallowed up by the expenses of their ill-advised trip to Switzerland, and that she had not even funds enough to pay their travelling expenses home; in short that she was a miserable boulder, at the lowest level of the terminal moraine!

To all this Captain Wopper listened in perfect silence, with a blank expression on his face that revealed nothing of the state of feeling within.

"Oh! Captain Wopper," exclaimed the poor lady anxiously, "surely-- surely _you_ won't forsake me! I know that I have no claim on you beyond friends.h.i.+p, but you have always given us to understand that you were well off, and I merely wish to _borrow_ a small sum. Just enough, and no more. Perhaps I may not be able to repay you just immediately, but I hope soon; and even if it came to the worst, there is the furniture in Euston Square, and the carriage and horses."

Poor Mrs Stoutley! She was not aware that her man of business had already had these resources appraised, and that they no more belonged to her at that moment than if they had been part of the personal estate of the celebrated man in the moon.

Still the Captain gazed at her in stolid silence.

"Even my personal wardrobe," proceeded Mrs Stoutley, beginning again to weep, "I will gladly dis--"

"Avast! Madam," cried the Captain, suddenly, thrusting his right hand into his breeches-pocket, and endeavouring to drag something therefrom with a series of wrenches that would have been terribly trying to the bonnet, had its ruin not been already complete, "don't talk to me of repayment. Ain't I your--your--husband's brother's buzzum friend-- Willum's old chum an' messmate? See here."

He jerked the chair (without rising) close to a table which stood at his elbow, and placed thereon a large canvas bag, much soiled, and tied round the neck with a piece of rope-yarn, which smelt of tar even at a distance. This was the Captain's purse. He carried it always in his right trouser-pocket, and it contained his gold. As for such trifling metal as silver, he carried that loose, mixed with coppers, bits of tobacco, broken pipes, and a clasp-knife, in the other pocket. He was very fond of his purse. In California he had been wont to carry nuggets in it, that simple species of exchange being the chief currency of the country at the time he was there. Some of the Californian _debris_ had stuck to it when he had filled it, at a place of exchange in London, with Napoleons. Emptying its glittering contents upon the table, he spread it out.

"There, madam," he said, with a hearty smile, "you're welcome to all I've got about me just at this moment, and you shall have more when that's done. Don't say `not so much,' cause it ain't much, fifty pound, more or less, barrin' the nuggets, which I'll keep, as I dessay they would only worry you, and there's plenty more shot in the locker where that come from; an' don't talk about payin' back or thankin' me. You've no occasion to thank me. It's only a loan, an' I'll hold Willum, your brother-in-law, responsible. You wouldn't decline to take it from Willum, would you?"

"Indeed no; William Stout has always been so kind to us--kinder than I have deserved."

"Well, then, I'll write to Willum. I'll say to him, `Willum, my boy, here's your brother's widdy bin caught in a squall, had her sails blown to ribbons, bin throw'd on her beam-ends, and every stick torn out of her. You've got more cash, Willum, than you knows what to do with, so, hand over, send me a power of attorney (is that the thing?) or an affydavy--whatever lawyer's dockiments is required--an' I'll stand by and do the needful.' An' Willum 'll write back, with that power an'

brevity for which he is celebrated,--`Wopper, my lad, all right; fire away. Anything short o' ten thousand, more or less. Do yer w'ust.

Yours to command,

"`Willum.'"

There was no resisting such arguments. Mrs Stoutley smiled through her tears as she accepted the money. Captain Wopper rose, crammed the empty canvas bag into his pocket, and hastily retired, with portions of the bonnet attached to him.

"Susan," said Mrs Stoutley, on the maid answering her summons, "we shall start for London tomorrow, or the day after, so, pray, set about packing up without delay."

"Very well, ma'am," replied Susan, whose eyes were riveted with an expression of surprised curiosity on the cane-bottomed chair.

"It is my bonnet Susan," said the lady, looking in the same direction with a sad smile. "Captain Wopper sat down on it by mistake. You had better remove it."

To remove it was a feat which even Susan, with all her ready wit and neatness of hand, could not have accomplished without the aid of brush and shovel. She, therefore, carried it off chair and all, to the regions below, where she and Gillie went into convulsions over it.

"Oh! Susan," exclaimed the blue spider, "wot would I not have given to have seed him a-doin' of it! Only think! The ribbons, flowers, and straw in one uniwarsal mus.h.!.+ _Wot_ a grindin' there must ave bin! I heer'd the Purfesser the other day talkin' of wot he calls glacier-haction--how they flutes the rocks an' grinds in a most musical way over the boulders with crus.h.i.+n' wiolence; but wot's glacier haction to _that_?"

Susan admitted that it was nothing; and they both returned at intervals in the packing, during the remainder of that day, to have another look at the bonnet-debris, and enjoy a fresh explosion over it.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

MYSTERIOUS PROCEEDINGS OF THE CAPTAIN AND GILLIE.

We are back again in London--in Mrs Roby's little cabin at the top of the old tenement in Grubb's Court.

Captain Wopper is there, of course. So is Mrs Roby. Gillie White is there also, and Susan Quick. The Captain is at home. The two latter are on a visit--a social tea-party. Little Netta White, having deposited Baby White in the mud at the lowest corner of the Court for greater security, is waiting upon them--a temporary handmaiden, relieving, by means of variety, the cares of permanent nursehood. Mrs White is up to the elbows in soap-suds, taking at least ocular and vocal charge of the babe in the mud, and her husband is--"drunk, as usual?"

No--there is a change there. Good of some kind has been somewhere at work. Either knowingly or unwittingly some one has been "overcoming evil with good," for Mrs White's husband is down at the docks toiling hard to earn a few pence wherewith to increase the family funds. And who can tell what a terrible yet hopeful war is going on within that care-worn, sin-worn man? To toil hard with shattered health is burden enough. What must it be when, along with the outward toil, there is a constant fight with a raging watchful devil within? But the man has given that devil some desperate falls of late. Oh, how often and how long he has fought with him, and been overcome, cast down, and his armoury of resolutions scattered to the winds! But he has been to see some one, or some one has been to see him, who has advised him to try another kind of armour--not his own. He knows the power of a "new affection" now. Despair was his portion not long ago. He is now animated by Hope, for the long uncared-for name of Jesus is now growing sweet to his ear. But the change has taken place recently, and he looks very weary as he toils and fights.

"Well, mother," said Captain Wopper, "now that I've given you a full, true, an' partikler account of Switzerland, what d'ee think of it?"