mr jones is outwitted, and nora is left desolate.
when morley jones found himself suddenly deserted by his ally billy towler, he retired to the privacy of a box in a low public-house in thames street, and there, under the stimulus of a stiff glass of grog, consulted with himself as to the best mode of procedure under the trying circumstances in which he found himself placed. he thought it probable, after half an hour of severe meditation, that billy would return to the grotto, but that, for his own sake, he would give a false account of his absence, and say nothing about the loss of the skylark. feeling somewhat relieved in mind by his conclusions on this head, he drank off his grog, called for another glass, and then set himself to the consideration of how far the disappearance of the boy would interfere with his obtaining payment of the various sums due by the insurance offices. this point was either more knotty and difficult to unravel than the previous one, or the grog began to render his intellect less capable of grappling with it. at all events it cost him an hour to determine his course of action, and required another glass of grog to enable him to put the whole matter fairly before his mental vision in one comprehensive view. this, however, accomplished, he called for a fourth glass of grog “for luck,” and reeled out of the house to carry out his deep-laid plans.
his first act was to proceed to greenwich, where a branch of his fish-curing business existed, or was supposed to exist. here he met a friend who offered to treat him. unfortunately for the success of his schemes he accepted this offer, and, in the course of a debauch, revealed so much of his private affairs that the friend, after seeing him safely to his lodging, and bidding him an affectionate farewell, went up to london by the first boat on the following morning, and presented himself to the managers of various insurance companies, to whom he made revelations which were variously received by these gentlemen; some of them opening their eyes in amazement, while others opened their mouths in amusement, and gave him to understand that he was very much in the position of a man who should carry coals to newcastle—they being then in possession of all the information given, and a great deal more besides.
the manager of the submarine insurance company was the most facetious among these gentlemen on hearing the revelations of mr jones’s “friend.”
“can you tell me,” said that gentleman, when he had pumped the “friend” dry, “which of us is likely to receive the distinguished honour of the first visit from mr jones?”
“he said summat about your own office, sir,” replied the informer; “leastwise i think he did, but i ain’t quite sartin.”
“h’m! not unlikely,” observed the manager; “we have had the pleasure of paying him something before to-day. come here, i will introduce you to an acquaintance of mr jones, who takes a deep interest in him. he has just arrived from ramsgate.”
opening a door, the manager ushered the informer into a small room where a stout man with peculiarly keen grey eyes was warming himself at the fire.
“allow me to introduce you, mr larks, to a friend of mr jones, who may be of some use. i will leave you together for a little,” said the manager, with a laugh, as he retired and shut the door.
it is not necessary that we should enter into details as to how mr jones went about the business of drawing his nets ashore—so to speak,—and how those who took a special interest in mr jones carefully assisted him, and, up to a certain point, furthered all his proceedings. it is sufficient to say that, about a fortnight after his arrival in london—all the preliminary steps having been taken—he presented himself one fine forenoon at the office of the submarine insurance company.
he was received very graciously, and, much to his satisfaction, was told that the claim could now be settled without further delay. former experience had taught him that such a piece of business was not unusually difficult of settlement, but he was quite charmed by the unwonted facilities which seemed to be thrown in his way in regard to the present affair. he congratulated himself internally, and the manager congratulated him externally, so to speak, by referring to his good fortune in having insured the vessel and cargo to the full amount.
even the clerks of the establishment appeared to manifest unwonted interest in the case, which gratified while it somewhat surprised mr jones. indeed, the interest deepened to such an extent, and was so obtrusive, that it became almost alarming, so that feelings of considerable relief were experienced by the adventurous man when he at length received a cheque for 300 pounds and left the office with it in his pocket.
in the outer lobby he felt a touch on his arm, and, looking round, met the gaze of a gentleman with peculiarly keen grey eyes. this gentleman made some quiet remarks with reference to mr jones being “wanted,” and when mr jones, not relishing the tone or looks of this gentleman, made a rush at the outer glass door of the office, an official stepped promptly in front of it, put one hand on the handle, and held up the other with the air of one who should say, “excuse me, there is no thoroughfare this way.” turning abruptly to the left, mr jones found himself confronted by another grave gentleman of powerful frame and resolute aspect, who, by a species of magic or sleight of hand known only to the initiated, slipped a pair of steel bracelets on mr jones’s wrists, and finally, almost before he knew where he was, mr jones found himself seated in a cab with the strong gentleman by his side, and the keen grey-eyed gentleman in front of him.
soon afterwards he found himself standing alone in the midst of an apartment, the chief characteristics of which were, that the furniture was scanty, the size inconveniently little, and the window unusually high up, besides being heavily barred, and ridiculously small.
here let us leave him to his meditations.
one fine forenoon—many weeks after the capture of morley jones—dick moy, jack shales, and jerry macgowl were engaged in painting and repairing buoys in the trinity store on the pier at ramsgate. the two former were enjoying their month of service on shore, the latter was on sick-leave, but convalescent. jack was painting squares of alternate black and white on a buoy of a conical shape. dick was vigorously scraping sea-weed and barnacles off a buoy of a round form. the store, or big shed, was full of buoys of all shapes; some new and fresh, others old and rugged; all of them would have appeared surprisingly gigantic to any one accustomed to see buoys only in their native element. the invalid sat on the shank of a mushroom anchor, and smoked his pipe while he affected to superintend the work.
“sure i pity the poor craturs as is always sick. the mouth o’ man can niver tell the blessedness of bein’ well, as the pote says,” observed jerry, with a sigh, as he shook the ashes out of his pipe and proceeded to refill it. “come now, jack shales,” he added, after a short pause, “ye don’t call that square, do ’ee?”
“i’ll paint yer nose black if you don’t shut up,” said jack, drawing the edge of a black square with intense caution, in order to avoid invading the domain of a white one.
“ah! you reminds me of the owld proverb that says somethin’ about asses gittin impudent an’ becomin’ free with their heels when lions grow sick.”
“well, jerry,” retorted jack, with a smile, as he leaned back and regarded his work with his head very much on one side, and his eyes partially closed, after the manner of knights of the brush, “i’m not offended, because i’m just as much of an ass as you are of a lion.”
“i say, mates,” remarked dick moy, pausing in his work, and wiping his brow, “are ’ee aweer that the cap’n has ordered us to be ready to start wi’ the first o’ the tide at half after five to-morrow?”
“i knows it,” replied jack shales, laying down the black brush and taking up the white one.
“i knows it too,” said jerry macgowl, “but it don’t make no manner of odds to me, ’cause i means to stop ashore and enjoy meself. i mean to amoose meself with the trial o’ that black thief morley jones.”
dick moy resumed his work with a grunt, and said that jerry was a lucky fellow to be so long on sick-leave, and jack said he wished he had been called up as a witness in jones’s case, for he would have cut a better figure than jim welton did.
“ay, boy,” said dick moy, “but there wos a reason for that. you know the poor feller is in love wi’ jones’s daughter, an’ he didn’t like for to help to convict his own father-in-law to be, d’ye see? that’s where it is. the boy billy towler was a’most as bad. he’s got a weakness for the gal too, an’ no wonder, for she’s bin as good as a mother to ’im. they say that billy nigh broke the hearts o’ the lawyers, he wos so stoopid at sometimes, an’ so oncommon cute at others. but it warn’t o’ no use. jim’s father was strong in his evidence agin him, an’ that mr larks, as comed aboard of the gull, you remember, he had been watching an’ ferreting about the matter to that extent that he turned jones’s former life inside out. it seems he’s bin up to dodges o’ that kind for a long time past.”
“no! has he?” said jack shales.
“arrah, didn’t ye read of it?” exclaimed jerry macgowl.
“no,” replied jack drily; “not bein’ on the sick-list i han’t got time to read the papers, d’ye see?”
“well,” resumed dick moy, “it seems he has more than once set fire to his premises in gravesend, and got the insurance money. hows’ever, he has got fourteen years’ transportation now, an’ that’ll take the shine pretty well out of him before he comes back.”
“how did the poor gal take it?” asked jack.
dick replied that she was very bad at first, but that she got somewhat comforted by the way her father behaved to her and listened to her readin’ o’ the bible after he was condemned. it might be that the death of his old mother had softened him a bit, for she died with his name on her lips, her last words being, “oh morley, give it up, my darling boy, give it up; it’s your only chance to give it up, for you inherit it, my poor boy; the passion and the poison are in your blood; oh, give it up, morley, give it up!”
“they do say,” continued dick, “that jones broke down altogether w’en he heard that, an’ fell on his gal’s neck an’ cried like a babby. but for my part i don’t much believe in them deathbed repentances—for it’s much the same thing wi’ jones now, he bein’ as good as dead. it’s not wot a man says, but how a man lives, as’ll weigh for or against him in the end.”
“an’ what more did he say?” asked jerry macgowl, stopping down the tobacco in his pipe with one of his fire-proof fingers; “you see, havin’ bin on the sick-list so long, i haven’t got up all the details o’ this business.”
“he didn’t say much more,” replied dick, scraping away at the sea-weed and barnacles with renewed vigour, “only he made his darter promise that she’d marry jim welton as soon after he was gone as possible. she did nothing but cry, poor thing, and wouldn’t hear of it at first, but he was so strong about it, saying that the thought of her being so well married was the only thing as would comfort him w’en he was gone, that she gave in at last.”
“sure then she’ll have to make up her mind,” said jerry, “to live on air, which is too light food intirely for any wan excep’ hummin’-birds and potes.”
“she’ll do better than that, mate,” returned dick, “for jim ’as got appointed to be assistant-keeper to a light’ouse, through that fust-rate gen’leman mr durant, who is ’and an’ glove, i’m told, wi’ the elder brethren up at the trinity ’ouse. it’s said that they are to be spliced in a week or two, but, owin’ to the circumstances, the weddin’ is to be kep’ quite priwate.”
“good luck to em!” cried jerry. “talkin’ of the durants, i s’pose ye’ve heard that there’s goin’ to be a weddin’ in that family soon?”
“oh, yes, i’ve heard on it,” cried dick; “miss durant—katie, they calls her—she’s agoin’ to be spliced to the young doctor that was wrecked in the wellington. a smart man that. they say ’ee has stepped into ’is father’s shoes, an’ is so much liked that ’ee’s had to git an assistant to help him to get through the work o’ curin’ people—or killin’ of ’em. i never feel rightly sure in my own mind which it is that the doctors does for us.”
“och, don’t ye know?” said jerry, removing his pipe for a moment, “they keeps curin’ of us as long as we’ve got any tin, an’ when that’s done they kills us off quietly. if it warn’t for the doctors we’d all live to the age of methoosamel, excep’, of coorse, w’en we was cut off by accident or drink.”
“well, i don’t know as to that,” said jack shales, in a hearty manner; “but i’m right glad to hear that miss durant is gettin’ a good husband, for she’s the sweetest gal in england, i think, always exceptin’ one whom i don’t mean for to name just now. hasn’t she been a perfect angel to the poor—especially to poor old men—since she come to ramsgate? and didn’t she, before goin’ back to yarmouth, where she b’longs to, make a beautiful paintin’ o’ the lifeboat, and present it in a gold frame, with tears in her sweet eyes, to the coxswain o’ the boat, an’ took his big fist in her two soft little hands, an’ shook an’ squeezed it, an’ begged him to keep the pictur’ as a very slight mark of the gratitude an’ esteem of dr hall an’ herself—that was after they was engaged, you know? ah! there ain’t many gals like her,” said jack, with a sigh, “always exceptin’ one.”
“humph!” said dick moy, “i wouldn’t give my old ’ooman for six dozen of ’er.”
“just so,” observed jerry, with a grin, “an’ i’ve no manner of doubt that dr hall wouldn’t give her for sixty dozen o’ your old ’ooman. it’s human natur’, lad,—that’s where it is, mates. but what has come o’ billy towler? has he gone back to the what’s-’is-name—the cavern, eh?”
“the grotto, you mean,” said jack shales.
“well, the grotto—’tan’t much differ.”
“he’s gone back for a time,” said dick; “but mr durant has prowided for him too. he has given him a berth aboord one of his east-indiamen; so if billy behaves hisself his fortin’s as good as made. leastwise he has got his futt on the first round, an’ the ladder’s all clear before him.”
“by the way, what’s that i’ve heard,” said jack shales, “about mr durant findin’ out that he’d know’d billy towler some years ago?”
“i don’t rightly know,” replied dick. “i’ve ’eerd it said that the old gentleman recognised him as a beggar boy ’e’d tuck a fancy to an’ putt to school long ago; but billy didn’t like the school, it seems, an’ runn’d away—w’ich i don’t regard as wery surprisin’—an’ mr durant could never find out where ’e’d run to. that’s how i ’eerd the story, but wot’s true of it i dun know.”
“there goes the dinner-bell!” exclaimed jack shales, rising with alacrity on hearing a neighbouring clock strike noon.
jerry rose with a sigh, and remarked, as he shook the ashes out of his pipe, and put it into his waistcoat pocket, that his appetite had quite left him; that he didn’t believe he was fit for more than two chickens at one meal, whereas he had seen the day when he would have thought nothing of a whole leg of mutton to his own cheek.
“ah,” remarked dick moy, “irish mutton, i s’pose. well, i don’t know ’ow you feels, but i feels so hungry that i could snap at a ring-bolt; and i know of a lot o’ child’n, big an’ small, as won’t look sweet on their daddy if he keeps ’em waitin’ for dinner, so come along, mates.”
saying this, dick and his friends left the buoy-store, and walked smartly off to their several places of abode in the town.
in a darkened apartment of that same town sat nora jones, the very personification of despair, on a low stool, with her head resting on the side of a poor bed. she was alone, and perfectly silent; for some sorrows, like some thoughts, are too deep for utterance. everything around her suggested absolute desolation. the bed was that in which not long ago she had been wont to smooth the pillow and soothe the heart of her old grandmother. it was empty now. the fire in the rusty grate had been allowed to die out, and its cold grey ashes strewed the hearth. among them lay the fragments of a black bottle. it would be difficult to say what it was in the peculiar aspect of these fragments that rendered them so suggestive, but there was that about them which conveyed irresistibly the idea that the bottle had been dashed down there with the vehemence of uncontrollable passion. the little table which used to stand at the patient’s bedside was covered with a few crumbs and fragments of a meal that must, to judge from their state and appearance, have been eaten a considerable time ago; and the confusion of the furniture, as well as the dust that covered everything, was strangely out of keeping with the character of the poor girl, who reclined by the side of the bed, so pale and still that, but for the slight twitching movement of her clasped hands, one might have supposed she had already passed from the scene of her woe. even the old-fashioned timepiece that hung upon a nail in the wall seemed to be smitten with the pervading spell, for its pendulum was motionless, and its feeble pulse had ceased to tick.
a soft tap at the door broke the deathlike silence. nora looked up but did not answer, as it slowly opened, and a man entered. on seeing who it was, she uttered a low wail, and buried her face in the bed-clothes. without speaking, or moving from her position, she held out her hand to jim welton, who advanced with a quick but quiet step, and, going down on his knees beside her, took the little hand in both of his. the attitude and the silence were suggestive. without having intended it the young sailor began to pray, and in a few short broken sentences poured out his soul before god.
a flood of tears came to nora’s relief. after a few minutes she looked up.
“oh! thank you, thank you, jim. i believe that in the selfishness of my grief i had forgotten god; but oh! i feel as if my heart was crushed beyond the power of recovery. she is gone” (glancing at the empty bed), “and he is gone—gone—for ever.”
jim wished to comfort her, and tried to speak, but his voice was choked. he could only draw her to him, and laying her head on his breast, smooth her fair soft hair with his hard but gentle hand.
“not gone for ever, dearest,” he said at length with a great effort. “it is indeed along long time, but—”
he could not go further, for it seemed to him like mockery to suggest by way of comfort that fourteen years would come to an end.
for some minutes the silence was broken only by an occasional sob from poor nora.
“oh! he was so different once,” she said, raising herself and looking at her lover with tearful, earnest eyes; “you have seen him at his worst, jim. there was a time,—before he took to—”
she stopped abruptly, as if unable to find words, and pointed, with a fierce expression, that seemed strange and awful on her gentle face, to the fragments of the broken bottle on the hearth. jim nodded. she saw that he understood, and went on in her own calm voice:—
“there was a time when he was kind and gentle and loving; when he had no drunken companions, and no mysterious goings to sea; when he was the joy as well as the support of his mother, and so fond of me—but he was always that; even after he had—”
again nora paused, and, drooping her head, uttered the low wail of desolation that went like cold steel to the young sailor’s heart.
“nora,” he said earnestly, “he will get no drink where he is going. at all events he will be cured of that before he returns home.”
“oh, i bless the lord for that,” said nora, with fervour. “i have thought of that before now, and i have thought, too, that there are men of god where he is going, who think of, and pray for, and strive to recover, the souls of those who—that is; but oh, jim, jim, it is a long, long, weary time. i feel that i shall never see my father more in this world—never, never more!”
“we cannot tell, nora,” said jim, with a desperate effort to appear hopeful. “i know well enough that it may seem foolish to try to comfort you with the hope of seein’ him again in this life; and yet even this may come to pass. he may escape, or he may be forgiven, and let off before the end of his time. but come, cheer up, my darling. you remember what his last request was?”
“how can you talk of such a thing at such a time?” exclaimed nora, drawing away from him and rising.
“be not angry, nora,” said jim, also rising. “i did but remind you of it for the purpose of sayin’ that as you agreed to what he wished, you have given me a sort of right or privilege, dear nora, at least to help and look after you in your distress. your own unselfish heart has never thought of telling me that you have neither money nor home; this poor place being yours only till term-day, which is to-morrow; but i know all this without requiring to be told, and i have come to say that there is an old woman—a sort of relation of mine—who lives in this town, and will give you board and lodging gladly till i can get arrangements made at the lighthouse for our—that is to say—till you choose, in your own good time, to let me be your rightful protector and supporter, as well as your comforter.”
“thank you, jim. it is like yourself to be so thoughtful. forgive me; i judged you hastily. it is true i am poor—i have nothing in the world, but, thanks be to god, i have health. i can work; and there are some kind friends,” she added, with a sad smile, “who will throw work in my way, i know.”
“well, we will talk about these things afterwards, nora, but you won’t refuse to take advantage of my old friend’s offer—at least for a night or two?”
“no, i won’t refuse that, jim; see, i am prepared to go,” she said, pointing to a wooden sea-chest which stood in the middle of the room; “my box is packed. everything i own is in it. the furniture, clock, and bedding belong to the landlord.”
“come then, my own poor lamb,” said the young sailor tenderly, “let us go.”
nora rose and glanced slowly round the room. few rooms in ramsgate could have looked more poverty-stricken and cheerless, nevertheless, being associated in her mind with those whom she had lost, she was loath to leave it. falling suddenly on her knees beside the bed, she kissed the old counterpane that had covered the dead form she had loved so well, and then went hastily out and leaned her head against the wall of the narrow court before the door.
jim lifted the chest, placed it on his broad shoulders and followed her. locking the door behind him and putting the key in his pocket, he gave his disengaged arm to nora, and led her slowly a way.
