TOM DRAKE’S TRUST
Tom Drake did have a hard time, as the physician predicted and Earle
feared.
He paid dearly for his one night’s adventure within the walls of
Wycliffe; and yet, perchance, the end will prove it to have been a
“blessing in disguise.”
For three weeks he raved in the wildest delirium of fever, unconscious
alike of his own condition, the care he was receiving, or the trouble
and weariness he caused, and it was three weeks longer before the
skilful physician pronounced him out of danger, or would give any hope
that the wounded limb could be saved.
“Save it if you can, doctor; the poor fellow has had a rough time of it,
and I should dislike to send him away from here a cripple,” Earle had
pleaded, when the doctor spoke of amputation.
“He will be a cripple any way; so much of the bone is diseased and will
have to come out, that the leg will always be weak, and he will be lame,
even if we save it. But for your sake I will do my best, though it is
more than the wretch deserves,” grumbled the physician.
He had not much faith or patience in nursing the “miserable wretch,” as
he called him.
“Like enough he will turn round and cut your throat, some fine day, when
he gets well. Such people have no feeling, no gratitude; they are like
the brutes and have no souls, and should be treated accordingly.”
“‘Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these,’” Earle
gravely repeated once, after one of the doctor’s outbursts.
“Humph! such high-toned philanthropy will doubtless be rewarded in a way
you don’t expect.”
But with all his apparent gruffness and contempt for the kindness Earle
was bestowing upon the unfortunate criminal, the young marquis could see
that he was always very gentle with him, and was satisfied that he was
bestowing the very best treatment that his knowledge and skill could
suggest.
When at last the fever left him he lay weak as a baby, and only able to
be lifted gently in the arms of strong men when he wished to change his
position.
He did not look nearly so repulsive to Earle as he lay there so pale,
and thin, and helpless, and a great pity crept into his heart for this
brother-man whose life had been so steeped in sin and infamy.
He had scarcely left him during those six long weeks when he lay in such
danger, catching what rest he could while his patient slept, and lying
upon a couch near his bed; and Earle himself looked almost as if he had
had a fit of sickness, he was so worn and weary with his watching.
It was six weeks longer before Tom Drake could be dressed and move about
his room, supported by a servant on one side and a crutch on the other.
He had grown more quiet and gentle in his manner during these weeks of
convalescence. After regaining consciousness when his fever turned, his
speech became more chaste, no oath left his lips to offend Earle’s ears,
while now and then some expression of gratitude, rough though it was,
would escape him for the attention and kindness he was receiving.
He became very thoughtful, even sad at times, and then Earle would bring
some interesting book and read to him; but though he listened
attentively, and appeared grateful for the attention, yet he could see
that he did not really enjoy it, and often grew nervous at the
monotonous sound of his voice.
One day he brought in a beautiful chess-table, and, after arranging the
curiously carved men upon it, asked him if he would like to learn the
game.
He was astonished to see his face light up with delight, as he
exclaimed:
“Aha! them are real beauties, and now I can stand it.”
He already knew the game—was even a skilful player and from that time
until he was able to ride out, Earle was never at a loss to know how to
amuse him.
But as he grew stronger, Earle could see that some heavy burden
oppressed him, and when not riding or playing chess, he would sit in
moody silence, his hands folded, his head bent, and a look of deep
trouble on his face, and frequent sighs escaped him.
One day Earle had been reading the newspaper to him—the only thing of
the literary kind in which he manifested any interest. A heavy sigh
interrupted him, and looking up, he found his companion’s eyes fixed
sadly on his face, while apparently he had not heard a word that he had
been reading.
“Well, Tom, are you feeling badly to-day?” Earle asked, laying down his
paper.
“N-o,” he returned, hesitatingly, and with some embarrassment.
Then, with an air of recklessness that Earle had not noticed before
during all his sickness, he asked:
“I say, what kind of a place is Botany Bay?”
Earle started, the question was so entirely unexpected; but he
understood at once now why he had been so sad and absent-minded of late.
He had been thinking of his probable future.
“It is supposed to be rather a desolate kind of place,” he said.
“Folks who are sent there at the expense of the Crown, don’t get rich
very fast, and it is somewhat inconvenient about getting away from there
if one should happen to wish to visit his native land, eh?” Tom Drake
said, with a ghastly attempt to be facetious.
“No,” Earle replied, very gravely, and with a searching glance at his
companion.
“There’s some comfort in knowing a fellow hain’t got to leave many
behind him to grieve over him,” he said, absently, and as if speaking
more to himself than to Earle.
“Where do your friends reside?” he asked.
“All the friend I’ve got in the world, sir, is my old mother, and her I
haven’t seen for many a long year.”
Earle thought there was a suspicious huskiness in his voice as he said
this, and that a tear dropped on his hand as he turned quickly to look
out of the window; but he might have been mistaken, and the man was
still very weak after his long illness, and tears come unbidden at such
a time.
“Your mother! Have you a mother living?”
“Yes, sir, as good a woman as ever drew breath,” Tom said, heartily.
“Who was that woman you had at the hotel in New York?” Earle asked.
“That was one of—the profession. She was nothing to me, and I paid her
well for that job. I—I——”
“Well?” Earle said, encouragingly, as he saw Tom evidently had something
on his mind, and did not know just how to get rid of it.
“I ain’t usually very white-livered nor tender-hearted, sir. I never
thought I was thin-skinned; but—I—I want to tell you that that rascally
business about the young lady has laid heavily on my mind this many a
day. She was a—particular friend o’ yours, weren’t she?”
“Yes,” Earle said, with a heavy sigh.
Tom Drake started at the sound, and shot an anxious glance at him, while
he grew, if possible, paler than he was before.
“I—I hope, sir, no harm came to her from the mesmerizing,” he said, in a
sort of hushed tone.
“No; she is quite well now.”
Tom looked intensely relieved, and went on, speaking with a rough kind
of earnestness and gratitude:
“You’ve been wonderful good to me after it all; you’ve given me the best
you have, and treated me as if I were a gentleman instead of a
gallows-bird. That was a pesky job—that business with the girl. She was
a pretty little thing, but plucky as the—I beg pardon, sir; but she was
the most spirited little woman I ever set eyes on; and many a time it
has given me the shivers, on waking up in the night, to think of her
lying there, growing so pale and weak, dying by inches.”
“It was a cruel thing to do,” Earle said, with a far-away look and a
very pale face.
He, too, often remembered that waxen face, with its great mournful eyes,
in the still hours of the night; but that now was not the saddest of his
troubles.
“You are right, sir,” Tom went on, with a strange mixture of humility
and defiance; “but I had three or four fat jobs on hand just at that
time, and I knew that if John Loker’s confession got abroad, there’d be
no more work for me in the United States. I was going to crack a safe
that very night, and had all my tools about me; so, as soon as you took
the young lady off, I set to work, picked the locks, and we took to our
heels with all the speed we had. You hadn’t made much noise about the
affair, so when madam and I walked out of the private entrance together,
no one suspected us, and we got off scot-free. I knew it wouldn’t be
safe for me to be seen around there after that, so I made for a steamer
that was just ready to start out, and came over here to try my luck,
never dreaming I’d fall into _your_ clutches a second time.”
“Have you been at this kind of thing long?” Earle asked.
“Nigh on to twenty years. I got in with a gang when I was a youngster,
learned all the tricks of the trade, and have lived by my wits and a
burglar’s kit ever since.”
“Have you, as a rule, found it a very _satisfactory_ kind of business?”
his listener asked, pointedly.
Tom Drake flushed a vivid crimson, and for an instant a fierce gleam of
anger shot from his eye; then he burst out vehemently:
“_No, sir; I haven’t._ I’ve always had to hide and sneak about like a
whipped cur. It’s all up with me now, though, and I might as well own to
it first as last, and there’s no comfort in it from beginning to end;
but when a fellow once gets started in it, there don’t seem to be any
place to stop, however bad you may want to. I’d got kind of hardened to
it, though, until—until that job at Dalton’s that _you_ got hauled up
for. I’ve cursed myself times without number for that affair, but I
hadn’t the grit to own up and take my chances; though, if I did put on a
bold front, every hair on my head stood on end when I saw you stand up
so proud and calm, and take the sentence and never squeal.”
Tom was getting excited over the remembrance, and his whole frame shook,
while Earle could see the perspiration that had gathered on his upper
lip.
His eyes were bent upon his hands, which were trembling with
nervousness, or some other emotion, and his voice was not quite steady.
“You’re a gentleman, sir, every inch of you,” he went on, after a few
minutes of awkward silence. “I’ve heard charity preached about no end of
times, and never knew what it meant before. I suppose you won’t believe
it, or think I am capable of feeling it, but I do—I feel mean clear
through, though I never would have owned to it before. Here I’ve been
for three months and more, making a deal of trouble, being waited upon
by your servants as if I was a prince, drinking your wine, and eating
all sorts of nice things that I never thought to taste, while you’ve
tended me until you’re nigh about worn out yourself. I tell you I
feel—mean! There, it’s out—I couldn’t hold it any longer; and if I have
to wear a ball and chain all the rest of my life, I shall feel better to
think I’ve said it; and I shall never forget to my dying day that there
was one man in the world who was willing to do a kindness to his worst
enemy.”
He had assumed a roughness of tone that had been unusual for the last
few weeks, but Earle knew it was done to cover his emotion.
It was evident that he felt every word he uttered, and that the
confession had cost him a great effort, as his nervousness and pallor
testified.
It was apparent also that he expected no mercy, as his reference to
Botany Bay and the ball and chain plainly showed. Earle pitied him
during his long siege of suffering.
He was a man of no small amount of intelligence, and had evidently
received a moderately good education before he began his career of
crime, and if he had started right in life he would, no doubt, have made
a smart man.
Earle had as yet come to no definite decision as to what course he
should pursue regarding him when he should fully recover, and he could
not bear to think of it even now.
He knew that his sentence, if tried and found guilty, would be a very
severe one, and his own sad experience naturally made him incline to the
side of mercy.
“But, Tom, whatever you may have been in the past, I do not consider
that you are my enemy now,” he said, kindly, when he had concluded his
excited speech.
“But I _am_, sir. I have done you the worst wrong a man can do
another—I’ve wronged you in _every_ way—I’m a wretch, and whatever they
do with me, it’ll serve me right, and I’ll never open my lips,” he said,
excitedly.
“Yes, you have wronged me, and I have suffered in your stead the worst
disgrace that a man can suffer. But that is all past now; my innocence
has been established, and no shadow of sin rests on my name—John Loker’s
confession accomplished that.”
“But, sir, it could not give you back those three years of your life
that—that you lost; you——”
“No,” Earle interrupted; “but those three years, long and weary as they
were, were not ‘lost’ by any means, Tom. They taught me a lesson of
patience and trust which, perhaps, I never should have learned in any
other way. It was a hard trial—a _bitter_ trial!” Earle exclaimed, with
a shudder, as something of the horror came back to him; “but”—in a
reverent tone—“I know that nothing which God sends upon us, if it is
rightly borne, can end in harm; nothing but our own sins can do that.”
“Did you feel that way _then_?” Tom asked, regarding the young marquis
with wonder.
“Not at first, perhaps, but it came to me after a little; for, Tom, I
had a good Christian mother.”
“Ay, and so had I,” he replied, with a sigh that ended in what sounded
very like a sob. But Tom was not strong, you know, and consequently more
easily moved.
“She used to teach me that suffering was often blessing in disguise.”
“I never heard that doctrine before, sir,” Tom returned, looking down
upon his emaciated hands, and thinking of his bandaged limb, which was
still very sore.
“I suppose you would not think that the wound I gave you, and the
terrible sickness which has followed, were blessings, would you, Tom?”
Earle asked, with a smile, as he noticed the look and divined his
thought.
“Hardly that, sir, when my reason tells me how it is all to end; but,
sir, I’ll say this much, my own mother couldn’t have been kinder, nor
given me better care; and, for the first time in my life, _I’ve learned
what it is to trust a man_!” he said, earnestly.
“Thank you, Tom,” Earle returned, heartily.
“You’ve no cause, sir. I should have killed you that night if I had
known you were there and awake, and then the world would have lost a
good man and gained another murderer. Perhaps, looking at it in that
way, sir, the wound and the sickness were blessings in disguise, as you
call them,” he concluded, reflectively, and he shivered slightly as he
spoke, as if the thought of crime had acquired a strange horror to him.
“We will not talk of this any more now,” Earle said, fearing the
excitement would be injurious to him. “I am only too glad that your life
was spared and I did not slay you, even in self-defense. I am glad to
know also that I have gained your confidence; and I firmly believe that
if you should ever be free to go forth into the world again, you would
never lift your hand to harm me or mine.”
“Thank you, sir; it is kind of you to say that,” was the humble reply.
“Now I want you to tell me something about your mother. She must be
quite old,” Earle continued, to change the subject.
“Sixty last March, sir, and I haven’t seen her for twenty years, though
I’ve sent her enough to give her a good living all that time. I used
to—to—love my mother,” he concluded, as if rather ashamed to make
confession of a sentiment so tender.
“Used to, Tom?”
“I ain’t fit to own to love for anybody now, sir! and it would break her
heart to know what I’ve been up to all these years.”
“Where does she live?”
“At Farnham, in this county, sir.”
“Here in England! Why, that is only twenty-five or thirty miles from
here!” exclaimed Earle, in surprise.
“Yes, sir; and if I had made a good haul here, I was going down to see
her, and settle something handsome on her,” he frankly confessed, but
his face flushed, nevertheless, at the acknowledgment.
“Wouldn’t you like to see her now?” asked Earle.
“That I would, sir; and I suppose the poor old lady has been worrying
and wondering what’s happened to me, that I did not send my usual letter
and money.”
“Did you send her money regularly?”
Earle began to think there was a little green spot in the man’s heart
after all, and there might be some hope of reclaiming him even yet.
“Once in three months—sometimes more, sometimes less, as my luck was,
but always _something_ as often as that, though it’s six months now
since she’s heard a word from me, poor old lady,” he said, with a sigh.
“Why did you not tell me of this before? Your mother should not be
allowed to want,” Earle said, feeling a deep interest in the lonely
mother.
“What right had I to burden you with my cares? You’ve had more than
enough of me as it is,” Tom replied, flushing more deeply than he had
yet done.
It was evident that he felt his obligation to Earle was no light one.
Earle did not reply, and at that moment the door opened, and a man
entered bearing a large tray, covered with a tempting array of viands
that would have done the heart of an epicure good.
“You must be hungry, Tom, after this long walk, so while you are eating
I will go away, as I have some letters to write,” Earle said, rising.
Tom looked up at him with a troubled air, opened his lips as if to
speak, shut them again resolutely, and then finally said, in a
half-reckless, half-humble way:
“You can take my softness for what it’s worth, sir; I couldn’t help it;
but—I’d have been broken on the wheel before I’d have said as much to
any one else. Tom Drake’s known nothing but hard knocks for the last
twenty years, until a bullet laid him here.”
Earle went out of the room with a very grave face.
“If I was only sure,” he murmured, with a deep-drawn sigh, as he passed
into the library and shut the door.