Strange it is and wonderful to mark how upon this planet of ours the
smallest and most insignificant of events set a train of consequences in
motion which act and react until their final results are portentous and
incalculable. Set a force rolling, however small; and who can say where
it shall end, or what it may lead to! Trifles develop into tragedies,
and the bagatelle of one day ripens into the catastrophe of the next.
An oyster throws out a secretion to surround a grain of sand, and so a
pearl comes into being; a pearl diver fishes it up, a merchant buys
it and sells it to a jeweller, who disposes of it to a customer. The
customer is robbed of it by two scoundrels who quarrel over the booty.
One slays the other, and perishes himself upon the scaffold. Here is
a direct chain of events with a sick mollusc for its first link, and a
gallows for its last one. Had that grain of sand not chanced to wash in
between the shells of the bivalve, two living breathing beings with all
their potentialities for good and for evil would not have been blotted
out from among their fellows. Who shall undertake to judge what is
really small and what is great?
Thus when in the year 1821 Don Diego Salvador bethought him that if it
paid the heretics in England to import the bark of his cork oaks, it
would pay him also to found a factory by which the corks might be cut
and sent out ready made, surely at first sight no very vital human
interests would appear to be affected. Yet there were poor folk who
would suffer, and suffer acutely--women who would weep, and men who
would become sallow and hungry-looking and dangerous in places of which
the Don had never heard, and all on account of that one idea which had
flashed across him as he strutted, cigarettiferous, beneath the grateful
shadow of his limes. So crowded is this old globe of ours, and so
interlaced our interests, that one cannot think a new thought without
some poor devil being the better or the worse for it.
Don Diego Salvador was a capitalist, and the abstract thought soon took
the concrete form of a great square plastered building wherein a couple
of hundred of his swarthy countrymen worked with deft nimble fingers at
a rate of pay which no English artisan could have accepted. Within a few
months the result of this new competition was an abrupt fall of prices
in the trade, which was serious for the largest firms and disastrous
for the smaller ones. A few old-established houses held on as they were,
others reduced their establishments and cut down their expenses, while
one or two put up their shutters and confessed themselves beaten. In
this last unfortunate category was the ancient and respected firm of
Fairbairn Brothers of Brisport.
Several causes had led up to this disaster, though Don Diego’s debut as
a corkcutter had brought matters to a head. When a couple of generations
back the original Fairbairn had founded the business, Brisport was a
little fishing town with no outlet or occupation for her superfluous
population. Men were glad to have safe and continuous work upon any
terms. All this was altered now, for the town was expanding into the
centre of a large district in the west, and the demand for labour and
its remuneration had proportionately increased. Again, in the old days,
when carriage was ruinous and communication slow, the vintners of Exeter
and of Barnstaple were glad to buy their corks from their neighbour of
Brisport; but now the large London houses sent down their travellers,
who competed with each other to gain the local custom, until profits
were cut down to the vanishing point. For a long time the firm had been
in a precarious position, but this further drop in prices settled the
matter, and compelled Mr. Charles Fairbairn, the acting manager, to
close his establishment.
It was a murky, foggy Saturday afternoon in November when the hands
were paid for the last time, and the old building was to be finally
abandoned. Mr. Fairbairn, an anxious-faced, sorrow-worn man, stood on
a raised dais by the cashier while he handed the little pile of
hardly-earned shillings and coppers to each successive workman as the
long procession filed past his table. It was usual with the employees to
clatter away the instant that they had been paid, like so many children
let out of school; but to-day they waited, forming little groups over
the great dreary room, and discussing in subdued voices the misfortune
which had come upon their employers, and the future which awaited
themselves. When the last pile of coins had been handed across the
table, and the last name checked by the cashier, the whole throng
faced silently round to the man who had been their master, and waited
expectantly for any words which he might have to say to them.
Mr. Charles Fairbairn had not expected this, and it embarrassed him. He
had waited as a matter of routine duty until the wages were paid, but
he was a taciturn, slow-witted man, and he had not foreseen this sudden
call upon his oratorical powers. He stroked his thin cheek nervously
with his long white fingers, and looked down with weak watery eyes at
the mosaic of upturned serious faces.
“I am sorry that we have to part, my men,” he said at last in a
crackling voice. “It’s a bad day for all of us, and for Brisport too.
For three years we have been losing money over the works. We held on in
the hope of a change coming, but matters are going from bad to worse.
There’s nothing for it but to give it up before the balance of our
fortune is swallowed up. I hope you may all be able to get work of some
sort before very long. Good-bye, and God bless you!”
“God bless you, sir! God bless you!” cried a chorus of rough voices.
“Three cheers for Mr. Charles Fairbairn!” shouted a bright-eyed, smart
young fellow, springing up upon a bench and waving his peaked cap in the
air. The crowd responded to the call, but their huzzas wanted the true
ring which only a joyous heart can give. Then they began to flock out
into the sunlight, looking back as they went at the long deal tables and
the cork-strewn floor--above all at the sad-faced, solitary man,
whose cheeks were flecked with colour at the rough cordiality of their
farewell.
“Huxford,” said the cashier, touching on the shoulder the young fellow
who had led the cheering; “the governor wants to speak to you.”
The workman turned back and stood swinging his cap awkwardly in front of
his ex-employer, while the crowd pushed on until the doorway was clear,
and the heavy fog-wreaths rolled unchecked into the deserted factory.
“Ah, John!” said Mr. Fairbairn, coming suddenly out of his reverie and
taking up a letter from the table. “You have been in my service since
you were a boy, and you have shown that you merited the trust which I
have placed in you. From what I have heard I think I am right in saying
that this sudden want of work will affect your plans more than it will
many of my other hands.”
“I was to be married at Shrovetide,” the man answered, tracing a pattern
upon the table with his horny forefinger. “I’ll have to find work
first.”
“And work, my poor fellow, is by no means easy to find. You see you have
been in this groove all your life, and are unfit for anything else.
It’s true you’ve been my foreman, but even that won’t help you, for
the factories all over England are discharging hands, and there’s not a
vacancy to be had. It’s a bad outlook for you and such as you.”
“What would you advise, then, sir?” asked John Huxford.
“That’s what I was coming to. I have a letter here from Sheridan and
Moore, of Montreal, asking for a good hand to take charge of a workroom.
If you think it will suit you, you can go out by the next boat. The
wages are far in excess of anything which I have been able to give you.”
“Why, sir, this is real kind of you,” the young workman said earnestly.
“She--my girl--Mary, will be as grateful to you as I am. I know what you
say is right, and that if I had to look for work I should be likely to
spend the little that I have laid by towards housekeeping before I found
it. But, sir, with your leave I’d like to speak to her about it before I
made up my mind. Could you leave it open for a few hours?”
“The mail goes out to-morrow,” Mr. Fairbairn answered. “If you decide to
accept you can write tonight. Here is their letter, which will give you
their address.”
John Huxford took the precious paper with a grateful heart. An hour ago
his future had been all black, but now this rift of light had broken in
the west, giving promise of better things. He would have liked to have
said something expressive of his feelings to his employer, but the
English nature is not effusive, and he could not get beyond a
few choking awkward words which were as awkwardly received by his
benefactor. With a scrape and a bow, he turned on his heel, and plunged
out into the foggy street.
So thick was the vapour that the houses over the way were only a vague
loom, but the foreman hurried on with springy steps through side streets
and winding lanes, past walls where the fishermen’s nets were drying,
and over cobble-stoned alleys redolent of herring, until he reached a
modest line of whitewashed cottages fronting the sea. At the door of one
of these the young man tapped, and then without waiting for a response,
pressed down the latch and walked in.
An old silvery-haired woman and a young girl hardly out of her teens
were sitting on either side of the fire, and the latter sprang to her
feet as he entered.
“You’ve got some good news, John,” she cried, putting her hands upon his
shoulders, and looking into his eyes. “I can tell it from your step. Mr.
Fairbairn is going to carry on after all.”
“No, dear, not so good as that,” John Huxford answered, smoothing back
her rich brown hair; “but I have an offer of a place in Canada, with
good money, and if you think as I do, I shall go out to it, and you can
follow with the granny whenever I have made all straight for you at the
other side. What say you to that, my lass?”
“Why, surely, John, what you think is right must be for the best,” said
the girl quietly, with trust and confidence in her pale plain face and
loving hazel eyes. “But poor granny, how is she to cross the seas?”
“Oh, never mind about me,” the old woman broke in cheerfully. “I’ll be
no drag on you. If you want granny, granny’s not too old to travel; and
if you don’t want her, why she can look after the cottage, and have an
English home ready for you whenever you turn back to the old country.”
“Of course we shall need you, granny,” John Huxford said, with a cheery
laugh. “Fancy leaving granny behind! That would never do! Mary! But
if you both come out, and if we are married all snug and proper at
Montreal, we’ll look through the whole city until we find a house
something like this one, and we’ll have creepers on the outside just
the same, and when the doors are shut and we sit round the fire on the
winter’s nights, I’m hanged if we’ll be able to tell that we’re not at
home. Besides, Mary, it’s the same speech out there, and the same king
and the same flag; it’s not like a foreign country.”
“No, of course not,” Mary answered with conviction. She was an orphan
with no living relation save her old grandmother, and no thought in life
but to make a helpful and worthy wife to the man she loved. Where these
two were she could not fail to find happiness. If John went to Canada,
then Canada became home to her, for what had Brisport to offer when he
was gone?
“I’m to write to-night then and accept?” the young man asked. “I knew
you would both be of the same mind as myself, but of course I couldn’t
close with the offer until we had talked it over. I can get started in a
week or two, and then in a couple of months I’ll have all ready for you
on the other side.”
“It will be a weary, weary time until we hear from you, dear John,” said
Mary, clasping his hand; “but it’s God’s will, and we must be patient.
Here’s pen and ink. You can sit at the table and write the letter which
is to take the three of us across the Atlantic.” Strange how Don Diego’s
thoughts were moulding human lives in the little Devon village.
The acceptance was duly despatched, and John Huxford began immediately
to prepare for his departure, for the Montreal firm had intimated that
the vacancy was a certainty, and that the chosen man might come out
without delay to take over his duties. In a very few days his scanty
outfit was completed, and he started off in a coasting vessel for
Liverpool, where he was to catch the passenger ship for Quebec.
“Remember, John,” Mary whispered, as he pressed her to his heart upon
the Brisport quay, “the cottage is our own, and come what may, we have
always that to fall back upon. If things should chance to turn out badly
over there, we have always a roof to cover us. There you will find me
until you send word to us to come.”
“And that will be very soon, my lass,” he answered cheerfully, with a
last embrace. “Good-bye, granny, good-bye.” The ship was a mile and more
from the land before he lost sight of the figures of the straight slim
girl and her old companion, who stood watching and waving to him from
the end of the grey stone quay. It was with a sinking heart and a vague
feeling of impending disaster that he saw them at last as minute specks
in the distance, walking townward and disappearing amid the crowd who
lined the beach.
From Liverpool the old woman and her granddaughter received a letter
from John announcing that he was just starting in the barque St.
Lawrence, and six weeks afterwards a second longer epistle informed them
of his safe arrival at Quebec, and gave them his first impressions of
the country. After that a long unbroken silence set in. Week after week
and month after month passed by, and never a word came from across the
seas. A year went over their heads, and yet another, but no news of the
absentee. Sheridan and Moore were written to, and replied that though
John Huxford’s letter had reached them, he had never presented himself,
and they had been forced to fill up the vacancy as best they could.
Still Mary and her grandmother hoped against hope, and looked out
for the letter-carrier every morning with such eagerness, that the
kind-hearted man would often make a detour rather than pass the two
pale anxious faces which peered at him from the cottage window. At last,
three years after the young foreman’s disappearance, old granny died,
and Mary was left alone, a broken sorrowful woman, living as best she
might on a small annuity which had descended to her, and eating her
heart out as she brooded over the mystery which hung over the fate of
her lover.
Among the shrewd west-country neighbours there had long, however, ceased
to be any mystery in the matter. Huxford arrived safely in Canada--so
much was proved by his letter. Had he met with his end in any sudden
way during the journey between Quebec and Montreal, there must have
been some official inquiry, and his luggage would have sufficed to have
established his identity. Yet the Canadian police had been communicated
with, and had returned a positive answer that no inquest had been held,
or any body found, which could by any possibility be that of the young
Englishman. The only alternative appeared to be that he had taken the
first opportunity to break all the old ties, and had slipped away to the
backwoods or to the States to commence life anew under an altered name.
Why he should do this no one professed to know, but that he had done it
appeared only too probable from the facts. Hence many a deep growl of
righteous anger rose from the brawny smacksmen when Mary with her pale
face and sorrow-sunken head passed along the quays on her way to her
daily marketing; and it is more than likely that if the missing man had
turned up in Brisport he might have met with some rough words or rougher
usage, unless he could give some very good reason for his strange
conduct. This popular view of the case never, however, occurred to the
simple trusting heart of the lonely girl, and as the years rolled by her
grief and her suspense were never for an instant tinged with a doubt as
to the good faith of the missing man. From youth she grew into middle
age, and from that into the autumn of her life, patient, long-suffering,
and faithful, doing good as far as lay in her power, and waiting humbly
until fate should restore either in this world or the next that which it
had so mysteriously deprived her of.
In the meantime neither the opinion held by the minority that John
Huxford was dead, nor that of the majority, which pronounced him to be
faithless, represented the true state of the case. Still alive, and of
stainless honour, he had yet been singled out by fortune as her victim
in one of those strange freaks which are of such rare occurrence, and so
beyond the general experience, that they might be put by as incredible,
had we not the most trustworthy evidence of their occasional
possibility.
Landing at Quebec, with his heart full of hope and courage, John
selected a dingy room in a back street, where the terms were less
exorbitant than elsewhere, and conveyed thither the two boxes which
contained his worldly goods. After taking up his quarters there he had
half a mind to change again, for the landlady and the fellow-lodgers
were by no means to his taste; but the Montreal coach started within a
day or two, and he consoled himself by the thought that the discomfort
would only last for that short time. Having written home to Mary to
announce his safe arrival, he employed himself in seeing as much of the
town as was possible, walking about all day, and only returning to his
room at night.
It happened, however, that the house on which the unfortunate youth had
pitched was one which was notorious for the character of its inmates.
He had been directed to it by a pimp, who found regular employment
in hanging about the docks and decoying new-comers to this den.
The fellow’s specious manner and proffered civility had led the
simple-hearted west-countryman into the toils, and though his instinct
told him that he was in unsafe company, he refrained, unfortunately,
from at once making his escape. He contented himself with staying out
all day, and associating as little as possible with the other inmates.
From the few words which he did let drop, however, the landlady gathered
that he was a stranger without a single friend in the country to inquire
after him should misfortune overtake him.
The house had an evil reputation for the hocussing of sailors, which
was done not only for the purpose of plundering them, but also to supply
outgoing ships with crews, the men being carried on board insensible,
and not coming to until the ship was well down the St. Lawrence. This
trade caused the wretches who followed it to be experts in the use of
stupefying drugs, and they determined to practise their arts upon
their friendless lodger, so as to have an opportunity of ransacking his
effects, and of seeing what it might be worth their while to purloin.
During the day he invariably locked his door and carried off the key in
his pocket, but if they could render him insensible for the night they
could examine his boxes at their leisure, and deny afterwards that he
had ever brought with him the articles which he missed. It happened,
therefore, upon the eve of Huxford’s departure from Quebec, that he
found, upon returning to his lodgings, that his landlady and her two
ill-favoured sons, who assisted her in her trade, were waiting up for
him over a bowl of punch, which they cordially invited him to share.
It was a bitterly cold night, and the fragrant steam overpowered any
suspicions which the young Englishman may have entertained, so he
drained off a bumper, and then, retiring to his bedroom, threw himself
upon his bed without undressing, and fell straight into a dreamless
slumber, in which he still lay when the three conspirators crept into
his chamber, and, having opened his boxes, began to investigate his
effects.
It may have been that the speedy action of the drug caused its effect to
be evanescent, or, perhaps, that the strong constitution of the victim
threw it off with unusual rapidity. Whatever the cause, it is certain
that John Huxford suddenly came to himself, and found the foul trio
squatted round their booty, which they were dividing into the two
categories of what was of value and should be taken, and what was
valueless and might therefore be left. With a bound he sprang out of
bed, and seizing the fellow nearest him by the collar, he slung him
through the open doorway. His brother rushed at him, but the young
Devonshire man met him with such a facer that he dropped in a heap
upon the ground. Unfortunately, the violence of the blow caused him to
overbalance himself, and, tripping over his prostrate antagonist, he
came down heavily upon his face. Before he could rise, the old hag
sprang upon his back and clung to him, shrieking to her son to bring the
poker. John managed to shake himself clear of them both, but before he
could stand on his guard he was felled from behind by a crashing blow
from an iron bar, which stretched him senseless upon the floor.
“You’ve hit too hard, Joe,” said the old woman, looking down at the
prostrate figure. “I heard the bone go.”
“If I hadn’t fetched him down he’d ha’ been too many for us,” said the
young villain sulkily.
“Still, you might ha’ done it without killing him, clumsy,” said his
mother. She had had a large experience of such scenes, and knew the
difference between a stunning blow and a fatal one.
“He’s still breathing,” the other said, examining him; “the back o’ his
head’s like a bag o’ dice though. The skull’s all splintered. He can’t
last. What are we to do?”
“He’ll never come to himself again,” the other brother remarked. “Sarve
him right. Look at my face! Let’s see, mother; who’s in the house?”
“Only four drunk sailors.”
“They wouldn’t turn out for any noise. It’s all quiet in the street.
Let’s carry him down a bit, Joe, and leave him there. He can die there,
and no one think the worse of us.”
“Take all the papers out of his pocket, then,” the mother suggested;
“they might help the police to trace him. His watch, too, and his
money--L3 odd; better than nothing. Now carry him softly and don’t
slip.”
Kicking off their shoes, the two brothers carried the dying man down
stairs and along the deserted street for a couple of hundred yards.
There they laid him among the snow, where he was found by the night
patrol, who carried him on a shutter to the hospital. He was duly
examined by the resident surgeon, who bound up the wounded head, but
gave it as his opinion that the man could not possibly live for more
than twelve hours.
Twelve hours passed, however, and yet another twelve, but John Huxford
still struggled hard for his life. When at the end of three days he was
found to be still breathing, the interest of the doctors became aroused
at his extraordinary vitality, and they bled him, as the fashion was in
those days, and surrounded his shattered head with icebags. It may have
been on account of these measures, or it may have been in spite of
them, but at the end of a week’s deep trance the nurse in charge was
astonished to hear a gabbling noise, and to find the stranger sitting up
upon the couch and staring about him with wistful, wondering eyes.
The surgeons were summoned to behold the phenomenon, and warmly
congratulated each other upon the success of their treatment.
“You have been on the brink of the grave, my man,” said one of them,
pressing the bandaged head back on to the pillow; “you must not excite
yourself. What is your name?”
No answer, save a wild stare.
“Where do you come from?”
Again no answer.
“He is mad,” one suggested. “Or a foreigner,” said another. “There were
no papers on him when he came in. His linen is marked ‘J. H.’ Let us try
him in French and German.”
They tested him with as many tongues as they could muster among them,
but were compelled at last to give the matter over and to leave their
silent patient, still staring up wild-eyed at the whitewashed hospital
ceiling.
For many weeks John lay in the hospital, and for many weeks efforts were
made to gain some clue as to his antecedents, but in vain. He showed,
as the time rolled by, not only by his demeanour, but also by the
intelligence with which he began to pick up fragments of sentences, like
a clever child learning to talk, that his mind was strong enough in the
present, though it was a complete blank as to the past. The man’s memory
of his whole life before the fatal blow was entirely and absolutely
erased. He neither knew his name, his language, his home, his business,
nor anything else. The doctors held learned consultations upon him,
and discoursed upon the centre of memory and depressed tables, deranged
nerve-cells and cerebral congestions, but all their polysyllables began
and ended at the fact that the man’s memory was gone, and that it was
beyond the power of science to restore it. During the weary months of
his convalescence he picked up reading and writing, but with the return
of his strength came no return of his former life. England, Devonshire,
Brisport, Mary, Granny--the words brought no recollection to his mind.
All was absolute darkness. At last he was discharged, a friendless,
tradeless, penniless man, without a past, and with very little to look
to in the future. His very name was altered, for it had been necessary
to invent one. John Huxford had passed away, and John Hardy took his
place among mankind. Here was a strange outcome of a Spanish gentleman’s
tobacco-inspired meditations.
John’s case had aroused some discussion and curiosity in Quebec, so that
he was not suffered to drift into utter helplessness upon emerging from
the hospital. A Scotch manufacturer named M‘Kinlay found him a post
as porter in his establishment, and for a long time he worked at seven
dollars a week at the loading and unloading of vans. In the course of
years it was noticed, however, that his memory, however defective as
to the past, was extremely reliable and accurate when concerned with
anything which had occurred since his accident. From the factory he was
promoted into the counting-house, and the year 1835 found him a junior
clerk at a salary of L120 a year. Steadily and surely John Hardy fought
his way upward from post to post, with his whole heart and mind devoted
to the business. In 1840 he was third clerk, in 1845 he was second, and
in 1852 he became manager of the whole vast establishment, and second
only to Mr. M‘Kinlay himself.
There were few who grudged John this rapid advancement, for it was
obviously due to neither chance nor favouritism, but entirely to his
marvellous powers of application and industry. From early morning until
late in the night he laboured hard in the service of his employer,
checking, overlooking, superintending, setting an example to all of
cheerful devotion to duty. As he rose from one post to another his
salary increased, but it caused no alteration in his mode of living,
save that it enabled him to be more open-handed to the poor. He
signalised his promotion to the managership by a donation of L1000 to
the hospital in which he had been treated a quarter of a century before.
The remainder of his earnings he allowed to accumulate in the business,
drawing a small sum quarterly for his sustenance, and still residing
in the humble dwelling which he had occupied when he was a warehouse
porter. In spite of his success he was a sad, silent, morose man,
solitary in his habits, and possessed always of a vague undefined
yearning, a dull feeling of dissatisfaction and of craving which never
abandoned him. Often he would strive with his poor crippled brain to
pierce the curtain which divided him from the past, and to solve the
enigma of his youthful existence, but though he sat many a time by the
fire until his head throbbed with his efforts, John Hardy could never
recall the least glimpse of John Huxford’s history.
On one occasion he had, in the interests of the firm, to journey to
Quebec, and to visit the very cork factory which had tempted him to
leave England. Strolling through the workroom with the foreman, John
automatically, and without knowing what he was doing, picked up a square
piece of the bark, and fashioned it with two or three deft cuts of his
penknife into a smooth tapering cork. His companion picked it out of his
hand and examined it with the eye of an expert. “This is not the first
cork which you have cut by many a hundred, Mr. Hardy,” he remarked.
“Indeed you are wrong,” John answered, smiling; “I never cut one before
in my life.” “Impossible!” cried the foreman. “Here’s another bit of
cork. Try again.” John did his best to repeat the performance, but
the brains of the manager interfered with the trained muscles of the
corkcutter. The latter had not forgotten their cunning, but they needed
to be left to themselves, and not directed by a mind which knew nothing
of the matter. Instead of the smooth graceful shape, he could produce
nothing but rough-hewn clumsy cylinders. “It must have been chance,”
said the foreman, “but I could have sworn that it was the work of an old
hand!”
As the years passed John’s smooth English skin had warped and crinkled
until he was as brown and as seamed as a walnut. His hair, too, after
many years of iron-grey, had finally become as white as the winters of
his adopted country. Yet he was a hale and upright old man, and when he
at last retired from the manager-ship of the firm with which he had been
so long connected, he bore the weight of his seventy years lightly and
bravely. He was in the peculiar position himself of not knowing his own
age, as it was impossible for him to do more than guess at how old he
was at the time of his accident.
The Franco-German War came round, and while the two great rivals were
destroying each other, their more peaceful neighbours were quietly
ousting them out of their markets and their commerce. Many English ports
benefited by this condition of things, but none more than Brisport.
It had long ceased to be a fishing village, but was now a large and
prosperous town, with a great breakwater in place of the quay on which
Mary had stood, and a frontage of terraces and grand hotels where
all the grandees of the west country came when they were in need of
a change. All these extensions had made Brisport the centre of a busy
trade, and her ships found their way into every harbour in the world.
Hence it was no wonder, especially in that very busy year of 1870,
that several Brisport vessels were lying in the river and alongside the
wharves of Quebec.
One day John Hardy, who found time hang a little on his hands since his
retirement from business, strolled along by the water’s edge listening
to the clanking of the steam winches, and watching the great barrels
and cases as they were swung ashore and piled upon the wharf. He had
observed the coming in of a great ocean steamer, and having waited until
she was safely moored, he was turning away, when a few words fell upon
his ear uttered by some one on board a little weather-beaten barque
close by him. It was only some commonplace order that was bawled out,
but the sound fell upon the old man’s ears with a strange mixture of
disuse and familiarity. He stood by the vessel and heard the seamen at
their work, all speaking with the same broad, pleasant jingling accent.
Why did it send such a thrill through his nerves to listen to it? He sat
down upon a coil of rope and pressed his hands to his temples, drinking
in the long-forgotten dialect, and trying to piece together in his mind
the thousand half-formed nebulous recollections which were surging up in
it. Then he rose, and walking along to the stern he read the name of
the ship, The Sunlight, Brisport. Brisport! Again that flush and tingle
through every nerve. Why was that word and the men’s speech so familiar
to him? He walked moodily home, and all night he lay tossing and
sleepless, pursuing a shadowy something which was ever within his reach,
and yet which ever evaded him.
Early next morning he was up and down on the wharf listening to the
talk of the west-country sailors. Every word they spoke seemed to him to
revive his memory and bring him nearer to the light. From time to time
they paused in their work, and seeing the white-haired stranger sitting
so silently and attentively, they laughed at him and broke little jests
upon him. And even these jests had a familiar sound to the exile, as
they very well might, seeing that they were the same which he had heard
in his youth, for no one ever makes a new joke in England. So he sat
through the long day, bathing himself in the west-country speech, and
waiting for the light to break.
And it happened that when the sailors broke off for their mid-day meal,
one of them, either out of curiosity or good nature, came over to the
old watcher and greeted him. So John asked him to be seated on a log by
his side, and began to put many questions to him about the country from
which he came, and the town. All which the man answered glibly enough,
for there is nothing in the world that a sailor loves to talk of so much
as of his native place, for it pleases him to show that he is no mere
wanderer, but that he has a home to receive him whenever he shall choose
to settle down to a quiet life. So the seaman prattled away about the
Town Hall and the Martello Tower, and the Esplanade, and Pitt Street and
the High Street, until his companion suddenly shot out a long eager arm
and caught him by the wrist. “Look here, man,” he said, in a low quick
whisper. “Answer me truly as you hope for mercy. Are not the streets
that run out of the High Street, Fox Street, Caroline Street, and George
Street, in the order named?” “They are,” the sailor answered, shrinking
away from the wild flashing eyes. And at that moment John’s memory came
back to him, and he saw clear and distinct his life as it had been and
as it should have been, with every minutest detail traced as in letters
of fire. Too stricken to cry out, too stricken to weep, he could only
hurry away homewards wildly and aimlessly; hurry as fast as his aged
limbs would carry him, as if, poor soul! there were some chance yet of
catching up the fifty years which had gone by. Staggering and tremulous
he hastened on until a film seemed to gather over his eyes, and throwing
his arms into the air with a great cry, “Oh, Mary, Mary! Oh, my lost,
lost life!” he fell senseless upon the pavement.
The storm of emotion which had passed through him, and the mental shock
which he had undergone, would have sent many a man into a raging fever,
but John was too strong-willed and too practical to allow his strength
to be wasted at the very time when he needed it most. Within a few days
he realised a portion of his property, and starting for New York, caught
the first mail steamer to England. Day and night, night and day, he
trod the quarter-deck, until the hardy sailors watched the old man with
astonishment, and marvelled how any human being could do so much upon
so little sleep. It was only by this unceasing exercise, by wearing
down his vitality until fatigue brought lethargy, that he could prevent
himself from falling into a very frenzy of despair. He hardly dared ask
himself what was the object of this wild journey? What did he expect?
Would Mary be still alive? She must be a very old woman. If he could but
see her and mingle his tears with hers he would be content. Let her
only know that it had been no fault of his, and that they had both been
victims to the same cruel fate. The cottage was her own, and she had
said that she would wait for him there until she heard from him. Poor
lass, she had never reckoned on such a wait as this.
At last the Irish lights were sighted and passed, Land’s End lay like
a blue fog upon the water, and the great steamer ploughed its way along
the bold Cornish coast until it dropped its anchor in Plymouth Bay. John
hurried to the railway station, and within a few hours he found
himself back once more in his native town, which he had quitted a poor
corkcutter, half a century before.
But was it the same town? Were it not for the name engraved all over
the station and on the hotels, John might have found a difficulty in
believing it. The broad, well-paved streets, with the tram lines laid
down the centre, were very different from the narrow winding lanes which
he could remember. The spot upon which the station had been built was
now the very centre of the town, but in the old days it would have been
far out in the fields. In every direction, lines of luxurious villas
branched away in streets and crescents bearing names which were new
to the exile. Great warehouses, and long rows of shops with glittering
fronts, showed him how enormously Brisport had increased in wealth as
well as in dimensions. It was only when he came upon the old High Street
that John began to feel at home. It was much altered, but still it was
recognisable, and some few of the buildings were just as he had left
them. There was the place where Fairbairn’s cork works had been. It was
now occupied by a great brand-new hotel. And there was the old grey Town
Hall. The wanderer turned down beside it, and made his way with eager
steps but a sinking heart in the direction of the line of cottages which
he used to know so well.
It was not difficult for him to find where they had been. The sea at
least was as of old, and from it he could tell where the cottages
had stood. But alas, where were they now! In their place an imposing
crescent of high stone houses reared their tall front to the beach. John
walked wearily down past their palatial entrances, feeling heart-sore
and despairing, when suddenly a thrill shot through him, followed by a
warm glow of excitement and of hope, for, standing a little back from
the line, and looking as much out of place as a bumpkin in a ballroom,
was an old whitewashed cottage, with wooden porch and walls bright with
creeping plants. He rubbed his eyes and stared again, but there it stood
with its diamond-paned windows and white muslin curtains, the very same
down to the smallest details, as it had been on the day when he last saw
it. Brown hair had become white, and fishing hamlets had changed into
cities, but busy hands and a faithful heart had kept granny’s cottage
unchanged and ready for the wanderer.
And now, when he had reached his very haven of rest, John Huxford’s
mind became more filled with apprehension than ever, and he came over so
deadly sick, that he had to sit down upon one of the beach benches
which faced the cottage. An old fisherman was perched at one end of it,
smoking his black clay pipe, and he remarked upon the wan face and sad
eyes of the stranger.
“You have overtired yourself,” he said. “It doesn’t do for old chaps
like you and me to forget our years.”
“I’m better now, thank you,” John answered. “Can you tell me, friend,
how that one cottage came among all those fine houses?”
“Why,” said the old fellow, thumping his crutch energetically upon
the ground, “that cottage belongs to the most obstinate woman in all
England. That woman, if you’ll believe me, has been offered the price
of the cottage ten times over, and yet she won’t part with it. They have
even promised to remove it stone by stone, and put it up on some more
convenient place, and pay her a good round sum into the bargain, but,
God bless you! she wouldn’t so much as hear of it.”
“And why was that?” asked John.
“Well, that’s just the funny part of it. It’s all on account of a
mistake. You see her spark went away when I was a youngster, and she’s
got it into her head that he may come back some day, and that he won’t
know where to go unless the cottage is there. Why, if the fellow were
alive he would be as old as you, but I’ve no doubt he’s dead long ago.
She’s well quit of him, for he must have been a scamp to abandon her as
he did.”
“Oh, he abandoned her, did he?”
“Yes--went off to the States, and never so much as sent a word to
bid her good-bye. It was a cruel shame, it was, for the girl has been
a-waiting and a-pining for him ever since. It’s my belief that it’s
fifty years’ weeping that blinded her.”
“She is blind!” cried John, half rising to his feet.
“Worse than that,” said the fisherman. “She’s mortal ill, and not
expected to live. Why, look ye, there’s the doctor’s carriage a-waiting
at her door.”
At this evil tidings old John sprang up and hurried over to the cottage,
where he met the physician returning to his brougham.
“How is your patient, doctor?” he asked in a trembling voice.
“Very bad, very bad,” said the man of medicine pompously. “If she
continues to sink she will be in great danger; but if, on the other
hand, she takes a turn, it is possible that she may recover,” with which
oracular answer he drove away in a cloud of dust.
John Huxford was still hesitating at the doorway, not knowing how to
announce himself, or how far a shock might be dangerous to the sufferer,
when a gentleman in black came bustling up.
“Can you tell me, my man, if this is where the sick woman is?” he asked.
John nodded, and the clergyman passed in, leaving the door half open.
The wanderer waited until he had gone into the inner room, and then
slipped into the front parlour, where he had spent so many happy hours.
All was the same as ever, down to the smallest ornaments, for Mary had
been in the habit whenever anything was broken of replacing it with
a duplicate, so that there might be no change in the room. He stood
irresolute, looking about him, until he heard a woman’s voice from the
inner chamber, and stealing to the door he peeped in.
The invalid was reclining upon a couch, propped up with pillows, and her
face was turned full towards John as he looked round the door. He could
have cried out as his eyes rested upon it, for there were Mary’s pale,
plain, sweet homely features as smooth and as unchanged as though she
were still the half child, half woman, whom he had pressed to his heart
on the Brisport quay. Her calm, eventless, unselfish life had left none
of those rude traces upon her countenance which are the outward emblems
of internal conflict and an unquiet soul. A chaste melancholy had
refined and softened her expression, and her loss of sight had been
compensated for by that placidity which comes upon the faces of the
blind. With her silvery hair peeping out beneath her snow-white cap, and
a bright smile upon her sympathetic face, she was the old Mary improved
and developed, with something ethereal and angelic superadded.
“You will keep a tenant in the cottage,” she was saying to the
clergyman, who sat with his back turned to the observer. “Choose some
poor deserving folk in the parish who will be glad of a home free. And
when he comes you will tell him that I have waited for him until I have
been forced to go on, but that he will find me on the other side still
faithful and true. There’s a little money too--only a few pounds--but I
should like him to have it when he comes, for he may need it, and then
you will tell the folk you put in to be kind to him, for he will be
grieved, poor lad, and to tell him that I was cheerful and happy up to
the end. Don’t let him know that I ever fretted, or he may fret too.”
Now John listened quietly to all this from behind the door, and more
than once he had to put his hand to his throat, but when she had
finished, and when he thought of her long, blameless, innocent life, and
saw the dear face looking straight at him, and yet unable to see him, it
became too much for his manhood, and he burst out into an irrepressible
choking sob which shook his very frame. And then occurred a strange
thing, for though he had spoken no word, the old woman stretched out her
arms to him, and cried, “Oh, Johnny, Johnny! Oh dear, dear Johnny,
you have come back to me again,” and before the parson could at all
understand what had happened, those two faithful lovers were in each
other’s arms, weeping over each other, and patting each other’s silvery
heads, with their hearts so full of joy that it almost compensated for
all that weary fifty years of waiting.
It is hard to say how long they rejoiced together. It seemed a very
short time to them and a very long one to the reverend gentleman,
who was thinking at last of stealing away, when Mary recollected his
presence and the courtesy which was due to him. “My heart is full of
joy, sir,” she said; “it is God’s will that I should not see my Johnny,
but I can call his image up as clear as if I had my eyes. Now stand up,
John, and I will let the gentleman see how well I remember you. He is as
tall, sir, as the second shelf, as straight as an arrow, his face brown,
and his eyes bright and clear. His hair is well-nigh black, and his
moustache the same--I shouldn’t wonder if he had whiskers as well by
this time. Now, sir, don’t you think I can do without my sight?” The
clergyman listened to her description, and looking at the battered,
white-haired man before him, he hardly knew whether to laugh or to cry.
But it all proved to be a laughing matter in the end, for, whether it
was that her illness had taken some natural turn, or that John’s return
had startled it away, it is certain that from that day Mary steadily
improved until she was as well as ever. “No special license for me,”
John had said sturdily. “It looks as if we were ashamed of what we are
doing, as though we hadn’t the best right to be married of any two folk
in the parish.” So the banns were put up accordingly, and three times
it was announced that John Huxford, bachelor, was going to be united
to Mary Howden, spinster, after which, no one objecting, they were duly
married accordingly. “We may not have very long in this world,” said old
John, “but at least we shall start fair and square in the next.”
John’s share in the Quebec business was sold out, and gave rise to a
very interesting legal question as to whether, knowing that his name
was Huxford, he could still sign that of Hardy, as was necessary for
the completion of the business. It was decided, however, that on his
producing two trustworthy witnesses to his identity all would be right,
so the property was duly realised and produced a very handsome fortune.
Part of this John devoted to building a pretty villa just outside
Brisport, and the heart of the proprietor of Beach Terrace leaped within
him when he learned that the cottage was at last to be abandoned, and
that it would no longer break the symmetry and impair the effect of his
row of aristocratic mansions.
And there in their snug new home, sitting out on the lawn in the
summer-time, and on either side of the fire in the winter, that worthy
old couple continued for many years to live as innocently and as happily
as two children. Those who knew them well say that there was never a
shadow between them, and that the love which burned in their aged hearts
was as high and as holy as that of any young couple who ever went to the
altar. And through all the country round, if ever man or woman were in
distress and fighting against hard times, they had only to go up to the
villa to receive help, and that sympathy which is more precious than
help. So when at last John and Mary fell asleep in their ripe old age,
within a few hours of each other, they had all the poor and the needy
and the friendless of the parish among their mourners, and in talking
over the troubles which these two had faced so bravely, they learned
that their own miseries also were but passing things, and that faith and
truth can never miscarry, either in this existence or the next.