IN that curious compound, the human heart, a respectable motive is
sometimes connected with a criminal act. And it was so with Joseph Wylie.
He had formed an attachment to Nancy Rouse, and her price was two
thousand pounds.
This Nancy Rouse was a character. She was General Rolleston's servant for
many years; her place was the kitchen. But she was a woman of such
restless activity, and so wanting in the proper pride of a servant, that
she would help a house-maid, or a lady's maid, or do anything almost,
except be idle. To use her own words, she was one as couldn't abide to
sit mum-chance. That fatal foe to domestic industry, the _London
Journal,_ fluttered in vain down her area, for she could not read. She
supported a sick mother out of her wages, aided by a few presents of
money and clothes from Helen Rolleston, who had a great regard for Nancy,
and knew what a hard fight she had to keep a sick woman out of her twenty
pounds a year.
In love, Nancy was unfortunate; her buxom looks and sterling virtues were
balanced by a provoking sagacity, and an irritating habit of speaking her
mind. She humbled her lovers' vanity, one after another, and they fled.
Her heart smarted more than once.
Nancy was ambitious; and her first rise in life took place as follows:
When the Rollestons went to Australia, she had a good cry at parting with
Helen; but there was no help for it. She could not leave her mother.
However, she told Helen she could not stomach any other service, and,
since she must be parted, was resolved to better herself. This phrase is
sometimes drolly applied by servants, because they throw Independence
into the scale. In Nancy's case it meant setting up as a washerwoman.
Helen opened her hazel eyes with astonishment at this, the first round in
the ladder of Nancy's ambition; however, she gave her ten pounds, and
thirty introductions, twenty-five of which missed fire, and with the odd
five Nancy set up her tub in the suburbs, and by her industry, geniality
and frugality, got on tolerably well. In due course she rented a small
house backed by a small green, and advertised for a gentleman lodger. She
soon got one; and soon got rid of him. However, she was never long
without one.
Nancy met Joseph Wylie in company. And, as sailors are brisk wooers, he
soon became her acknowledged suitor, and made some inroad into her heart,
though she kept on the defensive, warned by past experience.
Wylie's love-making had a droll feature about it; it was most of it
carried on in the presence of three washerwomen, because Nancy had no
time to spare from her work, and Wylie had no time to lose in his wooing,
being on shore for a limited period. And this absence of superfluous
delicacy on his part gave him an unfair advantage over the
tallow-chandler's foreman, his only rival at present. Many a sly thrust,
and many a hearty laugh, from his female auditors, greeted his amorous
eloquence. But, for all that, they sided with him, and Nancy felt her
importance, and brightened along with her mates at the sailor's approach,
which was generally announced by a cheerful hail. He was good company, to
use Nancy's own phrase, and she accepted him as a sweetheart on
probation. But, when Mr. Wylie urged her to marry him, she demurred, and
gave a string of reasons, all of which the sailor and his allies, the
subordinate washerwomen, combated in full conclave.
Then she spoke out: "My lad, the washtub is a saddle as won't carry
double. I've seen poverty enough in my mother's house; it shan't come in
at my door to drive love out o' window. Two comes together with just
enough for two; next year instead of two they are three, and one of the
three can't work and wants a servant extra, and by and by there is half a
dozen, and the money coming in at the spigot and going out at the
bung-hole."
One day, in the middle of his wooing, she laid down her iron, and said:
"You come along with me. And I wonder how much work will be done while my
back is turned, for you three gabbling and wondering what ever I'm a
going to do with this here sailor."
She took Wylie a few yards down the street, and showed him a large house
with most of the windows broken. "There," said she, "there's a sight for
a seafaring man. That's in Chancery."
"Well, it's better to be there than in H--," said Wylie, meaning to be
sharper.
"Wait till you've tried 'em both," said Nancy.
Then she took him to the back of the house, and showed him a large garden
attached to it.
"Now, Joseph," said she, "I've showed you a lodging-house and a
drying-ground; and I'm a cook and a clear-starcher, and I'm wild to keep
lodgers and do for 'em, washing and all. Then, if their foul linen goes
out, they follows it. The same if they has their meat from the cook-shop.
Four hundred pounds a year lies there a waiting for me. I've been at them
often to let me them premises. But they says no, we have got no horder
from the court to let. Which the court would rather see 'em go to rack
an' ruin for nothing, than let 'em to an honest woman as would pay the
rent punctual, and make her penny out of 'em, and nobody none the worse.
And to sell them, the price is two thousand pounds, and if I had it I'd
give it this minit. But where are the likes of you and me to get two
thousand pounds? But the lawyer he says, 'Miss Rouse, from _you_ one
thousand down, and the rest on mortgige at forty-five pounds the year,'
which it is dirt cheap, I say. So now, my man, when that house is mine,
I'm yours. I'm putting by for it o' my side. If you means all you say,
why not save a bit o' yours? Once I get that house and garden, you
needn't go to sea no more; nor you shan't. If I am to be bothered with a
man, let me know where to put my finger on him at all hours, and not lie
shivering and shaking at every window as creaks, and him out at sea. And
if you are too proud to drive the linen in a light cart, why, I could pay
a man." In short, she told him plainly she would not marry till she was
above the world; and the road to above the world was through that great
battered house and seedy garden in Chancery.
Now it may appear a strange coincidence that Nancy's price to Wylie was
two thousand pounds, and Wylie's to Wardlaw was two thousand pounds. But
the fact is it was a forced coincidence. Wylie, bargaining with Wardlaw,
stood out for two thousand pounds, because that was the price of the
house and garden and Nancy.
Now, when Wylie returned to England safe after his crime and his perils,
he comforted himself with the reflection that Nancy would have her house
and garden, and he should have Nancy.
But young Wardlaw lay on his sick bed; his father was about to return to
the office, and the gold disguised as copper was ordered up to the
cellars in Fenchurch Street. There, in all probability, the contents
would be examined ere long, the fraud exposed, and other unpleasant
consequences might follow over and above the loss of the promised 2,000
pounds.
Wylie felt very disconsolate, and went down to Nancy Rouse depressed in
spirits. To his surprise she received him with more affection than ever,
and, reading his face in a moment, told him not to fret.
"It will be so in your way of life," said this homely comforter; "your
sort comes home empty-handed one day, and money in both pockets the next.
I'm glad to see you home at all, for I've been in care about you. You're
very welcome, Joe. If you are come home honest and sober, why, that is
the next best thing to coming home rich."
Wylie hung his head and pondered these words; and well he might, for he
had not come home either so sober or so honest as he went out, but quite
as poor.
However, his elastic spirits soon revived in Nancy's sunshine, and he
became more in love with her than ever.
But when, presuming upon her affection, he urged her to marry him and
trust to Providence, she laughed in his face.
"Trust to himprovidence, you mean," said she; "no, no, Joseph. If you are
unlucky, I must be lucky, before you and me can come together."
Then Wylie resolved to have his 2,000 pounds at all risks. He had one
great advantage over a landsman who has committed a crime. He could
always go to sea and find employment, first in one ship, and then in
another. Terra firma was not one of the necessaries of life to him.
He came to Wardlaw's office to feel his way, and talked guardedly to
Michael Penfold about the loss of the _Proserpine._ His apparent object
was to give information; his real object was to gather it. He learned
that old Wardlaw was very much occupied with fitting out a steamer; that
the forty chests of copper had actually come up from the _Shannon_ and
were under their feet at that moment, and that young Wardlaw was
desperately ill and never came to the office. Michael had not at that
time learned the true cause of young Wardlaw's illness. Yet Wylie
detected that young Wardlaw's continued absence from the office gave
Michael singular uneasiness. The old man fidgeted, and washed the air
with his hands, and with simple cunning urged Wylie to go and see him
about the _Proserpine,_ and get him to the office, if it was only for an
hour or two. "Tell him we are all at sixes and sevens, Mr. Wylie; all at
sixes and sevens."
"Well," said Wylie, affecting a desire to oblige, "give me a line to him;
for I've been twice, and could never get in."
Michael wrote an earnest line to say that Wardlaw senior had been
hitherto much occupied in fitting out the _Springbok,_ but that he was
going into the books next week. What was to be done?
The note was received; but Arthur declined to see the bearer. Then Wylie
told the servant it was Joseph Wylie, on a matter of life and death.
"Tell him I must stand on the staircase and hallo it out, if he won't
hear it any other way."
This threat obtained his admission to Arthur Wardlaw. The sailor found
him on a sofa, in a darkened room, pale and worn to a shadow.
"Mr. Wardlaw," said Wylie, firmly, "you mustn't think I don't feel for
you; but, sir, we are gone too far to stop, you and me. There is two
sides to this business; it is 150,000 pounds for you, and 2,000 pounds
for me, or it is--"
"What do I care for money now?" groaned Wardlaw. "Let it all go to the
Devil, who tempted me to destroy her I loved better than money, better
than all the world."
"Well, but hear me out," said Wylie. "I say it is 150,000 pounds to you
and 2,000 pounds to me, or else it is twenty years' penal servitude to
both on us."
"Penal servitude!" And the words roused the merchant from his lethargy
like a shower-bath.
"You know that well enough," said Wylie. "Why, 'twas a hanging matter a
few years ago. Come, come, there are no two ways; you must be a man, or
we are undone."
Fear prevailed in that timorous breast, which even love of money had
failed to rouse. Wardlaw sat up, staring wildly, and asked Wylie what he
was to do.
"First, let me ring for a bottle of that old brandy of yours."
The brandy was got. Wylie induced him to drink a wine-glassful neat, and
then to sit at the table and examine the sailors' declaration and the
logs. "I'm no great scholard," said he. "I warn't a going to lay these
before the underwriters till you had overhauled them. There, take another
drop now--'twill do you good--while I draw up this thundering blind."
Thus encouraged and urged, the broken-hearted schemer languidly compared
the seamen's declaration with the logs; and, even in his feeble state of
mind and body, made an awkward discovery at once.
"Why, they don't correspond!" said he.
"What don't correspond?"
"Your men's statement and the ship's log. The men speak of one heavy gale
after another, in January, and the pumps going; but the log says, 'A puff
of wind from the N.E.' And, here again, the entry exposes your
exaggeration. One branch of our evidence contradicts the other; this
comes of trying to prove too much. You must say the log was lost, went
down with the ship."
"How can I?" cried Wylie. "I have told too many I had got it safe at
home."
"Why did you say that? What madness!"
"Why were you away from your office at such a time? How can I know
everything and do everything? I counted on you for the head-work ashore.
Can't ye think of any way to square the log to that part of our tale?
might paste in a leaf or two, eh?"
"That would be discovered at once. You have committed an irremediable
error. What broad strokes this Hudson makes. He must have written with
the stump of a quill."
Wylie received this last observation with a look of contempt for the mind
that could put so trivial a question in so great an emergency.
"Are you quite sure poor Hudson is dead?" asked Wardlaw, in a low voice.
"Dead! Don't I tell you I saw him die!" said Wylie, trembling all of a
sudden.
He took a glass of brandy, and sent it flying down his throat.
"Leave the paper with me," said Arthur, languidly, "and tell Penfold I'll
crawl to the office to-morrow. You can meet me there; I shall see nobody
else."
Wylie called next day at the office, and was received by Penfold, who had
now learned the cause of Arthur's grief, and ushered the visitor in to
him with looks of benevolent concern. Arthur was seated like a lunatic,
pale and motionless; on the table before him was a roast fowl and a
salad, which he had forgotten to eat. His mind appeared to alternate
between love and fraud; for, as soon as he saw Wylie, he gave himself a
sort of shake and handed Wylie the log and the papers.
"Examine them; they agree better with each other now."
Wylie examined the log, and started with surprise and superstitious
terror. "Why, Hiram's ghost has been here at work!" said he. "It is his
very handwriting."
"Hush!" said Wardlaw; "not so loud. Will it do?"
"The writing will do first-rate; but any one can see this log has never
been to sea."
Inspired by the other's ingenuity, he then, after a moment's reflection,
emptied the salt-cellar into a plate, and poured a little water over it.
He wetted the leaves of the log with this salt water, and dog's-eared the
whole book.
Wardlaw sighed. "See what expedients we are driven to," said he. He then
took a little soot from the chimney, and mixed it with salad oil. He
applied some of this mixture to the parchment cover, rubbed it off, and
by such manipulation gave it a certain mellow look, as if it had been
used by working hands.
Wylie was armed with these materials, and furnished with money to keep
his sailors to their tale, in case of their being examined.
Arthur begged, in his present affliction, to be excused from going
personally into the matter of the _Proserpine;_ and said that Penfold had
the ship's log, and the declaration of the survivors, which the insurers
could inspect, previously to their being deposited at Lloyd's.
The whole thing wore an excellent face, and nobody found a peg to hang
suspicion on so far.
After this preliminary, and the deposit of the papers, nothing was
hurried; the merchant, absorbed in his grief, seemed to be forgetting to
ask for his money. Wylie remonstrated; but Arthur convinced him they were
still on too ticklish ground to show any hurry without exciting
suspicion.
And so passed two weary months, during which Wylie fell out of Nancy
Rouse's good graces, for idling about doing nothing.
"Be you a waiting for the plum to fall into your mouth, young man?" said
she.
The demand was made on the underwriters, and Arthur contrived that it
should come from his father. The firm was of excellent repute and had
paid hundreds of insurances, without a loss to the underwriters. The
_Proserpine_ had foundered at sea; several lives had been lost, and of
the survivors one had since died, owing to the hardships he had endured.
All this betokened a genuine calamity. Nevertheless, one ray of suspicion
rested on the case at first. The captain of the _Proserpine_ had lost a
great many ships; and, on the first announcement, one or two were
resolved to sift the matter on that ground alone. But when five
eye-witnesses, suppressing all mention of the word "drink," declared that
Captain Hudson had refused to leave the vessel, and described his going
down with the ship, from an obstinate and too exalted sense of duty,
every chink was closed; and, to cut the matter short, the insurance money
was paid to the last shilling, and Benson, one of the small underwriters,
ruined. Nancy Rouse, who worked for Mrs. Benson, lost eighteen shillings
and sixpence, and was dreadfully put out about it.
Wylie heard her lamentations, and grinned; for now his 2,000 pounds was
as good as in his pocket, he thought. Great was his consternation when
Arthur told him that every shilling of the money was forestalled, and
that the entire profit of the transaction was yet to come; viz., by the
sale of the gold dust.
"Then sell it," said Wylie.
"I dare not. The affair must cool down before I can appear as a seller of
gold; and even then I must dribble it out with great caution. Thank
Heaven, it is no longer in those cellars."
"Where is it, then?"
"That is my secret. You will get your two thousand all in good time; and,
if it makes you one-tenth part as wretched as it has made me, you will
thank me for all these delays."
At last Wylie lost all patience, and began to show his teeth; and then
Arthur Wardlaw paid him his two thousand pounds in forty crisp notes.
He crammed them into a side pocket, and went down triumphant to Nancy
Rouse. Through her parlor window he saw the benign countenance of Michael
Penfold. He then remembered that Penfold had told him some time before
that he was going to lodge with her as soon as the present lodger should
go.
This, however, rather interrupted Wylie's design of walking in and
chucking the two thousand pounds into Nancy's lap. On the contrary, he
shoved them deeper down in his pocket, and resolved to see the old
gentleman to bed, and then produce his pelf, and fix the wedding-day with
Nancy.
He came in and found her crying, and Penfold making weak efforts to
console her. The tea-things were on the table, and Nancy 's cup half
emptied.
Wylie came in, and said, "Why, what is the matter now?"
He said this mighty cheerfully, as one who carried the panacea for all
ills in his pocket, and a medicine peculiarly suited to Nancy Rouse's
constitution. But he had not quite fathomed her yet.
As soon as ever she saw him she wiped her eyes, and asked him, grimly,
what he wanted there. Wylie stared at the reception; but replied stoutly,
that it was pretty well known by this time what he wanted in that
quarter.
"Well, then," said Nancy, "Want will be your master. Why did you never
tell me Miss Helen was in that ship? my sweet, dear mistress as was, that
I feel for like a mother. You left her to drown, and saved your own great
useless carcass, and drowned she is, poor dear. Get out o' my sight, do."
"It wasn't my fault, Nancy," said Wylie, earnestly. "I didn't know who
she was, and I advised her to come with us; but she would go with that
parson chap."
"What parson chap? What a liar you be! She is Wardlaw's sweetheart, and
don't care for no parsons. If you didn't know you was to blame, why
didn't you tell me a word of your own accord? You kep' dark. Do you call
yourself a man, to leave my poor young lady to shift for herself?"
"She had as good a chance to live as I had," said Wylie, sullenly.
"No, she hadn't; you took care o' yourself. Well, since you are so fond
of yourself, keep yourself _to_ yourself, and don't come here no more.
After this, I hate the sight on ye. You are like the black dog in my
eyes, and always will be. Poor, dear Miss Helen! Ah, I cried when she
left--my mind misgave me; but little I thought she would perish in the
salt seas, and all for want of a man in the ship. If you had gone out
again after in the steamboat--Mr. Penfold have told me all about it--I'd
believe you weren't so much to blame. But no; lolloping and looking about
all day for months. There's my door, Joe Wylie; I can't cry comfortable
before you as had a hand in drowning of her. You and me is parted
forever. I'll die as I am, or I'll marry a _man;_ which you ain't one,
nor nothing like one. Is he waiting for you to hold the door open, Mr.
Penfold? or don't I speak plain enough? Them as I gave the sack to afore
you didn't want so much telling."
"Well, I'm going," said Wylie, sullenly. Then, with considerable feeling,
"This is hard lines."
But Nancy was inexorable, and turned him out, with the 2,000 pounds in
his pocket.
He took the notes out of his pocket, and flung them furiously down in the
dirt.
Then he did what everybody does under similar circumstances, he picked
them up again, and pocketed them, along with the other dirt they had
gathered.
Next day he went down to the docks and looked out for a ship; he soon got
one, and signed as second mate. She was to sail in a fortnight.
But, before a week was out, the banknotes had told so upon him that he
was no longer game to go to sea. But the captain he had signed with was a
Tartar, and not to be trifled with. He consulted a knowing friend, and
that friend advised him to disguise himself till the ship had sailed.
Accordingly he rigged himself out with a long coat, and a beard, and
spectacles, and hid his sea-slouch as well as he could, and changed his
lodgings. Finding he succeeded so well, he thought he might as well have
the pleasure of looking at Nancy Rouse, if he could not talk to her. So
he actually had the hardihood to take the parlor next door; and by this
means he heard her move about in her room, and caught a sight of her at
work on her little green; and he was shrewd enough to observe she did not
sing and whistle as she used to do. The dog chuckled at that. His
bank-notes worried him night and day. He was afraid to put them in a
bank; afraid to take them about with him into his haunts; afraid to leave
them at home; and out of this his perplexity arose some incidents worth
relating in their proper order.
Arthur Wardlaw returned to business; but he was a changed man. All zest
in the thing was gone. His fraud set him above the world; and that was
now enough for him, in whom ambition was dead, and, indeed, nothing left
alive in him but deep regrets.
He drew in the horns of speculation, and went on in the old safe routine;
and to the restless activity that had jeopardized the firm succeeded a
strange torpidity. He wore black for Helen, and sorrowed without hope. He
felt he had offended Heaven, and had met his punishment in Helen's death.
Wardlaw senior retired to Elmtrees, and seldom saw his son. When they did
meet, the old man sometimes whispered hope, but the whisper was faint and
unheeded.
One day Wardlaw senior came up express, to communicate to Arthur a letter
from General Rolleston, written at Valparaiso. In this letter, General
Rolleston deplored his unsuccessful search; but said he was going
westward, upon the report of a Dutch whaler, who had seen an island
reflected in the sky, while sailing between Juan Fernandez and Norfolk
Isle.
Arthur only shook his head with a ghastly smile. "She is in heaven," said
he, "and I shall never see her again, not here or hereafter."
Wardlaw senior was shocked at this speech; but he made no reply. He
pitied his son too much to criticise the expressions into which his
bitter grief betrayed him. He was old, and had seen the triumphs of time
over all things human, sorrow included. These, however, as yet, had done
nothing for Arthur Wardlaw. At the end of six months, his grief was as
somber and as deadly as the first week.
But one day, as this pale figure in deep mourning sat at his table, going
listlessly and mechanically through the business of scraping money
together for others to enjoy, whose hearts, unlike his, might not be in
the grave, his father burst in upon him, with a telegram in his hand, and
waved it over his head in triumph.
"She is found! she is found!" he roared. "Read that!" and thrust the
telegram into his hands.
Those hands trembled, and the languid voice rose into shrieks of
astonishment and delight, as Arthur read the words, "We have got her,
alive and well. Shall be at Charing Cross Hotel, 8 P. M."