THE REMITTANCE MAN
Singleton Carthew, the father of Norris, was heavily built and feebly
vitalised, sensitive as a musician, dull as a sheep, and conscientious
as a dog. He took his position with seriousness, even with pomp; the
long rooms, the silent servants, seemed in his eyes like the observances
of some religion of which he was the mortal god. He had the stupid man's
intolerance of stupidity in others; the vain man's exquisite alarm lest
it should be detected in himself. And on both sides Norris irritated and
offended him. He thought his son a fool, and he suspected that his son
returned the compliment with interest. The history of their relation was
simple; they met seldom, they quarrelled often. To his mother, a fiery,
pungent, practical woman, already disappointed in her husband and her
elder son, Norris was only a fresh disappointment.
Yet the lad's faults were no great matter; he was diffident, placable,
passive, unambitious, unenterprising; life did not much attract him; he
watched it like a curious and dull exhibition, not much amused, and not
tempted in the least to take a part. He beheld his father ponderously
grinding sand, his mother fierily breaking butterflies, his brother
labouring at the pleasures of the Hawbuck with the ardour of a soldier
in a doubtful battle; and the vital sceptic looked on wondering. They
were careful and troubled about many things; for him there seemed not
even one thing needful. He was born disenchanted, the world's promises
awoke no echo in his bosom, the world's activities and the world's
distinctions seemed to him equally without a base in fact. He liked the
open air; he liked comradeship, it mattered not with whom, his comrades
were only a remedy for solitude. And he had a taste for painted art. An
array of fine pictures looked upon his childhood, and from these roods
of jewelled canvas he received an indelible impression. The gallery at
Stallbridge betokened generations of picture-lovers; Norris was perhaps
the first of his race to hold the pencil. The taste was genuine, it grew
and strengthened with his growth; and yet he suffered it to be
suppressed with scarce a struggle. Time came for him to go to Oxford,
and he resisted faintly. He was stupid, he said; it was no good to put
him through the mill; he wished to be a painter. The words fell on his
father like a thunderbolt, and Norris made haste to give way. "It didn't
really matter, don't you know?" said he. "And it seemed an awful shame
to vex the old boy."
To Oxford he went obediently, hopelessly; and at Oxford became the hero
of a certain circle. He was active and adroit; when he was in the
humour, he excelled in many sports; and his singular melancholy
detachment gave him a place apart. He set a fashion in his clique.
Envious undergraduates sought to parody his unaffected lack of zeal and
fear; it was a kind of new Byronism more composed and dignified.
"Nothing really mattered"; among other things this formula embraced the
dons; and though he always meant to be civil, the effect on the college
authorities was one of startling rudeness. His indifference cut like
insolence; and in some outbreak of his constitutional levity (the
complement of his melancholy) he was "sent down" in the middle of the
second year.
The event was new in the annals of the Carthews, and Singleton was
prepared to make the most of it. It had been long his practice to
prophesy for his second son a career of ruin and disgrace. There is an
advantage in this artless parental habit. Doubtless the father is
interested in his son; but doubtless also the prophet grows to be
interested in his prophecies. If the one goes wrong, the others come
true. Old Carthew drew from this source esoteric consolations; he dwelt
at length on his own foresight; he produced variations hitherto unheard
from the old theme "I told you so," coupled his son's name with the
gallows and the hulks, and spoke of his small handful of college debts
as though he must raise money on a mortgage to discharge them.
"I don't think that is fair, sir," said Norris; "I lived at college
exactly as you told me. I am sorry I was sent down, and you have a
perfect right to blame me for that; but you have no right to pitch into
me about these debts."
The effect upon a stupid man not unjustly incensed need scarcely be
described. For a while Singleton raved.
"I'll tell you what, father," said Norris at last, "I don't think this
is going to do. I think you had better let me take to painting. It's the
only thing I take a spark of interest in. I shall never be steady as
long as I'm at anything else."
"When you stand here, sir, to the neck in disgrace," said the father, "I
should have hoped you would have had more good taste than to repeat this
levity."
The hint was taken; the levity was never more obtruded on the father's
notice, and Norris was inexorably launched upon a backward voyage. He
went abroad to study foreign languages, which he learned, at a very
expensive rate; and a fresh crop of debts fell soon to be paid, with
similar lamentations, which were in this case perfectly justified, and
to which Norris paid no regard. He had been unfairly treated over the
Oxford affair; and with a spice of malice very surprising in one so
placable, and an obstinacy remarkable in one so weak, refused from that
day forward to exercise the least captaincy on his expenses. He wasted
what he would; he allowed his servants to despoil him at their
pleasure; he sowed insolvency; and, when the crop was ripe, notified his
father with exasperating calm. His own capital was put in his hands, he
was planted in the diplomatic service, and told he must depend upon
himself.
He did so till he was twenty-five, by which time he had spent his money,
laid in a handsome choice of debts and acquired (like so many other
melancholic and uninterested persons) a habit of gambling. An Austrian
colonel--the same who afterwards hanged himself at Monte Carlo--gave him
a lesson which lasted two-and-twenty hours, and left him wrecked and
helpless. Old Singleton once more repurchased the honour of his name,
this time at a fancy figure; and Norris was set afloat again on stern
conditions. An allowance of three hundred pounds in the year was to be
paid to him quarterly by a lawyer in Sydney, New South Wales. He was not
to write. Should he fail on any quarter-day to be in Sydney, he was to
be held for dead, and the allowance tacitly withdrawn. Should he return
to Europe, an advertisement publicly disowning him was to appear in
every paper of repute.
It was one of his most annoying features as a son that he was always
polite, always just, and in whatever whirlwind of domestic anger always
calm. He expected trouble; when trouble came he was unmoved; he might
have said with Singleton, "_I told you so_": he was content with
thinking, "_Just as I expected_." On the fall of these last thunderbolts
he bore himself like a person only distantly interested in the event,
pocketed the money and the reproaches, obeyed orders punctually; took
ship and came to Sydney. Some men are still lads at twenty-five; and so
it was with Norris. Eighteen days after he landed his quarter's
allowance was all gone, and with the light-hearted hopefulness of
strangers in what is called a new country he began to besiege offices
and apply for all manner of incongruous situations. Everywhere, and last
of all from his lodgings, he was bowed out; and found himself reduced,
in a very elegant suit of summer tweeds, to herd and camp with the
degraded outcasts of the city.
In this strait he had recourse to the lawyer who paid him his allowance.
"Try to remember that my time is valuable, Mr. Carthew," said the
lawyer. "It is quite unnecessary you should enlarge on the peculiar
position in which you stand. _Remittance men_, as we call them here, are
not so rare in my experience; and in such cases I act upon a system. I
make you a present of a sovereign--here it is. Every day you choose to
call my clerk will advance you a shilling; on Saturday, since my office
is closed on Sunday, he will advance you half-a-crown. My conditions are
these. That you do not come to me, but to my clerk, that you do not come
here the worse of liquor; and you go away the moment you are paid and
have signed a receipt.--I wish you a good morning."
"I have to thank you, I suppose," said Carthew. "My position is so
wretched that I cannot even refuse this starvation allowance."
"Starvation!" said the lawyer, smiling. "No man will starve here on a
shilling a day. I had on my hands another young gentleman who remained
continuously intoxicated for six years on the same allowance." And he
once more busied himself with his papers.
In the time that followed, the image of the smiling lawyer haunted
Carthew's memory. "That three minutes' talk was all the education I ever
had worth talking of," says he. "It was all life in a nutshell. Confound
it," I thought, "have I got to the point of envying that ancient
fossil?"
Every morning for the next two or three weeks the stroke of ten found
Norris, unkempt and haggard, at the lawyer's door. The long day and
longer night he spent in the Domain, now on a bench, now on the grass
under a Norfolk Island pine, the companion of perhaps the lowest class
on earth, the Larrikins of Sydney. Morning after morning, the dawn behind
the lighthouse recalled him from slumber; and he would stand and gaze
upon the changing east, the fading lenses, the smokeless city, and the
many-armed and many-masted harbour growing slowly clear under his eyes.
His bed-fellows (so to call them) were less active; they lay sprawled
upon the grass and benches, the dingy men, the frowsy women, prolonging
their late repose; and Carthew wandered among the sleeping bodies alone,
and cursed the incurable stupidity of his behaviour. Day brought a new
society of nurserymaids and children, and fresh-dressed and (I am sorry
to say) tight-laced maidens, and gay people in rich traps; upon the
skirts of which Carthew and "the other black-guards"--his own bitter
phrase--skulked, and chewed grass, and looked on. Day passed, the light
died, the green and leafy precinct sparkled with lamps or lay in shadow,
and the round of the night began again--the loitering women, the lurking
men, the sudden outburst of screams, the sound of flying feet. "You
mayn't believe it," says Carthew, "but I got to that pitch that I didn't
care a hang. I have been wakened out of my sleep to hear a woman
screaming, and I have only turned upon my other side. Yes, it's a queer
place, where the dowagers and the kids walk all day, and at night you can
hear people bawling for help as if it was the Forest of Bondy, with the
lights of a great town all round, and parties spinning through in cabs
from Government House and dinner with my lord!"
It was Norris's diversion, having none other, to scrape acquaintance,
where, how, and with whom he could. Many a long, dull talk he held upon
the benches or the grass; many a strange waif he came to know; many
strange things he heard, and saw some that were abominable. It was to
one of these last that he owed his deliverance from the Domain. For some
time the rain had been merciless; one night after another he had been
obliged to squander fourpence on a bed and reduce his board to the
remaining eightpence: and he sat one morning near the Macquarrie Street
entrance, hungry, for he had gone without breakfast, and wet, as he had
already been for several days, when the cries of an animal in distress
attracted his attention. Some fifty yards away, in the extreme angle of
the grass, a party of the chronically unemployed had got hold of a dog,
whom they were torturing in a manner not to be described. The heart of
Norris, which had grown indifferent to the cries of human anger or
distress, woke at the appeal of the dumb creature. He ran amongst the
Larrikins, scattered them, rescued the dog, and stood at bay. They were
six in number, shambling gallows-birds; but for once the proverb was
right, cruelty was coupled with cowardice, and the wretches cursed him
and made off. It chanced that this act of prowess had not passed
unwitnessed. On a bench near by there was seated a shopkeeper's
assistant out of employ, a diminutive, cheerful, red-headed creature by
the name of Hemstead. He was the last man to have interfered himself,
for his discretion more than equalled his valour: but he made haste to
congratulate Carthew, and to warn him that he might not always be so
fortunate.
"They're a dyngerous lot of people about this park. My word! it doesn't
do to ply with them!" he observed, in that _rycy Austrylian_ English,
which (as it has received the imprimatur of Mr. Froude) we should all
make haste to imitate.
"Why, I'm one of that lot myself," returned Carthew.
Hemstead laughed, and remarked that he knew a gentleman when he saw one.
"For all that, I am simply one of the unemployed," said Carthew, seating
himself beside his new acquaintance, as he had sat (since this
experience began) beside so many dozen others.
"I'm out of a plyce myself," said Hemstead.
"You beat me all the way and back," says Carthew. "My trouble is that I
have never been in one."
"I suppose you've no tryde?" asked Hemstead.
"I know how to spend money," replied Carthew, "and I really do know
something of horses and something of the sea. But the unions head me
off; if it weren't for them, I might have had a dozen berths."
"My word!" cried the sympathetic listener. "Ever try the mounted
police?" he inquired.
"I did, and was bowled out," was the reply; "couldn't pass the doctors."
"Well, what do _you_ think of the ryleways, then?" asked Hemstead.
"What do _you_ think of them, if you come to that?" asked Carthew.
"O, _I_ don't think of them; I don't go in for manual labour," said the
little man proudly. "But if a man don't mind that, he's pretty sure of a
job there."
"By George, you tell me where to go!" cried Carthew rising.
The heavy rains continued, the country was already overrun with floods;
the railway system daily required more hands, daily the superintendent
advertised; but "the unemployed" preferred the resources of charity and
rapine, and a navvy, even an amateur navvy, commanded money in the
market. The same night, after a tedious journey, and a change of trains
to pass a landslip, Norris found himself in a muddy cutting behind South
Clifton, attacking his first shift of manual labour.
For weeks the rain scarce relented. The whole front of the mountain
slipped seaward from above, avalanches of clay, rock, and uprooted
forest spewed over the cliffs and fell upon the beach or in the
breakers. Houses were carried bodily away and smashed like nuts; others
were menaced and deserted, the door locked, the chimney cold, the
dwellers fled elsewhere for safety. Night and day the fire blazed in the
encampment; night and day hot coffee was served to the overdriven
toilers in the shift; night and day the engineer of the section made his
rounds with words of encouragement, hearty and rough and well suited to
his men. Night and day, too, the telegraph clicked with disastrous news
and anxious inquiry. Along the terraced line of rail, rare trains came
creeping and signalling; and paused at the threatened corner, like
living things conscious of peril. The commandant of the post would
hastily review his labours, make (with a dry throat) the signal to
advance; and the whole squad line the way and look on in a choking
silence, or burst into a brief cheer as the train cleared the point of
danger and shot on, perhaps through the thin sunshine between squalls,
perhaps with blinking lamps into the gathering rainy twilight.
One such scene Carthew will remember till he dies. It blew great guns
from the seaward; a huge surf bombarded, five hundred feet below him,
the steep mountain's foot; close in was a vessel in distress, firing
shots from a fowling-piece, if any help might come. So he saw and heard
her the moment before the train appeared and paused, throwing up a
Babylonian tower of smoke into the rain and oppressing men's hearts with
the scream of her whistle. The engineer was there himself; he paled as
he made the signal: the engine came at a foot's pace; but the whole bulk
of mountain shook and seemed to nod seaward, and the watching navvies
instinctively clutched at shrubs and trees: vain precautions, vain as
the shots from the poor sailors. Once again fear was disappointed; the
train passed unscathed; and Norris, drawing a long breath, remembered
the labouring ship, and glanced below. She was gone.
So the days and the nights passed: Homeric labour in Homeric
circumstance. Carthew was sick with sleeplessness and coffee; his hands,
softened by the wet, were cut to ribbons; yet he enjoyed a peace of mind
and health of body hitherto unknown. Plenty of open air, plenty of
physical exertion, a continual instancy of toil--here was what had been
hitherto lacking in that misdirected life, and the true cure of vital
scepticism. To get the train through, there was the recurrent problem:
no time remained to ask if it were necessary. Carthew, the idler, the
spendthrift, the drifting dilettante, was soon remarked, praised, and
advanced. The engineer swore by him and pointed him out for an example.
"I've a new chum, up here," Norris heard him saying, "a young swell.
He's worth any two in the squad." The words fell on the ears of the
discarded son like music; and from that moment he not only found an
interest, he took a pride, in his plebeian tasks.
The press of work was still at its highest when quarter-day approached.
Norris was now raised to a position of some trust; at his discretion,
trains were stopped or forwarded at the dangerous cornice near North
Clifton; and he found in this responsibility both terror and delight.
The thought of the seventy-five pounds that would soon await him at the
lawyer's, and of his own obligation to be present every quarter-day in
Sydney, filled him for a little with divided councils. Then he made up
his mind, walked in a slack moment to the inn at Clifton, ordered a
sheet of paper and a bottle of beer, and wrote, explaining that he held
a good appointment which he would lose if he came to Sydney, and asking
the lawyer to accept this letter as an evidence of his presence in the
colony, and retain the money till next quarter-day. The answer came in
course of post, and was not merely favourable but cordial. "Although
what you propose is contrary to the terms of my instructions," it ran,
"I willingly accept the responsibility of granting your request. I
should say I am agreeably disappointed in your behaviour. My experience
has not led me to found much expectations on gentlemen in your
position."
The rains abated, and the temporary labour was discharged; not Norris,
to whom the engineer clung as to found money; not Norris, who found
himself a ganger on the line in the regular staff of navvies. His camp
was pitched in a grey wilderness of rock and forest, far from any house;
as he sat with his mates about the evening fire, the trains passing on
the track were their next, and indeed their only, neighbours, except the
wild things of the wood. Lovely weather, light and monotonous
employment, long hours of somnolent camp-fire talk, long sleepless
nights, when he reviewed his foolish and fruitless career as he rose and
walked in the moonlit forest, an occasional paper of which he would read
all, the advertisements with as much relish as the text; such was the
tenor of an existence which soon began to weary and harass him. He
lacked and regretted the fatigue, the furious hurry, the suspense, the
fires, the midnight coffee, the rude and mud-bespattered poetry of the
first toilful weeks. In the quietness of his new surroundings a voice
summoned him from this exorbital part of life, and about the middle of
October he threw up his situation and bade farewell to the camp of tents
and the shoulder of Bald Mountain.
Clad in his rough clothes, with a bundle on his shoulder and his
accumulated wages in his pocket, he entered Sydney for the second time,
and walked with pleasure and some bewilderment in the cheerful streets,
like a man landed from a voyage. The sight of the people led him on. He
forgot his necessary errands, he forgot to eat. He wandered in moving
multitudes like a stick upon a river. Last he came to the Domain and
strolled there, and remembered his shame and sufferings, and looked with
poignant curiosity at his successors. Hemstead, not much shabbier and no
less cheerful than before, he recognised and addressed like an old
family friend.
"That was a good turn you did me," said he. "That railway was the making
of me. I hope you've had luck yourself."
"My word, no!" replied the little man. "I just sit here and read the
_Dead Bird_. It's the depression in tryde, you see. There's no positions
goin' that a man like me would care to look at." And he showed Norris
his certificates and written characters, one from a grocer in
Wooloomooloo, one from an ironmonger, and a third from a billiard
saloon. "Yes," he said, "I tried bein' a billiard-marker. It's no
account; these lyte hours are no use for a man's health. I won't be no
man's slyve," he added firmly.
On the principle that he who is too proud to be a slave is usually not
too modest to become a pensioner, Carthew gave him half a sovereign and
departed, being suddenly struck with hunger, in the direction of the
Paris House. When he came to that quarter of the city, the barristers
were trotting in the streets in wig and gown, and he stood to observe
them with his bundle on his shoulder, and his mind full of curious
recollections of the past.
"By George!" cried a voice, "it's Mr. Carthew!"
And turning about he found himself face to face with a handsome sunburnt
youth, somewhat fatted, arrayed in the finest of fine raiment, and
sporting about a sovereign's worth of flowers in his button-hole. Norris
had met him during his first days in Sydney at a farewell supper; had
even escorted him on board a schooner full of cockroaches and black-boy
sailors, in which he was bound for six months among the islands; and had
kept him ever since in entertained remembrance. Tom Hadden (known to the
bulk of Sydney folk as _Tommy_) was heir to a considerable property,
which a prophetic father had placed in the hands of rigorous trustees.
The income supported Mr. Hadden in splendour for about three months out
of twelve; the rest of the year he passed in retreat among the islands.
He was now about a week returned from his eclipse, pervading Sydney in
hansom cabs and airing the first bloom of six new suits of clothes; and
yet the unaffected creature hailed Carthew in his working jeans and
with the damning bundle on his shoulder, as he might have claimed
acquaintance with a duke.
"Come and have a drink?" was his cheerful cry.
"I'm just going to have lunch at the Paris House," returned Carthew.
"It's a long time since I have had a decent meal."
"Splendid scheme!" said Hadden. "I've only had breakfast half an hour
ago; but we'll have a private room, and I'll manage to pick something.
It'll brace me up. I was on an awful tear last night, and I've met no
end of fellows this morning." To meet a fellow, and to stand and share a
drink, were with Tom synonymous terms.
They were soon at table in the corner room upstairs, and paying due
attention to the best fare in Sydney. The odd similarity of their
positions drew them together, and they began soon to exchange
confidences. Carthew related his privations in the Domain, and his toils
as a navvy; Hadden gave his experience as an amateur copra merchant in
the South Seas, and drew a humorous picture of life in a coral island.
Of the two plans of retirement, Carthew gathered that his own had been
vastly the more lucrative; but Hadden's trading outfit had consisted
largely of bottled stout and brown sherry for his own consumption.
"I had champagne, too," said Hadden, "but I kept that in case of
sickness, until I didn't seem to be going to be sick, and then I opened
a pint every Sunday. Used to sleep all morning, then breakfast with my
pint of fizz, and lie in a hammock and read Hallam's 'Middle Ages.' Have
you read that? I always take something solid to the islands. There's no
doubt I did the thing in rather a fine style; but if it was gone about a
little cheaper, or there were two of us to bear the expense, it ought to
pay hand over fist. I've got the influence, you see. I'm a chief now,
and sit in the speak-house under my own strip of roof. I'd like to see
them taboo _me!_ They daren't try it; I've a strong party, I can tell
you. Why I've had upwards of thirty cowtops sitting in my front verandah
eating tins of salmon."
"Cowtops?" asked Carthew, "what are they?"
"That's what Hallam would call feudal retainers," explained Hadden, not
without vainglory. "They're My Followers. They belong to My Family. I
tell you, they come expensive, though; you can't fill up all these
retainers on tinned salmon for nothing; but whenever I could get it, I
would give 'em squid. Squid's good for natives, but I don't care for it,
do you?--or shark either. It's like the working classes at home. With
copra at the price it is, they ought to be willing to bear their share
of the loss; and so I've told them again and again. I think it's a man's
duty to open their minds, and I try to, but you can't get political
economy into them; it doesn't seem to reach their intelligence."
There was an expression still sticking in Carthew's memory, and he
returned upon it with a smile. "Talking of political economy," said he,
"you said if there were two of us to bear the expense, the profits would
increase. How do you make out that?"
"I'll show you! I'll figure it out for you!" cried Hadden, and with a
pencil on the back of the bill of fare proceeded to perform miracles. He
was a man, or let us rather say a lad, of unusual projective power. Give
him the faintest hint of any speculation, and the figures flowed from
him by the page. A lively imagination, and a ready, though inaccurate
memory, supplied his data; he delivered himself with an inimitable heat
that made him seem the picture of pugnacity; lavished contradiction had
a form of words, with or without significance, for every form of
criticism; and the looker-on alternately smiled at his simplicity and
fervour, or was amazed by his unexpected shrewdness. He was a kind of
Pinkerton in play. I have called Jim's the romance of business; this was
its Arabian tale.
"Have you any idea what this would cost?" he asked, pausing at an item.
"Not I," said Carthew.
"Ten pounds ought to be ample," concluded the projector.
"O, nonsense!" cried Carthew. "Fifty at the very least."
"You told me yourself this moment you knew nothing about it!" cried
Tommy. "How can I make a calculation if you blow hot and cold? You don't
seem able to be serious!"
But he consented to raise his estimate to twenty; and a little after,
the calculation coming out with a deficit, cut it down again to five
pounds ten, with the remark, "I told you it was nonsense. This sort of
thing has to be done strictly, or where's the use?"
Some of these processes struck Carthew as unsound; and he was at times
altogether thrown out by the capricious starlings of the prophet's mind.
These plunges seemed to be gone into for exercise and by the way, like
the curvets of a willing horse. Gradually the thing took shape; the
glittering if baseless edifice arose; and the hare still ran on the
mountains, but the soup was already served in silver plate. Carthew in a
few days could command a hundred and fifty pounds; Hadden was ready with
five hundred; why should they not recruit a fellow or two more, charter
an old ship, and go cruising on their own account? Carthew was an
experienced yachtsman; Hadden professed himself able to "work an
approximate sight." Money was undoubtedly to be made, or why should so
many vessels cruise about the islands? they who worked their own ship,
were sure of a still higher profit.
"And whatever else comes of it, you see," cried Hadden, "we get our keep
for nothing.--Come, buy some togs, that's the first thing you have to do
of course; and then we'll take a hansom and go to the 'Currency Lass.'"
"I'm going to stick to the togs I have," said Norris.
"Are you?" cried Hadden. "Well, I must say I admire you. You're a
regular sage. It's what you call Pythagoreanism, isn't it? if I haven't
forgotten my philosophy."
"Well, I call it economy," returned Carthew. "If we are going to try
this thing on, I shall want every sixpence."
"You'll see if we're going to try it!" cried Tommy, rising radiant from
table. "Only, mark you, Carthew, it must be all in your name. I have
capital, you see; but you're all right. You can play _vacuus viator_ if
the thing goes wrong."
"I thought we had just proved it was quite safe," said Carthew.
"There's nothing safe in business, my boy," replied the sage; "not even
bookmaking."
The public-house and tea-garden called the "Currency Lass" represented a
moderate fortune gained by its proprietor, Captain Bostock, during a
long, active, and occasionally historic career, among the islands.
Anywhere from Tonga to the Admiralty Isles, he knew the ropes and could
lie in the native dialect. He had seen the end of sandalwood, the end of
oil, and the beginning of copra; and he was himself a commercial
pioneer, the first that ever carried human teeth into the Gilberts. He
was tried for his life in Fiji in Sir Arthur Gordon's time; and if ever
he prayed at all, the name of Sir Arthur was certainly not forgotten. He
was speared in seven places in New Ireland--the same time his mate was
killed--the famous "outrage on the brig _Jolly Roger_"; but the
treacherous savages made little by their wickedness, and Bostock, in
spite of their teeth, got seventy-five head of volunteer labour on
board, of whom not more than a dozen died of injuries. He had a hand,
besides, in the amiable pleasantry which cost the life of Patteson; and
when the sham bishop landed, prayed, and gave his benediction to the
natives, Bostock, arrayed in a female chemise out of the trade-room, had
stood at his right hand and boomed amens. This, when he was sure he was
among good fellows, was his favourite yarn. "Two hundred head of labour
for a hatful of amens," he used to name the tale; and its sequel, the
death of the real bishop, struck him as a circumstance of extraordinary
humour.
Many of these details were communicated in the hansom, to the surprise
of Carthew.
"Why do we want to visit this old ruffian?" he asked.
"You wait till you hear him," replied Tommy. "That man knows
everything."
On descending from the hansom at the "Currency Lass," Hadden was struck
with the appearance of the cabman, a gross, salt-looking man, red-faced,
blue-eyed, short-handed and short-winded, perhaps nearing forty.
"Surely I know you?" said he. "Have you driven me before?"
"Many's the time, Mr. Hadden," returned the driver. "The last time you
was back from the islands it was me that drove you to the races, sir."
"All right: jump down and have a drink then," said Tom, and he turned
and led the way into the garden.
Captain Bostock met the party: he was a slow, sour old man, with fishy
eyes; greeted Tommy offhand, and (as was afterwards remembered)
exchanged winks with the driver.
"A bottle of beer for the cabman there at that table," said Tom.
"Whatever you please from shandy-gaff to champagne at this one here; and
you sit down with us. Let me make you acquainted with my friend Mr.
Carthew. I've come on business, Billy; I want to consult you as a
friend; I'm going into the island trade upon my own account."
Doubtless the captain was a mine of counsel, but opportunity was denied
him. He could not venture on a statement, he was scarce allowed to
finish a phrase, before Hadden swept him from the field with a volley of
protest and correction. That projector, his face blazing with
inspiration, first laid before him at inordinate length a question, and
as soon as he attempted to reply, leaped at his throat, called his facts
into question, derided his policy, and at times thundered on him from
the heights of moral indignation.
"I beg your pardon," he said once. "I am a gentleman, Mr. Carthew here
is a gentleman, and we don't mean to do that class of business. Can't
you see who you are talking to? Can't you talk sense? Can't you give us
'a dead bird' for a good traderoom?"
"No, I don't suppose I can," returned old Bostock; "not when I can't
hear my own voice for two seconds together. It was gin and guns I did it
with."
"Take your gin and guns to Putney," cried Hadden. "It was the thing in
your times, that's right enough; but you're old now, and the game's up.
I'll tell you what's wanted nowadays, Bill Bostock," said he; and did,
and took ten minutes to it.
Carthew could not refrain from smiling. He began to think less seriously
of the scheme, Hadden appearing too irresponsible a guide; but on the
other hand, he enjoyed himself amazingly. It was far from being the same
with Captain Bostock.
"You know a sight, don't you?" remarked that gentleman bitterly, when
Tommy paused.
"I know a sight more than you, if that's what you mean," retorted Tom.
"It stands to reason I do. You're not a man of any education; you've
been all your life at sea, or in the islands; you don't suppose you can
give points to a man like me."
"Here's your health, Tommy," returned Bostock. "You'll make an A1 bake
in the New Hebrides."
"That's what I call talking," cried Tom, not perhaps grasping the
spirit of this doubtful compliment. "Now you give me your attention. We
have the money and the enterprise, and I have the experience; what we
want is a cheap, smart boat, a good captain, and an introduction to some
house that will give us credit for the trade."
"Well, I'll tell you," said Captain Bostock. "I have seen men like you
baked and eaten, and complained of afterwards. Some was tough, and some
hadn't no flaviour," he added grimly.
"What do you mean by that?" cried Tom.
"I mean I don't care," cried Bostock. "It ain't any of my interests. I
haven't underwrote your life. Only I'm blest if I'm not sorry for the
cannibal as tries to eat your head. And what I recommend is a cheap,
smart coffin and a good undertaker. See if you can find a house to give
you credit for a coffin! Look at your friend there: _he's_ got some
sense; he's laughing at you so as he can't stand."
The exact degree of ill-feeling in Mr. Bostock's mind was difficult to
gauge; perhaps there was not much, perhaps he regarded his remarks as a
form of courtly badinage. But there is little doubt that Hadden resented
them. He had even risen from his place, and the conference was on the
point of breaking up when a new voice joined suddenly in the
conversation.
The cabman sat with his back turned upon the party, smoking a meerschaum
pipe. Not a word of Tommy's eloquence had missed him, and he now faced
suddenly about with these amazing words--
"Excuse me, gentlemen; if you'll buy me the ship I want, I'll get you
the trade on credit."
There was a pause.
"Well, what do _you_ mean?" gasped Tommy.
"Better tell 'em who I am, Billy," said the cabman.
"Think it safe, Joe?" inquired Mr. Bostock.
"I'll take my risk of it," returned the cabman.
"Gentlemen," said Bostock, rising suddenly, "let me make you acquainted
with Captain Wicks of the _Grace Darling_."
"Yes, gentlemen, that is what I am," said the cabman. "You know I've
been in trouble, and I don't deny but what I struck the blow, and where
was I to get evidence of my provocation? So I turned to and took a cab,
and I've driven one for three year now, and nobody the wiser."
"I beg your pardon," said Carthew, joining almost for the first time,
"I'm a new chum. What was the charge?"
"Murder," said Captain Wicks, "and I don't deny but what I struck the
blow. And there's no sense in my trying to deny I was afraid to go to
trial, or why would I be here? But it's a fact it was flat mutiny. Ask
Billy here. He knows how it was."
Carthew breathed long; he had a strange, half-pleasurable sense of
wading deeper in the tide of life. "Well," said he, "you were going on
to say?"
"I was going on to say this," said the captain sturdily. "I've overheard
what Mr. Hadden has been saying, and I think he talks good sense. I like
some of his ideas first chop. He's sound on traderooms; he's all there
on the traderoom, and I see that he and I would pull together. Then
you're both gentlemen, and I like that," observed Captain Wicks. "And
then I'll tell you I'm tired of this cabbing cruise, and I want to get
to work again. Now, here's my offer. I've a little money I can stake
up--all of a hundred, anyway. Then my old firm will give me trade, and
jump at the chance; they never lost by me; they know what I'm worth as
supercargo. And, last of all, you want a good captain to sail your ship
for you. Well, here I am. I've sailed schooners for ten years. Ask Billy
if I can handle a schooner."
"No man better," said Billy.
"And as for my character as a shipmate," concluded Wicks, "go and ask my
old firm."
"But, look here!" cried Hadden, "how do you mean to manage? You can
whisk round in a hansom and no questions asked; but if you try to come
on a quarter-deck, my boy, you'll get nabbed."
"I'll have to keep back till the last," replied Wicks, "and take another
name."
"But how about clearing? What other name?" asked Tommy, a little
bewildered.
"I don't know yet," returned the captain, with a grin. "I'll see what
the name is on my new certificate, and that'll be good enough for me. If
I can't get one to buy, though I never heard of such a thing, there's
old Kirkup, he's turned some sort of farmer down Bondi way; he'll hire
me his."
"You seemed to speak as if you had a ship in view," said Carthew.
"So I have too," said Captain Wicks, "and a beauty. Schooner yacht
_Dream_--got lines you never saw the beat of, and a witch to go. She
passed me once off Thursday Island, doing two knots to my one and lying
a point and a half better, and the _Grace Darling_ was a ship that I was
proud of. I took and tore my hair. The _Dream's_ been _my_ dream ever
since. That was in the old days, when she carried a blue ens'n. Grant
Sanderson was the party as owned her; he was rich and mad, and got a
fever at last somewhere about the Fly River and took and died. The
captain brought the body back to Sydney and paid off. Well, it turned
out Grant Sanderson had left any quantity of wills and any quantity of
widows, and no fellow could make out which was the genuine article. All
the widows brought lawsuits against all the rest, and every will had a
firm of lawyers on the quarter-deck as long as your arm. They tell me it
was one of the biggest turns-to that ever was seen, bar Tichborne; the
Lord Chamberlain himself was floored, and so was the Lord Chancellor,
and all that time the _Dream_ lay rotting up by Glebe Point. Well, it's
done now; they've picked out a widow and a will--tossed up for it, as
like as not--and the _Dream_'s for sale. She'll go cheap; she's had a
long turn-to at rotting."
"What size is she?"
"Well, big enough. We don't want her bigger. A hundred and ninety, going
two hundred," replied the captain. "She's fully big for us three; it
would be all the better if we had another hand, though it's a pity too,
when you can pick up natives for half nothing. Then we must have a cook.
I can fix raw sailor-men, but there's no going to sea with a new-chum
cook. I can lay hands on the man we want for that: a Highway boy, an old
shipmate of mine, of the name of Amalu. Cooks first-rate, and it's
always better to have a native; he ain't fly, you can turn him to as you
please, and he don't know enough to stand out for his rights."
From the moment that Captain Wicks joined in the conversation, Carthew
recovered interest and confidence; the man (whatever he might have done)
was plainly good-natured, and plainly capable; if he thought well of the
enterprise, offered to contribute money, brought experience, and could
thus solve at a word the problem of the trade, Carthew was content to go
ahead. As for Hadden, his cup was full; he and Bostock forgave each
other in champagne; toast followed toast; it was proposed and carried
amid acclamation to change the name of the schooner (when she should be
bought) to the _Currency Lass_; and the "Currency Lass Island Trading
Company" was practically founded before dusk.
Three days later, Carthew stood before the lawyer, still in his jean
suit, received his hundred and fifty pounds, and proceeded rather
timidly to ask for more indulgence.
"I have a chance to get on in the world," he said. "By to-morrow evening
I expect to be part owner of a ship."
"Dangerous property, Mr. Carthew," said the lawyer.
"Not if the partners work her themselves, and stand to go down along
with her," was the reply.
"I conceive it possible you might make something of it in that way,"
returned the other. "But are you a seaman? I thought you had been in the
diplomatic service."
"I am an old yachtsman," said Norris; "and I must do the best I can. A
fellow can't live in New South Wales upon diplomacy. But the point I
wish to prepare you for is this. It will be impossible I should present
myself here next quarter-day; we expect to make a six months' cruise of
it among the islands."
"Sorry, Mr. Carthew: I can't hear of that," replied the lawyer.
"I mean upon the same conditions as the last," said Carthew.
"The conditions are exactly opposite," said the lawyer. "Last time I had
reason to know you were in the colony, and even then I stretched a
point. This time, by your own confession, you are contemplating a breach
of the agreement; and I give you warning if you carry it out, and I
receive proof of it (for I will agree to regard this conversation as
confidential), I shall have no choice but to do my duty. Be here on
quarter-day, or your allowance ceases."
"This is very hard, and, I think, rather silly," returned Carthew.
"It is not of my doing. I have my instructions," said the lawyer.
"And you so read these instructions that I am to be prohibited from
making an honest livelihood?" asked Carthew.
"Let us be frank," said the lawyer; "I find nothing in these
instructions about an honest livelihood. I have no reason to suppose my
clients care anything about that. I have reason to suppose only one
thing--that they mean you shall stay in this colony, and to guess
another, Mr. Carthew. And to guess another."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Norris.
"I mean that I imagine, on very strong grounds, that your family desire
to see no more of you," said the lawyer. "O, they may be very wrong; but
that is the impression conveyed, that is what I suppose I am paid to
bring about, and I have no choice but to try and earn my hire."
"I would scorn to deceive you," said Norris, with a strong flush; "you
have guessed rightly. My family refuse to see me; but I am not going to
England, I am going to the islands. How does that affect the islands?"
"Ah, but I don't know that you are going to the islands," said the
lawyer, looking down, and spearing the blotting-paper with a pencil.
"I beg your pardon. I have the pleasure of informing you," said Norris.
"I am afraid, Mr. Carthew, that I cannot regard that communication as
official," was the slow reply.
"I am not accustomed to have my word doubted!" cried Norris.
"Hush! I allow no one to raise his voice in my office," said the lawyer.
"And for that matter--you seem to be a young gentleman of
sense--consider what I know of you. You are a discarded son; your family
pays money to be shut of you. What have you done? I don't know. But do
you not see how foolish I should be, if I exposed my business reputation
on the safeguard of the honour of a gentleman of whom I know just so
much and no more? This interview is very disagreeable. Why prolong it?
Write home, get my instructions changed, and I will change my behaviour.
Not otherwise."
"I am very fond of three hundred a year," said Norris, "but I cannot pay
the price required. I shall not have the pleasure of seeing you again."
"You must please yourself," said the lawyer. "Fail to be here next
quarter-day, and the thing stops. But I warn you, and I mean the warning
in a friendly spirit. Three months later you will be here begging, and
I shall have no choice but to show you in the street."
"I wish you a good-evening," said Norris.
"The same to you, Mr. Carthew," retorted the lawyer, and rang for his
clerk.
So it befell that Norris, during what remained to him of arduous days in
Sydney, saw not again the face of his legal adviser; and he was already
at sea, and land was out of sight, when Hadden brought him a Sydney
paper, over which he had been dozing in the shadow of the galley, and
showed him an advertisement:
"Mr. Norris Carthew is earnestly entreated to call without delay at the
office of Mr. ----, where important intelligence awaits him."
"It must manage to wait for me for six months," said Norris lightly
enough, but yet conscious of a pang of curiosity.