firm, trading from London to India, took him as midshipman. The ship was
called the _Bangalore_; a fine vessel of about fourteen hundred tons,
bound for some port out there. When Captain Sanker came back from
shipping him off, he was full of spirits, and said Dan was cured
already. No sooner was Dan amidst the bustle of London, than his fears
and fancies left him.
It was some time in the course of the next spring--getting on for
summer, I think--that Captain Sanker gave up his house in Worcester, and
went abroad, somewhere into Germany. Partly from motives of economy, for
they had no idea of saving, and somehow spent more than their income;
partly to see if change would get up Mrs. Sanker's health, which was
failing. After that, we heard nothing more of them: and a year or two
went on.
* * * * *
"Please, sir, here's a young man asking to see you."
"A young man asking to see me," cried the Squire--we were just finishing
dinner. "Who is it, Thomas?"
"I don't know, sir," replied old Thomas. "Some smart young fellow
dressed as a sailor. I've showed him into your room, sir."
"Go and see who it is, Johnny."
It was summer-time, and we were at home at Dyke Manor. I went on to the
little square room. You have been in it too. Opposite the Squire's old
bureau and underneath the map of Warwickshire on the wall, sat the
sailor. He had good blue clothes on and a turned-down white collar,
and held a straw hat in his hand. Where had I seen the face? A very
red-brown honest face, with a mouth as wide as Molly's rolling-pin.
Wider, now that it was smiling.
He stood up, and turned his straw hat about a little nervously. "You've
forgotten me, Master Johnny. Mark Ferrar, please, sir."
Mark Ferrar it was, looking shorter and broader; and I put out my hand
to him. I take my likes and dislikes, as you have already heard, and
can't help taking them; and Ferrar was one whom I had always liked.
"Please, sir, I've made bold to come over here," he went on. "Captain
Sanker's left Worcester, they tell me, and I can't hear where he is to
be found: and the Teals, they have left. I've brought news to him from
his son, Mr. Dan: and father said I had better come over here and tell
it, and maybe Squire Todhetley might get it sent to the captain."
"Have you seen anything of Mr. Dan, then?"
"I've been with him nearly all the time, Master Johnny. We served on the
same ship: he as middy and I as working apprentice. Not but what the
middies are apprenticed just as sure as we are. They don't do our rough
work, the cleaning and that, and they mess apart; but that's pretty nigh
all the difference."
"And how are you getting on, Mark?"
"First-rate, sir. The captain and officers are satisfied with me, and
when I've served my four years I shall go up to pass for second mate. I
try to improve myself a bit in general learning at odd moments too, sir,
seeing I didn't have much. It may be of use to me if I ever get up a bit
in life. Mr. Dan----"
"But look here, Ferrar," I interrupted, the recollection striking me.
"How came you and Mr. Dan to sail together? You were on a small
home-coasting barque: he went in an Indiaman."
"I was in the barque first of all, Master Johnny, and took a voyage to
Spain and back. But our owners, hearing a good report of me, that I was
likely to make a smart and steady sailor, put me on their big ship, the
_Bangalore_. In a day or two Mr. Dan Sanker came on board."
"And how is he getting on? Does he----"
"If you please, Master Johnny, I'd like to tell what I've got to tell
about him to the Squire," he interrupted. "It is for that, sir, I have
come all the way over here."
So I called the Squire in. The following was the condensed substance of
Ferrar's narrative. What with his way of telling it, and what with the
Squire's interruptions, it was rather long.
"Mr. Dan joined the _Bangalore_ the day we sailed, sir. When he saw
me as one of the sailors he started back as if I shocked him. But in
a week or two, when he had got round from his sea-sickness, he grew
friendly, and sometimes talked a bit. I used to bring up Master King's
death, and say how sorry I was for it--for you see, sir, I couldn't bear
that he should think it true that I had had a hand in it. But he seemed
to hate the subject; he'd walk away if I began it, and at last he said
he couldn't stand the talking about King; so I let it be. Our voyage was
a long one, for the ship went about from port to port. Mr. Dan----"
"What sort of a sailor did he make?" interrupted the Squire.
"Well, sir, he was a good smart sailor at his work, but he got to be
looked upon as rather a queer kind of young man. He couldn't bear to
keep his night watches--it was too lonely, he said; and several times he
fell into trouble for calling up the hands when there was nothing to
call them up for. At Hong Kong he had a fever, and they shaved his head;
but he got well again. One evening, after we had left Hong Kong and were
on our way to San Francisco, I was on deck--almost dark it was--when Mr.
Dan comes down the rigging all in a heap, just as if a wild-cat was
after him. 'There's King up there,' he says to me: and Mr. Conroy, do
what he would, couldn't get him up again. After that he went about the
ship peeping and peering, always fancying King was hiding somewhere and
going to pounce out upon him. The captain said his fever was coming
back: Mr. Dan said it was not fever, it was King. I told him one day
what I thought--that Master King had been flung down; that it was not an
accident--I felt as sure of it as though I had seen it done; and what I
said seemed to put him up, sir. Who did I fancy had done it, or would do
it? he asked me all in anger: and I said I did not know who, but if ever
I got back to Worcester I'd leave not a stone unturned to find out.
Well, sir, he got worse: worse in his fancies, and worse as to sickness.
He was seeing King always at night, and he had dysentery and ague, and
grew so weak that he could hardly stand. One of the cabin-boys took sick
and died on board. The night he lay below, dead, Mr. Dan burst into the
saloon saying it was King who was below, and that he'd never be got out
of the ship again. Mr. Conroy--he was the chief mate, sir--humoured him,
telling him not to fear, that if it was King he would be buried deep in
the sea on the morrow: but Mr. Dan said he'd not stop in the sea, any
more than he had stopped in his grave in St. Peter's churchyard at home;
he'd be back in the ship again."
"Dan Sanker must have been mad," observed the Squire.
"Yes, sir, I think he was; leastways not right. In a day or two he had
to be fastened down in his berth with brain-fever, and Mr. Conroy said
that as he had known me in the past days I had better be the one to sit
with him, for he couldn't be left. I was quite taken aback to hear what
he said in his mutterings, and hoped it wasn't true."
"Did he get well again?"
"Just for a day or two, sir. The fever left him, but he was in the
shockingest state of weakness you could imagine. The night before he
died----"
The Squire started up. "Dan Sanker's not dead, Ferrar!"
"Yes he is, sir. It's what I have come to tell of."
"Goodness bless me! Poor Dan dead! Only think of it, Johnny!"
But I was not surprised. From the moment Ferrar first spoke, an instinct
had been upon me that it was so. He resumed.
"Everything was done for him that could be, sir. We had a doctor on
board--a passenger going to California--but he could not save him. He
said when it came to such awful weakness as that, there could be no
saving. Mr. Conroy and the other officers were very kind to him--the
skipper too; but they could do nothing. All his fears seemed to be gone
then; we could hardly hear his whispers, but he was sensible and calm.
He said he knew God had forgave him for what he did, and would blot his
sin out, and King had forgave him too, and had come to tell him so: he
had been to him in the night and talked and smiled happily and said over
to him a verse of 'Lord Bateman'----"
"And you say he was in his senses, Ferrar?"
"Yes, sir, that he was. That night he made a confession, Mr. Conroy and
the doctor and me being by him. It was he that killed King."
"Bless my heart!" cried the Squire.
"He had seen me sitting with King that afternoon at Malvern, and heard
him saying the verses to me. It put his temper up frightful, sir, I
being one of their enemies the Frogs; but he says if he'd known it was
me that snatched King out of the fight on Saturday, he'd not have minded
so much. It must have been him that King saw coming, Master Johnny,"
added Ferrar, turning momentarily from the Squire to address me; "when
he broke off in the midst of 'Lord Bateman,' and told me, all in a
hurry, to go away. He waited till I was gone, and then rushed on to King
and began abusing him and knocking him about. King was unsteady through
his weak leg, and one of the knocks sent him over the bank. Dan says
he was frightened almost to death; he caught up Dr. Teal's green
handkercher from a chair and ran to the Well with it; he was too
frightened to go and see after King, thinking he had killed him; and he
sat down outside the Well and made as if he went to sleep. He never
meant to hurt King, he said; it was only passion; but he had drunk a lot
of strong ale and some wine upon it, and hardly knew what he was about.
He said there was never a minute since but what he had been sorry
for it, and he had been always seeing King. He asked me to show him
the verses that had been given to me, that King wrote out, 'Lord
Bateman'--for I had got them with me at sea, sir--and he kissed them
and held them to him till he died."
"Dear, dear!" sighed the Squire.
"And that's all, sir," concluded Ferrar. "Mr. Conroy wrote out a copy
of his confession, which I brought along with me to Worcester. Mr. Dan
charged me to tell his father, and my own folks, and any other friends I
liked that had thought me guilty, and I promised him. He was as placid
as a child all the day after that, and died at sundown, so happy and
peaceful that it was almost like heaven."
Ferrar broke off with a sob. Poor Dan!
And that was the final ending of the Day of Pleasure. He and King are
together again.
XII.
MARGARET RYMER.
They had gone through the snow to evening service at North Crabb, the
Squire, Mrs. Todhetley, and Tod, leaving me at home with one of my
splitting headaches. Thomas had come in to ask if I would have the lamp,
but I told him I would rather be without it. So there I sat on alone,
beside the fire, listening to Hannah putting the children to bed
upstairs, and looking sleepily out at the snowy landscape.
As the fire became dim, sending the room into gloom, the light outside
grew stronger. The moon was high; clear and bright as crystal; what with
that, and the perfectly white snow that lay on everything, the night
seemed nearly as light as day. The grass plat outside was a smooth white
plain, the clustering shrubs beyond it being also white.
I knew the fire wanted replenishing: I knew that if I sat on much
longer, I should fall asleep; but sit on I did, letting the fire go, too
listless to move. My eyes were fixed dreamily on the plain of snow, with
the still moonlight lying across it. The room grew darker, the landscape
lighter.
And asleep, in another minute, I should inevitably have been, but for a
circumstance that suddenly arose. All in a moment--I saw not how or
whence it came--a dark figure appeared on the grass plat, close before
the bank of shrubs, right in front of me; the figure of a man, wrapped
in a big great-coat. He was standing still and gazing fixedly at the
house. Gazing, as it seemed (though that was impossible) at _me_. I was
wide awake at once, and sitting bolt upright in the chair.
Yes, there could be no mistake; and it was no delusion. The man appeared
to be a tall man, strong and muscular, with a mass of hair on his face.
What could he want? Was it a robber reconnoitring the premises; peering
and peeping to ascertain whether all the world was at church, before he
broke in to rifle the house?
No one, void of such an experience, can imagine how dark he looked
standing there, amidst the whiteness of all the scene around. In one
sense, he stood out plainer than he could have done by daylight, because
the contrast was greater. But this sort of light did not show his
features, which were shrouded in obscurity.
Presently he moved. Looking to right and left, he took a step forward.
Evidently he was trying to see whether the parlour where I sat was empty
or occupied. Should I go out to him? Or should I fling up the window and
ask what he wanted? I was not frightened: don't let any one think that:
but watching him brought rather a creepy kind of sensation.
And, just then, as I left the chair quietly to open the window, I heard
the catch of the garden-gate, and some one came whistling up the path.
The man vanished as if by magic. Whilst I looked, he was gone. It seemed
to me that I did not take my eyes off him; but where he went to, or what
became of him, I knew not.
"Anybody at home?" called out Tom Coney, as he broke off his whistling
and opened the hall-door.
"All right, Tom. Come along."
And, to tell the truth, I was not sorry to see Tom's hearty face. He had
stayed away from evening service to sit with his mother.
"I say, Tom, did you see any fellow on the snow there, as you came in?"
"On the snow where?" asked Tom.
"There; just before the shrubs." And I pointed the spot out to him, and
told him what had happened. Tom, one of the most practical fellows
living, more so, I think, than even Tod, and with less imagination than
an ostrich, received the account with incredulity.
"You dropped asleep, Johnny, and fancied it."
"I did not drop asleep, and I did not fancy it. When you came into the
garden I was about to open the window and call to him."
"Those headaches are downright stupefying things, Johnny. Jane has them,
you know. One day I remember she fell asleep with a bad one, and woke up
and said the sofa was on fire."
"Tom, I tell you the man was there. A tall, strong-looking fellow, with
a beard. He was staring at the house with all his might, at this room,
as it seemed to me, wanting to come forward, I think, but afraid to. He
kept close to the laurels, as if he did not wish to be seen, forgetting
perhaps that they were white and betrayed him. When you opened the gate,
he was there."
"It's odd, then, where he could have put himself," said Tom Coney, not
giving in an inch. "I'll vow not a soul was there, man or woman, when I
came up the path."
"That's true. He vanished in a moment. Whilst I was looking at him he
disappeared."
"Vanished! Disappeared! You talk as though you thought it a ghost,
Johnny."
"Ghost be hanged! It was some ill-doing tramp, I expect, trying to look
if he might steal into the house."
"Much you know of the ways of tramps, Johnny Ludlow! Tramps don't come
showing themselves on snow-lighted, open lawns, in the face and eyes of
the front windows: they hide themselves in obscure hedges and byways.
It's a case of headachy sleep, young man, and nothing else."
"Look here, Tom. If the man was there, his footprints will be there; if
he was not, as you say, the snow will be smooth and level: come out and
see."
We went out at once, Tom catching up a stick in the hall, and crossed
the lawn. I was right, and Tom wrong. Sure enough, there were the
footprints, plenty of them, indented in the deep snow. Tom gave in then.
"I wish to goodness I had seen him! The fellow should not have got off
scot-free, I can tell him that. What tremendous feet he must have! Just
look at the size, Johnny. Regular crushers."
"Don't you go and say again I was asleep! He must have stepped back and
got away through these laurels; yes, here are the marks. I say,
Tom"--dropping my voice to a whisper--"perhaps he's here now."
"We'll soon see that," said Tom Coney, plunging amidst the laurels with
a crash, and beating about with the stick.
But there was no trace of him. Tom came out presently, covered with the
beaten snow, and we went indoors; he veering round partly to his first
opinion, and a little incredulous, in spite of the footprints.
"If any man was there, Johnny, how did he get away? I don't see, for my
part, what he could possibly want. A thief would have gone to work in a
different manner."
"Well, let it be so. I shall say nothing about it to them when they come
home. Mrs. Todhetley's timid, you know, she would fancy the man was
outside still, and be lying awake all night, listening for the smashing
in of doors and windows."
Cracking the fire into a blaze; as much of a blaze, that is, as its
dilapidated state allowed; I called Thomas to light the lamp and shut
the shutters. When I told him of the affair, bidding him not mention it,
he took a different view of it altogether, and put it down to the score
of one of the younger maid-servants.
"They've got sweethearts, Master Johnny, the huzzies have; lots of
sweethearts. One or the t'other of 'em is always a sidling sheepfaced up
to the house, as though he didn't dare to say his soul was his own."
They came in from church before the fire had burnt up, and the Squire
scolded me for letting it go so low. The coal we get in Worcestershire
is the Staffordshire coal; it does not burn up in a minute as London
coal does, but must have time.
Nothing of course was said about the man; I and Tom Coney--who stayed
supper--held our tongues, as agreed upon. But I told Tod in going up to
bed. He was sleepy, and did not think much of it. The fact was, as I
could plainly perceive, that to any of them, when related, it did not
seem to be much. They had not seen it as I had.
* * * * *
Timberdale Rectory, a cosy, old-fashioned house, its front walls covered
with ivy, stood by itself amidst pasture-land, a field's length from the
church. Mrs. Todhetley sent me there on the Monday morning, to invite
the Rector, Herbert Tanerton, and his wife to dine with us the next
evening, for we had a prime codfish sent as a present from London. The
Squire and Tod had gone out shooting. It was January weather; cold and
bright, with a frosty sky. Icicles drooped from the trees, and the snow
in Crabb Ravine was above my ankles. The mater had said to me, "I should
go the road way, Johnny;" but I did not mind the snow.
In Timberdale I met Margaret Rymer. She had her black cloak on, and her
natty little black bonnet; and the gentle and refined face under it,
with its mild brown eyes, put me more than ever in mind of her dead
father.
Does any one remember her? I told something about her and her people
early in this volume. When Thomas Rymer died, partly of a broken heart,
Benjamin had again gone off, and Margaret continued to keep the business
going. She understood the drugs thoroughly. During all the months that
had elapsed since, the son had not made his appearance at home.
Timberdale would say, "Why does not Benjamin come back to carry on
affairs in his father's place?" but it had no satisfactory answer.
Latterly, Timberdale had let Benjamin alone, and busied itself with
Margaret.
Six months ago, the Reverend Isaac Sale had come to Timberdale as
curate. He was a plain, dark little man of sterling worth, and some
thirty years of age--older than the Rector. Margaret Rymer met him at
the Sunday School, where she taught regularly, and he fell desperately
in love with her--if it's not wrong to say that of a parson. As a rule,
men and women like contrasts; and perhaps the somewhat abrupt-mannered
man with the plain and rugged features had been irresistibly attracted
by the delicate face of Margaret, and by her singularly gentle ways.
In position she was not his equal; but Mr. Sale made no secret of his
attachment, or that he wanted Margaret to be his wife. Mrs. Rymer
entirely opposed it: how was the business to be kept going without
Margaret, she demanded; or herself, either?
Mr. Sale had taken the curacy as a temporary thing. He was waiting for
some expected appointment abroad. When it fell to him, Margaret Rymer
would have to choose between sailing with him as his wife, or staying at
home and giving him up for good. So said Timberdale.
After standing to talk a bit with Margaret, who had come out on an
errand for her mother, I ran on to the Rectory. Mr. Tanerton and his
wife were in the snug little bow-windowed front-room. He, spare and
colourless, young yet, with cold grey eyes and thin light whiskers, sat
by the blazing fire of wood and coal, that went roaring and sparkling up
the chimney. Somehow Herbert Tanerton gave you the idea of being always
in a chill. Well meaning, and kind in the main, he was yet severe,
taking too much note of offences, and expecting all the world, and
especially his own flock, to be better than gold.
His wife, kind, genial, and open-hearted, sat at the window, stitching a
wristband for one of her husband's new shirts--he was as particular over
_them_ as he was over the parish sins--and glancing cheerfully out
between whiles at the snowy landscape. When she was Grace Coney, and
niece at the farm, we were very intimate; a nice, merry-hearted, capable
girl, rather tall and slender, with bright dark hazel eyes, and a wide
mouth that seemed always to be smiling to show its pretty white teeth.
Seeing me coming, she ran to open the porch-door. As yet, she and
Herbert had no children.
"Come in, Johnny! Is it not a lovely day? Herbert thinks it the coldest
morning we have had; but I tell him that is because he does not feel
very well. And he has been put out a little."
"What about?" I asked, as the Rector turned in his chair to shake hands
with me. For she had said all that in his hearing.
"Oh, there are one or two things. Sam Mullett----"
"Where's the use of talking of the stupid old man, Grace?" cried the
parson, crossly. "He is getting too old for his place."
"And Mr. Sale is going to leave," added Mrs. Tanerton, as I sat down by
the table, after delivering the invitation. "The appointment he expected
has been offered to him; it is a chaplaincy at the Bahama Islands. Mr.
Sale has known of it for a week, and never told Herbert until
yesterday."
"He spoke to me in the vestry after morning service," said the Rector,
in an injured tone. "And he said at the same time that he was not sure
he should accept it; it did not quite depend upon himself. I saw as
clearly what he meant to imply as though he had avowed it; that it
depended upon that girl, Margaret Rymer. It is a preposterous thing. The
idea of a clergyman and a gentleman wanting to marry _her_! She keeps a
chemist's shop!"
"It was her father who kept it," I said eagerly, for I liked Margaret
Rymer, and did not care to hear her disparaged. "And he was a gentleman
born."
"What has that to do with it?" retorted the parson, who was in one of
his most touchy humours. "Had her grandfather been a duke, it would make
no difference to what she is. Look at the mother!"
"Margaret is a lady in mind, in looks, and in manners," I persisted.
"If I loved Margaret Rymer, I would marry her, though I were an
archdeacon."
"That's just like you, Johnny Ludlow! you have no more sense than a
child in some things," said the parson, crustily. Grace glanced up from
her work and laughed; and looked as if she would like to take part with
me.
"I never could have suspected Sale of such folly," went on the Rector,
warming his hands over the blaze. "Grace, do you think that soup's
ready?"
"I will see," answered Grace, putting the wristband on the little
work-table; and she touched my shoulder playfully in passing.
Herbert Tanerton sat in silence; knitting his brow into lines. I took
the chair on the other side the fireplace opposite to him, thinking of
this and that, and fingering the tongs to help me: a habit I was often
scolded for at home--that of fingering things.
"Look here, Mr. Tanerton. If they go all the way out to settle at the
Bahamas, it will not signify there who Margaret has been here. Whether
she may have helped in her father's business, or whether she may have
been--as you said--a duke's granddaughter, and brought up accordingly,
it will be all one to the Bahamas. Mr. Sale need not say to the Bahamas,
'My wife used to sell pennyworths of rhubarb and magnesia.'"
"It is not that," crossly responded the Rector--"what people will think
or say; it is for Sale's own sake that I object. He cannot like the
connection. A clergyman should marry in his own sphere."
"I suppose men are differently constituted, clergymen as well as
others," said I, with deprecation, remembering that I was a plain,
inexperienced lad, and he was the Rector of Timberdale. "Some persons
don't care for social distinctions as others do, don't even see them:
perhaps Mr. Sale is one."