Charles Hazlit, Esquire, was a merchant and a shipowner, a landed
proprietor, a manager of banks, a member of numerous boards and
committees, a guardian of the poor, a volunteer colonel, and a
good-humoured man on the whole, but purse-proud and pompous. He was
also the father of Aileen.
Behold him seated in an elegant drawing-room, in a splendid mansion at
the "west end" (strange that all aristocratic ends would appear to be
west ends!) of the seaport town which owned him. His blooming daughter
sat beside him at a table, on which lay a small, peculiar, box. He
doated on his daughter, and with good reason. Their attention was so
exclusively taken up with the peculiar box that they had failed to
observe the entrance, unannounced, of a man of rough exterior, who stood
at the door, hat in hand, bowing and coughing attractively, but without
success.
"My darling," said Mr Hazlit, stooping to kiss his child--his only
child--who raised her pretty little three-cornered mouth to receive it,
"this being your twenty-first birthday, I have at last brought myself to
look once again on your sainted mother's jewel-case, in order that I may
present it to you. I have not opened it since the day she died. It is
now yours, my child."
Aileen opened her eyes in mute amazement. It would seem as though there
had been some secret sympathy between her and the man at the door, for
he did precisely the same thing. He also crushed his hat somewhat
convulsively with both hands, but without doing it any damage, as it was
a very hard sailor-like hat. He also did something to his lips with his
tongue, which looked a little like licking them.
"Oh papa!" exclaimed Aileen, seizing his hand, "how kind; how--"
"Nay, love, no thanks are due to me. It is your mother's gift. On her
deathbed she made me promise to give it you when you came of age, and to
train you, up to that age, as far as possible, with a disregard for
dress and show. I think your dear mother was wrong," continued Mr
Hazlit, with a mournful smile, "but, whether right or wrong, you can
bear me witness that I have sought to fulfil the second part of her
dying request, and I now accomplish the first."
He proceeded to unlock, the fastenings of the little box, which was made
of some dark metal resembling iron, and was deeply as well as richly
embossed on the lid and sides with quaint figures and devices.
Mr Hazlit had acquired a grand, free-handed way of manipulating
treasure. Instead of lifting the magnificent jewels carefully from the
casket, he tumbled them out like a gorgeous cataract of light and
colour, by the simple process of turning the box upside down.
"Oh papa, take care!" exclaimed Aileen, spreading her little hands in
front of the cataract to stem its progress to the floor, while her two
eyes opened in surprise, and shone with a lustre that might have made
the insensate gems envious. "How exquisite! How inexpressibly
beautiful!--oh my dear, darling mother--!"
She stopped abruptly, and tears fluttered from her eyes. In a few
seconds she continued, pushing the gems away, almost passionately--
"But I cannot wear them, papa. They are worthless to me."
She was right. She had no need of such gems. Was not her hair golden
and her skin alabaster? Were not her lips coral and her teeth pearls?
And were not diamonds of the purest water dropping at that moment from
her down-cast eyes?
"True, my child, and the sentiment does your heart credit; they are
worthless, utterly worthless--mere paste"--at this point the face of the
man at the door visibly changed for the worse--"mere paste, as regards
their power to bring back to us the dear one who wore them.
Nevertheless, in a commercial point of view"--here the ears of the man
at the door cocked--"they are worth some eight or nine thousand pounds
sterling, so they may as well be taken care of."
The tongue and lips of the man at the door again became active. He
attempted--unsuccessfully, as before--to crush his hat, and
inadvertently coughed.
Mr Hazlit's usually pale countenance flushed, and he started up.
"Hallo! My man, how came _you_ here?"
The man looked at the door and hesitated in his attempt to reply to so
useless a question.
"How comes it that you enter my house and drawing-room without being
announced?" asked Mr Hazlit, drawing himself up.
"'Cause I wanted to see you, an' I found the door open, an' there warn't
nobody down stair to announce me," answered the man in a rather surly
tone.
"Oh, indeed?--ah," said Mr Hazlit, drawing out a large silk
handkerchief with a flourish, blowing his nose therewith, and casting it
carelessly on the table so as to cover the jewel-box. "Well, as you are
now ere, pray what have you got to say to me?"
"Your ship the _Seagull_ has bin' wrecked, sir, on Toosday night on the
coast of Wales."
"I received that unpleasant piece of news on Wednesday morning. What
has _that_ to do with your visit?"
"Only that I thought you might want divers for to go to the wreck, an'
_I'm_ a diver--that's all."
The man at the door said this in a very surly tone, for the slight
tendency to politeness which had begun to manifest itself while the
prospect of "a job" was hopeful, vanished before the haughty manner of
the merchant.
"Well, it is just possible that I may require the assistance of divers,"
said Mr Hazlit, ringing the bell; "when I do, I can send for you.--
John, show this person out."
The hall-footman, who had been listening attentively at the key-hole,
and allowed a second or two to elapse before opening the door, bowed
with a guilty flush on his face and held the door wide open.
David Maxwell--for it was he--passed out with an angry scowl, and as he
strode with noisy tread across the hall, said something uncommonly pithy
to the footman about "upstarts" and "puppies," and "people who thought
they was made o' different dirt from others," accompanied with many
other words and expressions which we may not repeat.
To all of this John replied with bland smiles and polite bows, hoping
that the effects of the interview might not render him feverish, and
reminding him that if it did he was in a better position than most men
for cooling himself at the bottom of the sea.
"Farewell," said John earnestly; "and if you should take a fancy to
honour us any day with your company to dinner, _do_ send a line to say
you're coming."
John did not indulge in this pleasantry until the exasperated diver was
just outside of the house, and it was well that he was so prudent, for
Maxwell turned round like a tiger and struck with tremendous force at
his face. His hard knuckles met the panel of the door, in which they
left an indelible print, and at the same time sent a sound like a
distant cannon shot into the library.
"I'm afraid I have been a little too sharp with him," said Mr Hazlit,
assisting his daughter to replace the jewels.
Aileen agreed with him, but as nothing could induce her to condemn her
father with her lips she made no reply.
"But," continued the old gentleman, "the rascal had no right to enter my
house without ringing. He might have been a thief, you know. He looked
rough and coarse enough to be one."
"Oh papa," said Aileen entreatingly, "don't be too hasty in judging
those who are sometimes called rough and coarse. I do assure you I've
met many men in my district who are big and rough and coarse to look at,
but who have the feelings and hearts of tender women."
"I know it, simple one; you must not suppose that I judged him by his
exterior; I judged him by his rude manner and conduct, and I do not
extend my opinion of him to the whole class to which he belongs."
It is strange--and illustrative of the occasional perversity of human
reasoning--that Mr Hazlit did not perceive that he himself had given
the diver cause to judge him, Mr Hazlit, very harshly, and the worst of
it was that Maxwell _did_, in his wrath, extend his opinion of the
merchant to the entire class to which he belonged, expressing a deep
undertoned hope that the "whole bilin' of 'em" might end their days in a
place where he spent many of his own, namely, at the bottom of the sea.
It is to be presumed that he wished them to be there without the benefit
of diving-dresses!
"It is curious, however," continued Mr Hazlit, "that I had been
thinking this very morning about making inquiries after a diver, one
whom I have frequently heard spoken of as an exceedingly able and
respectable man--Balding or Bolding or some such name, I think."
"Oh! Baldwin, Joe Baldwin, as his intimate friends call him," said
Aileen eagerly. "I know him well; he is in my district."
"What!" exclaimed Mr Hazlit, "not one of your paupers?"
Aileen burst into a merry laugh. "No, papa, no; not a pauper certainly.
He's a well-off diver, and a Wesleyan--a local preacher, I believe--but
he lives in my district, and is one of the most zealous labourers in it.
Oh! If you saw him, papa, with his large burly frame and his rough
bronzed kindly face, and broad shoulders, and deep bass voice and hearty
laugh."
The word suggested the act, for Aileen went off again at the bare idea
of Joe Baldwin being a pauper--one at whose feet, she said, she
delighted to sit and learn.
"Well, I'm glad to have such a good account of him from one so well able
to judge," rejoined her father, "and as I mean to go visit him without
delay I'll be obliged if you'll give me his address."
Having received it, the merchant sallied forth into those regions of the
town where, albeit she was not a guardian of the poor, his daughter's
light figure was a much more familiar object than his own.
"Does a diver named Baldwin live here?" asked Mr Hazlit of a figure
which he found standing in a doorway near the end of a narrow passage.
The figure was hazy and indistinct by reason of the heavy wreaths of
tobacco-smoke wherewith it was enveloped.
"Yis, sur," replied the figure; "he lives in the door it the other ind
o' the passage. It's not over-light here, sur; mind yer feet as ye go,
an' pay attintion to your head, for what betune holes in the floor an'
beams in the ceilin', tall gintlemen like you, sur, come to grief
sometimes."
Thanking the figure for its civility, Mr Hazlit knocked at the door
indicated, but there was no response.
"Sure it's out they are!" cried the figure from the other end of the
passage. "Joe Baldwin's layin' a charge under the wreck off the jetty
to-day--no doubt that's what's kep' 'im, and it's washin'-day with Mrs
Joe, I belave; but I'm his pardner, sur, an' if ye'll step this way,
Mrs Machowl'll be only too glad to see ye, sur, an' I can take yer
orders."
Not a little amused by this free-and-easy invitation, Mr Hazlit entered
a small apartment, which surprised him by its clean and tidy appearance.
A pretty little Irishwoman, with a pert little turned-up nose, auburn
hair so luxuriant that it _could_ not be kept in order, and a set of
teeth that glistened in their purity, invited him to sit down, and wiped
a chair with her apron for his accommodation.
"You've got a nice little place here," remarked the visitor, looking
round him.
"Troth, sur, ye wouldn't have said that if you'd seen it whin we first
came to it. Of all the dirty places I iver saw! I belave an Irish pig
would have scunnered at it, an' held his nose till he got out. It's
very well for England, but we was used to cleaner places in the owld
country. Hows'iver we've got it made respictable now, and we're not
hard to plaze."
This was a crushing reply. It upset Mr Hazlit's preconceived ideas
regarding the two countries so completely that he was perplexed. Not
being a man of rapid thought he changed the subject:--
"You are a diver, you say?"
"I am, sur."
"And Mr Baldwin's partner--if I understand you correctly?"
"Well, we work together--whin we're not workin' apart--pritty regular.
He took in hand to train me some months gone by, an' as our two
missusses has took a fancy to aich other, we're likely to hold on for
some time--barrin' accidents, av coorse."
"Well, then," said Mr Hazlit, "I came to see Mr Baldwin about a vessel
of mine, which was wrecked a few days ago on the coast of Wales--"
"Och! The _Seagull_ it is," exclaimed Rooney.
"The same; and as it is a matter of importance that I should have the
wreck visited without delay, I shall be obliged by your sending your
partner to my house this evening."
Rooney promised to send Baldwin up, and took his wife Molly to witness,
with much solemnity, that he would not lose a single minute. Thereafter
the conversation became general, and at last the merchant left the place
much shaken in his previous opinion of Irish character, and deeply
impressed with the sagacity of Rooney Machowl.
The result of this visit was that Baldwin was engaged to dive for the
cargo of the _Seagull_, and found himself, a few days later, busy at
work on the Welsh coast with a staff of men under him, among whom were
our friends Rooney Machowl and surly David Maxwell. The latter had at
first declined to have anything to do with the job, but, on
consideration of the wages, he changed his mind.