Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0062/00628.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00628}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Message From The Sea
Chapter V}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{captain
now
tregarthen
jorgan
how
house
never
time
brothers
sir}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Message From The Sea
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter V

The Restitution

     Captain Jorgan, up and out betimes, had put the whole village of Lanrean
under an amicable cross-examination, and was returning to the King Arthur's
Arms to breakfast, none the wiser for his trouble, when he beheld the young
fisherman advancing to meet him accompanied by a stranger.  A glance at this
stranger assured the captain that he could be no other than the Seafaring Man;
and the captain was about to hail him as a fellow-craftsman, when the two
stood still and silent before the captain, and the captain stood still,
silent, and wondering before them.

     "Why, what's this?" cried the captain, when at last he broke the silence.
"You two are alike.  You two are much alike!  What's this?"

     Not a word was answered on the other side, until after the seafaring
brother had got hold of the captain's right hand, and the fisherman brother
had got hold of the captain's left hand; and if ever the captain had had his
fill of hand-shaking, from his birth to that hour, he had it then.  And
presently up and spoke the two brothers, one at a time, two at a time, two
dozen at a time for the bewilderment into which they plunged the captain,
until he gradually had Hugh Raybrock's deliverance made clear to him, and also
unravelled the fact that the person referred to in the half-obliterated paper
was Tregarthen himself.

     "Formerly, dear Captain Jorgan," said Alfred, "of Lanrean, you recollect?
Kitty and her father came to live at Steepways after Hugh shipped on his last
voyage."

     "Ay, ay!" cried the captain, fetching a breath.  "Now you have me in tow.
Then your brother here don't know his sister-in-law that is to be so much as
by name?"

     "Never saw her; never heard of her!"

     "Ay, ay, ay!" cried the captain.  "Why then we every one go back together
- paper, writer, and all - and take Tregarthen into the secret we kept from
him?"

     "Surely," said Alfred, "we can't help it now.  We must go through with
our duty."

     "Not a doubt," returned the captain.  "Give me an arm apiece, and let us
set this ship-shape."

     So walking up and down in the shrill wind on the wild moor, while the
neglected breakfast cooled within, the captain and the brothers settled their
course of action.

     It was that they should all proceed by the quickest means they could
secure to Barnstaple, and there look over the father's books and papers in the
lawyer's keeping; as Hugh had proposed to himself to do if ever he reached
home.  That, enlightened or unenlightened, they should then return to
Steepways and go straight to Mr. Tregarthen, and tell him all they knew, and
see what came of it, and act accordingly.  Lastly, that when they got there
they should enter the village with all precautions against Hugh's being
recognized by any chance; and that to the captain should be consigned the task
of preparing his wife and mother for his restoration to this life.

     "For you see," quoth Captain Jorgan, touching the last head, "it requires
caution any way, great joys being as dangerous as great griefs, if not more
dangerous, as being more uncommon (and therefore less provided against) in
this round world of ours.  And besides, I should like to free my name with the
ladies, and take you home again at your brightest and luckiest; so don't let's
throw away a chance of success."

     The captain was highly lauded by the brothers for his kind interest and
foresight.

     "And now stop!" said the captain, coming to a standstill, and looking
from one brother to the other, with quite a new rigging of wrinkles about each
eye; "you are of opinion," to the elder, "that you are ra'ather slow."

     "I assure you I am very slow," said the honest Hugh.

     "Wa'al," replied the captain, "I assure you that to the best of my belief
I am ra'ather smart.  Now a slow man ain't good at quick business, is he?"

     That was clear to both.

     "You," said, the captain, turning to the younger brother, "are a little
in love; ain't you?"

     "Not a little, Captain Jorgan."

     "Much or little, you're sort preoccupied; ain't you?"

     It was impossible to be denied.

     "And a sort preoccupied man ain't good at quick business, is he?" said
the captain.

     Equally clear on all sides.

     "Now," said the captain, "I ain't in love myself, and I've made many a
smart run across the ocean, and I should like to carry on and go ahead with
this affair of yours and make a run slick through it.  Shall I try? Will you
hand it over to me?"

     They were both delighted to do so, and thanked him heartily.

     "Good," said the captain, taking out his watch.  "This is half past eight
a. m., Friday morning.  I'll jot that down, and we'll compute how many hours
we've been out when we run into your mother's post-office. There!  The entry's
made, and now we go ahead."

     They went ahead so well that before the Barnstaple lawyer's office was
open next morning, the captain was sitting whistling on the step of the door,
waiting for the clerk to come down the street with his key and open it.  But
instead of the clerk there came the master, with whom the captain fraternized
on the spot to an extent that utterly confounded him.

     As he personally knew both Hugh and Alfred, there was no difficulty in
obtaining immediate access to such of the father's papers as were in his
keeping.  These were chiefly old letters and cash accounts; from which the
captain with a shrewdness and despatch that left the lawyer far behind,
established with perfect clearness, by noon, the following particular: -

     That one Lawrence Clissold had borrowed of the deceased, at a time when
he was a thriving young tradesman in the town of Barnstaple, the sum of five
hundred pounds.  That he had borrowed it on the written statement that it was
to be laid out in furtherance of a speculation which he expected would raise
him to independence; he being, at the time of writing that letter, no more
than a clerk in the house of Dringworth Brothers, America Square, London.
That the money was borrowed for a stipulated period; but that, when the term
was out, the aforesaid speculation failed, and Clissold was without means of
repayment.  That, hereupon, he had written to his creditor, in no very
persuasive terms, vaguely requesting further time.  That the creditor had
refused this concession, declaring that he could not afford delay.  That
Clissold then paid the debt, accompanying the remittance of the money with an
angry letter describing it as having been advanced by a relative to save him
from ruin.  That in acknowledging the receipt, Raybrock had cautioned Clissold
to seek to borrow money of him no more, as he would never so risk money again.

     Before the lawyer the captain said never a word in reference to these
discoveries.  But when the papers had been put back in their box, and he and
his two companions were well out of the office, his right leg suffered for it,
and he said, -

     "So far this run's begun with a fair wind and a prosperous; for don't you
see that all this agrees with that dutiful trust in his father maintained by
the slow member of the Raybrock family?"

     Whether the brothers had seen it before or no, they saw it now.  Not that
the captain gave them much time to contemplate the state of things at their
ease, for he instantly whipped them into a chaise again, and bore them off to
Steepways.  Although the afternoon was but just beginning to decline when they
reached it, and it was broad daylight, still they had no difficulty, by dint
of muffling the returned sailor up, and ascending the village rather than
descending it, in reaching Tregarthen's cottage unobserved.  Kitty was not
visible, and they surprised Tregarthen sitting writing in the small bay-window
of his little room.

     "Sir," said the captain, instantly shaking hands with him, pen and all,
"I'm glad to see you, sir.  How do you do, sir?  I told you you'd think better
of me by and by, and I congratulate you on going to do it."

     Here the captain's eye fell on Tom Pettifer Ho, engaged in preparing some
cookery at the fire.

     "That critter," said the captain, smiting his leg, "is a born steward,
and never ought to have been in any other way of life.  Stop where you are,
Tom, and make yourself useful.  Now, Tregarthen, I'm going to try a chair."

     Accordingly the captain drew one close to him, and went on:

     "This loving member of the Raybrock family you know, sir.  This slow
member of the same family, you don't know, sir.  Wa'al, these two are
brothers, - fact!  Hugh's come to life again, and here he stands.  Now see
here, my friend!  You don't want to be told that he was cast away, but you do
want to be told (for there's a purpose in it) that he was cast away with
another man.  That man by name was Lawrence Clissold."

     At the mention of this name Tregarthen started and changed colour.
"What's the matter?" said the captain.

     "He was a fellow-clerk of mine thirty - five-and-thirty - years ago."

     "True," said the captain, immediately catching at the clew: "Dringworth
Brothers, America Square, London City."

     The other started again, nodded, and said, "That was the house."

     "Now," pursued the captain, "between those two men cast away there arose
a mystery concerning the round sum of five hundred pound."

     Again Tregarthen started, changing colour.  Again the captain said,
"What's the matter?"

     As Tregarthen only answered, "Please to go on," the captain recounted,
very tersely and plainly, the nature of Clissold's wanderings on the barren
island, as he had condensed them in his mind from the seafaring man.
Tregarthen became agitated during this recital, and at length exclaimed,

     "Clissold was the man who ruined me!  I have suspected it for many a long
year, and now I know it."

     "And how," said the captain, drawing his chair still closer to
Tregarthen, and clapping his hand upon his shoulder, - "how may you know it?"

     "When we were fellow-clerks," replied Tregarthen, "in that London house,
it was one of my duties to enter daily in a certain book an account of the
sums received that day by the firm, and afterward paid into the banker's.  One
memorable day, - a Wednesday, the black day of my life, - among the sums I so
entered was one of five hundred pounds."

     "I begin to make it out," said the captain.  "Yes?"

     "It was one of Clissold's duties to copy from this entry a memorandum of
the sums which the clerk employed to go to the bankers paid in there. It was
my duty to hand the money to Clissold; it was Clissold's to hand it to the
clerk, with that memorandum of his writing.  On that Wednesday I entered a sum
of five hundred pounds received.  I handed that sum, as I handed the other
sums in the day's entry, to Clissold.  I was absolutely certain of it at the
time; I have been absolutely certain of it ever since.  A sum of five hundred
pounds was afterward found by the house to have been that day wanting from the
bag, from Clissold's memorandum, and from the entries in my book.  Clissold,
being questioned, stood upon his perfect clearness in the matter, and
emphatically declared that he asked no better than to be tested by
'Tregarthen's book.' My book was examined, and the entry of five hundred
pounds was not there."

     "How not there," said the captain, "when you made it yourself?"

     Tregarthen continued:

     "I was then questioned.  Had I made the entry?  Certainly I had.  The
house produced my book, and it was not there.  I could not deny my book; I
could not deny my writing.  I knew there must be forgery by some one; but the
writing was wonderfully like mine, and I could impeach no one if the house
could not.  I was required to pay the money back.  I did so; and I left the
house, almost broken-hearted rather than remain there, - even if I could have
done so, - with a dark shadow of suspicion always on me.  I returned to my
native place, Lanrean, and remained there, clerk to a mine, until I was
appointed to my little post here."

     "I well remember," said the captain, "that I told you that if you had had
no experience of ill judgments on deceiving appearances, you were a lucky man.
You went hurt at that, and I see why.  I'm sorry."

     "Thus it is," said Tregarthen.  "Of my own innocence I have of course
been sure; it has been at once my comfort and my trial.  Of Clissold I have
always had suspicions almost amounting to certainty; but they have never been
confirmed until now.  For my daughter's sake and for my own I have carried
this subject in my own heart, as the only secret of my life, and have long
believed that it would die with me."

     "Wa'al, my good sir," said the captain, cordially, "the present question
is, and will be long, I hope, concerning living, and not dying. Now, here are
two honest friends, the loving Raybrock and the slow.  Here they stand, agreed
on one point, on which I'd back 'em round the world, and right across it from
north to south, and then from east to west, and through it, from your deepest
Cornish mine to China.  It is, that they will never use this same so-mentioned
sum of money, and that restitution of it must be made to you.  These two, the
loving member and the slow, for the sake of the right and of their father's
memory, will have it ready for you to-morrow.  Take it, and ease their minds
and mine, and end a most unfort'nate transaction."

     Tregarthen took the captain by the hand, and gave his hand to each of the
young men, but positively and finally answered No.  He said, they trusted to
his word, and he was glad of it and at rest in his mind; but there was no
proof, and the money must remain as it was.  All were very earnest over this;
and earnestness in men, when they are right and true, is so impressive, that
Mr. Pettifer deserted his cookery and looked on quite moved.

     "And so," said the captain, "so we come, - as that lawyer crittur over
yonder where we were this morning might, - to mere proof; do we?  We must have
it; must we?  How?  From this Clissold's wanderings, and from what you say, it
ain't hard to make out that there was a neat forgery of your writing committed
by the too smart Rowdy that was grease and ashes when I made his acquaintance,
and a substitution of a forged leaf in your book for a real and true leaf torn
out.  Now was that real and true leaf then and there destroyed?  No, - for
says he, in his drunken way, he slipped it into a crack in his own desk,
because you came into the office before there was time to burn it, and could
never get back to it afterwards.  Wait a bit.  Where is that desk now?  Do you
consider it likely to be in America Square, London City?"

     Tregarthen shook his head.

     "The house has not, for years, transacted business in that place.  I have
heard of it, and read of it, as removed, enlarged, every way altered. Things
alter so fast in these times."

     "You think so," returned the captain, with compassion; "but you should
come over and see me afore you talk about that.  Wa'al, now.  This desk, this
paper, - this paper, this desk," said the captain, ruminating and walking
about, and looking, in his uneasy abstraction, into Mr. Pettifer's hat on a
table, among other things.  "This desk, this paper, - this paper, this desk,"
the captain continued, musing and roaming about the room, "I'd give - "

     However, he gave nothing, but took up his steward's hat instead, and
stood looking into it, as if he had just come into Church.  After that he
roamed again, and again said, "This desk, belonging to this House of
Dringworth Brothers, America Square, London City - "

     Mr. Pettifer, still strangely moved, and now more moved than before, cut
the captain off as he backed across the room, and bespake him thus:

     "Captain Jorgan, I have been wishful to engage your attention, but I
couldn't do it.  I am unwilling to interrupt, Captain Jorgan, but I must do
it.  I know something about that house."

     The captain stood stock-still, and looked at him - with his (Mr.
Pettifer's) hat under his arm.

     "You're aware," pursued his steward, "that I was once in the broking
business, Captain Jorgan?"

     "I was aware," said the captain, "that you had failed in that calling,
and in half the businesses going, Tom."

     "Not quite so, Captain Jorgan; but I failed in the broking business. I
was partners with my brother, sir.  There was a sale of old office furniture
at Dringworth Brothers when the house was moved from America Square, and me
and my brother made what we call in the trade a Deal there, sir.  And I'll
make bold to say, sir, that the only thing I ever had from my brother, or from
any relation, - for my relations have mostly taken property from me instead of
giving me any, - was an old desk we bought at that same sale, with a crack in
it.  My brother wouldn't have given me even that, when we broke partnership,
if it had been worth anything."

     "Where is that desk now?" said the captain.

     "Well, Captain Jorgan," replied the steward, "I couldn't say for certain
where it is now; but when I saw it last, - which was last time we were
outward-bound, - it was at a very nice lady's at Wapping, along with a little
chest of mine which was detained for a small matter of a bill owing."

     The captain, instead of paying that rapt attention to his steward which
was rendered by the other three persons present, went to Church again, in
respect of the steward's hat.  And a most especially agitated and memorable
face the captain produced from it, after a short pause.

     "Now, Tom," said the captain, "I spoke to you, when we first came here,
respecting your constitutional weakness on the subject of sunstroke."

     "You did, sir."

     "Well my slow friend," said the captain, "lend me his arm, or I shall
sink right back'ards into this blessed steward's cookery?  Now, Tom," pursued
the captain, when the required assistance was given, "on your oath as a
steward, didn't you take that desk to pieces to make a better one out of it
and put it together fresh - or something of the kind?"

     "On my oath I did, sir," replied the steward.

     "And by the blessing of Heaven, my friends, one and all," cried the
captain, radiant with joy - "of the Heaven that put it into this Tom
Pettifer's head to take so much care of his head against the bright sun, - he
lined his hat with the original leaf in Tregarthen's writings, - and here it
is!"

     With that the captain, to the utter destruction of Mr. Pettifer's
favourite hat, produced the book leaf very much worn, but still legible, and
gave both his legs such tremendous slaps that they were heard far off in the
bay, and never accounted for.

     "A quarter past five p. m.," said the captain, pulling out his watch,
"and that's thirty-three hours and a quarter in all, and a pretty run!"

     How they were all overpowered with delight and triumph; how the money was
restored, then and there, to Tregartheir; how Tregarthen, then and there, gave
it all to his daughter; how the captain undertook to go to Dringworth Brothers
and re-establish the reputation of their forgotten old clerk; how Kitty came
in, and was nearly torn to pieces, and the marriage was reappointed, needs not
to be told.  Nor how she and the young fisherman went home to the post-office
to prepare the way for the captain's coming, by declaring him to be the
mightiest of men, who had made all their fortunes, - and then dutifully
withdrew together, in order that he might have the domestic coast entirely to
himself.  How he availed himself of it is all that remains to tell.

     Deeply delighted with his trust, and putting his heart into it, he raised
the latch of the post-office parlour where Mrs. Raybrock and the young widow
sat, and said,

     "May I come in?"

     "Sure you may, Captain Jorgan!" replied the old lady.  "And good reason
you have to be free of the house, though you have not been too well used in it
by some who ought to have known better.  I ask your pardon."

     "No, you don't, ma'am," said the captain, "for I won't let you. Wa'al, to
be sure!" By this time he had taken a chair on the hearth between them.

     "Never felt such an evil spirit in the whole course of my life! There!  I
tell you!  I could a'most have cut my own connection.  Like the dealer in my
country, away West, who when he had let himself be outdone in a bargain, said
to himself, 'Now I tell you what!  I'll never speak to you again.' And he
never did, but joined a settlement of oysters, and translated the
multiplication-table into their language, - which is a fact that can be
proved.  If you doubt it, mention it to any oyster you come across, and see if
he'll have the face to contradict it."

     He took the child from her mother's lap and set it on his knee.

     "Not a bit afraid of me now, you see.  Knows I am fond of small people.
I have a child, and she's a girl, and I sing to her sometimes."

     "What do you sing?" asked Margaret.

     "Not a long song, my dear.

     Silas Jorgan
     Played the organ.

     That's about all.  And sometimes I tell her stories, - stories of sailors
supposed to be lost, and recovered after all hope was abandoned." Here the
captain musingly went back to his song,

     Silas Jorgan
     Played the organ;

repeating it with his eyes on the fire, as he softly danced the child on his
knee.  For he felt that Margaret had stopped working.

      - "Yes," said the captain, still looking at the fire.  "I make up
stories and tell 'em to that child.  Stories of shipwreck on desert island,
and long delay in getting back to civilized lands.  It is to stories the like
of that mostly, that
     Silas Jorgan
     Played the organ."

     There was no light in the room but the light of the fire; for the shades
of night were on the village, and the stars had begun to peep out of the sky
one by one, as the houses of the village peeped out from among the foliage
when the night departed.  The captain felt that Margaret's eyes were upon him,
and thought it discreetest to keep his own eyes on the fire.

     "Yes; I make 'em up," said the captain.  "I make up stories of brothers
brought together by the good providence of God.  Of sons brought back to
mothers, - husbands brought back to wives, - fathers raised from the deep, for
little children like herself."

     Margaret's touch was on his arm, and he could not choose but look round
now.  Next moment her hand moved imploringly to his breast, and she was on her
knees before him, - supporting the mother, who was also kneeling.

     "What's the matter?" said the captain.  "What's the matter?

     Silas Jorgan
     Played the - "

     Their looks and tears were too much for him, and he could not finish the
song, short as it was.

     "Mistress Margaret, you have borne ill fortune well.  Could you bear good
fortune equally well, if it was to come?"

     "I hope so.  I thankfully and humbly and earnestly hope so!"

     "Wa'al, my dear," said the captain, "p'r'aps it has come.  He's - don't
be frightened - shall I say the word?"

     "Alive?"

     "Yes!"

     The thanks they fervently addressed to Heaven were again too much for the
captain, who openly took out his handkerchief and dried his eyes.

     "He's no further off," resumed the captain, "than my country. Indeed,
he's no further off than his own native country.  To tell you the truth, he's
no further off than Falmouth.  Indeed, I doubt if he's quite so fur.  Indeed,
if you was quite sure you could bear it nicely, and I was to do no more than
whistle for him - "

     The captain's trust was discharged.  A rush came, and they were all
together again.

     This was a fine opportunity for Tom Pettifer to appear with a tumbler of
cold water, and he presently appeared with it, and administered it to the
ladies; at the same time soothing them, and composing their dresses, exactly
as if they had been passengers crossing the Channel.  The extent to which the
captain slapped his legs, when Mr. Pettifer acquitted himself of this act of
stewardship, could have been thoroughly appreciated by no one but himself;
inasmuch as he must have slapped them black and blue, and they must have
smarted tremendously.

     He couldn't stay for the wedding, having a few appointments to keep at
the irreconcilable distance of about four thousand miles.  So next morning all
the village cheered him up to the level ground above, and there he shook hands
with a complete Census of its population, and invited the whole without
exception, to come and stay several months with him at Salem, Mass., U. S.
And there as he stood on the spot where he had seen that little golden picture
of love and parting, and from which he could that morning contemplate another
golden picture with a vista of golden years in it, little Kitty put her arms
around his neck, and kissed him on both his bronzed cheeks, and laid her
pretty face upon his storm-beaten breast, in sight of all, - ashamed to have
called such a noble captain names.  And there the captain waved his hat over
his head three final times; and there he was last seen, going away accompanied
by Tom Pettifer Ho, and carrying his hands in his pockets.  And there, before
that ground was softened with the fallen leaves of three more summers, a rosy
little boy took his first unsteady run to a fair young mother's breast, and
the name of that infant fisherman was Jorgan Raybrock.