Twenty- two Short Works by Dickens - Jerry W. Brown · Charles Dickens THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS IN...

Twenty-two ShortWorks byDickens

Charles DickensAn Electronic Classics Series

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Contents

The Seven Poor Travellers ........................................................... 5

A Message From the Sea ........................................................... 32

The Battle of Life ..................................................................... 65

The Chimes ........................................................................... 144

A Christmas Carol ................................................................. 224

The Cricket on the Hearth ..................................................... 297

Doctor Marigold .................................................................... 378

George Silverman’s Explanation ............................................. 405

Going into Society ................................................................. 434

The Haunted Man and The Ghost’s Bargain .......................... 447

Holiday Romance .................................................................. 536

Hunted Down ....................................................................... 609

The Lamplighter .................................................................... 632

Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy ............................................................. 648

Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings ......................................................... 677

Mugby Junction ..................................................................... 712

Somebody’s Luggage .............................................................. 764

Sunday Under Three Heads ................................................... 816

Three Ghost Stories ............................................................... 845

To Be Read at Dusk ............................................................... 899

Tom Tiddler’s Ground............................................................ 911

The Wreck of the Golden Mary ............................................. 937

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Twenty-two Short Works

Charles Dickens7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870

Image: from the Wikimedia Commonshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Charles_Dickens_3.jpg

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Charles Dickens

THE SEVENPOOR TRAVELLERS

IN THREE CHAPTERS

by

Charles Dickens

CHAPTER IIN THE OLD CITY OF ROCHESTER

STRICTLY SPEAKING, there were only six Poor Travellers; but, being aTraveller myself, though an idle one, and being withal as poor as Ihope to be, I brought the number up to seven. This word of expla-nation is due at once, for what says the inscription over the quaintold door?

RICHARD WATTS, Esq.by his Will, dated 22 Aug. 1579,

founded this Charityfor Six poor Travellers,

who not being ROGUES, or PROCTORS,May receive gratis for one Night,

Lodging, Entertainment,and Fourpence each.

It was in the ancient little city of Rochester in Kent, of all the gooddays in the year upon a Christmas-eve, that I stood reading this inscrip-tion over the quaint old door in question. I had been wandering about

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the neighbouring Cathedral, and had seen the tomb of Richard Watts,with the effigy of worthy Master Richard starting out of it like a ship’sfigure-head; and I had felt that I could do no less, as I gave the Vergerhis fee, than inquire the way to Watts’s Charity. The way being veryshort and very plain, I had come prosperously to the inscription andthe quaint old door.

“Now,” said I to myself, as I looked at the knocker, “I know I amnot a Proctor; I wonder whether I am a Rogue!”

Upon the whole, though Conscience reproduced two or threepretty faces which might have had smaller attraction for a moralGoliath than they had had for me, who am but a Tom Thumb inthat way, I came to the conclusion that I was not a Rogue. So, be-ginning to regard the establishment as in some sort my property,bequeathed to me and divers co-legatees, share and share alike, bythe Worshipful Master Richard Watts, I stepped backward into theroad to survey my inheritance.

I found it to be a clean white house, of a staid and venerable air,with the quaint old door already three times mentioned (an archeddoor), choice little long low lattice-windows, and a roof of threegables. The silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables, with oldbeams and timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly garnishedwith a queer old clock that projects over the pavement out of agrave red-brick building, as if Time carried on business there,and hung out his sign. Sooth to say, he did an active stroke of workin Rochester, in the old days of the Romans, and the Saxons, andthe Normans; and down to the times of King John, when the rug-ged castle—I will not undertake to say how many hundreds of yearsold then—was abandoned to the centuries of weather which haveso defaced the dark apertures in its walls, that the ruin looks as if therooks and daws had pecked its eyes out.

I was very well pleased, both with my property and its situation.While I was yet surveying it with growing content, I espied, at oneof the upper lattices which stood open, a decent body, of a whole-some matronly appearance, whose eyes I caught inquiringly ad-dressed to mine. They said so plainly, “Do you wish to see the house?”that I answered aloud, “Yes, if you please.” And within a minute theold door opened, and I bent my head, and went down two steps

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into the entry.“This,” said the matronly presence, ushering me into a low room

on the right, “is where the Travellers sit by the fire, and cook whatbits of suppers they buy with their fourpences.”

“O! Then they have no Entertainment?” said I. For the inscrip-tion over the outer door was still running in my head, and I wasmentally repeating, in a kind of tune, “Lodging, entertainment, andfourpence each.”

“They have a fire provided for ‘em,” returned the matron—a mightycivil person, not, as I could make out, overpaid; “and these cookingutensils. And this what’s painted on a board is the rules for theirbehaviour. They have their fourpences when they get their ticketsfrom the steward over the way,—for I don’t admit ‘em myself, theymust get their tickets first,—and sometimes one buys a rasher of ba-con, and another a herring, and another a pound of potatoes, or whatnot. Sometimes two or three of ‘em will club their fourpences to-gether, and make a supper that way. But not much of anything is tobe got for fourpence, at present, when provisions is so dear.”

“True indeed,” I remarked. I had been looking about the room,admiring its snug fireside at the upper end, its glimpse of the streetthrough the low mullioned window, and its beams overhead. “It isvery comfortable,” said I.

“Ill-conwenient,” observed the matronly presence.I liked to hear her say so; for it showed a commendable anxiety to

execute in no niggardly spirit the intentions of Master Richard Watts.But the room was really so well adapted to its purpose that I pro-tested, quite enthusiastically, against her disparagement.

“Nay, ma’am,” said I, “I am sure it is warm in winter and cool insummer. It has a look of homely welcome and soothing rest. It hasa remarkably cosey fireside, the very blink of which, gleaming outinto the street upon a winter night, is enough to warm all Rochester’sheart. And as to the convenience of the six Poor Travellers—”

“I don’t mean them,” returned the presence. “I speak of its beingan ill-conwenience to myself and my daughter, having no other roomto sit in of a night.”

This was true enough, but there was another quaint room of cor-responding dimensions on the opposite side of the entry: so I stepped

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across to it, through the open doors of both rooms, and asked whatthis chamber was for.

“This,” returned the presence, “is the Board Room. Where thegentlemen meet when they come here.”

Let me see. I had counted from the street six upper windows be-sides these on the ground-story. Making a perplexed calculation inmy mind, I rejoined, “Then the six Poor Travellers sleep upstairs?”

My new friend shook her head. “They sleep,” she answered, “intwo little outer galleries at the back, where their beds has alwaysbeen, ever since the Charity was founded. It being so very ill-conwenient to me as things is at present, the gentlemen are going totake off a bit of the back-yard, and make a slip of a room for ‘emthere, to sit in before they go to bed.”

“And then the six Poor Travellers,” said I, “will be entirely out ofthe house?”

“Entirely out of the house,” assented the presence, comfortablysmoothing her hands. “Which is considered much better for all par-ties, and much more conwenient.”

I had been a little startled, in the Cathedral, by the emphasis withwhich the effigy of Master Richard Watts was bursting out of histomb; but I began to think, now, that it might be expected to comeacross the High Street some stormy night, and make a disturbancehere.

Howbeit, I kept my thoughts to myself, and accompanied the pres-ence to the little galleries at the back. I found them on a tiny scale, likethe galleries in old inn-yards; and they were very clean.

While I was looking at them, the matron gave me to understandthat the prescribed number of Poor Travellers were forthcoming ev-ery night from year’s end to year’s end; and that the beds were al-ways occupied. My questions upon this, and her replies, brought usback to the Board Room so essential to the dignity of “the gentle-men,” where she showed me the printed accounts of the Charityhanging up by the window. From them I gathered that the greaterpart of the property bequeathed by the Worshipful Master RichardWatts for the maintenance of this foundation was, at the period ofhis death, mere marsh-land; but that, in course of time, it had beenreclaimed and built upon, and was very considerably increased in

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value. I found, too, that about a thirtieth part of the annual revenuewas now expended on the purposes commemorated in the inscrip-tion over the door; the rest being handsomely laid out in Chancery,law expenses, collectorship, receivership, poundage, and other ap-pendages of management, highly complimentary to the importanceof the six Poor Travellers. In short, I made the not entirely newdiscovery that it may be said of an establishment like this, in dearold England, as of the fat oyster in the American story, that it takesa good many men to swallow it whole.

“And pray, ma’am,” said I, sensible that the blankness of my facebegan to brighten as the thought occurred to me, “could one seethese Travellers?”

“Well!” she returned dubiously, “no!”“Not to-night, for instance!” said I.“Well!” she returned more positively, “no. Nobody ever asked to

see them, and nobody ever did see them.”As I am not easily balked in a design when I am set upon it, I

urged to the good lady that this was Christmas-eve; that Christmascomes but once a year,—which is unhappily too true, for when itbegins to stay with us the whole year round we shall make this eartha very different place; that I was possessed by the desire to treat theTravellers to a supper and a temperate glass of hot Wassail; that thevoice of Fame had been heard in that land, declaring my ability tomake hot Wassail; that if I were permitted to hold the feast, I shouldbe found conformable to reason, sobriety, and good hours; in a word,that I could be merry and wise myself, and had been even known ata pinch to keep others so, although I was decorated with no badgeor medal, and was not a Brother, Orator, Apostle, Saint, or Prophetof any denomination whatever. In the end I prevailed, to my greatjoy. It was settled that at nine o’clock that night a Turkey and a pieceof Roast Beef should smoke upon the board; and that I, faint andunworthy minister for once of Master Richard Watts, should pre-side as the Christmas-supper host of the six Poor Travellers.

I went back to my inn to give the necessary directions for the Tur-key and Roast Beef, and, during the remainder of the day, could settleto nothing for thinking of the Poor Travellers. When the wind blewhard against the windows,—it was a cold day, with dark gusts of sleet

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alternating with periods of wild brightness, as if the year were dyingfitfully,—I pictured them advancing towards their resting-place alongvarious cold roads, and felt delighted tothink how little they foresaw the supper that awaited them. I paintedtheir portraits in my mind, and indulged in little heightening touches.I made them footsore; I made them weary; I made them carry packsand bundles; I made them stop by finger-posts and milestones, lean-ing on their bent sticks, and looking wistfully at what was writtenthere; I made them lose their way; and filled their five wits with ap-prehensions of lying out all night, and being frozen to death. I tookup my hat, and went out, climbed to the top of the Old Castle, andlooked over the windy hills that slope down to the Medway, almostbelieving that I could descry some of my Travellers in the distance.After it fell dark, and the Cathedral bell was heard in the invisiblesteeple—quite a bower of frosty rime when I had last seen it—strik-ing five, six, seven, I became so full of my Travellers that I could eatno dinner, and felt constrained to watch them still in the red coals ofmy fire. They were all arrived by this time, I thought, had got theirtickets, and were gone in.—There my pleasure was dashed by thereflection that probably some Travellers had come too late and wereshut out.

After the Cathedral bell had struck eight, I could smell a delicioussavour of Turkey and Roast Beef rising to the window of my adjoin-ing bedroom, which looked down into the inn-yard just where thelights of the kitchen reddened a massive fragment of the Castle Wall.It was high time to make the Wassail now; therefore I had up thematerials (which, together with their proportions and combinations,I must decline to impart, as the only secret of my own I was everknown to keep), and made a glorious jorum. Not in a bowl; for abowl anywhere but on a shelf is a low superstition, fraught withcooling and slopping; but in a brown earthenware pitcher, tenderlysuffocated, when full, with a coarse cloth. It being now upon thestroke of nine, I set out for Watts’s Charity, carrying my brownbeauty in my arms. I would trust Ben, the waiter, with untold gold;but there are strings in the human heart which must never be soundedby another, and drinks that I make myself are those strings in mine.

The Travellers were all assembled, the cloth was laid, and Ben had

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Charles Dickens

brought a great billet of wood, and had laid it artfully on the top ofthe fire, so that a touch or two of the poker after supper shouldmake a roaring blaze. Having deposited my brown beauty in a rednook of the hearth, inside the fender, where she soon began to singlike an ethereal cricket, diffusing at the same time odours as of ripevineyards, spice forests, and orange groves,—I say, having stationedmy beauty in a place of security and improvement, I introducedmyself to my guests by shaking hands all round, and giving them ahearty welcome.

I found the party to be thus composed. Firstly, myself. Secondly,a very decent man indeed, with his right arm in a sling, who had acertain clean agreeable smell of wood about him, from which I judgedhim to have something to do with shipbuilding. Thirdly, a littlesailor-boy, a mere child, with a profusion of rich dark brown hair,and deep womanly-looking eyes. Fourthly, a shabby-genteel per-sonage in a threadbare black suit, and apparently in very bad cir-cumstances, with a dry suspicious look; the absent buttons on hiswaistcoat eked out with red tape; and a bundle of extraordinarilytattered papers sticking out of an inner breast-pocket. Fifthly, a for-eigner by birth, but an Englishman in speech, who carried his pipein the band of his hat, and lost no time in telling me, in an easy,simple, engaging way, that he was a watchmaker from Geneva, andtravelled all about the Continent, mostly on foot, working as a jour-neyman, and seeing new countries,—possibly (I thought) also smug-gling a watch or so, now and then. Sixthly, a little widow, who hadbeen very pretty and was still very young, but whose beauty hadbeen wrecked in some great misfortune, and whose manner wasremarkably timid, scared, and solitary. Seventhly and lastly, a Trav-eller of a kind familiar to my boyhood, but now almost obsolete,—a Book-Pedler, who had a quantity of Pamphlets and Numbers withhim, and who presently boasted that he could repeat more verses inan evening than he could sell in a twelvemonth.

All these I have mentioned in the order in which they sat at table.I presided, and the matronly presence faced me. We were not longin taking our places, for the supper had arrived with me, in thefollowing procession:

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Myself with the pitcher.Ben with Beer.Inattentive Boy with hot plates. Inattentive Boy with hot plates.The Turkey.Female carrying sauces to be heated on the spot.The Beef.Man with Tray on his head, containing Vegetables and Sundries.Volunteer Hostler from Hotel, grinning,And rendering no assistance.

As we passed along the High Street, comet-like, we left a long tailof fragrance behind us which caused the public to stop, sniffing inwonder. We had previously left at the corner of the inn-yard a wall-eyed young man connected with the Fly department, and well ac-customed to the sound of a railway whistle which Ben always car-ries in his pocket, whose instructions were, so soon as he shouldhear the whistle blown, to dash into the kitchen, seize the hot plum-pudding and mince-pies, and speed with them to Watts’s Charity,where they would be received (he was further instructed) by thesauce-female, who would be provided with brandy in a blue state ofcombustion.

All these arrangements were executed in the most exact and punc-tual manner. I never saw a finer turkey, finer beef, or greater prodigal-ity of sauce and gravy;—and my Travellers did wonderful justice toeverything set before them. It made my heart rejoice to observe howtheir wind and frost hardened faces softened in the clatter of platesand knives and forks, and mellowed in the fire and supper heat.While their hats and caps and wrappers, hanging up, a few smallbundles on the ground in a corner, and in another corner three orfour old walking-sticks, worn down at the end to mere fringe, linkedthis smug interior with the bleak outside in a golden chain.

When supper was done, and my brown beauty had been elevatedon the table, there was a general requisition to me to “take the cor-ner;” which suggested to me comfortably enough how much myfriends here made of a fire,—for when had I ever thought so highlyof the corner, since the days when I connected it with Jack Horner?However, as I declined, Ben, whose touch on all convivial instru-

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Charles Dickens

ments is perfect, drew the table apart, and instructing my Travellersto open right and left on either side of me, and form round the fire,closed up the centre with myself and my chair, and preserved theorder we had kept at table. He had already, in a tranquil manner,boxed the ears of the inattentive boys until they had been by imper-ceptible degrees boxed out of the room; and he now rapidly skir-mished the sauce-female into the High Street, disappeared, and softlyclosed the door.

This was the time for bringing the poker to bear on the billet ofwood. I tapped it three times, like an enchanted talisman, and abrilliant host of merry-makers burst out of it, and sported off by thechimney,—rushing up the middle in a fiery country dance, andnever coming down again. Meanwhile, by their sparkling light, whichthrew our lamp into the shade, I filled the glasses, and gave myTravellers, Christmas!—Christmas-eve, my friends, when the shep-herds, who were Poor Travellers, too, in their way, heard the Angelssing, “On earth, peace. Good-will towards men!”

I don’t know who was the first among us to think that we oughtto take hands as we sat, in deference to the toast, or whether anyone of us anticipated the others, but at any rate we all did it. Wethen drank to the memory of the good Master Richard Watts. AndI wish his Ghost may never have had worse usage under that roofthan it had from us.

It was the witching time for Story-telling. “Our whole life, Travel-lers,” said I, “is a story more or less intelligible,—generally less; but weshall read it by a clearer light when it is ended. I, for one, am so dividedthis night between fact and fiction, that I scarce know which is which.Shall I beguile the time by telling you a story as we sit here?”

They all answered, yes. I had little to tell them, but I was boundby my own proposal. Therefore, after looking for awhile at the spi-ral column of smoke wreathing up from my brown beauty, throughwhich I could have almost sworn I saw the effigy of Master RichardWatts less startled than usual, I fired away.

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CHAPTER IITHE STORY OF

RICHARD DOUBLEDICK

IN THE YEAR one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, a relativeof mine came limping down, on foot, to this town of Chatham. Icall it this town, because if anybody present knows to a nicety whereRochester ends and Chatham begins, it is more than I do. He was apoor traveller, with not a farthing in his pocket. He sat by the fire inthis very room, and he slept one night in a bed that will be occupiedtonight by some one here.

My relative came down to Chatham to enlist in a cavalry regi-ment, if a cavalry regiment would have him; if not, to take KingGeorge’s shilling from any corporal or sergeant who would put abunch of ribbons in his hat. His object was to get shot; but he thoughthe might as well ride to death as be at the trouble of walking.

My relative’s Christian name was Richard, but he was better knownas Dick. He dropped his own surname on the road down, and tookup that of Doubledick. He was passed as Richard Doubledick; age,twenty-two; height, five foot ten; native place, Exmouth, which hehad never been near in his life. There was no cavalry in Chathamwhen he limped over the bridge here with half a shoe to his dustyfeet, so he enlisted into a regiment of the line, and was glad to getdrunk and forget all about it.

You are to know that this relative of mine had gone wrong, andrun wild. His heart was in the right place, but it was sealed up. Hehad been betrothed to a good and beautiful girl, whom he had lovedbetter than she—or perhaps even he—believed; but in an evil hourhe had given her cause to say to him solemnly, “Richard, I willnever marry another man. I will live single for your sake, but MaryMarshall’s lips”—her name was Mary Marshall—”never address an-

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other word to you on earth. Go, Richard! Heaven forgive you!”This finished him. This brought him down to Chatham. This madehim Private Richard Doubledick, with a determination to be shot.

There was not a more dissipated and reckless soldier in Chathambarracks, in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine,than Private Richard Doubledick. He associated with the dregs ofevery regiment; he was as seldom sober as he could be, and wasconstantly under punishment. It became clear to the whole bar-racks that Private Richard Doubledick would very soon be flogged.

Now the Captain of Richard Doubledick’s company was a younggentleman not above five years his senior, whose eyes had an expres-sion in them which affected Private Richard Doubledick in a veryremarkable way. They were bright, handsome, dark eyes,—what arecalled laughing eyes generally, and, when serious, rather steady thansevere,—but they were the only eyes now left in his narrowed worldthat Private Richard Doubledick could not stand. Unabashed byevil report and punishment, defiant of everything else and every-body else, he had but to know that those eyes looked at him for amoment, and he felt ashamed. He could not so much as salute Cap-tain Taunton in the street like any other officer. He was reproachedand confused,—troubled by the mere possibility of the captain’slooking at him. In his worst moments, he would rather turn back,and go any distance out of his way, than encounter those two hand-some, dark, bright eyes.

One day, when Private Richard Doubledick came out of the Blackhole, where he had been passing the last eight-and-forty hours, andin which retreat he spent a good deal of his time, he was ordered tobetake himself to Captain Taunton’s quarters. In the stale and squalidstate of a man just out of the Black hole, he had less fancy than everfor being seen by the captain; but he was not so mad yet as to dis-obey orders, and consequently went up to the terrace overlookingthe parade-ground, where the officers’ quarters were; twisting andbreaking in his hands, as he went along, a bit of the straw that hadformed the decorative furniture of the Black hole.

“Come in!” cried the Captain, when he had knocked with hisknuckles at the door. Private Richard Doubledick pulled off his cap,took a stride forward, and felt very conscious that he stood in the

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light of the dark, bright eyes.There was a silent pause. Private Richard Doubledick had put the

straw in his mouth, and was gradually doubling it up into his wind-pipe and choking himself.

“Doubledick,” said the Captain, “do you know where you aregoing to?”

“To the Devil, sir?” faltered Doubledick.“Yes,” returned the Captain. “And very fast.”Private Richard Doubledick turned the straw of the Black hole in

his month, and made a miserable salute of acquiescence.“Doubledick,” said the Captain, “since I entered his Majesty’s

service, a boy of seventeen, I have been pained to see many men ofpromise going that road; but I have never been so pained to see aman make the shameful journey as I have been, ever since you joinedthe regiment, to see you.”

Private Richard Doubledick began to find a film stealing over thefloor at which he looked; also to find the legs of the Captain’s break-fast-table turning crooked, as if he saw them through water.

“I am only a common soldier, sir,” said he. “It signifies very little what sucha poor brute comes to.”

“You are a man,” returned the Captain, with grave indignation,“of education and superior advantages; and if you say that, meaningwhat you say, you have sunk lower than I had believed. How lowthat must be, I leave you to consider, knowing what I know of yourdisgrace, and seeing what I see.”

“I hope to get shot soon, sir,” said Private Richard Doubledick;“and then the regiment and the world together will be rid of me.”

The legs of the table were becoming very crooked. Doubledick,looking up to steady his vision, met the eyes that had so strong aninfluence over him. He put his hand before his own eyes, and thebreast of his disgrace-jacket swelled as if it would fly asunder.

“I would rather,” said the young Captain, “see this in you,Doubledick, than I would see five thousand guineas counted outupon this table for a gift to my good mother. Have you a mother?”

“I am thankful to say she is dead, sir.”“If your praises,” returned the Captain, “were sounded from mouth

to mouth through the whole regiment, through the whole army,

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through the whole country, you would wish she had lived to say,with pride and joy, ‘He is my son!’”

“Spare me, sir,” said Doubledick. “She would never have heardany good of me. She would never have had any pride and joy inowning herself my mother. Love and compassion she might havehad, and would have always had, I know but not—Spare me, sir! Iam a broken wretch, quite at your mercy!” And he turned his face tothe wall, and stretched out his imploring hand.

“My friend—” began the Captain.“God bless you, sir!” sobbed Private Richard Doubledick.“You are at the crisis of your fate. Hold your course unchanged a

little longer, and you know what must happen. I know even betterthan you can imagine, that, after that has happened, you are lost.No man who could shed those tears could bear those marks.”

“I fully believe it, sir,” in a low, shivering voice said Private Rich-ard Doubledick.

“But a man in any station can do his duty,” said the young Cap-tain, “and, in doing it, can earn his own respect, even if his caseshould be so very unfortunate and so very rare that he can earn noother man’s. A common soldier, poor brute though you called himjust now, has this advantage in the stormy times we live in, that healways does his duty before a host of sympathising witnesses. Doyou doubt that he may so do it as to be extolled through a wholeregiment, through a whole army, through a whole country? Turnwhile you may yet retrieve the past, and try.”

“I will! I ask for only one witness, sir,” cried Richard, with a burst-ing heart.

“I understand you. I will be a watchful and a faithful one.”I have heard from Private Richard Doubledick’s own lips, that he

dropped down upon his knee, kissed that officer’s hand, arose, andwent out of the light of the dark, bright eyes, an altered man.

In that year, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, theFrench were in Egypt, in Italy, in Germany, where not? NapoleonBonaparte had likewise begun to stir against us in India, and mostmen could read the signs of the great troubles that were coming on.In the very next year, when we formed an alliance with Austria againsthim, Captain Taunton’s regiment was on service in India. And there

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was not a finer non-commissioned officer in it,—no, nor in thewhole line—than Corporal Richard Doubledick.

In eighteen hundred and one, the Indian army were on the coastof Egypt. Next year was the year of the proclamation of the shortpeace, and they were recalled. It had then become well known tothousands of men, that wherever Captain Taunton, with the dark,bright eyes, led, there, close to him, ever at his side, firm as a rock,true as the sun, and brave as Mars, would be certain to be found,while life beat in their hearts, that famous soldier, Sergeant RichardDoubledick.

Eighteen hundred and five, besides being the great year of Trafalgar,was a year of hard fighting in India. That year saw such wondersdone by a Sergeant-Major, who cut his way single-handed througha solid mass of men, recovered the colours of his regiment, whichhad been seized from the hand of a poor boy shot through the heart,and rescued his wounded Captain, who was down, and in a veryjungle of horses’ hoofs and sabres,—saw such wonders done, I say,by this brave Sergeant-Major, that he was specially made the bearerof the colours he had won; and Ensign Richard Doubledick hadrisen from the ranks.

Sorely cut up in every battle, but always reinforced by the bravestof men,—for the fame of following the old colours, shot throughand through, which Ensign Richard Doubledick had saved, inspiredall breasts,—this regiment fought its way through the Peninsularwar, up to the investment of Badajos in eighteen hundred and twelve.Again and again it had been cheered through the British ranks untilthe tears had sprung into men’s eyes at the mere hearing of the mightyBritish voice, so exultant in their valour; and there was not a drum-mer-boy but knew the legend, that wherever the two friends, MajorTaunton, with the dark, bright eyes, and Ensign Richard Doubledick,who was devoted to him, were seen to go, there the boldest spirits inthe English army became wild to follow.

One day, at Badajos,—not in the great storming, but in repellinga hot sally of the besieged upon our men at work in the trenches,who had given way,—the two officers found themselves hurryingforward, face to face, against a party of French infantry, who madea stand. There was an officer at their head, encouraging his men,—

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Charles Dickens

a courageous, handsome, gallant officer of five-and-thirty, whomDoubledick saw hurriedly, almost momentarily, but saw well. Heparticularly noticed this officer waving his sword, and rallying hismen with an eager and excited cry, when they fired in obedience tohis gesture, and Major Taunton dropped.

It was over in ten minutes more, and Doubledick returned to thespot where he had laid the best friend man ever had on a coat spreadupon the wet clay. Major Taunton’s uniform was opened at the breast,and on his shirt were three little spots of blood.

“Dear Doubledick,” said he, “I am dying.”“For the love of Heaven, no!” exclaimed the other, kneeling down

beside him, and passing his arm round his neck to raise his head.“Taunton! My preserver, my guardian angel, my witness! Dearest,truest, kindest of human beings! Taunton! For God’s sake!”

The bright, dark eyes—so very, very dark now, in the pale face—smiled upon him; and the hand he had kissed thirteen years ago laiditself fondly on his breast.

“Write to my mother. You will see Home again. Tell her how webecame friends. It will comfort her, as it comforts me.”

He spoke no more, but faintly signed for a moment towards hishair as it fluttered in the wind. The Ensign understood him. Hesmiled again when he saw that, and, gently turning his face over onthe supporting arm as if for rest, died, with his hand upon the breastin which he had revived a soul.

No dry eye looked on Ensign Richard Doubledick that melan-choly day. He buried his friend on the field, and became a lone,bereaved man. Beyond his duty he appeared to have but two re-maining cares in life,—one, to preserve the little packet of hair hewas to give to Taunton’s mother; the other, to encounter that Frenchofficer who had rallied the men under whose fire Taunton fell. Anew legend now began to circulate among our troops; and it was,that when he and the French officer came face to face once more,there would be weeping in France.

The war went on—and through it went the exact picture of theFrench officer on the one side, and the bodily reality upon theother—until the Battle of Toulouse was fought. In the returns senthome appeared these words: “Severely wounded, but not danger-

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ously, Lieutenant Richard Doubledick.”At Midsummer-time, in the year eighteen hundred and fourteen,

Lieutenant Richard Doubledick, now a browned soldier, seven-and-thirty years of age, came home to England invalided. He broughtthe hair with him, near his heart. Many a French officer had he seensince that day; many a dreadful night, in searching with men andlanterns for his wounded, had he relieved French officers lying dis-abled; but the mental picture and the reality had never come to-gether.

Though he was weak and suffered pain, he lost not an hour ingetting down to Frome in Somersetshire, where Taunton’s motherlived. In the sweet, compassionate words that naturally present them-selves to the mind to-night, “he was the only son of his mother, andshe was a widow.”

It was a Sunday evening, and the lady sat at her quiet garden-win-dow, reading the Bible; reading to herself, in a trembling voice, thatvery passage in it, as I have heard him tell. He heard the words: “Youngman, I say unto thee, arise!”

He had to pass the window; and the bright, dark eyes of his de-based time seemed to look at him. Her heart told her who he was;she came to the door quickly, and fell upon his neck.

“He saved me from ruin, made me a human creature, won mefrom infamy and shame. O, God for ever bless him! As He will, HeWill!”

“He will!” the lady answered. “I know he is in heaven!” Then shepiteously cried, “But O, my darling boy, my darling boy!”

Never from the hour when Private Richard Doubledick enlistedat Chatham had the Private, Corporal, Sergeant, Sergeant-Major,Ensign, or Lieutenant breathed his right name, or the name of MaryMarshall, or a word of the story of his life, into any ear except hisreclaimer’s. That previous scene in his existence was closed. He hadfirmly resolved that his expiation should be to live unknown; todisturb no more the peace that had long grown over his old of-fences; to let it be revealed, when he was dead, that he had strivenand suffered, and had never forgotten; and then, if they could for-give him and believe him—well, it would be time enough—timeenough!

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Charles Dickens

But that night, remembering the words he had cherished for twoyears, “Tell her how we became friends. It will comfort her, as itcomforts me,” he related everything. It gradually seemed to him asif in his maturity he had recovered a mother; it gradually seemed toher as if in her bereavement she had found a son. During his stay inEngland, the quiet garden into which he had slowly and painfullycrept, a stranger, became the boundary of his home; when he wasable to rejoin his regiment in the spring, he left the garden, thinkingwas this indeed the first time he had ever turned his face towardsthe old colours with a woman’s blessing!

He followed them—so ragged, so scarred and pierced now, thatthey would scarcely hold together—to Quatre Bras and Ligny. Hestood beside them, in an awful stillness of many men, shadowythrough the mist and drizzle of a wet June forenoon, on the field ofWaterloo. And down to that hour the picture in his mind of theFrench officer had never been compared with the reality.

The famous regiment was in action early in the battle, and re-ceived its first check in many an eventful year, when he was seen tofall. But it swept on to avenge him, and left behind it no such crea-ture in the world of consciousness as Lieutenant Richard Doubledick.

Through pits of mire, and pools of rain; along deep ditches, onceroads, that were pounded and ploughed to pieces by artillery, heavywaggons, tramp of men and horses, and the struggle of every wheeledthing that could carry wounded soldiers; jolted among the dyingand the dead, so disfigured by blood and mud as to be hardlyrecognisable for humanity; undisturbed by the moaning of menand the shrieking of horses, which, newly taken from the peacefulpursuits of life, could not endure the sight of the stragglers lying bythe wayside, never to resume their toilsome journey; dead, as to anysentient life that was in it, and yet alive,—the form that had beenLieutenant Richard Doubledick, with whose praises England rang,was conveyed to Brussels. There it was tenderly laid down in hospi-tal; and there it lay, week after week, through the long bright sum-mer days, until the harvest, spared by war, had ripened and wasgathered in.

Over and over again the sun rose and set upon the crowded city;over and over again the moonlight nights were quiet on the plains

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of Waterloo: and all that time was a blank to what had been Lieu-tenant Richard Doubledick. Rejoicing troops marched into Brus-sels, and marched out; brothers and fathers, sisters, mothers, andwives, came thronging thither, drew their lots of joy or agony, anddeparted; so many times a day the bells rang; so many times theshadows of the great buildings changed; so many lights sprang up atdusk; so many feet passed here and there upon the pavements; somany hours of sleep and cooler air of night succeeded: indifferentto all, a marble face lay on a bed, like the face of a recumbent statueon the tomb of Lieutenant Richard Doubledick.

Slowly labouring, at last, through a long heavy dream of confusedtime and place, presenting faint glimpses of army surgeons whomhe knew, and of faces that had been familiar to his youth,—dearestand kindest among them, Mary Marshall’s, with a solicitude uponit more like reality than anything he could discern,—LieutenantRichard Doubledick came back to life. To the beautiful life of acalm autumn evening sunset, to the peaceful life of a fresh quietroom with a large window standing open; a balcony beyond, inwhich were moving leaves and sweet-smelling flowers; beyond, again,the clear sky, with the sun full in his sight, pouring its golden radi-ance on his bed.

It was so tranquil and so lovely that he thought he had passedinto another world. And he said in a faint voice, “Taunton, are younear me?”

A face bent over him. Not his, his mother’s.“I came to nurse you. We have nursed you many weeks. You were

moved here long ago. Do you remember nothing?”“Nothing.”The lady kissed his cheek, and held his hand, soothing him.“Where is the regiment? What has happened? Let me call you

mother. What has happened, mother?”“A great victory, dear. The war is over, and the regiment was the

bravest in the field.”His eyes kindled, his lips trembled, he sobbed, and the tears ran

down his face. He was very weak, too weak to move his hand.“Was it dark just now?” he asked presently.“No.”

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“It was only dark to me? Something passed away, like a black shadow.But as it went, and the sun—O the blessed sun, how beautiful it is!—touched my face, I thought I saw a light white cloud pass out at thedoor. Was there nothing that went out?”

She shook her head, and in a little while he fell asleep, she stillholding his hand, and soothing him.

From that time, he recovered. Slowly, for he had been desperatelywounded in the head, and had been shot in the body, but makingsome little advance every day. When he had gained sufficient strengthto converse as he lay in bed, he soon began to remark that Mrs.Taunton always brought him back to his own history. Then he re-called his preserver’s dying words, and thought, “It comforts her.”

One day he awoke out of a sleep, refreshed, and asked her to readto him. But the curtain of the bed, softening the light, which shealways drew back when he awoke, that she might see him from hertable at the bedside where she sat at work, was held undrawn; and awoman’s voice spoke, which was not hers.

“Can you bear to see a stranger?” it said softly. “Will you like tosee a stranger?”

“Stranger!” he repeated. The voice awoke old memories, beforethe days of Private Richard Doubledick.

“A stranger now, but not a stranger once,” it said in tones thatthrilled him. “Richard, dear Richard, lost through so many years,my name—”

He cried out her name, “Mary,” and she held him in her arms,and his head lay on her bosom.

“I am not breaking a rash vow, Richard. These are not MaryMarshall’s lips that speak. I have another name.”

She was married.“I have another name, Richard. Did you ever hear it?”“Never!”He looked into her face, so pensively beautiful, and wondered at

the smile upon it through her tears.“Think again, Richard. Are you sure you never heard my altered

name?”“Never!”“Don’t move your head to look at me, dear Richard. Let it lie

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here, while I tell my story. I loved a generous, noble man; loved himwith my whole heart; loved him for years and years; loved him faith-fully, devotedly; loved him without hope of return; loved him, know-ing nothing of his highest qualities—not even knowing that he wasalive. He was a brave soldier. He was honoured and beloved by thou-sands of thousands, when the mother of his dear friend found me,and showed me that in all his triumphs he had never forgotten me.He was wounded in a great battle. He was brought, dying, here,into Brussels. I came to watch and tend him, as I would have joy-fully gone, with such a purpose, to the dreariest ends of the earth.When he knew no one else, he knew me. When he suffered most,he bore his sufferings barely murmuring, content to rest his headwhere your rests now. When he lay at the point of death, he marriedme, that he might call me Wife before he died. And the name, mydear love, that I took on that forgotten night—”

“I know it now!” he sobbed. “The shadowy remembrance strength-ens. It is come back. I thank Heaven that my mind is quite restored!My Mary, kiss me; lull this weary head to rest, or I shall die ofgratitude. His parting words were fulfilled. I see Home again!”

Well! They were happy. It was a long recovery, but they were happythrough it all. The snow had melted on the ground, and the birdswere singing in the leafless thickets of the early spring, when thosethree were first able to ride out together, and when people flockedabout the open carriage to cheer and congratulate Captain RichardDoubledick.

But even then it became necessary for the Captain, instead ofreturning to England, to complete his recovery in the climate ofSouthern France. They found a spot upon the Rhone, within a rideof the old town of Avignon, and within view of its broken bridge,which was all they could desire; they lived there, together, six months;then returned to England. Mrs. Taunton, growing old after threeyears—though not so old as that her bright, dark eyes weredimmed—and remembering that her strength had been benefitedby the change resolved to go back for a year to those parts. So shewent with a faithful servant, who had often carried her son in hisarms; and she was to be rejoined and escorted home, at the year’send, by Captain Richard Doubledick.

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She wrote regularly to her children (as she called them now), andthey to her. She went to the neighbourhood of Aix; and there, intheir own chateau near the farmer’s house she rented, she grew intointimacy with a family belonging to that part of France. The inti-macy began in her often meeting among the vineyards a pretty child,a girl with a most compassionate heart, who was never tired of lis-tening to the solitary English lady’s stories of her poor son and thecruel wars. The family were as gentle as the child, and at length shecame to know them so well that she accepted their invitation to passthe last month of her residence abroad under their roof. All thisintelligence she wrote home, piecemeal as it came about, from timeto time; and at last enclosed a polite note, from the head of thechateau, soliciting, on the occasion of his approaching mission tothat neighbourhood, the honour of the company of cet homme sijustement celebre, Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick.

Captain Doubledick, now a hardy, handsome man in the fullvigour of life, broader across the chest and shoulders than he hadever been before, dispatched a courteous reply, and followed it inperson. Travelling through all that extent of country after three yearsof Peace, he blessed the better days on which the world had fallen.The corn was golden, not drenched in unnatural red; was bound insheaves for food, not trodden underfoot by men in mortal fight.The smoke rose up from peaceful hearths, not blazing ruins. Thecarts were laden with the fair fruits of the earth, not with woundsand death. To him who had so often seen the terrible reverse, thesethings were beautiful indeed; and they brought him in a softenedspirit to the old chateau near Aix upon a deep blue evening.

It was a large chateau of the genuine old ghostly kind, with roundtowers, and extinguishers, and a high leaden roof, and more win-dows than Aladdin’s Palace. The lattice blinds were all thrown openafter the heat of the day, and there were glimpses of rambling wallsand corridors within. Then there were immense out-buildings falleninto partial decay, masses of dark trees, terrace-gardens, balustrades;tanks of water, too weak to play and too dirty to work; statues,weeds, and thickets of iron railing that seemed to have overgrownthemselves like the shrubberies, and to have branched out in allmanner of wild shapes. The entrance doors stood open, as doors

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often do in that country when the heat of the day is past; and theCaptain saw no bell or knocker, and walked in.

He walked into a lofty stone hall, refreshingly cool and gloomyafter the glare of a Southern day’s travel. Extending along the foursides of this hall was a gallery, leading to suites of rooms; and it waslighted from the top. Still no bell was to be seen.

“Faith,” said the Captain halting, ashamed of the clanking of hisboots, “this is a ghostly beginning!”

He started back, and felt his face turn white. In the gallery, lookingdown at him, stood the French officer—the officer whose picture he hadcarried in his mind so long and so far. Compared with the original, atlast—in every lineament how like it was!

He moved, and disappeared, and Captain Richard Doubledick heardhis steps coming quickly down own into the hall. He entered throughan archway. There was a bright, sudden look upon his face, muchsuch a look as it had worn in that fatal moment.

Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick? Enchanted to receivehim! A thousand apologies! The servants were all out in the air.There was a little fete among them in the garden. In effect, it wasthe fete day of my daughter, the little cherished and protected ofMadame Taunton.

He was so gracious and so frank that Monsieur le Capitaine Rich-ard Doubledick could not withhold his hand. “It is the hand of abrave Englishman,” said the French officer, retaining it while hespoke. “I could respect a brave Englishman, even as my foe, howmuch more as my friend! I also am a soldier.”

“He has not remembered me, as I have remembered him; he didnot take such note of my face, that day, as I took of his,” thoughtCaptain Richard Doubledick. “How shall I tell him?”

The French officer conducted his guest into a garden and presentedhim to his wife, an engaging and beautiful woman, sitting with Mrs.Taunton in a whimsical old-fashioned pavilion. His daughter, herfair young face beaming with joy, came running to embrace him; andthere was a boy-baby to tumble down among the orange trees on thebroad steps, in making for his father’s legs. A multitude of childrenvisitors were dancing to sprightly music; and all the servants and peas-ants about the chateau were dancing too. It was a scene of innocent

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happiness that might have been invented for the climax of the scenesof peace which had soothed the Captain’s journey.

He looked on, greatly troubled in his mind, until a resoundingbell rang, and the French officer begged to show him his rooms.They went upstairs into the gallery from which the officer had lookeddown; and Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick was cordiallywelcomed to a grand outer chamber, and a smaller one within, allclocks and draperies, and hearths, and brazen dogs, and tiles, andcool devices, and elegance, and vastness.

“You were at Waterloo,” said the French officer.“I was,” said Captain Richard Doubledick. “And at Badajos.”Left alone with the sound of his own stern voice in his ears, he sat

down to consider, What shall I do, and how shall I tell him? At thattime, unhappily, many deplorable duels had been fought betweenEnglish and French officers, arising out of the recent war; and theseduels, and how to avoid this officer’s hospitality, were the upper-most thought in Captain Richard Doubledick’s mind.

He was thinking, and letting the time run out in which he shouldhave dressed for dinner, when Mrs. Taunton spoke to him outsidethe door, asking if he could give her the letter he had brought fromMary. “His mother, above all,” the Captain thought. “How shall Itell her?”

“You will form a friendship with your host, I hope,” said Mrs. Taunton,whom he hurriedly admitted, “that will last for life. He is so true-heartedand so generous, Richard, that you can hardly fail to esteem one an-other. If He had been spared,” she kissed (not without tears) the locketin which she wore his hair, “he would have appreciated him with hisown magnanimity, and would have been truly happy that the evil dayswere past which made such a man his enemy.”

She left the room; and the Captain walked, first to one window,whence he could see the dancing in the garden, then to anotherwindow, whence he could see the smiling prospect and the peacefulvineyards.

“Spirit of my departed friend,” said he, “is it through thee thesebetter thoughts are rising in my mind? Is it thou who hast shown me,all the way I have been drawn to meet this man, the blessings of thealtered time? Is it thou who hast sent thy stricken mother to me, to

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stay my angry hand? Is it from thee the whisper comes, that this mandid his duty as thou didst,—and as I did, through thy guidance, whichhas wholly saved me here on earth,—and that he did no more?”

He sat down, with his head buried in his hands, and, when herose up, made the second strong resolution of his life,—that neitherto the French officer, nor to the mother of his departed friend, norto any soul, while either of the two was living, would he breathewhat only he knew. And when he touched that French officer’s glasswith his own, that day at dinner, he secretly forgave him in thename of the Divine Forgiver of injuries.

HERE I ENDED my story as the first Poor Traveller. But, if I had toldit now, I could have added that the time has since come when theson of Major Richard Doubledick, and the son of that French of-ficer, friends as their fathers were before them, fought side by side inone cause, with their respective nations, like long-divided brotherswhom the better times have brought together, fast united.

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CHAPTER IIITHE ROAD

MY STORY BEING FINISHED, and the Wassail too, we broke up as theCathedral bell struck Twelve. I did not take leave of my travellersthat night; for it had come into my head to reappear, in conjunc-tion with some hot coffee, at seven in the morning.

As I passed along the High Street, I heard the Waits at a distance,and struck off to find them. They were playing near one of the oldgates of the City, at the corner of a wonderfully quaint row of red-brick tenements, which the clarionet obligingly informed me wereinhabited by the Minor-Canons. They had odd little porches overthe doors, like sounding-boards over old pulpits; and I thought Ishould like to see one of the Minor-Canons come out upon his topstop, and favour us with a little Christmas discourse about the poorscholars of Rochester; taking for his text the words of his Masterrelative to the devouring of Widows’ houses.

The clarionet was so communicative, and my inclinations were(as they generally are) of so vagabond a tendency, that I accompa-nied the Waits across an open green called the Vines, and assisted—in the French sense—at the performance of two waltzes, two pol-kas, and three Irish melodies, before I thought of my inn any more.However, I returned to it then, and found a fiddle in the kitchen,and Ben, the wall-eyed young man, and two chambermaids, cir-cling round the great deal table with the utmost animation.

I had a very bad night. It cannot have been owing to the turkey orthe beef,—and the Wassail is out of the question—but in every en-deavour that I made to get to sleep I failed most dismally. I was neverasleep; and in whatsoever unreasonable direction my mind rambled,the effigy of Master Richard Watts perpetually embarrassed it.

In a word, I only got out of the Worshipful Master Richard Watts’s

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way by getting out of bed in the dark at six o’clock, and tumbling,as my custom is, into all the cold water that could be accumulatedfor the purpose. The outer air was dull and cold enough in the street,when I came down there; and the one candle in our supper-room atWatts’s Charity looked as pale in the burning as if it had had a badnight too. But my Travellers had all slept soundly, and they took tothe hot coffee, and the piles of bread-and-butter, which Ben hadarranged like deals in a timber-yard, as kindly as I could desire.

While it was yet scarcely daylight, we all came out into the streettogether, and there shook hands. The widow took the little sailortowards Chatham, where he was to find a steamboat for Sheerness;the lawyer, with an extremely knowing look, went his own way,without committing himself by announcing his intentions; two morestruck off by the cathedral and old castle for Maidstone; and thebook-pedler accompanied me over the bridge. As for me, I was go-ing to walk by Cobham Woods, as far upon my way to London as Ifancied.

When I came to the stile and footpath by which I was to divergefrom the main road, I bade farewell to my last remaining Poor Trav-eller, and pursued my way alone. And now the mists began to rise inthe most beautiful manner, and the sun to shine; and as I went onthrough the bracing air, seeing the hoarfrost sparkle everywhere, Ifelt as if all Nature shared in the joy of the great Birthday.

Going through the woods, the softness of my tread upon the mossyground and among the brown leaves enhanced the Christmas sa-credness by which I felt surrounded. As the whitened stems environedme, I thought how the Founder of the time had never raised hisbenignant hand, save to bless and heal, except in the case of oneunconscious tree. By Cobham Hall, I came to the village, and thechurchyard where the dead had been quietly buried, “in the sureand certain hope” which Christmas time inspired. What childrencould I see at play, and not be loving of, recalling who had lovedthem! No garden that I passed was out of unison with the day, for Iremembered that the tomb was in a garden, and that “she, suppos-ing him to be the gardener,” had said, “Sir, if thou have borne himhence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.”In time, the distant river with the ships came full in view, and with

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it pictures of the poor fishermen, mending their nets, who aroseand followed him,—of the teaching of the people from a ship pushedoff a little way from shore, by reason of the multitude,—of a majes-tic figure walking on the water, in the loneliness of night. My veryshadow on the ground was eloquent of Christmas; for did not thepeople lay their sick where the more shadows of the men who hadheard and seen him might fall as they passed along?

Thus Christmas begirt me, far and near, until I had come toBlackheath, and had walked down the long vista of gnarled old treesin Greenwich Park, and was being steam-rattled through the mistsnow closing in once more, towards the lights of London. Brightlythey shone, but not so brightly as my own fire, and the brighterfaces around it, when we came together to celebrate the day. Andthere I told of worthy Master Richard Watts, and of my supper withthe Six Poor Travellers who were neither Rogues nor Proctors, andfrom that hour to this I have never seen one of them again.

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A MessageFrom the Sea

by

Charles Dickens

CHAPTER ITHE VILLAGE

“AND A MIGHTY SING’LAR and pretty place it is, as ever I saw in all thedays of my life!” said Captain Jorgan, looking up at it.

Captain Jorgan had to look high to look at it, for the village wasbuilt sheer up the face of a steep and lofty cliff. There was no road init, there was no wheeled vehicle in it, there was not a level yard in it.From the sea-beach to the cliff-top two irregular rows of white houses,placed opposite to one another, and twisting here and there, andthere and here, rose, like the sides of a long succession of stages ofcrooked ladders, and you climbed up the village or climbed downthe village by the staves between, some six feet wide or so, and madeof sharp irregular stones. The old pack-saddle, long laid aside inmost parts of England as one of the appendages of its infancy, flour-ished here intact. Strings of pack-horses and pack-donkeys toiled

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slowly up the staves of the ladders, bearing fish, and coal, and suchother cargo as was unshipping at the pier from the dancing fleet ofvillage boats, and from two or three little coasting traders. As thebeasts of burden ascended laden, or descended light, they got so lostat intervals in the floating clouds of village smoke, that they seemedto dive down some of the village chimneys, and come to the surfaceagain far off, high above others. No two houses in the village werealike, in chimney, size, shape, door, window, gable, roof-tree, any-thing. The sides of the ladders were musical with water, runningclear and bright. The staves were musical with the clattering feet ofthe pack-horses and pack-donkeys, and the voices of the fishermenurging them up, mingled with the voices of the fishermen’s wives andtheir many children. The pier was musical with the wash of the sea, thecreaking of capstans and windlasses, and the airy fluttering of little vanesand sails. The rough, sea-bleached boulders of which the pier was made,and the whiter boulders of the shore, were brown with drying nets. Thered-brown cliffs, richly wooded to their extremest verge, had their soft-ened and beautiful forms reflected in the bluest water, under the clearNorth Devonshire sky of a November day without a cloud. The villageitself was so steeped in autumnal foliage, from the houses lying on thepier to the topmost round of the topmost ladder, that one might havefancied it was out a bird’s-nesting, and was (as indeed it was) a wonder-ful climber. And mentioning birds, the place was not without somemusic from them too; for the rook was very busy on the higher levels,and the gull with his flapping wings was fishing in the bay, and the lustylittle robin was hopping among the great stone blocks and iron rings ofthe breakwater, fearless in the faith of his ancestors, and the Children inthe Wood.

Thus it came to pass that Captain Jorgan, sitting balancing him-self on the pier-wall, struck his leg with his open hand, as some mendo when they are pleased—and as he always did when he waspleased—and said, —

“A mighty sing’lar and pretty place it is, as ever I saw in all thedays of my life!”

Captain Jorgan had not been through the village, but had comedown to the pier by a winding side-road, to have a preliminary lookat it from the level of his own natural element. He had seen many

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things and places, and had stowed them all away in a shrewd intel-lect and a vigorous memory. He was an American born, was Cap-tain Jorgan,—a New-Englander,—but he was a citizen of the world,and a combination of most of the best qualities of most of its bestcountries.

For Captain Jorgan to sit anywhere in his long-skirted blue coatand blue trousers, without holding converse with everybody withinspeaking distance, was a sheer impossibility. So the captain fell totalking with the fishermen, and to asking them knowing questionsabout the fishery, and the tides, and the currents, and the race ofwater off that point yonder, and what you kept in your eye, and gotinto a line with what else when you ran into the little harbour; andother nautical profundities. Among the men who exchanged ideaswith the captain was a young fellow, who exactly hit his fancy,—ayoung fisherman of two or three and twenty, in the rough sea-dressof his craft, with a brown face, dark curling hair, and bright, modesteyes under his Sou’wester hat, and with a frank, but simple andretiring manner, which the captain found uncommonly taking. “I’dbet a thousand dollars,” said the captain to himself, “that your fa-ther was an honest man!”

“Might you be married now?” asked the captain, when he hadhad some talk with this new acquaintance.

“Not yet.”“Going to be?” said the captain.“I hope so.”The captain’s keen glance followed the slightest possible turn of

the dark eye, and the slightest possible tilt of the Sou’wester hat.The captain then slapped both his legs, and said to himself, -

“Never knew such a good thing in all my life! There’s his sweet-heart looking over the wall!”

There was a very pretty girl looking over the wall, from a littleplatform of cottage, vine, and fuchsia; and she certainly dig notlook as if the presence of this young fisherman in the landscapemade it any the less sunny and hopeful for her.

Captain Jorgan, having doubled himself up to laugh with thathearty good-nature which is quite exultant in the innocent happi-ness of other people, had undoubted himself, and was going to start

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a new subject, when there appeared coming down the lower laddersof stones, a man whom he hailed as “Tom Pettifer, Ho!” Tom Pettifer,Ho, responded with alacrity, and in speedy course descended on thepier.

“Afraid of a sun-stroke in England in November, Tom, that youwear your tropical hat, strongly paid outside and paper-lined in-side, here?” said the captain, eyeing it.

“It’s as well to be on the safe side, sir,” replied Tom.“Safe side!” repeated the captain, laughing. “You’d guard against a

sun-stroke, with that old hat, in an Ice Pack. Wa’al! What have youmade out at the Post-office?”

“It is the Post-office, sir.”“What’s the Post-office?” said the captain.“The name, sir. The name keeps the Post-office.”“A coincidence!” said the captain. “A lucky bit! Show me where it

is. Good-bye, shipmates, for the present! I shall come and have an-other look at you, afore I leave, this afternoon.”

This was addressed to all there, but especially the young fisher-man; so all there acknowledged it, but especially the young fisher-man. “He’s a sailor!” said one to another, as they looked after thecaptain moving away. That he was; and so outspeaking was the sailorin him, that although his dress had nothing nautical about it, withthe single exception of its colour, but was a suit of a shore-goingshape and form, too long in the sleeves and too short in the legs,and too unaccommodating everywhere, terminating earthward in apair of Wellington boots, and surmounted by a tall, stiff hat, whichno mortal could have worn at sea in any wind under heaven; never-theless, a glimpse of his sagacious, weather-beaten face, or his strong,brown hand, would have established the captain’s calling. WhereasMr. Pettifer—a man of a certain plump neatness, with a curly whis-ker, and elaborately nautical in a jacket, and shoes, and all thingscorrespondent—looked no more like a seaman, beside CaptainJorgan, than he looked like a sea-serpent.

The two climbed high up the village,—which had the most arbi-trary turns and twists in it, so that the cobbler’s house came deadacross the ladder, and to have held a reasonable course, you musthave gone through his house, and through him too, as he sat at his

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work between two little windows,—with one eye microscopicallyon the geological formation of that part of Devonshire, and theother telescopically on the open sea,—the two climbed high up thevillage, and stopped before a quaint little house, on which waspainted, “Mrs. Raybrock, Draper;” and also “Post-Office.” Before it,ran a rill of murmuring water, and access to it was gained by a littleplank-bridge.

“Here’s the name,” said Captain Jorgan, “sure enough. You cancome in if you like, Tom.”

The captain opened the door, and passed into an odd little shop,about six feet high, with a great variety of beams and bumps in theceiling, and, besides the principal window giving on the ladder ofstones, a purblind little window of a single pane of glass, peepingout of an abutting corner at the sun-lighted ocean, and winking atits brightness.

“How do you do, ma’am?” said the captain. “I am very glad to seeyou. I have come a long way to see you.”

“Have you, sir? Then I am sure I am very glad to see you, thoughI don’t know you from Adam.”

Thus a comely elderly woman, short of stature, plump of form,sparkling and dark of eye, who, perfectly clean and neat herself,stood in the midst of her perfectly clean and neat arrangements,and surveyed Captain Jorgan with smiling curiosity. “Ah! but youare a sailor, sir,” she added, almost immediately, and with a slightmovement of her hands, that was not very unlike wringing them;“then you are heartily welcome.”

“Thank’ee, ma’am,” said the captain, “I don’t know what it is, Iam sure; that brings out the salt in me, but everybody seems to seeit on the crown of my hat and the collar of my coat. Yes, ma’am, Iam in that way of life.”

“And the other gentleman, too,” said Mrs. Raybrock.“Well now, ma’am,” said the captain, glancing shrewdly at the

other gentleman, “you are that nigh right, that he goes to sea,—ifthat makes him a sailor. This is my steward, ma’am, Tom Pettifer;he’s been a’most all trades you could name, in the course of his life,—would have bought all your chairs and tables once, if you had wishedto sell ‘em,—but now he’s my steward. My name’s Jorgan, and I’m a

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ship-owner, and I sail my own and my partners’ ships, and havedone so this five-and-twenty year. According to custom I am calledCaptain Jorgan, but I am no more a captain, bless your heart, thanyou are.”

“Perhaps you’ll come into my parlour, sir, and take a chair?” saidMrs. Raybrock.

“Ex-actly what I was going to propose myself, ma’am. After you.”Thus replying, and enjoining Tom to give an eye to the shop,

Captain Jorgan followed Mrs. Raybrock into the little, low back-room,—decorated with divers plants in pots, tea-trays, old chinateapots, and punch-bowls,—which was at once the private sitting-room of the Raybrock family and the inner cabinet of the post-office of the village of Steepways.

“Now, ma’am,” said the captain, “it don’t signify a cent to youwhere I was born, except—” But here the shadow of some one en-tering fell upon the captain’s figure, and he broke off to double him-self up, slap both his legs, and ejaculate, “Never knew such a thingin all my life! Here he is again! How are you?”

These words referred to the young fellow who had so taken Cap-tain Jorgan’s fancy down at the pier. To make it all quite completehe came in accompanied by the sweetheart whom the captain haddetected looking over the wall. A prettier sweetheart the sun couldnot have shone upon that shining day. As she stood before the cap-tain, with her rosy lips just parted in surprise, her brown eyes a littlewider open than was usual from the same cause, and her breathinga little quickened by the ascent (and possibly by some mysterioushurry and flurry at the parlour door, in which the captain had ob-served her face to be for a moment totally eclipsed by the Sou’westerhat), she looked so charming, that the captain felt himself under amoral obligation to slap both his legs again. She was very simplydressed, with no other ornament than an autumnal flower in herbosom. She wore neither hat nor bonnet, but merely a scarf or ker-chief, folded squarely back over the head, to keep the sun off,—according to a fashion that may be sometimes seen in the moregenial parts of England as well as of Italy, and which is probably thefirst fashion of head-dress that came into the world when grassesand leaves went out.

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“In my country,” said the captain, rising to give her his chair, anddexterously sliding it close to another chair on which the youngfisherman must necessarily establish himself,—”in my country weshould call Devonshire beauty first-rate!”

Whenever a frank manner is offensive, it is because it is strainedor feigned; for there may be quite as much intolerable affectation inplainness as in mincing nicety. All that the captain said and did washonestly according to his nature; and his nature was open natureand good nature; therefore, when he paid this little compliment,and expressed with a sparkle or two of his knowing eye, “I see howit is, and nothing could be better,” he had established a delicateconfidence on that subject with the family.

“I was saying to your worthy mother,” said the captain to theyoung man, after again introducing himself by name and occupa-tion,—”I was saying to your mother (and you’re very like her) thatit didn’t signify where I was born, except that I was raised on ques-tion-asking ground, where the babies as soon as ever they come intothe world, inquire of their mothers, ‘Neow, how old may you be,and wa’at air you a goin’ to name me?’—which is a fact.” Here heslapped his leg. “Such being the case, I may be excused for askingyou if your name’s Alfred?”

“Yes, sir, my name is Alfred,” returned the young man.“I am not a conjurer,” pursued the captain, “and don’t think me

so, or I shall right soon undeceive you. Likewise don’t think, if youplease, though I do come from that country of the babies, that I amasking questions for question-asking’s sake, for I am not. Somebodybelonging to you went to sea?”

“My elder brother, Hugh,” returned the young man. He said it inan altered and lower voice, and glanced at his mother, who raisedher hands hurriedly, and put them together across her black gown,and looked eagerly at the visitor.

“No! For God’s sake, don’t think that!” said the captain, in a sol-emn way; “I bring no good tidings of him.”

There was a silence, and the mother turned her face to the fireand put her hand between it and her eyes. The young fishermanslightly motioned toward the window, and the captain, looking inthat direction, saw a young widow, sitting at a neighbouring win-

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dow across a little garden, engaged in needlework, with a youngchild sleeping on her bosom. The silence continued until the cap-tain asked of Alfred, —

“How long is it since it happened?”“He shipped for his last voyage better than three years ago.”“Ship struck upon some reef or rock, as I take it,” said the captain,

“and all hands lost?”“Yes.”“Wa’al!” said the captain, after a shorter silence, “Here I sit who

may come to the same end, like enough. He holds the seas in thehollow of His hand. We must all strike somewhere and go down.Our comfort, then, for ourselves and one another is to have doneour duty. I’d wager your brother did his!”

“He did!” answered the young fisherman. “If ever man strove faith-fully on all occasions to do his duty, my brother did. My brotherwas not a quick man (anything but that), but he was a faithful, true,and just man. We were the sons of only a small tradesman in thiscounty, sir; yet our father was as watchful of his good name as if hehad been a king.”

“A precious sight more so, I hope—bearing in mind the generalrun of that class of crittur,” said the captain. “But I interrupt.”

“My brother considered that our father left the good name to us,to keep clear and true.”

“Your brother considered right,” said the captain; “and you couldn’ttake care of a better legacy. But again I interrupt.”

“No; for I have nothing more to say. We know that Hugh livedwell for the good name, and we feel certain that he died well for thegood name. And now it has come into my keeping. And that’s all.”

“Well spoken!” cried the captain. “Well spoken, young man! Con-cerning the manner of your brother’s death,”—by this time the cap-tain had released the hand he had shaken, and sat with his ownbroad, brown hands spread out on his knees, and spoke aside,—”concerning the manner of your brother’s death, it may be that Ihave some information to give you; though it may not be, for I amfar from sure. Can we have a little talk alone?”

The young man rose; but not before the captain’s quick eye hadnoticed that, on the pretty sweetheart’s turning to the window to

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greet the young widow with a nod and a wave of the hand, the youngwidow had held up to her the needlework on which she was engaged,with a patient and pleasant smile. So the captain said, being on hislegs, —

“What might she be making now?”“What is Margaret making, Kitty?” asked the young fisherman,—

with one of his arms apparently mislaid somewhere.As Kitty only blushed in reply, the captain doubled himself up as

far as he could, standing, and said, with a slap of his leg, —“In my country we should call it wedding-clothes. Fact! We should,

I do assure you.”But it seemed to strike the captain in another light too; for his

laugh was not a long one, and he added, in quite a gentle tone, —“And it’s very pretty, my dear, to see her—poor young thing, with

her fatherless child upon her bosom—giving up her thoughts toyour home and your happiness. It’s very pretty, my dear, and it’svery good. May your marriage be more prosperous than hers, andbe a comfort to her too. May the blessed sun see you all happytogether, in possession of the good name, long after I have doneploughing the great salt field that is never sown!”

Kitty answered very earnestly, “O! Thank you, sir, with all myheart!” And, in her loving little way, kissed her hand to him, andpossibly by implication to the young fisherman, too, as the latterheld the parlour-door open for the captain to pass out.

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CHAPTER IITHE MONEY

“THE STAIRS ARE very narrow, sir,” said Alfred Raybrock to CaptainJorgan.

“Like my cabin-stairs,” returned the captain, “on many a voyage.”“And they are rather inconvenient for the head.”“If my head can’t take care of itself by this time, after all the knock-

ing about the world it has had,” replied the captain, as unconcernedlyas if he had no connection with it, “it’s not worth looking after.”

Thus they came into the young fisherman’s bedroom, which wasas perfectly neat and clean as the shop and parlour below; though itwas but a little place, with a sliding window, and a phrenologicalceiling expressive of all the peculiarities of the house-roof. Here thecaptain sat down on the foot of the bed, and glancing at a dreadfullibel on Kitty which ornamented the wall,—the production of somewandering limner, whom the captain secretly admired as havingstudied portraiture from the figure-heads of ships,—motioned tothe young man to take the rush-chair on the other side of the smallround table. That done, the captain put his hand in the deep breast-pocket of his long-skirted blue coat, and took out of it a strongsquare case-bottle,—not a large bottle, but such as may be seen inany ordinary ship’s medicine-chest. Setting this bottle on the tablewithout removing his hand from it, Captain Jorgan then spake asfollows:—

“In my last voyage homeward-bound,” said the captain, “and that’sthe voyage off of which I now come straight, I encountered suchweather off the Horn as is not very often met with, even there. Ihave rounded that stormy Cape pretty often, and I believe I firstbeat about there in the identical storms that blew the Devil’s hornsand tail off, and led to the horns being worked up into tooth-picks

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for the plantation overseers in my country, who may be seen (if youtravel down South, or away West, fur enough) picking their teethwith ‘em, while the whips, made of the tail, flog hard. In this lastvoyage, homeward-bound for Liverpool from South America, I sayto you, my young friend, it blew. Whole measures! No half mea-sures, nor making believe to blow; it blew! Now I warn’t blownclean out of the water into the sky,—though I expected to be eventhat,—but I was blown clean out of my course; and when at last itfell calm, it fell dead calm, and a strong current set one way, day andnight, night and day, and I drifted—drifted—drifted—out of allthe ordinary tracks and courses of ships, and drifted yet, and yetdrifted. It behooves a man who takes charge of fellow-critturs’ lives,never to rest from making himself master of his calling. I never didrest, and consequently I knew pretty well (‘specially looking overthe side in the dead calm of that strong current) what dangers toexpect, and what precautions to take against ‘em. In short, we weredriving head on to an island. There was no island in the chart, and,therefore, you may say it was ill-manners in the island to be there; Idon’t dispute its bad breeding, but there it was. Thanks be to Heaven,I was as ready for the island as the island was ready for me. I made itout myself from the masthead, and I got enough way upon her ingood time to keep her off. I ordered a boat to be lowered and manned,and went in that boat myself to explore the island. There was a reefoutside it, and, floating in a corner of the smooth water within thereef, was a heap of sea-weed, and entangled in that sea-weed wasthis bottle.”

Here the captain took his hand from the bottle for a moment,that the young fisherman might direct a wondering glance at it; andthen replaced his band and went on:—

“If ever you come—or even if ever you don’t come—to a desertplace, use you your eyes and your spy-glass well; for the smallestthing you see may prove of use to you; and may have some informa-tion or some warning in it. That’s the principle on which I came tosee this bottle. I picked up the bottle and ran the boat alongside theisland, and made fast and went ashore armed, with a part of myboat’s crew. We found that every scrap of vegetation on the island (Igive it you as my opinion, but scant and scrubby at the best of

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times) had been consumed by fire. As we were making our way,cautiously and toilsomely, over the pulverised embers, one of mypeople sank into the earth breast-high. He turned pale, and ‘Haulme out smart, shipmates,’ says he, ‘for my feet are among bones.’We soon got him on his legs again, and then we dug up the spot,and we found that the man was right, and that his feet had beenamong bones. More than that, they were human bones; thoughwhether the remains of one man, or of two or three men, what withcalcination and ashes, and what with a poor practical knowledge ofanatomy, I can’t undertake to say. We examined the whole islandand made out nothing else, save and except that, from its oppositeside, I sighted a considerable tract of land, which land I was able toidentify, and according to the bearings of which (not to trouble youwith my log) I took a fresh departure. When I got aboard again Iopened the bottle, which was oilskin-covered as you see, and glass-stoppered as you see. Inside of it,” pursued the captain, suiting hisaction to his words, “I found this little crumpled, folded paper, justas you see. Outside of it was written, as you see, these words: ‘Who-ever finds this, is solemnly entreated by the dead to convey it un-read to Alfred Raybrock, Steepways, North Devon, England.’ A sa-cred charge,” said the captain, concluding his narrative, “and, AlfredRaybrock, there it is!”

“This is my poor brother’s writing!”“I suppose so,” said Captain Jorgan. “I’ll take a look out of this

little window while you read it.”“Pray no, sir! I should be hurt. My brother couldn’t know it would

fall into such hands as yours.”The captain sat down again on the foot of the bed, and the young

man opened the folded paper with a trembling hand, and spread iton the table. The ragged paper, evidently creased and torn bothbefore and after being written on, was much blotted and stained,and the ink had faded and run, and many words were wanting.What the captain and the young fisherman made out together, aftermuch re-reading and much humouring of the folds of the paper, isgiven on the next page.

The young fisherman had become more and more agitated, as thewriting had become clearer to him. He now left it lying before the

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captain, over whose shoulder he had been reading it, and droppinginto his former seat, leaned forward on the table and laid his face inhis hands.

“What, man,” urged the captain, “don’t give in! Be up and doinglike a man!”

“It is selfish, I know,—but doing what, doing what?” cried theyoung fisherman, in complete despair, and stamping his sea-booton the ground.

“Doing what?” returned the captain. “Something! I’d go down tothe little breakwater below yonder, and take a wrench at one of thesalt-rusted iron rings there, and either wrench it up by the roots orwrench my teeth out of my head, sooner than I’d do nothing. Noth-ing!” ejaculated the captain. “Any fool or fainting heart can do that,and nothing can come of nothing,—which was pretended to befound out, I believe, by one of them Latin critters,” said the captainwith the deepest disdain; “as if Adam hadn’t found it out, afore everhe so much as named the beasts!”

Yet the captain saw, in spite of his bold words, that there was somegreater reason than he yet understood for the young man’s distress.And he eyed him with a sympathising curiosity.

“Come, come!” continued the captain, “Speak out. What is it,boy!”

“You have seen how beautiful she is, sir,” said the young man,looking up for the moment, with a flushed face and rumpled hair.

“Did any man ever say she warn’t beautiful?” retorted the captain.“If so, go and lick him.”

The young man laughed fretfully in spite of himself, and said —“It’s not that, it’s not that.”“Wa’al, then, what is it?” said the captain in a more soothing tone.The young fisherman mournfully composed himself to tell the

captain what it was, and began: “We were to have been marriednext Monday week—”

“Were to have been!” interrupted Captain Jorgan. “And are to be?Hey?”

Young Raybrock shook his head, and traced out with his fore-finger the words, “poor father’s five hundred pounds,” in the writ-ten paper.

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“Go along,” said the captain. “Five hundred pounds? Yes?”“That sum of money,” pursued the young fisherman, entering

with the greatest earnestness on his demonstration, whi

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