← catalogue

At Sunwich Port [complete]

by W. W. Jacobs · English · Gutenberg #10876 · 372,844 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of At Sunwich Port [complete]
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: At Sunwich Port [complete]

Author: W. W. Jacobs

Illustrator: Will Owen


        
Release date: January 1, 2004 [eBook #10876]
                Most recently updated: August 13, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10876

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT SUNWICH PORT [COMPLETE] ***




                               AT SUNWICH
                                  PORT

                                   BY
                              W. W. JACOBS

                          Drawings by Will Owen



Contents


  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV



List of Illustrations


  “His perturbation attracted the attention of his hostess.”

  “A welcome subject of conversation in marine circles.”

  “The suspense became painful.”

  “Captain Hardy lit his pipe before replying.”

  “Mr. Wilks watched it from the quay.”

  “Master Hardy on the beach enacting the part of David.”

  “Mr. Wilks replied that he was biding his time.”

  “A particularly hard nut to crack.”

  “A stool in the local bank.”

  “A diversion was created by the entrance of a new arrival.”

  “He stepped across the road to his emporium.”

  “‘Most comfortable shoulder in Sunwich,’ she murmured.”

  “The most astounding and gratifying instance of the wonders effected by
  time was that of Miss Nugent.”

  “Mr. Swann with growing astonishment slowly mastered the contents.”

  “Fullalove alley.”

  “She caught sight of Hardy.”

  “Undiluted wisdom and advice flowed from his lips.”

  “‘What do you want?’ inquired Miss Kybird.”

  “He regarded the wife of his bosom with a calculating glance.”

  “He even obtained work down at the harbor.”

  “Miss Kybird standing in the doorway of the shop.”

  “Me or ’im—which is it to be?”

  “I wonder what the governor’ll say.”

  “A spirit of quiet despair.”

  “A return visit.”

  “He set off towards the life and bustle of the two schooners.”

  “For the second time he left the court without a stain on his
  character.”

  “The proprietor eyed him with furtive glee as he passed.”

  “Miss Nugent’s consternation was difficult of concealment.”

  “He found his remaining guest holding his aching head beneath the tap.”

  “Mr. Nathan Smith.”

  “It was not until he had consumed a pint or two of the strongest brew
  that he began to regain some of his old self-esteem.”

  “The man on the other side fell on all fours into the room.”

  “He pushed open the small lattice window and peered out into the alley.”

  “Tapping the steward on the chest with a confidential finger, he backed
  him into a corner.”

  “He finished up the evening at the chequers.”

  “The meagre figure of Mrs. Silk.”

  “In search of Mr. Smith.”

  “I ’ave heard of ’em exploding.”

  “He stepped to the side and looked over.”

  “You keep on, Nugent, don’t you mind ’im.”

  “Hadn’t you better see about making yourself presentable, Hardy?”

  “It was not without a certain amount of satisfaction that he regarded
  her discomfiture.”

  “Mr. Hardy resigned himself to his fate.”

  “The carefully groomed and fastidious Murchison.”

  “‘Why do you wish to be on friendly terms?’ she asked.”

  “He said that a bit o’ wedding-cake ’ad blowed in his eye.”

  “Mr. Wilks drank to the health of both of them.”

  “A popular hero.”

  “He met these annoyances with a set face.”

  “Can’t you let her see that her attentions are undesirable?”

  “He took a glass from the counter and smashed it on the floor.”

  “The great thing was to get Teddy Silk home.”

  “Captain Nugent.”

  “Sniffing at their contents.”

  “‘Puppy!’ said the invalid.”

  “Bella, in a state of fearsome glee, came down the garden to tell the
  captain of his visitor.”

  “‘Get out of my house,’ he roared.”

  “I do hope he has not come to take you away from me.”

  “Are you goin’ to send Cap’n Nugent an invite for the wedding?”

  “Are there any other of my patients you are anxious to hear about?”

  “He wondered, gloomily, what she would think when she heard of it.”

  “‘Some people ’ave all the luck,’ he muttered.”

  “If you’ve got anything to say, why don’t you say it like a man?”

  “Mrs. Kybird suddenly seized him by the coat.”

  “Mr. Kybird and his old friend parted.”

  “He took up his candle and went off whistling.”

  “He could just make out a dim figure behind the counter.”

  “‘But suppose she asks me to?’ said the delighted Mr. Nugent, with much
  gravity.”

  “‘You’re a deceiver,’ she gasped.”

  “‘It was teddy done it,’ said Mr. Kybird, humbly.”

  “Pausing occasionally to answer anxious inquiries.”

  “She placed her other arm in that of Hardy.”




CHAPTER I


The ancient port of Sunwich was basking in the sunshine of a July
afternoon. A rattle of cranes and winches sounded from the shipping in
the harbour, but the town itself was half asleep. Somnolent shopkeepers
in dim back parlours coyly veiled their faces in red handkerchiefs
from the too ardent flies, while small boys left in charge noticed
listlessly the slow passing of time as recorded by the church clock.

It is a fine church, and Sunwich is proud of it. The tall grey tower
is a landmark at sea, but from the narrow streets of the little town
itself it has a disquieting appearance of rising suddenly above the
roofs huddled beneath it for the purpose of displaying a black-faced
clock with gilt numerals whose mellow chimes have recorded the passing
hours for many generations of Sunwich men.

Regardless of the heat, which indeed was mild compared with that which
raged in his own bosom, Captain Nugent, fresh from the inquiry of the
collision of his ship _Conqueror_ with the German barque Hans Müller,
strode rapidly up the High Street in the direction of home. An honest
seafaring smell, compounded of tar, rope, and fish, known to the
educated of Sunwich as ozone, set his thoughts upon the sea. He longed
to be aboard ship again, with the Court of Inquiry to form part of his
crew. In all his fifty years of life he had never met such a collection
of fools. His hard blue eyes blazed as he thought of them, and the
mouth hidden by his well-kept beard was set with anger.

Mr. Samson Wilks, his steward, who had been with him to London to give
evidence, had had a time upon which he looked back in later years with
much satisfaction at his powers of endurance. He was with the captain,
and yet not with him. When they got out of the train at Sunwich he
hesitated as to whether he should follow the captain or leave him. His
excuse for following was the bag, his reason for leaving the volcanic
condition of its owner’s temper, coupled with the fact that he appeared
to be sublimely ignorant that the most devoted steward in the world was
tagging faithfully along a yard or two in the rear.

The few passers-by glanced at the couple with interest. Mr. Wilks
had what is called an expressive face, and he had worked his sandy
eyebrows, his weak blue eyes, and large, tremulous mouth into such an
expression of surprise at the finding of the Court, that he had all the
appearance of a beholder of visions. He changed the bag to his other
hand as they left the town behind them, and regarded with gratitude the
approaching end of his labours.

At the garden-gate of a fair-sized house some half-mile along the road
the captain stopped, and after an impatient fumbling at the latch
strode up the path, followed by Mr. Wilks, and knocked at the door. As
he paused on the step he half turned, and for the first time noticed
the facial expression of his faithful follower.

“What the dickens are you looking like that for?” he demanded.

“I’ve been surprised, sir,” conceded Mr. Wilks; “surprised and
astonished.”

Wrath blazed again in the captain’s eyes and set lines in his forehead.
He was being pitied by a steward!

“You’ve been drinking,” he said, crisply; “put that bag down.”

“Arsking your pardon, sir,” said the steward, twisting his unusually
dry lips into a smile, “but I’ve ’ad no opportunity, sir—I’ve been
follerin’ you all day, sir.”

A servant opened the door. “You’ve been soaking in it for a month,”
declared the captain as he entered the hall. “Why the blazes don’t you
bring that bag in? Are you so drunk you don’t know what you are doing?”

Mr. Wilks picked the bag up and followed humbly into the house. Then
he lost his head altogether, and gave some colour to his superior
officer’s charges by first cannoning into the servant and then wedging
the captain firmly in the doorway of the sitting-room with the bag.

“Steward!” rasped the captain.

“Yessir,” said the unhappy Mr. Wilks.

“Go and sit down in the kitchen, and don’t leave this house till you’re
sober.”

Mr. Wilks disappeared. He was not in his first lustre, but he was an
ardent admirer of the sex, and in an absent-minded way he passed his
arm round the handmaiden’s waist, and sustained a buffet which made his
head ring.

“A man o’ your age, and drunk, too,” explained the damsel.

Mr. Wilks denied both charges. It appeared that he was much younger
than he looked, while, as for drink, he had forgotten the taste of
it. A question as to the reception Ann would have accorded a boyish
teetotaler remained unanswered.

In the sitting-room Mrs. Kingdom, the captain’s widowed sister, put
down her crochet-work as her brother entered, and turned to him
expectantly. There was an expression of loving sympathy on her mild and
rather foolish face, and the captain stiffened at once.

“I was in the wrong,” he said, harshly, as he dropped into a chair; “my
certificate has been suspended for six months, and my first officer has
been commended.”

“Suspended?” gasped Mrs. Kingdom, pushing back the white streamer to
the cap which she wore in memory of the late Mr. Kingdom, and sitting
upright. “You?”

“I think that’s what I said,” replied her brother.

Mrs. Kingdom gazed at him mournfully, and, putting her hand behind her,
began a wriggling search in her pocket for a handkerchief, with the
idea of paying a wholesome tribute of tears. She was a past-master in
the art of grief, and, pending its extraction, a docile tear hung on
her eyelid and waited. The captain eyed her preparations with silent
anger.

“I am not surprised,” said Mrs. Kingdom, dabbing her eyes; “I expected
it somehow. I seemed to have a warning of it. Something seemed to tell
me; I couldn’t explain, but I seemed to know.”

She sniffed gently, and, wiping one eye at a time, kept the disengaged
one charged with sisterly solicitude upon her brother. The captain,
with steadily rising anger, endured this game of one-eyed bo-peep for
five minutes; then he rose and, muttering strange things in his beard,
stalked upstairs to his room.

Mrs. Kingdom, thus forsaken, dried her eyes and resumed her work. The
remainder of the family were in the kitchen ministering to the wants of
a misunderstood steward, and, in return, extracting information which
should render them independent of the captain’s version.

“Was it very solemn, Sam?” inquired Miss Nugent, aged nine, who was
sitting on the kitchen table.

Mr. Wilks used his hands and eyebrows to indicate the solemnity of the
occasion.

“They even made the cap’n leave off speaking,” he said, in an awed
voice.

“I should have liked to have been there,” said Master Nugent, dutifully.

“Ann,” said Miss Nugent, “go and draw Sam a jug of beer.”

“Beer, Miss?” said Ann.

“A jug of beer,” repeated Miss Nugent, peremptorily.

Ann took a jug from the dresser, and Mr. Wilks, who was watching her,
coughed helplessly. His perturbation attracted the attention of his
hostess, and, looking round for the cause, she was just in time to see
Ann disappearing into the larder with a cream jug.

[Illustration: “His perturbation attracted the attention of his
hostess.”]

“The big jug, Ann,” she said, impatiently; “you ought to know Sam would
like a big one.”

Ann changed the jugs, and, ignoring a mild triumph in Mr. Wilks’s eye,
returned to the larder, whence ensued a musical trickling. Then Miss
Nugent, raising the jug with some difficulty, poured out a tumbler for
the steward with her own fair hands.

“Sam likes beer,” she said, speaking generally.

“I knew that the first time I see him, Miss,” remarked the vindictive
Ann.

Mr. Wilks drained his glass and set it down on the table again, making
a feeble gesture of repulse as Miss Nugent refilled it.

“Go on, Sam,” she said, with kindly encouragement; “how much does this
jug hold, Jack?”

“Quart,” replied her brother.

“How many quarts are there in a gallon?”

“Four.”

Miss Nugent looked troubled. “I heard father say he drinks gallons a
day,” she remarked; “you’d better fill all the jugs, Ann.”

“It was only ’is way o’ speaking,” said Mr. Wilks, hurriedly; “the
cap’n is like that sometimes.”

“I knew a man once, Miss,” said Ann, “as used to prefer to ’ave it in
a wash-hand basin. Odd, ugly-looking man ’e was; like Mr. Wilks in the
face, only better-looking.”

Mr. Wilks sat upright and, in the mental struggle involved in taking
in this insult in all its ramifications, did not notice until too late
that Miss Nugent had filled his glass again.

“It must ha’ been nice for the captain to ’ave you with ’im to-day,”
remarked Ann, carelessly.

“It was,” said Mr. Wilks, pausing with the glass at his lips and eyeing
her sternly. “Eighteen years I’ve bin with ’im—ever since ’e ’ad a
ship. ’E took a fancy to me the fust time ’e set eyes on me.”

“Were you better-looking then, Sam?” inquired Miss Nugent, shuffling
closer to him on the table and regarding him affectionately.

“Much as I am now, Miss,” replied Mr. Wilks, setting down his glass and
regarding Ann’s giggles with a cold eye.

Miss Nugent sighed. “I love you, Sam,” she said, simply. “Will you have
some more beer?”

Mr. Wilks declined gracefully. “Eighteen years I’ve bin with the
cap’n,” he remarked, softly; “through calms and storms, fair weather
and foul, Samson Wilks ’as been by ’is side, always ready in a quiet
and ’umble way to do ’is best for ’im, and now—now that ’e is on his
beam-ends and lost ’is ship, Samson Wilks’ll sit down and starve ashore
till he gets another.”

At these touching words Miss Nugent was undisguisedly affected, and
wiping her bright eyes with her pinafore, gave her small, well-shaped
nose a slight touch en passant with the same useful garment, and
squeezed his arm affectionately.

“It’s a lively look-out for me if father is going to be at home for
long,” remarked Master Nugent. “Who’ll get his ship, Sam?”

“Shouldn’t wonder if the fust officer, Mr. Hardy, got it,” replied
the steward. “He was going dead-slow in the fog afore he sent down to
rouse your father, and as soon as your father came on deck ’e went at
’arfspeed. Mr. Hardy was commended, and your father’s certifikit was
suspended for six months.”

Master Nugent whistled thoughtfully, and quitting the kitchen proceeded
upstairs to his room, and first washing himself with unusual care for a
boy of thirteen, put on a clean collar and brushed his hair. He was not
going to provide a suspended master-mariner with any obvious reasons
for fault-finding. While he was thus occupied the sitting-room bell
rang, and Ann, answering it, left Mr. Wilks in the kitchen listening
with some trepidation to the conversation.

“Is that steward of mine still in the kitchen?” demanded the captain,
gruffly.

“Yessir,” said Ann.

“What’s he doing?”

Mr. Wilks’s ears quivered anxiously, and he eyed with unwonted
disfavour the evidences of his late debauch.

“Sitting down, sir,” replied Ann.

“Give him a glass of ale and send him off,” commanded the captain; “and
if that was Miss Kate I heard talking, send her in to me.”

Ann took the message back to the kitchen and, with the air of a martyr
engaged upon an unpleasant task, drew Mr. Wilks another glass of ale
and stood over him with well-affected wonder while he drank it. Miss
Nugent walked into the sitting-room, and listening in a perfunctory
fashion to a shipmaster’s platitude on kitchen-company, took a seat on
his knee and kissed his ear.




CHAPTER II


The downfall of Captain Nugent was for some time a welcome subject of
conversation in marine circles at Sunwich. At The Goblets, a rambling
old inn with paved courtyard and wooden galleries, which almost backed
on to the churchyard, brother-captains attributed it to an error of
judgment; at the Two Schooners on the quay the profanest of sailormen
readily attributed it to an all-seeing Providence with a dislike of
over-bearing ship-masters.

The captain’s cup was filled to the brim by the promotion of his first
officer to the command of the _Conqueror_. It was by far the largest
craft which sailed from the port of Sunwich, and its master held a
corresponding dignity amongst the captains of lesser vessels. Their
allegiance was now transferred to Captain Hardy, and the master of a
brig which was in the last stages of senile decay, meeting Nugent in
The Goblets, actually showed him by means of two lucifer matches how
the collision might have been avoided.

[Illustration: “A welcome subject of conversation in marine circles.”]

A touching feature in the business, and a source of much gratification
to Mr. Wilks by the sentimental applause evoked by it, was his
renunciation of the post of steward on the ss. _Conqueror_. Sunwich
buzzed with the tidings that after eighteen years’ service with Captain
Nugent he preferred starvation ashore to serving under another master.
Although comfortable in pocket and known to be living with his mother,
who kept a small general shop, he was regarded as a man on the brink of
starvation. Pints were thrust upon him, and the tale of his nobility
increased with much narration. It was considered that the whole race of
stewards had acquired fresh lustre from his action.

His only unfavourable critic was the erring captain himself. He sent
a peremptory summons to Mr. Wilks to attend at Equator Lodge, and the
moment he set eyes upon that piece of probity embarked upon such a
vilification of his personal defects and character as Mr. Wilks had
never even dreamt of. He wound up by ordering him to rejoin the ship
forthwith.

“Arsking your pardon, sir,” said Mr. Wilks, with tender reproach, “but
I couldn’t.”

“Are you going to live on your mother, you hulking rascal?” quoth the
incensed captain.

“No, sir,” said Mr. Wilks. “I’ve got a little money, sir; enough for my
few wants till we sail again.”

“When I sail again you won’t come with me,” said the captain, grimly.
“I suppose you want an excuse for a soak ashore for six months!”

Mr. Wilks twiddled his cap in his hands and smiled weakly.

“I thought p’r’aps as you’d like me to come round and wait at table,
and help with the knives and boots and such-like,” he said, softly.
“Ann is agreeable.”

“Get out of the house,” said the captain in quiet, measured tones.

Mr. Wilks went, but on his way to the gate he picked up three pieces
of paper which had blown into the garden, weeded two pieces of grass
from the path, and carefully removed a dead branch from a laurel facing
the window. He would have done more but for an imperative knocking on
the glass, and he left the premises sadly, putting his collection of
rubbish over the next garden fence as he passed it.

But the next day the captain’s boots bore such a polish that he was
able to view his own startled face in them, and at dinner-time the
brightness of the knives was so conspicuous that Mrs. Kingdom called
Ann in for the purpose of asking her why she didn’t always do them
like that. Her brother ate his meal in silence, and going to his room
afterwards discovered every pair of boots he possessed, headed by the
tall sea-boots, standing in a nicely graduated line by the wall, and
all shining their hardest.

For two days did Mr. Wilks do good by stealth, leaving Ann to blush
to find it fame; but on the third day at dinner, as the captain took
up his knife and fork to carve, he became aware of a shadow standing
behind his chair. A shadow in a blue coat with metal buttons, which,
whipping up the first plate carved, carried it to Mrs. Kingdom, and
then leaned against her with the vegetable dishes.

The dishes clattered a little on his arm as he helped the captain, but
the latter, after an impressive pause and a vain attempt to catch the
eye of Mr. Wilks, which was intent upon things afar off, took up the
spoon and helped himself. From the unwonted silence of Miss Nugent in
the presence of anything unusual it was clear to him that the whole
thing had been carefully arranged. He ate in silence, and a resolution
to kick Mr. Wilks off the premises vanished before the comfort, to say
nothing of the dignity, afforded by his presence. Mr. Wilks, somewhat
reassured, favoured Miss Nugent with a wink to which, although she had
devoted much time in trying to acquire the art, she endeavoured in vain
to respond.

It was on the day following this that Jack Nugent, at his sister’s
instigation, made an attempt to avenge the family honour. Miss Nugent,
although she treated him with scant courtesy herself, had a touching
faith in his prowess, a faith partly due to her brother occasionally
showing her his bicep muscles in moments of exaltation.

“There’s that horrid Jem Hardy,” she said, suddenly, as they walked
along the road.

“So it is,” said Master Nugent, but without any display of enthusiasm.

“Halloa, Jack,” shouted Master Hardy across the road.

[Illustration: “The suspense became painful.”]

“Halloa,” responded the other.

“He’s going to fight you,” shrilled Miss Nugent, who thought these
amenities ill-timed; “he said so.”

Master Hardy crossed the road. “What for?” he demanded, with surprise.

“Because you’re a nasty, horrid boy,” replied Miss Nugent, drawing
herself up.

“Oh,” said Master Hardy, blankly.

The two gentlemen stood regarding each other with uneasy grins; the
lady stood by in breathless expectation. The suspense became painful.

“Who are you staring at?” demanded Master Nugent, at last.

“You,” replied the other; “who are you staring at?”

“You,” said Master Nugent, defiantly.

There was a long interval, both gentlemen experiencing some difficulty
in working up sufficient heat for the engagement.

“You hit me and see what you’ll get,” said Master Hardy, at length.

“You hit me,” said the other.

“Cowardy, cowardy custard,” chanted the well-bred Miss Nugent, “ate his
mother’s mustard. Cowardy, cowardy cus—”

“Why don’t you send that kid home?” demanded Master Hardy, eyeing the
fair songstress with strong disfavour.

“You leave my sister alone,” said the other, giving him a light tap on
the shoulder. “There’s your coward’s blow.”

Master Hardy made a ceremonious return. “There’s yours,” he said.
“Let’s go behind the church.”

His foe assented, and they proceeded in grave silence to a piece of
grass screened by trees, which stood between the church and the beach.
Here they removed their coats and rolled up their shirt-sleeves. Things
look different out of doors, and to Miss Nugent the arms of both
gentlemen seemed somewhat stick-like in their proportions.

The preliminaries were awful, both combatants prancing round each other
with their faces just peering above their bent right arms, while their
trusty lefts dealt vicious blows at the air. Miss Nugent turned pale
and caught her breath at each blow, then she suddenly reddened with
wrath as James Philip Hardy, having paid his tribute to science, began
to hammer John Augustus Nugent about the face in a most painful and
workmanlike fashion.

She hid her face for a moment, and when she looked again Jack was on
the ground, and Master Hardy just rising from his prostrate body. Then
Jack rose slowly and, crossing over to her, borrowed her handkerchief
and applied it with great tenderness to his nose.

“Does it hurt, Jack?” she inquired, anxiously. “No,” growled her
brother.

He threw down the handkerchief and turned to his opponent again; Miss
Nugent, who was careful about her property, stooped to recover it, and
immediately found herself involved in a twisting tangle of legs, from
which she escaped by a miracle to see Master Hardy cuddling her brother
round the neck with one hand and punching him as hard and as fast as he
could with the other. The unfairness of it maddened her, and the next
moment Master Hardy’s head was drawn forcibly backwards by the hair.
The pain was so excruciating that he released his victim at once, and
Miss Nugent, emitting a series of terrified yelps, dashed off in the
direction of home, her hair bobbing up and down on her shoulders, and
her small black legs in an ecstasy of motion.

Master Hardy, with no very well-defined ideas of what he was going to
do if he caught her, started in pursuit. His scalp was still smarting
and his eyes watering with the pain as he pounded behind her. Panting
wildly she heard him coming closer and closer, and she was just about
to give up when, to her joy, she saw her father coming towards them.

Master Hardy, intent on his quarry, saw him just in time, and, swerving
into the road, passed in safety as Miss Nugent flung herself with some
violence at her father’s waistcoat and, clinging to him convulsively,
fought for breath. It was some time before she could furnish the
astonished captain with full details, and she was pleased to find that
his indignation led him to ignore the hair-grabbing episode, on which,
to do her justice, she touched but lightly.

That evening, for the first time in his life, Captain Nugent, after
some deliberation, called upon his late mate. The old servant who,
since Mrs. Hardy’s death the year before, had looked after the house,
was out, and Hardy, unaware of the honour intended him, was scandalized
by the manner in which his son received the visitor. The door opened,
there was an involuntary grunt from Master Hardy, and the next moment
he sped along the narrow passage and darted upstairs. His father, after
waiting in vain for his return, went to the door himself.

“Good evening, cap’n,” he said, in surprise.

Nugent responded gruffly, and followed him into the sitting-room. To an
invitation to sit, he responded more gruffly still that he preferred
to stand. He then demanded instant and sufficient punishment of Master
Hardy for frightening his daughter.

Even as he spoke he noticed with strong disfavour the change which had
taken place in his late first officer. The change which takes place
when a man is promoted from that rank to that of master is subtle, but
unmistakable—sometimes, as in the present instance, more unmistakable
than subtle. Captain Hardy coiled his long, sinewy form in an arm-chair
and, eyeing him calmly, lit his pipe before replying.

“Boys will fight,” he said, briefly.

“I’m speaking of his running after my daughter,” said Nugent, sternly.

Hardy’s eyes twinkled. “Young dog,” he said, genially; “at his age,
too.”

[Illustration: “Captain Hardy lit his pipe before replying.”]

Captain Nugent’s face was suffused with wrath at the pleasantry, and
he regarded him with a fixed stare. On board the _Conqueror_ there was
a witchery in that glance more potent than the spoken word, but in his
own parlour the new captain met it calmly.

“I didn’t come here to listen to your foolery,” said Nugent; “I came to
tell you to punish that boy of yours.”

“And I sha’n’t do it,” replied the other. “I have got something better
to do than interfere in children’s quarrels. I haven’t got your spare
time, you know.”

Captain Nugent turned purple. Such language from his late first officer
was a revelation to him.

“I also came to warn you,” he said, furiously, “that I shall take the
law into my own hands if you refuse.”

“Aye, aye,” said Hardy, with careless contempt; “I’ll tell him to keep
out of your way. But I should advise you to wait until I have sailed.”

Captain Nugent, who was moving towards the door, swung round and
confronted him savagely.

“What do you mean?” he demanded.

“What I say,” retorted Captain Hardy. “I don’t want to indulge Sunwich
with the spectacle of two middle-aged ship-masters at fisticuffs, but
that’s what’ll happen if you touch my boy. It would probably please the
spectators more than it would us.”

“I’ll cane him the first time I lay hands on him,” roared Captain
Nugent.

Captain Hardy’s stock of patience was at an end, and there was,
moreover, a long and undischarged account between himself and his late
skipper. He rose and crossed to the door.

“Jem,” he cried, “come downstairs and show Captain Nugent out.”

There was a breathless pause. Captain Nugent ground his teeth with fury
as he saw the challenge, and realized the ridiculous position into
which his temper had led him; and the other, who was also careful of
appearances, repented the order the moment he had given it. Matters had
now, however, passed out of their hands, and both men cast appraising
glances at each other’s form. The only one who kept his head was Master
Hardy, and it was a source of considerable relief to both of them when,
from the top of the stairs, the voice of that youthful Solomon was
heard declining in the most positive terms to do anything of the kind.

Captain Hardy repeated his command. The only reply was the violent
closing of a door at the top of the house, and after waiting a short
time he led the way to the front door himself.

“You will regret your insolence before I have done with you,” said his
visitor, as he paused on the step. “It’s the old story of a beggar on
horseback.”

“It’s a good story,” said Captain Hardy, “but to my mind it doesn’t
come up to the one about Humpty-Dumpty. Good-night.”




CHAPTER III


If anything was wanted to convince Captain Nugent that his action had
been foolish and his language intemperate it was borne in upon him
by the subsequent behaviour of Master Hardy. Generosity is seldom an
attribute of youth, while egotism, on the other hand, is seldom absent.
So far from realizing that the captain would have scorned such lowly
game, Master Hardy believed that he lived for little else, and his
Jack-in-the-box ubiquity was a constant marvel and discomfort to that
irritable mariner. Did he approach a seat on the beach, it was Master
Hardy who rose (at the last moment) to make room for him. Did he stroll
down to the harbour, it was in the wake of a small boy looking coyly at
him over his shoulder. Every small alley as he passed seemed to contain
a Jem Hardy, who whizzed out like a human firework in front of him, and
then followed dancing on his toes a pace or two in his rear.

This was on week-days; on the Sabbath Master Hardy’s daring ingenuity
led him to still further flights. All the seats at the parish church
were free, but Captain Nugent, whose admirable practice it was to take
his entire family to church, never thoroughly realized how free they
were until Master Hardy squeezed his way in and, taking a seat next to
him, prayed with unwonted fervour into the interior of a new hat, and
then sitting back watched with polite composure the efforts of Miss
Nugent’s family to restrain her growing excitement.

Charmed with the experiment, he repeated it the following Sunday. This
time he boarded the seat from the other end, and seeing no place by the
captain, took one, or more correctly speaking made one, between Miss
Nugent and Jack, and despite the former’s elbow began to feel almost
like one of the family. Hostile feelings vanished, and with an amiable
smile at the half-frantic Miss Nugent he placed a “bull’s-eye” of great
strength in his cheek, and leaning forward for a hymn-book left one on
the ledge in front of Jack. A double-distilled perfume at once assailed
the atmosphere.

Miss Nugent sat dazed at his impudence, and for the first time in
her life doubts as to her father’s capacity stirred within her. She
attempted the poor consolation of an “acid tablet,” and it was at
once impounded by the watchful Mrs. Kingdom. Mean-time the reek of
“bull’s-eyes” was insufferable.

The service seemed interminable, and all that time the indignant
damsel, wedged in between her aunt and the openly exultant enemy of
her House, was compelled to endure in silence. She did indeed attempt
one remark, and Master Hardy, with a horrified expression of outraged
piety, said “H’sh,” and shook his head at her. It was almost more than
flesh and blood could bear, and when the unobservant Mrs. Kingdom asked
her for the text on the way home her reply nearly cost her the loss of
her dinner.

[Illustration: “Mr. Wilks watched it from the quay.”]

The _Conqueror_, under its new commander, sailed on the day following.
Mr. Wilks watched it from the quay, and the new steward observing him
came to the side, and holding aloft an old pantry-cloth between his
finger and thumb until he had attracted his attention, dropped it
overboard with every circumstance of exaggerated horror. By the time a
suitable retort had occurred to the ex-steward the steamer was half a
mile distant, and the extraordinary and unnatural pantomime in which
he indulged on the edge of the quay was grievously misinterpreted by a
nervous man in a sailing boat.

Master Hardy had also seen the ship out, and, perched on the extreme
end of the breakwater, he remained watching until she was hull down
on the horizon. Then he made his way back to the town and the nearest
confectioner, and started for home just as Miss Nugent, who was about
to pay a call with her aunt, waited, beautifully dressed, in the front
garden while that lady completed her preparations.

Feeling very spic and span, and still a trifle uncomfortable from the
vigorous attentions of Ann, who cleansed her as though she had been a
doorstep, she paced slowly up and down the path. Upon these occasions
of high dress a spirit of Sabbath calm was wont to descend upon her and
save her from escapades to which in a less severe garb she was somewhat
prone.

She stopped at the gate and looked up the road. Then her face flushed,
and she cast her eyes behind her to make sure that the hall-door stood
open. The hated scion of the house of Hardy was coming down the road,
and, in view of that fact, she forgot all else—even her manners.

The boy, still fresh from the loss of his natural protector, kept a
wary eye on the house as he approached. Then all expression died out of
his face, and he passed the gate, blankly ignoring the small girl who
was leaning over it and apparently suffering from elephantiasis of the
tongue. He went by quietly, and Miss Nugent, raging inwardly that she
had misbehaved to no purpose, withdrew her tongue for more legitimate
uses.

“Boo,” she cried; “who had his hair pulled?”

Master Hardy pursued the even tenor of his way.

“Who’s afraid to answer me for fear my father will thrash him?” cried
the disappointed lady, raising her voice.

This was too much. The enemy retraced his steps and came up to the gate.

“You’re a rude little girl,” he said, with an insufferably grown-up air.

“Who had his hair pulled?” demanded Miss Nugent, capering wildly; “who
had his hair pulled?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Master Hardy. “Here.” He put his hand in his
pocket, and producing some nuts offered them over the gate. At this
Miss Nugent ceased her capering, and wrath possessed her that the enemy
should thus misunderstand the gravity of the situation.

“Well, give ’em to Jack, then,” pursued the boy; “he won’t say no.”

This was a distinct reflection on Jack’s loyalty, and her indignation
was not lessened by the fact that she knew it was true.

“Go away from our gate,” she stormed. “If my father catches you, you’ll
suffer.”

“Pooh!” said the dare-devil. He looked up at the house and then,
opening the gate, strode boldly into the front garden. Before this
intrusion Miss Nugent retreated in alarm, and gaining the door-step
gazed at him in dismay. Then her face cleared suddenly, and Master
Hardy looking over his shoulder saw that his retreat was cut off by Mr.
Wilks.

“Don’t let him hurt me, Sam,” entreated Miss Nugent, piteously.

Mr. Wilks came into the garden and closed the gate behind him.

“I wasn’t going to hurt her,” cried Master Hardy, anxiously; “as if I
should hurt a girl!

“Wot are you doing in our front garden, then?” demanded Mr. Wilks.

He sprang forward suddenly and, catching the boy by the collar with one
huge hand, dragged him, struggling violently, down the side-entrance
into the back garden. Miss Nugent, following close behind, sought to
improve the occasion.

“See what you get by coming into our garden,” she said.

The victim made no reply. He was writhing strenuously in order to
frustrate Mr. Wilks’s evident desire to arrange him comfortably for the
administration of the stick he was carrying. Satisfied at last, the
ex-steward raised his weapon, and for some seconds plied it briskly.
Miss Nugent trembled, but sternly repressing sympathy for the sufferer,
was pleased that the long arm of justice had at last over-taken him.

“Let him go now, Sam,” she said; “he’s crying.”

“I’m _not_,” yelled Master Hardy, frantically.

“I can see the tears,” declared Miss Nugent, bending.

Mr. Wilks plied the rod again until his victim, with a sudden turn,
fetched him a violent kick on the shin and broke loose. The ex-steward
set off in pursuit, somewhat handicapped by the fact that he dare not
go over flower-beds, whilst Master Hardy was singularly free from
such prejudices. Miss Nugent ran to the side-entrance to cut off his
retreat. She was willing for him to be released, but not to escape,
and so it fell out that the boy, dodging beneath Mr. Wilks’s outspread
arms, charged blindly up the side-entrance and bowled the young lady
over.

There was a shrill squeal, a flutter of white, and a neat pair of
button boots waving in the air. Then Miss Nugent, sobbing piteously,
rose from the puddle into which she had fallen and surveyed her
garments. Mr. Wilks surveyed them, too, and a very cursory glance was
sufficient to show him that the case was beyond his powers. He took the
outraged damsel by the hand, and led her, howling lustily, in to the
horrified Ann.

“My word,” said she, gasping. “Look at your gloves! Look at your frock!”

But Miss Nugent was looking at her knees. There was only a slight
redness about the left, but from the right a piece of skin was
indubitably missing. This knee she gave Ann instructions to foment
with fair water of a comfortable temperature, indulging in satisfied
prognostications as to the fate of Master Hardy when her father should
see the damage.

The news, when the captain came home, was broken to him by degrees. He
was first shown the flower-beds by Ann, then Mrs. Kingdom brought in
various soiled garments, and at the psychological moment his daughter
bared her knees.

“What will you do to him, father?” she inquired.

The captain ignored the question in favour of a few remarks on the
subject of his daughter’s behaviour, coupled with stern inquiries as to
where she learnt such tricks. In reply Miss Nugent sheltered herself
behind a list which contained the names of all the young gentlemen who
attended her kindergarten class and many of the young ladies, and again
inquired as to the fate of her assailant.

Jack came in soon after, and the indefatigable Miss Nugent produced her
knees again. She had to describe the injury to the left, but the right
spoke for itself. Jack gazed at it with indignation, and then, without
waiting for his tea, put on his cap and sallied out again.

He returned an hour later, and instead of entering the sitting-room
went straight upstairs to bed, from whence he sent down word by the
sympathetic Ann that he was suffering from a bad headache, which he
proposed to treat with raw meat applied to the left eye. His nose,
which was apparently suffering from sympathetic inflammation, he left
to take care of itself, that organ bitterly resenting any treatment
whatsoever.

He described the battle to Kate and Ann the next day, darkly ascribing
his defeat to a mysterious compound which Jem Hardy was believed to rub
into his arms; to a foolish error of judgment at the beginning of the
fray, and to the sun which shone persistently in his eyes all the time.
His audience received the explanations in chilly silence.

“And he said it was an accident he knocked you down,” he concluded; “he
said he hoped you weren’t hurt, and he gave me some toffee for you.”

[Illustration: “Master Hardy on the beach enacting the part of David.”]

“What did you do with it?” demanded Miss Nugent.

“I knew you wouldn’t have it,” replied her brother, inconsequently,
“and there wasn’t much of it.”

His sister regarded him sharply.

“You don’t mean to say you ate it?” she screamed.

“Why not?” demanded her brother. “I wanted comforting, I can tell you.”

“I wonder you were not too—too proud,” said Miss Nugent, bitterly.

“I’m never too proud to eat toffee,” retorted Jack, simply.

He stalked off in dudgeon at the lack of sympathy displayed by his
audience, and being still in need of comforting sought it amid the
raspberry-canes.

His father noted his son’s honourable scars, but made no comment. As to
any action on his own part, he realized to the full the impotence of
a law-abiding and dignified citizen when confronted by lawless youth.
But Master Hardy came to church no more. Indeed, the following Sunday
he was fully occupied on the beach, enacting the part of David, after
first impressing the raving Mr. Wilks into that of Goliath.




CHAPTER IV


For the next month or two Master Hardy’s existence was brightened by
the efforts of an elderly steward who made no secret of his intentions
of putting an end to it. Mr. Wilks at first placed great reliance
on the saw that “it is the early bird that catches the worm,” but
lost faith in it when he found that it made no provision for cases
in which the worm leaning from its bedroom window addressed spirited
remonstrances to the bird on the subject of its personal appearance.

To the anxious inquiries of Miss Nugent, Mr. Wilks replied that he
was biding his time. Every delay, he hinted, made it worse for Master
Hardy when the day of retribution should dawn, and although she pleaded
earnestly for a little on account he was unable to meet her wishes.
Before that day came, however, Captain Nugent heard of the proceedings,
and after a painful interview with the steward, during which the
latter’s failings by no means escaped attention, confined him to the
house.

An excellent reason for absenting himself from school was thus denied
to Master Hardy; but it has been well said that when one door closes
another opens, and to his great satisfaction the old servant, who
had been in poor health for some time, suddenly took to her bed and
required his undivided attention.

[Illustration: “Mr. Wilks replied that he was biding his time.”]

He treated her at first with patent medicines purchased at the
chemist’s, a doctor being regarded by both of them as a piece of
unnecessary extravagance; but in spite of four infallible remedies
she got steadily worse. Then a doctor was called in, and by the time
Captain Hardy returned home she had made a partial recovery, but was
clearly incapable of further work. She left in a cab to accept a home
with a niece, leaving the captain confronted with a problem which he
had seen growing for some time past.

“I can’t make up my mind what to do with you,” he observed, regarding
his son.

“I’m very comfortable,” was the reply.

“You’re too comfortable,” said his father. “You’re running wild. It’s
just as well poor old Martha has gone; it has brought things to a head.”

“We could have somebody else,” suggested his son.

The captain shook his head. “I’ll give up the house and send you to
London to your Aunt Mary,” he said, slowly; “she doesn’t know you, and
once I’m at sea and the house given up, she won’t be able to send you
back.”

Master Hardy, who was much averse to leaving Sunwich and had heard
accounts of the lady in question which referred principally to her
strength of mind, made tender inquiries concerning his father’s comfort
while ashore.

“I’ll take rooms,” was the reply, “and I shall spend as much time as I
can with you in London. You want looking after, my son; I’ve heard all
about you.”

His son, without inquiring as to the nature of the information, denied
it at once upon principle; he also alluded darkly to his education, and
shook his head over the effects of a change at such a critical period
of his existence.

“And you talk too much for your age,” was his father’s comment when he
had finished. “A year or two with your aunt ought to make a nice boy of
you; there’s plenty of room for improvement.”

He put his plans in hand at once, and a week before he sailed again had
disposed of the house. Some of the furniture he kept for himself; but
the bulk of it went to his sister as conscience-money.

Master Hardy, in very low spirits, watched it taken away. Big men in
hob-nailed boots ran noisily up the bare stairs, and came down slowly,
steering large pieces of furniture through narrow passages, and using
much vain repetition when they found their hands acting as fenders.
The wardrobe, a piece of furniture which had been built for larger
premises, was a particularly hard nut to crack, but they succeeded at
last—in three places.

A few of his intimates came down to see the last of him, and Miss
Nugent, who in some feminine fashion regarded the move as a triumph
for her family, passed by several times. It might have been chance, it
might have been design, but the boy could not help noticing that when
the piano, the wardrobe, and other fine pieces were being placed in
the van, she was at the other end of the road, a position from which
such curios as a broken washstand or a two-legged chair never failed to
entice her.

[Illustration: “A particularly hard nut.”]

It was over at last. The second van had disappeared, and nothing
was left but a litter of straw and paper. The front door stood open
and revealed desolation. Miss Nugent came to the gate and stared in
superciliously.

“I’m glad you’re going,” she said, frankly.

Master Hardy scarcely noticed her. One of his friends who concealed
strong business instincts beneath a sentimental exterior had suggested
souvenirs and given him a spectacle-glass said to have belonged to
Henry VIII., and he was busy searching his pockets for an adequate
return. Then Captain Hardy came up, and first going over the empty
house, came out and bade his son accompany him to the station. A minute
or two later and they were out of sight; the sentimentalist stood on
the curb gloating over a newly acquired penknife, and Miss Nugent,
after being strongly reproved by him for curiosity, paced slowly home
with her head in the air.

Sunwich made no stir over the departure of one of its youthful
citizens. Indeed, it lacked not those who would have cheerfully parted
with two or three hundred more. The boy was quite chilled by the
tameness of his exit, and for years afterwards the desolate appearance
of the platform as the train steamed out occurred to him with an odd
sense of discomfort. In all Sunwich there was only one person who
grieved over his departure, and he, after keeping his memory green for
two years, wrote off fivepence as a bad debt and dismissed him from his
thoughts.

Two months after the _Conqueror_ had sailed again Captain Nugent
obtained command of a steamer sailing between London and the Chinese
ports. From the gratified lips of Mr. Wilks, Sunwich heard of this
new craft, the particular glory of which appeared to be the luxurious
appointments of the steward’s quarters. Language indeed failed Mr.
Wilks in describing it, and, pressed for details, he could only murmur
disjointedly of satin-wood, polished brass, and crimson velvet.

Jack Nugent hailed his father’s departure with joy. They had seen a
great deal of each other during the latter’s prolonged stay ashore,
and neither had risen in the other’s estimation in consequence. He
became enthusiastic over the sea as a profession for fathers, and
gave himself some airs over acquaintances less fortunately placed. In
the first flush of liberty he took to staying away from school, the
education thus lost being only partially atoned for by a grown-up style
of composition engendered by dictating excuses to the easy-going Mrs.
Kingdom.

At seventeen he learnt, somewhat to his surprise, that his education
was finished. His father provided the information and, simply as a
matter of form, consulted him as to his views for the future. It was an
important thing to decide upon at short notice, but he was equal to it,
and, having suggested gold-digging as the only profession he cared for,
was promptly provided by the incensed captain with a stool in the local
bank.

[Illustration: “A stool in the local bank.”]

He occupied it for three weeks, a period of time which coincided to a
day with his father’s leave ashore. He left behind him his initials
cut deeply in the lid of his desk, a miscellaneous collection of cheap
fiction, and a few experiments in book-keeping which the manager
ultimately solved with red ink and a ruler.

A slight uneasiness as to the wisdom of his proceedings occurred to him
just before his father’s return, but he comforted himself and Kate with
the undeniable truth that after all the captain couldn’t eat him. He
was afraid, however, that the latter would be displeased, and, with a
constitutional objection to unpleasantness, he contrived to be out when
he returned, leaving to Mrs. Kingdom the task of breaking the news.

The captain’s reply was brief and to the point. He asked his son
whether he would like to go to sea, and upon receiving a decided answer
in the negative, at once took steps to send him there. In two days he
had procured him an outfit, and within a week Jack Nugent, greatly to
his own surprise, was on the way to Melbourne as apprentice on the
barque Silver Stream.

He liked it even less than the bank. The monotony of the sea was
appalling to a youth of his tastes, and the fact that the skipper,
a man who never spoke except to find fault, was almost loquacious
with him failed to afford him any satisfaction. He liked the mates no
better than the skipper, and having said as much one day to the second
officer, had no reason afterwards to modify his opinions. He lived a
life apart, and except for the cook, another martyr to fault-finding,
had no society.

In these uncongenial circumstances the new apprentice worked for four
months as he had never believed it possible he could work. He was
annoyed both at the extent and the variety of his tasks, the work of
an A.B. being gratuitously included in his curriculum. The end of the
voyage found him desperate, and after a hasty consultation with the
cook they deserted together and went up-country.

Letters, dealing mainly with the ideas and adventures of the cook,
reached Sunwich at irregular intervals, and were eagerly perused by
Mrs. Kingdom and Kate, but the captain forbade all mention of him. Then
they ceased altogether, and after a year or two of unbroken silence
Mrs. Kingdom asserted herself, and a photograph in her possession, the
only one extant, exposing the missing Jack in petticoats and sash,
suddenly appeared on the drawing-room mantelpiece.

The captain stared, but made no comment. Disappointed in his son,
he turned for consolation to his daughter, noting with some concern
the unaccountable changes which that young lady underwent during his
absences. He noticed a difference after every voyage. He left behind
him on one occasion a nice trim little girl, and returned to find a
creature all legs and arms. He returned again and found the arms less
obnoxious and the legs hidden by a long skirt; and as he complained in
secret astonishment to his sister, she had developed a motherly manner
in her dealings with him which was almost unbearable.

“She’ll grow out of it soon,” said Mrs. Kingdom; “you wait and see.”

The captain growled and waited, and found his sister’s prognostications
partly fulfilled. The exuberance of Miss Nugent’s manner was certainly
modified by time, but she developed instead a quiet, unassuming habit
of authority which he liked as little.

“She gets made such a fuss of, it’s no wonder,” said Mrs. Kingdom, with
a satisfied smile. “I never heard of a girl getting as much attention
as she does; it’s a wonder her head isn’t turned.”

“Eh!” said the startled captain; “she’d better not let me see anything
of it.”

“Just so,” said Mrs. Kingdom.

The captain dwelt on these words and kept his eyes open, and, owing
to his daughter’s benevolent efforts on his behalf, had them fully
occupied. He went to sea firmly convinced that she would do something
foolish in the matrimonial line, the glowing terms in which he had
overheard her describing the charms of the new postman to Mrs. Kingdom
filling him with the direst forebodings.

It was his last voyage. An unexpected windfall from an almost forgotten
uncle and his own investments had placed him in a position of modest
comfort, and just before Miss Nugent reached her twentieth birthday
he resolved to spend his declining days ashore and give her those
advantages of parental attention from which she had been so long
debarred.

Mr. Wilks, to the inconsolable grief of his ship-mates, left with him.
He had been for nearly a couple of years in receipt of an annuity
purchased for him under the will of his mother, and his defection left
a gap never to be filled among comrades who had for some time regarded
him in the light of an improved drinking fountain.




CHAPTER V


On a fine afternoon, some two months after his release from the toils
of the sea, Captain Nugent sat in the special parlour of The Goblets.
The old inn offers hospitality to all, but one parlour has by ancient
tradition and the exercise of self-restraint and proper feeling been
from time immemorial reserved for the _elite_ of the town.

The captain, confident in the security of these unwritten regulations,
conversed freely with his peers. He had been moved to speech by the
utter absence of discipline ashore, and from that had wandered to the
growing evil of revolutionary ideas at sea. His remarks were much
applauded, and two brother-captains listened with grave respect to
a disquisition on the wrongs of shipmasters ensuing on the fancied
rights of sailor men, the only discordant note being struck by the
harbour-master, a man whose ideas had probably been insidiously sapped
by a long residence ashore.

“A man before the mast,” said the latter, fortifying his moral courage
with whisky, “is a human being.”

“Nobody denies it,” said Captain Nugent, looking round.

One captain agreed with him.

“Why don’t they act like it, then?” demanded the other.

Nugent and the first captain, struck by the remark, thought they had
perhaps been too hasty in their admission, and waited for number two to
continue. They eyed him with silent encouragement.

“Why don’t they act like it, then?” repeated number two, who, being a
man of few ideas, was not disposed to waste them.

Captain Nugent and his friend turned to the harbour-master to see how
he would meet this poser.

“They mostly do,” he replied, sturdily. “Treat a seaman well, and he’ll
treat you well.”

This was rank heresy, and moreover seemed to imply something. Captain
Nugent wondered dismally whether life ashore would infect him with the
same opinions.

“What about that man of mine who threw a belaying-pin at me?”

The harbour-master quailed at the challenge. The obvious retort was
offensive.

“I shall carry the mark with me to my grave,” added the captain, as a
further inducement to him to reply.

[Illustration: “A diversion was created by the entrance of a new
arrival.”]

“I hope that you’ll carry it a long time,” said the harbour-master,
gracefully.

“Here, look here, Hall!” expostulated captain number two, starting up.

“It’s all right, Cooper,” said Nugent.

“It’s all right,” said captain number one, and in a rash moment
undertook to explain. In five minutes he had clouded Captain Cooper’s
intellect for the afternoon.

He was still busy with his self-imposed task when a diversion was
created by the entrance of a new arrival. A short, stout man stood
for a moment with the handle of the door in his hand, and then came
in, carefully bearing before him a glass of gin and water. It was the
first time that he had set foot there, and all understood that by this
intrusion Mr. Daniel Kybird sought to place sea-captains and other
dignitaries on a footing with the keepers of slop-shops and dealers in
old clothes. In the midst of an impressive silence he set his glass
upon the table and, taking a chair, drew a small clay pipe from his
pocket.

Aghast at the intrusion, the quartette conferred with their eyes, a
language which is perhaps only successful in love. Captain Cooper, who
was usually moved to speech by externals, was the first to speak.

“You’ve got a sty coming on your eye, Hall,” he remarked.

“I daresay.”

“If anybody’s got a needle,” said the captain, who loved minor
operations.

Nobody heeded him except the harbour-master, and he muttered something
about beams and motes, which the captain failed to understand. The
others were glaring darkly at Mr. Kybird, who had taken up a newspaper
and was busy perusing it.

“Are you looking for anybody?” demanded Captain Nugent, at last.

“No,” said Mr. Kybird, looking at him over the top of his paper.

“What have you come here for, then?” inquired the captain.

“I come ’ere to drink two o’ gin cold,” returned Mr. Kybird, with a
dignity befitting the occupation.

“Well, suppose you drink it somewhere else,” suggested the captain.

Mr. Kybird had another supposition to offer. “Suppose I don’t?” he
remarked. “I’m a respect-able British tradesman, and my money is as
good as yours. I’ve as much right to be here as you ’ave. I’ve never
done anything I’m ashamed of!”

“And you never will,” said Captain Cooper’s friend, grimly, “not if you
live to be a hundred.”

Mr. Kybird looked surprised at the tribute. “Thankee,” he said,
gratefully.

“Well, we don’t want you here,” said Captain Nugent. “We prefer your
room to your company.”

Mr. Kybird leaned back in his chair and twisted his blunt features into
an expression of withering contempt. Then he took up a glass and drank,
and discovered too late that in the excitement of the moment he had
made free with the speaker’s whisky.

“Don’t apologize,” interrupted the captain; “it’s soon remedied.”

He took the glass up gingerly and flung it with a crash into the
fireplace. Then he rang the bell.

“I’ve smashed a dirty glass,” he said, as the bar-man entered. “How
much?”

The man told him, and the captain, after a few stern remarks about
privacy and harpies, left the room with his friends, leaving the
speechless Mr. Kybird gazing at the broken glass and returning evasive
replies to the inquiries of the curious Charles.

He finished his gin and water slowly. For months he had been screwing
up his courage to carry that room by assault, and this was the result.
He had been insulted almost in the very face of Charles, a youth whose
reputation as a gossip was second to none in Sunwich.

“Do you know what I should do if I was you?” said that worthy, as he
entered the room again and swept up the broken glass.

“I do not,” said Mr. Kybird, with lofty indifference.

“I shouldn’t come ’ere again, that’s what I should do,” said Charles,
frankly. “Next time he’ll throw _you_ in the fireplace.”

“Ho,” said the heated Mr. Kybird. “Ho, will he? I’d like to see ’im.
I’ll make ’im sorry for this afore I’ve done with ’im. I’ll learn ’im
to insult a respectable British tradesman. I’ll show him who’s who.”

“What’ll you do?” inquired the other.

[Illustration: “He stepped across the road to his emporium.”]

“Never you mind,” said Mr. Kybird, who was not in a position to satisfy
his curiosity—“never you mind. You go and get on with your work,
Charles, and p’r’aps by the time your moustache ’as grown big enough to
be seen, you’ll ’ear something.”

“I ’eard something the other day,” said the bar-man, musingly; “about
you it was, but I wouldn’t believe it.”

“Wot was it?” demanded the other.

“Nothing much,” replied Charles, standing with his hand on the
door-knob, “but I wouldn’t believe it of you; I said I couldn’t.”

“Wot—was—it?” insisted Mr. Kybird.

“Why, they said you once gave a man a fair price for a pair of
trousers,” said the barman, indignantly.

He closed the door behind him softly, and Mr. Kybird, after a brief
pause, opened it again and, more softly still, quitted the precincts of
The Goblets, and stepped across the road to his emporium.

Captain Nugent, in happy ignorance of the dark designs of the wardrobe
dealer, had also gone home. He was only just beginning to realize the
comparative unimportance of a retired shipmaster, and the knowledge
was a source of considerable annoyance to him. No deferential mates
listened respectfully to his instructions, no sturdy seaman ran to
execute his commands or trembled mutinously at his wrath. The only
person in the wide world who stood in awe of him was the general
servant Bella, and she made no attempt to conceal her satisfaction at
the attention excited by her shortcomings.

He paused a moment at the gate and then, walking slowly up to the door,
gave it the knock of a master. A full minute passing, he knocked again,
remembering with some misgivings his stern instructions of the day
before that the door was to be attended by the servant and by nobody
else. He had seen Miss Nugent sitting at the window as he passed it,
but in the circumstances the fact gave him no comfort. A third knock
was followed by a fourth, and then a distressed voice upstairs was
heard calling wildly upon the name of Bella.

At the fifth knock the house shook, and a red-faced maid with her
shoulders veiled in a large damp towel passed hastily down the
staircase and, slipping the catch, passed more hastily still upstairs
again, affording the indignant captain a glimpse of a short striped
skirt as it turned the landing.

“Is there any management at all in this house?” he inquired, as he
entered the room.

“Bella was dressing,” said Miss Nugent, calmly, “and you gave orders
yesterday that nobody else was to open the door.”

“Nobody else when she’s available,” qualified her father, eyeing her
sharply. “When I give orders I expect people to use their common sense.
Why isn’t my tea ready? It’s five o’clock.”

“The clock’s twenty minutes fast,” said Kate.

“Who’s been meddling with it?” demanded her father, verifying the fact
by his watch.

Miss Nugent shook her head. “It’s gained that since you regulated it
last night,” she said, with a smile.

The captain threw himself into an easy-chair, and with one eye on the
clock, waited until, at five minutes to the hour by the right time, a
clatter of crockery sounded from the kitchen, and Bella, still damp,
came in with the tray. Her eye was also on the clock, and she smirked
weakly in the captain’s direction as she saw that she was at least two
minutes ahead of time. At a minute to the hour the teapot itself was on
the tray, and the heavy breathing of the handmaiden in the kitchen was
audible to all.

“Punctual to the minute, John,” said Mrs. Kingdom, as she took her seat
at the tray. “It’s wonderful how that girl has improved since you’ve
been at home. She isn’t like the same girl.”

She raised the teapot and, after pouring out a little of the contents,
put it down again and gave it another two minutes. At the end of that
time, the colour being of the same unsatisfactory paleness, she set the
pot down and was about to raise the lid when an avalanche burst into
the room and, emptying some tea into the pot from a canister-lid, beat
a hasty retreat.

“Good tea and well-trained servants,” muttered the captain to his
plate. “What more can a man want?”

Mrs. Kingdom coughed and passed his cup; Miss Nugent, who possessed a
healthy appetite, serenely attacked her bread and butter; conversation
languished.

“I suppose you’ve heard the news, John?” said his sister.

“I daresay I have,” was the reply.

“Strange he should come back after all these years,” said Mrs. Kingdom;
“though, to be sure, I don’t know why he shouldn’t. It’s his native
place, and his father lives here.”

“Who are you talking about?” inquired the captain.

“Why, James Hardy,” replied his sister. “I thought you said you had
heard. He’s coming back to Sunwich and going into partnership with old
Swann, the shipbroker. A very good thing for him, I should think.”

“I’m not interested in the doings of the Hardys,” said the captain,
gruffly.

“I’m sure I’m not,” said his sister, defensively.

Captain Nugent proceeded with his meal in silence. His hatred of
Hardy had not been lessened by the success which had attended that
gentleman’s career, and was not likely to be improved by the well-being
of Hardy junior. He passed his cup for some more tea, and, with a
furtive glance at the photograph on the mantelpiece, wondered what had
happened to his own son.

“I don’t suppose I should know him if I saw him,” continued Mrs.
Kingdom, addressing a respectable old arm-chair; “London is sure to
have changed him.”

“Is this water-cress?” inquired the captain, looking up from his plate.

“Yes. Why?” said Mrs. Kingdom.

“I only wanted information,” said her brother, as he deposited the
salad in question in the slop-basin.

Mrs. Kingdom, with a resigned expression, tried to catch her niece’s
eye and caught the captain’s instead. Miss Nugent happening to glance
up saw her fascinated by the basilisk glare of the master of the house.

“Some more tea, please,” she said.

Her aunt took her cup, and in gratitude for the diversion picked out
the largest lumps of sugar in the basin.

“London changes so many people,” mused the persevering lady, stirring
her tea. “I’ve noticed it before. Why it is I can’t say, but the fact
remains. It seems to improve them altogether. I dare say that young
Hardy—”

“Will you understand that I won’t have the Hardys mentiond in my
house?” said the captain, looking up. “I’m not interested in their
business, and I will not have it discussed here.”

“As you please, John,” said his sister, drawing herself up. “It’s your
house and you are master here. I’m sure I don’t want to discuss them.
Nothing was farther from my thoughts. You understand what your father
says, Kate?”

“Perfectly,” said Miss Nugent. “When the desire to talk about the
Hardys becomes irresistible we must go for a walk.”

The captain turned in his chair and regarded his daughter steadily. She
met his gaze with calm affection.

“I wish you were a boy,” he growled.

“You’re the only man in Sunwich who wishes that,” said Miss Nugent,
complacently, “and I don’t believe you mean it. If you’ll come a little
closer I’ll put my head on your shoulder and convert you.”

“Kate!” said Mrs. Kingdom, reprovingly.

“And, talking about heads,” said Miss Nugent, briskly, “reminds me that
I want a new hat. You needn’t look like that; good-looking daughters
always come expensive.”

She moved her chair a couple of inches in his direction and smiled
alluringly. The captain shifted uneasily; prudence counselled flight,
but dignity forbade it. He stared hard at Mrs. Kingdom, and a smile of
rare appreciation on that lady’s face endeavoured to fade slowly and
naturally into another expression. The chair came nearer.

“Don’t be foolish,” said the captain, gruffly.

[Illustration: “’Most comfortable shoulder in Sunwich,’ she murmured.”]

The chair came still nearer until at last it touched his, and then Miss
Nugent, with a sigh of exaggerated content, allowed her head to sink
gracefully on his shoulder.

“Most comfortable shoulder in Sunwich,” she murmured; “come and try the
other, aunt, and perhaps you’ll get a new bonnet.”

Mrs. Kingdom hastened to reassure her brother. She would almost as soon
have thought of putting her head on the block. At the same time it was
quite evident that she was taking a mild joy in his discomfiture and
eagerly awaiting further developments.

“When you are tired of this childish behaviour, miss,” said the
captain, stiffly——

There was a pause. “Kate!” said Mrs. Kingdom, in tones of mild reproof,
“how can you?”

“Very good,” said the captain, we’ll see who gets tired of it first.
“I’m in no hurry.”

A delicate but unmistakable snore rose from his shoulder in reply.




CHAPTER VI


For the first few days after his return Sunwich was full of surprises
to Jem Hardy. The town itself had changed but little, and the older
inhabitants were for the most part easily recognisable, but time had
wrought wonders among the younger members of the population: small
boys had attained to whiskered manhood, and small girls passing into
well-grown young women had in some cases even changed their names.

The most astounding and gratifying instance of the wonders effected
by time was that of Miss Nugent. He saw her first at the window, and
with a ready recognition of the enchantment lent by distance took the
first possible opportunity of a closer observation. He then realized
the enchantment afforded by proximity. The second opportunity led him
impetuously into a draper’s shop, where a magnificent shop-walker,
after first ceremoniously handing him a high cane chair, passed on his
order for pins in a deep and thrilling baritone, and retired in good
order.

By the end of a week his observations were completed, and Kate Nugent,
securely enthroned in his mind as the incarnation of feminine grace and
beauty, left but little room for other matters. On his second Sunday
at home, to his father’s great surprise, he attended church, and after
contemplating Miss Nugent’s back hair for an hour and a half came home
and spoke eloquently and nobly on “burying hatchets,” “healing old
sores,” “letting bygones be bygones,” and kindred topics.

“I never take much notice of sermons myself,” said the captain,
misunderstanding.

“Sermon?” said his son. “I wasn’t thinking of the sermon, but I saw
Captain Nugent there, and I remembered the stupid quarrel between you.
It’s absurd that it should go on indefinitely.”

“Why, what does it matter?” inquired the other, staring. “Why shouldn’t
it? Perhaps it’s the music that’s affected you; some of those old
hymns—”

“It wasn’t the sermon and it wasn’t the hymns,” said his son,
disdainfully; “it’s just common sense. It seems to me that the enmity
between you has lasted long enough.”

“I don’t see that it matters,” said the captain; “it doesn’t hurt me.
Nugent goes his way and I go mine, but if I ever get a chance at the
old man, he’d better look out. He wants a little of the starch taken
out of him.”

“Mere mannerism,” said his son.

“He’s as proud as Lucifer, and his girl takes after him,” said the
innocent captain. “By the way, she’s grown up a very good-looking girl.
You take a look at her the next time you see her.”

[Illustration: “The most astounding and gratifying instance of the
wonders effected by time was that of Miss Nugent.”]

His son stared at him.

“She’ll get married soon, I should think,” continued the other. “Young
Murchison, the new doctor here, seems to be the favourite. Nugent is
backing him, so they say; I wish him joy of his father-in-law.”

Jem Hardy took his pipe into the garden, and, pacing slowly up and
down the narrow paths, determined, at any costs, to save Dr. Murchison
from such a father-in-law and Kate Nugent from any husband except of
his choosing. He took a seat under an old apple tree, and, musing in
the twilight, tried in vain to think of ways and means of making her
acquaintance.

Meantime they passed each other as strangers, and the difficulty of
approaching her only made the task more alluring. In the second week
he reckoned up that he had seen her nine times. It was a satisfactory
total, but at the same time he could not shut his eyes to the fact that
five times out of that number he had seen Dr. Murchison as well, and
neither of them appeared to have seen him.

He sat thinking it over in the office one hot afternoon. Mr. Adolphus
Swann, his partner, had just returned from lunch, and for about the
fifth time that day was arranging his white hair and short, neatly
pointed beard in a small looking-glass. Over the top of it he glanced
at Hardy, who, leaning back in his chair, bit his pen and stared hard
at a paper before him.

“Is that the manifest of the _North Star_?” he inquired.

“No,” was the reply.

Mr. Swann put his looking-glass away and watched the other as he
crossed over to the window and gazed through the small, dirty panes at
the bustling life of the harbour below. For a short time Hardy stood
gazing in silence, and then, suddenly crossing the room, took his hat
from a peg and went out.

“Restless,” said the senior partner, wiping his folders with great care
and putting them on. “Wonder where he’s put that manifest.”

He went over to the other’s desk and opened a drawer to search for
it. Just inside was a sheet of foolscap, and Mr. Swann with growing
astonishment slowly mastered the contents.

“See her as often as possible.”

“Get to know some of her friends.”

“Try and get hold of the old lady.”

“Find out her tastes and ideas.”

“Show my hand before Murchison has it all his own way.”

“It seems to me,” said the bewildered shipbroker, carefully replacing
the paper, “that my young friend is looking out for another partner. He
hasn’t lost much time.”

He went back to his seat and resumed his work. It occurred to him
that he ought to let his partner know what he had seen, and when
Hardy returned he had barely seated himself before Mr. Swann with a
mysterious smile crossed over to him, bearing a sheet of foolscap.

“Try and dress as well as my partner,” read the astonished Hardy.
“What’s the matter with my clothes? What do you mean?”

Mr. Swann, in place of answering, returned to his desk and, taking up
another sheet of foolscap, began to write again, holding up his hand
for silence as Hardy repeated his question. When he had finished his
task he brought it over and placed it in the other’s hand.

[Illustration: “Mr. Swann with growing astonishment slowly mastered the
contents.”]

“Take her little brother out for walks.”

Hardy crumpled the paper up and flung it aside. Then, with his face
crimson, he stared wrathfully at the benevolent Swann.

“It’s the safest card in the pack,” said the latter. “You please
everybody; especially the little brother. You should always hold his
hand—it looks well for one thing, and if you shut your eyes—”

“I don’t want any of your nonsense,” said the maddened Jem. “What do
you mean by reading my private papers?”

“I came over to look for the manifest,” said Mr. Swann, “and I read it
before I could make out what it was. You must admit it’s a bit cryptic.
I thought it was a new game at first. Getting hold of the old lady
sounds like a sort of blind-man’s buff. But why not get hold of the
young one? Why waste time over—”

“Go to the devil,” said the junior partner.

“Any more suggestions I can give you, you are heartily welcome to,”
said Mr. Swann, going back to his seat. “All my vast experience is at
your service, and the best and sweetest and prettiest girls in Sunwich
regard me as a sort of second father.”

“What’s a second father?” inquired Jim, looking up—“a grandfather?”

“Go your own way,” said the other; “I wash my hands of you. You’re
not in earnest, or you’d clutch at any straw. But let me give you one
word of advice. Be careful how you get hold of the old lady; let her
understand from the commencement that it isn’t her.”

Mr. Hardy went on with his work. There was a pile of it in front of him
and an accumulation in his drawers. For some time he wrote assiduously,
but work was dry after the subject they had been discussing. He looked
over at his partner and, seeing that that gentleman was gravely busy,
reopened the matter with a jeer.

“Old maids always know most about rearing children,” he remarked; “so I
suppose old bachelors, looking down on life from the top shelf, think
they know most about marriage.”

“I wash my hands of you,” repeated the senior, placidly. “I am not to
be taunted into rendering first aid to the wounded.”

The conscience-stricken junior lost his presence of mind. “Who’s trying
to taunt you?” he demanded, hotly. “Why, you’d do more harm than good.”

“Put a bandage round the head instead of the heart, I expect,” assented
the chuckling Swann. “Top shelf, I think you said; well, I climbed
there for safety.”

“You must have been much run after,” said his partner.

“I was,” said the other. “I suppose that’s why it is I am always so
interested in these affairs. I have helped to marry so many people in
this place, that I’m almost afraid to stir out after dark.”

Hardy’s reply was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Edward Silk, a
young man of forlorn aspect, who combined in his person the offices
of messenger, cleaner, and office-boy to the firm. He brought in some
letters, and placing them on Mr. Swann’s desk retired.

“There’s another,” said the latter, as the door closed. “His complaint
is Amelia Kybird, and he’s got it badly. She’s big enough to eat him,
but I believe that they are engaged. Perseverance has done it in his
case. _He_ used to go about like a blighted flower—”

“I am rather busy,” his partner reminded him.

Mr. Swann sighed and resumed his own labours. For some time both men
wrote in silence. Then the elder suddenly put his pen down and hit his
desk a noisy thump with his fist.

“I’ve got it,” he said, briskly; “apologize humbly for all your
candour, and I will give you a piece of information which shall
brighten your dull eyes, raise the corners of your drooping mouth, and
renew once more the pink and cream in your youthful cheeks.”

“Look here—” said the overwrought Hardy.

“Samson Wilks,” interrupted Mr. Swann, “number three, Fullalove Alley,
at home Fridays, seven to nine, to the daughter of his late skipper,
who always visits him on that day. Don’t thank me, Hardy, in case you
break down. She’s a very nice girl, and if she had been born twenty
years earlier, or I had been born twenty years later, or you hadn’t
been born at all, there’s no saying what might not have happened.”

“When I want you to interfere in my business,” said Hardy, working
sedulously, “I’ll let you know.”

“Very good,” replied Swann; “still, remember Thursdays, seven to nine.”

“Thursdays,” said Hardy, incautiously; “why, you said Fridays just now.”

Mr. Swann made no reply. His nose was immersed in the folds of a large
handkerchief, and his eyes watered profusely behind his glasses. It
was some minutes before he had regained his normal composure, and even
then the sensitive nerves of his partner were offended by an occasional
belated chuckle.

Although by dint of casual and cautious inquiries Mr. Hardy found that
his partner’s information was correct, he was by no means guilty of any
feelings of gratitude towards him; and he only glared scornfully when
that excellent but frivolous man mounted a chair on Friday afternoon,
and putting the clock on a couple of hours or so, urged him to be in
time.

The evening, however, found him starting slowly in the direction of
Fullalove Alley. His father had gone to sea again, and the house was
very dull; moreover, he felt a mild curiosity to see the changes
wrought by time in Mr. Wilks. He walked along by the sea, and as the
church clock struck the three-quarters turned into the alley and looked
eagerly round for the old steward.

The labours of the day were over, and the inhabitants were for the most
part out of doors taking the air. Shirt-sleeved householders, leaning
against their door-posts smoking, exchanged ideas across the narrow
space paved with cobble-stones which separated their small and ancient
houses, while the matrons, more gregariously inclined, bunched in
little groups and discussed subjects which in higher circles would have
inundated the land with libel actions. Up and down the alley a tiny boy
all ready for bed, with the exception of his nightgown, mechanically
avoided friendly palms as he sought anxiously for his mother.

The object of Mr. Hardy’s search sat at the door of his front room,
which opened on to the alley, smoking an evening pipe, and noting with
an interested eye the doings of his neighbours. He was just preparing
to draw himself up in his chair as the intruder passed, when to his
utter astonishment that gentleman stopped in front of him, and taking
possession of his hand shook it fervently.

“How do you do?” he said, smiling.

Mr. Wilks eyed him stupidly and, releasing his hand, coyly placed it in
his trouser-pocket and breathed hard.

“I meant to come before,” said Hardy, “but I’ve been so busy. How are
you?”

Mr. Wilks, still dazed, muttered that he was very well. Then he sat
bolt upright in his chair and eyed his visitor suspiciously.

“I’ve been longing for a chat with you about old times,” said Hardy;
“of all my old friends you seem to have changed the least. You don’t
look a day older.”

“I’m getting on,” said Mr. Wilks, trying to speak coldly, but observing
with some gratification the effect produced upon his neighbours by the
appearance of this well-dressed acquaintance.

“I wanted to ask your advice,” said the unscrupulous Hardy, speaking
in low tones. “I daresay you know I’ve just gone into partnership in
Sunwich, and I’m told there’s no man knows more about the business and
the ins and outs of this town than you do.”

Mr. Wilks thawed despite himself. His face glistened and his huge
mouth broke into tremulous smiles. For a moment he hesitated, and then
noticing that a little group near them had suspended their conversation
to listen to his he drew his chair back and, in a kind voice, invited
the searcher after wisdom to step inside.

[Illustration: “Fullalove Alley.”]

Hardy thanked him, and, following him in, took a chair behind the
door, and with an air of youthful deference bent his ear to catch
the pearls which fell from the lips of his host. Since he was a babe
on his mother’s knee sixty years before Mr. Wilks had never had such
an attentive and admiring listener. Hardy sat as though glued to his
chair, one eye on Mr. Wilks and the other on the clock, and it was
not until that ancient timepiece struck the hour that the ex-steward
suddenly realized the awkward state of affairs.

“Any more ’elp I can give you I shall always be pleased to,” he said,
looking at the clock.

Hardy thanked him at great length, wondering, as he spoke, whether Miss
Nugent was of punctual habits. He leaned back in his chair and, folding
his arms, gazed thoughtfully at the perturbed Mr. Wilks.

“You must come round and smoke a pipe with me sometimes,” he said,
casually.

Mr. Wilks flushed with gratified pride. He had a vision of himself
walking up to the front door of the Hardys, smoking a pipe in a
well-appointed room, and telling an incredulous and envious Fullalove
Alley about it afterwards.

“I shall be very pleased, sir,” he said, impressively.

“Come round on Tuesday,” said his visitor. “I shall be at home then.”

Mr. Wilks thanked him and, spurred on to hospitality, murmured
something about a glass of ale, and retired to the back to draw it. He
came back with a jug and a couple of glasses, and draining his own at
a draught, hoped that the example would not be lost upon his visitor.
That astute person, however, after a modest draught, sat still,
anchored to the half-empty glass.

“I’m expecting somebody tonight,” said the ex-steward, at last.

“No doubt you have a lot of visitors,” said the other, admiringly.

Mr. Wilks did not deny it. He eyed his guest’s glass and fidgeted.

“Miss Nugent is coming,” he said.

Instead of any signs of disorder and preparations for rapid flight, Mr.
Wilks saw that the other was quite composed. He began to entertain a
poor idea of Mr. Hardy’s memory.

“She generally comes for a little quiet chat,” he said.

“Indeed!”

“Just between the two of us,” said the other.

His visitor said “Indeed,” and, as though some chord of memory had been
touched, sat gazing dreamily at Mr. Wilks’s horticultural collection in
the window. Then he changed colour a little as a smart hat and a pretty
face crossed the tiny panes. Mr. Wilks changed colour too, and in an
awkward fashion rose to receive Miss Nugent.

“Late as usual, Sam,” said the girl, sinking into a chair. Then she
caught sight of Hardy, who was standing by the door.

[Illustration: “She caught sight of Hardy.”]

“It’s a long time since you and I met, Miss Nugent,” he said, bowing.

“Mr. Hardy?” said the girl, doubtfully.

“Yes, miss,” interposed Mr. Wilks, anxious to explain his position. “He
called in to see me; quite a surprise to me it was. I ’ardly knowed
him.”

“The last time we three met,” said Hardy, who to his host’s discomfort
had resumed his chair, “Wilks was thrashing me and you were urging him
on.”

Kate Nugent eyed him carefully. It was preposterous that this young man
should take advantage of a boy and girl acquaintance of eleven years
before—and such an acquaintance!—in this manner. Her eyes expressed a
little surprise, not unmixed with hauteur, but Hardy was too pleased
to have them turned in his direction at all to quarrel with their
expression.

“You were a bit of a trial in them days,” said Mr. Wilks, shaking his
head. “If I live to be ninety I shall never forget seeing Miss Kate
capsized the way she was. The way she——”

“How is your cold?” inquired Miss Nugent, hastily.

“Better, miss, thankee,” said Mr. Wilks.

“Miss Nugent has forgotten and forgiven all that long ago,” said Hardy.

“Quite,” assented the girl, coldly; “one cannot remember all the boys
and girls one knew as a child.”

“Certainly not,” said Hardy. “I find that many have slipped from my own
memory, but I have a most vivid recollection of you.”

Miss Nugent looked at him again, and an idea, strange and incredible,
dawned slowly upon her. Childish impressions are lasting, and Jem Hardy
had remained in her mind as a sort of youthful ogre. He sat before her
now a frank, determined-looking young Englishman, in whose honest eyes
admiration of herself could not be concealed. Indignation and surprise
struggled for supremacy.

“It’s odd,” remarked Mr. Wilks, who had a happy knack at times of
saying the wrong thing, “it’s odd you should ’ave ’appened to come just
at the same time as Miss Kate did.”

“It’s my good fortune,” said Hardy, with a slight bow. Then he cocked
a malignant eye at the innocent Mr. Wilks, and wondered at what age
men discarded the useless habit of blushing. Opposite him sat Miss
Nugent, calmly observant, the slightest suggestion of disdain in her
expression. Framed in the queer, high-backed old chair which had
belonged to Mr. Wilks’s grandfather, she made a picture at which Jem
Hardy continued to gaze with respectful ardour. A hopeless sense of
self-depreciation possessed him, but the idea that Murchison should
aspire to so much goodness and beauty made him almost despair of his
sex. His reverie was broken by the voice of Mr. Wilks.

“A quarter to eight?” said that gentleman incredulously; “it can’t be.”

“I thought it was later than that,” said Hardy, simply.

Mr. Wilks gasped, and with a faint shake of his head at the floor
abandoned the thankless task of giving hints to a young man who was
too obtuse to see them; and it was not until some time later that
Mr. Hardy, sorely against his inclinations, gave his host a hearty
handshake and, with a respectful bow to Miss Nugent, took his departure.

“Fine young man he’s growed,” said Mr. Wilks, deferentially, turning to
his remaining visitor; “greatly improved, I think.”

Miss Nugent looked him over critically before replying. “He seems to
have taken a great fancy to you,” she remarked.

Mr. Wilks smiled a satisfied smile. “He came to ask my advice about
business,” he said, softly. “He’s ’eard two or three speak o’ me as
knowing a thing or two, and being young, and just starting, ’e came to
talk it over with me. I never see a young man so pleased and ready to
take advice as wot he is.”

“He is coming again for more, I suppose?” said Miss Nugent, carelessly.

Mr. Wilks acquiesced. “And he asked me to go over to his ’ouse to smoke
a pipe with ’im on Tuesday,” he added, in the casual manner in which
men allude to their aristocratic connections. “He’s a bit lonely, all
by himself.”

Miss Nugent said, “Indeed,” and then, lapsing into silence, gave little
occasional side-glances at Mr. Wilks, as though in search of any hidden
charms about him which might hitherto have escaped her.

At the same time Mr. James Hardy, walking slowly home by the edge of
the sea, pondered on further ways and means of ensnaring the affection
of the ex-steward.




CHAPTER VII


The anticipations of Mr. Wilks were more than realized on the following
Tuesday. From the time a trim maid showed him into the smoking-room
until late at night, when he left, a fêted and honoured guest, with one
of his host’s best cigars between his teeth, nothing that could yield
him any comfort was left undone. In the easiest of easy chairs he sat
in the garden beneath the leafy branches of apple trees, and undiluted
wisdom and advice flowed from his lips in a stream as he beamed
delightedly upon his entertainer.

Their talk was mainly of Sunwich and Sunwich people, and it was an easy
step from these to Equator Lodge. On that subject most people would
have found the ex-steward somewhat garrulous, but Jem Hardy listened
with great content, and even brought him back to it when he showed
signs of wandering. Altogether Mr. Wilks spent one of the pleasantest
evenings of his life, and, returning home in a slight state of mental
exhilaration, severely exercised the tongues of Fullalove Alley by a
bearing considered incompatible with his station.

[Illustration: “Undiluted wisdom and advice flowed from his lips.”]

Jem Hardy paid a return call on the following Friday, and had no cause
to complain of any lack of warmth in his reception. The ex-steward was
delighted to see him, and after showing him various curios picked up
during his voyages, took him to the small yard in the rear festooned
with scarlet-runner beans, and gave him a chair in full view of the
neighbours.

“I’m the only visitor tonight?” said Hardy, after an hour’s patient
listening and waiting.

Mr. Wilks nodded casually. “Miss Kate came last night,” he said.
“Friday _is_ her night, but she came yesterday instead.”

Mr. Hardy said, “Oh, indeed,” and fell straight-way into a dismal
reverie from which the most spirited efforts of his host only partially
aroused him.

Without giving way to undue egotism it was pretty clear that Miss
Nugent had changed her plans on his account, and a long vista of
pleasant Friday evenings suddenly vanished. He, too, resolved to vary
his visits, and, starting with a basis of two a week, sat trying to
solve the mathematical chances of selecting the same as Kate Nugent;
calculations which were not facilitated by a long-winded account from
Mr. Wilks of certain interesting amours of his youthful prime.

Before he saw Kate Nugent again, however, another old acquaintance
turned up safe and sound in Sunwich. Captain Nugent walking into the
town saw him first: a tall, well-knit young man in shabby clothing,
whose bearing even in the distance was oddly familiar. As he came
closer the captain’s misgivings were confirmed, and in the sunburnt
fellow in tattered clothes who advanced upon him with outstretched hand
he reluctantly recognized his son.

“What have you come home for?” he inquired, ignoring the hand and
eyeing him from head to foot.

“Change,” said Jack Nugent, laconically, as the smile left his face.

The captain shrugged his shoulders and stood silent. His son looked
first up the road and then down.

“All well at home?” he inquired.

“Yes.”

Jack Nugent looked up the road again.

“Not much change in the town,” he said, at length.

“No,” said his father.

“Well, I’m glad to have seen you,” said his son. “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” said the captain.

His son nodded and, turning on his heel, walked back towards the town.
Despite his forlorn appearance his step was jaunty and he carried his
head high. The captain watched him until he was hidden by a bend in
the road, and then, ashamed of himself for displaying so much emotion,
turned his own steps in the direction of home.

“Well, he didn’t whine,” he said, slowly. “He’s got a bit of pride
left.”

Meantime the prodigal had reached the town again, and stood ruefully
considering his position.

He looked up the street, and then, the well-known shop of Mr. Kybird
catching his eye, walked over and inspected the contents of the window.
Sheath-knives, belts, tobacco-boxes, and watches were displayed
alluringly behind the glass, sheltered from the sun by a row of cheap
clothing dangling from short poles over the shop front. All the goods
were marked in plain figures in reduced circumstances, Mr. Kybird
giving a soaring imagination play in the first marking, and a good
business faculty in the second.

At these valuables Jack Nugent, with a view of obtaining some idea of
prices, gazed for some time. Then passing between two suits of oilskins
which stood as sentinels in the doorway, he entered the shop and smiled
affably at Miss Kybird, who was in charge. At his entrance she put down
a piece of fancy-work, which Mr. Kybird called his sock, and with a
casual glance at his clothes regarded him with a prejudiced eye.

“Beautiful day,” said the customer; “makes one feel quite young again.”

“What do you want?” inquired Miss Kybird.

Mr. Nugent turned to a broken cane-chair which stood by the counter,
and, after applying severe tests, regardless of the lady’s feelings,
sat down upon it and gave a sigh of relief.

“I’ve walked from London,” he said, in explanation. “I could sit here
for hours.”

“Look here——” began the indignant Miss Kybird.

[Illustration: “What do you want?’ inquired Miss Kybird.”]

“Only people would be sure to couple our names together,” continued
Mr. Nugent, mournfully. “When a handsome young man and a good-looking
girl——”

“Do you want to buy anything or not?” demanded Miss Kybird, with an
impatient toss of her head.

“No,” said Jack, “I want to sell.”

“You’ve come to the wrong shop, then,” said Miss Kybird; “the warehouse
is full of rubbish now.”

The other turned in his chair and looked hard at the window. “So it
is,” he assented. “It’s a good job I’ve brought you something decent to
put there.”

He felt in his pockets and, producing a silver-mounted briar-pipe, a
battered watch, a knife, and a few other small articles, deposited them
with reverent care upon the counter.

“No use to us,” declared Miss Kybird, anxious to hit back; “we burn
coal here.”

“These’ll burn better than the coal you buy,” said the unmoved customer.

“Well, we don’t want them,” retorted Miss Kybird, raising her voice,
“and I don’t want any of your impudence. Get up out of our chair.”

Her heightened tones penetrated to the small and untidy room behind the
shop. The door opened, and Mr. Kybird in his shirt-sleeves appeared at
the opening.

“Wot’s the row?” he demanded, his little black eyes glancing from one
to the other.

“Only a lovers’ quarrel,” replied Jack. “You go away; we don’t want
you.”

“Look ’ere, we don’t want none o’ your nonsense,” said the shopkeeper,
sharply; “and, wot’s more, we won’t ’ave it. Who put that rubbish on my
counter?”

He bustled forward, and taking the articles in his hands examined them
closely.

“Three shillings for the lot—cash,” he remarked. “Done,” said the other.

“Did I say three?” inquired Mr. Kybird, startled at this ready
acceptance.

“Five you said,” replied Mr. Nugent, “but I’ll take three, if you throw
in a smile.”

Mr. Kybird, much against his inclinations, threw in a faint grin, and
opening a drawer produced three shillings and flung them separately
on the counter. Miss Kybird thawed somewhat, and glancing from the
customer’s clothes to his face saw that he had a pleasant eye and
a good moustache, together with a general air of recklessness much
appreciated by the sex.

“Don’t spend it on drink,” she remarked, not unkindly.

“I won’t,” said the other, solemnly; “I’m going to buy house property
with it.”

“Why, darn my eyes,” said Mr. Kybird, who had been regarding him
closely; “darn my old eyes, if it ain’t young Nugent. Well, well!”

“That’s me,” said young Nugent, cheerfully; “I should have known
you anywhere, Kybird: same old face, same old voice, same old
shirt-sleeves.”

“’Ere, come now,” objected the shopkeeper, shortening his arm and
squinting along it.

“I should have known you anywhere,” continued the other, mournfully;
“and here I’ve thrown up a splendid berth and come all the way from
Australia just for one glimpse of Miss Kybird, and she doesn’t know me.
When I die, Kybird, you will find the word ‘Calais’ engraven upon my
heart.”

Mr. Kybird said, “Oh, indeed.” His daughter tossed her head and bade
Mr. Nugent take his nonsense to people who might like it.

“Last time I see you,” said Mr. Kybird, pursing up his lips and gazing
at the counter in an effort of memory; “last time I see you was one
fifth o’ November when you an’ another bright young party was going
about in two suits o’ oilskins wot I’d been ’unting for ’igh and low
all day long.”

Jack Nugent sighed. “They were happy times, Kybird.”

“Might ha’ been for you,” retorted the other, his temper rising a
little at the remembrance of his wrongs.

“Have you come home for good? inquired Miss Kybird, curiously. Have you
seen your father? He passed here a little while ago.”

“I saw him,” said Jack, with a brevity which was not lost upon the
astute Mr. Kybird. “I may stay in Sunwich, and I may not—it all
depends.”

“You’re not going ’ome?” said Mr. Kybird.

“No.”

The shopkeeper stood considering. He had a small room to let at the
top of his house, and he stood divided between the fear of not getting
his rent and the joy to a man fond of simple pleasures, to be obtained
by dunning the arrogant Captain Nugent for his son’s debts. Before he
could arrive at a decision his meditations were interrupted by the
entrance of a stout, sandy-haired lady from the back parlour, who,
having conquered his scruples against matrimony some thirty years
before, had kept a particularly wide-awake eye upon him ever since.

“Your tea’s a-gettin’ cold,” she remarked, severely.

Her husband received the news with calmness. He was by no means an
enthusiast where that liquid was concerned, the admiration evoked by
its non-inebriating qualities having been always something in the
nature of a mystery to him.

“I’m coming,” he retorted; “I’m just ’aving a word with Mr. Nugent
’ere.”

“Well, I never did,” said the stout lady, coming farther into the shop
and regarding the visitor. “I shouldn’t ’ave knowed ’im. If you’d asked
me who ’e was I couldn’t ha’ told you—I shouldn’t ’ave knowed ’im from
Adam.”

Jack shook his head. “It’s hard to be forgotten like this,” he said,
sadly. “Even Miss Kybird had forgotten me, after all that had passed
between us.”

“Eh?” said Mr. Kybird.

“Oh, don’t take any notice of him,” said his daughter. “I’d like to see
myself.”

Mr. Kybird paid no heed. He was still thinking of the son of Captain
Nugent being indebted to him for lodging, and the more he thought of
the idea the better he liked it.

“Well, now you’re ’ere,” he said, with a great assumption of
cordiality, “why not come in and ’ave a cup o’ tea?”

The other hesitated a moment and then, with a light laugh, accepted
the offer. He followed them into the small and untidy back parlour,
and being requested by his hostess to squeeze in next to ’Melia at the
small round table, complied so literally with the order that that young
lady complained bitterly of his encroachments.

“And where do you think of sleeping tonight?” inquired Mr. Kybird after
his daughter had, to use her own expressive phrase, shown the guest
“his place.”

Mr. Nugent shook his head. “I shall get a lodging somewhere,” he said,
airily.

“There’s a room upstairs as you might ’ave if you liked,” said Mr.
Kybird, slowly. “It’s been let to a very respectable, clean young man
for half a crown a week. Really it ought to be three shillings, but if
you like to ’ave it at the old price, you can.”

“Done with you,” said the other.

“No doubt you’ll soon get something to do,” continued Mr. Kybird, more
in answer to his wife’s inquiring glances than anything else. “Half a
crown every Saturday and the room’s yours.”

Mr. Nugent thanked him, and after making a tea which caused Mr. Kybird
to congratulate himself upon the fact that he hadn’t offered to board
him, sat regaling Mrs. Kybird and daughter with a recital of his
adventures in Australia, receiving in return a full and true account of
Sunwich and its people up to date.

“There’s no pride about ’im, that’s what I like,” said Mrs. Kybird to
her lord and master as they sat alone after closing time over a glass
of gin and water. “He’s a nice young feller, but bisness is bisness,
and s’pose you don’t get your rent?”

“I shall get it sooner or later,” said Mr. Kybird. “That stuck-up
father of ’is ’ll be in a fine way at ’im living here. That’s wot I’m
thinking of.”

“I don’t see why,” said Mrs. Kybird, bridling. “Who’s Captain Nugent, I
should like to know? We’re as good as what ’e is, if not better. And as
for the gell, if she’d got ’alf Amelia’s looks she’d do.”

“’Melia’s a fine-looking gal,” assented Mr. Kybird. “I wonder——”

He laid his pipe down on the table and stared at the mantelpiece. “He
seems very struck with ’er,” he concluded. “I see that directly.”

“Not afore I did,” said his wife, sharply.

“See it afore you come into the shop,” said Mr. Kybird, triumphantly.
“It ’ud be a strange thing to marry into that family, Emma.”

[Illustration: “He regarded the wife of his bosom with a calculating
glance.”]

“She’s keeping company with young Teddy Silk,” his wife reminded him,
coldly; “and if she wasn’t she could do better than a young man without
a penny in ’is pocket. Pride’s a fine thing, Dan’l, but you can’t live
on it.”

“I know what I’m talking about,” said Mr. Kybird, impatiently. “I know
she’s keeping company with Teddy as well as wot you do. Still, as far
as money goes, young Nugent ’ll be all right.”

“’Ow?” inquired his wife.

Mr. Kybird hesitated and took a sip of his gin and water. Then he
regarded the wife of his bosom with a calculating glance which at once
excited that lady’s easily kindled wrath.

“You know I never tell secrets,” she cried.

“Not often,” corrected Mr. Kybird, “but then I don’t often tell you
any. Wot would you say to young Nugent coming into five ’undred pounds
’is mother left ’im when he’s twenty-five? He don’t know it, but I do.”

“Five ’undred,” repeated his wife, “sure?”

“No,” said the other, “I’m not sure, but I know. I ’ad it from young
Roberts when ’e was at Stone and Dartnell’s. Five ’undred pounds! I
shall get my money all right some time, and, if ’e wants a little bit
to go on with, ’e can have it. He’s honest enough; I can see that by
his manner.”

Upstairs in the tiny room under the tiles Mr. Jack Nugent, in blissful
ignorance of his landlord’s generous sentiments towards him, slept
the sound, dreamless sleep of the man free from monetary cares. In
the sanctity of her chamber Miss Kybird, gazing approvingly at the
reflection of her yellow hair and fine eyes in the little cracked
looking-glass, was already comparing him very favourably with the
somewhat pessimistic Mr. Silk.




CHAPTER VIII


Mr. Nugent’s return caused a sensation in several quarters, the feeling
at Equator Lodge bordering close upon open mutiny. Even Mrs. Kingdom
plucked up spirit and read the astonished captain a homily upon the
first duties of a parent—a homily which she backed up by reading the
story of the Prodigal Son through to the bitter end. At the conclusion
she broke down entirely and was led up to bed by Kate and Bella, the
sympathy of the latter taking an acute form, and consisting mainly of
innuendoes which could only refer to one person in the house.

Kate Nugent, who was not prone to tears, took a different line, but
with no better success. The captain declined to discuss the subject,
and, after listening to a description of himself in which Nero and
other celebrities figured for the purpose of having their characters
whitewashed, took up his hat and went out.

Jem Hardy heard of the new arrival from his partner, and, ignoring that
gentleman’s urgent advice to make hay while the sun shone and take
Master Nugent for a walk forthwith, sat thoughtfully considering how to
turn the affair to the best advantage. A slight outbreak of diphtheria
at Fullalove Alley had, for a time, closed that thoroughfare to Miss
Nugent, and he was inclined to regard the opportune arrival of her
brother as an effort of Providence on his behalf.

For some days, however, he looked for Jack Nugent in vain, that
gentleman either being out of doors engaged in an earnest search for
work, or snugly seated in the back parlour of the Kybirds, indulging in
the somewhat perilous pastime of paying compliments to Amelia Kybird.
Remittances which had reached him from his sister and aunt had been
promptly returned, and he was indebted to the amiable Mr. Kybird for
the bare necessaries of life. In these circumstances a warm feeling
of gratitude towards the family closed his eyes to their obvious
shortcomings.

He even obtained work down at the harbour through a friend of Mr.
Kybird’s. It was not of a very exalted nature, and caused more strain
upon the back than the intellect, but seven years of roughing it had
left him singularly free from caste prejudices, a freedom which he
soon discovered was not shared by his old acquaintances at Sunwich.
The discovery made him somewhat bitter, and when Hardy stopped him one
afternoon as he was on his way home from work he tried to ignore his
outstretched hand and continued on his way.

“It is a long time since we met,” said Hardy, placing himself in front
of him.

“Good heavens,” said Jack, regarding him closely, “it’s Jemmy Hardy—
grown up spick and span like the industrious little boys in the
school-books. I heard you were back here.”

[Illustration: “He even obtained work down at the harbor.”]

“I came back just before you did,” said Hardy.

“Brass band playing you in and all that sort of thing, I suppose,” said
the other. “Alas, how the wicked prosper—and you were wicked. Do you
remember how you used to knock me about?”

“Come round to my place and have a chat,” said Hardy.

Jack shook his head. “They’re expecting me in to tea,” he said, with a
nod in the direction of Mr. Kybird’s, “and honest waterside labourers
who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow—when the foreman is
looking—do not frequent the society of the upper classes.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Hardy, politely.

“Well, I’m not very tidy,” retorted Mr. Nugent, glancing at his
clothes. “I don’t mind it myself; I’m a philosopher, and nothing hurts
me so long as I have enough to eat and drink; but I don’t inflict
myself on my friends, and I must say most of them meet me more than
half-way.”

“Imagination,” said Hardy.

“All except Kate and my aunt,” said Jack, firmly. “Poor Kate; I tried
to cut her the other day.”

“Cut her?” echoed Hardy.

Nugent nodded. “To save her feelings,” he replied; “but she wouldn’t
be cut, bless her, and on the distinct understanding that it wasn’t to
form a precedent, I let her kiss me behind a waggon. Do you know, I
fancy she’s grown up rather good-looking, Jem?”

“You _are_ observant,” said Mr. Hardy, admiringly.

“Of course, it may be my partiality,” said Mr. Nugent, with judicial
fairness. “I was always a bit fond of Kate. I don’t suppose anybody
else would see anything in her. Where are you living now?”

“Fort Road,” said Hardy; “come round any evening you can, if you won’t
come now.”

Nugent promised, and, catching sight of Miss Kybird standing in the
doorway of the shop, bade him good-bye and crossed the road. It was
becoming quite a regular thing for her to wait and have her tea with
him now, an arrangement which was provocative of many sly remarks on
the part of Mrs. Kybird.

“Thought you were never coming,” said Miss Kybird, tartly, as she led
the way to the back room and took her seat at the untidy tea-tray.

“And you’ve been crying your eyes out, I suppose,” remarked Mr. Nugent,
as he groped in the depths of a tall jar for black-currant jam. “Well,
you’re not the first, and I don’t suppose you’ll be the last. How’s
Teddy?”

“Get your tea,” retorted Miss Kybird, “and don’t make that scraping
noise on the bottom of the jar with your knife. It puts my teeth on
edge.”

“So it does mine,” said Mr. Nugent, “but there’s a black currant down
there, and I mean to have it. ‘Waste not, want not.’”

[Illustration: “Miss Kybird standing in the doorway of the shop.”]

“Make him put that knife down,” said Miss Kybird, as her mother entered
the room. Mrs. Kybird shook her head at him. “You two are always
quarrelling,” she said, archly, “just like a couple of—couple of——”

“Love-birds,” suggested Mr. Nugent.

Mrs. Kybird in great glee squeezed round to him and smote him playfully
with her large, fat hand, and then, being somewhat out of breath with
the exertion, sat down to enjoy the jest in comfort.

“That’s how you encourage him,” said her daughter; “no wonder he
doesn’t behave. No wonder he acts as if the whole place belongs to him.”

The remark was certainly descriptive of Mr. Nugent’s behaviour. His
easy assurance and affability had already made him a prime favourite
with Mrs. Kybird, and had not been without its effect upon her
daughter. The constrained and severe company manners of Mr. Edward Silk
showed up but poorly beside those of the paying guest, and Miss Kybird
had on several occasions drawn comparisons which would have rendered
both gentlemen uneasy if they had known of them.

Mr. Nugent carried the same easy good-fellowship with him the following
week when, neatly attired in a second-hand suit from Mr. Kybird’s
extensive stock, he paid a visit to Jem Hardy to talk over old times
and discuss the future.

“You ought to make friends with your father,” said the latter; “it only
wants a little common sense and mutual forbearance.”

“That’s all,” said Nugent; “sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? No, all he
wants is for me to clear out of Sunwich, and I’m not going to—until
it pleases me, at any rate. It’s poison to him for me to be living at
the Kybirds’ and pushing a trolley down on the quay. Talk about love
sweetening toil, that does.”

Hardy changed the subject, and Nugent, nothing loath, discoursed on
his wanderings and took him on a personally conducted tour through the
continent of Australia. “And I’ve come back to lay my bones in Sunwich
Churchyard,” he concluded, pathetically; “that is, when I’ve done with
’em.”

“A lot of things’ll happen before then,” said Hardy.

“I hope so,” rejoined Mr. Nugent, piously; “my desire is to be buried
by my weeping great-grandchildren. In fact, I’ve left instructions to
that effect in my will—all I have left, by the way.”

“You’re not going to keep on at this water-side work, I suppose?” said
Hardy, making another effort to give the conversation a serious turn.

“The foreman doesn’t think so,” replied the other, as he helped himself
to some whisky; “he has made several remarks to that effect lately.”

He leaned back in his chair and smoked thoughtfully, by no means
insensible to the comfort of his surroundings. He had not been in such
comfortable quarters since he left home seven years before. He thought
of the untidy litter of the Kybirds’ back parlour, with the forlorn
view of the yard in the rear. Something of his reflections he confided
to Hardy as he rose to leave.

“But my market value is about a pound a week,” he concluded, ruefully,
“so I must cut my coat to suit my cloth. Good-night.”

He walked home somewhat soberly at first, but the air was cool
and fresh and a glorious moon was riding in the sky. He whistled
cheerfully, and his spirits rose as various chimerical plans of making
money occurred to him. By the time he reached the High Street, the
shops of which were all closed for the night, he was earning five
hundred a year and spending a thousand. He turned the handle of the
door and, walking in, discovered Miss Kybird entertaining company in
the person of Mr. Edward Silk.

“Halloa,” he said, airily, as he took a seat. “Don’t mind me, young
people. Go on just as you would if I were not here.”

Mr. Edward Silk grumbled something under his breath; Miss Kybird,
turning to the intruder with a smile of welcome, remarked that she had
just thought of going to sleep.

“Going to sleep?” repeated Mr. Silk, thunderstruck.

“Yes,” said Miss Kybird, yawning.

Mr. Silk gazed at her, open-mouthed. “What, with me ’ere?” he inquired,
in trembling tones.

“You’re not very lively company,” said Miss Kybird, bending over her
sewing. “I don’t think you’ve spoken a word for the last quarter of an
hour, and before that you were talking of death-warnings. Made my flesh
creep, you did.”

“Shame!” said Mr. Nugent.

“You didn’t say anything to me about your flesh creeping,” muttered Mr.
Silk.

“You ought to have seen it creep,” interposed Mr. Nugent, severely.

“I’m not talking to you,” said Mr. Silk, turning on him; “when I want
the favour of remarks from you I’ll let you know.”

“Don’t you talk to my gentlemen friends like that, Teddy,” said Miss
Kybird, sharply, “because I won’t have it. Why don’t you try and be
bright and cheerful like Mr. Nugent?”

Mr. Silk turned and regarded that gentleman steadfastly; Mr. Nugent
meeting his gaze with a pleasant smile and a low-voiced offer to give
him lessons at half a crown an hour.

“I wouldn’t be like ’im for worlds,” said Mr. Silk, with a scornful
laugh. “I’d sooner be like anybody.”

“What have you been saying to him?” inquired Nugent.

“Nothing,” replied Miss Kybird; “he’s often like that. He’s got a
nasty, miserable, jealous disposition. Not that I mind what he thinks.”

Mr. Silk breathed hard and looked from one to the other.

“Perhaps he’ll grow out of it,” said Nugent, hopefully. “Cheer up,
Teddy. You’re young yet.”

“Might I arsk,” said the solemnly enraged Mr. Silk, “might I arsk you
not to be so free with my Christian name?”

“He doesn’t like his name now,” said Nugent, drawing his chair closer
to Miss Kybird’s, “and I don’t wonder at it. What shall we call him?
Job? What’s that work you’re doing? Why don’t you get on with that
fancy waistcoat you are doing for me?”

Before Miss Kybird could deny all knowledge of the article in question
her sorely tried swain created a diversion by rising. To that simple
act he imparted an emphasis which commanded the attention of both
beholders, and, drawing over to Miss Kybird, he stood over her in an
attitude at once terrifying and reproachful.

“Take your choice, Amelia,” he said, in a thrilling voice. “Me or ’im—
which is it to be?”

“Here, steady, old man,” cried the startled Nugent. “Go easy.”

“Me or ’im?” repeated Mr. Silk, in stern but broken accents.

Miss Kybird giggled and, avoiding his gaze, looked pensively at the
faded hearthrug.

“You’re making her blush,” said Mr. Nugent, sternly. “Sit down, Teddy;
I’m ashamed of you. We’re both ashamed of you. You’re confusing us
dreadfully proposing to us both in this way.”

[Illustration: “Me or ’im—which is it to be?”]

Mr. Silk regarded him with a scornful eye, but Miss Kybird, bidding
him not to be foolish, punctuated her remarks with the needle, and a
struggle, which Mr. Silk regarded as unseemly in the highest degree,
took place between them for its possession.

Mr. Nugent secured it at last, and brandishing it fiercely extorted
feminine screams from Miss Kybird by threatening her with it. Nor was
her mind relieved until Mr. Nugent, remarking that he would put it back
in the pincushion, placed it in the leg of Mr. Edward Silk.

Mr. Kybird and his wife, entering through the shop, were just in
time to witness a spirited performance on the part of Mr. Silk, the
cherished purpose of which was to deprive them of a lodger. He drew
back as they entered and, raising his voice above Miss Kybird’s, began
to explain his action.

“Teddy, I’m ashamed of you,” said Mr. Kybird, shaking his head. “A
little joke like that; a little innercent joke.”

“If it ’ad been a darning-needle now—” began Mrs. Kybird.

“All right,” said the desperate Mr. Silk, “’ave it your own way. Let
’Melia marry ’im—I don’t care—I give ’er up.”

“Teddy!” said Mr. Kybird, in a shocked voice. “Teddy!”

Mr. Silk thrust him fiercely to one side and passed raging through the
shop. The sound of articles falling in all directions attested to his
blind haste, and the force with which he slammed the shop-door was
sufficient evidence of his state of mind.

“Well, upon my word,” said the staring Mr. Kybird; “of all the
outrageyous—”

“Never mind ’im,” said his wife, who was sitting in the easy chair,
distributing affectionate smiles between her daughter and the startled
Mr. Nugent. “Make ’er happy, Jack, that’s all I arsk. She’s been a good
gal, and she’ll make a good wife. I’ve seen how it was between you for
some time.”

“So ’ave I,” said Mr. Kybird. He shook hands warmly with Mr. Nugent,
and, patting that perturbed man on the back, surveyed him with eyes
glistening with approval.

“It’s a bit rough on Teddy, isn’t it?” inquired Mr. Nugent, anxiously;
“besides—”

“Don’t you worry about ’im,” said Mr. Kybird, affectionately. “He ain’t
worth it.”

“I wasn’t,” said Mr. Nugent, truthfully. The situation had developed so
rapidly that it had caught him at a disadvantage. He had a dim feeling
that, having been the cause of Miss Kybird’s losing one young man, the
most elementary notions of chivalry demanded that he should furnish her
with another. And this idea was clearly uppermost in the minds of her
parents. He looked over at Amelia and with characteristic philosophy
accepted the position.

“We shall be the handsomest couple in Sunwich,” he said, simply.

“Bar none,” said Mr. Kybird, emphatically.

The stout lady in the chair gazed at the couple fondly. “It reminds
me of our wedding,” she said, softly. “What was it Tom Fletcher said,
father? Can you remember?”

[Illustration: “I wonder what the governor’ll say.”]

“’Arry Smith, you mean,” corrected Mr. Kybird.

“Tom Fletcher said something, I’m sure,” persisted his wife.

“He _did_,” said Mr. Kybird, grimly, “and I pretty near broke ’is ’ead
for it. ’Arry Smith is the one you’re thinking of.”

Mrs. Kybird after a moment’s reflection admitted that he was right,
and, the chain of memory being touched, waxed discursive about her own
wedding and the somewhat exciting details which accompanied it. After
which she produced a bottle labelled “Port wine” from the cupboard,
and, filling four glasses, celebrated the occasion in a befitting but
sober fashion.

“This,” said Mr. Nugent, as he sat on his bed that night to take his
boots off, “this is what comes of trying to make everybody happy and
comfortable with a little fun. I wonder what the governor’ll say.”




CHAPTER IX


The news of his only son’s engagement took Captain Nugent’s breath
away, which, all things considered, was perhaps the best thing it
could have done. He sat at home in silent rage, only exploding when
the well-meaning Mrs. Kingdom sought to minimize his troubles by
comparing them with those of Job. Her reminder that to the best of her
remembrance he had never had a boil in his life put the finishing touch
to his patience, and, despairing of drawing-room synonyms for the words
which trembled on his lips, he beat a precipitate retreat to the garden.

His son bore his new honours bravely. To an appealing and indignant
letter from his sister he wrote gravely, reminding her of the
difference in their years, and also that he had never interfered in her
flirtations, however sorely his brotherly heart might have been wrung
by them. He urged her to forsake such diversions for the future, and
to look for an alliance with some noble, open-handed man with a large
banking account and a fondness for his wife’s relatives.

To Jem Hardy, who ventured on a delicate remonstrance one evening, he
was less patient, and displayed a newly acquired dignity which was a
source of considerable embarrassment to that well-meaning gentleman. He
even got up to search for his hat, and was only induced to resume his
seat by the physical exertions of his host.

“I didn’t mean to be offensive,” said the latter. “But you were,” said
the aggrieved man. Hardy apologized.

“Talk of that kind is a slight to my future wife,” said Nugent, firmly.
“Besides, what business is it of yours?”

Hardy regarded him thoughtfully. It was some time since he had seen
Miss Nugent, and he felt that he was losing valuable time. He had hoped
great things from the advent of her brother, and now his intimacy
seemed worse than useless. He resolved to take him into his confidence.

“I spoke from selfish motives,” he said, at last. “I wanted you to make
friends with your father again.”

“What for?” inquired the other, staring.

“To pave the way for me,” said Hardy, raising his voice as he thought
of his wrongs; “and now, owing to your confounded matrimonial business,
that’s all knocked on the head. I wouldn’t care whom you married if it
didn’t interfere with my affairs so.”

“Do you mean,” inquired the astonished Mr. Nugent, “that you want to be
on friendly terms with my father?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Nugent gazed at him round-eyed. “You haven’t had a blow on the head
or anything of that sort at any time, have you?” he inquired.

Hardy shook his head impatiently. “You don’t seem to suffer from
an excess of intellect yourself,” he retorted. “I don’t want to be
offensive again, still, I should think it is pretty plain there is only
one reason why I should go out of my way to seek the society of your
father.”

“Say what you like about my intellect,” replied the dutiful son, “but
I can’t think of even one—not even a small one. Not—Good gracious! You
don’t mean—you can’t mean—”

Hardy looked at him.

“Not that,” said Mr. Nugent, whose intellect had suddenly become
painfully acute—“not _her_?”

“Why not?” inquired the other.

Mr. Nugent leaned back in his chair and regarded him with an air of
kindly interest. “Well, there’s no need for you to worry about my
father for that,” he said; “he would raise no objection.”

“_Eh?_” said Hardy, starting up from his chair.

“He would welcome it,” said Mr. Nugent, positively. “There is nothing
that he would like better; and I don’t mind telling you a secret—she
likes you.”

Hardy reddened. “How do you know?” he stammered.

“I know it for a fact,” said the other, impressively. “I have heard
her say so. But you’ve been very plain-spoken about me, Jem, so that I
shall say what I think.”

“Do,” said his bewildered friend.

“I think you’d be throwing yourself away,” said Nugent; “to my mind
it’s a most unsuitable match in every way. She’s got no money, no
looks, no style. Nothing but a good kind heart rather the worse for
wear. I suppose you know she’s been married once?”

“What!” shouted the other. “Married?”

Mr. Nugent nodded. His face was perfectly grave, but the joke was
beginning to prey upon his vitals in a manner which brooked no delay.

“I thought everybody knew it,” he said. “We have never disguised the
fact. Her husband died twenty years ago last——”

“Twenty” said his suddenly enlightened listener. “Who?—What?”

Mr. Nugent, incapable of reply, put his head on the table and beat the
air frantically with his hand, while gasping sobs rent his tortured
frame.

“Dear—aunt,” he choked, “how pleas—pleased she’d be if—she knew. Don’t
look like that, Hardy. You’ll kill me.”

“You seem amused,” said Hardy, between his teeth.

“And you’ll be Kate’s uncle,” said Mr. Nugent, sitting up and wiping
his eyes. “Poor little Kate.”

He put his head on the table again. “And mine,” he wailed. “Uncle
Jemmy!—will you tip us half-crowns, nunky?”

Mr. Hardy’s expression of lofty scorn only served to retard his
recovery, but he sat up at last and, giving his eyes a final wipe,
beamed kindly upon his victim.

“Well, I’ll do what I can for you,” he observed, “but I suppose you
know Kate’s off for a three months’ visit to London to-morrow?”

The other observed that he didn’t know it, and, taught by his recent
experience, eyed him suspiciously.

“It’s quite true,” said Nugent; “she’s going to stay with some
relatives of ours. She used to be very fond of one of the boys—her
cousin Herbert—so you mustn’t be surprised if she comes back engaged.
But I daresay you’ll have forgotten all about her in three months. And,
anyway, I don’t suppose she’d look at you if you were the last man in
the world. If you’ll walk part of the way home with me I’ll regale you
with anecdotes of her chilhood which will probably cause you to change
your views altogether.”

[Illustration: “A spirit of quiet despair.”]

In Fullalove Alley Mr. Edward Silk, his forebodings fulfilled, received
the news of Amelia Kybird’s faithlessness in a spirit of quiet despair,
and turned a deaf ear to the voluble sympathy of his neighbours.
Similar things had happened to young men living there before, but their
behaviour had been widely different to Mr. Silk’s. Bob Crump, for
instance, had been jilted on the very morning he had arranged for his
wedding, but instead of going about in a state of gentle melancholy he
went round and fought his beloved’s father—merely because it was her
father—and wound up an exciting day by selling off his household goods
to the highest bidders. Henry Jones in similar circumstances relieved
his great grief by walking up and down the alley smashing every window
within reach of his stick.

But these were men of spirit; Mr. Silk was cast in a different
mould, and his fair neighbours sympathized heartily with him in his
bereavement, while utterly failing to understand any man breaking his
heart over Amelia Kybird.

His mother, a widow of uncertain age, shook her head over him and
hinted darkly at consumption, an idea which was very pleasing to her
son, and gave him an increased interest in a slight cold from which he
was suffering.

“He wants taking out of ’imself,” said Mr. Wilks, who had stepped
across the alley to discuss the subject with his neighbour; “cheerful
society and ’obbies—that’s what ’e wants.”

“He’s got a faithful ’eart,” sighed Mrs. Silk. “It’s in the family; ’e
can’t ’elp it.”

“But ’e might be lifted out of it,” urged Mr. Wilks. “I ’ad several
disappointments in my young days. One time I ’ad a fresh gal every
v’y’ge a’most.”

Mrs. Silk sniffed and looked up the alley, whereat two neighbours
who happened to be at their doors glanced up and down casually, and
retreated inside to continue their vigil from the windows.

“Silk courted me for fifteen years before I would say ‘yes,’” she said,
severely.

“Fifteen years!” responded the other. He cast his eyes upwards and his
lips twitched. The most casual observer could have seen that he was
engaged in calculations of an abstruse and elusive nature.

“I was on’y seven when ’e started,” said Mrs. Silk, sharply.

Mr. Wilks brought his eyes to a level again. “Oh, seven,” he remarked.

“And we was married two days before my nineteenth birthday,” added Mrs.
Silk, whose own arithmetic had always been her weak point.

“Just so,” said Mr. Wilks. He glanced at the sharp white face and
shapeless figure before him. “It’s hard to believe you can ’ave a son
Teddy’s age,” he added, gallantly.

“It makes you feel as if you’re getting on,” said the widow.

The ex-steward agreed, and after standing a minute or two in silence
made a preliminary motion of withdrawal.

“Beautiful your plants are looking,” said Mrs. Silk, glancing over at
his window; “I can’t think what you do to ’em.”

The gratified Mr. Wilks began to explain. It appeared that plants
wanted almost as much looking after as daughters.

“I should like to see ’em close,” said Mrs. Silk.

“Come in and ’ave a look at ’em,” responded her neighbour.

Mrs. Silk hesitated and displayed a maidenly coyness far in excess of
the needs of the situation. Then she stepped across, and five seconds
later the two matrons, with consternation writ large upon their faces,
appeared at their doors again and, exchanging glances across the alley,
met in the centre.

They were more surprised an evening or two later to see Mr. Wilks leave
his house to pay a return visit, bearing in his hand a small bunch of
his cherished blooms. That they were blooms which would have paid the
debt of Nature in a few hours at most in no way detracted from the
widow’s expressions of pleasure at receiving them, and Mr. Wilks, who
had been invited over to cheer up Mr. Silk, who was in a particularly
black mood, sat and smiled like a detected philanthropist as she placed
them in water.

“Good evenin’, Teddy,” he said, breezily, with a side-glance at his
hostess. “What a lovely day we’ve ’ad.”

“So bright,” said Mrs. Silk, nodding with spirit.

Mr. Wilks sat down and gave vent to such a cheerful laugh that the
ornaments on the mantelpiece shook with it. “It’s good to be alive,” he
declared.

[Illustration: “A return visit.”]

“Ah, you enjoy your life, Mr. Wilks,” said the widow.

“Enjoy it!” roared Mr. Wilks; “enjoy it! Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t
everybody enjoy their lives? It was what they was given to us for.”

“So they was,” affirmed Mrs. Silk; “nobody can deny that; not if they
try.”

“Nobody wants to deny it, ma’am,” retorted Mr. Wilks, in the high voice
he kept for cheering-up purposes. “I enjoy every day o’ my life.”

He filled his pipe, chuckling serenely, and having lit it sat and
enjoyed that. Mrs. Silk retired for a space, and returning with a jug
of ale poured him out a glass and set it by his elbow.

“Here’s your good ’ealth, ma’am,” said Mr. Wilks, raising it. “Here’s
yours, Teddy—a long life and a ’appy one.”

Mr. Silk turned listlessly. “I don’t want a long life,” he remarked.

His mother and her visitor exchanged glances.

“That’s ’ow ’e goes on,” remarked the former, in an audible whisper.
Mr. Wilks nodded, reassuringly.

“I ’ad them ideas once,” he said, “but they go off. If you could only
live to see Teddy at the age o’ ninety-five, ’e wouldn’t want to go
then. ’E’d say it was crool hard, being cut off in the flower of ’is
youth.”

Mrs. Silk laughed gaily and Mr. Wilks bellowed a gruff accompaniment.
Mr. Edward Silk eyed them pityingly.

“That’s the ’ardship of it,” he said, slowly, as he looked round from
his seat by the fireplace; “that’s where the ’ollowness of things comes
in. That’s where I envy Mr. Wilks.”

“Envy me?” said the smiling visitor; “what for?”

“Because you’re so near the grave,” said Mr. Silk.

Mr. Wilks, who was taking another draught of beer, put the glass down
and eyed him fixedly.

“That’s why I envy you,” continued the other.

“I don’t want to live, and you do, and yet I dessay I shall be walking
about forty and fifty years after you’re dead and forgotten.”

“Wot d’ye mean—near the grave?” inquired Mr. Wilks, somewhat shortly.

“I was referring to your age,” replied the other; “it’s strange to see
’ow the aged ’ang on to life. You can’t ’ave much pleasure at your time
o’ life. And you’re all alone; the last withered branch left.”

“_Withered branch!_” began Mr. Wilks; “’ere, look ’ere, Teddy——”

“All the others ’ave gone,” pursued Mr. Silk, “and they’re beckoning to
you.”

“Let ’em beckon,” said Mr. Wilks, coldly. “I’m not going yet.”

“You’re not young,” said Mr. Silk, gazing meditatively at the grate,
“and I envy you that. It can only be a matter of a year or two at most
before you are sleeping your last long sleep.”

“Teddy!” protested Mrs. Silk.

“It’s true, mother,” said the melancholy youth. “Mr. Wilks is old. Why
should ’e mind being told of it? If ’e had ’ad the trouble I’ve ’ad
’e’d be glad to go. But he’ll ’ave to go, whether ’e likes it or not.
It might be tonight. Who can tell?”

Mr. Wilks, unasked, poured himself out another glass of ale, and drank
it off with the air of a man who intended to make sure of that. It
seemed a trifle more flat than the last.

“So many men o’ your age and thereabouts,” continued Mr. Silk, “think
that they’re going to live on to eighty or ninety, but there’s very
few of ’em do. It’s only a short while, Mr. Wilks, and the little
children’ll be running about over your grave and picking daisies off of
it.”

“Ho, will they?” said the irritated Mr. Wilks; “they’d better not let
me catch ’em at it, that’s all.”

“He’s always talking like that now,” said Mrs. Silk, not without a
certain pride in her tones; “that’s why I asked you in to cheer ’im up.”

“All your troubles’ll be over then,” continued the warning voice, “and
in a month or two even your name’ll be forgotten. That’s the way of the
world. Think ’ow soon the last five years of your life ’ave passed; the
next five’ll pass ten times as fast even if you live as long, which
ain’t likely.”

[Illustration: “He set off towards the life and bustle of the Two
Schooners.”]

“He talks like a clergyman,” said Mrs. Silk, in a stage whisper.

Mr. Wilks nodded, and despite his hostess’s protests rose to go. He
shook hands with her and, after a short but sharp inward struggle,
shook hands with her son. It was late in the evening as he left, but
the houses had not yet been lit up. Dim figures sat in doorways or
stood about the alley, and there was an air of peace and rest strangely
and uncomfortably in keeping with the conversation to which he had just
been listening. He looked in at his own door; the furniture seemed
stiffer than usual and the tick of the clock more deliberate. He closed
the door again and, taking a deep breath, set off towards the life and
bustle of the Two Schooners.




CHAPTER X


Time failed to soften the captain’s ideas concerning his son’s
engagement, and all mention of the subject in the house was strictly
forbidden. Occasionally he was favoured with a glimpse of his son and
Miss Kybird out together, a sight which imparted such a flavour to
his temper and ordinary intercourse that Mrs. Kingdom, in unconscious
imitation of Mr. James Hardy, began to count the days which must elapse
before her niece’s return from London. His ill-temper even infected the
other members of the household, and Mrs. Kingdom sat brooding in her
bedroom all one afternoon, because Bella had called her an “overbearing
dish-pot.”

The finishing touch to his patience was supplied by a little
misunderstanding between Mr. Kybird and the police. For the second time
in his career the shopkeeper appeared before the magistrates to explain
the circumstances in which he had purchased stolen property, and for
the second time he left the court without a stain on his character, but
with a significant magisterial caution not to appear there again.

Jack Nugent gave evidence in the case, and some of his replies were
deemed worthy of reproduction in the _Sunwich Herald_, a circumstance
which lost the proprietors a subscriber of many years’ standing.

[Illustration: “For the second time he left the court without a stain
on his character.”]

One by one various schemes for preventing his son’s projected alliance
were dismissed as impracticable. A cherished design of confining him
in an asylum for the mentally afflicted until such time as he should
have regained his senses was spoilt by the refusal of Dr. Murchison to
arrange for the necessary certificate; a refusal which was like to have
been fraught with serious consequences to that gentleman’s hopes of
entering the captain’s family.

Brooding over his wrongs, the captain, a day or two after his
daughter’s return, strolled slowly down towards the harbour. It was
afternoon, and the short winter day was already drawing towards a
close. The shipping looked cold and desolate in the greyness, but a
bustle of work prevailed on the _Conqueror_, which was nearly ready for
sea again. The captain’s gaze wandered from his old craft to the small
vessels dotted about the harbour and finally dwelt admiringly on the
lines of the whaler _Seabird_, which had put in a few days before as
the result of a slight collision with a fishing-boat. She was high out
of the water and beautifully rigged. A dog ran up and down her decks
barking, and a couple of squat figures leaned over the bulwarks gazing
stolidly ashore.

There was something about the vessel which took his fancy, and he stood
for some time on the edge of the quay, looking at her. In a day or two
she would sail for a voyage the length of which would depend upon her
success; a voyage which would for a long period keep all on board of
her out of the mischief which so easily happens ashore. If only Jack——

He started and stared more intently than before. He was not an
imaginative man, but he had in his mind’s eye a sudden vision of his
only son waving farewells from the deck of the whaler as she emerged
from the harbour into the open sea, while Amelia Kybird tore her yellow
locks ashore. It was a vision to cheer any self-respecting father’s
heart, and he brought his mind back with some regret to the reality of
the anchored ship.

He walked home slowly. At the Kybirds’ door the proprietor, smoking
a short clay pipe, eyed him with furtive glee as he passed. Farther
along the road the Hardys, father and son, stepped briskly together.
Altogether a trying walk, and calculated to make him more dissatisfied
than ever with the present state of affairs. When his daughter shook
her head at him and accused him of going off on a solitary frolic his
stock of patience gave out entirely.

A thoughtful night led to a visit to Mr. Wilks the following evening.
It required a great deal of deliberation on his part before he
could make up his mind to the step, but he needed his old steward’s
assistance in a little plan he had conceived for his son’s benefit, and
for the first time in his life he paid him the supreme honour of a call.

[Illustration: “The proprietor eyed him with furtive glee as he
passed.”]

The honour was so unexpected that Mr. Wilks, coming into the parlour in
response to the tapping of the captain’s stick on the floor, stood for
a short time eyeing him in dismay. Only two minutes before he had taken
Mr. James Hardy into the kitchen to point out the interior beauties of
an ancient clock, and the situation simply appalled him. The captain
greeted him almost politely and bade him sit down. Mr. Wilks smiled
faintly and caught his breath.

“Sit down,” repeated the captain.

“I’ve left something in the kitchen, sir,” said Mr. Wilks. “I’ll be
back in half a minute.”

The captain nodded. In the kitchen Mr. Wilks rapidly and incoherently
explained the situation to Mr. Hardy.

“I’ll sit here,” said the latter, drawing up a comfortable oak chair to
the stove.

“You see, he don’t know that we know each other,” explained the
apologetic steward, “but I don’t like leaving you in the kitchen.”

“I’m all right,” said Hardy; “don’t you trouble about me.”

He waved him away, and Mr. Wilks, still pale, closed the door behind
him and, rejoining the captain, sat down on the extreme edge of a chair
and waited.

“I’ve come to see you on a little matter of business,” said his visitor.

Mr. Wilks smiled; then, feeling that perhaps that was not quite the
right thing to do, looked serious again.

“I came to see you about my—my son,” continued the captain.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Wilks. “Master Jack, you mean?”

“I’ve only got one son,” said the other, unpleasantly, “unless you
happen to know of any more.”

Mr. Wilks almost fell off the edge of the chair in his haste to
disclaim any such knowledge. His ideas were in a ferment, and the
guilty knowledge of what he had left in the kitchen added to his
confusion. And just at that moment the door opened and Miss Nugent came
briskly in.

Her surprise at seeing her father ensconced in a chair by the fire led
to a rapid volley of questions. The captain, in lieu of answering them,
asked another.

“What do you want here?”

“I have come to see Sam,” said Miss Nugent. “Fancy seeing you here! How
are you, Sam?”

“Pretty well, miss, thank’ee,” replied Mr. Wilks, “considering,” he
added, truthfully, after a moment’s reflection.

Miss Nugent dropped into a chair and put her feet on the fender. Her
father eyed her restlessly.

“I came here to speak to Sam about a private matter,” he said, abruptly.

“Private matter,” said his daughter, looking round in surprise. “What
about?”

“A private matter,” repeated Captain Nugent. “Suppose you come in some
other time.”

Kate Nugent sighed and took her feet from the fender. “I’ll go and wait
in the kitchen,” she said, crossing to the door.

Both men protested. The captain because it ill-assorted with his
dignity for his daughter to sit in the kitchen, and Mr. Wilks because
of the visitor already there. The face of the steward, indeed, took
on such extraordinary expressions in his endeavour to convey private
information to the girl that she gazed at him in silent amazement. Then
she turned the handle of the door and, passing through, closed it with
a bang which was final.

Mr. Wilks stood spellbound, but nothing happened. There was no cry
of surprise; no hasty reappearance of an indignant Kate Nugent. His
features working nervously he resumed his seat and gazed dutifully at
his superior officer.

“I suppose you’ve heard that my son is going to get married?” said the
latter.

“I couldn’t help hearing of it, sir,” said the steward in self
defence—“nobody could.”

“He’s going to marry that yellow-headed Jezebel of Kybird’s,” said the
captain, staring at the fire.

Mr. Wilks murmured that he couldn’t understand anybody liking yellow
hair, and, more than that, the general opinion of the ladies in
Fullalove Alley was that it was dyed.

“I’m going to ship him on the _Seabird_,” continued the captain.
“She’ll probably be away for a year or two, and, in the meantime, this
girl will probably marry somebody else. Especially if she doesn’t know
what has become of him. He can’t get into mischief aboard ship.”

“No, sir,” said the wondering Mr. Wilks. “Is Master Jack agreeable to
going, sir?”

“That’s nothing to do with it,” said the captain, sharply.

“No, sir,” said Mr. Wilks, “o’ course not. I was only a sort o’
wondering how he was going to be persuaded to go if ’e ain’t.”

“That’s what I came here about,” said the other. “I want you to go and
fix it up with Nathan Smith.”

“Do you want ’im to be crimped, sir?” stammered Mr. Wilks.

“I want him shipped aboard the _Seabird_,” returned the other, “and
Smith’s the man to do it.”

“It’s a very hard thing to do in these days, sir,” said Mr. Wilks,
shaking his head. “What with signing on aboard the day before the ship
sails, and before the Board o’ Trade officers, I’m sure it’s a wonder
that anybody goes to sea at all.”

“You leave that to Smith,” said the captain, impatiently. “The
_Seabird_ sails on Friday morning’s tide. Tell Smith I’ll arrange to
meet my son here on Thursday night, and that he must have some liquor
for us and a fly waiting on the beach.”

Mr. Wilks wriggled: “But what about signing on, sir?” he inquired.

“He won’t sign on,” said the captain, “he’ll be a stowaway. Smith must
get him smuggled aboard, and bribe the hands to let him lie hidden in
the fo’c’s’le. The _Seabird_ won’t put back to put him ashore. Here is
five pounds; give Smith two or three now, and the remainder when the
job is done.”

The steward took the money reluctantly and, plucking up his courage,
looked his old master in the face.

“It’s a ’ard life afore the mast, sir,” he said, slowly.

“Rubbish!” was the reply. “It’ll make a man of him. Besides, what’s it
got to do with you?”

“I don’t care about the job, sir,” said Mr. Wilks, bravely.

“What’s that got to do with it?” demanded the other, frowning. “You go
and fix it up with Nathan Smith as soon as possible.”

Mr. Wilks shuffled his feet and strove to remind himself that he was a
gentleman of independent means, and could please himself.

“I’ve known ’im since he was a baby,” he murmured, defiantly.

“I don’t want to hear anything more from you, Wilks,” said the captain,
in a hard voice. “Those are my orders, and you had better see that they
are carried out. My son will be one of the first to thank you later on
for getting him out of such a mess.”

Mr. Wilks’s brow cleared somewhat. “I s’pose Miss Kate ’ud be pleased
too,” he remarked, hopefully.

“Of course she will,” said the captain. “Now I look to you, Wilks, to
manage this thing properly. I wouldn’t trust anybody else, and you’ve
never disappointed me yet.”

The steward gasped and, doubting whether he had heard aright, looked
towards his old master, but in vain, for the confirmation of further
compliments. In all his long years of service he had never been praised
by him before. He leaned forward eagerly and began to discuss ways and
means.

In the next room conversation was also proceeding, but fitfully. Miss
Nugent’s consternation when she closed the door behind her and found
herself face to face with Mr. Hardy was difficult of concealment. Too
late she understood the facial contortions of Mr. Wilks, and, resigning
herself to the inevitable, accepted the chair placed for her by the
highly pleased Jem, and sat regarding him calmly from the other side of
the fender.

“I am waiting here for my father,” she said, in explanation.

[Illustration: “Miss Nugent’s consternation was difficult of
concealment.”]

“In deference to Wilks’s terrors I am waiting here until he has gone,”
said Hardy, with a half smile.

There was a pause. “I hope that he will not be long,” said the girl.

“Thank you,” returned Hardy, wilfully misunderstanding, “but I am in no
hurry.”

He gazed at her with admiration. The cold air had heightened her
colour, and the brightness of her eyes shamed the solitary candle which
lit up the array of burnished metal on the mantelpiece.

“I hope you enjoyed your visit to London,” he said.

Before replying Miss Nugent favoured him with a glance designed to
express surprise at least at his knowledge of her movements. “Very
much, thank you,” she said, at last.

Mr. Hardy, still looking at her with much comfort to himself, felt an
insane desire to tell her how much she had been missed by one person at
least in Sunwich. Saved from this suicidal folly by the little common
sense which had survived the shock of her sudden appearance, he gave
the information indirectly.

“Quite a long stay,” he murmured; “three months and three days; no,
three months and two days.”

A sudden wave of colour swept over the girl’s face at the ingenuity of
this mode of attack. She was used to attention and took compliments as
her due, but the significant audacity of this one baffled her. She sat
with downcast eyes looking at the fender, occasionally glancing from
the corner of her eye to see whether he was preparing to renew the
assault. He had certainly changed from the Jem Hardy of olden days. She
had a faint idea that his taste had improved.

“Wilks keeps his house in good order,” said Hardy, looking round.

“Yes,” said the girl.

“Wonder why he never married,” said Hardy, musingly; “for my part I
can’t understand a man remaining single all his life; can you?”

“I never think of such things,” said Miss Nugent, coldly—and
untruthfully.

“If it was only to have somebody to wait on him and keep his house
clean,” pursued Hardy, with malice.

Miss Nugent grew restless, and the wrongs of her sex stirred within
her. “You have very lofty ideas on the subject,” she said, scornfully,
“but I believe they are not uncommon.”

“Still, you have never thought about such things, you know,” he
reminded her.

“And no doubt you have devoted a great deal of time to the subject.”

Hardy admitted it frankly. “But only since I returned to Sunwich,” he
said.

“Caused by the spectacle of Sam’s forlorn condition, I suppose,” said
Miss Nugent.

“No, it wasn’t that,” he replied.

Miss Nugent, indignant at having been drawn into such a discussion,
lapsed into silence. It was safer and far more dignified, but at the
same time she yearned for an opportunity of teaching this presumptuous
young man a lesson. So far he had had it all his own way. A way strewn
with ambiguities which a modest maiden had to ignore despite herself.

“Of course, Wilks may have had a disappointment,” said Hardy, with the
air of one willing to make allowances.

“I believe he had about fifty,” said the girl, carelessly.

Hardy shook his head in strong disapproval. “No man should have more
than one,” he said, firmly; “a man of any strength of will wouldn’t
have that.”

“Strength of will?” repeated the astonished Miss Nugent.

Their eyes met; hers sparkling with indignation; his full of cold
calculation. If he had had any doubts before, he was quite sure now
that he had gone the right way to work to attract her attention; she
was almost quivering with excitement.

“Your ideas will probably change with age—and disappointment,” she
said, sweetly.

“I shall not be disappointed,” said Hardy, coolly. “I’ll take care of
that.”

Miss Nugent eyed him wistfully and racked her brains for an appropriate
and crushing rejoinder. In all her experience—and it was considerable
considering her years—she had never met with such carefully constructed
audacity, and she longed, with a great longing, to lure him into the
open and destroy him. She was still considering ways and means of doing
this when the door opened and revealed the surprised and angry form of
her father and behind it the pallid countenance of Mr. Wilks. For a
moment anger deprived the captain of utterance.

“Who——” he stammered. “What——”

“What a long time you’ve been, father,” said Miss Nugent, in a
reproving voice. “I began to be afraid you were never going.”

“You come home with me,” said the captain, recovering.

The command was given in his most imperious manner, and his daughter
dropped her muff in some resentment as she rose, in order to let
him have the pleasure of seeing Mr. Hardy pick it up. It rolled,
however, in his direction, and he stooped for it just as Hardy darted
forward. Their heads met with a crash, and Miss Nugent forgot her own
consternation in the joy of beholding the pitiable exhibition which
terror made of Mr. Wilks.

“I’m very sorry,” said Hardy, as he reverently dusted the muff on his
coat-sleeve before returning it. “I’m afraid it was my fault.”

“It was,” said the infuriated captain, as he held the door open for his
daughter. “Now, Kate.”

[Illustration: “He found his remaining guest holding his aching head
beneath the tap.”]

Miss Nugent passed through, followed by her father, and escorted to the
front door by the steward, whose faint “Good-night” was utterly ignored
by his injured commander. He stood at the door until they had turned
the corner, and, returning to the kitchen, found his remaining guest
holding his aching head beneath the tap.

“And now,” said the captain, sternly, to his daughter, “how dare you
sit and talk to that young cub? Eh? How dare you?”

“He was there when I went in,” said his daughter.

“Why didn’t you come out, then?” demanded her father.

“I was afraid of disturbing you and Sam,” said Miss Nugent. “Besides,
why shouldn’t I speak to him?”

“Why?” shouted the captain. “Why? Because I won’t have it.”

“I thought you liked him,” said Miss Nugent, in affected surprise. “You
patted him on the head.”

The captain, hardly able to believe his ears, came to an impressive
stop in the roadway, but Miss Nugent walked on. She felt instinctively
that the joke was thrown away on him, and, in the absence of any
other audience, wanted to enjoy it without interruption. Convulsive
and half-suppressed sounds, which she ascribed to a slight cold
caught while waiting in the kitchen, escaped her at intervals for the
remainder of the journey home.




CHAPTER XI


Jack Nugent’s first idea on seeing a letter from his father asking him
to meet him at Samson Wilks’s was to send as impolite a refusal as a
strong sense of undutifulness and a not inapt pen could arrange, but
the united remonstrances of the Kybird family made him waver.

“You go,” said Mr. Kybird, solemnly; “take the advice of a man wot’s
seen life, and go. Who knows but wot he’s a-thinking of doing something
for you?”

“Startin’ of you in business or somethin’,” said Mrs. Kybird. “But if
’e tries to break it off between you and ’Melia I hope you know what to
say.”

“He won’t do that,” said her husband.

“If he wants to see me,” said Mr. Nugent, “let him come here.”

“I wouldn’t ’ave ’im in my house,” retorted Mr. Kybird, quickly. “An
Englishman’s ’ouse is his castle, and I won’t ’ave him in mine.”

“Why not, Dan’l,” asked his wife, “if the two families is to be
connected?”

Mr. Kybird shook his head, and, catching her eye, winked at her with
much significance.

[Illustration: “Mr. Nathan Smith.”]

“’Ave it your own way,” said Mrs. Kybird, who was always inclined to
make concessions in minor matters. “’Ave it your own way, but don’t
blame me, that’s all I ask.”

Urged on by his friends Mr. Nugent at last consented, and, in a reply
to his father, agreed to meet him at the house of Mr. Wilks on Thursday
evening. He was not free himself from a slight curiosity as to the
reasons which had made the captain unbend in so unusual a fashion.

Mr. Nathan Smith put in an appearance at six o’clock on the fatal
evening. He was a short, slight man, with a clean-shaven face mapped
with tiny wrinkles, and a pair of colourless eyes the blankness
of whose expression defied research. In conversation, especially
conversation of a diplomatic nature, Mr. Smith seemed to be looking
through his opponent at something beyond, an uncomfortable habit which
was a source of much discomfort to his victims.

“Here we are, then, Mr. Wilks,” he said, putting his head in the door
and smiling at the agitated steward.

“Come in,” said Mr. Wilks, shortly.

Mr. Smith obliged. “Nice night outside,” he said, taking a chair;
“clear over’ead. Wot a morning it ’ud be for a sail if we was only
young enough. Is that terbacker in that canister there?”

The other pushed it towards him.

“If I was only young enough—and silly enough,” said the boarding-house
master, producing a pipe with an unusually large bowl and slowly
filling it, “there’s nothing I should enjoy more than a three years’
cruise. Nothing to do and everything of the best.”

“’Ave you made all the arrangements?” inquired Mr. Wilks, in a tone of
cold superiority.

Mr. Smith glanced affectionately at a fish-bag of bulky appearance
which stood on the floor between his feet. “All ready,” he said,
cheerfully, “an’ if you’d like a v’y’ge yourself I can manage it for
you in two twos. You’ve on’y got to say the word.”

“I don’t want one,” said the steward, fiercely; “don’t you try none o’
your larks on me, Nathan Smith, cos I won’t have it.”

“Lord love your ’art,” said the boarding-master, “I wouldn’t ’urt you.
I’m on’y acting under your orders now; yours and the captin’s. It ain’t
in my reg’lar way o’ business at all, but I’m so good-natured I can’t
say ‘no.’”

“Can’t say ‘no’ to five pounds, you mean,” retorted Mr. Wilks, who by
no means relished these remarks.

“If I was getting as much out of it as you are I’d be a ’appy man,”
sighed Mr. Smith.

“Me!” cried the other; “do you think I’d take money for this—why, I’d
sooner starve, I’d sooner. Wot are you a-tapping your nose for?”

“Was I tapping it?” demanded Mr. Smith, in surprise. “Well, I didn’t
know it. I’m glad you told me.”

“You’re quite welcome,” said the steward, sharply. “Crimping ain’t in
my line; I’d sooner sweep the roads.”

“’Ear, ’ear,” exclaimed Mr. Smith, approvingly. “Ah! wot a thing it is
to come acrost an honest man. Wot a good thing it is for the eyesight.”

He stared stonily somewhere in the direction of Mr. Wilks, and then
blinking rapidly shielded his eyes with his hand as though overcome
by the sight of so much goodness. The steward’s wrath rose at the
performance, and he glowered back at him until his eyes watered.

“Twenty past six,” said Mr. Smith, suddenly, as he fumbled in his
waistcoat-pocket and drew out a small folded paper. “It’s time I made a
start. I s’pose you’ve got some salt in the house?”

“Plenty,” said Mr. Wilks.

“And beer?” inquired the other.

“Yes, there is some beer,” said the steward.

“Bring me a quart of it,” said the boarding-master, slowly and
impressively. “I want it drawed in a china mug, with a nice foaming
’ead on it.”

“Wot do you want it for?” inquired Mr. Wilks, eyeing him very closely.

“Bisness purposes,” said Mr. Smith. “If you’re very good you shall see
’ow I do it.”

Still the steward made no move. “I thought you brought the stuff with
you,” he remarked.

Mr. Smith looked at him with mild reproach. “Are you managing this
affair or am I?” he inquired.

The steward went out reluctantly, and drawing a quart mug of beer set
it down on the table and stood watching his visitor.

“And now I want a spoonful o’ sugar, a spoonful o’ salt, and a spoonful
o’ vinegar,” said Mr. Smith. “Make haste afore the ’ead goes off of it.”

Mr. Wilks withdrew grumbling, and came back in a wonderfully short
space of time considering, with the articles required.

“Thankee,” said the other; “you ’ave been quick. I wish I could move as
quick as you do. But you can take ’em back now, I find I can do without
’em.”

“Where’s the beer?” demanded the incensed Mr. Wilks; “where’s the beer,
you underhanded swab?”

“I altered my mind,” said Mr. Smith, “and not liking waste, and seeing
by your manner that you’ve ’ad more than enough already tonight, I
drunk it. There isn’t another man in Sunwich I could ha’ played that
trick on, no, nor a boy neither.”

Mr. Wilks was about to speak, but, thinking better of it, threw the
three spoons in the kitchen, and resuming his seat by the fire sat with
his back half turned to his visitor.

“Bright, cheerful young chap, ’e is,” said Mr. Smith; “you’ve knowed
’im ever since he was a baby, haven’t you?”

Mr. Wilks made no reply.

“The _Conqueror_’s sailing to-morrow morning, too,” continued his
tormentor; “his father’s old ship. ’Ow strange it’ll seem to ’im
following it out aboard a whaler. Life is full o’ surprises, Mr. Wilks,
and wot a big surprise it would be to you if you could ’ear wot he says
about you when he comes to ’is senses.”

“I’m obeying orders,” growled the other.

“Quite right,” said Mr. Smith, approvingly, as he drew a bottle of
whisky from his bag and placed it on the table. “Two glasses and there
we are. We don’t want any salt and vinegar this time.”

Mr. Wilks turned a deaf ear. “But ’ow are you going to manage so as to
make one silly and not the other?” he inquired.

“It’s a trade secret,” said the other; “but I don’t mind telling you I
sent the cap’n something to take afore he comes, and I shall be in your
kitchen looking arter things.”

“I s’pose you know wot you’re about?” said Mr. Wilks, doubtfully.

“I s’pose so,” rejoined the other. “Young Nugent trusts you, and, of
course, he’ll take anything from your ’ouse. That’s the beauty of
’aving a character, Mr. Wilks; a good character and a face like a baby
with grey whiskers.”

Mr. Wilks bent down and, taking up a small brush, carefully tidied up
the hearth.

“Like as not, if my part in it gets to be known,” pursued Mr. Smith,
mournfully, “I’ll ’ave that gal of Kybird’s scratching my eyes out
or p’r’aps sticking a hat-pin into me. I had that once; the longest
hat-pin that ever was made, I should think.”

He shook his head over the perils of his calling, and then, after
another glance at the clock, withdrew to the kitchen with his bag,
leaving Mr. Wilks waiting in a state of intense nervousness for the
arrival of the others.

Captain Nugent was the first to put in an appearance, and by way of
setting a good example poured a little of the whisky in his glass and
sat there waiting. Then Jack Nugent came in, fresh and glowing, and Mr.
Wilks, after standing about helplessly for a few moments, obeyed the
captain’s significant nod and joined Mr. Smith in the kitchen.

“You’d better go for a walk,” said that gentleman, regarding him
kindly; “that’s wot the cap’n thought.”

Mr. Wilks acquiesced eagerly, and tapping at the door passed through
the room again into the street. A glance as he went through showed him
that Jack Nugent was drinking, and he set off in a panic to get away
from the scene which he had contrived.

He slackened after a time and began to pace the streets at a rate
which was less noticeable. As he passed the Kybirds’ he shivered, and
it was not until he had consumed a pint or two of the strongest brew
procurable at the Two Schooners that he began to regain some of his old
self-esteem. He felt almost maudlin at the sacrifice of character he
was enduring for the sake of his old master, and the fact that he could
not narrate it to sympathetic friends was not the least of his troubles.

The shops had closed by the time he got into the street again, and
he walked down and watched with much solemnity the reflection of the
quay lamps in the dark water of the harbour. The air was keen and the
various craft distinct in the starlight. Perfect quiet reigned aboard
the _Seabird_, and after a vain attempt to screw up his courage to see
the victim taken aboard he gave it up and walked back along the beach.

[Illustration: “It was not until he had consumed a pint or two of the
strongest brew that he began to regain some of his old self-esteem.”]

By the time he turned his steps homewards it was nearly eleven o’clock.
Fullalove Alley was quiet, and after listening for some time at his
window he turned the handle of the door and passed in. The nearly empty
bottle stood on the table, and an over-turned tumbler accounted for
a large, dark patch on the table-cloth. As he entered the room the
kitchen door opened and Mr. Nathan Smith, with a broad smile on his
face, stepped briskly in.

“All over,” he said, rubbing his hands; “he went off like a lamb, no
trouble nor fighting. He was a example to all of us.”

“Did the cap’n see ’im aboard?” inquired Mr. Wilks.

“Certainly not,” said the other. “As a matter o’ fact the cap’n took a
little more than I told ’im to take, and I ’ad to help ’im up to your
bed. Accidents will ’appen, but he’ll be all right in the morning if
nobody goes near ’im. Leave ’im perfectly quiet, and when ’e comes
downstairs give ’im a strong cup o’ tea.”

“In my bed?” repeated the staring Mr. Wilks.

“He’s as right as rain,” said the boarding master. “I brought down a
pillow and blankets for you and put ’em in the kitchen. And now I’ll
take the other two pound ten and be getting off ’ome. It ought to be
ten pounds really with the trouble I’ve ’ad.”

Mr. Wilks laid the desired amount on the table, and Mr. Nathan Smith
placing it in his pocket rose to go.

“Don’t disturb ’im till he’s ’ad ’is sleep out, mind,” he said, pausing
at the door, “else I can’t answer for the consequences. If ’e should
get up in the night and come down raving mad, try and soothe ’im.
Good-night and pleasant dreams.”

He closed the door after him quietly, and the horrified steward, after
fetching the bed-clothes on tiptoe from the kitchen, locked the door
which led to the staircase, and after making up a bed on the floor lay
down in his clothes and tried to get to sleep.

He dozed off at last, but woke up several times during the night with
the cold. The lamp burnt itself out, and in the dark he listened
intently for any sounds of life in the room above. Then he fell asleep
again, until at about half-past seven in the morning a loud crash
overhead awoke him with a start.

In a moment he was sitting up with every faculty on the alert.
Footsteps blundered about in the room above, and a large and rapidly
widening patch of damp showed on the ceiling. It was evident that the
sleeper, in his haste to quench an abnormal thirst, had broken the
water jug.

Mr. Wilks, shivering with dread, sprang to his feet and stood
irresolute. Judging by the noise, the captain was evidently in a fine
temper, and Mr. Smith’s remarks about insanity occurred to him with
redoubled interest. Then he heard a hoarse shout, the latch of the
bedroom door clicked, and the prisoner stumbled heavily downstairs and
began to fumble at the handle of the door at the bottom. Trembling
with excitement Mr. Wilks dashed forward and turned the key, and then
retreating to the street door prepared for instant flight.

[Illustration: “The man on the other side fell on all fours into the
room.”]

He opened the door so suddenly that the man on the other side, with
a sudden cry, fell on all fours into the room, and raising his face
stared stupidly at the steward. Mr. Wilks’s hands dropped to his sides
and his tongue refused its office, for in some strange fashion, quite
in keeping with the lawless proceedings of the previous night, Captain
Nugent had changed into a most excellent likeness of his own son.




CHAPTER XII


For some time Mr. Wilks stood gazing at this unexpected apparition and
trying to collect his scattered senses. Its face was pale and flabby,
while its glassy eyes, set in rims of red eyelids, were beginning
to express unmistakable signs of suspicion and wrath. The shock was
so sudden that the steward could not even think coherently. Was the
captain upstairs? And if so, what was his condition? Where was Nathan
Smith? And where was the five pounds?

A voice, a husky and discordant voice, broke in upon his meditations;
Jack Nugent was also curious.

“What does all this mean?” he demanded, angrily. “How did I get here?”

“You—you came downstairs,” stammered Mr. Wilks, still racking his
brains in the vain effort to discover how matters stood.

Mr. Nugent was about to speak, but, thinking better of it, turned and
blundered into the kitchen. Sounds of splashing and puffing ensued,
and the steward going to the door saw him with his head under the tap.
He followed him in and at the right time handed him a towel. Despite
the disordered appearance of his hair the improvement in Mr. Nugent’s
condition was so manifest that the steward, hoping for similar results,
turned the tap on again and followed his example.

“Your head wants cooling, I should think,” said the young man,
returning him the towel. “What’s it all about?”

Mr. Wilks hesitated; a bright thought occurred to him, and murmuring
something about a dry towel he sped up the narrow stairs to his
bedroom. The captain was not there. He pushed open the small lattice
window and peered out into the alley; no sign of either the captain or
the ingenious Mr. Nathan Smith. With a heavy heart he descended the
stairs again.

“Now,” said Mr. Nugent, who was sitting down with his hands in his
pockets, “perhaps you’ll be good enough to explain what all this means.”

“You were ’ere last night,” said Mr. Wilks, “you and the cap’n.”

“I know that,” said Nugent. “How is it I didn’t go home? I didn’t
understand that it was an all-night invitation. Where is my father?”

The steward shook his head helplessly. “He was ’ere when I went out
last night,” he said, slowly. “When I came back the room was empty and
I was told as ’e was upstairs in my bed.”

“Told he was in your bed?” repeated the other. “Who told you?”

[Illustration: “He pushed open the small lattice window and peered out
into the alley.”]

Mr. Wilks caught his breath. “I mean I told myself ’e was in my bed,”
he stammered, “because when I came in I see these bed-clothes on the
floor, an’ I thought as the cap’n ’ad put them there for me and taken
my bed ’imself.”

Mr. Nugent regarded the litter of bed-clothes as though hoping that
they would throw a little light on the affair, and then shot a puzzled
glance at Mr. Wilks.

“Why should you think my father wanted your bed?” he inquired.

“I don’t know,” was the reply. “I thought p’r’aps ’e’d maybe taken a
little more than ’e ought to have taken. But it’s all a myst’ry to me.
I’m more astonished than wot you are.”

“Well, I can’t make head or tail of it,” said Nugent, rising and pacing
the room. “I came here to meet my father. So far as I remember I had
one drink of whisky—your whisky—and then I woke up in your bedroom with
a splitting headache and a tongue like a piece of leather. Can you
account for it?”

Mr. Wilks shook his head again. “I wasn’t here,” he said, plucking up
courage. “Why not go an’ see your father? Seems to me ’e is the one
that would know most about it.”

Mr. Nugent stood for a minute considering, and then raising the latch
of the door opened it slowly and inhaled the cold morning air. A subtle
and delicate aroma of coffee and herrings which had escaped from
neighbouring breakfast-tables invaded the room and reminded him of an
appetite. He turned to go, but had barely quitted the step before he
saw Mrs. Kingdom and his sister enter the alley.

Mr. Wilks saw them too, and, turning if anything a shade paler,
supported himself by the door-pest. Kate Nugent quickened her pace
as she saw them, and, after a surprised greeting to her brother,
breathlessly informed him that the captain was missing.

“Hasn’t been home all night,” panted Mrs. Kingdom, joining them. “I
don’t know what to think.”

They formed an excited little group round the steward’s door, and
Mr. Wilks, with an instinctive feeling that the matter was one to be
discussed in private, led the way indoors. He began to apologize for
the disordered condition of the room, but Jack Nugent, interrupting him
brusquely, began to relate his own adventures of the past few hours.

Mrs. Kingdom listened to the narrative with unexpected calmness. She
knew the cause of her nephew’s discomfiture. It was the glass of whisky
acting on a system unaccustomed to alcohol, and she gave a vivid and
moving account of the effects of a stiff glass of hot rum which she
had once taken for a cold. It was quite clear to her that the captain
had put his son to bed; the thing to discover now was where he had put
himself.

“Sam knows something about it,” said her nephew, darkly; “there’s
something wrong.”

“I know no more than a babe unborn,” declared Mr. Wilks. “The last I
see of the cap’n ’e was a-sitting at this table opposite you.”

“Sam wouldn’t hurt a fly,” said Miss Nugent, with a kind glance at her
favourite.

“Well, where is the governor, then?” inquired her brother. “Why didn’t
he go home last night? He has never stayed out before.”

“Yes, he has,” said Mrs. Kingdom, folding her hands in her lap. “When
you were children. He came home at half-past eleven next morning, and
when I asked him where he’d been he nearly bit my head off. I’d been
walking the floor all night, and I shall never forget his remarks when
he opened the door to the police, who’d come to say they couldn’t find
him. Never.”

A ghostly grin flitted across the features of Mr. Wilks, but he passed
the back of his hand across his mouth and became serious again as he
thought of his position. He was almost dancing with anxiety to get away
to Mr. Nathan Smith and ask for an explanation of the proceedings of
the night before.

“I’ll go and have a look round for the cap’n,” he said, eagerly; “he
can’t be far.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Nugent. “I should like to see him too. There
are one or two little things that want explaining. You take aunt home,
Kate, and I’ll follow on as soon as there is any news.”

As he spoke the door opened a little way and a head appeared, only
to be instantly withdrawn at the sight of so many people. Mr. Wilks
stepped forward hastily, and throwing the door wide open revealed the
interesting features of Mr. Nathan Smith.

“How do you do, Mr. Wilks?” said that gentleman, softly. “I just walked
round to see whether you was in. I’ve got a message for you. I didn’t
know you’d got company.”

He stepped into the room and, tapping the steward on the chest with a
confidential finger, backed him into a corner, and having got him there
gave an expressive wink with one eye and gazed into space with the
other.

“I thought you’d be alone,” he said, looking round, “but p’r’aps it’s
just as well as it is. They’ve got to know, so they may as well know
now as later on.”

“Know what?” inquired Jack Nugent, abruptly. “What are you making that
face for, Sam?”

Mr. Wilks mumbled something about a decayed tooth, and to give colour
to the statement continued a series of contortions which made his face
ache.

“You should take something for that tooth,” said the boarding-master,
with great solicitude. “Wot do you say to a glass o’ whisky?”

He motioned to the fatal bottle, which still stood on the table; the
steward caught his breath, and then, rising to the occasion, said that
he had already had a couple of glasses, and they had done no good.

[Illustration: “Tapping the steward on the chest with a confidential
finger, he backed him into a corner.”]

“What’s your message?” inquired Jack Nugent, impatiently.

“I’m just going to tell you,” said Mr. Smith. “I was out early this
morning, strolling down by the harbour to get a little appetite for
breakfast, when who should I see coming along, looking as though ’e ’ad
just come from a funeral, but Cap’n Nugent! I was going to pass ’im,
but he stopped me and asked me to take a message from ’im to ’is old
and faithful steward, Mr. Wilks.”

“Why, has he gone away?” exclaimed Mrs. Kingdom.

“His old and faithful steward,” repeated Mr. Smith, motioning her to
silence. “‘Tell ’im,’ he says, ‘that I am heartily ashamed of myself
for wot took place last night—and him, too. Tell ’im that, after my
father’s ’art proved too much for me, I walked the streets all night,
and now I can’t face may injured son and family yet awhile, and I’m off
to London till it has blown over.’”

“But what’s it all about?” demanded Nugent. “Why don’t you get to the
point?”

“So far as I could make out,” replied Mr. Smith, with the studious care
of one who desires to give exact information, “Cap’n Nugent and Mr.
Wilks ’ad a little plan for giving you a sea blow.”

“_Me?_” interrupted the unfortunate steward. “Now, look ’ere, Nathan
Smith——”

“Them was the cap’n’s words,” said the boarding-master, giving him a
glance of great significance; “are you going to take away or add to wot
the cap’n says?”

Mr. Wilks collapsed, and avoiding the indignant eyes of the Nugent
family tried to think out his position.

“It seems from wot the cap’n told me,” continued Mr. Smith, “that there
was some objection to your marrying old—Mr. Kybird’s gal, so ’e and Mr.
Wilks, after putting their ’eads together, decided to get you ’ere and
after giving you a little whisky that Mr. Wilks knows the trick of—”

“_Me?_” interrupted the unfortunate steward, again.

“Them was the cap’n’s words,” said Mr. Smith, coldly. “After you’d ’ad
it they was going to stow you away in the _Seabird_, which sailed this
morning. However, when the cap’n see you overcome, his ’art melted,
and instead o’ putting you aboard the whaler he took your feet and Mr.
Wilks your ’ead, and after a great deal o’ trouble got you upstairs and
put you to bed.”

“You miserable scoundrel,” said the astonished Mr. Nugent, addressing
the shrinking steward; “you infernal old reprobate—you—you—I didn’t
think you’d got it in you.”

“So far as I could make out,” said Mr. Smith, kindly, “Mr. Wilks was
only obeying orders. It was the cap’n’s plan, and Mr. Wilks was aboard
ship with ’im for a very long time. O’ course, he oughtn’t to ha’
done it, but the cap’n’s a masterful man, an’ I can quite understand
Mr. Wilks givin’ way; I dessay I should myself if I’d been in ’is
place—he’s all ’art, is Mr. Wilks—no ’ead.”

“It’s a good job for you you’re an old man, Sam,” said Mr. Nugent.

“I can hardly believe it of you, Sam,” said Miss Nugent. “I can hardly
think you could have been so deceitful. Why, we’ve trusted you all our
lives.”

The unfortunate steward quailed beneath the severity of her glance.
Even if he gave a full account of the affair it would not make his
position better. It was he who had made all the arrangements with Mr.
Smith, and after an indignant glance at that gentleman he lowered his
gaze and remained silent.

“It is rather odd that my father should take you into his confidence,”
said Miss Nugent, turning to the boarding-master.

“Just wot I thought, miss,” said the complaisant Mr. Smith; “but I
s’pose there was nobody else, and he wanted ’is message to go for fear
you should get worrying the police about ’im or something. He wants it
kep’ quiet, and ’is last words to me as ’e left me was, ‘If this affair
gets known I shall never come back. Tell ’em to keep it quiet.’”

“I don’t think anybody will want to go bragging about it,” said Jack
Nugent, rising, “unless it is Sam Wilks. Come along, Kate.”

Miss Nugent followed him obediently, only pausing at the door to give
a last glance of mingled surprise and reproach at Mr. Wilks. Then they
were outside and the door closed behind them.

“Well, that’s all right,” said Mr. Smith, easily.

“All right!” vociferated the steward. “Wot did you put it all on to me
for? Why didn’t you tell ’em your part in it?”

“Wouldn’t ha’ done any good,” said Mr. Smith; “wouldn’t ha’ done _you_
any good. Besides, I did just wot the cap’n told me.”

“When’s he coming back?” inquired the steward.

Mr. Smith shook his head. “Couldn’t say,” he returned. “He couldn’t say
’imself. Between you an’ me, I expect ’e’s gone up to have a reg’lar
fair spree.”

“Why did you tell me last night he was up-stairs?” inquired the other.

“Cap’n’s orders,” repeated Mr. Smith, with relish. “Ask ’im, not me.
As a matter o’ fact, he spent the night at my place and went off this
morning.”

“An’ wot about the five pounds?” inquired Mr. Wilks, spitefully. “You
ain’t earned it.”

“I know I ain’t,” said Mr. Smith, mournfully. “That’s wot’s worrying
me. It’s like a gnawing pain in my side. D’you think it’s conscience
biting of me? I never felt it before. Or d’ye think it’s sorrow to
think that I’ve done the whole job too cheap? You think it out and let
me know later on. So long.”

He waved his hand cheerily to the steward and departed. Mr. Wilks
threw himself into a chair and, ignoring the cold and the general air
of desolation of his best room, gave way to a fit of melancholy which
would have made Mr. Edward Silk green with envy.




CHAPTER XIII


Days passed, but no word came from the missing captain, and only the
determined opposition of Kate Nugent kept her aunt from advertising
in the “Agony” columns of the London Press. Miss Nugent was quite as
desirous of secrecy in the affair as her father, and it was a source
of great annoyance to her when, in some mysterious manner, it leaked
out. In a very short time the news was common property, and Mr. Wilks,
appearing to his neighbours in an entirely new character, was besieged
for information.

His own friends were the most tiresome, their open admiration of
his lawlessness and their readiness to trace other mysterious
disappearances to his agency being particularly galling to a man whose
respectability formed his most cherished possession. Other people
regarded the affair as a joke, and he sat gazing round-eyed one evening
at the Two Schooners at the insensible figures of three men who had
each had a modest half-pint at his expense. It was a pretty conceit
and well played, but the steward, owing to the frenzied efforts of one
of the sleepers whom he had awakened with a quart pot, did not stay
to admire it. He finished up the evening at the Chequers, and after
getting wet through on the way home fell asleep in his wet clothes
before the dying fire.

[Illustration: “He finished up the evening at the Chequers.”]

He awoke with a bad cold and pains in the limbs. A headache was
not unexpected, but the other symptoms were. With trembling hands
he managed to light a fire and prepare a breakfast, which he left
untouched. This last symptom was the most alarming of all, and going to
the door he bribed a small boy with a penny to go for Dr. Murchison,
and sat cowering over the fire until he came.

“Well, you’ve got a bad cold,” said the doctor, after examining him.
“You’d better get to bed for the present. You’ll be safe there.”

“Is it dangerous?” faltered the steward.

“And keep yourself warm,” said the doctor, who was not in the habit
of taking his patients into his confidence. “I’ll send round some
medicine.”

“I should like Miss Nugent to know I’m bad,” said Mr. Wilks, in a weak
voice.

“She knows that,” replied Murchison. “She was telling me about you the
other day.”

He put his hand up to his neat black moustache to hide a smile, and met
the steward’s indignant gaze without flinching.

“I mean ill,” said the latter, sharply.

“Oh, yes,” said the other. “Well, you get to bed now. Good morning.”

He took up his hat and stick and departed. Mr. Wilks sat for a little
while over the fire, and then, rising, hobbled slowly upstairs to bed
and forgot his troubles in sleep.

He slept until the afternoon, and then, raising himself in bed,
listened to the sounds of stealthy sweeping in the room below. Chairs
were being moved about, and the tinkle of ornaments on the mantelpiece
announced that dusting operations were in progress. He lay down again
with a satisfied smile; it was like a tale in a story-book: the
faithful old servant and his master’s daughter. He closed his eyes as
he heard her coming upstairs.

[Illustration: “The meagre figure of Mrs. Silk.”]

“Ah, pore dear,” said a voice.

Mr. Wilks opened his eyes sharply and beheld the meagre figure of Mrs.
Silk. In one hand she held a medicine-bottle and a glass and in the
other paper and firewood.

“I only ’eard of it half an hour ago,” she said, reproachfully. “I saw
the doctor’s boy, and I left my work and came over at once. Why didn’t
you let me know?”

Mr. Wilks muttered that he didn’t know, and lay crossly regarding his
attentive neighbour as she knelt down and daintily lit the fire. This
task finished, she proceeded to make the room tidy, and then set about
making beef-tea in a little saucepan.

“You lay still and get well,” she remarked, with tender playfulness.
“That’s all you’ve got to do. Me and Teddy’ll look after you.”

“I couldn’t think of troubling you,” said the steward, earnestly.

“It’s no trouble,” was the reply. “You don’t think I’d leave you here
alone helpless, do you?”

“I was going to send for old Mrs. Jackson if I didn’t get well to-day,”
said Mr. Wilks.

Mrs. Silk shook her head at him, and, after punching up his pillow,
took an easy chair by the fire and sat there musing. Mr. Edward Silk
came in to tea, and, after remarking that Mr. Wilks was very flushed
and had got a nasty look about the eyes and a cough which he didn’t
like, fell to discoursing on death-beds.

“Good nursing is the principal thing,” said his mother. “I nursed my
pore dear ’usband all through his last illness. He couldn’t bear me to
be out of the room. I nursed my mother right up to the last, and your
pore Aunt Jane went off in my arms.”

Mr. Wilks raised himself on his elbow and his eyes shone feverishly in
the lamplight. “I think I’ll get a ’ospital nurse to-morrow,” he said,
decidedly.

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Silk. “It’s no trouble to me at all. I like
nursing; always did.”

Mr. Wilks lay back again and, closing his eyes, determined to ask
the doctor to provide a duly qualified nurse on the morrow. To his
disappointment, however, the doctor failed to come, and although he
felt much better Mrs. Silk sternly negatived a desire on his part to
get up.

“Not till the doctor’s been,” she said, firmly. “I couldn’t think of
it.”

“I don’t believe there’s anything the matter with me now,” he declared.

“’Ow odd—’ow very odd that you should say that!” said Mrs. Silk,
clasping her hands.

“Odd!” repeated the steward, somewhat crustily. “How do you mean—odd?”

“They was the very last words my Uncle Benjamin ever uttered in this
life,” said Mrs. Silk, with dramatic impressiveness.

The steward was silent, then, with the ominous precedent of Uncle
Benjamin before him, he began to talk until scores of words stood
between himself and a similar ending.

“Teddy asked to be remembered to you as ’e went off this morning,” said
Mrs. Silk, pausing in her labours at the grate.

“I’m much obliged,” muttered the invalid.

“He didn’t ’ave time to come in,” pursued the widow. “You can ’ardly
believe what a lot ’e thinks of you, Mr. Wilks. The last words he said
to me was, ‘Let me know at once if there’s any change.’”

Mr. Wilks distinctly felt a cold, clammy sensation down his spine
and little quivering thrills ran up and down his legs. He glared
indignantly at the back of the industrious Mrs. Silk.

“Teddy’s very fond of you,” continued the unconscious woman. “I s’pose
it’s not ’aving a father, but he seems to me to think more of you than
anybody else in the wide, wide world. I get quite jealous sometimes.
Only the other day I said to ’im, joking like, ‘Well, you’d better go
and live with ’im if you’re so fond of ’im,’ I said.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed Mr. Wilks, uneasily.

“You’ll never guess what ’e said then,” said Mrs. Silk dropping her
dustpan and brush and gazing at the hearth.

“Said ’e couldn’t leave you, I s’pose,” guessed the steward, gruffly.

“Well, now,” exclaimed Mrs. Silk, clapping her hands, “if you ’aven’t
nearly guessed it. Well, there! I never did! I wouldn’t ’ave told you
for anything if you ’adn’t said that. The _exact_ words what ’e did say
was, ‘Not without you, mother.’”

Mr. Wilks closed his eyes with a snap and his heart turned to water.
He held his breath and ransacked his brain in vain for a reply which
should ignore the inner meaning of the fatal words. Something careless
and jocular he wanted, combined with a voice which should be perfectly
under control. Failing these things, he kept his eyes closed, and, very
wide-awake indeed, feigned sleep. He slept straight away from eleven
o’clock in the morning until Edward Silk came in at seven o’clock in
the evening.

“I feel like a new man,” he said, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

“I don’t see no change in your appearance,” said the comforting youth.

“’E’s much better,” declared his mother. “That’s what comes o’ good
nursing; some nurses would ’ave woke ’im up to take food, but I just
let ’im sleep on. People don’t feel hunger while they’re asleep.”

She busied herself over the preparation of a basin of arrowroot, and
the steward, despite his distaste for this dish, devoured it in a
twinkling. Beef-tea and a glass of milk in addition failed to take more
than the edge off his appetite.

“We shall pull ’im through,” said Mrs. Silk, smiling, as she put down
the empty glass. “In a fortnight he’ll be on ’is feet.”

It is a matter of history that Mr. Wilks was on his feet at five
o’clock the next morning, and not only on his feet but dressed and
ready for a journey after such a breakfast as he had not made for
many a day. The discourtesy involved in the disregard of the doctor’s
instructions did not trouble him, and he smirked with some satisfaction
as he noiselessly closed his door behind him and looked at the drawn
blinds opposite. The stars were paling as he quitted the alley and made
his way to the railway station. A note on his tumbled pillow, after
thanking Mrs. Silk for her care of him, informed her that he was quite
well and had gone to London in search of the missing captain.

Hardy, who had heard from Edward Silk of the steward’s indisposition
and had been intending to pay him a visit, learnt of his departure
later on in the morning, and, being ignorant of the particulars,
discoursed somewhat eloquently to his partner on the old man’s devotion.

“H’m, may be,” said Swann, taking off his glasses and looking at him.
“But you don’t think Captain Nugent is in London, do you?”

“Why not?” inquired Hardy, somewhat startled.

“If what Wilks told you is true, Nathan Smith knows,” said the other.
“I’ll ask him.”

“You don’t expect to get the truth out of him, do you?” inquired Hardy,
superciliously.

“I do,” said his partner, serenely; “and when I’ve got it I shall go
and tell them at Equator Lodge. It will be doing those two poor ladies
a service to let them know what has really happened to the captain.”

“I’ll walk round to Nathan Smith’s with you,” said Hardy. “I should
like to hear what the fellow has to say.”

“No, I’ll go alone,” said his partner; “Smith’s a very shy
man—painfully shy. I’ve run across him once or twice before. He’s
almost as bashful and retiring as you are.”

Hardy grunted. “If the captain isn’t in London, where is he?” he
inquired.

The other shook his head. “I’ve got an idea,” he replied, “but I want
to make sure. Kybird and Smith are old friends, as Nugent might have
known, only he was always too high and mighty to take any interest in
his inferiors. There’s something for you to go on.”

He bent over his desk again and worked steadily until one o’clock—his
hour for lunching. Then he put on his hat and coat, and after a
comfortable meal sallied out in search of Mr. Smith.

The boarding-house, an old and dilapidated building, was in a bystreet
convenient to the harbour. The front door stood open, and a couple
of seamen lounging on the broken steps made way for him civilly
as he entered and rapped on the bare boards with his stick. Mr.
Smith, clattering down the stairs in response, had some difficulty
in concealing his surprise at the visit, but entered genially into
a conversation about the weather, a subject in which he was much
interested. When the shipbroker began to discuss the object of his
visit he led him to a small sitting-room at the back of the house and
repeated the information he had given to Mr. Wilks.

[Illustration: “In search of Mr. Smith.”]

“That’s all there is to tell,” he concluded, artlessly; “the cap’n
was that ashamed of hisself, he’s laying low for a bit. We all make
mistakes sometimes; I do myself.”

“I am much obliged to you,” said Mr. Swann, gratefully.

“You’re quite welcome, sir,” said the boarding-master.

“And now,” said the visitor, musingly—“now for the police.”

“Police!” repeated Mr. Smith, almost hastily. “What for?”

“Why, to find the captain,” said Mr. Swann, in a surprised voice.

Mr. Smith shook his head. “You’ll offend the cap’n bitter if you go to
the police about ’im, sir,” he declared. “His last words to me was,
‘Smith, ’ave this kept quiet.’”

“It’ll be a little job for the police,” urged the shipbroker. “They
don’t have much to do down here; they’ll be as pleased as possible.”

“They’ll worry your life out of you, sir,” said the other. “You don’t
know what they are.”

“I like a little excitement,” returned Mr. Swann. “I don’t suppose
they’ll trouble me much, but they’ll turn your place topsy-turvy, I
expect. Still, that can’t be helped. You know what fools the police
are; they’ll think you’ve murdered the captain and hidden his body
under the boards. They’ll have all the floors up. Ha, ha, ha!”

“’Aving floors up don’t seem to me to be so amusing as wot it does to
you,” remarked Mr. Smith, coldly.

“They may find all sorts of treasure for you,” continued his visitor.
“It’s a very old house, Smith, and there may be bags of guineas hidden
away under the flooring. You may be able to retire.”

“You’re a gentleman as is fond of his joke, Mr. Swann,” returned the
boarding-master, lugubriously. “I wish I’d got that ’appy way of
looking at things you ’ave.”

“I’m not joking, Smith,” said the other, quietly.

Mr. Smith pondered and, stealing a side-glance at him, stood scraping
his foot along the floor.

“There ain’t nothing much to tell,” he grumbled, “and, mind, the worst
favour you could do to the cap’n would be to put it about how he was
done. He’s gone for a little trip instead of ’is son, that’s all.”

“Little trip!” repeated the other; “you call a whaling cruise a little
trip?”

“No, no, sir,” said Mr. Smith, in a shocked voice, “I ain’t so bad as
that; I’ve got some ’art, I hope. He’s just gone for a little trip with
’is old pal Hardy on the _Conqueror_. Kybird’s idea it was.”

“Don’t you know it’s punishable?” demanded the shipbroker, recovering.

[Illustration: “I ’ave heard of ’em exploding.”]

To Mr. Smith’s great surprise his visitor sat down suddenly and began
to laugh. Tears of honest mirth suffused his eyes and dimmed his
glasses. Mr. Smith, regarding him with an air of kindly interest, began
to laugh to keep him company.

Mr. Smith shook his head and became serious. “The cap’n fell into ’is
own trap,” he said, slowly. “There’s no lor for ’im! He’d only get
laughed at. The idea of trying to get me to put little Amelia Kybird’s
young man away. Why, I was ’er god-father.”

Mr. Swann stared at him, and then with a friendly “good morning”
departed. Half-way along the passage he stopped, and retracing
his steps produced his cigar-case and offered the astonished
boarding-master a cigar.

“I s’pose,” said that gentleman as he watched the other’s retreating
figure and dubiously smelt the cigar; “I s’pose it’s all right; but
he’s a larky sort, and I ’ave heard of ’em exploding. I’ll give it to
Kybird, in case.”




CHAPTER XIV


Captain Nugent awoke the morning after his attempt to crimp his son
with a bad headache. Not an ordinary headache, to disappear with a
little cold water and fresh air; but a splitting, racking affair, which
made him feel all head and dulness. Weights pressed upon his eye-lids
and the back of his head seemed glued to his pillow.

He groaned faintly and, raising himself upon his elbow, opened his
eyes and sat up with a sharp exclamation. His bed was higher from the
floor than usual and, moreover, the floor was different. In the dim
light he distinctly saw a ship’s forecastle, untidy bunks with frouzy
bedclothes, and shiny oil-skins hanging from the bulkhead.

For a few moments he stared about in mystification; he was certainly
ill, and no doubt the forecastle was an hallucination. It was a strange
symptom, and the odd part of it was that everything was so distinct.
Even the smell. He stared harder, in the hope that his surroundings
would give place to the usual ones, and, leaning a little bit more
on his elbow, nearly rolled out of the bunk. Resolved to probe this
mystery to the bottom he lowered himself to the floor and felt
distinctly the motion of a ship at sea.

[Illustration: “He stepped to the side and looked over.”]

There was no doubt about it. He staggered to the door and, holding by
the side, looked on to the deck. The steamer was rolling in a fresh
sea and a sweet strong wind blew refreshingly into his face. Funnels,
bridge, and masts swung with a rhythmical motion; loose gear rattled,
and every now and then a distant tinkle sounded faintly from the
steward’s pantry.

He stood bewildered, trying to piece together the events of the
preceding night, and to try and understand by what miracle he was back
on board his old ship the _Conqueror_. There was no doubt as to her
identity. He knew every inch of her, and any further confirmation that
might be required was fully supplied by the appearance of the long,
lean figure of Captain Hardy on the bridge.

Captain Nugent took his breath sharply and began to realize the
situation. He stepped to the side and looked over; the harbour was only
a little way astern, and Sunwich itself, looking cold and cheerless
beyond the dirty, tumbling seas, little more than a mile distant.

At the sight his spirits revived, and with a hoarse cry he ran shouting
towards the bridge. Captain Hardy turned sharply at the noise, and
recognizing the intruder stood peering down at him in undisguised
amazement.

“Put back,” cried Nugent, waving up at him. “Put back.”

“What on earth are you doing on my ship?” inquired the astonished Hardy.

“Put me ashore,” cried Nugent, imperiously; “don’t waste time talking.
D’ye hear? Put me ashore.”

The amazement died out of Hardy’s face and gave way to an expression of
anger. For a time he regarded the red and threatening visage of Captain
Nugent in silence, then he turned to the second officer.

“This man is not one of the crew, Mr. Prowle?” he said, in a puzzled
voice.

“No, sir,” said Mr. Prowle.

“How did he get aboard here?”

Captain Nugent answered the question himself. “I was crimped by you and
your drunken bullies,” he said, sternly.

“How did this man get aboard here? repeated Captain Hardy, ignoring him.

“He must have concealed ’imself somewhere, sir,” said the mate; “this
is the first I’ve seen of him.”

“A stowaway?” said the captain, bending his brows. “He must have got
some of the crew to hide him aboard. You’d better make a clean breast
of it, my lad. Who are your confederates?”

Captain Nugent shook with fury. The second mate had turned away, with
his hand over his mouth and a suspicious hunching of his shoulders,
while the steward, who had been standing by, beat a hasty retreat and
collapsed behind the chart-room.

“If you don’t put me ashore,” said Nugent, restraining his passion by a
strong effort, “I’ll take proceedings against you for crimping me, the
moment I reach port. Get a boat out and put me aboard that smack.”

He pointed as he spoke to a smack which was just on their beam, making
slowly for the harbour.

“When you’ve done issuing orders,” said the captain, in an indifferent
voice, “perhaps you’ll explain what you are doing aboard my craft.”

Captain Nugent gazed at the stern of the fast-receding smack; Sunwich
was getting dim in the distance and there was no other sail near. He
began to realize that he was in for a long voyage.

“I awoke this morning and found myself in a bunk in your fo’c’s’le,” he
said, regarding Hardy steadily. “However I got there is probably best
known to yourself. I hold you responsible for the affair.”

“Look here my lad,” said Captain Hardy, in patronizing tones, “I
don’t know how you got aboard my ship and I don’t care. I am willing
to believe that it was not intentional on your part, but either the
outcome of a drunken freak or else a means of escaping from some scrape
you have got into ashore. That being so, I shall take a merciful view
of it, and if you behave yourself and make yourself useful you will not
hear anything more of it. He has something the look of a seafaring man,
Mr. Prowle. See what you can make of him.”

“Come along with me, my lad,” said the grinning Mr. Prowle, tapping him
on the shoulder.

The captain turned with a snarl, and, clenching his huge, horny fist,
let drive full in the other’s face and knocked him off his feet.

“Take that man for’ard,” cried Captain Hardy, sharply. “Take him
for’ard.”

Half-a-dozen willing men sprang forward. Captain Nugent’s views
concerning sailormen were well known in Sunwich, and two of the men
present had served under him. He went forward, the centre of an
attentive and rotating circle, and, sadly out of breath, was bestowed
in the forecastle and urged to listen to reason.

For the remainder of the morning he made no sign. The land was almost
out of sight, and he sat down quietly to consider his course of
action for the next few weeks. Dinner-time found him still engrossed
in thought, and the way in which he received an intimation from a
good-natured seaman that his dinner was getting cold showed that his
spirits were still unquelled.

By the time afternoon came he was faint with hunger, and, having
determined upon his course of action, he sent

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/10876