Kitabı oku: «The Story of Jack Ballister's Fortunes», sayfa 21

“How long will it take to get to Norfolk?” asked the young lady.

“Well, we ought to get there by midnight if this wind holds,” said the captain.

“The berth’s made up now if your ladyship’d like to lie down,” said the captain’s wife, appearing at the door of the inner cabin.

After the young lady had gone, the captain and the man named Jackson plied Jack with questions as to all that had happened. He answered dully and inertly; he wished they would let him alone and not tease him with questions. “I’m tired,” he said, at last; “I’d like to lie down for a while.”

“I suppose you be feeling kind of used up, ben’t you?” asked the man Jackson.

Jack nodded his head.

“Won’t you have a bite to eat first?” asked the captain.

“I’m not hungry,” said Jack; “I want to rest – that’s all.”

“I’m going to let you have the mate’s cabin,” said the captain. “You said I made the young lady promise too much for carrying ye back to Norfolk. Well, I’m doing all I can to make you comfortable. I give my cabin to her, and I give the mate’s cabin to you; and if you’ll only wait I’ll have a good hot supper cooked.”

“Just where did the bullet hit him?” asked Jackson.

“I don’t know just where,” said Jack. “Somewhere about here (indicating the spot with his finger). Can I go to the mate’s cabin now?”

“Well, I think ‘twas mortal strange,” said Jackson, “that he didn’t fall down straight away, or at least drop the tiller, or something of the sort. He just sat there, did he?”

The mate came in, still in his bare feet. He sat down without saying anything, and stared at Jack.

“I’m going to let him have your berth for to-night, Kitchen,” said the captain.

CHAPTER XLIII
THE RETURN

THE breeze had fallen during the night so that it was nearly daylight when the schooner came to anchor off Norfolk. The captain sent the mate directly to carry the news of the young lady’s return to Colonel Parker’s schooner. Colonel Parker himself was not on board, but the lieutenant came at once out of his cabin, half dressed as he was, and the mate told him the news. Mr. Maynard at once sent word ashore to Colonel Parker, and then had himself rowed aboard the schooner on which the young lady was.

Within an hour Colonel Parker came off from the town. The first man he met when he stepped aboard the coaster was Lieutenant Maynard. “Why, Maynard, is that you?” he said, and Mr. Maynard had never seen him so overcome. He grasped the lieutenant’s hand and wrung it and wrung it again. His fine, broad face twitched with the effort he made to suppress his emotions. “Where is she?” he said, turning around almost blindly to Captain Dolls, who, with his mate, had been standing at a little distance looking on. “This way, your honor,” said the captain with alacrity.

He led the way across the deck to the great cabin; Lieutenant Maynard did not accompany them. “She’s in my cabin here, your honor,” said the captain. “I let her have it, for ‘twas the best aboard. Her ladyship’s asleep yet, I do suppose. If your honor’ll sit down here I’ll send my wife into the cabin to wake her and to help her dress.”

“Never mind,” said the colonel, “where is she – in here?” He opened the door and went into the cabin. She was lying upon the berth sleeping. She had only loosened her clothes when she lay down the night before, and she was lying fully dressed. “Nelly!” said Colonel Parker, leaning over her, “Nelly!” She did not stir. He had not entirely closed the door, and it stood a little ajar. Captain Dolls, in the great cabin beyond, stood looking in, and for the moment Colonel Parker did not notice him. “Nelly!” he said again. “Nelly!” and he laid his hand upon her shoulder.

She stirred; she raised her arm; she drew the back of her hand across her eyes; she opened her eyes and they looked directly into his face as he leaned over her. “What is it?” she said, vacantly.

Colonel Parker was crying. “’Tis I – ’tis thy poor father, Nelly.” The tears were trickling down his cheeks, but he did not notice them. Suddenly her vacancy melted and dissolved, and she was wide awake. “Papa! O papa!” she cried, and instantly her arms were about his neck and she was in his arms.

She cried and cried. Colonel Parker, still holding her with one arm, reached in his pocket and drew out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes and his cheeks. As he did so he caught sight of Captain Dolls standing without in the great cabin looking in at them. The captain moved instantly away, but Colonel Parker reached out and closed the door.

Presently she looked up into his face, her own face wet with tears. “Mamma,” she said, – “how is poor mamma?”

“She is well – she is very well,” he said. “My dear! my dear!”

Once more she flung her arms about his neck. She pressed her lips to his again and again, weeping tumultuously as she did so. “O papa, if you only knew what I’ve been through!”

“I know – I know,” he said.

“Oh, but you can’t know all that I’ve been through – all the dreadful, terrible things. They shot poor Mr. Dred, and he died. I saw them shoot him, – I was in the boat, – I saw him die. Oh, papa! I can’t tell you all. Oh, it was so terrible. He lay on the sand and died. There was sand on the side of his face, and the young man, Jack, did not see it to brush it off, and I could not do it, and there it was.”

“There! there!” said Colonel Parker, soothingly. “Don’t talk about it, my dear. Tell me about other things. The sailor who came to bring me off told me there was a young man – a lad – with you when they picked you up down at the capes.”

“Yes,” she said, “that was late yesterday afternoon.”

“But the young man; is he the young man you call Jack?”

“Yes, that is he.”

“He is aboard here now, is he not? Who is he?”

So they talked together for a long time. She had lain down again, and she held his hand in hers as he sat upon the edge of the berth beside her. As they talked she stroked the back of his hand, and once she raised it to her lips and kissed it.

A while later Jack was awakened from a sound sleep by some one shaking him. He opened his eyes and saw that a rough, red face was bending over just above him. In the first instant of waking he could not remember where he was, or what face it was looking down at him. Then he recognized Captain Dolls. He was, first of all, conscious of a throbbing, beating pain in the palms of his hands. It seemed to him that he had been feeling it all night.

“What is it?” he said. “What do you want?”

“Well,” said Captain Dolls, “we’re at Norfolk, and have been here for three hours and more.”

“Norfolk!” said Jack, vaguely. “Are we, then, at Norfolk? How came we there?” His mind was still clouded with the fumes of sleep.

Captain Dolls burst out laughing. “We got there by sailing,” he said. “How else? But come! get up! Colonel Parker’s aboard, and he wants to see you. He’s out in the great cabin now.”

Then Jack was instantly wide awake. “Very well,” he said, “then I’ll go to him directly. Have you a bucket of water here that I may wash myself? I’m not fit to go as I am.”

He stood lingering for a moment before he entered the cabin. He could hear Colonel Parker’s voice within, and he shrank from entering, with a sudden trepidation.

“Go on,” said Captain Dolls, who had followed him. “What d’ ye stop for?” Then Jack opened the door and went in.

Some one rose as he entered; it was Colonel Parker. In a swift look Jack saw that the young lady had been sitting beside her father. She had been holding her father’s hand, and she released it as he arose. Captain Doll’s wife was also in the cabin busily packing the young lady’s clothes ready for her departure. Jack knew that Eleanor Parker was looking at him, and he also saw in the glance that she had been crying. Colonel Parker was gazing at him also. “Was it, then, one so young as you,” he said, “who would dare to bring my Nelly away from the villains? Come hither,” and as Jack came lingeringly forward Colonel Parker reached out and laid a hand upon his shoulder, holding it firmly. He looked long and steadily at Jack’s face. “Ay,” said he, “’tis a good, honest face.” Jack was very conscious of the presence of the captain’s wife, and it made him feel more embarrassed than he would otherwise perhaps have been. He could not look up. “Ay,” said Colonel Parker again, “’tis a good, honest face, and the face of an honest young man. I am glad ‘twas such a good, honest soul that brought our Nelly back to us. We shall never, never forget what you have done – never forget it.”

His mood was still very warm with the emotions that had melted him. “And that other preserver,” he said, “that other noble preserver who gave his life that he might save my girl; never can I forget him. But he is beyond anything that I can do to reward him and to bless him now. I would that he were here, that I might show him, as I shall show you, that we shall never forget what you have done for us – never forget it.” In his softened mood, still holding Jack by the shoulder, he drew out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes and his face. Jack, knowing that there were tears running down from the great man’s eyes, had not dared to look up into his face, but it suddenly came into his mind to remember how it was Dred who had shot and killed this man’s only son.

“Well,” said Colonel Parker, “we are just making ready to leave this and to go aboard of my own vessel, and so back to Marlborough. If you have anything to get ready you had better do so, for of course you go along with us.”

“I have nothing to get ready,” said Jack. “There were two overcoats we brought with us, – they belong to Captain Teach, – but I left them in the yawl last night.”

“What does your ladyship intend doing with this petticoat?” said the captain’s wife, holding up a mud-stained skirt. “Shall I bundle this up with the others?”

“No,” said the young lady, “you need not do so, for I sha’n’t need that any longer. Do you know, papa,” she said, “that was a part of the clothes I wore when I tried to run away by myself down in North Carolina, and ran into the swamp. ’Tis the mud from the swamp that stains it so.”

Jack had sat down on the bench opposite to Colonel Parker and the young lady. Every moment he was growing happier and happier. He had an indefinable feeling that some great good was coming to him. His hands hurt him very much. He awoke from his golden thoughts to hear Colonel Parker saying to his daughter, “And now, my dear, if you are quite ready, we will go.”

Lieutenant Maynard stood waiting at the open gangway as the three came up out of the cabin. He took off his hat as the young lady approached.

“This is my daughter, Lieutenant Maynard,” said Colonel Parker. And the lieutenant bowed low to her with a fine air, to which she replied with as fine a courtesy. “And this,” said Colonel Parker, “is the young man who brought her back – a fine, noble fellow, and a good, honest, comely lad, too.”

“Why, then,” said the lieutenant, “I shall ask you to let me take your hand. Give me your hand.” Jack reached out his throbbing palm to the lieutenant, who took the hand and shook it firmly. “By zounds! you are a hero,” he said. “See, sir,” – to Colonel Parker – “that is the boat they escaped in – such a little open boat as that to come all the way from Bath Town and through a storm, they tell me, in the lower sound. We are going to tow it over to the schooner.”

He pointed down at the yawl as it lay alongside, fastened to the other boat by the bow-line. Colonel Parker looked down into the empty boat. There was the stain of blood still upon the seat where Dred had sat when he was shot. The very emptiness of the boat as it lay there seemed to speak all the more vividly of the tragedy that had been enacted in it.

As they left the coaster, Jack sat in the stern of the boat not far from Colonel Parker and the young lady. As he looked back he could see the figures of Captain Dolls and his wife, of the barefoot mate with his knit cap, and of Mr. Jackson standing at the gangway. The yawl was towing behind them. His smarting palms throbbed and burned in pulsations of pain, and he looked furtively down into one of his hands.

“Why, what is the matter with your hand, my lad?” Colonel Parker asked, suddenly.

Jack blushed red and shut his fist tight. “I flayed them rowing, your honor,” he said.

“While you were helping Nelly away?”

“Yes, your honor.”

“Let me see your hand.”

Jack held it out reluctantly, conscious of the rough knuckles and nails, and Colonel Parker took it into his soft, white grasp. “Why,” he exclaimed, “what a dreadful, terrible sore hand is this! Let me see t’other. And did you suffer this in helping Nelly get away? Look, lieutenant, at the poor boy’s hands. They must be salved and dressed as soon as we get him aboard the schooner.”

“Let me see, my lad,” said the lieutenant.

CHAPTER XLIV
RISING FORTUNES

PERHAPS there was no period of the attorney Burton’s misfortunes more bitter to him than when he stood that morning upon the deck of Colonel Parker’s schooner, and saw the town almost within hand’s reach, and yet felt himself so helpless, so utterly powerless to escape.

All hands were talking about Colonel Parker’s daughter, and how she had been brought back from the pirates, and by and by an interest in what he heard began to work its way into his consciousness in spite of the misfortunes that overhung him. So it was that, when he saw the boat coming toward the schooner, he went over to the rail and stood with the others gathered there looking out as it approached. He saw that there were several people sitting in the stern-sheets, – one of them the young lady, – and that they were towing an empty boat behind them. All hands aboard the schooner were standing at the rail or clinging to the shrouds watching their approach, and from where the little attorney stood he could see that the surgeon and the sailing-master and the shipwrecked mate were at the gangway waiting for them.

He at once singled out the pirate who had rescued the young lady – the young man with the long, shaggy hair and rough, half-sailor clothes. He seemed to the attorney Burton to be singularly young for a pirate, with a round, smooth, boyish face. Presently the boat was close under the side of the schooner, and the next moment the crew had unshipped their oars with a loud and noisy clatter. The lieutenant leaned out astern and stopped the yawl as it slid past with the impetus of its motion, and then it also fell around broadside to the schooner.

Then they began to come aboard, first the lieutenant, then Colonel Parker, then the young lady. At that instant the young pirate looked up, and the attorney looked full into his face. If a thunderbolt had fallen and burst at the little lawyer’s feet, he could not have been more amazed than he was to see the face of Jack Ballister looking toward him.

It is such wonderful chance meetings as this, and as that other time when Jack met Dred at Bullock’s Landing, that teach us how little is this little world of ours, and how great is the fatality that drifts men apart and then drifts them together again.

The next moment Jack also had climbed aboard, and had gone into the cabin with the others. “You must look at the poor lad’s hands before you do anything else, doctor,” Colonel Parker was saying to the physician who accompanied them.

Jack was still filled full of warm happiness as he sat there in the fine cabin, watching Dr. Poor as the surgeon dressed his hands, winding the clean white linen bandage around one of them. The dressing felt very soothing and cool. Colonel Parker and the young lady and Lieutenant Maynard sat opposite to him across the table, Colonel Parker asking him many things about the circumstances of their escape. Jack had been telling what he knew concerning the young lady’s abduction. “And were you with the pirates, then, when they took Nelly away?” said Colonel Parker.

The surgeon was trimming away the rough edges of skin from the palm of Jack’s other hand, and Jack looked down at the skilful touches upon the sore and tender place. “I didn’t go with them over to the house, if you mean that, your honor. I stayed aboard of the boat while they went. There was a watch of half a dozen left aboard, and I was with them. The others went off in three boats; the yawl was one of them. It was the biggest of the three, and Blackbeard went in it. I had only just come aboard, and I don’t think they would have chosen me to go with them upon such an expedition. I had just run away from Mr. Parker’s then, and that was my first day with them.”

“Why, then, I am glad of that,” said Colonel Parker. “I am glad you were not with them in such an unlovely business as attacking a defenseless houseful of women. But I don’t see how they could dare to do such a thing. There must have been some one set the villains on to do it. Did you hear whether there was any one else concerned in it – instigating them to the outrage?”

Jack had heard enough talk in Blackbeard’s house to feel sure that Mr. Richard Parker had been the prime mover in the outrage, but he did not dare to tell Colonel Parker about it. “I don’t know,” said he; “but they’re very desperate villains, your honor, and that’s the truth. You don’t think what desperate villains they are when you are with them, for they talk and act just like other men. But I do believe that there’s nothing they would stop at. They are very desperate villains.”

Colonel Parker was looking intently at him as he spoke. “You speak mightily good language,” he said; “are you educated?”

Jack blushed red. “Yes, your honor,” he said; “my father taught me. He was a clergyman, and a great scholar, I’ve heard say.”

Colonel Parker appeared very much interested. “Indeed!” he said, “is that the case? Why, then, I am very glad to hear it. Your being a gentleman’s son makes it easier for me to do all that I want to do for you. But you were kidnapped, you say?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jack.

Suddenly the surgeon clipped the thread of the second bandage. “There, you are as well as I can make you now,” he said.

“And indeed they feel mightily comfortable,” said Jack, opening and shutting his hand; “and I thank you kindly for the ease you have given me.”

“Now go and dress yourself, ready for breakfast,” said Colonel Parker. “My man Robin hath set out some clothes for you in the lieutenant’s cabin.”

Colonel Parker’s body-servant Robin was just coming out of the lieutenant’s cabin when Jack entered. “You’ll find everything you want in there, I do suppose,” he said. “If you don’t you may call me. I’ll be just outside here.”

He had laid the clothes upon the lieutenant’s berth. He closed the door as he went away, and Jack stood looking about him. It was all very clean and neat. It was the cabin that Miss Eleanor Parker generally used when she was aboard the schooner. A cool, fresh smell pervaded it. He laid his clothes aside, and sat down upon the edge of the berth, and then, presently, lay down at length upon its clean surface. As he lay there resting he was very, very happy. He went over in his mind all that had passed that morning. How beautiful it all was! How kind was Colonel Parker! Yes; he was reaping his reward. He lay there for a long time, yielding himself to his pleasant thoughts. Everything seemed very bright and hopeful. His hands felt so comfortable. He lifted them and looked at the bandages: how white and clean they were, how neatly they were stitched! He could smell the salve, and it seemed to have a very pleasant savor in the odor. He was glad now that Colonel Parker had seen his hands, and that they had looked so terribly sore. At last he roused himself, and looked at the clothes that had been laid out for him, turning them over and feeling them. They were of fine brown cloth, and there was a pair of white stockings. “I wish I had something to rub up my shoes a trifle,” he thought; “they look mightily rusty and ugly.”

Then he got up and began dressing, only to stop in the midst of it and to lie down once more to build those bright castles in the air. How fine it would be to live at Marlborough, not as a servant, but as one of the household! And now such good fortune was really his own. He lay there for a long, long time until, suddenly, the door was opened, and Colonel Parker’s servant looked in. Jack sprang up from where he lay. “Not dressed yet?” said the man. “Well, then, hurry as quick as you can. His honor wants you out in his own cabin. There’s somebody aboard here knows you, and he’s been in his honor’s cabin now for ten minutes or more.”

“Somebody who knows me?” said Jack. “Why, who can that be, pray?”

“’Tis a lawyer,” said the man – “a man named Burton. He says he knew you in Southampton.”

“Master Roger Burton!” cried Jack. “Why, to be sure I know him. Are you sure that is who ’tis? Why, how does he come aboard here? When did he come to America?”

He was getting dressed rapidly as he talked, and the servant came into the cabin and closed the door after him. “As to coming to America,” he said, “he came here naturally enough. He was kidnapped just as you and me were. I heard him tell his honor the lieutenant he had been knocked on the head and kidnapped.”

“Knocked on the head and kidnapped!” Jack cried; “why, that was just what happened to me.”

“Here, let me hold your coat for you,” said Robin. He held it up as Jack slipped his arms into the sleeves. “There, now then, you come straight along,” he said, and he led the way across the great cabin to Colonel Parker’s own private cabin beyond. He tapped on the door and then opened it.

“Come in,” called out Colonel Parker, and Jack entered.

He saw the attorney Burton immediately. He would not have recognized him if he had not known whom he was to see. The marks of the smallpox, the rough clothes he wore, and the thin, stringy beard that covered his cheeks and chin made him look like altogether a different man. Only his little stature and his long nose fitted with the memory of him in Jack’s mind. He stood for a while gazing at the little man. “Why, how now, Master Jack,” said the attorney, “don’t you know me?”

“Yes, I do, now that you speak,” said Jack, “but to be sure I wouldn’t have known you if I hadn’t been told you were here.”

Colonel Parker was lying in his berth, a blanket spread over his knees and feet. Miss Eleanor Parker sat on the edge of the berth, holding his hand, and the lieutenant sat opposite, crowded into the narrow space. “Come hither,” said Colonel Parker, reaching out his hand, and as Jack came toward him he took the lad’s bandaged hand into his own and held it firmly. “Why did you not tell me who you were?” said he.

“I don’t know what you mean, your honor,” said Jack.

“Don’t call me ‘your honor,’” said Colonel Parker. “Call me ‘sir,’ or else ‘Colonel Parker.’”

“Yes, sir,” said Jack, blushing.

“What I mean,” said Colonel Parker, “is that you did not tell me that you were Sir Henry Ballister’s nephew and a young gentleman of such high quality, nor that you were the heir of any such fortune as I am told hath been left to you. You should have told me all this at once. I might have gone on for a long while without knowing, had this good man not told me what was your family and condition.”

“I don’t know, sir,” said Jack, awkwardly, “why I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t think to do it.”

Lieutenant Maynard burst out laughing, and even Colonel Parker smiled. “Well, well,” he said, “family and fortune are something worth while to talk about, as the world goes. But I am glad that I shall know what to do for you now.”

Jack looked up at Miss Eleanor Parker, and saw that she was gazing straight at him. She smiled brightly as their eyes met.

The schooner left Norfolk that morning, but the breeze was very light, and it was not until the following day that they reached Marlborough.

The great house was in clear sight when Jack came up on deck at sunrise. Colonel Parker and Miss Eleanor were standing at the rail gazing out toward the house, which had been already aroused by the approach of the schooner. People were hurrying hither and thither, and then a number came running down to the landing from the house and the offices and the cabins, until a crowd had gathered at the end of the wharf.

“Yonder is thy mother, Nelly,” said Colonel Parker – “yonder is thy mother, my dear.” He spoke with trembling lips. The tears were running down the young lady’s cheeks, but she seemed hardly to notice them, and she was not crying. She wiped her eyes and her cheeks with her handkerchief, and then waved it; then wiped her eyes again, then waved it again. “Yonder is your Uncle Richard with her,” said Colonel Parker, and he also wiped his eyes as he spoke.

Jack could see his former master standing close to the edge of the wharf. He himself stood a little to one side with the Attorney Burton, who had also come up on deck. He had an uncomfortable feeling of not being exactly one in all the joy of this home-bringing.

A boat was pulling rapidly off from the shore, and in a moment the anchor fell with a splash. They were close to the wharf, and almost immediately the boat from the shore was alongside. Everybody was cheering, and Jack and the Attorney Burton stood silently in the midst of it all. Suddenly Colonel Parker turned to Jack, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Come,” he said, “you must go along with us. The others may follow later.”

The young lady did not see him or seem to think of him. She was weeping and weeping, clinging to the stays, and now and then wiping her eyes. The crew helped her down into the boat, where Colonel Parker was already seated. Jack followed after her, and then the men pulled away toward the shore; in a moment they were at the wharf. The people, black and white, were crowded above them, and Madam Parker had struggled so close to the edge that her brother-in-law and Mr. Jones were holding her back. She was crying convulsively and hysterically, and reaching out her hands and arms, clutching toward her daughter. Jack sat, looking up at all the faces staring down at them. The only unmoved one among them all upon the wharf was Mr. Richard Parker. He stood, calm and unruffled, with hardly a change of expression upon his handsome face. The next moment the mother and daughter were in one another’s arms, weeping and crying; and then, a moment more, and Colonel Parker was with them, his arms around them both.

Still Mr. Richard Parker stood calmly by; only now, when Jack looked, he saw that his eyes were fastened steadily upon him – but there was neither surprise nor interest in his face. Then Jack, too, went ashore. Colonel Parker saw him. “My dear,” he said to his wife in a shaking voice, “this is our dear Nelly’s preserver – the young hero who brought her back to us. Have you not a welcome for him?”

Madam Parker looked up, her eyes streaming with tears. She could not have seen Jack through them, and Jack stood, overcome and abashed. Through it all he was conscious that Mr. Parker was still looking steadily at him.

“Ay, brother Richard,” said Colonel Parker, wiping his eyes, “you know him, do you not? Well, ’tis to him we owe it that our Nelly hath been brought back to us again, for ‘twas he who brought her.”

Then Jack looked at his former master and wondered what he was thinking; he said nothing.