IN that curious compound, the human heart, a respectable motive is sometimes connected with a criminal act. And it was so with Joseph Wylie. He had formed an attachment to Nancy Rouse, and her price was two thousand pounds.
This Nancy Rouse was a character. She was General Rolleston's servant for many years; her place was the kitchen. But she was a woman of such restless activity, and so wanting in the proper pride of a servant, that she would help a house-maid, or a lady's maid, or do anything almost, except be idle. To use her own words, she was one as couldn't abide to sit mum-chance. That fatal foe to domestic industry, the London Journal, fluttered in vain down her area, for she could not read. She supported a sick mother out of her wages, aided by a few presents of money and clothes from Helen Rolleston, who had a great regard for Nancy, and knew what a hard fight she had to keep a sick woman out of her twenty pounds a year.
In love, Nancy was unfortunate; her buxom looks and sterling virtues were balanced by a provoking sagacity, and an irritating habit of speaking her mind. She humbled her lovers' vanity, one after another, and they fled. Her heart smarted more than once.
Nancy was ambitious; and her first rise in life took place as follows: When the Rollestons went to Australia, she had a good cry at parting with Helen; but there was no help for it. She could not leave her mother. However, she told Helen she could not stomach any other service, and, since she must be parted, was resolved to better herself. This phrase is sometimes drolly applied by servants, because they throw Independence into the scale. In Nancy's case it meant setting up as a washerwoman. Helen opened her hazel eyes with astonishment at this, the first round in the ladder of Nancy's ambition; however, she gave her ten pounds, and thirty introductions, twenty-five of which missed fire, and with the odd five Nancy set up her tub in the suburbs, and by her industry, geniality and frugality, got on tolerably well. In due course she rented a small house backed by a small green, and advertised for a gentleman lodger. She soon got one; and soon got rid of him. However, she was never long without one.
Nancy met Joseph Wylie in company. And, as sailors are brisk wooers, he soon became her acknowledged suitor, and made some inroad into her heart, though she kept on the defensive, warned by past experience.
Wylie's love-making had a droll feature about it; it was most of it carried on in the presence of three washerwomen, because Nancy had no time to spare from her work, and Wylie had no time to lose in his wooing, being on shore for a limited period. And this absence of superfluous delicacy on his part gave him an unfair advantage over the tallow-chandler's foreman, his only rival at present. Many a sly thrust, and many a hearty laugh, from his female auditors, greeted his amorous eloquence. But, for all that, they sided with him, and Nancy felt her importance, and brightened along with her mates at the sailor's approach, which was generally announced by a cheerful hail. He was good company, to use Nancy's own phrase, and she accepted him as a sweetheart on probation. But, when Mr. Wylie urged her to marry him, she demurred, and gave a string of reasons, all of which the sailor and his allies, the subordinate washerwomen, combated in full conclave.
Then she spoke out: "My lad, the washtub is a saddle as won't carry double. I've seen poverty enough in my mother's house; it shan't come in at my door to drive love out o' window. Two comes together with just enough for two; next year instead of two they are three, and one of the three can't work and wants a servant extra, and by and by there is half a dozen, and the money coming in at the spigot and going out at the bung-hole."
One day, in the middle of his wooing, she laid down her iron, and said: "You come along with me. And I wonder how much work will be done while my back is turned, for you three gabbling and wondering what ever I'm a going to do with this here sailor."
She took Wylie a few yards down the street, and showed him a large house with most of the windows broken. "There," said she, "there's a sight for a seafaring man. That's in Chancery."
"Well, it's better to be there than in H—," said Wylie, meaning to be sharper.
"Wait till you've tried 'em both," said Nancy.
Then she took him to the back of the house, and showed him a large garden attached to it.
"Now, Joseph," said she, "I've showed you a lodging-house and a drying-ground; and I'm a cook and a clear-starcher, and I'm wild to keep lodgers and do for 'em, washing and all. Then, if their foul linen goes out, they follows it. The same if they has their meat from the cook-shop. Four hundred pounds a year lies there a waiting for me. I've been at them often to let me them premises. But they says no, we have got no horder from the court to let. Which the court would rather see 'em go to rack an' ruin for nothing, than let 'em to an honest woman as would pay the rent punctual, and make her penny out of 'em, and nobody none the worse. And to sell them, the price is two thousand pounds, and if I had it I'd give it this minit. But where are the likes of you and me to get two thousand pounds? But the lawyer he says, 'Miss Rouse, from you one thousand down, and the rest on mortgige at forty-five pounds the year,' which it is dirt cheap, I say. So now, my man, when that house is mine, I'm yours. I'm putting by for it o' my side. If you means all you say, why not save a bit o' yours? Once I get that house and garden, you needn't go to sea no more; nor you shan't. If I am to be bothered with a man, let me know where to put my finger on him at all hours, and not lie shivering and shaking at every window as creaks, and him out at sea. And if you are too proud to drive the linen in a light cart, why, I could pay a man." In short, she told him plainly she would not marry till she was above the world; and the road to above the world was through that great battered house and seedy garden in Chancery.
Now it may appear a strange coincidence that Nancy's price to Wylie was two thousand pounds, and Wylie's to Wardlaw was two thousand pounds. But the fact is it was a forced coincidence. Wylie, bargaining with Wardlaw, stood out for two thousand pounds, because that was the price of the house and garden and Nancy.
Now, when Wylie returned to England safe after his crime and his perils, he comforted himself with the reflection that Nancy would have her house and garden, and he should have Nancy.
But young Wardlaw lay on his sick bed; his father was about to return to the office, and the gold disguised as copper was ordered up to the cellars in Fenchurch Street. There, in all probability, the contents would be examined ere long, the fraud exposed, and other unpleasant consequences might follow over and above the loss of the promised 2,000 pounds.
Wylie felt very disconsolate, and went down to Nancy Rouse depressed in spirits. To his surprise she received him with more affection than ever, and, reading his face in a moment, told him not to fret.
"It will be so in your way of life," said this homely comforter; "your sort comes home empty-handed one day, and money in both pockets the next. I'm glad to see you home at all, for I've been in care about you. You're very welcome, Joe. If you are come home honest and sober, why, that is the next best thing to coming home rich."
Wylie hung his head and pondered these words; and well he might, for he had not come home either so sober or so honest as he went out, but quite as poor.
However, his elastic spirits soon revived in Nancy's sunshine, and he became more in love with her than ever.
But when, presuming upon her affection, he urged her to marry him and trust to Providence, she laughed in his face.
"Trust to himprovidence, you mean," said she; "no, no, Joseph. If you are unlucky, I must be lucky, before you and me can come together."
Then Wylie resolved to have his 2,000 pounds at all risks. He had one great advantage over a landsman who has committed a crime. He could always go to sea and find employment, first in one ship, and then in another. Terra firma was not one of the necessaries of life to him.
He came to Wardlaw's office to feel his way, and talked guardedly to Michael Penfold about the loss of the Proserpine. His apparent object was to give information; his real object was to gather it. He learned that old Wardlaw was very much occupied with fitting out a steamer; that the forty chests of copper had actually come up from the Shannon and were under their feet at that moment, and that young Wardlaw was desperately ill and never came to the office. Michael had not at that time learned the true cause of young Wardlaw's illness. Yet Wylie detected that young Wardlaw's continued absence from the office gave Michael singular uneasiness. The old man fidgeted, and washed the air with his hands, and with simple cunning urged Wylie to go and see him about the Proserpine, and get him to the office, if it was only for an hour or two. "Tell him we are all at sixes and sevens, Mr. Wylie; all at sixes and sevens."
"Well," said Wylie, affecting a desire to oblige, "give me a line to him; for I've been twice, and could never get in."
Michael wrote an earnest line to say that Wardlaw senior had been hitherto much occupied in fitting out the Springbok, but that he was going into the books next week. What was to be done?
The note was received; but Arthur declined to see the bearer. Then Wylie told the servant it was Joseph Wylie, on a matter of life and death. "Tell him I must stand on the staircase and hallo it out, if he won't hear it any other way."
This threat obtained his admission to Arthur Wardlaw. The sailor found him on a sofa, in a darkened room, pale and worn to a shadow.
"Mr. Wardlaw," said Wylie, firmly, "you mustn't think I don't feel for you; but, sir, we are gone too far to stop, you and me. There is two sides to this business; it is 150,000 pounds for you, and 2,000 pounds for me, or it is—"
"What do I care for money now?" groaned Wardlaw. "Let it all go to the Devil, who tempted me to destroy her I loved better than money, better than all the world."
"Well, but hear me out," said Wylie. "I say it is 150,000 pounds to you and 2,000 pounds to me, or else it is twenty years' penal servitude to both on us."
"Penal servitude!" And the words roused the merchant from his lethargy like a shower-bath.
"You know that well enough," said Wylie. "Why, 'twas a hanging matter a few years ago. Come, come, there are no two ways; you must be a man, or we are undone."
Fear prevailed in that timorous breast, which even love of money had failed to rouse. Wardlaw sat up, staring wildly, and asked Wylie what he was to do.
"First, let me ring for a bottle of that old brandy of yours."
The brandy was got. Wylie induced him to drink a wine-glassful neat, and then to sit at the table and examine the sailors' declaration and the logs. "I'm no great scholard," said he. "I warn't a going to lay these before the underwriters till you had overhauled them. There, take another drop now—'twill do you good—while I draw up this thundering blind."
Thus encouraged and urged, the broken-hearted schemer languidly compared the seamen's declaration with the logs; and, even in his feeble state of mind and body, made an awkward discovery at once.
"Why, they don't correspond!" said he.
"What don't correspond?"
"Your men's statement and the ship's log. The men speak of one heavy gale after another, in January, and the pumps going; but the log says, 'A puff of wind from the N.E.' And, here again, the entry exposes your exaggeration. One branch of our evidence contradicts the other; this comes of trying to prove too much. You must say the log was lost, went down with the ship."
"How can I?" cried Wylie. "I have told too many I had got it safe at home."
"Why did you say that? What madness!"
"Why were you away from your office at such a time? How can I know everything and do everything? I counted on you for the head-work ashore. Can't ye think of any way to square the log to that part of our tale? might paste in a leaf or two, eh?"
"That would be discovered at once. You have committed an irremediable error. What broad strokes this Hudson makes. He must have written with the stump of a quill."
Wylie received this last observation with a look of contempt for the mind that could put so trivial a question in so great an emergency.
"Are you quite sure poor Hudson is dead?" asked Wardlaw, in a low voice.
"Dead! Don't I tell you I saw him die!" said Wylie, trembling all of a sudden.
He took a glass of brandy, and sent it flying down his throat.
"Leave the paper with me," said Arthur, languidly, "and tell Penfold I'll crawl to the office to-morrow. You can meet me there; I shall see nobody else."
Wylie called next day at the office, and was received by Penfold, who had now learned the cause of Arthur's grief, and ushered the visitor in to him with looks of benevolent concern. Arthur was seated like a lunatic, pale and motionless; on the table before him was a roast fowl and a salad, which he had forgotten to eat. His mind appeared to alternate between love and fraud; for, as soon as he saw Wylie, he gave himself a sort of shake and handed Wylie the log and the papers.
"Examine them; they agree better with each other now."
Wylie examined the log, and started with surprise and superstitious terror. "Why, Hiram's ghost has been here at work!" said he. "It is his very handwriting."
"Hush!" said Wardlaw; "not so loud. Will it do?"
"The writing will do first-rate; but any one can see this log has never been to sea."
Inspired by the other's ingenuity, he then, after a moment's reflection, emptied the salt-cellar into a plate, and poured a little water over it. He wetted the leaves of the log with this salt water, and dog's-eared the whole book.
Wardlaw sighed. "See what expedients we are driven to," said he. He then took a little soot from the chimney, and mixed it with salad oil. He applied some of this mixture to the parchment cover, rubbed it off, and by such manipulation gave it a certain mellow look, as if it had been used by working hands.
Wylie was armed with these materials, and furnished with money to keep his sailors to their tale, in case of their being examined.
Arthur begged, in his present affliction, to be excused from going personally into the matter of the Proserpine; and said that Penfold had the ship's log, and the declaration of the survivors, which the insurers could inspect, previously to their being deposited at Lloyd's.
The whole thing wore an excellent face, and nobody found a peg to hang suspicion on so far.
After this preliminary, and the deposit of the papers, nothing was hurried; the merchant, absorbed in his grief, seemed to be forgetting to ask for his money. Wylie remonstrated; but Arthur convinced him they were still on too ticklish ground to show any hurry without exciting suspicion.
And so passed two weary months, during which Wylie fell out of Nancy Rouse's good graces, for idling about doing nothing.
"Be you a waiting for the plum to fall into your mouth, young man?" said she.
The demand was made on the underwriters, and Arthur contrived that it should come from his father. The firm was of excellent repute and had paid hundreds of insurances, without a loss to the underwriters. The Proserpine had foundered at sea; several lives had been lost, and of the survivors one had since died, owing to the hardships he had endured. All this betokened a genuine calamity. Nevertheless, one ray of suspicion rested on the case at first. The captain of the Proserpine had lost a great many ships; and, on the first announcement, one or two were resolved to sift the matter on that ground alone. But when five eye-witnesses, suppressing all mention of the word "drink," declared that Captain Hudson had refused to leave the vessel, and described his going down with the ship, from an obstinate and too exalted sense of duty, every chink was closed; and, to cut the matter short, the insurance money was paid to the last shilling, and Benson, one of the small underwriters, ruined. Nancy Rouse, who worked for Mrs. Benson, lost eighteen shillings and sixpence, and was dreadfully put out about it.
Wylie heard her lamentations, and grinned; for now his 2,000 pounds was as good as in his pocket, he thought. Great was his consternation when Arthur told him that every shilling of the money was forestalled, and that the entire profit of the transaction was yet to come; viz., by the sale of the gold dust.
"Then sell it," said Wylie.
"I dare not. The affair must cool down before I can appear as a seller of gold; and even then I must dribble it out with great caution. Thank Heaven, it is no longer in those cellars."
"Where is it, then?"
"That is my secret. You will get your two thousand all in good time; and, if it makes you one-tenth part as wretched as it has made me, you will thank me for all these delays."
At last Wylie lost all patience, and began to show his teeth; and then Arthur Wardlaw paid him his two thousand pounds in forty crisp notes.
He crammed them into a side pocket, and went down triumphant to Nancy Rouse. Through her parlor window he saw the benign countenance of Michael Penfold. He then remembered that Penfold had told him some time before that he was going to lodge with her as soon as the present lodger should go.
This, however, rather interrupted Wylie's design of walking in and chucking the two thousand pounds into Nancy's lap. On the contrary, he shoved them deeper down in his pocket, and resolved to see the old gentleman to bed, and then produce his pelf, and fix the wedding-day with Nancy.
He came in and found her crying, and Penfold making weak efforts to console her. The tea-things were on the table, and Nancy 's cup half emptied.
Wylie came in, and said, "Why, what is the matter now?"
He said this mighty cheerfully, as one who carried the panacea for all ills in his pocket, and a medicine peculiarly suited to Nancy Rouse's constitution. But he had not quite fathomed her yet.
As soon as ever she saw him she wiped her eyes, and asked him, grimly, what he wanted there. Wylie stared at the reception; but replied stoutly, that it was pretty well known by this time what he wanted in that quarter.
"Well, then," said Nancy, "Want will be your master. Why did you never tell me Miss Helen was in that ship? my sweet, dear mistress as was, that I feel for like a mother. You left her to drown, and saved your own great useless carcass, and drowned she is, poor dear. Get out o' my sight, do."
"It wasn't my fault, Nancy," said Wylie, earnestly. "I didn't know who she was, and I advised her to come with us; but she would go with that parson chap."
"What parson chap? What a liar you be! She is Wardlaw's sweetheart, and don't care for no parsons. If you didn't know you was to blame, why didn't you tell me a word of your own accord? You kep' dark. Do you call yourself a man, to leave my poor young lady to shift for herself?"
"She had as good a chance to live as I had," said Wylie, sullenly.
"No, she hadn't; you took care o' yourself. Well, since you are so fond of yourself, keep yourself to yourself, and don't come here no more. After this, I hate the sight on ye. You are like the black dog in my eyes, and always will be. Poor, dear Miss Helen! Ah, I cried when she left—my mind misgave me; but little I thought she would perish in the salt seas, and all for want of a man in the ship. If you had gone out again after in the steamboat—Mr. Penfold have told me all about it—I'd believe you weren't so much to blame. But no; lolloping and looking about all day for months. There's my door, Joe Wylie; I can't cry comfortable before you as had a hand in drowning of her. You and me is parted forever. I'll die as I am, or I'll marry a man; which you ain't one, nor nothing like one. Is he waiting for you to hold the door open, Mr. Penfold? or don't I speak plain enough? Them as I gave the sack to afore you didn't want so much telling."
"Well, I'm going," said Wylie, sullenly. Then, with considerable feeling, "This is hard lines."
But Nancy was inexorable, and turned him out, with the 2,000 pounds in his pocket.
He took the notes out of his pocket, and flung them furiously down in the dirt.
Then he did what everybody does under similar circumstances, he picked them up again, and pocketed them, along with the other dirt they had gathered.
Next day he went down to the docks and looked out for a ship; he soon got one, and signed as second mate. She was to sail in a fortnight.
But, before a week was out, the banknotes had told so upon him that he was no longer game to go to sea. But the captain he had signed with was a Tartar, and not to be trifled with. He consulted a knowing friend, and that friend advised him to disguise himself till the ship had sailed. Accordingly he rigged himself out with a long coat, and a beard, and spectacles, and hid his sea-slouch as well as he could, and changed his lodgings. Finding he succeeded so well, he thought he might as well have the pleasure of looking at Nancy Rouse, if he could not talk to her. So he actually had the hardihood to take the parlor next door; and by this means he heard her move about in her room, and caught a sight of her at work on her little green; and he was shrewd enough to observe she did not sing and whistle as she used to do. The dog chuckled at that. His bank-notes worried him night and day. He was afraid to put them in a bank; afraid to take them about with him into his haunts; afraid to leave them at home; and out of this his perplexity arose some incidents worth relating in their proper order.
Arthur Wardlaw returned to business; but he was a changed man. All zest in the thing was gone. His fraud set him above the world; and that was now enough for him, in whom ambition was dead, and, indeed, nothing left alive in him but deep regrets.
He drew in the horns of speculation, and went on in the old safe routine; and to the restless activity that had jeopardized the firm succeeded a strange torpidity. He wore black for Helen, and sorrowed without hope. He felt he had offended Heaven, and had met his punishment in Helen's death. Wardlaw senior retired to Elmtrees, and seldom saw his son. When they did meet, the old man sometimes whispered hope, but the whisper was faint and unheeded.
One day Wardlaw senior came up express, to communicate to Arthur a letter from General Rolleston, written at Valparaiso. In this letter, General Rolleston deplored his unsuccessful search; but said he was going westward, upon the report of a Dutch whaler, who had seen an island reflected in the sky, while sailing between Juan Fernandez and Norfolk Isle.
Arthur only shook his head with a ghastly smile. "She is in heaven," said he, "and I shall never see her again, not here or hereafter."
Wardlaw senior was shocked at this speech; but he made no reply. He pitied his son too much to criticise the expressions into which his bitter grief betrayed him. He was old, and had seen the triumphs of time over all things human, sorrow included. These, however, as yet, had done nothing for Arthur Wardlaw. At the end of six months, his grief was as somber and as deadly as the first week.
But one day, as this pale figure in deep mourning sat at his table, going listlessly and mechanically through the business of scraping money together for others to enjoy, whose hearts, unlike his, might not be in the grave, his father burst in upon him, with a telegram in his hand, and waved it over his head in triumph.
"She is found! she is found!" he roared. "Read that!" and thrust the telegram into his hands.
Those hands trembled, and the languid voice rose into shrieks of astonishment and delight, as Arthur read the words, "We have got her, alive and well. Shall be at Charing Cross Hotel, 8 P. M."
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