Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1815 page)

The day was breaking again, when I was roused up by feeling rough hands on me. Naked savages — some on the rocks, some in the water, some in two long canoes — were clamouring and crowding about on all sides. They bound me, and took me off at once to one of the canoes. The other kept company — and both were paddled back to that high land which I had seen in the south. Death had passed me by once more — and Captivity had come in its place.

The story of my life among the savages, having no concern with the matter now in hand, may be passed by here in few words. They had seen the fire on the island; and paddling over to reconnoitre, had found me. Not one of them had ever set eyes on a white man before. I was taken away to be shown about among them for a curiosity. When they were tired of showing me, they spared my life, finding my knowledge and general handiness as a civilised man useful to them in various ways. I lost all count of time in my captivity — and can only guess now that it lasted more than one year and less than two. I made two attempts to escape, each time in a canoe, and was balked in both. Nobody at home in England would ever, as I believe, have seen me again, if an outward-bound vessel had not touched at the little desert island for fresh water. Finding none there, she came on to the territory of the savages (which was an island too). When they took me on board, I looked little better than a savage myself, and I could hardly talk my own language. By the help of the kindness shown to me, I was right again by the time we spoke the first ship homeward-bound. To that vessel I was transferred; and, in her, I worked my passage back to Falmouth.

CHAPTER V — THE RESTITUTION

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

“Why, what’s this?” cried the captain, when at last he broke the silence.  “You two are alike.  You two are much alike.  What’s this?”

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

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

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

“Never saw her; never heard of her!”

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

“Surely,” said Alfred, “we can’t help it now.  We must go through with our duty.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was clear to both.

“You,” said the captain, turning to the younger brother, “are a little in love; ain’t you?”

“Not a little, Captain Jorgan.”

“Much or little, you’re sort preoccupied; ain’t you?”

It was impossible to be denied.

“And a sort preoccupied man ain’t good at quick business, is he?” said the captain.

Equally clear on all sides.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the mention of this name Tregarthen started and changed colour.  “What’s the matter?” said the captain.

“He was a fellow-clerk of mine thirty — five-and-thirty — years ago.”

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

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

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

Again Tregarthen started, changing colour.  Again the captain said, “What’s the matter?”

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

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

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

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

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

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