A Dream of the North Sea Part 14

Why, you silly dear, you think you are a commercial genius, and yet the fishmonger probably charges you ever so much per cent over and above what the fishermen receive, because of the great expense of railway carriage and distribution of the fish. I know that, because Mr.

Fullerton told me; so you see I've corrected you, even you, on a point of finance."

How prettily this stern, composed young woman could put on artful airs of youthfulness when she chose! How she had that firm, far-seeing old man held in position, ready to be twirled round her rosy finger!

Which of us is not held in bondage by some creature of the kind? Unhappy the man who misses that sweet and sacred slavery.

Mr. Ca.s.sall wrinkled his grim face not unpleasantly. "Go on; go on.

You're a lawyer, neither more nor less. By the way, who is this--this what's-the-name--the Doctor, that you mentioned?"

"Oh! he is a very clever young man who has chosen to become a surgeon instead of being a university professor. He's now out on the North Sea in all this bad weather. He was so much struck with the need of a hospital, that he made up his mind to risk a winter so that he may tell people exactly what he has seen. He doesn't do things in a half-hearted way.

"What a long, pretty description of Mr. Ferrier. You seem to have taken a good deal of notice of the fortunate youth. Well, proceed."

Marion was a little flushed when she resumed, but her uncle did not observe anything at all unusual.

"Where was I?--Oh, yes! You hold it right to give money in charity to deserving objects. Now these men out at sea were left for years, perhaps for centuries, to live as a cla.s.s without hope or help. Dear good creatures like my own uncle actually never knew that such people were in existence. They were far worse off than savages who have plantains and pumpkins and cocoanuts, and they were our own good flesh and blood, yet we neglected them."

"So we do the East Enders, and the Lancashire operatives and the dock labourers."

"True. But we are doing better now. Then you see the East End has been discovered a long time, and visitors can walk; but the poor North Sea men were left alone, until lately, by everybody."

"Still, we haven't come to why _I_ should help them."

"Oh! uncle, you are a commercial man. Look at selfish reasons alone. You know how much we depend on sailors, and you often say the country is so very, very ill-provided with them. And these men are--oh! such splendid seamen. Fancy them staying out for two months with a gale of wind per week, and doing it in little boats about eighty feet long. You should see a hundred of them moving about in mazes and never running into any trouble. Oh! uncle, it _is_ wonderful. Well, now, these men would be all ready for us if we were in national danger. I heard Mr. Fullerton say that hundreds of them are in the Naval Reserve, and as soon as they learned their way about an ironclad, they would take to the work by instinct. There is nothing they don't understand about the sea, and wind and weather. Would any negro help us? Why, Lord Wolseley told your friend Sir James Roche that a thousand Fantees ran away from fifty painted men of some other tribe; and Lord Wolseley said that you can only make a negro of that sort defend himself by telling him that he will die if he runs away. You wouldn't neglect our own men who are so brave. Why they might have to defend London, where all your money is, and they would do it too." (Oh! the artful minx!) "And we send missions to nasty, brutal Fantees who run away from enemies, and we leave our own splendid creatures far worse off than dogs."

"Well, if I'm not having the law laid down to me, I should like to know who ever had. But I'm interested. Let's go round by the avenue, through the kitchen garden, and then round to the front by road, and make the walk as long as you can. Why on earth didn't Blair tell me something of this before? Most wonderful. He talks enough, heaven knows, about anything and everything, but he never mentioned that. Why?" "Now don't be a crusty dear. I don't know what good form is, but he told me he thought it would hardly be good form to bring up the subject in your company, as it might seem as though he were hinting at a donation. Now that's plain."

"Good. Now never mind the preaching. I understand you to say that's done good."

"Perfectly wonderful. You remember how we were both insulted and hooted at Burslem, only because we were strangers! Well, now, in all the time that we were away we never heard one uncivil word. Not only they were civil, and so beautifully courteous to us, but they were so kindly among themselves, and it is all because they take their Christianity without any isms."

That wicked puss! She knew how Robert Ca.s.sall hated the fights of the sects, and she played on him, without in the least letting him suspect what she was doing. He snorted satisfaction. "That's good! that's good!

No isms. And you say they've dropped drink?"

"Entirely, uncle, and all through the preaching without any isms. It is such a blessed, beautiful thing to think that hundreds of men who used to make themselves and every one about them wretched, are now calm, happy fellows. And they do not cant, uncle. All of them know each other's failings, and they are gentle and forgiving to each other."

"What a precious lot of saints--much too good to live, I should fancy."

"Don't sneer, you graceless. Yes it's quite true. Do you know, dear, the Early Christian movement is being repeated on the sea."

"Umph. Early Christians! The later Christians have made a pretty mess of it. Now, just give me, without any waste words, all you have to say about this hospital business. Don't bring in preachee-preachee any more."

"Very good, dear. Stop me if I go wrong. I'm going round about. You know, you crabby dear, you wouldn't neglect an old dog or an old pony after it had served you. You wouldn't say, 'Oh, Ponto had his tripe and biscuit, and Bob had his hay;' you would take care of them. Now wouldn't you? Of course you would. And these fishers get their wages, but still they give their lives for your convenience just as the dog and the pony do."

"Yes, yes. But come to the hospital ship. You dance round as if you were a light-weight boxer sparring for breath."

"Hus-s-sh! I won't have it. The fishermen, then, are constantly being dreadfully hurt: I don't mean by such things as toothache, though many hundreds of them have to go sleepless for days, until they are worn out with pain;--I mean really serious, violent hurts. Why, we were not allowed to see several of the men who came to Dr. Ferrier for treatment.

The wounds were too shocking. Nearly eight thousand of them are already relieved in various ways every year. Just fancy. And I a.s.sure you I wonder very much that there are no more."

"What sort of hurts?"

Then Marion told him all about the falling spars, the poisoned ulcers, the great festers, the poisoned hands caused by venomous fishes accidentally handled in the dark, wild midnights; the salt-water cracks, the thousand and one physical injuries caused by falls, or the blow of the sea, or the prolonged fighting with heavy gales. The girl had become eloquent; she had _seen_, and, as she was eloquent as women generally are, she was able to make the keen old man see exactly what she wanted him to see. Then she told how Ferrier stuck to the sinking smack and saved his patient, and Robert Ca.s.sall muttered, "That sounds like a man's doings;" and then with every modesty she spoke of Tom Betts's mistake. There never was such a fluent, artful, mock-modest, dramatic puss in the world!

"Hah! mistook you for an angel. Eh? Not much mistake when you like to be good, but when you begin picking my pocket, there's not much of the angel about that, I venture to say."

So spoke the old gentleman; but the anecdote delighted him so much that for two or three days he snorted "Angel!" in various keys all over the house, until the servants thought he must have turned Atheist or Republican, or something generally contemptuous and sarcastic. The girl had him in her toils, and the fascination was too much for him. She could look grand as a Greek G.o.ddess, calm and inscrutably imposing as the Venus of Milo; but she could also play _Perdita_, and dance with her enslaved ones like a veritable little witch. Robert Ca.s.sall was captured--there could not be much error about that. He asked, with a sudden snap of teeth and lips which made his niece start: "And how much do you want to coax out of me, Miss Molly. Give me an idea. Of course I'm to be the uncle in the play, and 'Bless you, me chee-ill-dren,' and the rest. Oh yes!"

"Oh, one vessel could be kept up for 30,000."

"What! Per year?"

"No. The interest on 30,000 in North Western Railway stock would support a vessel well. _You_ could easily support two."

"This girl's got bitten by a money-spending tarantula. Why you'd dance a million away in no time. _Why_, in the name of common sense, why should I support two vessels and their hulking crews--who chew tobacco, of course, don't they? To be sure, and hitch their slacks! Why should I support all these manly tars!"

"Now! I'll be angry. I'll tell you why. You know you have more money than you can ever spend. You promise me some, and you're very good, but I'd almost rather live on my own than have too much. Well, I can't bear to think of your dying--but you must die, my own good dear, and you will have to divide your money before you go. There will be a lot of heart-burning, and I'm afraid poor me won't come off very lightly if I am left behind you. You will want a memorial."

"You remember me and do as I would like you to do, and we sha'n't trouble our minds much about memorials. I thought of almshouses, though."

"Oh! uncle dear, and then the Charity Commissioners may come in, and give all your money to fat, comfortable tradesmen's children, or well-to-do professional men, instead of to your old people, and the clergyman will be master of your money; and the old people will not be grateful, and all will go wrong, and my dear uncle will be forgotten.

Oh! no."

"I say, come, come; you're too knowing. You're trying to knock a pet scheme of mine on the head."

The old man was genuinely concerned, and he felt as if some prop had been knocked away from him. But his sweet niece soon brought him round.

She had scared his vanity on purpose, and she now applied the antidote.

"Supposing you give us two ships, you give yourself a better memorial than poor Alleyn of Dulwich, or Roan of Greenwich. Dear uncle, a charity which can be enjoyed by the idle is soon forgotten, and the pious founder is no more than a weed round the base of his own monument; he has not even a name. But you may actually see your own memorial working good long, long before you die, and you may see exactly how things will go on when your time is over. When you make out your deed of gift, exact the condition that one vessel must always be called after you, no matter how long or how often the ships are renewed. Sir James Roche can advise you about that. Place your portrait in the ship, and make some such provision as that she shall always carry a flag with your name, if you want to flaunt it, you proud thing! Then something like, at any rate, three thousand sufferers will a.s.sociate your name with their happiness and cure every year; and they will say in every port in England, 'I was cured on the _Robert Ca.s.sall,'_ or 'I should have lost that hand,' or 'I was dying of typhoid and our skipper thought I needed salts, but they cured me on the _Robert Ca.s.sall_.' And the great ships will pa.s.s your beautiful ship, and when people ask 'What is that craft, and who is Ca.s.sall?' they will say that Ca.s.sall gave of his abundance during his lifetime, so that seamen might be relieved of bitter suffering; and those brave men will be so very grateful. And oh! uncle, fancy going out to sea in your own monument, and watching your own wealth working blessedness before your eyes. Why, you will actually have all the pleasures of immortality before you have lost the power of seeing or knowing anything. Oh, uncle dear, think if you can only see _one_ sailor's limbs saved by means of your money! Think of having a hundred living monuments of your goodness walking about in the beautiful world--saved and made whole by you!"

The girl frightened the plucky old gentleman. His voice trembled, and he said, "Why, we must send you to Parliament! You can beat most of those dull sconces. Why, you're a no-mistake born orator--a talkee-talkee shining light! But if you go in for woman's rights and take to short hair, I shall die, after burning my will! And now you kiss me, my darling, and don't scare me any more with that witch's tongue." Was ever millionaire in such manner wooed? Was ever millionaire in such fashion won? The gipsy's eyes glowed, and her heart beat in triumph. Was this the Diana of Ferrier's imagination? Was this the queen of whom that athletic young gentleman was silently dreaming as he swung over the pulsing mountains of the North Sea? This slyboots! This most infantile coax!

I wish some half-dozen of the most charming young ladies in England would only begin coaxing, and coax to as good purpose! I would go out next summer and willingly end my days in work on the water, if I thought my adorable readers would only take Marion Dearsley's hint, and help to blot out a little misery and pain from this bestained world.

While Mr. Ca.s.sall was standing, with his teacup, before the glowing wood fire, he said, "Be my secretary for half an hour, Molly, my pet. Write and ask Blair, and that other whom I don't know--Fullerton. Yes; ask them to dinner. And, let me see, you can't ask Mr. Phoenix the Sawbones?"

"Who, uncle?" "Why, the young doctor that performs such prodigies, of course."

"He's out on the sea now, dear, and I expect that he's in some abominable cabin--"

"Catching smallpox to infect cleanly people with?"

"No, dear. He is most likely tending some helpless tatterdemalion, and moving about like a clever nurse. He is strong--so strong. He pulled a man through a wave with one hand while he held the rigging with the other, and the man told me that it was enough to tear the strongest man to pieces"

"Here, stop the catalogue. Why, Sawbones must be Phoebus Apollo! If you talk much more I shall ask him a question or two. Go on with your secretary's duties, you naughty girl."

So ended the enslavement of Robert Ca.s.sall, and so, I hope, began his immortality. Oh! Marion Dearsley; sweet English lady. This is what you were turning over in your maiden meditations out at sea. Demure, deep, delicious plotter. What a _coup_! All the mischievous North Sea shall be jocund for this, before long. Surely they must name _one_ vessel after _you_! You are a bloodless Judith, and you have enchanted a perfectly blameless Holofernes. I, your laureate, have no special song to give you just now, but I think much of you, for the sake of darkened fishers, if not for your own.

Mr. Ca.s.sall invited Sir James Roche to meet the other men. Sir James was the millionaire's physician and friend, and Ca.s.sall valued all his judgments highly, for he saw in the fashionable doctor a money-maker as shrewd as himself; and, moreover, he had far too much of the insular Briton about him to undervalue the kind of prestige which attaches to one who a.s.sociates with royal personages and breathes the sacred atmosphere of money. Sir James was an apple-faced old gentleman, who had been a miser over his stock of health and strength. He was consequently ruddy, buoyant, strong, and his good spirits were infectious. He delighted in the good things of the world; no one could order a dinner better; no one could better judge a picture; no one had a more pure and hearty liking for pretty faces;--and it must be added, that few men had more worldly wisdom of the kind needed for everyday use. He could fool a humbug to the top of his bent, and he would make use of humbugs, or any other people, to serve his own ends; but he liked best to meet with simple, natural folks, and Ca.s.sall always took his fancy from the time of their first meeting onward.