A Dream of the North Sea Part 16

"Yes; I've been thinking of that. You must have a regular masterful Tartar of a surgeon, and make him bear all responsibility. Pick out a good man, and give him a free hand; that seems the best thing to be done."

The two observers saw all that Ferrier had seen, and suffered a little of what he had suffered. Before they had their vessel's head pointed for home, Ca.s.sall remarked: "That young Sawbones must have a reasonable pluck, mind you, Roche. I find it hard enough to keep my feet, without having to manage delicate operations; and you notice that we've heard at least fifty of the men talk about this Ferrier's skill with his hands."

"That's your man, Ca.s.sall, if you only knew it. I shall make a point of meeting him. You haven't seen my plans, have you? Well, I've employed myself since we came out in trying to design every kind of fitting that you're likely to need. I used to be very good at that kind of thing, and I'm very glad my hand hasn't forgot its cunning. I shall test young Ferrier's judgment over my drawings, and that will be a good pretext for meeting him."

"The spring is on us now, Roche. We must use that youngster to get at people. He must have some kind of personal magnetism. Did you notice how that fellow choked and sobbed when he told us how the youngster refused to leave him during the gale? A good sign that. We must have parties to meet him, and let him do the talkee-talkee lecturing business. I shouldn't wonder if my girl found the nerve to speak. If you had only heard her oration delivered for my private gratification, you would have been pretty much amazed. She shall spout if she likes."

"I see you've set up a new hobby, my friend, and I can back you to ride hard. Seriously speaking, I never knew any cause that I would a.s.sist sooner than this. That fellow Fullerton was once described to me by a Jew as 'hare-brained.' It needed a curious sort of hare-brain to build up such an organization as we have seen. I may tell you a little secret, as we are alone. When I was fighting my way up, I was very glad to attend a working man, and I starved genteelly for a long time in a big fishing-port. I a.s.sure you that in those days a fisherman was the most ill-conditioned dog on G.o.d's earth. He knew less of goodness than a dog does, and I think you could see every possible phase of hoggishness and cruel wickedness on a Sat.u.r.day night in that town. It used to be a mere commonplace to say that no one should venture into the fishermen's quarter after dark. There is a big change. You snarl at parsons a good deal, I know, but you can't snarl at what we have seen. You are quite right, and I mean to help spur your new hobby as hard as I can."

After Robert Ca.s.sall had been some days at home, Mr. Fullerton received the following letter:--

DEAR SIR,--As arranged at our last meeting, I went out to view your work among the North Sea fishermen, and I am satisfied that I may a.s.sist your admirable efforts. In this letter I merely sketch my proposals in an informal manner, but my solicitors, Messrs. Bowles and Gordon, Gresham Buildings, will be ready at any time to meet a deputation from the Council of the Mission, so that my wishes may be accurately stated, and all business settled in strict legal form.

1. I propose to build a steam cruiser of 350 tons, and I am now engaged in consulting with practical men concerning those technical details of which I have scanty knowledge.

2. This cruiser I wish to support entirely at my own expense; and, after my decease, the capital sum set aside for the maintenance of the vessel will pa.s.s into the hands of the Council. 3. I should naturally desire to have some voice in the appointment of trustees, and also in the selection of the medical staff; but no doubt my solicitors will arrange that to the satisfaction of all parties.

4. My niece, Miss Marion Dearsley, is intensely interested in your work, and, as a very large sum of money belonging to that lady remains at my disposal as her trustee, I have, with her approval, transferred to the Mission 30,000 Great Northern Railway ordinary shares, with which we desire to found a maintenance fund for a vessel of 200 tons. This transaction has been carried out at the urgent desire of my niece. I am informed that this sailing cruiser must be schooner-rigged on account of her tonnage, which would require an unworkable spread of canvas if she were rigged as a ketch. These matters I leave entirely to the experts whom I have retained.

5. Should you agree to my terms, and should you also come to a thoroughly clear understanding with my legal representatives, the building of the vessels may proceed at once. I will have nothing but the _best_, and therefore I will ask you to let me act directly and indirectly as superintendent of the construction of the ships. I have already taken the liberty of engaging a practical and scientific seaman--a merchant captain--who will, with your permission, watch over the building of the vessels to the last rivet.

6. We learn that Mr. Ferrier has returned. Could you and he make it convenient to come to us from Sat.u.r.day next until Monday? In that time we may have much useful talk.

7. In conclusion, you will perhaps not be displeased if an old man, who has not your strong faith, ventures nevertheless to ask G.o.d's blessing on you and your Mission.

With much admiration and regard, I am, dear sir, Your obedient servant, ROBERT Ca.s.sALL.

H. Fullerton, Esq.

Committees of charitable organizations are not usually wanting in complaisance toward gentlemen who can spare lump sums of 130,000; so Mr. Ca.s.sall and his lawyers had very much of their own way. On the day when the last formal business was completed, Fullerton and our young savant, both in a state of bewildered exaltation of spirit, paid their visit to Mr. Ca.s.sall. Ferrier was strangely dumb in presence of Miss Dearsley, but he made up amply for his silence when he was alone with the men. Robert Ca.s.sall observed, however, that the youngster never spoke of himself. Once or twice the old man delicately referred to certain little matters which had occurred during the January gales--the amputation, the rescue of Lennard, the rough trips from smack to smack, the swamping of the small boat: but Ferrier was too eager for other people's good; he had so utterly forgotten himself that he hardly recognized Mr. Ca.s.sall's allusions. On the first evening at dinner Mr.

Ca.s.sall said: "Now, Marion, you and Miss Lena must stay with us. She's not an orator like you; she was meant for a mouse, but you can do all the talk you like. And now, gentlemen, let me lay a few statements before you. I shall talk shorthand style if I can. First, I want Mr.

Ferrier to be our first medical director, and I wish him to take the steamer on her first cruise. After that, if he likes to be a sort of inspector-general, we can arrange it. Next, I want to draw some more people into Mr. Fullerton's net. Excuse the poaching term. Mr. Ferrier and Mr. Fullerton can teach us, and I wish to begin with a big party here as soon as possible. After that, our young friend must go crusading. I'll provide every kind of expense, and we'll regard his engagement as beginning to-day if he likes. Next, I may tell you that I have already arranged for men to work night and day in relays on both my vessels--or rather your vessels. Mr. Director-General must see his hospital wards fitted out to the last locker, and I've taken another liberty in that direction. There's your cheque-book, and you are to draw at Yarmouth or London for any amount that you may think necessary. And now I fancy that is about all I need say."

Then Mr. Ca.s.sall smiled on his dumb-foundered hearers.

Ferrier said, "I must eventually stay on sh.o.r.e, I fear. I have resigned the professorship which I had hoped to keep; but I do not need to practise, and I am ready to see your venture well started."

Then the host finally insisted on hearing all about the cruise; he could understand every local allusion now, and the narrative touched him far more than any romance could have done. The girls dropped in a word here and there, for they claimed to be among the initiated, and thus an evening was spent in piling fresh fuel on the old gentleman's newborn fire of enthusiasm.

There never was such an elderly tornado of a man. After church on Sunday he packed the girls off in the pony-carriage, and then took his guests for a most vehement walk, during which he asked questions in a voice as vehement as his gait, and set forth projects with all the fine breadth of conception and heedlessness of cost which might be expected from an inspired man with a practically inexhaustible fund at his disposal.

The good Henry Fullerton had long walked in darkness; doubts had been presented to him; jibes and sneers had hailed upon him; all sorts of mean detractors had tried to label him as visionary, or crackbrain, or humbug, or even as money-grub: and now the clouds that obscured the wild path along which he had fared with such forlorn courage were all lifted away, and he saw the fulfilment of the visions which had tantalized him on doleful nights, when effort seemed vain and hope dead. He maintained his serenity, and calmly calculated pounds and shillings with all the methodic coolness of a banker's clerk. On the Sunday evening he was asked to confer privately with Mr. Ca.s.sall, and Ferrier was left free.

Of course Lewis proposed a stroll in the grounds--what young man would have missed the opportunity?--and he listened delightedly to that musical, girlish talk for which he had longed during his tremendous vigils on the Sea of Storms.

Miss Ranken was in a flutter of exultation. "Did you ever know any one so clever as Marion?" she inquired, with quite the air of an elderly person accustomed to judge intellects. "We knew she could do anything with Mr. Ca.s.sall, but we never expected this. And now, Mr. Ferrier, you won't go and get drowned in nasty cabins any more, and you'll have your sailors all under your eye, and no more degenerate sea-sick ladies to plague you. Why, now we've made a start, we must capture some more millionaires, and we'll have a vessel with every fleet, and no sick men lying on grimy floors. By the way, what a capital a.s.sociation that would be--The Royal Society for the Capture of Millionaires. President and Organizing Director, Marion Dearsley; Treasurer, Lena Ranken; General Agent for Great Britain and the Colonies, Lewis Ferrier! Wouldn't that be splendid? I begin to feel quite like an administrator."

This was the very longest speech that Miss Ranken was ever known to make, and she was applauded for her remarkable excursion into practical affairs.

"You must tell us a little more about your winter, Mr. Ferrier. Lena hasn't heard half enough," observed the stately "little jilt" when the cataract of Miss Ranken's eloquence had ceased flowing.

"Better wait until the meeting, Miss Dearsley. Then, if you are satisfied, I may be able to do something in different places."

"But you will tell us how Tom Betts fared in the end?"

"He was well and at work when we left his fleet, and he had established a sort of elaborate myth, with you as central figure. I'm afraid you would never recognize your own doings if you heard his version of them.

Tom's imagination is distinctly active. We had no bad mishaps with our men, but it was a dreadful time."

"I think you seem to be more solemn and older than when you went away first, Mr. Ferrier," remarked the Treasurer of the Capturers.

"One ages fast there; I really lived a good deal. One life isn't enough for that work. I suppose the Englishmen began working on the Banks two hundred years ago, and we have all that time of neglect to make up."

"Yes. I wonder now what was the use of our ancestors. My brother says that no philosopher has ever discovered the ultimate uses of babies; I wonder if any one can tell the uses of those blundering, silly old ancestors of ours. As far as I can see, we have to put up with all sorts of horrid things, and you have to go and get wet on dirty fishing-boats, just because our ancestors neglected their proper business and stayed lazy at home."

"You mustn't start a Society for the Abolition of Ancestors, Miss Ranken. We have to make up all lost ground, and we can't help it. I'm sorry almost that I take it all so seriously. I feel so very much like a middle-aged prig. Perhaps, Miss Dearsley, we may grow more cheerful when your uncle and I (and you) are fairly at work and clear of brooding. At present I seem to exude lectures and serious precepts."

"You go to Yarmouth after the meeting, Mr. Ferrier?"

"Yes; we must all of us copy you, and humour your uncle. I can see he feels time going very fast, and I shall play at being in a hurry all the time I am looking after the new vessels."

"My uncle says I must speak to our meeting."

"Why not? If you like, I can bring some good lady orators to keep you in countenance."

"I shall consider. I don't think we ought to talk; but we cannot afford to neglect any fancy of uncle's."

Ferrier never heard so queer a speech from a girl before. She had evidently made up her mind to face an ordeal which would stagger the nerves of the "young person" of the drawing-room; and her deliberate acceptance of a strained and unnatural situation pleased him. He thought, "If she ever does take to the platform, the capture of the millionaires is sure to begin."

Ca.s.sall and Fullerton looked very solemn and satisfied during the evening, and both of them were just a little tiresome in recurring to their new and exhaustless topic.

The old man was off to Yarmouth long before his guests were astir, for a fever of haste was upon him. He returned in the evening, and until Sat.u.r.day he was employed with his beautiful secretary in making the most lordly preparations for the great meeting--the first of the series which was to revolutionize rich people's conceptions of duty and necessity.

A very brilliant company a.s.sembled; the old man was an artist in his way, and he had spread his lures with consummate tact. How on earth he got hold of eminent pressmen, I cannot tell; but then, eminent pressmen, like the rest of our world, are distinctly susceptible to the blandishments of amiable millionaires. Sir John Rooby, the ex-Lord Mayor, appeared in apoplectic importance; Lady Glendower, who had expended a fortune on the conversion of the Siamese, also waited with acute curiosity; every name on every card there was known more or less to Secretaries, to Missionary Societies, to begging-letter writers--to all the people who run on the track of wealth. The great saloon, which reached from the front, right across the mansion to the windows that overlooked the park, was filled fairly; and Ferrier was not a little perturbed by the sight of his audience.

Mr. Ca.s.sall soon ended all suspense by coming to the point in his quick fashion. (He would not have succeeded as a parliamenteer, for he had a most uncultivated habit of never using forty words where five would serve.) "Sir John, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen,--I have lately returned from a voyage in the North Sea among the Fishing Fleets. That was perhaps a foolish trip for an old man to make, in a world of rheumatics and doctors' fees; but I'm very glad I made it. Most people are very ready to point out the faults of others: I have to point out my own. I learned that I had been unwittingly neglecting a duty, and now I blame myself for remissness. It's very pleasant to blame yourself, because it gives you such a superior sense of humility, and I am enjoying the luxury to the full. I saw a great deal of beautiful and promising work going on, and I saw ever so much pain, and squalor, and unnecessary unhappiness. I needn't tell you that I've made up my mind to a.s.sault that pain and squalor and unhappiness, and try to drive them out of the field; I needn't tell you, because the newspapers have done that for me. They always know my business as well as I know it myself. Now it struck me that many men are as ignorant as I was. I know that some people continually go about imagining evil; but there are others who are constantly seeking for chances of doing good, and they jump at their chance the moment they clap eye on it. That is why I arranged this meeting. I cannot describe things, nor put out anything very lucidly--except a balance-sheet; but I have a young friend here, who has been at sea all winter in those ugly gales that made us so uncomfortable on sh.o.r.e, and he will tell us something. Then we have also Mr. Fullerton, who has been working and speechifying to some purpose for years. While I was pur-blind, this gentleman was clear-sighted; and, if you could go where I have been, and see the missionary work that I have seen, you would never speak ill of a missionary again. I do not believe ill of men. Some one among our statesmen summed up his ideas of life by saying, 'Men are very good fellows, but rather vain.' I should say, 'Men are mixtures; but few can resist the temptation to do a good action if they are shown how to do it.' Now, we're all very comfortable here--or I hope so, at all events; and it will do us good to hear of strong, useful men who never know what comfort means--and that through no fault of their own, but only through the strange complications of civilized society. I call on Mr. Fullerton to address this meeting." Fullerton rose and faced his audience like a practised hand. His trance-like intensity of gaze might have led you to think that he was going to pour out a lengthy speech: but he had tact; he knew that he would please Ca.s.sall and the audience by letting them hear the words of a new man, and he merely said: "For years I have addressed many meetings, and I have worked and prayed day and night. Help has risen up for me, and now I am content to be a humble member of the company who have agreed in their hundreds to aid in my life's work. I am but an instrument to be laid aside when my weary day is over and my Master's behests fulfilled.

I see light spreading, darkness waning, kindness growing warmer, purity and sobriety become the rule in quarters where they were unknown; and I am thankful--not proud, only thankful--to have helped in a work which, I believe, is of G.o.d. We are now near the attainment of a long dream of mine, thanks to Robert Ca.s.sall; and, when the fulfilment is complete, I care not when I may be called on to say my 'Nunc dimittis.' And now I will not stand longer between you and Mr. Ferrier." Thus, with one dexterous push Ferrier found himself projected into the unknown depths of his speech. He was easy enough before students, but the quick whispers, the lightning flash of raised eye-gla.s.ses, the calm, bovine stare of certain ladies, rather disconcerted him at first. But he warmed to his work, and in deliberate, mathematical fashion wrought through his subject. He told of the long Night; the dark age of the North Sea. The little shivering cabin-boy lay on his dank wooden couch, and curled under the wrench of the bitter winter nights; he had to bear a hard struggle for existence, and, if he were a weakling, he soon went under.

Alas! there had been instances, only too well authenticated, of boys being subjected to the most shocking treatment--though we would not saddle upon the majority of fishermen the responsibility for this cruelty on the part of a few. "What could a boy know of good?" said the speaker, with a sharp ring of the voice. "Why, the very name of G.o.d was not so much as a symbol to him; it was a sound to curse with--no more; and it might have seemed to a man of bitter soul that G.o.d had turned away His face from those of His human works that lived, and sinned, and suffered and perished on the grey sea." Then Ferrier showed how the light of new faith, the light of new kindness, had suddenly shot in on the envenomed darkness, like the purifying lightning that leaps and cleans the obscured face of a murky sky. He told of the incredulity which greeted the first missionaries, and he explained that the men could not think it possible that any one should care to show them human sympathy; he traced the gradual growth of belief, and pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude, and he then turned dexterously off and asked, "But how could you touch men's souls with transforming effect, where the poor body--the humble mask through which the soul gazes--was torn with great pain, or perplexed with pettier ills? My lords, ladies, and gentlemen, I have seen, in one afternoon, suffering home with sombre acquiescence, suffering the very sight of which in all its manifold dreariness would have driven you homeward shuddering from this beautiful place. Till this good man--I will say this great man--carried his baffling compound of sacred zeal and keen sense into that weary country, those toiling sailors were hopeless, loveless, comfortless, joyless, and--I say it with awe--heavenless; for scarcely a man of them had knowledge or expectation of a life wherein the miseries of this one may be redressed in some far land where Time is not." Then the youngster coldly, gravely told of his surgical work, and it seemed as if he were drawing an inexorable steel edge across the nerves of his terrified hearers. He watched the impression spread, and then sprang at his peroration with lightning-footed tact. "We English are like barbarians who have been transferred from a chilly land to a kind of hot-house existence. We are too secure; no predatory creature can harm us, and we cultivate the lordlier and lazier vices. Our middle cla.s.s, as Bismarck says, has 'gone to fat,' and is too slothful to look for the miseries of others. The middle-cla.s.s man, and even the aristocrat, are both too content to think of looking beyond their own horizon. And yet we are good in essentials, and no tale of pity is unheeded--if only it be called forth loudly enough. Let us wake our languid rich folk. They suffer from a surfeit--an apoplexy--of money. An eager, wakeful, nervous American plutocrat, thinks nothing of giving a large fortune to endow a hospital or an inst.i.tute for some petty Western town. Are we meaner or more griping than the Americans? Never. Our men only want to know. Here is a work for you. I do not call our fishermen stainless; they are rude, they are stormy in pa.s.sions, they are lacking in self-control; but they are worth helping. It is not fitting that these lost children of civilization should draw their breath in pain. Help us to heal their bodies, and maybe you will see a day when their strength will be your succour, and when their rescued souls shall be made in a glory of good deeds and manly righteousness." There was no mistake about the effect of this simple speech. I cannot give the effect of the timbre of Ferrier's voice, but his virility, his majestic seriousness, just tinctured by acuteness, and his thrill of half-restrained pa.s.sion, all told heavily.

Slowly the party dispersed to the tents on the lawn, and many were the languidly curious inquiries made about the strange young professor who had turned missionary. The man himself was captured by Lady Glendower, who explained her woe at the perfidious behaviour of Myung Yang, the most interesting convert ever seen, who was now in penal servitude for exercising his imitative skill on my lady's signature. "And I expended a fortune, Mr. Ferrier, on those ungrateful people. Is it not enough to make one misanthropic?"

"Your ladyship must begin again on a new line."

"After hearing you, and all about those charmingly horrid accidents, I am almost tempted to take your advice."

Ferrier was invited to address at least a dozen more drawing-room meetings, and Sir John Rooby grunted, "Young man! I'm ready to put a set of engines in that boat of Ca.s.sall's, and you can have so much the more money for her maintenance."