A Little World Part 49

"Can't get no furrer with cabs here, sir," he said; "we must walk the rest on it."

Harry told the driver to wait; and then, in a troubled state of mind, he followed his conductor in and out by wharf and crazy waterside shed, where paths were wet and muddy, and the few people seen looked poverty-stricken and repulsive. Tall walls heaved upward to shut out the light and air from the low, damp dwellings. A few yards farther and there was the din of iron as rivets were driven cherry-red into the plates of some huge metallic sea-ark. And again a little farther, and they were where corn ran in teeming golden cascades out of shoots to lighter or granary. Farther still, and the rap, rap, incessant rap, of the caulkers' hammers were heard as they drove in the tarry oak.u.m between the seams of the wooden vessels.

Iron-workers, black and grimy, painters, carpenters, rope-makers, all were busy here. Steam hissed and roared and shrieked, as it escaped from some torturing engine in white wreaths, like the ghost of dead water hurrying to its heaven of clouds far above the grimy earth. All forced itself upon Harry Clayton's brain, as he followed his conductor to where there were loose stones and mud beneath his feet, the black rushing river on his left hand, and on his right slimy piles, black and green and brown, with the bolts protruding, and iron rings hanging from their sides, all eaten and worn away.

There was a channel leading to some dock close by, and foul water was babbling noisily down through a pair of sluice-falls, and this too struck him painfully as the plashing fell upon his ear.

All pa.s.sed away, though, but the one shudder-engendering idea of that which he had come to see; for a rough harsh voice, proceeding from another amphibious muddy being, said:--

"You've found some one, then?"

"Ay!" was the response from Harry Clayton's conductor; and making to the right, the young man found himself beside a low, wet, half-rotten shed.

Volume 3, Chapter V.

WHAT THE SHED HELD.

Harry Clayton felt his breath come thick and fast as he caught sight of the low place by his side. It was a boat-house evidently, and was roughly built of the hole-filled planks torn from the side of some ship taken to the breaker's yard. The door was secured with a large rusty padlock, and the amphibious-looking man, now introduced as "my mate,"

had evidently been doing duty as a sentry, seated upon a post, and smoking a long clay pipe, troubled not in the slightest degree that within a few feet, dripping, soddened, battered by contact with pier and pile, lay the nameless dead, separated from him only by that badly-hung door facing the river, and through whose rifts and cracks and treenail-holes the interior could easily have been viewed.

The strongest of nerve might have shuddered as the man who had been keeping guard noisily unfastened the padlock, drew it from the staple, and was about to throw open the door of the hovel, when Harry abruptly arrested him.

"Are you sure that this answers to the description given?" he said, hoa.r.s.ely.

"Sure on it! Oh yes, sir; that's right enough. You needn't go in without you like: you may take our word for it. But as soon as you're saddersfied, we must go and tell the perlice, or else there'll be a rumpus. They won't like it as it is, and'll be wanting to go in for the reward; but we looks to you, sir, as a genleman, to make all that right."

"I'll see justice done you," said Harry, still hesitating.

"Thanky, sir! You see, about them police, there's the inquiss, and the doctor, and the jury, and all of them to see it; but you may take our word for it as it's all right: it's him, sure enough."

"How--how do you suppose it happened?--by accident?"

"Well, sir," said the first man, "it don't look very accidental when a poor chap's got two knife-holes in his chest, and a cut across the head enough to do for any man. You may call it a accident if you like, but accidents don't turn a chap's pockets inside out, and take his watch and ring."

Harry glanced again shudderingly at the door. Should he go in, or should he stay? It was cruel work, but he had promised the father, and the duty must be performed. He could not help dreading to gaze upon the fair frank face that he knew of old; and as he thought, he recalled it, with its insolent smile of triumph, when they parted at the station.

And now, barbarously mutilated, sullied with mud and water, perhaps it would be so changed as to be beyond the power of recognition.

And yet he knew that it must be done--that it was impossible for him to take the men's judgment, which must needs be of the most partial character.

There was nothing else for it, then, but to go, and he motioned to the man to throw open the door.

"I don't know as I'd go, sir, if I was you," said the man who had been his guide. "Give it up, sir, and take our word for it. We're used to this sorter thing; but it ain't pleasant to look at I wouldn't go in, sir, if I was you."

The man became so importunate at last, on seeing Harry's firmness, that the latter grew angry, for he had now nerved himself for his task; and without waiting to hear more, he muttered the two words, "Poor Lionel!"

threw back the door, and strode in.

Almost as soon as he had crossed the threshold the door swung to behind him, leaving the place in semi-obscurity, for it was only illumined by the faint pencils of light that streamed in through the treenail-holes of the old planks,

But there was light enough to show Harry that he was standing in a place whose floor was of muddy shingle stones, with a plank laid down the centre, worn and furrowed by the long coursing to and fro upon it of the iron keel of some boat. A few broken oars and a small skiff's mast were leaned against the side in company with a boathook and a rude pole.

Upon a peg hard by was a coil of rope and a grapnel; and again, in other parts, coils of rope and four-fluked, sharp-pointed grapnels, which made the visitor shudder as he thought of their purpose. Pieces of old iron, fragments of chain, sc.r.a.ps of rope, a ragged old ship's fender, and some pieces of drift wood, muddy, sodden, and jagged with old red water-corroded nails, were all that remained to take his attention, as his eyes wandered round the place, studiously avoiding and leaving to the last that which he had expressly come to see.

Oars, boathook, mast, cordage, they were all there, but where was the boat's sail? It was not in the boat--that he had seen when outside with the men.

Harry Clayton felt as if his mind were divided, and one portion were set in array against the other, questioning and responding, for the response was plain enough, and he knew that answer, though he had not seen that sail--could not see it now.

As he stood gazing upon the faint rays streaming down from between two loose tiles, falling here straight, there aslant, but all to cross and form a curious network of light with the rays pouring in from the side, he told himself that he was a coward; but the defensive part of his intelligence whispered in return, had this been the body of a stranger lying at his feet he could have calmly and sadly gazed upon the dead.

But it was the dread of looking upon his friend--upon the man whom of late, but for a hard battle with self, he could have struck down as an enemy--to look upon him cut off in the flower of his youth, and by some dreadful death, in the midst of a wild freak, perhaps of dissipation.

Clayton paused, and he repeated these words--

"Had it been the body of a stranger!"

Then, as if a flash of light had illumined the meaning of those words, he started. "Had it been the body of a stranger!" Why, after all, might it not be the earthly clay of some one unknown. It would be horrible still; but if he could bear back the tidings to that stricken old man that Lionel might still be living--that this was not he--how he could fervently say, "Thank Heaven!"

He stepped forward to where an old patched sail lay covering something in a pool of mud and water. The sailcloth was stained and dabbled with the mud; and a strange sense of shrinking seized upon Clayton as he stooped to lift one end.

He knew which to lift, for through the bare old cloth the human form could plainly be distinguished. It was not much to do to raise that cloth at the end for a brief moment. He could recognise Lionel in an instant; and nerving himself once more, he stooped hastily, raised the covering, and dropped it again, to mutter--nay, to exclaim loudly, with a fervour of tone that bespoke the intensity of the speaker's feelings--"Thank G.o.d!"

Harry turned hastily away, and forced open the door to admit the light of day, and to confront the bearer of the tidings and his mate; for his glance had been but a momentary one. He had stood at the back, as he raised the sail, and in that moment's glance he had seen no horrors-- none of the distortions left sometimes by a fearful death; he had seen but one thing, and that was--

The man's hair was black!

Volume 3, Chapter VI.

RIVER-SIDE HOPES.

Harry Clayton hurriedly made his way back to the chambers, where he found Sir Francis hastily walking up and down the room.

"Ah! you are back!" he said, impatiently. "I fell asleep for quite two hours, and then I should have come after you, only the address the man gave had quite glided from my memory. It seems, Clayton, as if my head were so full of this one trouble that it will hold nothing else. But what news?"

"None, sir," said Harry, quietly. "It was, thank Heaven, a mistake."

"I don't know, Clayton--I don't know. This suspense is almost more agonising than the knowledge that my poor boy had really been found dead. I feel, at times, that I cannot bear it much longer. You saw this--this--"

"Yes, sir; I saw the body of some poor creature lying in a boat-shed; but it was not the one we seek."

"Are you sure? You were not mistaken? You really did look to make sure?"

Harry smiled faintly, as he thought of his irresolution, and the way in which he had held back; and then he answered, calmly--

"Yes, Sir Francis; I made perfectly sure."

It was pitiful to see the old man's trouble--the constant agitation, the anxious gaze, the nervous restless motion of his hands--as he turned over some communication--some letter professing to give information respecting a young man in some far-off part of England or Wales--every despatch exciting hopes that were soon found to be perfectly baseless.

At length, after much persuasion, Sir Francis agreed to lie down, on the condition that Clayton would stay, ready to answer any communication that might arrive.

"You know, my dear boy, these things always will arrive when we are absent," he said, pitifully.