Homeward Bound; Or, the Chase Part 61

Norfolk, for thee remains a heavy doom, Which I with some unwillingness p.r.o.nounce.

SHAKSPEARE.

The history of the unfortunate young man, who, after escaping all the hazards and adventures of the pa.s.sage was now so unexpectedly overtaken as he was about to reach what he fancied an asylum, was no more than one of those common-place tissue of events that lead, through vanity and weakness, to crime. His father had held an office under the British government. Marrying late, and leaving a son and daughter just issuing into life at the time of his decease, the situation he had himself filled had been given to the first, out of respect to the unwearied toil of a faithful servant.

The young man was one of those who, without principles or high motives, live only for vanity. Of prominent vices he had none, for there were no salient points in his character on which to hang any quality of sufficient boldness to encourage crime of that nature. Perhaps he owed his ruin to the circ.u.mstance that he had a tolerable person, and was six feet high, as much as to any one other thing. His father had been a short, solid, square-built little man, whose ambition never towered above his stature, and who, having entered fairly on the path of industry and integrity early in life, had sedulously persevered in it to the end. Not so with the son. He read so much about aristocratic stature, aristocratic ears, aristocratic hands, aristocratic feet, and aristocratic air, that he was delighted to find that in all these high qualities he was not easily to be distinguished from most of the young men of rank he occasionally saw riding in the parks, or met in the streets, and, though he very well knew he was not a lord, he began to fancy it a happiness to be thought one by strangers, for an hour or two in a week.

His pa.s.sion for trifles and toys was inherent, and it had been increased by reading two or three caricatures of fashionable men in the novels of the day, until his happiness was chiefly centered in its indulgence. This was an expensive foible; and its gratification ere long exhausted his legitimate means. One or two trifling and undetected peculations favoured his folly, until a large sum happening to lie at his sole mercy for a week or two, he made such an inroad on it as compelled a flight. Having made up his mind to quit England, he thought it would be as easy to escape with forty thousand pounds as with the few hundreds he had already appropriated to himself. This capital mistake was the cause of his destruction; for the magnitude of the sum induced the government to take unusual steps to recover it, and was the true cause of its having despatched the cruiser in chase of the Montauk.

The Mr. Green who had been sent to identify the fugitive, was a cold, methodical man, every way resembling the delinquent's father, whose office-companion he had been, and in whose track of undeviating attention to business and negative honesty he had faithfully followed. He felt the peculation, or robbery, for it scarce deserved a milder term, to be a reproach on the corps to which he belonged, besides leaving a stigma on the name of one to whom he had himself looked up as to a model for his own imitation and government. It will readily be supposed, therefore, that this person was not prepared to meet the delinquent in a very forgiving mood.

"Saunders," said Captain Truck in the stern tone with which he often hailed a-top, and which implied that instant obedience was a condition of his forbearance, "go to the state-room of the person who has _called_ himself Sir George Templemore--give him my compliments--be very particular, Mr. Saunders--and say Captain Truck's compliments, and then tell him I expect the honour of his company in this cabin--the _honour_ of his company, remember, in this cabin. If that don't bring him out of his state-room, I'll contrive something that shall."

The steward turned up the white of his eyes, shrugged his shoulders, and proceeded forthwith on the errand. He found time, however, to stop in the pantry, and to inform Toast that their suspicions were at least in part true.

"This elucidates the circ.u.mstance of his having no attendant with him, like other gentlemen on board, and a wariety of other incidents, that much needed dewelopement. Mr. Blunt, I do collect from a few hints on deck, turns out to be a Mr. Powis, a much genteeler name; and as they spoke to some one in the ladies' cabin as 'Sir George,' I should not be overcome with astonishment should Mr. Sharp actually eventuate as the real baronite."

There was time for no more, and Saunders proceeded to summon the delinquent.

"This is the most unpleasant part of the duty of a packet-master between England and America," continued Captain Truck, as soon as Saunders was out of sight. "Scarce a ship sails that it has not some runaway or other, either in the steerage or in the cabins, and we are often called on to aid the civil authorities on both sides of the water."

"America seems to be a favourite country with our English rogues,"

observed the office-man, drily. "This is the third that has gone from our own department within as many years."

"Your department appears to be fruitful of such characters, sir,"

returned Captain Truck, pretty much in the spirit in which the first remark had been given.

Mr. Green was as thorough-going an Englishman as any of his cla.s.s in the island. Methodical, plodding, industrious, and regular in all his habits, he was honest by rule, and had no leisure or inclination for any other opinions than those which were obtained with the smallest effort. In consequence of the limited sphere in which he dwelt, in a moral sense at least, he was a ma.s.s of the prejudices that were most prevalent at the period when he first obtained his notions. His hatred of France was unconquerable, for he had early learned to consider her as the fast enemy of England; and as to America, he deemed her to be the general asylum of all the rogues of his own country--the possession of a people who had rebelled against their king because the restraints of law were inherently disagreeable to them. This opinion he had no more wish to proclaim than he felt a desire to go up and down declaring that Satan was the father of sin; but the fact in the one case was just as well established in his mind as in the other. If he occasionally betrayed the existence of these sentiments, it was as a man coughs; not because he particularly wishes to cough, but because he cannot help it. Finding the subject so naturally introduced, therefore, it is no wonder if some of his peculiar notions escaped him in the short dialogue that followed.

"We have our share of bad men, I presume, sir," he rejoined to the thrust of Captain Truck; "but the thing that has most attracted comment with us, is the fact that they all go to America."

"And we receive our share of rogues, I presume, sir; and it is the subject of animadversion with _us_ that they all come from England."

Mr. Green did not feel the force of this retort; but he wiped his spectacles as he quietly composed his features into look of dignified gravity.

"Some of your most considerable men in America, I believe, sir," he continued, "have been Englishmen, who preferred a residence in the colonies to a residence at home."

"I never heard of them," returned the captain; "will you have the goodness to name just one?"

"Why, to begin, there was your Washington. I have often heard my father say that he went to school with him in Warwickshire, and that he was thought anything but very clever, too, while he lived in England."

"You perceive, then, that we made something of him when we got him over on this side; for he turned out in the end to be a very decent and respectable sort of person. Judging from the language of some of your prints, sir, I should suppose that King William enjoyed the reputation of being a respectable man in your country?"

Although startled to hear his sovereign spoken of in this irreverent manner, Mr. Green answered promptly,----

"He is a king, sir, and comports himself as a king."

"And all the better, I dare say, for the thrashing he got when a youngster, from the Vermont tailor."

Now Captain Truck quite as religiously believed in this vulgar tale concerning the prince in question, as Mr. Green believed that Washington had commenced his career as one no better than he should be, or as implicitly as Mr. Steadfast Dodge gave credit to the ridiculous history of the schoolmaster of Haddonfield; all three of the legends belonging to the same high cla.s.s of historical truths.

Sir George Templemore looked with surprise at John Effingham, who gravely remarked,----

"Elegant extracts, sir, from the vulgar rumours of two great nations. We deal largely in these legends, and you are not quite guiltless of them. I dare say, now, if you would be frank, that you yourself have not always been deaf to the reports against America."

"You surely do not imagine that I am so ignorant of the career of Washington?"

"Of that I fully acquit you; nor do I exactly suppose that your present monarch was flogged by a tailor in Vermont, or that Louis Phillipe kept school in New Jersey. Our position in the world raises us beyond these elegancies; but do you not fancy some hard things of America, more especially concerning her disposition to harbour rogues, if they come with full pockets."

The baronet laughed, but he coloured. He wished to be liberal, for he well knew that liberality distinguishes the man of the world, and was an indispensable requisite for a gentleman; but it is very hard for an Englishman to manifest true liberality towards the _ci-devant_ colonies, and this he felt in the whole of his moral system, notwithstanding every effort to the contrary.

"I will confess that case of Stephenson made an unfavourable impression in England," he said with some reluctance.

"You mean the absconding member of Parliament," returned John Effingham, with emphasis on the four last words. "You cannot mean to reproach us with his selection of a place of refuge; for he was picked up at sea by a foreign ship that was accidentally bound to America."

"Certainly not with that circ.u.mstance, which, as you say, was purely an accident. But was there not something extraordinary in his liberation from arrest!"

"Sir George Templemore, there are few Englishmen with whom I would dwell an instant on this subject," said John Effingham gravely; "but you are one of those who have taught me to respect you, and I feel a strong regret whenever I trace any of these mistaken notions in a man of your really generous disposition. A moment's reflection will show you that no civilized society could exist with the disposition you hint at; and as for the particular case you have mentioned, the man did not bring money of any moment with him, and was liberated from arrest on a principle common to all law, where law is stronger than political power, and which principle we derive directly from Great Britain. Depend on it, so far from there being a desire to receive rich rogues in America from other countries, there is a growing indisposition to receive emigrants at all; for their number is getting to be inconvenient to the native population."

"Why does not America pa.s.s reciprocal laws with us then, for the mutual delivery of criminals."

"One insuperable objection to such a reciprocity arises from the nature of our government, as a confederation, since there is no ident.i.ty in our own criminal jurisprudence: but a chief reason is the exceedingly artificial condition of your society, which is the very opposite of our own, and indisposes the American to visit trifling crimes with so heavy punishments. The American, who has a voice in this matter, you will remember, is not prepared to hang a half-starved wretch for a theft, or to send a man to Botany Bay for poaching. The facility with which men obtain a livelihood in America has. .h.i.therto converted most rogues into comparatively honest men when they get there; though I think the day is near, now your own police is so much improved, when we shall find it necessary in self-defence to change our policy. The common language, as I am told, induces many knaves, who now find England too hot to hold them, to migrate to America."

"Captain Ducie is anxious to know whether Mr. Truck will quietly permit this criminal to be transferred to the Foam."

"I do not think he will permit it at all without being overpowered, if the request be urged in any manner as a right. In that case, he will very properly think that the maintenance of his national character is of more importance than the escape of a dozen rogues. _You_ may put a harsh construction on his course; but _I_ shall think him right in resisting an unjust and an illegal invasion of his rights. I had thought Captain Ducie, however, more peaceably disposed from what has pa.s.sed."

"Perhaps I have expressed myself too strongly. I know he would wish to take back the criminal; but I scarce think that he meditates more than persuasion. Ducie is a fine fellow, and every way a gentleman."

"He appears to have found an acquaintance in our young friend, Powis."

"The meeting between these two gentlemen has surprised me, for it can scarcely be termed amicable: and yet it seems to occupy more of Ducie's thoughts just now than the affair of the runaway."

Both now became silent and thoughtful, for John Effingham had too many unpleasant suspicions to wish to speak, and the baronet was too generous to suggest a doubt concerning one whom he felt to be his rival, and whom, in truth, he had begun sincerely to respect, as well as to like. In the mean time, a discussion, which had gradually been growing more dogged and sullen on the part of Mr. Green and more biting and caustic on that of Captain Truck, was suddenly terminated by the reluctant and tardy appearance of Mr. Sandon.

Guilt, that powerful vindicator of the justice of Providence, as it proves the existence of the inward monitor, conscience, was painfully impressed on a countenance that, in general, expressed little beyond a vacant vanity. Although of a tall and athletic person, his limbs trembled in a way to refuse to support him, and when he saw the well-known face of Mr.

Green, the unhappy young man sank into a seat from a real inability to stand. The other regarded him sternly through his spectacles, for more than a minute.

"This is a melancholy picture, Henry Sandon!" he at length said. "I am, at least, glad that you do not affect to brazen out your crime, but that you show a proper sense of its enormity. What would your upright and painstaking father have said, had he lived to see his only son in this situation?"

"He is dead!" returned the young man, hoa.r.s.ely. "He is dead, and never can know any thing about it."

The unhappy delinquent experienced a sense of frightful pleasure as he uttered these words.

"It is true, he is dead; but there are others to suffer by your misconduct. Your innocent sister is living, and feels all your disgrace."