Rattlin the Reefer Part 33

"Daunton, I am ready to hear you."

"Thank you, Ralph."

"Fellow! you may have heard that I am a prisoner--in disgrace--but not in dishonour; but know, scoundrel, that if I were to swing the next minute at the yardarm, I would not tolerate or answer to such familiarity. Speak respectfully, or I leave you."

"Mr Rattlin, pray do not speak so loudly, or the other invalids will hear us."

"Hear us, sirrah! they may, and welcome. Scoundrel! can _we_ have any secrets?"

The fiery hate that flashed from the eye of venomous impotence played upon me, at the very moment that the tone of his voice became more bland, and his deportment more submissive.

"Mr Rattlin, your honour, will you condescend to hear me? It is for your own good, sir. Pray be no longer angry. I think I am dying; will you forgive me?--will you shake hands with me?" And he extended to me his thin and delicate hand.

"Oh, no, no!" I exclaimed, accompanying my sneer with all the scorn that I could put in my countenance. "Such things as you don't die-- reptiles are tenacious of life. For the malicious and ape-like mischiefs that you have done to me and to my messmates--though in positive guilt I hold them to be worse than actual felony--I forgive you--but, interchange the token of friendship with such as you--never!"

"Ralph Rattlin, I know you!"

"Insolent rascal! know yourself; dare to send for me no more. I leave you."

I turned upon my heel, and was about leaving this floating hospital, when again that familiar tone of the voice that had struck the inmost chord of my heart in his shrieking appeal at the gangway, arrested me, and the astounding words which he uttered quickly brought me to his side. In that strange tone, that seemed to have been born with my existence, he exclaimed, distinctly, yet not loudly, "Brother Ralph, listen to me!"

"Liar, cheat, swindler!" I hissed forth in an impa.s.sioned whisper, close to his inclined ear, "my heart disowns you--my soul abhors you--my gorge rises at you. I abominate--I loathe you--most contemptible, yet most ineffable liar!"

"Oh, brother!" and a hectic flush came over his chalky countenance, whilst a sardonic smile played over his features. "You can speak low enough now. 'Tis a pity that primogeniture is so little regarded in his Majesty's vessels of war; but methinks that you are but little dutiful, seeing that I am some ten years your senior, and that I do not scorn to own _you_, though you are the son of my father's paramour."

The horrible words shot ice into my heart. I could no longer retain my stooping position over him, but, feeling faint and very sick, I sat down involuntarily beside him. But the agony of apprehension was but for a moment. A mirth, stern and wild, brought its relief to my paralysed bosom, and, laughing loudly, I jumped up and exclaimed, "Josh, you little vagabond, come, carry me a-pick-a-back--son of a respectable p.a.w.nbroker of Whitechapel--how many paramours was the worthy old gentleman in the habit of keeping? Respectable scion of such respectable parent, who finished his studies by a little tramping, a little thieving, a little swindling, a little forging--I heartily thank you for the amus.e.m.e.nt you have afforded me."

"Oh, my good brother, deceive not yourself! I repeat that I have tramped, thieved, swindled, ay, and forged. And to whom do I owe all this ignominy? To you--to you--to you. Yet I do not hate you very, very much. You showed some fraternal feeling when they seared my back with the indelible scar of disgrace. I have lied to you, but it suited my purpose!"

"And I have given you the confidence due to a liar."

"What! still incredulous, brother of mine! Do you know these--and these?"

The handwriting was singular, and very elegant. I knew the letters at once. They were the somewhat affected amatory effusions of that superb woman, Mrs Causand, whom I have described in the early part of this life. They spoke of Ralph,--of Ralph Rattlin--and described, with tolerable accuracy, my singular birth at the Crown Inn, at Reading.

There were three letters. The two first that I read contained merely pa.s.sionate protestations of affection; the third, that had reference to myself, spoke darkly. After much that is usual in the ardent style of unhallowed love, it went on, as nearly as I can recollect, in these words--"I have suffered greatly--suffered with you, and for you. The child is, however, now safe, and well provided for. It is placed with a decent woman of the name of Brandon, Rose Brandon. A discovery now is impossible. We have managed the thing admirably. The child is fair,"

etcetera, etcetera.

In the midst of my agitation I remarked that the writer did not speak of the infant as "my child," nor with the affection of a mother--and yet, without a great stretch of credulity, the inference seemed plain that she was the parent of it, though not a fond one.

"Mysterious man! who are you, and who am I?"

"Your disgraced, your discarded, yet your legitimate brother. More it suits me not now that you should know. I am weak in frame, but I am steel in purpose. You, you have been the bane of my life. Since your clandestine birth, our father loved me no more. I will have my broad acres back--I will--they are mine--and you only stand between me and them."

"Desperate and degraded man!--I believe, even after this pretended confession, that you are an impostor to me, as much as you are to the rest of the world. I now understand some things that were before dark to me. My life seems to stand in your way--and your cowardice only prevents you from taking it. You tell me you are a forger--these letters are forgeries. Mrs Causand is not my mother, nor are you my brother. Pray, where did you get them?"

"I stole them from our father's escritoir."

"Amiable son! But I weary myself no more with your tissue of falsehoods. To-morrow we shall cast anchor. I will leave the service, and devote the rest of my life to the discovery of origin. I will learn your real name, I will trace out your crimes--and the hands of justice shall at once terminate my doubts, and your life of infamy--we are enemies to the death!"

"A fair challenge, and fairly spoken. I accept it, from all my soul.

You refused my hand in brotherly love; for, by the grey hairs of our common parent, in brotherly love it was offered to you--will you now take it as a pledge of a burning, a never-dying, enmity between us? It is at present emaciated and withered--it has been seized up at your detested gangway--it has been held up at the bar of justice; but it will gain strength, my brother--there, take it, sir--and despise it not."

I shuddered as I received the pledge of hate; and his grasp, though I was in the plenitude of youthful vigour, was stronger than my own.

This dreadful conference had been carried on princ.i.p.ally in whispers; but owing to several bursts of emotion on my part, enough had transpired among those present to give them to understand that I had been claimed as a brother, and that I had very hard-heartedly rejected the claim.

After we had pa.s.sed our mutual defiance, there was silence between us for several minutes; he coiling himself up like an adder in his corner, and I pacing the deck, my bosom swelling with contending emotions. "If he should really be my brother," thought I. The idea was horrible to me. I again paused in my walk, and looked upon him steadfastly; but I found no sympathy with him. His style of thin and pallid beauty was hateful to me--there was no expression in his countenance upon which I could bang the remotest feeling of love. He bore my scrutiny, in his weakness, proudly.

"Daunton," said I, at length, "you have failed: in endeavouring to make a tool, you have created an enemy and an avenger of the outraged laws.

I shall be in London in the course of eight-and-forty hours--you cannot escape me--if it cost me a hundred pounds, I will loose the bloodhounds of justice after you--you shall be made, in chains, to give up your hateful secret. I am no longer a boy; nor you, nor the lawyer that administers my affairs, shall longer make a plaything of me. I will know who I am. Thank G.o.d, I can always ask Mrs Cherfeuil."

At that name, a smile, no longer bitter, but deeply melancholy, and almost sweet, came over his effeminate features. But it lasted not long. That smile, like a few tones of his voice, seemed so familiar to me. Was I one of two existences, the consciousness of the one nearly, but not quite, blotting out the other? I looked upon him again, and the smile was gone; but a look of grief, solemn and heartrending, had supplied its place--and then the big and involuntary tear stood in his eye. I know not whether it fell, for he held down his arm to the concealment of his face, and spoke not.

Had the wretch a heart, after all?

As I turned to depart he lifted up his face, and all that was amiable in its expression had fled. With a calm sneer he said, "May I trouble you, Mr Rattlin, for those letters which I handed over to you for your perusal?"

"I shall keep them."

"Is your code of equity as low as mine? They are my property; I paid dearly enough for them. And what says your code of honour to such conduct?"

"There, take your detested forgeries! We shall meet in London."

"Mr Rattlin forgets that he is a prisoner."

"Absurd! The charge cannot be sustained for a moment."

"Be it so. Peradventure, I shall be in London before you."

CHAPTER FIFTY NINE.

LISTENERS SELDOM HEAR GOOD THINGS OF THEMSELVES--RALPH AT A DREADFUL DISCOUNT WITH HIS MESSMATES, BUT CONTRIVES TO SETTLE HIS ACCOUNTS WITH HIS PRINc.i.p.aL DEBTOR.

I left him, with a strong foreboding that he would work me some direful mischief.

For the long day I sat, with my head buried in my hands on the sordid table of our berth. I ate not, I spoke not. The ribaldry of my coa.r.s.e a.s.sociates moved me not; their boisterous and vulgar mirth aroused me not. They thought me, owing to my arrest, and my antic.i.p.ations of its consequences, torpid with fear. They were deceived. I was never more alive. My existence was--if I may so speak--glowing and fiery hot; my sense of being was intense with various misery.

Towards evening, another piece of intelligence reached me, that alarmed and astounded me. Since the laying on of the one lash on the back of Joshua Daunton, our old servant had descended from the mizzen-top, again to wait upon us. He was, in his way, an insatiate news-gatherer; but he was as liberal in dispensing it as he was eager in acquiring it.

The midshipmen were drinking, out of the still unbroken cups and two or three tin pannikins, their grog at eight o'clock in the evening, when our unshod and dirty attendant spoke thus:

"Oh, Mr Pigtop!--such news!--such strange news! You'll be so very sorry to hear it, sir, and so will all the young gentlemen."

"What, has the ship tumbled overboard, or the pig-ballast mutinied for arrears of pay?"

"Oh, sir, ten thousand times worse than that! That thief of the world, sir, Joshua Daunton, is not to have his six dozen, after all, though he did corrupt all the midshipmen's clothes, sir. Dr Thompson has taken him into his own cabin, and nothing is now too good for him."