The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales Part 8

He made no intimate friends at Cambridge; yet was popular and something of a figure in his College, which had marked him down for high--perhaps the highest--university honours, and was pleasantly astonished to find him also a good cricketer. His good looks attracted men; they asked his name, were told it, and exclaimed, "Bracy? Not the man Trinity is running for Senior Wrangler?" With this double reputation he might have won a host of friends, and his father and Miss Bracy would gladly have welcomed one, in hope that such companionship might exorcise the ghost: but he kept his way, liking and liked by men, yet aloof; with many acquaintances, censorious of none, influenced by none; avoiding when he disapproved, but not judging, and in no haste even to disapprove; easy to approach, and almost eager for goodwill, yet in the end inaccessible.

His first Easter vacation he spent with a reading-party in c.u.mberland.

There he first tasted the "sacred fury" of the mountains and mountain-climbing, and in Switzerland the next August it grew to be a pa.s.sion. He returned to it again and again, in c.u.mberland playing at the game with half a dozen fellow-undergraduates whom he had bitten with the mania; but in Switzerland during the Long vacations giving himself over to a glut of it, with only a guide and porter for company-- sometimes alone, if he could ever be said to be alone. As in mathematics so in his sport, the cold heights were the mistresses he wooed; the peaks called to him, the rare atmosphere, the glittering wastes. He neither scorned danger nor was daunted by it. Below in the forests he would sing aloud, but the summits held him silent. As an old pastor at Zermatt told Mr. Frank, he would come down from a mountain "like Moses, with his face illumined."

He started on his third visit to Switzerland early in July: in the second week in August Miss Bracy and Mr. Frank were to join him at Chamounix, and thence the three would make a tour together. He started in the highest spirits, and halted at the gate to wave his ice-axe defiantly. . . .

VI.

The clergyman who ministered to the little tin English Church boarded at the big hotel, which kept a bedroom and a sitting-room at his disposal.

They faced north from the back of the building, which stood against the mountain-side; but the sitting-room had a second window at the corner of the block, and from this the eye went up over a plantation of dark firs to the white snowfields of the Col and the dark jagged wall of the Aiguille du Geant--distant, yet as clear as if stencilled against the blue heaven. It was a delectable vision; but the clergyman, being short-sighted as a mole, had never seen it. He wore spectacles with a line running horizontally across them, and through these he peered at Mr. Frank and Miss Bracy as if uncertain of their distance.

Mr. Frank, in a suit of black, sat at the little round table in the centre of the room, pressing his finger-tips into the soft nap of a gaudy French table-cloth. Miss Bracy stood by the window with her back to the room, but she was listening. She too wore black. The fourth person, at the little clergyman's elbow, was Christian the guide.

It was he who spoke, while Mr. Frank dug his fingers deeper, and the clergyman nodded at every pause sympathetically, and both kept their eyes on the table-cloth, the pink and crimson roses of which on their background of buff and maroon were to one a blur only, to the other a pattern bitten on his brain.

"It must have been between noon and one o'clock"--the guide was saying-- "when we crossed the Col and began on the rocks. I was leading, of course; the Herr next, and Michel"--this was their porter--"behind.

We had halted and lunched at the foot of the rocks. They were nasty, with a coating, for the most part, of thin ice which we must knock away; but not really dangerous. The Herr was silent; not singing--he had been singing and laughing all through the morning--but in high spirits.

He kept his breath now for business. I never knew him fatigued; and that day I had to beg him once or twice not to press the pace.

Michel was tired, I think, and the wine he had taken earlier had upset his stomach; also he had been earning wages all the winter in England as a gentleman's valet and this was his first ascent for the year, so it may have been that his nerve was wrong.

"The first trouble we had with him was soon after starting on the rocks.

We were roped; and at the first awkward place he said, 'If one of us should slip now, we are all lost.' The Herr was annoyed, as I have never seen him; and I too was angry, the more because what he said had some truth, but it was not, you understand, the moment to say it. After this we had no great trouble until we had pa.s.sed the place where Herr Mummery turned back. About thirty metres from the summit we came to a bit requiring caution; a small _couloir_ filled with good ice but at a slope--so!" Here Christian held his open hand aslant, but Mr. Frank did not lift his eyes. "They anch.o.r.ed themselves and held me while I cut steps--large steps--across it. On the other side there was no good foothold within length of the rope, so I cast off, and the Herr came across in my steps with Michel well anch.o.r.ed. It was now Michel's turn, and having now the extra length of rope brought across by the Herr, I could go higher to a rock and moor myself firmly. The Herr was right enough where he stood, but not to bear any strain; so I told him to cast off that I might look to Michel alone. While he unknotted his rope I turned to examine the rock, and at that instant . . . Michel did not understand, or was impatient to get it over . . . at any rate he started to cross just as the Herr had both hands busy. He slipped at the third step . . . I heard, and turned again in time to see the jerk come.

The Herr bent backward, but it was useless: he was torn from his foothold--"

The little clergyman nodded and broke in: "They were found, close together, on a ledge two thousand feet below. Your son, sir, was not much mutilated, though many limbs were broken--and his spine and neck.

The bodies were found the next day and brought down. We did all that was possible. Shall I take you and madame to the grave?"

But the guide had not finished. "He fell almost on top of Michel, and the two went spinning down the _couloir_ out of sight. I do not think that Michel uttered any cry: but the Herr, as the strain came and he bent backwards against it, seeking to get his axe free and plant it . . . though that would have been useless . . . the Herr cried once and very loud . . . such a strange cry!--"

"Madame will be glad," interrupted the clergyman again, who had heard Christian's story at the inquest,--"Madame will be glad"--he addressed Miss Bracy, who, as he was dimly aware, had been standing throughout with face averted, staring up at the far-away cliffs. "The young man's last thoughts--"

But Christian was not to be denied. He had told the story a score of times during the last three days, and had a.s.sured himself by every evidence that he could tell it effectively. He was something of an egoist, too, and the climax he had in mind was that of his own emotions in recrossing the fatal _couloir_ ropeless, with shaking knees, haunted by the Englishman's last cry.

"Such a strange cry," he persisted. "His eyes were on mine for a moment . . . then they turned from me to the _couloir_ and the great s.p.a.ce below, It was then he uttered it, stretching out his hands as the rope pulled him forward--yet not as one afraid. 'Mother!' he cried: just that, and only once--'Mother!'"

Mr. Frank looked up sharply, and turned his head towards Miss Bracy.

The clergyman and the guide also had their eyes on her, the latter waiting for the effect of his climax.

"It must be a consolation to you--" the clergyman began to mumble.

But Miss Bracy did not turn. Mr. Frank withdrew his eyes from her and fixed them again on the gaudy tablecloth. She continued to stare up at he clean ice-fields, the pencilled cliffs. She did not even move.

So Ba.s.sett was avenged.

THE CAPTURE OF THE _BURGOMEISTER VAN DER WERF.

A REPORTED TALE OF A DUTCHMAN AND A PRIVATEER

Yes, a heap of folks have admired that teapot. Hundreds of pounds we must have been offered for it, first and last, since the night my wife's grandfather, Captain John Tackabird--or Cap'n Jacka, as he was always called--brought it into the family over the back-garden wall, and his funny little wife went for him with the broom-handle. Poor souls, they were always a most affectionate couple, and religious too, but not much to look at; and when he took and died of a seizure in the Waterloo year she wasn't long in following.

Ay, ay--very pleasant in their lives! though not what you would call lovely. I've heard that, through being allowed by his mother to run too soon, Tackabird's legs grew up so bandy, the other children used to drive their hoops between them. And next, at fifteen, what must he do but upset a bee-skip! A bee stung him, and all his hair came off, and for three parts of his natural life be went about as bald as an egg.

To cap everything, he'd scarcely began courting when he lost his left eye in a little job with the preventive men; but none of this seemed to make any difference to the woman. Peters her maiden name was--Mary Polly Peters; a little figure with beady black eyes. She believed that all Captain Jacka's defects would be set right in another world, though not to hinder her recognising him; and meantime the more he got chipped about the more she doted on what was left of the man.

Everyone in Polperro respected the couple, for Mary Polly kept herself _to_ herself, and Captain Jacka was known for the handiest man in the haven to run a Guernsey cargo or handle a privateer, and this though he took to privateering late in life, in the service of the "Hand and Glove" company of adventurers. By and by Mr. Zephaniah Job, who looked after these affairs in Polperro--free-trade and privateering both-- started a second company called the "Pride of the West," and put Captain Jacka to command their first ship, the old _Pride_ lugger; a very good choice, seeing that for three years together he cleared over forty per cent. on the adventurers' capital.

The more was his disappointment when they built a new lugger, the _Unity_, one hundred and sixty tons, and Job gave the command to a smart young fellow called d.i.c.k Hewitt, whose father held shares in the concern and money to buy votes beside. I've told you how Jacka swallowed his pride and sailed as mate under this Hewitt, and how he managed to heap coals of fire on the company's head. Well that's one story and this is another. I'm telling now of the second boat, when Captain Jacka, or, as you might say, Providence--for what happened was none of his seeking, and the old boy acted throughout as innocent as a sucking-child--left off shaming the company as honest men, and hit them slap in their pockets, where they could feel.

The bottom of the quarrel was that Mr. Job, the agent, took a dislike to Jacka. He was one of your sour, long-jawed sort, a bit of a lawyer, with a temper like Old Nick, and just the amount of decent feeling that makes a man the angrier for knowing he's unjust, especially when the fellow that's. .h.i.t takes it smiling instead of cursing; and more especially still when he carries but one eye in his head, and be dashed if you can tell whether its twinkling back at you out of pure sweetness of nature or because it sees a joke of its own. I believe Captain Jacka twinkled back on Mr. Job as he twinkled on the rest of the world, willing to be friends and search for the best side of everyone, if he might be allowed. But Mr. Job couldn't be sure of this, and I'm fain to admit the old boy was a trial to him, with his easy-going ways.

Job, you see, was a stickler for order; kept his accounts like the Bank of England, all in the best penmanship, with black and red ink, and signed his name at the end with a beautiful flourish in the shape of a swan, all done with one stroke--he having been a school-master in his youth, and highly respected at it until his unfortunate temper made him shy a child out of window, which drove him out of the business, as such things will. In young d.i.c.k Hewitt he had a captain to his mind: soap and tidiness and punctuality, and oil and rotten-stone for the very gun-swivels; all the crew touching caps, and nerve and seamanship on top of all. Jacka admired the young spark, for all his boastfulness; for his own part he could do anything with a ship but keep her tidy.

"What's the use of giving yourself on-necessary work?" he'd say in his mild manner, if he saw one of his hands coiling a rope or housing a sail neatly. "We may be wantin' it any minute, and then you'll be sorry for labour thrown away." The dirtiness of his decks was a caution, and this was the queerer because in his own parlour you might have eaten your dinner off the floor. "I reckon," he'd explain, "when the Lord made sea and land He meant there should be a difference, and likewise when He made man and woman," and stuck to his untidiness afloat because it made him the gladder to be at home again. Mary Polly, though she lived within forty yards of the sea, and was proud of her husband as any mortal woman, would never step on board a boat. The sight of one (she declared) turned her stomach, and she married their only child to a house-decorator.

All this untidiness was poison to Mr. Job, and it worked inside the man until he was just one simmering pot of wrath, and liable to boil over at the leastest little extra provocation.

One day--it was the tenth of July in the year 'nine; Peter's Tide, and the Upper Town crowded with peep-shows and ranter-go-rounds, and folks keeping the feast--Mr. Job takes a stroll down the quay past the sweet-standings, and c.o.c.ks his eye over the edge, down upon the deck of the old _Pride_ that was moored alongside and fitting out for a fresh cruise. And there, in the shade of the quay wall, sat old Captain Jacka with a hammer, tap-tapping at a square of tinplate.

"Hullo!" Mr. Job hailed. "Where's the crew?"

"Up riding the hobby-horses, I b'lieve," answered Jacka, as friendly as you please.

"And in thirty-six hours you've engaged to have the _Pride_ ready for sea!"

"She's about ready now," said Jacka, stopping to put a peppermint in his mouth. He had bought a packet off one of the sweet-standings, and spread it on the deck beside him. "Feast-day doesn't come round more than once a year, and I haven't the heart to deny them, with the work so well forward, too." The old fellow fairly beamed across his deck, the raffle of which was something cruel. "There's a fat woman up there, too. I'm told she's well worth seeing."

"You call that dirty mess 'being fit for sea'?" asked Mr. Job, nodding down, but bottling up his anger after a fashion. "Look here, Captain Tackabird, you're a servant of the company; and I'll trouble you to stand up and behave respectful when the company's agent pays you a visit of inspection."

"Cert'nly, Mr. Job." Jacka scrambled up to his feet as mild as milk.

"Beg your pardon, sir, I thought you'd just strolled down to pa.s.s the time of day."

"And don't flash that plaguey thing in my eyes, as you're doing."

For Jacka was standing in the sunshine now, with the tinplate in his hands blazing away like a looking-gla.s.s.

"Very well, sir. Perhaps you'll allow me to fetch a hat out of the cabin; for my head feels the heat powerful, being so bald. They do say it twinkles a bit, too, when the sun catches it the right way."

So down he went to the cabin, and up he came again to find Mr. Job with his best coat-tails spread, seated on the carriage of the _Pride's_ stern-chaser.

"Oh, Lord!" he couldn't help groaning.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing, Mr. Job, nothing." The fact was, Jacka had smeared a dollop of honey on that very gun-carriage to keep the wasps off him while he worked. The sweet-standings, you see, always drew a swarm of wasps on feast-days, and the old man never could abide them since his accident with the bee-skip.

Mr. Job sat there with his mouth screwed up, eyeing the whole length of the lugger.