Two Maiden Aunts Part 17

'Oh, you won't tire me, Kiah,' said the stranger, lying back on the gra.s.s with his arms under his head, while he followed with his eyes the flight of a lark up into the untroubled blue sky. 'I've not so many friends to talk to that I get tired of the sound of their voices.'

'You're maybe not from these parts, sir?'

'No, I've been away from England for years,' was the answer. 'I've had some queer ups and downs, and tried being a prisoner, and come very near to leaving my bones in foreign parts.'

Kiah touched his hat with increased respect.

'I ask your pardon, sir. I didn't guess as you'd seen service.'

'No, not your sort of service, Kiah; nothing so fine. I'm nothing grander than a West Indian planter.'

'Well, sir, it's welcome home to you, all the same.'

'Well, I suppose my country is home,' said the stranger, rather sadly, 'but I don't know about the welcome. I've outstayed the time for that, Kiah, and there's no one now will care to see me back.'

'I wouldn't be too sure of that if I was you, sir, especially if you've women folks belonging to you. It's wonderful, sir, how they keep a man's place warm for him, and a deal more than we deserve, I say, that go knocking about the world all our lives, and coming back useless old hulks when we can't do for ourselves any longer. Why, there's my sister Martha, with a man and children of her own to think about, and yet, when I come back with my hand and a half and my timber toe, "Kiah," says she, "you're kindly welcome, so you are, and you shall have a chair by our fire as long as we have a fire ourselves, my dear."

And as for our young ladies, I doubt there'll be n.o.body sit in the young master's place till he comes back himself to fill it.'

'Oh, you and your young master have been good brothers, I daresay,'

said the stranger, looking up at the singing lark with rather sad eyes.

'Not so extra particular for me, sir, though Martha and me was good friends enough; and as for the young gentleman, the ladies aren't his sisters but his aunts, you see, he having neither father nor mother, brother nor sister. Bless 'em, they're that wrapped up in him; and yet they haven't spoilt him, not they. "You see, Kiah," Miss Angel says to me, "we feel like as if we must answer to his dear papa, our brother that's dead, for how we bring up his boy; we daren't be pleasing ourselves, Kiah," says she. Dear, now, that's one thing I'm bound to own I miss down here, them coming in and out. But, if you'll believe it, sir, I've got a letter Miss Angel wrote me herself. I got my mate's missus, that's a fine scholar, to write to her for me, and there come a beautiful answer back; leastways them as read it to me says it's written like a book. I can make shift with a chapter of the Bible, but I can't get on with handwriting, you see. But it sounds just like as if she was talking to me, and she sends me a sovereign for a poor soul that lost her husband in a brush in the Channel last month--she's that feeling, Miss Angel, and she knows what it is to have them belonging to her in danger.'

The gentleman put his hand in his pocket.

'I'll give you something for her too,' he said; 'and mind you, Kiah, there's a worse thing than having those belonging to you in danger, and that's to have no one belonging to you at all. I'm staying at Plymouth for a bit, and I shall see you again.'

'Well, I hope you will, sir, and I'm very grateful to you, I'm sure, and so will she be; and you'll make yourself some friends, I doubt, if you be short of relations.'

And then, after fumbling in his pockets, he produced a letter, wrapped up with much care in a sheet of paper.

'May be, sir, you'd like to see the young lady's letter. No, you needn't read it all at once, for you see it's a long letter and very beautiful, and you being a scholar you'll understand that, and if you're coming in to-morrow you'd bring it back to me.'

The stranger promised and put the precious paper in his pocket, and then strolled away along the cliffs.

He had nowhere particular to go and nothing particular to do, only he liked to be out here, where the breeze blew salt and fresh in his face, and where he could see the dancing, plunging waves, and the beautiful line of coast. He had had plenty of hard work in the last few years, and had been tired and ill when he started a few months before for the country which, as he had said to Kiah, must always be home.

And now he found himself wondering whether it were worth while to get strong again, and to be brave and successful as he had been lately, when there was no one in all the world to whom his success made any difference. He had grown more happy and hopeful since he had come to Plymouth, for in those days, when the safety of England was depending from hour to hour upon her coast defences, the very life and heart of England seemed to be stirring and throbbing in the great seaport town.

Even now, in these happier days, when no hostile ships are waiting for our weak moments in the Channel, we can hardly stand on Plymouth Hoe and see the stately ships in the port, and the guns ready to thunder defiance from the citadel, and think of Drake turning cheerily from his game of bowls to meet the Armada 'For G.o.d and Queen Bess,' without thrilling and glowing at the thought of the little land that rules the waves. And in those days every one was so eager and patriotic, and so ready and willing to fight Boney if he came, that our traveller had caught the enthusiasm too, and was wondering how he could give to his country's service the life that seemed of little use to any one else.

Here, on the coast, where the danger was most real and present, people drew together in the sympathy of the one great anxiety, and the lonely man felt as if, in coming back to England, he had really got among friends, who were all ready to talk and tell the latest news and discuss the common safety with him as if he were indeed one of themselves.

He liked the fisher folk, too, in the villages round about, they were so frank and simple and kindly; and once or twice he had been out in their boats, for after the hot southern climate he had come from he felt as if he could not have too much of the fresh salt air. And there was always excitement, too, in the Channel in those days, when even a fishing-boat might have to make sail and get away at her best speed before a French privateer.

When he got back to Plymouth late in the evening after his talk with Kiah Parker he found every one in a state of great excitement. The landlady of the lodgings he had taken during his stay there was eager to tell him the latest news. A frigate had come into the port just at sundown with a fine prize--a French gun-brig, taken after a stubborn fight in which both vessels had suffered severely. The first lieutenant had brought the ship in, the captain being wounded and disabled, but the whole place was ringing with his praise.

It had been a most brilliant capture, only the greatest daring and most skilful management could have carried it out.

Two brigs had both attacked the English frigate, and she had made a feint of flight and then turned on them and managed to sink one and disable the other. She would have to wait for repairs. So much the good landlady had told before her lodger could ask a question, and when she paused for breath he inquired whether she knew the name of the English ship. Certainly, the _Mermaid_ frigate, Captain Maitland; heaven send he was not badly hurt, poor gentleman! Had there been any loss? Not many killed, she thought, a matter of one or two men, and one officer downed, but a many wounded, they were in hospital; and she branched off into stories of sailor friends of her own, while her lodger tried to remember why the name of the ship and the captain were so familiar to him. It came back to him later in the evening, when he was reading his paper after a solitary supper. It was a midshipman of the _Mermaid_ whom he had nursed in a fever in his far-away West Indian home, and it was the praises of Captain Maitland that the lad was always singing. What a pleasant visitor he had been! What a regretful longing he had left behind him for such another blithe stout-hearted English boy who might call that house his home! His late host wondered if he were in Plymouth, and decided to try and find him out next morning, but one of his fishermen friends came to invite him to go on a two days' cruise, and he accepted readily.

It was a bright day, but there were clouds on the horizon and a fresh breeze springing up; there might be a capful of wind at night, the fisherman said, but the gentleman didn't mind that, he knew. The gentleman said he would like it all the better, and he won the men's hearts as they went along before the wind by his questions about navigation, about rocks and shoals and sandbanks, and the adventures which they were ready enough to tell over again. And their guest had stories of his own to tell, about marvellous adventures with mutinous slaves in the West Indies, and of how he had escaped from their hands to be taken by a French privateer, and was freed by a storm in which the ship went down. And in the interest of the tales and the weather and the fishing he almost forgot about the excitement of the day before, for the bringing in of a prize was a common enough event in war time.

In the afternoon the wind freshened to something like a gale; the fishermen were too busy and alert for talk, and their guest was left to his own thoughts. And then he found himself going back to his conversation with the old sailor. What a good cheery old fellow he was, and what a happy view of life he managed to take after all his ups and downs! And one piece of advice which he had given so frankly to his new acquaintance kept running in the stranger's head, it had been there ever since, though he wouldn't let himself think of it. 'It's wonderful,' Kiah had said, 'how women folks keep a man's place warm for him,' and involuntarily he found himself thinking how it would be if he should test the old man's words on his own account.

'No, it's nonsense for me,' he thought; 'she probably doesn't remember that she ever saw me, and since then she can't have heard very attractive accounts. No, no, better not turn up to be an embarra.s.sment to them if they're alive, for even that I don't know.'

Just then one of the fishermen caught his attention by a remark to his companion: 'Ay, poor old Kiah'll take it hard, such a work as he made about him; but after all he couldn't look for better, only it's hard like when the young uns go.'

'Do you know Kiah Parker?' asked the stranger.

'Ay, surely sir, everybody knows Kiah. Poor old chap, he'll be breaking his heart over his young master, as he calls him, for I doubt 'twas him was drowned off the _Mermaid_ in the tussle the other day.'

'Drowned, was he? Is it certain?' asked the visitor, with sudden interest.

'Ay, so they say, not a doubt of it. It's a pity, he was as smart a middy as any afloat, so they say. I saw the bo's'un myself, that was piping his eye like a baby to think of him safe ash.o.r.e and the lad at the bottom.'

The stranger did not answer. His thoughts had flown to Kiah's young ladies, waiting and watching at home for the boy whom no favouring wind would blow home to them. How strange it seemed, he thought, that that young life should be cut off when so many would mourn for it, and that he, whose life or death made no difference to any one, should have come safely through so many strange accidents and changes and chances of fortune! And then he suddenly remembered that letter which Kiah had given him, and which had been in his pocket unthought of ever since.

He felt as if he hardly liked to look at it now, as if it were presumption to read the words of one on whom so terrible a grief had fallen. But he took it out of his pocket, and unfolded it from its wrapping, and glanced at the beginning by the red light of the stormy sunset which was beginning to blaze in the western sky. And as he did so the heading caught his eye: 'Oakfield Cottage.'

He gave a great start, and half dropped the closely-written sheet. And then he laughed at himself. There might be other Oakfield Cottages in the world besides the one which stirred such a host of boyish memories by the very sound of its name. He turned the letter over to look at the signature. There it was, plain enough in the clear, legible writing:

'Your sincere friend, 'ANGELICA WYNDHAM.'

The reader put his hand before his eyes for a moment, seeming to feel again a pair of soft arms round his neck, a curly head pressed against his cheek, while a trembling child's voice whispered to him not to cry because they would wake Betty, and papa and mamma would come back.

Little Angel, the little sister whom he had never seen but that once when they grew near together in a few minutes under the shadow of a great grief, she might well have grown into such a woman as old Kiah had spoken of with loving pride.

'Boat ahoy!'

The shout came faint and far away across the gleaming tossing water from where that red glow burned in the west. The fishermen were on the look out at once, a hail in those days might mean something serious; but their pa.s.senger sat with the letter unread in his hand, unheeding anything, reading instead a page out of the long ago past.

But after a minute or two the fishermen's excited words brought him back to the present.

'Boat? Not a bit of it. 'Tis a bit of a raft, some poor chap on a spar. English too, 'twas an English shout. Well, and if he was Boney himself we're bound to get him aboard.'

'Where is he?' asked the stranger, shading his eyes from the dazzling sun rays.

Yonder, sir, don't you see him, there, just where you're looking? We'll have him aboard in a minute.'

All eyes were fixed on the black moving object in the water, which, as they came nearer, proved to be a large piece of wreckage to which a figure was clinging. Presently it could be seen that the figure was that of a boy, who seemed to be holding to the tossing spars with the last effort of his strength, for when he was hailed again he made no reply, only lifting his head for a moment.

'He'll hardly get hold of a rope,' said one of the men doubtfully; 'he's about done for, that last hail was as much as he could do.'

The next moment the ma.s.s of wreckage disappeared for a moment, and when it rose again there was a cry of dismay from the boat, for the boy was gone. Another minute showed him lifted high on the crest of a wave, and, before any one else could move, the strange gentleman was overboard and striking out boldly towards him. A few breathless moments, then he had hold of him, and immediately a rope, thrown by a powerful arm, struck the water close to them. It was the work of a minute to knot it about his waist, and he and his unconscious burden were dragged on board amid the congratulations of the fishermen.

'Well done, sir! Didn't know you could swim like that. Never gave us a chance, no more you did. Take a sup o' this,' and a can was put to his lips; 'never mind about the lad, he'll do well enough. Lift his head a bit, Jack, and loose his jacket. What's that bag hung round his neck? Why, bless us, he's an officer, he is--see his clothes; may be 'tis Kiah's middy; there'd be a thing if we'd picked him up!'

'He's alive, isn't he?' gasped the stranger.