Charlie to the Rescue, R. M. Ballantyne [classic english novels TXT] 📗

Chapter Nine. Shank Reveals Something More of his Character.

Taking his way to the railway station Shank Leather found himself ere long at his mother’s door.

He entered without knocking.

“Shank!” exclaimed Mrs Leather and May in the same breath.

“Ay, mother, it’s me. A bad shilling, they say, always turns up. I always turn up, therefore I am a bad shilling! Sound logic that, eh, May?”

“I’m glad to see you, dear Shank,” said careworn Mrs Leather, laying her knitting-needles on the table; “you know I’m always glad to see you, but I’m naturally surprised, for this visit is out of your regular time.”

“Has anything happened?” asked May anxiously. And May looked very sweet, almost pretty, when she was anxious. A year had refined her features, developed her mind and body, and almost converted her into a little woman. Indeed, mentally, she had become more of a woman than many girls in her neighbourhood who were much older. This was in all likelihood one of the good consequences of adversity.

“Ay, May, something has happened,” answered the youth, flinging himself gaily into an arm-chair and stretching out his legs towards the fire; “I have thrown up my situation. Struck work. That’s all.”

“Shank!”

“Just so. Don’t look so horrified, mother; you’ve no occasion to, for I have the offer of a better situation. Besides—ha! ha! old Crossley—close-fisted, crabbed, money-making, skin-flint old Crossley—is going to pray for me. Think o’ that, mother—going to pray for me!”

“Shank, dear boy,” returned his mother, “don’t jest about religious things.”

“You don’t call old Crossley a religious thing, do you? Why, mother, I thought you had more respect for him than that comes to; you ought at least to consider his years!”

“Come, Shank,” returned Mrs Leather, with a deprecating smile, “be a good boy and tell me what you mean—and about this new situation.”

“I just mean that my friend and chum and old schoolfellow Ralph Ritson—jovial, dashing, musical, handsome Ralph—you remember him—has got me a situation in California.”

“Ralph Ritson?” repeated Mrs Leather, with a little sigh and an uneasy glance at her daughter, whose face had flushed at the mention of the youth’s name.

“Yes,” continued Shank, in a graver tone, for he had observed the flush on May’s face. “Ralph’s father, who is manager of a gold mine in California, has asked his son to go out and assist him at a good salary, and to take a clerk out with him—a stout vigorous fellow, well up in figures, book-keeping, carpenting, etcetera, and ready to turn his hand to anything, and Ralph has chosen me! What d’ee think o’ that?”

From her silence and expression it was evident that the poor lady’s thoughts were not quite what her son had hoped.

“Why don’t you congratulate me, mother?” he asked, somewhat petulantly.

“Would it not be almost premature,” she replied, with a forced smile, “to congratulate you before I know anything about the salary or the prospects held out to you? Besides, I cannot feel as enthusiastic about your friend Ralph as you do. I don’t doubt that he is a well-meaning youth, but he is reckless. If he had only been a man like your former friend, poor Charlie Brooke, it would have been different, but—”

“Well, mother, it’s of no use wishing somebody to be like somebody else. We must just take folk as we find them, and I find Ralph Ritson a remarkably fine, sensible fellow, who has a proper appreciation of his friends. And he’s not a bad fellow. He and Charlie Brooke were fond of each other when we were all schoolboys together—at least he was fond of Charlie, like everybody else. But whether we like him or not does not matter now, for the thing is fixed. I have accepted his offer, and thrown old Jacob overboard.”

“Dear Shank, don’t be angry if I am slow to appreciate this offer,” said the poor lady, laying aside her knitting and clasping her hands before her on the table, as she looked earnestly into her son’s face, “but you must see that it has come on me very suddenly, and I’m so sorry to hear that you have parted with good old Mr Crossley in anger—”

“We didn’t part in anger,” interrupted Shank. “We were only a little less sweet on each other than usual. There was no absolute quarrel. D’you think he’d have promised to pray for me if there was?”

“Have you spoken yet to your father?” asked the lady.

“How could I? I’ve not seen him since the thing was settled. Besides, what’s the use? He can do nothing for me, an’ don’t care a button what I do or where I go.”

“You are wrong, Shank, in thinking so. I know that he cares for you very much indeed. If he can do nothing for you now, he has at least given you your education, without which you could not do much for yourself.”

“Well, of course I shall tell him whenever I see him,” returned the youth, somewhat softened; “and I’m aware he has a sort of sneaking fondness for me; but I’m not going to ask his advice, because he knows nothing about the business. Besides, mother, I am old enough to judge for myself, and mean to take the advice of nobody.”

“You are indeed old enough to judge for yourself,” said Mrs Leather, resuming her knitting, “and I don’t wish to turn you from your plans. On the contrary, I will pray that God’s blessing and protection may accompany you wherever you go, but you should not expect me to be instantaneously jubilant over an arrangement which will take you away from me, for years perhaps.”

This last consideration seemed to have some weight with the selfish youth.

“Well, well, mother,” he said, rising, “don’t take on about that. Travelling is not like what it used to be. A trip over the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains is nothing to speak of now—a mere matter of a few weeks—so that a fellow can take a run home at any time to say ‘How do’ to his people. I’m going down now to see Smithers and tell him the news.”

“Stay, I’ll go with you—a bit of the way,” cried May, jumping up and shaking back the curly brown hair which still hung in native freedom—and girlish fashion—on her shoulders.

May had a charming and rare capacity for getting ready to go out at a moment’s notice. She merely threw on a coquettish straw hat, which had a knack of being always at hand, and which clung to her pretty head with a tenacity that rendered strings or elastic superfluous. One of her brother’s companions—we don’t know which—was once heard to say with fervour that no hat would be worth its ribbons that didn’t cling powerfully to such a head without assistance! A shawl too, or cloak, was always at hand, somehow, and had this not been so May would have thrown over her shoulders an antimacassar or table-cloth rather than cause delay,—at least we think so, though we have no absolute authority for making the statement.

“Dear Shank,” she said, clasping both hands over his arm as they walked slowly down the path that led to the shore, “is it really all true that you have been telling us? Have you fixed to go off with—with Mr Ritson to California?”

“Quite true; I never was more in earnest in my life. By the way, sister mine, what made you colour up so when Ralph’s name was mentioned? There, you’re flushing again! Are you in love with him?”

“No, certainly not,” answered the girl, with an air and tone of decision that made her brother laugh.

“Well, you needn’t flare up so fiercely. You might be in love with a worse man. But why, then, do you blush?”

May was silent, and hung down her head.

“Come, May, you’ve never had any secrets from me. Surely you’re not going to begin now—on the eve of my departure to a foreign land?”

“I would rather not talk about him at all,” said the girl, looking up entreatingly.

But Shank looked down upon her sternly. He had assumed the parental rôle. “May, there is something in this that you ought not to conceal. I have a right to know it, as your brother—your protector.”

Innocent though May was, she could not repress a faint smile at the idea of a protector who had been little else than a cause of anxiety in the past, and was now about to leave her to look after herself, probably for years to come. But she answered frankly, while another and a deeper blush overspread her face—

“I did not mean to speak of it, Shank, as you knew nothing, and I had hoped would never know anything about it, but since you insist, I must tell you that—that Mr Ritson, I’m afraid, loves me at least he—”

“Afraid! loves you! How do you know?” interrupted Shank quickly.

“Well, he said so—the last time we met.”

“The rascal! Had he the audacity to ask you to marry him?—him—a beggar, without a sixpence except what his father gives him?”

“No, Shank, I would not let him get the length of that. I told him I was too young to—to think about such matters at all, and said that he must not speak to me again in such a way. But I was so surprised, flurried, and distressed, that I don’t clearly remember what I said.”

“And what did he say?” asked Shank, forgetting the parental rôle for a moment, and looking at May with a humorous smile.

“Indeed I can hardly tell. He made a great many absurd protestations, begged me to give him no decided answer just then, and said something about letting him write to me, but all I am quite sure of is that at last I had the courage to utter a very decided No, and then ran away and left him.”

“That was too sharp, May. Ralph is a first-rate fellow, with capital prospects. His father is rich and can give him a good start in life. He may come back in a few years with a fortune—not a bad kind of husband for a penniless lass.”

“Shank!” exclaimed May, letting go her brother’s arm and facing him with flashing eyes and heightened colour, “do you really think that a fortune would make me marry a man whom I did not love?”

“Certainly not, my dear sis,” said the youth, taking May’s hand and drawing it again through his arm with an approving smile. “I never for a moment thought you capable of such meanness, but that is a very different thing from slamming the door in a poor fellow’s face. You’re not in love with anybody else. Ralph is a fine handsome young fellow. You might grow to like him in time—and if you did, a fortune, of course, would be no disadvantage. Besides, he is to be my travelling companion, and might write to you about me if I were ill, or chanced to meet with an accident and were unable to write myself—don’t you know?”

“He could in that case write to mother,” said May, simply.

“So he could!” returned Shank, laughing. “I never thought o’ that, my sharp sister.”

They had reached the shore by that time. The tide was out; the sea was calm and the sun glinted brightly on the wavelets that sighed rather than broke upon the sands.

For some distance they sauntered in silence by the margin of the sea. The mind of each was busy with the same thought. Each was aware of that, and for some time neither seemed able to break the silence. The timid girl recovered her courage before the self-reliant