The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands, Robert Michael Ballantyne [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

wind would hold as it was a little longer, they should soon pass through the Downs, and say good-bye to the sea breezes and the roll of the ocean wave.


CHAPTER THIRTEEN.


BOB QUEEKER COMES OUT VERY STRONG INDEED.

It is both curious and interesting to observe the multitude of unlikely ways in which the ends of justice are ofttimes temporarily defeated. Who would have imagined that an old pump would be the cause of extending Morley Jones's term of villainy, of disarranging the deep-laid plans of Mr Larks, of effecting the deliverance of Billy Towler, and of at once agonising the body and ecstatifying the soul of Robert Queeker? Yet so it was. If the old pump had not existed--if its fabricator had never been born--there is every probability that Mr Jones's career would have been cut short at an earlier period. That he would, in his then state of mind, have implicated Billy, who would have been transported along with him and almost certainly ruined; that Mr Queeker would--but hold. Let us present the matter in order.

Messrs. Merryheart and Dashope were men of the law, and Mr Robert Queeker was a man of their office--in other words, a clerk--not a "confidential" one, but a clerk, nevertheless, in whose simple-minded integrity they had much confidence. Bob, as his fellow-clerks styled him, was sent on a secret mission to Ramsgate. The reader will observe how fortunate it was that his mission was _secret_, because it frees us from the necessity of setting down here an elaborate and tedious explanation as to how, when, and where the various threads of his mission became interwoven with the fabric of our tale. Suffice it to say that the only part of his mission with which we are acquainted is that which had reference to two men--one of whom was named Mr Larks, the other Morley Jones.

Now, it so happened that Queeker's acquaintance, Mr Durant, had an intimate friend who dwelt near a beautiful village in Kent. When Queeker mentioned the circumstance of the secret mission which called him to Ramsgate, he discovered that the old gentleman was on the point of starting for this village, in company with his daughter and her cousin Fanny.

"You'll travel with us, I hope, Queeker; our roads lie in the same direction, at least a part of the way, you know," said the hearty little old gentleman, with good-nature beaming in every wrinkle, from the crown of his bald head to the last fold of his treble chin; "it will be such a comfort to have you to help me take care of the girls. And if you can spare time to turn aside for a day or two, I promise you a hearty welcome from my friend--whose residence, named Jenkinsjoy, is an antique paradise, and his hospitality unbounded. He has splendid horses, too, and will give you a gallop over as fine a country as exists between this and the British Channel. You ride, of course?"

Queeker admitted that he could ride a little.

"At least," he added, after a pause, "I used frequently to get rides on a cart-horse when I was a very little boy."

So it was arranged that Queeker should travel with them. Moreover, he succeeded in obtaining from his employers permission to delay for three days the prosecution of the mission--which, although secret, was not immediately pressing--in order that he might visit Jenkinsjoy. It was fortunate that, when he went to ask this brief holiday, he found Mr Merryheart in the office. Had it been his mischance to fall upon Dashope, he would have received a blunt refusal and prompt dismissal--so thoroughly were the joys of that gentleman identified with the woes of other people.

But, great though Queeker's delight undoubtedly was on this occasion, it was tempered by a soul-harassing care, which drew forth whole quires of poetical effusions to the moon and other celestial bodies. This secret sorrow was caused by the dreadful and astonishing fact, that, do what he would to the contrary, the weather-cock of his affections was veering slowly but steadily away from Katie, and pointing more and more decidedly towards Fanny Hennings! It is but simple justice to the poor youth to state that he loathed and abhorred himself in consequence.

"There am I," he soliloquised, on the evening before the journey began, "a monster, a brute, a lower animal almost, who have sought with all my strength to gain--perchance _have_ gained--the innocent, trusting heart of Katie Durant, and yet, without really meaning it, but, somehow, without being able to help it, I am--_not_ falling in love; oh! no, perish the thought! but, but--falling into something strangely, mysteriously, incomprehensibly, similar to--Oh! base ingrate that I am, is there no way; no back-door by which--?"

Starting up, and seizing a pen, at this point of irrepressible inspiration, he wrote, reading aloud as he set down the burning thoughts--


Oh for a postern in the rear,
Where wretched man might disappear;
And never more should seek her!

Fly, fly to earth's extremest bounds,--


Bounds, mounds, lounds, founds, kounds, downds, rounds, pounds, zounds!--hounds--ha! hounds--I have it--


"Fly, fly to earth's extremest bounds,
With huntsmen, horses, horns, and hounds
And die!--dejected Queeker.


"I wonder," thought Queeker, as he sat biting the end of his quill--his usual method of courting inspiration, "I wonder if there is anything prophetic in these lines! Durant said that his friend has splendid horses. They may, perhaps, be hunters! Ha! my early ambition, perchance, youth's fond dream, may yet be realised! But let me not hope. Hope always tells a false as well as flattering tale _to me_. She has ever been, in my experience" (he was bitter at this point) "an incorrigible li--ahem! story-teller."

Striking his clenched fist heavily on the table, Queeker rose, put on his hat, and went round to Mr Durant's merely to inquire whether he could be of any service--not that he could venture to offer assistance in the way of packing, but there _might_ be something such as roping trunks, or writing and affixing addresses, in regard to which he might perhaps render himself useful.

"Why, Miss Durant," he said, on entering, "you are _always_ busy."

"Am I?" said Katie, with a smile, as she rose and shook hands.

"Yes, I--I--assure you, Miss Durant," said Queeker, bowing to Fanny, on whose fat pretty face there was a scarlet flush, the result either of the suddenness of Queeker's entry, or of the suppression of her inveterate desire to laugh, "I assure you that it quite rouses my admiration to observe the ease with which you can turn your hand to anything. You can write out accounts better than any fellow in our office. Then you play and sing with so much ease, and I often find you making clothes for poor people, with pounds of tea and sugar in your pockets, besides many other things, and now, here you are painting like--like--one of the old masters!"

This was quite an unusual burst on the part of Queeker, who felt as though he were making some amends for his unfaithfulness in thus recalling and emphatically asserting the unquestionably good qualities of his lady-love. He felt as if he were honestly attempting to win himself back to his allegiance.

"You are very complimentary," said Katie, with a glance at her cousin, which threw that young lady into silent convulsions.

"Not at all," cried Queeker, forcing his enthusiasm up to white heat, and seizing a drawing, which he held up before him, in the vain attempt to shut Fanny out of his sight.

"Now, I call this most beautiful," he said, in tones of genuine admiration. "I _never_ saw anything so sweet before."

"Indeed!" said Katie, who observed that the youth was gazing over the top of the drawing at her cousin. "I am _so_ glad you like it, for, to say truth, I have felt disappointed with it myself, and papa says it is only so-so. Do point out to me its faults, Mr Queeker, and the parts you like best."

She rose and looked over Queeker's shoulder with much interest, and took hold of the drawing to keep it firmly in its position.

There was an excessively merry twinkle in Katie's eyes as she watched the expression of Queeker's face when he exclaimed--

"Faults, Miss Durant, there are no--eh! why, what--"

"Oh you wicked, deceptive man, you've got it upside down!" said Katie, shaking her finger at the unhappy youth, who stammered, tried to explain--to apologise--failed, broke down, and talked unutterable nonsense, to the infinite delight of his fair tormentor.

As for Fanny, that Hebe bent her head suddenly over her work-basket, and thrust her face into it as if searching with microscopic intensity for something that positively refused to be found. All that we can safely affirm in regard to her is, that if her face bore any resemblance to the scarlet of her neck, the fact that her workbox did not take fire is little short of a miracle!

Fortunately for all parties Queeker inadvertently trod on the cat's tail, which resulted in a spurt so violent as to justify a total change of subject. Before the storm thus raised had calmed down, Mr Durant entered the room.

At Jenkinsjoy Queeker certainly did meet with a reception even more hearty than he had been led to expect. Mr Durant's friend, Stoutheart, his amiable wife and daughters and strapping sons, received the youthful limb of the law with that frank hospitality which we are taught to attribute "to Merrie England in the olden time." The mansion was old-fashioned and low-roofed, trellis-worked and creeper-loved; addicted to oak panelling, balustrades, and tapestried walls, and highly suitable to ghosts of a humorous and agreeable tendency. Indeed it was said that one of the rooms actually _was_ haunted at that very time; but Queeker did not see any ghosts, although he afterwards freely confessed to having seen all the rooms in the house more or less haunted by fairy spirits of the fair sex, and masculine ghosts in buckskins and top-boots! The whole air and aspect of the neighbourhood was such that Queeker half expected to find a May-pole in the neighbouring village, sweet shepherdesses in straw hats, pink ribbons, and short kirtles in the fields, and gentle shepherds with long crooks, playing antique flageolets on green banks, with innocent-looking dogs beside them, and humble-minded sheep reposing in Arcadian felicity at their feet.

"Where does the meet take place to-day, Tom?" asked Mr Stoutheart senior of Mr Stoutheart junior, while seated at breakfast the first morning after their arrival at Jenkinsjoy.

"At Curmersfield," replied young Stoutheart.

"Ah, not a bad piece of country to cross. You remember when you and I went over it together, Amy?"

"We have gone over it so often together, papa," replied Amy, "that I really don't know to which occasion you refer."

"Why, that time when we met the hounds unexpectedly; when you were mounted on your favourite Wildfire, and appeared to have imbibed some of his spirit, for you went off at a tangent, crying out, `Come along, papa!' and cleared the hedge at the roadside, crossed Slapperton's farm, galloped up the lane leading to Curmersfield, took the ditch, with the low fence beyond at Cumitstrong's turnip-field, in a flying leap-- obliging me to go quarter of a mile round by the gate--and overtook the hounds just