Run to Earth, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [epub ebook reader .TXT] 📗

than common between those two men, Captain Jernam. However that

is, you take my advice. Don’t you come back to this house till you come

to meet Captain George. Captain George is a cool hand, and I’m not

afraid of him; but you’re too wild and too free-spoken for such folks

as hang about the ‘Jolly Tar’. You sported your pocket-book too freely

last night, when you were paying for the punch. I saw the landlord spot

the notes and gold, and I haven’t trusted myself to sleep too soundly

all night, for fear there should be any attempt at foul play.”

 

“You’re a good fellow, Joyce; but though you’ve pluck enough for twenty

in a storm at sea, you’re as timid as a baby at home.”

 

“I’m like a dog, captain—I can smell danger when it threatens those I

love. Hark! what’s that?”

 

They were going down stairs quietly, in the darkness of the early

spring morning. The clerk’s quick ear caught the sound of a stealthy

footstep; and in the next minute they were face to face with a man who

was ascending the narrow stairs.

 

“You’re early astir, Mr. Wayman,” said Joyce Harker, recognizing the

landlord of the ‘Jolly Tar’.

 

“And so are you, for the matter of that,” answered the host.

 

“My captain is off by an early coach, and I’m going to walk to the

office with him,” returned Joyce.

 

“Off by an early coach, is he? Then, if he can stop to drink it, I’ll

make him a cup of coffee.”

 

“You’re very good,” answered Joyce, hastily; “but you see, the captain

hasn’t time for that, if he’s going to catch the coach.”

 

“Are you going into the country for long, captain?” asked the landlord.

 

“Well, no; not for long, mate; for I’ve got an appointment to keep in

this house, on the fifth of April, with a brother of mine, who’s

homeward-bound from Barbadoes. You see, my brother and me are partners;

whatever good luck one has he shares it with the other. We’ve been

uncommon lucky lately.”

 

The captain slapped his hand upon one of his capacious pockets as he

spoke. Dennis Wayman watched the gesture with eager eyes. All through

Valentine’s speech, Joyce Harker had been trying to arrest his

attention, but trying in vain. When the owner of the ‘Pizarro’ began to

talk, it was very difficult to stop him.

 

The captain bade the landlord a cheerful good day, and departed with

his faithful follower.

 

Out in the street, Joyce Harker remonstrated with his employer.

 

“I told you that fellow was not to be trusted, captain,” he said; “and

yet you blabbed to him about the money.”

 

“Nonsense, Joyce. I didn’t say a word about money.”

 

“Didn’t you though, captain? You said quite enough to let that man know

you’d got the cash about you. But you won’t go back to that place till

you go to meet Captain George on the fifth?”

 

“Of course not.”

 

“You won’t change your mind, captain?”

 

“Not I.”

 

“Because, you see, I shall be down at Blackwall, looking after the

repairs, for it will be sharp work to get finished against you want to

sail for Rio. So, you see, I shall be out of the way. And if you did go

back to that house alone, Lord knows what they might try on.”

 

“Don’t you be afraid, Joyce. In the first place I shan’t go back there

till twelve o’clock on the fifth. I’ll come up from Plymouth by the

night coach, and put up at the ‘Golden Cross’ like a gentleman. And, in

the second place, I flatter myself I’m a match for any set of

land-sharks in creation.”

 

“No, you’re not, captain. No honest man is ever a match for a

scoundrel.”

 

Jernam and his companion carried the captain’s portmanteau between

them. They hailed a hackney-coach presently, and drove to the “Golden

Cross,” through the chill, gray streets, where the closed shutters had

a funereal aspect.

 

At the coach-office they parted, with many friendly words on both

sides; but to the last, Joyce Harker was grave and anxious.

 

The last he saw of his friend and employer was the captain’s dark face

looking out of the coach-window; the captain’s hand waved in cordial

farewell.

 

“What a good fellow he is!—what a noble fellow!” thought the wizen

little clerk, as he trudged back towards the City. “But was there ever

a baby so helpless on shore?—was there ever an innocent infant that

needed so much looking after?”

 

*

 

Valentine Jernam arrived at Plymouth early the next morning, and walked

from Plymouth to the little village of Allanbay, in which lived the

only relative he had in the world, except his brother George. Walking

at a leisurely pace along the quiet road, Captain Jernam, although not

usually a thoughtful person, was fain to think about something, and

fell to thinking over the past.

 

Light-hearted and cheery of spirit as the adventurous sailor was

now-a-days, his childhood had been a very sad one. Motherless at eight

years of age, and ill-used by a drunken father, the boy had suffered as

the children of the poor too often suffer.

 

His mother had died, leaving George an infant of less than twelve

months old; and from the hour of her death, Valentine had been the

infant’s sole nurse and protector; standing between the helpless little

one and the father’s brutality; enduring all hardships cheerfully, so

long as he was able to shelter little Georgy.

 

On more than one occasion, the elder boy had braved and defied his

father in defence of the younger brother.

 

It was scarcely strange, therefore, that there should arise between the

two brothers an affection beyond the ordinary measure of brotherly

love. Valentine had supplied the place of both parents to his brother

George,—the place of the mother, who lay buried in Allanbay

churchyard; the place of the father, who had sunk into a living death

of drunkenness and profligacy.

 

They were not peasant-born these Jernams. The father had been a

lieutenant in the Royal Navy; but had deservedly lost his commission,

and had come, with his devoted wife, to hide his disgrace at Allanbay.

The vices which had caused his expulsion from the navy had increased

with every year, until the family had sunk to the lowest depths of

poverty and degradation, in spite of the wife’s heroic efforts to

accomplish the reform of a reprobate. She had struggled nobly till the

last, and had died broken-hearted, leaving the helpless children to the

mercy of a wretch whose nature had become utterly debased and

brutalized.

 

Throughout their desolate childhood the brothers had been all in all to

each other, and as soon as George was old enough to face the world with

his brother, the two boys ran away to sea, and obtained employment on

board a small trading vessel.

 

At sea, as on shore, Valentine stood between his younger brother and

all hardships. But the rough sailors were kinder than the drunken

father had been, and the two lads fared pretty well.

 

Thus began the career of the two Jernams. Through all changes of

fortune, the brothers had clung to each other. Despite all differences

of character, their love for each other had known neither change nor

diminution; and to-day, walking alone upon this quiet country road, the

tears clouded Valentine Jernam’s eyes as he remembered how often he had

trodden it in the old time with his little brother in his arms.

 

“I shall see his dear face on the fifth,” he thought; “God bless him!”

 

The old aunt lived in a cottage near the entrance to the village. She

was comfortably off now—thanks to the two merchant captains; but she

had been very poor in the days of their childhood, and had been able to

do but little for the neglected lads. She had given them shelter,

however, when they had been afraid to go home to their father, and had

shared her humble fare with them very often.

 

Mrs. Jernam, as she was called by her neighbours, in right of her sixty

years of age, was sitting by the window when her nephew opened the

little garden-gate: but she had opened the door before he could knock,

and was standing on the threshold ready to embrace him.

 

“My boy,” she exclaimed, “I have been looking for you so long!”

 

That day was given up to pleasant talk between the aunt and nephew. She

was so anxious to hear his adventures, and he was so willing to tell

them. He sat before the fire smoking, while Susan Jernam’s busy fingers

plied her knitting-needles, and relating his hair-breadth escapes and

perils between the puffs of blue smoke.

 

The captain was regaled with an excellent dinner, and a bottle of wine

of his own importation. After dinner, he strolled out into the village,

saw his old friends and acquaintances, and talked over old times.

Altogether his first day at Allanbay passed very pleasantly.

 

The second day at Allanbay, however, hung heavily on the captain’s

hands. He had told all his adventures; he had seen all his old

acquaintances. The face of the ballad-singer haunted him perpetually;

and he spent the best part of the day leaning over the garden-gate and

smoking. Mrs. Jernam was not offended by her nephew’s conduct.

 

“Ah! my boy,” she said, smiling fondly on her handsome kinsman, “it’s

fortunate Providence made you a sailor, for you’d have been ill-fitted

for any but a roving life.”

 

The third day of Valentine Jernam’s stay at Allanbay was the second of

April, and on that morning his patience was exhausted. The face which

had made itself a part of his very mind lured him back to London. He

was a man who had never accustomed himself to school his impulses; and

the impulse that drew him back to London was irresistible.

 

“I must and will see her once more,” he said to himself; “perhaps, if I

see her face again, I shall find out it’s only a common face after all,

and get the better of this folly. But I must see her. After the fifth,

George will be with me, and I shan’t be my own master. I must see her

before the fifth.”

 

Impetuous in all things, Valentine Jernam was not slow to act upon his

resolution. He told his aunt that he had business to transact in

London. He left Allanbay at noon, walked to Plymouth, took the

afternoon coach, and rode into London on the following day.

 

It was one o’clock when Captain Jernam found himself once more in the

familiar seafaring quarter; early as it was, the noise of riot and

revelry had begun already.

 

The landlord looked up with an expression of considerable surprise as

the captain of the ‘Pizarro’ crossed the threshold.

 

“Why, captain,” he said, “I thought we weren’t to see you till the

fifth.”

 

“Well, you see, I had some business to do in this neighbourhood, so I

changed my mind.”

 

“I’m very glad you did,” answered Dennis Wayman, cordially; “you’ve

just come in time to take a snack of dinner with me and my missus, so

you can sit down, and make yourself at home, without ceremony.”

 

The captain was too good-natured to refuse an invitation that seemed

proffered in such a hearty spirit. And beyond this, he wanted to hear

more about Jenny Milsom, the ballad-singer.

 

So he ate his dinner with Mr. Wayman and his wife, and found himself

asking all manner of questions about the singing-girl in the course of

his hospitable entertainment.

 

He asked