Run to Earth, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [classic literature books txt] 📗

before him, and his head resting on his folded arms.

There was a miserable pretence of a fire, made with bad coals and damp wood.

Sleeping in that wretched atmosphere, in that uncomfortable attitude, it was scarcely strange if Valentine Jernam dreamt a bad dream.

He dreamt that he fell asleep at broad day in his cabin on board the 'Pizarro', and that he woke suddenly and found himself in darkness. He dreamt that he groped his way up the companion-way, and on to the deck.

There, as below, he found gloom and darkness, and instead of a busy crew, utter loneliness, perfect silence. A stillness like the stillness of death reigned on the level waters around the motionless ship.

The captain shouted, but his voice died away among the shrouds. Presently a glimmer of star-light pierced the universal gloom, and in that uncertain light a shadowy figure came gliding towards him across the ocean--a face shone upon him beneath the radiance of the stars. It was the face of the ballad-singer.

The shadow drew nearer to him, with a strange gliding motion. The shadow lifted a white, transparent hand, and pointed.

To what?

To a tombstone, which glimmered cold and white through the gloom of sky and waters.

The starlight shone upon the tombstone, and on it the sleeper read this inscription--"_In memory of Valentine Jernam, aged 33_."

The sailor awoke suddenly with a cry, and, looking up, saw the man they called Black Milsom sitting on the opposite side of the table, looking at him earnestly.

"Well, you are a restless sleeper, captain!" said this man: "I dropped in here just now, thinking to find Dennis Wayman, and I've been looking on while you finished your nap. I never saw a harder sleeper."

"I had a bad dream," answered Jernam, starting to his feet.

"A bad dream! What about, captain?"

"About your daughter!"

CHAPTER II.


DONE IN THE DARKNESS.

Before Thomas Milsom, otherwise Black Milsom, could express his surprise, the landlord of the 'Jolly Tar' returned from his business excursion, and presented himself in the dingy little room, where it was already beginning to grow dusk.

Milsom told Dennis Wayman how he had discovered the captain sleeping uneasily, with his head upon the table; and on being pressed a little, Valentine Jernam told his dream as freely as it was his habit to tell everything relating to his own affairs.

"I don't see that it was such a very bad dream, after all," said Dennis Wayman, when the story was finished. "You dreamt you were at sea in a dead calm, that's about the plain English of it."

"Yes; but such a calm! I've been becalmed many a time; but I never remember anything like what I saw in my dream just now. Then the loneliness; not a creature on board besides myself; not a human voice to answer me when I called. And the face--there was something so awful in the face--smiling at me, and yet with a kind of threatening look in the smile; and the hand pointing to the tombstone! Do you know that I was thirty-three last December?"

The sailor covered his face with his hands, and sat for some moments in a meditative attitude. Bold and reckless though he was, the superstition of his class had some hold upon him; and this bad dream influenced him, in spite of himself.

The landlord was the first to break the silence. "Come, captain," he said; "this is what I call giving yourself up to the blue devils. You went to sleep in an uncomfortable position, and you had an uncomfortable dream, with no more sense nor reason in it than such dreams generally have. What do you say to a hand at cards, and a drop of something short? You want cheering up a bit, captain; that's what you want."

Valentine Jernam assented. The cards were brought, and a bowl of punch ordered by the open-handed sailor, who was always ready to invite people to drink at his expense.

The men played all-fours; and what generally happens in this sort of company happened now to Captain Jernam. He began by winning, and ended by losing; and his losses were much heavier than his gains.

He had been playing for upwards of an hour, and had drunk several glasses of punch, before his luck changed, and he had occasion to take out the bloated leathern pocket-book, distended unnaturally with notes and gold.

But for that rum-punch he might, perhaps, have remembered Joyce Harker's warning, and avoided displaying his wealth before these two men. Unhappily, however, the fumes of the strong liquor had already begun to mount to his brain, and the clerk was completely forgotten. He opened his pocket-book every time he had occasion to pay his losses, and whenever he opened it the greedy eyes of Dennis Wayman and Black Milsom devoured the contents with a furtive gaze.

With every hand the sailor grew more excited. He was playing for small stakes, and as yet his losses only amounted to a few pounds. But the sense of defeat annoyed him. He was feverishly eager for his revenge: and when Milsom rose to go, the captain wanted him to continue to play.

"You shan't sneak off like that," he said; "I want my revenge, and I must have it."

Black Milsom pointed to a little Dutch clock in a corner of the room.

"Past eight o'clock," he said; "and I've got a five-mile walk between me and home. My girl, Jenny, will be waiting up for me, and getting anxious about her father."

In the excitement of play, and the fever engendered by strong drink, Valentine Jernam had forgotten the ballad-singer. But this mention of her name brought the vision of the beautiful face back to him.

"Your daughter!" he muttered; "your daughter! Yes; the girl who sang here, the beautiful girl who sang."

His voice was thick, and his accents indistinct. Both the men had pressed Jernam to drink, while they themselves took very little. They had encouraged him to talk as well as to drink, and the appointment with his brother had been spoken of by the captain.

In speaking of this intended meeting, Valentine Jernam had spoken also of the good fortune which had attended his latest trading adventures; and he had said enough to let these men know that he carried the proceeds of his trading upon his person.

"Joyce wanted me to bank my money," he said; "but none of your banking rogues for me. My brother George is the only banker I trust, or ever mean to trust."

Milsom insisted upon the necessity of his departure, and the sailor declared that he would have his revenge. They were getting to high words, when Dennis Wayman interfered to keep the peace.

"I'll tell you what it is," he said; "if the captain wants his revenge, it's only fair that he should have it. Suppose we go down to your place, Milsom! you can give us a bit of supper, I dare say. What do you say to that?"

Milsom hesitated in a sheepish kind of manner. "Mine's such a poor place for a gentleman like the captain," he said. "My daughter Jenny will do her best to make things straight and comfortable; but still it is about the poorest place that ever was--there's no denying that."

"I'm no fine gentleman," said the captain, enraptured at the idea of seeing the ballad-singer; "if your daughter will give us a crust of bread and cheese, I shall be satisfied. We'll take two or three bottles of wine down with us, and we'll be as jolly as princes. Get your trap ready, Wayman, and let's be off at once."

The captain was all impatience to start. Dennis Wayman went away to get the vehicle ready, and Milsom followed him, but they did not leave Captain Jernam much time for thought, for Dennis Wayman came back almost immediately to say that the vehicle was ready.

"Now, then, look sharp, captain!" he said; "it's a dark night, and we shall have a dark drive."

It was a dark night--dark even here in Wapping, darker still on the road by which Valentine Jernam found himself travelling presently.

The vehicle which Dennis Wayman drove was a disreputable-looking conveyance--half chaise-cart, half gig--and the pony was a vicious-looking animal, with a shaggy mane; but he was a tremendous pony to go, and the dark, marshy country flew past the travellers in the darkness like a landscape in a dream.

The ripple of the water, sounding faintly in the stillness, told Valentine Jernam that the river was near at hand; but beyond this the sailor had little knowledge of his whereabouts.

They had soon left London behind.

After driving some six or seven miles, and always keeping within sound of the dull plash of the river, the landlord of the 'Jolly Tar' drew up suddenly by a dilapidated wooden paling, behind which there was a low- roofed habitation of some kind or other, which was visible only by reason of one faint glimmer of light, flickering athwart a scrap of dingy red curtain. The dull, plashing sound of the river was louder here; and, mingling with that monotonous ripple of the water, there was a shivering sound--the trembling of rushes stirred by the chill night wind.

"I'd almost passed your place, Tom," said the landlord, as he drew up before the darksome habitation.

"You might a'most drive over it on such a night as this," answered Black Milsom, "and not be much the wiser."

The three men alighted, and Dennis Wayman led the vicious pony to a broken-down shed, which served as stable and coach-house in Mr. Milsom's establishment.

Valentine Jernam looked about him. As his eyes grew more familiar with the locality, he was able to make out the outline of the dilapidated dwelling.

It was little better than a hovel, and stood on a patch of waste ground, which could scarcely have been garden within the memory of man. By one side of the house there was a wide, open ditch, fringed with rushes--a deep, black ditch, that flowed down to the river.

"I can't compliment you on the situation of your cottage, mate," he said; "it might be livelier."

"I dare say it might," answered Black Milsom, rather sulkily. "I took to this place because everybody else was afraid to take to it, and it was to be had for nothing. There was an old miser as cut his throat here seven or eight year ago, and the place has been left to go to decay ever since. The miser's ghost walks about here sometimes, after twelve o'clock at night, folks say. 'Let him walk till he tires himself out,' says I. 'He don't come my way; and if he did he wouldn't scare me.' Come, captain."

Mr. Milsom opened the door, and ushered his visitor into the lively abode, which the prejudice of weak-minded people permitted him to occupy rent-free.

The girl whom Jernam had seen at the Wapping public-house was sitting by the hearth, where a scrap of fire burnt in a rusty grate. She had been sitting in a listless attitude, with her hands lying idle on her lap, and her eyes fixed on the fire; but she looked up as the two men entered.

She did not welcome her father's return with any demonstration of affection; she looked at him with a strange, wondering gaze; and she looked with an anxious expression from him to his companion.

Dennis Wayman came in