Erema - My Father's Sin, Richard Doddridge Blackmore [read me a book TXT] 📗

Barnes shouted; and then a black squall of terrific wind and hail burst forth. We bowed our heads and drew our bodies to their tightest compass, and every rib of our boat vibrated as a violin does; and the oars were beaten flat, and dashed their drip into fringes like a small-toothed comb.

That great squall was either a whirlwind or the crowning blast of a hurricane. It beat the high waves hollow, as if it fell from the sky upon them; and it snapped off one of our oars at the hilt, so that two of our men rolled backward. And when we were able to look about again the whole roof of "Desolate Hole" was gone, and little of the walls left standing. And how we should guide our course, or even save our lives, we knew not.

We were compelled to bring up--as best we might--with the boat's head to the sea, and so to keep it by using the steering gear against the surviving oar. As for the people we were come to save, there was no chance whatever of approaching them. Even without the mishap to the oar, we never could have reached them.

And indeed when first we saw them again they seemed better off than ourselves were. For they were not far from dry land, and the man (a skillful and powerful swimmer) had a short piece of plank, which he knew how to use to support his weak companion.

"Brave fellow! fine fellow!" the Major cried, little knowing whom he was admiring. "See how he keeps up his presence of mind! Such a man as that is worth any thing. And he cares more for her than he does for himself. He shall have the Society's medal. One more long and strong stroke, my noble friend. Oh, great God! what has befallen him?"

In horror and pity we gazed. The man had been dashed against something headlong. He whirled round and round in white water, his legs were thrown up, and we saw no more of him. The woman cast off the plank, and tossed her helpless arms in search of him. A shriek, ringing far on the billowy shore, declared that she had lost him; and then, without a struggle, she clasped her hands, and the merciless water swallowed her.

"It is all over," cried Major Hockin, lifting his drenched hat solemnly. "The Lord knoweth best. He has taken them home."


CHAPTER LV


A DEAD LETTER

With that great tornado, the wind took a leap of more points of the compass than I can tell. Barnes, the fisherman, said how many; but I might be quite wrong in repeating it. One thing, at any rate, was within my compass--it had been blowing to the top of its capacity, direct from the sea, but now it began to blow quite as hard along the shore. This rough ingratitude of wind to waves, which had followed each breath of its orders, produced extraordinary passion, and raked them into pointed wind-cocks.

"Captain, we can't live this out," cried Barnes; "we must run her ashore at once; tide has turned; we might be blown out to sea, with one oar, and then the Lord Himself couldn't save us."

Crippled as we were, we contrived to get into a creek, or backwater, near the Major's gate. Here the men ran the boat up, and we all climbed out, stiff, battered, and terrified, but doing our best to be most truly thankful.

"Go home, Captain, as fast as you can, and take the young lady along of you," said Mr. Barnes, as we stood and gazed at the weltering breadth of disaster. "We are born to the drip, but not you, Sir; and you are not so young as you was, you know."

"I am younger than ever I was," the lord of the manor answered, sternly, yet glancing back to make sure of no interruption from his better half--who had not even heard of his danger. "None of that nonsense to me, Barnes. You know your position, and I know mine. On board of that boat you took the lead, and that may have misled you. I am very much obliged to you, I am sure, for all your skill and courage, which have saved the lives of all of us. But on land you will just obey me."

"Sartinly, Captain. What's your orders?"

"Nothing at all. I give no orders. I only make suggestions. But if your experience sees a way to recover those two poor bodies, let us try it at once--at once, Barnes. Erema, run home. This is no scene for you. And tell Margaret to put on the double-bottomed boiler, with the stock she made on Friday, and a peck of patent pease. There is nothing to beat pea soup; and truly one never knows what may happen."

This was only too evident now, and nobody disobeyed him.

Running up his "drive" to deliver that message, at one of the many bends I saw people from Bruntsea hurrying along a footpath through the dairy-farm. While the flood continued this was their only way to meet the boat's crew. On the steps of "Smuggler's Castle" (as Bruntlands House was still called by the wicked) I turned again, and the new sea-line was fringed with active searchers. I knew what they were looking for, but, scared and drenched and shivering as I was, no more would I go near them. My duty was rather to go in and comfort dear Aunt Mary and myself. In that melancholy quest I could do no good, but a great deal of harm, perhaps, if any thing was found, by breaking forth about it.

Mrs. Hockin had not the least idea of the danger we had encountered. Bailiff Hopkins had sent her home in Rasper's fly by an inland road, and she kept a good scolding quite ready for her husband, to distract his mind from disaster. That trouble had happened she could not look out of her window without knowing; but could it be right, at their time of life, to stand in the wet so, and challenge Providence, and spoil the first turkey-poult of the season?

But when she heard of her husband's peril, in the midst of all his losses, his self-command, and noble impulse first of all to rescue life, she burst into tears, and hugged and kissed me, and said the same thing nearly fifty times.

"Just like him. Just like my Nicholas. You thought him a speculative, selfish man. Now you see your mistake, Erema."

When her veteran husband came home at last (thoroughly jaded, and bringing his fishermen to gulp the pea soup and to gollop the turkey), a small share of mind, but a large one of heart, is required to imagine her doings. Enough that the Major kept saying, "Pooh-pooh!" and the more he said, the less he got of it.

When feelings calmed down, and we returned to facts, our host and hero (who, in plain truth, had not so wholly eclipsed me in courage, though of course I expected no praise, and got none, for people hate courage in a lady), to put it more simply, the Major himself, making a considerable fuss, as usual--for to my mind he never could be Uncle Sam--produced from the case of his little "Church Service," to which he had stuck like a Briton, a sealed and stamped letter, addressed to me at Castlewood, in Berkshire--"stamped," not with any post-office tool, but merely with the red thing which pays the English post.

Sodden and blurred as the writing was, I knew the clear, firm hand, the same which on the envelope at Shoxford had tempted me to meanness. This letter was from Thomas Hoyle; the Major had taken it from the pocket of his corpse; all doubt about his death was gone. When he felt his feet on the very shore, and turned to support his mother, a violent wave struck the back of his head upon Major Hockin's pillar-box.

Such sadness came into my heart--though sternly it should have been gladness--that I begged their pardon, and went away, as if with a private message. And wicked as it may have been, to read was more than once to cry. The letter began abruptly:

"You know nearly all my story now. I have only to tell you what brought me to you, and what my present offer is. But to make it clear, I must enlarge a little.

"There was no compact of any kind between your father and myself. He forbore at first to tell what he must have known, partly, perhaps, to secure my escape, and partly for other reasons. If he had been brought to trial, his duty to his family and himself would have led him, no doubt, to explain things. And if that had failed, I would have returned and surrendered myself. As things happened, there was no need.

"Through bad luck, with which I had nothing to do, though doubtless the whole has been piled on my head, your father's home was destroyed, and he seems to have lost all care for every thing. Yet how much better off was he than I! Upon me the curse fell at birth; upon him, after thirty years of ease and happiness. However, for that very reason, perhaps, he bore it worse than I did. He grew imbittered against the world, which had in no way ill-treated him; whereas its very first principle is to scorn all such as I am. He seems to have become a misanthrope, and a fatalist like myself. Though it might almost make one believe the existence of such a thing as justice to see pride pay for its wickedness thus--the injury to the outcast son recoil upon the pampered one, and the family arrogance crown itself with the ignominy of the family.

"In any case, there was no necessity for my interference; and being denied by fate all sense of duty to a father, I was naturally driven to double my duty to my mother, whose life was left hanging upon mine. So we two for many years wandered about, shunning islands and insular prejudice. I also shunned your father, though (so far as I know) he neither sought me nor took any trouble to clear himself. If the one child now left him had been a son, heir to the family property and so on, he might have behaved quite otherwise, and he would have been bound to do so. But having only a female child, who might never grow up, and, if she did, was very unlikely to succeed, he must have resolved at least to wait. And perhaps he confirmed himself with the reflection that even if people believed his tale (so long after date and so unvouched), so far as family annals were concerned, the remedy would be as bad as the disease. Moreover, he owed his life to me, at great risk of my own; and to pay such a debt with the hangman's rope would scarcely appear quite honorable, even in the best society.

"It is not for me to pretend to give his motives, although from my knowledge of his character I can guess them pretty well, perhaps. We went our several ways in the world, neither of us very fortunate.

"One summer, in the Black Forest, I fell in with an outcast Englishman, almost as great a vagabond as myself. He was under the ban of the law for writing his father's name without license. He did not tell me that, or perhaps even I might have despised him, for I never was dishonest. But one great bond there was between