A Message From the Sea

by Charles Dickens

  “I well remember,” said the captain, “that I told you that if you had no experience of ill judgments on deceiving appearances, you were a lucky man. You went hurt at that, and I see why. I’m sorry.”

  “Thus it is,” said Tregarthen. “Of my own innocence I have of course been sure; it has been at once my comfort and my trial. Of Clissold I have always had suspicions almost amounting to certainty; but they have never been confirmed until now. For my daughter’s sake and for my own I have carried this subject in my own heart, as the only secret of my life, and have long believed that it would die with me.”

  “Wa’al, my good sir,” said the captain cordially, “the present question is, and will be long, I hope, concerning living, and not dying. Now, here are our two honest friends, the loving Raybrock and the slow. Here they stand, agreed on one point, on which I’d back ‘em round the world, and right across it from north to south, and then again from east to west, and through it, from your deepest Cornish mine to China. It is, that they will never use this same so-often-mentioned sum of money, and that restitution of it must be made to you. These two, the loving member and the slow, for the sake of the right and of their father’s memory, will have it ready for you to-morrow. Take it, and ease their minds and mine, and end a most unfortunate transaction.”

  Tregarthen took the captain by the hand, and gave his hand to each of the young men, but positively and finally answered No. He said, they trusted to his word, and he was glad of it, and at rest in his mind; but there was no proof, and the money must remain as it was. All were very earnest over this; and earnestness in men, when they are right and true, is so impressive, that Mr. Pettifer deserted his cookery and looked on quite moved.

  “And so,” said the captain, “so we come—as that lawyer-crittur over yonder where we were this morning might—to mere proof; do we? We must have it; must we? How? From this Clissold’s wanderings, and from what you say, it ain’t hard to make out that there was a neat forgery of your writing committed by the too smart rowdy that was grease and ashes when I made his acquaintance, and a substitution of a forged leaf in your book for a real and torn leaf torn out. Now was that real and true leaf then and there destroyed? No,—for says he, in his drunken way, he slipped it into a crack in his own desk, because you came into the office before there was time to burn it, and could never get back to it arterwards. Wait a bit. Where is that desk now? Do you consider it likely to be in America Square, London City?”

  Tregarthen shook his head.

  “The house has not, for years, transacted business in that place. I have heard of it, and read of it, as removed, enlarged, every way altered. Things alter so fast in these times.”

  “You think so,” returned the captain, with compassion; “but you should come over and see me afore you talk about that. Wa’al, now. This desk, this paper,—this paper, this desk,” said the captain, ruminating and walking about, and looking, in his uneasy abstraction, into Mr. Pettifer’s hat on a table, among other things. “This desk, this paper,—this paper, this desk,” the captain continued, musing and roaming about the room, “I’d give—”

  However, he gave nothing, but took up his steward’s hat instead, and stood looking into it, as if he had just come into church. After that he roamed again, and again said, “This desk, belonging to this house of Dringworth Brothers, America Square, London City—”

  Mr. Pettifer, still strangely moved, and now more moved than before, cut the captain off as he backed across the room, and bespake him thus:-

  “Captain Jorgan, I have been wishful to engage your attention, but I couldn’t do it. I am unwilling to interrupt Captain Jorgan, but I must do it. I knew something about that house.”

  The captain stood stock-still and looked at him,—with his (Mr. Pettifer’s) hat under his arm.

  “You’re aware,” pursued his steward, “that I was once in the broking business, Captain Jorgan?”

  “I was aware,” said the captain, “that you had failed in that calling, and in half the businesses going, Tom.”

  “Not quite so, Captain Jorgan; but I failed in the broking business. I was partners with my brother, sir. There was a sale of old office furniture at Dringworth Brothers’ when the house was moved from America Square, and me and my brother made what we call in the trade a Deal there, sir. And I’ll make bold to say, sir, that the only thing I ever had from my brother, or from any relation,—for my relations have mostly taken property from me instead of giving me any,—was an old desk we bought at that same sale, with a crack in it. My brother wouldn’t have given me even that, when we broke partnership, if it had been worth anything.”

  “Where is that desk now?” said the captain.

  “Well, Captain Jorgan,” replied the steward, “I couldn’t say for certain where it is now; but when I saw it last,—which was last time we were outward bound,—it was at a very nice lady’s at Wapping, along with a little chest of mine which was detained for a small matter of a bill owing.”

  The captain, instead of paying that rapt attention to his steward which was rendered by the other three persons present, went to Church again, in respect of the steward’s hat. And a most especially agitated and memorable face the captain produced from it, after a short pause.

  “Now, Tom,” said the captain, “I spoke to you, when we first came here, respecting your constitutional weakness on the subject of sunstroke.”

  “You did, sir.”

  “Will my slow friend,” said the captain, “lend me his arm, or I shall sink right back’ards into this blessed steward’s cookery? Now, Tom,” pursued the captain, when the required assistance was given, “on your oath as a steward, didn’t you take that desk to pieces to make a better one of it, and put it together fresh,—or something of the kind?”

  “On my oath I did, sir,” replied the steward.

  “And by the blessing of Heaven, my friends, one and all,” cried the captain, radiant with joy,—”of the Heaven that put it into this Tom Pettifer’s head to take so much care of his head against the bright sun,—he lined his hat with the original leaf in Tregarthen’s writing,—and here it is!”

  With that the captain, to the utter destruction of Mr. Pettifer’s favourite hat, produced the book-leaf, very much worn, but still legible, and gave both his legs such tremendous slaps that they were heard far off in the bay, and never accounted for.

  “A quarter past five p.m.,” said the captain, pulling out his watch, “and that’s thirty-three hours and a quarter in all, and a pritty run!”

  How they were all overpowered with delight and triumph; how the money was restored, then and there, to Tregarthen; how Tregarthen, then and there, gave it all to his daughter; how the captain undertook to go to Dringworth Brothers and re-establish the reputation of their forgotten old clerk; how Kitty came in, and was nearly torn to pieces, and the marriage was reappointed, needs not to be told. Nor how she and the young fisherman went home to the post-office to prepare the way for the captain’s coming, by declaring him to be the mightiest of men, who had made all their fortunes,—and then dutifully withdrew together, in order that he might have the domestic coast entirely to himself. How he availed himself of it is all that remains to tell.

  Deeply delighted with his trust, and putting his heart into it, he raised the latch of the post-office parlour where Mrs. Raybrock and the young widow sat, and said, -

  “May I come in?”

  “Sure you may, Captain Jorgan!” replied the old lady. “And good reason you have to be free of the house, though you have not been too well used in it by some who ought to have known better. I ask your pardon.”

  “No you don’t, ma’am,” said the captain, “for I won’t let you. Wa’al, to be sure!”

  By this time he had taken a chair on the hearth between them.

  “Never felt such an evil spirit in the whole course of my life! There! I tell you! I could a’most have cut my own connection. Like the dealer in my country, away West, who when he had let himself be outdone
in a bargain, said to himself, ‘Now I tell you what! I’ll never speak to you again.’ And he never did, but joined a settlement of oysters, and translated the multiplication table into their language,—which is a fact that can be proved. If you doubt it, mention it to any oyster you come across, and see if he’ll have the face to contradict it.”

  He took the child from her mother’s lap and set it on his knee.

  “Not a bit afraid of me now, you see. Knows I am fond of small people. I have a child, and she’s a girl, and I sing to her sometimes.”

  “What do you sing?” asked Margaret.

  “Not a long song, my dear.

  Silas Jorgan Played the organ.

  That’s about all. And sometimes I tell her stories,—stories of sailors supposed to be lost, and recovered after all hope was abandoned.” Here the captain musingly went back to his song, -

  Silas Jorgan Played the organ;

  repeating it with his eyes on the fire, as he softly danced the child on his knee. For he felt that Margaret had stopped working.

  “Yes,” said the captain, still looking at the fire, “I make up stories and tell ‘em to that child. Stories of shipwreck on desert islands, and long delay in getting back to civilised lauds. It is to stories the like of that, mostly, that

  Silas Jorgan Plays the organ.”

  There was no light in the room but the light of the fire; for the shades of night were on the village, and the stars had begun to peep out of the sky one by one, as the houses of the village peeped out from among the foliage when the night departed. The captain felt that Margaret’s eyes were upon him, and thought it discreetest to keep his own eyes on the fire.

  “Yes; I make ‘em up,” said the captain. “I make up stories of brothers brought together by the good providence of GOD,—of sons brought back to mothers, husbands brought back to wives, fathers raised from the deep, for little children like herself.”

  Margaret’s touch was on his arm, and he could not choose but look round now. Next moment her hand moved imploringly to his breast, and she was on her knees before him,—supporting the mother, who was also kneeling.

  “What’s the matter?” said the captain. “What’s the matter?

  Silas Jorgan Played the -

  Their looks and tears were too much for him, and he could not finish the song, short as it was.

  “Mistress Margaret, you have borne ill fortune well. Could you bear good fortune equally well, if it was to come?”

  “I hope so. I thankfully and humbly and earnestly hope so!”

  “Wa’al, my dear,” said the captain, “p’rhaps it has come. He’s— don’t be frightened—shall I say the word—”

  “Alive?”

  “Yes!”

  The thanks they fervently addressed to Heaven were again too much for the captain, who openly took out his handkerchief and dried his eyes.

  “He’s no further off,” resumed the captain, “than my country. Indeed, he’s no further off than his own native country. To tell you the truth, he’s no further off than Falmouth. Indeed, I doubt if he’s quite so fur. Indeed, if you was sure you could bear it nicely, and I was to do no more than whistle for him—”

  The captain’s trust was discharged. A rush came, and they were all together again.

  This was a fine opportunity for Tom Pettifer to appear with a tumbler of cold water, and he presently appeared with it, and administered it to the ladies; at the same time soothing them, and composing their dresses, exactly as if they had been passengers crossing the Channel. The extent to which the captain slapped his legs, when Mr. Pettifer acquitted himself of this act of stewardship, could have been thoroughly appreciated by no one but himself; inasmuch as he must have slapped them black and blue, and they must have smarted tremendously.

  He couldn’t stay for the wedding, having a few appointments to keep at the irreconcilable distance of about four thousand miles. So next morning all the village cheered him up to the level ground above, and there he shook hands with a complete Census of its population, and invited the whole, without exception, to come and stay several months with him at Salem, Mass., U.S. And there as he stood on the spot where he had seen that little golden picture of love and parting, and from which he could that morning contemplate another golden picture with a vista of golden years in it, little Kitty put her arms around his neck, and kissed him on both his bronzed cheeks, and laid her pretty face upon his storm-beaten breast, in sight of all,—ashamed to have called such a noble captain names. And there the captain waved his hat over his head three final times; and there he was last seen, going away accompanied by Tom Pettifer Ho, and carrying his hands in his pockets. And there, before that ground was softened with the fallen leaves of three more summers, a rosy little boy took his first unsteady run to a fair young mother’s breast, and the name of that infant fisherman was Jorgan Raybrock.

  Footnotes:

  {1} Dicken’s didn’t write chapters three and four and they are omitted in this edition. The story continues with Captain Jorgan and Alfred at Lanrean.

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  Charles Dickens

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