Judge of my astonishment, some half-hour later, to receive a note of invitation from the Tempest.
“Dear Sir,” it began, “we are all naturally very much interested in the wreck of the Flying Scud, and as soon as I mentioned that I had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, a very general wish was expressed that you would come and dine on board. It will give us all the greatest pleasure to see you to-night, or in case you should be otherwise engaged, to luncheon either to-morrow or to-day.” A note of the hours followed, and the document wound up with the name of “J. Lascelles Sebright,” under an undeniable statement that he was sincerely mine.
“No, Mr. Lascelles Sebright,” I reflected, “you are not, but I begin to suspect that (like the lady in the song) you are another’s. You have mentioned your adventure, my friend; you have been blown up; you have got your orders; this note has been dictated; and I am asked on board (in spite of your melancholy protests) not to meet the men, and not to talk about the Flying Scud, but to undergo the scrutiny of some one interested in Carthew: the doctor, for a wager. And for a second wager, all this springs from your facility in giving the address.” I lost no time in answering the billet, electing for the earliest occasion; and at the appointed hour, a somewhat blackguard-looking boat’s crew from the Norah Creina conveyed me under the guns of the Tempest.
The ward-room appeared pleased to see me; Sebright’s brother officers, in contrast to himself, took a boyish interest in my cruise; and much was talked of the Flying Scud; of how she had been lost, of how I had found her, and of the weather, the anchorage, and the currents about Midway Island. Carthew was referred to more than once without embarrassment; the parallel case of a late Earl of Aberdeen, who died mate on board a Yankee schooner, was adduced. If they told me little of the man, it was because they had not much to tell, and only felt an interest in his recognition and pity for his prolonged ill-health. I could never think the subject was avoided; and it was clear that the officers, far from practising concealment, had nothing to conceal.
So far, then, all seemed natural, and yet the doctor troubled me. This was a tall, rugged, plain man, on the wrong side of fifty, already gray, and with a restless mouth and bushy eyebrows: he spoke seldom, but then with gaiety; and his great, quaking, silent laughter was infectious. I could make out that he was at once the quiz of the ward-room and perfectly respected; and I made sure that he observed me covertly. It is certain I returned the compliment. If Carthew had feigned sickness — and all seemed to point in that direction — here was the man who knew all — or certainly knew much. His strong, sterling face progressively and silently persuaded of his full knowledge. That was not the mouth, these were not the eyes, of one who would act in ignorance, or could be led at random. Nor again was it the face of a man squeamish in the case of malefactors; there was even a touch of Brutus there, and something of the hanging judge. In short, he seemed the last character for the part assigned him in my theories; and wonder and curiosity contended in my mind.
Luncheon was over, and an adjournment to the smoking-room proposed, when (upon a sudden impulse) I burned my ships, and pleading indisposition, requested to consult the doctor.
“There is nothing the matter with my body, Dr. Urquart,” said I, as soon as we were alone.
He hummed, his mouth worked, he regarded me steadily with his gray eyes, but resolutely held his peace.
“I want to talk to you about the Flying Scud and Mr. Carthew,” I resumed. “Come: you must have expected this. I am sure you know all; you are shrewd, and must have a guess that I know much. How are we to stand to one another? and how am I to stand to Mr. Carthew?”
“I do not fully understand you,” he replied, after a pause; and then, after another: “It is the spirit I refer to, Mr. Dodd.”
“The spirit of my inquiries?” I asked.
He nodded.
“I think we are at cross-purposes,” said I. “The spirit is precisely what I came in quest of. I bought the Flying Scud at a ruinous figure, run up by Mr. Carthew through an agent; and I am, in consequence, a bankrupt. But if I have found no fortune in the wreck, I have found unmistakable evidences of foul play. Conceive my position: I am ruined through this man, whom I never saw; I might very well desire revenge or compensation; and I think you will admit I have the means to extort either.”
He made no sign in answer to this challenge.
“Can you not understand, then,” I resumed, “the spirit in which I come to one who is surely in the secret, and ask him, honestly and plainly: How do I stand to Mr. Carthew?”
“I must ask you to be more explicit,” said he.
“You do not help me much,” I retorted. “But see if you can understand: my conscience is not very fine-spun; still, I have one. Now, there are degrees of foul play, to some of which I have no particular objection. I am sure with Mr. Carthew, I am not at all the person to forgo an advantage; and I have much curiosity. But on the other hand, I have no taste for persecution; and I ask you to believe that I am not the man to make bad worse, or heap trouble on the unfortunate.”
“Yes; I think I understand,” said he. “Suppose I pass you my word that, whatever may have occurred, there were excuses — great excuses — I may say, very great?”
“It would have weight with me, doctor,” I replied.
“I may go further,” he pursued. “Suppose I had been there, or you had been there: after a certain event had taken place, it’s a grave question what we might have done — it’s even a question what we could have done — ourselves. Or take me. I will be plain with you, and own that I am in possession of the facts. You have a shrewd guess how I have acted in that knowledge. May I ask you to judge from the character of my action, something of the nature of that knowledge, which I have no call, nor yet no title, to share with you?”
I cannot convey a sense of the rugged conviction and judicial emphasis of Dr. Urquart’s speech. To those who did not hear him, it may appear as if he fed me on enigmas; to myself, who heard, I seemed to have received a lesson and a compliment.
“I thank you,” I said. “I feel you have said as much as possible, and more than I had any right to ask. I take that as a mark of confidence, which I will try to deserve. I hope, sir, you will let me regard you as a friend.”
He evaded my proffered friendship with a blunt proposal to rejoin the mess; and yet a moment later, contrived to alleviate the snub. For, as we entered the smoking-room, he laid his hand on my shoulder with a kind familiarity.
“I have just prescribed for Mr. Dodd,” says he, “a glass of our Madeira.”
I have never again met Dr. Urquart: but he wrote himself so clear upon my memory that I think I see him still. And indeed I had cause to remember the man for the sake of his communication. It was hard enough to make a theory fit the circumstances of the Flying Scud; but one in which the chief actor should stand the least excused, and might retain the esteem or at least the pity of a man like Dr. Urquart, failed me utterly. Here at least was the end of my discoveries; I learned no more, till I learned all; and my reader has the evidence complete. Is he more astute than I was? or, like me, does he give it up?
CHAPTER XVIII. CROSS-QUESTIONS AND CROOKED ANSWERS.
I have said hard words of San Francisco; they must scarce be literally understood (one cannot suppose the Israelites did justice to the land of Pharaoh); and the city took a fine revenge of me on my return. She had never worn a more becoming guise; the sun shone, the air was lively, the people had flowers in their button-holes and smiles upon their faces; and as I made my way towards Jim’s place of employment, with some very black anxieties at heart, I seemed to myself a blot on the surrounding gaiety.
My destination was in a by-street in a mean, rickety building; “The Franklin H. Dodge Steam Printing Company” appeared upon its front, and in characters of greater freshness, so as to suggest recent conversion, the watch-cry, “White Labour Only.” In the office, in a dusty pen, Jim sat alone before a table. A wretched change had overtaken him i
n clothes, body, and bearing; he looked sick and shabby; he who had once rejoiced in his day’s employment, like a horse among pastures, now sat staring on a column of accounts, idly chewing a pen, at times heavily sighing, the picture of inefficiency and inattention. He was sunk deep in a painful reverie; he neither saw nor heard me; and I stood and watched him unobserved. I had a sudden vain relenting. Repentance bludgeoned me. As I had predicted to Nares, I stood and kicked myself. Here was I come home again, my honour saved; there was my friend in want of rest, nursing, and a generous diet; and I asked myself with Falstaff, “What is in that word honour? what is that honour?” and, like Falstaff, I told myself that it was air.
“Jim!” said I.
“Loudon!” he gasped, and jumped from his chair and stood shaking.
The next moment I was over the barrier, and we were hand in hand.
“My poor old man!” I cried.
“Thank God, you’re home at last!” he gulped, and kept patting my shoulder with his hand.
“I’ve no good news for you, Jim!” said I.
“You’ve come — that’s the good news that I want,” he replied. “O, how I’ve longed for you, Loudon!”
“I couldn’t do what you wrote me,” I said, lowering my voice. “The creditors have it all. I couldn’t do it.”
“Ssh!” returned Jim. “I was crazy when wrote. I could never have looked Mamie in the face if we had done it. O, Loudon, what a gift that woman is! You think you know something of life: you just don’t know anything. It’s the GOODNESS of the woman, it’s a revelation!”
“That’s all right,” said I. “That’s how I hoped to hear you, Jim.”
“And so the Flying Scud was a fraud,” he resumed. “I didn’t quite understand your letter, but I made out that.”
“Fraud is a mild term for it,” said I. “The creditors will never believe what fools we were. And that reminds me,” I continued, rejoicing in the transition, “how about the bankruptcy?”
“You were lucky to be out of that,” answered Jim, shaking his head; “you were lucky not to see the papers. The Occidental called me a fifth-rate Kerbstone broker with water on the brain; another said I was a tree-frog that had got into the same meadow with Longhurst, and had blown myself out till I went pop. It was rough on a man in his honeymoon; so was what they said about my looks, and what I had on, and the way I perspired. But I braced myself up with the Flying Scud. How did it exactly figure out anyway? I don’t seem to catch on to that story, Loudon.”
“The devil you don’t!” thinks I to myself; and then aloud: “You see we had neither one of us good luck. I didn’t do much more than cover current expenses; and you got floored immediately. How did we come to go so soon?”
“Well, we’ll have to have a talk over all this,” said Jim with a sudden start. “I should be getting to my books; and I guess you had better go up right away to Mamie. She’s at Speedy’s. She expects you with impatience. She regards you in the light of a favourite brother, Loudon.”
Any scheme was welcome which allowed me to postpone the hour of explanation, and avoid (were it only for a breathing space) the topic of the Flying Scud. I hastened accordingly to Bush Street. Mrs. Speedy, already rejoicing in the return of a spouse, hailed me with acclamation. “And it’s beautiful you’re looking, Mr. Dodd, my dear,” she was kind enough to say. “And a miracle they naygur waheenies let ye lave the oilands. I have my suspicions of Shpeedy,” she added, roguishly. “Did ye see him after the naygresses now?”
I gave Speedy an unblemished character.
“The one of ye will niver bethray the other,” said the playful dame, and ushered me into a bare room, where Mamie sat working a type-writer.
I was touched by the cordiality of her greeting. With the prettiest gesture in the world she gave me both her hands; wheeled forth a chair; and produced, from a cupboard, a tin of my favourite tobacco, and a book of my exclusive cigarette papers.
“There!” she cried; “you see, Mr. Loudon, we were all prepared for you; the things were bought the very day you sailed.”
I imagined she had always intended me a pleasant welcome; but the certain fervour of sincerity, which I could not help remarking, flowed from an unexpected source. Captain Nares, with a kindness for which I can never be sufficiently grateful, had stolen a moment from his occupations, driven to call on Mamie, and drawn her a generous picture of my prowess at the wreck. She was careful not to breathe a word of this interview, till she had led me on to tell my adventures for myself.
“Ah! Captain Nares was better,” she cried, when I had done. “From your account, I have only learned one new thing, that you are modest as well as brave.”
I cannot tell with what sort of disclamation I sought to reply.
“It is of no use,” said Mamie. “I know a hero. And when I heard of you working all day like a common labourer, with your hands bleeding and your nails broken — and how you told the captain to ‘crack on’ (I think he said) in the storm, when he was terrified himself — and the danger of that horrid mutiny” — (Nares had been obligingly dipping his brush in earthquake and eclipse) — ”and how it was all done, in part at least, for Jim and me — I felt we could never say how we admired and thanked you.”
“Mamie,” I cried, “don’t talk of thanks; it is not a word to be used between friends. Jim and I have been prosperous together; now we shall be poor together. We’ve done our best, and that’s all that need be said. The next thing is for me to find a situation, and send you and Jim up country for a long holiday in the redwoods — for a holiday Jim has got to have.”
“Jim can’t take your money, Mr. Loudon,” said Mamie.
“Jim?” cried I. “He’s got to. Didn’t I take his?”
Presently after, Jim himself arrived, and before he had yet done mopping his brow, he was at me with the accursed subject. “Now, Loudon,” said he, “here we are all together, the day’s work done and the evening before us; just start in with the whole story.”
“One word on business first,” said I, speaking from the lips outward, and meanwhile (in the private apartments of my brain) trying for the thousandth time to find some plausible arrangement of my story. “I want to have a notion how we stand about the bankruptcy.”
“O, that’s ancient history,” cried Jim. “We paid seven cents, and a wonder we did as well. The receiver — — ” (methought a spasm seized him at the name of this official, and he broke off). “But it’s all past and done with anyway; and what I want to get at is the facts about the wreck. I don’t seem to understand it; appears to me like as there was something underneath.”
“There was nothing IN it, anyway,” I said, with a forced laugh.
“That’s what I want to judge of,” returned Jim.
“How the mischief is it I can never keep you to that bankruptcy? It looks as if you avoided it,” said I — for a man in my situation, with unpardonable folly.
“Don’t it look a little as if you were trying to avoid the wreck?” asked Jim.
It was my own doing; there was no retreat. “My dear fellow, if you make a point of it, here goes!” said I, and launched with spurious gaiety into the current of my tale. I told it with point and spirit; described the island and the wreck, mimicked Anderson and the Chinese, maintained the suspense.... My pen has stumbled on the fatal word. I maintained the suspense so well that it was never relieved; and when I stopped — I dare not say concluded, where there was no conclusion — I found Jim and Mamie regarding me with surprise.
“Well?” said Jim.
“Well, that’s all,” said I.
“But how do you explain it?” he asked.
“I can’t explain it,” said I.
Mamie wagged her head ominously.
“But, great Caesar’s ghost! the money was offered!” cried Jim. “It won’t do, Loudon; it’s nonsense, on the face of it! I don’t say but what you and Nares did your best; I’m sure, of course, you did; but I do say, you got fooled. I say the stuff is in that ship t
o-day, and I say I mean to get it.”
“There is nothing in the ship, I tell you, but old wood and iron!” said I.
“You’ll see,” said Jim. “Next time I go myself. I’ll take Mamie for the trip; Longhurst won’t refuse me the expense of a schooner. You wait till I get the searching of her.”
“But you can’t search her!” cried I. “She’s burned.”
“Burned!” cried Mamie, starting a little from the attitude of quiescent capacity in which she had hitherto sat to hear me, her hands folded in her lap.
There was an appreciable pause.
“I beg your pardon, Loudon,” began Jim at last, “but why in snakes did you burn her?”
“It was an idea of Nares’s,” said I.
“This is certainly the strangest circumstance of all,” observed Mamie.
“I must say, Loudon, it does seem kind of unexpected,” added Jim. “It seems kind of crazy even. What did you — what did Nares expect to gain by burning her?”
“I don’t know; it didn’t seem to matter; we had got all there was to get,” said I.
“That’s the very point,” cried Jim. “It was quite plain you hadn’t.”
“What made you so sure?” asked Mamie.
“How can I tell you?” I cried. “We had been all through her. We WERE sure; that’s all that I can say.”
“I begin to think you were,” she returned, with a significant emphasis.
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) Page 162