A Message from the Sea

“So far this run’s begun with a fair wind and a prosperous; for don’t you see that all this agrees with that dutiful trust in his father maintained by the slow member of the Raybrock family?”

Whether the brothers had seen it before or no, they saw it now. Not that the captain gave them much time to contemplate the state of things at their ease, for he instantly whipped them into a chaise again, and bore them off to Steepways. Although the afternoon was but just beginning to decline when they reached it, and it was broad day-light, still they had no difficulty, by dint of muffing the returned sailor up, and ascending the village rather than descending it, in reaching Tregarthen’s cottage unobserved. Kitty was not visible, and they surprised Tregarthen sitting writing in the small bay-window of his little room.

“Sir,” said the captain, instantly shaking hands with him, pen and all, “I’m glad to see you, sir. How do you do, sir? I told you you’d think better of me by-and-by, and I congratulate you on going to do it.”

Here the captain’s eye fell on Tom Pettifer Ho, engaged in preparing some cookery at the fire.

“That critter,” said the captain, smiting his leg, “is a born steward, and never ought to have been in any other way of life. Stop where you are, Tom, and make yourself useful. Now, Tregarthen, I’m going to try a chair.”

Accordingly the captain drew one close to him, and went on: —

“This loving member of the Raybrock family you know, sir. This slow member of the same family you don’t know, sir. Wa’al, these two are brothers, – fact! Hugh’s come to life again, and here he stands. Now see here, my friend! You don’t want to be told that he was cast away, but you do want to be told (for there’s a purpose in it) that he was cast away with another man. That man by name was Lawrence Clissold.”

At the mention of this name Tregarthen started and changed colour. “What’s the matter?” said the captain.

“He was a fellow-clerk of mine thirty – five-and-thirty – years ago.”

“True,” said the captain, immediately catching at the clew: “Dringworth Brothers, America Square, London City.”

The other started again, nodded, and said, “That was the house.”

“Now,” pursued the captain, “between those two men cast away there arose a mystery concerning the round sum of five hundred pound.”

Again Tregarthen started, changing colour. Again the captain said, “What’s the matter?”

As Tregarthen only answered, “Please to go on,” the captain recounted, very tersely and plainly, the nature of Clissold’s wanderings on the barren island, as he had condensed them in his mind from the seafaring man. Tregarthen became greatly agitated during this recital, and at length exclaimed, —

“Clissold was the man who ruined me! I have suspected it for many a long year, and now I know it.”

“And how,” said the captain, drawing his chair still closer to Tregarthen, and clapping his hand upon his shoulder, – “how may you know it?”

“When we were fellow-clerks,” replied Tregarthen, “in that London house, it was one of my duties to enter daily in a certain book an account of the sums received that day by the firm, and afterward paid into the bankers’. One memorable day, – a Wednesday, the black day of my life, – among the sums I so entered was one of five hundred pounds.”

“I begin to make it out,” said the captain. “Yes?”

“It was one of Clissold’s duties to copy from this entry a memorandum of the sums which the clerk employed to go to the bankers’ paid in there. It was my duty to hand the money to Clissold; it was Clissold’s to hand it to the clerk, with that memorandum of his writing. On that Wednesday I entered a sum of five hundred pounds received. I handed that sum, as I handed the other sums in the day’s entry, to Clissold. I was absolutely certain of it at the time; I have been absolutely certain of it ever since. A sum of five hundred pounds was afterward found by the house to have been that day wanting from the bag, from Clissold’s memorandum, and from the entries in my book. Clissold, being questioned, stood upon his perfect clearness in the matter, and emphatically declared that he asked no better than to be tested by ‘Tregarthen’s book.’ My book was examined, and the entry of five hundred pounds was not there.”

“How not there,” said the captain, “when you made it yourself?”

Tregarthen continued: —

“I was then questioned. Had I made the entry? Certainly I had. The house produced my book, and it was not there. I could not deny my book; I could not deny my writing. I knew there must be forgery by some one; but the writing was wonderfully like mine, and I could impeach no one if the house could not. I was required to pay the money back. I did so; and I left the house, almost broken-hearted, rather than remain there, – even if I could have done so, – with a dark shadow of suspicion always on me. I returned to my native place, Lanrean, and remained there, clerk to a mine, until I was appointed to my little post here.”

“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 sun-stroke.”

“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.