Agatha Webb (23 page)

He wanted to live. Now that the dread spectre had risen out of the
water and had its clutch on his hair, he realised that the world
held much for him, and that even in exile he might work and love
and enjoy God's heaven and earth, the green fields and the blue
sky. Not such skies as were above him now. No, this was not sky
that overarched him, but a horrible vault in which the clouds,
rushing in torn masses, had the aspect of demons stooping to
contend for him with those other demons that with long arms and
irresistible grip were dragging at him from below. He was alone on
a whirling spar in the midst of a midnight ocean, but horror and a
pitiless imagination made this conflict more than that of the
elements, and his position an isolation beyond that of man removed
from his fellows. He was almost mad. Yet he clung.

Suddenly a better frame of mind prevailed. The sky was no lighter,
save as the lightning came to relieve the overwhelming darkness by
a still more overwhelming glare, nor were the waves less
importunate or his hold on the spar more secure; but the horror
seemed to have lifted, and the practical nature of the man
reasserted itself. Other men had gone through worse dangers than
these and survived to tell the tale, as he might survive to tell
his. The will was all—will and an indomitable courage; and he had
will and he had courage, or why had he left his home to dare a
hard and threatening future purely from a sentiment of gratitude?
Could he hold on long enough, daylight would come; and if, as he
now thought possible, he had been thrown into the sea within
twenty hours after leaving Sutherlandtown, then he must be not far
from Cape Cod, and in the direct line of travel from New York to
Boston. Rescue would come, and if the storm which was breaking
over his head more and more furiously made it difficult for him to
retain his hold, it certainly would not wreck his spar or drench
him more than he was already drenched, while every blast would
drive him shoreward. The clinging was all, and filial love would
make him do that, even in the semi-unconsciousness which now and
then swept over him. Only, would it not be better for Mr.
Sutherland if he should fail and drop away into the yawning chasms
of the unknown world beneath? There were moments when he thought
so, and then his clutch perceptibly weakened; but only once did he
come near losing his hold altogether. And that was when he thought
he heard a laugh. A laugh, here in the midst of ocean! in the
midst of storm! a laugh! Were demons a reality, then? Yes; but the
demon he had heard was of his own imagination; it had a face of
Medusa sweetness and the laugh—Only Amabel's rang out so
thrillingly false, and with such diabolic triumph. Amabel, who
might be laughing in her dreams at this very moment of his supreme
misery, and who assuredly would laugh if conscious of his
suffering and aware of the doom to which his self-sacrifice had
brought him. Amabel! the thought of her made the night more dark,
the waters more threatening, the future less promising. Yet he
would hold on if only to spite her who hated him and whom he hated
almost as much as he loved Mr. Sutherland.

It was his last conscious thought for hours. When morning broke he
was but a nerveless figure, with sense enough to cling, and that
was all.

"A man! Haul him in! Don't leave a poor fellow drifting about like
that."

The speaker, a bluff, hearty skipper, whose sturdy craft had
outridden one of the worst storms of the season, pointed to our
poor friend Sweetwater, whose head could just be seen above the
broken spar he clung to. In another moment a half-dozen hands were
stretched for him, and the insensible form was drawn in and laid
on a deck which still showed the results of the night's fierce
conflict with the waters.

"Damn it! how ugly he is!" cried one of the sailors, with a leer
at the half-drowned man's face. "I'd like to see the lass we'd
please in saving him. He's only fit to poison a devil-fish!"

But though more than one laugh rang out, they gave him good care,
and when Sweetwater came to life and realised that his blood was
pulsing warmly again through his veins, and that a grey sky had
taken the place of darkness, and a sound board supported limbs
which for hours had yielded helplessly to the rocking billows, he
saw a ring of hard but good-natured faces about him and realised
quite well what had been done for him when one of them said:

"There! he'll do now; all hands on deck! We can get into New
Bedford in two days if this wind holds. Nor' west!" shouted the
skipper to the man at the tiller. "We'll sup with our old women in
forty-eight hours!"

New Bedford! It was the only word Sweetwater heard. So, he was no
farther away from Sutherlandtown than that. Evidently Providence
had not meant him to escape. Or was it his fortitude that was
being tried? A man as humble as he might easily be lost even in a
place as small as New Bedford. It was his identity he must
suppress. With that unrecognised he might remain in the next
village to Sutherlandtown without fear of being called up as a
witness against Frederick. But could he suppress it? He thought he
could. At all events he meant to try.

"What's your name?" were the words he now heard shouted in his
ear.

"Jonathan Briggs," was his mumbled reply. "I was blown off a
ship's deck in the gale last night."

"What ship?"

"The Proserpine." It was the first name that suggested itself to
him.

"Oh, I thought it might have been the Hesper; she foundered off
here last night."

"Foundered? The Hesper?" The hot blood was shooting now through
his veins.

"Yes, we just picked up her name-board. That was before we got a
hold on you."

Foundered! The ship from which he had been so mercilessly thrown!
And all on board lost, perhaps. He began to realise the hand of
Providence in his fate.

"It was the Hesper I sailed on. I'm not just clear yet in my head.
My first voyage was made on the Proserpine. Well, bless the gale
that blew me from that deck!"

He seemed incoherent, and they left him again for a little while.
When they came back he had his story all ready, which imposed upon
them just so far as it was for their interest. Their business on
this coast was not precisely legitimate, and when they found he
simply wanted to be set on shore, they were quite willing to do
thus much for him. Only they regretted that he had barely two
dollars and his own soaked clothing to give in exchange for the
motley garments they trumped up among them for his present
comfort. But he, as well as they, made the best of a bad bargain,
he especially, as his clothes, which would be soon scattered among
half a dozen families, were the only remaining clew connecting him
with his native town. He could now be Jonathan Briggs indeed. Only
who was Jonathan Briggs, and how was he to earn a living under
these unexpected conditions?

At the end of a couple of days he was dexterously landed on the
end of a long pier, which they passed without stopping, on their
way to their own obscure anchorage. As he jumped from the rail to
the pier and felt again the touch of terra firma he drew a long
breath of uncontrollable elation. Yet he had not a cent in the
world, no friends, and certainly no prospects. He did not even
know whether to turn to the right or the left as he stepped out
upon the docks, and when he had decided to turn to the right as
being on the whole more lucky, he did not know whether to risk his
fortune in the streets of the town or to plunge into one of the
low-browed drinking houses whose signs confronted him on this
water-lane.

He decided that his prospects for a dinner were slim in any case,
and that his only hope of breaking fast that day lay in the use he
might make of one of his three talents. Either he must find a
fiddle to play on, a carpenter's bench to work at, or a piece of
detective shadowing to do. The last would bring him before the
notice of the police, which was just the thing he must avoid; so
it was fiddling or carpentry he must seek, either of which would
be difficult to obtain in his present garb. But of difficulties
Sweetwater was not a man to take note. He had undertaken out of
pure love for a good man to lose himself. He had accomplished
this, and now was he to complain because in doing so he was likely
to go hungry for a day or two? No; Amabel might laugh at him, or
he might fancy she did, while struggling in the midst of rapidly
engulfing waters, but would she laugh at him now? He did not think
she would. She was of the kind who sometimes go hungry themselves
in old age. Some premonition of this might give her a fellow
feeling.

He came to a stand before a little child sitting on an ill-kept
doorstep. Smiling at her kindly, he waited for her first
expression to see how he appeared in the eyes of innocence. Not so
bad a man, it seemed, though his naturally plain countenance was
not relieved by the seaman's cap and knitted shirt he wore. For
she laughed as she looked at him, and only ran away because there
wasn't room for him to pass beside her.

Comforted a little, he sauntered on, glancing here and there with
that sharp eye of his for a piece of work to be done. Suddenly he
came to a halt. A market-woman had got into an altercation with an
oysterman, and her stall had been upset in the contention, and her
vegetables were rolling here and there. He righted her stall,
picked up her vegetables, and in return got two apples and a red
herring he would not have given to a dog at home. Yet it was the
sweetest morsel he had ever tasted, and the apples might have been
grown in the garden of the Hesperides from the satisfaction and
pleasure they gave this hungry man. Then, refreshed, he dashed
into the town. It should now go hard but he would earn a night's
lodging.

The day was windy and he was going along a narrow street, when
something floated down from a window above past his head. It was a
woman's veil, and as he looked up to see where it came from he met
the eyes of its owner looking down from an open casement above
him. She was gesticulating, and seemed to point to someone up the
street. Glad to seize at anything which promised emolument or
adventure, he shouted up and asked her what she wanted.

"That man down there!" she cried; "the one in a long black coat
going up the street. Keep after him and stop him; tell him the
telegram has come. Quick, quick, before he gets around the corner!
He will pay you; run!"

Sweetwater, with joy in his heart,—for five cents was a boon to
him in the present condition of his affairs,—rushed after the man
she had pointed out and hastily stopped him.

"Someone," he added, "a woman in a window back there, bade me run
after you and say the telegram has come. She told me you would pay
me," he added, for he saw the man was turning hastily back,
without thinking of the messenger. "I need the money, and the run
was a sharp one."

With a preoccupied air, the man thrust his hand into his pocket,
pulled out a coin, and handed it to him. Then he walked hurriedly
off. Evidently the news was welcome to him. But Sweetwater stood
rooted to the ground. The man had given him a five-dollar gold
piece instead of the nickel he had evidently intended.

How hungrily Sweetwater eyed that coin! In it was lodging, food,
perhaps a new article or so of clothing. But after a moment of
indecision which might well be forgiven him, he followed speedily
after the man and overtook him just as he reached the house from
which the woman's veil had floated.

"Sir, pardon me; but you gave me five dollars instead of five
cents. It was a mistake; I cannot keep the money."

The man, who was not just the sort from whom kindness would be
expected, looked at the money in Sweetwater's palm, then at the
miserable, mud-bespattered clothes he wore (he had got that mud
helping the poor market-woman), and stared hard at the face of the
man who looked so needy and yet returned him five dollars.

"You're an honest fellow," he declared, not offering to take back
the gold piece. Then, with a quick glance up at the window, "Would
you like to earn that money?"

Sweetwater broke out into a smile, which changed his whole
countenance.

"Wouldn't I, sir?"

The man eyed him for another minute with scrutinising intensity.
Then he said shortly:

"Come up-stairs with me."

They entered the house, went up a flight or two, and stopped at a
door which was slightly ajar.

"We are going into the presence of a lady," remarked the man.
"Wait here until I call you."

Sweetwater waited, the many thoughts going through his mind not
preventing him from observing all that passed.

The man, who had left the door wide open, approached the lady who
was awaiting him, and who was apparently the same one who had sent
Sweetwater on his errand, and entered into a low but animated
conversation. She held a telegram in her hand which she showed
him, and then after a little earnest parley and a number of
pleading looks from them both toward the waiting Sweetwater, she
disappeared into another room, from which she brought a parcel
neatly done up, which she handed to the man with a strange
gesture. Another hurried exchange of words and a meaning look
which did not escape the sharp eye of the watchful messenger, and
the man turned and gave the parcel into Sweetwater's hands.

"You are to carry this," said he, "to the town hall. In the second
room to the right on entering you will see a table surrounded by
chairs, which at this hour ought to be empty. At the head of the
table you will find an arm-chair. On the table directly in front
of this you will lay this packet. Mark you, directly before the
chair and not too far from the edge of the table. Then you are to
come out. If you see anyone, say you came to leave some papers for
Mr. Gifford. Do this and you may keep the five dollars and
welcome."