Part 2 (1/2)
Cullen and the Tresco men saved the cargo and hid it away, and when the collector came over with his men from the Customs House upon St.
Mary's, Cullen drove him back to his boats with a broken head. Cullen broke old Captain Hathaway's patience at the same time. Hathaway took off his silver spectacles at last and shut up his _Diodorus Siculus_ with a bang; and so Cullen Mayle sat in the stocks before the Customs House on the Sunday morning. He left the islands that night. That was two years and a month ago.”
”And what had d.i.c.k Parmiter to do with Cullen Mayle?” said I.
”d.i.c.k?” said he. ”Oh, d.i.c.k was Cullen Mayle's henchman. But it seems that d.i.c.k has transferred his allegiance to----” And he stopped abruptly. His face soured as he stopped.
”To the girl Helen?” said I, quite forgetting my indifference.
”Yes!” cried Clutterbuck, savagely, ”to the girl Helen. He is fifteen years old is d.i.c.k. But at fifteen years a lad is ripe to be one of Cupid's April fools.” And after that he would say no more.
His last words, however, and, more than his words, the tone in which he spoke, had given me the first definite clue of the many for which my curiosity searched. It was certainly on behalf of the girl, whom I only knew as Helen, that d.i.c.k had undertaken his arduous errand, and it was no less certain that just for that reason Lieutenant Clutterbuck had refused to meddle in the matter. I recognised that I should get no advantage from persisting, but I kept close to his side that day waiting upon opportunity.
We dined together at Locket's, by Charing Cross; we walked together to the ”Cocoa Tree” in St. James's Street, and pa.s.sed an hour or so with a dice-box. Clutterbuck was very silent for the most part. He handled the dice-box with indifference; and, since he was never the man to keep his thoughts for any long time to himself, I had no doubt that some time that day I should learn more. Indeed, very soon after we left the ”Cocoa Tree” I thought the whole truth was coming out; for he stopped in St. James's Park, close to the Mall, which at that moment was quiet and deserted. We could hear a light wind rippling through the leaves of the poplars, and a faint rumble of carriages lurching over the stones of Pall Mall.
”It is very like the sound of the sea on a still morning of summer,”
said he, looking at me with a vacant eye, and I wondered whether he was thinking of a tangled garden raised above a beach of sand, wherein, maybe, he had walked, and not alone on some such day as this two years ago.
We crossed the water to the Spring Gardens at Vauxhall, where we supped. I was now fallen into as complete a silence and abstraction as Clutterbuck himself, for I was clean lost in conjectures, I knew something now of Adam Mayle and his son Cullen, but as to Helen I was in the dark. Was her name Mayle too? Was she wife to Cullen? The sight of Clutterbuck's ill-humour inclined me to that conjecture; but I was wrong, for as the attendants were putting out the lights in the garden I ventured upon the question. To my surprise, Clutterbuck answered me with a smile.
”Sure,” said he, ”you are the most pertinacious fellow. What's come to you, who were content to drink your liquor and sit on one side while the world went by? No, she was not wife to Cullen Mayle, nor sister.
She was a waif of the sea. Adam Mayle picked her up from the rocks a long while since. It was the only action that could be counted to his credit since he came out of nowhere and leased the granite house of Tresco. A barque--a Venetian vessel, it was thought, from Ma.r.s.eilles, in France, for a great deal of Castile soap, and almonds and oil was washed ash.o.r.e afterwards--drove in a northwesterly gale on to the Golden Bar reef. The reef runs out from St. Helen's Island, opposite Adam Mayle's window. Adam put out his lugger and crossed the sound, but before he could reach St. Helen's the s.h.i.+p went down into fourteen fathoms of water. He landed on St. Helen's, however, and amongst the rocks where the reef joins the land he came across a sailor, who lay in the posture of death, and yet wailed like a hungry child. The sailor was dead, but within his jacket, b.u.t.toned up on his breast, was a child of four years or so. Adam took her home. No one ever claimed her, so he kept her, and called her Helen from the island on which she was wrecked. That was a long time since, for the girl must be twenty.”
”Is she French?” I asked.
”French, or Venetian, or Spanish, or what you will,” he cried. ”It matters very little what country a woman springs from. I have no doubt that a Hottentot squaw will play you the same tricks as a woman of fas.h.i.+on, and with as demure a countenance. Well, it seems we are to go to bed sober;” and we went each to his lodging.
For my part, I lay awake for a long time, seeking to weave into some sort of continuous story what I had heard that day from Lieutenant Clutterbuck and the sc.r.a.ps which I remembered of Parmiter's talk. But old Adam Mayle, who was dead; Cullen, the gannet who struck from the skies; and even Helen, the waif of the sea--these were at this time no more to me than a showman's puppets; marionettes of sawdust and wood, that faced this way and that way according as I pulled the strings.
The one being who had life was the boy Parmiter, with his jersey and his red fisherman's bonnet; and I very soon turned to conjecturing how he fared upon his journey.
Had he money to help him forward? Had he fallen in with a kindly carrier? How far had he travelled? I had no doubt that, whether he had money or no, he would reach his journey's end. His spirit was evident in the resolve to travel to London, in his success, and in the concealment of any weakness until the favour he asked for had been refused.
I bought next morning one of the new maps of the Great West Road and began to pick off the stages of his journey. This was the second day since he had started. He would not travel very fast, having no good news to lighten his feet. I reckoned that he would have reached the ”Golden Farmer,” and I made a mark at that name on the map. Every day for a week I kept in this way an imagined tally of his progress, following him from county to county; and at the end of the week, coming out in the evening from my lodging at the corner of St. James's Street, I ran plump into the arms of the gentleman I had met at Clutterbuck's, and whose name I did not know. But his familiarity was all gone from him. He bowed to me stiffly, and would have pa.s.sed on, but I caught him by the arm.
”Sir,” said I, ”you will remember a certain night when I had the honour of your acquaintance.”
”Mr. Berkeley,” he returned with a smile, ”I remember very much better the dreadful morning which followed it.”
”You will not, at all events, have forgotten the boy whom you discovered outside the door, and if you can repeat the story which he told, or some portion of it, I shall be obliged to you.”
He looked at his watch.
”I have still half an hour to spare,” said he; and he led the way to the ”Groom Porters.” The night was young, but not so young but what the Ba.s.sett-table was already full. We sat down together in a dark corner of the room, and my companion told me what he remembered of Parmiter's story.
It appeared that Cullen Mayle had quarrelled with his father on that Sunday night after he had sat in the stocks and had left the house. He had never returned. A year ago Adam Mayle had died, bequeathing his fortune, which was considerable, and most of it placed in the African Company, to his adopted daughter Helen. She, however, declared that she had no right to it, that it was not hers, and that she would hold it in trust until such time as Cullen should come back to claim it.
He did not come back, as has been said; but eight months later d.i.c.k Parmiter, on an occasion when he had crossed in his father's fis.h.i.+ng boat to Cornwall, had discovered upon Penzance Quay a small crowd of loiterers, and on the ground amongst them, with his back propped against a wall, a negro asleep. A paper was being pa.s.sed from hand to hand among the group, and in the end it came to d.i.c.k Parmiter. Upon the paper was written Adam Mayle's name and the place of his residence, Tresco, in the Scilly Islands; and d.i.c.k at once recognised that the writing was in Cullen Mayle's hand. He pushed to the front of the group, and stooping down, shook the negro by the shoulder. The negro drowsily opened his eyes.
”You come from Mr. Cullen Mayle?” said d.i.c.k.