Run to Earth - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (ebook reader .txt) 📗

if the girl was going to sing at the tavern to-night.

 

“No,” answered the landlord; “this is Friday. She only sings at my

place on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays.”

 

“And what does she do with herself for the rest of the week?”

 

“Ah! that’s more than I know; but very likely her father will look in

here in the course of the afternoon, and he can tell you. I say,

though, captain, you seem uncommonly sweet on this girl,” added the

landlord, with a leer and a wink.

 

“Well, perhaps I am sweet upon her,” replied Valentine Jernam “perhaps

I’m fool enough to be caught by a pretty face, and not wise enough to

keep my folly a secret.”

 

“I’ve got a Little business to see to over in Rotherhithe,” said Mr.

Wayman, presently; “you’ll see after the bar while I’m gone, Nancy.

There’s the little private room at your service, captain, and I dare

say you can make yourself comfortable there with your pipe and the

newspaper. It’s ten to one but what Tom Milsom will look in before the

day’s out, and he’ll tell you all about his daughter.”

 

Upon this the landlord departed, and Valentine Jernam retired to the

little den called a private room, where he speedily fell asleep,

wearied out by his journey on the previous night.

 

His slumbers were not pleasant. He sat in an uneasy position, upon a

hard wooden chair, with his arms folded on the table before him, and

his head resting on his folded arms.

 

There was a miserable pretence of a fire, made with bad coals and damp

wood.

 

Sleeping in that wretched atmosphere, in that uncomfortable attitude,

it was scarcely strange if Valentine Jernam dreamt a bad dream.

 

He dreamt that he fell asleep at broad day in his cabin on board the

‘Pizarro’, and that he woke suddenly and found himself in darkness. He

dreamt that he groped his way up the companion-way, and on to the deck.

 

There, as below, he found gloom and darkness, and instead of a busy

crew, utter loneliness, perfect silence. A stillness like the stillness

of death reigned on the level waters around the motionless ship.

 

The captain shouted, but his voice died away among the shrouds.

Presently a glimmer of starlight pierced the universal gloom, and in

that uncertain light a shadowy figure came gliding towards him across

the ocean—a face shone upon him beneath the radiance of the stars. It

was the face of the ballad-singer.

 

The shadow drew nearer to him, with a strange gliding motion. The

shadow lifted a white, transparent hand, and pointed.

 

To what?

 

To a tombstone, which glimmered cold and white through the gloom of sky

and waters.

 

The starlight shone upon the tombstone, and on it the sleeper read this

inscription—”In memory of Valentine Jernam, aged 33.”

 

The sailor awoke suddenly with a cry, and, looking up, saw the man they

called Black Milsom sitting on the opposite side of the table, looking

at him earnestly.

 

“Well, you are a restless sleeper, captain!” said this man: “I dropped

in here just now, thinking to find Dennis Wayman, and I’ve been looking

on while you finished your nap. I never saw a harder sleeper.”

 

“I had a bad dream,” answered Jernam, starting to his feet.

 

“A bad dream! What about, captain?”

 

“About your daughter!”

 

CHAPTER II.

 

DONE IN THE DARKNESS.

 

Before Thomas Milsom, otherwise Black Milsom, could express his

surprise, the landlord of the ‘Jolly Tar’ returned from his business

excursion, and presented himself in the dingy little room, where it was

already beginning to grow dusk.

 

Milsom told Dennis Wayman how he had discovered the captain sleeping

uneasily, with his head upon the table; and on being pressed a little,

Valentine Jernam told his dream as freely as it was his habit to tell

everything relating to his own affairs.

 

“I don’t see that it was such a very bad dream, after all,” said Dennis

Wayman, when the story was finished. “You dreamt you were at sea in a

dead calm, that’s about the plain English of it.”

 

“Yes; but such a calm! I’ve been becalmed many a time; but I never

remember anything like what I saw in my dream just now. Then the

loneliness; not a creature on board besides myself; not a human voice

to answer me when I called. And the face—there was something so awful

in the face—smiling at me, and yet with a kind of threatening look in

the smile; and the hand pointing to the tombstone! Do you know that I

was thirty-three last December?”

 

The sailor covered his face with his hands, and sat for some moments in

a meditative attitude. Bold and reckless though he was, the

superstition of his class had some hold upon him; and this bad dream

influenced him, in spite of himself.

 

The landlord was the first to break the silence. “Come, captain,” he

said; “this is what I call giving yourself up to the blue devils. You

went to sleep in an uncomfortable position, and you had an

uncomfortable dream, with no more sense nor reason in it than such

dreams generally have. What do you say to a hand at cards, and a drop

of something short? You want cheering up a bit, captain; that’s what

you want.”

 

Valentine Jernam assented. The cards were brought, and a bowl of punch

ordered by the open-handed sailor, who was always ready to invite

people to drink at his expense.

 

The men played all-fours; and what generally happens in this sort of

company happened now to Captain Jernam. He began by winning, and ended

by losing; and his losses were much heavier than his gains.

 

He had been playing for upwards of an hour, and had drunk several

glasses of punch, before his luck changed, and he had occasion to take

out the bloated leathern pocket-book, distended unnaturally with notes

and gold.

 

But for that rum-punch he might, perhaps, have remembered Joyce

Harker’s warning, and avoided displaying his wealth before these two

men. Unhappily, however, the fumes of the strong liquor had already

begun to mount to his brain, and the clerk was completely forgotten. He

opened his pocket-book every time he had occasion to pay his losses,

and whenever he opened it the greedy eyes of Dennis Wayman and Black

Milsom devoured the contents with a furtive gaze.

 

With every hand the sailor grew more excited. He was playing for small

stakes, and as yet his losses only amounted to a few pounds. But the

sense of defeat annoyed him. He was feverishly eager for his revenge:

and when Milsom rose to go, the captain wanted him to continue to play.

 

“You shan’t sneak off like that,” he said; “I want my revenge, and I

must have it.”

 

Black Milsom pointed to a little Dutch clock in a corner of the room.

 

“Past eight o’clock,” he said; “and I’ve got a five-mile walk between

me and home. My girl, Jenny, will be waiting up for me, and getting

anxious about her father.”

 

In the excitement of play, and the fever engendered by strong drink,

Valentine Jernam had forgotten the ballad-singer. But this mention of

her name brought the vision of the beautiful face back to him.

 

“Your daughter!” he muttered; “your daughter! Yes; the girl who sang

here, the beautiful girl who sang.”

 

His voice was thick, and his accents indistinct. Both the men had

pressed Jernam to drink, while they themselves took very little. They

had encouraged him to talk as well as to drink, and the appointment

with his brother had been spoken of by the captain.

 

In speaking of this intended meeting, Valentine Jernam had spoken also

of the good fortune which had attended his latest trading adventures;

and he had said enough to let these men know that he carried the

proceeds of his trading upon his person.

 

“Joyce wanted me to bank my money,” he said; “but none of your banking

rogues for me. My brother George is the only banker I trust, or ever

mean to trust.”

 

Milsom insisted upon the necessity of his departure, and the sailor

declared that he would have his revenge. They were getting to high

words, when Dennis Wayman interfered to keep the peace.

 

“I’ll tell you what it is,” he said; “if the captain wants his revenge,

it’s only fair that he should have it. Suppose we go down to your

place, Milsom! you can give us a bit of supper, I dare say. What do you

say to that?”

 

Milsom hesitated in a sheepish kind of manner. “Mine’s such a poor

place for a gentleman like the captain,” he said. “My daughter Jenny

will do her best to make things straight and comfortable; but still it

is about the poorest place that ever was—there’s no denying that.”

 

“I’m no fine gentleman,” said the captain, enraptured at the idea of

seeing the ballad-singer; “if your daughter will give us a crust of

bread and cheese, I shall be satisfied. We’ll take two or three bottles

of wine down with us, and we’ll be as jolly as princes. Get your trap

ready, Wayman, and let’s be off at once.”

 

The captain was all impatience to start. Dennis Wayman went away to get

the vehicle ready, and Milsom followed him, but they did not leave

Captain Jernam much time for thought, for Dennis Wayman came back

almost immediately to say that the vehicle was ready.

 

“Now, then, look sharp, captain!” he said; “it’s a dark night, and we

shall have a dark drive.”

 

It was a dark night—dark even here in Wapping, darker still on the

road by which Valentine Jernam found himself travelling presently.

 

The vehicle which Dennis Wayman drove was a disreputable-looking

conveyance—half chaise-cart, half gig—and the pony was a

vicious-looking animal, with a shaggy mane; but he was a tremendous

pony to go, and the dark, marshy country flew past the travellers in

the darkness like a landscape in a dream.

 

The ripple of the water, sounding faintly in the stillness, told

Valentine Jernam that the river was near at hand; but beyond this the

sailor had little knowledge of his whereabouts.

 

They had soon left London behind.

 

After driving some six or seven miles, and always keeping within sound

of the dull plash of the river, the landlord of the ‘Jolly Tar’ drew up

suddenly by a dilapidated wooden paling, behind which there was a low-roofed habitation of some kind or other, which was visible only by

reason of one faint glimmer of light, flickering athwart a scrap of

dingy red curtain. The dull, plashing sound of the river was louder

here; and, mingling with that monotonous ripple of the water, there was

a shivering sound—the trembling of rushes stirred by the chill night

wind.

 

“I’d almost passed your place, Tom,” said the landlord, as he drew up

before the darksome habitation.

 

“You might a’most drive over it on such a night as this,” answered

Black Milsom, “and not be much the wiser.”

 

The three men alighted, and Dennis Wayman led the vicious pony to a

broken-down shed, which served as stable and coach-house in Mr.

Milsom’s establishment.

 

Valentine Jernam looked about him. As his eyes grew more familiar with

the locality, he was able to make out the outline of the dilapidated

dwelling.

 

It was little better than a hovel, and stood on a patch of waste

ground, which could scarcely have been garden within the memory of man.

By one side of the house there was a wide, open ditch, fringed with

rushes—a deep, black