Foul Play - Dion Boucicault (the best books to read txt) 📗

said, “Why, what is the matter now?”

He said this mighty cheerfully, as one who carried the panacea for all ills in his pocket, and a medicine peculiarly suited to Nancy Rouse’s constitution. But he had not quite fathomed her yet.

As soon as ever she saw him she wiped her eyes, and asked him, grimly, what he wanted there. Wylie stared at the reception; but replied stoutly, that it was pretty well known by this time what he wanted in that quarter.

“Well, then,” said Nancy, “Want will be your master. Why did you never tell me Miss Helen was in that ship? my sweet, dear mistress as was, that I feel for like a mother. You left her to drown, and saved your own great useless carcass, and drowned she is, poor dear. Get out o’ my sight, do.”

“It wasn’t my fault, Nancy,” said Wylie, earnestly. “I didn’t know who she was, and I advised her to come with us; but she would go with that parson chap.”

“What parson chap? What a liar you be! She is Wardlaw’s sweetheart, and don’t care for no parsons. If you didn’t know you was to blame, why didn’t you tell me a word of your own accord? You kep’ dark. Do you call yourself a man, to leave my poor young lady to shift for herself?”

“She had as good a chance to live as I had,” said Wylie, sullenly.

“No, she hadn’t; you took care o’ yourself. Well, since you are so fond of yourself, keep yourself to yourself, and don’t come here no more. After this, I hate the sight on ye. You are like the black dog in my eyes, and always will be. Poor, dear Miss Helen! Ah, I cried when she left—my mind misgave me; but little I thought she would perish in the salt seas, and all for want of a man in the ship. If you had gone out again after in the steamboat—Mr. Penfold have told me all about it—I’d believe you weren’t so much to blame. But no; lolloping and looking about all day for months. There’s my door, Joe Wylie; I can’t cry comfortable before you as had a hand in drowning of her. You and me is parted forever. I’ll die as I am, or I’ll marry a man; which you ain’t one, nor nothing like one. Is he waiting for you to hold the door open, Mr. Penfold? or don’t I speak plain enough? Them as I gave the sack to afore you didn’t want so much telling.”

“Well, I’m going,” said Wylie, sullenly. Then, with considerable feeling, “This is hard lines.”

But Nancy was inexorable, and turned him out, with the 2,000 pounds in his pocket.

He took the notes out of his pocket, and flung them furiously down in the dirt.

Then he did what everybody does under similar circumstances, he picked them up again, and pocketed them, along with the other dirt they had gathered.

Next day he went down to the docks and looked out for a ship; he soon got one, and signed as second mate. She was to sail in a fortnight.

But, before a week was out, the banknotes had told so upon him that he was no longer game to go to sea. But the captain he had signed with was a Tartar, and not to be trifled with. He consulted a knowing friend, and that friend advised him to disguise himself till the ship had sailed. Accordingly he rigged himself out with a long coat, and a beard, and spectacles, and hid his sea-slouch as well as he could, and changed his lodgings. Finding he succeeded so well, he thought he might as well have the pleasure of looking at Nancy Rouse, if he could not talk to her. So he actually had the hardihood to take the parlor next door; and by this means he heard her move about in her room, and caught a sight of her at work on her little green; and he was shrewd enough to observe she did not sing and whistle as she used to do. The dog chuckled at that. His banknotes worried him night and day. He was afraid to put them in a bank; afraid to take them about with him into his haunts; afraid to leave them at home; and out of this his perplexity arose some incidents worth relating in their proper order.

 

Arthur Wardlaw returned to business; but he was a changed man. All zest in the thing was gone. His fraud set him above the world; and that was now enough for him, in whom ambition was dead, and, indeed, nothing left alive in him but deep regrets.

He drew in the horns of speculation, and went on in the old safe routine; and to the restless activity that had jeopardized the firm succeeded a strange torpidity. He wore black for Helen, and sorrowed without hope. He felt he had offended Heaven, and had met his punishment in Helen’s death. Wardlaw senior retired to Elmtrees, and seldom saw his son. When they did meet, the old man sometimes whispered hope, but the whisper was faint and unheeded.

One day Wardlaw senior came up express, to communicate to Arthur a letter from General Rolleston, written at Valparaiso. In this letter, General Rolleston deplored his unsuccessful search; but said he was going westward, upon the report of a Dutch whaler, who had seen an island reflected in the sky, while sailing between Juan Fernandez and Norfolk Isle.

Arthur only shook his head with a ghastly smile. “She is in heaven,” said he, “and I shall never see her again, not here or hereafter.”

Wardlaw senior was shocked at this speech; but he made no reply. He pitied his son too much to criticise the expressions into which his bitter grief betrayed him. He was old, and had seen the triumphs of time over all things human, sorrow included. These, however, as yet, had done nothing for Arthur Wardlaw. At the end of six months, his grief was as somber and as deadly as the first week.

But one day, as this pale figure in deep mourning sat at his table, going listlessly and mechanically through the business of scraping money together for others to enjoy, whose hearts, unlike his, might not be in the grave, his father burst in upon him, with a telegram in his hand, and waved it over his head in triumph.

“She is found! she is found!” he roared. “Read that!” and thrust the telegram into his hands.

Those hands trembled, and the languid voice rose into shrieks of astonishment and delight, as Arthur read the words, “We have got her, alive and well. Shall be at Charing Cross Hotel, 8 P. M.”

 

CHAPTER LIV.

 

WHILE the boat was going to the Springbok, General Rolleston whispered to Captain Moreland; and what he said may be almost guessed from what occurred on board the steamer soon afterward. Helen was carried trembling into the cabin, and the order was given to heave the anchor and get under way. A groan of disappointment ran through the ship; Captain Moreland expressed the general’s regret to the men, and divided two hundred pounds upon the capstan; and the groan ended in a cheer.

As for Helen’s condition, that was at first mistaken for ill health. She buried herself for two whole days in her cabin; and from that place faint moans were heard now and then. The sailors called her the sick lady.

Heaven knows what she went through in that forty-eight hours.

She came upon deck at last in a strange state of mind and body; restless, strung up, absorbed. The rare vigor she had acquired on the island came out now with a vengeance. She walked the deck with briskness, and a pertinacity that awakened admiration in the crew at first, but by and by superstitious awe. For, while the untiring feet went briskly to and fro over leagues and leagues of plank every day, the great hazel eyes were turned inward, and the mind, absorbed with one idea, skimmed the men and things about her listlessly.

She had a mission to fulfill, and her whole nature was stringing itself up to do the work.

She walked so many miles a day, partly from excitement, partly with a deliberate resolve to cherish her health and strength; “I may want them both,” said she, “to clear Robert Penfold.” Thought and high purpose shone through her so, that after a while nobody dared trouble her much with commonplaces. To her father, she was always sweet and filial, but sadly cold compared with what she had always been hitherto. He was taking her body to England, but her heart stayed behind upon that island. He saw this, and said it.

“Forgive me,” said she, coldly; and that was all her reply.

Sometimes she had violent passions of weeping; and then he would endeavor to console her; but in vain. They ran their course, and were succeeded by the bodily activity and concentration of purpose they had interrupted for a little while.

At last, after a rapid voyage, they drew near the English coast; and then General Rolleston, who had hitherto spared her feelings, and been most indulgent and considerate, felt it was high time to come to an understanding with her as to the course they should both pursue.

“Now, Helen,” said he, “about the Wardlaws!”

Helen gave a slight shudder. But she said, after a slight hesitation, “Let me know your wishes.”

“Oh, mine are not to be too ungrateful to the father, and not to deceive the son.”

“I will not be ungrateful to the father, nor deceive the son,” said Helen, firmly.

The general kissed her on the brow, and called her his brave girl. “But,” said he, “on the other hand, it must not be published that you have been for eight months on an island alone with a convict. Anything sooner than that. You know the malice of your own sex; if one woman gets hold of that, you will be an outcast from society.”

Helen blushed and trembled. “Nobody need be told that but Arthur; and I am sure he loves me well enough not to injure me with the world.”

“But he would be justified in declining your hand, after such a revelation.”

“Quite. And I hope he will decline it when he knows I love another, however hopelessly.”

“You are going to tell Arthur Wardlaw all that?”

“I am.”

“Then all I can say is, you are not like other women.”

“I have been brought up by a man.”

“If I was Arthur Wardlaw, it would be the last word you should ever speak to me.”

“If you were Arthur Wardlaw, I should be on that dear island now.”

“Well, suppose his love should be greater than his spirit, and—”

“If he does not go back when he hears of my hopeless love, I don’t see how I can. I shall marry him; and try with all my soul to love him. I’ll open every door in London to Robert Penfold; except one; my husband’s. And that door, while I live, he shall never enter. Oh, my heart; my heart!” She burst out sobbing desperately. And her father laid her head upon his bosom, and sighed deeply, and asked himself how all this would end.

Before they landed, her fortitude seemed to return; and of her own accord she begged her father to telegraph to the Wardlaws.

“Would you not like a day to compose yourself, and prepare for this trying interview?” said he.

“I should. But it is mere weakness. And I must cure myself of my weakness, or I shall never clear Robert Penfold. And then, papa, I think of you. If old Mr. Wardlaw heard you had been a day in