Only an Ensign: A Tale of the Retreat from Cabul, Volume 2 (of 3)

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE WANDERER.

We must now ask the reader to traverse with greater speed than even the electric wire possesses, both sea and land, and, annihilating time and space, accompany us once more to the opening scenes of our story—even to the grey, sea-beaten cliffs, and broad brown moors of Cornwall.

In an early chapter we referred to a certain hostelry named the Trevanion Tavern, as a place where sundry beverages were procurable, and to which General Trecarrel (whose poor old bones were whitening now with others in the Khyber Pass) sent Mike Treherne and his comrades on that exciting evening when Audley Trevelyan rescued Sybil Devereaux from the terrors of the gloomy Pixies' Hole.

It was the sweet season of spring, and the flowers of balmy April were in all their bloom; the young and fragrant buds were bursting in the woods of Rhoscadzhel, and the willows that gave a name to the long narrow glen, forming the avenue to Porthellick, were as green, as leafy, and as graceful in their droop, as when Constance, dark-eyed and pale-faced, sat at the windows of the pretty white villa, watching for her husband, Richard, cantering his horse to the little portico, where Derrick Braddon awaited him; Denzil going forth to whip the trouting-stream, or Sybil sitting, sketch-book in hand, under a tree, to shade her from the sunshine.

The Trevanion Arms, over which creaked and swung a signboard decorated with the arms of that old surname, a fesse between two chevrons, with three escallops (for old Jack, like every Cornishman, had a pedigree), is a picturesque little old-fashioned house, partly built of granite and partly of straw and mud beaten into a consistency that is pretty enduring. Four boulders that had lain for ages on the promontory where it stands, had been improvised as corner-stones by the first builders of the edifice, and then the erection proved easy enough. It is square, with a trellised porch, which is always a mass of flowers and leaves; two windows are on each side of this, and five above, while there are other little quaint dormers that abut from the roof, which is conical, or pavilion-shaped, to write more correctly: and the edifice was then, from its foundation to its apex, chimneys included, literally a mass of clematis, dark green ivy, jasmine and sweet briar, so matted and interwoven as completely to conceal where the wall ended and the roof began; and in the pairing season the snug recesses of this leafy covering were all alive with teeming nests and twittering birds, whose gaping bills and glittering eyes peeped forth at times when a frocked waggoner or dusky-visaged miner drew up at the door for a pot of creamy ale, or a quart of sharp, foaming Devonshire cider.

Though April, the night on which we visit this place is bleak; the rain is swooping in torrents on the drenched land, and tossing sea; black clouds envelop all the Bristol Channel, the wild waves of which were rolling in snowy foam against the bluffs of Tintagel, along Trebarreth Strand, and all that iron shore from thence, perhaps, to Cape Cornwall, for it was just such a night of storm as the old Cornish wreckers would have loved, and hung their lanterns on the cliffs to mislead doomed ships at sea.

Seated alone, gazing intently into the sea-coal fire that burned low in the grate of the humble tavern parlour, smoking a short pipe, and taking occasional sips from a tankard of ale, was a somewhat tattered, but well-bearded, grizzled, and weather-beaten man, about sixty years of age. His features were rather Cornish or Celtic in type; the nose and cheek bones high, the eyes keen and glittering, when the firelight shone on them; his sturdy figure and well-embrowned hands showed that his life had been one of hard work, and, by the peculiar mode in which he carried his head, it was easy to see that he had been drilled as a soldier in the ranks.

Intently thinking, he sighed deeply once or twice, and, looking round the room as a gust of the storm without roused him from reverie, he said aloud,—

"So here you are at last, after all that has come and gone—here at last, and for what, Derrick Braddon?"

For Derrick Braddon he was—Derrick, the faithful attendant and follower of the late Richard Pencarrow Trevelyan—Lord Lamorna! His fate and adventures had been strange; for since the steamer Admiral, of Montreal, had perished at sea, Braddon had seen more of the world than he ever expected to behold again, and been so circumstanced, that he could never communicate with England, even in this age of ease and appliances; or his letters had miscarried; and now when he found himself once more at home—but, as it eventually proved, a home filled with strangers—his heart grew soft, and his eyes suffused, albeit that he was somewhat unused to the melting mood.

The purple moorlands, the great grey standing stones, the mines teeming with men and lights, and strange sounds, their giant works and grimy gearing; the granite carns and the dark oak woodlands had all spoken of home and his boyhood to the returned wanderer, the faithful old soldier, and caused him to be doubly sad; nature was the same, but many a voice was hushed, and many a familiar face was gone for ever.

The Trevanion tavern was unchanged even to the leafy tendrils that clambered over it, shrouding every inch of wall and roof, and hiding more than the half of each window; but his old comrade, Jack Trevanion, whilom drum-major of the Cornish Light Infantry, who had left a leg in the Punjaub, and with whom he had smoked many a pipe, by that same hearth (where he now sat alone), talking of old times, and of the old regiment, where even their names were forgotten, was gone to his last home by Lanteglos church (the burial place of the Trecarrels, too), and another host occupied Jack's place in the bar-parlour.

Old Mike Treherne and Winny Braddon had quitted their native place, and gone to Plymouth, from whence Derrick had travelled thus far on a pilgrimage to Rhoscadzhel, when his heart began utterly to fail him.

From his sister Winny, the old nurse of Sybil, he had heard, with honest indignation, the details of that futile and remarkable visit paid to Rhoscadzhel, and how Downie Trevelyan had treated their now dead mistress. He was told, too, of her hapless lawsuit, marred, as it was believed, by the low practitioner, who, to gain some notoriety, had thrust himself unasked into the case. But he could only further learn "that Master Denzil was somewhere far away in the Ingies," and that Miss Sybil, the sweet-voiced and gentle-eyed Sybil, who had slept in her bosom in infancy, and whom she had seen develope into a lovely young woman, had, after seeking in vain to sell her drawings, gone penniless to London, after which she could hear of her no more.

"Gone to London?" repeated Braddon, with a groan; "and penniless, too!"

He knew that amid the human tide of that mighty Babylon she might be lost as surely as if she were among the waves of the ocean; and then, as the old soldier thought of his proud dead master, and how he had loved that little daughter, he sighed again bitterly.

From the breast-pocket of his well-worn pea-jacket (Derrick was attired somewhat like a sailor) he drew forth a rusted and battered tin case. It was thin and flat in form, and he surveyed it long and silently. Then he opened the lid, as if he was often in the habit of doing so, mechanically and as if to assure himself that the contents were safe; and he was, perhaps, about to draw them forth for inspection, when a sound startled him, and he hastily consigned the case to its keeping-place, just as the landlord ushered in a man, who was dripping with rain, and whose personal appearance, the soaking of his somewhat seedy habiliments had by no means improved.

Derrick courteously made way for the stranger, who ordered some "gin and water hot," and after desiring the landlord to let him know when the "first return fly," by which he meant a brougham, passed for some town that he named, he proceeded to drink Braddon's health, and to dry his shabby black garments by the rotary process of turning, as if in a roasting-jack before the fire, raising the limp tails of his coat from time to time over his long and awkward-looking arms and lean bony hands.

"A wet night, sir," said he.

"Yes; but I have seen a wetter," replied Braddon.

"The dooce you have!"

"Aye, at sea; on a night when I was precious near having a cold water cure for all my sufferings."

"How?"

"By being drowned."

"Your fate is perhaps a drier one. You are, I suppose, a seafaring man?"

"I am an old soldier, and have served in the Cornish Light Infantry, as boy and man, for one-and-twenty years, and have earned my shilling a day from the Queen, God bless her! so don't crack your stale joke on me," said Derrick grimly and emphatically, as he surveyed the new-comer, whose face, somehow, seemed not unfamiliar to him.

He was attired in clothes a world too wide for him; the collar of his coat rested on the nape of his neck, and its sleeve cuffs fell well nigh over his fingers; the legs of his trousers flapped loosely over his broken boots, and the tall shiny hat which he had deposited on the deal table, after carefully wiping it with a coloured handkerchief, had evidently seen better days upon another and perhaps honester head. His brow was low and narrow; the frontal bones projecting over keen eyes of a nondescript colour, and a mean turned-up nose. Mistrust, acuteness, suspicion and avarice, were the leading expressions of his face, which would have horrified a disciple of Lavater; yet, in the tone of his voice, and in his manner, there was an affectation of deferential suavity, as if he sought to win rather than to repel a confidence that few, unless very simple indeed, would accord to one with lips so thin and cruel, and whose ears, like those of a cat, were nearly on the line of his pericranium, which was covered by a few wisps of thin, grey, and dead-looking hair. Yet this ugly personage has been described to the reader before.

Perceiving that his jest had not been appreciated by the veteran, he resumed the conversation in a different style.

"Know these parts?" said he, drinking his gin-and-water, and fixing his eyes furtively on Derrick.

"Think I should," was the curt response.

"Ah"—

There was a pause; then the other said,—

"Many hereabout will be surprised to hear of old Derrick Braddon coming to earth again."

The shabby stranger started, and the iris of his cunning eyes dilated and shrunk again in a somewhat feline fashion, as he asked eagerly,—

"What! were you the groom to Captain Devereaux who—well, occasionally—lived at Porthellick?"

"To the Right Honorable Lord Lamorna, if it is all the same to you," replied Derrick, stiffly.

"It is quite the same. What on earth is up! Is the sky about to rain larks, eh?"

"It is pouring a torrent anyhow, at this moment," was the dry response, as a fresh gust without clashed the leaves against the window-panes, and the cry of the red-legged Cornish chough, driven from his eyrie in the cliffs, was heard on the passing tempest.

"Where have you been all this time—nearly nine months, now?"

"That is too long a story to tell a stranger."

"And where is your master?"

"In his grave, God rest him!—in his grave, if the great sea can be called so."

"How long have you been in England?"

"Three weeks."

"And in Cornwall?"

"I have just arrived."

"Then you may not have heard of me, William Schotten Sharkley, solicitor, who acted as your mistress's agent in her case which failed for want of legal or documentary proofs. I did all that I could to befriend her—"

"And pocketed her last shilling, as I have heard."

"Law is an expensive amusement, and lawyers must be paid. I did my best."

"For that I thank you, Lawyer Sharkley," replied Braddon, taking in his hard honest hand the damp, unwholesome fingers of the solicitor, adding somewhat awkwardly, "if you have a bad name, perhaps you can't help it."

Mr. William S. Sharkley's face darkened, and his eyes dilated and shrunk, but he was too craven in spirit to manifest the least annoyance.

"And it was through the lack of certain papers," resumed Braddon, "that my lady's case was lost, and her heart broken?"

"Yes; the doubtful letter she produced referred to a certificate of marriage and a will in favour of her and her two children; but these documents, if they ever existed, no doubt perished with the captain, your master."

"They did not, as they are here—here—in the pocket of my old coat, Master Sharkley; so it is of more value than it looks, for it contains a peerage and an estate," replied Braddon, with gleaming eyes, as he slapped his breast emphatically.

For a moment Sharkley sat silent and bewildered, for the energy and perfect confidence of the speaker could not fail to impress him. Then he said,—

"You of course mean to turn them to account somehow?"

"When the right time comes."

"And to show them—"

"To the right man when he comes."

"And who, and where is he?"

"Young Denzil Trevelyan—Lord Lamorna—now in India, with the old Regiment. Could I but get there—there to the young master—" continued old Derrick with fervour; "but I might as well wish myself in the moon; for I am a poor friendless old fellow. One thing, Master Sharkley, I sha'n't trust the papers with you."

Sharkley was silent again; Braddon's mistrust of him was open and unconcealed, and he saw but one way of obtaining a sight of papers so important, and that was by exciting his indignation by a sneer.

"Ah—the lady at the villa was very much attached to your master—very handsome, and I doubt not—"

"What more?"

"Very expensive, as these kind of folks usually are."

"What do you mean, sir?" asked Braddon, sternly.

"I mean what my words imply; she could not prove herself a wedded wife, so her case had not a leg to stand on; yet I was her friend and adviser."

"You think thus ill of her, and yet thrust yourself into her case."

"My dear sir, I am a lawyer, and lawyers must feed."

"Which is too often feeding what ought to be hung," replied Braddon, with all a soldier's contempt for the other's cloth.

"I repeat that I was her friend," urged Sharkley.

"God keep us from such friends, if all I have been told is true."

"But giving a mere sight of those papers can do you no harm."

"And you small good; however, see them you shall," replied Braddon, with something of grim triumph, as he drew them from the before-mentioned tin case.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE LOST STEAMER.

The first document which Derrick produced and spread upon the table was the Père Latour's certificate of the marriage; the second was an undoubted will, duly stamped and signed, wherein the testator, Richard Pencarrow Trevelyan, Lord Lamorna, of Rhoscadzhel, in the Duchy of Cornwall, left all he possessed to Constance Devereaux, his wife, for the term of her life, and after her death to their two children absolutely.

The cunning and avaricious eyes of Sharkley seemed to devour the documents, and his trembling fingers indicated the eagerness of his heart to possess them, as he saw that beyond all uncertainty they were genuine, authentic, and of vast legal value to the son and daughter of his late unhappy client; nor were they of less worth to their opponent, if their existence could be terminated, ere it was known. Here was a means of triumph over the Messrs. Gorbelly and Culverhole—the solicitors of Downie Trevelyan, the present titular lord—who, as more respectable practitioners than Sharkley, had ever treated him with undisguised contempt.

Frequently his long lean fingers approached the papers, which were faded and yellow in aspect, having been stained by saltwater in the shipwreck; but Derrick Braddon, aware of the man he had to deal with, had taken from his pocket a large clasp knife, with which he usually cut his tobacco, and which had been of much and varied service to him in his recent wanderings; and with the point of this suggestive instrument he indicated the dates and so forth, while its production seemed to hint that any attempt to appropriate either the certificate or the will might be attended by an unpleasant sequel; for old as he was, Braddon would have given a stronger antagonist than the village lawyer "a Cornish hug," that might have been little to his taste.

When Sharkley had perused the papers which he was not permitted to touch, Braddon deliberately replaced them in their case and carefully stowed the latter in his inner pocket, the cat-like eyes of the attorney watching all his motions, while a kind of sigh seemed to escape him. He drained his gin and water to the last drop and then said,—

"No doubt, Mr. Braddon, these papers are of great value; but what do you mean to do with them?"

"Keep them for young Denzil. Once they are safe in his hands, he'll march in and take possession with colours flying."

Sharkley smiled at the old soldier's idea of the mode of succeeding to a title and heritage; but, as the storm had not yet passed away, and no "return fly" had yet been announced, he resolved to improve the occasion, by worming himself into Derrick's confidence, and drawing all the information from him that he could win.

"But if your master was drowned, as you say he was, how came these important documents into your possession?"

"Drowned as I say he was! Do you doubt me?"

"Nay, nay; you misunderstand."

"Well, you shall hear all about it. Have another drain of gin and I shall have one more pot of ale; I have not tasted such good old English tipple for many a day."

Then, after a little pause, Derrick began his narrative, which we shall give in our own words rather than his. The accounts of the wreck which Constance had read in the public prints, were scarcely a correct version of the catastrophe in all its details.

The ocean steamer Admiral had not been more than four days' sail from the mouth of the River St. Lawrence, when her engines broke down; thus she was forced to continue the voyage under canvas, and being but ill calculated for sailing purposes, while endeavouring to beat against a continual head wind, she was driven so far south out of her direct course, as to be somewhere within seventy miles of Corvo, the most northern isle of the Azores, when she should have been breasting the waves of the British Channel.

When she had been three weeks at sea, the wind one night became a gale, and from a gale it freshened to a regular tempest; and most of her crew, not being seamen, but such as are usually bred in coasting steamers, handled her extremely ill. Much of her canvas was split, rent to ribbons, or blown out of the bolt ropes; and thus, by the time three bells in the middle watch were struck, the wind was howling through her bare rigging, for there was nothing left upon her save a staysail and trysail, by the aid of which four men at the wheel strove to steer her under direction of the quarter-master.

Apprehending no danger, Richard Trevelyan was quietly seated in the cabin, endeavouring to write up his diary, by the light of a single lamp, which swung madly to and fro from a beam overhead; his desk was open, but was secured to the table, for every loose thing in the cabin was flying from port to starboard and back again, as the vessel lurched and rolled. Derrick was standing, rather swaying to and fro behind his master's chair, as they conferred together concerning the exact date of some incident which he wished to record, and while conversing they heard a crash on deck, as the staysail sheet snapped in the fierce gust; and as the ship broached to, that is, was taken aback on the weather side, the seas flew in wild foam, and in fierce succession over her, from stem to stern. Then was heard the voice of the mate in charge of the watch, shouting to, "haul down the staysail, and bend on the sheet anew."

Ere this could be done, a wave some twenty feet in height took the crippled steamer right on her broadside, and tore away the boats, the entire bulwark, four signal guns, and half the crew, washing by a mighty volume of water, and at one fell sweep, all and everything overboard into the black and seething sea!

With an astounding crash, the funnel and mizenmast went next by the board; but the lower portion of the mainmast remained, with all its top-hamper hanging about it. The last lamp in the cabin went out; but not before Richard Trevelyan, who never lost his presence of mind, had secured the two documents in question, placed them in an inner breast-pocket of his coat, and calling on Derrick to follow him, went on deck, where a terrible and unexpected scene presented itself, in the aspect of the ship, changed now to a total wreck.

They had barely staggered along the slippery main-deck, so far as where the stump of the mainmast yet held on, when another wave, its mighty head cresting and curling with foam, that seemed all the whiter amid the blackness of the night, burst over the doomed ship.

"Hold on, my lord," cried Derrick, "for the love of Heaven, hold on!"

"Yes—and for the love of my poor wife," added Richard, as they simultaneously grasped some of the belaying pins at the base of the mast, and as soon as the mountain of bitter water passed away to leeward leaving them drenched and half-blinded, a more fearful sight was visible by the pale light of the stars.

The entire poop, from which they had just issued, had been torn away from the ship; the wheel, with its four men, the skylights, the upper deck, and all that was in the cabin below, were gone, and all was ruin, and all was silence there save the seething of the angry sea. Some twenty of the passengers and crew were still clustered on the forecastle, seeking shelter between the bunks and windlass; but water was pouring fast into the ship, and as a portion of her deck was beginning to break up, Richard, who was powerful and brave as most men, grasped his faithful servant by the arm, and was assisting him towards this temporary and comfortless bourne, when some of the planking parted below him, and he was suddenly enclosed nearly to the waist, in the jarring woodwork. Then a double shriek escaped him, for both his thighs were broken, and he was so peculiarly jammed among the wreckage, that at that particular time no human power could either aid or save him.

Derrick could only remain near him, helpless, bewildered, and uttering exclamations of commiseration, which mingled with Richard's groans, the hiss of the sea, the roaring of the wind, and the piteous ejaculations of the passengers.

"Oh, Derrick, what a wretched thing I am now," said he, through his clenched teeth, "and what a proud, hale man I was some five minutes ago! Well, well, a six pound shot might have done as much for me elsewhere; but Derrick, God and myself alone know the agony—the awful agony I am enduring. Would to Heaven it were all over—even though I shall never see them more—Constance—Constance, and the children!" he added, while nearly gnawing through his nether lip, in the intensity of his pain and despair.

He made more than one frantic effort to wrench his crushed limbs, and torn and bleeding flesh out of the sudden and terrible trap into which he had fallen; but all such attempts were hopeless and futile, and he would pause exhausted and as pale as a corpse, with the perspiration wrung by agony, mingling with the spray on his temples. That he must soon be drowned, or die in an ecstasy of suffering was but too evident.

"I have often thought to die, Derrick," said he, in a husky voice, "and knew that the day and hour must come to me as they come to all; but I never thought to die thus. Blessed be God, that she knows nothing of it! Do you hear me, Braddon, my old comrade?"

And the servant wept as his master wrung his hand, and in weaker accents urged him to take possession of the two documents which were of such value to the family, and to preserve them even as he would his own life; and with tears in his eyes—tears that mingled with the wind-swept foam—Derrick promised to do so; and every minute Richard Trevelyan's once powerful and athletic frame grew weaker and weaker. Some of the arteries of his limbs had been torn as well as the ligaments, and he was evidently bleeding to death in his half-crushed situation.

Amid their own sufferings and danger, his dying words and prayers were unheeded by the pale and drenched wretches who clung close by to the windlass and forecastle ring-bolts; but terribly his sinking accents fell on the tympanum of Derrick's listening ear. His whole soul seemed as if filled by the idea of those he should never see again.

His last utterances were all about Sybil, Denzil, and their mother; he imagined himself to see them, to be speaking to them, to hear their voices, and to feel their kisses on his sodden face, over which the sea washed ever and anon; and thus, happy it might be in his delirium, he passed away, and when more of the wreck broke up, the body dropped quietly into the sea, and was swept away in the trough to leeward, just as the grey dawn began to steal in, and the wind and waves to go down together, as if their object had been accomplished in the destruction of the ill-fated ship.

A boat that was not stove in, but was still dragged alongside by the fall-tackle, was now properly lowered. Ten men who survived got on board of her and shoved off from the wreck. But Derrick, who, in grief and weakness, had dropped asleep in the forecastle bunks, was unseen or forgotten by them in the hurry and selfishness of the moment; thus when he awoke, the sun was nearly setting, and he was alone upon the sea, for the boat had been picked up by one of Her Majesty's steam vessels, the captain of which duly reported the circumstance, with the loss of the Admiral, to Lloyds and the owners in London.

Derrick's reflections on finding himself alone in the sinking ship were far from soothing. He had death before him, in its most terrible form, by slow starvation; and all the horrors he had read or heard of in shipwrecked men occurred to him with vivid minutiæ most painful to endure. But he prayed quite as much that he might be spared to fulfil the wishes of his master as for the prolongation of his own humble life, and the honest fellow's supplications were not uttered in vain, for ere the twilight came, a vessel bound for Tasmania took him off the wreck; and now, after long, perilous, and penniless wanderings, he found himself once more safe in old England.

Sharkley, who had listened to all this narrative with deep interest—not that he cared a jot about the escapes, the sufferings, or the perseverance of the narrator, but because it formed a necessary sequence to the other portions of his story, which related to Montreal—now said,—

"After all you have undergone, you will, I hope, be careful to whom you show, and with whom you trust, papers, upon the production of which, in a proper and legal manner, so much depends."

"Make yourself perfectly easy on that head," replied Braddon, winking knowingly, as he refilled his pipe.

"Lord Lamorna would give a good round sum, I doubt not—a good round sum, my dear sir, to possess them."

"I am neither a dear sir, nor a cheap one," growled Derrick; "if you mean by Lord Lamorna Master Denzil, the papers are his already by right; if you mean Downie Trevelyan, they sha'n't be his, even if he piled up money as high as Bron Welli. Ah—he had ever an eye to the main chance."

"And haven't we all?"

"In some ways, perhaps, more or less; but harkee, comrade, no more hints like that you gave just now. I had a kind, good master, and was his faithful servant. I am an old soldier, and know what honour is, though my coat be a tattered one."

"Yet, if I have heard aright, you were not always a soldier," sneered Sharkley, who despised monetary scruples that were beyond his comprehension.

"No," replied Braddon, his wrinkled cheek flushing with anger as he spoke; "I was in my youth a smuggler, and here in Cornwall ain't ashamed to say so. I know well the Isles of Scilly, and every creek and cranny in those whose inhabitants are only gulls and rabbits; for in them, as in the Piper's Hole at Tresco, and in many a place hereby known only to myself now, have I at the risk of my life by steel and lead, and storm, run the kegs of Cognac and the negrohead, that never paid duty to the Crown. But what of that; I am not a smuggler now, though I had to bolt for being one! I suppose few will dispute that you have been a lawyer in heart since you first saw the light, or learned to steal your school-mates' apples and nuts, till able to aim at bigger prizes—eh?"

"Come, don't let us quarrel after so pleasant an evening, Mr. Braddon," urged Sharkley, deprecatingly.

"I ain't Mister Braddon," said the old soldier, doggedly; "I am only plain Derrick Braddon, once full private, and No. 2006 in Captain Trevelyan's company of the Old Cornish; and now, I think, I shall turn in."

Sharkley succeeded in talking the veteran into a better humour again, to throw him off his guard; but his eyes never wandered from that left breast pocket where the outline of the tin case was distinctly visible, impressed on the worn-out, faded cloth.

As the storm continued, he remained all night at the Trevanion Arms; and, after assuring himself that Derrick Braddon had no intention of leaving the neighbourhood in a hurry, an early hour next morning saw him spinning along the Cornwall and Devon Railway, in a corner of a third-class carriage, en route to Rhoscadzhel.

END OF VOL. II.

BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.