"I have lost a letter this morning," said Mr Lawrence, explaining its form and size, "and it must have fallen from my pocket somewhere between my father's house and this ship by way of Old Friar's Road. If you can bring me that letter, or find out if it has been found, and if so, by whom, before we sail, you shall have five pounds."
"Simply a letter, your honour, folded into four, without address, written in pencil, and not sealed?" said the hunchback.
"That's it!" exclaimed Mr Lawrence.
"I'll do my best, sir, and I'll work from dawn to night to find it, if it's to be found," was the answer.
Mr Lawrence was for a few days very uneasy, but uneasy is a mild term to express the state of a man's mind that starts at a look or an exclamation, who fancies he is whispered about when two go past him talking, who expects that every man who approaches him is going to speak to him about the letter he has found, who imagines that every look that his father fastens upon him is a prelude to a tremendous attack, who is willing to attribute the silence of Captain Acton to the consideration of what steps in the face of such an enormity should be taken by him against the son of his old friend Sir William Lawrence.
But Lucy Acton smiled and curtsied when he passed as usual. Old Miss Acton was nervously polite in her way in her little chirrupy salutations. Captain Acton was sometimes down at the ship, but had nothing to say about the finding of a letter good or bad.
Therefore after a few days of miserable anxiety, during which he was remarkable for sobriety and for conspicuous regard to his personal apparel, Mr Lawrence allowed the subject of the letter to slip from his mind, satisfied that it had been reduced to pulp by the wet that had fallen on the morning he lost it, or that it had been blown by some sportive stroke of breeze into a corner, or a place where it was as much lost as if it had dropped from his pocket into the ocean.
As evidence that Mr Lawrence was improving in general esteem, a brief conversation passed at Old Harbour House on the fourth evening following the day of the loss of the letter. Captain Acton had invited some friends to a rubber of whist. Sir William Lawrence was to be amongst the guests, but as he lived near he was always late, explaining that the fact of his living near excused him for taking plenty of time. Miss Lucy was lovely in black muslin spangled with stars as the hair is dusted with gold.
Whilst they waited for Sir William the conversation turned upon his son.
"How greatly Mr Lawrence has improved, not indeed in manners, for he was always a very fine gentleman, a very pretty gentleman, but in appearance, since you gave him the command of the Minorca, Captain Acton."
This was said by Lady Larmont, the widow of an East India Director, who had achieved a reputation for beneficence in the district without spending very much money.
"What I much admire in Mr Lawrence," said Miss Acton, "is his art in making a leg on entering a room. His art in this way rises to a degree that is very unusual in men nowadays, and I should think particularly in sea-faring men. His deportment embraces the whole room. A man has a right to claim some sort of excellence who can make a leg with skill."
"'Tis a very old-fashioned term, madam," said General Groves, "current in my time, but I question if much understood in this."
"It is most happily explained in the play of the Man of the World," said Miss Acton. "I was never more pleased than by Sir Pertinax Macsycophant's reply to his nephew's question how he had made his way in the world. Sir Pertinax replies, 'By booing, sir.' A great deal of money and fine social positions have been obtained by booing."
"Hence the value of being able to make a leg in your opinion, madam," said General Groves.
"If trousers come in legs must go out," said Lucy. "What is the good of being able to make a leg with elegance if fashion compels you to conceal the eloquent member?"
"Well said, Miss, well said!" cried Miss Proudfoot, who was a very good hand at whist and very quarrelsome over the game.
"I don't believe myself," said Miss Acton, "that trousers ever will come in. Men whose calves are of a good shape and who have long been in the habit of admiring and cherishing them, will be very reluctant to conceal them in those ridiculous unmanly garments called trousers."
"As the majority of men strut this petty earth on drum-sticks," said General Groves. "I expect that in a few years hence the universal male wear will be trousers."
He looked at his own legs. Time had somewhat shrunk them.
"Mr Lawrence has wonderfully improved of late," said Miss Proudfoot, with a glance at Lucy. "I should say that when in the Navy he was one of the handsomest men in that glorious Service."
"All praise of him is gratifying to me for his father's sake," said Captain Acton, whilst Lucy sat in silence with the shadow of a smile lurking about her mouth, but invisible in her soft, dreamy half-veiled eyes.
"Would not you like to take a trip to the West Indies in your father's ship, Miss?" said the Reverend James Prettyman, who had been headmaster at a fashionable school for young gentlemen for many years past in a city about twenty miles distant from Old Harbour Town.
"Only the other day," replied Lucy, "I told Mr Eagle, the mate of the vessel, that I could not imagine a pleasanter trip than a voyage to the West Indies in the Minorca, but I stipulated that the sea should be always smooth."
"There it is!" said Miss Acton. "Give me a sea as smooth as our lawn, and I will accompany you, my dear."
Here Mr Pierpoint, who held some influential position in connection with Old Harbour and was one of Captain Acton's frequent guests at his whist tables, exclaimed: "The master of the Aurora told me, a day or two ago, that Mr Lawrence was attempting a wonderful innovation in Merchant ships by the introduction of a sick-bay, after the custom of men-o'-war."
"It is true, sir," said Captain Acton, "and Mr Lawrence loses nothing in my esteem by his idea and application of it. The Merchants care nothing about their sick. 'A sick man is no man's dog,' I believe, is one of their adages. Every vessel, supposing her to be above a certain tonnage, whether flying a pennant or not, should have quarters properly fitted for the reception and treatment of the sick among her crew."
"I should think so indeed, poor men!" exclaimed Miss Acton.
"Suppose she carries no surgeon?" said Mr Pierpoint.
"Her master should be able to dispense physic with the aid of a book," said Captain Acton. "Besides, the idea is to isolate the sufferers from the rest of the crew in the black, wet, slush-lighted holes in which Merchant sailors are forced to live in dozens, breathing the aroma of their own breath, and creating such an atmosphere that the wicked halo of miasma gleams a corpse-light round the flickering, stinking flame which hovers at the mouth of the spout of the lamp."
"What an awful picture!" cried Miss Proudfoot.
"Who'd be a sailor in the Merchant Service!" exclaimed General Groves.
"It is a noble life," said Lucy. "But it must be nobly lived."
"Oh, madam, I thank you," exclaimed Mr Prettyman. "To live nobly you need pure air to begin with. But it certainly does young Mr Lawrence great credit to be the first, as I apprehend from this conversation, to introduce sick quarters for sick men on board Merchant ships. I doubt even if the East India Company's vessels are fitted with such humane receptacles."
"And yet Nelson," said Lady Larmont, "liked the Merchant Service so well that he was reluctant to leave it to enter the Royal Navy. When he came from his West India voyage in a Merchant ship his favourite saying was, 'Aft the more honour. Forward the better man.'"
At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the bustling entrance of Admiral Sir William Lawrence, when of course the conversation was immediately changed from the subject of his son and sick-bays to other matters.
The Minorca was announced to sail on Tuesday, 3rd May, at half-past twelve o'clock. All her people without exception lived in or near Old Harbour Town, consequently her crew was quickly assembled. On the day previous they had bent all sails, rove all running rigging, done all that was necessary to render a ship fit for the sea. She lay between two other vessels, but was readily distinguished, not only by her rig but by the height her masts towered above those of the others.
It had been arranged between Captain Acton and Admiral Lawrence that the latter should breakfast at half-past nine with Captain Acton, who would then fill an hour with transaction of certain business which he could deal with in his own house, leaving the Admiral to amuse himself in the grounds with his pipe, and, if he chose, a telescope; after which they would walk leisurely down to Old Harbour, go on board the Minorca, and take a farewell view of the vessel with a God-speed to her new commander.
Lucy over-night had said she would join them, but she did not appear at the breakfast table. Her father enquired for her, and was told that she had left the house an hour earlier, or perhaps more, to take the morning air and a walk with her dog.
Neither Captain Acton nor Miss Acton witnessed anything strange in the absence of Lucy from the breakfast table. She was in the habit of taking these early walks, and would often turn into a cottage whose inmates she well knew and breakfast with the occupants, enjoying more the egg warm from the nest, the home-cured rasher of bacon, the pot of home-made jam, the slice of brown bread and sweet butter, the bowl of new milk, or the cup of tea which on such grand occasions would be introduced by her humble friends, than the choicest dainties which her father's cook could send to the breakfast table at Old Harbour House.
"I expect you will find her down at the wharves waiting for the ship to sail," said Miss Acton. "I met Mrs Jellybottle yesterday. She told me that Farmer Jellybottle had received on the previous day a large parcel of very substantial eatables from his brother, who is head gardener at Lord Lancaster's. Lucy has possibly been tempted by the display."
"Here is her dog anyhow!" exclaimed the Admiral, as the little animal marched into the room and stood near Lucy's chair with fore-foot lifted as though she awaited her mistress.
"How sits the wind?" enquired Captain Acton, who being used to his daughter's occasional absence took no particular interest in her failure that morning to attend the breakfast table.
"I believe," said the Admiral, casting his eyes at the window, "that it blows a pretty little off-shore breeze from the north. The sea is rippled by it into a dark blue, and your ship will sail into it with almost square yards."
"No ship of mine departs without my heart accompanying her," said Captain Acton. "I believe I am bound to go in one of them to the West Indies some day or other, but not whilst there's an enemy's cruiser to be met with in the circle of the horizon."
"I suppose, sir," said Miss Acton to the Admiral, "that there is no further news of the descent of the French."
"Plenty of news, madam," answered the Admiral, "but most of the reports are lies born of fear. The French never can get a footing upon this land."
This led to a brief argument between Captain Acton and Sir William, who was making a prodigious breakfast off a large crab, which he affirmed was much more delicate eating than the lobster, as the shrimp is sweeter than the prawn, though people whom the actor Quin loved to deride were of a different opinion. He had begun with crab, and was now ploughing heartily through a dish of eggs and bacon, with a view to letting go his anchor in some savoury sausages. Captain Acton fed capriciously, as a man who thinks of his digestion more than his appetite.
After breakfast the Captain went to his library to transact certain business with a lawyer and one or two others, Miss Acton to the housekeeper's room, there to receive certain poor people, and Sir William Lawrence, filling his pipe, waited in the grounds until Captain Acton should appear, and diverted himself as best he could with conversation with the gardeners and in admiring the springing flowers.
He came from the kitchen garden and was standing in the middle of the lawn, where he obtained a view of the sea betwixt the bluff on which stood the windmill and the other bluff on which stood the lighthouse. He sent his gaze in the direction of Old Harbour. It was a heedless gaze. He took no particular note. Alongside the wharves a number of small vessels were moored. They somewhat crowded the eye with their rigging and spars. The brig-of-war lay in her accustomed place off the pier. Apparently it was not Lieutenant Tupman's intention to put to sea that day.
All of a sudden the Admiral's gaze, that was somewhat heedless—that of a man who takes in a general prospect without regard to particulars—grew intent: his eyes were fixed on Old Harbour. In a minute they grew more than intent: astonishment dilated them, and they were not without the sparkle of alarm. He rubbed his eyes, and removing his pipe from his lips strained his gaze once more at the shipping in the Harbour.
"Good God!" he ejaculated, "where is she?"
Only a little bit of sea lay within his sight; that which he had seen ran in blue ripples between the points of cliff which framed the entrance to Old Harbour. Though the scene was distant, his sight, for a man of advanced age, was fairly good, and even all that distance off, he could without much difficulty distinguish the fine lines of the Aurora's masts bearing their trucks high above the spars and rigging of the vessels abaft and ahead of her.
He walked to a bed of flowers at which an under-gardener was at work, and said to the man: "Have you good eyes?"
"I can see a good bit, your honour."
"Do you know the Minorca?"
"Oh yes, sir."
"Could you distinguish her if she's in the Harbour at this distance?"
"Why, sartinly, your honour," answered the man, looking at the Admiral.
"Then tell me if you see her," and the Admiral watched him with such an expression of face as he might have looked with at a falling barometer in seas distinguished for cyclones and typhoons.
The gardener gazed and gazed, and his intent regard crumpled his brow, for he seemed ambitious to be able to say he could see the ship. After a considerable pause, during a portion of which the man sheltered his eyes with his hand, he exclaimed: "If the Minorca's a three-masted vessel, square rigged forward, and fore-and-aft rigged on the mizzen-mast, then all that I can say is, your honour, she ain't among that shipping down there."
Without speech the Admiral walked away swiftly on the stout staff he was used to carry, striking the sward with it till you witnessed the energy of his thoughts with each blow, and, entering the hall of Old Harbour House, took down from its brackets a very handsome, and for those times, powerful telescope with which he returned to the place he had left, where he might obtain the best view of the Harbour that was to be got from the grounds of the mansion.
He levelled the tubes at the shipping, but witnessed no signs of the Minorca. He was amazed. The glass sank in his hand, and he rubbed his naked eye and fastened it again upon the Harbour. The vessel was to sail at half-past twelve, and it was now about a quarter past ten, and the Minorca was gone. The old gentleman took aim with his glass at the little breadth of sea that was in sight, in a hopeless way conceiving that a sail, invisible to his bare vision, might leap into the lenses out of the distant blue recess, and proclaim herself to his nautical eye as the ship that was gone. Nothing was in sight.
He stood musing. It was, as we have seen, about a quarter past ten. Captain Acton would not have completed his business until something after eleven. Should the Admiral invade him with the announcement of this strange disappearance of his ship? He considered the matter a little, and concluded that it must be impossible but that, although Captain Acton had been silent on the subject at the breakfast table, he must know the business of his ship, and that it was understood between him and Mr Lawrence that if the wind served, or anything unforeseen befell, or if Mr Lawrence in his judgment chose to sail before the time announced, he was at liberty to let go his fasts and blow into the open at any hour he pleased. Thus it struck the old man, though secretly he did not regard his own reasoning as sagacious.
Nevertheless he determined to await Captain Acton's arrival from the business which was holding him in his library; so he lighted his pipe afresh with his singular little pistol-shaped pipe-lighter and struck about the grounds with his staff, blowing great clouds out of the depth of his meditation, and often heaving a sailor's blessing at the two points of cliff which interrupted the view of the sea to east and west of the coast.
It was a few minutes past eleven when Captain Acton came out of the house talking to Miss Acton, who was followed by her own and Lucy's dog.
"Sorry to have kept you waiting so long, Admiral!" exclaimed Captain Acton.
"Why, sir," answered the Admiral, "I don't see that we should be late if we did not go at all."
"I don't quite understand," said Captain Acton, gazing with friendly interest at the jolly, round, weather-dyed face of Sir William, whose looks certainly at this moment did not wear the jocund complexion they were used to carry.
"Your telescope is in the hall, sir," said the Admiral. "But your sight is very good. I presume that you are aware that your ship has left her berth, and is not in the Harbour."
"Not in the Harbour!" cried Miss Acton. "Good gracious, has she sunk, do you think?"
Captain Acton sent a swift and searching glance at the shipping in the distance. He then with quick steps fetched his glass. By his movements and countenance the Admiral immediately perceived that he did not know his ship had sailed. He pointed the telescope at the shipping. The Minorca was certainly not one of them. The river flowed bare from the sea under its bridges to its inland recesses, and offered no creek nor shelter to the eye for a vessel of any tonnage. If the barque was not in the Harbour, she had put to sea. Both observers on the lawn were sailors, and did not need to be told this.
"If your son has sailed," said Captain Acton, with a face charged with perplexity, doubt, irritation, and astonishment, "he had no authority to do so. What has caused him to take this step? Surely as a sailor who has served the State, he, before all masters in the Merchant Service, ought to understand the meaning of the word of command."
Sir William's countenance resembled the expression that probably decorated Captain Marryat's Port Admiral when he was told in no uncompromising language, "You be damned!"
"And where, pray, is Lucy?" said Miss Acton, in a voice querulous with alarm and other feelings, for Miss Acton was one of those old ladies who are always praising Providence for its blessings, but who are very willing to find calamity in trifles. "She is a long time gone. Who says that she breakfasted with the Jellybottles? And at what time did she leave the house? And if Mamie went with her why is she here?" she added, turning her eyes upon the little terrier.
The hall door was wide open; a footman was crossing the hall. Captain Acton called to him.
"What time this morning did Miss Lucy leave the house?"
"I don't know, sir. I'll ascertain, sir," and the man disappeared.
"The Minorca not in the Harbour!" exclaimed Miss Acton, staring at the cluster of rigs, beyond which rose the breadth of narrow sea shining in a blue tremble to its horizon. "No accident could have happened or you would have heard, brother."
"Miss Lucy went out at about half-past seven, sir," said the footman.
"Come, Admiral, we will walk to the Harbour and enquire into this matter," said Captain Acton, who was somewhat pale and looked extremely disconcerted.
"But where is Lucy?" cried Miss Acton.
"Send the people about and make enquiries," answered Captain Acton. "She is making calls. It is the Minorca that has disappeared."
"But what a dreadful responsibility to leave upon my shoulders," said Miss Acton. "Suppose those I send about come back and say she is not to be found? It is more than I can bear. The charge is too awful! What am I to do if she is not to be found?"
"But she is to be found," cried Captain Acton, surveying his sister with a quarterdeck severity of look. "What do you think? That Lucy has run away with the ship? She has breakfasted somewhere and is gossiping somewhere else. I leave you to make enquiries, sister. The area to be covered is not wide. She will be telling you where she has been before we return. Come, Sir William, this is the most extraordinary thing that has happened to me in my time!"
The two gentlemen set out at a vigorous pace, leaving the poor old lady overwhelmed, motionless, and gaping with the alarm raised in her by this enormous obligation of discovering whether her niece had breakfasted with the Jellybottles or with other folks, where she was, and why she had not returned since half-past seven that morning.
All the conversation of the two officers consisted of idle speculations as to the cause of the Minorca having sailed some hours before the time announced for her departure. It was clearly necessary that Mr Lawrence should have much business to do before he could quit his moorings, and that if the ship had sailed as early as the Captain and the Admiral suspected, her captain had completed all necessary arrangements on the previous day. For first the loading of the vessel was to be fully completed, and all the necessary papers and documents to be on board, the clearance or transire from the Customs duly obtained, and the master furnished with copies of the charter party or memorandum of charter party and of the policies of insurance on both ship and goods.
"I saw Mr Lawrence on several occasions yesterday," exclaimed Captain Acton, "and he did not suggest by a syllable that he was making ready to sail early this morning before the various officials he would have to see were aboard."
The Admiral struck his staff strongly upon the earth and stopped to look through a break in the hedge in the lane or road which they were descending, at Old Harbour: the Captain stopped too; they stared amain.
"But he must have had some object!" cried the old Admiral, whose face was strongly flushed with heat and conflicting passions. "We shall very shortly find out what that object is, and I shall feel very greatly astonished if it does not satisfy you, sir, as well as myself."
They resumed their walk. When they had reached the bridge they found old Mr Greyquill, leaning over the rail, and gazing with intentness, with a sort of lifting leer which could not be defined as a smile, though it was like the shadow of one, in the direction of Old Harbour. This person was not used to address either of the gentlemen on meeting them in the public streets. They were accustomed to nod in silence. But this morning as the Admiral and the Captain passed him, the Admiral so close as to brush his coat-tail, the old scrivener turned with a rapid motion and exclaimed, still preserving his singular leer: "I beg pardon, gentlemen, but as I fail to see the Minorca amongst the ships, may I enquire if she has sailed?"
"That, sir, is the errand which is carrying us to the wharves," answered the Admiral, and the two passed on, whilst Mr Greyquill, retaining a hold on the rail of the bridge with his hand, gazed after them with an unchanged face.
It was hard upon twelve o'clock when Captain Acton and his friend reached the wharves. Though there was plenty of shipping about to suggest occupation there was little apparently doing. Here and there a song was monotonously sung by sailors or labourers who were leisurely taking in or discharging cargo. Had the Minorca sailed at her appointed hour the little Harbour would no doubt have looked gay with colours flying on the ships and plenty of gossips to see the vessels off on the wharf.
Captain Acton and the Admiral turned into the Custom House, and the first person they met after leaving it was Josiah Weaver, master of the Aurora, a thick-set man of a dark-red complexion rendered more glowing still by the sun, greasy deep-red hair, ear-rings, and brown eyes which moved sharply in their sheaths.
"I find," cried Captain Acton, eagerly addressing him, "that the Minorca has sailed. How is this? Do you know anything about the matter?"
"She left the Harbour at about a quarter past eight this morning, sir," answered Weaver.
"At about a quarter past eight!" exclaimed Captain Acton. "What was Mr Lawrence's object in quitting his berth before the fixed time?"
Captain Weaver faintly smiled, slightly glancing at Admiral Lawrence.
"When I saw the ship starting," said he, "I walked over to her and asked Mr Lawrence, who was standing right aft watching the crew working, making sail and so forth, what made him in such a hurry, and he answered that he had received news on the previous night of a French cruiser that was hovering over this part of the coast, that when last seen she was standing to the east'ard, and that he had made up his mind to sneak the Minorca out at daybreak if possible so as to have the heels of her should she shift her helm, as he had no mind to start his first voyage in Captain Acton's employ by being taken by a French cruiser and locked up for a time no man could detarmine."
"And that was the reason for sailing which he gave you?" said Captain Acton.
"Yes, sir."
Captain Acton looked at the Admiral, who was staring sternly into Captain Weaver's face.
"Mr Lawrence told you," said Captain Acton, "that he had received the news of this cruiser last night. At what hour, do you think?"
"That, sir, I couldn't say," answered Captain Weaver. "But we might take it as his having heard it after eight o'clock."
"In that case he must have intended during the day," said Captain Acton, addressing the Admiral, "to sail early this morning. For, as I have explained to you, he could have had no time to do his business at so early an hour at which he started this morning, nor would the officials be seen at that time. Therefore he must have made the necessary arrangements yesterday for what he contemplated as a daybreak departure this morning."
"Does the ship call anywhere in England before her final departure for her port?" asked the Admiral in a voice that proclaimed his heart hot with bewilderment, doubt, and anger.
"No, sir," answered Captain Acton.
"A pity!" said the Admiral, striking the ground with his staff. "Otherwise I would have posted it, caught him, and asked him his reason, which to satisfy me would have to prove infinitely more intelligible than the one Captain Weaver has repeated."
"I saw him two or three times yesterday," said Captain Acton. "He had nothing to say about French cruisers in the offing. Nor did he give me a hint that he was taking the necessary steps to quit this Harbour early this morning."
"Is the ship in sight?" exclaimed the Admiral.
"No, sir. A man came down from the cliffs," answered Captain Weaver, "and I asked him that question, and he said she'd rounded the coast to the west'ard."
"The pilot," said Captain Acton, "was John Andrews. Was he on board, do you know?"
"Yes, sir," answered Captain Weaver, "I took notice of him on the fok'sle."
They could obtain no further information from Captain Weaver. They called at "The Swan" and saw the landlord, who told them that he had seen Mr Lawrence on the previous day, that, in fact, he had lunched at the Inn and sat next him, but had said never a word about the change in the sailing of his ship. They called upon Mrs Andrews, the pilot's wife, who informed them that Mr Lawrence had told her husband the day before that the hour of sailing had been changed, and that the Minorca would leave Old Harbour shortly after eight o'clock instead of half-past twelve.
"Did Mr Lawrence state the reason of this change?" enquired Captain Acton.
"Not to my husband, sir, who naturally thought the matter all right, and said he would be on board at half-past seven."
They met Lieutenant Tupman of the Saucy brig-of-war, a large, fat, purple, smiling man, with the word grog written in small red veins over his nose and parts of his cheeks: obviously a good-natured, drunken fellow who would fight, no doubt, if a Frenchman opposed him, but who preferred his bed and "The Swan" to frequent sentinel cruisings in his little ship of war. Both gentlemen knew him slightly. They ventured on this occasion to stop and accost him. They asked him if it was true that news of a French cruiser being off the coast had come to hand, and he answered that he had not heard of such a ship being near the coast.
The replies of other questions put to Mr Tupman were equally unsatisfactory, and it now being past one o'clock and the information the Captain and the Admiral had obtained not being worth the questions that had elicited it, they stepped on to the bridge and walked in the direction of Old Harbour House, the Admiral saying that he would accompany the Captain to his home, as he was anxious to hear if Miss Acton had obtained news of Lucy.
Captain Acton and the Admiral walked a few hundred paces in silence, each lost in thought. Very abruptly the Admiral stopped, obliging his companion to halt.
"If I have your permission, sir," he exclaimed, "I will at once send a messenger in a post-chaise to the Commander-in-Chief at Plymouth, and after stating the facts request him to send a ship to overtake or intercept and arrest the Minorca, and you will then be able to ascertain direct from my son the meaning and causes of his extraordinary conduct."
Captain Acton resumed his walk, and the Admiral rolled by his side beating the ground.
"That idea has occurred to me," he said, "and I have dismissed it, sir, for what reception would the Commander-in-Chief give such a message as you propose? The master of a ship, who is fully empowered to act in the interests of his owners, chooses to leave a certain harbour some hours earlier than the time announced. The reason he gives is that there is a Frenchman in the neighbourhood whom he is anxious to avoid and escape. The Commander-in-Chief's sympathy would be with him in that. It is no case of piracy to ship a pilot, and the mate and crew which the vessel carried last voyage; and besides, sir, would the sloop, corvette, or frigate which the Commander-in-Chief might choose to send, overhaul the Minorca if your son determined that his purpose, whatever it may be, should be prosecuted without interruption? She is certainly as swift as the fastest thing that we have in the Navy, and there is no reason to suppose that any vessel as fast would be despatched in chase. Plymouth is a long distance from this spot, and messengers are not always the rapid people we desire them to be. No, sir, we have to accept the position as it is. The ship has sailed; Mr Lawrence's conduct is unaccountable. We must continue to regard him as the honourable, well-meaning man which I have found him during our association in the matter of this command, and I must await with a certain degree of confidence a letter in which he will communicate the full meaning of what is now unintelligible to us."
The Admiral bowed in silence. He was the father of the person they were talking about. Captain Acton's acceptance of an incident which must instantly prove sinister to a suspicious intelligence was noble and gracious, and it was certainly not for the father to endeavour to prove his son a rogue and a scoundrel, and perhaps worse still, in the teeth of the disposition of his employer to continue to place trust in him.
When they were within ten minutes' walk of Old Harbour House, they met Mr Adams, who was an agent for a gentleman who lived in London, and who owned a great deal of property in the neighbourhood of Old Harbour Town.
"I beg your pardon, squire," said Mr Adams, addressing Captain Acton, who with the Admiral was passing on with a nod, "but I understand that enquiries are being made after your daughter."
Both the old retired officers instantly stopped.
"Has she returned home?" asked Captain Acton.
"I cannot tell you that, sir, but this morning at about a quarter before eight o'clock, I was about ten minutes' walk this side Old Harbour Bridge. I was going up the road and met your daughter, who was alone, coming down. A few minutes after I had passed her, I happened to look round and perceived that she had been stopped by a young man, humpbacked and otherwise deformed, well known to me as a fellow who used to hang about Old Town, and called by the single word Paul. As your daughter was alone I slackened my pace and continued to look to see what the man wanted with her, and observed that he gave her a letter which she read, and I heard her exclaim on reading it: 'Oh dear! I hope it is not serious,' and she immediately walked swiftly on followed by the fellow called Paul. She turned the bend of the road, and I pursued my way."
"I beg your pardon," exclaimed Captain Acton, whose agitation was marked when Mr Adams ceased to speak, "but may I enquire if you are quite sure that it was my daughter whom you met?"
"Sir, there is but one Lucy Acton in this country, and no man who has set eyes on her is ever likely to forget her beauty and sweetness."
Captain Acton bowed, but his distress was lively.
"What sort of a fellow was this who stopped Miss Acton?" enquired the Admiral. "Was he a pauper? Broken clothes, whining voice, the suppliant's demeanour—that sort of thing?"
"I have known the fellow by sight some years. He got his living by running errands, and has in his day, I believe, been watched with some attention by the magistrates. He is a red-haired, hunchbacked, long-armed man with rounded legs, and I marked a peculiarity in him whilst he addressed the lady which I have before taken notice of when passing him as he lounged in the sun, or stood waiting in a door: I mean that whilst the young lady was reading the missive, he scratched his left shoulder precisely as a monkey scratches himself."
Captain Acton started, and stared hard at Mr Adams.
"Did you notice how he was dressed?" he asked.
"In a camlet jacket. There was something of the sailor's rig in his costume."
"Then the fellow," said Captain Acton, "is steward of the Minorca! This gentleman," said he, addressing the Admiral, "has exactly described the figure of a man who passed me in the cabin two or three days ago when I was talking to Mr Lawrence. Judging that he belonged to the ship, and being struck by his appearance, I asked Mr Lawrence who he was, and he answered that he was a poor devil whom he had shipped as a steward or captain's waiter out of pity, and he said something about having once paid a fine for the man to rescue him from a term of imprisonment to which he would have been sentenced for some trifling offence."
The Admiral's face wore an expression that was almost imbecile with bewilderment.
"From whom was that letter? Who is the person that Miss Lucy has fled to help? It cannot possibly be my son, sir. If he had met with a serious accident, would the ship have sailed? But even if he had met with a serious accident and left the duty of going to sea with the mate, would he have sent to Miss Lucy? I am utterly beaten. I see nothing, and can conjecture nothing!"
Captain Acton with a violent effort had by this time recollected himself.
"I am much obliged to you, sir, for your information," he said to Mr Adams. "We may find her at home, sir," he said, addressing the Admiral. "An explanation will simplify the miraculous. Good day, sir, and many thanks."
He bowed to Mr Adams, and again set off with the Admiral for Old Harbour House.
"To me it is impossible to suppose," said Sir William, "that my son could have written the letter which Mr Adams saw your daughter reading. Captain Weaver told us plainly that my son was aft on the quarterdeck of the Minorca at the time that she was hauling out from the wharf. It is perfectly clear therefore that no accident could have befallen him. Nor is it imaginable that, even if he had met with a disaster, he would dream of communicating with your daughter. Why your daughter, sir? If they are on bowing terms we may take it that their intimacy scarcely goes farther. Depend upon it, there is some man in connection with this business, in whom your daughter is interested—of course, sir, you will understand me to mean as a sweet and beautiful Christian sympathiser, as one to whom every sort of misfortune appeals, to whom suffering and misery are quick to make themselves known, being sure of heartfelt, womanly pity. The moment I have had a peck, after hearing whether Miss Lucy has arrived at home, I will devote the rest of the day to enquiries about this person who wrote the letter which Mr Adams saw delivered."
"Speculation is idle," exclaimed Captain Acton, with a slight flavour of impatience in his manner. "I am profoundly puzzled. There can be no question from Mr Adams's statement and from my own observation that the fellow who delivered the missive is cabin-boy, or steward, or whatever you please to call him, of the Minorca, chosen by your son, as he admits, though it seemed to me as I looked at him that nobody less likely and less inviting for such a post could have been found in the district."
These and a few further words brought them to the gateway of Old Harbour House. They entered and found Miss Acton in the dining-room.
"Well," she cried in a voice of tremulous eagerness, "have you heard of her?"
This was proof conclusive that Miss Acton had not.
"She has not returned, then?" said Captain Acton.
"No, nor can I get to hear of her," answered Miss Acton, whose voice trembled with tears and terror. "Wasn't she down on the wharves?"
"We have heard of her, but not as we could wish, sister," said Captain Acton. "But what have you done to find her, or to hear of her?"
"Why," answered the old lady, "I sent George and Joseph on horseback to every house where she is known, and she has visited none, nor been seen by any this morning. Yes, Mrs Moore as she was passing our gate, caught a sight of her coming out of the house at half-past seven, or at some such time, and gave her a curtsy and received a smile. But nobody else that George and Joseph met and called upon has seen her this day. What have you to tell me about her?"
Captain Acton repeated Mr Adams's statement. The old lady's face was slowly moulded into a mask that her friends would scarcely have recognised by the horror and terror that worked in her.
She cried: "A dirty fellow giving her a letter, and beguiling her and luring her into some dreadful place, perhaps to her destruction! Oh dear! oh dear! what is to be done? Can't she be discovered? Can't the bell-man raise the alarm? Who can the wretch be that wrote to her? And why should she rush away to his help? Oh dear! oh dear! what is to be done?"
"I'll do something," said the Admiral. "I'll call upon you this evening and tell you what I have found out. Farewell for the present. No, I thank you, I must go home first and I'll get a bite that awaits me, and then away to Old Harbour Town, and the place shall be dredged, and the fellow who wrote the letter found, and the lady restored to her home if wrong has been done her, if there is one ounce of energy left in this old composition."
He bowed with the vehemence of a man who butts at another, struck the floor hard with his staff, and rolled out on legs that showed themselves more expeditious than his years seemed to promise.
Captain and Miss Acton sat down to dinner. An elegant repast was rendered insipid in every dish by the absence of Lucy. The Captain's excellent if fastidious appetite was gone, and his eyes often wandered to his daughter's vacant place. Brother and sister had but one subject in their minds; they talked but little, however, for servants were present.
When they were alone, Miss Acton exclaimed: "I hope I may be forgiven if I do him a wrong, and I love his old father, who is the soul of honour and a fine example of a true gentleman of the sea, but I cannot help thinking, brother, that Mr Lawrence has had a hand in our Lucy's disappearance."
And the worthy old lady's eyes grew dim as she pronounced the words "our Lucy."
Captain Acton started from a reverie and looked at her attentively.
"You want to imply," he cried, "that there was an understanding between Mr Lawrence and my daughter?"
"I cannot imagine why the steward of the ship came to be employed, as Mr Adams tells us—an assertion you justify by saying that you saw this man in the cabin of the vessel—unless Mr Lawrence sent the letter."
Captain Acton expanded his chest, and a look of haughtiness entered his face.
"Sister, is your opinion of Lucy such that you imagine she can have anything to do with Mr Lawrence unknown to me?"
But a quality of stubbornness was one of Miss Acton's characteristics.
"He offered her marriage, brother."
"Yes. And she rejected him with the peremptoriness which I should have expected in her."
"A woman," said Miss Acton, "cannot but think with more or less kindness of the man who offers her marriage and who loves her. She may reject him, but she will always feel a tenderness for him."
"But do I understand," said Captain Acton, "that you mean that Lucy was secretly attached to the man whose hand she declined, and that she speeds to him at the first call that is made upon her by such a missive as the fellow Paul delivered?"
"I cannot but think," answered Miss Acton, "that Lucy had a secret hankering after Mr Lawrence. He is exceedingly handsome. In bearing he is superior to any man of quality I ever met, and for fine manners you must look to the aristocracy of this country. He can make a leg with the grace equal to any master of elegant salutations; and though his character is bad, yet there are many points in him which women admire, and I say," she continued, with perseverance and a fixity of meaning truly astonishing in an old lady who in most matters scarcely knew her own mind, who was easily filled with terror, and who seldom acted without consulting her friends, "Lucy has a secret liking for the man, which could scarcely escape the observation of any one who watched them when they are in company."
With an expression of face that was near to amazement Captain Acton said: "Do you want me to believe that Lucy has eloped with Mr Lawrence?"
"Lord forbid! She is too God-fearing, and too nobly and sweetly moulded as a woman to be capable of any such descent."
"Then I do not understand you," said Captain Acton.
"What has become of her?" cried Miss Acton, sinking suddenly into her tremulous voice and into a manner of alarm, bewilderment, and general confusion of mind. "What shall you do to find out?"
"As I am quite convinced," said Captain Acton, "that Mr Lawrence has nothing to do with this business, and as I feel persuaded that the call made upon her is by some man or woman—for how are we to know the sex of the person who wrote that letter?—in whom her charity is interested, and whom she has been helping according to her wont in ways unknown to us, I shall devote the afternoon as Sir William intends, to making enquiries in Old Harbour Town and about the wharves——"
"But she cannot be in Old Town or even in the district," broke in Miss Acton, "or why did she not return to dinner? She has had the whole morning. From a little after seven till now is a very long time, and a hundred acts of charity may be performed in less."
Though Captain Acton was not a man to be influenced by his sister's opinions he knew her to be in many directions a shrewd, observant woman, who could deliver herself of many stupid antiquated notions, whilst at times she would astonish him by the sagacity of her views and the penetration with which she interpreted human motives. We shall not be surprised, therefore, when we learn that shortly after dinner he ordered his mare to be saddled, and rode straight into Old Harbour Town, where he stabled the mare at "The Swan" and walked direct to the wharves, first of all to learn if anybody had seen Lucy down at the shipping early that morning.
He made for the Aurora and found Captain Weaver on board. He immediately related Mr Adams' story, and asked Captain Weaver if he had seen Miss Lucy Acton down by the Minorca or near her, or aboard of her shortly before she sailed.
"No, sir," was Captain Weaver's answer. "I came on to the wharf as the Minorca was warping out, and talked with Mr Lawrence from the quay-side. I saw nothing of the young lady, who, depend upon it, sir, would have immediately caught my attention had I seen her."
"It is very strange," said Captain Acton, "that that mis-shapen fellow made by Mr Lawrence the steward of the ship, should be employed to convey a letter to my daughter at so early an hour when there was very little likelihood of finding the young lady abroad."
"The whole job of the ship sailing before her time is a mystery to me, sir," said Captain Weaver.
"Walk with me, and we'll endeavour to find out if Miss Lucy Acton was on the wharf after the hour of half-past seven this morning, and before the Minorca sailed."
Captain Weaver knew many who were engaged on the several wharves, and so indeed did Captain Acton. They asked two or three score of different persons the question, but the majority had not been down on the wharves at that time, and the few who were at work declared that they had not seen her. It seemed impossible to Captain Weaver as well as to Captain Acton, that so beautiful and well known a lady as Miss Lucy should make her appearance on the wharf at a time of day when scarce more than labourers were about, without being either recognised or seen, and her presence borne witness to by those who did not know who she was.
They went on board the several vessels lying in the harbour, but the answer they received was that of the wharf: Miss Lucy Acton had not been seen, or at all events noticed.
"I will leave you," said Captain Acton, "to make further enquiries, sir, and you will be pleased to immediately communicate with me at my home should you meet with anybody who can positively swear that my daughter was down here between seven and eight this morning."
He seemed convinced by these enquiries at the wharves that at all events Mr Lawrence could have had nothing whatever to do with the communication which Mr Adams had seen Paul place in the hands of Miss Lucy. Who, then, was the sender of the note, and how was it that Paul, who should have been on board his ship since she was on the eve of sailing, should have been engaged to carry the letter? There was really no particular reason why the writer should be a man. Why should not she be a woman? She might even be a relative of the fellow Paul. Lucy was a girl of singular kindness, who was always helping others and going amongst the poor and ministering to the afflicted; and though Captain Acton could not positively say, he might readily believe that she had one or two or three poor sufferers on her list whom she saw to and helped with her purse, and one of these—possibly a woman—might have written the letter in a moment of urgency intending it for delivery at Old Harbour House.
Captain Acton walked slowly towards Old Harbour Town. He was sunk in thought, and was in deep distress and at a loss to know what to do. He had no machinery of police to command. 1805 was a year very primitive as compared with 1905. He reflected that the first step in the disappearance of his daughter as represented in the statement of Mr Adams might indicate nothing in respect of the real cause of her disappearance. Because, suppose his surmise was correct, and that she had hastened to the help of some afflicted or humble person whom she befriended, she might, after having left the place wherever it was, have met with some disaster; she might have fallen over the cliff—she might on some roundabout way home have been robbed and left for dying; in short, when a person mysteriously disappears a hundred reasons for his or her envanishment will occur to the mind, and any one of them may so satisfy, so convince, that those who accept it will go to work as though it were the truth though it possess but the very attenuated merit of being a conjecture.
At six o'clock, greatly wearied, Captain Acton mounted his mare at "The Swan" stables and rode home. He was very pale. Indeed this man loved his daughter, who was his only child. His immediate question, put with bright-eyed passion to the servant who came to the door, was, "Has Miss Lucy returned?"
"No, sir."
"Has news been received of her?"
"I don't think so, sir."
"Has Admiral Lawrence been here?"
"No, sir."
Captain Acton walked into his house and sought his sister, whom he found alone in the dining-room. She was seated on a high-backed chair knitting. Her own and Lucy's dog lay at her feet. She started at the entrance of Captain Acton, dropped her knitting in her lap, and half rose at her brother, clutching the arms of the chair.
"Well!" she cried in a note that was like a suppressed scream with excitement, fear, and expectation. "What have you heard? Is there any news of her? What have you to tell me?"
He sat down, looking very weary.
"I have heard nothing of her, sister. Nobody saw her on the wharf at the time the Minorca sailed, and there was plenty about, labourers ashore, and sailors in the ships."
"Then what have you done to find out what has become of her?"
"Believing that she might have met with some accident—God knows of what serious nature—on her return from the person whose letter she received"—Miss Acton looked stunned at such an idea—"I called at Arrowsmith's first of all, and wrote out a placard, offering a reward of fifty guineas to any one who can find Miss Lucy Acton, who can state her whereabouts, or who can give any information as to her disappearance since half-past seven o'clock this morning, which was dated and the day named. This placard will be printed and pasted in Old Harbour Town, and over a wide area of the district before nightfall. I also gave a copy of this placard to the bell-man. What further publicity could I command?"
"But what do you fear, brother? What could have happened to her?"
"Why, suppose on her way home by way of the cliffs, or by any other of the roads by which this house may be gained, she fell upon the rocks, or was met by a band of gipsies, or attacked for her money and left for dead——"
His feelings overcame him, and he looked upon the ground in silence.
"Nothing of the sort. I am sure of it!" exclaimed Miss Acton. "Who hears of such outrages happening here?"
"But to fall over the edge of a cliff is not an outrage," said Captain Acton.
"She is too careful. She may safely be trusted. Besides, are there not blockaders stationed along these cliffs, and would not one see her on the rocks? No, no, no! an accident is not the cause of her disappearance. The more I think, the more persuaded I am that Mr Lawrence has had a hand in this horrid business. Why did he sail so early and long before his time? Why was his steward Paul engaged to carry the letter?"
"You again want to imply, sister," said Captain Acton with a darkling face, "that my daughter has eloped with the man she rejected."
"Rejected, but she has a hankering for him still," said the old lady with one of those smiles of knowingness which make the lineaments ghastly when bitter sorrow and tragic trouble are the topics talked about.
Captain Acton left the room to refresh himself with a change of apparel, and returned after a brief absence. He was a man of considerable but not powerful self-control. He entered the room with a face that indicated a certain resolution of mind, and said to his sister: "I have been thinking, perhaps, that we have been unnecessarily flurried and somewhat hurried in our conjecture and efforts. I believe I have done well in giving all possible publicity to the fact that Lucy left her home this morning and has not returned. But when I come to reflect that even now it is not twelve hours since she started on her early walk, I consider that she has not been long enough absent to cause us the bitter anxiety we have felt and are feeling. Suppose after visiting the person from whom she received the letter, she breakfasted with a friend on the other side of Old Harbour Town. This friend may have induced her to stop to dinner; a drive might follow. There are hundreds of things in this business which when explained would seem perfectly reasonable, so that at any moment she may turn up and tell us the story of her day's outing, and wonder that we should be so troubled because of an absence that she makes perfectly comprehensible. I shall hold to this view," he continued firmly, "until the night is advanced. If she does not return to-night then we must take further steps to-morrow."
"What steps?" asked his sister. "What steps have not been taken that remain to be taken?"
He had suddenly sunk in reflection and did not answer her.
"I should be uneasy in my mind in any case," said Miss Acton. "But that odious steward of the Minorca being in the business together with the unwarrantable sailing of the vessel hours before her time, fills me with dread and terror, and I cannot, brother, listen to what you say about her breakfasting and dining with a friend and going for a drive, and so forth. She would guess at our suspense and anxiety. Is our Lucy a girl to cause unnecessary pain and unhappiness, not indeed to those who love her as we do, but to the humblest creature in the world?"
Just then the door was opened, and the footman announced "Admiral Sir William Lawrence."
The old gentleman entered, not with his familiar deep-sea rolling gait, but slowly and wearily, and with an air of dejection. Lucy's dog welcomed him by barking and rushing at his shoe and trying to bite through it. Miss Acton rose and sank in a curtsy which is to be seen in these days only on the stage, but her kindly heart quickened her gaze for anything that invited sympathy, and she immediately said: "Sir William, you are quite worn out. You need refreshment. Pray sit, pray sit! What will you take?"
"We will have some brandy and seltzer water," said Captain Acton, pulling the bell, knowing this drink to be as great a favourite with the Admiral as hock and soda water was with Lord Byron.
"I am sorry to say," said the Admiral, sinking into a chair, "that I have brought no news."
"I have scoured Old Harbour Town and can obtain no information," said Captain Acton; "but it is certain that no one seems to have seen her down on the wharf between seven and eight this morning."
"I heard the bell-man recite your notice," said Sir William, speaking leisurely, as one who is tired out; "that, and the bill which they were beginning to paste as I came this way, should help. I've walked my legs off. I have enquired everywhere. I, too, asked if Miss Lucy had been seen down at the harbour at any hour this morning. But my fixed idea was, and still is, that the person who wrote to her through the Minorca's steward was somebody that she helped, somebody in poverty and want, and I called upon everybody likely to know of the existence of such an individual; but to no purpose. The parson, the apothecary, all the tradespeople I looked in upon, could tell me nothing. Once I thought I had run the person we want to earth. Mrs Moore, who keeps the greengrocer's shop, told me that there was an old woman who lived in a cottage just out of Lower Street, out of whose house she had once seen Miss Lucy Acton issue. I got the address, called at the cottage and saw a squalid female who said she was Mrs Mortimer's niece, and that Mrs Mortimer had died that morning at five o'clock. She said it was true that Miss Acton occasionally visited Mrs Mortimer and brought her little comforts and read to her. I got no further. This is the extent and value of my report, and I am as profoundly puzzled," said the Admiral, raising the glass of brandy and seltzer and examining it before he drank, "as I was this morning."
"She may turn up at any moment," said Captain Acton, with more gloom than the hope his words expressed justified. "She has only been twelve hours missing."
"Only!" cried Miss Acton. "Sir William," she went on slowly, nodding, at him whilst her face hardened, "I have a conviction which my brother does not share. It seems to me, sir, impossible to think of the unexpected and terrifying departure of the Minorca hours before her time, and the conveyance of a letter by the steward of the vessel, without feeling the conviction I speak of."
"And what is that conviction, madam?" asked Sir William, from whose jolly round face fatigue had robbed much of its warm colour.
"I regret to have to say it," said Miss Acton, "but I must think—I cannot help it, that Mr Lawrence's hand is in this strange disappearance of my niece."
Captain Acton slightly frowned upon the old dame, and exclaimed: "I think, Caroline, you should have withheld your conviction, for the present at all events, from Admiral Lawrence."
Sir William looked firmly and somewhat sternly at Miss Acton and said: "I am very sorry, madam, that you should hold this opinion, very sorry indeed. I had thought you the friend and well-wisher of my son—in this respect eminently the charitable and warm-hearted sister of Captain Acton. But if you mean to imply that Mr Lawrence wrote the letter to Miss Lucy, then you have to confess (which would be an indignity done to a beautiful character) that your niece was a willing recipient of my son's missive, that she hastened to him on reading the contents of his communication and that in short, the design of the Minorca's premature sailing was that Mr Lawrence and Miss Lucy Acton should elope—a thing not to be dreamt of—at an hour when few were abroad, and when there was little or no chance of the news reaching her home that Captain Acton's daughter had sailed in the Minorca."
Scarcely had the old gentleman pronounced these words when a footman, throwing open the door, exclaimed: "Mr Greyquill presents his humble respects to Captain Acton, and desires leave to speak with him."
"Mr Greyquill!" cried Captain Acton.
"Mr Greyquill!" echoed the Admiral, looking with a changed face at the footman.
"Mr Greyquill!" cried Miss Acton. "Why, he may have come with news of Lucy. Bid him step in!"
The footman disappeared.
"What on earth but some news of my daughter can bring Greyquill here at this hour?" said Captain Acton.
The Admiral looked deaf, and continued to stare at the door, which in a few moments was again flung open, and Mr Greyquill entered.