Ричард Марш
A Hero of Romance

Bertie lay down; and again the captain resumed his pacing to and fro, keeping watch, as it were, over his young prisoner.

The boy fell asleep. The reaction which followed the short sharp struggle beguiled him, and he slept. And oddly enough he slept the sleep of peace. And more than once the captain, pausing in his solitary vigil, bent over the sleeping boy, and looked down at him.

"The young beggar's actually smiling."

And in fact a smile did flit across the sleeper's face. Perhaps he was dreaming of his mother.

"Ran away for fun, did he? Yet the youngster isn't quite a fool. Pity it should be a case of he or I, but self-preservation is Nature's first law! That was a headline in my copy-books unless I greatly err."

The captain lit a fresh cigar, and continued his patrol. What did he think of? A hopeless past and a hopeless future? God forgive him! for such as he there is no forgiveness to be had from men. That self-preservation, which is Nature's first law, is a law which cuts both ways. Honest men must destroy the Captain Loftuses, or they will be themselves destroyed.

The morning dawned; the day returned to the world. Still the boy slept on. At last the captain woke him. He got up, as if bewildered, and rubbed his eyes.

"Well, nephew mine, are you going to sleep for ever? If so, I'm sorry that I woke you. Jump up and come with me."

His "uncle" led the way into the cabin. They were preparing breakfast; the passengers were falling to. The night had been so tranquil that not one had suffered from sea-sickness, and appetite had come with the morning. A trained eye, looking at the fleecy clouds which were peeping over the horizon, would have prophesied a change, and that rough weather was at hand. But the day had dawned in splendour, and so far the morning was as tranquil as the night had been. So those passengers who were going through to Jersey sat down with light hearts to breakfast.

The captain and Bertie joined them. That his "uncle" had no present intention of starving him was plain, for he was allowed a hearty meal of whatever took his fancy.

And while they were at breakfast the Ella was brought up alongside the jetty, St. Peter's Port, Guernsey.

Chapter XX
EXIT CAPTAIN TOM

When they returned to the deck the boat was preparing to continue her journey. The fruit vendors-and with what delicious fruit the Guernsey men board the Jersey boats! – were preparing to take their leave, and those passengers who had gone to stretch their legs with a saunter on the jetty were returning to the steamer.

The rest of the voyage was uneventful. Jersey is not very far away from Guernsey, and for a considerable part of the distance the passengers were in sight of land. The breeze began to freshen, and as they steamed round Jersey towards St. Heliers it began to dawn upon not a few that enough of this sort of thing was as good as a feast. There is such a very striking difference between steaming over a tranquil sea and being tossed and tumbled among boisterous waves. It was fortunate they were so near their journey's end. Several of the travellers were congratulating themselves that, when they reached dry land, they would be able to boast that they had voyaged from Southampton to Jersey without experiencing a single qualm. Had the journey been prolonged much further, that boast would have been cruelly knocked on the head. When they drew up beside the pier at St. Heliers, coming events, as it were, had already cast their shadows before. They were saved just in the nick of time.

Bertie and the captain were among the first on shore; and, not unnaturally, the young gentleman supposed that their journeying was at an end. But he was wrong.

"Step out! We have no time to lose! We have to catch another boat, which is due to start."

Bertie stepped out. He wondered if the other boat was to take them back to England. Did the captain mean to pass the rest of his life in voyaging to and fro?

The disappointed flymen, to whom the arrival of the mail-boat is the great event of the St. Heliers day, let them pass. The hotel and boarding-house touters touted, so far as they were concerned, in vain. The captain gave no heed to their solicitations. He evidently knew his way about, for he walked quickly down the jetty, turned unhesitatingly to the left when he reached the bottom, crossed the harbour, and down the jetty again upon the other side. About half-way down was a fussy little steamer which was making ready to start.

"Here you are! Jump on board!"

If Bertie did not exactly jump, he at any rate got on board.

What the boat was Bertie knew not, nor whither it was going. Compared to the Ella, which they had just quitted, it was so small a craft that he scarcely thought it could be going back the way the mail had come.

As a matter of fact it was not.

Two or three times a week a fussy little steamer passes to and fro between Jersey and France. The two French ports at which it touches are St. Malo and St. Brieuc. One journey it takes to St. Malo, the next to St. Brieuc. On this occasion it was about to voyage to St. Brieuc.

St. Brieuc, as some people may not know, is the chief town of the department of Cotes-du-Nord, in Brittany-about as unpretending a chief town as one could find. That Captain Loftus had some preconceived end in view, and had not started on a wild-goose chase, not, as might have at first appeared, going hither and thither as his fancy swayed him, seemed plain.

A more roundabout route to France he could scarcely have chosen. Had he simply desired to reach the Continent, fast steamers which passed from Southampton to Havre in little less than half the time which the journey had already occupied, were at his disposal. Very many people, some of them constant travellers, are ignorant of the fact that a little steamer is constantly plying between Jersey and Brittany. It is dependent on the tides for its time of departure. Only in the local papers are the hours advertised. Captain Loftus must have been pretty well posted on the matter to have been aware that on this particular day the little steamer, La Commerce, would be starting for St. Brieuc about the time the mail-boat entered Jersey.

He must have had some particular object in making for that remote corner of Breton France. No sooner did the boat enter the little harbour than he made a dash for the railway station.

Bertie seemed to have passed into another world. He had not the faintest notion where he was. He was not even sure that they had reached Jersey. He heard strange tongues sounding in his ears; saw strange costumes before his eyes. In his then state of bewilderment he would have been quite ready to believe anybody who might have chosen to tell him that he had arrived in Timbuctoo.

Some light was thrown upon the subject when they reached the station. The captain took some money out of his pocket and held it out to Bertie.

"Go and ask for the tickets," he said.

Bertie stared. If he had been told to go and ask the man in the moon for a lock of his hair he could not have been more puzzled.

"Do you hear what I say? Go and ask for the tickets."

"Tickets? Where for?"

The captain hesitated a moment, then said:

"Two first-class tickets for Constantinople."

He handed Bertie some silver coins.

"Two first-class tickets for Constantinople."

Bertie stammeringly repeated the words. Could the captain be in earnest?

"I want to catch the train; look alive, or-"

The captain touched the pocket where the revolver was.

Bertie doubtfully advanced to the booking office, gazing behind him as he went to make quite sure that the captain had meant what he said. There was an old lady taking tickets, so he waited his turn.

"Two first-class tickets for Constantinople."

"Comment?"

He stared at the booking-clerk, and the booking-clerk stared at him, each in complete ignorance of what the other meant.

"Do you mean to say you can't speak French?"

The captain came to the rescue, speaking so gently that his words were only audible to Bertie's ears.

"No-o."

"Do you mean to say you don't know enough to be able to ask for two first-class tickets for Constantinople?"

"No-o."

"How much French do you know?"

"No-one."

The captain evidently knew a great deal, for he immediately addressed the booking-clerk in fluent French-French which that official understood, for two tickets were at once forthcoming. But whether they were for Constantinople, or for Jericho, or for Kamtchatka, was more than the boy could tell. He was in the pleasant position of not being able to understand a word that was said; of being without the faintest notion where he was, and of not having the least idea where he was going to.

It may be mentioned, however, that the captain had not asked for tickets for Constantinople-which at St. Brieuc he would have experienced some difficulty in getting-but for Brest.

They had not long to wait before the through train from Paris entered the station. They got into a first-class carriage, which they had for themselves, and in due time they were off.

The state of Bertie's mind was easier imagined than described. He had been in a dream since he had started on his journey to the Land of Golden Dreams; and dreams have a tendency to become more and more incoherent.

His adventures up to the time of leaving London had been strange enough, but he had at least known in what part of the world he was. Now he was not possessed of even that rudimentary knowledge. The continued travelling towards an unknown destination, the unresting onward rush, as though the captain meant, like the brook, to "go on for ever" – and this in the case of a boy who had never travelled more than twenty miles from home in his life-had in itself been enough to confuse him; but the sudden discovery that he was in an unknown country, in which they spoke an unknown tongue, put the climax to his mental muddle. Had the captain, revolver in hand, then and there insisted on his informing him which part of his body as a rule was uppermost, he would have been wholly at a loss to state whether it was on his head or heels he was accustomed to stand.

Something strange, too, about the railway carriage, about the country through which they passed, about the people and the very houses he saw through the carriage window made his muddle more.

The names of the roadside stations at which they stopped, which were shouted out with stentorian lungs, were such oddities. They came to one where the word "Guingamp" was painted in huge letters on a large white board. Guingamp! What was the pronunciation of such a word as that? And fancy living at a town with such a name! He was not aware that, like a conjurer's trick, it was only a question of knowing how it was done, and Guingamp would come as glibly to his tongue as Slough or Upton.

And then Belle-Isle-en-Terre and Plouigneau-what names! The educational system which flourished at Mecklemburg House had tended to make French an even stranger tongue than it need have done. He saw the letters on the boards, but he could no more pronounce the words which they were supposed to form than he could fly.

Throughout the long journey-and it is a long journey from St. Brieuc to Brest-not a word had been exchanged. The captain had scarcely moved. He had stretched his legs out on the seat, and had taken up the easiest position which was attainable under the circumstances; but he had not closed his eyes. Bertie wondered if he never slept; if those fierce black eyes remained always on the watch.

The captain looked straight in front of him; and, although he seemed to pay no heed to what the boy was doing, Bertie was conscious that he never moved without the captain knowing it. What a life this man must lead, to be ever on the watch; to be ever fearful that the time of the avenger had come at last; that the prison gates were about to close on him, and, perhaps, this time for ever.

"Uncle Tom" seemed to be as much at home in Brest as he had been everywhere. The station was filled with the usual crowd. Porters advanced to offer their services to carry the Gladstone bag and place it on a cab, outside the cabmen hailed them in the hope of a fare; but the captain, paying no heed to any of them, marched quickly on.

Were they at their journey's end? Bertie wondered. Was this Constantinople, or had they another stage to go? If not Constantinople, and he had a vague idea that Constantinople could not be reached quite so quickly as they had come-what place was it?

What struck him chiefly as they passed into the town was the number of men in uniform there seemed to be about. Every third person they met seemed to wear a uniform. He supposed they were soldiers, though he had never seen soldiers dressed like these before; and then what a number of them there were! Geography is not a strong point of the English education system, and he had never been taught at Mecklemburg House that Brest was to France much more than Portsmouth is to England, and that its population consists of four classes, soldiers, sailors, dockyard labourers-looking at all those, of whatever grade, who labour in the dockyard in the light of labourers-and, a long way behind the other three, civilians: "civilians" being a generic name for that-regarded from a Brest point of view-absolutely insignificant class who have no direct connection with war or making ready for war.

On their arrival the day was well advanced, and as they went down the Rue de Siam they met the men returning from the yards. Bertie had never seen such a sight before, not even in the course of his present adventures. The Rue de Siam runs down the hill. The dockyards are at the foot. From where they stood, as far as the eye could reach, advanced a dense mass of dirt-grimed men. They were the Government employés, employed by France to make engines and ships of war, and as the seemingly never-ending stream went past he actually moved closer to the captain with a vague idea that he might-think of it, ye heroes! – need his protection; for it seemed to the lad that, taken in the mass, he had never seen a more repulsive-looking set of gentlemen even in his dreams.

The captain went straight down to the bridge; then he paused, seeming to hesitate a moment, then turned to the right, striking into what seemed very much like a nest of rookeries. They came to an ancient, disreputable-looking inn. This they entered; and as they did so Bertie's memory suddenly travelled back to the Kingston inn, into which he had been enticed by the Original Badger. The two houses were about on a par.

Apparently the establishment was not accustomed to receive guests of their distinguished appearance-though Bertie was shabby enough-for the aged crone who received them was evidently bent double by her sense of the honour which was paid to the house.

She and the captain carried on a voluble conversation, though, for all that Bertie understood of what they said, they might as well have held their peace. He remained standing in the centre of the brick floor, shuffling from foot to foot, feeling and looking as much out of place as though he had been suddenly dropped into the middle of China. Gabble, gabble went the old crone's tongue, wiggle-waggle went her picturesque white cap-the only picturesque thing there was about her-up and down went her arms and hands. She was the personification of volubility, but unfortunately she might have been dumb for any meaning which her words conveyed to Bertie.

Yet, incomprehensible as her speech might be and was, he could not rid himself of an impression, derived from her manner to the captain, and the captain's manner to her, that they two had met before, and that, in fact, they knew each other very well indeed. But neither then nor at any other time did he get beyond impression.

Certainly her after-conduct was not of a kind to show that, even if she knew the gentleman, she had much faith in his integrity, unless, as was possible, the understanding between the two was of a very deep and subtle kind indeed.

She showed the new arrivals up a flight of rickety stairs, into a room in which there were two beds of a somewhat better sort than might have been expected. Some attempt had also been made to fit the room up after the French fashion, so that it might serve as sitting-room as well as bedroom. There was a table in the centre, and the apartment also contained two or three rush-bottomed chairs.

The old crone, having shown them in, said something to the captain and disappeared. The man and the boy were left alone. They had not spoken to each other since they had left St. Brieuc, and there was not much spoken now.

"You can take your hat off and sit down. We shall sleep here to-night."

So at any rate they had reached a temporary resting-place at last; their journey was not to be quite unceasing. It was only the night before they had left London, but it seemed to Bertie that it was a year ago.

He did as he was bid-took his hat off and sat on a chair. The captain sat down also, seating himself on one chair and putting his feet upon another. Not a word was spoken; they simply sat and waited, perhaps twenty minutes.

Bertie wondered what they were waiting for, but the reappearance of the crone with a coarse white tablecloth shed light upon the matter. They had been waiting while a meal was being prepared.

The prospect revived his spirits. He had not tasted food since they had left the Ella, and his appetite was always hale and hearty. But he was thrown into the deepest agitation by a remark which the crone addressed to him. He had not the faintest notion what it was she said; but the mere fact of being addressed in a foreign and therefore unknown tongue made him feel quite ill.

The captain did not improve the matter.

"Why don't you answer the woman?"

"I don't know what she says."

"Are you acting, or is it real?"

Bertie only wished that he had been acting, and that his ignorance had not been real. At Mecklemburg House the idea of learning French had seemed to him absurd, an altogether frivolous waste of time. What would he not have given then-and still more, what would he not have given a little later on-to have made better use of his opportunities when he had them? Circumstances alter cases.

The captain looked at him for a moment or two with his fierce black eyes; then he said something to the old woman which made her laugh. Not a pleasant laugh by any means, and it did not add to Bertie's sense of comfort that such a laugh was being laughed at him.

"Sit up to the table!"

The old woman had laid the table, and had then disappeared to fetch the food to put before her guests. Bertie sat up. The meal appeared. Not by any means a bad one-better, like the room itself, than might have been expected.

When they had finished, and the old crone had cleared the things away, the captain stood up and lighted a cigar.

"Now, my lad, you'd better tumble into bed. I've a strong belief in the virtue of early hours. There's nothing like sleep for boys, even for those with a turn for humour."

Bertie had not himself a taste for early hours as a rule-it may be even questioned if the captain had-but he was ready enough for bed just then, and he had scarcely got between the sheets before he was asleep. But what surprised him was to see the captain prepare himself for bed as well. Bertie had one bed, the captain the other. The lights were put out; and at an unusually early hour silence reigned.

Perhaps the journey had fatigued the man as much as the boy. It is beyond question that the captain was asleep almost as soon as Bertie was.

But he did not sleep quite so long.

While it was yet dark he got up, and, having lit a candle, looked at his watch. Then he dressed very quietly, making not the slightest noise. He took his revolver from underneath his pillow, and replaced it in the top pocket of his overcoat. He also took from underneath his pillow a leathern case. He opened it. It contained a necklace of wondrous beauty, formed of diamonds of uncommon brilliancy and size. His great black eyes sparkled at the precious stones, and the precious stones sparkled back at him.

It was that necklace which had once belonged to the Countess of Ferndale, and which, according to Mr. Rosenheim, had cost more than twenty thousand pounds. The captain reclosed the leathern case, and put it in the same pocket which contained his revolver.

Then, being fully dressed, even to his hat and boots, he crossed the room and looked at Bertie. The boy was fast asleep.

"The young beggar's smiling again."

The young beggar was; perhaps he was again dreaming of his mother.

The captain took his Gladstone bag and crept on tiptoe down the stairs. Curiously enough the front door was unbarred, so that it was not long before he was standing in the street. Then, having lighted, not a cigar this time, but a pipe, he started at a pace considerably over four miles an hour, straight off through the country lanes, to Landerneau. He must have had a complete knowledge of the country to have performed that feat, for Landerneau is at a distance of not less than fifteen miles from Brest; and in spite of the darkness which prevailed, at any rate when he started, he turned aside from the high road, and selected those by-paths which only a native of the country as a rule knows well.

Landerneau is a junction on the line which runs to Nantes. He caught the first train to that great seaport, and that afternoon he boarded, at St. Nazaire, a steamer which was bound for the United States of America, and by night he was far away on the high seas.

Henceforward he disappears from the pages of this story. He had laid his plans well. He had destroyed the trail, and the only witness of his crime whom he had any cause to fear he had left penniless in the most rabid town in France, where any Englishman who is penniless, and unable to speak any language but his own, was not likely to receive much consideration from the inhabitants.