Philosopher Jack

“I hope not, Mrs Niven,” said Jack, laughing, as he shook her hand heartily and sat down, “for my own sake as well as yours; because I have come to take my old room if it is vacant.”

“Yer auld room, Maister Jack!” exclaimed the bewildered woman.

“Yes, if it is not already occupied.”

“The yin wi’ the reeky lum and the view o’ chimbley-pots frae the wundy?”

“The same. I hope I can have it, for I’m going to college again, and I’ve an affection for the old place, despite the smoky chimney and the cans on the cats’ parade.”

“Yer jokin’, Maister Jack.”

“Indeed I am not, Mrs Niven.”

“They telt me ye was in Callyforny, an had made ’eer fortin there by howkin’ gold.”

“Well, they told the truth, my good woman, but I happened to invest all in Blankow Bank shares, and—”

“Wow! wow!” exclaimed Mrs Niven, whimpering, for she understood full well the meaning of that, “an’ ’ee’ve been ruined! Oh dear! Weel, weel, ay, ay, an it’s come to that. Jist like my kind freen’ Maister Black. Losh me! man,” she added in a sudden burst of indignation, “what for disna the Government order a penny subscription ower the hail kingdom to git the puir guiltless shareholders oot o’ their diffeeculties?”

Philosopher Jack declined to enter upon so subtle a question, but after finding that his old room was vacant, retook it, and then went out to the region of the docks to pay a visit to Captain Samson. He found that old salt in possession of his old lodging, but it was wonderfully changed, and, perhaps, not for the better. Polly was there, however, and her presence would have made any place charming.

“Sit down. There is an empty keg to offer a friend,” said the captain, looking round the almost empty room. “You see they’ve cleared me out. Had to sell everything a’most.”

This was true. The marine stores, coils of rope, kegs, charts, telescopes, log-lines, sextants, foreign shells, model ships, Chinese idols—all were gone, excepting a table, a chair, a child’s crib in a corner, and the hammock, which latter looked more like an overwhelmingly heavy cloud than ever, as it hung over the clean but desolate scene.

“But we’re going to have such a nice tea,” said Polly, “and you shall stay and have some.”

She bustled about the fire, but it had so little heart that even her coaxing nearly failed to make it burn. Jack offered to assist.

“Take care,” said Polly with some anxiety; “if you cough or sneeze you’ll put it out.”

“But I promise neither to cough nor sneeze,” said Jack.

Under their united efforts the fire blazed, and tea with buttered toast ere long smoked on the board.

“Polly’s going to London,” said the captain suddenly—almost fiercely.

“Yes,” said Polly, hastening to explain; “you see, my aunt Maria has been so good as to offer to take me to live with her and put me to school.”

“Ha!” said the captain, almost blowing the buttered toast out of his mouth with contempt, “and Aunt Maria says she’ll make a lady of Polly! Think o’ that, Jack; make a lady out of an angel!”

The captain was so tickled with the idea that he went off into a roar of sarcastic laughter.

“I’ll tell ’ee what it is, Jack,” he continued on recovering, “I shouldn’t wonder it in the course of a few months’ residence with her, Polly was to make a lady out of Aunt Maria—supposin’ that to be possible.”

“Oh! father,” remonstrated Polly.

“Come,” cried the captain savagely, “give us a nor’-wester—that’s it; another—thank ’ee. The fact is, I’m goin’ in for nor’-westers durin’ the next fortnight—goin’ to have it blow a regular hurricane of ’em.”

Philosopher Jack hoped, if at all allowable, that he might be permitted to come under the influence of the gale, and then asked why Polly was leaving her father.

“She’s not leavin’ me, bless you,” said the captain, “it’s me that’s leavin’ her. The fact is, I’ve got a ship. What’s left of me is not over young, but it’s uncommon tough, so I mean to use it up as long as it lasts for Polly. I’m off to the East Indies in two or three weeks. If it hadn’t been for this Aunt Maria I shouldn’t have known what to do for Polly, so I’ve no call to abuse the stupid old thing. A lady, indeed—ha!”

“You might have been quite sure that my father’s house would have been open to Polly,” said Jack quite warmly, “or Mr Wilkins’s, for the matter of that.”

“I know it lad, I know it” returned the captain, slapping his friend on the shoulder, “but after all, this Aunt Maria—this lady-like individual—is the most natural protector. But now, tell me, what of O’Rook?”

“I know nothing of him. Haven’t seen him for several days. When I last met him he seemed to be much depressed, poor fellow. I don’t wonder, considering the fortune he has lost. However, Wilkins’s father is sure to do the best he can for him. He feels so deeply having led him and the rest of us into this—though it was no fault of his, and he went in and suffered along with us. I couldn’t understand, however, what O’Rook meant by some wild remarks he made the other day about taking to the temperance line and going in for coffee and mutton chops up a holly-tree. I hope it hasn’t unseated his reason, poor fellow.”

While the trio were thus discussing O’Rook over a cup of tea, that bold Irishman was busily engaged “comforting the widdy” over a cup of coffee in Mrs Bancroft’s private parlour.

It is only just to O’Rook to say that he originally sought the widow from a simple desire to tell her of her husband’s sad end, which, as we have seen, had made a deep impression on his sympathetic heart. When, however, he found that the widow was young, cheery, and good-looking, his sympathy was naturally increased, and the feeling was not unnaturally intensified when he found her engaged in the management of so excellent an institution as the “Holly Tree Public House without Drink.” At first O’Rook confined his visits to pure sympathy; then, when he had allowed a “raisonable” time to elapse, he made somewhat warmer approaches, and finally laid siege to the widow’s heart. But the widow was obdurate.

“Why won’t ye have me, now?” asked the poor man one evening, with a perplexed look; “sure it’s not bad-lookin’ I am, though I’ve no occasion to boast of gud looks neither.”

“No, it’s not your looks,” said Mrs Bancroft with a laugh, as she raised her eyes from her knitting and looked at her sister Flo, who sat opposite, also knitting, and who took a smiling but comparatively indifferent view of the matter.

“Then it must be because I’m not owld enough. Sure if ye wait a year or two I’ll be as owld as yourself, every bit,” said O’Rook.

“No, it’s not that either,” said the widow.

“Ah, then, it can’t be because I’m poor,” persisted O’Rook, “for with this good business you don’t want money, an’ I’m great at cookin’, besides havin’ the willin’ hands that can turn to a’most anything. If ye’d seen me diggin’ for goold, bad luck to it, ye’d belaive what I tell ye. Ah!” he added with a sigh, “it’s a rich man I’d have been this day if that ship had only kep’ afloat a few hours longer. Well, well, I needn’t grumble, when me own comrades, that thought it so safe in the Blankow Bank, are about as badly off as me. When was it they began to suspec’ the bank was shaky?”

“Oh, long ago,” said Mrs Bancroft, “soon after the disappearance of Mr Luke, the cashier—”

“Mr who?” demanded O’Rook with a start.

“Mr Luke. Did you know him?”

“I’ve heard of such a man,” replied O’Rook with assumed carelessness; “what about him?”

“Well, it was supposed that he was goin’ deranged, poor fellow, and at last he suddenly disappeared, no one could tell why; but it’s clear enough now, for he was made to put the accounts all wrong, and I suppose the struggle in his mind drove him to suicide, for he was a long, thin, weakly sort of man, without much brains except for figures.”

Hereupon O’Rook told the widow all he knew about the strange passenger of that name with whom he had sailed to the Southern Seas and worked at the gold fields. The conclusion which they came to was that the gold-digging passenger was the absconded cashier. Having settled this, O’Rook renewed the siege on the widow’s heart but without success, though she did not cast him off altogether. The poor man, however, lost patience, and, finally, giving it up in despair, went off to sea.

“I’ve been too hard on him,” remarked the widow, sadly, to her sister Flo, after he was gone.

“You have,” was Flo’s comforting reply, as she rose to serve a clamorous customer of the Holly Tree.

Philosopher Jack from that time forth devoted himself heartily to study, and gradually ceased to think of the golden dreams which had for so long a time beset him by night and by day. He had now found the gold which cannot perish, and while he studied medicine and surgery to enable him to cure the bodies of men, he devoted much of his time to the study of the Book which would enable him to cure their souls.

The captain came and went across the seas in the course of his rough calling, and he never came without a heart full of love and hands full of foreign nick-nacks, which he conveyed to Polly in London, and never went away without a rousing nor’-wester.

Watty and his father worked on together in vigorous contentment and many a visit did the former pay to Bailie Trench, attracted by the strong resemblance in Susan to the bosom friend who had reached the “Better Land” before him.

Thus time rolled quietly on, until an event occurred which modified the career of more than one of those whose fortunes we have followed so long.

Chapter Twelve