"Oh, but it ain't Jane; it's Elizabeth," says he, and when I had done laughing, and asked him why he had ignored my aunt's recommendation, he launched forth into a very rambling and confused statement of which I could make nothing. He married Elizabeth soon after, and I do not think my aunt ever thoroughly forgave him.
One Mariner Returns
One day, about ten years ago, I was sitting with my uncle in his garden, chatting with him as I frequently did in the evening, because he could not get about much, when we saw an old man, very crooked and infirm, hobble up to the gate on two sticks, and lift the latch. Thinking he was a beggar, my uncle bade him very sharply to be off. For a moment he hesitated; then he opened the gate and came slowly towards us, my uncle shaking his fist at him, and daring him to move another step. There was something strangely familiar, and yet unfamiliar, in his appearance; but as he still hobbled along, it came upon me all of a sudden who he was, and I told my uncle I believed it was Nick Wabberley. "The scoundrel! The villain!" cried my uncle. "How dare he show his face here!" and then he added under his breath, "I'm getting old, Harry," remembering, I suppose, that he and Wabberley were much of an age.
Wabberley came towards us very slowly, and I saw that his hands were shaking and his features twisted. He looked at my uncle, and then at me, but it was plain that he did not recognize me; and then he began to speak, and it was very pitiful to hear him, because with palsy upon him he could not pronounce some of his words aright, and the story he told was pitiful too. He related how he had been left with Hoggett and Chick on the island by me and the stowaway, "who didn't ought to have left us, men what they ought to respect," said he. Chick died; then Hoggett fell into a melancholy and took to going off for days alone. One day there was a dreadful eruption of the volcano, which terrified them so much that they went down into the cavern below the hut to hide, and when the danger was past, Hoggett refused to go up; he had lost his wits and thought he was in his grave. Wabberley let down food to him in a basket, but he did not touch it, and so remained until he starved himself to death.
"I was all alone; d'ye know what that is, Stephen Brent?" says Wabberley. How long he lived thus solitary he knew not, but he was nearly out of his mind when one day a ship's boat came ashore for water, and brought him home, the wreck we saw him. "You won't forget your old schoolmate, Stephen Brent?" says he; and my uncle, who had muttered "Dear, dear!" and "Poor fellow!" and suchlike things, while Wabberley was speaking, now thrust his hand into his pocket, and saying "God have mercy on us all!" gave him a handful of silver. Wabberley touched his forelock in the old mechanical fashion, and without a second look at me he hobbled away, and as he came to the gate, whom should he meet but Billy, walking up to the house with his eldest son, a boy of twelve. Billy stopped, and in his face I saw a great amazement; but Wabberley passed him by, not knowing him again. And then I was surprised, and touched too, to see Billy follow after the poor old man, and take him by one arm, and make his boy take the other, to help his tottering footsteps, and so they passed out of my sight.
The End
I have been long of telling my story; yet I might have told much more but for the fear of wearying you. Billy sometimes says he wouldn't have minded taking a trip to the South Seas and having a look at Old Smoker; but if it had come to the point I think he could hardly have torn himself away from Elizabeth and the little Bobbins. As for me, though I have neither wife nor child, I am too busy a man, and maybe too old, to think of entering upon what would, I fear, be a long and troublesome search. There have been many voyages of discovery in those parts since my time, and if Palm Tree Island is now marked on maps and charts for the guidance of captains and navigators, I think I should feel a trifle sorry did I see it under another name.
[[1]] This must have been Bougainville Island, one of the Solomon Group.—H.S.
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.