This may appear a long story, but its conclusion invests it with a degree of interest which warrants the detail. The running away to sea of a young man, and his return after a lapse of years, is, and ever has been, no novelty in this island. This is not the burden of the tale. It possessed an awful interest to those whom it immediately concerned, and cannot fail to have some for the most indifferent reader.
From that night in November, 1803, to this month of January, 1838, the missing man was never seen again; nor was any intelligence, or any clue of the faintest or most remote description, ever obtained by his friends respecting him.
Next morning, and many mornings afterwards, the mother still anxiously and hopelessly expected the arrival of her son. Again and again did she question Grimaldi about him—his appearance, his manner, what he said, and all the details of his disappearance; again and again was every minute fact recalled, and every possible conjecture hazarded relative to his fate. He could scarcely persuade himself but that the events of the preceding night were a delusion of his brain, until the inquiries after his brother, which were made by those who had seen him on the previous night, placed them beyond all doubt. He communicated to his friends the strange history of the last few hours, with all the circumstances of his brother's sudden appearance, and of his equally sudden disappearance. He was advised to wait a little while before he made the circumstance public, in the hope that he might have been induced to spend the night with some shipmates, and might speedily return.
But a week passed away, and then further silence would have been criminal, and he proceeded to set on foot every inquiry which his own mind could suggest, or the kindness of his friends prompted them to advise. A powerful nobleman who at that time used to frequent Drury Lane Theatre, and who had on, many occasions expressed his favourable opinion of Grimaldi, interested himself greatly in the matter, and set on foot a series of inquiries at the Admiralty: every source of information possessed by that establishment that was deemed at all likely to throw any light upon the subject was resorted to, but in vain; the newspapers were searched to ascertain what ships had arrived in the river or upon the coast that day—whence they came, what crews they carried, what passengers they had; the police-officers were paid to search all London through, and endeavour to gain some information, if it were only of the lost man's death. Everything was tried by the family, and by many very powerful friends whom the distressing nature of the inquiry raised up about them, to trace the object of their regret and labour, but all in vain. The sailor was seen no more.
Various surmises were afloat at the time regarding the real nature of this mysterious transaction; many of them, of course, were absurd enough, but the two most probable conjectures appear to have been hazarded many years afterwards, and when all chance of the man being alive were apparently at an end,—the one by the noble lord who had pursued the investigation at the Admiralty, and the other by a shrewd long-headed police-officer, who had been employed to set various inquiries on foot in the neighbourhood of the theatre.
The former suggested that a press-gang, to whom the person of the brother was known, might possibly have pounced upon him in some by-street, and have carried him off; in which case, as he had previously assumed a false name, the fact of his friends receiving no intelligence of him was easily accounted for; while, as nothing could be more probable than that he was slain in one of the naval engagements so rife about that time, his never appearing again was easily explained. This solution of the mystery, however, was by no means satisfactory to his friends, as it was liable to many very obvious doubts and objections. Upon the whole, they felt inclined to give far more credence to the still more tragical, but, it is to be feared, more probable explanation which the experience of the police-officer suggested.
This man was of opinion that the unfortunate subject of their doubts had been lured into some low infamous den, by persons who had either previously known or suspected that he had a large sum of money in his possession; that here he was plundered, and afterwards either murdered in cold blood, or slain in some desperate struggle to recover his gold. This conjecture was encouraged by but too many corroboratory circumstances: the sailor was of a temper easily persuaded: he had all the recklessness and hardihood of a seafaring man, only increased by the possession of prize-money and the release from hard work: he had money, and a very large sum of money, about him, the greater part in specie, and not in notes, or any security which it would be difficult or dangerous to exchange: all this was known to his brother and to Mr. Wroughton, both eye-witnesses of the fact.
One other circumstance deserves a word. It was, both at the time and for a long period afterwards, a source of bitter, although of most groundless self-reproach to Grimaldi, that he could not sufficiently recollect the appearance of the man who accompanied his brother to the stage-door of the theatre, to describe his person. If he could have been traced out, some intelligence respecting the poor fellow might perhaps have been discovered; but Grimaldi was so much moved by the unexpected recognition of his brother, that he scarcely bestowed a thought or a look upon his companion: nor, after taxing his memory for many years, could he ever recollect more than that he was dressed in precisely the same attire as his brother, even down to the white waistcoat; a circumstance which had not only been noticed by himself, but was well remembered by the door-keeper, and others who had passed in and out of the theatre during the time the two young men were standing in the lobby.
Recollecting the intimate terms upon which the two appeared to be, and the appointment which was made between them for the following morning, "at ten precisely," there is little reason to doubt that if the sailor had disappeared without the knowledge or privity of his companion, the latter would infallibly have applied to Grimaldi to know where his brother was. Coupling the fact of his never doing so, and never being seen or heard of again, with the circumstance of the lost man never having evinced the least inclination to take him home with him, to retain him when he was in his brother's company, or even to introduce him in the slightest manner, (from all of which it would seem that he was some bad or doubtful character,) the family arrived at the conclusion,—if it should ever be an unjust one, it will be forgiven,—that this man was cognizant of, if indeed he was not chiefly instrumental in bringing about, the untimely fate of the murdered man, for such they always supposed him. Whether they were right or wrong in this conclusion will probably ever remain unknown.
