[CHAPTER VIII.]
CAPTAIN PRODDER GOES BACK TO DONCASTER.
Mr. Samuel Prodder, returning to London after having played his insignificant part in the tragedy at Mellish Park, found that city singularly dull and gloomy. He put up at some dismal boarding-house, situated amid a mazy labyrinth of brick and mortar between the Tower and Wapping, and having relations with another boarding-house in Liverpool. He took up his abode at this place, in which he was known and respected. He drank rum-and-water, and played cribbage with other seamen, made after the same pattern as himself. He even went to an East-End theatre upon the Saturday night after the murder, and sat out the representation of a nautical drama, which he would have been glad to have believed in, had it not promulgated such wild theories in the science of navigation, and exhibited such extraordinary experiments in the manoeuvring of the man-of-war, upon which the action of the play took place, as to cause the captain's hair to stand on end in the intensity of his wonder. The things people did upon that ship curdled Samuel Prodder's blood, as he sat in the lonely grandeur of the eighteenpenny boxes. It was quite a common thing for them to walk unhesitatingly through the bulwarks and disappear in what ought to have been the sea. The extent of browbeating and humiliation borne by the captain of that noble vessel; the amount of authority exercised by a sailor with loose legs; the agonies of sea-sickness, represented by a comic countryman, who had no particular business on board the gallant bark; the proportion of hornpipe-dancing and nautical ballad-singing gone through, as compared to the work that was done,—all combined to impress poor Samuel with such a novel view of her Majesty's naval service, that he was very glad when the captain who had been browbeaten suddenly repented of all his sins,—not without a sharp reminder from the prompter, who informed the dramatis personæ, in a confidential voice that it was parst twelve, and they'd better cut it short,—joined the hands of the contumacious sailor and a young lady in white muslin, and begged them to be 'appy.
It was in vain that the captain sought distraction from the one idea upon which he had perpetually brooded since the night of his visit to Mellish Park. He would be wanted in Yorkshire to tell what he knew of the dark history of that fatal night. He would be called upon to declare at what hour he had entered the wood, whom he had met there, what he had seen and heard there. They would extort from him that which he would have died rather than tell. They would cross-examine, and bewilder, and torment him, until he told them everything,—until he repeated, syllable by syllable, the passionate words that had been said,—until he told them how, within a quarter of an hour of the firing of the pistol, he had been the witness of a desperate scene between his niece and the murdered man,—a scene in which concentrated hate, vengeful fury, illimitable disdain and detestation had been expressed by her—by her alone:—the man had been calm and moderate enough. It was she who had been angry; it was she who had given loud utterance to her hate.
Now, by reason of one of those strange inconsistencies common to weak human nature, the captain, though possessed night and day by a blind terror of being suddenly pounced upon by the minions of the law, and compelled to betray his niece's secret, could not rest in his safe retreat amid the labyrinths of Wapping, but must needs pine to return to the scene of the murder. He wanted to know the result of the inquest. The Sunday papers gave a very meagre account, only hinting darkly at suspected parties. He wanted to ascertain for himself what had happened at the inquest, and whether his absence had given rise to suspicion. He wanted to see his niece again,—to see her in the daylight, undisturbed by passion. He wanted to see this beautiful tigress in her calmer moods, if she ever had any calmer moods. Heaven knows the simple merchant-captain was well-nigh distracted as he thought of his sister Eliza's child, and the awful circumstances of his first and only meeting with her.
Was she—that which he feared people might be led to think her, if they heard the story of that scene in the wood? No, no, no!
She was his sister's child,—the child of that merry, impetuous little girl, who had worn a pinafore and played hop-scotch. He remembered his sister flying into a rage with one Tommy Barnes for unfair practices in that very game, and upbraiding him almost as passionately as Aurora had upbraided the dead man. But if Tommy Barnes had been found strangled by a skipping-rope or shot dead from a pea-shooter in the next street a quarter of an hour afterwards, would Eliza's brother have thought that she must needs be guilty of the boy's murder? The captain had gone so far as to reason thus, in his trouble of mind. His sister Eliza's child would be likely to be passionate and impetuous; but his sister Eliza's child would be a generous, warm-hearted creature, incapable of any cruelty in either thought or deed. He remembered his sister Eliza boxing his ears on the occasion of his gouging out the eyes of her wax-doll; but he remembered the same dark-eyed child sobbing piteously at the spectacle of a lamb that a heartless butcher was dragging to the slaughter-house.
But the more seriously Captain Prodder revolved this question in his mind, the more decidedly his inclination pointed to Doncaster; and early upon that very morning on which the quiet marriage had taken place in the obscure City church, he repaired to a magnificent Israelitish temple of fashion in the Minories, and there ordered a suit of such clothes as were most affected by elegant landsmen. The Israelitish salesman recommended something light and lively in the fancy-check line; and Mr. Prodder, submitting to that authority as beyond all question, invested himself in a suit which he had contemplated solemnly athwart a vast expanse of plate-glass, before entering the temple of the Graces. It was "Our aristocratic tourist," at seventy-seven shillings and sixpence, and was made of a fleecy and rather powdery-looking cloth; in which the hues of baked and unbaked bricks predominated over a more delicate hearthstone tint,—which latter the shopman declared to be a colour that West-End tailors had vainly striven to emulate.
The captain, dressed in "Our aristocratic tourist," which suit was of the ultra cut-away and peg-toppy order, and with his sleeves and trousers inflated by any chance summer's breeze, had perhaps more of the appearance of a tombola than is quite in accordance with a strictly artistic view of the human figure. In his desire to make himself utterly irrecognizable as the seafaring man who had carried the tidings of the murder to Mellish Park, the captain had tortured himself by substituting a tight circular collar and a wisp of purple ribbon for the honest half-yard of snowy linen which it had been his habit to wear turned over the loose collar of his blue coat. He suffered acute agonies from this modern device, but he bore them bravely; and he went straight from the tailor's to the Great Northern Railway Station, where he took his ticket for Doncaster. He meant to visit that town as an aristocratic tourist; he would keep himself aloof from the neighbourhood of Mellish Park, but he would be sure to hear the result of the inquest, and he would be able to ascertain for himself whether any trouble had come upon his sister's child.