‘Here we are, sir, at our journey’s end for this time,’ he added, as the boat slowly floated into a small open basin, there to remain for the night. The boatman’s wife, being already shawled and armed with a capacious basket, stepped on shore as soon as the boat came near enough; and with a cheerful ‘good-night’ to us, went away to do her marketing before the shops should close.
Tying up the boat, my bargee friend sent off the boys with the horse to its stable, and proceeded to gather together and stow away in their respective lockers the odds and ends which had been in use during the day; remarking as he did so, that though there were watchmen kept in every dock, it often happened that the barges were robbed of any loose things which might be left about, and therefore it was that most of the boats had a dog on board, who made a better policeman than all the watchmen. With a last glance round he took from one of the cupboards a dirty paper, and unfolding it for our inspection, said: ‘There, you see, reading and writing would be of some use to us after all; for according to what tonnage is put down there, we get paid. And as you see, wherever we pay tolls they put down the time we pass, so that if we get drinking or loitering about for a day the owners know it, and make up our character according.
‘Yes; I’m going to sleep on board; but I must go and report our arrival at the office, and see as the horse is all right first. And as for what I’ve told you, I’m sure you’re very welcome to know it, especially if it will only make you believe as if something was done to give our children a little reading and writing, and to stop so many lads and lasses being crammed together in the boats, there might be less respectable people than bargees.’
An unclouded moon was shining upon the calm water of the canal and upon the gaudily painted cabins of some twelve or thirteen barges, which lay motionless in the basin, displaying no other sign of human habitation than the thin columns of smoke which issued from their stove-pipes, as we bade our friend ‘good-night,’ and started on our homeward walk, well satisfied with the experience we had gained while spending an hour or two with some of ‘our canal population.’
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
CHAPTER XXIII.—JASPER FEELS PERPLEXED.
Jasper Denzil, as he slowly made his elaborate toilet on the sunny September morning which succeeded to the eventful night on which he had espied from his window Ruth’s slight form gliding across the lonely park, turned over many things in his mind. His man, who groaned over the dull monotony of rural existence, and longed to be once more in Mount Street or Bond Street lodgings, silently opined, as he applied the ivory-backed brushes to his master’s hair or removed the silver-gilt stoppers of the scent-bottles, that ‘the captain’ was brooding over his turf calamities. But he was wrong. Jasper’s reverie was on a different theme.
Who or what was this mysterious Miss Willis, this interesting orphan, whom regard for the mythical major her defunct papa had induced Sir Sykes to take into the bosom of his family? The conversation which he had overheard when lurking in the frowsy garden of The Traveller’s Rest recurred again and again to his memory, and served to explain much, but not all. That the presence beneath his roof-tree of Ruth Willis had been imposed upon the baronet by Hold’s importunity, he well knew. That he had with his own ears heard Hold describe her as his sister, he well remembered, but he recalled too the sneering tone in which the adventurer had claimed kindred with the Indian orphan.
Of one thing alone did Captain Denzil feel sure. Ruth, be her understanding with Hold what it might, was a lady, and no blood-relation of the rough rover who claimed to be her brother. Who then was this Ruth? Again and again Jasper’s thoughts flew back to the little sister that had died so early, and whose untimely death was reported to have made the owner of Carbery Chase the morose joyless recluse that he had long been. Could it be—was it possible that the child had not died at all, that a false registry, a sham burial, had thrown dust in credulous eyes, and that the missing member of the family, hidden for years from all eyes, had at length been introduced under a fictitious name into the household?