Chapter XLIV

RISING FORTUNES

PERHAPS there was no period of the attorney Burton’s misfortunes more bitter to him than when he stood that morning upon the deck of Colonel Parker’s schooner, and saw the town almost within hand’s reach, and yet felt himself so helpless, so utterly powerless to escape.

All hands were talking about Colonel Parker’s daughter, and how she had been brought back from the pirates, and by and by an interest in what he heard began to work its way into his consciousness in spite of the misfortunes that overhung him. So it was that, when he saw the boat coming toward the schooner, he went over to the rail and stood with the others gathered there looking out as it approached. He saw that there were several people sitting in the stern-sheets,—one of them the young lady,—and that they were towing an empty boat behind them. All hands aboard the schooner were standing at the rail or clinging to the shrouds watching their approach, and from where the little attorney stood he could see that the surgeon and the sailing-master and the shipwrecked mate were at the gangway waiting for them.

He at once singled out the pirate who had rescued the young lady—the young man with the long, shaggy hair and rough, half-sailor clothes. He seemed to the attorney Burton to be singularly young for a pirate, with a round, smooth, boyish face. Presently the boat was close under the side of the schooner, and the next moment the crew had unshipped their oars with a loud and noisy clatter. The lieutenant leaned out astern and stopped the yawl as it slid past with the impetus of its motion, and then it also fell around broadside to the schooner.

Then they began to come aboard, first the lieutenant, then Colonel Parker, then the young lady. At that instant the young pirate looked up, and the attorney looked full into his face. If a thunderbolt had fallen and burst at the little lawyer’s feet, he could not have been more amazed than he was to see the face of Jack Ballister looking toward him.

It is such wonderful chance meetings as this, and as that other time when Jack met Dred at Bullock’s Landing, that teach us how little is this little world of ours, and how great is the fatality that drifts men apart and then drifts them together again.

The next moment Jack also had climbed aboard, and had gone into the cabin with the others. “You must look at the poor lad’s hands before you do anything else, doctor,” Colonel Parker was saying to the physician who accompanied them.

Jack was still filled full of warm happiness as he sat there in the fine cabin, watching Dr. Poor as the surgeon dressed his hands, winding the clean white linen bandage around one of them. The dressing felt very soothing and cool. Colonel Parker and the young lady and Lieutenant Maynard sat opposite to him across the table, Colonel Parker asking him many things about the circumstances of their escape. Jack had been telling what he knew concerning the young lady’s abduction. “And were you with the pirates, then, when they took Nelly away?” said Colonel Parker.

The surgeon was trimming away the rough edges of skin from the palm of Jack’s other hand, and Jack looked down at the skilful touches upon the sore and tender place. “I didn’t go with them over to the house, if you mean that, your honor. I stayed aboard of the boat while they went. There was a watch of half a dozen left aboard, and I was with them. The others went off in three boats; the yawl was one of them. It was the biggest of the three, and Blackbeard went in it. I had only just come aboard, and I don’t think they would have chosen me to go with them upon such an expedition. I had just run away from Mr. Parker’s then, and that was my first day with them.”

“Why, then, I am glad of that,” said Colonel Parker. “I am glad you were not with them in such an unlovely business as attacking a defenseless houseful of women. But I don’t see how they could dare to do such a thing. There must have been some one set the villains on to do it. Did you hear whether there was any one else concerned in it—instigating them to the outrage?”

Jack had heard enough talk in Blackbeard’s house to feel sure that Mr. Richard Parker had been the prime mover in the outrage, but he did not dare to tell Colonel Parker about it. “I don’t know,” said he; “but they’re very desperate villains, your honor, and that’s the truth. You don’t think what desperate villains they are when you are with them, for they talk and act just like other men. But I do believe that there’s nothing they would stop at. They are very desperate villains.”

Colonel Parker was looking intently at him as he spoke. “You speak mightily good language,” he said; “are you educated?”

Jack blushed red. “Yes, your honor,” he said; “my father taught me. He was a clergyman, and a great scholar, I’ve heard say.”

Colonel Parker appeared very much interested. “Indeed!” he said, “is that the case? Why, then, I am very glad to hear it. Your being a gentleman’s son makes it easier for me to do all that I want to do for you. But you were kidnapped, you say?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jack.

Suddenly the surgeon clipped the thread of the second bandage. “There, you are as well as I can make you now,” he said.

“And indeed they feel mightily comfortable,” said Jack, opening and shutting his hand; “and I thank you kindly for the ease you have given me.”

“Now go and dress yourself, ready for breakfast,” said Colonel Parker. “My man Robin hath set out some clothes for you in the lieutenant’s cabin.”

Colonel Parker’s body-servant Robin was just coming out of the lieutenant’s cabin when Jack entered. “You’ll find everything you want in there, I do suppose,” he said. “If you don’t you may call me. I’ll be just outside here.”

He had laid the clothes upon the lieutenant’s berth. He closed the door as he went away, and Jack stood looking about him. It was all very clean and neat. It was the cabin that Miss Eleanor Parker generally used when she was aboard the schooner. A cool, fresh smell pervaded it. He laid his clothes aside, and sat down upon the edge of the berth, and then, presently, lay down at length upon its clean surface. As he lay there resting he was very, very happy. He went over in his mind all that had passed that morning. How beautiful it all was! How kind was Colonel Parker! Yes; he was reaping his reward. He lay there for a long time, yielding himself to his pleasant thoughts. Everything seemed very bright and hopeful. His hands felt so comfortable. He lifted them and looked at the bandages: how white and clean they were, how neatly they were stitched! He could smell the salve, and it seemed to have a very pleasant savor in the odor. He was glad now that Colonel Parker had seen his hands, and that they had looked so terribly sore. At last he roused himself, and looked at the clothes that had been laid out for him, turning them over and feeling them. They were of fine brown cloth, and there was a pair of white stockings. “I wish I had something to rub up my shoes a trifle,” he thought; “they look mightily rusty and ugly.”

Then he got up and began dressing, only to stop in the midst of it and to lie down once more to build those bright castles in the air. How fine it would be to live at Marlborough, not as a servant, but as one of the household! And now such good fortune was really his own. He lay there for a long, long time until, suddenly, the door was opened, and Colonel Parker’s servant looked in. Jack sprang up from where he lay. “Not dressed yet?” said the man. “Well, then, hurry as quick as you can. His honor wants you out in his own cabin. There’s somebody aboard here knows you, and he’s been in his honor’s cabin now for ten minutes or more.”

“Somebody who knows me?” said Jack. “Why, who can that be, pray?”

“’Tis a lawyer,” said the man—“a man named Burton. He says he knew you in Southampton.”

“Master Roger Burton!” cried Jack. “Why, to be sure I know him. Are you sure that is who ’tis? Why, how does he come aboard here? When did he come to America?”

He was getting dressed rapidly as he talked, and the servant came into the cabin and closed the door after him. “As to coming to America,” he said, “he came here naturally enough. He was kidnapped just as you and me were. I heard him tell his honor the lieutenant he had been knocked on the head and kidnapped.”

“Knocked on the head and kidnapped!” Jack cried; “why, that was just what happened to me.”

“Here, let me hold your coat for you,” said Robin. He held it up as Jack slipped his arms into the sleeves. “There, now then, you come straight along,” he said, and he led the way across the great cabin to Colonel Parker’s own private cabin beyond. He tapped on the door and then opened it.

“Come in,” called out Colonel Parker, and Jack entered.

He saw the attorney Burton immediately. He would not have recognized him if he had not known whom he was to see. The marks of the smallpox, the rough clothes he wore, and the thin, stringy beard that covered his cheeks and chin made him look like altogether a different man. Only his little stature and his long nose fitted with the memory of him in Jack’s mind. He stood for a while gazing at the little man. “Why, how now, Master Jack,” said the attorney, “don’t you know me?”

“Yes, I do, now that you speak,” said Jack, “but to be sure I wouldn’t have known you if I hadn’t been told you were here.”

Colonel Parker was lying in his berth, a blanket spread over his knees and feet. Miss Eleanor Parker sat on the edge of the berth, holding his hand, and the lieutenant sat opposite, crowded into the narrow space. “Come hither,” said Colonel Parker, reaching out his hand, and as Jack came toward him he took the lad’s bandaged hand into his own and held it firmly. “Why did you not tell me who you were?” said he.

“I don’t know what you mean, your honor,” said Jack.

“Don’t call me ‘your honor,’” said Colonel Parker. “Call me ‘sir,’ or else ‘Colonel Parker.’”

“Yes, sir,” said Jack, blushing.

“What I mean,” said Colonel Parker, “is that you did not tell me that you were Sir Henry Ballister’s nephew and a young gentleman of such high quality, nor that you were the heir of any such fortune as I am told hath been left to you. You should have told me all this at once. I might have gone on for a long while without knowing, had this good man not told me what was your family and condition.”

“I don’t know, sir,” said Jack, awkwardly, “why I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t think to do it.”

Lieutenant Maynard burst out laughing, and even Colonel Parker smiled. “Well, well,” he said, “family and fortune are something worth while to talk about, as the world goes. But I am glad that I shall know what to do for you now.”

Jack looked up at Miss Eleanor Parker, and saw that she was gazing straight at him. She smiled brightly as their eyes met.

The schooner left Norfolk that morning, but the breeze was very light, and it was not until the following day that they reached Marlborough.

The great house was in clear sight when Jack came up on deck at sunrise. Colonel Parker and Miss Eleanor were standing at the rail gazing out toward the house, which had been already aroused by the approach of the schooner. People were hurrying hither and thither, and then a number came running down to the landing from the house and the offices and the cabins, until a crowd had gathered at the end of the wharf.

“Yonder is thy mother, Nelly,” said Colonel Parker—“yonder is thy mother, my dear.” He spoke with trembling lips. The tears were running down the young lady’s cheeks, but she seemed hardly to notice them, and she was not crying. She wiped her eyes and her cheeks with her handkerchief, and then waved it; then wiped her eyes again, then waved it again. “Yonder is your Uncle Richard with her,” said Colonel Parker, and he also wiped his eyes as he spoke.

Jack could see his former master standing close to the edge of the wharf. He himself stood a little to one side with the Attorney Burton, who had also come up on deck. He had an uncomfortable feeling of not being exactly one in all the joy of this home-bringing.

A boat was pulling rapidly off from the shore, and in a moment the anchor fell with a splash. They were close to the wharf, and almost immediately the boat from the shore was alongside. Everybody was cheering, and Jack and the Attorney Burton stood silently in the midst of it all. Suddenly Colonel Parker turned to Jack, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Come,” he said, “you must go along with us. The others may follow later.”

The young lady did not see him or seem to think of him. She was weeping and weeping, clinging to the stays, and now and then wiping her eyes. The crew helped her down into the boat, where Colonel Parker was already seated. Jack followed after her, and then the men pulled away toward the shore; in a moment they were at the wharf. The people, black and white, were crowded above them, and Madam Parker had struggled so close to the edge that her brother-in-law and Mr. Jones were holding her back. She was crying convulsively and hysterically, and reaching out her hands and arms, clutching toward her daughter. Jack sat, looking up at all the faces staring down at them. The only unmoved one among them all upon the wharf was Mr. Richard Parker. He stood, calm and unruffled, with hardly a change of expression upon his handsome face. The next moment the mother and daughter were in one another’s arms, weeping and crying; and then, a moment more, and Colonel Parker was with them, his arms around them both.

Still Mr. Richard Parker stood calmly by; only now, when Jack looked, he saw that his eyes were fastened steadily upon him—but there was neither surprise nor interest in his face. Then Jack, too, went ashore. Colonel Parker saw him. “My dear,” he said to his wife in a shaking voice, “this is our dear Nelly’s preserver—the young hero who brought her back to us. Have you not a welcome for him?”

Madam Parker looked up, her eyes streaming with tears. She could not have seen Jack through them, and Jack stood, overcome and abashed. Through it all he was conscious that Mr. Parker was still looking steadily at him.

“Ay, brother Richard,” said Colonel Parker, wiping his eyes, “you know him, do you not? Well, ’tis to him we owe it that our Nelly hath been brought back to us again, for ‘twas he who brought her.”

Then Jack looked at his former master and wondered what he was thinking; he said nothing.