Run to Earth by M. E. Braddon

M >> M. E. Braddon >> Run to Earth

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* * * * *

Valentine Jernam arrived at Plymouth early the next morning, and walked
from Plymouth to the little village of Allanbay, in which lived the
only relative he had in the world, except his brother George. Walking
at a leisurely pace along the quiet road, Captain Jernam, although not
usually a thoughtful person, was fain to think about something, and
fell to thinking over the past.

Light-hearted and cheery of spirit as the adventurous sailor was
now-a-days, his childhood had been a very sad one. Motherless at eight
years of age, and ill-used by a drunken father, the boy had suffered as
the children of the poor too often suffer.

His mother had died, leaving George an infant of less than twelve
months old; and from the hour of her death, Valentine had been the
infant's sole nurse and protector; standing between the helpless little
one and the father's brutality; enduring all hardships cheerfully, so
long as he was able to shelter little Georgy.

On more than one occasion, the elder boy had braved and defied his
father in defence of the younger brother.

It was scarcely strange, therefore, that there should arise between the
two brothers an affection beyond the ordinary measure of brotherly
love. Valentine had supplied the place of both parents to his brother
George,--the place of the mother, who lay buried in Allanbay
churchyard; the place of the father, who had sunk into a living death
of drunkenness and profligacy.

They were not peasant-born these Jernams. The father had been a
lieutenant in the Royal Navy; but had deservedly lost his commission,
and had come, with his devoted wife, to hide his disgrace at Allanbay.
The vices which had caused his expulsion from the navy had increased
with every year, until the family had sunk to the lowest depths of
poverty and degradation, in spite of the wife's heroic efforts to
accomplish the reform of a reprobate. She had struggled nobly till the
last, and had died broken-hearted, leaving the helpless children to the
mercy of a wretch whose nature had become utterly debased and
brutalized.

Throughout their desolate childhood the brothers had been all in all to
each other, and as soon as George was old enough to face the world with
his brother, the two boys ran away to sea, and obtained employment on
board a small trading vessel.

At sea, as on shore, Valentine stood between his younger brother and
all hardships. But the rough sailors were kinder than the drunken
father had been, and the two lads fared pretty well.

Thus began the career of the two Jernams. Through all changes of
fortune, the brothers had clung to each other. Despite all differences
of character, their love for each other had known neither change nor
diminution; and to-day, walking alone upon this quiet country road, the
tears clouded Valentine Jernam's eyes as he remembered how often he had
trodden it in the old time with his little brother in his arms.

"I shall see his dear face on the fifth," he thought; "God bless him!"

The old aunt lived in a cottage near the entrance to the village. She
was comfortably off now--thanks to the two merchant captains; but she
had been very poor in the days of their childhood, and had been able to
do but little for the neglected lads. She had given them shelter,
however, when they had been afraid to go home to their father, and had
shared her humble fare with them very often.

Mrs. Jernam, as she was called by her neighbours, in right of her sixty
years of age, was sitting by the window when her nephew opened the
little garden-gate: but she had opened the door before he could knock,
and was standing on the threshold ready to embrace him.

"My boy," she exclaimed, "I have been looking for you so long!"

That day was given up to pleasant talk between the aunt and nephew. She
was so anxious to hear his adventures, and he was so willing to tell
them. He sat before the fire smoking, while Susan Jernam's busy fingers
plied her knitting-needles, and relating his hair-breadth escapes and
perils between the puffs of blue smoke.

The captain was regaled with an excellent dinner, and a bottle of wine
of his own importation. After dinner, he strolled out into the village,
saw his old friends and acquaintances, and talked over old times.
Altogether his first day at Allanbay passed very pleasantly.

The second day at Allanbay, however, hung heavily on the captain's
hands. He had told all his adventures; he had seen all his old
acquaintances. The face of the ballad-singer haunted him perpetually;
and he spent the best part of the day leaning over the garden-gate and
smoking. Mrs. Jernam was not offended by her nephew's conduct.

"Ah! my boy," she said, smiling fondly on her handsome kinsman, "it's
fortunate Providence made you a sailor, for you'd have been ill-fitted
for any but a roving life."

The third day of Valentine Jernam's stay at Allanbay was the second of
April, and on that morning his patience was exhausted. The face which
had made itself a part of his very mind lured him back to London. He
was a man who had never accustomed himself to school his impulses; and
the impulse that drew him back to London was irresistible.

"I must and will see her once more," he said to himself; "perhaps, if I
see her face again, I shall find out it's only a common face after all,
and get the better of this folly. But I must see her. After the fifth,
George will be with me, and I shan't be my own master. I must see her
before the fifth."

Impetuous in all things, Valentine Jernam was not slow to act upon his
resolution. He told his aunt that he had business to transact in
London. He left Allanbay at noon, walked to Plymouth, took the
afternoon coach, and rode into London on the following day.

It was one o'clock when Captain Jernam found himself once more in the
familiar seafaring quarter; early as it was, the noise of riot and
revelry had begun already.

The landlord looked up with an expression of considerable surprise as
the captain of the 'Pizarro' crossed the threshold.

"Why, captain," he said, "I thought we weren't to see you till the
fifth."

"Well, you see, I had some business to do in this neighbourhood, so I
changed my mind."

"I'm very glad you did," answered Dennis Wayman, cordially; "you've
just come in time to take a snack of dinner with me and my missus, so
you can sit down, and make yourself at home, without ceremony."

The captain was too good-natured to refuse an invitation that seemed
proffered in such a hearty spirit. And beyond this, he wanted to hear
more about Jenny Milsom, the ballad-singer.

So he ate his dinner with Mr. Wayman and his wife, and found himself
asking all manner of questions about the singing-girl in the course of
his hospitable entertainment.

He asked if the girl was going to sing at the tavern to-night.

"No," answered the landlord; "this is Friday. She only sings at my
place on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays."

"And what does she do with herself for the rest of the week?"

"Ah! that's more than I know; but very likely her father will look in
here in the course of the afternoon, and he can tell you. I say,
though, captain, you seem uncommonly sweet on this girl," added the
landlord, with a leer and a wink.

"Well, perhaps I am sweet upon her," replied Valentine Jernam "perhaps
I'm fool enough to be caught by a pretty face, and not wise enough to
keep my folly a secret."

"I've got a Little business to see to over in Rotherhithe," said Mr.
Wayman, presently; "you'll see after the bar while I'm gone, Nancy.
There's the little private room at your service, captain, and I dare
say you can make yourself comfortable there with your pipe and the
newspaper. It's ten to one but what Tom Milsom will look in before the
day's out, and he'll tell you all about his daughter."

Upon this the landlord departed, and Valentine Jernam retired to the
little den called a private room, where he speedily fell asleep,
wearied out by his journey on the previous night.

His slumbers were not pleasant. He sat in an uneasy position, upon a
hard wooden chair, with his arms folded on the table before him, and
his head resting on his folded arms.

There was a miserable pretence of a fire, made with bad coals and damp
wood.

Sleeping in that wretched atmosphere, in that uncomfortable attitude,
it was scarcely strange if Valentine Jernam dreamt a bad dream.

He dreamt that he fell asleep at broad day in his cabin on board the
'Pizarro', and that he woke suddenly and found himself in darkness. He
dreamt that he groped his way up the companion-way, and on to the deck.

There, as below, he found gloom and darkness, and instead of a busy
crew, utter loneliness, perfect silence. A stillness like the stillness
of death reigned on the level waters around the motionless ship.

The captain shouted, but his voice died away among the shrouds.
Presently a glimmer of star-light pierced the universal gloom, and in
that uncertain light a shadowy figure came gliding towards him across
the ocean--a face shone upon him beneath the radiance of the stars. It
was the face of the ballad-singer.

The shadow drew nearer to him, with a strange gliding motion. The
shadow lifted a white, transparent hand, and pointed.

To what?

To a tombstone, which glimmered cold and white through the gloom of sky
and waters.

The starlight shone upon the tombstone, and on it the sleeper read this
inscription--"_In memory of Valentine Jernam, aged 33_."

The sailor awoke suddenly with a cry, and, looking up, saw the man they
called Black Milsom sitting on the opposite side of the table, looking
at him earnestly.

"Well, you are a restless sleeper, captain!" said this man: "I dropped
in here just now, thinking to find Dennis Wayman, and I've been looking
on while you finished your nap. I never saw a harder sleeper."

"I had a bad dream," answered Jernam, starting to his feet.

"A bad dream! What about, captain?"

"About your daughter!"

CHAPTER II.

DONE IN THE DARKNESS.

Before Thomas Milsom, otherwise Black Milsom, could express his
surprise, the landlord of the 'Jolly Tar' returned from his business
excursion, and presented himself in the dingy little room, where it was
already beginning to grow dusk.

Milsom told Dennis Wayman how he had discovered the captain sleeping
uneasily, with his head upon the table; and on being pressed a little,
Valentine Jernam told his dream as freely as it was his habit to tell
everything relating to his own affairs.

"I don't see that it was such a very bad dream, after all," said Dennis
Wayman, when the story was finished. "You dreamt you were at sea in a
dead calm, that's about the plain English of it."

"Yes; but such a calm! I've been becalmed many a time; but I never
remember anything like what I saw in my dream just now. Then the
loneliness; not a creature on board besides myself; not a human voice
to answer me when I called. And the face--there was something so awful
in the face--smiling at me, and yet with a kind of threatening look in
the smile; and the hand pointing to the tombstone! Do you know that I
was thirty-three last December?"

The sailor covered his face with his hands, and sat for some moments in
a meditative attitude. Bold and reckless though he was, the
superstition of his class had some hold upon him; and this bad dream
influenced him, in spite of himself.

The landlord was the first to break the silence. "Come, captain," he
said; "this is what I call giving yourself up to the blue devils. You
went to sleep in an uncomfortable position, and you had an
uncomfortable dream, with no more sense nor reason in it than such
dreams generally have. What do you say to a hand at cards, and a drop
of something short? You want cheering up a bit, captain; that's what
you want."

Valentine Jernam assented. The cards were brought, and a bowl of punch
ordered by the open-handed sailor, who was always ready to invite
people to drink at his expense.

The men played all-fours; and what generally happens in this sort of
company happened now to Captain Jernam. He began by winning, and ended
by losing; and his losses were much heavier than his gains.

He had been playing for upwards of an hour, and had drunk several
glasses of punch, before his luck changed, and he had occasion to take
out the bloated leathern pocket-book, distended unnaturally with notes
and gold.

But for that rum-punch he might, perhaps, have remembered Joyce
Harker's warning, and avoided displaying his wealth before these two
men. Unhappily, however, the fumes of the strong liquor had already
begun to mount to his brain, and the clerk was completely forgotten. He
opened his pocket-book every time he had occasion to pay his losses,
and whenever he opened it the greedy eyes of Dennis Wayman and Black
Milsom devoured the contents with a furtive gaze.

With every hand the sailor grew more excited. He was playing for small
stakes, and as yet his losses only amounted to a few pounds. But the
sense of defeat annoyed him. He was feverishly eager for his revenge:
and when Milsom rose to go, the captain wanted him to continue to play.

"You shan't sneak off like that," he said; "I want my revenge, and I
must have it."

Black Milsom pointed to a little Dutch clock in a corner of the room.

"Past eight o'clock," he said; "and I've got a five-mile walk between
me and home. My girl, Jenny, will be waiting up for me, and getting
anxious about her father."

In the excitement of play, and the fever engendered by strong drink,
Valentine Jernam had forgotten the ballad-singer. But this mention of
her name brought the vision of the beautiful face back to him.

"Your daughter!" he muttered; "your daughter! Yes; the girl who sang
here, the beautiful girl who sang."

His voice was thick, and his accents indistinct. Both the men had
pressed Jernam to drink, while they themselves took very little. They
had encouraged him to talk as well as to drink, and the appointment
with his brother had been spoken of by the captain.

In speaking of this intended meeting, Valentine Jernam had spoken also
of the good fortune which had attended his latest trading adventures;
and he had said enough to let these men know that he carried the
proceeds of his trading upon his person.

"Joyce wanted me to bank my money," he said; "but none of your banking
rogues for me. My brother George is the only banker I trust, or ever
mean to trust."

Milsom insisted upon the necessity of his departure, and the sailor
declared that he would have his revenge. They were getting to high
words, when Dennis Wayman interfered to keep the peace.

"I'll tell you what it is," he said; "if the captain wants his revenge,
it's only fair that he should have it. Suppose we go down to your
place, Milsom! you can give us a bit of supper, I dare say. What do you
say to that?"

Milsom hesitated in a sheepish kind of manner. "Mine's such a poor
place for a gentleman like the captain," he said. "My daughter Jenny
will do her best to make things straight and comfortable; but still it
is about the poorest place that ever was--there's no denying that."

"I'm no fine gentleman," said the captain, enraptured at the idea of
seeing the ballad-singer; "if your daughter will give us a crust of
bread and cheese, I shall be satisfied. We'll take two or three bottles
of wine down with us, and we'll be as jolly as princes. Get your trap
ready, Wayman, and let's be off at once."

The captain was all impatience to start. Dennis Wayman went away to get
the vehicle ready, and Milsom followed him, but they did not leave
Captain Jernam much time for thought, for Dennis Wayman came back
almost immediately to say that the vehicle was ready.

"Now, then, look sharp, captain!" he said; "it's a dark night, and we
shall have a dark drive."

It was a dark night--dark even here in Wapping, darker still on the
road by which Valentine Jernam found himself travelling presently.

The vehicle which Dennis Wayman drove was a disreputable-looking
conveyance--half chaise-cart, half gig--and the pony was a
vicious-looking animal, with a shaggy mane; but he was a tremendous
pony to go, and the dark, marshy country flew past the travellers in
the darkness like a landscape in a dream.

The ripple of the water, sounding faintly in the stillness, told
Valentine Jernam that the river was near at hand; but beyond this the
sailor had little knowledge of his whereabouts.

They had soon left London behind.

After driving some six or seven miles, and always keeping within sound
of the dull plash of the river, the landlord of the 'Jolly Tar' drew up
suddenly by a dilapidated wooden paling, behind which there was a low-
roofed habitation of some kind or other, which was visible only by
reason of one faint glimmer of light, flickering athwart a scrap of
dingy red curtain. The dull, plashing sound of the river was louder
here; and, mingling with that monotonous ripple of the water, there was
a shivering sound--the trembling of rushes stirred by the chill night
wind.

"I'd almost passed your place, Tom," said the landlord, as he drew up
before the darksome habitation.

"You might a'most drive over it on such a night as this," answered
Black Milsom, "and not be much the wiser."

The three men alighted, and Dennis Wayman led the vicious pony to a
broken-down shed, which served as stable and coach-house in Mr.
Milsom's establishment.

Valentine Jernam looked about him. As his eyes grew more familiar with
the locality, he was able to make out the outline of the dilapidated
dwelling.

It was little better than a hovel, and stood on a patch of waste
ground, which could scarcely have been garden within the memory of man.
By one side of the house there was a wide, open ditch, fringed with
rushes--a deep, black ditch, that flowed down to the river.

"I can't compliment you on the situation of your cottage, mate," he
said; "it might be livelier."

"I dare say it might," answered Black Milsom, rather sulkily. "I took
to this place because everybody else was afraid to take to it, and it
was to be had for nothing. There was an old miser as cut his throat
here seven or eight year ago, and the place has been left to go to
decay ever since. The miser's ghost walks about here sometimes, after
twelve o'clock at night, folks say. 'Let him walk till he tires himself
out,' says I. 'He don't come my way; and if he did he wouldn't scare
me.' Come, captain."

Mr. Milsom opened the door, and ushered his visitor into the lively
abode, which the prejudice of weak-minded people permitted him to
occupy rent-free.

The girl whom Jernam had seen at the Wapping public-house was sitting
by the hearth, where a scrap of fire burnt in a rusty grate. She had
been sitting in a listless attitude, with her hands lying idle on her
lap, and her eyes fixed on the fire; but she looked up as the two men
entered.

She did not welcome her father's return with any demonstration of
affection; she looked at him with a strange, wondering gaze; and she
looked with an anxious expression from him to his companion.

Dennis Wayman came in presently, and as the girl recognized him, a
transient look, almost like horror, flitted across her face, unseen by
the sailor.

"Come, Jenny," said Milsom; "I've brought Wayman and a friend of his
down to supper. What can you give us to eat? There's a bit of cold beef
in the house, I know, and bread and cheese; the captain here has
brought the wine; so we shall do well enough. Look sharp, lass. You're
in one of your tempers to-night, I suppose; but you ought to know that
don't answer with me. I say, captain," added the man, with a laugh, "if
ever you're going to marry a pretty woman, make sure she isn't troubled
with an ugly temper; for you'll find, as a rule, that the handsomer a
woman is the more of the devil there is in her. Now, Jenny, the supper,
and no nonsense about it."

The girl went into another room, and returned presently with such fare
as Mr. Milsom's establishment could afford. The sailor's eyes followed
her wherever she went, full of compassion and love. He was sure this
brutal wretch, Milsom, used her badly, and he rejoiced to think that he
had disregarded all Joyce Harker's warnings, and penetrated into the
scoundrel's home. He rejoiced, for he meant to rescue this lovely,
helpless creature. He knew nothing of her, except that she was
beautiful, friendless, lonely, and ill-used; and he determined to take
her away and marry her.

He did not perplex himself with any consideration as to whether she
would return his love, or be grateful for his devotion. He thought only
of her unhappy position, and that he was predestined to save her.

The supper was laid upon the rickety deal table, and the three men sat
down. Valentine would have waited till his host's daughter had seated
herself; but she had laid no plate or knife for herself, and it was
evident that she was not expected to share the social repast.

"You can go to bed now," said Milsom. "We're in for a jolly night of
it, and you'll only be in the way. Where's the old man?"

"Gone to bed."

"So much the better: and the sooner you follow him will be so much the
better again. Good night."

The girl did not answer him. She looked at him for a few moments with
an earnest, inquiring gaze, which seemed to compel him to return her
look, as if he had been fascinated by the profound earnestness of those
large dark eyes; and then she went slowly and silently from the room.

"Sulky!" muttered Mr. Milsom. "There never was such a girl to sulk."

He took up a candle, and followed his daughter from the room.

A rickety old staircase led to the upper floor, where there were three
or four bed-chambers. The house had been originally something more than
a cottage, and the rooms and passages were tolerably large.

Thomas Milsom found the girl standing at the top of the stairs, as if
waiting for some one.

"What are you standing mooning there for?" asked the man. "Why don't
you go to bed?"

"Why have you brought that sailor here?" inquired the girl, without
noticing Milsom's question.

"What's that to you? You'd like to know my business, wouldn't you? I've
brought him here because he wanted to come. Is that a good answer? I've
brought him here because he has money to lose, and is in the humour to
lose it. Is that a better answer?"

"Yes," returned the girl, fixing her eyes upon him with a look of
horror; "you will win his money, and, if he is angry, there will be a
quarrel, as there was on that hideous night three years ago, when you
brought home the foreign sailor, and what happened to that man will
happen to this one. Father," cried the girl, suddenly and passionately,
"let this man leave the house in safety. I sometimes think my heart is
almost as hard as yours; but this man trusts us. Don't let any harm
come to him."

"Why, what harm should come to him?"

For some time the girl called Jenny stood before her father in silence,
with her head bent, and her face in shadow; then she lifted her head
suddenly, and looked at him piteously.

"The other!" she murmured; "the other! I remember what happened to
him."

"Come, drop that!" cried Milsom, savagely; "do you think I'm going to
stand your mad talk? Get to bed, and go to sleep. And the sounder you
sleep the better, unless you want to sleep uncommonly sound for the
future, my lady."

The ruffian seized his daughter by the arm, and half pushed, half flung
her into a room, the door of which stood open. It was the dreary room
which she called her own. Milsom shut the door upon her, and locked it
with a key which he took from his pocket--a key which locked every door
in the house. "And now, I flatter myself, you're safe, my pretty
singing-bird," he muttered.

He went down stairs, and returned to his guest, who had been pressed to
eat and drink by Dennis Wayman, and who had yielded good-naturedly to
that gentleman's hospitable attentions.

* * * * *

Alone in her room, Jenny Milsom opened the window, and sat looking out
into the inky darkness of the night, and listening to the voices of the
three men in the room below.

The voices sounded very distinctly in that dilapidated old house. Every
now and then a hearty shout of laughter seemed to shake the crazy
rafters; but presently the revellers grew silent. Jenny knew they were
busy with the cards.

"Yes, yes," she murmured; "it all happens as it happened that night--
first the loud voices and laughter; then the silence; then--Great
Heaven! will the end be like the end of that night?"

She clasped her hands in silent agony, and sank in a crouching position
by the open window, with her head lying on the sill.

For hours this wretched girl sat upon the floor in the same attitude,
with the cold wind blowing in upon her. All seemed tranquil in the room
below. The voices sounded now and then, subdued and cautious, and there
were no more outbursts of jovial laughter.

A dim, gray streak glimmered faint and low in the east--the first pale
flicker of dawn. The girl raised her weary eyes towards that chill gray
light.