A Simpleton

C >> Charles Reade >> A Simpleton


He is near it. He cries, "Rosa! Rosa!" and with all the energy of love
and life flings himself almost out of the water, and catches hold of the
nearest thing on the raft.

It was the dead man's leg.

It seemed as if it would come away in his grasp. He dared not try to
pull himself up by that. But he held on by it, panting, exhausting,
faint.

This faintness terrified him. "Oh," thought he, "if I faint now, all is
over."

Holding by that terrible and strange support, he made a grasp, and
caught hold of the woodwork at the bottom of the rail. He tried to draw
himself up. Impossible.

He was no better off than with his life-buoy.

But in situations so dreadful, men think fast; he worked gradually
round the bottom of the raft by his hands, till he got to leeward, still
holding on. There he found a solid block of wood at the edge of the
raft. He prised himself carefully up; the raft in that part then sank a
little: he got his knee upon the timber of the raft, and with a wild
cry seized the nearest upright, and threw both arms round it and clung
tight. Then first he found breath to speak. "THANK GOD!" he cried,
kneeling on the timber, and grasping the upright post--"OH, THANK GOD!
THANK GOD!"




CHAPTER XVI.


"Thank God!" why, according to his theory, it should have been "Thank
Nature." But I observe that, in such cases, even philosophers are
ungrateful to the mistress they worship.

Our philosopher not only thanked God, but being on his knees, prayed
forgiveness for his late ravings, prayed hard, with one arm curled round
the upright, lest the sea, which ever and anon rushed over the bottom of
the raft, should swallow him up in a moment.

Then he rose carefully, and wedged himself into the corner of the raft
opposite to that other figure, ominous relic of the wild voyage the
new-comer had entered upon; he put both arms over the rail, and stood
erect.

The moon was now up; but so was the breeze: fleecy clouds flew with
vast rapidity across her bright face, and it was by fitful though vivid
glances Staines examined the raft and his companion.

The raft was large, and well made of timbers tied and nailed together,
and a strong rail ran round it resting on several uprights. There were
also some blocks of a very light wood screwed to the horizontal timbers,
and these made it float high.

But what arrested and fascinated the man's gaze was his dead companion,
sole survivor, doubtless, of a horrible voyage, since the raft was not
made for one, nor by one.

It was a skeleton, or nearly, whose clothes the seabirds had torn, and
pecked every limb in all the fleshy parts; the rest of the body had
dried to dark leather on the bones. The head was little more than an
eyeless skull; but in the fitful moonlight, those huge hollow
caverns seemed gigantic lamp-like eyes, and glared at him fiendishly,
appallingly.

He sickened at the sight. He tried not to look at it; but it would be
looked at, and threaten him in the moonlight, with great lack-lustre
eyes.

The wind whistled, and lashed his face with spray torn off the big
waves, and the water was nearly up to his knees, and the raft tossed
so wildly, it was all he could do to hold on in his corner: in which
struggle, still those monstrous lack-lustre eyes, like lamps of death,
glared at him in the moon; all else was dark, except the fiery crests of
the black mountain-billows, tumbling and raging all around.

What a night!

But, before morning, the breeze sank, the moon set, and a sombre quiet
succeeded, with only that grim figure in outline dimly visible. Owing to
the motion still retained by the waves, it seemed to nod and rear, and
be ever preparing to rush upon him.

The sun rose glorious, on a lovely scene; the sky was a very mosaic of
colors sweet and vivid, and the tranquil, rippling sea, peach-colored to
the horizon, with lines of diamonds where the myriad ripples broke into
smiles.

Staines was asleep, exhausted. Soon the light awoke him, and he looked
up. What an incongruous picture met his eye: that heaven of color
all above and around, and right before him, like a devil stuck in
mid-heaven, that grinning corpse, whose fate foreshadowed his own.

But daylight is a great strengthener of the nerves; the figure no longer
appalled him--a man who had long learned to look with Science's calm
eye upon the dead. When the sea became like glass, and from peach-color
deepened to rose, he walked along the raft, and inspected the dead man.
He found it was a man of color, but not a black. The body was not kept
in its place, as he had supposed, merely by being jammed into the angle
caused by the rail; it was also lashed to the corner upright by a long,
stout belt. Staines concluded this had kept the body there, and its
companions had been swept away.

This was not lost on him: he removed the belt for his own use: he then
found it was not only a belt, but a receptacle; it was nearly full of
small, hard substances that felt like stones.

When he had taken it off the body, he felt a compunction. "Ought he to
rob the dead, and expose it to be swept into the sea at the first wave,
like a dead dog?"

He was about to replace the belt, when a middle course occurred to him.
He was a man who always carried certain useful little things about him,
viz., needles, thread, scissors, and string. He took a piece of string,
and easily secured this poor light skeleton to the raft. The belt he
strapped to the rail, and kept for his own need.

And now hunger gnawed him. No food was near. There was nothing but the
lovely sea and sky, mosaic with color, and that grim, ominous skeleton.

Hunger comes and goes many times before it becomes insupportable. All
that day and night, and the next day, he suffered its pangs; and then it
became torture, but the thirst maddening.

Towards night fell a gentle rain. He spread a handkerchief and caught
it. He sucked the handkerchief.

This revived him, and even allayed in some degree the pangs of hunger.

Next day was cloudless. A hot sun glared on his unprotected head, and
battered down his enfeebled frame.

He resisted as well as he could. He often dipped his head, and as often
the persistent sun, with cruel glare, made it smoke again.

Next day the same: but the strength to meet it was waning. He lay down
and thought of Rosa, and wept bitterly. He took the dead man's belt, and
lashed himself to the upright. That act, and his tears for his beloved,
were almost his last acts of perfect reason: for next day came the
delusions and the dreams that succeed when hunger ceases to torture,
and the vital powers begin to ebb. He lay and saw pleasant meadows with
meandering streams, and clusters of rich fruit that courted the hand and
melted in the mouth.

Ever and anon they vanished, and he saw grim death looking down on him
with those big cavernous eyes.

By and by, whether his body's eye saw the grim skeleton, or his mind's
eye the juicy fruits, green meadows, and pearly brooks, all was shadowy.

So, in a placid calm, beneath a blue sky, the raft drifted dead, with
its dead freight, upon the glassy purple, and he drifted, too, towards
the world unknown.

There came across the waters to that dismal raft a thing none too
common, by sea or land--a good man.

He was tall, stalwart, bronzed, and had hair like snow, before his time,
for he had known trouble. He commanded a merchant steamer, bound for
Calcutta, on the old route.

The man at the mast-head descried a floating wreck, and hailed the
deck accordingly. The captain altered his course without one moment's
hesitation, and brought up alongside, lowered a boat, and brought the
dead, and the breathing man, on board.

A young middy lifted Staines in his arms from the wreck to the boat; he
whose person I described in chapter one weighed now no more than that.

Men are not always rougher than women. Their strength and nerve enable
them now and then to be gentler than buttery-fingered angels, who drop
frail things through sensitive agitation, and break them. These rough
men saw Staines was hovering between life and death, and they handled
him like a thing the ebbing life might be shaken out of in a moment. It
was pretty to see how gingerly the sailors carried the sinking man up
the ladder, and one fetched swabs, and the others laid him down softly
on them at their captain's feet.

"Well done, men," said he. "Poor fellow! Pray Heaven, we may not have
come too late. Now stand aloof a bit. Send the surgeon aft."

The surgeon came, and looked, and felt the heart. He shook his head, and
called for brandy. He had Staines's head raised, and got half a spoonful
of diluted brandy down his throat. But there was an ominous gurgling.

After several such attempts at intervals, he said plainly the man's life
could not be saved by ordinary means.

"Then try extraordinary," said the captain. "My orders are that he is to
be saved. There is life in him. You have only got to keep it there. He
MUST be saved; he SHALL be saved."

"I should like to try Dr. Staines's remedy," said the surgeon.

"Try it, then what is it?"

"A bath of beef-tea. Dr. Staines says he applied it to a starved
child--in the Lancet."

"Take a hundred-weight of beef, and boil it in the coppers."

Thus encouraged, the surgeon went to the cook, and very soon beef was
steaming on a scale and at a rate unparalleled.

Meantime, Captain Dodd had the patient taken to his own cabin, and he
and his servant administered weak brandy and water with great caution
and skill.

There was no perceptible result. But at all events there was life and
vital instinct left, or he could not have swallowed.

Thus they hovered about him for some hours, and then the bath was ready.

The captain took charge of the patient's clothes: the surgeon and a
sailor bathed him in lukewarm beef-tea, and then covered him very warm
with blankets next the skin. Guess how near a thing it seemed to them,
when I tell you they dared not rub him.

Just before sunset his pulse became perceptible. The surgeon
administered half a spoonful of egg-flip. The patient swallowed it.

By and by he sighed.

"He must not be left, day or night," said the captain. "I don't know who
or what he is, but he is a man; and I could not bear him to die now."

That night Captain Dodd overhauled the patient's clothes, and looked for
marks on his linen. There were none.

"Poor devil" said Captain Dodd. "He is a bachelor."

Captain Dodd found his pocket-book, with bank-notes, two hundred pounds.
He took the numbers, made a memorandum of them, and locked the notes up.

He lighted his lamp, examined the belt, unripped it, and poured out the
contents on his table.

They were dazzling. A great many large pieces of amethyst, and some
of white topaz and rock crystal; a large number of smaller stones,
carbuncles, chrysolites, and not a few emeralds. Dodd looked at them
with pleasure, sparkling in the lamplight.

"What a lot!" said he. "I wonder what they are worth!" He sent for the
first mate, who, he knew, did a little private business in precious
stones. "Masterton," said he, "oblige me by counting these stones with
me, and valuing them."

Mr. Masterton stared, and his mouth watered. However, he named the
various stones and valued them. He said there was one stone, a large
emerald, without a flaw, that was worth a heavy sum by itself; and the
pearls, very fine: and looking at the great number, they must be worth a
thousand pounds.

Captain Dodd then entered the whole business carefully in the ship's
log: the living man he described thus: "About five feet six in height,
and about fifty years of age." Then he described the notes and the
stones very exactly, and made Masterton, the valuer, sign the log.

Staines took a good deal of egg-flip that night, and next day ate
solid food; but they questioned him in vain; his reason was entirely in
abeyance: he had become an eater, and nothing else. Whenever they gave
him food, he showed a sort of fawning animal gratitude. Other sentiment
he had none, nor did words enter his mind any more than a bird's. And
since it is not pleasant to dwell on the wreck of a fine understanding,
I will only say that they landed him at Cape Town, out of bodily danger,
but weak, and his mind, to all appearance, a hopeless blank.

They buried the skeleton,--read the service of the English Church over a
Malabar heathen.

Dodd took Staines to the hospital, and left twenty pounds with the
governor of it to cure him. But he deposited Staines's money and jewels
with a friendly banker, and begged that the principal cashier might see
the man, and be able to recognize him, should he apply for his own.

The cashier came and examined him, and also the ruby ring on his
finger--a parting gift from Rosa--and remarked this was a new way of
doing business.

"Why, it is the only one, sir," said Dodd. "How can we give you his
signature? He is not in his right mind."

"Nor never will be."

"Don't say that, sir. Let us hope for the best, poor fellow."

Having made these provisions, the worthy captain weighed anchor, with a
warm heart and a good conscience. Yet the image of the man he had saved
pursued him, and he resolved to look after him next time he should coal
at Cape Town, homeward bound.

Staines recovered his strength in about two months; but his mind
returned in fragments, and very slowly. For a long, long time he
remembered nothing that had preceded his great calamity. His mind
started afresh, aided only by certain fixed habits; for instance, he
could read and write: but, strange as it may appear, he had no idea who
he was; and when his memory cleared a little on that head, he thought
his surname was Christie, but he was not sure.

Nevertheless, the presiding physician discovered in him a certain
progress of intelligence, which gave him great hopes. In the fifth
month, having shown a marked interest in the other sick patients,
coupled with a disposition to be careful and attentive, they made him a
nurse, or rather a sub-nurse under the special orders of a responsible
nurse. I really believe it was done at first to avoid the alternative
of sending him adrift, or transferring him to the insane ward of the
hospital. In this congenial pursuit he showed such watchfulness and
skill, that by and by they found they had got a treasure. Two months
after that he began to talk about medicine, and astonished them still
more. He became the puzzle of the establishment. The doctor and surgeon
would converse with him, and try and lead him to his past life; but when
it came to that, he used to put his hands to his head with a face of
great distress, and it was clear some impassable barrier lay between
his growing intelligence and the past events of his life. Indeed, on
one occasion, he said to his kind friend the doctor, "The past!--a black
wall! a black wall!"

Ten months after his admission he was promoted to be an attendant, with
a salary.

He put by every shilling of it; for he said, "A voice from the dark past
tells me money is everything in this world."

A discussion was held by the authorities as to whether he should be
informed he had money and jewels at the bank or not.

Upon the whole, it was thought advisable to postpone this information,
lest he should throw it away; but they told him he had been picked up
at sea, and both money and jewels found on him; they were in safe hands,
only the person was away for the time. Still, he was not to look upon
himself as either friendless or moneyless.

At this communication he showed an almost childish delight, that
confirmed the doctor in his opinion he was acting prudently, and for the
real benefit of an amiable and afflicted person, not yet to be trusted
with money and jewels.




CHAPTER XVII.


In his quality of attendant on the sick, Staines sometimes conducted
a weak but convalescent patient into the open air; and he was always
pleased to do this, for the air of the Cape carries health and vigor on
its wings. He had seen its fine recreative properties, and he divined,
somehow, that the minds of convalescents ought to be amused, and so he
often begged the doctor to let him take a convalescent abroad. Sooner
than not, he would draw the patient several miles in a Bath chair. He
rather liked this; for he was a Hercules, and had no egotism or false
pride where the sick were concerned.

Now, these open-air walks exerted a beneficial influence on his own
darkened mind. It is one thing to struggle from idea to idea; it is
another when material objects mingle with the retrospect; they seem
to supply stepping-stones in the gradual resuscitation of memory and
reason.

The ships going out of port were such a steppingstone to him, and a
vague consciousness came back to him of having been in a ship.

Unfortunately, along with this reminiscence came a desire to go in one
again; and this sowed discontent in his mind, and the more that mind
enlarged, the more he began to dislike the hospital and its confinement.
The feeling grew, and bade fair to disqualify him for his humble office.
The authorities could not fail to hear of this, and they had a little
discussion about parting with him; but they hesitated to turn him
adrift, and they still doubted the propriety of trusting him with money
and jewels.

While matters were in this state a remarkable event occurred. He drew a
sick patient down to the quay one morning, and watched the business of
the port with the keenest interest. A ship at anchor was unloading,
and a great heavy boat was sticking to her side like a black leech.
Presently this boat came away, and moved sluggishly towards the shore,
rather by help of the tide than of the two men who went through the form
of propelling her with two monstrous sweeps, while a third steered her.
She contained English goods: agricultural implements, some cases, four
horses, and a buxom young woman with a thorough English face. The woman
seemed a little excited, and as she neared the landing-place, she called
out in jocund tones to a young man on the shore, "It is all right, Dick;
they are beauties," and she patted the beasts as people do who are fond
of them.

She stepped lightly ashore, and then came the slower work of landing her
imports. She bustled about, like a hen over her brood, and wasn't always
talking, but put in her word every now and then, never crossly, and
always to the point.

Staines listened to her, and examined her with a sort of puzzled look;
but she took no notice of him; her whole soul was in the cattle.

They got the things on board well enough; but the horses were frightened
at the gangway, and jibbed. Then a man was for driving them, and poked
one of them in the quarter; he snorted and reared directly.

"Man alive!" cried the young woman, "that is not the way. They are
docile enough, but frightened. Encourage 'em, and let 'em look at it.
Give 'em time. More haste less speed, with timorous cattle."

"That is a very pleasant voice," said poor Staines, rather more
dictatorially than became the present state of his intellect. He added
softly, "a true woman's voice;" then gloomily, "a voice of the past--the
dark, dark past."

At this speech intruding itself upon the short sentences of business,
there was a roar of laughter, and Phoebe Falcon turned sharply round to
look at the speaker. She stared at him; she cried "Oh!" and clasped her
hands, and colored all over. "Why, sure," said she, "I can't be mistook.
Those eyes--'tis you, doctor, isn't it?"

"Doctor?" said Staines, with a puzzled look. "Yes; I think they called
me doctor once. I'm an attendant in the hospital now."

"Dick!" cried Phoebe, in no little agitation. "Come here this minute."

"What, afore I get the horses ashore?"

"Ay, before you do another thing, or say another word. Come here, now."
So he came, and she told him to take a good look at the man. "Now," said
she, "who is that?"

"Blest if I know," said he.

"What, not know the man who saved your own life! Oh, Dick, what are your
eyes worth?"

This discourse brought the few persons within hearing into one band of
excited starers.

Dick took a good look, and said, "I'm blest if I don't, though; it is
the doctor that cut my throat."

This strange statement drew forth quite a shout of ejaculations.

"Oh, better breathe through a slit than not at all," said Dick. "Saved
my life with that cut, he did, didn't he, Pheeb?"

"That he did, Dick. Dear heart, I hardly know whether I am in my senses
or not, seeing him a-looking so blank. You try him."

Dick came forward. "Sure you remember me, sir. Dick Dale. You cut my
throat, and saved my life."

"Cut your throat! why, that would kill you."

"Not the way you done it. Well, sir, you ain't the man you was, that is
clear; but you was a good friend to me, and there's my hand."

"Thank you, Dick," said Staines, and took his hand. "I don't remember
YOU. Perhaps you are one of the past. The past is dead wall to me--a
dark dead wall," and he put his hands to his head with a look of
distress.

Everybody there now suspected the truth, and some pointed mysteriously
to their own heads.

Phoebe whispered an inquiry to the sick person.

He said a little pettishly, "All I know is, he is the kindest attendant
in the ward, and very attentive."

"Oh, then, he is in the public hospital."

"Of course he is."

The invalid, with the selfishness of his class, then begged Staines to
take him out of all this bustle down to the beach. Staines complied at
once, with the utmost meekness, and said, "Good-by, old friends; forgive
me for not remembering you. It is my great affliction that the past
is gone from me--gone, gone." And he went sadly away, drawing his sick
charge like a patient mule.

Phoebe Falcon looked after him, and began to cry.

"Nay, nay, Phoebe," said Dick; "don't ye take on about it."

"I wonder at you," sobbed Phoebe. "Good people, I'm fonder of my brother
than he is of himself, it seems; for I can't take it so easy. Well, the
world is full of trouble. Let us do what we are here for. But I shall
pray for the poor soul every night, that his mind may be given back to
him."

So then she bustled, and gave herself to getting the cattle on shore,
and the things put on board her wagon.

But when this was done, she said to her brother, "Dick, I did not think
anything on earth could take my heart off the cattle and the things we
have got from home; but I can't leave this without going to the hospital
about our poor dear doctor: and it is late for making a start, any
way--and you mustn't forget the newspapers for Reginald--he is so fond
of them--and you must contrive to have one sent out regular after this,
and I'll go to the hospital."

She went, and saw the head doctor, and told him he had got an attendant
there she had known in England in a very different condition, and she
had come to see if there was anything she could do for him--for she felt
very grateful to him, and grieved to see him so.

The doctor was pleased and surprised, and put several questions.

Then she gave him a clear statement of what he had done for Dick in
England.

"Well," said the doctor, "I believe it is the same man; for, now you
tell me this--yes, one of the nurses told me he knew more about medicine
than she did. His name, if you please."

"His name, sir?"

"Yes, his name. Of course you know his name. Is it Christie?"

"Doctor," said Phoebe, blushing, "I don't know what you will think of
me, but I don't know his name. Laws forgive me, I never had the sense to
ask it."

A shade of suspicion crossed the doctor's face.

Phoebe saw it, and colored to the temples. "Oh, sir," she cried
piteously, "don't go for to think I have told you a lie! why should I?
and indeed I am not of that sort, nor Dick neither. Sir, I'll bring
him to you, and he will say the same. Well, we were all in terror and
confusion, and I met him accidentally in the street. He was only a
customer till then, and paid ready money, so that is how I never knew
his name, but if I hadn't been the greatest fool in England, I should
have asked his wife."

"What! he has a wife?"

"Ay, sir, the loveliest lady you ever clapped eyes on, and he is almost
as handsome; has eyes in his head like jewels; 'twas by them I knew him
on the quay, and I think he knew my voice again, said as good as he had
heard it in past times."

"Did he? Then we have got him," cried the doctor energetically.

"La, Sir."

"Yes; if he knows your voice, you will be able in time to lead his
memory back; at least, I think so. Do you live in Cape Town?"

"Dear heart, no. I live at my own farm, a hundred and eighty miles from
this."

"What a pity!"

"Why, sir?"

"Well--hum!"

"Oh, if you think I could do the poor doctor good by having him with
me, you have only to say the word, and out he goes with Dick and me
to-morrow morning. We should have started for home to-night, but for
this."

"Are you in earnest, madam?" said the doctor, opening his eyes. "Would
you really encumber yourself with a person whose reason is in suspense,
and may never return?"

"But that is not his fault, sir. Why, if a dog had saved my brother's
life, I'd take it home, and keep it all its days; and this is a man, and
a worthy man. Oh, sir, when I saw him brought down so, and his beautiful
eyes clouded like, my very bosom yearned over the poor soul; a kind act
done in dear old England, who can see the man in trouble here, and
not repay it--ay, if it cost one's blood. But indeed he is strong and
healthy, and hands are always scarce our way, and the odds are he will
earn his meat one way or t'other; and if he doesn't, why, all the better
for me; I shall have the pleasure of serving him for nought that once
served me for neither money nor reward."