第221章

`Weak-minded man, sir,' observed Mr. Tapley. `Plays the organ for nothing, sir. Takes no care of himself?'

`I wish he took a little more, indeed,' said Martin. `Though I don't know why I should. We shouldn't like him half as well, perhaps.'

`He gets put upon, sir,' hinted Mark.

`Yes!' said Martin, after a short silence. `I know that, Mark.'

He spoke so regretfully that his partner abandoned the theme, and was silent for a short time until he had thought of another.

`Ah, sir!' said Mark, with a sigh. `Dear me! You've ventured a good deal for a young lady's love!'

`I tell you what. I'm not so sure of that, Mark,' was the reply; so hastily and energetically spoken, that Martin sat up in his bed to give it. `I begin to be far from clear upon it. You may depend upon it she is very unhappy. She has sacrificed her peace of mind; she has endangered her interests very much; she can't run away from those who are jealous of her, and opposed to her, as I have done. She has to endure, Mark: to endure without the possibility of action, poor girl! I begin to think that she has more to bear than ever I had. Upon my soul I do!'

Mr. Tapley opened his eyes wide in the dark; but did not interrupt.

`And I'll tell you a secret, Mark,' said Martin, `since we are upon this subject. That ring --'

`Which ring, sir?' Mark inquired, opening his eyes still wider.

`That ring she gave me when we parted, Mark. She bought it; bought it; knowing I was poor and proud (Heaven help me! Proud!) and wanted money.'

`Who says so, sir?' asked Mark.

`I say so. I know it. I thought of it, my good fellow, hundreds of times, while you were lying ill. And like a beast, I took it from her hand, and wore it on my own, and never dreamed of this even at the moment when I parted with it, when some faint glimmering of the truth might surely have possessed me! But it's late,' said Martin, checking himself, `and you are weak and tired, I know. You only talk to cheer me up. Good night! God bless you, Mark!'

`God bless you, sir! But I'm reg'larly defrauded,' thought Mr. Tapley, turning round with a happy face. `It's a swindle. I never entered for this sort of service. There'll be no credit in being jolly with him !'

The time wore on, and other steamboats coming from the point on which their hopes were fixed, arrived to take in wood; but still no answer to the letter. Rain, heat, foul slime, and noxious vapour, with all the ills and filthy things they bred, prevailed. The earth, the air, the vegetation, and the water that they drank, all teemed with deadly properties. Their fellow-passenger had lost two children long before; and buried now her last. Such things are much too common to be widely known or cared for.

Smart citizens grow rich, and friendless victims smart and die, and are forgotten. That is all.

At last a boat came panting up the ugly river, and stopped at Eden.

Mark was waiting at the wood hut when it came, and had a letter handed to him from on board. He bore it off to Martin. They looked at one another, trembling.

`It feels heavy,' faltered Martin. And opening it a little roll of dollar-notes fell out upon the ground.

What either of them said, or did, or felt, at first, neither of them knew. All Mark could ever tell was, that he was at the river's bank again out of breath, before the boat had gone, inquiring when it would retrace its track, and put in there.

The answer was, in ten or twelve days: notwithstanding which they began to get their goods together and to tie them up that very night. When this stage of excitement was passed, each of them believed (they found this out, in talking of it afterwards) that he would surely die before the boat returned.

They lived, however, and it came, after the lapse of three long crawling weeks. At sunrise, on an autumn day, they stood upon her deck.

`Courage! We shall meet again!' cried Martin, waving his hand to two thin figures on the bank. `In the Old World!'

`Or in the next one,' added Mark below his breath. `To see them standing side by side, so quiet, is a'most the worst of all!'

They looked at one another as the vessel moved away, and then looked backward at the spot from which it hurried fast. The loghouse, with the open door, and drooping trees about it; the stagnant morning mist, and red sun, dimly seen beyond; the vapour rising up from land and river; the quick stream making the loathsome banks it washed more flat and dull: how often they returned in dreams! How often it was happiness to wake and find them Shadows that had vanished!