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Chapter V.

“So you see, sir,” said Jack, àpropos of nothing, “that I cannot accept your kind offer of a clerkship in your office.”

Mr. Denby looked up from his newspaper. (This was the morning following our last chapter.)

“Why not, young man,” he asked.

“I am going to New Zealand, sir.”

“I see now that, if you go to New Zealand, you certainly cannot be a clerk in my office; but, as I did not know you were going till now, and even now am not at all sure you are going, I could hardly be expected to follow you very easily.”

Presently Mr. Denby asked, “What do you purpose doing in New Zealand?”

“I have no fixed idea. I shall find something to do when there.”

“You will probably find the only occupation out there ready to your hands is starving,” said Mr. Denby irritably. page 50 “I think you are a very wrong-headed foolish boy; but there, I know it is worse than useless to talk to a person who is bent upon taking his own way. You will live to regret having thrown away a living in England for a mere uncertainty abroad.”

“I could not be a clerk in an office. I would sooner do anything rather than that,” said Jack.

“Very well, take your own way,” said the lawyer: “you will have no one but yourself to blame. I may as well tell you, now we are talking on the subject, that you have a few hundreds invested by your poor father. I suppose you may as well squander them abroad as squander them in England.”

“I see you think me a good-for-nothing fellow, sir,” said Jack.

“Humph!” said Mr. Denby, allowing his hearer to make as much as he liked of the expression.

“I shall, if you please, make arrangements for leaving England as soon as I can. I hope,” said Jack presently, “that you do not think me ungrateful for refusing your offer: you have been very kind to me.”

“I did not expect any gratitude,” said Mr. Denby. “I will make arrangements for withdrawing your money and settling your father's affairs.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Jack. “May I ask how much money my father invested?”

“As it stands now, about seven hundred pounds,” said the lawyer.

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Seven hundred pounds seemed to Jack Stanley an immense sum to be possessed of, quite sufficient with which to start at the Antipodes. However, shortly afterwards, upon the money being given into his hands, he found that the seven hundred pounds were reduced to about five hundred and fifty, Mr. Denby having found various demands in the way of lawyers' bills requiring to be met.

Jack was not sorry on the whole that the lawyer compensated himself so handsomely for anything he had done for him, as the idea of showing ingratitude to Mr. Denby had rather weighed upon his spirits. He took his passage on board a ship shortly to sail, and then strove to wait with patience until the time should arrive.

Several times during this interval Jack went to St. Bartholomew's Hospital in the hope of seeing Bernard, but he was always so unfortunate as to find him out of the house. He had some difficulty in making himself understood at his first visit, for the porter was, so Jack thought, a very obtuse old man, and declared that no Mr. Bernard lived there. However, after asking for the house surgeon, Jack was shown into a room where several of the students were variously occupied or unoccupied as the case might be; and these young men informed him that Bernard had resigned his appointment at the hospital, as he was thinking of going abroad.

“He did not say anything about going abroad when I saw him,” observed Jack.

“Well,” said one of the students, “I fancy it is rather page 52 a sudden resolve on his part. I only heard of it a few days ago. I thought he was fixed here for another twelve-month. Well, he is right enough. I'd go abroad myself if I had a chance, like a bird.”

“And where is Bernard going?” asked Jack.

“Bernard? oh! ah! yes,” answered the other. “Well, I do not know where he is going; I have not heard him say.”

“Abroad is rather vague, is it not? I know where I should go if I could, and that would be to the Fijis. That is the place for getting on nowadays. You will be made a magistrate the first six months you are out there; Lord Mayor in a twelvemonth; and perhaps king of one of the islands in a little while longer.”

So they rattled on, these light-hearted boys, much to Jack Stanley's amusement, to whom the companionship of those of his own age was so new. Still he wished for fuller tidings of Hope Bernard. The next time he went to the hospital, he walked at once to the students' room. But again Bernard was not there, and he could only get the same information that he was very busy making preparations for leaving England; but Bernard had left a message for Jack to the effect that he would see him before he left, and that he was not to bother himself: at least, that was the message given as from him by young Merton, the fellow who desired to go to the Fiji Islands.

The time came to an end which yet remained to Jack Stanley in England, and the very day arrived upon which page 53 he was to leave, and still he had not seen Bernard. Beyond Bernard, he had no one to regret in leaving England. There was not a soul, beyond old Mrs. Bennett, the owner of the lodging-house, whom he cared ever to see again. She, good old soul! came down to the docks to see him off, and hugged and kissed him in the most demonstrative way, and went off into floods of tears. Just as Jack relieved himself from the embraces of Mrs. Bennett, he caught sight of Bernard, busy helping to carry on board and see stowed away all sorts of things.

Jack sprang after him and seized him by the arm.

“Found you at last!” he exclaimed. “I thought you were going to let me go away after all without bidding me good bye. What on earth are you about? Leave those fellows to stow away the packages, and talk to me for a few minutes. What is this? I hear of your going abroad. Where are you going? and why do you go?”

“I am going to New Zealand, and I am going out in this ship as surgeon; and I have no time to attend to you now, my dear fellow, for I am awfully busy, and those men do not know where to put anything,” said Bernard, laughing at the expression of Jack's face; “we shall have lots of time to talk.” And he ran down into the hold in pursuit of some case which had been carried there.

Jack sat down upon the top of a package which was lying on deck, and watched the passengers coming on board, and the many little interesting incidents peculiar to a ship leaving for the colonies, many of them very page 54 melancholy—and all so new to him. His own regret in leaving England was gone now: the only friend he had was, curiously enough, going with him. The voyage out as well as the arrival in a new country would all be made brighter by the company of Bernard. Had it not been for one circumstance Jack Stanley would have turned his back to England and sought his fortune in a new world with no feelings but hope and pleasurable anticipation; but that one circumstance threw a gloom over every happy feeling of his breast—the hatred he chose to cherish for Maitland. With that feeling in his bosom he no longer dared to kneel at night or when he rose from sleep, and say the prayers he had been used to say from his earliest childhood: he could no more look with a light heart at the glorious heavens above him, remembering the God who spread them out as a curtain. Those who had known him as a boy might ascribe the change in him to the sudden death of his father. But it was not so. A natural grief Jack would have risen above after a time; but this unnatural desire of revenge sunk him downwards, and destroyed all the buoyancy of his spirit. It was not until the ship had been at sea more than a week, and the inevitable sea-sickness was over with Jack, that he found an opportunity of talking with his friend Bernard.

The ship was then many hundred miles from England, dashing through a densely blue sea, with no object upon any side but the petrels. Jack had been gazing into the rigging or staring at the glittering water until his eyes page 55 ached with its brightness, feeling too idle to do anything, or perhaps too full of thought for occupation.

“Well, Stanley,” said a voice, and a hand was laid upon his shoulder.

Jack looked into Bernard's face. “You're a nice fellow,” he said: “the only soul I know on board excepting one or two acquaintances I have picked up during the last few hours, and you never came near me once all the while I was sick.”

“You were not sick enough to require it,” answered Bernard. “I have had my hands pretty well full, I can tell you. Why, I haven't had my clothes off since we sailed from England.”

Jack Stanley stared at him in surprise.

“You can have no idea,” resumed Bernard, “how ill some of those poor women in the steerage have been. I thought several times that one of them would have died.”

“People do not die of sea-sickness,” said Jack, in the confident tone which people often use when they know nothing about the matter they are talking of.

“People do, I can tell you, sometimes. You do not know what sea-sickness is. I knew a man who died of that and nothing else, merely on the passage from New York to San Francisco. However, never mind that now. Let us talk of something pleasanter.”

“I think you had much better lie down and get some sleep,” said Jack; “you look fagged and worn out.”

“I shall have plenty of that now, I hope,” said Bernard. page 56 “Indeed, I have hardly recovered from a good strong dose of it.”

Neither spoke for a few minutes, but the two young men leant over the ship's side, looking at the water.

Presently Jack asked, “What makes you come out to New Zealand? for you never told me you were coming. Do you remember that night I went to the hospital, and told you I was going? You said nothing about it then.”

“I had not made up my mind on the subject,” answered Bernard.

“Had my going anything to do with your making up your mind?” asked Jack, looking pleased.

“It may have had,” said the other, still looking at the sea. “I dare say it had: it set me thinking about it.”

“But how suddenly you managed it all! I was never more surprised in my life than when I found you on board this ship.”

“I found on inquiry that there was a vacancy for a surgeon,” said Bernard, “so I applied for it.”

“Well, for my part,” said Jack, warmly, “I am immensely glad. But what are you going to do? Shall you remain out there, do you think? or are you coming back with the ship?”

“Stop out there,” answered Bernard, abruptly.

“And practise?” asked Jack Stanley.

“I hope so, if I can get any practice.”

“It seems all very sudden,” remarked Jack.

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“I have another object,” said his companion, “in going out to New Zealand: my father is there.”

“I thought you told me once,” said Jack slowly, “that you were alone in the world.”

Bernard did not answer for a moment, then he said,

“I have no relations in England. I was educated and brought up by my aunt and godmother, and when she died she left me alone.”

“How alone, if you have your father living?” asked Jack, in surprise.

“I have not seen my father since I can remember,” said Bernard.

“How strange that must be!” mused Jack. “I cannot understand such a state of things.”

Bernard suddenly changed the subject.

“I wish you had some profession, Stanley. What were you meant for?” said he.

“My father was putting by money to send me to college. He wished me to go to the Bar. I would have gone into the navy, but the time passed for that; my father could not afford to send me to sea, through the rascality of that fellow Maitland. I wish I had a profession. Never fear, I will find something to do as soon as I can settle down.”

Both were silent for a few minutes, then Jack Stanley said, as if in his thoughts he had been pursuing the subject they had been so lately speaking of,

“I cannot now even understand your sudden determination.”

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“I think,” said Bernard, slowly, “that it is not an unnatural turn for events to take, considering what I have just told you. Would you not, perhaps, have acted in the same way had you been similarly placed?”

“Oh, yes, of course—of course,” answered Jack. “It is not your going to New Zealand at which I am surprised, but that you did not go long ago; that you could ever have contemplated remaining in England.

“But, Bernard,” commenced Jack again, after some more thought, “you are a queer fellow, after all. You never left any word or message at the hospital that you were going to New Zealand. I called several times, and had it not been for Merton, I should not even have heard you were going abroad. That old porter at your place seems a fearful old idiot. Why, if another fellow had come to me and said he was going out, as soon as I had made up my mind to go too, I should have been after him, and have said, ‘Let us go together, and let us get our things together.”’

“I suppose I must be unlike other fellows,” said Bernard. “I am sorry for it.”

He leant against the netting as he spoke, and turned so pale that Jack exclaimed,

“Good gracious, Bernard! what is the matter? Are you ill?”

“I believe I am rather overdone,” said Bernard; “my head swims.”

“No wonder, with all the bother you have gone through. page 59 Here, let me help you below. You had better lie down,” said Jack.

Bernard made no opposition, and shortly afterwards Jack Stanley returned to the deck alone.

There was an infinite source of amusement to a boy like Jack Stanley, who was out in the world upon his own account for the first time. All his old predilections for a sea life returned. He took an active part in all the economy of the ship, volunteering to help upon all occasions, and becoming in consequence a favourite with all on board. Jack had that most influential and valuable gift—the power of popularity. He was always liked wherever he went, although many of those with whom he was a favourite would have been unable to say why they liked him. The female passengers and the children on board, of which there were a great number, came to him in their little difficulties. Bernard would sometimes watch with surprise the influence which Jack Stanley exercised involuntarily upon those about him; and, perhaps, to Bernard's more serious way of viewing life and its responsibilities, it may have been a subject of some regret that Jack was not more careful that he should influence for good instead of, as was often the case, for harm, those who were weaker than himself. But Jack was himself unconscious of any higher motive of action than the mere interest of the moment; so how could he be expected to care for any more important results in his intercourse with his fellow-passengers?

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Only since the death of his father had he begun to think and act for himself, and in so doing he had, unhappily for himself and others, chosen for his guide a spirit of revenge instead of the spirit of love. What might not be in the power of a young man, full of health and life and energy, who starts on his own account with the determined resolve to spend the long glorious time before him in the service of God and of his fellow-creatures—what happiness might not be in prospect for such a young man who seeks it in the favour of his Creator and the happiness of others? What is there in prospect, on the contrary, where such as Jack Stanley throws aside the fear of God and the teachings of his boyhood, and starts in life with a wrong motive of action? Jack had exalted his feelings of hatred against Maitland into a fancied duty, and was so determined in his own mind to make it so that he would not analyse the feeling even to himself, and never stopped to compare it with the precepts of the Bible, or to ask what his father, for whose sake he professed to be acting, would have said to his course of conduct.