Flotsam, the study of a life

Chapter I. The Evil Genius

THE sun was setting behind some palm-trees, and threw golden shafts of light down the ridges of the paddy fields where the green rice stood lush in water. The Hooghiy was stealing past the quiet bungalow built on the bank opposite to the spot where now stands the palace of the King of Oude. The great river flashed and gleamed greasily in the pink haze of Indian sunset, bearing on its sacred bosom sundry mysterious objects half afloat, half submerged. These were the bodies of the elect floating down to that Paradise where no flesh-eating Feringhee will mar the Oriental peace and luxury of life. The year was at its prime — the monsoon was steady. It was June, and eighteen hundred and thirty-one. No bodies float down the Ganges now; for European energy has set aside the re- FLOTSAM. 2 ligious growth of the ages.

Eighteen hundred and thirty-one! Before the child-queen in the far island of the north had gathered into her firm little hands the reins of a great government — before the pro soundest statesman had dreamt of an Indian Empire with its imperial crown on a head six thousand miles away. Before — twenty-five years before — the sorest strait that ever Englishmen were in. For the men who were to fight the Indian Mutiny were mostly children still, throwing pebbles from the bank of the sacred river at the floating corpses and the crocodiles. The shadows of the palms cast by the lowering sun stretched almost across the sleek water. It was very still, except for the distant song of boatmen who were creeping up the swift river in the shallows by the bank. A strange song this, and full of some racial trouble which touches European ears uneasily.

An Englishman in the bungalow garden looked up from a letter he was reading, as if the wail of the thin Hindu voices disturbed him. He was a young man with an aquiline nose, which seemed to dominate his face. There was something sculptural and clean-cut about this nose which put it out of place upon an ordinary physiognomy. The face was not an unpleasant one in full view, and the profile was striking and attractive. The man was of medium height, with a long-shaped head, some what abnormally developed at the back. His eyes were of a greeny grey — his mouth was too small. He listened to the weird chant of the boatmen, who made more noise than progress, and then turned again with a frown to the letter in his hand. This was written on the thin blue-laid paper still in use among old-established firms for foreign mail correspondence.

It was dated four months earlier, and bore the address: 91 St. Helen's Place, Lon don. It was addressed to Phillip Lamond, Esq., Goojera Reach, Hooghiy River, Calcutta. And Phillip Lamond read as follows: — ' Dear Sir, — I have your letter of December 4 last, and carefully note contents. Again I beg to assure you that I have every confidence in your kind intentions towards the child thrown upon your hands by the untimely death of my poor cousin and his young wife. Your reasons for suggesting that the boy Henry be allowed to remain in India under your care have received my careful consideration, and I have only to reiterate my former request that the child be sent home without delay. It appears to me that the risks you fear as attaching to a voyage home under the care of a native nurse are less urgent than those which are run by European children remaining in India.

Let me assure you that I fully appreciate the kindness you have shown FLOTSAM. my little relative. At the same time I must inform you that I should consider myself, as his next of kin, deficient in my sense of duty if I allowed the child, Henry, to pass the next ten or twelve years in India. His life is, as you know, a valuable one. He is the heir to considerable riches, and as the son of a valued servant of the Honourable East India Company he will step into a position of some importance in society. It is therefore right and expedient that he should be sent home at once, and it will be my personal care and happiness to see that he receives a good education, such as befits his future station in life. I shall therefore be obliged if you will make arrangements with Captain Farr, of the barque Golden Horn, who carries this to you, that the child and his nurse be put on board that vessel on her departure from Calcutta. ' Captain Farr has a duplicate of this letter; he also possesses written instructions to take over in my name the custody of the child, Henry Charles Wylam.

I beg that you will place no further difficulty in his way, and that you will accede with out demur to my request that the nurse and child be shipped home to me in the Golden Horn. Cap tain Farr has plenary power from me to take such steps as he may think necessary to secure obedience to my desire. 'I note your remarks respecting the affairs of my late cousin, and thank you for the care you have devoted to these matters. The remittances may be forwarded regularly, as you suggest, in drafts payable to myself and Mr. Henry Candler, of this city. joint guardians of the child. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, ' John Gresham. Phillip Lamond folded the letter with a shrug of tne shoulders, and slipped it into the pocket of his thin tussore silk jacket. ' One of your pompous old city magnates,' he said. ' Big waistcoat, big balance at his bank, as narrow-minded as he is broad in the beam.

Old boy wants to have the fingering of the money, I can see that.' Especially as regards a motive do we judge others by ourselves. Phillip Lamond was not held, by such as knew him, to be overburdened by that virtue which cov ereth a multitude of sins. And yet he had just returned from Delhi, whither he had journeyed to watch the interests of Henry Charles Wylam, a waif of tender years, cast upon the great world. Lamond was the agent of the late Captain Wylam, in so much as he collected the rents accru ing to that gentleman from a considerable tract ot land lying to the south of Delhi. Captain and Mrs. Wylam had been cut off in youth and health by him who is no respecter of either and came in the form of virulent cholera. FLOTSAM. Phillip Lamond had found Henry Charles Wylam a year earlier in the act of beating his ayah with the leg of a rocking-horse — gay, in a frock and a careless half-humorous access of temper.

The child knew nothing of his own bereaved condition, and as little of his prospects in life. He only knew that the near hind leg of the rocking-horse had come off, and formed a convenient instrument of chastisement. He looked with disapproving eyes upon Phillip Lamond, but presently entered into the question of travelling in a boat with unfeigned delight. It would appear that in children the hereditary character shows itself early. Harry's father had been an adventurous soul. The living Harry laid aside the leg of the rocking-horse and expressed himself ready to start on a long journey. With all the insolence of the dominant race hc gave his orders to the ayah in his prattling Hindustani, and Phillip Lamond, while laughing good-naturedly at his haste, threw no obstacle in its way. So expeditiously, indeed, were the arrangements carried out, that a start was effected the next morn ing, and in due course Phillip Lamond reached his own home on the banks of the Hooghiy, where he installed his charge.

While the agent read the missive in the compound, the master slept the sleep of innocence on a mat stretched upon the floor of the bungalow, and the ayah slowly waved a palm-leaf fan over his recum bent form. The child lay with careless outstretched limbs, a fair scion of the northern race which knows no rest or fear, which has laid its dead in every part of the earth, beneath the wave of every sea. The boy was fair of skin, with golden hair, and cupid lips half open. The dusky woman bending over him smiled with very pride as her deep eyes rested on him. Thus, Harry Wylam slept amidst the turmoil of this first stage of his journey through life — careless, fearless, happy with a woman loving him and men quarrelling over him — a subtle prophecy of things to come. Indeed, thc life of every child is nothing but a prophecy, for those who know the interpretation.

Phillip Lamond sat down to think. Presently he stretched his thin legs down the elongated arms of the lounge. He lighted a cigar and frowned as he did so. He beckoned to the silent black servant who was watching him in the shadow of the ve randah, and ordered a brandy and soda, which was presently brought to him foaming in a long glass. He was tired after his quick journey to Delhi and back in the height of the hot season. Hc was wor- FLOTSAM. ried by the London merchant's courteously firm let ter. He had grown fond of the high-spirited child during the last few months, a fact of which Mr. Gresham had been informed, although he chose to ignore it. Lamond was a rising man in India, and in those days men rose fast. By a smart piece of social manœuvring he had a year earlier constituted him self the guardian of Harry Wylam, and this tended to assure to him a position he had not hitherto enjoyed.

It is so easy to claim friendship with the dead. With Captain Wylam died the small fact that Phillip Lamond had been his servant. For Lamond had only lately begun to call himself a solicitor. Hc was a man of many irons — of great and varied knowledge, of small and easy scruple. The very man to get on in India before the Mutiny. Indeed, the very man to get on in any part of this world. He had written home to Mr. Gresham a long account of the sudden death of Captain Wylam and his wife: 'my dear friend Harry Wylam,' he had written with the assurance of the worldling. In reply Mr. Gresham wrote a letter full of gratitude, noting with a business-like exactitude the details relating to the worldly possessions of the late Harry Wylam, and courteously suggesting that the three year-old son should be sent home at once.

Phillip Lamond replied at some length, setting forth many good reasons why the child should remain under his care. And thus a year slipped away. During that time Lamond administered the estate near Delhi with wisdom and discretion. He remitted home to Mr. Gresham quarterly sums, the rents collected by his native colleague in Delhi. He informed the English merchant that he had retained for himself the fitting remuneration attendant on his duties as agent, in addition to one hundred pounds per annum for the maintenance and lodging of the child. India is a land of overgrown vitality. Life is so abundant that death is treated cavalierly, and the dead are soon forgotten. Mr. Gresham in London had reason to congratulate himself that the af fairs of the Wylams were in the hands of a prompt man of business such as Phillip Lamond, acting in conjunction with the respectable native firm of H. Alaraka, Sajin & Co., of Delhi.

The Wylams appeared to have had many acquaintances and a few friends who could, if they had taken the trouble, have given details of their life and death. Mr. Gresham never, however, happened to meet any of these friends, who naturally moved in a different circle from his own, and when in England failed to discover that there was a London east of Temple FLOTSAM. 10 Bar. He made careful inquiries none the less respecting the firm of native merchants in Delhi who collected the rents and supervised the affairs of Captain Wylam in that city, and learnt nothing to their discredit. The sums remitted to Mr. Gresham amounted to fifteen hundred odd pounds per annum, which modest income was duly invested by the careful London merchant in safe affairs. These and other matters were moving to and fro within the brain of Phillip Lamond as he lay at length and gazed out between his own feet across thc river.

This man passed for a bachelor, and his small household was conducted on the somewhat Bohe mian principles which obtained in India in the olden days. The bungalow stood between the road and the river — a small white house with green shutters in sore need of a coat of paint. A few years earlier Lamond had come from the south, had bought this bungalow from a river-pilot, and had painted it without and furnished it within quite regardless of expense. He seemed to take it for granted that he should get into society, and for a few months had actually hung on the outskirts of that vague bourne. But society had dropped him — slowly, surely, inexora bly. He bore no goodwill towards Anglo-Indians. From the upper circle he slid imperceptibly to the second range. He began to haunt the billiard rooms of the hotels.

His name, after figuring for months upon the list of more than one club-board as a candidate for election, disappeared therefrom. Among such friends as he succeeded in making in public billiard-rooms and drinking-bars he dissemi nated the opinion that Anglo-Indians were a narrow-minded race. When a man begins to complain of narrow mindedness in others the worldly wise gather in their skirts. Yet Phillip Lamond did not drink, neither did he swear. He was ever ready to assist the new-comer, and even to warn him against such dangers as might beset his social path. 'But,' he would say with a wave of his cigar, ' don't say I told you. I'm no gossip. I hate a mischief-maker. I like to live at peace with my neighbours ! " He laughed his jolly laugh — went his way, and in due time the new-comer dropped him.

Lamond could not understand it. No more than he could understand why each succeeding letter from Mr. Gresham was colder and more polite. That which he now held in his hand was final. For Phillip Lamond knew, as certainly as if the mer- FLOTSAM. chant had told him, that Captain Farr, of thc barque Golden Horn, had a power of attorney from Harry Wylam's guardians to assume custody of the child. Hc knew Captain Farr by sight. During the last year or so his friends had mostly been numbered among the officers of the ships at anchor in the river. These mariners were in the habit of com ing ashore in the evening — brown, well-washed and soapy in their rough serge clothes, to seek such en tertainment as the city afforded, and their haunts became also the haunts of Phillip Lamond. Captain Farr was known to be a red-headed skip per of the old school, with a rough tongue further accentuated by a Glasgow brogue.

An honest man, who thrashed his ship backwards and forwards round the Cape, making no very quick passages and few mistakes. He was the sort of man to obey orders to the letter — a suspicious Scotchman, who had seen the world and the wickedness thereof. Phillip Lamond went indoors and wrote a note to this mariner, asking him to dinner the next evening, and expressing considerable relief that his charge, Harry Wylam, was at last to be removed from his over-burdened hands. ' The truth is,' he wrote, ' a bachelor like myself is unfit for the management of a child, and it was only in obedience to my dear old friend Wylam's desire that I undertook the thing at all.' A queer smile hovered beneath the Captain's red moustache as he read this simple-minded epistle an hour later. Phillip Lamond, over his solitary dinner, was per haps beginning to realise that in India a dog may do worse than have a bad name — he may have none at all. For the old order changeth, giving place to new. If a dog be given a bad name nowadays, he usually gets into society with it.

Chapter II. An Early Adventure

There is nothing in this world so desolate as the waste of ocean lying to the south of the Cape of Good Hope — the home of the albatross and of his smaller, duskier brethren of the mighty wing. The loneliness of it all is overwhelming, the silence of it full of melancholy. Here arc the mighty works of God and the silence of them. The albatross is a taciturn bird. He sails along on his weird wings — self-absorbed, mysterious, incom prehensible. The Cape pigeon flits by half scared, the dainty petrel trips on the wave, and they one and all have no voice. The great sperm whale lumbers along with a strange air of attending to his own affairs. And the waves, as high as the Sussex Downs, roll unbroken around the world. Captain Farr was of the old school of mariners, and a navigator always rounds the Cape as he was taught in his apprenticeship.

The modern dashing skipper, intent on a quick passage, breaks into that silent sea below the forties. He forces his ship into the great waste, and boldly sights Prince Edward Island and the lone Crozets. On the homeward voyage he sails in shoal water and sights Table Moun tain. This is the whole art of rapid navigation — to go where the wind blows steadily. But thc Golden Horn rounded the Cape on either voyage in a safe old medium latitude, sighting no land, breaking into no unknown waters in search of a fair wind. She was now rolling easily on a glassy sea, her great sails flapping sleepily. As she tumbled to windward, the canvas filled with a solemn flap. On the leeward roll, the sails suddenly flattening, dropped the sheet-blocks with a clatter on the deck. The regularity of it, the sleepy monotony of the rattling block-sheaves, the grave flap of the filling sail, were maddening or sleep-inducing according to the nerve of the hearer.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and in the shadow of the deck-house the watch on deck lay prone in strong attitudes. Some were reading, others slept. The ayah squatting on the upper deck with her back against the white rail was wrapped in a deep Oriental meditation. A monkey sat on the lower ratlines of the mizzen rigging, engaged in an un blushing effort at personal cleanliness. In the in tervals of his occupation he glanced with blinking, FLOTSAM. affectionate eyes at the gentle native woman, as if reminding her that they had the tie of a common country amidst these fair-faced aliens. At times hc looked hurriedly around him, impelled to precaution not so much by the evil conscience hereditary to his kind, as by the knowledge that his chief tor mentor, little Harry Wylam, was about the decks. The child had as a matter of fact clambered down from the poop to the main-deck, where he was peeping wonderingly over the combing of the main hatch.

The hatches were off, and a warm odour of Indian produce — of indigo and rapeseed, of cocoa nut oil and coir-yarn, rose from the closely stowed hold. Harry Wylam, with the irrepressible energy of his years, had exhausted his' ayah's patience, leaving the woman meditatively somnolent in the sun. He had been forcibly snubbed by the watch in the shade of the deck-house. The captain was below, and the first officer, sitting on the stern rail, was busy with Sunday thoughts of home. For on blue water the seventh day is devoted to washing clothes and thinking of one's home ties. The monkey had escaped to the mizzen rigging. Remained therefore for the enterprising Harry his own neck, to risk on lower rigging and poop gang way, the open hatchways and the wonders of the hold, and perchance a little sport with a young bear confined in a rough cage between the foremast and the deck-house.

Having exhausted his investigations of the hold as seen over the high, old-fashioned combing of the hatchway, Harry went forward on tiptoe in his lit tle slippers. The bear provided better sport when aroused from a comfortable nap. With some exul tation Harry found that the peace of a warm after noon had soothed his victim to profound slumber. It being Sunday the carpenter was not at work, and the orderly deck provided no suitable arm where with to goad the sleeping bear. A belaying-pin was too short to reach him where he lay at the back of the cage, the capstan-bars in their rack against the bulkhead of the deck-house were too heavy. With the enterprise of ignorance and a characteristic heedlessness of consequence, Harry determined to go inside the cage and kick his unconscious foe. He worked silently and steadily at the door of the cage with that singular perseverance which in some natures is only brought to a high perfection by the knowledge of wrong-doing.

At last the door was open, and clambering on an overturned bucket Harry Wylam proceeded to carry out his pro gramme to the letter. FLOTSAM. There was a roar, a shriek, — and the watch hurry ing to the spot found a scuffling mass of fur and pinafore and stout bare limbs tossing to and fro in the cage. This was finally extracted, and for a brief moment the fight continued on deck in the centre of a circle of dumbfoundered men. Then some one seized the bear, and immediately the first officer dealt the beast an exceedingly shrewd blow across the eyes with a capstan-bar. The bear tottered and rolled backwards, opening his great arms as he fell, and dropping from their suffocating embrace Master Harry Wylam — crushed, white, and unconscious. The combatants lay side by side. Some one had already run to the fresh water pump, and presently a pannikin of lukewarm water was sluiced over the child's face, washing away the bloodstains from his pallid cheeks.

There was a deep serrated scratch across his forehead, and those who saw it knew that the mark of it would last the child's life. For a few moments Harry lay motionless, while the ayah knelt on the deck and beat her breast in a terror of suspense. Then the blue eyes opened with a wondering look, which presently gave way to the light of anger. The child scrambled to his feet, and before the onlookers comprehended his intention, he hid fallen upon the bear again, literally : tooth and nail. He beat the prostrate animal on the face and head with his tiny fists, he kicked it with his little button-up slippers. It was the sort of thing that appealed to the humour of the British mariner, and the men around him roared again with laughter and admiration of such dauntless pluck. ' That'll be a great man some day,' said a sailor, as they dragged the bear towards its cage. ' Ay,' opined Captain Farr, slowly, as he led the child away, ' or else he'll come to the gallows.' After this incident a greater vigilance was ob served.

The child was deemed by the cautious Captain Farr to be too headstrong for such gentle care as the devoted but passive ayah could lavish upon him. Her slim black arms no longer knew how to control his wayward strength of limb. The masterfulness of the dominant race was beginning to override the small moral control which the woman exercised over her charge. It was probably owing to the Scotchman's suspicious precautions that, when the Start was at length sighted, Harry Wylam was still on board the Golden Horn, a merry, heedless child, with a brown face and brave blue eyes — the picture of good health, of happy innocence, and wilful daring. In due course the great ship crept up the river to the gates of the St. Katherine's Dock — then FLOTSAM. busy with shipping, alive with commerce; now still and sleepy — the last resting-place of the superseded.

As the Golden Horn slowly warped in through the tidal basin, a stout gentleman in tight trousers, in straps, and a black silk choker, walked along the quay, keeping pace with the vessel. Captain Farr on the poop — steady, cautious, infinitely careful, raised his hat at the sight of this gentleman, and received in return a courteous wave of the hand. The old gentleman changed his gold-knobbed ma lacca cane from the left to the right hand, settled his black silk cravat, and looked the Golden Horn up and down — not with the knowing eye of a sea man, but with the possessive pride of an owner. ' Yon's Mr. Gresham,' said the captain curtly to the child at his side, and across the little space of muddy water the fatherless child and sonless man looked hard at each other. ' He's very fat,' said Harry. ' He's varra wealthy,' said the Glasgow captain, sternly.

When the ship was at length moored alongside the quay and the long voyage was at an end, Mr. Gresham walked gravely up the gangway. 'A hearty welcome to you, captain,' he said, with that grand air for which we have no time today. And he extended a gracious hand. ' A successful voyage and a clean bill of health I hope,' he added. And the captain muttered ' Ay, ay ! ' within his beard. ' Yon's the child,' he said, ' and he's led us a pretty dance.' Harry was standing in front of his great relative, contemplating the vast silk waistcoat, which had so imperatively commanded his attention. 'Come here, my little man,' said Mr. Gresham kindly — and the two shook hands. ' I am going to be a sailor,' announced Harry, with that blunt arrival at the main issue which we lay aside in later life. ' No doubt, my little man, no doubt,' said the merchant with a smile. ' It is only natural.

I hope you have had a nice voyage, and have not given Captain Farr much trouble. And this is your kind nurse. I thank you, my good woman, for your care of this little traveller. And now we will go ashore. My carriage is awaiting us in the Minories. Captain Farr, you will dine with me to-morrow afternoon, I hope.' The captain expressed a gruff acquiescence, and visiby broke out into a cold perspiration at the thought of the social agonies to come. FLOTSAM. As Mr. Gresham walked to the dock-gates, holding the child by the hand, more than one man paused in his work to touch his hat to the great shipowner, and to stare open-mouthed at the black woman, in her dusky reds, meekly walking behind. The carriage was awaiting them in the shadow of the trees in Trinity Square, for it was St. Martin's summer and a hot October.

The first that Harry saw of England was there fore the great Tower of London, and he abandoned the idea of a maritime career for the red coat the moment he set eyes on the guards drilling in the square. The carriage rattled away over the cobble stones, past the Mint, through the narrow Minories, where the smell of ships still lingers. And Harry ex plained to his guardian, in a high, clear voice, the difference between a reef-knot and a bowline, as they drove along; which difference he made clearer by an illustration effected with the check-string attached to the coachman's centre button. Through Leadenhall Street, past the great East India House, all innocent of the Empire within its ledgers, past Crosby Hall — untouched to-day — and through the iron gates of St. Helen's Place. ' You will find a little playmate in the nursery,' said Mr. Gresham, as he lifted the child to the pavement. ' I have a little girl, younger than you, although you think me a very old man.' ' What is her name ? ' asks Harry, stumping up the steps.

He has already forgotten Captain Farr and the Golden Horn. If we are to have ereat changes in our life, please God that He may send them in our childhood. Her name is Miriam,' replied Mr. Gresham. Her mother's name. Her mother is dead, my little man, she has gone to heaven. You must never talk of her. And you must be a brother to my little Miriam.' 'Yes; or else I'll marry her,' replied Harry, sturdily. The merchant turned and looked down into the child's face with a queer smile. He was rather amused at the independence of spirit displayed by this small traveller, at his grand air acquired in a nursery where he had even been lord and master with cringing servants at his beck and call. It must be remembered that this was in the thirties, before the drawing-room had begun to ad vance, much less the nursery; before the mother had begun to shriek and clamour for her rights, much less the child.

Mr. Gresham belonged to the older school, and clung to his grand house in St. FLOTSAM. Helen's Place in preference to a villa on Clapham Common or at Lewisham. He cherished many quaint ideas, now daily losing ground before the so-called advancement of a generation of women, who hold it higher to be an object of ridicule abroad than the idol of a nursery at home. Mr. Gresham, in his rigid old-world formality, held very pronounced principles on the bringing up of children — principles in which the nursery figured largely — wherein a wise discipline tempered that parental pride which handicaps many childish vir tues. And though we laugh at such to-day, it has yet to be proved by a future generation, whether we are bringing up a better race of men and women than did our grandfathers. Harry Wylam was led kindly past the open dining-room door — where he glanced wonderingly at the massive, highly polished mahogany — up the grave staircase, where the portraits of many city magnates looked down upon him. ' That,' said the merchant, indicating a steel engraving, ' is the great John Gresham, my second cousin.' Harry was interested in a picture representing the Duke of Wellington extending his hand to General Blucher. ' Where are we going ? ' he asked, as they passed the drawing-room door, and began to climb the narrower staircase to the upper rooms. ' To the nursery, where your little sister is wait ing tea for you,' replied Mr. Gresham, kindly. ' It is very high up,' observed Harry.