CHAPTER XLII
TOM DRAKE’S TRUST
Tom Drake did have a hard time, as the physician predicted and Earle feared.
He paid dearly for his one night’s adventure within the walls of Wycliffe; and yet, perchance, the end will prove it to have been a “blessing in disguise.”
For three weeks he raved in the wildest delirium of fever, unconscious alike of his own condition, the care he was receiving, or the trouble and weariness he caused, and it was three weeks longer before the skillful physician pronounced him out of danger, or would give any hope that the wounded limb could be saved.
“Save it if you can, doctor; the poor fellow has had a rough time of it, and I should dislike to send him away from here a cripple,” Earle had pleaded when the doctor spoke of amputation.
“He will be a cripple anyway; so much of the bone is diseased and will have to come out, that the leg will always be weak, and he will be lame, even if we save it. But for your sake I will do my best, though it is more than the wretch deserves,” grumbled the physician.
He had not much faith or patience in nursing the “miserable wretch,” as he called him.
“Like enough, he will turn round and cut your throat, some fine day when he gets well. Such people have no feeling, no gratitude; they are like the brutes and have no souls, and should be treated accordingly.”
“‘Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these,’” Earle gravely repeated once, after one of the doctor’s outbursts.
“Humph! such high-toned philanthropy will doubtless be rewarded in a way you don’t expect.”
But with all his apparent gruffness and contempt for the kindness Earle was bestowing upon the unfortunate criminal, the young marquis could see that he was always very gentle with him, and was satisfied that he was bestowing the very best treatment that his knowledge and skill could suggest.
When at last the fever left him he lay weak as a baby, and only able to be lifted gently in the arms of strong men when he wished to change his position.
He did not look nearly so repulsive to Earle as he lay there so pale, thin, and helpless, and a great pity crept into his heart for this brother-man whose life had been so steeped in sin and infamy.
He had scarcely left him during those six long weeks when he lay in such danger, catching what rest he could while his patient slept, and lying upon a couch near his bed; and Earle himself looked almost as if he had had a fit of sickness, he was so worn and weary with his watching.
It was six weeks longer before Tom Drake could be dressed and move about his room, supported by a servant on one side and a crutch on the other.
He had grown more quiet and gentle in his manner during these weeks of convalescence. After regaining consciousness when his fever turned, his speech became more chaste, no oath left his lips to offend Earle’s ears, while now and then some expression of gratitude, rough though it was, would escape him for the attention and kindness he was receiving.
He became very thoughtful, even sad at times, and then Earle would bring some interesting book and read to him; but though he listened attentively, and appeared grateful for the attention, yet he could see that he did not really enjoy it, and often grew nervous at the monotonous sound of his voice.
One day he brought in a beautiful chess-table, and, after arranging the curiously carved men upon it, asked him if he would like to learn the game.
He was astonished to see his face light up with delight, as he exclaimed:
“Aha! them are real beauties, and now I can stand it.”
He already knew the game—was even a skillful player and from that time until he was able to ride out, Earle was never at a loss to know how to amuse him.
But as he grew stronger, Earle could see that some heavy burden oppressed him, and when not riding or playing chess, he would sit in moody silence, his hands folded, his head bent, and a look of deep trouble on his face, and frequent sighs escaped him.
One day Earle had been reading the newspaper to him—the only thing of the literary kind in which he manifested any interest. A heavy sigh interrupted him, and looking up, he found his companion’s eyes fixed sadly on his face, while apparently, he had not heard a word that he had been reading.
“Well, Tom, are you feeling badly today?” Earle asked, laying down his paper.
“N-o,” he returned, hesitatingly, and with some embarrassment.
Then, with an air of recklessness that Earle had not noticed before during all his sickness, he asked:
“I say, what kind of a place is Botany Bay?”
Earle started, the question was so entirely unexpected, but he understood at once now why he had been so sad and absent-minded of late. He had been thinking of his probable future.
“It is supposed to be rather a desolate kind of place,” he said.
“Folks who are sent there at the expense of the Crown, don’t get rich very fast, and it is somewhat inconvenient about getting away from there if one should happen to wish to visit his native land, eh?” Tom Drake said, with a ghastly attempt to be facetious.
“No,” Earle replied, very gravely, and with a searching glance at his companion.
“There’s some comfort in knowing a fellow ain’t got to leave many behind him to grieve over him,” he said, absently, and as if speaking more to himself than to Earle.
“Where do your friends reside?” he asked.
“All the friend I’ve got in the world, sir, is my old mother, and her I haven’t seen for many a long year.”
Earle thought there was a suspicious huskiness in his voice as he said this, and that a tear dropped on his hand as he turned quickly to look out of the window, but he might have been mistaken, and the man was still very weak after his long illness, and tears come unbidden at such a time.
“Your mother! Have you a mother living?”
“Yes, sir, as good a woman as ever drew breath,” Tom said, heartily.
“Who was that woman you had at the hotel in New York?” Earle asked.
“That was one of—the profession. She was nothing to me, and I paid her well for that job. I—I—”
“Well?” Earle said, encouragingly, as he saw Tom evidently had something on his mind and did not know just how to get rid of it.
“I ain’t usually very white-livered nor tender-hearted, sir. I never thought I was thin-skinned; but—I—I want to tell you that that rascally business about the young lady has laid heavily on my mind this many a day. She was a—particular friend o’ yours, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” Earle said, with a heavy sigh.
Tom Drake started at the sound, and shot an anxious glance at him, while he grew, if possible, paler than he was before.
“I—I hope, sir, no harm came to her from the mesmerizing,” he said, in a sort of hushed tone.
“No; she is quite well now.”
Tom looked intensely relieved, and went on, speaking with a rough kind of earnestness and gratitude:
“You’ve been wonderful good to me after it all; you’ve given me the best you have, and treated me as if I were a gentleman instead of a gallows-bird. That was a pesky job—that business with the girl. She was a pretty little thing, but plucky as the—I beg pardon, sir; but she was the most spirited little woman I ever set eyes on; and many a time it has given me the shivers, on waking up in the night, to think of her lying there, growing so pale and weak, dying by inches.”
“It was a cruel thing to do,” Earle said, with a far-away look and a very pale face.
He, too, often remembered that waxen face, with its great mournful eyes, in the still hours of the night; but that now was not the saddest of his troubles.
“You are right, sir,” Tom went on, with a strange mixture of humility and defiance; “but I had three or four fat jobs on hand just at that time, and I knew that if John Loker’s confession got abroad, there’d be no more work for me in the United States. I was going to crack a safe that very night, and had all my tools about me; so, as soon as you took the young lady off, I set to work, picked the locks, and we took to our heels with all the speed we had. You hadn’t made much noise about the affair, so when Madam and I walked out of the private entrance together, no one suspected us, and we got off scot-free. I knew it wouldn’t be safe for me to be seen around there after that, so I made for a steamer that was just ready to start out, and came over here to try my luck, never dreaming I’d fall into your clutches a second time.”
“Have you been at this kind of thing long?” Earle asked.
“Nigh on to twenty years. I got in with a gang when I was a youngster, learned all the tricks of the trade, and have lived by my wits and a burglar’s kit ever since.”
“Have you, as a rule, found it a very satisfactory kind of business?” his listener asked, pointedly.
Tom Drake flushed a vivid crimson, and for an instant a fierce gleam of anger shot from his eye; then he burst out vehemently:
“No, sir; I haven’t. I’ve always had to hide and sneak about like a whipped cur. It’s all up with me now, though, and I might as well own to it first as last, and there’s no comfort in it from beginning to end; but when a fellow once gets started in it, there don’t seem to be any place to stop, however bad you may want to. I’d got kind of hardened to it, though, until—until that job at Dalton’s that you got hauled up for. I’ve cursed myself times without number for that affair, but I hadn’t the grit to own up and take my chances; though, if I did put on a bold front, every hair on my head stood on end when I saw you stand up so proud and calm, and take the sentence and never squeal.”
Tom was getting excited over the remembrance, and his whole frame shook, while Earle could see the perspiration that had gathered on his upper lip.
His eyes were bent upon his hands, which were trembling with nervousness, or some other emotion, and his voice was not quite steady.
“You’re a gentleman, sir, every inch of you,” he went on, after a few minutes of awkward silence. “I’ve heard charity preached about no end of times, and never knew what it meant before. I suppose you won’t believe it, or think I am capable of feeling it, but I do—I feel mean clear through, though I never would have owned to it before. Here I’ve been for three months and more, making a deal of trouble, being waited upon by your servants as if I was a prince, drinking your wine, and eating all sorts of nice things that I never thought to taste, while you’ve tended me until you’re nigh about worn out yourself. I tell you I feel—mean! There, it’s out—I couldn’t hold it any longer; and if I have to wear a ball and chain all the rest of my life, I shall feel better to think I’ve said it; and I shall never forget to my dying day that there was one man in the world who was willing to do a kindness to his worst enemy.”
He had assumed a roughness of tone that had been unusual for the last few weeks, but Earle knew it was done to cover his emotion.
It was evident that he felt every word he uttered, and that the confession had cost him a great effort, as his nervousness and pallor testified.
It was apparent also that he expected no mercy, as his reference to Botany Bay and the ball and chain plainly showed. Earle pitied him during his long siege of suffering.
He was a man of no small amount of intelligence, and had evidently received a moderately good education before he began his career of crime, and if he had started right in life he would, no doubt, have made a smart man.
Earle had as yet come to no definite decision as to what course he should pursue regarding him when he should fully recover, and he could not bear to think of it even now.
He knew that his sentence if tried and found guilty, would be a very severe one, and his own sad experience naturally made him inclined to the side of mercy.
“But, Tom, whatever you may have been in the past, I do not consider that you are my enemy now,” he said, kindly, when he had concluded his excited speech.
“But I am, sir. I have done you the worst wrong a man can do another—I’ve wronged you in every way—I’m a wretch, and whatever they do with me, it’ll serve me right, and I’ll never open my lips,” he said, excitedly.
“Yes, you have wronged me, and I have suffered in your stead the worst disgrace that a man can suffer. But that is all past now; my innocence has been established, and no shadow of sin rests on my name—John Loker’s confession accomplished that.”
“But, sir, it could not give you back those three years of your life that—that you lost; you—”
“No,” Earle interrupted; “but those three years, long and weary as they were, were not ‘lost’ by any means, Tom. They taught me a lesson of patience and trust which, perhaps, I never should have learned in any other way. It was a hard trial—a bitter trial!” Earle exclaimed, with a shudder, as something of the horror came back to him; “but”—in a reverent tone—“I know that nothing which God sends upon us if it is rightly borne, can end in harm; nothing but our own sins can do that.”
“Did you feel that way then?” Tom asked, regarding the young marquis with wonder.
“Not at first, perhaps, but it came to me after a little; for, Tom, I had a good Christian mother.”
“Ay, and so had I,” he replied, with a sigh that ended in what sounded very like a sob. But Tom was not strong, you know, and consequently more easily moved.
“She used to teach me that suffering was often a blessing in disguise.”
“I never heard that doctrine before, sir,” Tom returned, looking down upon his emaciated hands, and thinking of his bandaged limb, which was still very sore.
“I suppose you would not think that the wound I gave you, and the terrible sickness which has followed, were blessings, would you, Tom?” Earle asked, with a smile, as he noticed the look and divined his thought.
“Hardly that, sir, when my reason tells me how it is all to end; but, sir, I’ll say this much, my own mother couldn’t have been kinder, nor given me better care; and, for the first time in my life, I’ve learned what it is to trust a man!” he said, earnestly.
“Thank you, Tom,” Earle returned, heartily.
“You’ve no cause, sir. I should have killed you that night if I had known you were there and awake, and then the world would have lost a good man and gained another murderer. Perhaps, looking at it in that way, sir, the wound and the sickness were blessings in disguise, as you call them,” he concluded, reflectively, and he shivered slightly as he spoke as if the thought of crime had acquired a strange horror to him.
“We will not talk of this anymore now,” Earle said, fearing the excitement would be injurious to him. “I am only too glad that your life was spared and I did not slay you, even in self-defense. I am glad to know also that I have gained your confidence; and I firmly believe that if you should ever be free to go forth into the world again, you would never lift your hand to harm me or mine.”
“Thank you, sir; it is kind of you to say that,” was the humble reply.
“Now I want you to tell me something about your mother. She must be quite old,” Earle continued, to change the subject.
“Sixty last March, sir, and I haven’t seen her for twenty years, though I’ve sent her enough to give her a good living all that time. I used to—to—love my mother,” he concluded, as if rather ashamed to make confession of a sentiment so tender.
“Used to, Tom?”
“I ain’t fit to own to love for anybody now, sir! and it would break her heart to know what I’ve been up to all these years.”
“Where does she live?”
“At Farnham, in this county, sir.”
“Here in England! Why, that is only twenty-five or thirty miles from here!” exclaimed Earle, in surprise.
“Yes, sir; and if I had made a good haul here, I was going down to see her, and settle something handsome on her,” he frankly confessed, but his face flushed, nevertheless, at the acknowledgment.
“Wouldn’t you like to see her now?” asked Earle.
“That I would, sir; and I suppose the poor old lady has been worrying and wondering what’s happened to me, that I did not send my usual letter and money.”
“Did you send her money regularly?”
Earle began to think there was a little green spot in the man’s heart after all, and there might be some hope of reclaiming him even yet.
“Once in three months—sometimes more, sometimes less, as my luck was, but always something as often as that, though it’s six months now since she’s heard a word from me, poor old lady,” he said, with a sigh.
“Why did you not tell me of this before? Your mother should not be allowed to want,” Earle said, feeling a deep interest in the lonely mother.
“What right had I to burden you with my cares? You’ve had more than enough of me as it is,” Tom replied, flushing more deeply than he had yet done.
It was evident that he felt his obligation to Earle was no light one.
Earle did not reply, and at that moment the door opened, and a man entered bearing a large tray, covered with a tempting array of viands that would have done the heart of an epicure good.
“You must be hungry, Tom, after this long walk, so while you are eating I will go away, as I have some letters to write,” Earle said, rising.
Tom looked up at him with a troubled air, opened his lips as if to speak, shut them again resolutely, and then finally said, in a half-reckless, half-humble way:
“You can take my softness for what it’s worth, sir; I couldn’t help it; but—I’d have been broken on the wheel before I’d have said as much to anyone else. Tom Drake’s known nothing but hard knocks for the last twenty years, until a bullet laid him here.”
Earle went out of the room with a very grave face.
“If I was only sure,” he murmured, with a deep-drawn sigh, as he passed into the library and shut the door.
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