Under the Waves: Diving in Deep Waters Part 6

Mr Hazlit had acquired a grand, free-handed way of manipulating treasure. Instead of lifting the magnificent jewels carefully from the casket, he tumbled them out like a gorgeous cataract of light and colour, by the simple process of turning the box upside down.

"Oh papa, take care!" exclaimed Aileen, spreading her little hands in front of the cataract to stem its progress to the floor, while her two eyes opened in surprise, and shone with a l.u.s.tre that might have made the insensate gems envious. "How exquisite! How inexpressibly beautiful!--oh my dear, darling mother--!"

She stopped abruptly, and tears fluttered from her eyes. In a few seconds she continued, pus.h.i.+ng the gems away, almost pa.s.sionately--

"But I cannot wear them, papa. They are worthless to me."

She was right. She had no need of such gems. Was not her hair golden and her skin alabaster? Were not her lips coral and her teeth pearls?

And were not diamonds of the purest water dropping at that moment from her down-cast eyes?

"True, my child, and the sentiment does your heart credit; they are worthless, utterly worthless--mere paste"--at this point the face of the man at the door visibly changed for the worse--"mere paste, as regards their power to bring back to us the dear one who wore them.

Nevertheless, in a commercial point of view"--here the ears of the man at the door c.o.c.ked--"they are worth some eight or nine thousand pounds sterling, so they may as well be taken care of."

The tongue and lips of the man at the door again became active. He attempted--unsuccessfully, as before--to crush his hat, and inadvertently coughed.

Mr Hazlit's usually pale countenance flushed, and he started up.

"Hallo! My man, how came _you_ here?"

The man looked at the door and hesitated in his attempt to reply to so useless a question.

"How comes it that you enter my house and drawing-room without being announced?" asked Mr Hazlit, drawing himself up.

"'Cause I wanted to see you, an' I found the door open, an' there warn't n.o.body down stair to announce me," answered the man in a rather surly tone.

"Oh, indeed?--ah," said Mr Hazlit, drawing out a large silk handkerchief with a flourish, blowing his nose therewith, and casting it carelessly on the table so as to cover the jewel-box. "Well, as you are now ere, pray what have you got to say to me?"

"Your s.h.i.+p the _Seagull_ has bin' wrecked, sir, on Toosday night on the coast of Wales."

"I received that unpleasant piece of news on Wednesday morning. What has _that_ to do with your visit?"

"Only that I thought you might want divers for to go to the wreck, an'

_I'm_ a diver--that's all."

The man at the door said this in a very surly tone, for the slight tendency to politeness which had begun to manifest itself while the prospect of "a job" was hopeful, vanished before the haughty manner of the merchant.

"Well, it is just possible that I may require the a.s.sistance of divers,"

said Mr Hazlit, ringing the bell; "when I do, I can send for you.-- John, show this person out."

The hall-footman, who had been listening attentively at the key-hole, and allowed a second or two to elapse before opening the door, bowed with a guilty flush on his face and held the door wide open.

David Maxwell--for it was he--pa.s.sed out with an angry scowl, and as he strode with noisy tread across the hall, said something uncommonly pithy to the footman about "upstarts" and "puppies," and "people who thought they was made o' different dirt from others," accompanied with many other words and expressions which we may not repeat.

To all of this John replied with bland smiles and polite bows, hoping that the effects of the interview might not render him feverish, and reminding him that if it did he was in a better position than most men for cooling himself at the bottom of the sea.

"Farewell," said John earnestly; "and if you should take a fancy to honour us any day with your company to dinner, _do_ send a line to say you're coming."

John did not indulge in this pleasantry until the exasperated diver was just outside of the house, and it was well that he was so prudent, for Maxwell turned round like a tiger and struck with tremendous force at his face. His hard knuckles met the panel of the door, in which they left an indelible print, and at the same time sent a sound like a distant cannon shot into the library.

"I'm afraid I have been a little too sharp with him," said Mr Hazlit, a.s.sisting his daughter to replace the jewels.

Aileen agreed with him, but as nothing could induce her to condemn her father with her lips she made no reply.

"But," continued the old gentleman, "the rascal had no right to enter my house without ringing. He might have been a thief, you know. He looked rough and coa.r.s.e enough to be one."

"Oh papa," said Aileen entreatingly, "don't be too hasty in judging those who are sometimes called rough and coa.r.s.e. I do a.s.sure you I've met many men in my district who are big and rough and coa.r.s.e to look at, but who have the feelings and hearts of tender women."

"I know it, simple one; you must not suppose that I judged him by his exterior; I judged him by his rude manner and conduct, and I do not extend my opinion of him to the whole cla.s.s to which he belongs."

It is strange--and ill.u.s.trative of the occasional perversity of human reasoning--that Mr Hazlit did not perceive that he himself had given the diver cause to judge him, Mr Hazlit, very harshly, and the worst of it was that Maxwell _did_, in his wrath, extend his opinion of the merchant to the entire cla.s.s to which he belonged, expressing a deep undertoned hope that the "whole bilin' of 'em" might end their days in a place where he spent many of his own, namely, at the bottom of the sea.

It is to be presumed that he wished them to be there without the benefit of diving-dresses!

"It is curious, however," continued Mr Hazlit, "that I had been thinking this very morning about making inquiries after a diver, one whom I have frequently heard spoken of as an exceedingly able and respectable man--Balding or Bolding or some such name, I think."

"Oh! Baldwin, Joe Baldwin, as his intimate friends call him," said Aileen eagerly. "I know him well; he is in my district."

"What!" exclaimed Mr Hazlit, "not one of your paupers?"

Aileen burst into a merry laugh. "No, papa, no; not a pauper certainly.

He's a well-off diver, and a Wesleyan--a local preacher, I believe--but he lives in my district, and is one of the most zealous labourers in it.

Oh! If you saw him, papa, with his large burly frame and his rough bronzed kindly face, and broad shoulders, and deep ba.s.s voice and hearty laugh."

The word suggested the act, for Aileen went off again at the bare idea of Joe Baldwin being a pauper--one at whose feet, she said, she delighted to sit and learn.

"Well, I'm glad to have such a good account of him from one so well able to judge," rejoined her father, "and as I mean to go visit him without delay I'll be obliged if you'll give me his address."

Having received it, the merchant sallied forth into those regions of the town where, albeit she was not a guardian of the poor, his daughter's light figure was a much more familiar object than his own.

"Does a diver named Baldwin live here?" asked Mr Hazlit of a figure which he found standing in a doorway near the end of a narrow pa.s.sage.

The figure was hazy and indistinct by reason of the heavy wreaths of tobacco-smoke wherewith it was enveloped.

"Yis, sur," replied the figure; "he lives in the door it the other ind o' the pa.s.sage. It's not over-light here, sur; mind yer feet as ye go, an' pay attintion to your head, for what betune holes in the floor an'

beams in the ceilin', tall gintlemen like you, sur, come to grief sometimes."

Thanking the figure for its civility, Mr Hazlit knocked at the door indicated, but there was no response.

"Sure it's out they are!" cried the figure from the other end of the pa.s.sage. "Joe Baldwin's layin' a charge under the wreck off the jetty to-day--no doubt that's what's kep' 'im, and it's was.h.i.+n'-day with Mrs Joe, I belave; but I'm his pardner, sur, an' if ye'll step this way, Mrs Machowl'll be only too glad to see ye, sur, an' I can take yer orders."

Not a little amused by this free-and-easy invitation, Mr Hazlit entered a small apartment, which surprised him by its clean and tidy appearance.

A pretty little Irishwoman, with a pert little turned-up nose, auburn hair so luxuriant that it _could_ not be kept in order, and a set of teeth that glistened in their purity, invited him to sit down, and wiped a chair with her ap.r.o.n for his accommodation.

"You've got a nice little place here," remarked the visitor, looking round him.

"Troth, sur, ye wouldn't have said that if you'd seen it whin we first came to it. Of all the dirty places I iver saw! I belave an Irish pig would have scunnered at it, an' held his nose till he got out. It's very well for England, but we was used to cleaner places in the owld country. Hows'iver we've got it made respictable now, and we're not hard to plaze."

This was a crus.h.i.+ng reply. It upset Mr Hazlit's preconceived ideas regarding the two countries so completely that he was perplexed. Not being a man of rapid thought he changed the subject:--