Chapter 26 Donald and Dorothy by Mary Mapes Dodge
UNCLE GEORGE TELLS DONALD
"Come into the study, Donald," said Uncle George, after their lonely supper,—lonely even to Lydia, who presided at the tea-tray wondering how Mr. G. could have been so thoughtless as to let that child go out. "We can have no better opportunity than this for our talk. But, first tell me—Who was the 'fellow' you mentioned? Where was he? Did Dorry see him?"
Donald, assuring his uncle that Dorry had not recognized the man, told all the particulars of the interview at Vanbogen's, and of Jack's timely appearance and Slade's beating.
Disturbed, even angry, as Mr. Reed was at hearing this unwelcome news, he could not resist Donald's persistent, resolute desire that the present hour should be given to the main question concerning Dorry.
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Twilight slowly faded, and the room grew darker as they sat there, until at last they scarcely could see each other's faces. Then they moved nearer to the open window, conversing in a low tone, as star after star came softly into view.
Donald's large, wistful eyes sometimes turned to look toward the front gate, through which Dorry had passed, though he gave close attention to every word Mr. Reed uttered.
It was a strange story; but all its details need not be repeated here. Suffice it to say, at last Donald learned his uncle's secret, and understood the many unaccountable moods that so often had perplexed Dorry and himself.
What wonder that Mr. George had been troubled, and had sometimes shown signs of irritation! For nearly fifteen years he had suffered from peculiar suspense and annoyance, because, while he believed Dorothy to be his own niece, he could not ascertain the fact to his complete satisfaction. To make matters worse, the young girl unconsciously increased his perplexity by sometimes evincing traits which well might be inherited from his brother Wolcott, and oftener in numberless little ways so reminding him of his adopted sister Kate in her early girlhood, that his doubts would gain new power to torment him.
All he had been able to find out definitely was that, in the autumn of 1859, in accordance with his instructions, Mrs. Wolcott Reed, his brother's widow, with her twin babies, a boy and girl of six weeks, and their nurse, had sailed from Europe, in company with Kate and her husband, Henry Robertson, who had with them their own little daughter Delia, a baby barely a week older than the twins.
When about seven days out, the steamer had been caught in a fog, and, going too near the treacherous coast of Newfoundland, had in the night suddenly encountered a sunken rock. The violence of the shock aroused every one on board. There was a rush for the pumps, but they were of no use; the vessel already had begun to sink. Then followed a terrible scene. Men and women rushed wildly about, vainly calling for those belonging to them. Parents and their children were separated in the darkness—all, passengers and crew alike, too panic-stricken to act in concert. In the distracting terror of the occasion, there was great difficulty in lowering the steamer's boats—now their only possible hope of rescue. These were no sooner let down than they became dangerously overloaded. The first one, indeed, was so crowded that it swamped instantly. The other boats, threatened with the same fate, were tossed far apart as fast as they were filled, and in the darkness and tumult their crews were able to pick up but a few of the poor creatures who were struggling with the waves.
Two of the three babies, a boy and a girl, had been rescued, as we already know, by the efforts of one of the crew, Sailor Jack, known to his comrades as Jack Burton. He had just succeeded in getting into one of the boats, when he heard through the tumult a woman's wild cry from the deck:
"Save these helpless little ones! Look out! I must throw them!"
"Ay, ay! Let 'em come!" shouted Jack in response; and the next moment the babies, looking like little black bundles, flew over the ship's side, one after the other, and were safely caught in Jack's dexterous arms. Just in time, too, for the men behind him at once bent to the oars, in the fear that the boat, so dangerously near the sinking ship, was in danger of being engulfed by it.
Against Jack's protesting shout of "There's another coming!—a woman!" the boat shot away on the crest of a wave.
Hearing a scream above the surrounding din, Jack hastily flung off his coat, thrust the babies into the arms of his comrades, and shouting, "Keep them safe for me: I'm Jack Burton. It may be the mother! Look out for me, mates!" he plunged into the sea.
Jack made gallant efforts for a time, but returning alone, worn out with his fruitless exertions, he was taken into the boat. If, after that, in the severe cold, he remembered his jacket, it was only to take real comfort in knowing that the "little kids" were wrapped in it safe and sound. In the darkness and confusion he had not been able to see who had thrown the babies to him, but the noble-hearted sailor resolved to be faithful to his trust, and if he ever touched land again never to lose sight of them until he could leave them safe with some of their own kindred.
All night, in the bitter cold, the boat that carried the two babies had tossed with the waves, the men using their oars as well as they could, working away from the dangerous rocks out to the open sea, and hoping that daylight might reveal some passing vessel. Every one excepting the babies, suffered keenly; these, wrapped from head to feet in the sailor's jacket, and tucked in between the shivering women, slept soundly, while their preserver, scorning even in his drenched condition to feel the need of his warm garment, did his best at the oars.
With the first light of dawn a speck appeared on the horizon. It slowly grew larger, sometimes seeming to recede, and often disappearing utterly, until at last the straining eyes that watched it discerned its outline. It was a ship under full sail! Everything now depended upon being able to attract attention. One of the women, wrapped in a large white woollen mantle, snatched it off; it would serve as a signal of distress. The men hoisted the garment upon an oar, and, heavy and wet though it was, waved it wildly in the air.
"She's seen us!" cried Sailor Jack at last. "Hooray! She's headin' straight for us!"
And so she was.
Before sunset of that day, the honest sailor, with two babies, and all his companions in the boat were comfortably quartered on what proved to be the good ship "Cumberland," a sailing vessel bound for the port of New York.
Once safely on board, Sailor Jack had time to reflect on his somewhat novel position—a jolly tar, as he expressed it, with two helpless little kids to take ashore as salvage. That the babies did not now belong to him never entered his mind; they were his twins, to be cared for and to keep, he insisted, till the "Cumberland" should touch shore; and his to keep and care for ever after, unless somebody with a better right and proof positive should meet him in New York and claim them, or else that some of their relatives should be saved in one of the other boats.
So certain was he of his rights, that when the captain's wife, who happened to be on board, offered to care for the little creatures, he, concealing his helplessness as a nurse, accepted her kindness with a lordly air and as though it were really a favor on his part. "Them twins is Quality," he would say, "and I can't have 'em meddled with till I find the grand folks they belong to. Wash their leetle orphan faces, you may; feed 'em, you may; and keep 'em warm, you may; but their leetle jackets, night gownds, and petticuts, an' caps has got to stay just as they are, to identify 'em. And this ere gimcrack on the leetle miss—gold it is, you may well say" (touching the chain on the baby's neck admiringly)—"this ere gimcrack likely's got a legal consequence to its folks, which I couldn't and wouldn't undertake to calc'late."
Meantime the sailors would stand around, looking reverently at the babies, until, with Jack's gracious permission, the kind-hearted woman would tenderly soothe the little ones to sleep.
Among the survivors of the wreck, none could give much information concerning the babies. Only two were women, and one of these lay ill in a rough bunk through the remainder of the voyage, raving in her fever of the brother who bent anxiously over her. (In her delirium, she imagined that he had been drowned on that terrible night.) Sailor Jack held the twins before her, but she took no notice of them. Her brother knew nothing about them or of any of the passengers. He had been a fireman on the wrecked vessel, and scarcely had been on deck from the hour of starting until the moment of the wreck. The other rescued woman frequently had seen a tall nurse with two very young infants on her lap, and a pale mother dressed in black standing near them; and she remembered hearing some one say that there was another lady with a young baby on board, and that the two mothers were sisters, or relatives of some kind, and that the one with twins had recently become a widow. That was all. Beyond vaguely wondering how any one could think of taking such mites of humanity across the ocean, she had given no more thought to them. Of the men rescued, not one had known of the existence of the three wee passengers, the only babies on board, as the little creatures seldom had been taken on deck.
The two mothers, as Jack learned from one of the women, had been made so ill by the voyage that they rarely had left their state-rooms. Mr. Robertson, Kate's husband, was known by sight to all as a tall, handsome man, though very restless and anxious-looking; but, being much occupied with the care of his wife and child, he had spoken to very few persons on board the vessel.
This was all Jack could find out, though he never wearied of making inquiries among the survivors. He was shrewd enough, however, to ask them to write their names and addresses for him to keep, so that, if the twins' people (as he called them) ever should be found, they could in turn communicate with the survivors. The family naturally would want to inquire about "the other baby and its poor father, and the two mothers, one of which was a widow in mournin'—poor soul! and the nurse-girl, all drowned and gone."
Long weeks afterward, one other boat was heard from—the only other one that was ever found. Its freight of human beings, only seven in all, had passed through great privation and danger, but they finally had been taken aboard a steamer going east. The list of persons saved in this boat had been in due time received by Mr. Reed, who, after careful investigation, at last ascertained to a certainty that they all were adults, and that neither Mr. and Mrs. Robertson, nor Wolcott Reed's widow, were of the number. He communicated in person or by letter with all of them excepting one; and that one was a woman, who was described as a tall, dark-complexioned girl, a genteel servant, who, as three of the men declared, had been occasionally seen, pacing up and down the deck of the ill-fated vessel during the early part of the voyage, carrying a "very small baby" in her arms. She had given her name as Ellen Lee; had accepted assistance from the ship's company, and finally she had been traced by Mr. Reed's clerk, Henry Wakeley, to an obscure boarding-house in Liverpool. Going there to see her, Mr. Wakeley had been told that she was "out;" and calling there again, late on the same day, he learned that she had paid her bill and left the house four hours before.
After that, all efforts to find her, both on the part of the clerk and of Mr. Reed, had been unavailing; though to this day, as the latter assured Donald, detectives in Liverpool and London had her name and description, as belonging to a person "to be found."
"But do they know your address?" asked Donald.
"Oh, yes, I shall be notified at once if any news is heard of her; but after all these years there is hardly a possibility of that. Ellen Lees are plentiful enough; it is not an uncommon name, I find; but that particular Ellen Lee seems to have vanished from the earth."