POOR JACK.

“As ye sweep through the deep
While the stormy winds do blow,
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.”
Campbell.

UST two years this very day since poor Jack Mackenzie sailed away from England in the Ocean Pride.”

Mr. Richards, of the tough old firm of Griffin, Keane, and Co., Solicitors, London, talked more to himself than to any one within hearing.

As he spoke he straightened himself up from his desk in a weary kind of way, and began to mend his pen: they used quills in those good old times.

“Just two years! How the time flies! And we’re not getting any younger. Are we, partner?”

Whether Mr. Keane heard what he said or not, he certainly did not reply immediately. He was standing by the window, gazing out into the half-dark, fog-shaded street.

“Fog, fog, fog!” he grunted peevishly; “nothing but fog and gloom. Been nothing else all winter; and now that spring has all but come, why it’s fog, fog, fog, just the same! Tired of it—sick of it!”

Then he turned sharply round, exclaiming, “What did you say about Jack and about growing younger?”

Mr. Richards smiled a conciliatory smile. He was the junior partner though the older man—if that is not a paradox—for his share in the firm was not a quarter as large as Keane’s, who was really Keane by name and keen by nature, of small stature, with dark hair turning gray, active, business-like, and a trifle suspicious.

Mr. Richards was delightfully different in every way—a round rosy face that might have belonged to some old sea-captain, a bald and rosy forehead, hair as white as drifted snow, and a pair of blue eyes that always seemed brimming over with kindness and good-humour.

“I was talking more to my pen than to you,” he said quietly.

“But what’s given you Jack on the brain, eh?”

“Oh, nothing—nothing in particular, that is. I happened to turn to his account, that is all.”

“Bother him. Yes, and but for you, Richards, never an account should he have had with us.”

“Well, Jack gets round me somehow. He is not half a bad lad, with his dash and his fun and his jollity. Ay, and his ways are very winning sometimes. He does get round one, partner.”

“I don’t doubt it, Richards. Winning enough when he wants to get round you and wheedle cash out of you. I tell you what, partner: Jack’s got all his father’s aristocratic notions, all his father’s pride and improvidence. Ay, and he’d ruin his dad too, if—if—”

“If what, partner?”

“Why, if his dad weren’t ruined already.”

“Come, come, Keane, it isn’t quite so bad as that.”

“Pretty nigh it, I can assure you. And I can’t get the proud old Scot to retrench. Why doesn’t he let that baronial hall of his, instead of sticking to it and mortgaging it in order to keep up appearances and entertain half the gentry in the county? Why doesn’t he take a five-roomed cottage, and let his daughter teach the harp that she plays so well?”

“O partner! Come, you know!”

“Well, ‘O partner’ as much as you like; if old Mackenzie’s pride were proper pride, his daughter would take in washing sooner than the family should go deeper in debt every day. But the crisis will come; somebody will foreclose.”

“You won’t surely, partner?”

“Bother your sentiment, Richards. He owes me over forty thousand pounds. Think of that. I declare I believe I’d be a better landlord than Mack himself. Forty thousand pounds, Richards, and I don’t see any way of getting a penny, except by—”

“Except by foreclosing?”

Richards sighed as he bent once more over his desk. He had been family lawyer to Mackenzie before he joined the firm of Griffin, Keane, and Co., and dearly loved the family, or what was left of it.

He tried to work but couldn’t now. Presently he closed the ledger with a bang and got down off his stool.

“I say, Keane.” he said, “I see a way out of this. Look here. You have nobody to leave your wealth to except dear little Gerty—”“Well?”

“Well, Jack is precious fond of her; why not—”

“He, he, he! ho, ho, ho!” laughed Keane. “Why, Richards, you’re in your dotage, man! I’ve a baronet in view for Gerty. And Jack is a beggar, although he does swing a sword at his side and fight the French.”

Richards went back to his stool quiet and subdued. “Poor Jack!” he muttered.

“Just two years this very day, Gerty dear, since poor Jack sailed away from England in the Ocean Pride.”

Flora Mackenzie bent listlessly over the harp she had been playing as she spoke, her fingers touching a chord or two that seemed in unison with her thoughts. The two girls, Gerty Keane and she, who were seldom separate now, by day or night, sat in Flora’s boudoir, which had two great windows opening on to a balcony and overlooking the grand old gardens of Grantley Hall, Suffolk. Grant Mackenzie, a sturdy old one-armed soldier, was the proud owner of the Hall and all the wide, wooded landscape for miles around. Jack, now far away at sea, was his heir, and with his sister Flora, the only children the general had. The fine old soldier had been in possession of the property only about a dozen years, yet I fear he had inherited something else—namely, the lordly fashions of his Highland ancestry. That branch of the Clan Mackenzie to which he belonged was nothing unless proud. So long as it could hold its head a little higher than its neighbours it was happy, and when poverty came then death might follow as soon as it pleased. There was every appearance of unbounded wealth in and around Grantley Hall. The house was a massive old Elizabethan mansion, half buried in lofty lime and elm and oak trees, approached by a winding drive, and a long way back from the main road that leads through this beautiful shire from north to south.

Everything was large connected with the Hall and estate. There were no finer trees anywhere in England than those sturdy oaks and elms, no more stately waving pine trees, and no more shady drooping limes than those that bordered the broad grass ride which stretched for many a mile across the estate. On the park-like lawn in front of the house—if this ancient quaint old pile could be said to have a front—the flower-beds were as big as suburban gardens, the statuary, the fountains, and even the gray and moss-grown dial-stone were gigantic; and nowhere else in all this vast and wealthy county were such stately herons seen as those that sailed around Grantley and built in its trees. The entrance-hall was spacious and noble, though the porch was comparatively small; but if divested of its banners and curtains and emptied of its antique furniture, its wealth-laden tables, on which jewelled arms and curios from every land under the sun seemed to have been laid out for show, its oaken chests, its sideboards, its organ and many another musical instrument ancient and modern, the drawing-room was large enough to have driven a coach-and-four around.

The bedrooms above were many of them so lofty that in the dead, dull winter two great fires in each could hardly keep them warm.

The room in which the girls sat was the tartan boudoir. The walls were draped with clan tartans, and eke the lounges and chairs; while the heads of many a royal stag adorned the walls, amidst tastefully displayed claymores, spears, shields, and dirks, and pistols.

“Just two years, Gerty. How quickly the time has fled!”

“Just two years, Flora. Strange that I should have been thinking about Jack this very moment. But then you were playing one of Jack’s favourite airs, you know.”

Flora got up from her seat at the harp. A tall and graceful girl she was, with a wealth of auburn hair, and blue dreamy eyes, and eyelashes that swept her sun-tinted cheeks when she looked downwards.

She got up from her seat, and went and knelt beside the couch on which Gerty was lounging with a book.

“Why strange, sister?” she asked, taking Gerty’s hand.

Gerty was petite, blonde, bewitching—so many a young man said, and many a rough old squire as well. She was no baby in face, however. Although of the purest type of Saxon beauty—without the square chin that so disfigures many an otherwise lovely English face—there was fire and character in every lineament of Gerty Keane’s countenance.

She answered Flora calmly, candidly, quietly—I am almost inclined to say, in a business way that reminded one of her father.

“Dear Flo,” she said—and her eyes as she spoke had a sad and far-away look in them—“it would be unmaidenly in me to say how much I should like to be your sister in reality. It may not be strange for me to think of Jack; we have liked each other, almost loved each other, since childhood.”

“Almost?” said Flora.

“Listen, Flo. I may love Jack, but there is one other I love even more.”

“Sir Digby, Gerty?”

“No, dear Flo, but my father. I love him more because he has few friends, and because others do not love him. I would do anything for father.”

“You would even marry Sir Digby?”

“Perhaps.”

“O Gerty! poor Jack will break his heart.”

She buried her face in the pillow for a few moments. She was struggling with the grief that bid fair to choke her. When she looked up again there was nothing but softness in Gerty’s face, and tears were coursing down her cheeks—tears she made no effort to wipe away.

Poor Jack!

“Just two years to-day, Tom, since you and I sailed away from dear old England in the Ocean Pride.”

“And hasn’t the time flown too?” said Tom. “Ah! but then we’ve been so busy. Just think of the many actions we’ve fought.”

“True, Jack, true! What a lucky, ay, and what a glorious thing for young fellows like us to be in a ship commanded by so daring a sailor as Sir Sidney Salt!”

“Yes, Tom, yes. And think of the haul of prize-money we shall have when we once more touch British ground.”

“O Jack, I am surprised. Money! A Mackenzie of the Mackenzies to be mercenary! Jack, Jack!”

Jack and Tom were keeping their watch—that is, it was Tom’s watch, and Jack had come on deck to bear him company and talk of home.

Under every stitch of canvas, with a bracing beam wind that filled every sail, jib, and square, and stay, the bold frigate Ocean Pride was skimming across the Atlantic like a veritable sea-bird. She was bound for the lone Bermudas, and the night was a heavenly one. So no wonder that, as the two young sailors leaned over the bulwarks and gazed at the moonlit water that seemed all a-shimmer with gold, their thoughts went back to their homes in merry England.

“Listen, Tom; don’t call me mercenary, bo’. Did you ever hear those lines of Burns, our great national bard?—

‘O poortith cauld and restless love,
Ye wreck my peace between ye;
But poortith cauld I well could bear,
If it werena for my Jeannie.’

Yes, Tom; I love the sweetest lass ever wooed by sailor lad. Does she love me? Was that what you asked, Tom? She never said so, bo’; but ah! I know she does, and as sure as yonder moon is shining she is thinking of me even now. But sit here on the skylight till I tell you, Tom, where the ‘poortith’ comes in.”

And sitting there, with the moonlight streaming clear on both their earnest young faces, and on their snow-white powdered hair, Jack poured into the ear of his friend a story that was at once both sorrowful and romantic.

Tom listened quietly till the very end, then he stretched out his soft right hand and clasped his friend’s.

“Poor Jack!” he said.

“Ay, poor Jack indeed! And now I’ll go below. I want to think and maybe dream of home and Gerty.”