Into the Storm

by Avi

  He closed his eyes. “I am in America,” he murmured to himself. “The promised land. Where everything is different.” He repeated the phrases as though they were a prayer, letting the ideas stir him, fill him. Then he dredged up a line from his Shakespeare: “‘The miserable have no other medicine but only hope.’” The words comforted him, calmed him. Taking a deep breath, he vowed he would become a new man. And he would begin by putting Maura O’Connell out of his mind.

  Mr. Drabble hailed the next person who passed. “Excuse me, sir, but I’m looking for The Liberty Tree Inn,” he said. “Can you help me?”

  “Just up there, half a block,” the man replied, pointing the way.

  The inn was easily reached. Mr. Drabble pushed through the double doors beneath the painted sign and stepped into the taproom. It was just as crowded and noisy as when Mr. Grout had arrived earlier in the day. The stench of liquor was thick, while clouds of tobacco smoke had reached thunderhead proportions.

  For Laurence — who had spent so much time alone — the sight of so many people pressed into the confines of one room, talking and arguing all at once, was overwhelming. He had to stop at the threshold. Mr. Drabble said, “Wait here,” made his way through to the bar, and addressed the man working there.

  “Excuse me, my good man,” he said. “A friend is lodging here. I’m supposed to join him. Would you be kind enough to tell me where I’ll find him?”

  “What’s his name?” the man asked.

  “Grout. Mr. Toby Grout.”

  “Englishman with an eye patch?”

  Mr. Drabble nodded.

  “Third floor, room sixteen. Take those stairs,” he said, indicating the steps at the far side of the room and providing Mr. Drabble with a lighted candle to help him find his way.

  Collecting Laurence, Mr. Drabble began to climb, the candle’s flickering light just enough to illuminate the narrow steps while creating grotesque shadows behind. At the third floor, the actor entered a gloomy hallway of many doors, upon each of which a number had been crudely painted.

  “Here we are.” As Mr. Drabble knocked, Laurence, feeling shy, stepped behind him.

  From inside a voice called, “Who is it?”

  “It’s me, Horatio Drabble!”

  The door was pulled open. “There you are,” Mr. Grout cried. “I’ve been wonderin’ wot ’appened to yer.”

  “The ship was late coming in,” Mr. Drabble explained. “I’ve only just arrived.”

  “Don’t yer worry none,” Mr. Grout assured him. “I didn’t give up on yer. Just step in so I can tell yer some amazin’ news.”

  Mr. Drabble hesitated. “I need to tell you that I’ve brought someone.”

  Mr. Grout grinned. “Yer gal?” he asked.

  The actor blushed. “N-N-Not at all,” he stammered. “It’s this boy.” So saying, he stepped to one side and held up the candle. “His name is Laurence, and I should explain —”

  Mr. Grout took one look and shrieked, “It’s him!”

  There, to Laurence’s utter astonishment, stood Mr. Toby Grout.

  “Why — what’s the matter?” asked the baffled actor, turning from Laurence’s look of shock to Mr. Grout’s look of terror.

  “Take ’im away!” Mr. Grout wailed from the depths of his soul. “Take ’im away!”

  “Take whom away?”

  “The ghost!”

  “My good man,” Mr. Drabble sputtered in confusion, “what are you talking about? There is no ghost.”

  “’E’s standin’ by yer side!”

  When Laurence grasped the fact that it truly was Toby Grout before him, all the pent-up rage he felt against those who had tormented him — his brother, Albert; his father, Lord Kirkle; the London police; Mr. Clemspool; Ralph Toggs; Mr. Murdock — all that rage exploded.

  “The money!” he shrieked. “Give me that money!”

  Panicked, Mr. Grout began to retreat into his room only to have Mr. Drabble haul him back.

  “Mr. Grout,” the actor urged, “pray look and see for yourself. This is no ghost. Merely a wretched boy by the name of Laurence.”

  “I know ’is name!” Mr. Grout cried. “Get ’im away!”

  “Thief!” Laurence screamed as he bore down upon Mr. Grout. “Thief!”

  “Mr. Grout, I assure you,” Mr. Drabble persisted as the one-eyed man struggled to get away, “this hapless boy is, like us, English and but newly arrived on the very same ship.”

  “I’m beggin’ yer,” Mr. Grout said, “take ’im away! I don’t ’ave ’is money. It’s gone!”

  Laurence began to pummel Mr. Grout with his small fists. “The money!” he screamed. “Give me back the money!”

  Hysterical, Mr. Grout waved his arms to protect himself from the rain of blows Laurence poured upon him. A lucky flail knocked the boy down. Sensing he was free, the one-eyed man fled from the room and sped along the hallway in search of escape but found only a dead end.

  Laurence sprang up from the floor and attempted to pursue the man. Mr. Drabble blocked his way at the door.

  “Mr. Grout, sir,” the actor called down the hallway. “I beg you, explain!”

  Cowering in the corner, Mr. Grout cried, “That money I ’ad — all me riches — I took it from ’im.”

  “From whom?”

  “That there ghost!” Mr. Grout covered his face with his hands.

  “Are you talking about this boy? But — I don’t understand. Where? When?”

  “In London.”

  “London?” Mr. Drabble looked at Laurence closely, but all he could see was the familiar beggar of a boy.

  Breaking from his grasp, Laurence charged upon Mr. Grout yet again. The one-eyed man sank to his knees and extended his massive hands toward the boy in desperate appeal. “I’ve repented,” he brayed. To prove it, he plunged a hand into a pocket, drew out his few remaining coins, and flung them to the floor.

  “That’s all I have,” he cried. “Take it. Tell me wot else to do, and I’ll do it. just don’t ’aunt me anymore!” So saying he prostrated himself upon the floor in abject submission.

  Standing over the groveling man, Laurence felt his fury melt. Abruptly, he turned and, wanting only to escape, ran back down the hall.

  Mr. Drabble caught him. Though Laurence fought to free himself, imploring, begging, pleading, the actor held fast until, exhausted, the boy collapsed.

  As if Laurence were a sack of potatoes, the actor hauled him into Mr. Grout’s room. Once again Laurence rallied, but when he realized his way to the door was blocked, he spun about, flung himself on one of the beds, and gave way to deep racking sobs of despair.

  Pale and quaking, Mr. Grout poked his head around the door and stared at the boy.

  Mr. Drabble beckoned him in. “Shut the door,” he whispered.

  “Is it safe?”

  “Of course it is!”

  Mr. Grout crept forward.

  “Lock the door.”

  A terribly nervous Mr. Grout complied.

  “Now sit down,” Mr. Drabble insisted, pointing to the empty bed. Mr. Grout did so, his gaze never leaving Laurence’s shaking form.

  Soon the sobs quieted, and the boy fell into a deep sleep, the only evidence of his misery being an occasional twitch.

  Mr. Drabble sat upon the chair, but only after he had blown out the candle and trimmed the lamp low. Relit, it cast just enough illumination for the two men to see each other.

  “Now, sir,” the actor said softly, soothingly, “you must inform me about all this.”

  “Mr. Drabble,” murmured Mr. Grout, keeping one wary eye upon Laurence, “yer don’t know the truth of me life.”

  “Sir, I am prepared to listen.”

  “It ain’t pretty.”

  “If you can speak it, sir, I am prepared to hear it. We are ‘poor but honest.’”

  “’Onest, eh? ’Ear me tale, then yer can decide for yerself.”

  Yer see, sir,” Mr. Grout began in a low, halting voice, “I was born maybe twenty years ag
o. In London, snug in the molderin’ shadow of Newgate Prison.

  “I ’ad lots of brothers and sisters, younger and older. None of us knew where the next feed might be comin’ from. Yer see, me father and mother were both mud larks.”

  Mr. Drabble gave his friend a puzzled look.

  “Mud larks goes into the Thames River, in London, yer know, winter and summer, gropin’ and feelin’ for things in the mudflats. Coal bits, old iron, rope, copper nails if yer lucky. Which they sells. It don’t bring but farthings and ha’pennies, though once me father found a silver thimble. The best year, that were. But yer can believe we was always fightin’ and scrapin’ over wot we ’ad.

  “Now,” Mr. Grout continued, “when each of us tykes got to be nine years or such, me father ’eaves us out — boys and girls both — to live or die. ‘Go muck fer yer own lives,’ he says, givin’ us ’is kiss an’ ’is boot all in one blow. Me mother ’ad no say. She were a mute anyway.

  “I did find me life, which was fightin’ for prizes. Terrifyin’ Toby they calls me. I was that fierce. That’s ’ow I lost me eye. I was maulin’ Brawlin’ Billy Bathwait when he slams me with a stake.

  “Well, sir, yer can’t fight much with one eye. And I couldn’t find ’onest work for any price. Not wantin’ the workhouse, I took to street thievin’. Me grift was an old man’s disguise. After a while I meets up with this Clemspool.”

  “Your friend?”

  “Clemspool ain’t no friend of mine!” Mr. Grout cried so loudly that Mr. Drabble, with a glance at Laurence, had to remind him to keep his voice low.

  “Clemspool runs a business for rich boys that don’t like their own brothers. Brother’s Keeper he calls it. For money — pots of it — ’e’ll nab yer brother, older or younger, ’e don’t care. Maybe once a week ’e’d point them out to me on the street. I’d snatch ’em and bring ’em to ’im. Then ’e’d ship ’em out. To India. West Indies. Australia. America. Places yer can’t get back from.

  “One night, when I’m out on me own grift, I prigged a lot of money from that there boy.” He pointed to Laurence.

  “How much?”

  Mr. Grout hesitated. “A thousand pounds,” he whispered.

  “A thousand!” Mr. Drabble cried in astonishment, and turned to look at Laurence again.

  “Truth to tell, ’e’s a young lord.”

  “A lord!”

  “I thought me luck ’ad turned. But me luck had Clemspool bein’ paid to send that very boy to America. Only the boy escaped, and somehow ’e got on board the same ship we did. Then I thought ’e’d gone dead, ’cause I was certain I saw ’is ghost rising up out of the floor on that ship.”

  “Mr. Grout, I assure you, if this is the boy you are speaking of, he’s very much alive.”

  Mr. Grout shook his head. “I ’ardly know wot to believe. I thought ’is ghost came to make me repent me ways, which I swore to do. Only now, if ’e ain’t dead, I say, what’s to be done?”

  Mr. Drabble placed a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Mr. Grout,” he murmured, “as the poet said, ‘Some rise by sin,’ but I do believe repentance is the nobler path to redemption.”

  Mr. Grout looked earnestly at his friend. “And do yer think, Mr. Drabble, truly, I can be forgiven all the wickedness I’ve done?”

  “The Bible teaches us so, sir. And does not the bard confirm this in the line ‘When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down, and ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live’?”

  “I don’t understand that, Mr. Drabble. To tell the truth, I never do when yer talks so. All the same, the sound of it soothes me wonderfully.”

  “Sir,” Mr. Drabble asked gravely, “what happened to that money?”

  “Some of it went into these very togs I’m wearin’. Other bits went to pay me way to America. And for Clemspool too. But just this afternoon, before you came, I discovered that same villain stole all nine hundred or so pounds remainin’!”

  “Heavens above! Are you sure?”

  “Somehow, Mr. Drabble, you believe in me goodness. Well, I believe in that man’s wickedness.”

  “You say the boy comes from a noble family. What is his true name?”

  Mr. Grout pondered the question for a time but finally shook his head. “Yer don’t want to know. It’ll only bring a fear on yer.”

  Mr. Drabble, so strangely fixed by the man’s one bright eye, let the question drop by nodding his understanding that he was not to pursue the matter. “Mr. Grout,” he said, “what do you intend to do now?”

  “Thing is,” Mr. Grout confessed, “I don’t ’ave a penny. I’m shamed to ask, but do yer ’ave any of wot I paid yer?”

  “I do,” Mr. Drabble assured him. “And since you were kind to me, there’s no reason not to be the same to you. The more so if you truly desire to change your ways.”

  “I do. Makin’ just one exception.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I’m goin’ to find Clemspool.”

  “But how?”

  “First I was in such a fit, I didn’t know wot to do. Then I got to thinkin’ ’ard. Clemspool made a friend on that boat. Name of Shagwell. An American. Said he came from a place called Lowell.”

  “Lowell!” Mr. Drabble caught his breath.

  “It’s slim pickin’s, but I’m ’opin’ that Shagwell fellow might know where Clemspool went.”

  “But, Mr. Grout,” the actor said sternly, “I am bound to ask: Do you intend to do Mr. Clemspool some harm?”

  Mr. Grout grimaced. “I’d like to. I would. Only as I swore a sacred vow to change me ways, I won’t. But I do want that money so I can ’and it back to that there boy. As for Clemspool, I’m goin’ to let the whole world know ’e’s a scoundrel!”

  “Well then, sir,” Mr. Drabble said, “as we have become friends, we shall go together to this place called Lowell. The boy too.”

  For Maura, Patrick, and Bridy, it was a long night huddled together, attempting vainly to keep warm, on the Long Wharf. None slept well, Maura hardly at all. More than once she found herself wishing they were on the ship.

  Suppose their father did not come. Maura had never considered such an appalling possibility before. How could she have? All they’d endured was for the sake of this reunion.

  How long, Maura asked herself, should they wait on the wharf for him? One day? Two? What if he came on the third? What if he’d never received Father Mahoney’s letter informing him of their sailing? Might it not be better then for them to go to Lowell, the place from which Da had written? But where was Lowell? How did one get there? Could one walk?

  No, Maura told herself firmly, Da would come. To think otherwise was a sin. Yet as the hours passed, the impossible seemed more and more likely.

  Maura wished she had not sent Mr. Drabble off the way she’d done. Had he not — for all his faults — helped them often? He’d deserved better.

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the girl prayed silently, help us in our hour of need.

  Feeling pangs of hunger, she checked to see how much money she still had. What, she wondered, would a few English pennies buy in America? Very little, she supposed. “Oh, Da,” she cried out softly, “where are you!”

  From time to time she looked at Patrick and Bridy, both, for the moment, sleeping. She told herself that — no matter what — she would care for them. They were in America. There was no going back.

  As the sky brightened to gray, Patrick stirred, opened his eyes, stretched, and looked about. They were the only ones on the wharf. “Has there been any sign of Da at all?”

  “Not yet,” his sister replied, struggling not to give voice to the panic she felt.

  “Maura,” Patrick asked in a low voice, as if there was danger in speaking too loudly, “what would you be thinking happened to him?”

  Trying to sound hopeful, Maura dredged up a bit of a conversation she had overheard. “Sure, but someone on the ship was saying that storm blew us in sooner than expected. Maybe that’s all it is. You mustn’t be d
oubting, Patrick O’Connell, not for a moment. He’ll be coming along today, tomorrow latest. There’s naught to do but stay where we are. As for being hungry, sure, we’ve been that before.”

  “Is there nothing to eat then?” her brother asked.

  “This is all we have,” Maura said, holding out the English pennies in the palm of her hand. “I’m thinking we’d better see what the day brings before we use them. You might get some more sleep.”

  “I’m tired of sleeping,” Patrick complained.

  “Well then, you sit and watch. For my part, I could use some rest.”

  Though too tense to really sleep, Maura lay down and closed her eyes. Here was, in any case, a way to escape Patrick’s painful questions.

  The boy took measure of where they were. Nearby, floating quietly, lay the Robert Peel. The once bustling ship was deserted. Puffed-up gulls strutted about as if claiming ownership.

  Boston lay in shadow. Only the golden dome at the crest of Beacon Hill caught the early light, creating the illusion of fire. In the air there wafted a smell of bread baking. Patrick’s stomach churned.

  The sky brightened to blue. Patrick began to see a few people — they looked like dockworkers — straggle onto the wharf. One of them caught Patrick’s attention. He was ambling along, hands deep in his pockets, as if he had all the time in the world. At first Patrick thought him old — he progressed so slowly — but as he drew nearer, Patrick realized he was a young man. Moreover, the way he was dressed — loose jacket, baggy trousers, blue cloth tied about his neck, cap perched on the back of his head — suggested nothing of either sea or docks.

  The fellow seemed to be looking for something. When he reached the Robert Peel, he halted, yanked his hands out of his pockets, turned hastily, and began to survey the wharf.

  Patrick realized that the young man was now staring right at them. He wished he’d turn elsewhere.

  Instead, the young man drew nearer, inching toward them a few steps at a time, pausing, turning about only to come on again.

  Patrick gave a poke to Maura. She sat up instantly.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “There’s a man staring at us,” Patrick whispered.