“Hollo! in the lighter there—I say, you lighter boy!” were words I heard, as I was pacing the deck of the vessel in deep cogitation Tom and his father were both in the cabin; there could be no doubt but that they were addressed to me. I looked up, and perceived the grinning, stupid, sneering face of the young clerk, Gubbins. “Why don’t you answer when you’re called to, heh?” continued the numbskull. “You’re wanted up here! Come up directly.”
“Who wants me?” replied I, reddening with anger.
“What’s that to you? Do you mean to obey my order or not?”
“No, I do not,” replied I; “I’m not under the orders of such a fool, thank God; and if you come within my reach, I’ll try if I can’t break your head, thick as it is, as well as your master’s.”
The lout disappeared, and I continued to pace up and down.
As I afterwards discovered, the message was from Mrs Drummond, who requested to speak to me. Sarah had communicated the real facts of my case, and Mrs Drummond had been convinced that what I had said was correct. She had talked with her husband; she pointed out to him that my conduct under Mr Tomkins had been so exemplary that there must have been some reason for so sudden a change. Sarah had gone down into the counting-house, and obtained the invoice which the senior clerk had torn up. The correctness of it established the fact of one part of my assertions, and that nothing but malice could have warranted its having been destroyed. Mr Drummond felt more than he chose to acknowledge; he was now aware that he had been too precipitate; even my having refused the money assumed a different appearance; he was puzzled and mortified. Few people like to acknowledge that they have been in error. Mr Drummond, therefore, left his wife to examine further into the matter, and gave her permission to send for me. The message given, and the results of it have been stated. The answer returned was that I would not come, and that I had threatened to break the clerk’s head as well as that of Mr Drummond; for although the scoundrel knew very well that in making use of the word “master,” I referred to the senior clerk, he thought it proper to substitute that of Mr Drummond. The effect of this reply may easily be imagined. Sarah was astonished, Mrs Drummond shocked, and Mr Drummond was almost pleased to find that he could not have been in the wrong. Thus was the breach made even wider than before, and all communication broken off. Much depends in this world upon messages being correctly given.
In half-an-hour we had hauled out of the tier and dropped down to the American schooner, to take out a cargo of flour, which old Tom had directions to land at the Battersea wharf; so that I was, for the time, removed from the site of my misfortune. I cannot say that I felt happy, but I certainly felt glad that I was away. I was reckless to a degree that was insupportable. I had a heavy load on my mind which I could not shake off—a prey upon my spirits—a disgust at almost everything. How well do I recollect with what different feelings I looked upon the few books which Mr Drummond and the Dominie had given me to amuse my leisure hours. I turned from them with contempt, and thought I would never open them again. I felt as if all ties were now cut off, and that I was again wedded to the Thames; my ideas, my wishes, extended no farther, and I surveyed the river and its busy scene as I did before I had been taken away from it, as if all my energies, all my prospects were in future to be bounded by its shores. In the course of four-and-twenty hours a revulsion had taken place, which again put me on the confines of barbarism.
My bargemates were equally dull as I was; they were too partial to me, and had too much kindness of heart, not to feel my situation, and anger at the injustice with which I had been treated. Employment, however, for a time relieved our melancholy thoughts. Our cargo was on board of the lighter, and we were again tiding it through the bridges.
We dropped our anchor above Putney Bridge a little after twelve o’clock, and young Tom, with the wish of amusing me, proposed that we should go on shore and walk. “Ah! do my lads, do—it will do you good, Jacob; no use moping here a whole tide. I’ll take care of the ’barkey. Mind you make the boat well fast, and take the sculls into the public-house there. I’ll have the supper under weigh when you come back, and then we’ll have a night on’t. It’s a poor heart that never rejoices; and, Tom, take a bottle on shore, get it filled, and bring it off with you. Here’s the money. But I say, Tom, honour bright.”
“Honour bright, father;” and to do Tom justice, he always kept his promise, especially after the word had passed of “honour bright.” Had there been gallons of spirits under his charge he would not have tasted a drop after that pledge.
“Haul up the boat, Jacob, quick,” said Tom, as his father went into the cabin to fetch an empty bottle. Tom hastened down below forward and brought up an old gun, which he put under the stern sheets before his father came out on the deck. We then received the bottle from him, and Tom called out for the dog Tommy.
“Why, you’re not going to take the dog. What’s the use of that? I want him here to keep watch with me,” said old Tom.
“Pooh! father; why can’t you let the poor devil have a run on shore? He wants to eat grass, I am sure, for I watched him this day or two. We shall be back before dark.”
“Well, well, just as you please, Tom.” Tommy jumped into the boat, and away we went.
“And now, Tom, what are you after?” said I, as soon as we were ten yards from the lighter.
“A’ter, Jacob, going to have a little shooting on Wimbledon Common; but father can’t bear to see a gun in my hand, because I once shot my old mother. I did pepper her, sure enough; her old flannel petticoat was full of shot, but it was so thick that it saved her. Are you anything of a shot?”
“Never fired a gun in my life.”
“Well, then, we’ll fire in turns, and toss up, if you like, for first shot.”
We landed, carried the sculls up to the public-house, and left the bottle to be filled, and then, with Tommy bounding before us, and throwing about his bushy tail with delight, ascended Putney Hill, and arrived at the Green Man public-house, at the corner of Wimbledon Common. “I wonder where green men are to be found?” observed Tom, laughing; “I suppose they live in the same country with the blue dogs my father speaks about sometimes. Now, then, its time to load.”
The bowl of a tobacco pipe, full of powder, was then inserted, with an equal dose of shot, and all being ready we were soon among the furze. A half penny decided it was my first shot, and fate further decided that a water-wagtail should be the mark. I took good aim, as I thought, at least I took sufficient time, for I followed him with the muzzle of the gun for three or four minutes at least, as he ran to and fro; at last I fired. Tommy barked with delight, and the bird flew away. “I think I must have hit it,” said I; “I saw it wag its tail.”
“More proof of a miss than a hit,” replied Tom. “Had you hit it he’d never have wagged his tail again.”
“Never mind,” said I, “better luck next time.”
Tom then knocked a blackbird off a furze bush, and loading the gun, handed it to me. I was more successful than before; a cock sparrow, three yards distant, yielded to the prowess of my arm, and I never felt more happy in my life than in this first successful attempt at murder.
Gaily did we trudge over the common, sometimes falling in with gravel-pits half full of water, at others bogs and swampy plains, which obliged us to make a circuit. The gun was fired again and again; but our game-bag did not fill very fast. However, if we were not quite so well pleased when we missed as when we hit, Tommy was, every shot being followed up with a dozen bounds, and half a minute’s barking. At last we began to feel tired, and agreed to repose a while in a cluster of furze bushes. We sat down, pulled out our game, and spread it in a row before us. It consisted of two sparrows, one greenfinch, one blackbird, and three tomtits. All of a sudden we heard a rustling in the furze, and then a loud squeal. It was the dog, who, scenting something, had forced its way into the bush, and had caught a hare, which having been wounded in the loins by some other sportsman, had dragged itself there to die. In a minute we had taken possession of it, much to the annoyance of Tommy, who seemed to consider that there was no co-partnership in the concern, and would not surrender his prize until after sundry admonitory kicks. When we had fairly beaten him off we were in an ecstasy of delight. We laid the animal out between us, and were admiring it from the ear to the tip of his tail, when we were suddenly saluted with a voice close to us. “Oh, you blam’d young poachers, so I’ve caught you, have I?” We looked up, and beheld the common-keeper. “Come—come along with me; we’ve a nice clink at Wandsworth to lock you up in. I’ve been looking a’rter you some time. Hand your gun here.”
“I should rather think not,” replied I. “The gun belongs to us, and not to you;” and I caught up the gun, and presented the muzzle at him.
“What! do you mean to commit murder? Why, you young villains!”
“Do you want to commit a robbery?” retorted I, fiercely; “because if you do, I mean to commit murder. Then I shoot him. Tom.”
“No, Jacob, no; you mustn’t shoot men,” replied Tom, who perceived that I was in a humour to keep my word with the common-keeper. “Indeed, you can’t,” continued he, whispering to me; “the gun’s not loaded.”
“Do you mean to refuse to give me up your gun?” repeated the man.
“Yes I do,” replied I, cocking the lock; “so keep off.”
“Oh! you young reprobates—you’ll come to the gallows before long, that’s certain. Do you refuse to come with me?”
“I should rather think we do,” replied I.
“You refuse, do you? Recollect I’ve caught you in the fact, poaching, with a dead hare in your possession.”
“Well, it’s no use crying about it. What’s done can’t be helped,” replied I.
“Don’t you know that all the game, and all the turf, and all the bog, and all the gravel, and all the furze on this common belong to the Right Honourable Earl Spencer?”
“And all the blackbirds, and all the greenfinches, and all the sparrows, and all the tomtits too, I suppose?” replied I.
“To be sure they do—and I’m common-keeper. Now you’ll give me up that hare immediately.”
“Look you,” replied Tom, “we didn’t kill that hare, the dog caught it, and it is his property. We sha’n’t interfere in the matter. If Tommy chooses to let you have it, well and good. Here, Tommy, this here gentleman says,” (and Tom pointed to the keeper) “that this hare,” (and Tom pointed to the hare) “is not yours; now will you ‘watch it,’ or let him have it?”
At the word ‘watch it,’ Tommy laid down with his fore-paws over the hare, and showing a formidable set of ivories, looked fiercely at the man, and growled.
“You see what he says; now you may do as you please,” continued Tom, addressing the man.
“Yes—very well—you’ll come to the gallows, I see that; but I’ll just go and fetch half-a-dozen men to help me, and then we’ll have you both in gaol.”
“Then, be smart,” replied I, jumping up and levelling the gun. Tommy jumped up also to fly at the man, but Tom caught him by the neck and restrained him. The common-keeper took to his heels, and as soon as he was out of gun-shot, turned round, shook his fist, and then hastened away to obtain the reinforcement he desired.
“I wish the gun had been loaded,” said I.
“Why, Jacob, what’s come over you? Would you have fired at him? The man is only doing his duty—we have no business here.”
“I think otherwise,” replied I. “A hare on a common is as much mine as Lord Spencer’s. A common belongs to everybody.”
“That’s my opinion, too; but, nevertheless, if he gets hold of us, he’ll have us in gaol; and therefore I propose we make off as fast as we can in the opposite way to which he is gone.”
We started accordingly, and as the keeper proceeded in the direction of Wandsworth, we took the other direction; but it so happened that on turning round, after a quarter of an hour’s walk, we perceived the man coming back with three or four others. “We must run for it,” cried Tom, “and then hide ourselves.” After ten minutes’ hard run we descended into a hollow and swampy place, looking round to see if they could perceive us, and finding that they were not in sight, we plunged into a thick cluster of furze bushes, which completely concealed us. Tommy followed us, and there we lay. “Now they never will find us,” said Tom, “if I can only keep the dog quiet. Lie down, Tommy. Watch, and lie down.” The dog appeared to understand what was required; he lay between us perfectly still.
We had remained there about half-an-hour when we heard voices. I motioned to Tom to give me the powder to load the gun, but he refused. The voices came nearer; Tommy gave a low growl. Tom held his mouth with his hands. At last they were close to the bushes, and we heard the common-keeper say, “They never went over the hill, that’s for certain, the little wagrants; they can’t be far off—they must be down in the hollow. Come along.”
“But I’m blessed if I’m not up to my knees in the bog,” cried one of the men; “I’ll go no further down, dang me!”
“Well, then let’s try the side of the bog,” replied the keeper, “I’ll show you the way.” And the voices retreated, fortunately for us, for there had been a continual struggle between us and the dog for the last minute, I holding his forepaws, and Tom jamming up his mouth. We were now all quiet again, but dare not leave our hiding-place.
We remained there for half-an-hour, when it became nearly dark, and the sky, which had been quite clear when we set out, clouded over. Tom put up his head, looked all round, and perceiving nobody, proposed that we should return as fast as we could; to which I agreed. But we were scarcely clear of the furze in which we had been concealed when a heavy fall of snow commenced, which, with the darkness, prevented us from distinguishing our way. Every minute the snow-storm increased, the wind rose, and hurled the flakes into our faces until we were blinded. Still we made good way against it, and expected every minute to be on the road, after which our task would be easy. On we walked in silence, I carrying the gun, Tom with the hare over his shoulder, and Tommy at our heels. For upwards of an hour did we tread our way through the furze, but could find no road. Above us all was dark as pitch; the wind howled; our clothes were loaded with snow; and we began to feel no inconsiderable degree of fatigue.
At last, quite tired out, we stopped. “Tom,” said I, “I’m sure we’ve not kept a straight course. The wind was on our starboard side, and our clothes were flaked with snow on that side, and now you see we’ve got it in our quarter. What the devil shall we do?”
“We must go on till we fall in with something, at all events,” replied Tom.
“And I expect that will be a gravel-pit,” replied I; “but never mind, ‘better luck next time.’ I only wish I had that rascal of a common-keeper here. Suppose we turn back again, and keep the wind on the starboard side of us as before; we must pitch upon something at last.”
We did so, but our difficulties increased every moment; we floundered in the bogs, we tumbled over the stumps of the cut furze, and had I not caught bold of Tom as he was sliding down he would have been at the bottom of a gravel-pit. This obliged us to alter our course, and we proceeded for a quarter of an hour, in another direction, until, worn out with cold and fatigue, we began to despair.
“This will never do, Tom,” said I, as the wind rose and roared with double fury. “I think we had better get into the furze, and wait till the storm is over.”
Tom’s teeth chattered with the cold; but before he could reply, they chattered with fear. We heard a loud scream overhead. “What was that?” cried he. I confess that I was as much alarmed as Tom. The scream was repeated, and it had an unearthly sound. It was no human voice—it was between a scream and a creak. Again it was repeated, and carried along with the gale. I mustered up courage sufficient to look up to where the sound proceeded from; but the darkness was so intense, and the snow blinded me so completely, that I could see nothing. Again and again did the dreadful sound ring in our ears, and we remained fixed and motionless with horror; even the dog crouched at our feet trembling. We spoke not a word—neither of us moved; the gun had fallen from my hand; the hare lay at Tom’s feet; we held each other’s hand in silence, and there we remained for more than a quarter of an hour, every moment more and more sinking under the effects of cold, fatigue, and horror. Fortunately for us the storm, in which had it continued much longer we should, in all probability, have perished, was by that time over; the snow ceased to fall; the clouds were rolled away to leeward; and a clear sky, bespangled with a thousand twinkling lights, roused us from our state of bodily and mental suffering. The first object which caught my eye was a post within two yards of us. I looked at it, followed it up with my eyes, and, to my horror, beheld a body suspended and swinging in chains over our heads.
As soon as I recovered from the shock which the first view occasioned, I pointed it out to Tom, who had not yet moved. He looked up, started back, and fell over the dog—jumped up again, and burst out into as loud a laugh as his frozen jaws would permit. “It’s old Jerry Abershaw,” said he, “I know him well, and now I know where we are.” This was the case; Abershaw had, about three years before, been hung in chains on Wimbledon Common; and the unearthly sound we had heard was the creaking of the rusty iron as the body was swung to-and-fro by the gale. “All’s right, Jacob,” said Tom, looking up at the brilliant sky, and then taking up the hare, “we’ll be on the road in five minutes.” I shouldered the gun, and off we set. “By the Lord, that rascally common-keeper was right,” continued Tom, as we renewed our steps; “he prophesied we should come to the gallows before long, and so we have. Well, this has been a pretty turn out. Father will be in a precious stew.”
“Better luck next time, Tom,” replied I; “it’s all owing to that turf-and-bog rascal. I wish we had him here.”
“Why, what would you do with him?”
“Take down old Abershaw, and hang him up in his place, as sure as my name’s Jacob.”
We soon recovered the road, and in half-an-hour we were at Putney Bridge; cold, wet, and tired, but not so bad as when we were stationary under the gallows; the quick walking restored the circulation. Tom went in for the bottle of spirits, while I went for the sculls and carried them down to the boat, which was high and dry, and nearly up to the thwarts with snow. When Tom joined me, he appeared with two bottles under his arms. “I have taken another upon tick, Jacob,” said he, “for I’m sure we want it, and so will father say, when he hears our story.” We launched our boat, and in a couple of minutes were close to the lighter, on the deck of which stood old Tom.
“Boat ahoy! is that you, lads?” cried he.
“Yes, father, all’s right,” replied Tom, as we laid in our oars.
“Thank God!” replied the old man. “Boys, boys, how you frightened me? where have you been? I thought you had met with some disaster. How have I been peeping through the snow-storm these last two hours, watching for the boat, and I’m as wet as a shag and as cold as charity. What has been the matter? Did you bring the bottle, Tom?”
“Yes, father; brought two, for we shall want them to-night if we go without for a week; but we must all get on dry rigging as fast as possible, and then you shall have the story of our cruise.”
In a few minutes we had changed our wet clothes and were seated at the cabin-table, eating our supper, and narrating our adventures to the old man. Tommy, poor fellow, had his share, and now lay snoring at our feet, as the bottles and pannikins were placed upon the little table.
“Come, Jacob, a drop will do you good,” said old Tom, filling me one of the pannikins. “A’ter all, it’s much better being snug here in this little cabin than shivering with fear and cold under old Abershaw’s gallows; and Tom, you scamp, if ever you go gunning again I’ll disinherit you.”
“What have you got to leave, father, except your wooden legs?” replied Tom. “Your’s would be but a wooden-leg-acy.”
“How do you know but what I can ‘post the coal?’”
“So you will, if I boil a pot o’ ’tatoes with your legacy—but it will only be char-coal.”
“Well, I believe you are about right, Tom; still, somehow or other, the old woman always picks out a piece or two of gold when I’m rather puzzled how to raise the wind. I never keeps no ’count with her. If I follow my legs before she, I hope the old soul will have saved something; for you know when a man goes to kingdom come, his pension goes with him. However, let me only hold on another five years, and then you’ll not see her want; will you, Tom?”
“No, father; I’ll sell myself to the king, and stand to be shot at, at a shilling a day, and give the old woman half.”
“Well, Tom, ’tis but natural for a man to wish to serve his country; so here’s to you, my lad, and may you never do worse! Jacob, do you think of going on board of a man-of-war?”
“I’d like to serve my apprenticeship first, and then I don’t care how soon.”
“Well, my boy, you’ll meet more fair play on board of a king’s ship than you have from those on shore.”
“I should hope so,” replied I, bitterly.
“I hope to see you a man before I die, yet, Jacob. I shall very soon be laid up in ordinary—my toes pain me a good deal lately!”
“Your toes!” cried Tom and I both at once.
“Yes, boys; you may think it odd, but sometimes I feel them just as plain as if they were now on, instead of being long ago in some shark’s maw. At nights I has the cramp in them till it almost makes me halloo out with pain. It’s a hard thing, when one has lost the sarvice of his legs, that all the feelings should remain. The doctor says as how it’s narvous. Come, Jacob, shove in your pannikin. You seem to take it more kindly than you did.”
“Yes,” replied I, “I begin to like grog now.” The now, however, might be comprehended within the space of the last twenty-four hours. My depressed spirits were raised with the stimulus, and for a time I got rid of the eternal current of thought which pressed upon my brain.
“I wonder what your old gentleman, the Dominie, as you call him, thought, after he got on shore again,” said old Tom. “He seemed to be mighty cut up. I suppose you’ll give him a hail, Jacob?”
“No,” replied I, “I shall not go near him, nor any one else, if I can help it. Mr Drummond may think I wish to make it up again. I’ve done with the shore. I only wish I knew what is to become of me; for you know I am not to serve in the lighter with you.”
“Suppose Tom and I look out for another craft, Jacob? I care nothing for Mr Drummond. He said t’other day I was a drunken old swab—for which, with my sarvice to him, he lies. A drunken fellow is one who can’t, for the soul of him, keep from liquor when he can get it, and who’s overtaken before he is aware of it. Now that’s not the case with me; I keep sober when there’s work to be done; and when I knows that everything is safe under hatches, and no fear of nothing, why then I gets drunk like a rational being, with my eyes open—’cause why?—’cause I chooses.”
“That’s exactly my notion of the thing,” observed Tom, draining his pannikin, and handing it over to his father for a fresh supply.
“Mind you keep to that notion, Tom, when you gets in the king’s sarvice, that’s all; or you’ll be sure to have your back scratched, which I understand is no joke after all. Yet I do remember once, in a ship I was in, when half-a-dozen fellows were all fighting who should be flogged.”
“Pray give us that yarn, father; but before you begin just fill my pannikin. I shoved it over half-an-hour ago, just by way of a hint.”
“Well then,” said old Tom, pouring out some spirits into Tom’s pannikin, “it was just as follows. It was when the ship was lying at anchor in Bermuda harbour, that the purser sent a breaker of spirits on shore to be taken up to some lady’s house whom he was very anxious to splice, and I suppose that he found a glass of grog helped the matter. Now, there were about twenty of the men who had liberty to go on shore, to stretch their limbs—little else could they do, poor fellows for the first lieutenant looked sharp after their kits to see that they did not sell any of their rigging; and as for money, we had been five years without touching a farthing of pay, and I don’t suppose there was a matter of threepence among the men before the mast. However, liberty’s liberty after all; and if they couldn’t go ashore and get glorious, rather than not go on shore at all, they went ashore and kept sober perforce. I do think, myself, it’s a very bad thing to keep the seamen without a farthing for so long—for you see a man who will be very honest with a few shillings in his pocket is often tempted to help himself, just for the sake of getting a glass or two of grog, and the temptation’s very great, that’s sartain, ’ticularly in a hot climate, when the sun scorches you, and the very ground itself is so heated that you can hardly bear the naked foot to it. (This has been corrected; the men have for some time received a portion of their pay on foreign stations, and this portion has been greatly increased during Sir James Graham’s administration.) But to go on. The yawl was ordered on shore for the liberty men, and the purser gives this breaker, which was at least half full, and I dare say there might be three gallons in it, under my charge as coxswain, to deliver to madam at the house. Well, as soon as we landed, I shoulders the breaker, and starts with it up the hill.
“‘What have you there, Tom?’ said Bill Short.
“‘What I wish I could share with you, Bill,’ says I; ‘it’s some of old Nipcheese’s eights, that he has sent on shore to bowse his jib up with, with his sweetheart.’
“‘I’ve seen the madam,’ said Holmes to me—for you see all the liberty men were walking up the hill at the same time—‘and I’d rather make love to the breaker than to her. She’s as fat as an ox, as broad as she’s long, built like a Dutch schuyt, and as yellow as a nabob.’
“‘But old Tummings knows what he’s about,’ said a Scotch lad of the name of M’Alpine; ‘they say she has lots of gold dust, more ducks and ingons, and more inches of water in her tank than any on the island.’
“You see, boys, Bermuda be a queer sort of place, and water very scarce; all they get there is a Godsend, as it comes from Heaven; and they look sharp for the rain, which is collected in large tanks, and an inch or two more of water in the tank is considered a great catch. I’ve often heard the ladies there talking for a shower:—
“‘Good morning, marm. How do you do this fine morning?’
“‘Pretty well, I tank you, marm. Charming shower hab last night.’
“‘Yes, so all say; but me not very lucky. Cloud not come over my tank. How many inches of water you get last night, marm?’
“‘I get good seven inches, and I tink a little bit more, which make me very happy.’
“‘Me no so lucky, marm; so help me God, me only get four inches of water in my tank; and dat nothing.’
“Well, but I’ve been yawing again, so now to keep my course. As soon as I came to the house I knocked at the door, and a little black girl opens the jalousies, and put her finger to her thick lips.
“‘No make noise; missy sleep.’
“‘Where am I to put this?’
“‘Put down there; by-and-by I come fetch it;’ and then she closed the jalousies, for fear her mistress should be woke up, and she get a hiding, poor devil. So I puts the breaker down at the door, and walks back to the boat again. Now, you see, these liberty men were all by when I spoke to the girl, and seeing the liquor left with no one to guard it, the temptation was too strong for them. So they looked all about them, and then at one another, and caught one another’s meaning by the eye; but they said nothing. ‘I’ll have no hand in it,’ at last says one, and walked away. ‘Nor I,’ said another, and walked away too. At last all of them walked away except eight, and then Bill Short walks up to the breaker and says—
“‘I won’t have no hand in it, either;’ but he gave the breaker a kick, which rolls it away two or three yards from the door.
“‘Nor more will I,’ said Holmes, giving the breaker another kick, which rolled it out in the road. So they all went on, without having a hand in it, sure enough, till they had kicked the breaker down the hill to the beach. Then they were at a dead stand, as no one would spile the breaker. At last a black carpenter came by, and they offered him a glass if he would bore a hole with his gimlet, for they were determined to be able to swear, every one of them; that they had no hand in it. Well, as soon as the hole was bored, one of them borrowed a couple of little mugs from a black woman, who sold beer, and then they let it run, the black carpenter shoving one mug under as soon as the other was full, and they drinking as fast as they could. Before they had half finished, more of the liberty men came down; I suppose they scented the good stuff from above as a shark does anything in the water, and they soon made a finish of it; and when it was all finished, they were all drunk, and made sail for a cruise, that they might not be found too near the empty breaker. Well, a little before sunset I was sent on shore with the boat to fetch off the liberty men, and the purser takes this opportunity of getting ashore to see his madam, and the first thing he falls athwart of is his own empty breaker.
“‘How’s this?’ says he; ‘didn’t you take this breaker up as I ordered you?’
“‘Yes, sir,’ replied I, ‘I did, and gave it in charge to the little back thing; but madam was asleep, and the girl did not allow me to put it inside the door.’ At that he began to storm, and swore that he’d find out the malefactors, as he termed the liberty men, who had emptied his breaker; and away he went to the house. As soon as he was gone we got hold of the breaker, and made a bull of it.”
“How did you manage that?” inquired I.
“Why, Jacob, a bull means putting a quart or two of water into a cask which has had spirits in it; and what with the little that may be left, and what has soaked in the wood, if you roll it and shake it well, it generally turns out pretty fair grog. At all events its always better than nothing. Well, to go on—but suppose we fill up again and take a fresh departure, as this is a tolerably long yarn, and I must wet the threads, or they may chance to break.”
Our pannikins, which had been empty, were all replenished, and then old Tom proceeded.
“It was a long while before we could pick up the liberty men, who were reeling about every corner of the town, and quite dark before I came on board. The first lieutenant was on deck, and had no occasion to ask me why I waited so long, when he found they were all lying in the stern sheets. ‘Where the devil could they have picked up the liquor?’ said he, and then he ordered the master-at-arms to keep them under the half-deck till they were sober. The next morning the purser comes off, and makes his complaint on the quarter-deck as how somebody had stolen his liquor. The first lieutenant reports to the captain, and the captain orders up all the men who came off tipsy.
“‘Which of you took the liquor?’ said he. They all swore that they had no hand in it. ‘Then how did you get tipsy? Come now, Mr Short, answer me; you came off beastly drunk—who gave you the liquor?’
“‘A black fellow, sir,’ replied Short; which was true enough, as the mugs were filled by the black carpenter, and handed by him.
“Well, they all swore the same, and then the captain got into a rage, and ordered them all to be put down on the report. The next day the hands were turned up for punishment, and the captain said, ‘Now, my lads, if you won’t tell who stole the purser’s grog, I will flog you all round. I only want to flog those who committed the theft, for it is too much to expect of seamen that they would refuse a glass of grog when offered to them.’
“Now, Short and the others had a parley together, and they had agreed how to act. They knew that the captain could not bear flogging, and was a very kind-hearted man. So Bill Short steps out, and says, touching his forelock to the captain, ‘If you please, sir, if all must be flogged if nobody will peach, I think it better to tell the truth at once. It was I who took the liquor.’
“‘Very well, then,’ said the captain; ‘strip, sir.’ So Bill Short pulls off his shirt, and is seized up. ‘Boatswain’s mate,’ said the captain, ‘give him a dozen.’
“‘Beg your honour’s pardon,’ said Jack Holmes, stepping out of the row of men brought out for punishment; ‘but I can’t bear to see an innocent man punished, and since one must be flogged, it must be the right one. It warn’t Bill Short that took the liquor; it was I.’
“‘Why, how’s this?’ said the captain; ‘didn’t you own that you took the liquor, Mr Short?’
“‘Why, yes, I did say so, ’cause I didn’t wish to see everybody flogged—but the truth’s the truth, and I had no hand in it.’
“‘Cast him loose—Holmes, you’ll strip, sir.’ Holmes stripped and was tied up. ‘Give him a dozen,’ said the captain; when out steps M’Alpine, and swore it was him, and not Holmes; and ax’d leave to be flogged in his stead. At which the captain bit his lips to prevent laughing, and then they knew all was right. So another came forward, and says it was him, and not M’Alpine; and another contradicts him again, and so on. At last the captain says, ‘One would think flogging was a very pleasant affair; you are all so eager to be tied up; but, however, I shan’t flog, to please you. I shall find out who the real culprit is, and then punish him severely. In the meantime, you keep them all on the report, Mr P—,’ speaking to the first lieutenant. ‘Depend upon it, I’ll not let you off, although I do not choose to flog innocent men.’ So they piped down, and the first lieutenant, who knew that the captain never meant to take any more notice of it, never made no inquiries, and the thing blew over. One day, a month or two after, I told the officers how it was managed, and they laughed heartily.”
We continued our carouse till a late hour, old Tom constantly amusing us with his long yarns; and that night, for the first time, I went to bed intoxicated. Old Tom and his son assisted me into my bed-place, old Tom observing, “Poor Jacob; it will do him good; his heart was heavy, and now he’ll forget it all, for a little time, at all events.”
“Well but, father, I don’t like to see Jacob drunk,” replied young Tom. “It’s not like him—it’s not worthy of him; as for you or me, it’s nothing at all; but I feel Jacob was never meant to be a toper. I never saw a lad so altered in a short time, and I expect bad will come of it when he leaves us.”
I awoke, as might be supposed, after my first debauch, with a violent headache, but I had also a fever, brought on by my previous anxiety of mind. I rose, dressed, and went on deck, where the snow was nearly a foot deep. It now froze hard, and the river was covered with small pieces of floating ice. I rubbed my burning forehead with the snow, and felt relief. For some time I assisted Tom to heave it overboard, but the fever pressed upon me, and in less than half-an-hour I could no longer stand the exertion. I sat down on the water cask, and pressed my hands to my throbbing temples.
“You are not well, Jacob?” inquired Tom, coming up to me with the shovel in his hand, and glowing with health and exercise.
“I am not, indeed, Tom,” replied I; “feel how hot I am.”
Tom went to his father, who was in the cabin, padding, with extra flannel, his stumps, to defend them from the cold, which always made him suffer much, and then led me into the cabin. It was with much difficulty I could walk; my knees trembled, and my eyesight was defective. Old Tom took my hand as I sank on the locker.
“Do you think that it was taking too much last night?” inquired Tom of his father.
“There’s more here than a gallon of liquor would have brought about,” replied old Tom. “No, no—I see it all. Go to bed again, Jacob.”
They put me into bed, and I was soon in a state of stupor, in which I remained until the lighter had arrived at the Brentford Wharf, and for many days afterwards.
When I recovered my senses, I found myself in bed, and Captain Turnbull sitting by my side. I had been removed to his house when the lighter had arrived at the wharf. Captain Turnbull was then talking with Mr Tomkins, the former head clerk, now in charge. Old Tom came on shore and stated the condition I was in, and Mr Tomkins having no spare bed in his house, Captain Turnbull immediately ordered me to be taken to his residence, and sent for medical advice. During the time I had remained in this state old Tom had informed Captain Turnbull, the Dominie, and Mr Tomkins of the circumstances which had occurred, and how much I had been misrepresented to Mr Drummond; and not saying a word about the affair of Wimbledon Common, or my subsequent intemperance, had given it as his opinion that ill-treatment had produced the fever. In this, I believe, he was nearly correct, although my disease might certainly have been aggravated and hastened by those two unmentioned causes. They all of them took my part, and Mr Turnbull went to London to state my condition to Mr Drummond, and also to remonstrate at his injustice. Circumstances had since occurred which induced Mr Drummond to lend a ready ear to my justification; but the message I had sent was still an obstacle. This, however, was partly removed by the equivocating testimony of the young clerk, when he was interrogated by Captain Turnbull and Mr Drummond; and wholly so by the evidence of young and old Tom, who, although in the cabin, had overheard the whole of the conversation; and Mr Drummond desired Captain Turnbull to inform me, as soon as I recovered, that all was forgotten and forgiven. It might have been on his part, but not on mine; and when Captain Turnbull told me so, with the view of raising my spirits, I shook my head as I lay on the pillow. As the reader will have observed, the feeling roused in me by the ill-usage I had received was a vindictive one—one that must have been deeply implanted in my heart, although, till then, it had never been roused into action, and now, once roused, was not to be suppressed. That it was based on pride was evident, and with it my pride was raised in proportion. To the intimation of Captain Turnbull, I, therefore, gave a decided dissent. “No, sir, I cannot return to Mr Drummond: that he was kind to me, and that I owe much to his kindness, I readily admit; and now that he has acknowledged his error in supposing me capable of such ingratitude, I heartily forgive him; but I cannot, and will not, receive any more favours from him. I cannot put myself in a situation to be again mortified as I have been. I feel I should no longer have the same pleasure in doing my duty as I once had, and I never could live under the same roof with those who at present serve him. Tell him all this, and pray tell little Sarah how grateful I feel no her for all her kindness to me, and that I shall always think of her with regret, at being obliged to leave her.” And at the remembrance of little Sarah I burst into tears, and sobbed on my pillow. Captain Turnbull, whether he rightly estimated my character, or fell convinced that I had made up my mind, did not renew the subject.
“Well, Jacob,” replied he, “we’ll not talk of that any more. I’ll give your messages just in your own words. Now, take your draught, and try to get a little sleep.”
I complied with this request, and nothing but weakness now remaining, I rapidly regained my strength, and with my strength, my feelings of resentment increased in proportion. Nothing but the very weak state that I was in when Captain Turnbull spoke to me would have softened me down to give the kind message that I did; but my vindictive mind was subdued by disease, and better feelings predominated. The only effect this had was to increase my animosity against the other parties who were the cause of my ill-treatment, and I vowed that they, at least, should one day repent their conduct.
The Dominie called upon me the following Sunday. I was dressed and looking through the window when he arrived. The frost was now intense, and the river was covered with large masses of ice, and my greatest pleasure was to watch them as they floated down with the tide; “Thou hast had a second narrow escape, my Jacob,” said he, after some preliminary observations. “Once again did death (pallida mors) hover over thy couch; but thou hast arisen, and thy fair fame is again established. When wilt thou be able to visit Mr Drummond, and be able to thank him for his kindness?”
“Never, sir,” replied I; “I will never again enter Mr Drummond’s house.”
“Nay, Jacob, this savoureth of enmity. Are not we all likely to be deceived—all likely to do wrong? Did not I, even I, in thy presence, backslide into intemperance and folly? Did not I disgrace myself before my pupil—and shalt thou, in thy tender years, harbour ill-will against one who had cherished thee when thou wert destitute, and who was deceived with regard to thee by the base and evil-speaking?”
“I am obliged to Mr Drummond for all his kindness, sir,” replied I; “but I never wish to enter his house. I was turned out of it, and never will again go into it.”
“Eheu! Jacobe, thou art in error; it is our duty to forgive as we hope to be forgiven.”
“I do forgive, sir, if that is what is requested: but I cannot, and will not, accept of further favours.”
The Dominie urged in vain, and left me. Mr Tomkins also came, and argued the point without success. I was resolved. I was determined to be independent; and I looked to the river as my father, mother, home, and everything. As soon as my health was reinstated, Captain Turnbull one day came to me. “Jacob,” said he, “the lighter has returned: and I wish to know if you intend to go on board again, and afterwards go into the vessel into which Mr Drummond proposes to send you.”
“I will go into no vessel through Mr Drummond’s means or interest,” replied I.
“What will you do then?” replied he.
“I can always enter on board a man-of-war,” replied I, “if the worst comes to the worst; but if I can serve out my apprenticeship on the river, I should prefer it.”
“I rather expected this answer, Jacob, from what you have said to me already; and I have been trying if I cannot help you to something which may suit you. You don’t mind being obliged to me?”
“O, no; but promise you will never doubt me—never accuse me.” My voice faltered, and I could say no more.
“No, my lad, that I will not; I know you, as I think, pretty well; and the heart that feels a false accusation as yours does is sure to guard against committing what you are so angry at being accused of. Now, Jacob, listen to me. You know old deaf Stapleton, whose wherry we have so often pulled up and down the river? I have spoken to him to take you as his help, and he has consented. Will you like to go? He has served his time, and has a right to take a ’prentice.”
“Yes,” replied I, “with pleasure; and with more pleasure, from expecting to see you often.”
“O, I promise you all my custom, Jacob,” replied he, laughing. “We’ll often turn old Stapleton out, and have a row together. Is it agreed?”
“It is,” replied I; “and many thanks to you.”
“Well, then, consider it settled. Stapleton has a very good room, and all that’s requisite on shore, at Fulham. I have seen his place, and I think you will be comfortable.”
I did not know at the time how much Captain Turnbull had been my friend—that he had made Stapleton take better lodgings, and had made up the difference to him, besides allowing him a trifle per week, and promising him a gratuity occasionally, if I were content with my situation. In a few days I had removed all my clothes to Stapleton’s, had taken my leave of Mr Turnbull, and was established as an apprentice to a waterman on the Thames. The lighter was still at the wharf when I left, and my parting with old Tom and his son was equally and sincerely felt on both sides.
“Jacob,” said old Tom, “I likes your pride after all, ’cause why, I think you have some right to be proud; and the man who only asks fair play, and no favour always will rise in this world. But look you, Jacob, there’s sometimes a current ’gainst a man that no one can make head against; and if so be that should be your case for a time, recollect the old house, the old woman, and old Tom, and there you’ll always find a hearty welcome, and a hearty old couple who’ll share with you what they have, be it good, bad, or indifferent. Here’s luck to you, my boy; and recollect, I means to go to the expense of painting the sides of my craft blue, and then you’ll always know her as she creeps up and down the river.”
“And Jacob,” said young Tom;—“I may be a wild one, but I’m a true one; if ever you want me in fair weather and in foul—good or bad—for fun or for mischief—for a help, or for a friend in need, through thick or thin, I’m yours, even to the gallows; and here’s my hand upon it.”
“Just like you, Tom,” observed his father; “but I know what you mean, and all’s right.”
I shook hands with them both, and we parted.
Thus did I remove from the lighter, and at once take up the profession of a waterman; I walked down to the Fulham side, where I found Stapleton at the door of the public-house, standing with two or three others, smoking his pipe. “Well, lad, so you’re chained to my wherry for two or three years; and I’m to initiate you into all the rules and regulations of the company. Now, I’ll tell you one thing, which is, d’ye see, when the river’s covered with ice, as it is just now, haul your wherry up high and dry, and smoke your pipe till the river is clear, as I do now.”
“I might have guessed that,” replied I, bawling in his ear, “without you telling me.”
“Very true; but don’t bawl in my ear quite so loud, I hears none the better for it; my ears require coaxing, that’s all.”
“Why, I thought you were as deaf as a post.”
“Yes, so I be with strangers, ’cause I don’t know the pitch of their voice; but with those about me I hear better when they speak quietly—that’s human nature. Come, let’s go home, my pipe is finished, and as there’s nothing to be done on the river, we may just as well make all tidy there.”
Stapleton had lost his wife; but he had a daughter, fifteen years old, who kept his lodgings, and did for him, as he termed it. He lived in part of some buildings leased by a boat-builder; his windows looked out on the river; and, on the first floor, a bay-window was thrown out, so that at high water the river ran under it. As for the rooms, consisting of five, I can only say that they could not be spoken of as large and small, but as small and smaller. The sitting-room was eight feet square, the two bed-rooms at the back, for himself and his daughter, just held a small bed each, and the kitchen and my room below were to match; neither were the tenements in the very best repair, the parlour especially, hanging over the river, being lop-sided, and giving you the uncomfortable idea that it would every minute fall into the stream below. Still, the builder declared that it would last many years without sinking further, and that was sufficient. At all events, they were very respectable accommodations for a waterman, and Stapleton paid for them 10 pounds per annum. Stapleton’s daughter was certainly a very well-favoured girl. She had rather a large mouth; but her teeth were very fine, and beautifully white. Her hair was auburn—her complexion very fair, her eyes were large, and of a deep blue, and from her figure, which was very good, I should have supposed her to have been eighteen, although she was not past fifteen, as I found out afterwards. There was a frankness and honesty of countenance about her, and an intellectual smile, which was very agreeable.
“Well, Mary, how do you get on?” said Stapleton, as we ascended to the sitting-room. “Here’s young Faithful come to take up with us.”
“Well, father, his bed’s all ready; and I have taken so much dirt from the room that I expect we shall be indicted for filling up the river. I wonder what nasty people lived in this house before us.”
“Very nice rooms, nevertheless; ain’t they, boy?”
“O yes, very nice for idle people; you may amuse yourself looking out on the river, or watching what floats past, or fishing with a pin at high water,” replied Mary, looking at me.
“I like the river,” replied I, gravely; “I was born on it, and hope to get my bread on it.”
“And I like this sitting-room,” rejoined Stapleton; “how mighty comfortable it will be to sit at the open window, and smoke in the summer time, with one’s jacket off!”
“At all events you’ll have no excuse for dirtying the room, father; and as for the lad, I suppose his smoking days have not come yet.”
“No,” replied I; “but my days for taking off my jacket are, I suspect.”
“O yes,” replied she, “never fear that; father will let you do all the work you please, and look on—won’t you, father?”
“Don’t let your tongue run quite so fast, Mary; you’re not over fond of work yourself.”
“No; there’s only one thing I dislike more,” replied she, “and that’s holding my tongue.”
“Well, I shall leave you and Jacob to make it out together; I am going back to the Feathers.” And old Stapleton walked down stairs, and went back to the inn, saying, as he went out, that he should be back to his dinner.
Mary continued her employment of wiping the furniture of the room with a duster for some minutes, during which I did not speak, but watched the floating ice on the river. “Well,” said Mary, “do you always talk as you do now? if so, you’ll be a very nice companion. Mr Turnbull who came to my father, told me that you was a sharp fellow, could read, write, and do everything, and that I should like you very much; but if you mean to keep it all to yourself, you might as well not have had it.”
“I am ready to talk when I have anything to talk about,” replied I.
“That’s not enough. I’m ready to talk about nothing, and you must do the same.”
“Very well,” replied I. “How old are you?”
“How old am I! O, then you consider me nothing. I’ll try hard but you shall alter your opinion, my fine fellow. However, to answer your question, I believe I’m about fifteen.”
“Not more? well, there’s an old proverb, which I will not repeat.”
“I know it, so you may save yourself the trouble, you saucy boy; but now, for your age?”
“Mine! let me see; well, I believe that I am nearly seventeen.”
“Are you really so old? well, now, I should have thought you no more than fourteen.”
This answer at first surprised me, as I was very stout and tall for my age; but a moment’s reflection told me that it was given to annoy me. A lad is as much vexed at being supposed younger than he really is as a man of a certain age is annoyed at being taken for so much older. “Pooh!” replied I; “that shows how little you know about men.”
“I wasn’t talking about men, that I know of; but still, I do know something about them. I’ve had two sweethearts already.”
“Indeed! and what have you done with them?”
“Done with them! I jilted the first for the second, because the second was better looking; and when Mr Turnbull told me so much about you, I jilted the second to make room for you: but now I mean to try if I can’t get him back again.”
“With all my heart,” replied I laughing. “I shall prove but a sorry sweetheart, for I have never made love in my life.”
“Have you ever had anybody to make love to?”
“No.”
“That’s the reason, Mr Jacob, depend upon it. All you have to do is to swear that I’m the prettiest girl in the world, that you like me better than anybody else in the world; do anything in the world that I wish you to do—spend all the money you have in the world in buying me ribbons and fairings, and then—”
“And then, what?”
“Why, then, I shall hear all you have to say, take all you have to give, and laugh at you in the bargain.”
“But I shouldn’t stand that long.”
“O, yes, you would. I’d put you out of humour, and coax you in again; the fact is, Jacob Faithful, I made my mind up, before I saw you, that you should be my sweetheart, and when I will have a thing, I will, so you may as well submit to it at once. If you don’t, as I keep the key of the cupboard, I’ll half starve you; that’s the way to tame any brute, they say. And I tell you why, Jacob, I mean that you shall be my sweetheart; it’s because Mr Turnbull told me that you knew Latin; now, tell me, what is Latin?”
“Latin is a language which people spoke in former times, but now they do not.”
“Well, then, you shall make love to me in Latin, that’s agreed.”
“And how do you mean to answer me?”
“O, in plain English, to be sure.”
“But how are you to understand me?” replied I, much amused with the conversation.
“O, if you make love properly, I shall soon understand you; I shall read the English of it in your eyes.”
“Very well, I have no objection; when am I to begin?”
“Why, directly, you stupid fellow, to be sure. What a question!”
I went close up to Mary, and repeated a few words of Latin. “Now,” says I, “look into my eyes, and see if you can translate them.”
“Something impudent, I’m sure,” replied she, fixing her blue eyes on mine.
“Not at all,” replied I, “I only asked for this,” and I snatched a kiss, in return for which I received a box on the ear, which made it tingle for five minutes. “Nay,” replied I, “that’s not fair; I did as you desired—I made love in Latin.”
“And I answered you, as I said I would, in plain English,” replied Mary, reddening up to the forehead, but directly after bursting out into a loud laugh. “Now, Mr Jacob, I plainly see that you know nothing about making love. Bless me, a year’s dangling, and a year’s pocket-money should not have given you what you have had the impudence to take in so many minutes. But it was my own fault, that’s certain, and I have no one to thank but myself. I hope I didn’t hurt you—I’m very sorry if I did; but no more making love in Latin. I’ve had quite enough of that.”
“Well, then, suppose we make friends,” replied I, holding out my hand.
“That’s what I really wished to do, although I’ve been talking so much nonsense,” replied Mary. “I know we shall like one another, and be very good friends. You can’t help feeling kind towards a girl you’ve kissed; and I shall try by kindness to make up to you for the box on the ear; so now, sit down, and let’s have a long talk. Mr Turnbull told us that he wished you to serve out your apprenticeship on the river with my father, so that, if you agree, we shall be a long while together. I take Mr Turnbull’s word, not that I can find it out yet, that you are a very good-tempered, good-looking, clever, modest lad; and as an apprentice who remains with my father must live with us, of course I had rather it should be one of that sort than some ugly, awkward brute who—”
“Is not fit to make love to you,” replied I.
“Who is not fit company for me,” replied Mary. “I want no more love from you at present. The fact is that father spends all the time he can spare from the wherry at the ale-house, smoking; and it’s very dull for me, and having nothing to do, I look out of the window, and make faces at the young men as they pass by, just to amuse myself. Now, there was no great harm in that a year or two ago; but now, you know, Jacob—”
“Well now, what then?”
“O, I’m bigger, that’s all? and what might be called sauciness in a girl may be thought something more of in a young woman. So I’ve been obliged to leave it off; but being obliged to remain home, with nobody to talk to, I never was so glad as when I heard that you were to come; so you see, Jacob, we must be friends. I daren’t quarrel with you long, although I shall sometimes, just for variety, and to have the pleasure of making it up again. Do you hear me—or what are you thinking of?”
“I’m thinking that you’re a very odd girl.”
“I dare say that I am, but how can I help that? Mother died when I was five years old, and father couldn’t afford to put me out, so he used to lock me in all day till he came home from the river; and it was not till I was seven years old, and of some use, that the door was left open. I never shall forget the day when he told me that in future he should trust me, and leave the door open. I thought I was quite a woman, and have thought so ever since. I recollect that I often peeped out, and longed to run about the world; but I went two or three yards from the door, and felt so frightened, that I ran back as fast as I could. Since that I have seldom quitted the house for an hour, and never have been out of Fulham.”
“Then you have never been at school?”
“O, no—never. I often wish that I had. I used to see the little girls coming home, as they passed our door, so merrily, with their bags from the school-house; and I’m sure, if it were only to have the pleasure of going there and back again for the sake of the run, I’d have worked hard, if for nothing else.”
“Would you like to learn to read and write?”
“Will you teach me?” replied Mary, taking me by the arm, and looking me earnestly in the face.
“Yes, I will, with pleasure,” replied I, laughing. “We will pass the evening better than making love, after all, especially if you hit so hard. How came you so knowing in those matters?”
“I don’t know,” replied Mary, smiling; “I suppose, as father says, it’s human nature, for I never learnt anything; but you will teach me to read and write?”
“I will teach you all I know myself, Mary, if you wish to learn. Everything but Latin—we’ve had enough of that.”
“Oh! I shall be so much obliged to you. I shall love you so!”
“There you are again.”
“No, no, I didn’t mean that,” replied Mary, earnestly. “I meant that—after all, I don’t know what else to say. I mean that I shall love you for your kindness, without your loving me again, that’s it.”
“I understand you; but now, Mary, as we are to be such good friends, it is necessary that your father and I should be good friends; so I must ask you what sort of a person he is, for I know but little of him, and, of course, wish to oblige him.”
“Well then, to prove to you that I’m sincere, I will tell you something; My father, in the first place, is a very good tempered sort of man. He works pretty well, but might gain more, but he likes to smoke at the public-house. All he requires of me is his dinner ready, his linen clean, and the house tidy. He never drinks too much, and is always civil spoken; but he leaves me too much alone, and talks too much about human nature, that’s all.”
“But he’s so deaf—he can’t talk to you.”
“Give me your hand—now promise—for I’m going to do a very foolish thing, which is to trust a man—promise you’ll never tell it again.”
“Well, I promise,” replied I, supposing her secret of no consequence.
“Well, then—mind—you’ve promised. Father is no more deaf than you or I.”
“Indeed!” replied I; “why, he goes by the name of Deaf Stapleton?”
“I know he does, and makes everybody believe that he is so; but it is to make money.”
“How can he make money by that?”
“There’s many people in business who go down the river, and they wish to talk of their affairs without being overheard as they go down. They always call for Deaf Stapleton: and there’s many a gentleman and lady, who have much to say to each other, without wishing people to listen—you understand me?”
“O yes, I understand—Latin!”
“Exactly—and they call for Deaf Stapleton; and by this means he gets more good fares than any other waterman, and does less work.”
“But how will he manage now that I am with him?”
“O, I suppose it will depend upon his customers; if a single person wants to go down, you will take the sculls; if they call for oars, you will both go; if he considers Deaf Stapleton only is wanted, you will remain on shore; or, perhaps, he will insist upon your being deaf too.”
“But I do not like deceit.”
“No, it’s not right; although it appears to me that there is a great deal of it. Still I should like you to sham deaf, and then tell me all that people say. It would be so funny. Father never will tell a word.”
“So far, your father, to a certain degree, excuses himself.”
“Well, I think he will soon tell you what I have now told you, but till then you must keep your promise; and now you must do as you please, as I must go down in the kitchen, and get dinner on the fire.”
“I have nothing to do,” replied I; “can I help you?”
“To be sure you can, and talk to me, which is better still. Come down and wash the potatoes for me, and then I’ll find you some more work. Well, I do think we shall be very happy.”
I followed Mary Stapleton down into the kitchen, and we were soon very busy, and very noisy, laughing, talking, blowing the fire, and preparing the dinner. By the time that her father came home we were sworn friends.
I was rather curious, after the secret confided to me by Mary Stapleton, to see how her father would behave; but when we had sat and talked some time, as he appeared to have no difficulty in answering to any observation in a common pitch of the voice, I observed to him that he was not so deaf as I thought he was.
“No, no,” replied he; “in the house I hear very well, but in the open air I can’t hear at all, if a person speaks to me two yards off. Always speak to me close to my ear in the open air, but not loud, and then I shall hear you very well.” I caught a bright glance from Mary’s blue eye, and made no answer. “This frost will hold, I’m afraid,” continued Stapleton, “and we shall have nothing to do for some days but to blow our fingers and spend our earnings; but there’s never much doing at this time of the year. The winter cuts us watermen up terribly. As for me, I smokes my pipe and thinks on human natur’; but what you are to do Jacob, I can’t tell.”
“Oh, he will teach me to read and write,” replied Mary.
“I don’t know that he shall,” replied Stapleton. “What’s the use of reading and writing to you? We’ve too many senses already, in my opinion, and if so be we have learning to boot, why then all the worse for us.”
“How many senses are there, father?”
“How many! I’m sure I can’t tell, but more than enough to puzzle us.”
“There are only five, I believe,” said I; “first, there’s hearing.”
“Well,” replied Stapleton “hearing may be useful at times; but not hearing at times is much more convenient. I make twice as much money since I lost the better part of my hearing.”
“Well, then, there’s seeing,” continued I.
“Seeing is useful at times, I acknowledge; but I knows this, that if a man could pull a young couple about the river, and not be able to see now and then, it would be many a half-crown in his pocket.”
“Well, then, now we come to tasting.”
“No use at all—only a vexation. If there was no tasting we should not care whether we ate brown bread or roast beef, drank water or XX ale; and in these hard times that would be no small saving.”
“Well, then, let me see, there’s smelling.”
“Smelling’s no use whatever. For one good smell by the river’s side there be ten nasty ones; and there is everywhere, to my conviction.”
“Which is the next, Jacob?” said Mary, smiling archly.
“Feeling.”
“Feeling! that’s the worst of the whole. Always feel too cold in winter, too hot in summer—feel a blow too; feeling only gives pain; that’s a very bad sense.”
“Well, then, I suppose you think we should get on better without our senses.”
“No, not without all of them. A little hearing and a little seeing be all very well; but there are other senses which you have forgot, Jacob. Now, one I takes to be the very best of the bunch is smoking.”
“I never heard that was a sense,” replied I, laughing.
“Then you haven’t half finished your education, Jacob.”
“Are reading and writing senses, father?” inquired Mary.
“To be sure they be, girl; for without sense you can’t read and write; and rowing be a sense just as well; and there be many other senses; but, in my opinion, most of the senses be nonsense, and only lead to mischief.”
“Jacob,” said Mary, whispering to my ear, “isn’t loving a sense?”
“No, that’s nonsense,” replied I.
“Well, then,” replied she, “I agree with my father that nonsense is better than sense; but still I don’t see why I should not learn to read and write, father.”
“I’ve lived all my life without it, and never felt the want of it—why can’t you?”
“Because I do feel the want of it.”
“So you may, but they leads no no good. Look at those fellows at the Feathers; all were happy enough before Jim Holder, who is a scholar, came among them, and now since he reads to them they do nothing but grumble, and growl, and talk about I don’t know what—corn laws, and taxes, and liberty, and all other nonsense. Now, what could you do more than you do now, if you larnt to read and write?”
“I could amuse myself when I’ve nothing to do, father, when you and Jacob are away. I often sit down, after I’ve done all my work, and think what I shall do next, and at last I look out of the window and make faces at people, because I’ve nothing better to do. Now, father, you must let him learn me to read and write.”
“Well, Mary, if you will, you will; but recollect, don’t blame me for it—it must be all on your own head, and not on my conscience. I’ve lived some forty or fifty years in this world, and all my bad luck has been owing to having too much senses, and all my good luck to getting rid of them.”
“I wish you would tell me how that came to pass,” said I; “I should like to hear it very much, and it will be a lesson to Mary.”
“Well, I don’t care if I do, Jacob, only I must light my pipe first; and, Mary, do you go for a pot o’ beer.”
“Let Jacob go, father. I mean him to run on all my errands now.”
“You mustn’t order Jacob, Mary.”
“No, no—I wouldn’t think of ordering him, but I know he will do it—won’t you, Jacob?”
“Yes, with pleasure,” replied I.
“Well, with all my heart, provided it be all for love,” said Stapleton.
“Of course, all for love,” replied Mary, looking at me, “or Latin—which, Jacob?”
“What’s Latin?” said her father.
“Oh! that’s a new sense Jacob has been showing me something of, which, like many others, proved to be nonsense.”
I went for the beer, and when I returned found the fire burning brightly, and a strong sense of smoking from old Stapleton’s pipe. He puffed once or twice more, and then commenced his history as follows:
“I can’t exactly say when I were born, nor where,” said old Stapleton, taking his pipe out of his mouth, “because I never axed either father or mother, and they never told me, because why, I never did ax, and that be all agreeable to human natur’.” Here Stapleton paused, and took three whiffs of his pipe. “I recollects when I was a little brat about two foot nothing, mother used to whack me all day long, and I used to cry in proportion. Father used to cry shame, and then mother would fly at him; he would whack she; she would up with her apron in one corner and cry, while I did the same with my pinbefore in another; all that was nothing but human natur’.” (A pause, and six or seven whiffs of the pipe.)
“I was sent to school at a penny a week, to keep me out of the way, and out of mischief. I larnt nothing but to sit still on the form and hold my tongue, and so I used to amuse myself twiddling my thumbs, and looking at the flies as they buzzed about the room in the summer time; and in the winter, cause there was no flies of no sort, I used to watch the old missus a-knitting of stockings, and think how soon the time would come when I should go home and have my supper, which, in a child was nothing but human natur’.” (Puff, puff, puff.) “Father and mother lived in a cellar; mother sold coals and ’tatoes, and father used to go out to work in the barges on the river. As soon as I was old enough, the schoolmissus sent word that I ought to learn to read and write, and that she must be paid threepence a week; so father took me away from school, because he thought I had had education enough; and mother perched me on a basket upside down, and made me watch that nobody took the goods while she was busy down below; and then I used to sit all day long watching the coals and ’tatoes, and never hardly speaking to nobody; so having nothing better to do, I used to think about this, and that, and everything, and when dinner would be ready, and when I might get off the basket; for you see thinking be another of the senses, and when one has nothing to do, and nothing to say, to think be nothing more than human natur’.” (Puff, puff, and a pause for a drink out of the pot.) “At last, I grew a big stout boy, and mother said that I ate too much, and must earn my livelihood somehow or other, and father for once agreed with her; but there was a little difficulty how that was to be done; so until that was got over I did nothing at all but watch the coals and ’tatoes as before. One day mother wouldn’t give me wituals enough, so I helped myself; so she whacked me, so I, being strong, whacked she; so father, coming home, whacked me, so I takes to my heels and runs away a good mile before I thought at all about how I was to live; and there I was, very sore, very unhappy, and very hungry.” (Puff, puff, puff, and a spit.) “I walks on, and on, and then I gets behind a coach, and then the fellow whips me, and I gets down again in a great hurry, and tumbles into the road, and before I could get up again, a gemman, in a gig drives right over me, and breaks my leg. I screams with pain, which if I hadn’t had the sense of feeling, of course I shouldn’t have minded. He pulls up and gets out, and tells me he’s very sorry. I tells him so am I. His servant calls some people, and they takes me into a public-house, and lays me on the table all among the pots of beer, sends for a doctor, who puts me into bed, and puts my leg right again; and then I was provided for, for at least six weeks, during which the gemman calls and axes how I feel myself; and I says, ‘Pretty well, I thanky.’” (Puff, puff—knock the ashes out, pipe refilled, relighted, a drink of beer, and go on.) “So when I was well, and on my pins again, the gentleman says, ‘What can I do for you?’ and the landlord cuts him short by saying that he wanted a pot-boy, if I liked the profession. Now, if I didn’t like the pots I did the porter, which I had no share of at home, so I agrees. The gemman pays the score, gives me half a guinea, and tells me not to be lying in the middle of the road another time. I tells him I won’t, so he jumps into his gig, and I never cast eyes upon him since. I stayed three years with my master, taking out beer to his customers, and always taking a little out of each pot for myself, for that’s nothing but human natur’ when you likes a thing; but I never got into trouble until one day I sees my missus a-kissing in the back parlour with a fellow who travels for orders. I never said nothing at first; but at last I sees too much, and then I tells master, who gets into a rage, and goes into his wife, stays with her half-an-hour, and then comes out and kicks me out of the door, calling me a liar, and telling me never to show my face again. I shies a pot at his head, and showed him anything but my face, for I took to my heels, and ran for it as fast as I could. So much for seeing; if I hadn’t seen, that wouldn’t have happened. So there I was adrift, and good-bye to porter.” (Puff, puff; “Mary, where’s my ’baccy stopper?” Poke down, puff, puff, spit, and proceed.) “Well, I walks towards Lunnen, thinking on husbands and wives, porter and human natur’, until I finds myself there, and then I looks at all the lighted lamps, and recollects that I haven’t no lodging for the night, and then all of a sudden I thinks of my father and mother, and wonders how they be going on. So I thought I’d go and see, and away I went, comes to the cellar, and goes down. There was my mother with a quartern of gin before her, walking to and fro, and whimpering to herself; so says I, ‘Mother, what’s the matter now?’ at which she jumps up and hugs me, and tells me I’m her only comfort left. I looked at the quartern and thinks otherwise; so down I sits by her side, and then she pours me out a glass, and pours out all her grief, telling me how my father had left her for another woman, who kept another cellar in another street, and how she was very unhappy, and how she had taken to gin—which was nothing but human natur’, you see, and how she meant to make away with herself; and then she sent for more quarterns, and we finished them. What with the joy of finding me, and the grief at losing my father, and the quarterns of gin, she went to bed crying drunk and fell fast asleep. So did I, and thought home was home after all. Next morning I takes up the business, and finds trade not so bad after all; so I takes the command of all, keeps all the money, and keeps mother in order; and don’t allow drinking nor disorderly conduct in the house; but goes to the public-house every night for a pipe and a pot.
“Well, everything goes on very well for a month, when who should come home but father, which I didn’t approve of, because I liked being master. So I, being a strong chap, then says, ‘If you be come to ill-treat my mother, I’ll put you in the kennel, father. Be off to your new woman. Ar’n’t you ashamed of yourself?’ says I. So father looks me in the face, and tells me to stand out of the way, or he’ll make cat’s meat of me; and then he goes to my mother, and after a quarter of an hour of sobbing on her part, and coaxing on his, they kiss and make friends; and then they both turns to me, and orders me to leave the cellar, and never to show my face again. I refuses: father flies at me, and mother helps him; and between the two I was hustled out to find my bread how and where I could. I’ve never taken a woman’s part since.” (Puff, puff, puff, and a deep sigh.) “I walks down to the water-side, and having one or two shillings in my pocket, goes into a public-house to get a drop of drink and a bed. And when I comes in, I sees a man hand a note for change to the landlady, and she gives him change. ‘That won’t do,’ says he, and he was half tipsy: ‘I gave you a ten-pound note, and this here lad be witness.’ ‘It was only a one,’ says the woman. ‘You’re a damned old cheat,’ says he, ‘and if you don’t give me the change, I’ll set your house on fire, and burn you alive.’ With that there was a great row, and he goes out for the constable and gives her in charge, and gives me in charge as a witness, and then she gives him in charge, and so we all went to the watchhouse together, and slept on the benches. The next morning we all appeared before the magistrate, and the man tells his story and calls me as a witness; but recollecting how much I had suffered from seeing, I wouldn’t see anything this time. It might have been a ten-pound note, for it certainly didn’t look like a one; but my evidence went rather for than against the woman, for I only proved the man to be drunk; and she was let off, and I walked home with her. So says she, ‘You’re a fine boy, and I’ll do you a good turn for what you have done for me. My husband is a waterman, and I’ll make you free of the river; for he hasn’t no ’prentice, and you can come on shore and stay at the public-house when you ar’n’t wanted.’ I jumped at the offer, and so, by not seeing, I gets into a regular livelihood. Well, Jacob, how do you like it?”
“Very much,” replied I.
“And you, Mary?”
“O! I like it very much; but I want father to go on, and to know how he fell in love, and married my mother.”
“Well, you shall have it all by-and-by; but now I must take a spell.”
Old Stapleton finished his pipe, took another swig at the porter, filled, relighted, puffed to try it, cleared his mouth, and then proceeded:—
“Now, you see, Bartley, her husband, was the greatest rogue on the river; he was up to everything, and stood at nothing. He fleeced as much on the water as she did on the land; for I often seed her give wrong change afterwards when people were tipsy, but I made it a rule always to walk away. As for Bartley, his was always night-work, and many’s the coil of rope I have brought on shore, what, although he might have paid for, he didn’t buy it of the lawful owner, but I never seed or heard, that was my maxim; and I fared well till I served my time, and then they gave me their old wherry, and built a new one for themselves. So I set up on my own account, and then I seed, and heard, and had all my senses, just as they were before—more’s the pity, for no good came of it.” (Puff, puff, puff, puff.) “The Bartleys wanted me to join them, but that wouldn’t do; for though I never meddled with other people’s concerns, yet I didn’t choose to go wrong myself. I’ve seed all the world cheating each other for fifty years or more, but that’s no concern of mine; I can’t make the world better; so all I thinks about it is to keep honest myself: and if every one was to look after his own soul, and not trouble themselves about their neighbours, why, then, it would be all the better for human natur’. I plied at the Swan Stairs, gained my livelihood, and spent it as I got it; for I was then too young to look out a’ter a rainy day.
“One night a young woman in a cloak comes down to the stairs with a bundle in her arms, and seems in a very great taking, and asks me for a boat. I hauls out of the row alongside of the yard, and hands her in. She trips as she steps in, and I catches to save her from falling, and in catching her I puts my hand upon the bundle in her arms, and feels the warm face of a baby. ‘Where am I to go, ma’am?’ says I. ‘O! pull across, and land me on the other side,’ says she; and then I hears her sobbing to herself, as if her heart would break. When we were in the middle o’ the stream, she lifts up her head, and then first she looks at the bundle and kisses it, and then she looks up at the stars which were glittering above in the sky. She kisses the child once more, jumps up, and afore I could be aware of what she was about, she tosses me her purse, throws her child into the water, and leaps in herself. I pulls sharp round immediately, and seeing her again, I made one or two good strokes, comes alongside of her, and gets hold of her clothes. A’ter much ado I gets her into the wherry, and as soon as I seed she was come to again, I pulls her back to the stairs where she had taken me from. As soon as I lands I hears a noise and talking, and several people standing about; it seems it were her relatives, who had missed her, and were axing whether she had taken a boat; and while they were describing her, and the other watermen were telling them how I had taken a fare of that description, I brings her back. Well, they takes charge of her, and leads her home; and then for the first time I thinks of the purse at the bottom of the boat, which I picks up, and sure enough there were four golden guineas in it, beside some silver. Well, the men who plied at the stairs axed me all about it; but I keeps my counsel, and only tells them how the poor girl threw herself into the water, and how I pulled her out again; and in a week I had almost forgot all about it, when up comes an officer, and says to me, ‘You be Stapleton the waterman?’ and I says, ‘Yes, I be.’ ‘Then you must come along with me;’ and he takes me to the police-office, where I finds the poor young woman in custody for being accused of having murdered her infant. So they begins to tax me upon my Bible oath, and I was forced to tell the whole story; for though you may loose all your senses when convenient, yet somehow or another, an oath on the Bible brings them all back again. ‘Did you see the child?’ said the magistrate. ‘I seed a bundle,’ said I. ‘Did you hear the child cry?’ said he. ‘No,’ says I, ‘I didn’t;’ and then I thought I had got the young woman off; but the magistrate was an old fox, and had all the senses at his fingers’ ends. So says he, ‘When the young woman stepped into the boat did she give you the bundle?’ ‘No,’ says I again. ‘Then you never touched it?’ ‘Yes, I did, when her foot slipped.’ ‘And what did it feel like?’ ‘It felt like a piece of human natur’.’ says I, ‘and quite warm like.’ ‘How do you mean?’ says he. ‘Why, I took it by the feel for a baby.’ ‘And it was quite warm, was it?’ ‘Yes,’ replied I, ‘it was.’ ‘Well then, what else took place?’ ‘Why, when we were in the middle of the stream she and her child went overboard; I pulled her in again, but could not see the child.’ Fortunately for the poor girl, they didn’t ask me which went overboard first, and that saved her from hanging. She was confined six months in prison, and then let out again; but you see, if it hadn’t been for my unfortunately feeling the child, and feeling it was warm, which proved its being alive, the poor young woman would have got off altogether, perhaps. So much for the sense of feeling, which I say is of no use to nobody, but only a vexation.” (Puff—the pipe out, relighted—puff, puff.)
“But, father,” said Mary, “did you ever hear the history of the poor girl?”
“Yes, I heard as how it was a hard case, how she had been seduced by some fellow who had left her and her baby, upon which she determined to drown herself, poor thing; and her baby too. Had she only tried to drown her baby I should have said it was quite unnatural; but as she wished to drown herself at the same time, I considers that drowning the baby to take it to heaven with her was quite natural, and all agreeable to human natur’. Love’s a sense which young women should keep down as much as possible, Mary; no good comes of that sense.”
“And yet, father, it appears to me to be human nature,” replied Mary.
“So it is, but there’s mischief in it, girl, so do you never have anything to do with it.”
“Was there mischief when you fell in love with my mother and married her?”
“You shall hear, Mary,” replied old Stapleton, who recommenced.
“It was ’bout two months after the poor girl threw herself into the river that I first seed your mother. She was then mayhap two years older than you may be, and much such a same sort of person in her looks. There was a young man who plied from our stairs, named Ben Jones; he and I were great friends, and used for to help each other, and when a fare called for oars, used to ply together. One night he says to me, ‘Will, come up, and I’ll show you a devilish fine piece of stuff.’ So I walks with him, and he takes me to a shop where they dealed in marine stores, and we goes and finds your mother in the back parlour. Ben sends for pipes and beer, and we sat down and made ourselves comfortable. Now, Mary, your mother was a very jilting kind of girl, who would put one fellow off to take another, just as her whim and fancy took her.” (I looked at Mary, who cast down her eyes.) “Now these women do a mint of mischief among men, and it seldom ends well; and I’d sooner see you in your coffin to-morrow, Mary, than think you should be one of this flaunting sort. Ben Jones was quite in for it, and wanted for to marry her, and she had turned off a fine young chap for him, and he used to come there every night, and it was supposed that they would be spliced in the course of a month; but when I goes there she cuts him almost altogether, and takes to me, making such eyes at me, and drinking beer out of my pot, and refusing his’n, till poor Jones was quite mad and beside himself. Well, it wasn’t in human natur’ to stand those large blue eyes (just like yours, Mary), darting fire at a poor fellow; and when Jones got up in a surly humour, and said it was time to go away, instead of walking home arm in arm, we went side by side, like two big dogs with their tails as stiff up as a crowbar, and ready for a fight; neither he nor I saying a word, and we parted without saying good-night. Well, I dreamed of your mother all that night, and the next day went to see her, and felt worser and worser each time, and she snubbed Jones, and at last told him to go about his business. This was ’bout a month after I had first seen her; and then one day Jones, who was a prize-fighter, says to me, ‘Be you a man?’ and slaps me on the ear. So, I knowing what he’d been a’ter, pulls off my duds, and we sets to. We fights for ten minutes or so, and then I hits him a round blow on the ear, and he falls down on the hard, and couldn’t come to time. No wonder, poor fellow! for he had gone to eternity.” (Here old Stapleton paused for half a minute, and passed his hand across his eyes.) “I was tried for manslaughter; but it being proved that he came up and struck me first, I was acquitted, after lying two months in gaol, for I couldn’t get no bail; but it was because I had been two months in gaol that I was let off. At first, when I came out, I determined never to see your mother again; but she came to me, and wound round me, and I loved her so much that I couldn’t shake her off. As soon as she found that I was fairly hooked, she began to play with others; but I wouldn’t stand that, and every fellow that came near her was certain to have a turn out with me, and so I became a great fighter; and she, seeing that I was the best man, and that no one else would come to her, one fine morning agreed to marry me. Well, we were spliced, and the very first night I thought I saw poor Ben Jones standing by my bedside, and, for a week or so, I was not comfortable; but, howsomever, it wore off, I plied at the stairs, and gained my money. But my pipe’s out, and I’m dry with talking. Suppose I take a spell for a few minutes.”
Stapleton relighted his pipe, and for nearly half-an-hour smoked in silence. What Mary’s thoughts were I cannot positively assert; but I imagined that, like myself, she was thinking about her mother’s conduct and her own. I certainly was making the comparison, and we neither of us spoke a word.
“Well,” continued Stapleton, at last, “I married your mother, Mary, and I only hope that any man who may take a fancy to you, will not have so much trouble with his wife as I had. I thought that a’ter she were settled she would give up all her nonsense, and behave herself—but I suppose it was in her natur’ and she couldn’t help it. She made eyes and gave encouragement to the men, until they became saucy and I became jealous, and I had to fight one, and then the other, until I became a noted pugilist. I will say that your mother seemed always very happy when I beat my man, which latterly I always did; but still she liked to be fit for, and I had hardly time to earn my bread. At last, some one backed me against another man in the ring for fifty pound aside, and I was to have half if I won. I was very short of blunt at the time, and I agreed; so, a’ter a little training the battle was fought, and I won easy: and the knowing ones liked my way of hitting so much that they made up another match with a better man, for two hundred pounds; and a lord and other great people came to me, and I was introduced to them at the public-house, and all was settled. So I became a regular prize-fighter, all through your mother, Mary. Nay, don’t cry, child, I don’t mean to say that your mother, with all her love of being stared at and talked to, would have gone wrong; but still it was almost as bad in my opinion. Well, I was put into training, and after five weeks we met at Mousley Hurst, and a hard fight it was—but I’ve got the whole of it somewhere, Mary; look in the drawer there, and you’ll see a newspaper.”
Mary brought out the newspaper, which was rolled up and tied with a bit of string, and Stapleton handed it over to me, telling me to read it aloud. I did so, but I shall not enter into the details.
“Yes, that’s all right enough,” said Stapleton, who had taken advantage of my reading to smoke furiously, to make up for lost time; “but no good came of it, for one of the gemmen took a fancy to your mother, Mary, and tried to win her away from me. I found him attempting to kiss her, and she refusing him—but laughing, and, as I thought, more than half-willing; so I floored him, and put him out of the house, and after that I never would have anything more to say with lords and gemmen, nor with fighting either. I built a new wherry, and stuck to the river, and I shifted my lodgings that I mightn’t mix any more with those who knew me as a boxer. Your mother was then brought to bed with you, and I hoped for a good deal of happiness, as I thought she would only think of her husband and child; and so she did until you were weaned, and then she went on just as afore. There was a captain of a vessel lying in the river, who used now and then to stop and talk with her; but I thought little about that, seeing how every one talked with her and she with everybody; and besides, she knew the captain’s wife, who was a very pretty woman, and used very often to ask Mary to go and see her, which I permitted. But one morning, when I was going off to the boat—for he had come down to me to take him to his vessel—just as I was walking away with the sculls over my shoulder, I recollects my ’baccy box, which I had left, and I goes back and hears him say before I came into the door—‘Recollect, I shall be here again by two o’clock, and then you promised to come on board my ship, and see—.’ I didn’t hear the rest, but she laughed and said yes, she would. I didn’t show myself, but walked away and went to the boat. He followed me, and I rowed him up the river and took my fare—and then I determined to watch them, for I felt mighty jealous. So I lays off on my oars in the middle of the stream, and sure enough I see the captain and your mother get into a small skiff belonging to his ship, and pull away; the captain had one oar and one of his men another. I pulled a’ter them as fast as I could, and at last they seed me; and not wishing me to find her out, she begged them to pull away as fast as they could, for she knew how savage I would be. Still I gained upon them, every now and then looking round and vowing vengeance in my heart, when all of a sudden I heard a scream, and perceived their boat to capsize, and all hands in the water. They had not seen a warp of a vessel getting into the row, and had run over it, and, as it tautened, they capsized. Your mother went down like a stone, Mary, and was not found for three days a’terward; and when I seed her sink I fell down in a fit.” Here old Stapleton stopped, laid down his pipe, and rested his face in his hands. Mary burst into tears. After a few minutes he resumed: “When I came to, I found myself on board of the ship in the captain’s cabin, with the captain and his wife watching over me—and then I came to understand that it was she who had sent for your mother, and that she was living on board, and that your mother had at first refused, because she knew that I did not like her to be on the river, but wishing to see a ship had consented. So it was not so bad a’ter all, only that a woman shouldn’t act without her husband—but you see, Mary, all this would not have happened if it hadn’t been that I overheard part of what was said; and you might now have had a mother, and I a wife to comfort us, if it had not been for my unfortunate hearing—so, as I said before, there’s more harm than good that comes from these senses—at least so it has proved to me. And now you have heard my story, and how your mother died, Mary; so take care you don’t fall into the same fault, and be too fond of being looked at, which it does somehow or another appear to me you have a bit of a hankering a’ter—but like mother, like child, they say, and that’s human natur’.”
When Stapleton had concluded his narrative, he smoked his pipe in silence. Mary sat at the table, with her hands pressed to her temples, apparently in deep thought; and I felt anything but communicative. In half-an-hour the pot of beer was finished, and Stapleton rose.
“Come, Mary, don’t be thinking so much; let’s all go to bed. Show Jacob his room, and then come up.”
“Jacob can find his own room, father,” replied Mary, “without my showing him; he knows the kitchen, and there is but one other below.”
I took my candle, wished them good night, and went to my bed, which, although very homely, was at all events comfortable.
For many days the frost continued, until at last the river was frozen over, and all communication by it was stopped. Stapleton’s money ran short, our fare became very indifferent, and Mary declared that we must all go begging with the market gardeners if it lasted much longer.
“I must go and call upon Mr Turnbull, and ax him to help us,” said Stapleton, one day, pulling his last shilling out and laying it on the table. “I’m cleaned out; but he’s a good gentleman, and will lend me a trifle.” In the afternoon Stapleton returned, and I saw by his looks that he had been successful. “Jacob,” said he, “Mr Turnbull desires that you will breakfast with him to-morrow morning, as he wishes to see you.”
I set off accordingly at daylight the next morning, and was in good time for breakfast. Mr Turnbull was as kind as ever, and began telling me long stories about the ice in the northern regions.
“By-the-by, I hear there is an ox to be roasted whole, Jacob, a little above London Bridge; suppose we go and see the fun.”
I consented, and we took the Brentford coach, and were put down at the corner of Queen Street, from thence we walked to the river. The scene was very amusing and exciting. Booths were erected on the ice, in every direction, with flags flying, people walking, and some skating, although the ice was too rough for that pastime. The whole river was crowded with people, who now walked in security over where they, a month before, would have met with death. Here and there smoke ascended from various fires, on which sausages and other eatables were cooking; but the great attraction was the ox roasting whole, close to the centre pier of the bridge. Although the ice appeared to have fallen at the spot where so many hundreds were assembled, yet as it was now four or five feet thick, there was no danger. Here and there, indeed, were what were called rotten places, where the ice was not sound; but these were intimated by placards, warning people not to approach too near; and close to them were ropes and poles for succour, if required. We amused ourselves for some time with the gaiety of the scene, for the sun shone out brightly, and the sky was clear. The wind was fresh from the northward, and piercing cold in the shade, the thermometer being then, it was said, twenty-eight degrees below the freezing point. We had been on the ice about three hours, amusing ourselves, when Mr Turnbull proposed our going home, and we walked up the river towards Blackfriars Bridge, where we proposed to land, and take the coach at Charing Cross.
“I wonder how the tide is now,” observed Mr Turnbull to me; “it would be rather puzzling to find out.”
“Not if I can find a hole,” replied I, looking for one. “Stop, here is one.” I threw in a piece of ice, and found that it was strong ebb. We continued our walk over the ice, which was now very rough, when Mr Turnbull’s hat fell off, and the wind catching it, it blew away, skimming across the ice at a rapid rate. Mr Turnbull and I gave chase, but could scarcely keep up with it, and, at all events, could not overtake it. Many people on the river laughed as we passed, and watched us in our chase. Mr Turnbull was the foremost, and, heedless in the pursuit, did not observe a large surface of rotten ice before him; neither did I, until all at once I heard it break and saw Mr Turnbull fall in and disappear. Many people were close to us, and a rope was laid across the spot to designate the danger. I did not hesitate—I loved Mr Turnbull, and my love and my feelings of resentment were equally potent. I seized the bight of the rope, twisted it round my arm, and plunged in after, recollecting it was ebb tide: fortunate for Mr Turnbull it was that he had accidentally put the question. I sank under the ice, and pushed down the stream, and in a few seconds felt myself grappled by him I sought, and at almost the same time, the rope hauling in from above. As soon as they found there was resistance, they knew that I, at least, was attached to it, and they hauled in quicker, not, however, until I had lost my recollection. Still I clung to the rope with the force of a drowning man, and Mr Turnbull did the same to me, and we shortly made our appearance at the hole in which we had been plunged. A ladder was thrown across, and two of the men of the Humane Society came to our assistance, pulled us out, and laid us upon it. They then drew back and hauled us on the ladder to a more secure situation. We were both still senseless; but having been taken to a public-house on the river-side, were put to bed, and medical advice having been procured, were soon restored. The next morning we were able to return in a chaise to Brentford, where our absence had created the greatest alarm. Mr Turnbull spoke but little the whole time; but he often pressed my hand, and when I requested him to drop me at Fulham, that I might let Stapleton and his daughter know that I was safe, he consented, saying, “God bless you, my fine boy; I will see you soon.”
When I went up the stairs of Stapleton’s lodgings, I found Mary by herself; she started up as soon as she saw me.
“Where have you been?” said she, half crying, half smiling.
“Under the ice,” I replied, “and only thawed again this morning.”
“Are you in earnest, Jacob?” said she; “now don’t plague and frighten me, I’ve been too frightened already; I never slept a wink last night;” I then told her the circumstances which had occurred. “I was sure something had happened,” she replied. “I told my father so, but he wouldn’t believe it. You promised to be at home to give me my lesson, and I know you never break your word; but my father smoked away, and said, that when boys are amused, they forget their promises, and that it was nothing but human natur’. Oh, Jacob, I’m so glad you’re back again, and after what has happened, I don’t mind your kissing me for once.” And Mary held her face towards me, and returned my kiss.
“There, that must last you a long while, recollect,” said she, laughing; “you must not think of another until you’re under the ice again.”
“Then I trust it will be the last,” replied I, laughing.
“You are not in love with me, Jacob, that’s clear, or you would not have made that answer,” replied Mary.
I had seen a great deal of Mary, and though she certainly was a great flirt, yet she had many excellent and amiable qualities. For the first week after her father had given us the history of his life, his remarks upon her mother appeared to have made a decided impression upon her, and her conduct was much more staid and demure; but as the remembrance wore off, so did her conduct become coquettish and flirting as before; still, it was impossible not to be fond of her, and even with all her caprice there was such a fund of real good feeling and amiableness, which, when called forth, was certain to appear, that I often thought how dangerous and captivating a girl she would be when she grew up. I had again produced the books, which I had thrown aside with disgust, to teach her to read and write. Her improvement was rapid, and would have been still more so if she had not been just as busy in trying to make me fond of her as she was in surmounting the difficulties of her lessons. But she was very young; and although, as her father declared, it was her natur’ to run after the men, there was every reason to hope that a year or two would render her less volatile, and add to those sterling good qualities which she really possessed. In heart and feeling she was a modest girl, although the buoyancy of her spirits often carried her beyond the bounds prescribed by decorum, and often called forth a blush upon her own animated countenance, when her good sense, or the remarks of others, reminded her of her having committed herself. It was impossible to know Mary and not like her, although, at a casual meeting, a rigid person might go away with an impression by no means favourable. As for myself, I must say, that the more I was in her company the more I was attached to her, and the more I respected her.
Old Stapleton came home in the evening. He had, as usual, been smoking, and thinking of human natur’, at the Feathers public-house. I told him what had happened, and upon the strength of it he sent for an extra pot of beer for Mary and me, which he insisted upon our drinking between us—a greater proof of good-will on his part could not have been given. Although Captain Turnbull appeared to have recovered from the effects of the accident, yet it seemed that such was not the case, as the morning after his arrival he was taken ill with shivering and pains in his loins, which ended in ague and fever, and he did not quit his bed for three or four weeks. I, on the contrary, felt no ill effects; but the constitution of a youth is better able to meet such violent shocks than that of a man of sixty years old, already sapped by exposure and fatigue. As the frost still continued, I complied with Captain Turnbull’s request to come up and stay with him, and for many days, until he was able to leave his bed, I was his constant nurse. The general theme of his conversation was on my future prospects, and a wish that I would embark in some pursuit or profession more likely to raise me in the world; but on this head I was positive, and also another point, which was, that I would in future put myself under an obligation to no one. I could not erase from my memory the injuries I had received, and my vindictive spirit continually brooded over them. I was resolved to be independent and free. I felt that in the company I was in I was with my equals, or, if there were any superiority, it was on my part, arising from education, and I never would submit to be again in the society of those above me, in which I was admitted as a favour, and by the major part looked down upon, and at the same time liable, as I had once been, to be turned out with contumely on the first moment of caprice. Still, I was very fond of Captain Turnbull. He had always been kind to me, spoke to me on terms of equality, and had behaved with consistency, and my feelings towards him since the accident had consequently strengthened; but we always feel an increased regard towards those to whom we have been of service, and my pride was softened by the reflection that, whatever might be Mr Turnbull’s good-will towards me, he never could, even if I would permit it, repay me for the life which I had preserved. Towards him I felt unbounded regard; towards those who had ill-treated me, unlimited hatred; towards the world in general a mixture of feeling which I could hardly analyse; and, as far as regarded myself, a love of liberty and independence, which nothing would ever have induced me to compromise. As I did not wish to hurt Captain Turnbull’s feelings by a direct refusal to all his proffers of service, and remarks upon the advantages which might arise, I generally made an evasive answer; but when, on the day proposed for my departure, he at once came to the point, offering me everything, and observing that he was childless, and, therefore, my acceptance of his offer would be injurious to nobody; when he took me by the hand, and drawing me near to him, passed his arm round me, and spoke to me in the kind accents of a father, almost entreating me to consent—the tears of gratitude coursed each other rapidly down my cheeks, but my resolution was no less firm—although it was with a faltering, voice that I replied, “You have been very kind to me, sir—very kind—and I shall never forget it; and I hope I shall deserve it—but—Mr Drummond, and Mrs Drummond, and Sarah, were also kind to me—very kind to me—you know the rest. I will remain as I am, if you please; and if you wish to do me a kindness; if you wish me to love you, as I really do, let me be as I am—free and independent. I beg it of you as the greatest favour that you can possibly confer on me—the only favour which I can accept, or shall be truly thankful for.”
Captain Turnbull was some minutes before he could reply. He then said—“I see it is useless, and I will not tease you any more; but, Jacob, do not let the fire of injustice which you have received from your fellow-creatures prey so much upon your mind, or induce you to form the mistaken idea that the world is bad. As you live on, you will find much good; and recollect, that those who injured you, from the misrepresentation of others, have been willing, and have offered, to repair their fault. They can do no more, and I wish you could get over this vindictive feeling. Recollect, we must forgive, as we hope to be forgiven.”
“I do sometimes,” said I, “for Sarah’s sake—I can’t always.”
“But you ought to forgive, for other reasons, Jacob.”
“I know I ought—but if I cannot, I cannot.”
“Nay, my boy, I never heard you talk so—I was going to say—wickedly. Do you not perceive that you are now in error? You will not abandon a feeling which your own good sense and religion tell you to be wrong—you cling to it—and yet you will admit of no excuse for the errors of others.”
“I feel what you say—and the truth of it, sir,” replied I “but I cannot combat the feeling. I will, therefore, admit every excuse you please for the faults of others; but at the same time, I am surely not to be blamed if I refuse to put myself in a situation where I am again liable to meet with mortification. Surely I am not to be censured, if I prefer to work for my bread after my own fashion, and prefer the river to dry land?”
“No, that I acknowledge; but what I dislike in the choice is, that it is dictated by feelings of resentment.”
“What’s done can’t be helped,” replied I, quickly, wishing to break off the conversation.
“Very true, Jacob; but I follow that up with another of your remarks, which is, ‘Better luck next time.’ God bless you, my boy; take care of yourself, and don’t get under the ice again!”
“For you I would to-morrow,” replied I, taking the proffered hand: “but if I could only see that Hodgson near a hole—”
“You’d not push him in?”
“Indeed I would,” replied I, bitterly.
“Jacob, you would not, I tell you—you think so now, but if you saw him in distress you would assist him as you did me. I know you, my boy, better than you know yourself.”
Whether Captain Turnbull or I were right remains to be proved in the sequel. We then shook hands, and I hastened away to see Mary, whom I had often thought of during my absence.
“Who do you think has been here?” said Mary, after our first greeting.
“I cannot guess,” replied I. “Not old Tom and his son?”
“No; I don’t think it was old Tom, but it was such an old quiz—with such a nose—O heavens! I thought I should have died with laughing as soon as he went downstairs. Do you know, Jacob, that I made love to him, just to see how he’d take it. You know who it is now?”
“O yes! you mean the Dominie, my schoolmaster.”
“Yes, he told me so; and I talked so much about you, and about your teaching me to read and write, and how fond I was of learning, and how I should like to be married to an elderly man who was a great scholar, who would teach me Latin and Greek, that the old gentleman became quite chatty, and sat for two hours talking to me. He desired me to say that he should call here to-morrow afternoon, and I begged him to stay the evening, as you are to have two more of your friends here. Now, who do you think are those?”
“I have no others, except old Tom Beazeley and his son.”
“Well, it is your old Tom after all, and a nice old fellow he is, although I would not like him for a husband; but as for his son—he’s a lad after my own heart—I’m quite in love with him.”
“Your love will do you no harm, Mary; but, recollect, what may be a joke to you may not be so to other people. As for the Dominie meeting old Beazeley and his son, I don’t exactly know how that will suit, for I doubt if he will like to see them.”
“Why not?” inquired Mary.
Upon a promise never to hint at them, I briefly stated the circumstances attending the worthy man’s voyage on board of the lighter. Mary paused, and then said, “Jacob, did we not read the last time that the most dangerous rocks to men were wine and women?”
“Yes, we did, if I recollect right.”
“Humph,” said she; “the old gentleman has given plenty of lessons in his time, and it appears that he has received one.”
“We may do so to the last day of our existence, Mary.”
“Well, he is a very clever, learned man, I’ve no doubt, and looks down upon all of us (not you, Jacob) as silly people. I’ll try if I can’t give him a lesson.”
“You, Mary, what can you teach him?”
“Never mind, we shall see;” and Mary turned the discourse on her father. “You know, I suppose, that father is gone up to Mr Turnbull’s.”
“No, I did not.”
“Yes, he has; he was desired to go there this morning, and hasn’t been back since. Jacob, I hope you won’t be so foolish again, for I don’t want to lose my master.”
“Oh, never fear; I shall teach you all you want to know before I die,” I replied.
“Don’t be too sure of that,” replied Mary; “how do you know how much I may wish to have of your company?”
“Well, if I walk off in a hurry, I’ll make you over to young Tom Beazeley. You’re half in love with him already, you know,” replied I, laughing.
“Well, he is a nice fellow,” replied she; “he laughs more than you do, Jacob.”
“He has suffered less,” replied I, gloomily, calling to mind what had occurred; “but, Mary, he is a fine young man, and a good-hearted, clever fellow to boot; and when you do know him, you will like him very much.” As I said this, I heard her father coming up stairs; he came in high good-humour with his interview with Captain Turnbull, called for his pipe and pot, and was excessively fluent upon “human natur’.”
The afternoon of the next day I heard a well-known voice, which carolled forth, as Mary huddled up her books, and put them out of the way; for at that time I was, as usual, giving her a lesson:—
“And many strange sights I’ve seen,
And long I’ve been a rover,
And everywhere I’ve been,
But now the wars are over.
I’ve been across the line,
Where the sun will burn your nose off;
And I’ve been in northern climes,
Where the frost would bite your toes off.
Fal de ral, fal de ral, fal de ral de liddy.”
“Heave a-head, Tom, and let me stump up at my leisure. It’s like warping ’gainst wind and tide with me—and I gets up about as fast as lawyers go to heaven.”
I thought when Tom came up first that he had been at unusual trouble in setting off his person, and certainly a better-looking, frank, open, merry countenance was seldom to be seen. In person he was about an inch taller than I, athletic, and well formed. He made up to Mary, who, perceiving his impatience, and either to check him before me, or else from her usual feeling of coquetry, received him rather distantly, and went up to old Tom, with whom she shook hands warmly.
“Whew! what’s in the wind now, Jacob? Why, we parted the best friends in the world,” said Tom, looking at Mary.
“Sheer off yourself, Tom,” replied I, laughing; “and you’ll see that she’ll come to again.”
“Oh, oh! so the wind’s in that quarter, is it?” replied Tom. “With all my heart—I can show false colours as well as she can. But I say, Jacob, before I begin my manoeuvres, tell me if you wish me to hoist the neutral flag—for I won’t interfere with you.”
“Here’s my hand upon it, Tom, that the coast is clear as far as I’m concerned; but take care—she’s a clipper, and not unlikely to slip through your fingers, even when you have her under your lee, within hail.”
“Let me alone, Jacob, for that.”
“And more, Tom, when you’re in possession of her, she will require a good man at the helm.”
“Then she’s just the craft after my fancy. I hate your steady, slow-sailing craft, that will steer themselves, almost; give me one that requires to be managed by a man and a seaman.”
“If well manned, she will do anything, depend upon it, Tom, for she’s as sound below as possible; and although she is down to her bearings on the puff of the moment, yet she’d not careen further.”
“Well, then, Jacob, all’s right; and now you’ve told me what tack she’s on, see if I don’t shape a course to cut her off.”
“Well, Jacob, my good boy, so you’ve been under the water again; I thought you had enough of it when Fleming gave you such a twist; but, however, this time you went to sarve a friend, which was all right. My sarvice to you Mr Stapleton,” continued old Tom, as Stapleton made his appearance. “I was talking to Jacob about his last dive.”
“Nothing but human natur’,” replied Stapleton.
“Well, now,” replied old Tom, “I consider that going plump into the river, when covered with ice, to be quite contrary to human natur’.”
“But not to save a friend, father?”
“No—because, that be Jacob’s nature; so you see one nature conquered the other, and that’s the whole long and short of it.”
“Well, now, suppose we sit down and make ourselves comfortable,” observed Stapleton; “but here be somebody else coming up—who can it be?”
“I say, old codger, considering you be as deaf as a post, you hears pretty well,” said old Tom.
“Yes, I hear very well in the house, provided people don’t speak loud.”
“Well, that’s a queer sort of deafness; I think we are all troubled with the same complaint,” cried Tom, laughing.
During this remark, the Dominie made his appearance. “Salve Domine,” said I upon his entering, taking my worthy pedagogue by the hand.
“Et tu quoque, fili mi, Jacobe! But whom have we here? the deaf man, the maiden, and—ehu!—the old man called old Tom, and likewise the young Tom;” and the Dominie looked very grave.
“Nay, sir,” said young Tom, going up to the Dominie; “I know you are angry with us, because we both drank too much when we were last in your company; but we promise—don’t we father?—not to do so again.”
This judicious reply of young Tom’s put the Dominie more at his ease; what he most feared was raillery and exposure on their parts.
“Very true, old gentleman; Tom and I did bowse our jibs up a little too taut when we last met—but what then?—there was the grog, and there was nothing to do.”
“All human natur’,” observed Stapleton.
“Come, sir, you have not said one word to me,” said Mary, going up to the Dominie. “Now you must sit down by me, and take care of me, and see that they all behave themselves and keep sober.”
The Dominie cast a look at Mary, which was intended for her alone, but which was not unperceived by young Tom or me. “We shall have some fun, Jacob,” said he, aside, as we all sat down to the table, which just admitted six, with close stowage. The Dominie on one side of Mary, Tom on the other, Stapleton next to Tom, then I and old Tom, who closed in on the other side of the Dominie, putting one of his timber toes on the old gentleman’s corns, which induced him to lift up his leg in a hurry, and draw his chair still closer to Mary, to avoid a repetition of the accident; while old Tom was axing pardon, and Stapleton demonstrating that, on the part of old Tom, not to feel with a wooden leg, and on the part of the Dominie, to feel with a bad corn, was all nothing but “human natur’.” At last we were all seated, and Mary, who had provided for the evening, produced two or three pots of beer, a bottle of spirits, pipes, and tobacco.
“Liberty Hall—I smokes,” said Stapleton, lighting his pipe, and falling back on his chair.
“I’ll put a bit of clay in my mouth too,” followed up old Tom; “it makes one thirsty, and enjoy one’s liquor.”
“Well, I malts,” said Tom, reaching a pot of porter, and taking a long pull. “What do you do, Jacob?”
“I shall wait a little, Tom.”
“And what do you do, sir?” said Mary to the Dominie. The Dominie shook his head. “Nay but you must—or I shall think you do not like my company. Come, let me fill a pipe for you.” Mary filled a pipe, and handed it to the Dominie, who hesitated, looked at her, and was overcome. He lighted it, and smoked furiously.
“The ice is breaking up—we shall have a change of weather—the moon quarters to-morrow,” observed old Tom, puffing between every observation; “and then honest men may earn their bread again. Bad times for you, old codger, heh!” continued he, addressing Stapleton. Stapleton nodded an assent through the smoke, which was first perceived by old Tom. “Well, he ar’nt deaf, a’ter all; I thought he was only shamming a bit. I say, Jacob, this is the weather to blow your fingers, and make your eyes bright.”
“Rather to blow a cloud and make your eyes water,” replied Tom, taking up the pot: “I’m just as thirsty with swallowing smoke, as if I had a pipe myself—at all events, I pipe my eye. Jacob,” continued Tom, to me apart, “do look how the old gentleman is funking Mary, and casting sheeps’ eyes at her through the smoke.”
“He appears as if he were inclined to board her in the smoke,” replied I.
“Yes, and she to make no fight of it, but surrender immediately,” said Tom.
“Don’t you believe it, Tom; I know her better; she wants to laugh at him—nothing more; she winked her eye at me just now, but I would not laugh, as I did not choose that the old gentleman should be trifled with. I will tax her severely to-morrow.”
During all this time old Tom and Stapleton smoked in silence: the Dominie made use of his eyes in dumb parlance to Mary, who answered him with her own bright glances, and Tom and I began to find it rather dull; when at last old Tom’s pipe was exhausted, and he laid it down; “There, I’ll smoke no more—the worst of a pipe is that one can’t smoke and talk at the same time. Mary, my girl, take your eyes off the Dominie’s nose, and hand me that bottle of stuff. What, glass to mix it in; that’s more genteel than we are on board, Tom.” Tom filled a rummer of grog, took half off at a huge sip, and put it down on the table. “Will you do as we do, sir?” said he, addressing the Dominie.
“Nay, friend Dux, nay—pr’ythee persuade me not—avaunt!” and the Dominie, with an appearance of horror, turned away from the bottle handed towards him by old Tom.
“Not drink anything?” said Mary to the Dominie, looking at him with surprise, “but indeed you must, or I shall think you despise us, and do not think us fit to be in your company.”
“Nay, maiden, entreat me not. Ask anything of me but this,” replied the Dominie.
“Ask anything but this—that’s just the way people have of refusing,” replied Mary; “were I to ask anything else, it would be the same answer—‘ask anything but this.’ Now, if you will not drink to please me, I shall quarrel with you. You shall drink a glass, and I’ll mix it for you.” The Dominie shook his head. Mary made a glass of grog, and then put it to her lips. “Now, if you refuse to drink it, after I have tasted it, I’ll never speak to you again.” So saying, she handed the glass to the Dominie.
“Verily, maiden, I must needs refuse, for I did make a mental vow.”
“What vow was that? was it sworn on the Bible?”
“Nay, not on the sacred book, but in my thoughts most solemnly.”
“Oh! I make those vows every day, and never keep one of them; so that won’t do. Now, observe, I give you one more chance. I shall drink a little more, and if you do not immediately put your lips to the same part of the tumbler, I’ll never drink to you again;” Mary put the tumbler again to her lips, drank a little, with her eyes fixed upon the Dominie, who watched her with distended nostrils and muscular agitation of countenance. With her sweetest smile, she handed him the tumbler; the Dominie half held out his hand, withdrew it, put it down again, and by degrees took the tumbler. Mary conquered, and I watched the malice of her look as the liquor trickled down the Dominie’s throat. Tom and I exchanged glances. The Dominie put down the tumbler, and then, looking round, like a guilty person, coloured up to the eyes; but Mary, who perceived that her victory was but half achieved, put her hand upon his shoulder, and asked him to let her taste the grog again. I also, to make him feel more at ease, helped myself to a glass. Tom did the same, and old Tom with more regard to the feelings of the Dominie than in his own bluntness of character I would have given him credit for, said in a quiet tone, “The old gentleman is afraid of grog, because he seed me take a drop too much, but that’s no reason why grog ar’n’t a good thing, and wholesome in moderation. A glass or two is very well, and better still when sweetened by the lips of a pretty girl; and, even if the Dominie does not like it, he’s too much of a gentleman not to give up his dislikes to please a lady. More’s the merit; for, if he did like it, it would be no sacrifice, that’s sartain. Don’t you think so, my old boozer?” continued he, addressing Stapleton, who smoked in silence.
“Human natur’,” replied Stapleton, taking the pipe out of his mouth, and spitting under the table.
“Very true, master; and so here’s to your health, Mr Dominie, and may you never want a pretty girl to talk to, or a glass of grog to drink her health with.”
“Oh, but the Dominie don’t care about pretty girls, father,” replied Tom; “he’s too learned and clever; he thinks about nothing but the moon, and Latin and Greek, and all that.”
“Who can say what’s under the skin, Tom? There’s no knowing what is, and what isn’t—Sall’s shoe for that.”
“Never heard of Sall’s shoe, father; that’s new to me.”
“Didn’t I ever tell you that, Tom?—Well, then, you shall have it now—that is, if all the company be agreeable.”
“Oh, yes,” cried Mary; “pray tell us.”
“Would you like to hear it, sir?”
“I never heard of Sall Sue in my life, and would fain hear her history,” replied the Dominie; “proceed, friend Dux.”
“Well, then, you must know when I was a-board of the Terp-sy-chore, there was a fore-topman, of the name of Bill Harness, a good sort of chap enough, but rather soft in the upper-works. Now, we’d been on the Jamaica station for some years, and had come home, and merry enough, and happy enough we were (those that were left of us), and we were spending our money like the devil. Bill Harness had a wife, who was very fond of he, and he was very fond of she, but she was a slatternly sort of a body, never tidy in her rigging, all adrift at all times, and what’s more, she never had a shoe up at heel, so she went by the name of Slatternly Sall, and the first lieutenant, who was a ’ticular sort of a chap, never liked to see her on deck, for you see she put her hair in paper on New Year’s day, and never changed it or took it out till the year came round again. However, be it as it may be, she loved Bill, and Bill loved she, and they were very happy together. A’ter all, it ain’t whether a woman’s tidy without that makes a man’s happiness; it depends upon whether she be right within; that is, if she be good-tempered, and obliging, and civil, and ’commodating, and so forth. A’ter the first day or two, person’s nothing—eyes get palled, like the cap-stern when the anchor’s up to the bows; but what a man likes is, not to be disturbed by vagaries, or gusts of temper. Well, Bill was happy—but one day he was devilish unhappy, because Sall had lost one of her shoes, which wasn’t to be wondered at, considering as how she was always slipshod. ‘Who has seen my wife’s shoe?’ says he. ‘Hang your wife’s shoe,’ said one, ‘it warn’t worth casting an eye upon;’ Still he cried out, ‘Who has seen my wife’s shoe?’ ‘I seed it,’ says another. ‘Where?’ says Bill. ‘I seed it down at heel,’ says the fellow. But Bill still hallooed out about his wife’s shoe, which it appeared she had dropped off her foot as she was going up the forecastle ladder to take the air a bit, just as it was dark. At last Bill made so much fuss about it that the ship’s company laughed, and all called out to each other, ‘Who has seen Sall’s shoe?—Have you got Sall’s shoe?’ and they passed the word fore and aft the whole evening, till they went to their hammocks. Notwithstanding, as Sall’s shoe was not forthcoming, the next morning Bill goes on the quarter-deck, and complains to the first lieutenant, as how he had lost Sall’s shoe. ‘Damn Sall’s shoe,’ said he, ‘haven’t I enough to look after without your wife’s confounded shoes, which can’t be worth twopence?’ Well, Bill argues that his wife had only one shoe left, and that won’t keep two feet dry, and begs the first lieutenant to order a search for it; but the first lieutenant turns away, and tells him to go to the devil, and all the men grin at Bill’s making such a fuss about nothing. So Bill at last goes up to the first lieutenant, and whispers something, and the first lieutenant booms him off with his speaking trumpet, as if he were making too free, in whispering to his commanding officer, and then sends for the master-at-arms. ‘Collier,’ says he, ‘this man has lost his wife’s shoe: let a search be made for it immediately—take all the ship’s boys, and look everywhere for it; if you find it bring it up to me.’ So away goes the master-at-arms with his cane, and collects all the boys to look for Sall’s shoe—and they go peeping about the maindeck, under the guns, and under the hen-coops, and in the sheep-pen, and everywhere; now and then getting a smart slap with the cane behind, upon the taut part of their trowsers, to make them look sharp, until they all wished Sall’s shoe at Old Nick, and her too, and Bill in the bargain. At last one of the boys picks it out of the manger, where it had lain all the night, poked up and down by the noses of the pigs, who didn’t think it eatable, although it might have smelt human-like; the fact was, it was the same boy who had picked up Sall’s shoe when she dropped it, and had shied it forward. It sartainly did not seem to be worth all the trouble, but howsomever it was taken aft by the master-at-arms, and laid on the capstern head. Then Bill steps out and takes the shoe before the first lieutenant, and cuts it open, and from between the lining pulls out four ten pound notes, which Sall had sewn up there by way of security; and the first lieutenant tells Bill he was a great fool to trust his money in the shoe of a woman who always went slipshod, and tells him to go about his business, and stow his money away in a safer place next time. A’ter, if any thing was better than it looked to be, the ship’s company used always to say it was like Sall’s shoe. There you have it all.”
“Well,” says Stapleton, taking the pipe out of his mouth, “I know a fact, much of a muchness with that, which happened to me when I was below the river, tending a ship at Sheerness—for at one time, d’ye see, I used to ply there. She was an old fifty-gun ship, called the Adamant, if I recollect right. One day the first lieutenant, who, like yourn, was a mighty particular sort of chap, was going round the maindeck, and he sees an old pair of canvas trowsers stowed in under the trunnion of one of the guns. So says he, ‘Whose be these?’ Now, no man would answer, because they knowed very well that it would be as good as a fortnight in the black list. With that, the first lieutenant bundles them out of the port, and away they floats astern with the tide. It was about half-an-hour after that, that I comes off with the milk for the wardroom mess, and a man named Will Heaviside says to me, ‘Stapleton,’ says he, ‘the first lieutenant has thrown my canvas trowsers overboard, and be damned to him; now I must have them back.’ ‘But where be they?’ says I: ‘I suppose down at the bottom by this time, and the flat-fish dubbing their noses into them.’ ‘No, no,’ says he, ‘they wo’n’t never sink, but float till eternity; they be gone down with the tide, and they will come back again; only you keep a sharp look-out for them, and I’ll give you five shillings if you bring them.’ Well, I seed little chance of ever seeing them again, or of my seeing five shillings, but as it so happened next tide, the very ’denticle pair of trowsers comes up staring me in the face. I pulls them in, and takes them to Will Heaviside, who appears to be mightily pleased, and gives me the money. ‘I wouldn’t have lost them for ten, no, not fur twenty pounds,’ says he. ‘At all events you’ve paid me more than they are worth,’ says I. ‘Have I?’ says he; ‘stop a bit;’ and he outs with his knife, and rips open the waistband, and pulls out a piece of linen, and out of the piece of linen he pulls out a child’s caul. ‘There,’ says he, ‘now you knows why the trowsers wouldn’t sink, and I’ll leave you to judge whether they ar’n’t worth five shillings.’ That’s my story.”
“Well, I can’t understand how it is, that a caul should keep people up,” observed old Tom.
“At all events, a call makes people come up fast enough on board a man-of-war, father.”
“That’s true enough, but I’m talking of a child’s caul, not of a boatswain’s, Tom.”
“I’ll just tell you how it is,” replied Stapleton, who had recommenced smoking; “it’s human natur’.”
“What is your opinion, sir?” said Mary to the Dominie.
“Maiden,” replied the Dominie, taking his pipe out of his mouth, “I opine that it’s a vulgar error. Sir Thomas Brown, I think it is, hath the same idea; many and strange were the superstitions which have been handed down by our less enlightened ancestors—all of which mists have been cleared away by the powerful rays of truth.”
“Well, but, master, if a vulgar error saves a man from Davy Jones’s locker, ar’n’t it just as well to sew it up in the waistband of your trowsers?”
“Granted, good Dux; if it would save a man; but how is it possible? it is contrary to the first elements of science.”
“What matter does that make, provided it holds a man up?”
“Friend Dux, thou art obtuse.”
“Well, perhaps I am, as I don’t know what that is.”
“But, father, don’t you recollect,” interrupted Tom, “what the parson said last Sunday, that faith saved men? Now, Master Dominie, may it not be faith that a man has in the caul which may save him?”
“Young Tom, thou art astute.”
“Well, perhaps I am, as father said, for I don’t know what that is. You knock us all down with your dictionary.”
“Well I do love to hear people make use of such hard words,” said Mary, looking at the Dominie. “How very clever you must be, sir! I wonder whether I shall ever understand them?”
“Nay, if thou wilt, I will initiate—sweet maiden, wilt steal an hour or so to impregnate thy mind with the seeds of learning, which, in so fair a soil, must needs bring forth good fruit!”
“That’s a fine word, that impregnate—will you give us the English of it, sir?” said young Tom to the Dominie.
“It is English, Tom, only the old gentleman razeed it a little. The third ship in the lee line of the Channel fleet was a eighty, called the Impregnable, but the old gentleman knows more about books than sea matters.”
“A marvellous misconception,” quoth the Dominie.
“There’s another,” cried Tom, laughing; “that must be a three-decker. Come, father, here’s the bottle, you must take another glass to wash that down.”
“Pray what was the meaning of that last long word, sir,” said Mary, taking the Dominie by the arm, “mis—something.”
“The word,” replied the Dominie, “is a compound from conception, borrowed from the Latin tongue implying conceiving; and the mis prefixed, which negatives or reverses the meaning; misconception, therefore, implies not to conceive. I can make you acquainted with many others of a similar tendency as mis-conception; videlicet, mis-apprehension, mis-understanding, mis-contriving mis-applying, mis—”
“Dear me, what a many misses,” cried Mary, “and do you know them all?”
“Indeed do I,” replied the Dominie, “and many, many more are treasured in my memory, quod nunc describere tongum est.”
“I’d no idea that the old gentleman was given to running after the girls in that way,” said old Tom to Stapleton.
“Human natur’,” replied the other.
“No more did I,” continued Mary; “I shall have nothing to say to him;” and she drew off her chair a few inches from that of the Dominie.
“Maiden,” quoth the Dominie, “thou art under a mistake.”
“Another miss, I declare,” cried Tom, laughing.
“What an old Turk!” continued Mary, getting further off.
“Nay, then, I will not reply,” said the Dominie indignantly, putting down his pipe, leaning back on his chair, and pulling out his great red handkerchief, which he applied to his nose, and produced a sound that made the windows of the little parlour vibrate for some seconds.
“I say, master Tom, don’t you make too free with your betters,” said old Tom, when he saw the Dominie affronted.
“Nay,” replied the Dominie, “there’s an old adage which saith, ‘As the old cock crows, so doth the young.’ Wherefore didst thou set him the example?”
“Very true, old gentleman, and I axes your pardon, and here’s my hand upon it.”
“And so do I, sir, and here’s my hand upon it,” said young Tom, extending his hand on the Dominie’s other side.
“Friend Dux, and thou, young Tom, I do willingly accept thy proffered reconciliation; knowing, as I well do, that there may be much mischief in thy composition, but naught of malice.” The Dominie extended his hands, and shook both those offered to him warmly.
“There,” said old Tom, “now my mind’s at ease, as old Pigtown said.”
“I know not the author whom thou quotest from, good Dux.”
“Author!—I never said he was an author; he was only captain of a schooner, trading between the islands, that I sailed with a few weeks in the West Indies.”
“Perhaps, then, you will relate to the company present the circumstances which took place to put old Pegtop’s—(I may not be correct in the name)—but whoever it may be—”
“Pigtown, master.”
“Well, then—that put old Pigtown’s mind at ease—for I am marvellously amused with thy narrations, which do pass away the time most agreeably, good Dux.”
“With all my heart, old gentleman; but first let us fill up our tumblers. I don’t know how it is, but it does appear to me that grog drinks better out of a glass than out of metal and if it wasn’t that Tom is so careless—and the dog has no respect for crockery any more than persons—I would have one or two on board for particular service; but I’ll think about that, and hear what the old woman has to say on the subject. Now to my yarn. D’ye see, old Pigtown commanded a little schooner, which plied between the isles, and he had been in her for a matter of forty years, and was as well-known as Port Royal Tom.”
“Who might Port Royal Tom be?” inquired the Dominie; “a relation of yours?”
“I hope not, master, for I wanted none of his acquaintance; he was a shark about twenty feet long who rode guard in the harbour, to prevent the men-of-war’s men from deserting, and was pensioned by government.”
“Pensioned by government! nay, but that soundeth strangely. I have heard that pensions have been most lavishly bestowed, but not that it extended so far. Truly it must have been a sinecure.”
“I don’t know what that last may be,” replied old Tom, “but I heard our boatswain, in the Minerve, who talked politics a bit, say, ‘as how half the pensions were held by a pack of damned sharks;’ but in this here shark’s case, it wasn’t in money, master; but he’d regular rations of bullock’s liver to persuade him to remain in the harbour, and no one dare swim on shore when he was cruising round and round the ships. Well, old Pigtown, with his white trousers and straw hat, red nose and big belly, was as well-known as could be, and was a capital old fellow for remembering and executing commissions, provided you gave him the money first; if not, he always took care to forget them. Old Pigtown had a son, a little dark or so, which proved that his mother wasn’t quite as fair as a lily, and this son was employed in a drogher, that is, a small craft which goes round to the bays of the island, and takes off the sugars to the West India traders. One fine day the drogher was driven out to sea, and never heard of a’terwards. Now, old Pigtown was very anxious about what had come of his son, and day after day expected he would come back again; but he never did, for very good reasons, as you shall hear by-and-by; and every one knowing old Pigtown, and he knowing everybody, it was at least fifty times a day that the question was put to him, ‘Well, Pigtown, have you heard anything of your son?’ And fifty times a day he would reply, ‘No; and my mind’s but ill at ease.’ Well, it was two or three months afterwards, that when I was in the schooner with him, as we lay becalmed between the islands, with the sun frizzing our wigs, and the planks so hot that you couldn’t walk without your shoes, that we hooked a large shark which came bowling under our counter, got him on board and cut him up. When we opened his inside, what should I see but something shining. I took it out, and sure enough it was a silver watch. So I hands it to old Pigtown. He looks at it very ’tentively, opens the outside case, reads the maker’s name, and then shuts it up again. ‘This here watch,’ says he, ‘belonged to my son Jack. I bought it of a chap in a South whaler for three dollars and a roll of pigtail, and a very good watch it was, though I perceive it to be stopped now. Now, d’ye see, it’s all clear—the drogher must have gone down in a squall—the shark must have picked up my son Jack, and must have digested his body, but has not been able to digest his watch. Now I knows what’s become of him, and so—my mind’s at ease.’”
“Well,” observed old Stapleton, “I agrees with old Poptown, or whatever his name might be, that it were better to know the worst at once than to be kept on the worry all your days; I consider it’s nothing but human natur’. Why, if one has a bad tooth, which is the best plan, to have it out with one good wrench, or to be eternally tormented, night and day.”
“Thou speakest wisely, friend Stapleton, and like a man of resolve—the anticipation is often, if not always, more painful than the reality. Thou knowest, Jacob, how often I have allowed a boy to remain unbuttoned in the centre of the room for an hour previous to the application of the birch—and it was with the consideration that the impression would be greater upon his mind than even upon his nether parts. All of the feelings in the human breast, that of suspense is—”
“Worse than hanging,” interrupted young Tom.
“Even so, boy (cluck, cluck), an apt comparison, seeing that in suspense you are hanging, as it were, in the very region of doubt, without being able to obtain a footing even upon conjecture. Nay, we may further add another simile, although not so well borne out, which is, that the agony of suspense doth stop the breath of a man for the time, as hanging doth stop it altogether, so that it may be truly said, that suspense is put an end to by suspending.” (cluck, cluck.)
“And now that you’ve got rid of all that, master, suppose you fill up your pipe,” observed old Tom.
“And I will fill up your tumbler, sir,” said Mary; “for you must be dry with talking such hard words.”
The Dominie this time made no objection, and again enveloped Mary and himself in a cloud of smoke, through which his nose loomed like an Indiaman in a Channel fog.
“I say, Master Stapleton, suppose we were to knock out half a port,” observed old Tom, after a silence of two minutes; “for the old gentleman blows a devil of a cloud: that is, if no one has an objection.” Stapleton gave a nod of assent, and I rose and put the upper window down a few inches. “Ay, that’s right, Jacob; now we shall see what Miss Mary and he are about. You’ve been enjoying the lady all to yourself, master,” continued Tom, addressing the Dominie.
“Verily and truly,” replied the Dominie, “even as a second Jupiter.”
“Never heard of him.”
“I presume not; still, Jacob will tell thee that the history is to be found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.”
“Never heard of the country, master.”
“Nay, friend Dux, it is a book, not a country, in which thou may’st read how Jupiter at first descended unto Semele in a cloud.”
“And pray, where did he come from, master?”
“He came from heaven.”
“The devil he did. Well, if ever I gets there, I mean to stay.”
“It was love, all-powerful love, which induced him, maiden,” replied the Dominie, turning, with a smiling eye, to Mary.
“’Bove my comprehension altogether,” replied old Tom.
“Human natur’,” muttered Stapleton, with the pipe still between his lips.
“Not the first vessels that have run foul in a fog,” observed young Tom.
“No, boy; but generally there ar’n’t much love between them at those times. But, come, now that we can breathe again, suppose I give you a song. What shall it be, young woman, a sea ditty, or something spooney?”
“Oh, something about love, if you’ve no objection, sir,” said Mary, appealing to the Dominie.
“Nay, it pleaseth me maiden, and I am of thy mind. Friend Dux, let it be Anacreontic.”
“What the devil’s that?” cried old Tom, lifting up his eyes, and taking the pipe out of his mouth.
“Nothing of your own, father, that’s clear; but something to borrow, for it’s to be on tick,” replied Tom.
“Nay, boy, I would have been understood that the song should refer to women or wine.”
“Both of which are to his fancy,” observed young Tom to me, aside.
“Human natur’,” quaintly observed Stapleton.
“Well, then, you shall have your wish. I’ll give you one that might be warbled in a lady’s chamber without stirring the silk curtains:—
“Oh! the days are gone when beauty bright
My heart’s chain wove,
When my dream of life from morn to night
Was Love—still Love.
New hope may bloom, and days may come,
Of milder, calmer beam,
But there’s nothing half so sweet in life
As Love’s young dream;
Oh! there’s nothing half so sweet in life,
As Love’s young dream.”
The melody of the song, added to the spirits he had drunk and Mary’s eyes beaming on him, had a great effect upon the Dominie. As old Tom warbled out, so did the pedagogue gradually approach the chair of Mary; and as gradually entwine her waist with his own arm, his eyes twinkling brightly on her. Old Tom, who perceived it, had given me and Tom a wink, as he repeated the two last lines; and then we saw what was going on, we burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. “Boys! boys!” said the Dominie, starting up, “thou hast awakened me, by thy boisterous mirth, from a sweet musing created by the harmony of friend Dux’s voice. Neither do I discover the source of thy cachinnation, seeing that the song is amatory and not comic. Still, it may not be supposed, at thy early age, that thou canst be affected with what thou art too young to feel. Pr’ythee continue, friend Dux, and, boys, restrain thy mirth.”
“Though the bard to a purer fame may soar
When wild youth’s past,
Though he win the wise, who frowned before,
To smile at last,
He’ll never meet a joy so sweet
In all his noon of fame,
As when first he sung to woman’s ear
His soul-felt flame;
And at every close she blush’d to hear
The once-lov’d name.”
At the commencement of this verse the Dominie appeared to be on his guard; but gradually moved by the power of song, he dropped his elbow on the table, and his pipe underneath it; his forehead sank into his broad palm, and he remained motionless. The verse ended, and the Dominie, forgetting all around him, softly ejaculated, without looking up, “Eheu! Mary.”
“Did you speak to me, sir?” said Mary, who, perceiving us tittering, addressed the Dominie with a half-serious, half-mocking air.
“Speak, maiden? nay, I spoke not; yet thou mayest give me my pipe, which apparently hath been abducted while I was listening to the song.”
“Abducted! that’s a new word; but it means smashed into twenty pieces, I suppose,” observed young Tom. “At all events, your pipe is, for you let it fall between your legs.”
“Never mind,” said Mary, rising from her chair, and going to the cupboard; “here’s another, sir.”
“Well, master, am I to finish, or have you had enough of it?”
“Proceed, friend Dux, proceed; and believe that I am all attention.”
“Oh, that hallowed form is ne’er forgot
Which first love trac’d,
Still it lingering haunts the greenest spot
On memory’s waste.
’Twas odour fled as soon as shed,
’Twas memory’s winged dream,
’Twas a light that ne’er can shine again
On life’s dull stream;
Oh, ’twas light that ne’er can shine again
On life’s dull stream.”
“Nay,” said the Dominie, again abstracted, “the metaphor is not just. ‘Life’s dull stream.’ ‘Lethe tacitus amnis,’ as Lucan hath it; but the stream of life flows—ay, flows rapidly—even in my veins. Doth not the heart throb and beat—yea, strongly—peradventure too forcibly against my better judgment? ‘Confiteor misere molle cor esse mihi,’ as Ovid saith. Yet must it not prevail! Shall one girl be victorious over seventy boys? Shall I, Dominie Dobbs, desert my post?—Again succumb to—I will even depart, that I may be at my desk at matutinal hours.”
“You don’t mean to leave us, sir?” said Mary, taking the Dominie’s arm.
“Even so, fair maiden, for it waxeth late, and I have my duties to perform,” said the Dominie, rising from his chair.
“Then you will promise to come again.”
“Peradventure I may.”
“If you do not promise me that you will, I will not let you go now.”
“Verily, maiden—”
“Promise,” interrupted Mary.
“Truly, maiden—”
“Promise,” cried Mary.
“In good sooth, maiden—”
“Promise,” reiterated Mary, pulling the Dominie towards her chair.
“Nay, then, I do promise, since thou wilt have it so,” replied the Dominie.
“And when will you come?”
“I will not tarry,” replied the Dominie; “and now good night to all.”
The Dominie shook hands with us, and Mary lighted him downstairs. I was much pleased with the resolution and sense of his danger thus shown by my worthy preceptor, and hoped that he would have avoided Mary in future, who evidently wished to make a conquest of him for her own amusement and love of admiration; but still I felt that the promise exacted would be fulfilled, and I was afraid that a second meeting, and that perhaps not before witnesses, would prove mischievous. I made up my mind to speak to Mary on the subject as soon as I had an opportunity, and insist upon her not making a fool of the worthy old man. Mary remained below a much longer time than was necessary, and when she re-appeared and looked at me, as if for a smile of approval, I turned from her with a contemptuous air. She sat down, and looked confused. Tom was also silent, and paid her no attention. A quarter of an hour passed, when he proposed to his father that they should be off, and the party broke up. Leaving Mary silent and thoughtful, and old Stapleton finishing his pipe, I took my candle and went to bed.
The next day the moon changed, the weather changed, and a rapid thaw took place. “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good,” observed old Stapleton; “we watermen will have the river to ourselves again, and the hucksters must carry their gingerbread-nuts to another market.” It was, however, three or four days before the river was clear of the ice, so as to permit the navigation to proceed; and during that time, I may as well observe, that there was dissension between Mary and me. I showed her that I resented her conduct, and at first she tried to pacify me; but finding that I held out longer than she expected, she turned round, and was affronted in return. Short words and no lessons were the order of the day; and as each party seemed determined to hold out, there was little prospect of a reconciliation. In this she was the greatest sufferer, as I quitted the house after breakfast, and did not return until dinner time. At first old Stapleton plied very regularly, and took all the fares; but about a fortnight after we had worked together, he used to leave me to look after employment, and remain at the public-house. The weather was now fine, and, after the severe frost, it changed so rapidly that most of the trees were in leaf, and the horse-chestnuts in full blossom. The wherry was in constant demand, and every evening I handed from four to six shillings over to old Stapleton. I was delighted with my life, and should have been perfectly happy if it had not been for my quarrel with Mary still continuing, she as resolutely refraining from making advances as I. How much may life be embittered by dissension with those you live with, even when there is no very warm attachment; the constant grating together worries and annoys, and although you may despise the atoms, the aggregate becomes insupportable. I had no pleasure in the house; and the evenings, which formerly passed so agreeably, were now a source of vexation, from being forced to sit in company with one with whom I was not on good terms. Old Stapleton was seldom at home till late, and this made it still worse. I was communing with myself one night, as I had my eyes fixed on my book, whether I should make the first advances, when Mary, who had been quietly at work, broke the silence by asking me what I was reading. I replied in a quiet tone.
“Jacob,” said she, in continuation, “I think you have used me very ill to humble me in this manner. It was your business to make it up first.”
“I am not aware that I have been in the wrong,” replied I.
“I do not say that you have; but what matter does that make? You ought to give way to a woman.”
“Why so?”
“Why so! don’t the whole world do so? Do you not offer everything first to a woman? Is it not her right?”
“Not when she is in the wrong, Mary.”
“Yes, when she’s in the wrong, Jacob; there’s no merit in doing it when she’s in the right.”
“I think otherwise; at all events, it depends on how much she has been in the wrong, and I consider you have shown a bad heart, Mary.”
“A bad heart! in what way, Jacob?”
“In realising the fable of the boys and the frogs with the poor old Dominie, forgetting that what may be sport to you is death to him.”
“You don’t mean to say that he’ll die of love,” replied Mary, laughing.
“I should hope not: but you may contrive, and you have tried all in your power, to make him very wretched.”
“And, pray, how do you know that I do not like the old gentleman, Jacob? You appear to think that a girl is to fall in love with nobody but yourself. Why should I not love an old man with so much learning? I have been told that old husbands are much prouder of their wives than young ones, and pay them more attention, and don’t run after other women. How do you know that I am not serious?”
“Because I know your character, Mary, and am not to be deceived. If you mean to defend yourself in that way, we had better not talk any more.”
“Lord, how savage you are! then, suppose I did pay the old gentleman any attention. Did the young ones pay me any? Did either you, or your precious friend, Mr Tom, even speak to me?”
“No; we saw how you were employed, and we both hate a jilt.”
“Oh, you do. Very well, sir; just as you please. I may make both your hearts ache for this some day or another.”
“Forewarned, forearmed, Mary; and I shall take care that they are both forewarned as well as myself. As I perceive that you are so decided, I shall say no more. Only, for your own sake, and your own happiness, I caution you. Recollect your mother, Mary, and recollect your mother’s death.”
Mary covered her face and burst into tears. She sobbed for a few minutes, and then came to me. “You are right, Jacob; and I am a foolish—perhaps wicked—girl; but forgive me, and indeed I will try to behave better. But, as father says, it is human nature in me, and it’s hard to conquer our natures, Jacob.”
“Will you promise me not to continue your advances to the Dominie, Mary?”
“I will not, if I can help it, Jacob. I may forget for the moment, but I’ll do all I can. It’s not very easy to look grave when one is merry, or sour when one is pleased.”
“But what can induce you, Mary, to practise upon an old man like him? If it were young Tom, I could understand it. There might be some credit, and your pride might be flattered by the victory; but an old man—”
“Still, Jacob, old or young, it’s much the same. I would like to have them all at my feet, and that’s the truth. I can’t help it. And I thought it a great victory to bring there a wise old man, who was so full of Latin and learning, and who ought to know better. Tell me Jacob, if old men a how themselves to be caught, as well as young, where is the crime of catching them? Isn’t there as much vanity in an old man, in his supposing that I really could love him, as there is in me, who am but a young, foolish girl, in trying to make him fond of me?”
“That may be; but still recollect that he is in earnest, and you are only joking, which makes a great difference; and recollect further, that in trying at all, we very often lose all.”
“That I would take my chance of, Jacob,” replied Mary, proudly throwing her curly ringlets back with her hand from her white forehead; “but what I now want is to make friends with you. Come, Jacob, you have my promise to do my best.”
“Yes, Mary, and I believe you, so there’s my hand.”
“You don’t know how miserable I have been, Jacob, since we quarrelled,” said Mary, wiping the tears away, which again commenced flowing; “and yet I don’t know why, for I’m sure I have almost hated you this last week—that I have; but the fact is, I like quarrelling very well for the pleasure of making it up again; but not for the quarrel to last so long as this has done.”
“It has annoyed me too, Mary, for I like you very much in general.”
“Well, then, now it’s all over; but Jacob, are you sure you are friends with me?”
“Yes, Mary.”
Mary looked archly at me. “You know the old saw, and I feel the truth of it.”
“What, ‘kiss and make friends?’” replied I; “with all my heart,” and I kissed her, without any resistance on her part.
“No, I didn’t mean that, Jacob.”
“What then?”
“Oh! ’twas another.”
“Well, then, what was the other?”
“Never mind, I forget it now,” said she laughing, and rising from the chair. “Now, I must go to my work again, and you must tell me what you’ve been doing this last fortnight.”
Mary and I entered into a long and amicable conversation till her father came home, when we retired to bed. “I think,” said old Stapleton, the next morning, “that I’ve had work enough; and I’ve belonged to two benefit clubs for so long as to ’title me to an allowance. I think, Jacob, I shall give up the wherry to you, and you shall in future give me one-third of your earnings, and keep the rest to yourself. I don’t see why you’re to work hard all day for nothing.” I remonstrated against this excess of liberality; but old Stapleton was positive, and the arrangement was made. I afterwards discovered, what may probably occur to the reader, that Captain Turnbull was at the bottom of all this. He had pensioned old Stapleton that I might become independent by my own exertions before I had served my apprenticeship; and after breakfast, old Stapleton walked down with me to the beach, and we launched the boat. “Recollect, Jacob,” said he, “one-third, and honour bright;” so saying, he adjourned to his old quarters, the public-house, to smoke his pipe and think of human natur’. I do not recollect any day of my life on which I felt more happy than on this: I was working for myself, and independent. I jumped into my wherry, and, without waiting for a fare, I pushed off, and, gaining the stream, cleaved through the water with delight as my reward; but after a quarter of an hour I sobered down with the recollection that, although I might pull about for nothing for my own amusement, that as Stapleton was entitled to one-third, I had no right to neglect his interest; and I shot my wherry into the row, and stood with my hand and fore-finger raised, watching the eye of every one who came towards the hard. I was fortunate that day, and when I returned, was proceeding to give Stapleton his share, when he stopped me. “Jacob, it’s no use dividing now; once a-week will be better. I likes things to come in a lump; cause, d’ye see—it’s—it’s—human natur’.”
I consider that the present was the period from which I might date my first launching into human life. I was now nearly eighteen years old, strong, active, and well-made, full of spirits, and overjoyed at the independence which I had so much sighed for. Since the period of my dismissal from Mr Drummond’s my character had much altered. I had become grave and silent, brooding over my wrongs, harbouring feelings of resentment against the parties, and viewing the world in general through a medium by no means favourable. I had become in some degree restored from this unwholesome state of mind from having rendered an important service to Captain Turnbull, for we love the world better as we feel that we are more useful in it; but the independence now given to me was the acme of my hopes and wishes. I felt so happy, so buoyant in mind, that I could even think of the two clerks in Mr Drummond’s employ without feelings of revenge. Let it, however, be remembered that the world was all before me in anticipation only.
“Boat, sir?”
“No, thanky, my lad. I want old Stapleton—is he here?”
“No, sir, but this is his boat.”
“Humph, can’t he take me down?”
“No, sir; but I can, if you please.”
“Well, then, be quick.”
A sedate-looking gentleman, about forty-five years of age, stepped into the boat, and in a few seconds I was in the stream, shooting the bridge with the ebbing tide.
“What’s the matter with deaf Stapleton?”
“Nothing, sir; but he’s getting old, and has made the boat over to me.”
“Are you his son?”
“No, sir, his ’prentice.”
“Humph! sorry deaf Stapleton’s gone.”
“I can be as deaf as he, sir, if you wish it.”
“Humph!”
The gentleman said no more at the time, and I pulled down the river in silence; but in a few minutes he began to move his hands up and down, and his lips, as if he was in conversation. Gradually his action increased, and words were uttered. At last he broke out:— “It is with this conviction, I may say important conviction, Mr Speaker, that I now deliver my sentiments to the Commons’ house of Parliament, trusting that no honourable member will decide until he has fully weighed the importance of the arguments which I have submitted to his judgment.” He then stopped, as if aware that I was present, and looked at me; but, prepared as I was, there was nothing in my countenance which exhibited the least sign of merriment; or, indeed, of having paid any attention to what he had been saying, for I looked carelessly to the right and left at the banks of the river. He again entered into conversation.
“Have you been long on the river?”
“Born on it, sir.”
“How do you like the profession of a waterman?”
“Very well, sir; the great point is to have regular customers.”
“And how do you gain them?”
“By holding my tongue; keeping their counsel and my own.”
“Very good answer, my boy. People who have much to do cannot afford to loose even their time on the water. Just now I was preparing and thinking over my speech in the House of Commons.”
“So I supposed, sir, and I think the river is a very good place for it, as no one can overhear you except the person whose services you have hired—and you need not mind him.”
“Very true, my lad; but that’s why I liked deaf Stapleton: he could not hear a word.”
“But sir, if you’ve no objection, I like to hear it very much; and you may be sure that I should never say anything about it, if you will trust me.”
“Do you my lad? well, then I’ll just try it over again. You shall be the speaker—mind you hold your tongue, and don’t interrupt me.”
The gentleman then began: “Mr Speaker, I should not have ventured to address the House at this late hour, did I not consider that the importance of the question now before it is—so important—no, that won’t do—did I not consider that the question now before it is of that, I may say, paramount importance as to call forth the best energies of every man who is a well-wisher to his country. With this conviction, Mr Speaker, humble individual as I am, I feel it my duty, I may say, my bounden duty, to deliver my sentiments upon the subject. The papers which I now hold in my hand, Mr Speaker, and to which I shall soon have to call the attention of the House, will, I trust, fully establish—”
“I say, waterman, be you taking that chap to Bedlam?” cried a shrill female voice close to us. The speech was stopped; we looked up, and perceived a wherry with two females passing close to us. A shout of laughter followed the observation, and my fare looked very much confused.
I had often read the papers in the public-house, and remembering what was usual in the house in case of interruption, called out, “Order, order!” This made the gentleman laugh, and as the other wherry was now far off, he recommenced his oration, with which I shall not trouble my readers. It was a very fair speech, I have no doubt, but I forget what it was about.
I landed him at Westminster Bridge, and received treble my fare. “Recollect,” said he, on paying me, “that I shall look out for you when I come again, which I do every Monday morning, and sometimes oftener. What’s your name?”
“Jacob, sir.”
“Very well; good morning, my lad.”
This gentleman became a very regular and excellent customer, and we used to have a great deal of conversation, independent of debating, in the wherry; and I must acknowledge that I received from him not only plenty of money, but a great deal of valuable information.
A few days after this I had an opportunity of ascertaining how far Mary would keep her promise. I was plying at the river side as usual, when old Stapleton came up to me, with his pipe in his mouth, and said, “Jacob, there be that old gentleman up at our house with Mary. Now, I sees a great deal, but I says nothing. Mary will be her mother over again, that’s sartain. Suppose you go and see your old teacher, and leave me to look a’ter a customer. I begin to feel as if handling the sculls a little would be of sarvice to me. We all think idleness be a very pleasant thing when we’re obliged to work but when we are idle, then we feel that a little work be just as agreeable—that’s human natur’.”
I thought that Mary was very likely to forget all her good resolutions, from her ardent love of admiration, and I was determined to go and break up the conference. I, therefore, left the boat to Stapleton, and hastened to the house. I did not like to play the part of an eavesdropper, and was quite undecided how I should act; whether to go in at once or not, when, as I passed under the window, which was open, I heard very plainly the conversation that was going on. I stopped in the street, and listened to the Dominie in continuation—“But, fair maiden, omnia vincit amor—here am I, Dominie Dobbs, who have long passed the grand climacteric, and can already muster three score years—who have authority over seventy boys, being Magister Princeps et Dux of Brentford Grammar School—who have affectioned only the sciences, and communed only with the classics—who have ever turned a deaf ear to the allurements of thy sex, and ever hardened my heart to thy fascination—here am I, even I, Dominie Dobbs, suing at the feet of a maiden who had barely ripened into womanhood, who knoweth not to read or write, and whose father earns his bread by manual labour. I feel it all—I feel that I am too old—that thou art too young—that I am departing from the ways of wisdom, and am regardless of my worldly prospects. Still, omnia vincit amor, and I bow to the all-powerful god, doing him homage through thee, Mary. Vainly have I resisted—vainly have I, as I have lain in bed, tried to drive thee from my thoughts, and tear thine image from my heart. Have I not felt thy presence everywhere? Do not I astonish my worthy coadjutor, Mistress Bately, the matron, by calling her by the name of Mary, when I had always before addressed her by her baptismal name of Deborah? Nay, have not the boys in the classes discovered my weakness, and do they not shout out Mary in the hours of play? Mare periculosum et turbidum hast thou been to me. I sleep not—I eat not—and every sign of love which hath been adduced by Ovidius Naso, whom I have diligently collated, do I find in mine own person. Speak, then, maiden. I have given vent to my feelings, do thou the same, that I may return, and leave not my flock without their shepherd. Speak, maiden.”
“I will, sir, if you will get up,” replied Mary, who paused, and then continued. “I think, sir, that I am young and foolish, and you are old and—and—”
“Foolish, thou wouldst say.”
“I had rather you said it, sir, than I; it is not for me to use such an expression towards one so learned as you are. I think, sir, that I am too young to marry; and that perhaps you are—too old. I think, sir, that you are too clever—and that I am very ignorant; that it would not suit you in your situation to marry; and that it would not suit me to marry you—equally obliged to you all the same.”
“Perhaps thou hast in thy reply proved the wiser of the two,” answered the Dominie; “but why, maiden, didst thou raise those feelings, those hopes in my breast, only to cause me pain, and make me drink deep of the cup of disappointment? didst thou appear to cling to me in fondness, if thou felt not a yearning towards me?”
“But are there no other sorts of love besides the one you would require, sir? May I not love you because you are so clever, and so learned in Latin. May I not love you as I do my father?”
“True, true, child; it is all my own folly, and I must retrace my steps in sorrow. I have been deceived—but I have been deceived only by myself. My wishes have clouded my understanding, and have obscured my reason; have made me forgetful of my advanced years, and of the little favour I was likely to find in the eyes of a young maiden. I have fallen into a pit through blindness, and I must extricate myself, sore as will be the task. Bless thee, maiden, bless thee! May another be happy in thy love, and never feel the barb of disappointment. I will pray for thee, Mary—that Heaven may bless thee.” And the Dominie turned away and wept.
Mary appeared to be moved by the good old man’s affliction, and her heart probably smote her for her coquettish behaviour. She attempted to console the Dominie, and appeared to be more than half crying herself. “No, sir, do not take on so, you make me feel very uncomfortable. I have been wrong—I feel I have—though you have not blamed me, I am a very foolish girl.”
“Bless thee, child—bless thee!” replied the Dominie, in a subdued voice.
“Indeed, sir, I don’t deserve it—I feel I do not; but pray do not grieve, sir; things will go cross in love. Now, sir, I’ll tell you a secret, to prove it to you. I love Jacob—love him very much, and he does not care for me—I am sure he does not; so, you sir, you are not the only one—who is—very unhappy;” and Mary commenced sobbing with the Dominie.
“Poor thing!” said the Dominie; “and thou lovest Jacob? truly is he worthy of thy love. And, at thy early age, thou knowest what it is to have thy love unrequited. Truly is this a vale of tears—yet let us be thankful. Guard well thy heart, child, for Jacob may not be for thee; nay I feel that he will not be.”
“And why so, sir?” replied Mary, despondingly.
“Because, maiden—but nay, I must not tell thee; only take my warning, Mary—fare thee well? I come not here again.”
“Good-bye, sir, and pray forgive me; this will be a warning to me.”
“Verily, maiden, it will be a warning to us both. God bless thee!”
I discovered by the sound that Mary had vouchsafed to the Dominie a kiss, and heard soon afterwards his steps as he descended the stairs. Not wishing to meet him I turned round the corner, and went down to the river, thinking over what had passed. I felt pleased with Mary, but I was not in love with her.
The spring was now far advanced, and the weather was delightful. The river was beautiful, and parties of pleasure were constantly to be seen floating up and down with the tide. The Westminster boys, the Funny Club, and other amateurs in their fancy dresses, enlivened the scene; while the races for prize wherries, which occasionally took place, rendered the water one mass of life and motion. How I longed for my apprenticeship to be over, that I might try for a prize! One of my best customers was a young man, who was an actor at one of the theatres, who, like the M.P., used to rehearse the whole time he was in the boat; but he was a lively, noisy personage, full of humour, and perfectly indifferent as to appearances. He had a quiz and a quirk for everybody that passed in another boat, and would stand up and rant at them until they considered him insane. We were on very intimate terms, and I was never more pleased than when he made his appearance, as it was invariably the signal for mirth. The first time I certainly considered him to be a lunatic, for playhouse phraseology was quite new to me. “Boat, sir,” cried I to him as he came to the hard.
“My affairs do even drag me homeward. Go on; I’ll follow thee,” replied he, leaping into the boat. “Our fortune lies in this jump.”
I shoved off the wherry: “Down, sir?”
“Down,” replied he; pointing downwards with his finger, as if pushing at something.
“Down, down to hell, and say I sent you there.”
“Thanky, sir, I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Our tongue is rough, coz—and my condition is not smooth.” We shot the bridge, and went rapidly down with the tide, when he again commenced:—
“Thus with imagin’d wing our soft scene flies,
In motion of no less celerity
Than that of thought.”
Then his attention was drawn by a collier’s boat, pulled by two men as black as chimney-sweeps, with three women in the stern-sheets. They made for the centre of the river, to get into the strength of the tide, and were soon abreast and close to the wherry, pulling with us down the stream.
“There’s a dandy young man,” said one of the women, with an old straw bonnet and very dirty ribbons, laughing, and pointing to my man.
“Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not;
At Ephesus I am but two hours old,
As strange unto your town as to your talk.”
“Well, he be a reg’lar rum cove, I’ve a notion,” said another of the women, when she witnessed the theatrical airs of the speaker, who immediately recommenced—
“The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burn’d on the water—the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tunes of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water, which they beat, to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar’d all description.”
“Come, I’ll be blowed but we’ve had enough of that, so just shut your pan,” said one of the women, angrily.
“Her gentlewomen, like the Naiades,
So many mermaids tend her.”
“Mind what you’re arter, or your mouth will tend to your mischief, young fellow.”
“From the barge
A strange, invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs.”
“Jem, just run him alongside, and break his head with your oar.”
“I thinks as how I will, if he don’t mend his manners.”
“I saw her once
Hop forty paces through the public streets.”
“You lie, you liver-faced rascal. I never walked the streets in my life. I’m a lawful married woman. Jem, do you call yourself a man, and stand this here?”
“Well, now, Sal, but he’s a nice young man. Now an’t he?” observed one of the other women.
“Away,
Away, you trifler. Love! I know thee not,
I care not for thee, Kate: this is no world
To play with mammets, and to tilt with lips;
We must have bloody noses and cracked crowns.”
“I’ve a notion you will, too, my hearty,” interrupted one of the colliers. “That ’ere long tongue of yours will bring you into disgrace. Bill, give her a jerk towards the wherry, and we’ll duck him.”
“My friend,” said the actor, addressing me:—
“Let not his unwholesome corpse come between the wind
And my nobility.
“Let us exeunt, OP.”
Although I could not understand his phrases, I knew very well what he meant, and pulling smartly, I shoved towards the shore, and ahead. Perceiving this, the men in the boat, at the intimation of the women, who stood up waving their bonnets, gave chase to us, and my companion appeared not a little alarmed. However, by great exertion on my part, we gained considerably, and they abandoned the pursuit.
“Now, by two-headed Janus,” said my companion, as he looked back upon the colliers—
“Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time,
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,
And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper,
And others of such a vinegar aspect
That they’ll not show their teeth by way of smile,
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.
“And now,” continued he, addressing me, “what’s your name, sir? Of what condition are you—and of what place, I pray?”
Amused with what had passed, I replied, “That my name was Jacob—that I was a waterman, and born on the river.”
“I find thee apt; but tell me, art thou perfect that our ship hath touched upon the deserts of Bohemia?”
“Do you land at Westminster, sir?”
“No: at Blackfriars—there attend my coming.
“Base is the slave who pays; nevertheless, what is your fare, my lad?
“What money’s in my purse? Seven groats and twopence.
“By Jove, I am not covetous of gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost.
“But—
“I can get no remedy for this consumption of the purse.
“Here my lad—is that enough?”
“Yes, sir, I thank you.”
“Remember poor Jack, sir,” said the usual attendant at the landing place, catching his arm as he careened the wherry on getting out.
“If he fall in, good-night—or sink or swim.
“Jack, there is a penny for you. Jacob, farewell—we meet again;” and away he went, taking three of the stone steps at each spring. This gentleman’s name was, as I afterwards found out, Tinfoil, an actor of second-rate merit on the London boards. The Haymarket Theatre was where he principally performed, and, as we became better acquainted, he offered to procure me orders to see the play when I should wish to go there.