Артур Конан Дойл
The Firm of Girdlestone
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE GREAT DANCE AT MORRISON'S
Never in the whole history of Morrison's boarding establishment had such festive preparations been known. The landlady herself had entered heart and soul into the business, and as all the boarders had received invitations for themselves and their friends, they co-operated in every possible manner to make the evening a success. The large drawing-room had been cleared and the floor waxed. This process left it in a very glassy and orthodox condition, as the cook discovered when, on bustling in, the back of her cranium came in violent contact with the boards, while her body described a half-circle with a velocity which completely eclipsed any subsequent feats of agility shown by the dancers in the evening. The saloon had been very tastefully laid out as a supper-room, and numerous other little chambers were thrown open and brightened up to serve as lounging places for those who were fatigued. In the parlour there were two card-tables, and every other convenience for any who preferred sedentary amusements. Altogether both Mrs. Morrison and the boarders, in solemn conclave assembled, agreed that the thing looked very promising, and that it would be a credit to the establishment.
The guests were as varied as the wines, though hardly as select. Mrs. Scully's exuberant hospitality included, as already intimated, not only her own friends, but those of her fellow-boarders, so that from an early hour the rooms began to fill, and by nine o'clock there was hardly space for the dancers. Hansoms and growlers rattled up in a continuous stream and discharged their burdens. There was a carpet down from the kerb to the head of the lodging-house steps, "like r'yalty," as the cook expressed it, and the greengrocer's man in the hall looked so pompous and inflated in his gorgeous attire that his own cabbages would hardly have recognized him. His main defect as a footman was that he was somewhat hard of hearing, and had a marvellous faculty of misinterpreting whatever was said to him, which occasionally led to remarkable results. Thus, when he announced the sporting Captain Livingstone Tuck under the title of Captain Lives-on-his luck, it was felt that he was rather too near the truth to be pleasant. Indeed, the company had hardly recovered from the confusion produced by this small incident when the two Bohemians made their appearance.
Mrs. Scully, who was tastefully arrayed in black satin and lace, stood near the door of the drawing-room, and looked very charming and captivating as she fulfilled her duties as hostess. So thought the major as he approached her and shook her hand, with some well turned compliment upon his lips.
"Let me inthroduce me friend, Herr von Baumser," he added.
Mrs. Scully smiled upon the German in a way that won his Teutonic heart. "You will find programmes over there," she explained. "I think the first is a round dance. No, thank you, major; I shall stand out, or there will be no one to receive the people." She hurried away to greet a party of new arrivals, while the major and Baumser wandered off in search of partners.
There was no want of spirit or of variety in the dancing at Morrison's. From Mr. Snodder, the exciseman, who danced the original old-fashioned trois-temps, to young Bucklebury, of the Bank, who stationed himself immediately underneath the central chandelier, and spun rapidly round with his partner upon his own axis, like a couple of beetles impaled upon a single pin, every possible variation of the art of waltzing was to be observed. There was Mr. Smith, of the Medical College, rotating round with Miss Clara Timms, their faces wearing that pained and anxious expression which the British countenance naturally assumes when dancing, giving the impression that the legs have suddenly burst forth in a festive mood, and have dragged the rest of the body into it very much against its will. There was the major too, who had succeeded in obtaining Mrs. Scully as a partner, and was dancing as old soldiers can dance, threading his way through the crowded room with the ease begotten by the experience of a lifetime. Meanwhile Von Baumser, at the other end, was floundering about with a broad smile upon his face and an elderly lady tucked under his right arm, while he held her disengaged hand straight out at right angles, as if she had been a banjo. In short, the fun was fast and furious, and waltz followed polka and mazurka followed waltz with a rapidity which weeded out the weaker vessels among the dancers and tested the stamina of the musicians.
Then there was the card-room, whither the Widow Scully and the major and many others of the elders repaired when they found the pace too fast for them. Very snug and comfortable it was, with its square tables, each with a fringe of chairs, and the clean shining cards spread out over their green baize surfaces. The major and his hostess played against Captain Livingstone Tuck and an old gentleman who came from Lambeth, with the result that the gallant captain and his partner rose up poorer and sadder men, which was rather a blow to the former, who reckoned upon clearing a little on such occasions, and had not expected to find himself opposed by such a past master of the art as the major. Then the veteran and another played the hostess and another lady, and the cunning old dog managed to lose in such a natural manner, and to pay up with such a good grace, and with so many pretty speeches and compliments, that the widow's partner was visibly impressed, a fact which, curiously enough, seemed to be anything but agreeable to the widow. After that they all filed off to supper, where they found the dancers already in possession, and there was much crushing and crowding, which tended to do away with ceremony and to promote the harmony of the evening.
If the major had contrived to win favour from Mrs. Lavinia Scully in the early part of the evening, he managed now to increase any advantage he had gained. In the first place he inquired in a very loud voice of Captain Tuck, at the other end of the table, whether that gentleman had ever met the deceased Major-General Scully, and being answered in the negative, he descanted fluently upon the merits of that imaginary warrior. After this unscrupulous manoeuvre the major proceeded to do justice to the wine and to indulge in sporting reminiscences, and military reminiscences, and travelling reminiscences, and social reminiscences, all of which he treated in a manner which called forth the admiration of his audience. Then, when supper had at last been finished, and the last cork drawn and the last glass filled, the dancers went back to their dance and the card-players to their cards, and the major addressed himself more assiduously than ever to the pursuit of the widow.
"I am afraid that you find the rooms very hot, major," she remarked.
"They are rather hot," he answered candidly.
"There is a room here," she said, "where you might be cooler. You might have a cigarette, too. I meant these rooms as smoking-rooms."
"Then you must come, too."
"No, no, major. You must remember that I am the hostess."
"But there is no one to entertain. They are all entertaining each other. You are too unselfish."
"But really, major – "
"Sure you are tired out and need a little rest."
He held the door open so persuasively that she yielded. It was a snug little room, somewhat retired from the bustle, with two or three chintz-covered chairs scattered round it, and a sofa of the same material at one side. The widow sat down at one end of this sofa, and the major perched himself at the other, looking even redder than usual, and puffing out his chest and frowning, as was his custom upon critical occasions.
"Do light a cigarette?" said Mrs. Scully.
"But the smell?"
"I like it."
The major extracted one from his flat silver case. His companion rolled a spill and lit it at the gas.
"To one who is as lonely as I am," she remarked, "it Is a pleasure to feel that one has friends near one, and to serve them even in trifles."
"Lonely!" said the major, shuffling along the sofa, "I might talk with authority on that point. If I were to turn me toes up to-morrow there's not a human being would care a thraneen about the mather, unless it were old Von Baumser."
"Oh, don't talk so," cried Mrs. Scully, with emotion.
"It is a fact. I've kicked against me fate at times, though. I've had fancies of late of something happier and cheerier. They have come on me as I sat over yonder at the window, and, do what I will, I have not been able to git them from me heart. Yit I know how rash I have been to treasure them, for if they fail me I shall feel me loneliness as I niver did before."
The major paused and cleared his throat huskily, while the widow remained silent, with her head bent and her eyes intent upon the pattern of the carpet.
"These hopes are," said the major, in a low voice, leaning forward and taking his companion's little ring-covered hand in his thick, pudgy fingers, "that you will have pity upon me; that you will – "
"Ach, my very goot vriend!" cried Von Baumser heartily, suddenly protruding his hairy head into the room and smiling benignantly.
"Go to the divil!" roared the major, springing furiously to his feet, while the German's head disappeared like a Jack-in-the-box. "Forgive the warmth of me language," the veteran continued, apologetically, "but me feelings overcame me. Will you be mine, Lavinia? I am a plain ould soldier, and have little to offer you save a faithful heart, and that is yours, and always will be. Will you make the remainder of me life happy by becoming me wife?" He endeavoured to pass his arm round her waist, but she sprang up from the sofa and stood upon the rug, facing him with an amused and somewhat triumphant smile upon her buxom features.
"Look here, major," she said, "I am a plain-spoken woman, as my poor Tom that's dead was a plain-spoken man. Out with it straight, now – have you come after me, or have you come after my money?"
The major was so astonished at this point-blank question, that for a moment he sat speechless upon the sofa. Being a man of ready resource, however, and one who was accustomed to sudden emergencies, he soon recovered himself.
"Yoursilf, of course" cried he. "If you hadn't a stiver I would do the same."
"Take care! take care!" said the lady, with a warning finger uplifted.
"You heard of the breaking of the Agra Bank?"
"What of that?"
"Every penny that I had in the world was in it."
This was facer number two for the campaigner. He recovered himself more quickly from this one, however, and inflated his chest with even more than his usual pomposity.
"Lavinia," said he, "you have been straight with me, and, bedad, I'll be so with you? When I first thought of you I was down in the world, and, much as I admired you, I own that your money was an inducement as well as yoursilf. I was so placed that it was impossible for me to think of any woman who had not enough to keep up her own end of the game. Since that time I've done bether. How I got it is neither here nor there, but I have a little nist-egg in the bank and see me way to increasing it. You tell me your money's gone, and I tell you I've enough for two; so say the word, acushla, and it's done."
"What! without the money?"
"Damn the money?" exclaimed Major Tobias Clutterbuck, and put his arm for the second time around his companion. This time it remained there. What happened after that is neither my business nor the reader's. Couples who have left their youth behind them have their own little romance quite as much as their juniors, and it is occasionally the more heartfelt of the two.
"What a naughty boy to swear!" exclaimed the widow at last. "Now I must give you a lecture since I have the chance."
"Bless her mischievous eyes!" cried the major, with delight in every feature of his face. "You shall give me as many lectures as you plase."
"You must be good, then, Toby, if you are to be my husband. You must not play billiards for money any more."
"No billiards! Why, pool is worth three or four pound a wake to me."
"It doesn't matter. No billiards and no cards, and no racing and no betting. Toby must be very good and behave as a distinguished soldier should do."
"What are you afther at all?" the major cried. "Sure if I am to give up me pool and whist, how is a distinguished soldier, and, above all, a distinguished soldier's wife, going to live?"
"We'll manage, dear," she said, looking roguishly up into his face.
"I told you that my money was all in the Agra Bank that broke."
"You did, worse luck!"
"But I didn't tell you that I had drawn it all out before it broke, Toby dear. It was too bad to put you to such a trial, wasn't it? but really I couldn't resist the temptation. Toby shall have money enough without betting, and he shall settle down and tell his stories, and do what he likes without anything to bother him."
"Bless her heart!" cried the major fervently; and the battered old Bohemian, as he stooped over and kissed her, felt a tear spring to his eyes as he knew that he had come into harbour after life's stormy tossings.
"No billiards or cards for three months, then," said the little woman firmly, with her hands round his arm. "None at all mind! I am going into Hampshire on a visit to my cousins in the country, and you shall not see me for that time, though you may write. If you can give me your word of honour when I come back that you've given up your naughty ways, why then – "
"What then?"
"Wait till then and you'll see," she said, with a merry laugh. "No, really, I won't stay another moment. Whatever will the guests say? I must, Toby; I really must – " Away she tripped, while the major remained standing where she had left him, feeling a better man than he had done since he was a young ensign and kissed his mother for the last time at the Portsmouth jetty before the great transport carried him off to India.
Everything in the world must have an end, and Mrs. Scully's dance was no exception to the rule. The day was breaking, however, before the last guests had muffled themselves up and the last hansom dashed away from the door. The major lingered behind to bid farewell, and then rejoined his German friend, who had been compelled to wait at the door for the latchkey.
"Look here, major," the latter said, when they came into their room, "is it well to tell a Brussian gentleman to go to the devil? You have much offended me. Truly I was surprised that you should have so spoken!"
"Me dear friend," the old soldier answered, shaking his hand, "I would not hurt your feelings for the world. Bedad, if I come into the room while you are proposing to a lady, you are welcome to use the strongest German verb to me that you can lay your tongue to."
"You have probosed, then?" cried the good-natured German, forgetting all about his grievance in an instant.
"Yes."
"And been took – received by her?"
"Yes."
"Dat Is gloriful!" Von Baumser cried, clapping his hands. "Three hochs for Frau Scully, and another one for Frau Clutterbuck. We must drink a drink on it; we truly must."
"So we shall, me boy, but it's time we turned in now. She's a good woman, and she plays a good hand at whist. Ged! she cleared the trumps and made her long suit to-night as well as ever I saw it done in me life!" With which characteristic piece of eulogy the major bade his comrade good night and retired to his room.
CHAPTER XXX.
AT THE "COCK AND COWSLIP."
Tom Dimsdale's duties were far from light. Not only was he expected to supervise the clerks' accounts and to treat with the wholesale dealers, but he was also supposed to spend a great part of his time in the docks, overlooking the loading of the outgoing ships and checking the cargo of the incoming ones. This latter portion of his work was welcome as taking him some hours a day from the close counting-house, and allowing him to get a sniff of the sea air – if, indeed, a sniff is to be had on the inland side of Woolwich. There was a pleasing life and bustle, too, in the broad, brown river, with its never-ending panorama of vessels of every size and shape which ebb and flow in the great artery of national life.
So interesting was this liquid highway to Tom's practical mind, that he would often stand at the head of the wharf when his work was done and smoke a meditative pipe. It was a quiet spot, which had once been busy enough, but was now superseded by new quays and more convenient landing-places. All over it were scattered great rusty anchors, colossal iron chains, deserted melancholy boilers, and other debris which are found in such places, and which might seem to the fanciful to be the shells and skeletons of strange monsters washed up there by the tide. To whom do these things belong? Who has an interest in them? Of what use are they? It appeared to Tom sometimes as if the original owners and their heirs must have all died away, and left these grim relics behind them to any one who might have the charity to remove them.
From this coign of vantage a long reach of the river was visible, and Tom sitting there would watch the fleets of passing vessels, and let his imagination wander away to the broad oceans which they had traversed, and the fair lands under bluer skies and warmer suns from which they had sailed. Here is a tiny steam-tug panting and toiling in front of a majestic three-master with her great black hulk towering out of the water and her masts shooting up until the topmast rigging looks like the delicate web of some Titanic spider. She is from Canton, with tea, and coffee, and spices, and all good things from the land of small feet and almond eyes. Here, too, is a Messagerie boat, the French ensign drooping daintily over her stern, and her steam whistle screeching a warning to some obstinate lighters, crawling with their burden of coal to a grimy collier whose steam-winch is whizzing away like a corncrake of the deep. That floating palace is an Orient boat from Australia. See how, as the darkness falls, a long row of yellow eyes glimmer out from her sides as the light streams through her countless portholes. And there is the Rotterdam packet-boat coming slowly up, very glad to get back into safe waters again, for she has had a wildish time in the North Sea. A coasting brig has evidently had a wilder time still, for her main-topmast is cracked across, and her rigging is full of the little human mites who crawl about, and reef, and splice, and mend.
An old acquaintance of ours was out in that same gale, and is even now making his way into the shelter of the Albert docks. This was none other than the redoubtable Captain Hamilton Miggs, whose ship will persistently keep afloat, to the astonishment of the gallant captain himself, and of every one else who knows anything of her sea-going qualities. Again and again she had been on the point of foundering; and again and again some change in the weather or the steady pumping of the crew had prevented her from fulfilling her destiny. So surprised was the skipper at these repeated interpositions of Providence that he had quite made up his superstitious mind that the ship never would go down, and now devoted himself with a whole heart to his old occupation of drinking himself into delirium tremens and physicking himself out of it again.
The Black Eagle had a fair cargo aboard, and Miggs was proportionately jubilant. The drunken old sea-dog had taken a fancy to Tom's frank face and honest eyes, and greeted him with effusion when he came aboard next morning.
"Knock me asunder, but you look rosy, man!" he cried. "It's easy to see that you have not been lying off Fernando Po, or getting the land mist into your lungs in the Gaboon."
"You look well yourself, captain," said Tom.
"Tolerable, tolerable. Just a touch of the jumps at times."
"We can begin getting our cargo out, I suppose? I have a list here to check it. Will you have the hatches off at once?"
"No work for me," said Captain Hamilton Miggs with decision. "Here, Sandy – Sandy McPherson, start the cargo, will ye, and stir your great Scotch bones. I've done enough in bringing this sieve of a ship all the way from Africa, without working when I am in dock."
McPherson was the first mate, a tall, yellow-bearded Aberdonian. "I'll see t'it," he said shortly. "You can gang ashore or where you wull."
"The Cock and Cowslip," said the captain, "I say, you – Master Dimsdale – when you're done come up an' have a glass o' wine with me. I'm only a plain sailor man, but I'm damned if my heart ain't in the right place. You too, McPherson – you'll come up and show Mr. Dimsdale the way. Cock and Cowslip, corner o' Sextant Court." The two having accepted his invitation, the captain shuffled off across the gangway and on to terra firma.
All day Tom stood at the hatchway of the Black Eagle, checking the cargo as it was hoisted out of her, while McPherson and his motley assistants, dock labourers, seamen, and black Kroomen from the coast, worked and toiled in the depths below. The engine rattled and snorted, and the great chain clanked as it was lowered into the hold.
"Make fast there!" cries the mate.
"Aye, aye, sir!"
"All right?"
"All right, sir."
"Hoist away!"
And clank, clank went the chain again, and whir-r-r the engine, and up would come a pair of oil casks, as though the crane were some giant forceps which was plucking out the great wooden teeth of the vessel. It seemed to Tom, as he stood looking down, note-book in hand, that some of the actual malarious air of the coast had been carried home in the hold, so foul and close were the smells evolved from it. Great cockchafers crawled about over the packages, and occasionally a rat would scamper over the barrels, such a rat as is only to be found in ships which hail from the tropics. On one occasion too, as a tusk of ivory was being hoisted out, there was a sudden cry of alarm among the workers, and a long, yellow snake crawled out of the cavity of the trunk and writhed away into the darkness. It is no uncommon thing to find the deadly creatures hibernating in the hollow of the tusks until the cold English air arouses them from their torpor, to the cost occasionally of some unhappy stevedore or labourer.
All day Tom stood amid grease and steam, bustle and blasphemy, checking off the cargo, and looking to its conveyance to the warehouses. At one o'clock there was a break of an hour for dinner, and then the work went on until six, when all hands struck and went off to their homes or to the public-house according to inclination. Tom and the mate, both fairly tired by their day's work, prepared to accept the captain's invitation, and to meet him up in his quarters. The mate dived down into his cabin, and soon reappeared with his face shining and his long hair combed into some sort of order.
"I've been performing my ablutions," he said, rolling out the last word with great emphasis and pomposity, for, like many Scotchmen, he had the greatest possible reverence for a sonorous polysyllable. Indeed, in McPherson, this national foible was pushed to excess, for, however inappropriate the word, he never hesitated to drag it into his conversation if he thought it would aid in the general effect.
"The captain," he continued, "has been far from salubrious this voyage.
He's aye complainin' o' his bodily infirmities."
"Hypochondriacal, perhaps," Tom remarked.
The Scotchman looked at his companion with a great accession of respect.
"My certie!" he cried. "That's the best I've heard since a word that
Jimmy M'Gee, of the Corisco, said the voyage afore last. Would you kindly arteeculate it again."
"Hypochondriacal," said Tom laughing heartily.
"Hypo-chon-driacal," the mate repeated slowly. "I shouldn't think Jimmy M'Gee kens that, or he'd ha' communicated it to me. I shall certainly utilize it, and am obleeged to you for namin' it."
"Don't mention it," said Tom. "I'll let you have as many long words as you like, if you are a collector of them. But what is the matter with the captain?"
"It's aye the drink," the mate said gravely. "I can tak' my modicum mysel' and enjoy it, but that's no the same as for a man to lock himself up in his cabin, and drink rum steady on from four bells in the mornin' watch to eight bells in the evenin'. And then the cussin', and prayin', and swearin' as he sets up is just awfu'. It's what might weel be described as pandemoniacal."
"Is he often like that, then?" Tom asked.
"Often! Why, he's never anything else, sir. And yet he's a good seaman too, and however fu' he may be, he keeps some form o' reckoning, and never vera far oot either. He's an ambeequosity to me, sir, for if I took a tithe o' the amount I'd be clean daft."
"He must be dangerous when he is like that?" Tom remarked.
"He is that. He emptied a sax-shooter down the deck last bout he had, and nigh perforated the carpenter. Another time he scoots after the cook – chased him with a handspike in his hand right up the rigging to the cross-trees. If the cook hadn't slid down the backstay of the mast, he'd ha' been obeetuarised."
Tom could not refrain from laughing at the last expression. "That's a new word," he said.
"Ha!" his companion cried with great satisfaction, "it is, is it? Then we are quits now on the hypochondriacal." He was so pleased that he chuckled to himself for some minutes in the depths of his tawny beard. "Yes," he continued at last, "he is dangerous to us at times, and he is dangerous to you. This is atween oorsels, as man to man, and is said withoot prejudice, but he do go on when he is in they fits aboot the firm, and aboot insurances, and rotten ships, and ither such things, which is all vera well when sequestrated amang gentlemen like oorsels, but sounds awfu' bad when it fa's on the ignorant tympanums of common seamen."
"It's scandalous," Tom said gravely, "that he should spread such reports about his employer. Our ships are old, and some of them, in my opinion, hardly safe, but that's a very different thing from implying, as you hint, that Mr. Girdlestone wishes them to go down."
"We'll no argue aboot that," said the canny Scot. "Muster Girdlestone kens on which side his bread is buttered. He may wish 'em to sink or he may wish 'em to swim. That's no for us to judge. You'll hear him speak o't to-night as like as not, for he's aye on it when he's half over. Here we are, sir. The corner edifice wi' the red blinds in the window."
During this conversation the two had been threading their way through the intricate and dirty lanes which lead up from the water side to the outskirts of Stepney. It was quite dark by the time that they reached a long thoroughfare, lined by numerous shops, with great gas flares outside them. Many of these belonged to dealers in marine stores, and the numerous suits of oil-skin, hung up for exhibition, swung to and fro in the uncertain light, like rows of attenuated pirates. At every corner was a great public-house with glittering windows, and a crowd of slatternly women and jersey-clad men elbowing each other at the door. At the largest and most imposing of these gin-palaces the mate and Dimsdale now pulled up.
"Come in this way," said McPherson, who had evidently paid many a visit there before. Pushing open a swinging door, he made his way into the crowded bar, where the reek of bad spirits and the smell of squalid humanity seemed to Tom to be even more horrible than the effluvium of the grease-laden hold.
"Captain Miggs in?" asked McPherson of a rubicund, white-aproned personage behind the bar.
"Yes, sir. He's in his room, sir, and expectin' you. There's a gent with him, sir, but he told me to send you up. This way, sir."
They were pushing their way through the crowd to reach the door which led behind the bar, when Tom's attention was arrested by the conversation of a very seedy-looking individual who was leaning with his elbows upon the zinc-covered counter.
"You take my tip," he said to an elderly man beside him. "You stick to the beer. The sperits in here is clean poison, and it's a sin and a shame as they should be let sell such stuff to Christian men. See here – see my sleeve!" He showed the threadbare cuff of his coat, which was corroded away in one part, as by a powerful acid. "I give ye my word I done that by wiping my lips wi' it two or three times after drinkin' at this bar. That was afore I found out that the whisky was solid vitriol. If thread and cotton can't stand it, how's the linin' of a poor cove's stomach, I'd like to know?"
"I wonder," thought Tom to himself, "if one of these poor devils goes home and murders his wife, who ought to be hung for it? Is it he, or that smug-faced villain behind the bar, who, for the sake of the gain of a few greasy coppers, gives him the poison that maddens him?" He was still pondering over this knotty point when they were ushered into the captain's room.
That worthy was leaning back in a rocking-chair with his feet perched upon the mantelpiece and a large glass of rum arid water within reach of his great leathery hand. Opposite him, in a similar chair and with a similar glass, was no less an individual than our old acquaintance, Von Baumser. As a mercantile clerk in the London office of a Hamburg firm the German was thrown into contact with the shippers of the African fleet, and had contracted a special alliance with the bibulous Miggs, who was a social soul in his hours of relaxation.
"Come in, my hearties, come in!" he cried huskily. "Take a seat, Mr.
Dimsdale. And you, Sandy, can't you bring yourself to your berth without being asked? You should know your moorings by this time.
This is my friend, Mr. Von Baumser from Eckermann's office."
"And dis, I think, is Mr. Dimsdale," said the German, shaking hands with Tom. "I have heard my very goot vriend, Major Clutterbuck, speak of your name, sir."
"Ah, the old major," Tom answered. "Of course, I remember him well."
"He is not so very old either," said Von Baumser, in a somewhat surly voice. "He has been took by a very charming and entirely pleasant woman, and they are about to be married before three months, the one to the other. Let me tell you, sir, I, who have lived with him so long, dat I have met no man for whom I have greater respect than for the major, however much they give him pills at a club or other such snobberies."
