Читать книгу The Remittance Man - Ambrose Pratt - Страница 4

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The steamer Tomki was signalled "off the bar" at sunrise, but although everyone knew that she could not enter the river until flood tide at 10.30 a.m., the inhabitants of Ballina drifted towards the public wharf as soon as they had breakfasted.

A dark-haired and rather sun-burned young man, who sat upon a flying pile industriously fishing, observed the crowd grow out of the corners of his eyes. He was at first indifferent enough. Ballina invariably assembled to welcome the mail boats. The fisherman, after a time, however, became aware of some unusual, and therefore noteworthy, features in the gathering. Major Reay, the richest mill owner and sugar planter of the district was seated on a camp chair about the centre of the wharf, nursing a gouty foot upon a stool before him. A score of gaily costumed young women fluttered attentively about him, each armed with a huge bouquet of white and crimson roses. The fisherman, having grasped these phenomena, turned his head in order to consider them more narrowly. As he did so a well-dressed lad of seventeen detached himself from the crowd and came forward. The fisherman recognised the boy with a nod, then, as if ashamed to be caught indulging his curiosity, he resumed his former attitude, and stared fixedly at the float. The lad rapidly approached, but, halting half a dozen feet away, he sat down upon the edge of the wharf and dangled his feet over the water.

"What ho! Jan!" he remarked familiarly.

The fisherman said "Good morning," in cool tones, without raising his eyes.

"Any luck?" asked the boy.

"No."

"I expect you will have no breakfast, then?"

The fisherman looked at his interlocutor in a fashion that needed no words to explain his meaning.

"None of my business, eh?" laughed the boy, entirely unabashed.

"I may be wrong," replied the other gently; his voice was soft as velvet, but it did not invite discussion of the subject.

The boy shifted uneasily for a moment, then he laughed at his thoughts. "I came over to you because I felt like a fish out of water over there," he muttered suddenly.

"Is that so?"

"O' course—if you have important business with yourself, I'll move on?"

The fisherman smiled, and his strong, serious face was unexpectedly illuminated.

"I do not own the wharf," he replied.

"That's better!" laughed the boy. "I hate you solemn! It's unsociable."

The fisherman lifted his rod, and drawing his line from the water, glanced at the untouched bait.

"They don't seem to be biting this morning," said the boy. "You should give 'em some burley."

The fisherman shrugged his shoulders and allowed the line to sink again.

"The steamer will bring them about," he remarked. "Why so many ladies to-day, Jack—and your father, the Major? Are you expecting someone by the boat?"

"My sister Marion," replied Jack Reay. "She has been in Europe for the past two years. The dad is pretty nearly off his head with excitement."

"And you?"

The boy blushed. "I've got 'em all on in honor of the occasion. How do you think I look?" he added artlessly.

The fisherman glanced up and nodded. "A credit to Bond-street," he answered, smiling.

"Jim Tunks put 'em together," said the boy. "I feel like a—like—a bloomin' home-made dude. Beastly all over! The chaps have been chiacking me all the morning. I've promised to give Hal Best a black eye to-morrow."

"He is more than your match, Jack."

"I know. That's why I put it off till to-morrow. Couldn't meet Marion with a smashed face, could I?"

"I suppose not."

"She's a good sort, Marion," observed the boy reflectively, "but peaceful like; she was always lecturing me against fighting."

"Pretty?" inquired the fisherman.

"She never struck me that way," replied the boy, with a judicial air. "She's nothing like Lena Best."

"No great misfortune," muttered the fisherman.

The boy did not hear. "Lena has a rod in pickle for her, I guess," he went on, with a grin.

"Indeed."

"Yes, sir, and the other girls as well, though Lena's the leader. She's president of the Women's League and Social Purity Brigade, you know."

"What is the motive for the rod?"

"Jealousy—I call it, Mr. Digby. They say—it's 'necessary precautions.' Martha Lang put the show away to me."

"What will they do?"

"I don't know, just. Watch her, I expect, like cats, for a chance to scratch."

"But why?"

"Well," drawled the lad, "the general feeling seems to be that Marion is pretty sure to come back superior, don't you know; 'sidey,' and all that sort of thing."

"Ah!"

"Yes—and the League has formed itself into a sort of vigilance committee. Martha says they are bound to resent being patronised—and they're sworn to give Marion a holy time if she puts on airs."

The fisherman's, lips curled. "Charity, thy name is Woman," he sneered.

"They are charitable, though," laughed the boy; "leastways, they think they are. Martha says they are going to give her every chance, and I believe Lena made a speech last meeting pluming herself and the others on their being broad-minded. I suppose it was because they decided to meet her with flowers."

Jan Digby glanced over his shoulder at the crowd. "They have flowers enough for a carnival," he remarked.

"False pretences, I call it," sneered the boy. "Marion will be that grateful to them! Never mind, I'll soon put her fly to the way they've picked her to pieces."

The fisherman stood up, and began to wind his line around his pole.

"Giving it best?" asked Jack Reay.

Digby nodded. "For the present. I don't want to lose my line. Here comes the Tomki."

"Where?" cried the boy, springing to his feet.

The man nodded in a certain direction, and beyond a point of mangrove swamp the boy perceived a pair of gliding masts.

He darted off, flushed and eager, to his father's side, and Jan Digby, after secreting his rod in a handy niche, climbed slowly to the wharf. Standing up, he threw out his arms and breathed deeply. He had been sitting for hours, and felt cramped. He was little short of six feet in height, and of light yet sinewy build. As he stretched his limbs he swayed slightly from side to side, and his muscles swelled and rolled under his threadbare, tightly buttoned coat with an astonishing oil-like smoothness that irresistibly suggested the movements of some animal of the cat species.

"If only one could exist without eating," he muttered in confidence to the air. "Or," he added reflectively, "fast without getting hungry—life would be worth living."

He heard a sudden clatter of feet, and turned to see the Ballina ladies coming forward in a body escorting in their midst the stumbling figure of Major Reay. Digby immediately remembered that he occupied that part of the wharf nearest the approaching steamer. His first intention was to slip away, but he subdued it on an impulse of defiance which he knew was absurd, and which left him undecided and frowning. Swinging on his heel, he stared at the Tomki and listened acutely to the conversation behind him.

"Can you see Marion, yet?" demanded Major Reay of all round. His voice was high pitched and tremulous.

"No, no, not yet," answered the ladles in chorus. "It is too soon yet."

"Jack, Jack. Where is Jack, confound him?" cried the Major.

The steamer whistled, and the Major groaned.

"If only I had someone to lean on," cried the old gentleman.

"Lean on me, dear Major!" said a woman's voice.

"Thank you, dear," growled the Major; "I'd break you! Jack," he shouted. "Jack!"

But Jack, who had climbed a post at the other end of the wharf, was frantically waving his kerchief at the Tomki, oblivious of all else.

"I can't stand any longer," said the Major, with a groan of pain. "Take me back! Oh, my foot, my foot."

Jan Digby turned about, and bowed to the old gentleman with the grace of a cavalier.

"Permit me to assist you, sir," he suggested gently.

The Major raised his grizzled eyebrows, and surveyed the tattered fisherman with a somewhat supercilious air. "You, Jan Digby!" he growled.

"At your service," replied Digby in slow, even tones, giving him look for look.

"Very well," said the Major, most ungraciously. "Help me to that ledge. I want my daughter to see me."

Digby smiled, and stepping forward lifted the ponderous old man as though he were a child, and placed him upon the coping of the wharf.

"You are strong, sir," said the Major.

Digby, still smiling, bent one knee upon the planks, and offered the other as a stool for his companion.

"If you sit down, sir, it will ease your foot," he remarked.

The Major suppressed a groan, and barely smothered an oath. "It is giving me the devil," he muttered, his lip trembling.

"Sit down," said Digby.

The Major obeyed, and Digby passed an arm around his waist.

"You are certainly strong, sir," said the Major. "But I am blocking your view, sir."

"That is of no consequence."

The voice of the boy, Jack Reay, at that moment rose high above the general babel.

"I see her, there she is!" he yelled. "Marion, Marion. Hurrah!"

The Major, uttering a cry, sprang half erect, then sank back again with an exclamation of anguish.

"Easy does it, sir," said Digby.

"Can you see her?" stammered the old man. "I can't! I can't!"

"There she is. There she is," chorussed the ladies behind them, and with shrill shouts they pressed to the coping's edge, fluttering their handkerchiefs and waving their bouquets.

The steamer's signal bell sounded through the din. Digby could see nothing, but he knew that the Major's self-control had broken down, for his right hand was splashed with tears, and the old man's body was quivering like a blancmange.

A weighted rope, skilfully cast from the Tomki's bows clattered upon the wharf, to the accompaniment of a chorus of female shrieks. Two attendants seized the line and pulled ashore a hawser, hand over hand, whose loop they cast presently over an immense iron stanchion screwed into the wharf near Jan Digby's feet.

The steamer, forging ahead, was stopped short by the rope, and her shivering stem swung inwards. A bell rang, and her screws reversing action, dragged her astern, a manoeuvre which in less than a minute brought her smooth iron sides in gentle contact with the wharf.

"Help me up!" cried the Major. "Quick man, quick!"

Digby put the old man on his feet, and lifted him down from the coping.

"Where to, sir?" he asked, for the Major clung to him helplessly, his eyes blinded with tears.

"Take me—to her," stammered the old man. "Be quick, be quick."

Digby shouted, "Way, way for the Major!" and half carrying, half leading his charge, he forced a path through the press in the direction of the gangway.

A moment later he paused at the foot of the ladder, wondering if the Major wished to wait there for his daughter or climb aboard the steamer. But his doubt was speedily resolved. Glancing up, he saw a sweet, furbelowed vision looking down at him. A milk-white face, with big blue shining eyes, and a small crimson mouth whose lips were tremulously parted—lower, a shape of softly undulating curves, and lower still, two tiny high-heeled shoes, peeping out of a bewildering mass of lace and silk and creamy draperies.

"Father!" cried a voice of piercing sweetness.

"Marion!" shouted Major Reay.

Jan Digby witnessed something of a miracle. As the girl ran down the steps with open arms and eyes aglow, Major Reay, a second since the weakling dependent on Digby's courtesy, started erect, and forgetting his gout, sprang up the gangway to meet his daughter with the agile vigor of a lad.

Digby immediately fell back, and threading his way through the crowd he returned to his original vantage post. The stern of the Tomki now lay beside the flying pile, separated by a dozen feet of space; but there was room to fish, and Digby forthwith recommenced operations with a hand line. The hook had barely sunk to its limit before he felt a tug, and with a quick series of gestures, he drew out a black bream, weighing at least a pound. Digby smacked his lips as he put the fish into his bag. "Come, come," he muttered, "we shall not starve to-day, at all events."

In ten minutes he had caught a dozen bream, and had expended all his bait. He then rolled up his line, and slinging his catch across his shoulders, got slowly to his feet.

The wharf presented now a very different picture from that which had obtained upon the arrival of the steamer. The ladles and other sight-seers had departed, and the whole place was in the charge of grimy stevedores and hairy-chested lightermen, who ran to and fro in busy streams between the store sheds and the Tomki's screaming cranes. Some were trundling trucks of merchandise which the sailors had discharged from the vessel's hold, others trotted with staggering steps under bags of flour and grain cast athwart their shoulders.

"Lucky devils," said Jan Digby, with a sigh of envy, as he watched them. "They have work to do!"