Читать книгу Golden Ballast - Henry De Vere Stacpoole - Страница 9

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As he stood between Doubt and Fortune he heard Sheila’s voice inquiring of Larry whether there were enough eggs for breakfast, and Larry’s voice from the little galley, mixed with the sizzle of frying bacon, replying in the affirmative, with an addendum on the size and price of the eggs and the condition of the hearts and souls of the people that charged tuppence apiece for them. “Oh, the murtherin’ scoundrels!”

Leaving the after rail, Dicky came to the locker where carpenters’ tools and odds and ends were stowed, found a mallet and chisel and turned to the dinghy. The pig lay up-ended against a thwart; during its use as an anchor a rock evidently had rubbed noses with the pig and a flange of yellow metal not bigger than a threepenny piece showed near the rope attachment. He chiselled it off, then as he held it in the palm of his hand the absurdity of the whole idea came to him like a blow, together with the old adage: “All is not gold that glitters.”

Gold, nonsense! There were a dozen metals and metallic combinations that looked like gold; this was one of them. Recollections of men who had made fools of themselves by mistaking iron pyrites and mica for the precious metal crossed his mind and he was about to toss the fragment over the side when a thought restrained him, and putting it in his waistcoat pocket he returned the chisel and mallet to the locker and came down to the saloon where breakfast was waiting, determined to say nothing about the business as yet.

He was due to go to town that day by the eleven-thirty that reaches Liverpool Street at twelve-fifteen. He had to see Forsythe about some business, get his hair cut and visit his tailors. Miss Dennis also had some work for him to do and as they sat at breakfast she produced a list of her requirements, things to be got at the stores and brought back with him, thus saving time and postage.

“You don’t mind, do you?” said she.

“Mind?—not a bit,” said Dicky, glancing over the list and putting it in the same pocket where he had placed the fragment of metal. “I’ll be back by the five-fifteen, and Larry can meet me and help to cart the stuff down to the boat.”

They came on deck, where he helped Larry and got the dinghy over, though there was an hour yet before he need start. Then he lit a pipe.

He had completely forgotten the pig and all his fantastic ideas about it, he was thinking of the parcel of stuff from the stores; he hated carrying parcels, especially parcels huge enough to contain six pounds of preserving sugar, two cans of asparagus, a jar of ginger, another of chutney and two cards of darning wool. The darning wool was a little worry in itself, it was not the sort of stuff that a young man cares to ask for—Sheila had never thought of that and it seemed to him that women were sometimes strangely obtuse about some things.

These meditations were suddenly interrupted by Larry.

“Now I wonder what them chaps are after,” said Larry, who was standing by the rail shading his eyes against the morning glitter.

“Which chaps?” asked Dicky.

“Them chaps in the boat,” said Larry.

A boat had put off from the shore. It had passed the Sunflower, the house boat, the mud dredgers and a cutter that had put in from Mersea during the night. There was nothing else for it to pass but the Baltrum.

It was coming toward the Baltrum.

Sheila was watching it now as well as the others.

“That’s Bone at the sculls,” said she. “But who is it in the stern sheets?”

“Faith, I don’t know,” said Larry, “but I’ve got a feelin’ down the back of me spine it’s some chap comin’ afther the boat—bad ’cess to him.”

He was right. The scow came alongside, Bone took in his sculls, grabbed on to the rail with the boat hook and the man in the stern sheets stood up.

He was a big man, prosperous looking, in tweeds, clean shaven, with a heavy jaw, and, quite irrespective of his obvious business, the crew of the Baltrum took an instant dislike to him.

The stranger, evidently primed with their family history by Bone, did not mince matters.

“My name is Houston,” he said. “I’ve come to look over the boat. Throw us a ladder.”

“Throw you a lather,” said Larry. “I haven’t no lathers to be throwin’ about. Where’s your orders to look over her?”

The big man contained himself; he was evidently a person not to be rattled, a believer in law and order, and the formalities of business. Holding on to the rail with his left hand, with his right he produced a letter and handed it up.

The crew read it over each other’s shoulders. It was an official order to view the ketch Baltrum, to be disposed of by auction on the sixth of May at eleven a. m. at the Three Bells Inn, Hildersditch, by Murdle & Jackman, auctioneers of Mersea, Hildersditch and Wyvenhole and by the order of the board of trade.

“But Captain Salt told us nothing of this,” cried Sheila, “and he told me he’d let me know when the boat was to be sold if it ever was sold.”

“Now I’ll put you wise about the matter,” said Larry, nudging Sheila gently aside and leaning affectionately over the rail toward the stranger. “If it’s a rat thrap you want to buy with holes in it and sprung masts and a garboard strake that’s outwore its houldin’ bolts, this is the chance of your lifetime. But if it’s a say-boat you’re wantin’, or a yacht, be chance, then you pop down to Bewick Flats and Misther Selway will suit you. Ax Bone if I’m not telling you the truth.”

“Will you kindly throw down the ladder?” said Houston, without moving an eyelid. “I have no time to waste, as I have to catch the eleven-thirty back to town.”

Sheila put the little ladder over and Houston come on board without saying “Thank you,” stood for a moment and looked around him just as though he were alone on the deck.

Then Dicky knew that he surely loathed this man, so prosperous-looking, heavy, material, utterly contained and satisfied with himself, so insulting in his aloofness. It was quite plain that he had taken them at Bone’s valuation—he probably had put up at Bone’s for the night—and looked on them as a lot of interlopers only a cut above tramps. He was not the man to understand Sheila and Larry or the poverty of old Captain Dennis or the humours of pig sticking as conducted by Mr. Meehan.

“Larry,” said Sheila, as Houston, having contemplated the sticks and strings, made a move toward the saloon companionway, “will you show this gentleman over the boat down below?”

“Thanks,” said Houston, “but I would prefer to go over the boat alone.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Larry, leading the way. “Not whiles our property is about, if it’s all the same to you. Not that I’m mistrustin’ you,” continued he, vanishing from sight followed by the other, “but tayspoons is tayspoons. Stip careful for them brass-bound steps is slippy and sure it’d be the pity of the world if you tumbled an’ hurt yourself.”

Sheila followed them down.

The breakfast things had not been cleared away in the cabin and the newcomer took them in with the rest of the fixings; to Sheila his cold disapproving gaze seemed to blight everything from the cabin furniture to the memory of happy days here with her father. He examined the bunk cushions, he examined the swinging lamp, the carpet. He opened lockers. The lockers of an Irish yacht and the cupboards of an Irish house are better left uninvestigated by the cold eye of the Anglo-Saxon.

Sheila had stuffed the starboard lockers of the Baltrum with all sorts of odds and ends, some edible, some not. Lubricating oil, Brasso, a can of peaches, a can of tomatoes, an old revolver and a sou’wester were among the contents of the first locker explored by Houston. He closed it, went to the others and then turned from them to the lazaret, looked into the after cabin and then came forward, inspecting the rest of the boat in a manner that showed he was not on a yacht for the first time.

Then up on deck he examined the spars and rigging and lastly dropping into the boat he gave his attention to the chain plates.

Then he rowed off, raising his hat with sudden remembered civility to Sheila, but totally ignoring the others.

“Divil go with him,” said Larry.

Sheila gazed after the retreating boat.

“He’ll buy her,” said Sheila, “if it’s only to spite us. I know the sort of man he is—at least I know I hate him. What makes him so beastly?”

“I don’t know,” said Dicky, “but if he buys her he’ll have to outbid me. What day did that paper say the sale’s to be?”

“The sixth of May,” replied Sheila. “That’s Tuesday next, and I’ll never—never—never forgive Captain Salt for not telling us—though maybe he doesn’t know. It would be just like the government to send the advertisements out without telling him.”

“I’ll see him when I get back to-night,” said Dicky, “and now I must be off if I’m to catch that train.”

Five minutes later he was being rowed ashore, Sheila waving to him and calling directions as to what he was not to forget at the stores. Landed at the Hard he sent Larry back with the boat and took his way to the station.

Bone, who was working in his patch of garden, pretended not to see him, and away ahead, bag in hand, and also making for the train, was Houston.

It was only this morning that the mind of Mr. Sebright began to sense antagonism in the air of Hildersditch. As a matter of fact the “Dennis people,” as Sheila and Larry had come to be called, had for a long time been laying down the bed plates of unpopularity; to say nothing of vanished pigs and ducks, Larry’s sharp tongue and the fact that they did not deal at the local shops, Hildersditch was against them because they were “strangers.” On this strip of coast every one not born on the soil is a stranger. That is to say an outsider.

Hildersditch tolerates outsiders who come and spend money in the place; holds them at a distance, criticizes, makes fun of them, yet tolerates them.

The Dennises spent no money, dug their own bait for fishing, caught more fish than the natives, camped free of charge in the Baltrum and were reported to be pig stickers and fowl snatchers—you can fancy.

The antagonism of Hildersditch was felt by Dicky this morning as a chill emanation coming from Bone, from Littler of the local shop standing in his doorway and looking up and down the street, from the railway porter at the station, from the very soil itself.

It was unpleasant, but Dicky had come of a fighting breed. He knew that Hildersditch would throw up its hat to see Sheila and Larry and himself cleared off the Baltrum, and, sniffing the battle afar off, he took a mental oath to beat Hildersditch if it cost him his last penny. The Baltrum could always be resold, the great thing was not to be turned off her, and turned off her by Houston.

The sight of Houston on the railway platform smoking a cigar and reading the morning paper did not damp the fighting spirit of the Sebrights. To avoid Houston he got into a smoking carriage at the far end of the train, a smoking carriage containing a huge crocodile-skin travelling bag, a bundle of rugs, golf sticks, a perfume of Turkish cigarettes, the Pink Un, the Times and several other newspapers strewn about, and a stout young man in tweeds.

A fresh-faced, pleasant, rather bibulous-looking young man, who, on seeing the other, cried:

“Good Lord, Dicky! Where the devil have you sprung from?”

“Corder!” said Dicky. “Well, I’m blest!”