Читать книгу The Sailor - Snaith John Collis - Страница 20

The Sailor, shipless and alone, was about to enter the most amazing city in the world.

He was a handsome boy, lean, eager eyed, and very straight in the body in spite of his gear, which consisted mainly of leggings, a tattered jersey, and a wonderful fur cap with flaps for the nose and ears. He was fairly tall, but being as thin as a rail looked much taller than he was. His face and hands were the color of mahogany, his vivid eyes were set with long intercourse with the sea, and in them was a look that was very hard to forget.

He came ashore about ten o'clock in the morning of Tuesday, October the fifth. For a while he stood on the edge of the quay with his bundle under his arm, wondering what he should do. It had not occurred to him to ask advice when he left the ship. Even the bosun had not said, "So long" to him; in spite of six years' service he was a poor seaman with no real heart for his job. He had been a cheap and inefficient hand; aboard a better ship, in the Old Man's opinion, he would have been dear at any price.

His relations with the rest of the crew had never been intimate. Most considered him "soft" or "a bit touched"; from the Old Man to the last joined ship's boy, he was "only Sailor." He never thought of asking what he ought to do; and had he done so his curious intuition told him the answer he would have been likely to receive. They would have told him to go and drown himself.

He had not been ashore a quarter of an hour when he began to feel that it was the best thing he could do. But the queer faculty he had told him at once that it was a thing he would never be able to do now. If he had had any luck it would have been done years ago.

Therefore, instead of jumping over the side of the quay, he suddenly walked through the dock gates into the streets of Wapping. All the morning he drifted aimlessly up one street and down another, his bundle under his arm, but neither plan nor purpose in his mind. At last, he began to feel very hungry, and then he found himself up against the problem of getting something to eat.

Opposite where he stood in the narrow, busy, interminable street was an imposing public house, painted a magnificent yellow. He knew that bread and cheese and a tankard of beer, which he so greatly desired, were there for the asking. But the asking! – that was the rub. He always felt tongue-tied in a public house, and his experience of them in his brief shore-goings in Frisco, Sydney, Liverpool, or Shanghai had never been happy, and had sometimes ended in disaster. But now under the spur of need, he crossed the street and, fixing his will, found his way through the swing doors into the gilded interior of the Admiral Nelson.

Happily, the American bar was at that moment without a customer. This was a great relief to the Sailor. But a truly thrilling bar-lady, replete with earrings, a high bust, and an elaborate false front, gave him an eye of cool disdain as he entered with his bundle, which he laid upon a marble-topped table as far from her as possible; and then, after a long moment's pause, in order to screw his courage to the sticking-point, he came over to the counter.

The sight of the bar-lady brought a surge of previous shore-goings into the Sailor's mind. Quite automatically, he doffed his fur cap as Klondyke would have done in these heroic circumstances, and then all at once she forgot to be magnificent. For one thing, in spite of his grotesque clothes and his thin cheeks and his shock of chestnut hair, he was a decidedly handsome boy. Also he was a genuinely polite and modest one, and the bar-lady, Miss Burton by name, who had the worldly wisdom that owns to thirty-nine and the charm which goes with that period of life, was favorably impressed. "What can I do for you?" Miss Burton inquired. It was clear that her one desire was to help a shy youth over his embarrassment.

The voice of the fair, so charmingly civilized, at once unlocked a door in the Sailor's memory. With a further slow summoning of will-power which made it the more impressive, he answered precisely as Klondyke had at the Bodega in Frisco: "May I have some bread and cheese, please, and half a pint of beer?"

"Certainly you may," she smiled.

The tone of deference had touched a chord in her. Moreover, he really was handsome, although attired as a very ordinary, not to say a very common, seaman, and evidently far more at home on the deck of a windjammer than in the American bar of an up-to-date public-house.

"Fourpence, please." The bar-lady set before him a pewter flagon of foaming fresh-drawn ale, also a liberal piece of bread and cheese, beautifully white to one accustomed to hard tack aboard the Margaret Carey.

In some confusion the Sailor produced a handful of silver coins from his amazing trousers, out of which he solemnly chose a Spanish fourpenny.

"Haven't you got anything English?" she asked, bursting suddenly into a laugh.

Not a little disconcerted, the Sailor began to struggle with a second handful of coins which he took from another pocket. Blushing to the tips of his ears, he finally tendered half a crown.

"Two-and-two change." With an intent smile she marked what he did with it.

Having stowed away the two-and-twopence, he was about to carry his plate of bread and cheese and tankard of beer to the marble-topped table where he had left his bundle, when the lady said, in a royal tone of gracious command, "Why not sit and eat it here?"

The Sailor would have been the last young man in the world to think of disobeying. He felt a little thrill creep down his spine as he climbed up on the high stool exactly opposite her. It was the sort of thrill he had had when under the ægis of Klondyke he had carried out this delicate social maneuver for the benefit of the bar-ladies of Frisco, Liverpool, and Shanghai.

At first, he was too shy to eat.

"Go on. Don't mind me," she encouraged him.

An intensive politeness caused him to cut his bread carefully with his knife. And then before he put it into his mouth he said, in an abrupt, but well modulated Klondyke manner, "'Scuse me, lady, won't yer 'ave a bite yerself?"

The deferential tone belonged to the mentor of his youth, yet the speech itself seemed to owe little to Eton College.

"No, thank you," said Miss Burton. "I'm not hungry." And then, seeing his look of embarrassment, "Now get on with it. Don't mind me."

This was a woman of the world. She was a ripe student of human nature, at least of the trousers-wearing section of human nature. Not for many a day had she been so taken by a specimen of an always remarkable genus as by this boy with the deep eyes, whose clothes and speech and behavior were like nothing on earth.

A true amateur of the male sex, she watched this quaint specimen eating bread and cheese. Presently he raised his tankard aloft, said, "Good 'ealth, lady," in a shy manner, and drank half of it at a gulp.

"When are you going to sea again?" asked Miss Burton, conversationally.

"Never going to sea no more," said the young man, with a strange look in his eyes.

"What – never?" She seemed surprised.

"Never no more. I'll never sail agen afore the mast. I'd sooner starve. It's – it's – "

"It's what?"

"It's hell, lady."

Miss Burton was taken aback by the tone of conviction. After all, this grotesque young sea monster was no true amphibian.

"Well, what are you going to do ashore?" she asked after a pause, while she gazed at him in astonishment.

"Dunno."

"No plans?"

The boy shook his head.

"Like another tankard of mild?"

"Yes, please, lady."

The impact of the bar-lady's easy and familiar style had caused a rather sharp relapse from the Klondyke standard of refinement, but not for a moment did the Sailor forget the dignity of her estate. In spite of the hybrid words he used, the note of subtle deference was never out of his voice; and Miss Burton, unconsciously intrigued by it, became even more interested in this strange product of the high seas.

"How long have you been afloat?" She handed him a second tankard of mild.

"Near six year."

"Six years. Gracious goodness! And you didn't like it?"

"No."

For some reason, the look in his eyes caused her to shiver a little.

"Why did you stick it, then?"

"Dunno."

A pause followed. Then he lifted his tankard again, said, "'Ere's lookin', lady," and drank it right off.

"Well, you are a rum one, you are, and no mistake," murmured Miss Burton, not to the Sailor, but to the beer engine at her side.