Of the meaning of the blind man’s talk I understood little. But he shocked me with a sense of insult, and more with one of surprise. For I had entertained a belief, born of Sunday-school stories, that blindness produced saintly piety — unless it were the piety that caused the blindness — and that in any case a virtuous meekness was an essential condition of the affliction. So I walked in doubt and cogitation.
And so, after a dive down a narrower street than any we had yet traversed (it could scarce be dirtier), and a twist through a steep and serpentine alley, we came, as it grew dusk, to the Hole in the Wall. Of odd-looking riverside inns I can remember plenty, but never, before or since, have I beheld an odder than this of Grandfather Nat’s. It was wooden and clap-boarded, and, like others of its sort, it was everywhere larger at top than at bottom. But the Hole in the Wall was not only top-heavy, but also most alarmingly lopsided. By its side, and half under it, lay a narrow passage, through which one saw a strip of the river and its many craft, and the passage ended in Hole-in-the-Wall Stairs. All of the house that was above the ground floor on this side rested on a row of posts, which stood near the middle of the passage; and the burden of these posts, twisted, wavy, bulging, and shapeless, hung still more toward the opposite building; while the farther side, bounded by a later brick house, was vertical, as though a great wedge, point downward, had been cut away to permit the rise of the newer wall. And the effect was as of a reeling and toppling of the whole construction away from its neighbour, and an imminent downfall into the passage. And when, later, I examined the side looking across the river, supported on piles, and bulging and toppling over them also, I decided that what kept the Hole in the Wall from crashing into the passage was nothing but its countervailing inclination to tumble into the river.
Painted large over the boards of the front, whose lapped edges gave the letters ragged outlines, were the words THE HOLE IN THE WALL; and below, a little smaller, NATHANIEL KEMP. I felt a certain pride, I think, in the importance thus given the family name, and my esteem of my grandfather increased porportionably with the size of the letters.
There was a great noise within, and Grandfather Nat, with a quick look toward the entrance, grunted angrily. But we passed up the passage and entered by a private door under the posts. This door opened directly into the bar parlour, the floor whereof was two steps below the level of the outer paving; and the size whereof was about thrice that of a sentry-box.
The din of a quarrel and a scuffle came from the bar, and my grandfather, thrusting me into a corner, and giving me his hat, ran out with a roar like that of a wild beast. At the sound the quarrel hushed in its height. “What’s this?” my grandfather blared, with a thump on the counter that made the pots jump. “What sort of a row’s this in my house? Damme, I’ll break y’ in halves, every mother’s son of ye!”
I peeped through the glass partition, and saw, first, the back of the potman’s head (for the bar-floor took another drop) and beyond that and the row of beer-pulls, a group of rough, hulking men, one with blood on his face, and all with an odd look of sulky guilt.
“Out you go!” pursued Grandfather Nat, “every swab o’ ye! Can’t leave the place not even to go to — not for nothin’, without a row like this, givin’ the house a bad name! Go on, Jim Crute! Unless I’m to chuck ye!”
The men had begun filing out awkwardly, with nothing but here and there: “Awright, guv’nor”— “Awright, cap’en.” “Goin’, ain’t I?” and the like. But one big ruffian lagged behind, scowling and murmuring rebelliously.
In a flash Grandfather Nat was through the counter-wicket. With a dart of his long left arm he had gripped the fellow’s ear and spun him round with a wrench that I thought had torn the ear from the head; and in the same moment had caught him by the opposite wrist, so as to stretch the man’s extended arm, elbow backward, across his own great chest; a posture in which the backward pull against the elbow joint brought a yell of agony from the victim. Only a man with extraordinarily long arms could have done the thing exactly like that. The movement was so savagely sudden that my grandfather had kicked open the door and flung Jim Crute headlong into the street ere I quite understood it; when there came a check in my throat and tears in my eyes to see the man so cruelly handled.
Grandfather Nat stood a moment at the door, but it seemed that his customer was quelled effectually, for presently he turned inward again, with such a grim scowl as I had never seen before. And at that a queer head appeared just above the counter — I had supposed the bar to be wholly cleared — and a very weak and rather womanish voice said, in tones of over-inflected indignation: “Serve ‘em right, Cap’en Kemp, I’m sure. Lot o’ impudent vagabones! Ought to be ashamed o’ theirselves, that they ought. Pity every ‘house ain’t kep’ as strict as this one is, that’s what I say!”
And the queer head looked round the vacant bar with an air of virtuous defiance, as though anxious to meet the eye of any so bold as to contradict.
It was anything but a clean face on the head, and it was overshadowed by a very greasy wideawake hat. Grubbiness and unhealthy redness contended for mastery in the features, of which the nose was the most surprising, wide and bulbous and knobbed all over; so that ever afterward, in any attempt to look Mr. Cripps in the face, I found myself wholly disregarding his eyes, and fixing a fascinated gaze on his nose; and I could never recall his face to memory as I recalled another, but always as a Nose, garnished with a fringe of inferior features. The face had been shaved — apparently about a week before; and by the sides hung long hair, dirtier to look at than the rest of the apparition.
My grandfather gave no more than a glance in the direction of this little man, passed the counter and rejoined me, pulling off his coat as he came. Something of my tingling eyes and screwed mouth was visible, I suppose, for he stooped as he rolled up his shirt-sleeves and said: “Why, Stevy boy, what’s amiss?”
“You — you — hurt the man’s ear,” I said, with a choke and a sniff; for till then Grandfather Nat had seemed to me the kindest man in the world.
Grandfather Nat looked mightily astonished. He left his shirt-sleeve where it was, and thrust his fingers up in his hair behind, through the grey and out at the brown on top. “What?” he said. “Hurt ‘im? Hurt ‘im? Why, s’pose I did? He ain’t a friend o’ yours, is he, young ‘un?”
I shook my head and blinked. There was a gleam of amusement in my grandfather’s grim face as he sat in a chair and took me between his knees. “Hurt ‘im?” he repeated. “Why, Lord love ye, I’d get hurt if I didn’t hurt some of ‘em, now an’ then. They’re a rough lot — a bitter bad lot round here, an’ it’s hurt or be hurt with them, Stevy. I got to frighten ‘em, my boy — an’ I do it, too.”
I was passing my fingers to and fro in the matted hair on my grandfather’s arm, and thinking. He seemed a very terrible man now, and perhaps something of a hero; for, young as I was, I was a boy. So presently I said, “Did you ever kill a man, Gran’fa’ Nat?”
IV. — STEPHEN’S TALE
MANY small matters of my first few hours at the Hole in the Wall were impressed on me by later events. In particular I remember the innocent curiosity with which I asked; “Did you ever kill a man, Gran’fa’ Nat?”
There was a twitch and a frown on my grandfather’s face, and he sat back as one at a moment’s disadvantage. I thought that perhaps he was trying to remember. But he only said, gruffly, and with a quick sound like a snort: “Very nigh killed myself once or twice, Stevy, in my time,” and rose hastily from his chair to reach a picture of a ship that was standing on a shelf. “There,” he said, “that’s a new ‘un, just done; pretty picter, ain’t it? An’ that there,” pointing to another hanging on the wall, “that’s the Juno, what your father’s on now.”
I had noticed that the walls, both of the bar and of the bar-parlour, were plentifully hung with paintings of ships; ships becalmed, ships in full sail, ships under bare spars; all with painful blue skies over them, and very even-waved seas beneat
h; and ships in storms, with torn sails, pursued by rumbustious piles of sooty cloud, and pelted with lengths of scarlet lightning. I fear I should not have recognised my father’s ship without help, but that was probably because I had only seen it, months before, lying in dock, battered and dingy, with a confusion of casks and bales about the deck, and naked yards dangling above; whereas in the picture (which was a mile too small for the brig) it was booming along under a flatulent mountain of clean white sail, and bulwarks and deck-fittings were gay with lively and diversified colour.
I said something about its being a fine ship, or a fine picture, and that there were a lot of them.
“Ah,” he said, “they do mount up, one arter another. It’s one gentleman as did ‘em all — him out in the bar now, with the long hair. Sometimes I think I’d rather a-had money; but it’s a talent, that’s what it is!”
The artist beyond the outer bar had been talking to the potman. Now he coughed and said: “Ha — um! Cap’en Kemp, sir! Cap’en Kemp! No doubt as you’ve ‘eard the noos to-day?”
“No,” said Grandfather Nat, finishing the rolling of his shirt-sleeves as he stepped down into the bar; “not as I know on. What is it?”
“Not about Viney and Marr?”
“No. What about ‘em?”
Mr. Cripps rose on his toes with the importance of his information, and his eyes widened to a moment’s rivalry with his nose. “Gone wrong,” he said, in a shrill whisper that was as loud as his natural voice. “Gone wrong. Unsolvent. Cracked up. Broke. Busted, in a common way o’ speakin’.” And he gave a violent nod with each synonym.
“No,” said Grandfather Nat; “surely not Viney and Marr?”
“Fact, Cap’en; I can assure you, on ‘igh a’thority. It’s what I might call the universal topic in neighbourin’ circles, an’ a gen’ral subjick o’ local discussion. You’d ‘a ‘eard it ‘fore this if you’d bin at ‘ome.”
My grandfather whistled, and rested a hand on a beer-pull.
“Not a stiver for nobody, they say,” Mr. Cripps pursued, “not till they can sell the wessels. What there was loose Marr’s bolted with; or, as you might put it, absconded; absconded with the proceeds. An’ gone abroad, it’s said.”
“I see the servant gal bringin’ out her box from Viney’s just now,” said Grandfather Nat. “An’ Crooks the ship-chandler was on the steps, very white in the gills, with a paper. Well, well! An’ you say Marr’s bolted?”
“Absconded, Cap’en Kemp; absconded with the proceeds; ‘opped the twig. Viney says ‘e’s robbed ‘im as well as the creditors, but I ‘ear some o’ the creditors’ observation is ‘gammon.’ An’ they say the wessels is pawned up to their r’yals. Up to their r’yals!”
“Well,” commented my grandfather, “I wouldn’t ha’ thought it. The Juno was that badly found, an’ they did everything that cheap, I thought they made money hand over fist.”
“Flyin’ too ‘igh, Cap’en Kemp, flyin’ too ‘igh. You knowed Viney long ‘fore ‘e elevated hisself into a owner, didn’t you? What was he then? Why, ‘e was your mate one voy’ge, wasn’t he?”
“Ay, an’ more.”
“So I’ve ‘eard tell. Well, arter that surely ‘e was flyin’ too ‘igh! An’ now Marr’s absconded with the proceeds!”
The talk in the bar went on, being almost entirely the talk of Mr. Cripps; who valued himself on the unwonted importance his news gave him, and aimed at increasing it by saying the same thing a great many times; by saying it, too, when he could, in terms and phrases that had a strong flavour of the Sunday paper. But as for me, I soon ceased to hear, for I discovered something of greater interest on the shelf that skirted the bar-parlour. It was a little model of a ship in a glass case, and it was a great marvel to me, with all its standing and running rigging complete, and a most ingenious and tumultuous sea about it, made of stiff calico cockled up into lumps and ridges, and painted the proper colour. Much better than either of the two we had at home, for these latter were only half-models, each nothing but one-half of a little ship split from stem to stern, and stuck against a board, on which were painted sky, clouds, seagulls, and (in one case) a lighthouse; an exasperating make-believe that had been my continual disappointment. But this was altogether so charming and delightful and real, and the little hatches and cuddy-houses so thrilled my fancy, that I resolved to beg of my grandfather to let me call the model my own, and sometimes have the glass case off. So I was absorbed while the conversation in the bar ranged from the ships and their owners to my father, and from him to me; as was plain when my grandfather called me.
“Here he is,” said my grandfather, with a deal of pride in his voice, putting his foot on a stool and lifting me on his knee. “Here he is, an’ a plucked ‘un; ain’t ye, Stevy?” He rubbed his hand over my head, as he was fond of doing. “Plucked? Ah! Why, he was agoin’ to keep house all by hisself, with all the pluck in life, till his father come home! Warn’t ye, Stevy boy? But he’s come along o’ me instead, an’ him an’ me’s goin’ to keep the Hole in the Wall together, ain’t we? Pardners: eh, Stevy?”
I think I never afterwards saw my grandfather talking so familiarly with his customers. I perceived now that there was another in the bar in addition to Mr. Cripps; a pale, quiet, and rather ragged man who sat in an obscure corner with an untouched glass of liquor by him.
“Come,” said my grandfather, “have one with me, Mr. Cripps, an’ drink the new pardner’s health. What is it? An’ you — you drink up too, an’ have another.” This last order Grandfather Nat flung at the man in the corner, just in the tones in which I had heard a skipper on a ship tell a man to “get forrard lively” with a rope fender, opposite our quay at Blackwall.
“I’m sure ‘ere’s wishin’ the young master every ‘ealth an’ ‘appiness,” said Mr. Cripps, beaming on me with a grin that rather frightened than pleased me, it twisted the nose so. “Every ‘ealth and ‘appiness, I’m sure!”
The pale man in the corner only looked up quickly, as if fearful of obtruding himself, gulped the drink that had been standing by him, and receiving another, put it down untasted where the first had stood.
“That ain’t drinkin’ a health,” said my grandfather, angrily. “There — that’s it!” and he pointed to the new drink with the hand that held his own.
The pale man lifted it hurriedly, stood up, looked at me and said something indistinct, gulped the liquor and returned the glass to the counter; whereupon the potman, without orders, instantly refilled it, and the man carried it back to his corner and put it down beside him, as before.
I began to wonder if the pale man suffered from some complaint that made it dangerous to leave him without a drink close at hand, ready to be swallowed at a moment’s notice. But Mr. Cripps blinked, first at his own glass and then at the pale man’s; and I fancy he thought himself unfairly treated.
Howbeit his affability was unconquerable. He grinned and snapped his fingers playfully at me, provoking my secret indignation; since that was what people did to please babies.
“An’ a pretty young gent ‘e is too,” said Mr. Cripps, “of considerable personal attractions. Goin’ to bring ‘im up to the trade, I s’pose, Cap’en Kemp?”
“Why, no,” said Grandfather Nat, with some dignity. “No. Something better than that, I’m hopin’. Pardners is all very well for a bit, but Stevy’s goin’ to be a cut above his poor old gran’father, if I can do it. Eh, boy?” He rubbed my head again, and I was too shy, sitting there in the bar, to answer. “Eh, boy? Boardin’ school an’ a gentleman’s job for this one, if the old man has his way.”
Mr. Cripps shook his head sagaciously, and could plainly see that I was cut out for a statesman. He also lifted his empty glass, looked at it abstractedly, and put it down again. Nothing coming of this, he complimented by personal appearance once more, and thought that my portrait should certainly be painted, as a memorial in my future days of greatness.
This notion seemed to strike my grandfather rather favourably, and h
e forthwith consulted a slate which dangled by a string; during his contemplations of which, with its long rows of strokes, Mr. Cripps betrayed a certain anxious discomfort. “Well,” said Grandfather Nat at length, “you are pretty deep in, you know, an’ it might as well be that as anything else. But what about that sign? Ain’t I ever goin’ to get that?”
Mr. Cripps knitted his brows and his nose, turned up his eyes and shook his head. “It ain’t come to me yet, Cap’en Kemp,” he said; “not yet. I’m still waiting for what you might call an inspiration. But when it comes, Cap’en Kemp — when it comes! Ah! you’ll ‘ave a sign then! Sich a sign! You’ll ‘ave sich a sign as’ll attract the ‘ole artistic feelin’ of Wapping an’ surroundin’ districks of the metropolis, I assure you. An’ the signs on the other ‘ouses — phoo!” Mr. Cripps made a sweep of the hand, which I took to indicate generally that all other publicans, overwhelmed with humiliation, would have no choice but straightway to tear down their own signs and bury them.
“Umph! but meanwhile I haven’t got one at all,” objected Grandfather Nat; “an’ they have.”
“Ah, yes, sir — some sort o’ signs. But done by mere jobbers, and poor enough too. My hart, Cap’en Kemp — I respect my hart, an’ I don’t rush at a job like that. It wants conception, sir, a job like that — conception. The common sort o’ sign’s easy enough. You go at it, an’ you do it or hexicute it, an’ when it’s done or hexicuted — why there it is. A ship, maybe, or a crown, or a Turk’s ‘ed or three cats an’ a fryin’ pan. Simple enough — no plannin’, no composition, no invention. But a ‘ole in a wall, Cap’en Kemp — it takes a hartist to make a picter o’ that; an’ it takes study, an’ meditation, an’ invention!”
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 131