But if the gun enhanced Cap’en Jollyfax’s popularity among the boys, its tendency was otherway with the women — those in particular who lived near enough to be startled by its noise. The natural feminine distrust of all guns in all circumstances was increased in the case of a brass cannon, which might go off at any moment of Cap’en Jollyfax’s crowded calendar. And it was asserted that Mrs. Billing, the widow, who lived at the hill-foot, exactly under Cap’en Jolly-fax’s line of fire, had been startled into the destruction of three basins and a large dish within one month of many birthdays. Mrs. Billing, indeed, as was to be expected from her situation, was the brass gun’s chief enemy. Consequently, if Cap’en Jollyfax had dragged his gun up the aisle of Leigh church and fired it under the pulpit he could scarcely have startled the parishioners more than did he rector when he first read the banns of marriage between John Jolly-fax, bachelor, and Mary Ann Billing, widow, both of that parish.
Except for the gun there need have been little to startle Leigh, for Cap’en Jollyfax was none so old, as retired skippers went thereabout, and Mrs. Billing was as neat and pleasant a widow of forty-two as might be found in Essex, where the widows have always been admirable. Moreover, she had no incumbrance in the way of children.
But there was no mistaking the fact now, even for the deaf who were not at church. For the succeeding fortnight and a day or two over Cap’en Jollyfax and Mrs. Billing were visible, day by day and arm-in-arm, from shop to shop, in Leigh High Street. The result was no great advance in the retail commerce of Leigh — in fact, none. The household appointments of both Cap’en Jollyfax and Mrs. Billing were fairly complete in their humble way; and when Mrs. Billing had triumphantly hauled Cap’en Jollyfax into an ironmonger’s in pursuit of a certain fish-kettle or a particular fender, she was certain presently to discover that just such an article embellished Cap’en Jollyfax’s kitchen, or her own. Nevertheless, she persevered, for a bout of shopping was the proper preliminary to any respectable wedding, and must be performed with full pomp and circumstance; and if nothing, or very little, was actually bought, so much the cheaper. Mrs. Billing was resolved to be baulked of no single circumstance of distinction and triumph appertaining to the occasion. And Cap’en Jollyfax was mightily relieved to find so much shopping cost so little after all; so that he grew gradually more cheerful as the wedding-day neared, which is said not to be invariably the case in these circumstances.
The wedding was fixed for the morning of a certain Wednesday, and on the evening before the day Mrs. Billing spent some little time in glorious authority on Cap’en Jollyfax’s premises, superintending the labor of Mrs. Packwood, who did charing, and was now employed to make the domestic arrangements of the place suit the fancies of its coming mistress. Flushed with hours of undisputed command, Mrs. Billing emerged in the little garden, whereunto Cap’en Jollyfax had retreated early in the operations; and there perceived to-morrow’s bridegroom in the act of withdrawing a broomstick from the mouth of the brass gun.
“What ha’ you been a-doing to that gun, John?” demanded Mrs. Billing rather peremptorily, eyeing the weapon askant.
“A-givin’ her a rub up inside an’ out,” answered Cap’en Jollyfax placably. “An’ I’ve just rammed her with a good big charge ready for to-morrow.”
“Why for to-morrow?” Mrs. Billing’s voice was a trifle sharper still, and she turned a fresh glance of unmistakable dislike on the gun.
“Why for to-morrow?” Cap’en Jollyfax repeated wonderingly. “Why, weddin’-day, o’ course. Touch her off when we come home from church.”
“Nothin’ o’ the sort.” She spoke now with a positive snap. “A nasty, dangerous, banging thing as frightens people out of their seven senses. I won’t hey it. Why, ‘twere almost more’n I could stand down there at the bottom o’ the hill, an’ hey that thing go off near me I will not, so there.”
Cap’en Jollyfax stared blankly. “What!” he jerked out, scarce believing his ears, “not fire the gun on the weddin’-day?”
“No,” Mrs. Billing replied emphatically, “nor any other day, neither. Folk ‘ud think you were a little boy, a-playin’ with sich toys; an’ I can’t abear to be near the thing.”
The staring wonder faded gradually from Cap’en Jollyfax’s face, and a certain extra redness succeeded it. “I be goin’ to fire my gun on my weddin’-day,” he said firmly.
“You ben’t nothin’ o’ the sort,” rejoined the widow, no less firmly; “not on my weddin’-day. Nayther then nor after, if I’m your wife. Just you take the charge out o’ that gun.”
Cap’en Jollyfax shook his head, with something like triumph in his eye. “Won’t come out ‘cept you fire it,” he said. “That’s the only way.”
“Very well then, fire it now — not now, but as soon as I be gone. fire off your gun for the last time to-night, and be done with sich foolishness.”
“Ben’t nothin’ to fire it for to-day,” the old sailor returned shortly. “This gun’s my department, an’ I’m goin’ to ‘tend to it. I’m goin’ to put the tarpaulin over it now, an’ to-morrow, Polly, when we’re back from church, I’m goin’ to fire it.”
Mrs. Billing bridled. “You’re a-goin’ to fire that gun before I go to church with ‘ee, John Jollyfax, an’ not load it agin, nayther.”
“I’m a-goin’ to fire this gun when we’re back from church, an’ afterwards when proper.”
“Cap’en John Jollyfax, I ben’t goin’ to church with ‘ee till after that gun be fired. So now you know. If you don’t fire it to-night you must fire it to-morrow before I turn a step toward church. That’s my word on it.”
“I’m a-goin’ to fire my gun when I like,” growled Cap’en Jollyfax, dogged and sulky.
“Very well,” replied the widow, tossing her head and turning away, “then if you want me to wed ‘ee, an’ when you want me to wed ‘ee, you’ll fire it first. Then, maybe, I’ll consider of it. But no wife o’ yours I’ll be till that powder be fired off. An’ so good-evenin’ to ‘ee, Cap’en Jollyfax.”
That was the beginning of a period of vast interest and excitement in Leigh and its neighborhood. Cap’en Jollyfax’s gun remained silent all that night, nor was it fired in the morning. What Mrs. Billing’s feelings were in the matter, whether she sat anxiously listening for the sound of the gun, as some averred, or dismissed the whole subject from her mind, as her subsequent conversation with Mrs. Peck suggested, are secrets I cannot pretend to have penetrated. Cap’en Jollyfax, on his part, consulted deeply in the morning with Roboshobery Dove, and evolved a scheme of strategy suited to the physical features of the place. As the hour fixed for the wedding drew near, Cap’en Jollyfax, in his best blue coat with brass buttons and his very shiniest hard glazed hat, approached the churchyard and took his seat, in a non-committal sort of way, on the low stone wall that bounded it, with his back toward the church. Roboshobery Dove crouched behind a corner of the same wall, vastly inconvenienced by his wooden leg, but steadily directing his telescope downhill, so that it bore exactly on the door of Mrs. Billing’s cottage. It was Roboshobery’s duty, as lookout man, to report instantly if Mrs. Billing were seen emerging from the door with her best bonnet on, in which event Cap’en Jollyfax would at once leave the wall and take up his position at the church door to receive her. Failing that, Cap’en Jollyfax would be spared the ignominy of waiting at the church for a bride who never came.
At intervals Cap’en Jollyfax took his pipe from his mouth and roared: “Look-out ahoy!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” came the unvarying reply.
“Hev’ee sighted?”
“Nothin’ but the door!”
Whereat the watch would resume for ten minutes more.
It was three-quarters of an hour past the time fixed, when the rector, himself never very punctual, came angrily to the church door, surveyed the small crowd which had gathered, and became aware of Cap’en Jollyfax’s strategy.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded of Mrs. Peck, who, in fact, was spy
ing in the interests of the opposite party. “Where’s Mrs. Billing?”
“Mrs. Billing, sir, she say she’ll never think o’ comin’ till Cap’en Jollyfax hey fired the gun.”
The rector stared at Mrs. Peck for fifteen seconds, passed his fingers once backward and once forward through his hair, and then without a word retired to the vestry.
Roboshobery Dove maintained his watch, and the little crowd waited patiently till the shadow of the dial over the church porch lay well past twelve o’clock, and the legal time for a wedding was over. Then Cap’en Jollyfax hauled out his silver watch and roared, though Roboshobery Dove was scarce a dozen yards off: “Look-out ahoy!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“Eight bells!”
With that Roboshobery Dove hauled out his own watch, banged it, as usual, on the socket of his wooden leg, clapped it against his ear, and then held it before his eyes. Finally, having restored the watch to his breeches-pocket, he shut the telescope, stood erect and rejoined his principal; and the two old sailors stumped off solemnly toward Cap’en Jollyfax’s cottage.
All that day Cap’en Jollyfax’s gun remained silent, and all the next. The day after that was June the first, on which date Cap’en Jollyfax had been wont to fire the gun in celebration of Howe’s victory. But this time the Glorious First went unhonored, and it was perceived that Cap’en Jollyfax was mighty stubborn. Monday, the fourth, was Sam Prentice’s birthday, but Cap’en Jollyfax’s gun stood dumb still.
Leigh had never before listened so eagerly for la bang as it listened now for the report that ‘should publish the submission of Cap’en Jolly-fax; but still the report did not come. People took sides, and bets were made. It was observed that Cap’en Jollyfax was grown peevish and morose, that he shunned his friends and moped at home.
Mrs. Billing, on the other hand, went abroad as always, gay and smiling as ever. Cap’en Jollyfax might do as he pleased, said Mrs. Billing, but she wasn’t going to marry him while the charge remained in that gun. If he chose to fire it out — well, she might think over the matter again, but she was none so sure of even that, now.
The days went on, and Cap’en Jollyfax’s friends grew concerned for him. He was obstinate enough, but brooding, it was plain. Roboshobery Dove, with much ingenuity, sought to convince him that by persisting in his determination he was defeating himself, since there was now an end of gun-fire altogether. Cap’en Jollyfax thought a little over that aspect of the case, but did not fire the gun. It was thought, however, that he could scarce hold out much longer. He was said to have been seen one afternoon stealthily rubbing over the gun and renewing the priming.
A fortnight went, and with June the eighteenth everybody expected to see an end of the business; for in truth Waterloo day would have made the best excuse of the year. But for the first time since Cap’en Jollyfax came to the cottage Waterloo day passed unsaluted. People wondered and shook their heads; surely it couldn’t last much longer?
And indeed it did not. There was another silent day, and then in the dead of night of the nineteenth, Leigh was startled once more by the bang of Cap’en Jollyfax’s gun. Louder and sharper than ever it rang in the still of the night, and folk jumped upright in their beds at the shock. Heads pushed out from latticed casements in Leigh High Street, and conversation passed between opposite gables.
“Did ‘ee hear? ‘Twere up at Cap’en Jollyfax’s!”
“Hear? I’d think so! Cap’en Jollyfax hey fired the gun!”
And so word passed all through Leigh and about on the moment, within house and out of window: “Cap’en Jollyfax hey fired the gun! Cap’en Jollyfax hey fired the gun!”
But in fact no sleeper in all Leigh bounced higher in his bed than Cap’en Jollyfax himself; and that for good reason, for the gun was almost under his bedroom window.
The gun! It was the gun! Somebody had fired it! Those boys — those rascal boys, rapscallion boys, cheeky boys, plaguey, villainous accursed, infernal boys! Cap’en Jollyfax fell into a pair ‘of trousers and downstairs in one complicated gymnastic, and burst into the garden under the thin light of a clouded moon. There stood the gun, uncovered, and there by its side lay the tarpaulin — no, not the tarpaulin, it would seem, but a human figure; a woman in a swoon.
Cap’en Jollyfax turned her over and stared close down into her face. “Why!” he cried, “Polly! Polly! What’s this?”
With that her eyes opened. “Be that you, John?” she said. “I den’t count ’twould go off that fearful sudden!”
SNORKEY TIMMS, HIS MARKS
THIS is another tale of Snorkey Timms, the disreputable acquaintance of whom I have written in other places. It is now years since I saw Snorkey, and I never had the faintest excuse for such an acquaintanceship, except that he was an amusing scoundrel and full of information that cannot be derived from any person of the smallest respectability.
It was at a time long after Snorkey’s adventure with the bags of bricks at Liverpool Street, of which I have told elsewhere, after he had told it me in a faro-house at Whitechapel; the time, in fact, was when the banker at that same faro-table was the envy of Snorkey’s soul and his ideal of sublunary good fortune. From Snorkey’s point of view, indeed, there was reason. Snorkey was a mere Cockney picker-up of trifles — and other things — that were not too carefully watched; Mr. Issy Marks during the day was a wholesale merchant with a fancy-goods warehouse in a little turning out of Hounds ditch, and in the evening he sat at the receipt of custom at the faro-den, the only man at the table who always won. Indeed, he paid the proprietor fifteen shillings an hour for the privilege of sitting banker, and made a very handsome thing of it on the top of that. Why Snorkey and others like him should have persisted in contributing nightly to Mr. Issy Marks’ income was not a question easily to be resolved by the impartial observer; the language wherewith they signalized their regular losses wholly precluded the supposition that they did it out of sheer benevolence to Mr. Marks. Yet they were far from being fools in the ordinary sense, and, in fact, were rather apt to pride themselves on their general knowingness; still they came, stood before the eight squares chalked on the table, saw their stakes decrease and vanish by a system which plainly and obviously must benefit the banker all through and nobody else, went away poor and angry, and came again the next night and all the nights after that to lose more money. There was no reason in it, but there was the phenomenon, and Mr. Marks did very well out of it, as did many another “banker” in many another gambling-house in those parts.
For this, and for the presumed wealth in the fancy-goods business, Mr. Issy Marks was regarded with much envy. The business had its place in a humpbacked little old house that stood uncomfortably shouldered and squeezed between two larger buildings, not so old but quite as dirty, in a rather grimy little street that led from Houndsditch to some undiscovered region beyond. There were scores of such places thereabout, with huddled little thick-framed windows, wherein flashy cheap china ornaments, framed oleographs, combs on cards of a dozen, shell covered boxes, brushes, sponges, and a hundred such things tumbled loose among cardboard boxes. These establishments were the small wholesale concerns which supplied still smaller retail shops in the eastern and southern suburbs. There were bigger houses among them than Mr. Marks’s, and busier; but his had the reputation — at least among his humble admirers — of carrying a solid trade of the sort called “snug.”
Now it was the quaint and interesting custom of Snorkey and all his friends of like habits, to inspect very often, and with loving care, the premises of prosperous persons who aroused their respect and envy as Mr. Marks had done Snorkey’s. They counted the windows and speculated on the probable interior fastenings of doors. They peeped through keyholes unobserved, affectionately patted shutters, and groped inquiringly about their iron fastenings. Their kindly interest even extended to the houses adjoining, the roofs, ladders, trapdoors, and possible means of intercommunication. They have been known to stand in cold streets for hours watching the lights on th
e window-blinds that screened the objects of their solicitude, and even the most careless of them never omitted to make sympathetic, if unostentatious, inquiries as to the comings and goings of the inmates, and the exact positions of their sleeping apartments.
Snorkey, therefore, was aware that Mr. Issy Marks’ warehouse was locked up and left to itself at night. He knew also that the back of the place could be reached from a paved alley by the scaling of an easy wall; that packing-cases littered the back yard; and that any person standing on one or two of the largest could reach a window that was not barred. Such things as these were always among the first noticed by Snorkey in any house in which he took an intelligent interest. And as regards this particular house, observation had taught him other things also. For instance, although the stock generally was not of a costly description, there was a good deal of cheap, thin, showy silver, which would melt down just as well as the same metal in heavier and more expensively finished pieces. There was a little safe in the back room on the ground floor, and there was all the possibility of a little jewellery. On the whole Snorkey decided that he had fallen in love with Mr. Marks’ warehouse and must take an early opportunity to scrape a closer acquaintance.
The opportunity, in fact, seemed to be occurring every night; so that between the moment when Snorkey fully realized the state of his affections and the evening on which he seized his opportunity very few hours elapsed.
It was Mr. Marks’s habit to bolt and bar his warehouse at seven each evening, and bid it and its business farewell till the next morning; for he lived at Mile End. On the evening of Snorkey’s venture he left as usual, and Snorkey, from a convenient entry, saw him go. So much being ascertained, the adventurer loitered for an hour amid the society of the Three Tuns, and then leisurely took his way to the faro “club.”
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 248