“What do you mean by the widow?” demanded the aroused captain.
“The one you are always talking about,” replied Mr. Vyner, winking at the sky.
“Me!” said the captain, purpling. “I don’t talk about her. You don’t hear me talk about her. I’m not always talking about anybody. I might just have mentioned her name when talking about Truefitt’s troubles; that’s all.”
“That’s what I meant,” said Robert Vyner, with an air of mild surprise.
“Well, it’s not her,” said the captain, shortly.
“Somebody I know, but not exactly,” mused Robert. “Somebody I know, but — Let me think.”
He closed his eyes in an effort of memory, and kept them shut so long that the captain, anxious to get him away before his visitor’s arrival, indulged in a loud and painful fit of coughing. Mr. Vyner’s eyes remained closed.
“Any more guesses?” inquired the captain, loudly.
Mr. Vyner, slept on. Gulls mewed overhead; a rattle of cranes sounded from the quays, and a conversation — mostly in hoarse roars — took place between the boatswain in the bows and an elderly man ashore, but he remained undisturbed. Then he sprang up so suddenly that he nearly knocked his chair over, and the captain, turning his head after him in amaze, saw Joan Hartley standing at the edge of the quay.
Before he could interfere Mr. Vyner, holding her hand with anxious solicitude, was helping her aboard. Poised for a moment on the side of the ship, she sprang lightly to the deck, and the young man, relinquishing her hand with some reluctance, followed her slowly toward the captain.
Ten minutes later, by far the calmest of the three, he sat at tea in the small but comfortable saloon. How he got there Captain Trimblett could not exactly remember. Mr. Vyner had murmured something about a slight headache, due in his opinion to the want of a cup of tea, and, even while talking about going home to get it, had in an abstracted fashion drifted down the companion-way.
“I feel better already,” he remarked, as he passed his cup up to Miss Hartley to be refilled. “It’s wonderful what a cup of tea will do.”
“It has its uses,” said the captain, darkly.
He took another cup himself and sat silent and watchful, listening to the conversation of his guests. A slight appearance of reserve on Miss Hartley’s part, assumed to remind Mr. Vyner of his bad behaviour on the occasion of their last meeting, was dispelled almost immediately. Modesty, tinged with respectful admiration, was in every glance and every note of his voice. When she discovered that a man who had asked for his tea without sugar had drunk without remark a cup containing three lumps, she became thoughtful.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, in concern.
Modesty and Mr. Vyner — never boon companions — parted company.
“I thought you had given me the wrong cup,” he said, simply.
The explanation seemed to Captain Trimblett quite inadequate. He sat turning it over in his mind, and even the rising colour in Miss Hartley’s cheek did not serve to enlighten him. But he was glad to notice that she was becoming reserved again. Mr. Vyner noticed it, too, and, raging inwardly against a tongue which was always striving after his undoing, began with a chastened air to criticise the architecture of the new chapel in Porter Street. Architecture being a subject of which the captain knew nothing, he discussed it at great length, somewhat pleased to find that both his listeners were giving him their undivided attention.
He was glad to notice, when they went up on deck again, that his guests had but little to say to each other, and, with a view to keeping them apart as much as possible, made no attempt to detain her when Joan rose and said that she must be going. She shook hands and then turned to Mr. Vyner.
“Oh, I must be going, too,” said that gentleman.
He helped her ashore and, with a wave of his hand to Captain Trimblett, set off by her side. At the bridge, where their ways homeward diverged, Joan half stopped, but Mr. Vyner, gazing straight ahead, kept on.
“Fine chap, Captain Trimblett,” he said, suddenly.
“He is the kindest man I know,” said Joan, warmly.
Mr. Vyner sang his praises for three hundred yards, secretly conscious that his companion was thinking of ways and means of getting rid of him. The window of a confectioner’s shop at last furnished the necessary excuse.
“I have got a little shopping to do,” she said, diving in suddenly. “Good-by.”
“The ‘good-by’ was so faint that it was apparent to her as she stood in the shop and gave a modest order for chocolates that he had not heard it. She bit her lip, and after a glance at the figure outside, added to her order a large one for buns. She came out of the shop with a bag overflowing with them.
“Let me,” said Mr. Vyner, hastily.
Miss Hartley handed them over at once, and, walking by his side, strove hard to repress malicious smiles. She walked slowly and gave appraising glances at shop windows, pausing finally at a greengrocer’s to purchase some bananas. Mr. Vyner, with the buns held in the hollow of his arm, watched her anxiously, and his face fell as she agreed with the greengrocer as to the pity of spoiling a noble bunch he was displaying. Insufficiently draped in a brown-paper bag, it took Mr. Vyner’s other arm.
“You are quite useful,” said Miss Hartley, with a bright smile.
Mr. Vyner returned the smile, and in bowing to an acquaintance nearly lost a bun. He saved it by sheer sleight of hand, and noting that his companion was still intent on the shops, wondered darkly what further burdens were in store for him. He tried to quicken the pace, but Miss Hartley was not to be hurried.
“I must go in here, I think,” she said, stopping in front of a draper’s. “I sha’n’t be long.”
Mr. Vyner took his stand by the window with his back to the passers-by, and waited. At the expiration of ten minutes he peeped in at the door, and saw Miss Hartley at the extreme end of the shop thoughtfully fingering bales of cloth. He sighed, and, catching sight of a small boy regarding him, had a sudden inspiration.
“Here! Would you like some buns, old chap?” he cried.
The child’s eyes glistened.
“Take ’em,” said Mr. Vyner, thankfully. “Don’t drop ’em.”
He handed them over and stood smiling benevolently as the small boy, with both arms clasped round the bag, went off hugging it to his bosom. Another urchin, who had been regarding the transaction with speechless envy, caught his eye. He beckoned him to him and, with a few kind words and a fatherly admonition not to make himself ill, presented him with the bananas. Then he drew a deep breath, and with a few kind words he presented him with the bananas assuming an expression of gravity befitting the occasion, braced himself for the inevitable encounter.
Five minutes later Miss Hartley, bearing a large and badly-tied parcel, came smiling out to him. The smile faded suddenly, and she stood regarding him in consternation.
“Why — !” she began. “Where — ?”
Mr. Vyner eyed her carefully. “I gave ’em away,” he said, slowly. “Two poor, hungry little chaps stood looking at me. I am awfully fond of children, and before I knew what I was doing—”
“I’ve no doubt,” said Joan, bitterly, as she realized her defeat. “I’ve no doubt.”
Mr. Vyner leaned toward the parcel. “Allow me,” he murmured, politely.
“Thank you, Til carry it myself,” said Joan, sharply.
Her taste for shopping had evaporated, and clutching her parcel she walked rapidly homeward. An occasional glance at her companion did not quite satisfy her that he was keeping his sense of humour under proper control. There was a twitching of his lips which might, she felt, in a little time become contagious. She averted her head.
“That’s all right,” said Mr. Vyner, with a sigh of relief. “I was half afraid that I had offended you.”
CHAPTER VII
TO the great relief of Mr. Truefitt’s imagination, his sister suddenly ceased from all comment upon the irregularity of his hours. Unprepared
, by the suddenness of the change, he recited mechanically, for the first day or two, the reasons he had invented for his lateness, but their reception was of so chilling a nature that his voice was scarcely audible at the finish. Indeed, when he came home one evening with a perfectly true story of a seaman stabbed down by the harbour, Mrs. Chinnery yawned three times during the narration, and Captain Trimblett shook his head at him.
“True or not,” said the latter, after Mrs. Chinnery had left the room, “it doesn’t matter. It isn’t worth while explaining when explanations are not asked for.”
“Do you think she knows?” inquired Mr. Truefitt, with bated voice.
“She knows something,” replied the captain. “I believe she knows all about it, else she wouldn’t keep so quiet. Why not tell her straight out? Tell her when she comes in, and get it over. She’s got to know some day.”
“Poor Susan!” said Mr. Truefitt, with feeling. “I’m afraid she’ll feel it. It’s not nice to have to leave home to make room for somebody else. And she won’t stay in it with another woman, I’m certain.”
“Here she comes,” said the captain, getting up. “I’ll go out for a little stroll, and when I come back I shall expect to find you’ve made a clean breast of it.”
Mr. Truefitt put out a hand as though to detain him, and then, thinking better of it, nodded at him with an air of great resolution, and puffed furiously at his pipe. Under cover of clouds of smoke he prepared for the encounter.
Closing the door gently behind him, the captain, after a moment’s indecision, drifted down the road. A shower of rain had brought out sweet odours from the hedgerow opposite, and a touch of salt freshened the breeze that blew up the river. Most of the inhabitants of the Vale were in bed, and the wet road was lonely under the stars. He walked as far as a little bridge spanning a brook that ran into the river, and seating himself on the low parapet smoked thoughtfully. His mind went back to his own marriage many years before, and to his children, whom he had placed, on his wife’s death, with a second cousin in London. An unusual feeling of loneliness possessed him. He smoked a second pipe and then, knocking the ashes out on the bridge, walked slowly homeward.
Mr. Truefitt, who was sitting alone, looked up as he entered and smiled vaguely.
“All right?” queried the captain, closing the door and crossing to a chair.
“Right as ninepence,” said Mr. Truefitt. “I’ve been worrying myself all this time for nothing. Judging by her manner, she seemed to think it was the most natural and proper thing in the world.”
“So it is,” said the captain, warmly.
“She talked about it as calmly as though she had a brother married every week,” continued Mr. Truefitt. “I don’t suppose she has quite realized it yet.”
“I don’t know that I have,” said the captain. “This has been the only home I’ve had for the last ten years; and I feel leaving it, what must it be for her?”
Mr. Truefitt shook his head.
“I’m beginning to feel old,” said the captain, “old and lonely. Changes like this bring it home to one.”
He took out his pouch, and shaking his head solemnly began to fill his pipe again.
“You ought to follow my example,” said Mr. Truefitt, eagerly.
“Too old,” said the captain.
“Nonsense!” said the other. “And the older you get, the lonelier you’ll feel. Mind that!”
“I shall go and live with my boys and girls when I leave the sea,” said the captain.
“They’ll probably be married themselves by that time,” said his comforter.
He rose, and, going to an old corner cupboard, took out a bottle of whiskey and a couple of glasses and put them on the table. The captain, helping himself liberally, emptied his glass to Miss Willett.
“She’s coming to tea on Friday, with her mother,” said Mr. Truefitt.
Captain Trimblett took some more whiskey and solemnly toasted Mrs. Willett. He put his glass down, and lighting his pipe, which had gone out, beamed over at his friend.
“Are there any more in the family?” he inquired.
“There’s an uncle,” said Mr. Truefitt, slowly, “and — —”
“One at a time,” said the captain, stopping him with one hand raised, while he helped himself to some more whiskey with the other. “The uncle!”
He drank the third glass slowly, and, sinking back in his chair, turned to his friend with a countenance somewhat flushed and wreathed in smiles.
“Who else?” he inquired.
“No more to-night,” said Mr. Truefitt, firmly, as he got up and put the bottle back in the cupboard. He came back slowly, and, resuming his seat, gazed in a meditative fashion at his friend.
“Talking about your loneliness—” he began.
“My loneliness?” repeated the captain, staring at “You were talking about feeling lonely,” Mr. Truett reminded him.
He proceeded with almost equal care to assist her mother
“So I was,” said the captain. “So I was. You’re quite right; but it’s all gone now. It’s wonderful what a little whiskey will do.”
“Wonderful what a lot will do,” said Mr. Truefitt, with sudden asperity. “You were talking about your loneliness, and I was advising you to get married.”
“So you were,” said the captain, nodding at him. “Good-night.”
He went off to bed with a suddenness that was almost disconcerting. Thus deserted, Mr. Truefitt finished his whiskey and water and, his head full of plans for the betterment of everybody connected with him, blew out the lamp and went upstairs.
Owing possibly to his efforts in this direction Captain Trimblett and Mrs. Chinnery scarcely saw him until Friday afternoon, when he drove up in a fly, and, after handing out Miss Willett with great tenderness, proceeded with almost equal care to assist her mother. The latter, a fragile little old lady, was at once conducted to a chair and, having been comfortably seated was introduced to Mrs. Chinnery.
“It’s a long way,” she said, as her daughter divested her of her bonnet and shawl, “but Cissie would insist on my coming, and I suppose, after all, it’s only right I should.”
“Of course, mother,” said Miss Willett, hurriedly.
“Right is right,” continued the old lady, “after all is said and done. And I’m sure Mr. Truefitt has been to ours often enough.”
Mr. Truefitt coughed, and the captain — a loyal friend — assisted him.
“Night after night,” said the old lady, during a brief interval.
Mr. Truefitt, still coughing slightly, began to place chairs at a table on which, as the captain presently-proved to his own dissatisfaction, there was not even; room for a pair of elbows. At the last moment the seating arrangements had to be altered owing to a leg of the table which got in the way of Mrs. Willett’s. The captain, in his anxiety to be of service, lowered a leaf of the table too far, and an avalanche of food descended to the floor.
“It don’t matter,” said Mrs. Chinnery, in a voice that belied her words. “Captain Trimblett is always doing something like that. The last time we had visitors he—”
“Kept on eating the cake after she had shaken her head at me,” interrupted the captain, who was busy picking up the provisions.
“Nothing of the kind,” cried Mrs. Chinnery, who was in no mood for frivolity. “I shouldn’t think of doing such a thing,” she added, turning to Mrs. Willett, as the lady allowed herself to be placed in a more convenient position. “It’s all Captain Trimblett’s nonsense.”
Mrs. Willett listened politely, “It is annoying, though,” she remarked.
“He might eat all the cake in the house for what I care,” said Mrs. Chinnery, turning very red, and raising her voice a little.
“As a matter of fact I don’t like cake,” said the captain, who was becoming uncomfortable.
“Perhaps it was something else,” said the excellent Mrs. Willett, with the air of one assisting to unravel a mystery.
Mrs. Chinnery, who w
as pouring out tea, glared at her in silence. She also spared a glance for Captain Trimblett, which made that gentleman seriously uneasy. With an idea of turning the conversation into safer and more agreeable channels, he called the old lady’s attention to a pencil drawing of a ruined castle which adorned the opposite wall. Mrs. Willett’s first remark was that it had no roof.
“It’s a ruin,” said the captain; “done by Mrs. Chinnery.”
The faded blue eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles inspected it carefully. “Done when she was a child — of course?” said Mrs. Willett.
“Eighteen,” said Mrs. Chinnery, in a deep voice.
“I’m no judge of such things,” said the old lady, shaking her head. “I only know what I like; but I dare say it’s very clever.”
She turned to help herself from a plate that the captain was offering her, and, finding that it contained cake, said that she would prefer bread and butter.
“Not that I don’t like cake,” she said. “As a rule I am rather partial to it.”
“Well, have some now,” said the unfortunate captain, trying to avoid Mrs. Chinnery’s eye.
“Bread and butter, please,” said Mrs. Willett, with quiet decision.
The captain passed it, and after a hopeless glance at Mr. Truefitt and Miss Willett, who were deep in the enjoyment of each other’s society, returned to the subject of art.
“If I could draw like that, ma’am,” he said, with a jerk of his head toward the ruined castle, “I should give up the sea.”
Mrs. Willett inspected it again, even going to the length of taking off her glasses and polishing them, with a view to doing perfect justice to the subject. “Would you really?” she said, when she had finished.
The captain made no reply. He sat appalled at the way in which the old lady was using him to pay off some of the debt that she fancied was due to Mrs. Chinnery.
“You must see some of my daughter’s pictures,” she said, turning to him. “Fruit and birds mostly, in oil colours. But then, of course, she had good masters. There’s one picture — let me see!”
She sat considering, and began to reel off the items on her fingers as she enumerated them. “There’s a plate of oranges, with a knife and fork, a glass, a bottle, two and a half walnuts and bits of shell, three-quarters of an apple, a pipe, a cigar, a bunch of grapes, and a green parrot looking at it all with his head on one side.”
Works of W. W. Jacobs Page 64