Works of W. W. Jacobs

by Jacobs, W. W.

  None of ’em was in the best o’ tempers when they woke up next morning, and Ginger ‘ad ‘ardly got ‘is eyes open before Isaac was asking ‘im about ‘is clothes agin.

  “Don’t bother me about your clothes,” ses Ginger; “talk about something else for a change.”

  “Where are they?” ses Isaac, sitting on the edge of ‘is bed.

  Ginger yawned and felt in ‘is waistcoat pocket — for neither of ’em ‘ad undressed — and then ‘e took the pawn-ticket out and threw it on the floor. Isaac picked it up, and then ‘e began to dance about the room as if ‘e’d gone mad.

  “Do you mean to tell me you’ve pawned my clothes?” he shouts.

  “Me and Peter did,” ses Ginger, sitting up in bed and getting ready for a row.

  Isaac dropped on the bed agin all of a ‘cap. “And wot am I to do?” he ses.

  “If you be’ave yourself,” ses Ginger, “and give us our money, me and Peter’ll go and get ’em out agin. When we’ve ‘ad breakfast, that is. There’s no hurry.”

  “But I ‘aven’t got the money,” ses Isaac; “it was all sewn up in the lining of the coat. I’ve on’y got about five shillings. You’ve made a nice mess of it, Ginger, you ‘ave.”

  “You’re a silly fool, Ginger, that’s wot you are,” ses Peter.

  “Sewn up in the lining of the coat?” ses Ginger, staring.

  “The bank-notes was,” ses Isaac, “and three pounds in gold ‘idden in the cap. Did you pawn that too?”

  Ginger got up in ‘is excitement and walked up and down the room. “We must go and get ’em out at once,” he ses.

  “And where’s the money to do it with?” ses Peter.

  Ginger ‘adn’t thought of that, and it struck ‘im all of a heap. None of ’em seemed to be able to think of a way of getting the other ten shillings wot was wanted, and Ginger was so upset that ‘e took no notice of the things Peter kept saying to ‘im.

  “Let’s go and ask to see ’em, and say we left a railway-ticket in the pocket,” ses Peter.

  Isaac shook ‘is ‘ead. “There’s on’y one way to do it,” he ses. “We shall ‘ave to pawn your clothes, Ginger, to get mine out with.”

  “That’s the on’y way, Ginger,” ses Peter, brightening up. “Now, wot’s the good o’ carrying on like that? It’s no worse for you to be without your clothes for a little while than it was for pore old Isaac.”

  It took ’em quite arf an hour afore they could get Ginger to see it. First of all ‘e wanted Peter’s clothes to be took instead of ‘is, and when Peter pointed out that they was too shabby to fetch ten shillings ‘e ‘ad a lot o’ nasty things to say about wearing such old rags, and at last, in a terrible temper, ‘e took ‘is clothes off and pitched ’em in a ‘eap on the floor.

  “If you ain’t back in arf an hour, Peter,” ‘e ses, scowling at ‘im, “you’ll ‘ear from me, I can tell you.”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” ses Isaac, with a smile. “I’m going to take ’em.”

  “You?” ses Ginger; “but you can’t. You ain’t got no clothes.”

  “I’m going to wear Peter’s,” ses Isaac, with a smile.

  Peter asked ‘im to listen to reason, but it was all no good. He’d got the pawn-ticket, and at last Peter, forgetting all he’d said to Ginger Dick about using bad langwidge, took ‘is clothes off, one by one, and dashed ’em on the floor, and told Isaac some of the things ‘e thought of ‘im.

  The old man didn’t take any notice of ‘im. He dressed ‘imself up very slow and careful in Peter’s clothes, and then ‘e drove ’em nearly crazy by wasting time making ‘is bed.

  “Be as quick as you can, Isaac,” ses Ginger, at last; “think of us two a-sitting ‘ere waiting for you.”

  “I sha’n’t forget it,” ses Isaac, and ‘e came back to the door after ‘e’d gone arf-way down the stairs to ask ’em not to go out on the drink while ‘e was away.

  It was nine o’clock when he went, and at ha’-past nine Ginger began to get impatient and wondered wot ‘ad ‘appened to ‘im, and when ten o’clock came and no Isaac they was both leaning out of the winder with blankets over their shoulders looking up the road. By eleven o’clock Peter was in very low spirits and Ginger was so mad ‘e was afraid to speak to ‘im.

  They spent the rest o’ that day ‘anging out of the winder, but it was not till ha’-past four in the after-noon that Isaac, still wearing Peter’s clothes and carrying a couple of large green plants under ‘is arm, turned into the road, and from the way ‘e was smiling they thought it must be all right.

  “Wot ‘ave you been such a long time for?” ses Ginger, in a low, fierce voice, as Isaac stopped underneath the winder and nodded up to ’em.

  “I met a old friend,” ses Isaac.

  “Met a old friend?” ses Ginger, in a passion. “Wot d’ye mean, wasting time like that while we was sitting up ‘ere waiting and starving?”

  “I ‘adn’t seen ‘im for years,” ses Isaac, “and time slipped away afore I noticed it.”

  “I dessay,” ses Ginger, in a bitter voice. “Well, is the money all right?”

  “I don’t know,” ses Isaac; “I ain’t got the clothes.”

  “Wot?” ses Ginger, nearly falling out of the winder. “Well, wot ‘ave you done with mine, then? Where are they? Come upstairs.”

  “I won’t come upstairs, Ginger,” ses Isaac, “because I’m not quite sure whether I’ve done right. But I’m not used to going into pawnshops, and I walked about trying to make up my mind to go in and couldn’t.”

  “Well, wot did you do then?” ses Ginger, ‘ardly able to contain hisself.

  “While I was trying to make up my mind,” ses old Isaac, “I see a man with a barrer of lovely plants. ‘E wasn’t asking money for ’em, only old clothes.”

  “Old clothes?” ses Ginger, in a voice as if ‘e was being suffocated.

  “I thought they’d be a bit o’ green for you to look at,” ses the old man, ‘olding the plants up; “there’s no knowing ‘ow long you’ll be up there. The big one is yours, Ginger, and the other is for Peter.”

  “‘Ave you gone mad, Isaac?” ses Peter, in a trembling voice, arter Ginger ‘ad tried to speak and couldn’t.

  Isaac shook ‘is ‘ead and smiled up at ’em, and then, arter telling Peter to put Ginger’s blanket a little more round ‘is shoulders, for fear ‘e should catch cold, ‘e said ‘e’d ask the landlady to send ’em up some bread and butter and a cup o’ tea.

  They ‘eard ‘im talking to the landlady at the door, and then ‘e went off in a hurry without looking behind ‘im, and the landlady walked up and down on the other side of the road with ‘er apron stuffed in ‘er mouth, pretending to be looking at ‘er chimney-pots.

  Isaac didn’t turn up at all that night, and by next morning those two unfortunate men see ‘ow they’d been done. It was quite plain to them that Isaac ‘ad been deceiving them, and Peter was pretty certain that ‘e took the money out of the bed while ‘e was fussing about making it. Old Isaac kept ’em there for three days, sending ’em in their clothes bit by bit and two shillings a day to live on; but they didn’t set eyes on ‘im agin until they all signed on aboard the Planet, and they didn’t set eyes on their money until they was two miles below Gravesend.

  THE CASTAWAY

  Mrs. John Boxer stood at the door of the shop with her hands clasped on her apron. The short day had drawn to a close, and the lamps in the narrow little thorough-fares of Shinglesea were already lit. For a time she stood listening to the regular beat of the sea on the beach some half-mile distant, and then with a slight shiver stepped back into the shop and closed the door.

  The little shop with its wide-mouthed bottles of sweets was one of her earliest memories. Until her marriage she had known no other home, and when her husband was lost with the North Star some three years before, she gave up her home in Poplar and returned to assist her mother in the little shop.

  In a restless mood she took up a piece of needle-work, and a minute or
two later put it down again. A glance through the glass of the door leading into the small parlour revealed Mrs. Gimpson, with a red shawl round her shoulders, asleep in her easy-chair.

  Mrs. Boxer turned at the clang of the shop bell, and then, with a wild cry, stood gazing at the figure of a man standing in the door-way. He was short and bearded, with oddly shaped shoulders, and a left leg which was not a match; but the next moment Mrs. Boxer was in his arms sobbing and laughing together.

  Mrs. Gimpson, whose nerves were still quivering owing to the suddenness with which she had been awakened, came into the shop; Mr. Boxer freed an arm, and placing it round her waist kissed her with some affection on the chin.

  “He’s come back!” cried Mrs. Boxer, hysterically.

  “Thank goodness,” said Mrs. Gimpson, after a moment’s deliberation.

  “He’s alive!” cried Mrs. Boxer. “He’s alive!”

  She half-dragged and half-led him into the small parlour, and thrusting him into the easy-chair lately vacated by Mrs. Gimpson seated herself upon his knee, regardless in her excitement that the rightful owner was with elaborate care selecting the most uncomfortable chair in the room.

  “Fancy his coming back!” said Mrs. Boxer, wiping her eyes. “How did you escape, John? Where have you been? Tell us all about it.”

  Mr. Boxer sighed. “It ‘ud be a long story if I had the gift of telling of it,” he said, slowly, “but I’ll cut it short for the present. When the North Star went down in the South Pacific most o’ the hands got away in the boats, but I was too late. I got this crack on the head with something falling on it from aloft. Look here.”

  He bent his head, and Mrs. Boxer, separating the stubble with her fingers, uttered an exclamation of pity and alarm at the extent of the scar; Mrs. Gimpson, craning forward, uttered a sound which might mean anything — even pity.

  “When I come to my senses,” continued Mr. Boxer, “the ship was sinking, and I just got to my feet when she went down and took me with her. How I escaped I don’t know. I seemed to be choking and fighting for my breath for years, and then I found myself floating on the sea and clinging to a grating. I clung to it all night, and next day I was picked up by a native who was paddling about in a canoe, and taken ashore to an island, where I lived for over two years. It was right out o’ the way o’ craft, but at last I was picked up by a trading schooner named the Pearl, belonging to Sydney, and taken there. At Sydney I shipped aboard the Marston Towers, a steamer, and landed at the Albert Docks this morning.”

  “Poor John,” said his wife, holding on to his arm. “How you must have suffered!”

  “I did,” said Mr. Boxer. “Mother got a cold?” he inquired, eying that lady.

  “No, I ain’t,” said Mrs. Gimpson, answering for herself. “Why didn’t you write when you got to Sydney?”

  “Didn’t know where to write to,” replied Mr. Boxer, staring. “I didn’t know where Mary had gone to.”

  “You might ha’ wrote here,” said Mrs. Gimpson.

  “Didn’t think of it at the time,” said Mr. Boxer. “One thing is, I was very busy at Sydney, looking for a ship. However, I’m ‘ere now.”

  “I always felt you’d turn up some day,” said Mrs. Gimpson. “I felt certain of it in my own mind. Mary made sure you was dead, but I said ‘no, I knew better.’”

  There was something in Mrs. Gimpson’s manner of saying this that impressed her listeners unfavourably. The impression was deepened when, after a short, dry laugh a propos of nothing, she sniffed again — three times.

  “Well, you turned out to be right,” said Mr. Boxer, shortly.

  “I gin’rally am,” was the reply; “there’s very few people can take me in.”

  She sniffed again.

  “Were the natives kind to you?” inquired Mrs. Boxer, hastily, as she turned to her husband.

  “Very kind,” said the latter. “Ah! you ought to have seen that island. Beautiful yellow sands and palm-trees; cocoa-nuts to be ‘ad for the picking, and nothing to do all day but lay about in the sun and swim in the sea.”

  “Any public-’ouses there?” inquired Mrs. Gimpson.

  “Cert’nly not,” said her son-in-law. “This was an island — one o’ the little islands in the South Pacific Ocean.”

  “What did you say the name o’ the schooner was?” inquired Mrs. Gimpson.

  “Pearl,” replied Mr. Boxer, with the air of a resentful witness under cross-examination.

  “And what was the name o’ the captin?” said Mrs. Gimpson.

  “Thomas — Henery — Walter — Smith,” said Mr. Boxer, with somewhat unpleasant emphasis.

  “An’ the mate’s name?”

  “John Brown,” was the reply.

  “Common names,” commented Mrs. Gimpson, “very common. But I knew you’d come back all right — I never ‘ad no alarm. ‘He’s safe and happy, my dear,’ I says. ‘He’ll come back all in his own good time.’”

  “What d’you mean by that?” demanded the sensitive Mr. Boxer. “I come back as soon as I could.”

  “You know you were anxious, mother,” interposed her daughter. “Why, you insisted upon our going to see old Mr. Silver about it.”

  “Ah! but I wasn’t uneasy or anxious afterwards,” said Mrs. Gimpson, compressing her lips.

  “Who’s old Mr. Silver, and what should he know about it?” inquired Mr. Boxer.

  “He’s a fortune-teller,” replied his wife. “Reads the stars,” said his mother-in-law.

  Mr. Boxer laughed — a good ringing laugh. “What did he tell you?” he inquired. “Nothing,” said his wife, hastily. “Ah!” said Mr. Boxer, waggishly, “that was wise of ‘im. Most of us could tell fortunes that way.”

  “That’s wrong,” said Mrs. Gimpson to her daughter, sharply. “Right’s right any day, and truth’s truth. He said that he knew all about John and what he’d been doing, but he wouldn’t tell us for fear of ‘urting our feelings and making mischief.”

  “Here, look ‘ere,” said Mr. Boxer, starting up; “I’ve ‘ad about enough o’ this. Why don’t you speak out what you mean? I’ll mischief ‘im, the old humbug. Old rascal.”

  “Never mind, John,” said his wife, laying her hand upon his arm. “Here you are safe and sound, and as for old Mr. Silver, there’s a lot o’ people don’t believe in him.”

  “Ah! they don’t want to,” said Mrs. Gimpson, obstinately. “But don’t forget that he foretold my cough last winter.”

  “Well, look ‘ere,” said Mr. Boxer, twisting his short, blunt nose into as near an imitation of a sneer as he could manage, “I’ve told you my story and I’ve got witnesses to prove it. You can write to the master of the Marston Towers if you like, and other people besides. Very well, then; let’s go and see your precious old fortune-teller. You needn’t say who I am; say I’m a friend, and tell ‘im never to mind about making mischief, but to say right out where I am and what I’ve been doing all this time. I have my ‘opes it’ll cure you of your superstitiousness.”

  “We’ll go round after we’ve shut up, mother,” said Mrs. Boxer. “We’ll have a bit o’ supper first and then start early.”

  Mrs. Gimpson hesitated. It is never pleasant to submit one’s superstitions to the tests of the unbelieving, but after the attitude she had taken up she was extremely loath to allow her son-in-law a triumph.

  “Never mind, we’ll say no more about it,” she said, primly, “but I ‘ave my own ideas.”

  “I dessay,” said Mr. Boxer; “but you’re afraid for us to go to your old fortune-teller. It would be too much of a show-up for ‘im.”

  “It’s no good your trying to aggravate me, John Boxer, because you can’t do it,” said Mrs. Gimpson, in a voice trembling with passion.

  “O’ course, if people like being deceived they must be,” said Mr. Boxer; “we’ve all got to live, and if we’d all got our common sense fortune-tellers couldn’t. Does he tell fortunes by tea-leaves or by the colour of your eyes?”

  “Laugh away, John Boxer,” sa
id Mrs. Gimpson, icily; “but I shouldn’t have been alive now if it hadn’t ha’ been for Mr. Silver’s warnings.”

  “Mother stayed in bed for the first ten days in July,” explained Mrs. Boxer, “to avoid being bit by a mad dog.”

  “Tchee — tchee — tchee,” said the hapless Mr. Boxer, putting his hand over his mouth and making noble efforts to restrain himself; “tchee — tch

  “I s’pose you’d ha’ laughed more if I ‘ad been bit?” said the glaring Mrs. Gimpson.

  “Well, who did the dog bite after all?” inquired Mr. Boxer, recovering.

  “You don’t understand,” replied Mrs. Gimpson, pityingly; “me being safe up in bed and the door locked, there was no mad dog. There was no use for it.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Boxer, “me and Mary’s going round to see that old deceiver after supper, whether you come or not. Mary shall tell ‘im I’m a friend, and ask him to tell her everything about ‘er husband. Nobody knows me here, and Mary and me’ll be affectionate like, and give ‘im to understand we want to marry. Then he won’t mind making mischief.”

  “You’d better leave well alone,” said Mrs. Gimpson.

  Mr. Boxer shook his head. “I was always one for a bit o’ fun,” he said, slowly. “I want to see his face when he finds out who I am.”

  Mrs. Gimpson made no reply; she was looking round for the market-basket, and having found it she left the reunited couple to keep house while she went out to obtain a supper which should, in her daughter’s eyes, be worthy of the occasion.

  She went to the High Street first and made her purchases, and was on the way back again when, in response to a sudden impulse, as she passed the end of Crowner’s Alley, she turned into that small by-way and knocked at the astrologer’s door.

  A slow, dragging footstep was heard approaching in reply to the summons, and the astrologer, recognising his visitor as one of his most faithful and credulous clients, invited her to step inside. Mrs. Gimpson complied, and, taking a chair, gazed at the venerable white beard and small, red-rimmed eyes of her host in some perplexity as to how to begin.