CHAPTER XIII.
‘Father, father,’ Dr Whitaker whispered in a low voice, ‘let us go aside a little—down into my cabin or somewhere—away from this crowd here. I am so glad, so happy to be back with you again; so delighted to be home once more, dear, dear father. But don’t you see, everybody is looking at us and observing us!’
The old mulatto glanced around him with an oily glance of profound self-satisfaction. Yes, undoubtedly; he was the exact centre of an admiring audience. It was just such a house as he loved to play to. He turned once more to his trembling son, whose sturdy knees were almost giving way feebly beneath him, and redoubled the ardour of his paternal demonstrativeness. ‘My son, my son, my own dear boy!’ he said once more; and then, stepping back two paces and opening his arms effusively, he ran forward quickly with short mincing steps, and pressed the astonished doctor with profound warmth to his swelling bosom. There was an expansiveness and a gushing effusion about the action which made the spectators titter audibly; and the titter cut the poor young mulatto keenly to the heart with a sense of his utter helplessness and ridiculousness in this absurd situation. He wondered to himself when the humiliating scene would ever be finished. But the old man was not satisfied yet. Releasing his son once more from his fat grasp, he placed his two big hands akimbo on his hips, puckered up his eyebrows as if searching for some possible flaw in a horse or in a woman’s figure—he was a noted connoisseur in either—and held his head pushed jauntily forward, staring once more at his son with his small pig’s eyes from top to toe. At last, satisfied apparently with his close scrutiny, and prepared to acknowledge that it was all very good, he seized the young doctor quickly by the shoulders, and kissing him with a loud smack on either cheek, proceeded to slobber him piecemeal all over the face, exactly like a nine-months’-old baby. Dr Whitaker’s cheeks tingled and burned, so that even through that dusky skin, Edward, who stood a little distance off, commiserating him, could see the hot blood rushing to his face by the deepened and darkened colour in the very centre.
Presently, old Bobby seemed to be sufficiently sated with this particular form of theatrical entertainment, and turned round pleasantly to the remainder of the company. ‘My son,’ he said, not without a real touch of heart-felt, paternal pride, as he glanced towards the gentlemanly looking and well-dressed young doctor, ‘your fellow-passengers! Introduce me! Which is de son of my ole and valued friend, de Honourable James Hawtorn, of Wagwater?’
Dr Whitaker, glad to divert attention from himself on any excuse, waved his hand quietly towards Edward.
‘How do you do, Mr Whitaker?’ Edward said, in as low and quiet a tone as possible, anxious as he was to disappoint the little gaping crowd of amused spectators. ‘We have all derived a great deal of pleasure from your son’s society on our way across. His music has been the staple entertainment of the whole voyage. We have appreciated it immensely.’
But old Bobby was not to be put off with private conversation aside in a gentle undertone. He was accustomed to living his life in public, and he wasn’t going to be balked of his wonted entertainment. ‘Yes, Mr Hawtorn,’ he answered in a loud voice, ‘you are right, sah. De taste for music an’ de taste for beauty in de ladies are two tastes dat are seldom wantin’ to de sons or de grandsons of Africa, however far removed from de original negro.’ (As he spoke, he glanced back with a touch of contempt and an infinite superiority of manner at the pure-blooded blacks, who were now busily engaged in picking up portmanteaus from the deck, and squabbling with one another as to which was to carry the buckras’ luggage. Your mulatto, however dark, always in a good-humoured, tolerant way, utterly despises his coal-black brethren.) ‘Bote dose tastes are highly developed in my own pusson. Bote no doubt my son, Wilberforce Clarkson Whitaker, is liable to inherit from his fader’s family. In de exercise of de second, I cannot fail to perceive dat dis lady beside you must be Mrs Hawtorn. Sah’—with a sidelong leer of his fat eyes—‘I congratulate you mos’ sincerely on your own taste in female beauty. A very nice, fresh-lookin’ young lady, Mrs Hawtorn.’
Marian’s face grew fiery red; and Edward hardly knew whether to laugh off the awkward compliment, or to draw himself up and stroll away, as though the conversation had reached its natural ending.
‘And de odder young lady,’ Bobby went on, quite unconscious of the effect he had produced—‘de odder young lady? Your sister, now, or Mrs Hawtorn’s?’
‘This is Miss Dupuy of Orange Grove,’ Edward answered hesitatingly; for he hardly knew what remark old Bobby might next venture upon. And indeed, as a matter of fact, the old mulatto’s conversation, even in the presence of ladies, was not at all times restrained by all those artificial rules of decorum imposed on most of us by what appeared to him a ridiculously strait-laced and puritanical white conventionality.
But Edward’s answer seemed to have an extraordinary effect in sobering and toning down the old man’s exuberant volubility; he pulled off his hat with a respectful bow, and said in a lower and more polite voice: ‘I have de honour of knowing Miss Dupuy’s fader; I am proud to make Miss Dupuy’s acquaintance.’
‘Here, Bobby!’ the captain called out from a little forward—‘you come here, say. The first-officer wants to introduce you’—with a wink at Edward—‘to His Excellency the Peruvian ambassador.—Look here, Mr Hawthorn; don’t you let Bobby talk too long to your ladies, sir. He sometimes blurts out something, you know, that ladies ain’t exactly accustomed to. We seafaring men are a bit rough on occasion ourselves, certainly; but we know how to behave for all that before the women.—Bobby, don’t; you’d better be careful.’
‘Thank you,’ Edward said, and again felt his heart smitten with a sort of remorse for poor Dr Whitaker. That quick, sensitive, enthusiastic young man to be tied down for life to such a father! It was too terrible. In fact, it was a tragedy.
‘Splendid take-down for that stuck-up, young brown doctor,’ the English officer exclaimed aside in a whisper to Edward. ‘Shake a little of the confounded conceit out of him, I should say. He wanted taking down a peg.—Screaming farce, isn’t he, the old father?’
‘I never saw a more pitiable or pitiful scene in my whole life,’ Edward answered earnestly. ‘Poor fellow, I’m profoundly sorry for him; he looks absolutely broken-hearted.’
The young officer gazed at him in mute astonishment. ‘Can’t see a joke, that fellow Hawthorn,’ he thought to himself. ‘Had all the fun worked out of him, I suppose, over there at Cambridge. Awful prig! Quite devoid of the sense of humour. Sorry for his poor wife; she’ll have a dull life of it.—Never saw such an amusing old fool in all my days as that ridiculous, fat old nigger fellow!’
Meanwhile, James Hawthorn had been standing on the wharf, waiting for the first crush of negroes and hangers-on to work itself off, and looking for an easy opportunity to come aboard in order to meet his son and daughter. By-and-by the crush subsided, and the old man stepped on to the gangway and made his way down upon the deck.
In a moment, Edward was wringing his hand fervently, and father and son had exchanged one single kiss of recognition in that half-shamefaced, hasty fashion in which men of our race usually get through that very un-English ceremony of greeting.
‘Father, father,’ Edward said, ‘I am so thankful to see you once more; so anxious to see my dear mother.’
There were tears standing in both their eyes as his father answered: ‘My boy, my boy! I’ve denied myself this pleasure for years; and now—now it’s come, it’s almost too much for me.’
There was a moment’s pause, and then Mr Hawthorn turned to Marian. ‘My daughter,’ he said, kissing her with a fatherly kiss, ‘we know you, and love you already, from Edward’s letters; and we’ll do our best, as far as we can, to make you happy.’
There was another pause, and then the father said again: ‘You didn’t get my telegram, Edward?’
‘Yes, father, I got it; but not till we were on the very point of starting. The steamer was actually under weigh, and we couldn’t have stopped even if we had wished to. There was nothing for it but to come on as we were, in spite of it.’
‘Oh, Mr Hawthorn, there’s papa!’ Nora cried excitedly. ‘There he is, coming down the gangway.’ And as she spoke, Mr Dupuy’s portly form was seen advancing towards them with slow deliberateness.
For a second, he gazed about him curiously, looking for Nora; then, as he saw her, he walked over towards her in his leisurely, dawdling, West Indian fashion. Nora darted forward and flung her arms impulsively around him. ‘So you’ve come, Nora,’ the old gentleman said quietly, disembarrassing himself with elephantine gracefulness from her close embrace—‘so you’ve come, after all, in spite of my telegram!—How was this, my dear? How was this, tell me?’
‘Yes, papa,’ Nora answered, a little abashed at his serene manner. ‘The telegram was too late—it was thrown on board after we’d started. But we’ve got out all safe, you see.—And Marian—you know—Marian Ord—Mrs Hawthorn that is now—she’s taken great care of me; and, except for the hurricane, we’ve had such a delightful voyage!’
Mr Dupuy drew himself up to his stateliest eminence and looked straight across at Marian Hawthorn with stiff politeness. ‘I didn’t know it was to Mrs Hawthorn, I’m sure,’ he said, ‘that I was to be indebted for your safe arrival here in Trinidad. It was very good of Mrs Hawthorn, I don’t doubt, to bring you out to us and act as your chaperon. I am much obliged to Mrs Hawthorn for her kind attention and care of you on the voyage. I must thank Mrs Hawthorn very sincerely for the trouble she may have been put to on your account.—Good-morning, Mrs Hawthorn!—Good-morning, Mr Hawthorn! Your son, I suppose? Ah, so I imagined.—Good-morning, good-morning.’ He raised his hat with formal courtesy to Marian, and bowed slightly to the son and father. Then he drew Nora’s arm carefully in his, and was just about to walk her immediately off the steamer, when Nora burst from him in the utmost amazement and rushed up to kiss Marian. ‘Papa,’ she cried, ‘I don’t think you understand. This is Marian Ord, don’t you know? General Ord’s daughter, that I’ve written to you about so often. She’s my dearest friend, and now she’s married to Mr Edward Hawthorn—this is he—and Aunt Harriet gave me in charge to her to come across with; and I must just say good-bye to her before I leave her.—Thank you, dear, thank you both so much for all your kindness. Not, of course, that it matters about saying good-bye to you, for you and we will be such very, very near neighbours, and of course we’ll see a great deal of one another.—Won’t we, papa? We shall be near neighbours, and see a great deal of Marian always, now she’s come here to live—won’t we?’
Mr Dupuy bowed again very stiffly. ‘We shall be very near neighbours, undoubtedly,’ he answered with unruffled politeness; ‘and I shall hope to take an early opportunity of paying my respects to—to your friend, General Ord’s daughter.—I am much obliged, once more, to Mrs Hawthorn for her well-meant attentions. Good-morning.—This way, Nora, my dear. This way to the Orange Grove carriage.’
‘Father,’ Edward exclaimed, in doubt and dismay, looking straight down into his father’s eyes, ‘what does it all mean? Explain it all to us. I’m utterly bewildered. Why did you telegraph to us not to come? And why did Nora Dupuy’s father telegraph to her, too, an identical message?’
Mr Hawthorn drew a deep breath and looked back at him with a face full of consternation and pity. ‘He telegraphed to her, too, did he?’ he muttered half to himself in slow reflection. ‘He telegraphed to prevent her from coming out in the Severn! I might have guessed as much—it’s very like him.—My boy, my boy—and my dear daughter—this is a poor welcome for you, a very poor welcome! We never wanted you to come out here; and if we could, we would have prevented it. But now that you’ve come, you’ve come, and there’s no helping it. We must just try to do our best to make you both tolerably comfortable.’
Marian stood in blank astonishment and silent wonder at this strange greeting. A thousand vague possibilities floated instantaneously through her mind, to be dismissed the next second, on closer consideration, as absolutely impossible. Why on earth did this handsome, dignified, courtly old gentleman wish to keep them away from Trinidad? He wasn’t poor; he wasn’t uneducated; he wasn’t without honour in his own country. That he was a gentleman to the backbone, she could see and feel the moment she looked at him and heard him speak. What, then, could be his objection to his son’s coming out to visit him in his own surroundings? Had he committed some extraordinary crime? Was he an ex-convict, or a fraudulent bankrupt, or a defaulting trustee? Did he fear to let his son discover his shame? But no. The bare idea was absolutely impossible. You had only to gaze once upon that fine, benevolent, clear-cut, transparently truthful face—as transparently truthful as Edward’s own—to see immediately that James Hawthorn was a man of honour. It was an insoluble mystery, and Marian’s heart sank within her as she wondered to herself what this gloomy welcome foreboded for the future.
‘Father,’ Edward exclaimed, looking at him once more with appealing eyes, ‘do explain to us what you mean? Why didn’t you want us to come to Trinidad? The suspense is too terrible! We shall be expecting something worse than the reality. Tell us now. Whatever it is, we are strong enough to bear it. I know it can be nothing mean or dishonourable that you have to conceal from us! For Marian’s sake, explain it, explain it!’
The old man turned his face away with a bitter gesture. ‘My boy, my boy, my poor boy,’ he answered slowly and remorsefully, ‘I cannot tell you. I can never tell you. You will find it out for yourself soon enough. But I—I—I can never tell you!’
DUST AND HOUSE REFUSE:
SHOWING WHAT BECOMES OF IT.
If any of our readers are in the habit of passing a contractor’s or town’s yard, he will, perhaps, remember perceiving, alongside the outer walls, a busy scene going on, which he cannot exactly make out. A crowd of women toiling and moiling amid heaps of rubbish, two or three barges laden with vegetable refuse, he can distinguish plainly enough; but it is not until he sees a string of dustcarts slowly wending their way towards the distant wharf, that the thought flashes upon his mind that the busy human ants he has been watching are scavengers, sorting and arranging the refuse of the great towns and cities. There is nothing particularly attractive in a scavenger’s yard: neither the sights nor the smells are pleasant; nevertheless, the scene that here meets his eye, repellent as it is, could not exist in any other than a high state of civilisation. When we think of it, the dustbin is the tomb of the householder; it is the grave into which all our domestic surroundings inevitably sink. Of old, in the ruder states of society, this dust and refuse found its final rest in mother earth; but with us, its removal by the scavenger is only the first stage of its elevation to a higher existence, if we may so speak. In detail, as it exists in every household, it is a nuisance to be got rid of; in the aggregate, it becomes a valuable commodity, to be re-imported into our arts and manufactures.
As the great lumbering carts arrive in a dust-contractor’s yard, their contents are emptied into isolated heaps. No sooner does this take place, than they are each in detail attacked by grimy men, who remove all the larger articles, such as vegetable matter, old coal-scuttles, old crinolines—or rather crinolettes—old hats, and old garments. This is a kind of rough sifting which prepares the heap for the attacks of the women, who instantly settle upon every heap like a flock of crows that may happen to spy any carrion in a field. Each woman as she settles upon the heap comes sieve in hand, and spreads around her a number of baskets; the man now fills the sieve, and the process of separating the dustheap into its elements begins. The first few shakes of the sieve throw down all the fine ashes and the coal-dust. This detritus becomes a very valuable commodity when collected and put to its right use. It is used by brickmakers to mix with the clay, and does its part in the ultimate baking of the brick. In the neighbourhood of most of our railways, our readers may have noticed vast heaps of fine black dust burning with a slow combustion and with much smoke. These heaps consist of bricks which are being baked. They are placed in rows a little apart, and their interstices are filled with the fine ‘breeze,’ as the coal-ashes are termed; a light is set below, and gradually the whole mass fires to a dull red heat, the ‘breeze’ intimately mixed with the clay helping to bake the inside of the brick in the most perfect manner without vitrifying it. The ‘breeze’ is the most valuable portion of the dust, and it rises or falls in value according to the amount of building going on and to the rate of its production; in the summer, but little, comparatively, is made. Coal-dust, it must be remembered, is entirely a distinct refuse from road-dust, which also possesses a certain value, as we shall show by-and-by. When all the finer refuse has passed through the sieve, the larger and coarser articles remain upon the top. There glisten some pieces of broken glass; this, of course, only requires to be remelted to be put once more into circulation in the world. Considering the brittle nature of this material and the enormous quantities of it employed, it is fortunate that it is almost indestructible. When we break a window, we only alter the arrangement of its particles. Broken into a thousand pieces, it remains as good glass as ever; time will not touch it. The remnants of glass that are found among the Roman remains that have been lying in the ground for two thousand years, are as fit for the glass-pot as though it had been made yesterday; phials and old bottles are rarely even chipped, hence they are merely washed, and they pass again into the drawers of the chemist or apothecary.
Bones form another constant contribution to the sieve, and a valuable item they are to the dust contractor. There is a grand tussle going on for their possession both by the manufacturer and agriculturist. The larger bones are first boiled, in order to extract all their fat and gelatine. The purposes the former article is put to are too numerous to be mentioned; a good deal of the finer kind goes to make pomatum and soap; the gelatine is, we do not doubt, used as the basis of soups; and we know that it is employed in the manufacture of jujube lozenges. The smaller bones, which cannot be used in the constructive arts, are equally valuable in agriculture. When ground down to a fine powder and mixed with sulphuric acid, they become that great fertiliser, superphosphate of lime, restoring to the soil all the productive qualities that have been taken out of it by over-cropping. Wheat-growing is very exhaustive to the soil; indeed, we could not go on growing wheat for many years without reducing it to sterility, were it not for the use of this superphosphate. Phosphorus, again, is another extractive from bones.
Old iron finds its way into a very spacious sieve. Like the glass, its substance is difficult to destroy; indeed, some old iron is rendered much more valuable by being knocked about. Thus, old iron in the form of horseshoes, and horseshoe nails, fetches a much higher price than the original metal from which they were made; the toughness it acquires by constant blows and concussions gives it a greatly enhanced value in the market. Old tinned articles, such as slop-pails and saucepans, are first heated, to recover their tin and the solder with which they are made, both of which articles are more valuable than the old iron. Paper is carefully collected, and goes once again to the paper-mills. Like glass, the original fibre is very indestructible; for all we know, the note-paper on which we indite the tenderest love-letters to our beloved was made from an old account-book of a tallow-chandler, or from the musty records of the past centuries. In turning over the ragman’s basket, what a singular history we have! The ball-dress of a lady drops into a rag-basket and reappears as a billet-doux; disappears again to reappear once more in the drawing-room or the nursery as a workbox of papier-mâché, or a doll, or even into the wheels of railway trucks, and other uses to which paper is now put.
Whilst, however, we are watching the sifters grubbing over the heaps—as we have said, like so many crows—they all rise together, as we sometimes see these birds do, without any apparent cause, and make off to the nearest public-house. But there is a cause, we may be sure, for this sudden flight. If you ask the overlooker, he speedily enlightens you. ‘Oh, they’ve been and found some money in the dustheap, and when they do, it is a rule among them to share it together in drink.’ By-and-by, their little jollification over, they return. If there is anything that can be used as food in the dust, the ‘hill-women’ are entitled to it as a perquisite. In this manner they obtain many pieces of bread which the reader might not like to eat, but which they either do not object to, or put to other uses.
All the pieces of wood are also considered to be theirs; and when they leave work, they may be seen laden with fuel of this kind, which saves them more expensive firing. The broken china and crockery goes to make the foundations of roads and paths; and all the ‘soft core’—namely, refuse vegetable matter—is returned directly to the fields in the shape of manure. Old clothes are not the least valuable items of the dustyard. Anything in the shape of cotton, even to the covering of the crinoline steels and stay-bones, is put aside for the paper-mill. Cloth finds its way to the shoddy-mills of Lancashire, where it is purified and ground down and remade into coarse cloth. The old woollen garments that are turned thus into shoddy are equal to a contribution of twenty-five thousand tons of wool. Yet these old clothes, not many years ago, were considered of no more value than to be thrown upon the manure-heap, there slowly to suffer disintegration until fit to be placed upon the land. Indeed, there is a class of rags which is now taken directly to the soil. Old house and dish cloths soaked with grease and animal refuse make capital manure. In the dust-contractors’ yards we may see them spread upon the ground to dry, preparatory to their being forwarded to the hop-grounds, where they are much used for the cultivation of that plant. Old boots and shoes, if not too much dilapidated, find their way to the back slums of the town, where a class of tradesmen live who patch them up, and, by the aid of heel-ball, make them once more presentable.
We had almost forgotten to say that no inconsiderable amount of coal is rescued from the dustheap. This, of course, does not go to the brickyard; it is purchased by the poor. In well-to-do neighbourhoods, and especially in the fashionable quarter of the town, the ashes are rarely sifted; hence, pieces of coal half-burnt, or small lumps, are thrown away every morning. This extravagance makes the ‘dust’ of the better portions of the town far more valuable than that collected from the poverty-stricken districts. Indeed, the dust in the aristocratic portion of the town is richer in every valuable refuse—there are more bones, more ‘breeze,’ more refuse clothing, than ever find a chance of getting into the boxes and middens of the poor quarter.
We have said that the dust from the roads is kept distinct from the dust of the ashpit. Road-dust is always very rich in manure, which makes it valuable as a top-dressing for meadows. It is also largely used to mix with soft clay for the making of inferior bricks, and we have ascertained that it is also used for a more unsightly adulteration. The composition with which many of the cheaply run-up houses are smoothed over and made to appear ornamental, is very freely mixed with road-dust. The evil of this we speedily see in the green stains with which all such structures are disfigured, such green stains being nothing more than a vegetation that occurs in all damp spots, and finds its support in this surreptitious dust.
Thus the grimy scavenger and ‘hill-women’ perform a valuable part in the world. By their aid we return to the exhausted fields the riches the towns have drawn from them; and they arrest from speedy destruction a score of valuable products, and set them once more in circulation in the busy world.