CHAPTER III. THE EAST INDIA DOCK ROAD
At about two o'clock on the following day a cab of the old type, with rattling windows, straw as though fresh from the tramp of swine, a wheezing cabman, encumbered with capes, shawls, and rugs, with nothing but a drunken nose glowing under the sallow brim of a rain-bronzed hat—this old cab, with a corded trunk hopping on top of it betwixt the iron fencing, drew up at a house in the East India Dock Road.
Mr. Hardy, the gentleman whom we left asleep on the sofa in Bax's farm, got out, leaving Miss Julia Armstrong sitting in a cab, and knocked on the door, which was opened in a few moments by a little woman in the clothes of a widow, clean and neat in person, with a wistful eye which softened her face into a look of kindness.
"Glad to see you, Mr. Hardy," she immediately said. "I got your letter, sir. Your room's quite ready."
"Well, I can't say I'm glad to see you, Mrs. Brierley, because you know what seeing you means to me. Did your husband love the stowing job, and the hauling out through the gates, with a crowd of drunken Dagos on the fok'sle, and the dockmaster bursting blood-vessels in expostulations to the mud pilot?"
She seemed to smile, but her attention was elsewhere. She had caught sight of Julia in the cab, and was dodging Mr. Hardy, who stood right in the way, to get a better sight of her.
"I want a lodging for that young lady you are trying to see," said Hardy. "Now say at once that you have a very comfortable bedroom for her in this house."
"You don't tell me that you are married, sir?" exclaimed Mrs. Brierley, putting this question just as she might put her eye to a keyhole before answering.
"No, nor keeping company with her, as you people call it," he replied. "It is a romantic story, and you shall hear the whole of it, provided that you can accommodate her with a bedroom, otherwise—mum!"
"Mr. Hardy," said the widow, with some earnestness, "you've long used this house. You knew my poor husband. My struggle has been to keep it a thoroughly respectable home for them who patronise me, and you'll not take it amiss, sir, I'm sure, if I ask you, is she a lady you can recommend on your honour as a sailor man?"
"I swear, Mrs. Brierley," exclaimed Hardy, with great feeling, "that she is a pure, charming, heart-broken lady, the daughter of a naval officer, whose sword was once at the service of his country."
"Then, sir, I have a very comfortable bedroom," answered the widow. "How long will she be wanting it for?"
"She shall engage it by the week," he answered, and walked to the door of the cab. "Tumble down, my lad, off that perch of yours," he shouted to the cabman, who seemed to have fallen asleep, "and carry that trunk into the house."
Both pavements were filled with people, walking the everlasting walk of the London streets. Numbers had the appearance of seamen, some of them lurched in liquor; there were numerous black and chocolate faces, here and there a turban; grimy women flitted past in old shawls and rakishly-perched bonnets; roistering young wenches flaunted past with feathers in their hats, with cheeks deeply coloured, with yellow brows adorned with jet-like love-locks; and chill as it was, children went by with naked feet, and the shuddering flesh of their backs showed through their rags, filthy-eyed, hatless, and all the glory they had trailed from their God had died out in the atmosphere of fog, which added bulk to the thunderous omnibus, and made the fleet hansom a shadow down the road.
"The landlady," said Hardy, putting his head into the cab, "has a comfortable bedroom at your disposal. We cannot do better. She is a thoroughly respectable woman, the widow of a master-mariner, who commanded brigs, and so on."
He opened the door, and Julia jumped out, and they went together into the narrow passage with the cabman and the trunk following them.
The landlady, curtseying her greeting to Julia, admitted them into her own private room, which was, in short, the front parlour. The cabman was paid, and went away looking at the shillings in the palm of his hand. In a very short time it was settled that Julia was to have the use of this parlour for her meals, and there would be no extra charge. The only other lodgers in the house were a sea captain and his wife.
The parlour was worth a pause and a look round. No apartment was ever more nautically equipped. The very clock was a dial fitted into the mainsail of a brass ship; the candlesticks on the mantelpiece represented mermaids; the walls were embellished with pictures of ships and those carvings which sailors delight in: ships on a wind, half their ghastly white canvas showing against the board, and the water very sloppy and fearfully blue; there were models of ships, and an old galleon in ivory stood under glass on a table in the window. A boy's heart would have beat high in this room. It was full of curiosities; artful carvings by whalemen, out of the bone or teeth of the mammoth of the sea; queer findings along shore under the Southern Cross, weapons of cannibals, heathenish jars, earthen vessels which had been the sepulchres of the remains of broiled whites.
After a little talk Mrs. Brierley took Julia up-stairs to her bedroom. Hardy, who had often before viewed the curiosities, wandered again round the room, but his mind was musing over other things, and soon he came to a stand at the window. The lookout was gloomy and grimy; opposite were a tobacconist, a house in which a stevedore lived, two lodging-houses, a pastry-cook, and a public-house. There was a great deal of mud in the road, the sky hung down sallow and dingy, and so close that the crooked black smoke, working out of a hundred shapes of chimney-pots, seemed to pierce it and vanish. A change indeed from the autumn glories of the country which the couple were newly from, where the hillsides, still thick with the leaves of the summer, were gashed with the red fires of the coming ruining winter; where the clear pale blue sky sank with its faint splendour of sunshine to the sharp, dark, terrace-like heights, which in their red breaks and scars of autumn overlooked the valley and the sheltered houses, and the quiet breast of river floating under the arch of the reflected bridge.
A man, thought Hardy, accepts a large obligation when he undertakes to look after a girl. But what a beautiful figure she has, and her face appeals to me. I cannot meet her eyes without feeling that I am in love with her. Shall I be able to get her a berth before I sail? If I cannot, ought I to leave her alone in London with about seven pounds ten in her pocket?
His brow contracted, and he hissed a tune through his teeth whilst he pondered. That thoughtless devil, her father, he mused, never came near Bax's farm. What is it to him that his daughter has bolted from her brutal home, and gone away with a young fellow who, for all the beggar cares, may leave her behind him in London in shame and destitution? 'Tis rather a tight corner, though. And he would have gone on meditating but for being interrupted by the entrance of Julia, followed in a respectful way by the widow.
"It is a very nice bedroom," said Julia. "I shall be very comfortable whilst I am here."
"I suppose you have told Mrs. Brierley all about it," exclaimed Hardy, whilst Julia seated herself, posturing her head with her unconscious, inimitable grace, as she glanced round the sights of the room, and resting her hands on her hips and crossing her feet, to the undoubted admiration of the widow, who had on her entrance admired her beautiful figure.
"Yes, sir, yes," said the widow; "and I'm truly sorry for the young lady, but don't doubt she'll find a berth, and do well where she's going."
"Miss Armstrong," said Hardy, "I'm not due at the docks until to-morrow, and then I shall put in for an afternoon off. This afternoon we shall spend without troubling ourselves about anything. We are human, and must eat, just as every night we must put ourselves away in a frame of iron or wooden pillars, covered with blankets and sheets, and sleep, or else we go mad and die. There is a decent eating-house not far from here; we will go there and dine. You'll have tea ready for us, Mrs. Brierley, by six; and if the evening hangs, which it will, we will look in at a music-hall and purchase a shilling's-worth of pure vulgarity, which to me, when perfectly unaffected, is more humourous and more artistically refined than much of the genteel comedy of the West End theatres."
Julia laughed, and looked at the widow, who said, "I don't visit the halls myself. They've got one good singer at Whitechapel, I hear. He comes in dressed as a coster, and brings a donkey with him which he sings about, and they say it's so affecting that even strong sailors cry."
"If he sang of the donkey's breakfast Jack would cry more," said Hardy, and saying he would return in a minute, went to his bedroom for a wash down and a brush up, leaving the widow explaining to Julia that the term donkey's breakfast signified the bundle of straw which sailors who are reckless of their money ashore carry on board ship with them as a bed.
Whilst he was going up-stairs a man dressed in blue serge, smoking a curly meerschaum pipe, came out of a bedroom and passed into an apartment that had been converted into a sitting-room. They glanced at each other, and Hardy went up another flight to his bedroom. Here he stayed a few minutes. His carpet-bag had arrived before him, and in it were a change of apparel, two or three shirts, brush and comb, and the like. The rest of his duds were in his sea-chest, which had been sent to the docks. He smartened himself up and looked a manly young fellow. The light of the sea was in his eye, and the freshness of its breath was in his cheery expression, and the colour of his cheek was warm with the sun-glow.
"Are you ready?" said he to Julia; and they went out, attended to the door by the widow, who appeared to have taken a liking to Miss Armstrong; but no one with a woman's heart in her could have heard the girl's story without being moved.
Hardy paused on the doorstep to say to Mrs. Brierley, "Is the man in blue serge, who smokes a meerschaum, the captain who's lodging with you?"
"Yes, sir."
"What ship does he command?"
"The Glamis Castle."
"I know her," exclaimed Hardy; "a fine Indiaman. What the deuce does a swell like him do in these lodgings? He should put up at a hotel."
"His home's at Penge," answered the widow, "and two or three weeks before he sails he always comes and stops with me, and brings his wife. Aren't my lodgings good enough for the captain of an Indiaman?"
"They are good enough for the owner of an Indiaman. They are good enough for a German prince," said Hardy, in his pleasantest manner. "Should I bring this lady here if they were not of the highest?" And nodding to her he stepped on to the pavement, and Julia walked by his side.
He was free in his comments upon the nastiness of the East End of London, and by his abuse of the mud and the shops, and the quality of the passing folks, he implied an apology for introducing Miss Armstrong into such a neighbourhood.
"It's sweeter to me than Bodley," she said, referring to the place she came from. "What is the good of fine houses and broad streets and handsome carriages to a girl who has no money, who has but one friend, from whom she must be shortly separated for ever, perhaps, and whose most ambitious dream dare not go beyond finding a cabin as emigrant or stewardess aboard a ship, and the berth of a servant, or, which is worse, a nursery governess when she arrives?"
They walked for awhile in silence; but the silence was in their mouths, not in the street. One of the music-murdering organs of those days was playing at the street corner they were approaching. Huge wagons were grinding thunder into the solid earth. There was a fight over the way—two Italians were going for each other. A crowd of dirty women were dancing round them, encouraging them by the stimulating plaudits of the stews. An optician, with a row of chronometers in his window, stood upon his doorstep howling, "Police!" They turned the corner, and the notes of the organ died away behind them, and after a little walking they arrived at an eating-house with big windows, and a sheet of paper stuck upon the glass with red wafers, telling what was to be eaten inside.
Hardy and Julia walked in. It was a long room with tables, separated one from another by brass rails and baize curtains, and nettings for receiving headgear. About a dozen people were in it—some of them neighbouring tradesmen, some of them obviously captains and mates. With a few of the men were women, who were evidently wives or sweethearts; in fact, the prices charged kept the place sweet.
Hardy and Miss Armstrong sat down side by side at an empty table. A waiter arrived, looking hard at the lady, and the sailor gave his orders. He guessed the girl was hungry; he knew that he was, and if he could not have spent a sovereign when ten shillings would have handsomely sufficed, he would have been no true salt. It is worth saying here that all the money our friend had was about two hundred pounds, and he had come to London with twenty sovereigns in his pocket, and a chequebook. As he was an only child he would inherit his father's leavings; but what would they amount to? A country practitioner who dispensed his own physic, and was glad to get three-and-sixpence a visit! A country practitioner with thirteen hundred pounds in bad debts on his books, and a horse, gig, and boy to keep! Still, whatever the doctor left would be George Hardy's, who did not value the prospect beyond the worth of the furniture, and had begun to save a little on his own account, with some light dream of amassing enough to enable him to purchase shares in a ship, which he would command.
He ordered a good dinner from the bill of fare, and asked the waiter if the champagne of the establishment was real wine or chemicals. The waiter named a good brand, and swore there was nothing in the market to equal it. It was nine shillings a bottle.
"I never drink champagne," said Julia.
"But I do," exclaimed Hardy. "Bear a hand, waiter. We've been fasting since eight this morning."
The waiter sidled away.
"Champagne is the best of all drinks for young ladies," said Hardy; "and it helps the spirits of chief mates who are bound away on long voyages. What shall we do when we've dined?"
"I should like to see the docks," said the girl.
"Not to-day," exclaimed Hardy, pursing his mouth into an expression of disgust. "Let us hug the land as long as we can; besides, it will be drawing on to four o'clock before we've dined, and the docks and the ships in it will be invisible."
As he spoke these words the man whom he had caught a sight of in his lodgings smoking a meerschaum pipe came into the dining-rooms with a lady, whom you at once guessed was his wife. They looked right and left, and took a table exactly opposite that occupied by Hardy and Miss Armstrong. The man who had been represented by Mrs. Brierley as the commander of an East Indiaman, named the Glamis Castle, was short and square, with a strong, red beard, and shorn upper lip; his eyebrows were reddish and habitually knitted, as though from long years of steadfast staring into the eyes of the wind. His eyes were dark and sharp in their glances; his brow was square as his form, and delicately browned by the sun. The lady was a homely-looking woman, in a bonnet and velvet mantle. She began to pull off her gloves, and her companion, after bawling "Waiter," in a quarter-deck roar, gazed fixedly at Hardy, who gazed back.
All the time the man was giving his orders to the waiter, with occasional references to the lady, he kept his eyes bent on Hardy, who muttered to Julia, "I believe I know that man." The moment he had done with the waiter he rose, and stepped over to Hardy.
"Is your name George Hardy?" said he, with a slight glance at the girl.
"Yes," answered Hardy, "and now that I've got the bearings of you, I don't need to ask if your name is James Smedley."
They clasped hands.
"Let me introduce you," said Hardy, "to Miss Julia Armstrong, daughter of Commander Armstrong, late of the Royal Navy. Captain Smedley, of the Glamis Castle, Miss Armstrong."
"How did you know that?" asked Smedley, exchanging a bow with the girl, whose peculiar grace of form, whose charm of movement, whose face, romantic and pleading, with the gifts of nature and the passions of her heart, his swift eye was observing with pleasure and curiosity.
"I am stopping in the house you're lodging in," answered Hardy, "and Mrs. Brierley told me who you were. Are you going to dine here?"
"Yes."
"Is that your wife?"
"Yes."
"Bring her across, Smedley, and we'll make a dinner party."
Mrs. Smedley had been bobbing to catch a view of Miss Armstrong, and the bugles in her bonnet twinkled like fireflies as she swayed her head.
"Miss Armstrong's story," continued Hardy, "is so moving that Mrs. Smedley will be grieved to the depths of her kindly heart when she hears it."
Julia looked down, and Captain Smedley studied her for a few moments, then wheeled abruptly, and stepped over to his wife. After a brief confab they both came to Hardy's table, and Mrs. Smedley was introduced to Miss Armstrong and her companion.
"Do you sail with your husband?" asked Julia.
"No," answered Mrs. Smedley, who seemed struck by the girl. "The owners won't let the captains carry their wives with them."
"A ship," said Julia, "should never be so safe as when a captain's wife is on board, because of course her presence would make the commander doubly vigilant and anxious."
"Haw, haw!" laughed Smedley.
The fish which had been ordered was now placed upon the table, and on both sides they began to eat. The waiter uncorked the champagne, and Hardy told him to fill the glasses opposite. This was resisted by Mrs. Smedley, a homely woman, who declared that for her part she loved nothing better than bitter beer. Again her husband "Haw-haw'd," and said they would see Hardy's champagne through, and then he would order another bottle. He believed it was not usual in polite society to drink champagne with fish; but it was all one to him. Champagne went down the same way, whether its messmate was fish or flesh.
"Are you leaving England?" inquired Mrs. Smedley, addressing Julia, at whom she continued to look hard, though not in the least rudely, as if she found a good deal in the girl that was infinitely beyond the range of her speculations.
"I am endeavouring to leave it," answered Julia, looking at her with her head a little on one side.
"May I tell them your story?" said Hardy, "for we shall want our friend's influence," he added, with a nod at his old shipmate.
"Oh, yes, tell them," exclaimed Julia, a little passionately; "it will account for my being in the East India Dock Road," and her face relaxed as she looked at Mrs. Smedley, who smiled upon her in a motherly way.
Hardy in his blunt, sailorly fashion began. He did not spare Captain Armstrong, neither did he spare Julia's stepmother. He warmed up, and put the girl's case in forcible terms. Asked what a young English lady was to do who was, to all intents and purposes, expelled from her father's roof by the brutality of a drunken stepmother, he related some of her experiences in nursing and in seeking independence in other ways, just as she had related them to him. He spoke of his finding her unconscious by the wayside, and how he was determined to take this poor, friendless young lady by the hand, and help her to the utmost stretch of his ability to find a home, a refuge across the seas.
"Don't cry, my dear," said Mrs. Smedley. "I have known more cases than yours. It is very hard—and to be motherless—but you cannot allow your heart to be broken by a bad woman; and I think you are acting wisely in resolving to go abroad."
Julia put her handkerchief into her lap, and closed her knife and fork. Hardy poured some champagne into her glass, and bade her drink.
"What's the lady's idea of going abroad?" said Captain Smedley, whose face exhibited no more signs of feeling than had it been a rump steak.
"She has no money, and wants to work her passage out as a stewardess," replied Hardy.
"And when she arrives?" said Captain Smedley.
"She is bound to find something to do," answered Hardy. "The colonies are yearning for young English ladies."
"Young English domestics, you mean," said Captain Smedley. "What is the good of ladies? What is the good of gentlemen in lands where labour, and labour only, is wanted?"
"Why would not you go out as an emigrant, Miss Armstrong?" said Mrs. Smedley. "Of course," she added, "I presume you have Australia in your mind?"
"I would go out as anything as long as I could get out," answered Julia.
"Take my advice and don't talk of emigration," said Captain Smedley. "You will be miserably fed and miserably berthed. You will have a matron and a surgeon over you, and the discipline will make you wish yourself overboard. Your associates will be mean and dirty wretches, who would have qualified for transportation could they have made sure of the sentence. Your ship will be ill-found. They talk of the emigrants marrying on their arrival. Yes, but what is a young lady like you going to say to such suitors as offer? You wouldn't like to marry a convict? You wouldn't like to settle down with a hairdresser in a back street? Don't you go out in an emigrant ship, Miss Armstrong."
"It is all very fine talking about don't," said Hardy, "but what we want is do. Miss Armstrong wishes to leave England for good. She pockets her pride, and is willing to work. She has no money, and I must secure her a berth somehow before I sail, because I am not going to leave her alone in London, where she's friendless; and friendlessness in London where all is opulence and misery, like the front and the back of the moon—one shining, one ice-cold as death, and black—is heart-breaking, and for many, Smedley, the invitation of the dark waters of the Thames has been welcome."
"My God! you're just the same—always sky high," said Smedley; and he drank some champagne out of the bottle he had ordered. "When you were a midshipman under me you were talking like that, and you're talking it still."
"Surely a man can put his hand in the tar-bucket without blacking his whole body," said Hardy, looking at Mrs. Smedley, whose face was in sympathy with his speech. "When I'm ashore I talk like a gentleman. One can't be always cussing and swearing; and oh! says you"—and his fine, dark keen eyes showed there was laughter in him—"Give me Jack Muck, nothing short of Jack Muck. Hitch up, turn your quid, pull your greasy forelock, mind that you're boozed. Oh, Lord! Smedley, ha'n't you had enough of it?"
"Miss Armstrong," said Smedley, rolling his eyes slowly from Hardy to the girl, "why do you want to go to Australia? Why don't you go to India?"
"India," muttered Hardy, "what's she going to do in India?"
"No, but I tell you what," said Smedley, with emphasis, "such a young lady as that may do before she gets out there."
Julia gazed at him inquiringly, and Mrs. Smedley turned her head to watch his face.
"Don't you know, Miss Armstrong," continued Smedley, "that there is no marriage market in the world to equal an East Indiaman?"
Julia flushed a little, but did not speak.
"She takes out young people," went on the commander of the Glamis Castle, "called Griffins. They are young men with a glass in their eye and susceptible hearts behind their waistcoats. They also take out planters, merchants, gentlemen going to join houses—"
"And ladies," interrupted Hardy. "Ladies in plenty."
"You know nothing about it," said Captain Smedley. "A few ladies, most of them married. Now," he continued, "such a young lady as Miss Armstrong, no matter what position she fills on board, stands a first-rate chance of finding a husband before her arrival in India. Your emigrant ship is not going to provide any chance of the sort."
"I do not think of marriage," said Julia, who after colouring had turned rather paler than usual, but she spoke calmly and even with sweetness, as though grateful for the interest these strangers were taking in her.
"Oh," cried Captain Smedley, with warmth, "but you must think of marriage. It is a condition of every woman's life. It is thought of from about the age of twelve until it happens, and nothing else is thought of. All the milliners and dressmakers contribute to the dream. It is the one idea in the darlings' heads, and of course it is a wrong one."
"What will Miss Armstrong think of such stuff and nonsense?" said Mrs. Smedley.
"What's a girl to do when she gets to India if she isn't married?" asked Hardy.
"They want governesses and nursemaids, I dare say," replied the captain. "Let her call upon the missionary. I took out the Bishop of Calcutta last voyage. He's a dear old chap, and many a yarn we spun together. I'll venture to say that a letter of introduction to him from me will ensure this young lady a berth."
Hardy, putting his elbow on the table, rested his cheek in the palm of his hand, and looked at Miss Armstrong musingly. Nobody spoke until Hardy started, and turning to Smedley, said, "Can you give her a berth on board your ship?"
"I am thinking of it," was the answer.
Julia looked almost startled, and exclaimed to Hardy, "We should be going different ways."
Smedley and his wife exchanged glances.
"I must see you safe on board bound to somewhere," answered Hardy, softly. "I am bound to Melbourne; afterward to a New Zealand port. Your ship will be bound to Calcutta. These places are different ways, and India is the same thing."
She looked down upon the table in silence. The other three saw how it was with her, poor girl, and how impossible it was, and Hardy then felt this with a sort of yearning of the heart that was as bad as sorrow.