London River

by H. M. Tomlinson

"People say things only change, but I like to think they change for the better, don't you? But Williams, he will have it they change for the worse. I don't know, I'm sure. He thinks nothing really good except the old days." She laughed quietly, bending to tickle the cat's ear—"nothing good at all except the old days. Even the wrecks were more like wrecks." She looked at me, smiling.

"As you know," she said, "there's many men who follow the sea with homes in this street, but Williams is so proud and strong-willed. He says he doesn't want to hear about them. What do they know about the sea? You know his way. What do they know about the sea? That's the way he talks, doesn't he? But surely the sea is the same for us all. He won't have it, though. Williams is so vain and determined."

The captain knocked. There was no doubt about that knock. The door surrendered to him. His is a peremptory summons. The old master mariner brought his bulk with dignity into the room, and his wife, reaching up to that superior height, too slight for the task, ministered to the overcoat of the big figure which was making, all unconsciously, disdainful noises in its throat. It would have been worse than useless for me to interfere. The pair would have repelled me. This was a domestic rite. Once in his struggle with his coat the dominant figure glanced down at the earnestness of his little mate, paused for a moment, and the stern face relaxed.

With his attention concentrated and severe even in so small an effort as taking from his broad back a reluctant coat, and the unvarying fixed intentness of the dark eyes over which the lids, loose with age, had partly folded, giving him the piercing look of a bird of prey; and the swarthiness of his face, massive, hairless, and acutely ridged, with its crown of tousled white hair, his was a figure which made it easy to believe the tales one had heard of him when he was the master of the Oberon, and drove his ship home with the new season's tea, leaving, it is said, a trail of light spars all the way from Tientsin to the Channel.

The coat was off. His wife had it over her arm, and was regarding with concern the big petulant face above her. She said to him: "Number Ten is let at last. They're a young couple who have got it. He's a sailor."

The old man sat down at a corner of the table, stooped, and in one handful abruptly hauled the cat off the rug, laying its unresisting body across his knees, and rubbing its ribs with a hand that half covered it. He did not appear to have heard what he had been told. He did not look at her, but talked gravely to the fire. "I met Dennison today," he said, as if speaking aloud to himself, in surprise at meeting Dennison. "Years since I saw him," he continued, turning to me. "Where was it now, where was it? Must have been Canton River, the year he lost his ship. Extraordinary to find Dennison still afloat. Not many of those men about now. You can go the length of the Dock Road today and see nothing and meet nobody."

He looked again into the flames, fixedly, as though what he really wanted was only to be found in them. His wife was at his elbow. She, too, was watching them, still with his coat over her arm. She spoke aloud, though more to herself than to us. "She seemed such a nice little woman, too. I couldn't see the badge on his cap."

"Eh?" said the old man, throwing the cat back to the floor and rounding to his wife. "What's that? Let's have tea, Mrs. Williams. We're both dreaming, and there's a visitor. What are you dreaming about? You've nothing to dream about."

There was never any doubt, though, that the past was full and alive to him. There was only the past. And what a memory was his! He would look at the portrait of his old clipper, the Oberon—it was central over the mantel-shelf—and recall her voyages, and the days in each voyage, and just how the weather was, what canvas she carried, and how things happened. Malabar Street vanished. We would go, when he was in that mood, and live for the evening in another year, with men who have gone, among strange affairs forgotten.

Mrs. Williams would be in her dream, too, with her work-basket in her lap, absently picking the table-cloth with her needle. But for us, all we knew was that the Cinderella had a day's start of us, and the weather in the Southern Ocean, when we got there, was like the death of the world. I was aware that we were under foresail, lower topsails, and stay-sails only, and they were too much. They were driving us under, and the Oberon was tender. Yes, she was very tricky. But where was the Cinderella? Anyhow, she had a day's start of us. Captain Williams would rise then, and stand before his ship's picture, pointing into her rigging.