In an evil moment, and at the mature age of fifty-two, Mr. Augustus Lincoln fell in love, and as often happens with the intellectually great, he fell in love with the very last person in the world whom he ought to have sought. Milly Brassey was a pert, pink-cheeked, saucy-eyed beauty, who played chamber-maid parts in his company. The Amateurs thought very much of Milly, and as she was not proud in the matter of receiving presents, it may be taken for granted that the sealskin jacket and diamond rings came from the gifted creatures whose works she had helped to illustrate. Off the stage she was a giddy, giggling little woman, always ready for a flirtation, and was madly loved by the jeune premier, and the low comedian of the company. Indeed, it is a matter of notoriety that a hostile meeting would have taken place between these jealous lovers had it not transpired that Milly was about to be led to the altar by the manager himself. So instead of meeting in Greenwich Park over the murderous muzzles of revolvers, they met in the “Goat and Compasses” over two glasses of cold gin.
Lincoln’s wedding was a very quiet affair. After all, no such very great change was to take place in the life of the bride. She was already a member of Lincoln’s company. She had now become a member of his household as well. Milly was a clever little actress, and if she did not really love her husband, she made that devoted man think that she did. His faith in her was unlimited, and although others thought that she flirted alternately with Philip Beresford, the jeune premier, and with Alf. Wild, the low comedian, Lincoln with a firm belief in his wife’s honesty and a still firmer belief in his own charms, saw nothing whatever. He was perfectly contented, and the amateurs, increasing in perseverance and impatience, brought him month after month new dramas for illustration, and new hats in token of esteem.
All might have gone well had it not been for the hats. Everybody in Lincoln’s company wanted a hat. Neither a jeune premier, nor a low comedian, can afford an unstinted indulgence in hats on two pounds a week, even when that modest stipend is regularly paid. Actors usually carry large ulster-cloaks that cover a multitude of sins. But a bad hat or a bad boot is always en évidence. To say that Milly was gifted with curiosity is simply to say that Milly was a woman. That she soon began to question her husband as to the contents of the locked cupboard, therefore goes without saying. But although Lincoln would have trusted her with almost any other secret, he was reticent concerning this. He had a sort of prescience that the volatile Milly might turn his collection into ridicule, and merely observing in answer to his wife’s queries that it was “Bluebeard’s Cupboard,” refused to be further cross-examined on the subject. Milly promised not to annoy him any more in the matter, and religiously kept her promise; only when he was out she tried every key in the house on the lock that kept her from a delightful mystery, and at last she found one that fitted, and opening “Bluebeard’s Cupboard” found it full,—not of heads without hats, but of hats without heads. So full was the cupboard of these samples of the hatter’s art, that she selected two, feeling confident, that from so large a bag, a brace would never be missed. These she secreted, and when her husband returned (he had gone to meet an Amateur, who was big with a tragedy called “The Paralytic”), she met him with a kiss, and they were quite happy till it was time to go to the theatre.
A week afterwards another Amateur wanted to see Mr. Lincoln. On this occasion the appointment was made at a Club in Adelphi Terrace. The interview was a short one, and Mr. Lincoln was able to bend his steps eastward some two hours before the time he had mentioned to Milly. He had to make a call in Greenwich, and in the Main Street of that highly-depressing village, he happened to look over the blind in a pastrycook’s window. He stopped suddenly, and shouted in a tone of the utmost consternation, “My ‘Murdered Monk’s’ hat!” And then after a pause, “My ‘Prodigal Son’s’ hat.” He looked again, and saw that the hats covered the empty heads of Philip Beresford and Alf. Wild, between whom sat his wife devouring open tarts, and laughing consumedly at her own jokes. He entered stealthily, and soon heard enough to show that he, her husband, was the subject of her witticisms. He strode up to them, and smashed the hats over the heads of the wearers, calling them varlets and minions. The Amateur of Adelphi Terrace had been good. So he was enabled to put his hand in his waistcoat pocket, and withdraw six sovereigns. Handing two to each, he said solemnly, “In lieu of a week’s notice. Begone!” and then on his wife making a gesture of remonstrance, he said, in louder tones, “D’ye hear. All of ye. Begone!” They went. And he has never seen any of them since.
XVII.
TRUE TO POLL.
It was a splendid morning in the leafy month of June—though down by the East India Docks “leafy” is scarcely the adjective which one would naturally select to qualify any month of the whole twelve. It was the morning on which Jack Tarpey, mariner, led Polly Andrews, spinster, to the altar. There is no altar in a Registrar’s Office, consequently the expression which I have used must be regarded as somewhat figurative. But an altar is by no means essential to the civil ceremony, and Jack and Poll were as much married as if they had been united by the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, assisted by all the “Honourable and Reverends” in the service of the Church of England, as by law established. There, in a small parlour near the Commercial Road, Jack and Poll were made man and wife, or, to put it in the forcible language of the former, “had tied a knot with their lips as they couldn’t undo with their teeth.” The bride was accompanied by a lady friend—for, alas! she was an orphan—while the bridegroom was accompanied by his “shipmet,” young Joey Copper, who was selected to discharge the onerous duties devolving upon him, for a reason which may also be given in Jack’s own words: “Why,” he said, “do I ’ave Joey for my best man? Stan’ by, mate, an’ I’ll tell ye. I ’ave’s Joey for my best man because he is the best man in all this ’ere blessed world. That’s why I ’ave’s Joey, d’ye see?” It may be taken for granted that they saw; because no one, having once asked the question, thought of putting it a second time.
Breakfast was provided at the residence of the landlord of the bridegroom, a house of public entertainment, at the corner of one of the somewhat melancholy streets abutting on the East India Docks. The sign of the house was the “Tartar Frigate,” and mine host had obligingly set apart his back parlour for the entertainment of Jack and his party, now increased by an addition of two other “shipmets.” The landlord of the “Tartar Frigate” was not, perhaps, a Gunter, but he understood the tastes of his patrons, and gave them what he called “a greasy and substawnshul set out.” There was a fine round of boiled beef, with carrots, boiled potatoes, and suet dumplings of great weight and sappiness. Following this there was a liberal dish of plum-duff; and to wind up with, there was half a Dutch cheese and pats of butter, about the composition of which, the less said here or elsewhere the better. The more solid part of the repast having been removed, all hands were piped to hot grog; a fiddler was introduced into the apartment, and all was jollity and dancing, until some difference of opinion arose between Jack’s male guests, as to which of the three should claim Poll’s lady friend as a partner. Jack, like the gallant and honest fellow that he was, stopped all disputes by announcing that there was to be no quarrel on his wedding-day, and that the proceedings, so far as he was concerned, were at an end. Then the punctilious tar paid the reckoning, and conveyed his wife to the apartments which she had engaged for them in Belt Alley, E.
A life on the Ocean Wave is regarded by some as the most jolly and enjoyable of all possible lives. But it must be admitted that the Ocean Wave is a relentless master, and has no more regard for the tender feelings of the mariner, and those who are dear to him, than the whale that swallowed Jonah. Jack and Poll had not been married three weeks, before his ship—The Promise of the May—was ready for sea, and Jack was ordered to join. Now I would call to my aid that which is not permitted to the Unvarnished writer—the lyre of the poet. For how shall I attune my harsh prose to the music of their sighs, the liquid measure of their tears?
It came, that final, that inevitable scene.
They stood on the quay, his arms round her waist, her head on his manly shoulder.