In the small front parlour of No. 3, Mermaid Passage, Sunset Bay,
Jackson Pepper, ex-pilot, sat in a state of indignant collapse,
tenderly feeling a cheek on which the print of hasty fingers still
lingered.
The room, which was in excellent order, showed no signs of the tornado
which had passed through it, and Jackson Pepper, looking vaguely round,
was dimly reminded of those tropical hurricanes he had read about which
would strike only the objects in the path, and leave all others
undisturbed.
In this instance he had been the object, and the tornado, after
obliterating him, had passed up the small staircase which led from the
room, leaving him listening anxiously to its distant mutterings.
To his great discomfort the storm showed signs of coming up again, and
he had barely time to effect an appearance of easy unconcern, which
accorded but ill with the flush afore-mentioned, when a big, red-faced
woman came heavily downstairs and burst into the room.
“You have made me ill again,” she said severely, “and now I hope you
are satisfied with your work. You’ll kill me before you have done with
me!”
The ex-pilot shifted on his chair.
“You’re not fit to have a wife,” continued Mrs. Pepper, “aggravating
them and upsetting them! Any other woman would have left you long ago!”
“We’ve only been married three months,” Pepper reminded her.
“Don’t talk to me!” said his wife; “it seems more like a lifetime!”
“It seems a long time to _me_,” said the ex-pilot, plucking up a little
courage.
“That’s right!” said his wife, striding over to where he sat. “Say
you’re tired of me; say you wish you hadn’t married me! You coward! Ah!
if my poor first husband was only alive and sitting in that chair now
instead of you, how happy I would be!”
“If he likes to come and take it he’s welcome!” said Pepper; “it’s my
chair, and it was my father’s before me, but there’s no man living I
would sooner give it to than your first. Ah! he knew what he was about
when the _Dolphin_ went down, he did. I don’t blame him, though.”
“What do you mean?” demanded his wife.
“It’s my belief that he didn’t go down with her,” said Pepper, crossing
over to the staircase and standing with his hand on the door.
“Didn’t go down with her?” repeated his wife scornfully. “What became
of him, then? Where’s he been this thirty years?”
“In hiding!” said Pepper spitefully, and passed hastily upstairs.
The room above was charged with memories of the late lamented. His
portrait in oils hung above the mantel-piece, smaller
portraits—specimens of the photographer’s want of art—were scattered
about the room, while various personal effects, including a mammoth
pair of sea-boots, stood in a corner. On all these articles the eye of
Jackson Pepper dwelt with an air of chastened regret.
“It ’ud be a rum go if he did turn up after all,” he said to himself
softly, as he sat on the edge of the bed. “I’ve heard of such things in
books. I dessay she’d be disappointed if she did see him now. Thirty
years makes a bit of difference in a man.”
“Jackson!” cried his wife from below, “I’m going out. If you want any
dinner you can get it; if not, you can go without it!”
The front door slammed violently, and Jackson, advancing cautiously to
the window, saw the form of his wife sailing majestically up the
passage. Then he sat down again and resumed his meditations.
“If it wasn’t for leaving all my property I’d go,” he said gloomily.
“There’s not a bit of comfort in the place! Nag, nag, nag, from morn
till night! Ah, Cap’n Budd, you let me in for a nice thing when you
went down with that boat of yours. Come back and fill them boots again;
they’re too big for me.”
He rose suddenly and stood gaping in the centre of the room, as a mad,
hazy idea began to form in his brain. His eyes blinked and his face
grew white with excitement. He pushed open the little lattice window,
and sat looking abstractedly up the passage on to the bay beyond. Then
he put on his hat, and, deep in thought, went out.
He was still thinking deeply as he boarded the train for London next
morning, and watched Sunset Bay from the window until it disappeared
round the curve. So many and various were the changes that flitted over
his face that an old lady, whose seat he had taken, gave up her
intention of apprising him of the fact, and indulged instead in a
bitter conversation with her daughter, of which the erring Pepper was
the unconscious object.
In the same preoccupied fashion he got on a Bayswater omnibus, and
waited patiently for it to reach Poplar. Strange changes in the
landscape, not to be accounted for by the mere lapse of time, led to
explanations, and the conductor—a humane man, who said he had got an
idiot boy at home—personally laid down the lines of his tour. Two hours
later he stood in front of a small house painted in many colours, and,
ringing the bell, inquired for Cap’n Crippen.
In response to his inquiry, a big man, with light blue eyes and a long
grey beard, appeared, and, recognising his visitor with a grunt of
surprise, drew him heartily into the passage and thrust him into the
parlour. He then shook hands with him, and, clapping him on the back,
bawled lustily for the small boy who had opened the door.
“Pot o’ stout, bottle o’ gin, and two long pipes,” said he, as the boy
came to the door and eyed the ex-pilot curiously.
At all these honest preparations for his welcome the heart of Jackson
grew faint within him.
“Well, I call it good of you to come all this way to see me,” said the
captain, after the boy had disappeared; “but you always was
warm-hearted, Pepper. And how’s the missis?”
“Shocking!” said Pepper, with a groan.
“Ill?” inquired the captain.
“Ill-tempered,” said Pepper. “In fact, cap’n, I don’t mind telling you,
she’s killing me—slowly killing me!”
“Pooh!” said Crippen. “Nonsense! You don’t know how to manage her!”
“I thought perhaps you could advise me,” said the artful Pepper. “I
said to myself yesterday, ‘Pepper, go and see Cap’n Crippen. What he
don’t know about wimmen and their management ain’t worth knowing! If
there’s anybody can get you out of a hole, it’s him. He’s got the
power, and, what’s more, he’s got the will!’”
“What causes the temper?” inquired the captain, with his most judicial
air, as he took the liquor from his messenger and carefully filled a
couple of glasses.
“It’s natural!” said his friend ruefully. “She calls it having a high
spirit herself. And she’s so generous. She’s got a married niece living
in the place, and when that gal comes round and admires the things—my
things—she gives ’em to her! She gave her a sofa the other day, and,
what’s more, she made me help the gal to carry it home!”
“Have you tried being sarcastic?” inquired the captain thoughtfully.
“I have,” said Pepper, with a shiver. “The other day I said, very
nasty, ‘Is there anything else you’d like, my dear?’ but she didn’t
understand it.”
“No?” said the captain.
“No,” said Pepper. “She said I was very kind, and she’d like the clock;
and, what’s more, she had it too! Red-’aired hussy!”
The captain poured out some gin and drank it slowly. It was evident he
was thinking deeply, and that he was much affected by his friend’s
troubles.
“There is only one way for me to get clear,” said Pepper, as he
finished a thrilling recital of his wrongs, “and that is, to find Cap’n
Budd, her first.”
“Why, he’s dead!” said Crippen, staring hard. “Don’t you waste your
time looking for him!”
“I’m not going to,” said Pepper; “but here’s his portrait. He was a big
man like you; he had blue eyes and a straight handsome nose, like you.
If he’d lived to now he’d be almost your age, and very likely more like
you than ever. He was a sailor; you’ve been a sailor.”
The captain stared at him in bewilderment.
“He had a wonderful way with wimmen,” pursued Jackson hastily; “you’ve
got a wonderful way with wimmen. More than that, you’ve got the most
wonderful gift for acting I’ve ever seen. Ever since the time when you
acted in that barn at Bristol I’ve never seen any actor I can honestly
say I’ve liked—never! Look how you can imitate cats—better than Henry
Irving himself!”
“I never had much chance, being at sea all my life,” said Crippen
modestly.
“You’ve got the gift,” said Pepper impressively. “It was born in you,
and you’ll never leave off acting till the day of your death. You
couldn’t if you tried—you know you couldn’t!”
The captain smiled deprecatingly.
“Now, I want you to do a performance for my benefit,” continued Pepper.
“I want you to act Cap’n Budd, what was lost in the _Dolphin_ thirty
years ago. There’s only one man in England I’d trust with the part, and
that’s you.”
“Act Cap’n Budd!” gasped the astonished Crippen, putting down his glass
and staring at his friend.
“The part is written here,” said the ex-pilot, producing a note-book
from his breast pocket and holding it out to his friend. “I’ve been
keeping a log day by day of all the things she said about him, in the
hopes of catching her tripping, but I never did. There’s notes of his
family, his ships, and a lot of silly things he used to say, which she
thinks funny.”
“I couldn’t do it!” said the captain seriously, as he took the book.
“You could do it if you liked,” said Pepper. “Besides, think what a
spree it’ll be for you. Learn it by heart, then come down and claim
her. Her name’s Martha.”
“What good ’ud it do you if I did?” inquired the captain. “She’d soon
find out!”
“You come down to Sunset Bay,” said Pepper, emphasising his remarks
with his forefinger; “you claim your wife; you allude carefully to the
things set down in this book; I give Martha back to you and bless you
both. Then”—
“Then what?” inquired Crippen anxiously.
“You disappear!” concluded Pepper triumphantly; “and, of course,
believing her first husband is alive, she has to leave me. She’s a very
particular woman; and, besides that, I’d take care to let the
neighbours know. I’m happy, you’re happy, and, if she’s not happy, why,
she don’t deserve to be.”
“I’ll think it over,” said Crippen, “and write and let you know.”
“Make up your mind now,” urged Pepper, reaching over and patting him
encouragingly upon the shoulder. “If you promise to do it, the thing’s
as good as done. Lord! I think I see you now, coming in at that door
and surprising her. Talk about acting!”
“Is she what you’d call a good-looking woman?” inquired Crippen.
“Very handsome!” said Pepper, looking out of the window.
“I couldn’t do it!” said the captain. “It wouldn’t be right and fair to
her.”
“I don’t see that!” said Pepper. “I never ought to have married her
without being certain her first was dead. It ain’t right, Crippen; say
what you like, it ain’t right!”
“If you put it that way,” said the captain hesitatingly.
“Have some more gin,” said the artful pilot.
The captain had some more, and, what with flattery and gin, combined
with the pleadings of his friend, began to consider the affair more
favourably. Pepper stuck to his guns, and used them so well that when
the captain saw him off that evening he was pledged up to the hilt to
come down to Sunset Bay and personate the late Captain Budd on the
following Thursday.
The ex-pilot passed the intervening days in a sort of trance, from
which he only emerged to take nourishment, or answer the scoldings of
his wife. On the eventful Thursday, however, his mood changed, and he
went about in such a state of suppressed excitement that he could
scarcely keep still.
“Lor’ bless me!” snapped Mrs. Pepper, as he slowly perambulated the
parlour that afternoon. “What ails the man? Can’t you keep still for
five minutes?”
The ex-pilot stopped and eyed her solemnly, but, ere he could reply,
his heart gave a great bound, for, from behind the geraniums which
filled the window, he saw the face of Captain Crippen slowly rise and
peer cautiously into the room. Before his wife could follow the
direction of her husband’s eyes it had disappeared.
“Somebody looking in at the window,” said Pepper, with forced calmness,
in reply to his wife’s eyebrows.
“Like their impudence!” said the unconscious woman, resuming her
knitting, while her husband waited in vain for the captain to enter.
He waited some time, and then, half dead with excitement, sat down, and
with shaking fingers lit his pipe. As he looked up the stalwart figure
of the captain passed the window. During the next twenty minutes it
passed seven times, and Pepper, coming to the not unnatural conclusion
that his friend intended to pass the afternoon in the same unprofitable
fashion, resolved to force his hand.
“Must be a tramp,” he said aloud.
“Who?” inquired his wife. “Man keeps looking in at the window,” said
Pepper desperately. “Keeps looking in till he meets my eye, then he
disappears. Looks like an old sea-captain, something.”
“Old sea-captain?” said his wife, putting down her work and turning
round. There was a strange hesitating note in her voice. She looked at
the window, and at the same instant the head of the captain again
appeared above the geraniums, and, meeting her gaze, hastily vanished.
Martha Pepper sat still for a moment, and then, rising in a slow, dazed
fashion, crossed to the door and opened it. Mermaid Passage was empty!
“See anybody?” quavered Pepper.
His wife shook her head, but in a strangely quiet fashion, and, sitting
down, took up her knitting again.
For some time the click of the needles and the tick of the clock were
the only sounds audible, and the ex-pilot had just arrived at the
conclusion that his friend had abandoned him to his fate, when there
came a low tapping at the door.
“Come in!” cried Pepper, starting.
The door opened slowly, and the tall figure of Captain Crippen entered
and stood there eyeing them nervously. A neat little speech he had
prepared failed him at the supreme moment. He leaned against the wall,
and in a clumsy, shamefaced fashion lowered his gaze, and stammered out
the one word—“Martha!”
At that word Mrs. Pepper rose and stood with parted lips, eyeing him
wildly.
“Jem!” she gasped, “Jem!”
“Martha!” croaked the captain again.
With a choking cry Mrs. Pepper ran towards him, and, to the huge
gratification of her lawful spouse, flung her arms about his neck and
kissed him violently.
“Jem,” she cried breathlessly, “is it really you? I can hardly believe
it. Where have you been all this long time? Where have you been?”
“Lots of places,” said the captain, who was not prepared to answer a
question like that offhand; “but wherever I’ve been”—he held up his
hand theatrically—“the image of my dear lost wife has been always in
front of me.”
“I knew you at once, Jem,” said Mrs. Pepper fondly, smoothing the hair
back from his forehead. “Have I altered much?”
“Not a bit,” said Crippen, holding her at arm’s length and carefully
regarding her. “You look just the same as the first time I set eyes on
you.”
“Where have you been?” wailed Martha Pepper, putting her head on his
shoulder.
“When the _Dolphin_ went down from under me, and left me fighting with
the waves for life and Martha, I was cast ashore on a desert island,”
began Crippen fluently. “There I remained for nearly three years, when
I was rescued by a barque bound for New South Wales. There I met a man
from Poole who told me you were dead. Having no further interest in the
land of my birth, I sailed in Australian waters for many years, and it
was only lately that I heard how cruelly I had been deceived, and that
my little flower was still blooming.”
The little flower’s head being well down on his shoulder again, the
celebrated actor exchanged glances with the worshipping Pepper.
“If you’d only come before, Jem,” said Mrs. Pepper. “Who was he? What
was his name?”
“Smith,” said the cautious captain.
“If you’d only come before, Jem,” said Mrs. Pepper, in a smothered
voice, “it would have been better. Only three months ago I married that
object over there.”
The captain attempted a melodramatic start with such success, that,
having somewhat underestimated the weight of his fair bride, he nearly
lost his balance.
“It can’t be helped, I suppose,” he said reproachfully, “but you might
have waited a little longer, Martha.”
“Well, I’m your wife, anyhow,” said Martha, “and I’ll take care I never
lose you again. You shall never go out of my sight again till you die.
Never.”
“Nonsense, my pet,” said the captain, exchanging uneasy glances with
the ex-pilot. “Nonsense.”
“It isn’t nonsense, Jem,” said the lady, as she drew him on to the sofa
and sat with her arms round his neck. “It may be true, all you’ve told
me, and it may not. For all I know, you may have been married to some
other woman; but I’ve got you now, and I intend to keep you.”
“There, there,” said the captain, as soothingly as a strange sinking at
the heart would allow him.
“As for that other little man, I only married him because he worried me
so,” said Mrs. Pepper tearfully. “I never loved him, but he used to
follow me about and propose. Was it twelve or thirteen times you
proposed to me, Pepper?”
“I forget,” said the ex-pilot shortly.
“But I never loved him,” she continued. “I never loved you a bit, did
I, Pepper?”
“Not a bit,” said Pepper warmly. “No man could ever have a harder or
more unfeeling wife than you was. I’ll say that for you, willing.”
As he bore this testimony to his wife’s fidelity there was a knock at
the door, and, upon his opening it, the rector’s daughter, a lady of
uncertain age, entered, and stood regarding with amazement the frantic
but ineffectual struggles of Captain Crippen to release himself from a
position as uncomfortable as it was ridiculous.
“Mrs. Pepper!” said the lady, aghast. “Oh, Mrs. Pepper!”
“It’s all right, Miss Winthrop,” said the lady addressed, calmly, as
she forced the captain’s flushed face on to her ample shoulder again;
“it’s my first husband, Jem Budd.”
“Good gracious!” said Miss Winthrop, starting. “Enoch Arden in the
flesh!”
“Who?” inquired Pepper, with a show of polite interest.
“Enoch Arden,” said Miss Winthrop. “One of our great poets wrote a
noble poem about a sailor who came home and found that his wife had
married again; but, in the _poem_, the first husband went away without
making himself known, and died of a broken heart.”
She looked at Captain Crippen as though he hadn’t quite come up to her
expectations.
“And now,” said Pepper, speaking with great cheerfulness, “it’s me
that’s got to have the broken heart. Well, well.”
“It’s a most interesting case,” cried Miss Winthrop; “and, if you wait
till I fetch my camera, I’ll take your portrait together just as you
are.”
“Do,” said Mrs. Pepper cordially.
“I won’t have my portrait took,” said the captain, with much acerbity.
“Not if I wish it, dear?” inquired Mrs. Pepper tenderly.
“Not if you keep a-wishing it all your life,” replied the captain
sourly, making another attempt to get his head from her shoulder.
“Don’t you think they ought to have their portrait taken now?” asked
Miss Winthrop, turning to the ex-pilot.
“I don’t see no ’arm in it,” said Pepper thoughtlessly.
“You hear what Mr. Pepper says,” said the lady, turning to the captain
again. “Surely if he doesn’t mind, you ought not to.”
“I’ll talk to him by-and-bye,” said the captain, very grimly.
“P’raps it would be better if we kept this affair to ourselves for the
present,” said the ex-pilot, taking alarm at his friend’s manner.
“Well, I won’t intrude on you any longer,” said Miss Winthrop. “Oh!
Look there! How rude of them!”
The others turned hastily in time to see several heads vanish from the
window. Captain Crippen was the first to speak.
“Jem!” said Mrs. Pepper severely, before he had finished.
“Captain Budd!” said Miss Winthrop, flushing.
The incensed captain rose to his feet and paced up and down the room.
He looked at the ex-pilot, and that small schemer shivered.
“Easy does it, cap’n,” he murmured, with a wink which he meant to be
comforting.
“I’m going out a little way,” said the captain, after the rector’s
daughter had gone. “Just to cool my head.”
Mrs. Pepper took her bonnet from its peg behind the door, and,
surveying herself in the glass, tied it beneath her chin.
“Alone,” said Crippen nervously. “I want to do a little thinking.”
“Never again, Jem,” said Mrs. Pepper firmly. “My place is by your side.
If you’re ashamed of people looking at you, I’m not. I’m proud of you.
Come along. Come and show yourself, and tell them who you are. You
shall never go out of my sight again as long as I live. Never.”
She began to whimper.
“What’s to be done?” inquired Crippen, turning desperately on the
bewildered pilot.
“What’s it got to do with him?” demanded Mrs. Pepper sharply.
“He’s got to be considered a little, I s’pose,” said the captain,
dissembling. “Besides, I think I’d better do like the man in the poetry
did. Let me go away and die of a broken heart. Perhaps it’s best.”
Mrs. Pepper looked at him with kindling eyes.
“Let me go away and die of a broken heart,” repeated the captain, with
real feeling. “I’d rather do it. I would indeed.”
Mrs. Pepper, bursting into angry tears, flung her arms round his neck
again, and sobbed on his shoulder. The pilot, obeying the frenzied
injunctions of his friend’s eye, drew down the blind.
“There’s quite a crowd outside,” he remarked.
“I don’t mind,” said his wife amiably. “They’ll soon know who he is.”
She stood holding the captain’s hand and stroking it, and whenever his
feelings became too much for her put her head down on his waistcoat. At
such times the captain glared fiercely at the ex-pilot, who, being of a
weak nature, was unable, despite his anxiety, to give his risible
faculties that control which the solemnity of the occasion demanded.
The afternoon wore slowly away. Miss Winthrop, who disliked scandal,
had allowed something of the affair to leak out, and several visitors,
including a local reporter, called, but were put off till the morrow,
on the not unnatural plea that the long-separated couple desired a
little privacy. The three sat silent, the ex-pilot, with wrinkled
brows, trying hard to decipher the lip-language in which the captain
addressed him whenever he had an opportunity, but could only dimly
guess its purport, when the captain pressed his huge fist into the
service as well.
Mrs. Pepper rose at length, and went into the back room to prepare tea.
As she left the door open, however, and took the captain’s hat with
her, he built no hopes on her absence, but turned furiously to the
ex-pilot.
“What’s to be done?” he inquired in a fierce whisper. “This can’t go
on.”
“It’ll have to,” whispered the other.
“Now, look here,” said Crippen menacingly, “I’m going into the kitchen
to make a clean breast of it. I’m sorry for you, but I’ve done the best
I can. Come and help me to explain.”
He turned to the kitchen, but the other, with the strength born of
despair, seized him by the sleeve and held him back.
“She’ll kill me,” he whispered breathlessly.
“I can’t help it,” said Crippen, shaking him off. “Serve you right.”
“And she’ll tell the folks outside, and they’ll kill you,” continued
Pepper.
The captain sat down again, and confronted him with a face as pale as
his own.
“The last train leaves at eight,” whispered the pilot hurriedly. “It’s
desperate, but it’s the only thing you can do. Take her for a stroll up
by the fields near the railway station. You can see the train coming in
for a mile off nearly. Time yourself carefully, and make a bolt for it.
She can’t run.”
The entrance of their victim with the tea-tray stopped the
conversation; but the captain nodded acceptance behind her back, and
then, with a forced gaiety, sat down to tea.
For the first time since his successful appearance he became
loquacious, and spoke so freely of incidents in the life of the man he
was impersonating that the ex-pilot sat in a perfect fever lest he
should blunder. The meal finished, he proposed a stroll, and, as the
unsuspecting Mrs. Pepper tied on her bonnet, slapped his leg, and
winked confidently at his fellow-conspirator.
“I’m not much of a walker,” said the innocent Mrs. Pepper, “so you must
go slowly.”
The captain nodded, and at Pepper’s suggestion left by the back way, to
avoid the gaze of the curious.
For some time after their departure Pepper sat smoking, with his
anxious face turned to the clock, until at length, unable to endure the
strain any longer, and not without a sportsmanlike idea of being in at
the death, he made his way to the station, and placed himself behind a
convenient coal-truck.
He waited impatiently, with his eyes fixed on the road up which he
expected the captain to come. He looked at his watch. Five minutes to
eight, and still no captain. The platform began to fill, a porter
seized the big bell and rang it lustily; in the distance a patch of
white smoke showed. Just as the watcher had given up all hope, the
figure of the captain came in sight. He was swaying from side to side,
holding his hat in his hand, but doggedly racing the train to the
station.
“He’ll never do it!” groaned the pilot. Then he held his breath, for
three or four hundred yards behind the captain Mrs. Pepper pounded in
pursuit.
The train rolled into the station; passengers stepped in and out; doors
slammed, and the guard had already placed the whistle in his mouth,
when Captain Crippen, breathing stertorously, came stumbling blindly on
to the platform, and was hustled into a third class carriage.
“Close shave that, sir,” said the station-master as he closed the door.
The captain sank back in his seat, fighting for breath, and turning his
head, gave a last triumphant look up the road.
“All right, sir,” said the station-master kindly, as he followed the
direction of the other’s eyes and caught sight of Mrs. Pepper. “We’ll
wait for your lady.”
Jackson Pepper came from behind the coal-truck and watched the train
out of sight, wondering in a dull, vague fashion what the conversation
was like. He stood so long that a tender hearted porter, who had heard
the news, made bold to come up and put a friendly hand on his shoulder.
“You’ll never see her again, Mr. Pepper,” he said sympathetically.
The ex-pilot turned and regarded him fixedly, and the last bit of
spirit he was ever known to show flashed up in his face as he spoke.
“You’re a blamed idiot!” he said rudely.