THE FIGUREHEADS.
It was Sunday morning, after breakfast, and Harry was sitting in the
boarding-house common room, silently contemplating his two
fellow-boarders, Josephus and Mr. Maliphant. The circle at Bormalack's
was greatly broken up. Not to speak of the loss of the illustrious pair,
Daniel Fagg had now taken to live entirely among the dressmakers, except
in the evenings, when their music and dancing drove him away; in fact,
he regarded the place as his own, and had so far forgotten that he took
his meals there by invitation as to criticise the dinners, which were
always good, although plain, and to find fault with the beer, which came
from Messenger's. Miss Kennedy, too, only slept at the boarding-house,
though by singular forgetfulness she always paid the landlady every
Saturday morning in advance for a week's board and lodging. Therefore
Josephus and the old man for the most part sat in the room alone, and
were excellent company, because the ill-used junior clerk never wanted
to talk with anybody, and the aged carver of figureheads never wanted a
listener.
Almost for the first time Harry considered this old man, the rememberer
of fag-ends and middle-bits of anecdote, with something more than a
passing curiosity and a sense of irritation caused by the incongruity of
the creature. You know that whenever you seriously address yourself to
the study of a person, however insignificant in appearance, that person
assumes an importance equal to any lord. A person, you see, is an
individual, or an indivisible thing. Wherefore, let us not despise our
neighbor. The ancient Mr. Maliphant was a little, thin old man, with a
few gray hairs left, but not many; his face was inwrapped, so to speak,
in a pair of very high collars, and he wore a black silk stock, not very
rusty, for he had been in the reign of the fourth George a dapper young
fellow, and possessed a taste in dress beyond the lights of Limehouse.
But this was in his nautical days, and before he developed his natural
genius for carving ship's figureheads. He had no teeth left, and their
absence greatly shortened the space between nose and chin, which
produced an odd effect; he was closely shaven; his face was all covered
over like an ocean with innumerable wrinkles, crows-feet, dimples,
furrows, valleys, and winding watercourses, which showed like the
universal smile of an accurate map. His forehead, when the original
thatch was thick, must have been rather low and weak; his eyes were
still bright and blue, though they wandered while he talked; when he was
silent they had a far-off look; his eyebrows, as often happens with old
men, had grown bushy and were joined across the bridge; when his memory
failed him, which was frequently the case, they frowned almost as
terribly as those of Daniel Fagg; his figure was spare and his legs
thin, and he sat on one side of the chair with his feet twisted beneath
it; he never did anything, except to smoke one pipe at night; he never
took the least notice of anybody; when he talked, he addressed the whole
company, not any individual; and he was affected by no man's happiness
or suffering. He had lived so long that he had no more sympathy left;
the world was nothing more to him; he had no further interest in it; he
had gone beyond it and out of it; he was so old that he had not a friend
left who knew him when he was young; he lived apart; he was, perforce, a
hermit.
Harry remembered, looking upon this survival, that the old man had once
betrayed a knowledge of his father and of the early history of the
Coppin and Messenger families. He wondered now why he had not tried to
get more out of him. It would be a family chronicle of small beer, but
there could be nothing, probably, very disagreeable to learn about the
career of the late sergeant, his father, nor anything painful about the
course of the Coppins. On this Sunday morning, when the old man looked
as if the cares of the week were off his mind, his memory should be
fresh--clearer than on a week-day.
In the happy family of boarders, none of whom pretended to take the
least interest in each other, nobody ever spoke to Mr. Maliphant, and
nobody listened when he spoke, except Mrs. Bormalack, who was bound by
rules of politeness, or took the least notice of his coming or his
going; nobody knew how he lived or what he paid for his board and
lodging, or anything else about him. Once, it was certain, he had been
in the mercantile marine. Now he had a "yard;" he went to his yard every
day; it was rumored that in this yard he carved figureheads all day for
large sums of money; he came home in the evening in time for supper; a
fragrance, as of rum and water, generally accompanied him at that time;
and after a pipe and a little more grog, and a few reminiscences chopped
up in bits and addressed to the room at large, the old fellow would
retire for the night. A perfectly cheerful and harmless old man, yet not
companionable.
"Did you know my father, Mr. Maliphant?" asked Harry, by way of opening
up the conversation. "He was a sergeant, you know, in the army."
Mr. Maliphant started and looked bewildered; he had been, in
imagination, somewhere off Cape Horn, and he could not get back at a
moment's notice. It irritated him to have to leave his old friends.
"Your father, young gentleman?" he asked in a vexed and trembling
quaver. "Did I know your father? Pray, sir, how am I to know that you
ever had a father?"
"You said, the other day, that you did. Think again. My father, you
know, married Caroline Coppin."
"Ay, ay--Caroline Coppin--I remember Caroline Coppin. Oh, yes, sister,
she was, to Bob--when Bob was third mate of an East Indiaman; a devil of
a fellow was Bob, though but a boy, and if living now, which I must
misdoubt, would be but sixty or thereabouts. Everybody, young man, knew
Bob Coppin," ... here he relapsed into silence. When he spoke again, he
carried on aloud the subject of his thoughts--"below he did his duty.
Such a man, sir, was Bob Coppin."
"Thank you, Mr. Maliphant. I seem to know Bob quite well from your
description. And now he's gone aloft, hasn't he? And when the word comes
to pass all hands, there will be Bob with a hitch of his trousers and a
kick of the left leg. But about my mother."
"Young gentleman, how am I to know that you were born with a mother?
Law, law! One might as well"---- Here his voice dropped again, and he
finished the sentence with the silent motion of his lips.
"Caroline Coppin, you know; your old friend."
He shook his head.
"No--oh, no! I knew her when she was as high as that table. My young
friend, not my old friend, she was. How could she be my old friend? She
married Sergeant Goslett, and he went out to India and--and--something
happened there. Perhaps he was cast away. As many get cast away in those
seas."
"Is that all you can remember about her?"
"I can remember," said the old man, "a wonderful lot of things at times.
You mustn't ask any man to remember all at once. Not at his best, you
mustn't, and I doubt I am hardly at what you may call my tip-top
ripest--yet. Wait a bit, young man; wait a bit. I've been to a many
ports and carved figureheads for a many ships, and they got cast away,
one after the other, but dear to memory still, and paid for. Like
Sergeant Goslett. A handsome man he was, with curly brown hair, like
yours, young gentleman. I remember how he sang a song in this very house
when Caroline--or was it her sister?--had it, and I forget whether it
was Bunker married her sister or after Caroline's baby was born, which
was when the child's father was dead. A beautiful evening we had."
Caroline's baby, Harry surmised, was himself.
"Where was Caroline's baby born?" Harry asked.
"Where should he be? Why, o' course, in his mother's own house."
"Why should he be born in his mother's own house? I did not know that
his mother had a house."
The old man looked at him with pity.
"Young man," he said, "you know nothing. Your ignorance is shameful."
"But why?"
"Enough said, young gentleman," replied Mr. Maliphant with dignity.
"Enough said: youth should not sport with age; it doth not become gray
hairs to--to----"
He did not finish the sentence, except to himself, but what he did say
was something emphatic and improving, because he shook his head a good
deal over it.
Presently he got up and left the room. Harry watched him getting his
hat and tying his muffler about his neck. When things were quite
adjusted the old man feebly tottered down the steps. Harry took his hat
and followed him.
"May I walk with you, sir?" he asked.
"Surely, surely!" Mr. Maliphant was surprised. "It is an unusual thing
for me to have a companion. Formerly they came--ah--all the way from
Rotherhithe to--to--sing and drink with me."
"Will you take my arm?" Harry asked.
The little old man, who wore black trousers and a dress-coat out of
respect of the day, but, although the month was December, no
great-coat--in fact he had never worn a great-coat in all his life--was
trotting along with steps which showed weakness, but manifest intention.
Harry wondered where he meant to go. He took the proffered arm, however,
and seemed to get on better for the support.
"Are you going to church, sir," asked Harry, when they came opposite the
good old church of Stepney, with its vast acres of dead men, and heard
the bells ringing.
"No, young gentleman; no, certainly not. I have more important business
to look after."
He quickened his steps, and they left the church behind them.
"Church?" repeated Mr. Maliphant with severity. "When there's property
to look after the bells may ring as loud as they please. Church is good
for paupers and church-wardens. Where would the property be, do you
think, if I were not on the spot everyday to protect it?"
He turned off the High Street into a short street of small houses
neither better nor worse than the thousands of houses around: it was a
cul-de-sac, and ended in a high brick wall, with a large gateway in the
middle, and square stone pillars, and a ponderous pair of wooden gates,
iron-bound as if they guarded things of the greatest value. There was
also a small wicket beside it, which the old man carefully unlocked and
opened, looking round to see that no burglars followed.
Harry saw within a tolerably large yard, in the middle of which was a
little house of one room. The house was a most wonderful structure; it
was built apparently of packing-cases nailed on four or eight square
posts; it was furnished with a door, a window, and a chimney, all
complete; it was exactly like a doll's house, only that it was rather
larger, being at least six feet high and eight feet square. The house
was painted green; the roof was painted red; the door blue; there was
also a brass knocker; so that in other respects it was like a doll's
house.
"Aha!" cried the old man, rubbing his hands and pointing to the house.
"I built it, young man. That is my house, that is; I laid the
foundations; I put up the walls; I painted it. And I very well remember
when it was. Let me see. Mr. Messenger, who was a younger man than me by
four years, married in that year, or lost his son--I forget which"--(his
voice lowered, and he went on talking to himself). "Caroline's
grandfather went bankrupt in the building trade; or her father perhaps,
who afterward made money and left houses. And here I am still. This is
my property, young gentleman, and I come here every day to execute
orders. Oh! yes"--he looked about him in mild kind of doubt--"I execute
orders. Perhaps the orders don't come in so thick as they did. But here
I am--ready for work--always ready, and I see my old friends, too, aha!
They come as thick as ever, bless you, if the orders don't. Quite a
gathering in here some days." Harry shuddered, thinking who these old
friends might be. "Sundays and all I come here, and they come too. A
merry company!"
The garrulous old man opened the door of the little house. Harry saw
that it contained a cupboard with some simple cooking utensils, and a
fireplace, where the proprietor began to make a fire, and one chair, and
a little table, and a rack with tools; there were also one or two pipes
and a tobacco jar.
He looked about the yard. A strange place, indeed! It was adorned, or
rather furnished, with great ships' figureheads, carved in wood,
standing in rows and circles, some complete, some half-finished, some
just begun; so that here was a Lively Peggy with rudimentary features
just emerging from her native wood, and here a Saucy Sal of Wapping
still clothed in oak up to her waist; and here a Neptune, his crowned
head only as yet indicated, though the weather-beaten appearance of his
wood showed that the time was long since he was begun; or a Father
Thames, his god-like face as yet showing like a blurred dream. Or there
were finished and perfect heads, painted and gilded, waiting for the
purchaser who never came. They stood, or sat--whichever a head and
shoulder can be said to do--with so much pride, each so rejoicing in
himself, and so disdainful of his neighbor, in so haughty a silence that
they seemed human and belonging to the first circles of Stepney; Harry
thought, too, that they eyed him curiously, as if he might be the
long-expected ship-owner come to buy a figurehead.
"Here is property, young man!" cried the old man; he had lit his fire
now and came to the door, craning forward and spreading his hands, "Look
at the beauties. There's truth! There's expression! Mine, young man, all
mine. Hundreds--thousands of pounds here, to be protected."
"Do you come here every day?" Harry asked.
"Every day. The property must be looked after."
"And do you sit here all day by yourself?"
"Why, who else should I sit with? And a man like me never sits alone.
Bless your heart, young gentleman, of a morning when I sit before the
fire and smoke a pipe, this room gets full of people. They crowd in,
they do. Dead people, I mean, of course. I know more dead men than
living. They're the best company, after all. Bob Coppin comes, for one."
Harry began to look about, wondering whether the ghost of Bob might
suddenly appear at the door. On the whole he envied the old man his
company of departed friends.
"So you talk," he said; "you and the dead people?" By this time the old
man had got into his chair and Harry stood in the doorway, for there
really was not room for more than one in the house at the same time, to
say nothing of inconveniencing and crowding the merry company of ghosts.
"You wouldn't believe," said the old man, "the talks we have nor the
yarns we spin, when we're here together."
"It must be a jovial time," said Harry. "Do they drink?"
Mr. Maliphant screwed up his lips and shook his head mysteriously.
"Not of a morning," he replied, as if in the evening the old rollicking
customs were still kept up.
"And you talk about old times--eh?"
"There's nothing else to talk about, as I know."
"Certainly not. Sometimes you talk about my--about Caroline Coppin's
father, I suppose. I mean the one who made money, not the one who went
bankrupt."
"Houses," said Mr. Maliphant; "houses it was."
"Oh!"
"Twelve houses there were, all his own. Two sons and two daughters to
divide among. Bob Coppin sold his at once--Bunker bought 'em--and we
drank up the money down Poplar-way, him and me and a few friends
together, in a friendly and comfortable spirit. A fine time we had, I
remember. Jack Coppin was in his father's trade and he lost his money;
speculated, he did. Builders are a believin' people. Bunker got his
houses too."
"Jack was my cousin Dick's father, I suppose," said Harry. "Go ahead,
old boy. The family history is reeling on beautifully. Where did the
other houses go?"
But the old man had gone off on another tack. "There were more Coppins,"
he said. "When I was a boy, to be a Coppin of Stepney was a thing of
pride. Josephus' father was church-warden, and held up his head."
"Did he, really?"
"If I hadn't the property to look after, I would show you his tombstone
in Stepney church-yard."
"That," said Harry, "would be a great happiness for me. As for Caroline
Coppin, now----"
"She was a pretty maid, she was," the old man went on. "I saw her born
and brought up. And she married a sojer."
"I know, and her three houses were lost, too, I suppose?"
"Why should her houses be lost, young man?" Mr. Maliphant asked with
severity. "Houses don't run away. This property doesn't run away. When
she died she left a baby, she did, and when the baby was took--or was
stolen--or something--Bunker said those houses were his. But not lost.
You can't lose a house. You may lose a figurehead." He got up and looked
outside to see if his were safe. "Or a big drum. But not a house."
"Oh!" Harry started. "Bunker said the houses were his, did he?"
"Of course he did."
"And if the baby had not died, those houses would still be the property
of that baby, I suppose."
But Mr. Maliphant made no reply. He was now in the full enjoyment of the
intoxication produced by his morning-pipe, and was sitting in his
arm-chair with his feet on the fender, disposed, apparently, for
silence. Presently he began to talk, as usual, to himself. Nor could he
be induced, by any leading questions, to remember anything more of the
things which Harry wanted him to remember. But he let his imagination
wander. Gradually the room became filled with dead people, and he was
talking with them. Nor did he seem to know that Harry was with him at
all.
Harry slipped quietly away, shutting the door after him, so that the old
man might be left quite alone with the ghosts.
The yard, littered with wood, crowded with the figureheads, all of which
seemed turning inquiring and jealous eyes upon the stranger, was silent
and ghostly. Thither came the old man every day, to sit before the fire
in his little red-and-green doll's house, to cook his own beefsteak for
himself, to drink his glass of grog after dinner, to potter about among
his carved heads, to talk to his friends the ghosts, to guard his
property, and to execute the orders which never came. For the
shipbuilders who had employed old Mr. Maliphant were all dead and gone,
and nobody knew of his yard any more, and he had it all to himself. The
tide of time had carried away all his friends and left him alone; the
memory of him among active men was gone; no one took any more interest
in him, and he had ceased to care for anything: to look back was his
only pleasure. No one likes to die at any time, but who would wish to
grow so old?
And those houses. Why, if the old man's memory was right, then Bunker
had simply appropriated his property. Was that, Harry asked, the price
for which he traded the child away?
He went straight away to his cousin Dick, who, mindful of the recent
speech at the club, was a little disposed to be resentful. It
fortunately takes two to make a quarrel, however, and one of those two
had no intention of a family row.
"Never mind, Dick," he said in answer to an allusion to the speech.
"Hang the club. I want to ask you about something else. Now, then. Tell
me about your grandfather."
"I cannot. He died before I can remember. He was a builder."
"Did he leave property?"
"There were some houses, I believe. My father lost his share, I know.
Speculated it away."
"Your uncle Bob. What became of his share?"
"Bob was a worthless chap. He drank everything, so of course he drank up
his houses."
"Then we come to the two daughters. Bunker married one, and of course he
got his wife's share. What became of my mother's share?"
"Indeed, Harry, I do not know."
"Who would know?"
"Bunker ought to be able to tell you all about it. Of course he knows."
"Dick," said Harry, "should you be astonished to learn that the
respectable uncle Bunker is a mighty great rogue? But say nothing, Dick.
Say nothing. Let me consider how to bring the thing home to him."