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.