Any one who could have watched Michael Wimble shaving himself at early
morn would have wondered whether the man were really sane, for, as he
performed the operation upon himself, he worked as if it was for
practice--to keep his hand in, just as acrobats and instrumentalists go
through their tasks constantly, so as to keep a tight hold upon that
which has taken them so much time and labour to acquire.
Being a barber, he considered that those who shaved should shave well,
and that the wearing of moustache, or the very smallest morsel of
whisker was but a wreak pandering to the savages who had introduced or
followed the moustache movement in the time of the Crimean war.
"It's filthy, that's what it is, filthy," Wimble used to say; "and how a
man can go about with his face like the back of a wild beast, beats me."
Consequently, soon after springing from his solitary bed, the owner of
the Museum used to set light to a spirit lamp to boil a small shaving
pot of water, and then, as there were signs of ebullitions at the side,
the brush was dipped in, and the performance commenced with a tremendous
lathering.
There were no half-measures. Wimble passed the brush deftly all over
his quaintly wrinkled face, till masses of lather hung on to his ears,
and covered his cheeks, so that only his eyes were seen. Then, as he
glared at himself in a shaving glass, he set to and scraped and scraped
his countenance all over, applied the brush again and again in obstinate
places, and finished off by grinning hideously in the little mirror, as
he stood, with the razor passing over the skin in a way that would have
suggested horrors about to be perpetrated by a maniac, weary of his
life, to any one who could have seen the process.
Clever as he was, too, in the manipulation, there were at times,
however, suggestions that a looker-on might have been right in his
ideas. As, for instance, upon the morning in question, when a slip or a
pimple--it is needless to say which--necessitated the use of sponge and
sticking-plaster.
Then the task was done, and Michael Wimble finished dressing, talking to
himself rapidly the while, sundry words which were spoken more loudly
than others, giving the key to the subject of the man's thoughts--the
old, old theme, love. Other words told too of disappointment and
jealousy, and all this tended to make Mr Wimble go the wrong way when
he started for his regular morning walk along the shore.
His way was always west, but he went east, so as to pass Chris Lisle's
lodgings; and as he did so, staring hard at the drawn-down blinds, and
the chimney pot innocent as yet of smoke, he gnashed his teeth softly,
for there were two new flowers in Chris's bedroom window--a fuchsia and
a geranium, in pots of dazzling red, and the mignonette box, full of
nasturtiums, which flowed over and hung down, had been newly painted a
delicate green.
Fresh attentions to the lodger. The previous week clean muslin curtains
had been put up, and the week before there was a new cover over the
little table in the window upon which lay the big History of England
which Mrs Sarson had taken in, or been taken in with, in shilling
numbers, by a book canvasser, and had bound afterwards for one pound
fifteen and sixpence, gilt lettered, and blind tooled, the canvasser had
said.
That table cover, when Wimble saw it through the half-open window, was
composed of crochet work and green satin, and must have been the widow's
handiwork, and a delicate compliment to her lodger.
That was bad enough, but the two new flower pots in the bedroom window
were beyond all bearing.
"But wait a bit," said Wimble to himself. "I can wait;" and he went on,
turned up the glen path, struck off to the left, where he reached the
bridge, and, by passing along by the backs of the cottages, he made his
way to the alley by the public-house at the harbour head, and from there
round by the boats and down to the sea shore.
Mr Wimble thought of the widow, and walked fast, gathering shells and
scraps of weeds washed up by the tide, and paused from time to time to
examine fragments of driftwood and pieces of rotten rope.
Everything was thrown away though, for he had plenty of duplicates at
home, and only exceptional finds were now worthy of a place in the
museum.
So limpets, and turritellas, and pectens were passed as unworthy of
notice. A pelican's foot shell was transferred to his pocket, but
nothing more; and growing quite low-spirited at last, for three
reasons--his ill-luck, love, and the want of his breakfast--he turned at
last, made for the cliffs, and came along close under the land, in and
out among the rocks where the soft sand lay thick and smooth, past the
hollows where the old boots and shoes were washed up in company with the
other _disjecta membra_ with which shore-dwellers insult the ocean, in
the belief that the tide will play the part of scavenger and sweep
everything away, a task that the sea mostly scorns.
And so it was that in sundry corners beneath the mighty granite rocks,
piled high like titanic walls, Michael Wimble thought of the widow, and
made his way among old baskets, fish-heads, scraps of worn-out netting
and tangles of rusty steel, half-covered with rotten fabric suggesting
female attire.
No objects these for his museum, for, though old, they were not old
enough. Had a few centuries passed since they were cast into the waves,
that would have made all the difference, and a thousand years would have
made them treasures great as gold.
But it was a barren hunt that morning. There had been no storm to tear
away the sand and sweep bare the rock, to leave exposed tarnished old
coins once cast ashore from an Armada galley; no serpula encrusted gem;
nothing worthy of notice; and Wimble, with his thoughts turning eagerly
now from the widow and her lodger to the toast and the rasher of bacon,
he passed over his bachelor rival and stepped out till he came beneath
the rocky point upon which Gartram had built his home, and was half-way
by when a ray of sunshine flashed from something lying among the rocks
in a little patch of soft, dry sand.
It might be a diamond, or at least a crystal ground out of the rocks!
But it was only a clear phial bottle--short, unlabelled, tightly corked,
and holding about a teaspoonful of some clear fluid at the bottom.
A disappointment; but a clean bottle was always useful, and, after a
brief examination, the barber transferred it to his pocket, but not
until he had removed the cork, sniffed, replaced it, and looked round,
asking himself whether it had floated there in the last spring tide.
No; it seemed too fresh. The cork was too new and dry. It could only
have come from about--been thrown from Gartram's windows, and--
Wimble got no further in his chain of reasoning. The vacuum which his
nature abhorred was giving him strong hints which he was glad to obey;
and the breakfast he had that morning was excellent for a jealous man in
love.
Afterwards he rose, took off his coat to put on his apron, found the
bottle in his pocket, put it carelessly in a drawer to wait till it
could be washed, and declared himself ready for business. He had not
long to wait, for one of his regular customers came for a shave. "Heard
the news, of course?"
"News? no," said Wimble, stopping short in the stropping of a razor.
"What news? What is it?"
"The King of the Castle--dead."
Volume Two, Chapter XV.