THE SIGN OF “THE OLD SHIP”
UPON few of the children of men has the surname of Pump fallen, and of
these few have been maddened into naming a child Humphrey in addition to
it. To such extremity, however, had the parents of the innkeeper at “The
Old Ship” proceeded, that their son might come at last to be called
“Hump” by his dearest friends, and “Pumph” by an aged Turk with a green
umbrella. All this, or all he knew of it, he endured with a sour smile;
for he was of a stoical temper.
Mr. Humphrey Pump stood outside his inn, which stood almost on the
seashore, screened only by one line of apple trees, dwarfed, twisted and
salted by the sea air; but in front of it was a highly banked bowling
green, and behind it the land sank abruptly; so that one very steep
sweeping road vanished into the depth and mystery of taller trees. Mr.
Pump was standing immediately under his trim sign, which stood erect in
the turf; a wooden pole painted white and suspending a square white
board, also painted white but further decorated with a highly grotesque
blue ship, such as a child might draw, but into which Mr. Pump’s
patriotism had insinuated a disproportionately large red St. George’s
cross.
Mr. Humphrey Pump was a man of middle size, with very broad shoulders,
wearing a sort of shooting suit with gaiters. Indeed, he was engaged at
the moment in cleaning and reloading a double-barrelled gun, a short but
powerful weapon which he had invented, or at least improved, himself;
and which, though eccentric enough as compared with latest scientific
arms, was neither clumsy nor necessarily out of date. For Pump was one
of those handy men who seem to have a hundred hands like Briareus; he
made nearly everything for himself and everything in his house was
slightly different from the same thing in anyone else’s house. He was
also as cunning as Pan or a poacher in everything affecting every bird
or dish, every leaf or berry in the woods. His mind was a rich soil of
subconscious memories and traditions; and he had a curious kind of
gossip so allusive as to almost amount to reticence; for he always took
it for granted that everyone knew his county and its tales as intimately
as he did; so he would mention the most mysterious and amazing things
without relaxing a muscle on his face, which seemed to be made of
knotted wood. His dark brown hair ended in two rudimentary side
whiskers, giving him a slightly horsey look, but in the old-fashioned
sportsman’s style. His smile was rather wry and crabbed; but his brown
eyes were kindly and soft. He was very English.
As a rule his movements, though quick, were cool; but on this occasion
he put down the gun on the table outside the inn in a rather hurried
manner and came forward dusting his hands in an unusual degree of
animation and even defiance. Beyond the goblin green apple trees and
against the sea had appeared the tall, slight figure of a girl, in a
dress about the colour of copper and a large shady hat. Under the hat
her face was grave and beautiful though rather swarthy. She shook hands
with Mr. Pump; then he very ceremoniously put a chair for her and called
her “Lady Joan.”
“I thought I would like a look at the old place,” she said. “We have had
some happy times here when we were boys and girls. I suppose you hardly
see any of your old friends now.”
“Very little,” answered Pump, rubbing his short whisker reflectively.
“Lord Ivywood’s become quite a Methody parson, you know, since he took
the place; he’s pulling down beer-shops right and left. And Mr. Charles
was sent to Australia for lying down flat at the funeral. Pretty stiff I
call it; but the old lady was a terror.”
“Do you ever hear,” asked Lady Joan Brett, carelessly, “of that
Irishman, Captain Dalroy?”
“Yes, more often than from the rest,” answered the innkeeper. “He seems
to have done wonders in this Greek business. Ah! He was a sad loss to
the Navy!”
“They insulted his country,” said the girl, looking at the sea with a
heightened colour. “After all, Ireland was his country; and he had a
right to resent it being spoken of like that.”
“And when they found he’d painted him green,” went on Mr. Pump.
“Painted him what?” asked Lady Joan.
“Painted Captain Dawson green,” continued Mr. Pump in colourless tones.
“Captain Dawson said green was the colour of Irish traitors, so Dalroy
painted him green. It was a great temptation, no doubt, with this fence
being painted at the time and the pail of stuff there; but, of course,
it had a very prejudicial effect on his professional career.”
“What an extraordinary story!” said the staring Lady Joan, breaking into
a rather joyless laugh. “It must go down among your county legends. I
never heard that version before. Why, it might be the origin of the
‘Green Man’ over there by the town.”
“Oh, no,” said Pump, simply, “that’s been there since before Waterloo
times. Poor old Noyle had it until they put him away. You remember old
Noyle, Lady Joan. Still alive, I hear, and still writing love-letters to
Queen Victoria. Only of course they aren’t posted now.”
“Have you heard from your Irish friend lately?” asked the girl, keeping
a steady eye on the sky-line.
“Yes, I had a letter last week,” answered the innkeeper. “It seems not
impossible that he may return to England. He’s been acting for one of
these Greek places, and the negotiations seem to be concluded. It’s a
queer thing that his lordship himself was the English minister in charge
of them.”
“You mean Lord Ivywood,” said Lady Joan, rather coldly. “Yes, he has a
great career before him, evidently.”
“I wish he hadn’t got his knife into us so much,” chuckled Pump. “I
don’t believe there’ll be an inn left in England. But the Ivywoods were
always cranky. It’s only fair to him to remember his grandfather.”
“I think it’s very ungallant on your part,” said Lady Joan, with a
mournful smile, “to ask a lady to remember his grandfather.”
“You know what I mean, Lady Joan,” said her host, good humouredly. “And
I never was hard on the case myself; we all have our little ways. I
shouldn’t like it done to my pig; but I don’t see why a man shouldn’t
have his own pig in his own pew with him if he likes it. It wasn’t a
free seat. It was the family pew.”
Lady Joan broke out laughing again. “What horrible things you do seem to
have heard of,” she said. “Well, I must be going, Mr. Hump—I mean Mr.
Pump—I used to call you Hump ... oh, Hump, do you think any of us will
ever be happy again?”
“I suppose it rests with Providence,” he said, looking at the sea.
“Oh, do say Providence again!” cried the girl. “It’s as good as
‘Masterman Ready.’”
With which inconsequent words she betook herself again to the path by
the apple trees and walked back by the sea front to Pebblewick.
The inn of “The Old Ship” lay a little beyond the old fishing village of
Pebblewick; and that again was separated by an empty half-mile or so
from the new watering-place of Pebblewick-on-Sea. But the dark-haired
lady walked steadily along the sea-front, on a sort of parade which had
been stretched out to east and west in the insane optimism of
watering-places, and, as she approached the more crowded part, looked
more and more carefully at the groups on the beach. Most of them were
much the same as she had seen them more than a month before. The seekers
after truth (as the man in the fez would say) who assembled daily to
find out what the man was doing with the paper-boxes, had not found out
yet; neither had they wearied of their intellectual pilgrimage. Pennies
were still thrown to the thundering atheist in acknowledgment of his
incessant abuse; and this was all the more mysterious because the crowd
was obviously indifferent, and the atheist was obviously sincere. The
man with the long neck who led Low Church hymns with a little wooden
spade had indeed disappeared; for children’s services of this kind are
generally a moving feast; but the man whose only claim consisted of
carrots round his hat was still there; and seemed to have even more
money than before. But Lady Joan could see no sign of the little old man
in the fez. She could only suppose that he had failed entirely; and,
being in a bitter mood, she told herself bitterly that he had sunk out
of sight precisely because there was in his rubbish a touch of unearthly
and insane clear-headedness of which all these vulgar idiots were
incapable. She did not confess to herself consciously that what had made
both the man in the fez and the man at the inn interesting was the
subject of which they had spoken.
As she walked on rather wearily along the parade she caught sight of a
girl in black with faint fair hair and a tremulous, intelligent face
which she was sure she had seen before. Pulling together all her
aristocratic training for the remembering of middle class people, she
managed to remember that this was a Miss Browning who had done
typewriting work for her a year or two before; and immediately went
forward to greet her, partly out of genuine good nature and partly as a
relief from her own rather dreary thoughts. Her tone was so seriously
frank and friendly that the lady in black summoned the social courage to
say:
“I’ve so often wanted to introduce you to my sister who’s much cleverer
than I am, though she does live at home; which I suppose is very
old-fashioned. She knows all sorts of intellectual people. She is
talking to one of them now; this Prophet of the Moon that everyone’s
talking about. Do let me introduce you.”
Lady Joan Brett had met many prophets of the moon and of other things.
But she had the spontaneous courtesy which redeems the vices of her
class, and she followed Miss Browning to a seat on the parade. She
greeted Miss Browning’s sister with glowing politeness; and this may
really be counted to her credit; for she had great difficulty in looking
at Miss Browning’s sister at all. For on the seat beside her, still in a
red fez but in a brilliantly new black frock coat and every appearance
of prosperity, sat the old gentleman who had lectured on the sands about
the inns of England.
“He lectured at our Ethical Society,” whispered Miss Browning, “on the
word Alcohol. Just on the word Alcohol. He was perfectly thrilling. All
about Arabia and Algebra, you know, and how everything comes from the
East. You really would be interested.”
“I am interested,” said Lady Joan.
“Poot it to yourselfs,” the man in the fez was saying to Miss Browning’s
sister, “joost what sort of meaning the names of your ince can have if
they do not commemorate the unlimitable influence of Islam. There is a
vary populous Inn in London, one of the most distinguished, one of the
most of the Centre, and it is called the Horseshoe? Now, my friendss,
why should anyone commemorate a horse-shoe? It iss but an appendage to a
creature more interesting than itself. I have already demonstrated to
you that the very fact that you have in your town a place of drink
called the Bool—”
“I should like to ask—” began Lady Joan, suddenly.
“A place of drink called the Bool,” went on the man in the fez, deaf to
all distractions, “and I have urged that the Bool is a disturbing
thought, while the BulBul is a reassuring thought. But even you my
friends, would not name a place after a ring in a Bool’s nose and not
after the Bool? Why then name an equivalent place after the shoo, the
mere shoo, upon a horse’s hoof, and not after the noble horse? Surely it
is clear, surely it is evident that the term ‘horse-shoe’ is a cryptic
term, an esoteric term, a term made during the days when the ancient
Moslem faith of this English country was oppressed by the passing
superstition of the Galileans. That bent shape, that duplex curving
shape, which you call horse-shoe, is it not clearly the Crescent?” and
he cast his arms wide as he had done on the sands, “the Crescent of the
Prophet of the only God?”
“I should like to ask,” began Lady Joan, again, “how you would explain
the name of the inn called ‘The Green Man,’ just behind that row of
houses.”
“Exactly! exactly!” cried the Prophet of the Moon, in almost insane
excitement. “The seeker after truth could not at all probably find a
more perfect example of these principles. My friendss, how could there
be a green man? You are acquainted with green grass, with green leaves,
with green cheese, with green chartreuse. I ask if any one of you,
however wide her social circle, has ever been acquainted with a green
man. Surely, surely, it is evident, my friendss, that this is an
imperfect version, an abbreviated version, of the original words. What
can be clearer than that the original expression, was ‘the
green-turban’d man,’ in allusion to the well-known uniform of the
descendants of the Prophet? ‘Turban’d’ surely is just the sort of word,
exactly the sort of foreign and unfamiliar word, that might easily be
slurred over and ultimately suppressed.”
“There is a legend in these parts,” said Lady Joan, steadily, “that a
great hero, hearing the colour that was sacred to his holy island
insulted, really poured it over his enemy for a reply.”
“A legend! a fable!” cried the man in the fez, with another radiant and
rational expansion of the hands. “Is it not evident that no such thing
can have really happened?”
“Oh, yes—it really happened,” said the young lady, softly. “There is not
much to comfort one in this world; but there are some things. Oh, it
really happened.”
And taking a graceful farewell of the group, she resumed her rather
listless walk along the parade.
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