STEPHEN'S TALE
The repeated multiplication of twenty by forty sent me to sleep that
night, and I woke with that arithmetical exercise still running in my
head. A candle was alight in the room--ours was one of several houses in
Wapping Wall without gas--and I peeped sleepily over the bed-clothes.
Grandfather Nat was sitting with the cash-box on his knees, and the
pocket-book open in his hand. He may just have been counting the notes
over again, or not; but now he was staring moodily at the photograph
that lay with them. Once or twice he turned his eyes aside, and then
back again to the picture, as though searching his memory for some old
face; then I thought he would toss it away as something valueless; but
when his glance fell on the fireless grate he returned the card to its
place and locked the box.
When the cash-box was put away in the little cupboard at his bed-head,
he came across and looked down at me. At first I shut my eyes, but
peeped. I found him looking on me with a troubled and thoughtful face;
so that presently I sat up with a jump and asked him what he was
thinking about.
"Fox's sleep, Stevy?" he said, with his hand under my chin. "Well, boy,
I was thinking about you. I was thinking it's a good job your father's
coming home soon, Stevy; though I don't like parting with you."
Parting with me? I did not understand. Wouldn't father be going away
again soon?
"Well, I dunno, Stevy, I dunno. I've been thinking a lot just lately,
that's a fact. This place is good enough for me, but it ain't a good
place to bring up a boy like you in; not to make him the man I want you
to be, Stevy. Somehow it didn't strike me that way at first, though it
ought to ha' done. It ought to ha' done, seein' it struck strangers--an'
not particular moral strangers at that."
He was thinking of Blind George and Mrs. Grimes. Though at the moment I
wondered if his talk with Mr. Viney had set him doubting.
"No, Stevy," he resumed, "it ain't giving you a proper chance, keeping
you here. You can't get lavender water out o' the bilge, an' this part's
the bilge of all London. I want you to be a better man than me, Stevy."
I could not imagine anybody being a better man than Grandfather Nat, and
the prospect of leaving him oppressed me dismally. And where was I to
go? I remembered the terrible group of aunts at my mother's funeral, and
a shadowy fear that I might be transferred to one of those virtuous
females--perhaps to Aunt Martha--put a weight on my heart. "Don't send
me away, Gran'fa Nat!" I pleaded, with something pulling at the corners
of my mouth; "I haven't been a bad boy yet, have I?"
He caught me up and sat me on his fore-arm, so that my face almost
touched his, and I could see my little white reflection in his eyes.
"You're the best boy in England, Stevy," he said, and kissed me
affectionately. "The best boy in the world. An' I wouldn't let go o' you
for a minute but for your own good. But see now, Stevy, see; as to goin'
away, now. You'll have to go to school, my boy, won't you? An' the best
school we can manage--a gentleman's school; boardin' school, you know.
Well, that'll mean goin' away, won't it? An' then it wouldn't do for you
to go to a school like that, not from here, you know--which you'll
understand when you get there, among the others. My boy--my boy an' your
father's--has got to be as good a gentleman as any of 'em, an' not
looked down on because o' comin' from a Wapping public like this, an'
sent by a rough old chap like me. See?"
I thought very hard over this view of things, which was difficult to
understand. Who should look down on me because of Grandfather Nat, of
whom I was so fond and so proud? Grandfather Nat, who had sailed ships
all over the world, had seen storms and icebergs and wrecks, and who was
treated with so much deference by everybody who came to the Hole in the
Wall? Then I thought again of the aunts at the funeral, and remembered
how they had tilted their chins at him; and I wondered, with
forebodings, if people at a boarding school were like those aunts.
"So I've been thinking, Stevy, I've been thinking," my grandfather went
on, after a pause. "Now, there's the wharf on the Cop. The work's
gettin' more, and Grimes is gettin' older. But you don't know about the
wharf. Grimes is the man that manages there for me; he's Mrs. Grimes's
brother-in-law, an' when his brother died he recommended the widder to
me, an' that's how she came: an' now she's gone; but that's neither here
nor there. Years ago Grimes himself an' a boy was enough for all the
work there was; now there's three men reg'lar, an' work for more. Most
o' the lime comes off the barges there for the new gas-works, an' more
every week. Now there's business there, an' a respectable business--too
much for Grimes. An' if your father'll take on a shore job--an' it's a
hard life, the sea--here it is. He can have a share--have the lot if he
likes--for your sake, Stevy; an' it'll build up into a good thing.
Grimes'll be all right--we can always find a job for him. An' you can go
an' live with your father somewhere respectable an' convenient; not such
a place as Wapping, an' not such people. An' you can go to school from
there, like any other young gentleman. We'll see about it when your
father comes home."
"But shan't I ever see you, Gran'fa' Nat?"
"See me, my boy? Ay, that you will--if you don't grow too proud--that
you will, an' great times we'll have, you an' your father an' me, all
ashore together, in the holidays, won't we? An' I'll take care of your
own little fortune--the notes--till you're old enough to have it. I've
been thinking about that, too." Here he stood me on my bed and playfully
pushed me back and forward by the shoulders. "I've been thinking about
that, an' if it was lyin' loose in the street I'd be puzzled clean to
say who'd really lost it, what with one thing an' another. But it
_ain't_ in the street, an' it's yours, with no puzzle about it. But
there--lie down, Stevy, an' go to sleep. Your old grandfather's holdin'
forth worse'n a parson, eh? Comes o' bein' a lonely man an' havin'
nobody to talk to, except myself, till you come. Lie down an' don't
bother yourself. We must wait till your father comes home. We'll keep
watch for the _Juno_ in the List,--she ought to ha' been reported at
Barbadoes before this. An' we must run down to Blackwall, too, an' see
if there's any letters from him. So go to sleep now, Stevy--we'll settle
it all--we'll settle it all when your father comes home!"
So I lay and dozed, with words to send me to sleep instead of figures:
till they made a tune and seemed to dance to it. "When father comes
home: when father comes home: we'll settle it all, when father comes
home!" And presently, in some unaccountable way, Mr. Cripps came into
the dance with his "Up to their r'yals, up to their r'yals: the wessels
is deep in, up to their r'yals!" and so I fell asleep wholly.
* * * * *
In the morning I was astir early, and watching the boats and the
shipping from the bedroom window ere my grandfather had ceased his
alarming snore. It was half an hour later, and Grandfather Nat was busy
with his razor on the upper lip that my cheeks so well remembered, when
we heard Joe the potman at the street door. Whereat I took the keys and
ran down to let him in; a feat which I accomplished by aid of a pair of
steps, much tugging at heavy bolts, and a supreme wrench at the big key.
Joe brought _Lloyd's List_ in with him every morning from the early
newsagent's in Cable Street. I took the familiar journal at once, and
dived into the midst of its quaint narrow columns, crowded with italics,
in hope of news from Barbadoes. For I wished to find for myself, and run
upstairs, with a child's importance, to tell Grandfather Nat. But there
was no news from Barbadoes--that is, there was no news of my father's
ship. The name Barbadoes stood boldly enough, with reports below it, of
arrivals and sailings, and one of an empty boat washed ashore; but that
was all. So I sat where I was, content to wait, and to tell Grandfather
Nat presently, offhand from over my paper, like a politician in the bar,
that there was no news. Thus, cutting the leaves with a table-knife, my
mind on my father's voyage, it occurred to me that I could not spell La
Guaira, the name of the port his ship was last reported from; and I
turned the paper to look for it. The name was there, with only one
message attached, and while I was slowly conning the letters over for
the third time, I was suddenly aware of a familiar word beneath--the
name of the _Juno_ herself. And this was the notice that I read:
LA GUAIRA, Sep. 1.
The _Juno_ (brig) of London, Beecher, from this for Barbadoes,
foundered N of Margarita. Total loss. All crew saved except
first mate. Master and crew landed Margarita.