When I came to the house in Malabar Street to which John Williams,
master mariner, had retired from the sea, his wife was at her front
gate. It was evening, and from the distant River a steamer called.
Mrs. Williams did not see me, for her grey head was turned away. She
was watching, a little down the street, an officer of the Merchant
Service, with his cap set like a challenge, for he was very young, and
a demure girl with a market-basket who was with him. They were
standing in amused perplexity before their house door. It was a house
that had been empty since the foundering of the _Drummond Castle_. The
sailor was searching his pockets for the door-key, and the girl was
laughing at his pretended lively nervousness in not finding it. Mrs.
Williams had not heard me stop at her elbow, and continued to watch the
comedy. She had no children, and she loved young people.
I did not speak, but waited for her to turn, with that ship's call
still sounding in my mind. The rain had cleared for a winter sunset.
Opposite, in the house which had been turned into a frugal shop, it was
thought so near to night that they lit their lamp, though it was not
only possible to see the bottles of sweet-stuff and the bundles of wood
in the window, but to make out the large print of a bill stuck to a
pane announcing a concert at the Wesleyan Mission Room. The lamp was
alight also in the little beer-house next door to it, where the
_Shipping Gazette_ could be borrowed, if it were not already out on
loan; for children constantly go there for it, with a request from
mother, learning their geography that way in Malabar Street, while
following a father or a brother round the world and back again, and
working out by dead-reckoning whether he would be home for Christmas.
The quiet street, with every house alike, had that air of conscious
reserve which is given by the respectable and monotonous; but for a
moment then it was bright with the glory of the sky's afterglow
reflected on its wet pavements, as though briefly exalted with an
unexpected revelation. The radiance died. Night came, and it was as
if the twilight native to the street clouded from its walls and brimmed
it with gloom, while yet the sky was bright. The lamplighter set his
beacon at the end of the street.
That key had been found. Mrs. Williams laughed to herself, and then
saw me. "Oh," she exclaimed. "I didn't know you were there. Did you
see that? That lamplighter! When Williams was at sea, and I was
alone, it was quite hopeful when the lamplighter did that. It looked
like a star. And that Number Ten is let at last. Did you see the
young people there? I'm sure they're newly married. He's a sailor."
With the fire, the humming kettle, and the cat between us, and the
table laid for tea, Mrs. Williams speculated with interest and hope
about those young strangers. Did I notice what badge was on his cap?
My eyes were better than hers. She trusted it would be all right for
them. They were starting very young. It was better to start young.
She looked such a good little soul, that girl. It was pleasant to know
that house was let at last. It had been empty too long. It was
getting a name. People could not help remembering why it was empty.
But young life would make it bright.
"People say things only change, but I like to think they change for the
better, don't you? But Williams, he will have it they change for the
worse. I don't know, I'm sure. He thinks nothing really good except
the old days." She laughed quietly, bending to tickle the cat's
ear--"nothing good at all except the old days. Even the wrecks were
more like wrecks." She looked at me, smiling.
"As you know," she said, "there's many men who follow the sea with
homes in this street, but Williams is so proud and strong-willed. He
says he doesn't want to hear about them. What do they know about the
sea? You know his way. What do they know about the sea? That's the
way he talks, doesn't he? But surely the sea is the same for us all.
He won't have it, though. Williams is so vain and determined."
The captain knocked. There was no doubt about that knock. The door
surrendered to him. His is a peremptory summons. The old master
mariner brought his bulk with dignity into the room, and his wife,
reaching up to that superior height, too slight for the task,
ministered to the overcoat of the big figure which was making, all
unconsciously, disdainful noises in its throat. It would have been
worse than useless for me to interfere. The pair would have repelled
me. This was a domestic rite. Once in his struggle with his coat the
dominant figure glanced down at the earnestness of his little mate,
paused for a moment, and the stern face relaxed.
With his attention concentrated and severe even in so small an effort
as taking from his broad back a reluctant coat, and the unvarying fixed
intentness of the dark eyes over which the lids, loose with age, had
partly folded, giving him the piercing look of a bird of prey; and the
swarthiness of his face, massive, hairless, and acutely ridged, with
its crown of tousled white hair, his was a figure which made it easy to
believe the tales one had heard of him when he was the master of the
_Oberon_, and drove his ship home with the new season's tea, leaving,
it is said, a trail of light spars all the way from Tientsin to the
Channel.
The coat was off. His wife had it over her arm, and was regarding with
concern the big petulant face above her. She said to him: "Number Ten
is let at last. They're a young couple who have got it. He's a
sailor."
The old man sat down at a corner of the table, stooped, and in one
handful abruptly hauled the cat off the rug, laying its unresisting
body across his knees, and rubbing its ribs with a hand that half
covered it. He did not appear to have heard what he had been told. He
did not look at her, but talked gravely to the fire. "I met Dennison
today," he said, as if speaking aloud to himself, in surprise at
meeting Dennison. "Years since I saw him," he continued, turning to
me. "Where was it now, where was it? Must have been Canton River, the
year he lost his ship. Extraordinary to find Dennison still afloat.
Not many of those men about now. You can go the length of the Dock
Road today and see nothing and meet nobody."
He looked again into the flames, fixedly, as though what he really
wanted was only to be found in them. His wife was at his elbow. She,
too, was watching them, still with his coat over her arm. She spoke
aloud, though more to herself than to us. "She seemed such a nice
little woman, too. I couldn't see the badge on his cap."
"Eh?" said the old man, throwing the cat back to the floor and rounding
to his wife. "What's that? Let's have tea, Mrs. Williams. We're both
dreaming, and there's a visitor. What are you dreaming about? You've
nothing to dream about."
There was never any doubt, though, that the past was full and alive to
him. There was only the past. And what a memory was his! He would
look at the portrait of his old clipper, the _Oberon_--it was central
over the mantel-shelf--and recall her voyages, and the days in each
voyage, and just how the weather was, what canvas she carried, and how
things happened. Malabar Street vanished. We would go, when he was in
that mood, and live for the evening in another year, with men who have
gone, among strange affairs forgotten.
Mrs. Williams would be in her dream, too, with her work-basket in her
lap, absently picking the table-cloth with her needle. But for us, all
we knew was that the _Cinderella_ had a day's start of us, and the
weather in the Southern Ocean, when we got there, was like the death of
the world. I was aware that we were under foresail, lower topsails,
and stay-sails only, and they were too much. They were driving us
under, and the _Oberon_ was tender. Yes, she was very tricky. But
where was the _Cinderella_? Anyhow, she had a day's start of us.
Captain Williams would rise then, and stand before his ship's picture,
pointing into her rigging.
"I must go in and see that girl," said the captain's wife once, when we
were in the middle of one of our voyages.
"Eh?" questioned her husband, instantly bending to her, but keeping his
forefinger pointing to his old ship; thinking, perhaps, his wife was
adding something to his narrative he had forgotten.
"Yes," she said, and did not meet his face. "I must go in and see her.
He's been gone a week now. He must be crossing the Bay, and look at
the weather we've had. I know what it is."
I did then leave our voyage in the past for a moment, to listen to the
immediate weather without. It was certainly a wild night. I should
get wet when I left for home.
"Ah!" exclaimed the puzzled captain, suddenly enlightened, with his
finger still addressing the picture on the wall. "She means the man
down the street. An engineer, isn't he? The missis calls him a
sailor." He continued that voyage, made in 1862.
There was one evening when, on the home run, we had overhauled and
passed our rivals in the race, and were off the Start. Captain
Williams was serving a tot all round, in a propitiatory act, hoping to
lower the masts of the next astern deeper beneath the horizon, and to
keep them there till he was off Blackwall Point. He then found he
wanted to show me a letter, testimony to the work of his ship, which he
had received that voyage from his owners. Where was it? The missis
knew, and he looked over his shoulder for her. But she was not there.
They must have been the days to live in, when China was like that, and
there was all the East, and such ships, and men who were seamen and
navigators in a way that is lost. As the old master mariner, who had
lived in that time, would sometimes demand of me: What is the sea now?
Steamers do not make time, or lose it. They keep it. They run to
schedule, one behind the other, in processions. They have nothing to
overcome. They do not fail, and they cannot triumph. They are
predestined engines, and the sea is but their track. Yet it had been
otherwise. And the old man would brood into the greater past, his
voice would grow quiet, and he would gently emphasize his argument by
letting one hand, from a fixed wrist, rise, and fall sadly on the
table, in a gesture of solemn finality. He was in that act, early one
evening, while his wife was reading a newspaper; and I had risen to go,
and stood for a moment silent in the thought that these of ours were
lesser days, and their petty demands and trivial duties made of men but
mere attendants on uninspiring process.
Serene Mrs. Williams, reading her paper, and not in our world at all,
at that moment struck the paper into her lap, and fixed me with
surprise and shock in her eyes, as though she had just repelled that
mean print in a malicious attempt at injury. Her husband took no
notice. She handed me the paper, with a finger on a paragraph. "The
steamer _Arab_, which sailed on December 26 last for Buenos Aires, has
not been heard of since that date, and today was 'posted' as missing."
I remembered then a young man in uniform, with a rakish cap, trying to
find a key while a girl was laughing at him. As I left the house I
could see in the dusk, a little down the street, the girl standing at
her gate. The street was empty and silent. At the end of it the
lamp-lighter set his beacon.