The Anchor and Chain is a warm, pleasantly noisy place by the
water-side at St. John's, with a not ungrateful reek of rum and
tobacco for such outport folk as we; forever filled, too, with big,
twinkling, trumpeting men, of our simple kind, which is the sort the
sea rears. There for many a mellow hour of the night was I perched
upon a chair at my uncle's side, delighting in the cheer which
enclosed me--in the pop of the cork, the inspiriting passage of the
black bottle, the boisterous talk and salty tales, the free
laughter--but in which I might not yet, being then but seven years
old, actively partake.
When in the first of it my uncle called for his dram, he would never
fail to catch the bar-maid's hand, squeeze it under the table, with
his left eyelid falling and his displaced jaw solemnly ajar, informing
her the while, behind his thumb and forefinger, the rest of that hand
being gone, that I was a devil of a teetotaler: by which (as I
thought, and, I'll be bound, he knew well I would think) my years were
excused and I was admitted to the company of whiskered skippers upon
a footing of equality. 'Tis every man's privilege, to be sure, to
drink rum or not, as he will, without loss of dignity.
If his mates would have me drink a glass with them my uncle would not
hinder.
"A nip o' ginger-ale," says I, brash as a sealing-captain.
'Twas the despair of my uncle. "Lord love us!" says he, looking with
horror upon the bottle.
"T' you, sir," says I, with my glass aloft, "an' t' the whole bally
crew o' ye!"
"Belly-wash!" groans my uncle.
And so, brave and jolly as the rest of them, forgetting the doses of
jalap in store for me when I was got back to the Tickle, I would now
have my ninny (as they called it). Had the bar-maids left off kissing
me--but they would not; no, they would kiss me upon every coming, and
if I had nothing to order 'twas a kiss for my virtue, and if I drank
'twas a smack for my engaging manliness; and my only satisfaction was
to damn them heartily--under my breath, mark you! lest I be soundly
thrashed on the spot for this profanity, my uncle, though you may now
misconceive his character, being in those days quick to punish me. But
such are women: in a childless place, being themselves childless, they
cannot resist a child, but would kiss queer lips, and be glad o' the
chance, because a child is lovely to women, intruding where no
children are.
As a child of seven I hated the bar-maids of the Anchor and Chain,
because they would kiss me against my will when the whiskered
skippers went untouched. But that was long ago....
* * * * *
I must tell that at the Anchor and Chain my uncle blundered in
with Tom Bull, of the _Green Billow_, the owner and skipper thereof,
trading the ports of the West Coast, then coast-wise, but (I fancy)
not averse to a smuggling opportunity, both ways, with the French
Islands to the south of us; at any rate, 'twas plain, before the
talk was over, that he needed no lights to make the harbor of
St.-Pierre, Miquelon, of a dark time. 'Twas a red-whiskered, flaring,
bulbous-nosed giant, with infantile eyes, containing more of wonder
and patience than men need. He was clad in yellow oil-skins, a-drip,
glistening in the light of the lamps, for he was newly come in from
the rain: a bitter night, the wind in the northeast, with a black
fog abroad (I remember it well)--a wet, black night, the rain
driving past the red-curtained windows of the Anchor and Chain, the
streets swept clean of men, ourselves light-hearted and warm,
indifferent, being ashore from the wind, the cloudy night, the
vicious, crested waves of the open, where men must never laugh nor
touch a glass.
They must have a dram together in a stall removed from the congregation
of steaming men at the long bar. And when the maid had fetched the
bottle, Tom Bull raised it, regarded it doubtfully, cocked his head,
looked my shamefaced uncle in the eye.
"An' what might this be?" says he.
"'Tis knowed hereabouts, in the langwitch o' waterside widows,"
replies my uncle, mildly, "as a bottle o' Cheap an' Nasty."
Tom Bull put the bottle aside.
"_Tis_ cheap, I'll be bound," says my uncle; "but 'tis not so
wonderful nasty, Tom," he grieved, "when 'tis the best t' be had."
"Skipper Nicholas," says Tom, in wonder, "wasn't you give aforetime t'
the use o' Long Tom?"
My uncle nodded.
"Dear man!" Tom Bull sighed.
My uncle looked away. Tom Bull seemed now first to observe his
impoverished appearance, and attacked it with frankly curious eyes,
which roamed without shame over my uncle's shrinking person; and my
uncle winced under this inquisition.
"Pour your liquor," growls he, "an' be content!"
Tom Bull grasped the bottle, unafraid of the contents, unabashed by
the rebuke. "An' Skipper Nicholas," asks he, "where did you manage t'
pick up the young feller?"
My uncle would not attend.
"Eh?" Tom Bull persisted. "Where did you come across o' he?"
"This," says my uncle, with a gentle tug at my ear, "is Dannie."
"Ay; but whose young one?"
"Tom Callaway's son."
"Tom Callaway's son!" cries Tom Bull.
There was that about me to stir surprise; with those generous days so
long gone by, I will not gainsay it. Nor will I hold Tom Bull in fault
for doubting, though he stared me, up and down, until I blushed and
turned uneasy while his astonished eyes were upon me.
"Tom Callaway's son!" cries he again.
That I was.
"The same," says my uncle.
Forthwith was I once more inspected, without reserve--for a child has
no complaint to make in such cases--and with rising wonder, which, in
the end, caused Tom Bull to gape and gasp; but I was now less
concerned with the scrutiny, being, after all, long used to the
impertinence of the curious, than with the phenomena it occasioned. My
uncle's friend had tipped the bottle, and was now become so deeply
engaged with my appearance that the yellow whiskey tumbled into his
glass by fits and starts, until the allowance was far beyond that
which, upon information supplied me by my uncle, I deemed proper (or
polite) for any man to have at one time. The measurement of drams was
in those bibulous days important to me--of much more agreeable
interest, indeed, than the impression I was designed to make upon the
'longshore world.
"No such nonsense!" exclaims Tom Bull. "Tom Callaway died 'ithout a
copper t' bury un."
"Tom Callaway," says my uncle, evasively, "didn't have no _call_ t' be
buried; he was drown-ded."
My uncle's old shipmate sipped his whiskey with absent, but
grateful, relish, his eyes continuing to wander over so much of me
as grew above the table, which was little enough. Presently my
uncle was subjected to the same severe appraisement, and wriggled
under it in guilty way--an appraisement of the waterside slops:
the limp and shabby cast-off apparel which scantily enveloped his
great chest, insufficient for the bitter rain then sweeping the
streets. Thence the glance of this Tom Bull went blankly over the
foggy room, pausing nowhere upon the faces of the folk at the bar,
but coming to rest, at last, upon the fly-blown rafters (where was
no interest), whence, suddenly, it dropped to my hand, which lay
idle and sparkling upon the sticky table.
"Tom Callaway's son!" he mused.
My hand was taken, spread down upon the calloused palm of Tom Bull, in
disregard of my frown, and for a long time the man stared in puzzled
silence at what there he saw. 'Twas very still, indeed, in the little
stall where we three sat; the boisterous laughter, the shuffling and
tramp of heavy boots, the clink of glasses, the beating of the rain
upon the windows seemed far away.
"I'd not be s'prised," says Tom Bull, in the low, hoarse voice of awe,
"if them there was di'monds!"
"They is," says my uncle, with satisfaction.
"Di'monds!" sighs Tom Bull. "My God!"
'Twas boredom--the intimate inspection, the question, the start of
surprise. 'Twas all inevitable, so familiar--so distastefully
intrusive, too. 'Twas a boredom hard to suffer, and never would have
been borne had not the occasion of it been my uncle's delight. 'Twas
always the same: Diamonds? ay, diamonds! and then the gasped "My God!"
They would pry into this, by the Lord! and never be stopped by my
scowl and the shrinking of my flesh. It may be that the parade my
misguided guardian made of me invited the intimacy, and, if so, I have
no cry to raise against the memory of it; but, whatever, they made
free with the child that was I, and boldly, though 'twas most boresome
and ungrateful to me. As a child my hand was fingered and eyed by
every 'longshore jack, coast-wise skipper, and foreign captain from
the Turkey Cock to the sign of The King George. And wherever I went
upon the streets of St. John's in those days there was no escape: the
glitter of me stopped folk in their tracks--to turn and stare and
wonder and pass muttering on.
"Three in that one, Tom," adds my uncle.
'Twas a moment before Tom Bull had mastered his amazement. "Well,
well!" cries he. "Di'monds! Three in that one! Lord, Lord, think o'
that! This wee feller with all them di'monds! An' Skipper Nicholas,"
says he, drawing closer to my beaming uncle, "this here red stone,"
says he, touching the ring on my third finger, "would be a jool? A
ruby, like as not?"
"'Tis that," says my uncle.
"An' this here?" Tom Bull continues, selecting my little finger.
"Well, now, Tom," says my uncle, with gusto, for he delighted in these
discussions, "I 'low I better tell you 'bout that. Ye see, lad," says
he, "that's a seal-ring, Tom. I'm told that gentlemen wears un t'
stamp the wax o' their corr-ee-spondence. 'Twas Sir Harry that give me
the trick o' that. It haves a D for Daniel, an' a C for Callaway; an'
it haves a T in the middle, Tom, for Top. I 'lowed I'd get the Top in
somewheres, so I put it in atween the D an' the C t' have it lie snug:
for I'm not wantin' this here little Dannie t' forget that Top was t'
the wheel in his younger days." He turned to me, and in a voice quite
broken with affection, and sadly hopeless, somehow, as I recall,
"Dannie, lad," says he, "ye'll never forget, will ye, that Top was t'
the wheel? God bless ye, child! Well, Tom," turning now to his
shipmate, "ye're a man much sailed t' foreign parts, an' ye wouldn't
think it ungenteel, would ye, for a lad like Dannie t' wear a
seal-ring? No? I'm wonderful glad o' that. For, Tom," says he, most
earnestly, "I'm wantin' Dannie t' be a gentleman. He's just _got_ t'
be a gentleman!"
"A gentleman, Nick?"
"He've _got_ t' be a gentleman!"
"You'll never manage that, Nick Top," says Tom Bull.
"Not manage it!" my uncle indignantly complained. "Why, look, Tom
Bull--jus' _look_--at them there jools! An' _that's_ on'y a poor
beginnin'!"
Tom Bull laid my hand very gingerly upon the table, as though 'twere a
thing not lightly to be handled lest it fall to pieces in his grasp.
He drew my left hand from my pocket and got it under the light.
"Two pearls," says my uncle, "'longside a emerald. Aft o' that you'll
be like t' find two more di'monds. Them's first-water Brazil, Tom."
Tom Bull inquiringly touched my watch-guard.
"Eighteen karat," says my uncle.
Tom Bull drew the watch from its pocket and let it lie glittering in
his hand; the jewels, set shyly in the midst of the chasing, glowed in
the twilight of the stall.
"Solid," says my uncle.
Tom Bull touched my velvet jacket with the tip of his finger.
"Imported direck," says my uncle, "from Lon'on. Direck, Tom--is
you hearin' me?--direck from Lon'on. Not," says he, with quick
consideration, "that we've no respeck for home talent. My, my, no!
Dannie haves a matter o' thirteen outfits done right here in St.
John's. You beat about Water Street for a week, Tom, an' you'll
_sight_ un. Fill your glass, Tom! We're well met this night. Leave me
talk t' you, lad. Leave me talk t' ye about Dannie. Fill up, an' may
the Lord prosper your smugglin'! 'Tis a wild night without. I'm
glad enough t' be in harbor. 'Tis a dirty night; but 'tis not blowin'
_here_, Tom--an' that's the bottle; pour your dram, lad, an' take
it like a man! God save us! but a bottle's the b'y t' make a fair
wind of a head wind. Tom," says he, laying a hand on my head--which
was the ultimate expression of his affection--"you jus' ought t'
clap eyes on this here little ol' Dannie when he've donned his
Highland kilts. He's a little divil of a dandy then, I'm tellin'
you. Never a lad o' the city can match un, by the Lord! Not match
my little Dannie! Clap eyes," says he, "on good ol' little Dannie!
Lord save ye, but of all the young fellers you've knowed he's the
finest figger of a lad--"
"Uncle Nick!" I cried, in pain--in pain to be excused (as shall be
told).
"Hush, lad!" croons he. "Never mind!"