A MAID CALLED BARBARA
I suppose the Skull and Spectacles was not quite the best place in the
world for a lad of my age, and perhaps for some lads it might have been
fruitful of evil. But I found then, and have found all through my life,
an infinite deal of entertainment in studying the ways and humours of
all kinds of fellowships, without of necessity accommodating myself to
the morals or the manners of the company. I have been very happy with
gipsies on a common, though I never poisoned a pig or coped a nag. I
have mixed much with sailors of all kinds, than whom no better
fellows--the best of them, and that is the greater part--exist on earth,
and no worse the worse; and yet I think I have not been stained with all
the soils of the sea. I have been with pirates, and thieves, and
soldiers of fortune, and gentlemen of blood, and highway robbers; and
once I supped with a hangman--off boiled rabbit and tripe, an excellent
alliance in a dish--and all this without being myself either pirate,
highwayman, or yet hangman. It is not always a man's company, but mostly
a man's mind, that makes him what he is or is not. If a man is going to
be a pitiful fellow and sorry knave, I am afraid you will not save him
by the companionship of a synod of bishops; nor will you spoil a fine
fellow if he occasionally rubs shoulders with rogues and vagabonds.
The girl at the Skull and Spectacles was kind to me, partly, perhaps,
because I differed somewhat from the ordinary ruck of customers of the
Skull and Spectacles. Had it been known that that crazy, villainous old
alehouse contained such a pearl, I make no doubt that the favour of the
place would have gone up, and its customers improved in outward seeming,
if not in inward merits or morals. The gallants of the town--for we had
our gallants even in that tranquil seaport--would have been assailed by
a thirst that naught save Nantz and schnapps and strong ale of the Skull
and Spectacles could assuage, and the gentlemen of the Chisholm Hunt
would have discovered that the only way after a run with the harriers
was through the vilest part of the town and among the oozy timbers of
the wharves which formed the kingdom of the Skull and Spectacles.
[Illustration: "SHE HAD ALWAYS A PLEASANT SMILE FOR ME WHEN I CAME."]
But few of the townspeople knew of the Skull and Spectacles. It never
thought to stretch its custom into the higher walks of life. It throve
on its own clients, its high-booted, thick-bearded, shaggy-coated
seamen, whose dealings with the sea were more in the way of smuggling,
buccaneering, scuttling, and marooning than in honest merchandise or the
service of the King. These sea-wolves liked the place famously, and
would have grievously resented the intrusion of the laced waistcoats of
the provincial dandies or the scarlet jackets of the Chisholm Hunt. So
the Skull and Spectacles went its own way, and a very queer way, too,
unheeded and unheeding.
How the girl and I got to be so friendly I scarcely know. It is like
enough that I thought we were more friendly than we really were, and
that the girl took my boyish homage with more indifference than I
guessed for. She had always a pleasant smile for me when I came, and she
was always ready to pass a pleasant word or two with me, even on the
days when the business in the place was at its heaviest, and when the
room was choking fit to burst with the shag-haired sea-fellows.
But there were times, too, better times for me, or worse, it may be,
when the Skull and Spectacles was almost deserted; when all its wonted
customers were away smuggling, or buccaneering, or cutting throats, or
crimping, or following whatever was their special occupation in life.
In such lonely times the girl was willing enough to spend half an hour
or more in speech with me. Of course, I fell in love with her, like the
donkey that I was, and worshipped the rotting boards of the Skull and
Spectacles because she was pleased to walk upon them. Her speech was all
of strange lands, and it fed my frenzy as dry wood feeds a fire. Her
people were all sea-people, her talk was all sea-talk, her words were
all sea-words. It was a strange rapture to me to sit and listen while
she spoke of the things that were dearest to my heart and to watch her
while she spoke. Then I used to feel a wild, foolish longing, which I
had never the courage to carry out, to tell her how beautiful she
was--as if she needed to be told that by me!--and how madly I loved her.
All of which I very profoundly thought and believed, but all of
which--for I was a shy lad with women-kind--I kept very devoutly to
myself.
I wonder if the girl had any idea of my devotion. I thought she had; I
felt sure that my love must be as patent to her as it was to myself, and
that she must needs prize it a little. I believe, indeed, that I never
talked to her very much during those happy times when she would come out
on to the creaking terrace and speak to me of the things which she never
seemed to weary of--the sea, and ships, and seamen. As for me, who would
not have wearied of any theme that gave her pleasure, had it even been
books and lessons, I was overjoyed that my sea longings could help me on
with her.
Then her black eyes would follow the river's course to where the estuary
widened to the sea, and search the horizon and point out to me the sails
that starred it here and there, and sometimes say with a laugh: 'Perhaps
one of those is my ship.'
But when I asked her what was her ship she would smile and shake her
head and say nothing; and once, when I asked her if it was her father's
ship, she laughed loudly and said yes, it was her father's ship she
longed for.
So late spring slipped into early summer; and, as the year grew kinder,
so every day my boy's heart grew hotter with its first foolish passion.
Somewhere about the middle of June, as I knew, her birthday was; and in
view of that saint's day of my calendar I had hoarded my poor pocket
money to buy her a little toy from the jeweller in the Main Street,
whose show seemed to me more opulent than the treasures of Aladdin.
The day found me all of a tremble. I had sat up half the night looking
at my token and kissing it a thousand times. It was a little locket that
was fashioned like a heart, and on the one side her name was engraved,
and on the other mine, for I thought by this to show what I dared not
say.
It was early when I stole from our shop, little less than ten, and I
calculated that I would look in at Mr. Davies's on my way back and make
some excuse for my truancy, and so be back in time for noonday dinner;
and I knew if I were a little late my mother would forgive me. Lord, how
I ran along the quays! I seemed to fly, and yet the road seemed endless.
As I ran I noted that some new ships had entered the night before, and
men on the wharves were busy unloading, and sailors were lounging round
with that foreign air which Jack always has after a cruise.
When I got to the Skull and Spectacles the landlord was standing before
his door smoking. As he saw me he nodded, and when I asked for Barbara,
saying I had a message for her, he told me she was upstairs, and added
something which I did not stay to hear.
I bounded up the crazy stairs with a beating heart. I was all on fire
with excitement at the thought of offering her a gift; my blood seemed
to be turned to quicksilver, and to race through its channels with a
feverish swiftness.
There was a gallery at the head of the stairs, a gallery on to which
looked the doors of the guest-rooms of the inn--rooms where bearded men
from over sea sometimes passed a night when they were uncertain where to
journey next, or when they were too much pleased with the liquor of the
Skull and Spectacles to leave it before morning.
As I swung round the stairs into the gallery I thought for a moment that
it was empty, as it lay before me dark and uninviting. Then from the far
end came the sound of voices, laughter, and laughing expostulation--this
last in a woman's voice that I knew too well. While I stood staring, not
understanding, and bewildered by a sudden and wholly meaningless alarm,
one of the doors at the end of the gallery that was just ajar swung
open, and Barbara slipped from it, laughing, breathless, with tumbled
hair and crimson cheeks. A man sprang after her and caught her,
unreluctant, in his arms.
I see the scene now as vividly as I saw it then with my despairing
boyish eyes. The great strong man had his arms close about her; her
dark hair was all about her face and over her shoulders as she flung her
head back to meet the great red mouth that was seeking hers. I have seen
since pictures of satyrs embracing nymphs, and whenever I see them I
cannot stay a shudder running through me as I think of that dim,
creaking gallery and the dishevelled girl and the strong man and the
tearful, trembling lad who beheld their passion.
I suppose a painter would have admired the group they made; she with her
body eagerly flung forward and her beautiful face all on fire with warm
animal emotion; he, big and amber-bearded, his great mouth crushed
against hers as if he wanted to absorb her life, and his arms about her
pliant body, at once yielding and resisting in its reckless disarray.
But I was not a painter--only a longshore mooncalf--and my eyes swam and
my tongue swelled till I thought it would stick between my teeth as
those of poor rogues do on the gallows, and I was chickenish enough to
wish to blubber. And while I stood there, stockish and stupid, the pair
became aware of me. I do not think I made any noise, but their eyes
dropped from each other and turned on me, and the man scowled a little,
without loosening his hold, but the woman, no whit troubled, flung one
arm away from her lover's neck and held out her hand to me, with a
laugh, and greeted me merrily.
'Why, it's little Raphael!' she said, laughing the words into the yellow
beard of the sea-thief who clipped her, and again she nodded at me, in
no ways discomposed by the strangeness of her position. But I, poor
fool, could not bear it, and I turned and ran down the stairs as if the
Devil himself were after me.