Paid off, free for the afternoon, with overcoat buttoned up and collar
about my ears, I stroll aimlessly through the town. It has often been
my ambition to emulate those correct creatures who, when they come to
a place, study maps, read guide-books, and "do" the sights one by one.
But, so far, I am a dead failure. Even my own dear London is known to
me by long-continued pedestrianism. When I reach a town I put up by
chance, I see things by chance, leave on an impulse, and carry away
precious glimpses of nothing in particular that I can piece together
at leisure into a sort of mnemonic mosaic. Well, so I stroll through
Swansea, trying to forget the only two facts which I know concerning
it--that Beau Nash was born here and Savage died here. They are like
bits of grit in the oyster of my content. I will turn aside and see
life.
I enter one of my favourite taverns. I am surrounded by maidens,
barmaidens, and a fat landlady. Amy, Baby, Starlight, Chubby--all
are here, clamorous for the baubles I had promised them four months
before. My friend would be shocked at their familiarity; I admit, from
a certain point of view, it is scandalous. But, then, all things are
still forgiven to sailors. And so, business being slack, I am dragged
into the bar-parlour and commanded to disgorge. I produce bottles of
perfume, little buckhorns, ostrich feathers, flamingo wings, and bits
of silk. The big pocket of my overcoat is discharged of its cargo. I
am suffocated with salutes of the boisterous, tom-boy kind, and am
commanded to name my poison.
As a reward, Chubby promises to go with me to that iridescent
music-hall up the street. Chubby's appearance is deceptive. She is
diminutive, with a Kenwigs tail of plaited hair down her straight
little back. But she is almost twenty; she is amazingly swift behind
the bar, and no man has yet bilked her of a penny. There is a Spartan
courage about the small maiden, too, which I cannot but admire. Her
parents are dead; her sisters both died the same week a year ago; she
must earn her living; but--"No use mopin', is it?" she inquires as she
fingers a locket containing photographs which hangs around her neck.
That is her philosophy, couched in language that resembles herself.
I should be only too delighted to take her. But--there is my
incorrigible habit of reading a book or lapsing into intellectual
oblivion while at the play. How many comedies have I "seen" without
hearing a single word! So, when I go to the iridescent music-hall,
something in the programme, or the audience, will set me musing, and
Chubby will be neglected. I think I shall buy two tickets, and let
Chubby take someone else--George the Fourth, say!
And Baby, fingering the silk I have brought her--Baby personifies for
me that terrible problem which women and men treat so callously. Baby
has already passed several milestones on the road to Alsatia and we
shall meet her some day, somewhere between Hyde Park Corner and
Wardour Street.
But that is far away yet. The glamour of the thing, its risk, its
pleasantness, are over her as yet. Officers of the Mercantile Marine
are not squeamish in a home port, nor are they scarce. Baby's rings
are worth good money. The sordid bickerings of the trade are in the
future, the callous calculations, the indispensable whiskey.
Now, while Baby is bending the violet eyes of hers upon a piece of
Moorish silk, let me clear my mind of humbug. I am no sentimentalist
in this matter. I am not certain, yet, that "my lady" of to-day is
the sole repository of every virtue; neither am I dogmatic about
"necessary vice," the "irreducible minimum," and such-like large
viewpoints. I have, indeed, nursed a theory that our floating
population might be induced to receive a certain percentage of these
adjuncts to civilisation, one or two on each ship, say, with results
satisfactory to all concerned. Everyone knows that, in towns, the
demand is grotesquely disproportionate to the supply. The Board of
Trade could deal with the question of certificates of competency.
As I sit in this bar-parlour, it seems to me that an inextinguishable
howl of horror is rising from the people of England. And as I desire
to be honest, I admit that I am overawed by that same tumult--a sort
of singing in my ears--and so leave the problem to Mr. H. G. Wells, or
someone else who deals habitually in social seismics.
After all, descriptions of sea-port barmaids can scarcely be
interesting to my friend. If she lose no time in providing him with
hot rum and water (not ungenerous with the sugar), she can rival
either Pompadour or La Pelletier--he cares not which. Which is the
callous regard of the whole business to which I have referred.
Once more adrift, I wend my way dockwards, pause at the Seamen's
Mission, hesitate, and am lost. I enter a workhouse-like room, and a
colourless man nods good-afternoon. Conveniences for "writing home,"
newspapers, magazines, flamboyant almanacks of the _Christian Herald_
type, Pears' Soap art, and "_Vessels entered inwards_." For the asking
I may have back numbers of the _Christian Herald_. Mrs. Henry Wood's
story-books are obtainable by the cubic foot. As the colourless man
opens his mouth to address me, I shudder and back out. Give me vice,
give me boredom, give me anything in the world but this "practical
religion" and smug futility of ignoble minds.
I fear my philosophy has broken away and I am misanthropic. Possibly
because I shall not see my friend this home-coming. Moreover, I am due
on the ship even now, for the others are going off to their triumphal
"finish" up town. Faring back, then, I come to the dock-head at
sunset, and it is my hour. Darkness is rushing down upon the shipping
as I watch. In the distance hill piled on hill, blue dome upon blue
dome, spangled with myriad firefly lights, backed by the smoky red of
winter sunset; and here the shipping, ghostly now in the darkness,
exquisitely beautiful in the silence. From out at sea comes a faint
"_ah-oo-oo-oo_"--one more toiler coming in to rest. And it is night.