The Story of Jael/Chapter II

was the beginning of their acquaintance, or friendship, or love affair. I say or, not and, because it was not acquaintanceship and friendship and love in one, or in rapid development from one to the other. The tie between them was elastic, sometimes very close, sometimes very loose; sometimes it was real love, and sometimes only cold, nodding acquaintance. The reason for this variation of relation was to be sought in Jael, not in Jeremiah Mustard.

Jael was impulsive, hot and capricious. Sometimes she quarrelled with Jeremiah, as—it must be confessed—she quarrelled with her father, and as—but that was allowable—she quarrelled with her gull.

It is a curious fact that man—and woman also—is never contented with what he has, but always wishes for what he has not; grumbles at what is, and desires what is not; and pants with unutterable longing for what cannot be. The artist who paints exquisitely sulks over his pictures and craves to be a musician, and curses his folly when he was a boy in not practising his fingers on the piano; and the sailor wants to be a soldier, and the soldier longs for a deck and the blue sea; and the girl’s ideal of happiness is to be a wife, and the wife sighs to be an unencumbered maiden again; and the first fiddle in the great orchestra of life envies the cornopean, and the cornopean longs for the double bass, and the man who saws on that elephantine instrument is conscious how absurd he looks poking his head from behind the great stem, and sighs ‘I want to be a fluter!’ and the conductor is disgusted at swaying the bâton, and would like to sit in the audience; and in the audience those in the reserved seats say that the only situation for hearing the music properly is back in the shilling or sixpenny places, and those in the rear growl because they are where the draught creeps round their feet and ears, and their benches are uncushioned, and—because they are not in the fauteuils reserved for the wealthy.

So was it with Shamgar Tapp. He was condemned by his profession as pilot over Gull-Fleet to be always at his post—to have indeed a very light task, but a monotonous and trying one—and his soul was full of ambition to see the world, to visit Asia, Africa, and America. Why should every young cub at Brightlingsea be able to follow his desires and go in a sailing craft somewhere, and see something beyond the flat coast of Essex, and sea, purer, bluer than the estuary of the Colne?

‘I’ve heard tell,’ said Mr Shamgar Tapp, ‘that there be black people—niggers. Why am I never to set my eyes on a nigger? Why has Providence so ordained that I can never go sailing to Africa, and see niggers?—Or—if that be too much—why doesn’t niggers come here and show theirselves off to me? There was a parcel of ’em came to Colchester and performed on the banjo and knuckle-bones there, but I couldn’t go. I must stay here, and mind the bridge always so. Everything in this world goes contrary. The parson, he came here t’other day, and said we couldn’t expect to have everything in this world. No, I dare say not—but shall I see niggers in the world to come? I doubt but such as go there will have left their black skins behind them, and there’ll be a pretty state of things for me—never seen a nigger in all my life, and never a chance of seeing any for all eternity. It isn’t,’ argued Shamgar, ‘the nigger himself I care for so much; it is that I want to satisfy my mind about him. From all I can see, the sun burns us brown, just the same as roasting coffee or doing a chop; it don’t make smut of us. Well, I believe—and till I see and satisfy myself with my own eyes, I will believe—that the real nigger is a sort of a deep red brown—a very dark chestnut; but as for being black—real black—get along!’

Tapp was working the crank turning the bridge, which had been opened to allow of a boat laden with straw to pass out with the falling tide.

‘What are reason and the faculty of observation given to a man for, if they are to lead him to knock his nose against stone walls, or lose his way in a marsh? Doesn’t reason, and the light of nature, and daily observation show that the sun browns the skin, and doesn’t blacken? The sun black a man’s skin as a shoe-boy blacks a boot!—get along!’

The bridge was closed, the lines united.

‘Life is made up of contrarinesses,’ said Tapp; ‘else why should I have been left a widower with that rollicking she-baby—that Jael to bring up. Lord! what a bother I had with her, and spoon-feeding and teething, and now—she’ll be running after all the boys. That’s the way with gals. Then there’s her money, that is, her mother’s money; it was thirty-eight pounds, but I’ve made it up to forty; the which is potted and put away. I’ll go and see it is all right.’

He took his spade and went into the marsh; at one spot known only to himself he removed the turf. ‘Right it is,’ said Tapp. ‘Forty pounds all in gold. I’m not a fool to trust that to banks and speculators, and sink in railways, and put into funds that goes up and down, up and down, like a ship’s deck, and may go down, down some day altogether. Not I. There is the pot—an old preserved ginger pot, and forty sovereigns in it—Jael’s own money. Ill give it her when she marries, and I’ve seen the back of her.’

‘Look there!’ said Jael, touching the arm of Jeremiah—they were together, sitting under a thorn-tree on the land above the marsh. ‘Father’s looking at my treasure. I never told you of that. My mother had some money, and father keeps it for me.’

‘How much?’

‘Oh I do not know—forty or fifty pounds.’

‘That’s a great lot.’

‘Is it? I have no use for it now; but I may some day, if we get married. Father hides the pot about in different places, so that no one may discover where it is; but I always know. He’s not afraid of telling me. But if he didn’t tell me, I should know. I could watch him.’

‘Fifty pounds! Why you might buy a boat with that.’

‘I dare say I might, but father won’t let me have the money till I marry; then I shall have it, and then you may do what you like with it.’

‘Fifty pounds!’ again repeated Jeremiah, ‘Why, if I had that I could buy a share in the Cordelia along with Tom May. He was saying yesterday in the ‘Anchor’ he wanted a mate. We’d go after chalk to Kent—there’s a lot required for the new sea wall, and we’d catch sprats when we couldn’t go after oysters. I’d make a pint of money in no time. That’s the worst of it; if you want to reap money, you must sow money. There’s the trouble with me. I’ve nothing, and so I never can get anything. I see lots of chances before me, but I can’t take hold of them, because, like the man without arms, I can’t grip. It’s all money does it. You’d soon see; if I had a little to start with, what a lot I’d make. I’ve brains. I can see through a milestone, but I can’t make a start without some thing to start on. Fifty pounds would just do it. Pot your money! What an idea! Invest it. Lend it to me, and I will turn it over and over, and every time it turns it will grow. Go and ask your father to lend me the money.’

‘It is of no use. He is suspicious of all speculations.’

‘Then take it.’

‘What—my money?’

‘Yes, your money.’

‘But father would not let me.’

‘It is your money, not his.’

Jael shook her head. ‘Father will not part with the money till I marry; so he who wants the money must take me along with it.’

‘How old are you, Jael?’

‘I’m just on eighteen.’

‘And I am twenty-one; just of age, and come into my property.’

‘What is your property, Jerry?’

‘Nothing—nothing at all. There is the aggravation. I have brains. I was the best boy in the school; always head of the class; but I can do nothing, begin nothing, gain nothing, because I’ve nothing to begin with. If you were a mathematician, Jael, you’d know that you may try to multiply naught till you’re black in the face, and naught is the product. You must have a cipher of some value, and tack naughts to that before you can make tens, and hundreds, and thousands, and millions. But without a cipher to begin with, with naught but a naught, all the adding of naughts makes naught but naught. That’s my situation. I could do wonders if I had something to begin upon.’

‘There’s nothing for it, then,’ said Jael, with her face grave, ‘but for you to go to father and ask him to give us to you.’

‘Us? What do you mean?’

‘Me, and the pot, and the sovereigns, and the gull.’

‘I’ll risk it,’ said Jeremiah; ‘but I don’t want the gull no more than I do the pot.’

‘Who takes me takes the gull, and he who takes the money must have the ginger pot also to hold it in.’

‘What do you say, Jael? Shall I risk it?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why not? We are both as strong as ever we are likely to be, and able to keep house together.’

Afar off stood Shamgar. He had caught sight of the two.

‘Ah,’ said he, ‘there they are—that pair of chattering good-for-nothing, mischievous jays—Jael and Jerry—J. and J. Looking on, were they, whilst I was digging up the pot. I shouldn’t be surprised if Jael were to tell that fellow all about it. I must hide it elsewhere. I don’t trust him or any one knowing where the girl’s money is hid. It would be as bad as putting it in a bank, or speculating with it. I wonder what they’re a-talking about? A pair of darned chattering, good-for-nothing, pecking, mischievous jays. Up to wickedness of some sort, I’ll be bound. Whatever did my wife, Clementina, mean by leaving of me with that girl to bring up. I wish she’d come back from the world of spirits, just for a moment—I wish she would—and, by Gorr! I’d pull her nose.’