The Story of Jael/Chapter VII

‘So—this is London,’ said Jael, looking round at the masts and warehouses. She was not cheerful in tone or in appearance. The vessel had taken a long time creeping up the Thames. She had not been able to remain in her forecastle berth, but had come out, leaned over the bulwarks and watched the coast, and the ships, the pretty wooded hills of Kent, the white chalk pits, the cement works smoking, the steamers shooting past, the long flax of Essex marsh, the chemical works, that made the air poisonous that wafted from them.

Jael had asked no questions; she was not greatly interested in what she saw, for she was occupied with her own troubles.

There were four men on the Cordelia, Tom May, Jerry Mustard, and two others; one of these latter was, however, hardly to be designated a man, he was a gawky boy. The man she did not know was a swarthy fellow with rings in his ears, and spoke broken English. He and May addressed her occasionally with offensive familiarity, and May put his arm round her waist as she leaned against the side looking at the coast.

‘Let me go,’ said Jael angrily.

‘You’re so light,’ answered May, ‘I’m afraid of your being blown away.’

His tone, his look, his freedom offended her, and she complained to Jerry, who shrugged his shoulders, and said they would soon be in London, and then be quit of May and the rest of them.

At length they entered dock, and Jael looking about her, in a tone of discouragement and disappointment said, ‘So—this is London.’

‘Ay,’ answered Jeremiah. ‘It is down Surrey side, Rotherhithe. You don’t suppose, do you, that we can sail up to Westminster Abbey, or Madame Tussaud’s, or Buckingham Palace to deliver over our cargo of beans? Come along ashore with me, you have no baggage, and we’ll go to an eating-shop and have something good to dine on.’

She followed him with some reluctance, and yet with the consciouness that she had committed herself to his charge, and that she had gone too far to draw back. But she could not shake off her uneasiness and growing regret at having acted with such lack of consideration. She argued with herself that no other course was open to her, that she had no other friend, and yet was unable to convince herself that she had done right. The conflict in her mind had worn her, and her face had lost its freshness, and her eye its fire. Moreover, her clothes, exposed to rain and sea-water, had become draggled and discoloured.

She looked about the wharfs, at the men and bales, and the warehouses. Rotherhithe seemed to her a very dingy place, not at all equal to her anticipation of what London should be.

Jerry led her to an eating-house, and ordered dinner. As they sat alone together in a compartment, with a table between them, and a dirty cloth over it, stained with ale and gravy, she was silent for a while, and then abruptly asked:

‘Jerry! Why did Captain May say I was light and might be blown overboard?’

‘How am I to understand his words?’ asked the young man in reply.

‘He chuckled and looked at that foreign fellow with the earrings, and then at the boy and laughed, and the boy laughed aloud. What did he mean?’

‘He was a fool to say it. He showed his ignorance,’ answered Jeremiah Mustard.

‘But what did he mean?’ She looked across the table at him, and leaned her chin in her hands, and her elbows on the dirty table, and with her great dark eyes fixed on his, insisted on an explanation.

The young man played with the steel-pronged fork set in a black handle, tapping it on the table, and laughed. He was a handsome fellow, remarkably handsome, with curly chestnut hair, and tine eyes, dark as those of Jael, but without their fire and expressiveness. His nose was well-shaped, and the mouth would have been beautiful had it been furnished with lips less thick.

‘Well, Jael,’ he said reluctantly, ‘I suppose he thought you light to fly away with me; but he was wrong, you know. He knew nothing of how you were weighted.’

‘Now,’ said the girl, slowly, ‘I do not understand you.’

Neither spoke for a while. Presently Jeremiah began to complain that the dinner was not served, they were kept waiting an unreasonable time, and then explained that the hour was not that at which customers were expected at the eating-house, so that nothing was ready. Jael did not pay attention to his complaints and explanations.

‘We’ll have something to drink first,’ he said.

‘Jerry,’ said the girl, ‘when are we to be married? It must be at once.’

‘How can it be at once?’ he asked roughly. ‘Our banns have not been called, and if we get a licence it will cost us at least a guinea. You don’t suppose it worth a guinea—why that would be eight acres in the Dominion of Canada. And for banns we should have to spend three weeks waiting. We must get to Liverpool and on to the sea before that. We can be married in America, or, if there’s a parson on the ship that takes us over, we will get spliced then. Don’t bother yourself about that.’

‘But I do, Jerry. We must be married at once if it does cost a guinea.’

‘Here!’ called Jerry to the shabby woman who attended on the tables as waitress, ‘you bring a pint of bitter, and be sharp.’

This was produced more quickly than the required meat and vegetables. Jeremiah took a long draught, and then passed the pewter across to Jael, who shook her head.

‘Well, if you won’t, others will,’ said Mustard, and again applied his lips to the tankard. When he had set it down, he said, ‘You don’t guess what a chance I have given up for you, Jael. Do you know Argent Soames?’

‘Only by name.’

He has got a mighty fine daughter—Julia.’

Jael looked at him hastily.

‘Argent Soames has sometimes to do with the B. & W. Railway, and I might have had a post on it, if I had liked, that would have suited me beautifully.’

‘But you could not take it. You had enlisted.’

‘Oh, gammon about that!’

‘What do you mean, Jerry?’

‘You are not so soft as that, are you?’

She looked intently at him with perplexity in her great eyes. She was still resting her chin in her hands.

‘That was all fudge,’ explained Jeremiah. ‘You don’t mean to tell me that you believed I had enlisted?’

‘You told me that you had.’

‘Oh yes, I did say so, but that is no reason why you should heave believed it.’

‘You said it, so of course I believed it. Did you not enlist, Jerry?’

He raised the pewter again to drink, partly to cover his confusion, for her true eyes searchingly fixed on him made him feel uncomfortable.

‘By George!’ he said, ‘I wish you would not stare a fellow out of countenance. It isn’t womanly, it isn’t respectful.’

‘I want to know if you did not enlist, Jerry.’

‘No, I did not.’

‘Then why did you say you had?’

‘Because—I didn’t think I’d persuade you otherwise to come away with me.’

‘It was a lie,’ she said, and worked her elbows impatiently, angrily, on the table.

‘Now, don’t put yourself out,’ said Mustard, ‘you’re irritable for want of victuals. It is always so when the meals aren’t regular. Have some bitter, it is cool, and rare stuff.’ He thrust the tankard towards her again. Again she shook her head, this time angrily. And now her eyes began to flash.

‘It was a lie, then,’ she said.

‘Well,’ he apologised, ‘I wouldn’t call it that. I had more than half a mind to enlist, and I swear to you, I would have done so, had not Argent Soames offered to take me on to the line. I would have liked that. I’ve tried it afore, and I can drive an engine as well as any one. Besides, it’s not hard to run one between Wyvenhoe and Brightlingsea, and back again from Brightlingsea to Wyvenhoe—a chap can’t go wrong so long as the bridge be right. You see the B. and W. has got across with the G.E.R. again, and she’s going to set up her own station, and work her own engines, and not allow a G.E.R. man on her premises. By gorr! She’s right. Why should the G.E.R. suck her blood? derive all the profits? The profits must be great, such a lot of oysters travel now-a-days from Brightlingsea. Shut those confounded eyes of yours, or look elsewhere. There’s an advertisement of Guinness’s Stout may interest you. Stare at that, if you please, and not at me.’

‘If you did not enlist, you did not desert?’

He attempted to put her down with bluster. ‘You are a fool to ask such a question. How could I desert if I did not enlist? As well expect a man to take off his coat when he has not drawn one on. I wish I’d a paper here. You—’ (to the waitress) ‘bring me the Daily Telegraph.’

He was given the newspaper; he opened it and held it up before him as a screen between himself and Jael. She put up her hand and beat it down, tearing it in two as she did so.

‘Now, then,’ said he, ‘see what you have done. You’ll have to pay a penny for that. Look at that woman if you want an engaging object of study, not at me.’

‘Why did you tell me you had deserted?’ asked Jael with persistency. She was a girl with strong will and much passion, and both were being roused by the falsehood and treachery of the man she had loved.

‘Why did I tell you?’ he repeated, and laughed mockingly, and held up his hand between himself and her to shut off the level steady glance of her eyes. ‘Why? If you want to be satisfied, I won’t balk you of your pleasure. Because I thought you wouldn’t take the money unless you had to buy me out.’

‘I am glad,’ she said, with constraint in her voice, ‘I am glad for one thing that you are not a deserter.’

‘And what is that one reason?’

He looked at her, but could not bear her eyes, and put up his open hand again. Her eyes pierced him, shone like the sun into the vile chamber of his heart, and showed even to himself how full of foulness it was.

‘I am glad,’ she said, ‘because only for that ten pounds was I tempted to take the money.’

‘But as I do not want it for Her Majesty, we will spend it in acres—eighty of them.’

‘I have not got the money. I did not take it.’

‘What?’ He started to his feet with an oath.

‘No, Jeremiah! I was tempted—for the sake of the ten pounds to buy you out—but I did not touch it.’

‘You have not the fifty sovereigns?’

‘No, Jeremiah, I could not touch them. I tried to reason with myself that I might take—not all, that I never could have taken—but a part, just ten pounds; but—’

‘But what?’ He had clenched his fists; he stood opposite her, at the table, she with her chin in her hands, and her elbows on the table, looking up at him. His blood mounted to his face, flushed his cheeks, kindled his eyes.

‘But,’ she continued, ‘I could not touch any of the money. It seemed to me that it would be like robbing my father. I knew that the money was mine—and yet I could not believe I had a right to it against his will. So—I let it lie where it was.’

‘You fool!’ he shouted, with a curse, and struck her in the face with his clenched fist. ‘You fool! Do you think I cared a snap of the fingers for you! There are other and handsomer girls in the world than you. And now—I have lost the place Argent Soames offered me all through you.’

He would have struck her again, but she stood up. The blow had dazed her for a moment and made sparks shoot before her eyes, but she speedily recovered herself. She stood up, drew herself to her full height, and tried to speak. Not a word would come. Her bosom was heaving as the sea in a storm. Flashes came and went in her eyes as the summer lightning had come and gone in the sky that night as she watched it from under the railway bridge that spanned Gull-Fleet. Her hands were clenched at her side. Between her eyes, on her brow, was a red mark, where his hand had struck her.

At that moment the waitress appeared with plates.

‘Irish stew, by all that is glorious! It is want of victuals has upset me, and I did express myself too strongly. There, Jael, sit down to the stew.’

She did not speak; with her hands still clenched, with her teeth set, her brows contracted, without a word she left the eating-house.

‘Well,’ said Jeremiah, ‘I must eat both portions. What a mercy it is I do dote on Irish stew!’