CHAPTER III
STEPHEN'S TALE
I had never been home with Grandfather Nat before. I fancy that somescruples of my mother's, in the matter of the neighbourhood and thecharacter of the company to be seen and heard at the Hole in the Wall,had hitherto kept me from the house, and even from the sugary elysium ofthe London Dock. Now I was going there at last, and something of eageranticipation overcame the sorrow of the day.
We went in an omnibus, which we left in Commercial Road. Here mygrandfather took order to repair my disappointment in the matter ofpear-drops; and we left the shop with such a bagful that it would not gointo the accustomed pocket at all. A little way from this shop, and onthe opposite side of the way, stood a house which my mother had morethan once pointed out to me already; and as we came abreast of it now,Grandfather Nat pointed it out also. "Know who lives there, Stevy?" heasked.
"Yes," I said; "Mr. Viney, that father's ship belongs to."
There was a man sitting on the stone baluster by the landing of thefront steps, having apparently just desisted from knocking at the door.He was pale and agitated, and he slapped his leg distractedly with afolded paper.
"Why," said my grandfather, "that's Crooks, the ship-chandler. He looksbad; wonder what's up?"
With that the door opened, and a servant-girl, in bonnet and shawl,emerged with her box, lifting and dragging it as best she might. The manrose and spoke to her, and I supposed that he was about to help. But ather answer he sank back on the balustrade, and she hauled the box to thepavement by herself. The man looked worse than ever, now, and he movedhis head from side to side; so that it struck me that it might be thathis mother also was dead; perhaps to-day; and at the thought all theflavour went from the pear-drop in my mouth.
We turned up a narrow street which led us to a part where the riverplainly was nearer at every step; for well I knew the curious smell thatgrew as we went, and that had in it something of tar, something of ropeand junk, something of ships' stores, and much of a blend of unknownoutlandish merchandise. We met sailors, some with parrots andaccordions, and many with undecided legs; and we saw more of thehang-dog fellows who were not sailors, though they dressed in the sameway, and got an inactive living out of sailors, somehow. They leaned onposts, they lurked in foul entries, they sat on sills, smoking; andoften one would accost and hang to a passing sailor, with a grinning,trumped-up cordiality that offended and repelled me, child as I was. Andthere were big, coarse women, with flaring clothes, and hair that shonewith grease; though for them I had but a certain wonder; as for why theyall seemed to live near the docks; why they all grew so stout; and whythey never wore bonnets.
As we went where the street grew fouler and more crooked, and where darkentries and many turnings gave evidence of the complication of courtsand alleys about us, we heard a hoarse voice crooning a stave of asea-song, with the low scrape of a fiddle striking in here and there, asit were at random. And presently there turned a corner ahead and facedtoward us a blind man, with his fiddle held low against his chest, andhis face lifted upward, a little aside. He checked at the corner to hitthe wall a couple of taps with the stick that hung from his wrist, andcalled aloud, with fouler words than I can remember or could print: "Nowthen, damn ye! Ain't there ne'er a Christian sailor-man as wants a toono' George? Who'll 'ave a toon o' George? Ain't ye got no money, damn ye?Not a brown for pore blind George? What a dirty mean lot it is! Who'll'ave a 'ornpipe? Who'll 'ave a song o' pore George?... O damn y' all!"
And so, with a mutter and another tap of the stick, he came creepingalong, six inches at a step, the stick dangling loose again, and the bowscraping the strings to the song:--
Fire on the fore-top, fire on the bow, Fire on the main-deck, fire down below! Fire! fire! fire down below! Fetch a bucket o' water; fire down below!
The man's right eye was closed, but the left was horribly wide and whiteand rolling, and it quite unpleasantly reminded me of a large chinamarble that lay at that moment at the bottom of my breeches pocket,under some uniform buttons, a key you could whistle on, a brass knobfrom a fender, and a tangle of string. So much indeed was I possessedwith this uncomfortable resemblance in later weeks, when I had seenBlind George often, and knew more of him, that at last I had no choicebut to fling the marble into the river; though indeed it was somethingof a rarity in marbles, and worth four "alleys" as big as itself.
My grandfather stopped his talk as we drew within earshot of thefiddler; but blind men's ears are keen beyond the common. The bowdropped from the fiddle, and Blind George sang out cheerily: "Why, 'erecomes Cap'en Nat, 'ome from the funeral; and got 'is little grandsonwhat 'e's goin' to take care of an' bring up so moral in 'is celebrated'ouse o' call!" All to my extreme amazement: for what should thisstrange blind man know of me, or of my mother's funeral?
Grandfather Nat seemed a little angry. "Well, well," he said, "your earsare sharp, Blind George; they learn a lot as ain't your business. Ifyour eyes was as good as your ears you'd ha' had your head broke 'forethis--a dozen times!"
"If my eyes was as good as my ears, Cap'en Nat Kemp," the otherretorted, "there's many as wouldn't find it so easy to talk o' breakin'my 'ed. Other people's business! Lord! I know enough to 'ang some of'em, that's what I know! I could tell you some o' _your_ business if Iliked,--some as you don't know yourself. Look 'ere! You bin to afuneral. Well, it ain't the last funeral as 'll be wanted in yourfamily; see? The kid's mother's gone; don't you be too sure 'is father'ssafe! I bin along o' some one you know, an' _'e_ don't look like lastin'for ever, 'e don't; 'e ain't in 'ealthy company."
Grandfather Nat twitched my sleeve, and we walked on.
"Awright!" the blind man called after us, in his tone of affableferocity. "Awright, go along! You'll see things, some day, near as wellas I can, what's blind!"
"That's a bad fellow, Stevy," Grandfather Nat said, as we heard thefiddle and the song begin again. "Don't you listen to neither his talknor his songs. Somehow it don't seem nat'ral to see a blind man such abad 'un. But a bad 'un he is, up an' down."
I asked how he came to know about the funeral, and especially about mycoming to Wapping--a thing I had only learned of myself an hour before.My grandfather said that he had probably learned of the funeral fromsomebody who had been at the Hole in the Wall during the day, and hadasked the reason of the landlord's absence; and as to myself, he hadheard my step, and guessed its meaning instantly. "He's a keen sharprascal, Stevy, an' he makes out all of parties' business he can. He knewyour father was away, an' he jumped the whole thing at once. That's hisway. But I don't stand him; he don't corne into my house barrin' hecomes a customer, which I can't help."
Of the meaning of the blind man's talk I understood little. But heshocked me with a sense of insult, and more with one of surprise. For Ihad entertained a belief, born of Sunday-school stories, that blindnessproduced saintly piety--unless it were the piety that caused theblindness--and that in any case a virtuous meekness was an essentialcondition of the affliction. So I walked in doubt and cogitation.
And so, after a dive down a narrower street than any we had yettraversed (it could scarce be dirtier), and a twist through a steep andserpentine alley, we came, as it grew dusk, to the Hole in the Wall. Ofodd-looking riverside inns I can remember plenty, but never, before orsince, have I beheld an odder than this of Grandfather Nat's. It waswooden and clap-boarded, and, like others of its sort, it was everywherelarger at top than at bottom. But the Hole in the Wall was not onlytop-heavy, but also most alarmingly lopsided. By its side, and halfunder it, lay a narrow passage, through which one saw a strip of theriver and its many craft, and the passage ended in Hole-in-the-WallStairs. All of the house that was above the ground floor on this siderested on a row of posts, which stood near the middle of the passage;and the burden of these posts, twisted, wavy, bulging, and shapeless,hung still more toward the opposite building; while the farther side,bounded by a later brick house, was vertical, as though a great wedge,point downward, had been cut away to permit the
rise of the newer wall.And the effect was as of a reeling and toppling of the wholeconstruction away from its neighbour, and an imminent downfall into thepassage. And when, later, I examined the side looking across the river,supported on piles, and bulging and toppling over them also, I decidedthat what kept the Hole in the Wall from crashing into the passage wasnothing but its countervailing inclination to tumble into the river.
Painted large over the boards of the front, whose lapped edges gave theletters ragged outlines, were the words THE HOLE IN THE WALL; and below,a little smaller, NATHANIEL KEMP. I felt a certain pride, I think, inthe importance thus given the family name, and my esteem of mygrandfather increased proportionably with the size of the letters.
There was a great noise within, and Grandfather Nat, with a quick looktoward the entrance, grunted angrily. But we passed up the passage andentered by a private door under the posts. This door opened directlyinto the bar parlour, the floor whereof was two steps below the level ofthe outer paving; and the size whereof was about thrice that of asentry-box.
The din of a quarrel and a scuffle came from the bar, and mygrandfather, thrusting me into a corner, and giving me his hat, ran outwith a roar like that of a wild beast. At the sound the quarrel hushedin its height. "What's this?" my grandfather blared, with a thump on thecounter that made the pots jump. "What sort of a row's this in my house?Damme, I'll break y' in halves, every mother's son of ye!"
I peeped through the glass partition, and saw, first, the back of thepotman's head (for the bar-floor took another drop) and beyond that andthe row of beer-pulls, a group of rough, hulking men, one with blood onhis face, and all with an odd look of sulky guilt.
"Out you go!" pursued Grandfather Nat, "every swab o' ye! Can't leavethe place not even to go to--not for nothin', without a row like this,givin' the house a bad name! Go on, Jim Crute! Unless I'm to chuck ye!"
The men had begun filing out awkwardly, with nothing but here and there:"Awright, guv'nor"--"Awright, cap'en." "Goin', ain't I?" and the like.But one big ruffian lagged behind, scowling and murmuring rebelliously.
In a flash Grandfather Nat was through the counter-wicket. With a dartof his long left arm he had gripped the fellow's ear and spun him roundwith a wrench that I thought had torn the ear from the head; and in thesame moment had caught him by the opposite wrist, so as to stretch theman's extended arm, elbow backward, across his own great chest; aposture in which the backward pull against the elbow joint brought ayell of agony from the victim. Only a man with extraordinarily long armscould have done the thing exactly like that. The movement was sosavagely sudden that my grandfather had kicked open the door and flungJim Crute headlong into the street ere I quite understood it; when therecame a check in my throat and tears in my eyes to see the man so cruellyhandled.
Grandfather Nat stood a moment at the door, but it seemed that hiscustomer was quelled effectually, for presently he turned inward again,with such a grim scowl as I had never seen before. And at that a queerhead appeared just above the counter--I had supposed the bar to bewholly cleared--and a very weak and rather womanish voice said, in tonesof over-inflected indignation: "Serve 'em right, Cap'en Kemp, I'm sure.Lot o' impudent vagabones! Ought to be ashamed o' theirselves, that theyought. Pity every 'ouse ain't kep' as strict as this one is, that's whatI say!"
And the queer head looked round the vacant bar with an air of virtuousdefiance, as though anxious to meet the eye of any so bold as tocontradict.
It was anything but a clean face on the head, and it was overshadowed bya very greasy wideawake hat. Grubbiness and unhealthy redness contendedfor mastery in the features, of which the nose was the most surprising,wide and bulbous and knobbed all over; so that ever afterward, in anyattempt to look Mr. Cripps in the face, I found myself whollydisregarding his eyes, and fixing a fascinated gaze on his nose; and Icould never recall his face to memory as I recalled another, but alwaysas a Nose, garnished with a fringe of inferior features. The face hadbeen shaved--apparently about a week before; and by the sides hung longhair, dirtier to look at than the rest of the apparition.
My grandfather gave no more than a glance in the direction of thislittle man, passed the counter and re-joined me, pulling off his coat ashe came. Something of my tingling eyes and screwed mouth was visible, Isuppose, for he stooped as he rolled up his shirt-sleeves and said:"Why, Stevy boy, what's amiss?"
"You--you--hurt the man's ear," I said, with a choke and a sniff; fortill then Grandfather Nat had seemed to me the kindest man in the world.
Grandfather Nat looked mightily astonished. He left his shirt-sleevewhere it was, and thrust his fingers up in his hair behind, through thegrey and out at the brown on top. "What?" he said. "Hurt 'im? Hurt 'im?Why, s'pose I did? He ain't a friend o' yours, is he, young 'un?"
I shook my head and blinked. There was a gleam of amusement in mygrandfather's grim face as he sat in a chair and took me between hisknees. "Hurt 'im?" he repeated. "Why, Lord love ye, _I'd_ get hurt if Ididn't hurt some of 'em, now an' then. They're a rough lot--a bitter badlot round here, an' it's hurt or be hurt with them, Stevy. I got tofrighten 'em, my boy--an' I do it, too."
I was passing my fingers to and fro in the matted hair on mygrandfather's arm, and thinking. He seemed a very terrible man now, andperhaps something of a hero; for, young as I was, I was a boy. Sopresently I said, "Did you ever kill a man, Gran'fa' Nat?"