William Wymark Jacobs - At Sunwich Port, Complete

“She’ll grow out of it soon,” said Mrs. Kingdom; “you wait and see.”

The captain growled and waited, and found his sister’s prognostications partly fulfilled. The exuberance of Miss Nugent’s manner was certainly modified by time, but she developed instead a quiet, unassuming habit of authority which he liked as little.

“She gets made such a fuss of, it’s no wonder,” said Mrs. Kingdom, with a satisfied smile. “I never heard of a girl getting as much attention as she does; it’s a wonder her head isn’t turned.”

“Eh!” said the startled captain; “she’d better not let me see anything of it.”

“Just so,” said Mrs. Kingdom.

The captain dwelt on these words and kept his eyes open, and, owing to his daughter’s benevolent efforts on his behalf, had them fully occupied. He went to sea firmly convinced that she would do something foolish in the matrimonial line, the glowing terms in which he had overheard her describing the charms of the new postman to Mrs. Kingdom filling him with the direst forebodings.

It was his last voyage. An unexpected windfall from an almost forgotten uncle and his own investments had placed him in a position of modest comfort, and just before Miss Nugent reached her twentieth birthday he resolved to spend his declining days ashore and give her those advantages of parental attention from which she had been so long debarred.

Mr. Wilks, to the inconsolable grief of his ship-mates, left with him. He had been for nearly a couple of years in receipt of an annuity purchased for him under the will of his mother, and his defection left a gap never to be filled among comrades who had for some time regarded him in the light of an improved drinking fountain.

On a fine afternoon, some two months after his release from the toils of the sea, Captain Nugent sat in the special parlour of The Goblets. The old inn offers hospitality to all, but one parlour has by ancient tradition and the exercise of self-restraint and proper feeling been from time immemorial reserved for the elite of the town.

The captain, confident in the security of these unwritten regulations, conversed freely with his peers. He had been moved to speech by the utter absence of discipline ashore, and from that had wandered to the growing evil of revolutionary ideas at sea. His remarks were much applauded, and two brother-captains listened with grave respect to a disquisition on the wrongs of shipmasters ensuing on the fancied rights of sailor men, the only discordant note being struck by the harbour-master, a man whose ideas had probably been insidiously sapped by a long residence ashore.

“A man before the mast,” said the latter, fortifying his moral courage with whisky, “is a human being.”

“Nobody denies it,” said Captain Nugent, looking round.

One captain agreed with him.

“Why don’t they act like it, then?” demanded the other.

Nugent and the first captain, struck by the remark, thought they had perhaps been too hasty in their admission, and waited for number two to continue. They eyed him with silent encouragement.

“Why don’t they act like it, then?” repeated number two, who, being a man of few ideas, was not disposed to waste them.

Captain Nugent and his friend turned to the harbour-master to see how he would meet this poser.

“They mostly do,” he replied, sturdily. “Treat a seaman well, and he’ll treat you well.”

This was rank heresy, and moreover seemed to imply something. Captain Nugent wondered dismally whether life ashore would infect him with the same opinions.

“What about that man of mine who threw a belaying-pin at me?”

The harbour-master quailed at the challenge. The obvious retort was offensive.

“I shall carry the mark with me to my grave,” added the captain, as a further inducement to him to reply.

“I hope that you’ll carry it a long time,” said the harbour-master, gracefully.

“Here, look here, Hall!” expostulated captain number two, starting up.

“It’s all right, Cooper,” said Nugent.

“It’s all right,” said captain number one, and in a rash moment undertook to explain. In five minutes he had clouded Captain Cooper’s intellect for the afternoon.

He was still busy with his self-imposed task when a diversion was created by the entrance of a new arrival. A short, stout man stood for a moment with the handle of the door in his hand, and then came in, carefully bearing before him a glass of gin and water. It was the first time that he had set foot there, and all understood that by this intrusion Mr. Daniel Kybird sought to place sea-captains and other dignitaries on a footing with the keepers of slop-shops and dealers in old clothes. In the midst of an impressive silence he set his glass upon the table and, taking a chair, drew a small clay pipe from his pocket.

Aghast at the intrusion, the quartette conferred with their eyes, a language which is perhaps only successful in love. Captain Cooper, who was usually moved to speech by externals, was the first to speak.

“You’ve got a sty coming on your eye, Hall,” he remarked.

“I daresay.”

“If anybody’s got a needle,” said the captain, who loved minor operations.

Nobody heeded him except the harbour-master, and he muttered something about beams and motes, which the captain failed to understand. The others were glaring darkly at Mr. Kybird, who had taken up a newspaper and was busy perusing it.

“Are you looking for anybody?” demanded Captain Nugent, at last.

“No,” said Mr. Kybird, looking at him over the top of his paper.

“What have you come here for, then?” inquired the captain.

“I come ‘ere to drink two o’ gin cold,” returned Mr. Kybird, with a dignity befitting the occupation.

“Well, suppose you drink it somewhere else,” suggested the captain.

Mr. Kybird had another supposition to offer. “Suppose I don’t?” he remarked. “I’m a respect-able British tradesman, and my money is as good as yours. I’ve as much right to be here as you ‘ave. I’ve never done anything I’m ashamed of!”

“And you never will,” said Captain Cooper’s friend, grimly, “not if you live to be a hundred.”

Mr. Kybird looked surprised at the tribute. “Thankee,” he said, gratefully.

“Well, we don’t want you here,” said Captain Nugent. “We prefer your room to your company.”

Mr. Kybird leaned back in his chair and twisted his blunt features into an expression of withering contempt. Then he took up a glass and drank, and discovered too late that in the excitement of the moment he had made free with the speaker’s whisky.

“Don’t apologize,” interrupted the captain; “it’s soon remedied.”

He took the glass up gingerly and flung it with a crash into the fireplace. Then he rang the bell.

“I’ve smashed a dirty glass,” he said, as the bar-man entered. “How much?”

The man told him, and the captain, after a few stern remarks about privacy and harpies, left the room with his friends, leaving the speechless Mr. Kybird gazing at the broken glass and returning evasive replies to the inquiries of the curious Charles.

He finished his gin and water slowly. For months he had been screwing up his courage to carry that room by assault, and this was the result. He had been insulted almost in the very face of Charles, a youth whose reputation as a gossip was second to none in Sunwich.

“Do you know what I should do if I was you?” said that worthy, as he entered the room again and swept up the broken glass.

“I do not,” said Mr. Kybird, with lofty indifference.

“I shouldn’t come ‘ere again, that’s what I should do,” said Charles, frankly. “Next time he’ll throw you in the fireplace.”