William Wymark Jacobs - Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection)

“Wouldn’t he like my table, too?” inquired Mr. Hatchard, with bitter sarcasm.

His wife said that she would inquire, and brought back word next day that Mr. Sadler, the new lodger, would like it. It disappeared during Mr. Hatchard’s enforced absence at business, and a small bamboo table, weak in the joints, did duty in its stead.

The new lodger, a man of middle age with a ready tongue, was a success from the first, and it was only too evident that Mrs. Hatchard was trying her best to please him. Mr. Hatchard, supping on bread and cheese, more than once left that wholesome meal to lean over the balusters and smell the hot meats going into Mr. Sadler.

“You’re spoiling him,” he said to Mrs. Hatchard, after the new lodger had been there a week. “Mark my words—he’ll get above himself.”

“That’s my look-out,” said his wife briefly. “Don’t come to me if you get into trouble, that’s all,” said the other.

Mrs. Hatchard laughed derisively. “You don’t like him, that’s what it is,” she remarked. “He asked me yesterday whether he had offended you in any way.”

“Oh! He did, did he?” snarled Mr. Hatchard. “Let him keep himself to himself, and mind his own business.”

“He said he thinks you have got a bad temper,” continued his wife. “He thinks, perhaps, it’s indigestion, caused by eating cheese for supper always.”

Mr. Hatchard affected not to hear, and, lighting his pipe, listened fer some time to the hum of conversation between his wife and Mr. Sadler below. With an expression of resignation on his face that was almost saintly he knocked out his pipe at last and went to bed.

Half an hour passed, and he was still awake. His wife’s voice had ceased, but the gruff tones of Mr. Sadler were still audible. Then he sat up in bed and listened, as a faint cry of alarm and the sound of somebody rushing upstairs fell on his ears. The next moment the door of his room burst open, and a wild figure, stumbling in the darkness, rushed over to the bed and clasped him in its arms.

“Help!” gasped his wile’s voice. “Oh, Alfred! Alfred!”

“Ma’am!” said Mr. Hatchard in a prim voice, as he struggled in vain to free himself.

“I’m so—so—fr-frightened!” sobbed Mrs. Hatchard.

“That’s no reason for coming into a lodger’s room and throwing your arms round his neck,” said her husband, severely.

“Don’t be stu-stu-stupid,” gasped Mrs. Hatchard. “He—he’s sitting downstairs in my room with a paper cap on his head and a fire-shovel in his hand, and he—he says he’s the—the Emperor of China.”

“He? Who?” inquired her husband.

“Mr. Sad-Sadler,” replied Mrs. Hatchard, almost strangling him. “He made me kneel in front o’ him and keep touching the floor with my head.”

The chair-bedstead shook in sympathy with Mr. Hatchard’s husbandly emotion.

“Well, it’s nothing to do with me,” he said at last.

“He’s mad,” said his wife, in a tense whisper; “stark staring mad. He says I’m his favorite wife, and he made me stroke his forehead.”

The bed shook again.

“I don’t see that I have any right to interfere,” said Mr. Hatchard, after he had quieted the bedstead. “He’s your lodger.”

“You’re my husband,” said Mrs. Hatchard. “Ho!” said Mr. Hatchard. “You’ve remembered that, have you?”

“Yes, Alfred,” said his wife.

“And are you sorry for all your bad behavior?” demanded Mr. Hatchard.

Mrs. Hatchard hesitated. Then a clatter of fire-irons downstairs moved her to speech.

“Ye-yes,” she sobbed.

“And you want me to take you back?” queried the generous Mr. Hatchard.

“Ye-ye-yes,” said his wife.

Mr. Hatchard got out of bed and striking a match lit the candle, and, taking his overcoat from a peg behind the door, put it on and marched downstairs. Mrs. Hatchard, still trembling, followed behind.

“What’s all this?” he demanded, throwing the door open with a flourish.

Mr. Sadler, still holding the fire-shovel sceptre-fashion and still with the paper cap on his head, opened his mouth to reply. Then, as he saw the unkempt figure of Mr. Hatchard with the scared face of Mrs. Hatchard peeping over his shoulder, his face grew red, his eyes watered, and his cheeks swelled.

“K-K-K-Kch! K-Kch!” he said, explosively. “Talk English, not Chinese,” said Mr. Hatchard, sternly.

Mr. Sadler threw down the fire-shovel, and to Mr. Hatchard’s great annoyance, clapped his open hand over his mouth and rocked with merriment.

“Sh—sh—she—she—” he spluttered.

“That’ll do,” said Mr. Hatchard, hastily, with a warning frown.

“Kow-towed to me,” gurgled Mr. Sadler. “You ought to have seen it, Alf. I shall never get over it—never. It’s—no—no good win-winking at me; I can’t help myself.”

He put his handkerchief to his eyes and leaned back exhausted. When he removed it, he found himself alone and everything still but for a murmur of voices overhead. Anon steps sounded on the stairs, and Mr. Hatchard, grave of face, entered the room.

“Outside!” he said, briefly.

“What!” said the astounded Mr. Sadler. “Why, it’s eleven o’clock.”

“I can’t help it if it’s twelve o’clock,” was the reply. “You shouldn’t play the fool and spoil things by laughing. Now, are you going, or have I got to put you out?”

He crossed the room and, putting his hand on the shoulder of the protesting Mr. Sadler, pushed him into the passage, and taking his coat from the peg held it up for him. Mr. Sadler, abandoning himself to his fate, got into it slowly and indulged in a few remarks on the subject of ingratitude.

“I can’t help it,” said his friend, in a low voice. “I’ve had to swear I’ve never seen you before.”

“Does she believe you?” said the staring Mr. Sadler, shivering at the open door.

“No,” said Mr. Hatchard, slowly, “but she pre-tends to.”

The night-watchman sat brooding darkly over life and its troubles. A shooting corn on the little toe of his left foot, and a touch of liver, due, he was convinced, to the unlawful cellar work of the landlord of the Queen’s Head, had induced in him a vein of profound depression. A discarded boot stood by his side, and his gray-stockinged foot protruded over the edge of the jetty until a passing waterman gave it a playful rap with his oar. A subsequent inquiry as to the price of pigs’ trotters fell on ears rendered deaf by suffering.

“I might ‘ave expected it,” said the watchman, at last. “I done that man—if you can call him a man—a kindness once, and this is my reward for it. Do a man a kindness, and years arterwards ‘e comes along and hits you over your tenderest corn with a oar.”

He took up his boot, and, inserting his foot with loving care, stooped down and fastened the laces.

Do a man a kindness, he continued, assuming a safer posture, and ‘e tries to borrow money off of you; do a woman a kindness and she thinks you want tr marry ‘er; do an animal a kindness and it tries to bite you—same as a horse bit a sailorman I knew once, when ‘e sat on its head to ‘elp it get up. He sat too far for’ard, pore chap.

Kindness never gets any thanks. I remember a man whose pal broke ‘is leg while they was working together unloading a barge; and he went off to break the news to ‘is pal’s wife. A kind-’earted man ‘e was as ever you see, and, knowing ‘ow she would take on when she ‘eard the news, he told her fust of all that ‘er husband was killed. She took on like a mad thing, and at last, when she couldn’t do anything more and ‘ad quieted down a bit, he told ‘er that it was on’y a case of a broken leg, thinking that ‘er joy would be so great that she wouldn’t think anything of that. He ‘ad to tell her three times afore she understood ‘im, and then, instead of being thankful to ‘im for ‘is thoughtfulness, she chased him ‘arf over Wapping with a chopper, screaming with temper.