Фредерик Марриет
Jacob Faithful
“O yes, I understand—Latin!”
“Exactly—and they call for Deaf Stapleton; and by this means he gets more good fares than any other waterman, and does less work.”
“But how will he manage now that I am with him?”
“O, I suppose it will depend upon his customers; if a single person wants to go down, you will take the sculls; if they call for oars, you will both go; if he considers Deaf Stapleton only is wanted, you will remain on shore; or, perhaps, he will insist upon your being deaf too.”
“But I do not like deceit.”
“No, it’s not right; although it appears to me that there is a great deal of it. Still I should like you to sham deaf, and then tell me all that people say. It would be so funny. Father never will tell a word.”
“So far, your father, to a certain degree, excuses himself.”
“Well, I think he will soon tell you what I have now told you, but till then you must keep your promise; and now you must do as you please, as I must go down in the kitchen, and get dinner on the fire.”
“I have nothing to do,” replied I; “can I help you?”
“To be sure you can, and talk to me, which is better still. Come down and wash the potatoes for me, and then I’ll find you some more work. Well, I do think we shall be very happy.”
I followed Mary Stapleton down into the kitchen, and we were soon very busy, and very noisy, laughing, talking, blowing the fire, and preparing the dinner. By the time that her father came home we were sworn friends.
Chapter Twenty Two
Is very didactic, and treats learnedly on the various senses, and “human nature;” is also diffuse on the best training to produce a moral philosopher—Indeed, it contains materials with which to build up one system, and half-a-dozen theories, as these things are now made
I was rather curious, after the secret confided to me by Mary Stapleton, to see how her father would behave; but when we had sat and talked some time, as he appeared to have no difficulty in answering to any observation in a common pitch of the voice, I observed to him that he was not so deaf as I thought he was.
“No, no,” replied he; “in the house I hear very well, but in the open air I can’t hear at all, if a person speaks to me two yards off. Always speak to me close to my ear in the open air, but not loud, and then I shall hear you very well.” I caught a bright glance from Mary’s blue eye, and made no answer. “This frost will hold, I’m afraid,” continued Stapleton, “and we shall have nothing to do for some days but to blow our fingers and spend our earnings; but there’s never much doing at this time of the year. The winter cuts us watermen up terribly. As for me, I smokes my pipe and thinks on human natur’; but what you are to do Jacob, I can’t tell.”
“Oh, he will teach me to read and write,” replied Mary.
“I don’t know that he shall,” replied Stapleton. “What’s the use of reading and writing to you? We’ve too many senses already, in my opinion, and if so be we have learning to boot, why then all the worse for us.”
“How many senses are there, father?”
“How many! I’m sure I can’t tell, but more than enough to puzzle us.”
“There are only five, I believe,” said I; “first, there’s hearing.”
“Well,” replied Stapleton “hearing may be useful at times; but not hearing at times is much more convenient. I make twice as much money since I lost the better part of my hearing.”
“Well, then, there’s seeing,” continued I.
“Seeing is useful at times, I acknowledge; but I knows this, that if a man could pull a young couple about the river, and not be able to see now and then, it would be many a half-crown in his pocket.”
“Well, then, now we come to tasting.”
“No use at all—only a vexation. If there was no tasting we should not care whether we ate brown bread or roast beef, drank water or XX ale; and in these hard times that would be no small saving.”
“Well, then, let me see, there’s smelling.”
“Smelling’s no use whatever. For one good smell by the river’s side there be ten nasty ones; and there is everywhere, to my conviction.”
“Which is the next, Jacob?” said Mary, smiling archly.
“Feeling.”
“Feeling! that’s the worst of the whole. Always feel too cold in winter, too hot in summer—feel a blow too; feeling only gives pain; that’s a very bad sense.”
“Well, then, I suppose you think we should get on better without our senses.”
“No, not without all of them. A little hearing and a little seeing be all very well; but there are other senses which you have forgot, Jacob. Now, one I takes to be the very best of the bunch is smoking.”
“I never heard that was a sense,” replied I, laughing.
“Then you haven’t half finished your education, Jacob.”
“Are reading and writing senses, father?” inquired Mary.
“To be sure they be, girl; for without sense you can’t read and write; and rowing be a sense just as well; and there be many other senses; but, in my opinion, most of the senses be nonsense, and only lead to mischief.”
“Jacob,” said Mary, whispering to my ear, “isn’t loving a sense?”
“No, that’s nonsense,” replied I.
“Well, then,” replied she, “I agree with my father that nonsense is better than sense; but still I don’t see why I should not learn to read and write, father.”
“I’ve lived all my life without it, and never felt the want of it—why can’t you?”
“Because I do feel the want of it.”
“So you may, but they leads no no good. Look at those fellows at the Feathers; all were happy enough before Jim Holder, who is a scholar, came among them, and now since he reads to them they do nothing but grumble, and growl, and talk about I don’t know what—corn laws, and taxes, and liberty, and all other nonsense. Now, what could you do more than you do now, if you larnt to read and write?”
“I could amuse myself when I’ve nothing to do, father, when you and Jacob are away. I often sit down, after I’ve done all my work, and think what I shall do next, and at last I look out of the window and make faces at people, because I’ve nothing better to do. Now, father, you must let him learn me to read and write.”
“Well, Mary, if you will, you will; but recollect, don’t blame me for it—it must be all on your own head, and not on my conscience. I’ve lived some forty or fifty years in this world, and all my bad luck has been owing to having too much senses, and all my good luck to getting rid of them.”
“I wish you would tell me how that came to pass,” said I; “I should like to hear it very much, and it will be a lesson to Mary.”
“Well, I don’t care if I do, Jacob, only I must light my pipe first; and, Mary, do you go for a pot o’ beer.”
“Let Jacob go, father. I mean him to run on all my errands now.”
“You mustn’t order Jacob, Mary.”
“No, no—I wouldn’t think of ordering him, but I know he will do it—won’t you, Jacob?”
“Yes, with pleasure,” replied I.
“Well, with all my heart, provided it be all for love,” said Stapleton.
“Of course, all for love,” replied Mary, looking at me, “or Latin—which, Jacob?”
“What’s Latin?” said her father.
“Oh! that’s a new sense Jacob has been showing me something of, which, like many others, proved to be nonsense.”
I went for the beer, and when I returned found the fire burning brightly, and a strong sense of smoking from old Stapleton’s pipe. He puffed once or twice more, and then commenced his history as follows:
“I can’t exactly say when I were born, nor where,” said old Stapleton, taking his pipe out of his mouth, “because I never axed either father or mother, and they never told me, because why, I never did ax, and that be all agreeable to human natur’.” Here Stapleton paused, and took three whiffs of his pipe. “I recollects when I was a little brat about two foot nothing, mother used to whack me all day long, and I used to cry in proportion. Father used to cry shame, and then mother would fly at him; he would whack she; she would up with her apron in one corner and cry, while I did the same with my pinbefore in another; all that was nothing but human natur’.” (A pause, and six or seven whiffs of the pipe.)
“I was sent to school at a penny a week, to keep me out of the way, and out of mischief. I larnt nothing but to sit still on the form and hold my tongue, and so I used to amuse myself twiddling my thumbs, and looking at the flies as they buzzed about the room in the summer time; and in the winter, cause there was no flies of no sort, I used to watch the old missus a-knitting of stockings, and think how soon the time would come when I should go home and have my supper, which, in a child was nothing but human natur’.” (Puff, puff, puff.) “Father and mother lived in a cellar; mother sold coals and ’tatoes, and father used to go out to work in the barges on the river. As soon as I was old enough, the schoolmissus sent word that I ought to learn to read and write, and that she must be paid threepence a week; so father took me away from school, because he thought I had had education enough; and mother perched me on a basket upside down, and made me watch that nobody took the goods while she was busy down below; and then I used to sit all day long watching the coals and ’tatoes, and never hardly speaking to nobody; so having nothing better to do, I used to think about this, and that, and everything, and when dinner would be ready, and when I might get off the basket; for you see thinking be another of the senses, and when one has nothing to do, and nothing to say, to think be nothing more than human natur’.” (Puff, puff, and a pause for a drink out of the pot.) “At last, I grew a big stout boy, and mother said that I ate too much, and must earn my livelihood somehow or other, and father for once agreed with her; but there was a little difficulty how that was to be done; so until that was got over I did nothing at all but watch the coals and ’tatoes as before. One day mother wouldn’t give me wituals enough, so I helped myself; so she whacked me, so I, being strong, whacked she; so father, coming home, whacked me, so I takes to my heels and runs away a good mile before I thought at all about how I was to live; and there I was, very sore, very unhappy, and very hungry.” (Puff, puff, puff, and a spit.) “I walks on, and on, and then I gets behind a coach, and then the fellow whips me, and I gets down again in a great hurry, and tumbles into the road, and before I could get up again, a gemman, in a gig drives right over me, and breaks my leg. I screams with pain, which if I hadn’t had the sense of feeling, of course I shouldn’t have minded. He pulls up and gets out, and tells me he’s very sorry. I tells him so am I. His servant calls some people, and they takes me into a public-house, and lays me on the table all among the pots of beer, sends for a doctor, who puts me into bed, and puts my leg right again; and then I was provided for, for at least six weeks, during which the gemman calls and axes how I feel myself; and I says, ‘Pretty well, I thanky.’” (Puff, puff—knock the ashes out, pipe refilled, relighted, a drink of beer, and go on.) “So when I was well, and on my pins again, the gentleman says, ‘What can I do for you?’ and the landlord cuts him short by saying that he wanted a pot-boy, if I liked the profession. Now, if I didn’t like the pots I did the porter, which I had no share of at home, so I agrees. The gemman pays the score, gives me half a guinea, and tells me not to be lying in the middle of the road another time. I tells him I won’t, so he jumps into his gig, and I never cast eyes upon him since. I stayed three years with my master, taking out beer to his customers, and always taking a little out of each pot for myself, for that’s nothing but human natur’ when you likes a thing; but I never got into trouble until one day I sees my missus a-kissing in the back parlour with a fellow who travels for orders. I never said nothing at first; but at last I sees too much, and then I tells master, who gets into a rage, and goes into his wife, stays with her half-an-hour, and then comes out and kicks me out of the door, calling me a liar, and telling me never to show my face again. I shies a pot at his head, and showed him anything but my face, for I took to my heels, and ran for it as fast as I could. So much for seeing; if I hadn’t seen, that wouldn’t have happened. So there I was adrift, and good-bye to porter.” (Puff, puff; “Mary, where’s my ’baccy stopper?” Poke down, puff, puff, spit, and proceed.) “Well, I walks towards Lunnen, thinking on husbands and wives, porter and human natur’, until I finds myself there, and then I looks at all the lighted lamps, and recollects that I haven’t no lodging for the night, and then all of a sudden I thinks of my father and mother, and wonders how they be going on. So I thought I’d go and see, and away I went, comes to the cellar, and goes down. There was my mother with a quartern of gin before her, walking to and fro, and whimpering to herself; so says I, ‘Mother, what’s the matter now?’ at which she jumps up and hugs me, and tells me I’m her only comfort left. I looked at the quartern and thinks otherwise; so down I sits by her side, and then she pours me out a glass, and pours out all her grief, telling me how my father had left her for another woman, who kept another cellar in another street, and how she was very unhappy, and how she had taken to gin—which was nothing but human natur’, you see, and how she meant to make away with herself; and then she sent for more quarterns, and we finished them. What with the joy of finding me, and the grief at losing my father, and the quarterns of gin, she went to bed crying drunk and fell fast asleep. So did I, and thought home was home after all. Next morning I takes up the business, and finds trade not so bad after all; so I takes the command of all, keeps all the money, and keeps mother in order; and don’t allow drinking nor disorderly conduct in the house; but goes to the public-house every night for a pipe and a pot.
“Well, everything goes on very well for a month, when who should come home but father, which I didn’t approve of, because I liked being master. So I, being a strong chap, then says, ‘If you be come to ill-treat my mother, I’ll put you in the kennel, father. Be off to your new woman. Ar’n’t you ashamed of yourself?’ says I. So father looks me in the face, and tells me to stand out of the way, or he’ll make cat’s meat of me; and then he goes to my mother, and after a quarter of an hour of sobbing on her part, and coaxing on his, they kiss and make friends; and then they both turns to me, and orders me to leave the cellar, and never to show my face again. I refuses: father flies at me, and mother helps him; and between the two I was hustled out to find my bread how and where I could. I’ve never taken a woman’s part since.” (Puff, puff, puff, and a deep sigh.) “I walks down to the water-side, and having one or two shillings in my pocket, goes into a public-house to get a drop of drink and a bed. And when I comes in, I sees a man hand a note for change to the landlady, and she gives him change. ‘That won’t do,’ says he, and he was half tipsy: ‘I gave you a ten-pound note, and this here lad be witness.’ ‘It was only a one,’ says the woman. ‘You’re a damned old cheat,’ says he, ‘and if you don’t give me the change, I’ll set your house on fire, and burn you alive.’ With that there was a great row, and he goes out for the constable and gives her in charge, and gives me in charge as a witness, and then she gives him in charge, and so we all went to the watchhouse together, and slept on the benches. The next morning we all appeared before the magistrate, and the man tells his story and calls me as a witness; but recollecting how much I had suffered from seeing, I wouldn’t see anything this time. It might have been a ten-pound note, for it certainly didn’t look like a one; but my evidence went rather for than against the woman, for I only proved the man to be drunk; and she was let off, and I walked home with her. So says she, ‘You’re a fine boy, and I’ll do you a good turn for what you have done for me. My husband is a waterman, and I’ll make you free of the river; for he hasn’t no ’prentice, and you can come on shore and stay at the public-house when you ar’n’t wanted.’ I jumped at the offer, and so, by not seeing, I gets into a regular livelihood. Well, Jacob, how do you like it?”
“Very much,” replied I.
“And you, Mary?”
“O! I like it very much; but I want father to go on, and to know how he fell in love, and married my mother.”
“Well, you shall have it all by-and-by; but now I must take a spell.”
Chapter Twenty Three
A very sensible chapter, having reference to the senses—Stapleton, by keeping his under control, keeps his head above water in his wherry—Forced to fight for his wife, and when he had won her, to fight on to keep her—No great prize, yet it made him a prize-fighter
Old Stapleton finished his pipe, took another swig at the porter, filled, relighted, puffed to try it, cleared his mouth, and then proceeded:—
“Now, you see, Bartley, her husband, was the greatest rogue on the river; he was up to everything, and stood at nothing. He fleeced as much on the water as she did on the land; for I often seed her give wrong change afterwards when people were tipsy, but I made it a rule always to walk away. As for Bartley, his was always night-work, and many’s the coil of rope I have brought on shore, what, although he might have paid for, he didn’t buy it of the lawful owner, but I never seed or heard, that was my maxim; and I fared well till I served my time, and then they gave me their old wherry, and built a new one for themselves. So I set up on my own account, and then I seed, and heard, and had all my senses, just as they were before—more’s the pity, for no good came of it.” (Puff, puff, puff, puff.) “The Bartleys wanted me to join them, but that wouldn’t do; for though I never meddled with other people’s concerns, yet I didn’t choose to go wrong myself. I’ve seed all the world cheating each other for fifty years or more, but that’s no concern of mine; I can’t make the world better; so all I thinks about it is to keep honest myself: and if every one was to look after his own soul, and not trouble themselves about their neighbours, why, then, it would be all the better for human natur’. I plied at the Swan Stairs, gained my livelihood, and spent it as I got it; for I was then too young to look out a’ter a rainy day.
“One night a young woman in a cloak comes down to the stairs with a bundle in her arms, and seems in a very great taking, and asks me for a boat. I hauls out of the row alongside of the yard, and hands her in. She trips as she steps in, and I catches to save her from falling, and in catching her I puts my hand upon the bundle in her arms, and feels the warm face of a baby. ‘Where am I to go, ma’am?’ says I. ‘O! pull across, and land me on the other side,’ says she; and then I hears her sobbing to herself, as if her heart would break. When we were in the middle o’ the stream, she lifts up her head, and then first she looks at the bundle and kisses it, and then she looks up at the stars which were glittering above in the sky. She kisses the child once more, jumps up, and afore I could be aware of what she was about, she tosses me her purse, throws her child into the water, and leaps in herself. I pulls sharp round immediately, and seeing her again, I made one or two good strokes, comes alongside of her, and gets hold of her clothes. A’ter much ado I gets her into the wherry, and as soon as I seed she was come to again, I pulls her back to the stairs where she had taken me from. As soon as I lands I hears a noise and talking, and several people standing about; it seems it were her relatives, who had missed her, and were axing whether she had taken a boat; and while they were describing her, and the other watermen were telling them how I had taken a fare of that description, I brings her back. Well, they takes charge of her, and leads her home; and then for the first time I thinks of the purse at the bottom of the boat, which I picks up, and sure enough there were four golden guineas in it, beside some silver. Well, the men who plied at the stairs axed me all about it; but I keeps my counsel, and only tells them how the poor girl threw herself into the water, and how I pulled her out again; and in a week I had almost forgot all about it, when up comes an officer, and says to me, ‘You be Stapleton the waterman?’ and I says, ‘Yes, I be.’ ‘Then you must come along with me;’ and he takes me to the police-office, where I finds the poor young woman in custody for being accused of having murdered her infant. So they begins to tax me upon my Bible oath, and I was forced to tell the whole story; for though you may loose all your senses when convenient, yet somehow or another, an oath on the Bible brings them all back again. ‘Did you see the child?’ said the magistrate. ‘I seed a bundle,’ said I. ‘Did you hear the child cry?’ said he. ‘No,’ says I, ‘I didn’t;’ and then I thought I had got the young woman off; but the magistrate was an old fox, and had all the senses at his fingers’ ends. So says he, ‘When the young woman stepped into the boat did she give you the bundle?’ ‘No,’ says I again. ‘Then you never touched it?’ ‘Yes, I did, when her foot slipped.’ ‘And what did it feel like?’ ‘It felt like a piece of human natur’.’ says I, ‘and quite warm like.’ ‘How do you mean?’ says he. ‘Why, I took it by the feel for a baby.’ ‘And it was quite warm, was it?’ ‘Yes,’ replied I, ‘it was.’ ‘Well then, what else took place?’ ‘Why, when we were in the middle of the stream she and her child went overboard; I pulled her in again, but could not see the child.’ Fortunately for the poor girl, they didn’t ask me which went overboard first, and that saved her from hanging. She was confined six months in prison, and then let out again; but you see, if it hadn’t been for my unfortunately feeling the child, and feeling it was warm, which proved its being alive, the poor young woman would have got off altogether, perhaps. So much for the sense of feeling, which I say is of no use to nobody, but only a vexation.” (Puff—the pipe out, relighted—puff, puff.)
“But, father,” said Mary, “did you ever hear the history of the poor girl?”
“Yes, I heard as how it was a hard case, how she had been seduced by some fellow who had left her and her baby, upon which she determined to drown herself, poor thing; and her baby too. Had she only tried to drown her baby I should have said it was quite unnatural; but as she wished to drown herself at the same time, I considers that drowning the baby to take it to heaven with her was quite natural, and all agreeable to human natur’. Love’s a sense which young women should keep down as much as possible, Mary; no good comes of that sense.”
“And yet, father, it appears to me to be human nature,” replied Mary.
“So it is, but there’s mischief in it, girl, so do you never have anything to do with it.”
“Was there mischief when you fell in love with my mother and married her?”
“You shall hear, Mary,” replied old Stapleton, who recommenced.
“It was ’bout two months after the poor girl threw herself into the river that I first seed your mother. She was then mayhap two years older than you may be, and much such a same sort of person in her looks. There was a young man who plied from our stairs, named Ben Jones; he and I were great friends, and used for to help each other, and when a fare called for oars, used to ply together. One night he says to me, ‘Will, come up, and I’ll show you a devilish fine piece of stuff.’ So I walks with him, and he takes me to a shop where they dealed in marine stores, and we goes and finds your mother in the back parlour. Ben sends for pipes and beer, and we sat down and made ourselves comfortable. Now, Mary, your mother was a very jilting kind of girl, who would put one fellow off to take another, just as her whim and fancy took her.” (I looked at Mary, who cast down her eyes.) “Now these women do a mint of mischief among men, and it seldom ends well; and I’d sooner see you in your coffin to-morrow, Mary, than think you should be one of this flaunting sort. Ben Jones was quite in for it, and wanted for to marry her, and she had turned off a fine young chap for him, and he used to come there every night, and it was supposed that they would be spliced in the course of a month; but when I goes there she cuts him almost altogether, and takes to me, making such eyes at me, and drinking beer out of my pot, and refusing his’n, till poor Jones was quite mad and beside himself. Well, it wasn’t in human natur’ to stand those large blue eyes (just like yours, Mary), darting fire at a poor fellow; and when Jones got up in a surly humour, and said it was time to go away, instead of walking home arm in arm, we went side by side, like two big dogs with their tails as stiff up as a crowbar, and ready for a fight; neither he nor I saying a word, and we parted without saying good-night. Well, I dreamed of your mother all that night, and the next day went to see her, and felt worser and worser each time, and she snubbed Jones, and at last told him to go about his business. This was ’bout a month after I had first seen her; and then one day Jones, who was a prize-fighter, says to me, ‘Be you a man?’ and slaps me on the ear. So, I knowing what he’d been a’ter, pulls off my duds, and we sets to. We fights for ten minutes or so, and then I hits him a round blow on the ear, and he falls down on the hard, and couldn’t come to time. No wonder, poor fellow! for he had gone to eternity.” (Here old Stapleton paused for half a minute, and passed his hand across his eyes.) “I was tried for manslaughter; but it being proved that he came up and struck me first, I was acquitted, after lying two months in gaol, for I couldn’t get no bail; but it was because I had been two months in gaol that I was let off. At first, when I came out, I determined never to see your mother again; but she came to me, and wound round me, and I loved her so much that I couldn’t shake her off. As soon as she found that I was fairly hooked, she began to play with others; but I wouldn’t stand that, and every fellow that came near her was certain to have a turn out with me, and so I became a great fighter; and she, seeing that I was the best man, and that no one else would come to her, one fine morning agreed to marry me. Well, we were spliced, and the very first night I thought I saw poor Ben Jones standing by my bedside, and, for a week or so, I was not comfortable; but, howsomever, it wore off, I plied at the stairs, and gained my money. But my pipe’s out, and I’m dry with talking. Suppose I take a spell for a few minutes.”
Stapleton relighted his pipe, and for nearly half-an-hour smoked in silence. What Mary’s thoughts were I cannot positively assert; but I imagined that, like myself, she was thinking about her mother’s conduct and her own. I certainly was making the comparison, and we neither of us spoke a word.
“Well,” continued Stapleton, at last, “I married your mother, Mary, and I only hope that any man who may take a fancy to you, will not have so much trouble with his wife as I had. I thought that a’ter she were settled she would give up all her nonsense, and behave herself—but I suppose it was in her natur’ and she couldn’t help it. She made eyes and gave encouragement to the men, until they became saucy and I became jealous, and I had to fight one, and then the other, until I became a noted pugilist. I will say that your mother seemed always very happy when I beat my man, which latterly I always did; but still she liked to be fit for, and I had hardly time to earn my bread. At last, some one backed me against another man in the ring for fifty pound aside, and I was to have half if I won. I was very short of blunt at the time, and I agreed; so, a’ter a little training the battle was fought, and I won easy: and the knowing ones liked my way of hitting so much that they made up another match with a better man, for two hundred pounds; and a lord and other great people came to me, and I was introduced to them at the public-house, and all was settled. So I became a regular prize-fighter, all through your mother, Mary. Nay, don’t cry, child, I don’t mean to say that your mother, with all her love of being stared at and talked to, would have gone wrong; but still it was almost as bad in my opinion. Well, I was put into training, and after five weeks we met at Mousley Hurst, and a hard fight it was—but I’ve got the whole of it somewhere, Mary; look in the drawer there, and you’ll see a newspaper.”
Mary brought out the newspaper, which was rolled up and tied with a bit of string, and Stapleton handed it over to me, telling me to read it aloud. I did so, but I shall not enter into the details.
“Yes, that’s all right enough,” said Stapleton, who had taken advantage of my reading to smoke furiously, to make up for lost time; “but no good came of it, for one of the gemmen took a fancy to your mother, Mary, and tried to win her away from me. I found him attempting to kiss her, and she refusing him—but laughing, and, as I thought, more than half-willing; so I floored him, and put him out of the house, and after that I never would have anything more to say with lords and gemmen, nor with fighting either. I built a new wherry, and stuck to the river, and I shifted my lodgings that I mightn’t mix any more with those who knew me as a boxer. Your mother was then brought to bed with you, and I hoped for a good deal of happiness, as I thought she would only think of her husband and child; and so she did until you were weaned, and then she went on just as afore. There was a captain of a vessel lying in the river, who used now and then to stop and talk with her; but I thought little about that, seeing how every one talked with her and she with everybody; and besides, she knew the captain’s wife, who was a very pretty woman, and used very often to ask Mary to go and see her, which I permitted. But one morning, when I was going off to the boat—for he had come down to me to take him to his vessel—just as I was walking away with the sculls over my shoulder, I recollects my ’baccy box, which I had left, and I goes back and hears him say before I came into the door—‘Recollect, I shall be here again by two o’clock, and then you promised to come on board my ship, and see—.’ I didn’t hear the rest, but she laughed and said yes, she would. I didn’t show myself, but walked away and went to the boat. He followed me, and I rowed him up the river and took my fare—and then I determined to watch them, for I felt mighty jealous. So I lays off on my oars in the middle of the stream, and sure enough I see the captain and your mother get into a small skiff belonging to his ship, and pull away; the captain had one oar and one of his men another. I pulled a’ter them as fast as I could, and at last they seed me; and not wishing me to find her out, she begged them to pull away as fast as they could, for she knew how savage I would be. Still I gained upon them, every now and then looking round and vowing vengeance in my heart, when all of a sudden I heard a scream, and perceived their boat to capsize, and all hands in the water. They had not seen a warp of a vessel getting into the row, and had run over it, and, as it tautened, they capsized. Your mother went down like a stone, Mary, and was not found for three days a’terward; and when I seed her sink I fell down in a fit.” Here old Stapleton stopped, laid down his pipe, and rested his face in his hands. Mary burst into tears. After a few minutes he resumed: “When I came to, I found myself on board of the ship in the captain’s cabin, with the captain and his wife watching over me—and then I came to understand that it was she who had sent for your mother, and that she was living on board, and that your mother had at first refused, because she knew that I did not like her to be on the river, but wishing to see a ship had consented. So it was not so bad a’ter all, only that a woman shouldn’t act without her husband—but you see, Mary, all this would not have happened if it hadn’t been that I overheard part of what was said; and you might now have had a mother, and I a wife to comfort us, if it had not been for my unfortunate hearing—so, as I said before, there’s more harm than good that comes from these senses—at least so it has proved to me. And now you have heard my story, and how your mother died, Mary; so take care you don’t fall into the same fault, and be too fond of being looked at, which it does somehow or another appear to me you have a bit of a hankering a’ter—but like mother, like child, they say, and that’s human natur’.”
