Friends I Have Made

“Oh, it means Birch Canoe,” he said, and when I asked further, he told me that he had found the name in Hiawatha, when he was reading Longfellow’s poems.

One of my greatest intimates though amongst the fishermen, was a quiet stern-faced middle-aged man, who seemed to have some great trouble upon his mind; and one evening when he had rowed me out beyond the headland, and lay upon his oars, he began talking to me about the sorrow of his life, the death of the woman he had loved and who was to have been his wife.

“Yes,” he said, “I behaved bad to her ma’am, and all through blind obstinacy and want of faith.

“I’ve seen that same face of hers scores of times since, and though it makes me shudder, and nips me to the heart, I always go and have a good long earnest look at it, and come away a better man. You may see that face yourself – as much like as if it had been taken from her sad, anxious looks – you may see it at the picture-shop windows, and it’s of a woman tying a handkerchief round a man’s arm, and she looks up at him pitifully, and it’s called ‘The Huguenot.’ That’s like the look, and the face that gazed up into mine after she’d told me what I know now was the truth; and I – yet I’m most ashamed to own it – I flung her away from me, and wouldn’t believe what she said. There was a tear upon each cheek, and the bright drops were brimming in her eyes, and ready to fall; but I was hard and bitter, and whispered to myself that they were false tears, put on to cheat me, and I ran out of her father’s house, swearing that I’d enter it again no more.

“Speaking as a fisherman, and one who was brought up with the sound of the sea always in his ears, I may say we rowed well together in the same boat, Mary and I. I had a long fight of it before I could persuade her that it would be best for her future that she should take me for pilot, and not Harry Penellyn; but I did persuade her at last, and we were to be married down at the little fishermen’s church at the head of the cove. So we worked and waited.

“Two years of as happy a life then fell to my lot as could fall to that of any man in this life, I believe. My ways were rough, and hers were not those of a lady, but they suited our stations in life, and what more would you have? I look back upon that bright bit of life as if it was some dream; and though I can’t settle to go back to the old place, I cling to the fish, and look upon those days when a Lozarne boat comes in, as days worth recollecting; for they bring the blood in one’s cheek, and a bit of light into one’s eye.

“I can see it all now as plain as can be: the little fishing village under the cliff; the stout granite pier running out so as to form a harbour for the fishing-boats; and the blue sea, stretching away far as eye could reach. Down by its edge, too, the weed-fringed rocks, piled high in places, with the sea foaming amongst the crevices, and again forming little rock-pools where the bright sea growths flourished; and as the tide came in, with its fresh cooling waters, you saw the limpets and sea flowers wakening again to life, while many a spider-crab and shell-fish crept out of the nook or crack where it had hidden from the warm sun. I can see it all now at any time, though I am growing grey, and nigh a score of years have passed since; but brighter than all seem to stand out those two mournful eyes, with the same tearful look they gave me as I flung out of the door and saw them for the last time; for when next I looked upon that face the eyes were fast closed, and could I have opened them the lustre would have been gone.

“A west country fisherman’s life is one which takes him a deal from home, for sometimes we go off for perhaps three months at a time to the north coast, or to Ireland when the herring season is on; and, like the rest, I used to be off in my boat, sorry enough to leave home – happy enough to return after a busy season, till one year, when I took it into my head to think it strange that Harry Penellyn, Mary’s old beau, should spin his illness out so long and stop ashore, time after time, when the boats went out, and him seeming to be well and strong as any of us. There had been a heavy gale on the coast some weeks before, and, as we always do at such times, we had run in for the harbour as soon as we saw it coming; but, through bad seamanship, Penellyn’s boat came inside the rocks, when she should have come outside, and then, through their not having water enough, she grounded, lifted again, caught by the stern, and then swung round broadside to the waves, which swept her half deck, while a regular chorus of shrieks rose from the women standing ashore.

“It was a rough time, for even our boats that were in the harbour were groaning and grinding together, while every now and then the sea washed over so as to threaten to fill them, and sweeping the pier from end to end. In an ordinary way we made a custom of laughing at the crew of a boat who, from bungling, got her on the rocks, for born as we were in the bay, with our fathers fishers before us, we knew every stone along the coast, and could almost have steered our boat to them blindfold; but this was no time to jeer, for now the poor fellows were being swept one by one from their hold, and borne struggling through the surf to the rocks, where they were in danger of being dashed to pieces, for ours was no smooth, sandy beach. Some were swimming, some beating the water frantically; and clad as our men are, in their thick cloth trousers, heavy sea boots, and stout Guernsey shirts, they stand a poor chance of keeping long afloat, for the weight of their boots is enough to drag them down.

“There was every one in a state of excitement; some running out as far as they could and throwing ropes – men shouting orders that nobody attended to – women tossing their arms up and crying, while first one and then another of the boat’s crew was dragged ashore, and carried half drowned up to the cottages.

“I was standing looking on, with Mary by my side, for she was out on the cliff when my boat ran into the little harbour, while her hand was the first to clasp mine when I got ashore, thankful for the escape we had had, for the sea had risen wonderfully quick. I had taken no part in trying to save the boat’s crew, for there were plenty of willing hands, and there being but little standing-room down below the cliff, I had thought I should be in the way; but now it seemed to me that one poor fellow would be lost with the efforts they were making to save him, for he was too weak to cling to the ropes thrown out, and as fast as he was swept in by the waves, they sucked him back.

“I had not seen who it was, but just then, as I made a start as if to go down, Mary clutched, my arm, and there was a wild look in her face as she said aloud, ‘Harry Penellyn.’

“The excitement of the moment carried almost everything before it, but I had a strange feeling shoot through my heart, and something seemed to say, ‘Keep back;’ but the next minute I was fighting with the waves, with the noose of a rope round my body, and plenty of stout mates ashore fast hold of the end. Then, after a strangling battle, I got tight hold of Penellyn, and we were drawn ashore, and both of us carried up to Mary’s father’s cottage, though I tried hard to get upon my feet and walk, but I might have known that our fellows would not have let me on any account.

“Well, Harry Penellyn lay there three or four days, and Mary tended him, and all that time I had to fight against a strange, ungenerous, cowardly feeling that would creep over me, and seemed at times to make me mad, till I got myself in a corner and asked myself questions, to all of which I could only answer the same word – nothing. Then Penellyn got better, and went to his mother’s house; and time went on, till I grew bitter, and harsh, and morose, and was always haunted by a suspicion that I would not put into words, while now the question came again and again – ‘Why doesn’t Harry Penellyn go to sea?’

“But no answer came to my question; and though he seemed to be well and strong as ever, he always kept at home while we went out; and in my then state of mind this troubled me, and I kept feeling glad that we were only out now on the short trips of a few days in length. I grew angry with myself and with all around. Ay, and I grow angry even now, when I think that a few earnest words of explanation – a few questions that I know would have been answered freely – would have set all right, and perhaps saved the life of as good and loving a woman as ever lived in the light.

“But it was not to be so; and I went on wilfully blinding my eyes to everything – placing a wrong construction upon every look and word, and making those true eyes gaze at me again and again in wonder; whilst Harry Penellyn, who had never before shown me much goodwill, now that I had saved his life, would have been friends, only I met his every advance with a black scowl, when he always turned off and avoided me.

“One evening it had come to the lot of my boat to run into harbour with the fish of several other boats; for the takes had been very light, and somehow or another I felt more bright and happy than I had done for weeks. I got ashore, left my mates tending the mackerel, and ran up to Old Carne’s cottage to find Mary out.

“This did not trouble me at first; but after a few minutes’ fidgeting about, I felt a flush come in my face, and hurrying out, I made an excuse at Mrs Penellyn’s, and got to know that Harry was out too.

“The hot blood rose from my cheeks to my forehead, and seemed to blind me; then a strange singing sensation came in my ears; but the next minute I was tearing along the cove in the dark of the evening, so as to get away where I might be alone with my thoughts, for that vile suspicion that was struggling with me before, had now conquered and beaten me down, so that I was its slave, and for the time a regular madman.

“I had run about half a mile, when I stopped panting, and began to walk slowly along beneath the trees close beside the fern-hung rocky bank, while it was now too dark to see far before me. But the next instant I was standing with my breath held, and one hand resting on my side, for as I crouched close to the bank I heard Penellyn’s voice, talking earnestly as he passed a few yards from me, with his arm tightly clasping a woman’s waist, and just as they had passed they stopped, and there was light enough for me to see him bend over her, and without stopping to think, I leaped from where I was hid, and, as the woman shrieked and fled, I had Penellyn by the throat, and we joined in a fierce struggle.

“If an angel had told me I was deceived, I should not have believed him then in my blind fury; and it was not until, having dashed his head against the ground again and again, and felt my enemy’s hold relax, that I leaped up, kicked him savagely, and then ran back.

“Just as I expected, Mary was at home, looking hot and flushed, but she jumped up with a smile, and hurried to me, saying —

“‘I was down at Mrs Trevere’s, dear; but I heard your boat had come, and – ’

“She stopped short, half frightened by my wild looks and disordered clothes, and half by the savage curse I gnashed out at her as I seized her arms; while, as the…” (two pages missing here.)

Chapter Seventeen.

The Empty House

Some pages are missing here… place, what electro or veneer is to the precious metal or solid wood. There were plate-glass windows, but the frames had warped; handsome balustrades to green shrunken stairs; the floor-boards had shrunk one from another and curled up; the ceilings had cracked; and where the rain had found its way in, through defective spouts at the side, or bad slating and plumbing of the roof, the walls told tales, in the unpleasant-smelling efflorescence of microscopic fungi, that, in place of good honest sand-mixed mortar, the house had been built, by a scamping contractor, with rubbish ground up with a dash of lime stuff, that is good for two or three years, and then crumbles away.

From room to room of the desolate place we went, to find every window closely shut. There was the pleasant prospect, beyond the tiny square of grass-grown earth called a garden, of the blank end wall of the row of houses in the next street. Over the wall, next door, an attempt had been made to brighten the prospect; but the plants looked melancholy, and a Virginia creeper that ought to have been displaying its gorgeous autumnal tints was evidently suffering from a severe bilious attack, due to low spirits, bad drainage, and a clay soil. The very sparrows on the ledges were moulting, and appeared depressed; and on going higher up, there was a blank hideous cistern in one of the attics, that looked so much like a sarcophagus on a humid principle, and suggested such horrors of some day finding a suicidal servant-maid within, that any lingering ideas of recommending the house vanished like dirty snow-crystals before a pelting rain.

“It’s a very convenient house,” said the old gentleman.

“And will let some day at a far higher rent,” piped the old lady.

“You’d better come down to the breakfast-room now,” said the old gentleman.

“And see the kitchen too,” echoed the old lady.

So I went down – to find, as I expected, the breakfast-room showing a cloudy mountainous line of damp on the paper for about two feet above the wainscot; and here again the window was closely shut, and the strange mephitic odour of damp and exhausted air stronger than ever.

This apartment was the one utilised by the old couple for bed and sitting-room combined, and their spare furniture was spread neatly over it, according to the homely old rule of “making the most of things.”

I finished my inspection, with the old folks most eager in their praise of all, and when I pointed to the damp the old gentleman exclaimed —

“Oh! you’ll find that in all the houses about here. It rises up the wall, you see.”

“Yes, from bad building,” I answered.

“But it’s much worse at the house opposite,” said the old lady.

“Where the tenant died?” I said.

“Yes,” she answered innocently enough.

“Why, you seem anxious to let the house,” I said smiling.

“Well, yes,” said the old gentleman, combing his few hairs with one end of his spectacles. “You see, the agents like us to let the houses; and if we’re in one very long – ”

“He don’t like it,” said the old lady.

“Then you often have to change?”

“It all depends; sometimes we’ve been in houses where they’ve been let in a week.”

“Not in new neighbourhoods,” said the old lady; “people’s shy of coming to the very new places. You see they’re only just run up, and the roads ain’t made.”

“Ah!” said the old gentleman, “sometimes the roads ain’t made till the houses are all let.”

“And people often won’t take the houses till the roads are made,” said the old lady.

“So sometimes we’re a year or two in a place. People are so particular about damp, you see,” said the old gentleman.

“And many of the houses are damp?” I asked inquiringly.

“Well, ma’am, what can you expect,” he replied confidentially, “seeing how things goes? Here’s, say, a field here to-day, and the surveyor marks it out into roads. Then one speculative builder runs up a lot of carcases on it, and fails. Then another buys the carcases, and finishes ’em in a showy, flashy way; and then they put them at very low rents, to tempt people to take ’em.”

“And raises the rents as soon as one or two tenants have been in them,” said the old lady.

“It tempts people like,” continued the old gentleman; “they see nice showy-looking houses in an open place, and they think they’re healthy.”

“And they’re not?” I said.

The old man shrugged his shoulders.

“Healthy? No!” cried the old lady. “How can they be healthy, with the mortar and bricks all wet, and the rain perhaps been streaming into them for months before they were finished? Why, if you go and look in some of those big half-finished houses, just two streets off, you see the water lying in the kitchens and breakfast-rooms a foot deep. That’s how he got his rheumatics.” Here she nodded at her husband.

“Don’t bother the lady about that, Mary,” said the old man, mildly.

“You’ve lived in some of these very new damp places, then?”

“Well,” said the old gentleman smiling, “beggars mustn’t be choosers, you see. We have to take the house the agent has on hand.”

“You take charge of a house, then, on condition of living rent-free?”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s it,” said the old lady smiling.

“And how long have you lived in this way?”

“Oh! close upon fifteen years, ma’am,” replied the old gentleman; “but things are not so good as they were. More than once I’ve nearly had to take a place – much building as there is going on.”

“Yes, and pay rent,” said the old lady.

“You see it’s the police,” the old gentleman went on.

“The police?”

“Yes, the police,” said the old lady. “The boys do so much mischief.”

“Boys, you see, from the thick parts of London,” said the old gentleman explaining. “Rough lads on Sundays. They get amongst the empty and unfinished houses, troops of them, to play pitch-and-toss, and they throw stones and break windows and slates.”

“And knock down the plaster and bricks,” added the old lady.

“Ah! they most levelled one wall close by,” said the old gentleman.

“They’re so fond of making seesaws of the wood, too,” said the old lady.

“And splashing about in the pools of water,” said the old gentleman.

“And the agents, on account of this, have took to having the police,” said the old lady.

“To keep the boys away?” I asked.

“Yes; you see, it’s the married police and their wives take charge of the houses, and when the boys know that there’s policemen about, why, of course they stay away.”

“But it makes it very bad for such as we,” said the old lady.

“Fifteen years is a long time to live rent-free,” I said smiling.

“Yes, ma’am, it is, and you see we have a deal to do for it. We have lots of people come to look at the houses before one’s let.”

“Specially women,” chimed in the old gentleman. “There’s some come regular, and do it, I s’pose, because they likes it. They look at all the houses in the neighbourhood, same as some other ladies always go to sales. They never buy anything; and they never mean to take a house; but they come and look at ’em, all the same.”

“But we always know them,” said the old lady.

“Yes, they’re easy enough to tell,” chuckled the old man. And then, seeing me look inquiringly at him, he went on, “They finds fault with everything, ma’am. The hall’s too narrow, or else too broad, and the staircase isn’t the right shape. Then they want folding doors to the dining-room; or they don’t want folding doors. Sometimes six bed-rooms is too many; some times eight ain’t enough. And they always finds fault with the kitchen.”

“And they always want a fresh paper in the dining-room,” said the old lady chiming in; “and the drawing-room paper’s too light; and we don’t mind them a bit.”

“No,” chuckled the old gentleman; “we’re used to them. We know, bless you!”

“And I suppose you felt that I did not want a house, eh?”

“No, that we didn’t,” said the old lady; “you see, you came with an order from the agent; while people as don’t want houses never takes the trouble to get that, but drops in promiskus where they see the bills up.”

“One gets to understand people in fifteen years,” said the old gentleman, in a quiet subdued way; “and we don’t mind. We say all we can for a house, as in dooty bound, for the agent; but it goes against one, same time.”

“You could not conscientiously recommend this house, then, for a family?” I asked.

The old gentleman tightened his lips, and looked at his wife; and the old lady tightened hers, and looked at her husband; but neither spoke.

“I see,” I said; then, turning the conversation, “you have been at this for years?”

“Fifteen ma’am,” said the old lady. “You see, when our poor – ”

“Don’t trouble the lady about that,” said the old man, with appeal in his voice; but the old lady liked to talk, and went on —

“When our poor Mary died – aged nineteen, ma’am, and as beautiful a girl as ever you saw, and used to help us in the business, keeping the books and writing letters – all seemed to go wrong, and at last we sold out for the best we could make of it, and that just paid our debts – ”

“All but Tompkins’ bill,” said the old man correcting.

“Yes, all but Tompkins’ bill,” said the old lady; “but that we paid afterwards. We should have had to go to the parish, only an aunt of mine died and left us a bit of property that brings us in ten shillings a week; which is enough for us so long as we don’t pay rent and taxes.”

“That’s how we came to be here,” said the old gentleman, smiling sadly at his wife, “and we’ve seen some strange changes since; living in houses where people died of fevers; in old houses; in new houses that ought to be knocked down by Act of Parliament, they’re so bad; in houses where the people’s been extravagant, and gone to ruin. But there, it does for us while we’re here.”

He looked at his wife on this, and the old lady placed her thin veiny hand on his arm, telling, by that one action, of trust, love, and faith in her old companion over a very stony path; and I left them together trying very hard to close the front door, the old man’s last words being —

“It sticks so, on account of the wood warping, and that great crack” – the said crack being one from the first to the second-floor.

Chapter Eighteen.

My Friend in Hospital

I was more successful during the next few days, and had a list of four houses for Mr Ross to see, one of which he selected for his brother.

For my part I was very busy, having many people to see, and being on one occasion in Hammersmith, where the omnibus driver had told me he lived, I made a point of finding his house in a very humble street, and after rather a distant reception from his wife, the poor creature opened her heart to me, and told me that she was in trouble: her husband had had an accident, been kicked by one of his horses, and was in the hospital very ill.

I said what I could by way of comforting the poor thing, and on leaving said that I would go and see him, when the woman’s face flushed with joy.

“You will, ma’am,” she cried.

“To be sure I will,” I said quietly, and I left her seeming the happier for my few words of sympathy and hope.

The next day I was on my way up Gower Street, the long dull, and dreary, where the cabs roll echoing along, and in the silent night the echoes sound like the rumbling in some huge water-pipe. Up Gower Street, where the dismal grinding of the organ sharpens every nerve, and sends the horrors throbbing through every vein and artery – music no longer, but a loud, long wail, sobbing in the windows, and beating for entrance at the doors; up Gower Street, where the dwellers grow hardened to sad sights – where they know the brougham of the great physician or surgeon – the cab conveying the out-patient, or that which bears the in-patient to his couch of suffering; where the face of the pale student who has not yet ceased to shudder at the sufferings of his fellow-man is as familiar as that of the reckless or studious one to whom a groan or heart-wrung agonised cry is part of the profession; where weeping relations – poor, common people, who have left their dear ones in the great hall, or perhaps been to spend an hour by their bedsides – are but everyday sights such as may be seen near each great hospital.

Up Gower Street there’s a crowd, which in London is but another word for a magnet which draws to itself the sharp needles of the streets; ay, the blunt and broken ones, too – everything steely clings to it, while the softer material falls away.

Only a woman crying! Not much that. We may see that every day in our streets, and in most cases turn shuddering away, thinking of the dear ones at home – wife and daughters – sisters or betrothed, and saying to ourselves, “Can this be a woman!” But here we can stand with pitying feelings welling up from our hearts. Only a woman crying! but with such tears gushing from her eyes as Rachel shed when mourning for her children, and refusing to be comforted because they were not. A poor, untutored, unlettered woman, who has not learned the art of controlling her feelings. She has just come out of the great, gaunt, cheerless building; staggered along for some distance, blinded with tears; and at last, oblivious of all but her own bitterness, sunk down upon a doorstep sobbing wildly, for she has been to see the stalwart son who was to have been the prop and stay of her old age, and they have shown her a gaunt, pale, wild-eyed figure that knew her not; and she has come away brokenhearted, and, unlike Joseph of old, too forgetful of self to seek a place where she might weep.