The Sailor

He was much impressed by Ginger's perusal of the evening's news, which always took place after supper. At the same time he was troubled. Ginger took it for granted that Enery could read a newspaper. He treated that as a matter of course, perhaps for the reason that he had seen the Sailor sign his name, laboriously it was true, in the time-book of Antcliff and Jackson, Limited. But Ginger, with all his shrewdness, made a bad mistake. He little guessed that the Sailor's signature stood for the sum of his learning. He little guessed when he flung the Evening Mercury across to the Sailor after he had done with it himself, and the Sailor thanked him with that odd politeness which rather puzzled him, and became absorbed in the paper's perusal, that the young man could hardly read a word.

On the evening this first happened the Sailor had intended no deceit. He was so straight by nature that he could not have set himself deliberately to take in anybody. The deception came about without any will of his to deceive at all; and he was soon having to maintain a false impression which he had not intended to create. All the same, he would have been mortally ashamed to let the cat out of his bag. He well knew that it would have been a crushing blow to that terrible thing, the pride of Ginger.

The young man wrestling behind the Evening Mercury with the simplest words it contained, and able to make very little of them in the way of sense because they so seldom came together, reflected ruefully that he ought at all costs to have borne in mind Klondyke's advice. "Stick to the reading and writing, old friend. That's your line of country. You'll get more out of those than ever you'll get out of the sea." Bitterly he regretted now that he had not set store by those inspired words. He began to see clearly that you could not hope to cut much ice ashore unless you were a man of education.

He was able to write his name, and that was all. Also he knew his alphabet and could count up to a hundred if you gave him plenty of time. There were also a few words he knew at sight, and thirty, perhaps, short ones, and the easiest in the terribly difficult English language, that he could spell with an effort. This was the sum of his knowledge, and the whole of it was due to Klondyke, who had given many a half-hour of his leisure to imparting it in the cold and damp misery of the half-deck with no more than a sputter of candle by which to do it.

Sailor had clung desperately to all the scraps of learning which Klondyke had given him, but when his friend left the ship he had not had the grit to plow the hard furrow of knowledge for himself. Somehow he had not been able to stick it. He needed the inspiration of Klondyke's voice and presence, of Klondyke's humor and friendliness. He could hardly bring himself to open the Bible his friend had given him, and when he tried to read the Brooklyn Eagle he couldn't see it for tears.

Now he had left the sea for good, he knew a bitter price would be exacted for his weakness. To begin with it would be impossible to tell Ginger the truth. Ginger was the kind of man who would look down on him if once he knew his secret. Besides it was a grievous handicap ashore never to have been to school. Moreover the Sailor was so honest that any kind of deception hurt him.

"Read that yarn about Kitchener and the Gippy?"

"No," said the miserable Sailor.

"Better. Page three. Bottom. Damn good. What?"

"Yep," said the Sailor, wishing to commit the act of hari-kari. He must find a way out. The longer the pretense was kept up the worse it would be. But it was impossible to tell Ginger that he couldn't even find the yarn of Kitchener and the Gippy, let alone attempt to read it.

VII

Ginger was a wonderful chap, but his nature was hard. He had little of Klondyke's far-sighted sympathy, which in circumstances of ever growing difficulty would have been an enormous help to the Sailor.

Henry Harper had felt no shame when he told the dismal truth to Klondyke that he could neither read nor write. But he would rather have his tongue cut out than tell that particular truth to Ginger. Still the game of make-believe must not go on. It made the young man horribly uncomfortable to be driven to play it after supper every night. Something must be done if the esteem, perhaps the friendship, of Ginger was not to be forfeited.

The Sailor was no fool. Therefore he set his wits very seriously to work to grasp the nettle without exposing his ignorance more than was absolutely necessary. He spent anxious hours, not only during the day, but in the watches of the night, trying to find a way out.

One Saturday evening he sat in a frame of mind bordering upon ecstasy. At the instance of Ginger, who was the captain and treasurer of the club, the chairman of the committee, and also one of its vice-presidents, the Sailor had been invited that afternoon to keep goal for the Isle of Dogs Albion. The Sailor had done so. Ginger had shaken hands with him impressively after the match, and had solemnly told him that he had won it for his side, which was truly the case. And the fact was frankly admitted by the rest of the team.

"Mark my words," said Ginger to his peers, "that feller's young at present, but he plays for England when he gets a bit more powder in his hold."

This was talking, but no member of the Isle of Dogs Albion was so misguided as to argue the matter. Ginger's word was the law of nations. Besides, the Sailor was a goalkeeping genius; his form that afternoon could not have been surpassed by Robinson of Chelsea.

That evening as the Sailor sat gazing, chin on hands, into the fire, while Ginger read out the results of the afternoon's matches, he began to think to a purpose.

"Sunderland hasn't half put it acrost the Arsenal. Villa and Wolves a draw."

"Ginger," said the Sailor wistfully, "if you had been to sea for near seven year an' you had forgot a bit o' what you knowed at school, what would you do about it?"

"Do about what? 'Otspur hasn't half punctured Liverpool, I don't think."

"Do about learnin' what you've forgot?"

"Come again, pardner. I'm not Old Moore. Manchester City and Birmingham no goals half time."

"Do about learnin' a bit o' figurin' what you ought to ha' knowed afore you went to sea?"

"Do you think I'm Datas?" The flash of scorn seared the soul of Henry Harper like the live end of an electric wire. "It's a silly juggins question. How the hell should I know?"

No, Ginger was not helpful.

But tonight the Sailor was in the seventh heaven, he was walking on air, therefore with a courage not his as a rule he would not own defeat.

"Suppose you'd almost forgot how to read the news. What'd you do about it?"

"Do about it? Why, I'd pleadin' well go and drown meself."

The Sailor drew in his breath in a little gasp. But the matter was so tragic that he must go on. And it was no more than Klondyke had foreseen.

"Perhaps there's someone as would learn me," said the Sailor half to himself. And then his pluck gave out.

Silence fell for twenty minutes. Ginger smoked Log Cabin and read the evening's news, while the Sailor continued to stare in the fire. Then Ginger flung across the Evening Mercury with, as the Sailor fancied, a slight touch of contempt. But Henry Harper had not the heart to take up the paper tonight. He must never take it up again until he had learned to read it!

In the meantime Ginger reflected.

"Sailor," he said, looking at the fire-lit figure, with vibrations of depth and power in his voice, "you'll go far. That's my opinion, an' I don't talk out o' the back o' my neck as a general rule. You'll go far."

This conveyed nothing to the Sailor.

"I'm tellin' yer," said Ginger. Rising with his freckled face shining and his deep mind fired by ambition, he took from a drawer in the supper table a sheet of writing-paper, an envelope, and a blotter which a philanthropic insurance company had presented to the landlady, an ancient ink bottle and a prehistoric pen from the chimneypiece, cleared a space by piling saucers upon plates and cups on the top of them, and then sat down to compose the following letter:

DEAR DINK,

I write these few lines hoping you are well as they leave me at present. A chap has just joined our club as I think you ought to know about. He's a sailor, and his goal-keeping is marvelous. None of our chaps has seen anything like it. Thought you might like to know this as the Hotspurs is after him. Two of their directors came to see him play this afternoon, and from what I hear they are going to make him an offer. But from what he tells me he would rather play for the Rovers than anybody as he is Blackhampton born, and though he's been nine times round the world and wrecked twice, he thinks there's no town like it. At present he is young and green, being took to sea as quite a kid, but I honestly think your directors ought to know about him, as he will be snapped up at once. I can arrange to bring him over to Blackhampton any Saturday for your club to look at if they care to give us both a trial with the Rovers' second team. We would both come for our expenses, railway fares, and one day's wages, but he won't come without me as we lodge together and play for the same club. You can take it from me he's a Nonesuch.

Yours truly,

W. H. JUKES.

P. S. – This season I am in pretty fair form myself at right full back. W. H. J.

Ginger wrote this letter with great pains in a very clear and masterful hand. He addressed it to Mr. D. Dawson (Blackhampton Rovers F.C.), 12 Curzon Street, Blackhampton. Then, without saying a word to the Nonesuch, he went out to post it at the end of the street. Having done this, thinking hard, he made his way to the little alien hairdresser in the High Road, who had the honor of his patronage, and sternly ordered "a hair cut, and see that you go close with the lawn mower."

Meanwhile the Sailor sat by the fire. Presently the room was invaded by Mrs. Sparks, the landlady. She was a fatigued and faded creature, but honest, discreet, and thoroughly respectable in Ginger's opinion, and in that of his fellow lodger there could be no higher. Besides it was no secret that Mrs. Sparks had seen better days. She was the widow of a mariner, who had borne a gallant part in the bombardment of Alexandria, although his country and hers appeared rather to have overlooked the fact.

The Sailor was a little afraid of Mrs. Sparks. She was to his mind a lady, and overawed by her sex in general, the young man was rather embarrassed by her air of austerity. She never spoke without choosing her words, also the order in which to place them; and Ginger, who was frankly and cynically contemptuous in private discourse of Mrs. Sparks' sex, was always careful to address her as "Ma'am," a fact which as far as the Sailor was concerned amply vouched for her status.

At ordinary times the Sailor would not have dared to speak to his landlady unless she had first spoken to him. But tonight he was in a state of excitement. By some curious means the events of the afternoon had translated him. A tiny bud of ambition was breaking its filaments in his brain.

While Mrs. Sparks, weary and sallow of countenance, was clearing the table, a compelling force made the Sailor remove his chin from his hands and cease gazing into the fire.

"Beggin' pardon, m'm," he said, with the odd, almost cringing humbleness which always inspired him in his passages with even the least considerable of Mrs. Sparks' sex, "would you mind if I ask you a question?"

The landlady was a little surprised. Her lodgers were not in the habit of taking her into their confidence. But in spite of a bleak exterior she was less formidable than she looked, and this the Sailor had felt to be the case. In his tone, moreover, was a note to touch the heart of any woman.

"Not at all," said Mrs. Sparks genteelly.

"If you had been seven year at sea," said the young man, enfolding her with his deep eyes, "an' you had forgot your figurin', what would you do about it?"

Mrs. Sparks was so completely at a loss that the Sailor felt it to be his duty to make himself a little clearer.

"Suppose, m'm, you had forgot all yer knowed of your writin' and readin' while you was at sea, what 'u'd you do about that?"

Mrs. Sparks shook her head. It was a ladylike expression of hopeless defeat.

The Sailor grew desperate.

"See here, m'm." He took up the Evening Mercury with a fierceness which immensely surprised Mrs. Sparks; he looked so gentle that he didn't seem to have it in him. "It's like this year. I can't read a word o' this pleadin' paper. Beg parding, lady." Her face had hardened at such a term of the sea. The voice of the young man died suddenly as if thoroughly ashamed of its own vehemence.

However the vehemence had done the trick.

"I would learn," said the landlady curtly.

"Yep," said the Sailor, with the blush of a girl, "it's what I want to."

"Then why not?"

"Dunno how, m'm," he said helplessly.

"Why not go to a school?"

"Can't while I'm at work, m'm."

"There are schools you can go to at night."

Mrs. Sparks swept up the crumbs, whisked away the table cloth, replaced it with a cheerful looking red one, and retired with a look which the Sailor took for disdain.

No, he ought never to have let the cat out of the bag. It would have been better to have bitten off his tongue. But after all it was only Mrs. Sparks … although Mrs. Sparks was Mrs. Sparks. He must be very careful how he let on to people about his shameful ignorance.

He was a fool to worry about it. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, old friend," Klondyke had said, but the world was not made up of Klondykes. It was something to be ashamed of if you looked at it as Mrs. Sparks and Ginger did. He felt, as far as they were concerned, he would never live it down. Once more he looked into the fire in order to resume the captaincy of his soul. But it was no use. Fix his will as he might, the famous blue and chocolate jerseys of the Blackhampton Rovers had yielded permanently to Mrs. Sparks with a look of scorn in her face.

He got up and in sudden despair took his cap off the peg behind the door. No longer could he stay in the room with his shame. More space, more air was needed. As he flung open the outer door, a gust of damp fog came in; and with it came the squat, powerful, slightly bow-legged figure of Ginger, looking more than ever like a man of destiny now he had had his hair cut.

"Where goin'?"

"Walk," said the Sailor miserably.

"Nice night for a walk. Rum one you are." Had the Sailor's promise as a goalkeeper been less remarkable Ginger would have been tempted to rebuke such irresponsible behavior. As it was he was content merely to place it on record.

"Well if you must, you must," said Ginger magisterially, closing the door.

VIII

At five minutes past six on Tuesday evening, when Ginger came home from work, a letter was waiting for him on the sitting-room chimneypiece. The first thing he noticed was that it bore the Blackhampton postmark, but being a very cool and sure hand, he did not open it at once. He preferred to fulfil the first and obvious duty of a self-respecting citizen of "cleaning himself up" at the scullery sink with water from the pump, and of sitting down to a dish of tripe and fried onions, always a favorite with him, and particularly on Tuesday when the tripe was fresh, while the Sailor, looking rather forlorn, poured out the tea. Ginger chose to do all this with astounding sang-froid before opening Dinkie Dawson's letter.

He read slowly, with unruffled countenance. Then with a noncommittal air, he threw the letter carelessly across the table to the Sailor, who had to retrieve it from the slop basin which fortunately was empty.

"Read it," said Ginger, his face a mask, his tone ice cold, without a trace of emotion.

The Sailor blushed vividly.

"Read it, yer fool," said Ginger. The pitiless autocrat was now striking through the tone of detachment.

Hopelessly confused, the Sailor turned the letter the right side up. But he didn't attempt to read. He knew it was no use. There was not a line he could understand, yet he was forced to hold it before his eyes.

"What do you think o' that, young feller, my lad?"

Stern triumph was striking now through Ginger's almost terrible detachment. "What do you think on it, eh?"

The Sailor was not able to think anything of it at the moment.

"None so dusty – what?" Ginger fairly glowed with a sense of victory.

"Yep," said the Sailor feebly.

"About fixes it – what?"

"Yep," said the Sailor.

He gave back the letter to Ginger with nervous guilt, neither knowing why it was none so dusty nor what it was that it fixed.

"Yer silly perisher. Don't yer see what it means?"

The Sailor nodded feebly.

"Very well, then, why don't yer say so?"

There was the light of contempt in the truculent eyes of Ginger. The Sailor simply could not meet them.

"Blymy" – the scorn of Ginger was withering – "if you hadn't been nine times round the world afore the mast, I should say you was just a guy – I should straight. Don't you understand what Dinkie Dawson says?"

The Sailor's stammer might be taken for, "Yep."

"Very well, then," said Ginger, so savagely that he had to read the Evening Mercury in order to calm himself.

The Sailor began to wish he was dead. And then suddenly Ginger laid down the paper.

"This touch is goin' to cost you money, young Mister Man," he said, magniloquently.

The Sailor's face was haggard.

"You'll have to lay out thirty bob on a new suit of clothes to start with."

The Sailor nodded.

"Of course, you can get a suit for less, but myself I'm all for quality."

The Sailor nodded.

"If you'll take my advice, young feller, you'll go to Dago and Rogers and get one o' them blue suitings as they shows in the winder, neat but not gaudy, cut in the West End style. I'm thinkin' o' gettin' one meself; you simply can't help lookin' a gentleman in one o' them, with a spotted tie and a double turnover collar."

"Yep," said the Sailor, to whom all this was as intelligible as a play of Sophocles.

"You'll also want a nice neat Gladstone."

"Yep," said the Sailor abjectly.

"Brown paper parcel and your boots tied on by string at the end o' it won't do in this scene, young feller."

"No," said the Sailor.

"Got to dress the shop winder a bit in this act." A strange inner light was beginning to gleam in the eyes of Ginger. "Nice new Gladstone, pair o' nice wide knickers cut saucy round the knee, and a set o' new laces in your boots. And I'm thinking one o' those all-wool white sweaters you can get at Tallow's might turn out a good investment."

The Sailor nodded feebly.

"Never spile the ship for a ha'porth o' tar. Allus dress the part. Never stint a coat o' paint for Mrs. Jarley's Waxworks."

The Sailor nodded.

"You've got to learn to knock the public silly," concluded Ginger, with a ferocity almost frightening, "if you are ever goin' to cut any ice on this bleedin' planet."

Utterly nonplussed, the Sailor went early to bed with his shame.

IX

In the opinion of Cox's Piece, "lift" was not the word for the bearing of Ginger on the morrow at the mid-day gathering. It was pardonable, no doubt; Ginger was Ginger, a being apart. Twopenny Sturgess wouldn't half have had it dusted out of him. It wouldn't have been stood from Gogo, or Hogan, or Foxey Green, but with Ginger it was different. It was realized in a way that was almost sinister by the cognoscenti of Cox's Piece that if there was such a thing existing in the world, Ginger was really and truly It.

Nevertheless, Pouncer Rogers was so unwise as to put into words the unspoken thought that was in every mind when he told Ginger bluntly to his face "that he'd believe it when he seed it."

"Yer call me a liar," said Ginger, drawing himself up to his full height of five feet six inches with remarkable dignity.

"I said I'd believe it when I seed it," said the heroic Pouncer.

"Sailor here read the letter," said Ginger, underplaying from the sheer strength of his hand. "Didn't you, Sailor boy? You read Dinkie Dawson's letter?"

"Yep," said the miserable Sailor.

"An' didn't he say a day's wages and railway fares both ways?"

The answer of the Sailor was understood to be in the affirmative.

"First class, o' course," said Pouncer, with a deliberate wink at Gogo and Twopenny.

Ginger's hand was so full that he could afford to treat the observation on its merits.

"Third class, Pouncer. It was third, Sailor boy?" The appeal to Sailor boy had a superb touch of condescension. Pouncer would cheerfully have given a week's wages for the privilege of slaying Ginger.

"Yep – third," muttered the miserable one.

"Ginger Jukes," said the defiant Pouncer, "if you want my 'pinion, you don't know Dinkie Dawson at all. That's my 'pinion."

"Your opinion was not ast, young Pouncer." Ginger's air was that of a Napoleon. "An' when anyone pleadin' well asts it, Pouncer, you can give it. Perhaps you'll say that Sailor didn't read Dinkie's letter?"

"So he says," sneered Pouncer.

The Sailor winced, but the cognoscenti were much too busy to notice him.

"You are never goin' to call him a liar," said Ginger.

"I call him nothing."

"You had better not," said Ginger, who noticed that Pouncer was drawing in his horns a bit. "I can afford to take your lip, young Pouncer Rogers. I'm used to it an' you are no class, anyway, but if you call the Sailor here a liar, he'll have to put it acrost you. Won't you, Sailor boy?"

No reply from the Sailor.

"I call him nothing," said Pouncer, coming back a bit at this rather unexpected silence on the part of the Sailor. "But I simply says he pleadin' well didn't read no pleadin' letter from Dinkie Dawson, that's all I simply says."

"Young Pouncer," said Ginger, "you have called the Sailor a liar." He turned to his protégé with the anxious air of an extraordinarily polite Samaritan. "I'll hold your coat, Sailor boy. You've took too much already from the likes o' him. Give me your coat. You are bound to put it acrost him now."

Ginger looked around magisterially; the cognoscenti concurred as one. Already the Sailor's coat was in Ginger's hand. In the next moment he had rolled up the sleeves of the Sailor's blue jersey, remarking as he did so, "If ever I see a chap on his bended knees a-lookin' for trouble, it's this here young Pouncer. Sailor boy, if you'll be ruled by me, you won't half give him his gruel."

"It's more than you can, Ginger Jukes," said Pouncer, with ill-timed and unworthy defiance.

Ginger was aware of that fact. In the first place, fighting was not his long suit. He had too much intellect to love so vulgar a pastime merely for its own sake. Not only was it violent and dangerous, but it seldom meant anything in particular when you were through with it. All the same, it had its uses. Pouncer had been getting above himself for some little time now. If he didn't soon receive a proper licking from somebody, the hegemony of Cox's Piece might cease to be a sinecure.

"His left's fairly useful," whispered Ginger, as he brought his man up to the scratch. "But that's all he's got. Now mind you punch a hole right through him."

It was a rather disappointing scrap. But for this it would be unfair to blame either Pouncer or the Sailor. The fiasco was due to the unexpected, unwarranted, thoroughly ill-timed, and almost unprecedented behavior of the Metropolitan Police, who in the person of a certain Constable Y28 promptly moved on the combatants while they were sparring for position. He was obviously a young constable who had not quite shaken down into his duties.

"It'll have to be a draw," announced Ginger a little lower down the road, while Constable Y28 stood watching the ebb and flow of the cognoscenti. But it may have been that Ginger's verdict was governed less by a consideration of the attitude of Constable Y28, than by the fact that Pouncer's ring-craft appeared to have improved considerably since Ginger had last seen it in action. For obvious reasons, it would not do for the Sailor to meet his Waterloo just then.