Run to Earth, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [epub ebook reader .TXT] 📗

it is the sea, and I love my ship for her

own sake.”

 

“Captain George is right, though,” answered the clerk. “Jernam Brothers

are growing rich; Jernam Brothers are prospering. But you haven’t told

me your plans yet, captain.”

 

“Well, since you say I had better cut this quarter, I suppose I must;

though I like to see the rigging above the housetops, and to hear the

jolly voices of the sailors, and to know that the ‘Pizarro’ lies hard

by in the Pool. However, there’s an old aunt of mine, down in a sleepy

little village in Devonshire, who’d be glad to see me, and none the

worse for a small slice of Jernam Brothers’ good luck; so I’ll take a

place on the Plymouth coach to-morrow morning, and go down and have a

peep at her. You’ll be able to keep a look-out on the repairs aboard of

the ‘Pizarro’, and I can be back in time to meet George on the fifth.”

 

“Where are you to meet him?”

 

“In this room.”

 

The factotum shook his head.

 

“You’re both a good deal too fond of this house,” he said. “The people

that have got it now are strangers to us. They’ve bought the business

since our last trip. I don’t like the look on them.”

 

“No more do I, if it comes to that. I was sorry to hear the old folks

had been done up. But come, Joyce, some more rum-and-water. Let’s

enjoy ourselves to-night, man, if I’m to start by the first coach to-morrow morning. What’s that?”

 

The captain stopped, with the bell-rope in his hand, to listen to the

sound of music close at hand. A woman’s voice, fresh and clear as the

song of a sky-lark, was singing “Wapping Old Stairs,” to the

accompaniment of a feeble old piano.

 

“What a voice!” cried the sailor. “Why, it seems to pierce to the very

core of my heart as I listen to it. Let’s go and hear the music,

Joyce.”

 

“Better not, captain,” answered the warning voice of the clerk. “I tell

you they’re a bad lot in this house. It’s a sort of concert they give

of a night; an excuse for drunkenness, and riot, and low company. If

you’re going by the coach to-morrow, you’d better get to bed early to-night. You’ve been drinking quite enough as it is.”

 

“Drinking!” cried Valentine Jernam; “why, I’m as sober as a judge.

Come, Joyce, let’s go and listen to that girl’s singing.”

 

The captain left the room, and Harker followed, shrugging his shoulders

as he went.

 

“There’s nothing so hard to manage as a baby of thirty years old,” he

muttered; “a blessed infant that one’s obliged to call master.”

 

He followed the captain, through a dingy little passage, into a room

with a sanded floor, and a little platform at one end. The room was

full of sailors and disreputable-looking women; and was lighted by

several jets of coarse gas, which flared in the bleak March wind.

 

A group of black-bearded, foreign-looking seamen made room for the

captain and his companion at one of the tables. Jernam acknowledged

their courtesy with a friendly nod.

 

“I don’t mind standing treat for a civil fellow like you,” he said;

“come, mates, what do you say to a bowl of punch?”

 

The men looked at him and grinned a ready assent.

 

Valentine Jernam called the landlord, and ordered a bowl of rum-punch.

 

“Plenty of it, remember, and be sure you are not too liberal with the

water,” said the captain.

 

The landlord nodded and laughed. He was a broad-shouldered,

square-built man, with a flat, pale face, broad and square, like his

figure—not a pleasant-looking man by any means.

 

Valentine Jernam folded his arms on the rickety, liquor-stained table,

and took a leisurely survey of the apartment.

 

There was a pause in the concert just now. The girl had finished her

song, and sat by the old square piano, waiting till she should be

required to sing again. There were only two performers in this

primitive species of concert—the girl who sang, and an old blind man,

who accompanied her on the piano; but such entertainment was quite

sufficient for the patrons of the ‘Jolly Tar’, seven-and-twenty years

ago, before the splendours of modern music-halls had arisen in the

land.

 

Valentine Jernam’s dark eyes wandered round the room, till they lighted

on the face of the girl sitting by the piano. There they fixed

themselves all at once, and seemed as if rooted to the face on which

they looked. It was a pale, oval face, framed in bands of smooth black

hair, and lighted by splendid black eyes; the face of a Roman empress

rather than a singing-girl at a public-house in Shadwell. Never before

had Valentine Jernam looked on so fair a woman. He had never been a

student or admirer of the weaker sex. He had a vague kind of idea that

there were women, and mermaids, and other dangerous creatures, lurking

somewhere in this world, for the destruction of honest men; but beyond

this he had very few ideas on the subject.

 

Other people were taking very little notice of the singer. The regular

patrons of the ‘Jolly Tar’ were accustomed to her beauty and her

singing, and thought very little about her. The girl was very quiet,

very modest. She came and went under the care of the old blind pianist,

whom she called her grandfather, and she seemed to shrink alike from

observation or admiration.

 

She began to sing again presently.

 

She stood by the piano, facing the audience, calm as a statue, with her

large black eyes looking straight before her. The old man listened to

her eagerly, as he played, and nodded fond approval every now and then,

as the full, rich notes fell upon his ear. The poor blind face was

illuminated with the musician’s rapture. It seemed as if the noisy,

disreputable audience had no existence for these two people.

 

“What a lovely creature!” exclaimed the captain, in a tone of subdued

intensity.

 

“Yes, she’s a pretty girl,” muttered the clerk, coolly.

 

“A pretty girl!” echoed Jernam; “an angel, you mean! I did not know

there were such women in the world; and to think that such a woman

should be here, in this place, in the midst of all this tobacco-smoke,

and noise, and blasphemy! It seems hard, doesn’t it, Joyce?”

 

“I don’t see that it’s any harder for a pretty woman than an ugly one,”

replied Harker, sententiously. “If the girl had red hair and a snub

nose, you wouldn’t take the trouble to pity her. I don’t see why you

should concern yourself about her, because she happens to have black

eyes and red lips. I dare say she’s a bad lot, like most of ‘em about

here, and would as soon pick your pocket as look at you, if you gave

her the chance.”

 

Valentine Jernam made no reply to these observations. It is possible

that he scarcely heard them. The punch came presently; but he pushed

the bowl towards Joyce, and bade that gentleman dispense the mixture.

His own glass remained before him untouched, while the foreign seamen

and Joyce Harker emptied the bowl. When the girl sang, he listened;

when she sat in a listless attitude, in the pauses between her songs,

he watched her face.

 

Until she had finished her last song, and left the platform, leading

her blind companion by the hand, the captain of the ‘Pizarro’ seemed

like a creature under the influence of a spell. There was only one exit

from the room, so the singing-girl and her grandfather had to pass

along the narrow space between the two rows of tables. Her dark stuff

dress brushed against Jernam as she passed him. To the last, his eyes

followed her with the same entranced gaze.

 

When she had gone, and the door had closed upon her, he started

suddenly to his feet, and followed. He was just in time to see her

leave the house with her grandfather, and with a big, ill-looking man,

half-sailor, half-landsman, who had been drinking at the bar.

 

The landlord was standing behind the bar, drawing beer, as Jernam

looked out into the street, watching the receding figures of the girl

and her two companions.

 

“She’s a pretty girl, isn’t she?” said the landlord, as Jernam shut the

door.

 

“She is, indeed!” cried the sailor. “Who is she?—where does she come

from?—what’s her name?”

 

“Her name is Jenny Milsom, and she lives with her father, a very

respectable man.”

 

“Was that her father who went out with her just now?”

 

“Yes, that’s Tom Milsom.”

 

“He doesn’t look very respectable. I don’t think I ever set eyes on a

worse-looking fellow.”

 

“A man can’t help his looks,” answered the landlord, rather sulkily;

“I’ve known Tom Milsom these ten years, and I’ve never known any harm

of him.”

 

“No, nor any good either, I should think, Dennis Wayman,” said a man

who was lounging at the bar; “Black Milsom is the name we gave him over

at Rotherhithe. I worked with him in a shipbuilder’s yard seven years

ago: a surly brute he was then, and a surly brute he is now; and a

lazy, skulking vagabond into the bargain, living an idle life out at

that cottage of his among the marshes, and eating up his pretty

daughter’s earnings.”

 

“You seem to know Milsom’s business as well as you do your own, Joe

Dermot,” answered the landlord, with some touch of anger in his tone.

 

“It’s no use looking savage at me, Dennis,” returned Dermot; “I never

did trust Black Milsom, and never will. There are men who would take

your life’s blood for the price of a gallon of beer, and I think Milsom

is one of ‘em.”

 

Valentine Jernam listened attentively to this conversation—not

because he was interested in Black Milsom’s character, but because he

wanted to hear anything that could enlighten him about the girl who had

awakened such a new sentiment in his breast.

 

The clerk had followed his master, and stood in the shadow of the

doorway, listening even more attentively than his employer; the small,

restless eyes shifted to and fro between the faces of the speakers.

 

More might have been said about Mr. Thomas Milsom; but it was evident

that the landlord of the ‘Jolly Tar’ was inclined to resent any

disrespectful allusion to that individual. The man called Joe Dermot

paid his score, and went away. The captain and his factotum retired to

the two dingy little apartments which were to accommodate them for the

night.

 

All through that night, sleeping or waking, Valentine Jernam was

haunted by the vision of a beautiful face, the sound of a melodious

voice, and the face and the voice belonged alike to the singing-girl.

 

The captain of the ‘Pizarro’ left his room at five o’clock, and tapped

at Joyce Marker’s door with the intention of bidding him goodbye.

 

“I’m off, Joyce,” he said; “be sure you keep your eye upon the repairs

between this and the fifth.”

 

He was prepared to receive a drowsy answer; but to his surprise the

door was opened, and Joyce stood dressed upon the threshold.

 

“I’m coming to the coach-office with you, captain,” answered Harker. “I

don’t like this place, and I want to see you safe out of it, never to

come back to it any more.”

 

“Nonsense, Joyce; the place suits me well enough.”

 

“Does it?” asked the factotum, in a whisper; “and the landlord suits

you, I suppose?—and that man they call Black Milsom? There’s something

more