Salthaven. William Wymark Jacobs
added, thoughtfully.
"Ale will do, sir," said Mr. Walters, humbly.
He walked to the kitchen, and, pushing the door open softly, went in. Rosa Jelks, who was sitting down reading, put aside her book and smiled welcome.
"Sit down," she said, patronizingly; "sit down."
"I was going to," said Mr. Walters. "I'm to 'ave a glass of ale."
"Say 'please,'" said Rosa, shaking her yellow locks at him, and rising to take a glass from the dresser.
She walked into the scullery humming a tune, and the pleasant sound of beer falling into a glass fell on the boatswain's ears. He stroked his small black moustache and smiled.
"Would you like me to take a sip at the glass first?" inquired Rosa, coming back carefully with a brimming glass, "just to give it a flavour?"
Mr. Walters stared at her in honest amazement. After a moment he remarked gruffly that the flavour of the ale itself was good enough for him. Rosa's eyes sparkled.
"Just a sip," she pleaded.
"Go on, then," said Mr. Walters, grudgingly.
"Chin, chin!" said Rosa.
The boatswain's face relaxed. Then it hardened suddenly and a dazed look crept into his eyes as Rosa, drinking about two-thirds of the ale, handed him the remainder.
"That's for your impudence," she said, sharply. "I don't like beer."
Mr. Walters, still dazed, finished the beer without a word and placed the glass on the table. A faint sigh escaped him, but that was all.
"Bear!" said Rosa, making a face at him.
She looked at his strong, lean face and powerful figure approvingly, but the bereaved boatswain took no notice.
"Bear!" said Rosa again.
She patted her hair into place, and, in adjusting a hair-pin, permitted a long, thick tress to escape to her shoulder. She uttered a little squeal of dismay.
"False, ain't it?" inquired Mr. Walters, regarding her antics with some amazement.
"False!" exclaimed Rosa. "Certainly not. Here! Tug!"
She presented her shoulder to the boatswain, and he, nothing loath, gave a tug, animated by the loss of two-thirds of a glass of beer. The next instant a loud slap rang through the kitchen.
"And I'd do it again for two pins," said the outraged damsel, as she regarded him with watering eyes. "Brute!"
She turned away, and, pink with annoyance, proceeded to arrange her hair in a small cracked glass that hung by the mantel-piece.
"I 'ad a cousin once," said Mr. Walters, thoughtfully, "that used to let her 'air down and sit on it. Tall gal, too, she was."
"So can I," snapped Rosa, rolling the tress up on her finger, holding it in place, and transfixing it with a hair-pin.
"H'm," said the boatswain.
"What d'ye mean by that?" demanded Rosa, sharply. "Do you mean to say I can't?"
"You might if you cut it off first," conceded Mr. Walters.
"Cut it off?" said Rosa, scornfully. "Here! Look here!"
She dragged out her hair-pins and with a toss of her head sent the coarse yellow locks flying. Then, straightening them slightly, she pulled out a chair and confronted him triumphantly. And at that moment the front-room bell rang.
"That's for you," said Mr. Walters, pointedly.
Rosa, who was already back at the glass, working with feverish haste, made no reply. The bell rang again, and a third time, Rosa finally answering it in a coiffure that looked like a hastily constructed bird's nest.
"There's your letter," she said, returning with a face still flushed. "Take it and go."
"Thankee," said the boatswain. "Was they very frightened?"
"Take it and go," repeated Rosa, with cold dignity. "Your young woman might be expecting you; pity to keep her waiting."
"I ain't got a young woman," said Mr. Walters, slowly.
"You surprise me!" said Rosa, with false astonishment.
"I never would 'ave one," said the boatswain, rising, and placing the letter in his breast-pocket. "I've got along all right for thirty years without 'em, and I ain't going to begin now."
"You must have broke a lot of hearts with disappointment," said Rosa.
"I never could see anything in young wimmen," said the boatswain, musingly. "Silly things, most of 'em. Always thinking about their looks; especially them as haven't got none."
He took up the empty glass and toyed with it thoughtfully.
"It's no good waiting," said Rosa; "you won't get no more beer; not if you stay here all night."
"So long!" said the boatswain, still playing with the glass. "So long! I know one or two that'll 'ave a fit pretty near when I tell 'em about you sitting on your 'air."
He put up his left arm instinctively, but Miss Jelks by a supreme effort maintained her calmness. Her eyes and colour were beyond her control, but her voice remained steady.
"So long!" she said, quietly. She took the glass from him and smiled. "If you like to wait a moment, I'll get you a little drop more," she said, graciously.
"Here's luck!" said Mr. Walters, as she returned with the glass. He drank it slowly and then, wiping his lips with the back of his hand, stood regarding her critically.
"Well, so long!" he said again, and, before the astonished maiden could resist, placed a huge arm about her neck and kissed her.
"You do that again, if you dare!" she gasped, indignantly, as she broke loose and confronted him. "The idea!"
"I don't want to do it agin," said the boatswain. "I've 'ad a glass of ale, and you've 'ad a kiss. Now we're quits."
He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand again and walked off with the air of a man who has just discharged an obligation. He went out the back way, and Rosa, to whom this sort of man was an absolutely new experience, stood gazing after him dumbly. Recovering herself, she followed him to the gate, and, with a countenance on which amazement still lingered, stood watching his tall figure up the road.
CHAPTER VI
WORK!" said Mr. Robert Vyner, severely, as he reclined in a deck-chair on the poop of the Indian Chief and surveyed his surroundings through half-closed eyes. "Work! It's no good sitting here idling while the world's work awaits my attention."
Captain Trimblett, who was in a similar posture a yard away, assented. He also added that there was "nothing like it."
"There's no play without work," continued Mr. Vyner, in a spirit of self-admonition.
The captain assented again. "You said something about work half an hour ago," he remarked.
"And I meant it," said Mr. Vyner; "only in unconscious imitation I dozed off. What I really want is for somebody to take my legs, somebody else my shoulders, and waft me gently ashore."
"I had a cook o' mine put ashore like that once," said Captain Trimblett, in a reminiscent voice; "only I don't know that I would have called it 'wafting,' and, so far as my memory goes, he didn't either. He had a lot to say about it, too."
Mr. Vyner, with a noisy yawn, struggled out of his chair and stood adjusting his collar and waistcoat.
"If I couldn't be a chrysalis," he said, slowly, as he looked down at the recumbent figure of the captain, "do you know what I would like to be?"
"I've had a very hard day's work," said the other, defensively, as he struggled into a sitting posture—"very hard. And I was awake half the night with the toothache."
"That isn't an answer to my question," said Mr. Vyner, gently. "But never mind; try and get a little sleep now; try and check that feverish desire for work, which is slowly, very, very slowly, wearing you to skin and bone. Think how grieved the firm would be if the toothache carried you off one night.