as you can see. She did her best to break up my pluck for me tho’. She jolly near drove as fine a fellow as ever lived into a madhouse. What do you say to that — eh?”
Not an eyelid twitched in Mr. Stonor’s enormous face. Monumental! The speaker looked straight into my eyes.
“It used to make me sick to think of her going about the world murdering people.”
Jermyn approached the handkerchief a little nearer to the grate and groaned. It was simply a habit he had.
“I’ve seen her once,” he declared, with mournful indifference. “She had a house —”
The stranger in tweeds turned to stare down at him, surprised.
“She had three houses,” he corrected, authoritatively. But Jermyn was not to be contradicted.
“She had a house, I say,” he repeated, with dismal obstinacy. “A great, big, ugly, white thing. You could see it from miles away — sticking up.”
“So you could,” assented the other readily. “It was old Colchester’s notion, though he was always threatening to give her up. He couldn’t stand her racket any more, he declared; it was too much of a good thing for him; he would wash his hands of her, if he never got hold of another — and so on. I daresay he would have chucked her, only — it may surprise you — his missus wouldn’t hear of it. Funny, eh? But with women, you never know how they will take a thing, and Mrs. Colchester, with her moustaches and big eyebrows, set up for being as strong-minded as they make them. She used to walk about in a brown silk dress, with a great gold cable flopping about her bosom. You should have heard her snapping out: ‘Rubbish!’ or ‘Stuff and nonsense!’ I daresay she knew when she was well off. They had no children, and had never set up a home anywhere. When in England she just made shift to hang out anyhow in some cheap hotel or boarding-house. I daresay she liked to get back to the comforts she was used to. She knew very well she couldn’t gain by any change. And, moreover, Colchester, though a first-rate man, was not what you may call in his first youth, and, perhaps, she may have thought that he wouldn’t be able to get hold of another (as he used to say) so easily. Anyhow, for one reason or another, it was ‘Rubbish’ and ‘Stuff and nonsense’ for the good lady. I overheard once young Mr. Apse himself say to her confidentially: ‘I assure you, Mrs. Colchester, I am beginning to feel quite unhappy about the name she’s getting for herself.’ ‘Oh,’ says she, with her deep little hoarse laugh, ‘if one took notice of all the silly talk,’ and she showed Apse all her ugly false teeth at once. ‘It would take more than that to make me lose my confidence in her, I assure you,’ says she.”
At this point, without any change of facial expression, Mr. Stonor emitted a short, sardonic laugh. It was very impressive, but I didn’t see the fun. I looked from one to another. The stranger on the hearthrug had an ugly smile.
“And Mr. Apse shook both Mrs. Colchester’s hands, he was so pleased to hear a good word said for their favourite. All these Apses, young and old you know, were perfectly infatuated with that abominable, dangerous —”
“I beg your pardon,” I interrupted, for he seemed to be addressing himself exclusively to me; “but who on earth are you talking about?”
“I am talking of the Apse family,” he answered, courteously.
I nearly let out a damn at this. But just then the respected Miss Blank put her head in, and said that the cab was at the door, if Mr. Stonor wanted to catch the eleven three up.
At once the senior pilot arose in his mighty bulk and began to struggle into his coat, with awe-inspiring up- heavals. The stranger and I hurried impulsively to his assistance, and directly we laid our hands on him he became perfectly quiescent. We had to raise our arms very high, and to make efforts. It was like caparisoning a docile elephant. With a “Thanks, gentlemen,” he dived under and squeezed himself through the door in a great hurry.
We smiled at each other in a friendly way.
“I wonder how he manages to hoist himself up a ship’s side-ladder,” said the man in tweeds; and poor Jermyn, who was a mere North Sea pilot, without official status or recognition of any sort, pilot only by courtesy, groaned.
“He makes eight hundred a year.”
“Are you a sailor?” I asked the stranger, who had gone back to his position on the rug.
“I used to be till a couple of years ago, when I got married,” answered this communicative individual. “I even went to sea first in that very ship we were speaking of when you came in.”
“What ship?” I asked, puzzled. “I never heard you mention a ship.”
“I’ve just told you her name, my dear sir,” he replied. “The Apse Family. Surely you’ve heard of the great firm of Apse & Sons, shipowners. They had a pretty big fleet. There was the Lucy Apse, and the Harold Apse, and Anne, John, Malcolm, Clara, Juliet, and so on — no end of Apses. Every brother, sister, aunt, cousin, wife — and grandmother, too, for all I know — of the firm had a ship named after them. Good, solid, old-fashioned craft they were, too, built to carry and to last. None of your new-fangled, labour-saving appliances in them, but plenty of men and plenty of good salt beef and hard tack put aboard — and off you go to fight your way out and home again.”
The miserable Jermyn made a sound of approval, which sounded like a groan of pain. Those were the ships for him. He pointed out in doleful tones that you couldn’t say to labour-saving appliances: “Jump lively now, my hearties.” No labour-saving appliance would go aloft on a dirty night with the sands under your lee.
“No,” assented the stranger, with a wink at me. “The Apses didn’t believe in them either, apparently. They treated their people well — as people don’t get treated nowadays, and they were awfully proud of their ships. Nothing ever happened to them. This last one, the Apse Family, was to be like the others, only she was to be still stronger, still safer, still more roomy and comfortable. I believe they meant her to last for ever. They had her built composite — iron, teak-wood, and greenheart, and her scantling was something fabulous. If ever an order was given for a ship in a spirit of pride this one was. Everything of the best. The commodore captain of the employ was to command her, and they planned the accommodation for him like a house on shore under a big, tall poop that went nearly to the mainmast. No wonder Mrs. Colchester wouldn’t let the old man give her up. Why, it was the best home she ever had in all her married days. She had a nerve, that woman.
“The fuss that was made while that ship was building! Let’s have this a little stronger, and that a little heavier; and hadn’t that other thing better be changed for something a little thicker. The builders entered into the spirit of the game, and there she was, growing into the clumsiest, heaviest ship of her size right before all their eyes, without anybody becoming aware of it somehow. She was to be 2,000 tons register, or a little over; no less on any account. But see what happens. When they came to measure her she turned out 1,999 tons and a fraction. General
