Dry Fish and Wet Part 4

"No, no, nothing to do with that. We're all right as far as money goes."

"All right, eh? But you're put out about something, that's plain to see. Liver out of order, perhaps?"

"Oh no!"

"Why, then, there's nothing else that I can see."

"It's those wretched youngsters of mine."

"Ho, is that all?"

"All! As if it wasn't enough! I tell you they're going stark mad, the pair of them."

"Seems to me they've been that way a long time now."

"Oh, it's all very well to talk like that. But really, it's getting beyond all bearing. William's taken it into his head to go and be a painter."

"Well, and not a bad thing, either, as long as he does the work decently, with plenty of driers and not too much oil in the mixing.

Look at Erlandsen up the river, he's made a good thing out of it."

"Oh, not that sort of painting. It's an artist, I mean. Painting pictures and things."

"Pictures!" Bramsen looked dumbfounded. "Painting pictures? Well, blister me if I ever heard the like. Wait a bit, though--there was Olsen, the verger; he'd a boy, I remember, a slip of a fellow with gold spectacles and consumption, he used to mess about with that sort of thing. But he never made a living out of it--didn't live long, anyway."

"But that's not the worst of it, Bramsen. There's Marie--she wants to be a singer."

Bramsen almost fell off the sugar-box on which he was seated.

"Singer--what! Singing for money, d'you mean? Going round with a hat?"

"Something very much like it, anyway--only it'll be my money that goes into the hat. What are we to do about it, eh?"

"H'm ... Couldn't you pack the boy off to sea? And the young lady--send her to a school to do needlework and such like?"

"Oh, what's the good of talking like that? No, my dear man, young people nowadays don't let themselves be sent anywhere that way.

There's the pair of them, they simply laugh at us."

Holm walked back to the office deep in thought. On his return, he found Hans Martinsen, and Berg, the organist, awaiting him.

Bramsen remained seated on his sugar-box and murmured to himself: "Well, it's a nice apple-pie for Knut Holm, that it is. Lord, but they children can be the very devil."

A little later, Garner came down to the quay, and found Bramsen still meditating on his box.

"What's wrong with the old man to-day, Bramsen? He looks as if he was going in for the deaf-and-dumb school; there's no getting a word out of him."

Bramsen sat for quite a while without answering. Then at last he said solemnly:

"It's my humble opinion, and that's none so humble after all, that there's a deal of what you might call contrapasts in this here world."

"Meaning to say?"

"It's plain enough. Folk that's got a retipation, they does all they can to lose it, and they that hasn't, why--there's no understanding them till they've got one."

Garner was still in the dark as to whither all this wisdom tended, and began absently slitting up a coffee-sack.

"Look you, Garner," Bramsen went on. "It's this way with the women: they've each their station here in life, as by the Lord appointed.

Some gets married, and some goes school-teaching, or out in service, and such-like--and all that sort, they stick to their retipation; but the woman that goes about singing for money in a hat, her retipation's like a broken window--it's out and gone to bits and done with."

Garner laughed and looked inquiringly at the other.

"_Now_, do you understand, Garner, what's the trouble with Holm?"

"Oh, so that's what you're getting at, is it? Miss Holm wants to go on the stage."

"Singing, my boy; singing for money, and if so be that was to happen to any daughter of mine, I'd give her a dose of something to make her lose her voice--ay, if it was rat poison, I would."

It was a regular thing for Garner and Bramsen to have a comfortable chat down at the waterside, when the old sailor would generally relate some of his experiences at sea. These yarns especially delighted Garner, who came of a peasant stock himself, and knew nothing of the sea or foreign parts until he came to the town. He tried now to open up the subject again.

"Ever been in the Arctic, Bramsen?"

"Have I? Why, I should think so. I was up that way in '76, on a whaling trip with Svend Foya."

It was a habit of Bramsen's at the beginning of a story to make some attempt at a literary style, but he invariably dropped it as he went on.

"Dangerous business, isn't it?"

"Why, that's as you take it or as you make it. If one of the brutes gets your boat with a flick of his tail, there's an end of you, of course. I remember once we were after a big fellow; had a shot at him and got in just aft of the spout-holes. And then, take my word for it, he led us a dance. Off he went, full-speed ahead, and us full speed astern, but blister me if he didn't win the tug-of-war and sail off with us at nineteen knots, till we were cutting along like a torpedo boat. He wasn't winded, ye see, for his blowpipe was intact, and his gear below-decks sound and s.h.i.+p-shape. But at last we got him fairly run down, and settled him with a straight one through the heart."

"A whale's heart must be pretty big?"

"Why, yes, he's what you might call a large-hearted beast. About the size of a middling chest o' drawers or a chiffonier."

"Rough on a whale, then, if he got heart disease," laughed Garner.

"Why, as to that, I suppose it would be in proportion, as you might say. But he's built pretty well to scale in the other parts as well, with his main arteries about as big round as a chimney."

"I wonder you didn't go up with Nansen to the Pole."

"And what for, I'd like to know? Messing about among a lot of nasty Eskimos; no, thankye, I'd a better use for my time." And Bramsen went on again with his whaling yarns for a spell, until Garner found it was time to get back to the shop.

Outside the store shed sat a row of urchins fis.h.i.+ng from the edge of the quay. Bramsen was a popular character among the waterside boys; he would chat and fish with them at off-times, or help them in the manufacture of a patent "knock-out" bait, from a recipe of his own, the chief ingredients being flour and spirits. There was always a shout of delight when the small fish appeared at the surface, belly upwards. But to-day the knock-out drops appeared to fail of their effect, whether because the fish had grown used to French brandy, or for some other reason. Bramsen soon left the boys to their own devices, and went back into the shed. Here, to his astonishment, he found Amanda, his daughter and only child, weeping in a corner.

Amanda was about fifteen, a lanky slip of a girl, with her hair in a thick plait down her back, twinkling dark brown eyes, and a bright, pleasant face.

"Saints and sea-serpents--you here, child? What's amiss now?"

"Mother--mother wants us to go to meeting this evening, and you promised we should go to the theatre and see _Monkey Tricks_, and they say it's the funniest piece."

Bramsen grew suddenly thoughtful. What if the child were to go getting ideas into her head, like Miss Holm, and want to go about singing with a hat--h'm, perhaps after all it might be as well to take her to the meeting with Andrine.