A Poor Man's House Part 6

[Sidenote: _FISHERMEN'S SKILL_]

The greatest charm of sailing lies in this: that it is the art of making a boat move by dodging, by taking advantage of, a score of possible dangers. Except when running before the wind, it is the capsizing-power of the wind which propels the boat. The fisherman is an artist none the less because his skill seems partly inborn; because he sails his boat airily and carelessly, yet grimly--for life and the bread and cheese of it. The 'poor fisherman' for whom appeals to charity are made, as if he were a hardworking, chance-fed, picturesque but ignorant and helpless creature, is more than a trader, more than a skilled labourer in a factory. To a peculiar extent he sells himself as well as his skill and his goods. He lives contingently on his own life.

7

All that day the wind out in the Channel was blowing fresh from the sou'west, as we could see by the blackness of the horizon and the saw-edged sea-line beyond the outer headlands. During the afternoon, a ground-sea crept into the bay, silently rolling in like an unbidden unannounced guest who will not name his business. And when, at the turn of the tide, the breeze in-sh.o.r.e also backed to the sou'west, a busy lop was superposed on the long heaving swell.[8] About half-past seven, the Widgers were gathered together near their boats.

[8] A _lop_ is a short choppy sea raised by the immediate action of a breeze. A _swell_ consists of the long heaving waves which follow, and sometimes precede, a storm. The diverse action of different sorts of waves on a s.h.i.+ngle beach is interesting. Short seas (_i.e._ short from crest to crest), even when they are very high, have not nearly the force or _run_ of a long, though much lower ground-swell; that is they neither run so far up the beach nor so greatly endanger the boats. All kinds of waves possess more run at spring than at neap tides. A lop on a swell at spring tide is therefore the most troublesome of all to the fishermen.

"What time be it high tide?" asked Granfer. "'Bout ten, en' it?"

"Had us better haul the boats up over?" said Tony. "Tides be dead, en't they?"

"No-o-o," replied Uncle Jake. "They 'en making."

"'Tis goin' to blow, I tell 'ee," said Granfer. "See how bra.s.sy the sun's going down. Swell coming in too. Boats up be boats safe."

"Hould yer b.l.o.o.d.y row," said John. "What be talking 'bout? Plenty o'

time to haul up if the sea makes."

"All very well for yu," Tony protested, "living right up to Saltmeadow.

If the sea urns up to the boats in the night yu won't be down to lend a hand, no, not wi' yer own boats. 'Tis us as lives to the beach what has to strain ourselves to bits hauling your boats up over so well as our own."

"Let 'em bide, then!"

"Looks dirty, I say," said Granfer. "Might jest so well haul up as bide here talking about it. _I_ shan't sleep till I knows the boats be all right."

"Thee't better lie awake then. An't got no patience wi' making such a buzz afore you wants tu." With that, John shouldered his coat and strode homewards.

[Sidenote: _JOHN WIDGER_]

The rest of us pulled the boats up, John's included, till their stems touched the sea-wall, and we placed the two sailing boats, John's and Tony's, close beside the steps, handy for hauling up over if need should be.

Tony and Granfer went in house. Uncle Jake watched them go with an ironical smile on his wrinkled old face. "Don't like the looks o' this yer lop on a ground-swell," he said. "There! Did 'ee see how thic sea licked the baych? Let one o' they lift yer boat.... My zenses! 'Tis all up wi' it, an' I should pick it up in bits, up 'long, for firewood.--Well, John's gone home along...."

John is the youngest, handsomest and most powerfully built of the Widgers; the most independent, most brutal-tongued and most logical, though not, I fancy, the most perceptive. The inborn toughness, the family tendency to health and strength, which made fine men of the elder Widgers in spite of their youthful exposure and privations, has, in the case of John who underwent fewer hards.h.i.+ps, resulted in the development, unimpeded, of a wonderful physique. "Never heard o' John being tired," says Uncle Jake.

Premature toil did not bend him; what he is the others had it in them to be, and by their labour helped to make him. Because his spirit has never been so buffeted, let alone broken, by hard times, he is also the most self-reliant. And like the majority of lucky men, he takes fate's forbearance as his due and adds it to his own credit. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his clean-shaven face deeply and clearly coloured; a combination of the Saxon bulldog type with the seafaring man's alertness; his heavy yet lissome frame admirably half-revealed by the simplicity of navy-blue guernsey and trousers,--it is one of the sights of Seacombe to see him walk the length of the Front with his two small boys. He lacks, however, the gift of expressing himself, except when he is angry--and then in a torrent of thras.h.i.+ng words. He communicates his good-will by smiling all over his face with a tinge of mockery in his eyes and the bend of his long neck; whether mockery at oneself or at things in general is not evident. (It is mainly, I think, by smiling at one another that we remain the very good friends we are.) In any discussion, his "Do as yu'm minded then!" is his signal for making others do as _he_ is minded. The advantages possessed by him--health, strength, clear-headedness, and good looks--he knows how to use, and that without scruple. He is never hustled by man or circ.u.mstance; seldom gives himself away; and seldom acknowledges an obligation. What one might reasonably expect him to do in return for help or even payment, he carelessly, deliberately, leaves undone, and performs instead some particularly nice action when it is least of all antic.i.p.ated. His opinion is respected less because it is known, than because it isn't known, and by playing in the outer world with a crack football team he adds to his prestige here. "What du John say?" is often asked when it doesn't matter even what John thinks. Without grat.i.tude for it, unconsciously perhaps, he exacts from others a sort of homage, which is certainly not rendered without protest. "There's more'n one real lady as John could ha' married if he'd a-been liked," I heard Granfer say over his beer one day. "The way they used to get he to take 'em out bathing in a boat.... Put 'en under the starn-sheets, I s'pose--he-he-he-he-he! But they real ladies du tire o' gen'lemen sometimes. Some on 'em had rather have a strong fellow like John. He married out o' the likes o' us, as 'twas. Her what he married used to eat wi' the gen'leman's family what her come'd yer with; sort o'

companion-nurse her was."

[Sidenote: _A NICE DISTINCTION_]

Once, when the _Moondaisy_ was mine, John charged me sixpence for putting me ash.o.r.e from the steamer, after he had been earning money with my boat that very same day. There is no meanness in his face, and I wondered who had taught him so to distinguish between the borrowing of a private boat and the use of a craft that was on the beach for hire--a perfectly sound distinction. Probably it was some commercial-minded lodger or beach-chatterer, from whom he picked up the opinion that nowadays, to get on, you must run with the hare and hunt with the hounds--a precept which he quotes with cynical gus...o...b..t carries out only so far as suits his feelings. He aims at being businesslike, but the businesslike side of his character is the more superficial. Pride will not allow him to boggle over bargains. "Take it, or leave it," is his way. Most up-to-date in what he does do, he is no pioneer, and follows a lead grudgingly when innovations are in question. Most progressive outwardly, he is the most conservative at heart. A reader of his daily paper, he speaks the broadest Devon of them all; scrupulously groomed after the modern way, and a smoker of cigarettes (he was laughed out of a pipe I've heard say), he still wears the old-fas.h.i.+oned seaman's high-heeled shoes. Tobacco is his obvious, his humane, weakness. What his other weaknesses are, I don't know. He strikes one as master of his fate, never yet wrecked, nor contemplating it. Did such a misfortune occur ... who knows what would happen? He is now, in his youth, so full of strength.

About ten o'clock, Tony, who was snoozing in the courting chair (Mrs Widger had gone on to bed) woke up with a "How about they boats?" I went out to look.

[Sidenote: _THE HIGH TIDE WAVES_]

The sea was covered with that pallid darkness which comes over it when the moon is hidden behind low rain-clouds. Out of the darkness, the waves seemed to spring suddenly, without warning at one's very feet.

Every now and then, when a swell and a lop came in together, their combined steady force and quick energy swept right up the beach, rattling the pebbles round the sterns of the boats. For the better part of an hour I waited. Then, after a sea had thrown some s.h.i.+ngle right into a boat, I called Tony.

"'Tis past high water, en' it?" he said sleepily.

"Thee't better come out an' see for thyself!"

He dragged himself up and out. "'Tis al'ys like thees yer wi' the likes o' us. 'Tis a life o'it!"

"Aye," he said, "the say's goin' down now sure 'nuff. Better git in house again. Raining is it?"

"G.o.d! Look out!"

A sea lifted Tony's and John's sailing boats; was sweeping them down the beach. We rushed, one to each boat, and hung on. Another sea swept the pebbles from under our feet--it felt as if the solid earth were giving way.

"Those was the high tide waves," said Tony. "If us hadn' a-come out both they boats 'ould ha' been losted. Yu've a-saved John his--all by chance. Aye! that's like 'tis wi' us, I tell thee. Yu never knows.--Be 'ee going to bed now?"

I stayed out a little while longer: the loss of boats means so much to men whose only capital they are. Just after Tony had gone in, the clouds parted and the moonlight burst with a sudden glory over the sea.

In the moonglade, which reached from my feet to the far horizon, the waters heaved and curled, most silvery, as if they were alive. That was the wistful gentle sea from which, but a moment or two before, we had wrested back our property--that sea of little strivings within a large peace. I thought at the time that there was surely a G.o.d, and that as surely He was there. For which reason, I was glad, when I came in house, that Tony had gone on to bed.

This morning John asked me: "Whu's been moving my boat?"

"The sea, last night."

"Oh...."

"I'm going to make a salvage claim on your insurance company."

"H'm?"

"Happened to be out here and hung on, or else she'd have been swept down the beach."

"Did you?"

"That's it--while yu were snug."

"Have 'ee got a cigarette on yu?--Match?--Thank yu."

8

[Sidenote: _MRS PINN_]

When I came into the kitchen early last evening, there was an old woman sitting bolt upright in the courting chair. At least, I came to the conclusion that she really was old after a moment or two's watchfulness. Her flowered hat, her shape--though a little angular and stiff,--her gestures and her bright lively damson-coloured eyes were all youthful enough. But one could see that her inquiet hands, which were folded on her lap, had been worn by many a was.h.i.+ng-day. Her skin, though wrinkled, was taut over the outstanding facial bones, as if the wrinkles might have opened out and have equalized the strain, had age not hardened them to brown cracks--and the tan of her complexion had old age's lack of clearness. As so often happens when the teeth remain good in spite of receding gums, her mouth was tightly stretched semicircular-wise around them, and the lips had become a long, very long, expressionless line, shaded into prominence, as in a drawing, by a mult.i.tude of lines up and down, from chin and nose;--a Simian jaw, remindful of the Descent of Man. All the acc.u.mulated hand-to-mouth wisdom of generations of peasantry seemed to lurk behind the old woman's quick eyes; to be defying one.

I was introduced to her--Mrs Pinn, Mrs Widger's mother. She was bound to shake my proffered hand; she did it, half rising, with a comic mixture of respect and defiance; then sat back in the courting chair as if to intimate, 'I knows how to keep meself to meself, I du!'