Chapter IV

Broughton went in search of her as soon as he had finished up on board the “Haidée” and turned her over to the care of the old lame shipkeeper.

He didn’t feel particularly excited; his feeling, naturally enough, was one of pleasurable anticipation of an improvement in his material circumstances--no more than that, as he realized with that wistful sense of flatness and disappointment which inevitably accompanies the discovery that some long-desired consummation has lost through the lapse of time its power to excite and to intoxicate the mind. “If this had happened ten years ago,” he thought rather sadly, “Lord, how full of myself I should have been!” forgetting that middle age, when it does make acquaintance with passion, seldom does it by halves.

He found the “Philopena” in a derelict, melancholy wet dock somewhere among vacant lots and chemical works down in the Isle of Dogs, along with a couple of dilapidated coasting colliers and a broken-down tug--a smoky Thames-side sunset burning like a banked fire behind the cynical-looking sheds of a shadowy and problematical Griffin--and he fell in love with her on the instant.

There is--or perhaps one should rather say was, since it is doubtful if the Age of Steam has cognizance of such sentimental weaknesses--a certain kind of thrill, not to be satisfactorily defined in words, which runs through a man’s whole being when first his eyes fall upon the one ship which, out of all the thousands which sail the seas, seems especially made to be the complement of his own being, as surely as a woman is made for her mate. It is a feeling to which first love is perhaps the thing most nearly comparable--it can make the most commonplace of men into a poet; and even that lacks one of its qualities--its pure and sexless virginity. Other ships there may be more beautiful; but they leave him cold. They are not for him as she is for him....

That thrill it was--that awakening of two of the root instincts of mankind, the instinct to cherish, and the instinct to possess--which ran (surprising even himself) through that most matter-of-fact and unimaginative of men, David Broughton, when he first set eyes on the ship that for twenty-odd years to come was destined to provide the main interest and object of his existence.

There seemed to be nobody about the wharf, but Broughton untied a leaky dinghy that he found moored under the piles and pulled out to her. The nearer he got to her the better he liked her. Stern a bit on the heavy side, he fancied--with too much weight aft she’d be inclined to run up into the wind if you didn’t watch her. She’d want some handling, all right, but it wouldn’t do to be afraid of her, either. Her lines were a dream! He pulled all round her, viewing her from every angle; and as he rowed under her keen bow he caught himself fancying that her little dainty figurehead looked down upon him with a kind of wistful appeal--a sort of “You won’t go away and leave me, will you?” look that won his heart on the spot.

He made the boat fast to the crazy Jacob’s ladder and swung himself on board. She was filthily dirty, appallingly neglected, with that unspeakably forlorn and abandoned look which ships seem to get after a long lay-up in port. The grime and litter everywhere made his heart ache. The Dagoes had had her for the last year or two, and her little cabin reeked of garlic and stale cigar smoke. The shipkeeper, a drink-sodden old ruffian with a horrible red-running eye, who was probably none too pleased at the prospect of losing his job now his temporary home was sold, followed Broughton round grumbling and croaking. Lor’ bless you, _she_ wouldn’t sail, not she! No more’n a mule’ll go if he don’t want to! There was plenty had had a try at her, and they all told the same tale. Somethink wrong with the way she was built, must be ... or else they’d laid her keel of a Friday or summat....

Broughton smiled to himself. Somehow, he thought, that ship was going to sail for him! He couldn’t have explained the feeling for the life of him, but there it was.

And so, in point of fact, things turned out. Just as a horse which is an unmanageable fiend in the hands of a crack jockey will let some snip of a stable lad do what he will with him--just as a dog made savage by ill-usage will attach himself for life (and perhaps--who knows?--beyond) to someone who first masters him and then shows him kindness--so did this little wild “Philopena” under her new name of “Maid of Athens” show no sign of the tricks and vices, whatever they might be, which had brought her, like some lovely but wilful lady fallen among evil companions, to the obscene desolation of that forlorn Millwall wet dock. Twenty-five years ago ... ah, well, they had been happy years, on the whole! A reserved and rather lonely man, not over fond of company, Broughton had drifted into a negatively disastrous sort of marriage in his young days with a woman considerably older than himself. With the best will in the world to do so, he had been unable to feel any but a superficial grief at her death a few years later; and in the house where his married stepdaughter now lived he always felt like a stranger on sufferance during his brief periods ashore. But he had found an abiding content in the daily routine of his life at sea. He gave himself up to his ship without grudging. She was his one interest in life, his hobby, his love. He laid out his spare cash on little items of personal adornment for her as for a loved woman, and on the new gear of which Old Featherstone stinted her as his natural tendency to stinginess increased with age.

It was a brother skipper, Tom Pellatt, of Maclean’s pretty little clipper “Phoebe Maclean”--a silly, noisy chap Broughton privately thought him--who had first put the idea into his head that the “Maid of Athens” might one day become his own property in name as she already was in spirit.

Pellatt had been dining on board when both ships were in Sydney Harbour, and just as he was going he said:

“Tell you what, Broughton, you’ve been the making of this ship; and if old Nethermillstone don’t leave her to you in his will he damn well ought to, that’s all!”

Broughton put the suggestion aside with a laugh. Pellatt, who was one of those people who, as the phrase goes, “talk as they warm,” and simply said it out of a desire to say something complimentary and pleasing to his host--Broughton’s absorption in his ship being something of a standing joke among his fellow-captains when his back was turned--probably forgot he had ever said it before he got back to his own ship. But the words had sown their seed.

At first Broughton only played with the idea at odd moments: he would do this, he would do that, if the ship were his--treating it as a pleasant kind of game of make-believe wherewith to beguile an idle minute; but always with the mental proviso that, of course, no one but a silly gabbling ass like Pellatt would ever have thought of such a thing.

Then, gradually, he began to wonder if it really was such a ridiculous notion, after all. Old Featherstone’s business would die with him, that was very certain. Hadn’t he said as much himself, the last time Broughton dined at Blackheath, about the time young Daly, whose father Featherstone had worked for in his clerking days, came such a holy mucker in the Bankruptcy Court?

“I don’t intend to leave my house-flag to be trailed through the mire!” he had said.

And hadn’t he said, too, not once but many times:

“I shall never sell the ‘Maid of Athens’!”

Presently, from being a desirable but remote possibility, he began to consider it in the light of a probability; and from that it was but a short step to take to begin to look upon it as a right. Who, he asked himself, had a stronger claim to the ship than he--if, indeed, half so strong?

He began by degrees to make his plans more definitely. It was no longer “if the ship were mine,” but “when she is mine.” He hugged the thought to him, fed upon it, lived with it night and day. He hoped he could honestly say he had never wished Old Featherstone’s death; but when the news of his death had come he had not been able to repress a thrill of exultation as the thought rose to the surface of his mind, “Now, at last, she will surely be mine!”

It had been the old man himself who had finally turned what had until then been no more than a vague hope into a virtual certainty.

It was on the occasion of that last dinner at Blackheath, a matter of six weeks ago, just before the attack of bronchitis that had finished the old fellow off. There he had sat in his big easy-chair by the fire, looking incredibly frail and shrunken, his eyes, for all that, as keen as ever in their sunken caves as they wandered from Broughton’s face to the counterfeit presentment of the “Maid of Athens” riding proudly on her painted sea.

“Well, Broughton,” he had snapped out, suddenly, for a moment almost like his old self again, “you’ve thought a lot of the old ship, haven’t you?”

Broughton, taken by surprise, and feeling, no doubt, just a little guilty about those secret aircastles of his, said, stammering, well, yes, he supposed he had.

And there the matter stopped. Not much, perhaps; but straws show which way the wind blows. Broughton thought he was justified in reading a certain significance into the incident.

And again, on the way up to the funeral that morning, he had looked in at a little club he belonged to, and met half a dozen skippers of his acquaintance: always the same tale--“Hello, Broughton! Off to plant old Feathers, I suppose! Hope he’s come down handsome in his will.”

“Bless you, I’m not expecting anything!” had been Broughton’s answer, as much to the jealous Fates as to them.... Well, it would soon be settled now one way or the other. He didn’t really, in his heart of hearts, believe in the possibility of that other way at all; but he included it in his mind as a matter of form--again with that vague half-superstitious notion of propitiating some watchful and sardonic Destiny.

He was surprised to find himself so little excited now that the great moment had arrived. He had had to keep a tight hand on himself on the way up from the cemetery, lest he should betray his fever of nervous impatience to his companions, and he had been relieved when the lawyer’s constant flow of chatter obviated the necessity of his taking any share in the conversation. Now, he was glad to find, he had got himself well under control. He was even able to derive a certain quiet interest from observing the suppressed eagerness on the decorous countenances of Old Featherstone’s relations. A so-so lot, on the whole! Broughton thought by the looks of ’em that old Thomas must have had the lion’s share of the family wits.

Funny that a man should spend all his life piling money up, and then have no one to leave it to that he really cared for! “My brother’s children’ll get my money when I’m gone,” Old Featherstone used to say; “don’t think much of ’em, but there it is! I hope they’ll enjoy spending it as much as I’ve enjoyed making it.” ...

The little lawyer sipped the last of his port, drew his chair up to the table, and rummaged in the depths of his shabby brown bag with the air of grave importance of a conjurer about to produce rabbits from a hat.

Ah, here was the rabbit--a blue, folded paper which he unfolded, flattened with immense deliberation, and began to read in the dead silence which had suddenly fallen on the room.

By George, thought Broughton, the old fellow was warm and no mistake! Houses here, houses there, shares in this railway, that bank, the other mine. It didn’t interest him much personally, but it was as good as a play to see the pale gooseberry eyes of that grocer-looking chap bulging with excitement until they bade fair to drop out of his head.

“The house ‘Pulo Way’ and the contents thereof (with the exception of certain items specified elsewhere),” droned on the lawyer’s unmusical, monotonous voice, “to Rosina Barratt for her life.” ... Rosina Barratt--that was the dyspeptic niece. Broughton felt glad to know he’d done the proper thing by her. She deserved it. A decent woman: and he must have been a crotchety old devil to live with in his latter days!

Good Lord, what an interminable rigmarole this legal business was! Broughton moved restlessly in his seat. The ships--the ships! Was he never coming to them?

His own name, starting at him out of the midst of the formal phraseology, made his heart miss a beat. Here it was at last: but no--not yet----

“To Captain David Broughton my oil painting of the clipper ship ‘Maid of Athens’ in gold frame, knowing his regard for the ship and that he will value the painting on that account....”

Broughton just managed to bite back a laugh in time. If the old chap had known what he really thought about that picture!

The lawyer droned on. Somebody got that black clock on the mantelpiece--somebody else the old man’s Malacca cane--two hundred pounds to little Jenkinson--a hundred to the lawyer. The little clerk sat up and smirked like a Sunday School kid that hears its name read out for a prize; but the lawyer, Broughton thought not without a touch of amusement, didn’t look any too well pleased with his.

The ships--the ships--what about the ships?...

“I desire that my two ships, ‘Maid of Athens’ and ‘Thyrza,’ shall be sold within twelve months after my decease, and the proceeds of the sale divided amongst the legatees aforesaid in the same proportion as the rest of my estate.”

It seemed to Broughton that the lawyer’s respectfully modulated tones went roaring and echoing round the room, with a note of derision in them like the ironical laughter of fiends. A black mist swam before his eyes for a minute or two, obscuring the prim Victorian dining-room and its familiar contents--a mist through which the three lit gas-globes on the brass chandelier shone large, round, and haloed like sun-dogs in the Far North.

The mist, clearing, left everything distinct again. The thundering voice subsided again to its former dry monotone. The lawyer brought his reading to a close, folded his eyeglasses, and replaced his documents in his bag. A discreet murmur of excited talk broke out among the relatives.

The dyspeptic niece, important in the consciousness of her legacy, came twittering up to Broughton as he rose to go.

“_So_ kind of you to come, Captain Broughton! My uncle would have appreciated your being here. And you’ll let me know where to send your picture, won’t you? I’m so glad it’s going to you. One likes to think things are going to those who will appreciate them.”

The picture! Broughton nearly laughed in the woman’s face--nearly told her to keep the damned picture. But he thought better of it--it wasn’t the poor silly creature’s fault, after all!

The lawyer hailed him as he stood on the steps, buttoning his overcoat, while he waited for his hansom.

“Can’t I give you a lift anywhere, Captain Broughton? Going to be a foggy night, I fancy.”

Broughton shook his head with a curt “No, thanks--walking!”

The little lawyer, who was a shrewd observer of men and, like most chatterboxes, a kindly soul, and who was, moreover, none too pleased with his own legacy, shook his head and sighed as he watched the square-set figure disappear into the fog and darkness.

“That man’s had a bit of a knock,” he reflected. “Wonder if he’s got anything to live on? Not much, I dare say. Wouldn’t have hurt that stingy old devil to leave him a hundred or two.... Ah well....”