fiddler groped for and took the drink, swallowed it, and twangled the fiddle-strings. "Will y'ave Black Jack?" he asked.
"No," Dan answered with a rising voice. "We won't 'ave Black Jack, an' what's more we won't 'ave Blind George, see? You cut your lucky, soon as ye like!"
"Awright, awright, cap'en," the fiddler remonstrated, rising reluctantly. "You're 'ard on a pore blind bloke, damme. Ain't I to get nothin' out o' this 'ere? I ask ye fair, didn't the genelman tell me to come along?"
Marr, ducking and lolling over the table, here looked up and said, "Whassup? Fiddler won' go? Gi'm twopence an' kick'm downstairs. 'Ere y'are!" and he pulled out some small change between his fingers, and spilt it on the table.
Dan and the broken-nosed man gathered it up and thrust it into the blind man's hand. "This ain't the straight game," he protested, in a hoarse whisper, as they pushed him through the doorway. "I want my reg'lars out o' that lot. D'ye 'ear? I want my reg'lars!"
But they shut the door on him, whereupon he broke into a torrent of curses on the landing; and presently, having descended several of the stairs, reached back to let drive a thump at the door with his stick; and so went off swearing into the street.
Marr sniggered feebly. "Chucked out fiddler," he said. "Whash we do now? I won'ave any more drink. I 'ad 'nough… Think I'll be gett'n' along… Here, what you after, eh?"
He clapped his hand again to his breast pocket, and turned suspiciously on the woman. "You keep y'r hands off," he said. "Wha' wan' my pocket?"
"Awright, mate," the woman answered placidly. "I ain't a touchin' yer pockets. Why, look there – yer watchguard's 'angin'; you'll drop that presently an' say it's me, I s'pose!"
"You'd better get away from the genelman if you can't behave yourself civil," interposed Dan, pushing the woman aside and getting between them. "'Ere, mate, you got to 'ave another drink along o' me. I'll turn her out arter the fiddler, if she ain't civil."
"I won'ave another drink," said Marr, thickly, struggling unsteadily to his feet and dropping back instantly to his chair. "I won'avanother."
"We'll see about that," replied Dan. "'Ere, you get out," he went on, addressing the woman as he hauled her up by the shoulders. "You get out; we're goin' to be comf'table together, us two an' 'im. Out ye go!" He thrust her toward the door and opened it. "I'm sick o' foolin' about," he added in an angry undertone; "quick's the word."
"O no, Dan – don't," the woman pleaded, whispering on the landing. "Not that way! Not again! I'll get it from him easy in a minute! Don't do it, Dan!"
"Shut yer mouth! I ain't askin' you. You shove off a bit."
"Don't, Dan!"
But the door was shut.
"I tell ye I won'avanother!" came Marr's voice from within.
The woman went down the stairs, her gross face drawn as though she wept, though her eyes were dry. At the door she looked back with something like a shudder, and then turned her steps down the street.
The two partners in Viney and Marr were separated indeed; but now it was by something more than half a mile of streets.
CHAPTER III
STEPHEN'S TALE
I had never been home with Grandfather Nat before. I fancy that some scruples of my mother's, in the matter of the neighbourhood and the character of the company to be seen and heard at the Hole in the Wall, had hitherto kept me from the house, and even from the sugary elysium of the London Dock. Now I was going there at last, and something of eager anticipation overcame the sorrow of the day.
We went in an omnibus, which we left in Commercial Road. Here my grandfather took order to repair my disappointment in the matter of pear-drops; and we left the shop with such a bagful that it would not go into the accustomed pocket at all. A little way from this shop, and on the opposite side of the way, stood a house which my mother had more than once pointed out to me already; and as we came abreast of it now, Grandfather Nat pointed it out also. "Know who lives there, Stevy?" he asked.
"Yes," I said; "Mr. Viney, that father's ship belongs to."
There was a man sitting on the stone baluster by the landing of the front steps, having apparently just desisted from knocking at the door. He was pale and agitated, and he slapped his leg distractedly with a folded paper.
"Why," said my grandfather, "that's Crooks, the ship-chandler. He looks bad; wonder what's up?"
With that the door opened, and a servant-girl, in bonnet and shawl, emerged with her box, lifting and dragging it as best she might. The man rose and spoke to her, and I supposed that he was about to help. But at her answer he sank back on the balustrade, and she hauled the box to the pavement by herself. The man looked worse than ever, now, and he moved his head from side to side; so that it struck me that it might be that his mother also was dead; perhaps to-day; and at the thought all the flavour went from the pear-drop in my mouth.
We turned up a narrow street which led us to a part where the river plainly was nearer at every step; for well I knew the curious smell that grew as we went, and that had in it something of tar, something of rope and junk, something of ships' stores, and much of a blend of unknown outlandish merchandise. We met sailors, some with parrots and accordions, and many with undecided legs; and we saw more of the hang-dog fellows who were not sailors, though they dressed in the same way, and got an inactive living out of sailors, somehow. They leaned on posts, they lurked in foul entries, they sat on sills, smoking; and often one would accost and hang to a passing sailor, with a grinning, trumped-up cordiality that offended and repelled me, child as I was. And there were big, coarse women, with flaring clothes, and hair that shone with grease; though for them I had but a certain wonder; as for why they all seemed to live near the docks; why they all grew so stout; and why they never wore bonnets.
As we went where the street grew fouler and more crooked, and where dark entries and many turnings gave evidence of the complication of courts and alleys about us, we heard a hoarse voice crooning a stave of a sea-song, with the low scrape of a fiddle striking in here and there, as it were at random. And presently there turned a corner ahead and faced toward us a blind man, with his fiddle held low against his chest, and his face lifted upward, a little aside. He checked at the corner to hit the wall a couple of taps with the stick that hung from his wrist, and called aloud, with fouler words than I can remember or could print: "Now then, damn ye! Ain't there ne'er a Christian sailor-man as wants a toon o' George? Who'll 'ave a toon o' George? Ain't ye got no money, damn ye? Not a brown for pore blind George? What a dirty mean lot it is! Who'll 'ave a 'ornpipe? Who'll 'ave a song o' pore George?.. O damn y' all!"
And so, with a mutter and another tap of the stick, he came creeping along, six inches at a step, the stick dangling loose again, and the bow scraping the strings to the song: —
Fire on the fore-top, fire on the bow,
Fire on the main-deck, fire down below!
Fire! fire! fire down below!
Fetch a bucket o' water; fire down below!
The man's right eye was closed, but the left was horribly wide and white and rolling, and it quite unpleasantly reminded me of a large china marble that lay at that moment at the bottom of my breeches pocket, under some uniform buttons, a key you could whistle on, a brass knob from a fender, and a tangle of string. So much indeed was I possessed with this uncomfortable resemblance in later weeks, when I had seen Blind George often, and knew more of him, that at last I had no choice but to fling the marble into the river; though indeed it was something of a rarity in marbles, and worth four "alleys" as big as itself.
My grandfather stopped his talk as we drew within earshot of the fiddler; but blind men's ears are keen beyond the common. The bow dropped from the fiddle, and Blind George sang out cheerily: "Why, 'ere comes Cap'en Nat, 'ome from the funeral; and got 'is little grandson what 'e's goin' to take care of an' bring up so moral in 'is celebrated 'ouse o' call!" All to my extreme amazement: for what should this strange blind man know of me, or of my mother's funeral?
Grandfather Nat seemed a little angry. "Well, well," he said, "your ears