The Lady of the Barge by W. W. Jacobs (best novels to read in english txt) 📕

The mate repeated them with gusto.

“Very good,” said the skipper, sharply; “very good.”

“Don’t you ever speak to me again,” said Miss Harris, with a stately air, “because I won’t answer you if you do.”

The mate displayed more of his schoolboy nature. “Wait till you’re spoken to,” he said, rudely. “This is your gratefulness, I suppose?”

“Gratefulness?” said Miss Harris, with her chin in the air. “What for?”

“For bringing you for a trip,” replied the mate, sternly.

“You bringing me for a trip!” said Miss Harris, scornfully. “Captain Gibbs is the master here, I suppose. He is giving me the trip. You’re only the mate.”

“Just so,” said the mate, with a grin at his brother-in-law, which made that worthy shift uneasily. “I wonder what Loo will say when she sees you with a lady aboard?”

“She came to please you,” said Captain Gibbs, with haste.

“Ho! she did, did she?” jeered the mate. “Prove it; only don’t look to me to back you, that’s all.”

The other eyed him in consternation, and his manner changed.

“Don’t play the fool, Ted,” he said, not unkindly; “you know what Loo is.”

“Well, I’m reckoning on that,” said the mate, deliberately. “I’m going for’ard; don’t let me interrupt you two. So long.”

He went slowly forward, and lighting his pipe, sprawled carelessly on the deck, and renounced the entire sex forthwith. At teatime the skipper attempted to reverse the procedure at the other meals; but as Miss Harris steadfastly declined to sit at the same table as the mate, his good intentions came to naught.

He made an appeal to what he termed the mate’s better nature, after Miss Harris had retired to the seclusion of her bedchamber, but in vain.

“She’s nothing to do with me,” declared the mate, majestically. “I wash my hands of her. She’s a flirt. I’m like Louisa, I can’t bear flirts.”

The skipper said no more, but his face was so worn that Miss Harris, when she came on deck in the early morning and found the barge gliding gently between the grassy banks of a river, attributed it to the difficulty of navigating so large a craft on so small and winding a stream.

“We shall be alongside in ’arf an hour,” said the skipper, eyeing her.

Miss Harris expressed her gratification.

“P’raps you wouldn’t mind going down the fo’c’sle and staying there till we’ve made fast,” said the other. “I’d take it as a favour. My owners don’t like me to carry passengers.”

Miss Harris, who understood perfectly, said, “Certainly,” and with a cold stare at the mate, who was at no pains to conceal his amusement, went below at once, thoughtfully closing the scuttle after her.

“There’s no call to make mischief, Ted,” said the skipper, somewhat anxiously, as they swept round the last bend and came into view of Coalsham.

The mate said nothing, but stood by to take in sail as they ran swiftly toward the little quay. The pace slackened, and the Arabella, as though conscious of the contraband in her forecastle, crept slowly to where a stout, middle-aged woman, who bore a strong likeness to the mate, stood upon the quay.

“There’s poor Loo,” said the mate, with a sigh.

The skipper made no reply to this infernal insinuation. The barge ran alongside the quay and made fast.

“I thought you’d be up,” said Mrs. Gibbs to her husband. “Now come along to breakfast; Ted’ll follow on.”

Captain Gibbs, dived down below for his coat, and slipping ashore, thankfully prepared to move off with his wife.

“Come on as soon as you can, Ted,” said the latter. “Why, what on earth is he making that face for?”

She turned in amazement as her brother, making a pretence of catching her husband’s eye, screwed his face up into a note of interrogation and gave a slight jerk with his thumb.

“Come along,” said Captain Gibbs, taking her arm with much affection.

“But what’s Ted looking like that for?” demanded his wife, as she easily intercepted another choice facial expression of the mate’s.

“Oh, it’s his fun,” replied her husband, walking on.

“Fun?” repeated Mrs. Gibbs, sharply. “What’s the matter, Ted.”

“Nothing,” replied the mate.

“Touch o’ toothache,” said the skipper. “Come along, Loo; I can just do with one o’ your breakfasts.”

Mrs. Gibbs suffered herself to be led on, and had got at least five yards on the way home, when she turned and looked back. The mate had still got the toothache, and was at that moment in all the agonies of a phenomenal twinge.

“There’s something wrong here,” said Mrs. Gibbs as she retraced her steps. “Ted, what are you making that face for?”

“It’s my own face,” said the mate, evasively.

Mrs. Gibbs conceded the point, and added bitterly that it couldn’t be helped. All the same she wanted to know what he meant by it.

“Ask John,” said the vindictive mate.

Mrs. Gibbs asked. Her husband said he didn’t know, and added that Ted had been like it before, but he had not told her for fear of frightening her. Then he tried to induce her to go with him to the chemist’s to get something for it.

Mrs. Gibbs shook her head firmly, and boarding the barge, took a seat on the hatch and proceeded to catechise her brother as to his symptoms. He denied that there was anything the matter with him, while his eyes openly sought those of Captain Gibbs as though asking for instruction.

“You come home, Ted,” she said at length.

“I can’t,” said the mate. “I can’t leave the ship.”

“Why not?” demanded his sister.

“Ask John,” said the mate again.

At this Mrs. Gibbs’s temper, which had been rising, gave way altogether, and she stamped fiercely upon the deck. A stamp of the foot has been for all time a rough-and-ready means of signalling; the fore-scuttle was drawn back, and the face of a young and pretty girl appeared framed in the opening. The mate raised his eyebrows with a helpless gesture, and as for the unfortunate skipper, any jury would have found him guilty without leaving the box. The wife of his bosom, with a flaming visage, turned and regarded him.

“You villain!” she said,