Miracle Gold: A Novel (Vol. 2 of 3)

CHAPTER XVI

RED HERRINGS

Dealers in marine stores generally select quiet by-ways, back-waters of traffic, for the scene of their trade. In the open high roads of business the current is too quick for them. They buy and sell substantial and weighty articles; their transactions are few and far between. Those who come to sell may be in haste; those who come to buy, never. No one ever yet rushed into a marine-store dealer's, and hammered with his money on a second-hand copper, in lieu of a counter, and shouted out that he could not wait a moment for a second-hand iron tripod. It is extremely doubtful if a marine-store dealer ever sells anything. Occasionally buying of ungainly, heavy, amorphous, valueless-looking bundles goes on, but a sale hardly ever. Who, for instance, could want an object visible in the business establishment of John Timmons, Tunbridge Street, London Road? The most important-looking article was a donkey-engine without a funnel, or any of its taps, and with a large rusty hole bulged in its knobby boiler. Then there lay a little distance from the engine the broken beam of a large pair of scales and the huge iron scoop of another pair. After this, looking along the left-hand side out of the gloom towards the door, lay three cannon-shot, for guns of different calibres; then the funnel of a locomotive, flat, and making a very respectable pretence of having been the barrel from which the cannon-shot had dribbled, instead of flown, because of the barrel's senile decay. After the funnel came a broken anvil, around the blockless and deposed body of which gathered-no doubt for the sake of old lang syne-two sledge-hammer heads, without handles, and the nozzle of a prodigious forge-bellows. Next appeared a heap of chunks of leaden pipe. Next, a patch of mutilated cylindrical half-hundred weights, like iron mushrooms growing up out of the ferruginous floor. The axle-tree and boxes of a cart stood against the wall, like the gingham umbrella of an antediluvian giant, and keeping them company the pillars and trough of a shower-bath, plainly the stand into which the umbrella ought to have been placed, if the dead Titan had had any notion of tidiness. Then appeared the cistern of the shower-bath, like the Roundhead iron cap of the cyclopean owner of the umbrella. Then spread what one might fancy to be the mouth of a mine of coffee mills, followed by a huge chaotic pile of rusty and broken guns and swords, and blunderbusses and pistols. Beyond this chaotic patch, a ton of nuts and screws and bolts; and, later, a bank of washers, a wire screen, five dejected chimney-jacks, the stock of an anchor, broken from the flukes, several hundred fathoms of short chains of assorted lengths, half a bundle of nailrod iron, three glassless ship's lamps, a pile of brazen miscellanies, a pile of iron miscellanies, a pile of copper miscellanies, and then the doorless opening into Tunbridge Street, and standing on the iron-grooved threshold, into which the shutters fitted at night, Mr. John Timmons in person, the owner of this flourishing establishment.

Mr. John Timmons was a tall and very thin man, of fifty years, or thereabouts. His face was dust-colour, with high, well-padded cheek bones, blue eyes and insignificant cocked nose. His hair was dark brown, touched here and there with grey, curly, short, thin. He wore a low-crowned brown felt hat and a suit of dark chocolate tweed, the trousers being half a span too short over his large shoes, and the waistcoat half a span too wide, half a span too long, and buttoned up to the deep-sunken hollow of his scraggy throat. His neck was extremely long and thin and wrinkled, and covered with sparse greyish hair. His ears were enormous, and stood out from his ill-shapen head like fins. They were iron-grey, the colour of the under surface of a bat's wing. The forehead was low, retreating, and creased with close parallel lines. The eyes were keen, furtive, suspicious. A hand's-breath below the sharp, large apple of his throat, and hanging loose upon the waistcoat, was the knot of a washed-out blue cotton neckerchief. He wore long mutton-chop whiskers. The rest of the face was covered with a short, grizzled stubble. When he was not using his hands, he carried them thrust down to the utmost in his trousers' pockets, showing a wide strip of red sinewy arm between the sleeve of his coat and the pocket of the trousers. No shirt was visible, and the neckerchief touched the long, lank neck, there being no collar or trace of linen. Excepting the blue patch of neckerchief on his chest, and his blue eyes, no positive colour appeared anywhere about the man. No part of the man himself or of his clothes was clean.

Mr. Timmons was taking the air on his own threshold late in the afternoon of that last Thursday in June. It was now some hours since the dwarf had called and had held that conversation with him in the cellar. Not a human being had entered the marine store since. Mr. Timmons was gazing out of his watchet blue eyes in a stony and abstracted way at the dead brick wall opposite. He had been standing in this position for a good while, now shifting the weight of his body to one foot, now to the other. Occasionally he cleared his throat, which, being a supererogation, showed that he was in deep thought, for no man, in his waking moments, could think of clearing so long a throat without ample reason. The sound he made was so deep and sepulchral it seemed as though he had left his voice behind him in the cellar, and it was becoming impatient there.

Although it had not yet struck six o'clock, he was thinking of closing his establishment. At this time of the day very few people passed through Tunbridge Street; often a quarter of an hour went by bringing no visitor. But after six the street became busier, for with the end of the working day came more carts and vans and barrows to rest for the night with their shafts thrust up in the air, after their particular manner of sleeping. This parking of the peaceful artillery of the streets Mr. Timmons looked on with dislike, for it brought many people about the place and no grist to his mill. He shared with poets and aristocrats the desire for repose and privacy.

As he was about to retire for the long shutters that by night defended and veiled his treasure from predatory hands or prying eyes, his enormous left ear became aware that feet were approaching from the end of the street touching London Road. He turned his pale blue eyes in the direction of the sound and saw coming along close to the wall the figure of a low sized stout woman, wearing a black bonnet far off her forehead. She was apparently about his own age, but except in the matter of age there was no likeness in the appearance of the two. She was dressed in shabby black stuff which had long ago forgotten to what kind of material it belonged. Her appearance was what merciful newspaper reporters describe as "decent," that is, she was not old or in tatters, or young and attractive and gaudy in apparel; her clothes were black and whole, and she was sober. She looked like an humble monthly nurse or an ideal charwoman. She carried a fish-basket in her hand. Out of this basket projected the tails of half-a-dozen red herrings. She had, apparently, once been good-looking, and was now well-favoured. She had that smooth, cheesy, oily, colourless rounded face peculiar to well-fed women of the humbler class indigenous in London.

Mr. Timmons' forehead wrinkled upwards as he recognised the visitor to Tunbridge Street. He smiled, displaying an imperfect line of long discoloured teeth.

"Good afternoon," said John Timmons in a deep vibrating voice that sounded as though it had effected its escape from the cellar through a drum.

"Afternoon," said the woman entering the store without pausing. Then nodding her head back in the direction whence she had come she asked: "Anyone?"

"No," answered Timmons, after a long and careful scrutiny of the eastern half of Tunbridge Street. "Not a soul."

"I thought I'd never get here. It's mortal hot. Are you sure there is no one after me?" said the woman, sitting down on a broken fire-grate, in the rear of the pile of shutters standing up against the wall on the left. She began rubbing her perspiring glistening face with a handkerchief of a dun colour rolled up in a damp ball. Still she held her fish-bag in her hand.

"Certain. Which shows what bad taste the men have. Now, only for Tom I know you'd have one follower you could never shake off," said Timmons, with a gallant laugh that sounded alarmingly deeper than his speaking voice. Timmons was at his ease and leisure, and he made it a point to be always polite to ladies.

"Tom's at home," said the woman, thrusting the handkerchief into her pocket and smiling briefly and mechanically in acknowledgment of the man's compliment to her charms. "I've brought you some fish for your tea."

"Herrings," he said, bending to examine the protruding tails. "Fresh herrings, or red?" he asked in a hushed significant voice. He did not follow the woman into the store, but still stood at the threshold, so that he could see up and down the street.

"Red," she whispered hoarsely, "and as fine as ever you saw. I thought you might like them for your tea."

By this time a man with a cart turned into the street, and, it just then striking six, the door of a factory poured out a living turbid stream of bedraggled, frowsy girls, some of whom went up and some down the street, noisily talking and laughing.

"Yes, There is nothing I am so fond of for my tea as red herrings," he said, with his face half turned to the store, half to the street. "And I shall like them particularly to-night."

"Eh! Particularly to-night? Are you alone? Are you going to have company at tea, Mr. Timmons?" asked the woman in a tone and manner of newly-awakened interest. She now held her fish basket with both hands in front of her fat body and resting on her shallow lap.

Timmons was standing half-a-dozen yards from her on the threshold. She could hear his voice quite plainly, notwithstanding the noise in the street and the fact that he spoke in a muffled tone. While he answered he kept his mouth partly open, and, because of so doing, spoke with some indistinctness. It was apparent he did not want people within sight or hearing to know he was speaking. "No; I am not expecting anyone to tea, and there is no one here. I am going to have my tea all by myself. I am very busy just now. I have had a visitor to-day-a few hours ago-"

"Well," whispered the woman eagerly.

"And I have the kettle on the boil, and I am going to put those red herrings in it for my tea." He was looking with vacant blue eyes down the street as he spoke. He did not lay stress upon the words, "I have the kettle on the boil." He uttered them in a lower tone and more slowly than any others. The emphasis thus given them was very great. It seemed to startle the woman. She rose partly as if to go to him. She was fluttered and agreeably fluttered.

"Stay where you are," he said. He seemed to know she had attempted to rise without turning his eyes upon her. She was half hidden in the gloom of the store. No casual observer passing by would have noticed her. She was simply a black shapeless mass on the old fire-grate against a dingy dark wall in a half light. She might easily be taken for some of Timmons's stock.

"And," she said, "he'll do it!"

"He will. He's been to Birmingham and has arranged all. They'll take every bit they can get and pay a good price-twice as much as could be got otherwise-from anyone else."

"Fine! Tine! You know, Mr. Timmons, how hard it is to find a bit now, and to get so little for it as we have been handling is very bad-heartbreaking. It takes all the spirit out of Tom."

"Where did you buy the six herrings?"

"Well," said the woman, with a smile, "I didn't exactly buy them herrings, though they are as good ones as ever you saw. You see, my little boys went to the meeting about the votes, or the Niggers, or the Gospel, or something or other, and they found the herrings growing on the trees there, ha-ha-ha."

"I know. It was a meeting for trying to get some notion of Christianity into the heads of the African Blacks. I read about it in the newspaper this morning. The missionaries and ourselves are much beholden to the Blacks."

"It was something now I remember about the Blacks. Anyway, they're six beauties. And can you let me have a little money, Mr. Timmons, for I must hurry back to Tom with the good news."

"How is Tom? Is he on the drink?"

"No, he isn't."

"That's a bad sign. What's the matter?"

"I don't know, if it isn't going to them Christian meetings about the Blacks. It's my belief that he'll turn Christian in the end, and you know, Mr. Timmons, that won't pay him."

"Not at Tom's time of life. You must begin that kind of thing young. There are lots of converted-well sinners, but they don't often make bishops of even the best of them."

"Well, am I to go? What are you going to give me, Mr. Timmons? When Tom isn't in a reasonable state of drink there's no standing him. Make it as much as you can. Say a fiver for luck on the new-found-out."

"I'll give you an order on the Bank of England for a million if you like, but I can't give you more than ten thousand pounds in sovereigns, or even half sovereigns, just at this moment, even for the good of the unfortunate heathen Blacks. But here, anyway, take this just to keep you going. I haven't landed any fish myself yet."

The woman rose and he handed to her money. Then followed a long, good-humoured dialogue in which she begged for more, and he firmly, but playfully, refused her. Then she went away, and Mr. John Timmons was left once more alone.

He had taken the fish basket from the woman when giving her the money, and now carried it to the back of the store and descended with, it to the cellar. He did not remain long below, but soon came trotting up the ladder, humming a dull air in a deep growl. Then he set himself briskly to work putting up the shutters, taking them out of the pile in front of the old fire-grate on which the woman had sat, carrying each one separately to the front and running it home through the slot. When all were up, he opened the lower part of one, which hung on hinges serving as a wicket, and stepped out into the street full from end to end of the bright, warm evening sunlight.

He rubbed his forehead with the sleeve of his coat and took a leisurely survey of the street. The noisy girls from the factory had all disappeared, and the silence of evening was falling upon the place. A few men busied themselves among the carts and vans and a dull muffled sound told of the traffic in London Road. The hum of machinery had ceased, and, contrasted with the noise of an hour ago, the place was soundless.

John Timmons seemed satisfied with his inspection. He closed the wicket and retired into the deep gloom of the store. The only light now in this place entered through holes up high in two shutters. The holes were no more than a foot square, and were protected by perforated iron plates. They were intended for ventilating not lighting the store.

Even in the thick dark air John Timmons was quite independent of light. He could have found any article in his stock blindfold. He was no sun-worshipper, nor did he pay divine honours to the moon. A good thick blinding London fog was his notion of reasonable weather. One could then do one's business, whatever it might be, without fear of bright and curious eyes.

He had told his late visitor that he had the kettle on the fire. She had brought him half-a dozen red herrings and left them with him in a fish-basket. Now red herrings, differing in this respect from other kinds of fish, are seldom or never cooked in a kettle, and although the front of the door was closed and the only visible source of heat the two ventilators high up in the shutters, the air of the store was growing already warmer and drier, and although there was no smell of cooking there was an unmistakable smell of fire.

The owner did not seem in any great hurry to cook and taste his savoury victuals. He might have meant that the kettle was for tea merely, and had nothing to do directly with the red herrings. He fastened the wicket-door very carefully, and then slowly examined the rear of the shutters one by one, and, holding his eye close to them here and there, tried if he could spy out, in order to ascertain if any one could spy in. Then he rested his shoulder against the middle shutter, leant his head against the panel and, having thrust his hands deeper than ever into his trousers' pockets, gave up his soul to listening.

In the meantime the fish basket, with the tails of the six red herrings sticking out, was lying on the top of the old fire-grate which had served his visitor as a seat. It had been placed here by Timmons when he took it from the woman.

A quarter of an hour the man remained thus without moving. Apparently he was satisfied at last. He stood upright upon his feet, shook himself, gazed confidently round the store and then walked to the old fire-grate. He was going to get his tea at last.

He took up the basket, drew out the wooden skewer by which it was closed, caught the herrings in a bundle and threw them behind him on the gritty earthen floor.

He opened the bag wide and peered into it. Holding it in his left hand upon his upraised thigh he thrust his right hand into it and fumbled about, bending his head down to look the better.

He was on the point of drawing something out when he suddenly paused and listened motionless.

There was the sound of approaching steps. Timmons stood as still as death.

Three soft knocks sounded upon the wicket and then, after an interval of a few seconds, two more knocks still softer.

"It's Stamer himself," cried Timmons, with an imprecation, in a muffled voice. Then he added: "What does he want? More money? Anyway, I suppose I must let him in."