‘"Shall” is summ’at of a hard word,
Captain,’ urged Riderhood, still feebly dodging
between him and the door, as he advanced. ’When
you say a man “shall” sign this and that
and t’other, Captain, you order him about in
a grand sort of a way. Don’t it seem so
to yourself?’
The man stood still, and angrily fixed him with his
eyes.
‘Father, father!’ entreated Pleasant,
from the door, with her disengaged hand nervously
trembling at her lips; ’don’t! Don’t
get into trouble any more!’
’Hear me out, Captain, hear me out! All
I was wishing to mention, Captain, afore you took
your departer,’ said the sneaking Mr Riderhood,
falling out of his path, ’was, your handsome
words relating to the reward.’
‘When I claim it,’ said the man, in a
tone which seemed to leave some such words as ‘you
dog,’ very distinctly understood, ’you
shall share it.’
Looking stedfastly at Riderhood, he once more said
in a low voice, this time with a grim sort of admiration
of him as a perfect piece of evil, ‘What a liar
you are!’ and, nodding his head twice or thrice
over the compliment, passed out of the shop.
But, to Pleasant he said good-night kindly.
The honest man who gained his living by the sweat
of his brow remained in a state akin to stupefaction,
until the footless glass and the unfinished bottle
conveyed themselves into his mind. From his mind
he conveyed them into his hands, and so conveyed the
last of the wine into his stomach. When that
was done, he awoke to a clear perception that Poll
Parroting was solely chargeable with what had passed.
Therefore, not to be remiss in his duty as a father,
he threw a pair of sea-boots at Pleasant, which she
ducked to avoid, and then cried, poor thing, using
her hair for a pocket-handkerchief.
A SOLO AND A DUETT
The wind was blowing so hard when the visitor came
out at the shop-door into the darkness and dirt of
Limehouse Hole, that it almost blew him in again.
Doors were slamming violently, lamps were flickering
or blown out, signs were rocking in their frames,
the water of the kennels, wind-dispersed, flew about
in drops like rain. Indifferent to the weather,
and even preferring it to better weather for its clearance
of the streets, the man looked about him with a scrutinizing
glance. ’Thus much I know,’ he murmured.
’I have never been here since that night, and
never was here before that night, but thus much I recognize.
I wonder which way did we take when we came out of
that shop. We turned to the right as I have turned,
but I can recall no more. Did we go by this alley?
Or down that little lane?’
He tried both, but both confused him equally, and
he came straying back to the same spot. ’I
remember there were poles pushed out of upper windows
on which clothes were drying, and I remember a low
public-house, and the sound flowing down a narrow
passage belonging to it of the scraping of a fiddle
and the shuffling of feet. But here are all these
things in the lane, and here are all these things in
the alley. And I have nothing else in my mind
but a wall, a dark doorway, a flight of stairs, and
a room.’
