Natural Born Spy
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I knew what it was as she came toward me. For ten minutes had watched her talking earnestly with the engineer, and now, with a sign for silence, I drew her out of earshot of the helmsman. Her face was white and set; her large eyes, larger than usual what of the purpose in them, looked penetratingly into mine. I felt rather timid and apprehensive, for she had come to search Humphrey Van Weyden's soul, and Humphrey Van Weyden had nothing of which to be particularly proud since his advent on the Ghost.
We walked to the break of the poop, where she turned and faced me. I glanced around to see that no one was within hearing distance.
"What is it?" I asked gently; but the expression of determination on her face did not relax.
"I can readily understand," she began, "that this morning's affair was largely an accident; but I have been talking with Mr. Haskins. He tells me that the day we were rescued, even while I was in the cabin, two men were drowned, deliberately drowned -- murdered."
There was a query in her voice, and she faced me accusingly, as though I were guilty of the deed, or at least a party to it.
"The information is quite correct," I answered. "The two men were murdered."
"And you permitted it!" she cried.
"I was unable to prevent it, is a better way of phrasing it," replied, still gently.
"But you tried to prevent it?" There was an emphasis on the "tried," and a pleading little note in her voice.
"Oh, but you didn't," she hurried on, divining my answer. "But why didn't you?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "You must remember, Miss Brewster, that you are a new inhabitant of this little world, and that you do not yet understand the laws which operate within it. You bring with you certain fine conceptions of humanity, manhood, conduct, and such things; but here you will find them misconceptions. I have found it so," I added, with an involuntary sigh.
She shook her head incredulously.
"What would you advise, then?" I asked. "That I should take a knife, or a gun, or an axe, and kill this man?"
She half started back.
THE ENGLISH working classes may be said to be soaked in beer. They are made dull and sodden by it. Their efficiency is sadly impaired, and they lose whatever imagination, invention, and quickness may be theirs by right of race. It may hardly be called an acquired habit, for they are accustomed to it from their earliest infancy. Children are begotten in drunkenness, saturated in drink before they draw their first breath, born to the smell and taste of it, and brought up in the midst of it.
The public house is ubiquitous. It flourishes on every corner and between corners, and it is frequented almost as much by women as by men. Children are to be found in it as well, waiting till their fathers and mothers are ready to go home, sipping from the glasses of their elders, listening to the coarse language and degrading conversation, catching the contagion of it, familiarizing themselves with licentiousness and debauchery.
Mrs. Grundy rules as supremely over the workers as she does over the bourgeoisie; but in the case of the workers, the one thing she does not frown upon is the public house. No disgrace or shame attaches to it, nor to the young woman or girl who makes a practice of entering it.
A Woman's Club at the Public House door.
I remember a girl in a coffee-house saying, `I never drink spirits when in a public 'ouse.' She was a young and pretty waitress, and she was laying down to another waitress her preeminent respectability and discretion. Mrs. Grundy drew the line at spirits, but allowed that it was quite proper for a clean young girl to drink beer and to go into a public house to drink it. |
