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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10789 ***
+
+SAILORS' KNOTS
+
+By W.W. Jacobs
+
+
+1909
+
+
+
+THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY
+
+
+Mr. Letts had left his ship by mutual arrangement, and the whole of the
+crew had mustered to see him off and to express their sense of relief at
+his departure.  After some years spent in long voyages, he had fancied a
+trip on a coaster as a change, and, the schooner Curlew having no use for
+a ship's carpenter, had shipped as cook.  He had done his best, and the
+unpleasant epithets that followed him along the quay at Dunchurch as he
+followed in the wake of his sea-chest were the result.  Master and mate
+nodded in grim appreciation of the crew's efforts.
+
+[Illustration: "After some years spent in long voyages"]
+
+He put his chest up at a seamen's lodging-house, and, by no means
+perturbed at this sudden change in his fortunes, sat on a seat
+overlooking the sea, with a cigarette between his lips, forming plans for
+his future.  His eyes closed, and he opened them with a start to find
+that a middle-aged woman of pleasant but careworn appearance had taken
+the other end of the bench.
+
+"Fine day," said Mr. Letts, lighting another cigarette.
+
+The woman assented and sat looking over the sea.
+
+"Ever done any cooking?"  asked Mr. Letts, presently.
+
+"Plenty," was the surprised reply.  "Why?"
+
+"I just wanted to ask you how long you would boil a bit o' beef," said
+Mr. Letts.  "Only from curiosity; I should never ship as cook again."
+
+He narrated his experience of the last few days, and, finding the
+listener sympathetic, talked at some length about himself and his
+voyages; also of his plans for the future.
+
+"I lost my son at sea," said the woman, with a sigh.  "You favor him
+rather."
+
+Mr. Letts's face softened.  "Sorry," he said.  "Sorry you lost him, I
+mean."
+
+"At least, I suppose he would have been like you," said the other; "but
+it's nine years ago now.  He was just sixteen."
+
+Mr. Letts--after a calculation--nodded.  "Just my age," he said.  "I was
+twenty-five last March."
+
+"Sailed for Melbourne," said the woman.  "My only boy."
+
+Mr. Letts cleared his throat, sympathetically.
+
+"His father died a week after he sailed," continued the other, "and three
+months afterwards my boy's ship went down.  Two years ago, like a fool, I
+married again.  I don't know why I'm talking to you like this.  I suppose
+it is because you remind me of him."
+
+"You talk away as much as you like," said Mr. Letts, kindly.  "I've got
+nothing to do."
+
+He lit another cigarette, and, sitting in an attitude of attention,
+listened to a recital of domestic trouble that made him congratulate
+himself upon remaining single.
+
+"Since I married Mr. Green I can't call my soul my own," said the victim
+of matrimony as she rose to depart.  "If my poor boy had lived things
+would have been different.  His father left the house and furniture to
+him, and that's all my second married me for, I'm sure.  That and the bit
+o' money that was left to me.  He's selling some of my boy's furniture at
+this very moment.  That's why I came out; I couldn't bear it."
+
+"P'r'aps he'll turn up after all," said Mr. Letts.  "Never say die."
+
+Mrs. Green shook her head.
+
+"I s'pose," said Mr. Letts, regarding her--"I s'pose you don't let
+lodgings for a night or two?"  Mrs. Green shook her head again.
+
+"It don't matter," said the young man.  "Only I would sooner stay with
+you than at a lodging-house.  I've taken a fancy to you.  I say, it would
+be a lark if you did, and I went there and your husband thought I was
+your son, wouldn't it?"
+
+Mrs. Green caught her breath, and sitting down again took his arm in her
+trembling fingers.
+
+"Suppose," she said, unsteadily--"suppose you came round and pretended to
+be my son--pretended to be my son, and stood up for me?"
+
+Mr. Letts stared at her in amazement, and then began to laugh.
+
+"Nobody would know," continued the other, quickly.  "We only came to this
+place just before he sailed, and his sister was only ten at the time.
+She wouldn't remember."
+
+Mr. Letts said he couldn't think of it, and sat staring, with an air of
+great determination, at the sea.  Arguments and entreaties left him
+unmoved, and he was just about to express his sorrow for her troubles and
+leave, when she gave a sudden start and put her arm through his.
+
+"Here comes your sister!" she exclaimed.
+
+Mr. Letts started in his turn.
+
+"She has seen me holding your arm," continued Mrs. Green, in a tense
+whisper.  "It's the only way I can explain it.  Mind, your name is Jack
+Foster and hers is Betty."
+
+Mr. Letts gazed at her in consternation, and then, raising his eyes,
+regarded with much approval the girl who was approaching.  It seemed
+impossible that she could be Mrs. Green's daughter, and in the excitement
+of the moment he nearly said so.
+
+"Betty," said Mrs. Green, in a voice to which nervousness had imparted
+almost the correct note--"Betty, this is your brother Jack!"
+
+Mr. Letts rose sheepishly, and then to his great amazement a pair of
+strong young arms were flung round his neck, and a pair of warm lips--
+after but slight trouble--found his. Then and there Mr. Letts's mind was
+made up.
+
+[Illustration: "Then and there Mr. Letts's mind was made up.]
+
+"Oh, Jack!"  said Miss Foster, and began to cry softly.
+
+"Oh, Jack!"  said Mrs. Green, and, moved by thoughts, perhaps, of what
+might have been, began to cry too.
+
+"There, there!" said Mr. Letts.
+
+He drew Miss Foster to the seat, and, sitting between them, sat with an
+arm round each.  There was nothing in sight but a sail or two in the far
+distance, and he allowed Miss Foster's head to lie upon his shoulder
+undisturbed.  An only child, and an orphan, he felt for the first time
+the blessing of a sister's love.
+
+"Why didn't you come home before?" murmured the girl.
+
+Mr. Letts started and squinted reproachfully at the top of her hat.  Then
+he turned and looked at Mrs. Green in search of the required information.
+"He was shipwrecked," said Mrs. Green.
+
+"I was shipwrecked," repeated Mr. Letts, nodding.
+
+"And had brain-fever after it through being in the water so long, and
+lost his memory," continued Mrs. Green.
+
+"It's wonderful what water will do--salt water," said Mr. Letts, in
+confirmation.
+
+Miss Foster sighed, and, raising the hand which was round her waist, bent
+her head and kissed it.  Mr. Letts colored, and squeezed her
+convulsively.
+
+Assisted by Mrs. Green he became reminiscent, and, in a low voice,
+narrated such incidents of his career as had escaped the assaults of the
+brain-fever.  That his head was not permanently injured was proved by the
+perfect manner in which he remembered incidents of his childhood narrated
+by his newly found mother and sister.  He even volunteered one or two
+himself which had happened when the latter was a year or two old.
+
+"And now," said Mrs. Green, in a somewhat trembling voice, "we must go
+and tell your step-father."
+
+Mr. Letts responded, but without briskness, and, with such moral support
+as an arm of each could afford, walked slowly back.  Arrived at a road of
+substantial cottages at the back of the town, Mrs. Green gasped, and,
+coming to a standstill, nodded at a van that stood half-way up the road.
+
+"There it is," she exclaimed.
+
+"What?" demanded Mr. Letts.
+
+"The furniture I told you about," said Mrs. Green.  "The furniture that
+your poor father thought such a lot of, because it used to belong to his
+grandfather.  He's selling it to Simpson, though I begged and prayed him
+not to."
+
+Mr. Letts encouraged himself with a deep cough.  "My furniture?" he
+demanded.
+
+Mrs. Green took courage.  "Yes," she said, hope-fully; "your father left
+it to you."
+
+Mr. Letts, carrying his head very erect, took a firmer grip of their arms
+and gazed steadily at a disagreeable-looking man who was eying them in
+some astonishment from the doorway.  With arms still linked they found
+the narrow gateway somewhat difficult, but they negotiated it by a
+turning movement, and, standing in the front garden, waited while Mrs.
+Green tried to find her voice.
+
+[Illustration: "A disagreeable-looking man was eying them in some
+astonishment from the doorway."]
+
+"Jack," she said at last, "this is your stepfather."
+
+Mr. Letts, in some difficulty as to the etiquette on such occasions,
+released his right arm and extended his hand.
+
+"Good-evening, stepfather," he said, cheerfully.
+
+Mr. Green drew back a little and regarded him unfavorably.
+
+"We--we thought you was drowned," he said at last.
+
+"I was nearly," said Mr. Letts.
+
+"We all thought so," pursued Mr. Green, grudgingly.  "Everybody thought
+so."
+
+He stood aside, as a short, hot-faced man, with a small bureau clasped in
+his arms and supported on his knees, emerged from the house and staggered
+towards the gate.  Mr. Letts reflected.
+
+"Halloa!" he said, suddenly.  "Why, are you moving, mother?"
+
+Mrs. Green sniffed sadly and shook her head.  "Well," said Mr. Letts,
+with an admirable stare, "what's that chap doing with my furniture?"
+
+"Eh?" spluttered Mr. Green.  "What?"
+
+"I say, what's he doing with my furniture?"  repeated Mr. Letts, sternly.
+
+Mr. Green waved his arm.  "That's all right," he said, conclusively;
+"he's bought it.  Your mother knows."
+
+"But it ain't all right," said Mr. Letts.  "Here! bring that back, and
+those chairs too."
+
+The dealer, who had just placed the bureau on the tail-board of the van,
+came back wiping his brow with his sleeve.
+
+"Wots the little game?" he demanded.
+
+Mr. Letts left the answer to Mr. Green, and going to the van took up the
+bureau and walked back to the house with it.  Mr. Green and the dealer
+parted a little at his approach, and after widening the parting with the
+bureau he placed it in the front room while he went back for the chairs.
+He came back with three of them, and was, not without reason, called a
+porcupine by the indignant dealer.
+
+He was relieved to find, after Mr. Simpson had taken his departure, that
+Mr. Green was in no mood for catechising him, and had evidently accepted
+the story of his escape and return as a particularly disagreeable fact.
+So disagreeable that the less he heard of it the better.
+
+"I hope you've not come home after all these years to make things
+unpleasant?"  he remarked presently, as they sat at tea.
+
+"I couldn't be unpleasant if I tried," said Mr. Letts.
+
+"We've been very happy and comfortable here--me and your mother and
+sister," continued Mr. Green.  "Haven't we, Emily?"
+
+"Yes," said his wife, with nervous quickness.
+
+"And I hope you'll be the same," said Mr. Green.  "It's my wish that you
+should make yourself quite comfortable here--till you go to sea again."
+
+"Thankee," said Mr. Letts; "but I don't think I shall go to sea any more.
+Ship's carpenter is my trade, and I've been told more than once that I
+should do better ashore.  Besides, I don't want to lose mother and Betty
+again."
+
+He placed his arm round the girl's waist, and, drawing her head on to his
+shoulder, met with a blank stare the troubled gaze of Mrs. Green.
+
+"I'm told there's wonderful openings for carpenters in Australia," said
+Mr. Green, trying to speak in level tones.  "Wonderful!  A good carpenter
+can make a fortune there in ten years, so I'm told."
+
+Mr. Letts, with a slight wink at Mrs. Green and a reassuring squeeze with
+his left arm, turned an attentive ear.
+
+"O' course, there's a difficulty," he said, slowly, as Mr. Green finished
+a vivid picture of the joys of carpentering in Australia.
+
+"Difficulty?" said the other.
+
+"Money to start with," explained Mr. Letts.  "It's no good starting
+without money.  I wonder how much this house and furniture would fetch?
+Is it all mine, mother?"
+
+"M-m-most of it," stammered Mrs. Green, gazing in a fascinated fashion at
+the contorted visage of her husband.
+
+"All except a chair in the kitchen and three stair-rods," said Betty.
+
+"Speak when you're spoke to, miss!"  snarled her stepfather.  "When we
+married we mixed our furniture up together--mixed it up so that it would
+be impossible to tell which is which.  Nobody could."
+
+"For the matter o' that, you could have all the kitchen chairs and all
+the stair-rods," said Mr. Letts, generously.  "However, I don't want to
+do anything in a hurry, and I shouldn't dream of going to Australia
+without Betty.  It rests with her."
+
+"She's going to be married," said Mr. Green, hastily; "and if she wasn't
+she wouldn't turn her poor, ailing mother out of house and home, that I`m
+certain of.  She's not that sort.  We've had a word or two at times--me
+and her--but I know a good daughter when I see one."
+
+"Married?"  echoed Mr. Letts, as his left arm relaxed its pressure.  "Who
+to?"
+
+"Young fellow o' the name of Henry Widden," replied Mr. Green, "a very
+steady young fellow; a great friend of mine."
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. Letts, blankly.
+
+"I'd got an idea, which I've been keeping as a little surprise,"
+continued Mr. Green, speaking very rapidly, "of them living here with us,
+and saving house-rent and furniture."
+
+Mr. Letts surveyed him with a dejected eye.
+
+"It would be a fine start for them," continued the benevolent Mr. Green.
+
+Mr. Letts, by a strong effort, regained his composure.
+
+"I must have a look at him first," he said, briskly.  "He mightn't meet
+with my approval."
+
+"Eh?" said Mr. Green, starting.  "Why, if Betty----"
+
+"I must think it over," interrupted Mr. Letts, with a wave of his hand.
+"Betty is only nineteen, and, as head of the family, I don't think she
+can marry without my consent.  I'm not sure, but I don't think so.
+Anyway, if she does, I won't have her husband here sitting in my chairs,
+eating off my tables, sleeping in my beds, wearing out my stair-rods,
+helping himself----"
+
+"Stow it," said Miss Foster, calmly.
+
+Mr. Letts started, and lost the thread of his discourse.  "I must have a
+look at him," he concluded, lamely; "he may be all right, but then,
+again, he mightn't."
+
+He finished his tea almost in silence, and, the meal over, emphasized his
+position as head of the family by taking the easy-chair, a piece of
+furniture sacred to Mr. Green, and subjecting that injured man to a
+catechism which strained his powers of endurance almost to breaking-
+point.
+
+"Well, I sha'n't make any change at present," said Mr. Letts, when the
+task was finished.  "There's plenty of room here for us all, and, so long
+as you and me agree, things can go on as they are.  To-morrow morning I
+shall go out and look for a job."
+
+He found a temporary one almost at once, and, determined to make a
+favorable impression, worked hard all day.  He came home tired and dirty,
+and was about to go straight to the wash-house to make his toilet when
+Mr. Green called him in.
+
+"My friend, Mr. Widden," he said, with a satisfied air, as he pointed to
+a slight, fair young man with a well-trimmed moustache.
+
+Mr. Letts shook hands.
+
+"Fine day," said Mr. Widden.
+
+"Beautiful," said the other.  "I'll come in and have a talk about it when
+I've had a wash."
+
+"Me and Miss Foster are going out for a bit of a stroll," said Mr.
+Widden.
+
+"Quite right," agreed Mr. Letts.  "Much more healthy than staying indoors
+all the evening.  If you just wait while I have a wash and a bit o'
+something to eat I'll come with you."
+
+"Co-come with us!"  said Mr. Widden, after an astonished pause.
+
+Mr. Letts nodded.  "You see, I don't know you yet," he explained, "and as
+head of the family I want to see how you behave yourself.  Properly
+speaking, my consent ought to have been asked before you walked out with
+her; still, as everybody thought I was drowned, I'll say no more about
+it."
+
+"Mr. Green knows all about me," said Mr. Widden, rebelliously.
+
+"It's nothing to do with him," declared Mr. Letts.  "And, besides, he's
+not what I should call a judge of character.  I dare say you are all
+right, but I'm going to see for myself.  You go on in the ordinary way
+with your love-making, without taking any notice of me.  Try and forget
+I'm watching you.  Be as natural as you can be, and if you do anything I
+don't like I'll soon tell you of it."
+
+The bewildered Mr. Widden turned, but, reading no hope of assistance in
+the infuriated eyes of Mr. Green, appealed in despair to Betty.
+
+"I don't mind," she said.  "Why should I?"
+
+Mr. Widden could have supplied her with many reasons, but he refrained,
+and sat in sulky silence while Mr. Letts got ready.  From his point of
+view the experiment was by no means a success, his efforts to be natural
+being met with amazed glances from Mr. Letts and disdainful requests from
+Miss Foster to go home if he couldn't behave himself.  When he relapsed
+into moody silence Mr. Letts cleared his throat and spoke.
+
+"There's no need to be like a monkey-on-a-stick, and at the same time
+there's no need to be sulky," he pointed out; "there's a happy medium."
+
+"Like you, I s'pose?" said the frantic suitor.  "Like me," said the
+other, gravely.  "Now, you watch; fall in behind and watch."
+
+He drew Miss Foster's arm through his and, leaning towards her with
+tender deference, began a long conversation.  At the end of ten minutes
+Mr. Widden intimated that he thought he had learned enough to go on with.
+
+"Ah! that's only your conceit," said Mr. Letts over his shoulder.  "I was
+afraid you was conceited."
+
+He turned to Miss Foster again, and Mr. Widden, with a despairing
+gesture, abandoned himself to gloom.  He made no further interruptions,
+but at the conclusion of the walk hesitated so long on the door-step that
+Mr. Letts had to take the initiative.
+
+"Good-night," he said, shaking hands.  "Come round to-morrow night and
+I'll give you another lesson.  You're a slow learner, that's what you
+are; a slow learner."
+
+He gave Mr. Widden a lesson on the following evening, but cautioned him
+sternly against imitating the display of brotherly fondness of which, in
+a secluded lane, he had been a wide-eyed observer.
+
+"When you've known her as long as I have--nineteen years," said Mr.
+Letts, as the other protested, "things'll be a bit different.  I might
+not be here, for one thing."
+
+By exercise of great self-control Mr. Widden checked the obvious retort
+and walked doggedly in the rear of Miss Foster.  Then, hardly able to
+believe his ears, he heard her say something to Mr. Letts.
+
+"Eh?" said that gentleman, in amazed accents.
+
+"You fall behind," said Miss Foster.
+
+"That--that's not the way to talk to the head of the family," said Mr.
+Letts, feebly.
+
+"It's the way I talk to him," rejoined the girl.
+
+It was a position for which Mr. Letts was totally unprepared, and the
+satisfied smile of Mr. Widden as he took the vacant place by no means
+improved matters.  In a state of considerable dismay Mr. Letts dropped
+farther and farther behind until, looking up, he saw Miss Foster,
+attended by her restive escort, quietly waiting for him.  An odd look in
+her eyes as they met his gave him food for thought for the rest of the
+evening.
+
+At the end of what Mr. Letts was pleased to term a month's trial, Mr.
+Widden was still unable to satisfy him as to his fitness for the position
+of brother-in-law.  In a spirit of gloom he made suggestions of a
+mutinous nature to Mr. Green, but that gentleman, who had returned one
+day pale and furious, but tamed, from an interview that related to his
+treatment of his wife, held out no hopes of assistance.
+
+"I wash my hands of him," he said bitterly.  "You stick to it; that's
+all you can do."
+
+"They lost me last night," said the unfortunate.  "I stayed behind just
+to take a stone out of my shoe, and the earth seemed to swallow them up.
+He's so strong.  That's the worst of it."
+
+"Strong?" said Mr. Green.
+
+Mr. Widden nodded.  "Tuesday evening he showed her how he upset a man
+once and stood him on his head," he said, irritably.  "I was what he
+showed her with."
+
+"Stick to it!" counselled Mr. Green again.  "A brother and sister are
+bound to get tired of each other before long; it's nature."
+
+Mr. Widden sighed and obeyed.  But brother and sister showed no signs of
+tiring of each other's company, while they displayed unmistakable signs
+of weariness with his.  And three weeks later Mr. Letts, in a few
+well-chosen words, kindly but firmly dismissed him.
+
+"I should never give my consent," he said, gravely, "so it's only wasting
+your time.  You run off and play."
+
+Mr. Widden ran off to Mr. Green, but before he could get a word out
+discovered that something unusual had happened.  Mrs. Green, a picture of
+distress, sat at one end of the room with a handkerchief to her eyes; Mr.
+Green, in a condition compounded of joy and rage, was striding violently
+up and down the room.
+
+"He's a fraud!" he shouted.  "A fraud!  I've had my suspicions for some
+time, and this evening I got it out of her."
+
+Mr. Widden stared in amazement.
+
+"I got it out of her," repeated Mr. Green, pointing at the trembling
+woman.  "He's no more her son than what you are."
+
+"What?" said the amazed listener.
+
+"She's been deceiving me," said Mr. Green, with a scowl, "but I don't
+think she'll do it again in a hurry.  You stay here," he shouted, as his
+wife rose to leave the room.  "I want you to be here when he comes in."
+
+Mrs. Green stayed, and the other two, heedless of her presence, discussed
+the situation until the front door was heard to open, and Mr. Letts and
+Betty came into the room.  With a little cry the girl ran to her mother.
+
+"What's the matter?" she cried.
+
+"She's lost another son," said Mr. Green, with a ferocious sneer--"a
+flash, bullying, ugly chap of the name o' Letts."
+
+"Halloa!" said Mr. Letts, starting.
+
+"A chap she picked up out of the street, and tried to pass off on me as
+her son," continued Mr. Green, raising his voice.  "She ain't heard the
+end of it yet, I can tell you."
+
+Mr. Letts fidgeted.  "You leave her alone," he said, mildly.  "It's true
+I'm not her son, but it don't matter, because I've been to see a lawyer
+about her, and he told me that this house and half the furniture belongs
+by law to Betty.  It's got nothing to do with you."
+
+"Indeed!"  said Mr. Green.  "Now you take yourself off before I put the
+police on to you.  Take your face off these premises."
+
+Mr. Letts, scratching his head, looked vaguely round the room.
+
+"Go on!"  vociferated Mr. Green.  "Or will you have the police to put you
+out?"
+
+Mr. Letts cleared his throat and moved towards the door.  "You stick up
+for your rights, my girl," he said, turning to Betty.  "If he don't treat
+your mother well, give him back his kitchen chair and his three
+stair-rods and pack him off."
+
+"Henry," said Mr. Green, with dangerous calm, "go and fetch a policeman."
+
+"I'm going," said Mr. Letts, hastily.  "Good-by, Betty; good-by, mother.
+I sha'n't be long.  I'm only going as far as the post-office.  And that
+reminds me.  I've been talking so much that I quite forget to tell you
+that Betty and me were married yesterday morning."
+
+He nodded pleasantly at the stupefied Mr. Green, and, turning to Mr.
+Widden, gave him a friendly dig in the ribs with his finger.
+
+"What's mine is Betty's," he said, in a clear voice, "and what's Betty's
+is MINE!  D'ye understand, step-father?"
+
+He stepped over to Mrs. Green, and putting a strong arm around her raised
+her to her feet.  "And what's mine is mother's," he concluded, and,
+helping her across the room, placed her in the best arm-chair.
+
+[Illustration: "What's mine is mother's."]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Head of The Family, by W.W. Jacobs
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10789 ***