Short Story: OLD SIMPS SECRET

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19590, 9 September 1933, Page 9

Short Story: OLD SIMPS SECRET

FHRAIM Simpkin—old “Simp” ggljjpyj to most—sat dozing on the A * beach by the syringa bush. The W hlte frill of beard encircling his double chin rose and fell with even movement on the faded woollen jersey, but his ruddy countenance appeared anything but peaceful. For old Simp carried a secret—a secret that weighed heavily on an otherwise untroubled mind, and harassed even those after dinner “forty winks.” For nine weeks the old man had been an inmate of the “Fisherman’s Hospital,” a group of thatched and latticed cottages clustering about a paved courtyard in the shadow of the church. Wide and comfortable were the seats made for old limbs to rest upon, colourful and varied the flowers tended by toil-free hands about each little green door, each narrow sill, and in the railed enclosure where stood the model of a full rigged ship. The figure of Charity looked down from a niche in the wall, a brass plate at her feet informing all who cared to read that the hospital "Was endowed for the benefit and use of such fishermen of that town disabled in pursuit of their calling.” It was this inscription that worried old Simp. Those letters of brass had burned themselves into his brain as though they had been written in fire. "Disabled in' pursuit of their calling” —and he though maimed surely

enough, with his right arm ending in an iron hook, had no right to be sitting there. Blind Sam. Slowly groping his way round the sun-splashed wall, sniffing in ecstasy at the blossoms he would never gaze upon, came old Sam Cathcart. He fumoled the edge ot the bench with a gnarled, blue-veined hand before lowering his body heavily into position. The contact of a rough-clad shoulder with his own woke old Simp, and he turned, somev T hat impatiently, to face the intruder. “Can’t yer let a body ’ave a peaceful nap, now?” he growled. “Didn’t know you -was asleep” rejoined the blind man, mildly. “An’ I don’t suppose you bought this bench eggsackly. I come becos o’ that there orange blossom smellin’ so powerful sweet —it’s a picsher I’ll lay. ..” He touched a spray, spilling its heady perfume almost on a level with his weatherbeaten cheek, gently, reverently, as though he trespassed. “Fond o’ flowers ” Old Sam nodded. ‘‘l used to be a gardener 'fore I took to the sea,” he said reminiscently. “Ay, an’ a bonny garden I hed to care for. Only a lad I wos, but I -will say as how I had a real gift that way. Why, I mind one year I had roses as red as a maid’s blush, an’ as big as a teacup across. Perfect, they were, like satin an’ velvet, I can see them now, all prim an’ proper in the middle o’ the lawns. But for all that, I never smelled anythin’ so sweet as the wild roses on the hedge around my old mother’s cottage when I came home after three years foreign. Rainin’, it had been, an’ the leaves were all« over di'monds. . You done any gardenin’ yourself?” “No, I never set much store by flowers till my back was too old to bend, then I wish I had planted a few of the easy growin’ kind in my little old back garden,” answered Simp regretfully. “Pretty they’d ha’ looked along o’ the whitewashed bricks an’ the odds an’ ends o’ chmy I had uo on shelves.” Sam nodded. “Collectin’ ehiny’s all right, but it ain’t like livin’ things to my mind. Though I will own it’s bright all the year round while you have a job to get a tloom from January to March." “1 hed curios,” imparted Simp, proudly, but Sam didn’t hear. “I should never ’ave forsook the briny,” he mused, “if it hadn't been for a cursed German mine adrift in the fishin’ field. The old salt’s tone grew bitter for a moment. Then, as though to cover the patch of his inner self thus laid bare, he tugged at the cuff of his companion’s jacket. “This ’ere ’and o’ yours now'," he invited. Old Simp’s mouth suddenly grew dry. Awkwirdly his thoughts groped for some lalsehood that would serve. But to lie with those sightless eyes turned towarcfe his ov'n seemed beyond his power. The letters of brass leapt out suddehy from the smoothne-s of the wall and stabbed his sight with pointed daggers of light. He loosened the red handkerchief at his throat, a cold sweat breaking out on his lined forehead.

By EVELYN DAVEY COLLINS.

“Feelin the heat, Simp?” At any other moment he would have cursed under his breath at the noisy approach of Jerry, who occupied the next cottage to his own, but now, with a broad smile of relief, he edged closer to Sam, leaving room enough for his neighbour’s bulky form. “It is warmish,” he agreed mildly. “Sam an’ me were admirin’ this ’ere bush. Orange blossom they are—like brides wear.”

“Brides, pah!” Jerry spat contemptuously. “Never had no truck wi’ wimmin but once—ans lorst me leg as well as me ’eart over that lot.” Sam chuckled softly. “It’s a fact,” Jerry protested indignantly. “To please a wumman I went to sea, and after she chucked me for a land lubber I just couldn't settle ashore. The waves get in yer blood that way sometimes, an’ I sailed in one ship for nigh on seven year. Then one night we were gettin’ a trouncin’ in a nor’easter when someone shouted ‘Man

Overboard!’ Like a fule I jumped in, an’ nabbed ,im, but they didn’t ’aul me

aboard again till I’d got a nasty wallop agin the side what just about finished one o’ my pins, An’ when I saw ’oo I’d rescued—Lord! If it wasn’t a measly little rat of a boy who plagued the life out o’ me with ’is monkey tricks.

“They gi’e me a medal, but you can’t walk on a medal, says I. nor earn your bread by it. Still, here I am, snug and safe in harbour, while I might be a lot worse orf. The wumman might ha’ married me after I was a ’ero if she’d known where to lay ’ands on me, ’er bein’ widdered, but one calamity in life is enow, I reckon.’ A Good Lie. Old Simp joined half-heartedly in Sam’s amused chuckle. Tt would be Jerry asking him next. Jerry, who wouldn’t be put off, either. Jerry, to use his ow T n words, soon “smelt a rat.” It would have to be a good lie to deceive Jerry. Supposing he told them, here and now. Laid bare his soul of the mantle of deceit with which he had cloaked it these past weeks? A sudden desire came upon him to stand up and shout to them all with the full power of his lungs, sealing his own doom with a trumpet call. “Look, mates! You, Jerry, an’ you, Sam, a-settin’ ‘ere beside me, an’ all you boys over in the cottages. Look on me, Old Simp, fraud an’ cheat an’ liar! You’ve all got your injuries an’ honest come by, but this ’ere ’and o’ mine were ’acked in a fight wi’ a greasy dago in a pub down Limehouse way, years after I left the sea. An’, what’s more, I aint got the backbone for your life, so you can brand me coward as well—a few more names won’t ’urt; I know I deerve ’em all! They would think he was mad, of course, and tell the parson, and the authorities would put him away in the Mental Ward at the Infirmary. No, he must not tell them, it must be the Parson, quietly and calmly when no one else was about. It would mean the ‘‘House,” of course, for to go back to his daughter Hannah and her noisy brood of youngsters would be impossible after the peace of this haven . . . But what of the bread of charity he had already eaten? Somehow, somewhere, he must find the wherewithal to pay the value of nine week’s shelter . . . then when he went out with the tide it would be with full sail and a clean deck. He could not put into the other Harbour with all this chalked up against him. And, thinking of harbour, his mind turned to the boats moored down by the oldfashioned stone quay; they needed watchmen sometimes and no questions were asked ... He could steal out after dark and be back before morning. The idea seemed worth trying, so, for the first time in many years, no roof but the star-filled vault of Heaven sheltered old Simp that night. He paced with restless, unsteady steps the otherwise deserted deck of the Jack and Charlie .... Ilis Reward. But one cannot run risks of damp and exposure at seventy-five, and

thus it was that old Simp lay a week later in a narrow white bed within the walls he had feared would receive him at last—the infirmary.

Rheumatic fever, the white-capped sister told him, tersely.

“Lucky to have pulled you through at all. As it is, you will go limpinS to your grave .. . Dying? Stuff and nonsense! You’ll be back at the ‘Hospital’ inside a month.”

But it wasn’t a month, or even two, when old Simp slowly crossed the courtyard on the still unaccustomed sticks.

The sparrow's were still there, hopping about the ship, but the leaves were a cascade of crimson over the grey of the wall, and but one flower remained, a rose on poor Sam’s tree, dropping faint pink petals reluctantly one by

The figure of Charity still looked down, benevolent but watchful, the brass tablet still at her feet, but the clear autumn sunlight only touched the inscription with mellowing fingers. Sudden pride welled in the calm old breast under the tightly-buttoned jacket .... “Disabled in pursuit of

his calling!” Not heroic, perhaps, like Jerry, not martyred, thank God! like Sam, but nevertheless knit for ever in that gallant little circle they called the “boys.” Then, for the first time, other engraved words took shape in the dim old sight, He drew nearer and peered at the last line on the tablet . . “Charity . . . suffereth long and is kind. . . .” And old Simp realised that he was forgiven.