“Rich men never marry servants!” Peg lamented.
“Wrong,” Becky assured her. “They often do. All the romantic novels tell of such matches.”
“We are not living in a romantic novel!” Peg said unhappily.
Becky gave her a sharp look as they walked along. She said, “At least you’ve learned that useful truth!”
When they reached the cheerless ground floor flat which had seemed so happy a home before their parents died, they had another grim surprise awaiting them in the person of Mrs. Medwick, the owner of the building. She had shown the effrontery of letting herself into the flat and waiting for them seated in their best chair.
Mrs. Medwick was large, and had a bloated, red face and wispy gray hair. She reeked of gin no matter the time of day or night. She stared up at the girls sullenly as they entered.
“No need to be surprised,” she said roughly. “This is my house!”
“I consider it ours as long as we rent it,” Becky said. Peg stood back looking awed.
Mrs. Medwick rose ponderously. “I will not take offence at that. I could, mark you, but I will not. I shall simply tell you that since you already owe for a month’s rent I consider the flat no longer yours.”
“I’ll see you are paid, Mrs. Medwick,” Becky said.
The big woman mocked her manner, saying, “Will you, now? And what with? After the funeral expenses are looked after. And I know Longbeck doesn’t offer his services free! He always gets his!”
Becky said, “We will pay you. But we shall be leaving here the first of the week. So you may plan on letting the place to someone else.”
Mrs. Medwick’s bloated face showed a nasty smile. “I’ve already done that! Party is coming to occupy on Monday. So you be out of here by then. And don’t expect to take this furniture with you unless my rent is paid in full! In full, mind you!” And with this threat she ambled out.
When the door closed behind the big woman Peg turned to Becky and said, “What will we do? If we can’t sell the furniture, we can’t raise the money to pay her.”
“It will work out,” Becky said with a confidence she did not feel. “We have not heard from the shipyard yet. Father’s employers, Gregg and Kerr, may be planning to offer us some money because of father’s being killed at work. In any event, we have coming to us whatever wages he had earned to the time of his death.”
For the first time, Peg showed a more hopeful look on her pretty young face. She said, “When will we know about that?”
“By tonight,” Becky said, removing her straw bonnet. “Jimmy Davis is going to speak to the partners, and he is coming by here on his way home.”
“Ugly little dwarf!” Peg said with a grimace.
“Don’t say that!” Becky rebuked her. “He was our father’s best friend, and he is ours as well. You may be sure he will do all he can for us.”
They spent the afternoon making a list of all which was saleable and trying to guess what price each item might bring. The total was not large, even when they were careful to try and set a proper price. They would not make much from the sale. But even a little would help.
A little after five the dwarf arrived. The girls let him in and pulled up the stool on which he always sat. Then they sat facing him, Becky hoping for the best and Peg even showing some signs of interest.
Becky asked the little man, “How did you make out, Jimmy?”
The dwarf looked miserable and tugged at his graying beard with a small hand. He said, “They gave me the wages he’d earned right enough.”
“I should hope so!” Becky exclaimed.
The dwarf showed embarrassment as he reached in his pocket and then handed some coins over to her. “Fifteen bob! Not much, I’d say!”
Peg sounded indignant. “Fifteen bob! That’s all?”
“That’s all,” the little man said sadly. “I’m sorry.”
Becky looked at the coins in her palm and said, “I can’t believe that they wouldn’t have at least sent his full week’s wages.”
Jimmy Davis said, “They’re hard men, Miss Becky. It’s a cruel company. We all know that.”
Becky said, “Did you speak with both partners?”
“Only with Mark Gregg,” the dwarf said. “Mr. Kerr’s health has been poor lately, and he seldom comes to the shipyard.”
“And what did Mark Gregg say?”
Jimmy sighed. “He gave me the fifteen bob and said to tell you he sent you his sympathy.”
“I wonder that he could afford it!” Becky said with scathing sarcasm.
Peg complained, “How can anyone be so heartless?”
The little man’s large face showed frustration. “They are cruel people, Miss Peggy. This is a cruel business, filled with competition in these days of the new iron ships. Gregg and Kerr are still building wooden ships and the call for them is going down.”
“Why don’t they build iron ships?” Becky wanted to know.
“I’ve heard old man Kerr is against it,” the dwarf said. “But Mark Gregg has been unhappy with the present policy ever since the
Great Eastern
was launched in 1858. Biggest iron ship afloat! They say she’ll make history! Some think there’s a curse on her because two workers were lost in the construction, and many claim they were caught between the false bottom and the hull and not noticed until all the section was closed in. They say their ghosts haunt the ship and will eventually doom it!”
Becky said, “So this means Gregg and Kerr are not doing as well as they might?”
“Correct!” Jimmy said. “But they’re doing fairly well. They could well pay you some good sum for your father losing his life on the job. Especially considering the facts.”
“Facts?” Becky asked crisply. “What are the facts?”
He looked uneasy. And then in a low voice, he said, “Well, I was told the scaffolding on which your father was working when he fell hadn’t been properly set up. That it swayed so as to make you ill.”
Becky said, “You’re saying my father was sent up there to work on a scaffolding which wasn’t safe?”
The little man nodded. “That’s about the size of it!”
Peg exclaimed, “They are murderers! It’s almost the same as if they deliberately killed my father!”
“Mr. Mark Gregg doesn’t see it so,” the dwarf told her. “But I must admit I agree with you. If that scaffolding had been set up the way it should, I haven’t a doubt your father would be alive this very moment.”
Becky sat back in her chair with a shocked look on her lovely face. “I shall have to see this Mark Gregg,” she said.
Peg gave her a disgusted look. “He’ll never agree to see you. Don’t you know that!”
“What do you think?” Becky asked their father’s best friend. “Do you think he’ll see me?”
“I think it’s worth a try.” Becky said, her young face offering a grim look.
“You could try and talk with him,” the little man said with despair. “I did not manage well with him as I’ve testified. But perhaps the sight of a pretty face might help. They say he is more fond of liquor and women! He’d never done a lick of work until he was left his share of the yard by his father. Now he is the meanest of the lot of them!”
Becky said warmly, “Thank you for all you’ve done, Jimmy. And for telling me the truth about dear father’s accident.”
“I thought you should know,” the little man said. “And I have some money of my own if you’d let me help you. I’ve saved it against sickness, but you’re welcome to every penny of it!”
“Do you mean that, Jimmy?” Peg asked with delight.
Becky turned on her younger sister swiftly and informed her, “Whether he means it or not, we are not going to take his money!”
“Why not?” Peg asked in astonishment.
“Because he needs it for himself and his own family,” she exclaimed. “You are forgetting he has a widowed mother and two spinster sisters to look after.”
“They do not grudge you the money,” the dwarf promised her.
“Say no more,” Becky told him. “We will manage well enough with our own resources, though we do appreciate your offer. And I intend to talk to Mr. Mark Gregg and speak to him of my father’s death. It is not to pass without some mention being made of it.”
“I agree, Miss Becky,” Jimmy Davis said, getting down from the stool. “I wish I had done better.”
“You musn’t worry yourself,” Becky said, escorting the little man out. “We have plans and we’ll make out. And I’ll let Mark Gregg know he had better not take his workers’ lives so cheaply in the future.”
“You do that, Miss,” Jimmy agreed. “He needs to be told how hard he is!”
After Becky had seen the dwarf out, she found Peg looking angry. The redhead cried, “How could you refuse his money, with us in this terrible plight? You must be mad!”
“I will not rob those as poor as ourselves,” Becky told her sister with determination.
Peg sank down into a nearby chair and cried, “We shall find ourselves in debtors’ prison!”
“Allow me to worry about that,” Becky said, placing a comforting hand on her sister’s shoulder. “I’m doing as I think our parents would have wished.”
She knew this was small comfort, even though it was the truth. And she was far from being the cool, collected person she allowed Peg to see. Actually she was quaking inwardly and full of fears for what would happen to them. But she knew Peg was of weaker clay than herself, and she did not want her to collapse. So she maintained this facade of knowing exactly what would happen next.
The next morning she dressed carefully in her best and made her way through the winding streets of the dockside area on the route to Gregg and Kerr’s shipyard. She had left Peg with a neighbor woman of a jolly nature and hoped all would be well. Now she was forcing herself to have a confrontation with the legendary Mark Gregg.
It was a fine, sunny day and the gold lettering of the shipbuilding firm’s name stood out in gold against a black background. The sign was mounted on a modest brick building at the harborfront within sight of the shipyard. She could glance in the distance and see the yard with the bare hull of some ship in the making, and men swarming about it like ants. The vast size of the project almost took her breath away.
She forced herself to turn from this interesting view of where her father had met his death and enter the offices of the shipbuilding company. She was first to find herself in a bare reception office where a wizened, bald man sat behind a high counter.
The old man paid no attention to her for a moment as he pored over a long, slim book of accounts. Suddenly he sneezed, and after wiping his thin nose, he turned to stare at her accusingly, as if she had rudely interrupted him.
He said sternly. “We do not employ young women, Miss!”
“I’m not looking for employment,” Becky said, her cheeks going crimson.
The old man stared at her. “What do you want?”
“To see Mr. Mark Gregg,” she said with as much authority as she could produce under the circumstances.
The thin face showed a nasty smile. “All the world wishes to see Mr. Gregg,” he said. “That is why I’m here. Let me warn you that few get by me here.”
“I cannot help that,” she said. “I wish to see him!”
“What is your business?”
“Personal!”
“No doubt,” the old man said, off his stool now and facing her like an ancient jackal on his skinny shanks. “May I ask the reason for your visit and your name?”
“My name she said firmly is Becky Lee and I have come to speak with Mr. Gregg concerning the recent death of my father in an accident in the shipyards.”
This brought a decided change in the old man’s manner. He said, “You are poor Barney’s daughter?”
“One of them.”
“He was a fine, hardworking man,” the old fellow said. “I’ll see if Mr. Gregg will see you. He’s busy!” And he shuffled off and out a door in the rear of the bleak office.
She trembled as she waited. She tried to picture what the formidable Gregg might be like. From all she’d heard, Mark Gregg must be in his mid-forties, a bachelor, grimly dedicated to business after a youth spent in debauchery. It was whispered that he still absented himself form the business every once in a while to go on a drinking binge. But she did not know how much of this was true, and how much was hearsay!
The door at the back opened, and the old clerk came shuffling back. He lifted a hinged section of the counter for her to join him as he confided, “You are fortunate! He has agreed to give you a few minutes. Follow me!”
She did so, trying to maintain the same facade of cool determination she used to fool Peg. But she was not deceiving herself of her quaking heart, and she doubted that she would deceive this hard man of business, either.
They mounted a dark stairway which gave access to a long hall, off which there were the doors of many offices. She heard the sounds of voices from the various doorways as they went on down to the very end of the hall. There a large door bore a brass plate with the name, Mark Gregg, in Old English script. The clerk rapped nervously on the heavy oaken door, and a brisk voice inside bade them to enter.
The clerk gave her a warning glance and then opened the door to let her in, remaining outside to close the door after her. She found herself in the most elegant quarters she had ever seen. It was a symphony in fine brown woodwork, with all in the best of taste. Seated at a desk with his back to windows overlooking the shipyard was a good looking man in his forties, with strong features and tightly curled brown hair which was graying. He had heavy sideburns, but no mustache or beard. He was dressed well in a dark suit and all in all, he was much more attractive than she had expected. But his eyes warned her this was no ordinary man. The perceptive, steel-gray eyes which burned through her as she stood there intimidated her.
He slowly rose, his eyes not leaving her. He spoke in a cultured voice, saying, “So you are Lee’s daughter?”
“Yes, sir. I am,” she said.
“Pray be seated,” he said brusquely, still studying her in that intent way. “I’m having a difficult morning, but I can give you a few minutes.”
“Thank you, Mr. Gregg,” she said, ignoring her pounding heart to speak with some sharpness. “I think it no more than right when I recall that my father gave his life in your service.”
He stood there staring at her oddly. Then he fumbled with some papers on his desk. “It was a most unfortunate affair. I’m sorry for his death, and I asked that my sympathy be conveyed to you.”