London was slowly changing and becoming larger and more populous. Elgar Street was no longer a quiet residential area, as it had been twenty years ago. Business places had located at either end of the street, many new houses had been built, and its cobblestone surface was the route for several horse-drawn bus lines. As she watched, a two decker came by with the driver perched high at the upper level and four horses moving it along at a good rate. The upper section was open to all sorts of weather, but the lower seats were protected. The front wheels were smaller than the rear, and there were advertisements of many kinds painted along the red sides of the bus in gold letters.
A bicycle rider went by on the latest model with its two giant wheels, a hawker of fish and chips halted to shout his wares and move on, and then the elegant carriage of Bart Woods pulled up before her door. She at once hurried out; the driver helped her inside.
Bart was sitting in a corner of the shadowed interior with a blanket pulled up over his arthritis legs. In his stove-pipe hat and drab grey suit he looked nothing like the daring man she had once known. He was a tired, dejected figure, yet there was immense strength in his face.
She leaned forward and kissed him. “How nice of you to think of this.”
“I needed to talk with you,” he said. “And we can do a bit of sight-seeing at the same time.”
“A delightful idea,” she said, settling close beside him with a smile.
As the carriage started away, he asked her, “How did it go in Paris?”
“I’m hopeful.”
“Just hopeful?”
She gave him a knowing look. “I fear Anne inherited your strong character. She refuses to break with Donald until she returns and talks it all out with him.”
“Damn!” he said. “That means we may be faced with telling them the truth. It seems nothing short of that will make them change their minds.”
“It may not be as bad as you fear,” she said. “Donald has been seeing a fine young woman. And I have reason to assume that he is more than a little fond of her.”
He frowned. “I have gathered that. But he has been most mysterious about it. Refuses to tell me anything about her.”
“That is often the case with young men in love.”
“You think he may actually be in love?”
Becky nodded. “He has admitted to being confused. I find that promising.”
Bart looked out the window and sighed. “I would not count too much on it. Things could hardly be worse. I sent Donald to you last night to warn you about James.”
“He came to see me, you know,” she said. “I mean James.”
Bart turned with anger showing on his worn face. “The Devil he did! What did he say?”
“Exactly what he must have said to you. He wasn’t at all careful to hold anything back. In fact he even called me to task for having been a prostitute, which you know to be a lie.”
“He’s loaded with lies,” Bart said, clenching his hands as they rested on the blanket. “He’s given me a deadline of three days to make a settlement. Then if nothing happens, he will tell his stories to the scandal sheets and the courts.”
“I think the yellow press is more likely to listen to him than any court!”
“The very fact he makes his accusations will be enough. He need not prove them. We will be ruined by what he implies. People enjoy scandal and are always ready to accept the worst.”
She reached out and took his hand in hers. “We have faced many things together.”
“And we can face this,” he agreed. “But I’m not worried about us. I’m thinking of the children.”
“Donald and Anne are hardly children.”
“They are young, with most of their lives ahead of them. I do not wish their names to be tainted with scandal.”
“So?”
He sighed. “I shall have to deal with James. I have not yet decided how.”
Becky said, “If you could make him wait a little, with his bad heart he is apt to die at any time.”
“He has those cursed pellets to help him,” Bart said.
“He had an attack at my place. I was shocked!” she said.
“We can hardly depend on his heart ridding us of him,” Bart said. “It may be that I may have to scrounge up a number of pounds more on the firm’s credit and pay him off.”
“The firm doesn’t have the money.”
“No,” he said grimly. “And the banks are into us deeply. We have little interest left.” They crossed the bridge and drove to a more familiar area, the East End dock section where she had grown up and where the shipyard was located. It was also changing, and not for the better. More houses were crowded into the narrow, crooked streets, and everywhere there was filth on the cobblestones. She could not believe that it had been this bad in her day.
They passed a bakery shop whose exterior looked familiar, and Bart pointed to it and said, “Used to be Crowns’ Tavern.”
“Of course !” she exclaimed, leaning to have a final look out the window as they passed it by. “I should have known it at once!”
“I’m taking you to the docks,” he said. “I want you to see a small wooden schooner we’ve just finished. She’s still on the stays, as graceful and beautiful a craft as you’re ever likely to cast eyes upon.”
“A wooden boat? Aren’t they usually built by the smaller yards?”
Bart looked down at his hands. “They are. But we had no work for our men. Better take a small job than have none at all.”
“I see,” she said.
“I know your thinking,” he said. “You side with Donald. You’d like us to go into steel ships.”
“Then I need say no more,” she said. “I don’t wish to plague you. You have enough other worries.”
He was looking straight ahead now. “Do you know who is to have the largest steel mill in the London area?”
She felt her throat tighten. How much did he know? She said, “I wonder who it might be.”
“A man called Davy Brown,” Bart said grimly. “I had him shanghaied years ago. He was just a sailor on the street to me. His head brought me a bounty. He went to Australia and made a fortune. And he is the man who thrashed me and sent me to the hospital.”
“It’s a strange story,” she said.
“A bitter one for me,” Bart said. “I wouldn’t have recognized him. But he told me who he was and what I had done to him. Then he beat me unmercifully.”
“That was hardly justified after all those years.”
“I think perhaps it was,” the man at her side said. “That is why I didn’t name him. He had his revenge, and I paid the price for my evil.”
Becky felt a little easier after hearing his reaction. She said, “Then it is at an end. You need think no more about it.”
Bart said, “I don’t think Brown is quite finished with me. He has bragged to his banker, who in turn gossiped with mine, that he intends to take over Gregg & Kerr and build steel ships.”
“These idle rumors often have no basis in fact,” she tried to placate him.
Bart said, “I think this one may have. I’m sure Brown wants to ruin me and will never be content until he takes over my business.”
She dared not tell him that it was she and his son who had approached Davy Brown with the idea, that he was proceeding with it on the assumption that he would have their support. She asked, “It might be the only way you can keep the yard operating?”
“Then I’ll let it close,” he said grimly.
“All the men out of work, and our investment in it lost!”
Bart said, “You must have enough put aside without being dependent on the yard’s income. I have.”
“We shall be much poorer if it goes.”
“I can endure that, but I cannot change my beliefs,” the ailing Bart said in his old, weary voice.
They reached the docks overlooking the yard, and he insisted on getting out and her joining him. His legs were so stiff both she and the coachmen had to help him. But after he moved about for a little, he was easier able to walk with his cane.
Using his cane as a pointer, he indicated the small, trim craft on stays at the end of the yard. It was, as he’d said, a fine example of wooden construction.
Staring at it with pride, he said, “When ships like that ruled the sea, a passing craft was a graceful sight. Now its naught but metal plates and wads of black smoke rolling up into the air!”
“It is a lovely vessel,” she said. “What is she to be called?”
He turned to her with a smile. “I had only one name for such a lovely vessel. That’s why I wanted you to see her. She’s to be the
Rebecca!
”
She looked up at him with shining eyes. “That is a truly lovely compliment!”
“There are few ways left I can express my love for you,”, he said. “This is one of them. She’ll keep your name alive over the seas as long as she sails.”
He took her back home again, and she could tell that he was exhausted. It had been a strange afternoon, with her learning some new facts. Oddest of all was that he had found out that Davy Brown was anxious to take over the yard. He still did not know that she and Davy had once been lovers and were still staunch friends.
Nor did he guess that attractive girl whom Donald was seeing was Brown’s daughter. If he did find out, there would be a row between the father and son. The feud between Bart and Davy continued.
That evening it was Davy Brown who came to see her. He had heard of her return from Donald. And since Donald and Julia had gone out for dinner and the Theatre, he was on his own.
He told her. “Those two are at the theatre tonight.”
“I know,” she said.
“That young man is winning her gradually,” he said with a stern look on his bronzed face. “I may have to send her back to Australia.”
“She might refuse to go.”
“She’d better not,” he said hotly.
“People in love are difficult to reason with.”
“Puppy love!” he scoffed. “I didn’t think anything would come of it, or I’d have discouraged him at once.”
She said, “They seem to get along so well together. And I can’t say anything against Bart’s son. He and my daughter have been very close.”
“Then let him marry your daughter!”
“I think Anne is in love with a Frenchman.”
Davy Brown looked frustrated. “Well, I can’t abide the thought of being linked with a Woods!”
“That’s nonsense. You might go far and not find as suitable a prospective husband for Julia as Donald.”
“I have the proposition ready for consideration by your people,” he said. “Now its up to you and Donald.”
“I know.”
He eyed her with a gleam in his sharp eyes. “We’ll see what happens then.”
“You mean what Bart does then?”
“He’s opposed to it. I know that much.”
“And it would give you satisfaction to break him?” she said. “Tell the truth.”
“It’ll be your decision and his son’s,” Davy said.
After he left she thought about it all. How cleverly he had worked it out. Bart was bound to lose, and not only was he doomed to be defeated but he would also be defeated by his son and the woman he loved. How could she go along with it? Yet, if she didn’t, they would all be impoverished for the sake of his stubborn refusal to face progress. It was a dilemma.
She was up early the next morning expecting to hear from Donald about the offer arriving from Davy Brown’s office. But she didn’t hear from Donald; she heard from Bart Woods. Her bell rang, and when she answered the door Bart was standing there looking almost as weary as when she had left him the previous afternoon.
“Bart, What is it?” she exclaimed.
“I’ll come in for a moment,” he said. And when he was inside, he suggested, “Let us go to your sewing room I do not wish to be overheard.”
She led the way and he followed, his cane in hand. When they were in the room and the door closed, she faced him anxiously to ask, “What is wrong, Bart?” She couldn’t help wonder if he hadn’t already heard of the plot to take the business from his hands.
He looked at her with a strange gleam in his eyes. And in an even voice, he said “James Kerr is dead!”
“Dead!” she gasped.
“Yes. One of the servants found him stretched out on the floor of his room this morning. He came in late last night. Very drunk.”
She was beginning to sense the unusual calm in him. Almost a mad calm. Fear made her taut. She repeated. “He was drunk, you say! You saw him come in?”
“I happened to be in the hallway by his door when he came stumbling up the stairs,” Bart said. “Crippled as I am, I was able to help him into his room and put him on the bed. I made no attempt to make him more comfortable. I thought I had done my duty.”
“You had,” she agreed, still bothered and not knowing quite why.
In that unnatural, even tone he said, “The next thing I knew they found him on the floor this morning.”
Becky said, “He must have had one of his spells in the night and had been trying, in his still drunken state, to find his bottle of pellets.”
“Pellets?” his tone was blank.
Her eyes windened. “You know what I mean. The pellets he brought from America with him. He used them whenever he had a seizure. He took one here, and it brought him back fairly quickly.”
“You must be confused,” Bart said stonily.
“What?”
“I know of no pellets.”
“But you told me about them,” she insisted. “I remember!”
Bart Woods shook his head. “You’re making a mistake. There were no pellets. None were found on him or in his room.”
She gasped again. “So!”
“I thought you should know.”
She caught him by the arm and in a urgent voice, said, “Bart! What are you telling me?”
“That there never were any pellets!”
She was near hysteria. “Bart, he came in drunk last night. You helped him onto the bed where he collapsed. Then you searched him and took that vial of pellets he always carried on him. After that you searched the room and located whatever other cache he had of them and took them. After that you left him!”
“You have a fine sense of melodrama,” Bart said, “You’re almost the equal of Dickens!”
“This is a dreadful business, Bart! You had no right!”
“James will tell no tales,” he said. “That worry at least is ended.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to somehow reconcile it all in her mind. Then she said, “I wish you had let him talk. Anything but this! You left him there to die!”