On each side of the shop-window is a door, one leading to the warehouse
and workshop at the back. Through this door there passes quite a
respectable commerce. The skin of the domestic cat, drawn hither on
coster carts from the remoter suburbs, passes in to this door to emerge
from it later in neat wooden cases addressed to enterprising merchants
in Trondhjem, Bergen, Berlin, and other northern cities from which
tourists are in the habit of carrying home mementoes in the shape of
the fur and feather of the country. There is also a small importation of
American fur to be dressed and treated and re-despatched to the Siberian
fur dealers from whom the American globe-trotter prefers to buy. A
number of unhealthy work-people--men, women, and ancient children--also
use this door, entering by it in the morning, and only coming into the
air again after dark. They have yellow faces and dusty clothes. A long
companionship with fur has made them hirsute; for the men are unshaven,
and the women's heads are burdened with heavy coils of black hair.
The other door, which is little used, seems to be the entrance to the
dwelling-house of the nameless foreigner. On the left-hand door-post
is nailed a small tin tablet, whereon are inscribed in the Russian
character three words, which, being translated, read: “The Brothers of
Liberty.” As no one of importance in the West India Dock Road reads the
Russian characters, there is no harm done, or else some disappointment
would necessarily be experienced by the passer-by to think that any one
so nearly related to liberty should choose to live in that spot. Neither
would the Trafalgar Square agitator be pleased were he called upon to
suppose that the siren whom he pursues with such ardor on rainy Sunday
afternoons could ever take refuge behind the dingy Turkey-red curtain
that hides the inner parts of the furrier's store from vulgar gaze.
“That's their lingo,” said Captain Cable to himself, with considerable
emphasis, one dull winter afternoon when, after much study of the
numbers over the shop doors, he finally came to a stand opposite the
furrier's shop.
He stepped back into the road to look up at the house, thereby
imperilling his life amid the traffic. A costermonger taking cabbages
from the Borough Market to Limehouse gave the captain a little piece
of his mind in the choicest terms then current in his daily intercourse
with man, and received in turn winged words of such a forcible and
original nature as to send him thoughtfully eastward behind his cart.
“That's their lingo, right enough,” said the captain, examining the tin
tablet a second time. “That's Polish, or I'm a Dutchman.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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