Chapter Sixteen.How I experienced some of the Downs and Ups of Fortune.My reader will hardly accuse me of painting myself in too flattering colours. I only wish I could promise him that the record of my folly should end here. But, alas! if he has patience to read my story to the end he will find that Frederick Batchelor’s folly was too inveterate to be chased away by two black eyes and a piece of bad news.But for the time being I was fairly cowed. As I lay awake that next morning, after a night of feverish tossing and dreaming, I could think of nothing but my friend Smith—ill, perhaps dying, in the hospital at Packworth. I could do nothing to help him; I might not even go near him. Who could tell if ever I should see him again? And then came the memory of my cowardly refusal to stand up for him in his absence when he was being insulted and mocked behind his back. No wonder I despised myself and hated my life in London without him!I got out of bed, determined at all costs to turn over a new leaf, and show every one that Iwasashamed of what I had done. But as I did so I became faint and sick, and was obliged to crawl back to bed. I had all this time nearly forgotten my bruises and injuries of the previous evening, but I was painfully reminded of them now, and gradually all the misery of that exploit returned, and along with it a new alarm.If Smith had caught smallpox from that wretched little street boy, was it not possible—nay, probable—I might be beginning with it too? It was not a pleasant thought, and the bare suggestion was enough to convince me I was really becoming ill.“I say, aren’t you going to get up?” said young Larkins, at my bedside, presently, evidently having come to see how I was getting on after last night’s sensation: “or are you queer still?”“I’m very queer,” said I, “and can’t get up. I think I’m going to be ill, Larkins. Would you mind calling at Hawk Street, and telling them there?”“All right!” said Larkins. “But what’s the matter with you?”“I’m not quite sure, but I’m afraid—have I got any spots coming out on my face?”“Eh? No; but your face is all black and blue, and there’s a big bump on one cheek.”“Is there? Then it must be so. Larkins, you’d better not stand too near, I’m afraid I’ve smallpox!”Larkins’s face grew alarmed, and his jaw dropped. “What! Smallpox? Oh, I say, Batchelor, I hope not. It looks more like as if you’d been fighting.”“That’s the smallpox coming on,” I said, mournfully; “I’m sure!”“Perhaps I’d better go,” said Larkins, making for the door. “I’ll tell them at your office,” and with that he bolted suddenly.It rather pleased me to imagine the sensation which his news would occasion not only down stairs among Mrs Nash’s lodgers, but also at the office. I could hear the sound of eager voices below, followed by what I fancied was the hurried stampede of the company from the house. Then presently Mrs Nash’s foot sounded on the stairs, and she opened the door.“Have you had it, Mrs Nash?” I cried, as she appeared.She made no answer, but walked up straight to my bed. “What’s all this nonsense about?” she demanded.“I’m afraid it’s smallpox. I’m so sorry on your account,” I said, quite meekly. “I sort of felt it coming on some days,” I added, quite convinced in my own mind it had been so.To my astonishment, the good lady expressed neither surprise nor sympathy. “Fiddlesticks!” said she. “Come, get up!”“Get up?” I cried, in astonishment. “I can’t possibly, Mrs Nash. I tried just now, and couldn’t stand!”“Stuff and nonsense! You ought to be ashamed of yourself going and fighting with a parcel of young roughs over night, and then shamming illness in the morning because you daren’t show your black eyes to the governors! Come, you don’t get round me with any of your nonsense! Up you get, or I’ll start and sweep out the room before you’re dressed!”It was in vain I protested and pleaded. I had to rise, and, dizzy and sick as I felt, to huddle on my clothes and go down stairs, utterly horrified at such inhuman treatment. Mrs Nash even expected, now I was up, I should go to the office; but this I positively declared I could not do, and was therefore permitted to make myself as comfortable as I could in the cheerless parlour, and there wait for the further development of my malady.Towards mid-day I began to feel hungry, but dared not ask Mrs Nash for anything; it would be so unlike an invalid. But I rang the bell and implored her to send for a doctor, which she finally promised to do.In the interval I began to feel more and more like myself. It was very aggravating, to be sure! Unless he came quickly the doctor would hardly think me ill at all. And yet Imustbe ill, even though it cost an effort!When the doctor did arrive I did my best, by putting on a pained expression of countenance, by breathing rather hard and closing my eyes occasionally, to make him feel he had not come for nothing. But somehow I didn’t quite succeed. He smiled pleasantly as he just touched my pulse, and gave a single glance at my protruded tongue.“There’s nothing wrong with him, except a black eye or so. Fighting, I suppose. Boys will be boys. Send him to bed early to-night, Mrs Nash, and he’ll be all right in the morning.”“But what about—about the smallpox?” I inquired, forgetting that during the last speech I had been lying with my eyes closed, apparently unconscious.The doctor laughed noisily, and Mrs Nash joined in the chorus.“We’ll see about him when we catch him, my young fighting-cock,” replied he, and then went.Then I hadn’t really got it! A nice fool I had made of myself! Larkins had, of course, announced it to all the lodgers at Mrs Nash’s, to my employers and fellow-clerks, and here was I all the while as right as a trivet, with nothing but a bruised face and an empty stomach afflicting me. Was ever luck like mine?I took care to be in bed before the fellows got home that evening, but as I lay awake I could hear their laughter down stairs, and it was not hard to guess what it was about. Larkins came up to my room.“You’re a nice fellow, Batchelor,” said he, laughing, “telling me it was smallpox! You gave me such a fright. I told all the fellows, and at your office, and you should have seen how blue they all looked. What a sell it will be when you turn up all serene.” This was pleasant.“You’d better not be too sure,” I said, still clinging to my ailment. “It may be it after all. The doctor said I was to go to bed early to-night and keep quite quiet. I’d advise you not to stay in the room, Larkins.”“Oh, all right, good-night,” said Larkins, going to the door.I heard him whistling merrily down the stairs, and felt still more uncomfortable. However, merciful sleep ended my troubles for a season. I slept like a top all that night, and woke next morning as fresh and well as I had ever been in all my life. The only thing wrong with me was the colour of my face. That was certainly rather brilliant. I had to endure a regular broadside of quizzing from my fellow-lodgers that morning at breakfast, which certainly did not tend to cheer me up in the prospect of presenting myself shortly at Hawk Street. I would fain have been spared that ceremony!There arrived, as I was starting out, a hurried line from Mrs Shield, announcing that Jack was “much the same,” which of course meant he was still very ill.Poor Jack! I had been so taken up with my own fancied ailment that I had scarcely thought of him. As it was I could hardly realise that he was so very ill.Little had we imagined that evening when he caught up the half-murdered urchin in his arms and carried him to our lodgings what the result of that act would be to one of us! And yet, if it were to do again, I fancied my friend Smith would do it again, whatever it cost. But to think of his being so ill, possibly losing his life, all for a graceless young vagabond who—“Clean ’e boots, do y’ hear, clean ’e boots, sir?”Looking towards the sound, I saw the very object of my thoughts in front of me. He was clad in a tattered old tail coat, and trousers twice the size of his little legs. His head and feet were bare, and there seemed little enough semblance of a shirt. Altogether it was the most “scarecrowy” apparition I ever came across.“Shine ’e boots, master?” he cried, flourishing a blacking-brush in either hand, and standing across my path.I stopped short, and answered solemnly, “Where’s that sixpence you stole out of my pocket, you young thief?”I expected he would be overawed and conscience-stricken by the sudden accusation. But instead of that he fired up with the most virtuous indignation.“What do yer mean, young thief? I ain’t a-goin’—Oh, my Jemimer, it’s one of them two flats. Oh, here’s a go! Shine ’e boots, mister?”There were certainly very few signs of penitence about this queer boy. This was pleasant, certainly. Not only robbed, but laughed at by the thief, a little mite of a fellow like this!“I’ve a great mind to call a policeman and give you in charge,” said I.He must have seen that I was not in earnest, for he replied, gaily, “No, yer don’t. Ef yer do, I’ll run yer in for prize-fightin’, so now.”“How much do you earn by blacking boots?” I asked, feeling an involuntary interest in this strange gutter lad.“Some days I gets a tanner. But, bless you, I ain’t a brigade bloke. I say, though, where’s t’other flat; ’im with the eyes?”“He’s away ill,” I said. “He’s got smallpox, and says he believes he caught it from you.”“Get ’long!” replied the boy.“Well, most likely it was in the court where you live.”“You can take your davy of that,” replied the boy; “there’s plenty of ’im there.”“Have you had it?”“In corse I ’ave. I say, ’ave yer seen the old gal about?”“Your mother? No. Why?”“On’y she’s a-missin’, that’s all; but there, she allers turns up, she does, and wipes me to-rights, too.”“She was nearly killing you the night we saw you,” said I.“’Taint no concern of yourn. Shine ’e boots, sir? ’ere yer are, sir. Not that bloke, sir. Do yer ’ear? Shine ’e boots, mister?”This last spirited call was addressed to an elderly gentleman who was passing. He yielded eventually to the youth’s solicitation, and I therefore resumed my walk to the office with a good deal more to think of than I had when I started.If I had desired to make a sensation at Hawk Street, I could hardly have done better than turn up that morning as usual. It was a picture to see the fellows’ faces of alarm, bewilderment, astonishment, and finally of merriment.They had all heard that I was laid up with smallpox, which, as my friend Smith was also ill of the same malady, they all considered as natural on my part, and highly proper. They had, in fact, faced the prospect of getting on without me, and were quite prepared to exist accordingly. The partners, too, had talked the matter over, and come to the decision of advertising again without delay for a new clerk to take my place, and that very morning were intending to draw up the advertisement and send it to the papers.Under these circumstances I appeared unexpectedly and just as usual on the Hawk Street horizon. No, not just as usual. Had I appeared just as usual, it might have been easier for the company generally to believe that I was really sound, but when my face presented a brilliant combination of most of the colours of the rainbow, the effect was rather sensational.“Why, if it’s not Batchelor,” exclaimed Doubleday; not, however, advancing open-armed to meet me, but edging towards the far end of the desk, and dexterously insinuating Crow and Wallop between me and his precious person. “Why, we heard you had smallpox.”“So we thought yesterday,” said I, gravely, half aggravated still that I had been defrauded of that distinction.“Oh, you did, did you?” said Doubleday, gradually working back to his own seat. “Well, youhavegot something on your face to show for it; hasn’t he, Wallop?”“Looks as if he’d been painting up for the South Sea Islands,” observed Wallop.“That’s rather a showy tint of yellow down his left cheek,” said Crow. “Very fashionable colour just now.”“Did you lay it on yourself?” said Doubleday, “or did you get any one to help you?”“Oh,” I said, in as off-hand a manner as I could, “I was having a little box with Whipcord up at the Field-marshal’s. You weren’t there, by the way, Doubleday. Whipcord’s rather a good hand.”“Is he?” said Doubleday, laughing exuberantly, with Wallop and Crow as chorus. “I would never have supposed that by your face, now; would you, you fellows? It strikes me you got a big box instead of smallpox, eh? Ha, ha!”“I wonder at Whipcord standing up to you,” said Crow. “He’s such a quiet fellow, and doesn’t know in the least what to do with his hands.”“He had the best of me,” I said.“Well, I don’t know. It doesn’t do to trust to appearances. If it did one might suppose he had—rather. I hope you’ll ask me up when you have the return match.”I didn’t see much fun in those witticisms, which, however, appeared to afford great merriment to the company generally, so much so that when Mr Barnacle presently opened the door he caught the whole counting-house laughing.“What tomfoolery is this?” he demanded, looking angrily round. “You seem to forget, all of you, that you come here to work, and not to play. If you want to play you can go somewhere else. There!” So saying he passed into his private room, slamming the door ill-temperedly behind him.This was not encouraging for me, who, of course, had to report myself, and contradict the rumours regarding my illness.I gave him a quartet of an hour or so to quiet down, partly in the hope that Mr Merrett might meanwhile arrive. But as that event did not happen, and as Doubleday informed me that the advertisements for a new clerk were to be sent out that morning, I made up my mind there was nothing to be gained by further delay, and therefore made the venture.I found myself anything but comfortable as I stood before Mr Barnacle’s desk, and stammeringly began my statement.“Please, sir—”“Why, what is this, sir?” demanded Mr Barnacle, sternly. “We were told yesterday you were ill.”“So I was, sir, and I believed I was going to have smallpox, but the doctor says I’m not.”“And does that account for your face being in that state, pray?”“No, sir, I got that boxing—that is fighting.”“Most discreditable conduct! Is that all you have to say?”“Yes, sir. I’m sorry I was away yesterday.”“Well, now, listen to what I have to say,” said Mr Barnacle, laying down his pen, and leaning forward in his chair. “You’ve not been doing well lately, Batchelor. I’ve watched you and I’ve watched your work, and I don’t like it. I was mistaken in you, sir. You’re idle, sir, and unless you improve I sha’n’t keep you another week, mind that.”“Indeed, sir—” I began.“Hold your tongue, sir,” said Mr Barnacle. “We’ve no room in this office for boys of your kind, and unless you change you must go somewhere else. You’ve played the fool quite enough here.”I would fain have replied to justify myself, but in the junior partner’s present temper the attempt would have been hazardous.So I said nothing and returned to my work, determined for my own credit, as well as in my own interest, to show Mr Barnacle that he had judged me harshly.How I worked that week! I refused invitation after invitation, and stayed late after every one else had gone to get ahead with my work. During office hours I steadily abstracted myself from what was going on all round, and determined that nothing should draw me from my tasks. I even volunteered for and undertook work not strictly my own, greatly to the amazement of everybody, especially Wallop, who began to think there really must be something in the rumour that I was not well. And all the while I most assiduously doctored my face, which gradually came to resume its normal complexion.I could see that this burst of industry was having its due effect in high quarters. Mr Barnacle, who after his lecture had treated me gruffly and abruptly for some days, began again to treat me civilly, and Mr Merrett bestowed once or twice a special commendation on my industry.In due time, so far from feeling myself a repentant idler, I had grown to consider myself one of the most virtuous, industrious, and well-principled clerks in London, and in proportion as this conviction got hold of me my application to work relaxed. One event especially completed my self-satisfaction. About three weeks after my interview with Mr Barnacle I was summoned into the partners’ room, and there informed that, having now been eight months in their service, and proving myself useful in my situation, my salary would henceforth be twelve shillings a week!I could hardly believe my ears! Why, it was just half as much again as what I had been receiving. On eight shillings a week I had lived economically, but not so badly. And now, what might I not do with twelve shillings a week?Doubleday insisted on my coming up to his lodgings that evening to celebrate the joyful event with a quiet supper. This invitation I accepted, the first for nearly a month, and in view of the occasion spent my first extra four shillings in anticipation on a coloured Oxford-shirt, which I grandly requested, with the air of a moneyed man, to be put down to my account. I found myself quite the hero of the party that evening. Every one was there. I had an affecting reconciliation with Whipcord, and forgot all about Flanagan’s desertion and Daly’s indifference in my hour of tribulation; I discoursed condescendingly with the Field-Marshal about his hopeless attachment, and promised to go for a row up the river one Saturday with the twins. And all the time of supper I was mentally calculating the cost of Doubleday’s entertainment, and wondering whether I could venture to give a party myself!In fact, I was so much taken up with my own good fortune and my new rise in life, that I could think of nothing else. I forgot my former warnings and humiliations. I forgot that even with twelve shillings a week I had barely enough to clothe me respectably; I forgot that every one of these fellows was in the habit of laughing at me behind my back, and I forgot all my good resolutions to live steadily till Jack came back.And I forgot all about poor Jack—(now, so the letters had told me), convalescent and slowly recovering health, but still lying lonely and weary in the Packworth Hospital. Indeed, that evening his name only twice crossed my mind—once when Doubleday and Crow were laughing over the prospect of “Bull’s-eye” turning up with a face deeply marked with his late disease; and once when, walking back to Beadle Square, full of my new plans of extravagance, I chanced to pass a small boy, curled up on a doorstep, with his head resting on a shoeblack box, and the light of a neighbouring lamp shining full on his sleeping face. Then I remembered how, not very long ago, I had seen that same head lying side by side with Jack’s head on the pillow at Mrs Nash’s. And as I stood for a moment to look, I could almost have believed that the sleeping figure there, with all his vulgarity and dishonesty, had as good a title to call himself Jack Smith’s friend as I had.
My reader will hardly accuse me of painting myself in too flattering colours. I only wish I could promise him that the record of my folly should end here. But, alas! if he has patience to read my story to the end he will find that Frederick Batchelor’s folly was too inveterate to be chased away by two black eyes and a piece of bad news.
But for the time being I was fairly cowed. As I lay awake that next morning, after a night of feverish tossing and dreaming, I could think of nothing but my friend Smith—ill, perhaps dying, in the hospital at Packworth. I could do nothing to help him; I might not even go near him. Who could tell if ever I should see him again? And then came the memory of my cowardly refusal to stand up for him in his absence when he was being insulted and mocked behind his back. No wonder I despised myself and hated my life in London without him!
I got out of bed, determined at all costs to turn over a new leaf, and show every one that Iwasashamed of what I had done. But as I did so I became faint and sick, and was obliged to crawl back to bed. I had all this time nearly forgotten my bruises and injuries of the previous evening, but I was painfully reminded of them now, and gradually all the misery of that exploit returned, and along with it a new alarm.
If Smith had caught smallpox from that wretched little street boy, was it not possible—nay, probable—I might be beginning with it too? It was not a pleasant thought, and the bare suggestion was enough to convince me I was really becoming ill.
“I say, aren’t you going to get up?” said young Larkins, at my bedside, presently, evidently having come to see how I was getting on after last night’s sensation: “or are you queer still?”
“I’m very queer,” said I, “and can’t get up. I think I’m going to be ill, Larkins. Would you mind calling at Hawk Street, and telling them there?”
“All right!” said Larkins. “But what’s the matter with you?”
“I’m not quite sure, but I’m afraid—have I got any spots coming out on my face?”
“Eh? No; but your face is all black and blue, and there’s a big bump on one cheek.”
“Is there? Then it must be so. Larkins, you’d better not stand too near, I’m afraid I’ve smallpox!”
Larkins’s face grew alarmed, and his jaw dropped. “What! Smallpox? Oh, I say, Batchelor, I hope not. It looks more like as if you’d been fighting.”
“That’s the smallpox coming on,” I said, mournfully; “I’m sure!”
“Perhaps I’d better go,” said Larkins, making for the door. “I’ll tell them at your office,” and with that he bolted suddenly.
It rather pleased me to imagine the sensation which his news would occasion not only down stairs among Mrs Nash’s lodgers, but also at the office. I could hear the sound of eager voices below, followed by what I fancied was the hurried stampede of the company from the house. Then presently Mrs Nash’s foot sounded on the stairs, and she opened the door.
“Have you had it, Mrs Nash?” I cried, as she appeared.
She made no answer, but walked up straight to my bed. “What’s all this nonsense about?” she demanded.
“I’m afraid it’s smallpox. I’m so sorry on your account,” I said, quite meekly. “I sort of felt it coming on some days,” I added, quite convinced in my own mind it had been so.
To my astonishment, the good lady expressed neither surprise nor sympathy. “Fiddlesticks!” said she. “Come, get up!”
“Get up?” I cried, in astonishment. “I can’t possibly, Mrs Nash. I tried just now, and couldn’t stand!”
“Stuff and nonsense! You ought to be ashamed of yourself going and fighting with a parcel of young roughs over night, and then shamming illness in the morning because you daren’t show your black eyes to the governors! Come, you don’t get round me with any of your nonsense! Up you get, or I’ll start and sweep out the room before you’re dressed!”
It was in vain I protested and pleaded. I had to rise, and, dizzy and sick as I felt, to huddle on my clothes and go down stairs, utterly horrified at such inhuman treatment. Mrs Nash even expected, now I was up, I should go to the office; but this I positively declared I could not do, and was therefore permitted to make myself as comfortable as I could in the cheerless parlour, and there wait for the further development of my malady.
Towards mid-day I began to feel hungry, but dared not ask Mrs Nash for anything; it would be so unlike an invalid. But I rang the bell and implored her to send for a doctor, which she finally promised to do.
In the interval I began to feel more and more like myself. It was very aggravating, to be sure! Unless he came quickly the doctor would hardly think me ill at all. And yet Imustbe ill, even though it cost an effort!
When the doctor did arrive I did my best, by putting on a pained expression of countenance, by breathing rather hard and closing my eyes occasionally, to make him feel he had not come for nothing. But somehow I didn’t quite succeed. He smiled pleasantly as he just touched my pulse, and gave a single glance at my protruded tongue.
“There’s nothing wrong with him, except a black eye or so. Fighting, I suppose. Boys will be boys. Send him to bed early to-night, Mrs Nash, and he’ll be all right in the morning.”
“But what about—about the smallpox?” I inquired, forgetting that during the last speech I had been lying with my eyes closed, apparently unconscious.
The doctor laughed noisily, and Mrs Nash joined in the chorus.
“We’ll see about him when we catch him, my young fighting-cock,” replied he, and then went.
Then I hadn’t really got it! A nice fool I had made of myself! Larkins had, of course, announced it to all the lodgers at Mrs Nash’s, to my employers and fellow-clerks, and here was I all the while as right as a trivet, with nothing but a bruised face and an empty stomach afflicting me. Was ever luck like mine?
I took care to be in bed before the fellows got home that evening, but as I lay awake I could hear their laughter down stairs, and it was not hard to guess what it was about. Larkins came up to my room.
“You’re a nice fellow, Batchelor,” said he, laughing, “telling me it was smallpox! You gave me such a fright. I told all the fellows, and at your office, and you should have seen how blue they all looked. What a sell it will be when you turn up all serene.” This was pleasant.
“You’d better not be too sure,” I said, still clinging to my ailment. “It may be it after all. The doctor said I was to go to bed early to-night and keep quite quiet. I’d advise you not to stay in the room, Larkins.”
“Oh, all right, good-night,” said Larkins, going to the door.
I heard him whistling merrily down the stairs, and felt still more uncomfortable. However, merciful sleep ended my troubles for a season. I slept like a top all that night, and woke next morning as fresh and well as I had ever been in all my life. The only thing wrong with me was the colour of my face. That was certainly rather brilliant. I had to endure a regular broadside of quizzing from my fellow-lodgers that morning at breakfast, which certainly did not tend to cheer me up in the prospect of presenting myself shortly at Hawk Street. I would fain have been spared that ceremony!
There arrived, as I was starting out, a hurried line from Mrs Shield, announcing that Jack was “much the same,” which of course meant he was still very ill.
Poor Jack! I had been so taken up with my own fancied ailment that I had scarcely thought of him. As it was I could hardly realise that he was so very ill.
Little had we imagined that evening when he caught up the half-murdered urchin in his arms and carried him to our lodgings what the result of that act would be to one of us! And yet, if it were to do again, I fancied my friend Smith would do it again, whatever it cost. But to think of his being so ill, possibly losing his life, all for a graceless young vagabond who—
“Clean ’e boots, do y’ hear, clean ’e boots, sir?”
Looking towards the sound, I saw the very object of my thoughts in front of me. He was clad in a tattered old tail coat, and trousers twice the size of his little legs. His head and feet were bare, and there seemed little enough semblance of a shirt. Altogether it was the most “scarecrowy” apparition I ever came across.
“Shine ’e boots, master?” he cried, flourishing a blacking-brush in either hand, and standing across my path.
I stopped short, and answered solemnly, “Where’s that sixpence you stole out of my pocket, you young thief?”
I expected he would be overawed and conscience-stricken by the sudden accusation. But instead of that he fired up with the most virtuous indignation.
“What do yer mean, young thief? I ain’t a-goin’—Oh, my Jemimer, it’s one of them two flats. Oh, here’s a go! Shine ’e boots, mister?”
There were certainly very few signs of penitence about this queer boy. This was pleasant, certainly. Not only robbed, but laughed at by the thief, a little mite of a fellow like this!
“I’ve a great mind to call a policeman and give you in charge,” said I.
He must have seen that I was not in earnest, for he replied, gaily, “No, yer don’t. Ef yer do, I’ll run yer in for prize-fightin’, so now.”
“How much do you earn by blacking boots?” I asked, feeling an involuntary interest in this strange gutter lad.
“Some days I gets a tanner. But, bless you, I ain’t a brigade bloke. I say, though, where’s t’other flat; ’im with the eyes?”
“He’s away ill,” I said. “He’s got smallpox, and says he believes he caught it from you.”
“Get ’long!” replied the boy.
“Well, most likely it was in the court where you live.”
“You can take your davy of that,” replied the boy; “there’s plenty of ’im there.”
“Have you had it?”
“In corse I ’ave. I say, ’ave yer seen the old gal about?”
“Your mother? No. Why?”
“On’y she’s a-missin’, that’s all; but there, she allers turns up, she does, and wipes me to-rights, too.”
“She was nearly killing you the night we saw you,” said I.
“’Taint no concern of yourn. Shine ’e boots, sir? ’ere yer are, sir. Not that bloke, sir. Do yer ’ear? Shine ’e boots, mister?”
This last spirited call was addressed to an elderly gentleman who was passing. He yielded eventually to the youth’s solicitation, and I therefore resumed my walk to the office with a good deal more to think of than I had when I started.
If I had desired to make a sensation at Hawk Street, I could hardly have done better than turn up that morning as usual. It was a picture to see the fellows’ faces of alarm, bewilderment, astonishment, and finally of merriment.
They had all heard that I was laid up with smallpox, which, as my friend Smith was also ill of the same malady, they all considered as natural on my part, and highly proper. They had, in fact, faced the prospect of getting on without me, and were quite prepared to exist accordingly. The partners, too, had talked the matter over, and come to the decision of advertising again without delay for a new clerk to take my place, and that very morning were intending to draw up the advertisement and send it to the papers.
Under these circumstances I appeared unexpectedly and just as usual on the Hawk Street horizon. No, not just as usual. Had I appeared just as usual, it might have been easier for the company generally to believe that I was really sound, but when my face presented a brilliant combination of most of the colours of the rainbow, the effect was rather sensational.
“Why, if it’s not Batchelor,” exclaimed Doubleday; not, however, advancing open-armed to meet me, but edging towards the far end of the desk, and dexterously insinuating Crow and Wallop between me and his precious person. “Why, we heard you had smallpox.”
“So we thought yesterday,” said I, gravely, half aggravated still that I had been defrauded of that distinction.
“Oh, you did, did you?” said Doubleday, gradually working back to his own seat. “Well, youhavegot something on your face to show for it; hasn’t he, Wallop?”
“Looks as if he’d been painting up for the South Sea Islands,” observed Wallop.
“That’s rather a showy tint of yellow down his left cheek,” said Crow. “Very fashionable colour just now.”
“Did you lay it on yourself?” said Doubleday, “or did you get any one to help you?”
“Oh,” I said, in as off-hand a manner as I could, “I was having a little box with Whipcord up at the Field-marshal’s. You weren’t there, by the way, Doubleday. Whipcord’s rather a good hand.”
“Is he?” said Doubleday, laughing exuberantly, with Wallop and Crow as chorus. “I would never have supposed that by your face, now; would you, you fellows? It strikes me you got a big box instead of smallpox, eh? Ha, ha!”
“I wonder at Whipcord standing up to you,” said Crow. “He’s such a quiet fellow, and doesn’t know in the least what to do with his hands.”
“He had the best of me,” I said.
“Well, I don’t know. It doesn’t do to trust to appearances. If it did one might suppose he had—rather. I hope you’ll ask me up when you have the return match.”
I didn’t see much fun in those witticisms, which, however, appeared to afford great merriment to the company generally, so much so that when Mr Barnacle presently opened the door he caught the whole counting-house laughing.
“What tomfoolery is this?” he demanded, looking angrily round. “You seem to forget, all of you, that you come here to work, and not to play. If you want to play you can go somewhere else. There!” So saying he passed into his private room, slamming the door ill-temperedly behind him.
This was not encouraging for me, who, of course, had to report myself, and contradict the rumours regarding my illness.
I gave him a quartet of an hour or so to quiet down, partly in the hope that Mr Merrett might meanwhile arrive. But as that event did not happen, and as Doubleday informed me that the advertisements for a new clerk were to be sent out that morning, I made up my mind there was nothing to be gained by further delay, and therefore made the venture.
I found myself anything but comfortable as I stood before Mr Barnacle’s desk, and stammeringly began my statement.
“Please, sir—”
“Why, what is this, sir?” demanded Mr Barnacle, sternly. “We were told yesterday you were ill.”
“So I was, sir, and I believed I was going to have smallpox, but the doctor says I’m not.”
“And does that account for your face being in that state, pray?”
“No, sir, I got that boxing—that is fighting.”
“Most discreditable conduct! Is that all you have to say?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry I was away yesterday.”
“Well, now, listen to what I have to say,” said Mr Barnacle, laying down his pen, and leaning forward in his chair. “You’ve not been doing well lately, Batchelor. I’ve watched you and I’ve watched your work, and I don’t like it. I was mistaken in you, sir. You’re idle, sir, and unless you improve I sha’n’t keep you another week, mind that.”
“Indeed, sir—” I began.
“Hold your tongue, sir,” said Mr Barnacle. “We’ve no room in this office for boys of your kind, and unless you change you must go somewhere else. You’ve played the fool quite enough here.”
I would fain have replied to justify myself, but in the junior partner’s present temper the attempt would have been hazardous.
So I said nothing and returned to my work, determined for my own credit, as well as in my own interest, to show Mr Barnacle that he had judged me harshly.
How I worked that week! I refused invitation after invitation, and stayed late after every one else had gone to get ahead with my work. During office hours I steadily abstracted myself from what was going on all round, and determined that nothing should draw me from my tasks. I even volunteered for and undertook work not strictly my own, greatly to the amazement of everybody, especially Wallop, who began to think there really must be something in the rumour that I was not well. And all the while I most assiduously doctored my face, which gradually came to resume its normal complexion.
I could see that this burst of industry was having its due effect in high quarters. Mr Barnacle, who after his lecture had treated me gruffly and abruptly for some days, began again to treat me civilly, and Mr Merrett bestowed once or twice a special commendation on my industry.
In due time, so far from feeling myself a repentant idler, I had grown to consider myself one of the most virtuous, industrious, and well-principled clerks in London, and in proportion as this conviction got hold of me my application to work relaxed. One event especially completed my self-satisfaction. About three weeks after my interview with Mr Barnacle I was summoned into the partners’ room, and there informed that, having now been eight months in their service, and proving myself useful in my situation, my salary would henceforth be twelve shillings a week!
I could hardly believe my ears! Why, it was just half as much again as what I had been receiving. On eight shillings a week I had lived economically, but not so badly. And now, what might I not do with twelve shillings a week?
Doubleday insisted on my coming up to his lodgings that evening to celebrate the joyful event with a quiet supper. This invitation I accepted, the first for nearly a month, and in view of the occasion spent my first extra four shillings in anticipation on a coloured Oxford-shirt, which I grandly requested, with the air of a moneyed man, to be put down to my account. I found myself quite the hero of the party that evening. Every one was there. I had an affecting reconciliation with Whipcord, and forgot all about Flanagan’s desertion and Daly’s indifference in my hour of tribulation; I discoursed condescendingly with the Field-Marshal about his hopeless attachment, and promised to go for a row up the river one Saturday with the twins. And all the time of supper I was mentally calculating the cost of Doubleday’s entertainment, and wondering whether I could venture to give a party myself!
In fact, I was so much taken up with my own good fortune and my new rise in life, that I could think of nothing else. I forgot my former warnings and humiliations. I forgot that even with twelve shillings a week I had barely enough to clothe me respectably; I forgot that every one of these fellows was in the habit of laughing at me behind my back, and I forgot all my good resolutions to live steadily till Jack came back.
And I forgot all about poor Jack—(now, so the letters had told me), convalescent and slowly recovering health, but still lying lonely and weary in the Packworth Hospital. Indeed, that evening his name only twice crossed my mind—once when Doubleday and Crow were laughing over the prospect of “Bull’s-eye” turning up with a face deeply marked with his late disease; and once when, walking back to Beadle Square, full of my new plans of extravagance, I chanced to pass a small boy, curled up on a doorstep, with his head resting on a shoeblack box, and the light of a neighbouring lamp shining full on his sleeping face. Then I remembered how, not very long ago, I had seen that same head lying side by side with Jack’s head on the pillow at Mrs Nash’s. And as I stood for a moment to look, I could almost have believed that the sleeping figure there, with all his vulgarity and dishonesty, had as good a title to call himself Jack Smith’s friend as I had.
Chapter Seventeen.How I gave a Little Supper to some of my Friends.The idea of giving a party of my own to my new friends, in return for their hospitality to me, was not by any means a new one. It had been simmering in my mind for some weeks past. Indeed, ever since I began to be invited out, the thought that I could not return the compliment had always been a drawback to my pleasure.But there had always been two obstacles in the way of carrying out my wish. The first was lack of funds, the second was Mrs Nash. On eight shillings a week I had come to the conclusion it was out of the question to dream of giving a party to eight persons. By the most modest calculation I couldn’t possibly do the thing decently under a shilling a head. It was true I had my uncle’s half-sovereign in my pocket still. I might, I reflected, borrow that, and pay it back by weekly instalments. But somehow I didn’t like the idea quite, and never brought myself to the point of carrying it into effect. Now, however, with the sudden rise in my fortunes recorded in the last chapter, the financial obstacle to my hospitality was quite swept away. I had only to take the extra four shillings a week for two weeks—and the thing was done!So the idea no longer simmered in my mind—it boiled; and I was determined for once in a way to astonish my friends.But though one obstacle had vanished, the other remained. What would Mrs Nash say? For, much as I disliked it, I was forced to face the fact that my party, if I gave it, would have to come off in Beadle Square. I had half thought of borrowing Flanagan’s room for the occasion, but didn’t like to ask him; besides, if I did, it would have to be half his party and half mine, which wasn’t at all my idea. Then it occurred to me, should I take lodgings for a week and give it there? No, it would cost too much even for twelve shillings a week; and my uncle, if he heard of it, might stop my keep at Mrs Nash’s. Suppose I hired a room at an hotel for the evening, and asked the fellows there? It wasn’t a bad idea, and would probably only cost me half a week’s wages. But the worst of it is, if you ask fellows to dine with you at an hotel, they are sure to come expecting a grand turn out; and I doubted my talents to provide anything grand; besides, the hotel people would be sure to want to supply the things themselves, and ask for the money in advance. Or if I didn’t humour them they would to a certainty turn crusty and critical, and spoil my party for me.No, the only thing was to make the best of Beadle Square, and to that end I determined to tackle Mrs Nash at once.You may fancy the good woman’s surprise and scorn when I propounded to her my ambitious scheme.“You give a party! Fiddlesticks! You’ll do nothing of the sort.”“Please, Mrs Nash,” pleaded I, “it will be a very quiet one, I promise.”“And where do you expect to have it, I wonder?” said she. “In the coal-cellar, I suppose? That’s the only spot in the house that ain’t occupied.”“Oh,” replied I, thinking it judicious to laugh at this facetious suggestion, “I’d like the parlour for that evening, if you could manage it, Mrs Nash.”“What! are you going to ask all the fellows here to your party, then?”“Oh, no. Couldn’t you let them know the parlour’s engaged for that evening?—just for once? You know I’d pay you something—”“I dare say you would!—you’d pay anything, you would! And what are you going to give them all to eat, eh?”“Oh, I’ll see to that,” said I.This was an unfortunate reply of mine. Mrs Nash, as it happened, was inclined to enter into my scheme, and, had I only known it, would have offered to take some trouble to help me. But this answer of mine offended her sorely.“Oh, very well,” said she, loftily; “you don’t want me, I can see, and I’m just as glad.”In vain I protested, and implored her not to be vexed. I hadn’t meant it at all. I couldn’t possibly do without her. I was a beast to say what I had, and so on. The most I could get out of her was a vague promise that I might have the room on the evening in question. As for the entertainment, she washed her hands of the whole affair.I was inclined to give it up. Not that I had ever imagined she would help me; but to have her downright unfriendly at such a time would, I knew, ruin the thing totally.For some days she would listen to nothing at all on the subject.“It’s your look-out,” she said to every appeal. “Let’s see what sort of a hand you’ll make of it, my beauty.”I was in despair. I longed to issue my invitations, but till Mrs Nash was “squared” it was out of the question to name the happy day. It was evidently useless to argue the matter. The best thing I could do was to let it alone, and allow her to imagine the scheme had been abandoned.In this calculation I was correct. Some days afterwards, happening to be in the parlour with her after breakfast, she said, “And when’s your grand party, as you call it, coming off, Mr Batchelor?”I started up in rapture at the question.“Then youwillhelp me, Mrs Nash?” I cried, running up to her, and taking it all for granted.She first looked amazed, then angry, and finally she smiled.“I never said so. You’re a sight too independent for my taste, you are.Iain’t a-goin’ to put my fingers into where I ain’t wanted.”“But youarewanted, and you will be a brick, I know!” cried I, almost hugging her in my eagerness.The battle was won, and that morning I went down to the office positively jubilant. My party was fixed for Thursday!I felt particularly important when the time came for inviting Doubleday and Crow to the festive assembly. I had rehearsed as I walked along the very words and tones I would use. On no account must they suppose the giving of a party was the momentous event it really proved itself.“By the way, Doubleday,” said I, in as off-hand a manner as I could assume, after some preliminary talk on different matters—“by the way, could you come up to supper on Thursday? Just the usual lot, you know.”I could have kicked myself for the way I blushed and stammered as I was delivering this short oration.Doubleday gazed at me half curiously, half perplexed.“Eh—supper? Oh, rather! Where’s it to be? Mansion House or Guildhall?”I didn’t like this. It wasn’t what I had expected.“Oh, up at my place, you know—Beadle Square,” I said.At this Doubleday fairly laughed.“Supper at your place at Black Beadle Square? Oh, rather! I’ll come. You’ll come too, Crow, eh? The young un’s got a supper on on Thursday. Oh, rather. Put me down for that, old man.”Could anything have been more mortifying? Most invitations are received politely and graciously. What there was to laugh at about mine I couldn’t understand.“Oh, yes, Crow’s coming,” I said, meekly. “At least I hope so.”“Oh, rather!” said Crow, beaming. “I wouldn’t miss it for a lot. Is it evening dress or what?”I was too much disconcerted and crestfallen to answer the question, and avoided my two prospective guests for the rest of the day.Already I was half repenting my venture. But there was no drawing back now. Letters or messages came from the rest of the “usual lot”—the Twins, Flanagan, the Field-Marshal, Daly, and Whipcord, every one of them saying they’d be there. Yes, there was nothing left but to go through with it.The next two days were two of the most anxious days I ever spent. I was running about all one afternoon (when I ought to have been delivering bills of lading), inquiring the prices of lobsters, pork-pies, oranges, and other delicacies, arranging for the hire of cups and saucers, ordering butter and eggs, and jam, and other such arduous and delicate duties. Then I spent the evening in discussing with myself the momentous questions whether I should lay in tea-cakes or penny buns, whether I need have brown bread as well as white, whether Mrs Nash’s tea would be good enough, whether I should help my great dish—the eel-pie—myself, or trust it to one of the company to do.These and similar momentous matters engaged my thoughts. And it began to dawn on me further that my financial estimates had been greatly out, and that my supper would cost me nearer a pound than ten shillings. Never mind. After all, was I not worth twelve shillings a week? I needn’t trouble about the expense. Besides, the pastrycook had agreed to give me credit, so that really I should have comparatively little to pay down.A far more serious anxiety was Mrs Nash. It required constant and most assiduous attention to keep her in good temper. And the nearer the time came the more touchy she got. If I suggested anything, she took it as a personal slight to herself; if I was bold enough to differ from her, she was mortally offended; if I ventured to express the slightest impatience, she turned crusty and threatened to let me shift for myself. The affair, too, naturally got wind amongst my fellow-lodgers, who one and all avowed that they would not give up their right to the parlour, and indulged in all manner of witticisms at my cost and the cost of my party. I pacified them as best I could by promising them the reversion of the feast, and took meekly all their gibes and jests when they begged to be allowed to come in to dessert and hear the speeches, or volunteered to come and hand round the champagne, or clear away the “turtle-soup,” and so on.But the nearer the fatal day came the more dejected and nervous I got. Mrs Nash’s parlour was really a disreputable sort of room, and after all I had had no experience of suppers, and was positive I should not know what to do when the time came. I had neither the flow of conversation of Doubleday, nor the store of stories of Daly, nor Whipcord’s sporting gossip, nor the Twins’ self-possessed humour. And if my guests should turn critical I was a lost man; that I knew. How I wished I were safe on the other side of that awful Thursday!The day came at last, and I hurried home as hard as I could after business to make my final preparations. The eel-pie was arriving as I got there, and my heart was comforted by the sight. Something, at least, was ready. But my joy was short-lived, for Mrs Nash was in a temper. The fact is, I had unconsciously neglected a piece of advice of hers in the matter of this very eel-pie. She had said, have it hot. I had told the pastrycook to deliver it cold. Therefore Mrs Nash, just at the critical moment, deserted me!With a feeling of desperation I laid my own tablecloth—not a very good one—and arranged as best I could the plates and dishes. Time was getting short, and it was no use wasting time on my crabby landlady. Yet what could I do without her? Who was to lend me a kettle, or a saucepan for the eggs, or a toasting-fork, or, for the matter of that, any of the material of war? It was clear I must at all hazards regain Mrs Nash, and the next half-hour was spent in frantic appeals to every emotion she possessed, to the drawing of abject pictures of my own helplessness, to profuse apologies, and compliments and coaxings. I never worked so hard in my life as I did that half-hour.Happily it was not all in vain. She consented, at any rate, to look after one or two of the matters in which I was most helpless, and I was duly and infinitely thankful.In due time all was ready, and the hour arrived. All my terrors returned. I felt tempted to bolt from the house and leave my guests to entertain themselves. IhatedBeadle Square. And there, of course, just when I should have liked things to be at their best, there were three or four cats setting up a most hideous concert in the yard, and the chimney in the parlour beginning to smoke. I could have torn my hair with rage and vexation.I seized the tongs, and was kneeling down and vigorously pushing them up the chimney, to ascertain the cause of this last misfortune, when a loud double-knock at the door startled me nearly out of my senses. I had never realised what I was in for till now!Horror of horrors! Who was to open the door, Mrs Nash, or I? We had never settled that. And while I stood trembling amid my smoke and eel-pie and half-boiled eggs, the knock was repeated—this time so long and loud that it must have been heard all over the square. I could hear voices and laughter outside. Some one asked, “Is this the shop?” and another voice said, “Don’t see his name on the door.”Then, terrified lest they should perpetrate another solo on the knocker, I rushed out and opened the door myself, just as Mrs Nash, with her face scarlet and her sleeves tucked up above the elbows, also appeared in the passage.They were all there; they had come down in a body. Oh, how shabby I felt as I saw them there with their fine clothes and free-and-easy manners!“Hullo! here you are!” said Doubleday. “Found you out, then, at last. Haven’t been this way for an age, but knew it at once by the cats. Hullo, is this your mother? How do, Mrs Batchelor. Glad to see you. Allow me to introduce—”“It’s not my mother!” I cried, with a suppressed groan, pulling his arm.“Eh, not your mother?—your aunt, perhaps? How do you—”“No, no,” I whispered; “no relation.”“Not? That’s a pity! She’s a tidy-looking old body, too. I say, where do you stick your hats, eh? I bag the door-handle; you hang yours on the key, Crow. Come on in, you fellows. Here’s a spree!”Could anything be more distressing or humiliating? Mrs Nash, too indignant for words, had vanished to her own kitchen, shutting the door behind her with an ominous slam, and here was the hall chock-full of staring, giggling fellows, with not a place to hang their hats, and Doubleday already the self-constituted master of the ceremonies!I mildly suggested they had better bring their hats inside, but they insisted on “stacking” them, as the Field-marshal called it, in pyramid form on the hall floor; and I let them have their way.“Come in,” I faltered presently, when this little diversion appeared to be ended. As I led the way into the parlour my heart was in my boots and no mistake.They entered, all coughing very much at the smoke. What a seedy, disreputable hole Mrs Nash’s parlour appeared at that moment!“I’m sorry the chimney’s smoking,” I said, “a—a—won’t you sit down?”This invitation, I don’t know why, seemed only to add to the amusement of the party. Daly proceeded to sit down on the floor, no chair being near, and the Twins solemnly established themselves on the top of him. The others sat down all round the room in silence. What could I do? In my cool moments I had thought of one or two topics of conversation, but of course they ah deserted me now. All except the weather.“Turned rather cold,” I observed to Whipcord.“Who?” exclaimed that worthy, with an alarmed face.“I mean the weather’s turned rather cold.”“Poor chap, pity he don’t wear a top-coat.”“I say,” said Doubleday, who had, to my great discomfort, been making a tour of discovery round the room, “rather nice pictures some of these, this one of Peace and Plenty’s not half bad, is it, Whip?”“Why you old ass, that’s not Peace and Plenty, it’s a Storm at Sea.”“Well, I don’t care who it is, it’s rattling good likenesses of them. Hullo, Twins, don’t you be going to sleep, do you hear?”This was addressed to the two brothers, from under whom, at that moment, Daly contrived suddenly to remove himself, leaving them to fall all of a heap.In the midst of the confusion caused by this accident, it occurred to me we might as well begin supper; so I called the company to attention.“We may as well begin,” I said, “there’s no one else to wait for. Will you take that end, Doubleday?”“I’m game,” said Doubleday. “Now then, you fellows, tumble into your seats, do you hear? We’re jist a-going to begin, as the conjurer says. I can tell you all I’m pretty peckish, too.”“So am I, rather,” said Crow, winking at the company generally, who all laughed.Awful thought! Suppose there’s not enough for them to eat after all!I began to pour out the coffee wildly, hardly venturing to look round. At last, however, I recollected my duties.“That’s an eel-pie in front of you, Doubleday,” I said.Now at all the parties I had been to I had never before seen an eel-pie. I therefore flattered myself I had a novelty to offer to my guests.“Eel-pie, eh?” said Doubleday; “do you catch them about here, then? Eel-pie, who says eel-pie? Don’t all speak at once. Bring forth the hot plates, my boy, and we’ll lead off.”“It’s cold,” I faltered.“Oh, goodness gracious!Coldeel-pie, gentlemen. You really mustnotall speak at once. Who says cold eel-pie? The Field-Marshal does!”“No, he doesn’t,” replied the Field-Marshal, laughing.“Flanagan does, then?”“No, thank you,” said Flanagan.“Well, you Twins; you with the cut on your chin. I wish one of you’d always cut your chin shaving, one would know you from the other. Any cold eel-pie?”“Rather not,” said the Twin addressed.“Have some lobster?” I said, despairingly. If no one was going to take eel-pie, it was certain my other provisions would not last round. Why hadn’t I taken Mrs Nash’s advice, and had that unlucky dish hot?“What will you take?” I said to Flanagan.“Oh, I don’t mind,” replied he, in a resigned manner; “I’ll take a shrimp or two.”“Have something more than that. Have some lobster?” I said.“No, thanks,” he replied.Evidently my good things were not in favour; why, I could not say. Nobody seemed to be taking anything, and Crow was most conspicuouslysmellingmy lobster.The meal dragged on heavily, with more talk than eating. Every dish came in for its share of criticism; the eel-pie remained uncut, the lobster had lost one claw, but more than half the contents of that was left on Abel’s plate. My penny buns all vanished, that was one ray of comfort.“Ring the bell for more buns,” said Doubleday, as if he was presiding at his own table.What was I to do? There were no more, and it was hardly likely Mrs Nash would go for more. Before I could make up my mind, Whipcord had rung a loud peal on the bell, and Mrs Nash in due time appeared.“More buns, and look sharp, old woman,” said Doubleday.“I’ll old woman you if I’ve much of your imperence, my young dandy!” was the somewhat startling rejoinder. “I’ll bundle the pack of you out of the house, that I will, if you can’t keep a civil tongue in your heads.”“I say, Batchelor,” said Doubleday, laughing, “your aunt has got a temper, I fancy. I’m always sorry to see it in one so young. What will it be when—”“Oh, please don’t, Doubleday,” I said; “you can see she doesn’t like it. It doesn’t matter, Mrs Nash, thank you,” I added.“Oh, don’t it matter?” retorted the irate Mrs Nash, “that’s all; we’ll settle that pretty soon, my beauty. I’ll teach you if it don’t matter that a pack of puppies comes into my house, and drinks tea out of my cups, and calls me names before my face and behind my back; I’ll teach you!” And she bounced from the room.I thought that meal would never end, although no one took anything. In time even the fun and laughter, which had at first helped to keep the thing going, died away, and the fellows lolled back in the chairs in a listless, bored way. It was vain for me to try to lead the talk; I could not have done it even if I had had the spirit, and there was precious little spirit left now!Doubleday began to look at his watch.“Half-past seven. I say,” said he, “time I was going. I’ve a particular engagement at eight.”“Well, I’ll go with you,” said Whipcord; “I want to get something to eat, and we can have supper together.”“Sorry we’ve got to go,” said Doubleday. “Jolly evening, wasn’t it, Crow?”I was too much humiliated and disgusted to notice their departure. To have my grand entertainment sneered at and made fun of was bad enough, but for two of my guests to leave my table for the avowed purpose of getting something to eat was a little too much. I could barely be civil to the rest and ask them to remain, and it was a real relief when they one and all began to make some excuse for leaving.So ended my famous supper-party, after which, for a season, I prudently retired into private life.
The idea of giving a party of my own to my new friends, in return for their hospitality to me, was not by any means a new one. It had been simmering in my mind for some weeks past. Indeed, ever since I began to be invited out, the thought that I could not return the compliment had always been a drawback to my pleasure.
But there had always been two obstacles in the way of carrying out my wish. The first was lack of funds, the second was Mrs Nash. On eight shillings a week I had come to the conclusion it was out of the question to dream of giving a party to eight persons. By the most modest calculation I couldn’t possibly do the thing decently under a shilling a head. It was true I had my uncle’s half-sovereign in my pocket still. I might, I reflected, borrow that, and pay it back by weekly instalments. But somehow I didn’t like the idea quite, and never brought myself to the point of carrying it into effect. Now, however, with the sudden rise in my fortunes recorded in the last chapter, the financial obstacle to my hospitality was quite swept away. I had only to take the extra four shillings a week for two weeks—and the thing was done!
So the idea no longer simmered in my mind—it boiled; and I was determined for once in a way to astonish my friends.
But though one obstacle had vanished, the other remained. What would Mrs Nash say? For, much as I disliked it, I was forced to face the fact that my party, if I gave it, would have to come off in Beadle Square. I had half thought of borrowing Flanagan’s room for the occasion, but didn’t like to ask him; besides, if I did, it would have to be half his party and half mine, which wasn’t at all my idea. Then it occurred to me, should I take lodgings for a week and give it there? No, it would cost too much even for twelve shillings a week; and my uncle, if he heard of it, might stop my keep at Mrs Nash’s. Suppose I hired a room at an hotel for the evening, and asked the fellows there? It wasn’t a bad idea, and would probably only cost me half a week’s wages. But the worst of it is, if you ask fellows to dine with you at an hotel, they are sure to come expecting a grand turn out; and I doubted my talents to provide anything grand; besides, the hotel people would be sure to want to supply the things themselves, and ask for the money in advance. Or if I didn’t humour them they would to a certainty turn crusty and critical, and spoil my party for me.
No, the only thing was to make the best of Beadle Square, and to that end I determined to tackle Mrs Nash at once.
You may fancy the good woman’s surprise and scorn when I propounded to her my ambitious scheme.
“You give a party! Fiddlesticks! You’ll do nothing of the sort.”
“Please, Mrs Nash,” pleaded I, “it will be a very quiet one, I promise.”
“And where do you expect to have it, I wonder?” said she. “In the coal-cellar, I suppose? That’s the only spot in the house that ain’t occupied.”
“Oh,” replied I, thinking it judicious to laugh at this facetious suggestion, “I’d like the parlour for that evening, if you could manage it, Mrs Nash.”
“What! are you going to ask all the fellows here to your party, then?”
“Oh, no. Couldn’t you let them know the parlour’s engaged for that evening?—just for once? You know I’d pay you something—”
“I dare say you would!—you’d pay anything, you would! And what are you going to give them all to eat, eh?”
“Oh, I’ll see to that,” said I.
This was an unfortunate reply of mine. Mrs Nash, as it happened, was inclined to enter into my scheme, and, had I only known it, would have offered to take some trouble to help me. But this answer of mine offended her sorely.
“Oh, very well,” said she, loftily; “you don’t want me, I can see, and I’m just as glad.”
In vain I protested, and implored her not to be vexed. I hadn’t meant it at all. I couldn’t possibly do without her. I was a beast to say what I had, and so on. The most I could get out of her was a vague promise that I might have the room on the evening in question. As for the entertainment, she washed her hands of the whole affair.
I was inclined to give it up. Not that I had ever imagined she would help me; but to have her downright unfriendly at such a time would, I knew, ruin the thing totally.
For some days she would listen to nothing at all on the subject.
“It’s your look-out,” she said to every appeal. “Let’s see what sort of a hand you’ll make of it, my beauty.”
I was in despair. I longed to issue my invitations, but till Mrs Nash was “squared” it was out of the question to name the happy day. It was evidently useless to argue the matter. The best thing I could do was to let it alone, and allow her to imagine the scheme had been abandoned.
In this calculation I was correct. Some days afterwards, happening to be in the parlour with her after breakfast, she said, “And when’s your grand party, as you call it, coming off, Mr Batchelor?”
I started up in rapture at the question.
“Then youwillhelp me, Mrs Nash?” I cried, running up to her, and taking it all for granted.
She first looked amazed, then angry, and finally she smiled.
“I never said so. You’re a sight too independent for my taste, you are.Iain’t a-goin’ to put my fingers into where I ain’t wanted.”
“But youarewanted, and you will be a brick, I know!” cried I, almost hugging her in my eagerness.
The battle was won, and that morning I went down to the office positively jubilant. My party was fixed for Thursday!
I felt particularly important when the time came for inviting Doubleday and Crow to the festive assembly. I had rehearsed as I walked along the very words and tones I would use. On no account must they suppose the giving of a party was the momentous event it really proved itself.
“By the way, Doubleday,” said I, in as off-hand a manner as I could assume, after some preliminary talk on different matters—“by the way, could you come up to supper on Thursday? Just the usual lot, you know.”
I could have kicked myself for the way I blushed and stammered as I was delivering this short oration.
Doubleday gazed at me half curiously, half perplexed.
“Eh—supper? Oh, rather! Where’s it to be? Mansion House or Guildhall?”
I didn’t like this. It wasn’t what I had expected.
“Oh, up at my place, you know—Beadle Square,” I said.
At this Doubleday fairly laughed.
“Supper at your place at Black Beadle Square? Oh, rather! I’ll come. You’ll come too, Crow, eh? The young un’s got a supper on on Thursday. Oh, rather. Put me down for that, old man.”
Could anything have been more mortifying? Most invitations are received politely and graciously. What there was to laugh at about mine I couldn’t understand.
“Oh, yes, Crow’s coming,” I said, meekly. “At least I hope so.”
“Oh, rather!” said Crow, beaming. “I wouldn’t miss it for a lot. Is it evening dress or what?”
I was too much disconcerted and crestfallen to answer the question, and avoided my two prospective guests for the rest of the day.
Already I was half repenting my venture. But there was no drawing back now. Letters or messages came from the rest of the “usual lot”—the Twins, Flanagan, the Field-Marshal, Daly, and Whipcord, every one of them saying they’d be there. Yes, there was nothing left but to go through with it.
The next two days were two of the most anxious days I ever spent. I was running about all one afternoon (when I ought to have been delivering bills of lading), inquiring the prices of lobsters, pork-pies, oranges, and other delicacies, arranging for the hire of cups and saucers, ordering butter and eggs, and jam, and other such arduous and delicate duties. Then I spent the evening in discussing with myself the momentous questions whether I should lay in tea-cakes or penny buns, whether I need have brown bread as well as white, whether Mrs Nash’s tea would be good enough, whether I should help my great dish—the eel-pie—myself, or trust it to one of the company to do.
These and similar momentous matters engaged my thoughts. And it began to dawn on me further that my financial estimates had been greatly out, and that my supper would cost me nearer a pound than ten shillings. Never mind. After all, was I not worth twelve shillings a week? I needn’t trouble about the expense. Besides, the pastrycook had agreed to give me credit, so that really I should have comparatively little to pay down.
A far more serious anxiety was Mrs Nash. It required constant and most assiduous attention to keep her in good temper. And the nearer the time came the more touchy she got. If I suggested anything, she took it as a personal slight to herself; if I was bold enough to differ from her, she was mortally offended; if I ventured to express the slightest impatience, she turned crusty and threatened to let me shift for myself. The affair, too, naturally got wind amongst my fellow-lodgers, who one and all avowed that they would not give up their right to the parlour, and indulged in all manner of witticisms at my cost and the cost of my party. I pacified them as best I could by promising them the reversion of the feast, and took meekly all their gibes and jests when they begged to be allowed to come in to dessert and hear the speeches, or volunteered to come and hand round the champagne, or clear away the “turtle-soup,” and so on.
But the nearer the fatal day came the more dejected and nervous I got. Mrs Nash’s parlour was really a disreputable sort of room, and after all I had had no experience of suppers, and was positive I should not know what to do when the time came. I had neither the flow of conversation of Doubleday, nor the store of stories of Daly, nor Whipcord’s sporting gossip, nor the Twins’ self-possessed humour. And if my guests should turn critical I was a lost man; that I knew. How I wished I were safe on the other side of that awful Thursday!
The day came at last, and I hurried home as hard as I could after business to make my final preparations. The eel-pie was arriving as I got there, and my heart was comforted by the sight. Something, at least, was ready. But my joy was short-lived, for Mrs Nash was in a temper. The fact is, I had unconsciously neglected a piece of advice of hers in the matter of this very eel-pie. She had said, have it hot. I had told the pastrycook to deliver it cold. Therefore Mrs Nash, just at the critical moment, deserted me!
With a feeling of desperation I laid my own tablecloth—not a very good one—and arranged as best I could the plates and dishes. Time was getting short, and it was no use wasting time on my crabby landlady. Yet what could I do without her? Who was to lend me a kettle, or a saucepan for the eggs, or a toasting-fork, or, for the matter of that, any of the material of war? It was clear I must at all hazards regain Mrs Nash, and the next half-hour was spent in frantic appeals to every emotion she possessed, to the drawing of abject pictures of my own helplessness, to profuse apologies, and compliments and coaxings. I never worked so hard in my life as I did that half-hour.
Happily it was not all in vain. She consented, at any rate, to look after one or two of the matters in which I was most helpless, and I was duly and infinitely thankful.
In due time all was ready, and the hour arrived. All my terrors returned. I felt tempted to bolt from the house and leave my guests to entertain themselves. IhatedBeadle Square. And there, of course, just when I should have liked things to be at their best, there were three or four cats setting up a most hideous concert in the yard, and the chimney in the parlour beginning to smoke. I could have torn my hair with rage and vexation.
I seized the tongs, and was kneeling down and vigorously pushing them up the chimney, to ascertain the cause of this last misfortune, when a loud double-knock at the door startled me nearly out of my senses. I had never realised what I was in for till now!
Horror of horrors! Who was to open the door, Mrs Nash, or I? We had never settled that. And while I stood trembling amid my smoke and eel-pie and half-boiled eggs, the knock was repeated—this time so long and loud that it must have been heard all over the square. I could hear voices and laughter outside. Some one asked, “Is this the shop?” and another voice said, “Don’t see his name on the door.”
Then, terrified lest they should perpetrate another solo on the knocker, I rushed out and opened the door myself, just as Mrs Nash, with her face scarlet and her sleeves tucked up above the elbows, also appeared in the passage.
They were all there; they had come down in a body. Oh, how shabby I felt as I saw them there with their fine clothes and free-and-easy manners!
“Hullo! here you are!” said Doubleday. “Found you out, then, at last. Haven’t been this way for an age, but knew it at once by the cats. Hullo, is this your mother? How do, Mrs Batchelor. Glad to see you. Allow me to introduce—”
“It’s not my mother!” I cried, with a suppressed groan, pulling his arm.
“Eh, not your mother?—your aunt, perhaps? How do you—”
“No, no,” I whispered; “no relation.”
“Not? That’s a pity! She’s a tidy-looking old body, too. I say, where do you stick your hats, eh? I bag the door-handle; you hang yours on the key, Crow. Come on in, you fellows. Here’s a spree!”
Could anything be more distressing or humiliating? Mrs Nash, too indignant for words, had vanished to her own kitchen, shutting the door behind her with an ominous slam, and here was the hall chock-full of staring, giggling fellows, with not a place to hang their hats, and Doubleday already the self-constituted master of the ceremonies!
I mildly suggested they had better bring their hats inside, but they insisted on “stacking” them, as the Field-marshal called it, in pyramid form on the hall floor; and I let them have their way.
“Come in,” I faltered presently, when this little diversion appeared to be ended. As I led the way into the parlour my heart was in my boots and no mistake.
They entered, all coughing very much at the smoke. What a seedy, disreputable hole Mrs Nash’s parlour appeared at that moment!
“I’m sorry the chimney’s smoking,” I said, “a—a—won’t you sit down?”
This invitation, I don’t know why, seemed only to add to the amusement of the party. Daly proceeded to sit down on the floor, no chair being near, and the Twins solemnly established themselves on the top of him. The others sat down all round the room in silence. What could I do? In my cool moments I had thought of one or two topics of conversation, but of course they ah deserted me now. All except the weather.
“Turned rather cold,” I observed to Whipcord.
“Who?” exclaimed that worthy, with an alarmed face.
“I mean the weather’s turned rather cold.”
“Poor chap, pity he don’t wear a top-coat.”
“I say,” said Doubleday, who had, to my great discomfort, been making a tour of discovery round the room, “rather nice pictures some of these, this one of Peace and Plenty’s not half bad, is it, Whip?”
“Why you old ass, that’s not Peace and Plenty, it’s a Storm at Sea.”
“Well, I don’t care who it is, it’s rattling good likenesses of them. Hullo, Twins, don’t you be going to sleep, do you hear?”
This was addressed to the two brothers, from under whom, at that moment, Daly contrived suddenly to remove himself, leaving them to fall all of a heap.
In the midst of the confusion caused by this accident, it occurred to me we might as well begin supper; so I called the company to attention.
“We may as well begin,” I said, “there’s no one else to wait for. Will you take that end, Doubleday?”
“I’m game,” said Doubleday. “Now then, you fellows, tumble into your seats, do you hear? We’re jist a-going to begin, as the conjurer says. I can tell you all I’m pretty peckish, too.”
“So am I, rather,” said Crow, winking at the company generally, who all laughed.
Awful thought! Suppose there’s not enough for them to eat after all!
I began to pour out the coffee wildly, hardly venturing to look round. At last, however, I recollected my duties.
“That’s an eel-pie in front of you, Doubleday,” I said.
Now at all the parties I had been to I had never before seen an eel-pie. I therefore flattered myself I had a novelty to offer to my guests.
“Eel-pie, eh?” said Doubleday; “do you catch them about here, then? Eel-pie, who says eel-pie? Don’t all speak at once. Bring forth the hot plates, my boy, and we’ll lead off.”
“It’s cold,” I faltered.
“Oh, goodness gracious!Coldeel-pie, gentlemen. You really mustnotall speak at once. Who says cold eel-pie? The Field-Marshal does!”
“No, he doesn’t,” replied the Field-Marshal, laughing.
“Flanagan does, then?”
“No, thank you,” said Flanagan.
“Well, you Twins; you with the cut on your chin. I wish one of you’d always cut your chin shaving, one would know you from the other. Any cold eel-pie?”
“Rather not,” said the Twin addressed.
“Have some lobster?” I said, despairingly. If no one was going to take eel-pie, it was certain my other provisions would not last round. Why hadn’t I taken Mrs Nash’s advice, and had that unlucky dish hot?
“What will you take?” I said to Flanagan.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” replied he, in a resigned manner; “I’ll take a shrimp or two.”
“Have something more than that. Have some lobster?” I said.
“No, thanks,” he replied.
Evidently my good things were not in favour; why, I could not say. Nobody seemed to be taking anything, and Crow was most conspicuouslysmellingmy lobster.
The meal dragged on heavily, with more talk than eating. Every dish came in for its share of criticism; the eel-pie remained uncut, the lobster had lost one claw, but more than half the contents of that was left on Abel’s plate. My penny buns all vanished, that was one ray of comfort.
“Ring the bell for more buns,” said Doubleday, as if he was presiding at his own table.
What was I to do? There were no more, and it was hardly likely Mrs Nash would go for more. Before I could make up my mind, Whipcord had rung a loud peal on the bell, and Mrs Nash in due time appeared.
“More buns, and look sharp, old woman,” said Doubleday.
“I’ll old woman you if I’ve much of your imperence, my young dandy!” was the somewhat startling rejoinder. “I’ll bundle the pack of you out of the house, that I will, if you can’t keep a civil tongue in your heads.”
“I say, Batchelor,” said Doubleday, laughing, “your aunt has got a temper, I fancy. I’m always sorry to see it in one so young. What will it be when—”
“Oh, please don’t, Doubleday,” I said; “you can see she doesn’t like it. It doesn’t matter, Mrs Nash, thank you,” I added.
“Oh, don’t it matter?” retorted the irate Mrs Nash, “that’s all; we’ll settle that pretty soon, my beauty. I’ll teach you if it don’t matter that a pack of puppies comes into my house, and drinks tea out of my cups, and calls me names before my face and behind my back; I’ll teach you!” And she bounced from the room.
I thought that meal would never end, although no one took anything. In time even the fun and laughter, which had at first helped to keep the thing going, died away, and the fellows lolled back in the chairs in a listless, bored way. It was vain for me to try to lead the talk; I could not have done it even if I had had the spirit, and there was precious little spirit left now!
Doubleday began to look at his watch.
“Half-past seven. I say,” said he, “time I was going. I’ve a particular engagement at eight.”
“Well, I’ll go with you,” said Whipcord; “I want to get something to eat, and we can have supper together.”
“Sorry we’ve got to go,” said Doubleday. “Jolly evening, wasn’t it, Crow?”
I was too much humiliated and disgusted to notice their departure. To have my grand entertainment sneered at and made fun of was bad enough, but for two of my guests to leave my table for the avowed purpose of getting something to eat was a little too much. I could barely be civil to the rest and ask them to remain, and it was a real relief when they one and all began to make some excuse for leaving.
So ended my famous supper-party, after which, for a season, I prudently retired into private life.
Chapter Eighteen.How my Friend Smith came back, and told me a Great Secret.My grand evening party was over, but I had still my accounts for that entertainment to square. And the result of that operation was appalling. It was a fortnight since my salary had been raised, but so far I had not a penny saved. The extra money had gone, I couldn’t exactly say how, in sundry “trifling expenditures,” such as pomatum, a scarf-pin, and a steel chain for my waistcoat, all of which it had seemed no harm to indulge in, especially as they were very cheap, under my altered circumstances.On the strength of my new riches also I was already six shillings in debt to the Oxford-shirt man, and four shillings in debt to the Twins, who had paid my share in the boating expedition up the river. And now, when I came to reckon up my liabilities for the supper, I found I owed as much as eight shillings to the pastrycook and five shillings to the grocer, besides having already paid two shillings for the unlucky lobster (which to my horror and shame I found out after every one had left hadnotbeen fresh), one shilling for eggs, sixpence for shrimps, and one-and-sixpence for the hire of the cups and saucers.The ingenious reader will be able to arrive at a true estimate of my financial position from these figures, and will see that so far, at any rate, my increase of riches had not made me a wealthier man than when I had lived within my income on eight shillings a week.Nor had it made me either better or happier I made a few more good resolutions after the party to be a fool no longer. I could see plainly enough that all my so-called friends had been amusing themselves at my expense, and were certainly not worth my running myself head over ears in debt to retain. I could see too, when I came to reflect, that all my efforts to pass myself off as “one of them” had ended pitifully for me, if not ridiculously. Yes, it was time I gave it up. Alas! for the vanity of youth! The very day that witnessed the forming of my resolutions witnessed also the breaking of them.“Hullo, young ’un!” cried Doubleday, as I put in my appearance at the office; “here you are! How are you after it all?”“I’m quite well,” said I, in what I intended to be a chilly voice.“That’s right. Very brickish of you to have us up. We all thought so, didn’t we, Crow?”“Rather,” replied Crow.“I’m afraid some of the fellows were rather rude,” continued Doubleday. “Those Twins are awfully underbred beggars. I believe, you know, their mother never knew which of the two it was that wanted whopping, and so she let them both grow up anyhow. If I’d been her, I’d have licked them both regularly, wouldn’t you, Crow?”Without setting much store by Doubleday’s moral disquisition on the duty of the parents of Twins, I felt mollified by the half apology implied in his reference to yesterday’s entertainment, and to the manner of his behaviour towards me now. It was clear he felt rather ashamed of himself and his cronies for their behaviour. Who could tell whether, if they had given me a fair chance, my supper might not have been a success after all? At any rate, I didn’t feel quite so downhearted about it as I had done.“How’s that festive old lady,” proceeded Doubleday, “this morning? I pity you with an old dragon like her to look after you. That’s the worst of those boarding-houses. A fellow can’t do the civil to his friends but he’s sure to be interfered with by somebody or other.”He was actually making excuses for me!Yes; if it hadn’t been for the rudeness of some of the fellows and the aggravating behaviour of Mrs Nash, my supper would have gone off quite well. I was quite thankful to Doubleday for the comfort he gave me, and cheerfully accepted an invitation to go up to his lodgings “to meet just the usual lot” next evening.Which I did, and found the “usual lot” in their usual good spirits. No one seemed to bear a grudge against me for that cold eel-pie, and one or two assured me that they had enjoyed themselves immensely.Nothing could speak more for my greenness and vanity than the fact that I believed what they said, and felt more convinced than ever that my party, however it hadseemedto go off, had really been a success.On my return to Beadle Square that evening I found a letter waiting for me, and to my joy and surprise it was in Jack Smith’s own handwriting. It said:“Dear Fred,—You’ll be glad to hear I’m off the sick list at last, and have been turned out a perfect cure. Mrs Shield, my sister’s nurse and friend, insists on my taking it easy another week, and then I shall come up to town, and mean to work like a nigger to make up for lost time. I’ll tell you all the news when I come. I’m afraid you’ve been having a slow time.—Yours ever, Jack.“P.S.—I’ve written to M., B., and Company, to tell them I’ll be up on Monday next.”It seemed almost too good to be true that I should so soon see my friend again. Ah! how different it would all be when he came back! For the next week I could think of nothing else. What a lot I should have to tell him! How he would laugh over my adventures and misfortunes, and how he would scold me for my extravagances and follies! Well, these would be over at last, that was a comfort.So, during the week, in view of giving up my extravagances, I bought a new suit of ready-made clothes that only half fitted me, and went on the Saturday afternoon with Whipcord and the Twins to see a steeplechase, where I was tempted to put two half-crowns, which I borrowed from the Twins, into a sweepstake, and lost them both. This was a good finish up to my little “fling” and no mistake; so much so that I began to think it was a pity Jack had not come last Monday instead of next.“He would have kept me out of all this mischief,” said I to myself. Ah! I had yet to learn that if one wants to keep out of mischief one must not depend altogether upon one’s friends, or even oneself, for the blessing. Strength must be sought from a higher Power and a better Friend!At last the long-looked-for Monday arrived, and I went down to the station in the evening to meet Jack’s train.I could scarcely have said what feeling it was which prompted me to wear, not my new stripe suit, but my old clothes, shabby as they were, or why, instead of wearing my coloured Oxford-shirt, I preferred to array myself in one of the old flannel shirts with its time-honoured paper collar.Somehow I had no ambition to “make an impression” on my friend Smith.There was his head out of the window and his hand waving long before the train pulled up. The face was the same I had always known, pale and solemn, with its big black eyes and clusters of black hair. His illness had left neither mark nor change on him; still less had it altered his tone and manner, as he sprang from the carriage and seizing me by the arm, said, “Well, old fellow, here we are again, at last!”What a happy evening that was! We walked to Beadle Square, carrying Jack’s bag between us, and talking all the way. The dull old place appeared quite bright now he was back; and the meal we had together in the parlour that evening before the other fellows came home seemed positively sumptuous, although it consisted only of weak tea and bread-and-butter.Then we turned out for a long walk, anywhere, and having no bag to catch hold of this time, we caught hold of one another’s arms, which was quite as comfortable.“Well, old man,” began Jack, “what have you been up to all the time? You never told me in your letters.”“There wasn’t much to tell,” I said. “It was awfully slow when you left, I can assure you.”“But you soon got over that?” said Jack, laughing.He wasn’t far wrong, as the reader knows, but somehow I would have preferred him to believe otherwise. I replied, “There would have been simply nothing to do of an evening if Doubleday—who is a very decent fellow at bottom, Jack—hadn’t asked me up to his lodgings once or twice to supper.”I said this in as off-hand a way as I could. I don’t know why I had fancied Jack would not be pleased with the intelligence, for Doubleday had never been very friendly to him.“Did he?” said Jack. “That was rather brickish of him.”“Yes; he knew it would be dull while you were away, and I was very glad to go.”“Rather! I expect he gave you rather better suppers than we get up at Beadle Square, eh?”“Yes. And then, you know, when I was there I heard where Flanagan was living, and found him out. Do you remember our hunt after him that night, Jack?”“Don’t I! By the way, Fred, has there been any news of the boy?”“The young thief? I should fancy you’d had enough of him, old man, for a good while to come. But I have seen him.”“Where?” asked Jack, with an interest that quite amused me.“One would think that after giving you smallpox, and robbing you of your money, you were really under an obligation to the young beggar, and wanted to thank him personally. If you are so very anxious to pay your respects, it’s ten to one we shall run across him at the top of Style Street—that’s where his place of business is.”“Place of business? What do you mean?”“I mean that he has spent the money he stole from us in buying a shoeblack’s apparatus, and seems to think it’s something to be proud of, too,” I replied.Jack laughed. “He might have done worse. My boots want blacking, Fred; let’s go round by Style Street.”The young vagabond was there, engaged, as we approached him, in walking round and round his box on the palms of his hands with his feet in the air.At the sight of us he dropped suddenly into a human posture, and, with a very broad grin on his face, said, “Shine ’e boots, governor? Why, if it ain’t t’other flat come back? Shine ’e boots?”“Yes; I want my boots cleaned,” said Jack, solemnly, planting one foot on the box.The boy dropped briskly on his knees and went to work, making Jack’s boot shine as it had never shone before. In the middle of the operation he stopped short, and, looking up, said, “Youwasa flat that there night, you was!”I could only laugh at this frank piece of information.“I think you were the flat!” said Jack, putting up his other foot on the box.“Me?Iain’t no flat, no error!” replied the boy, with a grin. “I’m a sharp ’un, that’s what I are!”“I think you were worse than a flat to steal my money, and my friend’s.”The boy looked perplexed. “Ga on!” said he.“What’s your name?” asked Jack, changing the subject.“Billy,” replied the boy.“Billy what?”“Ga on! What do you mean by ‘what’? Ain’t Billy enough?”“Where do you live?”“Live? where I can; that’s where I live!”“Then you don’t live with your mother in that court any longer?”“The old gal—she ain’t no concern of yourn!” said the youth, firing up.“I know that,” said Jack, evidently at a loss, as I had been, how to pursue the conversation with this queer boy. “I say, Billy,” he added, “where are you going to sleep to-night?”“Ain’t a-goin’ to sleep nowheres!” was the prompt reply.“Would you like to come and sleep with me?”“No fear!” was the complimentary reply.“What are you going to do, then?”“’Tain’t no concern o’ yourn; so it ain’t.”“Will you be here to-morrow?”“In corse I shall!”“Well, I expect I’ll want my boots done again to-morrow evening. Here’s a penny for this time.”The boy took the penny and held it in the palm of his hand.“Isn’t it enough?” asked Jack.“You’re ’avin’ a lark with me,” said the boy. “This ’ere brown—”“What’s wrong? It’s a good one, isn’t it?”“Oh, ain’t you funny? I don’t want yer brown!” and to my amazement he tossed the coin back.Jack solemnly picked it up and put it back into his pocket. “Good-night, Billy,” said he. “Mind you are here to-morrow.”“No fear!” said Billy, who was once more resuming his gymnastic exercises.And so we left him.My friend Smith was certainly a queer fellow. He seemed more interested during the remainder of our walk with the little dishonest shoeblack we had just left than with my half-candid story of my life in London during his absence.“Depend upon it, that’s his way of making amends,” said he; “there’s some good in the young scamp after all.”“It’s precious hard to discover,” said I. “He appears to me to be a graceless young reprobate, who knows well enough that it’s wicked to steal, and seems rather proud of it than otherwise. I say, Jack, I’d advise you not to have too much to do with him. He’s done you harm enough as it is.”When we returned to Beadle Square we found our amiable fellow-lodgers evidently expecting our arrival. It was so long since I had taken supper at Mrs Nash’s that I seemed quite as much a stranger as Jack.“Here they come,” said Horncastle, who always shone on occasions like this. “Here comes the two smallpoxes. Hold your noses, you fellows.”In this flattering manner we were received as we proceeded to seat ourselves in our accustomed place at the table.“They seem as cheerful and merry as ever,” said Jack, solemnly, to me, looking round him.“I say, Jones,” cried Horncastle, in an audible voice to a friend, “wonderful how Batchelor turns up here now the other’s come home! Got to stop going out every night now, and coming home drunk at two in the morning, eh? Going to behave now, eh? But he does go it, don’t he, when his keeper’s back’s turned, eh?”All this, ridiculous as it was, was not very pleasant for me. To Jack, however, it was highly amusing.“I suppose they mean that for you,” said he. “I feel quite flattered to be called your keeper.”“It’s all a lie,” I said angrily, “about my coming home drunk, and all that.”“I should rather hope it was,” said my friend with a smile.I was sufficiently uncomfortable, however, by the turn my fellow-lodgers’ wit was taking. Without meaning to deceive, I had somehow, in my story to Jack, omitted all reference to my own extravagances, and represented my dissipations more as contrivances to pass the time in my friend’s absence than congenial pleasures.“Rum thing, too,” continued Horncastle, who evidently saw I was not liking it—“rum thing he’s dropped those new ready-made togs of his and his flash watch-chain. I wonder why—”“Because they’re not paid for,” said another. “I know that, because I was in Shoddy’s shop to-day, and he asked me to tell Batchelor the things were sold for ready money and no tick. Do you hear that, Batchelor? that’s what he says, and you’d better attend to it, I can tell you.”Why need I have got myself into a rage over a suit of ready-made clothes? It was surely no crime to possess them; and if I was owing the amount it didn’t follow I had anything to be ashamed of, as long as I paid in the end. But I flushed up dreadfully, in a manner which Jack could not help noticing, and replied, “You mind your own business—I’ll mind mine!”“You’d better, my boy,” was the reply. “Pyman, the pastrycook, was asking most affectionately after you too. He says he hopes you won’t move without letting him know, as he’d like to call and—”“Come on, Jack!” I cried, taking Jack’s arm; “it’s enough to make one sick the way they talk.”And amid much laughter, and in no very amiable frame of mind, I quitted my persecutors.I made sure Jack would read me a lecture, or at any rate refer to the subject which had caused me so much annoyance. He did neither.“Lively lot they are,” said he. “It’s a wonder where they pick up all their notions.”“They want to make you believe I’ve been up to all sorts of mischief since you went away,” I said.Jack laughed.“And they expect me to believe it,” said he. “The best way with them is to let them say what they like, and take no notice.”We went upstairs to bed, as the only place where we could enjoy one another’s society undisturbed.As we were undressing. Jack took from his pocket a photograph, which he showed to me.“Fred,” said he, “would you like to see a portrait of Mary?”“Your sister?” said I, taking the picture. “Yes.”It was a pretty little girl of about twelve or thirteen, with dark eyes and hair like Jack’s; but, unlike him, with a merry, sunny face, which even under the eye of a photographer could not be made to look solemn.“How jolly!” was my exclamation.Jack looked as delighted with this unsentimental comment as if I had broken out into all sorts of poetic raptures, and replied, in his peculiar, solemn way, “Yes, she is jolly.”“Is she your only sister?” I asked, giving him back the portrait.“Yes,” said he.“Was she very ill when you got down?”“Yes; we hardly thought she was going to live,” he replied.“I heard how you were both getting on now and then from Mrs Shield. She seems a very kind person.”“She’s our old nurse, you know,” Jack said, “and like a mother to Mary and me.”He had never spoken like this about home before. Whenever we had approached the topic he had nervously changed the conversation. Now, however, he seemed almost glad to talk to some one, and there was quite a tremble in his voice as he spoke of his sister and Mrs Shield.“Then your own mother’s not alive?” I asked. I had asked the same question once at Stonebridge House, I remembered, and then he had almost resented it.“No, she died when Mary was born, fourteen years ago. I cannot remember her at all.”“Just like me,” I said. “I never saw my mother that I know of. I say, Jack, let’s look at that portrait again.”He was delighted to show it to me, and I was glad once more to get a glimpse of that merry face.“And your father,” I inquired, presently, “is he dead too?”“No!” said Jack, with a sudden return of his old abruptness.I was perplexed, but it was no use, evidently, pumping my friend with further questions in that direction. So we proceeded to undress in silence, and were soon in bed.Presently the other lodgers came up, and then there was no chance of renewing our talk, even if Jack had been so inclined. But he seemed evidently in no humour for pursuing it.In due time all was quiet once more, and then, just as I was beginning to feel drowsy, and was lying half awake, half asleep, fancying myself back again at Stonebridge House in the old dormitory, I felt a hand on my arm and heard Jack’s voice whisper, “Fred, are you asleep?”“No,” I replied, moving over to make room for him as he slipped in beside me.“Fred,” he whispered, “I’m afraid you think me a brute.”“No, I don’t,” replied I, astonished; “why ever should I?”“Why, I offended you just now, when you meant to be kind.”“No you didn’t,” said I. “I know there are some things you don’t like to talk about, and I—I’ve no right to ask you about them.”Jack lay silent for some minutes. Then he whispered—“Old man, you can keep a secret, can’t you?”“Yes,” I said, wondering what was coming.“I’ve never told it to anybody yet; but somehow it’s awful having no one to talk to,” he said.“What is it, Jack?” I asked. “I won’t tell a soul.”He crept closer to me, and his voice dropped to a lower whisper as he said, “Fred—my father is a convict!”I was too bewildered and shocked to speak. All I could do was to take the hand which lay on my arm and hold it in mine. This then was Jack’s mystery. This explained his nervous avoidance of all references to home, his sudden changes of manner both at Stonebridge House and in London. Poor Jack!We neither of us spoke for some time; then, as if in answer to the questions I longed to ask, he continued, “I hardly ever saw him. When mother died he went nearly mad and took to drinking, so Mrs Shield told me, and left home. No one heard of him again till it was discovered he had forged on his employers. I remember their coming and looking for him at M—, where we then lived. He wasn’t there, but they found him in London, and,”—here Jack groaned—“he was transported.”“Poor Jack!” was all I could say. “How dreadful for you all!”We said no more that night, but as we lay arm in arm, and presently fell asleep, I think we both felt we were bound together that night by a stronger tie than ever.Yet, had I known what was to come, I would sooner have rushed from that house than allow my friend Smith to tell me his secret.
My grand evening party was over, but I had still my accounts for that entertainment to square. And the result of that operation was appalling. It was a fortnight since my salary had been raised, but so far I had not a penny saved. The extra money had gone, I couldn’t exactly say how, in sundry “trifling expenditures,” such as pomatum, a scarf-pin, and a steel chain for my waistcoat, all of which it had seemed no harm to indulge in, especially as they were very cheap, under my altered circumstances.
On the strength of my new riches also I was already six shillings in debt to the Oxford-shirt man, and four shillings in debt to the Twins, who had paid my share in the boating expedition up the river. And now, when I came to reckon up my liabilities for the supper, I found I owed as much as eight shillings to the pastrycook and five shillings to the grocer, besides having already paid two shillings for the unlucky lobster (which to my horror and shame I found out after every one had left hadnotbeen fresh), one shilling for eggs, sixpence for shrimps, and one-and-sixpence for the hire of the cups and saucers.
The ingenious reader will be able to arrive at a true estimate of my financial position from these figures, and will see that so far, at any rate, my increase of riches had not made me a wealthier man than when I had lived within my income on eight shillings a week.
Nor had it made me either better or happier I made a few more good resolutions after the party to be a fool no longer. I could see plainly enough that all my so-called friends had been amusing themselves at my expense, and were certainly not worth my running myself head over ears in debt to retain. I could see too, when I came to reflect, that all my efforts to pass myself off as “one of them” had ended pitifully for me, if not ridiculously. Yes, it was time I gave it up. Alas! for the vanity of youth! The very day that witnessed the forming of my resolutions witnessed also the breaking of them.
“Hullo, young ’un!” cried Doubleday, as I put in my appearance at the office; “here you are! How are you after it all?”
“I’m quite well,” said I, in what I intended to be a chilly voice.
“That’s right. Very brickish of you to have us up. We all thought so, didn’t we, Crow?”
“Rather,” replied Crow.
“I’m afraid some of the fellows were rather rude,” continued Doubleday. “Those Twins are awfully underbred beggars. I believe, you know, their mother never knew which of the two it was that wanted whopping, and so she let them both grow up anyhow. If I’d been her, I’d have licked them both regularly, wouldn’t you, Crow?”
Without setting much store by Doubleday’s moral disquisition on the duty of the parents of Twins, I felt mollified by the half apology implied in his reference to yesterday’s entertainment, and to the manner of his behaviour towards me now. It was clear he felt rather ashamed of himself and his cronies for their behaviour. Who could tell whether, if they had given me a fair chance, my supper might not have been a success after all? At any rate, I didn’t feel quite so downhearted about it as I had done.
“How’s that festive old lady,” proceeded Doubleday, “this morning? I pity you with an old dragon like her to look after you. That’s the worst of those boarding-houses. A fellow can’t do the civil to his friends but he’s sure to be interfered with by somebody or other.”
He was actually making excuses for me!
Yes; if it hadn’t been for the rudeness of some of the fellows and the aggravating behaviour of Mrs Nash, my supper would have gone off quite well. I was quite thankful to Doubleday for the comfort he gave me, and cheerfully accepted an invitation to go up to his lodgings “to meet just the usual lot” next evening.
Which I did, and found the “usual lot” in their usual good spirits. No one seemed to bear a grudge against me for that cold eel-pie, and one or two assured me that they had enjoyed themselves immensely.
Nothing could speak more for my greenness and vanity than the fact that I believed what they said, and felt more convinced than ever that my party, however it hadseemedto go off, had really been a success.
On my return to Beadle Square that evening I found a letter waiting for me, and to my joy and surprise it was in Jack Smith’s own handwriting. It said:
“Dear Fred,—You’ll be glad to hear I’m off the sick list at last, and have been turned out a perfect cure. Mrs Shield, my sister’s nurse and friend, insists on my taking it easy another week, and then I shall come up to town, and mean to work like a nigger to make up for lost time. I’ll tell you all the news when I come. I’m afraid you’ve been having a slow time.—Yours ever, Jack.
“P.S.—I’ve written to M., B., and Company, to tell them I’ll be up on Monday next.”
It seemed almost too good to be true that I should so soon see my friend again. Ah! how different it would all be when he came back! For the next week I could think of nothing else. What a lot I should have to tell him! How he would laugh over my adventures and misfortunes, and how he would scold me for my extravagances and follies! Well, these would be over at last, that was a comfort.
So, during the week, in view of giving up my extravagances, I bought a new suit of ready-made clothes that only half fitted me, and went on the Saturday afternoon with Whipcord and the Twins to see a steeplechase, where I was tempted to put two half-crowns, which I borrowed from the Twins, into a sweepstake, and lost them both. This was a good finish up to my little “fling” and no mistake; so much so that I began to think it was a pity Jack had not come last Monday instead of next.
“He would have kept me out of all this mischief,” said I to myself. Ah! I had yet to learn that if one wants to keep out of mischief one must not depend altogether upon one’s friends, or even oneself, for the blessing. Strength must be sought from a higher Power and a better Friend!
At last the long-looked-for Monday arrived, and I went down to the station in the evening to meet Jack’s train.
I could scarcely have said what feeling it was which prompted me to wear, not my new stripe suit, but my old clothes, shabby as they were, or why, instead of wearing my coloured Oxford-shirt, I preferred to array myself in one of the old flannel shirts with its time-honoured paper collar.
Somehow I had no ambition to “make an impression” on my friend Smith.
There was his head out of the window and his hand waving long before the train pulled up. The face was the same I had always known, pale and solemn, with its big black eyes and clusters of black hair. His illness had left neither mark nor change on him; still less had it altered his tone and manner, as he sprang from the carriage and seizing me by the arm, said, “Well, old fellow, here we are again, at last!”
What a happy evening that was! We walked to Beadle Square, carrying Jack’s bag between us, and talking all the way. The dull old place appeared quite bright now he was back; and the meal we had together in the parlour that evening before the other fellows came home seemed positively sumptuous, although it consisted only of weak tea and bread-and-butter.
Then we turned out for a long walk, anywhere, and having no bag to catch hold of this time, we caught hold of one another’s arms, which was quite as comfortable.
“Well, old man,” began Jack, “what have you been up to all the time? You never told me in your letters.”
“There wasn’t much to tell,” I said. “It was awfully slow when you left, I can assure you.”
“But you soon got over that?” said Jack, laughing.
He wasn’t far wrong, as the reader knows, but somehow I would have preferred him to believe otherwise. I replied, “There would have been simply nothing to do of an evening if Doubleday—who is a very decent fellow at bottom, Jack—hadn’t asked me up to his lodgings once or twice to supper.”
I said this in as off-hand a way as I could. I don’t know why I had fancied Jack would not be pleased with the intelligence, for Doubleday had never been very friendly to him.
“Did he?” said Jack. “That was rather brickish of him.”
“Yes; he knew it would be dull while you were away, and I was very glad to go.”
“Rather! I expect he gave you rather better suppers than we get up at Beadle Square, eh?”
“Yes. And then, you know, when I was there I heard where Flanagan was living, and found him out. Do you remember our hunt after him that night, Jack?”
“Don’t I! By the way, Fred, has there been any news of the boy?”
“The young thief? I should fancy you’d had enough of him, old man, for a good while to come. But I have seen him.”
“Where?” asked Jack, with an interest that quite amused me.
“One would think that after giving you smallpox, and robbing you of your money, you were really under an obligation to the young beggar, and wanted to thank him personally. If you are so very anxious to pay your respects, it’s ten to one we shall run across him at the top of Style Street—that’s where his place of business is.”
“Place of business? What do you mean?”
“I mean that he has spent the money he stole from us in buying a shoeblack’s apparatus, and seems to think it’s something to be proud of, too,” I replied.
Jack laughed. “He might have done worse. My boots want blacking, Fred; let’s go round by Style Street.”
The young vagabond was there, engaged, as we approached him, in walking round and round his box on the palms of his hands with his feet in the air.
At the sight of us he dropped suddenly into a human posture, and, with a very broad grin on his face, said, “Shine ’e boots, governor? Why, if it ain’t t’other flat come back? Shine ’e boots?”
“Yes; I want my boots cleaned,” said Jack, solemnly, planting one foot on the box.
The boy dropped briskly on his knees and went to work, making Jack’s boot shine as it had never shone before. In the middle of the operation he stopped short, and, looking up, said, “Youwasa flat that there night, you was!”
I could only laugh at this frank piece of information.
“I think you were the flat!” said Jack, putting up his other foot on the box.
“Me?Iain’t no flat, no error!” replied the boy, with a grin. “I’m a sharp ’un, that’s what I are!”
“I think you were worse than a flat to steal my money, and my friend’s.”
The boy looked perplexed. “Ga on!” said he.
“What’s your name?” asked Jack, changing the subject.
“Billy,” replied the boy.
“Billy what?”
“Ga on! What do you mean by ‘what’? Ain’t Billy enough?”
“Where do you live?”
“Live? where I can; that’s where I live!”
“Then you don’t live with your mother in that court any longer?”
“The old gal—she ain’t no concern of yourn!” said the youth, firing up.
“I know that,” said Jack, evidently at a loss, as I had been, how to pursue the conversation with this queer boy. “I say, Billy,” he added, “where are you going to sleep to-night?”
“Ain’t a-goin’ to sleep nowheres!” was the prompt reply.
“Would you like to come and sleep with me?”
“No fear!” was the complimentary reply.
“What are you going to do, then?”
“’Tain’t no concern o’ yourn; so it ain’t.”
“Will you be here to-morrow?”
“In corse I shall!”
“Well, I expect I’ll want my boots done again to-morrow evening. Here’s a penny for this time.”
The boy took the penny and held it in the palm of his hand.
“Isn’t it enough?” asked Jack.
“You’re ’avin’ a lark with me,” said the boy. “This ’ere brown—”
“What’s wrong? It’s a good one, isn’t it?”
“Oh, ain’t you funny? I don’t want yer brown!” and to my amazement he tossed the coin back.
Jack solemnly picked it up and put it back into his pocket. “Good-night, Billy,” said he. “Mind you are here to-morrow.”
“No fear!” said Billy, who was once more resuming his gymnastic exercises.
And so we left him.
My friend Smith was certainly a queer fellow. He seemed more interested during the remainder of our walk with the little dishonest shoeblack we had just left than with my half-candid story of my life in London during his absence.
“Depend upon it, that’s his way of making amends,” said he; “there’s some good in the young scamp after all.”
“It’s precious hard to discover,” said I. “He appears to me to be a graceless young reprobate, who knows well enough that it’s wicked to steal, and seems rather proud of it than otherwise. I say, Jack, I’d advise you not to have too much to do with him. He’s done you harm enough as it is.”
When we returned to Beadle Square we found our amiable fellow-lodgers evidently expecting our arrival. It was so long since I had taken supper at Mrs Nash’s that I seemed quite as much a stranger as Jack.
“Here they come,” said Horncastle, who always shone on occasions like this. “Here comes the two smallpoxes. Hold your noses, you fellows.”
In this flattering manner we were received as we proceeded to seat ourselves in our accustomed place at the table.
“They seem as cheerful and merry as ever,” said Jack, solemnly, to me, looking round him.
“I say, Jones,” cried Horncastle, in an audible voice to a friend, “wonderful how Batchelor turns up here now the other’s come home! Got to stop going out every night now, and coming home drunk at two in the morning, eh? Going to behave now, eh? But he does go it, don’t he, when his keeper’s back’s turned, eh?”
All this, ridiculous as it was, was not very pleasant for me. To Jack, however, it was highly amusing.
“I suppose they mean that for you,” said he. “I feel quite flattered to be called your keeper.”
“It’s all a lie,” I said angrily, “about my coming home drunk, and all that.”
“I should rather hope it was,” said my friend with a smile.
I was sufficiently uncomfortable, however, by the turn my fellow-lodgers’ wit was taking. Without meaning to deceive, I had somehow, in my story to Jack, omitted all reference to my own extravagances, and represented my dissipations more as contrivances to pass the time in my friend’s absence than congenial pleasures.
“Rum thing, too,” continued Horncastle, who evidently saw I was not liking it—“rum thing he’s dropped those new ready-made togs of his and his flash watch-chain. I wonder why—”
“Because they’re not paid for,” said another. “I know that, because I was in Shoddy’s shop to-day, and he asked me to tell Batchelor the things were sold for ready money and no tick. Do you hear that, Batchelor? that’s what he says, and you’d better attend to it, I can tell you.”
Why need I have got myself into a rage over a suit of ready-made clothes? It was surely no crime to possess them; and if I was owing the amount it didn’t follow I had anything to be ashamed of, as long as I paid in the end. But I flushed up dreadfully, in a manner which Jack could not help noticing, and replied, “You mind your own business—I’ll mind mine!”
“You’d better, my boy,” was the reply. “Pyman, the pastrycook, was asking most affectionately after you too. He says he hopes you won’t move without letting him know, as he’d like to call and—”
“Come on, Jack!” I cried, taking Jack’s arm; “it’s enough to make one sick the way they talk.”
And amid much laughter, and in no very amiable frame of mind, I quitted my persecutors.
I made sure Jack would read me a lecture, or at any rate refer to the subject which had caused me so much annoyance. He did neither.
“Lively lot they are,” said he. “It’s a wonder where they pick up all their notions.”
“They want to make you believe I’ve been up to all sorts of mischief since you went away,” I said.
Jack laughed.
“And they expect me to believe it,” said he. “The best way with them is to let them say what they like, and take no notice.”
We went upstairs to bed, as the only place where we could enjoy one another’s society undisturbed.
As we were undressing. Jack took from his pocket a photograph, which he showed to me.
“Fred,” said he, “would you like to see a portrait of Mary?”
“Your sister?” said I, taking the picture. “Yes.”
It was a pretty little girl of about twelve or thirteen, with dark eyes and hair like Jack’s; but, unlike him, with a merry, sunny face, which even under the eye of a photographer could not be made to look solemn.
“How jolly!” was my exclamation.
Jack looked as delighted with this unsentimental comment as if I had broken out into all sorts of poetic raptures, and replied, in his peculiar, solemn way, “Yes, she is jolly.”
“Is she your only sister?” I asked, giving him back the portrait.
“Yes,” said he.
“Was she very ill when you got down?”
“Yes; we hardly thought she was going to live,” he replied.
“I heard how you were both getting on now and then from Mrs Shield. She seems a very kind person.”
“She’s our old nurse, you know,” Jack said, “and like a mother to Mary and me.”
He had never spoken like this about home before. Whenever we had approached the topic he had nervously changed the conversation. Now, however, he seemed almost glad to talk to some one, and there was quite a tremble in his voice as he spoke of his sister and Mrs Shield.
“Then your own mother’s not alive?” I asked. I had asked the same question once at Stonebridge House, I remembered, and then he had almost resented it.
“No, she died when Mary was born, fourteen years ago. I cannot remember her at all.”
“Just like me,” I said. “I never saw my mother that I know of. I say, Jack, let’s look at that portrait again.”
He was delighted to show it to me, and I was glad once more to get a glimpse of that merry face.
“And your father,” I inquired, presently, “is he dead too?”
“No!” said Jack, with a sudden return of his old abruptness.
I was perplexed, but it was no use, evidently, pumping my friend with further questions in that direction. So we proceeded to undress in silence, and were soon in bed.
Presently the other lodgers came up, and then there was no chance of renewing our talk, even if Jack had been so inclined. But he seemed evidently in no humour for pursuing it.
In due time all was quiet once more, and then, just as I was beginning to feel drowsy, and was lying half awake, half asleep, fancying myself back again at Stonebridge House in the old dormitory, I felt a hand on my arm and heard Jack’s voice whisper, “Fred, are you asleep?”
“No,” I replied, moving over to make room for him as he slipped in beside me.
“Fred,” he whispered, “I’m afraid you think me a brute.”
“No, I don’t,” replied I, astonished; “why ever should I?”
“Why, I offended you just now, when you meant to be kind.”
“No you didn’t,” said I. “I know there are some things you don’t like to talk about, and I—I’ve no right to ask you about them.”
Jack lay silent for some minutes. Then he whispered—
“Old man, you can keep a secret, can’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, wondering what was coming.
“I’ve never told it to anybody yet; but somehow it’s awful having no one to talk to,” he said.
“What is it, Jack?” I asked. “I won’t tell a soul.”
He crept closer to me, and his voice dropped to a lower whisper as he said, “Fred—my father is a convict!”
I was too bewildered and shocked to speak. All I could do was to take the hand which lay on my arm and hold it in mine. This then was Jack’s mystery. This explained his nervous avoidance of all references to home, his sudden changes of manner both at Stonebridge House and in London. Poor Jack!
We neither of us spoke for some time; then, as if in answer to the questions I longed to ask, he continued, “I hardly ever saw him. When mother died he went nearly mad and took to drinking, so Mrs Shield told me, and left home. No one heard of him again till it was discovered he had forged on his employers. I remember their coming and looking for him at M—, where we then lived. He wasn’t there, but they found him in London, and,”—here Jack groaned—“he was transported.”
“Poor Jack!” was all I could say. “How dreadful for you all!”
We said no more that night, but as we lay arm in arm, and presently fell asleep, I think we both felt we were bound together that night by a stronger tie than ever.
Yet, had I known what was to come, I would sooner have rushed from that house than allow my friend Smith to tell me his secret.