Chapter Thirteen.How my Friend Smith and I caught a Young Tartar.The novelty of our life in London soon began to wear off. For the first week or so I thought I never should grow weary of the wonderful streets and shops and crowds of people. And the work at the office, while it was fresh, appeared—especially when enlivened by the pranks of my fellow-clerks—more of a game than downright earnest. My eight shillings a week, too, seemed a princely allowance to begin with, and even the lodging-house in Beadle Square was tolerable.But after a month or so a fellow gets wonderfully toned down in his notions. I soon began to pine inwardly for an occasional escape from the murky city to the fresh air of the country. The same routine of work hour after hour, day after day, week after week, grew tame and wearisome. And I began to find out that even the lordly income of eight shillings a week didn’t make the happy possessor, who had to clothe and feed himself, actually a rich man; while as for Mrs Nash’s, the place before long became detestable. The fact is, that I, with no cheerier home than Brownstroke to look back on, became desperately homesick before three months in London were over; and but for my friend Smith, I might have deserted entirely.However, Smith, solemn as he was, wouldn’t let me get quite desperate. He was one of those even-tempered sort of fellows who never gush either with joy or sorrow, but take things as they come, and because they never let themselves get elated, rarely let themselves get down.“Fred,” he said to me one day, when I was in the dumps, “what’s wrong?”“Oh, I don’t know,” said I, “I’m getting rather sick of London, I think.”“Not much use getting sick of it yet,” said he. “Time enough in fifty years.”“Jack,” said I, “if I thought I had all my life to live here, I should run away.”“You’re a duffer, old man. Aren’t you getting on at Hawk Street, then?”“Oh yes, well enough, but it’s most fearfully slow. The same thing every day.”Jack smiled. “They can’t alter the programme just to suit you.”“Of course not,” I cried, feeling very miserable; “of course I’m an ass, but I’d sooner be back at Stonebridge House than here.”“By the way,” said Smith, suddenly, “talking of Stonebridge House, who did you think I ran against to-day at dinner-time?”“Who, old Henniker?” I inquired.“Rather not. If I had, I think I should have been game for running away along with you. No, it was Flanagan.”“Was it? I should like to have seen him. What’s he doing?”“Not much, I fancy. He says his brother’s a solicitor, and he’s come up to loaf about in his office and pick up a little law.”“Oh, I like that,” I cried, laughing. “Think of old Flanagan a lawyer. But didn’t he say where he was living?”“Yes, Cabbage Street, in Hackney. I forget the number. I say, Fred, suppose we take a stroll this evening and try to find him out. It’ll do you good, a walk.”I gladly consented. We gave Mrs Nash due notice that we should not be home to supper, and might possibly be out after ten, and then sallied forth. Hackney was a good four miles from Beadle Square, and by the time we had discovered Cabbage Street it was almost time to be returning. But having come so far we were resolved we would at least make an effort to find out our old schoolfellow. But the fates were against us. Cabbage Street was a new street of small houses, about a third of a mile long. Even if we had known the number it would have taken some time to discover the house; but without that information it was simply impossible. We did try. Jack took the left of the street and began knocking at the odd numbers, starting from 229; while I attacked the even numbers on the right side. But as far as we went no one knew of a Flanagan, and we had to give it up.It was half-past nine when we finally abandoned the search and turned our faces Citywards once more.“Horrid sell,” said Jack. “We shall have to find out where his brother’s office is from the Directory, and get at him that way.”We walked back hard. Mrs Nash’s temper was never to be relied on, and it was ten to one she might lock us out for the night.Luckily Jack was up to all the short cuts, and he piloted me through more than one queer-looking slum on the way.At last we were getting near our journey’s end, and the prospect of a “lock-out” from our lodgings was looming unpleasantly near, when Jack took me by the arm and turned up a dark narrow passage.“I’m nearly certain it’s got a way out at the other end,” he said, “and if so it will take us right close to the square.”I followed him, trusting he was right, and inwardly marvelling at his knowledge of the ins and outs of the great city.But what a fearful “skeery”-looking hole that passage was!There were wretched tumbledown houses on either side, so wretched and tumbledown that it seemed impossible any one could live in them. But the houses were nothing to the people. The court was simply swarming with people. Drunken and swearing men; drunken and swearing women; half-naked children who swore too. It was through such a company that we had to thread our way down my friend Smith’s “short cut.” As we went on it became worse, and what was most serious was that everybody seemed to come out to their doors to stare at us. Supposing there were no way through, and we had to turn back, it would be no joke, thought I, to face all these disreputable-looking loungers who already were making themselves offensive as we passed, by words and gesture.I could tell by the way Smith strode on that he felt no more comfortable than I did.“You’re sure there’s a way through?” I said.“Almost sure,” he answered.At the same moment a stone struck me on the cheek. It was not a hard blow, and the blood which mounted to my face was quite as much brought there by anger as by pain.“Come on!” said Smith, who had seen what happened.Coming on meant threading our way through a knot of young roughs, who evidently considered our appearance in the court an intrusion and were disposed to resent it. One of them put out his foot as Smith came up with a view to trip him, but Jack saw the manoeuvre in time and walked round. Another hustled me as I brushed past and sent me knocking up against Jack, who, if he hadn’t stood steady, would have knocked up against some one else, and so pretty certainly have provoked an assault. How we ever got past these fellows I can’t imagine; but we did, and for a yard or two ahead the passage was clear.“Shall we make a rush for it?” I asked of Jack.“Better not,” said he. “If there is a way through, we must be nearly out now.”He spoke so doubtfully that my heart sunk quite as much as if he had said there was no way through and we must turn back.However, what lay immediately before us was obscured by a suddenly collected crowd of inhabitants, shouting and yelling with more than ordinary clamour. This time the centre of attraction was not ourselves, but a drunken woman, who had got a little ragged boy by the collar, and was beating him savagely on the head with her by no means puny fist.“There!—take that, you young—! I’ll do for you this time!”And without doubt it looked as if we were to witness the accomplishment of the threat. The little fellow, unable even to howl, reeled and staggered under her brutal blows. His pale, squalid face was covered with blood, and his little form crouching in her grip was convulsed with terror and exhaustion. It was a sickening spectacle.The crowd pressed round, and yelled and laughed and hooted. The woman, savage enough as she was, seemed to derive fresh vehemence from the cries around her, and redoubled her cruel blows.One half-smothered moan escaped the little boy’s lips as she swung him off his feet, and flung him down on the pavement.Then Jack and I could stand it no longer.“Let the child alone!” cried Jack, at the top of his voice.I shall never forget the sudden weird hush which followed that unexpected sound. The woman released her grasp of her victim as if she had been shot, and the crowd, with a shout on their lips, stopped short in amazement.“Quick, Fred!” cried Jack, flying past me.He dashed straight to where the little boy lay, swept him up in his arms, and then, with me close at his heels, was rushing straight for the outlet of the court, which, thank Heaven! was there, close at hand. Next moment we were standing in the street which led to Beadle Square.It all took less time to accomplish than it takes to write, and once out of that awful court we could hardly tell whether we were awake or dreaming.The boy, however, in Jack’s arms settled that question.“Come on, quick!” said Smith, starting to run again. “They’ll be out after us.”We hurried on until we were in Beadle Square.“What’s to be done?” I asked.“We must take him in with us,” said Jack. “Look at the state he’s in.”I did look. The little fellow, who seemed about eight years old, was either stunned by his last blow or had fainted. His face, save where the blood trickled down, was deadly pale, and as his head with its shock of black hair lay back on Jack’s arm, it seemed as if he could not look in worse plight were he dead.“We must take him with us,” said Jack.“What will Mrs Nash say?” was my inward ejaculation, as we reached the door.All the lights were out. We knocked twice, and no one came. Here was a plight! Locked out at this hour of night, with a half-dead child in our charge!“Knock again,” said Jack.Ididknock again, a wonderful knock, that must have startled the cats for a mile round, and this time it called up the spirit we wished for.There was a flicker of a candle through the keyhole, and a slipshod footstep in the hall, which gave us great satisfaction. Mrs Nash opened the door.At the sight of our burden, the abuse with which she was about to favour us faded from her lips as she gazed at us in utter amazement.“Why, what’s all this? eh, you two? What’s this?” she demanded.“I’ll tell you,” said Jack, entering with his burden; “but I say, Mrs Nash, can’t you do something for him? Look at him!”Mrs Nash was a woman, and whatever her private opinion on the matter generally may have been; she could not resist this appeal. She took the little fellow out of Jack’s arms, and carried him away to her own kitchen, where, after sponging his bruised face and forehead, and giving him a drop of something in a teaspoon, and brushing back his matted hair and loosing his ragged jacket at the neck, she succeeded in restoring him to his senses. It was with a thrill of relief that we saw his eyes open and a shade of colour come into his grimy cheeks.“What have you been doing to him?” said Mrs Nash.“He was being knocked about,” said Jack, modestly, “and Batchelor and I got him away.”“And what are you going to do with him?” inquired Mrs Nash, who, now that her feminine offices were at an end, was fast regaining her old crabbedness.“He’d better go to bed,” said Smith. “I’ll have him in my bed.”“No, you won’t!” said Mrs Nash, decisively.“We can’t turn him out at this time of night,” said I.“Can’t help that. He don’t sleep here, the dirty little wretch.”“He’ll be murdered if he goes back,” said Jack.“That’s no reason I should have my house made not fit to live in,” said Mrs Nash.“He won’t do any harm, I’ll see to that,” said Smith, rising and taking the boy up in his arms.“I tell you I ain’t going to allow it,” said Mrs Nash.But Jack without another word carried off his burden, and we heard his footsteps go slowly up the stairs to the bedroom. I stayed for some little time endeavouring to appease Mrs Nash, but without much effect. She abandoned her first idea of rushing out and defending the cleanliness of her house by force of arms, but in place of that relieved herself in very strong language on the subject of Jack Smith generally, and of me in aiding and abetting him, and ended by announcing that she gave us both warning, and we might look-out for somebody else to stand our impudence (she called it “imperence”), forshewouldn’t.When I went up stairs Jack and his smallprotégéwere in bed and asleep. I was quite startled when I caught sight of their two heads side by side on the pillow. It looked for all the world like a big Jack and a little Jack.“Wouldn’t Jack be flattered if I told him so!” thought I.I was not long in following their example. All night long I dreamt of Flanagan and that dreadful court, and of those two heads lying there side by side in the next bed.When I awoke in the morning it was very early and not yet light. I soon discovered that what had aroused me was a conversation going on in the next bed.“Go on! you let me be!” I heard a shrill voice say.“Hush! don’t make a noise,” said Jack. “I’ll take you home in the morning all right.”“I ain’t done nothink to you,” whined the boy.“I know. No one’s going to hurt you.”“You let me be, then; do you ’ear?” repeated the boy. “What did you fetch me ’ere for?”“You were nearly being killed last night,” said Jack.“You’re a lie, I worn’t,” was the polite answer.“Yes you were,” said Jack. “A woman was nearly murdering you.”“That was my old gal—’tain’t no concern of yourn.”Evidently there was little use expecting gratitude out of this queer specimen of mortality; and Jack didn’t try.“You stay quiet and go to sleep, and I’ll give you some breakfast in the morning,” he said to his graceless little bed-fellow.“You ain’t a-going to take me to the station, then?” demanded the latter.“No.”“Or the workus?”“No.”“Or old shiny-togs?”“Who?”“Shiny-togs—you know—the bloke with the choker.”“I don’t know who you mean.”“Go on!—you know ’im—’im as jaws in the church with ’is nightgown on.”“Oh, the clergyman,” said Jack, hardly able to repress a smile. “No. I’ll take you back to your home.”“To my old gal?”“Yes, to your mother.”“You ain’t a ’avin’ a lark with me, then?”“No,” said Jack, pitifully.With this assurance the small boy was apparently satisfied, for he pursued the conversation no longer, and shortly afterwards I fell off to sleep again.When next I woke it was broad daylight, and Jack Smith was standing by my bed.“Fred, I say, he’s bolted!” he exclaimed, in an agitated voice, as I sat up and rubbed my eyes.“Who—the kid?” I asked.“Yes.”“He’s a nice amiable young specimen,” replied I. “When did he go?”“I don’t know. When I woke up he was gone.”“Well, it’s a good riddance,” said I, who really did not see why Jack should be so afflicted about such a graceless young ragamuffin. “Do you know Mrs Nash has given us both warning over this business?”“I don’t care. But, I say, I wonder if he’s hiding anywhere.”“Not he. He’s safe away, depend upon it, and if Mrs Nash had had any silver spoons they’d be safe away too.”Jack began to dress thoughtfully, and then said, “I’m sorry he’s gone.”“I don’t see why you should be,” I said. “The ungrateful young cad! If it hadn’t been for you he might have been killed.”Jack smiled. “He doesn’t think so himself,” he said. “He told me I’d no business to interfere between him and his ‘gal,’ as he politely styles his mother. Poor little beggar! I dare say he’ll catch it all the worse now. Hullo! I say!” exclaimed Jack, feeling in his pockets. “I’m positive I had a shilling and two pennies in my pocket yesterday evening. I must have been robbed in that court!”The money had evidently gone, and what was more, I made the pleasant discovery that a sixpence which I had in my pocket, as well as my penknife, were both missing!Jack and I looked at one another.“The young thief!” I exclaimed.“Perhaps it was done in the court,” said Jack. “There was an awful crowd, you know.”“All very well,” I replied; “but, as it happens, I had my knife out before I went to bed, to cut one of my bootlaces, and when I put it back in my pocket I distinctly remember feeling the sixpence there. No; our young hopeful’s done this bit of business.”“I’m awfully sorry, Fred,” said Jack; “it was my fault bringing him here.”We went down to breakfast in a somewhat perturbed state of mind. Here we found the assembled company in a state of great excitement. Mr Horncastle, who occupied a bed in the next dormitory to that where Jack and I slept, had missed his collar-stud, which he described as “red coral,” and complaining thereof to Mrs Nash, had been told by that lady that Smith and Batchelor had brought a young pickpocket into the house with them last night, and that being so, she was only surprised Mr Horncastle had not lost all the jewellery he possessed. Whereat, of course, Mr Horncastle was in a mighty state of wrath, and quite ready for poor Jack and me when we appeared.“Oh, here you are. Perhaps you’ll hand me out half a sov., you two.”“What for?” demanded I.“Never you mind, but you’d better look sharp, or I’ll give you in charge!” said Horncastle, pompously.“You’re funny this morning,” said I, utterly at a loss to guess what he was driving at.“So will you be funny when you get transported for stealing!”“What do you mean?” asked Smith, solemnly.“Mean; why, I mean my collar-stud.”A general laugh interrupted the speaker at this point, which did not tend to improve his spirits.“What’s your collar-stud to do with me, or Batchelor?” demanded Smith, who evidently saw nothing to laugh at.“Why, you’ve stolen it!” shouted Horncastle.Smith gazed solemnly at the speaker.“You’re a fool,” he said, quietly.This cool remark drove the irate Horncastle nearly frantic. He advanced up to Smith with a face as red as the collar-stud he had lost, and cried, “Say that again, and I’ll knock you down.”“You’re a fool,” quietly repeated Jack.Horncastle didn’t knock him down, or attempt to do so. He turned on his heel and said, “We’ll see if we’re to be robbed by shop-boy cads, or any of your young thieving friends. I’ll complain to the police, and let them know you know all about it, you two.”“I don’t know anything about it,” said I, feeling it incumbent on me to make a remark, “except that I don’t think a red bone collar-stud costs ten shillings.” This occasioned another laugh at the expense of Mr Horncastle, who retorted, “You’re a companion of thieves and blackguards, that’s what you are. I’ll have you kicked out of the house.”And as if to suit the action to the word, he advanced towards me and aimed a vehement kick at my person.I had just time to dodge the blow, but as I did so something knocked against my hand. Fancy my astonishment when, stooping to pick it up, I found that it was the missing red bone collar-stud, which had dropped into the leg of its stately owner’s trousers, and which this kick had unearthed from its hiding-place!The laugh was now all against the discomfited Horncastle. Even those who had at first been disposed to side with him against Jack and me could not resist the merriment which this revelation occasioned, particularly when the stud, which Horncastle at once identified, was discovered to be an ordinary painted bone article, with a good deal of the red worn off, of the kind usually sold in the streets for a penny.Jack and I had at least the relief of feeling that so far we ourselves were the only sufferers by our hospitality to our little ragamuffin acquaintance.But more was to come of this adventure, as the reader will see.
The novelty of our life in London soon began to wear off. For the first week or so I thought I never should grow weary of the wonderful streets and shops and crowds of people. And the work at the office, while it was fresh, appeared—especially when enlivened by the pranks of my fellow-clerks—more of a game than downright earnest. My eight shillings a week, too, seemed a princely allowance to begin with, and even the lodging-house in Beadle Square was tolerable.
But after a month or so a fellow gets wonderfully toned down in his notions. I soon began to pine inwardly for an occasional escape from the murky city to the fresh air of the country. The same routine of work hour after hour, day after day, week after week, grew tame and wearisome. And I began to find out that even the lordly income of eight shillings a week didn’t make the happy possessor, who had to clothe and feed himself, actually a rich man; while as for Mrs Nash’s, the place before long became detestable. The fact is, that I, with no cheerier home than Brownstroke to look back on, became desperately homesick before three months in London were over; and but for my friend Smith, I might have deserted entirely.
However, Smith, solemn as he was, wouldn’t let me get quite desperate. He was one of those even-tempered sort of fellows who never gush either with joy or sorrow, but take things as they come, and because they never let themselves get elated, rarely let themselves get down.
“Fred,” he said to me one day, when I was in the dumps, “what’s wrong?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said I, “I’m getting rather sick of London, I think.”
“Not much use getting sick of it yet,” said he. “Time enough in fifty years.”
“Jack,” said I, “if I thought I had all my life to live here, I should run away.”
“You’re a duffer, old man. Aren’t you getting on at Hawk Street, then?”
“Oh yes, well enough, but it’s most fearfully slow. The same thing every day.”
Jack smiled. “They can’t alter the programme just to suit you.”
“Of course not,” I cried, feeling very miserable; “of course I’m an ass, but I’d sooner be back at Stonebridge House than here.”
“By the way,” said Smith, suddenly, “talking of Stonebridge House, who did you think I ran against to-day at dinner-time?”
“Who, old Henniker?” I inquired.
“Rather not. If I had, I think I should have been game for running away along with you. No, it was Flanagan.”
“Was it? I should like to have seen him. What’s he doing?”
“Not much, I fancy. He says his brother’s a solicitor, and he’s come up to loaf about in his office and pick up a little law.”
“Oh, I like that,” I cried, laughing. “Think of old Flanagan a lawyer. But didn’t he say where he was living?”
“Yes, Cabbage Street, in Hackney. I forget the number. I say, Fred, suppose we take a stroll this evening and try to find him out. It’ll do you good, a walk.”
I gladly consented. We gave Mrs Nash due notice that we should not be home to supper, and might possibly be out after ten, and then sallied forth. Hackney was a good four miles from Beadle Square, and by the time we had discovered Cabbage Street it was almost time to be returning. But having come so far we were resolved we would at least make an effort to find out our old schoolfellow. But the fates were against us. Cabbage Street was a new street of small houses, about a third of a mile long. Even if we had known the number it would have taken some time to discover the house; but without that information it was simply impossible. We did try. Jack took the left of the street and began knocking at the odd numbers, starting from 229; while I attacked the even numbers on the right side. But as far as we went no one knew of a Flanagan, and we had to give it up.
It was half-past nine when we finally abandoned the search and turned our faces Citywards once more.
“Horrid sell,” said Jack. “We shall have to find out where his brother’s office is from the Directory, and get at him that way.”
We walked back hard. Mrs Nash’s temper was never to be relied on, and it was ten to one she might lock us out for the night.
Luckily Jack was up to all the short cuts, and he piloted me through more than one queer-looking slum on the way.
At last we were getting near our journey’s end, and the prospect of a “lock-out” from our lodgings was looming unpleasantly near, when Jack took me by the arm and turned up a dark narrow passage.
“I’m nearly certain it’s got a way out at the other end,” he said, “and if so it will take us right close to the square.”
I followed him, trusting he was right, and inwardly marvelling at his knowledge of the ins and outs of the great city.
But what a fearful “skeery”-looking hole that passage was!
There were wretched tumbledown houses on either side, so wretched and tumbledown that it seemed impossible any one could live in them. But the houses were nothing to the people. The court was simply swarming with people. Drunken and swearing men; drunken and swearing women; half-naked children who swore too. It was through such a company that we had to thread our way down my friend Smith’s “short cut.” As we went on it became worse, and what was most serious was that everybody seemed to come out to their doors to stare at us. Supposing there were no way through, and we had to turn back, it would be no joke, thought I, to face all these disreputable-looking loungers who already were making themselves offensive as we passed, by words and gesture.
I could tell by the way Smith strode on that he felt no more comfortable than I did.
“You’re sure there’s a way through?” I said.
“Almost sure,” he answered.
At the same moment a stone struck me on the cheek. It was not a hard blow, and the blood which mounted to my face was quite as much brought there by anger as by pain.
“Come on!” said Smith, who had seen what happened.
Coming on meant threading our way through a knot of young roughs, who evidently considered our appearance in the court an intrusion and were disposed to resent it. One of them put out his foot as Smith came up with a view to trip him, but Jack saw the manoeuvre in time and walked round. Another hustled me as I brushed past and sent me knocking up against Jack, who, if he hadn’t stood steady, would have knocked up against some one else, and so pretty certainly have provoked an assault. How we ever got past these fellows I can’t imagine; but we did, and for a yard or two ahead the passage was clear.
“Shall we make a rush for it?” I asked of Jack.
“Better not,” said he. “If there is a way through, we must be nearly out now.”
He spoke so doubtfully that my heart sunk quite as much as if he had said there was no way through and we must turn back.
However, what lay immediately before us was obscured by a suddenly collected crowd of inhabitants, shouting and yelling with more than ordinary clamour. This time the centre of attraction was not ourselves, but a drunken woman, who had got a little ragged boy by the collar, and was beating him savagely on the head with her by no means puny fist.
“There!—take that, you young—! I’ll do for you this time!”
And without doubt it looked as if we were to witness the accomplishment of the threat. The little fellow, unable even to howl, reeled and staggered under her brutal blows. His pale, squalid face was covered with blood, and his little form crouching in her grip was convulsed with terror and exhaustion. It was a sickening spectacle.
The crowd pressed round, and yelled and laughed and hooted. The woman, savage enough as she was, seemed to derive fresh vehemence from the cries around her, and redoubled her cruel blows.
One half-smothered moan escaped the little boy’s lips as she swung him off his feet, and flung him down on the pavement.
Then Jack and I could stand it no longer.
“Let the child alone!” cried Jack, at the top of his voice.
I shall never forget the sudden weird hush which followed that unexpected sound. The woman released her grasp of her victim as if she had been shot, and the crowd, with a shout on their lips, stopped short in amazement.
“Quick, Fred!” cried Jack, flying past me.
He dashed straight to where the little boy lay, swept him up in his arms, and then, with me close at his heels, was rushing straight for the outlet of the court, which, thank Heaven! was there, close at hand. Next moment we were standing in the street which led to Beadle Square.
It all took less time to accomplish than it takes to write, and once out of that awful court we could hardly tell whether we were awake or dreaming.
The boy, however, in Jack’s arms settled that question.
“Come on, quick!” said Smith, starting to run again. “They’ll be out after us.”
We hurried on until we were in Beadle Square.
“What’s to be done?” I asked.
“We must take him in with us,” said Jack. “Look at the state he’s in.”
I did look. The little fellow, who seemed about eight years old, was either stunned by his last blow or had fainted. His face, save where the blood trickled down, was deadly pale, and as his head with its shock of black hair lay back on Jack’s arm, it seemed as if he could not look in worse plight were he dead.
“We must take him with us,” said Jack.
“What will Mrs Nash say?” was my inward ejaculation, as we reached the door.
All the lights were out. We knocked twice, and no one came. Here was a plight! Locked out at this hour of night, with a half-dead child in our charge!
“Knock again,” said Jack.
Ididknock again, a wonderful knock, that must have startled the cats for a mile round, and this time it called up the spirit we wished for.
There was a flicker of a candle through the keyhole, and a slipshod footstep in the hall, which gave us great satisfaction. Mrs Nash opened the door.
At the sight of our burden, the abuse with which she was about to favour us faded from her lips as she gazed at us in utter amazement.
“Why, what’s all this? eh, you two? What’s this?” she demanded.
“I’ll tell you,” said Jack, entering with his burden; “but I say, Mrs Nash, can’t you do something for him? Look at him!”
Mrs Nash was a woman, and whatever her private opinion on the matter generally may have been; she could not resist this appeal. She took the little fellow out of Jack’s arms, and carried him away to her own kitchen, where, after sponging his bruised face and forehead, and giving him a drop of something in a teaspoon, and brushing back his matted hair and loosing his ragged jacket at the neck, she succeeded in restoring him to his senses. It was with a thrill of relief that we saw his eyes open and a shade of colour come into his grimy cheeks.
“What have you been doing to him?” said Mrs Nash.
“He was being knocked about,” said Jack, modestly, “and Batchelor and I got him away.”
“And what are you going to do with him?” inquired Mrs Nash, who, now that her feminine offices were at an end, was fast regaining her old crabbedness.
“He’d better go to bed,” said Smith. “I’ll have him in my bed.”
“No, you won’t!” said Mrs Nash, decisively.
“We can’t turn him out at this time of night,” said I.
“Can’t help that. He don’t sleep here, the dirty little wretch.”
“He’ll be murdered if he goes back,” said Jack.
“That’s no reason I should have my house made not fit to live in,” said Mrs Nash.
“He won’t do any harm, I’ll see to that,” said Smith, rising and taking the boy up in his arms.
“I tell you I ain’t going to allow it,” said Mrs Nash.
But Jack without another word carried off his burden, and we heard his footsteps go slowly up the stairs to the bedroom. I stayed for some little time endeavouring to appease Mrs Nash, but without much effect. She abandoned her first idea of rushing out and defending the cleanliness of her house by force of arms, but in place of that relieved herself in very strong language on the subject of Jack Smith generally, and of me in aiding and abetting him, and ended by announcing that she gave us both warning, and we might look-out for somebody else to stand our impudence (she called it “imperence”), forshewouldn’t.
When I went up stairs Jack and his smallprotégéwere in bed and asleep. I was quite startled when I caught sight of their two heads side by side on the pillow. It looked for all the world like a big Jack and a little Jack.
“Wouldn’t Jack be flattered if I told him so!” thought I.
I was not long in following their example. All night long I dreamt of Flanagan and that dreadful court, and of those two heads lying there side by side in the next bed.
When I awoke in the morning it was very early and not yet light. I soon discovered that what had aroused me was a conversation going on in the next bed.
“Go on! you let me be!” I heard a shrill voice say.
“Hush! don’t make a noise,” said Jack. “I’ll take you home in the morning all right.”
“I ain’t done nothink to you,” whined the boy.
“I know. No one’s going to hurt you.”
“You let me be, then; do you ’ear?” repeated the boy. “What did you fetch me ’ere for?”
“You were nearly being killed last night,” said Jack.
“You’re a lie, I worn’t,” was the polite answer.
“Yes you were,” said Jack. “A woman was nearly murdering you.”
“That was my old gal—’tain’t no concern of yourn.”
Evidently there was little use expecting gratitude out of this queer specimen of mortality; and Jack didn’t try.
“You stay quiet and go to sleep, and I’ll give you some breakfast in the morning,” he said to his graceless little bed-fellow.
“You ain’t a-going to take me to the station, then?” demanded the latter.
“No.”
“Or the workus?”
“No.”
“Or old shiny-togs?”
“Who?”
“Shiny-togs—you know—the bloke with the choker.”
“I don’t know who you mean.”
“Go on!—you know ’im—’im as jaws in the church with ’is nightgown on.”
“Oh, the clergyman,” said Jack, hardly able to repress a smile. “No. I’ll take you back to your home.”
“To my old gal?”
“Yes, to your mother.”
“You ain’t a ’avin’ a lark with me, then?”
“No,” said Jack, pitifully.
With this assurance the small boy was apparently satisfied, for he pursued the conversation no longer, and shortly afterwards I fell off to sleep again.
When next I woke it was broad daylight, and Jack Smith was standing by my bed.
“Fred, I say, he’s bolted!” he exclaimed, in an agitated voice, as I sat up and rubbed my eyes.
“Who—the kid?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“He’s a nice amiable young specimen,” replied I. “When did he go?”
“I don’t know. When I woke up he was gone.”
“Well, it’s a good riddance,” said I, who really did not see why Jack should be so afflicted about such a graceless young ragamuffin. “Do you know Mrs Nash has given us both warning over this business?”
“I don’t care. But, I say, I wonder if he’s hiding anywhere.”
“Not he. He’s safe away, depend upon it, and if Mrs Nash had had any silver spoons they’d be safe away too.”
Jack began to dress thoughtfully, and then said, “I’m sorry he’s gone.”
“I don’t see why you should be,” I said. “The ungrateful young cad! If it hadn’t been for you he might have been killed.”
Jack smiled. “He doesn’t think so himself,” he said. “He told me I’d no business to interfere between him and his ‘gal,’ as he politely styles his mother. Poor little beggar! I dare say he’ll catch it all the worse now. Hullo! I say!” exclaimed Jack, feeling in his pockets. “I’m positive I had a shilling and two pennies in my pocket yesterday evening. I must have been robbed in that court!”
The money had evidently gone, and what was more, I made the pleasant discovery that a sixpence which I had in my pocket, as well as my penknife, were both missing!
Jack and I looked at one another.
“The young thief!” I exclaimed.
“Perhaps it was done in the court,” said Jack. “There was an awful crowd, you know.”
“All very well,” I replied; “but, as it happens, I had my knife out before I went to bed, to cut one of my bootlaces, and when I put it back in my pocket I distinctly remember feeling the sixpence there. No; our young hopeful’s done this bit of business.”
“I’m awfully sorry, Fred,” said Jack; “it was my fault bringing him here.”
We went down to breakfast in a somewhat perturbed state of mind. Here we found the assembled company in a state of great excitement. Mr Horncastle, who occupied a bed in the next dormitory to that where Jack and I slept, had missed his collar-stud, which he described as “red coral,” and complaining thereof to Mrs Nash, had been told by that lady that Smith and Batchelor had brought a young pickpocket into the house with them last night, and that being so, she was only surprised Mr Horncastle had not lost all the jewellery he possessed. Whereat, of course, Mr Horncastle was in a mighty state of wrath, and quite ready for poor Jack and me when we appeared.
“Oh, here you are. Perhaps you’ll hand me out half a sov., you two.”
“What for?” demanded I.
“Never you mind, but you’d better look sharp, or I’ll give you in charge!” said Horncastle, pompously.
“You’re funny this morning,” said I, utterly at a loss to guess what he was driving at.
“So will you be funny when you get transported for stealing!”
“What do you mean?” asked Smith, solemnly.
“Mean; why, I mean my collar-stud.”
A general laugh interrupted the speaker at this point, which did not tend to improve his spirits.
“What’s your collar-stud to do with me, or Batchelor?” demanded Smith, who evidently saw nothing to laugh at.
“Why, you’ve stolen it!” shouted Horncastle.
Smith gazed solemnly at the speaker.
“You’re a fool,” he said, quietly.
This cool remark drove the irate Horncastle nearly frantic. He advanced up to Smith with a face as red as the collar-stud he had lost, and cried, “Say that again, and I’ll knock you down.”
“You’re a fool,” quietly repeated Jack.
Horncastle didn’t knock him down, or attempt to do so. He turned on his heel and said, “We’ll see if we’re to be robbed by shop-boy cads, or any of your young thieving friends. I’ll complain to the police, and let them know you know all about it, you two.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” said I, feeling it incumbent on me to make a remark, “except that I don’t think a red bone collar-stud costs ten shillings.” This occasioned another laugh at the expense of Mr Horncastle, who retorted, “You’re a companion of thieves and blackguards, that’s what you are. I’ll have you kicked out of the house.”
And as if to suit the action to the word, he advanced towards me and aimed a vehement kick at my person.
I had just time to dodge the blow, but as I did so something knocked against my hand. Fancy my astonishment when, stooping to pick it up, I found that it was the missing red bone collar-stud, which had dropped into the leg of its stately owner’s trousers, and which this kick had unearthed from its hiding-place!
The laugh was now all against the discomfited Horncastle. Even those who had at first been disposed to side with him against Jack and me could not resist the merriment which this revelation occasioned, particularly when the stud, which Horncastle at once identified, was discovered to be an ordinary painted bone article, with a good deal of the red worn off, of the kind usually sold in the streets for a penny.
Jack and I had at least the relief of feeling that so far we ourselves were the only sufferers by our hospitality to our little ragamuffin acquaintance.
But more was to come of this adventure, as the reader will see.
Chapter Fourteen.How Smith went Home and I took Part in an Evening Party.Two days after the events recorded in the last chapter something happened which materially affected the course of my life in London.Smith and I were just starting off to the office, after having finally made our submission to Mrs Nash, and induced her, with a promise “never to do it again,” to withdraw her threat to turn us out, when the postman appeared coming round the corner.It was a comparatively rare sight in Beadle Square, and Jack and I naturally felt our curiosity excited.“May as well see if there’s anything for me,” said I, who had only once heard from my affectionate relative in six months.Jack laughed. “I never saw such a fellow,” said he, “for expecting things. It’s just as likely there’s a letter for me as for you.”At this moment the postman came up with a letter in his hand in apparent perplexity.“Anything for me?” I said.“Not unless your name’s Smith,” said the postman. “Smith of Beadle Square, that’s the party—might as well send a letter to a straw in a haystack.”“My name’s Smith,” said Jack.“Is it?” said the postman, evidently relieved. “Then I suppose it’s all right.”So saying he placed the letter in Jack’s hand and walked on, evidently quite proud to have found out a Smith at first shot.Jack’s colour changed as he took the letter and looked at it.He evidently recognised the cramped, ill-formed hand in which it was addressed.“It’s from Packworth!” he exclaimed, as he eagerly tore open the envelope.I don’t think he intended the remark for me, for we had never once referred either to his home or his relatives since the first day we were together in London. In fact, I had almost come to forget that my friend Smith had a home anywhere but in Beadle Square.He glanced rapidly over the short scrawl, and as he did so his face turned pale and a quick exclamation escaped his lips.“Anything wrong, old man?” I asked.“Yes,” said he, looking up with a face full of trouble. “Here, you can see it,” he added, putting the letter into my hand.It was a very short letter, and ran thus:—“Dear Mister Johnny,—Mary is very very ill. Could you come and seen her? Do come—from Jane Shield.”“Mary is my sister,” said Jack, nearly breaking down. “I must go, whether Barnacle lets me or no.”Our walk to the office that morning was quicker than usual, and more silent. Poor Jack was in no mood for conversation, and I fancied it would be kinder not to worry him. We reached Hawk Street before any of the partners had come, and Smith’s patience was sorely tried by the waiting.“I say,” said he presently to me, “I must go, Fred. Will you tell them?”“Yes, if you like, only—”“Now then, you two,” cried Mr Doubleday, looking round; “there you are, larking about as usual. Go off to your work, young Import, do you hear? and don’t stand grinning there!”Poor Jack looked like anything but grinning at that moment.“I’ll do the best I can,” I said, “but I’m afraid Barnacle will be in a wax unless you ask him yourself.”“I can’t help it,” said Jack, “I must go.”“Eh? what’s that?” said Doubleday, who was near enough to hear this conversation; “who must go?”“Smith has just heard that his sister’s ill,” I said, by way of explanation, and hoping to enlist the chief clerk’s sympathy, “and he must go to her, that’s all.”“Hullo!” interposed Crow, “you don’t mean to say he’s got a sister. My eyes, what a caution! Fancy a female bull’s-eye, Wallop, eh?”“So you may say,” said Wallop the cad, laughing. “I guess I wouldn’t fancy her, if she’s like brother Johnny.”“And he’s got to go to her, poor dear thing, because she’s got a cold in her nose or something of the sort. Jolly excuse to get off work. I wishI’dgot a sister to be ill too.”“Never mind,” said Wallop; “if you’d been brought up in gaol you’d be subject to colds. It’s a rare draughty place is Newgate.”No one but myself had noticed Jack during this brief conversation. His face, already pale and troubled, grew livid as the dialogue proceeded, and finally he could restrain himself no longer.Dashing from his desk, he flew at Wallop like a young wolf, and before that facetious young gentleman knew where he was he was lying at full length on the floor, and Jack standing over him, trembling with fury from head to foot.It was the work of an instant, and before more mischief could be done Doubleday had interposed.“Look here,” said he, catching Jack by the arm and drawing him away from his adversary, “we aren’t used to that here, I can tell you! Go to your desk! Do you hear? There’s the governor coming up! A nice row you’ll get us into with your temper! Come, you Wallop, up you get, I say—you beast! I’m jolly glad the young ’un walked into you. Serves you right! Look alive, or you’ll be nobbled!”The result of these exertions was that when the door opened half a minute later the office was, to all appearance, as quiet as usual.To our surprise, the comer was not Mr Barnacle, who usually arrived first, but Mr Merrett, who on other days hardly ever put in an appearance till an hour later.What was the reason of this reversal of the order of things we could not say, and did not much care. Indeed, it was rather a relief to see the mild senior partner instead of the sharp-eyed junior, who was, some of us thought, far too quick to perceive anything amiss. Jack’s face brightened as much as any one’s at the circumstance. For a moment he forgot all his wrath, and thought only of his poor sister.He followed Mr Merrett quickly to the door of the partners’ room and said eagerly, “May I speak to you a moment, sir?”“Yes, my man; come in,” was the encouraging reply.“Gone to tell tales, I suppose,” said Crow, as the door closed on the two.“No, he’s not,” said I, ready to take up the gauntlet for my friend; “and you’d better not say it again!”“Oh, I say! Look here,” said Doubleday, “don’tyoubegin at that game, young shaver! We’re used to it from your chum bull’s-eye, but I’m not going to let you start at it. Besides, Crow wouldn’t like it. Get on with your work, do you hear?”Jack reappeared in a minute with a grateful face, which showed at once that his application had been successful.“Good-bye,” said he, coming to my desk; “I’ll send you a line;” and without another word to any one he was gone.“He’s a cool fish, that friend of yours!” said Doubleday, that afternoon to me. “He seems to get on pretty much as he likes.”“He’s awfully cut up about his sister,” I said. “Poor Jack!”“No harm in that!” said Doubleday, condescendingly. “I thought he was quite right to walk into that cad Wallop myself. But he’ll find it rather hot for him when he gets back, I fancy. When’s he coming back?”“In a day or two, I suppose,” said I.“And you’ll be mighty disconsolate, I suppose,” said Doubleday, “till he returns? What do you say to coming up to my lodgings to-night, eh, young ’un, to see me?”I felt very grateful for this unlooked-for honour, and said I would be delighted to come.“All serene! I’ve asked one or two of the fellows up, so we’ll have a jolly evening. By the way, when you go out get me a couple of boxes of sardines, will you, and a dozen twopenny cigars?”I executed these commissions, and in due time, business being ended, Doubleday and I and Crow, and the sardines and the cigars, started in a body for Cork Place, where, in a first-floor front, the estimable Mr Doubleday was wont to pitch his daily tent.They were cosy quarters, and contrasted in a marked manner with Beadle Square. Doubleday knew how to make himself comfortable, evidently. There were one or two good prints on his walls, a cheerful fire in the hearth, a sofa and an easy-chair, and quite an array of pickle-jars and beer-bottles and jam-pots in his cupboard. And, to my thinking, who had been used to the plain, unappetising fare of Mrs Nash, the spread on his table was simply sumptuous.I felt quite shy at being introduced to such an entertainment, and inwardly wondered how long it would be before I, with my eight shillings a week, would be able to afford the like.We were a little early, and Doubleday therefore pressed us into the service to help him, as he called it, “get all snug and ship-shape,” which meant boiling some eggs, emptying the jam-pots into glass dishes, and cutting up a perfect stack of bread.“Who’s coming to-night?” said Crow, with whom, by the way, I had become speedily reconciled in our mutual occupation.“Oh, the usual lot,” said Doubleday, with the air of a man who gives “feeds” every day of his life. “The two Wickhams, and Joe Whipcord, and the Field-Marshal, and an Irish fellow who is lodging with him. We ought to have a jolly evening.”In due time the guests arrived, Mr Joseph Whipcord being the earliest. He was a freckled youth of a most horsey get up, in clothes so tight that it seemed a marvel how he could ever sit down, and a straw in his mouth which appeared to grow there. Close on his heels came the two Wickhams, whose chief attractiveness seemed to be that they were twins, and as like as two peas.“Hullo! here you are,” was Doubleday’s greeting. “Which is which of you to-night, eh?”“I’m Adam,” replied one of the two, meekly.“All serene, Adam. Stick this piece of paper in your button-hole, and then we’ll know you from Abel. By the way, Whipcord, I suppose you never heard my last joke, did you?”“Never heard your first yet,” replied Whipcord, shifting his straw to the other corner of his mouth.“Oh, yes you did,” retorted Doubleday, who as usual always preferred the laugh when it was on his own side. “Don’t you remember me telling Crow last time you came that you were a fellow who knew a thing or two? That was a joke, eh, twins?”“Rather,” said both the twins, warmly.“But my last wasn’t about Whipcord at all: it was about you two. I got muddled up among you somehow and said, ‘For the life of me I am not able to tell one of you from Adam!’”“Well?” said Whipcord.“Well, what!” said Doubleday, savagely “The joke?”“Why, thatwasthe joke, you blockhead! But we can’t expect a poor fellow like you to see it. I say, the Field-Marshal’s behind time. I’ll give him two minutes, and then we’ll start without him.”Just then there was a knock at the door, and two fellows entered. One was a tall, thin, cadaverous-looking boy a little my senior, and the other—his exact contrast, a thick-set, burly youth, with a merry twinkle in his eye and a chronic grin on his lips.“Late again, Field-Marshal,” said Doubleday, clapping the cadaverous one on the back with a blow that nearly doubled him up. “Is this your chum? How are you, Patrick?”The youth addressed as Patrick, but whose real name subsequently was announced as Daly, said he was “rightly,” and that it was his fault the Field-Marshal was late, as he had to shave.This announcement caused great amusement, for Master Daly was as innocent of a hair on his face as he was of being tattooed, and by the manner in which he joined in the laughter he seemed to be quite aware of the fact.We sat down to supper in great good spirits. I was perhaps the least cheerful, for all the others being friends, and I knowing only my two fellow-clerks, I felt rather out of it. However, Doubleday, who seemed to have an eye for everybody, soon put me at my ease with myself and the rest.What a meal it was! I hadn’t tasted such a one since I came to London. Eggs and sardines, lobster and potted meat; coffee and tea, toast, cake, bread-and-butter—it was positively bewildering. And the laughing, and talking, and chaffing that went on, too. Doubleday perfectly astonished me by his talents as a host. He never ceased talking, and yet everybody else talked too; he never ceased partaking, and took care that no one else should either. He seemed to know by the outside of a cup whether it was full or empty, and to be able to see through loaves and dish-covers into everybody’s plate. It would be impossible to say what was not talked about during that wonderful meal. The private affairs of Hawk Street were freely canvassed, and the private affairs of every one of the company were discussed with the most charming frankness. I found myself giving an account of my uncle to the Field-marshal, which confidence he reciprocated by telling me that he was a private in the volunteers (that was why the fellows called him Field-Marshal), and an accountant’s clerk, that his income was fifty pounds a year, that he had saved seven pounds, that he was engaged to a most charming person named Felicia, whom at the present rate of his progress he hoped to marry in about twenty years. Whipcord was discoursing on the points of every racehorse in the calendar to the twins, who had evidently never seen a racehorse; and Daly was telling stories which half choked Crow, and kept us all in fits of laughter. It was a new life to me, this, and no mistake.“Now then, young Batchelor, walk into those sardines, do you hear?” said our host. “Any more coffee, twins? Pass up those tea-cakes when you’ve helped yourself, Crow. I got them for twopence apiece—not bad, eh? I say, I suppose you’ve heard what’s up in Hawk Street, eh?—jam to the Field-Marshal there. Yes, Harris of the Imports told me: he heard it from Morgan, who knows a fellow who knows old Merrett. Plenty more potted meat in the cupboard; get out some, Batchelor, that’s a good fellow. The fact is—sugar enough in yours, Paddy?—the fact is, the old boy is going to put in a nephew—pass up your cup, Adam, Abel, what’s your name, you with the paper in your button-hole?—what was your mother about when she gave you such idiotic names, both of you? I’d like to give her a piece of my mind!—a nephew or something of the sort—that’ll be the third kid in the last half-year landed in on us—don’t you call that lobster a good one for eighteen pence, Paddy, my boy? Never mind, I’ll let them know I’m not going to train up all their young asses for nothing—hullo! Batchelor, beg pardon, old man; I forgot you were one of them!”This occasioned a laugh, which made me look very self-conscious; which Doubleday saw, and tried to help me out.“If they were all like you,” he said, with a patronising smile, “it wouldn’t hurt; but that bull’s-eye chum of yours is a drop too much for an office like ours. Do you know, I believe it’s a fact he’s been in gaol, or something of the sort—try a little vinegar with it, Field-Marshal—capital thing for keeping down the fat. Never saw such a temper, upon my word, did you, Crow? Why, he was nearly going to eatyouup this very morning. And the best of it is, he thinks he’s the only fellow in the office who does a stroke of work. Never mind, he’s safe at home for a bit; but, my eye! won’t he be astonished to find Merrett, Barnacle, and Company can get on without him!”I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable. It was rank treason to sit by and listen to all this without putting in a word for my friend; and yet in this company I could not for the life of me make the venture. Indeed, to my shame be it said, with the eyes of my companions upon me, and their laughter in my ears, I even faintly joined in the smile at poor Jack’s expense.“Is this pleasant chap a friend of yours?” said the Field-Marshal.“Yes,” said I, rather hesitatingly, “we were at school together, you know.”I despised myself heart and soul for my cowardice, and for me the rest of the meal passed with little enjoyment.And when the cloth was cleared away fresh difficulties presented themselves.“Are you a good hand at whist?” asked Adam, as we stood in front of the fire.“No,” said I; “I don’t play.”“Don’t you? We’ll give you a lesson, then.”Now my bringing-up had been peculiar, as the reader knows. In many ways it had been strict, and in many ways lax; but one of the scruples I had always carried about with me was on the subject of gambling.Consequently I felt particularly uncomfortable at the twin’s offer, and at a loss how to respond to it; and before I could resolve the chance was gone.“Now then,” said Doubleday, “make up your fours there, but for goodness’ sake don’t let both the patriarchs get at the same table! You with the paper and Crow, and Paddy and I—we’ll have this table, and you other four take the other;” and before I knew where I was I found myself seated at a table, opposite Whipcord, with thirteen cards in my hand.I did not know what to do. Had my partner been any one but Whipcord, with the straw in his mouth, I do believe I should have made a mild protest. Had Doubleday or Crow been one of our party, I might have screwed up my courage. But Whipcord had impressed me as a particularly knowing and important personage, and I felt quite abashed in his presence, and would not for anything have him think I considered anything that he did not correct.“I’m afraid I don’t know the way to play,” said I, apologetically, when the game began.“You don’t!” said he. “Why, where were you at school? Never mind, you’ll soon get into it.”This last prophecy was fulfilled. Somehow or other I picked up the game pretty quickly, and earned a great deal of applause from my partner by my play. Indeed, despite my being a new hand, our side won, and the Field-Marshal and Abel had to hand over sixpence after sixpence as the evening went on. The sight of the money renewed my discomforts; it was bad enough, so I felt, to play cards at all, but to play for money was a thing I had always regarded with a sort of horror. Alas! how easy it is, in the company of one’s fancied superiors, to forget one’s own poor scruples!The game at our table came to rather an abrupt end, brought on by a difference of opinion between the Field-marshal and Mr Whipcord on some point connected with a deal. It was a slight matter, but in the sharp words that ensued my companions came out in a strangely new light. Whipcord, especially, gave vent to language which utterly horrified me, and the Field-Marshal was not backward to reply in a similar strain.How long this interchange of language might have gone on I cannot say, had not Doubleday opportunely interposed. “There you are, at it again, you two, just like a couple of bargees! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Look how you’ve shocked the young ’un there! You really shouldn’t!”I coloured up at this speech. From the bantering tone in which Doubleday spoke it seemed as if he half despised any one who was not used to the sound of profanity; and I began to be angry with myself for having looked so horrified.The quarrel was soon made up with the help of some of the twopenny cigars, which were now produced along with the beer-bottles. By this time I had been sufficiently impressed by my company not to decline anything, and I partook of both of these luxuries—that is, I made believe to smoke a cigar, and kept a glass of beer in front of me, from which I took a very occasional sip.My mind was thoroughly uncomfortable. I had known all along I was not a hero; but it had never occurred to me before that I was a coward. In the course of one short evening I had forsaken more than one old principle, merely because others did the same. I had joined in a laugh against my best friend, because I had not the courage to stand up for him behind his back, and I had tried to appear as if bad language and drinking and gambling were familiar things to me, because I dared not make a stand and confess I thought them loathsome.We sat for a long time that night talking and cracking jokes, and telling stories. Many of the latter were clever and amusing, but others—those that raised the loudest laugh—were of a kind I had never heard before, and which I blush now to recall. Any one who had seen me would have supposed that talk like this was what I most relished. Had they but heard another voice within reproaching me, they might have pitied rather than blamed me.And yet with all the loose talk was mixed up so much of real jollity and good-humour that it was impossible to feel wholly miserable.Doubleday kept up his hospitality to the last. He would stop the best story to make a guest comfortable, and seemed to guess by instinct what everybody wanted.At last the time came for separating, and I rose to go with feelings partly of relief, partly of regret. The evening had been a jolly one, and I had enjoyed it; but then, had I done well to enjoy it? That was the question.“Oh, I say,” said Daly, as we said good-night on the doorstep, “were you ever at a school called Stonebridge House?”“Yes,” said I, startled to hear the name once more. “You weren’t there, were you?”“No; but a fellow I know, called Flanagan, was, and—”“Do you know Flanagan?” I exclaimed; “he’s the very fellow I’ve been trying to find out. Iwouldlike to see him again.”“Yes, he lives near us. I say, suppose you come up to the Field-Marshal and me on Tuesday; we live together, you know. We’ll have Flanagan and a fellow or two in.”I gladly accepted this delightful invitation, and went back to Mrs Nash’s feeling myself a good deal more a “man of the world,” and a good deal less of a hero, than I had left it that morning.
Two days after the events recorded in the last chapter something happened which materially affected the course of my life in London.
Smith and I were just starting off to the office, after having finally made our submission to Mrs Nash, and induced her, with a promise “never to do it again,” to withdraw her threat to turn us out, when the postman appeared coming round the corner.
It was a comparatively rare sight in Beadle Square, and Jack and I naturally felt our curiosity excited.
“May as well see if there’s anything for me,” said I, who had only once heard from my affectionate relative in six months.
Jack laughed. “I never saw such a fellow,” said he, “for expecting things. It’s just as likely there’s a letter for me as for you.”
At this moment the postman came up with a letter in his hand in apparent perplexity.
“Anything for me?” I said.
“Not unless your name’s Smith,” said the postman. “Smith of Beadle Square, that’s the party—might as well send a letter to a straw in a haystack.”
“My name’s Smith,” said Jack.
“Is it?” said the postman, evidently relieved. “Then I suppose it’s all right.”
So saying he placed the letter in Jack’s hand and walked on, evidently quite proud to have found out a Smith at first shot.
Jack’s colour changed as he took the letter and looked at it.
He evidently recognised the cramped, ill-formed hand in which it was addressed.
“It’s from Packworth!” he exclaimed, as he eagerly tore open the envelope.
I don’t think he intended the remark for me, for we had never once referred either to his home or his relatives since the first day we were together in London. In fact, I had almost come to forget that my friend Smith had a home anywhere but in Beadle Square.
He glanced rapidly over the short scrawl, and as he did so his face turned pale and a quick exclamation escaped his lips.
“Anything wrong, old man?” I asked.
“Yes,” said he, looking up with a face full of trouble. “Here, you can see it,” he added, putting the letter into my hand.
It was a very short letter, and ran thus:—
“Dear Mister Johnny,—Mary is very very ill. Could you come and seen her? Do come—from Jane Shield.”
“Mary is my sister,” said Jack, nearly breaking down. “I must go, whether Barnacle lets me or no.”
Our walk to the office that morning was quicker than usual, and more silent. Poor Jack was in no mood for conversation, and I fancied it would be kinder not to worry him. We reached Hawk Street before any of the partners had come, and Smith’s patience was sorely tried by the waiting.
“I say,” said he presently to me, “I must go, Fred. Will you tell them?”
“Yes, if you like, only—”
“Now then, you two,” cried Mr Doubleday, looking round; “there you are, larking about as usual. Go off to your work, young Import, do you hear? and don’t stand grinning there!”
Poor Jack looked like anything but grinning at that moment.
“I’ll do the best I can,” I said, “but I’m afraid Barnacle will be in a wax unless you ask him yourself.”
“I can’t help it,” said Jack, “I must go.”
“Eh? what’s that?” said Doubleday, who was near enough to hear this conversation; “who must go?”
“Smith has just heard that his sister’s ill,” I said, by way of explanation, and hoping to enlist the chief clerk’s sympathy, “and he must go to her, that’s all.”
“Hullo!” interposed Crow, “you don’t mean to say he’s got a sister. My eyes, what a caution! Fancy a female bull’s-eye, Wallop, eh?”
“So you may say,” said Wallop the cad, laughing. “I guess I wouldn’t fancy her, if she’s like brother Johnny.”
“And he’s got to go to her, poor dear thing, because she’s got a cold in her nose or something of the sort. Jolly excuse to get off work. I wishI’dgot a sister to be ill too.”
“Never mind,” said Wallop; “if you’d been brought up in gaol you’d be subject to colds. It’s a rare draughty place is Newgate.”
No one but myself had noticed Jack during this brief conversation. His face, already pale and troubled, grew livid as the dialogue proceeded, and finally he could restrain himself no longer.
Dashing from his desk, he flew at Wallop like a young wolf, and before that facetious young gentleman knew where he was he was lying at full length on the floor, and Jack standing over him, trembling with fury from head to foot.
It was the work of an instant, and before more mischief could be done Doubleday had interposed.
“Look here,” said he, catching Jack by the arm and drawing him away from his adversary, “we aren’t used to that here, I can tell you! Go to your desk! Do you hear? There’s the governor coming up! A nice row you’ll get us into with your temper! Come, you Wallop, up you get, I say—you beast! I’m jolly glad the young ’un walked into you. Serves you right! Look alive, or you’ll be nobbled!”
The result of these exertions was that when the door opened half a minute later the office was, to all appearance, as quiet as usual.
To our surprise, the comer was not Mr Barnacle, who usually arrived first, but Mr Merrett, who on other days hardly ever put in an appearance till an hour later.
What was the reason of this reversal of the order of things we could not say, and did not much care. Indeed, it was rather a relief to see the mild senior partner instead of the sharp-eyed junior, who was, some of us thought, far too quick to perceive anything amiss. Jack’s face brightened as much as any one’s at the circumstance. For a moment he forgot all his wrath, and thought only of his poor sister.
He followed Mr Merrett quickly to the door of the partners’ room and said eagerly, “May I speak to you a moment, sir?”
“Yes, my man; come in,” was the encouraging reply.
“Gone to tell tales, I suppose,” said Crow, as the door closed on the two.
“No, he’s not,” said I, ready to take up the gauntlet for my friend; “and you’d better not say it again!”
“Oh, I say! Look here,” said Doubleday, “don’tyoubegin at that game, young shaver! We’re used to it from your chum bull’s-eye, but I’m not going to let you start at it. Besides, Crow wouldn’t like it. Get on with your work, do you hear?”
Jack reappeared in a minute with a grateful face, which showed at once that his application had been successful.
“Good-bye,” said he, coming to my desk; “I’ll send you a line;” and without another word to any one he was gone.
“He’s a cool fish, that friend of yours!” said Doubleday, that afternoon to me. “He seems to get on pretty much as he likes.”
“He’s awfully cut up about his sister,” I said. “Poor Jack!”
“No harm in that!” said Doubleday, condescendingly. “I thought he was quite right to walk into that cad Wallop myself. But he’ll find it rather hot for him when he gets back, I fancy. When’s he coming back?”
“In a day or two, I suppose,” said I.
“And you’ll be mighty disconsolate, I suppose,” said Doubleday, “till he returns? What do you say to coming up to my lodgings to-night, eh, young ’un, to see me?”
I felt very grateful for this unlooked-for honour, and said I would be delighted to come.
“All serene! I’ve asked one or two of the fellows up, so we’ll have a jolly evening. By the way, when you go out get me a couple of boxes of sardines, will you, and a dozen twopenny cigars?”
I executed these commissions, and in due time, business being ended, Doubleday and I and Crow, and the sardines and the cigars, started in a body for Cork Place, where, in a first-floor front, the estimable Mr Doubleday was wont to pitch his daily tent.
They were cosy quarters, and contrasted in a marked manner with Beadle Square. Doubleday knew how to make himself comfortable, evidently. There were one or two good prints on his walls, a cheerful fire in the hearth, a sofa and an easy-chair, and quite an array of pickle-jars and beer-bottles and jam-pots in his cupboard. And, to my thinking, who had been used to the plain, unappetising fare of Mrs Nash, the spread on his table was simply sumptuous.
I felt quite shy at being introduced to such an entertainment, and inwardly wondered how long it would be before I, with my eight shillings a week, would be able to afford the like.
We were a little early, and Doubleday therefore pressed us into the service to help him, as he called it, “get all snug and ship-shape,” which meant boiling some eggs, emptying the jam-pots into glass dishes, and cutting up a perfect stack of bread.
“Who’s coming to-night?” said Crow, with whom, by the way, I had become speedily reconciled in our mutual occupation.
“Oh, the usual lot,” said Doubleday, with the air of a man who gives “feeds” every day of his life. “The two Wickhams, and Joe Whipcord, and the Field-Marshal, and an Irish fellow who is lodging with him. We ought to have a jolly evening.”
In due time the guests arrived, Mr Joseph Whipcord being the earliest. He was a freckled youth of a most horsey get up, in clothes so tight that it seemed a marvel how he could ever sit down, and a straw in his mouth which appeared to grow there. Close on his heels came the two Wickhams, whose chief attractiveness seemed to be that they were twins, and as like as two peas.
“Hullo! here you are,” was Doubleday’s greeting. “Which is which of you to-night, eh?”
“I’m Adam,” replied one of the two, meekly.
“All serene, Adam. Stick this piece of paper in your button-hole, and then we’ll know you from Abel. By the way, Whipcord, I suppose you never heard my last joke, did you?”
“Never heard your first yet,” replied Whipcord, shifting his straw to the other corner of his mouth.
“Oh, yes you did,” retorted Doubleday, who as usual always preferred the laugh when it was on his own side. “Don’t you remember me telling Crow last time you came that you were a fellow who knew a thing or two? That was a joke, eh, twins?”
“Rather,” said both the twins, warmly.
“But my last wasn’t about Whipcord at all: it was about you two. I got muddled up among you somehow and said, ‘For the life of me I am not able to tell one of you from Adam!’”
“Well?” said Whipcord.
“Well, what!” said Doubleday, savagely “The joke?”
“Why, thatwasthe joke, you blockhead! But we can’t expect a poor fellow like you to see it. I say, the Field-Marshal’s behind time. I’ll give him two minutes, and then we’ll start without him.”
Just then there was a knock at the door, and two fellows entered. One was a tall, thin, cadaverous-looking boy a little my senior, and the other—his exact contrast, a thick-set, burly youth, with a merry twinkle in his eye and a chronic grin on his lips.
“Late again, Field-Marshal,” said Doubleday, clapping the cadaverous one on the back with a blow that nearly doubled him up. “Is this your chum? How are you, Patrick?”
The youth addressed as Patrick, but whose real name subsequently was announced as Daly, said he was “rightly,” and that it was his fault the Field-Marshal was late, as he had to shave.
This announcement caused great amusement, for Master Daly was as innocent of a hair on his face as he was of being tattooed, and by the manner in which he joined in the laughter he seemed to be quite aware of the fact.
We sat down to supper in great good spirits. I was perhaps the least cheerful, for all the others being friends, and I knowing only my two fellow-clerks, I felt rather out of it. However, Doubleday, who seemed to have an eye for everybody, soon put me at my ease with myself and the rest.
What a meal it was! I hadn’t tasted such a one since I came to London. Eggs and sardines, lobster and potted meat; coffee and tea, toast, cake, bread-and-butter—it was positively bewildering. And the laughing, and talking, and chaffing that went on, too. Doubleday perfectly astonished me by his talents as a host. He never ceased talking, and yet everybody else talked too; he never ceased partaking, and took care that no one else should either. He seemed to know by the outside of a cup whether it was full or empty, and to be able to see through loaves and dish-covers into everybody’s plate. It would be impossible to say what was not talked about during that wonderful meal. The private affairs of Hawk Street were freely canvassed, and the private affairs of every one of the company were discussed with the most charming frankness. I found myself giving an account of my uncle to the Field-marshal, which confidence he reciprocated by telling me that he was a private in the volunteers (that was why the fellows called him Field-Marshal), and an accountant’s clerk, that his income was fifty pounds a year, that he had saved seven pounds, that he was engaged to a most charming person named Felicia, whom at the present rate of his progress he hoped to marry in about twenty years. Whipcord was discoursing on the points of every racehorse in the calendar to the twins, who had evidently never seen a racehorse; and Daly was telling stories which half choked Crow, and kept us all in fits of laughter. It was a new life to me, this, and no mistake.
“Now then, young Batchelor, walk into those sardines, do you hear?” said our host. “Any more coffee, twins? Pass up those tea-cakes when you’ve helped yourself, Crow. I got them for twopence apiece—not bad, eh? I say, I suppose you’ve heard what’s up in Hawk Street, eh?—jam to the Field-Marshal there. Yes, Harris of the Imports told me: he heard it from Morgan, who knows a fellow who knows old Merrett. Plenty more potted meat in the cupboard; get out some, Batchelor, that’s a good fellow. The fact is—sugar enough in yours, Paddy?—the fact is, the old boy is going to put in a nephew—pass up your cup, Adam, Abel, what’s your name, you with the paper in your button-hole?—what was your mother about when she gave you such idiotic names, both of you? I’d like to give her a piece of my mind!—a nephew or something of the sort—that’ll be the third kid in the last half-year landed in on us—don’t you call that lobster a good one for eighteen pence, Paddy, my boy? Never mind, I’ll let them know I’m not going to train up all their young asses for nothing—hullo! Batchelor, beg pardon, old man; I forgot you were one of them!”
This occasioned a laugh, which made me look very self-conscious; which Doubleday saw, and tried to help me out.
“If they were all like you,” he said, with a patronising smile, “it wouldn’t hurt; but that bull’s-eye chum of yours is a drop too much for an office like ours. Do you know, I believe it’s a fact he’s been in gaol, or something of the sort—try a little vinegar with it, Field-Marshal—capital thing for keeping down the fat. Never saw such a temper, upon my word, did you, Crow? Why, he was nearly going to eatyouup this very morning. And the best of it is, he thinks he’s the only fellow in the office who does a stroke of work. Never mind, he’s safe at home for a bit; but, my eye! won’t he be astonished to find Merrett, Barnacle, and Company can get on without him!”
I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable. It was rank treason to sit by and listen to all this without putting in a word for my friend; and yet in this company I could not for the life of me make the venture. Indeed, to my shame be it said, with the eyes of my companions upon me, and their laughter in my ears, I even faintly joined in the smile at poor Jack’s expense.
“Is this pleasant chap a friend of yours?” said the Field-Marshal.
“Yes,” said I, rather hesitatingly, “we were at school together, you know.”
I despised myself heart and soul for my cowardice, and for me the rest of the meal passed with little enjoyment.
And when the cloth was cleared away fresh difficulties presented themselves.
“Are you a good hand at whist?” asked Adam, as we stood in front of the fire.
“No,” said I; “I don’t play.”
“Don’t you? We’ll give you a lesson, then.”
Now my bringing-up had been peculiar, as the reader knows. In many ways it had been strict, and in many ways lax; but one of the scruples I had always carried about with me was on the subject of gambling.
Consequently I felt particularly uncomfortable at the twin’s offer, and at a loss how to respond to it; and before I could resolve the chance was gone.
“Now then,” said Doubleday, “make up your fours there, but for goodness’ sake don’t let both the patriarchs get at the same table! You with the paper and Crow, and Paddy and I—we’ll have this table, and you other four take the other;” and before I knew where I was I found myself seated at a table, opposite Whipcord, with thirteen cards in my hand.
I did not know what to do. Had my partner been any one but Whipcord, with the straw in his mouth, I do believe I should have made a mild protest. Had Doubleday or Crow been one of our party, I might have screwed up my courage. But Whipcord had impressed me as a particularly knowing and important personage, and I felt quite abashed in his presence, and would not for anything have him think I considered anything that he did not correct.
“I’m afraid I don’t know the way to play,” said I, apologetically, when the game began.
“You don’t!” said he. “Why, where were you at school? Never mind, you’ll soon get into it.”
This last prophecy was fulfilled. Somehow or other I picked up the game pretty quickly, and earned a great deal of applause from my partner by my play. Indeed, despite my being a new hand, our side won, and the Field-Marshal and Abel had to hand over sixpence after sixpence as the evening went on. The sight of the money renewed my discomforts; it was bad enough, so I felt, to play cards at all, but to play for money was a thing I had always regarded with a sort of horror. Alas! how easy it is, in the company of one’s fancied superiors, to forget one’s own poor scruples!
The game at our table came to rather an abrupt end, brought on by a difference of opinion between the Field-marshal and Mr Whipcord on some point connected with a deal. It was a slight matter, but in the sharp words that ensued my companions came out in a strangely new light. Whipcord, especially, gave vent to language which utterly horrified me, and the Field-Marshal was not backward to reply in a similar strain.
How long this interchange of language might have gone on I cannot say, had not Doubleday opportunely interposed. “There you are, at it again, you two, just like a couple of bargees! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Look how you’ve shocked the young ’un there! You really shouldn’t!”
I coloured up at this speech. From the bantering tone in which Doubleday spoke it seemed as if he half despised any one who was not used to the sound of profanity; and I began to be angry with myself for having looked so horrified.
The quarrel was soon made up with the help of some of the twopenny cigars, which were now produced along with the beer-bottles. By this time I had been sufficiently impressed by my company not to decline anything, and I partook of both of these luxuries—that is, I made believe to smoke a cigar, and kept a glass of beer in front of me, from which I took a very occasional sip.
My mind was thoroughly uncomfortable. I had known all along I was not a hero; but it had never occurred to me before that I was a coward. In the course of one short evening I had forsaken more than one old principle, merely because others did the same. I had joined in a laugh against my best friend, because I had not the courage to stand up for him behind his back, and I had tried to appear as if bad language and drinking and gambling were familiar things to me, because I dared not make a stand and confess I thought them loathsome.
We sat for a long time that night talking and cracking jokes, and telling stories. Many of the latter were clever and amusing, but others—those that raised the loudest laugh—were of a kind I had never heard before, and which I blush now to recall. Any one who had seen me would have supposed that talk like this was what I most relished. Had they but heard another voice within reproaching me, they might have pitied rather than blamed me.
And yet with all the loose talk was mixed up so much of real jollity and good-humour that it was impossible to feel wholly miserable.
Doubleday kept up his hospitality to the last. He would stop the best story to make a guest comfortable, and seemed to guess by instinct what everybody wanted.
At last the time came for separating, and I rose to go with feelings partly of relief, partly of regret. The evening had been a jolly one, and I had enjoyed it; but then, had I done well to enjoy it? That was the question.
“Oh, I say,” said Daly, as we said good-night on the doorstep, “were you ever at a school called Stonebridge House?”
“Yes,” said I, startled to hear the name once more. “You weren’t there, were you?”
“No; but a fellow I know, called Flanagan, was, and—”
“Do you know Flanagan?” I exclaimed; “he’s the very fellow I’ve been trying to find out. Iwouldlike to see him again.”
“Yes, he lives near us. I say, suppose you come up to the Field-Marshal and me on Tuesday; we live together, you know. We’ll have Flanagan and a fellow or two in.”
I gladly accepted this delightful invitation, and went back to Mrs Nash’s feeling myself a good deal more a “man of the world,” and a good deal less of a hero, than I had left it that morning.
Chapter Fifteen.How I got rather the Worst of it in a Certain Encounter.My evening at Doubleday’s lodgings was the first of a course of small dissipations which, however pleasant while they lasted, did not altogether tend to my profit.Of course, I had no intention of going in for that sort of thing regularly; but, I thought, while Jack Smith was away for a few days, there would be no harm in relieving the dulness of my life at Beadle Square by occasionally accepting the hospitality of such decent, good-natured fellows as Doubleday and his friends. There was nothing wrong, surely, in one fellow going and having supper with another fellow now and then! How easy the process, when one wishes to deceive oneself!But two days after Smith had gone home I received a letter which somewhat upset my calculations. It had the Packworth postmark, and was addressed in the same cramped hand in which the momentous letter which had summoned Jack from London had been written.I was surprised that it was not in Jack’s own hand. It ran as follows:—“Sir,—I am sorry to say Master Johnny has took ill since he came down. The doctor thinks it is smallpox; so please excuse him to the gentlemen, and say we hope it will make no difference, as he cannot come for a many weeks. Your humble—Jane Shield.”John ill—with smallpox! This was a blow! My first impulse was, at all risks, to go down and look after him. But I reflected that this would be, after all, foolish. I should certainly not be allowed to see him, and even if I were, I could not of course return to the office with the infection about me. Poor Jack! At least it was a comfort that he had some one to look after him.My first care, after the receipt of the letter, was to seek an interview with the partners and explain matters to them. And this I found not a very formidable business. Mr Barnacle, indeed, did say something about its being awkward just when they were so busy to do without a clerk. But Mr Merrett overruled this by reminding his partner that in a week or two his nephew would be coming to the office, and that, to begin with, he could fill up the vacant place.“Besides,” said he, with a warmth which made me feel quite proud of my friend—“besides, Smith is too promising a lad to spare.”So I was able to write a very reassuring letter to good Mrs Shield, and tell her it would be all right about Jack’s place when he came back. Meanwhile, I entreated her to let me know regularly how he was getting on, and to tell me if his sister was better, and, in short, to keep me posted up in all the Smith news that was going.This done, I set myself to face the prospect of a month or so of life in London without my chum.I didn’t like the prospect. The only thing that had made Beadle Square tolerable was his company, and how I should get on now with Mr Horncastle and his set I did not care to anticipate.I confided my misgivings to Doubleday, who laughed at them.“Oh,” said he, “you must turn that place up. I know it. One of our fellows was there once. It’s an awfully seedy place to belong to.”“The worst of it is,” said I—who, since my evening at Doubleday’s, had come to treat him as a confidant—“that my uncle pays my lodging there; and if I went anywhere else he’d tell me to pay for myself.”“That’s awkward,” said Doubleday, meditatively; “pity he should stick you in such a cheap hole.”“I don’t think, you know,” said I, feeling rather extinguished by Doubleday’s pitying tone, “it’s such a very cheap place. It’s three-and-six a week.”Doubleday gazed at me in astonishment, and then broke out into a loud laugh.“Three-and-six a week! Why, my dear fellow, you could do it cheaper in a workhouse. Oh, good gracious! your uncle must be in precious low water to stick you up in a hole like that at three-and-six a week. Do you know what my lodgings cost, eh, young ’un?”“No,” said I, very crestfallen; “how much?”“Fifteen bob, upon my honour, and none too grand. Three-and-six a week, why—I say, Crow!”“Oh, don’t go telling everybody!” cried I, feeling quite ashamed of myself.“Oh, all serene. But it is rather rich, that. Good job you don’t get your grub there.”I did not tell Doubleday that I did get my “grub” there, and left him to infer what he pleased by my silence.“Anyhow,” said he, “if you must hang on there, there’s nothing to prevent your knocking about a bit of an evening. What do you generally go in for when your friend Bull’s-eye’s at home? I mean what do you do with yourselves of an evening?”“Oh,” said I, “they’ve got a parlour at Mrs Nash’s, and books—”Once more Doubleday laughed loud, “What! a parlour and books included for three-and-six a week! My eye! young ’un, you’re in luck; and you mean to say you—oh, I say, what a treat!—do you hear, Crow?”“Please!” I exclaimed, “what’s the use of telling any one?”“Eh—oh, all right, I won’t tell any one; but think of you and Bull’s-eye sitting in a three-and-six parlour without carpets or wall-papers readingTim Goodyboy’s Sunday Picture-book, and all that.”I smiled faintly, vexed though I was. “They’ve novels there,” I said, grandly.“No! and all for three-and-six too! No wonder you’re snug. Well, no accounting for tastes. I wonder you don’t ask me to come and spend an evening with you. Itwouldbe a treat!”The result of this conversation and a good many of a similar character was to make me thoroughly discontented with, and more than half ashamed of, my lot. And the more I mixed with Doubleday and his set, the more I felt this. They all had the appearance of such well-to-do fellows, to whom expense seemed no object. They talked in such a scoffing way of the “poor beggars” who couldn’t “stand” the luxuries they indulged in, or dress in the fashionable style they affected.After six months, the clothes with which I had come to London were beginning to look the worse for wear, and this afflicted me greatly just at a time when I found myself constantly in the society of these grandees. I remember one entire evening at Doubleday’s sitting with my left arm close in to my side because of a hole under the armpit; and on another occasion borrowing Mrs Nash’s scissors to trim the ends of my trousers before going to spend the evening at Daly’s.That occasion, by the way, was the Tuesday when, according to invitation, I was to go up to the lodgings of Daly and the Field-Marshal, there to meet my old schoolfellow Flanagan.I had looked forward not a little to this meeting, and was secretly glad that he would find me one of a set represented by such respectable and flourishing persons as Doubleday and Daly. When, a fortnight before, Smith and I had hunted up and down his street to find him, I knew nothing of “what was what” compared with what I did now. I was determined to make an impression on my old schoolfellow; and therefore, as I have said, trimmed up the ends of my trousers with Mrs Nash’s scissors, invested in a new (cheap), necktie, and carefully doctored the seam under my armpit with ink and blacking.Thus decorated I hurried off to my host’s lodgings. The first thing I saw as I entered the door filled me with mortification. It was Flanagan, dressed in a loud check suit, with a stick-up collar and a horseshoe scarf-pin—with cloth “spats” over his boots, and cuffs that projected at least two inches from the ends of his coat sleeves.I felt so shabby and disreputable that I was tempted to turn tail and escape. I had all along hoped that Flanagan would be got up in a style which would keep me in countenance, and make me feel rather more at home than I did among the other stylish fellows of the set. But so far from that being the case, here he was the most howling swell of them all.Before I could recover from the surprise and disappointment I felt he had seen me, and advanced with all his old noisy frankness.“Hullo! here he is. How are you, Batchelor? Here we are again, eh? Rather better than the Henniker’s parlour, eh?”I forgot all my disappointment for a moment in the pleasure of meeting him. In voice and manner at least he was the Flanagan of old days. Why couldn’t he dress rather more quietly?Daly was there in all his glory, and the Field-Marshal as lank and cadaverous as ever; and besides ourselves there was Whipcord with the straw in his mouth, and one or two other fellows belonging to our host’s particular set. The supper was quite as elaborate and a good deal more noisy than that at Doubleday’s. I sat next to Flanagan, and hoped to be able to get some talk with him about old days; but I found he was far too much taken up with the fun that was going on to be a very attentive listener. And so I felt more than ever extinguished and out of it, and all my fond hopes of making an impression on my old schoolfellow speedily vanished.“What are you going to do?” said Whipcord, when the meal was over.“I don’t care,” said Daly; “cards if you like.”“Oh, bother cards,” was the reply; “let’s have a ramble out of doors for a change.”“Hullo! Whip, how is it you’re down on cards?” said the Field-Marshal. “I thought you always won.”There was something not very nice in the tone of the cadaverous man of war which roused the ire of the virtuous Whipcord.“What do you mean, you—who says I always win at cards?”“You generally win when I’m playing against you,” said the Field-Marshal.“Look here,” said Whipcord, very red in the face, and chewing his straw in an agitated manner, “do you mean to insinuate I cheat at cards, eh, you—?”“I never said anything of the kind,” replied the Field-marshal; “I said you generally won, that’s all. What’s the use of making an ass of yourself?”I began to perceive by this time that Mr Whipcord was excited by something more than the Field-Marshal’s talk. The fact was, he had drunk too much, and that being so, it was worse than useless to reason with him.“Who says I generally win at cards?” shouted he. “I’ll fight any one that says so: if you like, I’ll take the lot of you.”The laugh which greeted this valiant challenge only enraged the excited youth the more.He broke out into language which seemed to be only too ready to his lips, and again shouted, “I’ll teach you to call me a cheat, I will! I’ll teach you to call me a blackleg, so I will! I’ll teach you to call me—”“A howling jackass,” put in the Field-Marshal, whose chief vocation it seemed to be to goad on his irate guest.“Yes, I’ll teach you to call me a howling jackass!” cried Whipcord, turning short round on me, and catching me by the throat.“Me! I never called you a howling jackass!” cried I, in astonishment and alarm.“Yes, you did, you young liar; I heard you. Wasn’t it him?” he cried, appealing to the company in general.“Sounded precious like his voice,” said one of the fellows, who, as I had scarcely opened my mouth the whole evening, must have had a rather vivid imagination.“Yes, I know it was you. I knew it all along,” said Whipcord, shifting his straw from side to side of his mouth, and glaring at me, half-stupidly, half-ferociously.“It wasn’t, indeed,” said I, feeling very uncomfortable. “I never said a word.”Whipcord laughed as he let go my throat and began to take off his coat. I watched him in amazement. Surely he was not going to make me fight! I looked round beseechingly on the company, but could get no comfort out of their laughter and merriment.Whipcord divested himself of his coat, then of his waistcoat, then he took off his necktie and collar, then he let down his braces and tied his handkerchief round his waist in the manner of a belt, and finally proceeded to roll up his shirt-sleeves above the elbows.“Now then,” said he, advancing towards me in a boxing attitude, “I’ll teach you to call me a thief!”I was so utterly taken aback by all this, that I could scarcely believe I was not dreaming.“I really didn’t call you a thief,” I said.“You mean to say you won’t fight?” cried my adversary, sparring up at me.“Hold hard!” cried Daly, before I could answer. “Of course he’s going to fight; but give him time to peel, man. Look alive, Batchelor, off with your coat.”“I’m not going to fight, indeed,” said I, in utter bewilderment.“Yes you are,” said Flanagan, “and it won’t be your first go in either, old man. I’ll back you!”One or two of the fellows pulled off my coat—my poor seedy coat. I remember even then feeling ashamed of the worn flannel shirt, out at elbows, that was below it, and which I had little expected any one that evening to see.“Will you have your waistcoat off?” said Daly.“No,” replied I.“Better,” said Flanagan, “and your collar too.”This was awful! My collar was a paper one, and pinned on to the shirt in two places!“No!” I cried, in desperation at these officious offers; “let me alone, please.”“Oh, all serene! But he’s got the pull of you.”Perhaps if I had had a clean linen shirt on, with studs down the front, I might have been more tractable in the matter of peeling.It had by this time gradually dawned on me that I was in for a fight, and that there was no getting out of it. My adversary was bigger than I was, and evidently far more at home with the customs of the prize-ring. I would fain have escaped, but what could I do?Meanwhile the table was hurriedly pushed into a corner of the room and the chairs piled up in a heap.“Now then!” cried the Field-Marshal, who, in some miraculous manner, now appeared as backer to the fellow with whom a few minutes ago he had been quarrelling—“now then, aren’t you ready there?”“Yes,” said Flanagan, rolling up my shirt-sleeves; “all ready! Now then, old man, straight out from the shoulder, you know. Keep your toes straight, and guard forward. Now then—there!”I was in for it then; and, being in for it, the only thing was to go through with it, and that I determined to do.My adversary advanced towards me, half prancing, with his hands high, his elbows out, his face red, and his straw jerking about like a steam-engine. It might be showy form, I thought, but from the very little I knew of boxing it was not good. And the closer we approached the more convinced of this I was, and the more hope I seemed to have of coming out of the affair creditably.Now, reader, whoever you are, before I go further I ask you to remember that I am recording in this book not what I ought to have done, but what I did do. You will very likely have your own opinions as to what I should have done under the circumstances. You may think that I should, at all costs, have declined to fight; you may think I should have summoned the police; you may think I should have stood with my hands behind my back till my face was the size of a football, and about the same colour; or you may think I was right in standing up to hit my man, and doing all I knew to demolish him. Do not let me embarrass your judgment; my duty just now is merely to tell you what did happen.As I expected, Whipcord’s idea seemed to be to knock me out of time at the very beginning of the encounter, and therefore during the first round I found it needed all my efforts to frustrate this little design, without attempting on my part to take the offensive.As it was, I did not altogether succeed, for, Whipcord being taller than I, I could not help coming in for one or two downward blows, which, however, thanks to my hard head, seemed more formidable to the spectators than they really were.“Not half bad,” was Flanagan’s encouraging comment when in due time I retired to his side for a short breathing space. “I never thought you’d be so well up to him. Are you much damaged?”“No,” said I.“Well, you’d best play steady this next round too,” said my second. “He can’t hold out long with his elbows that height. If you like you can have a quiet shot or two at his breastplate, just to get your hand in for the next round.”This advice I, now quite warmed up to the emergency, adopted.Whipcord returned to his sledge-hammer tactics, and as carelessly as ever, too; for more than once I got in under his guard, and once, amid terrific plaudits, got “home”—so Flanagan called it—on his chin, in a manner which, I flattered myself, fairly astonished him.“Now then, Whip, what are you thinking about?” cried the Field-Marshal; “you aren’t going to let the young ’un lick you, surely?”“Time!” cried Daly, before the bruised one could reply; and so ended round two, from which I retired covered with dust and glory.I felt very elated, and was quite pleased with myself now that I had, stood up to my man. It seemed perfectly plain I had the battle in my own hands, so I inwardly resolved if possible to bring the affair to an end in the next round, and let my man off easy.Conceited ass that I was! To my amazement and consternation, Whipcord came up to the scratch on time being called in an entirely new light. Instead of being the careless slogger I had taken him for, he went to work now in a most deliberate and scientific manner. It gradually dawned on me that I had been played with so far, and that my man was only now beginning to give his mind to the business. Ass that I had been! Poor wretch that I was!Before the round had well begun I was reeling about like a ninepin. The little knowledge of pugilism I had, or thought I had, was like child’s play against the deliberate downright assault of this practised hand. I did what I could, but it was very little. The laughter of my opponents and the gibes of my backers all tended to flurry me and lose me my head.Let me draw a veil over that scene.My opponent was not one of the sort to give quarter. He had had a blow of mine on his chin in the last round, and he had heard the laughter and cheers which greeted it. It was his turn now, and he took his turn as long as I could stand up before him. It seemed as if “time!” would never be called. I was faint and sick, and my face—Ah! that last was a finishing stroke. I could keep my feet no longer, and fell back into Flanagan’s arms amidst a perfect roar of laughter and applause.At that moment the shame was almost more bitter to me than the pain. This then was the result of my high living! This was what I had got by turning up my nose at my lot in Beadle Square, and aspiring to associate with my betters! This was the manner in which I was to make an impression on my old schoolfellow, and improve my footing with my new friends! No wonder I felt ashamed.“You’d better invest in a little raw beefsteak,” said Flanagan; “that’s what will do you most good.”This was all the comfort I got. The fight being over, everybody lost his interest in me and my opponent, and, as if nothing had happened, proceeded to re-discuss the question of playing cards or taking a walk.I was left to put on my poor shabby coat without help, and no one noticed me as I slunk from the room. Even Flanagan, from whom I had at least expected some sympathy, was too much taken up with the others to heed me; and as I walked slowly and unsteadily that night along the London streets, I felt for the first time since I came to the great city utterly friendless and miserable.When I returned to Beadle Square every one had gone to bed except one boy, who was sitting up, whistling merrily over a postage-stamp album, into which he was delightedly sticking some recent acquisition. I could not help thinking bitterly how his frame of mind contrasted at that moment with mine. He was a nice boy, lately come. He kept a diary of everything he did, and wrote and heard from home every week. The fellows all despised him, and called him a pious young prig, because he said his prayers at night, and went to a chapel on Sundays. But, prig or not, he was as happy as a king over his stamps, and the sight made me (I knew not why), tenfold more miserable.“Hullo!” said he, stopping whistling as I came in, “there’s a letter for you. I say, if you get any foreign stamps at your office I wish you’d save them for me, will you? Look, here’s a jolly Brazil one; I got it—what’s the matter?”I heard not a word of his chatter, for the letter was from Packworth.“Sir,—We’re afraid poor Master Johnny is very bad—he’s been taken to the hospital. He said, when he took ill, that it must have been a boy he took out of the streets and let sleep in his bed. Oh, sir, we are so sad! The young lady is better; but if Johnny dies—”I could read no more. The excitement and injuries of the evening, added to this sudden and terrible news of my only friend, were too much for me. I don’t exactly know what happened to me, but I have an idea young Larkins was not able to get on with his postage-stamps much more that evening.
My evening at Doubleday’s lodgings was the first of a course of small dissipations which, however pleasant while they lasted, did not altogether tend to my profit.
Of course, I had no intention of going in for that sort of thing regularly; but, I thought, while Jack Smith was away for a few days, there would be no harm in relieving the dulness of my life at Beadle Square by occasionally accepting the hospitality of such decent, good-natured fellows as Doubleday and his friends. There was nothing wrong, surely, in one fellow going and having supper with another fellow now and then! How easy the process, when one wishes to deceive oneself!
But two days after Smith had gone home I received a letter which somewhat upset my calculations. It had the Packworth postmark, and was addressed in the same cramped hand in which the momentous letter which had summoned Jack from London had been written.
I was surprised that it was not in Jack’s own hand. It ran as follows:—
“Sir,—I am sorry to say Master Johnny has took ill since he came down. The doctor thinks it is smallpox; so please excuse him to the gentlemen, and say we hope it will make no difference, as he cannot come for a many weeks. Your humble—Jane Shield.”
John ill—with smallpox! This was a blow! My first impulse was, at all risks, to go down and look after him. But I reflected that this would be, after all, foolish. I should certainly not be allowed to see him, and even if I were, I could not of course return to the office with the infection about me. Poor Jack! At least it was a comfort that he had some one to look after him.
My first care, after the receipt of the letter, was to seek an interview with the partners and explain matters to them. And this I found not a very formidable business. Mr Barnacle, indeed, did say something about its being awkward just when they were so busy to do without a clerk. But Mr Merrett overruled this by reminding his partner that in a week or two his nephew would be coming to the office, and that, to begin with, he could fill up the vacant place.
“Besides,” said he, with a warmth which made me feel quite proud of my friend—“besides, Smith is too promising a lad to spare.”
So I was able to write a very reassuring letter to good Mrs Shield, and tell her it would be all right about Jack’s place when he came back. Meanwhile, I entreated her to let me know regularly how he was getting on, and to tell me if his sister was better, and, in short, to keep me posted up in all the Smith news that was going.
This done, I set myself to face the prospect of a month or so of life in London without my chum.
I didn’t like the prospect. The only thing that had made Beadle Square tolerable was his company, and how I should get on now with Mr Horncastle and his set I did not care to anticipate.
I confided my misgivings to Doubleday, who laughed at them.
“Oh,” said he, “you must turn that place up. I know it. One of our fellows was there once. It’s an awfully seedy place to belong to.”
“The worst of it is,” said I—who, since my evening at Doubleday’s, had come to treat him as a confidant—“that my uncle pays my lodging there; and if I went anywhere else he’d tell me to pay for myself.”
“That’s awkward,” said Doubleday, meditatively; “pity he should stick you in such a cheap hole.”
“I don’t think, you know,” said I, feeling rather extinguished by Doubleday’s pitying tone, “it’s such a very cheap place. It’s three-and-six a week.”
Doubleday gazed at me in astonishment, and then broke out into a loud laugh.
“Three-and-six a week! Why, my dear fellow, you could do it cheaper in a workhouse. Oh, good gracious! your uncle must be in precious low water to stick you up in a hole like that at three-and-six a week. Do you know what my lodgings cost, eh, young ’un?”
“No,” said I, very crestfallen; “how much?”
“Fifteen bob, upon my honour, and none too grand. Three-and-six a week, why—I say, Crow!”
“Oh, don’t go telling everybody!” cried I, feeling quite ashamed of myself.
“Oh, all serene. But it is rather rich, that. Good job you don’t get your grub there.”
I did not tell Doubleday that I did get my “grub” there, and left him to infer what he pleased by my silence.
“Anyhow,” said he, “if you must hang on there, there’s nothing to prevent your knocking about a bit of an evening. What do you generally go in for when your friend Bull’s-eye’s at home? I mean what do you do with yourselves of an evening?”
“Oh,” said I, “they’ve got a parlour at Mrs Nash’s, and books—”
Once more Doubleday laughed loud, “What! a parlour and books included for three-and-six a week! My eye! young ’un, you’re in luck; and you mean to say you—oh, I say, what a treat!—do you hear, Crow?”
“Please!” I exclaimed, “what’s the use of telling any one?”
“Eh—oh, all right, I won’t tell any one; but think of you and Bull’s-eye sitting in a three-and-six parlour without carpets or wall-papers readingTim Goodyboy’s Sunday Picture-book, and all that.”
I smiled faintly, vexed though I was. “They’ve novels there,” I said, grandly.
“No! and all for three-and-six too! No wonder you’re snug. Well, no accounting for tastes. I wonder you don’t ask me to come and spend an evening with you. Itwouldbe a treat!”
The result of this conversation and a good many of a similar character was to make me thoroughly discontented with, and more than half ashamed of, my lot. And the more I mixed with Doubleday and his set, the more I felt this. They all had the appearance of such well-to-do fellows, to whom expense seemed no object. They talked in such a scoffing way of the “poor beggars” who couldn’t “stand” the luxuries they indulged in, or dress in the fashionable style they affected.
After six months, the clothes with which I had come to London were beginning to look the worse for wear, and this afflicted me greatly just at a time when I found myself constantly in the society of these grandees. I remember one entire evening at Doubleday’s sitting with my left arm close in to my side because of a hole under the armpit; and on another occasion borrowing Mrs Nash’s scissors to trim the ends of my trousers before going to spend the evening at Daly’s.
That occasion, by the way, was the Tuesday when, according to invitation, I was to go up to the lodgings of Daly and the Field-Marshal, there to meet my old schoolfellow Flanagan.
I had looked forward not a little to this meeting, and was secretly glad that he would find me one of a set represented by such respectable and flourishing persons as Doubleday and Daly. When, a fortnight before, Smith and I had hunted up and down his street to find him, I knew nothing of “what was what” compared with what I did now. I was determined to make an impression on my old schoolfellow; and therefore, as I have said, trimmed up the ends of my trousers with Mrs Nash’s scissors, invested in a new (cheap), necktie, and carefully doctored the seam under my armpit with ink and blacking.
Thus decorated I hurried off to my host’s lodgings. The first thing I saw as I entered the door filled me with mortification. It was Flanagan, dressed in a loud check suit, with a stick-up collar and a horseshoe scarf-pin—with cloth “spats” over his boots, and cuffs that projected at least two inches from the ends of his coat sleeves.
I felt so shabby and disreputable that I was tempted to turn tail and escape. I had all along hoped that Flanagan would be got up in a style which would keep me in countenance, and make me feel rather more at home than I did among the other stylish fellows of the set. But so far from that being the case, here he was the most howling swell of them all.
Before I could recover from the surprise and disappointment I felt he had seen me, and advanced with all his old noisy frankness.
“Hullo! here he is. How are you, Batchelor? Here we are again, eh? Rather better than the Henniker’s parlour, eh?”
I forgot all my disappointment for a moment in the pleasure of meeting him. In voice and manner at least he was the Flanagan of old days. Why couldn’t he dress rather more quietly?
Daly was there in all his glory, and the Field-Marshal as lank and cadaverous as ever; and besides ourselves there was Whipcord with the straw in his mouth, and one or two other fellows belonging to our host’s particular set. The supper was quite as elaborate and a good deal more noisy than that at Doubleday’s. I sat next to Flanagan, and hoped to be able to get some talk with him about old days; but I found he was far too much taken up with the fun that was going on to be a very attentive listener. And so I felt more than ever extinguished and out of it, and all my fond hopes of making an impression on my old schoolfellow speedily vanished.
“What are you going to do?” said Whipcord, when the meal was over.
“I don’t care,” said Daly; “cards if you like.”
“Oh, bother cards,” was the reply; “let’s have a ramble out of doors for a change.”
“Hullo! Whip, how is it you’re down on cards?” said the Field-Marshal. “I thought you always won.”
There was something not very nice in the tone of the cadaverous man of war which roused the ire of the virtuous Whipcord.
“What do you mean, you—who says I always win at cards?”
“You generally win when I’m playing against you,” said the Field-Marshal.
“Look here,” said Whipcord, very red in the face, and chewing his straw in an agitated manner, “do you mean to insinuate I cheat at cards, eh, you—?”
“I never said anything of the kind,” replied the Field-marshal; “I said you generally won, that’s all. What’s the use of making an ass of yourself?”
I began to perceive by this time that Mr Whipcord was excited by something more than the Field-Marshal’s talk. The fact was, he had drunk too much, and that being so, it was worse than useless to reason with him.
“Who says I generally win at cards?” shouted he. “I’ll fight any one that says so: if you like, I’ll take the lot of you.”
The laugh which greeted this valiant challenge only enraged the excited youth the more.
He broke out into language which seemed to be only too ready to his lips, and again shouted, “I’ll teach you to call me a cheat, I will! I’ll teach you to call me a blackleg, so I will! I’ll teach you to call me—”
“A howling jackass,” put in the Field-Marshal, whose chief vocation it seemed to be to goad on his irate guest.
“Yes, I’ll teach you to call me a howling jackass!” cried Whipcord, turning short round on me, and catching me by the throat.
“Me! I never called you a howling jackass!” cried I, in astonishment and alarm.
“Yes, you did, you young liar; I heard you. Wasn’t it him?” he cried, appealing to the company in general.
“Sounded precious like his voice,” said one of the fellows, who, as I had scarcely opened my mouth the whole evening, must have had a rather vivid imagination.
“Yes, I know it was you. I knew it all along,” said Whipcord, shifting his straw from side to side of his mouth, and glaring at me, half-stupidly, half-ferociously.
“It wasn’t, indeed,” said I, feeling very uncomfortable. “I never said a word.”
Whipcord laughed as he let go my throat and began to take off his coat. I watched him in amazement. Surely he was not going to make me fight! I looked round beseechingly on the company, but could get no comfort out of their laughter and merriment.
Whipcord divested himself of his coat, then of his waistcoat, then he took off his necktie and collar, then he let down his braces and tied his handkerchief round his waist in the manner of a belt, and finally proceeded to roll up his shirt-sleeves above the elbows.
“Now then,” said he, advancing towards me in a boxing attitude, “I’ll teach you to call me a thief!”
I was so utterly taken aback by all this, that I could scarcely believe I was not dreaming.
“I really didn’t call you a thief,” I said.
“You mean to say you won’t fight?” cried my adversary, sparring up at me.
“Hold hard!” cried Daly, before I could answer. “Of course he’s going to fight; but give him time to peel, man. Look alive, Batchelor, off with your coat.”
“I’m not going to fight, indeed,” said I, in utter bewilderment.
“Yes you are,” said Flanagan, “and it won’t be your first go in either, old man. I’ll back you!”
One or two of the fellows pulled off my coat—my poor seedy coat. I remember even then feeling ashamed of the worn flannel shirt, out at elbows, that was below it, and which I had little expected any one that evening to see.
“Will you have your waistcoat off?” said Daly.
“No,” replied I.
“Better,” said Flanagan, “and your collar too.”
This was awful! My collar was a paper one, and pinned on to the shirt in two places!
“No!” I cried, in desperation at these officious offers; “let me alone, please.”
“Oh, all serene! But he’s got the pull of you.”
Perhaps if I had had a clean linen shirt on, with studs down the front, I might have been more tractable in the matter of peeling.
It had by this time gradually dawned on me that I was in for a fight, and that there was no getting out of it. My adversary was bigger than I was, and evidently far more at home with the customs of the prize-ring. I would fain have escaped, but what could I do?
Meanwhile the table was hurriedly pushed into a corner of the room and the chairs piled up in a heap.
“Now then!” cried the Field-Marshal, who, in some miraculous manner, now appeared as backer to the fellow with whom a few minutes ago he had been quarrelling—“now then, aren’t you ready there?”
“Yes,” said Flanagan, rolling up my shirt-sleeves; “all ready! Now then, old man, straight out from the shoulder, you know. Keep your toes straight, and guard forward. Now then—there!”
I was in for it then; and, being in for it, the only thing was to go through with it, and that I determined to do.
My adversary advanced towards me, half prancing, with his hands high, his elbows out, his face red, and his straw jerking about like a steam-engine. It might be showy form, I thought, but from the very little I knew of boxing it was not good. And the closer we approached the more convinced of this I was, and the more hope I seemed to have of coming out of the affair creditably.
Now, reader, whoever you are, before I go further I ask you to remember that I am recording in this book not what I ought to have done, but what I did do. You will very likely have your own opinions as to what I should have done under the circumstances. You may think that I should, at all costs, have declined to fight; you may think I should have summoned the police; you may think I should have stood with my hands behind my back till my face was the size of a football, and about the same colour; or you may think I was right in standing up to hit my man, and doing all I knew to demolish him. Do not let me embarrass your judgment; my duty just now is merely to tell you what did happen.
As I expected, Whipcord’s idea seemed to be to knock me out of time at the very beginning of the encounter, and therefore during the first round I found it needed all my efforts to frustrate this little design, without attempting on my part to take the offensive.
As it was, I did not altogether succeed, for, Whipcord being taller than I, I could not help coming in for one or two downward blows, which, however, thanks to my hard head, seemed more formidable to the spectators than they really were.
“Not half bad,” was Flanagan’s encouraging comment when in due time I retired to his side for a short breathing space. “I never thought you’d be so well up to him. Are you much damaged?”
“No,” said I.
“Well, you’d best play steady this next round too,” said my second. “He can’t hold out long with his elbows that height. If you like you can have a quiet shot or two at his breastplate, just to get your hand in for the next round.”
This advice I, now quite warmed up to the emergency, adopted.
Whipcord returned to his sledge-hammer tactics, and as carelessly as ever, too; for more than once I got in under his guard, and once, amid terrific plaudits, got “home”—so Flanagan called it—on his chin, in a manner which, I flattered myself, fairly astonished him.
“Now then, Whip, what are you thinking about?” cried the Field-Marshal; “you aren’t going to let the young ’un lick you, surely?”
“Time!” cried Daly, before the bruised one could reply; and so ended round two, from which I retired covered with dust and glory.
I felt very elated, and was quite pleased with myself now that I had, stood up to my man. It seemed perfectly plain I had the battle in my own hands, so I inwardly resolved if possible to bring the affair to an end in the next round, and let my man off easy.
Conceited ass that I was! To my amazement and consternation, Whipcord came up to the scratch on time being called in an entirely new light. Instead of being the careless slogger I had taken him for, he went to work now in a most deliberate and scientific manner. It gradually dawned on me that I had been played with so far, and that my man was only now beginning to give his mind to the business. Ass that I had been! Poor wretch that I was!
Before the round had well begun I was reeling about like a ninepin. The little knowledge of pugilism I had, or thought I had, was like child’s play against the deliberate downright assault of this practised hand. I did what I could, but it was very little. The laughter of my opponents and the gibes of my backers all tended to flurry me and lose me my head.
Let me draw a veil over that scene.
My opponent was not one of the sort to give quarter. He had had a blow of mine on his chin in the last round, and he had heard the laughter and cheers which greeted it. It was his turn now, and he took his turn as long as I could stand up before him. It seemed as if “time!” would never be called. I was faint and sick, and my face—
Ah! that last was a finishing stroke. I could keep my feet no longer, and fell back into Flanagan’s arms amidst a perfect roar of laughter and applause.
At that moment the shame was almost more bitter to me than the pain. This then was the result of my high living! This was what I had got by turning up my nose at my lot in Beadle Square, and aspiring to associate with my betters! This was the manner in which I was to make an impression on my old schoolfellow, and improve my footing with my new friends! No wonder I felt ashamed.
“You’d better invest in a little raw beefsteak,” said Flanagan; “that’s what will do you most good.”
This was all the comfort I got. The fight being over, everybody lost his interest in me and my opponent, and, as if nothing had happened, proceeded to re-discuss the question of playing cards or taking a walk.
I was left to put on my poor shabby coat without help, and no one noticed me as I slunk from the room. Even Flanagan, from whom I had at least expected some sympathy, was too much taken up with the others to heed me; and as I walked slowly and unsteadily that night along the London streets, I felt for the first time since I came to the great city utterly friendless and miserable.
When I returned to Beadle Square every one had gone to bed except one boy, who was sitting up, whistling merrily over a postage-stamp album, into which he was delightedly sticking some recent acquisition. I could not help thinking bitterly how his frame of mind contrasted at that moment with mine. He was a nice boy, lately come. He kept a diary of everything he did, and wrote and heard from home every week. The fellows all despised him, and called him a pious young prig, because he said his prayers at night, and went to a chapel on Sundays. But, prig or not, he was as happy as a king over his stamps, and the sight made me (I knew not why), tenfold more miserable.
“Hullo!” said he, stopping whistling as I came in, “there’s a letter for you. I say, if you get any foreign stamps at your office I wish you’d save them for me, will you? Look, here’s a jolly Brazil one; I got it—what’s the matter?”
I heard not a word of his chatter, for the letter was from Packworth.
“Sir,—We’re afraid poor Master Johnny is very bad—he’s been taken to the hospital. He said, when he took ill, that it must have been a boy he took out of the streets and let sleep in his bed. Oh, sir, we are so sad! The young lady is better; but if Johnny dies—”
I could read no more. The excitement and injuries of the evening, added to this sudden and terrible news of my only friend, were too much for me. I don’t exactly know what happened to me, but I have an idea young Larkins was not able to get on with his postage-stamps much more that evening.