Chapter Eight.My Fare.Don’t you make a mistake, now, and think I’m not a working man, because I am. Don’t you run away with the idea that because I go of a morning and find my horse and cab waiting ready cleaned for me, and I jumps up and drives off, as I don’t work as hard as any mechanic, because I do; and I used to work harder, for it used to be Sunday and week days, till the missus and me laid our heads together, and said, if we couldn’t live on six days’ work a week at cabbing we’d try something else; so now I am only a six days’ man—Hansom cab, VR, licensed to carry two persons.None o’ your poor, broken-kneed knackers for me. I takes my money in to the governor regular, and told him flat that if I couldn’t have a decent horse, I wouldn’t drive; and I spoke a bit sharp, having worked for him ten years.“Take your chice, Steve Wilkins,” he says; and I took it, and drove Kangaroo, the wall-eyed horse with a rat tail.I had a call one day off the stand by the Foundling, and has to go into New Ormond Street, close by; and I takes up an old widow lady and her daughter—as beautiful a girl of seventeen or eighteen as ever I set eyes on, but so weak that I had to go and help her down to the cab, when she thanked me so sweetly that I couldn’t help looking again and again, for it was a thing I wasn’t used to.“Drive out towards the country, cabman, the nearest way,” says the old lady; “and when we want to turn back, I’ll speak.”“Poor gal!” I says, “she’s an invalid. She’s just such a one as my Fan would have been if she’d lived;” and I says this to myself as I gets on to my box, feeling quite soft; for though I knew my gal wouldn’t have been handsome, what did that matter? I didn’t like to lose her.“Let’s see,” I says again, “she wants fresh air. We’ll go up the hill, and through Hampstead;” and I touches Kangaroo on the flank, and away we goes, and I picks out all the nicest bits I could, and when I comes across a pretty bit of view I pulls up, and pretends as there’s a strap wanted tightening, or a hoof picking, or a fresh knot at the end of the whip, and so on. Then I goes pretty quickly along the streety bits, and walks very slowly along the green lanes; and so we goes on for a good hour, when the old lady pushes the lid open with her parasol, and tells me to turn back.“All right, mum,” I says; and takes ’em back another way, allers following the same plan; and at last pulls up at the house where I supposed they was lodgers, for that’s a rare place for lodgings about there.I has the young lady leaning on my arm when she gets out, and when she was at the door she says, “Thank you” again, so sweetly and sadly that it almost upset me. But the old lady directly after asked me the fare, and I tells her, and she gives me sixpence too much, and though I wanted to pocket it, I wouldn’t, but hands it back.“Thank you, cabman,” she says; “that’s for being so kind and attentive to my poor child.”“God bless her, mum,” I says, “I don’t want paying for that.”Then she smiles quite pleasant, and asks me if it would be worth my while to call again the next afternoon if it was fine, and I says it would; and next day, just in the same way, I goes right off past Primrose Hill, and seeing as what they wanted was the fresh air, I makes the best o’ my way right out, and then, when we was amongst the green trees, Kangaroo and me takes it easy, and just saunters along. Going up hill I walks by his head, and picks at the hedges, while them two, seeing as I took no notice of ’em, took no notice o’ me. I mean, you know, treated me as if we was old friends, and asked me questions about the different places we passed, and so on.Bimeby I drives ’em back, and the old lady again wanted to give me something extra for what she called my kind consideration; but “No, Stevey,” I says to myself; “if you can’t do a bit o’ kindness without being paid for it, you’d better put up the shutters, and take to some other trade.” So I wouldn’t have it, and the old lady thought I was offended; but I laughed, and told her as the young lady had paid me; and so she had, with one of her sad smiles, and I said I’d be there again nex’ day if it was fine.And so I was; and so we went on, day after day, and week after week; and I could see that, though the sight of the country and the fresh air brightened the poor girl up a bit, yet he was getting weaker and weaker, so that, at last, I half carried her to the cab, and back again after the ride. One day, while I was waiting, the servant tells me that they wouldn’t stay in town, only on account of a great doctor, as they went to see at first, but who came to them now; and, last of all, when I went to the house, I used always to be in a fidget for fear the poor gal should be too ill to come out. But no, month after month she kep’ on; and when I helped her, used to smile so sweetly, and talk so about the trouble she gave me, that one day, feeling a bit low, I turned quite silly, and happening to look at her poor mother a-standing there with the tears in her eyes, I had to hurry her in, trod get up on to my seat as quick as I could, to keep from breaking down myself.Poor gal! always so loving and kind to all about her—always thanking one so sweetly, and looking all the while so much like what one would think an angel would look—it did seem so pitiful to feel her get lighter and lighter, week by week—so feeble, that, at last, I used to go upstairs to fetch her, and always carried her down like a child.Then she used to laugh, and say, “Don’t let me fall, Stephen,”—for they got to call me by my name, and to know the missus, by her coming in to help a bit; for the old lady asked me to recommend ’em an honest woman, and I knowed none honester than my wife. And so it was with everybody—it didn’t matter who it was—they all loved the poor gal; and I’ve had the wife come home and sit and talk about her, and about our Fanny as died, till she’s been that upset she’s cried terribly.Autumn came in werry wet and cold, and there was an end to my jobs there. Winter was werry severe, but I kep’ on hearing from the missus how the poor gal was—sometimes better, sometimes worse; and the missus allus shook her head werry sadly when she talked about her.Jennywerry and Feberwerry went by terribly cold, and then March came in quite warm and fine, so that things got so forrard, you could buy radishes wonderful cheap in April; and one night the wife comes home and tells me that if it was as fine nex’ day as it had been, I was to call, and take the old lady and her daughter out.Nex’ day was splendid. It was as fine a spring day as ever I did see, and I sticks a daffy-down-dilly in on each side of Kangaroo’s head, and then spends twopence in a couple o’ bunches o’ wilets, and pins ’em in on the side where the poor gal used to sit, puts clean straw in the boot, and then drives to the place with the top lid open, so as to sweeten the inside, because swells had been smoking there that morning.“Jest run yer sponge and leather over the apron a bit, Buddy,” I says to our waterman, afore I left the stand.“Got a wedding on?” he says, seeing how pertickler I was.“There, look alive!” I says, quite snappish; for I didn’t feel in a humour to joke; and then, when I’d got all as I thought right, I drives up, keeping the lid open, as I said afore.When I draws up, I puts the nose-bag on the old horse, for him to amuse himself with, and so as I could leave him, for he wouldn’t stir an inch with that bag on, to please all the pleacemen in London. Then I rings, and waits, and at last gets my orders to go and help the young lady down.I takes off my hat, wipes my shoes well, and goes up; and there she was waiting, and smiled so pleasantly again, and held out her hand to me, as though I’d been a friend, instead of a rough, weather-battered street cabman. And do you know what I did, as I went in there, with my eyes all dim at seeing her so, so changed? Why, I felt as if I ought to do it, and I knelt down and took her beautiful white hand in mine, and kissed it, and left a big tear on it; for something seemed to say so plainly that she’d soon be where I hoped my own poor gal was, whom I always say we lost; but my wife says, “No, not lost, for she is ours still.”She was so light now, that I carried her down in a minute; and when she was in the cab and saw the wilets, she took ’em down, and held ’em in her hand, and nodded and smiled again at me, as though she thanked me for them.“Go the same way as you went first time, Stephen,” she says.And I pushed over all the quieter bits, and took her out beyond Hampstead; and there, in the greenest and prettiest spot I could find, I pulls up, and sits there listening to the soft whispers of her voice, and feeling, somehow, that it was for the last time.After a bit I goes gently on again, more and more towards the country, where the hedges were turning beautiful and green, and all looked so bright and gay.Bimeby I stops again, for there was a pretty view, and you could see miles away. Of course, I didn’t look at them if I could help it, for the real secret of people enjoying a ride is being with a driver who seems no more to ’em than the horse—a man, you see, who knows his place. But I couldn’t help just stealing one or two looks at the inside where that poor gal lay back in the corner, looking out at the bright spring-time, and holding them two bunches o’ wilets close to her face. I was walking backwards and forwards then, patting the horse and straightening his harness, when I just catches the old lady’s eye, and saw she looked rather frightened, and she leans over to her daughter and calls her by name quickly; but the poor girl did not move, only stared straight out at the blue sky, and smiled so softly and sweetly.I didn’t want no telling what to do, for I was in my seat and the old horse flying amost before you could have counted ten; and away we went, full pace, till I come up to a doctor’s, dragged at the bell, and had him up to the cab in no time; and then he rode on the footboard of the cab, in front of the apron, with the shutters let down; and he whispered to me to drive back softly, and I did.The old lady has lodged with us ever since, for I took a better place on purpose, and my missus always attends on her. She’s werry fond o’ talking with my wife about their two gals who have gone before; but though I often, take her for a drive over the old spots, she never says a word to me about such things; while soon after the funeral she told Sarah to tell me as the wilets were not taken from the poor gal’s hand, same time sending me a fi-pun note to buy a suit o’ mourning.Of course, I couldn’t wear that every day, but there was a bit o’ rusty crape on my old shiny hat not such a werry long time ago; and I never buy wilets now, for as they lie in the baskets in spring-time, sprinkled with the drops o’ bright water, they seem to me to have tears upon ’em, and make me feel sad and upset, for they start me off thinking about “My Fare.”
Don’t you make a mistake, now, and think I’m not a working man, because I am. Don’t you run away with the idea that because I go of a morning and find my horse and cab waiting ready cleaned for me, and I jumps up and drives off, as I don’t work as hard as any mechanic, because I do; and I used to work harder, for it used to be Sunday and week days, till the missus and me laid our heads together, and said, if we couldn’t live on six days’ work a week at cabbing we’d try something else; so now I am only a six days’ man—Hansom cab, VR, licensed to carry two persons.
None o’ your poor, broken-kneed knackers for me. I takes my money in to the governor regular, and told him flat that if I couldn’t have a decent horse, I wouldn’t drive; and I spoke a bit sharp, having worked for him ten years.
“Take your chice, Steve Wilkins,” he says; and I took it, and drove Kangaroo, the wall-eyed horse with a rat tail.
I had a call one day off the stand by the Foundling, and has to go into New Ormond Street, close by; and I takes up an old widow lady and her daughter—as beautiful a girl of seventeen or eighteen as ever I set eyes on, but so weak that I had to go and help her down to the cab, when she thanked me so sweetly that I couldn’t help looking again and again, for it was a thing I wasn’t used to.
“Drive out towards the country, cabman, the nearest way,” says the old lady; “and when we want to turn back, I’ll speak.”
“Poor gal!” I says, “she’s an invalid. She’s just such a one as my Fan would have been if she’d lived;” and I says this to myself as I gets on to my box, feeling quite soft; for though I knew my gal wouldn’t have been handsome, what did that matter? I didn’t like to lose her.
“Let’s see,” I says again, “she wants fresh air. We’ll go up the hill, and through Hampstead;” and I touches Kangaroo on the flank, and away we goes, and I picks out all the nicest bits I could, and when I comes across a pretty bit of view I pulls up, and pretends as there’s a strap wanted tightening, or a hoof picking, or a fresh knot at the end of the whip, and so on. Then I goes pretty quickly along the streety bits, and walks very slowly along the green lanes; and so we goes on for a good hour, when the old lady pushes the lid open with her parasol, and tells me to turn back.
“All right, mum,” I says; and takes ’em back another way, allers following the same plan; and at last pulls up at the house where I supposed they was lodgers, for that’s a rare place for lodgings about there.
I has the young lady leaning on my arm when she gets out, and when she was at the door she says, “Thank you” again, so sweetly and sadly that it almost upset me. But the old lady directly after asked me the fare, and I tells her, and she gives me sixpence too much, and though I wanted to pocket it, I wouldn’t, but hands it back.
“Thank you, cabman,” she says; “that’s for being so kind and attentive to my poor child.”
“God bless her, mum,” I says, “I don’t want paying for that.”
Then she smiles quite pleasant, and asks me if it would be worth my while to call again the next afternoon if it was fine, and I says it would; and next day, just in the same way, I goes right off past Primrose Hill, and seeing as what they wanted was the fresh air, I makes the best o’ my way right out, and then, when we was amongst the green trees, Kangaroo and me takes it easy, and just saunters along. Going up hill I walks by his head, and picks at the hedges, while them two, seeing as I took no notice of ’em, took no notice o’ me. I mean, you know, treated me as if we was old friends, and asked me questions about the different places we passed, and so on.
Bimeby I drives ’em back, and the old lady again wanted to give me something extra for what she called my kind consideration; but “No, Stevey,” I says to myself; “if you can’t do a bit o’ kindness without being paid for it, you’d better put up the shutters, and take to some other trade.” So I wouldn’t have it, and the old lady thought I was offended; but I laughed, and told her as the young lady had paid me; and so she had, with one of her sad smiles, and I said I’d be there again nex’ day if it was fine.
And so I was; and so we went on, day after day, and week after week; and I could see that, though the sight of the country and the fresh air brightened the poor girl up a bit, yet he was getting weaker and weaker, so that, at last, I half carried her to the cab, and back again after the ride. One day, while I was waiting, the servant tells me that they wouldn’t stay in town, only on account of a great doctor, as they went to see at first, but who came to them now; and, last of all, when I went to the house, I used always to be in a fidget for fear the poor gal should be too ill to come out. But no, month after month she kep’ on; and when I helped her, used to smile so sweetly, and talk so about the trouble she gave me, that one day, feeling a bit low, I turned quite silly, and happening to look at her poor mother a-standing there with the tears in her eyes, I had to hurry her in, trod get up on to my seat as quick as I could, to keep from breaking down myself.
Poor gal! always so loving and kind to all about her—always thanking one so sweetly, and looking all the while so much like what one would think an angel would look—it did seem so pitiful to feel her get lighter and lighter, week by week—so feeble, that, at last, I used to go upstairs to fetch her, and always carried her down like a child.
Then she used to laugh, and say, “Don’t let me fall, Stephen,”—for they got to call me by my name, and to know the missus, by her coming in to help a bit; for the old lady asked me to recommend ’em an honest woman, and I knowed none honester than my wife. And so it was with everybody—it didn’t matter who it was—they all loved the poor gal; and I’ve had the wife come home and sit and talk about her, and about our Fanny as died, till she’s been that upset she’s cried terribly.
Autumn came in werry wet and cold, and there was an end to my jobs there. Winter was werry severe, but I kep’ on hearing from the missus how the poor gal was—sometimes better, sometimes worse; and the missus allus shook her head werry sadly when she talked about her.
Jennywerry and Feberwerry went by terribly cold, and then March came in quite warm and fine, so that things got so forrard, you could buy radishes wonderful cheap in April; and one night the wife comes home and tells me that if it was as fine nex’ day as it had been, I was to call, and take the old lady and her daughter out.
Nex’ day was splendid. It was as fine a spring day as ever I did see, and I sticks a daffy-down-dilly in on each side of Kangaroo’s head, and then spends twopence in a couple o’ bunches o’ wilets, and pins ’em in on the side where the poor gal used to sit, puts clean straw in the boot, and then drives to the place with the top lid open, so as to sweeten the inside, because swells had been smoking there that morning.
“Jest run yer sponge and leather over the apron a bit, Buddy,” I says to our waterman, afore I left the stand.
“Got a wedding on?” he says, seeing how pertickler I was.
“There, look alive!” I says, quite snappish; for I didn’t feel in a humour to joke; and then, when I’d got all as I thought right, I drives up, keeping the lid open, as I said afore.
When I draws up, I puts the nose-bag on the old horse, for him to amuse himself with, and so as I could leave him, for he wouldn’t stir an inch with that bag on, to please all the pleacemen in London. Then I rings, and waits, and at last gets my orders to go and help the young lady down.
I takes off my hat, wipes my shoes well, and goes up; and there she was waiting, and smiled so pleasantly again, and held out her hand to me, as though I’d been a friend, instead of a rough, weather-battered street cabman. And do you know what I did, as I went in there, with my eyes all dim at seeing her so, so changed? Why, I felt as if I ought to do it, and I knelt down and took her beautiful white hand in mine, and kissed it, and left a big tear on it; for something seemed to say so plainly that she’d soon be where I hoped my own poor gal was, whom I always say we lost; but my wife says, “No, not lost, for she is ours still.”
She was so light now, that I carried her down in a minute; and when she was in the cab and saw the wilets, she took ’em down, and held ’em in her hand, and nodded and smiled again at me, as though she thanked me for them.
“Go the same way as you went first time, Stephen,” she says.
And I pushed over all the quieter bits, and took her out beyond Hampstead; and there, in the greenest and prettiest spot I could find, I pulls up, and sits there listening to the soft whispers of her voice, and feeling, somehow, that it was for the last time.
After a bit I goes gently on again, more and more towards the country, where the hedges were turning beautiful and green, and all looked so bright and gay.
Bimeby I stops again, for there was a pretty view, and you could see miles away. Of course, I didn’t look at them if I could help it, for the real secret of people enjoying a ride is being with a driver who seems no more to ’em than the horse—a man, you see, who knows his place. But I couldn’t help just stealing one or two looks at the inside where that poor gal lay back in the corner, looking out at the bright spring-time, and holding them two bunches o’ wilets close to her face. I was walking backwards and forwards then, patting the horse and straightening his harness, when I just catches the old lady’s eye, and saw she looked rather frightened, and she leans over to her daughter and calls her by name quickly; but the poor girl did not move, only stared straight out at the blue sky, and smiled so softly and sweetly.
I didn’t want no telling what to do, for I was in my seat and the old horse flying amost before you could have counted ten; and away we went, full pace, till I come up to a doctor’s, dragged at the bell, and had him up to the cab in no time; and then he rode on the footboard of the cab, in front of the apron, with the shutters let down; and he whispered to me to drive back softly, and I did.
The old lady has lodged with us ever since, for I took a better place on purpose, and my missus always attends on her. She’s werry fond o’ talking with my wife about their two gals who have gone before; but though I often, take her for a drive over the old spots, she never says a word to me about such things; while soon after the funeral she told Sarah to tell me as the wilets were not taken from the poor gal’s hand, same time sending me a fi-pun note to buy a suit o’ mourning.
Of course, I couldn’t wear that every day, but there was a bit o’ rusty crape on my old shiny hat not such a werry long time ago; and I never buy wilets now, for as they lie in the baskets in spring-time, sprinkled with the drops o’ bright water, they seem to me to have tears upon ’em, and make me feel sad and upset, for they start me off thinking about “My Fare.”
Chapter Nine.Spots on Life’s Sun.In educating myself a bit, it seems to me like getting up a high mountain; and after going on at it for years and years, I’ve come to the idea that there never is any getting up atop, for no sooner do I get up one place than there’s another; and so it is always the same, and you’ve never done. It’s being thick-headed, I suppose; but somehow or another I can’t get to understand lots of things, and I know I never shall. Now just look here: suppose I, as a working man, go into my neighbour Frank Brown’s garden, cuts his cabbages, digs up his potatoes, and takes ’em home—“annexes” ’em, you know; then larrups Frank till he’s obliged to cut and run; then I takes a werry loving fancy to all his furniture, clothes, and chaney, and moves ’em into my premises. “Don’t do that,” says his wife. “There, holdyourtongue,” I says, “I’m ‘annexing’ ’em; and you may be off after your husband;” and then I turns her out and locks the door.“That’s a rum game,” you’ll say. Very good; so it is; and when the thing’s showed up, where am I? stole the vegetables, assaulted Frank Brown, insulted and abused his wife, and plundered his house. What would Mr Payne, or Mr Bodkin, or Mr Knox say to me, eh? Why, of course, I must serve my time in gaol to make amends. But that’s what I can’t understand, and I want to know why I mayn’t do it retail, when my betters do it wholesale. Here we are: here’s the King of Prussia turned out the King of Hanover and his wife, and, I s’pose, some more of ’em; and I mean to say it’s precious hard; and then again he’s been thrashing the Austrians, as perhaps deserved it, and perhaps didn’t, while no end of homes have been made desolate, and thousands upon thousands of God’s creatures slaughtered, let alone the tens of thousands as have been mutilated and will bear the marks of the battles to their graves. Ah! I’ve sat aside a man as was on the battle-fields, and heard him describe the “glory” of the war, the anguish of the wounded, the fearful distortion of the dead, the smashed horses, and, above all, that horrible slaughterhouse stench of blood that fouled the air with its sickening, disease-bringing, cholera-sowing taint. And then the King says “Hurray,” and they sing the “Te Deum.”There, I suppose I’m very ignorant, but I can’t understand it at all; and in my simple fancy it seems blasphemous. Say we had an invading army coming against us—same as in the days of good Queen Bess—and we drive ’em off. Those who fall do it in defence of their country, and die like heroes; well, then, let’s sing the “Te Deum,” and thank Him for letting us gain the victory. Say we go to help an oppressed country fairly and honestly. Good again—let’s return thanks; but when it’s for the sake of getting land, and for more conquest, why, then, if it must be done, the less that is said afterwards the better. And besides they must be having a grand festival, and bring fifty of the prettiest maidens in the city to meet the King and present him with laurel wreaths. Better have taken him crape bands for the hats of all his party, and to distribute amongst the fatherless! Some pictures there were in the ’lustrated papers, too, of the laurel-crowned damsels, and the grand religious festival with panoply and priests; but the artist gave one grim rub to the whole thing—one as tells, too—for here and there, in undress uniform, he sketched out wan-looking men with their arms in slings, or limping with sticks, crippled perhaps for life; and then no doubt they’ll give you some of their ideas of glorious war. Illuminations, too, under the Lindens at Berlin; grand enough, no doubt; but it seems as though the heavens wept to see it, for the rain’s streaming down at a fine rate.But, there, I suppose I don’t understand these sort of things, and like a good many more get talking about what I should hold my tongue on; but somehow or another, whenever I hear the wordwar, I can’t see regiments of gay soldiers, and bands of music, and prancing horses, but trampled, muddy, and blood-stained fields, with shattered bodies lying about; or dim rooms turned into hospitals, with men lying groaning in their great agony—hopeless, perhaps, of ever rising from the rough pallet where they lie.But, there, let’s get on to another kind of war—warwiththe knife—knife and fork, you know—the battle of life for a living; for there’s no mistake about it, there is a regular battle going on for the daily bread, and if a man hasn’t been well drilled to it in his apprenticeship, it’s rather a poor figure he’ll cut in amongst the rest. Ah, you come across some rum fellow soldiers, too, in the course of your life; here’s one chap is asked to do a little extra job, and, as he does it, goes on like our old sexton used down in the country when he put up the Christmas holly in the church. “Ah!” he says to me—“Ah! you see, I don’t get nothing for doing this—only my salary.” Men are so precious frightened of making work scarce. Why, I remember soon after I came up to London going into Saint Paul’s for a gape round, when they were going to fit up the seats for the Charity Children’s Festival; and do what I would I couldn’t help having a hearty laugh to see how the fellows were going it. Perhaps it was a scaffold pole wanted lifting; when about a score of chaps would go crawling up to it, and have a look; then one would touch it with his foot, and then another; then one would stoop down and take hold on it, and give a groan, and then let go again; next another would have his groan over it; then they’d look round, as if they thought being in a grand church a miracle war going to happen, and that the pole would get up of itself and go to its place.It didn’t though: so at last, groaning and grunting, they managed to get it on their shoulders—the whole score of ’em trying to have a hand in it; but puzzled sometimes how to manage it, for the short ’uns couldn’t hitch their shoulders up high enough to reach, and had to be content with walking under it like honest British workmen as had made up their minds to earn every penny of their money; while the tall chaps carried the pole, and it didn’t seem to hurt them much as they took it to its place and groaned it down again; when they was all so faint that they had to knock off for some beer.I have heard an old workman say how many bricks he’d lay in a day in his best times, and it was a precious many; and I’ve seen old Johnny Mawley lay ’em too, and he’d have been just the chap to suit some of our London men, who look sour at you if you lay into the work tight. Old Johnny used to build little walls and pigsties down in Lincolnshire, and had his boy, young Johnny, with him. There the old chap would be tapping and pottering about over his work, with no necessity for him to stand still till the mortar set at the bottom, for fear of the building giving way or growing top-heavy—there he’d be, with the work getting well set as he went on; for after getting one brick in its place and the mortar cleared off, he’d drawl out very slowly, as he stood looking at his job—“Johnny, lad, wilt thou bring me another brick?” And Johnny used to bring him another brick; and old Johnny would lay it; and work never got scarce through him.Men are so precious frightened of interfering with one another. I s’pose it’s all right; but it seems so queer for the plasterer to knock off because a bit of beading wants nailing on or taking off, and the carpenter has to be fetched to do it, when half a dozen taps of the hammer would have set all right. Bricklayer’s setting a stove, and he can’t turn a screw, but must have the smith; whilst the carpenter knocks off because a bit of brick wants chipping out of the wall; and so they go on; and so I go on grumbling at it, and fault-finding. But the most I grumble at is this—the number of public-houses there is about London waiting with their easily-swinging doors to trap men. There’s no occasion to knock; just lean against the door, and open it comes; and there’s the grandly fitted-up place, and a smart barman or barmaid to wait on you, and all so nice, and attractive, and sticky, that there’s no getting away again; so that it seems like one of those catch-’em-alives as the fellows used to sell about the streets—and we poor people the flies.Nice trade that must be, and paying; to see the glitter and gloss they puts on, and the showy places they build in the most miserable spots—gilt, and paint, and gas, and all in style. And then the boards and notices! “Double brown stout, 3 pence per pot in your own jugs; sparkling champagne ales; Devonshire cider; cordial gin, and compounds; Jamaica rum;” while at one place there was a chap had up in his window “Cwrw o’ Cymru,” which must be an uncommon nice drink, I should think; but I never had any of it, whatever it is. But how one fellow does tempt another into these places, and how the money does go there—money that ought to be taken home; and it isn’t like any other kind of business: say you want a coffee-shop, or a baker’s, you’ll have two or three streets, perhaps, to go down to find one; but there’s always a public at the corner all ready. And, you see, with some men it is like it was with a mate of mine—Fred Brown—easy-going, good-hearted chap.“Come and have half a pint, Fred,” one’d say to him; and then Fred would shake his head, and be going on, till they began to banter him a bit, when he’d go in and have his half-pint same as lots of us do, and no great harm neither; but then this beer used to make him thirsty for more, and then more, and more, when the end of it used to be that what with treating, and one thing and another, Fred used to go home less seven or eight shillings in his pocket, and all of a stagger, to make his wife miserable, and the little things of children stare to see him look such a brute.I lost sight of the poor chap for about five years; and then, when we met, I shouldn’t have known him if he hadn’t spoken in a rough, husky voice, while his face looked bloated and pasty.“Can’t help it, mate,” he’d say. “Can’t eat now, and if it warn’t for the drop o’ drink I couldn’t live.”Strange words them for a young man of five-and-thirty; but I believe they were true, and he almost lived upon beer and gin. But I thought it couldn’t last long, and living as I did close by him, and often dropping into his miserable room, I knew how matters went with him; and at last he was down and unable to go to work.Fortunately for him, in spite of all trouble, his wife had kept the club money paid up, or they would have been in a queer fix, for they were proper badly off, as you could see at a glance when you went in: ragged scrap or two of carpet, half worn-out chairs, ricketty table, and very dirty-looking old bedstead in the same room, while where his poor wife and children managed to creep of nights I don’t know. Second floor back room it was, and when I got up there his wife made me a sign not to make a noise, for he was asleep; and she was doing all she could to hush the baby in her arms.Poor woman! only a few years ago healthy, bright-eyed, and good-looking; but now only half-dressed, sunken-cheeked, and pale, as numbers of other poor neglected wives we see every day in the streets. Two more children were playing on the floor, while another lay with arms round its father’s neck, and there, just peeping at me above Fred’s rough black whiskers, were the two bright eyes.I hadn’t been there long before he woke; and then in that half-hour that followed I saw sorrow, misery, and horrors enough to make any man thoughtful for the rest of his life. A strong, able workman, with his mind completely overthrown by drink, imagining all sorts of strange creatures were in the room and thronging about his bed, while every time he recognised those about him came the constant demand for drink—for the stuff that had brought him down to what he was. His poor wife was that beat out, that I promised to come back and sit up with him that night, so that she could go and lie down at a neighbour’s; and about half-past nine I went back, and soon after there I was alone with poor Fred, and him lying in a sort of dose.It’s not a nice thing to do, sitting up, in any case, for you get creepy, and nervous, and fidgetty; but when it’s with a man who is off his mind, why, it’s ten times worse; and there I sat with my eyes fixed upon the bed, hour after hour, half afraid lest the poor fellow should get out, or be up to any mad tricks.I suppose it was about two o’clock, and when all was about still in the streets—not even the rumble of a cab to be heard—when somehow or another things seemed to get misty and dim; the bed seemed to be rising and falling, while poor Fred’s head was as if it had swelled up, and kept coming closer to me, and then went back; and then I could see nothing at all.I woke up with a start, and a horrible feeling on me that there was something wrong; then came the sound of trampling overhead, while at the same moment the light gave a flickering leap, and went out.I knew the matches were on the table, and after knocking over something I found them lying open; but it was the barley-water jug I had upset, and the matches were dripping wet. Trembling and confused, I stood for a moment not knowing what to do, and then felt my way towards the bed, with the horrid dread upon me that poor Fred might spring at me and strangle me in the dark. Something seemed to tell me that he wasn’t in the bed, and therefore I expected he would be crouching down and waiting to spring at me; and in my fancy I thought I could see it all—the struggle for the mastery, and him getting me down, so that I could not cry for help.The confusion must have had something to do with it; but at all events there was I quite unnerved and shaken, as I lightly touched the bed and found all the clothes in a heap; while further search showed me that there was no one there. Then I heard again the trampling noise overhead and hurried towards the door, with both hands stretched out; when, in the dark, one went on either side of the open door, and I struck my forehead a violent blow. There was no time, though, to mind that, for I knew something was wrong upstairs, and that Fred must be at the bottom of it; so, hurrying up, I was soon at the door of the back attic, where, though it was shut, I heard enough to make me shove it open with my shoulder and dash in; for a sound came out as of two savage beasts worrying each other, and then, by the dim light from the open window, I could see two men scuffling upon the floor, while a woman sat on the bed crouched up, and holding a baby to her breast—evidently too frightened to move.As I dashed in, one of the men leaped up, and was through the window in a moment; and then, on going quickly up and leaning out, I could see it was Fred, standing right upon the parapet above the lead gutter, when my heart seemed to quite stand still, as I leaned there, expecting every moment to see the poor fellow fall on to the flags beneath—four stories; for he would have gone right into the basement yard at the back.Just then some one touched me; and looking sharp round, there was the scared face of the lodger, and he whispered, “He was a-trying to get out, when I woke up and seized him. He’s a’most choked me.”That was a strange, wild time, as I stood there wondering what was best to be done; and do what I would I could hardly summon up the courage to go after him, though I knew it was only through my neglect that he had escaped from his room, and therefore I was bound to do something.I tried calling him at first; but the only effect that had was to make him begin muttering and walking backwards and forwards upon that giddy parapet, so that it quite chilled one’s blood; for, though used enough to scaffolds at proper time and place, there was something horrid in engaging in a struggle with one who was no better than a madman, on such a roof as this.But I did not stop thinking, or I should never have done what I did, which was to get out into the gutter and walk cautiously up to the poor fellow.There—it took only a moment or two—not more, and then he bounded on to me, and we too were struggling together and rocking backwards and forwards all those feet above the ground, with certain death on one side if I slipped, or he proved too strong for me. Now we swayed this way, now that, and wet with the sweat of terror, I could feel myself weaker every moment; and the very thought of what would come at last was too horrid to bear. Once I got him back against the sloping roof, and my spirits revived; but the next moment he leaped up, as though of watch-spring, and had me down on my back upon the stone parapet, and head and shoulders over the horrid pit beneath.I could not cry out, but felt tongue and lips parched, while, with the strength of despair, I clutched his neck, and gazed with startled looks into his wild, glowering, half-shut eyes. He was muttering and talking the whole time, and every moment as I grew weaker, I could feel that I was being forced over the parapet. How many seconds it took I can’t say, but it seemed to me like an hour till the time when I felt that all hope was past, and I shut my eyes that I might not see myself fall. There seemed no hope—nothing but death before me, as I lay there, with my flesh seeming to creep, and me unable to give a cry for help.All at once, though, the clutch upon me grew feeble; then it ceased altogether; and I saw poor Fred dragged away backwards; but it was some few moments before I dared try to move, when, shivering in every limb, I rolled myself off the stone parapet, and lay in a half swoon in the gutter.But the danger was over now; for two of the lodgers had dragged the poor fellow back into the attic by his legs, and after a sharp struggle he was securely tied down to the bed; but it was some time before I could work on the top of a house again without getting nervous and upset.
In educating myself a bit, it seems to me like getting up a high mountain; and after going on at it for years and years, I’ve come to the idea that there never is any getting up atop, for no sooner do I get up one place than there’s another; and so it is always the same, and you’ve never done. It’s being thick-headed, I suppose; but somehow or another I can’t get to understand lots of things, and I know I never shall. Now just look here: suppose I, as a working man, go into my neighbour Frank Brown’s garden, cuts his cabbages, digs up his potatoes, and takes ’em home—“annexes” ’em, you know; then larrups Frank till he’s obliged to cut and run; then I takes a werry loving fancy to all his furniture, clothes, and chaney, and moves ’em into my premises. “Don’t do that,” says his wife. “There, holdyourtongue,” I says, “I’m ‘annexing’ ’em; and you may be off after your husband;” and then I turns her out and locks the door.
“That’s a rum game,” you’ll say. Very good; so it is; and when the thing’s showed up, where am I? stole the vegetables, assaulted Frank Brown, insulted and abused his wife, and plundered his house. What would Mr Payne, or Mr Bodkin, or Mr Knox say to me, eh? Why, of course, I must serve my time in gaol to make amends. But that’s what I can’t understand, and I want to know why I mayn’t do it retail, when my betters do it wholesale. Here we are: here’s the King of Prussia turned out the King of Hanover and his wife, and, I s’pose, some more of ’em; and I mean to say it’s precious hard; and then again he’s been thrashing the Austrians, as perhaps deserved it, and perhaps didn’t, while no end of homes have been made desolate, and thousands upon thousands of God’s creatures slaughtered, let alone the tens of thousands as have been mutilated and will bear the marks of the battles to their graves. Ah! I’ve sat aside a man as was on the battle-fields, and heard him describe the “glory” of the war, the anguish of the wounded, the fearful distortion of the dead, the smashed horses, and, above all, that horrible slaughterhouse stench of blood that fouled the air with its sickening, disease-bringing, cholera-sowing taint. And then the King says “Hurray,” and they sing the “Te Deum.”
There, I suppose I’m very ignorant, but I can’t understand it at all; and in my simple fancy it seems blasphemous. Say we had an invading army coming against us—same as in the days of good Queen Bess—and we drive ’em off. Those who fall do it in defence of their country, and die like heroes; well, then, let’s sing the “Te Deum,” and thank Him for letting us gain the victory. Say we go to help an oppressed country fairly and honestly. Good again—let’s return thanks; but when it’s for the sake of getting land, and for more conquest, why, then, if it must be done, the less that is said afterwards the better. And besides they must be having a grand festival, and bring fifty of the prettiest maidens in the city to meet the King and present him with laurel wreaths. Better have taken him crape bands for the hats of all his party, and to distribute amongst the fatherless! Some pictures there were in the ’lustrated papers, too, of the laurel-crowned damsels, and the grand religious festival with panoply and priests; but the artist gave one grim rub to the whole thing—one as tells, too—for here and there, in undress uniform, he sketched out wan-looking men with their arms in slings, or limping with sticks, crippled perhaps for life; and then no doubt they’ll give you some of their ideas of glorious war. Illuminations, too, under the Lindens at Berlin; grand enough, no doubt; but it seems as though the heavens wept to see it, for the rain’s streaming down at a fine rate.
But, there, I suppose I don’t understand these sort of things, and like a good many more get talking about what I should hold my tongue on; but somehow or another, whenever I hear the wordwar, I can’t see regiments of gay soldiers, and bands of music, and prancing horses, but trampled, muddy, and blood-stained fields, with shattered bodies lying about; or dim rooms turned into hospitals, with men lying groaning in their great agony—hopeless, perhaps, of ever rising from the rough pallet where they lie.
But, there, let’s get on to another kind of war—warwiththe knife—knife and fork, you know—the battle of life for a living; for there’s no mistake about it, there is a regular battle going on for the daily bread, and if a man hasn’t been well drilled to it in his apprenticeship, it’s rather a poor figure he’ll cut in amongst the rest. Ah, you come across some rum fellow soldiers, too, in the course of your life; here’s one chap is asked to do a little extra job, and, as he does it, goes on like our old sexton used down in the country when he put up the Christmas holly in the church. “Ah!” he says to me—“Ah! you see, I don’t get nothing for doing this—only my salary.” Men are so precious frightened of making work scarce. Why, I remember soon after I came up to London going into Saint Paul’s for a gape round, when they were going to fit up the seats for the Charity Children’s Festival; and do what I would I couldn’t help having a hearty laugh to see how the fellows were going it. Perhaps it was a scaffold pole wanted lifting; when about a score of chaps would go crawling up to it, and have a look; then one would touch it with his foot, and then another; then one would stoop down and take hold on it, and give a groan, and then let go again; next another would have his groan over it; then they’d look round, as if they thought being in a grand church a miracle war going to happen, and that the pole would get up of itself and go to its place.
It didn’t though: so at last, groaning and grunting, they managed to get it on their shoulders—the whole score of ’em trying to have a hand in it; but puzzled sometimes how to manage it, for the short ’uns couldn’t hitch their shoulders up high enough to reach, and had to be content with walking under it like honest British workmen as had made up their minds to earn every penny of their money; while the tall chaps carried the pole, and it didn’t seem to hurt them much as they took it to its place and groaned it down again; when they was all so faint that they had to knock off for some beer.
I have heard an old workman say how many bricks he’d lay in a day in his best times, and it was a precious many; and I’ve seen old Johnny Mawley lay ’em too, and he’d have been just the chap to suit some of our London men, who look sour at you if you lay into the work tight. Old Johnny used to build little walls and pigsties down in Lincolnshire, and had his boy, young Johnny, with him. There the old chap would be tapping and pottering about over his work, with no necessity for him to stand still till the mortar set at the bottom, for fear of the building giving way or growing top-heavy—there he’d be, with the work getting well set as he went on; for after getting one brick in its place and the mortar cleared off, he’d drawl out very slowly, as he stood looking at his job—“Johnny, lad, wilt thou bring me another brick?” And Johnny used to bring him another brick; and old Johnny would lay it; and work never got scarce through him.
Men are so precious frightened of interfering with one another. I s’pose it’s all right; but it seems so queer for the plasterer to knock off because a bit of beading wants nailing on or taking off, and the carpenter has to be fetched to do it, when half a dozen taps of the hammer would have set all right. Bricklayer’s setting a stove, and he can’t turn a screw, but must have the smith; whilst the carpenter knocks off because a bit of brick wants chipping out of the wall; and so they go on; and so I go on grumbling at it, and fault-finding. But the most I grumble at is this—the number of public-houses there is about London waiting with their easily-swinging doors to trap men. There’s no occasion to knock; just lean against the door, and open it comes; and there’s the grandly fitted-up place, and a smart barman or barmaid to wait on you, and all so nice, and attractive, and sticky, that there’s no getting away again; so that it seems like one of those catch-’em-alives as the fellows used to sell about the streets—and we poor people the flies.
Nice trade that must be, and paying; to see the glitter and gloss they puts on, and the showy places they build in the most miserable spots—gilt, and paint, and gas, and all in style. And then the boards and notices! “Double brown stout, 3 pence per pot in your own jugs; sparkling champagne ales; Devonshire cider; cordial gin, and compounds; Jamaica rum;” while at one place there was a chap had up in his window “Cwrw o’ Cymru,” which must be an uncommon nice drink, I should think; but I never had any of it, whatever it is. But how one fellow does tempt another into these places, and how the money does go there—money that ought to be taken home; and it isn’t like any other kind of business: say you want a coffee-shop, or a baker’s, you’ll have two or three streets, perhaps, to go down to find one; but there’s always a public at the corner all ready. And, you see, with some men it is like it was with a mate of mine—Fred Brown—easy-going, good-hearted chap.
“Come and have half a pint, Fred,” one’d say to him; and then Fred would shake his head, and be going on, till they began to banter him a bit, when he’d go in and have his half-pint same as lots of us do, and no great harm neither; but then this beer used to make him thirsty for more, and then more, and more, when the end of it used to be that what with treating, and one thing and another, Fred used to go home less seven or eight shillings in his pocket, and all of a stagger, to make his wife miserable, and the little things of children stare to see him look such a brute.
I lost sight of the poor chap for about five years; and then, when we met, I shouldn’t have known him if he hadn’t spoken in a rough, husky voice, while his face looked bloated and pasty.
“Can’t help it, mate,” he’d say. “Can’t eat now, and if it warn’t for the drop o’ drink I couldn’t live.”
Strange words them for a young man of five-and-thirty; but I believe they were true, and he almost lived upon beer and gin. But I thought it couldn’t last long, and living as I did close by him, and often dropping into his miserable room, I knew how matters went with him; and at last he was down and unable to go to work.
Fortunately for him, in spite of all trouble, his wife had kept the club money paid up, or they would have been in a queer fix, for they were proper badly off, as you could see at a glance when you went in: ragged scrap or two of carpet, half worn-out chairs, ricketty table, and very dirty-looking old bedstead in the same room, while where his poor wife and children managed to creep of nights I don’t know. Second floor back room it was, and when I got up there his wife made me a sign not to make a noise, for he was asleep; and she was doing all she could to hush the baby in her arms.
Poor woman! only a few years ago healthy, bright-eyed, and good-looking; but now only half-dressed, sunken-cheeked, and pale, as numbers of other poor neglected wives we see every day in the streets. Two more children were playing on the floor, while another lay with arms round its father’s neck, and there, just peeping at me above Fred’s rough black whiskers, were the two bright eyes.
I hadn’t been there long before he woke; and then in that half-hour that followed I saw sorrow, misery, and horrors enough to make any man thoughtful for the rest of his life. A strong, able workman, with his mind completely overthrown by drink, imagining all sorts of strange creatures were in the room and thronging about his bed, while every time he recognised those about him came the constant demand for drink—for the stuff that had brought him down to what he was. His poor wife was that beat out, that I promised to come back and sit up with him that night, so that she could go and lie down at a neighbour’s; and about half-past nine I went back, and soon after there I was alone with poor Fred, and him lying in a sort of dose.
It’s not a nice thing to do, sitting up, in any case, for you get creepy, and nervous, and fidgetty; but when it’s with a man who is off his mind, why, it’s ten times worse; and there I sat with my eyes fixed upon the bed, hour after hour, half afraid lest the poor fellow should get out, or be up to any mad tricks.
I suppose it was about two o’clock, and when all was about still in the streets—not even the rumble of a cab to be heard—when somehow or another things seemed to get misty and dim; the bed seemed to be rising and falling, while poor Fred’s head was as if it had swelled up, and kept coming closer to me, and then went back; and then I could see nothing at all.
I woke up with a start, and a horrible feeling on me that there was something wrong; then came the sound of trampling overhead, while at the same moment the light gave a flickering leap, and went out.
I knew the matches were on the table, and after knocking over something I found them lying open; but it was the barley-water jug I had upset, and the matches were dripping wet. Trembling and confused, I stood for a moment not knowing what to do, and then felt my way towards the bed, with the horrid dread upon me that poor Fred might spring at me and strangle me in the dark. Something seemed to tell me that he wasn’t in the bed, and therefore I expected he would be crouching down and waiting to spring at me; and in my fancy I thought I could see it all—the struggle for the mastery, and him getting me down, so that I could not cry for help.
The confusion must have had something to do with it; but at all events there was I quite unnerved and shaken, as I lightly touched the bed and found all the clothes in a heap; while further search showed me that there was no one there. Then I heard again the trampling noise overhead and hurried towards the door, with both hands stretched out; when, in the dark, one went on either side of the open door, and I struck my forehead a violent blow. There was no time, though, to mind that, for I knew something was wrong upstairs, and that Fred must be at the bottom of it; so, hurrying up, I was soon at the door of the back attic, where, though it was shut, I heard enough to make me shove it open with my shoulder and dash in; for a sound came out as of two savage beasts worrying each other, and then, by the dim light from the open window, I could see two men scuffling upon the floor, while a woman sat on the bed crouched up, and holding a baby to her breast—evidently too frightened to move.
As I dashed in, one of the men leaped up, and was through the window in a moment; and then, on going quickly up and leaning out, I could see it was Fred, standing right upon the parapet above the lead gutter, when my heart seemed to quite stand still, as I leaned there, expecting every moment to see the poor fellow fall on to the flags beneath—four stories; for he would have gone right into the basement yard at the back.
Just then some one touched me; and looking sharp round, there was the scared face of the lodger, and he whispered, “He was a-trying to get out, when I woke up and seized him. He’s a’most choked me.”
That was a strange, wild time, as I stood there wondering what was best to be done; and do what I would I could hardly summon up the courage to go after him, though I knew it was only through my neglect that he had escaped from his room, and therefore I was bound to do something.
I tried calling him at first; but the only effect that had was to make him begin muttering and walking backwards and forwards upon that giddy parapet, so that it quite chilled one’s blood; for, though used enough to scaffolds at proper time and place, there was something horrid in engaging in a struggle with one who was no better than a madman, on such a roof as this.
But I did not stop thinking, or I should never have done what I did, which was to get out into the gutter and walk cautiously up to the poor fellow.
There—it took only a moment or two—not more, and then he bounded on to me, and we too were struggling together and rocking backwards and forwards all those feet above the ground, with certain death on one side if I slipped, or he proved too strong for me. Now we swayed this way, now that, and wet with the sweat of terror, I could feel myself weaker every moment; and the very thought of what would come at last was too horrid to bear. Once I got him back against the sloping roof, and my spirits revived; but the next moment he leaped up, as though of watch-spring, and had me down on my back upon the stone parapet, and head and shoulders over the horrid pit beneath.
I could not cry out, but felt tongue and lips parched, while, with the strength of despair, I clutched his neck, and gazed with startled looks into his wild, glowering, half-shut eyes. He was muttering and talking the whole time, and every moment as I grew weaker, I could feel that I was being forced over the parapet. How many seconds it took I can’t say, but it seemed to me like an hour till the time when I felt that all hope was past, and I shut my eyes that I might not see myself fall. There seemed no hope—nothing but death before me, as I lay there, with my flesh seeming to creep, and me unable to give a cry for help.
All at once, though, the clutch upon me grew feeble; then it ceased altogether; and I saw poor Fred dragged away backwards; but it was some few moments before I dared try to move, when, shivering in every limb, I rolled myself off the stone parapet, and lay in a half swoon in the gutter.
But the danger was over now; for two of the lodgers had dragged the poor fellow back into the attic by his legs, and after a sharp struggle he was securely tied down to the bed; but it was some time before I could work on the top of a house again without getting nervous and upset.
Chapter Ten.Dining with Cabby.“Where to dine at any time,” says the advertisement, as though such a thing as money was quite out of the question, and so many men did not depend upon the hospitality of their old friend Duke Humphrey. Spite of cattle disease and trichine terrors, the human stomach—be it beneath an educated brain, or appertaining to Bill Sykes, of the Somers Town Brill—the human stomach will act upon the mind, and cause it to long after the flesh-pots.Il faut manger—as a matter of course, the more moderately the better! and as the Spartans held up the drunken Helot for their youth to shun, why do we not have a double-barrelled statue of Banting erected in our streets—a “look on this picture and on this” style of article, showing the beauties of temperance and moderation—the keeping a tight rein upon gastronomic desires, as opposed to gluttony and feasting.When youcandine, how many temptations are offered, as, urged on by the vacuum which, above all, fond Nature abhors, you stand chinking your coin and considering. You are in London, say; and you stand and ponder. Club? No. Invites? Not one. Where shall it be—at the first-class hotel or the shilling ordinary? Fish with Simpson? Whitebait with Lovegrove? With Bibra? With Rudkin? A steak at the Cock? A snack at the Rainbow? Sawyer! Sawyer! Suggestive of snags and America, and tremendous gorges? Shall it be the London? Shall we mount above the great stationer’s—the Partridge and Cozens—suggestive names for a hungry man—impulsive as to the first, and making him think of a cozy dinner after a long tramp in the stubble—checking as to the second. “Call me cousin, but do not cozen me,” says somebody somewhere, and most likely the quotation is not correct, but then we hunger and are athirst. No; we will dine in London, but not in “The London.” Westward, ho! Strand, Circus, Quadrant, up the great street where rent is said to swallow the tradesman’s profit; where the throng is great in the season, while out of the season the dog-fancier pockets his pups, and migrates to the far east. Now down this street to the left.The student of human nature is like the proverbial traveller—he sees strange things; and, what is more, he gets into queer company. To study human nature in its happiest moments, study it over its dinner—be it the three courses and a dessert, preceded by removes, partaken of in Belgravia, Berkleyria, or Transgibbetia; the public feed at a great tavern, with a real MP in the chair, and all the delicacies of the season upon the table, with toasts, speeches, cheers, reporters, and a long and particular account to follow in the morning paper; the dinner at the club,à laSprouts—a nubbly potato from a can, peppered with gingery dust; the meal brought in a basin, “kivered” with a plate, tied up in a blue cotton “wipe,” and partaken of perchance upon the bricks waiting for piling in father’s hod when he has had his “wittles”; or the three-halfpenny saveloy and “penny buster,” forming in combination the delicacy popularly known as a “dustman’s sandwich,” and said, in connection with porter, to form a large portion of that gentleman’s sustenance; each, every, either of these dinners gives a certain glow to the countenance of the recipient and undoubtedly it will be found that human nature will be at its best about feeding-time.Listen, then, and know all ye of the softer sex; and if you want anything out of this same human nature, wait till the corn is planted, and then look out for your harvest.Knowing all this, and how mollifying is the influence of food, we should prefer the interval following his last anthropophagia in our visit to the cannibal; and, therefore, urged by a desire to see our enemy of the badge at his best, we walk down “this street to the left,” and somewhere about half-way down we find a perennial fountain in the shape of an iron post with a hole in its side by which to wind it up. There are some squat, tubby-looking little pails in a row; while close by stands a shiny-hatted straw-bit besprinkled Triton blowing his pipe. The water looks cool and limpid, but hard by is the gin—a trap within an open door. Gin and water—a potent mixture; but in this case the master takes the gin, and the horse the water. The horses look hot and stuffy this sunshiny day, as they stand with their cabs in a row down the long street, nose-bagged and contemplative, but they evidently find considerable enjoyment in banging their chaff-holding receptacles against the back of the cab in front, or resting them upon spring or wheel.But where are the drivers—the supplanters of the Jehu, the jarvey of hackney-coach days—the men who place a bit in the mouths of their steeds, but prefer a sup in their own—the men who guide and rein them in their course and check the prancings of their hoofs—where are they? At their best. Cabby dineth! Dine we with him.Up this shady little street, and into this shady shop—none the cooler for it though; while phew! the steam! Six, ten, fifteen hams in the window; legs, loins, shoulders, all sorts of mutton; beef joints by the dozen; and all hanging ready for to-morrow’s consumption. And to-day’s?“This way, sir; room in that box to the left.”We enter that box to the left, and find the “room” very small, and also that we are elbowed by the people “Pegging away” at their dinner; while, if we closed our eyes for a moment, we should be ready to take oath that we were neither in the shop of Rimmel, Hendrie, nor Atkinson. But, sinking the sentimental, and setting aside the too great smell of kitchen when a hot cinder has quenched its glow in the dripping-pan, the odour is not so very bad, and we prepare to eat.Now, we have eaten in a variety of places in our time, and with the eating we have drunk—quaffing the regal wine of Champagne in an ex-palace—that is to say, emptied glasses of what was said to be genuine Clicquot; but we dare not venture to assert that it was not gooseberry. Reversing Mr Hullah’s legend, “per scalam ascendimus,” we have dined off an Abernethy biscuit and a “penn’orth” of shrimps in a recess of Waterloo Bridge—a redbait dinner in a granite hall, with a view of the river both ways, equalling or excelling that from Lovegrove’s; and, therefore, we were not above asking the opinion of friends right and left as to the quality of the joints on cut.“Try the beef, guv’ner,” says a gentleman in the style of head-dress known as a “deerstalker,” which he wore while he trowelled his dinner into his mouth with the blade of a very wide knife. “Try the beef, guv’ner—the weal and ’am won’t do. Somethin’s turned, either the weal or my stummick.”A gentleman in a great-coat on my right suggests “line o’ mutton,” while a very red-nosed man in front—red-nosed, but the very antithesis of the holy Stiggins—quotes beefsteak pudding; but we like the look of the beef proposer, and the sound of the dish; so, forgetful ofrinderand every other pest, we seek to gain the attention of the hot nymph in waiting. No easy task, though, for the maiden, evidently own sister of the Polly who captivated Smallweed, junior, is in all directions in the space of a few seconds.In luck though at last, and we announce that we will take a plate of beef—roast.“And taters?”“And taters.”“And brockylow?”“And brockylow.”“Stout?”“Stout’s hard,” hints our beefy friend, and we decide upon “half-and-half.”Five minutes after we are served with a prime plate off some prime ribs of beef, three fine potatoes in their brown jackets, grinning all over, and looking temptingly mealy-mouthed; a tolerably fine head of broccoli that would suggest “cathoppers and grassipillars” were the season more advanced, while even now one cannot help shuddering and thinking of Fenianism and slugs; “a bread;” and, lastly, the beer supposed to be soft, or rather not hard.Now, if the place had been ventilated, twenty degrees cooler, free from steam, smell, and tobacco smoke; it the knives had been what the cloth should have been, and what the salt was not; if my neighbours had not picked their teeth with their forks; if the mustard-pot had had no pipe ashes in its jaundiced throat; if the pint pots had not made the tables quite so gum-ringed; and lastly, and very briefly, if Cabby himself had been a little less demonstrative in his eating, and a little more guarded in his conversation: why, we could have made a very satisfactory dinner. But as the few above-mentioned trifles, and a mangy dog at our feet, militated against our getting a comfortable meal, why, the result was not quite so well as might be expected.The trade going on was fast and furious. Cabbies went out and Cabbies came in; joint after joint was devoured, and the naked bones lay on the steaming pewter desert like those of the vulture-torn camel in far Araby. Cabby was certainly here at his best—the bow was unstrung, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. He seemed rather Indian—Red Indian—in his eating; laying in a good store, as though doubtful when time or money would again be propitious for a hearty meal; while jokes flew about—many at the expense of unwary fares and swells, for whom, as a rule, Cabby seemed to entertain a profound contempt.We were not there long, but the topics of the day were settled again and again in the most satisfactory of ways, though probably not in accordance with the ideas of our statesmen. Mr Sothern was pitied; and gin, rum, whisky, and brandy declared the only table spirits. Fenianism was stigmatised as “rowdy”; Jamaica turned inside out; and the Parliamentary campaign mapped down. We noted what we could while finishing our “toke”; but we were upon enemies’ ground; and who knows the fate of spies discovered amid the freemasonry of Cabland. We thought of all this, and did not so much as point a pencil within the sacred precincts; but we recollected what we could—not much, though, for after dinner the digestive organs form a combination against those devoted to thinking. We came, however, to the conclusion that Cabby loves good living—bodily, if not morally; and we fear that he possesses the amiable weakness that exists to so large an extent amongst the London poor—namely, that of living well to-day, and letting to-morrow take care of itself. To-morrow may be a bad day, and then he goes not to his club; but contents himself with a “small German” upon his box; or a kidney-pie at the corner; or lower still, perhaps, he may have but a mealy potato from a can, or a “penn’orth” of peas-pudding on a scrap of a newspaper, the aroma of whose ink imparts no improved flavour. But so it is throughout the world, Earth’s creatures remembering that on the blackest day there is another side to the cloud, and that sooner or later the sun will shine again for rich and poor alike.Cabby says luck’s sure to turn sometime; so he munches his potato on or in his cab; goes “tic” for a screw of tobacco, for which he seldom finds the screw on too tightly, and then smokes and waits patiently for a fare. When he is down on his luck, and has nothing else to live upon, he exists upon Hope; and she deals as gently with the rough-clothed, battle-scarred veteran of the streets as with the Hon Charley Fitzgauntlet of the Blues, when Fortune frowns and he has gambled away half his patrimony at the Derby. But if Cabby makes himself comfortable at times, surely he is not much to be blamed, for this world is not peopled with abstemious Dr Franklins, and when Cabby has the money in his pocket, and smells a good dinner, who can blame him that he eats, pays, and then waits for the next? Perhaps it comes punctually, perhaps it does not; still he waits, as Trotty Veck did, for his jobs; the bells cried, “Job coming soon, Toby;” and it always did come sooner or later. And so, like Toby’s, Cabby’s job comes sooner or later, and then he does as wiser men do—eats, drinks, and is merry, “quaffing amber draughts from the pearly pewter’s foam”—draughts that make glad his heart, and sometimes unsteady his hand. But cab-horses are not given to run away—we have sometimes wished they were—that is, if they would keep in the right direction. Still it is very rarely that Cabby meets with a mishap through careless driving. Accidents he does have, ’tis true; but, considered in relation to the thousands of miles traversed, their paucity is wonderful.“But they’re a shocking set, my dear; lazy, good-for-nothing creatures—cheating, story-telling fellows. Whatever you do, take the man’s number before you enter his cab.”So says Mrs British Matron. But this is not all true. Cabby can cheat, lie, and be good for nothing; but he has his honest phase; and, poor fellow, he has a hard time of it.The wind whistles down the street on a dark night; the rain or sleet drives in cutting clouds round the corners; and Dives’ son and daughter, to return from dinner or party, send for a cab. The first Cabby has been sitting for a couple of hours fareless upon his box, and as his half-frozen Rosinante is drawn up at the door of the well-lit house, Cabby stiffly descends, and begins to dance upon the pavement, and beat warmth into his breast after the popular mode of “Two thieves whopping a rascal.”All this while there is a round of “good-byeing,” and “dearing,” shawling, wrapping, and goloshing; and then the thoughtful head of the house hopes that the cabman is a member of the Bonded Brotherhood of Bottle Scorners, and thinks Thomas had better take a hand candlestick and look at the man’s number.The hand candlestick goes out, and so does the candle; for directly the white-stockinged legs of Thomas are outside the hall door the light is extinct, and the bearer fares like poor Mr Winkle on the windy night at Bath, for he is banged out of the house.“Vot odds vot a cove’s number is?” says Cabby. “Tell ’em to make ’aste out.”Now Cabby is not a member of the Bonded Brotherhood, for he has had two “goes” of gin since eight o’clock, and would have liked another—“only it runs away with the brass”; and if this were known he would probably lose his fare, although he has been sitting so long in the driving sleet or rain, and Dives, jun, has imbibed two or three glasses of sherry, three of champagne, and as many of port, during dinner and dessert.The ricketty door of the vehicle is opened; the glass let down; dragged up again; and then, with a bang which threatens to dislocate every joint in the old cab’s body, the door is closed, the box mounted, when rattling and jangling, off goes the licensed carriage to deposit its freight.Distance two miles, barely, time nearly midnight; what wonder that after a bad day our dinner companion pockets his “bob” with a growl, and sullenly mounts his box to seek a fairer fare?
“Where to dine at any time,” says the advertisement, as though such a thing as money was quite out of the question, and so many men did not depend upon the hospitality of their old friend Duke Humphrey. Spite of cattle disease and trichine terrors, the human stomach—be it beneath an educated brain, or appertaining to Bill Sykes, of the Somers Town Brill—the human stomach will act upon the mind, and cause it to long after the flesh-pots.Il faut manger—as a matter of course, the more moderately the better! and as the Spartans held up the drunken Helot for their youth to shun, why do we not have a double-barrelled statue of Banting erected in our streets—a “look on this picture and on this” style of article, showing the beauties of temperance and moderation—the keeping a tight rein upon gastronomic desires, as opposed to gluttony and feasting.
When youcandine, how many temptations are offered, as, urged on by the vacuum which, above all, fond Nature abhors, you stand chinking your coin and considering. You are in London, say; and you stand and ponder. Club? No. Invites? Not one. Where shall it be—at the first-class hotel or the shilling ordinary? Fish with Simpson? Whitebait with Lovegrove? With Bibra? With Rudkin? A steak at the Cock? A snack at the Rainbow? Sawyer! Sawyer! Suggestive of snags and America, and tremendous gorges? Shall it be the London? Shall we mount above the great stationer’s—the Partridge and Cozens—suggestive names for a hungry man—impulsive as to the first, and making him think of a cozy dinner after a long tramp in the stubble—checking as to the second. “Call me cousin, but do not cozen me,” says somebody somewhere, and most likely the quotation is not correct, but then we hunger and are athirst. No; we will dine in London, but not in “The London.” Westward, ho! Strand, Circus, Quadrant, up the great street where rent is said to swallow the tradesman’s profit; where the throng is great in the season, while out of the season the dog-fancier pockets his pups, and migrates to the far east. Now down this street to the left.
The student of human nature is like the proverbial traveller—he sees strange things; and, what is more, he gets into queer company. To study human nature in its happiest moments, study it over its dinner—be it the three courses and a dessert, preceded by removes, partaken of in Belgravia, Berkleyria, or Transgibbetia; the public feed at a great tavern, with a real MP in the chair, and all the delicacies of the season upon the table, with toasts, speeches, cheers, reporters, and a long and particular account to follow in the morning paper; the dinner at the club,à laSprouts—a nubbly potato from a can, peppered with gingery dust; the meal brought in a basin, “kivered” with a plate, tied up in a blue cotton “wipe,” and partaken of perchance upon the bricks waiting for piling in father’s hod when he has had his “wittles”; or the three-halfpenny saveloy and “penny buster,” forming in combination the delicacy popularly known as a “dustman’s sandwich,” and said, in connection with porter, to form a large portion of that gentleman’s sustenance; each, every, either of these dinners gives a certain glow to the countenance of the recipient and undoubtedly it will be found that human nature will be at its best about feeding-time.
Listen, then, and know all ye of the softer sex; and if you want anything out of this same human nature, wait till the corn is planted, and then look out for your harvest.
Knowing all this, and how mollifying is the influence of food, we should prefer the interval following his last anthropophagia in our visit to the cannibal; and, therefore, urged by a desire to see our enemy of the badge at his best, we walk down “this street to the left,” and somewhere about half-way down we find a perennial fountain in the shape of an iron post with a hole in its side by which to wind it up. There are some squat, tubby-looking little pails in a row; while close by stands a shiny-hatted straw-bit besprinkled Triton blowing his pipe. The water looks cool and limpid, but hard by is the gin—a trap within an open door. Gin and water—a potent mixture; but in this case the master takes the gin, and the horse the water. The horses look hot and stuffy this sunshiny day, as they stand with their cabs in a row down the long street, nose-bagged and contemplative, but they evidently find considerable enjoyment in banging their chaff-holding receptacles against the back of the cab in front, or resting them upon spring or wheel.
But where are the drivers—the supplanters of the Jehu, the jarvey of hackney-coach days—the men who place a bit in the mouths of their steeds, but prefer a sup in their own—the men who guide and rein them in their course and check the prancings of their hoofs—where are they? At their best. Cabby dineth! Dine we with him.
Up this shady little street, and into this shady shop—none the cooler for it though; while phew! the steam! Six, ten, fifteen hams in the window; legs, loins, shoulders, all sorts of mutton; beef joints by the dozen; and all hanging ready for to-morrow’s consumption. And to-day’s?
“This way, sir; room in that box to the left.”
We enter that box to the left, and find the “room” very small, and also that we are elbowed by the people “Pegging away” at their dinner; while, if we closed our eyes for a moment, we should be ready to take oath that we were neither in the shop of Rimmel, Hendrie, nor Atkinson. But, sinking the sentimental, and setting aside the too great smell of kitchen when a hot cinder has quenched its glow in the dripping-pan, the odour is not so very bad, and we prepare to eat.
Now, we have eaten in a variety of places in our time, and with the eating we have drunk—quaffing the regal wine of Champagne in an ex-palace—that is to say, emptied glasses of what was said to be genuine Clicquot; but we dare not venture to assert that it was not gooseberry. Reversing Mr Hullah’s legend, “per scalam ascendimus,” we have dined off an Abernethy biscuit and a “penn’orth” of shrimps in a recess of Waterloo Bridge—a redbait dinner in a granite hall, with a view of the river both ways, equalling or excelling that from Lovegrove’s; and, therefore, we were not above asking the opinion of friends right and left as to the quality of the joints on cut.
“Try the beef, guv’ner,” says a gentleman in the style of head-dress known as a “deerstalker,” which he wore while he trowelled his dinner into his mouth with the blade of a very wide knife. “Try the beef, guv’ner—the weal and ’am won’t do. Somethin’s turned, either the weal or my stummick.”
A gentleman in a great-coat on my right suggests “line o’ mutton,” while a very red-nosed man in front—red-nosed, but the very antithesis of the holy Stiggins—quotes beefsteak pudding; but we like the look of the beef proposer, and the sound of the dish; so, forgetful ofrinderand every other pest, we seek to gain the attention of the hot nymph in waiting. No easy task, though, for the maiden, evidently own sister of the Polly who captivated Smallweed, junior, is in all directions in the space of a few seconds.
In luck though at last, and we announce that we will take a plate of beef—roast.
“And taters?”
“And taters.”
“And brockylow?”
“And brockylow.”
“Stout?”
“Stout’s hard,” hints our beefy friend, and we decide upon “half-and-half.”
Five minutes after we are served with a prime plate off some prime ribs of beef, three fine potatoes in their brown jackets, grinning all over, and looking temptingly mealy-mouthed; a tolerably fine head of broccoli that would suggest “cathoppers and grassipillars” were the season more advanced, while even now one cannot help shuddering and thinking of Fenianism and slugs; “a bread;” and, lastly, the beer supposed to be soft, or rather not hard.
Now, if the place had been ventilated, twenty degrees cooler, free from steam, smell, and tobacco smoke; it the knives had been what the cloth should have been, and what the salt was not; if my neighbours had not picked their teeth with their forks; if the mustard-pot had had no pipe ashes in its jaundiced throat; if the pint pots had not made the tables quite so gum-ringed; and lastly, and very briefly, if Cabby himself had been a little less demonstrative in his eating, and a little more guarded in his conversation: why, we could have made a very satisfactory dinner. But as the few above-mentioned trifles, and a mangy dog at our feet, militated against our getting a comfortable meal, why, the result was not quite so well as might be expected.
The trade going on was fast and furious. Cabbies went out and Cabbies came in; joint after joint was devoured, and the naked bones lay on the steaming pewter desert like those of the vulture-torn camel in far Araby. Cabby was certainly here at his best—the bow was unstrung, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. He seemed rather Indian—Red Indian—in his eating; laying in a good store, as though doubtful when time or money would again be propitious for a hearty meal; while jokes flew about—many at the expense of unwary fares and swells, for whom, as a rule, Cabby seemed to entertain a profound contempt.
We were not there long, but the topics of the day were settled again and again in the most satisfactory of ways, though probably not in accordance with the ideas of our statesmen. Mr Sothern was pitied; and gin, rum, whisky, and brandy declared the only table spirits. Fenianism was stigmatised as “rowdy”; Jamaica turned inside out; and the Parliamentary campaign mapped down. We noted what we could while finishing our “toke”; but we were upon enemies’ ground; and who knows the fate of spies discovered amid the freemasonry of Cabland. We thought of all this, and did not so much as point a pencil within the sacred precincts; but we recollected what we could—not much, though, for after dinner the digestive organs form a combination against those devoted to thinking. We came, however, to the conclusion that Cabby loves good living—bodily, if not morally; and we fear that he possesses the amiable weakness that exists to so large an extent amongst the London poor—namely, that of living well to-day, and letting to-morrow take care of itself. To-morrow may be a bad day, and then he goes not to his club; but contents himself with a “small German” upon his box; or a kidney-pie at the corner; or lower still, perhaps, he may have but a mealy potato from a can, or a “penn’orth” of peas-pudding on a scrap of a newspaper, the aroma of whose ink imparts no improved flavour. But so it is throughout the world, Earth’s creatures remembering that on the blackest day there is another side to the cloud, and that sooner or later the sun will shine again for rich and poor alike.
Cabby says luck’s sure to turn sometime; so he munches his potato on or in his cab; goes “tic” for a screw of tobacco, for which he seldom finds the screw on too tightly, and then smokes and waits patiently for a fare. When he is down on his luck, and has nothing else to live upon, he exists upon Hope; and she deals as gently with the rough-clothed, battle-scarred veteran of the streets as with the Hon Charley Fitzgauntlet of the Blues, when Fortune frowns and he has gambled away half his patrimony at the Derby. But if Cabby makes himself comfortable at times, surely he is not much to be blamed, for this world is not peopled with abstemious Dr Franklins, and when Cabby has the money in his pocket, and smells a good dinner, who can blame him that he eats, pays, and then waits for the next? Perhaps it comes punctually, perhaps it does not; still he waits, as Trotty Veck did, for his jobs; the bells cried, “Job coming soon, Toby;” and it always did come sooner or later. And so, like Toby’s, Cabby’s job comes sooner or later, and then he does as wiser men do—eats, drinks, and is merry, “quaffing amber draughts from the pearly pewter’s foam”—draughts that make glad his heart, and sometimes unsteady his hand. But cab-horses are not given to run away—we have sometimes wished they were—that is, if they would keep in the right direction. Still it is very rarely that Cabby meets with a mishap through careless driving. Accidents he does have, ’tis true; but, considered in relation to the thousands of miles traversed, their paucity is wonderful.
“But they’re a shocking set, my dear; lazy, good-for-nothing creatures—cheating, story-telling fellows. Whatever you do, take the man’s number before you enter his cab.”
So says Mrs British Matron. But this is not all true. Cabby can cheat, lie, and be good for nothing; but he has his honest phase; and, poor fellow, he has a hard time of it.
The wind whistles down the street on a dark night; the rain or sleet drives in cutting clouds round the corners; and Dives’ son and daughter, to return from dinner or party, send for a cab. The first Cabby has been sitting for a couple of hours fareless upon his box, and as his half-frozen Rosinante is drawn up at the door of the well-lit house, Cabby stiffly descends, and begins to dance upon the pavement, and beat warmth into his breast after the popular mode of “Two thieves whopping a rascal.”
All this while there is a round of “good-byeing,” and “dearing,” shawling, wrapping, and goloshing; and then the thoughtful head of the house hopes that the cabman is a member of the Bonded Brotherhood of Bottle Scorners, and thinks Thomas had better take a hand candlestick and look at the man’s number.
The hand candlestick goes out, and so does the candle; for directly the white-stockinged legs of Thomas are outside the hall door the light is extinct, and the bearer fares like poor Mr Winkle on the windy night at Bath, for he is banged out of the house.
“Vot odds vot a cove’s number is?” says Cabby. “Tell ’em to make ’aste out.”
Now Cabby is not a member of the Bonded Brotherhood, for he has had two “goes” of gin since eight o’clock, and would have liked another—“only it runs away with the brass”; and if this were known he would probably lose his fare, although he has been sitting so long in the driving sleet or rain, and Dives, jun, has imbibed two or three glasses of sherry, three of champagne, and as many of port, during dinner and dessert.
The ricketty door of the vehicle is opened; the glass let down; dragged up again; and then, with a bang which threatens to dislocate every joint in the old cab’s body, the door is closed, the box mounted, when rattling and jangling, off goes the licensed carriage to deposit its freight.
Distance two miles, barely, time nearly midnight; what wonder that after a bad day our dinner companion pockets his “bob” with a growl, and sullenly mounts his box to seek a fairer fare?
Chapter Eleven.K9’s Adventure.One of the great peculiarities of the policeman is his head. Now, I do not mean that his head differs from the small or large capital at the head of most articles; but I allude to the use he makes of that important appendage to the human body. A nod is said to be as good as a wink to a blind horse; but leaving blind horses out of the question, the policeman’s nod is a great deal better than his wink. There is a majesty about one of his wags of the head that is sun-like in its powers; for as the snow dissolves, so melts away the crowd before that simple act. It would be a matter of no small difficulty to reduce the workings of his head to rule, on account of the vast number of exceptions which would intrude; but in spite of the attendant difficulties, I have learned something from my friend of the bracelet. What most men would do by a wave of the hand, Bobby does waggishly—that is to say, by means of his head. What one would do in a pointed manner with one’s finger, again, K9 performs with his head. If any ordinary being wished to eject an intruder from his premises he would give tongue—that is to say, not snarl or bark, but tell him to go in a very fierce tone of voice; but again, a wag of our friend’s head does the duty, and far more effectually. In short, the nod of emperor or king is not one half so potent in the upper regions of society as that of K9 with the people.What awe there is amongst the small boys of the metropolis, and how they skim and scuffle off when the policeman wags his head; and yet, as they round a corner, how that never-to-be-beaten Briton peeps forth from their small natures as they yell defiance when out of reach. But in spite of his alacrity in fleeing, our friend holds the Londongaminsomewhat in dread. There is something very humiliating for a noble swell of a policeman to have to march off four feet six inches of puerile mischief—powerful in its very weakness—a morsel which acts as a barbed and stinging thorn in Bobby’s side all the way to the station. We can easily imagine the grim smile of satisfaction which would ripple over the countenance of our hero if, in traversing that part of Holborn called High, like Tom Hood, he came into contact with a mother bewailing the loss of her beloved child. We can easily believe that Bobby would fervently hope that the loss would prove his gain, that the child would be, like the old woman’s son Jerry in the ancient rhyme, lost and never found; that the young dog would never turn up again to plague his life, as he would be pretty sure to do at some future time, banding himself with birds of a similar feather, chalking the pavements, bowling hoops amongst the horses’ legs, dropping caps down areas, altering butter-shop tickets, running howling in troops out of courts, and disturbing the equanimity of foot passengers, cutting behind cabs, yelling inside shop doors, climbing lamp-posts and performing perilous acrobatic tricks on the ladder bar, giving runaway knocks and rings, casting themselves beneath horses’ hoofs and miraculously escaping death at every tick of the clock, making slides on the pave—ice in winter, mud in autumn or spring, and of the slippery stones in summer; in short, proving a most thorough plague, torment, and curse to our friend, who shuns the persecution, as beasts do gad-flies or hornets, from their painful insignificance.A youthful pickpocket is a sad trial to him; in fact so is a small offender of any description; for the sharp boys of London are all gifted with tongues keen as the adder’s teeth, and slightly artful in their small way. They are powerful at snivelling and appealing to the tender feelings of the bystanders for aid and assistance against the bitter tyranny of their captor; and now shines forth that peculiarity of the British public against which our friend declaims, for the removal of a boy of tender years, but tough experience, generally calls forth a large amount of sympathy, which is loudly evinced in a manner most trying to the nerves of K9.In due course I received proper apology for the rather rough treatment I had received, and then listened with considerable attention to further recitals, many of which are lost to posterity from the jealousy evinced by the street hero when an attempt was made at noting.“No thanky, sir,” said he, “as I said afore, that sorter thing’s bad enough in open court; but then we says what we are obliged. No prifate notin’, thanky. P’raps you’ll put that flimsy away, as it might cause futur’ unpleasantry through bein’ used as information again your umbel servant. I was a-goin’ to say a word or two about a hupset as I had one night going to take a fellow for forgery. It warn’t a very partic’lar affair, for we knowed where my gentleman could be found, and there warn’t any need of a detective. I was detective that time, and only took one chap with me, as I went quietly about my job.“From information I received I knowed my customer was somewhere out Soho way, in one o’ them big old houses as is all let out in lodgings, and full of Frenchies, and Hightalians, and sich. Reg’lar furren colony, you know, all the way towards Leicester-square. My customer had been a clerk in a City firm, and had been hard at work makin’ hisself a fortun at bettin’. He used to work hard at it, too, allus making his book so that he’d bet on the safe side, whatever ’oss won; and I don’t know what he warn’t going to make out of it.“On the strength of what was a-comin’, and to pay some little expenses as he used to come in for through a werry smart sort o’ lady as he courted, he used to borrow money of his gov’nor, just on the quiet-like, without bothering of him when he knowed he was busy. So he used to sign his gov’nor’s name for him on bits o’ cheques, and get what tin he wanted from the bank; but allus meant to pay it back again when he got in his heavy amounts as he was to win at Epsom, or Ascot, S’Leger, or Newmarket.“Well, you see this sweetheart of his was jest sech another as that Miss Millwood as did for George Barnwell, and she was a regular dragon at spending money. Consequently my young friend was allus a borrowin’ of his gov’nor, as I telled you jest now; and at last of all he wouldn’t stand it any longer, for it was bleeding him precious heavy. Besides which, he wanted to know who was being so kind to him and savin’ him so much trouble about his ortygruff, as he called it. So with a little bit o’ dodgin’, in which I assisted, my customer was treed; and then, watchin’ his chance, he runs, and I has to find him. In fact, yer know, he was what we calls ‘wanted.’“But I could tell pretty well where my gentleman would be, so when I’d got my instructions I goes off to look arter him.“Jest as a matter of form I goes to his lodgin’s; but, jest as I expected, he wasn’t there; so then I goes on to Soho, where his lady had apartments. I was in plain clothes, so when I asked for her the people let me in at once, and said I should find her in the first-floor front. I left my mate on the other side o’ the street, for I didn’t expect any opposition, so I walks upstairs to the door, turned the handle quietly, and walks in—when I gave a bit of a start, for the place was nearly dark, and would have been quite, if it hadn’t been for the gas shining up out of the street, and making patches of light on the wall; while, as the lamps ain’t werry close together in that part, it wasn’t such a great deal o’ light as got in that ways. If I’d been in uniform I should have had my bull’s-eye; but, as I warn’t, why, I hadn’t; so I looks round the room, and, as far as I could see, it was nicely furnished, but there was nobody there; so I gives a kick under the table, but there was no one there neither; but on it I could just make out as there was a decanter and two glasses and some biscuits.“Well, only naterally, I takes ’old o’ the decanter with one hand, pulls out the stopper with the other, and has a smell. No mistake about it—sherry.“There was the glasses all ready, and there was my mouth all ready; so I pours out a glassful all ready too, and I was just a-goin’ to raise the glass to my lips, when a thought struck me, and I says to myself:“‘You air a niste promisin’ young officer, you air. You’re aspiring to be a detective, you air; and jest in the midst o’ business you’re a-goin’ to commit yourself like that. How do you know it ain’t a trap?’“Well, you see, that was rather a settler; so I leaves the glass alone, though it was rather hard work, and then I has another look, and sees as there was foldin’ doors leading into the back room, and one o’ them doors was not close shut.“My finger goes up to the side o’ my nose, and I gives myself a wink, and slips out again to see if there warn’t a door outer the back room on to the landing. As a matter o’ course there it was, so that any one might slip out o’ that hole while I went in at t’other. So I slips in again and feels as there was one o’ them little turning bolts on the folding door; so I claps the door to, turns the bolt, and was out again on to the landing in a jiffy.“I needn’t have hurried myself, though, for all was as quiet as could be; and I thought as there was no one there, but of course I has to make sure. All at once I thinks that perhaps the landing door would be locked in side, and as I’d shut the folding door that would be locked too, so that I should be obliged to have ’em broken open, and this was the sort of house where you wouldn’t have a row if you could help it.“How-so-be, sir, I tries the landing door, and finds it open easy enough, and then I was inside the room, but what sort of a place it was I couldn’t tell, for it was as dark as Ejup. Of course I expect it was a bedroom, and thinks as I should soon feel the bedstead, as would fill up a good bit o’ the place. But fust of all I drops down upon my hands and knees; so as if anybody hit at me, or shot at me, or tried any o’ them little games in the dark, as they’d most likely do it at the height of a man, why it would go over one, and only hit the furniture, which can be replaced, when you can’t replace active and enterprising officers—leave alone being cut off in the flower of one’s youth, you know.“Then I listens. All as still and as dark as could be. But still as it was, I could hear my heart go ‘beat, beat,’ wonderful loud.“‘Wish I’d a light,’ I says to myself, but then it warn’t no use wishing; and I didn’t want to go to the people downstairs, so I begins feeling about as slow and as quiet as I could.“I soon finds out as it’s a bedroom, for I rubs my knuckles up against the bed-post, and soon was close up alongside o’ the ticking, when I thinks as I heered a noise, and darts back to the door in a moment; but all was still again, and I turns back, and then in a manner I got lost, and confused, and could not tell which way I was going, nor yet where was the door.“Now, I daresay that all sounds werry queer; but perhaps you don’t know how easy it is to be lost in a dark room as you’ve never been in before, even if it is a little ’un; and if so be as you thinks werry little of it, jest you get a handkercher tied tight over yer eyes, and do as you does at Christmas time—‘turn round three times and ketch who you may,’ and then see where you are in two twinklings.“Well, first of all I hits my hand again a chair; then I butts my head again the corner of as hard a chest o’ drawers as ever I did feel in my life; and then I kicks up such a clatter with the washstand as would have a’most alarmed the house; but I keeps down on my hands and knees, being suspicious of an ambushment, till last of all I feels my way round to the bedside again, and when I was far enough I reaches my hand lightly over, and lays it on the bed, and then I jumps as though I was shot, for I felt somebody’s leg under the clothes.“Then I snatches my hand back and turns all over in a wet, cold state as if I’d been dipped, for I feels precious uncomfortable, and didn’t know what was best to be done next. One moment I expected to hear the ‘whish’ of a heavy stick, or the sharp crack of a pistol; for arter the noise I made it was quite impossible for whoever was in the bed to be asleep. Then I thinks as I would call for help, or run out, for I don’t mind telling you I felt regularly scared with the silence. How-so-be, I gets the better of my bit o’ failing; and, rousing up, I puts my hand over once more close up to where the pillow should be, and lays it upon a cold face, and there it seemed to stick, for a shudder went up my arm right to my head, and I couldn’t neither move nor speak, while my mouth felt as dry and hot inside as though it was full o’ dust.“Cold! I never felt anything so cold; and I fell a shivering awful, till with a regular drag I rouses myself up and snatches my hand away; and as fast as ever I could I got out on to the landing and into the front room, and all the while trembling and feeling as if something was after me to pull me back. I got to the window, smashes out a pane, and gives a whistle as brings my mate to the door, and then I hears a ring, and some voices, and he was up to my side in a moment or two, with some o’ the people o’ the house arter him.“‘Turn on your light,’ I says, as soon as he stood by me on the landing, and then, feeling as white as a sheet, and my hair wet with persperation, but more plucky now there was light and a companion, I goes back towards the room.“‘Here, give us one o’ them candles,’ I says to a woman as came upstairs with one in each hand; and then from upstairs and down comes the people, all talking together, while as soon as some on ’em sees as it was the police they shuffles off again, so as it was all women as stayed about us.“First glance I take I sees what was up, and I says to my mate:—“‘Keep them all out;’ and he goes and stands at the door and closes it after him, when I’m blest if I didn’t let the candle fall, and it was out in a moment. But I felt better now there was help if I wanted it, and I goes up to the bedside and lays my hand on that face as I touched before, but it was cold as ice. Then I slips my hand down to the breast, but there wasn’t a beat there, so I then says to myself, ‘Gone,’ says I; and in spite o’ my shiverin’ and tremblin’ I tried to get the better of it, and reaches over again and lays my hand on the back of a head as felt cold, too; and then, after a good hard tussel with number one, I feels down to the breast of this one, and there wasn’t a beat there. Then I gets to the door again, just as a man comes with a candle in his hand.“I gives him my empty candlestick, and takes his light, and I says:—“‘I’m a policeman,’ I says, ‘and you go out and fetch the nighest doctor; and if you meets another constable tell him to come here.’“‘What for, young man?’ he says, werry bounceable.“‘Never you mind what for,’ I says; but you do as you’re told; and seeing me look as though I meant it, he starts off like a shot, and we two stood there till the doctor came, and then we goes in, followed by ever so many women, all looking white, and talking in whispers.“Lord, sir, it was a sight! There was the room well-furnished, and on the bed lay as pretty a girl as ever you see, search through all London; her face, and neck looking as white as so much marble, while all her long black hair lay loose and scattered over the pillow. Her hands were under her head, and she looked for all the world as though she was asleep; while by the flickering candles I almost thought I could see her smile. And there, with one arm across her, his head close to her side, his face buried in the clothes, half-lying on the bed, with his feet on the ground by the bedside, was him as I took to be my customer as I wanted; and both him and the girl dead and stiff.“The doctor examined ’em, and only said what every one could see plain enough, but he says as well that they’d been gone hours; and that we didn’t know.“Then he gives a sniff or two, and says as there’s a strong smell of acid about. ‘Is there any cup or bottle anywhere?’ he says.“I gives a sorter jump, and felt my skin creep, for I recollects the bottle and glasses in the next room, and a cold shiver goes all down my back.“How-so-be, I goes round and opens the folding doors, and shows the doctor the sherry decanter, which had about three glasses at the bottom.“‘Ah!’ says he, taking the glassful as I poured out, holding it up to the light, and then sniffing it. ‘Ah,’ says he, ‘there’s more than enough for one in that glassful; and that seems to be the same,’ he says, smelling at the decanter. ‘Pour it in, pleeceman, and tie the stopper down, and seal it.’“I takes up the glass and tries to pour it back, but if my hand didn’t shake to that degree that the glass chattered against the neck of the decanter, and I spilt half the stuff on the cloth, I was so scared at the escape I’d had.“Well, sir, you see some one as won’t take no refusal had been beforehand with his warrant, and took both the forger and his lady, and I know I thought it a most awful affair, for I was rather new to such things then. But whether he poisoned her, or whether they’d agreed to it aforehand, nobody knew, not even the Coroner; but all I know is that never before, nor since, have I met with anything as upset me so much as finding them two poor things lying there in the dark—dead, and stiff, and stark; it upset me wonderful—at least, that and the sherry together.”
One of the great peculiarities of the policeman is his head. Now, I do not mean that his head differs from the small or large capital at the head of most articles; but I allude to the use he makes of that important appendage to the human body. A nod is said to be as good as a wink to a blind horse; but leaving blind horses out of the question, the policeman’s nod is a great deal better than his wink. There is a majesty about one of his wags of the head that is sun-like in its powers; for as the snow dissolves, so melts away the crowd before that simple act. It would be a matter of no small difficulty to reduce the workings of his head to rule, on account of the vast number of exceptions which would intrude; but in spite of the attendant difficulties, I have learned something from my friend of the bracelet. What most men would do by a wave of the hand, Bobby does waggishly—that is to say, by means of his head. What one would do in a pointed manner with one’s finger, again, K9 performs with his head. If any ordinary being wished to eject an intruder from his premises he would give tongue—that is to say, not snarl or bark, but tell him to go in a very fierce tone of voice; but again, a wag of our friend’s head does the duty, and far more effectually. In short, the nod of emperor or king is not one half so potent in the upper regions of society as that of K9 with the people.
What awe there is amongst the small boys of the metropolis, and how they skim and scuffle off when the policeman wags his head; and yet, as they round a corner, how that never-to-be-beaten Briton peeps forth from their small natures as they yell defiance when out of reach. But in spite of his alacrity in fleeing, our friend holds the Londongaminsomewhat in dread. There is something very humiliating for a noble swell of a policeman to have to march off four feet six inches of puerile mischief—powerful in its very weakness—a morsel which acts as a barbed and stinging thorn in Bobby’s side all the way to the station. We can easily imagine the grim smile of satisfaction which would ripple over the countenance of our hero if, in traversing that part of Holborn called High, like Tom Hood, he came into contact with a mother bewailing the loss of her beloved child. We can easily believe that Bobby would fervently hope that the loss would prove his gain, that the child would be, like the old woman’s son Jerry in the ancient rhyme, lost and never found; that the young dog would never turn up again to plague his life, as he would be pretty sure to do at some future time, banding himself with birds of a similar feather, chalking the pavements, bowling hoops amongst the horses’ legs, dropping caps down areas, altering butter-shop tickets, running howling in troops out of courts, and disturbing the equanimity of foot passengers, cutting behind cabs, yelling inside shop doors, climbing lamp-posts and performing perilous acrobatic tricks on the ladder bar, giving runaway knocks and rings, casting themselves beneath horses’ hoofs and miraculously escaping death at every tick of the clock, making slides on the pave—ice in winter, mud in autumn or spring, and of the slippery stones in summer; in short, proving a most thorough plague, torment, and curse to our friend, who shuns the persecution, as beasts do gad-flies or hornets, from their painful insignificance.
A youthful pickpocket is a sad trial to him; in fact so is a small offender of any description; for the sharp boys of London are all gifted with tongues keen as the adder’s teeth, and slightly artful in their small way. They are powerful at snivelling and appealing to the tender feelings of the bystanders for aid and assistance against the bitter tyranny of their captor; and now shines forth that peculiarity of the British public against which our friend declaims, for the removal of a boy of tender years, but tough experience, generally calls forth a large amount of sympathy, which is loudly evinced in a manner most trying to the nerves of K9.
In due course I received proper apology for the rather rough treatment I had received, and then listened with considerable attention to further recitals, many of which are lost to posterity from the jealousy evinced by the street hero when an attempt was made at noting.
“No thanky, sir,” said he, “as I said afore, that sorter thing’s bad enough in open court; but then we says what we are obliged. No prifate notin’, thanky. P’raps you’ll put that flimsy away, as it might cause futur’ unpleasantry through bein’ used as information again your umbel servant. I was a-goin’ to say a word or two about a hupset as I had one night going to take a fellow for forgery. It warn’t a very partic’lar affair, for we knowed where my gentleman could be found, and there warn’t any need of a detective. I was detective that time, and only took one chap with me, as I went quietly about my job.
“From information I received I knowed my customer was somewhere out Soho way, in one o’ them big old houses as is all let out in lodgings, and full of Frenchies, and Hightalians, and sich. Reg’lar furren colony, you know, all the way towards Leicester-square. My customer had been a clerk in a City firm, and had been hard at work makin’ hisself a fortun at bettin’. He used to work hard at it, too, allus making his book so that he’d bet on the safe side, whatever ’oss won; and I don’t know what he warn’t going to make out of it.
“On the strength of what was a-comin’, and to pay some little expenses as he used to come in for through a werry smart sort o’ lady as he courted, he used to borrow money of his gov’nor, just on the quiet-like, without bothering of him when he knowed he was busy. So he used to sign his gov’nor’s name for him on bits o’ cheques, and get what tin he wanted from the bank; but allus meant to pay it back again when he got in his heavy amounts as he was to win at Epsom, or Ascot, S’Leger, or Newmarket.
“Well, you see this sweetheart of his was jest sech another as that Miss Millwood as did for George Barnwell, and she was a regular dragon at spending money. Consequently my young friend was allus a borrowin’ of his gov’nor, as I telled you jest now; and at last of all he wouldn’t stand it any longer, for it was bleeding him precious heavy. Besides which, he wanted to know who was being so kind to him and savin’ him so much trouble about his ortygruff, as he called it. So with a little bit o’ dodgin’, in which I assisted, my customer was treed; and then, watchin’ his chance, he runs, and I has to find him. In fact, yer know, he was what we calls ‘wanted.’
“But I could tell pretty well where my gentleman would be, so when I’d got my instructions I goes off to look arter him.
“Jest as a matter of form I goes to his lodgin’s; but, jest as I expected, he wasn’t there; so then I goes on to Soho, where his lady had apartments. I was in plain clothes, so when I asked for her the people let me in at once, and said I should find her in the first-floor front. I left my mate on the other side o’ the street, for I didn’t expect any opposition, so I walks upstairs to the door, turned the handle quietly, and walks in—when I gave a bit of a start, for the place was nearly dark, and would have been quite, if it hadn’t been for the gas shining up out of the street, and making patches of light on the wall; while, as the lamps ain’t werry close together in that part, it wasn’t such a great deal o’ light as got in that ways. If I’d been in uniform I should have had my bull’s-eye; but, as I warn’t, why, I hadn’t; so I looks round the room, and, as far as I could see, it was nicely furnished, but there was nobody there; so I gives a kick under the table, but there was no one there neither; but on it I could just make out as there was a decanter and two glasses and some biscuits.
“Well, only naterally, I takes ’old o’ the decanter with one hand, pulls out the stopper with the other, and has a smell. No mistake about it—sherry.
“There was the glasses all ready, and there was my mouth all ready; so I pours out a glassful all ready too, and I was just a-goin’ to raise the glass to my lips, when a thought struck me, and I says to myself:
“‘You air a niste promisin’ young officer, you air. You’re aspiring to be a detective, you air; and jest in the midst o’ business you’re a-goin’ to commit yourself like that. How do you know it ain’t a trap?’
“Well, you see, that was rather a settler; so I leaves the glass alone, though it was rather hard work, and then I has another look, and sees as there was foldin’ doors leading into the back room, and one o’ them doors was not close shut.
“My finger goes up to the side o’ my nose, and I gives myself a wink, and slips out again to see if there warn’t a door outer the back room on to the landing. As a matter o’ course there it was, so that any one might slip out o’ that hole while I went in at t’other. So I slips in again and feels as there was one o’ them little turning bolts on the folding door; so I claps the door to, turns the bolt, and was out again on to the landing in a jiffy.
“I needn’t have hurried myself, though, for all was as quiet as could be; and I thought as there was no one there, but of course I has to make sure. All at once I thinks that perhaps the landing door would be locked in side, and as I’d shut the folding door that would be locked too, so that I should be obliged to have ’em broken open, and this was the sort of house where you wouldn’t have a row if you could help it.
“How-so-be, sir, I tries the landing door, and finds it open easy enough, and then I was inside the room, but what sort of a place it was I couldn’t tell, for it was as dark as Ejup. Of course I expect it was a bedroom, and thinks as I should soon feel the bedstead, as would fill up a good bit o’ the place. But fust of all I drops down upon my hands and knees; so as if anybody hit at me, or shot at me, or tried any o’ them little games in the dark, as they’d most likely do it at the height of a man, why it would go over one, and only hit the furniture, which can be replaced, when you can’t replace active and enterprising officers—leave alone being cut off in the flower of one’s youth, you know.
“Then I listens. All as still and as dark as could be. But still as it was, I could hear my heart go ‘beat, beat,’ wonderful loud.
“‘Wish I’d a light,’ I says to myself, but then it warn’t no use wishing; and I didn’t want to go to the people downstairs, so I begins feeling about as slow and as quiet as I could.
“I soon finds out as it’s a bedroom, for I rubs my knuckles up against the bed-post, and soon was close up alongside o’ the ticking, when I thinks as I heered a noise, and darts back to the door in a moment; but all was still again, and I turns back, and then in a manner I got lost, and confused, and could not tell which way I was going, nor yet where was the door.
“Now, I daresay that all sounds werry queer; but perhaps you don’t know how easy it is to be lost in a dark room as you’ve never been in before, even if it is a little ’un; and if so be as you thinks werry little of it, jest you get a handkercher tied tight over yer eyes, and do as you does at Christmas time—‘turn round three times and ketch who you may,’ and then see where you are in two twinklings.
“Well, first of all I hits my hand again a chair; then I butts my head again the corner of as hard a chest o’ drawers as ever I did feel in my life; and then I kicks up such a clatter with the washstand as would have a’most alarmed the house; but I keeps down on my hands and knees, being suspicious of an ambushment, till last of all I feels my way round to the bedside again, and when I was far enough I reaches my hand lightly over, and lays it on the bed, and then I jumps as though I was shot, for I felt somebody’s leg under the clothes.
“Then I snatches my hand back and turns all over in a wet, cold state as if I’d been dipped, for I feels precious uncomfortable, and didn’t know what was best to be done next. One moment I expected to hear the ‘whish’ of a heavy stick, or the sharp crack of a pistol; for arter the noise I made it was quite impossible for whoever was in the bed to be asleep. Then I thinks as I would call for help, or run out, for I don’t mind telling you I felt regularly scared with the silence. How-so-be, I gets the better of my bit o’ failing; and, rousing up, I puts my hand over once more close up to where the pillow should be, and lays it upon a cold face, and there it seemed to stick, for a shudder went up my arm right to my head, and I couldn’t neither move nor speak, while my mouth felt as dry and hot inside as though it was full o’ dust.
“Cold! I never felt anything so cold; and I fell a shivering awful, till with a regular drag I rouses myself up and snatches my hand away; and as fast as ever I could I got out on to the landing and into the front room, and all the while trembling and feeling as if something was after me to pull me back. I got to the window, smashes out a pane, and gives a whistle as brings my mate to the door, and then I hears a ring, and some voices, and he was up to my side in a moment or two, with some o’ the people o’ the house arter him.
“‘Turn on your light,’ I says, as soon as he stood by me on the landing, and then, feeling as white as a sheet, and my hair wet with persperation, but more plucky now there was light and a companion, I goes back towards the room.
“‘Here, give us one o’ them candles,’ I says to a woman as came upstairs with one in each hand; and then from upstairs and down comes the people, all talking together, while as soon as some on ’em sees as it was the police they shuffles off again, so as it was all women as stayed about us.
“First glance I take I sees what was up, and I says to my mate:—
“‘Keep them all out;’ and he goes and stands at the door and closes it after him, when I’m blest if I didn’t let the candle fall, and it was out in a moment. But I felt better now there was help if I wanted it, and I goes up to the bedside and lays my hand on that face as I touched before, but it was cold as ice. Then I slips my hand down to the breast, but there wasn’t a beat there, so I then says to myself, ‘Gone,’ says I; and in spite o’ my shiverin’ and tremblin’ I tried to get the better of it, and reaches over again and lays my hand on the back of a head as felt cold, too; and then, after a good hard tussel with number one, I feels down to the breast of this one, and there wasn’t a beat there. Then I gets to the door again, just as a man comes with a candle in his hand.
“I gives him my empty candlestick, and takes his light, and I says:—
“‘I’m a policeman,’ I says, ‘and you go out and fetch the nighest doctor; and if you meets another constable tell him to come here.’
“‘What for, young man?’ he says, werry bounceable.
“‘Never you mind what for,’ I says; but you do as you’re told; and seeing me look as though I meant it, he starts off like a shot, and we two stood there till the doctor came, and then we goes in, followed by ever so many women, all looking white, and talking in whispers.
“Lord, sir, it was a sight! There was the room well-furnished, and on the bed lay as pretty a girl as ever you see, search through all London; her face, and neck looking as white as so much marble, while all her long black hair lay loose and scattered over the pillow. Her hands were under her head, and she looked for all the world as though she was asleep; while by the flickering candles I almost thought I could see her smile. And there, with one arm across her, his head close to her side, his face buried in the clothes, half-lying on the bed, with his feet on the ground by the bedside, was him as I took to be my customer as I wanted; and both him and the girl dead and stiff.
“The doctor examined ’em, and only said what every one could see plain enough, but he says as well that they’d been gone hours; and that we didn’t know.
“Then he gives a sniff or two, and says as there’s a strong smell of acid about. ‘Is there any cup or bottle anywhere?’ he says.
“I gives a sorter jump, and felt my skin creep, for I recollects the bottle and glasses in the next room, and a cold shiver goes all down my back.
“How-so-be, I goes round and opens the folding doors, and shows the doctor the sherry decanter, which had about three glasses at the bottom.
“‘Ah!’ says he, taking the glassful as I poured out, holding it up to the light, and then sniffing it. ‘Ah,’ says he, ‘there’s more than enough for one in that glassful; and that seems to be the same,’ he says, smelling at the decanter. ‘Pour it in, pleeceman, and tie the stopper down, and seal it.’
“I takes up the glass and tries to pour it back, but if my hand didn’t shake to that degree that the glass chattered against the neck of the decanter, and I spilt half the stuff on the cloth, I was so scared at the escape I’d had.
“Well, sir, you see some one as won’t take no refusal had been beforehand with his warrant, and took both the forger and his lady, and I know I thought it a most awful affair, for I was rather new to such things then. But whether he poisoned her, or whether they’d agreed to it aforehand, nobody knew, not even the Coroner; but all I know is that never before, nor since, have I met with anything as upset me so much as finding them two poor things lying there in the dark—dead, and stiff, and stark; it upset me wonderful—at least, that and the sherry together.”