Chapter Thirteen.How Tom Drift, still going downhill, met my old master.When Tom reached his lodgings that night he found a jubilant letter from Charlie awaiting him.“Just fancy,” he said, “it’s only three weeks more, old man, and then to Jericho with books, and test-tubes, and anatomy! I’ll drag you out of your study by the scruff of your neck, see if I don’t; I’ll clap a knapsack on your back, and haul you by sheer force down into Kent. There you shall snuff the ozone, and hold your hat on your head with both hands on the cliff top. I’ll hound you through old castles, and worry you up hills. If I catch so much as a leaflet on chemistry in your hands, I’ll tear it up and send it flying after the sea-gulls. In short, I shouldn’t like to say what I won’t do, I’m so wild at the prospect of a week with you. Of course, the dear old people growl at me for leaving them in the lurch; but they are glad for us to get the blow; indeed, my pater insists on paying the piper, which is handsome of him. I expect I shall get a day in London on my way, either going or returning; and if you can put me up at your diggings for the night, we’ll have a jolly evening, and you can show me all your haunts.”Tom gasped as he got so far; and well he might.“I’ll tell you all the news when I come. I suppose, by your not writing, you are saving yours up for me. Ta, ta, old boy, andau revoirin twenty-one days! Hurrah! Yours ever,—C.N.”Tom, in his misery, crushed the letter up in his fingers and flung it from him. If a passing pang shot through his breast, it was followed almost instantly by other feelings of vexation and shame. One moment he was ready to sink to the floor in a passion of penitence and remorse—the next, he was ready to resent Charlie’s influence over him even at a distance, and to sneer, as Gus and his friend had done, at the boy’s expense. His brain was too muddled with the excitement and the strange emotions of that evening to reason with himself; his head ached, and his mind was poisoned.“What right has the fellow always to be following me up in this way?” he asked. “I’m a fool to stand it. Why can’t I do as I choose without his pulling a long face?”Thus Tom questioned, and thus he proved that it was Charlie’s influence more than his letter that worried him; for what had the latter said, either in the way of exhortation or reproof?Then he threw himself on the bed, and lay with the wild memory of the evening crowding on his feverish mind. He rose, and, lighting a candle, endeavoured to read; but even his novel was flat and stupid, and in the midst of it he fell asleep, to dream of Gus and his friend all night long. Long ere he awoke my senses had left me, for he had neglected to wind me up. Next morning he went to lectures as usual. To his fellow-students he appeared the same shy, quiet youth he had always seemed; to MrNewcome, whom he met in the street, he appeared still as Charlie’s chosen and dear friend, ready for his holiday and rejoicing in the prospect of the coming meeting; to his professors he appeared still the same steady, hard-working student, bent on making his way in his profession. But to himself, alas! how altered, how degraded he appeared!In the midst of his duties his thoughts ran continually—now back to the strange experience of last evening, now forward to the doubtful events of this.The recollection of the past had lost a good deal of its repulsiveness after twelve hours’ interval, and although he still felt it to be low and harmful, he yet secretly encouraged his curiosity to revisit the place of his temptation.“After all, it did me no harm,” said he to himself; “it’s not interfered with my work, or made me feel worse than before. What harm in going again to-night? When Charlie comes, and we get away from town, I shall easily be able to break it off; and besides, Charlie’s sure to help to put me square; he always does. Yes; I think I’ll just go and see what’s on there to-night; it can’t be worse than it was. Besides,” thought he, glad to seize on any straw of excuse, “I’m bound in honour to play Gus a return match; it would be ungentlemanly to back out of that.”But why sicken you, dear reader, and myself, with recapitulating the sad workings of this poor fellow’s mind? The more he tried to convince himself he was doing only a slight wrong, the more his conscience cried out he was running to his ruin. But he stopped his ears and shut his eyes, and blindly dared his fate. He went that evening to the music-hall. He met Gus and Mortimer, and two other friends. He had taken care to get himself up in a nearer approach to his companions’ style. He bought some cigars of his own on the way, and offered them with a less awkward swagger than he had been able to assume the night before. He found himself able to nod familiarly to the barmaid, and fancied that even Mortimer must have approved of the way in which he ordered about the billiard-marker.In the match with Gus for half-crowns he lost, though only narrowly—so narrowly that he was not content, without a further trial of skill, to own himself beaten, and therefore challenged his adversary to a second meeting the next evening. Then he watched the others play, and betted with Mortimer on the result—and alas! for him, he won.It was Tom himself who said, at nine o’clock,—“And now, suppose we see what’s going on below.”It was the same stupid, disgusting spectacle, but to Tom it seemed less repulsive than he had found it the night before. True, he at times felt a return of the old feeling of shame; the blush would occasionally suffuse his face; but such fits were rare, and he was able to carry them off more easily with joke and laughter.“Jack,” said Gus in a whisper to Mortimer, as Tom, after accepting a very broad hint to treat the party to spirits, was turning to go, “that fellow will be a credit to you and me. Did you see how he smacked his lips over the play, and yet all the while wanted to make us think he saw that sort of thing every day of his life, eh? He’s a promising chap, eh, Jack?”“Wathah,” replied Jack, laughing.Meanwhile Tom, glad enough to get out into the pure air, though in not so desperate a case as the night before, shouldered his way among the loitering company towards the door. He was just emerging into the street, when the sound of voices arrested him.“That’s one of our men, isn’t it?” said one.“Why, so it is; I fancied he was anything but a festive blade. Yes; and upon my word he’s half seas over!”Tom had no difficulty in discovering that these hurried words had reference to him, and turning instinctively towards the voices, he found himself face to face with two, reputedly, of the wildest of his fellow-students.Gladly would he have avoided them; gladly would he have shrunk back and lost himself in the crowd, but it was too late now; he stood discovered.“How are you?” cried one of the two, as he passed; “isn’t your name Drift?”Tom stared as if he would have denied his name; but the next moment he put on his lately acquired swagger, and said, “Yes.”“Ah! I thought so; one of the Saint Elizabeth men. Hullo! he’s in a hurry, though,” added he, as Tom made a dive forward and strode rapidly down the street.It was but a step deeper. Well he knew that by to-morrow every one of his fellow-students would know of him as a frequenter of that wretched place. Well he knew that, as far as they were concerned, the mask of shyness and reticence under which he had sheltered in their midst was for ever pulled away. “One of us,” indeed! So truly the very worst of them might now speak and think of him. Oh, if he had but considered in time; if he had but stemmed this flood at its source! But it was too late now.And he strode home reckless and hardened.The next day, as he expected, every one seemed to know of his visits to the music-hall. The two who had seen him accosted him with every show of friendship and intelligence. He was appealed to in the presence of nearly a dozen of his fellow-students as to the name of one of the low songs there given; he was asked if he was going to be there to-night, and he was invited to join this party and that in similar expeditions to similar places. And to all these questions and greetings he was constrained to reply in keeping with his assumed character of a gay spark. How sick, how vile he felt; yet in that one day how hardened and desperate he became!It was not in Tom Drift to cry “I have sinned! I will return!” No, once loose from his moorings, he let himself float down the stream, watching the receding banks in mute despair, raising no shout for succour, venturing no plunge for safety.You, who by this time have given him up, disgusted at his weakness, his vanity, his low instincts, his cowardliness—who say let him wallow in the mire he has prepared for himself, who know so glibly what you would have done, what you would have said, what you would have felt, remember once more that Tom Drift was not such as you; and unfortunately did not know you. He was not gifted with your heroic resolution or your all-penetrating wisdom. He was an ordinary sinful being of flesh and blood, relying only on his own poor strength; and therefore, reader, try to realise all he went through before you fling your stone.The toils were closing round him fast. His will had been the first to suffer, his conscience next. Then with a rush had gone honour, temperance, and purity; and now finally the flimsy rag, his good name, had been torn from him, and he stood revealed a prodigal—and a hypocrite.Even yet, however, help might have been forthcoming.“I say, you fellow,” said one of his fellow-students this same day, “I’ve never spoken to you before, and perhaps shall never do so again; butdon’t be a fool!”“What do you mean?” said Tom sharply.“Only this, and I can’t help it if you are angry, keep clear of these new friends of yours, and still more, keep clear of the places they visit. If you’ve been led in once, rather cut off your right hand than be led in again, that’s all!”What spirit of infatuation possessed Tom Drift, that he did not spring for very life at the proffered help, that he did not besiege this friend, however blunt and outspoken, and compel his timely aid? Alas, for his blindness and folly!Scowling round at the speaker, he muttered an oath, and said, “What on earth concern is it of yours who my friends are and where I go? Mind your own business.”And so, thrusting rudely away the hand that might, by God’s grace, have saved him, he swept farther and farther out towards the dark waters.One final and great hope was still reserved for him, and that was Charlie’s visit. But to Tom that prospect was becoming day by day mere distasteful. As the days wore on, and Tom sunk deeper and deeper into the snare prepared for him, the thought of a week in the society of one so upright and pure as Charlie became positively odious. The effort to conceal his new condition would be almost impossible, and yet to admit it to him would be, he felt, to shatter for ever the only friendship he really prized. He racked his brain for expedients and excuses to avert the visit, but without avail. If he pleaded illness Charlie would be the first to rush to his bedside; if he pleaded hard work Charlie would insist on sharing it, or improving its few intervals of rest; if he pleaded disinclination Charlie would devise a hundred other plans to please him. In short, Charlie’s visit was inevitable, and as he looked forward to it he writhed in misgiving and anxiety.His visits to the music-hall were meanwhile continuing, and his circle of acquaintance at that evil haunt enlarging. He was duly installed as one of the “fast set” at Saint Elizabeth’s, and under its auspices had already made hisdébutat other scenes and places than that of his first transgression. He was known by sight to a score of billiard-markers, potmen, blacklegs, and lower characters still, and was on nodding terms with fully half of them. He had lost considerably more than he had gained at billiards, and was still further emptying his purse at cards. Quick work for a few weeks! So quickly and fatally, alas! Will the infection, once admitted, spread, especially in a patient whose moral constitution has undergone so long a course of slow preparation as Tom’s had.The day came at last. Tom had carefully hidden away his worst books and his spirits; he had bathed his face half a dozen times, to remove the traces of last night’s intemperance he had gathered together from the corners where they had for so long lain neglected the books and relics of his Randlebury days, and restored them to their old places; he had brightened me up, and he had taken pains to purify his room from the smell of rank tobacco; and then he sauntered down to the station.How my heart beat as the train came into the platform!Hishead was out of the window, andhishand was waving to us a hundred yards off; and the next minute he had burst from the carriage, and seized Tom by the hands.“How are you, old Tom? I thought we’d never get here; how glad I am to set eyes on you! Isn’t this a spree?” And not waiting for Tom’s answer he hauled his traps out of the carriage in a transport of delight.Still the same jovial, honest, fine-hearted boy.“Hi! here! some of you,” he shouted to a porter, “look after these things, will you, and get us a cab. I tell you what, Tom, you’ve got to come up home with me first, and we can have dinner there; then I’ll come on to your den, and we can pack our knapsacks and sleep, and then start by the five train to-morrow morning.”Thus he bustled, and thus he brought back the old times on poor Tom Drift. Without the heart to speak, he helped his friend to collect his luggage, and when they were fairly started in the cab he even smiled feebly in reply to the boy’s sallies.“Tom, you rascal, didn’t I tell you you weren’t to knock yourself up, eh? Why can’t you do what you’re told? Why, I declare you’re as thin as a hurdle, and as black under the eyes as if you had been fighting with a collier. You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Look at me; do all I can I can’t get up an interesting pallor like you, and I’ve fretted enough over those conic sections (comic sections Jim always calls them). Never mind! Wait till I get you down to the sea.”And so he rattled on, while Tom leaned back in his seat and winced at every word.When they reached Mr Newcome’s of course there was a scene of eager welcome on one side and boisterous glee on the other. Tom, as he looked on, sighed, as well he might, and wished he could have been spared the torture of this day.Charlie tore himself away from his mother, to drag his friend into the house.“Look at this object!” he cried; “did you ever see such a caution to students? If we do nothing else in Kent we shall scare the crows, eh, Tom?”“Charlie!” exclaimed his mother; “you have come home quite rude! I hope you’ll excuse him, Mr Drift.”Mr Drift said nothing, and looked and felt extremely miserable.“He looks really ill, poor fellow!” said Mrs Newcome to her husband. “I wonder they allow the students to overwork themselves in that way.”And then they sat down to dinner—a meal as distasteful to Tom as it was joyful to Charlie and his parents.
When Tom reached his lodgings that night he found a jubilant letter from Charlie awaiting him.
“Just fancy,” he said, “it’s only three weeks more, old man, and then to Jericho with books, and test-tubes, and anatomy! I’ll drag you out of your study by the scruff of your neck, see if I don’t; I’ll clap a knapsack on your back, and haul you by sheer force down into Kent. There you shall snuff the ozone, and hold your hat on your head with both hands on the cliff top. I’ll hound you through old castles, and worry you up hills. If I catch so much as a leaflet on chemistry in your hands, I’ll tear it up and send it flying after the sea-gulls. In short, I shouldn’t like to say what I won’t do, I’m so wild at the prospect of a week with you. Of course, the dear old people growl at me for leaving them in the lurch; but they are glad for us to get the blow; indeed, my pater insists on paying the piper, which is handsome of him. I expect I shall get a day in London on my way, either going or returning; and if you can put me up at your diggings for the night, we’ll have a jolly evening, and you can show me all your haunts.”
Tom gasped as he got so far; and well he might.
“I’ll tell you all the news when I come. I suppose, by your not writing, you are saving yours up for me. Ta, ta, old boy, andau revoirin twenty-one days! Hurrah! Yours ever,—C.N.”
Tom, in his misery, crushed the letter up in his fingers and flung it from him. If a passing pang shot through his breast, it was followed almost instantly by other feelings of vexation and shame. One moment he was ready to sink to the floor in a passion of penitence and remorse—the next, he was ready to resent Charlie’s influence over him even at a distance, and to sneer, as Gus and his friend had done, at the boy’s expense. His brain was too muddled with the excitement and the strange emotions of that evening to reason with himself; his head ached, and his mind was poisoned.
“What right has the fellow always to be following me up in this way?” he asked. “I’m a fool to stand it. Why can’t I do as I choose without his pulling a long face?”
Thus Tom questioned, and thus he proved that it was Charlie’s influence more than his letter that worried him; for what had the latter said, either in the way of exhortation or reproof?
Then he threw himself on the bed, and lay with the wild memory of the evening crowding on his feverish mind. He rose, and, lighting a candle, endeavoured to read; but even his novel was flat and stupid, and in the midst of it he fell asleep, to dream of Gus and his friend all night long. Long ere he awoke my senses had left me, for he had neglected to wind me up. Next morning he went to lectures as usual. To his fellow-students he appeared the same shy, quiet youth he had always seemed; to Mr
Newcome, whom he met in the street, he appeared still as Charlie’s chosen and dear friend, ready for his holiday and rejoicing in the prospect of the coming meeting; to his professors he appeared still the same steady, hard-working student, bent on making his way in his profession. But to himself, alas! how altered, how degraded he appeared!
In the midst of his duties his thoughts ran continually—now back to the strange experience of last evening, now forward to the doubtful events of this.
The recollection of the past had lost a good deal of its repulsiveness after twelve hours’ interval, and although he still felt it to be low and harmful, he yet secretly encouraged his curiosity to revisit the place of his temptation.
“After all, it did me no harm,” said he to himself; “it’s not interfered with my work, or made me feel worse than before. What harm in going again to-night? When Charlie comes, and we get away from town, I shall easily be able to break it off; and besides, Charlie’s sure to help to put me square; he always does. Yes; I think I’ll just go and see what’s on there to-night; it can’t be worse than it was. Besides,” thought he, glad to seize on any straw of excuse, “I’m bound in honour to play Gus a return match; it would be ungentlemanly to back out of that.”
But why sicken you, dear reader, and myself, with recapitulating the sad workings of this poor fellow’s mind? The more he tried to convince himself he was doing only a slight wrong, the more his conscience cried out he was running to his ruin. But he stopped his ears and shut his eyes, and blindly dared his fate. He went that evening to the music-hall. He met Gus and Mortimer, and two other friends. He had taken care to get himself up in a nearer approach to his companions’ style. He bought some cigars of his own on the way, and offered them with a less awkward swagger than he had been able to assume the night before. He found himself able to nod familiarly to the barmaid, and fancied that even Mortimer must have approved of the way in which he ordered about the billiard-marker.
In the match with Gus for half-crowns he lost, though only narrowly—so narrowly that he was not content, without a further trial of skill, to own himself beaten, and therefore challenged his adversary to a second meeting the next evening. Then he watched the others play, and betted with Mortimer on the result—and alas! for him, he won.
It was Tom himself who said, at nine o’clock,—
“And now, suppose we see what’s going on below.”
It was the same stupid, disgusting spectacle, but to Tom it seemed less repulsive than he had found it the night before. True, he at times felt a return of the old feeling of shame; the blush would occasionally suffuse his face; but such fits were rare, and he was able to carry them off more easily with joke and laughter.
“Jack,” said Gus in a whisper to Mortimer, as Tom, after accepting a very broad hint to treat the party to spirits, was turning to go, “that fellow will be a credit to you and me. Did you see how he smacked his lips over the play, and yet all the while wanted to make us think he saw that sort of thing every day of his life, eh? He’s a promising chap, eh, Jack?”
“Wathah,” replied Jack, laughing.
Meanwhile Tom, glad enough to get out into the pure air, though in not so desperate a case as the night before, shouldered his way among the loitering company towards the door. He was just emerging into the street, when the sound of voices arrested him.
“That’s one of our men, isn’t it?” said one.
“Why, so it is; I fancied he was anything but a festive blade. Yes; and upon my word he’s half seas over!”
Tom had no difficulty in discovering that these hurried words had reference to him, and turning instinctively towards the voices, he found himself face to face with two, reputedly, of the wildest of his fellow-students.
Gladly would he have avoided them; gladly would he have shrunk back and lost himself in the crowd, but it was too late now; he stood discovered.
“How are you?” cried one of the two, as he passed; “isn’t your name Drift?”
Tom stared as if he would have denied his name; but the next moment he put on his lately acquired swagger, and said, “Yes.”
“Ah! I thought so; one of the Saint Elizabeth men. Hullo! he’s in a hurry, though,” added he, as Tom made a dive forward and strode rapidly down the street.
It was but a step deeper. Well he knew that by to-morrow every one of his fellow-students would know of him as a frequenter of that wretched place. Well he knew that, as far as they were concerned, the mask of shyness and reticence under which he had sheltered in their midst was for ever pulled away. “One of us,” indeed! So truly the very worst of them might now speak and think of him. Oh, if he had but considered in time; if he had but stemmed this flood at its source! But it was too late now.
And he strode home reckless and hardened.
The next day, as he expected, every one seemed to know of his visits to the music-hall. The two who had seen him accosted him with every show of friendship and intelligence. He was appealed to in the presence of nearly a dozen of his fellow-students as to the name of one of the low songs there given; he was asked if he was going to be there to-night, and he was invited to join this party and that in similar expeditions to similar places. And to all these questions and greetings he was constrained to reply in keeping with his assumed character of a gay spark. How sick, how vile he felt; yet in that one day how hardened and desperate he became!
It was not in Tom Drift to cry “I have sinned! I will return!” No, once loose from his moorings, he let himself float down the stream, watching the receding banks in mute despair, raising no shout for succour, venturing no plunge for safety.
You, who by this time have given him up, disgusted at his weakness, his vanity, his low instincts, his cowardliness—who say let him wallow in the mire he has prepared for himself, who know so glibly what you would have done, what you would have said, what you would have felt, remember once more that Tom Drift was not such as you; and unfortunately did not know you. He was not gifted with your heroic resolution or your all-penetrating wisdom. He was an ordinary sinful being of flesh and blood, relying only on his own poor strength; and therefore, reader, try to realise all he went through before you fling your stone.
The toils were closing round him fast. His will had been the first to suffer, his conscience next. Then with a rush had gone honour, temperance, and purity; and now finally the flimsy rag, his good name, had been torn from him, and he stood revealed a prodigal—and a hypocrite.
Even yet, however, help might have been forthcoming.
“I say, you fellow,” said one of his fellow-students this same day, “I’ve never spoken to you before, and perhaps shall never do so again; butdon’t be a fool!”
“What do you mean?” said Tom sharply.
“Only this, and I can’t help it if you are angry, keep clear of these new friends of yours, and still more, keep clear of the places they visit. If you’ve been led in once, rather cut off your right hand than be led in again, that’s all!”
What spirit of infatuation possessed Tom Drift, that he did not spring for very life at the proffered help, that he did not besiege this friend, however blunt and outspoken, and compel his timely aid? Alas, for his blindness and folly!
Scowling round at the speaker, he muttered an oath, and said, “What on earth concern is it of yours who my friends are and where I go? Mind your own business.”
And so, thrusting rudely away the hand that might, by God’s grace, have saved him, he swept farther and farther out towards the dark waters.
One final and great hope was still reserved for him, and that was Charlie’s visit. But to Tom that prospect was becoming day by day mere distasteful. As the days wore on, and Tom sunk deeper and deeper into the snare prepared for him, the thought of a week in the society of one so upright and pure as Charlie became positively odious. The effort to conceal his new condition would be almost impossible, and yet to admit it to him would be, he felt, to shatter for ever the only friendship he really prized. He racked his brain for expedients and excuses to avert the visit, but without avail. If he pleaded illness Charlie would be the first to rush to his bedside; if he pleaded hard work Charlie would insist on sharing it, or improving its few intervals of rest; if he pleaded disinclination Charlie would devise a hundred other plans to please him. In short, Charlie’s visit was inevitable, and as he looked forward to it he writhed in misgiving and anxiety.
His visits to the music-hall were meanwhile continuing, and his circle of acquaintance at that evil haunt enlarging. He was duly installed as one of the “fast set” at Saint Elizabeth’s, and under its auspices had already made hisdébutat other scenes and places than that of his first transgression. He was known by sight to a score of billiard-markers, potmen, blacklegs, and lower characters still, and was on nodding terms with fully half of them. He had lost considerably more than he had gained at billiards, and was still further emptying his purse at cards. Quick work for a few weeks! So quickly and fatally, alas! Will the infection, once admitted, spread, especially in a patient whose moral constitution has undergone so long a course of slow preparation as Tom’s had.
The day came at last. Tom had carefully hidden away his worst books and his spirits; he had bathed his face half a dozen times, to remove the traces of last night’s intemperance he had gathered together from the corners where they had for so long lain neglected the books and relics of his Randlebury days, and restored them to their old places; he had brightened me up, and he had taken pains to purify his room from the smell of rank tobacco; and then he sauntered down to the station.
How my heart beat as the train came into the platform!Hishead was out of the window, andhishand was waving to us a hundred yards off; and the next minute he had burst from the carriage, and seized Tom by the hands.
“How are you, old Tom? I thought we’d never get here; how glad I am to set eyes on you! Isn’t this a spree?” And not waiting for Tom’s answer he hauled his traps out of the carriage in a transport of delight.
Still the same jovial, honest, fine-hearted boy.
“Hi! here! some of you,” he shouted to a porter, “look after these things, will you, and get us a cab. I tell you what, Tom, you’ve got to come up home with me first, and we can have dinner there; then I’ll come on to your den, and we can pack our knapsacks and sleep, and then start by the five train to-morrow morning.”
Thus he bustled, and thus he brought back the old times on poor Tom Drift. Without the heart to speak, he helped his friend to collect his luggage, and when they were fairly started in the cab he even smiled feebly in reply to the boy’s sallies.
“Tom, you rascal, didn’t I tell you you weren’t to knock yourself up, eh? Why can’t you do what you’re told? Why, I declare you’re as thin as a hurdle, and as black under the eyes as if you had been fighting with a collier. You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Look at me; do all I can I can’t get up an interesting pallor like you, and I’ve fretted enough over those conic sections (comic sections Jim always calls them). Never mind! Wait till I get you down to the sea.”
And so he rattled on, while Tom leaned back in his seat and winced at every word.
When they reached Mr Newcome’s of course there was a scene of eager welcome on one side and boisterous glee on the other. Tom, as he looked on, sighed, as well he might, and wished he could have been spared the torture of this day.
Charlie tore himself away from his mother, to drag his friend into the house.
“Look at this object!” he cried; “did you ever see such a caution to students? If we do nothing else in Kent we shall scare the crows, eh, Tom?”
“Charlie!” exclaimed his mother; “you have come home quite rude! I hope you’ll excuse him, Mr Drift.”
Mr Drift said nothing, and looked and felt extremely miserable.
“He looks really ill, poor fellow!” said Mrs Newcome to her husband. “I wonder they allow the students to overwork themselves in that way.”
And then they sat down to dinner—a meal as distasteful to Tom as it was joyful to Charlie and his parents.
Chapter Fourteen.How Tom Drift parted with his best friend.Charlie could not fail to discover before long that there was something wrong with my master.Never before had he known him so silent, so spiritless, so mysterious. No effort could rouse him into cheerfulness or conversation, and for the first time for three years Charlie felt that Tom was sorry to see him. Naturally, he put it all down to the results of overwork. Tom in his letters had always represented himself as engrossed in study. Even the few hurried scrawls of the past few weeks he had excused on the same ground. It never once occurred to the simple-minded schoolboy that a chum of his could possibly be struggling in the agonies of shame and temptation and he know nothing of it; he who knew so little of evil himself, was not the one to think or imagine evil where any other explanation was possible.And yet Tom’s manner was so strange and altered, that he determined, as soon as they should find themselves alone, to make an effort to ascertain its cause.The opportunity came when the two youths, having bid farewell to Mr and Mrs Newcome, found themselves at last in Tom’s lodgings in Grime Street.“Well,” said Charlie, with all the show of cheerfulness he could muster, for his spirits had been strangely damped by the irresponsive gloom of his old schoolfellow—“well! here’s the den at last. Upon my word, old man, I’ve seen livelier holes! Why don’t you explore and find some place a trifle less dead-alive? But I dare say it’s convenient to be near the Hospital, and when a fellow’s working, it doesn’t much matter what sort of a place he’s in, as long as there’s not a row going on under his window—and I don’t suppose there’s much chance of that here,” said Charlie, looking out into the black street with a kind of shudder.Tom said nothing; he wished his friend would not everlastingly be talking of hard work and study in the way he did. However Charlie intended it, it was neither more nor less than a talking at him, and that he could not stand.Charlie took no notice of his silence, but continued his inspection of the dismal apartment, lighting up with pleasure at the sight of the old Randlebury relics.“My old rod!” exclaimed he, taking down the very rod with the lance-wood top which had figured so conspicuously in a certain adventure three years ago; “how jolly to see it again! I’m afraid you don’t get much use for it here. And our fencing-sticks, too; see, Tom, here’s the very place where you got under my guard and snipped a bit out of the basket. Ha, ha! what a crack that was! And here’s the picture of old Randlebury, with you at your window, and me lying on the grass (and looking uncommonly like a recently felled tree). Look here, Tom, this window here is where Jim and I hang out now. It used to be Callaghan’s. By the way, do you ever see Call? He’s in London, articled to a solicitor. A pretty lawyer he’ll make! Have you seen him yet, Tom?”Tom, during this rattle, had been looking listlessly out of the window. He now turned round with a start and said—“Eh? what did you say?”The look which accompanied the words was so haggard and miserable, that Charlie’s pity was instantly touched. He stepped across the room and put his arm in Tom’s as he stood, and said,—“Tom, old boy, what’s wrong?”Tom said nothing, but walked away and leaned against the mantelpiece.“What is it, Tom? Are you ill, or in trouble? You’ll tell me, won’t you?”Tom still remained silent, but his flushing face and restless lips showed that the appeal had at least been heard.“Old boy,” continued Charlie, venturing again nearer, “we never used to have secrets. I’m sure something’s the matter. Mayn’t I know what it is? Very likely I can’t help you; but I could try.”Tom’s lips quivered. The old influence was fast coming back. Already in his mind he was picturing himself telling Charlie all and with his help extricating himself from the slough into which he had sunk. Howcouldhe stand unmoved with that voice, familiar by many a memory of simple courageous goodness, again falling on his ear; and that appealing face, one so loved and delighted in, again turned to his?“I’m afraid it’s something more than ill health, old boy. You’ve something on your mind. Oh! why won’t you at least tell me what it is?”Tom could stand it no longer. Hemustspeak. Whatever the confession cost him, whatever its effect would be on his old schoolfellow’s friendship, Charlie must know all. To him at least he could not play the hypocrite or the deceiver. He had turned from the mantelpiece, his hand was held out to take that of his friend’s, he was just about to speak, when the door of his room opened, and there entered Gus, Mortimer, and two companions.“Here he is!” cried Gus, not noticing that Tom had company. “Tommy, old man, you’re in luck. Old Owl has got a supper on to-night, no end of punch, my boy, and he’s expecting you; and afterwards we’re going for a regular night of it to the— Hullo! who’s your friend?”He caught sight of Charlie at this moment, and for an instant failed to recognise in Tom’s companion the boy whom he had treated so shamefully at Gurley races. But he remembered him in a moment.“What, surely—yet upon my honour so it is, our young sporting friend. How are you, Charlie, my boy? Here’s a game! You’ll come too, of course? Mortimer, this fellow is Drift’s special—up to all the wrinkles, no end of a knowing blade.”During this brief and rapid salutation Tom and Charlie, I need hardly say, were speechless. One in utter despair, the other in utter rage and astonishment. In both the revulsion of feeling caused by the interruption was almost stupefying, and they stood for a moment staring at the intruders in simple bewilderment.Tom was the first to find words. His cheeks were white, and his voice almost choked as he said to Gus,—“I wish you’d go. I’m engaged.”“So you are,” said Gus, with a sneer; “but I say. Tom, old man, I wish you’d come. It’s too good a thing to miss.”“Go away!” almost gasped Tom.“Oh, of course an Englishman’s house is his castle,” said Gus, offended at this unusual rebuff; “you’re a fool, though, that’s all. We were going to have a spree to-night that would make all sprees of the past month look foolish. Come along, don’t be an ass; and bring young mooney-face; I dare say by this time he knows what’s what as well as you or me, Tom; eh, Jack?”“Lookth tho,” replied the amused Jack.By this time Charlie had found words. The truth of course had all flashed in upon him; he knew the secret now of Tom’s strange manner, of the neglected letters, of the haggard looks, of the reluctant welcome.And he knew, too, that but for this untimely incursion he would have heard it all from Tom himself, penitent and humble, instead of, as now, hardened and desperate.And he recognised in the miserable little swaggering dandy before him the author and the promoter of his friend’s ruin; on him therefore his sudden rage expended itself.“You little cowardly wretch!” he exclaimed, addressing Gus, “haven’t you done mischief enough to Tom already? Go out of his room!”Poor Charlie! Nothing could have been more fatal to his hopes than this rash outbreak. The words had scarcely escaped his lips before he saw the mischief he had done.Tom’s manner suddenly altered. All signs of shame and penitence disappeared as he stepped with a swagger up to Charlie and exclaimed,—“What business have you to attack my friends? Get out yourself!”“Bravo, Tom, old man,” cried the delighted Gus. “Do you hear, young prig? walk off, you’re not wanted here.”Charlie stood for one moment stunned and irresolute. Had there been in Tom’s face the faintest glimmer of regret, or the faintest trace of the old affection, he would have stayed and braved all consequences. But there was neither. The spell that bound Tom Drift, his fear of being thought a milksop, had changed him utterly, and as Charlie’s eyes turned with pleading look to his they met only with menace and confusion.“Go!” repeated Tom, driven nearly wild by the mocking laugh in which Mortimer and his two companions joined.This, then, was the end of their friendship—so full of hope on one side, so full of promise on the other.It was a strange moment in the lives of those two. To one it was the wilful throwing away of the last and best chance of deliverance, to the other it was the cruel extinction of a love and trust that had till now bid fair to stand the wear of years to come.“Get out, I say!” said Tom Drift, once more goaded to madness by the pitying sneers of Mortimer.Charlie stayed no longer. Half stunned, and scarcely knowing what he did, with one wild, mute prayer at his heart, he turned without a word and left the room.Tom’s friends followed his departure with mocking laughter, and watched his slowly retreating figure down the street with many a foul jest, and then returned to congratulate Tom Drift on his deliverance.“Well,” said Gus, “you are well rid ofhim, at any rate. What a lucky thing we turned up just when we did! He’d have snivelled you into a shocking condition. Why, what a weak-minded fellow Tom is; ain’t he, Jack?”“Wathah,” replied Jack, with a laugh.Meanwhile Tom had abandoned even himself. He hated his friends, he hated himself, he hated Charlie and cursed himself for having ever allowed him within his doors. He took no notice of Gus’s gibes for a long time. At last, “Ugh!” said he, “never mind if I’m weak-minded or not, I’m sick of all this. Suppose we go off to the supper, and I’ll stand treat afterwards at the music-hall?”And crushing his hat on his head, he dashed out of the house utterly reckless and desperate.Need I say my thoughts were with the poor injured boy, who, stung with ingratitude, robbed of his friend, and ill with mingled pity, dread, and sorrow, walked slowly down the street away from Tom’s lodgings? Ah! when should I see his face or hear his voice again now?At the supper that evening Tom drank often and deeply, and of all the party his shout rose highest and his laugh drowned all the others. They led him staggering away among them, and brought him to their vile resort. Even his companions wondered at his reckless demeanour, and expostulated with him on his extravagant wildness. He laughed them to scorn and called for more drink. After a while they rose to depart, leaving him where he was, noisy and helpless.How long he remained so I cannot say, for suddenly and most unexpectedly I found myself called upon to enter upon a new stage in my career.As my master leaned back hopelessly tipsy in his seat, a hand quietly and swiftly slipped under his coat and drew me from my pocket; as swiftly the chain was detached from its button-hole, and the next thing I was conscious of was being thrust into a strange pocket, belonging to some one who was quitting the hall as fast as his legs would carry him.
Charlie could not fail to discover before long that there was something wrong with my master.
Never before had he known him so silent, so spiritless, so mysterious. No effort could rouse him into cheerfulness or conversation, and for the first time for three years Charlie felt that Tom was sorry to see him. Naturally, he put it all down to the results of overwork. Tom in his letters had always represented himself as engrossed in study. Even the few hurried scrawls of the past few weeks he had excused on the same ground. It never once occurred to the simple-minded schoolboy that a chum of his could possibly be struggling in the agonies of shame and temptation and he know nothing of it; he who knew so little of evil himself, was not the one to think or imagine evil where any other explanation was possible.
And yet Tom’s manner was so strange and altered, that he determined, as soon as they should find themselves alone, to make an effort to ascertain its cause.
The opportunity came when the two youths, having bid farewell to Mr and Mrs Newcome, found themselves at last in Tom’s lodgings in Grime Street.
“Well,” said Charlie, with all the show of cheerfulness he could muster, for his spirits had been strangely damped by the irresponsive gloom of his old schoolfellow—“well! here’s the den at last. Upon my word, old man, I’ve seen livelier holes! Why don’t you explore and find some place a trifle less dead-alive? But I dare say it’s convenient to be near the Hospital, and when a fellow’s working, it doesn’t much matter what sort of a place he’s in, as long as there’s not a row going on under his window—and I don’t suppose there’s much chance of that here,” said Charlie, looking out into the black street with a kind of shudder.
Tom said nothing; he wished his friend would not everlastingly be talking of hard work and study in the way he did. However Charlie intended it, it was neither more nor less than a talking at him, and that he could not stand.
Charlie took no notice of his silence, but continued his inspection of the dismal apartment, lighting up with pleasure at the sight of the old Randlebury relics.
“My old rod!” exclaimed he, taking down the very rod with the lance-wood top which had figured so conspicuously in a certain adventure three years ago; “how jolly to see it again! I’m afraid you don’t get much use for it here. And our fencing-sticks, too; see, Tom, here’s the very place where you got under my guard and snipped a bit out of the basket. Ha, ha! what a crack that was! And here’s the picture of old Randlebury, with you at your window, and me lying on the grass (and looking uncommonly like a recently felled tree). Look here, Tom, this window here is where Jim and I hang out now. It used to be Callaghan’s. By the way, do you ever see Call? He’s in London, articled to a solicitor. A pretty lawyer he’ll make! Have you seen him yet, Tom?”
Tom, during this rattle, had been looking listlessly out of the window. He now turned round with a start and said—
“Eh? what did you say?”
The look which accompanied the words was so haggard and miserable, that Charlie’s pity was instantly touched. He stepped across the room and put his arm in Tom’s as he stood, and said,—
“Tom, old boy, what’s wrong?”
Tom said nothing, but walked away and leaned against the mantelpiece.
“What is it, Tom? Are you ill, or in trouble? You’ll tell me, won’t you?”
Tom still remained silent, but his flushing face and restless lips showed that the appeal had at least been heard.
“Old boy,” continued Charlie, venturing again nearer, “we never used to have secrets. I’m sure something’s the matter. Mayn’t I know what it is? Very likely I can’t help you; but I could try.”
Tom’s lips quivered. The old influence was fast coming back. Already in his mind he was picturing himself telling Charlie all and with his help extricating himself from the slough into which he had sunk. Howcouldhe stand unmoved with that voice, familiar by many a memory of simple courageous goodness, again falling on his ear; and that appealing face, one so loved and delighted in, again turned to his?
“I’m afraid it’s something more than ill health, old boy. You’ve something on your mind. Oh! why won’t you at least tell me what it is?”
Tom could stand it no longer. Hemustspeak. Whatever the confession cost him, whatever its effect would be on his old schoolfellow’s friendship, Charlie must know all. To him at least he could not play the hypocrite or the deceiver. He had turned from the mantelpiece, his hand was held out to take that of his friend’s, he was just about to speak, when the door of his room opened, and there entered Gus, Mortimer, and two companions.
“Here he is!” cried Gus, not noticing that Tom had company. “Tommy, old man, you’re in luck. Old Owl has got a supper on to-night, no end of punch, my boy, and he’s expecting you; and afterwards we’re going for a regular night of it to the— Hullo! who’s your friend?”
He caught sight of Charlie at this moment, and for an instant failed to recognise in Tom’s companion the boy whom he had treated so shamefully at Gurley races. But he remembered him in a moment.
“What, surely—yet upon my honour so it is, our young sporting friend. How are you, Charlie, my boy? Here’s a game! You’ll come too, of course? Mortimer, this fellow is Drift’s special—up to all the wrinkles, no end of a knowing blade.”
During this brief and rapid salutation Tom and Charlie, I need hardly say, were speechless. One in utter despair, the other in utter rage and astonishment. In both the revulsion of feeling caused by the interruption was almost stupefying, and they stood for a moment staring at the intruders in simple bewilderment.
Tom was the first to find words. His cheeks were white, and his voice almost choked as he said to Gus,—
“I wish you’d go. I’m engaged.”
“So you are,” said Gus, with a sneer; “but I say. Tom, old man, I wish you’d come. It’s too good a thing to miss.”
“Go away!” almost gasped Tom.
“Oh, of course an Englishman’s house is his castle,” said Gus, offended at this unusual rebuff; “you’re a fool, though, that’s all. We were going to have a spree to-night that would make all sprees of the past month look foolish. Come along, don’t be an ass; and bring young mooney-face; I dare say by this time he knows what’s what as well as you or me, Tom; eh, Jack?”
“Lookth tho,” replied the amused Jack.
By this time Charlie had found words. The truth of course had all flashed in upon him; he knew the secret now of Tom’s strange manner, of the neglected letters, of the haggard looks, of the reluctant welcome.
And he knew, too, that but for this untimely incursion he would have heard it all from Tom himself, penitent and humble, instead of, as now, hardened and desperate.
And he recognised in the miserable little swaggering dandy before him the author and the promoter of his friend’s ruin; on him therefore his sudden rage expended itself.
“You little cowardly wretch!” he exclaimed, addressing Gus, “haven’t you done mischief enough to Tom already? Go out of his room!”
Poor Charlie! Nothing could have been more fatal to his hopes than this rash outbreak. The words had scarcely escaped his lips before he saw the mischief he had done.
Tom’s manner suddenly altered. All signs of shame and penitence disappeared as he stepped with a swagger up to Charlie and exclaimed,—
“What business have you to attack my friends? Get out yourself!”
“Bravo, Tom, old man,” cried the delighted Gus. “Do you hear, young prig? walk off, you’re not wanted here.”
Charlie stood for one moment stunned and irresolute. Had there been in Tom’s face the faintest glimmer of regret, or the faintest trace of the old affection, he would have stayed and braved all consequences. But there was neither. The spell that bound Tom Drift, his fear of being thought a milksop, had changed him utterly, and as Charlie’s eyes turned with pleading look to his they met only with menace and confusion.
“Go!” repeated Tom, driven nearly wild by the mocking laugh in which Mortimer and his two companions joined.
This, then, was the end of their friendship—so full of hope on one side, so full of promise on the other.
It was a strange moment in the lives of those two. To one it was the wilful throwing away of the last and best chance of deliverance, to the other it was the cruel extinction of a love and trust that had till now bid fair to stand the wear of years to come.
“Get out, I say!” said Tom Drift, once more goaded to madness by the pitying sneers of Mortimer.
Charlie stayed no longer. Half stunned, and scarcely knowing what he did, with one wild, mute prayer at his heart, he turned without a word and left the room.
Tom’s friends followed his departure with mocking laughter, and watched his slowly retreating figure down the street with many a foul jest, and then returned to congratulate Tom Drift on his deliverance.
“Well,” said Gus, “you are well rid ofhim, at any rate. What a lucky thing we turned up just when we did! He’d have snivelled you into a shocking condition. Why, what a weak-minded fellow Tom is; ain’t he, Jack?”
“Wathah,” replied Jack, with a laugh.
Meanwhile Tom had abandoned even himself. He hated his friends, he hated himself, he hated Charlie and cursed himself for having ever allowed him within his doors. He took no notice of Gus’s gibes for a long time. At last, “Ugh!” said he, “never mind if I’m weak-minded or not, I’m sick of all this. Suppose we go off to the supper, and I’ll stand treat afterwards at the music-hall?”
And crushing his hat on his head, he dashed out of the house utterly reckless and desperate.
Need I say my thoughts were with the poor injured boy, who, stung with ingratitude, robbed of his friend, and ill with mingled pity, dread, and sorrow, walked slowly down the street away from Tom’s lodgings? Ah! when should I see his face or hear his voice again now?
At the supper that evening Tom drank often and deeply, and of all the party his shout rose highest and his laugh drowned all the others. They led him staggering away among them, and brought him to their vile resort. Even his companions wondered at his reckless demeanour, and expostulated with him on his extravagant wildness. He laughed them to scorn and called for more drink. After a while they rose to depart, leaving him where he was, noisy and helpless.
How long he remained so I cannot say, for suddenly and most unexpectedly I found myself called upon to enter upon a new stage in my career.
As my master leaned back hopelessly tipsy in his seat, a hand quietly and swiftly slipped under his coat and drew me from my pocket; as swiftly the chain was detached from its button-hole, and the next thing I was conscious of was being thrust into a strange pocket, belonging to some one who was quitting the hall as fast as his legs would carry him.
Chapter Fifteen.How I found myself in very low company.My capturer was a boy, and as remarkable a specimen of a boy as it has ever been my lot to meet during the whole of my career. His age was, say, fourteen. He stood four feet one in his slipshod boots.The hat which adorned his head was an old white billycock, which in its palmy days might have adorned noble brows, so fashionable were its pretensions. Now, alas! it had one side caved in, and the other was green with wear and weather. The coat which arrayed his manly form was evidently one not made recently or to wearer’s measure, for besides showing cracks and rents in various parts, its tails were so extravagantly long for its small occupant that they literally almost touched the ground. His nether garments, on the other hand, although they resembled the coat in their conveniences for ventilation, being all in rags and tatters, appeared to have been borrowed from a smaller pair of legs even than those owned by my present possessor, for they—at least one leg—barely reached half way below the knee, while the other stopped short very little lower. Altogether, the boy was as nondescript and “scarecrowy” an object as one could well expect to meet with.As he left the hall he gave a quick look round to assure himself no one was following him; then he darted across the road and proceeded to shuffle forward in so extremely leisurely and casual a way, that very few of the people who met him would have imagined he carried a stolen watch in his pocket.Such a hole as it was! As soon as I had sufficiently recovered from my astonishment to look about me, I became aware that I was by no means the sole occupant of the receptacle he was pleased to designate by the title of a pocket, but which other people would have called a slit in the lining of his one sound coat-tail.There was a stump of a clay pipe, with tobacco still hot in it. There was a greasy piece of string, a crust of bread, a halfpenny, a few brass buttons, and a very greasy and very crumpled and very filthy copy of a “penny awful” paper. I need hardly say that this scrutiny did not afford me absolute pleasure. In the first place, my temporary lodging was most unsavoury and unclean; and in the second place, there was not one among my many fellow-lodgers who could be said to be in my position in life, or to whom I felt in any way tempted to address any inquiry.This difficulty, however, was settled for me. A voice close beside me said, in a hoarse whisper, “What cheer, Turnip? how do you like it?”I looked round, and perceived that the speaker was the clay pipe, who happened to be close beside me as I lay.I held my nose—so to speak (for watches are not supposed to be gifted with that organ)—the tobacco which was smouldering in him must have been a month old, while the pipe itself looked remarkably grimy and dirty. However, thought I, there would be no use in being uncivil to my new comrades, unpleasant though they were, and I might as well make use of this pipe to assist me to certain information I was curious to get. So I answered, “I don’t like it at all. Can you tell me where I am?”“Where are you, Turnip? Why, you’re in young Cadger’s pocket, to be sure; but you won’t stay there long, no error.”I secretly wished this objectionable pipe would not insist on addressing me as “Turnip,” but on the whole the present did not seem exactly the time to stand on my dignity, so I replied,—“Why, what’s going to become of me?”“What’s going to become of you, Turnip! Why, you’ll go to Cadger’s uncle. Won’t he, mate?”The mate addressed was the piece of string, who, I should say, was by no means the latest addition to the Cadger’s collection of valuables. He now grinned and wriggled in reply to the pipe’s appeal, and snuffled,—“That’s right, mate; that’s where he’ll go. Do you hear, Turnip? that’s where you’ll go—to Cadger’s uncle.”It occurred to me that Cadger’s uncle would have to be vastly more respectable and fragrant than his nephew to make the change at all advantageous to me.“Is young Cadger a thief?” I next inquired.The pipe laughed.“Why, what a funny chap you are, Turnip!” it said.“Does it look like it? Cadger a thief!—oh, my eye! not at all. Eh, mate?”The greasy string took up the laugh, and snivelled in chorus.“Ho, ho! ain’t he a funny chap? Do you hear. Turnip? ain’t you a funny chap? Oh, my eye! not at all.”It was disgusting! Not only was I cooped up in an abominably filthy tail-coat pocket, with a motley rabble of disreputable associates, but every time I opened my lips here I was insulted and laughed at for every word I spoke.However, I gathered that the purport of the reply to my last inquiry was that the young Cadgerwasa thief, and I made one more attempt to gain information.“Where are we going to now?” I asked.“Going!” cried the pipe, with his insulting jeer.“What, don’t you know where you’re a-going, old Turnip? You’re a-going wherever he takes yer; ain’t he, mate?”It was positively painful to see how that vile piece of string wriggled as he replied,—“Do you hear, Turnip? You’re a-going wherever young Cadger takes yer. Now what do you think of that?”It was impossible to continue a conversation with such low, ill-mannered creatures, and I therefore abandoned the attempt, having at least ascertained that I was at present located in a thief’s pocket, that my immediate destination was vague, and that ultimately I might expect to become the property of a near relative of my present possessor.Noticing that I became silent, the pipe and the string between them began to question me. But I was neither in the mood nor the desire to gratify their curiosity. They therefore contented themselves with cracking jokes at my expense, and thus we journeyed together a mile or two towards our unknown destination.Presently a dirty little hand came groping down into our place of retreat. It first fumbled me and my chain, with a view, I suppose, to ascertain if we were all safe, and then proceeded among the other occupants of the pocket to secure and draw forth the half penny which I have before mentioned.I was relieved to have even one of my unpleasant companions removed, and could not refrain from expressing my feelings by a sigh.“What are you snivelling at, Turnip?” asked the pipe.I did not deign to reply.“Suppose yer think that theresou,” (fancy the stump of a clay pipe speaking French!) “is gone for good, and good riddance, do yer? You wait a bit, that’s all.”“Boh, boh!” chimed in the string. “Do you hear, Turnip? Wait till you see the soldier; then see how you’ll laugh!”“What soldier?” I inquired, my curiosity for a moment getting the better of my reserve. I could not imagine what possible connexion there could be between the military and the disreputable copper I had so lately seen depart.I was not long in suspense, however, for before my two vulgar companions could answer my question, the “soldier” made his appearance.The dirty little hand again entered our quarters, and let fall in our midst a red herring! At the sight and smell of him I turned sick with disgust. Fancy a silver watch sat upon, squeezed, and besmeared by a reeking red herring. He came sprawling right on the top of me, the brute, his ugly mouth wide open and his loathsome fins scraping along my back. Ugh!“That there’s the soldier, Turnip; ain’t it, mate?” called out the pipe.“Do you hear, Turnip? this here’s the soldier. How do you like him?” snuffled the string.It was enough! I felt my nerves collapse, and my circulation fail, and for the remainder of that dreadful night I was speechless.I was not, however, blind, or so far gone as to be unable to notice in a vague sort of way what happened.The young gentleman rejoicing in the name of Cadger (but whose real cognomen I subsequently ascertained to be Stumpy Walker) proceeded on his walk, whistling shrilly to himself, exchanging a passing recognition with one and another loafer, and going out of his way to kick every boy he saw smaller than himself, which last exertion, by the way, at twelve o’clock at night he did not find very often necessary.I observed that he did not go out of his way to avoid the police; on the contrary, he made a point of touching his hat to every guardian of the peace he happened to meet, and actually went so far as to inform one that “he’d want his muckintogs before morning”—a poetical way of prophesying rain.He proceeded down a succession of back streets, which it would have puzzled a stranger to remember, till he came into a large deserted thoroughfare which was undergoing a complete renovation of its drainage arrangements. All along the side of the road extended an array of huge new pipes, some three feet in diameter, awaiting their turn underground. Into one of these Master Walker dived, and as it was just tall enough to allow of his sitting upright in its interior, and just long enough to allow his small person to lie at full length without either extremity protruding; and further, as the rain was just beginning to come down, I could not forbear, even in the midst of my misery, admiring his selection of a lodging.Greatly to my relief, the “soldier,” the crust, and the pipe were all three presently summoned from the pocket, and with the help of the first two and the consolation of the last, Master Walker contrived to make an evening meal which at least affordedhimsatisfaction.Before making himself snug for the night he pulled me out, and by the aid of the feeble light of a neighbouring lamp-post, made a hasty examination of my exterior and interior. Having apparently satisfied himself as to my value, he put me and the pipe back into his dreadful pocket, from which, even yet, the fumes of the “soldier” had not faded, and then curled himself up like a dormouse and composed himself to slumber.He had not, however, settled himself many moments before another ragged figure came crawling down the inside of the pipes towards him. Stumpy started up at the first sound in a scared sort of way, but instantly resumed his composure on seeing who the intruder was.“What cheer, Stumpy?” said the latter.“What cheer, Tuppeny?” replied my master. “Where’ve yer been to?”“Lunnon Bridge,” replied Mr Tuppeny.“An’ what ’ave yer got?” asked Stumpy.“Only a rag,” said the other, in evident disgusts producing a white handkerchief.“That ain’t much; I’ve boned a turnip.”“Jus’ your luck. Let’s ’ave a look at him.”Stumpy complied, and his comrade, lighting a match, surveyed me with evident complacency.“Jus’ your luck,” said he again. “Where did yer git ’im?”“At the gaff, off a young cove as was reg’lar screwed up. I could ’ave took ’is nose off if I’d a wanted it, and he wouldn’t have knowed.”“Then this ’ere rag might ’a been some use,” replied the disconsolate Tuppeny. “’Tain’t worth three’a’pence.”“Any marks?” inquired my master.“Yees; there is so. C.N. it is; hup in one corner. He was sticking out of the pocket of a young chap as was going along with a face as long as a fooneral, and as miserable-lookin’ as if ’e’d swallowed a cat.”C.N.! Could this handkerchief possibly have belonged to poor Charlie Newcome? His way home from Grime Street I knew would lead by London Bridge, and with the trouble of that afternoon upon him, would he not indeed have looked as miserable as the thief described?And these two boys, having thus briefly compared notes, and exhibited to one another their ill-gotten gains, curled themselves up and fell fast asleep.Dear reader, does it ever occur to your mind that there are hundreds of such vagrants in this great city? Night after night they crowd under railway arches and sheds, on doorsteps and in cellars. They have neither home nor friend. To many of them the thieves’ life is their natural calling; they live as animals live, and hope only as animals hope, and when they die, die as animals die; ignorant of God, ignorant of good, ignorant of their own souls. Yet even for such as they, Christ died, and the Spirit strives.The pipe, and his friend, the string, that night had a long conversation as their master lay asleep. They evidently thought I was asleep too, for they made no effort to conceal their voices, and I consequently heard every word.It chiefly had reference to me, and was in the main satirical.“Some coves is uncommon proud o’ themselves, mate, ain’t they?—particular them as ain’t much account after all?”“You’re right, mate. Do you hear, Turnip? you ain’t much account; you’re on’y silver-plate, yer know, so you don’t ought to be proud, you don’t!”“What I say,” continued the pipe, “is that coves as gives ’emselves hairs above their stations is a miserable lot. What doyouthink?”“What don’t I?” snuffled the string. “Do you hear, Turnip? you’re a miserable cove, you are. Why can’t you be ’appy like me and my mate? We don’t give ourselves hairs; that’s why we’re ’appy.”“And, arter all,” pursued the pipe, “that’s the sort of coves as go second-hand in the end. People ’ud think better on ’em if they didn’t think such a lot of theirselves; wouldn’t they now, mate?”“Wouldn’t they just! What do you think of that, Turnip? You’re on’y a second-hand turnip, now, and that’s all along of being stuck-up and thinking such a lot of yourself! You won’t go off for thirty bob, you won’t see!”“Mate!” exclaimed the pipe, presently (after I had had leisure to meditate on the foregoing philosophical dialogue), “mate, I’ll give you a riddle!”“Go it!” said the mate.“Why,” asked the pipe, in a solemn voice, “is a second-hand pewter-plate, stuck-up turnip, like a weskit that ain’t paid for?”“Do you hear, Turnip? Why are you like a weskit that ain’t paid for? Do yer give it up? I do.”“’Cos it’s on tick!” pronounced the pipe.I could have howled to find myself the victim of such a low, villainous joke, that had not even the pretence of wit, and I could have cried to see how that greasy string wriggled and snuffled at my expense.“My eye, mate! that’s a good ’un! Do you hear, Turnip? you’re on tick, you know, like the weskit. Oh, my eye! that’ll do, mate; another o’ them will kill me. Oh, turn it up! do you hear? On tick!— hoo, hoo, hoo! Do you hear, Turnip?tick!”Need I say I spent a sad and sleepless night? When my disgust admitted of thought I could not help reflecting how very happy some vulgar people can be with a very little sense, and how very unhappy other people who flatter themselves they are very clever and superior can at times find themselves.By the time I had satisfied myself of this my master uncurled himself and got up.
My capturer was a boy, and as remarkable a specimen of a boy as it has ever been my lot to meet during the whole of my career. His age was, say, fourteen. He stood four feet one in his slipshod boots.
The hat which adorned his head was an old white billycock, which in its palmy days might have adorned noble brows, so fashionable were its pretensions. Now, alas! it had one side caved in, and the other was green with wear and weather. The coat which arrayed his manly form was evidently one not made recently or to wearer’s measure, for besides showing cracks and rents in various parts, its tails were so extravagantly long for its small occupant that they literally almost touched the ground. His nether garments, on the other hand, although they resembled the coat in their conveniences for ventilation, being all in rags and tatters, appeared to have been borrowed from a smaller pair of legs even than those owned by my present possessor, for they—at least one leg—barely reached half way below the knee, while the other stopped short very little lower. Altogether, the boy was as nondescript and “scarecrowy” an object as one could well expect to meet with.
As he left the hall he gave a quick look round to assure himself no one was following him; then he darted across the road and proceeded to shuffle forward in so extremely leisurely and casual a way, that very few of the people who met him would have imagined he carried a stolen watch in his pocket.
Such a hole as it was! As soon as I had sufficiently recovered from my astonishment to look about me, I became aware that I was by no means the sole occupant of the receptacle he was pleased to designate by the title of a pocket, but which other people would have called a slit in the lining of his one sound coat-tail.
There was a stump of a clay pipe, with tobacco still hot in it. There was a greasy piece of string, a crust of bread, a halfpenny, a few brass buttons, and a very greasy and very crumpled and very filthy copy of a “penny awful” paper. I need hardly say that this scrutiny did not afford me absolute pleasure. In the first place, my temporary lodging was most unsavoury and unclean; and in the second place, there was not one among my many fellow-lodgers who could be said to be in my position in life, or to whom I felt in any way tempted to address any inquiry.
This difficulty, however, was settled for me. A voice close beside me said, in a hoarse whisper, “What cheer, Turnip? how do you like it?”
I looked round, and perceived that the speaker was the clay pipe, who happened to be close beside me as I lay.
I held my nose—so to speak (for watches are not supposed to be gifted with that organ)—the tobacco which was smouldering in him must have been a month old, while the pipe itself looked remarkably grimy and dirty. However, thought I, there would be no use in being uncivil to my new comrades, unpleasant though they were, and I might as well make use of this pipe to assist me to certain information I was curious to get. So I answered, “I don’t like it at all. Can you tell me where I am?”
“Where are you, Turnip? Why, you’re in young Cadger’s pocket, to be sure; but you won’t stay there long, no error.”
I secretly wished this objectionable pipe would not insist on addressing me as “Turnip,” but on the whole the present did not seem exactly the time to stand on my dignity, so I replied,—
“Why, what’s going to become of me?”
“What’s going to become of you, Turnip! Why, you’ll go to Cadger’s uncle. Won’t he, mate?”
The mate addressed was the piece of string, who, I should say, was by no means the latest addition to the Cadger’s collection of valuables. He now grinned and wriggled in reply to the pipe’s appeal, and snuffled,—
“That’s right, mate; that’s where he’ll go. Do you hear, Turnip? that’s where you’ll go—to Cadger’s uncle.”
It occurred to me that Cadger’s uncle would have to be vastly more respectable and fragrant than his nephew to make the change at all advantageous to me.
“Is young Cadger a thief?” I next inquired.
The pipe laughed.
“Why, what a funny chap you are, Turnip!” it said.
“Does it look like it? Cadger a thief!—oh, my eye! not at all. Eh, mate?”
The greasy string took up the laugh, and snivelled in chorus.
“Ho, ho! ain’t he a funny chap? Do you hear. Turnip? ain’t you a funny chap? Oh, my eye! not at all.”
It was disgusting! Not only was I cooped up in an abominably filthy tail-coat pocket, with a motley rabble of disreputable associates, but every time I opened my lips here I was insulted and laughed at for every word I spoke.
However, I gathered that the purport of the reply to my last inquiry was that the young Cadgerwasa thief, and I made one more attempt to gain information.
“Where are we going to now?” I asked.
“Going!” cried the pipe, with his insulting jeer.
“What, don’t you know where you’re a-going, old Turnip? You’re a-going wherever he takes yer; ain’t he, mate?”
It was positively painful to see how that vile piece of string wriggled as he replied,—
“Do you hear, Turnip? You’re a-going wherever young Cadger takes yer. Now what do you think of that?”
It was impossible to continue a conversation with such low, ill-mannered creatures, and I therefore abandoned the attempt, having at least ascertained that I was at present located in a thief’s pocket, that my immediate destination was vague, and that ultimately I might expect to become the property of a near relative of my present possessor.
Noticing that I became silent, the pipe and the string between them began to question me. But I was neither in the mood nor the desire to gratify their curiosity. They therefore contented themselves with cracking jokes at my expense, and thus we journeyed together a mile or two towards our unknown destination.
Presently a dirty little hand came groping down into our place of retreat. It first fumbled me and my chain, with a view, I suppose, to ascertain if we were all safe, and then proceeded among the other occupants of the pocket to secure and draw forth the half penny which I have before mentioned.
I was relieved to have even one of my unpleasant companions removed, and could not refrain from expressing my feelings by a sigh.
“What are you snivelling at, Turnip?” asked the pipe.
I did not deign to reply.
“Suppose yer think that theresou,” (fancy the stump of a clay pipe speaking French!) “is gone for good, and good riddance, do yer? You wait a bit, that’s all.”
“Boh, boh!” chimed in the string. “Do you hear, Turnip? Wait till you see the soldier; then see how you’ll laugh!”
“What soldier?” I inquired, my curiosity for a moment getting the better of my reserve. I could not imagine what possible connexion there could be between the military and the disreputable copper I had so lately seen depart.
I was not long in suspense, however, for before my two vulgar companions could answer my question, the “soldier” made his appearance.
The dirty little hand again entered our quarters, and let fall in our midst a red herring! At the sight and smell of him I turned sick with disgust. Fancy a silver watch sat upon, squeezed, and besmeared by a reeking red herring. He came sprawling right on the top of me, the brute, his ugly mouth wide open and his loathsome fins scraping along my back. Ugh!
“That there’s the soldier, Turnip; ain’t it, mate?” called out the pipe.
“Do you hear, Turnip? this here’s the soldier. How do you like him?” snuffled the string.
It was enough! I felt my nerves collapse, and my circulation fail, and for the remainder of that dreadful night I was speechless.
I was not, however, blind, or so far gone as to be unable to notice in a vague sort of way what happened.
The young gentleman rejoicing in the name of Cadger (but whose real cognomen I subsequently ascertained to be Stumpy Walker) proceeded on his walk, whistling shrilly to himself, exchanging a passing recognition with one and another loafer, and going out of his way to kick every boy he saw smaller than himself, which last exertion, by the way, at twelve o’clock at night he did not find very often necessary.
I observed that he did not go out of his way to avoid the police; on the contrary, he made a point of touching his hat to every guardian of the peace he happened to meet, and actually went so far as to inform one that “he’d want his muckintogs before morning”—a poetical way of prophesying rain.
He proceeded down a succession of back streets, which it would have puzzled a stranger to remember, till he came into a large deserted thoroughfare which was undergoing a complete renovation of its drainage arrangements. All along the side of the road extended an array of huge new pipes, some three feet in diameter, awaiting their turn underground. Into one of these Master Walker dived, and as it was just tall enough to allow of his sitting upright in its interior, and just long enough to allow his small person to lie at full length without either extremity protruding; and further, as the rain was just beginning to come down, I could not forbear, even in the midst of my misery, admiring his selection of a lodging.
Greatly to my relief, the “soldier,” the crust, and the pipe were all three presently summoned from the pocket, and with the help of the first two and the consolation of the last, Master Walker contrived to make an evening meal which at least affordedhimsatisfaction.
Before making himself snug for the night he pulled me out, and by the aid of the feeble light of a neighbouring lamp-post, made a hasty examination of my exterior and interior. Having apparently satisfied himself as to my value, he put me and the pipe back into his dreadful pocket, from which, even yet, the fumes of the “soldier” had not faded, and then curled himself up like a dormouse and composed himself to slumber.
He had not, however, settled himself many moments before another ragged figure came crawling down the inside of the pipes towards him. Stumpy started up at the first sound in a scared sort of way, but instantly resumed his composure on seeing who the intruder was.
“What cheer, Stumpy?” said the latter.
“What cheer, Tuppeny?” replied my master. “Where’ve yer been to?”
“Lunnon Bridge,” replied Mr Tuppeny.
“An’ what ’ave yer got?” asked Stumpy.
“Only a rag,” said the other, in evident disgusts producing a white handkerchief.
“That ain’t much; I’ve boned a turnip.”
“Jus’ your luck. Let’s ’ave a look at him.”
Stumpy complied, and his comrade, lighting a match, surveyed me with evident complacency.
“Jus’ your luck,” said he again. “Where did yer git ’im?”
“At the gaff, off a young cove as was reg’lar screwed up. I could ’ave took ’is nose off if I’d a wanted it, and he wouldn’t have knowed.”
“Then this ’ere rag might ’a been some use,” replied the disconsolate Tuppeny. “’Tain’t worth three’a’pence.”
“Any marks?” inquired my master.
“Yees; there is so. C.N. it is; hup in one corner. He was sticking out of the pocket of a young chap as was going along with a face as long as a fooneral, and as miserable-lookin’ as if ’e’d swallowed a cat.”
C.N.! Could this handkerchief possibly have belonged to poor Charlie Newcome? His way home from Grime Street I knew would lead by London Bridge, and with the trouble of that afternoon upon him, would he not indeed have looked as miserable as the thief described?
And these two boys, having thus briefly compared notes, and exhibited to one another their ill-gotten gains, curled themselves up and fell fast asleep.
Dear reader, does it ever occur to your mind that there are hundreds of such vagrants in this great city? Night after night they crowd under railway arches and sheds, on doorsteps and in cellars. They have neither home nor friend. To many of them the thieves’ life is their natural calling; they live as animals live, and hope only as animals hope, and when they die, die as animals die; ignorant of God, ignorant of good, ignorant of their own souls. Yet even for such as they, Christ died, and the Spirit strives.
The pipe, and his friend, the string, that night had a long conversation as their master lay asleep. They evidently thought I was asleep too, for they made no effort to conceal their voices, and I consequently heard every word.
It chiefly had reference to me, and was in the main satirical.
“Some coves is uncommon proud o’ themselves, mate, ain’t they?—particular them as ain’t much account after all?”
“You’re right, mate. Do you hear, Turnip? you ain’t much account; you’re on’y silver-plate, yer know, so you don’t ought to be proud, you don’t!”
“What I say,” continued the pipe, “is that coves as gives ’emselves hairs above their stations is a miserable lot. What doyouthink?”
“What don’t I?” snuffled the string. “Do you hear, Turnip? you’re a miserable cove, you are. Why can’t you be ’appy like me and my mate? We don’t give ourselves hairs; that’s why we’re ’appy.”
“And, arter all,” pursued the pipe, “that’s the sort of coves as go second-hand in the end. People ’ud think better on ’em if they didn’t think such a lot of theirselves; wouldn’t they now, mate?”
“Wouldn’t they just! What do you think of that, Turnip? You’re on’y a second-hand turnip, now, and that’s all along of being stuck-up and thinking such a lot of yourself! You won’t go off for thirty bob, you won’t see!”
“Mate!” exclaimed the pipe, presently (after I had had leisure to meditate on the foregoing philosophical dialogue), “mate, I’ll give you a riddle!”
“Go it!” said the mate.
“Why,” asked the pipe, in a solemn voice, “is a second-hand pewter-plate, stuck-up turnip, like a weskit that ain’t paid for?”
“Do you hear, Turnip? Why are you like a weskit that ain’t paid for? Do yer give it up? I do.”
“’Cos it’s on tick!” pronounced the pipe.
I could have howled to find myself the victim of such a low, villainous joke, that had not even the pretence of wit, and I could have cried to see how that greasy string wriggled and snuffled at my expense.
“My eye, mate! that’s a good ’un! Do you hear, Turnip? you’re on tick, you know, like the weskit. Oh, my eye! that’ll do, mate; another o’ them will kill me. Oh, turn it up! do you hear? On tick!— hoo, hoo, hoo! Do you hear, Turnip?tick!”
Need I say I spent a sad and sleepless night? When my disgust admitted of thought I could not help reflecting how very happy some vulgar people can be with a very little sense, and how very unhappy other people who flatter themselves they are very clever and superior can at times find themselves.
By the time I had satisfied myself of this my master uncurled himself and got up.
Chapter Sixteen.How I changed masters twice in two days, and after all found myself in pawn.It was scarcely four o’clock when my lord and master arose from his brief repose, and sallied through the rain and darkness back in the direction of the city. He was far less anxious to salute the police now than he had been a few hours ago. He slunk down the back streets, and now and then darted up a court at the sound of approaching foot steps; or retreated for some distance by the way he had come, in order to strike a less guarded street.In this manner he pursued his way for about an hour, till he reached a very narrow street of tumble-down houses, not far from Holborn. Down this he wended his way till he stood before a door belonging to one of the oldest, dingiest, and most decayed houses in all the street. Here he gave a peculiar scrape with his foot along the bottom of the door, and then sat down on the doorstep.Presently a voice came through the keyhole, in a whisper.“That you, Stumpy?” it said.“Yas,” replied my master.“All clear?”Stumpy looked up and down the street and then hurriedly whispered, “No.”Instantly the voice within was silent, and Stumpy was to all appearance sleeping soundly and heavily, as if tired nature in him had fairly reached its last strait.The distant footsteps came nearer; and still he slept on, snoring gently and regularly. The policeman advanced leisurely, turning his lantern first on this doorway, then on that window; trying now a shutter-bar, then a lock. At last he stood opposite the doorstep where Stumpy lay. It was a critical moment. He turned his lamp full on the boy’s sleeping face, he took hold of his arm and gently shook him, he tried the bolt of the door against which he leaned. The sleeper only grunted drowsily and settled down to still heavier slumber, and the policeman, evidently satisfied, walked on.“Is he gone?” asked the voice within, the moment the retreating footsteps showed this.“Yas, but he’ll be back,” whispered the boy.And so he was. Three times he paced the street, and every time found the boy in the same position, and wrapped in the same profound slumber. Then at last he strode slowly onward to the end of his beat, and his footsteps died gradually away.“Now?” inquired the voice.“Yas,” replied Stumpy.Whereat the door half-opened, and Stumpy entered.It was a dirty, half-ruinous house, in which the rats had grown tame and the spiders fat. The stairs creaked dismally as Stumpy followed his entertainer up them, while the odours rising from every nook and cranny in the place were almost suffocating.The man led the way into a small room, foul and pestilential in its closeness. In it lay on the floor no less than nine or ten sleeping figures, mostly juveniles, huddled together, irrespective of decency, health, or comfort. Stumpy surveyed the scene composedly.“Got lodgers, then,” he observed.“Yes, two on ’em—on’y penny ones, though.”Just then a sound of moaning came from one corner of the room, which arrested Stumpy’s attention.“Who’s that?” he asked.“Old Sal; she’s bad, and I reckon she won’t last much longer the way she’s a-going on. I shall pack her off to-day.”Stumpy whistled softly; but it was evident, by the frequent glances he stole every now and then towards the corner where the sufferer lay, that he possessed a certain amount of interest in the woman described as “Old Sal.”The man who appeared to be the proprietor of this one well-filled lodging-room was middle-aged, and had a hare-lip. He had an expression half careworn, and half villainous, of which he gave Stumpy the full benefit as he inquired.“What ’ave yer got?”“Got, pal?” replied Stumpy; “a ticker.”“Hand it up,” said the man, hurriedly.Stumpy produced me, and the man, taking me to the candle, examined me greedily and minutely.Then he said,—“I shall get fifteen bob for him.”“Come, now, none of your larks!” replied Stumpy, who had produced the pipe, and was endeavouring to rekindle its few remaining embers at the candle; “try ag’in.”“Well, I don’t see as he’ll fetch seventeen-and-six, but I’ll do it foryou.”“Try ag’in,” coolly replied Stumpy.The man did try again, and named a sovereign, which my master also declined.In this manner he advanced to twenty-four shillings.“Won’t do,” said Stumpy.“Then you can take ’im off,” said the man, with an oath; “he ain’t worth the money.”“Yas ’e is, an’ a tanner more,” put in Stumpy.The man uttered a few more oaths, and again examined me. Then he dropped me in his pocket, and slowly counted out the purchase-money from a drawer at his side.Stumpy watched the process eagerly, doubtless calculating with professional interest how the entire hoard of this thieves’ broker could at some convenient opportunity be abstracted. However, for the present he made sure of the sum given him, and dropped the coins one by one into his tail pocket.“Now lay down,” said the man, “and make yourself comfortable.”I fancy Stumpy was a good deal more comfortable in his drain-pipe an hour or two ago than in this foul, choking lodging-room; however, he curled himself up on the floor near the dying woman, and did his share in exhausting the air of the apartment.I should offend all rules of good taste and decency if I described the loathsome room; I wish I could forget it, but that I shall never do. Suffice it to say daylight broke in at last on the squalid scene, and then one by one the sleepers rose and departed—all but Stumpy and she whose groaning had risen ceaselessly and hopelessly the livelong night.“Old Sal’s very bad,” said Stumpy to his host.“Yas, she’ll have to clear out of here.”“She’s nigh dying, I reckon,” said the boy.“Can’t help that; she ain’t paid a copper this three weeks, and I ain’t a-going to have her lumbering up my place no longer.”“Where’s she a-going to?” asked Stumpy.“How do I know?—out of ’ere, anyways, and pretty soon, too. I can tell yer.”“Pal,” said the boy, after a long pause, “I charged yer a tanner too much for that there ticker; here you are, lay hold.”And he tossed back the sixpence. The man understood quite well the meaning of the act, and Old Sal lay undisturbed all that day.Stumpy took his departure early. I have never seen him since; what has become of him I know not; where he is now I know still less.But to return to myself. I spent that entire day in the man’s pocket, too ill to care what became of me, and too weak to notice much of what passed around me. I was conscious of others like Stumpy coming up the creaking stairs and offering their ill-gotten gains as he had done; and I was conscious towards evening, when the last rays of the setting sun were struggling feebly through the dingy window, of a groan in that dismal corner, deeper than all that had gone before. Then I knew Old Sal was dead. In an hour the body was laid in its rude coffin, and had made its last journey down those stairs: and that night another outcast slept in her corner.The night was like the one which had preceded it, foul and sickening. I was thankful that my illness had sufficiently deadened my senses to render me unable to hear and see all that went on during those hours. Morning came at length, and one by one the youthful lodgers took their departure. When the last had left, my possessor produced a bag, into which he thrust me, with a score or more of other articles acquired as I had been acquired; then, locking the door behind him, he descended the stairs and stepped out.Oh, the delight of that breath of fresh morning air! Even as it struggled in through the crevices and cracks of that old bag, it was like a breath of Paradise, after the vile, pestilential atmosphere of that room!As we went on, I had leisure to observe the company of which I formed one. What a motley crew we were! There were watches, snuff-boxes, and pencils, bracelets and brooches, handkerchiefs and gloves, studs, pins, and rings—all huddled together higgledy-piggledy. We none of us spoke to one another, nor inquired whither we were going; we were a sad, spiritless assembly, and to some of us it mattered little what became of us.Still I could not help wondering if the man in whose possession I and my fellow-prisoners found ourselves was Stumpy’s “uncle,” referred to by that miserable clay pipe. If he was, I felt I could not candidly congratulate that youth on his relative. What he could want with us all I could not imagine.If I had been the only watch, and if there hadn’t been half a dozen scarf-pins, snuff-boxes, and pencils, it would not have been so extraordinary. It would have been easy enough to imagine the person of Stumpy’s “aunt” decorated with one brooch, two bracelets, and three or four rings; but when instead of that modest allowance these articles were present by the half-dozen, it was hardly possible to believe that any one lady could accommodate so much splendour. How ever, I could only suppose the superfluous treasures were destined for Stumpy’s cousins, masculine and feminine, and occupied the rest of the journey in the harmless amusement of wondering to whose lot I was likely to fall.The man walked some considerable distance, and strangely enough bent his steps in a direction not far removed from Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital. Surely he was not going to restore me to Tom Drift! No; we passed the end of Grime Street. There were milkmen’s carts rattling up and down; servants were scrubbing doorsteps; and a few sleepy-looking men, with their breakfasts in their hands, were scurrying off to work. It was all the same as usual; yet how interesting, all of a sudden, the dull street had become to me. It was here I had last seen poor Charlie, outraged and struck by the friend he strove to save, creeping slowly home; it was here Tom Drift still dwelt, daily sinking in folly and sin, with no friend now left to help him. Poor Tom Drift! How gladly would I have returned to him, even to be neglected and ill-used, if only I might have the opportunity once again of fulfilling that charge put upon me by my first master, and which yet ever rang in my ears,—“Be good to Tom Drift.”But it was not to be yet. The man walked rapidly on down a street parallel with Grime Street, at the farthest corner of which stood a small private house.Here he knocked.The occupant of the house evidently knew and expected him, for he at once admitted him, and led the way upstairs into a private parlour. Here the thieves’ broker emptied the contents of his bag, laying the articles one by one on the table.The man of the house looked on in an unconcerned way while this was taking place, picking up now one, now another of the objects, and examining them superficially. When the bag was empty, and the whole of the ill-gotten booty displayed, he remarked, “Not so much this time, Bill.”“No; trade’s bad, sir,” replied he who owned the bag.“Well, I’ll send the most of ’em down to the country to-day,” resumed the master of the house.“When shall I call, sir?” inquired Stumpy’s friend.“Monday. But look here, Bill!” said the other, taking me up, “it’s no use leaving this; I shall be able to manage the gold ones, but this is no good.”I had long lost the pride which in former days would have made me resent such a remark, and patiently waited for the result.Stumpy’s friend took me back. “Well,” he said, “if you can’t, you can’t. I’ll see to him myself. Well, good-day; and I’ll call on Monday.”And he turned to depart, with me in his hand. In a minute, however, he came back. “Would yer mind lending me some togs, sir, for a few minutes?” said he; “I don’t want no questions asked at the pawnshop.”And he certainly did not look, in his present get-up, as the likeliest sort of owner of a silver watch. The man of the house, however, lent him some clothes, in which he arrayed himself, and which so transformed him that any one would have taken him, not for the disreputable thieves’ broker he was, but for the unfortunate decayed gentleman he professed to be. In this guise he had no difficulty in disposing of me at the nearest pawnbroker’s shop, which happened to be at the corner of Grime Street.The pawnbroker asked no questions, and I am sure never suspected anything wrong. He advanced thirty shillings on me and the chain, gave the man his ticket, and put a corresponding one on me.Then Stumpy’s friend departed, and my new master went back to his breakfast.
It was scarcely four o’clock when my lord and master arose from his brief repose, and sallied through the rain and darkness back in the direction of the city. He was far less anxious to salute the police now than he had been a few hours ago. He slunk down the back streets, and now and then darted up a court at the sound of approaching foot steps; or retreated for some distance by the way he had come, in order to strike a less guarded street.
In this manner he pursued his way for about an hour, till he reached a very narrow street of tumble-down houses, not far from Holborn. Down this he wended his way till he stood before a door belonging to one of the oldest, dingiest, and most decayed houses in all the street. Here he gave a peculiar scrape with his foot along the bottom of the door, and then sat down on the doorstep.
Presently a voice came through the keyhole, in a whisper.
“That you, Stumpy?” it said.
“Yas,” replied my master.
“All clear?”
Stumpy looked up and down the street and then hurriedly whispered, “No.”
Instantly the voice within was silent, and Stumpy was to all appearance sleeping soundly and heavily, as if tired nature in him had fairly reached its last strait.
The distant footsteps came nearer; and still he slept on, snoring gently and regularly. The policeman advanced leisurely, turning his lantern first on this doorway, then on that window; trying now a shutter-bar, then a lock. At last he stood opposite the doorstep where Stumpy lay. It was a critical moment. He turned his lamp full on the boy’s sleeping face, he took hold of his arm and gently shook him, he tried the bolt of the door against which he leaned. The sleeper only grunted drowsily and settled down to still heavier slumber, and the policeman, evidently satisfied, walked on.
“Is he gone?” asked the voice within, the moment the retreating footsteps showed this.
“Yas, but he’ll be back,” whispered the boy.
And so he was. Three times he paced the street, and every time found the boy in the same position, and wrapped in the same profound slumber. Then at last he strode slowly onward to the end of his beat, and his footsteps died gradually away.
“Now?” inquired the voice.
“Yas,” replied Stumpy.
Whereat the door half-opened, and Stumpy entered.
It was a dirty, half-ruinous house, in which the rats had grown tame and the spiders fat. The stairs creaked dismally as Stumpy followed his entertainer up them, while the odours rising from every nook and cranny in the place were almost suffocating.
The man led the way into a small room, foul and pestilential in its closeness. In it lay on the floor no less than nine or ten sleeping figures, mostly juveniles, huddled together, irrespective of decency, health, or comfort. Stumpy surveyed the scene composedly.
“Got lodgers, then,” he observed.
“Yes, two on ’em—on’y penny ones, though.”
Just then a sound of moaning came from one corner of the room, which arrested Stumpy’s attention.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
“Old Sal; she’s bad, and I reckon she won’t last much longer the way she’s a-going on. I shall pack her off to-day.”
Stumpy whistled softly; but it was evident, by the frequent glances he stole every now and then towards the corner where the sufferer lay, that he possessed a certain amount of interest in the woman described as “Old Sal.”
The man who appeared to be the proprietor of this one well-filled lodging-room was middle-aged, and had a hare-lip. He had an expression half careworn, and half villainous, of which he gave Stumpy the full benefit as he inquired.
“What ’ave yer got?”
“Got, pal?” replied Stumpy; “a ticker.”
“Hand it up,” said the man, hurriedly.
Stumpy produced me, and the man, taking me to the candle, examined me greedily and minutely.
Then he said,—
“I shall get fifteen bob for him.”
“Come, now, none of your larks!” replied Stumpy, who had produced the pipe, and was endeavouring to rekindle its few remaining embers at the candle; “try ag’in.”
“Well, I don’t see as he’ll fetch seventeen-and-six, but I’ll do it foryou.”
“Try ag’in,” coolly replied Stumpy.
The man did try again, and named a sovereign, which my master also declined.
In this manner he advanced to twenty-four shillings.
“Won’t do,” said Stumpy.
“Then you can take ’im off,” said the man, with an oath; “he ain’t worth the money.”
“Yas ’e is, an’ a tanner more,” put in Stumpy.
The man uttered a few more oaths, and again examined me. Then he dropped me in his pocket, and slowly counted out the purchase-money from a drawer at his side.
Stumpy watched the process eagerly, doubtless calculating with professional interest how the entire hoard of this thieves’ broker could at some convenient opportunity be abstracted. However, for the present he made sure of the sum given him, and dropped the coins one by one into his tail pocket.
“Now lay down,” said the man, “and make yourself comfortable.”
I fancy Stumpy was a good deal more comfortable in his drain-pipe an hour or two ago than in this foul, choking lodging-room; however, he curled himself up on the floor near the dying woman, and did his share in exhausting the air of the apartment.
I should offend all rules of good taste and decency if I described the loathsome room; I wish I could forget it, but that I shall never do. Suffice it to say daylight broke in at last on the squalid scene, and then one by one the sleepers rose and departed—all but Stumpy and she whose groaning had risen ceaselessly and hopelessly the livelong night.
“Old Sal’s very bad,” said Stumpy to his host.
“Yas, she’ll have to clear out of here.”
“She’s nigh dying, I reckon,” said the boy.
“Can’t help that; she ain’t paid a copper this three weeks, and I ain’t a-going to have her lumbering up my place no longer.”
“Where’s she a-going to?” asked Stumpy.
“How do I know?—out of ’ere, anyways, and pretty soon, too. I can tell yer.”
“Pal,” said the boy, after a long pause, “I charged yer a tanner too much for that there ticker; here you are, lay hold.”
And he tossed back the sixpence. The man understood quite well the meaning of the act, and Old Sal lay undisturbed all that day.
Stumpy took his departure early. I have never seen him since; what has become of him I know not; where he is now I know still less.
But to return to myself. I spent that entire day in the man’s pocket, too ill to care what became of me, and too weak to notice much of what passed around me. I was conscious of others like Stumpy coming up the creaking stairs and offering their ill-gotten gains as he had done; and I was conscious towards evening, when the last rays of the setting sun were struggling feebly through the dingy window, of a groan in that dismal corner, deeper than all that had gone before. Then I knew Old Sal was dead. In an hour the body was laid in its rude coffin, and had made its last journey down those stairs: and that night another outcast slept in her corner.
The night was like the one which had preceded it, foul and sickening. I was thankful that my illness had sufficiently deadened my senses to render me unable to hear and see all that went on during those hours. Morning came at length, and one by one the youthful lodgers took their departure. When the last had left, my possessor produced a bag, into which he thrust me, with a score or more of other articles acquired as I had been acquired; then, locking the door behind him, he descended the stairs and stepped out.
Oh, the delight of that breath of fresh morning air! Even as it struggled in through the crevices and cracks of that old bag, it was like a breath of Paradise, after the vile, pestilential atmosphere of that room!
As we went on, I had leisure to observe the company of which I formed one. What a motley crew we were! There were watches, snuff-boxes, and pencils, bracelets and brooches, handkerchiefs and gloves, studs, pins, and rings—all huddled together higgledy-piggledy. We none of us spoke to one another, nor inquired whither we were going; we were a sad, spiritless assembly, and to some of us it mattered little what became of us.
Still I could not help wondering if the man in whose possession I and my fellow-prisoners found ourselves was Stumpy’s “uncle,” referred to by that miserable clay pipe. If he was, I felt I could not candidly congratulate that youth on his relative. What he could want with us all I could not imagine.
If I had been the only watch, and if there hadn’t been half a dozen scarf-pins, snuff-boxes, and pencils, it would not have been so extraordinary. It would have been easy enough to imagine the person of Stumpy’s “aunt” decorated with one brooch, two bracelets, and three or four rings; but when instead of that modest allowance these articles were present by the half-dozen, it was hardly possible to believe that any one lady could accommodate so much splendour. How ever, I could only suppose the superfluous treasures were destined for Stumpy’s cousins, masculine and feminine, and occupied the rest of the journey in the harmless amusement of wondering to whose lot I was likely to fall.
The man walked some considerable distance, and strangely enough bent his steps in a direction not far removed from Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital. Surely he was not going to restore me to Tom Drift! No; we passed the end of Grime Street. There were milkmen’s carts rattling up and down; servants were scrubbing doorsteps; and a few sleepy-looking men, with their breakfasts in their hands, were scurrying off to work. It was all the same as usual; yet how interesting, all of a sudden, the dull street had become to me. It was here I had last seen poor Charlie, outraged and struck by the friend he strove to save, creeping slowly home; it was here Tom Drift still dwelt, daily sinking in folly and sin, with no friend now left to help him. Poor Tom Drift! How gladly would I have returned to him, even to be neglected and ill-used, if only I might have the opportunity once again of fulfilling that charge put upon me by my first master, and which yet ever rang in my ears,—
“Be good to Tom Drift.”
But it was not to be yet. The man walked rapidly on down a street parallel with Grime Street, at the farthest corner of which stood a small private house.
Here he knocked.
The occupant of the house evidently knew and expected him, for he at once admitted him, and led the way upstairs into a private parlour. Here the thieves’ broker emptied the contents of his bag, laying the articles one by one on the table.
The man of the house looked on in an unconcerned way while this was taking place, picking up now one, now another of the objects, and examining them superficially. When the bag was empty, and the whole of the ill-gotten booty displayed, he remarked, “Not so much this time, Bill.”
“No; trade’s bad, sir,” replied he who owned the bag.
“Well, I’ll send the most of ’em down to the country to-day,” resumed the master of the house.
“When shall I call, sir?” inquired Stumpy’s friend.
“Monday. But look here, Bill!” said the other, taking me up, “it’s no use leaving this; I shall be able to manage the gold ones, but this is no good.”
I had long lost the pride which in former days would have made me resent such a remark, and patiently waited for the result.
Stumpy’s friend took me back. “Well,” he said, “if you can’t, you can’t. I’ll see to him myself. Well, good-day; and I’ll call on Monday.”
And he turned to depart, with me in his hand. In a minute, however, he came back. “Would yer mind lending me some togs, sir, for a few minutes?” said he; “I don’t want no questions asked at the pawnshop.”
And he certainly did not look, in his present get-up, as the likeliest sort of owner of a silver watch. The man of the house, however, lent him some clothes, in which he arrayed himself, and which so transformed him that any one would have taken him, not for the disreputable thieves’ broker he was, but for the unfortunate decayed gentleman he professed to be. In this guise he had no difficulty in disposing of me at the nearest pawnbroker’s shop, which happened to be at the corner of Grime Street.
The pawnbroker asked no questions, and I am sure never suspected anything wrong. He advanced thirty shillings on me and the chain, gave the man his ticket, and put a corresponding one on me.
Then Stumpy’s friend departed, and my new master went back to his breakfast.