CHAPTER XXV.
At the door of a hotel in St. James's Street, towards that hour of the day at which waiters, butlers, and valets, have the least to do, stood a group consisting of several of those respectable personages, with their hands behind their backs, enjoying the air of the fine spring day, and making impertinent comments upon everybody who passed. Amongst the rest was a tall, thin man, of middle age, who had originally possessed very dark hair as well as a dark complexion, but whose hair and whiskers were now thickly mottled with grey. His face was good and intelligent, his eyes were black and sparkling, his features aquiline and high. Though he was an Italian, his face had not at all the Italian cast; and, well-dressed and gentlemanly in appearance, he looked more like an old French nobleman, who had escaped the first Revolution, than the foreign servant of an English gentleman, which was in reality his condition. He and one or two more were standing on the top step of the flight which descended from the door of the hotel to the street, when a small, sleek, oily-looking man, dressed as a respectable tradesman, approached and spoke to one of the younger waiters, who, upon the lowest step, was making signs to a chambermaid in the area.
"I don't know, I am sure: there's his gentleman," said the waiter. "Mr. Carlini, this person is asking for your master. Is he at home?"
"No," replied the other, with a very slight foreign accent; "he has gone out."
"Can you tell me where he is to be found, sir?" asked the tradesman in a deferential tone; "I want to speak with him on important business."
"He has gone to Lady Fleetwood's, in ---- Square," said the Italian; "but if your business is not very important indeed, he will not thank you for going there after him;" and he turned round to carry on his conversation with the others near.
"Why, the colonel is always going to Lady Fleetwood's, Mr. Carlini," said the head waiter, with a jocular air. "I should not wonder if you found a mistress there some day. I recollect her a very handsome woman, in Sir John's time. What do you think of it? Is it likely to be?"
"Perhaps so: I know nothing about it," replied Carlini, "for I never inquire into my master's affairs."
"Oh! it's all settled, I can tell you," said a pert puppy, who formed the third at the top of the steps. "I heard my master talking about it with young Count Fraga this very morning, and it's to be very soon, too."
The gentleman who had been speaking to the waiter below heard all this conversation, and then turned away. It might seem a matter of little importance to a man of his apparent pursuits in life, who married another in the higher ranks of society; but yet he seemed very well satisfied with what he had heard; and he chuckled a little as he walked up St. James's Street, crossed over to the corner of Abermarle Street, and then took his way towards Berkeley Square.
"It only wants working well," he murmured to himself; "it only wants working well, and we may make a pretty penny of it. I mustn't trust it to that thick-headed fool, Sam, though. He'd make a mess of it. Going to be married in two days! Well, that's extraordinary. I dare say the old lady wouldn't like to be disappointed, and would pay a handsome sum down to save her lover from being scragged. But I mustn't let Sam have anything to do with it, he's so rude and unpolishable. There he stands: I must have a chat with him before the matter goes farther."
And walking on, he found a tall, stout man, who has been already described as holding negotiations with Joshua Brown, the pedlar, of rather a fierce and intemperate character. He was not badly dressed upon the present occasion, having clearly put on his Sunday's best for his trip to London; but, nevertheless, he could not by any means get rid of a certain blackguard air, any more than the ominous black eye, which shed a halo of many colours around it on the cheek and temple. As soon as he saw his friend and fellow-labourer, Mr. Mingy Bowes, he advanced towards him with a quick step, asking eagerly for intelligence, in language which, perhaps, would not be altogether comprehensible to most of my readers.
"Mum!" said Mingy Bowes, holding up his finger, and looking along the pavement under the walls of Lansdowne House, where a policeman was seen sauntering slowly and nonchalantly along, his eyes turned towards the wall, as if his sole business in life was to count bricks set in mortar. "Come along, Sam; let us go and have a whet at the 'Pig and Whistle.' The cove's out, but I've got hold of something that, if tidily worked, may fill both our breeches pockets."
"I'll have mine filled first," said the man he called Sam; "for it's my job anyhow, Mingy, though I don't mind your having a cut out of the whiddy."
"To be sure, to be sure," answered Mingy Bowes; "that's all fair. I don't want more than a quarter; and I'll manage it so, if you'll let me, that I'll answer for it my quarter shall be more than ever I took in three months out of the shop--the bank into the bargain."
His companion merely gave a grunt, for the policeman was by this time near; and they walked on together, across various streets and through various alleys which led into Oxford Street.
It is curious and sad that in some of the most fashionable parts of the town of London, within a stone's throw of the mansions of the opulent and great, are, or at least were some twenty years ago, an immense mass of the lowest and most squalid houses in the metropolis. Close by Grosvenor and Manchester Squares, and lying between them and Bond Street, are a number of places in which it was dangerous, as the writer once found to his cost, for a respectably-dressed person to set his foot. There, congregated tier above tier, in small, dark, unwholesome rooms, are whole classes of people, in comparison with whom the denizens of Saint Giles's may be looked upon as aristocracy. If you walk along one of these courts or alleys, the first things you remark, on the right hand and the left, are the two confederates in demoralization and degradation, the pawnbroker's and the gin-shop, both tolerated and encouraged by the British government on account of those iniquitous and burdensome taxes grouped under the name of excise--taxes which, whatever they may do for the revenue, tend more to hamper industry, to debase the people, to make rogues of honest men, to prevent the employment of the poor, to give monopoly to the rich, to obstruct salutary laws, and to disgrace the legislature, than any imposts that ever were invented by the great British demon, Taxation.
The fact is, ministers dare not deal with the gin-shop nuisance as they would with any other nuisance, for fear of diminishing the revenue; and when they come before parliament and boast of an increased revenue from the excise--which they call the barometer of commercial prosperity--they boast, in fact, of how much they have been able to wring from the vices, the follies, or the hard labours of the industrious classes. They say neither more nor less than this: there must have been more demand for labour, because the labouring classes have been able to drink more gin, to smoke more tobacco, and to swill more beer.
This is a very irrelevant tirade, but it would be written.
Beyond the pawnbroker's and the gin-shop, you enter into the heart of the den; probably meeting, at the first two or three steps, some half-clad women, with foul matted hair, strange-shaped caps which were once white, and yellowish handkerchiefs loosely spread over the otherwise uncovered bosom. Perhaps there is a short pipe in the mouth; but there is gin in every hue of the face, and the eyes are bleared and inflamed with habitual intoxication.
There may be a miserable baby in the arms, or on the back, the naked feet and legs appearing from beneath the rags that cover it--sallow, sickly, sharp-faced, keen-eyed--the nursling of misery, despair, and vice--the destined victim of every evil passion and every degrading crime. Above, below, around, from every window in cellar, in attic, in the middle floors, come forth the varied murmurs, in different tongues and tones: the slang and cant of English rogues and vagabonds; the brogue of Ireland, or the old Irish language itself; the shouts of wrath or merriment; the groans of anguish; the cries of pain or sorrow; the gay laugh; the dull buzz of tongues consulting over deeds of evil, telling tales of despair and woe, or asking counsel how to avoid starvation.
As you go on, innumerable are the different forms you meet, in every shape of degradation: the fierce bludgeoned bully, the dexterous pickpocket, the wretched woman who acts as their decoy, the boys and girls serving an apprenticeship to vice, the hoary prompters of all evil, who, in the shape of receivers, profit by the crimes of the younger and more active.
Look at that girl there in the tattered chintz gown. She can scarcely be sixteen; and yet, see how she reels from side to side in beastly intoxication! And then that elderly man in the shabby brown coat, with the venerable white hair, who goes walking along by the side of the gutter, and every now and then stops and gazes in, as if he saw something exceedingly curious there. He is a respectable-looking man, with a gentlemanly air and carriage. A thief, and a man suspected of murder, are just passing him; but he is quite safe: they know he has nothing to lose, and his emaciated body would not fetch two pounds at the anatomist's.
What is it has brought him to this state? Look in his face; see the dull, meaningless eye, the nose and lips bloated with habitual sottish tippling. That man can boast that he never was drunk in his life, but for more than forty years he has never been quite sober. Hark to the screams coming forth from that house where one-half of the windowpanes at least are covered up with paper. They are produced by a drunken scoundrel beating his unhappy wife. She was once an honest, cheerful, happy country girl, and now--I must not stay to tell the various stages of degradation she has gone through, till she is here, the wife of a drunken savage, in one of the lowest and vilest dens of London. Hark how the poor thing screams under the ruffian's blow, while one of his brutal companions sits hard by and witnesses it, laughing! Three days hence, by one too-fatally-directed blow, that man will murder the wretched woman in the presence of her two children, and then will go to end his own days on a scaffold, leaving those wretched infants to follow the same course in after years.
I must not pause upon these things more. It was through such scenes as I have described that Mingy Bowes and his companion took their way, without the slightest fear or trepidation, for it would seem that they both knew the haunt right well. They went up a very narrow sort of court out of Oxford Road, and then turned into a broader and more reputable-looking street, though heaven knows it was bad enough. About half-way down was an open door, over which were written some letters required by the excise, and by the side of which, on a board about two feet square, appeared a curious painting.
On a background, intended to represent sky and cloud, though in reality it looked more like a torn blue coat with a white shirt peeping through the rents, appeared a tolerably well painted sow, standing on her hind legs, with a flageolet in her mouth, whence this pleasant resort of rogues and vagabonds took its name of the "Pig and Whistle." Mingy and his friend went in, pushed the first swing-door open, then passed a second, for there was no impediment in the way, at least for the moment, though there were bolts and bars in plenty about, which might possibly be used at times to shut out suspicious characters. The sense of words, of course, differs in different places, and perhaps by the term "suspicious characters" two very different classes of persons would be meant by the police and by the landlord of the "Pig and Whistle." The latter, at all events, did not seem to consider Mr. Mingy Bowes and his friend Sam as within the category; for he made them a very reverent bow as they entered that apartment which bore an ironical inscription, designating it as "the Commercial Room." With Sam he seemed quite familiar, and to Mingy Bowes was highly deferential, for gentlemen of Mingy's calling are very important personages in the great community of thieves and scoundrels. As soon as he had brought the liquor which his two guests demanded, the landlord, well skilled in the usages of his own peculiar world, retired from the room, which for the time had no other tenants than those just arrived.
"And so the cove was out, Mingy," said Sam, who had by this time recovered in some degree from his first disappointment; "but what's this you've found out that you think you may work well?"
Mingy took a sip of his brandy-and-water, looked into his glass, and seemed to consider, like one of Homer's heroes, before he began to tell his story. When it began, however, it was not a very long one.
"Why, as far as I can make out, Sam," he replied, at length, "the young man is a-going to be married to a rich lady, a good deal older than hisself."
"D--n him! what's that to me?" asked the ruffian.
"A great deal," answered Mingy Bowes; "for I think it was ten to one your scheme broke down with the young man, while I am quite sure we can make it answer with the old woman."
"Broke down! How the devil should it break down?" asked Sam, with great indignation. "Why, I had nothing to do but to tell him that I'd blow him altogether if he didn't give three or four hundred down."
"But he might think you couldn't, Sam," said Mingy Bowes, in a sly tone. "You may say you would soon have shown him that you could, and that you'd tell him his own real name, and all that you made out from the pocket-book. But then, you see, Sam, it's very much more than probable that the fellow who came after the book has told him by this time that you put it in the fire. Then the young man will lay his calculation this way:--'As this cove has burned the book, he can't prove anything but by his own word. Now, he can't come forward to swear, even if his swearing would be of any good; for if he swears at all, he must swear that he knocked me down and took my pocket-book, and then what's his oath worth? If I give him a penny, he will be sure to come bothering me for more.' That's what he will say, Sam, and devilish right, too." 4 "Not quite so right after all," answered the man; "for if I can't prove nothing myself, I can put those upon the scent as will. He wouldn't like that, Mingy, and I shall just tell him so. If there's anybody can prove that he's the same man who ten years ago was called Henry Hayley, they can hang him--that's all; for the paper that showed who did forge the gentleman's name was burned in that book. Now, take my word for it, Mingy, he won't let it come to that for the sake of a cool hundred or two."
"Do you recollect whose name it was that was forged?" asked Mingy Bowes, fixing his shrewd eyes upon the big man's face.
"To be sure I do," answered the other: "it was Scriven and Co.; and hang me, if the young fellow makes any mouths at it, I'll find out where Scriven and Co. put up, and tell them all about it."
"For heaven's sake, don't do that!" cried Mingy Bowes, with a look of consternation. "It was bad enough burning the pocket-book; but if once you tell, you've given the whip out of your own hands altogether, my man. Let me try it with the old lady first. I think we might manage to get a thousand pound out of her to save her young man, if we can but get her to believe that we can grab him when we like. If you like to leave her to me, Sam, I'll take you a bet I'll screw something out of her."
The ruffian seemed a good deal impressed by the cogency of Mr. Bowes's arguments, especially in regard to the impropriety of suffering his valuable secret to slip from him in any fit of rage.
"No, no; it won't do," he said, "I can see that clear enough, to go and tell Scriven and Co. till I've tried everything else; and as to the old lady, Mingy, I don't care if you try her, but I'll try the young man too; and I say, Mingy--remember, fair play's a jewel, and it's understood I am to have three-quarters of whatever we get, and you one quarter; so no kicking, Master Mingy."
"Honour--honour!" said Mingy, laying his hand upon his heart; "but now let's have something to eat after this brandy-and-water. I dare say the landlord has got some cold roast pork. He generally has."
His pleasant anticipations were fulfilled. The landlord had cold roast pork, and it was speedily placed upon the table before him and his companion, together with a fresh supply of brandy-and-water. Mingy calculated upon discussing all points which wanted further elucidation, over cold pork and mustard; but here he was disappointed, for hardly had each helped himself abundantly when the room was flooded by a stream of the usual guests, who seemed just returned from some successful enterprise, so that any further private conversation was at an end. All sorts of things were called for by the new-comers. Mingy and San were saluted by several, who had some slight acquaintance with them. Beer, gin, brandy, flowed abundantly. Some stood, some sat; all talked together. There was a great deal of swearing, a great deal of laughter, a great deal of abuse. One-half of them seemed to be quarrelling with the other half, though in reality they were only what is called chaffing; but from one especial corner of the room a continual strain of angry words was heard to rise, which went on, with greater and greater vehemence, till at last a blow was struck and returned. Two or three who were near rushed forward, perhaps to see what was going on, perhaps to keep the peace; but somehow the pugnacious spirit seemed to spread. Fists seemed to be flying about very thick; and in the midst of the uproar and confusion, the cause of which nobody appeared clearly to understand, the two men with whom the riot had originated came struggling forward out of their corner, driving back the crowd, knocking over the tables and benches, smashing the glasses, and squeezing flat the pewter ware.
Mingy Bowes did not like the scene at all, although he was often compelled to witness such; for, besides being small and fragile, he was a very peaceable person, and thought force of cunning much superior to force of arm. Besides, he calculated upon having his character compromised, and he soon saw that such was very likely to be the case.
His more pugnacious companion, Sam, who never could resist a row when it was either within sight or hearing, had just started up and rushed into the midst of the affray, exclaiming, "I'll soon settle that," when Mingy Bowes, having raised his eyes to the window, in the vain hope of finding some means of exit, perceived two or three ominous-looking heads gazing in, and at the same time heard the sound of a rattle. He would have given worlds to reach the door, but that was impossible, for the combatants were exactly in the way; and in a minute after his worst anticipations were realised; for, just as the landlord was attempting to restore peace, an overwhelming force of police poured in, and the whole body of vagabonds there assembled, inclusive of Sam and his friend, were marched off to the station-house.