Chapter Twenty Three.
A Plunge Downward.
A chill October squall was whistling through the trees—in Regent’s Park, stirring up the fallen leaves on the footpaths, and making the nursemaids, as they listlessly trundled their perambulators, shiver suddenly, and think of the nursery fire and the singing kettle on the hob. The gathering clouds above sent the park-keeper off to his shed for a waterproof, and emptied the carriage-drive of the vehicles in which a few semi-grand people were taking an afternoon airing at half a crown an hour. A little knot of small boys, intently playing football, with piled-up jackets for goals, and an old parti-coloured “bouncer” for a ball, were the last to take alarm at the lowering sky; nor was it till the big drops fell in their midst that they scattered right and left, and left the park empty.
No; not quite empty. One young man sat on through the rain on the seat from which he had been watching the boys’ game. A shabby, almost ragged young man, with a disagreeable face and an almost contemptuous curl of the lips, as the rain, gathering force every second, buffeted him in the face and drenched him where he sat. There were a hundred seats more sheltered than that on which he sat, and by walking scarcely fifty yards he could have escaped the rain altogether. But he sat recklessly on, and let the rain do its worst, his eyes still on the empty football field, and his ears ringing still with the merry shouts of the departed boys.
My reader, had he chanced to pass down that deserted walk on this stormy afternoon, would hardly have recognised in the lonely occupant of that seat the John Jeffreys he had seen six months ago at Clarges Street. It was not merely that he looked haggard and ill, or that his clothes were ragged. That was bad enough, but the reader has seen him in such a plight before. But what he has not seen before—or if at all, only in passing moments—is the bitter, hard look on his face, changing it miserably. A stranger passing him that afternoon would have said—
“There sits a man who hates all the world.”
We, who know him better, would have said—
“There sits our poor dog with a bad name, deserted even by hope.”
And so it was.
Jeffreys had left Clarges Street smarting under a sense of injury, but still resolved to keep up the fight for his good name, in which for so many months past he had been engaged.
Not by appealing to Mr Rimbolt. Although he knew, had Mr Rimbolt been at home, all this would not have happened, his pride forbade him now to take a single step to reinstate himself in a house from which he had been so ignominiously expelled. No, not even when that house held within its walls Percy and Raby. The idea of going back filled him with horror.
On the contrary, he would hide himself from them, even though they sought to find him; and not till his name was as good as theirs would he see them again or come near them.
Which surely was another way of resolving never to see them again; for the leopard cannot change his spots or the Ethiopian his skin! A bad name is a stain which no washing can efface; it clings wherever you go, and often men who see it see nothing else in you but the scar.
So thought poor Jeffreys as he slowly turned his back on all that was dear to him in life, and went out into the night of the unsympathetic city.
At first, as I said, he tried to hold up his head. He inquired in one or two quarters for work. But the question always came up—
“What is your character?”
“I have none,” he would say doggedly.
“Why did you leave your last place?”
“I was turned away.”
“What for?”
“Because I am supposed to have killed a boy once.”
Once indeed he did get a temporary job at a warehouse—as a porter—and for a week, a happy week, used his broad back and brawny arms in carrying heavy loads and lifting weights. Hope sprang again within him as he laboured. He might yet, by beginning at the lowest step, rise above his evil name and conquer it.
Alas! One day a shilling was lost from the warehouseman’s desk. Jeffreys had been seen near the place and was suspected. He resented the charge scornfully at first, then savagely, and in an outbreak of rage struck his accuser. He was impeached before the head of the firm, and it was discovered that he had come without a character. That was enough. He was bundled out of the place at five minutes’ notice, with a threat of a policeman if he made it six. And even when a week later the shilling was found in the warehouseman’s blotting-paper, no one doubted that the cashiered rogue was as cunning as he was nefarious.
After that he had given up what seemed the farce of holding up his head. What was the use, he said, when, as sure as night follows day, that bad name of his dogged him wherever he went?
So Jeffreys began to go down. In after years he spoke very little of those six months in London, and when he did it was about people he had met, and not about himself. What he did, where he lodged, how he lived, these were matters he never mentioned and never liked to be asked about.
I am quite sure myself that the reason of this silence was not shame. He was not one of those fellows who revenge themselves on fate by deliberately going to the bad. At his worst, he had no taste for vice or any affinity for it. He may have sunk low, not because he himself was low, but because in his miserable feud with all the world he scorned not to share the lot of others as miserable as himself.
His money—he had a few pounds when he left Clarges Street—soon failed him. He made no great effort to keep it, and was relieved to see the end of it. His companions in misery soon helped him away with it, and he let them.
But when it was gone the old necessity for work came back. By day he hardly ever ventured out of his court, for fear of being seen by some one who would attempt to rescue him from his present condition. At night he wandered restlessly about in the narrow streets picking up an early morning job at Covent Garden or in the omnibus stables.
He moved his lodgings incessantly, one week inhabiting a garret in Westminster, another sharing a common room in Whitechapel, another doing without lodgings altogether. He spoke little or not at all to his fellow-miserables, not because he despised them, but because they fought shy of him. They disliked his superior ways and his ill-concealed disgust of their habits and vices. They could have forgiven him for being a criminal in hiding; that they were used to. But a man who spoke like a gentleman, who took no pleasure in their low sports, and sat dumb while they talked loud and broad, seemed to them an interloper and an intruder.
Once—it was about the beginning of August—in a lodging-house across the river, he met a man to whom for a day or two he felt drawn. His story was a sad one. His father had been a gentleman, and the boy had been brought up in luxury and virtue. While at school his father had died, and before he had left school his mother had been married again to a brute who not only broke her heart, but, after setting himself to corrupt his stepson, had at last turned him adrift without a penny in the world. The lad, with no strong principle to uphold him, had sunk deep in vice. Yet there lurked about him occasional flashes of something better.
“After all,” he would say to Jeffreys, as the two lay at night almost on bare boards, “what’s the odds? I may be miserable one day, but I’m jolly the next. Now you seem to prefer to be uniformly miserable.”
“Hardly a case of preference,” said Jeffreys; “but I’m not sure that it wouldn’t be more miserable to be jolly.”
“Try it. You’d give a lot to forget all about everything for an hour, wouldn’t you?”
“It would be pleasant.”
“You can do it.”
“By dropping asleep?”
“Sleep! That’s the time I’m most miserable. I remember the old days then, and my mother, and—I say, Jeffreys, I was once nearly drowned at Eton. Just as I was going down for the last time I put up my hand, and a fellow saw it and came in and fished me out. What a born fool I was to do it! I was grateful to the fellow at the time. I hate him now!”
And the poor fellow, with all the manhood out of him, cried himself to sleep; and Jeffreys in mercy said not a word to stop him.
A pitiful sort of friendship sprung up between the two—the bitter strong one, and the vicious weak one. It kept a soft corner in Jeffreys’ heart to find some one who held to him even in this degradation, and to the poor prodigal it was worth anything to have some one to talk to.
Coming home one wet morning from one of his nocturnal expeditions, Jeffreys found his fellow-lodger up, with a bottle in his hands.
“My boy, my boy,” cried the lad, “you’re in luck, and just in time. Who says I’m lost to all decency after this? Why, I might have hidden it away when I heard you coming up. No. There’s something of the nobleman left in me yet. Half of this is yours, Jeffreys; only help yourself quickly, man, or I may repent.”
He held out the bottle tremblingly and with a wince that spoke volumes.
“Take it. I never went halves before, and perhaps I never shall again.”
Jeffreys took the bottle. It was brandy.
“Half a tumbler of that, Jeffreys, will make another man of you. It will send you into dreamland. You’ll forget there is such a thing as misery in the world. Don’t be squeamish, old fellow. You’re cold and weak, you know you are; you ought to take it. You’re not too good, surely—eh? Man alive, if you never do anything worse than take a drop of brandy, you’ll pass muster. Come, I say, you’re keeping me waiting.”
Jeffreys sunk on a chair, and raised the bottle half-way to his lips.
What was it, as he did so, which flashed before his eyes and caused him suddenly to set it down and rise to his feet?
Nothing real, it is true, yet nothing new. Just a momentary glimpse of a boy’s pale face somewhere in the dim gloom of that little room, and then all was as before. Yet to Jeffreys the whole world was suddenly altered.
He set the bottle down, and neither heeding nor hearing the expostulations of his companion, he left the house never to return.
That night he slept in another part of the town; and the poor bewildered prodigal, deserted by his only friend, cried half the night through, and cursed again the Eton boy who had once saved his life.
Jeffreys, hidden in another part of the great city, sunk to a lower depth of misery than ever. To him it seemed now that his bad name had taken form in the face of young Forrester, and was dogging him in adversity more relentlessly even than in prosperity. It comforted him not at all to think it had saved him from a drunkard’s ruin. He despised himself, when he came to himself, for having been scared so weakly. Yet he avoided his old quarters, and turned his back on the one friend he had, rather than face his evil genius again.
His evil genius! Was he blinded then, that he saw in all this nothing but evil and despair? Was he so numbed that he could not feel a Father’s hand leading him even through the mist? Had he forgotten that two little boys far away were praying for him? Had he ceased to feel that young Forrester himself might be somewhere, not far away, ready to forgive?
He was blinded, and could see nothing through the mists.
He half envied his new fellow-lodgers in the den at Ratcliff. Four of them, at least, stood a chance of being hanged. Yet they managed to shake off care and live merrily.
“Come, old gallus,” said one young fellow, who in that place was the hero of a recent “mystery” in the West End, “perk up. You’re safe enough here. Don’t be down. We’re all in the same boat. Save up them long faces for eight o’clock in the morning at Old Bailey. Don’t spoil our fun.”
It was half pathetic, this appeal; and Jeffreys for a day tried to be cheerful. But he could not do it, and considerately went somewhere else.
How long was it to go on? A time came when he could get no work, and starvation stared him in the face. But a dying boy bequeathed him a loaf, and once again he was doomed to live.
But a loaf, and the proceeds of a week’s odd jobs, came to an end. And now once more, as he sits in the rain in Regent’s Park, he faces something more than the weather. He has not tasted food for two whole days, and for all he knows may never taste it again.
So he sits there, with his eyes still on that football ground, and his ears ringing still with the merry shouts of the departed boys.
The scene changes as he stays on. It is a football field still, but not the brown patch in a London park. There are high trees, throwing shadows across the green turf, and in the distance an old red school-house. And the boys are no longer the lively London urchins with their red, white, and blue bouncer. They are in flannels, and their faces are familiar, and the names they call each other he knows. Nor is the game the same. It, like the London boys’ game, has ended suddenly, but not in a helter-skelter stampede in the rain. No. It is a silent, awe-struck group round something on the ground; and as he, Jeffreys, elbows his way among them, he sees again a boy’s face lying there pallid and perhaps lifeless. Then instinctively he lifts his hands to his ears. For a howl rises on all sides which deafens him, stuns him.
After all, it is only the last effort of the October squall in Regent’s Park buffeting him with a fusillade of rain and withered leaves. He takes his hands from his ears, and with a sigh gets up and walks away, he cares not whither.
His steps lead him round the park and into the long avenue. The rain and the wind are dying down, and already a few wayfarers, surprised by the sudden storm, are emerging from their shelters and speeding home. The park-keeper boldly parades the path in his waterproof, as if he had braved the elements since daybreak. A nursemaid draws out her perambulator from under the trees and hastens with it and its wailing occupant nursery-wards. And there, coming to meet him, sheltered under one umbrella, are two who perhaps have no grudge against the storm for detaining them in their walk that afternoon.
It is long since Jeffreys has seen anything to remind him of the world he has left, but there is something about these two as they advance towards him, their faces hidden by the umbrella, which attracts him. The youth is slim and well-dressed, and holds himself well; his companion’s figure reminds him of a form he knew—can it be only six months ago?—light, gentle, courageous, beside which he has walked in the Wildtree Park and on the London pavements. Ah, how changed now!
Where, he wonders, is she now? and what is she thinking of him, if she thinks of him at all?
They meet—the tramp and the young couple. They never heed him; how should they? But a turn of the umbrella gives him a momentary glimpse of them, and in that glimpse poor hapless Jeffreys recognises Raby and Scarfe! Surely this blow was not needed to crush him completely! Scarfe! How long he stood, statue-like, looking down the path by which they had gone neither he nor any one else could tell. But it was dark when he was roused by a harsh voice in front of him.
“Come, sheer off, young fellow! It’s time you was out of the park!”
“Yes, I’ll go,” said he, and walked slowly to the gate.
It was ridiculous of him, of course, to writhe as he did under that chance meeting. What else could he have expected? A hundred times already he had told himself she had forgotten all about him, or, worse still, she remembered him only to despise him. And a hundred times, too, he had seen her in fancy beside the enemy who had stabbed him.
For Scarfe might have spared his precaution in begging Mrs Rimbolt not to name him as Jeffreys’ accuser. Jeffreys needed no telling to whom he owed his ruin, and he needed no telling the reason why.
That reason had made itself clear this afternoon, at any rate, and as the wretched outcast wandered out into the night, it seemed as if the one ray of light which yesterday had glimmered for him, even across the darkness, was now quenched for ever, and that there was nothing left either to hope or dread.
He could not quit the park, but wandered round and round it, outside its inhospitable palings, covering mile after mile of wet pavement, heedless of the now drenching rain, heedless of his hunger, heedless of his failing limbs.
The noisy streets had grown silent, and a clock near at hand had struck two when he found himself on the little bridge which crosses the canal. It was too dark to see the water below, but he heard the hard rain hissing on its surface.
He had stood there before, in happier days, and wondered how men and women could choose, as they sometimes did, to end their misery in that narrow streak of sluggish water.
He wondered less now. Not that he felt tempted to follow them; in his lowest depths of misery that door of escape had never allured him. Yet as he stood he felt fascinated, and even soothed, by the ceaseless noise of the rain on the invisible water beneath. It seemed almost like the voice of a friend far away.
He had been listening for some time, crouched in a dark corner of the parapet, when he became aware of footsteps approaching.
Imagining at first they were those of a policeman coming to dislodge the tramp from his lurking-place, he prepared to get up and move on. But listening again he remained where he was.
The footsteps were not those of a policeman. They approached fitfully, now quickly, now slowly, now stopping still for a moment or two, yet they were too agitated for those of a drunkard, and too uncertain for those of a fugitive from justice.
As they drew near to the bridge they stopped once more, and Jeffreys, peering through the darkness, saw a form clutching the railings, and looking down in the direction of the water. Then a voice groaned, “Oh my God!” and the footsteps hurried on.
Jeffreys had seen misery in many forms go past him before, but something impelled him now to rise and follow the footsteps of this wanderer.
The plashing rain drowned every sound, and it was with difficulty that Jeffreys, weak and weary as he was, could keep pace with the figure flitting before him, for after that glance over the bridge the fugitive no longer halted in his pace, but went on rapidly.
Across the bridge he turned and followed the high banks of the canal. Then he halted, apparently looking for a way down. It was a long impatient search, but at last Jeffreys saw him descend along some railings which sloped down the steep grass slope almost to the towing-path.
Jeffreys followed with difficulty, and when at last he stood on the towing-path the fugitive was not to be seen, nor was it possible to say whether he had turned right or left.
Jeffreys turned to the right, and anxiously scanning both the bank and the water, tramped along the muddy path.
A few yards down he came upon a heap of stones piled up across the path. Any one clambering across this must have made noise enough to be heard twenty yards away, and, as far as he could judge in the darkness, no one had stepped upon it. He therefore turned back hurriedly and retraced his steps.
The sullen water, hissing still under the heavy rain, gave no sign as he ran along its edge and scanned it with anxious eyes.
The high bank on his left, beyond the palings, became inaccessible from below. The wanderer must, therefore, be before him on the path.
For five minutes he ran on, straining his eyes and ears, when suddenly he stumbled. It was a hat upon the path.
In a moment Jeffreys dived into the cold water. As he came to the surface and looked round there was nothing but the spreading circles of his own plunge to be seen; but a moment afterwards, close to the bank, he had a glimpse of something black rising for an instant and then disappearing. Three strokes brought him to the spot just as the object rose again.
To seize it and strike out for the bank was the work of a moment. The man—for it was he—was alive, and as Jeffreys slowly drew him from the water he opened his eyes and made a faint resistance.
“Let me go!” he said with an oath; “let me go!”
But his head fell heavily on his rescuer’s shoulder while he spoke, and when at last he lay on the path he was senseless.
Jeffreys carried him to the shelter of an arch, and there did what he could to restore animation. It was too dark to see the man’s face, but he could feel his pulse still beating, and presently he gave a sigh and moved his head.
“What did you do it for?” he said piteously.
Jeffreys started. He knew the voice, hoarse and choked as it was.
“What’s your name?” he said, raising the form in his arms and trying to see the face. “Who are you?”
“I’ve got no name! Why couldn’t you let me be?”
“Isn’t your name Trimble—Jonah Trimble?”
The poor fellow lifted his head with a little shriek.
“Oh, don’t give me up! Don’t have me taken up! Help me!”
“I will help you all I can, Trimble.”
“Why, you know me, then?—you’re—Who are you?”
“I’m John Jeffreys.”