Chapter Eighteen.
How my Friend Smith came back, and told me a Great Secret.
My grand evening party was over, but I had still my accounts for that entertainment to square. And the result of that operation was appalling. It was a fortnight since my salary had been raised, but so far I had not a penny saved. The extra money had gone, I couldn’t exactly say how, in sundry “trifling expenditures,” such as pomatum, a scarf-pin, and a steel chain for my waistcoat, all of which it had seemed no harm to indulge in, especially as they were very cheap, under my altered circumstances.
On the strength of my new riches also I was already six shillings in debt to the Oxford-shirt man, and four shillings in debt to the Twins, who had paid my share in the boating expedition up the river. And now, when I came to reckon up my liabilities for the supper, I found I owed as much as eight shillings to the pastrycook and five shillings to the grocer, besides having already paid two shillings for the unlucky lobster (which to my horror and shame I found out after every one had left had not been fresh), one shilling for eggs, sixpence for shrimps, and one-and-sixpence for the hire of the cups and saucers.
The ingenious reader will be able to arrive at a true estimate of my financial position from these figures, and will see that so far, at any rate, my increase of riches had not made me a wealthier man than when I had lived within my income on eight shillings a week.
Nor had it made me either better or happier I made a few more good resolutions after the party to be a fool no longer. I could see plainly enough that all my so-called friends had been amusing themselves at my expense, and were certainly not worth my running myself head over ears in debt to retain. I could see too, when I came to reflect, that all my efforts to pass myself off as “one of them” had ended pitifully for me, if not ridiculously. Yes, it was time I gave it up. Alas! for the vanity of youth! The very day that witnessed the forming of my resolutions witnessed also the breaking of them.
“Hullo, young ’un!” cried Doubleday, as I put in my appearance at the office; “here you are! How are you after it all?”
“I’m quite well,” said I, in what I intended to be a chilly voice.
“That’s right. Very brickish of you to have us up. We all thought so, didn’t we, Crow?”
“Rather,” replied Crow.
“I’m afraid some of the fellows were rather rude,” continued Doubleday. “Those Twins are awfully underbred beggars. I believe, you know, their mother never knew which of the two it was that wanted whopping, and so she let them both grow up anyhow. If I’d been her, I’d have licked them both regularly, wouldn’t you, Crow?”
Without setting much store by Doubleday’s moral disquisition on the duty of the parents of Twins, I felt mollified by the half apology implied in his reference to yesterday’s entertainment, and to the manner of his behaviour towards me now. It was clear he felt rather ashamed of himself and his cronies for their behaviour. Who could tell whether, if they had given me a fair chance, my supper might not have been a success after all? At any rate, I didn’t feel quite so downhearted about it as I had done.
“How’s that festive old lady,” proceeded Doubleday, “this morning? I pity you with an old dragon like her to look after you. That’s the worst of those boarding-houses. A fellow can’t do the civil to his friends but he’s sure to be interfered with by somebody or other.”
He was actually making excuses for me!
Yes; if it hadn’t been for the rudeness of some of the fellows and the aggravating behaviour of Mrs Nash, my supper would have gone off quite well. I was quite thankful to Doubleday for the comfort he gave me, and cheerfully accepted an invitation to go up to his lodgings “to meet just the usual lot” next evening.
Which I did, and found the “usual lot” in their usual good spirits. No one seemed to bear a grudge against me for that cold eel-pie, and one or two assured me that they had enjoyed themselves immensely.
Nothing could speak more for my greenness and vanity than the fact that I believed what they said, and felt more convinced than ever that my party, however it had seemed to go off, had really been a success.
On my return to Beadle Square that evening I found a letter waiting for me, and to my joy and surprise it was in Jack Smith’s own handwriting. It said:
“Dear Fred,—You’ll be glad to hear I’m off the sick list at last, and have been turned out a perfect cure. Mrs Shield, my sister’s nurse and friend, insists on my taking it easy another week, and then I shall come up to town, and mean to work like a nigger to make up for lost time. I’ll tell you all the news when I come. I’m afraid you’ve been having a slow time.—Yours ever, Jack.
“P.S.—I’ve written to M., B., and Company, to tell them I’ll be up on Monday next.”
It seemed almost too good to be true that I should so soon see my friend again. Ah! how different it would all be when he came back! For the next week I could think of nothing else. What a lot I should have to tell him! How he would laugh over my adventures and misfortunes, and how he would scold me for my extravagances and follies! Well, these would be over at last, that was a comfort.
So, during the week, in view of giving up my extravagances, I bought a new suit of ready-made clothes that only half fitted me, and went on the Saturday afternoon with Whipcord and the Twins to see a steeplechase, where I was tempted to put two half-crowns, which I borrowed from the Twins, into a sweepstake, and lost them both. This was a good finish up to my little “fling” and no mistake; so much so that I began to think it was a pity Jack had not come last Monday instead of next.
“He would have kept me out of all this mischief,” said I to myself. Ah! I had yet to learn that if one wants to keep out of mischief one must not depend altogether upon one’s friends, or even oneself, for the blessing. Strength must be sought from a higher Power and a better Friend!
At last the long-looked-for Monday arrived, and I went down to the station in the evening to meet Jack’s train.
I could scarcely have said what feeling it was which prompted me to wear, not my new stripe suit, but my old clothes, shabby as they were, or why, instead of wearing my coloured Oxford-shirt, I preferred to array myself in one of the old flannel shirts with its time-honoured paper collar.
Somehow I had no ambition to “make an impression” on my friend Smith.
There was his head out of the window and his hand waving long before the train pulled up. The face was the same I had always known, pale and solemn, with its big black eyes and clusters of black hair. His illness had left neither mark nor change on him; still less had it altered his tone and manner, as he sprang from the carriage and seizing me by the arm, said, “Well, old fellow, here we are again, at last!”
What a happy evening that was! We walked to Beadle Square, carrying Jack’s bag between us, and talking all the way. The dull old place appeared quite bright now he was back; and the meal we had together in the parlour that evening before the other fellows came home seemed positively sumptuous, although it consisted only of weak tea and bread-and-butter.
Then we turned out for a long walk, anywhere, and having no bag to catch hold of this time, we caught hold of one another’s arms, which was quite as comfortable.
“Well, old man,” began Jack, “what have you been up to all the time? You never told me in your letters.”
“There wasn’t much to tell,” I said. “It was awfully slow when you left, I can assure you.”
“But you soon got over that?” said Jack, laughing.
He wasn’t far wrong, as the reader knows, but somehow I would have preferred him to believe otherwise. I replied, “There would have been simply nothing to do of an evening if Doubleday—who is a very decent fellow at bottom, Jack—hadn’t asked me up to his lodgings once or twice to supper.”
I said this in as off-hand a way as I could. I don’t know why I had fancied Jack would not be pleased with the intelligence, for Doubleday had never been very friendly to him.
“Did he?” said Jack. “That was rather brickish of him.”
“Yes; he knew it would be dull while you were away, and I was very glad to go.”
“Rather! I expect he gave you rather better suppers than we get up at Beadle Square, eh?”
“Yes. And then, you know, when I was there I heard where Flanagan was living, and found him out. Do you remember our hunt after him that night, Jack?”
“Don’t I! By the way, Fred, has there been any news of the boy?”
“The young thief? I should fancy you’d had enough of him, old man, for a good while to come. But I have seen him.”
“Where?” asked Jack, with an interest that quite amused me.
“One would think that after giving you smallpox, and robbing you of your money, you were really under an obligation to the young beggar, and wanted to thank him personally. If you are so very anxious to pay your respects, it’s ten to one we shall run across him at the top of Style Street—that’s where his place of business is.”
“Place of business? What do you mean?”
“I mean that he has spent the money he stole from us in buying a shoeblack’s apparatus, and seems to think it’s something to be proud of, too,” I replied.
Jack laughed. “He might have done worse. My boots want blacking, Fred; let’s go round by Style Street.”
The young vagabond was there, engaged, as we approached him, in walking round and round his box on the palms of his hands with his feet in the air.
At the sight of us he dropped suddenly into a human posture, and, with a very broad grin on his face, said, “Shine ’e boots, governor? Why, if it ain’t t’other flat come back? Shine ’e boots?”
“Yes; I want my boots cleaned,” said Jack, solemnly, planting one foot on the box.
The boy dropped briskly on his knees and went to work, making Jack’s boot shine as it had never shone before. In the middle of the operation he stopped short, and, looking up, said, “You was a flat that there night, you was!”
I could only laugh at this frank piece of information.
“I think you were the flat!” said Jack, putting up his other foot on the box.
“Me? I ain’t no flat, no error!” replied the boy, with a grin. “I’m a sharp ’un, that’s what I are!”
“I think you were worse than a flat to steal my money, and my friend’s.”
The boy looked perplexed. “Ga on!” said he.
“What’s your name?” asked Jack, changing the subject.
“Billy,” replied the boy.
“Billy what?”
“Ga on! What do you mean by ‘what’? Ain’t Billy enough?”
“Where do you live?”
“Live? where I can; that’s where I live!”
“Then you don’t live with your mother in that court any longer?”
“The old gal—she ain’t no concern of yourn!” said the youth, firing up.
“I know that,” said Jack, evidently at a loss, as I had been, how to pursue the conversation with this queer boy. “I say, Billy,” he added, “where are you going to sleep to-night?”
“Ain’t a-goin’ to sleep nowheres!” was the prompt reply.
“Would you like to come and sleep with me?”
“No fear!” was the complimentary reply.
“What are you going to do, then?”
“’Tain’t no concern o’ yourn; so it ain’t.”
“Will you be here to-morrow?”
“In corse I shall!”
“Well, I expect I’ll want my boots done again to-morrow evening. Here’s a penny for this time.”
The boy took the penny and held it in the palm of his hand.
“Isn’t it enough?” asked Jack.
“You’re ’avin’ a lark with me,” said the boy. “This ’ere brown—”
“What’s wrong? It’s a good one, isn’t it?”
“Oh, ain’t you funny? I don’t want yer brown!” and to my amazement he tossed the coin back.
Jack solemnly picked it up and put it back into his pocket. “Good-night, Billy,” said he. “Mind you are here to-morrow.”
“No fear!” said Billy, who was once more resuming his gymnastic exercises.
And so we left him.
My friend Smith was certainly a queer fellow. He seemed more interested during the remainder of our walk with the little dishonest shoeblack we had just left than with my half-candid story of my life in London during his absence.
“Depend upon it, that’s his way of making amends,” said he; “there’s some good in the young scamp after all.”
“It’s precious hard to discover,” said I. “He appears to me to be a graceless young reprobate, who knows well enough that it’s wicked to steal, and seems rather proud of it than otherwise. I say, Jack, I’d advise you not to have too much to do with him. He’s done you harm enough as it is.”
When we returned to Beadle Square we found our amiable fellow-lodgers evidently expecting our arrival. It was so long since I had taken supper at Mrs Nash’s that I seemed quite as much a stranger as Jack.
“Here they come,” said Horncastle, who always shone on occasions like this. “Here comes the two smallpoxes. Hold your noses, you fellows.”
In this flattering manner we were received as we proceeded to seat ourselves in our accustomed place at the table.
“They seem as cheerful and merry as ever,” said Jack, solemnly, to me, looking round him.
“I say, Jones,” cried Horncastle, in an audible voice to a friend, “wonderful how Batchelor turns up here now the other’s come home! Got to stop going out every night now, and coming home drunk at two in the morning, eh? Going to behave now, eh? But he does go it, don’t he, when his keeper’s back’s turned, eh?”
All this, ridiculous as it was, was not very pleasant for me. To Jack, however, it was highly amusing.
“I suppose they mean that for you,” said he. “I feel quite flattered to be called your keeper.”
“It’s all a lie,” I said angrily, “about my coming home drunk, and all that.”
“I should rather hope it was,” said my friend with a smile.
I was sufficiently uncomfortable, however, by the turn my fellow-lodgers’ wit was taking. Without meaning to deceive, I had somehow, in my story to Jack, omitted all reference to my own extravagances, and represented my dissipations more as contrivances to pass the time in my friend’s absence than congenial pleasures.
“Rum thing, too,” continued Horncastle, who evidently saw I was not liking it—“rum thing he’s dropped those new ready-made togs of his and his flash watch-chain. I wonder why—”
“Because they’re not paid for,” said another. “I know that, because I was in Shoddy’s shop to-day, and he asked me to tell Batchelor the things were sold for ready money and no tick. Do you hear that, Batchelor? that’s what he says, and you’d better attend to it, I can tell you.”
Why need I have got myself into a rage over a suit of ready-made clothes? It was surely no crime to possess them; and if I was owing the amount it didn’t follow I had anything to be ashamed of, as long as I paid in the end. But I flushed up dreadfully, in a manner which Jack could not help noticing, and replied, “You mind your own business—I’ll mind mine!”
“You’d better, my boy,” was the reply. “Pyman, the pastrycook, was asking most affectionately after you too. He says he hopes you won’t move without letting him know, as he’d like to call and—”
“Come on, Jack!” I cried, taking Jack’s arm; “it’s enough to make one sick the way they talk.”
And amid much laughter, and in no very amiable frame of mind, I quitted my persecutors.
I made sure Jack would read me a lecture, or at any rate refer to the subject which had caused me so much annoyance. He did neither.
“Lively lot they are,” said he. “It’s a wonder where they pick up all their notions.”
“They want to make you believe I’ve been up to all sorts of mischief since you went away,” I said.
Jack laughed.
“And they expect me to believe it,” said he. “The best way with them is to let them say what they like, and take no notice.”
We went upstairs to bed, as the only place where we could enjoy one another’s society undisturbed.
As we were undressing. Jack took from his pocket a photograph, which he showed to me.
“Fred,” said he, “would you like to see a portrait of Mary?”
“Your sister?” said I, taking the picture. “Yes.”
It was a pretty little girl of about twelve or thirteen, with dark eyes and hair like Jack’s; but, unlike him, with a merry, sunny face, which even under the eye of a photographer could not be made to look solemn.
“How jolly!” was my exclamation.
Jack looked as delighted with this unsentimental comment as if I had broken out into all sorts of poetic raptures, and replied, in his peculiar, solemn way, “Yes, she is jolly.”
“Is she your only sister?” I asked, giving him back the portrait.
“Yes,” said he.
“Was she very ill when you got down?”
“Yes; we hardly thought she was going to live,” he replied.
“I heard how you were both getting on now and then from Mrs Shield. She seems a very kind person.”
“She’s our old nurse, you know,” Jack said, “and like a mother to Mary and me.”
He had never spoken like this about home before. Whenever we had approached the topic he had nervously changed the conversation. Now, however, he seemed almost glad to talk to some one, and there was quite a tremble in his voice as he spoke of his sister and Mrs Shield.
“Then your own mother’s not alive?” I asked. I had asked the same question once at Stonebridge House, I remembered, and then he had almost resented it.
“No, she died when Mary was born, fourteen years ago. I cannot remember her at all.”
“Just like me,” I said. “I never saw my mother that I know of. I say, Jack, let’s look at that portrait again.”
He was delighted to show it to me, and I was glad once more to get a glimpse of that merry face.
“And your father,” I inquired, presently, “is he dead too?”
“No!” said Jack, with a sudden return of his old abruptness.
I was perplexed, but it was no use, evidently, pumping my friend with further questions in that direction. So we proceeded to undress in silence, and were soon in bed.
Presently the other lodgers came up, and then there was no chance of renewing our talk, even if Jack had been so inclined. But he seemed evidently in no humour for pursuing it.
In due time all was quiet once more, and then, just as I was beginning to feel drowsy, and was lying half awake, half asleep, fancying myself back again at Stonebridge House in the old dormitory, I felt a hand on my arm and heard Jack’s voice whisper, “Fred, are you asleep?”
“No,” I replied, moving over to make room for him as he slipped in beside me.
“Fred,” he whispered, “I’m afraid you think me a brute.”
“No, I don’t,” replied I, astonished; “why ever should I?”
“Why, I offended you just now, when you meant to be kind.”
“No you didn’t,” said I. “I know there are some things you don’t like to talk about, and I—I’ve no right to ask you about them.”
Jack lay silent for some minutes. Then he whispered—
“Old man, you can keep a secret, can’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, wondering what was coming.
“I’ve never told it to anybody yet; but somehow it’s awful having no one to talk to,” he said.
“What is it, Jack?” I asked. “I won’t tell a soul.”
He crept closer to me, and his voice dropped to a lower whisper as he said, “Fred—my father is a convict!”
I was too bewildered and shocked to speak. All I could do was to take the hand which lay on my arm and hold it in mine. This then was Jack’s mystery. This explained his nervous avoidance of all references to home, his sudden changes of manner both at Stonebridge House and in London. Poor Jack!
We neither of us spoke for some time; then, as if in answer to the questions I longed to ask, he continued, “I hardly ever saw him. When mother died he went nearly mad and took to drinking, so Mrs Shield told me, and left home. No one heard of him again till it was discovered he had forged on his employers. I remember their coming and looking for him at M—, where we then lived. He wasn’t there, but they found him in London, and,”—here Jack groaned—“he was transported.”
“Poor Jack!” was all I could say. “How dreadful for you all!”
We said no more that night, but as we lay arm in arm, and presently fell asleep, I think we both felt we were bound together that night by a stronger tie than ever.
Yet, had I known what was to come, I would sooner have rushed from that house than allow my friend Smith to tell me his secret.