Chapter Sixteen.
How I experienced some of the Downs and Ups of Fortune.
My reader will hardly accuse me of painting myself in too flattering colours. I only wish I could promise him that the record of my folly should end here. But, alas! if he has patience to read my story to the end he will find that Frederick Batchelor’s folly was too inveterate to be chased away by two black eyes and a piece of bad news.
But for the time being I was fairly cowed. As I lay awake that next morning, after a night of feverish tossing and dreaming, I could think of nothing but my friend Smith—ill, perhaps dying, in the hospital at Packworth. I could do nothing to help him; I might not even go near him. Who could tell if ever I should see him again? And then came the memory of my cowardly refusal to stand up for him in his absence when he was being insulted and mocked behind his back. No wonder I despised myself and hated my life in London without him!
I got out of bed, determined at all costs to turn over a new leaf, and show every one that I was ashamed of what I had done. But as I did so I became faint and sick, and was obliged to crawl back to bed. I had all this time nearly forgotten my bruises and injuries of the previous evening, but I was painfully reminded of them now, and gradually all the misery of that exploit returned, and along with it a new alarm.
If Smith had caught smallpox from that wretched little street boy, was it not possible—nay, probable—I might be beginning with it too? It was not a pleasant thought, and the bare suggestion was enough to convince me I was really becoming ill.
“I say, aren’t you going to get up?” said young Larkins, at my bedside, presently, evidently having come to see how I was getting on after last night’s sensation: “or are you queer still?”
“I’m very queer,” said I, “and can’t get up. I think I’m going to be ill, Larkins. Would you mind calling at Hawk Street, and telling them there?”
“All right!” said Larkins. “But what’s the matter with you?”
“I’m not quite sure, but I’m afraid—have I got any spots coming out on my face?”
“Eh? No; but your face is all black and blue, and there’s a big bump on one cheek.”
“Is there? Then it must be so. Larkins, you’d better not stand too near, I’m afraid I’ve smallpox!”
Larkins’s face grew alarmed, and his jaw dropped. “What! Smallpox? Oh, I say, Batchelor, I hope not. It looks more like as if you’d been fighting.”
“That’s the smallpox coming on,” I said, mournfully; “I’m sure!”
“Perhaps I’d better go,” said Larkins, making for the door. “I’ll tell them at your office,” and with that he bolted suddenly.
It rather pleased me to imagine the sensation which his news would occasion not only down stairs among Mrs Nash’s lodgers, but also at the office. I could hear the sound of eager voices below, followed by what I fancied was the hurried stampede of the company from the house. Then presently Mrs Nash’s foot sounded on the stairs, and she opened the door.
“Have you had it, Mrs Nash?” I cried, as she appeared.
She made no answer, but walked up straight to my bed. “What’s all this nonsense about?” she demanded.
“I’m afraid it’s smallpox. I’m so sorry on your account,” I said, quite meekly. “I sort of felt it coming on some days,” I added, quite convinced in my own mind it had been so.
To my astonishment, the good lady expressed neither surprise nor sympathy. “Fiddlesticks!” said she. “Come, get up!”
“Get up?” I cried, in astonishment. “I can’t possibly, Mrs Nash. I tried just now, and couldn’t stand!”
“Stuff and nonsense! You ought to be ashamed of yourself going and fighting with a parcel of young roughs over night, and then shamming illness in the morning because you daren’t show your black eyes to the governors! Come, you don’t get round me with any of your nonsense! Up you get, or I’ll start and sweep out the room before you’re dressed!”
It was in vain I protested and pleaded. I had to rise, and, dizzy and sick as I felt, to huddle on my clothes and go down stairs, utterly horrified at such inhuman treatment. Mrs Nash even expected, now I was up, I should go to the office; but this I positively declared I could not do, and was therefore permitted to make myself as comfortable as I could in the cheerless parlour, and there wait for the further development of my malady.
Towards mid-day I began to feel hungry, but dared not ask Mrs Nash for anything; it would be so unlike an invalid. But I rang the bell and implored her to send for a doctor, which she finally promised to do.
In the interval I began to feel more and more like myself. It was very aggravating, to be sure! Unless he came quickly the doctor would hardly think me ill at all. And yet I must be ill, even though it cost an effort!
When the doctor did arrive I did my best, by putting on a pained expression of countenance, by breathing rather hard and closing my eyes occasionally, to make him feel he had not come for nothing. But somehow I didn’t quite succeed. He smiled pleasantly as he just touched my pulse, and gave a single glance at my protruded tongue.
“There’s nothing wrong with him, except a black eye or so. Fighting, I suppose. Boys will be boys. Send him to bed early to-night, Mrs Nash, and he’ll be all right in the morning.”
“But what about—about the smallpox?” I inquired, forgetting that during the last speech I had been lying with my eyes closed, apparently unconscious.
The doctor laughed noisily, and Mrs Nash joined in the chorus.
“We’ll see about him when we catch him, my young fighting-cock,” replied he, and then went.
Then I hadn’t really got it! A nice fool I had made of myself! Larkins had, of course, announced it to all the lodgers at Mrs Nash’s, to my employers and fellow-clerks, and here was I all the while as right as a trivet, with nothing but a bruised face and an empty stomach afflicting me. Was ever luck like mine?
I took care to be in bed before the fellows got home that evening, but as I lay awake I could hear their laughter down stairs, and it was not hard to guess what it was about. Larkins came up to my room.
“You’re a nice fellow, Batchelor,” said he, laughing, “telling me it was smallpox! You gave me such a fright. I told all the fellows, and at your office, and you should have seen how blue they all looked. What a sell it will be when you turn up all serene.” This was pleasant.
“You’d better not be too sure,” I said, still clinging to my ailment. “It may be it after all. The doctor said I was to go to bed early to-night and keep quite quiet. I’d advise you not to stay in the room, Larkins.”
“Oh, all right, good-night,” said Larkins, going to the door.
I heard him whistling merrily down the stairs, and felt still more uncomfortable. However, merciful sleep ended my troubles for a season. I slept like a top all that night, and woke next morning as fresh and well as I had ever been in all my life. The only thing wrong with me was the colour of my face. That was certainly rather brilliant. I had to endure a regular broadside of quizzing from my fellow-lodgers that morning at breakfast, which certainly did not tend to cheer me up in the prospect of presenting myself shortly at Hawk Street. I would fain have been spared that ceremony!
There arrived, as I was starting out, a hurried line from Mrs Shield, announcing that Jack was “much the same,” which of course meant he was still very ill.
Poor Jack! I had been so taken up with my own fancied ailment that I had scarcely thought of him. As it was I could hardly realise that he was so very ill.
Little had we imagined that evening when he caught up the half-murdered urchin in his arms and carried him to our lodgings what the result of that act would be to one of us! And yet, if it were to do again, I fancied my friend Smith would do it again, whatever it cost. But to think of his being so ill, possibly losing his life, all for a graceless young vagabond who—
“Clean ’e boots, do y’ hear, clean ’e boots, sir?”
Looking towards the sound, I saw the very object of my thoughts in front of me. He was clad in a tattered old tail coat, and trousers twice the size of his little legs. His head and feet were bare, and there seemed little enough semblance of a shirt. Altogether it was the most “scarecrowy” apparition I ever came across.
“Shine ’e boots, master?” he cried, flourishing a blacking-brush in either hand, and standing across my path.
I stopped short, and answered solemnly, “Where’s that sixpence you stole out of my pocket, you young thief?”
I expected he would be overawed and conscience-stricken by the sudden accusation. But instead of that he fired up with the most virtuous indignation.
“What do yer mean, young thief? I ain’t a-goin’—Oh, my Jemimer, it’s one of them two flats. Oh, here’s a go! Shine ’e boots, mister?”
There were certainly very few signs of penitence about this queer boy. This was pleasant, certainly. Not only robbed, but laughed at by the thief, a little mite of a fellow like this!
“I’ve a great mind to call a policeman and give you in charge,” said I.
He must have seen that I was not in earnest, for he replied, gaily, “No, yer don’t. Ef yer do, I’ll run yer in for prize-fightin’, so now.”
“How much do you earn by blacking boots?” I asked, feeling an involuntary interest in this strange gutter lad.
“Some days I gets a tanner. But, bless you, I ain’t a brigade bloke. I say, though, where’s t’other flat; ’im with the eyes?”
“He’s away ill,” I said. “He’s got smallpox, and says he believes he caught it from you.”
“Get ’long!” replied the boy.
“Well, most likely it was in the court where you live.”
“You can take your davy of that,” replied the boy; “there’s plenty of ’im there.”
“Have you had it?”
“In corse I ’ave. I say, ’ave yer seen the old gal about?”
“Your mother? No. Why?”
“On’y she’s a-missin’, that’s all; but there, she allers turns up, she does, and wipes me to-rights, too.”
“She was nearly killing you the night we saw you,” said I.
“’Taint no concern of yourn. Shine ’e boots, sir? ’ere yer are, sir. Not that bloke, sir. Do yer ’ear? Shine ’e boots, mister?”
This last spirited call was addressed to an elderly gentleman who was passing. He yielded eventually to the youth’s solicitation, and I therefore resumed my walk to the office with a good deal more to think of than I had when I started.
If I had desired to make a sensation at Hawk Street, I could hardly have done better than turn up that morning as usual. It was a picture to see the fellows’ faces of alarm, bewilderment, astonishment, and finally of merriment.
They had all heard that I was laid up with smallpox, which, as my friend Smith was also ill of the same malady, they all considered as natural on my part, and highly proper. They had, in fact, faced the prospect of getting on without me, and were quite prepared to exist accordingly. The partners, too, had talked the matter over, and come to the decision of advertising again without delay for a new clerk to take my place, and that very morning were intending to draw up the advertisement and send it to the papers.
Under these circumstances I appeared unexpectedly and just as usual on the Hawk Street horizon. No, not just as usual. Had I appeared just as usual, it might have been easier for the company generally to believe that I was really sound, but when my face presented a brilliant combination of most of the colours of the rainbow, the effect was rather sensational.
“Why, if it’s not Batchelor,” exclaimed Doubleday; not, however, advancing open-armed to meet me, but edging towards the far end of the desk, and dexterously insinuating Crow and Wallop between me and his precious person. “Why, we heard you had smallpox.”
“So we thought yesterday,” said I, gravely, half aggravated still that I had been defrauded of that distinction.
“Oh, you did, did you?” said Doubleday, gradually working back to his own seat. “Well, you have got something on your face to show for it; hasn’t he, Wallop?”
“Looks as if he’d been painting up for the South Sea Islands,” observed Wallop.
“That’s rather a showy tint of yellow down his left cheek,” said Crow. “Very fashionable colour just now.”
“Did you lay it on yourself?” said Doubleday, “or did you get any one to help you?”
“Oh,” I said, in as off-hand a manner as I could, “I was having a little box with Whipcord up at the Field-marshal’s. You weren’t there, by the way, Doubleday. Whipcord’s rather a good hand.”
“Is he?” said Doubleday, laughing exuberantly, with Wallop and Crow as chorus. “I would never have supposed that by your face, now; would you, you fellows? It strikes me you got a big box instead of smallpox, eh? Ha, ha!”
“I wonder at Whipcord standing up to you,” said Crow. “He’s such a quiet fellow, and doesn’t know in the least what to do with his hands.”
“He had the best of me,” I said.
“Well, I don’t know. It doesn’t do to trust to appearances. If it did one might suppose he had—rather. I hope you’ll ask me up when you have the return match.”
I didn’t see much fun in those witticisms, which, however, appeared to afford great merriment to the company generally, so much so that when Mr Barnacle presently opened the door he caught the whole counting-house laughing.
“What tomfoolery is this?” he demanded, looking angrily round. “You seem to forget, all of you, that you come here to work, and not to play. If you want to play you can go somewhere else. There!” So saying he passed into his private room, slamming the door ill-temperedly behind him.
This was not encouraging for me, who, of course, had to report myself, and contradict the rumours regarding my illness.
I gave him a quartet of an hour or so to quiet down, partly in the hope that Mr Merrett might meanwhile arrive. But as that event did not happen, and as Doubleday informed me that the advertisements for a new clerk were to be sent out that morning, I made up my mind there was nothing to be gained by further delay, and therefore made the venture.
I found myself anything but comfortable as I stood before Mr Barnacle’s desk, and stammeringly began my statement.
“Please, sir—”
“Why, what is this, sir?” demanded Mr Barnacle, sternly. “We were told yesterday you were ill.”
“So I was, sir, and I believed I was going to have smallpox, but the doctor says I’m not.”
“And does that account for your face being in that state, pray?”
“No, sir, I got that boxing—that is fighting.”
“Most discreditable conduct! Is that all you have to say?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry I was away yesterday.”
“Well, now, listen to what I have to say,” said Mr Barnacle, laying down his pen, and leaning forward in his chair. “You’ve not been doing well lately, Batchelor. I’ve watched you and I’ve watched your work, and I don’t like it. I was mistaken in you, sir. You’re idle, sir, and unless you improve I sha’n’t keep you another week, mind that.”
“Indeed, sir—” I began.
“Hold your tongue, sir,” said Mr Barnacle. “We’ve no room in this office for boys of your kind, and unless you change you must go somewhere else. You’ve played the fool quite enough here.”
I would fain have replied to justify myself, but in the junior partner’s present temper the attempt would have been hazardous.
So I said nothing and returned to my work, determined for my own credit, as well as in my own interest, to show Mr Barnacle that he had judged me harshly.
How I worked that week! I refused invitation after invitation, and stayed late after every one else had gone to get ahead with my work. During office hours I steadily abstracted myself from what was going on all round, and determined that nothing should draw me from my tasks. I even volunteered for and undertook work not strictly my own, greatly to the amazement of everybody, especially Wallop, who began to think there really must be something in the rumour that I was not well. And all the while I most assiduously doctored my face, which gradually came to resume its normal complexion.
I could see that this burst of industry was having its due effect in high quarters. Mr Barnacle, who after his lecture had treated me gruffly and abruptly for some days, began again to treat me civilly, and Mr Merrett bestowed once or twice a special commendation on my industry.
In due time, so far from feeling myself a repentant idler, I had grown to consider myself one of the most virtuous, industrious, and well-principled clerks in London, and in proportion as this conviction got hold of me my application to work relaxed. One event especially completed my self-satisfaction. About three weeks after my interview with Mr Barnacle I was summoned into the partners’ room, and there informed that, having now been eight months in their service, and proving myself useful in my situation, my salary would henceforth be twelve shillings a week!
I could hardly believe my ears! Why, it was just half as much again as what I had been receiving. On eight shillings a week I had lived economically, but not so badly. And now, what might I not do with twelve shillings a week?
Doubleday insisted on my coming up to his lodgings that evening to celebrate the joyful event with a quiet supper. This invitation I accepted, the first for nearly a month, and in view of the occasion spent my first extra four shillings in anticipation on a coloured Oxford-shirt, which I grandly requested, with the air of a moneyed man, to be put down to my account. I found myself quite the hero of the party that evening. Every one was there. I had an affecting reconciliation with Whipcord, and forgot all about Flanagan’s desertion and Daly’s indifference in my hour of tribulation; I discoursed condescendingly with the Field-Marshal about his hopeless attachment, and promised to go for a row up the river one Saturday with the twins. And all the time of supper I was mentally calculating the cost of Doubleday’s entertainment, and wondering whether I could venture to give a party myself!
In fact, I was so much taken up with my own good fortune and my new rise in life, that I could think of nothing else. I forgot my former warnings and humiliations. I forgot that even with twelve shillings a week I had barely enough to clothe me respectably; I forgot that every one of these fellows was in the habit of laughing at me behind my back, and I forgot all my good resolutions to live steadily till Jack came back.
And I forgot all about poor Jack—(now, so the letters had told me), convalescent and slowly recovering health, but still lying lonely and weary in the Packworth Hospital. Indeed, that evening his name only twice crossed my mind—once when Doubleday and Crow were laughing over the prospect of “Bull’s-eye” turning up with a face deeply marked with his late disease; and once when, walking back to Beadle Square, full of my new plans of extravagance, I chanced to pass a small boy, curled up on a doorstep, with his head resting on a shoeblack box, and the light of a neighbouring lamp shining full on his sleeping face. Then I remembered how, not very long ago, I had seen that same head lying side by side with Jack’s head on the pillow at Mrs Nash’s. And as I stood for a moment to look, I could almost have believed that the sleeping figure there, with all his vulgarity and dishonesty, had as good a title to call himself Jack Smith’s friend as I had.