Chapter Twenty Seven.
How I suffered a Relapse, which did me good.
The gentleman who entered the room was a middle-aged man, of striking appearance. In face and person he seemed worn and feeble. He walked with a slight stoop; his cheeks were hollow and slightly flushed, and his brow was furrowed by lines which would have appeared deep even in a much older man. But as soon as he began to talk his face lit up, his eyes sparkled, and there was a ring in his voice which was more like Jack Smith himself than his older and more sedate namesake.
For this stranger, I guessed at once, must be the other Mr Smith with whom Jack lodged.
At sight of him Billy stopped abruptly in the middle of his sentence, and, putting his hand up to his forelock, saluted him with his usual familiar grin.
“Ah, William, my worthy friend, you here?” the gentleman said, almost gaily, as he entered. “I heard I should find you on duty. You must introduce me to this sick gentleman, and ask him if I shall disturb him.”
Billy grinned in a confused sort of way, not knowing exactly how to do the honours. Then, looking at me and jerking his thumb in the direction of the stranger, he said, “This here’s the cove from downstairs!”
The gentleman approached my bedside and said, gently, “Am I disturbing you? I found a note from my fellow-lodger when I got in just now, asking me to call up and see how you were getting on.”
“It’s very kind of you,” said I. “I hope you can stay a bit.”
“Certainly; I’ve nothing to do.”
Billy, however, did not apparently favour this suggestion.
“This ’ere cove,” said he, pointing to me, “ain’t to jaw, mister!”
“Quite right, William,” said the gentleman; “I’ll see he doesn’t. I’ll do all the talking and he shall do the listening. You can go down to my room and make my bed ready for me and tidy up.”
The boy looked dubiously first at the speaker, then at me, as if he was not quite sure about the propriety of allowing me out of his sight, but finally obeyed.
“There’s a trusty youngster for you!” said the gentleman, laughing, as he disappeared. “Young Smith couldn’t have found a safer nurse for you anywhere.”
“I believe you are right,” said I.
“And how are you feeling? You’re looking better than when I saw you last, anyhow.”
“I never saw you before, did I?” I asked.
“No, you didn’t; but I saw you when you were brought in here the other evening. However, as Billy says, you mustn’t talk now. I suppose you heard me order him to make my bed. I always go to bed every morning at eleven. Young Smith and I are like Box and Cox, you know; he’s away all day, I’m away all night. Just when he’s finishing up work I’m beginning.”
“I wonder you can keep awake all the night,” I said.
“Not more wonderful than you keeping awake all day, my boy. In fact, there’s not much chance of a poor literary hack sleeping over his work. Now I wonder, when you read your newspaper in the morning, if you ever think of what has to be done to produce it. If you only did, I dare say you would find it more interesting than it often seems.”
And then my companion launched out into a lively description of the work of a newspaper office, and of the various stages in the production of a paper, from the pen and ink in the sub-editor’s room to the printed, folded, and delivered newspaper which lies on one’s breakfast-table every morning. I wish I could repeat it all for the benefit of the reader, for few subjects are more interesting; but it would take more time than we have to spare to do so.
Of course Mr Smith the elder—for so I had to call him to distinguish him from my friend his namesake—rattled on in this strain, more for the sake of keeping me interested and amused than any other reason. Still, his talk was something better than idle chatter, and I began to feel that here at last, among all my miscellaneous acquaintance, was a man worth knowing.
He gave me no chance of talking myself, but rattled on from one topic to another in a way which left me quite free to listen or not as I liked, and finally rose, much to my regret, to go.
“Now I must be off, or I shall have Billy up to hunt me off. Good-bye, my boy; glad to see you doing so well. You’ve a lot to be thankful for, and of course you are.”
“Will you come again?” I asked.
“Gladly; that is, if Billy allows me,” said he, laughing, and nodding kindly as he left the room.
“No wonder,” thought I, as I listened to his footsteps going down stairs—“no wonder Jack Smith found these lodgings pleasanter than Beadle Square.”
I saw Mr Smith frequently during the next few days. He usually came up to sit with me for half an hour or so in the morning, and was always the same cheery and interesting companion.
And yet I could not quite make him out. For when not talking or smiling his face used to wear a look of habitual trouble and restlessness, which made me suspect he was either making an effort to be cheery before me, or else that he was the victim of a constant battle between good spirits and bad.
However, just as I was getting to feel intimate with him, and looking forward to hear more about him than I had yet learned, my recovery came to a sudden and rather serious halt.
I was lying one evening propped up in my bed, with my damaged arm feeling comparatively comfortable, and myself in a particularly jovial frame of mind as I listened to Jack Smith attempting to instil into the mind of the volatile Billy the art of spelling d-o-g—dog.
“Now, Billy,” said the instructor, “you’ll never get on at this rate. That letter you’re pointing at is a B for Billy, and not a D.”
“That there B’s a caution,” growled the boy; “he’s always a-turnin’ up.”
“Time you knew him, then,” said Smith. “Now show us the D.”
Billy cocked his head a little to one side and took a critical survey of the alphabet before him. His eye passed once down and once up the procession, then looking up at Jack with a grin, he said, “He’s ’iding, I reckon, governor. That there dorg’ll have to start with a B after all.”
Our laughter at this philosophic observation was interrupted by an unwonted footstep on the stairs outside. It certainly was not Mr Smith, for he was out at his work; nor was it the doctor, our only other visitor, for he always came up two steps at a time, and his boots always squeaked. Who could our visitor be?
“Come in,” called Smith, as a knock sounded on the door.
To my utter astonishment and concern, Hawkesbury, with his sweetest smile, entered the room.
How had he found out my retreat? What did he want here? What would Jack Smith say? These were the questions which rushed through my mind as he closed the door behind him and walked into the room.
I glanced round at Jack. There was written anything but peace in his countenance, while Billy glared like a young bulldog ready to spring on the intruder.
“Well, Batchelor,” said Hawkesbury, in his blandest voice, addressing me and ignoring everybody else; “you’ll be surprised to see me here. The fact is, I couldn’t feel happy till I came to see you and tell you how sorry I was for your accident.”
My few days’ confinement and the opportunity for meditation they had afforded had served to give me an insight into Hawkesbury’s character which made me treat this speech suspiciously. I replied nothing, and felt very uncomfortable.
“It was most unfortunate,” proceeded Hawkesbury, helping himself to the chair. “You know—”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Smith at this point, in a tone which made me start; “this is my room, Hawkesbury, and I must ask you to go.”
The visitor’s face clouded with a quick shade of vexation, but immediately regained its chronic smile, as he said, “Ah, Smith! I should have said it was my friend Batchelor I came to see, not you.”
“You’re no friend of his,” retorted Smith, with rising wrath.
“Do you hear, nob,” broke in Billy, unable to restrain himself any longer; “you ain’t a-wanted here.”
Hawkesbury looked round with an amused smile.
“Really,” said he, “a most gratifying reception, and from a most unexpected quarter. Er—excuse me, Smith, I’m afraid it’s rather a strange request—would you mind allowing me to have a little private conversation with my friend?”
“No,” replied Smith, firmly.
“Really,” said Hawkesbury. “I must appeal to Batchelor himself.”
“I shall answer for Batchelor,” said Smith, not giving me time to reply. “Leave my room, please.”
“Do you hear? You leave the bloke’s room,” cried Billy. “Ef you don’t you’ll get a topper.”
Hawkesbury, whose colour had been rising during the last few moments, and whose assurance had gradually been deserting him, now turned round with a ceremonious smile to the last speaker as he rose to his feet and said, “If you desire it, I’ll go. I can submit to be ordered off by a shoeblack, but the son of a convict is—”
With clenched fist and crimson face Jack gave a sudden bound towards the speaker. But as suddenly he checked himself and walked gently to my bed, where I had started up ready to spring to my feet and back up my friend in what seemed a certain quarrel.
“What a cad I am!” he murmured, as he bent over me, and motioned me gently back to my pillow, “but the fellow nearly drives me mad.”
I was too exhausted by my effort to say anything.
Jack remained by my side while the unwelcome visitor slowly walked to the door. But if one of Hawkesbury’s enemies was disposed of, another remained. Billy, who had been a fuming and speechless witness of this last scene, now boiled over completely, and was to be kept in check no longer.
Wasting no words, he made a wild dash at the retreating intruder and closed with him. He would have closed with a lion, I firmly believe, if a lion had made himself obnoxious to Jack Smith.
Hawkesbury turned suddenly to receive the assault; an angry flush overspread his face, his hands clenched, and next moment Billy reeled back bleeding and almost senseless into the middle of the room, and the visitor had gone.
This was the event which put a check on my recovery.
To lie helpless and see Jack Smith insulted before my face would have been bad enough, but to hear him taunted with the very secret I had so miserably and treacherously let out was more than I could endure.
I don’t know what I did that evening, I was so weak and so excited. I have vague recollections of breaking out into passionate self-reproaches and wild entreaties for forgiveness; and of Jack Smith with pale and troubled face bending over me trying to soothe me, imploring me to be still, telling me twenty times there was nothing left to forgive. And then in the middle of the scene the doctor arrived, with serious face and hushed voice. He felt my pulse more carefully than ever, and took my temperature not once only, but several times. There was a hurried consultation in the corner of the room, of which all I heard were the words “most unfortunate” and “fever.” My usual supper of bread-and-butter and an egg gave place to a cup of beef-tea, which I could scarcely taste, and after that some medicine. Jack, with a face more solemn than ever, made his bed at the foot of mine, and smoothed my pillow for me and whispered—
“Be sure and call if you want anything.”
Then everything was silent and dark, and I began to realise that I was ill. I shall never forget that night. I tossed restlessly and ceaselessly all through it. In whatever position I lay I found no relief. My arm seemed to pain me more than ever before, my head ached, I was nearly suffocated with heat. And my mind was as restless as my body. One after another the follies and meannesses, the failures and sins of my life in London, rose up before me and stared me in the face. Try all I would, I could not get rid of them. I tried to think of other things—of books I had read, of stories I had heard, of places I had seen, of Stonebridge House, of Brownstroke—but no, the thought of my pitiful career in London, my debts, my evil acquaintances, my treachery to my friend, would come and come and come, and drive out all else. And all the while I seemed to see Jack’s solemn face looking reproachfully at me from the bottom of the bed, just as it had looked at me that morning weeks ago at Hawk Street. Once, instead of being at the bottom of the bed, I found it close beside me, saying—
“What is it, old boy?”
“Eh? nothing. I didn’t call.”
“Yes you did. Do try and lie still and get some rest.”
Lie still! As soon tell the waves to lie still in the storm as expect me, with my fever-tossed body and mind, to rest!
So the night wore on, and when the morning light struggled through the window it found me in a raging fever and delirious.
I must pass over the weeks that followed. I was very ill—as ill, so they told me afterwards, as I well could be, and live.
Jack watched me incessantly. I don’t know what arrangement he came to at Hawk Street, but while I was at my worst he never left my bedside day or night.
No one else was allowed up, except occasionally Billy, to relieve guard. With these two nurses to tend me—and never a patient had two such guardian angels!—I battled with my fever, and came through it.
I came through it an altered being.
Surely—this was the thought with which I returned to health—we boys, sent up to rough it in London, are not, after all, mere slung stones. There is One who cares for us, some One who comes after us when we go astray, some One who saves us when we are at the point of falling, if we will but cry, in true penitence, to Him!
I had had many and grievous lessons before I had found it out; but now I had, life seemed a new thing to me!
As my convalescence advanced and my bodily strength returned, my spirits rose within me, and I felt eager to be back at my post at Hawk Street. However, I had to exercise some patience yet. Meanwhile, with Billy (and occasionally Mr Smith), as my companion by day, and Jack by night, the time could hardly hang heavily.
“Well, Billy,” I said one morning when the doctor had been and told me that next week I might be allowed to sit up for an hour or so a day, “I shall soon be rid of this bed. I don’t know what would have become of me if it hadn’t been for you and Jack Smith.”
“Ga on,” said Billy, who, with his tongue in one cheek and his face twisting into all sorts of contortions, was sitting writing an exercise in a copy-book, “you don’t know what you’re torkin’ about.”
“Oh yes, I do, though,” I replied, understanding that this was Billy’s modest way of disclaiming any merit.
“More’n you didn’t when you was ’avin’ the fever!” observed the boy.
“What?” I inquired. “Was I talking much when I was ill?”
“You was so,” said Billy, “a-joring and a-joring and a-joring same as you never heard a bloke.”
“What was I saying?” I asked, feeling a little uneasy as to what I might have said in my delirium.
“You was a swearin’ tremenjus,” said the boy.
“Was I?” Alas! Jack would have heard it all.
“Yes, and you was a-torkin’ about your Crowses, and Wollopses, and Doubledaisies, and sich like. And you was a-tellin’ that there ’Orksbury (which I’d like to do for, the animal, so I would), as you was a convex son, and he wasn’t to tell no one for fear Mashing should ’ear of it. And you was a-crying out for your friend Smith to shine your boots, and tellin’ him you wouldn’t do it never no more. And you was a-singin’ out that there was a little gal a-bein’ run away with on a pony, and you must go and stop ’im. You was a-jawin’, rather.”
I could hardly help laughing at his description, though its details reminded me sadly of my old follies and their consequences.
The most extraordinary raving of all, however, was that which referred to my stopping the little girl’s runaway pony at Packworth years ago—an incident I don’t believe I had ever once thought of since.
It was curious, too, that, now it was called to memory, I thought of the adventure a good deal, and wished I knew what had become of the owner of that restive little pony. I determined to tell Jack about it when he came home.
“What do you think, Jack?” I said, as he was tucking me up for the night. “Billy has been telling me what I was talking about in my fever, and says one thing I discoursed about was a little girl who was being run away with by a pony.”
“Yes,” said Jack, laughing; “I heard that. It was quite a new light for you, old man, to be dreaming of that sort of romantic thing.”
“But it really happened once,” I said.
“No! where? I thought the Henniker and Mrs Nash were the only lady friends you ever had? Where was it?”
“At Packworth, of all places,” I said. “It was that day I went over to try and find you out—just before we came up to London, you know. I was walking back to Brownstroke, and met the pony bolting down the road.”
Jack seemed suddenly very much interested. “What sort of little girl was it?” he asked.
“I can’t exactly tell you. She was so frightened I had hardly time to look at her. But—”
“What sort of pony?” asked Jack.
“A grey one—and a jolly little animal, too!” I said. “But why do you ask?”
“Only,” said Jack, with a peculiar smile, “because it strikes me very forcibly the young person in question was my sister, that’s all!”
“What!” I exclaimed, in amazement, “your sister!—the little girl of the photograph! Oh, Jack, how extraordinary!”
“It is queer,” said Jack; “but it’s a fact all the same. I heard about it when I was last home. The pony took fright, so they told me, and—wasn’t there a nurse with her?”
“Yes, there was.”
“Yes; that was Mrs Shield. The pony took fright as she was walking beside it, and Mary would have come to grief to a dead certainty, so they both say, if a young gentleman hadn’t rushed up and stopped it. Why, Fred, old man,” said he, taking my hand, “I little thought I owed you all that!”
I took his hand warmly, but humbly.
“Jack,” I said, “I think it’s almost time you and I gave up talking about what we owe to one another. But,” I added, after a moment, “if you do want to do me a favour, just let us have a look at that photograph again, will you, old man?”