CHAPTER II.
The boy’s sense of injury gave way, and became, indeed, utterly routed the next morning by a feeling of importance. Mrs. Rastin bustled in and prepared a breakfast that filled the room with a most entrancing scent of frying fish; to show her sympathy she sat down with him to the meal, and ate with excellent appetite, beguiling the time with cheery accounts of sudden deaths and murders and suicides that she, in the past, had had the rare good fortune to encounter. Mrs. Rastin took charge of the keys belonging to the chest of drawers, remarking that so far as regarded any little thing that Bobbie’s poor dear mother might have left, she would see that right was done just the same as though it were her own. Holidays being on at the Board School which Bobbie intermittently attended, Mrs. Rastin said how would it be if he were to take a turn in Hoxton Street for a few hours whilst she turned to and tidied up?
“Jest as you like,” said Bobbie agreeably.
“Don’t you go and get into no mischief, mind,” counselled Mr. Rastin.
“Trust me,” said the boy.
“Keep away from that Shoreditch set, and take good care of yourself. You’re all alone in the world now,” said Mrs. Rastin, pouring the last drop from the teapot into her cup, “and you’ll ’ave to look out. You ’ain’t got no mother to ’elp you.”
“By-the-bye,” said Bobbie, “who’s going to cash up for putting the old woman away?”
“Me and a few neighbours are going to see to it,” remarked the lady with reserve. “Don’t you bother your ’ead about that. Run off and—Just a minute, I’ll sew this black band round the sleeve of your coat.”
“Whaffor?” asked the boy.
“Why, bless my soul!” exclaimed Mrs. Rastin. “As a sign that you’re sorry, of course.’
“That’s the idea, is it?”
“Some one’ll ’ave to buy you a collar, too, for Tuesday.”
“Me in a collar?” he said gratified. “My word, I shall be a reg’lar toff, if I ain’t careful.”
“What size—I think that’ll hold—what size do you take, I wonder?”
“Lord knows,” said the boy. “I don’t. I’ve never wore one yet.”
If in Hoxton that day a more conceited boy than Robert Lancaster had been in request, the discovery would have been difficult. He strolled up and down Hoxton Street, where the second-hand furniture dealers place bedsteads brazenly in the roadway, and when shop people, standing at their doors, glanced at the crape band on his sleeve he stood still for a while in order that they might have a good view.
A good-natured Jewess in charge of a fruit stall called to him and inquired the nature of his loss, and on Bobbie supplying the facts (adding to the interest by various details suggested by his imagination) the Jewess gave an enormous sigh and, as token of sympathy, presented him with two doubtful pears and a broken stick of chocolate. Bobbie went up towards New North Road inventing further details of a gruesome nature, in the hope of finding other shopkeepers similarly curious and appreciative, but no one else called to him, and at a confectioner’s shop, where he waited for a long time, a girl with her hair screwed by violent twists of paper came out and said that if he did not leave off breathing on their window she would wring his neck for him; upon Bobbie giving her a brief criticism in regard to the arrangement of her features, she repeated her threat with increased emphasis, and as there was obviously nothing to be gained by further debate, he strolled off with dignity through Fanshaw Street, arriving presently at Drysdale Street. The boys here were boys with an intolerably good opinion of themselves, because they lived in a street over which the railway passed; this made them hold themselves aloof from the other youths of Hoxton, and go through life with the austerity of men who knew the last word about engines. It seemed to Bobbie Lancaster that a chance had now arisen to humiliate Drysdale Street and to lower its pride.
“Cheer!” he said casually.
“Cheer!” said the two boys. They were marking out squares on the pavement for a game of hop-scotch. “Got any more chalk in your pocket, Nose?”
The boy called Nose searched, and shook his head negatively. “Daresay I can oblige you,” remarked Bobbie.
“Look ’ere,” said the first boy with heated courtesy, “did anyone ast you come ’ere standin’ on our pavement?”
“No,” acknowledged Bobbie.
“Very well, then! You trot off ’fore you get ’urt.
“Who you going to get to ’urt me?” asked Bobbie.
“Going to get no one,” said the first boy aggressively. “Going to do it meself.”
“I should advise you to go into training a bit first,” said Bobbie kindly. “Them arms and wrists of yours I should sell for matches; your boots you might get rid of as sailin’ vessels.”
“’Old my jacket, Nose,” said the boy furiously. “I’ll knock the stuffin’ out of him ’fore I’m many minutes older.”
“With a shirt like yourn,” said Bobbie, edging back a little, “I should keep me jacket on. You’ll frighten all the birds.”
“You’d better be off,” said Nose, feeling it safe now to offer a remark. “Come down ’ere temorrer, and we’ll spoil your face for you.”
“Take a bit o’ doin’ to spoil yourn,” shouted Bobbie.
“Come down temorrer,” repeated Nose defiantly, “and I’ll give you what for.”
“Make it the next day,” called Bobbie. “I shall be at the cimetry temorrer.”
“Cimetry?” said the two boys with a change of voice.
“Cimetry!” repeated Master Lancaster with pride.
“Who is it?”
“Mother,” said Bobbie.
“Come ’ere,” said the first boy putting on his jacket. “Tell us all about it.”
“Fen punchin’,” requested Bobbie cautiously.
“Fen punchin’,” agreed the two Drysdale Street boys.
Such was the respect Bobbie exacted from the two boys during the truce and after his recital, that they not only allowed him to lose a game of hop-scotch with them, but at his urgent request they took him to the railway arch, and permitted him to climb to a place where, when a train presently went shrieking overhead, a thunderous noise came to his ears that deafened him. The thin boy’s name was George Libbis; the other boy’s name it appeared was not really Nose but Niedermann; called Nose for brevity, and because that feature was unusually prominent. With Master Libbis, Bobbie presently found himself on good terms; with Nose he had, before saying good-bye, a brief tussle over the possession of a piece of string, and went off with a truculent remark concerning German Jews.
He felt so much advanced in society by reason of this entrance into Drysdale Street circles that he declined games with boys of Pimlico Walk, and affected not to see Trixie Bell dancing a neighbour’s baby that was not quite so large as herself, but more muscular. Trixie called after him peremptorily, but he went by with his head well up and eyes alert for signs of interest. In Charles Square his reserve was broken by sudden encounter with Ted Sullivan. Master Sullivan, in possession of a toy pistol with small paper caps that snapped quite loudly, told Bobbie in confidence that he had half made up his mind to get a mask and go out somewhere and stop the mail coach, shoot the driver, and take all the gold and bank-notes that it carried. Upon Bobbie inquiring where he proposed to find this mail coach, shoot the driver, and take the bullion, Master Sullivan declared that there were plenty about if you only knew where to find them, and in confirmation exhibited the coloured paper cover of a well thumbed book, called “Dashing Dick Dare-devil, or the Highwayman and the Faithful Indian Girl,” confronted with which evidence Bobbie Lancaster relinquished his argument and acknowledged that Ted Sullivan had reason. Because these adventures are not to be entered upon without rehearsal and taking thought, the two had a brief game round the tipsy railings of the old square; Bobbie starting from the county court was a restive steed conveying a stage coach which bore untold gold, and just as he galloped round by the untidy public-house at the north-west corner, who should rush out upon him but Master Sullivan with black dirt upon his face so that he should not be recognized, and presenting the toy pistol with a stern warning.
“Stir but a single step and I fire.”
Upon which, the restive steed tried to gallop over the highwayman and to gallop round him, and eventually to turn and gallop back; the highwayman was just on the point of snapping his last cap and rendering the noble horse senseless when, most inopportunely, the highwayman’s mother appeared at the corner.
“Teddy Sullivin! Come here, ye mis’rable little hound, and let me knock the head off of ye, ye onholy son of a good parint that ye are.”
This interruption left the struggle at a highly interesting point, but Master Sullivan before leaving said that he proposed to get a proper revolver, some day, and then there would be larks of the rarest and most exciting kind. Meanwhile, added Master Sullivan as he went off, the watchword was “Death to Injuns!”
Bobbie, after a highly enjoyable morning, went home, where, thanks to Mrs. Rastin, the house reeked with a perfectly entrancing odour of frying steak and onions. To this meal Mrs. Rastin invited a lady from downstairs, called the Duchess, who wore several cheap rings and spoke with a tone of acquired refinement that had always impressed Bobbie very much. He remembered, though, that his mother had warned him never to speak to this lady from downstairs, and when that vivacious lady addressed him at his meal, he refused at first to answer her, thus forcing the conversation to be shared exclusively by the two ladies. They talked of rare tavern nights, the lady from downstairs shaking her head reminiscently as she re-called diverting incidents of the past, declaring that the world was no longer what it had been.
“Why, there’s no Cremorne, now,” argued the Duchess affectedly.
“True, true!” agreed Mrs. Rastin.
“Argyll Rooms, and the rest of it, all swept away,” complained the Duchess.
“It’s sickenin’,” said Mrs. Rastin. “I s’pose they was rare times if the truth was known.”
“You’d never believe?”
“Onfortunately,” said Mrs. Rastin humbly, “I was country-bred meself. I wasted all the best years of my life in service down in Essex.”
“Why, in my day,” remarked the Duchess, smoothing the torn lace at her sleeves, “in my day I’ve sat at the same table with people that you couldn’t tell from gentlefolk, thinking no more of champagne than we do of water.”
“Goodness.”
“Nobody never thought of walking,” declared the Duchess ecstatically. “It was cabs here, cabs there, cabs everywhere.”
“That’s the way,” said the interested Mrs. Rastin.
“Talk about sparkling conversation,” said the Duchess with enthusiasm. “They can’t talk like it now, that’s a very sure thing.”
“I don’t know what’s come over London,” remarked Mrs. Rastin despairingly. “It’s more like a bloomin’ church than anything else. I s’pose you was a fine-looking young woman in those days, ma’am.”
“I don’t suppose,” said the Duchess, “there was ever a finer.”
The night of that day became so extended by reason of a generous supply of drink, that Bobbie went to bed in the corner of the room and left the two women still reviewing the days and nights that were. He understood their conversation imperfectly (although God knows there was little in the way of worldly knowledge hidden from him), but he decided that the Duchess was worthy of some respect as one who had moved in society, and when she stumbled over to him and kissed him, crooning a comic song as lullaby, he felt gratified. He remembered that his mother had kissed him once. It was when he was quite a child; at about the time that his father died. For the first time he found himself thinking of her, and his mouth twitched, but he bent his mind determinedly to the ride that he was to enjoy in the morning, and having persuaded himself that everything had happened for the best, went presently to sleep, content.
The journey the next morning proved indeed to be all that imagination had suggested, with a high wind added, with the manners of a hurricane. There was a new peaked cap for him to wear; the white collar was fixed with difficulty, being by accident some two sizes too large and bulging accordingly. Mrs. Rastin, swollen eyed partly with tears, assisted him to dress; herself costumed in black garments borrowed from opulent neighbours in the Walk.
A man appeared whom Bobbie recognized as the boy Nose’s father, and he, glancing round the room, said depreciatingly that there was nothing there worth carting away, but Mrs. Rastin told him to look at the chest of drawers; to look at the bedstead; to look at the mirror. Mr. Niedermann, still contemptuous, said that if he gave fifteen bob for the lot he should look down on himself for being an adjective idiot; Mrs. Rastin reasoned strongly against this attitude, saying that she was quite sure that two pounds five would not hurt him. Mr. Niedermann intimated, with much emphasis, that, on the contrary, two pound five would do him very grievous injury, apart from the fact that, by offering that sum, he would be making himself the laughing-stock of all Hoxton.
A neighbour here looked in to announce that the carriage was waiting, and after a sharp argument, conducted with great asperity on both sides, Mrs. Rastin climbed down from two pounds five to one pound two-and-six, and Mr. Niedermann, with a generous flow of language that was in an inverse ratio to his manner of disbursing money, climbed up to that amount, and Mr. Niedermann’s men came in and took everything away, leaving the room empty and bare. Mr. Niedermann paid over the amount, assuring Mrs. Rastin and Bobbie that a few jobs of similar character would bankrupt him, and departed, Mrs. Rastin acutely placing a small bag containing money under a loose plank of the flooring where, as she said to the Duchess, it would be, if anything, safer than in the Bank of England. The work completed, Mrs. Rastin showed them out and locked the door, placing the key under the mat. In Hoxton Street the carriage waited; the gloomy horses, standing with feet extended to avoid being blown away, turned round as the two came up through admiring rows of people as who should say, “Oh, you have come at last, then.” The scarlet-faced driver and his colleague were rubbing marks of mud off the black carriage; Trixie Bell was there, and slipped a clammy piece of sweetstuff into Bobbie’s hand as he was about to be lifted into the coach, which piece of sweetstuff he instantly threw away, to the regret of Trixie Bell and the joy of an infant at whose feet it was thrown, and who apparently thought the age of miracles had come again. The wind took off Bobbie’s new cap, carrying it sportively into a puddle. Fifty people ran to recover it, and the cap came back with enough of the puddle to give it age. Mrs. Rastin occupied the journey, as the two gloomy horses trotted to the mortuary, with wise precepts, to the effect that boys who couldn’t keep their new caps on, never by any dexterity or luck or artfulness went to Heaven. Bobbie did not mind this; he was too much interested in looking out of the window of the carriage. It seemed to him that it was like belonging to the royal family.
“’Ere we are, at the gates,” said Mrs. Rastin, finding her handkerchief. “Now mind you cry and behave yourself properly like a good boy, or else, when I get you ’ome, I’ll give you the best shakin’ you ever had in all your born days.”
“Don’t upset yourself,” said the boy.
“I’ll upset you, me lord,” retorted Mrs. Rastin. “You’ll have to be knocked into shape a bit before you’ll be good for anything; ’itherto you’ve been allowed to do too much jest as you bloomin’ well pleased.”
“Now who’s behavin’?” asked Bobbie satirically. The carriage went slowly through the opened iron gates and up the broad gravelled walk. “Nice language to use in a churchyard, I don’t think.”
“It’s your fault,” said Mrs. Rastin.
“It’s you that’ll get punished for it,” said the boy, “anyway.”
“Another word,” declared Mrs. Rastin strenuously, “and you don’t get out of the kerrige.”
“Try it on,” said Bobbie, “if you dare.”
As they had to wait some few minutes outside the chapel the purple-faced driver came round to the window and, holding his ruffled silk hat on, engaged Mrs. Rastin in conversation, mentioning casually that he knew a place where presently as good a glass of beer could be obtained as the heart desired. Mrs. Rastin, promising to remember this, mentioned that for the price, she thought it—meaning the coach and horses—by no means a bad turn-out. The purple-faced coachman took this compliment placidly, remarking that it was cutting it pretty adjective fine to do the thing for two pun two, and if it were his show he should decline to put the harness on the horses under two pun twelve. If people liked to go and die, said the coachman firmly, let them pay for it. On Mrs. Rastin remarking that she supposed it was what we must all come to, the coachman replied that Mrs. Rastin would be perfectly safe in laying all the money she had got on that.
“Now they’re ready for us,” said the coachman. And whistled to his colleague.
Bobbie, following the draped case, which was borne on the shoulders of the two men, felt full of regret that he had no audience; Mrs. Rastin, blown about distractedly by the tempestuous wind, appeared too much occupied to cry. The young curate, in his white surplice, wore a skull cap and looked resentfully at the elements as he spoke the opening words. The liturgy came to Bobbie’s ears in detachments when the wind rested for a moment.
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord, he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet. . . .”
“Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days. . . .”
“Oh spare me a little that I may recover my strength before I go hence and be no more seen. . . .”
The small procession moved to a shallow opening in the clay earth. The driver and his stolid companion let the long draped case down to the side of this opening, the driver complaining in an undertone of the other’s clumsiness; as lief have a plank of wood to help him, growled the driver. The straps were placed round the long case; the boy watching had difficulty in preventing himself from offering a word of advice.
“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live. . . .”
“Suffer us not in our last hour from any pains of death to fall from Thee. . . .”
The stolid man picked up a lump of dry clay and crumbled it.
“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear sister here departed. . . .”
Presently a prayer that Bobbie knew. He muttered it by rote and without the least desire to consider the meaning of the words. “Our Fa’r, chart in ’Eaven, ’allowed be—” The curate closed the book and controlled his white surplice from the vagaries of the gusty irreverent wind.
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.”
“This the poor creature’s son?” asked the young curate briskly and cheerfully.
“Her only boy, sir.”
“And you are his aunt, eh?”
“No, sir! Only a well-meanin’ neighbour; he ain’t got any rel’tives, worse luck.”
“So you’re all alone in the world, my boy? (Bother the wind!) Now you must make up your mind to be a good lad, because there are plenty of people ready to help good lads, and very few who will waste their time over bad ones.”
“That’s what I tell him, sir,” remarked Mrs. Rastin ingratiatingly.
“And don’t forget—” The curate stopped and sneezed. “Enough to give anybody a cold,” said he. “Good-bye, my lad.”
“Say good-bye to the kind gentleman, Bobbie.”
“So long,” said Bobbie, resenting the interference of Mrs. Rastin. “Look after that cold of yourn.”
“Nice thing to say, upon my word,” declared Mrs. Rastin, manoeuvring the wind. “You’ve got no more idea of etiquette than a ’og. If it wasn’t that your poor mother was lying down there, poor thing, I’d give you a jolly good ’iding.”
“Let me ketch you trying at it,” said Bobbie defiantly.
Thus, without a tear, the boy left the edge of the oblong hole in clay earth, and was blown back to the carriage. Though his eyes were dry and his manner aggressive, there came a regretful feeling now all the excitement was over, that he had to resume his position of an ordinary boy with no longer any special claims to respect in Hoxton. He wondered vaguely what the next few days would be like. He was not capable of looking beyond that. At the gate Mrs. Rastin alighted to patronise the house of refreshment so urgently recommended by the driver, and whilst that purple-faced gentleman conducted her to the private bar, Bobbie remained in the carriage, and the other man came round and looked stolidly in through the window without saying a word, as though Bobbie were a new arrival at the Zoo.
When Mrs. Rastin, in excellent humour, returned, she brought a seed biscuit for Bobbie, told him that he was a model boy, and that she wished there were six of him for her to look after.
“You run ’ome to your room,” said Mrs. Rastin, when the carriage stopped in Hoxton Street, “the key’s under the mat, and I shan’t be many minutes ’fore I’m with you. Wait for me, there’s a deer. I must have a drop of something short.”
In the walk he was hailed.
“I say, Bobbie Lancaster.”
“Now, what is it?”
“My mother says,” began Trixie Bell, panting, “that you—.”
“I don’t talk to gels,” said the boy, marching on.
“Says that you ain’t in—.”
“Be off, I tell you. Don’t let me ’ave to speak twice.”
“That you ain’t in good ’ands where you are now.”
“Ain’t what?”
Miss Bell, persistent, repeated the statement.
“You’ll pardon me,” said the boy laboriously, “if I ast a rude question. Is your mother still kerryin’ on her business?”
“She is,” said Trixie.
“Very well, then,” he said, going on, “tell her to jolly well mind it.”
“She says they’re a bad lot,” shouted the girl, “and she says they won’t do you no good.”
“Don’t make me come back and pull your ’air for you,” entreated Bobbie.
“Cow—werd!” bawled Miss Trixie Bell.
“Cat!” shouted Mr. Robert Lancaster.
Looking back as be pressed open the black door, he saw the youth called Nose talking to the small girl, and he felt tempted to return and punish both of them, but it occurred to him that a man with a collar could not afford to appear undignified. He went upstairs. The key not being under the mat, he sat astride the rickety banisters and waited. He had found that morning a half emptied box of fusees, and the time did not seem long.
“Don’t tell me the key ain’t under the mat,” said Mrs. Rastin truculently, as she came up the stairs. “You’re too lazy to look for it; that’s about the truth; you little—.”
“Find it yourself, then.”
“Why ’ere it is in the door,” said Mrs. Rastin, “in the door all the time.” She unlocked it. “Ain’t you got no eyes, you good-for-nothing?” Mrs. Rastin stumbled over the mat and went into the dark room. “Light a match when I keep telling you.”
In the room, Bobbie held up one of the flaming fusees. Mrs. Rastin blinked, looked round, and screamed shrilly.
“Murder!” she wailed. “Murder! Police! Fire! Thieves!” She gasped and recovered her breath. “Every penny gone of the money that was to keep the young—.”
“What money?” asked the boy. The question seemed to goad Mrs. Rastin to fury.
“Out you go, you little devil,” she cried furiously. She took him by the back of his neck.
“Mind my collar,” he shouted.
“Out of it,” she screamed. “I was goin’ to be good-natured enough to keep you whilst the bloomin’ money lasted, but now I’ve had enough of it.” She lugged him out, despite his kicks, to the landing. “Now then, out you go.”
Bobbie fell down the staircase to the bottom. The commotion had excited the house; doors were open.
“Come in ’ere,” said the Duchess kindly. She wore an old, old satin gown, her lean, rope-like throat uncovered. “You come and live long of us. I’ve of’en wanted a child of me own.”
CHAPTER III.
On the Duchess and Mr. Leigh, her husband, leaving Pimlico Walk somewhat hurriedly the next morning with two barrow-loads of furniture and Bobbie Lancaster, Pimlico Walk, led by Mrs. Rastin, did not hesitate to give them verbal testimonials as to character. The husband, Mrs. Rastin suggested, had robbed her of someone else’s hard-earned savings; the Duchess was condemned severely by those to whom she had in effusive moments given her confidence. The Duchess’s husband was a quiet, resigned-looking man, with a fringe of whiskers that met underneath his chin; his behaviour conveyed the impression that he only desired to be let alone in order that he might do good in a quiet, unobtrusive way. He seemed, in regard to conversation, curt; he never used superfluous words, and before he spoke he always drew in a whistling breath looking around cautiously, as one anxious above all things not to incriminate himself. He for his part took the attacks of the neighbours quite calmly, and when the Duchess, so indignant that she dropped a glass candlestick with lustres, essayed to reply, he begged her to hold her tongue and to come on.
“Least said,” remarked the Duchess’s husband, “soonest mended. Give us a pound with this barrer.”
“And I ’ope,” screamed Mrs. Rastin, “that the money’ll prove a curse to you if so be that you’re the party as took it. What’ll become of the poor kid don’t bear thinking of.”
“You thought you was going to have a ’igh old time,” retorted the Duchess, “and you’re disappointed. Moment the money was spent you were going to turn the poor boy out neck and crop.”
“Don’t you measure other ladies by yourself, ma’am,” shouted Mrs. Rastin. “You’re nothing more nor less than—”
“Come on,” said the Duchess’s husband.
“But,” urged the trembling Duchess, “did you ’ear what she called me?”
“What’s it matter?” remarked the man.
Bobbie, helping to push one of the barrows through the Walk, had the happy feeling that he had really been the cause of the disturbance, and that he was engaged in making history very fast. Trixie Bell’s mother, standing at the door of her small bonnet shop, shook her head dolefully as she saw him; Bobbie make a grimace at her that checked the excellent woman’s sympathy. Behind the shop window Trixie Bell herself looked out between the ostrich-feathered hats with round, astonished eyes.
“What’s the number, Leigh?”
Mr. Leigh gave the information as the two barrows turned from Hoxton Street into Ely Place. Ely Place had more breadth than Pimlico Walk, but it was a grim, mysterious thoroughfare, it had none of the shops which served to make Pimlico Walk interesting; certainly a few of the cottages had a plot in front with a slate-coloured lawn, but these were in every case flagged with imperfect drying linen that destroyed any pretence of rusticity. Before one of these the barrows stopped.
A long young woman with sleeves folded back high above her elbow, her red hair in a single knot, swept the step casually with a bald broom.
“’Ullo,” she said, “you’ve arrived, then?”
Mr. Leigh seemed about to reply in the affirmative, but stopped himself leaving the confession to the Duchess.
“Bat’s gone out in the Kingsland Road,” went on the red-haired young woman.
“What for?” asked the Duchess, unloading the barrows.
“To get change,” said the young woman.
This reply amused the Duchess so much that, casting away resentment against the world in general and Pimlico Walk in particular, she rested a chair-bedstead in the dim passage and sat down upon it to enjoy the laugh. Bobbie, anxious to show himself as one of the family, laughed too, and Mr. Leigh almost smiled.
“You are a caution,” said the Duchess exhaustedly.
“What ’ave I said now?” asked the young woman, with all a humorist’s assumption of gravity.
“It isn’t so much what you say as your manner.”
“This your tenth?” asked the girl, resting her chin on the broom and nodding her head in the direction of Bobbie.
“He’s a little chap,” explained the amused Duchess, “that’s left without a parent, and we’re going to look after him. Ain’t we, Leigh?”
“Don’t ast me,” begged Mr. Leigh.
“He’ll come in useful,” whispered the Duchess.
“Bat don’t care for kids about the place.”
“He’s as knowing,” urged the Duchess, “as a grown-up.”
“This is only our town ’ouse,” explained the red-haired young woman to Bobbie. “Rather ’andsome, palatial sort of mansion, don’t you think?”
“Tell better,” said Bobbie, looking round, “when someone’s give it a good clean down. What’s in the room at the back?”
“You ask my ’usband that question when he comes ’ome,” said the young woman with sudden acerbity, “and he’ll strap you till he’s tired.”
“Shan’t ask him, then,” said Bobbie.
“Never pry, Bobbie,” counselled the Duchess warningly. “Little boys that go prying never come to no good. Carry that lamp upright, and don’t upset the oil, or I’ll upset you.”
Bobbie, submitted to Mr. Bat Miller upon that gentleman’s return from obtaining change in Kingsland Road, was so fortunate as to obtain favour, and Bat Miller after telling the young woman, who seemed of a jealous disposition, exactly how his time had been occupied, ruffled the boy’s head of hair, telling him that if he behaved himself he should learn in that house everything worth knowing. But none of your tricks mind, said Mr. Bat Miller. As a first test Mr. Miller took a bright two shilling-piece from an inside pocket of his waistcoat, and, spite of the protests of the two women, dispatched him with it to a certain shop in Hackney Road to purchase one ounce of shag. When Bobbie returned, panting, with the tobacco in a screw of paper and the change safely in his fist, Bat Miller first tested the coins by trying them with his teeth, and then gave Bobbie for himself a penny, some of the tobacco, and commendation in congratulatory but lurid terms. The two men went out together, and the Duchess and young Mrs. Bat Miller exchanged grievances, Mrs. Miller complaining a good deal of her husband’s irregular behaviour, and presently they too, finding themselves in agreement on several questions, went out, locking the boy in that he might look after the house. They promised to be absent for not more than two seconds, but by some error they made it two hours, and during that time Bobbie prowled over the house and went into every room, excepting only the locked-up room at the back of the ground floor.
At the door of this locked-up room he listened very carefully. The keyhole being plugged, he could see nothing, but he kept his ear to the door for some time. It seemed to him that a sound of heavy breathing came from within.
The two couples came home in admirable temper. Even Mr. Leigh’s attitude to the world seemed less guarded, and several times he appeared inclined to sing with the rest. They brought in with them fried potatoes, fish, and a large bottle; Bobbie, to his astonishment and great satisfaction, being allowed to help himself. The Duchess repeated the anecdotes of high life in the sixties that Bobbie had heard before, Mr. Leigh watching her with pride as she assumed her accent of refinement, and ordering her to tell more than one account of a past evening twice over. Later, young Mrs. Miller let down her knot of red hair, and recited a touching poem about a Russian mother who being torn from her family to endure punishment in Siberia, apparently objected to it very much and pleaded with the soldiers, but with no avail until presently her youngest born argued with them, and then the officer in charge relenting, kissed the babe and said, “Your mother’s safe, my darling child. To you she owes her life; For I, too, have an infant mild, Also a loving wife.” At which pleasing point the recital finished, leaving the hearers content, with perhaps a slight fear that the tender-hearted officer might have had some trouble in explaining his conduct to his superior officers. Then Mr. Bat Miller, a little sleepy, sang a long, long song, relating vaguely to the sea, with a refrain of “What ho for the rolling wave, me boys, And a life on the vasty deep,” and when he had finished, the Duchess consented, after a good deal of pressing, to give her imitation of a well-known serio-comic lady whose star had been high some twenty-five years previously, a performance requiring a hiccough that the Duchess had no difficulty in repeating. Bobbie had seldom enjoyed an afternoon so much.
“Time for the Fright’s ’alf pint, ain’t it?” said Mr. Leigh.
The wooden clock on the mantel-piece had just struck twelve, as notification that it was six o’clock.
“Enough left in the jug, ain’t there?” asked Mrs. Miller.
“Bit flat.”
“He don’t care whether its flat or round,” said the humorous young woman. “It’s all one to the Fright. Bat, wake up and look after your lodger.”
Bat Miller awakened, took the large bottle, and went out into the passage.
“Come back, Bobbie,” cried the Duchess, sharply. The boy did not obey, being indeed accustomed to persist in doing anything that he was told not to do. Mr. Leigh rushed out, and catching him, swung him back into the room. The two women boxed his ears.
“Stiddy,” said the boy resentfully. “Three to one’s plenty.”
“I’ve told you before not to pry,” said the Duchess.
“Look ’ere,” said Mr. Leigh, as peacemaker, “come out ’long o’ me.”
“Where you goin’, Leigh?”
“Station,” he said.
“Ain’t you reported yourself yet?”
“I ain’t,” said Mr. Leigh, finding his cap.
“You’ll get yourself into trouble some day,” remarked the Duchess.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” interposed young Mrs. Miller.
“Got the ticket with you?”
“Course I ’ave.”
Mr. Leigh took from his inside pocket a sheet of paper about the size of an ordinary letter; he replaced it in an envelope and led Bobbie out of the house. In Kingsland Road they turned to the right. Opposite were the low almshouses standing in their own grounds and protected by a low iron spiked wall. The two went towards Shoreditch.
“Where are we going to book to?” asked Bobbie, “when we get to the station?” Mr. Leigh did not answer. “Going for ride in the train, ain’t we?”
“No!”
“What station are we going to, then?”
“Police station.”
“’Ere,” said the boy, stopping. “None of your ’alf larks.’
“You’re all right, kiddy.”
“What’s the row, then?”
“No row,” said Mr. Leigh. “Slight fermality, that’s all.”
Bobbie’s fears proved groundless. Mr. Leigh went up the steps of the police station, where one or two uniformed men and a few men in plain clothes stood under the blue lamp, and these nodded to Mr. Leigh. Bobbie waited in the hall in order that, necessity arising, he might make swift escape, and Mr. Leigh, taking off his cap respectfully, tapped at a wooden window. The window opened; the face of an inspector appeared.
“Evenin’, sir,” said Mr. Leigh.
“Well, me man?”
“Nice bright, cold autumn weather, sir,” said Mr. Leigh, holding his cap between his teeth and finding the sheet of paper. “Soon be ’aving winter on us now.”
“I thought it had turned warmer,” said the inspector, taking a book down.
“P’raps you’re right, sir,” said Mr. Leigh obsequiously.
“I ought to remember your name,” said the inspector, turning over the pages of the book. “Begins with an L, don’t it?”
“You’re right again, sir. Name of Leigh—Abraham Leigh.”
“I’ve found it,” said the inspector, who had been running his finger down the page. “Got the ticket?”
Mr. Leigh passed in the sheet of letter paper, and the inspector, comparing it with the entry in the book, endorsed it.
“Seems all right,” said the inspector.
“Slight alteration of address,” remarked Mr. Leigh humbly. “Now residing at 112, Ely Place.”
“Rum quarter,” said the inspector, as he made a note.
“Must live somewhere, sir,” submitted Mr. Leigh.
“Going on straight now?” asked the inspector, as he handed the note back.
“Rather,” answered Mr. Leigh complacently. “Turned over a new leaf, I ’ave.”
“Good!”
“Other bisness don’t pay, sir,” said Mr. Leigh, replacing the folded sheet of paper in his pocket. “It’s a mug’s game, that’s what I call it. Good day, sir.”
“Good day, me man.” Shutting the window to with a decisive snap.
Mr. Leigh, coming down the steps with Bobbie, was spoken to casually by one of the plain clothes men, who in an uninterested way asked Mr. Leigh some questions concerning (it appeared to the boy) mutual acquaintances, but Mr. Leigh seemed unable to give the plain clothes man any of the information desired, complaining as excuse of decaying powers of memory.
“I think it must be I’m getting old, Mr. Thorpe, sir.”
“That’ll grow on you,” said the plain clothes man, “if you aren’t careful.”
“I can’t remember names,” declared Mr. Leigh, complainingly; “I can’t remember faces; I can’t remember any mortal thing.”
“Ah,” said the detective, “pity!”
To Bobbie, as they walked home to Ely Place, Mr. Leigh appeared slightly more communicative, counselling the boy to behave decorously if ever he should find himself in trouble.
“Inside or outside,” declared Mr. Leigh, “it pays in the long run.”
At Ely Place everything was in train, the day being special and the evening also out of the ordinary, for a visit to the theatre. Some question arose in regard to the wisdom of leaving the house alone, but young Mrs. Miller said that she wasn’t going to be left out of it if Bat were going, the Duchess said it wasn’t often she got the chance, Mr. Leigh said he didn’t see no particular harm in going to the play, Bat Miller said that too much work told on a man; that the Fright would be safe enough, and it would make a nice change for all of them. So they all went. Bat Miller locked the door with great care, and in five minutes they were finding their way up the broad stone stairs of the Britannia with a struggling, anxious, noisy, good-tempered crowd.
“Right sort,” suggested Mr. Leigh, in a whisper to Bat Miller, as they forced their way to the pay box.
“I’m sure,” agreed Bat Miller. “Don’t want no fuss ’ere.” He pinched the ear of a dark young woman in front of him.
“I’ll have your black eyes,” he said admiringly.
“You’ll get two of your own if you ain’t careful,” retorted the girl, not displeased.
“Shouldn’t mind being punched by you,” said Bat Miller. “Let me keep these others from scrouging you.”
“Bat,” cried a voice behind him.
“Now begin agin.”
“Leave off talkin’ to that nigger gel,” commanded young Mrs. Miller.
“Who are you callin’ a nigger gel,” inquired the dark young woman across the heads of the surging crowd, “carrots?”
“You,” replied Mrs. Miller frankly, “Miss Tar Brush.”
“Don’t answer her,” begged Mr. Bat Miller to his new acquaintance. “She’s so jealous she can’t see straight.”
“I pity you,” said the dark young woman.
“So do I,” said Mr. Miller softly. “Lemme get your ticket for you.”
A roaring noisy crowded gallery, like the side of a mountain going from the base with strong iron rods protecting up to the topmost point, where patrons had to bend their backs to escape the ceiling. General discardment of coats by men and boys, universal doffing of hats and bonnets, and loosening of blouses by ladies. Bobbie, perched on the rolled-up coats of the two men, saw at a distance of what seemed at first to be several miles below, the tightly-wedged people on the floor of the theatre packed closely to the very footlights, and leaving just sufficient room for a small orchestra. Mrs. Bat Miller, still trembling with annoyance, bought oranges, and selecting one over ripe, stood up and threw it, and more by luck than skill, managed to hit the dark young woman, seated below, well on the side of the face, where it burst shell-like and caused annoyance. Having done this, young Mrs. Miller seemed more content, and twisting up her rope of red hair, settled down to unrestrained enjoyment of the evening.
“I wouldn’t ’ave your dispisition,” said Mr. Bat Miller to her, wistfully, “for a bloomin’ pension.”
Bobbie felt pleased to see the two boys from Drysdale Street far above him; they would require all the austerity that a railway arch could give to prevent them from feeling envious of him. He held up a piece of apple and shouted above the babel of voices, “’Ave ’alf?” and when they screamed back “Yus!” he ate it all calmly; thus goading them to a state of speechless vexation. Everybody called to everybody else; the enormous theatre filled with appeals for recognition. Presently through the uproar could be heard the discordant tuning up of the violins, and, holding the Duchess’s thin arm, he looked down again and saw that the orchestra had come in.
The footlights being turned up, the violins began to play. The Duchess said it was nothing to the Alhambra in the old days, but Bobbie felt this could not be true. When the curtain ascended and the uniformed men posted in various quarters of the large theatre bawled for silence, Bobbie held tightly to the Duchess for fear that he might be tempted to jump over.
It was not easy to discover at first the true intent of the play, because the gallery did not at once become quiet; two fights and a faint were necessary before quietude could be obtained. When the words from the far-off stage came up more distinctly to Bobbie’s quick ears, he realized that a plot was being arranged by two gentlemanly men in evening dress to rob the bank of the sum of fifty thousand pounds, and it seemed that they wished to do this unobtrusively, and indeed desired that any credit for its success should be placed to the account not of themselves, but of the manager of the bank. The manager came on just then to a majestic air from the orchestra; the audience seemed to know him, for they cheered, and he stood in the centre of the stage bowing condescendingly before he commenced to interest himself in the drama. He was rather a noble-looking young man, a little stout perhaps, with a decided way of speaking; you could hear every word he said, and when he had to make any movement the orchestra played briskly, as though to intimate that whatever misfortune might cross his path, he had always the support of four fiddlers, two bass viols, a cornet, a pianist, and a trombone. The two villains intimated their desire to open an account at the bank. The manager asked for references. The two villains, first looking cautiously off at the wings to make sure that no one observed them, suddenly flung themselves on the bank manager. They were engaged in binding him with ropes, when a ragged boy (who the Duchess said was not a boy but a girl) jumped in at the window, and said,—
“What price me!”
Upon which the two villains instantly decamped; the ragged boy summoned the clerks (who, reasonably speaking, should have heard the struggle, but apparently did not), and the manager ordered that the ragged boy should he offered a highly responsible post in the bank, for, said the manager to the gallery, of what use is sterling honesty in this world if it be not liberally rewarded? a sentiment with which the gallery found itself able to express cordial agreement. In the next scene the two gentlemanly villains, undeterred by their rebuff, were seen in a vague light, drilling with caution the cardboard door of an immense safe of the bank. They had but just succeeded when voices were heard. Plaintive music and entrance of heroine. Dressed in white, she had come to bring a posy of flowers to the manager, whom, it appeared, she was to marry on the morrow. This visit seemed unnecessary, and it was certainly indiscreet; after the manager had surprised her and had given to the gallery a few choice opinions on the eternal power of Love, which made Mrs. Bat Miller so agitated that her rope of red hair became untied, the heroine went, after an affectionate farewell, leaving a note on the floor.
“You’ve dropped something, Miss,” shouted Bobbie.
“’Ush,” warned the Duchess. “That’s done a purpose.”
This note the villains found, after a struggle with the girl boy, who, demanding of them, “What price me?” was clubbed on the head, and left insensible. The note only required a slight alteration with the tearing off of one page to be construed into evidence of complicity in the crime; so that when, in the next scene, a cheerful wedding party in secondhand clothes came out of the church door, bells ringing, villagers strewing flowers, and wedding march from the orchestra, two constables suddenly pushed their way through the crowd and placed hands on the shoulders of the astonished bride, causing so much consternation that the bells stopped, the wedding march changed into a hurried frantic movement, what time the bride clutched at her bodice, and assured the gallery (but this they knew full well) that she was innocent. A boy inspector, with a piping voice, stepped forward and proceeded to act in accordance with stage law. Woman, I arrest you. Oh, sir, explain. This letter (said the inspector) in your handwriting was found in the bank after the robbery. Sir, said the tearful bride, ’tis true I wrote that letter, but—. Woman (said the stern boy inspector), prevarication is useless; who were your accomplices? You decline to answer? Good! Officers, do your duty. Scoundrels (shouted the bridegroom bank manager), unhand her, before God she is innocent as the driven snow, I swear it. Ho, ho (remarked the boy inspector, acutely putting two and two together), then this can only mean—here the orchestra became quite hysterical—that you yourself are guilty. Officers, arrest him also! May Heaven, begged the bride emotionally, addressing the gallery, may Heaven in its great mercy, protect the innocent and the pure. It seemed that Heaven proved somewhat tardy in responding to the heroine’s appeal, for from a quarter to eight until a quarter to eleven, she and the hero found themselves in a succession of the direst straits, which, apportioned with justice, would have been more than enough for fifty young couples. It did seem that they could not by any dexterity do the right thing; whereas, the two villains, on the contrary, prospered exceedingly, to the special annoyance of Mr. Bat Miller, who, constituting himself leader of a kind of vigilance committee in the hot perspiring gallery, led off the hisses whenever either or both appeared, and at certain moments—as, for instance, when in the hospital ward they lighted their cigarettes, and discussed cynically the prospect of the injured boy’s speedy departure from life—hurling down at them appropriate and forcible words of reproof, that did credit alike to his invention and to the honesty of his feelings.
It is only fair to add that the gallery gave to Mr. Miller ready and unanimous assistance. How they yelled with delight when the boy (who was a girl) defied one of the villains, and bade him do his worst! How they shivered when the villain, producing a steel dagger, crept furtively up to the boy, whose back was turned, and how they shouted with rapture as the boy, swinging round at exactly the right moment, presented a revolver at the villain’s forehead, causing that despicable person to drop the dagger and go weak at the knees. How they held their breath when, on the boy incautiously laying down the revolver and going to look at the wings, the villain obtained possession of the deadly weapon, and covered the boy with it. And then when the boy had affected to cower and to beg for mercy (which, it need hardly be said, the villain flatly declined to grant), how they screamed with mad ecstasy on the boy saying with sudden calm,—
“By-the-bye! Hadn’t you better make sure that that little pop-gun’s loaded?”
Causing the villain to curse his fate and to snap the trigger ineffectually, thus giving the boy a cue for saying once more,—
“What price me!”
Bobbie in support whistled and hissed and howled so much, that after a while he became exhausted, and to his regret found himself unable to express opinions with vigour; this did not, however, prevent him from weeping bitter tears over the hospital scene. It was in the hospital scene, as a matter of fact, that the luck of the hero and heroine turned. The injured youngster suddenly recovered sight and reason; denounced the two villains, now cringing beneath the triumphant, hysterical theatre; called upon the boy inspector, fortunately at the wings, to arrest them, which the boy inspector instantly did, thus retrieving his position in the esteem of the audience; amid an increasing hum of approval from the mountain of heads in front, the youngster arranged from his couch for the future happiness of the hero and heroine, capping it all and extracting a roar from the house by remarking,—
“Now, what price me!”
Which might have been the pure essence distilled from all the best jokes of all time, judging from its instantaneous and admirable effect. Then the hero and heroine, at the centre of the stage, managed to intimate that sunshine had broken through the clouds; that trustful and loving, they would now proceed to live a life of absolute peace and perfect happiness; the orchestra feeling itself rewarded at last for all its faithful attention, broke out into a triumphant march, and—rideau.
In Hoxton Street it was drizzling, and the crowd surging out of the doorway turned up its coat collars and tied handkerchiefs over its bonnets, and set off for home. Bobbie, dazed with excitement, clutched the Duchess’s yellow skirt and trotted along, after a minute’s rest at a whelk stall, the two men and Mrs. Miller following closely behind. At the corner of Essex Street they waited to allow a four-wheeler to go by. The elderly horse, checked by the driver, slipped, and nearly fell, recovered itself, and slipped again, made vain efforts to get a secure footing, and upon the driver standing up to use his whip and saying bitterly, “Why don’t you fall down and ’ave done with it,” did fall down, and remained there. A small crowd formed without a moment’s delay; Mr. Bat Miller went to the stout old gentleman inside the cab, now trying without success to let down the window, and opening the door, assured him with great courtesy that he had no cause for fear. Having done this, Mr. Miller re-closed the door and stepped back. He passed something furtively to red-haired Mrs. Miller, who slipped the something into Bobbie’s pocket, telling him in a commanding whisper to cut off home like mad. Bobbie, feeling that he was helping in some proceeding of an imperial nature, complied, noting as he darted away the very stout gentleman hammering with his fists at the closed window of the four-wheeler. Mr. Miller sauntered off Kingsland Road way; the two women and Mr. Leigh went unconcernedly to a public-house.
Bobbie was shivering when five minutes later the company rejoined him at the street door of the house in Ely Place. Mr. Miller found his key and let them in. The smelly lamp in the passage burned low; in the closed back room a quavering voice sang a hymn.
“Dare to be a Daniyul,
Dare to stand alone,
Dare to ’ave a purpose firm,
And dare—”
“Shut it!” commanded Bat Miller, knocking at the door of the back room sharply. “Get off to sleep, can’t you?” He turned to the others. “And now,” he said with a change of manner, “let’s see what kind of a little present this young genelman’s bin and brought ’ome for us.”
“I b’lieve he pinched it for me,” said young Mrs. Miller cheerfully, “’cause to-day isn’t my birthday.”
Bobbie, with something of majesty, brought from his pocket a heavy gold watch and part of a gold chain, and laid them on the table. The four put their heads together and examined the property. Then they beamed round upon the small boy.
“I foresee, Bobbie,” said the Duchess, in complimentary tones, “that you’re a goin’ to grow up a bright, smart, useful young chep.”
“He’ll want trainin’,” suggested Mr. Bat Miller.
“And watchin’,” growled Mr. Leigh.
“And when he gets to be a man,” said young Mrs. Miller facetiously, as she pulled off her boots, “all the gels in the neighbourhood ’ll be after him.”
With these praises clanging and resounding in his heated little brain, Bobbie went upstairs to bed.
CHAPTER IV.
For nearly a year Bobbie Lancaster lived his young life in Ely Place. Although every day was not so full of incident as the first, he could not charge dulness against his existence; the standard of happiness set up in Ely Place not being a high one, was therefore easily reached; monotony at any rate came rarely. When other plans failed, quarrels could always be relied upon, and these gave such joy, not only to the chief actors and actresses, but also to the audience, that it seemed small wonder so successful a performance should be frequently repeated. Now and again events occurred which flattered Bobbie, and gave him the dearest satisfaction a small boy can experience—that of being treated as though he were grown up. It had not taken Mr. Leigh and Mr. Bat Miller long to recognize that in Bobbie they had a promising apprentice; one so obstinately honest as to be of great assistance to them in their dishonest profession. They exercised due caution in taking him into their confidence. For instance, he was still at the end of the year not sure why it was that the back room on the ground floor remained always locked; why its windows, facing a yard, and overlooked by the huge straggling workhouse, were closely shuttered. He knew that a man worked there; he knew that this man was called The Fright, and Mrs. Miller, on one expansive evening when in admirable humour, told him that The Fright was by trade a silver chaser. Presuming on some additional knowledge acquired at a time when supposed to be asleep, he demanded of the two men further particulars; Mr. Bat Miller replied fiercely that spare the rod and spoil the child had never been his motto, and thereupon gave Bobbie the worst thrashing that the boy had ever dreamed of. Following this, the boy found himself for some days treated with great coldness by the adult members of the household, and made to feel that he was no longer in the movement. When either of the men went out in the evening, the boy was not permitted to go also; he found himself deprived of adventurous excursions into the suburbs; the casual loafing about at busy railway stations was denied to him. So keenly did he feel this ostracism that he had tumultuous thoughts of giving himself up to the School Board inspector whom he had hitherto dodged, and of devoting his time to the acquirement of useful knowledge; it is right to add that the idea of betraying any of the secrets which he had learnt concerning the habits of the two men never for a moment occurred to him. An alternative was to buy a revolver similar to the one possessed by Teddy Sullivan, and to go out somewhere and shoot someone; the latter faintly-sketched plan was rubbed out because Master Sullivan, his friend, encountered disaster one evening in Union Street. In the course of a strenuous hand-to-hand fight between Hackney Road boys and Hoxton boys, a point arrived where the Hoxton boys found themselves badly worsted, whereupon Master Sullivan, with a sentence plagiarized from a penny romance which he knew almost by heart, “Ten thousand furies take you, you dastardly scoundrels,” whipped out his revolver, and closing his eyes, fired, injuring two or three promising juveniles from the tributary streets of Hackney Road, and, as a last consequence of this act, finding himself exposed to the glory of police court proceedings, and to the indignity of a birching.
Tension was snapped by a quarrel between Mr. Bat Miller and his young wife. There were times when Mrs. Bat Miller was obtrusively affectionate with her husband; as compensation, occasions flew in when she became half mad with jealousy. The Duchess and Mr. Leigh at these crises acted as peacemakers, a task at times not easy; in this particular case they failed entirely. The young woman tore her red hair with fury; she screamed so loudly that, common as such exhibitions were in Ely Place, neighbours began to show some interest in the front door. In this difficulty Mr. Bat Miller, pained and distressed, appealed to Bobbie to state whether so far from having been walking with the sister of Nose, the boy of Drysdale Street, between the hours of nine and ten that evening, he had not as a matter of fact been in the company of Bobbie at Liverpool Street Station. To this question Bobbie (who at the hours mentioned had been having a gloomy and quite solitary game of hop-scotch at the Kingsland Road end of Ely Place) answered promptly, “Yus!” and Mrs. Bat Miller confronted with this proof of alibi burst into regretful tears and reproached herself for a silly woman, one who allowed herself to be taken in by the gossip of any spiteful cat of a neighbour. Mr. Miller, grateful to Bobbie for this timely assistance, persuaded the quiet Leigh to allow the boy to resume his position in their confidence. After some hesitation Mr. Leigh agreed, adding, however, that he hoped Bobbie would see that the first duty of little boys was to be seen and not heard; the second, not to go about interfering with what did not concern them. These Mr. Leigh declared to be ever golden rules, not to be broken without danger. Bobbie promised to bear the advice carefully in mind, and re-assumed his position in the house with satisfaction.
The two women were nearly always kind to him, and to them he became indebted for cheerful hours. The proudest memory of the Duchess’s was that of her one appearance on the music hall stage. It seemed that another young lady and herself, having, in the late sixties, saved their money, had made their bow from the small stage of a small hall attached to a small public-house in Banner Street, St. Luke’s. They called themselves the Sisters Montmorency (on the urgent recommendation of the agent), and sang a song which still remained her favourite air. When in very good temper and when Bobbie had been a very good boy, she would go out of the room, and re-enter with a fine swish of the skirts singing in a thin, quavering voice this verse:—
You should see us in our landor when we’re drivin’ in the Row,
You should ’ear us chaff the dukes and belted earls;
We’re daughters of nobility, so they treat us with ceevility,
For of well-bred, high-class damsels we’re the pearls.
It appeared that the two débutantes quarrelled with each other after the first performance over some point of etiquette and fought in Banner Street, St. Luke’s; as a consequence the partnership had thereupon been dissolved, and the Duchess’s career as an artiste of the music halls found itself checked and stopped.
Proud in the ownership of a new bowler hat; magnificent in the possession of a four-bladed knife with a corkscrew, which had come to him as his share of the contents of a portmanteau labelled from Scarborough to King’s Cross, and taken possession of at the latter station by Mr. Miller before the owner had time to claim it, Bobbie strolled along Old Street one evening, smoking a cigarette, and pushing small girls off the pavement into the roadway. Behind him walked Miss Trixie Bell, feathered hatted and a skirt furtively let out after departure from her mother’s shop in Pimlico Walk; Miss Bell, in crossing lakes on the pavement, felt justified in lifting her skirt carefully to avoid contact with the ground, which it cleared by about twelve inches. At a junction of the City Road the boy stopped to allow the confused trams to untie themselves, and looking round saw her.
“Cheer!” said Miss Bell with defiant shyness. “How’s the world using you?” Bobbie did not answer. “You ain’t seen me for a long time.”
“Ain’t wanted,” replied the boy.
“I’ve been away in the country,” said the young woman, in no way disconcerted. “’Mongst medders and pigs and farm yards and nuts, and I don’t know what all.”
“Well,” he said, “what of it?”
“You still living in Ely Place?”
“P’raps I am; p’raps I ain’t.”
“I wouldn’t live there for something,” remarked the girl, shrugging her shoulders.
“They wouldn’t let you,” replied the boy. “They’re very particular about the kerricter of people they ’ave there.”
“Must they all ’ave a bad kerricter?” asked Miss Bell innocently.
The trams at the junction of roads extricated themselves from the tangle, and people who had been waiting on the kerb went across the roadway. Trixie Bell followed Bobbie, and they walked on opposite sides of the dimly-lighted pavement near St. Luke’s Asylum, continuing their conversation with breaks occasioned by intervening passers-by.
“You’ve no call,” shouted the boy, “to come follering me about. I don’t want no truck with gels.”
“I s’pose you’ve bought the street, ain’t you?” asked Miss Bell loudly. “Seem to think you’re everybody ’cause you’ve got a bowler ’at on. Be wearing a chimney-pot next, I lay.”
“Shan’t ask your permission.”
“All the boys down in the country,” called out the girl, “wash ’emselves twice a day.”
“More fools them,” said Bobbie.
“They wouldn’t dare be seen going about with a dirty face and neck like what you’ve got.”
“Look ’ere,” said the boy savagely. He moved nearer to her. “You leave my face and neck alone.”
“Sorry to do otherwise,” she remarked pertly.
“When I want any remarks from you ’bout my face and neck I’ll ast for ’em. Till then you keep your mouth shut ’r I’ll shut it for you.”
“You’d do a lot.”
Bobbie lifted his arm, but the small girl did not flinch. He made another threatening gesture; instantly his new bowler hat went spinning into the middle of the road in imminent danger of being run over by a railway van. Bobbie rescued it adroitly, and returning chased Miss Bell as far as Goswell Road.
“Don’t hit me,” she begged, panting; “I won’t do it again.”
“Time’s come,” said the boy hotly, “when I’ve got to punch your bloomin’ ’ead for you.”
“Lemme off this time,” craved Miss Bell, crouching against a shop window, “and I’ll stand you a ride back by tram.”
“You ain’t got no tuppence,” said Bobbie, relenting.
“I’ve got thruppence,” she said.
They walked on as far as Bloomsbury in order that they might have full money’s worth. When they boarded a departing tram, and the conductor shouted to them to get off, it delighted Bobbie very much to be able to confound the man by declaring themselves as passengers. To do honour to the occasion the boy rolled a cigarette, and, turning to a tall spectacled young man on the seat behind them, borrowed a match.
“Take two,” said the tall young man.
As the tram sailed past the lighted shops in Theobald’s Road, Trixie passed the twopence furtively to her companion, who paid the conductor with a lordly air, offering at the same time a few criticisms on the conductor’s appearance. Presently the girl touched very lightly his hand and moved nearer to him.
“Keep your ’ead off my shoulder,” he remarked brusquely.
“I want to tell you something,” said Trixie.
“Needn’t get so close.”
“My mother says—”
“What,” said Bobbie, “is the old cat still alive?”
“My mother says that if you like to leave those people what you’re with now and come and work at our shop as a errand boy—”
“A errand boy,” echoed Bobbie amazedly. “Work at that bloomin’ ’ole in the wall?’
“She’ll give you eighteen-pence a week and see that you ’ave good schooling, and arrange so that you grow up respectable.”
Bobbie, recovering from his astonishment, placed his cigarette on the seat in order that he might laugh without restraint.
“Of all the dam bits of cheek!” he declared exhaustedly.
“Make a lot of difference to you,” said the wise young woman. “If you don’t grow up respectable you’ll simply—”
“Me, respectable,” said the amused boy. “Why, you silly little ijiot, d’you think I don’t know a trick worth fifty of that. I ain’t going to work for my bloomin’ livin’.”
“Won’t ’ave a chance to if the police get ’old of you.”
“Is that another one of your Mar’s remarks? ’Cause, if so, you tell her from me, that she’s a—”
“Let’s get down ’ere,” said Trixie Bell. She interrupted the string of adjectives by rising; there were tears in her eyes. “This is ’Oxton Street.”
“You can,” said the boy. “I’m goin’ on to Shoreditch.”
“Wish I—I hadn’t met you now,” she said, with a catch in her voice.
“Don’t let it ’appen again.”
“I’ll never speak to you,” sobbed Trixie Bell, “never no more in all my life.”
“Best bit of news I’ve ’eard for a age.”
“Don’t you expect—don’t you expect me ever to take notice of you in future, mind.”
“If you do,” said Bobbie, “I shall be under the pineful necessity of knocking your ’ead clean off.”
“Goo’-bye,” said the girl hesitatingly.
The tall young man on the seat behind leaned forward as Trixie Bell disappeared down the steps of the tram. He tapped Bobbie on the shoulder.
“You behaved rather discourteously, sir, to your fair companion,” he said.
“Go on!” said Bobbie, recklessly. “All of you manage my affairs! Don’t mind me! I’ll sit back and not do nothing.”
“My excuse must be that we have met before. My name is Myddleton West, and I was at an inquest once—”
“I remember,” said the boy.
“Is the lady who has just gone engaged to you, may I ask?”
“No fear,” said Bobbie, disdainfully. “She’s a bit gone on me, that’s all. Perfect nuisance it is, if you ask me.”
“This,” said Myddleton West, “shows how awkward Providence is. With some of us the case is exactly the reverse.”
“You’re a lump better off without ’em,” said the boy sagely.
“I only want one.”
“And one,” said Bobbie, “is sometimes one too many. What are you doing in this quarter? Thought you lived ’Olborn way.”
“I want the police station in Kingsland Road,” said the journalist. “I have to see the inspector about something. Do you know it?”
“Do I not?” said Bobbie confidently.
They descended at the turbulent junction of roads near Shoreditch Station, and the boy conducted Myddleton West along the noisy crowded pavement of Kingsland Road, under the railway arch towards the police station. Glancing down Drysdale Street as he passed, Bobbie noticed Bat Miller near the gas-lamp talking to Nose’s sister; observed also in the shadow of the arch Mrs. Bat Miller watching the scene, her face white and her lips moving. As soon as he had shown Myddleton West the entrance to the police station, and had received sixpence for his pains, he hurried through to Hoxton Street, coming back into Drysdale Street from that end. His intention had been to witness the comedy that he assumed to be impending; to his great regret, just as Mr. Bat Miller began to punch the dark young woman affectionately, the young men who guarded Drysdale Street from the ruthless invader suddenly appeared, led by Nose and by Libbis, and the odds being about eight to one, drove him off with furious threats. He went back to the police station in order to complete the earning of his sixpence by reconducting Myddleton West to the tram for Bloomsbury. Approaching the station, on the steps of which plain clothes men were as usual lounging, he saw Mrs. Bat Miller on the opposite side of the roadway, her white apron over her head, beckoning to one of the plain clothes men. Then she walked carelessly into Union Street. The detective followed her. Bobbie slipped across and stood in a doorway.
“Well, my dear,” said the detective. “What’s your little game?”
“Mr. Thorpe,” said Mrs. Bat Miller, panting. She pressed one hand against her bodice and gasped for breath. “Do you want—want to do a fair cop?”
“A fair cop,” said Mr. Thorpe, cheerfully, “would just now come in very handy. Who are the parties?”
“He’s behaved like a wretch,” said the young woman breathlessly, “or I’d never ’are turned on him. I’m as striteforward a gel as ever breathed in all ’Oxton, ain’t I, Mr. Thorpe?”
“No one more so,” agreed the detective. “What’s the name of—”
“Anything else I could ’ave forgive him,” she said, trembling with passion. “When we’ve been ’ard up and he’s come ’ome with not a penny in his pocket and me gone without dinner, did I complain?”
“Course you didn’t. Who—”
“When he was put away for six months three year ago, didn’t I slave and keep myself to myself, and go and meet him down at Wandsworth when he came out?”
“No lady,” conceded Mr. Thorpe, “could have done more. What is—”
“When he was laid up in the orsepital,” she went on fiercely, “didn’t I go to see him every visiting day and take him nuts and oranges and goodness knows what all, and sit be his bedside for the hour together?”
“I really don’t know,” said the detective impartially, “what men are coming to. Where are—”
“And then to go paying his attentions to a—”
“Not so loud!”
She checked herself and looked round. Then she took the lapel of Mr. Thorpe’s coat and whispered. Bobbie could not hear the words.
“Good!” exclaimed the detective. “Are they both indoors now?”
“If they ain’t you can wait for ’em,” she replied.
“Will six men be enough d’you think?”
“Six ’ll be ample, Mr. Thorpe,” she said. “And if Miller shows fight, tell them not to be afraid of knocking him about. It’ll do him good, the—”
“I’ll make a note of it,” said Mr. Thorpe. “You don’t want to come with us, I s’pose? You’d better not be seen p’raps?”
“You leave me to look after meself,” she answered.
“Come over and ’ave a cup of tea along with our female searcher,” suggested Mr. Thorpe.
“Tea be ’anged,” she said. “I shall want something stronger than tea when my paddy’s over.”
“Daresay we shall be able to get you a sovereign or two for this job if you keep yourself quiet.”
“Keep your money,” she cried angrily. “All I want is to be at the Sessions when he comes up and to watch her face.”
Bobbie crept from his doorway. Once in Kingsland Road, he flew along swiftly, slipping in and out of the crowd, and jumping a linen basket, to the astonishment of the two women who were carrying it. He scuttled through the dwarf posts and down Ely Place, knocking over one or two children toddling about in the way, and reaching the house so exhausted that he could only just give the usual whistle at the key-hole. Mr. Leigh opened the door, and seeing him took off the chain. The boy, staggering into the dimly-lighted passage leaned against the wall.
“Bat Miller in?” he panted.
“What’s the row?” demanded Mr. Leigh concernedly. Bobbie explained in a hurried, detached, spasmodic way. Mr. Leigh took a pair of scissors from his pocket, and, glancing at a slip of looking-glass, cut off the whiskers which fringed his face.
“Tell the wife,” said Mr. Leigh, quietly snipping, “to meet me at Brenchley, if she gets clear. Tell her not to make no fuss.” He took his overcoat from the peg, and a cloth cap with ear flaps. “Come straight here ’ave you?” he asked.
“Look outside and see if they’ve come up yet,” requested Mr. Leigh, tying the flaps of his cap under his chin. “We don’t want no bother or nothing.”
Ely Place being clear at the Hoxton Street end, Mr. Leigh, his head well down, went out of the doorway. He shook hands with Bobbie.
“You’re a capital boy,” whispered Mr. Leigh, approvingly. “If I’d got anything smaller than a tanner about me I’d give it you. Be good!”
Bobbie closed the door, and his heart fluttering, went upstairs to the front bedroom. The Duchess was asleep, dressed, on her bed; her high-heeled boots ludicrously obtrusive. Bobbie aroused her and gave her the news.
“My old man’s safe, then? What about Bat Miller?” she asked, sitting up, affrightedly.
“We must watch out of the winder,” ordered Bobbie. “If he comes first we’ll wave him to be off; if he comes after they’re ’ere he’ll be nabbed.”
“You’ve got a ’ead on you,” said the Duchess, trembling, “that would be a credit to a Prime Minister. Come to the winder and—Let me ’old your ’and, I’m all of a shake.”
“They can’t touch us, can they?” asked Bobbie, stroking the woman’s thin trembling wrist.
“Hope not,” said the Duchess, nervously. “But there, you never know what the law can do. Fancy her turning nark jest through a fit of jealousy. Is that Miller talking to one of the neighbours?”
Mr. Miller it was. Mr. Miller, chatting amiably with one of the lady neighbours on the subject of flowers and how to rear them; the lady neighbour being something of a horticulturist in her way, possessing, as she did, in her garden plot, one sooty shrub, a limp sunflower, and several dandelions. Mr. Miller had just said something to the lady neighbour which had made her laugh uproariously, when, chancing to look up, he saw the signals of the Duchess and of Bobbie. His face took a note of interrogation; they motioned to him to go away with all despatch. Mr. Bat Miller crammed his hat over his head and ran off blindly; so blindly indeed that, at the Kingsland Road end of the place, he jumped into the arms of three overcoated men led by Mr. Thorpe; escaping these, he was caught neatly by uniformed policemen who were close behind. At the same moment a similar force appeared at the Hoxton Street end of the place. Bobbie and the Duchess held each other’s hands and went downstairs. The faint sound of a hymn came from the closed door.
Three loud raps at the front door. Bobbie went along the passage and opened it. Mr. Thorpe, with the other men; out in the court a small interested crowd, the noise of windows being thrown up.
“Come about the white-washin’?” asked Bobbie, innocently.
“Take the chain off, me lad,” said Mr. Thorpe, with his foot inside.
“Right you are, sir.”
The men came into the dark passage and one of them flashed a bull’s-eye lantern around.
“Father in?” asked Mr. Thorpe.
“Well, no,” answered the boy, “he isn’t exactly in, sir.”
“Won’t be long, I daresay.”
“I wouldn’t wait, sir,” said Bobbie respectfully, “if I was you. Fact is he’s been dead some years.”
The man with the bull’s-eye made the circle of light dance to the bottom stair and discovered the Duchess. Another went to the closed door of the back room and put his shoulder against it.
“Now then, ma’am,” said Mr. Thorpe, turning from the boy impatiently. “Where’s your good gentleman?”
“Pray don’t ask me, fellow,” replied the Duchess, endeavouring to assume her accent of refinement with some want of success. “If you want him, I really think the best thing you can do is to find him.”
“Go upstairs, two of you,” commanded Mr. Thorpe. “Two others give Baker a help with that door. Someone look after this woman and the kid.”
Bobbie, his shoulder gripped by a broad hand, watched with interest. The door groaned complainingly for a moment or two; then it gave way with so much suddenness that the two men stumbled into the room. Between the figures of the men Bobbie could see the room crowded in the manner of a workshop of limited accommodation. A wooden bench stood against the shuttered windows; the flare of a fire out of sight reddened the untidy floor. On a table some circular moulds of plaster of Paris; near, some coins with a tail of metal attached that gave them an unconvincing appearance. Three pewter pots, half melted on the edge of an iron sink. A small battery in the corner, and at this seated the figure of a young man. The figure looked round casually as’ the men entered, and Bobbie caught sight of a face not pleasant to look upon.
“Is that the Fright?” whispered Bobbie to the Duchess. The Duchess nodded and touched her forehead.
“Tile loose!” she said.
The figure turned back to his work of plating, crooning his hymn as though the interruption was not worthy of any special notice. Then the door partially closed.
“Mind my shoulder, please,” said the Duchess affectedly.
“I am minding it,” said the detective cheerfully.
“You’re no gentleman,” declared the Duchess, “or you wouldn’t behave to a lady in this way.”
“I was never what you may call a society man,” said the detective. “You seem to have got a rare old little snide factory here all to yourself.”
“I beg your pardon!” said the Duchess icily.
“Carried on nice and quiet too, apparently. No show, no display, no what you may call arrogance about it.”
“What is this person talking about, Bobbie, my dear?”
“Ast him,” said Bobbie, his eyes fixed on the partially-closed door.
“This your boy, ma’am?”
“Are you addressing your conversation to me, sir?”
“Who does the kid belong to?”
“This lad,” said the Duchess, precisely, “is, I regret to say, an orphan. I took some interest in his case, and my husband and myself have, so to speak, adopted him.”
“Then you’ll probably have to unadopt him,” said the detective. “If he’s got no relatives the State will take him in hand.”
“Who’s she?” asked Bobbie, detaching his interest from the back room.
“The State’s got a pretty decent-sized family as it is,” went on the man, “and one extra won’t make much difference.” His two colleagues came downstairs. “Anybody?” he asked. The two men replied not a soul.
“Then one of ’em’s nipped off,” said the detective. “Go and tell the sergeant.”
The door re-opened as the men proceeded to obey. Between two of Mr. Thorpe’s assistants came the demented man, his terrible face down; Bobbie was pulled back to allow them to conduct him through the passage. Finding himself going at a regular pace, he commenced to sing huskily a Moody and Sankey hymn with a marching rhythm.
“Hold the gospel banner high,
On to victory grand,
Satan and his hosts defy,
And shout for Danyul’s band.”
“Bring the woman and the boy,” ordered Mr. Thorpe. “And keep close round them. There’s an awkward crowd outside.”
The awkward crowd of Ely Place was not apparently ready to carry its awkwardness to the point of interference with the police. On the contrary, the crowd seemed anxious to show some friendliness towards the plain clothes men, saying, Good evening, Mr. Thorpe, sir; more work for you, I see. And how are you, Mr. Baker? and how’s that cold of yours getting on, I wonder? Some of the men of Mr. Thorpe’s regiment remained in charge of the house; the others assisted in conducting the three arrested people to the police station.
“Hullo, young man,” said Myddleton West, at the entrance. The crowd in Kingsland Road had swelled to the number of hundreds, and West had to wait for their departure. “You in this affair?”
“Looks like it,” said Bobbie.
“Can I do anything?” asked the long young journalist.
“Yes!”
“Tell me!”
“Keep your head shut,” said the boy gruffly. “I don’t want no one interfering with my affairs.”
“Deplorable thing,” remarked Myddleton West aside to the sergeant, “for a child like that.”
“Not at all, sir,” said Mr. Thorpe, “not at all. We’ve nabbed him just in time.”