But tell me aw that’s happen’d thee,
The neet is wearing fast;
There’s nought I like sae weel to hear,
As dangers that are past.”
The Sailor Lad’s Return.
We must now return to our poor lost muttons, “Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys, their son and daughter.”
The journey of Master Jobby to Wimbledon and back was sufficiently long to try the patience of poor Mrs. Cursty. Though the youth was fleet of foot, the “busses” on the road were unluckily on the most amicable terms; and being unopposed, the “Celerities” drawled along at little better than hearse-pace, as if they belonged to the “Mors omnibus” species, and had no great inclination to “look alive.”
Mrs. Sandboys, after having been dragged by the authorities from the presence of the magistrate, at the commencement of an oration, in which she was about to tell his Worship a “bit of her mind,” and torn in the outer office from the coat-tails of her beloved Cursty, passed the time—when her paroxysm of conjugal sympathy had in a measure subsided—by inquiring of such of the officers as she could seduce into conversation, what wretched fate awaited the ill-starred Christopher, in the event of Jobby not arriving in time with the expected witnesses to character. When the lady was informed, to her indescribable horror, that the police van, under such circumstances, would remove Mr. Sandboys that evening to the nearest prison, she drew a vivid but melancholy picture in ideal black-lead upon imaginary paper, of the partner of her bosom ushered across the flagstones, between files of giggling unsympathetic boys, to become an inside passenger in that dismal-looking, mulberry-coloured ’artsease, which runs daily between the Police Offices and the Houses of Correction—“nothing all the way.” And when Mrs. Cursty learnt, moreover, in answer to her numerous queries as to the treatment of the inmates of the Metropolitan Prisons, that there was a special costume and coiffure set aside for such persons, and to which every one, on conviction, was made to conform, she commenced executing a series of mental cartoons in unsubstantial crayons, portraying her lord and master with his hair cropped as short as the plush of a footman’s bree—ahem!—that is to say, gentle reader, trouserlets, picturing him done up in pepper and salt, and looking like a representation in Scotch granite of one of the very lowest of the “lower orders.” Then, as the scenes of her visionary diorama glided dreamily along, she beheld the phantasm of the wretched man, whom she had taken for better or worse, at one moment busily engaged in the arduous process of mounting a spectral treadmill, or “everlasting staircase,” and now reduced to the not particularly honourable nor lively occupation of picking phantom oakum—for as the authorities described the manners and customs of prison life to Mrs. Cursty, there popped up immediately before the eyes of the excited lady an air-drawn picture of each discreditable scene, with a phantasmagoric Mr. Sandboys figuring prominently in the foreground.
The long hand of the official clock moved on as slow and unconcerned as a government clerk; but in the eyes of the anxious Mrs. Sandboys it seemed to be spinning round like the index to a pieman’s gaming-dial; Time, to her, appeared to have parted with his scythe for a reaping machine, and to be mowing down the minutes as if they were incipient bristles on a chin undergoing “a clean shave for a halfpenny.” It wanted but a short time to the appointed hour for the arrival of the dreaded van; and Mrs. Sandboys, with the weeping Elcy at her side, sat trembling in her Adelaides, and experiencing at each fresh opening of the door the same breathless and “sinking” sensation as is peculiar to steamboats on pitching deep down into the trough of the sea. To her ineffable relief, however, the red-faced Jobby at length darted into the office, carrying the reply from Parthenon House in his hand. The boy was unable to speak for the speed he had made (for he believed the letter he bore would be sufficient to gain his father’s liberty), and stood panting—now wiping his forehead, and now, to cool himself, tearing open the collar of his shirt.
His mother, in her anxiety, had not sufficient patience to wait till the boy had breath to tell the issue of his journey, but snatching the letter from his hand, tore it eagerly open. She had, however, no sooner run her eyes over its contents, than she uttered a faint cry, and fell back against the wall. Jobby and Elcy were instantly at their mother’s side, endeavouring to comfort her, and seeking to know what fresh catastrophe had befallen them; and when Jobby learnt that Mrs. Wewitz had declined vouching for the respectability of his father, the effect of the news upon the lad, who had made certain that all was right, was almost painful to contemplate. For a moment, he turned pale as marble, and stood as if half incredulous of what he heard; then the blood crimsoned his face, and the tears filled his eyes, as he fell on his mother’s neck, and sobbed like a child with her. Elcy, however, seemed to gain new courage from their combined distress, and as she loosened the strings of her mother’s bonnet, and entreated Jobby, in a whisper, to remember where he was, telling him all the people were looking at him, she suddenly recollected Mrs. Fokesell, who she felt sure would willingly come and speak for her father. As the thought flashed across her mind, she turned hastily to the clock, and then, bending over her mother, told her in a low voice to be of good heart, for she still saw a way of obtaining her father’s liberation. Mrs. Sandboys no sooner caught the words, and learnt from Elcy the course she meant to pursue, than she became as confident as the girl of success, and bidding her take a cab, she told her that there might be yet time, if she departed with all possible speed.