A Dog with a Bad Name

by Talbot Baines Reed

He half envied his new fellow-lodgers in the den at Ratcliff. Four of them, at least, stood a chance of being hanged. Yet they managed to shake off care and live merrily.

“Come, old gallus,” said one young fellow, who in that place was the hero of a recent “mystery” in the West End, “perk up. You’re safe enough here. Don’t be down. We’re all in the same boat. Save up them long faces for eight o’clock in the morning at Old Bailey. Don’t spoil our fun.”

It was half pathetic, this appeal; and Jeffreys for a day tried to be cheerful. But he could not do it, and considerately went somewhere else.

How long was it to go on? A time came when he could get no work, and starvation stared him in the face. But a dying boy bequeathed him a loaf, and once again he was doomed to live.

But a loaf, and the proceeds of a week’s odd jobs, came to an end. And now once more, as he sits in the rain in Regent’s Park, he faces something more than the weather. He has not tasted food for two whole days, and for all he knows may never taste it again.

So he sits there, with his eyes still on that football ground, and his ears ringing still with the merry shouts of the departed boys.

The scene changes as he stays on. It is a football field still, but not the brown patch in a London park. There are high trees, throwing shadows across the green turf, and in the distance an old red school-house. And the boys are no longer the lively London urchins with their red, white, and blue bouncer. They are in flannels, and their faces are familiar, and the names they call each other he knows. Nor is the game the same. It, like the London boys’ game, has ended suddenly, but not in a helter-skelter stampede in the rain. No. It is a silent, awe-struck group round something on the ground; and as he, Jeffreys, elbows his way among them, he sees again a boy’s face lying there pallid and perhaps lifeless. Then instinctively he lifts his hands to his ears. For a howl rises on all sides which deafens him, stuns him.

After all, it is only the last effort of the October squall in Regent’s Park buffeting him with a fusillade of rain and withered leaves. He takes his hands from his ears, and with a sigh gets up and walks away, he cares not whither.

His steps lead him round the park and into the long avenue. The rain and the wind are dying down, and already a few wayfarers, surprised by the sudden storm, are emerging from their shelters and speeding home. The park-keeper boldly parades the path in his waterproof, as if he had braved the elements since daybreak. A nursemaid draws out her perambulator from under the trees and hastens with it and its wailing occupant nursery-wards. And there, coming to meet him, sheltered under one umbrella, are two who perhaps have no grudge against the storm for detaining them in their walk that afternoon.

It is long since Jeffreys has seen anything to remind him of the world he has left, but there is something about these two as they advance towards him, their faces hidden by the umbrella, which attracts him. The youth is slim and well-dressed, and holds himself well; his companion’s figure reminds him of a form he knew—can it be only six months ago?—light, gentle, courageous, beside which he has walked in the Wildtree Park and on the London pavements. Ah, how changed now!