England is supposed to be unmusical; but without dwelling on the
patronage extended to the organ-grinder, without seeking to found any
argument on the prevalence of the Jew’s trump, there is surely one
instrument that may be said to be national in the fullest acceptance
of the word. The herdboy in the broom, already musical in the days of
Father Chaucer, startles (and perhaps pains) the lark with this exiguous
pipe; and in the hands of the skilled bricklayer,
‘The thing becomes a trumpet, whence he blows’
(as a general rule) either ‘The British Grenadiers’ or ‘Cherry Ripe’.
The latter air is indeed the shibboleth and diploma piece of the
penny whistler; I hazard a guess it was originally composed for this
instrument. It is singular enough that a man should be able to gain
a livelihood, or even to tide over a period of unemployment, by the
display of his proficiency upon the penny whistle; still more so, that
the professional should almost invariably confine himself to ‘Cherry
Ripe’. But indeed, singularities surround the subject, thick like
blackberries. Why, for instance, should the pipe be called a penny
whistle? I think no one ever bought it for a penny. Why should the
alternative name be tin whistle? I am grossly deceived if it be made
of tin. Lastly, in what deaf catacomb, in what earless desert, does the
beginner pass the excruciating interval of his apprenticeship? We have
all heard people learning the piano, the fiddle, and the cornet; but
the young of the penny whistler (like that of the salmon) is occult from
observation; he is never heard until proficient; and providence (perhaps
alarmed by the works of Mr Mallock) defends human hearing from his first
attempts upon the upper octave.
A really noteworthy thing was taking place in a green lane, not far from
Padwick. On the bench of a carrier’s cart there sat a tow-headed, lanky,
modest-looking youth; the reins were on his lap; the whip lay behind
him in the interior of the cart; the horse proceeded without guidance
or encouragement; the carrier (or the carrier’s man), rapt into a higher
sphere than that of his daily occupations, his looks dwelling on the
skies, devoted himself wholly to a brand-new D penny whistle, whence he
diffidently endeavoured to elicit that pleasing melody ‘The Ploughboy’.
To any observant person who should have chanced to saunter in that lane,
the hour would have been thrilling. ‘Here at last,’ he would have said,
‘is the beginner.’
The tow-headed youth (whose name was Harker) had just encored himself
for the nineteenth time, when he was struck into the extreme of
confusion by the discovery that he was not alone.
‘There you have it!’ cried a manly voice from the side of the road.
‘That’s as good as I want to hear. Perhaps a leetle oilier in the run,’
the voice suggested, with meditative gusto. ‘Give it us again.’
Harker glanced, from the depths of his humiliation, at the speaker. He
beheld a powerful, sun-brown, clean-shaven fellow, about forty years of
age, striding beside the cart with a non-commissioned military bearing,
and (as he strode) spinning in the air a cane. The fellow’s clothes were
very bad, but he looked clean and self-reliant.
‘I’m only a beginner,’ gasped the blushing Harker, ‘I didn’t think
anybody could hear me.’
‘Well, I like that!’ returned the other. ‘You’re a pretty old beginner.
Come, I’ll give you a lead myself. Give us a seat here beside you.’
The next moment the military gentleman was perched on the cart, pipe in
hand. He gave the instrument a knowing rattle on the shaft, mouthed it,
appeared to commune for a moment with the muse, and dashed into ‘The
girl I left behind me’. He was a great, rather than a fine, performer;
he lacked the bird-like richness; he could scarce have extracted all
the honey out of ‘Cherry Ripe’; he did not fear--he even ostentatiously
displayed and seemed to revel in he shrillness of the instrument; but
in fire, speed, precision, evenness, and fluency; in linked agility of
jimmy--a technical expression, by your leave, answering to warblers on
the bagpipe; and perhaps, above all, in that inspiring side-glance of
the eye, with which he followed the effect and (as by a human appeal)
eked out the insufficiency of his performance: in these, the fellow
stood without a rival. Harker listened: ‘The girl I left behind me’
filled him with despair; ‘The Soldier’s Joy’ carried him beyond jealousy
into generous enthusiasm.
‘Turn about,’ said the military gentleman, offering the pipe.
‘O, not after you!’ cried Harker; ‘you’re a professional.’
‘No,’ said his companion; ‘an amatyure like yourself. That’s one style
of play, yours is the other, and I like it best. But I began when I was
a boy, you see, before my taste was formed. When you’re my age you’ll
play that thing like a cornet-a-piston. Give us that air again; how does
it go?’ and he affected to endeavour to recall ‘The Ploughboy’.
A timid, insane hope sprang in the breast of Harker. Was it possible?
Was there something in his playing? It had, indeed, seemed to him at
times as if he got a kind of a richness out of it. Was he a genius?
Meantime the military gentleman stumbled over the air.
‘No,’ said the unhappy Harker, ‘that’s not quite it. It goes this
way--just to show you.’
And, taking the pipe between his lips, he sealed his doom. When he had
played the air, and then a second time, and a third; when the military
gentleman had tried it once more, and once more failed; when it became
clear to Harker that he, the blushing debutant, was actually giving a
lesson to this full-grown flutist--and the flutist under his care was
not very brilliantly progressing--how am I to tell what floods of glory
brightened the autumnal countryside; how, unless the reader were an
amateur himself, describe the heights of idiotic vanity to which
the carrier climbed? One significant fact shall paint the situation:
thenceforth it was Harker who played, and the military gentleman
listened and approved.
As he listened, however, he did not forget the habit of soldierly
precaution, looking both behind and before. He looked behind and
computed the value of the carrier’s load, divining the contents of the
brown-paper parcels and the portly hamper, and briefly setting down the
grand piano in the brand-new piano-case as ‘difficult to get rid of’.
He looked before, and spied at the corner of the green lane a little
country public-house embowered in roses. ‘I’ll have a shy at it,’
concluded the military gentleman, and roundly proposed a glass. ‘Well,
I’m not a drinking man,’ said Harker.
‘Look here, now,’ cut in the other, ‘I’ll tell you who I am: I’m
Colour-Sergeant Brand of the Blankth. That’ll tell you if I’m a drinking
man or not.’ It might and it might not, thus a Greek chorus would have
intervened, and gone on to point out how very far it fell short of
telling why the sergeant was tramping a country lane in tatters; or even
to argue that he must have pretermitted some while ago his labours for
the general defence, and (in the interval) possibly turned his attention
to oakum. But there was no Greek chorus present; and the man of war went
on to contend that drinking was one thing and a friendly glass another.
In the Blue Lion, which was the name of the country public-house,
Colour-Sergeant Brand introduced his new friend, Mr Harker, to a
number of ingenious mixtures, calculated to prevent the approaches of
intoxication. These he explained to be ‘rekisite’ in the service, so
that a self-respecting officer should always appear upon parade in a
condition honourable to his corps. The most efficacious of these devices
was to lace a pint of mild ale with twopenceworth of London gin. I am
pleased to hand in this recipe to the discerning reader, who may find
it useful even in civil station; for its effect upon Mr Harker was
revolutionary. He must be helped on board his own waggon, where he
proceeded to display a spirit entirely given over to mirth and music,
alternately hooting with laughter, to which the sergeant hastened to
bear chorus, and incoherently tootling on the pipe. The man of war,
meantime, unostentatiously possessed himself of the reins. It was plain
he had a taste for the secluded beauties of an English landscape; for
the cart, although it wandered under his guidance for some time, was
never observed to issue on the dusty highway, journeying between hedge
and ditch, and for the most part under overhanging boughs. It was plain,
besides, he had an eye to the true interests of Mr Harker; for though
the cart drew up more than once at the doors of public-houses, it was
only the sergeant who set foot to ground, and, being equipped himself
with a quart bottle, once more proceeded on his rural drive.
To give any idea of the complexity of the sergeant’s course, a map of
that part of Middlesex would be required, and my publisher is averse
from the expense. Suffice it, that a little after the night had closed,
the cart was brought to a standstill in a woody road; where the sergeant
lifted from among the parcels, and tenderly deposited upon the wayside,
the inanimate form of Harker.
‘If you come-to before daylight,’ thought the sergeant, ‘I shall be
surprised for one.’
From the various pockets of the slumbering carrier he gently collected
the sum of seventeen shillings and eightpence sterling; and, getting
once more into the cart, drove thoughtfully away.
‘If I was exactly sure of where I was, it would be a good job,’ he
reflected. ‘Anyway, here’s a corner.’
He turned it, and found himself upon the riverside. A little above him
the lights of a houseboat shone cheerfully; and already close at hand,
so close that it was impossible to avoid their notice, three persons, a
lady and two gentlemen, were deliberately drawing near. The sergeant put
his trust in the convenient darkness of the night, and drove on to meet
them. One of the gentlemen, who was of a portly figure, walked in the
midst of the fairway, and presently held up a staff by way of signal.
‘My man, have you seen anything of a carrier’s cart?’ he cried.
Dark as it was, it seemed to the sergeant as though the slimmer of
the two gentlemen had made a motion to prevent the other speaking, and
(finding himself too late) had skipped aside with some alacrity. At
another season, Sergeant Brand would have paid more attention to the
fact; but he was then immersed in the perils of his own predicament.
‘A carrier’s cart?’ said he, with a perceptible uncertainty of voice.
‘No, sir.’
‘Ah!’ said the portly gentleman, and stood aside to let the sergeant
pass. The lady appeared to bend forward and study the cart with every
mark of sharpened curiosity, the slimmer gentleman still keeping in the
rear.
‘I wonder what the devil they would be at,’ thought Sergeant Brand; and,
looking fearfully back, he saw the trio standing together in the midst
of the way, like folk consulting. The bravest of military heroes are
not always equal to themselves as to their reputation; and fear, on some
singular provocation, will find a lodgment in the most unfamiliar bosom.
The word ‘detective’ might have been heard to gurgle in the sergeant’s
throat; and vigorously applying the whip, he fled up the riverside road
to Great Haverham, at the gallop of the carrier’s horse. The lights of
the houseboat flashed upon the flying waggon as it passed; the beat of
hoofs and the rattle of the vehicle gradually coalesced and died away;
and presently, to the trio on the riverside, silence had redescended.
‘It’s the most extraordinary thing,’ cried the slimmer of the two
gentlemen, ‘but that’s the cart.’
‘And I know I saw a piano,’ said the girl.
‘O, it’s the cart, certainly; and the extraordinary thing is, it’s not
the man,’ added the first.
‘It must be the man, Gid, it must be,’ said the portly one.
‘Well, then, why is he running away?’ asked Gideon.
‘His horse bolted, I suppose,’ said the Squirradical.
‘Nonsense! I heard the whip going like a flail,’ said Gideon. ‘It simply
defies the human reason.’
‘I’ll tell you,’ broke in the girl, ‘he came round that corner. Suppose
we went and--what do you call it in books?--followed his trail? There
may be a house there, or somebody who saw him, or something.’
‘Well, suppose we did, for the fun of the thing,’ said Gideon.
The fun of the thing (it would appear) consisted in the extremely close
juxtaposition of himself and Miss Hazeltine. To Uncle Ned, who was
excluded from these simple pleasures, the excursion appeared hopeless
from the first; and when a fresh perspective of darkness opened up,
dimly contained between park palings on the one side and a hedge and
ditch upon the other, the whole without the smallest signal of human
habitation, the Squirradical drew up.
‘This is a wild-goose chase,’ said he.
With the cessation of the footfalls, another sound smote upon their
ears.
‘O, what’s that?’ cried Julia.
‘I can’t think,’ said Gideon.
The Squirradical had his stick presented like a sword. ‘Gid,’ he began,
‘Gid, I--’
‘O Mr Forsyth!’ cried the girl. ‘O don’t go forward, you don’t know what
it might be--it might be something perfectly horrid.’
‘It may be the devil itself,’ said Gideon, disengaging himself, ‘but I
am going to see it.’
‘Don’t be rash, Gid,’ cried his uncle.
The barrister drew near to the sound, which was certainly of a
portentous character. In quality it appeared to blend the strains of
the cow, the fog-horn, and the mosquito; and the startling manner of its
enunciation added incalculably to its terrors. A dark object, not unlike
the human form divine, appeared on the brink of the ditch.
‘It’s a man,’ said Gideon, ‘it’s only a man; he seems to be asleep and
snoring. Hullo,’ he added, a moment after, ‘there must be something
wrong with him, he won’t waken.’
Gideon produced his vestas, struck one, and by its light recognized the
tow head of Harker.
‘This is the man,’ said he, ‘as drunk as Belial. I see the whole story’;
and to his two companions, who had now ventured to rejoin him, he set
forth a theory of the divorce between the carrier and his cart, which
was not unlike the truth.
‘Drunken brute!’ said Uncle Ned, ‘let’s get him to a pump and give him
what he deserves.’
‘Not at all!’ said Gideon. ‘It is highly undesirable he should see us
together; and really, do you know, I am very much obliged to him, for
this is about the luckiest thing that could have possibly occurred. It
seems to me--Uncle Ned, I declare to heaven it seems to me--I’m clear of
it!’
‘Clear of what?’ asked the Squirradical.
‘The whole affair!’ cried Gideon. ‘That man has been ass enough to steal
the cart and the dead body; what he hopes to do with it I neither know
nor care. My hands are free, Jimson ceases; down with Jimson. Shake
hands with me, Uncle Ned--Julia, darling girl, Julia, I--’
‘Gideon, Gideon!’ said his uncle. ‘O, it’s all right, uncle, when
we’re going to be married so soon,’ said Gideon. ‘You know you said so
yourself in the houseboat.’
‘Did I?’ said Uncle Ned; ‘I am certain I said no such thing.’
‘Appeal to him, tell him he did, get on his soft side,’ cried Gideon.
‘He’s a real brick if you get on his soft side.’
‘Dear Mr Bloomfield,’ said Julia, ‘I know Gideon will be such a very
good boy, and he has promised me to do such a lot of law, and I will
see that he does too. And you know it is so very steadying to young men,
everybody admits that; though, of course, I know I have no money, Mr
Bloomfield,’ she added.
‘My dear young lady, as this rapscallion told you today on the boat,
Uncle Ned has plenty,’ said the Squirradical, ‘and I can never forget
that you have been shamefully defrauded. So as there’s nobody looking,
you had better give your Uncle Ned a kiss. There, you rogue,’ resumed
Mr Bloomfield, when the ceremony had been daintily performed, ‘this very
pretty young lady is yours, and a vast deal more than you deserve. But
now, let us get back to the houseboat, get up steam on the launch, and
away back to town.’
‘That’s the thing!’ cried Gideon; ‘and tomorrow there will be no
houseboat, and no Jimson, and no carrier’s cart, and no piano; and when
Harker awakes on the ditchside, he may tell himself the whole affair has
been a dream.’
‘Aha!’ said Uncle Ned, ‘but there’s another man who will have a
different awakening. That fellow in the cart will find he has been too
clever by half.’
‘Uncle Ned and Julia,’ said Gideon, ‘I am as happy as the King of
Tartary, my heart is like a threepenny-bit, my heels are like feathers;
I am out of all my troubles, Julia’s hand is in mine. Is this a time
for anything but handsome sentiments? Why, there’s not room in me for
anything that’s not angelic! And when I think of that poor unhappy devil
in the cart, I stand here in the night and cry with a single heart God
help him!’
‘Amen,’ said Uncle Ned.
CHAPTER XIII. The Tribulations of Morris: Part the Second
In a really polite age of literature I would have scorned to cast my eye
again on the contortions of Morris. But the study is in the spirit of
the day; it presents, besides, features of a high, almost a repulsive,
morality; and if it should prove the means of preventing any respectable
and inexperienced gentleman from plunging light-heartedly into crime,
even political crime, this work will not have been penned in vain.
He rose on the morrow of his night with Michael, rose from the leaden
slumber of distress, to find his hand tremulous, his eyes closed with
rheum, his throat parched, and his digestion obviously paralysed.
‘Lord knows it’s not from eating!’ Morris thought; and as he dressed
he reconsidered his position under several heads. Nothing will so well
depict the troubled seas in which he was now voyaging as a review
of these various anxieties. I have thrown them (for the reader’s
convenience) into a certain order; but in the mind of one poor human
equal they whirled together like the dust of hurricanes. With the same
obliging preoccupation, I have put a name to each of his distresses;
and it will be observed with pity that every individual item would have
graced and commended the cover of a railway novel.
Anxiety the First: Where is the Body? or, The Mystery of Bent Pitman. It
was now manifestly plain that Bent Pitman (as was to be looked for from
his ominous appellation) belonged to the darker order of the criminal
class. An honest man would not have cashed the bill; a humane man would
not have accepted in silence the tragic contents of the water-butt; a
man, who was not already up to the hilts in gore, would have lacked
the means of secretly disposing them. This process of reasoning left a
horrid image of the monster, Pitman. Doubtless he had long ago disposed
of the body--dropping it through a trapdoor in his back kitchen, Morris
supposed, with some hazy recollection of a picture in a penny dreadful;
and doubtless the man now lived in wanton splendour on the proceeds of
the bill. So far, all was peace. But with the profligate habits of a man
like Bent Pitman (who was no doubt a hunchback in the bargain), eight
hundred pounds could be easily melted in a week. When they were gone,
what would he be likely to do next? A hell-like voice in Morris’s own
bosom gave the answer: ‘Blackmail me.’
Anxiety the Second: The Fraud of the Tontine; or, Is my Uncle dead?
This, on which all Morris’s hopes depended, was yet a question. He had
tried to bully Teena; he had tried to bribe her; and nothing came of
it. He had his moral conviction still; but you cannot blackmail a sharp
lawyer on a moral conviction. And besides, since his interview with
Michael, the idea wore a less attractive countenance. Was Michael
the man to be blackmailed? and was Morris the man to do it? Grave
considerations. ‘It’s not that I’m afraid of him,’ Morris so far
condescended to reassure himself; ‘but I must be very certain of my
ground, and the deuce of it is, I see no way. How unlike is life to
novels! I wouldn’t have even begun this business in a novel, but what
I’d have met a dark, slouching fellow in the Oxford Road, who’d have
become my accomplice, and known all about how to do it, and probably
broken into Michael’s house at night and found nothing but a waxwork
image; and then blackmailed or murdered me. But here, in real life, I
might walk the streets till I dropped dead, and none of the criminal
classes would look near me. Though, to be sure, there is always Pitman,’
he added thoughtfully.
Anxiety the Third: The Cottage at Browndean; or, The Underpaid
Accomplice. For he had an accomplice, and that accomplice was blooming
unseen in a damp cottage in Hampshire with empty pockets. What could be
done about that? He really ought to have sent him something; if it was
only a post-office order for five bob, enough to prove that he was kept
in mind, enough to keep him in hope, beer, and tobacco. ‘But what
would you have?’ thought Morris; and ruefully poured into his hand
a half-crown, a florin, and eightpence in small change. For a man in
Morris’s position, at war with all society, and conducting, with the
hand of inexperience, a widely ramified intrigue, the sum was already a
derision. John would have to be doing; no mistake of that. ‘But then,’
asked the hell-like voice, ‘how long is John likely to stand it?’
Anxiety the Fourth: The Leather Business; or, The Shutters at Last: a
Tale of the City. On this head Morris had no news. He had not yet dared
to visit the family concern; yet he knew he must delay no longer, and
if anything had been wanted to sharpen this conviction, Michael’s
references of the night before rang ambiguously in his ear. Well and
good. To visit the city might be indispensable; but what was he to do
when he was there? He had no right to sign in his own name; and, with
all the will in the world, he seemed to lack the art of signing with
his uncle’s. Under these circumstances, Morris could do nothing to
procrastinate the crash; and, when it came, when prying eyes began to be
applied to every joint of his behaviour, two questions could not fail to
be addressed, sooner or later, to a speechless and perspiring insolvent.
Where is Mr Joseph Finsbury? and how about your visit to the bank?
Questions, how easy to put!--ye gods, how impossible to answer! The man
to whom they should be addressed went certainly to gaol, and--eh! what
was this?--possibly to the gallows. Morris was trying to shave when this
idea struck him, and he laid the razor down. Here (in Michael’s words)
was the total disappearance of a valuable uncle; here was a time of
inexplicable conduct on the part of a nephew who had been in bad
blood with the old man any time these seven years; what a chance for a
judicial blunder! ‘But no,’ thought Morris, ‘they cannot, they dare not,
make it murder. Not that. But honestly, and speaking as a man to a man,
I don’t see any other crime in the calendar (except arson) that I don’t
seem somehow to have committed. And yet I’m a perfectly respectable man,
and wished nothing but my due. Law is a pretty business.’
With this conclusion firmly seated in his mind, Morris Finsbury
descended to the hall of the house in John Street, still half-shaven.
There was a letter in the box; he knew the handwriting: John at last!
‘Well, I think I might have been spared this,’ he said bitterly, and
tore it open.
Dear Morris [it ran], what the dickens do you mean by it? I’m in an
awful hole down here; I have to go on tick, and the parties on the spot
don’t cotton to the idea; they couldn’t, because it is so plain I’m in a
stait of Destitution. I’ve got no bedclothes, think of that, I must have
coins, the hole thing’s a Mockry, I wont stand it, nobody would. I would
have come away before, only I have no money for the railway fare. Don’t
be a lunatic, Morris, you don’t seem to understand my dredful situation.
I have to get the stamp on tick. A fact.
--Ever your affte. Brother,
J. FINSBURY
‘Can’t even spell!’ Morris reflected, as he crammed the letter in his
pocket, and left the house. ‘What can I do for him? I have to go to the
expense of a barber, I’m so shattered! How can I send anybody coins?
It’s hard lines, I daresay; but does he think I’m living on hot muffins?
One comfort,’ was his grim reflection, ‘he can’t cut and run--he’s got
to stay; he’s as helpless as the dead.’ And then he broke forth again:
‘Complains, does he? and he’s never even heard of Bent Pitman! If he had
what I have on my mind, he might complain with a good grace.’
But these were not honest arguments, or not wholly honest; there was a
struggle in the mind of Morris; he could not disguise from himself that
his brother John was miserably situated at Browndean, without news,
without money, without bedclothes, without society or any entertainment;
and by the time he had been shaved and picked a hasty breakfast at a
coffee tavern, Morris had arrived at a compromise.
‘Poor Johnny,’ he said to himself, ‘he’s in an awful box! I can’t
send him coins, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll send him the Pink
Un--it’ll cheer John up; and besides, it’ll do his credit good getting
anything by post.’
Accordingly, on his way to the leather business, whither he proceeded
(according to his thrifty habit) on foot, Morris purchased and
dispatched a single copy of that enlivening periodical, to which (in
a sudden pang of remorse) he added at random the Athenaeum, the
Revivalist, and the Penny Pictorial Weekly. So there was John set up
with literature, and Morris had laid balm upon his conscience.
As if to reward him, he was received in his place of business with good
news. Orders were pouring in; there was a run on some of the back stock,
and the figure had gone up. Even the manager appeared elated. As for
Morris, who had almost forgotten the meaning of good news, he longed to
sob like a little child; he could have caught the manager (a pallid
man with startled eyebrows) to his bosom; he could have found it in
his generosity to give a cheque (for a small sum) to every clerk in
the counting-house. As he sat and opened his letters a chorus of airy
vocalists sang in his brain, to most exquisite music, ‘This whole
concern may be profitable yet, profitable yet, profitable yet.’
To him, in this sunny moment of relief, enter a Mr Rodgerson, a
creditor, but not one who was expected to be pressing, for his
connection with the firm was old and regular.
‘O, Finsbury,’ said he, not without embarrassment, ‘it’s of course only
fair to let you know--the fact is, money is a trifle tight--I have some
paper out--for that matter, every one’s complaining--and in short--’
‘It has never been our habit, Rodgerson,’ said Morris, turning pale.
‘But give me time to turn round, and I’ll see what I can do; I daresay
we can let you have something to account.’
‘Well, that’s just where is,’ replied Rodgerson. ‘I was tempted; I’ve
let the credit out of MY hands.’
‘Out of your hands?’ repeated Morris. ‘That’s playing rather fast and
loose with us, Mr Rodgerson.’
‘Well, I got cent. for cent. for it,’ said the other, ‘on the nail, in a
certified cheque.’
‘Cent. for cent.!’ cried Morris. ‘Why, that’s something like thirty per
cent. bonus; a singular thing! Who’s the party?’
‘Don’t know the man,’ was the reply. ‘Name of Moss.’
‘A Jew,’ Morris reflected, when his visitor was gone. And what could a
Jew want with a claim of--he verified the amount in the books--a claim
of three five eight, nineteen, ten, against the house of Finsbury? And
why should he pay cent. for cent.? The figure proved the loyalty of
Rodgerson--even Morris admitted that. But it proved unfortunately
something else--the eagerness of Moss. The claim must have been wanted
instantly, for that day, for that morning even. Why? The mystery of Moss
promised to be a fit pendant to the mystery of Pitman. ‘And just when
all was looking well too!’ cried Morris, smiting his hand upon the desk.
And almost at the same moment Mr Moss was announced.
Mr Moss was a radiant Hebrew, brutally handsome, and offensively polite.
He was acting, it appeared, for a third party; he understood nothing of
the circumstances; his client desired to have his position regularized;
but he would accept an antedated cheque--antedated by two months, if Mr
Finsbury chose.
‘But I don’t understand this,’ said Morris. ‘What made you pay cent. per
cent. for it today?’
Mr Moss had no idea; only his orders.
‘The whole thing is thoroughly irregular,’ said Morris. ‘It is not the
custom of the trade to settle at this time of the year. What are your
instructions if I refuse?’
‘I am to see Mr Joseph Finsbury, the head of the firm,’ said Mr Moss.
‘I was directed to insist on that; it was implied you had no status
here--the expressions are not mine.’
‘You cannot see Mr Joseph; he is unwell,’ said Morris.
‘In that case I was to place the matter in the hands of a lawyer. Let
me see,’ said Mr Moss, opening a pocket-book with, perhaps, suspicious
care, at the right place--‘Yes--of Mr Michael Finsbury. A relation,
perhaps? In that case, I presume, the matter will be pleasantly
arranged.’
To pass into the hands of Michael was too much for Morris. He struck his
colours. A cheque at two months was nothing, after all. In two months
he would probably be dead, or in a gaol at any rate. He bade the manager
give Mr Moss a chair and the paper. ‘I’m going over to get a cheque
signed by Mr Finsbury,’ said he, ‘who is lying ill at John Street.’
A cab there and a cab back; here were inroads on his wretched capital!
He counted the cost; when he was done with Mr Moss he would be left with
twelvepence-halfpenny in the world. What was even worse, he had now been
forced to bring his uncle up to Bloomsbury. ‘No use for poor Johnny
in Hampshire now,’ he reflected. ‘And how the farce is to be kept up
completely passes me. At Browndean it was just possible; in Bloomsbury
it seems beyond human ingenuity--though I suppose it’s what Michael
does. But then he has accomplices--that Scotsman and the whole gang. Ah,
if I had accomplices!’
Necessity is the mother of the arts. Under a spur so immediate, Morris
surprised himself by the neatness and dispatch of his new forgery, and
within three-fourths of an hour had handed it to Mr Moss.
‘That is very satisfactory,’ observed that gentleman, rising. ‘I was to
tell you it will not be presented, but you had better take care.’
The room swam round Morris. ‘What--what’s that?’ he cried, grasping the
table. He was miserably conscious the next moment of his shrill tongue
and ashen face. ‘What do you mean--it will not be presented? Why am I to
take care? What is all this mummery?’
‘I have no idea, Mr Finsbury,’ replied the smiling Hebrew. ‘It was a
message I was to deliver. The expressions were put into my mouth.’
‘What is your client’s name?’ asked Morris.
‘That is a secret for the moment,’ answered Mr Moss. Morris bent toward
him. ‘It’s not the bank?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘I have no authority to say more, Mr Finsbury,’ returned Mr Moss. ‘I
will wish you a good morning, if you please.’
‘Wish me a good morning!’ thought Morris; and the next moment, seizing
his hat, he fled from his place of business like a madman. Three streets
away he stopped and groaned. ‘Lord! I should have borrowed from the
manager!’ he cried. ‘But it’s too late now; it would look dicky to go
back; I’m penniless--simply penniless--like the unemployed.’
He went home and sat in the dismantled dining-room with his head in his
hands. Newton never thought harder than this victim of circumstances,
and yet no clearness came. ‘It may be a defect in my intelligence,’ he
cried, rising to his feet, ‘but I cannot see that I am fairly used. The
bad luck I’ve had is a thing to write to The Times about; it’s enough to
breed a revolution. And the plain English of the whole thing is that I
must have money at once. I’m done with all morality now; I’m long past
that stage; money I must have, and the only chance I see is Bent Pitman.
Bent Pitman is a criminal, and therefore his position’s weak. He must
have some of that eight hundred left; if he has I’ll force him to go
shares; and even if he hasn’t, I’ll tell him the tontine affair, and
with a desperate man like Pitman at my back, it’ll be strange if I don’t
succeed.’
Well and good. But how to lay hands upon Bent Pitman, except by
advertisement, was not so clear. And even so, in what terms to ask a
meeting? on what grounds? and where? Not at John Street, for it would
never do to let a man like Bent Pitman know your real address; nor yet
at Pitman’s house, some dreadful place in Holloway, with a trapdoor
in the back kitchen; a house which you might enter in a light summer
overcoat and varnished boots, to come forth again piecemeal in a
market-basket. That was the drawback of a really efficient accomplice,
Morris felt, not without a shudder. ‘I never dreamed I should come to
actually covet such society,’ he thought. And then a brilliant idea
struck him. Waterloo Station, a public place, yet at certain hours of
the day a solitary; a place, besides, the very name of which must knock
upon the heart of Pitman, and at once suggest a knowledge of the latest
of his guilty secrets. Morris took a piece of paper and sketched his
advertisement.
WILLIAM BENT PITMAN, if this should meet the eye of, he will hear of
SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE on the far end of the main line departure
platform, Waterloo Station, 2 to 4 P.M., Sunday next.
Morris reperused this literary trifle with approbation. ‘Terse,’ he
reflected. ‘Something to his advantage is not strictly true; but it’s
taking and original, and a man is not on oath in an advertisement.
All that I require now is the ready cash for my own meals and for the
advertisement, and--no, I can’t lavish money upon John, but I’ll give
him some more papers. How to raise the wind?’
He approached his cabinet of signets, and the collector suddenly
revolted in his blood. ‘I will not!’ he cried; ‘nothing shall induce me
to massacre my collection--rather theft!’ And dashing upstairs to the
drawing-room, he helped himself to a few of his uncle’s curiosities:
a pair of Turkish babooshes, a Smyrna fan, a water-cooler, a musket
guaranteed to have been seized from an Ephesian bandit, and a pocketful
of curious but incomplete seashells.