This etext was transcribed by Les Bowler
A SON
OF THE STATE
* * * * *
BY
W. PETT RIDGE
AUTHOR OF “MORD EM’LY,” ETC.
* * * * *
METHUEN AND CO.
36, ESSEX STREET, W.C.
LONDON
1902
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
THE round white September moon lighted up Pitfield Street from end to
end, making the gas lights in the shop windows look abashed and
unnecessary; out in the Old Street triangle, men on the wooden seats who
had good eyesight read halfpenny evening papers as though it were day,
able without trouble to make record in knowing-looking pocket-books of
the running of Ormonde. At the Hoxton Theatre of Varieties, the early
crowd streamed out into Pitfield Street flushed with two hours of joy for
twopence, and the late crowd which had been waiting patiently for some
time at the doors, flowed in. When these two crowds had disappeared, the
Old Street end of Pitfield Street belonged once more to the men and women
who were shopping, and at the obtrusive fruiterer’s (with a shop that
bulged almost to the kerb and a wife whose size was really beyond all
reason), even there one could just pass without stepping into the road.
Further up the street, outside a public-house, was, however, another
crowd blocking the pathway, and this crowd overflowed into the dim
passage by the side of the public-house, where it looked up at a lighted
room on the first floor with an interest ungenerously repaid by the back
view of a few heads. A grown-up crowd, mainly of middle-aged women.
Children had given up efforts to belong to it, and down the passage,
which was as the neck of a bottle leading into a court quite six feet
wide, youngsters shouted and sang and quarrelled and played at games.
From the direction of the other end came a short acute-faced boy with a
peakless cap, a worn red scarf tied very tightly around his neck. He had
both hands in the pockets of a jacket which was too large for him; he
smoked the fag-end of a cigar with the frowning air of a connoisseur who
is not altogether well pleased with the brand. He stopped, signalled
with a jerk of his head to a slip of a girl who was disputing for the
possession of an empty lobster can, with the vigour that could not have
been exceeded if the lobster can had been a jewel case of priceless
value; she retired at once from the struggle, and, pulling at her
stocking, ran towards him.
“Where’s all the chaps?” he asked, removing the cigar stump from his
lips.
“Where’ve you bin, Bobbie Lancaster?” she asked, without replying to his
question.
“You ’eard what I asted you, Trix,” he said, steadily. “I asted you
where all the chaps was.”
“Some of ’em have gone over ’Ackney way,” said the slip of a girl.
“Where’ve you bin?”
He flicked the black ash from the fag end in the manner of one five times
his age.
“’Opping!” he said.
“You’re a liar!” retorted the small girl, sharply.
“Ho!” said the boy. “Shows what you know about it.”
“No, but,” she said, admiringly, “’ave you though, straight?”
“I’ve bin at Yaldin’,” he said, with immeasurable importance,—“at Yaldin’
down in Kent for ite days. Me and another chap.”
“Bin ’ome?” asked the girl, with interest.
“Not yet,” he said. “When I do I shall ’ave to take a drop of something
in for the old gel. I went off wifout letting her know and I expect
she’s been wonderin’ what’s become of me.”
“Then if you ain’t bin ’ome,” said the little girl, breathlessly, “p’raps
you don’t—”
A strong voice called from a doorway.
“Trixie Bell! Trixie Bell! You come in this minute and look after the
shop, you good-for-nothing little terror.”
“I must be off,” said the small girl, going hurriedly. “Wait ’ere till I
come out again and I’ll tell you somefing.”
“I don’t waste my time loafin’ about for gels,” said Master Lancaster, as
the girl disappeared in a doorway. “Ketch me!”
He sauntered down the court towards Pitfield Street and, noting the
crowd, slightly increased his pace. Taking a shilling from his coat
pocket he tied it in a blue handkerchief and stuffed the handkerchief
inside his waistcoat, being aware apparently that it is in a London crowd
that property sometimes changes hands in the most astonishing manner.
“Very well then,” said a fiery faced woman, who, getting the worst of an
argument, was looking around for another subject, “if you did ’ave an
uncle who was drowned, that’s no reason why you should step on this
little kid’s toes.”
“Born clumsy!” agreed Master Lancaster, resentfully rubbing his boot.
“Stand a bit aside, can’t you, and let the youngster pass. ’Aving a
uncle who was in the navy don’t entitle you to take up all the room.
“Likely as not the little beggar’s a witness and wants to go upstairs.”
The fiery faced woman looked down at the boy. “Are you a witness, dear?”
“Course I’m a witness,” he said, readily.
“What did I tell you?” exclaimed the beefy faced woman with triumph.
“Constable, ’ere ’s a witness that ’s got to be got upstairs. Make way
for him, else he’ll get hisself in a row for being late.”
Whereupon, to his great amazement and satisfaction, Master Bobbie
Lancaster found himself passed along through the thick crowd of matrons
to the swing doors of the public-house; the importance of his mission
being added to by every lady, so that when at last he reached the two
policemen guarding the stairs he was introduced to them as a boy who saw
the accident; could identify the driver, could, in short, clear up
everything. Bobbie, accordingly, after being cuffed by the two policemen
(more from force of habit than any desire to treat him harshly), was shot
up the staircase past a window where, glancing aside, he saw the bunches
of excited interested faces below; past a landing, and, the door being
left momentarily unattended, he slipped into the room. He gave up
instantly his newly gained character and crouched modestly in a corner
behind the thirty members of the general public and kept his head well
down.
“Now, now, now! Do let ’s proceed in order. Is there any other witness
who can throw any light on the affair? What?”
The club room of the public-house, with cider and whiskey advertisements
on its brown papered walls, was long and narrow, and the stout genial man
seated at the end of the table had command of the room from his position.
He gave his orders to a bare-headed sergeant who hunted for witnesses and
submitted the results at the other end of the long table; he smiled when
he turned to the twelve moody gentlemen at the side of the table; to one,
at the extreme end, who had a carpenter’s rule in his breast pocket he
was especially courteous. The carpenter made laborious notes with a flat
lead pencil on a slip of blue paper, a proceeding at which the other
members of the jury grunted disdainfully. Bobbie Lancaster, between the
arms of two men in front of him, caught sight momentarily of the woman
whom the sergeant had caught and who was now kissing the Testament. He
recognised her as a neighbour.
“What does she say her name is, sergeant?”
“Mary Jane Rastin, sir.”
“Mary Jane Rastin.” The coroner wrote the name. “Very good! Now, Mrs.
Rastin—”
“’Alf a minute,” interrupted the carpenter. “Let me get this down right.
W—r—a—”
“W be blowed,” said the blowsy woman at the end of the table indignantly.
“Don’t you know how to spell a simple name like Rastin? Very clear you
was before the days of the School Board.”
“I have it down,” said the coroner, suavely, “R—a—s—t—i—n.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Rastin, in complimentary tones, “you’re a gentleman, sir.
You’ve had an education. You ain’t been dragged up like—”
“Be careful what you’re saying of,” begged the carpenter, fiercely.
“Don’t you go aspersing my character, if you please. I’m setting ’ere
now to represent the for and—”
“Now, now, my dear sir,” said the coroner, “don’t quarrel with the
witness.” He smiled cheerfully at the other members of the jury and
almost winked. “That’s my prerogative, you know.” He turned to the
trembling lady at the end of the table. “Now, Mrs. Rastin, you live in
Pimlico Walk, and you are, I believe, a widow?” Mrs. Rastin bowed
severely, and then looked at the carpenter as who should say, What do you
make of that, my fine fellow? The coroner went on. “And you knew the
deceased?”
“Intimate, sir!”
“Was she a woman with—er, inebriate tendencies?”
“Pardon, sir?”
“I say was she a woman who had a weakness for alcohol?”
The sergeant interpreted, “Did she booze?”
“She liked her glass now and again, sir,” said Mrs. Rastin, carefully.
“That is rather vague,” remarked the coroner. “What does ’now and again’
mean?”
“Well, sir,” said Mrs. Rastin, tying the ribbons of her rusty bonnet into
a desperate knot, “what I mean to say is whenever she had the chance.”
“You were with her before the accident?”
“I were!”
“You had been drinking together?”
“Well, sir,” said Mrs. Rastin, impartially, and untying her
bonnet-strings, “scarcely what you’d call drinking. It was like this.
It were the anniversary of my weddin’ day, and, brute as Rastin always
was, and shameful as he treated all my rel’tives in the way of borrowin’,
still it’s an occasion that comes, as I say, only once a year, and it
seems wicked not to take a little something special, if it’s only a drop
of—”
“And after you had been together some time, you walked along Haberdasher
Street to East Street.”
“With the view, sir,” explained Mrs. Rastin, “of ’aving a breath of fresh
air before turning in.”
“Was the deceased the worse for drink?”
“Oh, no, sir! No, nothing of the kind.” Mrs. Rastin was quite emphatic.
“She felt much the better for it. She said so.”
A corroborative murmur came from the crowd behind which Bobbie was
hiding; one of the endorsements sounded so much like the tones of his
mother that he edged a little further away. He had become interested in
the proceedings, and after the great good fortune of getting into the
room, he did not want to be expelled by an indignant parent.
“How was it you did not see the omnibus coming along?”
“Just one query I should like to ask first,” interposed the carpenter,
holding up his left hand with a dim remembrance of school etiquette.
“What time was all this?”
“Six o’clock, as near as I can remember,” snapped Mrs. Rastin.
“Six o’clock in the morning?” asked the carpenter, writing.
“No, pudden head,” said Mrs. Rastin, contemptuously. “Six o’clock in the
evening. Why don’t you buy a new pair of ears and give another twopence
this time and get a good—All right, sir.” To the coroner. “I’ll answer
your question with pleasure. I know when I’m speaking to gentlemen, and
I know when I’m talking to pigs.” Mrs. Rastin glanced triumphantly at
the carpenter, and the carpenter looked appealingly at his unsympathetic
colleagues in search of support. “We was standing on the kerb as I might
be ’ere. Over there, as it might be, where the young man in glasses is
that’s connected with the newspaper, was a barrer with sweetstuff. ‘Oh!’
she says all at once, ‘I must get some toffee,’ she says, ‘for my little
boy ’gainst he comes ’ome,’ she says. With that, and before I could so
much as open me mouth to say ‘Mind out!’ the poor deer was ’alf way
across the road; the ’bus was on her and down she went. I cuts across to
her”—Mrs. Rastin wept, and Bobbie could hear responsive sobs from the
women near him—“I cuts across to her, and she says. ‘I—I never got the
sweets for him,’ she says. Thinking of her—of her little boy right at
the last; you understand me, sir! And the constable off with his cape
and put it under her ’ead, and she just turned, and,” Mrs. Rastin wept
bitterly, “and it was all over.” Mrs. Rastin patted her eyes with a
deplorable handkerchief. “‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I never got them sweets—’”
“Pardon me!” said the carpenter. “Did you make a note of them words at
the time? What I mean to say is, did you write ’em down on paper?”
“Not being,” said Mrs. Rastin, swallowing, her head shivering with
contempt, and speaking with great elaboration, “not being a clever
juggins with a miserable twopenny ’apenny business as joiner and
carpenter in ’Oxton Street, and paying about a penny in the pound, if
that, I did not write them words down on paper.”
“Ho!” said the carpenter, defiantly. “Then you ought to ’ave.”
Mrs. Rastin was allowed to back from the end of the table and to take a
privileged seat on a form where she had for company the witnesses who had
already given evidence. These were an anxious ’bus driver, a constable
of the G Division, and a young doctor from the hospital. The sergeant
went hunting again in the crowd, and this time captured what appeared to
be a small girl, but proved to be a tiny specimen of a mature woman.
Bobbie Lancaster, dodging to get a sight of her, chuckled as he
recognized Miss Threepenny (so called from some fancied resemblance to
that miniature coin), a little person whom he had not infrequently
derided and chased.
“I really don’t know that we want any more evidence, sergeant,” remarked
the coroner. “What do you say, gentlemen?”
Eleven of the gentlemen replied that they had had ample; the carpenter
waited until they had stated this, and then decided that the little
woman’s evidence should be heard. Miss Threepenny, stepping on tiptoe,
her hands folded on the handle of a rib-broken umbrella that was for her
absurdly long, explained that she saw the accident, being then on her way
home from her work at a theatrical costumier’s in Tabernacle Street.
“I was on the point of crossing the road, your worship,” said the tiny
woman in her shrill voice, “jest ’esitatin’ on the kerb, when I see the
’bus coming along, and I says to myself, ‘I’ll wait till this great
’ulking thing goes by,’ I says, ‘and then I’ll pop across.’ The
thought,” said Miss Threepenny, dramatically, “had no sooner entered my
mind than across the road runs the poor creature, under the ’orses’ ’eels
she goes, and I,—well, I went off into a dead faint.”
The mite of a creature looked round the room as though anticipating
commendation for her appropriate behaviour.
“And you agree with the other witnesses, my good little girl, that—”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Miss Threepenny, with great dignity, “I’m not a
good little girl; I’m a grown-up woman of thirty-three.”
“Thirty what?” asked the carpenter, his pencil ready to record facts.
“Thirty-three,” she repeated, sharply.
A confirmatory murmur came from the crowd of women at the back of the
room. The sergeant told the women to be quiet.
“My mistake,” said the coroner, politely, and waving aside the
incredulous carpenter. “The point is—you think it was an accident, don’t
you, madam?”
“It were an accident,” said Miss Threepenny, looking round and fixing the
nervous ’bus driver with her bright, black little eyes, “that would never
have happened if drivers on ’busses was to attend to their business
instead of having their heads turned and carrying on conversation with
long silly overgrown gels riding on the front seat.”
The little woman, having made this statement, kissed the Testament again
as though to make doubly sure, and, with an air of dignity that no
full-grown woman would ever have dared to assume, trotted off to take her
seat next the ’bus driver. On the ’bus driver whispering something
viciously behind his hand, Miss Threepenny replied with perfect calm in
an audible voice that it was no use the ’bus driver flirting with her,
for she was a strict Wesleyan.
The carpenter’s obstinacy necessitated the clearing of the court now that
the time had arrived for the jury to consider their verdict, and Master
Lancaster, much to his annoyance, found himself borne out of the room in
the middle of the crowd of women. He doubted the probability of getting
back into the room to hear the verdict, because it seemed scarce likely
that he would again have the good luck to slip in unobserved by the
policeman at the door. He went to the first landing and looked out on
the upturned faces in the court below. A long youth with pince-nez, who
had been taking notes upstairs, came down, and, in opening an evening
paper, brushed unintentionally against Bobbie’s face.
“That’s my dial,” said the boy, truculently, “when you’ve done with it.”
“I’m sorry,” said the young reporter.
“You’re clumsy,” said Bobbie.
“What are you doing at an affair of this kind?”
“Answerin’ silly questions what are put to me.” The reporter laughed,
and, striking a match, lighted a cigarette. “After you,” said Bobbie,
producing another fag-end of a cigar, “after you with the match.”
“Like smoking?” asked the young man.
“Perfect slive to it,” said the boy, puffing the smoke well away in a
manner that belied the assertion.
“Queer little beggar!” said the young man. “Where d’you live?”
“’Ome!” said the boy, promptly. “Where d’you think, cloth-head?”
“Strictly speaking,” remarked the youth, with good humour, “my name is
not cloth-head. My name is Myddleton West.”
“Can you sleep a-nights?” asked the boy, “with a name like that?”
“Myddleton West, journalist, of 39, Fetter Lane, Holborn. Now tell me
yours.”
The boy complied reluctantly. With decreasing hesitation he gave further
particulars.
“I’ll do a sketch about you,” said Myddleton West, looking down at the
boy. “‘The Infant of Hoxton’ I think I’ll call it.”
“Going to put some’ing about me in the paper?” asked the boy, with
undisguised interest, and discarding entirely his attitude of defiance.
“If they’ll take it. There is at times a certain coyness on the part of
editors—”
The boy suddenly started. He touched the brass rod, and flew downstairs
with so much swiftness that he reached the court before Myddleton West
had discovered his absence. West looked up and saw the constable
descending to call him back to the room; the reason for Bobbie
Lancaster’s flight became obvious.
The boy slipped eel-like through the crowd of women at the doorway, and
presently reached moonlight and Hoxton Street, where he drifted
intuitively to the outside of the theatre. It gratified him exceedingly
as he felt the shilling in his knotted handkerchief, to think that he
might, if he were so minded—the hour being now half-past eight—go in at
half price, and seating himself in the stage box, witness the last three
acts of “Foiled by a Woman.” He laughed outright as, standing near the
lamps, he looked in at the swing doors of the principal entrance and
imagined the astonishment of those in the three-penny gallery, high up on
the top of the mountain of faces within, were they to see him enter
importantly the box at the right of the stage and survey with lordly air
the crowded, heated, interested house. How they would roar at him if he
were to stick a penny in his eye and, carefully stroking an imaginary
moustache, say, “Bai Jove! What people!” It would not be the first time
that he had amused a crowd; once at a fire in Shoreditch he had put on a
paper helmet, pretending to be chief of the fire brigade, and a matron in
the crowd, watching him, had been so exceptionally amused at his antics
that she had had to be unlaced and dragged home by solicitous lady
friends. The boy resisted the temptations of the enticing placards, for
he had already decided on the manner in which the shilling was to be
expended; the recollection of this made him think of home. There would
be some argument, he knew, with his mother concerning his long absence,
but, once the first storm was over, sunshine would come, and a small
flask and sausages would make her content.
He stepped in at the dark open doorway of his home, and went upstairs.
At the end of the passage on the ground floor a smelly oil lamp diffused
scent, but not light; it served only to accentuate the blackness. The
boy knew the stairs well, and dodging the hole on the fifth stair and
stepping over the eighth—the eighth was a practical joke stair, and if
you stepped on its edge it instantly stood up and knocked your leg—he
piloted himself adroitly on the landing. There were voices in the back
room.
“Comp’ny!” said Bobbie. “So much the better.”
He pushed the door and entered. Two women in a corner, examining the
contents of a crippled chest of drawers by the aid of a candle, looked
affrightedly over their shoulders.
“Ullo!” said Bobbie. “What’s your little game?”
“You give us quite a turn, Bobbie,” said Mrs. Rastin nervously, “coming
in so quiet. Where ’ave you bin all this time, deer?”
“Where’s the old gel?” asked Bobbie, taking his parcels from his pocket.
“Where’s she got to?”
“’Eaven,” said Mrs. Rastin’s friend, trying to close the drawer.
“Don’t try to be funny,” advised the boy, “you can’t do it well, and
you’d better be ’alf leave it alone. How long ’fore she’ll be in?”
“You ’aven’t ’eard, deer,” said Mrs. Rastin, coming forward and taking
the flask from him absently. “Your poor mother’s bin run over and we’ve
jest bin ’olding her inquest.”
Bobbie Lancaster sat down on the wooden chair and blinked stupidly at the
two women.
“And was that—was that my old gel that you give evidence about jest now
up at the—”
“Yes, Bobbie. That was your poor dear mother, and a lovinger heart never
breathed. Not in this world at any rate.” Mrs. Rastin uncorked the
flask and sniffed at it. “But you must cheer up, you know, because it
was to be, and all flesh is grass, and we shall meet, please God—” Mrs.
Rastin took a sip.
“And there’s many a kid,” chimed in the other neighbour, “that’s just as
bad off as you, my lad, losing both their parents, and you mustn’t think
you’re the only one, ye know. You want a glass, Mrs. Rastin.”
The boy did not cry. His mouth twitched slightly, and he frowned as
though endeavouring to understand clearly the position of affairs.
“Old man died,” he said slowly, “soon after I was born, and now the old
gel’s gone.”
“Yes, Bobby! Run and get a lump of sugar, Mrs. What-is-it, out of my
caddy.”
“So,” said the boy, “it ’mounts to this. I ain’t got no fawther and I
ain’t got no mother.”
“That’s about it, Bobbie.”
The boy jerked his chin and commenced to unlace his boots rather
fiercely.
“Dem bright look out for me,” he said.