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.”