The foul and foggy night of early February was descending, some weeks
after the scene in the Cockpit, on the river and the town. Night was
falling from the heavens; or rather, night seemed to be rising from the
earth--steamed up, black, from the dingy trampled snow of the streets,
and from the vapors that swam above the squalid houses. There was
coal-smoke and a taste of lucifer matches in the air. In the previous
night there had been such a storm as London seldom sees; the powdery,
flying snow had been blown for many hours before a tyrannous northeast
gale, and had settled down, like dust in a neglected chamber, over every
surface of the city. Drifts and “snow-wreathes,” as northern folk say,
were lying in exposed places, in squares and streets, as deep as they
lie when sheep are “smoored” on the sides of Sundhope or Penchrist in
the desolate Border-land. All day London had been struggling under her
cold winding-sheet, like a feeble, feverish patient trying to throw off
a heavy white counterpane. Now the counterpane was dirty enough. The
pavements were three inches deep in a rich greasy deposit of mud and
molten ice. Above the round glass or iron coverings of coal-cellars
the foot-passengers slipped, “ricked” their backs, and swore as they
stumbled, if they did not actually fall down, in the filth. Those who
were in haste, and could afford it, travelled, at fancy prices, in
hansoms with two horses driven tandem. The snow still lay comparatively
white on the surface of the less-frequented thoroughfares, with straight
shining black marks where wheels had cut their way.
At intervals in the day the fog had fallen blacker than night. Down by
the waterside the roads were deep in a mixture of a weak gray-brown or
coffee color. Beside one of the bridges in Chelsea, an open slope leads
straight to the stream, and here, in the afternoon--for a late start was
made--the carts of the Vestry had been led, and loads of slush that had
choked up the streets in the more fashionable parts of the town had been
unladen into the river. This may not be the most; scientific of sanitary
modes of clearing the streets and squares, but it was the way that
recommended itself to the wisdom of the Contractor. In the early evening
the fog had lightened a little, but it fell sadly again, and grew so
thick that the bridge was lost in mist half-way across the river, like
the arches of that fatal bridge beheld by Mirza in his Vision. The masts
of the vessels moored on the near bank disappeared from view, and only
a red lamp or two shone against the blackness of the hulks. From the
public-house at the corner--the _Hit or Miss_--streamed a fan-shaped
flood of light, soon choked by the fog.
Out of the muddy twilight of a street that runs at right angles to
the river, a cart came crawling; its high-piled white load of snow was
faintly visible before the brown horses (they were yoked tandem) came
into view. This cart was driven down to the water-edge, and was there
upturned, with much shouting and cracking of whips on the part of the
men engaged, and with a good deal of straining, slipping, and stumbling
on the side of the horses.
One of the men jumped down, and fumbled at the iron pins which kept the
backboard of the cart in its place.
“Blarmme, Bill,” he grumbled, “if the blessed pins ain’t froze.”
Here he put his wet fingers in his mouth, blowing on them afterward, and
smacking his arms across his breast to restore the circulation.
The comrade addressed as Bill merely stared speechlessly as he stood at
the smoking head of the leader, and the other man tugged again at the
pin.
“It won’t budge,” he cried at last. “Just run into the _Hit or Miss_ at
the corner, mate, and borrow a hammer; and you might get a pint o’ hot
beer when ye’re at it. Here’s fourpence. I was with three that found a
quid in the _Mac_,* end of last week; here’s the last of it.”
* A quid in the _Mac_--a sovereign in the street-scrapings.
called _Mac_ from Macadam, and employed as mortar in
building eligible freehold tenements.
He fumbled in his pocket, but his hands were so numb that he could
scarcely capture the nimble fourpence. Why should the “nimble fourpence”
have the monopoly of agility?
“I’m Blue Ribbon, Tommy, don’t yer know,” said Bill, with regretful
sullenness. His ragged great-coat, indeed, was decorated with the azure
badge of avowed and total abstinence.
“Blow yer blue ribbon! Hold on where ye are, and I’ll bring the bloomin’
hammer myself.”
Thus growling, Tommy strode indifferent through the snow, his legs
protected by bandages of straw ropes. Presently he reappeared in the
warmer yellow of the light that poured through the windows of the old
public-house. He was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, which
he then thrust into the deeps of his pockets, hugging a hammer to his
body under his armpit.
“A little hot beer would do yer bloomin’ temper a deal more good than
ten yards o’ blue ribbon at sixpence. Blue ruin’s more in _my_ line,”
observed Thomas, epigram-matically, much comforted by his refreshment.
Aid with two well-directed taps he knocked the pins out of their
sockets, and let down the backboard of the cart.
Bill, uncomforted by ale, sulkily jerked the horses forward; the
cart was tilted up, and the snow tumbled out, partly into the shallow
shore-water, partly on to the edge of the slope.
“Ullo!” cried Tommy suddenly. “E’re’s an old coat-sleeve a sticking out
o’ the snow.”
“‘Alves!” exclaimed Bill, with a noble eye on the main chance.
“‘Alves! of course, ‘alves. Ain’t we on the same lay,” replied the
chivalrous Tommy. Then he cried, “Lord preserve us, mate; _there’s a
cove in the coat!_”
He ran forward, and clutched the elbow of the sleeve which stood up
stiffly above the frozen mound of lumpy snow. He might well have thought
at first that the sleeve was empty, such a very stick of bone and skin
was the arm he grasped within it.
“Here, Bill, help us to dig him out, poor chap!”
“Is he dead?” asked Bill, leaving the horses’ heads.
“Dead! he’s bound to be dead, under all that weight. But how the dickens
did he get into the cart? Guess we didn’t shovel him in, eh; we’d have
seen him?”
By this time the two men had dragged a meagre corpse out of the snow
heap. A rough worn old pilot-coat, a shabby pair of corduroy trousers,
and two broken boots through which the toes could be seen peeping
ruefully, were all the visible raiment of the body. The clothes lay in
heavy swathes and folds over the miserable bag of bones that had once
been a tall man. The peaked blue face was half hidden by a fell of
iron-gray hair, and a grizzled beard hung over the breast.
The two men stood for some moments staring at the corpse. A wretched
woman in a thin gray cotton dress had come down from the bridge, and
shivered beside the body for a moment.
“He’s a goner,” was her criticism. “I wish _I_ was.”
With this aspiration she shivered back into the fog again, walking
on her unknown way. By this time a dozen people had started up from
nowhere, and were standing in a tight ring round the body. The behavior
of the people was typical of London gazers. No one made any remark,
or offered any suggestion; they simply stared with all their eyes and
souls, absorbed in the unbought excitement of the spectacle. They were
helpless, idealess, interested and unconcerned.
“Run and fetch a peeler, Bill,” said Tommy at last.
“Peeler be hanged! Bloomin’ likely I am to find a peeler. Fetch him
yourself.”
“Sulky devil you are,” answered Tommy, who was certainly of milder
mood; whereas Bill seemed a most unalluring example of the virtue of
Temperance. It is true that he had only been “Blue Ribbon” since the end
of his Christmas bout--that is, for nearly a fortnight--and Virtue, a
precarious tenant, was not yet comfortable in her new lodgings.
Before Tommy returned from his quest the dusk had deepened into night
The crowd round the body in the pea-coat had grown denser, and it might
truly be said that “the more part knew not wherefore they had come
together.” The centre of interest was not a fight, they were sure,
otherwise the ring would have been swaying this way and that. Neither
was it a dispute between a cabman and his fare: there was no sound of
angry repartees. It might be a drunken woman, or a man in a fit, or a
lost child. So the outer circle of spectators, who saw nothing, waited,
and patiently endured till the moment of revelation should arrive.
Respectable people who passed only glanced at the gathering; respectable
people may wonder, but they never do find out the mystery within a
London crowd. On the extreme fringe of the mob were some amateurs who
had just been drinking in the _Hit or Miss_. They were noisy, curious,
and impatient.
At last Tommy arrived with two policeman, who, acting on his warning,
had brought with them a stretcher. He had told them briefly how the dead
man was found in the cart-load of snow.
Before the men in blue, the crowd of necessity opened. One of the
officers stooped down and flashed his lantern on the heap of snow where
the dead face lay, as pale as its frozen pillow.
“Lord, it’s old Dicky Shields!” cried a voice in the crowd, as the
peaked still features were lighted up.
The man who spoke was one of the latest spectators that had arrived,
after the news that some pleasant entertainment was on foot had passed
into the warm alcoholic air and within the swinging doors of the _Hit
or Miss_.
“You know him, do you?” asked the policeman with the lantern.
“Know him, rather! Didn’t I give him sixpence for rum when he tattooed
this here cross and anchor on my arm? Dicky was a grand hand at
tattooing, bless you: he’d tattooed himself all over!”
The speaker rolled up his sleeve, and showed, on his burly red forearm,
the emblems of Faith and Hope rather neatly executed in blue.
“Why, he was in the _Hit or Miss_,” the speaker went on, “no later nor
last night.”
“Wot beats me,” said Tommy again, as the policeman lifted the light
corpse, and tried vainly to straighten the frozen limbs, “Wot beats me
is how he got in this here cart of ours.”
“He’s light enough surely,” added Tommy; “but I warrant _we_ didn’t
chuck him on the cart with the snow in Belgrave Square.”
“Where do you put up at night?” asked one of the policemen suddenly. He
had been ruminating on the mystery.
“In the yard there, behind that there hoarding,” answered Tommy,
pointing to a breached and battered palisade near the corner of the
public-house.
At the back of this ricketty plank fence, with its particolored tatters
of damp and torn advertisements, lay a considerable space of waste
ground. The old houses that recently occupied the site had been pulled
down, probably as condemned “slums,” in some moment of reform, when
people had nothing better to think of than the housing of the poor.
There had been an idea of building model lodgings for tramps, with all
the latest improvements, on the space, but the idea evaporated when
something else occurred to divert the general interest. Now certain
sheds, with roofs sloped against the nearest walls, formed a kind of
lumber-room for the parish.
At this time the scavengers’ carts were housed in the sheds, or outside
the sheds when these were overcrowded. Not far off were stables for the
horses, and thus the waste ground was not left wholly unoccupied.
“Was this cart o’ yours under the sheds all night or in the open?” asked
the policeman, with an air of penetration.
“Just outside the shed, worn’t it, Bill?” replied Tommy.
Bill said nothing, being a person disinclined to commit himself.
“If the cart was outside,” said the policeman, “then the thing’s
plain enough. You started from there, didn’t you, with the cart in the
afternoon?”
“Ay,” answered Tommy.
“And there was a little sprinkle o’ snow in the cart?”
“May be there wos. I don’t remember one way or the other.”
“Then you _must_ be a stupid if you don’t see that this here cove,”
pointing to the dead man, “got drinking too much last night, lost
hisself, and wandered inside the hoarding, where he fell asleep in the
cart.”
“Snow do make a fellow bloomin’ sleepy,” one of the crowd assented.
“Well, he never wakened no more, and the snow had covered over his body
when you started with the cart, and him in it, unbeknown. He’s light
enough to make no difference to the weight. Was it dark when you
started?”
“One of them spells of fog was on; you could hardly see your hand,”
grunted Tommy.
“Well, then, it’s as plain as--as the nose on your face,” said the
policeman, without any sarcastic intentions. “That’s how it was.”
“Bravo, Bobby!” cried one of the crowd. “They should make you an
inspector, and set you to run in them dynamiting Irish coves.”
The policeman was not displeased at this popular tribute to his
shrewdness. Dignity forbade him, however, to acknowledge the compliment,
and he contented himself with lifting the two handles of the stretcher
which was next him. A covering was thrown over the face of the dead
man, and the two policemen, with their burden, began to make their way
northward to the hospital.
A small mob followed them, but soon dwindled into a tail of street boys
and girls. These accompanied the body till it disappeared from their
eyes within the hospital doors. Then they waited for half an hour or so,
and at last seemed to evaporate into the fog.
By this time Tommy and his mate had unharnessed their horses and taken
them to stable, the cart was housed (beneath the sheds this time), and
Bill had so far succumbed to the genial influences of the occasion as to
tear off his blue badge and follow Tommy into the _Hit or Miss_.
A few chance acquaintances, hospitable and curious, accompanied them,
intent on providing with refreshments and plying with questions the
heroes of so remarkable an adventure. It is true that they already knew
all Tommy and Bill had to tell; but there is a pleasure, in moments of
emotional agitation, in repeating at intervals the same questions, and
making over and again the same profound remarks. The charm of these
performances was sure to be particularly keen within the very walls
where the dead man had probably taken his last convivial glass, and
where some light was certain to be thrown, by the landlady or her
customers, on the habits and history of poor Dicky Shields.