"I saw you looking about, sir," he said, "but I could not make you hear.
You was looking the wrong side of the tent."
It was pleasant to find that his honest face had not belied him.
"It is very good of you," I said; "I had given up all hopes of seeing
you. Or," I added with a smile, "my seven pounds."
"Seven pun' ten," he corrected me; "you're forgetting your own thin 'un."
He handed me the money and went back to his stand.
On my way into the town I came across him again. A small crowd was
collected, thoughtfully watching a tramp knocking about a
miserable-looking woman.
Jack, pushing to the front, took in the scene and took off his coat in
the same instant.
"Now then, my fine old English gentleman," he sang out, "come and have a
try at me for a change."
The tramp was a burly ruffian, and I have seen better boxers than Jack.
He got himself a black eye, and a nasty cut over the lip, before he
hardly knew where he was. But in spite of that--and a good deal more--he
stuck to his man and finished him.
At the end, as he helped his adversary up, I heard him say to the fellow
in a kindly whisper:--
"You're too good a sort, you know, to whollop a woman. Why, you very
near give me a licking. You must have forgot yourself, matey."
The fellow interested me. I waited and walked on with him. He told me
about his home in London, at Mile End--about his old father and mother,
his little brothers and sisters--and what he was saving up to do for
them. Kindliness oozed from every pore in his skin.
Many that we met knew him, and all, when they saw his round, red face,
smiled unconsciously. At the corner of the High Street a pale-faced
little drudge of a girl passed us, saying as she slipped by
"Good-evening, Mr. Burridge."
He made a dart and caught her by the shoulder.
"And how is father?" he asked.
"Oh, if you please, Mr. Burridge, he is out again. All the mills is
closed," answered the child.
"And mother?"
"She don't get no better, sir."
"And who's keeping you all?"
"Oh, if you please, sir, Jimmy's earning something now," replied the
mite.
He took a couple of sovereigns from his waistcoat pocket, and closed the
child's hand upon them.
"That's all right, my lass, that's all right," he said, stopping her
stammering thanks. "You write to me if things don't get better. You
know where to find Jack Burridge."
Strolling about the streets in the evening, I happened to pass the inn
where he was staying. The parlour window was open, and out into the
misty night his deep, cheery voice, trolling forth an old-fashioned
drinking song, came rolling like a wind, cleansing the corners of one's
heart with its breezy humanness. He was sitting at the head of the table
surrounded by a crowd of jovial cronies. I lingered for a while watching
the scene. It made the world appear a less sombre dwelling-place than I
had sometimes pictured it.
I determined, on my return to London, to look him up, and accordingly one
evening started to find the little by-street off the Mile End Road in
which he lived. As I turned the corner he drove up in his dog-cart; it
was a smart turn-out. On the seat beside him sat a neat, withered little
old woman, whom he introduced to me as his mother.
"I tell 'im it's a fine gell as 'e oughter 'ave up 'ere aside 'im," said
the old lady, preparing to dismount, "an old woman like me takes all the
paint off the show."
"Get along with yer," he replied laughingly, jumping down and handing the
reins to the lad who had been waiting, "you could give some of the young
uns points yet, mother. I allus promised the old lady as she should ride
behind her own 'oss one day," he continued, turning to me, "didn't I,
mother?"
"Ay, ay," replied the old soul, as she hobbled nimbly up the steps,
"ye're a good son, Jack, ye're a good son."
He led the way into the parlour. As he entered every face lightened up
with pleasure, a harmony of joyous welcome greeted him. The old hard
world had been shut out with the slam of the front door. I seemed to
have wandered into Dickensland. The red-faced man with the small
twinkling eyes and the lungs of leather loomed before me, a large, fat
household fairy. From his capacious pockets came forth tobacco for the
old father; a huge bunch of hot-house grapes for a neighbour's sickly
child, who was stopping with them; a book of Henty's--beloved of boys--for
a noisy youngster who called him "uncle"; a bottle of port wine for a
wan, elderly woman with a swollen face--his widowed sister-in-law, as I
subsequently learned; sweets enough for the baby (whose baby I don't
know) to make it sick for a week; and a roll of music for his youngest
sister.
"We're a-going to make a lady of her," he said, drawing the child's shy
face against his gaudy waistcoat, and running his coarse hand through her
pretty curls; "and she shall marry a jockey when she grows up."
After supper he brewed some excellent whisky punch, and insisted upon the
old lady joining us, which she eventually did with much coughing and
protestation; but I noticed that she finished the tumblerful. For the
children he concocted a marvellous mixture, which he called an
"eye-composer," the chief ingredients being hot lemonade, ginger wine,
sugar, oranges, and raspberry vinegar. It had the desired effect.
I stayed till late, listening to his inexhaustible fund of stories. Over
most of them he laughed with us himself--a great gusty laugh that made
the cheap glass ornaments upon the mantelpiece to tremble; but now and
then a recollection came to him that spread a sudden gravity across his
jovial face, bringing a curious quaver into his deep voice.
Their tongues a little loosened by the punch, the old folks would have
sung his praises to the verge of tediousness had he not almost sternly
interrupted them.
"Shut up, mother," he cried at last, quite gruffly, "what I does I does
to please myself. I likes to see people comfortable about me. If they
wasn't, it's me as would be more upset than them."
I did not see him again for nearly two years. Then one October evening,
strolling about the East End, I met him coming out of a little Chapel in
the Burdett Road. He was so changed that I should not have known him had
not I overheard a woman as she passed him say, "Good-evening, Mr.
Burridge."
A pair of bushy side-whiskers had given to his red face an aggressively
respectable appearance. He was dressed in an ill-fitting suit of black,
and carried an umbrella in one hand and a book in the other.
In some mysterious way he managed to look both thinner and shorter than
my recollection of him. Altogether, he suggested to me the idea that he
himself--the real man--had by some means or other been extracted, leaving
only his shrunken husk behind. The genial juices of humanity had been
squeezed out of him.
"Not Jack Burridge!" I exclaimed, confronting him in astonishment.
His little eyes wandered shiftily up and down the street. "No, sir," he
replied (his tones had lost their windy boisterousness--a hard, metallic
voice spoke to me), "not the one as you used to know, praise be the
Lord."
"And have you given up the old business?" I asked.
"Yes, sir," he replied, "that's all over; I've been a vile sinner in my
time, God forgive me for it. But, thank Heaven, I have repented in
time."
"Come and have a drink," I said, slipping my arm through his, "and tell
me all about it."
He disengaged himself from me, firmly but gently. "You mean well, sir,"
he said, "but I have given up the drink."
Evidently he would have been rid of me, but a literary man, scenting
material for his stockpot, is not easily shaken off. I asked after the
old folks, and if they were still stopping with him.
"Yes," he said, "for the present. Of course, a man can't be expected to
keep people for ever; so many mouths to fill is hard work these times,
and everybody sponges on a man just because he's good-natured."
"And how are you getting on?" I asked.
"Tolerably well, thank you, sir. The Lord provides for His servants," he
replied with a smug smile. "I have got a little shop now in the
Commercial Road."
"Whereabouts?" I persisted. "I would like to call and see you."
He gave me the address reluctantly, and said he would esteem it a great
pleasure if I would honour him by a visit, which was a palpable lie.
The following afternoon I went. I found the place to be a pawnbroker's
shop, and from all appearances he must have been doing a very brisk
business. He was out himself attending a temperance committee, but his
old father was behind the counter, and asked me inside. Though it was a
chilly day there was no fire in the parlour, and the two old folks sat
one each side of the empty hearth, silent and sad. They seemed little
more pleased to see me than their son, but after a while Mrs. Burridge's
natural garrulity asserted itself, and we fell into chat.
I asked what had become of his sister-in-law, the lady with the swollen
face.
"I couldn't rightly tell you, sir," answered the old lady, "she ain't
livin' with us now. You see, sir," she continued, "John's got different
notions to what 'e used to 'ave. 'E don't cotten much to them as ain't
found grace, and poor Jane never did 'ave much religion!"
"And the little one?" I inquired. "The one with the curls?"
"What, Bessie, sir?" said the old lady. "Oh, she's out at service, sir;
John don't think it good for young folks to be idle."
"Your son seems to have changed a good deal, Mrs. Burridge," I remarked.
"Ay, sir," she assented, "you may well say that. It nearly broke my 'art
at fust; everythin' so different to what it 'ad been. Not as I'd stand
in the boy's light. If our being a bit uncomfortable like in this world
is a-going to do 'im any good in the next me and father ain't the ones to
begrudge it, are we, old man?"
The "old man" concurred grumpily.
"Was it a sudden conversion?" I asked. "How did it come about?"
"It was a young woman as started 'im off," explained the old lady. "She
come round to our place one day a-collectin' for somethin' or other, and
Jack, in 'is free-'anded way, 'e give 'er a five-pun' note. Next week
she come agen for somethin' else, and stopped and talked to 'im about 'is
soul in the passage. She told 'im as 'e was a-goin' straight to 'ell,
and that 'e oughter give up the bookmakin' and settle down to a
respec'ble, God-fearin' business. At fust 'e only laughed, but she
lammed in tracts at 'im full of the most awful language; and one day she
fetched 'im round to one of them revivalist chaps, as fair settled 'im.
"'E ain't never been his old self since then. 'E give up the bettin' and
bought this 'ere, though what's the difference blessed if I can see. It
makes my 'eart ache, it do, to 'ear my Jack a-beatin' down the poor
people--and it ain't like 'im. It went agen 'is grain at fust, I could
see; but they told him as 'ow it was folks's own fault that they was
poor, and as 'ow it was the will of God, because they was a drinkin',
improvident lot.
"Then they made 'im sign the pledge. 'E'd allus been used to 'is glass,
Jack 'ad, and I think as knockin' it off 'ave soured 'im a bit--seems as
if all the sperit 'ad gone out of 'im--and of course me and father 'ave
'ad to give up our little drop too. Then they told 'im as 'e must give
up smokin'- that was another way of goin' straight to 'ell--and that
ain't made 'im any the more cheerful like, and father misses 'is little
bit--don't ye, father?"
"Ay," answered the old fellow savagely; "can't say I thinks much of these
'ere folks as is going to heaven; blowed if I don't think they'll be a
chirpier lot in t'other place."
An angry discussion in the shop interrupted us. Jack had returned, and
was threatening an excited woman with the police. It seemed she had
miscalculated the date, and had come a day too late with her interest.
Having got rid of her, he came into the parlour with the watch in his
hand.
"It's providential she was late," he said, looking at it; "it's worth ten
times what I lent on it."
He packed his father back into the shop, and his mother down into the
kitchen to get his tea, and for a while we sat together talking.
I found his conversation a strange mixture of self-laudation, showing
through a flimsy veil of self-disparagement, and of satisfaction at the
conviction that he was "saved," combined with equally evident
satisfaction that most other people weren't--somewhat trying, however;
and, remembering an appointment, rose to go.
He made no effort to stay me, but I could see that he was bursting to
tell me something. At last, taking a religious paper from his pocket,
and pointing to a column, he blurted out:
"You don't take any interest in the Lord's vineyard, I suppose, sir?"
I glanced at the part of the paper indicated. It announced a new mission
to the Chinese, and heading the subscription list stood the name, "Mr.
John Burridge, one hundred guineas."
"You subscribe largely, Mr. Burridge," I said, handing him back the
paper.
He rubbed his big hands together. "The Lord will repay a hundredfold,"
he answered.
"In which case it's just as well to have a note of the advance down in
black and white, eh?" I added.
His little eyes looked sharply at me; but he made no reply, and, shaking
hands, I left him.