INTRODUCES A MERITORIOUS HEBREW
I had hardly time to open the window ere they were recovered of their
entry and on their feet. Seeing what I was about to attempt they made
a rush, but I did not bear youth and vigour in my limbs for nothing.
With a quickness that I'll warrant would have done no discredit to a
cat, I had poised myself on the precarious sill, and had twisted myself
into a favourable position for reaching the roof. It was easily in
reach, as this chamber very happily was at the top of the house. I had
barely taken a firm hold on the iron gutter that ran along the edge of
the tiles, before I had drawn up one knee, and was in the act of
dragging up the other as fast as I could, when it was seized by a hand
from the room below. Luckily for me, I had a firm enough hold of the
roof to get some little purchase for my imprisoned leg, whereby I was
enabled to deal my adversary a pretty smart kick in the teeth, which
sent him cursing back into the room. Thereupon I scrambled
willy-nilly, hands and knees, on to the tiles. Not one moment too
soon, however. My pursuers evidently numbered fleet and active fellows
among them. Their blood was up too. For scarcely had I gone ten yards
along the edge of the tiles, moving on all-fours for safety, ere
another fellow was also in possession of the roof. This was not at all
to my liking, and a good deal outside my calculations, since I had not
expected that these clumsy Bow Street runners would attempt to follow
me in this fashion.
My pursuer gave a view-halloa and followed me so fast that I realized
at once that at this game Jack was like to be as good as his master.
Perchance the fellow was better schooled in this mode of procedure than
I, for he was clattering behind me, preparing to grab my heels before I
could take my bearings. I did not know where I was, and had not the
least idea as to how I should get away. But one thing was plain. I
had embarked on so bold a course that the moment there was a limit to
my daring all would be lost. Therefore, hearing the Bow Street
gentleman wheezing and grunting a yard or two behind me, I stopped and
rose to my feet, and turned round so suddenly as considerably to
endanger my own safety and to take him entirely unawares. And I sent
my fist such a crack in his eye, that only a miracle saved him from
toppling over the parapet into the middle of Jermyn Street, twenty feet
beneath.
While Mr. Catchpole sprawled and wallowed with his arms and legs
outstretched striving to save himself from falling over the brink, and
howling to his mates, whose heads were just showing above the gutter,
to come to his assistance, I took the occasion to alter my tactics.
Instead of crawling along the edge, I began climbing up in a vertical
direction. And my pursuer being but a runner from Bow Street after
all, had been considerably cooled in his zeal, and accordingly allowed
me rather more of elbow room, whilst his companions, of whom two more
had now come upon the top, observing the nature of his accident, were
in no such hurry as he had been to come by one themselves.
I mounted painfully enough as high as the chimney pots, not without
some damage to the skin of my hands and knees, and a good deal of
slipping and sliding. A game of hide-and-seek followed. Reaching the
opposite slope of the roofs, which concealed me and put me farthest
away from the enemy, I crept as swiftly as I could from chimney-stack
to chimney-stack with ever a keen eye for a means of getting down again
into the street. Some yards ahead I saw that the straight line of the
tiles was broken by a dormer window. I made to this for here was the
very chance that I desired. Alas! when I reached it I found it secured
from within. I had no time in which to break a pane of glass in the
hope that I might put my hand through and discover the fastenings. A
couple of the traps had already found out in which direction I had
gone, and were even now standing on the apex, and beckoning to the
others. I moved away to another dormer window a few yards further on.
It too was fast, but looking ahead I saw, greatly to my relief, that a
third was standing open. My satisfaction had a short life, however.
For scarcely had I made two yards towards it ere I observed a thing
that in my haste I had overlooked. The line of the houses ended
abruptly; the open window belonged to another row. Between ran an
alley or a narrow street, wide enough to make me pause in my career.
Hard pressed as I was, I must confess that I had no fancy to attempt a
leap so precarious. I turned to go back, but the enemy had followed so
smartly on my heels that I saw in a glance that there was no chance of
retreating by the way I had come. My only hope lay in a forward
direction; I could not possibly retire. Nor must I hesitate an instant
either. The closer I came to this gulf in the houses the more
desperate it looked, but my resolve was already taken. A drowning man
clutches at a straw.
Impeded as I was with a cumbersome riding-coat, I could not hope to
make the leap successfully. Hastily pulling it off, therefore, I
folded it up in some rude fashion, for I could not afford to lose it,
and pitched it over a space between the houses. It landed in safety
well over the immediate brink. The traps, apprehending the nature of
the feat I was about to attempt, were coming along the roof with
wonderful expedition. Indeed, they are almost within an arm's-length
of me when I started on the run to make the leap. With teeth set, and
it must be confessed some little sickness of anticipation in my spirit,
I ran as hard as I could, and hurled myself into the air with a
despairing energy. That I covered the gulf and landed with my knees on
the coat I had cast across, I have always ascribed to that benevolent
Providence that hath such a jealous regard for the worthless. And in
sooth when I had actually arrived there it was one of the greatest
wonders in the world that I did not fall back again in the recoil, or
did not begin to roll sideways and so tumble over the lower edge. But
somehow I recovered my balance before either of these calamities
happened. Then I felt that I might breathe again.
There was precious little to fear that the men from Bow Street would be
bold enough to follow me. For when I came to contemplate, now as you
may believe with no little satisfaction, the magnitude of the hazard
intervening between us, it cost me a shudder in despite of my
complacency. And as in their case it was not a life and death matter
on which line of the roofs they happened to stand, and they had no
thoughts of adorable little Cynthia to spur them on to these great
risks, I think they may be pardoned for giving back before that which I
with so many sweats and misgivings had accomplished. Nor do I lay any
unction to myself, since I am sure that had I stood in their shoes, or
had I played for a lesser stake, I would have had none of such risks
either. Nay, I am not altogether clear in my mind that had I not been
heated by the fine excitements of the hue and cry I should have been
wrought up to do it as it was. There can be little doubt, I think,
that the chase makes a much nobler and more adventurous creature of the
fox than ever consists with his vulgar and common character.
Seeing my pursuers had halted on the opposite brink, and were
presenting such a helpless and bewildered appearance as plainly showed
they had no stomach for a similar deed, I was able to resume my riding
coat at my ease, and even to engage in a few words of conversation as I
did so. Says I:
"Certainly, gentlemen, I think you are well advised in not seeking to
come over. 'Pon my soul I would not have come over myself had you not
pressed me so hard! Here is a guinea to drink my health, and now I
will wish you good afternoon!"
Such is the power of habit that I fumbled in several pockets in search
of a gold piece to toss them, ere I recollected the bankrupt condition
in which I stood. Perforce I had to be content with a bow and a
lifting of the hat, whereupon I went my way along the roof while they
were left at the end of their wits to discover a means by which they
might circumvent me.
I had not an instant of time to lose, however, if I was to make good my
escape. There were doubtless persons in the street below who had had a
keen eye for these proceedings. No sooner would they see in which
direction the cat was to jump than they would act accordingly.
Therefore it behoved me to be as bold and as quick as ever. The open
dormer window offered the readiest mode of egress. I made to it at
once, and peering within saw that the chamber, a bedroom, was very
happily empty. I had no difficulty in squeezing my body through the
narrow opening and so came into the room. Having done this, I securely
fastened the window to present a further obstacle to my enemies. The
great thing that lay before me now was to make my way downstairs as
cautiously as I could, and to slip out of the house without attracting
the attention of its occupants, or of those of my foes who might be
lurking about in the street. But much address was required to perform
all this successfully, as you will readily understand.
First I opened the door of the bed-chamber with noiseless care, and
then groped my way through the gloom and strangeness of the place to
the stairs. And mighty rickety and full of noises they were when I
found them. They began so sheer and abruptly, and so close to the
bed-room door, that in spite of my caution, I was on them long ere I
thought I was, and as a consequence nearly pitched headlong down their
whole length. Mercifully I recovered my balance in the nick of time,
but not before, as it seemed to my nervous ears, I had set up an
intolerable clatter that appeared to echo and re-echo through every
room of the house. Step by step, I crept down the stairs, and paused
to listen on every one. It was so dark that I had to be very tenacious
of the walls. But fortune was still on my side. There seemed not a
soul in all the house, nor could I hear a sound. Yet every step I
descended the place grew darker and darker; there was not so much as a
glimmer of light from a door or a window to be discerned; while the
walls were so close about me that when I stretched out my hands I could
feel them on either side. Presently I ceased to descend, whereon much
shuffling of my feet ensued, and I concluded that this was some kind of
a landing. More shuffling and gingerly manoeuvring followed, and then
the stairs began again, and the place grew darker than ever. The
darkness became so great that I could not see my hand before my face;
and as I had not the means about me to procure a light, nor would have
dared to employ them had they been in my possession, I began to marvel
where in the world I was coming to.
At last the stairs ended altogether, and on pushing carefully forward,
my nose suddenly came against an unexpected obstacle. Running my hands
over it, I judged it to be a door. I put my ear to the wood, but
listen as I might I could hear no sound. Whither it led or what lay
behind it I had not the vaguest notion, nor was there a speck of light
by which I might make a guess. But when the handle of the door came
into my fist, I decided not to flinch the situation whatever it might
present. A bold course had been my salvation hitherto; come what might
I would continue in it. Therefore, I cautiously turned the handle, and
opened the door an inch at a time, I daresay I had got it about five
inches apart when it was rudely grasped from the other side, and flung
wide open in my face. A Jew stood before me, as true a child of Israel
as ever I set eyes on. He cast up his hands and gurgled in his anger
and surprise.
"Why, what the deffil!" says he at last.
"How do you do, sir," says I, cordially holding out my hand. "Proud to
meet you, sir, infernally proud to meet you."
Although I had hoped that my air and tone were the very pattern of
affability, I doubt if this Hebrew thought them so; or even if he did,
he hardly seemed to think they became me in the circumstances as
handsomely as I had hoped they would. For he gurgled and cackled, his
tawny countenance grew redder and redder, his hands trembled, and he
contorted his body into a truly fantastic shape. Meantime I gazed past
him to see whence he had emerged, in the hope that I might get some
clue as to what would be the best line of conduct to adopt. To my
infinite pleasure I saw that I had come upon the threshold of a
pawnbroker's shop, since a truly miscellaneous collection of articles
lay scattered about it, whilst the character and nation of my
inquisitor alone warranted the theory. Yet in an instant was my
satisfaction turned to anger, for there, staring into my very eyes with
all the meditative grandeur he had of yore, was that learned nobleman,
my grandfather. It was well for M. François that he was not at that
moment within my reach.
"What do you do here?" says the Jew, having discovered his tongue at
last. "Do you think I do not know? You haf come to rob my house.
Benjamin, bring your blunderbush. In broad daylight, too. O heaven,
what effrontery!"
"My dear Mr. Moses," says I winningly, "what words are these?
Effrontery--rob your house; to conceive that I, the best friend your
tribe ever had or for that matter ever will have, should be thus
accosted by you! I am here as a client, sir; and to conceive that you
of all men should deny a client when he takes these monstrous pains to
come to you in privacy!"
Mr. Moses was a good deal reassured by my address. But after all his
race are a good deal too tenacious to be put off so lightly. He
demanded to know in what manner I had come there and he did it so
boisterously too, and in a fashion so calculated to attract the
attention of persons in the street that I judged it wisest to make a
clean breast of how matters stood with me.
"Well, Mr. Moses," says I, "if you must know I am that great benefactor
of your tribe, Lord Tiverton. My lodgings are about six doors up the
street, and they have been visited this afternoon by the dirtiest set
of minions from Bow Street as ever I saw. And so hard was I put to it
to clear them that I took to the housetops, whereupon, seeing your
dormer window open, I gave them the slip by climbing into it, and here
I am. And mark you, my dear Mr. Moses, I would not so honour the
dormer windows of all and sundry, no, rabbit me an I would. For I am
mighty particular as to whose hands I would accept an obligation from.
But if a friend cannot take a benefaction from a friend, then who in
all the world is one to take it from? As Flaccus himself has said."
Mr. Moses, you may be sure, was mollified indeed.
"I am sure I beg your lordship's pardon," says he. "A thousand times
most humbly I am sure I do. Benjamin, put by your blunderbush; and
withdraw the curtains across the window, sirrah, for I have seen the
traps walking up and down the street, and peering here and there and
everywhere this last ten minutes; yes, that I have. Is there any
particular in which I can serve your lordship?"
"Yes, by thunder, that you can!" says I. "I must get away from here
unknown as quickly as you might count ten. The traps are still about
in the street you say?"
"See, my lord, there is one going past the window now."
As he spoke I took the precaution of drawing farther back into the
shadow of the stairs, for it was even as he said. The next instant Mr.
Moses pushed the door to in my face, and as he did so, wheeled round to
confront (as I guessed) two or three of the traps who were coming into
the shop.
"A sheeny, by the Lord!" I heard one say, in a voice so coarse that it
set my teeth on edge.
"What is your pleasure, good gentlemans?" says Mr. Moses in a tone of
incredible politeness. "If I, a poor old clo'es-dealer as I am, can be
of service to you, I cannot tell you how happy you will make me."
"Well, ole Father Abraham," says the foremost man, "we're on the 'eels
of a hearl, d'ye see. We've been a-chasing of him on the 'ouse-tops,
we have so, and he's just a-been a-squeedgin' of himself through your
dormer window, and he's left us in the lurch, d'ye see. He's in your
bed-room, you can wager, and we're a-going up to rout him out."
"Is he so?" says Mr. Moses. "God-a-mercy! is it possible? Benjamin,
get your blunderbush, and go and bring him down."
I was so charmed with the comedy that was being played, that at some
little risk I had opened just a small crevice in the door, in order
that I might peer through upon the actors. Benjamin, a youth about as
tall as the counter, but wonderfully keen and sharp of feature, put
himself in possession of an antiquated fire-arm, probably the most
obsolete weapon ever handed down from early times.
"Be damned to Benjamin," says the man from Bow Street, "and be damned
to his blunderbush; we're a-going up to look ourselves."
"And wherefore, gentlemans," says Moses in a tone like silk, it was so
soft, "should Benjamin and his blunderbush be damned? Benjamin is a
good boy, and his blunderbush is a good weapon. If this earl is in my
chamber, depend upon it one or the other shall bring him down."
"No; we'll go up ourselves, ole Shylock," says the other, "for this
hearl is so full of hell, that as likely as not he'd beat Benjamin to
death with his own blunderbush, crikey-likey! he would so."
"Nay, that he would not," says Mr. Moses, "for Benjamin would blow the
heart out of him, if he but advanced one step upon him."
Mr. Moses was evidently a master of fence, and determined as my enemies
might show themselves, they could make nothing of his subtle, cringing
ways. They might have excellent reasons for overhauling the house, and
going upstairs, as indeed they had, yet they had not the wit to enforce
them. For every additional argument he had a new excuse to advance,
which at least if it contributed nothing whatever to the case in point,
yet served to obscure the issue and to distract and confound those
concerned in it. It was truly remarkable how he managed to lure and
cheat them with the most specious words that could mean nothing
whatever; and yet at the same time, and therein lay his art, they
listened to him and never once seemed to doubt his sincerity. And it
seemed too that this cunning Hebrew had something of a trump card to
play, and this he had reserved for the last.
"An earl did ye say, sirs?" says he, with a vast air of reflection.
"It could not have been by any chance the Earl of Tiverton?"
"Yes, by thunder," they cried together, "the man himself."
"Well now, I call that whimsical," says he, "seeing as how I see his
lordship running at the top of his legs past this window not five
minutes before you came here."
"You did that," says one of my enemies, "then why in thunder couldn't
you say so before, instead o' keepin' us argle-hargling here, you piece
o' pork, you hedge-pig!"
With a stream of oaths and vituperation they tumbled out into the
street, whilst Mr. Moses, with his hands outspread and a cringing,
shrugging, smiling yet deprecating aspect, looked the picture of a
highly ingenuous bewilderment. No sooner had they passed away in the
hot pursuit of some phantom of myself, than Mr. Moses opened the door
he had pushed so lately upon me, and informed me that the immediate
danger was overpast. He waved away the thanks I offered him, with a
great deal of politeness, assuring me that he was more than repaid by
the happiness he took for having been of some slight service to so fine
a specimen of the nobility as myself.
"But if there is any leetle thing in the way of pizness," says he, "I
am the man, your lordship."
"Yes, Mr. Moses, I have been thinking of it," says I, and indeed I had.
"Now you see I am very tolerably attired." I unbuttoned my riding-coat
and threw it open to display as elegant a costume as ever I had from
Tracy. "Unhappily I have not a guinea in the world"--let me do Mr.
Moses the justice of recording that in the face of this announcement he
retained his countenance wonderfully well.--"But I will barter
breeches, coat, waistcoat, ruffles, stockings, buckled shoes, for a
plain drab shoddy suit, some common hose, and a pair of hob-nailed
boots. By this exchange I think we shall both be gratified; you on
your side by receiving things of about twelve times the value of what
you give away; and I on mine by obtaining a tolerable disguise to my
condition when I start on my itinerary, for I hardly think I should
recognize myself in such a uniform, whilst as for my mamma, dear
sainted buckram lady! if at the end of all the journeying that is
before me I come before the gates of Heaven in it, she will hold a
bottle of vinegar before her fine-cut nose, and say _c'est un faux
pas!_ and get me denied the _entrée_. She will ecod! for I would have
you to know, my dear Mr. Moses, I am of a devilish stiff-backed family.
Look at my grandfather. What a majestical old gentleman it is, even as
in his declining years he takes his ease in his pop-shop, with
christening mugs and dirty candlesticks about him on the one hand, and
saving your presence, Mr. Moses, a Jew dealer on the other. But there,
my good fellow, we will not talk about it."
Mr. Moses, seeing his advantage in this proposal--indeed he was so
excellent a fellow that had he not done so, I do not doubt he would
still have tried to accommodate me--fully entered into this idea, and
did his best to fish this chaste wardrobe out of the varied contents of
his shop. Indeed such hidden stores did it contain, that after the
contents of divers boxes, and cupboards, and back parlours, and
mysterious receptacles had been examined, the necessary articles were
forthcoming, and I was shown into one of the chambers leading from the
shop, in order to effect this change in my attire.
It would have made you laugh to see the figure I cut--my snuff-coloured
coat and pantaloons, fitting in most places where they touched, gave me
such a rustical appearance that an ostler or a tapster became a
gentleman by the comparison. The hose was rather better, however, but
the boots were not only the thickest and clumsiest as ever I saw, but
were much too big into the bargain. A hat was also found for me that
matched very well indeed with this startling change in my condition;
and a thick, coarse brown cover-all in lieu of the smart riding-coat I
had set out with. Mr. Moses certainly had as good a bargain as he
could have wished, but certainly not a better one than his merits
deserved; whilst I had come by the most effectual disguise to my
station, and one well calculated to mislead Sheriff's officers and Bow
Street runners, for in all my extended experience of the tribe they
have ever been clumsy fellows, blind of eye and thick of understanding,
incapable of seeing beyond the noses on their faces. With mutual
respect and pleasure, therefore, and many pious hopes for the welfare
of my grandfather, whom I was moved to say could not have been left in
more worthy hands, I took my leave of Mr. Moses. And seeing he was a
Jew, I must say that he was the best conditioned Jew as ever I met.
I took my way very cautiously on leaving the shop of my friend the
Hebrew. At first I kept well in the shadow of the houses and peered
carefully about. My enemies, however, appeared to be still away on the
false scent. The twilight of the autumn afternoon was gathering in as
I pursued my way towards little Cynthia. She was to have met me at the
gates of Hyde Park nearly an hour ago. As I turned into Piccadilly
without meeting with a sign of my enemies, for no reason whatever I was
suddenly stabbed with the pain of a most bitter speculation. Suppose
my little Cynthia was not there to meet me after all! Suppose I had
tarried so long that, fearing I was taken, she had gone from the
rendezvous! Suppose something unforeseen and mysterious had befallen
her, as such accidents occasionally do! In a flash I realized how
dear, how inexpressibly dear she was to me. If aught bereft me of her
now, she, the one friend I had, the one creature who believed in me,
worthless ruined fellow as I was, the one person who would dare to
stand at my side and face the sneers and the scorn of the world, life
would indeed have no savour left in it. I should neither have the
heart nor the desire to continue in that which would become a burden
and a mockery. And in sooth so did this terrible thought take hold of
me, that a kind of fatality came upon me. I began to have a sense of
foreboding, as they say one may have in a dream; I felt the blood grow
slow and thin in my limbs; I was taken with a cold shivering; and my
spirit flagged so low that I would have wagered a kingdom at that
moment that some dire circumstance had happened to my love, and even
more particularly to me.
In the very height of this fever of insane fears, I came to the end of
Piccadilly, and there in the increasing gloom of the evening were the
gates of Hyde Park. And there too, like a sentinel on guard, so proud
and strict she was of outline, was my little Cynthia. She stood there
all unconscious of the fact that the simple sight of her was enough in
itself to reconcile a ruined man to his empty life.