IN MULLINER'S RENTS
It was a hot, stifling summer day, and perhaps Whitechapel never looked
more grimy, more squalid, more sorrowful, perforce from its pathetic
contrast to the summer beauty of the skies.
The pavement was so hot that the heat seemed to rise up, flouting
itself in your very face.
In one particular alley, known as Mulliner's Rents, the heat seemed
almost tropical. Possibly the dense overcrowding of this quarter with
human life enhanced the burning sensation of the thick air breathed out
and breathed in again, unrefreshed, by multitudes of lungs. Here,
there, and everywhere human beings stood about idly. Groups of untidy
women, in twos and threes, gossiped; lazy men lolled against the
houses, smoking in sullen silence; and for every grown-up person there
were fully a dozen of squalid children playing, shouting, staring, and
squabbling with a vigour no heat could abate.
There was little traffic, so to say, in Mulliner's Rents; it was quite
select in that one single respect. Nothing on wheels penetrated the
unlovely quarter save a coster's barrow of fruit; unwholesome little
yellow pears and cruelly green apples of the lowest type of apple-kind
being the wares of the moment. It was truly a sad and sorrowful haunt,
this of the man-made town; and so it seemed to the two travellers fresh
from the God-made country--from the wholesome breezes of the _caller_
salt air of Northbourne--when they plunged into its midst.
'Courage, captain!' said Philip Price, when he noticed the blanching of
the elder man's brown face and the unutterable loathing of horror that
spoke out of every feature. 'We've got to put our shoulder to the
wheel, and leave no stone unturned to find Alick, and carry him out of
this pestilent hole.'
Philip Price, before his health broke down, had been for a few months
doing duty as curate in a still more squalid colony of human nests than
even this. When the sailor flinched, and hung back, Philip strode
forward, determined to conquer, unheeding the battery of stares turned
upon himself and his companion by the inhabitants, and the
free-and-easy comments, of which they were by no means chary.
Already the captain and Philip had that day spent many fruitless hours
in the search, when they hit on a fresh clue and an address in
Mulliner's Rents. But here, even, difficulties bristled, and the tide
of hopelessness was setting in upon both men when a wretched old crone
was dragged out of a public-house to confront them, with dazed eyes and
with a hateful odour of gin oozing from her whole person.
'Yes--well, yes,' she grudgingly admitted, in answer to the eager
questions of the searchers; 'I does know a boy down with fever. What
o' that? I ain't done no harm to him! He's 'ad the best I could
offer; and five shillin's don't go far when there's sickness,' she
ended, with a whimper, for she was maudlin with drink.
'Take us to that boy at once!' commanded Philip Price; for the
captain's agitation unmanned him for the moment.
The wretched woman, awed by Philip's tone, complied. Perhaps, also,
she obeyed, half in fear of the policeman, who had stepped up to join
the gentlemen, and half in hope of getting more silver to spend on more
drink.
Before half an hour was over Alick Carnegy was found. It was a
terrible shock to the captain to recognise his boy in the squalid,
dirty, delirious sufferer tossing wearily on a heap of sacks, on the
grimy floor of an attic at the top of an evil-smelling, dilapidated
house, to which the crone stumblingly conducted them.
'Merciful powers!' he groaned in dismayed horror.
'Hush!' enjoined Philip. 'Be as calm as you can. I believe the poor
little chap is off his head; but, if there's a gleam of consciousness,
it would send him over the precipice again to witness your agitation.'
There was small fear of the captain doing any further mischief; he was
stunned into helplessness, and stood mute, trying to force himself to
believe that the huddled heap of squalid misery was his very own
son--smart, manly-looking Alick Carnegy. Though the captain was thus
helpless, Philip Price seemed to know exactly what to do, and how to do
it.
Getting the address of a doctor, he rushed off, in the first place, to
fetch him. Then a bedstead and clean bedding were hired in. In an
hour or two more the grimy room was swept and tidied as far as
possible; the window propped up to stay open; the hapless, dirty
sufferer cleansed and made straight; and beside his bed sat a
gentle-faced, trained nurse, whose wholesome presence seemed to
transform the room.
'Now, captain,' cheerily said Philip, who looked another man in the
excitement, 'you are going to take a bit of advice from me, I hope.
You will go straight back to Brattlesby by the night train. Your
invalid at home must not be forgotten; anxiety is not the best sort of
tonic for her. And I mean to remain here with your boy.'
'God bless you, Price!' The old sailor's voice trembled as he wrung
Philip's hand. 'I never knew it was in you! Man, how one can be
deceived! I thought your head was in the clouds, and that you didn't
know your right hand from your left, practically speaking. Yes, yes!
I'll run down to-night, and to-morrow I can return. I can trust my boy
to you. Let nothing be spared; there's my purse. The doctor seemed a
downright good sort of chap and _she_ is worth a gold-mine!' He
pointed to the nurse, who was deftly bathing Alick's burning brow.
'What a splendid lad that Price is! He's the very salt of the earth!'
murmured the old captain, as he threaded his way later through the
unsavoury streets, now ablaze with lights that enticed and beckoned
forth misery to stalk out from every dark corner. 'He is a true
Christian--that's what it is! To think how my boys have ill-treated
him, and here he is caring for Alick so tenderly that the poor boy's
mother couldn't have done more, had she been spared! That's what you
call returning good for evil, with a vengeance! Well, well, please
God, I'll mend my own ways too! If I have my girl and my boy both
restored to me, I'll be a different father to them from what I have
been.'
It had been borne in upon the captain's mind, during the cloud of
sorrow overshadowing his home, that he had, somehow, failed in his
duty. And, with the courage that belongs only to the brave heart, he
admitted his shortcomings.
There was tremendous excitement in Northbourne when it was known that
Alick had actually been found. The Bunk was besieged by an
ever-growing crowd, anxious to have the news verified. And where was
Ned Dempster? The captain himself had to assure them his next step
would be to discover the hapless Ned. Yes, yes; Ned also should be
found and brought back. Not a stone should be left unturned until he
rescued Ned likewise.
And the old sailor kept his word. On his return to London he and
Philip Price took it in turn, between their spells of watching beside
Alick's sick-bed, to seek out the wandering half of the show-circus.
Time went on, but they were still unsuccessful, however. Not until the
fever died out, and Alick, weak and exhausted, almost beyond building
up, began to show faint signs of interest in his surroundings, could
any questions be put to him. It was Philip Price who managed, without
agitating the sufferer, to win from his feeble lips the name of the
show. After that it was a tolerably easy matter to unearth its
whereabouts.
On demanding Ned's release, a series of denials met them as to the boy
being with the establishment at all. A storm of furious resistance
which followed had to be quelled by the stern detective who accompanied
the captain in his raid upon the show. Back in triumph to the
Whitechapel attic they carried the trembling Ned, who had to be scoured
and fed and clothed into his 'right mind' once again.
And this was running away secretly! thought each humiliated adventurer
as they gazed, stony-eyed, at one another.
Shortly after, when Alick had crept sufficiently far out of the fever,
looking a white shadow of his former self, the two boys were conveyed
back to Northbourne, where a genuinely hearty welcome awaited them from
the fisher-folk. Jerry Blunt, indeed, had suggested a triumphal arch
with WELCOME in letters tall and wide. But that notion was instantly
quashed by wiser heads.
'We be thankful to see 'em back,' judicially said Northbourne; 'but we
ain't a-goin' to make "conquerin' heroes" of such young limbs!'
So it came to pass that the boys who thought it such a fine, manly
thing to run away to sea, as boys will think, returned meekly, with
shamed eyes, and hearts bounding joyfully at sight of the homes they
had not dreamed were so dear until they had forfeited them, as they
thought, for ever.