"It is just the same with what you may call the human joints," observed
Henry. He was in one of his philosophic moods that evening. "It all
depends upon the cooking. I never see a youngster hanging up in the
refrigerator, as one may put it, but I says to myself: 'Now I wonder what
the cook is going to make of you! Will you be minced and devilled and
fricasseed till you are all sauce and no meat? Will you be hammered
tender and grilled over a slow fire till you are a blessing to mankind?
Or will you be spoilt in the boiling, and come out a stringy rag, an
immediate curse, and a permanent injury to those who have got to swallow
you?'
"There was a youngster I knew in my old coffee-shop days," continued
Henry, "that in the end came to be eaten by cannibals. At least, so the
newspapers said. Speaking for myself, I never believed the report: he
wasn't that sort. If anybody was eaten, it was more likely the cannibal.
But that is neither here nor there. What I am thinking of is what
happened before he and the cannibals ever got nigh to one another. He
was fourteen when I first set eyes on him--Mile End fourteen, that is;
which is the same, I take it, as City eighteen and West End
five-and-twenty--and he was smart for his age into the bargain: a trifle
too smart as a matter of fact. He always came into the shop at the same
time--half-past two; he always sat in the seat next the window; and three
days out of six, he would order the same dinner: a fourpenny beef-steak
pudding--we called it beef-steak, and, for all practical purposes, it was
beef-steak--a penny plate of potatoes, and a penny slice of roly-poly
pudding--'chest expander' was the name our customers gave it--to follow.
That showed sense, I always thought, that dinner alone; a more satisfying
menu, at the price, I defy any human being to work out. He always had a
book with him, and he generally read during his meal; which is not a bad
plan if you don't want to think too much about what you are eating. There
was a seedy chap, I remember, used to dine at a cheap restaurant where I
once served, just off the Euston Road. He would stick a book up in front
of him--Eppy something or other--and read the whole time. Our
four-course shilling table d'hote with Eppy, he would say, was a banquet
fit for a prince; without Eppy he was of opinion that a policeman
wouldn't touch it. But he was one of those men that report things for
the newspapers, and was given to exaggeration.
"A coffee-shop becomes a bit of a desert towards three o'clock; and,
after a while, young Tidelman, for that was his name, got to putting down
his book and chatting to me. His father was dead; which, judging from
what he told me about the old man, must have been a bit of luck for
everybody; and his mother, it turned out, had come from my own village in
Suffolk; and that constituted a sort of bond between us, seeing I had
known all her people pretty intimately. He was earning good money at a
dairy, where his work was scouring milk-cans; and his Christian
name--which was the only thing Christian about him, and that, somehow or
another, didn't seem to fit him--was Joseph.
"One afternoon he came into the shop looking as if he had lost a shilling
and found sixpence, as the saying is; and instead of drinking water as
usual, sent the girl out for a pint of ale. The moment it came he drank
off half of it at a gulp, and then sat staring out of the window.
"'What's up?' I says. 'Got the shove?'
"'Yes,' he answers; 'but, as it happens, it's a shove up. I've been
taken off the yard and put on the walk, with a rise of two bob a week.'
Then he took another pull at the beer and looked more savage than ever.
"'Well,' I says, 'that ain't the sort of thing to be humpy about.'
"'Yes it is,' he snaps back; 'it means that if I don't take precious good
care I'll drift into being a blooming milkman, spending my life yelling
"Milk ahoi!" and spooning smutty-faced servant-gals across area
railings.'
"'Oh!' I says, 'and what may you prefer to spoon--duchesses?'
"'Yes,' he answers sulky-like; 'duchesses are right enough--some of 'em.'
"'So are servant-gals,' I says, 'some of 'em. Your hat's feeling a bit
small for you this morning, ain't it?'
"'Hat's all right,' says he; 'it's the world as I'm complaining
of--beastly place; there's nothing to do in it.'
"'Oh!' I says; 'some of us find there's a bit too much.' I'd been up
since five that morning myself; and his own work, which was scouring milk-
cans for twelve hours a day, didn't strike me as suggesting a life of
leisured ease.
"'I don't mean that,' he says. 'I mean things worth doing.'
"'Well, what do you want to do,' I says, 'that this world ain't big
enough for?'
"'It ain't the size of it,' he says; 'it's the dulness of it. Things
used to be different in the old days.'
"'How do you know?' I says.
"'You can read about it,' he answers.
"'Oh,' I says, 'and what do they know about it--these gents that sit down
and write about it for their living! You show me a book cracking up the
old times, writ by a chap as lived in 'em, and I'll believe you. Till
then I'll stick to my opinion that the old days were much the same as
these days, and maybe a trifle worse.'
"'From a Sunday School point of view, perhaps yes,' says he; 'but there's
no gainsaying--'
"'No what?' I says.
"'No gainsaying,' repeats he; 'it's a common word in literatoor.'
"'Maybe,' says I, 'but this happens to be "The Blue Posts Coffee House,"
established in the year 1863. We will use modern English here, if you
don't mind.' One had to take him down like that at times. He was the
sort of boy as would talk poetry to you if you weren't firm with him.
"'Well then, there's no denying the fact,' says he, 'if you prefer it
that way, that in the old days there was more opportunity for adventure.'
"'What about Australia?' says I.
"'Australia!' retorts he; 'what would I do there? Be a shepherd, like
you see in the picture, wear ribbons, and play the flute?'
"'There's not much of that sort of shepherding over there,' says I,
'unless I've been deceived; but if Australia ain't sufficiently
uncivilised for you, what about Africa?'
"'What's the good of Africa?' replies he; 'you don't read advertisements
in the "Clerkenwell News": "Young men wanted as explorers." I'd drift
into a barber's shop at Cape Town more likely than anything else.'
"'What about the gold diggings?' I suggests. I like to see a youngster
with the spirit of adventure in him. It shows grit as a rule.
"'Played out,' says he. 'You are employed by a company, wages ten
dollars a week, and a pension for your old age. Everything's played
out,' he continues. 'Men ain't wanted nowadays. There's only room for
clerks, and intelligent artisans, and shopboys.'
"'Go for a soldier,' says I; 'there's excitement for you.'
"'That would have been all right,' says he, 'in the days when there was
real fighting.'
"'There's a good bit of it going about nowadays,' I says. 'We are
generally at it, on and off, between shouting about the blessings of
peace.'
"'Not the sort of fighting I mean,' replies he; 'I want to do something
myself, not be one of a row.'
"'Well,' I says, 'I give you up. You've dropped into the wrong world it
seems to me. We don't seem able to cater for you here.'
"'I've come a bit too late,' he answers; 'that's the mistake I've made.
Two hundred years ago there were lots of things a fellow might have
done.'
"'Yes, I know what's in your mind,' I says: 'pirates.'
"'Yes, pirates would be all right,' says he; 'they got plenty of sea-air
and exercise, and didn't need to join a blooming funeral club.'
"'You've got ideas above your station,' I says. 'You work hard, and one
day you'll have a milk-shop of your own, and be walking out with a pretty
housemaid on your arm, feeling as if you were the Prince of Wales
himself.'
"'Stow it!' he says; 'it makes me shiver for fear it might come true. I'm
not cut out for a respectable cove, and I won't be one neither, if I can
help it!'
"'What do you mean to be, then?' I says; 'we've all got to be something,
until we're stiff 'uns.'
"'Well,' he says, quite cool-like, 'I think I shall be a burglar.'
"I dropped into the seat opposite and stared at him. If any other lad
had said it I should have known it was only foolishness, but he was just
the sort to mean it.
"'It's the only calling I can think of,' says he, 'that has got any
element of excitement left in it.'
"'You call seven years at Portland "excitement," do you?' says I,
thinking of the argument most likely to tell upon him.
"'What's the difference,' answers he, 'between Portland and the ordinary
labouring man's life, except that at Portland you never need fear being
out of work?' He was a rare one to argue. 'Besides,' says he, 'it's
only the fools as gets copped. Look at that diamond robbery in Bond
Street, two years ago. Fifty thousand pounds' worth of jewels stolen,
and never a clue to this day! Look at the Dublin Bank robbery,' says he,
his eyes all alight, and his face flushed like a girl's. 'Three thousand
pounds in golden sovereigns walked away with in broad daylight, and never
so much as the flick of a coat-tail seen. Those are the sort of men I'm
thinking of, not the bricklayer out of work, who smashes a window and
gets ten years for breaking open a cheesemonger's till with nine and
fourpence ha'penny in it.'
"'Yes,' says I, 'and are you forgetting the chap who was nabbed at
Birmingham only last week? He wasn't exactly an amatoor. How long do
think he'll get?'
"'A man like that deserves what he gets,' answers he; 'couldn't hit a
police-man at six yards.'
"'You bloodthirsty young scoundrel,' I says; 'do you mean you wouldn't
stick at murder?'
"'It's all in the game,' says he, not in the least put out. 'I take my
risks, he takes his. It's no more murder than soldiering is.'
"'It's taking a human creature's life,' I says.
"'Well,' he says, 'what of it? There's plenty more where he comes from.'
"I tried reasoning with him from time to time, but he wasn't a sort of
boy to be moved from a purpose. His mother was the only argument that
had any weight with him. I believe so long as she had lived he would
have kept straight; that was the only soft spot in him. But
unfortunately she died a couple of years later, and then I lost sight of
Joe altogether. I made enquiries, but no one could tell me anything. He
had just disappeared, that's all.
"One afternoon, four years later, I was sitting in the coffee-room of a
City restaurant where I was working, reading the account of a clever
robbery committed the day before. The thief, described as a well-dressed
young man of gentlemanly appearance, wearing a short black beard and
moustache, had walked into a branch of the London and Westminster Bank
during the dinner-hour, when only the manager and one clerk were there.
He had gone straight through to the manager's room at the back of the
bank, taken the key from the inside of the door, and before the man could
get round his desk had locked him in. The clerk, with a knife to his
throat, had then been persuaded to empty all the loose cash in the bank,
amounting in gold and notes to nearly five hundred pounds, into a bag
which the thief had thoughtfully brought with him. After which, both of
them--for the thief seems to have been of a sociable disposition--got
into a cab which was waiting outside, and drove away. They drove
straight to the City: the clerk, with a knife pricking the back of his
neck all the time, finding it, no doubt, a tiresome ride. In the middle
of Threadneedle Street, the gentlemanly young man suddenly stopped the
cab and got out, leaving the clerk to pay the cabman.
"Somehow or other, the story brought back Joseph to my mind. I seemed to
see him as that well-dressed gentlemanly young man; and, raising my eyes
from the paper, there he stood before me. He had scarcely changed at all
since I last saw him, except that he had grown better looking, and seemed
more cheerful. He nodded to me as though we had parted the day before,
and ordered a chop and a small hock. I spread a fresh serviette for him,
and asked him if he cared to see the paper.
"'Anything interesting in it, Henry?' says he.
"'Rather a daring robbery committed on the Westminster Bank yesterday,' I
answers.
"'Oh, ah! I did see something about that,' says he.
"'The thief was described as a well-dressed young man of gentlemanly
appearance, wearing a black beard and moustache,' says I.
"He laughs pleasantly.
"'That will make it awkward for nice young men with black beards and
moustaches,' says he.
"'Yes,' I says. 'Fortunately for you and me, we're clean shaved.'
"I felt as certain he was the man as though I'd seen him do it.
"He gives me a sharp glance, but I was busy with the cruets, and he had
to make what he chose out of it.
"'Yes,' he replies, 'as you say, it was a daring robbery. But the man
seems to have got away all right.'
"I could see he was dying to talk to somebody about it.
"'He's all right to-day,' says I; 'but the police ain't the fools they're
reckoned. I've noticed they generally get there in the end.'
"'There's some very intelligent men among them,' says he: 'no question of
it. I shouldn't be surprised if they had a clue!'
"'No,' I says, 'no more should I; though no doubt he's telling himself
there never was such a clever thief.'
"'Well, we shall see,' says he.
"'That's about it,' says I.
"We talked a bit about old acquaintances and other things, and then,
having finished, he handed me a sovereign and rose to go.
"'Wait a minute,' I says, 'your bill comes to three-and-eight. Say
fourpence for the waiter; that leaves sixteen shillings change, which
I'll ask you to put in your pocket.'
"'As you will,' he says, laughing, though I could see he didn't like it.
"'And one other thing,' says I. 'We've been sort of pals, and it's not
my business to talk unless I'm spoken to. But I'm a married man,' I
says, 'and I don't consider you the sort worth getting into trouble for.
If I never see you, I know nothing about you. Understand?'
"He took my tip, and I didn't see him again at that restaurant. I kept
my eye on the paper, but the Westminster Bank thief was never discovered,
and success, no doubt, gave him confidence. Anyhow, I read of two or
three burglaries that winter which I unhesitatingly put down to Mr.
Joseph--I suppose there's style in housebreaking, as in other things--and
early the next spring an exciting bit of business occurred, which I knew
to be his work by the description of the man.
"He had broken into a big country house during the servants' supper-hour,
and had stuffed his pockets with jewels. One of the guests, a young
officer, coming upstairs, interrupted him just as he had finished. Joseph
threatened the man with his revolver; but this time it was not a nervous
young clerk he had to deal with. The man sprang at him, and a desperate
struggle followed, with the result that in the end the officer was left
with a bullet in his leg, while Joseph jumped clean through the window,
and fell thirty feet. Cut and bleeding, if not broken, he would never
have got away but that, fortunately for him, a tradesman's cart happened
to be standing at the servants' entrance. Joe was in it, and off like a
flash of greased lightning. How he managed to escape, with all the
country in an uproar, I can't tell you; but he did it. The horse and
cart, when found sixteen miles off, were neither worth much.
"That, it seems, sobered him down for a bit, and nobody heard any more of
him till nine months later, when he walked into the Monico, where I was
then working, and held out his hand to me as bold as brass.
"'It's all right,' says he, 'it's the hand of an honest man.'
"'It's come into your possession very recently then,' says I.
"He was dressed in a black frock-coat and wore whiskers. If I hadn't
known him, I should have put him down for a parson out of work.
"He laughs. 'I'll tell you all about it,' he says.
"'Not here,' I answers, 'because I'm too busy; but if you like to meet me
this evening, and you're talking straight--'
"'Straight as a bullet,' says he. 'Come and have a bit of dinner with me
at the Craven; it's quiet there, and we can talk. I've been looking for
you for the last week.'
"Well, I met him; and he told me. It was the old story: a gal was at the
bottom of it. He had broken into a small house at Hampstead. He was on
the floor, packing up the silver, when the door opens, and he sees a gal
standing there. She held a candle in one hand and a revolver in the
other.
"'Put your hands up above your head,' says she.
"'I looked at the revolver,' said Joe, telling me; 'it was about eighteen
inches off my nose; and then I looked at the gal. There's lots of 'em
will threaten to blow your brains out for you, but you've only got to
look at 'em to know they won't.
"'They are thinking of the coroner's inquest, and wondering how the judge
will sum up. She met my eyes, and I held up my hands. If I hadn't I
wouldn't have been here.
"'Now you go in front,' says she to Joe, and he went. She laid her
candle down in the hall and unbolted the front door.
"'What are you going to do?' says Joe, 'call the police? Because if so,
my dear, I'll take my chance of that revolver being loaded and of your
pulling the trigger in time. It will be a more dignified ending.'
"'No,' says she, 'I had a brother that got seven years for forgery. I
don't want to think of another face like his when he came out. I'm going
to see you outside my master's house, and that's all I care about.'
"She went down the garden-path with him, and opened the gate.
"'You turn round,' says she, 'before you reach the bottom of the lane and
I give the alarm.' And Joe went straight, and didn't look behind him.
"Well, it was a rum beginning to a courtship, but the end was rummer. The
girl was willing to marry him if he would turn honest. Joe wanted to
turn honest, but didn't know how.
"'It's no use fixing me down, my dear, to any quiet, respectable
calling,' says Joe to the gal, 'because, even if the police would let me
alone, I wouldn't be able to stop there. I'd break out, sooner or later,
try as I might.'
"The girl went to her master, who seems to have been an odd sort of a
cove, and told him the whole story. The old gent said he'd see Joe, and
Joe called on him.
"'What's your religion?' says the old gent to Joe.
"'I'm not particular, sir; I'll leave it to you,' says Joe.
"'Good!' says the old gent. 'You're no fanatic. What are your
principles?'
"At first Joe didn't think he'd got any, but, the old gent leading, he
found to his surprise as he had.
"'I believe,' says Joe, 'in doing a job thoroughly.'
"'What your hand finds to do, you believe in doing with all your might,
eh?' says the old gent.
"'That's it, sir,' says Joe. 'That's what I've always tried to do.'
"'Anything else?' asks the old gent.
"'Yes; stick to your pals,' said Joe.
"'Through thick and thin,' suggests the old gent.
"'To the blooming end,' agrees Joe.
"'That's right,' says the old gent. 'Faithful unto death. And you
really want to turn over a new leaf--to put your wits and your energy and
your courage to good use instead of bad?'
"'That's the idea,' says Joe.
"The old gent murmurs something to himself about a stone which the
builders wouldn't have at any price; and then he turns and puts it
straight:
"'If you undertake the work,' says he, 'you'll go through with it without
faltering--you'll devote your life to it?'
"'If I undertake the job, I'll do that,' says Joe. 'What may it be?'
"'To go to Africa,' says the old gent, 'as a missionary.'
"Joe sits down and stares at the old gent, and the old gent looks him
back.
"'It's a dangerous station,' says the old gent. 'Two of our people have
lost their lives there. It wants a man there--a man who will do
something besides preach, who will save these poor people we have
gathered together there from being scattered and lost, who will be their
champion, their protector, their friend.'
"In the end, Joe took on the job, and went out with his wife. A better
missionary that Society never had and never wanted. I read one of his
early reports home; and if the others were anything like it his life must
have been exciting enough, even for him. His station was a small island
of civilisation, as one may say, in the middle of a sea of savages.
Before he had been there a month the place had been attacked twice. On
the first occasion Joe's 'flock' had crowded into the Mission House, and
commenced to pray, that having been the plan of defence adopted by his
predecessor. Joe cut the prayer short, and preached to them from the
text, 'Heaven helps them as helps themselves'; after which he proceeded
to deal out axes and old rifles. In his report he mentioned that he had
taken a hand himself, merely as an example to the flock; I bet he had
never enjoyed an evening more in all his life. The second fight began,
as usual, round the Mission, but seems to have ended two miles off. In
less than six months he had rebuilt the school-house, organised a police
force, converted all that was left of one tribe, and started a tin
church. He added (but I don't think they read that part of his report
aloud) that law and order was going to be respected, and life and
property secure in his district so long as he had a bullet left.
"Later on the Society sent him still further inland, to open up a fresh
station; and there it was that, according to the newspapers, the
cannibals got hold of him and ate him. As I said, personally I don't
believe it. One of these days he'll turn up, sound and whole; he is that
sort."