BACK IN SAPPS COURT. MICHAEL RAGSTROAR'S SECULARISM. HIS EXTENDED
KNOWLEDGE OF LIFE. YET A GAOL-BIRD PROPER WAS OUTSIDE IT. ONE IN
QUEST OF A WIDOW. THE DEAD BEETLE IN DOLLY'S CAKE. HOW UNCLE MO DID
NOT LIKE THE MAN'S LOOKS. THERE _WAS_ NO WIDOW DAVERILL AND NEITHER
BURR NOR PRICHARD WOULD DO. HOW AUNT M'RIAR HAD BEEN AT CHAPEL. THE
SONS OF LEVI. MICHAEL'S NOBLE LOYALTY TOWARDS OUTLAWS
It was a fine Sunday morning in Sapps Court, and our young friend
Michael Rackstraw was not attending public worship. Not that it was his
custom to do so. Nevertheless, the way he replied to a question by a
chance loiterer into the Court seemed to imply the contrary. The
question was, what the Devil he was doing that for?--and referred to the
fact that he was walking on his hands. His answer was, that it was
because he wasn't at Church. Not that all absentees from religious rites
went about upside down; but that, had he been at Church, the narrow
exclusiveness of its ritual would have kept him right side up.
The speaker's appearance was disreputable, and his manner morose,
sullen, and unconciliatory. Michael, even while still upside down,
fancied he could identify a certain twist in his face that seemed not
unfamiliar; but thought this might be due to his own drawbacks on
correct observation. Upright again, his identification was confirmed and
he knew quite well whose question he was answering by the time he felt
his feet. It was the man he had seen in the clutches of the water-rat at
Hammersmith, when both were capsized into the river six months ago. This
put him on his guard, and he prepared to meet further questions with
evasion or defiance. But he would flavour them with substantial facts.
It would confuse issues and make it more difficult to convict him of
mendacity.
"You don't look an unlikely young beggar," said the man. "What name are
you called?"
Michael thought a moment and settled that it might be impolitic to
disclose his name. So he answered simply:--"Ikey." Now, this name was
not contrary to any statute or usage. The man appeared to accept it in
good faith, and Michael decided in his heart that he was softer than
what he'd took him for.
He recovered some credit, however, by his next inquiry which seemed to
place baptismal names among negligibles: "Ah, that's it, is it? But Ikey
what? What do they call your father, if you've got one?"
Three courses occurred to Michael; improbable fiction, evasive or
defiant; plausible fiction; and the undisguised truth. As the first, the
Duke of Wellington's name recommended itself. He had, however, decided
mentally that this man was a queer customer, and might be an awkward
customer. So he discarded the Duke--satire might irritate--and chose the
second course to avoid the third. But he was betrayed by Realism, which
suggested that a study from Nature would carry conviction. He decided on
assuming the name of his friend the apothecary round the corner, up the
street facing over against the Wheatsheaf. He replied that his father's
name was Heeking's. It was easier to do this than to invent a name,
which might have turned out an insult to the human understanding. He was
disgusted to be met with incredulity.
"Don't believe you," said the man. "You're a young liar. Where's your
father now--now this very minute?"
"Abed."
"What's he doing there?"
"Sleeping of it off. It was Saturday with him last night. He had to be
fetched from the King's Arms very careful. Perkins's Entire. Barclay
Perkins. Fetched him myself! Mean to say I didn't?" But this part of the
tale was probable and no comment seemed necessary.
"Where's your mother?"
"Cookin' 'im a bloater over the fire. It does the temper good. Can't yer
smell it?" A flavour of cooking confirmed Michael's words, but he seemed
to require a more formal admission of his veracity than a mere nostril
set ajar and a glance at an open window. "Say, if you don't! On'y
there's no charge for the smelling of it. She'll tell yer just the same
like me, word in and word out. You can arks for yourself. I can 'oller
'er up less time than talkin' about it. You've only to say!"
But this man, the twist of whose face had not been improved by his
recognition of the bloater, seemed to wish to confine his communications
to Michael, rather decisively. Indeed, there was a sound of veiled
intimidation in his voice as he said:--"You leave your mother to see to
the herrings, young 'un, and just you listen to me. You be done with
your kidding and listen to me. _You_ can tell me as much as I want to
know. Sharp young beggar!--you know what's good for you." An
intimidation of a possible _douceur_ perhaps?
Now Master Michael, though absolutely deficient in education--his class,
a sort of aristocracy of guttersnipes, was so in the pre-Board-School
fifties,--was as sharp as a razor already even in the days of Dave
Wardle's early accident, and had added a world of experience to his
stock in the last few months. He had, in fact, been seeing the
Metropolis, as an exponent or auxiliary of his father's vocation as a
costermonger; and had made himself extremely useful, said Mr. Rackstraw,
in the manner of speaking. Only the manner of speaking, strictly
reported, did not use the expression _extremely_, but another
one which we need not dwell upon except to make reference to its
inappropriateness. Mr. Rackstraw was not a man of many words, so he had
to fall back upon the same very often or hold his tongue: a course
uncongenial to him. This word was a _piece de resistance_--a kind of
sheet-anchor.
In the course of these last few months of active costermongery, of
transactions in early peas and new potatoes, spring-cabbage and ripe
strawberries, he had acquired not only an insight into commerce but
apparently an intimate knowledge of every street in London, and a very
fair acquaintance with its celebrities; meaning thereby its real
celebrities--its sportsmen, patrons of the Prize Ring, cricketers,
rowing-men, billiard-players, jockeys--what not? Its less important
representative men, statesmen, bishops, writers, artists, lawyers;
soldiers and sailors even, though here concession was rife, had to take
a second place. But there was one class--a class whose members may have
belonged to any one of these--of which Michael's experience was very
limited. It was the class of gaol-birds. This type, the most puzzling to
eyes that see it for the first time, the most unmistakable by those well
read in it, was the type that was now setting this juvenile coster's
wits to work upon its classification, on this May morning in Sapps
Court. Michael's previous record of him was an interrupted sight of his
face in the river-garden at Hammersmith, and a reference to his
felonious antecedents at the inquest. He was, by the time the
conversation assumed the interest due to a hint of emolument, able to
say to himself that he should know the Old Bailey again by the cut of
its jib next time he came across it.
In reply, he scorned circumlocution, saying briefly:--"Wot'll it come
to? Wot are you good for? That's the p'int."
"You tell me no lies and you'll see. There's an old widow-lady down this
Court. Don't you go and say there ain't!"
"There's any number. Which old widder?"
"Name of Daverill. Old enough to be your father's granny."
"No sich a name! There's one a sight older than that though--last house
down the Court--top bell."
"How old do you make her out?"
"Two 'underd next birthday!" But Michael perceived in his questioner's
eye a possible withdrawal of his offer of a consideration, and amended
his statement:--"Ninety-nine, p'raps!--couldn't say to arf a minute."
"House at the end where the old cock in a blue shirt's smoking a
pipe--is that it?"
"Ah!--up two flights of stairs. But she can't see you, nor yet hear you,
to speak of."
"Who's the old cock?"
"This little boy's uncle. He b'longs to the Fancy. 'Eavyweight he was,
wunst upon a time." And Dave Wardle, who had joined the colloquy, gave
confirmatory evidence: "He's moy Uncle Moses, he is. And he's moy sister
Dolly's Uncle Moses, he is. And moy sister Dolly she had a piece of koyk
with a beadle in it. She _had_. A dead beadle!" But this evidence was
ruled out of court by general consent; or rather, perhaps, it should be
said that the witness remained in the box giving evidence of the same
nature for his own satisfaction, while the court's attention wandered.
"Oh--he was a heavyweight, was he? An ugly customer, I should reckon."
The stranger said this more to himself than to the boys. But he spoke
direct to Michael with the question, "What was it you said was the old
lady's name, now?"
The boy, shrewd as he was, was but a boy after all. Was it wonderful
that he should accept the implication that he had given the name? Thrown
off his guard he answered:--"Name of Richards." Whereupon Dave, who was
still stuttering on melodiously about the dead monster in Dolly's cake,
endeavoured to correct his friend without complete success.
"Pitcher, is it?" said the stranger. Michael, disgusted to find that he
had been betrayed into giving a name, though he was far from clear why
it should have been reserved, was glad of Dave's perverted version, as
replacing matters on their former footing. But the repetition of the
name, by voices the stimulus of definition had emphasized, caught the
attention of Uncle Moses, who thereon moved up the Court to find out who
this stranger could be, who was so evidently inquiring about the
upstairs tenant. As he reached close inspection-point his face did not
look as though the visitor pleased him. The latter said good-morning
first; but, simple as his words were, the gaol-bird manner of guarded
suspicion crept into them and stamped the speaker.
"Don't like the looks of you, mister!" said Uncle Mo to himself. But
aloud he said:--"Good-morning to _you_, sir. I understood you to be
inquiring for Mrs. Prichard."
"No--Daverill. No such a name, this young shaver says."
"Not down this Court. It wasn't Burr by any chance now, was it?"
"No--Daverill."
"Because there _is_ a party by the name of Burr if you could have seen
your way." This was only the natural civility which sometimes runs riot
with an informant's judgment, making him anxious to meet the inquirer at
any cost, whatever inalienable stipulations the latter may have
committed himself to. In this case it seemed that nothing short of
Daverill, crisp and well defined, would satisfy the conditions. The
stranger shook his head with as much decision as reciprocal civility
permitted--rather as though he regretted his inability to accept
Burr--and replied that the name had "got to be" Daverill and no other.
But he seemed reluctant to leave the widows down this Court unsifted,
saying:--"You're sure there ain't any other old party now?" To which
Uncle Moses responded: "Ne'er a one, master, to _my_ knowledge. Widow
Daverill she's somewheres else. Not down _this_ Court!" He said it in a
valedictory way as though he had no wish to open a new subject, and
considered this one closed. He had profited by his inspection of the
stranger, and had formed a low opinion of him.
But the stranger's reluctance continued. "You couldn't say, I suppose,"
said he, in a cautious hesitating way, "you couldn't say what
countrywoman she was, now?" His manner might easily have been--so Uncle
Mo thought at least--that of indigence trying to get a foothold with an
eye to begging in the end. It really was the furtive suspiciousness that
hangs alike upon the miscreant and the mere rebel against law into whose
bones the fetter has rusted. The guilt of the former, if he can cheat
both the gaol and the gallows, may merge in the demeanour of a free man;
that of the latter, after a decade of prison-service you or I might have
remitted, will hang by him till death.
Uncle Mo may have detected, through the mere blood-poisoning of the
prison, the inherent baseness of the man, or may have recoiled from the
type. Anyway, his instinct was to get rid of him. And evidently the less
he said about anyone in Sapps Court the better. So he replied, surlily
enough considering his really amiable disposition:--"No--I could _not_
say what countrywoman she is, master." Then he thought a small trifle of
fiction thrown in might contribute to the detachment of this man's
curiosity from Mrs. Prichard, and added carelessly:--"Some sort of a
foringer I take it." Which accounted, too, for his knowing nothing about
her. No true Englishman knows anything about that benighted class.
Now the boy Michael, all eyes and ears, had somehow come to an imperfect
knowledge that Mrs. Prichard had been in Australia once on a time. The
imperfection of this knowledge had affected the name of the place, and
when he officiously struck in to supply it, he did so inaccurately.
"Horstrian she is!" He added:--"Rode in a circus, she did." But this was
only the reaction of misinterpretation on a too inventive brain.
"Then she ain't any use to me. Austrian, is she?" Thus the stranger; who
then, after a slow glare up and down the Court, in search of further
widows perhaps, turned to go, saying merely:--"I'll wish you a
good-morning, guv'nor. Good-morning!" Uncle Mo watched him as he lurched
up the Court, noting the oddity of his walk. This man, you see, had been
chained to another like himself, and his bias went to one side like a
horse that has gone in harness. This gait is known in the class he
belonged to as the "darby-roll," from the name by which fetters are
often spoken of.
"How long has that charackter been makin' the Court stink, young
Carrots?" said Uncle Moses to Michael.
"Afore you come up, Mr. Moses."
"Afore I come up. How long afore I come up?"
Michael appeared to pass through a paroxysm of acute calculation, ending
in a lucid calm with particulars. "Seven minute and a half," said he
resolutely. "Wanted my name, he did!"
"What did you tell him?"
"I told 'im a name. Orl correct it was. Only it warn't mine. I was too
fly for him."
"What name did you tell him?"
"Mr. Eking's at the doctor's shop. He'll find that all right. He can
read it over the door. He's got eyes in his head." No doubt sticklers
for conscience will quarrel with the view that the demands of Truth can
be satisfied by an authentic name applied to the wrong person.
It did not seem to grate on Uncle Moses, who only said:--"Sharp boy! But
don't you tell no more lies than's wanted. Only now and again to shame
the Devil, as the sayin' is. And you, little Dave, don't you tell
nothing but the truth, 'cos your Aunt M'riar she says not to it." Dave
promised to oblige.
Aunt M'riar, returning home with Dolly from a place known as "Chapel"--a
place generally understood to be good, and an antidote to The Rising
Sun, which represented Satan and was bad--only missed meeting this
visitor to Sapps by a couple of minutes. She might have just come face
to face with him the very minute he left the Court, if she had not
delayed a little at the baker's, where she had prevailed on
Sharmanses--the promoter of some latent heat in the bowels of the earth
which came through to the pavement, making it nice and dry and warm to
set upon in damp, cold weather--to keep the family Sunday dinner back
just enough to guarantee it brown all through, and the potatoes crackly
all over. Sharmanses was that obliging he would have kep' it in--it was
a shoulder of mutton--any time you named, but he declined to be
responsible that the gravy should not dry up. So Dolly carried her
aunt's prayer-book, feeling like the priests, the Sons of Levi, which
bare the Ark of the Covenant; and Aunt M'riar carried the Tin of the
Shoulder of Mutton, and took great care not to spill any of the Gravy.
The office of the Sons of Levi was a sinecure by comparison.
Why did our astute young friend Michael keep his counsel about the
identity of the bloke that come down the Court that Sunday morning?
Well--it was not mere astuteness or vulgar cunning on the watch for an
honorarium. It was really a noble chivalry akin to that of the schoolboy
who will be flogged till the blood comes, rather than tell upon his
schoolfellow, even though he loathes the misdemeanour of the latter. It
was enough for Michael that this man was wanted by Scotland Yard, to
make silence seem a duty--silence, at any rate, until interrogated. He
was certainly not going to volunteer information--was, in fact, in the
position of the Humanitarian who declined to say which way the fox had
gone when the scent was at fault; only with this difference--that the
hounds were not in sight. Neither was he threatened with the
hunting-whip of an irate M.F.H. "Give the beggar his chance!"--that was
how Michael looked at it. He who knows the traditions of the class this
boy was born in will understand and excuse the feeling.
Michael was--said his _entourage_--that sharp at twelve that he could
understand a'most anything. He had certainly understood that the man
whom he saw in the grip of the police-officer overturned in the Thames
was wanted by Scotland Yard, to pay an old score, with possible
additions to it due to that officer's death. He had understood, too,
that the attempt to capture the man had been treacherous according to
his ideas of fair play, while he had no information about his original
crime. He did not like his looks, certainly, but then looks warn't much
to go by. His conclusion was--silence for the present, without prejudice
to future speech if applied for. When that time came, he would tell no
more lies than were wanted.