THE BEER AT THE KING'S ARMS. HOW UNCLE MO READ THE _STAR_, LIKE A
CHALDEAN, AND BROKE HIS SPECTACLES. HOW THE _STAR_ TOLD OF A
CONVICT'S ESCAPE FROM A JUG. HOW AUNT M'RIAR OVERHEARD THE NAME
"DAVERILL," AND WAS QUITE UPSET-LIKE. HER DEGREES AND DATES OF
INFORMATION ABOUT THIS MAN AND HIS ANTECEDENTS. UNCLE MO'S
IGNORANCE ABOUT HERS. HOW SHE DID NOT GIVE THE _STAR_ TO MRS. BURR
INTACT
The unwelcome visitor who, in the phrase of Uncle Mo, had made Sapps
Court stink--a thing outside the experience of its inhabitants--bade
fair to be forgotten altogether. Michael, the only connecting link
between the two, had all memory of the Hammersmith arrest quite knocked
out of his head a few days later by a greater incident--his father
having been arrested and fined for an assault on a competitor in
business, with an empty sack. It was entirely owing to the quality of
the beer at the King's Arms that Mr. Rackstraw lost his temper.
But Daverill's corruption of the Court's pure air was not destined to
oblivion. It was revived by the merest accident; the merest, that is, up
to that date. There have been many merer ones since, unless the phrase
has been incorrectly used in recent literature.
One day in July, when Uncle Moses was enjoying his afternoon pipe with
his old friend Affability Bob, or Jerry Alibone, and reading one of the
new penny papers--it was the one called the _Morning Star_, now no
more--he let his spectacles fall when polishing them; and, rashly
searching for them, broke both glasses past all redemption. He was much
annoyed, seeing that he was in the middle of a sensational account of
the escape of a prisoner from Coldbath Fields house of detention; a gaol
commonly known the "The Jug." It was a daring business, and Uncle Mo had
just been at the full of his enjoyment of it when the accident happened.
"Have you never another pair, Mo?" said Mr. Alibone. And Uncle Mo called
out to Aunt M'riar:--"M'riar!--just take a look round and see for them
old glasses upstairs. I've stood down on mine, and as good as spiled
'em. Look alive!" For, you see, he was all on end to know how this
prisoner, who had been put in irons for violence, and somehow got free
and overpowered a gaoler who came alone into his cell, had contrived his
final escape from the prison.
Mr. Alibone was always ready to deserve his name of Affability Bob.
"Give me hold of the paper, Mo," said he. "Where was you?... Oh
yes--here we are!... 'almost unparalleled audacity.' ... I'll go on
there." For Uncle Mo had read some aloud, and Mr. Alibone he wanted to
know too, to say the truth. And he really was a lot better scollard than
Mo--when it came to readin' out loud--and tackled "unparalleled" as if
it was just nothing at all; it being the word that brought Moses up
short; and, indeed, Aunt M'riar, whom we quote, had heard him wrestling
with it through the door, and considered it responsible for the
accident. Anyhow, Mr. Jerry was equal to it, and read the remainder of
the paragraph so you could hear every word.
"What I don't make out," said Uncle Mo, "is why he didn't try the same
game without getting the leg-irons on him. He hadn't any call to be
violent--that I see--barring ill-temper."
"That was all part of the game, Mo. Don't you see the game? It was
putting reliance on the irons led to this here warder making so free.
You go to the Zoarlogical Gardens in the Regency Park, and see if the
keeper likes walking into the den when the Bengal tiger's loose in it.
These chaps get like that, and they have to get the clinkers on 'em."
"Don't quite take your idear, Jerry. Wrap it up new."
"Don't you _see_, old Mo? He shammed savage to get the irons on his
legs, knowing how he might come by a file--which I don't, and it hasn't
come out, that I see. Then he spends the inside o' the night getting
through 'em, and rigs himself up like a picter, just so as if they was
on. So the officer was took in, with him going on like a lamb. Then up
he jumps and smashes his man's skull--makes no compliments about it, you
see. Then he closes to the door and locks it to enjoy a little leisure.
And then he changes their sootes of cloze across, and out he walks for
change of air. And he's got it!"
Uncle Mo reflected and said:--"P'r'aps!" Then Aunt M'riar, who had
hunted up the glasses without waking the children, reappeared, bringing
them; and Uncle Mo found they wouldn't do, and only prevented his seeing
anything at all. So he was bound to have a new pair and pay by the week.
A cheap pair, that would see him out, come to threepence a week for
three months.
The discovery of this painful fact threw the escaped prisoner into the
shade, and the _Morning Star_ would have been lost sight of--because it
was only Monday's paper, after all!--unless Aunt M'riar she'd put it by
for upstairs to have their turn of it, and Mrs. Burr could always read
some aloud to Mrs. Prichard, failing studious energy on the part of the
old lady. She reproduced it in compliance with the current of events.
For Uncle Moses, settling down to a fresh pipe after supper, said to his
friend, similarly occupied:--"What, now, was the name of that
charackter--him as got out at the Jug?"
"Something like Mackerel," said Mr. Alibone.
"Wrong you are, for once, Jerry! 'Twarn't no more Mackerel than it was
Camberwell."
Said Mr. Jerry:--"Take an even tizzy on it, Mo?" He twisted the paper
about to recover the paragraph, and found it. "Here we are! 'Ralph
Daverill, _alias_ Thornton, _alias_ Wix, _alias_!' ..."
"Never mind his ale-houses, Jerry. That's the name I'm consarned
with--Daverill.... What's the matter with M'riar?"
Uncle Mo had not finished his sentence owing to an interruption. For
Aunt M'riar, replacing some table-gear she was shifting, had sat down
suddenly on the nearest chair.
"Never you mind me, you two. Just you go on talking." So said Aunt
M'riar. Only she looked that scared it might have been a ghost. So Mrs.
Burr said after, who came in that very minute from a prolonged trying
on.
"Take a little something, M'riar," said Uncle Mo. He got up and went to
the cupboard close at hand, to get the something, which would almost
certainly have taken the form of brandy. But Aunt M'riar she said never
mind _her_!--she would be all right in a minute. And in a metaphorical
minute she pulled herself together, and went on clearing off the
supper-table. Suggestions of remedies or assistance seemed alike
distasteful to her, whether from Mrs. Burr or the two men, and there was
no doubt she was in earnest in preferring to be left to herself. So Mrs.
Burr she went up to her own supper, with thanks in advance for the
newspaper when quite done with, according to the previous intention of
Aunt M'riar.
The two smokers picked life up at the point of interruption, while Aunt
M'riar made a finish of her operations in the kitchen. Uncle Mo
said:--"Good job for you I didn't take your wager, Jerry. Camberwell
isn't in it. Mackerel goes near enough to landing--as near as Davenant,
which is what young Carrots called him."
This was the case--for Michael, though he had been silent at the time
about the Inquest, had been unable to resist the temptation to correct
Uncle Moses when the old boy asked: "_Wot_ did he say was the blooming
name of the party he was after--Daverill--Daffodil?" His answer
was:--"No it warn't! Davenant was what _he_ said." His acumen had gone
the length of perceiving in the stranger's name a resemblance to the
version of it heard more plainly in the Court at Hammersmith. This
correction had gratified and augmented his secret sense of importance,
without leading to any inquiries. Uncle Mo accepted Davenant as more
intrinsically probable than Daffodil or Daverill, and forgot both names
promptly. For a subsequent mention of him as Devilskin, when he referred
to the incident later in the day, can scarcely be set down to a
recollection of the name. It was quite as much an appreciation of the
owner.
"But what's your consarn with any of 'em, Mo?" said Mr. Jerry.
Uncle Moses took his pipe out of his mouth to say, almost
oratorically:--"Don't you _re_-member, Jerry, me telling you--Sunday six
weeks it was--about a loafing wagabond who came into this Court to hunt
up a widder named Daverill or Daffodil, or some such a name?" Uncle
Moses paused a moment. A plate had fallen in the kitchen. Nothing was
broke, Aunt M'riar testified, and closed the door. Uncle Mo
continued:--"I told you Davenant, because of young Radishes. But I'll
pound it I was right and he was wrong. Don't you call to mind,
Jeremiah?" For Uncle Mo often addressed his friend thus, for a greater
impressiveness. Jeremiah recalled the incident on reflection. "There you
are, you see," continued Uncle Mo. "Now you bear in mind what I tell
you, sir;"--this mode of address was also to gain force--"He's him! That
man's _him_--the very identical beggar! And this widder woman he was for
hunting up, she's his mother or his aunt."
"Or his sister--no!--sister-in-law."
"Not if she's a widder's usual age, Jerry." Uncle Mo always figured to
himself sisters, and even sisters-in-law, as essentially short of middle
life. You may remember also his peculiar view that married twins could
not survive their husbands.
"What sort of man did you make him out to be, Mo?"
"A bad sort in a turn-up with no rules. Might be handy with a knife on
occasion. Foxy sort of wiper!"
"Not your sort, Mo?"
"Too much ill-will about him. Some of the Fancy may have run into bad
feeling in my time, but mostly when they shook hands inside the ropes
they meant it. How's yourself, M'riar?" Here Aunt M'riar came in after
washing up, having apparently overheard none of the conversation.
"I'm nicely, Mo, thankee! Have you done with the paper, Mr. Alibone?...
Thanks--I'll give it to 'em upstairs.... Oh yes! I'm to rights. It was
nothing but a swimming in the head! Goodnight!" And off went Aunt
M'riar, leaving the friends to begin and end about two more pipes; to
talk over bygones of the Ring and the Turf, and to part after midnight.
* * * * *
Observe, please, that until Mr. Jerry read aloud from the _Star_ Mr.
Wix's _aliases_, Aunt M'riar had had no report of this escaped convict,
except under the name of Davenant; and, indeed, very little under that,
because Uncle Mo, in narrating to her the man's visit to Sapps Court,
though he gave the name of his inquiry as Davenant, spoke of the man
himself almost exclusively as Devilskin. And really she had paid very
little attention to the story, or the names given. At the time of the
man's appearance in the Court nothing transpired to make her associate
him with any past experience of her own. He was talked about at dinner
on that Sunday certainly; but then, consider the responsibilities of the
carving and distribution of that shoulder of mutton.
Aunt M'riar did not give the newspaper to Mrs. Burr, to read to Mrs.
Prichard, till next day. Perhaps it was too late, at near eleven
o'clock. When she did, it was with a reservation. Said she to Mrs.
Burr:--"You won't mind losing the bit I cut out, just to keep for the
address?--the cheapest shoes I ever did!--and an easy walk just out of
Oxford Street." She added that Dave was very badly off in this respect.
But she said nothing about what was on the other side of the shoe-shop
advertisement. Was she bound to do so? Surely one side of a
newspaper-cutting justifies the scissors. If Aunt M'riar could want one
side, ever so little, was she under any obligation to know anything
about the other side?
Anyhow, the result was that old Mrs. Prichard lost this opportunity of
knowing that her son was at large. And even if the paragraph had not
been removed, its small type might have kept her old eyes at bay.
Indeed, Mrs. Burr's testimony went to show that the old lady's
inspection of the paper scarcely amounted to solid perusal. Said she,
accepting the _Star_ from Aunt M'riar next morning, apropos of the
withdrawn paragraph: "That won't be any denial to Mrs. Prichard, ma'am.
There's a-many always wants to read the bit that's tore off, showin' a
contradictious temper like. But she ain't that sort, being more by way
of looking at the paper than studying of its contents." Mrs. Burr then
preached a short homily on the waste of time involved in a close
analysis of the daily press, such as would enable the reader to
discriminate between each day's issue and the next. For her part the
news ran similar one day with another, without, however, blunting her
interest in human affairs. She imputed an analogous attitude of mind to
old Mrs. Prichard, the easier of maintenance that the old lady's failing
sight left more interpretations of the text open to her imagination.
Mrs. Burr, moreover, went on to say that Mrs. Prichard had been that
upset by hearing about the builders, that she wasn't herself. This odd
result could not but interfere with the reading of even the lightest
literature. Its cause calls for explanation. Circumstances had arisen
which, had they occurred in the wintertime, would have been a serious
embarrassment to the attic tenants in Sapps Court. As it chanced, the
weather was warm and dry; otherwise old Mrs. Prichard and Mrs. Burr
would just have had to turn out, to allow the builder in, to attend to
the front wall. For there was no doubt that it was bulging and ought to
have been seen to, aeons ago. And it was some days since the landlord's
attention had been called, and Bartletts the builders had waked all the
dwellers in Sapps Court who still slept at six o'clock, by taking out a
half a brick or two to make a bearing for as many putlogs--pronounced
pudlocks--as were needed for a little bit of scaffold. For there was
more than you could do off a ladder, if you was God A'mighty Himself.
Thus Mr. Bartlett, and Aunt M'riar condemned his impiety freely. Before
the children! Closely examined, his speech was reverential, and an
acknowledgment of the powers of the Constructor of the Universe as
against the octave-stretch forlorn of our limitations. But it was
Anthropomorphism, no doubt.