I had to take Jess Murray for her share in a very bold robbery, in
which a commercial traveller, peaceably walking home to his hotel,
had been waylaid and stripped of pocket-book, purse, and watch,
the haul altogether amounting to upwards of £100 in value, the
greater part of which was not his own. The gentleman could give no
description of the men, but remembered that they had been assisted
at a critical moment by a woman, who, so far as he could judge, was
tall and handsome, and not very old. It was the style of the robbery
as much as that brief and imperfect description which directed my
attention to Jess Murray. She was a bold wench, strong as a lion,
and so thoroughly bad that I took the trouble of hating her—an
exceptional case indeed, as in general one gets to look upon her kind
with as much indifference as a drover does upon a herd of horned
knowte, under his care one day and gone the next.
I believed Jess to be one of the few who have not one redeeming
quality or trait, and was eager for the chance which should put her
out of harm’s way for a good long term of years.
I had really no evidence, but an instinctive feeling, connecting Jess
with the robbery; but when on my way to her place I chanced to pass
one of her acquaintances on the street. I let him pass, and then a
thought struck me, and I turned back and stopped him. A scared look
at once came into his face, so I asked him to come with me—back to
the Office. He came reluctantly, and the cause I speedily understood
when he tried to throw away behind his back a £20 bank note taken
from the pocket-book of the commercial traveller. The number and
description of this note was already in my possession, and I picked
up the paper money with the most lively satisfaction, when the fellow
immediately began to protest that he had only been sent to change the
note, and was willing to tell all about the robbery if things were
made right for himself.
The result of this chance capture was that we had abundant evidence
against Jess and another, and I went for her with the greatest of
pleasure. She was in the “kitchen” of the place among a crowd of her
kind when I entered, and it needed only a motion of my finger and a
nod of my head to chase the merriment from her face, and bring her
slowly across the floor to my side. It is not usual for me to be
communicative, but on the present occasion I was elated, and said in
reply to her sullen inquiry—
“It’s that affair of the commercial traveller. It’s all blown, and
you are in for five years at least. Jim White is in the office
already, and the £20 bank note with him.”
Jess seemed struck in a heap with the news. She flashed deadly pale
and sank feebly into a chair, with her bold, bright eyes becoming
shiny with tears.
“Where’s Dickie?” she faintly articulated to some of the silent
onlookers, and, fearing treachery, I snatched out a double brass
whistle which can be heard a whole street off, and swiftly raised it
to my lips.
“Stop! you needn’t,” Jess quickly interposed, understanding the
motion. “Dickie’s only my laddie. Oh, what will become of him when
I’m away?”
Dickie was said to be playing down on the street, so I told her we
might see him as we left. Jess began to cry bitterly—Jess! whom I
believed to have not one genuine tear in her! and thus we descended
the stairs together. In the street a ragged and unkempt boy of seven
or eight was brought to her side, and she clutched him to her breast,
kissing his smudged face with a passionate fervour which gave me
quite a fresh insight into her character. The boy resembled her in
features, and would have passed for good-looking had he only been
washed and dressed up a little.
“What’s to ’come o’ my bairn?—oh, what’s to ’come o’ my bairn?”
wailed Jess, and the boy began to howl in concert, and I saw that it
would be useless to try to separate them just then.
“Oh, he’ll be looked after as he has often been before,” I carelessly
answered. “He’ll go to the Poorhouse. He’ll be safer there than under
your care—and cleaner.”
The remark did not appear to console Jess in the least. Dickie
was her only child, and the whole strength of her nature seemed
concentrated in her love of that boy. I was astonished, and
speculated on the matter all the way to the office, quietly wondering
what “line of business” that same gutter child was destined to
torment me and others by adopting, when he should be a few years
older.
I had made a pretty shrewd guess at Jess’s sentence, for the list of
previous convictions was so strong against her that she was awarded
exactly the number of years I had named. I was convinced by that
time that she did not grieve over the punishment at all, but over
her separation from her child, and I remember thinking—“We are poor
judges of one another. What a strong hold could be taken of that
woman through that child, if one only knew how to use the power.”
Dickie was allowed to see his mother once before she was sent to the
Penitentiary, and then he went back to the Poorhouse. He was a good
deal cleaner by that time, and had on different clothing, but there
was one plaything, or fetish, with which he had resolutely refused to
part, and that still hung from his neck. It was a broken cairngorm
stone, with a hole drilled at one end, through which a bit of twine
had been drawn, that he might suspend the trinket from his neck. I
had noticed the stone when I took him to the office with his mother,
but merely glanced at it, thinking that it was but an imitation
moulded in yellow glass. I was mistaken, for it was part of a real
stone, and had probably been set in some stolen brooch which had been
broken up for the metal.
It was of no great value, but it pleased Dickie, and kept him from
wearying during his long confinement in the Poorhouse, which to
him was as irksome as being shut up in a prison. He was a lively,
spirited boy, and had never been checked or curbed, so it may be
imagined he got into as many scrapes as the average boy of his age.
However, in spite of his mischief and wild pranks, Dickie had a soft
spot in his heart, and could be tamed by a gentle word or appeal
when lashing had been tried in vain. When he had been about eighteen
months in the Poorhouse, a poor knife-grinder was admitted for a day
or two, who told Dickie such grand romances of his free life on the
road that the boy took an insatiable longing for freedom. Squinting
Jerry was the man’s name, but though he had an evil look, he was
really an honest fellow.
Jerry had been driven to the Poorhouse for a night’s shelter, and
while there had been laid up for a day or two with a bad leg which
troubled him at times, but as soon as he was able to move he hastened
to quit the oppressive confinement. Before he had done so, Dickie, by
a series of pathetic appeals, had extracted from him a consent to
receiving him as an apprentice.
Jerry was really not reluctant to having an assistant, whom he needed
sorely at times, but he was afraid that the arrangement might get him
into trouble with the parochial authorities, should he be followed
and Dickie taken back. Then there were Dickie’s antecedents to be
considered—he was the son of a convict, and might have the “bad
blood” in him, as Jerry expressed it. The old knife-grinder therefore
agreed to the proposal with reluctance, as we often do with what
turns out a great blessing. Dickie had no difficulty in fulfilling
his part of the agreement, for he had already run away twice, and
each time gone back of his own accord.
He therefore got out of the Poorhouse easily, and joined Jerry a
mile or two out of the city. He took with him his only treasure, the
broken cairngorm, which some one had declared to him was a diamond,
and worth a great deal of money. This opinion was not shared by
Jerry, who failed to find a purchaser for the stone, and finally
relegated it to a little box in the grinding machine, which they
trundled before them wherever they went. Perhaps the parochial
authorities were glad to get rid of Dickie, for he was not followed
or taken back. The new life suited him—it was free and untrammelled;
it had constant variety, and there was a certain spice of romance
about it, which made sleeping in the open air, or getting drenched
with rain, or lost and benighted, as they often were, mere trifles,
to be forgotten with the first blaze of sunshine. Compared with his
life in the Poorhouse Dickie found it heavenly, and very soon a new
and altogether unexpected result began to arise from his changed
condition.
When Dickie had taken to the road it was sheer impatience of
restraint that sent him thither, and he had many ideas of right and
wrong which are tolerated only among my “bairns.” Now Jerry was an
ignorant man, who did not know one letter from another, but there was
one lesson he had learned—that a life of crime is the worst paying
trade in the world. Halting by roadside hamlets, resting under shady
hedges, or wandering along green lanes, Jerry laid down his ideas
to Dickie in a homely fashion, which would have thrown a teacher of
grammar into hysterics, but which nevertheless carried conviction to
the heart of the boy. Not that Dickie had ever meant to wrong Jerry,
but he had only taken to this life as a make-shift till his mother
should be released from prison.
When questioned as to his intentions for the future, and especially
after rejoining his mother, he coolly said that he supposed he should
take to her trade. It was this callous idea that Jerry set himself
to undermine, and admirably the old man succeeded, thus affixing a
brighter gem to his brow for all eternity than if he had gone as a
missionary to the heathen and converted a whole troop of savages.
Dickie first listened in respectful patience to the new doctrines
of honesty and hard work, then began to imbibe them and manfully
adopt them himself, and finally became as firm and resolute in their
dissemination as Jerry himself. Out of this sprang a strange act.
Dickie had once written to his mother describing his new life, and
promising to rejoin her on her liberation; he now wrote a final
letter, asserting his intention of separating himself for ever from
her and her influence, and declaring his intention of growing up
“on the square.” Jess was nearly insane over the news—not that she
cared whether he grew up honest or a thief—but that he should think
of separating his life entirely from her own. Three months elapsed
before she was able to reply to his letter, and by that time Dickie
was hundreds of miles away, leaving no address, and the letter was
returned to the Penitentiary, marked “_Not Found_.” Jerry was an
Irishman, and though he always earned less money in his own country
than in Scotland or England, he inclined more to wander at that side
of the Channel, where, if the people could give nothing else, they
were always ready with a kindly greeting or a sympathetic answer,
and, of course, Dickie accompanied him, and gradually acquired such a
strong smack of the Irish brogue that he would have passed for one of
themselves.
When the queer partnership had first been formed, Dickie did little
but go round the houses at which they paused and ask for knives or
scissors to grind, but gradually, as he grew stronger and mastered
the intricacies of the grinding as taught by old Jerry, the position
of the partners became inverted, Dickie taking the heavy part of the
work and Jerry the light. A strong affection had sprung up between
them, and Dickie never thought he could do too much for the feeble
old man, whose bad leg at times held them in a poor locality till
they were literally starved out of it. During these detentions,
Dickie, not at all dismayed, sturdily faced the road alone, sometimes
making a round of thirty miles in a day, and faithfully returning
with the grinding machine and his earnings at night. In this way he
had “eaten the district bare,” as he said, while Jerry’s leg showed
no sign of mending or allowing him to move.
“Ye’ll have to take another county, Dickie, darlint,” he said, after
they had discussed the matter, and found some action imperative.
“I’m not afeard of ye running away an’ forgetting your poor owld
grandfather. I’ve teached ye better nor that, more by token they can
never expect to prosper that wrongs the helpless or the suffering.”
“May I drop dead the minute such a thought enters my head!” said
Dickie with energy. “Rest where you are, Jerry dear—and get well and
take all the comfort ye can, for sure ye’ve been a blessed friend to
me, and made a man of me when I’d have turned out nothing but a jail
bird and a vagabone.”
The “man,” as he termed himself, was then just twelve years of age,
but his sentiments, as the reader will admit, were worthy of twice
that number of years.
Thus it was that Dickie came to face the world as an independent
traveller. He moved over a great part of Ireland in this way, always
sending the net gains regularly to old Jerry, and, on the whole,
doing nearly as well as before the separation. He almost invariably
met with kindness and sympathy, but once he was attacked and robbed
of three days’ earnings. But in taking the money the wretches took
also Dickie’s carefully cherished talisman, the broken cairngorm, and
by that they were identified and convicted, while the trinket was
returned to Dickie, who cherished it and guarded it, with greater
faith than ever in its power. He would not have parted with that
senseless bit of stone for a twenty-pound note, for it was the only
link which connected the present with the past, and he never looked
at it, as he was wont to declare, without remembering what he might
have been but for old Jerry.
“Faith, I believe if I were to lose that stone my good luck would go
with it,” he repeatedly asserted, from which it will be seen that
there was mixed up with Dickie’s well-doing a spice of superstition,
which, however, is not a bad thing, when it keeps in the straight
path feet inclined to wander.
On one of the rare occasions when Dickie was able to get back as far
as Belfast to see Jerry, he found the old grinder unusually weak and
worn. Hitherto Jerry had doctored his leg himself, but now it had
assumed such a strange appearance that he was glad to have Dickie by
his side to advise him. It had begun to grow black, and, what was
more strange, the pain had all gone out of it. Dickie had been doing
pretty well on his travels, so he promptly decided that they should
call in a doctor.
When that gentleman came he looked at the leg, and then at the
emaciated face of the old man, and then said compassionately—
“Why did you send for me?”
“To mend me leg, plase God,” said Jerry.
The doctor quietly covered up the limb and shook his head.
“Ye’ve more need of a praist, good man,” he said, shortly, but not
unkindly. “No doctor alive will ever make you well.”
Dickie felt his heart suddenly grow cold and empty within him; then
a revulsion came and he burst into tears. Jerry alone was calm, and
even radiant.
“I’ve been expecting the message,” he quietly returned. “Plase the
Lord, I’m ready to die. Dickie, avourneen, don’t sob the heart out ov
ye like that. Sure, it’s rejoicing ye ought to be that I’m getting
rid of all my troubles and pains at wanst; and, blessed be God, it’s
aisy dyin’ when love smooths the pillow. Ye’ve been a true son to me,
and my own heart’s blood couldn’t have been affectionater. Pay the
gintleman for his trouble, Dickie, aroon, and then run for a praist,
for I feel the blackness creeping up on me, and when it covers my
heart I’ll be in heaven. The Lord is always good; He’s kept me alive
till you got back, Dickie, to take my hand an’ help me over the dark
stile.”
The doctor would accept of no fee, and Dickie ran off and got a
priest, who came and went, leaving Jerry happy and peaceful, with
one arm round Dickie’s neck and the other clasping his hand. He
had a great deal to tell his young partner, but the most important
of all was a strong injunction that he should continue honest and
industrious.
“There’s some money in the owld snuff-box under my head,” he
continued. “I’ve tuck care of it for ye, for ye’ve earned the most of
it, and deserved it all. You’ll get all that, and give me a dacent
funeral, and keep the rest. It’ll maybe start ye in a better way of
doing some day, but if the other way isn’t the straight way, ye’d
better pitch the money into the salt say and go on as ye are.”
The next morning the blackness crept up on Jerry’s tender heart, and
Dickie, still clasping the old man’s hand and wetting it with his
tears, helped him over the dark stile, and stood alone in the world.
The courage had nearly gone out of Dickie under this blow, but youth
is buoyant, hopeful, and active. After laying the head of Jerry in
the grave, and paying every one, Dickie found that he had nearly £20
left, all in gold sovereigns, for Jerry had imbibed the national
distrust of bank notes. Dickie left the money in safe keeping,
and started once more with his grinding machine. It was only when
going over his old rounds that he discovered how much Jerry had
been beloved and respected—truly another testimony that “honour and
shame from no condition rise.” Every one had a good word for his
memory, and many a tear was shed as Dickie described his peaceful
and courageous end. After another year of this wandering in Ireland,
Dickie crossed to Liverpool, and spent a year in England, at the end
of which time he sold his grinding machine, and became a hawker of
cheap jewellery.
He was now a smart-tongued lad of fifteen, nicely dressed, with a
good stock, all bought with Jerry’s careful savings, and found the
new line much more congenial, and quite as profitable as the old.
Much of the Irish accent dropped from his tongue, and at length it
would have puzzled even an expert to decide his nationality by his
speech. As he increased in experience and accumulated capital, he was
enabled to deal in a finer class of jewellery, which he carried about
in a mahogany box having several lifting trays and compartments, and
having on the side a stout leather handle, and on the top a brass
plate bearing the words—
“RICHARD MURRAY,
Licensed Hawker.”
Till he was seventeen he never thought of coming near Scotland, and
had long since forgotten his mother’s features, and given up any idea
of seeking her out, or joining his fortunes with her own; but some
one then fired his mind with a glowing account of what could be done
in his line in some of the towns, and Dickie crossed the Border and
worked his way to Glasgow, in which city he succeeded well. Saturday
afternoon and night were his best times for business, as then the
working folks were all free and plentiful of money.
After one of these successful days he had wandered into a big, flashy
public-house, close to one of the theatres, for a last effort before
going home to his humble lodging. The place was crowded, bar and
boxes, for the theatre had just disgorged its contents, and it was
near closing time. Dickie sold some of his wares, and then found
himself in one of the boxes offering a silver brooch, set with
imitation diamonds, to a company of three there seated—two men and a
big muscular woman, with some traces of beauty still about her face.
The woman fancied the brooch, and appeared resolved on buying it,
but among them they could not muster the price of the trinket, and
as Dickie would not abate to their price, the brooch was reluctantly
handed back and shut up in his box. The moment he had gone a
significant look ran round the three.
“It would be easily done, and he’s quite a boy,” said Jess Murray
eagerly. “He won’t give it for a fair price; if you’ve any spirit at
all, you’ll take the boxful.”
One of the men, Bob Lynch by name, was indifferent whether they
adopted the suggestion or not, and rose carelessly to follow the
lad; the other, known as “Jockey” Savage, thought that the boy, as
Jess called him, was not such a stripling, and might give them more
trouble than they bargained for. They all agreed, however, that it
was worth while following him, and, if a suitable spot were found,
making the attempt. They left the public house and separated, one man
going on either side of the street, and Jess following some distance
behind, to assist in any emergency. Dickie’s lodging was in a narrow
close off the Gallowgate, and they had to follow him thus far before
any opportunity occurred for attacking him, as, though he did no
business on the way, he kept persistently to the main thoroughfare,
thronged with passengers. The moment he entered the close the men
exchanged signals and dived in after him. Dickie had scarcely walked
twenty yards when a garrotting arm was thrown round his neck, and
a snatch made at the box in his hand. But Dickie had not knocked
about the world so long without learning something. He held on to
the leather strap of his box with all his strength, and at the same
time delivered a backward kick at Jockey Savage’s shin bone, which
made him slacken his grip, and squirm and howl with agony. As the
intended victim made a great outcry at the same moment Bob Lynch made
a desperate effort to bring out a leaden-headed life-preserver, but
then Dickie, divining what the motion meant, grasped at the villain’s
arm with his disengaged hand while he tried to pin the other to
Lynch’s side with his teeth. Just then there was a swift rush to the
spot, and Jess Murray, snatching the “neddy” from Lynch’s pocket,
brought it down with a crashing swing on the fair brow of the lad.
Dickie dropped like a log, and Jess caught the box as it fell from
his hand, tossing the neddy back to its owner, and saying—
“You bunglers would take all night to it. Now bolt! I’ll take care of
the swag.”
They vanished from the spot like magic, and by different routes
gained a den further east, known to them all, and peculiarly handy
in their present condition, as it was kept by a man who would reset
anything—the Great Eastern, even, if anyone chose to steal it. Jess
was the last to arrive, with the box hidden under her shawl, and she
tossed it down on the table with much pride and satisfaction.
“You hit him twice, Jess,” observed Lynch, who was a bit of a coward,
and was now very pale and concerned. “I hope to goodness you haven’t
croaked him.”
“His own fault if I have,” coolly answered Jess. “Turn out the box
and see what we’ve got, and then into the fire with it before the
spots come.”
The order was speedily obeyed. The stock was of greater value than
they had anticipated, but in addition, in the bottom compartment of
the box, they found five or six pounds in money, and a bank-book
representing a good deal more.
“What a pity! what a pity!” cried Jockey reflectively; “banks are a
nuisance—if the money had only been here instead of the book!”
“What’s that in the tissue paper?” said Jess eagerly—“a pile of
sovereigns, very like. Turn them out—the greedy beggar was as rich as
a Jew.”
Jockey obeyed, and gave a whistle of disappointment. All that the
tissue paper contained was a broken cairngorm stone, with a bit of
dirty twine drawn through a hole at one end.
“There’s your pile of gold,” he said, tossing Dickie’s talisman over
to Jess. “I hope you like it.”
Jess lifted the trinket and stared at it with her face slowly
becoming ghastly, and her heart freezing within her.
“I’ve seen that before!” she slowly whispered, as the men stared at
her in awe-stricken wonder and silence. “It was his when he was taken
from me. Perhaps it is a mistake—perhaps I have not killed my own
bairn. Read! read! you that can read—read what is on that brass plate
on the lid of the box.”
Jockey glanced at the plate, and sprang to his feet in horror.
“God alive! it’s there,” was all he could articulate.
“What? what? tell me what?” moaned Jess, beginning to clutch at her
breast with her hands, and to writhe about like one grown mad.
“RICHARD MURRAY,
Licensed Hawker,”
was the awe-stricken response, and only the half of it was heard.
Shriek upon shriek went pealing through that rookery. Nothing could
check her outcry; she screamed at every one; tore at them like a
tiger; denounced them with every gasp and mad exclamation, and
finally drew to the spot the police by struggling to throw her two
accomplices out at the window. They were all marched off to the
Central—with the reset as a make-weight, and Jess was there put in a
padded cell and watched the long night through, or she would never
have seen the light of another day. The first thing that helped to
soothe her was the news that Dickie was not killed, and though there
was concussion of the brain, he was likely to recover. When he did
recover he was allowed to visit her in prison, and put his arms
through the bars and clasp her close and hear her say that she was
done for ever with a life of crime.
Jess and her companions were tried shortly after, when she, on
account of the peculiar circumstances of the case, and the tearful
appeal to the jury by the chief witness—Dickie—got the mild sentence
of two years’ imprisonment. Jockey and Lynch got ten each, as by
a fiction of the law Jess was supposed to have acted under their
influence.
When Jess was released, Dickie waited for her, and they vanished
together.