Despite the lateness of the hour before he got to rest, Percival
had already breakfasted, when his valet informed him, with raised,
supercilious eyebrows, that an uncommon ragged sort of a person insisted
that he had been told to call. Though Beck had been at the house before,
and the valet had admitted him, so much thinner, so much more ragged was
he now, that the trim servant--no close observer of such folk--did
not recognize him. However, at Percival’s order, too well-bred to
show surprise, he ushered Beck up with much civility; and St. John
was painfully struck with the ravages a few weeks had made upon the
sweeper’s countenance. The lines were so deeply ploughed, the dry hair
looked so thin, and was so sown with gray that Beck might have beat all
Farren’s skill in the part of an old man.
The poor sweeper’s tale, extricated from its peculiar phraseology, was
simple enough, and soon told. He had returned home at night to find his
hoards stolen, and the labour of his life overthrown. How he passed that
night he did not very well remember. We may well suppose that the little
reason he possessed was wellnigh bereft from him. No suspicion of the
exact thief crossed his perturbed mind. Bad as Grabman’s character might
be, he held a respectable position compared with the other lodgers in
the house. Bill the cracksman, naturally and by vocation, suggested the
hand that had despoiled him: how hope for redress or extort surrender
from such a quarter? Mechanically, however, when the hour arrived to
return to his day’s task, he stole down the stairs, and lo, at the very
door of the house Bill’s children were at play, and in the hand of the
eldest he recognized what he called his “curril.”
“Your curril!” interrupted St. John.
“Yes, curril,--vot the little ‘uns bite afore they gets their teethin’.”
St. John smiled, and supposing that Beck had some time or other been
puerile enough to purchase such a bauble, nodded to him to continue.
To seize upon the urchin, and, in spite of kicks, bites, shrieks, or
scratches, repossess himself of his treasure, was the feat of a moment.
The brat’s clamour drew out the father; and to him Beck (pocketing the
coral, that its golden bells might not attract the more experienced
eye and influence the more formidable greediness of the paternal thief)
loudly, and at first fearlessly, appealed. Him he charged and accused
and threatened with all vengeance, human and divine. Then, changing his
tone, he implored, he wept, he knelt. As soon as the startled cracksman
recovered his astonishment at such audacity, and comprehended the nature
of the charge against himself and his family, he felt the more indignant
from a strange and unfamiliar consciousness of innocence. Seizing Beck
by the nape of the neck, with a dexterous application of hand and foot
he sent him spinning into the kennel.
“Go to Jericho, mud-scraper!” cried Bill, in a voice of thunder; “and if
ever thou sayst such a vopper agin,--‘sparaging the characters of them
‘ere motherless babes,--I’ll seal thee up in a ‘tato-sack, and sell thee
for fiv’pence to No. 7, the great body-snatcher. Take care how I ever
sets eyes agin on thy h-ugly mug!”
With that Bill clapped to the door, and Beck, frightened out of his
wits, crawled from the kennel and, bruised and smarting, crept to
his crossing. But he was unable to discharge his duties that day; his
ill-fed, miserable frame was too weak for the stroke he had received.
Long before dusk he sneaked away, and dreading to return to his lodging,
lest, since nothing now was left worth robbing but his carcass, Bill
might keep his word and sell that to the body-snatcher, he took refuge
under the only roof where he felt he could sleep in safety.
And here we must pause to explain. In our first introduction of Beck we
contented ourselves with implying to the ingenious and practised reader
that his heart might still be large enough to hold something besides his
crossing. Now, in one of the small alleys that have their vent in the
great stream of Fleet Street there dwelt an old widow-woman who eked out
her existence by charing,--an industrious, drudging creature, whose sole
occupation, since her husband, the journeyman bricklayer, fell from a
scaffold, and, breaking his neck, left her happily childless as well as
penniless, had been scrubbing stone floors and cleaning out dingy houses
when about to be let,--charing, in a word. And in this vocation had she
kept body and soul together till a bad rheumatism and old age had put
an end to her utilities and entitled her to the receipt of two shillings
weekly from parochial munificence. Between this old woman and Beck there
was a mysterious tie, so mysterious that he did not well comprehend it
himself. Sometimes he called her “mammy,” sometimes “the h-old crittur.”
But certain it is that to her he was indebted for that name which he
bore, to the puzzlement of St. Giles’s. Becky Carruthers was the name of
the old woman; but Becky was one of those good creatures who are always
called by their Christian names, and never rise into the importance of
the surname and the dignity of “Mistress;” lopping off the last syllable
of the familiar appellation, the outcast christened himself “Beck.”
“And,” said St. John, who in the course of question and answer had got
thus far into the marrow of the sweeper’s narrative, “is not this good
woman really your mother?”
“Mother!” echoed Beck, with disdain; “no, I ‘as a gritter mother nor
she. Sint Poll’s is my mother. But the h-old crittur tuk care on me.”
“I really don’t understand you. St. Paul’s is your mother? How?”
Beck shook his head mysteriously, and without answering the question,
resumed the tale, which we must thus paraphrastically continue to
deliver.
When he was a little more than six years old, Beck began to earn his own
livelihood, by running errands, holding horses, scraping together pence
and halfpence. Betimes, his passion for saving began; at first with a
good and unselfish motive,--that of surprising “mammy” at the week’s
end. But when “mammy,” who then gained enough for herself, patted his
head and called him “good boy,” and bade him save for his own uses,
and told him what a great thing it would be if he could lay by a pretty
penny against he was a man, he turned miser on his own account; and the
miserable luxury grew upon him. At last, by the permission of the police
inspector, strengthened by that of the owner of the contiguous house,
he made his great step in life, and succeeded a deceased negro in the
dignity and emoluments of the memorable crossing. From that hour he felt
himself fulfilling his proper destiny. But poor Becky, alas! had
already fallen into the sere and yellow leaf; with her decline, her
good qualities were impaired. She took to drinking,--not to positive
intoxication, but to making herself “comfortable;” and, to satisfy her
craving, Beck, waking betimes one morning, saw her emptying his pockets.
Then he resolved, quietly and without upbraiding her, to remove to
a safer lodging. To save had become the imperative necessity of his
existence. But to do him justice, Beck had a glimmering sense of what
was due to the “h-old crittur.” Every Saturday evening he called at her
house and deposited with her a certain sum, not large even in proportion
to his earnings, but which seemed to the poor ignorant miser, who
grudged every farthing to himself, an enormous deduction from his total,
and a sum sufficient for every possible want of humankind, even to
satiety. And now, in returning, despoiled of all save the few pence he
had collected that day, it is but fair to him to add that not his least
bitter pang was in the remembrance that this was the only Saturday on
which, for the first time, the weekly stipend would fail.
But so ill and so wretched did he look when he reached her little room
that “mammy” forgot all thought of herself; and when he had told his
tale, so kind was her comforting, so unselfish her sympathy, that his
heart smote him for his old parsimony, for his hard resentment at her
single act of peculation. Had not she the right to all he made? But
remorse and grief alike soon vanished in the fever that now seized him;
for several days he was insensible; and when he recovered sufficiently
to be made aware of what was around him, he saw the widow seated beside
him, within four bare walls. Everything, except the bed he slept on,
had been sold to support him in his illness. As soon as he could totter
forth, Beck hastened to his crossing. Alas! it was preoccupied. His
absence had led to ambitious usurpation. A one-legged, sturdy sailor had
mounted his throne, and wielded his sceptre. The decorum of the street
forbade altercation to the contending parties; but the sailor referred
discussion to a meeting at a flash house in the Rookery that evening.
There a jury was appointed, and the case opened. By the conventional
laws that regulate this useful community, Beck was still in his rights;
his reappearance sufficed to restore his claims, and an appeal to the
policeman would no doubt re-establish his authority. But Beck was still
so ill and so feeble that he had a melancholy persuasion that he could
not suitably perform the duties of his office; and when the sailor, not
a bad fellow on the whole, offered to pay down on the nail what really
seemed a very liberal sum for Beck’s peaceful surrender of his rights,
the poor wretch thought of the bare walls at his “mammy’s,” of the
long, dreary interval that must elapse, even if able to work, before the
furniture pawned could be redeemed by the daily profits of his post, and
with a groan he held out his hand and concluded the bargain.
Creeping home to his “h-old crittur,” he threw the purchase money into
her lap; then, broken-hearted and in despair, he slunk forth again in a
sort of vague, dreamy hope that the law, which abhors vagabonds, would
seize and finish him.
When this tale was done, Percival did not neglect the gentle task of
admonition, which the poor sweeper’s softened heart and dull remorse
made easier. He pointed out, in soft tones, how the avarice he had
indulged had been perhaps mercifully chastised, and drew no ineloquent
picture of the vicious miseries of the confirmed miser. Beck listened
humbly and respectfully; though so little did he understand of mercy and
Providence and vice that the diviner part of the homily was quite lost
on him. However, he confessed penitently that “the mattress had made
him vorse nor a beast to the h-old crittur;” and that “he was cured of
saving to the end of his days.”
“And now,” said Percival, “as you really seem not strong enough to
bear this out-of-door work (the winter coming on, too), what say you to
entering into my service? I want some help in my stables. The work is
easy enough, and you are used to horses, you know, in a sort of a way.”
Beck hesitated, and looked a moment undecided. At last he said, “Please
your honour, if I bean’t strong enough for the crossin’, I ‘se afeared
I’m too h-ailing to sarve you. And voud n’t I be vorse nor a wiper to
take your vages and not vork for ‘em h-as I h-ought?”
“Pooh! we’ll soon make you strong, my man. Take my advice; don’t let
your head run on the crossing. That kind of industry exposes you to bad
company and bad thoughts.”
“That’s vot it is, sir,” said Beck, assentingly, laying his dexter
forefinger on his sinister palm.
“Well! you are in my service, then. Go downstairs now and get your
breakfast; by and by you shall show me your ‘mammy’s’ house, and we’ll
see what can be done for her.”
Beck pressed his hands to his eyes, trying hard not to cry; but it was
too much for him; and as the valet, who appeared to Percival’s summons,
led him down the stairs, his sobs were heard from attic to basement.