Читать книгу Thereby Hangs a Tale. Volume One - George Manville Fenn - Страница 7

“Woa! d’ye hear? woa! I’m blest if I ever did see sich a ’oss as you are, Ratty, ’ang me if I did. If a chap could drive you without swearing, he must be a downright artch-angel. Holt still, will yer? Look at that now!”

A jig here at the reins, and Ratty went forward; a lash from the whip, and the horse, a wall-eyed, attenuated beast, with a rat-tail, went backwards, ending by backing the hansom cab, in whose shafts he played at clay mill, going round and round in a perfect slough of a new unmade road, cut into ruts by builders’ carts.

“Now, look’ee here,” said the driver, our friend of the Pall Mall accident; “on’y one on us can be master, yer know. If you’ll on’y say as yer can drive, and will drive, why, I’ll run in the sharps, and there’s an end on’t. Hold still, will yer? Yer might be decent to-day.”

The horse suddenly stood still—bogged, with the slushy mud over his fetlocks, and the cab wheels half-way down to the nave.

“Thenky,” said the driver, standing up on his perch; “much obliged. I’m blessed!” he muttered. “Buddy may well say as mine’s allus the dirtiest keb as comes inter the yard, as well as the shabbiest. ’Struth, what a place! Now, then, get on, will yer?”

The horse gave his Roman-profiled head a shake, and remained motionless.

“Just like yer,” said the cabman. “When I want yer to go, yer stop; and when I don’t want yer to go, off yer do go, all of a shy, and knocks ’alf a dozen people into the mud, and gets yer driver nearly took up for reckless driving, as the bobbies calls it. Come, get on.”

Another shake of the head, but the four legs seemed planted as if they were to grow.

“Well, there’s one thing, Ratty,” said the driver, “we’re about square, mate; for if ever I’ve give yer too much of the whip, yer’ve had it outer me with obstinacy. Look at this now, just when yer oughter be on yer best manners, seeing as I’ve come about the mischief as yer did; and then, to make it wus, yer takes advantage of yer poor master’s weakness, and goes a-leading of him inter temptation sore as can’t be bore, and pulls up close aside of a public.”

For the spot at which the horse had stopped was at the opening of one of those new suburban streets run up by speculative builders—a street of six and seven-roomed houses, with a flaring tavern at the corner; and the houses, starting from the commencement of the street, in every stage from finished and inhabited, through finished and uninhabited, down to unfinished skeletons with the bricks falling out—foundations just above the ground, foundations merely dug, to end only with a few scaffold poles, and a brick-field in frill work.

“Stops right in front of a public, yer do,” said the driver; “and me as thirsty as a sack o’ sawdust.”

The cabman looked at the public-house, to read golden announcements of “Tipkin’s Entire,” of “The Celebrated Fourpenny Ale,” and the “Brown London Stout, threepence per pot in your own jugs,” and his whip-hand was drawn across his lips. Then the whip-hand was set free, and forced its way into his pockets, where it rattled some halfpence.

“Must have ’alf pint now, anyhow,” he muttered, and he made as if to fasten the reins to the roof of the cab, but only to plump himself down into his seat again, jig the reins, and give his whip, a sharp crack.

“I’ll tell the missus on you, Hatty, see if I don’t?” he said, “a-trying to get your master back into his old ways. Get on with yer, or yer’ll get it directly.”

He gave his whip such a vigorous crack in the air that Ratty consented to go, and dragging the muddy cab partially down the new street, its driver pulled up by where a knot of shoeless boys were ornamenting, and amusing themselves with, the new ill-laid pavement. One was standing like a small Colossus of Rhodes, with his grimy feet at either corner of a loose slab, making the liquid mud beneath squirt out into a puddle, while a companion carefully turned a naked foot into a stamp, dipped it in the mud, and printed a pattern all along the pave, till a third smudged it out, and a fight ensued.

“Hallo, yer young dogs,” roared the cabman, and his long whip gave a crack which stopped the fray; “a-fightin’ like that! Where’s Whaley’s Place?”

“First turn to the left, and first to the right,” shouted two boys.

“And is it all like this here?” said the cabman.

“No; you should have gone round Brick Street. I’ll show yer.”

“Hook on, then,” said the cabman, turning his horse; and, to the extreme envy of his companions, the little speaker “hooked on” behind, his muddy feet slipping about on the step; but he clung fast, shouting his directions till the driver reached the main road, made a détour, and arrived at last in Whaley’s Place, where the present of a copper sent the boy off in high glee to spend it in some coveted luxury.

“Nice sorter cheerful spot this,” said the cabman, taking an observation of the street, which was of a similar class to the new one he had left, only that the houses had fallen into a state of premature decay; quite half, too, had declined from the genteel private and taken to trade, with or without the bow window of shop life. For instance, one displayed a few penny illustrated sheets and an assortment of fly-specked clay pipes, the glass panes bearing the legends, “Tobacco” and “Cigars.” Another house had the door wide open, and sundry squeaks issued therefrom—squeaks of a manufacturing tendency, indicative of grinding, the process being explained by a red and yellow board, having an artistic drawing of the machinery used, and the words, “Mangling Done Here.” Then, after an interval of private houses, there was a fishmonger’s, with a stock-in-trade of four plaice and ten bloaters, opposite to a purveyors, in whose open window—the parlour by rights, with the sashes out—were displayed two very unpleasant-looking decapitations of the gentle sheep, and three trays of pieces, labelled ninepence, sevenpence, and sixpence individually, apparently not from any variation of quality, but the amount of bone.

“A werry nice sorter place,” said the cabman, gazing down at the numerous children, and the preternaturally big-headed, tadpoleish babies, whose porters were staring at him. “Said it was a little groshers shop. Ah, here we are.”

It was only four doors farther on, and at this establishment there was a shop front, with the name “B. Sturt” on the facia. The stock here did not seem to be extensive, though the place was scrupulously clean. There was a decorative and pictorial aspect about the trade carried on, which was evidently that of a chandler’s shop; for, in attenuated letters over the door, you read that Barnabas Sturt was licenced by the Board of Inland Revenue to deal in tea, coffee, pepper, vinegar, and tobacco. The panes of the windows were gay with show cards, one of which displayed the effects of Tomkins’s Baking Powder, while in another a lady was holding up fine linen got up with Winks’s Prussian Blue, and smiling sweetly at a neighbouring damsel stiff with regal starch. There were pictorial cards, too, telling of the celebrated Unadulterated Mustard, the Ho-fi Tea Company, and Fort’s Popular Coffee.

Descending from his perch, the cabman stroked and patted his horse, and then entered the shop, setting a bell jingling, and standing face to face with a counter, a pair of scales, and a box of red herrings.

Nobody came, so he tapped the floor with his whip, and a voice growled savagely from beyond a half-glass door which guarded an inner room—

Waiting patiently for a few moments, the cabman became aware of the fact that Barnabas Sturt consumed his tobacco as well as dealt in it; and at last, growing impatient, he peered through the window, to perceive that a very thin, sour-looking woman, with high cheek bones, was dipping pieces of rag into a tea-cup of vinegar and water, and applying them to the contused countenance of a bull-headed gentleman, who lay back in a chair smoking, and making the woman wince and sneeze by puffing volumes of the coarse, foul vapour into her face.

“Better mind what you are doing!” he growled.

“Can’t help it, dear,” said the woman, plaintively, “if you smoke me so. Well, what now?” she said, waspishly, and changing her tone to the metallic aggressive common amongst some women.

“Been having a—?” the cabman finished his sentence by grinning, and giving his arms a pugilistic flourish.

“What’s that got to do with you?” growled Mr Sturt. “What d’ yer come into people’s places like that for?”

“Because people says as they sells the werry best tobacco at threepence a hounce,” said the cabman. “Give’s half-hounce.”

“Go an’ weigh it,” said Mr Sturt.

The woman dropped the piece of rag she held, and passed shrinkingly into the shop, took the already weighed-out tobacco from a jar, and held out her hand for the money.

“Now then,” growled Mr Sturt from the back room, “hand that over here, will yer?”

The cabman walked into the room and laid down the money, slowly emptying the paper afterwards into a pouch, which he took from a side pocket.

“This here’s twenty-seven, ain’t it?” said the cabman then.

“Yes, it is twenty-seven,” cried Mr Sturt—our friend Barney of the steeplechase—and he seemed so much disturbed that he leaped up and backed into a corner of the room. “You ain’t got nothin’ again’ me, come, now.”

“No, I ain’t got nothin’ again’ yer,” said the cabman, quietly, but with his eye twinkling. “Did yer think I was—?”

He finished his sentence with a wink.

“Never you mind what I thought,” said Barney. “What d’ yer want here?”

“Only to know if Mrs Lane lives here.”

“Yes, she do,” cried the woman, spitefully; “and why couldn’t you ring the side bell, and not come bothering us?”

“Because I wanted some tobacco, mum,” said the cabman, quietly.

“Oh!” said the woman, in a loud voice; “with their cabs, indeed, a-comin’ every day: there’ll be kerridges next!”

“Just you come and go on with your job,” said Barney, with a snarl.

“I’m coming!” said the woman, sharply. Then to the cabman—“You can go this way;” and she flung open a side door and called up the stairs—“Here, Mrs Lane, another cab’s come for you. There, I s’pose you can go up,” she added; and then, in a voice loud enough to be heard upstairs, “if people would only pay their way instead of riding in cabs, it would be better for some of us.”

A door had been heard to open on the first floor, and then, as the vinegary remark of Mrs Sturt rose, voices were heard whispering. The cabman went straight up the uncarpeted stairs, to pause before the half-open door, as he heard, in a low conversation, the words—

“Mamma—dear mamma, pray don’t notice it.”

The next moment the door opened fully, and the pale, worn-looking woman of the accident stood before the cabman, who shuffled off his hat, and stood bowing.

“Jenkles, mum,” he said—“Samuel Jenkles, nine ’underd seven six, as knocked you down in Pall Mall.”

The woman stepped back and laid her hand upon her side, seeming about to fall, when the cabman started forward and caught her, helping her to a chair in the shabbily-furnished room, as the door swung to.

“Oh, mamma,” cried a girl of about seventeen, springing forward, the work she had been engaged upon falling on the floor.

“It is nothing, my dear,” gasped the other; though her cheek was ashy pale, and the dew gathered on her forehead.

“She’s fainting, my dear,” said the cabman. “Got anything in the house?”

“Yes, some water,” said the girl, supporting the swooning woman, and fanning her face.

“Water!” ejaculated the cabman, in a tone of disgust. “Here, I’ll be back directly.”

He caught up a little china mug from a side table, and ran out, nearly upsetting Mrs Sturt on the landing and Barney at the foot of the stairs, to return at the end of a few minutes, and find the passage vacant; so he hastily ran up, to see that Mrs Lane had come to in his absence, though she looked deadly pale.

“Here, mum,” he said, earnestly, “drink this; don’t be afeard, it’s port wine. A drop wouldn’t do you no harm neither, Miss,” he added, as he glanced at the pale, thin face and delicate aspect of the girl.

Mrs Lane put the mug to her lips, and then made an effort, and sat up.

“You was hurt, then, mum?” said the cabman, anxiously.

“Only shaken—frightened,” she said, in a feeble voice.

“And my coming brought it all up again, and upset you. It’s jest like me, mum, I’m allus a-doing something; ask my missus if I ain’t.”

“It did startle me,” said Mrs Lane, recovering herself. “But you wished to see me. I am better now, Netta,” she said to the girl, who clung to her. “Place a chair.”

“No, no, arter you, Miss,” said the cabman; “I’m nobody;” and he persisted in standing. “’Scuse me, but I knows a real lady when I sees one; I’ll stand, thanky. You see, it was like this: I saw Tommy Runce on the stand—him, you know, as brought you home from the front of the club there—and I ast him, and he told me where he brought you. And when I was talking to the missus last night, she says, says she, ‘Well, Sam,’ she says, ‘the least you can do is to drive up and see how the poor woman is, even if you lose half a day.’ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘that’s just what I was a thinking,’ I says, ‘only I wanted to hear you say it too.’ So you see, mum, thinking it was only decent like, I made bold to come and tell you how sorry I am, and how it was all Ratty’s fault; for he’s that beast of a horse—begging your pardon, mum, and yours too, Miss—as it’s impossible to drive. He oughter ha’ been called Gunpowder, for you never know when he’s going off.”

“It was very kind and very thoughtful of you, and—and your wife,” said Mrs Lane; “and indeed I thank you; but I was not hurt, only shaken.”

“Then it shook all the colour outer your face, mum, and outer yours too, Miss,” he said, awkwardly. “You’ll excuse me, but you look as if you wanted a ride every day out in the country.”

As he spoke, the girl glanced at a bundle of violets in a broken glass of water in the window; then the tears gathered in her eyes. She seemed to struggle for a moment against her emotion, and then started up and burst into a passion of weeping.

“My darling!” whispered Mrs Lane, catching her in her arms, and trying to soothe her, “pray—pray don’t give way.”

“I’ve done it again,” muttered Jenkles—“I’m allus a-doing it—it is my natur’ to.”

The girl made a brave effort, dashed away the tears, shook back her long dark hair, and tried to smile in the speaker’s face, but so piteous and sad a smile that Jenkles gave a gulp; for he had been glancing round the room, and in that glance had seen a lady and her daughter living in a state of semi-starvation, keeping life together evidently by sewing the hard, toilsome slop-work which he saw scattered upon the table and chairs.

“She has been ill,” said Mrs Lane, apologetically, “and has not quite recovered. We are very much obliged to you for calling.”

“Well, you see, mum,” said Jenkles, “it was to set both of us right, like—you as I didn’t mean to do it, and me and my missus that you warn’t hurt. And now I’m here, mum, if you and the young lady there would like a drive once or twice out into the country, why, mum, you’ve only got to say the word, and—”

“You’ll excuse me, ma’am,” said the sharp voice of Mrs Sturt, laying great stress on the “ma’am,” “but my ’usban’ is below, and going out on business, and he’d be much obliged if you’d pay us the rent.”

The girl looked in a frightened way at her mother, who rose, and said, quietly—

“Mrs Sturt, you might have spared me this—and before a stranger, too.”

“I don’t know nothing about no strangers, ma’am,” said Mrs Sturt, defiantly. “I only know that my master sent me up for the rent; for he says if people can afford to come home in cabs, and order cabs, and drink port wine, they can afford to pay their rent; so, if you please, ma’am, if you’ll be kind—”

“Why, them two cabs warn’t nothing to do with the lady at all,” said Jenkles, indignantly; “and as for the wine, why, that was mine—and—and I paid for it.”

“And drunk it too, I dessay,” said Mrs Sturt. “Which it’s four weeks at seven-and-six, if you please, ma’am—thirty shillings, if you please.” The girl stood up, her eyes flashing, and a deep flush in her cheeks; but at a sign from her mother she was silent.

“Mrs Sturt,” she said, “I cannot pay you now; give me till Saturday.”

“That won’t do for my master, ma’am; he won’t be put off.”

“But the work I have in hand, Mrs Sturt, will half pay you—you shall receive that.”

“I’m tired on it,” said Mrs Sturt, turning to the door; “p’r’aps I’d better send him up.”

“Oh, mamma,” said the girl, in a low, frightened voice, and she turned of a waxen pallor, “don’t let him come here.”

And she clung trembling to her arm as the retreating footsteps of Mrs Sturt were heard, and, directly after, her vinegary voice in colloquy with her husband.

“Here, I’ll soon let ’em know,” he was heard to say, roughly.

The trembling girl hid her face on her mother’s shoulder; but only to start up directly, very pale and firm, as Barney’s heavy step was heard.

“Blame me if I can stand this,” muttered Jenkles.

Then without a word he stuck his hat on his head and walked out of the room, in time to meet the master of the house on the stairs.

“Now, then?” said Barney, as Jenkles stopped short.

“Now, then,” said Jenkles, “where are you going?”

“In there,” said Barney, savagely; and he nodded towards the room.

“No, you ain’t,” said Jenkles; “you’re a-going downstairs.”

“Oh, am I? I’ll just show you about that.”

He rushed up two more of the stairs; but Jenkles did not budge an inch—only met the brute with such a firm, unflinching look in his ugly eyes that the bully was cowed, puzzled at the opposition.

“You’re a-going downstairs to send yer missus up; and jest you tell her to go and take a spoonful o’ treacle out o’ the shop afore she does come up, so as she’ll be a little bit sweeter when the ladies pays her.”

Then Jenkles walked back into the room, rammed his hand into his pocket, and pulled out a dirty canvas bag, out of which he fished a piece of rag tied tightly, in one corner of which was a sovereign, which had to be set free with his teeth. From another corner he tried to extricate a half-sovereign, but it would not come, the knot was too tight.

“Here, lends a pair o’ scissors,” he exclaimed, angrily.

“What are you going to do?” said Mrs Lane.

“To cut this here out,” said Jenkles; “there, that’s it. Here’s a sov and a arf, mum, as was saved up for our rent. I never did such a thing afore, but that’s nothing to you. I’ll lend it you, and you’ll pay me again when you can. There’s my name on that dirty envelope, and you’ll send it, I know.”

“No,” exclaimed Mrs Lane, in a choking voice, “I—”

At this moment Mrs Sturt entered the room, looking very grim; but no sooner did she see the money lying upon the table than she walked up, took it, said “Thanky,” shortly, and jerked a letter upon the table.

Jenkles was following her, when Mrs Lane cried “Stop!” seized the letter, tore it open, and read it.

It was in reply to the second she had written, both of which had reached Captain Vanleigh, though she believed the first had been lost.

Her letter had been brief—

“Help us—we are destitute.

“A.V.”

The reply was—

“Do what I wish, and I will help you.”

No signature.

Mrs Lane clenched her teeth as she crushed the letter in her hand, then raised her eyes to see the cabman at the door, with her daughter kissing his hand.

“Oh, God!” she moaned, “has it come to this!”

The next minute Netta was clinging to her, and they wept in unison as the sound of wheels was heard; and Sam Jenkles apostrophised his ugly steed.

“Ratty,” he said, “I wonder what it feels like to be a fool—whether it’s what I feels just now?”

There was a crack of the whip here, and the hansom trundled along.

“How many half-pints are there in thirty bob, I wonder?” said Sam again.

And then, as he turned into the main road at Upper Holloway, he pulled up short—to the left London, to the right over the hills to the country.

“Not above four or five mile, Ratty, and then there’ll be no missus to meet. Ratty, old man, I think I’d better drive myself to Colney Hatch.”