Читать книгу The Wayfarers - J. C. Snaith - Страница 8

I had hardly time to open the window ere they were recovered of their entry and on their feet. Seeing what I was about to attempt they made a rush, but I did not bear youth and vigour in my limbs for nothing. With a quickness that I'll warrant would have done no discredit to a cat, I had poised myself on the precarious sill, and had twisted myself into a favourable position for reaching the roof. It was easily in reach, as this chamber very happily was at the top of the house. I had barely taken a firm hold on the iron gutter that ran along the edge of the tiles, before I had drawn up one knee, and was in the act of dragging up the other as fast as I could, when it was seized by a hand from the room below. Luckily for me, I had a firm enough hold of the roof to get some little purchase for my imprisoned leg, whereby I was enabled to deal my adversary a pretty smart kick in the teeth, which sent him cursing back into the room. Thereupon I scrambled willy-nilly, hands and knees, on to the tiles. Not one moment too soon, however. My pursuers evidently numbered fleet and active fellows among them. Their blood was up too. For scarcely had I gone ten yards along the edge of the tiles, moving on all-fours for safety, ere another fellow was also in possession of the roof. This was not at all to my liking, and a good deal outside my calculations, since I had not expected that these clumsy Bow Street runners would attempt to follow me in this fashion.

My pursuer gave a view-halloa and followed me so fast that I realized at once that at this game Jack was like to be as good as his master. Perchance the fellow was better schooled in this mode of procedure than I, for he was clattering behind me, preparing to grab my heels before I could take my bearings. I did not know where I was, and had not the least idea as to how I should get away. But one thing was plain. I had embarked on so bold a course that the moment there was a limit to my daring all would be lost. Therefore, hearing the Bow Street gentleman wheezing and grunting a yard or two behind me, I stopped and rose to my feet, and turned round so suddenly as considerably to endanger my own safety and to take him entirely unawares. And I sent my fist such a crack in his eye, that only a miracle saved him from toppling over the parapet into the middle of Jermyn Street, twenty feet beneath.

While Mr. Catchpole sprawled and wallowed with his arms and legs outstretched striving to save himself from falling over the brink, and howling to his mates, whose heads were just showing above the gutter, to come to his assistance, I took the occasion to alter my tactics. Instead of crawling along the edge, I began climbing up in a vertical direction. And my pursuer being but a runner from Bow Street after all, had been considerably cooled in his zeal, and accordingly allowed me rather more of elbow room, whilst his companions, of whom two more had now come upon the top, observing the nature of his accident, were in no such hurry as he had been to come by one themselves.

I mounted painfully enough as high as the chimney pots, not without some damage to the skin of my hands and knees, and a good deal of slipping and sliding. A game of hide-and-seek followed. Reaching the opposite slope of the roofs, which concealed me and put me farthest away from the enemy, I crept as swiftly as I could from chimney-stack to chimney-stack with ever a keen eye for a means of getting down again into the street. Some yards ahead I saw that the straight line of the tiles was broken by a dormer window. I made to this for here was the very chance that I desired. Alas! when I reached it I found it secured from within. I had no time in which to break a pane of glass in the hope that I might put my hand through and discover the fastenings. A couple of the traps had already found out in which direction I had gone, and were even now standing on the apex, and beckoning to the others. I moved away to another dormer window a few yards further on. It too was fast, but looking ahead I saw, greatly to my relief, that a third was standing open. My satisfaction had a short life, however. For scarcely had I made two yards towards it ere I observed a thing that in my haste I had overlooked. The line of the houses ended abruptly; the open window belonged to another row. Between ran an alley or a narrow street, wide enough to make me pause in my career. Hard pressed as I was, I must confess that I had no fancy to attempt a leap so precarious. I turned to go back, but the enemy had followed so smartly on my heels that I saw in a glance that there was no chance of retreating by the way I had come. My only hope lay in a forward direction; I could not possibly retire. Nor must I hesitate an instant either. The closer I came to this gulf in the houses the more desperate it looked, but my resolve was already taken. A drowning man clutches at a straw.

Impeded as I was with a cumbersome riding-coat, I could not hope to make the leap successfully. Hastily pulling it off, therefore, I folded it up in some rude fashion, for I could not afford to lose it, and pitched it over a space between the houses. It landed in safety well over the immediate brink. The traps, apprehending the nature of the feat I was about to attempt, were coming along the roof with wonderful expedition. Indeed, they are almost within an arm's-length of me when I started on the run to make the leap. With teeth set, and it must be confessed some little sickness of anticipation in my spirit, I ran as hard as I could, and hurled myself into the air with a despairing energy. That I covered the gulf and landed with my knees on the coat I had cast across, I have always ascribed to that benevolent Providence that hath such a jealous regard for the worthless. And in sooth when I had actually arrived there it was one of the greatest wonders in the world that I did not fall back again in the recoil, or did not begin to roll sideways and so tumble over the lower edge. But somehow I recovered my balance before either of these calamities happened. Then I felt that I might breathe again.

There was precious little to fear that the men from Bow Street would be bold enough to follow me. For when I came to contemplate, now as you may believe with no little satisfaction, the magnitude of the hazard intervening between us, it cost me a shudder in despite of my complacency. And as in their case it was not a life and death matter on which line of the roofs they happened to stand, and they had no thoughts of adorable little Cynthia to spur them on to these great risks, I think they may be pardoned for giving back before that which I with so many sweats and misgivings had accomplished. Nor do I lay any unction to myself, since I am sure that had I stood in their shoes, or had I played for a lesser stake, I would have had none of such risks either. Nay, I am not altogether clear in my mind that had I not been heated by the fine excitements of the hue and cry I should have been wrought up to do it as it was. There can be little doubt, I think, that the chase makes a much nobler and more adventurous creature of the fox than ever consists with his vulgar and common character.

Seeing my pursuers had halted on the opposite brink, and were presenting such a helpless and bewildered appearance as plainly showed they had no stomach for a similar deed, I was able to resume my riding coat at my ease, and even to engage in a few words of conversation as I did so. Says I:

"Certainly, gentlemen, I think you are well advised in not seeking to come over. 'Pon my soul I would not have come over myself had you not pressed me so hard! Here is a guinea to drink my health, and now I will wish you good afternoon!"

Such is the power of habit that I fumbled in several pockets in search of a gold piece to toss them, ere I recollected the bankrupt condition in which I stood. Perforce I had to be content with a bow and a lifting of the hat, whereupon I went my way along the roof while they were left at the end of their wits to discover a means by which they might circumvent me.

I had not an instant of time to lose, however, if I was to make good my escape. There were doubtless persons in the street below who had had a keen eye for these proceedings. No sooner would they see in which direction the cat was to jump than they would act accordingly. Therefore it behoved me to be as bold and as quick as ever. The open dormer window offered the readiest mode of egress. I made to it at once, and peering within saw that the chamber, a bedroom, was very happily empty. I had no difficulty in squeezing my body through the narrow opening and so came into the room. Having done this, I securely fastened the window to present a further obstacle to my enemies. The great thing that lay before me now was to make my way downstairs as cautiously as I could, and to slip out of the house without attracting the attention of its occupants, or of those of my foes who might be lurking about in the street. But much address was required to perform all this successfully, as you will readily understand.

First I opened the door of the bed-chamber with noiseless care, and then groped my way through the gloom and strangeness of the place to the stairs. And mighty rickety and full of noises they were when I found them. They began so sheer and abruptly, and so close to the bed-room door, that in spite of my caution, I was on them long ere I thought I was, and as a consequence nearly pitched headlong down their whole length. Mercifully I recovered my balance in the nick of time, but not before, as it seemed to my nervous ears, I had set up an intolerable clatter that appeared to echo and re-echo through every room of the house. Step by step, I crept down the stairs, and paused to listen on every one. It was so dark that I had to be very tenacious of the walls. But fortune was still on my side. There seemed not a soul in all the house, nor could I hear a sound. Yet every step I descended the place grew darker and darker; there was not so much as a glimmer of light from a door or a window to be discerned; while the walls were so close about me that when I stretched out my hands I could feel them on either side. Presently I ceased to descend, whereon much shuffling of my feet ensued, and I concluded that this was some kind of a landing. More shuffling and gingerly manoeuvring followed, and then the stairs began again, and the place grew darker than ever. The darkness became so great that I could not see my hand before my face; and as I had not the means about me to procure a light, nor would have dared to employ them had they been in my possession, I began to marvel where in the world I was coming to.

At last the stairs ended altogether, and on pushing carefully forward, my nose suddenly came against an unexpected obstacle. Running my hands over it, I judged it to be a door. I put my ear to the wood, but listen as I might I could hear no sound. Whither it led or what lay behind it I had not the vaguest notion, nor was there a speck of light by which I might make a guess. But when the handle of the door came into my fist, I decided not to flinch the situation whatever it might present. A bold course had been my salvation hitherto; come what might I would continue in it. Therefore, I cautiously turned the handle, and opened the door an inch at a time, I daresay I had got it about five inches apart when it was rudely grasped from the other side, and flung wide open in my face. A Jew stood before me, as true a child of Israel as ever I set eyes on. He cast up his hands and gurgled in his anger and surprise.

"Why, what the deffil!" says he at last.

"How do you do, sir," says I, cordially holding out my hand. "Proud to meet you, sir, infernally proud to meet you."

Although I had hoped that my air and tone were the very pattern of affability, I doubt if this Hebrew thought them so; or even if he did, he hardly seemed to think they became me in the circumstances as handsomely as I had hoped they would. For he gurgled and cackled, his tawny countenance grew redder and redder, his hands trembled, and he contorted his body into a truly fantastic shape. Meantime I gazed past him to see whence he had emerged, in the hope that I might get some clue as to what would be the best line of conduct to adopt. To my infinite pleasure I saw that I had come upon the threshold of a pawnbroker's shop, since a truly miscellaneous collection of articles lay scattered about it, whilst the character and nation of my inquisitor alone warranted the theory. Yet in an instant was my satisfaction turned to anger, for there, staring into my very eyes with all the meditative grandeur he had of yore, was that learned nobleman, my grandfather. It was well for M. François that he was not at that moment within my reach.

"What do you do here?" says the Jew, having discovered his tongue at last. "Do you think I do not know? You haf come to rob my house. Benjamin, bring your blunderbush. In broad daylight, too. O heaven, what effrontery!"

"My dear Mr. Moses," says I winningly, "what words are these? Effrontery—rob your house; to conceive that I, the best friend your tribe ever had or for that matter ever will have, should be thus accosted by you! I am here as a client, sir; and to conceive that you of all men should deny a client when he takes these monstrous pains to come to you in privacy!"

Mr. Moses was a good deal reassured by my address. But after all his race are a good deal too tenacious to be put off so lightly. He demanded to know in what manner I had come there and he did it so boisterously too, and in a fashion so calculated to attract the attention of persons in the street that I judged it wisest to make a clean breast of how matters stood with me.

"Well, Mr. Moses," says I, "if you must know I am that great benefactor of your tribe, Lord Tiverton. My lodgings are about six doors up the street, and they have been visited this afternoon by the dirtiest set of minions from Bow Street as ever I saw. And so hard was I put to it to clear them that I took to the housetops, whereupon, seeing your dormer window open, I gave them the slip by climbing into it, and here I am. And mark you, my dear Mr. Moses, I would not so honour the dormer windows of all and sundry, no, rabbit me an I would. For I am mighty particular as to whose hands I would accept an obligation from. But if a friend cannot take a benefaction from a friend, then who in all the world is one to take it from? As Flaccus himself has said."

Mr. Moses, you may be sure, was mollified indeed.

"I am sure I beg your lordship's pardon," says he. "A thousand times most humbly I am sure I do. Benjamin, put by your blunderbush; and withdraw the curtains across the window, sirrah, for I have seen the traps walking up and down the street, and peering here and there and everywhere this last ten minutes; yes, that I have. Is there any particular in which I can serve your lordship?"

"Yes, by thunder, that you can!" says I. "I must get away from here unknown as quickly as you might count ten. The traps are still about in the street you say?"

"See, my lord, there is one going past the window now."

As he spoke I took the precaution of drawing farther back into the shadow of the stairs, for it was even as he said. The next instant Mr. Moses pushed the door to in my face, and as he did so, wheeled round to confront (as I guessed) two or three of the traps who were coming into the shop.

"A sheeny, by the Lord!" I heard one say, in a voice so coarse that it set my teeth on edge.

"What is your pleasure, good gentlemans?" says Mr. Moses in a tone of incredible politeness. "If I, a poor old clo'es-dealer as I am, can be of service to you, I cannot tell you how happy you will make me."

"Well, ole Father Abraham," says the foremost man, "we're on the 'eels of a hearl, d'ye see. We've been a-chasing of him on the 'ouse-tops, we have so, and he's just a-been a-squeedgin' of himself through your dormer window, and he's left us in the lurch, d'ye see. He's in your bed-room, you can wager, and we're a-going up to rout him out."

"Is he so?" says Mr. Moses. "God-a-mercy! is it possible? Benjamin, get your blunderbush, and go and bring him down."

I was so charmed with the comedy that was being played, that at some little risk I had opened just a small crevice in the door, in order that I might peer through upon the actors. Benjamin, a youth about as tall as the counter, but wonderfully keen and sharp of feature, put himself in possession of an antiquated fire-arm, probably the most obsolete weapon ever handed down from early times.

"Be damned to Benjamin," says the man from Bow Street, "and be damned to his blunderbush; we're a-going up to look ourselves."

"And wherefore, gentlemans," says Moses in a tone like silk, it was so soft, "should Benjamin and his blunderbush be damned? Benjamin is a good boy, and his blunderbush is a good weapon. If this earl is in my chamber, depend upon it one or the other shall bring him down."

"No; we'll go up ourselves, ole Shylock," says the other, "for this hearl is so full of hell, that as likely as not he'd beat Benjamin to death with his own blunderbush, crikey-likey! he would so."

"Nay, that he would not," says Mr. Moses, "for Benjamin would blow the heart out of him, if he but advanced one step upon him."

Mr. Moses was evidently a master of fence, and determined as my enemies might show themselves, they could make nothing of his subtle, cringing ways. They might have excellent reasons for overhauling the house, and going upstairs, as indeed they had, yet they had not the wit to enforce them. For every additional argument he had a new excuse to advance, which at least if it contributed nothing whatever to the case in point, yet served to obscure the issue and to distract and confound those concerned in it. It was truly remarkable how he managed to lure and cheat them with the most specious words that could mean nothing whatever; and yet at the same time, and therein lay his art, they listened to him and never once seemed to doubt his sincerity. And it seemed too that this cunning Hebrew had something of a trump card to play, and this he had reserved for the last.

"An earl did ye say, sirs?" says he, with a vast air of reflection. "It could not have been by any chance the Earl of Tiverton?"

"Yes, by thunder," they cried together, "the man himself."

"Well now, I call that whimsical," says he, "seeing as how I see his lordship running at the top of his legs past this window not five minutes before you came here."

"You did that," says one of my enemies, "then why in thunder couldn't you say so before, instead o' keepin' us argle-hargling here, you piece o' pork, you hedge-pig!"

With a stream of oaths and vituperation they tumbled out into the street, whilst Mr. Moses, with his hands outspread and a cringing, shrugging, smiling yet deprecating aspect, looked the picture of a highly ingenuous bewilderment. No sooner had they passed away in the hot pursuit of some phantom of myself, than Mr. Moses opened the door he had pushed so lately upon me, and informed me that the immediate danger was overpast. He waved away the thanks I offered him, with a great deal of politeness, assuring me that he was more than repaid by the happiness he took for having been of some slight service to so fine a specimen of the nobility as myself.

"But if there is any leetle thing in the way of pizness," says he, "I am the man, your lordship."

"Yes, Mr. Moses, I have been thinking of it," says I, and indeed I had. "Now you see I am very tolerably attired." I unbuttoned my riding-coat and threw it open to display as elegant a costume as ever I had from Tracy. "Unhappily I have not a guinea in the world"—let me do Mr. Moses the justice of recording that in the face of this announcement he retained his countenance wonderfully well.—"But I will barter breeches, coat, waistcoat, ruffles, stockings, buckled shoes, for a plain drab shoddy suit, some common hose, and a pair of hob-nailed boots. By this exchange I think we shall both be gratified; you on your side by receiving things of about twelve times the value of what you give away; and I on mine by obtaining a tolerable disguise to my condition when I start on my itinerary, for I hardly think I should recognize myself in such a uniform, whilst as for my mamma, dear sainted buckram lady! if at the end of all the journeying that is before me I come before the gates of Heaven in it, she will hold a bottle of vinegar before her fine-cut nose, and say c'est un faux pas! and get me denied the entrée. She will ecod! for I would have you to know, my dear Mr. Moses, I am of a devilish stiff-backed family. Look at my grandfather. What a majestical old gentleman it is, even as in his declining years he takes his ease in his pop-shop, with christening mugs and dirty candlesticks about him on the one hand, and saving your presence, Mr. Moses, a Jew dealer on the other. But there, my good fellow, we will not talk about it."

Mr. Moses, seeing his advantage in this proposal—indeed he was so excellent a fellow that had he not done so, I do not doubt he would still have tried to accommodate me—fully entered into this idea, and did his best to fish this chaste wardrobe out of the varied contents of his shop. Indeed such hidden stores did it contain, that after the contents of divers boxes, and cupboards, and back parlours, and mysterious receptacles had been examined, the necessary articles were forthcoming, and I was shown into one of the chambers leading from the shop, in order to effect this change in my attire.

It would have made you laugh to see the figure I cut—my snuff-coloured coat and pantaloons, fitting in most places where they touched, gave me such a rustical appearance that an ostler or a tapster became a gentleman by the comparison. The hose was rather better, however, but the boots were not only the thickest and clumsiest as ever I saw, but were much too big into the bargain. A hat was also found for me that matched very well indeed with this startling change in my condition; and a thick, coarse brown cover-all in lieu of the smart riding-coat I had set out with. Mr. Moses certainly had as good a bargain as he could have wished, but certainly not a better one than his merits deserved; whilst I had come by the most effectual disguise to my station, and one well calculated to mislead Sheriff's officers and Bow Street runners, for in all my extended experience of the tribe they have ever been clumsy fellows, blind of eye and thick of understanding, incapable of seeing beyond the noses on their faces. With mutual respect and pleasure, therefore, and many pious hopes for the welfare of my grandfather, whom I was moved to say could not have been left in more worthy hands, I took my leave of Mr. Moses. And seeing he was a Jew, I must say that he was the best conditioned Jew as ever I met.

I took my way very cautiously on leaving the shop of my friend the Hebrew. At first I kept well in the shadow of the houses and peered carefully about. My enemies, however, appeared to be still away on the false scent. The twilight of the autumn afternoon was gathering in as I pursued my way towards little Cynthia. She was to have met me at the gates of Hyde Park nearly an hour ago. As I turned into Piccadilly without meeting with a sign of my enemies, for no reason whatever I was suddenly stabbed with the pain of a most bitter speculation. Suppose my little Cynthia was not there to meet me after all! Suppose I had tarried so long that, fearing I was taken, she had gone from the rendezvous! Suppose something unforeseen and mysterious had befallen her, as such accidents occasionally do! In a flash I realized how dear, how inexpressibly dear she was to me. If aught bereft me of her now, she, the one friend I had, the one creature who believed in me, worthless ruined fellow as I was, the one person who would dare to stand at my side and face the sneers and the scorn of the world, life would indeed have no savour left in it. I should neither have the heart nor the desire to continue in that which would become a burden and a mockery. And in sooth so did this terrible thought take hold of me, that a kind of fatality came upon me. I began to have a sense of foreboding, as they say one may have in a dream; I felt the blood grow slow and thin in my limbs; I was taken with a cold shivering; and my spirit flagged so low that I would have wagered a kingdom at that moment that some dire circumstance had happened to my love, and even more particularly to me.

In the very height of this fever of insane fears, I came to the end of Piccadilly, and there in the increasing gloom of the evening were the gates of Hyde Park. And there too, like a sentinel on guard, so proud and strict she was of outline, was my little Cynthia. She stood there all unconscious of the fact that the simple sight of her was enough in itself to reconcile a ruined man to his empty life.