Читать книгу THE EAST END TRILOGY: Tales of Mean Streets, A Child of the Jago & To London Town - Morrison Arthur - Страница 21

Thus far the outward and visible signs of Napper wealth were these: the separate house; the barrel of beer; a piano — not bought as a musical instrument, but as one of the visible signs; a daily paper, also primarily a sign; the bonnets and dresses of the missis; and the perpetual possession of Bill Napper by a varying degree of fuddlement. An inward and dissembled sign was a regiment, continually re-enforced, of mostly empty bottles, in a cupboard kept sacred by the missis. And the faculties of that good lady herself experienced a fluctuating confusion from causes not always made plain to Bill; for the money was kept in the bedroom chest of drawers, and it was easy to lay hands on a half sovereign as required without unnecessary disturbance.

Now and again Bill Napper would discuss the abstract question of entering upon some investment or business pursuit. Land had its advantages — great advantages; and he had been told that it was very cheap just now, in some places. Houses were good, too, and a suitable possession for a man of consideration. Not so desirable on the whole, however, as land. You bought your land and — well, there it was, and you could take things easily. But with houses there was rent to collect, and repairs to see to and so forth. It was a vastly paying thing for any man with capital to be a merchant; but there was work even in that, and you had to be perpetually on guard against sharp chaps in the city. A public-house, suggested by one of his old mates on the occasion of wetting it, was out of the question. There was tick, and long hours, and a sharp lookout, and all kinds of troubles, which a man with money would be a fool to encounter. Altogether, perhaps, land seemed to be the thing; although there was no need to bother now, and plenty of time to turn things over, even if the matter were worth pondering at all, when it was so easy for a man to live on his means. After all, to take your boots off, and lie on the bed with a pipe and a pot and paper was very comfortable, and you could always stroll out and meet a mate, or bring him in when so disposed.

Of a evening the Albert Music Hall was close at hand, and the Queen’s not very far away. And on Sundays and Saturday afternoons Bill would often take a turn down by the dock gates, or even in Victoria Park, or Mile End Waste, where there were speakers of all sorts. At the dock gates it was mostly labor and anarchy, but at the other places there was a fine variety; you could always be sure of a few minutes of teetotalism, evangelism, atheism, republicanism, salvationism, socialism, anti-vaccinationism, and social purity, with now and again some Mormonism or another curious exotic. Most of the speakers denounced something, and if the denunciations of one speaker were not sufficiently picturesque and lively, you passed on to the next. Indeed you might always judge afar off where the best denouncing was going on, by the size of the crowds, at least until the hat went round.

It was at Mile End Waste that a good notion occurred to Bill Napper. He had always vastly admired the denunciations of one speaker — a little man, shabbier, if anything, than most of the others, and surpassingly tempestuous of antic. He was an unattached orator, not confining himself to any particular creed, but denouncing whatever seemed advisable, considering the audience and circumstances. He was always denouncing something somewhere, and was ever in a crisis that demanded the circulation of a hat. Bill esteemed this speaker for his versatility as well as for the freshness of his abuse, and Bill’s sudden notion was to engage him for private address.

The orator did not take kindly to the proposal at first, strongly suspecting something in the nature of “guy” or “kid”; but a serious assurance of a shilling for an occasional hour and the payment of one in advance brought him over. After this Squire Napper never troubled to go to Mile End Waste. He sat at ease in his parlor, with his pot on the piano, while the orator, with another pot on the mantel-piece, stood up and denounced to order. “Tip us the Teetotal an’ Down-with-the-Public-‘Ouse,” Bill would request, and the orator (his name was Minns) would oblige in that line till most of the strong phrases had run out, and had begun to recur. Then Bill would say, “Now come the Rights o’ Labor caper.” Whereupon Minns would take a pull at the pot, and proceed to denounce capital, Bill Napper applauding or groaning at the pauses provided for those purposes. And so on with whatever subjects appealed to the patron’s fancy. It was a fancy that sometimes put the orator’s invention to grievous straits; but for Bill the whole performance was peculiarly privileged and dignified. For to have an orator gesticulating and speechifying all to one’s self, on one’s own order and choice of subject, is a thing not given to all men.

One day Minns turned up (not having been invited) with a friend. Bill did not take to the friend. He was a lank-jawed man with a shifty eye, who smiled as he spoke, and showed a top row of irregular and dirty teeth. This friend, Minns explained, was a journalist — a writer of newspapers; and between them they had an idea, which idea the friend set forth. Everybody, he said, who knew the history of Mr. Napper admired his sturdy independence and democratic simplicity. He was of the people and not ashamed of it. (“Well, no, I ain’t proud,” Bill interjected, wondering what was coming.) With all the advantages of wealth, he preferred to remain one of the people, living among them plainly, conforming to their simple habits, and sympathizing with their sorrows. (“This chap,” thought Bill, “wants to be took on to hold forth turn about with the other, and he’s showing his capers; but I ain’t on it.”) It was the knowledge of these things, so greatly to Mr. Napper’s honor, that had induced Minns and Minns’s friend to place before him a means by which he might do the cause of toiling humanity a very great service. A new weekly paper was wanted — wanted very badly; a paper that should rear its head on behalf of the down-trodden toilers, and make its mighty voice heard with dread by the bloated circles of class and privilege. That paper would prove a marvelously paying investment to its proprietor, bringing him enormous profits every week. He would have a vast fortune in that paper alone, besides the glory and satisfaction of striking the great blow that should pave the way to the emancipation of the masses and the destruction of the vile system of society whose whole and sole effect was the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the grasping few. Being professionally disengaged at present, he (the speaker), in conjunction with his friend Minns, had decided to give Mr. Napper the opportunity of becoming its proprietor.

Bill was more than surprised; he was also a little bewildered. “What,” he said, after two draws of his pipe, “d’ye mean you want me to go in the printin’ line?”

That was not at all necessary. The printing would be done by contract. Mr. Napper would only have to find the money. The paper, with a couple of thousand pounds behind it — or even one thousand (Minns’s friend read a difficulty in Bill’s face)— would be established forever. Even five hundred would do, and many successful papers had been floated with no more than a couple of hundred or so. Suppose they said just a couple of hundred to go on with, till the paper found its legs and began to pay? How would that do?

Bill Napper smoked a dozen whiffs. Then he said: “An’ what should I ‘ave to do with the two ‘undred pound? Buy anythink?”

Not directly that, the promoters explained. It would finance the thing-just finance it.

“‘Ood ‘ave the money, then?”

That was perfectly simple. It would simply be handed over to Minns and his friend, and they would attend to all the details.

Bill Napper continued to smoke. Then, beginning with a slight chuckle at the back of his throat, he said: “We’n I got my money, I went to a lawyer’s for it. There was two lawyers — one layin’ low. There was two fust-rate lawyers an’ a lot o’ clurks — city clurks — an’ a bank an’all. An’ they couldn’t ‘ave me, not for a single farden — not a farden, try an’ fiddle as they would . . . Well, arter that, it ain’t much good you a-tryin’ it on, is it?” And he chuckled again, louder.

Minns was indignant, and Minns’s friend was deeply hurt. Both protested. Bill Napper laughed aloud. “Awright, you’ll do,” he said; “you’ll do. My ‘abits may be simple, but they ain’t as simple as all that. Ha! ha! ‘Ere, ‘ave a drink — you ain’t done no ‘arm, an’ I ain’t spiteful. Ha, ha!”

It was on an evening a fortnight after this that, as Bill Napper lay, very full of beer and rather sleepy, on the bed — the rest of his household being out-of-doors — a ladder was quietly planted against the outer wall from the back-yard. Bill heard nothing until the window, already a little open, was slowly pushed up, and from the twilight outside a head and an arm plunged into the thicker darkness of the room, and a hand went feeling along the edge of the chest of drawers by the window. Bill rolled over on the bed, and reached from the floor one of a pair of heavy iron-set boots. Taking the toe in his right hand, and grasping the footrail of the bedstead with his left, he raised himself on his knees, and brought the boot-heel down heavily on the intruding head. There was a gasp, and the first breath of a yell, and head, arm, shoulders, and body vanished with a bump and a rattle. Bill Napper let the boot fall, dropped back on the bed, and took no further heed.

Neither Minns nor his friend ever came back again, but for some time after, at Victoria Park, Minns, inciting an outraged populace to rise and sweep police and army from the earth, was able to point to an honorable scar on his own forehead, the proof and sign of a police bludgeoning at Tower Hill — or Trafalgar Square.