_ CHAPTER SIXTEEN. HOW I CHANGED MASTERS TWICE IN TWO DAYS, AND AFTER ALL FOUND MYSELF IN PAWN
It was scarcely four o'clock when my lord and master arose from his brief repose, and sallied through the rain and darkness back in the direction of the city. He was far less anxious to salute the police now than he had been a few hours ago. He slunk down the back streets, and now and then darted up a court at the sound of approaching foot steps; or retreated for some distance by the way he had come, in order to strike a less guarded street.
In this manner he pursued his way for about an hour, till he reached a very narrow street of tumble-down houses, not far from Holborn. Down this he wended his way till he stood before a door belonging to one of the oldest, dingiest, and most decayed houses in all the street. Here he gave a peculiar scrape with his foot along the bottom of the door, and then sat down on the doorstep.
Presently a voice came through the keyhole, in a whisper.
"That you, Stumpy?" it said.
"Yas," replied my master.
"All clear?"
Stumpy looked up and down the street and then hurriedly whispered, "No."
Instantly the voice within was silent, and Stumpy was to all appearance sleeping soundly and heavily, as if tired nature in him had fairly reached its last strait.
The distant footsteps came nearer; and still he slept on, snoring gently and regularly. The policeman advanced leisurely, turning his lantern first on this doorway, then on that window; trying now a shutter-bar, then a lock. At last he stood opposite the doorstep where Stumpy lay. It was a critical moment. He turned his lamp full on the boy's sleeping face, he took hold of his arm and gently shook him, he tried the bolt of the door against which he leaned. The sleeper only grunted drowsily and settled down to still heavier slumber, and the policeman, evidently satisfied, walked on.
"Is he gone?" asked the voice within, the moment the retreating footsteps showed this.
"Yas, but he'll be back," whispered the boy.
And so he was. Three times he paced the street, and every time found the boy in the same position, and wrapped in the same profound slumber. Then at last he strode slowly onward to the end of his beat, and his footsteps died gradually away.
"Now?" inquired the voice.
"Yas," replied Stumpy.
Whereat the door half-opened, and Stumpy entered.
It was a dirty, half-ruinous house, in which the rats had grown tame and the spiders fat. The stairs creaked dismally as Stumpy followed his entertainer up them, while the odours rising from every nook and cranny in the place were almost suffocating.
The man led the way into a small room, foul and pestilential in its closeness. In it lay on the floor no less than nine or ten sleeping figures, mostly juveniles, huddled together, irrespective of decency, health, or comfort. Stumpy surveyed the scene composedly.
"Got lodgers, then," he observed.
"Yes, two on 'em--on'y penny ones, though."
Just then a sound of moaning came from one corner of the room, which arrested Stumpy's attention.
"Who's that?" he asked.
"Old Sal; she's bad, and I reckon she won't last much longer the way she's a-going on. I shall pack her off to-day."
Stumpy whistled softly; but it was evident, by the frequent glances he stole every now and then towards the corner where the sufferer lay, that he possessed a certain amount of interest in the woman described as "Old Sal."
The man who appeared to be the proprietor of this one well-filled lodging-room was middle-aged, and had a hare-lip. He had an expression half careworn, and half villainous, of which he gave Stumpy the full benefit as he inquired.
"What 'ave yer got?"
"Got, pal?" replied Stumpy; "a ticker."
"Hand it up," said the man, hurriedly.
Stumpy produced me, and the man, taking me to the candle, examined me greedily and minutely.
Then he said,--
"I shall get fifteen bob for him."
"Come, now, none of your larks!" replied Stumpy, who had produced the pipe, and was endeavouring to rekindle its few remaining embers at the candle; "try ag'in."
"Well, I don't see as he'll fetch seventeen-and-six, but I'll do it for _you_."
"Try ag'in," coolly replied Stumpy.
The man did try again, and named a sovereign, which my master also declined.
In this manner he advanced to twenty-four shillings.
"Won't do," said Stumpy.
"Then you can take 'im off," said the man, with an oath; "he ain't worth the money."
"Yas 'e is, an' a tanner more," put in Stumpy.
The man uttered a few more oaths, and again examined me. Then he dropped me in his pocket, and slowly counted out the purchase-money from a drawer at his side.
Stumpy watched the process eagerly, doubtless calculating with professional interest how the entire hoard of this thieves' broker could at some convenient opportunity be abstracted. However, for the present he made sure of the sum given him, and dropped the coins one by one into his tail pocket.
"Now lay down," said the man, "and make yourself comfortable."
I fancy Stumpy was a good deal more comfortable in his drain-pipe an hour or two ago than in this foul, choking lodging-room; however, he curled himself up on the floor near the dying woman, and did his share in exhausting the air of the apartment.
I should offend all rules of good taste and decency if I described the loathsome room; I wish I could forget it, but that I shall never do. Suffice it to say daylight broke in at last on the squalid scene, and then one by one the sleepers rose and departed--all but Stumpy and she whose groaning had risen ceaselessly and hopelessly the livelong night.
"Old Sal's very bad," said Stumpy to his host.
"Yas, she'll have to clear out of here."
"She's nigh dying, I reckon," said the boy.
"Can't help that; she ain't paid a copper this three weeks, and I ain't a-going to have her lumbering up my place no longer."
"Where's she a-going to?" asked Stumpy.
"How do I know?--out of 'ere, anyways, and pretty soon, too. I can tell yer."
"Pal," said the boy, after a long pause, "I charged yer a tanner too much for that there ticker; here you are, lay hold."
And he tossed back the sixpence. The man understood quite well the meaning of the act, and Old Sal lay undisturbed all that day.
Stumpy took his departure early. I have never seen him since; what has become of him I know not; where he is now I know still less.
But to return to myself. I spent that entire day in the man's pocket, too ill to care what became of me, and too weak to notice much of what passed around me. I was conscious of others like Stumpy coming up the creaking stairs and offering their ill-gotten gains as he had done; and I was conscious towards evening, when the last rays of the setting sun were struggling feebly through the dingy window, of a groan in that dismal corner, deeper than all that had gone before. Then I knew Old Sal was dead. In an hour the body was laid in its rude coffin, and had made its last journey down those stairs: and that night another outcast slept in her corner.
The night was like the one which had preceded it, foul and sickening. I was thankful that my illness had sufficiently deadened my senses to render me unable to hear and see all that went on during those hours. Morning came at length, and one by one the youthful lodgers took their departure. When the last had left, my possessor produced a bag, into which he thrust me, with a score or more of other articles acquired as I had been acquired; then, locking the door behind him, he descended the stairs and stepped out.
Oh, the delight of that breath of fresh morning air! Even as it struggled in through the crevices and cracks of that old bag, it was like a breath of Paradise, after the vile, pestilential atmosphere of that room!
As we went on, I had leisure to observe the company of which I formed one. What a motley crew we were! There were watches, snuff-boxes, and pencils, bracelets and brooches, handkerchiefs and gloves, studs, pins, and rings--all huddled together higgledy-piggledy. We none of us spoke to one another, nor inquired whither we were going; we were a sad, spiritless assembly, and to some of us it mattered little what became of us.
Still I could not help wondering if the man in whose possession I and my fellow-prisoners found ourselves was Stumpy's "uncle," referred to by that miserable clay pipe. If he was, I felt I could not candidly congratulate that youth on his relative. What he could want with us all I could not imagine.
If I had been the only watch, and if there hadn't been half a dozen scarf-pins, snuff-boxes, and pencils, it would not have been so extraordinary. It would have been easy enough to imagine the person of Stumpy's "aunt" decorated with one brooch, two bracelets, and three or four rings; but when instead of that modest allowance these articles were present by the half-dozen, it was hardly possible to believe that any one lady could accommodate so much splendour. How ever, I could only suppose the superfluous treasures were destined for Stumpy's cousins, masculine and feminine, and occupied the rest of the journey in the harmless amusement of wondering to whose lot I was likely to fall.
The man walked some considerable distance, and strangely enough bent his steps in a direction not far removed from Saint Elizabeth's Hospital. Surely he was not going to restore me to Tom Drift! No; we passed the end of Grime Street. There were milkmen's carts rattling up and down; servants were scrubbing doorsteps; and a few sleepy-looking men, with their breakfasts in their hands, were scurrying off to work. It was all the same as usual; yet how interesting, all of a sudden, the dull street had become to me. It was here I had last seen poor Charlie, outraged and struck by the friend he strove to save, creeping slowly home; it was here Tom Drift still dwelt, daily sinking in folly and sin, with no friend now left to help him. Poor Tom Drift! How gladly would I have returned to him, even to be neglected and ill-used, if only I might have the opportunity once again of fulfilling that charge put upon me by my first master, and which yet ever rang in my ears,--
"Be good to Tom Drift."
But it was not to be yet. The man walked rapidly on down a street parallel with Grime Street, at the farthest corner of which stood a small private house.
Here he knocked.
The occupant of the house evidently knew and expected him, for he at once admitted him, and led the way upstairs into a private parlour. Here the thieves' broker emptied the contents of his bag, laying the articles one by one on the table.
The man of the house looked on in an unconcerned way while this was taking place, picking up now one, now another of the objects, and examining them superficially. When the bag was empty, and the whole of the ill-gotten booty displayed, he remarked, "Not so much this time, Bill."
"No; trade's bad, sir," replied he who owned the bag.
"Well, I'll send the most of 'em down to the country to-day," resumed the master of the house.
"When shall I call, sir?" inquired Stumpy's friend.
"Monday. But look here, Bill!" said the other, taking me up, "it's no use leaving this; I shall be able to manage the gold ones, but this is no good."
I had long lost the pride which in former days would have made me resent such a remark, and patiently waited for the result.
Stumpy's friend took me back. "Well," he said, "if you can't, you can't. I'll see to him myself. Well, good-day; and I'll call on Monday."
And he turned to depart, with me in his hand. In a minute, however, he came back. "Would yer mind lending me some togs, sir, for a few minutes?" said he; "I don't want no questions asked at the pawnshop."
And he certainly did not look, in his present get-up, as the likeliest sort of owner of a silver watch. The man of the house, however, lent him some clothes, in which he arrayed himself, and which so transformed him that any one would have taken him, not for the disreputable thieves' broker he was, but for the unfortunate decayed gentleman he professed to be. In this guise he had no difficulty in disposing of me at the nearest pawnbroker's shop, which happened to be at the corner of Grime Street.
The pawnbroker asked no questions, and I am sure never suspected anything wrong. He advanced thirty shillings on me and the chain, gave the man his ticket, and put a corresponding one on me.
Then Stumpy's friend departed, and my new master went back to his breakfast. _