Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet Part 30

"Humph!"

"Dee yow think, noo, yow could find out my boy out of un, by any ways o'

conjuring like?"

"By what?"

"Conjuring--to strike a perpendicular, noo, or say the Lord's Prayer backwards?"

"Wadna ye prefer a meeracle or twa?" asked Sandy, after a long pull at the whisky-toddy.

"Or a few efreets?" added I.

"Whatsoever you likes, gentlemen. You're best judges, to be sure," answered Farmer Porter, in an awed and helpless voice.

"Aweel--I'm no that disinclined to believe in the occult sciences. I dinna haud a'thegither wi' Salverte. There was mair in them than Magia naturalis, I'm thinking. Mesmerism and magic-lanterns, benj and opium, winna explain all facts, Alton, laddie. Dootless they were an unco' barbaric an' empiric method o' expressing the gran' truth o' man's mastery ower matter. But the interpenetration o' the spiritual an' physical worlds is a gran' truth too; an' aiblins the Deity might ha' allowed witchcraft, just to teach that to puir barbarous folk--signs and wonders, laddie, to mak them believe in somewhat mair than the beasts that perish: an' so ghaists an warlocks might be a necessary element o' the divine education in dark and carnal times. But I've no read o' a case in which necromancy, nor geomancy, nor coskinomancy, nor ony other mancy, was applied to sic a purpose as this.

Unco gude they were, may be, for the discovery o' stolen spunes--but no that o' stolen tailors."

Farmer Porter had listened to this harangue, with mouth and eyes gradually expanding between awe and the desire to comprehend; but at the last sentence his countenance fell.

"So I'm thinking, Mister Porter, that the best witch in siccan a case is ane that ye may find at the police-office."

"Anan?"

"Thae detective police are gran' necromancers an' canny in their way: an' I just took the liberty, a week agone, to ha' a crack wi' ane o' 'em. An noo, gin ye're inclined, we'll leave the whusky awhile, an' gang up to that cave o' Trophawnius, ca'd by the vulgar Bow-street, an' speir for tidings o' the twa lost sheep."

So to Bow-street we went, and found our man, to whom the farmer bowed with obsequiousness most unlike his usual burly independence. He evidently half suspected him to have dealings with the world of spirits: but whether he had such or not, they had been utterly unsuccessful; and we walked back again, with the farmer between us, half-blubbering--

"I tell ye, there's nothing like ganging to a wise 'ooman. Bless ye, I mind one up to Guy Hall, when I was a barn, that two Irish reapers coom down, and murthered her for the money--and if you lost aught she'd vind it, so sure as the church--and a mighty hand to cure burns; and they two villains coom back, after harvest, seventy mile to do it--and when my vather's cows was shrew-struck, she made un be draed under a brimble as growed together at the both ends, she a praying like mad all the time; and they never got nothing but fourteen shilling and a crooked sixpence; for why, the devil carried off all the rest of her money; and I seen um both a-hanging in chains by Wisbeach river, with my own eyes. So when they Irish reapers comes into the vens, our chaps always says, 'Yow goo to Guy Hall, there's yor brithren a-waitin' for yow,' and that do make um joost mad loike, it do. I tell ye there's nowt like a wise 'ooman, for vinding out the likes o'

this."

At this hopeful stage of the argument I left them to go to the Magazine office. As I pa.s.sed through Covent Garden, a pretty young woman stopped me under a gas-lamp. I was pushing on when I saw it was Jemmy Downes's Irish wife, and saw, too, that she did not recognise me. A sudden instinct made me stop and hear what she had to say.

"Shure, thin, and ye're a tailor, my young man?"

"Yes," I said, nettled a little that my late loathed profession still betrayed itself in my gait.

"From the counthry?"

I nodded, though I dared not speak a white lie to that effect. I fancied that, somehow, through her I might hear of poor Kelly and his friend Porter.

"Ye'll be wanting work, thin?"

"I have no work."

"Och, thin, it's I can show ye the flower o' work, I can. Bedad, there's a shop I know of where ye'll earn--bedad, if ye're the ninth part of a man, let alone a handy young fellow like the looks of you--och, ye'll earn thirty shillings the week, to the very least--an' beautiful lodgings; och, thin, just come and see 'em--as chape as mother's milk! Gome along, thin--och, it's the beauty ye are--just the nate figure for a tailor."

The fancy still possessed me; and I went with her through one dingy back street after another. She seemed to be purposely taking an indirect road, to mislead me as to my whereabouts; but after a half-hour's walking, I knew, as well as she, that we were in one of the most miserable slop-working nests of the East-end.

She stopped at a house door, and hurried me in, up to the first floor, and into a dirty, slatternly parlour, smelling infamously of gin; where the first object I beheld was Jemmy Downes, sitting before the fire, three-parts drunk, with a couple of dirty, squalling children on the hearthrug, whom he was kicking and cuffing alternately.

"Och, thin, ye villain, beating the poor darlints whinever I lave ye a minute." And pouring out a volley of Irish curses, she caught up the urchins, one under each arm, and kissed and hugged them till they were nearly choked. "Och, ye plague o' my life--as drunk as a baste; an' I brought home this darlint of a young gentleman to help ye in the business."

Downes got up, and steadying himself by the table, leered at me with lackl.u.s.tre eyes, and attempted a little ceremonious politeness. How this was to end I did not see; but I was determined to carry it through, on the chance of success, infinitely small as that might be.

"An' I've told him thirty shillings a week's the least he'll earn; and charge for board and lodgings only seven shillings."

"Thirty!--she lies; she's always a lying; don't you mind her.

Five-and-forty is the werry lowest figure. Ask my respectable and most piousest partner, Shemei Solomons. Why, blow me--it's Locke!"

"Yes, it is Locke; and surely you're my old friend Jemmy Downes? Shake hands. What an unexpected pleasure to meet you again!"

"Werry unexpected pleasure. Tip us your daddle! Delighted--delighted, as I was a saying, to be of the least use to yer. Take a caulker? Summat heavy, then? No? 'Tak' a drap o' kindness yet, for auld langsyne?"

"You forget I was always a teetotaller."

"Ay," with a look of unfeigned pity. "An' you're a going to lend us a hand?

Oh, ah! perhaps you'd like to begin? Here's a most beautiful uniform, now, for a markis in her Majesty's Guards; we don't mention names--tarn't businesslike. P'r'aps you'd like best to work here to-night, for company--'for auld langsyne, my boys;' and I'll introduce yer to the gents up-stairs to-morrow."

"No," I said; "I'll go up at once, if you've no objection."

"Och, thin, but the sheets isn't aired--no--faix; and I'm thinking the gentleman as is a going isn't gone yet."

But I insisted on going up at once; and, grumbling, she followed me. I stopped on the landing of the second floor, and asked which way; and seeing her in no hurry to answer, opened a door, inside which I heard the hum of many voices, saying in as sprightly a tone as I could muster, that I supposed that was the workroom.

As I had expected, a fetid, choking den, with just room enough in it for the seven or eight sallow, starved beings, who, coatless, shoeless, and ragged, sat st.i.tching, each on his truckle-bed. I glanced round; the man whom I sought was not there.

My heart fell; why it had ever risen to such a pitch of hope I cannot tell; and half-cursing myself for a fool, in thus wildly thrusting my head into a squabble, I turned back and shut the door, saying--

"A very pleasant room, ma'am, but a leetle too crowded."

Before she could answer, the opposite door opened; and a face appeared--unwashed, unshaven, shrunken to a skeleton. I did not recognise it at first.

"Blessed Vargen! but that wasn't your voice, Locke?"

"And who are you?"

"Tear and ages! and he don't know Mike Kelly!"

My first impulse was to catch him up in my arms, and run down-stairs with him. I controlled myself, however, not knowing how far he might be in his tyrant's power. But his voluble Irish heart burst out at once--

"Oh! blessed saints, take me out o' this! take me out for the love of Jesus! take me out o' this h.e.l.l, or I'll go mad intirely! Och! will n.o.body have pity on poor sowls in purgatory--here in prison like negur slaves?

We're starved to the bone, we are, and kilt intirely with cowld."

And as he clutched my arm, with his long, skinny, trembling fingers, I saw that his hands and feet were all chapped and bleeding. Neither shoe nor stocking did he possess; his only garments were a ragged shirt and trousers; and--and, and in horrible mockery of his own misery, a grand new flowered satin vest, which to-morrow was to figure in some gorgeous shop-window!

"Och! Mother of Heaven!" he went on, wildly, "when will I get out to the fresh air? For five months I haven't seen the blessed light of sun, nor spoken to the praste, nor ate a bit o' mate, barring bread-and-b.u.t.ter.

Shure, it's all the blessed Sabbaths and saints' days I've been a working like a haythen Jew, an niver seen the insides o' the chapel to confess my sins, and me poor sowl's lost intirely--and they've p.a.w.ned the relaver [Footnote: A coat, we understand, which is kept by the coatless wretches in these sweaters' dungeons, to be used by each of them in turn when they want to go out.--EDITOR.] this fifteen weeks, and not a boy of us iver sot foot in the street since."

"Vot's that row?" roared at this juncture Downes's voice from below.