Harding's Luck Part 15

He got out of the house when no one was looking, and went off down the street.

"Clickety-clack" went the crutch on the dusty pavement.

His back ached; his lame foot hurt; his "good" leg was tired and stiff, and his heart, too, was very tired. About this time, in the dream he had chosen to awaken from, for the sake of Beale, a bowl of porridge would be smoking at the end of a long oak table, and a great carved chair be set for a little boy who was not there.

d.i.c.kie strode on manfully, but the pain in his back made him feel sick.

"I don't know as I can do it," he said.

Then he saw the three gold b.a.l.l.s above the door of the friendly p.a.w.nbroker.

He looked, hesitated, shrugged his shoulders, and went in.

"Hullo!" said the p.a.w.nbroker, "here we are again. Want to p.a.w.n the rattle, eh?"

"No," said d.i.c.kie, "but what'll you give me on the seal you gave me?"

The p.a.w.nbroker stared, frowned, and burst out laughing.

"If you don't beat all!" he said. "I give you a present, and you come to pledge it with me! You should have been one of our people! So you want to pledge the seal. Well, well!"

"I'd much rather not," said d.i.c.kie seriously, "because I love it very much. But I must have my fare to Gravesend. My father's there, waiting for me. And I don't want to leave Tinkler behind."

He showed the rattle.

"What's the fare to Gravesend?"

"Don't know. I thought you'd know. Will you give me the fare for the seal?"

The p.a.w.nbroker hesitated and looked hard at him. "No," he said, "no. The seal's not worth it. Not but what it's a very good seal," he added, "very good indeed."

"See here," said d.i.c.kie suddenly, "I know what honor is now, and the word of a gentleman. You will not let me pledge the seal with you. Then let me pledge my word--my word of honor. Lend me the money to take me to Gravesend, and by the honor of a gentleman I will repay you within a month."

The voice was firm; the accent, though strange, was not the accent of Deptford street boys. It was the accent of the boy who had had two tutors and a big garden, a place in the King's water-party, and a knowledge of what it means to belong to a n.o.ble house.

The p.a.w.nbroker looked at him. With the unerring instinct of his race, he knew that this was not play-acting, that there was something behind it--something real. The sense of romance, of great things all about them transcending the ordinary things of life--this in the Jews has survived centuries of torment, shame, cruelty, and oppression. This inherited sense of romance in the p.a.w.nbroker now leaped to answer d.i.c.kie's appeal.

(And I do hope I am not confusing you; stick to it; read it again if you don't understand. What I mean is that the Jews always see the big beautiful things; they don't just see that gray is made of black and white; they see how incredibly black black can be, and that there may be a whiteness transcending all the whitest dreams in the world.)

"You're a rum little chap," was what the p.a.w.nbroker said, "but I like your pluck. Every man's got to make a fool of himself one time or the other," he added, apologizing to the spirit of business.

"You mean you will?" said d.i.c.kie eagerly.

"More fool me," said the Jew, feeling in his pocket.

"You won't be sorry; not in the end you won't," said d.i.c.kie, as the p.a.w.nbroker laid certain monies before him on the mahogany counter.

"You'll lend me this? You'll trust me?"

"Looks like it," said the Jew.

"Then some day I shall do something for you. I don't know what, but something. We never forget, we----" He stopped. He remembered that he was poor little lame d.i.c.kie Harding, with no right to that other name which had been his in the dream.

He picked up the coins, put them in his pocket--felt the moon-seeds.

"I cannot repay your kindness," he said, "though some day I will repay your silver. But these seeds--the moon-seeds," he pulled out a handful.

"You liked the flowers?" He handed a generous score across the red-brown polished wood.

"Thank you, my lad," said the p.a.w.nbroker. "I'll raise them in gentle heat."

"I think they grow best by moonlight," said d.i.c.kie.

So he came to Gravesend and the common lodging-house, and a weary, sad, and very anxious man rose up from his place by the fire when the clickety-clack of the crutch sounded on the threshold.

"It's the nipper!" he said; and came very quickly to the door and got his arm round d.i.c.kie's shoulders. "The little nipper, so it ain't! I thought you'd got pinched. No, I didn't, I knew your clever ways--I knew you was bound to turn up."

"Yes," said d.i.c.kie, looking round the tramps' kitchen, and remembering the long, clean tapestry-hung dining-hall of his dream. "Yes, I was bound to turn up. You wanted me to, didn't you?" he added.

"Wanted you to?" Beale answered, holding him close, and looking at him as men look at some rare treasure gained with much cost and after long seeking. "Wanted you? Not 'arf! I _don't_ think," and drew him in and shut the door.

"Then I'm glad I came," said d.i.c.kie. But in his heart he was not glad.

In his heart he longed for that pleasant house where he was the young master, and was not lame any more. But in his soul he was glad, because the soul is greater than the heart, and knows greater things. And now d.i.c.kie loved Beale more than ever, because for him he had sacrificed his dream. So he had gained something. Because loving people is the best thing in the world--better even than being loved. Just think this out, will you, and see if I am not right.

There were herrings for tea. And in the hard bed, with his clothes and his boots under the pillows, d.i.c.kie slept soundly.

But he did not dream.

Yet when he woke in the morning, remembering many things, he said to himself--

"Is this the dream? Or was the other the dream?"

And it seemed a foolish question--with the feel of the coa.r.s.e sheets and the smell of the close room, and Mr. Beale's voice saying, "Rouse up, nipper, there's sossingers for breakfast."

CHAPTER V

"TO GET YOUR OWN LIVING"

"NO," said Mr. Beale, "we ain't a-goin' to crack no more cribs. It's low--that's what it is. I quite grant you it's low. So I s'pose we'll 'ave to take the road again."

d.i.c.kie and he were sitting in the sunshine on a sloping field. They had been sitting there all the morning, and d.i.c.kie had told Mr. Beale all his earthly adventures from the moment the redheaded man had lifted him up to the window of Talbot Court to the time when he had come in by the open door of the common lodging-house.

"What a nipper it is, though!" said Mr. Beale regretfully. "For the burgling, I mean--sharp--clever--no one to touch him. But I don't cotton to it myself," he added quickly, "not the burgling, I don't. You're always liable to get yourself into trouble over it, one way or the other--that's the worst of it. I don't know how it is," he ended pensively, "but somehow it _always_ leads to trouble."

d.i.c.kie picked up seven straws from among the stubble and idly plaited them together; the nurse had taught him this in the dream when he was still weak from the fever.