Peter Biddulph Part 1

Peter Biddulph.

by W.H.G. Kingston.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE SETTLER'S EARLY DAYS.

From my earliest days to the present time I have been gradually climbing up the ladder towards a comfortable berth on the top; and if a ratlin has given way beneath my feet, I always have had a firm hold above my head. The first step I took was off the mud on to dry ground. I can recollect nothing clearly before that time. I was born on board a river barge, and never left it, winter nor summer, till I was fully six years old. One day the barge took the mud, which is not surprising, considering that I was the only person on deck. I ran to the helm to turn her head off the sh.o.r.e, but it was too late--there she stuck hard and fast. My mother was below, tending my father, and he lay dying. It was the barge's last voyage, and his too. Both had seen much service.

The barge never moved again, but went on rotting and rotting till the owner sold her and she was broken up.

Father died that night, and a boat came and took mother and me on sh.o.r.e, with father's body, and such property as we possessed--not much, I fancy,--a kettle and pot, some plates, and knives, and cups, and a few clothes,--we hadn't wanted furniture, and with these mother and I had to begin the world. She said things might have been worse, for she might have had a dozen children instead of one, and debts to pay--and she didn't owe a farthing, which was a great comfort in her affliction.

My mother was indeed, while she lived, a very good mother to me, for she taught me to distinguish right from wrong, to love the former and to hate the latter. As may be supposed, she was very poor, and I was often without a meal. I know, too, that she frequently stinted herself to give me food. She lived on the banks of the Thames somewhere below London, and I very soon found my way down to the mud, where I now and then used to pick up odds and ends, bits of iron and copper, and sometimes even coin, and chips of wood. The first my mother used to sell, and I often got enough in the week to buy us a hearty meal; the last served to boil our kettle when we had any food to cook in it. Few rich people know how the poor live; our way was a strange one. My poor mother used to work with her needle, and go out as a charwoman, and to wash, when she could get any one to wash for, but that was seldom; and toil as hard as she might, a difficult matter she had to pay the rent of the little room in which we lived. She felt sorely the struggle she had to endure with poverty, for she had seen better days--far better, I suspect,--and was not accustomed to it. She was, I have reason to believe, well educated--at all events, much above most persons in the station in life she then occupied; and, young as I was, she taught me to read, and to repeat poetry, and to sing psalms; and though I forget nearly all the events of my life at that time, I remember many of the verses she taught me; they have been a wonderful comfort to me through life. My mother had married unwisely, I have no doubt, and if she ever had any relations, they discarded her; so she was very soon reduced to the condition I have described, aided by an illness which at length terminated in her death.

I was about eight years old when I became an orphan; but my intellects were sharpened by exercise, and I was as precocious as many children double my age. As I was able to do something to gain my own livelihood, the people of the house where we lodged took compa.s.sion on me, and, instead of sending me to the workhouse, gave me the corner of a garret to sleep in. I understood the compact, and worked harder than ever.

Young as I was I felt my mother's loss most bitterly. We had been all in all to each other, and I should have broken down altogether with grief, had not my kind host roused me up and advised me to go out and try and do something to gain my livelihood. Hunger is a severe taskmaster; it makes many an idle man work.

I now became a regular mudlark, though I got employment when I could by running on errands and in a.s.sisting the boatmen on the river. I was one summer's day, with a number of other boys, wading up to my knees in the water, when a boat with several gentlemen on a pleasure excursion came down the river, and pulled into the sh.o.r.e near where we were. Some of the gentlemen landed, while the others who remained in the boat amused themselves by throwing halfpence into the water for us to dive after.

They scattered them about in every direction, so that many coins were altogether lost; for as the boys rushed after them they drove them into the mud.

At last, as I was standing some way from the other boys, a gentleman threw a penny towards me; but it pa.s.sed over my head and fell into deep water, and directly afterwards I heard him exclaim--

"Dear me! I've lost my ring--my diamond ring, too. I would not have lost it for a hundred pounds."

As he had been throwing pence in various directions, he had no notion where it had fallen, though he naturally concluded that it had come off at one of those times. As I saw that he was very much annoyed at his loss I felt sorry for him; so I went up to him, and told him that I would hunt about for his ring, and that if I found it I would gladly bring it to him, provided he would tell me where he lived.

"But don't you bargain for a reward?" asked one of his companions.

"That depends upon how far off the gentleman lives," I replied. "If near at hand this errand may be only worth a sixpence; but if far off, perhaps he won't think a shilling too much to give me."

"I'll tell you what, my man; I'll gladly give you ten shillings if you find it; but I fear there is little chance of your so doing," replied the gentleman, smiling.

"There's nothing like trying, sir," I replied; "and if you'll tell me your name and where you live, if I pick it up you shall have it again."

"Well, then, you must inquire for Mr Wells, -- Street, -- Square, London," said the gentleman.

"If you write it down I shall have less chance of forgetting it," I replied.

"That would be little use to you, my man," he observed; "you cannot read, I should suppose."

"But I can, though," I replied. "Give me your card, and you will see I speak the truth."

On this one of the gentlemen drew out a card from his pocket, and wrote some words on it with a pencil, while I washed my hands and dried them in my shirt-sleeves. He then handed me the card. I looked at it and saw that it was in a language I could not understand.

"Those are Latin words, and I did not say I could read any language," I observed, handing him back his card.

"You are right, my boy," said the gentleman who had lost his ring; "but here are some lines in English: let us hear if you can read them."

I looked at the lines attentively: they were at the commencement of a poem my mother had taught me; so I not only read them off fluently, but, to the great surprise of all present, went on repeating the succeeding ones.

"Bravo! bravo!" exclaimed the gentlemen, highly delighted. "You're a genius, my lad--a perfect marvel. A mudlark spout poetry! Truly the schoolmaster is abroad."

"Who taught you your learning, my boy?" asked another.

"My mother, sir," I replied, calmly, and rather surprised at their expressions, for I saw nothing wonderful in my performance.

"I should like to see this mother of yours; she must be out of the common way too," observed the same person.

"Mother is dead, sir," I answered, crying; for the very mention of her name wrung my young heart with grief.

"There is something more here than meets the eye," said Mr Wells. "My poor boy, don't cry. Come to-morrow to my house, whether you find my ring or not. In the meantime here is half a crown; your poetry deserves it."

I took the money almost mechanically; for I was thinking of my mother, and was scarcely aware of the amount of wealth I was receiving.

On seeing Mr Wells give me money, the other gentlemen did the same, and some even gave me as much as five shillings; so that I felt as if coin was raining down on me from the skies. My tears dried up, and, for a minute, I felt supremely happy; but on a sudden the thought occurred to me, that if my mother had been alive how happy it would have made her, and I burst forth into tears again.

Mr Wells on this asked me why I cried; so I told him the truth, and he believed me; though I believe, from the expression of some of the other gentlemen's faces, that they fancied I was crying to gain their compa.s.sion: at all events, they gave me no more money, and their companions returning to the boat, they shoved off and continued their course down the river.

As soon as they were gone I began to collect my thoughts, and to consider my best chance of finding the lost ring. As I heard Mr Wells say that he would not have lost it for a hundred pounds, I believed that was its value, and though I had no just conception of how much a hundred pounds was, I knew that it must be a great deal of money. I was therefore very anxious to restore it to the kind gentleman.

Here I benefited by my good mother's instruction; and I believed her spirit watched over me to keep me from evil; for it never occurred to me, as I am sorry to say it did to some of the other boys who overheard the gentleman's observation, that it would be easier if the ring was found to sell it and secure its value, than to trust to the chance of obtaining a small reward by returning it to its proper owner.

I fortunately overheard them plotting to secure the ring for themselves, and I determined to counteract their plan. Though the water was deep where the ring had fallen there was no current, as it was in a little bay in the bank of the river, and what was more, I remembered that the ground was rather harder than that surrounding it, and that it rose slightly outside.

These circ.u.mstances gave me hopes of finding the ring; so I sat down at some little distance on the bank, pretending to be counting the money I had received, but in reality watching narrowly the spot where I thought it had fallen.

I do not mean to say that I was indifferent to my good fortune, but I honestly believe I thought much more of the pleasure it would give the poor people who had charitably taken care of me in my dest.i.tution, than of the benefit I should myself derive from it.

The tide had only run off a very little when the ring was thrown in, so that I had a considerable time to wait; but though I grew very hungry, and felt that I might enjoy a plentiful meal, I would not quit my post; indeed, I was accustomed to starve, so that did not incommode me much.

Slowly the tide receded, and one after one the other boys went away. At last the bank appeared, and the intervening s.p.a.ce was left with very little water over it. I was in hopes that none of the other boys would return to interrupt me in my search; but, to my annoyance, just as the mud was left quite clear, two of them came back, and immediately tucking up their trousers, hurried into the mud.

CHAPTER TWO.

NEW FRIENDS.

Now it so happened that I had carefully noted where the penny had fallen, and if I had been alone, I could have gone straight to the place. But, wishing to mislead my rivals in the search, I waded into the water at a considerable distance from the spot. Glad of a clue, the other mud-larks came over to me in a hurry, and began hunting about.

Leaving them there, I went to another place, and so on till I gradually approached the spot where I thought the ring had fallen. They again followed me, and as I was stooping down I heard one of them cry out, and I thought he had found the treasure, but it was only the penny Mr Wells had thrown me. "Ho! ho!" I thought, "the ring will not have reached as far as that, but I must make haste and find it, or it will be too dark to see anything." The other boys thought the ring must be close to the penny, and kept turning up the mud in every direction round it, while I worked my way straight on to where the boat had been. I had begun to think that I must have pa.s.sed it, when I saw something glitter in a little pool of water just under a large stone. I stooped down, and to my joy I found that it was the gold ring. My first impulse was to sing out, but then it struck me that I might run some chance of being robbed of my treasure, and that it would be a just punishment to the naughty boys to keep them still hunting for it; so, instead of saying anything about the matter, I pretended to be groping on as before, and at last, on getting near the sh.o.r.e, I exclaimed that there was no chance of any one finding it that night, and that I should go home. On getting on sh.o.r.e I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, eager to give my charitable friends an account of my good fortune, but with regard to the ring I said not a word. The instinctive caution I possessed taught me that it would be wiser to say nothing, even to them, about it. I told them, as was the case, that the money had been given to me by the gentlemen for repeating poetry to them.

We had a capital supper that night, the best I had ever enjoyed; and giving my wealth to my friends to keep for me, I set off the next morning, my heart beating high with satisfaction, to restore the ring to Mr Wells.

I found his house without much difficulty, although I had never been in that part of London before, but my wits were not at fault on this occasion more than on any other. A domestic opened the door, whom I at first took to be a very great lord, for I had seldom before seen a livery servant; but when he told me that his master was not at home, and he could not say when he would return, and without deigning any further answer slammed the door in my face, I guessed who he was. I accordingly sat down on the steps to wait patiently for the return of Mr Wells. As I had been thinking all night long of my good fortune, I had not slept a wink, and it was therefore not surprising that I fell very fast asleep where I sat. How long I thus remained dreaming of the events of the previous day I do not know, when I was awaked by the sound of a kind voice in my ear, and opening my eyes I saw Mr Wells standing before me.

"Ah, my little poet!" he exclaimed; "you here already!"