When Ghost Meets Ghost Part 14

However, the Intelligence Department did itself credit in the end, and everyone knew that, immediately on the receipt of sanction from headquarters, Tom Kettering the young groom had mounted the grey mare--a celebrity in these parts--and made a foxhunter's short cut across a stiff country to carry the news of the disaster to Pensham Steynes, Sir Hamilton Torrens's house twenty miles off, and that that baronet and his daughter Irene Torrens had come at once. "I hope he hasn't killed the mare," said the Earl apprehensively. But his wife summoned Norbury to a secret confidence, saying after it:--"No--it's all right--he came on the box--didn't ride." From which the Earl knew--if the avenue didn't--that Tom Kettering the groom, after an incredible break across country, stabled the mare at Pensham Steynes, and rode back with the carriage.

The whole thing had been negotiated in less than three hours.

All these things Gwendolen comes to be aware of somehow. But all of us know how a chance word in a confused conversation stays by the hearer, who is forced to listen to what is no elucidation of it, and is discontented. Such a word had struck this young lady; and she watched for her father, as lunch died away, to get the elucidation overdue. She was able to intercept him at the end of a long colloquy with Sir Coupland. "What did you mean, papa dearest, just now?..."

"What did I mean, dear?... When?"

"By 'until he's fit to move'?"

"I meant until Sir Coupland says he can be safely brought up to the house."

"_This_ house, my dear?" It is not Gwen who speaks, but her mother, who has joined the conversation.

"Certainly, my love," says the Earl, with a kind of appealing diffidence. "If you have no very strong objection. He can be carried, Sir Coupland says, as soon as the wound is safe from inflammation. Of course he must not be left at the Hall."

"Of course not. But there are beds at the Lodge...." However, the Earl says with a meek self-a.s.sertion:--"I think I would rather he were brought here. His father and George were at Christ Church together...."

Before which her ladyship concedes the point. His lordship then says he shall go at once to the Hall to see Sir Hamilton, and Gwen suggests that she shall accompany him. She may persuade Miss Torrens to come up to the Towers.

This a.s.sumption that the wounded man could be moved, after conversation between the Earl and Sir Coupland, was so rea.s.suring, that Gwendolen felt it more than ever due to herself to cultivate that indifference about his recovery. However, she could not easily be too affectionate and hospitable to his sister under the circ.u.mstances.

By-the-by, it was rather singular that she had never seen this Irene Torrens, when they were almost neighbours--only eighteen miles by road between them. And Irene's father had been her Uncle George's great friend at Oxford; both at Christ Church! This uncle, who, like his friend Torrens, had gone into the army, was killed in action at Rangoon, long before Gwendolen's day.

It all takes so long to tell. The omission of half would shorten the tale and spare the reader so much. What a very small book the History of the World would be if all the events were left out!

CHAPTER XIII

BACK IN SAPPS COURT. MICHAEL RAGSTROAR'S SECULARISM. HIS EXTENDED KNOWLEDGE OF LIFE. YET A GAOL-BIRD PROPER WAS OUTSIDE IT. ONE IN QUEST OF A WIDOW. THE DEAD BEETLE IN DOLLY'S CAKE. HOW UNCLE MO DID NOT LIKE THE MAN'S LOOKS. THERE _WAS_ NO WIDOW DAVERILL AND NEITHER BURR NOR PRICHARD WOULD DO. HOW AUNT M'RIAR HAD BEEN AT CHAPEL. THE SONS OF LEVI. MICHAEL'S n.o.bLE LOYALTY TOWARDS OUTLAWS

It was a fine Sunday morning in Sapps Court, and our young friend Michael Rackstraw was not attending public worship. Not that it was his custom to do so. Nevertheless, the way he replied to a question by a chance loiterer into the Court seemed to imply the contrary. The question was, what the Devil he was doing that for?--and referred to the fact that he was walking on his hands. His answer was, that it was because he wasn't at Church. Not that all absentees from religious rites went about upside down; but that, had he been at Church, the narrow exclusiveness of its ritual would have kept him right side up.

The speaker's appearance was disreputable, and his manner morose, sullen, and unconciliatory. Michael, even while still upside down, fancied he could identify a certain twist in his face that seemed not unfamiliar; but thought this might be due to his own drawbacks on correct observation. Upright again, his identification was confirmed and he knew quite well whose question he was answering by the time he felt his feet. It was the man he had seen in the clutches of the water-rat at Hammersmith, when both were capsized into the river six months ago. This put him on his guard, and he prepared to meet further questions with evasion or defiance. But he would flavour them with substantial facts.

It would confuse issues and make it more difficult to convict him of mendacity.

"You don't look an unlikely young beggar," said the man. "What name are you called?"

Michael thought a moment and settled that it might be impolitic to disclose his name. So he answered simply:--"Ikey." Now, this name was not contrary to any statute or usage. The man appeared to accept it in good faith, and Michael decided in his heart that he was softer than what he'd took him for.

He recovered some credit, however, by his next inquiry which seemed to place baptismal names among negligibles: "Ah, that's it, is it? But Ikey what? What do they call your father, if you've got one?"

Three courses occurred to Michael; improbable fiction, evasive or defiant; plausible fiction; and the undisguised truth. As the first, the Duke of Wellington's name recommended itself. He had, however, decided mentally that this man was a queer customer, and might be an awkward customer. So he discarded the Duke--satire might irritate--and chose the second course to avoid the third. But he was betrayed by Realism, which suggested that a study from Nature would carry conviction. He decided on a.s.suming the name of his friend the apothecary round the corner, up the street facing over against the Wheatsheaf. He replied that his father's name was Heeking's. It was easier to do this than to invent a name, which might have turned out an insult to the human understanding. He was disgusted to be met with incredulity.

"Don't believe you," said the man. "You're a young liar. Where's your father now--now this very minute?"

"Abed."

"What's he doing there?"

"Sleeping of it off. It was Sat.u.r.day with him last night. He had to be fetched from the King's Arms very careful. Perkins's Entire. Barclay Perkins. Fetched him myself! Mean to say I didn't?" But this part of the tale was probable and no comment seemed necessary.

"Where's your mother?"

"Cookin' 'im a bloater over the fire. It does the temper good. Can't yer smell it?" A flavour of cooking confirmed Michael's words, but he seemed to require a more formal admission of his veracity than a mere nostril set ajar and a glance at an open window. "Say, if you don't! On'y there's no charge for the smelling of it. She'll tell yer just the same like me, word in and word out. You can arks for yourself. I can 'oller 'er up less time than talkin' about it. You've only to say!"

But this man, the twist of whose face had not been improved by his recognition of the bloater, seemed to wish to confine his communications to Michael, rather decisively. Indeed, there was a sound of veiled intimidation in his voice as he said:--"You leave your mother to see to the herrings, young 'un, and just you listen to me. You be done with your kidding and listen to me. _You_ can tell me as much as I want to know. Sharp young beggar!--you know what's good for you." An intimidation of a possible _douceur_ perhaps?

Now Master Michael, though absolutely deficient in education--his cla.s.s, a sort of aristocracy of guttersnipes, was so in the pre-Board-School fifties,--was as sharp as a razor already even in the days of Dave Wardle's early accident, and had added a world of experience to his stock in the last few months. He had, in fact, been seeing the Metropolis, as an exponent or auxiliary of his father's vocation as a costermonger; and had made himself extremely useful, said Mr. Rackstraw, in the manner of speaking. Only the manner of speaking, strictly reported, did not use the expression _extremely_, but another one which we need not dwell upon except to make reference to its inappropriateness. Mr. Rackstraw was not a man of many words, so he had to fall back upon the same very often or hold his tongue: a course uncongenial to him. This word was a _piece de resistance_--a kind of sheet-anchor.

In the course of these last few months of active costermongery, of transactions in early peas and new potatoes, spring-cabbage and ripe strawberries, he had acquired not only an insight into commerce but apparently an intimate knowledge of every street in London, and a very fair acquaintance with its celebrities; meaning thereby its real celebrities--its sportsmen, patrons of the Prize Ring, cricketers, rowing-men, billiard-players, jockeys--what not? Its less important representative men, statesmen, bishops, writers, artists, lawyers; soldiers and sailors even, though here concession was rife, had to take a second place. But there was one cla.s.s--a cla.s.s whose members may have belonged to any one of these--of which Michael's experience was very limited. It was the cla.s.s of gaol-birds. This type, the most puzzling to eyes that see it for the first time, the most unmistakable by those well read in it, was the type that was now setting this juvenile coster's wits to work upon its cla.s.sification, on this May morning in Sapps Court. Michael's previous record of him was an interrupted sight of his face in the river-garden at Hammersmith, and a reference to his felonious antecedents at the inquest. He was, by the time the conversation a.s.sumed the interest due to a hint of emolument, able to say to himself that he should know the Old Bailey again by the cut of its jib next time he came across it.

In reply, he scorned circ.u.mlocution, saying briefly:--"Wot'll it come to? Wot are you good for? That's the p'int."

"You tell me no lies and you'll see. There's an old widow-lady down this Court. Don't you go and say there ain't!"

"There's any number. Which old widder?"

"Name of Daverill. Old enough to be your father's granny."

"No sich a name! There's one a sight older than that though--last house down the Court--top bell."

"How old do you make her out?"

"Two 'underd next birthday!" But Michael perceived in his questioner's eye a possible withdrawal of his offer of a consideration, and amended his statement:--"Ninety-nine, p'raps!--couldn't say to arf a minute."

"House at the end where the old c.o.c.k in a blue shirt's smoking a pipe--is that it?"

"Ah!--up two flights of stairs. But she can't see you, nor yet hear you, to speak of."

"Who's the old c.o.c.k?"

"This little boy's uncle. He b'longs to the Fancy. 'Eavyweight he was, wunst upon a time." And Dave Wardle, who had joined the colloquy, gave confirmatory evidence: "He's moy Uncle Moses, he is. And he's moy sister Dolly's Uncle Moses, he is. And moy sister Dolly she had a piece of koyk with a beadle in it. She _had_. A dead beadle!" But this evidence was ruled out of court by general consent; or rather, perhaps, it should be said that the witness remained in the box giving evidence of the same nature for his own satisfaction, while the court's attention wandered.

"Oh--he was a heavyweight, was he? An ugly customer, I should reckon."

The stranger said this more to himself than to the boys. But he spoke direct to Michael with the question, "What was it you said was the old lady's name, now?"

The boy, shrewd as he was, was but a boy after all. Was it wonderful that he should accept the implication that he had given the name? Thrown off his guard he answered:--"Name of Richards." Whereupon Dave, who was still stuttering on melodiously about the dead monster in Dolly's cake, endeavoured to correct his friend without complete success.

"Pitcher, is it?" said the stranger. Michael, disgusted to find that he had been betrayed into giving a name, though he was far from clear why it should have been reserved, was glad of Dave's perverted version, as replacing matters on their former footing. But the repet.i.tion of the name, by voices the stimulus of definition had emphasized, caught the attention of Uncle Moses, who thereon moved up the Court to find out who this stranger could be, who was so evidently inquiring about the upstairs tenant. As he reached close inspection-point his face did not look as though the visitor pleased him. The latter said good-morning first; but, simple as his words were, the gaol-bird manner of guarded suspicion crept into them and stamped the speaker.

"Don't like the looks of you, mister!" said Uncle Mo to himself. But aloud he said:--"Good-morning to _you_, sir. I understood you to be inquiring for Mrs. Prichard."

"No--Daverill. No such a name, this young shaver says."

"Not down this Court. It wasn't Burr by any chance now, was it?"

"No--Daverill."