A Breaker of Laws/Chapter 11

by W. Pett Ridge

 

CHAPTER XI

At Lewisham Station Mr. Dowton said good-bye to the lady who had won his heart, and she flushed with the gratifying success of her visit to town, leaned out of the window, blowing kisses through the slight fog to her fiancé until Alfred and Caroline, who were accompanying the sisters to Paddington, warned her to be careful. Alfred remarked sagely that accidents on the railways always happened when you least expected them, and, being challenged by the nervous sisters for further information, described with much burlesque detail a disaster in which he declared he had borne conspicuous part by stopping an express train with his head; a recital arrested by Caroline, who declared her belief that the Devonshire young women did not realize when her husband was in earnest and when be was serious. The younger sister said that thank goodness she was not going to marry a joking husband; the eldest sister remarked severely that it was unwise to laugh about anything, for to do so was to tempt Providence. At Paddington, where the fog seemed less, Alfred regained their favour by his adroitness in obtaining for them corner seats in the return excursion, the first occupants of which he persuaded to move by the incorrect assurance that they were in the wrong part of the train.

'Take gude care of her, Alfred,' the Devonshire sisters cried as the excursion went slowly out.

'We shan't come to no 'arm,' he shouted confidently; 'we're too artful.'

'Kiss Falgy for us,' called the younger sister, 'd'rectly you get home. Reckon I shall be up again in a few months, all married and settled down.'

'Go' bless you both, dears,' cried Caroline.

She cried when the train had gone, and Alfred had to assume his most amusing vein in order to distract. They returned by another route, and it was at Victoria Station, as the train was on the point of starting, that Alfred saw Mr. Ladd. Mr. Ladd looked older; his hair had whitened, but increasing years had evidently not lessened his enthusiasm in wrong-doing. He whispered to Alfred, in passing on the platform, that having tired of small affairs, he was now about to engage upon a big business.

'Gi-gantic,' said Mr. Ladd confidentially, as he stepped into the smoking compartment next the one which they entered.

'Rather nice busy old gentleman,' remarked Caroline, when they had taken their seats.

'Very busy,' replied Alfred cautiously.

'I like to see old people active,' she said.

'Sooner see them active,' said Alfred, 'than be active meself.' He looked round at the other passengers for approval, glad in his Cockney way to have an audience. '’Ard work and me had a bit of a tiff when I was quite young, and we've never quite made it up.'

The other passengers on their way to spend an afternoon at the Crystal Palace applauded this frank statement. A matron in the corner declared sportively that she often wondered that, what with your Houses of Parliament and your goodness knows what, something could not be done to abolish work of all kinds; for her part, she would not greatly complain were she never to see a flat-iron again. The matron's husband advised her not to talk silly nonsense, but found himself shouted down by most of the other holiday-makers in the compartment, who encouraged the lady to proceed.

'But, excuse me,' said Caroline shyly, 'do you think we should enjoy our little outings if it wasn't that we worked at other times?'

The matron's husband welcomed this remark as sound common-sense, and added, without looking at his wife, that he wished there were more people who gained some idea of logic instead of giving up their minds to tomfoolery, and not being satisfied unless they were rushing off to the Palace at least once every two or three years. On this the matron grew scarlet, and proceeded to give the compartment a criticism passed upon her husband by her own Aunt Eliza, now in Abney Park Cemetery, to which the moody husband retorted by a wistful appeal to the other passengers to suggest a reason why he married the matronly lady, pointing out that her face had never been what was usually understood by that word; that it could not have been her mind that had attracted him, because she hadn't any. The compartment seemed unable to give the puzzled husband any assistance, and the two addressed each other fiercely. Outside the fog became more dense, it was impossible now to see the houses.

'Making yourself a circus clown!' said the wife contemptuously. 'Why, they're all gigglin' at you up their sleeves.'

'Don't wonder at it,' remarked the husband, sighing; 'when they look at you and see what I married.'

'Worst day's work I ever did in my life,' said the woman, not to be outdone in courtesy. 'I sometimes think I must have been off me head.'

'You looked it,' remarked the husband reminiscently, 'if I remember aright.'

'For two pins,' cried the matron furiously, I'd——'

'Look 'ere,' interrupted Alfred, 'you two seem to be sparrin' a bit early in the day. Me and my young missis get out at Nunhead. Can't one of you give us a song before we get there?'

The suggestion was at once acted upon. A lad stared at the lamp in the roof of the carriage, and commenced:

 

'You see in me a noblemin who has his share of pelf,
I'm open-'anded, generous, I care not for myself;
Whene'er I see a case of want, of sickness, or of pine,
My 'and into my pocket goes, and I shout this refrine:
Chuck him a sov., boys, chuck him a sov., boys,
It means a lot to him, ye know; it don't mean much to you, ye know;
Chuck him a sov., boys, chuck——"'

 

A sudden insistent, brutal check to the train; a moaning sound of buffers in distress; a smashing and splintering of wood and glass. On the instant, as Alfred swiftly lifted up Caroline's little brown-shoed feet, the side of the compartment where they were sitting crashed forward, and the two seats almost met. The carriage stopped; it appeared to twist oddly. Screams came from the rest of the train, but for the moment there was here nothing but a deep simultaneous groan of pain; then came appealing screams of the women in the distorted, cramped compartment, furious swearing of the men. Alfred, the first to release himself, broke the window with his elbow, and managed with a great effort to open the broken door; it fell solidly out on the ballast. Turning to Caroline, who had fainted, he lifted her very gently and very tenderly. His leg pained him.

'Give me the lady,' said a platelayer below cheerfully. 'I'll ketch her all right, mate. You look after yerself.'

'I must—I must look after her,' he said.

'Caught!' said the platelayer, as Caroline slipped helplessly down into his arms. 'Now you rest partly on your walking-stick and partly on me, and we shall get along like a 'ouse afire.' They went slowly across the other pair of rails to the bank where several injured passengers had already been placed. 'That's it,' said the platelayer. 'Now we shan't—— Mind my cabbages, Jim, old man!'

From the crooked, splintered carriages men and women with blood-besmirched faces were being assisted, and these, when left to themselves, staggered foolishly; one man tried to get back into the smashed compartment from which he had been dragged. An up train being stopped by a red flag, passengers looked out from it interestedly. A nurse, with gray wings, hurried from the forepart of the injured train, and Alfred beckoned her feebly to come to the assistance of the still senseless Caroline, who lay on the bank, her brown shoes peeping beneath the hem of her skirt, her face white, and a speck of blood at her lips. More uniformed men arrived now, with a station-master in command, who despatched messengers in search of doctors; from one or two villas whose lawns touched the railway white-capped servants hastened, despatched at full speed by their distracted mistresses with bottles of brandy and glasses

'Hurt, old man?' asked a young porter of Alfred.

'How is she, nurse?'

'Only a faint from the shock,' said the winged butterfly. 'No bones broken. Hi!'—this to one of the white-capped maid-servants—bring that glass here, please.'

'Where's your damage?' repeated the young porter.

'My leg's a bit silly,' said Alfred, his head drooping. 'I think—I think it's broke.'

'Shall I have a dash at it,' asked the porter, 'or would you rather wait for a doctor? I'm a first-aid man, and I've got me certificate, and if you——'

'Fire away!'

The young porter, proud of an opportunity for using his knowledge, found a piece of broken foot-board, found also three handkerchiefs, cut up the leg of Alfred's trousers, and with admirable deftness bound the broken limb.

'’Pon me word,' declared Alfred, who had scarcely withdrawn his gaze from Caroline, now opening her eyes slowly, 'if you ain't a reg'lar young Royal College of Surgeons!'

'Neat, ain't it?' said the porter, regarding his work critically.

'Neat!' echoed Alfred; 'it's neater than neat. Go and look after some of the others now. Kerry, my gel, you're all right. Look 'ere: I'm Elf, close beside of you, dear.'

'She'll recover almost directly,' said the busy butterfly. 'Excuse me if I hurry off to some of the others.'

'I'm ever so much obliged to you, miss,' said Alfred.

He kissed his wife and smoothed her cheek. Close by a short white-haired man was being brought on a strip of carpet taken from a first-class carriage, and as soon as the porters laid him down, one of the doctors who had arrived knelt, placing his hand inside the man's waistcoat.

'Dead,' said the doctor quietly. 'Cover him over with the tarpaulin, and come along.'

Alfred, lifting himself up with intense difficulty to see the face before it was hidden from sight, recognised Mr. Ladd. As the sun came out, piercing and dispersing the fog and lighting up the scene, it shocked him to think of the old man being thus shot from life into eternity without notice, but his head was too dazed to think of their old companionship or of Mr. Ladd's ambitions. Caroline kept her eyes open now, and he turned to her to whisper comfortingly. He could not help feeling that there was nothing real in the scene before him, that a curtain would fall presently, that a band would play a set of quadrilles. The up train advanced cautiously, and some of the passengers who were only shaken found themselves hauled up into it in order to return to London, groaning as they did so; those who were the least hurt complained the most. The moody husband of their compartment had been kneeling beside the body of his wife, calling her the affectionate short names used in their early days, imploring her frantically not to leave him, and craving her pardon for anything that he might ever have said or done to displease her. He wept and prayed at her side in a jumbled, half-delirious way until the doctor assured him that his wife was but little hurt; whereupon he became calmer, and as the lady recovered consciousness, so he regained his usual manner, until she was able to stand and to be assisted into the up train, when he said, in following her into the carriage: 'This, now, is what comes of your gadding about, Meria!'

By the time the up train had gone on with its damaged passengers, Caroline, partly recovered from the shock, was able to realize what had happened, and, having done this, lost no time, like the sensible young woman that she was, in bestirring herself. Discovering that Alfred's injury was serious, and that he could not move, she instantly secured the attention of a doctor, caught a passing maid-servant, and begged her to get permission from her mistress for Alfred to be conveyed indoors. This obtained, she engaged the services of two busy, perspiring porters, who conveyed Alfred on an overcoat arranged in accordance with the teaching of the ambulance classes through the broken-down portion of the wooden fence, across the lawn to the house where a pleasant-faced young lady awaited them.

Looking back, they could see the uninjured portion of the train starting to complete its interrupted journey; to the engine which had run into it was, for punishment, assigned the difficult task of dragging the smashed brake-van and the telescoped third-class carriages back to a siding, where they could be covered with tarpaulins and shielded from public view. The break-down gang had arrived from London, and a small regiment of men in white jackets attacked the carriages that had jumped off the rails.

'Only two, ma'am,' said one of the porters to the pleasant-faced young lady. 'There's a good many shook up and knocked about, but only two are absolutely what you may term gone to glory.'

'Miss Jennie!' exclaimed Caroline excitedly.

'Why, it is Caroline, aunt's maid at Blackheath!'

'Talk about Providence!' said Caroline with astonishment. 'This is my dear husband, miss, and he's hurt himself badly. Elf, this is Miss Jennie that you've 'eard me talk of so often.'

'Miss,' began Alfred, 'excuse us if——'

'I can't allow you to call me "miss,"' cried the pleasant-faced young woman, 'and I can't allow you to make any excuses. Take him very carefully, my men, upstairs to the spare bedroom, and here is something for yourselves. Caroline, it is like old times to see you again.'

'I heard you were married, miss,' said Caroline delightedly. 'But you can't manage a house ma'am, surely?'

'Can't I!' replied the young woman confidently. 'You shall stay here and see.'

'I have a little baby-boy,' remarked Caroline with hesitation, 'getting anxious about me at Lewisham, and——"

'I'll send for him,' said the hostess briskly. 'Give me the address and a note, and Martha shall go like a shot.'

Martha, the maid, went like a shot, and returned from Lewisham with something of the swiftness of a shot, but doing more than any shot could have done, in that she carried Trafalgar all the way back, talking to the youth as though she were the mother of twelve, instead of being a single young woman not yet seventeen.

Miss Jennie's husband (become a pushful young barrister) on his return from the City that night applauded his young wife's action, gave Alfred advice in regard to obtaining recompense (for even a lawyer has no compunction in obtaining money from a railway company), promised to conduct the necessary correspondence, and enabled Alfred to see that instead of having met with a deplorable accident he had really encountered good fortune. Mellish was proud to be able to give legal advice in the presence of his young wife, who told Caroline afterwards that he was the best husband in the world, to which Caroline, remembering Alfred, listened with an incredulous smile.

Thus began Alfred Bateson a period of laziness.

It was a happy little household of a type not unusual in the suburbs, but rarely to be found in descriptions of life in the suburbs. Young Mrs. Mellish assured Caroline that she had never ceased to congratulate herself on having taken her career with both hands, deciding for herself without reference to her aunt, who had immeasurable sympathy for the lower classes, but could not bring herself to feel any friendliness for intermediate sections. When, the next morning, young Mrs. Mellish, having waved her hand to her husband until he turned the corner of the road, proceeded to encase herself in a brown pinafore and to organize, in concert with her maid, a determined attack upon dust and rust, and when, after scoring a brilliant victory in this direction, she consulted the stout red-bound volume without which no suburban household is complete, and, aided by the advice of the late Mrs. Beeton, arranged the commissariat department; when the maid, despatched with a basket to forage the shops of the neighbourhood, left young Mrs. Mellish free to run races with Trafalgar on the long lawn, races in which the young toddler was always permitted by a series of jerks and staggers and slips to reach the winning-post just in front of his skirt-hampered competitor—then Caroline felt obliged to admit that Miss Jennie had done well in leaving the big house at Blackheath and in making her own life in a small villa. Fearful of giving trouble Caroline expressed herself anxious that Alfred should be at once conveyed home to Lewisham, where Mr. Finnis was managing the shop and the house, with the assistance of an old charwoman; but Jennie Mellish would not hear of this, and insisted that they should wait until the doctor gave permission. The doctor, who came again in the afternoon—having on the previous evening improved on the rough workmanship of the young porter—seemed more concerned with Caroline than with Alfred. He told her she must rest.

'No use tellin' her that, sir,' remarked Alfred from the bed. 'She isn't one of your resters.'

'Nevertheless she will have to. And,' added the doctor casually, 'you must of course do so too.'

'Trust me!' said Alfred. 'I can do a lot of resting before I'm tired. It 'd suit me if I was like this all my life.'

'Alfred,' remarked his wife severely, 'you must not say such wicked things. Falgy, speak to your father.'

The baby said a few indistinct words.

'You should not nurse that big boy either,' said the doctor warningly. 'Let him jump down and run about. If you are not very careful about overtaxing your strength just now, you may feel the effects of this shaking all your life. Keep quiet and lie down a good deal. Be a sensible woman now, and do as I tell you.'

'I'll try to remember, sir,' said Caroline, smiling.

'Don't forget,' he remarked, going.

'Doctors,' said Caroline when he had left, 'get some of the oddest ideas that ever anybody dreamt of. The idea of me keeping quiet and—leg easier, Elf dear?'

'It's throbbin' a bit.'

'If you hadn't caught me up just at that moment I should have been knocked about. You're a dear good chap, Elf,' she said, bending over him, 'and I'm proud of you.'

'Give me a kiss,' said Alfred contentedly.

Another visitor, shown up to the bedroom by the good-tempered Martha, introduced himself as police inspector from the railway, a big burly man, clean shaven, who, when he announced his occupation, caused Alfred something of fear. It soon became evident, however, that he had called on no matter of police, but rather in the character of a philanthropic representative of the regretful railway company, wishful to get rid of ten-pound notes, and, in exchange, to obtain signatures to a form intimating acceptance of the amounts in payment of all demands. Young Jennie Mellish, called upon for advice, reminded Alfred of his consultation with her gifted husband, and advised that nothing should be done at present. The inspector shrugged his shoulders, urging that it was for Mr. and Mrs. Bateson to decide; if a ten-pound note to each and eventual payment of the doctor's bill seemed good enough for them, why, it could all be settled (said the inspector cheerfully) in the twinkling of an eye. By strategy the inspector induced Mrs. Mellish to leave the room, and then set himself the task of being a genial, entertaining man, telling Alfred, at his request, the details of a case with which his company had recently had to. deal, where a rather clumsy attempt had been made to obtain goods at one of their London stations, and recounting with great enjoyment the manner in which the scheme had failed and the organizers had been arrested. Alfred listened with great interest, and asked one or two questions.

'Joking apart, though,' said the railway inspector, rising, 'what do you say to our settling this lamentable little business in a friendly, amicable way? I've got a lot of other calls to make, I am sorry to say, and——'

'I think it would be safe for me to take a lump sum down,' said Caroline; 'but I'm not so sure about my 'usband.'

'You're looking wonderfully well, ma'am,' said the inspector flatteringly. 'Sometimes a bit of a shake-up does anybody good, you know.'

'I feel rather nervous about everything, and I get cold shivers, and——'

'Pooh!' said the inspector lightly, as he produced a ten-pound note and a form, 'don't talk about cold shivers. You ought to know my sister-in-law; she wouldn't think she was alive if she didn't have 'em now and again. Sign just here, ma'am.'

Mellish, on his return home, declared himself perturbed at the news of Caroline's acceptance of the amount, and said that she ought to have waited. He instructed Alfred to ask for £30, which amount, to Alfred's surprise, the inspector, in a few days, brought to him. By that time he was in a condition to be removed, and although he appeared quite content to stay on, Caroline insisted that they should no longer test the kindness of their young hostess. They started with a sensation of possessing uncountable riches.

'Caroline,' said Mrs. Mellish brightly at the gate, when the departure was being made, 'it has done me good to see you.'

'I shall never forget you, ma'am,' said Caroline with earnestness, 'and all your goodness to us. It's something to see you so happy.'

'Come and see us again soon,' said young Mellish, 'and if you are ever in trouble——'

'I believe you're all so kind,' said Caroline happily, 'that if ever there was any trouble I should find myself pulled out of it.'

'Rely upon us,' said the two young people.

William Finnis was waiting for them in (for him) exuberant spirits at the doorway of the shop; behind him stood the quaint-bonneted charwoman who had ruled in the absence of Caroline, wearing a thick smile of resignation that had in its best days goaded people almost to the point of frenzy. The sofa stood on the pavement; upon it Alfred was placed, and thus wheeled through the shop to the room at the back. It gave Alfred a great deal of satisfaction to be waited upon; he had long determined to show no immoderate haste in getting well. There was a luxury, moreover, in being free from work that increased his content.

'’Pon my word. Elf,' declared William, whilst Caroline upstairs put the boy to bed, '’pon my word if I ain't missed you all like anything.'

'Some of us can't easily be done without.'

'The place seemed empty,' went on William Finnis; 'everything seemed to go crooked; me meals was a torture. I never seemed to hear no pleasant voices, and altogether, I tell you, I fairly got the 'ump.'

'Well, 'ere we are now, at any rate,' said Alfred importantly, 'and simply covered all over with money.' He told William the result of his dealings with the railway company. 'So we shall 'ave a copper or two in our pockets for a week or two, at any rate.'

'I'm expecting to get a bit of money, too,' said William. 'Perhaps we might both put it in the bisness and kind of extend the undertaking, so to speak.' The charwoman broke forth into a quavering hymn in the kitchen. 'There,' he said, 'that's the kind of 'armonic meeting that's been going on whilst you two've been away. Fancy her being in the 'ouse instead of——'

He stopped.

'Fact of the matter is, Mr. Finnis,' said Caroline archly, appearing at the doorway, 'you'll have to get married. What do you say, Alf?'

'There must be many a countess wearing her 'eart out for his sake,' said Alfred.

'I don't want to make no change,' said William soberly. 'Do you feel all right again after your smash up?'

'Well, but you don't mean to say you're going to remain a lonely bachelor all your life?' she demanded in a tone of raillery, evading his question.

'Looks like it,' he said. 'You might pay off the old lady and get rid of her.'

They were very merry, when the post came with a double knock that started William off quickly. He returned bearing a letter, which he opened hesitatingly.

'Now then,' he said nervously; 'is this good news or bad, I wonder?'

'Good, I hope,' remarked Caroline; 'I found a stranger in my tea this evening.'

'Who's it from, old man?'

'The chap about my patent.'

'Oh!' said Alfred.

He opened the envelope. 'You read it,' he said to Caroline. 'Perhaps that'll bring me luck.'

 

'"My dear Sir,"' read Caroline,

'"We regret to inform you that as a result of our inquiries it appears that"' (Alfred Bateson turned his face to the wall and traced with his finger the pattern of the paper) '"whilst a patent can, of course, be granted for your invention, it would be quite useless to obtain this, as a precisely similar affair has recently been registered by a firm in Holborn Viaduct. They would take proceedings at once on any attempt at infringement, and you will find yourself in a position of some difficulty if you apply it to any machines without their express permission."'

 

William Finnis had been standing up whilst this letter was being read. As it finished he strode out into the shop, and for ten minutes he walked around it.

'Mr. Finnis seems upset,' whispered Caroline presently.

'Yes,' answered her husband, still intent on the wall-paper; 'he don't of'en take things to heart so.'

'Isn't there anything we can do, Alf? We've got plenty of money now. Couldn't we make him a present of, say, a five-pound note?'

'The very thing!' exclaimed Alfred, almost jumping from the sofa. 'That will put me square—what I mean to say is that he can't complain, can he?'

The door of the shop banged. Finnis, discovering that the limits of the shop were too narrow, had gone out to walk off his bitter disappointment up and down Loampit Vale.

'I suppose these people may make 'undreds out of it,' remarked Caroline, as she addressed an envelope.

'Likely as not,' said Alfred cheerfully. 'Put on the outside, "With our united love."'

'The rest, mind, sir,' said Caroline, sealing the envelope and shaking her pretty head warningly, 'goes straight into the post-office savings-bank to-morrow morning.'

'You look tired,' remarked Alfred. 'Get off to bye-bye, old dear.'