A Breaker of Laws/Chapter 12

by W. Pett Ridge

 

CHAPTER XII

Deptford Fair Ground was at its busiest point (which meant that the night was Saturday), and patrons turned through the narrow passage leading to it from High Street in a steady, continuous stream. The passage being not only narrow but dark, you were wise if in passing through you gripped the pocket where your money rested; if you were not wise, likely enough someone else gripped it for you, and you reached the large, open, blazingly-lighted space without enough to pay for a ride on the mechanical horses which plunged and reared and jibbed as they went round to the grunting music for all the world as though they were real horses of the highest mettle and the purest breed. And what a gay, insistent, rollicking place it was, with its shows and admirable pictures outside, pictures which persuaded strangers but failed to delude Deptford infants, who had learnt by bitter experience that much had to be allowed for artistic exaggeration; so that when, for instance, they saw on the flapping canvas 'The Wonder of Two Continents!' with a picture of John Bull and Uncle Sam holding up hands in an attitude of helpless astonishment at the sight of a delightful young lady resting on nothing in a horizontal position, the Deptford children knew quite well that they would find nothing like this within, but only some arrangement of mirrors with the reflection of a murky-faced little girl in a muslin frock, whom they could see any morning near to the van peeling potatoes and being boxed on the ears by her mother because the mother had been upbraided by the father. Similarly, there was the most perfect collection of wild animals extant, which had for proprietress a scarlet-faced lady with a voice that was indeed enough to make any animal wild; and here there was the bitterest disappointment for any incautious patron, because inside you saw only the bear (who seemed a prey to melancholia) and the three monkeys who had been exhibited before the performance on the platform outside, and excepting that a shivering small boy in darned tights, who was called 'The Emperor of the Animal Kingdom,' made the bear play at see-saw, which it did with the gloomy, abstracted air of one with no appetite for such frivolity, one might just as well have stayed outside and have spent the penny on sherbet, or on sport at the shooting-galleries. The advantages of the Fair Ground were that one paid nothing for admission to the roaring, noisy, tumultuous, brilliant space, and that no policemen worth speaking of interfered to restrain enjoyment, for both of which reasons it was greatly patronized by young gentlemen—and ladies—from Mill Lane and similar neighbourhoods, who went about in gangs, enjoying life to the full.

Alfred Bateson, walking towards Deptford Green, turned in at the narrow entrance to the Fair Ground as though by instinct. He had seen Caroline and the boy off from Lewisham Road Station that evening for Westgate-on-Sea, where, by the energy of Jennie Mellish and the influence of that young woman's aunt (now leaving Blackheath and going to the house in Devonshire because every female relative was getting married), room had been found in a convalescent home. Alfred himself limped but slightly from the effects of the accident, but having given faith unrestrainedly to the assumption that he was not yet fit for work, he still posed as an invalid.

William Finnis had for some weeks been doing the work of two men at the cycle-shop—work which he did with the greater goodwill because the fact did not escape his notice that Alfred, with all his laziness, gave every attention to Caroline. William Finnis guessed that the young woman needed great care. She lost appetite. One day, to their great concern, they found her in the kitchen prone on the floor, with the small Trafalgar patting her face and begging her to wake up. She had fainted.

'Whatever the doc. says is to be done,' Alfred had declared seriously, 'shall be done. There's still a trifle left of the merry little quids, and I'd spend the last penny to see her well again.'

'Alf,' William Finnis had replied, 'you're a good sort, and 'pon me soul if I ain't beginnin' to think you're worthy of her!'

Wherefore, the doctor having said 'Seaside!' Caroline and her boy had gone, and Caroline had blown kisses to her husband out of the window of the departing train, whilst Trafalgar's chubby little fist had waved until the train went out of sight. William Finnis having promised to do anything that Caroline had wished, the young woman had instantly begged that Miss Ladd should be her substitute until her return in preference to a stranger, and Finnis, with a twist of the face that meant reluctance, had agreed.

Alfred discovered that his feelings of regret at the departure of his good young wife were oddly contested by the sensation of freedom and a general feeling of the brake of good behaviour being released; he had turned into the hilarious Fair Ground for the better encouragement of this. The mad discord of steaming instruments at the centre of each merry-go-round, the cheerful recklessness of the crowd, the scent of flaming naphtha—all these would help him to chase any depression. He tipped his bowler hat to the back of his head and lighted a cigar at one of the blazing lights.

'What cheer, me sportin' nobleman!' cried Alfred, slapping the shoulder of a short lad who had just replaced a rifle with a sigh. 'How's the continental bisness goin' on? How's your luck?'

'Dead out!' replied the young carman. 'Six shots I've had, and ain't hit a single doll.'

'Why don't you aim straight?'

'Ah!' said the young carman ironically, 'I never thought of that'

The walnut-faced woman at the shooting-gallery urged the lad to have one more try, pointing out that practice made perfect, mentioning also that Waterloo would not have been won bad our gallant British soldiers given up after the sixth shot. The young carman seemed to be impressed by these arguments, and throwing down another penny recklessly, he took the rifle, cocked one eye, and snapped three more shots. The preposterous swinging dolls at the end of the gallery remained untouched.

'This ain't my birthday,' said the lad gloomily, as he handed the rifle back to the woman. 'Particularly wanted either a penny cigar or a penny packet of cigarettes,' he went on, 'and 'ere I've bin and blowed threepence, and no nearer a smoke than ever I was.'

'Allow me,' said Alfred generously, 'to offer you a very fine tuppeny.'

'Can you spare it?'

'Catch me offerin' it,' replied Alfred, 'if I couldn't! Let's stroll round and see the fun.'

'My position in life,' said the young carman, accepting a light, 'makes it necessary that I should be a bit careful about mixin' up with strangers.'

'Don't talk like that,' begged Alfred. 'Why, we've met at least once before.'

'I know, I know,' he said importantly. 'Same time, you'll quite understand that with my responsibility I 'ave to use a great deal of cautiousness. It don't do for me to be 'ail-fellow-well-met with every Tom, Dick, and 'Erry that I come across. Valuables are valuables; watches are watches; 'orses and vans are 'orses and vans, and—well, there you are.'

'’Pon me word,' said Alfred, as they paused near a football which, attached to a string, had to be kicked through a hole in a board, '’pon me word if you don't talk like a reg'lar book! What you'll be like when you grow up don't bear thinking of.'

'I beg your pardon?' said the lad, with forced politeness.

'You 'ang on a rope, don't you,' asked Alfred, with a fine air of innocence, 'at the back of the van, and keep the flies off?'

'You don't seem quite to understand,' said the youth, raising his voice, as another blaring, trumpeting, gusty waltz added itself to the general clamour, 'the kind of individual what you 'ave to deal with. I'm a grown-up,' he said, striking himself on the breast violently, 'a grown-up with a 'ead—a 'ead, mind you, set on me shou'ders.'

'If I'd had the makin' of you, I should 'ave taken more trouble about the 'ead. At present,' said Alfred, 'it's got a unfinished look about it.'

'Yours 'll look finished all right,' said the youth explosively and wetting the palms of his hands, 'in about two twos.'

'Don't kill me on a Saturday night,' appealed Alfred. 'It's so bloomin' unlucky. Besides, I've got a call to make at Deptford Green, and I shall look silly if I ain't alive when I knock at eighty-four.'

'Eighty-four!' echoed the young carman amazedly, and now rolling up the sleeves of his jacket. 'Tell me you're going to call on a young party the nime of Ladd! Go on. Tell me that!'

'I shouldn't call her young.'

'And you're pestering her with your attentions, are you?' demanded the youth, putting up his fists and dancing. A crowd diverted from the try-your-strength machine instantly formed a circle. 'Blow me if I didn't think there was someone else in the case! 'Ere, someone, 'old my cigar whilst I——'

'Don't be a young fool,' urged Alfred good-humouredly; 'put your jacket on, unless you want it pinched, and keep calm. I'm simply going to call there on a matter of business; she knowed me since I was a kid. We'll go down together if you like.'

The young carman replaced his hat, eyeing Alfred narrowly for some moments. The crowd begged each to hit the other, but finding their advice was not accepted, gave a few bitter criticisms on cowards and cowardice and drifted away. The youth looked round for his partly-consumed cigar, but it had vanished, together with its bailee.

'I'm quick-tempered,' said the young carman humbly, 'and I'm hasty and——'

'No 'arm in being hasty if you're only right.'

'P'r'aps I sometimes jump at conclusions. But if I made a mistake, I 'ope I'm gen'leman enough either to fight it out or to apologize'

'You're all right, ole man,' said Alfred. 'You're only silly. Let's get down towards the Green.'

People were still coming in as they went through the dark passage into High Street. A woman in blue plush listened to the advice of a female companion to mind her purse, and thereupon placed the purse with some trouble in a pocket at the back of her skirt, where it could be easily got at by everybody but herself. Alfred turned to follow; then, remembering Caroline, he stopped and reproved himself severely. On the way the youthful carman, penitent for his outburst of temper, confided to Alfred that the gaunt, middle-aged Miss Ladd had impressed his youthful imagination, and that her reserved and almost contemptuous air had but increased his ardour. Always an admirer of tall women, he had retained Miss Ladd in his memory since their first meeting in the Deptford hotel on the occasion of Alfred's congratulatory smoking concert, and although she had given him no encouragement, he had persisted in his courteous attentions, and felt inclined to believe that since the death of her brother she had been slightly less brusque in her manner towards him.

'Women,' said the little carman, 'are all different. You might say things to one, and it would please her; go and say exactly the same things to another, and she'd fetch you a clip 'side the head.'

'Still,' said Alfred, as they went by the old archway at the entrance to Hughes' Fields, 'I could tell from the first that you were a perfect terror with the fair sect.'

'Could you, though?' inquired the young carman delightedly. 'Could you, though, reely?'

'With 'alf a eye,' said Alfred.

Whatever capabilities the youth possessed of terrorizing ladies in general, it was soon evident, when Miss Ladd appeared at the doorway in Deptford Green, that they had no immediate effect upon her; a jerk of the head was sufficient to send him quickly to the other side of the broad roadway, where he read an auctioneer's placard on the blank wall the while Alfred and Miss Ladd conversed in the passage. Miss Ladd, wiping her eyes, explained that she had been thinking of poor dear Thomas, of his unfinished schemes, his many successes. If her late brother had been an earnest exponent of all the virtues. Miss Ladd could have had no greater reverence for his memory.

'And he was so fond of vegetable marrow, too,' said Miss Ladd inconsequently. 'I'm sure, if anybody deserved to go to 'eaven, he did.'

Alfred explained the difficulty at Lewisham, and Miss Ladd, on hearing it was the wish of Caroline that she should take her place in respect to the housekeeping, at once consented.

'The bisness was never much,' she said, glancing over her shoulder. 'Only that, as you know, Elf, it saved people from scandalizing. Neighbours about 'ere are very suspicious.'

'Stable empty at the back?'

'Quite empty,' said Miss Ladd dolefully, with the corner of her apron to her eyes. 'I sold the pony and the cart a week ago. They reminded me too much of him that's gone; besides, they were no use to me. How's the dear little boy, Elf?'

'Reg'lar young marvel,' replied Alfred proudly. 'Gave me a rare old punch yesterday because I pretended to be cross with Keroline; up and denounced me like a beak on the bench.'

'Ah!' sighed Miss Ladd, 'that's where your 'appiness comes in.'

'Talkin' of 'appiness,' remarked Alfred, as he walked through the passage and the kitchen and looked around at the back of the house, 'why don't you pick up a 'usband and settle down?'

'I would,' said the tall woman midway in the passage—'I would. Elf, if—if there was another man like you in the world.'

He went out of the door and looked in at the stable. It was hidden from the houses at either side by fences enveloped in a coarse, straggling, dusty creeper; houses in Hughes' Fields, whose and gardens backed against it, overlooked it from their windows.

In that moment a scheme, perfect, admirable, enticing, appeared to the mind of Alfred Bateson.

'Yes,' he said, returning, 'us good chaps are scarce. That's a roomy sort of stable of yours out at the back. It'd take almost anything.'

The young carman came nervously across from study of posters on the wall, and asked with great respect the favour of five minutes' conversation outside.

'There's a pail of water in the kitchen,' replied Miss Ladd strenuously. 'Stay where you are one moment, my lad, and I'll fetch it and empt' it over you.' She turned to Alfred: 'I shall be down at Lewisham to-morrow,' she said.

'Wait for me, kiddie,' called Alfred to the departing youth.

Alfred caught the young carman at the end of Deptford Green, and walked with him up Church Street. It took some time to persuade the young man that to accept remarks made by ladies in a literal sense was a mistake, and that one should look, rather, for hidden meanings; they had reached the back of the old church before the infuriated young man agreed to slacken his pace and to listen calmly to Alfred's arguments.

'What on earth possesses her to be so bloomin' 'aughty,' he said with bitterness, 'I can't for a moment understand.'

'She ain't reely 'aughty,' declared Alfred. 'It's only her manner.'

'Licker to me why I take so much trouble about her,' said the other. 'There's plenty of other gels in the world that I could pick and choose from.'

'P'r'aps it's because she's cold in her behaviour.'

'P'r'aps that is it.'

'But do you know, old man, that underneath that 'arsh exterior there's a woman's tender and loving 'eart?'

'Well,' said the young carman, walking through the passage by the churchyard towards High Street, 'what of it?'

'A 'eart,' went on Alfred, 'capable of affection, but affection for only one blessed person in this world.'

'Show me him!'

'Only one person, and that a good-looking chap that thinks he's hard done by.'

'You don't mean to tell me——'

'My boy,' said Alfred, lowering his voice confidentially, 'I know what you don't know. I'm not goin' to say that you don't understand women, because that 'd be wrong; all I can tell you is that what she said to you jest now was only done to 'ide the real state of her feelings towards you.'

'Fact?' demanded the youth animatedly.

'Should I tell it you if it wasn't?' asked Alfred. 'Presently I'll inform you jest what she told me in confidence, word for word.'

'Well,' said the young carman, with great wonder, 'it jest shows how the cleverest of as can make mistakes. Let's 'ave a tonic on the strength of it.'

Alfred would not accept the drink until he had made two calls—the first at a shop near High Street, having for motto 'Keep Moving,' where he engaged the services for Monday of a horse and the plain van which had conveyed his furniture to Lewisham; the second to turn again into the Fair Ground and find the stout lady in blue plush, at that moment about to take a round of equestrian exercise on a restive wooden steed called Isonomy. Alfred bestrode a horse next to her, and in the swift whirl round to the deafening blatant waltz he offered her assistance when she appeared to be slipping from the painted saddle. Somewhat to his dismay, he found that he could not induce himself to take the purse; he touched it, but withdrew his hand at once.

The carman, flushed with the joy that reassuring news had given him, insisted that Alfred should accompany him to his club, situated over a shop near the Broadway, where in the largest room a 'sing-song' was being held, attended by shy, spectacled Mr. Barraclough, who, having some idea of offering himself as candidate for the constituency, had apparently been advised to make himself known and to make himself amiable. He had the notes of a speech in his hand, and it seemed that he had been near the piano for some time waiting his opportunity to give the smoked and crowded room his views on political matters; but the room appeared not very desirous of listening to speeches, and as the waiter in his shirt-sleeves (who was something of a despot in his way, and had to be addressed with humility) brought tankards to the beer-stained deal table where Alfred and his host had found seats, Barraclcugh listened with an air of wonder to a rough-haired member who was singing 'Four-and-twenty jossers in a four-wheel cab.' The room took up the chorus, and when they had concluded the last prolonged note, applauded themselves by rattling glasses on the wooden tables.

'Don't smoke a pipe, old man,' said the young carman. '’Ave a ceegar. 'Ere, Spots! fetch me two of your best tuppenies.'

The waiter told him to fetch them himself; he wasn't a slave, added the waiter, to be at everybody's beck and call. The youth obeyed meekly, and the waiter, gathering a bouquet of empty glasses, shouted for orders.

Mr. Barraclough had just commenced his speech, when a man at the back of the room intimated that he wished to speak to a point of order. Some uproar at this; the chairman conferred seriously with Barraclough. Alfred enjoyed the scene until he caught sight of Barraclough's pained face; then on the instant he started up and begged to be allowed to speak. As a stranger, he asked the chairman to give him two minutes. All he desired to say was this: that he knew more about the honourable gentleman than anybody else in that room; knew him for a high-minded, straightforward, kind-hearted young man; in time of trouble Mr. Barraclough had stood by him like a brick. The room, easily touched, applauded Alfred, and the interrupting man at the back of the room found himself glared at reproachfully by all.

'You've got the gift of the gab, old man,' said the young carman admiringly as Mr. Barraclough proceeded. 'I often wish I'd got more cheek; I should get on a jolly sight better.'

'You're all right, my son,' said Alfred reassuringly. 'A chap that can make the female 'eart flutter to the extent you do ain't got much to complain of.'

'And you think she's reely fond of me, then?'

'When I tell you,' said Alfred in a low voice, leaning across the table, 'the news I've got for you, you'll be better able to understand the havoc that your captivating manners have been and caused.'

'Did she send a message?'

'She wants you,' said Alfred slowly and distinctly, 'to be at the house in Deptford Green to-morrow evening at midnight sharp. She'll be there, and she'll be prepared to listen to any honourable bloomin' proposal you've got to make. Will you go?'

'Will I not!' ejaculated the delighted youth affirmatively.

'All I ask in return is that on the 'appy day when you and her are declared man and wife you'll wrap up a bit of the weddin'-cake and send it to him what's talking to you now.'

'Old man,' declared the young carman fervently, 'I shall never forget your kindness. 'Ave another?'