A Breaker of Laws/Chapter 15

by W. Pett Ridge

 

CHAPTER XV

Here was Mayer, at any rate. An excellent man Mayer, seated now at his window, the blinds up and the gas alight, so that all the world in swishing home through the pelting rain might glance up and note that here at any rate was a house free from guile and a man abhorring secrecy. Mr. Mayer, in tasselled smoking-cap, read the evening paper, looking down now and again from his first floor at the rain-peppered roadway when a skirt uplifted recklessly flew along. Alfred Bateson, his black coat already shining with wet, stood under the scaffolding of a public-house that was giving up its old-fashioned appearance and preparing to mirror it, and golden-letter it, and plate-glass it with the best of them.

Round the corner of the dismantled public-house, in the shadow, a four-wheeled cab rested at an angle against the kerb; with it a streaming elderly horse, hoofs extended, and looking as though it were about to give way and sob bitterly. Two figures in mackintoshes and nor'westers smoked on the box, their pipes from underneath the brim-bent hats puffing smoke that the blustering rain instantly dispersed.

If the rain appeared truculent, a word more harsh had to be found for the wind. It helped the rain a good deal, and together they were able to perform tricks that would have been impossible to either alone. Thus, when the wind suddenly screamed round a corner and blew down a show-frame at the photographer's, smashing the glass front, the rain, before the photographer could call to his wife to go out in the wet and regain it (being himself a man with prejudice against chills)—the rain had beaten down on the specimens of art thus exposed, and smiling domestics, alert young soldiers, grim-looking babies, defiant brides and bridegrooms (the latter always appearing to say, 'Who are you laughing at?') had been effectually soaked and damaged beyond repair. Similarly, when the wind discovered a silk hat on the top of a smart young man carrying a bunch of flowers and an open umbrella, it turned the umbrella inside out, despatched the silk hat for a sail in the middle of the roadway where the puddles seemed deepest, and the rain then came down on the dismayed bare-headed youth, taking the scent from his hair and the starch from his collar, thus ruining all his chances of a happy married future. Together the wind and the rain broke chimney-pots, overturned cases of eggs, soaked poor rheumatic old women, adulterated supper beer (so that its small bearers were punished for the beer's want of strength), and in a general way played the very mischief with Rotherhithe and its people.

Mr. Mayer, in one of his glances at trim ankles in the roadway, had discovered Alfred. He nodded his head, and, standing, pulled down the blind of the window at which he had been seated.

'Now for it,' said Alfred to himself. '’Pon me word, I shall be glad when the job's all over. If it wasn't too late to back out of it——'

He felt the sample watches in his pocket, and forded the stream that had once been a road. On the other side, he went half-way down the narrow passage at the side of Mayer's house, and knocked at the side-door.

'Mis-ter Bateson,' said Mayer effusively, with the manner of one who has encountered his best and oldest friend, 'I dort you was dead.'

'You thought wrong! I've got some stuff for you—watches! watches!'

'I guessed it was you in that chob.'

'There you guessed right. Are you a buyer? We must look slippy.'

'Am I a buyer?' echoed Mayer in tones of reproof. 'Of course I am a buyer. But I buy no peeg in a poke. I must see the goots don't it?'

'Come out sharp after me. Meet me at Rotherhithe Station over the way.'

'In dree minutes,' whispered Mayer. 'I follow yoo in dree minutes. Be gautious, my friend Bateson.'

'It's a 'ell of a night,' remarked Alfred.

'So much the bedder for those who do not want gompany.'

'’Urry yourself,' urged Alfred. 'I want to get the job finished.'

Out in the roadway the four-wheeled cab was crossing, weathering the gale clumsily. The light from a weeping gas-lamp touched the features of one of its occupants.

'Mother Fayres!' he ejaculated. And stopped dead in the passage.

One of the bundles of tarpaulin slipped down from the box of the cab, the door opened, a peak-capped man stepped out. On the instant Alfred turned and ran—ran swiftly through the passage at the side, blundering against wooden palings and crashing them down, bending aged sunflowers aside roughly, climbing a tarred fence, and falling on the other side into an exactly similar garden leading to an identical passage. Two matrons stood in this passage out of the rain, and he forced his way roughly between them, exciting them to indignant remonstrance.

Call yerself a man?' cried the two matrons after him.

Swift! swift! What was this street? Impossible to tell. It was half shop, half dwelling-house, like fifty other streets of the neighbourhood. Roadway clear, at any rate—that was something in his favour. The docks were to the right, he thought (but he was not quite sure); the docks would be the place to get to. From one of the many foot-bridges he could perhaps lower himself into a boat and get out to a large foreign steamer. Swifter, swifter, swifter! Mother Fayres had blown on him—burn her! That was the worst of dealing with women; you never knew what side-wind would alter their course. Here was Neptune Street. Good! Neptune Street he knew; it led off Lower Road straight away to the river. Half-way down was a street which went away east to the docks, and—— Two constables, their capes dripping and shining with the rain, stood in the centre of the roadway of Church Street. He doubled back to Neptune Street again.

The river would do—would have to do. How his good luck did attend him, to be sure! With anybody else in such a corner it would have been a fine evening, with streets filled, and a sportive crowd to take up the chase after any running man, and—— Out of the way, you bundle of wet, reeking old clothes, with soddened crape bonnet slipping at the top.

'Ah! bad luck to ye, ye young blaiguard!'

His leg hurt as he slipped and recovered and slipped and recovered again on the rain-swept, uneven cobble-stones into Elephant Lane. He limped now as he ran, and a girl, with apron over her head, at one of the top windows in the dark, narrow street, screamed encouragingly: 'Go it, dot-and-kerry one!' The end of the street with a public-house and a half-demolished house in Bermondsey Wall, guarding the black, closed-in tunnel that led to the river stairs; choruses in the public-house by roystering waterside men with a

 

'Here's to our sailors far across the sea,'
'Long may they fight for Britain's flag!'
'Fill your tankards high, me lads——'

 

'Want a boat, guv'nor?'

'Yes, yes, yes, kiddie!' panted Alfred. 'Quick, for God in heaven's sake!'

The boy darted out of the tunnel into the doorway of the noisy public-house.

'Ginger-beer,' screamed the boy, '’ere's a fare for you!'

'Le'm wait,' replied the waterman from within thickly. 'How dare you int'rup' me in the mi'l of song! Fill yer tankar's 'igh, me lads!'

'Quick!' cried Alfred, pushing open the door more widely.

'Is there,' asked the waterman, lurching from the group of colleagues at the zinc bar—'is there lovely wom'n in the case?'

'Yes,' gasped Alfred, 'six of 'em!'

'That's good enough for me,' hiccoughed the waterman gallantly. He staggered out into the rain, and swerved round by happy accident into the black tunnel. 'Show me 'em.'

'They're the other side of the water,' exclaimed Alfred urgently. 'Don't lose no time, there's a good sort.'

He looked back from the middle of the dark tunnel. Through the mist caused by the rain he fancied he could see figures at the other end of the lane, imagined he could hear shouting.

'Fine wom'n?' asked the waterman.

They emerged from the tunnel. It was low tide on the river, and the boats lay high and dry—as dry as they could under the relentless, persistent downpour. Alfred took the waterman's arm, and hurried him down the stone stairs.

'Dem fine women,' he answered.

'I'm perfec' slave,' declared the waterman, stumbling on the gravel and seizing the first boat that he fell against—'lend 'and with this bl' boat—I'm perfec' slave, as I was sayin' when you int'rupted—perfec' slave where female beauty's concerned.'

'We all are,' said Alfred.

'Not to same extent,' argued the other obstinately.

Alfred shot the waterman into the boat; giving it a shove, he jumped in quickly with an exclamation of relief. The Cheerful Jane swayed from side to side, and the waterman called her an adjective, adjective, adjective noun, whereupon the Cheerful Jane resumed a manner of sanity, and the waterman pulled (intuition sobering him temporarily) up against the stream to catch the current that would bring him to the stairs, exactly opposite. Alfred, sitting in the bow, looked with strained eagerness over his shoulder at the steps which they had just left. Every second now counted for safety. Once he reached the other side he would do the first thing occurring to him that would put a greater distance between himself and them; that done be could sit down and get his breath and think. Meanwhile, curse Mother Fayres for a wicked spiteful, evil-headed old woman! Curse Dowton, too! Dowton would set aside all the claims of family connection, and would hunt him desperately just to increase his reputation in the force. Curse Dowton, then, for a red-headed dog! Curse the inspector! If he came in at the death—but there was going to be no death—he would offer some preposterous remark intended to be humorous. Curse the young carman whose foolishness had tempted him into this! Curse Mayer! curse this slowly-pulling fuddle-headed waterman! in short, to save time, curse everybody in this world, except Caroline and Trafalgy! When, he wondered, would he see them again?

'’Curs to me!' said the waterman, shipping his oars as the Cheerful Jane swished under the stern of a giant steamer asleep in mid-river, '’curs to me, my fine feller, that you've been telling ole Bill Rich'son a most scound'l lie!'

'Now what's the row?' asked Alfred, leaning forward. The Cheerful Jane stopped, and the eddy swung her slowly round. The pulley of a lighted-up wharf on the north side where a boat was unloading, gave a scream of annoyance at being burdened with an unusually heavy load.

'You've taken 'vantage of civil and obligin' manners,' said the waterman, resting on the oars and swaying forward, 'to make poor ole Bill Rich'son look like silly ass.'

'Get on, you fool!' cried Alfred, standing up in the boat excitedly. 'Row me to them stairs over there, or I'll——'

'Ol' Bill Rich'son,' said the waterman with drunken stolidity, 'is not the man to be imposed on. You can take in lot of riverside men, but you can't take in ol' Bill Rich'son. If you can get over ol' Bill Rich'son there's only one more——'

With a back-handed blow he knocked the tipsy waterman from his seat into the bottom of the boat. Taking the oars clumsily, for he had rarely in his life tried to row, he began to pull, abrading his knuckles with the handles. Away on the Kentish shore there were lights now at the stairs which he had left—lights which moved as though carried: some of them gave the small, vague, circular light of a bull's-eye lantern. He bent his back and pulled fiercely, kicking the waterman's foot out of the way.

'Goo' ni',' said the waterman sleepily.

The Cheerful Jane swirled half round and back, and then round again. The rain and the perspiration streamed from his white face; he glanced down at the black, rain-bespattered river, and shivered at the suggestion that hovered in his mind. Now again, with both oars pulling together, and dipping not too far into the water. That was better; the Cheerful Jane ready to listen to argument, moved towards the shore. Another pull of the same kind. Burn the left-hand oar for not catching the water! and burn the Cheerful Jane for not having the sense to behave demurely under those circumstances! The rain blinded now; he was pulling again, when a weary, complaining scream came from the siren whistle of a tug under whose bows he had passed, escaping the running down by a miracle. A boatful of Thames policemen shouted at him reprovingly; the Cheerful Jane wanted to dance after the tug had bustled away, and it was difficult to persuade her to return to reasonableness. A simultaneous pull, and another and another, and they were near to the long landing-stage that ran out for use at low tide. He jumped out—that leg shook him again—and rushed blunderingly, furiously, blindly along the slimy incline up the stone stairs.

In the street he looked around. Here was Wapping Station immediately to the right; nothing could have been more convenient. Luck again! A train would take him half-way round the circle to the other side of London in thirty minutes—it was as good as one of those old underground passages from baronial castles of which he had read. He swung into the little station; two steps in the miniature place took him to the pay window, three more steps took him quickly to the top of the spiral staircase. The ticket-collector, occupied in receiving badinage from two matronly passengers, shouted after him as he rushed clumsily down the first flight of curving steps, but he did not answer; time was too precious; moments were not to be wasted in conversation with dogmatic railway officials. His ticket was for Westbourne Park; that sounded like a good distance—another flight of stairs done; he wondered how many more there were—a good distance off; sounded like a safe place. He could not remember at this hurried descending moment—another flight done; surely the platform was near now—could not remember that he had ever heard of a man being arrested at Westbourne Park. The steps were boarded high at the side so that he could not see over; he could only stumble and slip and blunder down, down, down the never-ending stairs. There came a sound of a train below; Heaven send that he would not miss it! If he did, it would mean a wait of five minutes that might be fatal to all hopes of escape; the thought came to him that it would be a fine daring thing to walk through the tunnel to the next station.

'I shall get to Australia soon,' he panted, as a fresh flight of stairs came, 'if I go on much further.'

They dazed him and half-terrified him, these persistent nightmare stairs; but for the pain of his leg he might have tried to persuade himself that it was all a violent dream, and that he—— The platform at last! Just when he had begun to despair of ever reaching it, here was the platform with a departing train on the other side. Not much of a platform—only, in fact, about seven feet wide with a few feet-damp reeking passengers leaning against the wall, and saying bitter things about the weather they had left in the streets high above them. Two white eyes came slowly out of one of the two dark smoke-filled arches; Alfred limped to the front, where he assumed the third-class carriages would be, and found, when the train drew up to a standstill, that the seconds were there. So like a railway company to make confusing changes.

'Jump in if you're goin' on,' shouted the guard.

He opened the door of a second-class compartment and stepped in. The train started, flinging him down in the corner, and then stopped suddenly, to the great consternation of the only other passenger in the compartment. The train went on again into the tunnel.

'Don't get frightened,' said the other passenger encouragingly as he took off his necktie; 'I shan't hurt you.'

'Thanks!'

'I'd like to bile 'em,' said the other passenger.

'Bile who?'

'The railway company,' said the other passenger, taking off his gray frock-coat. 'I would, too,' he added strenuously, 'if I wasn't so blooming busy. Do you know what it is to 'ave the police after you?'

'I've read of such things,' replied Alfred cautiously. He took off his soddened, streaming bowler hat and swung it, and rubbed his dank hair with his handkerchief. Already he was recovering self-possession.

'They want to make me pay for the keep of my wife and my children,' went on the other passenger, taking a butcher's apron from a newspaper parcel beside him.

'Impidence!'

'And I won't do it!' roared the other passenger with sudden acerbity. 'I won't pay a penny! I'll see them——'

'What are you going to do with them clothes?'

'Chuck 'em out of the window,' said the other passenger.

'Hand 'em over,' said Alfred cheerfully. 'I'll dress myself up in 'em.'

'You seem to have got a bit damp,' remarked the other passenger.

'Ain't you quick at taking notice!' said Alfred admiringly. He changed quickly into the frock-coat and white hat, and stuffed his damp jacket underneath the seat. Looking at his reflection in the window, he laughed. 'I shall be a reg'lar ornament to society,' he said.

The train pulled up. This would be Shadwell, he considered, as he looked for the name of the station; then would come Aldgate and Moorgate, and——

'This can't be Rotherhithe!' he said affrightedly.

'Always has been,' said the other passenger.

'I'm in the wrong train.'

'Jump out, then,' advised the other passenger. 'Be good to them clothes of mine.'

This was not luck to have returned to the place where he had started his run, and yet it was luck in disguise; for here was Mayer advancing with hands outstretched to welcome, and wagging his head as intimation that he was going to address a remark of gentle reproof for having kept him waiting. A bunch of men had alighted at the rear. The train clattered noisily on as he met Mayer; he half turned to avoid the swirl of dust that followed. At that moment he felt his arm gripped.

'Bateson, old man,' said the voice of Dowton behind him, 'we've caught up with you at last then. Are you comin' quiet or are you comin' rough?'

'I'm comin' rough,' replied Alf Bateson.