A Breaker of Laws/Chapter 5

by W. Pett Ridge

 

CHAPTER V

It was characteristic of Alfred that with the sum of one pound in his pocket, generously pressed upon him by Mr. Ladd, he should stay from work the following morning. To evade the reproaches of his busy young wife he urged slight indisposition; there came to him a rare suggestion of remorse when he observed her concern. She brought his breakfast to the bedside, made a soothing mixture from some old Devonshire recipe that sent him to sleep again, and having written a letter to the firm:

 

'Dear Sirs,

'My husband is slightly unwell, and will be unable to attend work to-day,

'Yours truly,
'C. Bateson,'

 

went about her duties in the sitting-room and kitchen quietly and deftly. The wife of the ex-cornet-player came upstairs in order to enjoy the luxury of reviewing a grievance against her deplorable partner, but Caroline sent her back instantly with urgent commands to keep the little boy silent. A gusty tempestuous German band began to play at the end of East Street, and Caroline, flying out, gave the trombone threepence to go away and murder its unhappy waltz in Park Street. When, later in the day, Alfred awoke to find an excellent chop and a pint of stout waiting him, the little woman felt happy because the afternoon would be embellished by his company. To do honour to the occasion Alfred dressed himself in his Sunday clothes, and for Caroline's amusement affected to be a titled personage dining at a costly restaurant, while she in her white apron pretended to be an extremely pert French waitress. The bill for the lunch made out by Caroline came to £12 8s. 6d., and Alfred laid on the table two shining half-sovereigns.

'Them's for yourself, mam'selle,' said the titled personage.

'Merci bieng!' said the French waitress, laughingly.

'I mean it,' said Alfred.

'Alf, I didn't see them at first. Where on earth did you get them from?'

'Earnt 'em.'

'But earnt 'm where?'

'Look 'ere, ma'mselle, are you forbidden to take tips in this restorong?'

'Don't be silly now,' said Caroline seriously. 'They're real half-sovereigns.'

'I should rather 'ope they was,' answered Alfred. 'Somebody'd suffer if they turned out not to be.'

'Tell me where——'

'Caroline,' he said, '’ark to me. I had a stroke of luck yesterday. Someone paid me back some money what was—what was due to me. Them two 'alf quid are for you, and you are going out presently into the town—quietly, mind, because you mustn't walk fast—and you're going to buy yourself a new hat——'

'Alf!'

'A new hat,' persisted Alfred, 'and a new long brown cloak.'

'I do want a cloak.'

'In what you may call the latest fashion or thereabouts, and we're going to lord it about the place like two bloomin' toffs.'

'Alf,' said the young woman ecstatically, 'you're the best husband that ever was. I don't believe that in all Greenwich or Deptford or——'

'Go and get ready,' he said.

The departure of the young couple arm in arm goaded Exmouth Terrace to the point of unintelligibility. What the——? Who the——? How the——? said Exmouth Terrace. Arm in arm, indeed! Been married well over a year, too; and her——Why (spluttered Exmouth Terrace indignantly), anybody would think that they were still engaged! Exmouth Terrace gave information to Miss Ladd with a good deal of acerbity when that lady, determination in her ^[1][eyes, called; and Miss Ladd returned to Deptford Green half-disappointed and half relieved at not having seen Caroline. At a large shop in London. Street, which had an enormous window full of hats labelled 'Parisienne,' 'La Dernière Mode,' 'The Ne Plus Ultra of Fashion,' Caroline purchased, after due consideration, a hat which the tall, ingratiating lady behind the counter declared to be somewhat similar to those worn at that very moment by the Princess of Wales' daughters, thus giving the happy young woman a vague sense of close comradeship with the Royal Family. At another shop of lesser grandeur, where placards on the window shouted 'Frightful Bargains!' and 'Alarming Sacrifice in Summer Novelties!' as though it were really dazed at its own recklessness, a brown cloak was bought, and this smaller shop agreed to send home the old hat and the old cape to Exmouth Terrace, Caroline watching narrowly the deep-voiced youth who had served her, to see if she could detect the least suggestion of contempt when she gave the address. Fortunately the bass-voiced young man took the information with perfect calm, merely saying that it had been a wonderful summer; he ventured, with submission, to predict that we should suffer for it later on. When in the new cloak and the new hat, Caroline rejoined her husband, who had been waiting patiently without, she found herself in that state of delight that comes only from the wearing of new clothes.]

'Let's go for a good old tram-ride,' suggest Alfred, 'as far as we can go. You mustn't walk much.'

The new hat went therefore on the top of the tram through Deptford—Alfred saw Miss Ladd walking near the Broadway, talking fiercely to herself, and he at once turned his head—and along New Cross Road and up Old Kent Road, and through New Kent Road, and eventually to Westminster Bridge over which the hat was taken slowly in order that Members of Parliament out on the terrace looking over the wide river might be gladdened by the sight. The new hat went with its owner into a tea-shop and there the young attendants were so interested in it that they came into collision with each other because, their gaze being fixed on this absorbing article of attire, they did not look to see where they were going.

Going back on top of the tram, the new hat created quite a sensation amongst young ladies returning from work to the southern suburbs; they took mental notes of it, discussing it in audible whispers, so that the new hat's owner had difficulty in keeping an aspect of placid unconsciousness. As the tram sailed smoothly down to Greenwich, the amiable evening breeze brought colour to her cheeks.

'Tell yer what,' said Alfred, when they had descended near the Seamen's Hospital, 'it's Thursday night. Let's have a dance.'

'I don't think I ought, Alf,' whispered the young wife.

'I forgot,' he said apologetically. 'Let's go and look on, at any rate, and listen to the music'

'P'r'aps it'll be nice to sit down and watch.'

'We shall be in the open,' agreed Alfred. 'It's too warm to see this Red Indian piece at the theatre, and, besides—— What ho! William, my long-lost child! Where did you spring from?'

William Finnis, shaking hands stolidly with Caroline, replied that he had not sprung from nowhere; he had been taking a turn round just to smoke about two pipes, and Alfred was the very man he wanted to see. Mr. Finnis growled a few words of advice into Alfred's ear, and Alfred said cheerfully that Finnis was not to worry his head off, that he (Alfred) would be at the works in the morning. At the entrance to the dancing pavilion—a zinc-roofed, wooden-floored space squeezed in between a German restaurant and a public-house—Alfred paid an old lady in a crape bonnet for three admissions, and they went into the lighted gravelled space and sat down on a wooden form.

The band, led by a silk-hatted conductor—somehow he looked rather like an interfering and slightly bemused vestryman, who had come to show everybody how a band should be managed—stood on a raised daïs at the end of the wooden platform, with circles of gas jets overhead just where chestnut-leaves fell. Wooden tables outside the platforms and near the arbours; a white-sleeved young waiter bustling about, serving any number of people at once, and never making a blunder. The band was playing a quadrille made up of comic songs, and several sets went through the figures with great enjoyment, despite the fact that space for each set was so limited that they could take but three steps forward ere they met each other, with certainty of collision against the neighbouring set when they returned to places. The only serious people were middle-aged ladies, who went through the evolutions of the quadrille with all the intensity of purpose that might have accompanied the performance of a religious ceremony with, 'Don't be so seely, James!' and 'Behave yourself when you're away from 'ome, can't you?' and 'Perfect clown, that's what you are! I'll never bring you out again.' For the rest, the atmosphere was one of jollity, and when the quadrille to the tune of 'She's a Dainty Little Daisy' finished, and the vestryman conductor had given a reluctant encore, danced with increased enthusiasm, men conducted their partners to the wooden forms, where the breathless, heated ladies fanned themselves with handkerchiefs and took sips of beverages with a twist of the face as though they were tasting medicine. Out in the roadway, on the other side of the trellised wall, boys called in shrill monotones an evening journal:

'Darin' burgulary in Lewisham—paper!'

'Let's try the next,' said Alf. 'It's only a polka.'

'I'd rather not dance, dear. I'd sooner sit here and look on quiet.'

'Finnis, old man, why don't you do a step or two?'

'I was never great,' said William Finnis, 'on the light fantastic.'

'You go and have a dance, Alf,' suggested Caroline. 'I shan't mind so long as you don't pick a good-looking partner.'

'Will you look after the wife?'

'I'll look after the wife,' said William Finnis.

Alfred, his hands in his pockets, strolled around the tables with critical air, and knowing that his young wife observed him closely, asked an empty wicker-seated chair for the honour of the next dance, blundered up against a chestnut-tree and apologized, all with the view of amusing that young woman, who, indeed, was ever ready to laugh at any of her husband's absurdities. Near the band (now snatching a hasty sandwich and hiding its heads in pewter-pots) he met a fellow-workman from Barraclough's, and obtained instant introduction to that gentleman's stout little, cottage-loaf-shaped wife. This lady grew almost purple with delight at the prospect of a dance, and when the vestryman, tapping his music-stand, pulled his band together, and got them well into the swing of the polka (the cornet doing the rarest and most artistic flourishes when ingeniously inclined), Alfred and the stout little woman waltzed to it, and went round the boarded space, the lady being, despite her generous figure, exceedingly light of foot. Each time that they whirled near to the form where Caroline and William Finnis were sitting Alfred did something to make his young wife smile: looked at her with a distant expression, stared at her with blank astonishment, sent a glance of half-recognition; now and again he gave an artful wink. Caroline's undisguised amusement at all of this was checked, and Alfred, too, on his way round, found himself startled, by the appearance of a fiery-haired man, who came up to the back of the form and, lifting his bowler hat, spoke to her.

'Look here,' interrupted Finnis at once, 'this lady's in my charge.'

'It's all right, Mr. Finnis,' said Caroline. 'This is Mr. Dowton, who had that case in hand at my old place.'

'Pleased to meet you, sir,' said the detective.

'Ho!' replied Finnis shortly.

'Busy, Mr. Dowton?' asked Caroline, looking up at the red-haired man. 'I shouldn't have expected to meet you at such a frivolous affair as this.'

'We men,' said Dowton importantly, 'have to go everywhere. We're always busy, and we're always on duty.' He bent down and lowered his voice. 'Is your husband here, Mrs. Bateson?'

'Of course he is. You wouldn't find me here if he wasn't.'

'Quite right, too,' said Dowton. '"Whither thou goest, there will I go" sort of thing. Worst of it is, it can't always be carried out. For instance——'

'If you've got any engagement,' interrupted Mr. Finnis, 'don't let us keep you from it.'

'For instance,' persisted the detective, 'there's such a thing as fate. Fate, when you come to think of it, is a rum thing. That's your husband, I think, dancing with the plumpish party?'

'I'll introduce you as soon as they're finished,' said Caroline proudly. 'You'll be pleased to meet him. I expect his partner's making him tired; he's looking a bit as though he wished it was over.'

'Let us two take a stroll round,' suggested William Finnis anxiously. 'Good-night, Mr. What's-your-name.'

'One second,' said the red-haired man. 'Can I have a word with you? You walk on, Mrs. Bateson.'

Caroline shook her head with a pretty assumption of reproach at Mr. Finnis as she obeyed.

'Mind he don't lock you up, Mr. Finnis.'

'I'll mind.'

The two men stepped aside. Dowton tipped his bowler hat well over his eyes and glanced round. The polka hastened its time as the end approached, and young shopmen whirled their companions around; the platform became a confused tempest of billowy skirts.

'You a friend of hers?' whispered Dowton quickly.

'I am.'

'And his?'

'And his.'

'Then get her away quiet, and get her away sharp, and get her away 'ome.'

'Whaffor?' demanded William Finnis.

'Because,' said Dowton, with a jerk of the head towards the platform, 'I've got to take him.'

'You've got to——' stammered Finnis. He looked round vacantly. 'No use me jolly well knockin' you down, I s'pose?'

'It won't help in the least,' said Dowton. 'Take her away now.'

William Finnis, drawing a deep breath, summoned all his latent powers of tact and invention. The polka was at its last whirl. He stepped back and spoke to Caroline.

'Air's getting a bit cooler,' said Finnis. 'If I was you I should see about 'ome.'

'When Alf's ready.'

'At any rate, step in here in this arbour whilst I go and speak to him.'

'I don't want to hurry him,' said Caroline, obeying, 'on my account.'

'You make yourself comfortable in that corner,' said William Finnis authoritatively, 'and no one won't take no notice of you. I'll go over and fetch him. Don't you stir, mind, till I come back, or else you'll ketch your death o' cold.'

'Why, Mr. Finnis, the evening's quite pleasant!'

'That's where you're wrong,' said Finnis brusquely. 'Stay where you are a few minutes.'

William Finnis, at the expiration of a few minutes, returned. He explained, rather clumsily, that a messenger had just arrived from Barraclough's, requesting the instant attendance of Alfred at the works. It was an uncommonly urgent matter, said Mr. Finnis, and Alfred was the only man who could be of any use; consequently he had had to run off at once, and had begged Finnis to see Caroline home.

'He won't be late, I dare say,' said Caroline, rising to go.

'Don't fancy he'll be 'ome all night. Likely to be a long job.'

She sighed as she walked slowly with Finnis over the gravelled space to the wooden gates. The conductor tapped with his baton, the band played the confused, undecided prelude to a waltz.

'Still,' she said, brightening a little, 'it shows what a good workman he is for them to send for him out of all the others, doesn't it, Mr. Finnis?'

'That's just it,' said William Finnis.

'It's a rare job to get him off in the mornings,' went on the young woman with interest. 'I tell him it's as bad as having a boy to start off to school. If it wasn't for me, he'd always be playing truant.'

'There's a good deal of the infant about him. We'll turn down Teapot Row, and then along—— Wait here a bit!'

He caught at her arm suddenly. On the walled side of the road Alfred was being conducted by a uniformed constable and Dowton. The 9.30 gun at Woolwich boomed across the park.

'How you do startle anyone!' said Caroline. 'You've quite hurt my arm.'

'Sorry,' said William Finnis. 'There was someone over there I didn't want to see. We won't go down Teapot Row after all; we'll walk along by the park and down. Not tired, are you?'

'Yes,' she confessed; 'I—I am a little tired. I shall be glad to get indoors.'

They walked quietly down Park Street towards Exmouth Terrace. At the corner as they turned out of Park Street, was the police-station, with its violet-coloured lamp outside; through the half-opened door, William Finnis caught sight, for a moment, of an absent-looking Alfred Bateson standing against the wall between two projecting iron bars; a bare-headed inspector wrote at a desk from dictation of Dowton. Alfred appeared to be taking no sort of notice of what was being done. A small crowd stood around the steps; people were running up to the spot from various quarters.

'I always shiver,' said Caroline, walking slowly and wearily, 'when I pass that place.'

Mr. Finnis, exceedingly troubled of mind, became slightly consoled on finding the ground-floor lady at the doorway of the house in Exmouth Terrace. That lady, the hour being now late, had apparently contrived to finish her slow work of dressing, and was now, with the exception of dress skirt and boots, fully costumed. Her face took a touch of concern when she saw Caroline, and after assisting her with great gentleness upstairs, she hastened back to Mr. Finnis and gave him a written message for a nursing home, enjoining him to be fleet of foot, and to wait for an answer. This answer Mr. Finnis, breathless and scarlet, brought back in the shape of a bright, bird-like young nurse, who had prepared herself for leaving the home in a space of time to which the twinkling of the eye was, so to speak, eternity, and had beaten William Finnis in the race back to Exmouth Terrace, because she had the facility of skimming the pavement without seeming to touch it. The door closed upon William Finnis, who stood outside for a while, undecided, until the ground-floor lady put her head agitatedly out of the window.

'What are you waiting for?' demanded the flurried ground-floor lady.

'Nothin',' said Mr. Finnis. 'Is it anything serious?'

'Are you a married man?' asked the ground-floor lady sharply.

'’Eaven forbid!' said William Finnis.

'Then I can't talk to you,' said the ground-floor lady, preparing to pull the window down carefully. 'Be off!'

'Right,' he said, 'I'll look round at lunch-time to-morrow to inquire. There's misfortune about, and it'll be a mercy if she is took a bit ill, because then——'

The window closed, and he turned away. He had some idea of calling at the police-station, but having little confidence in his own abilities, he could not see how his attendance there would improve matters. Poor Alf was caught at last, and there was certain trouble in store. He would call round at Exmouth Terrace the next day. If Mrs. Bateson were better he would break the news gently to her, and they could engage a solicitor to defend Alfred.

At the end of East Street he stopped and looked back. The ground-floor lady was hurrying out of her doorway in her slippers, her hat stuck clumsily upon her head. She hastened up, nodded to him as she went by, and slid on to the doctor's.

'Now, I wonder,' said the perturbed bachelor, 'what all this fuss is about.'

1. Text in square brackets is of the missing page sourced from elsewhere