Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 2/My first Ca. Sa.
MY FIRST CA. SA.
BY AN EX-SHERIFF’S OFFICER.
es, for some time I was a sheriff’s officer; one of those trusty agents of the law who have to represent her Majesty under a less gracious aspect than she assumes in her palace at Westminster, or at one of her drawing-rooms at St. James’s. Ay, and I saw a thing or two—a great number of them, indeed—that were not “the thing.” I don’t know that there’s much use to society in laying bare its sores, but I will give you as a sample my “First Ca. Sa.”[1]
I am one of those who, in their time, have played many parts, and as I had just got through two whole yearn as turnkey at White Cross Street[2]—a berth as prosy as it was cozy—the unconquerable desire I have always had of changing an old beat in life for a new one, made me but too ready to snap at the overture of becoming a sheriff’s officer.
Having gone through the little legal formalities usual on such an appointment, I was introduced the same evening to a number of my brother Nimrods at a tavern in Chancery Lane, where the usual weekly meeting was being held of what was called “The Catch Club,” a pleasant term that indicated less our worship of St. Cecilia than certain interesting consultations we there held on the “runs” of the past, and the “meets” of the coming week.
As I knew this to be one of the occasions where free expenditure is not only permissible but politic, I submitted with a good grace to those contributions to the general comfort which at that time were always levied on a “new member;” but my change of employment was too much against me in the higher circle to which I had reached, for any liberality to protect me from another and more galling infliction, a running fire of the little witticisms, or rather chaffing impertinences which, among our people, so commonly pass current for wit.
I remember—to give a specimen of them—that an odd-looking little Jew, a relation of my principal, and, like most of the London-born portion of the tribe, so thick with “barbaric gold and jewels,” that one wondered how they had escaped his nose—had the first shot at me something in this fashion:
“Is’s dooced cuvious, aint it, Jim? ’ow ’ard it it is to some peeples to keep in ’ard places! My hye,—I vinder voo next ’ll be vun of hus?”
“That’s what I say, Mr. Dives,” replied Jim, as he went on like the other, at once amusing and inebriating himself at my expense. “This here hambition ’ll be your ruin, Mr. Baggs, as sure as heggs is heggs. Better have stuck to the larder up there at the Cross, and leave us to look up the supplies.”
“Now, I entertain a different opinion,” pompously interposed a broken-down surveyor, who had not long joined “The Hunt.” “What’s more natural, I say, than as how a gentleman should get tired of playing keeper to the game, and come out to have a shot for himself, providing as how his master permits him.”
Here our chairman of the evening, a weather-beaten old stager, known among us as “sly Mat,” from the clever way in which he accomplished his captures, broke in upon the laughter, of which this tickling of the club’s vanity had made me the object, and stretching out his right hand, accompanied by a sibilant “hish,” shouted:
“Gentlemen, I’ve a conundrum. Horder, you gentlemen in the kitchen, down there! Ven does a jay turn into a hen! Vy, ven a Jailer turns Nailer, to be sure!”
“And suppose he turns Tailor,” I replied, addressing myself to the old rogue, who had belonged to that calling, “jailer, nailer, and tailor, would be all the same to a T, eh?”
Undisturbed by the slapping of glasses and clapping of hands that hailed the rejoinder, Mat left the chair, and, making his way to me,—his long pipe in one hand and glass of gin-and-water in the other—slowly surveyed me all over; as if to take my measure, one of them said; and bluntly exclaimed:
“Give me your ’and, hold feller—drink—I loves a gentleman as is a gentleman to my ’art, I does,—and I’ll see you’ve summit to do as suits your abilities better than picking o’ hokum. Jerry Chessells’ your man, sir; or say I knows nothing about it. A five pound job if he’s a ha’penny—he up there, Jim, in Grosvenor Street, just on the Square.”
“He up there, just on the Cross, more like,” broke in the surveyor, who had recently had a touch of this Mr. Chessells quality.
“I say, Mr. Baggs,” said the first interlocutor, “there’s a fiver, and no mistake, if you nabs Chessells—ain’t there, Jim?”
There was a chorus of assent to this appeal that did not please me, for I read that Mat was helping me to what we know as a “sell.”
“But, suppose I tried, what’s the guarantee?”
“I give you my vird,” said Mat, proudly.
“Mat’s word! Unexceptionable security that, I should think,” said the surveyor, slyly.
“And, if very particular, you may throw in his honour,” said another, gravely.
“Ay, as an officer,” continued a third.
“And a gentleman,” concluded a fourth.
“Gentle fiddlestick!” interposed Mat, angrily. “I say the tin is down on the nail at Fixes and Swears, if you only kitches your man.”
“Kitches your min, eh?” cried the gaudy little Mr. Dives. “But it hain’t so easy to kitch ’im, though. He’s de cutest old fox in de beat. If I’ve ‘hater ’im once, I espose I ‘af fifty times. Ees’ like nuffing ‘sep de shidow vich foller you ven you ‘if been vawking. Ee’s halways deere, but you niver come hup vi’ ’im. I vince as neer kitched ’im as could be vid a Middlesex writ. ‘Ee vos comin’ down ‘Obo'n, but ven he sees me he toes no more but skip over to de Seety on te oder side, and ven he sees as ‘ow I ‘vis a-lookin’ arter ’im, I sawr ’im gip a penny to a leettle poy to go over to me, and vat you tink it vos to say? Vy—''Tin’t you vish as you may kitch me?’ I declare it vos.”
The anecdote preluded others, illustrative of the same adroitness; and at the end interested almost as much by the difficulties to be mastered as by the hope of achieving a share in the professional greatness I was bowing to about me, I consented that, among the hunting engagements of the ensuing week, I would undertake to answer for Mr. Chessells.
The next morning, having carefully gone over whatever information I had collected on the haunts, habits, and connections—the natural history—of the animal I was after, I dressed myself in a nearly new suit of habiliments hired for the occasion, and, duly armed with my warrant, sallied out to make my first acquaintance with his lair.
I found, as forewarned, that he was in the occupation of a large house in Grosvenor Street, carrying on business as a painter and decorator. The shop was in admirable order, fresh painted, simply but tastefully decorated, and—what surprised me—with no space that did not seem filled with the materials suited to his business. While asking, therefore, the respectable youth in charge some vague questions on price and terms, I found myself silently addressing another to myself,—namely, why my creditor, instead of taking the man’s body, had not tried to get the amount of his execution by suing out a fi. fa. against all the goods I saw before me. I remembered, indeed, that one of the anecdotes of the preceding evening talked of a levy which had failed to repay the sheriff’s expenses; but, with all I saw before me, this seemed to me a greater puzzle than the puzzle it was supposed to explain. A more detailed inspection, however, suggested to me a doubt whether the same process now would not be followed by the same result.
On asking to look at one of several rolls of rich velvet-and-gold papers which appeared to load the shelves, a specimen was brought down which did not exceed a few yards in length, and when I desired to look at the other rolls, I was told they were of the same pattern, and that if I had any orders Mr. Chessells would receive them upon the pattern before me—a bit of which, in an offhand manner, he offered to supply me with. The same sort of evasive answers were given in reference to a large looking-glass-frame, wrapped up in paper tastefully nosegayed at the corners and centres so as to give the effect of elaborate mouldings or carvings. And so, as my eye travelled from shelf to shelf, I found a beggarly account of empty boxes—or boxes which, like the closets of some of our friend’s domesticities, had only skeletons for tenants. The establishment, in short, belonged to one of those men of genius who, having to live on credit, find that their dependence is in the inverse ratio of their capital, or, what is worse, their celebrity; and so much of his fortune as lay in stock was, of a very truth, the creation of his own hand, consisting of the interesting phantasmagoria yclept “dummies”—those nest-eggs of Commerce which often provoke layings on the part of the old Cochin China which her wayward incredulity would otherwise withhold.
“Well,” I said, moodily, “I think that will do. I see you have enough for a large apartment.”
And I carelessly threw down the richly-tissued paper.
“All of the same pattern, sir, and Mr. Chessells has twice as much up-stairs.”
“Exactly. But I prefer arranging with himself.”
“He’s engaged, sir—on business, sir—but expected every instant. If you leave your name, he’ll call, sir, at any moment.”
I affected a fit of absence of mind, and the merciless youth again and again inflicted on me the same promise. Misunderstanding the proffer which it would not have been quite convenient to accept, I answered, carelessly:—
“Well, yes, I will call—say, to-morrow, as I am passing—say, eleven to-morrow, or, better still, twelve.”
And I turned to stalk out, when a voice, that might have been a parrot’s, from the neighbouring staircase rung out:—
“Polly! pretty Polly! Don’t you wish you may get it?”
I confess it, the interruption flurried me all the more that, despite the deferential manner of the youth, I thought I saw a discerning smile of triumph in his face as he seemed to watch the effect upon me.
“A clever parrot, sir?” he said, inquiringly.
“Very: might I see it?”
“Well, sir, we never do show it.”
“As I thought.”
“It is a great favourite of Mrs. Chessells.”
“Likely enough.”
And I bethought me of the boy that crossed Holborn with the same message of peace to my fellow labourer in the fair field of law.
I turned out, as you may fancy, with a mental “non est inventus” indorsed on my ca. sa., my memory weighed down with that everlasting “leave your address, sir,” “wait upon you, sir, at any hour,” which had stopped my mouth very much as the word “security,”—the verbal equivalent of ratsbane—stopped that of Falstaff.
I was exercising whatever resources of thought I possessed to discover some mode of getting over the difficulty, and was deep in the speculation, when, as I paced my way home, getting along Brooke Street, my eye fell on one of those dirty, dingy, thoroughly respectable houses you often meet with at the West End, which, with no bill in the window, have yet assumed the right to be empty, and so out of the small repairs that you would take them to be in the first stage of decline supervening on a Chancery suit, if you had not learned from other sources that they are the deserted houses of people who are spending a fortune useful to their own country just to be contemned in some other.
The idea ripened in my mind in an instant; and having made a few inquiries about the owner, I went straight back to the decorator’s.
“I have rethought the matter,” I resumed, with the insolent nonchalance so much in favour with West End shopkeepers, “and as I have no time to lose, you can say that Mr. Singleton Jones, who has just returned from the continent, will be glad to see him at No. —, Brook Street, at twelve to-morrow, to arrange about putting it in order. At twelve precisely, No. —:” and I stalked out of the shop with my head at that angle of elevation which might have indicated an ex-officer of the Guards.
The empty house was near that part of Brook Street which opens into Bond Street, so that placing myself in the first floor of a public-house near by, I was able to watch the result of my appointment without prematurely exciting the suspicion of the rather shy gentleman I was awaiting. I was established in my new observatory but a few minutes when I recognised a succession of scouts—a servant girl in occasional communication with the young assistant—making a careful reconnaissance of the territory. Their report appears to have been satisfactory, for a little later I had the pleasure of seeing the sort of person Mr. Chessells had been described to me,—a dapper dandyish man with twinkling eyes, red hair and whiskers, approaching as from his own residence, and showing in his face and port all that animated air of business importance and urgency which one never sees in the men who carry on a steady respectable trade, and always in those who live by its affectation.
By the time Mr. Chessells—for it was he—had reached the house and knocked, I had reached it too. He seemed to understand at once that I was the owner of the house, for he took off his hat, spared me no number of bows, and, when I haughtily inquired if he were Mr. Chessells, found fresh occasion to be again liberal with his West End manifestations of obsequious affability.
One instant, and what a change! He had scarcely got through his course of salutations before his keen, accustomed eye missed, I suppose, those peculiar modifications a long innings of aristocratic ease impresses on the features, and his colour, going and coming with every beat of the heart, indicated pretty clearly that he had made a discovery out of the way of his trade, and was beginning to pass a rather awkward couple of minutes. The indecision he evidently felt involved too little flattery to me to bear imitation on my side, unless I meant to risk the unsatisfactory bail two heels sometimes put in to suits like ours. Foregoing, therefore, the pleasure of playing with my captive, I was not above avowing my honest calling, and making him the subject of her Majesty’s process, by a gentle touch on the shoulder, backed by the production of the warrant.
Wonderful surely that touch! More wonderful than the subtle breath which reaches the landscape to-night that—bud, blossom, and fruit,—is to-morrow all a canker! The true hocus pocus of a veritable social magic. Watch as I have done the marvels which await that touch from the suspension of active life—its first result—to the vice, the beggary, the harlot-life, the felon-doom that spread from it through a whole family for a generation, and pray what were the wand-carrying magicians of Egypt to us, with our mysterious slips of parchment, touching once and blighting for ever?
Oh! it shames me to think, with, alas! so little to palliate the infamy, how often—a providence of evil—I have kept watch over a peaceful household filled with the innocent and the young, undermining it through days, to apply at length the subtle agency that was to blow all to atoms, doing daily against hundreds, under the sanction of parliament, that for which they disembowelled Guy Fawkes for trying once against themselves!
Mr. Chessells, however, was less a victim than a part of the bad system. Like the toad thriving on the foul vapours of a dungeon, his successes, like my own, sprung from the very elements that poisoned better things. The incident appertained to his style of business, standing to it in the relation if not of a grant of supplies, at least of a vote of indemnity, and he accordingly at once accepted it as a “fait accompli,” showing the spirit of a generous opponent in his liberal acknowledgments to what he was pleased to call the ’cute move by which I had unearthed him.
“No, it ain’t badly done, Mr. Singleton Jones,” and he emphasised the name I had assumed. “Clean, very; though how I could have been such a blisted ninny as to come, cap in hand, to deliver myself up to a—bum, makes me wild to think about. But it don’t much signify. Instead of setting your house in order, I’ll give a coat of whitewash to my own—that’s all. File my petition and schedule to-morrow, come out on bail on Saturday—in three weeks have my hearing—and then—why then we’ll begin again with all the old scores rubbed off—that’s all! A glass of wine, old fellow, just to gulp down this little contre-danse I think you fine people call it?”
“If it’s the same thing to you, Mr. Chessells, I’d prefer it at the Peacock, our house opposite the Cross, you know.”
“Good—the last thing, eh?—a sort of viaticum just to console one for that parting which must happen to friends fond even as we are, eh?”
“Just so.”
“It ain’t flattery, Mr. Singleton Jones; it ain’t, I assure you. For though I didn’t exactly seek your acquaintance, I must admit that you’ve been ‘so clear in your great office,’ that I not only forgive you ‘the deep damnation of this taking off,’ but sincerely regret that so young a friendship must so soon terminate.
“Had we never met, or never parted,
We had ne’er been broken-hearted!”
And he hummed the words in a wild devil-may-care sort of spirit which showed the intensity of that disgust he was making such efforts to conceal.
I bowed my thanks, but though I assured him that I was more than rewarded for the great trouble I had taken, &c., I confess that my assent to each new evidence of my friend’s cleverness was laden with an uneasy sense of the insecurity of the tenure by which I held him; for though he had evidently been trained as a child in the way he was now to walk, there was no strong appearance that he would not depart out of it if he got a decent chance.
Hailing a cab, therefore, that happened to be passing, I felt unspeakably relieved, as you may think, when I saw him safely deposited in its interior. We reached, without accident, our destination, and satisfied that he was in “the safe keeping” to which he was legally privileged, I felt at length at liberty to congratulate myself on “my first Ca Sa,” and to claim the five pounds that were to reward its success.