CHAPTER VI
A KIND WORLD
The other pushed on with a light step and a swimming brain. The sudden change in his poor little fortunes seemed too good to be true. Thirty-five pounds is not a mint of money, but to Erichsen it was something like one; at least it was his all, for he had no right to another penny in the world. The sum represented his full capital, as well as his last chance in life. And he had it safe in his pocket in the shape of Blaydes’s watch and chain.
And then—and then—Claire loved him still! The tears started to his eyes; tears of hot shame and bitter self-reproach. Yet at least he had been punished. He was thankful for that. Nor could his punishment be over yet But what remained he would bear like a man, ay, and glory in every pang. And he would write and tell her so, and of his immediate but accidental meeting with Blaydes; and of the interview which flesh and blood could not then resist.
He would tell her, too, that Blaydes was not after all as bad as he had seemed. Yet was he not? Tom thought of the sword-stick, and was torn between duty and magnanimity. It was right that the Hardings should have intimate warning as to the manner of man who went to their house. On the other hand, even Blaydes was entitled to fair play. And for some reason, Tom now chiefly pictured him in his last and best moment, with the dawn of remorse in his eyes, and the light of the moon upon that grey, uncovered head.
The moon was hidden now. Tom had difficulty in seeing and following the beaten path; and was unduly startled by a fellow-waif, who suddenly stood before him in the darkness.
“Got the time about yer, guv’nor?” said a high, hoarse voice.
“No, I—I don’t possess a watch,” stammered Tom, taken as much aback by the question as by the questioner. And he grasped the repeater in one pocket, and doubled the other fist.
“Ha! I see you don’t,” rejoined the other, as the moon shone forth at that moment. “No ’arm done, I ’ope. We can’t all be real swells, can we?”
And Tom was left shuddering from a single moonlight glimpse of a horrible face horribly disfigured: disease had razed the nose to the level of the stubbly, shrunken cheeks; the very eyes were more prominent, but wolfish, unsteady, and little better to see. His own required the lotion of long star-gazing when the man had gone his way. But the sight would have remained longer in an emptier mind; that of the youth was full of the final kindness of the world, of the instinct for better things in even a Blaydes, and the divine possibilities of human nature as exemplified by the deep, full, true and tender love of a girl like Claire for a scapegrace like himself. And so he came back to his own unworthiness, and made as many honest resolutions as there were stars in the sky, and felt strength and virtue leaping in his warm and humble heart. Yet all this time was but twenty minutes at most; and he was still in the fields between the Finchley Road and Haverstock Hill, though descending now and in sight of the latter thoroughfare.
His plans for the night were as yet unmade. He thought of his old lodgings off Fetter Lane; but only for a moment. He could not be there before one o’clock in the morning; they were early people, and he had traded enough upon their good-nature. One more night in the open would not hurt him; and could there be a better place than in these very fields? Tom looked about him and espied a promising thicket not thirty paces from the path. And here, being tired out, he did actually lie down, after first kneeling, as he had not knelt for months, and thanking the Maker of All Good Things for having made the world so kind, and his love so true and so forgiving.
But he never quite fell asleep; he was near it when a sound of slipshod feet, running downhill through the grass, passed close by the thicket, and left him wide awake and wondering. It was hopeless after that. And two o’clock struck upon his ears with the sound of his own footsteps trudging down Haverstock Hill to no immediate goal.
Yet still the world was kind. A waggon came creaking at his heels, slowly overhauling him, and unexpectedly stopping when it did so. It was green mountains high with country vegetables, smelling notably in the clean night air; and with this sweet whiff of home and the past there came a hearty, elderly voice evidently hailing Tom.
“Now then, young man! If you want a lift, joomp oop!”
Tom was not sure what he wanted; but his feet were sore, the voice liked him, and up he jumped. And between darkness and dawn—the quiet foot of the sleeping hill and the half-awakened but already noisy purlieus of Tottenham Court Road—the lucky, attractive fellow made another friend.
The waggoner was a red-faced, red-whiskered, freckle-handed fellow, with a genial, broad, communicative tongue. Jonathan Butterfield was his name, and he was a Yorkshireman only recently come south, as he said with a sigh which left him silent. Whereupon Tom became communicative in his turn, and remarked that he too meditated a move—to India.
“There’s the good ship Jean advertised to sail on Monday and I’m on my way to the office to see if they’ve a bunk left. If there isn’t, I shall go on to the docks and try my luck on the ship herself. I might work my passage out; if not, I’ll stow away.”
“You’re that anxious to leave old England!”
“I am anxious to make my way.”
“Ah, well!” sighed the waggoner. “I’ve got a lad o’ my own as far away as you are going; he writes us canny letters, but dear knows what we’d give to see him back!”
Tom said no more; he was wondering who but Claire would give a thank-you to see him back. But to Claire he must only return as a successful man of substance; and had he it in him so to succeed? The practical issue presented itself with dawn; and Tom’s little night of romance and exaltation was at an end long ere they got to Bow Street, raucous with wheels and oaths, and blocked with costermongers’ shallows, among which the waggon stood wedged till broad daylight.
But there was no end to the good-will of the Yorkshireman, who not only insisted on paying for hot coffee at an early stall, but flatly refused to go about his business until Tom promised to accompany him to breakfast at its conclusion. The promise was made with some reluctance, but not a little relief at the prospect of an hour or two beneath a roof; while the interim in the market was in itself was an entertainment for one to whom the scene was new. Tom never forgot the sweet smell of the early, costly peas, the picturesque groups of market-women busy shelling them in the shade, the red-stained pottles of premature strawberries, or the thousand flower-pots gay and odorous with the flowers of spring, which occupied his attention in the waggoners absence. Nor was his interest greater than his personal satisfaction in the scene; it made a wonderfully happy ending to an unworthy phase of his existence, a wonderfully stimulating prelude to the new life begun with this day. Indeed, his heart rose steadily with the sun, and was singing with brave resolve when at length the waggoner returned.
“I doubt I’ve been a long time,” said Butterfield. “It’ll be very near six o’clock.”
“Ten past,” said Tom whipping out the golden nucleus of his future fortunes, which he had even then been hugging in his pocket.
“Mercy on us!” cried the other.
“You thought it earlier?”
“Ay, I did; by gum, though, that’s a fine watch you’ve gotten!”
And Tom felt a new light beating on his shabby clothes, and himself flushing painfully under a scrutiny which began with round-eyed wonder and ended in a series of approving nods.
“I see—I see,” added simple Butterfield, in quite a reverent voice; “you’d rather starve than part with you. I’m jealous it belonged some one else before you; but there’s not many would ha’ gone hungry with a watch like that about them. However, t’ waggon’s ready, an’ we’ll take good care you don’t go hungry today.”
Tom’s only answer was a sudden attempt to back out of the breakfast, and it failed. He tried again as they drove past Fetter Lane—he could pay his way in Rolls Buildings now—but this time the waggoner whipped up his horse and refused to listen.
“No, no,” said he; “a promise is a promise, and I warrant they’ll be proud to see you.”
“You mean your wife and family?” said Tom.
“Nay,” said Butterfield, “I doubt you’ll not see them there.”
“Not at your house?” cried Tom.
“It isn’t mine,” confessed the other; “it’s my wife’s brother’s. He drives a hackney-coach, and I use his stable every other morning. Me an’ my missus live out at Hendon, and I come in three nights a week.”
“But you mustn’t saddle these people with me. Let me get down at once!”
“Mustn’t I?” chuckled the waggoner. “I’ll take the blame then. We’re very near there; and dashed if that isn’t Jim on his way home to breakfast. Jim! Jim!”
And a hackney-coach, crawling leisurely along in front, was pulled up as the coachman turned round and recognised Butterfield.
“Well, Jonathan, how are you?”
“How’s yourself, Jim? Early and late, as usual, eh? This is a young gent who has ridden in with me. He’s waiting till t’ offices open, and I thought you’d give us both a bit of breakfast.”
“Always glad to oblige a gen’leman,” said the coachman, looking hard but nodding genially at Tom; nor would he either listen to a single protest or apology from the youth, who found himself at breakfast, scarce ten minutes later, in a cosy kitchen close to Blackfriars Bridge.
The hackney-coachman was a burly old soldier, a jolly ruffian with a good brown eye; his wife was small and spruce, watchful and quiet, and perhaps Tom liked her less. She was kind enough, however; indeed, the sympathetic interest shown by all in an unknown vagabond was a circumstance that touched Tom deeply, though of a piece with all his most recent experiences, and but another proof of the world’s kindness.
The old soldier had served in India himself. He was full of practical advice for Tom, who listened gratefully, but yawned twice, when it came out he had not slept for some thirty hours. Instantly the household was on its feet. It appeared that Jonathan Butterfield had a snooze there each morning after his night journey with the vegetables, and Tom must and should lie down beside him.
Tom consented—for an hour—and fell asleep wondering where he had seen the good Jim before. When he awoke, the waggoner was gone and the light different. He went downstairs in his socks and asked Jim’s wife the time.
“Time?” said she. “Haven’t you a watch?”
“Not I.”
“Jonathan told me you’d a gold repeater!”
Tom remembered the repeater, for the first time since awaking; but the woman was looking at him queerly, and he had no intention of entering into explanations with her. So he simply asked whether Jonathan had gone.
“Many an hour ago; it’s five o clock.”
“Five!”
“And after.”
Tom burst into apologies, in the midst of which the woman put on a shawl and went out. He was still standing irresolute in his socks, dazed by his long sleep, when there came a rattle of wheels outside, and in rushed Jim with his whip and an evening newspaper.
“Glad to find you still here, sir!” cried he. “I want somebody as can read to read me a slice out of this ’ere Globe. It’s awful, sir—awful! The wery gen’leman I drove last night! I’ve come straight from Scotland Yard!”
Tom suddenly remembered when and where he had seen the other before; it was overnight on the box of Blaydes’s hackney-coach.
“Who is the gentleman?”
“Blaydes it seems his name is; or rather was!”
“Was?”
“He’s dead—”
“Dead!”
“Stone dead—murdered—by a man I saw as close as I see you now, but never looked twice at! It’s all in the Globe, they tell me; read it out, sir, read it out.”