Reginald Cruden, Talbot Baines Reed [best black authors txt] 📗
- Author: Talbot Baines Reed
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“Take that for an impudent young beggar!” said the latter as he passed, suiting the action to the word with a smart cuff directed at the visitor’s head.
Horace, however, was quick enough to ward it off.
“I thought you’d try that on,” he said, with a laugh; “you’re—”
But Mr Pillans, who had by this time worked himself into a fury by a method known only to himself, cut short further parley by making a desperate rush at him just as he reached the door.
The wary Horace had not played football for three seasons for nothing. He quietly ducked, allowing his unscientific assailant to overbalance himself, and topple head first on the lobby outside, at the particular moment when the real owner of the racehorse and the real wine-merchant, who had just arrived, reached the top of the stairs.
“Hullo, young fellow!” said the sporting gentleman; “practising croppers, are you? or getting up an appetite? or what? High old times you’re having up here among you! Who’s the kid?”
“Stop him!” gasped Pillans, picking himself up; “don’t let him go! hold him fast!”
The wine-merchant obligingly took possession of Horace by the collar, and the company returned in solemn procession to the room.
“Now, then,” said Horace’s captor, “what’s the row? Let’s hear all about it. Has he been collaring any of your spoons? or setting the house on fire? or what? Who is he?”
“He’s cheeked me!” said Pillans, brushing the dust off his coat. “Hold him fast, will you? till I take it out of him.”
But the horse-racer was far too much of a sportsman for that.
“No, no,” said he, laughing; “make a mill of it and I’m your man. I’ll bet two to one on the young ’un to start with.”
The wine-merchant said he would go double that on Pillans, whereupon the sporting man offered a five-pound note against a half-sovereign on his man, and called out to have the room cleared and a sponge brought in.
How far his scientific enthusiasm would have been rewarded it is hard to say, for Blandford at this juncture most inconsiderately interposed.
“No, no,” said he, “I’m not going to have the place made a cock-pit. Shut up, Pillans, and don’t make an ass of yourself; and you, Cruden, cut off. What did you ever come here for? See what a row you’ve made.”
“It wasn’t I made the row,” said Horace. “I’m awfully sorry, Bland. I’d advise you to cut that friend of yours, I say. He’s an idiot. Good-bye.”
And while the horse-racer and the wine-merchant were still discussing preliminaries, and Mr Pillans was privately ascertaining whether his nose was bleeding, Horace departed in peace, partly amused, partly vexed, and decidedly of opinion that Blandford had taken to keeping very queer company since he last saw him.
The great thing was that Horace could now write and report to Reg that the debt had been paid.
His way home led him past the Rocket office. It was half-past ten, and the place looked dark and deserted. Even the lights in the editor’s windows were out, and the late hands had gone home. Just at the corner Horace encountered Gedge, one of the late hands in question.
“Hullo, young ’un!” he said. “Going home?”
“Yes, I’m going home,” said young Gedge.
“I heard from my brother yesterday. He was asking after you.”
“Was he?” said the boy half-sarcastically. “He does remember my name, then?”
“Whatever do you mean? Of course he does,” said Horace. “You know that well enough.”
“I shouldn’t have known it unless you’d told me,” said Gedge, with a cloud on his face; “he’s never sent me a word since he left.”
“He’s been awfully busy—he’s scarcely had time to write home. I say, young ’un, what’s the row with you? What makes you so queer?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the boy wearily; “I used to fancy somebody cared for me, but I was mistaken. I was going to the dogs fast enough when Cruden came here; I pulled up then, because I thought he’d stand by me; but now he’s gone and forgotten all about me. I’ll—well, there’s nothing to prevent me going to the bad; and I may as well make up my mind to it.”
“No, no,” said Horace, taking his arm kindly; “you mustn’t say that, young ’un. The last words Reg said to me when he went off were, ‘Keep your eye on young Gedge, don’t forget’; the very last words, and he’s reminded me of my promise in every letter since. I’ve been a cad, I know, not to see more of you; but you mustn’t go thinking that you’ve no friends. If it were only for Reg’s sake I’d stick to you. Don’t blame him, though, for I know he thinks a lot about you, and it would break his heart if you went to the bad. Of course you can help going to the bad, old man; we can all help it.”
The boy looked up with the clouds half brushed away from his face.
“I don’t want to go to the bad,” said he; “but I sort of feel I’m bound to go, unless some one sticks up for me. I’m so awfully weak-minded, I’m not fit to be trusted alone.”
“Hullo, I say,” whispered Horace, suddenly stopping short in his walk, “who’s that fellow sneaking about there by the editor’s door?”
“He looks precious like Durfy,” said Gedge; “I believe it is he.”
“What does he want there, I wonder—he wasn’t on the late shift to-night, was he?”
“No; he went at seven.”
“I don’t see what he wants hanging about when everybody’s gone,” said Horace.
“Unless he’s screwed and can’t get home—I’ve known him like that. That fellow’s not screwed, though,” he added; “see, he’s heard some one coming, and he’s off steady enough on his legs.”
“Rum,” said Horace. “It looked like Durfy, too. Never mind, whoever it is, we’ve routed him out this time. Good-night, old man; don’t go down on your luck, mind, and don’t go abusing Reg behind his back, and don’t forget you’re booked to come home to supper with me on Monday, and see my mother. Ta-ta.”
It is high time to return to Reginald, whom we left in a somewhat dismal fashion, straining his eyes for a last sight of his mother and brother as they waved farewell to him on the Euston platform.
If the reader expects me to tell him that on finding himself alone our hero burst into tears, or broke out into repentant lamentations, or wished himself under the wheels of the carriage, I’m afraid he will be disappointed.
Reginald spent the first half-hour of his solitary journey in speculating how the oil in the lamp got round at the wick. He considered the matter most attentively, and kept his eyes fixed on the dim light until London was miles behind him, and the hedges and grey autumn fields on either hand proclaimed the country. Then his mind abandoned its problems, and for another half-hour he tried with all his might to prevent the beat of the engine taking up the rhythm of one of the old Wilderham cricket songs. That too he gave up eventually, and let his imagination wander at large over those happy school days, when all was merry, when every friend was a brick, and every exertion a sport, when the future beckoned him forward with coaxing hand. What grand times they were! Should he ever forget the last cricket match of the summer term, when he bowled three men in one over, and made the hardest catch on record in the Wilderham Close? He and Blandford—
Ah, Blandford! His mind swerved on the points here, and branched off into the recollection of that ill-starred dinner at the Shades, and the unhealthy bloated face of the cad Pillans. How he would have liked to knock the idiot down, just as he had knocked Durfy down that night when young Gedge—
Ah, another point here and another swerve. Would Horace be sure and keep his eye on the young ’un, and was there any chance of getting him down to Liverpool?
Once more a swerve, and this time into a straight reach of meditation for miles and miles ahead. He thought of everything. He pictured his own little office and living-room. He drew a mental portrait of the housekeeper, and the cups and saucers he would use at his well-earned meals. He made up his mind the board-room would be furnished in green leather, and that the Bishop of S— would be a jolly sort of fellow and fond of his joke. He even imagined what the directors would say among themselves respecting himself after he had been introduced and made his first impression. At any rate they should not say he lacked in interest for their affairs, and when he wrote home—
Ah! this was the last of all the points, and his thoughts after that ran on the same lines till the train plunged into the smoke and gloom of the great city which was henceforth to extend to him its tender mercies.
If Reginald had reckoned on a deputation of directors of the Select Agency Corporation to meet their new secretary at the station, he was destined to be disappointed. There were plenty of people there, but none concerning themselves with him as he dragged his carpet-bag from under the seat and set foot on the platform.
The bag was very heavy, and Shy Street, so he was told, was ten-minutes’ walk from the station. It did occur to him that most secretaries of companies would take a cab under such circumstances and charge it to “general expenses.” But he did not care to spend either the Corporation’s money or his own for so luxurious a purpose, and therefore gripped his bag manfully and wrestled with it out into the street.
The ten-minutes grew to considerably more than twenty before they both found themselves in Shy Street. A long, old-fashioned, dismal street it was, with some shops in the middle, and small offices at either end. No imposing-looking edifice, chaste in architecture and luxurious in proportions, stood with open doors to receive its future lord. Reginald and his bag stumbled up a side staircase to the first floor over a chemist’s shop, where a door with the name “Medlock” loomed before him, and told him he had come to his journey’s end.
Waiting a moment to wipe the perspiration from his face, he turned the handle and found himself in a large, bare, carpetless room, with a table and a few chairs in the middle of it, a clock over the chimneypiece, a few directories piled up in one corner, and a bundle of circulars and wrappers in another; and a little back room screened off from the general observation with the word “private” on the door. Such was the impression formed in Reginald’s mind by a single glance round his new quarters.
In the flutter of his first entrance, however, he entirely overlooked one important piece of furniture—namely, a small boy with long lank hair and pale blotched face, who was sitting on a low stool near the window, greedily devouring the contents of a pink-covered periodical. This young gentleman, on becoming aware of the presence of a stranger, crumpled his paper hurriedly into his pocket and rose to his feet.
“What do yer want?” he demanded.
“Is Mr Medlock here?” asked Reginald.
“No fear,” replied the boy.
“Has he left any message?”
“Don’t know who you are. What’s yer name?”
“I’m Mr Cruden, the new secretary.”
“Oh, you’re ’im, are yer? Yes, you’ve got to address them there envellups, and ’e’ll be up in the morning.”
This was depressing. Reginald’s castles in the air were beginning to tumble about his ears in rapid succession. The bare room he could excuse, on the ground that the Corporation was only just beginning its operations. Doubtless the carpet was on order, and was to be delivered soon. He could even afford not to afflict himself much about this vulgar, irreverent little
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