Reginald Cruden, Talbot Baines Reed [best black authors txt] 📗

If the worshipful magistrate flattered himself that the reprimand he had addressed to Reginald that afternoon would move his hearer to self-abasement or penitence, he had sadly miscalculated the power of his own language.

Every word of that “caution” had entered like iron into the boy’s soul, and had roused in him every evil passion of which his nature was capable. A single word of sympathy or kindly advice might have won him heart and soul. But those stinging, brutal sentences goaded him almost to madness, and left him desperate.

What was the use of honesty, of principle, of conscientiousness, if they were all with one accord to rise against him and degrade him?

What was the use of trying to be better than others when the result was an infamy which, had he been a little more greedy or a little less upright, he might have avoided?

What was the use of conscious innocence and unstained honour, when they could not save him from a sense of shame of which no convicted felon could know the bitterness?

It would go out to all the world that Reginald Cruden, the suspected swindler, had been “let off” for lack of evidence after three days’ imprisonment. The victims of the Corporation would read it, and regret the failure of justice to overtake the man who had robbed them. His father’s old county friends would read it, and shake their heads over poor Cruden’s prodigal. The Wilderham fellows would read it, and set him down as one more who had gone to the bad. Young Gedge would read it, and scorn him for a hypocrite and a humbug. Durfy would read it, and chuckle. His mother and Horace would read it. Yes, and what would they think? Nothing he could say would convince them or anybody. They might forgive him, but—

The thought made his blood boil within him. He would take forgiveness from no man or woman. If they chose to believe him guilty, let them; but let them keep their forgiveness to themselves. Rather let them give the dog a bad name and hang him. He did not care! Would that they could!

Such was the rush of thought that passed through his mind as he stood that bleak winter afternoon in the street, a free man.

Free! he laughed at the word, and envied the burglar with his six months. What spirit of malignity had hindered Mr Sniff from letting him lose himself in a felon’s cell rather than turn him out “free” into a world every creature of which was an enemy?

Are you disgusted with him, reader? With his poor spirit, his weak purpose, his blind folly? Do you say that you, in his shoes, would have done better? that you would never have lost courage? that you would have held up your head still, and braved the storm? Alas, alas, that the Reginalds are so many and the heroes of your sort so few!

Alas for the sensitive natures whom injustice can crush and make cowards of! You are not sensitive, thank God, and you do not know what crushing is. Pray that you never may; but till you have felt it deal leniently with poor Reginald, as he goes recklessly out into the winter gloom without a friend—not even himself.

It mattered little to him where he went or what became of him. It made no odds how and when he should spend his last shilling. He was hungry now. Since early that morning nothing had passed his lips. Why not spend it now and have done with it?

So he turned into a coffee-shop, and ordered coffee and a plate of beef.

“My last meal,” said he to himself, with a bitter smile.

His appetite failed him when the food appeared, but he ate and drank out of sheer bravado. His enemies—Durfy, and the magistrate, and the victims of the Corporation—would rejoice to see him turn with a shudder from his food. He would devour it to spite them.

“How much?” said he, when it was done.

“Ninepence, please,” said the rosy-cheeked girl who waited.

Reginald tossed her the shilling.

“Keep the change for yourself,” said he, and walked out of the shop.

He was free now with a vengeance! He might do what he liked, go where he liked, starve where he liked.

He wandered up and down the streets that winter evening recklessly indifferent to what became of him. The shops were gaily lighted and adorned with Christmas decorations. Boys and girls, men and women, thronged them, eager in their purchases and radiant in the prospect of the coming festival. There went a grave father, parading the pavement with a football under his arm for the boy at home; and here a lad, with his mother’s arm in his, stood halted before an array of fur cloaks, and bade her choose the best among them. Bright-eyed school-girls brushed past him with their brothers, smiling and talking in holiday glee; and here a trio of school-chums, arm-in-arm, bore down upon him, laughing over some last-term joke. He watched them all.

Times were when his heart would warm and soften within him at the memories sights like these inspired; but they were nothing to him now; or if they were anything, they were part of a universal conspiracy to mock him. Let them mock him; what cared he?

The night drew on. One by one the gay lights in the shops went out, and the shutters hid the crowded windows. One by one the passengers dispersed, some to besiege the railway-stations, some to invade the trams, others to walk in cheery parties by the frosty roads; all to go home.

Even the weary shopmen and shop-girls, released from the day’s labours, hurried past him homeward, and the sleepy cabman whipped up his horse for his last fare before going home, and the tramps and beggars vanished down their alleys, and sought every man his home.

Home! The word had no meaning to-night for Reginald as he watched the streets empty, and found himself a solitary wayfarer in the deserted thoroughfares.

The hum of traffic ceased. One by one the bedroom lights went out, the clocks chimed midnight clearly in the frosty air, and still he wandered on.

He passed a newspaper-office, where the thunder of machinery and the glare of the case-room reminded him of his own bitter apprenticeship at the Rocket. They might find him a job here if he applied. Faugh! who would take a gaol-bird, a “let-off” swindler, into their employ?

He strolled down to the docks. The great river lay asleep. The docks were, deserted; the dockyards silent. Only here and there a darting light, or the distant throb of an engine, broke the slumber of the scene.

A man came up to him as he stood on the jetty.

“Now then, sheer off; do you hear?” he said. “What do you want here?”

“Mayn’t I watch the river?” said Reginald.

“Not here. We’ve had enough of your sort watching the river. Off you go,” and he laid his hand on the boy’s collar and marched him off the pier.

Of course! Who had not had enough of his sort? Who would not suspect him wherever he went? Cain went about with a mark on his forehead for every one to know him by. In what respect was he better off, when men seemed to know by instinct and in the dark that he was a character to mistrust and suspect?

The hours wore on. Even the printing-office when he passed it again was going to rest. The compositors one by one were flitting home, and the engine was dropping asleep. He stood and watched the men come out, and wondered if any of them were like himself—whether among them was a young Gedge or a Durfy?

Then he wandered off back into the heart of the town. A wretched outcast woman, with a child in her arms, stood at the street corner and accosted him.

“Do, kind gentleman, give me a penny. The child’s starving, and we’re so cold and hungry.”

“I’d give you one if I had one,” said Reginald; “but I’m as poor as you are.”

The woman sighed, and drew her rags round the infant.

Reginald watched her for a moment, and then, taking off his overcoat, said,—

“You’d better put this round you.”

And he dropped it at her feet, and hurried away before she could pick up the gift, or bless the giver.

He gave himself no credit for the deed, and he wanted none. What did he care about a coat? he who had been frozen to the heart already. Would a coat revive his good name, or cover the disgrace of that magisterial caution?

The clocks struck four, and the long winter night grew bleaker and darker. It was eleven hours since he had taken that last defiant meal, and Nature began slowly to assert her own with the poor outcast. He was faint and tired out, and the breeze cut him through. Still the rebel spirit within him