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

denied that he was in distress. No food or rest or shelter for him! All he craved was leave to lose himself and forget his own name.

Is it any use bidding him, as we bade him once before, turn round and face the evil genius that is pursuing him? or is there nothing for him now but to run? He has run all night, but he is no farther ahead than when he stood at the police-court door. On the contrary, it is running him down fast, and as he staggers forward into the darkest hour of that cruel night, it treads on his heels and begins to drag him back.

Is there no home? no voice of a friend? no helping hand to save him from that worst of all enemies—his evil self?

It was nearly five o’clock when, without knowing how he got there, he found himself on the familiar ground of Shy Street. In the dim lamplight he scarcely recognised it at first, but when he did it seemed like a final stroke of irony to bring him there, at such a time, in such a mood. What else could it be meant for but to remind him there was no escape, no hope of losing himself, no chance of forgetting?

That gaunt, empty window of Number 13, with the reflected glare of the lamp opposite upon it, seemed to leer down on him like a mocking ghost, claiming him as its own. What was the use of keeping up the struggle any longer? After all, was there not one way of escape?

What was it crouching at the door of Number 13, half hidden in the shade? A dog? a woman? a child?

He stood still a moment, with beating heart, straining his eyes through the gloom. Then he crossed. As he did so the figure sprang to its feet and rushed to meet him.

“I knowed it, gov’nor; I knowed you was a-comin’,” cried a familiar boy’s voice. “It’s all right now. It’s all right, gov’nor!”

Never did sweeter music fall on mortal ears than these broken, breathless words on the spirit of Reginald. It was the voice he had been waiting for to save him in his extremity—the voice of love to remind him he was not forsaken; the voice of trust to remind him some one believed in him still; the voice of hope to remind him all was not lost yet. It called him back to himself; it thawed the chill at his heart, and sent new life into his soul. It was like a key to liberate him from the dungeon of Giant Despair.

“Why, Love, is that you, my boy?” he cried, seizing the lad’s hand.

“It is so, gov’nor,” whimpered the boy, trembling with excitement, and clinging to his protector’s hand. “I knowed you was a-comin’, but I was a’most feared I wouldn’t see you too.”

“What made you think I would come?” said Reginald, looking down with tears in his eyes on the poor wizened upturned face.

“I knowed you was a-comin’,” repeated the boy, as if he could not say it too often; “and I waited and waited, and there you are. It’s all right, gov’nor.”

“It is all right, old fellow,” said Reginald. “You don’t know what you’ve saved me from.”

“Go on,” said the boy, recovering his composure in the great content of his discovery. “I ain’t saved you from nothink. Leastways unless you was a-goin’ to commit soosanside. If you was, you was a flat to come this way. That there railway-cutting’s where I’d go, and then at the inkwidge they don’t know if you did it a-purpose or was topped over by the train, and they gives you the benefit of the doubt, and says, ‘Found dead.’”

“We won’t talk about it,” said Reginald, smiling, the first smile that had crossed his lips for a week. “Do you know, young ’un, I’m hungry; are you?”

“Got any browns?” said Love.

“Not a farthing.”

“More ain’t I, but I’ll—” He paused, and a shade of doubt crossed his face as he went on. “Say, gov’nor, think they’d give us a brown for this ’ere Robinson?”

And he pulled out his Robinson Crusoe bravely and held it up.

“I’m afraid not. It only cost threepence.”

Another inward debate took place; then drawing out his beloved Pilgrim’s Progress, he put the two books together, and said,—

“Suppose they’d give us one for them two?”

“Don’t let’s part with them if we can help,” said Reginald. “Suppose we try to earn something?”

The boy said nothing, but trudged on beside his protector till they emerged from Shy Street and stood in one of the broad empty main streets of the city.

Here Reginald, worn out with hunger and fatigue, and borne up no longer by the energy of desperation, sank half fainting into a doorstep.

“I’m—so tired,” he said; “let’s rest a bit. I’ll be all right—in a minute.”

Love looked at him anxiously for a moment, and then saying, “Stay you there, gov’nor, till I come back,” started off to run.

How long Reginald remained half-unconscious where the boy left him he could not exactly tell; but when he came to himself an early streak of dawn was lighting the sky, and Love was kneeling beside him.

“It’s all right, gov’nor,” said he, holding up a can of hot coffee and a slice of bread in his hands. “Chuck these here inside yer; do you ’ear?”

Reginald put his lips eagerly to the can. It was nearly sixteen hours since he had touched food. He drained it half empty; then stopping suddenly, he said,—

“Have you had any yourself?”

“Me? In corse! Do you suppose I ain’t ’ad a pull at it?”

“You haven’t,” said Reginald, eyeing him sharply, and detecting the well-meant fraud in his looks. “Unless you take what’s left there, I’ll throw it all into the road.”

In vain Love protested, vowed he loathed coffee, that it made him sick, that he preferred prussic acid; Reginald was inexorable, and the boy was obliged to submit. In like manner, no wile or device could save him from having to share the slice of bread; nor, when he did put it to his lips, could any grimace or protest hide the almost ravenous eagerness with which at last he devoured it.

“Now you wait till I take back the can,” said Love. “I’ll not be a minute,” and he darted off, leaving Reginald strengthened in mind and body by the frugal repast.

It was not till the boy returned that he noticed he wore no coat.

“What have you done with it?” he demanded sternly.

“Me? What are you talking about?” said the boy, looking guiltily uneasy.

“Don’t deceive me!” said Reginald. “Where’s your coat?”

“What do I want with coats? Do you—”

“Have you sold it for our breakfast?”

“Go on! Do you think—”

“Have you?” repeated Reginald, this time almost angrily.

“Maybe I ’ave,” said the boy; “ain’t I got a right to?”

“No, you haven’t; and you’ll have to wear mine now.”

And he proceeded to take it off, when the boy said,—

“All right. If you take that off, gov’nor, I slides—I mean it—so I do.”

There was a look of such wild determination in his pinched face that Reginald gave up the struggle for the present.

“We’ll share it between us, at any rate,” said he. “Whatever induced you to do such a foolish thing, Love?”

“Bless you, I ain’t got no sense,” replied the boy cheerily.

Day broke at last, and Liverpool once more became alive with bustle and traffic. No one noticed the two shivering boys as they wended their way through the streets, trying here and there, but in vain, for work, and wondering where and when they should find their next meal. But for Reginald that walk, faint and footsore as he was, was a pleasure-trip compared with the night’s wanderings.

Towards afternoon Love had the rare good fortune to see a gentleman drop a purse on the pavement. There was no chance of appropriating it, had he been so minded, which, to do him justice, he was not, for the purse fell in a most public manner in the sight of several onlookers. But Love was the first to reach it and hand it back to its owner.

Now Love’s old story-books had told him that honesty of this sort is a very paying sort of business; and though he hardly expected the wonderful consequences to follow his own act which always befall the superfluously honest boys in the “penny dreadfuls,” he was yet low-souled enough to linger sufficiently long in the neighbourhood of the owner of the purse to give him an opportunity of proving the truth of the story-book moral.

Nor was he disappointed; for the good gentleman, happening to have no less than fifty pounds in gold and notes stored up in this particular purse, was magnanimous enough to award Love a shilling for his lucky piece of honesty, a result which made that young gentleman’s countenance glow with a grin of the profoundest satisfaction.

“My eye, gov’nor,” said he, returning radiant with his treasure to Reginald, and thrusting it into his hand; “’ere, lay ’old. ’Ere’s a slice o’ luck. Somethink like that there daily bread you was a-tellin’ me of t’other day. No fear, I ain’t forgot it. Now, I say sassages. What do you say?”

Reginald said “sausages” too; and the two friends, armed with their magic shilling, marched boldly into a cosy coffee-shop where there was a blazing fire and a snug corner, and called for sausages for two. And they never enjoyed such a meal in all their lives. How they did make those sausages last! And what life and comfort they got out of that fire, and what rest out of those cane-bottomed chairs!

At the end of it all they had fourpence left, which, after serious consultation, it was decided to expend in a bed for the night.

“If we can get a good sleep,” said Reginald, “and pull ourselves together, we’re bound to get a job of some sort to-morrow. Do you know any lodging-house?”

“Me? don’t I? That there time you jacked me up I was a night in a place down by the river. It ain’t a dainty place, gov’nor, but it’s on’y twopence a piece or threepence a couple on us, and that’ll leave a brown for the morning.”

“All right. Let’s go there soon, and get a long night.”

Love led the way through several low streets beside the wharves until he came to a court in which stood a tumble-down tenement with the legend “Lodgings” scrawled on a board above the door. Here they entered, and Love in a few words bargained with the sour landlady for a night’s lodging. She protested at first at their coming so early, but finally yielded, on condition they would make the threepence into fourpence. They had nothing for it but to yield.

“Up you go, then,” said the woman, pointing to a rickety ladder which served the house for a staircase. “There’s one there already. Never mind him; you take the next.”

Reginald turned almost sick as he entered the big, stifling, filthy loft which was to serve him for a night’s lodging. About a dozen beds were ranged along the walls on either side, one of which, that in the far corner of the room, was, as the woman had said, occupied. The atmosphere of the place was awful already. What would it be when a dozen or possibly two dozen persons slept there?

Reginald’s first impulse was to retreat and rather spend another night in the streets than in such a place. But his weary limbs and aching bones forbade it. He must stay where he was now.

Already Love was curled up and asleep on the bed next to that where the other lodger lay; and Reginald, stifling every feeling but his weariness, flung himself by his side and soon forgot both place and surroundings in a heavy sleep.

Heavy but fitful. He had scarcely lain an hour when he found himself suddenly wide awake. Love still lay breathing heavily beside him. The other lodger turned restlessly from side to side, muttering to himself,