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

It was in anything but exuberant spirits that the two Crudens presented themselves on the following morning at the workman’s entrance of the Rocket Newspaper Company, Limited. The bell was beginning to sound as they did so, and their enemy the timekeeper looked as though he would fain discover a pretext for pouncing on them and giving them a specimen of his importance. But even his ingenuity failed in this respect, and as Horace passed him with a good-humoured nod, he had, much against his will, to nod back, and forego his amiable intentions.

The brothers naturally turned their steps to the room presided over by Mr Durfy. That magnate had not yet arrived, much to their relief, and they consoled themselves in his absence by standing at the table watching their fellow-workmen as they crowded in and proceeded with more or less alacrity to settle down to their day’s work.

Among those who displayed no unseemly haste in applying themselves to their tasks was Barber, who, with the dust of the back case-room still in his mind, and equally on his countenance, considered the present opportunity of squaring up accounts with Reginald too good to be neglected. For reasons best known to himself, Mr Barber determined that his victim’s flagellation should be moral rather than physical. He would have liked to punch Reginald’s head, or, better still, to have knocked Reginald’s and Horace’s heads together. But he saw reasons for denying himself that pleasure, and fell back on the more ethereal weapons of his own wit.

“Hullo, puddin’ ’ead,” he began, “’ow’s your pa and your ma to-day? Find the Old Bailey a ’ealthy place, don’t they?”

Reginald favoured the speaker by way of answer with a stare of mingled scorn and wrath, which greatly elevated that gentleman’s spirits.

“’Ow long is it they’ve got? Seven years, ain’t it? My eye, they won’t know you when they come out, you’ll be so growed.”

The wrath slowly faded from Reginald’s face, as the speaker proceeded, leaving only the scorn to testify to the interest he took in this intellectual display.

Horace, delighted to see there was no prospect of a “flare-up,” smiled, and began almost to enjoy himself.

“I say,” continued Barber, just a little disappointed to find that his exquisite humour was not as electrical in its effect as it would have been on any one less dense than the Crudens, “’ow is it you ain’t got a clean collar on to-day, and no scent on your ’andkerchers—eh?”

This was getting feeble. Even Mr Barber felt it, for he continued, in a more lively tone,—

“Glad we ain’t got many of your sickening sort ’ere; snivelling school-boy brats, that’s what you are, tired of pickin’ pockets, and think you’re goin’ to show us your manners. Yah! if you wasn’t such a dirty ugly pair of puppy dogs I’d stick you under the pump—so I would.”

Reginald yawned, and walked off to watch a compositor picking up type out of a case. Horace, on the other hand, appeared to be deeply interested in Mr Barber’s eloquent observations, and inquired quite artlessly, but with a twinkle in his eye,—“Is the pump near here? I was looking for it everywhere yesterday.”

It was Mr Barber’s turn to stare. He had not expected this, and he did not like it, especially when one or two of the men and boys near, who had failed to be convulsed by his wit, laughed at Horace’s question.

After all, moral flagellation does not always answer, and when one of the victims yawns and the other asks a matter-of-fact questions it is disconcerting even to an accomplished operator. However, Barber gallantly determined on one more effort.

“Ugh—trying to be funny, are you, Mr Snubnose? Best try and be honest if you can, you and your mealy-mug brother. It’ll be ’ard work, I know, to keep your ’ands in your own pockets, but you’d best do it, do you ’ear—pair of psalm-singin’ twopenny-ha’penny puppy dogs!”

This picturesque peroration certainly deserved some recognition, and might possibly have received it, had not Mr Durfy’s entrance at that particular moment sent the idlers back suddenly to their cases.

Reginald, either heedless of or unconcerned at the new arrival, remained listlessly watching the operations of the compositor near him, an act of audacity which highly exasperated the overseer, and furnished the key-note for the day’s entertainment.

For Mr Durfy, to use an expressive term, had “got out of bed the wrong side” this morning. For the matter of that, after the blowing-up about the back case-room, he had got into it the wrong side last night, so that he was doubly perturbed in spirit, and a short conversation he had just had with the manager below had not tended to compose him.

“Durfy,” said that brusque official, as the overseer passed his open door, “come in. What about those two lads I sent up to you yesterday? Are they any good?”

“Not a bit,” growled Mr Durfy; “fools both of them.”

“Which is the bigger fool?”

“The old one.”

“Then keep him for yourself—put him to composing, and send the other one down here. Send him at once, Durfy, do you hear?”

With this considerately worded injunction in his ears it is hardly to be wondered at that Mr Durfy was not all smiles as he entered the domain which owned his sway.

His eye naturally lit on Reginald as the most suitable object on which to relieve his feelings.

“Now, then, there,” he called out. “What do you mean by interfering with the men in their work?”

“I’m not interfering with anybody,” said Reginald, looking up with glowing cheeks, “I’m watching this man.”

“Come out of it, do you hear me? Why don’t you go about your own work?”

“I’ve been waiting here ten-minutes for you.”

“Look here,” said Mr Durfy, his tones getting lower as his passion rose; “if you think we’re going to keep you here to give us any of your impudence you’re mistaken; so I can tell you. It’s bad enough to have a big fool put into the place for charity, without any of your nonsense. If I had my way I’d give you your beggarly eighteen shillings a week to keep you away. Go to your work.”

Reginald’s eyes blazed out for a moment on the speaker in a way which made Horace, who heard and saw all, tremble. But he overcame himself with a mighty effort, and said,—

“Where?”

Mr Durfy glanced round the room.

“Young Gedge!” he called out.

A boy answered the summons.

“Clear that rack between you and Barber, and put up a pair of cases for this fool here, and look after him. Off you go! and off you go,” added he, rounding on Reginald, “and if we don’t make it hot for you among us I’m precious mistaken.”

It was a proud moment certainly for the cock of the fifth at Wilderham to find himself following meekly at the heels of a youngster like Gedge, who had been commissioned to put him to work and look after him. But Reginald was too sick at heart and disgusted to care what became of himself, as long as Mr Durfy’s odious voice ceased to torment his ears. The only thing he did care about was what was to become of Horace. Was he to be put in charge of some one too, or was he to remain a printer’s devil?

Mr Durfy soon answered that question.

“What are you standing there for?” demanded he, turning round on the younger brother as soon as he had disposed of the elder. “Go down to the manager’s room at once; you’re not wanted here.”

So they were to be separated! There was only time to exchange one glance of mutual commiseration and then Horace slowly left the room with sad forebodings, more on his brother’s account than his own, and feeling that as far as helping one another was concerned they might as well be doomed to serve their time at opposite ends of London.

Gedge, under whose imposing auspices Reginald was to begin his typographical career, was a diminutive youth who, to all outward appearances, was somewhere about the tender age of fourteen, instead of, as was really the case, being almost as old as Reginald himself. He was facetiously styled “Magog” by his shopmates, in allusion to his small stature, which required the assistance of a good-sized box under his feet to enable him to reach his “upper case.” His face was not an unpleasant one, and his voice, which still retained its boyish treble, was an agreeable contrast to that of most of the “gentlemen of the case” in Mr Durfy’s department.

For all that, Reginald considered himself much outraged by being put in charge of this chit of a child, and glowered down on him much as a mastiff might glower on a terrier who presumed to do the honour of his back yard for his benefit.

However, the terrier in this case was not at all disheartened by his reception, and said cheerily as he began to clear the frame,—

“You don’t seem to fancy it, I say. I don’t wonder. Never mind, I shan’t lick you unless you make me.”

“Thanks,” said Reginald, drily, but scarcely able to conceal a smile at this magnanimous declaration.

“Magog” worked busily away, putting away cases in the rack, dusting the frame down with his apron, and whistling softly to himself.

“Thanks for helping me,” said he, after a time, as Reginald still stood by doing nothing. “I could never have done it all by myself.”

Reginald blushed a little at this broad hint, and proceeded to lift down a case. But he nearly upset it in doing so, greatly to his companion’s horror.

“You’d better rest,” he said, “you’ll be fagged out. Here, let me do it. There you are. Now we’re ready to start you. I’ve a good mind to go and get old Tacker to ring up the big bell and let them know you’re just going to begin.”

Reginald could hardly be offended at this good-natured banter, and, as Gedge was after all a decent-looking boy, and aspirated his “h’s,” and did not smell of onions, he began to think that if he were doomed to drudge in this place he might have been saddled with a more offensive companion.

“It’s a pity to put Tacker to the trouble, young ’un,” said he; “he’ll probably ring when I’m going to leave off, and that’ll do as well.”

“That’s not bad for you,” said Gedge, approvingly; “not half bad. Go on like that, and you’ll make a joke in about a fortnight.”

“Look here,” said Reginald, smiling at last. “I shall either have to punch your head or begin work. You’d better decide which you’d like best.”

“Well, as Durfy is looking this way,” said Gedge, “I suppose you’d better begin work. Stick that pair of empty cases up there—the one with the big holes below and the other one above. You needn’t stick them upside down, though, unless you particularly want to; they look quite as well the right way. Now, then, you’d better watch me fill them, and see what boxes the sorts go in. No larks, now. Here goes for the ‘m’s.’”

So saying, Mr “Magog” proceeded to fill up one box with types of the letter “m,” and another box some distance off with “a’s,” and another with “b’s,” and so on, till presently the lower of the two cases was nearly full. Reginald watched him with something like admiration, inwardly wondering if he would ever be able to find his way about this labyrinth of boxes, and strongly of opinion that only muffs like printers