Merry-Garden and Other Stories Part 13

"Nonsense," said I. "It's a deal likelier to be the Fat Woman or the Two-headed Calf."

"It's the press," insisted Hartnoll: and for the moment, when we emerged out of a side lane upon a square filled with flaring lights, the cras.h.i.+ng of drums and cymbals, and the voices of showmen yelling in front of their booths, I had a suspicion that he was right. One or two women, catching sight of our uniforms, edged away swiftly, and, as they went, peered back into the darkness of the lane behind us. A few minutes later, as we dodged around the circ.u.mference of the crowd in search of an opening, we ran up against one of the women with her man in tow. She was arguing with him in a low, eager sort of voice, and he followed sulkily. At sight of us again she fetched up with a gasp of breath, almost with a squeal.

The man drew himself up defiantly and began to curse us, but she quickly interrupted him, thrusting her open hand over his mouth, and drew him away down a dark courtyard.

After this we found ourselves in the glare immediately under the platform of a booth; and two minutes later were mounting the rickety steps, less of our own choice than by pressure of the crowd behind. The treat promised us within was the Siege of Copenhagen with real fireworks, which as an entertainment would do as well as another. On the way up Hartnoll whispered to me to keep my hands in my breeches pockets, if I carried my money there; and almost on the same instant cried out that someone had stolen his dirk. He stood lamenting, pointing to the empty sheath, while a stout woman at a table took our entrance-money with an impa.s.sive face.

The Siege of Copenhagen was what you youngsters nowadays would call a 'fizzle,' I believe: or maybe Hartnoll's face of woe and groanings over his lost dirk damped the fireworks for me. But these were followed by a performing pony, which, after some tricks, being invited by his master to indicate among the audience a gentleman addicted to kissing the ladies and running away, thrust its muzzle affectionately into my waistcoat; whereat Hartnoll recovered his spirits at a bound, and treacherously laughed louder than any of the audience. I thought it infernally bad taste, and told him so. But, as it happened, I had a very short while to wait for revenge: for in the very next booth, being invited to pinch the biceps of the Fat Woman, my gentleman-of-the-world blushed to the eyes, cast a wild look around for escape, and turned, to fall into the arms of a couple of saucy girls who pushed him forward to hold him to his bargain. His eyes were red--he was positively crying with shame and anger--when we found ourselves outside under the torchlights that made flaming haloes in the fog.

"Hang it, Rodd! I've had enough of this fair. Let's get back to the Posts."

"What's the time?" said I, and felt for my watch.

My watch had disappeared.

It had been my mother's parting gift, and somehow the loss of it made me feel, with a shock, utterly alone in the world. Why on earth had I not clung to the respectable shelter of the Blue Posts? What a hollow mockery were these brazen cymbals, these hoa.r.s.e inviting voices, these coa.r.s.e show-cloths, these lights!

Curiously enough, and as if in instant sympathy with my dejection, the cymbals ceased to clash. The showmen began to extinguish their torches.

I had lost my watch; Hartnoll did not own one. But we agreed that, at latest, the hour could not be much more than ten. Yet the shows were closing, the populace was melting away into the fog.

"I've had enough of this. Let's get back to the Posts," Hartnoll repeated. His eyes told me that up to two days ago, when he left home, nine o'clock or thereabouts had been his regular bedtime. It had been mine also.

One of the two saucy girls, happening to pa.s.s an instant before the booth above us extinguished its lights, spied us in dejected colloquy, and came forward. Hartnoll turned from her, but I made bold to ask her the nearest way to the Blue Posts.

I will give you her exact answer. She said--"Turn up on your right hand at the next turning, but, at the next turning of all, on your left; marry, at the very next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the Blue Postesses."

I have it by heart, because years after I found it in Shakespeare's _Merchant of Venice_, where you may find it for yourselves, if you look, with the answer I might have made to her. She did not wait for one, however, but stood looking around in the fog as if for a guide.

"Poor lads!" she went on, "you'll certainly never reach it without help, though everyone in Portsmouth knows the Blue Posts: and I'd go with you myself if I weren't due at the theatre in ten minutes' time. I have to call on the manager as soon as the house empties to-night; and if I miss it will mean losing an engagement." She puckered her brow thoughtfully, and her face in spite of the paint on it struck me as a lovely one, saucy no longer but almost angelically kind. I have never seen her again from that day to this, and I was a boy of fourteen, but I'll wager that girl had a good heart. "Your best plan," she decided, "is to step along with me, and at the stage door, or inside the theatre at any rate, we'll soon find somebody to put you in the way."

But here a small figure stepped out against us from the shadow of the platform, and a small shrillish voice piped up--

"For a copper, miss--or a copper apiece if they'll trust me. Find the Blue Postesses? W'y, I'd walk there on my head with my eyes bound!"

We stared down at her--for it was a small girl, a girl so diminutive that Hartnoll and I, who were not Anaks by any means, topped her by head and shoulders. She wore no shoes, no stockings, no covering for her head.

Her hair, wet with the fog, draggled down, half-hiding her face, which was old for its age (as they say), and chiefly by reason of her sharp, gipsy-coloured eyes.

"For a copper apiece, miss, and honour bright!" said the waif.

The young actress turned to us with a laugh. "Why not?" she asked.

"That is, if you're not above being beholden to the child? But I warn you not to pay her till you get to the Blue Posts."

I answered that any port was good in a storm, and the child should have sixpence if she proved as good as her word.

"So long, then, my pair of seventy-fours. I'm late for the theatre already. Good-night! and when you tuck yourselves in to bye-low don't forget to dream of your mammies." Bending quickly, she kissed Hartnoll on the cheek, and was in the act to offer me a like salute when I dodged aside, angered by her last words. She broke into a laugh like a chime of bells, made a pretty pout at me with her lips and disappeared into the darkness. Then it struck me that I need not have lost my temper; but I was none the more inclined to let Hartnoll down easily.

"I call that pretty meek," said I, as we walked off together, the child pattering, barefoot, beside us.

"What's the matter?" asked Hartnoll.

"Why, to let that girl kiss you--like a baby!"

"Sure you're not thinking of sour grapes?"

"I take you to witness," said I, "that she tried it on and I wouldn't let her."

"The more fool you!" retorted Hartnoll, edging away from me in dudgeon-- but I knew he was more than half ashamed. Just at that moment to my astonishment I felt the child at my side reach up and touch my hand.

"Ugh!" said I, drawing it away quickly. "Paws off, please! Eh?--what's this?" For she was trying to thrust something into it and to close my fingers upon it.

"Hus.h.!.+" she whispered. "It's your watch."

I gave a whistle. "My watch? How the deuce did _you_ come by my watch?"

"Prigged it," said the child in a business-like voice. "Don't know why I gave it back: seemed that I wanted to. That's why I offered to come with you: and now I'm glad. Don't care if I _do_ get a hiding."

For the moment, while she plodded alongside, I could only feel the watch over in my hand, making sure that it was really mine.

"But," said I, after a long pause of wonder, "you don't suppose that _I_ want to give you a hiding, eh?--and you a girl, too!"

"No."

"Then who's going to beat you?"

"Mother." After a moment she added rea.s.suringly, "But I've got another inside o' my bodice."

I whistled again, and called up Hartnoll, who had been lagging behind sulkily. But he lost his sulks when I showed him the watch: and he too whistled, and we stood stock-still gazing at the child, who had halted with one bare foot on the edge of the gutter.

"She has another about her," said I. "She confessed it."

"Good Lord!" As the child made a motion to spring away, Hartnoll stepped out across the gutter and intercepted her. "I--I say," he stammered, "you don't by any chance happen to have my dirk?"

She fell to whimpering. "Lemme go . . . I took pity on yer an' done yer a kindness . . . put myself out o' the way, I did, and this is what I get for it. Thought you was kind-hearted, I did, and--if you don't lemme go, I'll leave you to find your way, and before mornin' the crimps'll get you." She threatened us, trembling with pa.s.sion, shaking her finger at the ugly darkness.

"Look here," said I, "if you said anything about another watch, understand that I didn't hear. You don't suppose I want to take it from you?

I'm only too glad to have my own again, and thank you."

"I thought _'e_ might," she said, only half-rea.s.sured, jerking a nod towards Hartnoll. "As for his dirk, I never took it, but I know the boy as did. He lives the way we're going, and close down by the water; and if you spring a couple o' tanners maybe I'll make him give it up."

"I'd give all I possess to get back that dirk," said Hartnoll, and I believe he meant it.

"Come along, then,"--and we plunged yet deeper into the dark bowels of Portsmouth. The child had quite recovered her confidence, and as we went she explained to us quite frankly why her mother would be angry.

The night--if I may translate out of her own language, which I forget-- was an ideal one for pocket-picking, what with the crowd at the fair, and the fog, and (best of all, it seemed) the constables almost to a man drawn off to watch the roads around Fareham.

"But what," I asked, "is the matter with Fareham?"

My ignorance staggered her. "What? Hadn't we heard of the great Prize-fight?" We had not. "Not the great fight coming off between Jem Clark and the Dustman?" We were unfamiliar even with the heroes' names.

She found this hard--very hard--to believe. Why, Portsmouth was full of it, word having come down from London the date was to-morrow, and that Fareham, or one of the villages near Fareham, the field of battle.

The constabulary, too, had word of it--worse luck--and were on their mettle to break up the meeting, as the sportsmen of Portsmouth and its neighbourhood were all on their mettle to attend it. This, explained the child in her thin clear voice,--I can hear it now discoursing its sad, its infinitely weary wisdom to us two Johnny Newcomes,--this was the reason why the fair had closed early. The show-folk were all waiting, so to speak, for a nod. The tip given, they would all troop out northward, on each other's heels, greedy for the aftermath of the fight.

Rumour filled the air, and every rumour chased after the movements of the two princ.i.p.als and their trainers, of whom nothing was known for certain save that they had left London, and (it was said) had successfully dodged a line of runners posted for some leagues along the Bath and Portsmouth roads. For an hour, soon after sunset, the town had been stunned by a report that Brighton, after all, would be the venue: a second report said Newbury, or at any rate a point south-west of Reading. Fire drives out fire: a third report swore positively that Clark and the Dustman were in Portsmouth, in hiding, and would run the cordon in the small hours of the morning.