My Friend Smith Part 53

However, Mr Merrett's arrival put an end to further altercation for the present, and during the next few hours no one would have guessed what fires were smouldering under the peaceful surface of the Hawk Street counting-house.

As the evening approached I became more and more nervous and restless.

For, come what would of it, I had determined I _would_ speak to Jack Smith.

He seemed to guess my intention, for he delayed leaving the office unusually long, in the hope that I would leave before him. At last, however, when it seemed probable we should be left alone together in the counting-house, he took his hat and hurriedly left the office. I followed him, but so stealthily and nervously that I might have been a highwayman d.o.g.g.i.ng his victim, rather than a friend trying to overtake a friend.

Despite all my caution, he soon became aware of my intention. At first with a half-glance back he started to walk rapidly away, but then, seeing that I still followed, he stopped short and waited till I came up with him.

Already I was repenting of my determination, and this att.i.tude of his quite disheartened me.

Still I could not draw back now--speak to him I must.

"Oh, Jack," I cried, as I came up. "It really wasn't my fault--indeed it wasn't. I only--"

He put up his hand to stop me and said, his eyes blazing with indignation as he did so, "You've been a liar and a coward!"

He may have been right. He was right! But the words were ill-judged and rash. I had followed him ready to do anything to show my contrition, ready to make any atonement in my power for the wrong I had done him. One gentle word from him, one encouraging look, would have made the task easy. But this angry taunt, deserved as it was--nay, just because it was so fully deserved--stirred up in me a sudden sense of disappointment and resentment which choked all other feelings.

This was my reward for the effort I had made! This was the friend I had striven so desperately to recover!

He gave me no time to retort, even if I could have found the words to do so, but turned on his heel and left me, humbled and smarting, to find out that it would have been better far for me had I never tried to make matters right with Jack Smith.

But I was too angry to be dispirited that night. His bitter words rang in my ears at every step I took, and though my conscience cried out they were just, my pride cried out louder they were cruel. I longed to get out of their sound and forget the speaker. Who was he, a convict's son, to accuse me as he had? Half an hour ago it had been I who had wronged him. Now, to my smarting mind, it seemed as if it was he who was the wronger, and I the wronged.

"Hullo, old fly-by-night," suddenly exclaimed a voice beside me, as I walked slowly on my way; "what's the joke? Never saw such a fellow for grinning, upon my honour. Why can't you look glum for once in a way, eh, my mouldy lobster?"

I looked up and saw Doubleday, Crow, Wallop, and Whipcord, arm-in-arm across the pavement, and Hawkesbury and Harris following on behind.

"Still weeping for his lost Jemima, I mean Bull's-eye," said Wallop, "like what's his name in the Latin grammar."

It wasn't often Wallop indulged in cla.s.sical quotations, but when he did they were always effective, as was the case now.

My recent adventure had left me just in an hysterical mood; and try all I would, I could not resist laughing at the very learned allusion.

"Bull's-eye be hanged!" I exclaimed, recklessly. "Hear, hear," was the general chorus. "Come along," cried Doubleday. "Now you are sober you can come along with us. Hook on to Whip. There's just room for five on the pavement comfortably. Plenty of room in the road for anybody else.

Come on, we're on the spree, my boy, and no mistake. Hullo, old party,"

cried he to a stout old lady who was approaching, and innocently proposing to pa.s.s us; "extremely sorry--no thoroughfare this way, is there, Wallop? Must trouble you to go along by the roofs of the houses.

Now, now, don't flourish your umbrella at me, or I shall call the police. My mother says I'm not to be worrited, doesn't she, Crow?"

"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, a set of young fellows like you," said the old lady, with great and very natural indignation, "insulting respectable people. I suppose you call yourselves gentlemen.

I'm ashamed of you, that I am!"

"Oh, don't apologise," said Whipcord; "it's of no consequence."

"There's one of you," said the old lady, looking at me, "that looks as if he ought to know better. A nice man you're making of him among you!"

I blushed, half with shame, half with bashfulness, to be thus singled out, but considering it my duty to be as great a blackguard as my companions, I joined in the chorus of ridicule and insult in a manner which effectually disabused the poor lady of her suspicion that I was any better than the others.

In the end she was forced to go out into the road to let us pa.s.s, and we rollicked on rejoicing, as if we had achieved a great victory, and speculating as to who next would be our victim.

I mention this incident to show in what frame of mind the troubles of the day had left me. At any other time the idea of insulting a lady would have horrified me. Now I cared for nothing if only I could forget about Jack Smith.

We spent the remainder of the evening in the same rollicking way, getting up rows here and there with what we were pleased to call the "cads," and at other times indulging in practical jokes of all kinds, to the annoyance of some pa.s.sers-by and the injury of others.

More than once we adjourned to drink, and returned thence to our sport more and more unsteady. As the evening grew later we grew more daring and outrageous. Hawkesbury and Harris left the rest of us presently, and, unrestrained even by their more sober demeanour, we chose the most crowded thoroughfares and the most harmless victims for our operations.

Once we all of us trooped into a poor old man's shop who was too infirm to come from behind the counter to prevent our turning his whole stock upside down. Another time we considered it gentlemanly sport to upset an orange barrow, or to capture a mild-looking doctor's boy and hustle him along in front of us for a quarter of a mile.

In the course of our pilgrimage we came across the street in which Daly and the Field-Marshal lodged, and forthwith invaded their house and dragged them forth with such hideous uproar, that all the neighbours thought the house must be on fire, and one or two actually went for the engines.

About eleven we made a halt at a restaurant for supper, at the end of which, I say it now with bitter shame, I scarcely knew what I was doing.

I remember mildly suggesting that it was time for me to be going home, and being laughed to scorn and told the fun was only just beginning.

Then presently, though how long afterwards I can't say, I remember being out in the road and hearing some one propose to ring all the bells down a certain street, and joining in the a.s.sent which greeted the proposition.

Whether I actually took part in the escapade I was too confused to know, but I became conscious of Doubleday's voice close beside me crying, "Look-out, there's a bobby. Run!"

Suddenly called back to myself by the exclamation, I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. My conscience had reproached me little enough during the evening's folly, but now in the presence of danger and the prospect of disgrace, my one idea was what a _fool_ I had been.

Ah! greatest fool of all, that I had never discovered it till now, when disgrace and ruin stared me in the face. It is easy enough to be contrite with the policeman at your heels. But I was yet to discover that real repentance is made of sterner stuff, and needs a hand that is stronger to save and steadier to direct than any which I, poor blunderer that I was, had as yet reached out to.

If I could but escape--this once--how I vowed I would never fall into such folly again!

I ran as if for my life. The streets were empty, and my footsteps echoed all round till it sounded as if a whole regiment of police were pursuing me. My companions had all vanished, some one way, some another. They were used to this sport, but it was new--horribly new to me. I never thought I _could_ run as I ran that night. I cared not where I went, provided only I could elude my pursuers. I dared not look behind me. I fancied I heard shouts and footsteps, and my heart sank as I listened. Still I bounded forward, along one street, across another, dodging this way and that way, diving through courts and down alleys, till at last, breathless and exhausted, I was compelled, if only for one moment, to halt.

I must have run a mile at the very least. I had never run a mile before that I knew of, and can safely say I have never run a mile since. But, remembering that night, I have sometimes thought a fellow can never possibly know how quickly he can get over the distance till some day he has to run it with a policeman behind him.

When I pulled up and looked round me, my pursuers, if ever I had had any, had disappeared. There was the steady tread of a policeman on the opposite side of the road, but he, I knew, was not after me. And there was the distant rumble of a cab, but that was ahead of me and not behind me. I had escaped after all! In my thankfulness I renewed with all fervour and sincerity my resolve to avoid all such foolish escapades for the future, and to devote myself to more profitable and less discreditable occupations.

As it was I dared not yet feel quite sure I was safe. I might have been seen, my name and address might have been discovered, and the policeman might be lying in wait for me yet, somewhere.

I slunk home that night down the darkest streets and along the shadiest sides of them, like a burglar. I trembled whenever I saw a policeman or heard a footfall on the road.

But my fears did not come to pa.s.s. I regained the City safely, and was soon on the familiar track leading to Beadle Square.

As I crossed the top of Style Street the place seemed as deserted as the grave. But my heart gave a leap to my mouth as suddenly I heard a voice at my side and a bound, as of some one springing upon me from a place of hiding.

It was only Billy, who had been curled up on a doorstep, but whose cat- like vigilance had discovered me even in this light and at this hour.

"Well, you are a-doin' it neat, you are," said he, grinning profusely; "where 'ave you been to, gov'nor?"

"What's that to do with you?" demanded I, to whom by this time the small ragam.u.f.fin's impudence had ceased to be astonis.h.i.+ng.

"On'y 'cos t'other bloke he was 'ere four hour ago, and I ain't see'd you go by. I say, you're a-doin' it, you are."

"Has my fr-- has Smith been here this evening?" I asked.

"He are so; and I give 'im a s.h.i.+ne to-rights, I did. But, bless you, he was glum about the mazard, he was."

"What do you mean?" I asked.