CHAPTER XLIII.
WE left Thomas Robinson writing his life. He has written it. It has been printed by prisoners and circulated among prisoners. One copy lay in Robinson's cell till he left the prison, and to this copy were appended Mr. Eden's remarks in MS.
This autobiography is a self-drawn portrait of a true Bohemian and his mind from boyhood up to the date when he fell into my hands.
Unfortunately we cannot afford so late in our story to make any retrograde step. The “Autobiography of a Thief” must therefore be thrust into my Appendix or printed elsewhere.
The reader has seen Robinson turned into a fiend by cruelty and turned back to a man by humanity.
On this followed many sacred, softening, improving lessons, and as he loved Mr. Eden his heart was open to them.
Most prisoners are very sensible of genuine kindness, and docile as wax in the hands of those who show it. They are the easiest class in the world to impress. The difficulty is to make the impression permanent. But the people who pretend to you that kindness does not greatly affect, persuade and help convince them HAVE NEVER TRIED ANYTHING BUT BRUTALITY, and never will; for nothing greater, wiser or better is in them.
I will now indicate the other phases through which his mind passed in —— Jail.
Being shown that his crimes were virtually the cause of Mary's hapless life and untimely death, and hard pressed by his father confessor, he fell into religious despondency; believed his case desperate, and his sins too many for Heaven's mercy.
Of all states of mind this was the one Mr. Eden most dreaded. He had observed that the notion that they cannot be reconciled to God and man is the cause of prisoners' recklessness, and one great means by which jail officers and society, England A.D. 185—, confirm them in ill.
He soothed and cheered the poor fellow with many a hopeful message from the gospel of mercy and soon drew him out of the Slough of Despond; but he drew him out with so eager an arm that up went this impressionable personage from despond to the fifth heaven. He was penitent, forgiven, justified, sanctified, all in three weeks. Moreover, he now fell into a certain foul habit. Of course Scripture formed a portion of his daily reading and discourse with the chaplain. Robinson had a memory that seized and kept everything like a vise, so now a text occurred to him for every occasion, and he interwove them with all his talk. Your shallow observers would have said, “What a hypocrite!”
Not a hypocrite, oh Criticaster, but a chameleon! who had been months out of the atmosphere of vice and in an atmosphere of religion.
His reverence broke him of this nasty habit of chattering Bible, and generally cooled him down. Finally he became sober, penitent for his past life, and firmly resolved to lead a better. With this began to mingle ambition to rise very high in the world, and a violent impatience to begin.
Through all these phases ran one excellent and saving thing, a genuine attachment to his good friend the chaplain. The attachment was reciprocal, and there was something touching in the friendship of two men so different in mind and worldly station. But they had suffered together. And indeed a much more depraved prisoner than Robinson would have loved such a benefactor and brother as Eden; and many a scoundrel in this place did love him as well as he could love anything; and as to the other, the clew to him is simple. While the vulgar self-deceiving moralist loathes the detected criminal, and never (whatever he may think) really rises to abhorrence of crime, the saint makes two steps upward toward the mind of Heaven itself, abhors crime, and loves, pities, and will not despair of the criminal.
But besides this Robinson was an engaging fellow, full of thought and full of facts, and the Rev. Francis Tender-Conscience often spent an extra five minutes in his cell and then reproached himself for letting the more interesting personage rob other depressed and thirsty souls of those drops of dew.
One day Mr. Eden, who had just entered the cell, said to Robinson, “Give me your hand. It is as I feared, your nerves are going.”
“Are they?” said Robinson ruefully.
“Do you not observe that you are becoming tremulous?”
“I notice that when my door is opened suddenly it makes me shake a little and twitches come in my thigh.”
“I feared as much. It is not every man that can bear separate confinement for twelve months. You cannot.”
“I shall have to, whether I can or not.”
“Will you?”
Three days after this Mr. Eden came into his cell and said with a sad smile, “I have good news for you; you are going to leave me.
“Oh, your reverence! is that good news?”
“Those who have the disposal of you are beginning to see that all punishment (except hanging) is for the welfare of the culprit, and must never be allowed to injure him. Strutt left the prison for my house a fortnight ago, and you are to cross the water next week.”
“Oh, your reverence! Heaven forgive me for feeling glad.”
“For being human, eh, my poor fellow?”
In the course of this conversation Mr. Eden frankly regretted that Robinson was going so soon. “Four months more prison would have made you safer, and I would have kept you here till the last minute of your sentence for the good of your soul,” said he grimly; “but your body and nerves might have suffered,” added he tenderly; “we must do all for the best.”
A light burst on Robinson. “Why, your reverence,” cried he, “is it for fear? Why you don't ever think that I shall turn rogue again after I get out of prison?”
“You are going among a thousand temptations.”
“What! do you really think all your kindness has been wasted on me? Why, sir, if a thousand pounds lay there I would not stretch out my hand to take one that did not belong to me. How ungrateful you must think me, and what a fool into the bargain after all my experience!”
“Ungrateful you are not, but you are naturally a fool—a weak, flexible fool. A man with a tenth of your gifts would lead you by the nose into temptation. But I warn you if you fall now conscience will prick you as it never yet has; you will be miserable, and yet though miserable perhaps will never rise again, for remorse is not penitence.”
Robinson was so hurt at this want of confidence that he said nothing in reply, and then Mr. Eden felt sorry he had said so much, “for, after all,” thought he, “these are mere misgivings; by uttering them I only pain him. I can't make him share them. Let me think what I can do.”
That very day he wrote to Susan Merton. The letter contained the following: “Thomas Robinson goes to Australia next week. He will get a ticket-of-leave almost immediately on landing. I am in great anxiety; he is full of good resolves, but his nature is unstable, yet I should not fear to trust him anywhere if I could but choose his associates. In this difficulty I have thought of George Fielding. You know I can read characters, and though you never summed George up to me, his sayings and doings reveal him to me. He is a man in whom honesty is engrained. Poor Robinson with such a companion would be as honest as the day, and a useful friend, for he is full of resources. Then, dear friend, will you do a Christian act and come to our aid. I want you to write a note to Mr. Fielding and let this poor fellow take it to him. Armed with this my convert will not be shy of approaching the honest man, and the exile will not hate me for this trick—will he? I send you inclosed the poor clever fool's life written by himself and printed by my girls. Read it and tell me are we wrong in making every effort to save such a man?” etc.
By return of post came a reply from Susan Merton, full of pity for Robinson and affectionate zeal to co-operate in any way with her friend. Inclosed was a letter addressed to George Fielding, the envelope not closed. Mr. Eden slipped in a banknote and a very small envelope and closed it, placed it in a larger envelope, sealed that and copied the first address on its cover.
He now gave Robinson more of his time than ever and seemed to cling to him with almost a motherly apprehension. Robinson noticed it and felt it very, very much, and his joy at getting out of prison oozed away more and more as the day drew near.
That day came at last. Robinson was taken by Evans to the chaplain's room to bid him farewell. He found him walking about the room in deep thought. “Robinson, when you are thousands of miles from me bear this in mind, that if you fall again you will break my heart.”
“I know it, sir; I know it; for you would say, 'If I could not save him who can I hope to?'”
“You would not like to break my heart—to discourage your friend and brother in the good work, the difficult work?”
“I would rather die; if it is to be so I pray Heaven to strike me dead in this room while I am fit to die!”
“Don't say that; live to repair your crimes and to make me prouder of you than a mother of her first-born.” He paused and walked the room in silence. Presently he stopped in front of Robinson. “You have often said you owed me something.”
“My life and my soul's salvation,” was the instant reply.
“I ask a return; square the account with me.”
“That I can never do.”
“You can! I will take two favors in return for all you say I have done for you. No idle words—but yes or no upon your honor. Will you grant them or won't you?”
“I will, upon my honor.”
“One is that you will pray very often, not only morning and evening, but at sunset, at that dangerous hour to you when evil association begins; at that hour honest men retire out of sight and rogues come abroad like vermin and wild beasts; but most of all at any hour of the day or night a temptation comes near you, at that moment pray! Don't wait to see how strong the temptation is, and whether you can't conquer it without help from above. At the sight of an enemy put on heavenly armor—pray! No need to kneel or to go apart. Two words secretly cast heavenward, 'Lord, help me,' are prayer. Will you so pray?”
“Yes!”
“Then give me your hand; here is a plain gold ring to recall this sacred promise; put it on, wear it, and look at it, and never lose it or forget your promise.”
“Them that take it must cut my hand off with it.”
“Enough, it is a promise. My second request is that the moment you are free you will go and stay with an honest man.”
“I ask no better, sir, if he will have me.”
“George Fielding; he has a farm near Bathurst.”
“George Fielding, sir? He affronted me when I was in trouble. It was no more than I deserved. I forgive him; but you don't know the lad, sir. He would not speak to me; he would not look at me. He would turn his back on me if we ran against one another in a wilderness.”
“Here is a talisman that will insure you a welcome from him—a letter from the woman he loves. Come, yes or no?”
“I will, sir, for your sake, not for theirs. Sir, do pray give me something harder to do for you than these two things!”
“No, I won't overweight you—nor encumber your memory with pledges—these two and no more. And here we part. See what it is to sin against society. I, whom your conversation has so interested, to whom your company is so agreeable—in one word, I, who love you, can find no kinder word to say to you to-day than this—let me never see your face again—let me never hear your name in this world!”
His voice trembled as he said these words—and he wrung Robinson's hand, and Robinson groaned and turned away.
“So now I can do no more for you—I must leave the rest to God.” And with these words, for the second time in their acquaintance, the good soul kneeled down and prayed aloud for this man. And this time he prayed at length with ardor and tenderness unspeakable. He prayed as for a brother on the brink of a precipice. He wrestled with Heaven; and ere he concluded he heard a subdued sound near him, and it was poor Robinson, who, touched and penetrated by such angelic love, and awestruck to hear a good man pour out his very soul at the mercy-seat of Heaven, had crept timidly to his side and knelt there, bearing his mute part in this fervent supplication.
As Mr. Eden rose from his knees Evans knocked gently at the door. He had been waiting some minutes, but had heard the voice of prayer and reverently forbore to interrupt it. At his knock the priest and the thief started. The priest suddenly held out both his hands; the thief bowed his head and kissed them many times, and on this they parted hastily with swelling hearts and not another word—except the thousands that their moist eyes exchanged in one single look—the last.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE ship was to sail in a week, and meantime Robinson was in the hulks at Portsmouth. Now the hulks are a disgrace to Europe, and a most incongruous appendage to a system that professes to cure by separate confinement. One or two of the worst convicts made the usual overtures of evil companionship to Robinson. These were coldly declined; and it was a good sign that Robinson, being permitted by the regulations to write one letter, did not write to any of his old pals in London or elsewhere, but to Mr. Eden. He told him that he regretted his quiet cell where his ears were never invaded with blasphemy and indecency, things he never took pleasure in even at his worst—and missed his reverence's talk sadly. He concluded by asking for some good books by way of antidote.
He received no answer while at Portsmouth, but the vessel having sailed and lying two days off Plymouth, his name was called just before she weighed again and a thick letter handed to him. He opened it eagerly and two things fell on deck—a sovereign and a tract. The sovereign rolled off and made for the sea. Robinson darted after it and saved it from the deep and the surrounding rogues. Then he read a letter which was also in the inclosure. It was short. In it Mr. Eden told him he had sent him the last tract printed in the prison. “It is called 'The Wages of Sin are Death.' It is not the same one you made into cards; that being out of print and the author dead I have been tempted by that good, true title to write another. I think you will value it none the less for being written by me and printed by our brothers and sisters in this place. I inclose one pound that you may not be tempted for want of a shilling.”
Robinson looked round for the tract; it was not to be seen; nobody had seen it. N. B. It had been through a dozen light-fingered hands already and was now being laughed at and blasphemed over by two filthy ruffians behind a barrel on the lower deck. Robinson was first in a fury and then, when he found it was really stolen from him, he was very much cut up. “I wish I had lifted it and let the money roll.” However, thought he, “if I keep quiet I shall hear of it.”
He did hear of it, but he never saw it; for one of these hardened creatures that had got hold of it had a spite against Robinson for refusing his proffered amity, and the malicious dog, after keeping it several hours, hearing Robinson threaten to inform against whoever had taken it, made himself safe and gratified his spite by flinging it into the Channel.
This, too, came in due course to Robinson's ears. He moralized on it. “I made the first into the devil's books,” said he, “and now a child of the devil has robbed me of the second. I shan't get a third chance. I would give my sovereign and more to see what his reverence says about 'The wages of sin are death.' The very title is a sermon. I pray Heaven the dirty hand that robbed me of it may rot off at the—no! I forgot. Bless and curse not!”
And now Robinson was confined for five months in a wooden prison with the scum of our jails. No cell to take refuge in from evil society. And in that wretched five months this perpetual contact with criminals, many of them all but incurable, took the gloss off him. His good resolutions were unshaken, but his repugnance to evil associates became gradually worn away.
At last they landed at Sydney. They were employed for about a fortnight in some government works, a mile from the town; and at the end of that time he was picked out by a gentleman who wanted a servant.
Robinson's work was to call him not too early, to clean his boots, go on errands into the town, and be always in the way till five o'clock. From that hour until about two in the morning Mr. Miles devoted to amusement, returning with his latch key, and often rousing the night owl and his servant with a bacchanalian or Anacreontic melody. In short, Mr. Miles was a loose fish; a bachelor who had recently inherited the fortune of an old screw his uncle, and was spending thrift in all the traditional modes. Horses, dogs, women, cards, etc.
He was a good-natured creature, and one morning as he brought him up his hot water and his soda-water Robinson ventured on a friendly remonstrance.
Mr. Miles flung canting rogue and half a dozen oaths and one boot at his head, and was preparing to add a tumbler, when his mentor whipped into the lobby. Robinson could not have fallen to a worse master than this, whose irregularities were so regular that his servant had always seven hours to spend in the town as he pleased. There he was often solicited to join in depredations on property. For he found half his old acquaintances were collected by the magic of the law on this spot of earth.
Robinson took a particular pride in telling these gentlemen that he had no objection to taking a friendly glass with them and talking over old times, but that as for taking what did not belong to him all that was over forever. In short, he improved on Mr. Eden's instructions. Instead of flying from temptation, like a coward conscious of weakness, he nobly faced it and walked cool, collected and safe on the edge of danger.
One good result of this was that he spent his wages every month faster than he got them, and spent the clothes his master gave him, and these were worth more than his wages, for Mr. Miles was going the pace—wore nothing after the gloss was off it. But Robinson had never lived out of prison at less than five hundred per annum, and the evening is a good time in the day for spending money in a town, and his evenings were all his own.
One evening a young tradeswoman with whom he was flirting in the character of a merchant's clerk, tremendously busy, who could only get out in the evening; this young woman, whom he had often solicited to go to the theater, consented.
“I could go with you to-morrow, my sister and I,” said she.
Robinson expressed his delight, but consulting his pockets found he had not the means of paying for their seats, and he could not pawn any clothes, for he had but two sets. One (yellowish) that government compelled him to wear by daylight, and one a present from his master (black). That, together with a mustache, admitted him into the bosom of society at night. What was to be done? Propose to the ladies to pay, that was quite without precedent. Ask his master for an advance, impossible. His master was gone kangaroo hunting for three days. Borrow some of his master's clothes and pawn them, that was too like theft. He would pawn his ring, it would only be for a day or two, and he would not spend a farthing more till he had got it back.
He pawned Mr. Eden's ring; it just paid for their places at the theater, where they saw the living puppets of the colony mop and mow and rant under the title of acting. This was so interesting that Robinson was thinking of his ring the whole time, and how to get it back. The girls agreed between themselves they had never enjoyed so dull a cavalier.
The next day a line from Mr. Miles to say that he should not be back for a week. No hope of funds from him. So Robinson pawned his black coat and got back his ring; and as the trousers and waistcoat were no use now, he pawned them for pocket-money, which soon dissolved.
Mr. Robinson now was out of spirits.
“Service is not the thing for me. I am of an active turn—I want to go into business that will occupy me all day long—business that requires some head. Even his reverence, the first man in the country, acknowledged my talents—and what is the vent for them here? The blacking-bottle.”
CHAPTER XLV.
IN a low public outside the town—in a back room—with their arms on the table and their low foreheads nearly touching, sat whispering two men—types. One had the deep-sunk, colorless eyes, the protruding cheek-bones, the shapeless mouth, and the broad chin good in itself but bad in the above connection; the other had the vulpine chin, and the fiendish eyebrows descending on the very nose in two sharp arches. Both had the restless eye, both the short-cropped hair, society's comment, congruous and auxiliary, though in itself faint by the side of habit's seal and Nature's.
A small north window dimly lighted the gloomy, uncouth cabin, and revealed the sole furniture—four chairs, too heavy to lift, too thick to break, and a table discolored with the stains of a thousand filthy debauches and dotted here and there with the fresh ashes of pipes and cigars.
In this appropriate frame behold two felons putting their heads together. By each felon's side smoked in a glass hot with heat and hotter with alcohol, the enemy of man. It would be difficult to give their dialogue, for they spoke in thieves' Latin. The substance was this: They had scent of a booty in a house that stood by itself three miles out of the town. But the servants were incorruptible, and they could not get access to inspect the premises, which were intricate. Now your professional burglar will no more venture upon unexplored premises than a good seaman will run into an unknown channel without pilot, soundings or chart. It appeared from the dialogue that the two men were acquainted with a party who knew these premises, having been more than once inside them with his master.
The more rugged one objected to this party. “He is no use, he has turned soft. I have heard him refuse a dozen good plants the last month. Besides, I don't want a canting son of a gun for my pal—ten to one if he don't turn tail and perhaps split.”
N. B.—All this not in English, but in thieve's cant, with an oath or a nasty expression at every third word. The sentences measled with them.
“You don't know how to take him,” replied he of the Mephistopheles eye-brow. “He won't refuse me.”
“Why not?”
“He is an old pal of mine, and I never found the thing I could not persuade him to. He does not know how to say me nay—you may bully him and queer him till all is blue, and he won't budge, and that is the lay you have been upon with him. Now I shall pull a long face—make up a story—take him by his soft bit—tell him I can't get on without him, and patter old lang syne to him. Then we'll get a fiddle and lots of whisky; and when we have had a reel and he has shaken his foot on the floor and drank a gill or two, you will see him thaw, and then you leave him to me and don't put in your jaw to spoil it. If we get him it will be all right—he is No. 1; his little finger has seen more than both our carcasses put together.”
CHAPTER XLVI.
FOUR days after this, mephistopheles with a small m and brutus with a little b sat again in the filthy little cabin where men hatch burglaries—but this time the conference wore an air of expectant triumph.
“Didn't I tell you?”
“You didn't do it easy.”
“No, I had almost to go on my knees to him.”
“He isn't worth so much trouble.”
“He is worth it ten times over. Look at this,” and the speaker produced a plan of the premises they were plotting against. “Could you have done this?”
“I don't say I could.”
“Could any man you know have done it? See here is every room and every door and window and passage put down, and what sort of keys and bolts and fastenings to each.”
“How came he to know so much; he never was in the house but twice.”
“A top-sawyer like him looks at everything with an eye to business. If he was in a church he'd twig the candlesticks and the fastenings, while the rest were mooning into the parson's face—he can't help it.”
“Well, he may be a top-sawyer, but I don't like him. See how loth he was, and, when he did agree, how he turned to and drank as if he would drown his pluck before it could come to anything.”
“Wait till you see him work. He will shake all that nonsense to blazes when he finds himself out under the moon with the swag on one side and the gallows on the other.”
To go back a little. Mr. Miles did not return at the appointed day; and Robinson, who had no work to do, and could not amuse himself without money, pawned Mr. Eden's ring. He felt ashamed and sorrowful, but not so much so as the first time.
This evening, as he was strolling moodily through the suburbs, a voice hailed him in tones of the utmost cordiality. He looked up and there was an old pal, with whom he had been associated in many a merry bout and pleasant felony; he had not seen the man for two years; a friendly glass was offered and accepted. Two girls were of the party, to oblige whom Robinson's old acquaintance sent for Blind Bill, the fiddler, and soon Robinson was dancing and shouting with the girls like mad—“High cut,” “side cut,” “heel and toe,” “sailor's fling,” and the double shuffle.
He did not leave till three in the morning, and after a promise to meet the same little party again next evening—to dance and drink and drive away dull care.
CHAPTER XLVII.
ON a certain evening some days later, the two men whose faces were definitions sat on a bench outside that little public in the suburbs—one at the end of a clay-pipe, the other behind a pewter mug. It was dusk.
“He ought to be here soon,” said the one into whose forehead holes seemed dug and little bits of some vitreous substance left at the bottom. “Well, mate,” cried he harshly, “what do you want that you stick to us so tight?” This was addressed to a peddler who had been standing opposite showing the contents of his box with a silent eloquence. Now this very asperity made the portable shopman say to himself, “wants me out of the way—perhaps buy me out.” So he stuck where he was, and exhibited his wares.
“We don't want your gim-cracks,” said mephistopheles quietly.
The man eyed his customers and did not despair. “But, gents,” said he, “I have got other things besides gim-cracks; something that will suit you if you can read.”
“Of course we can read,” replied sunken-eyes haughtily; and in fact they had been too often in jail to escape this accomplishment.
The peddler looked furtively in every direction; and after this precaution pressed a spring and brought a small drawer out from the bottom of his pack. The two rogues winked at one another. Out of the drawer the peddler whipped a sealed packet.
“What is it?” asked mephistopheles, beginning to take an interest.
“Just imported from England,” said the peddler, a certain pomp mingling with his furtive and mysterious manner.
“—— England,” was the other's patriotic reply.
“And translated from the French.”
“That is better! but what is it?”
“Them that buy it—they will see!”
“Something flash?”
“Rather, I should say.”
“Is there plenty about the women in it?”
The trader answered obliquely.
“What are we obliged to keep it dark for?”—the other put in, “Why of course there is.”
“Well!” said sunken-eyes affecting carelessness. “What do you want for it? Got sixpence, Bill?”
“I sold the last to a gentleman for three-and-sixpence. But as this is the last I've got—say half a crown.”
Sunken-eyes swore at the peddler.
“What! half a crown for a book no thicker than a quire of paper?”
“Only half a crown for a thing I could be put in prison for selling. Is not my risk to be paid as well as my leaves?”
This logic went home, and after a little higgling two shillings was offered and accepted, but in the very act of commerce the trader seemed to have a misgiving.
“I daren't do it unless you promise faithfully never to tell you had it of me. I have got a character to lose, and I would not have it known—not for the world, that James Walker had sold such loose—licentious—”
“Oh! what it is very spicy, is it? Come, hand it over. There's the two bob.”
“My poverty and not my will consents,” sighed the trader.
“There, you be off, or we shall have all the brats coming round us.”
The peddler complied and moved off, and so willing was he to oblige his customers that on turning the corner he shouldered his pack and ran with great agility down the street, till he gained a network of small alleys in which he wriggled and left no trace.
Meantime sunken-eyes had put his tongue to the envelope and drawn out the contents. “I'll go into the light and see what it is all about.”
mephistopheles left alone had hardly given his pipe two sucks ere brutus returned black with rage and spouting oaths like a whale.
“Why, what is the matter?”
“Matter! Didn't he sell this to me for a flash story?”
“Why he didn't say so. But certainly he dropped a word about loose books.”
“Of course he did.”
“Well! and ain't they?”
“Ain't they!” cried the other with fury. “Here, you young shaver, bring the candle out here. Ain't they? No they ain't——and——and——the —— ——. Look here!”
mephisto. “'Mend your Ways,' a tract.”
brutus. “I'll break his head instead.”
mephisto. “'Narrative of Mr. James the Missionary.'”
brutus. “The cheating, undermining rip.”
mephisto. “And here is another to the same tune.”
brutus. “Didn't I tell you so. The hypocritical, humbugging rascal—”
mephisto. “Stop a bit. Here is a little one: 'Memoirs of a Gentleman's Housekeeper.'”
brutus. “Oh! is there? I did not see that.”
mephisto. “You are so hasty. The case mayn't be so black as it looks. The others might be thrown in to make up the parcel. Hold the candle nearer.
brutus. “Ay! let us see about the housekeeper.”
The two men read “The Housekeeper” eagerly, but as they read the momentary excitement of hope died out of their faces. Not a sparkle of the ore they sought; all was dross. “The Housekeeper” was one of those who make pickles, not eat them—and in a linen apron a yard wide save their master's money from the fangs of cook and footman, not help him scatter it in a satin gown.
There was not even a stray hint or an indelicate expression for the poor fellow's two shillings. The fraud, was complete. It was not like the ground coffee, pepper and mustard in a London shop—in which there is as often as not a pinch of real coffee, mustard and pepper to a pound of chicory and bullock's blood, of red lead, dirt, flour and turmeric. Here the do was pure.
Then brutus relieved his swelling heart by a string of observations partly rhetorical, partly zoological. He devoted to horrible plagues every square inch of the peddler, enumerating more particularly those interior organs that subserve vitality, and concluded by vowing solemnly to put a knife into him the first fair opportunity. “I'll teach the rogue to—” Sell you medicine for poison, eh?
mephistopheles, either because he was a more philosophic spirit or was not the one out of pocket, took the blow more coolly. “It is a bite and no mistake. But what of it? Our money,” said he, with a touch of sadness, “goes as it comes. This is only two bob flung in the dirt. We should not have invested them in the Three per Cents; and to-night's swag will make it up.”
He then got a fresh wafer and sealed the pamphlets up again. “There,” said he, you keep dark and sell the first flat you come across the same way the varmint sold you.
brutus, sickened at heart by the peddler's iniquity, revived at the prospect of selling some fellow-creature as he had been sold. He put the paper-trap in his pocket; and, cheated of obscenity, consoled himself with brandy such as Bacchus would not own, but Beelzebub would brew for man if permitted to keep an earthly distillery.
Presently they were joined by the third man, and for two hours the three heads might all have been covered by one bushel-basket, and peddler Walker's heartless fraud was forgotten in business of a higher order.
At last mephistopheles gave brutus a signal, and they rose to interrupt the potations of the newcomer, who was pouring down fire and hot water in rather a reckless way.
“We won't all go together,” said mephistopheles. “You two meet me at Jonathan's ken in an hour.”
As brutus and the newcomer walked along an idea came to brutus. “Here is a fellow that passes for a sharp. What if I sell him my pamphlets and get a laugh at his expense. Mate,” said he, “here is a flash book all sealed up. What will you give me for it?”
“Well! I don't much care for that sort of reading, old fellow.”
“But this is cheap. I got it a bargain. Come—a shilling won't hurt you for it. See there is more than one under the cover.”
Now the other had been drinking till he was in that state in which a good-natured fellow's mind if decomposed would be found to be all “Yes,” and “Dine with me to-morrow,” so he fell into the trap.
“I'll give it you, my boy,” said he. “Let us see it? There are more than one inside it. You're an honest fellow. Owe you a shilling.” And the sealed parcel went into his pocket. Then, seeing brutus look rather rueful at this way of doing business, he hiccoughed out, “Stop your bob out of the swag”—and chuckled.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
A SNOW-WHITE suburban villa standing alone with its satellites that occupied five times as much space as itself; coach-house, stable, offices, greenhouse clinging to it like dew to a lily, and hot-house farther in the rear. A wall of considerable height inclosed the whole. It booked as secure and peaceful as innocent in the fleeting light the young moon cast on it every time the passing clouds left her clear a moment. Yet at this calm thoughtful hour crime was waiting to invade this pretty little place.
Under the scullery-window lurked brutus and mephistopheles—faces blackened, tools in hand—ready to whip out a pane of said window and so penetrate the kitchen, and from the kitchen the pantry, where they made sure of a few spoons, and up the back stairs to the plate-chest. They would be in the house even now but a circumstance delayed them—a light was burning on the second floor. Now it was contrary to their creed to enter a house where a light was burning, above all, if there was the least chance of that light being in a sitting-room. Now they had been some hours watching the house and that light had been there all the time, therefore, argued mephistopheles, “It is not a farthing glim in a bedroom or we should have seen it lighted. It is some one up. We must wait till they roost.”
They waited and waited and waited. Still the light burned. They cursed the light. No wonder. Light seems the natural enemy of evil deeds.
They began to get bitter, and their bodies cold. Even burglary becomes a bore when you have to wait too long idle out in the cold.
At last, at about half past two, the light went out. Then, keenly listening, the two sons of darkness heard a movement in the house, and more than one door open and shut, and then the sound of feet going rapidly down the road toward Sydney.
“Why! it is a party only just broke up. Lucky I would not work till the glim was out.”
“But I say, Bill—he is at that corner—the nobs must have passed close to him—suppose they saw him.”
“He is not so green as let them see him.”
The next question was how long they should wait to let the inmates close their peepers. All had been still and dark more than half an hour when the pair began to work, mephisto took out a large piece of putty and dabbed it on the middle of the pane; this putty he worked in the center up to a pyramid; this he held with his left hand, while with his right be took out his glazier's diamond and cut the pane all round the edges. By the hold the putty gave him, he prevented the pane from falling inside the house and making a noise, and finally whipped it out clean and handed it to brutus. A moment more the two men were in the scullery, thence into the kitchen through a door which they found open; in the kitchen were two doors—trying one they found it open into a larder. Here casting the light of his dark lantern round, brutus discovered some cold fowl and a ham; they took these into the kitchen, and somewhat coolly took out their knives and ate a hasty but hearty supper. Their way of hacking the ham was as lawless as all the rest. They then took off their shoes and dropped them outside the scullery window, and now the serious part of the game began. Creeping like cats, they reached the pantry, and sure enough found more than a dozen silver spoons and forks of different sizes that had been recently used. These they put into a small bag, and mephisto went back through the scullery into the back garden and hid these spoons in a bush. “Then, if we should be interrupted, we can come back for them.”
And now the game became more serious and more nervous—the pair drew their clasp knives and placed them in their bosoms ready in case of extremity; then creeping like cats, one foot at a time and then a pause, ascended the back stairs, at the top of which was a door. But this door was not fastened, and in another moment they passed through it and were on the first landing. The plan, correct in every particular, indicated the plate closet to their right. A gleam from the lantern showed it; the key-hole was old-fashioned as also described, and in a moment brutus had it open. Then mephisto whipped out a green baize bag with compartments, and in a minute these adroit hands had stowed away cups, tureens, baskets, soup-spoons, etc., to the value of three hundred pounds, and scarce a chink heard during the whole operation. It was done; a look passed as much as to say this is enough, and they crept back silent and cat-like as they had come, brutus leading with the bag. Now just as he had his hand on the door through which they had come up—snick! click!—a door was locked somewhere down below.
brutus looked round and put the bag gently down. “Where?” he whispered.
“Near the kitchen,” was the reply scarce audible. “Sounded to me to come from the hall,” whispered the other.
Both men changed color, but retained their presence of mind and their cunning. brutus stepped back to the plate-closet, put the bag in it, and closed it, but without locking it. “Stay there,” whispered he, “and if I whistle—run out the back way empty-handed. If I mew—out with the bag and come out by the front door; nothing but inside bolts to it, plan says.”
They listened a moment, there was no fresh sound. Then brutus slipped down the front stairs in no time; he found the front door not bolted; he did not quite understand that, and drawing a short bludgeon, he opened it very cautiously; the caution was not superfluous. Two gentlemen made a dash at him from the outside the moment the door was open; one of their heads cracked like a broken bottle under the blow the ready ruffian struck him with his bludgeon, and he dropped like a shot; but another was coming flying across the lawn with a drawn cutlass, and brutus, finding himself overmatched, gave one loud whistle and flew across the hall, making for the kitchen. Flew he never so fast mephisto was there an instant before him. As for the gentleman at the door he was encumbered with his hurt companion, who fell across his knees as he rushed at the burglar. brutus got a start of some seconds and dashed furiously into the kitchen and flew to the only door between them and the scullery-window.
THE DOOR WAS LOCKED.
The burglar's eyes gleamed in their deep caverns, “Back, Will—and cut through them,” he cried—and out flashed his long bright knife.