The beating heart

The wind howled miserably round the great London station and pierced the thin, worn clothing of Jim Thorn and Bill Smith as they loitered, hands in pockets, near the mouth of one of the draughty passages.

It was a bitter January evening and neither inside them nor outside them had the men anything to keep them warm.

“It ain’t no sort of use, Bill,” remarked Jim, drearily, after a long silence during which both men had been gazing across the wide space filled with moving figures to where the refreshment buffet threw out its warm and cheery glow speaking of the tempting delights within. “We shan’t get a job here to-night. There’s too many reg’lar porters about.” He was a thin, spare man, with a long white face in which shone two grey eyes of a kindly expression. Once a good gardener, ill-health and ill-luck had brought him to evil days.

“Go on with yer! Who came here after a job?” snarled the other, in every way a contrast to his companion: thick-set and heavy, bull-necked, long-lipped and cruel-eyed. “It’s pinching we’re after and I’ll get something to-night or I’m not Bill Smith.” Lie finished his sentence with an oath. The other made no reply, only sank into a still more slouching position against the wall. The crowd of passengers before them had swelled. There were many coming out from the ticket office following well-filled trucks of luggage. It was not long now to the departure of a favorite express into Kent. Jim Thorn’s gaze drifted about the throng until it lighted on a girl’s figure, one of a newly-arrived party, and there it remained. His eyes followed her about with interest, not because he thought she had anything to “pinch,” but because, in his own instinctive, uneducated way, he loved all pretty things. She was a very pretty young lady in her plain dark clothes and her heavy furs, with a slim tall figure and golden curly hair peeping out from underneath her small black velvet hat. Jim looked at her with pleasure. He quite forgot about the hot coffee he had been dreaming of in watching her dainty movements.

It did not occur to him to envy her furs or her warm clothing, nor to be wrathful with her that she had them, and he had not. His mind was not of the Socialist order. He no more expected her to give him her cloak than he expected himself to give his coat to one who had only waistcoat and trousers. Her cloak was hers and his coat was his, and could he have explained his mental attitude in words, he would have told you that he was jolly glad that the same law and order that enabled the lady to keep her cloak, also gave him the right to keep his coat and not have it torn off his back by one poorer than he. Although the companion of a thief, he was by nature a respecter of property.

Suddenly he felt a great grab on his arm, and Bill bent his large red face close to him.

“Look there!” he whispered excitedly. “The very thing I was looking for. See that party?”

Jim, following with his gaze Bill’s outstretched finger, saw to his dismay that it indicated the very young girl he had been so admiring.

“See that little case she has?” pursued his companion in his thick, beery accents. “Mark my words, that a jool case!” His mouth was close to Jim’s ear now. “P’raps dimonds, maybe pearls.” He let fly these imposing words like darts into Jim’s ear.

Jim straightened up and strained his eyes to see what the girl was carrying. It certainly did look most inviting. A little square, rather deep case of some dark wood, clamped carefully on all sides with metal, and with a handle on the top through which the dainty hand of its owner was passed. It looked as if pearls or diamonds might be lying on cotton wool inside, and yet the sentimental Jim felt he did not want that young lady robbed.

“It’s a bit small,” he ventured lamely, in a discouraging tone.

The burly one gave a contemptuous grunt. “Much good you’d be at the game without me,” he answered. “Haven’t you never heard wot’s good comes in small parcels? Don’t you know that small and valuable, easy to sell and light to carry should be the pinchers’ motto? I’m onto that there jool casket, if I dies for it.”

“But you don’t know what’s in it,” argued Jim. “Maybe it’s just a purse with not much in, an’ a ticket, an’ a hanky.”

The other sniffed scornfully, his gaze glued on the girl’s hand as he answered:

“You just watch, as I do, an’ don’t talk so much. I’ve watched and watched that girl till I knows wot’s in that casket as well as I knows wot’s in my pocket. ’Ow do I know? Well, because she’s that careful of it. She looks down at that little box every half-minute and just now, when she set it down for a second and the porter comes by, up she snatches it again and holds it to her, and w’en just now someone wanted to take it off her while she fastened her jacket, she shakes her head and clings on all the time.”

“It’ll take some doing to get it,” replied Jim, with intensifying gloom.

“I can manage it,” returned Bill, swelling out his chest. “You’ll see. I’ll always take trouble for jools, and jools they is. Girls don’t go on like that about anything else.”

“P’raps it’s her young man’s picture,” suggested the sentimental Jim in a last hope of changing his companion’s intention, though the little square box with its clamp did not suggest a portrait-case.

The light from where the men stood was not very good and the dark case sank indistinguishably into the shadow of the girl’s dress. Bill could not see to his satisfaction what shape and look it really had but the girl’s intense solicitude for it carried complete conviction to his mind which was unable to imagine anything being of value except what could be turned into cash.

The conversation came to an end as the crowd of passengers moved toward the barrier. It was time for action and the two thieves mingled with the stream of hurrying humanity and pressed closely up behind the party to which the girl with the jewel-case belonged. She was certainly very careful of it. She held it tightly and firmly to her so that it could not be caught or brushed out of her grasp by any jostling or hustling movement and she constantly glanced down on it as if to assure herself of its safety. The train had not come up and the throng swayed back again, Bill and Jim moving naturally with it, but always quite close to the girl. They were, though thinly and poorly dressed, not ragged, or in their aspect in any way likely to attract attention. Bill, especially, had adapted for the occasion quite a traveling appearance and had a light overcoat on one arm. True it was only a bit of an overcoat, but when skilfully draped on the arm, looked quite well and might have its uses. Their quarry now approached the book-stall to the delight of Bill, but though the girl stopped to look with interest at the books and papers and even purchased one of the latter, she never once set down the little box. The train was now due and the passengers thickly bunched near the barrier to the platform. Once through the barrier the girl would be, as Jim put it to himself, “safe,” for he really did not want to see that box filched from her slender hand, and as Bill put it to himself, “lorst.” He felt desperate and was just inwardly cursing his luck when luck itself favoured him. The girl was standing chatting to the older persons of her group, presumably her parents, when a young man, leading a fat terrier, hurriedly joined the throng round the gates. Bill’s eye fell on the dog, and he instantly moved to the side of the girl farthest from the young man. With a movement of his hand he attracted the dog’s attention, and next moment the chain was wound round the girl’s ankles. The dog-owner pulled at the chain, but to free herself she had to take it from his hand, and to do so, for one moment, she set the box down beside her. In the second, while she stooped over the dog, Bill’s great hand dropped on the box. It was lifted and under his hanging coat, and he and Jim sifted themselves out of the press of passengers now swaying to the gates which had just been opened. Calmly, quietly, with blank faces, Jim and Bill crossed the station to the exit, hearing in their rear a sort of confused clamour which told them the owner of the box had discovered her loss.

No one stopped them, no one looked at them. They slipped through the wind-swept passage, and in a few seconds were out in the street; still without apparent haste, but at a good pace, they turned down a side alley and made a short cut for “home.” As they turned down one silent, dark street, Bill, swelling with satisfaction, opened out on his companion.

“Now you see wot it is. But for me you’d never have got this necklace, or tiary, whichever it is, an’ we might have stayed grubbin’ at ’ome all winter. Now we’ll have a trip abroad for it won’t do to try and sell ’em here. It ain’t safe for pearls and dimonds.”

“We don’t know yet that they is pearls and dimonds,” objected Jim.

“There you go. You haven’t the brain to imagine anything,” returned Bill loftily. “And what do you think a young lady would be carrying—herself—personally, mind, when she had a strappin’ maid walking behind her with a dressing-case a yard square. Maybe you’d have gone for that dressing-case,” he added, with a crushing sneer. “That’s the ordinary brain all over. Sees what’s just ahead an’ no more; goes for the gilt-topped bottles and lets the tiarys go. Now p’raps when we’ve sold the jools and are getting a fling on the Continnong you’ll be grateful you’ve got such a partner and you won’t be so narsty about it.”

It was a bitter night; sleeting now and with scurries of icy wind and snow. In the sky a moon was struggling up amongst thick black clouds, the streets and alleys through which they passed were slippery, wet and dark. Arrived at a dingy building with a gaping open doorway, they groped their way up an unlighted stone staircase and reached their “pitch” at the top in safety. Bill marched in first with the air of a conqueror, and Jim followed, bolting the door after him. There was a little light from the remains of a smouldering fire in the grate.

Jim stirred it into a blaze and fed it with some split-up egg-boxes, and Bill turned on the gas and lighted it.

“That’s my job,” he said, setting down the little dark case on the table, “and a neat bit of work I calls it, and that dawg helped wonderful.”

Jim regarded it mournfully. Odd though it may seem this strange waif of humanity was not thinking of the rich contents; he was wondering what the poor young lady was feeling at having lost it.

The light revealed a curious den in which these two lived. A folding bed of ancient date with one side sagging to the floor, in the corner. A capacious cupboard in the wall through the half-open door of which strange and various articles were protruding, a table in the centre with scattered tin cups and plates and battered tin teapot on it and on the window ledge a cracked flower-pot with a primrose-root growing in it—Jim’s.

“Now, then,” said Bill, “let’s have a look.” He took up the box and turned it round. “Why, blimey, it hasn’t a lock,” he exclaimed, rather blankly. “That don’t look like jools—only a bit of a catch like this, and two ’oles each side. Wot the ’Ell’s that for?”

With fingers beginning to tremble, he forced up the brass catch and then tore open the lid, and then both men who had been bending forward over their treasure, collapsed suddenly speechless, on the two chairs, and sat opposite to each other staring across the table, for there within the box was no necklace of rare pearls reposing on velvet cushions, but a neat little nest of hay, from the centre of which looked out with enquiring eyes—two white mice!

Very dainty silk-like coats of the purest white on which the gas-light gleamed, tiny pink paws of the palest shell-like pink, little white ears delicate as a butterfly’s wing and large eyes like glowing rubies. Gentle and not dreaming that anyone could hurt them, they looked up at the staring faces of the men over them, unafraid, and began polishing their noses with their tiny paws.

Bill recovered from the shock first. With a foul oath, he sprang to his feet and made a grab at the box, but Jim was too quick for him. With one of his agile movements that made him such an invaluable thief, he snatched away the box before Bill’s heavy hand reached it, snapped down its lid and held it firmly in both hands against his chest.

“Wot yer goin’ to do with it?” he asked.

For a full ten seconds, Bill swore all the best oaths he knew.

“Do with it?” he roared at the finish. “Throw it on the fire and see those vermin burn alive—you just give it me!”

Jim turned pale and clutched the box tighter.

“Now, Bill, you’d never do such a thing,” he urged anxiously. “They’s done you no harm and it’s crool to burn them; no good’d come of it, besides the lidy was fond of ’em, you saw that yourself, and maybe there’ll be a reward. Here’s a name and address on the box.”

This was sound sense, but Bill was blind and deaf with fury. No oaths nor mere words could suffice to vent his rage. Some horrible violence and cruelty alone could do that. He made a lunge across the rickety table, but Jim avoided him and backed against the wall. He was pale, but his eyes shone with an indomitable light. A frail, small man with a poor physique and little health or strength but there was a spirit in him that had often stood up to and conquered the big bully before. He saw now this might be a fight to the death, but he just felt he didn’t care. He would be crushed to a pulp first before Bill got hold of the box and burned those two little innocent things inside. His blood was up and on its tide had risen that wonderful determination that can make one weak man equal to ten strong ones. Bill was round the table in an instant and let fly at him a blow from his ponderous fist which he meant to stretch him senseless, but Jim dodged and it only caught the corner of his eye and his lean arm seemed locked like steel across the box on his chest and Bill wrenched at it in vain.

Does some great current of electricity come into being with that mental fixity of purpose and lend a determined combatant a strength altogether beyond his own?

It seemed so to Jim. He seemed full of some living force as he dodged round the table and chairs and over the bed and Bill came floundering after him, cursing and sending his blows wide of the mark. At last Jim found himself close to the door and with a monkey’s quickness shot back the bolt and fell through the opening door. Bill grabbed him by the neck, but Jim wriggled so furiously that both men fell in a heap on the top stair and then rolled to the bottom. As they bumped onto the last step, Bill’s hands sank from the other’s neck and while Jim scrambled to his feet he lay inert and crumpled on the lowest stair.

Jim, breathless, his thin clothing torn and one eye closed, but still gripping the box to his body, ran out into the street and to the nearest lamp-post. There under the wavering light he read the address on the casket-lid:

MISS TORRINGTON
Hailstone Hall
Sevenoaks, Kent.

All the time Bill had been chasing him round the attic a resolution had been forming in his mind. If he escaped with his life he would take the box and its little inmates back to the young “lidy.”

For years past in his low degraded existence this man’s soul had vaguely yearned after goodness, as a plant in a dark cellar strains with its colourless leaves towards its native light, but there was little opportunity in his life overshadowed by Bill for anything but crime. He hated Bill but he couldn’t get away from him. He had not the strength of mind to say good-bye to the daring pal who kept the attic supplied with bread and beer and knew exactly how to utilise in his petty thievings the sharp agility of Jim. But now to-night was the end of it all. Bill was down and out and the way lay clear to a good action, and standing there in the biting cold with his bleeding eye and bruised body, he thrilled through and through with joy. He had done something already. He had foiled his companion’s brutal intention, he had saved the animals, and now if he could restore the “lidy’s” property to her safe and sound he felt he would be content no matter what happened to himself. Possibly the thought of a reward struggled for life at the back of his mind, but it was not the prompting motive, and there was a risk of being turned over to the law and to prison on returning the property, which far out-balanced the possible reward. To have kept on the right side of his partner and destroyed the stolen goods, as a business proposition, was far better, but the thought of the lady’s pleasure and the joy of the little creatures that had looked out so confidingly at him, attracted him just as the primrose blossoms pleased his eyes when they bloomed in the Spring on his window ledge.

Sevenoaks! Not so far away—a matter of twenty-four mile. He had tramped it before in the hop-picking season; he could tramp it again. It was a freezing night, but the moon was getting up, and if he had luck he would be there in the morning. He raised the lid of the casket and looked in to see if his treasures were still safe. Yes, there they lay close side by side, like tiny snowballs tucked down in the hay which had protected them through all the scuffling with Bill and the roll down the stairs.

Jim carefully snapped to the lid and put the box under his arm for shelter against the searching wind. Then aching and shaky in body but dauntless in mind he set out for his tramp to Sevenoaks. When the city and its pitiless streets were left behind him and he had once reached the open country road he felt happier. Here there were no police to pass with a quaking heart as they sternly eyed his blood-stained face and torn coat. He stepped out more strongly as the night wind of the countryside blew in his face. It was cold but not so damp and cruel as London’s breath. He looked over the hedge-tops across the wide meadows with the shadowy form of sleeping cattle; he looked at the trees arching over him and the tracery of their shadows on his path, at the sky with the moon riding high in it through bands of scurrying clouds, and he felt he loved it all. Wonderful indeed, as the Latin poet sang, is the joy of the mind conscious of its own right doing, and wonderful also is the dominion of man’s mind over his body. Jim, the poor, penniless tramp, hungry and empty and aching, footsore, weary and cold, marched on full of the greatest joy of his life because his mind told him he was doing right. Many doubts and fears beset him and much anxious questioning as to his reception and his fate but nothing could quell that springing sense of joy in his heart as mile after mile fell behind him. When the first red light of morning lit up the sky, it shewed a forlorn and limping figure with a drawn and haggard face, but with a proud, glad light in its one uninjured eye.

The great gates of Hailstone Hall looked imposing enough, shut tight in frosty splendour of twisted ironwork, but they were not locked and Jim pushed them open with an unfaltering hand. The drive winding between the velvet green of tall evergreen trees and with gleaming bands of sparkling frost on each side, lay before him silent and solitary save for the birds hopping across it, and Jim walked straight up the middle of it and found himself with a beating heart on the steps before the big front door. No slinking round by the back door for him with that proud consciousness of right in his breast. He wanted no delays and parleys with impeding and inquisitive servants. He felt weak and his strength failing; with the last bit of it he wanted to put the box himself straight into the lady’s hand, and then what became of him did not seem to matter at all.

The door opened in response to his modest ring and a young footman looked out at him with blank astonishment.

“Please can I see Miss Torrington,” said Jim. “I’ve something for her which she wants very particular.”

He had thought this sentence out with care, and it certainly showed ingenuity in its suggestion of the lady’s desire to see him.

The door was not slammed in his face as he feared it might be. The young footman held it, still staring at him in silence. As he said afterwards in the servants’ hall, “I was that surprised at his cheek coming to the front door in his condition I couldn’t say nothing.”

At that moment the butler chanced to cross the hall and seeing the open door and the intruder on the steps, approached. A tall, portly man the butler, who would have made about four of Jim. As he came up the frail one clutched still harder the box against his bony ribs. “Good Lord, if she should drop upon me, I’m done,” was the thought that dashed through his brain. Nothing of the kind happened, however.

“My good man,” said the butler benevolently, “what is it you want?”

Jim repeated his fine phrase, but stammering a little as his weakness gained on him.

“Very good,” replied the butler blandly, “Give me what you have and I will give it to Miss Torrington.”

Jim’s heart thumped, and the hall seemed moving round him, but he stuck to his purpose.

“Twenty-four miles,” he stammered with blue lips. “Give it ’er myself.”

The butler looked him over. He was a man of some brains, or perhaps he would not have been butler to Miss Torrington on a comfortable salary. He met the clear determined gaze of Jim’s one unclosed eye and read perhaps something in it that made him sign to Jim to enter and the footman to close the door. Then he said: “If you wait here I will enquire if Miss Torrington wishes to see you.”

Jim stood still as a post just inside the door and erect, though everything was getting uncertain round him, and the footman lounged watching him.

Though a thief by profession and accustomed to be so styled and considered, a feeling of amusement stirred in Jim that the man should mount guard over him here.

“As if I’d steal a thing off ’er,” passed through him, and somehow this new feeling of pride and self-respect he had been indulging in was so delightful he thought he would never steal another thing as long as he lived.

Jim did not know how long he waited, but it seemed a world of time, and then a swift, light step came down the stairs and the young lady herself came across the hall towards him. There she was, slim, dark-clothed form and golden hair and slender hand.

“Oh, you’ve found my box!” she exclaimed in a sweet, soft voice. “Oh, good man! Are they alive and all right?”

Jim stood speechless; the last of his powers seemed deserting him. His voice died in his throat. With both trembling hands he pushed out the precious casket into her eager grasp.

Then all went dark and he fell in a crumpled heap on the whiteness of the marble flooring.

Bill is now in quod doing seven years for a burglary with violence, but Jim is third gardener at Hailstone Hall, has a sunny room all to himself, and a whole row of primroses on his window sill.