Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  “There it is, mum,” he said, “an’ there’s your bonnet an’ shawl in the corner. There’s nothing else o’ yours in the place, I believe, so there’s no need for you to go out o’ my sight till you go out of it altogether. That you’d better do quick. I’ll lay the dinner myself.”

  Mrs. Grimes swept up the money and began fixing her bonnet on her head and tying the strings under her chin, with savage jerks and a great play of elbow; her lips screwing nervously, and her eyes blazing with spite.

  “Ho yus!” she broke out — though her rage was choking her — as she snatched her shawl. “Ho yus! A nice pusson, Cap’en Nat Kemp, to talk about honesty an’ gratefulness — a nice pusson! A nice teacher for young master ‘opeful, I must say, an’ ‘opin’ ‘e’ll do ye credit! It ain’t the last you’ll see o’ me, Captain Nat Kemp!...Get out o’ my way, you old lickspittle!”

  Mr. Cripps got out of it with something like a bound, and Mrs. Grimes was gone with a flounce and a slam of the door.

  Scold as she was, and furious as she was, I was conscious that something in my grandfather’s scowl had kept her speech within bounds, and shortened her clamour; for few cared to face Captain Nat’s anger. But with the slam of the door the scowl broke, and he laughed.

  “Come,” he said, “that’s well over, an’ I owe you a turn, Mr. Cripps, though you weren’t intending it. Stop an’ have a bit of dinner. And if you’d like something on account to buy the board for the sign — or say two boards if you like — we’ll see about it after dinner.”

  It will be perceived that Grandfather Nat had no reason to regret the keeping of his cash-box key on his watchguard. For had it been with the rest, in Mrs. Grimes’s hands, she need never have troubled to smuggle out the box among the ashes, since the pocket-book was no such awkward article, and would have gone in her pocket. Mrs. Grimes had taken her best chance and failed. The disorders caused by the inquests had left her unobserved, the keys were in her hands, and the cash-box was left in the cupboard upstairs; but the sedulous Mr. Cripps had been her destruction.

  As for that artist, he attained his dinner, and a few shillings under the name of advance; and so was well pleased with his morning’s work.

  XIV. — STEPHEN’S TALE

  A POLICEMAN brought my grandfather a bill, which was stuck against the bar window with gelatines; and just such another bill was posted on the wall at the head of Hole-in-the-Wall Stairs, above the smaller bills that advertised the found bodies. This new bill was six times the size of those below; it was headed “Murder” in grim black capitals, and it set forth an offer of fifty pounds reward for information which should lead to the apprehension of the murderer of Robert Kipps.

  The offer gave Grandfather Nat occasion for much solemn banter of Mr. Cripps: banter which seemed to cause Mr. Cripps a curious uneasiness, and time and again stopped his eloquence in full flood. He had been at the pains to cut from newspapers such reports of the inquest as were printed; and though they sadly disappointed him by their brevity, and all but two personally affronted him by disregarding his evidence and himself altogether, still he made great play with the exceptional two, in the bar. But he was quick to drop the subject when Captain Nat urged him in pursuit of the reward.

  “Come,” my grandfather would say, “you’re neglecting your fortune, you know. There’s fifty pound waitin’ for you to pick up, if you’d only go an’ collar that murderer. An’ you’d know him anywhere.” Whereupon Mr. Cripps would look a little frightened, and subside.

  I did not learn till later how the little painter’s vanity had pushed him over bounds at the inquest, so far that he committed himself to an absolute recognition of the murderer. The fact alarmed him not a little, on his return to calmness, and my grandfather, who understood his indiscretion as well as himself, and enjoyed its consequences, in his own grim way, amused himself at one vacant moment and another by setting Mr. Cripps’s alarm astir again.

  “You’re throwing away your luck,” he would say, perhaps, “seein’ you know him so well by sight. If you’re too well-off to bother about fifty pound, give some of us poor ‘uns a run for it, an’ put us on to him. I wish I’d been able to see him so clear.” For in truth Grandfather Nat well knew that nobody had had so near a chance of seeing the murderer’s face as himself; and that Mr. Cripps, at the top of the passage — perhaps even round the corner — had no chance at all.

  It was because of Mr. Cripps’s indiscretion, in fact — this I learned later still — that the police were put off the track of the real criminal. For after due reflection on the direful complications whereinto his lapse promised to fling him, that distinguished witness, as I have already hinted, fell into a sad funk. So, though he needs must hold to the tale that he knew the man by sight, and could recognise him again, he resolved that come what might, he would identify nobody, and so keep clear of further entanglements. Now the police suspicions fell shrewdly on Dan Ogle, a notorious ruffian of the neighbourhood. He had been much in company of the murdered man of late, and now was suddenly gone from his accustomed haunts. Moreover, there was the plain agitation of the woman he consorted with, Musky Mag, at the inquest: she had fainted, indeed, when Mr. Cripps had been so positive about identifying the murderer. These things were nothing of evidence, it was true; for that they must depend on the witness who saw the fellow’s face, knew him by sight, and could identify him. But when they came to this witness with their inquiries and suggestions the thing went overboard at a breath. Was the assassin a tall man? Not at all — rather short, in fact. Was he a heavy-framed, bony fellow? On the contrary, he was fat rather than bony. Did Mr. Cripps ever happen to have seen a man called Dan Ogle, and was this man at all like him? Mr. Cripps had been familiar with Dan Ogle’s appearance from his youth up (this was true, for the painter’s acquaintance was wide and diverse) but the man who killed Bob Kipps was as unlike him as it was possible for any creature on two legs to be. Then, would Mr. Cripps, if the thing came to trial, swear that the man he saw was not Dan Ogle? Mr. Cripps was most fervently and desperately ready and anxious to swear that it was not, and could not by any possibility be Dan Ogle, or anybody like him.

  This brought the police inquiries to a halt: even had their suspicions been stronger and better supported, it would have been useless to arrest Dan Ogle, supposing they could find him; for this, the sole possible witness to identity, would swear him innocent. So they turned their inquiries to fresh quarters, looking among the waterside population across the river — since it was plain that the murderer had rowed over — for recent immigrants from Wapping. For a little while Mr. Cripps was vexed and disquieted with invitations to go with a plainclothes policeman and “take a quiet look” at some doubtful characters; but of course with no result, beyond the welcome one of an occasional free drink ordered as an excuse for waiting at bars and tavern-corners; and in time these attentions ceased, for the police were reduced to waiting for evidence to turn up; and Mr. Cripps breathed freely once more. While Dan Ogle remained undisturbed, and justice was balked for a while; for it turned out in the end that when the police suspected Dan Ogle they were right, and when they went to other conjectures they were wrong.

  All this was ahead of my knowledge at the moment, however, as, indeed, it is somewhat ahead of my story; and for the while I did not more than wonder to see Mr. Cripps abashed at an encouragement to earn fifty pounds; for he seemed not a penny richer than before, and still impetrated odd coppers on account of the sign-board of promise.

  Once or twice we saw Mr. Viney, and on each occasion he borrowed money off Grandfather Nat. The police were about the house a good deal at this time, because of the murder, or I think he might have come oftener. The first time he came I heard him telling my grandfather that he had got hold of Blind George, that Blind George had told him a good deal about the missing money, and that with his help he hoped for a chance of saving some of it. He added, mysteriously, that it had been “nearer hereabouts than you might think, at one time”; a piece of news that
my grandfather received with a proper appearance of surprise. But was it safe to confide in Blind George? Viney swore for an answer, and said that the rascal had stipulated for such a handsome share that it would pay him to play square.

  On the last of these visits I again overheard some scraps of their talk, and this time it was angrier. I judged that Viney wanted more money than my grandfather was disposed to give him. They were together in the back room where the boxes and bottles were — the room into which I had seen Bill Stagg’s head and shoulders thrust by way of the trap-door. My grandfather’s voice was low, and from time to time he seemed to be begging Viney to lower his; so that I wondered to find Grandfather Nat so mild, since in the bar he never twice told a man to lower his voice, but if once were not enough, flung him into the street. And withal Viney paid no heed, but talked as he would, so that I could catch his phrases again and again.

  “Let them hush as is afraid — I ain’t,” he said. And again: “O, am I? Not me...It’s little enough for me, if it does; not the rope, anyway.” And later, “Yes, the rope, Cap’en Kemp, as you know well enough; the rope at Newgate Gaol...Dan Webb, aboard o’ the Florence...The Florence that was piled up on the Little Dingoes in broad day...As you was ordered o’ course, but that don’t matter...That’s what I want now, an’ no less. Think it lucky I offer to pay back when I get — ...Well, be sensible — ...I’m friendly enough...Very well.”

  Presently my grandfather, blacker than common about brow and eyes, but a shade paler in the cheek, came into the bar-parlour and opened the trade cash-box — not the one that Mrs. Grimes had hidden among the cinders, but a smaller one used for gold and silver. He counted out a number of sovereigns — twenty, I believe — put the box away, and returned to the back room. And in a few minutes, with little more talk, Mr. Viney was gone.

  Grandfather Nat came into the bar-parlour again, and his face cleared when he saw me, as it always would, no matter how he had been ruffled. He stood looking in my face for a while, but with the expression of one whose mind is engaged elsewhere. Then he rubbed his hand on my head, and said abstractedly, and rather to himself, I fancied, than to me: “Never mind, Stevy; we got it back beforehand, forty times over.” A remark that I thought over afterward, in bed, with the reflection that forty times twenty was eight hundred.

  But Mr. Viney’s talk in the back room brought most oddly into my mind, in a way hard to account for, the first question I put to my grandfather after my arrival at the Hole in the Wall: “Did you ever kill a man, Grandfather Nat?”

  XV. — STEPHEN’S TALE

  THE repeated multiplication of twenty by forty sent me to sleep that night, and I woke with that arithmetical exercise still running in my head. A candle was alight in the room — ours was one of several houses in Wapping Wall without gas — and I peeped sleepily over the bed-clothes. Grandfather Nat was sitting with the cash-box on his knees, and the pocket-book open in his hand. He may just have been counting the notes over again, or not; but now he was staring moodily at the photograph that lay with them. Once or twice he turned his eyes aside, and then back again to the picture, as though searching his memory for some old face; then I thought he would toss it away as something valueless; but when his glance fell on the fireless grate he returned the card to its place and locked the box.

  When the cash-box was put away in the little cupboard at his bed-head, he came across and looked down at me. At first I shut my eyes, but peeped. I found him looking on me with a troubled and thoughtful face; so that presently I sat up with a jump and asked him what he was thinking about.

  “Fox’s sleep, Stevy?” he said, with his hand under my chin. “Well, boy, I was thinking about you. I was thinking it’s a good job your father’s coming home soon, Stevy; though I don’t like parting with you.”

  Parting with me? I did not understand. Wouldn’t father be going away again soon?

  “Well, I dunno, Stevy, I dunno. I’ve been thinking a lot just lately, that’s a fact. This place is good enough for me, but it ain’t a good place to bring up a boy like you in; not to make him the man I want you to be, Stevy. Somehow it didn’t strike me that way at first, though it ought to ha’ done. It ought to ha’ done, seein’ it struck strangers — an’ not particular moral strangers at that.”

  He was thinking of Blind George and Mrs. Grimes. Though at the moment I wondered if his talk with Mr. Viney had set him doubting.

  “No, Stevy,” he resumed, “it ain’t giving you a proper chance, keeping you here. You can’t get lavender water out o’ the bilge, an’ this part’s the bilge of all London. I want you to be a better man than me, Stevy.”

  I could not imagine anybody being a better man than Grandfather Nat, and the prospect of leaving him oppressed me dismally. And where was I to go? I remembered the terrible group of aunts at my mother’s funeral, and a shadowy fear that I might be transferred to one of those virtuous females — perhaps to Aunt Martha — put a weight on my heart. “Don’t send me away, Gran’fa Nat!” I pleaded, with something pulling at the corners of my mouth; “I haven’t been a bad boy yet, have I?”

  He caught me up and sat me on his fore-arm, so that my face almost touched his, and I could see my little white reflection in his eyes. “You’re the best boy in England, Stevy,” he said, and kissed me affectionately. “The best boy in the world. An’ I wouldn’t let go o’ you for a minute but for your own good. But see now, Stevy, see; as to goin’ away, now. You’ll have to go to school, my boy, won’t you? An’ the best school we can manage — a gentleman’s school; boardin’ school, you know. Well, that’ll mean goin’ away, won’t it? An’ then it wouldn’t do for you to go to a school like that, not from here, you know — which you’ll understand when you get there, among the others. My boy — my boy an’ your father’s — has got to be as good a gentleman as any of ‘em, an’ not looked down on because o’ comin’ from a Wapping public like this, an’ sent by a rough old chap like me. See?”

  I thought very hard over this view of things, which was difficult to understand. Who should look down on me because of Grandfather Nat, of whom I was so fond and so proud? Grandfather Nat, who had sailed ships all over the world, had seen storms and icebergs and wrecks, and who was treated with so much deference by everybody who came to the Hole in the Wall? Then I thought again of the aunts at the funeral, and remembered how they had tilted their chins at him; and I wondered, with forebodings, if people at a boarding school were like those aunts.

  “So I’ve been thinking, Stevy, I’ve been thinking,” my grandfather went on, after a pause. “Now, there’s the wharf on the Cop. The work’s gettin’ more, and Grimes is gettin’ older. But you don’t know about the wharf. Grimes is the man that manages there for me; he’s Mrs. Grimes’s brother-in-law, an’ when his brother died he recommended the widder to me, an’ that’s how she came: an’ now she’s gone; but that’s neither here nor there. Years ago Grimes himself an’ a boy was enough for all the work there was; now there’s three men reg’lar, an’ work for more. Most o’ the lime comes off the barges there for the new gas-works, an’ more every week. Now there’s business there, an’ a respectable business — too much for Grimes. An’ if your father’ll take on a shore job — an’ it’s a hard life, the sea — here it is. He can have a share — have the lot if he likes — for your sake, Stevy; an’ it’ll build up into a good thing. Grimes’ll be all right — we can always find a job for him. An’ you can go an’ live with your father somewhere respectable an’ convenient; not such a place as Wapping, an’ not such people. An’ you can go to school from there, like any other young gentleman. We’ll see about it when your father comes home.”

  “But shan’t I ever see you, Gran’fa’ Nat?”

  “See me, my boy? Ay, that you will — if you don’t grow too proud — that you will, an’ great times we’ll have, you an’ your father an’ me, all ashore together, in the holidays, won’t we? An’ I’ll take care of your own little fortune — the notes — till you’re old enough to have
it. I’ve been thinking about that, too.” Here he stood me on my bed and playfully pushed me back and forward by the shoulders. “I’ve been thinking about that, an’ if it was lyin’ loose in the street I’d be puzzled clean to say who’d really lost it, what with one thing an’ another. But it ain’t in the street, an’ it’s yours, with no puzzle about it. But there — lie down, Stevy, an’ go to sleep. Your old grandfather’s holdin’ forth worse’n a parson, eh? Comes o’ bein’ a lonely man an’ havin’ nobody to talk to, except myself, till you come. Lie down an’ don’t bother yourself. We must wait till your father comes home. We’ll keep watch for the Juno in the List, — she ought to ha’ been reported at Barbadoes before this. An’ we must run down to Blackwall, too, an’ see if there’s any letters from him. So go to sleep now, Stevy — we’ll settle it all — we’ll settle it all when your father comes home!”

  So I lay and dozed, with words to send me to sleep instead of figures: till they made a tune and seemed to dance to it. “When father comes home: when father comes home: we’ll settle it all, when father comes home!” And presently, in some unaccountable way, Mr. Cripps came into the dance with his “Up to their r’yals, up to their r’yals: the wessels is deep in, up to their r’yals!” and so I fell asleep wholly.

  * * * * *

  In the morning I was astir early, and watching the boats and the shipping from the bedroom window ere my grandfather had ceased his alarming snore. It was half an hour later, and Grandfather Nat was busy with his razor on the upper lip that my cheeks so well remembered, when we heard Joe the potman at the street door. Whereat I took the keys and ran down to let him in; a feat which I accomplished by aid of a pair of steps, much tugging at heavy bolts, and a supreme wrench at the big key.

  Joe brought Lloyd’s List in with him every morning from the early newsagent’s in Cable Street. I took the familiar journal at once, and dived into the midst of its quaint narrow columns, crowded with italics, in hope of news from Barbadoes. For I wished to find for myself, and run upstairs, with a child’s importance, to tell Grandfather Nat. But there was no news from Barbadoes — that is, there was no news of my father’s ship. The name Barbadoes stood boldly enough, with reports below it, of arrivals and sailings, and one of an empty boat washed ashore; but that was all. So I sat where I was, content to wait, and to tell Grandfather Nat presently, offhand from over my paper, like a politician in the bar, that there was no news. Thus, cutting the leaves with a table-knife, my mind on my father’s voyage, it occurred to me that I could not spell La Guaira, the name of the port his ship was last reported from; and I turned the paper to look for it. The name was there, with only one message attached, and while I was slowing conning the letters over the third time, I was suddenly aware of a familiar word beneath — the name of the Juno herself. And this was the notice that I read: