Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  At home things grew worse. To return at half-past five, and find the children still undressed, screaming, hungry, and dirty, was a matter of habit: to get them food, to wash them, to tend the cuts and bumps sustained through the day of neglect, before lighting a fire and getting tea for himself, were matters of daily duty. “Ah,” he said to his sister, who came at intervals to say plain things about Mrs. Jennings, “you shouldn’t go for to set a man agin ‘is wife, Jin. Melier do’n’ like work, I know, but that’s nach’ral to ‘er. She ought to married a swell ‘stead o’ me; she might ‘a’ done easy if she liked, bein’ sich a fine gal; but she’s good-’arted, is Melier; an’ she can’t ‘elp bein’ a bit thoughtless.” Whereat his sister called him a fool (it was her customary good-by at such times), and took herself off.

  Bob Jennings’s intelligence was sufficient for his common needs, but it was never a vast intelligence. Now, under a daily burden of dull misery, it clouded and stooped. The base wit of the workshop he comprehended less, and realized more slowly, than before; and the gaffer cursed him for a sleepy dolt.

  Mrs. Jennings ceased from any pretence of housewifery, and would sometimes sit — perchance not quite sober — while Bob washed the children in the evening, opening her mouth only to express her contempt for him and his establishment, and to make him understand that she was sick of both. Once, exasperated by his quietness, she struck at him; and for a moment he was another man. “Don’t do that, Melier,” he said, “else I might forget myself.” His manner surprised his wife: and it was such that she never did do that again.

  So was Bob Jennings: without a friend in the world, except his sister, who chid him, and the children, who squalled at him: when his wife vanished with the lodger, the clock, a shade of wax flowers, Bob’s best boots (which fitted the lodger), and his silver watch. Bob had returned, as usual, to the dirt and the children, and it was only when he struck a light that he found the clock was gone. “Mummy tooked ve t’ock,” said Milly, the eldest child, who had followed him in from the door, and now gravely observed his movements. “She tooked ve t’ock an’ went ta-ta. An’ she tooked ve fyowers.”

  Bob lit the paraffin lamp with the green glass reservoir, and carried it and its evil smell about the house. Some things had been turned over and others had gone, plainly. All Melier’s clothes were gone. The lodger was not in, and under his bedroom window, where his box had stood, there was naught but an oblong patch of conspicuously clean wall-paper. In a muddle of doubt and perplexity, Bob found himself at the front door, staring up and down the street. Divers women-neighbors stood at their doors, and eyed him curiously; for Mrs. Webster, moralist, opposite, had not watched the day’s proceedings (nor those of many other days) for nothing, nor had she kept her story to herself.

  He turned back into the house, a vague notion of what had befallen percolating feebly through his bewilderment. “I dunno — I dunno,” he faltered, rubbing his ear. His mouth was dry, and he moved his lips uneasily, as he gazed with aimless looks about the walls and ceiling. Presently his eyes rested on the child, and “Milly,” he said decisively, “come an’ ‘ave yer face washed.”

  He put the children to bed early, and went out. In the morning, when his sister came, because she had heard the news in common with everybody else, he had not returned. Bob Jennings had never lost more than two quarters in his life, but he was not seen at the workshop all this day. His sister stayed in the house, and in the evening, at his regular homing-time, he appeared, haggard and dusty, and began his preparations for washing the children. When he was made to understand that they had been already attended to, he looked doubtful and troubled for a moment. Presently he said: “I ain’t found ‘er yet, Jin; I was in ‘opes she might ‘a’ bin back by this. I — I don’t expect she’ll be very long. She was alwis a bit larky, was Melier; but very good-’arted.”

  His sister had prepared a strenuous lecture on the theme of “I told you so”; but the man was so broken, so meek, and so plainly unhinged in his faculties, that she suppressed it. Instead she gave him comfortable talk, and made him promise in the end to sleep that night, and take up his customary work in the morning.

  He did these things, and could have worked placidly enough had he been alone; but the tale had reached the workshop, and there was no lack of brutish chaff to disorder him. This the decenter men would have no part in, and even protested against. But the ill-conditioned kept their way, till, at the cry of “Bell O!” when all were starting for dinner, one of the worst shouted the cruellest gibe of all. Bob Jennings turned on him and knocked him over a scrapheap.

  A shout went up from the hurrying workmen, with a chorus of “Serve ye right,” and the fallen joker found himself awkwardly confronted by the shop bruiser. But Bob had turned to a corner, and buried his eyes in the bend of his arm, while his shoulders heaved and shook.

  He slunk away home, and stayed there: walking restlessly to and fro, and often peeping down the street from the window. When, at twilight, his sister came again, he had become almost cheerful, and said with some briskness, “I’m a-goin’ to meet ‘er, Jin, at seven. I know where she’ll be waitin’.”

  He went upstairs, and after a little while came down again in his best black coat, carefully smoothing a tall hat of obsolete shape with his pocket-handkerchief. “I ain’t wore it for years,” he said. “I ought to ‘a’ wore it — it might ‘a’ pleased ‘er. She used to say she wouldn’t walk with me in no other — when I used to meet ‘er in the evenin’, at seven o’clock.” He brushed assiduously, and put the hat on. “I’d better ‘ave a shave round the corner as I go along,” he added, fingering his stubbly chin.

  He received as one not comprehending his sister’s persuasion to remain at home; but when he went she followed at a little distance. After his penny shave he made for the main road, where company-keeping couples walked up and down all evening. He stopped at a church, and began pacing slowly to and fro before it, eagerly looking out each way as he went.

  His sister watched him for nearly half an hour, and then went home. In two hours more she came back with her husband. Bob was still there, walking to and fro.

  “‘Ullo, Bob,” said his brother-in-law; “come along ‘ome an’ get to bed, there’s a good chap. You’ll be awright in the mornin’.”

  “She ain’t turned up,” Bob complained, “or else I’ve missed ‘er. This is the reg’lar place — where I alwis used to meet ‘er. But she’ll come to-morrer. She used to leave me in the lurch sometimes, bein’ nach’rally larky. But very good-’arted, mindjer; very good-’arted.”

  She did not come the next evening, nor the next, nor the evening after, nor the one after that. But Bob Jennings, howbeit depressed and anxious, was always confident. “Somethink’s prevented ‘er to-night,” he would say, “but she’ll come to-morrer.... I’ll buy a blue tie to-morrer — she used to like me in a blue tie. I won’t miss ‘er to-morrer. I’ll come a little earlier.”

  So it went. The black coat grew ragged in the service, and hobbledehoys, finding him safe sport, smashed the tall hat over his eyes time after time. He wept over the hat, and straightened it as best he might. Was she coming? Night after night, and night and night. But to-morrow....

  A CONVERSION.

  There are some poor criminals that never have a chance: circumstances are against them from the first, as they explain, with tears, to sympathetic mission-readers. Circumstances had always been against Scuddy Lond, the gun. The word gun, it may be explained, is a friendly synonym for thief.

  His first name was properly James, but that had been long forgotten. “Scuddy” meant nothing in particular, was derived from nothing, and was not, apparently, the invention of any distinct person. Still, it was commonly his only name, and most of his acquaintances had also nicknames of similarly vague origin. Scuddy was a man of fine feelings, capable of a most creditable hour of rapturous misery after hearing, perhaps at a sing-song, “Put Me in my Little Bed,” or any other ditty that was rank enough in sentiment: wheref
ore the mission-readers never really despaired of him. He was a small, shabby man of twenty-six, but looking younger; with a runaway chin, a sharp yellow face, and tremulously sly eyes; with but faint traces of hair on his face, he had a great deal of it, straight and ragged and dirty, on his head.

  Scuddy Lond’s misfortunes began early. Temptation had prevailed against him when he was at school, but that was nothing. He became errand boy in a grocer’s shop, and complications with the till brought him, a howling penitent, to the police court. Here, while his mother hid her head in the waiting-room, he set forth the villainy of older boys who had prompted him to sin, and got away with no worse than a lecture on the evils of bad company. So that a philanthropist found him a better situation at a distance, where the evil influence could no longer move him. Here he stayed a good while — longer than some who had been there before him, but who had to leave because of vanishing postal orders. Nevertheless, the postal orders still went, and in the end he confessed to another magistrate, and fervently promised to lead a better life if his false start were only forgiven. Betting, he protested, was this time the author of his fall; and as that pernicious institution was clearly to blame for the unhappy young man’s ruin, the lamenting magistrate let him off with a simple month in consideration of his misfortune and the intercession of his employer, who had never heard of the grocer and his till.

  After his month Scuddy went regularly into business as a lob-crawler: that is to say, he returned to his first love, the till: not narrowly to any individual till, but broad-mindedly to the till as a general institution, to be approached in unattended shops by stealthy grovelling on the belly. This he did until he perceived the greater security and comfort of waiting without while a small boy did the actual work within. From this, and with this, he ventured on peter-claiming: laying hands nonchalantly on unconsidered parcels and bags at railway stations, until a day when, bearing a fat portmanteau, he ran against its owner by the door of a refreshment bar. This time the responsibility lay with Drink. Strong Drink, he declared, with deep emotion, had been his ruin; he dated his downfall from the day when a false friend persuaded him to take a Social Glass; he would still have been an honest, upright, self-respecting young man but for the Cursed Drink. From that moment he would never touch it more. The case was met with three months with hard labor, and for all that Scuddy Lond had so clearly pointed out the culpability of Drink, he had to do the drag himself. But the mission-readers were comforted: for clearly there was hope for one whose eyes were so fully opened to the causes of his degradation.

  After the drag, Scuddy for long made a comfortable living, free from injurious overwork, in the several branches of lob-crawling and peter-claiming, with an occasional deviation into parlor-jumping. It is true that this last did sometimes involve unpleasant exertion when the window was high and the boy heavy to bunk up; and it was necessary, at times, to run. But Scuddy was out of work, and hunger drove him to anything, so long as it was light and not too risky. And it is marvellous to reflect how much may be picked up in the streets and at the side-doors of London and the suburbs without danger or vulgar violence. And so Scuddy’s life went on, with occasional misfortunes in the way of a moon, or another drag, or perhaps a sixer. And the mission-readers never despaired, because the real cause was always hunger, or thirst, or betting, or a sudden temptation, or something quite exceptional — never anything like real, hardened, unblushing wickedness; and the man himself was always truly penitent. He made such touching references to his innocent childhood, and was so grateful for good advice or anything else you might give him.

  One bold attempt Scuddy made to realize his desire for better things. He resolved to depart from his evil ways and to become a nark — a copper’s nark — which is a police spy, or informer. The work was not hard, there was no imprisonment, and he would make amends for the past. But hardly had he begun his narking when some of the Kate Street mob dropped on him in Brick Lane, and bashed him full sore. This would never do: so once more implacable circumstance drove him to his old courses. And there was this added discomfort: that no boy would parlor-jump nor dip the lob for him. Indeed they bawled aloud, “Yah, Scuddy Lond the copper’s nark!” So that the hand of all Flower and Dean Street was against him. Scuddy grew very sad.

  These and other matters were heavy upon his heart on an evening when, with nothing in his pockets but the piece of coal that he carried for luck, he turned aimlessly up Baker’s Row. Things were very bad: it was as though the whole world knew him — and watched. Shopkeepers stood frowningly at their doors. People sat defiantly on piles of luggage at the railway stations, and there was never a peter to touch for. All the areas were empty, and there were no side-doors left unguarded, where, failing the more desirable wedge, one might claim a pair or two of daisies put out for cleaning. All the hundred trifling things that commonly come freely to hand in a mile or two of streets were somehow swept out of the world’s economy; and Scuddy tramped into Baker’s Row in melting mood. Why were things so hard for some and so easy for others? It was not as though he were to blame — he, a man of feeling and sentiment. Why were others living comfortable lives unvexed of any dread of the police? And apart from that, why did other gonophs get lucky touches for half a century of quids at a time, while he!... But there: the world was one brutal oppression, and he was its most pitiable victim; and he slunk along, dank with the pathos of things.

  At a corner a group was standing about a woman, whose voice was uplifted to a man’s accompaniment on a stand-accordion. Scuddy listened. She sang, with a harsh tremble: —

  “An’ sang a song of ‘ome, sweet ‘ome,

  The song that reached my ‘art.

  ‘Ome, ‘ome, sweet, sweet ‘ome,

  She sang the song of ‘ome, sweet ‘ome,

  The song that reached my ‘art.”

  Here, indeed, was something in tune with Scuddy’s fine feelings. He looked up. From the darkening sky the evening star winked through the smoke from a factory chimney. From anear came an exquisite scent of saveloys. Plaintive influences all. He tried to think of ‘ome himself — of ‘ome strictly in the abstract, so that it might reach his ‘art. He stood for some minutes torpid and mindless, oozing with sentiment: till the song ended, and he went on. Fine feelings — fine.

  He crossed the road, and took a turning. A lame old woman sat in a recess selling trotters, where a dark passage led back to a mission-hall. About the opening a man hovered — fervent, watchful — and darted forth on passers-by. He laid his hand on Scuddy’s shoulder, and said: “My dear friend, will you come in an’ ‘ear the word of the Lord Jesus Christ?”

  Scuddy turned: the sound of an harmonium and many strenuous voices came faintly down the passage. It was his mood. Why not give his fine feelings another little run? He would: he would go in.

  “Trotters!” quavered the lame old woman, looking up wistfully. “Two a penny! Two a penny!” But no: he went up the passage, and she turned patiently to her board.

  Along the passage the singing grew louder, and burst on his ears unchecked as he pushed open the door at the end: —

  “‘Oosoever will, ‘oosoever will,

  Send the proclamation over vale an’ ‘ill;

  ’Tis a lovin’ Father calls the wand’rer ‘ome,

  ‘Oosoever will may come!”

  A man by the door knew him at once for a stranger, and found him a seat. The hymn went quavering to an end, and the preacher in charge, a small, bright-eyed man with rebellious hair and a surprisingly deep voice, announced that Brother Spyers would offer a prayer.

  The man prayed with his every faculty. He was a sturdy, red-necked artisan, great of hand and wiry of beard: a smith, perhaps, or a bricklayer. He spread his arms wide, and, his head thrown back, brought forth, with passion and pain, his fervid, disordered sentences. As he went on, his throat swelled and convulsed in desperate knots, and the sweat hung thick on his face. He called for grace, that every unsaved soul there might come to the fold and believe that n
ight. Or if not all, then some — even a few. That at least one, only one, poor soul might be plucked as a brand from the burning. And as he flung together, with clumsy travail, his endless, formless, unconsidered vehemences of uttermost Cockney, the man stood transfigured, admirable.

  From here and there came deep amens. Then more, with gasps, groans, and sobs. Scuddy Lond, carried away luxuriously on a tide of grievous sensation, groaned with the others. The prayer ended in a chorus of ejaculations. Then there was a hymn. Somebody stuffed an open hymn-book into Scuddy’s hand, but he scarce saw it. Abandoning himself to the mesmeric influence of the many who were singing about him, he plunged and revelled in a debauch of emotion. He heard, he even joined in; but understood nothing, for his feelings filled him to overflowing.

  “I ‘ave a robe: ’tis resplendent in w’iteness,

  Awaitin’ in glory my wonderin’ view:

  Oh, w’en I receive it, all shinin’ in brightness,

  Dear friend, could I see you receivin’ one too!

  For you I am prayin’! For you I am prayin’!

  For you I am prayin’, I’m prayin’ for you.”

  The hymn ceased; all sat down, and the preacher began his discourse: quietly at first, and then, though in a different way, with all the choking fervor of the man who had prayed. For the preacher was fluent as well as zealous, and his words, except when emotion stayed them, poured in a torrent. He preached faith — salvation in faith — declaiming, beseeching, commanding. “Come — come! Now is the appointed time! Only believe — only come! Only — only come!” To impassioned, broken entreaty he added sudden command and the menace of eternity, but broke away pitifully again in urgent pleadings, pantings, gasps; pointing above, spreading his arms abroad, stretching them forth imploringly. Come, only come!