‘What did he say to that?’ asked Keppel, with a kind of awful glee.
‘Why, truly,’ said Jack, ‘I think they gave up argument at that point, and took to calling names. They were hard at it when I came in, and Tobias had a long round ruler in his hand, and Cousin B. was backed up into a corner behind the celestial globe. By the time I had got Tobias away and down the stairs, Cousin B. had recovered his wits to some degree, for he Rings up the library window and bawls out “Miserane …” but he can’t remember the rest, and claps the window to. Tobias as near as dammit breaks the tow in order to dart back and make a reply, but I get him round the corner into Sackville Street: and there, strike me down, is Cousin Brocas again, at the billiard–room window. “Mis …Mis …” he holloes, but it escapes him again, which must have been very vexing, you know, Keppel, for I make no doubt that it was a stunning quotation – and he has to content himself with shaking his fist. Which he does, very hearty, purple in the face. Well, when they had gnashed their teeth at one another for a while – through the glass, you understand – I managed to get him under way again, and brought him fairly into Piccadilly, where he calmed down, sitting on a white doorstep, while I told the people that it was quite all right – only a passing fit. But I do assure you that some of the things he said made my blood run cold. “The House of Lords is an infamous place,” he cries, “and exists to reward toad-eaters and to depress ingenuous merit. I will rise,” he says, very shrill and high, “upon my own worth or not at all.” Now, that is all very well, and Roman and virtuous, but I appeal to you, Keppel, is it sensible language to address to a patron?’
‘No,’ said Keppel, with total conviction, ‘it is not.’
‘And to think,’ said Jack, ‘that I had proposed taking him to the House to present him to your father.’
‘I wish you had,’ said Keppel, writhing in his seat. ‘Oh strike me down, I wish you had. But tell me,’ he added, ‘did you not expect him to blow up all republican?’
‘No,’ cried Jack. ‘I was amazed. Lard, Keppel, I have known him all my life, and have always considered him the meekest creature breathing. I have known him take the most savage treatment from his guardian without ever complaining. Besides, when we were riding to Town I explained the nature of the world to him, and he never jibbed then – said he had always understood that it was tolerably corrupt. Though it is true,’ he said, after a pause for reflection, ‘that he never had much in the way of what you might call natural awe – was always amazingly self-possessed.’
At this moment Tobias’ self-possession was as shrunk and puckered as his shabby old rained-upon black coat, for the boat in which he and Ransome had embarked for the Tower was in the very act of shooting London Bridge. The tide was on the ebb – it was at half-ebb, to be precise – and when Tobias moved his fascinated gaze from the houses which packed the bridge and leant out over the edge in a vertiginous, not to say horrifying manner, he found that the boat was engaged in a current that raced curling towards a narrow arch, and there, to his horror, he saw the silent black water slide with appalling nightmare rapidity downhill into the darkness, while the rower and Ransome sat poised and motionless. He had time to utter no more than the cry “Ark", or “Gark", expressive of unprepared alarm, before they shot out of the fading light of day. A few damp, reverberating seconds passed, and they were restored to it. The rower pulled hard; in a moment they were out of the thundering fall below the bridge; and all around them were vessels of one kind or another, rowing, sculling, paddling and sailing down and across the Thames, or waiting very placidly for the tide in order to go up. All these people seemed perfectly at their ease – in the innumerable masts that lined the river or lay out in the Pool no single man stood on high to warn the populace of the danger, and even as Tobias gazed back in horror he saw another boat shoot the central arch, and another, full of soldiers who shouted and waved their hats, while a woman, leaning out of her kitchen window on the bridge, strewed apple peelings impartially upon the soldiers and the raging flood: apparently this passage was quite usual. But Tobias was unable to repress his emotion entirely, and he said, ‘That is a surprising current, sir. That is a very surprising piece of water, indeed.’
‘I thought you was surprised,’ said Ransome, with a grin; and the waterman closed one eye.
‘I was never so frightened before,’ said Tobias, ‘and I find that my heart is still beating violently.’
‘Why, it’s a question of use,’ said Ransome, wishing that his companion would be a little less candid in public. ‘I dare say you never was in a rip-tide or an overfall?’
‘I have never been in a boat in my life.’
‘Nor ever seen the sea?’
‘Nor yet the Thames, until today.’
‘The gentleman has never set foot in a boat before,’ said Ransome to the waterman, ‘nor ever shot the bridge: so he was surprised.’
‘Never set foot in a boat before?’ exclaimed the waterman, resting on his oars.
‘Not once: not so much as a farden skiff,’ said Ransome, who was a waterman’s son himself, from Frying-pan Stairs in Wapping, and who had been nourished and bred on the water, fresh or salt, since first he drew breath. They stared at Tobias, and eventually the waterman said, ‘Then how do they get about, where he comes from?’
‘They walk,’ said Tobias. ‘It is all dry land.’
‘Well, I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said the waterman, dipping his oars and edging his boat across to the Tower stairs. He would take no further notice of Tobias: considered him a dangerous precedent, and was seen, as they went away, to dust Tobias’ seat over the running water, with particular vehemence.
It was a still evening as they walked into the Tower, and although the day had been tolerably warm, the mist was already forming over the water; two or three hundred thousand coal-fires were alight or lighting, and the smoke, mingling with the mist, promised, as Ransome said, ‘to grow as slab as burgoo’ before long.
They walked briskly in past the spur-guard, past a faded representation of a lion and up to a door with another lion painted above it: a tiny black-haired man with a white face, the under-keeper, was renewing the ghastliness of this lion’s maw with vermilion paint. ‘There is horror, look you,’ he said, putting his head on one side and surveying his work through narrowed eyes. ‘There is gore and alarm, isn’t it?’ He was unwilling to leave his brush; but the prospect of immediate gain will always seduce an artist, and pocketing Ransome’s shilling the under-keeper opened the door.
‘I am infinitely obliged to you, sir,’ said Tobias, when they were outside again and walking down to the river.
‘Haw,’ said Ransome, with a lurch of his head to acknowledge this civility. ‘That’s all right, mate: but I wish you had not a-done it. It makes me feel right poorly, only to think on it,’ he said, leaning against the rail of the Tower stairs and reflecting upon the sight of Tobias in the lions’ den, peering down the throat of an enormous beast that was stated to be ‘a very saucy lion, the same that is eating the young gentlewoman’s arm last Bartholomew Fair.’
‘Up or down, gents?’ cried the waterman. ‘Oars, sir? Pair of oars?’
‘Up or down, mate?’ asked Ransome, recovering from his reverie and thumping Tobias on the back.
‘Do you see that bird?’ asked Tobias, pointing to the Customs House, where a number of kites were coming in to roost upon the cornucopias and reclining goddesses (or perhaps nymphs) that decorated the pediment.
‘Ar,’ said Ransome, looking through the misty dusk in the general direction of a flight of pigeons.
‘I believe – I do not assert it, but I believe that it is a black kite,’ said Tobias.
‘All right, mate,’ said Ransome, with cheerful indifference, ‘I dare say it is. Up or down?’
‘The tail was so much less forked. Up or down? I think, if you will excuse me, that I will stay a little longer.’
‘If you want to see ‘em go to roost,’ said Ransome, ‘you should go round be
hind: there’s millions of ‘em there. But I must drop down now, or I shall lose my tide.’
‘Good-bye, then,’ said Tobias, ‘and thank you very much indeed for showing me the lions.’
‘You’ll take boat directly?’ called Ransome, turning as he stood in the skiff. ‘You’ll know your way all right?’ Tobias waved.
The boat pushed out into the stream, where it was lost in the crowd and the evening, and Tobias leant musing against the rail. Dozens of people came down the steps to take to the water or mounted them as they were landed, and perpetually the boatmen bawled ‘Up or down?’
A thin, sharp child brushed against him and stole the handkerchief from his coat pocket. ‘Up or down?’ cried a waterman in his ear. ‘Come, make up your mind.’
‘Why, truly,’ said Tobias, ‘I believe that I shall walk.’
‘And the devil go with you,’ cried the waterman passionately.
‘What did he mean by “round behind"?’ asked Tobias in a gentle mutter as he walked away. He looked at St Dunstan’s in the East, the Coal-meters’ Office and the Bakers’ Hall; there were pigeons and starlings, but nothing more, for kites were already growing uncommon in London, and Ransome had quite misunderstood Tobias’ remark. They were coming in to roost in their thousands, and while the day lasted Tobias searched among them for black kites; but very soon there was not a bird abroad, black or white, and Tobias stopped under a newly-lit street-lantern to consider his bearings. He had a good natural sense of direction, and with an easy mind he set out and walked through the crowded Mark Lane, crossed quite mistakenly into Crutched Friars by way of Hart Street, and tried to correct his error by going north-westward along Shoemaker Row and Bevis Marks to Camomile Street and Bishopsgate. A good natural sense of direction is a charming possession, and it is very useful in the country; but in a London fog, and even more particularly in the crowded, narrow, winding streets and alleys of the City, it is worse than useless; for the countryman, confident of his ability, will go for miles and miles in the wrong direction before he can bring himself to ask a native for guidance. This state of affairs is not without its advantages, however; the countryman, in his winding course, is made intimately aware of the monstrous extent of London; and by the time Tobias had passed the parish churches of Allhallows Barking, Allhallows the Great, Allhallows the Less, Allhallows in Bread Street, Allhallows in Honey Lane, Allhallows in Lombard Street, Allhallows Staining and Allhallows on London Wall, he found his ideas of London much enlarged. He went on patiently by St Andrew Hubbard, St Andrew Undershaft and St Andrew by the Wardrobe, St Bennet Fink, St Bennet Gracechurch and St Bennet Sherehog, St Dionis Backchurch, St Laurence Jewry, St Laurence Pountney and St Clement near Eastcheap, St Margaret Moses, St Margaret Pattens and St Martin Outwich, St Mary Woolchurch, St Mary Somerset, St Mary Mountshaw, St Mary Woolnoth, St Michael-le-Quern, St Michael Royal, St Nicholas Acons and St Helen’s, which brought him back to Bishopsgate again, with at least sixty parish churches as yet unseen, to say nothing of chapels.
Here, by an unhappy fatality, Tobias turned to his right, hoping to find the river, but he found Bedlam instead, and the broad dark open space of Moorfields. He looked with respectful wonder at the vast lunatic asylum, but the new shoes that Jack and he had bought earlier in the day (it seemed more like several months ago) were now causing him a very highly-wrought agony, and he wandered into Moorfields, now deserted by all prudent honest men, to sit on the grass and take them off. After this he went on much more briskly, and determined to ask his way of the next citizen he should meet: it was some time, however, before he met anyone who would stop, and by then he had walked clean out of Moorfields northwards.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he said to one of a group who were crossing the vague field with a lantern, ‘but can you tell me …’ With a thrill of horror he found that he did not know the name of the street where he lodged, nor Jack’s street either.
‘Tell you what?’ said the lantern, suspiciously.
‘Knock him down,’ said the lantern’s friend, adding, ‘We’ve got pistols, you rogue.’
‘Tell me where I am?’ asked Tobias, with unusual presence of mind.
‘Where you are?’
‘If you please.’
‘Don’t you know where you are?’
‘No, I do not.’
‘He doesn’t know where he is,’ said the lantern.
‘He will cut your throat in a minute,’ said the lantern’s friend. ‘Why don’t you knock him down?’
‘So you want to know where you are?’
‘Yes, sir, I should like to know very much.’
‘Why, then, you’re in Farthing Piehouse Field,’ said the lantern, and by way of proof waved towards a dirty glimmer a hundred yards away, saying, ‘And there’s the Farthing Piehouse itself, in all its charming lustre.’
‘Sir, I am obliged to you,’ said Tobias.
‘At your service, sir,’ said the lantern, with a bow.
‘You could still knock him down,’ said the friend, wistfully. ‘It’s not too late.’
The door of the Farthing Piehouse opened easily, letting out the odour of farthing pies: it was a crowded room, and when Tobias walked in holding his shoes, they all looked up; but the farthing pie-eaters were thieves to a man, and as it was obvious to them that Tobias had just stolen these shoes – that he too was a thief – they took no more notice of him.
‘When I have eaten a pie, I shall ask the way back to the river,’ thought Tobias, ‘and from there I shall be able to find the house, no doubt. It is most likely, too, that I shall remember the name of the street quite suddenly, if I do not force my mind to it. The mind is saturated with new ideas, but it is starved for material sustenance, and must be fed. House,’ he cried, ‘House, a pie here, if you please.’
‘A pie for the gentleman,’ called the man of the house into the kitchen, adding, in a voice meant only for his spouse, ‘A rum cully what I never set my glimmers on before.’
Tobias, by way of keeping his mind from searching too hard (it was a mind that would remember almost anything if it were not worried and if it were given time, but it was apt to grow stupid if it were overpressed), turned his attention and his anatomical knowledge to his pie. But this was a most discouraging course of study, and he abandoned it in favour of recalling the events of the day: he dwelt with pleasure upon Ransome, not only as a most amiable companion, but also as a living proof that unaided merit could rise, for Ransome had entered the Navy as an ordinary pressed seaman. ‘I wish I had been able to find a moment to ask him about money, however,’ said Tobias, yawning: he had intended to do so, but what with their voyage on the river, the lions and the other beasts in the Tower, there had not been time. Jack had shared his purse with Tobias, and these were the first coins that Tobias had ever owned; but Tobias’ education had been such that although he could have dealt in the market places of Athens or Rome with ease, he did not know a farthing when he saw one, and he was sadly perplexed by the whole system of modern coinage. The English currency, even now, is the most complicated in the world, with its twelve pence to the shilling and its twenty shillings to the pound; but it is child’s play to the time when there were broad pieces, reckoned at twenty-three and twenty-five shillings, half and quarter pieces, ninepenny and fourpence-halfpenny pieces, as well as tin, brass and copper small change, and when the shilling passed for thirteen pence halfpenny and the guinea for anything between a pound and twenty-five shillings.
To distract his mind, which would revert with a touch of panic to the question of his lost address, Tobias turned his fortune on to the table, with the intention of making what sense he could of the inscriptions. At the sound of money all the farthing pie-eaters stopped talking, eating or drinking; and when Tobias, paying his host with a four-shilling piece, asked for a direction to the river, he spoke in the midst of a profound and attentive silence. The man slowly paid out a mountain of small coins, talking as he dribbled them out, and from his questions the hearers learn
t that Tobias was lost, unknown and unarmed, and that this was his first day in London.
The pie-man scratched his head: he had a certain pity for his guest – even a very ill-natured brute will stop a blind man from walking into an open pit – but he also had a duty towards his regular customers. In the end he satisfied his conscience by giving Tobias an exact route for the Thames, by telling him that he ought to take care, great care, and by winking with all the significance in his power.
The door closed behind Tobias: the pie-man said to his wife, ‘He never did ought to of been let out alone,’ and shook his head.
There was a pause of some few listening minutes, then the door opened, and all the regular customers hurried in again.
‘They never left him so much as his shirt,’ said the pieman to his wife, coming back into the kitchen.
‘Well, my dear,’ said she, placidly wiping her hands upon her apron and looking through the door to where the regular customers were making their division, ‘I hope they have not cut his throat, that’s all. Or if they have, that they done it at a decent distance from the house, poor wandering soul.’
Chapter Three
JACK BYRON sat in Thacker’s coffee-house, staring vacantly before him: he was almost alone in the place, apart from the waiters, and he sat there as steadily and silently as if he had been part of the furniture. The clock in front of him said half-past seven, and the big calendar beside it bore the ominous name Friday, newly changed that morning.
The door opened, and an elderly man in a black coat and a periwig walked in: he nodded to Jack, who bowed, although for the moment he did not recognise him. It was Mr Eliot, the surgeon of the Wager, to whom Keppel had presented Jack some days before. ‘So you have not gone down to Portsmouth yet?’ he said, with some surprise.
‘No, sir,’ said Jack.
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