A Story

by William Makepeace Thackeray

with his "Meejor."

  "In coorse, you fool! and how? I'll tell you how. This Hayes is

  well to do in the world, and--"

  "And we'll nab him again--ha, ha!" roared out Macshane. "By my

  secred honour, Meejor, there never was a gineral like you at a

  strathyjam!"

  "Peace, you bellowing donkey, and don't wake the child. The man is

  well to do, his wife rules him, and they have no children. Now,

  either she will be very glad to have the boy back again, and pay for

  the finding of him, or else she has said nothing about him, and will

  pay us for being silent too: or, at any rate, Hayes himself will be

  ashamed at finding his wife the mother of a child a year older than

  his marriage, and will pay for the keeping of the brat away.

  There's profit, my dear, in any one of the cases, or my name's not

  Peter Brock."

  When the Ensign understood this wondrous argument, he would fain

  have fallen on his knees and worshipped his friend and guide. They

  began operations, almost immediately, by an attack on Mrs. Hayes.

  On hearing, as she did in private interview with the ex-corporal the

  next morning, that her son was found, she was agitated by both of

  the passions which Wood attributed to her. She longed to have the

  boy back, and would give any reasonable sum to see him; but she

  dreaded exposure, and would pay equally to avoid that. How could

  she gain the one point and escape the other?

  Mrs. Hayes hit upon an expedient which, I am given to understand, is

  not uncommon nowadays. She suddenly discovered that she had a dear

  brother, who had been obliged to fly the country in consequence of

  having joined the Pretender, and had died in France, leaving behind

  him an only son. This boy her brother had, with his last breath,

  recommended to her protection, and had confided him to the charge of

  a brother officer who was now in the country, and would speedily

  make his appearance; and, to put the story beyond a doubt, Mr. Wood

  wrote the letter from her brother stating all these particulars, and

  Ensign Macshane received full instructions how to perform the part

  of the "brother officer." What consideration Mr. Wood received for

  his services, we cannot say; only it is well known that Mr. Hayes

  caused to be committed to gaol a young apprentice in his service,

  charged with having broken open a cupboard in which Mr. Hayes had

  forty guineas in gold and silver, and to which none but he and his

  wife had access.

  Having made these arrangements, the Corporal and his little party

  decamped to a short distance, and Mrs. Catherine was left to prepare

  her husband for a speedy addition to his family, in the shape of

  this darling nephew. John Hayes received the news with anything but

  pleasure. He had never heard of any brother of Catherine's; she had

  been bred at the workhouse, and nobody ever hinted that she had

  relatives: but it is easy for a lady of moderate genius to invent

  circumstances; and with lies, tears, threats, coaxings, oaths, and

  other blandishments, she compelled him to submit.

  Two days afterwards, as Mr. Hayes was working in his shop with his

  lady seated beside him, the trampling of a horse was heard in his

  courtyard, and a gentleman, of huge stature, descended from it, and

  strode into the shop. His figure was wrapped in a large cloak; but

  Mr. Hayes could not help fancying that he had somewhere seen his

  face before.

  "This, I preshoom," said the gentleman, "is Misther Hayes, that I

  have come so many miles to see, and this is his amiable lady? I was

  the most intimate frind, madam, of your laminted brother, who died

  in King Lewis's service, and whose last touching letthers I

  despatched to you two days ago. I have with me a further precious

  token of my dear friend, Captain Hall--it is HERE."

  And so saying, the military gentleman, with one arm, removed his

  cloak, and stretching forward the other into Hayes's face almost,

  stretched likewise forward a little boy, grinning and sprawling in

  the air, and prevented only from falling to the ground by the hold

  which the Ensign kept of the waistband of his little coat and

  breeches.

  "Isn't he a pretty boy?" said Mrs. Hayes, sidling up to her husband

  tenderly, and pressing one of Mr. Hayes's hands.

  * * *

  About the lad's beauty it is needless to say what the carpenter

  thought; but that night, and for many many nights after, the lad

  stayed at Mr. Hayes's.

  CHAPTER VIII. ENUMERATES THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF MASTER THOMAS

  BILLINGS--INTRODUCES BROCK AS DOCTOR WOOD--AND ANNOUNCES THE

  EXECUTION OF ENSIGN MACSHANE.

  We are obliged, in recording this history, to follow accurately that

  great authority, the "Calendarium Newgaticum Roagorumque

  Registerium," of which every lover of literature, in the present day

  knows the value; and as that remarkable work totally discards all

  the unities in its narratives, and reckons the life of its heroes

  only by their actions, and not by periods of time, we must follow in

  the wake of this mighty ark--a humble cock-boat. When it pauses, we

  pause; when it runs ten knots an hour, we run with the same

  celerity; and as, in order to carry the reader from the penultimate

  chapter of this work unto the last chapter, we were compelled to

  make him leap over a gap of seven blank years, ten years more must

  likewise be granted to us before we are at liberty to resume our

  history.

  During that period, Master Thomas Billings had been under the

  especial care of his mother; and, as may be imagined, he rather

  increased than diminished the accomplishments for which he had been

  remarkable while under the roof of his foster-father. And with this

  advantage, that while at the blacksmith's, and only three or four

  years of age, his virtues were necessarily appreciated only in his

  family circle and among those few acquaintances of his own time of

  life whom a youth of three can be expected to meet in the alleys or

  over the gutters of a small country hamlet,--in his mothers

  residence, his circle extended with his own growth, and he began to

  give proofs of those powers of which in infancy there had been only

  encouraging indications. Thus it was nowise remarkable that a child

  of four years should not know his letters, and should have had a

  great disinclination to learn them; but when a young man of fifteen

  showed the same creditable ignorance, the same undeviating dislike,

  it was easy to see that he possessed much resolution and

  perseverance. When it was remarked, too, that, in case of any

  difference, he not only beat the usher, but by no means disdained to

  torment and bully the very smallest boys of the school, it was easy

  to see that his mind was comprehensive and careful, as well as

  courageous and grasping. As it was said of the Duke of Wellington,

  in the Peninsula, that he had a thought for everybody--from Lord

  Hill to the smallest drummer in the army--in like manner Tom

  Billings bestowed HIS attention on
high and low; but in the shape of

  blows: he would fight the strongest and kick the smallest, and was

  always at work with one or the other. At thirteen, when he was

  removed from the establishment whither he had been sent, he was the

  cock of the school out of doors, and the very last boy in. He used

  to let the little boys and new-comers pass him by, and laugh; but he

  always belaboured them unmercifully afterwards; and then it was, he

  said, HIS turn to laugh. With such a pugnacious turn, Tom Billings

  ought to have been made a soldier, and might have died a marshal;

  but, by an unlucky ordinance of fate, he was made a tailor, and died

  a--never mind what for the present; suffice it to say, that he was

  suddenly cut off, at a very early period of his existence, by a

  disease which has exercised considerable ravages among the British

  youth.

  By consulting the authority above mentioned, we find that Hayes did

  not confine himself to the profession of a carpenter, or remain long

  established in the country; but was induced, by the eager spirit of

  Mrs. Catherine most probably, to try his fortune in the metropolis;

  where he lived, flourished, and died. Oxford Road, Saint Giles's,

  and Tottenham Court were, at various periods of his residence in

  town, inhabited by him. At one place he carried on the business of

  greengrocer and small-coalman; in another, he was carpenter,

  undertaker, and lender of money to the poor; finally, he was a

  lodging-house keeper in the Oxford or Tyburn Road; but continued to

  exercise the last-named charitable profession.

  Lending as he did upon pledges, and carrying on a pretty large

  trade, it was not for him, of course, to inquire into the pedigree

  of all the pieces of plate, the bales of cloth, swords, watches,

  wigs, shoe-buckles, etc. that were confided by his friends to his

  keeping; but it is clear that his friends had the requisite

  confidence in him, and that he enjoyed the esteem of a class of

  characters who still live in history, and are admired unto this very

  day. The mind loves to think that, perhaps, in Mr. Hayes's back

  parlour the gallant Turpin might have hob-and-nobbed with Mrs.

  Catherine; that here, perhaps, the noble Sheppard might have cracked

  his joke, or quaffed his pint of rum. Who knows but that Macheath

  and Paul Clifford may have crossed legs under Hayes's dinner-table?

  But why pause to speculate on things that might have been? why

  desert reality for fond imagination, or call up from their honoured

  graves the sacred dead? I know not: and yet, in sooth, I can never

  pass Cumberland Gate without a sigh, as I think of the gallant

  cavaliers who traversed that road in old time. Pious priests

  accompanied their triumphs; their chariots were surrounded by hosts

  of glittering javelin-men. As the slave at the car of the Roman

  conqueror shouted, "Remember thou art mortal!", before the eyes of

  the British warrior rode the undertaker and his coffin, telling him

  that he too must die! Mark well the spot! A hundred years ago

  Albion Street (where comic Power dwelt, Milesia's darling son)-

  -Albion Street was a desert. The square of Connaught was without

  its penultimate, and, strictly speaking, NAUGHT. The Edgware Road

  was then a road, 'tis true; with tinkling waggons passing now and

  then, and fragrant walls of snowy hawthorn blossoms. The ploughman

  whistled over Nutford Place; down the green solitudes of Sovereign

  Street the merry milkmaid led the lowing kine. Here, then, in the

  midst of green fields and sweet air--before ever omnibuses were, and

  when Pineapple Turnpike and Terrace were alike unknown--here stood

  Tyburn: and on the road towards it, perhaps to enjoy the prospect,

  stood, in the year 1725, the habitation of Mr. John Hayes.

  One fine morning in the year 1725, Mrs. Hayes, who had been abroad

  in her best hat and riding-hood; Mr. Hayes, who for a wonder had

  accompanied her; and Mrs. Springatt, a lodger, who for a

  remuneration had the honour of sharing Mrs. Hayes's friendship and

  table: all returned, smiling and rosy, at about half-past ten

  o'clock, from a walk which they had taken to Bayswater. Many

  thousands of people were likewise seen flocking down the Oxford

  Road; and you would rather have thought, from the smartness of their

  appearance and the pleasure depicted in their countenances, that

  they were just issuing from a sermon, than quitting the ceremony

  which they had been to attend.

  The fact is, that they had just been to see a gentleman hanged,--a

  cheap pleasure, which the Hayes family never denied themselves; and

  they returned home with a good appetite to breakfast, braced by the

  walk, and tickled into hunger, as it were, by the spectacle. I can

  recollect, when I was a gyp at Cambridge, that the "men" used to

  have breakfast-parties for the very same purpose; and the exhibition

  of the morning acted infallibly upon the stomach, and caused the

  young students to eat with much voracity.

  Well, Mrs. Catherine, a handsome, well-dressed, plump, rosy woman of

  three or four and thirty (and when, my dear, is a woman handsomer

  than at that age?), came in quite merrily from her walk, and entered

  the back-parlour, which looked into a pleasant yard, or garden,

  whereon the sun was shining very gaily; and where, at a table

  covered with a nice white cloth, laid out with some silver mugs,

  too, and knives, all with different crests and patterns, sat an old

  gentleman reading in an old book.

  "Here we are at last, Doctor," said Mrs. Hayes, "and here's his

  speech." She produced the little halfpenny tract, which to this day

  is sold at the gallows-foot upon the death of every offender. "I've

  seen a many men turned off, to be sure; but I never did see one who

  bore it more like a man than he did."

  "My dear," said the gentleman addressed as Doctor, "he was as cool

  and as brave as steel, and no more minded hanging than

  tooth-drawing."

  "It was the drink that ruined him," said Mrs. Cat.

  "Drink, and bad company. I warned him, my dear,--I warned him years

  ago: and directly he got into Wild's gang, I knew that he had not a

  year to run. Ah, why, my love, will men continue such dangerous

  courses," continued the Doctor, with a sigh, "and jeopardy their

  lives for a miserable watch or a snuff-box, of which Mr. Wild takes

  three-fourths of the produce? But here comes the breakfast; and,

  egad, I am as hungry as a lad of twenty."

  Indeed, at this moment Mrs. Hayes's servant appeared with a smoking

  dish of bacon and greens; and Mr. Hayes himself ascended from the

  cellar (of which he kept the key), bearing with him a tolerably

  large jug of small-beer. To this repast the Doctor, Mrs. Springatt

  (the other lodger), and Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, proceeded with great

  alacrity. A fifth cover was laid, but not used; the company

  remarking that "Tom had very likely found some acquaintances at

  Tyburn, with whom he might choose to pass the morning."

  Tom was Master Thomas Billings, now of the age of sixteen: s
lim,

  smart, five feet ten inches in height, handsome, sallow in

  complexion, black-eyed and black-haired. Mr. Billings was

  apprentice to a tailor, of tolerable practice, who was to take him

  into partnership at the end of his term. It was supposed, and with

  reason, that Tom would not fail to make a fortune in this business;

  of which the present head was one Beinkleider, a German.

  Beinkleider was skilful in his trade (after the manner of his

  nation, which in breeches and metaphysics--in inexpressibles and

  incomprehensibles--may instruct all Europe), but too fond of his

  pleasure. Some promissory notes of his had found their way into

  Hayes's hands, and had given him the means not only of providing

  Master Billings with a cheap apprenticeship, and a cheap partnership

  afterwards; but would empower him, in one or two years after the

  young partner had joined the firm, to eject the old one altogether.

  So that there was every prospect that, when Mr. Billings was

  twenty-one years of age, poor Beinkleider would have to act, not as

  his master, but his journeyman.

  Tom was a very precocious youth; was supplied by a doting mother

  with plenty of pocket-money, and spent it with a number of lively

  companions of both sexes, at plays, bull-baitings, fairs, jolly

  parties on the river, and such-like innocent amusements. He could

  throw a main, too, as well as his elders; had pinked his man, in a

  row at Madam King's in the Piazza; and was much respected at the

  Roundhouse.

  Mr. Hayes was not very fond of this promising young gentleman;

  indeed, he had the baseness to bear malice, because, in a quarrel

  which occurred about two years previously, he, Hayes, being desirous

  to chastise Mr. Billings, had found himself not only quite

  incompetent, but actually at the mercy of the boy; who struck him

  over the head with a joint-stool, felled him to the ground, and

  swore he would have his life. The Doctor, who was then also a

  lodger at Mr. Hayes's, interposed, and restored the combatants, not

  to friendship, but to peace. Hayes never afterwards attempted to

  lift his hand to the young man, but contented himself with hating

  him profoundly. In this sentiment Mr. Billings participated

  cordially; and, quite unlike Mr. Hayes, who never dared to show his

  dislike, used on every occasion when they met, by actions, looks,

  words, sneers, and curses, to let his stepfather know the opinion

  which he had of him. Why did not Hayes discard the boy altogether?

  Because, if he did so, he was really afraid of his life, and because

  he trembled before Mrs. Hayes, his lady, as the leaf trembles before

  the tempest in October. His breath was not his own, but hers; his

  money, too, had been chiefly of her getting,--for though he was as

  stingy and mean as mortal man can be, and so likely to save much, he

  had not the genius for GETTING which Mrs. Hayes possessed. She kept

  his books (for she had learned to read and write by this time), she

  made his bargains, and she directed the operations of the

  poor-spirited little capitalist. When bills became due, and debtors

  pressed for time, then she brought Hayes's own professional merits

  into play. The man was as deaf and cold as a rock; never did poor

  tradesmen gain a penny from him; never were the bailiffs delayed one

  single minute from their prey. The Beinkleider business, for

  instance, showed pretty well the genius of the two. Hayes was for

  closing with him at once; but his wife saw the vast profits which

  might be drawn out of him, and arranged the apprenticeship and the

  partnership before alluded to. The woman heartily scorned and spit

  upon her husband, who fawned upon her like a spaniel. She loved

  good cheer; she did not want for a certain kind of generosity. The

  only feeling that Hayes had for anyone except himself was for his

  wife, whom he held in a cowardly awe and attachment: he liked

  drink, too, which made him chirping and merry, and accepted

  willingly any treats that his acquaintances might offer him; but he