by Libi Astaire
But that was the problem. The General was looking at the young lady’s eyes. He had fallen in love.
“Close the window, Sarah. I’m home.”
Sarah turned around and scowled at her younger brother. But she did put down the bucket, to Berel’s relief.
“Do close the window, Sarah. You’re letting in all the cold air.”
Sarah took one last look down at the street. She made a face at General Well’ngone, who was still standing below, and then she slammed the window shut.
“Have you lost your senses, Berel? I thought you knew better than to associate with that band of thieves.”
“It wasn’t me who was associating. The General wanted to say his condolences. I could hardly stop him from doing that, could I?”
“What else did he want to say?” Sarah demanded.
Berel knew his sister was doing her best to keep them together in their own home. And perhaps he had been wrong to walk down the street with a well-known thief—if Mr. Melamed heard about that, he might very well be carted off to the orphanage. But Berel felt he was no longer a child who must report every word of a conversation to his older sister, and so he changed the subject by waving the package from the solicitor in front of Sarah’s eyes. “Wouldn’t you rather know what Mr. Barnstock had to say?”
“Did you really do it?” she asked, while trying to grab the packet. “Did you convince him to give us more work?”
Berel removed the little money pouch with his free hand and dangled that before his sister’s eyes as well. “And on the same terms!”
“You are wonderful!” exclaimed Sarah, giving her brother a hug. “With work, we truly shall manage. Oh, Berel, I am so happy. And Mother and Father would have been so proud of you. Were you not even a little afraid?”
“Of course not,” he said, placing the package and the money on the table in what he hoped was a suitably indifferent manner. “Old sour face can’t scare me.”
“We cannot call him that any longer. It is thanks to Mr. Barnstock that we will be able to stay here, and we must be grateful.” Sarah turned her attention to the packet of papers. “I think I shall begin work now, while there is still light.”
However, before she could remove the ink and pen from the cupboard, there was a knock at the door.
The visitor, whose name was Mrs. Hutner and who lived in the rooms below the Krinkles, did not wait to be invited inside. Her eye had seen the money pouch, and she walked straight over to it and dumped the contents onto the table.
“Just as I thought,” she said, turning to Berel. “I saw you with that young good-for-nothing, Berel Krinkle. If you think you can try their thieving tricks on Duke’s Street, you’ll be sorry.” She then turned her angry eye on Sarah and said, “This is a fine way for a Jewish girl to behave, with your father not even a month dead!”
The two young people watched in silence as the elderly woman stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
“Shall we tell her the truth, Sarah?”
“We cannot. We promised Mr. Barnstock that no one would know that I am the one doing the copy work.”
“Do you think she will tell Mr. Melamed?”
“It is not Mr. Melamed that worries me. I only hope she will not tell a constable …”
Sarah went back to the window and gazed anxiously down at the street. To her relief, she did not see Mrs. Hutner or a constable or anything that looked like more than the usual activity. When she was satisfied that they were safe, at least for that evening, she returned to her brother and said, “Berel, please do not speak with General Well’ngone again, or any of his associates. Do not be taken in by their words. They do not mean you well.”
Berel raised himself to his full height, wishing that he could find a few more inches so he could look his sister in the eye. “What do you take me for, Sarah? I know better than to fall into one of General Well’ngone’s traps. Didn’t I bring home the money safe and sound?”
“Yes, you did. Father would have been proud of you for that, too.”
“Father would have been proud of you, too, Sarah. The way you told off the General was a glory. I don’t think he’ll dare come anywhere near Duke’s Street again.”
III.
The Earl of Gravel Lane looked over at his second in command with disdain. “If I am boring you, General, pray do not let me keep you from your more important business.”
General Well’ngone awoke from his reverie with a start. “I was listening, Earl. The previous owner of this gold fob must have been a scientific gentleman on account of the seal’s having a half moon and three stars.”
The Earl picked up one of the half dozen gold fobs sitting upon the table. “This was the fob with the stars, General Well’ngone. I set it aside a good ten minutes ago. The one I have been discussing is of interest for quite a different reason.”
“I don’t see that it matters what sort of pictures the seals make. We’re going to unload them all, anyway.”
The Earl gave a sigh. In his mind, he did not see himself as a common thief, an unwanted blight upon the pretty landscape of the beau monde, whose richly filled pockets provided both food and shelter for the Earl and his boys. Although he may have lifted his noble title from one of the poorest, sorriest streets in London—and though his threadbare coat and wig, which harked back to the previous century, had been lifted from the piles of cast-off clothing that even the old clothes men had no use for—the Earl liked to think that he had a gentleman’s sensibility. And so when it came to appreciating the watches and snuff boxes and seals that his boys brought back to him at the end of their day’s work in the streets of London, he considered himself on an equal footing with the gentlemen whose pockets had yielded up to him their treasures.
“True, General, but for the moment these pretty things are ours and so we should enjoy them.” The Earl picked up one of the less ornate fobs. “And if I am not mistaken, this fob has caught your fancy, though I cannot see why.”
General Well’ngone blushed. It was true. This one fob did hold him in its grip. To his eyes, the swirls and curves of its golden form suggested the shape of a certain person whose acquaintance he had recently made, a young lady with a proud head and arms placed defiantly upon her hips.
“It looks like the fishmonger’s wife,” said Saulty, another member of the band, who was also sitting in the room. “A real scold,” he added.
“She’s not a scold! And she’s not …” The General stopped in mid-sentence. The cynically raised eyebrows of the Earl struck him as fiercely as a blast of grapeshot from a Frenchman’s cannon.
“She?” inquired the Earl.
General Well’ngone stuck his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat and glared down at the tip of his faded black boot.
The Earl of Gravel Lane motioned for Saulty to leave the room. When he and General Well’ngone were alone, he said, “You cannot keep a secret from me. Who is she?”
“Nobody. Just an ordinary girl.”
“If she were an ordinary girl, you would not have been thinking about her for the past quarter of an hour. Who is she?”
The General shifted uneasily in his seat. “Miss Sarah Krinkle.”
“The Miss Sarah Krinkle whose father died a few weeks ago?”
General Well’ngone nodded his head.
“Where does she live?”
“Duke’s Street.”
“As of this hour, General Well’ngone, consider Duke’s Street to be enemy territory. You shall neither walk through there nor work there, until this folly has passed.”
The Earl paused and waited. “Those are orders, General Well’ngone.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the General, albeit reluctantly.
“In our profession, a man has to keep his wits about him. When a love-sick laborer makes a slip up, he loses his job. When we get caught, we get a noose around our necks.”
The Earl made a gesture of being hanged on the gallows. In the past, the General would have laughed a
t his companion’s gruesome expression, certain that he and the others would always escape that grisly fate. Today, however, the game of successfully eluding the hangman seemed much less thrilling.
“You there, don’t you know how to properly shut a door? You’ve let in all the cold air. I cannot think why Mr. Barnstock puts up with you.”
Berel Krinkle cast a wary glance in the direction of the desk where Arthur Barnstock was sitting, before returning to the door and giving it a shove. He knew that the younger Mr. Barnstock did not like him, even though Berel was certain he had done nothing to offend the young clerk.
“Is Mr. Barnstock available, sir?”
“No, he is not. Do you think he has nothing better to do than talk with messenger boys? There! See what you have made me do!”
Berel saw that the contents of a bottle of ink had spilled onto the pages scattered upon the desk, but he did not see what his presence had to do with the unfortunate occurrence. Still, he held his tongue.
Arthur Barnstock angrily mopped up the ink with his handkerchief. When his eye again fell upon the boy, he became even angrier. “What are you grinning at?”
“I am not grinning, sir.”
“Do not contradict me. Give me that package and go away.”
“I shall be happy to go away, sir. But my instructions are to deliver these papers into the hands of Mr. Horace Barnstock, and no one else.”
“Impertinent little …”
The clerk’s rant was brought to a halt by the opening of the door to his father’s private room. The solicitor and his client, Lord Liverwood, a round-faced gentleman whose face perpetually had the expression of a happy child, were standing in the doorway.
“I shall attend to it at once, Lord Liverwood. Are you staying in London for a few days?”
Lord Liverwood’s attention was elsewhere. His stubby, bejeweled fingers were searching through his pockets for some object. “I cannot think where that fob seal of mine went to.” His eye fell upon Berel, and there was an uneasy silence for a moment.
“A man cannot walk from his house to the end of the street without some urchin reaching his hand into his pocket,” said Arthur Barnstock, also looking in Berel’s direction.
It took Berel all the restraint he could muster to refrain from talking back. But the situation was saved by Mr. Horace Barnstock escorting Lord Liverwood to the front door. When Lord Liverwood had left, the solicitor motioned for Berel to follow him into his room.
“How quickly can your sister work?” he asked, while he wrote several lines upon a page. “Will you be able to bring back a clean copy of this tomorrow?”
“I know she will try, sir.”
“Good. Here’s a coin for a fresh candle. I will pay you for this document and the other work when you return.”
Berel was disappointed that he had not received the full amount, but he was not unduly worried. After all, what was one day? They were not starving, thank God. He stuffed the new work into his coat pocket and, after securely wrapping his scarf about his neck and pulling his cap low upon his forehead, turned in the direction of his home. He had not gone far when he saw some other boys running in the direction of the River Thames. When one of them stumbled and fell near his feet, he helped up the child. “What’s the rush?” he asked. “Is London on fire?”
“Fire? Didn’t you hear? The river’s frozen! There’s a Frost Fair going on.”
“What’s a Frost Fair?”
“How should I know? That’s what we’re running to see.”
The child scampered off. Berel knew he should continue walking towards home. But his feet seemed to have a mind of their own. They followed the boy, who was running after his friends, who were all running in the direction of that magical sounding thing, the Frost Fair.
General Well’ngone stepped gingerly upon the frozen surface. He supposed there was no danger of falling through the ice and sinking to the depths of the river. He could see in the distance scores of people promenading up and down “Freezeland Street,” not to mention the dozens of makeshift stalls that had set up shop in the middle of the Thames. But he was the sort who liked to see things with his own eyes—or in this instance, test the ice with his own toes—before he accepted a fact as true.
The younger members of his band of thieves had no such qualms. The Earl had given them all a holiday, in honor of the Fair, and they were slipping and sliding upon the frozen river with carefree abandon.
“Can we have a coin for the swing?” asked one of the younger boys.
General Well’ngone reached into his pocket and gave the child the money. “Mind, just one turn each.”
The boys ran off, whooping with delight. As he looked after them, the General suddenly felt very old, though he would not see twenty for several more years. The frozen river was a marvel; there was no question about that. But he could not join in with the general hilarity over drinking beer and eating gingerbread, just because it was being done in the middle of the river. Something was missing, though he could not say what, until he spied Berel Krinkle standing in front of one of the bookstalls and the vision of a certain young person once again appeared before his eyes.
He recalled the way that this young person had watched over her younger brother like a lioness guarding her cub—and surmised that Berel Krinkle had gotten a telling-off that he would not soon forget. And as he walked over to the boy, the General thought it must be a nice thing to have someone care so much about you, even if it meant getting a dressing-down from time to time.
“My compliments, Mr. Krinkle. It is a pleasure to see you again so soon. I hope you and your sister are enjoying the Fair.”
“Sarah is at home, General Well’ngone. I suppose the Fair isn’t for girls.” Berel looked at the motley crowd that had gathered around a stall selling gin.
General Well’ngone also shot a dark glance in the direction of the gin drinkers. “No, I suppose it is not. We must buy her something then, something from the Fair.”
“Why should you buy my sister a present?”
“Well, why not?” replied the General, hoping that Berel was not the curious type who would ask a dozen questions. “Who knows when we shall see such a thing again? It seems only right to have some memento.” He picked up one of the books on display, a slender volume, and leafed through the pages. “What sort of book is this?” he said with wonder. “There’s nothing written inside.”
“That’s the joke of it,” replied Berel, turning back to the first page. “All it says is ‘Bought on the Thames.’”
“What would a person do with the rest of the book?”
“Write on the pages, I suppose.”
“Do you know how to write, Mr. Krinkle? If I purchased this book, could you write something for me?”
“I could, but I don’t have a pencil with me.”
The owner of the stall was growing impatient, or perhaps he feared that the youngsters would run off with the book when he was not looking. “If you two boys are going to buy, hand over your money. If not, move on.”
The General bristled at being called a boy, but he gave the man a coin.
“Where will you find a pencil, General?” asked Berel.
General Well’ngone knew where he would usually go to find a pencil—the same place he would go to find a pocket watch or gold fob. But while he was surveying the crowd, on the lookout for an unsuspecting “client,” he felt an unfamiliar feeling, a twinge of conscience, which took the form of a question: How could he write a message to a pure being such as Miss Sarah Krinkle with a pencil that was stolen?
“Do you see any of your acquaintances here, Mr. Krinkle? Perhaps we could borrow a pencil from them.”
Berel also looked about the crowd. The only person he recognized was one of the gentlemen who had been at his father’s funeral, Mr. Samuel Lyon.
Mr. Lyon had come to the Frost Fair with his family and they were all laughing and sliding about the ice. Mrs. Rose Lyon, the matriarch of the family, began to flap her ar
ms up and down to keep her balance, which made the two youngest Lyon daughters laugh so hard they fell down on their bottoms. Their son Joshua, not to be outdone, also fell down on the ice and kicked his legs in the air with delight.
Miss Rebecca Lyon, a young lady not quite of the marriageable age (and, Reader, the Narrator of this story, although she did not know at the time that such interesting events were about to unfold), was the only member of the family who tried to maintain a sense of dignity. Indeed, she regarded her laughing parents, who were usually the epitome of all that was dignified and refined, with a look of stern approbation, which unfortunately they ignored.
It was Mr. Lyon who spotted Berel and the General and he slid over to them, proud of his prowess on the ice. “Enjoying yourselves?” he asked them. Mr. Lyon was not well acquainted with Berel Krinkle, but he was familiar with General Well’ngone, who had come to his assistance a few years earlier, when some money of his was stolen. Indeed, Mr. Lyon had tried to convince the General to leave his sorry profession and come and work in his clockmaking workshop. Although the General had declined the offer, Mr. Lyon still had hopes that he might be able to influence the youngster to change his ways. But on this day, when all London seemed to have just one thing in mind, enjoying the Frost Fair, he said, “May I treat you both to a ride on the merry-go-round?”
“It is not money we need,” replied the General. “If you have a pencil we might borrow, we would be much obliged.”
“A pencil? Let me see.” Mr. Lyon searched through his pockets, but could not find the desired object.
“Allow me.”
They turned and saw two well-dressed gentlemen standing behind them. Berel recognized one of them as being Lord Liverwood, the person who had been in the solicitor’s office. Lord Liverwood handed the pencil to General Well’ngone.
“It may take us a while,” said the General. “We are not accustomed to writing.”
“Keep the pencil, with my compliments,” replied Lord Liverwood, who bowed to Mr. Lyon and then walked away with his companion.