Part 33 (2/2)

And no longer master of myself, I sat down at the table and hid my face, shaken by great sobs, to think that this was my return for his kindness.

”What,” I heard him cry, ”Mr. Manners spurned you, Richard! By all the law in c.o.ke and Littleton, he shall answer for it to me. Your fairweather fowl shall have the chance to run me through!”

I sat up in bewilderment, doubting my senses.

”You believe me, captain,” I said, overcome by the man's faith; ”you believe me when I tell you that one I have known from childhood refused to recognize me to-day?”

He raised me in his arms as tenderly as a woman might.

”And the whole world denied you, lad, I would not. I believe you--” and he repeated it again and again, unable to get farther.

And if his words brought tears to my eyes, my strength came with them.

”Then I care not,” I replied; ”I only to live to reward you.”

”Mr. Manners shall answer for it to me!” cried John Paul again, and made a pace toward the door.

”Not so fast, not so fast, captain, or admiral, or whatever you are,”

said the bailiff, stepping in his way, for he was used to such scenes; ”as G.o.d reigns, the owners of all these fierce t.i.tles be fire-eaters, who would spit you if you spilt snuff upon 'em. Come, come, gentlemen, your swords, and we shall see the sights o' London.”

This was the signal for another uproar, the tailor shrieking that John Paul must take off the suit, and Banks the livery; asking the man in the corner by the sea-chests (who proved to be the landlord) who was to pay him for his work and his lost cloth. And the landlord shook his fist at us and shouted back, who was to pay him his four pounds odd, which included two ten-s.h.i.+lling dinners and a flask of his best wine? The other tradesmen seized what was theirs and made off with remarks appropriate to the occasion. And when John Paul and my man were divested of their plumes, we were marched downstairs and out through a jeering line of people to a hackney coach.

”Now, sirs, whereaway?” said the bailiff when we were got in beside one of his men, and burning with the shame of it; ”to the prison? Or I has a very pleasant hotel for gentlemen in Castle Yard.”

The frightful stories my dear grandfather had told me of the Fleet came flooding into my head, and I shuddered and turned sick. I glanced at John Paul.

”A guinea will not go far in a sponging-house,” said he, and the bailiff's man laughed.

The bailiff gave a direction we did not hear, and we drove off. He proved a bluff fellow with a bloat yet not unkindly humour, and despite his calling seemed to have something that was human in him. He pa.s.sed many a joke on that pitiful journey in an attempt to break our despondency, urging us not to be downcast, and reminding us that the last gentleman he had taken from Pall Mall was in over a thousand pounds, and that our amount was a bagatelle. And when we had gone through Temple Bar, instead of keeping on down Fleet Street, we jolted into Chancery Lane. This roused me.

”My friend has warned you that he has no money,” I said, ”and no more have I.”

The bailiff regarded me shrewdly.

”Ay,” he replied, ”I know. But I has seen many stripes o' men in my time, my masters, and I know them to trust, and them whose silver I must feel or send to the Fleet.”

I told him unreservedly my case, and that he must take his chance of being paid; that I could not hear from America for three months at least. He listened without much show of attention, shaking his head from side to side.

”If you ever cheated a man, or the admiral here either, then I begin over again,” he broke in with decision; ”it is the fine sparks from the clubs I has to watch. You'll not worry, sir, about me. Take my oath I'll get interest out of you on my money.”

Unwilling as we both were to be beholden to a bailiff, the alternative of the Fleet was too terrible to be thought of. And so we alighted after him with a s.h.i.+ver at the sight of the ugly, grimy face of the house, and the dirty windows all barred with double iron. In answer to a knock we were presently admitted by a turnkey to a vestibule as black as a tomb, and the heavy outer door was locked behind us. Then, as the man cursed and groped for the keyhole of the inner door, despair laid hold of me.

Once inside, in the half light of a narrow hallway, a variety of noises greeted our ears,--laughter from above and below, interspersed with oaths; the click of billiard b.a.l.l.s, and the occasional hammering of a pack of cards on a bare table before the shuffle. The air was close almost to suffocation, and out of the coffee room, into which I glanced, came a heavy cloud of tobacco smoke.

”Why, my masters, why so glum?” said the bailiff; ”my inn is not such a bad place, and you'll find ample good company here, I promise you.”

And he led us into a dingy antechamber littered with papers, on every one of which, I daresay, was written a tragedy. Then he inscribed our names, ages, descriptions, and the like in a great book, when we followed him up three flights to a low room under the eaves, having but one small window, and bare of furniture save two narrow cots for beds, a broken chair, and a cracked mirror. He explained that cash boarders got better, and added that we might be happy we were not in the Fleet.

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