Part 30 (1/2)
”Humph!”
”Dee yow think, noo, yow could find out my boy out of un, by any ways o'
conjuring like?”
”By what?”
”Conjuring--to strike a perpendicular, noo, or say the Lord's Prayer backwards?”
”Wadna ye prefer a meeracle or twa?” asked Sandy, after a long pull at the whisky-toddy.
”Or a few efreets?” added I.
”Whatsoever you likes, gentlemen. You're best judges, to be sure,” answered Farmer Porter, in an awed and helpless voice.
”Aweel--I'm no that disinclined to believe in the occult sciences. I dinna haud a'thegither wi' Salverte. There was mair in them than Magia naturalis, I'm thinking. Mesmerism and magic-lanterns, benj and opium, winna explain all facts, Alton, laddie. Dootless they were an unco' barbaric an' empiric method o' expressing the gran' truth o' man's mastery ower matter. But the interpenetration o' the spiritual an' physical worlds is a gran' truth too; an' aiblins the Deity might ha' allowed witchcraft, just to teach that to puir barbarous folk--signs and wonders, laddie, to mak them believe in somewhat mair than the beasts that perish: an' so ghaists an warlocks might be a necessary element o' the divine education in dark and carnal times. But I've no read o' a case in which necromancy, nor geomancy, nor coskinomancy, nor ony other mancy, was applied to sic a purpose as this.
Unco gude they were, may be, for the discovery o' stolen spunes--but no that o' stolen tailors.”
Farmer Porter had listened to this harangue, with mouth and eyes gradually expanding between awe and the desire to comprehend; but at the last sentence his countenance fell.
”So I'm thinking, Mister Porter, that the best witch in siccan a case is ane that ye may find at the police-office.”
”Anan?”
”Thae detective police are gran' necromancers an' canny in their way: an' I just took the liberty, a week agone, to ha' a crack wi' ane o' 'em. An noo, gin ye're inclined, we'll leave the whusky awhile, an' gang up to that cave o' Trophawnius, ca'd by the vulgar Bow-street, an' speir for tidings o' the twa lost sheep.”
So to Bow-street we went, and found our man, to whom the farmer bowed with obsequiousness most unlike his usual burly independence. He evidently half suspected him to have dealings with the world of spirits: but whether he had such or not, they had been utterly unsuccessful; and we walked back again, with the farmer between us, half-blubbering--
”I tell ye, there's nothing like ganging to a wise 'ooman. Bless ye, I mind one up to Guy Hall, when I was a barn, that two Irish reapers coom down, and murthered her for the money--and if you lost aught she'd vind it, so sure as the church--and a mighty hand to cure burns; and they two villains coom back, after harvest, seventy mile to do it--and when my vather's cows was shrew-struck, she made un be draed under a brimble as growed together at the both ends, she a praying like mad all the time; and they never got nothing but fourteen s.h.i.+lling and a crooked sixpence; for why, the devil carried off all the rest of her money; and I seen um both a-hanging in chains by Wisbeach river, with my own eyes. So when they Irish reapers comes into the vens, our chaps always says, 'Yow goo to Guy Hall, there's yor brithren a-waitin' for yow,' and that do make um joost mad loike, it do. I tell ye there's nowt like a wise 'ooman, for vinding out the likes o'
this.”
At this hopeful stage of the argument I left them to go to the Magazine office. As I pa.s.sed through Covent Garden, a pretty young woman stopped me under a gas-lamp. I was pus.h.i.+ng on when I saw it was Jemmy Downes's Irish wife, and saw, too, that she did not recognise me. A sudden instinct made me stop and hear what she had to say.
”Shure, thin, and ye're a tailor, my young man?”
”Yes,” I said, nettled a little that my late loathed profession still betrayed itself in my gait.
”From the counthry?”
I nodded, though I dared not speak a white lie to that effect. I fancied that, somehow, through her I might hear of poor Kelly and his friend Porter.
”Ye'll be wanting work, thin?”
”I have no work.”
”Och, thin, it's I can show ye the flower o' work, I can. Bedad, there's a shop I know of where ye'll earn--bedad, if ye're the ninth part of a man, let alone a handy young fellow like the looks of you--och, ye'll earn thirty s.h.i.+llings the week, to the very least--an' beautiful lodgings; och, thin, just come and see 'em--as chape as mother's milk! Gome along, thin--och, it's the beauty ye are--just the nate figure for a tailor.”
The fancy still possessed me; and I went with her through one dingy back street after another. She seemed to be purposely taking an indirect road, to mislead me as to my whereabouts; but after a half-hour's walking, I knew, as well as she, that we were in one of the most miserable slop-working nests of the East-end.
She stopped at a house door, and hurried me in, up to the first floor, and into a dirty, slatternly parlour, smelling infamously of gin; where the first object I beheld was Jemmy Downes, sitting before the fire, three-parts drunk, with a couple of dirty, squalling children on the hearthrug, whom he was kicking and cuffing alternately.
”Och, thin, ye villain, beating the poor darlints whinever I lave ye a minute.” And pouring out a volley of Irish curses, she caught up the urchins, one under each arm, and kissed and hugged them till they were nearly choked. ”Och, ye plague o' my life--as drunk as a baste; an' I brought home this darlint of a young gentleman to help ye in the business.”