Part 31 (1/2)
”Och, thin,” shrieked the woman, ”here's that thief o' the warld, Micky Kelly, slandhering o' us afore the blessed heaven, and he owing 2. 14s.
1/2d. for his board an' lodging, let alone p.a.w.n-tickets, and goin' to rin away, the black-hearted ongrateful sarpent!” And she began yelling indiscriminately, ”Thieves!” ”Murder!” ”Blasphemy!” and such other e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, which (the English ones at least) had not the slightest reference to the matter in hand.
”I'll come to him!” said Downes, with an oath, and rushed stumbling up the stairs, while the poor wretch sneaked in again, and slammed the door to. Downes battered at it, but was met with a volley of curses from the men inside; while, profiting by the Babel, I blew out the light, ran down-stairs, and got safe into the street.
In two hours afterwards, Mackaye, Porter, Crossthwaite, and I were at the door, accompanied by a policeman, and a search-warrant. Porter had insisted on accompanying us. He had made up his mind that his son was at Downes's; and all representations of the smallness of his chance were fruitless. He worked himself up into a state of complete frenzy, and flourished a huge stick in a way which shocked the policeman's orderly and legal notions.
”That may do very well down in your country, sir; but you arn't a goin' to use that there weapon here, you know, not by no hact o' Parliament as I knows on.”
”Ow, it's joost a way I ha' wi' me.” And the stick was quiet for fifty yards or so, and then recommenced smas.h.i.+ng imaginary skulls.
”You'll do somebody a mischief, sir, with that. You'd much better a lend it me.”
Porter tucked it under his arm for fifty yards more; and so on, till we reached Downes's house.
The policeman knocked: and the door was opened, cautiously, by an old Jew, of a most un-”Caucasian” cast of features, however ”high-nosed,” as Mr.
Disraeli has it.
The policeman asked to see Michael Kelly.
”Michaelsh? I do't know such namesh--” But before the parley could go farther, the farmer burst past policeman and Jew, and rushed into the pa.s.sage, roaring, in a voice which made the very windows rattle,
”Billy Poorter! Billy Poorter! whor be yow? whor be yow?”
We all followed him up-stairs, in time to see him charging valiantly, with his stick for a bayonet, the small person of a Jew-boy, who stood at the head of the stairs in a scientific att.i.tude. The young rascal planted a dozen blows in the huge carcase--he might as well have thumped the rhinoceros in the Regent's Park; the old man ran right over him, without stopping, and dashed up the stairs; at the head of which--oh, joy!--appeared a long, shrunken, red-haired figure, the tears on its dirty cheeks glittering in the candle-glare. In an instant father and son were in each other's arms.
”Oh, my barn! my barn! my barn! my barn!” And then the old Hercules held him off at arm's length, and looked at him with a wistful face, and hugged him again with ”My barn! my barn!” He had nothing else to say. Was it not enough? And poor Kelly danced frantically around them, hurrahing; his own sorrows forgotten in his friend's deliverance.
The Jew-boy shook himself, turned, and darted down stairs past us; the policeman quietly put out his foot, tripped him headlong, and jumping down after him, extracted from his grasp a heavy pocket-book.
”Ah! my dear mothersh's dying gift! Oh, dear! oh dear! give it back to a poor orphans.h.!.+”
”Didn't I see you take it out o' the old un's pocket, you young villain?”
answered the maintainer of order, as he shoved the book into his bosom, and stood with one foot on his writhing victim, a complete nineteenth-century St. Michael.
”Let me hold him,” I said, ”while you go up-stairs.”
”_You_ hold a Jew-boy!--you hold a mad cat!” answered the policeman, contemptuously--and with justice--for at that moment Downes appeared on the first-floor landing, cursing and blaspheming.
”He's my 'prentice! he's my servant! I've got a bond, with his own hand to it, to serve me for three years. I'll have the law of you--I will!”
Then the meaning of the big stick came out. The old man leapt down the stairs, and seized Downes. ”You're the tyrant as has locked my barn up here!” And a thras.h.i.+ng commenced, which it made my bones ache only to look at. Downes had no chance; the old man felled him on his face in a couple of blows, and taking both hands to his stick, hewed away at him as if he had been a log.
”I waint hit a's head! I waint hit a's head!”--whack, whack. ”Let me be!”--whack, whack-puff. ”It does me gude, it does me gude!”--puff, puff, puff--whack. ”I've been a bottling of it up for three years, come Whitsuntide!”--whack, whack, whack--while Mackaye and Crossthwaite stood coolly looking on, and the wife shut herself up in the side-room, and screamed ”Murder!”
The unhappy policeman stood at his wits' end, between the prisoner below and the breach of the peace above, bellowing in vain, in the Queen's name, to us, and to the grinning tailors on the landing. At last, as Downes's life seemed in danger, he wavered; the Jew-boy seized the moment, jumped up, upsetting the constable, dashed like an eel between Crossthwaite and Mackaye, gave me a back-handed blow in pa.s.sing, which I felt for a week after, and vanished through the street-door, which he locked after him.
”Very well!” said the functionary, rising solemnly, and pulling out a note-book--”Scar under left eye, nose a little twisted to the right, bad chilblains on the hands. You'll keep till next time, young man. Now, you fat gentleman up there, have you done a qualifying of yourself for Newgate?”