A Breaker of Laws/Chapter 1

by W. Pett Ridge

 

A BREAKER OF LAWS

 

CHAPTER I

Music came vaguely from the drawing-room below, and the narrow-faced young man looking through the barred window of the room in which he was hiding saw the carriage-drive illumined by lights from the house; out in the roadway a line of scarlet-eyed broughams stood with horses heading firmly against the wind. Beyond, the darkness of Blackheath, where the roistering hurricane whistled and screamed like a hundred noisy children, and beyond again, stars fringing the town. When a door opened in the rooms underneath there came a loud discharge of singing that ceased when the door re-closed. Alfred Bateson, untying and unrolling a stout sack, set his bowler hat firm. He went to the door of the small dressing-room and crept along the dimly-lighted passage to the top of the staircase. Below he saw a young couple seated on chairs near a large palm, which seemed to bless them in a paternal way. The lad, telling the girl that she had played delightfully, called her the dearest creature on earth; to which she, not to be outdone in compliment, declared that he was a good fellow, and had tied his dress-tie that evening admirably.

'When they've quite finished their silly cackle,' growled Alfred Bateson to himself, 'p'raps they'll kindly move 'emselves off somewhere else. I'm a man that's got work to do.'

He rolled the empty sack under his brown overcoat and waited impatiently. When the young couple's stock of compliments had run out, the girl remarked that they had better go back to the drawing-room, or her aunt would never allow her to hear the last of it, and the boy said violently, 'Oh, bother your aunt, Jennie!' upon which she replied with coldness that this remark settled it, and in future she and Mr. Mellish would meet as strangers. The lad, overcome with remorse upon hearing this, made abject apology, extolling the virtues of her aunt to such an extent that there seemed some reason to fear he would offend in an opposite direction; but he stopped in time, and the girl graciously according pardon, he was permitted to kiss her hand, and the two went into the drawing-room together. Someone was speaking now—a clergyman, Alfred Bateson thought, for he was appealing for funds.

'To carry on this great work, my friends, money is wanted. Five shillings may save a convicted man's soul; ten shillings may——' The door of the room closed.

'And now,' said Alfred Bateson, 'now I play my little scene.'

The key which he took from his waistcoat pocket opened the butler's room. He turned down a green-shaded lamp which had been lighting up the Sportsman, that evening's 'Special,' and in the corner a large square iron safe. A pair of keys now came from Alfred Bateson's hip pocket, and with the first (an infant key) he released the escutcheons of the locks; with the second (an adult key) he opened the locks. The iron door groaned complainingly as it was pulled open.

'’Ush! can't you?' whispered Alfred Bateson reprovingly.

Heavy silver articles went into the bag first, making a sure and solid foundation for lighter articles to follow. He had just placed in with great care a silver soap-tureen, when he felt a touch on his shoulders. Looking up affrightedly, he saw a tall middle-aged lady in striped evening dress, her hair strained back from her forehead, pince-nez gripping tightly her definitely pointed nose.

'My good man,' she said amazedly, 'what on earth are you doing here?'

'Beg pardon, mem,' said Alfred Bateson, 'There's some mistake,I'm afraid. Isn't this 'ouse The Laurels, Black'eath?'

'This," she said, 'is The Chase.'

'Well,' he said regretfully, as he rose from his knees, 'then all I can say is, mem, I've made a error that's put me into rather a awkward position. I was told by my employers to cart away stuff from The Laurels, and, as a working man, my duty is to obey orders. Instead of which——'

'Young man,' said the lady, taking off her pince-nez and sawing the air, 'pray don't trouble to tell falsehoods.'

'Very well, mem,' he said agreeably, 'I won't.'

'First of all, replace all of those articles where you found them.'

'With pleasure, mem.'

'I wish to speak to you,' said the lady, standing now with her back to the door and looking at him in her short-sighted way. 'I should like to ask how you came to your present terrible position. What series of events has caused you, a comparatively young man, to become a criminal if I have my theory in regard to crime, and——'

'If I tell you the truth, mem,' he asked acutely, 'will you let me go?'

'I decline to bargain with you, my man. If I do not at once summon the household, it is because I look upon you in the light of a human document.'

'Nice name to call anybody.'

'A human document,' repeated the severe lady, still cutting the air with her pince-nez, 'representative of that much-to-be-condoled-with class for whom at this very moment a concert is being held in my drawing-room. I am an active worker in the cause of reclamation, and it is not, I confess, altogether uninteresting for me to meet one of them face to face. Only I must have the truth.'

'As to that,' said Alfred Bateson, as he completed the task of replacing the silver articles in the safe, 'I may 'ave me faults, lady, and I should be sorry to argue that I was abs'lutely perfect; but if it's truth you want, you couldn't have come to a better man. It's like this. When I was a kid——'

Only necessary to say of Alfred Bateson's story that it had as much of pathos as it was possible to put into a short story, and that it did credit to his powers of invention; a twinkle of enjoyment in his small eyes escaped the notice of the short-sighted lady. When he had finished the five minutes recital, she patted her eyelids with a belaced hand kerchief.

'So true it is,' she said half to herself, tearfully, 'that we know not the temptations to which others are subjected.'

'Do you mind, lady,' asked Alfred Bateson respectfully, 'if I skoot off now?'

'Skoot?'

'Do a bunk, I mean. I shall 'ave to earn 'alf a crown honest somehow to-night.'

'Here is the sum,' she said impulsively. 'In return, my poor young man, promise me one thing. Promise me that you will never in all your life break into a house again.'

'Lady,' he said feelingly, 'it's askin' a great deal of a man; but—well, I promise.'

'We have a meeting of a sub-committee here on Thursday next. Perhaps you could——'

'Thursday,' he said, 'I'm engaged, onfortunately.'

'I must return to the concert,' she said, 'because I have to speak a few words at the close. This encounter will enable me to give quite a dramatic effect in my speech. And we will try to find honest work for you, my poor man——'

'Ah!' said Alfred Bateson, sighing, 'that's what I want more 'n anything.'

'It was careless,' she said, preceding him through a passage to the door, 'very careless of my butler to leave everything unlocked. I must tell my niece to reprimand him after the concert.'

'I think he's as much to blame as I am, mem, if you ask me.'

'I hope I am doing the right thing in thus letting you go to commence a new life.'

'Lady,' he said fervently, and with some anxiety, 'you'll never regret it. Words that you've uttered to-night 'ave stamped 'emselves on my 'eart, and can never be rubbed out. As to gratitude, I can only say that I've enough for ten ordinary people.'

A rustle and a flash of print skirts at the end of the passage. He flushed and stepped quickly to the door, his face taking a changed look that improved it.

'Good-night, my man,' she said. The wind shrieked in at the open doorway, and she retired quickly.

'Bless you, lady!' replied Alfred Bateson.

'Caroline!' she called, 'come and close the door.'

'I'll do that, lady,' he whispered. 'Don't trouble her, and don't you stand here and ketch cold.' He stepped outside and pulled the door to.

'That's my gel,' he said to himself, with a confused smile, 'that she was callin' of. Glad she didn't see me. My own little Keroline!'

His bowler hat promptly flew off as he stepped along the path, and dodged sportively under a row of dwarfed trees. He condemned it very bitterly for this, but it refused to come out of hiding until a new gust of wind sent it spinning across a narrow thread of light that came from one of the windows. When he caught the hat, he rammed it well upon his head, and took his scarlet handkerchief from his pocket to tie over it in order to prevent another escape. As he did this, the keys which he had used clinked, and he stopped on his way to the gate. Away in the shadow of a groaning, wailing, complaining tree, he could see dimly the small fruiterer's cart and the quick-trotting pony that were waiting for him. A sudden idea arrived. He crept back through the bushes and climbed again to the small window by which he had first entered.

Five minutes later he was out of the house with a half-filled sack under his arm.

'Well,' whispered the short man at the pony's head complainingly, 'you've took your time!'

'That's right,' answered Alfred Bateson, 'grumble. Give us a lift with this bag.'

'It ain't full, neither,' growled the short man. 'Can't stand cheps what 'alf do a job.' They adjusted a tarpaulin sheet over the sack and heaped upon and around it a mountain of broccoli. One of the round white-faced heads fell off. 'There's another bloomin' twopence gone,' said the short man.

'Wouldn't be you, Ladd, if you 'adn't got a grievance.'

Mr. Ladd, stamping round in a splay-footed way to the wind-blown little pony, whisked off the cloth. Then, taking a hand from Alfred Bateson, he swung himself up on the seat; the alert pony looked back for the signal, its ears erect.

'Gu it, Punch!' said Mr. Ladd.

The quick little animal went, racing the wind, and seeming sometimes to beat it, away along the road skirting the heath towards the hill which led down to Deptford. Alfred Bateson explained.

'That,' said Ladd, as the cart shook and jerked and danced—'that is what I call as near as a toucher.'

'’Ighly enjoyable,' remarked the younger man with relish, holding on to the side of the cart.

'Enjoyable be ——' The wind carried the last word away. 'I like safety. When you've gone through what I've gone through, you'll—— But there, you're always lucky.'

'Speak up!' cried the younger man.

'I say,' roared the other above the shrieking of the hurricane, as the pony steadied himself slightly to go down the hill—'I say when you've gone through what I've gone through, you won't want no putting your 'ead in a bloomin' lion's mouth. It may be amusin', but it don't make me laugh.'

'Jest the part I enjoy most. Stop at the barber's.'

'Whaffor?'

'To get a letter from a party,' said Alfred Bateson with some confusion. 'You drive on and I'll follow.'

'Gel?' asked Mr. Ladd.

'Gel,' he admitted.

'Silly young josser!' said Mr. Ladd despairingly. 'Here's you, a sharp chap full of ideas and smart as they make 'em, and you go and get yourself——'

Mr. Ladd pulled up the pony, making it slide for a few yards. Alfred Bateson jumped down, and ran into the shop, which bore, amongst oblong labels acclaiming golden wares for making the hair curl, for making it grow, for making it wave, and for making it disappear, one which said: 'Letters and Parcels may be Addressed Here.'

'The silly young josser!' repeated the elder man. 'Gu it, Punch!'

The German who kept the hairdresser's shop brought forward, with a knowing smile, a post-letter. Alfred Bateson paid the penny.

'I vish the laties took nodice of me,' said the German hairdresser, winking portentously. 'Some of you japs get all the good luck.'

'I expect you was a reg'lar dog in your own country, Bismarck.'

'You bed your boods I was,' answered the gratified German.

'Whilst I'm here,' said Alfred Bateson, 'oblige me by shaving off these side-whiskers of mine. Strikes me I shall look better without 'em.'

He read his letter whilst the German performed this service. The letter was signed 'Caroline Hooper,' the writing large and careful:

 

'I am writing a note as promised. I am not a good writer because in Devonshire I only went to the parrish school, and I have never wrote a love letter before. I hope to see you … [here the word 'dear' had been written and struck out] on Saturday morning at you know where. I think of you a great deal. I am so glad you work hard for a living. I must now conclude with love.'

 

Alfred Bateson glanced at himself shamefacedly in the mirror.

'Dere's some grosses on the other side,' pointed out the hairdresser at his shoulder. 'Durn over.'

'What the 'ell do you mean,' he said angrily, 'by lookin' over my shou'der and readin' my private correspondence, eh? Damnation bit of cheek, and so I shall tell you if you ain't careful! Unnerstand that!'

'Don't fly into a demper,' begged the German, 'over a mere drifle. How vas I to know you don't vant me to read your ledders?'

'For two pins,' said Alfred Bateson with fierceness, 'for two small or'inary pins I'd take 'old of you by the scruff of your neck and——'

'My fellow,' interrupted the German nervously, 'you make nonsense remarks. You are a lucky man to have a goot girl in love with you; when you marry her I come and give you away.'

'I tell you what it is, Bismarck,' said the young man, wiping his cheeks with the towel and resuming his usual good temper, as he noted approvingly his changed appearance, 'I will marry her and chance it. I don't say I'm worthy of her, mind, but——'

'My boy,' protested the hairdresser, 'womens don't mind that.'

At Deptford Green (which was not a green, but had been one in the old days when a Czar came there to learn shipbuilding, and was now only a broad street leading towards the river, with old, dark-shuttered houses on one side, and irregular backs of factories on the other, a lamp at the centre)—at Deptford Green Mr. Ladd had already unloaded his respectable van of the innocent heads of broccoli; the sack of plate, when Alfred arrived, was being emptied of its contents on the floor of the front-room. In the yard at the back, the pony, his head well in a nosebag, munched with an appetite not denied to ponies that have been engaged in illegal proceedings.

The yard looked at the backs of old houses in Hughes' Fields. Hughes' Fields was a twin street to Deptford Green, but they did not precisely resemble each other, for Hughes' Fields had two entrances from Church Street, one under an archway, whilst Deptford Green had but one entrance, by the side of an old church. They were alike, however, in that each had wooden houses looking slightly awry, and brick houses, where you stepped directly from the cobblestoned pavement into the front-room; each was dimly lighted and had small beerhouses, which wasted no money on gas and added little to general illumination. To both roads an uncountable army of boys and girls came every evening from the less spacious streets near to play at robbers and thieves, a game that some of them continued to play when they had reached years of adolescence.

Mr. Ladd's sister, a stern, hard-faced woman, knelt on the floor rubbing up with a piece of leather the articles of silver plate that stood in a solid square on the linoleum, and muttered between whiles expressions of regret; in the corner near to the smoking lamp, with its snake of wick floating in a white glass vase of oil, sat on two chairs a stout lady in silk, with overplump hands that had rings embedded in the flesh. Near her Ladd looked at the scene with modest triumph, smoking a cigar, the scent of which fought desperately with the smell of the oil lamp. High up in the shatter at the window two round eyes had been plastered over with brown paper. Alfred Bateson was able to gain entrance only by whistling a few bars of a peculiar air at the front-door keyhole.

'Cheer, Elf!' said Mr. Ladd; 'you look quite smart.'

'Ah,' remarked the stern woman, looking over her shoulder, 'Elf always looks a treat. And, I say, look how this silver teapot's been and got dented! I do think it's a shame to take other people's property—don't you, Mrs. Fayres?'

'What's she say?' inquired the old lady, placing one large hand to her ear.

'Says,' translated Alfred Bateson in a loud whisper, 'that it's a 'orrible thing to see good goods pinched by gentlemen what it don't belong to.'

'Nonsense!' she said seriously in her bass voice. 'Whose goods are ye to pinch if it ain't other people's? What's use of going about taking your own goods, eh?'

'All the same,' said the woman on her knees, sighing, 'it's wrong, and some of you'll get into trouble sooner or later. This set of large spoons I should like to keep for meself; they'd be nice for me to leave to someone when I'm gone.'

'You're a cheerful bit of sunshine,' said her elderly brother. 'I wonder you don't get yourself 'ired out to evening parties where they want amusing. Have you done playing about with them goods?'

'It's a dangerous game,' she said mournfully, rising from her knees. 'Elf, my boy, you stop whilst you're lucky. Honesty's the best policy, although, of course, it don't pay very well. Still, in the long run—— I never had a saltspoon of me own, Elf,' she said, breaking off; 'make him give me one of these.'

'Look 'ere, my girl,' said Mr. Ladd, not unkindly, 'you retire into private life. You step out into the kitchen and sing yourself to sleep, or play with the sorcepins, or do something. We three 'ave got bisness to settle. You shunt, there's a good woman.'

'Not me,' she said definitely.

'Let her stop,' said Alfred; 'she won't be in the way.'

'A reg'lar soft you are,' growled Mr. Ladd, 'where there's a woman concerned. Mrs. Fayres, you've bin takin' stock of this lot for the last twen'y-five minutes. Now it's time to talk. How much?'

'Not much,' said the stout old lady with a lugubrious air.

'Well, how much?'

'There's a lot o' risk,' said Mrs. Fayres desolately. 'I'd rather leave it alone.'

'Vurry well,' interposed Alfred. 'Leave it alone, then. Get out o' the place, and don't waste our time——'

'How impetuous you are, my son!' complained the old lady, whose powers of hearing now appeared excellent. 'How you do jump at conclusions! That ain't the way to do business—is it, Ladd?'

'How much?' repeated that individual stolidly. 'That's all I want to know. Gimme a figure, and then I can talk to you.'

'Them silver dishes wasn't bought under close on fifty poun',' remarked Miss Ladd. 'Pity people don't take better care of their valuables!'

'Now, then, Mother Fayres,' urged Alfred, '’urry.'

Mrs. Fayres rose with great care from her chairs and went heavily across to the heap of silver plate. She handled each article, flicking with her handkerchief, inspecting narrowly, humming a bass air the while. Then she went to the door, as though prepared to leave the house on the least show of dissatisfaction. She whispered a sum in passing near to Ladd.

'And not a penny more,' said old Mrs. Fayres definitely, 'if it was to save my precious life.'

'Shall I tell you what you are?' asked Mr. Ladd with studied politeness. 'You're a 'og, that's what you are.'

'Goo'-night, missy,' said Mrs. Fayres, turning the handle, 'and goo'-night, my son. I'm sorry we haven't been able to do business together. I'm not so active in getting about as I was, and——'

'How much ready cesh 'ave you got?' asked Alfred. 'What's your limit?'

'If I was to tell you that I could lay my hands on much at the present moment, I sh'd be tellin' a lie. And a lie,' added the old lady, lifting her eyes with some emotion, 'I won't, never did, shan't, and cannot tell,'

'Let her go,' suggested the other woman. 'I'll run round and fetch that foreign chep from Mill Lane. He'll make a fair bid, and he'll give me something for a keepsake.'

'Do you mean,' asked the old lady at the door, trembling—'do you mean to look me in the face, my dear, and tell me that you, an Englishwoman, would dare to so far forget what's due to your own country'—here she shed tears—'as to go and do business with a lot of—of scoundrelly sauerkraut-eating, piano-organ-grinding, monkey-faced foreigners?'

'Cert'ny,' said Mr. Ladd promptly, 'if it paid us to.'

Mrs. Fayres came slowly back to the pile of articles, shaking her head.

'I'm ashamed of you,' she said pathetically. 'I'm ashamed to own you as fellow-countrymen. England isn't what it was in my young days. When I was a kid we all used to hang together and——'

'Jolly well deserved it, too,' said Alfred, 'I'll be bound.'

'You'll come to a bad end,' remarked Mrs. Fayres.

'’Eaven send it ain't worse than yours! Get on to business, and don't cackle so.'

'I wish,' said the old lady, obeying slowly—'I wish I 'adn't offered you so much now. These things 'll want a lot of alterin' and——'

'I've had to do with some fences in my time,' said Ladd, 'worse luck, but a older or a artfuller one I never saw. 'Pon my word,I'd rather deal with Mayer and the Mill Lane lot. They may be slaves to garlic, and their talk may be a bit difficult to follow, but——'

'Be a man!' urged Mrs. Fayres feelingly. 'Be a patriot, Ladd! Be a Briton! Remember what the poet says.'

Mr. Mr. Ladd was about to express an opinion concerning poetry and poets, when a sharp triple knock came at the front-door. Alfred Bateson grabbed at the sack, opened the mouth, and Ladd hurriedly threw in the articles of silver plate. Miss Ladd turned down the lamp, and flew to look through a chink in the shutters.

'It's the Inspector,' she whispered, panting. 'Get into the bedroom, you two, quick, and lock the door. Mother Fayres, take a book and be readin'. Alf, I don't want you to be caught.'

'Ain't very keen on it meself,' said the young man swiftly.

He lugged the full sack into a wooden box and closed it, his hands trembling. The two men crept out into the passage and went into the bedroom.

'A fair cop,' murmured Ladd feebly. 'I give in, mister; it's a fair cop.'

'Quiet, cloth-head!'

As the two men opened the window of the bedroom ready to jump out and escape thus by Hughes' Fields, the woman went humming cheerfully to the front-door, a bundle of worsted and a darning-needle in her hand.

'Who is it?'

'Inspector MacDonogh and a friend.'

'What do you want, Mr. MacDonogh, calling at a respectable house at this time of the night, and me busy darnin' stockin's?'

'I want,' said the voice of the Inspector, 'to come in out of the wind, and have just a friendly look round. Open the door, me good young woman.'

The good young woman undid the chain, and opened the door slowly. The Inspector, touching his cap in acknowledgment of her bow, beckoned to his companion, as the wind blew them in.

'Me friend, Mr. Arthur Barraclough,' said the Inspector.

'You've come to the 'ouse, gentlemen,' said Miss Ladd, 'of honest, 'ardworking people, and not to a manchin in the West End. Please, therefore, excuse me being in me disables, and the place being more or less 'ead over 'eels.'

'Is your brother in now?' asked the Inspector.

'Sir,' she said earnestly, 'I will not deceive you: I have not set eyes on him since the morning. He's been on his round with vegetables; he'll not be home till late. A honest living is not to be got without——'

'Hello, Mrs. Fayres, me charming young friend! what are ye doing here now? Waitin' for your sweetheart?'

'Mr. MacDonogh for a joke,' growled Mother Fayres ingratiatingly to the Inspector's companion. 'I know several people that make jokes, but none of 'em comes up to Mr. MacDonogh.'

'Me friend, Mr. Barraclough, is an employer of labour,' said the Inspector, 'with an interest in all classes. He wanted to see the home of a ticket-of-leave, and I took the liberty, ladies, of bringing him here.'

'It's a great intrusion, I'm afraid,' said the young man in a high apologetic voice. 'Point of fact, I'm just down from Oxford, and——'

'We must enjure it,' remarked Miss Ladd resignedly; 'it's part of the punishment.'

'The man was once,' explained the Inspector to the youth, 'a most notorious character. Since his last sintence he's been perfectly reformed, and he now earns a living in the greengrocery business.'

'Pleasant to know,' said Barraclough, looking around at the sacred pictures on the walls.

'Mother Fayres here,' went on the Inspector in the manner of a showman, 'as fine a woman as there is in all Deptford——'

'Mr. MacDonogh!' said the old lady.

'Keeps a second-hand furniture shop in the arches, and is an active politician with her own opinion on Home Rule. She'll be in the House of-Commons the moment the fair sex is admitted.'

'If only I could remember all of 'em,' whined the old lady, 'my fortune 'd be made. Such a book——'

'What do you keep in the wooden box?' inquired the tall youth politely.

The Inspector went to the recess. In the dark back-room, each of the two men who had been listening at the thin wall put a foot on the sill of the window.

'Bear witness,' cried the old lady appealingly, 'that I'm an honest tradeswoman, and that——'

'There's some fruit there, sir,' said the younger woman calmly. 'I'll fetch the key and show you. It was a bit off colour, and we put it in there because the smell——'

'I think we'll dispense, Inspector,' interrupted Barraclough, 'with the formality of opening the box.'

'It would give me absolutely no pleasure,' agreed the Inspector. 'Miss Ladd, me sincere apologies for disturbin' of ye.'

'Mr. MacDonogh,' said Miss Ladd, 'there's no one here more welcome than yourself.'

'Good-night to ye both,' remarked the Inspector. 'Happy dreams to ye, and the best of husbands. Mother Fayres, me girl, ye're a perfect heart-breaker, and ye know ut.'

'If only they was all printed!' moaned Mother Fayres. 'Oh, what a volume they'd make!'

'Thank you, sir!' Miss Ladd accepted a coin from young Barraclough as she showed them through the passage. 'I wanted a new Moody and Sankey 'ymn-book badly.'

A minute elapsed before the two men returned awkwardly, their faces still white, to the front-room. Ladd concluded the bargain with the old lady in an undertone. The bag once loaded in the van, ready to be driven through Church Street by Alfred in the early hours of the morning, relief came.

'We shall meet again, I 'ope, before long, my son,' remarked Mother Fayres in leaving.

'Not if I can 'elp it," replied Alfred Bateson definitely. 'I'm retiring from this sort of bisness, I am. I'm going to wash me 'ands of it—clean!'

The others stared.