He'll be swiping, round at The Sun. I can reckon _him_ up! He don't train for fighting, like he did thirty years ago. One sight of him would easy your mind--an old dot-and-go-one image!"
"I got the idea the officers would look to catch you there. I _did_, Wix."
"And I got the idea no such a thing!" Omission again before this last word. "Why in thunder do you suppose?... Shut to that door!"
"There's no one there--only old Nixon."
"Who's he talking to?"
"Nobody. Empty space!"
"Tell you he is! Look and see." Thereupon Miss Julia, looking through a transparent square in a glass chessboard into the bar, saw that the typical sot was certainly under the impression that he had an audience.
He was, in fact, addressing a homily to Michael on the advantages of Temperance. See, he said--substantially--the reward of self-restraint!
He was no mere bigoted doctrinaire, wedded to the absurd and exaggerated theories of the Teatolers. He had not a word to say in favour of Toalabshnensh. It was against Human Naysh. But Manshknewwhairtshtop, like himself, was always on the safe side. He charged Micky to be on his guard against Temptation, who lay in wait for inexperience without his first syllable, which had been absorbed in a hiccup. Micky was not grateful to Mr. Nixon for this, as it interfered with his hearing of the conversation within.
"Who are you, in behind that handle?" asked Miss Hawkins. "Come out and show us your face.... What's this? 'Dog Found'? Yes--very happy to oblige your aunt.... Stick it up against the front-glass yourself....
'Won't stick of itself,' won't it? Wait till I see for a wafer." She returned into the small parlour, and foraged in the drawer of her inkstand, which had probably done no service since her experiment in _faussure_, till it supplied Mr. Wix with a simile for the fog, ten minutes since.
"That's young Ikey," said the convict. "I can tell him by his lip. Fetch him inside. I've a message for him to carry." Miss Julia had found red wafers; and, after instructing Michael how to use them--to suck them in earnest, as they had got dry awaiting their mission in life--induced him into Mr. Wix's presence. Micky's instinctive hatred of this man was subdued by the recollection of the _douceurs_ he had received from him.
But do what he would, he was only equal to a nod, as greeting. He hardly received so much himself.
The convict eyed him sleepily from the window-seat, his usual anchorage at The Pigeons, and said nothing for some seconds. Then he roused himself to say:--"Well, young shaver, what the office for you?--that's the point! Look you now--are you going home?"
"Quite as like as not. That don't commit me to nothing, neither way.
Spit it out, guv'nor!"
Mr. Wix was filling a pipe, and did it to his satisfaction before he answered:--"You've to carry a message. A message to Aunt M'riar. Got that? You know Aunt M'riar."
"Knew Aunt M'riar afore ever you did."
Mr. Wix looked through his first puff of smoke, amused. "About right you are, that time!" said he. Not that this was untrue enough to be worth telling as a falsehood. Polly the barmaid had no niece or nephew that he knew of, in the early days. "But you could carry a message to her, if you didn't. Just you tell her old Goody Prichard's gone off her hooks."
"The widder two pair up at Number Seven? What hooks?"
"She's slipped her wind, handed in her chips."
"Mean she's dead? Carn't you say so, mister?"
"Sharp boy! That's what _she_ is. Dead."
"That won't soote Aunt M'riar." Micky had only known old Maisie by repute, but he knew the Court's love for her. A wish for some confirmation of the convict's statement arose in his mind. "How's she to know it's not a lie?" said he.
"_She'll_ know, fast enough! Say I told you. Say who I am. _She'll_ twig, when you tell her.... Stop a bit!" He was thinking how to authenticate the death without telling the boy overmuch about himself.
"Look here--I'll tell you what you've got to say. Say her son--old mother Prichard's son--was just up from Rocestershire, and he'd seen her dead, with his own eyes. Dead as a boiled lobster. That's your message."
If Micky had known that this man was speaking of himself and his own mother! Perhaps it was some instinctive inwardness that made him glad he had got his message and could be gone. He made short work of his exit, saying:--"All right, mister, I'm your man"--and departed after a word in the bar to Miss Julia:--"Right you are, missis! Don't you let him have another half-a-quartern." For Mr. Nixon being a penny short, her anxiety that he should observe his own rules of life had been reinforced by commercialism. She drew the line of encouraging drunkenness at integers--halves not counting as fractions, by tacit consent. They are not hard enough.
Miss Hawkins had placed herself in a difficulty by that indiscreet tampering with Aunt M'riar's letter. She had done it in a fit of furious exasperation with Daverill, immediately the result of an interview with him on his reappearance at The Pigeons some weeks ago. Some whim had inclined him towards the exhibition of a better selfhood than the one in daily use; perhaps merely to assert the power he still possessed over the woman; more probably to enable him to follow it up with renewed suggestions that she should turn the freehold Pigeons into solid cash, and begin with him a new life in America. She had kept her head in spite of kisses and cajolery, which appealed with some success to her memories of twenty years ago, and had refused to entertain any scheme in which lawful marriage was postponed till after the sale of her property. The parson was to precede the auctioneer.
But an escaped convict with the police inquiring for him cannot put up the banns. Had Daverill seen his way to doing so he would have made light of bigamy. Besides, _was_ it likely his first wife would claim him? He preferred to suppress his real reason for refusing to "make an honest woman" of Miss Julia, and to take advantage of the fact that his "real wife" Polly was still living.
Then Miss Hawkins had made a proposal which showed a curious frame of mind about marriage law. Her idea may be not unknown in the class she belonged to, still. It certainly existed in the fifties of last century.
If Aunt M'riar could be deprived of her "marriage lines" her teeth would be drawn, not merely practically by making proof of a marriage difficult, but definitely by the removal of a mysterious influence--most to be likened to the key of a driving-pulley, whose absence from its slot would leave the machinery of Matrimony at a deadlock. Let Mr. Wix, by force or fraud, get possession of this charter of respectability, and he and his lawful wife would come apart, like a steamed postage-stamp and its envelope. Nothing would be lacking then but a little fresh gum, and reattachment. This expresses Miss Julia's idea, however faulty the simile may be in itself.
"She's got her lines to show"--So the lady had been saying, shortly before Michael came into the bar.--"But she won't have them long, if you put your mind on making her give 'em up. _You_ can do it, Wix." She seemed to have a strong faith in the convict's cunning.
He appeared to ponder over it, saying finally:--"Right you are, Juliar!
I see my way."
"What are you going to do?"
"That's tellings. I'll get the dockyment out of her. That's enough for you, without your coming behind to see. I'll make you a New Year's present of it, gratish. What'll you do with it?"
"Tear it up--burn it. That'll quiet _her_ off. Lawful Polly! Damn her!"
Really Miss Hawkins made a better figure in a rage, than when merely vegetating. And yet her angry flush was inartistic, through so much pearl powder. It made streaks.
It had its effect on Daverill, soothing his complaisant mood, making him even more cunning than before. "I'll get it out of her, Juliar," said he, "and you shall have it to tear up, to your heart's content. It don't make one farthing's worth of difference, that I see. But have it your own choice. A woman's a woman!" There seems no place in this for Mr.
Wix's favourite adjective; but it called for omission before "farthing's worth," for all that!
"Not a penny of mine shall go your way, Wix, till I've put it on the fire, and seen it burn." Miss Hawkins dropped her voice to say:--"Only keep safe, just the little while left."
After Micky's exit one or two customers called for attention, and subsided into conversation over one or two quarts. One had a grievance that rumbled on continuously, barely pausing for intermittent sympathy from the other or others. Their quarts having been conceded and paid for, Miss Julia returned. That steak--which you may have felt anxious about--was being kept hot, and Mr. Wix was tapping the ashes out of his finished pipe. "There!" said he. "You run your eye through that, and you'll see there's no more cause to shy off Sapps than any other place."
His exact words suggested recent carnage in Sapps Court, but only for rhetoric's sake.
Miss Hawkins picked up the letter he threw across the table, and recognised the one she had stealthily converted to an assurance of the disappearance of extra police from Sapps Court. She felt very uncomfortable indeed--but what could she do?
Ill news is said to travel fast, always. It had not done so in this case, and Sapps Court was still in ignorance of old Maisie's death when Michael passed under its archway, to experience for the first time the feelings that beset the bearer of fatal tidings to those it will wound to hear them far worse than himself. To a not inhuman creature, in such a case, a title to sorrow, that will lessen the distance between his own heart and the one he has to lacerate, is almost a relief.
He himself was not to blame for delay in delivering his message. On the contrary, his sympathetic perception of its unwelcomeness to its recipients took the strange form of a determination not to lose a second in fulfilling his instructions. So deeply bent was he on doing this that he never questioned the reasonableness of his own alacrity until he had passed the iron post Dave fell off--you remember?--and was opposite to his own family residence at the head of the Court. His intention had been to pass it, and go straight on to No. 7. Something made him change his mind; perhaps the painfulness of his task dawned on him. His mother was surprised to see him. "There now," said she. "I thought you was going to be out all day, and your father he'll want all the supper there is for hisself."
"So I _was_ a-going to be out all day. I'm out now, in a manner o'
speaking. Going out again. Nobody's going to suffer from an empty stummick along o' me." He had subsided on a rocking-chair, dropping his old cloth cap between his feet.
"Whereabouts have you been to, Micky?" said his mother conciliatorily, to soothe her son's proud independent spirit.
He recited his morning's work rapidly. "Linked an old cock down to Chiswick Mawl what was frightened to ride in a hansom, till half-past eleven, 'cos he could only go slow. Got an early dinner off of his cook by reason of roomuneration. Cold beef and pickles as much as I choose.
Slice o' plum pudding hotted up a purpose, only no beer for to encourage wice in youth. Bein' clost handy, dropped round on a wisit to Arnty Lisbeth. Arnty Lisbeth she's makin' inquiry concerning a young tike's owner. Wrote Arnty Lisbeth out a notice-card. Got Miss Horkings next door to allow it up in her window on the street. That's how I came by this here intelligence I got to pass on to Wardle's. Time I was going!"
Mrs. Ragstroar stopped scraping the brown outer skin off a very large potato, and looked reproachfully at Micky. "You've never said nothing of _that_," said she.
"Who ever went to say I said anything of it?" was the reply. In this family all communications took the form of contradictions or indictments, more or less defiant in character. "I never said not one word. I'd no call to say anything, and I didn't."
"Then how can you ever expect anyone to know unless you say?" She went on peeling.
"Who's ever said I expected anyone to know?" But in spite of his controversial method, he did _not_ go away to give this message; and evidently wanted a helping hand, or at least sympathy.
His mother perceived the fact, and said magnanimously:--"You might just as well up and tell, Micky." Then she nearly undid the effect of her concession by saying:--"Because you know you want to!"