We set off in the direction I had come, towards Covent Garden. All London was ours, and we’d a good hour to kill before reporting to Mr. Perkins.
“He’s from Jamaica. He showed it me on one of the cove’s maps.”
“How did he come here?”
“Oh, ain’t that a story!”
“Is it? Well, give it me then.”
And as we made our way, he told Mr. Bumham’s tale as it had been told to him.
Robert Burnham, of mixed blood, grew up on a plantation some distance outside Kingston. His father, the youngest son of a Shropshire squire, was the owner of the plantation and was then a bachelor; his mother was the plantation house cook. Though she was a slave she was held in great regard by her master; he accepted her son as his own and set about early to educate the boy, Robert, himself. He had a considerable library, though no texts in Latin or Greek, and so the boy learned only to read English and to write a good hand and as much of practical mathematics as his father could teach him. Yet what the boy learned, he learned well; he read his way through his father’s library, and his father appointed him to serve as his secretary and also to teach the younger children, black and mixed blood, how to read and write. When his father brought a widow with three young children over from England and married her, Robert taught her children, as well. Ultimately, the time came when the master had to return to England for reasons of business — family matters and others pertaining to the coffee trade — and Robert accompanied him as his secretary. It so happened that while the two were in London, Robert happened upon an advert placed by Mr. Bilbo in the Public Advertiser seeking a new tutor for Jim-mie Bunkins — the fifth in two years had just been discharged. Unknown to his master, he answered the advert, convinced Mr. Bilbo of his qualifications, and was hired. Young Robert Bumham, who knew the law well, returned to his master and claimed his freedom, for while slavery was permitted in the colonies, it had been banned in all Britain for centuries. His master was somewhat affronted, hurt to learn that Robert valued his freedom more than he did his favored life in Jamaica, yet there was little he would do to prevent him from remaining in London. Nor would he have been likely to prevent him though it be in his power to do so, for after all, master and slave were also father and son. And at their parting, it was as a father that he gave to Robert sufficient money to see him through in London for months to come; and it was as father and son that together they wept.
So did Robert Bumham come into Black Jack Bilbo’s employ as Jimmie Bunkins’s schoolmaster. I shall not pretend, reader, that all that I have revealed above I gleaned from Bunkins’s first telling of the tale, which was at best patchy. Yet I would come to know the young gentleman from Jamaica better and learn far more about him than I have given here.
Let it be said merely of Bunkins’s recital that it ended very nearly as it had begun — with Bunkins proclaiming his tutor “a rum joe” and adding that Mr. Bumham was the only teacher from whom he had ever learned a thing.
“Oh?” said I, “what about that French lady who taught you in her language? You learned nothing from her?”
“Madame Bertrand? What I learnt from her in Frenchy-talk was just to parrot what she said — though she taught me a few other things worth keepin’ in me napper. She was a rum blowen, she was, but she wasn’t no real teacher, wasn’t meant to be such.”
“How is Mr. Bumham different from the rest of them?”
“Well, first of all, he talks to you like you was a joe and not some eejit. And I remember one time, he takes me out for a walk, and he shows me there’s writing all round London — names of streets, shops and such, adverts and bills posted on walls, things I’d never bothered with. He showed me what I’d been missin’, he did. And he showed me, too, I could read some of them right off. It wasn’t just what was in the book. So I been practicin’ — like each time I goes out on tasks for Mr. Bilbo.”
By that time, Bunkins having told the long story of Mr. Bumham’s arrival in London, we had reached Chandos Street, where shops abounded of all purposes and descriptions. I thought to put him to the test and asked him to demonstrate his new-found skill. He quailed not at my challenge but stopped at the next shop and gave thoughtful study to the sign hung in front.
“Well,” said he, “from lookin’ inside, I know what sort of shop it be, but that ain’t what the sign says. It says ‘a-po-the-ca-ry’ “ — sounding it out carefully just so — “which, putting it all together, would be apothecary. And that must be some fancy name for a chemist’s shop, for that is what it is. There now, ain’t I right, chum?”
I was indeed most favorably impressed. “Right as can be. Mister Jimmie B.,” said I, saluting him in rhyme.
At which he stuck his tongue out at me. “Me tollibon’s out to you,” said he, seeking to match me in rhyme, “for daring to doubt me so.”
“That’s no proper rhyme,” said I.
“Tis,” said he.
“‘Tisn’t,” said I.
And, laughing, we repeated our claims for near half the length of the street. Then, thinking to play a trick upon him, I stopped quite sudden before the dressmaker shop of Mary Deemey.
“There,” said I, “read me that.” And I pointed at the daintily printed sign in Mary Deemey’s window.
He had no difficulty with her name and only a bit with “dressmaker,” yet the phrase below it, ”modes elegantes,” confused him. He read them out right enough, but they did not seem right to him.
“Should be t’other way round — ‘elegant modes,’ fancy fashions, like. Ain’t that right?” Then I saw kindle in his eyes the fire of suspicion. “You bugger,” said he. “That’s Frenchy-talk! You thought to addle me with French!”
Then did I run from him, laughing, and then did he chase me, shouting that low epithet so loudly that heads turned — “Bugger! Bugger!” — as we ran through the crowd. Sour disapproval registered on every face. He caught me up in Half Moon Passage and we wrestled a bit in jest. Then, quickly satisfied, we walked on together arm in arm. Two lads out on the town. We went so into Bedford Street where I did see something — or rather, someone — that brought me to a halt, and perforce Bunkins, as well.
“What is it?” said he. “Why’d you stop?”
“That fellow on the other side of the way — the one loitering at the door of that dive talking to the other that has his back to us. Who is he?”
I had pointed out the one I called the bully-boy. As Bun-kins looked, my eyes swept the street, but I saw no sign of Mariah.
“That one? You want nicks to do with him. He’s a queer cull, if ever there was one, right nasty with a knife.”
“Has he taken a stab at anyone? Who has he cut?”
“I ain’t all that certain he’s cut anyone. Still and all, he does dearly love to whip it out and scare people with it.”
“Such as?”
“Such as? Whores mostly, and me once when I was a kid. I’d napped a ring he wanted. I tried to sell it to him. Out came the knife, and he made a lunge at me, prob’ly just as a scare. Well, it worked. I took to me heaters, and he kept the ring.”
I was reminded of Yossel, whose way it was to threaten to cut off a nose or an ear and thus rob women of the streets of their earnings. He swore his were only threats; that he had never cut a one. Perhaps the bully-boy was just such a one — but f)erhaps not.
“Is he what you’d call a high-ripper?” I asked Bunkins.
“You can call him what you like, but he’s a nasty cull. That much I’ll give you.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jack something.” Bunkins gave it a moment’s thought. “Jackie Carver, he calls himself. But I think it’s a made-up name, like ‘Jack-the-carver’ — he’ll carve you up, see?”
As we discussed him, Jackie Carver concluded his conversation at the door of the dive, left his chum with a wave, and walked through it — lost from sight.
“Why’d you want to know about such as him?” asked Bunkins.
“We’ve had some dealings,” I said, not wishing to tell him more just then.