Chapter III. In which the reader is made acquainted with an occurrence which happened on a memorable Friday.
It is my sincere belief that my mother no more deserved to be stigmatised as Judas, through her connexion with that unlucky business of Uncle Ben’s, than the reader’s respected self; at the same time, I am bound to admit that my father appears to have thought otherwise, and for my own part I hardly know whether to wish that such was really his impression. If so, it was some excuse for his brutal behaviour towards her. Only some, however; not enough, by a very long way, to justify him in beating, and taunting, and worrying her to death. And that’s what it came to.
At the same time, I must do my father the justice to state my opinion, that while he was bullying and beating her he did not have it in his mind that he was killing her. I am willing to give him credit for thinking that she was of the same hardy and enduring kind as the majority of the women living in our alley. I judge so, from many reasons; from the one which I am about to relate more than any other.
It was on a Friday afternoon, in the summer time, that, coming in from play in the alley, I made my way up-stairs to the front room in which we lived, and, to my great astonishment, was peremptorily refused admittance by a person of the name of Jenkins, who with her husband lodged on the floor below ours, but who on this occasion was in our room. As I turned the latch, I could hear her hurrying towards the door; and putting out her head, she very sharply requested me to run and play, as no little boys were wanted there. I recall with regret the fact that I, smarting under a sense of indignity put on me by Mrs. Jenkins, and further exasperated by hearing the lock click as she turned the key, began to bawl my loudest, and to batter and kick the door, demanding of my mother to turn out Mrs. Jenkins instantly, and to cut me a thick slice of bread and treacle. Presently, however, I was calmed. My mother came to the door.
“Don’t make mammy’s head ache, Jimmy,” said she kindly. “Mammy’s ill, dear. Don’t cry. Buy a cake, Jim.”
And hearing a metallic sound at my feet, I looked down and saw that she had pushed a farthing through the chink at the bottom of the door; so I went off and bought a brandy-ball.
It was near my father’s time for returning from the market when I went indoors again. Just, however, as I reached the first landing, there came a hasty creaking of boots behind me, and in an instant I was overtaken and passed by a tall gentleman in black clothes, who took the stairs two at a time, as though in a mighty hurry, and arriving at our room-door, as I could plainly hear, rapped at it and went in, closing the door behind him. This, of course, was a settler for me. I sat down in a corner of the stairs to wait until the creaky boots came down again.
But they didn’t come down, and I waited and waited until I dozed off to sleep, and so my father (who that evening happened to be later than usual) found me. He had been drinking a little, I think, and began to bluster and talk loud, asking me where the something my mother was, and why the something else she did not take better care of me.
“Mother’s up-stairs, father,” said I. “Up-stairs! and leave you laying about on the stairs to be trod on! We’ll thundering soon see what that means.”
And raging like a bull, he was stamping up the stairs, when I called after him—
“There’s somebody up with her, father.”
“Somebody! Who?”
“A gentleman with”—
“A what! a gentleman?”
“A gentleman with a white thing round his neck, and creaky boots. Mrs. Jenkins is up there, too, father.”
Hearing this explanation, my father turned slowly back, laughing a little, and tossing his head.
“Come on, Jimmy,” said he, softly, taking me up in his arms; “we don’t want nothing to say to Mr. Gentleman. I know who he is, Jim. Let’s come down to old Jenks, and see what he’s got to say about it.”
So we went down and knocked at old Jenkins’s door. At first it seemed that there was nobody within; but when father knocked again, louder, Mr. Jenkins made his appearance, rubbing his eyes as though he had been awoke out of a sleep. He laid hold on my father by the jacket-sleeve and pulled him into the room.
“You haven’t been up, Jim, have you?” asked he, eagerly.
“No, I’m just a-goin’,” replied my father; “what’s up? anything the matter? Anything uncommon, I mean?”
“Beggar the things! to think that you should have gone past the door and me not hear you,” replied Mr. Jenkins, evasively.
“Gone past the door! why shouldn’t I?” asked my father, beginning to look serious.
“Come in, that’s a good fellow, and I’ll tell you all about it. You must know, Jim, that I promised my old woman that I would lay wait for you on the landing, just to give you a hint like; but you see, Jim, I get up so jolly early, and you was so late to-night before you came home, that I”—
“A hint of what?” interrupted my father.
“Dozed off, I suppose,” continued Mr. Jenkins, nervously. “I wouldn’t go up, Jim, if I was you. Fact, that’s what I was laying wait to tell you; leastways I ought to have done. My old woman is up there, you know. She said she would when it happened. Bless you, the place was full of women till the doctor came, and then says he, ‘Which of you may I regard as this poor creature’s nuss?’ ‘Will you be so good as to regard me as such, sir?’ said my old woman. ‘I will so,’ said the doctor; ‘and now all the rest of you hook it, for this is, I am sorry to say, a case that requires the greatest amount of uninterruption.’ Them wasn’t the exact words, but my old woman can tell you. He turned ’em all out, howsomever.”
“Why, course he did,” answered my father. “Get out with you, trying to frighten a fellow. Why, aint you old enough to know that they always do turn ’em out when they find a pack of ’em chattering and jawing together?”
“What’s the time, Jim?”
“After six—half-past,” my father replied, beginning to whistle, as though to show his superiority to Mr. Jenkins’s ungrounded croaking.
“Half-past three—half-past four! Ah, he’s been up there, barring the time he run home and back again to fetch something—he’s been up there four hours—four solid hours, Jim. That’s a good while, don’t you know?” observed Mr. Jenkins, wagging his head seriously.
“That aint no manner of odds, I tell you,” maintained my father, stoutly; “they always do stay a long while. Why, when this young shaver as I’ve got in my arms was born”—
“Oh! I never met such a fellow for argument as he is,” ejaculated Mr. Jenkins, distressfully turning away, and making a pretence of mending the fire. “Talk about breaking it to him gradual! It ’ud puzzle a lawyer to do it.” Then turning in desperation, and with the poker in his hand, towards my father, said he—
“Since you must know, Jim Ballisat, there’s something wrong up there;” and he jerked his thumb towards the ceiling.
“How wrong?”
“Altogether wrong, Jim. Al—to—gether wrong.”
It wasn’t Mr. Jenkins’s words, so much as the way in which he delivered them, that seemed to impress my father. He had no heart for further argument He took off his hairy cap, and lowered himself down on to a chair by the window, with me on his knees.
“When was she took?” he presently asked.
“A little afore tea—so I’m told,” replied Mr. Jenkins.