“How easy!” “While you’ve been shivering here it might have been done three times over!” “You haven’t got pluck enough!”
“That’s all very well,” said I to myself in answer! “easy enough when a fat old woman, with a pocket in her silk frock, sticks herself out like that! Any one could do it. I could! But how long might a cove wait for another such a chance?”
And so it came about that I presently found myself standing against the lamp-post waiting for “another such a chance!”
I didn’t have long to wait The “luck” that attended my first pilfer in Covent Garden Market seemed ready at hand. Before I could have counted fifty, a lady—not a stout one nor an old one, it is true, but owning a bead purse and wearing a silk dress—came out of the grocer’s. She was fidgeting at the purse, out of which, I suppose, she had paid for the goods she had bought; and just as she reached the door, she shut the snap of the purse and dropped it carelessly into the pocket of her silk gown.
“You would be the sort to crowd in among the others round the window,” thought I.
And so she did.
She sauntered up to the window to have a look at the nodding mandarins, and I crept softly behind her. It seemed that in wishing that she might go to the window I had pledged myself to a bargain I was bound to go through with if she did so. I did as nearly as possible as I had seen the other boy do. While I looked very hard indeed at the Chinaman, my hand slid between the folds in the silk gown, through which I had seen the purse disappear. In an instant my fingers were touching the slippery bead-work, and in another instant the purse was mine! I was strong to run now, and I did run; I ran all the way to Whitechapel Church, and there, in a by-street, and by a light that shone from a little shop window, behind which an honest old tailor sat stitching a coat, I opened the clasp of the purse, as it still lay in the pocket of my trousers, and emptied it. One at a time I took the pieces of money out, looked at them, and slipped them into the other trousers’ pocket. I kept count as I went, and found that I had got eighteen shillings and four-pence—two half-crowns, a half-sovereign, three shillings, and a fourpenny-piece.
In all my life I had never had so much money; no, nor a half, nor a quarter as much. It was an enormous lot of money. But I was not pleased on that account The largeness of the sum seemed to make the crime I had committed all the more tremendous. The half-sovereign, especially, made the business seem dreadfully wicked. Had it been an old purse, with a couple of shillings—or, at the outside, half-a-crown—in it, I believe I should have got a sort of comfort out of the reflection that it was a great risk, and the money no more than paid for it; but when I saw the rich-looking shining purse, and the gold and the large and small silver, I was in great terror, and fully of half a mind to take some of the weight from my conscience by dropping the half-sovereign down the tailor’s area. I did drop the empty purse there.
I didn’t quite know what to do; that is, I didn’t know what to buy to eat, or where to buy it. “If Mouldy or Ripston was with me now I should be all right,” I thought; but, at the same instant, it came into my head that perhaps my old friends would not speak to me now, or have anything to do with my money. I was a pickpocket—a real thief, such as Mouldy had described that time when he was trying to prove to me that our business at Covent Garden was not real thieving. “I don’t call myself a thief, I can tell you,” said Mouldy; and he spoke as though he would be very sorry indeed to be one. Yet I was one, and Mouldy, if he met me, might turn his back on me. It made me feel very miserable indeed to think of this, nor did I arrive at a more comfortable condition of mind until I had stopped at a hot-eel stall and spent the whole of my odd fourpenny-piece.
After this, I past the greater part of the evening in eating or in choosing what I would eat. My stomach must indeed have been empty! I went again and again to a confectioner’s five times, for a twopenny sausage roll, and that after I had bought and eaten a twopenny loaf and some treacle. The last thing I bought was a pen’orth of eating-chocolate, and I afterwards very much wished that I had not eaten it.
But after all, I found, on counting up when I began to think of looking for a lodging, that I hadn’t spent very much—one and sevenpence was all—and even after I had bought a good strong pair of boots, I found myself with something over three-and-sixpence, besides the half-sovereign, which I fastened with a pin in the cuff of my jacket.
And now the reader knows how I came to be a real thief. But I didn’t mean to repeat the trick. Not I! It was done, and it couldn’t be helped; but not a soul in the world beside myself knew it, nor were they likely to; when I got up in the morning I would look about me and see what could be done. There were a hundred ways of getting a living with thirteen-and-sixpence to start with.
Chapter XXXII. In which I make the acquaintance of Long George Hopkins, who kindly offers to take me as an in-door apprentice, and instruct me in the mysteries of his craft.
So I’ll be bound there were a hundred ways of getting an honest living; but, to my shame, I never tried one of them.
I returned to my lodging at the soup-shop after my tremendous “success;” and, when I set out therefrom next morning, I felt as well-disposed to find something honest to do as, under the circumstances, could be possible; but, since I had run such a risk to obtain the means of setting myself up in the world, nothing could be more foolish than to embark in any business rashly and without giving it deliberate consideration. So I went along, deliberately considering this and that until dinner-time came, and I went to a cook-shop and had a good dinner. After dinner, I strolled through Petticoat Lane, and seeing there exposed for sale a yellow silk neckerchief, spotted with blue, of the fashionable “bird’s-eye” pattern, such as my father wore, I bought it for three-and-sixpence, well aware at the time that it was ridiculous extravagance; but trying to fudge my conscience that the three-and-sixpence was invested rather as a tribute to my father than to my own personal vanity. After that I bought a pint of beer to cheer my spirits, which the remembrance of home, conjured up by contemplation of the blue “bird’s-eye,” had much cast down.
Whether it was the action of the stimulant on my already excited mind, or that the beer of Petticoat Lane was particularly powerful, I can’t say; but shortly after disposing of my twopen’-orth of beer, my spirits rose to that degree I could scarcely contain them. All dread of my enemies ceased, and I felt full enough of courage to face Mr. Belcher himself, provided he did not have the double-barrelled gun with him. Gazing into a second-hand tool-shop, it occurred to me that an individual against whom all the world were making a dead set was justified in arming himself, so I entered the shop, and purchased a terrible-looking old flint pistol for two-and-three-pence; but finding that it was an awkward implement to carry about in a shallow trouser pocket, I re-sold it at the same shop late in the afternoon for one-and-fourpence. So was my dearly earned eighteen-and-fourpence frittered away, that after pawning the silk neckerchief (I never durst wear the glaring thing; I was not reckless enough for that) for eighteenpence, I found myself in the street, on the evening of the third day, as poor in pocket as when I stood against the lamp-post facing the grocer’s window in Aldgate; and so—
But the reader can guess what happened next. The ice was broken, and I was in for it. I tried very hard to make myself believe that I was a poor forlorn boy, despised and hunted by everybody, and right-down driven to adopt courses which were so utterly repugnant to his nature that it was the merest turn of a straw with him whether he allowed himself quietly to starve, or consent to yield to the promptings of a hungry belly; but how much less I was to be pitied in my second than in my first attempt is sufficiently shown in the fact that finding but four shillings in the purse, I was much disappointed, and more than ever impressed with the conviction that if ever there was an unlucky and despised boy, I was that one.