The trail of the serpent
overflowing gutter would have been welcome as pools of water in the
great desert of Sahara; till the people who lived on the sunny side of
the way felt spitefully disposed towards the inhabitants of the shady
side; till the chandler at the corner, who came out with a watering-pot
and sprinkled the pavement before his door every evening, was thought
a public benefactor; till the baker, who added his private stock of
caloric to the great firm of Sunshine and Co., and baked the pavement
above his oven on his own account, was thought a public nuisance, and
hot bread an abomination; till the butter Slopperton had for tea was
no longer butter, but oil, and eluded the pursuit of the knife, or hid
itself in a cowardly manner in the holes of the quartern loaf when the
housewife attempted to spread it thereon; till cattle standing in pools
of water were looked upon with envy and hatred; and till--wonder of
wonders!--Slopperton paid up the water-rate sharp, in fear and anguish
at the thought of the possible cutting-off of that refreshing fluid.
The 17th of June ushered in the midsummer holidays at Dr. Tappenden’s
establishment, and on the evening of that day Dr. Tappenden broke up.
Of course, this phrase, breaking up, is only a schoolboy’s slang. I do
not mean that the worthy Doctor (how did he ever come to be a doctor,
I wonder? or where did he get his degree?) experienced any physical
change when he broke up; or that he underwent the moral change of
going into the _Gazette_ and coming out thereof better off than
when he went in--which is, I believe, the custom in most cases of
bankruptcy; I merely mean to say, that on the evening of the 17th of
June Dr. Tappenden gave a species of ball, at which Mr. Pranskey, the
dancing-master, assisted with his pumps and his violin; and at which
the young gentlemen appeared also in pumps, a great deal of wrist-band
and shirt-collar, and shining faces--in a state of painfully high
polish, from the effect of the yellow soap that had been lavished
upon them by the respectable young person who looked to the wardrobe
department, and mended the linen of the young gentlemen.
By the evening of the 18th, Dr. Tappenden’s young gentlemen, with the
exception of two little fellows with dark complexions and frizzy hair,
whose nearest connections were at Trinidad, all departed to their
respective family circles; and Mr. Jabez North had the schoolroom to
himself for the whole of the holidays--for, of course, the little
West Indians, playing at a sea-voyage on one of the forms, with a
cricket-bat for a mast, or reading Sinbad the Sailor in a corner, were
no hindrance to that gentleman’s proceedings.
Our friend Jabez is as calm-looking as ever. The fair pale complexion
may be, perhaps, a shade paler, and the arched mouth a trifle more
compressed--(that absurd professor of phrenology had declared that
both the head and face of Jabez bespoke a marvellous power of
secretiveness)--but our friend is as placid as ever. The pale face,
delicate aquiline nose, the fair hair and rather slender figure, give a
tone of aristocracy to his appearance which even his shabby black suit
cannot conceal. But Jabez is not too well pleased with his lot. He
paces up and down the schoolroom in the twilight of the June evening,
quite alone, for the little West Indians have retired to the long
dormitory which they now inhabit in solitary grandeur. Dr. Tappenden
has gone to the sea-side with his slim only daughter, familiarly known
amongst the scholars, who have no eyes for ethereal beauty, as “Skinny
Jane.” Dr. Tappenden has gone to enjoy himself; for Dr. Tappenden is a
rich man. He is said to have some twenty thousand pounds in a London
bank. He doesn’t bank his money in Slopperton. And of “Skinny Jane,” it
may be observed, that there are young men in the town who would give
something for a glance from her insipid grey eyes, and who think her
ethereal figure the very incarnation of the poet’s ideal, when they add
to that slender form the bulky figures that form the sum-total of her
father’s banking account.
Jabez paces up and down the long schoolroom with a step so light that
it scarcely wakes an echo (those crotchety physiologists call this
light step another indication of a secretive disposition)--up and down,
in the darkening summer evening.
“Another six months’ Latin grammar,” he mutters, “another half-year’s
rudiments of Greek, and all the tiresome old fables of Paris and Helen,
and Hector and Achilles, for entertainment! A nice life for a man
with my head--for those fools who preached about my deficient moral
region were right perhaps when they told me my intellect might carry me
anywhere. What has it done for me yet? Well, at the worst, it has taken
me out of loathsome parish rags; it has given me independence. And it
shall give me fortune. But how? What is to be the next trial? This time
it must be no failure. This time my premises must be sure. If I could
only hit upon some scheme! There is a way by which I could obtain a
large sum of money; but then, the fear of detection! Detection, which
if eluded to-day might come to-morrow! And it is not a year or two’s
riot and dissipation that I want to purchase; but a long life of wealth
and luxury, with proud men’s necks to trample on, and my old patrons to
lick the dust off my shoes. This is what I must fight for, and this is
what I must attain--but how? How?”
He takes his hat up, and goes out of the house. He is quite his own
master during these holidays. He comes in and goes out as he likes,
provided he is always at home by ten o’clock, when the house is shut up
for the night.
He strolls with a purposeless step through the streets of Slopperton.
It is half-past eight o’clock, and the factory hands fill the streets,
enjoying the coolness of the evening, but quiet and subdued in their
manner, being exhausted by the heat of the long June day. Jabez does
not much affect these crowded streets, and turns out of one of the most
busy quarters of the town into a little lane of old houses, which
leads to a great old-fashioned square, in which stand two ancient
churches with very high steeples, an antique-looking town-hall (once
a prison), a few quaint houses with peaked roofs and projecting upper
stones, and a gaunt pump. Jabez soon leaves this square behind him,
and strolls through two or three dingy, narrow, old-fashioned streets,
till he comes to a labyrinth of tumble-down houses, pig-styes, and
dog-kennels, known as Blind Peter’s Alley. Who Blind Peter was, or how
he ever came to have this alley--or whether, as a place possessing no
thoroughfare and admitting very little light, it had not originally
been called Peter’s Blind Alley--nobody living knew. But if Blind
Peter was a myth, the alley was a reality, and a dirty loathsome
fetid reality, with regard to which the Board of Health seemed as if
smitten with the aforesaid Peter’s own infirmity, ignoring the horror
of the place with fatal blindness. So Blind Peter was the Alsatia of
Slopperton, a refuge for crime and destitution--since destitution
cannot pick its company, but must be content often, for the sake of
shelter, to jog cheek by jowl with crime. And thus no doubt it is
on the strength of that golden adage about birds of a feather that
destitution and crime are thought by numerous wise and benevolent
persons to mean one and the same thing. Blind Peter had risen to
popularity once or twice--on the occasion of a girl poisoning her
father in the crust of a beef-steak pudding, and a boy of fourteen
committing suicide by hanging himself behind a door. Blind Peter, on
the first of these occasions, had even had his portrait taken for a
Sunday paper; and very nice indeed he had looked in a woodcut--so nice,
that he had found some difficulty in recognizing himself; which perhaps
was scarcely wonderful, when it is taken into consideration that the
artist, who lived in the neighbourhood of Holborn, had sketched Blind
Peter from a mountain gorge in the Tyrol, broken up with three or four
houses out of Chancery Lane.
Certainly Blind Peter had a peculiar wildness in his aspect, being
built on the side of a steep hill, and looked very much like a London
alley which had been removed from its site and pitched haphazard on to
a Slopperton mountain.
It is not to be supposed for a moment that so highly respectable
an individual as Mr. Jabez North had any intention of plunging
into the dirty obscurity of Blind Peter. He had come thus far only
on his way to the outskirts of the town, where there was a little
brick-bestrewn, pseudo country, very much more liberally ornamented by
oyster-shells, broken crockery, and scaffolding, than by trees or wild
flowers--which natural objects were wondrous rarities in this part of
the Sloppertonian outskirts.
So Jabez pursued his way past the mouth of Blind Peter--which was
adorned by two or three broken-down and rusty iron railings that looked
like jagged teeth--when he was suddenly arrested by a hideous-looking
woman, who threw her arms about him, and addressed him in a shrill
voice thus--
“What, he’s come back to his best friends, has he? He’s come back to
his old granny, after frightening her out of her poor old wits by
staying away four days and four nights. Where have you been, Jim, my
deary? And where did you get your fine toggery?”
“Where did I get my fine toggery? What do you mean, you old hag? I
don’t know you, and you don’t know me. Let me pass, will you? or I’ll
knock you down!”
“No, no,” she screamed; “he wouldn’t knock down his old granny; he
wouldn’t knock down his precious granny that nursed him, and brought
him up like a gentleman, and will tell him a secret one of these days
worth a mint of money, if he treats her well.”
Jabez pricked up his ears at the words “mint of money,” and said in
rather a milder tone--
“I tell you, my good woman, you mistake me for somebody else. I never
saw you before.”
“What! you’re not my Jim?”
“No. My name is Jabez North. If you’re not satisfied, here’s my card,”
and he took out his card-case.
The old woman stuck her arms akimbo, and stared at him with a gaze of
admiration.
“Lor’,” she cried, “don’t he do it nat’ral? Ain’t he a born genius?
He’s been a-doing the respectable reduced tradesman, or the young
man brought up to the church, what waits upon the gentry with a long
letter, and has a wife and two innocent children staying in another
town, and only wants the railway fare to go to ’em. Eh, Jim, that’s
what you’ve been a-doing, ain’t it now? And you’ve brought home the
swag like a good lad to your grandmother, haven’t you now?” she said in
a wheedling tone.
“I tell you, you confounded old fool, I’m not the man you take me for.”
“What, not my Jim! And you can look at me with his eyes, and tell me
so with his voice. Then, if you’re not him, he’s dead, and you’re his
ghost.”
Jabez thought the old woman was mad; but he was no coward, and the
adventure began to interest him. Who was this man who was so like him,
and who was to learn a secret some day worth a mint of money?
“Will you come with me, then,” said the old woman, “and let me get a
light, and see whether you are my Jim or not?”
“Where’s the house?” asked Jabez.
“Why, in Blind Peter, to be sure. Where should it be?”
“How should I know?” said Jabez, following her. He thought himself safe
even in Blind Peter, having nothing of value about him, and having
considerable faith in the protecting power of his strong right arm.
The old woman led the way into the little mountain gorge, choked up
with rickety hovels lately erected, or crazy old houses which had once
been goodly residences, in the days when the site of Blind Peter had
been a pleasant country lane. The house she entered was of this latter