The trail of the serpent
grated window, and counting the drops falling from the eaves--for there
is at last some cessation in the violence of the rain. He knows it is
an autumn evening; but he has not seen the golden red of one fallen
leaf, or the subdued colouring of one autumnal flower: he knows it is
the end of September, because his keeper has told him so; and when
his window is open, he can hear sometimes, far away, deadened by the
rainy atmosphere as well as by the distance, the occasional report
of some sportsman’s gun. He thinks, as he hears this, of a September
many years ago, when he and a scapegrace companion took a fortnight’s
shooting in a country where to brush against a bush, or to tread upon
the long grass, was to send a feathered creature whirring up in the
clear air. He remembers the merry pedestrian journey, the road-side
inns, the pretty barmaids, the joint purse; the blue smoke from two
short meerschaum pipes curling up to the grey morning sky; the merry
laughter from two happy hearts ringing out upon the chill morning air.
He remembers encounters with savage gamekeepers, of such ferocious
principle and tender consciences as even the administration of a
half-crown could not lull to sleep; he remembers jovial evenings in
the great kitchens of old inns, where unknown quantities of good old
ale were drunk, and comic songs were sung, with such a chorus, that to
join in it was to be overcome by such fatigue, or to be reduced from
wildest mirth to such a pitch of sudden melancholy, as ultimately to
lead to the finishing of the evening in tears, or else under the table.
He remembers all these things, and he wonders--as, being a madman, it
is natural he should--wonders whether it can be indeed himself, who
once was that wittiest, handsomest, most generous, and best of fellows,
baptised long ago in a river of sparkling hock, moselle, and burgundy,
“Daredevil Dick.”
But something more than these sad memories comes with the deepening
twilight, for presently Richard hears the door of his room unlocked,
and his keeper’s voice, saying,--
“There, go in, and tell the gent you’ve come. I’m a-comin’ in with his
supper and his lamp presently, and then I’ll tell you what you’ve got
to do.”
Naturally Richard looked round in the direction of the door, for he
knew this must be the strange boy. Now, his late juvenile attendant
had numbered some fifteen summers; to say nothing of the same number
of winters, duly chronicled by chilblains and chapped hands. Richard’s
eyes therefore looked towards the open door at about that height from
the ground which a lad of fifteen has commonly attained; and looking
thus, Richard saw nothing. He therefore lowered his glance, and in
about the neighbourhood of what would have been the lowest button of
his last attendant’s waistcoat, he beheld the small pale thin face of a
very small and very thin boy.
This small boy was standing rubbing his right little foot against his
left little wizen leg, and looking intently at Richard. To say that his
tiny face had a great deal of character in it would not be to say much;
what face he had was all character.
Determination, concentration, energy, strength of will, and brightness
of intellect, were all written in unmistakable lines upon that pale
pinched face. The boy’s features were wonderfully regular, and had
nothing in common with the ordinary features of a boy of his age
and his class; the tiny nose was a perfect aquiline; the decided
mouth might have belonged to a prime minister with the blood of the
Plantagenets in his veins. The eyes, of a bluish grey, were small, and
a little too near together, but the light in them was the light of an
intelligence marvellous in one so young.
Richard, though a wild and reckless fellow, had never been devoid of
thought, and in the good days past had dabbled in many a science,
and had adopted and abandoned many a creed. He was something of a
physiognomist, and he read enough in one glance at this boy’s face to
awaken both surprise and interest in him.
“So,” said he, “you are the new boy! Sit down,” he pointed to a little
wooden stool near the bed as he spoke. “Sit down, and make yourself at
home.”
The boy obeyed, and seated himself firmly by the side of Richard’s
pillow; but the stool was so low, and he was so small, that Richard
had to change his position to look over the edge of the bed at his
new attendant. While Daredevil Dick contemplated him the boy’s small
grey eyes peered round the four white-washed walls, and then fixed
themselves upon the barred window with such a look of concentration,
that it seemed to Richard as if the little lad must be calculating the
thickness and power of resistance of each iron bar with the accuracy of
a mathematician.
“What’s your name, my lad?” asked Richard. He had been always beloved
by all his inferiors for a manner combining the stately reserve of a
great king with the friendly condescension of a popular prince.
“Slosh, sir,” answered the boy, bringing his grey eyes with a great
effort away from the iron bars and back to Richard.
“Slosh! A curious name. Your surname, I suppose?”
“Surname and christen name too, sir. Slosh--short for Sloshy.”
“But have you no surname, then?”
“No, sir; _fondling_, sir.”
“A foundling: dear me, and you are called Sloshy! Why, that is the name
of the river that runs through Slopperton.”
“Yes, sir, which I was found in the mud of the river, sir, when I was
only three months old, sir.”
“Found in the river--were you? Poor boy--and by whom?”
“By the gent what adopted me, sir.”
“And he is----?” asked Richard.
“A gent connected with the police force, sir; detective----”
This one word worked a sudden change in Richard’s manner. He raised
himself on his elbow, looked intently at the boy, and asked, eagerly,--
“This detective, what is his name? But no,” he muttered, “I did not
even know the name of that man. Stay--tell me, you know perhaps some of
the men in the Slopperton police force besides your adopted father?”
“I knows every man jack of ’em, sir; and a fine staff they is--a credit
to their country and a happiness to theirselves.”
“Do you happen to know amongst them a dumb man?” asked Richard.
“Lor’, sir, that’s him.”
“Who?”
“Father, sir. The gent what found me and adopted me. I’ve got a message
for you, sir, from father, and I was a-goin’ to give it you, only I
thought I’d look about me a little first; but stay--Oh, dear, the
gentleman’s took and fainted. Here,” he said, running to the door and
calling out in a shrill voice, “come and unlock this here place, will
yer, and look alive with that lamp! The gentleman’s gone off into a
dead faint, and there ain’t so much as a drop of water to chuck over
his face.”
The prisoner had indeed fallen back insensible on the bed. For eight
long years he had nourished in his heart a glimmering though dying hope
that he might one day receive some token of remembrance from the man
who had taken a strange part in the eventful crisis of his life. This
ray of light had lately died out, along with every other ray which had
once illuminated his dreary life; but in the very moment when hope was
abandoned, the token once eagerly looked for came upon him so suddenly,
that the shock was too much for his shattered mind and feeble frame.
When Richard recovered from his swoon, he found himself alone with the
boy from Slopperton. He was a little startled by the position of that
young person, who had seated himself upon the small square deal table
by the bedside, commanding from this elevation a full view of Richard’s
face, whereon his two small grey eyes were intently fixed, with that
same odd look of concentration with which he had regarded the iron bars.
“Come now,” said he, with the consolatory tone of an experienced
sick-nurse; “come now, we mustn’t give way like this, just because we
hears from our friends; because, you see, if we does, our friends can’t
be no good to us whichever way their intention may be.”
“You said you had a message for me,” said Richard, in feeble but
anxious tones.
“Well, it ain’t a long un, and here it is,” answered the young
gentleman from his extempore pulpit; and then he continued, with very
much the air of giving out a text--“Keep up your pecker.”
“Keep up what?” muttered Richard.
“Your pecker. ‘Keep up your pecker,’ them’s his words; and as he never
yet vos known to make a dirty dinner off his own syllables, it ain’t
likely as he’ll take and eat ’em. He says to me--on his fingers, in
course--‘Tell the gent to keep up his pecker, and leave all the rest
to you; for you’re a pocket edition of all the sharpness as ever
knives was nothing to, or else say I’ve brought you up for no good
whatsomedever.’”
This was rather a vague speech; so perhaps it is scarcely strange that
Richard did not derive much immediate comfort from it. But, in spite
of himself, he did derive a great deal of comfort from the presence of
this boy, though he almost despised himself for attaching the least
importance to the words of an urchin of little better than eight years
of age. Certainly this urchin of eight had a shrewdness of manner which
would have been almost remarkable in a man of the world of fifty, and
Richard could scarcely help fancying that he must have graduated in
some other hemisphere, and been thrown, small as to size, but full
grown as to acuteness, into this; or it seemed as if some great strong
man had been reduced into the compass of a little boy, in order to
make him sharper, as cooks boil down a gallon of gravy to a pint in the
manufacture of strong soup.
But, however the boy came to be what he was, there he was, holding
forth from his pulpit, and handing Richard the regulation basin of
broth which composed his supper.
“Now, what you’ve got to do,” said he, “is to get well; for until you
are well, and strong too, there ain’t the least probability of your
bein’ able to change your apartments, if you should feel so inclined,
which perhaps ain’t likely.”
Richard looked at the diminutive speaker with a wonderment he could not
repress.
“Starin’ won’t cure you,” said his juvenile attendant, with friendly
disrespect, “not if you took the pattern of my face till you could draw
it in the dark. The best thing you can do is to eat your supper, and
to-morrow we must try what we can do for you in the way of port wine;
for if you ain’t strong and well afore that ere river outside this ere
vall goes down, it’s a chance but vot it’ll be a long time afore you
sees the outside of the val in question.”
Richard caught hold of the boy’s small arm with a grasp which, in
spite of his weakness, had a convulsive energy that nearly toppled his
youthful attendant from his elevation.
“You never can think of anything so wild?” he said, in a tumult of
agitation.
“Lor’ bless yer ’art, no,” said the boy; “we never thinks of anything
vot’s wild--our ’abits is business-like; but vot you’ve got to do is to
go to sleep, and not to worrit yourself; and as I said before, I say
again, when you’re well and strong we’ll think about changin’ these
apartments. We can make excuse that the look-out was too lively, or
that the colour of the whitewash was a-hinjurin’ our eyesight.”
For the first time for many nights Richard slept well; and opening
his eyes the next morning, his first anxiety was to convince himself
that the arrival of the boy from Slopperton was not some foolish dream
engendered in his disordered brain. No, there the boy sat: whether
he had been to sleep on the table, or whether he had never taken his
eyes off Richard the whole night, there he was, with those eyes fixed,
exactly as they had been the night before, on the prisoner’s face.
“Why, I declare we’re all the better for our good night’s rest,” he