Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet Part 21

When I started again next morning, I found myself so stiff and footsore, that I could hardly put one leg before the other, much less walk upright. I was really quite in despair, before the end of the first mile; for I had no money to pay for a lift on the coach, and I knew, besides, that they would not be pa.s.sing that way for several hours to come. So, with aching back and knees, I made s.h.i.+ft to limp along, bent almost double, and ended by sitting down for a couple of hours, and looking about me, in a country which would have seemed dreary enough, I suppose, to any one but a freshly-liberated captive, such as I was. At last I got up and limped on, stiffer than ever from my rest, when a gig drove past me towards Cambridge, drawn by a stout cob, and driven by a tall, fat, jolly-looking farmer, who stared at me as he pa.s.sed, went on, looked back, slackened his pace, looked back again, and at last came to a dead stop, and hailed me in a broad nasal dialect--

"Whor be ganging, then, boh?"

"To Cambridge."

"Thew'st na git there that gate. Be'est thee honest man?"

"I hope so," said I, somewhat indignantly.

"What's trade?"

"A tailor," I said.

"Tailor!--guide us! Tailor a-tramp? Barn't accoostomed to tramp, then?"

"I never was out of London before," said I, meekly--for I was too worn-out to be cross--lengthy and impertinent as this cross-examination seemed.

"Oi'll gie thee lift; dee yow joomp in. Gae on, powney! Tailor, then! Oh!

ah! tailor, saith he."

I obeyed most thankfully, and sat crouched together, looking up out of the corner of my eyes at the huge tower of broad-cloth by my side, and comparing the two red shoulders of mutton which held the reins, with my own wasted, white, woman-like fingers.

I found the old gentleman most inquisitive. He drew out of me all my story--questioned me about the way "Lunnon folks" lived, and whether they got ony shooting or "pattening"--whereby I found he meant skating--and broke in, every now and then, with e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of childish wonder, and clumsy sympathy, on my accounts of London labour and London misery.

"Oh, father, father!--I wonders they bears it. Us'n in the fens wouldn't stand that likes. They'd roit, and roit, and roit, and tak' oot the dook-gunes to un--they would, as they did five-and-twenty year agone. Never to goo ayond the housen!--never to go ayond the housen! Kill me in a three months, that would--bor', then!"

"Are you a farmer?" I asked, at last, thinking that my turn for questioning was come.

"I bean't varmer; I be yooman born. Never paid rent in moy life, nor never wool. I farms my own land, and my vathers avore me, this ever so mony hoondred year. I've got the swoord of 'em to home, and the helmet that they fut with into the wars, then when they chopped off the king's head--what was the name of um?"

"Charles the First?"

"Ees--that's the booy. We was Parliament side--true Britons all we was, down into the fens, and Oliver Cromwell, as dug Botsham lode, to the head of us. Yow coom down to Metholl, and I'll shaw ye a country. I'll shaw 'ee some'at like bullocks to call, and some'at like a field o' beans--I wool,--none o' this here darned ups and downs o' hills" (though the country through which we drove was flat enough, I should have thought, to please any one), "to shake a body's victuals out of his inwards--all so flat as a barn's floor, for vorty mile on end--there's the country to live in!--and vour sons--or was vour on 'em--every one on 'em fifteen stone in his shoes, to patten again' any man from Whit'sea Mere to Denver Sluice, for twenty pounds o' gold; and there's the money to lay down, and let the man as dare cover it, down with his money, and on wi' his pattens, thirteen-inch runners, down the wind, again' either a one o' the bairns!"

And he jingled in his pockets a heavy bag of gold, and winked, and chuckled, and then suddenly checking himself, repeated in a sad, dubious tone, two or three times, "Vour on 'em there was--vour on 'em there was;"

and relieved his feelings by springing the pony into a canter till he came to a public-house, where he pulled up, called for a pot of hot ale, and insisted on treating me. I a.s.sured him that I never drank fermented liquors.

"Aw? Eh? How can yow do that then? Die o' cowd i' the fen, that gate, yow would. Love ye then! they as dinnot tak' spirits down thor, tak' their pennord o' elevation, then--women-folk especial."

"What's elevation?"

"Oh! ho! ho!--yow goo into druggist's shop o' market-day, into Cambridge, and you'll see the little boxes, doozens and doozens, a' ready on the counter; and never a ven-man's wife goo by, but what calls in for her pennord o' elevation, to last her out the week. Oh! ho! ho! Well, it keeps women-folk quiet, it do; and it's mortal good agin ago pains."

"But what is it?"

"Opium, bor' alive, opium!"

"But doesn't it ruin their health? I should think it the very worst sort of drunkenness."

"Ow, well, yow moi soy that-mak'th 'em cruel thin then, it do; but what can bodies do i' th'ago? Bot it's a bad thing, it is. Harken yow to me. Didst ever know one called Porter, to yowr trade?"

I thought a little, and recollected a man of that name, who had worked with us a year or two before--a great friend of a certain scatter-brained Irish lad, brother of Crossthwaite's wife.

"Well, I did once, but I have lost sight of him twelve months, or more."

The old man faced sharp round on me, swinging the little gig almost over, and then twisted himself back again, and put on a true farmer-like look of dogged, stolid reserve. We rolled on a few minutes in silence.

"Dee yow consider, now, that a mon mought be lost, like, into Lunnon?"

"How lost?"

"Why, yow told o' they sweaters--dee yow think a mon might get in wi' one o' they, and they that mought be looking for un not to vind un?"

"I do, indeed. There was a friend of that man Porter got turned away from our shop, because he wouldn't pay some tyrannical fine for being saucy, as they called it, to the shopman; and he went to a sweater's--and then to another; and his friends have been tracking him up and down this six months, and can hear no news of him."

"Aw! guide us! And what'n, think yow, be gone wi' un?"

"I am afraid he has got into one of those dens, and has p.a.w.ned his clothes, as dozens of them do, for food, and so can't get out."

"p.a.w.ned his clothes for victuals! To think o' that, noo! But if he had work, can't he get victuals?"

"Oh!" I said, "there's many a man who, after working seventeen or eighteen hours a day, Sundays and all, without even time to take off his clothes, finds himself brought in in debt to his tyrant at the week's end. And if he gets no work, the villain won't let him leave the house; he has to stay there starving, on the chance of an hour's job. I tell you, I've known half a dozen men imprisoned in that way, in a little dungeon of a garret, where they had hardly room to stand upright, and only just s.p.a.ce to sit and work between their beds, without breathing the fresh air, or seeing G.o.d's sun, for months together, with no victuals but a few slices of bread-and-b.u.t.ter, and a little slop of tea, twice a day, till they were starved to the very bone."

"Oh, my G.o.d! my G.o.d!" said the old man, in a voice which had a deeper tone of feeling than mere sympathy with others' sorrow was likely to have produced. There was evidently something behind all these inquiries of his.

I longed to ask him if his name, too, was not Porter.

"Aw yow knawn Billy Porter? What was a like? Tell me, now--what was a like, in the Lord's name! what was a like unto?"

"Very tall and bony," I answered.

"Ah! sax feet, and more? and a yard across?--but a was starved, a was a'

thin, though, maybe, when yow sawn un?--and beautiful fine hair, hadn't a, like a la.s.s's?"

"The man I knew had red hair," quoth I.

"Ow, ay, an' that it wor, red as a rising sun, and the curls of un like gowlden guineas! And thou knew'st Billy Porter! To think o' that, noo."--

Another long silence.

"Could you find un, dee yow think, noo, into Lunnon? Suppose, now, there was a mon 'ud gie--may be five pund--ten pund--twenty pund, by * * *--twenty pund down, for to ha' him brocht home safe and soun'--Could yow do't, bor'? I zay, could yow do't?"

"I could do it as well without the money as with, if I could do it at all.

But have you no guess as to where he is?"

He shook his head sadly.

"We--that's to zay, they as wants un--hav'n't heerd tell of un vor this three year--three year coom Whitsuntide as ever was--" And he wiped his eyes with his cuff.