Books: Robert Falconer

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'It is a mercy they do not. They would only do infinite mischief.
The best notion civilization seems to have is--not to drive out the
demons, but to drive out the possessed; to take from them the poor
refuges they have, and crowd them into deeper and more fetid
hells--to make room for what?--more and more temples in which Mammon
may be worshipped. The good people on the other hand invade them
with foolish tracts, that lie against God; or give their money to
build churches, where there is as yet no people that will go to
them. Why, the other day, a young clergyman bored me, and would
have been boring me till now, I think, if I would have let him, to
part with a block of my houses, where I know every man, woman, and
child, and keep them in comparative comfort and cleanliness and
decency, to say no more, that he might pull them down and build a
church upon the site--not quite five minutes' walk from the church
where he now officiates.'

It was a blowing, moon-lit night. The gaslights flickered and
wavered in the gusts of wind. It was cold, very cold for the
season. Even Falconer buttoned his coat over his chest. He got a
few paces in advance of me sometimes, when I saw him towering black
and tall and somewhat gaunt, like a walking shadow. The wind
increased in violence. It was a north-easter, laden with dust, and
a sense of frozen Siberian steppes. We had to stoop and head it at
the corners of streets. Not many people were out, and those who
were, seemed to be hurrying home. A few little provision-shops, and
a few inferior butchers' stalls were still open. Their great jets
of gas, which looked as if they must poison the meat, were flaming
fierce and horizontal, roaring like fiery flags, and anon dying into
a blue hiss. Discordant singing, more like the howling of wild
beasts, came from the corner houses, which blazed like the gates of
hell. Their doors were ever on the swing, and the hot odours of
death rushed out, and the cold blast of life rushed in. We paused a
little before one of them--over the door, upon the sign, was in very
deed the name Death. There were ragged women within who took their
half-dead babies from their bare, cold, cheerless bosoms, and gave
them of the poison of which they themselves drank renewed despair in
the name of comfort. They say that most of the gin consumed in
London is drunk by women. And the little clay-coloured baby-faces
made a grimace or two, and sank to sleep on the thin tawny breasts
of the mothers, who having gathered courage from the essence of
despair, faced the scowling night once more, and with bare necks and
hopeless hearts went--whither? Where do they all go when the
gin-hells close their yawning jaws? Where do they lie down at
night? They vanish like unlawfully risen corpses in the graves of
cellars and garrets, in the charnel-vaults of pestiferously-crowded
lodging-houses, in the prisons of police-stations, under dry arches,
within hoardings; or they make vain attempts to rest the night out
upon door-steps or curbstones. All their life long man denies them
the one right in the soil which yet is so much theirs, that once
that life is over, he can no longer deny it--the right of room to
lie down. Space itself is not allowed to be theirs by any right of
existence: the voice of the night-guardian commanding them to move
on, is as the howling of a death-hound hunting them out of the air
into their graves.

In St. James's we came upon a group around the gates of a great
house. Visitors were coming and going, and it was a show to be had
for nothing by those who had nothing to pay. Oh! the children with
clothes too ragged to hold pockets for their chilled hands, that
stared at the childless duchess descending from her lordly carriage!
Oh! the wan faces, once lovely as theirs, it may be, that gazed
meagre and pinched and hungry on the young maidens in rose-colour
and blue, tripping lightly through the avenue of their eager
eyes--not yet too envious of unattainable felicity to gaze with
admiring sympathy on those who seemed to them the angels, the
goddesses of their kind. 'O God!' I thought, but dared not speak,
'and thou couldst make all these girls so lovely! Thou couldst give
them all the gracious garments of rose and blue and white if thou
wouldst! Why should these not be like those? They are hungry even,
and wan and torn. These too are thy children. There is wealth
enough in thy mines and in thy green fields, room enough in thy
starry spaces, O God!' But a voice--the echo of Falconer's
teaching, awoke in my heart--'Because I would have these more
blessed than those, and those more blessed with them, for they are
all my children.'

By the Mall we came into Whitehall, and so to Westminster Bridge.
Falconer had changed his mind, and would cross at once. The
present bridge was not then finished, and the old bridge alongside
of it was still in use for pedestrians. We went upon it to reach
the other side. Its centre rose high above the other, for the line
of the new bridge ran like a chord across the arc of the old.
Through chance gaps in the boarding between, we looked down on the
new portion which was as yet used by carriages alone. The moon had,
throughout the evening, alternately shone in brilliance from amidst
a lake of blue sky, and been overwhelmed in billowy heaps of
wind-tormented clouds. As we stood on the apex of the bridge,
looking at the night, the dark river, and the mass of human effort
about us, the clouds gathered and closed and tumbled upon her in
crowded layers. The wind howled through the arches beneath, swept
along the boarded fences, and whistled in their holes. The
gas-lights blew hither and thither, and were perplexed to live at
all.

We were standing at a spot where some shorter pieces had been used
in the hoarding; and, although I could not see over them, Falconer,
whose head rose more than half a foot above mine, was looking on the
other bridge below. Suddenly he grasped the top with his great
hands, and his huge frame was over it in an instant. I was on the
top of the hoarding the same moment, and saw him prostrate some
twelve feet below. He was up the next instant, and running with
huge paces diagonally towards the Surrey side. He had seen the
figure of a woman come flying along from the Westminster side,
without bonnet or shawl. When she came under the spot where we
stood, she had turned across at an obtuse angle towards the other
side of the bridge, and Falconer, convinced that she meant to throw
herself into the river, went over as I have related. She had all
but scrambled over the fence--for there was no parapet yet--by the
help of the great beam that ran along to support it, when he caught
her by her garments. So poor and thin were those garments, that if
she had not been poor and thin too, she would have dropped from them
into the darkness below. He took her in his arms, lifted her down
upon the bridge, and stood as if protecting her from a pursuing
death. I had managed to find an easier mode of descent, and now
stood a little way from them.

'Poor girl! poor girl!' he said, as if to himself: 'was this the
only way left?'

Then he spoke tenderly to her. What he said I could not hear--I
only heard the tone.

'O sir!' she cried, in piteous entreaty, 'do let me go. Why should
a wretched creature like me be forced to live? It's no good to you,
sir. Do let me go.'

'Come here,' he said, drawing her close to the fence. 'Stand up
again on the beam. Look down.'

She obeyed, in a mechanical kind of way. But as he talked, and she
kept looking down on the dark mystery beneath, flowing past with
every now and then a dull vengeful glitter--continuous, forceful,
slow, he felt her shudder in his still clasping arm.

'Look,' he said, 'how it crawls along--black and slimy! how silent
and yet how fierce! Is that a nice place to go to down there?
Would there be any rest there, do you think, tumbled about among
filth and creeping things, and slugs that feed on the dead; among
drowned women like yourself drifting by, and murdered men, and
strangled babies? Is that the door by which you would like to go
out of the world?'

'It's no worse,' she faltered, '--not so bad as what I should leave
behind.'

'If this were the only way out of it, I would not keep you from it.
I would say, "Poor thing! there is no help: she must go." But
there is another way.'

'There is no other way, sir--if you knew all,' she said.

'Tell me, then.'

'I cannot. I dare not. Please--I would rather go.'

She looked, from the mere glimpses I could get of her, somewhere
about five-and-twenty, making due allowance for the wear of
suffering so evident even in those glimpses. I think she might have
been beautiful if the waste of her history could have been restored.
That she had had at least some advantages of education, was evident
from both her tone and her speech. But oh, the wild eyes, and the
tortured lips, drawn back from the teeth with an agony of
hopelessness, as she struggled anew, perhaps mistrusting them, to
escape from the great arms that held her!

'But the river cannot drown you,' Falconer said. 'It can only stop
your breath. It cannot stop your thinking. You will go on
thinking, thinking, all the same. Drowning people remember in a
moment all their past lives. All their evil deeds come up before
them, as if they were doing them all over again. So they plunge
back into the past and all its misery. While their bodies are
drowning, their souls are coming more and more awake.'

'That is dreadful,' she murmured, with her great eyes fixed on his,
and growing steadier in their regard. She had ceased to struggle,
so he had slackened his hold of her, and she was leaning back
against the fence.

'And then,' he went on, 'what if, instead of closing your eyes, as
you expected, and going to sleep, and forgetting everything, you
should find them come open all at once, in the midst of a multitude
of eyes all round about you, all looking at you, all thinking about
you, all judging you? What if you should hear, not a tumult of
voices and noises, from which you could hope to hide, but a solemn
company talking about you--every word clear and plain, piercing your
heart with what you could not deny,--and you standing naked and
shivering in the midst of them?'

'It is too dreadful!' she cried, making a movement as if the very
horror of the idea had a fascination to draw her towards the
realization of it. 'But,' she added, yielding to Falconer's renewed
grasp, 'they wouldn't be so hard upon me there. They would not be
so cruel as men are here.'

'Surely not. But all men are not cruel. I am not cruel,' he added,
forgetting himself for a moment, and caressing with his huge hand
the wild pale face that glimmered upon him as it were out of the
infinite night--all but swallowed up in it.

She drew herself back, and Falconer, instantly removing his hand,
said,

'Look in my face, child, and see whether you cannot trust me.'

As he uttered the words, he took off his hat, and stood bare-headed
in the moon, which now broke out clear from the clouds. She did
look at him. His hair blew about his face. He turned it towards
the wind and the moon, and away from her, that she might be
undisturbed in her scrutiny. But how she judged of him, I cannot
tell; for the next moment he called out in a tone of repressed
excitement,

'Gordon, Gordon, look there--above your head, on the other bridge.'

I looked and saw a gray head peering over the same gap through which
Falconer had looked a few minutes before. I knew something of his
personal quest by this time, and concluded at once that he thought
it was or might be his father.

'I cannot leave the poor thing--I dare not,' he said.

I understood him, and darted off at full speed for the Surrey end of
the bridge. What made me choose that end, I do not know; but I was
right.

I had some reason to fear that I might be stopped when I reached it,
as I had no business to be upon the new bridge. I therefore
managed, where the upper bridge sank again towards a level with the
lower, to scramble back upon it. As I did so the tall gray-headed
man passed me with an uncertain step. I did not see his face. I
followed him a few yards behind. He seemed to hear and dislike the
sound of my footsteps, for he quickened his pace. I let him
increase the distance between us, but followed him still. He turned
down the river. I followed. He began to double. I doubled after
him. Not a turn could he get before me. He crossed all the main
roads leading to the bridges till he came to the last--when he
turned toward London Bridge. At the other end, he went down the
stairs into Thames Street, and held eastward still. It was not
difficult to keep up with him, for his stride though long was slow.
He never looked round, and I never saw his face; but I could not
help fancying that his back and his gait and his carriage were very
like Falconer's.

We were now in a quarter of which I knew nothing, but as far as I
can guess from after knowledge, it was one of the worst districts in
London, lying to the east of Spital Square. It was late, and there
were not many people about.

As I passed a court, I was accosted thus:

''Ain't you got a glass of ale for a poor cove, gov'nor?'

'I have no coppers,' I said hastily. 'I am in a hurry besides,' I
added as I walked on.

'Come, come!' he said, getting up with me in a moment, 'that ain't a
civil answer to give a cove after his lush, that 'ain't got a
blessed mag.'

As he spoke he laid his hand rather heavily on my arm. He was a
lumpy-looking individual, like a groom who had been discharged for
stealing his horse's provender, and had not quite worn out the
clothes he had brought with him. From the opposite side at the same
moment, another man appeared, low in stature, pale, and marked with
the small-pox.

He advanced upon me at right angles. I shook off the hand of the
first, and I confess would have taken to my heels, for more reasons
than one, but almost before I was clear of him, the other came
against me, and shoved me into one of the low-browed entries which
abounded.

I was so eager to follow my chase that I acted foolishly throughout.
I ought to have emptied my pockets at once; but I was unwilling to
lose a watch which was an old family piece, and of value besides.

'Come, come! I don't carry a barrel of ale in my pocket,' I said,
thinking to keep them in good-humour. I know better now. Some of
these roughs will take all you have in the most good-humoured way in
the world, bandying chaff with you all the time. I had got amongst
another set, however.

'Leastways you've got as good,' said a third, approaching from the
court, as villanous-looking a fellow as I have ever seen.

'This is hardly the right way to ask for it,' I said, looking out
for a chance of bolting, but putting my hand in my pocket at the
same time. I confess again I acted very stupidly throughout the
whole affair, but it was my first experience.

'It's a way we've got down here, anyhow,' said the third with a
brutal laugh. 'Look out, Savoury Sam,' he added to one of them.

'Now I don't want to hurt you,' struck in the first, coming nearer,
'but if you gives tongue, I'll make cold meat of you, and gouge your
pockets at my leisure, before ever a blueskin can turn the corner.'

Two or three more came sidling up with their hands in their pockets.

'What have you got there, Slicer?' said one of them, addressing the
third, who looked like a ticket-of-leave man.

'We've cotched a pig-headed counter-jumper here, that didn't know
Jim there from a man-trap, and went by him as if he'd been a
bull-dog on a long-chain. He wants to fight cocum. But we won't
trouble him. We'll help ourselves. Shell out now.'

As he spoke he made a snatch at my watch-chain. I forgot myself and
hit him. The same moment I received a blow on the head, and felt
the blood running down my face. I did not quite lose my senses,
though, for I remember seeing yet another man--a tall fellow, coming
out of the gloom of the court. How it came into my mind, I do not
know, and what I said I do not remember, but I must have mentioned
Falconer's name somehow.

The man they called Slicer, said,

'Who's he? Don't know the--.'

Words followed which I cannot write.

'What! you devil's gossoon!' returned an Irish voice I had not heard
before. 'You don't know Long Bob, you gonnof!'

All that passed I heard distinctly, but I was in a half faint, I
suppose, for I could no longer see.

'Now what the devil in a dice-box do you mean?' said Slicer,
possessing himself of my watch. 'Who is the blasted cove?--not that
I care a flash of damnation.'

'A man as 'll knock you down if he thinks you want it, or give you a
half-a-crown if he thinks you want it--all's one to him, only he'll
have the choosing which.'

'What the hell's that to me? Look spry. He mustn't lie there all
night. It's too near the ken. Come along, you Scotch haddock.'

I was aware of a kick in the side as he spoke.

'I tell you what it is, Slicer,' said one whose voice I had not yet
heard, 'if so be this gentleman's a friend of Long Bob, you just let
him alone, I say.'

I opened my eyes now, and saw before me a tall rather slender man in
a big loose dress-coat, to whom Slicer had turned with the words,

'You say! Ha! ha! Well, I say--There's my Scotch haddock! who'll
touch him?'

'I'll take him home,' said the tall man, advancing towards me. I
made an attempt to rise. But I grew deadly ill, fell back, and
remember nothing more.

When I came to myself I was lying on a bed in a miserable place. A
middle-aged woman of degraded countenance, but kindly eyes, was
putting something to my mouth with a teaspoon: I knew it by the
smell to be gin. But I could not yet move. They began to talk
about me, and I lay and listened. Indeed, while I listened, I lost
for a time all inclination to get up, I was so much interested in
what I heard.

'He's comin' to hisself,' said the woman. 'He'll be all right by and
by. I wonder what brings the likes of him into the likes of this
place. It must look a kind of hell to them gentle-folks, though we
manage to live and die in it.'

'I suppose,' said another, 'he's come on some of Mr. Falconer's
business.'

'That's why Job's took him in charge. They say he was after
somebody or other, they think.--No friend of Mr. Falconer's would be
after another for any mischief,' said my hostess.

'But who is this Mr. Falconer?--Is Long Bob and he both the same
alias?' asked a third.

'Why, Bessy, ain't you no better than that damned Slicer, who ought
to ha' been hung up to dry this many a year? But to be sure you
'ain't been long in our quarter. Why, every child hereabouts knows
Mr. Falconer. Ask Bobby there.'

'Who's Mr. Falconer, Bobby?'

A child's voice made reply,

'A man with a long, long beard, that goes about, and sometimes grows
tired and sits on a door-step. I see him once. But he ain't Mr.
Falconer, nor Long Bob neither,' added Bobby in a mysterious tone.
'I know who he is.'

'What do you mean, Bobby? Who is he, then?'

The child answered very slowly and solemnly,

'He's Jesus Christ.'

The woman burst into a rude laugh.

'Well,' said Bobby in an offended tone, 'Slicer's own Tom says so,
and Polly too. We all says so. He allus pats me on the head, and
gives me a penny.'

Here Bobby began to cry, bitterly offended at the way Bessy had
received his information, after considering him sufficiently
important to have his opinion asked.

'True enough,' said his mother. 'I see him once a-sittin' on a
door-step, lookin' straight afore him, and worn-out like, an' a lot
o' them childer standin' all about him, an' starin' at him as mum as
mice, for fear of disturbin' of him. When I come near, he got up
with a smile on his face, and give each on 'em a penny all round,
and walked away. Some do say he's a bit crazed like; but I never
saw no sign o' that; and if any one ought to know, that one's Job's
Mary; and you may believe me when I tell you that he was here night
an' mornin' for a week, and after that off and on, when we was all
down in the cholerer. Ne'er a one of us would ha' come through but
for him.'

I made an attempt to rise. The woman came to my bedside.

'How does the gentleman feel hisself now?' she asked kindly.

'Better, thank you,' I said. 'I am ashamed of lying like this, but I
feel very queer.'

'And it's no wonder, when that devil Slicer give you one o' his even
down blows on the top o' your head. Nobody knows what he carry in
his sleeve that he do it with--only you've got off well, young man,
and that I tell you, with a decent cut like that. Only don't you go
tryin' to get up now. Don't be in a hurry till your blood comes
back like.'

I lay still again for a little. When I lifted my hand to my head, I
found it was bandaged up. I tried again to rise. The woman went to
the door, and called out,

'Job, the gentleman's feelin' better. He'll soon be able to move, I
think. What will you do with him now?'

'I'll go and get a cab,' said Job; and I heard him go down a stair.

I raised myself, and got on the floor, but found I could not stand.
By the time the cab arrived, however, I was able to crawl to it.
When Job came, I saw the same tall thin man in the long dress coat.
His head was bound up too.

'I am sorry to see you too have been hurt--for my sake, of course,'
I said. 'Is it a bad blow?'

'Oh! it ain't over much. I got in with a smeller afore he came
right down with his slogger. But I say, I hope as how you are a
friend of Mr. Falconer's, for you see we can't afford the likes of
this in this quarter for every chance that falls in Slicer's way.
Gentlemen has no business here.'

'On the contrary, I mean to come again soon, to thank you all for
being so good to me.'

'Well, when you comes next, you'd better come with him, you know.'

'You mean with Mr. Falconer?'

'Yes, who else? But are you able to go now? for the sooner you're
out of this the better.'

'Quite able. Just give me your arm.'

He offered it kindly. Taking a grateful farewell of my hostess, I
put my hand in my pocket, but there was nothing there. Job led me
to the mouth of the court, where a cab, evidently of a sort with the
neighbourhood, was waiting for us. I got in. Job was shutting the
door.

'Come along with me, Job,' I said. 'I'm going straight to Mr.
Falconer's. He will like to see you, especially after your kindness
to me.'

'Well, I don't mind if I do look arter you a little longer; for to
tell the truth,' said Job, as he opened the door, and got in beside
me, 'I don't over and above like the look of the--horse.'

'It's no use trying to rob me over again,' I said; but he gave no
reply. He only shouted to the cabman to drive to John Street,
telling him the number.

I can scarcely recall anything more till we reached Falconer's
chambers. Job got out and rang the bell. Mrs. Ashton came down.
Her master was not come home.

'Tell Mr. Falconer,' I said, 'that I'm all right, only I couldn't
make anything of it.'

'Tell him,' growled Job, 'that he's got his head broken, and won't
be out o' bed to-morrow. That's the way with them fine-bred ones.
They lies a-bed when the likes o' me must go out what they calls
a-custamongering, broken head and all.'

'You shall stay at home for a week if you like, Job--that is if I've
got enough to give you a week's earnings. I'm not sure though till
I look, for I'm not a rich man any more than yourself.'

'Rubbish!' said Job as he got in again; 'I was only flummuxing the
old un. Bless your heart, sir, I wouldn't stay in--not for nothink.
Not for a bit of a pat on the crown, nohow. Home ain't none so
nice a place to go snoozing in--nohow. Where do you go to,
gov'nor?'

I told him. When I got out, and was opening the door, leaning on
his arm, I said I was very glad they hadn't taken my keys.

'Slicer nor Savoury Sam neither's none the better o' you, and I
hopes you're not much the worse for them,' said Job, as he put into
my hands my purse and watch. 'Count it, gov'nor, and see if it's all
right. Them pusses is mannyfactered express for the convenience o'
the fakers. Take my advice, sir, and keep a yellow dump (sovereign)
in yer coat-tails, a flatch yenork (half-crown) in yer waistcoat,
and yer yeneps (pence) in yer breeches. You won't lose much nohow
then. Good-night, sir, and I wish you better.'

'But I must give you something for plaster,' I said. 'You'll take a
yellow dump, at least?'

'We'll talk about that another day,' said Job; and with a second
still heartier good-night, he left me. I managed to crawl up to my
room, and fell on my bed once more fainting. But I soon recovered
sufficiently to undress and get into it. I was feverish all night
and next day, but towards evening begun to recover.

I kept expecting Falconer to come and inquire after me; but he never
came. Nor did he appear the next day or the next, and I began to be
very uneasy about him. The fourth day I sent for a cab, and drove
to John Street. He was at home, but Mrs. Ashton, instead of showing
me into his room, led me into her kitchen, and left me there.