James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“Well! you do look a sight! I’d ha’ lived and died upstairs if I’d a been you, rather than show with such a figure-head as that! ”

“I know you’d rather I’d died, but I’m going to live, my dear,” she replied. “I wish my face was five times as ugly, for the sake of you and your handsome friends.”

“I’d like to see a face five times as ugly as yours,” laughed Mr. Hopkins; “it ’ud be worth something by way of a curiosity. The sooner you take it out of my house the better, that’s all I know about it.”

“You will have, to turn it out to get rid of it, my. dear,” answered she, with a laugh as ugly as his own.

It was quite plain that the sick housekeeper’s feelings towards Mr. Hopkins had not improved since the night when she had let me into the secret concerning them, and it was equally plain that there was not an atom of love lost on the gentleman’s part.

Under such circumstances I was not a little surprised on coming home early the very next evening to find her sitting with Mr. Hopkins and two male friends of his in the parlour, chatting and laughing in the most cheerful way, and seemingly on the best of terms with him. The meeting, however, was rather of a business than a convivial character; for, after I had been in the room a few moments, and Mr. Hopkins had called the attention of his friends to me by a significant wink, and they had “taken my measure,” as the saying is, by a few rapid glances, I was told that I might either go out again for an hour, or go to bed at once. Feeling tired, I adopted the latter suggestion.

How long I bad been asleep I don’t know; but I was awoke by a hand on my shoulder and a voice calling my name.

“Are you awake, Jim?”

It was the housekeeper.

“Yes ’m.”

“Have you thought over what we talked about the night before I was taken ill?”

“I’ve thought about it plenty of times, mum.”

“And have you made up your mind to take my advice?”

“Yes ’m; but I don’t know where to run away to; that’s the worst on it.”

“You must settle that quick, then. If you don’t go away to-morrow, you ’ll be sorry as long as you live. You saw the two men, Twiner and Johnny Armitage, down-stairs talking with him when you came in?”

“Yes, mum; I saw ’em. I saw ’em both look hard at me when master winked at ’m.”

“Did you? I’m glad that you did. There’s a job planned; a biggish job, and there’s a part for you cut out in it.”

“What sort of a job is it, mum?”

“A burglary. Hush; don’t ask any more questions; it comes off to-morrow night or the night after; he’ll tell you about it in the morning, I daresay. At Fulham the job is—Prescot House—Prescot House, Fulham. But he’ll tell you, no doubt. You take my advice, and be off as soon as you can to-morrow—to somewhere, you know, as I told you before, where he daren’t follow you, and tell them all about it —all, except that I had even so much as a single word in sending you away. It’s for your good I interfere; you know that, don’t you? And you won’t even breathe my name at—at the safe quarters, you’ll find your way to, will you?”

She laid her hand very earnestly (it was in the dark) on my face as she asked this last question.

“There’s no ’casion for you to be afraid of that, ma’am,” I answered.

“I am not afraid of it; you are too good a boy to bring hurt to any one who runs a risk for your good, I’m sure. Good-night I must go down again; they have only gone as far as the public-house.”

And, patting my cheek with her hot hand, she stole out of the room. It had come at last, then, it seemed. It was very odd that I should be required to engage in a job of so much importance as a burglary without any of that useful training Mr. Hopkins had promised me; but, no doubt, he had his reasons for the step. Mrs. Hopkins, too, had her reasons—reasons that, while they perplexed me very much, I couldn’t, bother my head how I might, get anything like a satisfactory clue to. Why did she want to inform me of as many of the details of the projected burglary as she had? If it was her simple intention to give me warning that I might by going away avoid plunging deeper into crime, why had she so carefully enunciated the names of Mr. Hopkins’s pals? Why was she so particular in impressing on me the place at which the burglary was to be perpetrated? It was a queer business altogether; and, lying awake through half the night reviewing it thoroughly, it most undoubtedly appeared to be my best plan to give such dangerous company the slip at the very earliest opportunity. This resolution I arrived at before I closed my eyes, as well as at another—that when I ran away next day I would go straight to Spitalfields, find out Ripston, and take his advice as to what I had best do next. There were only two persons to whom I could apply for advice in my extremity—to Mrs. Winkship and Ripston—and for some time I was undecided which it should be; but when I came to reflect on the danger of encountering my father—especially if the authorities had been troubling him respecting the resurrectionist business—and again on the view Mrs. Winkship might possibly have been led to take respecting my behaviour towards Mr. Belcher, her son-in-law, I at once made up my mind.

The housekeeper was wrong in her surmise that Long George would tell me “all about it” in the morning. All he said was, as he dressed himself to go out after breakfast,

“Don’t you go driving about to-day, and making yourself as tired as a dog before night, because I shall want you.”

“What for, sir?” I asked, with affected innocence.

“What the —— is that to do with you?

You’ll see when the time comes,” was Mr. Hopkins’s answer.

A little time after he called me from the little wash-house at the end of the passage. There was a small window in the wash-house—just a single square of glass framed and hinged opening into the kitchen; he was standing by this little window.

“Show me how neatly you can get through a hole of this size,” was his strange request.

There was bare room for my shoulders; but I contrived to squeeze through with tolerable ease, and jumped down on the other side.

“Don’t you think you could make a little more noise in doing it?” asked he, sarcastically.

I got through it again; this time as quietly as possible.

“That’s better,” said he; “try again—come down on your toes.”

I tried again, and still again; twenty times at least.

“That ’ll do better,” he remarked; “let’s see, what sort of boots do you wear, Jim?”

“Lace-ups, sir.”

“Then they won’t do. You must have a pair of shoes—something that you can kick off and put on easy. You may as well go and buy yourself a pair at once. Go out into Bishopsgate Street for ’em.”

He gave me half-a-sovereign, and away I went. He was still in the wash-house, and I had to pass the parlour door on my way out. The housekeeper was there, and as I passed and glanced in she nodded her head and made “now be off” with her lips too plainly to be misunderstood, and I nodded back again.

It was plain that she had told me the truth. Mr. Hopkins had told me nothing of the nature of the job he wanted me to assist him in by and by, nor was there any necessity that he should; setting his behaviour by the side of what she had told me last night made it all clear enough. My share in the burglary was to get through a window, and I wanted the shoes so that I might slip them off without waste of time, and in order to go about the job the quieter! I was a little incredulous when the housekeeper had applied the harsh word “felony” to simple pocket-picking; but there could be no mistake about burglary being felony—felony for which the certain punishment was transportation. The housekeeper was right I should be lost for life unless I got out of the mess as quickly as possible; and quite determined to do so, I made all haste in the direction of Spitalfields.