James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“We’re going to do nothing with you, my lad,” replied Thomas, “’cept carry you to jail. You’ll find somebody there that will do something with you, I daresay.”

“They can’t hang me, even if they brings it home to me, that’s summat,” said Mr. Perks, philosophically.

“Lucky for you,” remarked Joseph; “you’d have murdered me if you could, you know you would.”

“I’d ha’ murdered somebody if I could, there’s no mistake about that, strike me blind if there is. I’d ha’ clove his—head through if it hadn’t ha’ been for them infernal dawgs as hindered it. That’s the whelp I mean.”

And suddenly raising his head as he spoke, and catching sight of me going first with the light, he drew up his knees and made a lunge at me that would have hurt me, I don’t know how much, had not Joseph perceived his design, and to avert it, let Mr. Perks’s shoulders fall unceremoniously to the ground.

“Don’t repeat that trick, young fellow,” observed Joseph, again catching up his end of Mr. Perks in the coolest manner; “there’s two ways of getting you to the cart, you see—carrying you, and dragging you; you know which is easiest.”

“You might drag me to—, if you liked, if you’d on’y let me get one fair swipe at him,” growled Mr. Perks, savagely. However, he allowed himself to be carried to the cart and shoved in at the tail-board without further attempting to assault me. When he found that the men were making ready to start, and that, beside the dead body in the sack, no one was to share the lower part of the cart with him, he found his tongue again.

“Where’s my mate?” he inquired, in a tone of surprise.

“Where you’d like to be, I’ll warrant,” replied Joe, with pardonable but indiscreet malice; “he’s luckier than you—he’s bolted.”

“Bolted, and took my gun with him,” put in the equally indiscreet Tom.

If, however, they thought to add envy to the tortures Mr. Perks was already enduring, they missed their aim. Ned was a wide-awake villain. It was not the first time he had been “in trouble,” and he was properly alive to the advantage of having a trustworthy “pal” at liberty.

“Got clean off, d’ye mean to say?” asked he, eagerly.

“I didn’t say that,” answered Tom; “he’ll be glad to lay that sore head of his down somewhere before he’s many hours older, and then they’ll nail him, as sure as he’s born. Give the boy a lift up, Joe; let him ride between us.”

“Can’t I run by the side, please, sir?” said I. “I can keep up with you, if you don’t drive very fast.” I was, not unnaturally, a little afraid of trusting myself so close to the ruffian who had expressed himself so unamiably towards me.

“Pish! you’re safe enough,” replied Mr. Joseph, bundling me up on to the cart-seat; “he’s a cleverer fellow than I take him for if he can so much as move a limb to hurt you or anybody else until we lift him out.” And whipping the mare, we started for Ilford, distant about two miles.

We had not gone far, however, when Mr. Joseph was convinced that Ned Perks was cleverer than he took him to be, inasmuch as he found means of hurting me in a mental, if not in a corporeal sense, and that without freeing one of his limbs, or even attempting to do so.

“Jim!” he shouted.

“Don’t answer him,” said gamekeeper Tom.

“Jim, you heerd what they said, didn’t yer? The guv’nor’s gone, and he’s took a gun with him. How far you have chirped, or how far you ain’t chirped, I don’t know. Don’t—you—chirp—any—more.”

The concluding words of Mr. Perks’s sentence were delivered slowly and deliberately, and in a manner calculated to be impressive.

“Save your breath, you silly fellow,” laughed Mr. Tom, turning about in his seat to address the live man lying cheek-and-jowl with the still and peaceful dead man in the cart: “he’ll say what he likes, and he’ll say the truth.”

“Jim!” persisted Mr. Perks.

“Sit down here in front, and hold on to the rail, my boy,” suggested gamekeeper Joseph; “you won’t be able to hear what he says then, perhaps.”

I adopted the suggestion most willingly, as it removed me a little from the man who had expressed his willingness to be dragged to the antipodes of heaven if he were allowed only “one fair swipe” at me, and sat on the butt of the shaft, with my feet on the step, and holding on with both hands to the front rail of the cart.

“Jim!” bawled my persecutor, loudly enough for me to hear had I been on the other side of the road; “you know what the guv’nor told yer; you know what he promised yer if yer ever chirped about his business, or cut up any ways orkard. He’ll do it, mind yer. You dare so much as open your jaws to’rds chirpin’ more’n you have chirped, and he’ll be down on yer—certain. P’r’aps it mightn’t be this week, and p’r’aps it mightn’t be next, and you might think it was all blowed over. You’ll see. When you think you’re rightest you’ll find yourself wrongest, and then he’ll drop on yer. Don’t you think as the law’ll kiver yer; the law can’t be alwis a-lookin’, and it wouldn’t take the guv’nor a minute to do what he said, don’t yer know, and he’ll do it. If you was a-bed a hundred miles off, and the door was double-locked, and there was iron bars acrost and acrost the chimbley, you’d wake up and find him stoopin’ over yer in the dark, ready to do what he said. So take a caution, my kiddy.”

It was hard to resist a caution so conveyed. Discovering the drift of Mr. Perks’s address to me, the two gamekeepers did all they could in the way of loud talking and tapping the front of the cart with their feet to prevent my hearing what Ned said; but I heard every word, and was thrown into such terror that it was a mercy I did not lose my hold and pitch head foremost under the wheels. It was all very well for my friends to say, “Don’t listen to him, my lad; you’re safe enough if you only speak up when you get before the magistrate. He’s only trying to frighten you into telling a lot of lies and getting yourself into trouble to screen him.” It was so easy for them to say this, and to believe in it, too; but they didn’t know Mr. Belcher—they didn’t know “what he said he’d do,” or how he looked when he said it. My acquaintance with the law up to the present time had taught me nothing of its protective power, but the contrary most emphatically. My gamekeeping friends meant well, without doubt; but they, in their ignorance, regarded me as a boy who had never offended the law and set it against me. To my small mind it seemed preposterous that because of my accidental discovery of Mr. Belcher’s nefarious trade the law would turn round friendly towards me—that its terrible instruments, the police, would go out of their way to serve me—to say, in effect, and as regards Mr. Belcher and his vengeance, “Come and stand behind me, my lad; he shan’t hurt you; if he attempts to do what he said he would, I’ll draw my staff and floor him in a twinkling;” and that the market beadle, if he met me, would shake hands with me affectionately, and inquire how I was getting on. Nay, even supposing that the law was inclined to shield me against my enemy, Ned Perks had very truly said that the law couldn’t always be looking; and how little time it took to strangle a boy, Mr. Belcher had clearly demonstrated in the course of that memorable conversation I had had with him. Besides, by this time I had come to understand to a certain extent the true nature of the offence of which my master had been guilty, and with the understanding came the suspicion that I had been rather too fast in the business. Stealing dead bodies out of churchyards was a very disgusting and horrid thing to do, (the more horrible because, in my profound ignorance, I could conceive but one use—a cannibal one—to which Mr. Belcher could put the bodies he stole,) but regarded as a crime—in such light as murder and burglary are regarded—it after all did not figure before my obtuse vision as anything very enormous. So that, weighing one consideration against another—the two chief being Mr. Belcher’s view of impending vengeance, and the law’s doubtful protection—by the time we reached the lock-up at Ilford, I was extremely sorry that I had been instrumental in bringing about such a tremendous fuss, and firmly resolved to adopt Ned Perks’s advice and “chirp,” when I was taken before the magistrate to give evidence, as little as possible.