James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

Step five opened with Frank in London, once more a clean and respectable young man, in search of a job of work. With a bright and hopeful countenance, he makes known his intent to the audience, tucking up his sleeves, and going through the motions of sawing, hammering, and digging—ay, and of crossing-sweeping, rather than again be dishonest, a sentiment which the audience very heartily applaud. By good luck, by comes a master-carpenter, with his basket of tools on his shoulder, and to him Frank applies for a job. The carpenter makes several inquiries, but finally engages him, giving him his card, that he may know where to come to. Frank Wildeye is delighted—so much so that he cannot refrain from singing, in allusion, perhaps, to the burly master-carpenter, the song of “The Fine Old English Gentleman” right through at the footlights.

But, alas! poor Frank’s promising nest of eggs are destined to be addled. Adverse influences are at work against him. While he is still blithely carolling his song, the carpenter once more crosses at the back of the stage, and is stopped and spoken to by—the very scoundrel whose life and liberty Frank Wildeye begged of the Governor of New South Wales. The scoundrel is well dressed, and wears a curly-brimmed hat and an eye-glass, and dandles an elaborate walking cane. He whispers the carpenter a little while, and points to Frank with a shrug of the shoulders, and the master-carpenter touches his cap, expressive of his thanks for the information the swell has given him. Swell walks off, and carpenter, approaching Frank Wildeye, by a snap of his finger and thumb, and a scornful curl of his lip, repudiates the engagement entered into so shortly before, and, with an impatient gesture, demands back his card of address. Poor Frank is thunderstruck, and, with clasped hands, beseeches the carpenter to make known his reasons for this sudden change; and the carpenter replies by laughing mockingly, and holding his head askew, raising his hand above it, giving the hand a jerk, as though tightening something about his throat, and making a choking sound, such as might be made by a man in the early stages of strangulation.

Frank Wildeye at once sees the true state of the case—the carpenter has discovered that he is a felon, who narrowly escaped the gallows, and on that account spurns him. In vain Frank begs and implores, and goes down on his knees to the carpenter; he is relentless, and, spurning the pleader with the toe of his boot, walks off. For a while Frank is overwhelmed by despair, but presently plucks up resolution, and drying his eyes on the ends of the clean cotton-handkerchief his bundle is tied in, departs with hope renewed in search of work.

While he is going, in comes the well-dressed scoundrel with the curly-brimmed hat and the eye-glass from the other side, and regarding the retreating form with the deadliest malice, shakes his fist at it, and laughs a bitter and diabolical laugh, which indicates as plain as spoken language his glee at the success of his fiendish plans, and his determination, from some mysterious and unexplained circumstance, to pursue and persecute Frank Wildeye to the death.

In something less than two minutes Frank returned, footsore and haggard, and with his bundle considerably diminished in size, which signs make it manifest to the audience that he has tramped in search of work through every county in England, until his scanty purse is exhausted, and he has been brought to selling things out of the bundle to keep life and soul together. All in vain, however—he is still an out-o’-work and an outcast, shunned by the world. He sits down on a bank, and covering his eyes with his hands, weeps. Suddenly a hollow and mocking laugh smites his ears, and looking up, there is Blue Lias, the well-dressed scoundrel, standing before him. With an instinctive cry of horror, Frank shrinks from the tempter, and catches up his little bundle. Blue Lias is not at all offended at this insinuation against his probity, and, good-humoredly slapping Frank on the shoulder, takes a seat beside him; then he withdraws from his pocket a capacious brandy-flask, and after some persuasion Frank is induced to take a swig out of it, the result of which is that his spirits are raised very considerably, and he laughs too, and accepts a cigar from Blue Lias’s elegant case, and takes some more brandy, and makes himself comfortable.

Then, when he is well primed, Blue Lias whispers in his ear. Frank Wildeye starts as though some insect had bitten him, and holds up his hands deprecatingly. The tempter shows him a handful of loose gold and silver, and whispers again. With a reckless laugh Frank Wildeye springs to his feet, and, clasping hands with Blue Lias, the two go off together.

“It’s a gettin’ on, ain’t it?” observed Ripston, taking a long breath.

“’Tain’t so disappintin’ as yer thought it would be; is it, Rip?”

“Not a half. There won’t be no love in it arter all, I begins to think. There would ha’ been though if it hadn’t a been for the mother’s ghost, you may depend upon it. It must make a cove feel orkard to see his mother’s ghost, musn’t it, Smiff? Hallo! my eyes, it is a stunnin’ piece!”

The opening scene of the sixth step prompted this last remark of Ripston. It was a night scene, and masked with crape, Frank Wildeye and Blue Lias are seen breaking into a dwelling-house, or rather into a bed-room in a dwelling-house, for when, with their united exertions, and the free use of centre-bits and “jemmies,” the door yields with a loud crash, the opening reveals an old gentleman calmly asleep on a sofa-bedstead. To make quite sure that he is asleep, Blue Lias flashes the fierce light of a bull’s eye lantern several times across the old gentleman’s eyes, and then the two proceed to ransack the strong box they drag from beneath the bedstead. Bags of silver and gold, candlesticks, and great rolls of bank-notes and parchment deeds, reward their search, when suddenly the old gentleman rouses, and proceeds to jerk the bell-rope at his bed-head, the result of which is a loud clanging sound at some other part of the premises. With a ferocious gesture, Blue Lias springs at the old gentleman’s throat, and raises a life preserver to knock his brains out, but Frank Wildeye, who, though a thief, is no murderer, rushes to the rescue, and catches Blue Lias’s hand just in time. With a howl of rage Blue Lias turns on Frank and knocks him down insensible with the life-preserver, and then, snatching from Frank’s pocket his clasp-knife, (presumably with his name and address upon it,) plunges it into the old man’s heart, and leaving it sticking there, escapes out of the window, thus bringing the sixth step to a close in a highly satisfactory manner.

Step seventh and last, and we have the wretched young man chained hand and foot, and securely padlocked to the wall of the condemned cell in Newgate. It is clear what has happened; he has been convicted on the false evidence furnished by his knife in the heart of the victim, and he is cast for death and awaiting execution. Evidently he is deeply penitent, so much so that the two-pound loaf and the gallon pitcher of water supplied him by the prison authorities remain untouched by his side, and he sits with his face on his drawn-up knees audibly sobbing. Suddenly he hears a well-remembered mocking laugh, and hastily raising his head there sees at his dungeon grate the hated face of Blue Lias, who, in the extremity of his hate and deadly spite, has come to taunt his wretched victim.

Owing, however, to the prohibition of the use of speech, his means of doing so are limited, and all he can do is to make faces—winking, thrusting out his tongue, and laying his forefinger along the side of his nose in the most exasperating manner. This last act goads Frank Wildeye to madness, and he rattles his chains and grinds his teeth at a tremendous rate. Blue Lias, however, is not destined to lord it to the end of the chapter. Suddenly, from amongst the straw in the dungeon, arises a white and ghostly form—the ghost of Frank’s mother. She eyes the monster at the grate menacingly, and instantly he gives vent to a shriek, his forefinger drops from the side of his nose, his guilty jaw falls ajar, and his knees tremble so that you may hear them bumping against the dungeon door. The ghostly figure raises its hand, and first pointing up and then pointing down, with a louder shriek than the first, down fell the taunter with a crash that bespoke him dead beyond the shadow of a doubt.