Уилки Коллинз - Hide and Seek

They strayed at last into Fleet Street, and walked to the foot of Ludgate Hill. Here the stranger stopped—glanced towards the open space on the right, where the river ran—gave a rough gasp of relief and satisfaction—and made directly for Blackfriars bridge. He led Zack, who was still thick in his utterance, and unsteady on his legs, to the parapet wall; let go of his arm there, and looking steadily in his face by the light of the gas-lamp, addressed him, for the first time, in a remarkably grave, deliberate voice, and in these words:

“Now, then, young ‘un, suppose you pull a breath, and wipe that bloody nose of yours.”

Zack, instead of resenting this unceremonious manner of speaking to him—which he might have done, had he been sober—burst into a frantic fit of laughter. The remarkable gravity and composure of the stranger’s tone and manner, contrasted with the oddity of the proposition by which he opened the conversation, would have been irresistibly ludicrous even to a man whose faculties were not in an intoxicated condition.

While Zack was laughing till the tears rolled down his cheeks, his odd companion was leaning over the parapet of the bridge, and pulling off his black kid gloves, which had suffered considerably during the progress of the fight. Having rolled them up into a ball, he jerked them contemptuously into the river.

“There goes the first pair of gloves as ever I had on, and the last as ever I mean to wear,” he said, spreading out his brawny hands to the sharp night breeze.

Young Thorpe heaved a few last expiring gasps of laughter; then became quiet and serious from sheer exhaustion.

“Go it again,” said the man of the skull-cap, staring at him as gravely as ever, “I like to hear you.”

“I can’t go it again,” answered Zack faintly; “I’m out of breath. I say, old boy, you’re quite a character! Who are you?”

“I ain’t nobody in particular; and I don’t know as I’ve got a single friend to care about who I am, in all England,” replied the other. “Give us your hand, young ‘un! In the foreign parts where I come from, when one man stands by another, as you’ve stood by me to-night, them two are brothers together afterwards. You needn’t be a brother to me, if you don’t like. I mean to be a brother to you, whether you like it or not. My name’s Mat. What’s your’s?”

“Zack,” returned young Thorpe, clapping his new acquaintance on the back with brotherly familiarity already. “You’re a glorious fellow; and I like your way of talking. Where do you come from, Mat? And what do you wear that queer cap under your hat for?”

“I come from America last,” replied Mat, as grave and deliberate as ever. “And I wear this cap because I haven’t got no scalp on my head.”

“What do you mean?” cried Zack, startled into temporary sobriety, and taking his hand off his new friend’s shoulder as quickly as if he had put it on red-hot iron.

“I always mean what I say,” continued Mat; “I’ve got that much good about me, if I haven’t got no more. Me and my scalp parted company years ago. I’m here, on a bridge in London, talking to a young chap of the name of Zack. My scalp’s on the top of a high pole in some Indian village, anywhere you like about the Amazon country. If there’s any puffs of wind going there, like there is here, it’s rattling just now, like a bit of dry parchment; and all my hair’s a flip-flapping about like a horse’s tail, when the flies is in season. I don’t know nothing more about my scalp or my hair than that. If you don’t believe me, just lay hold of my hat, and I’ll show you—”

“No, thank you!” exclaimed Zack, recoiling from the offered hat. “I don’t want to see it. But how the deuce do you manage without a scalp?—I never heard of such a thing before in my life—how is it you’re not dead? eh?”

“It takes a deal more to kill a tough man than you London chaps think,” said Mat. “I was found before my head got cool, and plastered over with leaves and ointment. They’d left a bit of scalp at the back, being in rather too great a hurry to do their work as handily as usual; and a new skin growed over, after a little—a babyish sort of skin, that wasn’t half thick enough, and wouldn’t bear no new crop of hair. So I had to eke out and keep my head comfortable with an old yellow handkercher; which I always wore till I got to San Francisco, on my way back here. I met with a priest at San Francisco, who told me that I should look a little less like a savage, if I wore a skull-cap like his, instead of a handkercher, when I got back into what he called the civilized world. So I took his advice, and bought this cap. I suppose it looks better than my old yellow handkercher; but it ain’t half as comfortable.”

“But how did you lose your scalp?” asked Zack—“tell us all about it. Upon my life, you’re the most interesting fellow I ever met with! And, I say, let’s walk about, while we talk. I feel steadier on my legs now; and it’s so infernally cold standing here.”

“Which way can we soonest get out of this muck of houses and streets?” asked Mat, surveying the London view around him with an expression of grim disgust. “There ain’t no room, even on this bridge, for the wind to blow fairly over a man. I’d just as soon be smothered up in a bed, as smothered up in smoke and stink here.”

“What a delightful fellow you are! so entirely out of the common way! Steady, my dear friend. The grog’s not quite out of my head yet; and I find I’ve got the hiccups. Here’s my way home, and your way into the fresh air, if you really want it. Come along; and tell me how you lost your scalp.”

“There ain’t nothing particular to tell. What’s your name again?”

“Zack.”

“Well, Zack, I was out on the tramp, dodging about after any game that turned up, on the banks of the Amazon—”

“Amazon? what’s that? a woman? or a place?”

“Did you ever hear of South America?”

“I can’t positively swear to it; but, to the best of my belief, I think I have.”

“Well; the Amazon’s a longish bit of a river in those parts. I was out, as I told you, on the tramp.”

“So I should think! you look like the sort of man who has tramped everywhere, and done everything.”

“You’re about right there, for a wonder! I’ve druv cattle in Mexico; I’ve been out with a gang that went to find an overland road to the North Pole; I’ve worked through a season or two in catching wild horses on the Pampas; and another season or two in digging gold in California. I went away from England, a tidy lad aboard ship; and here I am back again now, an old vagabond as hasn’t a friend to own him. If you want to know exactly who I am, and what I’ve been up to all my life, that’s about as much as I can tell you.”

“You don’t say so! Wait a minute, though; there’s one thing—you’re not troubled with the hiccups, are you, after eating supper? (I’ve been a martyr to hiccups ever since I was a child.) But, I say, there’s one thing you haven’t told me yet; you haven’t told me what your other name is besides Mat. Mine’s Thorpe.”

“I haven’t heard the sound of the other name you’re asking after for a matter of better than twenty year: and I don’t care if I never hear it again.” His voice sank huskily, and he turned his head a little away from Zack, as he said those words. “They nicknamed me ‘Marksman,’ when I used to go out with the exploring gangs, because I was the best shot of all of them. You call me Marksman, too, if you don’t like Mat. Mister Mathew Marksman, if you please: everybody seems to be a ‘Mister’ here. You’re one, of course. I don’t mean to call you ‘Mister’ for all that. I shall stick to Zack; it’s short, and there’s no bother about it.”