CHAPTER VII. THE RAPE OF THE MATTRESS.
That Mr. Grabman slept calmly that night is probable enough, for hisgin-bottle was empty the next morning; and it was with eyes more thanusually heavy that he dozily followed the movements of Beck, who,according to custom, opened the shutters of the little den adjoining hissitting-room, brushed his clothes, made his fire, set on the kettle toboil, and laid his breakfast things, preparatory to his own departureto the duties of the day. Stretching himself, however, and shaking offslumber, as the remembrance of the enterprise he had undertaken glancedpleasantly across him, Grabman sat up in his bed and said, in a voicethat, if not maudlin, was affectionate, and if not affectionate, wasmaudlin,--
"Beck, you are a good fellow. You have faults, you are human,--humanismest errare; which means that you some times scorch my muffins. But,take you all in all, you are a kind creature. Beck, I am going intothe country for some days. I shall leave my key in the hole in thewall,--you know; take care of it when you come in. You were out latelast night, my poor fellow. Very wrong! Look well to yourself, or whoknows? You may be clutched by that blackguard resurrection-man, No. 7.Well, well, to think of that Jason's foolhardiness! But he's the worsedevil of the two. Eh! what was I saying? And always give a look intomy room every night before you go to roost. The place swarms withcracksmen, and one can't be too cautious. Lucky dog, you, to havenothing to be robbed of!"
Beck winced at that last remark. Grabman did not seem to notice hisconfusion, and proceeded, as he put on his stockings: "And, Beck, youare a good fellow, and have served me faithfully; when I come back,I will bring you something handsome,--a backey-box or--who knows?--abeautiful silver watch. Meanwhile, I think--let me see--yes, I can giveyou this elegant pair of small-clothes. Put out my best,--the blackones. And now, Beck, I'll not keep you any longer."
The poor sweep, with many pulls at his forelock, acknowledged themunificent donation; and having finished all his preparations, hastenedfirst to his room, to examine at leisure, and with great admiration, thedrab small-clothes. "Room," indeed, we can scarcely style the wretchedenclosure which Beck called his own. It was at the top of the house,under the roof, and hot--oh, so hot--in the summer! It had one smallbegrimed window, through which the light of heaven never came, for theparapet, beneath which ran the choked gutter, prevented that; but therain and the wind came in. So sometimes, through four glassless frames,came a fugitive tom-cat. As for the rats, they held the place as theirown. Accustomed to Beck, they cared nothing for him.
They were the Mayors of that Palace; he only le roi faineant. They ranover his bed at night; he often felt them on his face, and was convincedthey would have eaten him, if there had been anything worth eating uponhis bones; still, perhaps out of precaution rather than charity, hegenerally left them a potato or two, or a crust of bread, to take offthe edge of their appetites. But Beck was far better off than most whooccupied the various settlements in that Alsatia,--he had his room tohimself. That was necessary to his sole luxury,--the inspection of histreasury, the safety of his mattress; for it he paid, without grumbling,what he thought was a very high rent. To this hole in the roof there wasno lock,--for a very good reason, there was no door to it. You went upa ladder, as you would go into a loft. Now, it had often been matter ofmuch intense cogitation to Beck whether or not he should have a doorto his chamber; and the result of the cogitation was invariably thesame,--he dared not! What should he want with a door,--a door with alock to it? For one followed as a consequence to the other. Such a novelpiece of grandeur would be an ostentatious advertisement that he hadsomething to guard. He could have no pretence for it on the ground thathe was intruded on by neighbours; no step but his own was ever caughtby him ascending that ladder; it led to no other room. All the officesrequired for the lodgment he performed himself. His supposed povertywas a better safeguard than doors of iron. Besides this, a door, ifdangerous, would be superfluous; the moment it was suspected that Beckhad something worth guarding, that moment all the picklocks and skeletonkeys in the neighbourhood would be in a jingle. And a cracksman of highrepute lodged already on the ground-floor. So Beck's treasure, like thebird's nest, was deposited as much out of sight as his instinctcould contrive; and the locks and bolts of civilized men were equallydispensed with by bird and Beck.
On a rusty nail the sweep suspended the drab small-clothes, stroked themdown lovingly, and murmured, "They be 's too good for I; I shouldlike to pop 'em! But vould n't that be a shame? Beck, be n't you be ahungrateful beast to go for to think of nothin' but the tin, ven your'art ought to varm with hemotion? I vill vear 'em ven I vaits on him.Ven he sees his own smalls bringing in the muffins, he will say, 'Beck,you becomes 'em!'"
Fraught with this noble resolution, the sweep caught up his broom, creptdown the ladder, and with a furtive glance at the door of the room inwhich the cracksman lived, let himself out and shambled his way to hiscrossing. Grabman, in the mean while, dressed himself with more carethan usual, shaved his beard from a four days' crop, and while seated athis breakfast, read attentively over the notes which Varney had left tohim, pausing at times to make his own pencil memoranda. He then packedup such few articles as so moderate a worshipper of the Graces mightrequire, deposited them in an old blue brief-bag, and this done, heopened his door, and creeping to the threshold, listened carefully.Below, a few sounds might be heard,--here, the wail of a child; there,the shrill scold of a woman in that accent above all others adaptedto scold,--the Irish. Farther down still, the deep bass oath of thecholeric resurrection-man; but above, all was silent. Only one floorintervened between Grabman's apartment and the ladder that led to Beck'sloft. And the inmates of that room gave no sound of life. Grabman tookcourage, and shuffling off his shoes, ascended the stairs; he passed theclosed door of the room above; he seized the ladder with a shaking hand;he mounted, step after step; he stood in Beck's room.
Now, O Nicholas Grabman! some moralists may be harsh enough to condemnthee for what thou art doing,--kneeling yonder in the dim light, by thatcurtainless pallet, with greedy fingers feeling here and there, and aplacid, self-hugging smile upon thy pale lips. That poor vagabond whomthou art about to despoil has served thee well and faithfully, has bornewith thine ill-humours, thy sarcasms, thy swearings, thy kicks, andbuffets; often, when in the bestial sleep of drunkenness he has foundthee stretched helpless on thy floor, with a kindly hand he has movedaway the sharp fender, too near that knavish head, now bent on his ruin,or closed the open window, lest the keen air, that thy breath tainted,should visit thee with rheum and fever. Small has been his guerdon foruncomplaining sacrifice of the few hours spared to this weary drudgefrom his daily toil,--small, but gratefully received. And if Beck hadbeen taught to pray, he would have prayed for thee as for a good man,O miserable sinner! And thou art going now, Nicholas Grabman, upon anenterprise which promises thee large gains, and thy purse is filled; andthou wantest nothing for thy wants or thy swinish luxuries. Why shouldthose shaking fingers itch for the poor beggar-man's hoards?
But hadst thou been bound on an errand that would have given thee amillion, thou wouldst not have left unrifled that secret store which thyprying eye had discovered, and thy hungry heart had coveted. No; sinceone night,--fatal, alas! to the owner of loft and treasure, when,needing Beck for some service, and fearing to call aloud (for theresurrection-man in the floor below thee, whose oaths even now ascend tothine ear, sleeps ill, and has threatened to make thee mute foreverif thou disturbest him in the few nights in which his dismal callingsuffers him to sleep at all), thou didst creep up the ladder, and didstsee the unconscious miser at his nightly work, and after the sight didststeal down again, smiling,--no; since that night, no schoolboy ever morerootedly and ruthlessly set his mind upon nest of linnet than thine wasset upon the stores in Beck's mattress.
And yet why, O lawyer, should rigid moralists blame thee more than suchof thy tribe as live, honoured and respectable, upon the frail and thepoor? Who among them ever left loft or mattress while a rap could bewrung from either? M
atters it to Astraea whether the spoliation be madethus nakedly and briefly, or by all the acknowledged forms in which,item on item, six-and-eightpence on six-and-eightpence, the inexorablehand closes at length on the last farthing of duped despair? Not--Heavenforbid!--that we make thee, foul Nicholas Grabman, a type for all theclass called attorneys-at-law! Noble hearts, liberal minds, are thereamongst that brotherhood, we know and have experienced; but a typeart thou of those whom want and error and need have proved--alas! toowell--the lawyers of the poor. And even while we write, and even whileye read, many a Grabman steals from helpless toil the savings of a life.
Ye poor hoards,--darling delights of your otherwise joyless owner,--howeasily has his very fondness made ye the prey of the spoiler! Howgleefully, when the pence swelled into a shilling, have they beenexchanged into the new bright piece of silver, the newest and brightestthat could be got; then the shillings into crowns, then the crowns intogold,--got slyly and at a distance, and contemplated with what rapture;so that at last the total lay manageable and light in its radiantcompass. And what a total! what a surprise to Grabman! Had it been buta sixpence, he would have taken it; but to grasp sovereigns by thehandful, it was too much for him; and as he rose, he positively laughed,from a sense of fun.
But amongst his booty there was found one thing that specially movedhis mirth: it was a child's coral, with its little bells. Who could havegiven Beck such a bauble, or how Beck could have refrained from turningit into money, would have been a fit matter for speculation. But it wasnot that at which Grabman chuckled; he laughed, first because it wasan emblem of the utter childishness and folly of the creature he wasleaving penniless, and secondly, because it furnished his ready wit witha capital contrivance to shift Beck's indignation from his own shouldersto a party more liable to suspicion. He left the coral on the floornear the bed, stole down the ladder, reached his own room, took up hisbrief-bag, locked his door, slipped the key in the rat-hole, where thetrusty, plundered Beck alone could find it, and went boldly downstairs;passing successively the doors within which still stormed theresurrection-man, still wailed the child, still shrieked the Irishshrew, he paused at the ground-floor occupied by Bill the cracksman andhis long-fingered, slender, quick-eyed imps, trained already to passthrough broken window-panes, on their precocious progress to the hulks.
The door was open, and gave a pleasant sight of the worthy familywithin. Bill himself, a stout-looking fellow with a florid, jollycountenance, and a pipe in his mouth, was sitting at his window, withhis brawny legs lolling on a table covered with the remains of a verytolerable breakfast. Four small Bills were employed in certain sportswhich, no doubt, according to the fashionable mode of education,instilled useful lessons under the artful guise of playful amusement.Against the wall, at one corner of the room, was affixed a row of bells,from which were suspended exceedingly tempting apples by slenderwires. Two of the boys were engaged in the innocent entertainment ofextricating the apples without occasioning any alarm from the bells;a third was amusing himself at a table, covered with mock rings andtrinkets, in a way that seemed really surprising; with the end of afinger, dipped probably in some glutinous matter, he just touched oneof the gewgaws, and lo, it vanished!--vanished so magically thatthe quickest eye could scarcely trace whither; sometimes up a cuff,sometimes into a shoe,--here, there, anywhere, except back again uponthe table. The fourth, an urchin apparently about five years old,--hemight be much younger, judging from his stunted size; somewhat older,judging from the vicious acuteness of his face,--on the floor under hisfather's chair, was diving his little hand into the paternal pockets insearch for a marble sportively hidden in those capacious recesses.On the rising geniuses around him Bill the cracksman looked, and hisfather's heart was proud. Pausing at the threshold, Grabman looked inand said cheerfully, "Good-day to you; good-day to you all, my littledears."
"Ah, Grabman," said Bill, rising, and making a bow,--for Bill valuedhimself much on his politeness,--"come to blow a cloud, eh? Bob," thisto the eldest born, "manners, sir; wipe your nose, and set a chair forthe gent."
"Many thanks to you, Bill, but I can't stay now; I have a long journeyto take. But, bless my soul, how stupid I am! I have forgotten myclothes-brush. I knew there was some thing on my mind all the way I wascoming downstairs. I was saying, 'Grabman, there is something forgotten!'"
"I know what that 'ere feelin' is," said Bill, thoughtfully; "I had itmyself the night afore last; and sure enough, when I got to the ----.But that's neither here nor there. Bob, run upstairs and fetch down Mr.Grabman's clothes-brush. 'T is the least you can do for a gent whosaved your father from the fate of them 'ere innocent apples. Your fist,Grabman. I have a heart in my buzzom; cut me open, and you will findthere `Halibi, and Grabman!' Give Bob your key."
"The brush is not in my room," answered Grabman; "it is at the top ofthe house, up the ladder, in Beck's loft,--Beck, the sweeper. The stupiddog always keeps it there, and forgot to give it me. Sorry to occasionmy friend Bob so much trouble."
"Bob has a soul above trouble; his father's heart beats in his buzzom.Bob, track the dancers. Up like a lark, and down like a dump."
Bob grinned, made a mow at Mr. Grabman, and scampered up the stairs.
"You never attends our free-and-easy," said Bill; "but we toasts youwith three times three, and up standing. 'T is a hungrateful world! Butsome men has a heart; and to those who has a heart, Grabman is a trump!"
"I am sure, whenever I can do you a service, you may reckon on me.Meanwhile, if you could get that cursed bullying fellow who lives underme to be a little more civil, you would oblige me."
"Under you? No. 7? No. 7, is it? Grabman, h-am I a man? Is this a h-arm,and this a bunch of fives? I dares do all that does become a man; butNo. 7 is a body-snatcher! No. 7 has bullied me, and I bore it! No. 7might whop me, and this h-arm would let him whop! He lives with gravesand churchyards and stiff 'uns, that damnable No. 7! Ask some'at else,Grabman. I dares not touch No. 7 any more than the ghostesses."
Grabman sneered as he saw that Bill, stout rogue as he was, turnedpale while he spoke; but at that moment Bob reappeared with theclothes-brush, which the ex-attorney thrust into his pocket, andshaking Bill by the hand, and patting Bob on the head, he set out on hisjourney.
Bill reseated himself, muttering, "Bully a body-snatcher! Drot thatGrabman, does he want to get rid of poor Bill?"
Meanwhile Bob exhibited slyly, to his second brother, the sight ofBeck's stolen coral. The children took care not to show it to theirfather. They were already inspired by the laudable ambition to set up inbusiness on their own account.