Harding’s Luck · Chapter 6 (3/3)

The digging began at the fence and reached the moonflower, whose roots were indeed deep. Quite a hole Mr. Beale dug before the tall stalk sloped and fell with slow dignity, like a forest tree before the axe. Then the man and the child went in and brought out the kitchen table and chairs, and laid blankets over them to air in the autumn sunlight. Dickie played at houses under the table⁠—it was not the sort of game he usually played, but the neighbors could not know that. The table happened to be set down just over the hole that had held the roots of the moonflower. Dickie dug a little with a trowel in the blanket house.

After dark they carried the blankets and things in. Then one of the blankets was nailed up over the top-floor window, and on the iron bedstead’s dingy mattress the resin was melted from the lid of the pot that Mr. Beale had brought in with the other things from the garden. Also it was melted from the crack of the iron casket. Mr. Beale’s eyes, always rather prominent, almost resembled the eyes of the lobster or the snail as their gaze fell on the embroidered leather bag. And when Dickie opened this and showered the twenty gold coins into a hollow of the drab ticking, he closed his eyes and sighed, and opened them again and said⁠—

“Give you? They give you that. I don’t believe you.”

“You got to believe me,” said Dickie firmly. “I never told you a lie, did I?”

“Come to think of it, I don’t know as you ever did,” Beale admitted.

“Well,” said Dickie, “they was give me⁠—see?”

“We’ll never change ’em, though,” said Beale despondently. “We’d get lagged for a cert. They’d say we pinched ’em.”

“No, they won’t. ’Cause I’ve got a friend as’ll change ’em for me, and then we’ll ’ave new clobber and some more furniture, and a carpet and a crockery basin to wash our hands and faces in ’stead of that old tin thing. And a bath we’ll ’ave. And you shall buy some more pups. And I’ll get some proper carving tools. And our fortune’s made. See?”

“You nipper,” said Beale, slowly and fondly, “the best day’s work ever I done was when I took up with you. You’re straight, you are⁠—one of the best. Many’s the boy would ’ave done a bunk and took the shiners along with him. But you stuck to old Beale, and he’ll stick to you.”

“That’s all right,” said Dickie, beginning to put the bright coins back into the bag.

“But it ain’t all right,” Beale insisted stubbornly; “it ain’t no good. I must ’ave it all out, or bust. I didn’t never take you along of me ’cause I fancied you like what I said. I was just a-looking out for a nipper to shove through windows⁠—see?⁠—along of that redheaded chap what you never set eyes on.”

“I’ve known that a long time,” said Dickie, gravely watching the candle flicker on the bare mantelshelf.

“I didn’t mean no good to you, not at first I didn’t,” said Beale, “when you wrote on the sole of my boot. I’d bought that bit of paper and pencil a-purpose. There!”

“You ain’t done me no ’arm, anyway,” said Dickie.

“No⁠—I know I ain’t. ’Cause why? ’Cause I took to you the very first day. I allus been kind to you⁠—you can’t say I ain’t.” Mr. Beale was confused by the two desires which make it difficult to confess anything truthfully⁠—the desire to tell the worst of oneself and the desire to do full justice to oneself at the same time. It is so very hard not to blacken the blackness, or whiten the whiteness, when one comes to trying to tell the truth about oneself. “But I been a beast all the same,” said Mr. Beale helplessly.

“Oh, stow it!” Dickie said; “now you’ve told me, it’s all square.”

“You won’t keep a down on me for it?”

“Now, should I?” said Dickie, exasperated and very sleepy. “Now all is open as the day and we can pursue our career as honorable men and comrades in all high emprise. I mean,” he explained, noticing Mr. Beale’s open mouth and eyes more lobster-like than ever⁠—“I mean that’s all right, farver, and you see it don’t make any difference to me. I knows you’re straight now, even if it didn’t begin just like that. Let’s get to bed, shan’t us?”

Mr. Beale dreamed that he was trying to drown Dickie in a pond full of stewed eels. Dickie didn’t dream at all.

You may wonder why, since going to the beautiful other world took no time and was so easy, Dickie did not do it every night, or even at odd times during the day.

Well, the fact was he dared not. He loved the other life so much that he feared that, once again there, he might not have the courage to return to Mr. Beale and Deptford and the feel of dirty clothes and the smell of dustbins. It was no light thing to come back from that to this. And now he made a resolution⁠—that he would not set out the charm of Tinkler and seal and moonseeds until he had established Mr. Beale in an honorable calling and made a life for him in which he could be happy. A great undertaking for a child? Yes. But then Dickie was not an ordinary child, or none of these adventures would ever have happened to him.

The pawnbroker, always a good friend to Dickie, had the wit to see that the child was not lying when he said that the box and the bag and the gold pieces had been given to him.

He changed the gold pieces stamped with the image of Queen Elizabeth for others stamped with the image of Queen Victoria. And he gave five pounds for the wrought-iron box, and owned that he should make a little⁠—a very little⁠—out of it. “And if your grand society friends give you any more treasures, you know the house to come to⁠—the fairest house in the trade, though I say it.”

“Thank you very much,” said Dickie; “you’ve been a good friend to me. I hope some day I shall do you a better turn than the little you make out of my boxes and things.”

The Jew sold the wrought-iron box that very week for twenty guineas.

And Dickie and Mr. Beale now possessed twenty-seven pounds. New clothes were bought⁠—more furniture. Twenty-two pounds of the money was put in the savings bank. Dickie bought carving tools and went to the Goldsmiths’ Institute to learn to use them. The front bedroom was fitted with a bench for Dickie. The back sitting-room was a kennel for the dogs which Mr. Beale instantly began to collect. The front room was a parlor⁠—a real parlor. A decent young woman⁠—Amelia by name⁠—was engaged to come in every day and “do for” them. The clothes they wore were clean; the food they ate was good. Dickie’s knowledge of an ordered life in a great house helped him to order life in a house that was little. And day by day they earned their living. The new life was fairly started. And now Dickie felt that he might dare to go back through the three hundred years to all that was waiting for him there.

“But I will only stay a month,” he told himself, “a month here and a month there, that will keep things even. Because if I were longer there than I am here I should not be growing up so fast here as I should there. And everything would be crooked. And how silly if I were a grown man in that life and had to come back and be a little boy in this!”

I do not pretend that the idea did not occur to Dickie, “Now that Beale is fairly started he could do very well without me.” But Dickie knew better. He dismissed the idea. Besides, Beale had been good to him and he loved him.

The white curtains had now no sordid secrets to keep⁠—and when the landlord called for the rent Mr. Beale was able to ask him to step in⁠—into a comfortable room with a horsehair sofa and a big, worn easy-chair, a carpet, four old mahogany chairs, and a table with a clean blue-and-red checked cloth on it. There was a bright clock on the mantelpiece, and vases with chrysanthemums in them, and there were red woollen curtains as well as the white lace ones.

“You’re as snug as snug in here,” said the landlord.

“Not so dusty,” said Beale, shining from soap; “ ’ave a look at my dawgs?”

He succeeded in selling the landlord a pup for ten shillings and came back to Dickie sitting by the pleasant firelight.

“It’s all very smart,” he said, “but don’t you never feel the fidgets in your legs? I’ve kep’ steady, and keep steady I will. But in the spring⁠—when the weather gets a bit open⁠—what d’you say to shutting up the little ’ouse and taking the road for a bit? Gentlemen do it even,” he added wistfully. “Walking towers they call ’em.”

“I’d like it,” said Dickie, “but what about the dogs?”

“Oh! Amelia’d do for them a fair treat, all but Fan and Fly, as ’ud go along of us. I dunno what it is,” he said, “makes me ’anker so after the road. I was always like it from a boy. Couldn’t get me to school, so they couldn’t⁠—allus after birds’ nests or rabbits or the like. Not but what I liked it well enough where I was bred. I didn’t tell you, did I, we passed close longside our old ’ome that time we slep’ among the furze bushes? I don’t s’pose my father’s alive now. But ’e was a game old chap⁠—shouldn’t wonder but what he’d stuck it out.”

“Let’s go and see him some day,” said Dickie.

“I dunno,” said Beale; “you see, I was allus a great hanxiety to ’im. And besides, I shouldn’t like to find ’im gone. Best not know nothing. That’s what I say.”

But he sighed as he said it, and he filled his pipe in a thoughtful silence.