Tales of the Old London Slum – Complete Series. Morrison Arthur

moss of trees clinging at each side. Here they turned, and, where the glen widened, a cottage was to be seen on sloping ground, with a narrow roadway a little beyond it. A whitewashed cottage, so small that there seemed scarce a score of tiles on its roof; one of the few scattered habitations holding its place in the forest by right of ancient settlement. A little tumult of garden tumbled about the cottage—a jostle of cabbages, lavender, onions, wallflowers and hollyhock, confined, as with difficulty, by a precarious fence, patched with wood in every form of manufacture and in every stage of decay.

      “I expect mother and Johnny finished tea long ago,” Bessy remarked, her eyes fixed on the cottage. “Why there’s a light!”

      The path they went by grew barer of grass as it neared the cottage, and as they trod it, men’s voices could be heard from within, and a woman’s laughter.

      “Sounds like visitors!” the old man exclaimed. “That’s odd. I wonder who…”

      “There you are then, father!” came a female voice from the door. “Here’s Uncle Isaac an’ a gentleman come to see us.” It was Bessy’s mother who spoke—a pleasant, fresh, active woman in a print dress, who stood in the doorway as the old man set back the gate.

      The door opened into the living-room, where sat two men, while a boy of fourteen squeezed, abashed and a trifle sulky, in a corner. There was a smell of bad cigar, which had almost, but not quite, banished the wonted smell of the room; a smell in some degree due to camphor, though, perhaps, more to caterpillar; for the walls were hidden behind boxes and drawers of divers shapes and sizes, and before the window and in unexpected places on the floor stood other boxes, covered with muslin, nurseries for larvae, pupae, and doomed butterflies. And so many were these things that the room, itself a mere box, gave scant space to the three people and the little round table that were in it; wherefore Bessy’s mother remained in the doorway, and Uncle Isaac, when he rose, took a very tall hat from the floor and clapped it on his head for lack of other safe place; for the little table sustained a load of cups and saucers. Uncle Isaac was a small man, though with a large face; a face fringed about with grey wisps of whisker, and characterised by wide and glassy eyes and a great tract of shaven upper lip.

      “Good evenin’, Mr. May, good evenin’!” said Uncle Isaac, shaking hands with the air of a man faithful to a friend in defiance of the world. “This is my friend Mr. Butson.”

      Mr. Butson was a tall, rather handsome man of forty or thereabout, with curly hair and whiskers, and he greeted the old man with grum condescension.

      “Mr. Butson,” Uncle Isaac continued, with a wave of the hand, “is a gentleman at present in connection with the steamboat profession, though above it by fam’ly and inclination. Mr. Butson an’ me ‘as bin takin’ a day’s ‘olludy with a seleck party by name of beanfeast, in brakes.”

      “O yes,” responded old May, divesting himself of his bag; “we passed some of ‘em by the Dun Cow, an’ very merry they was, too, with concertinas, an’ kiss-in-the-ring, an’ what not—very gay.”

      “O damn, no,” growled the distinguished Butson. “Not that low lot. He means that coster crowd in vans,” he added, for Uncle Isaac’s enlightenment. “I ain’t fell as low as that. Lor, no.” He sucked savagely at the butt of his cigar, found it extinct, looked vainly for somewhere to fling it, and at last dropped it into a teacup.

      “No, Mr. May, no; not them lot,” Uncle Isaac said, with a touch of grave reproof. “As a man of some little property meself, an’ in company of Mr. Butson, by nature genteel-disposed, I should be far from mixin’ with such. We come down with the shipwrights an’ engineers from Lawsonses. That was prob’ly Mr. May’s little joke, Mr. Butson. Mr. May is a man of property hisself, besides a man of science, as I think I told you. This ‘ere land an’ residence bein’ in pint. If any man was to come an’ say to Mr. May, ‘Git out o’ that property, Mr. May,’ what would the law say to that man? Null-avoid. That’s what the lawr ‘ud say. It ‘ud say, ‘Git out yerself, your claim’s nullavoid.’” Uncle Isaac, checking a solemn thump at the table just in time to save the tea-cups, took his hat off instead, and put it on again.

      Mr. Butson grunted “Ah!” and Mrs. May, taking the net, squeezed in, with Bessy behind her. “I’ll put a few o’ these boxes on the stairs, an’ make more room,” she said. “The kettle’s still boiling in the backhouse, an’ I’ll make some more tea.”

      Bessy had a habit of shyness in presence of strangers, and Uncle Isaac ranked as one, for it was two years at least since he had been there before. Indeed, what she remembered of him then made her the shyer. For he had harangued her very loudly on the gratitude she owed her grandfather, calling her a cripple very often in course of his argument, and sometimes a burden. She knew that she was a cripple and a burden, but to be held tightly by the arm and told so, by a gentleman with such a loud voice and such large eyes as Uncle Isaac, somehow inclined her to cry. So now, as soon as might be, she joined her brother, and the two retreated into the shadowy corner between the stairfoot and the backhouse door.

      The old butterfly-hunter, too, was shy in his more elderly way. Beyond his widowed daughter-in-law and her two children he had scarce an acquaintance, or at least none more familiar than the naturalists in London to whom he sold his specimens. So that now, in presence of this very genteel Mr. Butson, who, he feared, was already disgusted at the humble character of the establishment, he made but a hollow meal. A half-forgotten notion afflicted him, that it was proper to drink tea in only one of two possible ways; but whether from the cup or from the saucer he could not resolve himself. Mr. Butson had finished his tea, so that his example was lacking: though indeed the lees in his saucer seemed to offer a hint—a hint soon triumphantly confirmed by Uncle Isaac, who was nothing averse from a supplementary cup, and who emptied it straightway into his saucer and gulped ardently, glaring fearfully over the edge. Whereat his host drank from the saucer also, and took heed to remember for the future. Still he was uncomfortable, and a little later he almost blushed at detecting himself inhospitably grateful for signs that Mr. Butson began to tire of the visit. Meanwhile he modestly contributed little to the conversation.

      “No,” said Mr. Butson gloomily after a long pause, and in reply to nothing in particular, “I ain’t a man of property. I wish I was. If people got what they was brought up to—but there!” He stuck his hands lower in his pockets and savagely regarded vacancy.

      “Mr. Butson’s uncle,” said Uncle Isaac, “is a mayor. A mayor. An’ ‘is other relations is of almost equal aristocracy. But ‘e won’t ‘ave nothin’ to say to ‘em, not a word. It’s jist blood—pride o’ breedin’. But what I say is, it may be proper self-respeck, but it ain’t proper self-justice. It ain’t self-justice, in my way o’ puttin’ it. Why ‘e won’t even name ‘em! Won’t name ‘em, Mr. May!”

      “Won’t he?” the old man answered, rather tamely, “dear, dear!” Mr. Butson laid his head back, jerked his chin, and snorted scorn at the ceiling.

      “No—won’t as much as name ‘em, such is ‘is lawfty contemp’. Otherwise, what ‘ud be my path of dooty? My path of dooty on behalf of self-justice to Mr. Butson would be to see ‘em an’ put a pint o’ argument. ‘Ere, I puts it, is ‘im, an’ ‘ere is me. ‘Ere is Mr. ‘Enery Butson, your very dootiful relation of fash’nable instinks, an’ a engineer than which none better though much above it, an’ unsuitably enchained by worldly circumstances in the engine-room of a penny steamer.” (Here Mr. Butson snorted again.) “Likewise ‘ere is me, a elderly man of some small property, an’ a shipwright of practical experience. Them circumstances bein’ the case, cons’kently, what more nachral an’ proper than a partnership—with capital. That’s ‘ow I’d put the pint; a partnership with capital.”

      “Jus’ so,” said old May. And seeing that the other still paused, he added “Of course.”

      “But ‘e’s proud—proud!” said Uncle Isaac, shaking his head plaintively.

      “P’raps I am proud,” Mr. Butson admitted candidly, “I s’pose I got my faults. But I wouldn’t take a penny