Chapter 25

Mr. Wells never contradicts Joe; but every now and then (forgetting that Joe can see) he shakes a sceptic head, and, leaning towards you, whispers (forgetting that Joe can only hear when you shout at him) that you must be pleased to remember that "_that's_ what he thinks he done; and no doubt he _thinks_ that it was so; and it may be it was, and I should never think of contradicting, not no man; but I has my own opinion in the matter. _I don't_ think it was so. I think he's half dreaming and half telling a tale. That's what _I_ think."

"But," you inquire, "is it not true that Joe was once a pirate?"

"Oh, yes," he cries at once, smiling proudly; "Oh, yes. Joe was a pirate right enough. What, haven't you heard him tell how they boarded a Spanish ship, and cut the throats and broke the heads of the swarthy crew? Oh, you ought to hear him tell that. It's as good as a play." And here he leans forward, and calls across to chuckling and gurgling Joe. "Joe! Tell the genneman how you boarded that Spanish ship, and cut the throats of them there swarthy Spaniards."

* * * * *

At this Old Joe seems to be smitten with a sudden frenzy. I have never seen anything like it. After a preliminary canter in the laughing line he suddenly makes taut his body; his eyes bulge from his head; his face becomes crimson and his nose blue; then, with his mouth open, while he hisses like a steam-saw and roars like a bull and sends the most extraordinary imitation of throat-cutting spluttering wetly from his distended lips, he waves his right arm madly and frantically in the air, makes imaginary stabs in front of him, draws imaginary knives across his throat, and brings down the butt ends of imaginary carbines on the supposititious heads of the swarthy crew unkindly resurrected to be slain again.

It is plain that the poor old paralysed fellow is lost to the Present. He is back in the Past--or in one of his novelettes; and in front of him, begging for mercy, as he slits their throats, or cracks open their skulls, are, indeed, hundreds of real and living men. His acting is superb. It is only made comical by the hanging legs, the fixture of the body to the seat of the chair, and the furious spluttering of his frenzied mouth.

When he has quite finished, thoroughly exhausted, he leans back in his chair, sticks his pipe into his face, strikes a match with his shaking hands, and covers his laughing face in a wreath of tobacco-smoke.

"Arst him," whispers Mr. Wells, "how many he killed? Go on; you arst him."

* * * * *

So you lean across to Old Joe, who shoots forward to meet your lips half-way with his left ear, and you calmly, and without dread or horror, ask the gurgling and chuckling veteran how many men he has killed.

As soon as he has caught your question he bursts out laughing, flings himself suddenly back, and exclaims, with a splutter: "How many ha' I killed? How many? I couldn't say. Too many on 'em. Hundreds! Hundreds! Hundreds of 'em!" Back goes the pipe, and, wreathed in proud smiles, his shoulders twitching, his hands never still for a moment, he sits square back in his chair and looks at you proudly, as much as to say:

"Ain't I a devil of a feller? Ain't I a monster? Ho, I've had a terrible life. You just arst me another!"

Well, I know not how true is the story told by Old Joe of his own wickedness.

But, however this may be--and it is not the province of Old Joe's humble historian to speculate--let us be content with the picture of these two old pensioners from the high seas, living together in the evening of their days in a narrow court in a London slum, the one paralysed and the other blind; the one a most brilliant and imaginative story-teller, the other a most cautious, modest, tentative, and genial critic. And let us sit between their two chairs for a moment and listen to the moving story of Old Joe, believing it with all the simplicity, if not with all the stupefied, admiration of the little slum children who gaze at the pirate when his chair is moved out into the court that he may warm his old bones in the sun.

[In brackets, let me say that I have come upon Old Joe literally posing in the court as a most ferocious pirate before an audience of toddling infants not more than four years of age.]

Eighty-two years ago Old Joe, surnamed Ridley, was born in the neighbourhood of the Barbican. He remembers how murderers and highwaymen used to come and hide in the court where he was born, "because, don't you see, the police daren't come where we was living." He went to a school in Charterhouse-square. "Charterhouse School," he says. But Mr. Wells nudges us with his pipe hand. "That's a mistake," he says. "There wasn't never no _school_ in Charterhouse Square, in those days. But never mind; let him go on. Only you must make allowance, you know."

His father was a carman who could drink porter by the two-gallon, and had an arm like a leg of mutton. But this great, lusty carman found himself ruled with a rod of iron by the little spitfire he took for his second wife. She managed the carman, and she managed his brats of children. She particularly managed Joe because he particularly disliked being managed.

* * * * *

So it came about that Joe found the streets pleasanter than his home, and took to slouching about with his hands in his pockets, feeling hungry and sometimes a little concerned, perhaps, as to what was to become of him. One day, as he was wasting time at a street-corner in Aldersgate, there came up to him a broad-shouldered, sandy-haired man in a blue reefer suit, who showed all his teeth when he smiled and whose voice had a sharp rattle in it like a bag full of gold coins. This noticeable man hailed Joe as a fine fellow, and asked the fine fellow whether he wouldn't step with him into a convenient tavern and wet his whistle with a glass of the best brandy.

The broad-shouldered, easy-smiling gentleman in the reefer suit told Joe, over a glass of brandy in the sanded-floor parlour of a neat tavern, that he was a rich man, with a hobby on which he spent a great deal of money. "It's a hobby of mine," he said, laughing, "to put down the slave-trade. I don't like it, and so I put it down. Now, a fine young likely fellow, such as you, is just the man I want for my ship. How would you like to go sailing the lovely seas catching slave-dealers, and giving them what-for with the best steel and gunpowder that money can buy?"

Joe said he could put up with it if the money was all right. And, being assured that the money was more than all right, he agreed to go down to Plymouth with a party of the gentleman's friends and try his hand for a year or two at laying pirates by the heel.

But when our Joe got out to sea and awoke from a terrible bout of intoxication on the schooner sailed by the gentleman with a hobby, he discovered that, instead of being on the ocean to catch pirates, he was there as a pirate himself. The boy had run away from home to make a fortune catching wicked men; he now found that his bread and butter depended upon his ability in cracking the heads of perfectly honest men. Some of the new hands wanted to be put back when the situation was explained to them, but Joe was among those who felt respect for the villainous seamen on board (the ship carried 130 men, he says,) who declared that they had as lief be pirates as catch pirates, and it was no odds to them what flag they sailed under or for what purpose.

"On board," splutters Joe, striking another match, "there was a turr'ble fellow--Jack Armstrong--six foot five in socks, strong's a lion, brave's a tiger. He and me use to fight--every day, pretty near. Bang! crack! g-r-r-r-r-r! I used to beat him--easy! I was turr'bly strong. Make's nose bleed--bung's eyes up--split's lips. Ess! And there was a mulatto aboard. Metsi-metsi-metsi-can, he was."

"He means Mexican," whispers Mr. Wells behind his hand. "That's what Joe means. A Mexican." And then he gets up from his chair and shouts into Joe's ear, "You mean a Mex-i-can, Joe."

"Ess; a Metsican," splutters Joe, getting purple in the face under the impression of a contradiction. "That's what I said--Metsican. Used to call him Black Peter. I've seen him eat rattlesnake. Swallow him clean down. Like this, he would--_Gollop!_" Here Mr. Wells goes off into a quiet chuckle of scepticism, one finger crooked over his pipe-stem, his sightless eyes blinking at the coals. "Great big bull of a feller. 'Normous chest. Legs o' granite. Used ter fight wi' bar o' iron. Ho! Ho! Weighed half a hunded. Tremenjus weapon! If he hit you, you know--_dash_!--out go your brains. Ho! ho! He was fond o' me. If I saw him sulky, or anythin', up I'd go, an' 'What's matter?' I'd say. Peter'd say, 'So-a-so.' 'Oh blow,' I'd say, and walk off. He looked up to me. R'spected me. Peter was always behind me in action. Always. Never let me be killed. Never! _Bang! Crack!_ Brain any man who come near me. Fond o' me."

Joe, we gather, was fourteen years at sea without ever coming home. He was a pirate in the China seas for years. He was in the Baltic during the Crimea. He has been to the bottom of the sea two or three times. He has fought hand-to-hand with many a shark. He has been shipwrecked a score of times. The experience of St. Paul in a good cause hardly exceeds for suffering the experience of Old Joe in a bad one. For six days and seven nights he and seven others were tossed about the sea without food in a row-boat. Two of the men died, and were eaten by the rest, with the exception of Joe, who could not stomach cannibalism for all he was such a terrible fellow. Then they were picked up by the famous _Alabama_, and Joe fought in the great American War of North _versus_ South.

"I was put in prison," he says, with a roar of laughter. "Two years. In Allybammer. Two years in dungeon. In the Harbour there. Allybammer Harbour."

"Alabama, he means," whispers Mr. Wells. "You've heard of Alabama, I dare say? Somewhere in Ameriky, isn't it? Ah! Well, that's what Joe means--Alabama."

"Two years!" laughed Joe; and then, with a great roar of delight, he adds, "Went off my nut! In dungeon. Clean off my nut!"

"What Joe means," whispers Mr. Wells, slowly and dogmatically, "is that, while he was in prison in Alabama Harbour, he lost his reason: 'Off his nut' is slang for losing his reason. Now, I dare say that that is true. I shouldn't be surprised if it was."

"Then I went Canada," bellows Joe, striking a fresh match. "Buff'lo hunter! Ho! Ho! Fought the Injuns. Red Injuns. Killed hundreds. _Slish! C-r-r-r-r! Bang! Dash! Gurrrr!_ Hundreds. Red Injuns! I killed hundreds myself. Ho! Ho! I dashed their brains out. Ho! Ho! Injuns. Red Injuns!"

It is some time before he grows really calm after illustrating with tremendous energy his ferocity against the poor Red Indians. Even Mr. Wells grows enthusiastic, and, sucking his pipe-stem, chuckles proudly over Joe's enormous valour.

But what a fall it is when Joe resumes his life. From being a pirate, a fighter, and a buffalo-hunter, he becomes--think of it!--a pastrycook. He leaves the magnificent society of Jack Armstrong, and Black Peter, and Red Indians, to mix with the commonplace citizens of London--as a pastrycook! He makes buns. He makes sponge cakes. Think of it--he makes jam-puffs!

* * * * *

But romance could not leave Joe, even while he toiled before a London oven.

There was a fire on the premises, and Joe did astonishing things. After being rescued he walked calmly back, through sheets of fire, to fetch the cash-box from the parlour. "Never afraid of anythin'--fire, water, gunpowder, sword, arrows--nothin'! No fear. Always brave. Ho! Ho! Brave's lion."

"Tell the genneman," shouted Mr. Wells, "what became of the shop."

"Ho, business failed," roars Joe. "Pastry-cook I was. Came down--_smash_! Lost everythin'. Every penny! Ho! Ho! But what's odds? Happy and jolly! Nothin' wrong. I'm a'right. What's odds?"

"Your old missus is dead, ain't she, Joe?" shouts Mr. Wells.

"Ess," answers Joe cheerfully. "Gone. Dead." He points towards the floor with a twitching finger, and stabs downward. "Dead. Years ago. Gone."

"And what about your boy?" asks Mr. Wells.

"No good," roars Joe, in half a rage. "He's no good. No good 't all. Brought him up like genneman. No good." He laughs again, shakes himself in his chair, and strikes another match.

"He was selling things in the street when the clergyman found him," says Mr. Wells behind his pipe. "Had a little tray strapped on to his shoulders, and two sticks to keep him standing. Collar-studs, tie-clips, bootlaces, matches--you know. You've often seen trays like that, I dare say. Well, that was what Joe was doing when the clergyman found him. Not this clergyman, you understand. The one before, Father Vivian. He's now a bishop. Out somewhere in Africa. That's his photograph on the wall over there. He sent us a picture-postcard the other day. Little black woolly-headed baby with no clothes on! I haven't seen it myself, because my eyes are bad; but they all laugh at it, and I dare say it's funny enough. A nice man Father Vivian was. A genneman. He's a bishop now, but he don't forget his old friends, do he?"

* * * * *

And as we listen to the blind man we wonder what his story is, and we learn that he was born in Trinity Lane, Upper Thames Street, in the days when poor people did live on that side of the water, and that he was engaged at an early age in tide work. "Coal trade," he says, quietly. "Seaham to London. The _Isabella_ brig. Four or five years I had of that. Then I was off to Russia in the _Prince George_. Then I did the trade between England and America. Then I was on a brig working the west coast of Africa. After that I came home and married. My wife lived in Fivefoot Lane. Her father was a carpenter. She was a good woman. She's dead now. We buried a sight of little 'uns. I can't tell you how many. There was a son, Harry: we buried him; a girl, 'Liza: we buried her; and a boy, Frank: we buried him; but I can't tell you how many little 'uns. Buried a lot, we did. Three children living now. Doing fair, they are; pretty fair. As times go, you know. I dare say they're happy enough."

After all these years of seafaring Mr. Wells worked on Brewer's Quay for eleven years, and after that took a spell of work in City warehouses. He "entered the Fur Trade." He did good work and earned good money; but after a bit he got what he describes as "a bit of a blight" in the eyes. He went to Moorfields hospital and underwent an operation. The darkness didn't lift. The twilight in which he lived deepened. He had to give up respectable work, and took to selling toys in the street. Then, one day, he was knocked down by a cab, and was carried to hospital, where by good fortune he fell in with Father Vivian. Father Vivian--whose name is blessed to this day in I know not how many slum homes--happened to want a companion for Joe, and Mr. Wells was pressed into the service. The blind man came to take care of the paralytic, and here they now are in the little two-roomed slum cottage, smoking their pipes in the blackened kitchen, and declaring that they have never been so well off in their lives before.

His Majesty the King has no more loyal and affectionate subjects. A friend of mine carried the two old gentlemen off to a Coronation dinner. They had a hundred things to complain of concerning the way in which the plates were whisked off before they had even got the savour of the dish in their nostrils; but when it came to singing "God save the King" they roared and cheered and shouted and cheered again, and cried till the tears ran down their faces. And now, among their possessions, there is nothing of which they are more proud than the gorgeous card telling how the King and Queen of England requested the favour of their society to a banquet. It is splendid to see these two old sea-dogs in their kitchen fingering that card and smiling over it with a pride not to be matched in all the world outside.

* * * * *

I have never heard them complain. They are old friends of mine. I have smoked many a pipe in their kitchen; but never yet did I hear murmur or complaint from their lips. Never once. They are most beautifully happy. They are radiant in their happiness. I do not believe there is a room in the world in which laughter is more constant and more spontaneous than in the little low-roofed black kitchen where the paralytic old pirate and the blind old seaman smoke their pipes and chuckle over the things they have done, the sights they have seen, and the storms they have weathered.

Opposite to the two old gentlemen lives a great friend of theirs, a maker of rag-dolls--a grey-headed, bent-back old veteran named Mr. Kight. I happened to be calling on the two old gentlemen on the Fifth of November last year, and, entering the kitchen, and while shaking hands with Joe (who always roars with laughter when he clutches your hand, and shakes it backwards and forwards as if he meant never to let it go) little Mr. Wells came fumbling to my side, laughing and chuckling, evidently with important news.

"You know it's the Fifth of November," he said, nudging me with the elbow of the hand which held his pipe. "You know that, don't you? Everybody knows that. Well, I've been telling Old Joe that he ought to let me and Mr. Kight shove a couple o' broom-sticks under his Grandfer Chair and carry him out into the streets. He'd make a lovely Guy, wouldn't he?"

Mr. Wells joined a treble of laughter to the continuous bass of Joe's gurgle, and then, stooping forward: "Joe," he shouted, "I'm telling the genneman you ought to let me and Kight take you out in your chair for a Guy Fawkes."

At this Old Joe's mouth opened wider than ever, his face became purple, and he pretended very hard indeed to laugh with a relish. But the jest hurt him. I saw, what Mr. Wells could not see, the hurt look in his old eyes, and, leaning to his ear, I shouted, "You'd have all the girls running after you, Joe! You're too handsome for a Guy. They'd run you off to church and marry you as sure as a gun."

"Ess!" he cried, delighted. "Ess! 'Zactly." And then, after a frightful effort to master his stammer, his face the colour of claret, his eyes buried in their flesh, his old body twitching violently, he burst out with the boast: "I was d----d handsome feller. Once. Ess! Handsome's paint. Ho! Ho! Girls mad about me!"

Happiness was restored. We drew our chairs nearer to the fire, filled our pipes, and laughed away the winter afternoon in the best of good spirits.

"We've got nothing to complain of," says Mr. Wells. "Everybody is kind to us. We've got our health, thank God! We've got a roof over our heads. We've got food in the locker. We've generally got a bit of terbaccer somewhere about the place. And we've done with the sea." After a pause, he adds, "When the Call comes, we shall be here to answer it. Early or late, we shall be ready; me and Old Joe."

Once more he leans across to the pirate. "I'm telling the genneman," he shouted; "that we've nothing to complain about, that when the Call comes we shall be ready."

"Ess!" shouts Old Joe cheerfully, with his pipe in the air. "Always ready! That's me. Always ready. But, don't want to die. Not yet. No! No fear. Why should I! Happy and jolly I am. Happy and jolly!" And once more he throws himself back with twitching shoulders, the chin fallen, the eyes scarcely visible in their bags of flesh, and laughs till the tears come.

"He's wunnerful hearty for eighty-two," says Mr. Wells quietly.

HITS AND MISSES [Sidenote: _Anon._]

Shop-windows shivered in the frames Do advertise the women's aims.

THE BROKEN WINDOW [Sidenote: _Anon._]

Till Venus saw a Suffragette Cried she, "But women should regret A broken glass!" But then, next minute, "Poor thing! she saw her image in it!"

WIT ON OCCASION

_Lamb said that the greatest pleasure in life was to do good in secret and be found out by accident_.

* * * * *

"_I suppose" said Lamb, "that Johnson was thinking of Shakespeare making Hector talk about Aristotle when he says,

And panting Time toils after him in vain_."

* * * * *

_A clergyman who had several livings was under discussion. "Why, such fellows look at a cure of souls like a cure of herrings--so much per hundred."

"Ah, but the herring cures fulfil their contract," said Jerrold.

He called clerical pluralists_ polypi, _parsons with many stomachs and no hearts_.

* * * * *

_A young prince had just been born and they were firing royal salutes to celebrate the occasion. A bystander exclaimed, "How they do powder these babies!_"

* * * * *

_In a pompous speech of self-defence the orator wound up by declaring himself the guardian of his own honour. "What a sinecure!" murmured his opponent._

"_How do you like babies, Mr. Lamb?" cried the gushing mother._

"_Boi-boi-boiled," answered the stammering old bachelor._

* * * * *

_Foote used to say that the Irish take us in and the Scots turn us out._

* * * * *

_A stout duellist once said to his diminutive antagonist, "It is a perfectly unequal contest. It is almost impossible to hit any one of your size, or to miss any one of mine."_

"_I agree," said his opponent. "And I will chalk my size on your body. We will not count the shots that go out of the ring_."

* * * * *

"_Ah," said Curran, noticing an Irish friend walking along absent-mindedly with his tongue out, "he is evidently trying to catch the English accent_."

* * * * *

_Sydney Smith was asked his opinion of Newton's portrait of Tom Moore. "Couldn't you," he asked the painter, "put more hostility to the Established Church into the face?_"

* * * * *

_An intemperate duke asked Foote how he should go to a masquerade. "Go sober," said Foote._

* * * * *

"_I'm afraid the salad is gritty," apologised the host.

"Gritty!" mumbled the guest, "it's a gravel path with a few weeds in it_."

* * * * *

"_I never read a book before reviewing it" said Sydney Smith to a friend. "It is so apt to prejudice one_."

* * * * *

_Bentley, the publisher, said to Jerrold, "I thought of calling my magazine_ The Wits' Miscellany, _but I have decided on_ Bentley's Miscellany."

"_My dear fellow," said Jerrold, "why go to the other extreme?_"

* * * * *

"_What a magnificent-looking man!" said Goldsmith of a stranger; "he ought to be a Lord Chancellor."

He was, in fact, a rich baker.

"Not Chancellor," whispered a friend; "only Master of the Rolls_."

* * * * *

_Coleridge was dreaming of the time when he was a minister. "Ah, Charles, you never heard me preach." "My dear fellow," cried Lamb, "I never heard you do anything else_."

* * * * *

_Sydney Smith said that the whole of his life had been spent like a razor--in hot water or a scrape._

* * * * *

_As a means of bragging of his acquaintance, a man was remarking to the company that, although he had often dined at the Duke of Devonshire's, there had never been any fish. "Is it not_ extraordinary?" _he asked. Jerrold said, "Hardly. They ate it all upstairs_."

* * * * *

_A jealous general was abusing Wolfe to the King.

"The man is mad," he declared bitterly.

George sighed. "I wish," he said, "that I could persuade him to bite all my generals."_

* * * * *