I’d been sitting in the Axe & Cleaver along of Mrs. Pellegrini for an hour at least; I hadn’t seen her in five years since she was doing the roads near Pontypool. An hour at least, for isn’t the Axe & Cleaver the pleasant kind of place? Talking or not talking you can always hear the water lashing from the outfall above Hinney Lock, the sound of it making you feel drowsy and kind. And isn’t the old bridge there a thing to be looking at indeed? Mrs. Pellegrini had a family of pikeys who traded in horses, willow-wattles, and rocksalt; she was as cunning as a jacksnipe, and if she had a deep voice like a man she was full of wisdom. A grand great woman was Rosa Pellegrini, with a face silky-brown like a beechnut, and eyes and hair the equal of a rook for darkness. The abundance of jewellery hooked and threaded upon her was something to be looking at too. Old man and young Isaac kept going out to look at the horses, or they’d be coming in to upbraid her for delaying, but she could drink a sconce of beer without the least sparkle of hilarity, as if it were a tribute she owed her whole magnificent constitution, or at least a reward for some part of it. So she kept doing it,[152] while her son and her husband could do no other and did it with nothing of her inevitable air.
Well, I was sitting in the Axe & Cleaver along of Mrs. Pellegrini when who should rove in but Larry McCall, good-looking Larry, bringing a friend with him, a soft kind of fellow who’d a harsh voice and a whining voice that we didn’t like the noise of tho’ he had good money in his purse. Larry gave me the grace of the day directly he entered the door, and then, letting a cry of joy out of him, he’d kissed Mrs. Pellegrini many times before she knew what was happening to her. She got up and punished him with a welt on his chin that would have bruised an oak-tree, and bade him behave himself. He sat down soothingly beside her and behaved very well. His companion stood very shy and nervous, like a kitten might be watching a cockfight.
“Who is this young man?” Mrs. Pellegrini asks.
“That’s Arthur,” said Larry: “I forget what Arthur knocks a living out of—I’ve known him but these three bits of an hour since we were walking in the one direction.”
“My dad,” said Arthur slowly and raspingly, “is an undertaker, and he lets me help him in his business: we bury people.”
“Oh come, young man,” said Mrs. Pellegrini, “that’s no sort of a trade at all—d’ye think it, Mr. McCall?”
“No, I do not,” replied Larry, “but Arthur does. It don’t seem to be a trade with very much humour in it. Life ain’t a sad solid chunk.”
[153]
“Now that’s just where you’re wrong,” drawled Arthur.
“’Tain’t a life at all,” Rosa interrupted severely, “it’s only sniffing, having a bad cold! No sort of a life at all—d’ye think it, Mr. McCall?”
“No, I do not,” said Larry with a chuckle, “but Arthur does!”
“Oh, I know what you’re a deluding on,” commenced the young man again, “but....”
“Strike me dead if I can see any fun in funerals!” Mrs. Pellegrini said with finality, taking up her mug. “But if you will have your grief, young man,” she added, pausing in one of her gulps to gaze at Arthur until he quivered, “you must have it, and may fortune fall in love with what we like. Fill up that cup now!”
The young man in agitation obeyed, and while this was doing we all heard someone come over the bridge singing a song, and that was Jerry Ogwin, who could tell the neatest tales and sing the littlest songs. Well, there were great salutations, for we all knew Jerry and loved Jerry, and he loved some of us. But he was the fiercest looking, fieriest gipsy man you ever saw, and he had all the gullible prescience of a cockney.
“My fortune! Where are you from, you cunning little man?”
“I bin doing a bit o’ road down Kent and London way. D’ye know Lewisham?” commenced Jerry.
“No,” said Larry, grinning at me, “but Arthur does!”
“No, I don’t; I never been there,” chanted Arthur.
[154]
“Now what’s the good of talking like that!” said McCall sternly, and letting a wink at me.
“More I ain’t,” asserted Arthur.
“Then I was at Deptford and Greenwich—know Greenwich?” continued Jerry.
“No,” replied Larry, then adding nonchalantly, “Arthur does.”
“No, I don’t, I don’t,” said Arthur wormily, for Jerry was glaring at him, and that fighting scar all down his nose, where his wife Katey once hit him with the spout of a kettle, was very disturbing.
“What’s the good of that?” urged the devilish-minded Larry. “Why don’t you talk to the gentleman, you don’t want to vex him, do you?”
“You ain’t blooming silly, are you?” queried Jerry.
Without waiting for reply he drifted off again.
“Me and my mate was doing a bit o’ road with oranges and things, you know—three for a ’eaver—down Mary’s Cray; d’ye know Mary’s Cray?”
But this time Arthur was looking avidly out of the window.
“Well, we was ’avin’ a bit of grub one night, just about dark it was, you know, with a little fire, we’d bin cookin’ something, when a blooming sweep come along. I’ll tell it to you; it was just inside a bit of a wood and we was sleeping rough. My mate was a bit nervous, you know, ’e kept looking round as if ’e could see something, but it was that dark you might be looking in a sack. I says to Timmy: what’s up with you? I dunno, ’e says, something going on, and just as ’e says that this blooming sweep ’oofs in from nowhere and[155] falls over our beer. I says to Timmy, ’e’s knocked over our beer; are you going to fight ’im or shall I? And Timmy shouts: look at ’im, ’e’s laying on the fire! And s’elp me God so ’e was, ’is legs was in the sticks and ’is trousers was a-burning. Come out of it, we says, but ’e didn’t move. No, my oath, ’e layed there like a dead sheep. Well, we pulled ’im off it, but ’e was like a silly bloke. ’E couldn’t stand up and ’e couldn’t say anything. ’E got a lot of froth round ’is mouth like a ’orse that’s going wicked. And ’e wasn’t drunk, neither, but, you know, ’e was just frightened out of ’is life about something. We sit ’im down with ’is back against a tree and made the fire up again. What’s the matter with you, we says; you got a fit, we says; what d’ye wa............