Authors: George W. M. Reynolds,James Malcolm Rymer
"THE DARK HOUSE"
MARKHAM did not forget his appointment with the Resurrection Man.
Having obtained the necessary sum from his solicitor, he determined to
sacrifice it in propitiating a miscreant who possessed the power of wounding
him in a tender and almost vital point. Accordingly we find him, on the evening
agreed upon, threading his way on foot amidst the maze of narrow streets and
crooked alleys which lie in the immediate neighbourhood of Spitalfields Church.
There is not probably in all London - not even in Saint
Giles's nor the Mint - so great an amount of squalid misery and fearful crime
huddled together, as in the joint districts of Spitalfields and Bethnal Green.
Between Shoreditch Church and Wentworth Street the most intense pangs of
poverty, the most profligate morals, and the most odious crimes, rage with the
fury of a pestilence.
Entire streets that are nought but sinks of misery and vice,
- dark courts, fetid with puddles of black slimy water, - alleys, blocked up
with heaps of filth, and nauseating with unwholesome odours, constitute, with
but little variety, the vast district of which we are speaking.
The Eastern Counties' Railway intersects Spitalfields and
Bethnal Green. The traveller upon this line may catch, from the windows of the
carriage in which he journeys, a hasty, but alas! too comprehensive glance of
the wretchedness and squalor of that portion of London. He may actually obtain
a view of the interior and domestic misery peculiar to the neighbourhood ;- he
may penetrate, with his eyes, into the secrets of those abodes of sorrow, vice,
and destitution. In summer time the poor always have their windows open, and
thus the hideous poverty of their rooms can be readily descried from the summit
of the arches on which the railroad is constructed.
And in those rooms may be seen women half naked,- some
employed in washing the few rags which they possess,- others ironing the linen
of a more wealthy neighbour,- a few preparing the sorry meal,-and numbers
scolding, swearing, and quarrelling. At many of the windows, men out of work,
with matted hair, black beards, and dressed only in filthy shirts and ragged
trousers,- lounge all the day long, smoking. From not a few of the open
casements bang tattered garments to dry in the sun. Around the doors children,
unwashed, uncombed, shoeless, dirty, and uncared for - throng in numbers, - a
rising generation of thieves and vagabonds.
In the districts of Spitalfields and Bethnal Green the
police are but little particular with regard to street-stalls. These portable
shops are therefore great in number and in nuisance. Fish, fresh and
fried,-oysters, sweet-stuff, vegetables, fruit, cheap publications,
sop-in-the-pan, shrimps and periwinkles, hair-combs, baked potatoes, liver and
lights, curds and whey, sheep's heads, haddocks and red-herrings, are the
principal comestibles which find vendors and purchasers in the public street.
The public-houses and the pawnbrokers also drive an excellent trade in that
huge section of London.
In a former chapter we have described the region of Saffron
Hill: all the streets and courts of that locality are safe and secure when
compared with many in Bethnal Green and Spitalfields. There are lanes and
alleys between Shoreditch and Church Street, and in the immediate neighbourhood
of the Railway east of Brick Lane, through which a well. dressed person would
not wander with a gold chain round his neck, at night, were he prudent.
Leading from the neighbourhood of church Street up into the
Hackney Road, is a sinuous thoroughfare, composed of Tyssen Street, Turk
Street, Virginia Street, and the Bird-cage Walk; and in the vicinity of these
narrow and perilous ways are the Wellington Road (bordered by a ditch of black
mud) and several vile streets, inhabited by the very lowest of the low, the
most filthy of the squalid, and the most profligate of the immoral.
We defy any city upon the face of the earth to produce a
district equal in vice, dirt, penury, and fear-inspiring dens, to these which
we are now describing.
The
Dark House
was a tavern of the lowest description in Brick Lane. a little
north of the spot where the railway now intersects the street. The parlour of
the
Dark House
was dirty and repulsive in all
respects; the gas-lights formed two enormous black patches upon the ceiling;
the tables were occupied by ill-looking men, whose principal articles of
consumption were tobacco and malt liquor, and the atmosphere was filled with a
dense volume of smoke. Markham was ashamed to be seen in such a place and in
such society; but he consoled himself with the idea that neither he nor his
business was known to those present; and as very little notice was taken of him
as he proceeded to seat himself in the most retired and obscure corner, he
speedily divested himself of the momentary embarrassment which had seized upon
him.
Having satisfied himself by a glance that the Resurrection
Man was not there, Richard ordered a glass of spirits and water, and resolved
to await with patience the arrival of the extortioner.
By degrees be fell into a train of reflections in which he
had never been involved before. He was about to purchase the silence of a
villain who had menaced him with exposure to a family whose good opinion he
valued. We have said elsewhere that he was a young man of the strictest honour,
and that he was ever animated with the most scrupulous integrity of purpose. He
could no longer conceal from himself the fact that he entertained a sincere and
deep attachment for the Signora Isabella, and he flattered himself that he was
not disagreeable to her in return. His transient passion for Mrs. Arlington had
faded away with reflection, and he now comprehended the immense difference
between an evanescent flame of that nature,- a flame kindled only by animal
beauty, and unsustained by moral considerations, - and the pure, chaste, and sacred
affection he experienced towards the charming Isabella. From the moment of his
release from confinement, he had never inquired after Diana - much less sought
after her; he knew not where she was, nor what had become of her, and his heart
was totally independent of any inclination in her favour. He now asked himself
whether he was pursuing an honourable part in concealing the antecedent
adventures of his life from her whose pure and holy love he was so anxious to
retain, whose confidence he would not lose for worlds, and whose peace of mind
be would not for a moment sacrifice to his own passion or interest?
He had not satisfactorily answered the question which he had
thus put to himself, when he was aroused from his reverie by the sound of a
voice at the further end of the room, which appeared familiar to him.
Glancing in that direction, he immediately recognised the
well-known form and features of Mr. Talbot
the vulgar companion of Sir
Rupert Harborough and Mr. Chichester.
But how had the mighty fallen! The charitable gentleman now
seemed to require the aid of charity himself. His hat, which was originally a
gossamer at four-and-nine, was now so fully ventilated about the crown, that it
would have fetched nothing at a Jews' auction, even though George Robins
himself had put it up for sale. His coat was out at the elbows, his trousers
out at the knees, and his shoes out at the toes; he was out of
cash
and out of
spirits;
and as he had none of the former, he trusted to the kindness of
the frequenters of the
Dark House
parlour to supply him with some of the latter, diluted with hot
water, and rendered more agreeable by means of sugar. Indeed, at the moment
when his voice fell upon Markham's ear, he was just about to apply his lips to
a tumbler of gin-punch which a butcher had ordered for his behoof.
"Well, Mr. Pocock," (this was Talbot's real name),
said the butcher, "how does the world use you now?"
"Very bad, indeed, Mr. Griskin," was the reply.
"For the last three year, come January, I haven’t known, when I got up in
the morning, where the devil I should sleep at night ;- and that is God's
Almighty's truth."
"I’m sorry to hear your affairs don't mend," said
the butcher. "For my part, I'm getting on blooming. I was a bankrupt only
seven weeks ago."
"A strange manner of being successful in
business," thought Markham.
"But all my goods was seized by the landlord,"
added the butcher, in a triumphant tone of voice, "and so they was saved
from the messenger of the Court, when he come down to take possession."
"Ah! I suppose your bankruptcy has put you all right
again," said Pocock. "Nothing like a bankruptcy now-a-days - it makes
a man's fortune."
"Yes - and no going to quod neither. I made a lot of
friends of mine creditors, and so I got my certificate the wery same day as I
passed my second examination; and now I'm as right as a trivet. But what ails
you, though, old feller, that you can't contrive to get on ?"
"The fact is," said Pocock, sipping his
gin-and-water, "I was led into bad company about three or four years ago,
and I don't care before who I say it, or who knows what infernal scrapes I was
partly the means of getting a nice young fellow into."
"I suppose you fell in with flash company ?"
observed the butcher.
"I did indeed! I went out of my element - out of my
proper sphere, as I may say; and when a man does that without the means of
keeping it
,
he's d—d and done for at once. I
fell in with a baronet and a swell cove of the name of Chichester, or Winchester,
and, who after all turned out to be the son of old Chichester the pawnbroker
down the street here. They made a perfect tool of me. I was fed and pampered,
and lived on the fat of the land; and then, when the scheme fell through, I was
trundled off like a hoop of which a charity school-boy is tried. I fell into
distress; and though I've met this here baronet and that there Chichester
riding in their cabs, with tigers behind and horses before, they never so much
as said, '
Talbot,
'
or '
Pocock my tulip, here
is a quid for you.
' "
"Willanous," ejaculated the butcher. "But of
what natur' was the scheme you talk of?"
"Why, I'll tell you that too. I shall certainly
proclaim my own crimes; but I don't hesitate to say that I was led away by
those two thieves. My name, as you well know, is Bill Pocock, and they made me
take the name of Talbot. I was brought up as an engraver, and did pretty well
until some four years ago, when I lost my wife and got drinking, and then every
thing went wrong. One day I fell in with this Chichester, and he lent me some
money. He then began telling me how he knew the way of making an immense
fortune with very little trouble, and no risk or expense to myself."
"So far, so good," said the butcher.
"I was hard up - I was rendered desperate by the death
of my wife, and, to tell the truth, I wanted to live an idle life. I had got
attached to public house parlours, and couldn't sit down to work with the
graver. So I bit at Chichester's proposal, and he introduced me to the baronet."
"Another glass, Pocock," interrupted the butcher,
winking to the other inmates of the parlour, who were now all listening with
the greatest attention to this narrative - but none with more avidity nor with
deeper interest than Richard Markham, who sate unperceived by Pocock in his
obscure corner.
"The scheme was certainly a very ingenious one,"
continued Talbot, "and deserved success. It was nothing more nor less than
making bank-notes. I was used to engraving plates of that kind; and so I undertook
the job. I don't care if any one here present goes and informs against me;
perhaps I should be better off in a prison than out of one. But what goes to my
heart - and what I can never forget, and shall reproach myself for as long as I
live, was the getting of a nice young fellow into a scrape, and making him
stand Moses for the punishment, as you do, Griskin, for the grog."
"And who was this young chap ?" demanded the
butcher.
"One Markham. You must recollect his case. He was tried
just about this time three years ago, and sentenced to two years'
imprisonment."
"Can't say I recollect."
"Well - this Markham was as innocent about the notes,
as the child unborn!" added Pocock emphatically.
"I don't see that you need take on so," remarked
the butcher, "for after all, you'd better let another feller get into
trouble than be locked up in lavender yourself."
"It was an unfortunate event," said Pocock,
shaking his head solemnly, "and nothing has prospered with me since. But
what vexes me as much as all the rest, is to think of the conduct of those two
chaps, Chichester and the baronet. They pretended not to know who I was, when I
one day stopped them in Regent Street, and wanted to borrow a few pounds of
them. The baronet turns round, and says to his pal, '
Who the devil is that
fellow?
' and Chichester puts up his eye-glass, stares at me through it for
five minutes, and says, '
My good man, we never give alms
to people unless they have certificates of good character to show.
'
"Perhaps you wasn't over swell in your toggery?"
said the butcher.
"Why -no I don't think I was so well dressed then as I
am now."
"The devil you wasn't! Well then, it ain't no wonder if
so be they slighted you; for one wouldn't think as how you was titivated off at
present to go to the Queen's le
-vee.
"
"Come, no joking," exclaimed Pocock. "I have
told you my story, and if you' think it is a good one, and are inclined to do
me a service, you can just order in a chop or a steak, for I think I could
manage to eat a bit."
"With all my heart," said the butcher, who was a
good-natured man in his way, and who, having