– thine inheritance – thine inheritance, mind, or lay down the fiddle and go back to thy desk. There, sir, I am, I hope, serious enough.'
He was. My father was a masterful man at all times; he was perfectly serious. Now the sons of masterful men are themselves often masterful. I walked out of the counting-house without a word.
I am conscious that there is no excuse for a disobedient son. I ought to have accepted any orders that my father might choose to lay upon me. But to part with my fiddle, to give up music: to abandon that sweet refreshment of the soul: oh! it was too much.
Moreover, no one knew better than myself the inveterate hatred with which my father and the whole of my family regarded what they called the tinkling cymbal which they thought leads souls to destruction. Had I seen any gleam of hope that there would be a relenting, I would have waited. But there was none. Therefore I cast obedience to the winds, and left the room without a word.
Had I known what awaited me: the misfortunes which were to drag me down almost unto a shameful death, in consequence of this act of disobedience, I might have given way.
But perhaps not: for in all my troubles there were two things which cheered and sustained me, I enjoyed at all times, so you shall learn, the support of love and the refreshment of music.
Had my father known of these misfortunes would he have given way? I doubt it. Misfortune does not destroy the soul, but music does. So he would say and so think, and conduct his relations with his own accordingly.
I walked out of the counting-house. At the door I met, face to face, the informer, my cousin Matthew, who had caused all this trouble.
He was attired as becomes a responsible merchant, though as yet only a clerk or factor with the other clerks. He wore a brown coat with silver buttons: white silk stockings: silver buckles in his shoes: silver braid upon his hat: a silver chain with seals hanging from his fob: with white lace ruffles and neckerchief as fine as those of his father, or of any merchant on Change.
He met me, I say, face to face, and for the first time within my knowledge, he grinned when he met me. For he knew what had been said to me. He grinned with a look of such devilish glee that I understood for the first time how much he hated me. Why? I had never crossed him. Because I was the son of the senior partner whose place I was to take and of the richer man of the two Partners. His would be the subordinate position with a third only of the profits. Therefore my cousin hated me. He, I say, noted my discomfiture. Now, at that moment, I was in no mood for mockery.
Something in my face stopped his grinning. He became suddenly grave: he dropped his eyes: he made as if he would pass by me and so into the house.
'Villain and maker of mischief!' I cried. Then I fell upon him. I had but fists: he had a stick: I was eighteen: he was five-and-twenty: he was heavier and taller: well; there is little credit, because he was a poor fighter: in two minutes I had his stick from him, and in three more I had broken it over his head and his shoulders. However, had his wind and his strength equalled his hatred and desire that the stick should be broken over my shoulders instead of his, the result would have been different.
'You shall pay – you shall pay – you shall pay for this,' he gasped, lying prostrate.
I kicked him out of my way as if he had been a dog and strode off, my cheek aflame, my hand trembling and my limbs stiffened with the joy of the fight and the victory. Come what might, I had whipped my cousin, like the cur he was. A thing to remember.
I have never repented that act of justice. The memory of it brought many woes upon me, but I have never repented or regretted it. And certain I am that to the day of his miserable death Matthew never forgot it. Nor did I.
CHAPTER II
A CITY OF REFUGE
My last recollection of the counting-house is that of Matthew lying in a heap and shaking his fist, at me, while, behind, my uncle's face looks out amazed upon the spectacle from one door, and the clerks in a crowd contemplate the discomfiture of Mr. Matthew from another door. Then I strode off, I say, like a gamecock after a victory, head erect, cheek flushed, legs straight. Ha! I am always glad that I drubbed my cousin, just once. A righteous drubbing it was, too, if ever there was one. It hanselled the new life. After it, there was no return possible.
And so home – though the house in College Street could no longer be called a home – I now had no home – I was turned into the street. However, I went upstairs to my own room – mine no longer. I looked about. In the cupboard I found a black box in which I placed everything I could call my own: my music; my linen and my clothes. On the wall hung the miniature of my mother. Happily she had not lived to see the banishment of her son: this I put in my pocket. The fiddle I laid in its case. Then with my cudgel under my arm and carrying the fiddle in one hand and the box on my shoulder I descended the stairs – now, I must confess, with a sinking heart – and found myself in the street.
I had in my purse five guineas – the son of a most solid and substantial merchant, and I had no more than five guineas in the world. What could I do to earn a living? Since I had been for two years in my father's counting house I might be supposed to know something of affairs. Alas! I knew nothing. One art or accomplishment I possessed: and one alone. I could play the fiddle. Now that I had to depend upon my playing for a livelihood, I began to ask whether I could play well enough. At all events, I could play vigorously. But the die was cast. I had made my choice, and must make the best of it. Besides, had I not drubbed my cousin Matthew and that, as they say, with authority?
You have heard how my father accused me of intimacy with a person named Shirley, a resident in the Rules of the King's Bench. That charge I could not deny. Indeed, the person named Shirley, by all his friends called Tom, had been of late my master. Every spare hour that I had was spent with him, practising with him and learning from him. He taught a finer style than I could learn from the sailors. When I went into the counting-house I had no longer any spare hours, except in the evening, and then my master was engaged earning his bread in an orchestra. Still I could manage to visit him sometimes on Sunday evenings when my father was generally occupied with friends who loved likewise to limit and make as narrow as they could the mercies of the Almighty.
At this moment I could think of no one except Tom Shirley who could help me or advise me.
I therefore lugged my box and my violin to the Three Cranes, and took boat across to Moldstrand Stairs, from which it is an easy half mile by pleasant lanes, Love Lane and Gravel Lane, past Looman's Pond to St. George's Fields where Tom Shirley lived.
It was a little after noon when I arrived at the house. It was one of three or four cottages standing in a row, every cottage consisting of four or five rooms. They are pleasing retreats, each having a small front garden where lilacs, laburnums, hollyhock, sunflowers, tulips, and other flowers and bushes grow. In front of the garden flows languidly one of the many little streams which cross the fields and meadows of Southwark: a rustic bridge with a single hand-rail crosses the stream.
The region of St. George's Fields, as is very well known, has a reputation which, in fact, is well deserved. The fact that it is covered with shallow ponds, some of which are little better than mere laystalls, causes it to be frequented on Sundays and on summer evenings by the rude and barbarous people who come here to hunt ducks with dogs – a horrid sport: some of them even throw cats into the water and set their dogs at them. The same people come here for prize fights, but they say that the combatants have an understanding beforehand how long the fight is to last: some come for quarter-staff practice: some come for hockey or for football. Outside the Fields there are many taverns and places of entertainment: on the Fields there is at least one, the notorious Dog and Duck. Every evening except in winter these places are full of people who come to dance and drink and sing. Every kind of wickedness is
