and pass his evenings here.
But we had not yet looked, Mr. Superintendent – said Trampfoot, receiving us in the street again with military salute – for Dark Jack. True, Trampfoot. Ring the wonderful stick, rub the wonderful lantern, and cause the spirits of the stick and lantern to convey us to the Darkies.
There was no disappointment in the matter of Dark Jack; he was producible. The Genii set us down in the little first floor of a little public-house, and there, in a stiflingly close atmosphere, were Dark Jack, and Dark Jack’s delight, his white unlovely Nan, sitting against the wall all round the room. More than that: Dark Jack’s delight was the least unlovely Nan, both morally and physically, that I saw that night.
As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among the company, Quickear suggested why not strike up? ‘Ah, la’ads!’ said a negro sitting by the door, ‘gib the jebblem a darnse. Tak’ yah pardlers, jebblem, for ’um Quad-rill.’
This was the landlord, in a Greek cap, and a dress half Greek and half English. As master of the ceremonies, he called all the figures, and occasionally addressed himself parenthetically – after this manner. When he was very loud, I use capitals.
‘Now den! Hoy! One. Right and left. (Put a steam on, gib ’um powder.) La-dies’ chail. Bal-loon say. Lemonade! Two. Ad-warnse and go back (gib ’ell a breakdown, shake it out o’ yerselbs, keep a movil). Swing-corners, Bal-loon say, and Lemonade! (Hoy!) Three. Gent come for’ard with a lady and go back, hoppersite come for’ard and do what yer can. (Aeiohoy!) Bal-loon say, and leetle lemonade. (Dat hair nigger by ’um fireplace ’hind a’ time, shake it out o’ yerselbs, gib ’ell a breakdown.) Now den! Hoy! Four! Lemonade. Bal-loon say, and swing. Four ladies meet in ’um middle, Four gents goes round ’um ladies, Four gents passes out under ’um ladies’ arms, swing – and Lemonade till ’a moosic can’t play no more! (Hoy, Hoy!)’
The male dancers were all blacks, and one was an unusually powerful man of six feet three or four. The sound of their flat feet on the floor was as unlike the sound of white feet as their faces were unlike white faces. They toed and heeled, shuffled, double-shuffled, double-double-shuffled, covered the buckle, and beat the time out, rarely, dancing with a great show of teeth, and with a childish good-humoured enjoyment that was very prepossessing. They generally kept together, these poor fellows, said Mr. Superintendent, because they were at a disadvantage singly, and liable to slights in the neighbouring streets. But, if I were Light Jack, I should be very slow to interfere oppressively with Dark Jack, for, whenever I have had to do with him I have found him a simple and a gentle fellow. Bearing this in mind, I asked his friendly permission to leave him restoration of beer, in wishing him good night, and thus it fell out that the last words I heard him say as I blundered down the worn stairs, were, ‘Jebblem’s elth! Ladies drinks fust!’
The night was now well on into the morning, but, for miles and hours we explored a strange world, where nobody ever goes to bed, but everybody is eternally sitting up, waiting for Jack. This exploration was among a labyrinth of dismal courts and blind alleys, called Entries, kept in wonderful order by the police, and in much better order than by the corporation: the want of gaslight in the most dangerous and infamous of these places being quite unworthy of so spirited a town. I need describe but two or three of the houses in which Jack was waited for as specimens of the rest. Many we attained by noisome passages so profoundly dark that we felt our way with our hands. Not one of the whole number we visited, was without its show of prints and ornamental crockery; the quantity of the latter set forth on little shelves and in little cases, in otherwise wretched rooms, indicating that Mercantile Jack must have an extraordinary fondness for crockery, to necessitate so much of that bait in his traps.
Among such garniture, in one front parlour in the dead of the night, four women were sitting by a fire. One of them had a male child in her arms. On a stool among them was a swarthy youth with a guitar, who had evidently stopped playing when our footsteps were heard.
‘Well I how do you do?’ says Mr. Superintendent, looking about him.
‘Pretty well, sir, and hope you gentlemen are going to treat us ladies, now you have come to see us.’
‘Order there!’ says Sharpeye.
‘None of that!’ says Quickear.
Trampfoot, outside, is heard to confide to himself, ‘Meggisson’s lot this is. And a bad ’un!’
‘Well!’ says Mr. Superintendent, laying his hand on the shoulder of the swarthy youth, ‘and who’s this?’
‘Antonio, sir.’
‘And what does he do here?’
‘Come to give us a bit of music. No harm in that, I suppose?’
‘A young foreign sailor?’
‘Yes. He’s a Spaniard. You’re a Spaniard, ain’t you, Antonio?’
‘Me Spanish.’
‘And he don’t know a word you say, not he; not if you was to talk to him till doomsday.’ (Triumphantly, as if it redounded to the credit of the house.)
‘Will he play something?’
‘Oh, yes, if you like. Play something, Antonio. You ain’t ashamed to play something; are you?’
The cracked guitar raises the feeblest ghost of a tune, and three of the women keep time to it with their heads, and the fourth with the child. If Antonio has brought any money in with him, I am afraid he will never take it out, and it even strikes me that his jacket and guitar may be in a bad way. But, the look of the young man and the tinkling of the instrument so change the place in a moment to a leaf out of Don Quixote, that I wonder where his mule is stabled, until he leaves off.
I am bound to acknowledge (as it tends rather to my uncommercial confusion), that I occasioned a difficulty in this establishment, by having taken the child in my arms. For, on my offering to restore it to a ferocious joker not unstimulated by rum, who claimed to be its mother, that unnatural parent put her hands behind her, and declined to accept it; backing into the fireplace, and very shrilly declaring, regardless of remonstrance from her friends, that she knowed it to be Law, that whoever took a child from its mother of his own will, was bound to stick to it. The uncommercial sense of being in a rather ridiculous position with the poor little child beginning to be frightened, was relieved by my worthy friend and fellow-constable, Trampfoot; who, laying hands on the article as if it were a Bottle, passed it on to the nearest woman, and bade her ‘take hold of that.’ As we came out the Bottle was passed to the ferocious joker, and they all sat down as before, including Antonio and the guitar. It was clear that there was no such thing as a nightcap to this baby’s head, and that even he never went to bed, but was always kept up – and would grow up, kept up – waiting for Jack.
Later still in the night, we came (by the court ‘where the man was murdered,’ and by the other court across the street, into which his body was dragged) to another parlour in another Entry, where several people were sitting round a fire in just the same way. It was a dirty and offensive place, with some ragged clothes drying in it; but there was a high shelf over the entrance-door (to be out of the reach of marauding hands, possibly) with two large white loaves on it, and a great piece of Cheshire cheese.
‘Well!’ says Mr. Superintendent, with a comprehensive look all round. ‘How do you do?’
‘Not much to boast of, sir.’ From the curtseying woman of the house. ‘This is my good man, sir.’
‘You are not registered as a common Lodging House?’
‘No,
