Chapter 14

      The afternoon unexpectedly changed its course as I was walking down Long Acre on my way to Gaunt-court and Mrs Jem’s six shillings, the balance of the price we had agreed for my aunt Reynolds’s possessions. I stopped to buy a buttonhole and, while the woman was fixing it to my lapel, I glanced over her shoulder along the way I had come. I saw some twenty-five yards away, quite distinctly, the man with the bird’s-nest beard.

      As if aware I had recognised him, he ducked into the shadow of a shop doorway. I gave the girl a penny and hurried back along the street. He plunged out of the doorway and blundered into one of the side roads leading down to Covent Garden.

      Without conscious thought, I set off in pursuit. I acted upon impulse – partly, no doubt, because Mr Frant wanted to know more about the man, and I welcomed an opportunity to oblige Mr Frant. But there was both more and less to it than that: I was like a cat chasing a rope’s end: I chased the man not because I wanted to catch him but because he moved.

      The market was drawing to its close for the day. We pushed our way into a swirling sea of humanity and vegetables. There was a tremendous din – of iron-shod wheels and hooves on cobbles, of half a dozen barrel organs, each playing a different tune, of people swearing and shouting and crying their wares. Despite his age and weight and condition, my quarry was remarkably agile. We zigzagged through the market, where he tried to conceal himself behind a stall selling oranges. I found him out, but he saw me, and off he went again. He leapt like a hunter over a wheelbarrow full of cocoa nuts, veered past the church and swerved into the mouth of Henrietta-street.

      It so happened that there was a pile of rotting cabbage leaves on the corner and this, quite literally, was his downfall. He slipped and went down. Though he tried at once to scramble up, his ankle gave way and he sank back, swearing. I seized him by the shoulder. He straightened his spectacles and looked up at me, his face red with exertion.

      “I meant no harm, sir,” he panted in that absurdly deep voice. “As God is my witness, I meant no harm.”

      “Then why did you run away?”

      “I was afraid, sir. I thought you might set the constables on me.”

      “Then why did you follow me in the first place?”

      “Because –” He broke off. “It does not matter.” His voice took on a richer note and the words that followed fell into a rhythm, like words often repeated: “I give you my word, sir, as one gentleman to another, that I am as innocent as the day is long. It is true that I have fallen upon evil times but the fault has not been mine. I have been unlucky in the choice of my companions, perhaps, and cursed by a generous spirit, by a fatal tendency to trust my fellow men. Yet –”

      “Enough, sir,” I interrupted. “Why have you been following me?”

      “A father’s feelings,” he said, beating himself on the breast with both fists, “may not be denied. The heart which beats within this breast is that of a gentleman of an old and distinguished Irish family.”

      By now he was kneeling in the gutter and a knot of spectators was gathering around us to enjoy the spectacle.

      “Bloody clunch,” an urchin cried. “He’s dicked in the nob.”

      “Which, you may ask, has been the worst of my many losses?” my companion continued. “Was it the loss of my patrimony? My enforced departure from my native heath? Was it the bitter knowledge that my reputation has been unjustly besmirched by men not fit to brush my coat? Was it disappointment in my profession and the loss, through the intemperate jealousy of others, of my hopes of regaining my fortune by my own exertions? Was it the death of the beloved wife of my bosom? No, sir, bad though all these things were, none of them was the worst blow to befall me.” He raised his face to the sky. “As heaven is my witness, no sorrow compares with the loss of my little cherubs, my beloved children. Two fine sons had I, and a daughter, destined to be the delights of my maturity and the supports of my old age. Alas, they have been snatched away from me.” He paused to wipe his eyes with the sleeve of his coat.

      “If that was a play,” observed another of our audience, “I wouldn’t pay a penny to see it. I wouldn’t pay a bloody ha’penny. A bloody farthing.”

      “You repugnant rapscallion!” the man roared, shaking his fist at the boy. Once more he lifted his face to the sky. “Why, heaven?” he inquired. “Why do I bare my innermost heart before the vulgar herd?”

      “Who are you calling names then?” said another voice.

      “The gentleman is unwell,” I said firmly.

      “No, he ain’t. He’s half-cocked.”

      “Perhaps his wits are a little disordered,” I conceded, helping my captive to his feet.

      The big man began to weep. “The lad speaks no more than the truth, sir,” he said, leaning so heavily on me that I could scarce bear his weight. “I’ll not deny that in my sorrow I have occasionally found consolation in a glass of brandy.” He brought his lips close to my ear. “Indeed, now you mention it, a drop of something warming would be a most effective prophylactic against this autumn chill which even now I feel creeping over me.”

      I led him, mumbling, down Henrietta-street. The crowd dropped away from us for the man was no longer amusing. In Bedford-street, he steered me to a tavern where we sat opposite each other in a corner. My guest thanked me kindly for my hospitality and ordered brandy and water. I asked for porter. When the girl brought the drinks, he raised his glass to me and said, “Your health, sir.” He drank deeply and then looked inquiringly at me. “You do not drink.”

      “I am wondering whether I should have you arrested and given in charge,” I said. “I regret that I shall be compelled to do so if you do not tell me the nature of your interest in myself and in the boys you waylaid in Stoke Newington.”

      “Ah, my dear sir.” He spread his hands wide. He was calmer now, almost at his ease, and the mellifluous tone of his voice was oddly at variance with his dishevelled appearance. “But I have already explained. Or rather I was in the middle of doing so when that pack of ruffians interrupted me.”

      “I am at a loss to understand you.”

      “The boy, of course,” he said impatiently. “The boy is my son.”