The Challenge of Love. Victorian Romance Novel
river, saw the boy on the pony brandish a switch and ride straight at the bridge as though he were charging the crowd of children there. They scattered like rabbits, the girl with the perambulator making a dash for Bread Street, the iron wheels bumping over the cobbles. One youngster refused to budge, standing sturdily with his back to the parapet, his fists thrust into his trousers pockets. The boy on the pony slashed this upholder of liberty across the face with his switch as his pony cantered past.
Bread Street was a dirty street, pitted with large puddles, and about thirty yards from where Wolfe stood a little servant girl in a clean print frock was picking her way over the cobbles. The boy on the black pony saw another chance of amusing himself. He made his pony swerve, and, cantering close to the girl when she was on the edge of a puddle, splashed the muddy water over her dress.
Wolfe stepped out into the road. The mannikin on the black pony came cantering up the street, glancing back once or twice to laugh at the servant girl’s rueful face. He was dressed like any dandy of thirty, in neat little trousers, a green waistcoat, a well-cut coat, and a high hat. A gold watch chain and gold seals showed on his waistcoat. The child was not more than twelve years old, and yet had all the airs and assurance of a very complacent man. His flat and colourless face with its faded blue eyes and impertinent nose had a queer resemblance to the face of some old roué.
The boy rode straight at Wolfe, waving him aside with his silver-handled switch.
“You, there, out of the way.”
He looked greatly astonished when Wolfe caught the pony’s bridle and pulled the beast up. The little gloved hand raised itself threateningly, but the man’s eyes met the boy’s, and the switch fell cowed.
“Hadn’t you better ride a little more quietly, Master Tommy?”
Master Tommy, indeed! This—to Aubrey Brandon, Esq., of “Pardons,” who in a certain number of years would have half Navestock in his pocket.
“What the deuce d’you mean, sir! Let go of my bridle.”
Wolfe smiled in his face.
“You have got a big voice for your years, Tommy. If I were you I should go back and tell that girl you are sorry you dirtied her dress.”
“Confound you, it’s no business of yours.”
“Cut along, then, Master Cub; I’m not your tutor.”
He let the bridle go, but still looked at Master Brandon in a way that made the boy feel angry and discomfited.
“And who the dickens are you, sir, stopping gentlemen in the public streets?”
“Oh—I’m nobody, Tommy.”
“You look like it, sir—you look like it.”
Wolfe gave a quiet, yet hearty laugh.
“It’s a pity someone does not give you a thrashing,” he said; “but as you say—a cub’s manners are no concern of mine.”
Young Master Brandon went trotting on up Bread Street his sallow face a little flushed and frightened. No one had ever interfered with him in Navestock before, save once on Peachy Hill, where old Josiah Crabbe’s Calvinistical gardener had threatened him with a thrashing for knocking over a little girl. Most of the Navestock folk were afraid of the youngster and his mother, and had agreed to regard his little arrogances as the ebullitions of the spirit of youth.
Wolfe turned to Sam, the surgery boy, who was looking up at him with comical respect.
“Who was that youngster, Sam?”
“Lor’, sir, that was young Master Brandon.”
“Brandon, and who’s he? Lead on to Paradise Place, Sam. It is marked down as being near Bread Street.”
Sam led on.
“That was young Master Brandon, of ‘Pardons,’ sir, Mrs. Brandon’s only son.”
“Big people, are they?”
“Tip toppers.”
“Own much of the town?”
“About half, sir, so I’ve heard say.”
“Mr. Brandon seems to do as he pleases.”
“Lor’, sir, who’s to stop him? I’ve seen him ride his pony half into Mr. Hubbard’s shop and swear like a lord at the old gentleman.”
Wolfe looked amused.
“Do lords swear so very furiously, Sam?”
“Sure, I don’t know, sir. I don’t know as I ever seed one.”
“And there is no Mr. Brandon?”
“Father—you mean, sir?”
“Yes.”
“No, sir. He died a sort of idiot quite a long while ago.”
They had made their way up a back street to Paradise Place, a row of brick and timber cottages, each with a small square of garden spread like a mat before it. How the place had earned its name it would be difficult to say, unless the person who had christened it had been blessed with a sardonic sense of humour. The bits of gardens were mere patches of dirt, and the casement windows, many of them stuffed with rags, looked out on the high brick wall of Miller Hansell’s great wagon-shed. A pump stood in an enclosure half-way up the place. People called it the “Paradise Pump,” though how many cesspools leaked into the well below no one troubled to consider.
Wolfe spent an hour in Paradise Place, and ended it with an inspection of the Paradise Pump. He decided that he would have a sample of that water, and examine it. An analysis might explain sundry phenomena that he had observed in the neighbouring cottages.
Walking homewards towards Mulberry Green he cast a critical eye over the fat boy and confessed to himself that the lad looked particularly healthy.
“You take plenty of physic, Sam?”
“Me, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Ain’t had a drop of physic since the measles five years ago.”
“Whereabouts do you live?”
“Up Peachy Hill, sir.”
“You’re a rogue, Sam! Many people get ill, living near the peaches?”
“Not much illness our way, sir. It’s mostly down along the river.”
“And who’s your landlord?”
“Mr. Crabbe.”
“And who is Mr. Crabbe?”
“Why, Mr. Josiah Crabbe, sir.”
Sam was out of breath, since Wolfe had been striding at full speed up Market Hill. He gasped out information between heavings of the chest.
“Does Mr. Crabbe own much property?”
“All about Peachy Hill, sir.”
“And the places we have been to this morning?”
“Part, Brandon’s, sir; part, Mr. Turrell, the brewer’s, so far as I know.”
“I expected as much. You are getting pumped, Sam, in more ways than one. What’s that striking? One o’clock! I shall be late for dinner.”
But Wolfe did not hurry himself. He appeared to be thinking hard all the rest of the way to Mulberry Green, and Sam, who was a lethargic lad, was content to wonder whether the cook at Prospect House had made a jam-roll for dinner.
CHAPTER FOUR
When a man marries Sincerity he marries a strong-willed young