Jack Maggs (12 page)

27

I soon had reason to doubt that Silas had ever seen the inside
of a chimney. First it was tight as a pipe, and the walls were
caked with soot so many inches deep that I was held by soot,
swaddled by soot, and had I not got given a great push on the
crown of my head, I would not have fit at all. But push I got,
and there I was jammed in like a cork in a grog bottle, some
foot below the top, coughing and wailing and choking myself
with fear.

Then there came another great push on my shoulder—a
boot most likely—and I was edged down further still, and there
the cork was stuck fast in darkness. I was very afraid, and imagined I would die.

When death did not come, I kicked with my boots, and
squirmed my shoulders and, in trying to climb back up towards
the sky, slid even further into the pit.

I have no idea how far down the chimney I was stuck, but
in any case I was caught there a long time.

Then a great sheet of soot gave way, a thick lump of it, and
I shrieked out in fright as I fell. The chimney was widening. In
my alarm, I scratched at the walls, thus bringing down more
filth into my panicked lungs. I coughed. I choked. I might have
fallen to the grate below had I not, like a babe, jerked out my
arms and legs and thus gained purchase on those protuberances which Silas had doubtless referred to when he said the
inside was like a staircase.

By this stage I must have been about half way through my
descent, and while surprised to be still alive, I was also very
frightened, for it was dark in there, and I was forever coughing
and choking on the falling soot, sure that the chimney must
soon become too wide for me to hold on to in just this way.

I looked up towards the sky, but could make out nothing but
the faint colour of the night. I had thought to see Silas looking
over me, but although I called out his name I never had a reply
except the constant dropping of soot.

I began to cry. I fancy that I cried a good long time, and that
Silas must have already become most impatient waiting for me
to appear at the back door, and even when I did begin to move
again it was with great timidity, and I might have been a good
hour in my descent had I not slipped and fallen.

I landed in the hearth with the wind knocked out of me,
and I lay there on the cold hard grate gasping like a mullet
brought up onto the dock.

When I had my breath back, I found, to my great surprise,
that I was not dead. My legs hurt a little, and there was a large
bump on my head, but nothing to stop me stepping out of the
high fireplace and peering around the room I had so abruptly
entered. My eyes were used to darkness by now and thus I could
see better than you might think.

And what a place it was I had arrived at.

It was the smells that first of all impressed themselves, the
smell of apples and oranges, and what may have been cinnamon, but in any case something sweet and strange. There were
no smells of drains either, and it was this I’m sure that made
the other smells the sweeter and gave me a feeling of almighty
comfort.

It was a long double room with great glass doors which, I
soon discovered, could be shut across the middle to make it into
two separate rooms, but for now the doors were open, and the
resulting space was bigger than Mary Britten’s quarters. In that
damp, low-ceilinged little place, we shared one bed and two
chairs between the three of us. Here there was enough upholstered seating to accommodate half the population of our little
court. All around the room there were arm-chairs, sofas,
chaises, love-seats—none of which I could have named for
you, never having seen such things before. In my enchantment,
I sat on each of them, each one, and it is only now, all these
years later, that I reflect on the sooty mess I must have left behind.

But the door—I had Silas waiting for me at the door.

It is easy enough to say, open the back door, but he had not
told me where the back door was. He did not know himself, of
course, not from the inside—it was half a flight down from the
kitchen, which was itself down a long and narrow staircase off
another hallway.

Finally I found my way there in the dark, guided by Silas’s
nervous whistle. But even having found the door, my work was
not done. I was six years old, no locksmith, and I was at the
chains and catches some five minutes with no other instruction
than Silas’s curses on the other side of the door until the last
chain fell away. Then the door swung in, and the knob
knocked me in the middle of my forehead, and I was momentarily made insensible.

I woke to discover Silas slapping me around the head and
pulling my ears, asking did I want him sent to America? I said
I did not, and that I had done as well as I could, and that I had
nearly died inside the chimney. Such was my upset that he
soon was quite civil, even giving me a handkerchief to dry my
tears. Then he lighted a little dip he had carried in his pocket,
and told me to follow him and I would learn something which
I would thank him for.

By now he had several workmates with him and they, having rushed in while I was insensible, were busy elsewhere in
the house. Silas took me down beside the kitchen to a grand
room which he said was the butler’s and there he held his dip
in the air and whistled.

In the spluttering light I saw first his enormous grin, and
then the reason for it: three grand dressers as massive as
galleons all bursting with silver plate, like so many moons—
tureens, salvers, candlesticks, great trays as big as shields—all
glittering behind their locked glass doors.

—There, said Silas, speaking very gently. There you are my
little darling.

I thought he spoke in this affectionate tone to me, and it was
a moment before I saw that it was the silver he was addressing.

Said he—There you are my fine cold little beauty.

He approached that plate like a man coming up towards an
altar.

—It is Uncle Silas, come to take you dancing up the City
Road.

He kept on talking, ever so gently, as from his sleeve he
withdrew a long steel jemmy which he must have had up his
sleeve all the way along the Mall.

—My lovely little bitch, said he. And set upon the dresser in
a most brutal fashion, jemmying and levering and cursing between his crooked teeth, until the first dresser gave up its secrets with a terrible screech as the brass hasp separated from
the oak.

—Hold the dip, said he, hold it high.

The dip was a little thing, just a bit of wick dipped into tallow, and it burnt my finger and splashed hot wax down my
arm. I held it gingerly as Silas swung the door of the dresser
open.

Above my head in another room, I heard glass breaking.

—Hold it here, over here.

I held the dip closer as he took out a great silver salver.

When I turned to look at him, he made me gasp. He had fitted a monocle on his left eye, and now it grew and swam before me like a fish.

He saw my face, and chortled.

Said Silas—Now lookee here, you coal-faced rascal, and I
will show you a set of hallmarks that you will remember when
you are an old man with children of your own.
Selvit Arbus est,
said he,
Servus et Cuccina erbe wit,
or words to that effect.

Of course I came close to see so wonderful a thing but Silas
already had the plate wrapped up in a rag, and was adding to
the contents of the sack which I had carried all the way from
London Bridge.

This sack now turned out to contain nothing more valuable
than soot, but amidst this acrid substance he now carefully
packed those pieces of silver which took his fancy. Many a finelooking piece of plate he lay aside, and more than once picked
up an object—a plain-looking little cruet, say—that I, with
my child’s eye, would have imagined of no value.

Thus, most slow and careful, he filled the sack, and when
he had washed his long white arms and spent one last moment
inquiring of the contents of the dresser drawers, he lifted the
entire load onto my bony shoulders and had me follow him out
into the summer’s night.

Thus we returned the way that we had come, with me staggering along the roadway amongst the shit and carriage wheels,
and Silas striding with the quality on the footpath of the Mall.

The sack sawed at the flesh on my shoulder, and at times the
pain was so v. bad I had no choice but stop and shift my load,
though I dared not tarry for fear of losing sight of Silas.

Of course the old dodger must have kept a nervous eye upon
his precious goods but he gave nary a sign of that to me, and
once we were in the West End I had the dickins of a time making out his green coat bobbing and ducking through the
crowds. And although I now say “the West End,” at the time I
had no idea of where on earth I was, and I imagined myself at
risk of being forever lost to Mary Britten and Poor Tom, who
now seemed to me the dearest people in the world.

The journey was all the worse for me not knowing where it
might end. Even when we finally reached a cat-infested lane-way beside a net-maker’s—it must have been in Wapping—
and Silas took the heavy sack away from me, I could not be
sure that I was permanently excused my burden.

I followed him up a rickety wooden staircase, although I
would rather not have—it was attached to the crumbling
brickwork as precariously as a beanstalk tied onto a cane. At
the top, Silas stooped and carefully unlocked some heavy
chains, and there we entered a small, low-ceilinged room
which my nose told me had, not so long before, been used for
drying fish.

This, it soon turned out, was where my patron did rest his
head, and I was most surprised to find it a more humble place
than my own.

He laid the sooty sack inside the doorway, and when he had
lit one more of his stubby little candles, I saw a movement
amidst a pile of rags in the far corner. At first I imagined rats,
but then saw a thin white arm, and then a pair of large dark
eyes, as the creature—it was a little girl, about my own age—
gazed sleepily up at us.

—Papa.

She extended her arm from her dark nest, and Silas, answering to this most unlikely title, knelt beside her and stroked
her head. I was—I can still remember—most astonished by the
tenderness exhibited by the man who had made me carry this
cruel weight; now he was fussing amongst the tangle of bedding and dragging out a rag doll with long dark hair just like
the little girl’s.

The girl, however, was looking not at the doll, but at me.

—Is that Jack?

Silas admitted that it was.

—Poor Jack.

She held out her hand to me, and I, having looked to Silas
for his approval, offered my own sooty paw. Thus she returned
to sleep, still holding my hand with a determined grip.

Silas left me there, holding the girl’s hand, and took his candle over to another corner where I heard him lifting floor
boards.

—Come here, young ’un.

I freed myself from the little hand, and went to where Silas
was kneeling over the floor cavity, his stooped form silhouetted
in the light of the sputtering candle. What I expected, as I
crossed towards him, was to be shown some treasure he had
hoarded away, and I was not mistaken. It was a small black
volume with words stamped on it in silver letters, and when
Silas gave it to me it was with such reverence that I imagined
it must be the Shakespeare he so often liked to quote. But
when I asked if it was poetry, he laughed and said it was, after
a sense, and that I should memorize a line or two and it would
improve my prospects no end. And then, saying he would be
back in a minute, he left me alone, and as I heard his light,
slippery feet descend the wooden staircase, I tried to take my
mind off the fact that I was left in a very strange place, and
turned my attention to the book.