第15章 CHAPTER IV Hiram's Bedesmen(3)

The pen was thrust into Crumple's hand, and a faint, wandering, meaningless sign was made, betokening such sanction and authority as Jonathan Crumple was able to convey.

'Come, job,' said Handy, softened by success, 'don't let 'em have to say that old Bunce has a man like you under his thumb--a man that always holds his head in the hospital as high as Bunce himself, though you're never axed to drink wine, and sneak, and tell lies about your betters as he does.'

Skulpit held the pen, and made little flourishes with it in the air, but still hesitated.

'And if you'll be said by me,' continued Handy, 'you'll not write your name to it at all, but just put your mark like the others,' --the cloud began to clear from Skulpit's brow--'we all know you can do it if you like, but maybe you wouldn't like to seem uppish, you know.'

'Well, the mark would be best,' said Skulpit. 'One name and the rest marks wouldn't look well, would it?'

'The worst in the world,' said Handy; 'there--there': and stooping over the petition, the learned clerk made a huge cross on the place left for his signature.

'That's the game,' said Handy, triumphantly pocketing the petition; 'we're all in a boat now, that is, the nine of us; and as for old Bunce, and his cronies, they may--' But as he was hobbling off to the door, with a crutch on one side and a stick on the other, he was met by Bunce himself.

'Well Handy, and what may old Bunce do?' said the gray- haired, upright senior.

Handy muttered something, and was departing; but he was stopped in the doorway by the huge frame of the newcomer.

'You've been doing no good here, Abel Handy,' said he, ''tis plain to see that; and 'tisn't much good, I'm thinking, you ever do.'

'I mind my own business, Master Bunce,' muttered the other, 'and do you do the same. It ain't nothing to you what I does--and your spying and poking here won't do no good nor yet no harm.'

'I suppose then, job,' continued Bunce, not noticing his opponent, 'if the truth must out, you've stuck your name to that petition of theirs at last.'

Skulpit looked as though he were about to sink into the ground with shame.

'What is it to you what he signs?' said Handy. 'I suppose if we all wants to ax for our own, we needn't ax leave of you first, Mr Bunce, big a man as you are; and as to your sneaking in here, into Job's room when he's busy, and where you're not wanted--'

'I've knowed job Skulpit, man and boy, sixty years,' said Bunce, looking at the man of whom he spoke, 'and that's ever since the day he was born. I knowed the mother that bore him, when she and I were little wee things, picking daisies together in the close yonder; and I've lived under the same roof with him more nor ten years; and after that I may come into his room without axing leave, and yet no sneaking neither.'

'So you can, Mr Bunce,' said Skulpit; 'so you can, any hour, day or night.'

'And I'm free also to tell him my mind,' continued Bunce, looking at the one man and addressing the other; 'and I tell him now that he's done a foolish and a wrong thing. He's turned his back upon one who is his best friend; and is playing the game of others, who care nothing for him, whether he be poor or rich, well or ill, alive or dead. A hundred a year?

Are the lot of you soft enough to think that if a hundred a year be to be given, it's the likes of you that will get it?'--and he pointed to Billy Gazy, Spriggs, and Crumple. 'Did any of us ever do anything worth half the money? Was it to make gentlemen of us we were brought in here, when all the world turned against us, and we couldn't longer earn our daily bread? A'n't you all as rich in your ways as he in his?'--and the orator pointed to the side on which the warden lived.

'A'n't you getting all you hoped for, ay, and more than you hoped for? Wouldn't each of you have given the dearest limb of his body to secure that which now makes you so unthankful?'

'We wants what John Hiram left us,' said Handy. 'We wants what's ourn by law; it don't matter what we expected.

What's ourn by law should be ourn, and by goles we'll have it.'

'Law!' said Bunce, with all the scorn he knew how to command--'law! Did ye ever know a poor man yet was the better for law, or for a lawyer? Will Mr Finney ever be as good to you, job, as that man has been? Will he see to you when you're sick, and comfort you when you're wretched?

Will he--'

'No, nor give you port wine, old boy, on cold winter nights! he won't do that, will he?' asked Handy; and laughing at the severity of his own wit, he and his colleagues retired, carrying with them, however, the now powerful petition.

There is no help for spilt milk; and Mr Bunce could only retire to his own room, disgusted at the frailty of human nature.

Job Skulpit scratched his head--Jonathan Crumple again remarked, that, 'for sartain, sure a hundred a year was very nice'--and Billy Gazy again rubbed his eyes, and lowly muttered that 'he didn't know.'