These remarks were not at all comforting. Joe walked out, stopped at the door of the next room, and listened. The serjeant was describing a military life. It was all drinking, he said, except that there were frequent intervals of eating and love-making. A battle was the finest thing in the world—when your side won it— and Englishmen always did that. “Supposing you should be killed, sir?” said a timid voice in one corner. “Well, sir, supposing you should be,” said the serjeant, “what then? Your country loves you, sir; his Majesty King George the Third loves you; your memory is honoured, revered, respected; everybody's fond of you, and grateful to you; your name's wrote down at full length in a book in the War Office. Damme, gentlemen, we must all die some time, or another, eh?”
The voice coughed, and said no more.
Joe walked into the room. A group of half-a-dozen fellows had gathered together in the taproom, and were listening with greedy ears. One of them, a carter in a smockfrock, seemed wavering and disposed to enlist. The rest, who were by no means disposed, strongly urged him to do so (according to the custom of mankind), backed the serjeant's arguments, and grinned among themselves. “I say nothing, boys,” said the serjeant, who sat a little apart, drinking his liquor. “For lads of spirit'—here he cast an eye on Joe—'this is the time. I don't want to inveigle you. The king's not come to that, I hope. Brisk young blood is what we want; not milk and water. We won't take five men out of six. We want topsawyers, we do. I'm not a-going to tell tales out of school, but, damme, if every gentleman's son that carries arms in our corps, through being under a cloud and having little differences with his relations, was counted up'—here his eye fell on Joe again, and so good-naturedly, that Joe beckoned him out. He came directly.
“You're a gentleman, by G—!” was his first remark, as he slapped him on the back. “You're a gentleman in disguise. So am I. Let's swear a friendship.”
Joe didn't exactly do that, but he shook hands with him, and thanked him for his good opinion.
“You want to serve,” said his new friend. “You shall. You were made for it. You're one of us by nature. What'll you take to drink?”
“Nothing just now,” replied Joe, smiling faintly. “I haven't quite made up my mind.”
“A mettlesome fellow like you, and not made up his mind!” cried the serjeant. “Here—let me give the bell a pull, and you'll make up your mind in half a minute, I know.”
“You're right so far'—answered Joe, “for if you pull the bell here, where I'm known, there'll be an end of my soldiering inclinations in no time. Look in my face. You see me, do you?”
“I do,” replied the serjeant with an oath, “and a finer young fellow or one better qualified to serve his king and country, I never set my—” he used an adjective in this place—'eyes on.
“Thank you,” said Joe, “I didn't ask you for want of a compliment, but thank you all the same. Do I look like a sneaking fellow or a liar?”
The serjeant rejoined with many choice asseverations that he didn't; and that if his (the serjeant's) own father were to say he did, he would run the old gentleman through the body cheerfully, and consider it a meritorious action.
Joe expressed his obligations, and continued, “You can trust me then, and credit what I say. I believe I shall enlist in your regiment to-night. The reason I don't do so now is, because I don't want until to-night, to do what I can't recall. Where shall I find you, this evening?”
His friend replied with some unwillingness, and after much ineffectual entreaty having for its object the immediate settlement of the business, that his quarters would be at the Crooked Billet in Tower Street ; where he would be found waking until midnight, and sleeping until breakfast time to-morrow.
“And if I do come—which it's a million to one, I shall—when will you take me out of London ?” demanded Joe.
“To-morrow morning, at half after eight o'clock,” replied the serjeant. “You'll go abroad—a country where it's all sunshine and plunder—the finest climate in the world.”
“To go abroad,” said Joe, shaking hands with him, “is the very thing I want. You may expect me.”
“You're the kind of lad for us,” cried the serjeant, holding Joe's hand in his, in the excess of his admiration. “You're the boy to push your fortune. I don't say it because I bear you any envy, or would take away from the credit of the rise you'll make, but if I had been bred and taught like you, I'd have been a colonel by this time.”
“Tush, man!” said Joe, “I'm not so young as that. Needs must when the devil drives; and the devil that drives me is an empty pocket and an unhappy home. For the present, good-bye.”
“For king and country!” cried the serjeant, flourishing his cap.
“For bread and meat!” cried Joe, snapping his fingers. And so they parted.
He had very little money in his pocket; so little indeed, that after paying for his breakfast (which he was too honest and perhaps too proud to score up to his father's charge) he had but a penny left. He had courage, notwithstanding, to resist all the affectionate importunities of the serjeant, who waylaid him at the door with many protestations of eternal friendship, and did in particular request that he would do him the favour to accept of only one shilling as a temporary accommodation. Rejecting his offers both of cash and credit, Joe walked away with stick and bundle as before, bent upon getting through the day as he best could, and going down to the locksmith's in the dusk of the evening; for it should go hard, he had resolved, but he would have a parting word with charming Dolly Varden.
He went out by Islington and so on to Highgate, and sat on many stones and gates, but there were no voices in the bells to bid him turn. Since the time of noble Whittington, fair flower of merchants, bells have come to have less sympathy with humankind. They only ring for money and on state occasions. Wanderers have increased in number; ships leave the Thames for distant regions, carrying from stem to stern no other cargo; the bells are silent; they ring out no entreaties or regrets; they are used to it and have grown worldly.
Joe bought a roll, and reduced his purse to the condition (with a difference) of that celebrated purse of Fortunatus, which, whatever were its favoured owner's necessities, had one unvarying amount in it. In these real times, when all the Fairies are dead and buried, there are still a great many purses which possess that quality. The sum-total they contain is expressed in arithmetic by a circle, and whether it be added to or multiplied by its own amount, the result of the problem is more easily stated than any known in figures.
Evening drew on at last. With the desolate and solitary feeling of one who had no home or shelter, and was alone utterly in the world for the first time, he bent his steps towards the locksmith's house. He had delayed till now, knowing that Mrs Varden sometimes went out alone, or with Miggs for her sole attendant, to lectures in the evening; and devoutly hoping that this might be one of her nights of moral culture.
He had walked up and down before the house, on the opposite side of the way, two or three times, when as he returned to it again, he caught a glimpse of a fluttering skirt at the door. It was Dolly's—to whom else could it belong? no dress but hers had such a flow as that. He plucked up his spirits, and followed it into the workshop of the Golden Key.
His darkening the door caused her to look round. Oh that face! “If it hadn't been for that,” thought Joe, “I should never have walked into poor Tom Cobb. She's twenty times handsomer than ever. She might marry a Lord!”
He didn't say this. He only thought it—perhaps looked it also. Dolly was glad to see him, and was SO sorry her father and mother were away from home. Joe begged she wouldn't mention it on any account.
Dolly hesitated to lead the way into the parlour, for there it was nearly dark; at the same time she hesitated to stand talking in the workshop, which was yet light and open to the street. They had got by some means, too, before the little forge; and Joe having her hand in his (which he had no right to have, for Dolly only gave it him to shake), it was so like standing before some homely altar being married, that it was the most embarrassing state of things in the world.