Should he by chance be found there, rest assured it is in some mongrel state: some Britisher with the ravishing strain of the hilarious, inconsequential, romantic Irish; or the Odyssean strain of the Italian cavalier or Spanish hidalgo’s blood pulsing in his veins. Though, stay—there _was_ one, by name Bill Grimes, a representative of the much-abused Cockney.
Men have toiled over the inscrutable wonders of Cockneyism. The short clay pipe, the black teeth, the perky shuffle of vile impertinence and blasphemous oaths have bedecked many a novelist’s pages with inky crime.
Believe me, Bill Grimes was a real out and outer good ’un. It is true enough that he chewed vilely and spat deliberately, so as not to miss, with that streaming certitude of black tobacco juice, when anyone capped his argument with indisputable conviction. But do not men argue the world over? Is it not far better to have a straightforward squirt of honest tobacco juice in one’s eye than life-long, stealthy enmity behind one’s back?
Ah, Bill Grimes (he’s dead now), the blue of your eyes was not counterfeit; your heart and voice had the genuine touch and true ring of the last half-crown you so often shared.
Yes, there he sits; what a face!—more like a half-worn-out broom, with two clear, sparkling eyes peeping from it, than anything else. A real “low ’un”—and yet his mouth, sensitive-looking, firm as a beautiful woman’s, as though ages back in British history some Roman captain, leader of invading legions, sighted and fell into the arms of a blue-eyed, golden-haired coster-girl, of leafy raiment and limbs of woaded beauty, as she pattered down that primitive Mile End Way.
As Grimes sat there on his tub, he gave them back as good as they gave when they chaffed him. He was no fool. His old grandfather and grandmother kept a pawnbroker’s shop down the Old Kent Road. He seemed to have tender memories of them and his kiddie days.
“Gorblimy, a dear old soul she were. She knewed all about Boyron the poyet; yes, she readed to me the poultry that made me wanter go to sea.”
“Fancy that,” said I, as I looked into those fine, low eyes.
“Yus; and I’m well connected, mate, I am. I had a hunkle on the Karnty Kouncil.” (Here he pulled his trouser-legs up and spat through the open door with mathematical precision.) “Clever bloke ’e was.”