Why, he knew not--nor cared. In the full enjoyment of a surfeit of indefinite emotion, tearful, rapturous, he had accepted the command put on him by the preacher, and he had come forth, walking on clouds, regenerate, compact of fine feelings. There was a short prayer of thanks, and then a final hymn:--
"Ring the bells of 'eaven, there is joy to-day, For a soul returnin' from the wild!"
Scuddy felt a curious equable lightness of spirits--a serene cheerfulness. His emotional orgasm was spent, and in its place was a numb calm, pleasant enough.
"Glory! glory! 'ow the angels sing-- Glory! glory! 'ow the loud 'arps ring! 'Tis the ransomed army, like a mighty sea, Pealin' forth the anthem of the free!"
The service ended. The congregation trooped forth into the evening; but Scuddy sat where he was, for the preacher wanted a few words with his converts ere he would let them go. He shook hands with Scuddy Lond, and spoke with grave, smiling confidence about his soul. Brother Spyers also shook hands with him and bespoke his return on Sunday.
In the cool air of the empty passage, Scuddy's ordinary faculties began to assert themselves; still in an atmosphere of calm cheer. Fine feelings--fine. And as he turned the piece of coal in his pocket, he reflected that, after all, the day had not been altogether unlucky--not in every sense a blank. Emerging into the street, he saw that the lame old woman, who was almost alone in view, had risen on her crutch and turned her back to roll her white cloth over her remaining trotters. On the ledge behind stood her little pile of coppers, just reckoned. Scuddy Lond's practised eye took the case in a flash. With two long tip-toed steps he reached the coppers, lifted them silently, and hurried away up the street. He did not run, for the woman was lame and had not heard him. No: decidedly the day had not been blank. For here was a hot supper.
"All that messuage dwelling-house and premises now standing on part of the said parcel of ground" was the phrase in the assignment of lease, although it only meant Number Twenty-seven Mulberry Street, Old Ford, containing five rooms and a wash-house, and sharing a dirty front wall with the rest of the street on the same side. The phrase was a very fine one, and, with others more intricate, lent not a little to the triumph and the perplexity the transaction filled old Jack Randall withal. The business was a conjunction of purchase and mortgage, whereby old Jack Randall, having thirty pounds of his own, had, after half-an-hour of helpless stupefaction in a solicitor's office in Cornhill, bought a house for two hundred and twenty pounds, and paid ten pounds for stamps and lawyer's fees. The remaining two hundred pounds had been furnished by the Indubitable Perpetual Building Society, on the security of a mortgage; and the loan, with its interest, was to be repaid in monthly instalments of two pounds and fourpence during twelve years. Thus old Jack Randall designed to provide for the wants and infirmities of age; and the outright purchase, he argued, was a thing of mighty easy accomplishment. For the house let at nine shillings a week, which was twenty-three pounds eight shillings a year; and the mortgage instalments, with the ground rent of three pounds a year, only came to twenty-seven pounds four, leaving a difference of three pounds sixteen, which would be more than covered by a saving of eighteenpence a week: certainly not a difficult saving for a man with a regular job and no young family, who had put by thirty pounds in little more than three years. Thus on many evenings old Jack Randall and his wife would figure out the thing, wholly forgetting rates and taxes and repairs.