THE ACTRESS AND THE WAIF.
A lady—a genius, beautiful in face, well formed in person, one of
Nature’s nobility if of doubtful pedigree—had been giving a Shakespearian
reading or recitation, it matters not which, to a highly respectable
audience in a highly respectable county town. The leading county
families had, as they were bound to do, put in an appearance on the
occasion. Wealthy manufacturers, who did not much care about that sort
of thing themselves, had sent their women-folk, always delighted to show
that they could dress as well, and look as grand, as the wives and
daughters of men whose ancestors had fought at Agincourt or at the Battle
of Hastings. Bevies of sweet girl graduates, from the neighbouring
female academies, had come to listen and admire; while a few of the
superior class of tradesmen and local magnates had kindly condescended to
patronize the star that had suddenly appeared in their midst, and whose
portrait for some weeks previous had ornamented their walls and shop
windows—in the case of the latter by means of photographs, while big
lithographs were available for posters. The audience were deeply
affected, some with the loveliness of the actress, others, a more select
and elderly party, with her dramatic power. According to local journals,
the actress was greeted with an ovation as she resumed her seat. All
eyes were turned on her as she retired from the scene of her triumphs,
fevered with excitement, wearied with her physical exertion, flushed with
the applause she had honestly won, her brain still reeking with
excitement, her whole figure quivering with emotion, her eyes still
glistening with the light that never shone on sea or shore.
By the side of the public hall was a small committee-room, into which our
heroine was led, having previously effected a change in her dress and put
on her bonnet.
‘How far is it to the railway-station?’ she asked of the committee who
had managed the undertaking, and who, as the model men of the town,
embalmed or embodied in themselves all those superior virtues which we
invariably associate with respectability and wealth, as they stood in a
semicircle round her chair, timidly and admiringly—timidly, for they were
all respectable married men and had characters to lose; admiringly,
because for two hours the actress, by her magic art, had opened up to
them something greater and grander than even the busy life of Sloville
town itself.
‘How far is it to the railway-station?’ repeated the Mayor, with an
anxious and troubled visage, as if such a question had never been put to
him before.
‘A carriage will take you there in less than ten minutes,’ said the Town
Clerk, rushing, as he was bound to do, to the relief of the august head
of the Corporation.
‘My mare will take you there in five minutes,’ said the old church Vicar,
not willing to hide his light under a bushel, and at the same time glad
to say a good word for the animal in question. His reverence, it is to
be feared, was not much of a theologian, but there were two things which
everyone admitted he did understand, and they were—horses and wine.
‘My brougham is quite at your service,’ said the Mayor, who was of the
party, and who began to fear that unless he asserted himself he would be
left out in the cold altogether.
‘Thank you, gentlemen, but I’d rather walk,’ said the actress.
She had passed her childhood in that town, and she was anxious to see
what alterations had been made by Time’s effacing fingers since she had
last looked wistfully at its shop-windows, or with girlish glee had
walked its streets.
‘Walk!’ all exclaimed, in a tone which intimated not a little surprise at
the absurdity of the idea.
‘Yes,’ repeated the lady calmly, ‘I’d rather walk. Why shouldn’t I?
there is plenty of time, and the weather is beautiful. I really should
enjoy it.’
‘Well, madam,’ said the Mayor, ‘if you insist upon it, of course we
cannot be so rude as to prevent it. I think I may also say, on behalf of
the Corpo—I beg pardon, on behalf of the committee, that if you do walk
we shall all be delighted to accompany you to the railway-station.’
‘And so say all of us,’ said the Town Clerk, blushing as soon as he
finished, fearing that the levity of his speech might not be acceptable
to the Vicar. He was, however, delighted to find his remark received
with universal assent.
‘You’re very kind,’ said the lady; ‘I am sorry to give you so much
trouble.’
‘No trouble at all, madam,’ was, of course, the polite reply of the whole
party.
‘You will take a little refreshment before you go?’ said the Mayor. ‘Let
me offer you a glass of wine.’
‘No, I thank you, I’d rather not. I am a teetotaler.’
‘You don’t mean that,’ said the Mayor, who was a brewer, and who had
ridden into place and power by means of his barrels; ‘you don’t think a
glass of wine wicked, I hope?’
‘Oh no! I’m not so absurd as all that.’
‘Such an exciting life as yours must really require a little stimulus;
let me give you half a glass,’ said the Vicar.
‘Not a drop, thank you.’
‘Then you have taken the pledge?’
‘Oh no!’ said the lady, laughing; ‘I am not so bad as to require that. I
am never tempted to drink. If I thought it would do me any good, I would
take a glass of wine; but I find I am better without it, and so I don’t.’
‘What, then, will you take?’
‘A cup of tea.’
‘A cup of tea—how provoking! That’s about the only thing we can’t give
you here.’
‘Well, then, I will put up with a glass of water and a sandwich.’
The Mayor was shocked; he had never heard such a request from a lady
before. In his distress he appealed to the Vicar for aid. His reverence
was equal to the occasion, actually going so far as to quote St. Paul,
and to tell how he recommended Timothy to take a glass of wine for his
stomach’s sake and his often infirmities. His reverence did more: he
enforced his argument by example, taking a glass himself, and at the same
time recommending the rest of the committee to do the same. ‘Fine port
that,’ said he, smacking his lips and holding up the glass to the light
to see the beeswing.
‘Yes,’ said the Mayor; ‘it was a present to the Corporation from Sir
Watkin Strahan.’
The lady coloured as she heard the name. It was observed by the
committee, whose inferences were not of the most charitable construction.
Everyone knew that Sir Watkin was rather fast, and was supposed to have
great weaknesses as far as actresses were concerned. The situation was
becoming embarrassing.
‘Had we not better be moving?’ asked the lady, rising from her seat.
‘Well,’ said the Mayor, ‘if we start at once, we shall get to the station
in ample time.’
The procession was then formed, the Mayor and the lady walking first, the
Vicar and the Town Clerk bringing up the rear. Only one of the committee
had gone home. He was new to his office; he had made a lot of money in
the shoe trade, and had recently retired from business, and was rather
doubtful as to the propriety of being seen by daylight walking with an
actress in the streets.
On they went. The general public, consisting of school-boys out of
school, and of the usual loafers who stand idle all the day long in the
market-place, or at the corners of public-houses and livery stables, were
not a little shocked as the actress from the Royal Theatre, Covent
Garden, walked along the streets as an ordinary Mrs. Jones or Brown might
have done.
‘Well, I would ’ave ’ad a cab, at any rate,’ said the ostler of the
leading hotel in the town, as the party passed, a remark cordially
accepted by his hearers, a seedy and bloated set of horsey-looking men,
who seemed to have nothing particular to do, and took a long time to do
it in.
‘’Ow the dickens are fellows like me to get a livin’ if tip-top actresses
like that ’ere young ooman take to walkin’? It’s wot I call downright
mean. She’s been ’ere and took a lot of money out o’ the town, and han’t
spent a blessed bob on a cab.’ Here the speaker, overcome with emotion,
dived into the pockets of his ragged corduroys, and finding unexpectedly
there the price of a pot of beer, repaired to the neighbouring bar, there
to solve the question he had anxiously asked; or to forget it, as he took
long draughts of his favourite beverage.
Meanwhile the actress and her attendant guardian angels continued
walking, she rapidly striving to recollect old shops and old faces,
whilst they mechanically uttered the unmeaning nothings that at times—and
the present was one of them—are quite as acceptable as real talk. As if
by magic, the news spread that the actress was walking to the station,
and great was the joy of the young men who served in all the fine shops
in the market-place, who had never seen a real live actress from London
in the daytime before, and whose remarks were of a highly complimentary
order. The shop-girls, who stared, were equally excited, but perhaps a
little more disposed to be critical. Further from the town centre the
excitement was less evident. People in the genteel villas scarce deigned
to turn their heads. To be emotionless and self-possessed is the object
of gentility all the world over. People in genteel villas are not easily
excited. In the low neighbourhood nearer the station, inhabited by
guards and porters and stokers and signalmen, where engines are
perpetually whistling and screaming and letting off steam, there was no
excitement at all. In such places, during business hours, one has
something to think of besides actors and actresses, and so the station
yard was very quickly gained. Only were to be seen a few young swells of
the town, who turned very red if the actress looked their way, simply
gazing respectfully from afar, wishing that they had been walking with
the actress instead of the Town Clerk, the Vicar, or the Mayor. The
latter worthy was a little proud of his position. He had by his side and
under his protection one whom he remarked, aside to his friends, was not
only an actress, but a deuced fine woman. The influence of a fine woman
on the male mind, especially in the provinces, where overpowering female
beauty is scarce, is marvellous. Even the reverend Vicar was not
insensible to its fascination; while the Town Clerk, who was a bachelor,
was, therefore, very legitimately in the seventh heaven, wherever that
may be; and when Sir Watkin Strahan’s family coach, with the three old
maids of that old family, drove up, those excellently disposed ladies, to
whom all Sloville was in the habit of grovelling, for the first time in
their lives almost found themselves slighted, though as to what there was
extraordinary to look at in that actor-woman from London they could none
of them see.
Suddenly the aspect of affairs was changed.
Just outside the railway-station, on the bare earth, sweltering in the
summer sun, was a bundle of rags. The actress was the first to perceive
it
‘What is that?’ she exclaimed,
‘A bundle of rags,’ said one.
‘And of very dirty ones too,’ said another.
‘Good heavens,’ said the lady, ‘it is a living child.’
‘A child! Impossible.’
‘Yes, I tell you it is, and we must save it.’
The actress led the way to the bundle of rags. They were the only
clothes of a little lad who, hatless and shoeless and shirtless, was
lying on the ground—to be trampled on by horses or men, it seemed to
matter little to him. To him approached the awfulness of respectability
as embodied in the persons of the Mayor and the Vicar, but he never
moved; he was too tired, too weak, too ill to rise. Half awake and half
asleep there he lay, quite unconscious, as they looked in his face—thin
with want, grimy with dirt, shaded with brown curling hair. Presently
the lad got upon his legs with a view to running away—that’s the
invariable etiquette on the part of ragged boys in such cases—but it was
too late. Already the enemy were on him. Holding his right hand across
his brow so as to shade his eyes, he plucked up his courage and prepared
for the encounter.
‘Hulloa, you little ragamuffin, what are you up to here?’ said the Mayor,
in a tone which frightened the poor boy at once.
‘Pray don’t speak so, Mr. Mayor,’ said the actress; ‘you’ll frighten the
poor boy.’
‘Dear madam,’ said the august official, ‘what are we to do?’
‘Save the child.’
‘Ah! that’s easier said than done. Besides, what is the use of saving
one? There are hundreds of such lads in Sloville, and we can’t save ’em
all.’
‘Quite true,’ said the Vicar, professionally shaking his head.
‘What’s the matter, my poor boy?’ said the actress, as, heedless of the
remarks of her companions, she stooped down to kindly pat the head of the
little waif, who was at first too frightened to reply.
Slowly and reluctantly he opened his big blue eyes and stared, then he
screwed up his mouth and began to cry.
‘Come, my little man,’ continued the actress, in her gentlest tone, ‘tell
us what is the matter with you.’
‘Yes, tell the good lady what’s the matter with you!’ said the Vicar, who
thought it was now high time for him to say something.
Even then the boy sulked. He was of a class apparently for whom
respectability has few kind words or looks, who, in this wicked world,
get more kicks than half-pence. Respectability has quite enough to do to
look after her own children, especially now that taxes and butchers’
bills and School Board rates, to say nothing of coals, run up to such
formidable items, to give herself much trouble about the children of
other people. I have myself little pity for the heartless vagabonds who
bring children into existence merely that they may rot and die. Of the
devilish cruelty of such fathers and mothers no tongue can give an
adequate idea; hanging is too good for them. It is to them we owe the
pauperism which, apparently, it is beyond the power of the State to cure.
I am sick of the cant ever uttered of population _versus_ property; one
is born of self-denial, industry, foresight, all the qualities which we
as a nation require, while population is too often the result of
unspeakable vice or consummate folly, qualities against which it becomes
the nation to set its face.
But I must not forget the actress. More tenderly and coaxingly she
repeated the question. To the charm of that voice and manner resistance
was impossible.
Swallowing the rising tear with a great effort, slowly opening his eyes
and mouth at the same time, and looking terribly frightened all the
while, the poor lad replied:
‘Oh, ma’am, I’ve got such a pain in my head.’
‘Of course you’ve got a headache, lying like that in the sun. Why don’t
you get away and run home?’
‘I ain’t got a home.’
‘Then, what are you doing here?’ said the Mayor.
‘Nothin’,’ said the boy.
‘So it seems,’ said the Vicar.
‘Where’s your father?’ asked the actress,
‘I ain’t got one.’
‘Then, where’s your mother?’
‘Gone off with a tramp, and she took brother with her.’
‘But why did not she take you as well?’
‘’Cause she said I was big enough to earn my own wittles and drink. But
I must be off; here comes a bobby,’ said the boy, frightened at the
appearance of one of the town police. Alas! he was too weak to run; he
had had no food all day, and his only bed by night had been under some
old waggon or in some old barn or loft, and, barefooted, he fell an easy
prey to the representative of law and order.
‘Now, you young rascal,’ said the policeman, as he gave the lad a good
shaking, apparently in order to test the strength of his ragged clothes,
and, if possible, to make matters worse, ‘get out of this, and be off,’
an order which the poor lad would have obeyed had not the actress held
his hand.
‘You know him,’ said she to the policeman.
‘Know him! of course I do. It was only last week I had him up before the
magistrate.’
‘What for?’
‘For sleeping in the open air, and now here he is again. ’Tis very
aggrawatin’. What’s the use of trying to do one’s duty if this sort of
thing goes on?’
‘Is it a crime to sleep in the open air?’ asked the actress.
‘Well, you see, ma’am, it ain’t allowed by the magistrates; leastwise,
not inside the borough.’
‘Poor little fellow!’ said the actress as she looked at the lad; ‘I’ll
take him myself to the workhouse. There he would be out of harm’s way,
and washed and fed, and made clean and comfortable.’
‘I beg your pardon, ma’am, that ain’t no use; you ain’t got a horder, and
it is as much as the porter’s place is worth to take anyone in without a
horder.’
‘Then, what’s to be done with the poor boy?’
‘Ah, that’s the question,’ said the policeman, and he was right there.
What’s to be done with our boys, rich or poor, good or bad, is a question
some of us find increasingly hard to answer.
‘Then you can’t help me?’ said the actress.
‘Oh no, mum; we’ve plenty of such boys about.’
‘What’s to be done?’ said the lady she still looked at the poor boy. ‘Is
it right to leave him thus?’ There was a tear in her voice as she spoke.
All seemed so hard and unmoved, and the urgency was so pressing.
‘Dear madam,’ said the Mayor, who felt himself bound to say something,
‘the case is a hard one, but there’s no help for it. We can’t encourage
such hoys as that. If we did, the town would be overrun with them. They
are always begging.’
‘I wasn’t beggin’,’ said the boy, who now began to feel interested in the
discussion. ‘I don’t want to go beggin’. I want a job.’
‘Ah, all the boys say that,’ said the Vicar, ‘the young rascals! If I
had my way, I would give them a good whipping all round.’
‘Yes, and if we listened to all these stories the bench would have to sit
all day long,’ said the Town Clerk, giving the boy a copper and ordering
him off.
‘Off,’ said the actress—‘where to?’
‘To Parker’s Buildings,’ said the Mayor. ‘That’s where these young
rascals live. There is not a worse place in the whole town.’
‘Nor in the country nayther,’ said the policeman. ‘It would be a good
job if the whole place were burnt down.’ The policeman always backed up
the opinions of his worship the Mayor, as, indeed, he did those of all
his betters. It was a habit that paid.
‘Well, the poor boy looks really ill; can’t you get him into the
hospital?’ asked the actress.
‘I am sorry,’ said the Vicar, ‘but the committee of the hospital don’t
meet for a week, and we can do nothing in such a case. If it had been
winter we could have sent him to the soup-kitchen; but in the summer-time
we are not prepared for such an irregularity.’ At length a happy thought
struck him. Turning to the boy, he said, ‘What’s your name, my little
man?’
‘Little Beast.’
‘Little Beast! Good heavens! what a name for a child. Who gave you that
name?’
‘Mother. Mother allus calls me Little Beast, ’cause I won’t let her hit
brother.’
The boy spoke honestly, that was clear. There was some good in him; the
devil had not yet got him in his grip. Was he to be saved? The Mayor,
and the Town Clerk and the Vicar seemed inclined to answer that question
in the negative. A passage of Scripture—a word of the Master’s—came into
the actress’s recollection as she looked at the little waif, ragged, half
starved, filthy, in their midst. Said the Master, when His disciples
asked Him which should be greatest in the kingdom of heaven, taking a
little child and setting him in their midst, ‘Except ye be converted and
become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Whosoever, therefore, shall humble himself as this little child, the same
is greatest in the kingdom of heaven, and whoso receiveth one such child
in My name receiveth Me. Take heed that ye despise not one of these
little ones, for I say unto you that in heaven their angels do always
behold the face of My Father which is in heaven.’
‘Save the child,’ whispered the woman’s heart of the actress; ‘to-morrow
it will be too late, and human law, with all its terrors, will track him,
and he will be a rebel against man and God.’
‘Excuse me,’ said the Mayor, ‘but the train has been signalled, and will
be in in a few minutes.’
‘I am ready,’ said the lady, ‘but the child goes with me.’ The child
seemed to nestle under her wing, as it were. He was frightened by the
others.
‘You don’t mean that!’ ‘It is impossible!’ ‘What an idea!’ were the
respective utterances of Mayor, Vicar, and Town Clerk, who simultaneously
stepped back a step or two, as if doubting whether the lady were in full
possession of her senses and were desirous to settle that question by a
fuller survey a little further off. It is astonishing how great a
sensation is produced in this Christian country when anyone tries to
reduce Christianity to practice, to get it to talk modern English, to
bring it down from the clouds, and to make it walk the streets. Just
then the station bell rang.
‘Now, my little man, won’t you come along with me?’ said the actress to
the lad. The little fellow opened his eyes—they were fine ones, and
testified to the beating of a clear, undefiled, honest heart within—and
joyfully assented.
‘Please get him a glass of milk, and some sandwiches and biscuits; put
them on a tray,’ said the actress to the stolidly staring policeman, who
was so overcome that, quite unconsciously, he found himself holding the
ragged boy by the hand, and administering to him what little refreshment
there was to take, and putting him in a first-class carriage, having
first carefully covered him over with one of the actress’s shawl’s, that
the shame of his nakedness might not appear, as if he were a young
nobleman’s son.
‘They are rum critters, them actresses,’ said the policeman on recovering
his dazed senses, as the train moved off, leaving the local dignitaries
rather crestfallen, as they stood on the platform bidding adieux with
their hats in their hands, and their uncovered, bald heads glistening in
the summer sun.
‘They are indeed, Jenkins,’ said the Mayor, wiping his hot face with his
pocket-handkerchief, evidently pleased that the actress had gone and
relieved the town of one juvenile difficulty.
‘At any rate, to whom does this boy belong?’
‘Why, to Widow Brown, who is off on the tramp; but I don’t believe it is
her boy, after all.’
‘Very likely not; but we are well rid of the lad and his mother, I think
I know her.’
‘Of course you do. There has been scarcely a Monday all this summer but
she has been brought up as drunk and disorderly. I believe she is
perfectly incorrigible; and yet she was a tidy, decent sort of woman when
she first came to live here,’ said the Town Clerk. ‘She took to drinking
when her husband died, and she has been going from bad to worse ever
since.’
Ah, when one is low, and wants to forget one’s wickedness, and poverty,
and misery, there’s nothing like a drop of drink. It may be rather
cowardly to take it, but we are not all heroes; and as long as the drink
lasts, you are in a world of sunshine and good fellowship. There is a
magic power in drink to make the old young, the sick whole, the poor
rich. No wonder the homeless and destitute take to it. Till the people
are better lodged and better fed, intemperance must be the curse of Great
Britain.