VATTED RUM CORNER, AND CHESTNUTS. A YOUNG TURK. HOW LIZARANN TOLD
MOTHER GROVES OF THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. OF AN AMBULANCE, AND WHAT WAS
IN IT. HOW LIZARANN WENT HOME WITHOUT DADDY
Lizarann Coupland used to wonder how ever Daddy could go out in the
cold and stop all day. It was noble of him to do so in the public
service--that was how Lizarann thought of it. For she believed the
insinuations embodied in song by "the boys" in Tallack Street to be
malicious falsehoods, and as for "the boy" whose aunt sold fried eels
and winkles next door to the shop where her father purchased his
shaving-soap, she only hoped that a good basting her own aunt wished to
give to the whole clanjamfray of 'em--meaning boys generally--might be
concentrated on the unsheltered person of this particular boy. She had
improved her acquaintance with him, and had come to the conclusion that
for presumption and self-conceit, for ill manners and very doubtful
good feeling, that boy was without a parallel.
During the whole of this acquaintance it had never occurred to Lizarann
to ask this boy's name. And but yesterday she had committed the
tactical error of surrendering her own christened name in exchange
for peppermint drops. The moment of the present writing is a deadly
afternoon in January, gettin' on for four, but that dark you'll have to
light the gas in the end, and may just as well do it at once. The place
is the one spoken of in an earlier chapter as Vatted Rum Corner, and
that boy is a settin' on the rilin' eatin' of four 'ot chestnuts off
of Mrs. Groves's bikin' trye, for a 'ape'ny, and to be allowed to warm
your fingers at the grite. He had had to make room for other customers.
Lizarann came up cold, and envied the feast. The boy was a
self-indulgent boy, or seemed so. For he only said, "These four's for
me, bought and paid for, square. You git some for yourself, orf of
Mother Groves. Two for a farden's _your_ figger, Aloyzer." And then he
sketched a clog-dance on the hard-trodden snow of the pavement, with a
mouth quite full of chestnuts.
Lizarann felt the heartlessness of his attitude. Yesterday he had
cajoled her into an admission that her name was Lizarann by offering
peppermint drops. _Now_ he had nothing to gain by an offer of
chestnuts, and kept them all himself! She happened to be in funds, and
could have purchased four for a 'ape'ny, and in that case would as like
as not have given that boy one, as an exemplar towards generosity. But
at the moment a higher interest claimed her attention. He knew her
name, and she didn't know his. An iniquity, clearly! How could she
remedy it?
Now Lizarann had contrived, childwise, a curious idea about her name.
It may have originated in a chant she herself had joined in frequently,
merely for the sake of the music:
"Oh fie--fie for shame!
Everybody knows your name."
But it certainly had acquired its full force from an expression made
use of by her Aunt Stingy, who had spoken of a young person as having
"lost her good name." What the young person was called by her friends,
afterwards, was a problem Lizarann had given a good deal of thought
to. And she was now unable to dissociate the young person's position
altogether from her own. If her name had not been lost as a necessary
implement of social intercourse with the world at large, it at least
had been surrendered with no _per contra_, in the case of an immoral
and worthless member of it. But she felt that, could she become
possessed of _his_ name, as a set-off, the balance of righteousness
would be adjusted. And she was much more anxious about this than about
the chestnuts.
"What's your nime?" said she, after self-commune which suggested no
less trenchant way of approaching the subject.
The boy paused in the clog-dance. "Moses," said he. And then went on as
before.
"Nuffint elst no more than Moses?"
"That's tellin's." The boy said this absently, and did some more steps.
Then he simulated a graceful subsidence of the dance, ending in an
attitude that seemed to acknowledge the applause of a delighted throng.
But a commercial possibility had presented itself. "What'll you stand,"
said he, "for to be told my name, and no lies?" This seemed mercenary;
but then, had not Lizarann herself surrendered hers for a deal? Why
condemn him?
No!--Lizarann lived in a glass house, and wouldn't throw stones. But
she would make conditions. "Real nime all froo," she said. "Moses is
lyin' stories!" For, you see, this was a crafty boy, and might consider
the concession of a true surname alone would discharge his obligations
under the contract.
"Then on'y Moses," said he; and began an encore--presumably, as it was
the same dance. But he was not too preoccupied by it to take off the
shell of his fourth chestnut, and when he had done so he smelt it, with
disappointment. For it was mouldy. An idea struck him, and he acted on
it.
"Marcy me, no!" said Mother Groves of the chestnuts when requested by
him to 'and over a good un, fair and no cheating. "The riskis lies with
the buyers. Where 'ud I be, in half the time, at that rate?"
"Then I'll 'ave the law of yer. Just see if I don't." He danced again,
and this time his dance seemed to express confidence in his solicitor.
But presently he stopped, and offered a composition: "You lookee here,
Missis Groves," he said. "I'll 'and you back the mouldy one, onbit-into
and closin' over the busted shell, acrost a clean new un, and I'll take
another highp'orth off you, and pay square. If that ain't fair, nothin'
ain't! But you got to look sharp, or the chance'll be gone."
Mother Groves rejected the chance. "It ain't consideration enough to go
again' the rules on, and me to take my 'ands out in the perishing cold.
Make it a penn'orth and pick yourself, all exceptin' the three top."
"Hin't got no penny! Feel in my porket and see. It's open to yer to
feel. There hin't no horbstickle. Here's a highp'ny and the bloomin'
nut, shell and all. Mike your mind up!"
But Mrs. Groves's mind _was_ made up, apparently. The boy then
suggested that his motives had been the prosperity of trade,
throughout; he was, in fact, or said he was, full up till dinner-time.
So he must have been dining late, recently.
At this point Lizarann made a proposal. She, too, had a halfpenny, and
was ready to pool this halfpenny with the boy's, and give him sole
enjoyment of the extra chestnut, but only on one condition. He must
tell his name, and no lies.
Mrs. Groves brought her hands out in the perishing cold--pathetic old
hands, a young girl's once--and made two even groups of four nuts
each. Then, leave being giv', the boy chose the compensation nut; only
he took his time like a young 'Eathen as he was. Then Mrs. Groves,
as assessor and umpire, required his name as a preliminary to final
liquidation.
"'Orkins. Frederick. Frederick 'Orkins. Could have told yer it wasn't
Moses any day of the week! 'And over!" And thereon he and Lizarann each
had four bloomin' nuts, so 'ot you couldn't 'ardly 'andle 'em.
"I shall keep mine for my daddy, and keep 'em 'ot too," said Lizarann.
She placed them nearest her heart, and felt that it was good to do so.
They was a'most too 'ot, in the manner of speaking; but then a small
undergarment protected her, when discreetly scroozled up fluffy.
"You best 'ide 'em well up," said Frederick Hawkins. "Here's a coarper
comin' along. Don't you let 'em make no show, or he'll get his 'and on
'em."
But he only said this to perplex and annoy, and create unnecessary
panic; and Lizarann knew that, every bit as well as we do. So she
merely said: "Jimmy 'Acker can foight _you_," and enjoyed the warmth
fearlessly. Her daddy's stick was not audible yet, coming along by the
wall. He was late to-day. Lizarann's orders were to wait at the corner
till she heard it, and then call "Pilot," that he might know she was
waiting for him, and be happy. For he always had pangs of doubt that
he might not meet her this time. Think of that little thing--for he
knew how small she was still, by the feel, though there was no one
to tell him what she was like to look at--think of her coming along
that crowded street alone, to meet her daddy! She for her part had no
misgivings about _his_ coming. "Never you fear for me, lassie," he had
said. And _he_ knew, Law bless you!
"I'll Jimmy 'Acker _'im_!" said Frederick Hawkins boastfully. "I could
'tend on two like 'im at wunst. How old do you make him?" Which showed
the vaingloriousness of his character, for clearly he knew nothing
about Jimmy Hacker.
Lizarann couldn't commit herself to the age of the latter. But she
could to his bulk and prowess. "He's thicker than you," she said, and
added, with recollection of a combatant defeated by Jimmy Hacker: "He
can foight a boy twelve next birthday."
"Then he ain't any so much to count on. I don't go by ages. Weights
is what I go by. Any number o' stun I can foight, up to eight stun
seven. You tell 'im to keep indoors, or I'll fetch him somethin' for to
rek'lect me by. You see!"
But Mother Groves interposed to rebuke and check this inflated and
defiant spirit. "Don't you pay no attention to that boy, my dear," said
she to Lizarann. "He's that full of lip there's no placin' no reliance
on a word he says. If I was his mother I should know just where he
wanted a good canin'. Ah!--and he'd get it too, night or mornin'. A
young cock-sparrer _I_ call him, and if he don't come by a bad end
it'll be a moral. Ah!--wait till I find out where your mother lives,
and see." Mrs. Groves worked rising indignation into her speech, after
the manner of her class. Even so the Choctaw or Cherokee stimulates
himself to battle-point. But Frederick Hawkins remained unmoved.
He knew the old woman couldn't ketch holt upon him. He became most
offensive, assuming a nasal drone with an approach to a chant.
"I got a widdered mother. She keeps a fish-shop. And I ain't a-goin',
neither, for to tell you where." He threw a reminiscence of his
previous dance into this.
Now Lizarann knew perfectly well that the fish-shop was next door to
where her daddy bought his shaving-soap. But she wasn't going to tell.
No nice little boy or girl ever tells. The particulars kept back on
principle may relate to young cock-sparrows on whom no reliance can be
placed, or to mere heathens--as in the present instance--but as for
acquaintin' their parents, guardians, or other responsible grown-up
persons, what they done, or anything likely to lead to conviction--who
ever heard of such a thing? Even the London servant class retains this
one trace of an honourable usage. It won't tell.
Mother Groves merely referred to the ease of discovering fish-shops;
especially when localized, as this one practically was, by the constant
presence round her corner of a heathen residing there. She then gave
all her attention to the conservation of vital heat; and it was needed,
for her poor old clothes were thin on her poor old body. It wasn't
'ardly a reg'lar bad day, not to call it so, but it was a frost that
was going to give a lift to the plumbin' trade, and do a rare lot of
good that way. For the only good that can come now to this world is
evidently through the destruction of something it has worked at the
making of in years past, in order that people who have little may have
to pay people who have less to do a bit of repairs to it, so that it
won't want no lookin' to again, not yet awhile.
Can we wonder?--we who have read, for instance, of the revived
prosperity of ship-building, shown by the putting down on the stocks
of several new ... destroyers? But never mind this!--pardon it and get
back to the story and the degrees of frost at Vatted Rum Corner.
It wasn't so bad then, not when once you was out in it; it had been
a tidy sight worse two days ago, afore it froze so hard underfoot;
why--the busses couldn't keep goin', and a 'orse fell down so soon as
ever you got him on his feet! And as for cabs, they wouldn't set foot
outside of the yard, because where was the use? You couldn't stiddy
yourself on your feet, not unless there was cenders on the track, or
thored with boiling water.
Lizarann bore it bravely, in spite of chilblains and a blue complexion.
Frederick Hawkins was blue; but either his heathenism or some other
attribute enabled him to bear the cold defiantly. "It ain't freezin'
here," said he, denying the obvious. "Hicey cold it was Bart'sey Park
Sunday. The hice makes it cold 'acos of the skatin'." And Lizarann
accepted this view of cause and effect. She might have disputed it had
she not been beginning to feel uneasy about her daddy.
"Why, child, don't ye go along to'ards meetin' him? He'll be comin',
I lay." Thus Mother Groves. And the boy added: "Why don't yer 'ook
it along down to the Rilewye, to see for yourself? You 'ook it! 'Ook
it orf! I'm tellin' of yer." But Lizarann only stood on her two feet
alternately, and hugged the dying heat of the chestnuts. They wouldn't
be no good for daddy. Alas!
"I was tolded not to do it," said she. "Yass!"
Mrs. Groves approved. "Quite right, my dear, not to disobey your
parents. But your daddy he'll come, you'll see."
But Frederick Hawkins had another code of morals. "I'd disobey my
parents if I had any to speak on. If I'd a dozen on 'em, I'd disobey
the bilin'." Mrs. Groves pointed out that by doing this Frederick would
be brought into collision with his Creator, and dwelt on the impolicy
of such an action. But he continued obdurate.
"I'd disobey the kit on 'em. You'd see, if you kep' your eye open."
Then, addressing Lizarann, he added: "You give me a chestnut, and
_I'll_ disobey your parents for yer. You jist try! See if I don't!"
Then, when Lizarann timidly produced the chestnut, in great doubt of
whether her action was justifiable, he added: "See if I ain't back
again afore yer know where y' are," and, after a slight preliminary
quick-step or double-shuffle, fled away into the growing dusk.
"You keep your sperrits up, child," said Mother Groves. And, as is
usual when one hears that one's spirits want keeping up, Lizarann's
went down. But she felt the old lady's goodwill, and went and stood
close up to her, taking care to choose the side away from the
roasting-box, lest she should seem simply seeking warmth. However,
she was soon invited round to the other side. The warmth made her
communicative.
"My daddy he's been to sea," she said. "Only in real ships, and come
home again. The Flying Dutchman she _never_ come home." This did not
explain itself to Mrs. Groves. She drew a false inference.
"She went to the bottom, I lay. And all aboard of her belike. Lord be
good to us!"
Lizarann shook her head. "Not the Dutchman. She's afloat, every
spar on her,"--she religiously gave Jim's exact words, with a sense
of saying a lesson--"and to stop afloat till the Lord comes to judge
sinners from repentance." She got a little confused here, but it
sounded good, and her hearer was impressed.
"Now only 'ark at that!" said she. "I'd 'a said you was a God-fearin'
child. And you may never need doubt but it's all true, my dear!" Mrs.
Groves, perhaps, was prepared to ascribe truth to any narrative that
had a religious phrase or two in it; still, she was probably impressed
with the little person's manner, for she referred to Frederick Hawkins,
in contrast. "Now, that young Turk, he's no respect, and won't come to
no good end, I lay."
But Lizarann didn't want the conversation coaxed away from the Flying
Dutchman. "Daddy _seen_ her, himself," she said fervently; and then,
resuming the lesson-manner: "Every stitch o' sail on her set in a
three-quarter gale freshenin' from the south. And the look-out forward,
he seen her too. And Job Collins, he seen her. And Marmaduke Flyn, he
seen her. And Peter Cortright, he seen her." All these were essential
items of the often-told tale.
Mother Groves's hearing was none of the best; so when she condemned
the time-honoured legend as outlandish and French, it may be she had
really supposed that some of the expressions were in a foreign tongue,
any variety of which she would naturally consider French, failing
instruction to the contrary. But Lizarann's reference to the Lord,
to sinners, and to repentance, was strong enough in itself to keep
suspicions of Voltaire and Tom Paine in abeyance. Mrs. Groves therefore
allowed the story to continue, and felt fortified against the heresies
abounding on the Continent by the approved religious bias of the
narrator.
"Peter Cortright and Marmaduke Flyn they was both on the mainyard
reefin', alongside o' my daddy, and Job Collins he was aft by the
binnacle. Then Peter Cortright he sings out to my daddy to look; and
my daddy he looked and seen her, carryin' all sail afore the wind. And
then, no more time than what you says budget in, she was agone away,
out o' sight." A pause came here, for dramatic impressiveness. Then
followed, for reinforcement of testimony: "But Job Collins, he seen
her, too, plain!"
Mrs. Groves only said, "My sakes, now!--to think of that." But rather
as a courtesy to the narrator. She would no doubt have followed her
meaning better if thawed indoors before a nice warm fire. She certainly
could not, or did not, admit to her mind a comparison that surely hung
on the outskirts of the tale--a parallel between that moment on the
great sea, and _now_! To think of it all! Of the three reefers out on
the yard, struggling with the mighty wind; of the rising seas whose
crested foam it blew to spray; of its voice as it whistled through
the drenched cordage, and made a whisper of the sailor's shout to his
mate, that spoke of the ship he saw out yonder--the ship that, whatever
she really was, was to become the Flying Dutchman in the memories of
all the three! And then to think of what that child--that almost baby
girl--told about her as she nestled, welcome enough, to the side of
the old soul that had spent her last decade selling, in the London
Streets, the chestnuts that had ripened in the southern sun, above the
slopes the vines grew on. To think of the sordid and darkened lives,
closed round in the intolerable hive of their own contriving, so
stunted and suborned to a spurious contentment as never to long for an
escape; so strange to the meaning of the word "rejoicing" as to find
a version of it in the filth-house at the corner; whose swing-door,
to say the truth, the little maid looks rather enviously at as it
opens and closes, letting out the vapid bawlings from the human fools
within into the silence of the streets, and suggesting jolly bad ale
and new to the cold and empty passer-by! To think of the millions near
at hand, all sunless beneath the great black pall that has for weeks
past shrouded their visible world, but has left them unchoked as yet
and confident, and even a little boastful--Heaven knows why!--of some
strange indefinite advantages carbon and sulphur confer on those who
can breathe them and live.
No two items of the parallels could be more unlike, surely, than
the reefers out on the yard in the great sea wind, and such chance
wayfarers as are to be seen now--few enough, for all who can keep
indoors prefer to do so--making the best of their slippery way home,
let us hope, to the native joint and vegetables and rice-pudding.
Certainly--so one would have said--none more unlike than those of this
approaching crowd, close on the heels of three policemen in charge of a
wheeled ambulance, hand-driven, working slowly along the least slippery
part of the road. And most unlike of all, surely, the human burden,
sot or reprobate perhaps, that the closed curtain of the ambulance
hides from us. But he would have been wrong who said so. For it was Jim
himself that was inside that ambulance, and he ought by rights to have
come along that road on his feet.
"You lie still, my good feller. The doctor he'll see to you." The
policeman who says this to the interior of the ambulance says it as one
to whom any form of poll-parrotting--that is to say, human speech--is
distasteful. He slaps his gloves for warmth, as he walks beside the
ambulance. He is a reserve man, who has come out in charge of it. But a
moment after he listens again; there may be exceptions, after all, to a
rule of universal glum silence! What is this ambulance case saying?
"It ain't for myself, master. It's for my little lass. She comes for to
fetch me home to the Green Man ... house at the corner ... very nigh
to us now, as I take it...." Jim's voice is bad, and he is speaking
against pain, gallantly. A subordinate constable says, "That's so,
too!" and this confirmation reinforces Jim, who goes on, recognizing
the voice: "Your mate, he knows her. You'll tell her, master. I'll
trust ye for a good man ... there's only a little bit of harm done ...
say I've had worse happen many a time afore...." But Jim is at the end
of his tether. His voice goes faint. His instruction was clear, though.
"See for the child, Clancy," says the first officer. "And tell 'em
at the bar to send out a small brandy." Clancy goes on ahead. He is
a person incapable of feeling surprise, so when he meets a potboy
approaching with a glass of brandy, he makes no useless inquiries, but
merely points backward towards the approaching ambulance.
The potboy carries the brandy on, and the officer gets it down Jim's
throat somehow. "Very smart of you, Thomas," says he, inventing a
name for the potboy, a complete stranger to him. "Nothin' like being
beforehand!"
But Thomas disclaims any credit for himself. His action was, he
affirms, due to instructions transmitted to him by a young customer.
His report is: "He cuts in and he says, says he, p'leece accident, he
says. Pickford's waggon gone over a bloke, he says. You cut along out
with a nip o' brandy for a stimilant, he says. That's what the orficer
says, he says. And off he goes!" As the brandy is consumed, it clearly
will be a good contribution to taciturnity to say nothing about it.
Moreover, the potboy, miscalled Thomas, conveys that his governor, at
the Man, is not a blooming screw; and that the brandy ain't worth going
to law about. The officer suggests, however, that a second nip would
not be unwelcome to himself, and would bring the total up to the point
of being chargeable to the Force.
There is time for all this, as a case of this sort must be carried
gently, apart from the fact that the slippery road makes caution
necessary. And by the time the ambulance reaches the corner Lizarann
is sticking to loyally, mindful to the last of her promise never to go
beyond where it was wrote up "Old Vatted Rum," her first tendency to
break into panic-stricken sobs, on hearing that her daddy has had an
accident, is already well under control; the policeman Clancy, whom
she knows by sight, and has even spoken with, and who therefore is
trustworthy, having told her that her daddy will soon come round, and
never be a penny the worse.
"Now _you're_ going to be a good little girl, ain't you, and not make
a shine?" Thus the policeman, on vernacular lines, supposed to be
soothing to the excitable. And Mother Groves, partly in deference to
a uniform, adds: "You do like the gentleman tells you, my dear, and
go along where he says!" This suggests to Clancy, who had at first
intended to limit himself to negative injunctions, to say: "Yes, you
run along home, little miss, and tell 'em your daddy's being took
proper care of."
But the terrified scrap, blue with the cold, half-choked with the
hysterical gasps she is fighting against so bravely, as bidden, sees a
deadlier possibility still before her in her arrival at home without
her daddy. It was the dread of having to tell, more than the fear of
being accounted the responsible culprit, that kept her glued to the
spot. She was docility itself towards constituted authorities of all
sorts, but now her feet simply would not move. Oh, what a huge relief
it was when the other policeman, him along of the hospital-barrer,
said: "Ketch that kid, some of you, and bring her along this way! Can't
wait here all day!" He slammed his hands one across the other very
hard, not only to procure circulation, but to express promptitude.
The kid didn't want any bringing. She was across the road and beside
the ambulance before the instruction to catch her could be obeyed.
"You'll do your daddy more harm than good, that way!" said the
hand-slapper, stopping short. Lizarann's first instinct, to scramble
up the hospital-barrer--to get at her daddy on any terms--had to be
combated on his behalf. "Peck the child up, and 'old her acrost the
edge," suggests the potboy from "The Man." The constable remarks, "Some
o' the public'll be feeling dry by now, and nobody to serve 'em! You
best carry that empty glass back, Thomas." But he accepts Thomas's
suggestion, and Lizarann is grateful to the strong hands that pick
her up to kiss her daddy's face. Was it really his?--she thinks to
herself, as they put her down again out of her father's sight, below
the couch-rim of the ambulance. She can't speak; he can.
"Ye never cried 'Pi-_lot_' little lass." How hard he tried to make
his voice cheerful, and how well he succeeded, too!--mere mass of
breathless pain that he was. The least word a man can speak over whom a
waggon has passed, crushing both legs, will show the constitution of a
giant behind it, even if it is followed perforce by a groan; and Jim
suppressed even that. Were not those his little lass's lips that had
just touched his cheek? She, poor child, could only say "Daddy!" or mix
it with a sob. Which of the two Jim heard, who can say? But just at
that moment the nip of brandy began to tell, and Jim was able to make
a great effort. "Never you fret, little lass," he said. "The ship's
doctor, he'll make a square job of my leg. You run away home and say
I'm took proper care of." What Lizarann's daddy said was to be done was
the thing to do, past doubt, and nothing else could be right. Lizarann
started straight for home.
Poor Jim!--he knew what he was and where he was well enough. But he
couldn't find his words right. So he talked of the ship's doctor,
knowing all the while that the surgeon of the Z division was going to
attend to his leg. As to the extent of his hurt and how it came about,
he knew almost as little as the story does, so far. All he was sure
of was that he lost his bearings after leaving his precious board at
the barber's shop, was shouted at to stand clear, didn't stand clear,
and was overwhelmed by what he should have stood clear of, and knocked
silly. Beyond that, the little that had reached him, since he recovered
consciousness, related so much to the prophetic certainty of its
speakers that what had happened had been sure to happen, and they could
have foreseen it any day, that it made him little the wiser. And what
the crash had left of his faculties was too actively employed about his
child to feel curious about the details of the accident.
* * * * *
Lizarann's first information about it, as she completed the legend
of the Flying Dutchman to Mother Groves, was from the boy Hawkins,
who came running to report the disaster, just as she was standing
cross-examination on her first deposition. Instead of coming straight,
he just in at one door of the ale 'us, and out at the other, like you
might have said, only half a minute between! He then come crassin'
over--this was Mrs. Groves's experience--and queer he looked, causing
Lizarann to ask, "Ain't my daddy there?" in alarm. To which his
reply was alarming and ambiguous: "Oh ah!--he's _there_ all right
enough--wot there is of him." He did not improve this by beginning, in
a throat-clearing, gasping way, like a boy whose speech has lost its
orientation, "I say, Missis...." Whereat Lizarann, in growing terror,
broke into hysterical sobs, and would have started in her despair
along the forbidden way, if the sad procession with the ambulance had
not appeared, and chilled her to the marrow. She could hear the boy,
greatly relieved by the appearance of direct evidence of what had
happened, saying that there was nothing to make a hollerin' about; it
was only a haccident, and wot could you expect, a day like this? His
anxiety to minimize the evil did credit to a human heart that seemed,
in spite of appearances to the contrary, to underlie his Asiatic
nature. He was even attempting further exhortation towards fortitude
when the policeman came up, and he vanished.
In a very few minutes all were gone but Mother Groves and the chestnut
stove, in the yellow gloom of the growing fog, waiting for the grandson
of the former to come and see to the gettin' of 'em both home. As the
old woman looked back on the event, it presented itself to her as an
accident, and the accident had been took to the Hospital. That was all.
On'y, that poor little thing! But Mrs. Groves soon forgot her, and was
back on a great problem of her life--would the stove last out her time,
with a bit of patching now and again? It had been that patched already,
and was near falling to pieces. And when her grandson come, late, she'd
a'most forgotten the accident. There now, she declared if she hadn't!
* * * * *
Lizarann pattered on as hard as she could go, so many steps to a sob,
until she got to Dartley Street, and then she heard, behind her, the
boy Frederick Hawkins, out of breath. "You ain't any call for to
watercart, young un," said he. His manner was superior and offensive,
but Lizarann felt that benevolent intention combined in it with
masculine dignity. Still, protest was called for.
"I hin't a-cryin'!" she said. "On'y my d-daddy--he's t-took to the
Hospital!" It was too dreadful, put into words, and Lizarann broke down
over it.
"Who do yer call the worse by that? _He_ ain't, not he!" This boy
means well. His better nature is roused, but he has no mode of speech
that is not truculent or threatening. He softens a little, though,
as he becomes communicative: "Why, I had two uncles and a aunt, flat
they was, under a street-roller! And they just off with 'em to the
Horspital, and, my eyes and witals!--you should a' seen 'em no better
than a fortnit after! Singin' they wos!"
Lizarann disbelieved this story, but not because of the main incident.
It was the singing that stuck in the gizzard of her credulity. Uncles
and aunts never sang. They might be raised from the dead; may not
Lazarus have had a niece? But _singing_!--no! She merely summarized her
views, not arguing the point: "They never sang nuffint."
A proud spirit brooks no contradiction. "Ain't I tellin' of yer?" said
the Turk indignantly. He adduced corroborative evidence. "Why!--warn't
a boy-makes-his-livin'-by-daily-journals-I-knows's father's corpse
h'isted up out of a shore and took to the Horspital stone-dead with
the un'olesome atmosphere and fetched to? And dined off of nourishin'
food the same evening, and rezoomed work on the Monday?" Meeting no
expression of doubt of this case, he adduced another, more calmly.
"Likewise Tom Scott, as 'arf killed Parker for five pounds a side, he
picked up six of his teeth he'd knocked out, he did; and he run after
him to the Horspital, he did; and they stuck 'em in again for Mr.
Parker, they did, as good as new. They can do most _anythin'_." So it
appeared. And the cases gained greatly in credibility by the Turk's
obviously true recitation of maturer ideas than his own in the language
of seniors. It was like Lizarann's own tale of the Flying Dutchman;
and she felt it so, and found solace accordingly. She hoped the Turk
would go all the way with her, to give moral support, and repeat his
experience. You see, this Turk was, to her vision, big, authoritative,
and mature. He did not present himself to her as an impident young
sprat, in want of local smacking. Which no doubt would have been Mrs.
Steptoe's view of him had he come all the way. But he forsook Lizarann
at the top of Tallack Street, leaving her grateful to him, all the
more for his narration of how he heard the blooming copper say a nip
o' brandy wouldn't be amiss as a stimilant, and he told 'em at the
Green Man. He added that he expected to be proarsecuted for telling
of 'em--recalling a little the saying of the third Napoleon, that the
Human Race always crucifies its Messiahs.
So there stands Lizarann trembling on the doorstep, after jumping up to
the knocker to strike it back and leave it to execute a single knock by
itself, and watching the great white flakes of snow that are beginning
to fall at their leisure--no hurry--plenty of time yet for three inches
deep of them and their mates before the milk comes in the morning!