Josh Perrott well understood the advantage of good prison-behaviour, and
after six months in his Chelmsford cell he had earned the right to a
visit from friends. But none came. He had scarcely expected that anybody
would, and asked for the order merely on the general principle that a
man should take all he can get, useful or not. For there would have been
a five shilling fare to pay for each visitor from London, and Hannah
Perrott could as easily have paid five pounds. And indeed she had other
things to think of.
Kiddo Cook had been less observed of late in the Jago. In simple fact he
was at work. He found that a steady week of porterage at Spitalfields
Market would bring him sixteen shillings and perhaps a little more; and
he had taken Father Sturt's encouragement to try another week, and a
week after that. Father Sturt too, had cunningly stimulated Kiddo's
ambitions: till he cherished aspirations to a fruit and vegetable stall,
with a proper tarpaulin cover for bad weather; though he cherished them
in secret, confident that they were of his own independent conception.
Perhaps the Perrotts saw as much of Kiddo as did anybody at this time.
For Kiddo, seeing how it went with them (though indeed it went as badly
with others too) built up laboriously a solemn and most circumstantial
Lie. There was a friend of his, a perfect gentleman, who used a
beer-shop by Spitalfields Market, and who had just started an extensive
and complicated business in the general provision line. He sold all
sorts of fruit and vegetables fresh, and all sorts of meat, carrots,
cabbages, saveloys, fried fish and pease-pudding cooked. His motto
was:--'Everything _of_ the best.' But he had the misfortune to be quite
unable himself to judge whether his goods were really of the best or
not, in consequence of an injury to his palate, arising from a blow on
the mouth with a quart pot, inflicted in the heat of discussion by a
wealthy acquaintance. So that he, being a perfect gentleman, had
requested Kiddo Cook, out of the friendship he bore him, to drop in
occasionally and test his samples. 'Take a good big whack, you know,'
said he, 'and get the advice of a friend or two, if _you_ ain't sure.'
So Kiddo would take frequent and handsome whacks accordingly, to the
perfect gentleman's delight; and, not quite knowing what to do with all
the whacks, or being desirous of an independent opinion on them (there
was some confusion between these two motives) he would bring Mrs Perrott
samples, from time to time, and hope it wouldn't inconvenience her. It
never did.
It was late in the dusk of a rainy day that Kiddo Cook stumped into Old
Jago Street with an apple in his pocket for Em. It was not much, but
money was a little short, and at any rate the child would be pleased. As
he climbed the stairs he grew conscious of sounds of anguish, muffled by
the Perrotts' door. There might have been sobs, and there seemed to be
groans; certainly little Em was crying, though but faintly, and
something--perhaps boot-heels--scraped on the boards. Kiddo hesitated a
little, and then knocked softly. The knock was unnoticed, so in the end
he pushed the door open.
* * * * *
The day had been a bad one with the Perrotts. Dicky had gone out early,
and had not returned. His mother had tramped unfed to the sackmakers,
but there was no work to be got. She tried the rush bag people, with a
like result. Nor was any matchbox material being given out. An
unregarded turnip had rolled from a shop into the gutter, and she had
seized it stealthily. It was not in nature to take it home whole, and
once a corner was cleared, she dragged herself Jago-ward, gnawing the
root furtively as she went. And so she joined Em at home late in the
afternoon.
* * * * *
Kiddo pushed the door open and went in. At his second step he stood
staring, and his chin dropped. 'Good Gawd!' said Kiddo Cook.
He cleared the stairs in three jumps. He stood but an instant on the
flags before the house, with a quick glance each way, and then dashed
off through the mud.
Pigeony Poll was erratic in residence, but just now she had a room by
the roof of a house in Jago Row, and up the stairs of this house Kiddo
ran, calling her by name.
'Go over to Perrotts', quick!' he shouted from the landing below as Poll
appeared at her door. 'Run, for Gawd's sake, or the woman'll croak! I'm
auf to Father's.' And he rushed away to the vicar's lodgings.
Father Sturt emerged at a run, and made for a surgeon's in Shoreditch
High Street. And when the surgeon reached Hannah Perrott he found her
stretched on her ragged bed, tended, with anxious clumsiness, by Pigeony
Poll; while little Em, tearful and abashed, sat in a corner and nibbled
a bit of turnip.
Hannah Perrott had anticipated the operation of the Maternity Society
letter, and another child of the Jago had come unconsenting into its
black inheritance.
Father Sturt met the surgeon as he came away in the later evening, and
asked if all were well. The surgeon shrugged his shoulders. 'People
would call it so,' he said. 'The boy's alive, and so is the mother. But
you and I may say the truth. You know the Jago far better than I. Is
there a child in all this place that wouldn't be better dead--still
better unborn? But does a day pass without bringing you just such a
parishioner? Here lies the Jago, a nest of rats, breeding, breeding, as
only rats can; and we say it is well. On high moral grounds we uphold
the right of rats to multiply their thousands. Sometimes we catch a rat.
And we keep it a little while, nourish it carefully, and put it back
into the nest to propagate its kind.'
Father Sturt walked a little way in silence. Then he said:--'You are
right, of course. But who'll listen, if you shout it from the housetops?
I might try to proclaim it myself, if I had time and energy to waste.
But I have none--I must work, and so must you. The burden grows day by
day, as you say. The thing's hopeless, perhaps, but that is not for me
to discuss. I have my duty.'
The surgeon was a young man, but Shoreditch had helped him over most of
his enthusiasms. 'That's right,' he said, 'quite right. People are so
very genteel, aren't they?' He laughed, as at a droll remembrance. 'But,
hang it all, men like ourselves needn't talk as though the world was
built of hardbake. It's a mighty relief to speak truth with a man who
knows--a man not rotted through with sentiment. Think how few men we
trust with the power to give a fellow creature a year in gaol, and how
carefully we pick them! Even damnation is out of fashion, I believe,
among theologians. But any noxious wretch may damn human souls to the
Jago, one after another, year in year out, and we respect his right: his
sacred right.'
At the 'Posties' the two men separated. The rain, which had abated for a
space, came up on a driving wind, and whipped Dicky Perrott home to meet
his new brother.