A FEW nights after this, Diamond woke up suddenly, believing he heard
North Wind thundering along. But it was something quite different. South
Wind was moaning round the chimneys, to be sure, for she was not very
happy that night, but it was not her voice that had wakened Diamond. Her
voice would only have lulled him the deeper asleep. It was a loud, angry
voice, now growling like that of a beast, now raving like that of a
madman; and when Diamond came a little wider awake, he knew that it was
the voice of the drunken cabman, the wall of whose room was at the head
of his bed. It was anything but pleasant to hear, but he could not help
hearing it. At length there came a cry from the woman, and then a scream
from the baby. Thereupon Diamond thought it time that somebody did
something, and as himself was the only somebody at hand, he must go and
see whether he could not do something. So he got up and put on part of
his clothes, and went down the stair, for the cabman's room did not open
upon their stair, and he had to go out into the yard, and in at the next
door. This, fortunately, the cabman, being drunk, had left open. By
the time he reached their stair, all was still except the voice of the
crying baby, which guided him to the right door. He opened it softly,
and peeped in. There, leaning back in a chair, with his arms hanging
down by his sides, and his legs stretched out before him and supported
on his heels, sat the drunken cabman. His wife lay in her clothes upon
the bed, sobbing, and the baby was wailing in the cradle. It was very
miserable altogether.
Now the way most people do when they see anything very miserable is to
turn away from the sight, and try to forget it. But Diamond began as
usual to try to destroy the misery. The little boy was just as much one
of God's messengers as if he had been an angel with a flaming sword,
going out to fight the devil. The devil he had to fight just then
was Misery. And the way he fought him was the very best. Like a wise
soldier, he attacked him first in his weakest point--that was the baby;
for Misery can never get such a hold of a baby as of a grown person.
Diamond was knowing in babies, and he knew he could do something to make
the baby, happy; for although he had only known one baby as yet, and
although not one baby is the same as another, yet they are so very much
alike in some things, and he knew that one baby so thoroughly, that he
had good reason to believe he could do something for any other. I have
known people who would have begun to fight the devil in a very different
and a very stupid way. They would have begun by scolding the idiotic
cabman; and next they would make his wife angry by saying it must be her
fault as well as his, and by leaving ill-bred though well-meant shabby
little books for them to read, which they were sure to hate the sight
of; while all the time they would not have put out a finger to touch the
wailing baby. But Diamond had him out of the cradle in a moment, set
him up on his knee, and told him to look at the light. Now all the light
there was came only from a lamp in the yard, and it was a very dingy and
yellow light, for the glass of the lamp was dirty, and the gas was bad;
but the light that came from it was, notwithstanding, as certainly
light as if it had come from the sun itself, and the baby knew that, and
smiled to it; and although it was indeed a wretched room which that lamp
lighted--so dreary, and dirty, and empty, and hopeless!--there in the
middle of it sat Diamond on a stool, smiling to the baby, and the baby
on his knees smiling to the lamp. The father of him sat staring at
nothing, neither asleep nor awake, not quite lost in stupidity either,
for through it all he was dimly angry with himself, he did not know
why. It was that he had struck his wife. He had forgotten it, but was
miserable about it, notwithstanding. And this misery was the voice of
the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond,
speaking in his heart, and telling him to be good. For that great Love
speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice
depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds. On Mount Sinai,
it was thunder; in the cabman's heart it was misery; in the soul of St.
John it was perfect blessedness.
By and by he became aware that there was a voice of singing in the room.
This, of course, was the voice of Diamond singing to the baby--song
after song, every one as foolish as another to the cabman, for he was
too tipsy to part one word from another: all the words mixed up in his
ear in a gurgle without division or stop; for such was the way he spoke
himself, when he was in this horrid condition. But the baby was more
than content with Diamond's songs, and Diamond himself was so contented
with what the songs were all about, that he did not care a bit about the
songs themselves, if only baby liked them. But they did the cabman good
as well as the baby and Diamond, for they put him to sleep, and the
sleep was busy all the time it lasted, smoothing the wrinkles out of his
temper.
At length Diamond grew tired of singing, and began to talk to the baby
instead. And as soon as he stopped singing, the cabman began to wake up.
His brain was a little clearer now, his temper a little smoother,
and his heart not quite so dirty. He began to listen and he went on
listening, and heard Diamond saying to the baby something like this, for
he thought the cabman was asleep:
“Poor daddy! Baby's daddy takes too much beer and gin, and that makes
him somebody else, and not his own self at all. Baby's daddy would never
hit baby's mammy if he didn't take too much beer. He's very fond of
baby's mammy, and works from morning to night to get her breakfast and
dinner and supper, only at night he forgets, and pays the money away for
beer. And they put nasty stuff in beer, I've heard my daddy say, that
drives all the good out, and lets all the bad in. Daddy says when a man
takes a drink, there's a thirsty devil creeps into his inside, because
he knows he will always get enough there. And the devil is always crying
out for more drink, and that makes the man thirsty, and so he drinks
more and more, till he kills himself with it. And then the ugly devil
creeps out of him, and crawls about on his belly, looking for some other
cabman to get into, that he may drink, drink, drink. That's what my
daddy says, baby. And he says, too, the only way to make the devil come
out is to give him plenty of cold water and tea and coffee, and nothing
at all that comes from the public-house; for the devil can't abide that
kind of stuff, and creeps out pretty soon, for fear of being drowned
in it. But your daddy will drink the nasty stuff, poor man! I wish he
wouldn't, for it makes mammy cross with him, and no wonder! and then
when mammy's cross, he's crosser, and there's nobody in the house to
take care of them but baby; and you do take care of them, baby--don't
you, baby? I know you do. Babies always take care of their fathers and
mothers--don't they, baby? That's what they come for--isn't it, baby?
And when daddy stops drinking beer and nasty gin with turpentine in it,
father says, then mammy will be so happy, and look so pretty! and daddy
will be so good to baby! and baby will be as happy as a swallow, which
is the merriest fellow! And Diamond will be so happy too! And when
Diamond's a man, he'll take baby out with him on the box, and teach him
to drive a cab.”
He went on with chatter like this till baby was asleep, by which time
he was tired, and father and mother were both wide awake--only rather
confused--the one from the beer, the other from the blow--and staring,
the one from his chair, the other from her bed, at Diamond. But he was
quite unaware of their notice, for he sat half-asleep, with his eyes
wide open, staring in his turn, though without knowing it, at the
cabman, while the cabman could not withdraw his gaze from Diamond's
white face and big eyes. For Diamond's face was always rather pale, and
now it was paler than usual with sleeplessness, and the light of the
street-lamp upon it. At length he found himself nodding, and he knew
then it was time to put the baby down, lest he should let him fall. So
he rose from the little three-legged stool, and laid the baby in the
cradle, and covered him up--it was well it was a warm night, and he did
not want much covering--and then he all but staggered out of the door,
he was so tipsy himself with sleep.
“Wife,” said the cabman, turning towards the bed, “I do somehow believe
that wur a angel just gone. Did you see him, wife? He warn't wery big,
and he hadn't got none o' them wingses, you know. It wur one o' them
baby-angels you sees on the gravestones, you know.”
“Nonsense, hubby!” said his wife; “but it's just as good. I might say
better, for you can ketch hold of him when you like. That's little
Diamond as everybody knows, and a duck o' diamonds he is! No woman could
wish for a better child than he be.”
“I ha' heerd on him in the stable, but I never see the brat afore. Come,
old girl, let bygones be bygones, and gie us a kiss, and we'll go to
bed.”
The cabman kept his cab in another yard, although he had his room in
this. He was often late in coming home, and was not one to take notice
of children, especially when he was tipsy, which was oftener than not.
Hence, if he had ever seen Diamond, he did not know him. But his wife
knew him well enough, as did every one else who lived all day in the
yard. She was a good-natured woman. It was she who had got the fire
lighted and the tea ready for them when Diamond and his mother came home
from Sandwich. And her husband was not an ill-natured man either, and
when in the morning he recalled not only Diamond's visit, but how he
himself had behaved to his wife, he was very vexed with himself, and
gladdened his poor wife's heart by telling her how sorry he was. And for
a whole week after, he did not go near the public-house, hard as it was
to avoid it, seeing a certain rich brewer had built one, like a trap to
catch souls and bodies in, at almost every corner he had to pass on his
way home. Indeed, he was never quite so bad after that, though it was
some time before he began really to reform.