NO. FIFTEEN, LITTLE QUEER STREET.
Little Queer Street, Seven Dials, is not a particularly nice street to
live in, but as every house in it is inhabited to the utmost extent of
its inhabitable capacity, it is evidently a street in which a great
many people are very glad to live.
Squalor and vice and misery, and everything that can make life
horrible, find their way into Little Queer Street, but fail to frighten
the inhabitants. Dirt they like—it suits them; most of them have been
brought up from infancy in close contact with it, and would feel
uncomfortable without it. As to vice and misery, they have seen so much
of them that any terror such things might once have possessed has long
since worn off. They may be real spectres to some people, but to them
they are only clumsy turnip-headed bogies, and he must be a very young
native of the locality indeed who would betray the suspicion of a
shudder at the sight of either.
All day long the muddy roadway is blocked with costers’ barrows, who
drive a roaring trade in cheap crockery, stale vegetables, doubtful
meat, and still more doubtful fish, which one class looks upon as
abominations, and another holds in high esteem as luxuries.
There are shops, too, in Little Queer Street. Such shops! Dusty, dirty,
barn-looking rooms, where sallow-faced women sit, dishevelled and
ragged, amid old boots and shoes, tumbled and dirty dresses, old coats,
and promiscuous heaps of cast-off wearing apparel.
Sometimes the shop is not large enough to contain the varied assortment
of ‘goods’ in which the proprietor deals, and a portion of the narrow
pavement is taken into the service.
Rows of boots—very much worn at the heels, and very shabby about the
uppers, but thickly coated with a blacking which is rather sticky than
shiny—stand in military array to tempt the shoeless.
But though the habits and customs and source of income of the
inhabitants of the lower portion of the houses in Little Queer Street
are thus openly demonstrated, the rest is all mystery. How the second,
third, and fourth floors get their living, what they are, and what they
do, it would be a difficult matter to explain. Most of them evidently
have very small incomes and very large families. There are more
children of all sizes and conditions in Little Queer Street than in any
other street in the United Kingdom.
Almost every female carries a baby, and some females carry two. There
are children in heaps at the corner of the street, children on the
doorsteps, children in the gutter, children under the wheels of hansom
cabs, up the lamp-posts, hanging over the window-sills, crowding the
staircases, lying in the areas, rolling with the cabbage-stalks under
the stalls, swarming and crawling all day long among the crowd,
laughing, crying, screaming, and playing, unheeded, uncared for,
unowned.
Their hair is rough and matted, their little hands are black with mud,
their faces are grimed with dirt, and often, alas! scarred with
disease. Sometimes they get lost, every now and then one or two will be
run over by a cab or a brewer’s dray, and sometimes an epidemic will
swoop down upon Little Queer Street, and thin the ranks of the great
gutter army, and make more room for the remainder.
All day long these human waifs loiter in the street, at the peril of
life and limb. They have no regular meal-times. They get a slice of
bread-and-butter, occasionally a slice of bread-and-treacle, at
irregular periods, and this constitutes their staple sustenance.
Many of them are turned out at seven, when mother and father go to
work, and called in again at whatever hour it may suit father and
mother to return. It is considered safer to leave them outside than in.
Out of doors they may get killed; indoors they might damage the
‘furniture’ or set fire to the house.
Two days after Edward Marston’s strange meeting with Dr. Birnie, a
little girl sat at one of the open doorways in Little Queer Street,
gazing vacantly at the busy scene around her. A stranger would have
been instantly attracted by the extraordinary appearance of her face.
_It was quite clean_. Her hair was neatly brushed, and over her plain
little brown merino frock she actually wore a white pinafore. Not only
would a stranger be struck with amazement at the phenomenal
appearance—a clean and tidy little girl on a Little Queer Street
door-step—but the inhabitants have been for a long time so struck with
it that Gertie Heckett, the child in question, has become quite a local
celebrity.
‘That gal ‘ll die a orful death,’ said Mrs. Maloney, of the fish-shop
at the corner, to her next-door neighbour, Mrs. Moss. ‘Larst night she
came for a pen’orth o’ fried fish, and I guv her a ha’penny too much
change out o’ sixpence, and she guv it me back.’
‘Lor,’ replied Mrs. Moss, ‘you don’t say so! I fancy she can’t be quite
right ‘ere.’ And Mrs. Moss put a very dirty and very fat forefinger on
her matronly brow.
‘I don’t believe she’s old Heckett’s gal at all,’ added Mrs. Maloney,
as she stared hard across the road to the doorway where sat the
unconscious object of her criticism. ‘It’s my belief she’s been stole,
like the gal in the play as was a nobleman’s dorter, arter all.’
What Mrs. Moss would have replied to this suggestion can never be
known, for at this moment the attention of both ladies was attracted by
the very extraordinary conduct of the child in question.
Gertie Heckett, who had long been wistfully looking up the street,
suddenly leaped up and made a joyful dash at a gentleman who was
elbowing his way through the crowd.
He was a good-looking, well-dressed gentleman, of about
eight-and-thirty. Gertie Heckett’s pretty face lit up with pleasure the
moment she caught sight of him. She was by his side in a moment, and
looking up into his face with her wistful blue eyes.
‘Oh, Dr. Birnie, I’m so glad you ‘ve come. Grandfather’s worse—I’m sure
he is.’
‘What makes you think he’s worse, my child?’
‘Because he gets crosser and crosser, and’—here a flush of shame came
upon her cheeks and she held her head down—‘and because he swears at me
worse than ever.’
Dr. Birnie laughed. He didn’t notice the pained tone in which the child
made her confession.
‘Cross and swears, eh, little one? That’s a good sign, not a bad one.
People are always cross when they’re getting well.’
‘Oh, then I don’t mind his being cross; but, Dr. Birnie, will you be
very kind, and do me a favour?’
She looked up at the doctor timidly, as though she was taking a great
liberty.
‘A favour? Eh, what is it? Has your doll got the measles, or does Lion
want a cough mixture?’
The child laughed for a moment, tickled by the notion; but her face
resumed its serious expression again directly.
‘No, it isn’t that, Dr. Birnie; but I want you to ask grandfather not
to swear at me. It hurts me here.’
She put her hand on her heart, and spoke with such earnest emphasis,
that the doctor stopped on the threshold of the house, which they had
just reached, and looked earnestly in her face.
‘Poor little thing!’ he said, laying his hand kindly on her smoothly
plaited hair, ‘what a shame it is!’ Then, without answering Gertie
Heckett’s petition, he ran rapidly up the stairs, the child following
him.
Mr. Josh Heckett, the invalid, was in bed when the doctor entered; that
is, he was lying partially dressed, with a dirty counterpane flung over
him and the pillows propped up under his head. The said head was
covered with surgical bandages, and a considerable portion of the face
below was ‘discoloured and bruised. That Mr. Heckett was in pain was
evident, for every time he moved—and he was very restless—he drew
liberally from that well of Saxon, impure and defiled, which is so
largely patronized by the free-born Englishman who wishes to add force
to his conversation.
He was a strange-looking invalid, with his burly limbs and giant
strength lying prostrate, like a lightning-stricken oak, and he was
surrounded by strange companions. Round the walls, wherever a nail
could be driven, hung cages full of all sorts and conditions of birds,
from the parrot to the lark. Lying about on the floor, in various
attitudes of repose, were two toy terriers, a fox-hound, and a fierce
and exceptionally ugly bull-dog. A pretty King Charles spaniel, with a
litter of puppies, occupied an empty box in one of the corners, and
scattered about the room in picturesque confusion were rabbits in
hutches, squirrels in revolving cages, guinea-pigs, and white mice, and
a few other animals, who had rolled themselves up so completely into a
ball for their noonday siesta, that it was quite impossible to say what
they were until they condescended to disentangle their heads from their
tails.
The central figure of the group, however, was a splendid mastiff dog.
He lay at the foot of Heckett’s bed, a perfect picture of unstudied
grace. His leonine head was slightly on one side, as though listening
for a footstep, and his paws were crossed in front of him. His sleek
fawn coat shone like velvet, and spoke of some one’s constant care and
attention. There was something of contempt for the other inhabitants of
the room in the dog’s look at times. When the other dogs barked, he
would glare towards them with a lazy, sneering expression, as much as
to say, ‘Poor idiots! what are you frightened about?’ But suddenly he
became agitated himself, and sprang from the floor. He uttered a deep
growl, and crouched in an attitude of attack, There was a footstep on
the stairs. The door opened, and Dr Birnie walked in.
At sight of him the dog dropped his tail, and, growling, slunk back
into the corner of the room, with his eyes steadily fixed on the
doctor, half in dislike, half in fear.
‘Why don’t you teach that brute not to growl at me, Heckett?’ said Dr.
Birnie, seizing a rabbit-hutch by the bedside, and sitting on it, much
to the terror of the occupant.
‘It’s his natur,’ the man answered. ‘He don’t like you; he’s a very
good judge, is Lion—he knows my pals in a minute.’
‘I suppose you mean he knows your friends from your enemies?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then he ought not to growl at me. I’m one of your friends.’
‘You’re friendly as long as it suits yer purpose, that’s all.’
‘All right, Heckett; have it your own way. How’s the head?’
‘Orful; can’t sleep with it.’
‘Let’s look at it again.’
With a hand as gentle as a woman’s, Birnie removed the bandages, and
examined the wounded man.
After carefully looking at a rapidly healing wound, he put back the
strappings and the linen, and felt the patient’s pulse.
‘All right, Heckett, you’re going on well. You’ll be able to get out in
a week. By Jove! I thought it was all up with you that night you sent
for me in a hurry. I didn’t expect you’d live till the morning.’
‘But I did, ye see; and I mean to live a good bit longer yet. Josh
Heckett isn’t going to snuff: it just for a crack on the head.’
‘No, you weren’t born to die that way, Josh.’
The invalid glanced up at the doctor’s face with a look of such intense
rage that it convulsed his swollen features, and made him cry out with
pain.
‘Mind what you say, governor,’ he hissed, clinching his fist under the
counterpane. ‘If I come to a bad end there’s others as ‘ll have to be
in the same boat with me.’
The doctor laughed, and turned the conversation.
‘How does Gertie manage?’
‘Oh, all right. She’s a kind wench; I don’t know what I should do
without her. She’s a fust-class nuss, and she attends the animiles, and
she can talk to the customers better nor I can.’
‘Well, then, why do you swear at her?’
The man looked at him a moment as if he had not heard aright.
‘Swear at her! Why, you’ll ask me why I looks at her next. There ain’t
nothin’ in swearing at anybody, is there? ‘Tain’t hitting of ‘em, is
it?’
Mr. Josh Heckett was lost in amazement. The doctor objected to his
swearing at Gertie. Why, he swore at everything—at the dogs, at the
guinea-pigs, at the chairs and tables, at himself—why should he make an
exception of Gertie?
‘Well, I’m blowed!’ he added, when he had fully realized the enormity
of the objection. ‘This here’s a free country, and a cove ain’t to
swear at his own gal. Oh, crikey!
‘Well, don’t do it, Josh; that’s all I ask you. The girl’s a good
little lass, and she doesn’t like it.’
Josh Heckett pulled himself up in bed.
‘Look here, Oliver Birnie, Hessquire, Hemd., you get my head well,
that’s your business. Me and my gal’s got on pretty well without your
assistance up to now, and we’re wery much obliged, but “declined with
thanks,” as they sez in the noose-papers. Oliver Birnie, Hessquire,
Hemd., drop it.’
‘You’re facetious to-day, Josh. Never mind; you’re always glad enough
to send for me when you’re in a mess.’
‘Yes, and you was very glad of my services once.’
The doctor’s brow darkened as he muttered:
‘That was a bad time for a good many of us—a time we should like to
forget.’
‘I dessay,’ growled Heckett; ‘and as you’d like other people to forget
too. You’ve got on in the world, and rolls your eyes hup, and does the
wirtuous now. I can’t afford to.’
‘You’ve had no end of money,’ said the doctor. ‘Heaven only knows what
you do with it. Why do you keep on this wretched den, and these
wretched animals? You could afford to retire and live decently and in
comfort.’
‘No, I couldn’t. I’ve spent all the money I ever made. You don’t
believe it, but I have. Besides, I must keep on this place. If I hadn’t
a crib like this, how could I live? It isn’t so respectable as the old
crib you and Egerton and Marston, and all the lot of you, was glad
enough to come to once, perhaps, but it soots me quite as well.’
The man winked at the doctor as well as his bruised face would let him.
The doctor thrust his hands in his pockets, and walked up and down the
room, treading on the toy terrier’s tail, and narrowly escaping a grab
from the bull-dog in consequence.
‘Heckett, do you ever think what might have happened if Marston had
turned traitor?’
The invalid went pale on the only side of his face that could change
colour.
‘Don’t talk like that,’ he growled. ‘I ain’t well, and it worrits me.
Bah! he’s died in furrin parts, or gone too stone broke ever to get
‘ome agin. I ain’t always sure as may be it wasn’t him as done it. What
did he bolt to America for directly afterwards? Only he hadn’t no
motive, and the other had, and I allus looks at motives. Besides,
anyway, it ‘ud be wus for you, now Egerton’s drownded, than it would
for me. You’re better off now than you wos then, and he might want to
go snacks, perhaps. A poor cove like me wouldn’t be high enough game
for him to fly at.’
Birnie glanced at the old dog-fancier, as he lay with his grey hair
straggling over his bandaged head.
‘You’re very poor, aren’t you, Heckett!’ he said presently with a
peculiar intonation in his voice.
‘Yes, I am. Curse you! what do you look like that at me for? Perhaps
you think I ain’t poor? Perhaps you thinks as I’m Baron Rotschild,
a-livin’ in this here drum for the benefit o’ my ‘elth? Perhaps you
thinks as I lends money to the Emperor O’ Rooshia at five per cent.,
and only goes out after dark, for fear the Goverment should call in the
day-time for a loan, and have to go away without it?’ The old man rose
in the bed, his body quivering with rage.
‘Nonsense, Heckett!’ said the doctor, trying to quiet him.
‘What a queer old fellow you are! Of course you’re poor. Why, you
wouldn’t worry me for money as you do if you weren’t.’
‘No, of course, I shouldn’t.’
‘There, there,’ continued the doctor, arranging his pillows and
smoothing the bandage that Heckett had moved in his excitement; ‘lie
still and get well; that’s what you’ve got to do. I’ll come and see you
again in a day or two.’
The doctor nodded to his patient, tumbled over the bulldog, and made a
bolt for the door. Outside Gertie was waiting for him.
‘Your grandfather’s better, my child,’ he said. ‘He’ll be about in a
week again. Good-bye.’
Dr. Birnie patted her face and went out of the door. He walked rapidly
up Little Queer Street and through the Dials, making his way into New
Oxford Street. Then he turned up past the Museum, and into Russell
Square. Leaving the square, and turning into one of the streets
branching off from it, he became aware of something shiny on a doorstep
that seemed to shine right _at_ him.
He looked up.
He nodded pleasantly, for he had recognised the highly polished face of
Mr. Duck, the clerk of his legal advisers.
‘Fine morning, Mr. Duck!’
‘Doctor,’ gasped the shiny one, running after him, and grabbing him by
the coat-tails, for Birnie had walked on rapidly, ‘Doctor, one moment.
I wish you’d come in and see Mrs. Turvey. She’s quite queer in her
head. I can’t make her out.’
‘What, Mr. Egerton’s housekeeper?’
‘Yes, doctor. She’s quite light-headed. Swears she’s seen his ghost.
Just come in and see her, sir, if you will. It’s the rummest case I
ever heard of.’
The doctor walked back with Mr. Jabez.
‘It’s shock to the system,’ he said; ‘that’s all. When did she hear the
news of his death?’
‘Last night, sir,’ answered Mr. Duck. ‘I told her, sir. Thought it was
best. Old and faithful servant, sir—very much attached. He’s left her
five hundred pounds in his will—as of course you know, sir, being
executor.’
‘Of course,’ muttered the doctor, and then he silently followed his
guide into Gurth Egerton’s house.
As he passed through the hall, and saw the late owner’s picture hanging
there, his memory went back to a time when he, Oliver Birnie, and this
very Gurth Egerton were companions in adversity, and were not quite
sure where their next pound was coming from.
Now he was a rising practitioner, with a balance at his banker’s, and
Gurth—well, Gurth had been drowned in the _Bon Espoir_, and had left
his housekeeper five hundred pounds.