bystanders looked on in unmoved silence. Mother Mawks gathered her torn
garments round her with a gesture of defiance, and sniffed the air as
though she said, “Any one who wants to meddle with me will get the worst
of it.” There was a brief pause; suddenly a man staggered out of the
gin-shop, smearing the back of his hand across his mouth as he came--a
massively built, ill-favoured brute, with a shock of uncombed red hair
and small ferret-like eyes. He stared stupidly at the weeping Liz, then
at Mother Mawks, finally from one to the other of the loafers who stood
by. “Wot’s the row?” he demanded, quickly. “Wot’s up? ‘Ave it out fair!
Joe Mawks ‘ll stand by and see fair game. Fire away, my hearties! fire,
fire away!” And, with a chuckling idiot laugh, he dived into the
pocket of his torn corduroy trousers and produced a pipe. Filling this
leisurely from a greasy pouch, with such unsteady fingers that the
tobacco dropped all over him, he lighted it, repeating, with increased
thickness of utterance, “Wot’s the row! ‘Ave it out fair!”
“It’s about your babby, Joe!” cried the girl before mentioned, jumping
up from her seat on the ground with such force that her hair came
tumbling all about her in a dark, dank mist, through which her thin,
eager face spitefully peered. “Liz has gone crazy! She wants your babby
to cuddle!” And she screamed with sudden laughter. “Eh, eh, fancy! Wants
a babby to cuddle!”
The stupefied Joe blinked drowsily and sucked the stem of his pipe with
apparent relish. Then, as if he had been engaged in deep meditation on
the subject, he removed his smoky consoler from his mouth, and said,
“W’y not? Wants a babby to cuddle? All right! Let ‘er ‘ave it--w’y not?”
At these words Liz looked up hopefully through her tears, but Mother
Mawks darted forward in raving indignation.
“Yer great drunken fool!” she yelled to her besotted spouse, “aren’t yer
ashamed of yerself? Wot! let out babby for a whole night for nuthin’?
It’s lucky I’ve my wits about me, an’ I say Liz sha’n’t ‘ave it! There,
now!”
The man looked at her, and a dogged resolution darkened his repulsive
countenance. He raised his big fist, clinched it, and hit straight out,
giving his infuriated wife a black eye in much less than a minute. “An’
I say she shall ‘ave it. Where are ye now?”
In answer to the query Mother Mawks might have said that she was “all
there,” for she returned her husband’s blow with interest and force,
and in a couple of seconds the happy pair were engaged in a “stand-up”
fight, to the intense admiration and excitement of all the inhabitants
of the little alley. Every one in the place thronged to watch the
combatants, and to hear the blasphemous oaths and curses with which the
battle was accompanied.
In the midst of the affray a wizened, bent old man, who had been sitting
at his door sorting rags in a basket, and apparently taking no heed of
the clamour around him, made a sign to Liz.
“Take the kid now,” he whispered. “Nobody’ll notice. I’ll see they don’t
cry arter ye.”
Liz thanked him mutely by a look, and rushing to the house where the
child still lay, seemingly inanimate, on the floor among the soiled
clothes, she caught it up eagerly, and hurried away to her own poor
garret in a tumble-down tenement at the farthest end of the alley. The
infant had been stunned by its fall, but under her tender care, and
rocked in the warmth of her caressing arms, it soon recovered, though
when its blue eyes opened they were full of a bewildered pain, such as
may be seen in the eyes of a shot bird.
“My pet! my poor little darling!” she murmured over and over again,
kissing its wee white face and soft hands; “I wish I was your
mother--Lord knows I do! As it is, you’re all I’ve got to care for. And
you do love me, baby, don’t you? just a little, little bit!” And as she
renewed her fondling embraces, the tiny, sad-visaged creature uttered
a low, crooning sound of baby satisfaction in response to her
endearments--a sound more sweet to her ears than the most exquisite
music, and which brought a smile to her mouth and a pathos to her dark
eyes, rendering her face for the moment almost beautiful. Holding the
child closely to her breast, she looked cautiously out of her narrow
window, and perceived that the connubial fight was over. From the shouts
of laughter and plaudits that reached her ears, Joe Mawks had evidently
won the day; his wife had disappeared from the field. She saw the little
crowd dispersing, most of those who composed it entered the gin-shop,
and very soon the alley was comparatively quiet and deserted. By-and-bye
she heard her name called in a low voice: “Liz! Liz!”
She looked down and saw the old man who had promised her his protection
in case Mother Mawks should persecute her. “Is that you, Jim? Come
upstairs; it’s better than talking out there.” He obeyed, and stood
before her in the wretched room, looking curiously both at her and the
baby. A wiry, wolfish-faced being was Jim Duds, as he was familiarly
called, though his own name was the aristocratic and singularly
inappropriate one of James Douglas. He was more like an animal than a
human creature, with his straggling gray hair, bushy beard, and sharp
teeth protruding like fangs from beneath his upper lip. His profession
was that of an area thief, and he considered it a sufficiently
respectable calling.
“Mother Mawks has got it this time,” he said, with a grin which was more
like a snarl. “Joe’s blood was up, and he pounded her nigh into a jelly.
She’ll leave ye quiet now; so long as ye pay the hire reg’lar ye’ll have
Joe on yer side. If so be as there’s a bad day, ye’d better not come
home at all.”
“I know,” said Liz; “but she’s always had the money for the child, and
surely it wasn’t much to ask her to let me keep it warm on such a cold
night as this.”
Jim Duds looked meditative. “Wot makes yer care for that babby so much?”
he asked. “‘T ain’t yourn.”
Liz sighed.
“No,” she said, sadly. “That’s true. But it seems something to hold on
to, like. See what my life has been!” She stopped, and a wave of colour
flushed her pallid features. “From a little girl, nothing but the
streets--the long, cruel streets! and I just a bit of dirt on the
pavement--no more; flung here, flung there, and at last swept into the
gutter. All dark--all useless!” She laughed a little. “Fancy, Jim! I’ve
never seen the country!”
“Nor I,” said Jim, biting a piece of straw reflectively. “It must be
powerful fine, with naught but green trees an’ posies a-blowin’ an’ a
growin’ everywheres. There ain’t many kitching areas there, though, I’m
told.”
Liz went on, scarcely heeding him: “The baby seems to me like what the
country must be--all harmless and sweet and quiet; when I hold it so, my
heart gets peaceful somehow--I don’t know why.”
Again Jim looked speculative. He waved his bitten straw expressively.
“Ye’ve had ‘sperience, Liz. Hain’t ye met no man like wot ye could care
fur?”
Liz trembled, and her eyes grew wild..
“Men!” she cried, with bitterest scorn--“no men have come my way, only
brutes!”
Jim stared, but was silent; he had no fit answer ready. Presently Liz
spoke again, more softly:
“Jim, do you know I went into a great church to-day?”
“Worse luck!” said Jim, sententiously. “Church ain’t no use nohow as far
as I can see.”
“There was a figure there, Jim,” went on Liz, earnestly, “of a Woman
holding up a Baby, and people knelt down before it. What do you s’pose
it was?”
“Can’t say!” replied the puzzled Jim. “Are ye sure ‘t was a church? Most
like ‘t was a mooseum.”
“No, no!” said Liz. “‘T was a church for certain; there were folks
praying in it.”
“Ah, well,” growled Jim, gruffly, “much good it may do ‘em! I’m not of
the prayin’ sort. A woman an’ a babby, did ye say? Don’t ye get
such cranky notions into yer head, Liz! Women an’ babbies are common
enough--too common, by a long chalk; an’ as for prayin’ to ‘em--” Jim’s
utter contempt and incredulity were too great for further expression,
and he turned away, wishing her a curt “Good-night!”
“Good-night!” said Liz, softly; and long after he had left her she
still sat silent, thinking, thinking, with the baby asleep in her arms,
listening to the rain as it dripped, dripped heavily, like clods falling
on a coffin lid. She was not a good woman--far from it. Her very motive
in hiring the infant at so much a day was entirely inexcusable; it was
simply to gain money upon false pretences--by exciting more pity than
would otherwise have been bestowed on her had she begged for herself
alone, without a child in her arms. At first she had carried the baby
about to serve as a mere trick of her trade, but the warm feel of its
little helpless body against her bosom day after day had softened her
heart toward its innocence and pitiful weakness, and at last she had
grown to love it with a strange, intense passion--so much that she would
willingly have sacrificed her life for its sake. She knew that its
own parents cared nothing for it, except for the money it brought them
through her hands; and often wild plans would form in her poor tired
brain--plans of running away with it altogether from the roaring,
devouring city, to some sweet, humble country village, there to obtain
work and devote herself to making this little child happy. Poor Liz!
Poor, bewildered, heart-broken Liz! Ignorant London heathen as she was,
there was one fragrant flower blossoming in the desert of her soiled
and wasted existence--the flower of a pure and guileless love for one
of those “little ones,” of whom it hath been said by an all-pitying
Divinity unknown to her, “Suffer them to come unto Me, and forbid them
not: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
The dreary winter days crept on apace, and, as they drew near Christmas,
dwellers in the streets leading off the Strand grew accustomed of
nights to hear the plaintive voice of a woman, singing in a peculiarly
thrilling and pathetic manner some of the old songs and ballads familiar
and dear to the heart of every Englishman--“The Banks of Allan Water,”
“The Bailiff’s Daughter,” “Sally in our Alley,” “The Last Rose of
Summer.” All these well-loved ditties she sang one after the other, and,
though her notes were neither fresh nor powerful, they were true and
often tender, more particularly in the hackneyed, but still captivating,
melody of “Home, Sweet Home.” Windows were opened, and pennies freely
showered on the street vocalist, who was accompanied in all her
wanderings by a fragile infant, which she seemed to carry with especial
care and tenderness. Sometimes, too, in the bleak afternoons, she would
be seen wending her way through mud and mire, setting her weary face
against the bitter east wind, and patiently singing on; and motherly
women, coming from the gay shops and stores, where they had been
purchasing Christmas toys for their own children, would often stop to
look at the baby’s pinched, white features with pity, and would say,
while giving their spare pennies, “Poor little thing! Is it not very
ill?” And Liz, her heart freezing with sudden terror, would exclaim,
hurriedly, “Oh, no, no! It is always pale; it is just a little bit weak,
that’s all!” And the kindly questioners, touched by the large despair
of her dark eyes, would pass on and say no more. And Christmas came--the
birthday of the Child Christ--a feast the sacred meaning of which was
unknown to Liz; she only recognized it as a sort of large and somewhat
dull bank-holiday, when all London devoted itself to church-going
and the eating of roast beef and plum-pudding. The whole thing was
incomprehensible to her mind, but even her sad countenance was brighter
than usual on Christmas eve, and she felt almost gay, for had she not,
by means of a little extra starvation on her own part, been able to
buy a wondrous gold-and-crimson worsted bird suspended from an elastic
string, a bird which bobbed up and down to command in the most lively
and artistic manner? And had not her hired baby actually laughed at the
clumsy toy--laughed an elfish and weird laugh, the first it had ever
indulged in? And Liz had laughed too, for pure gladness in the child’s
mirth, and the worsted bird became a sort of uncouth charm to make them
both merry.
But after Christmas had come and gone, and the melancholy days, the
last beating of the failing pulse of the Old Year, throbbed slowly
and heavily away, the baby took upon its wan visage a strange
expression--the solemn expression of worn-out and suffering age. Its
blue eyes grew more solemnly speculative and dreamy, and after a while
it seemed to lose all taste for the petty things of this world and the
low desires of mere humanity. It lay very quiet in Liz’s arms; it never
cried, and was no longer fretful, and it seemed to listen with a sort of
mild approval to the tones of her voice as they rang out in the dreary
streets, through which, by day and night, she patiently wandered.
By-and-by the worsted bird, too, fell out of favour; it jumped and
glittered in vain; the baby surveyed it with an unmoved air of superior
wisdom, just as if it had suddenly found out what real birds were
like, and was not to be deceived into accepting so poor an imitation
of nature. Liz grew uneasy, but she had no one in whom to confide her
fears. She had been very regular in her payments to Mother Mawks, and
that irate lady, kept in order by her bull-dog of a husband, had been
of late very contented to let her have the child without further
interference. Liz knew well enough that no one in the miserable alley
where she dwelt would care whether the baby were ill or not. They would
tell her, “The more sickly the better for your trade.” Besides, she was
jealous; she could not endure the idea of any one tending it or touching
it but herself. Children were often ailing, she thought, and if left to
themselves without doctor’s stuff they recovered sometimes more quickly
than they had sickened. Thus soothing her inward tremors as best she
might, she took more care than ever of her frail charge, stinting
herself than she might nourish it, though the baby seemed to care less
and less for mundane necessities, and only submitted to be fed, as it
were, under patient and silent protest.
And so the sands in Time’s hour-glass ran slowly but surely away, and it
was New-Year’s eve. Liz had wandered about all day, singing her little
repertoire of ballads in the teeth of a cruel, snow-laden wind--so cruel
that people otherwise charitably disposed had shut close their doors and
windows, and had not even heard her voice. Thus the last span of the
Old Year had proved most unprofitable and dreary; she had gained no more
than sixpence; how could she return with only that humble amount to face
Mother Mawks and her vituperative fury? Her throat ached; she was
very tired, and, as the night darkened from pale to deep and starless
shadows, she strolled mechanically from the Strand to the Embankment,
and after walking some little distance she sat down in a corner close to
Cleopatra’s Needle--that mocking obelisk that has looked upon the decay
of empires, itself impassive, and that still appears to say, “Pass on,
ye puny generations! I, a mere carven block of stone, shall outlive you
all!” For the first time in all her experience the child in her arms
seemed a heavy burden. She put aside her shawl and surveyed it tenderly;
it was fast asleep, a small, peaceful smile on its thin, quiet face.
Thoroughly worn out herself, she leaned her head against the damp stone
wall behind her, and clasping the infant tightly to her breast, she
also slept--the heavy, dreamless sleep of utter fatigue and physical
exhaustion. The solemn night moved on, a night of black vapours; the
pageant of the Old Year’s deathbed was unbrightened by so much as a
single star. None of the hurrying passers-by perceived the weary woman
where she slept in that obscure corner, and for a long while she rested
there undisturbed. Suddenly a vivid glare of light dazzled her eyes; she
started to her feet half asleep, but still instinctively retaining the
infant in her close embrace. A dark form, buttoned to the throat and
holding a brilliant bull’s-eye lantern, stood before her.
“Come now,” said this personage, “this won’t do! Move on!”
Liz smiled faintly and apologetically.
“All right!” she answered, striving to speak cheerfully, and raising her
eyes to the policeman’s good-natured countenance. “I didn’t mean to
fall asleep here. I don’t know how I came to do it. I must go home, of
course.”
“Of course,” said the policeman, somewhat mollified by her evident
humility, and touched in spite of himself by the pathos of her eyes.
Then turning his lamp more fully upon her, he continued, “Is that a baby
you’ve got there?”
“Yes,” said Liz, half proudly, half tenderly. “Poor little dear! it’s
been ailing sadly--but I think it’s better now than it was.”
And, encouraged by his friendly tone, she opened the folds of her shawl
to show him her one treasure. The bulls-eye came into still closer
requisition as the kindly guardian of the peace peered inquiringly at
the tiny bundle. He had scarcely looked when he started back with an
exclamation:
“God bless my soul!” he cried, “it’s dead!”
“Dead!” shrieked Liz; “oh, no, no! Not dead! Don’t say so, oh, don’t,
don’t say so! Oh, you can’t mean it! Oh, for God’s love, say you didn’t
mean it! It can’t be dead, not really dead!--no, no, indeed! Oh, baby,
baby! You are not dead, my pet my angel, not dead, oh no!”
And breathless, frantic with fear, she felt the little thing’s hands and
feet and face, kissed it wildly, and called it by a thousand endearing
names, in vain--in vain! Its tiny body was already stiff and rigid; it
had been a corpse more than two hours.
The policeman coughed, and brushed his thick gauntlet glove across his
eyes. He was an emissary of the law, but he had a heart. He thought of
his bright-eyed wife at home, and of the soft-cheeked, cuddling little
creature that clung to her bosom and crowed with rapture whenever he
came near.
“Look here,” he said, very gently, laying one hand on the woman’s
shoulder as she crouched shivering against the wall, and staring
piteously at the motionless waxen form in her arms; “it’s no use
fretting about it.” He paused; there was an uncomfortable lump in his
throat, and he had to cough again to get it down. “The poor little
creature’s gone--there’s no help for it. The next world’s a better place
than this, you know! There, there, don’t take on so about it”--this as
Liz shuddered and sighed; a sigh of such complete despair that it went
straight to his honest soul, and showed him how futile were his efforts
at consolation. But he had his duty to attend to, and he went on in
firmer tones: “Now, like a good woman, you just move off from here and
go home. If I leave you here by yourself a bit, will you promise me to
go straight home? I mustn’t find you here when I come back on this beat,
d’ ye understand?” Liz nodded. “That’s right!” he resumed, cheerily.
“I’ll give you just ten minutes; you just go straight home.”
And with a “Good-night,” uttered in accents meant to be comforting, he
turned away and paced on, his measured tread echoing on the silence at
first loudly, then fainter and fainter, till it altogether died away, as
his bulky figure disappeared in the distance. Left to herself, Liz rose
from her crouching posture; rocking the dead child in her arms, she
smiled.
“Go straight home!” she murmured, half aloud. “Home, sweet home! Yes,
baby; yes, my darling, we will go home together!”
And creeping cautiously along in the shadows, she reached a flight of
the broad stone steps leading down to the river. She descended them, one
by one; the black water lapped against them heavily, heavily; the tide
was full up. She paused; a sonorous, deep-toned iron voice rang through
the air with reverberating, solemn melody. It was the great bell of St.
Paul’s tolling midnight--the Old Year was dead.
“Straight home!” she repeated, with a beautiful, expectant look in her
wild, weary eyes. “My little darling! Yes, we are both tired; we will go
home! Home, sweet home! We will go!”
Kissing the cold face of the baby corpse she held, she threw herself
forward; there followed a sullen, deep splash--a slight struggle--and
all was over! The water lapped against the steps heavily, heavily, as
before; the policeman passed once more, and saw to his satisfaction that
the coast was clear; through the dark veil of the sky one star looked
out and twinkled for a brief instant, then disappeared again. A clash
and clamour of bells startled the brooding night, here and there a
window was opened, and figures appeared in balconies to listen. They
were ringing in the New Year--the festival of hope, the birthday of the
world! But what were New Years to her, who, with white, upturned face,
and arms that embraced an infant in the tenacious grip of death, went
drifting, drifting solemnly down the dark river, unseen, unpitied by all
those who awoke to new hopes and aspirations on that first morning
of another life-probation! Liz had gone; gone to make her peace with
God--perhaps through the aid of her “hired” baby, the little sinless
soul she had so fondly cherished; gone to that sweetest “home” we dream
of and pray for, where the lost and bewildered wanderers of this earth
shall find true welcome and rest from grief and exile; gone to that
fair, far glory-world where reigns the divine Master, whose words still
ring above the tumult of ages: “See that ye despise not one of these
little ones; for I say unto you, that their angels do always behold the
face of My Father who is in heaven.”
End of Project Gutenberg’s Stories By English Authors: London, by Various