A HOT DAY IN MELBOURNE.
A hot, scorching day. The winds having travelled, over hundreds of
miles of arid plain and smoking bush, floated into Melbourne, laden
with blazing heat. The sky glared down whitely, and the blinding sun
scorched up moisture and vegetation with its eye of fire. The very
clouds where white with heat, and to look up at them made one dizzy.
In the city, mankind panted with thirst and fatigue, and, regardless
of consequences, revelled, inordinately and greedily, in ices and cool
drinks. Womankind retreated to cellars and shady nooks, and, divested
of superfluous attire, indulged, gratefully, in water-melons; and
mankind, coming home wearied and parched, joined womankind in her
retreat, and lay at her feet, tamely. Dogkind panted, and lolled out
its tongue, distressfully; but though it wandered in despair through
the streets, it found no relieving moisture in kennel or gutter; and
being, by its constitution and laws, debarred from the luxury of ices
and cool drinks, it endured agonies of silent suffering. Clerks fell
asleep over their ledgers, and storekeepers grew dozy behind their
desks. At the sea-side the very waves were too wearied to roll, and
lay, supine, beneath the dreadful glare of the sun. The beaches were
deserted: not even a crab was to be seen. In the country, the bush
smoked and blazed, and wretched oxen strained at their chains, and did
their half-a-mile an hour in dire distress. With suffering noses
almost touching the ground, they smelt in vain along the earth for
liquid life. The drivers with their cabbage-tree hats slouched over
their eyes, were too lazy to crack their whips, and too fatigued to
swear loudly at their cattle; but, determined not to be cheated of
their privilege, they growled and cursed in voices almost inaudible.
The leafless trees smoked beneath the glare of the sun, and stretched
their bare branches to the sky as if for pity, but got none. On the
goldfields, diggers stripped to their shirts, and were glad to hide
themselves at the bottom of deep pits, with bottles of lager beer or
cold tea by their side; those who could find no such shelter threw
themselves upon their rough beds, and longed eagerly for the night.
Everywhere, business, except where bare-armed men or muslin-clad
barmaids served long drinks to thirsty souls, was at a standstill.
Merchants were too lazy to haggle. Percentages were forgotten, and
invoices disregarded. Even Zachariah Blemish, dressed in white linen
from the top of his head to the sole of his foot, and looking, with
his rubicund face, like a white and pink saint, ready and fit to fly
heavenward, lolled idly in his sanctum, and refreshed himself with
hock and seltzer water. The conjugal Nuttalls were in the deepest
misery. The head of the family, Nicholas Nuttall, was in his
dressing-room, pouring jugfuls of cold water over his head, as if he
were afraid of its taking fire: and, directing his eyes to the bed,
beheld thereupon the partner of his bosom, whose face was puffed up
with mosquito bites, and who, glaring reproachfully at her husband,
said as plainly as eloquent looks could speak, Fiend! behold your
handiwork! Walls and pavement were smoking; and all nature, excepting
the flies and the fishes, was in a state of misery. The blazing wind
was comparable to nothing but the blast from a fiercely-heated
furnace, and high and low succumbed to its power.
High and low! Ay, even down to Old Flick, who, in the back-room of his
All-Sorts Store, in Old Flick's Thoroughfare, gasped, and growled, and
cursed, as he drank his rum-and-water. Old Flick was attired in shirt,
trousers, and slippers. Nothing more. His shirt was open at the bosom,
thereby displaying a sinewy chest, covered with dirty gray hair; and
was tucked up to the shoulders, showing his lean and bony arms. He was
not a pleasant object to look upon, with his straggling hair, and his
blotched face, and his bloodshot bleary eyes. One might have wondered
while looking upon him, Was this man ever a child, and was he ever
blessed with a mother's love? One might have so wondered, and,
doubting, might have been pardoned for the doubt. For indeed he looked
terribly sinful and depraved: a very blot upon humanity. Sitting and
drinking and growling, he became conscious of a shadow before him, and
looking up and seeing the girl Milly, who had just entered the room,
he made a motion as if he would like to spring upon her. She, too, was
not pleasant to look upon; for she also had been drinking, and her
eyes were bloodshot. Her hair was hanging loosely about her face, and
she had a reckless and defiant manner which almost unwomanised her.
"What do you want?" growled Old Flick.
She did not answer him for many moments. She had come there for a
purpose, and she knew she was not fit for it, and that she was no
match for the crafty man who sat before her. Milly's condition was
very pitiable. She depended upon Jim Pizey for support, and she had
not received a line from him since his departure from Melbourne. He
had left her without wishing her good-bye, but he had sent her a
message that Old Flick would give her money when she required it.
Depending upon this, when she wanted funds she had applied to the old
man, but getting a few shillings from him was like squeezing life's
blood from his heart. The process was such a sickening one to Milly,
that she had lately but seldom attempted it. He had so wearied her
with his whining protestations, that she had not applied to him for
assistance for a long time; but now necessity was driving her hard.
There was another reason besides the want of money, which induced
Milly to visit Old Flick at the present time. He had, she knew,
received a letter from Jim, and she wanted to read it. You see, Jim
was the only rock the poor girl had to cling to.
As for Old Flick, the sight of Milly was torture to him. He thought he
had got rid of her for good, and here she was to torment him again. He
knew what she wanted well enough--money, money, always money! But he
would not give her a doit--not a doit! He did not think that part of
Milly's purpose was to get Jim's letter; he was not aware that she
know he had received one. His tribulation would have been sore indeed
had he suspected that; for there was something in the letter about
Milly which would be enough to drive her mad. "I wish she would die!"
he muttered, inly. "What's the use of her? Why don't she die?" If he
could, he would have killed her with a look.
"What do you want?" he growled again.
She seized the bottle from the table, and placed it to her lips. Old
Flick did not attempt to restrain her. Indeed, he was frightened of
her.
"I want money!" Milly exclaimed, with a kind of drunken scream.
"The old cry!" he screamed, in return.
"Yes, the old cry. You thought you weren't going to hear it again, eh!
I want money!"
"I haven't any."
"Lies! You're rolling in it. You've enough to fill your grave. I want
money."
"You're a pretty article to want money," said Old Flick, with a sneer.
"Go and earn it."
"Don't say that again, Flick," said the girl, with a threatening flash
in her eyes, "or I'll tear your liver out! Oh, I don't care for your
looks! What do you think I've got in me to-day?"
"I don't know, and I don't care," he replied.
"I've got the devil in me!" she cried. "Mind how you let it loose. I
feel it here--here!" and she drew her hand, with a nervous twitching
of the fingers, across her forehead. "I try to deaden it to sleep with
drink, but it won't rest. It dances in my brain, and laughs at me
through my eyes! Oh! you're frightened at my talk, are you? What
wonder! I'm frightened at it myself."
"You want rest, Milly," the old man said, with a sort of lame
compassion in his voice.
"Rest!" she echoed, bitterly. "What rest can I expect or do I deserve?
What did I come here for?" she asked herself, in a confused, wandering
manner. "I came here to ask you for something, Flick. Not money alone;
no, no! something else. I have it!" she steadied herself in an
instant. "The letter!"
"The letter!" he repeated, his face turning ashen white.
"The letter!" she reiterated. "The one you received from Jim Pizey
yesterday. You have a lie ready! I see it trembling on your lips. Send
it back, and mind it don't choke you! Where's the letter?"
"I haven't it."
"Where's the letter?"
"I've burnt it."
"You are a liar!" she said, quietly, looking steadily at him.
"You're drunk!" he cried, in a voice thick with passion, "If you don't
go away I'll set the police on you."
"Do!" she replied, laughing scornfully, "and I'll tell them who you
are in league with. Who do you think they will believe? You or me?
You'll set the peelers on me, will you? You worn-out parcel of bones,
it's more than your soul's worth--though that's not worth much. I'll
tell them that you are in league with two of the biggest scoundrels in
the colony. And I'll prove it too. You shall go out of here into quod,
and out of quod into hell, Old Flick! You'll set the peelers on me,
will you? Shall I call 'em in?" and she moved towards the door.
He threw one of his evil looks upon her, and, in his shaking voice,
told her to stay where she was.
"Give me some drink," exclaimed Milly, taking the bottle as she spoke,
and drinking from it again. "Do you know what I am going to do,
Flick?" she asked, her mood suddenly changing. "I'm going to kill
myself with drink."
"All the better," he growled.
"Right you are!" she returned, recklessly. "I'm tired of my life. It's
time I was dead! Look here, Flick; if you don't tell me where Jim is,
I'll set the place about your ears."
"I don't know," he whined; "how should I know? What's the use of
asking me where he is? I know nothing about him. He wrote me a letter,
but you don't think he put his address in it, do you? You ought to
know him better than that, Milly!"
"You miserable gray-head, ain't you afraid that your lies will choke
you? Ain't you afraid of dying? What an old sinner you are! Do you
ever think of the worms creeping over your ugly carcase, and gloating
over you when you are in your grave? Do you ever think of the cold
slimy earth falling on your face through the coffin, and sucking all
the hope out of you, even after you are dead? Ain't you afraid when
you think of it? I am! I am!" she exclaimed, with a shuddering shriek;
"or I should have killed myself long ago!"
The drunken old man's face twitched with terror as she spoke these
dreadful words, and he whined piteously, "Don't, Milly, there's a good
girl. Talk of something pleasant."
"I haven't the courage to do it," she continued, in a musing tone, not
heeding his remonstrance. "I have thought of it often--have dreamt of
it often. I have woke up in the night and seen it looking at me, from
the foot of the bed--my thought that seemed to be all eyes, and no
shape. It speaks to me, and I can never hear it; it clings about me,
and I can never feel it. It takes me through the dark streets to the
water side, and I look down and see the stars bidding me come--I see
the shadows of the trees moving about at the bottom--and then and
then," she said, shudderingly, "I see myself lying in the mud, and
things crawling over me--and I run away, I run away!"
Old Flick moved nearer to the wall, and regarded her with cowardly
fear.
"If I wasn't afraid of that," she continued, "I should have been out
of the world long before now. I bought some poison one day, and was
very near taking it. But I got such a fit of shaking all at once, that
I threw it on the floor, and stamped on it, and ran away, mad with
fright. Did you ever try to take poison, Flick? Pour it in a glass,
and look at it for a moment, and you see a lot of devils glaring at
you and clutching at you, and you feel a lot of creeping things
dancing in your brain, and stirring in your hair, and tingling at your
fingers' ends!"
Old Flick shook with fear now, and not with ague. "Don't talk like
that, Milly," he cried again, looking fearsomely about him; "do talk
of something pleasant."
"Something pleasant!" Milly exclaimed. "What have I got pleasant to
talk about? I wish the sun would burst through the ceiling, and strike
me dead, and so put an end to it!" and she threw her hair from her
face, and looked up wildly. "Do you know, Flick, I think something is
going to happen to me! My head is whirling about strangely. I've an
old father and mother at home, and I've been thinking of them at odd
times, all the day. Father is an old man--a basket-maker--and I can
see him as plainly as I see you, sitting down in our little room,
weaving the canes, and thinking of me. Yes, I can see him thinking of
me. He used to stroke my hair and my face, and call me his pretty
Milly. Pretty Milly! That's what they called me at home. I _was_
pretty--I had the prettiest hands!"--she put them close to her eyes,
with a caressing motion, and hid her face in them. "I can see father
with my eyes shut. He weaves the canes in the back room, sitting by
the window. There is the little garden outside, and the two pots of
mignonette on the window-sill. And there's the speckled hen that used
to eat out of my hand. There is the picture of me on the wall, over
the mantel-shelf, with my hair all in curls. Father is smiling at it.
And now--now it is raining, and what do you think he is doing? He is
looking at me, and crying, and I am lying dead in a basket cradle,
with flowers all about me!" (She stood silent for a little while, with
her face still buried in her hands, as if she could see the picture
she had described.) "He was too fond of me, father was; he was so fond
of me that he didn't look after me properly; he used to let me do as I
liked."
"Why don't you go home to him?" asked Old Flick, in a voice which he
strove to make gentle.
"Home!" she exclaimed. "Home! As I am! What would they say of me, I
wonder? No; thank God, they think me dead. But there! I don't want to
think of them, and they still keep coming up;" and she passed her
hands over her face, confusedly.
"What's the matter, Milly?" Old Flick said, soothingly. "What's made
you like this?"
"Drink!" she cried. "Drink and thought. And the more I think, the more
my head is filled with awful fancies. Why did Jim go away from me?
What right had he to leave me alone by myself?" and here she began to
cry. But, seeing that Flick was about to speak, she said, "Stop a
minute. I haven't done yet. I must work myself out first, and then I
shall be all right. How long is it since you were a boy, Flick?"
"I don't remember," he muttered.
"What happiness! Not to be able to remember! But if you could
remember, you would have to go a long way back, Flick; you're old
enough to be my grandfather. It isn't so long ago since I was a little
girl, and I can't help remembering. Oh, if I could forget! if I could
forget!" And throwing herself upon the ground, she sighed, and
trembled, and sobbed; and then, as if angry with herself, she bit her
white lips, and tried to suppress her passion.
"Now, then, you are more quiet," said Old Flick, after a little while.
"Get up, Milly, like a good girl, and go home."
"I'm not a good girl--I'm a bad woman; and," she said, folding her
arms resolutely, "I'm not going to stir until you give me what I want,
and tell me what I want to know."
"I haven't any money, Milly," whined Old Flick, "and I can't tell you
anything you don't know."
"Didn't Jim say, before he left, that you were to give me money when I
wanted it?"
"Yes, but he hasn't sent me any, and I have no more to give. I'm a
poor man, Milly."
"What was in that letter Jim sent you?"
"That letter?" exclaimed Old Flick, almost instinctively putting his
hand to the pocket in which it was hidden.
"Yes, that letter," repeated Milly, her quick eyes noting the old
man's action.
"There was nothing in it, Milly, upon my--my honour, and I burnt it."
"All right," Milly said, quietly, rising. "I suppose there was nothing
in it, as you say, for you never tell a lie; and I suppose you burnt
it, for you never tell a lie; and I suppose you haven't got any money,
for you never tell a lie. That's right, ain't it?"
"Yes, that's right," he exclaimed, sullenly.
"And you can tell me what's to become of Jim's baby--for it is Jim's,
you know. How am I to keep it?"
"How do I know what's to become of it?"
"I'll kill it," Milly said, composedly.
"Milly!" cried Old Flick, catching her arm.
"Let me go! You don't think I meant it, do you? I haven't come to that
yet. No, I won't kill it. I'll do something better," and without
another word, Milly walked away.
"A good job she's gone," muttered Old Flick. "I must tell Jim about
her. She's getting mischievous. If she had known I had that letter
about me, she would have torn it from me, I believe. The cat! Does she
know there is anything in the letter about her? No, she can't; she
only suspects. I must read it once more, and destroy it. It implicates
the whole gang; I must burn it--burn it. What a turn she gave me when
she talked about killing the baby! I am glad she's gone;" and, in
self-gratulation, Old Flick drank some more rum-and-water, and,
raising his eyes, exclaimed--"The devil take the cat! Here she is
again!"
And there she was again, sure enough, with her baby in her arms.
"Now then, Old Flick," she said, "I've got rid of all my fancies. When
Jim went away, he told me you would give me money as I wanted it, so
long as I didn't ask for too much. I haven't asked for too much, have
I? You precious old flint, you've taken good care of that. You've
screwed me down so tight that I've been obliged to pawn every blessed
thing I could lay hands on; and I haven't a shilling left, and haven't
anything more to pawn."
"You've plenty of money to get drunk with, anyhow."
"The drink was treated to me. People will give me lush, but they won't
give me bread. Can you tell me how I am to keep Jim's baby?"
"How do I know? I suppose you can get your own living."
She gave him another of her threatening looks, and then she asked--
"Are you going to give me some money?"
"I haven't any."
"Very well. I love my baby; let alone that it's mine, it is a pretty
little thing. Of course you can't understand how it is a bad girl like
me can love an innocent pet like this; but then you never loved
anything in your life, and can't be supposed to understand my feeling.
I love it dearly, but as I can't keep Jim's baby, and as you are in
partnership with Jim, you'd better keep it yourself;" and she laid the
baby on the table, where it sprawled contentedly amongst the bottles
and glasses.
"What do you mean?" demanded Old Flick, it considerable alarm.
"What do I mean? Just this--I'm going to leave the baby here. You'll
have to feed it and wash it. It will be a nice companion for you, and
you can bring it up your own way. What a blessed father you'll make!"
"Are you mad?" cried Old Flick, with a rueful look at the baby.
"Not a bit of it. I've often thought what a pity it is you haven't got
a lot of young Flicks of your own. Never mind. Here's one you can try
your hand upon."
"Take the brat away!"
"Will you give me some money?"
"No!" he snarled.
"Then here's your baby!" Milly said; and taking the child from the
table, she placed it dexterously in Old Flick's arms, and moved
towards the door.
"Come back, you jade!" roared Old Flick, looking disgustedly at his
burden. "Come back, and I'll give you what you want."
"How much now?" asked Milly, with a laugh, standing by the half-open
door.
Old Flick fumbled in his pockets, and, with much difficulty, produced
three half-crowns.
"Seven-and-six," he said.
"Baby will cost you more than that the first week," said Milly. "Then,
how am I to live? 'Tain't half enough.
"I haven't another shilling in the world!" cried Old Flick, tearing at
his gray locks in a delirium of drunken despair. "You'll ruin me, you
jade!"
"Say two pounds," suggested Milly, regardless of his appeal; "and out
with it quick, or I'm off. Now, then, before I count three. One--"
"Milly, dear, say a pound," implored Old Flick.
"Two--"
"Thirty bob!" screamed Old Flick, in anguish.
"Three. I'm off."
"Stop, stop!" roared Old Flick; "here's the money, and I wish you'd
kill yourself with it."
"And what did Jim say about me in the letter?" asked Milly, coming
back.
"Not a word," said Flick, pretending to consider, as he counted out a
pound's worth of silver. "Oh, yes, he did; he sent his love to you.
You'll find that right, Milly."
"All right," said Milly, pocketing the money carelessly. "You know,
Flick, if you'd like to keep the baby--"
"Take it away--take it away!" cried Old Flick; "and curse you, the
pair of you," he added, in an undertone.
"You fool!" exclaimed Milly, scornfully, as she took the baby in her
arms, and kissed her. "You gray-headed, cold-hearted, old fool! Did
you think for a moment that I would leave this angel from heaven here,
for you to contaminate with your filthy breath! Did you think it, old
sinner? You might have saved your money, if you weren't a coward as
well as a thief. And so you've burnt the letter, eh, Flick!"
"Yes, yes," said Old Flick, as Milly walked away with the child, "it
is burnt, sure enough. Phew! what with her, and what with the heat,
I'm melting away. How cantankerous she was about the letter! She'd
have gone mad if she'd seen it. I must burn it; it isn't safe to keep;
but I must copy the address first."
His shaking hand sought his pocket, and drew therefrom the letter. He
opened it, and read it again by fits and starts, muttering the while.
But when he tried to copy the address, his fingers trembled so that he
could not trace the letters.
"I'll wait till the evening, when if s cool," he said, returning the
letter to his pocket, "when it's cool. The devil take the sun! It's
enough to scorch one to a cinder!"
As a counteractive, Old Flick applied himself industriously to his
rum-and-water, which he swallowed with a running accompaniment of
oaths and curses. Now, as too much rum-and-water will make a man
drunk, and as Old Flick had drunk a great deal too much rum-and-water,
and still continued drinking it, he soon got very drunk indeed--so
drunk, that he began to cry, and to beat his breast, and to tear his
hair, and to shake so, that the table trembled when he leant upon it.
"To scorch one to a cinder," he mumbled, pursuing his previous remark.
"Supposing it should come, and scorch me to a cinder!"
He held up his hands, as if to ward off a blow, and as he looked about
him, his fevered fancy conjured a thousand crawling things upon the
ceiling and the walls. With sight-terror fixed he gazed at them as
they crept nearer and nearer to him. As fast as he brushed them away,
they came again. In desperation he drank more rum, and strove to rid
himself of the terrible fancies.
"Go away--go away," he cried, menacing them with impotent fingers; "I
know what it is. I've been drinking too much. I must leave it off, or
I shall have the deliriums." To strengthen his good resolution he
applied himself again to the bottle. "I'm better now. What a cat that
Milly is! Beast--beast--beast! Why don't she die? What good is she in
the world? She wished to frighten me by asking me if I had ever tried
to take poison. What did she mean by 'the devils in the glass?' Ugh! I
can see them glaring at me!"--and Old Flick staggered to his feet in
dire terror, and then dropped down in a drunken swoon.
It was late in the afternoon now, and people began to breathe more
freely. A slight but refreshing breeze set in from the sea, and the
cooler air, floating through the streets, brought a sweet relief to
exhausted nature. To no person did the grateful change bring more
satisfaction than to Grif, whose sufferings during the day had caused
him to fret exceedingly. The whole of that day, as he stood blistering
in the sun, he had been propounding questions to himself--questions to
which he could find only one answer, dictated by hunger and misery.
Why was he so unfortunate? All other boys were not so. He was trying
hard to be good, and something would not let him. He felt that his
requirements were modest, that he did not ask for too much. The
constant pressure of misery had caused him to look about him and
compare his condition with that of other boys. There were plenty of
them walking the streets--well-fed, well-dressed boys; not sons of
gentlemen, but working boys--boys occupying the social sphere to which
he aspired. What had he done that his lot should not be as comfortable
as theirs appeared to be? He was sure he was trying hard enough to
deserve it. "I've been bad, I know," he reflected, "but I can't make
out as it was all my fault. I couldn't help it. There's father, he was
bad, and in course I was bad too; I didn't know nothin' else. Then
Ally come, and she made me good--leastways, she tried to. But what's
the good of bein' good? I usen't to be 'arf so hungry when I was bad!"
This was the argument which clenched the matter. When he was bad, his
stomach was better supplied, as a rule, than now that he was good.
Not only was Grif's mind argumentative, but his nature was sensitive.
How this came about was strange, for his father's nature was brutal
enough; he did not remember his mother, and had never given her a
thought. His sensitiveness was a positive misfortune; it intensified
his sufferings just now. What with the awful heat, which made his
heart faint and sick, the hunger which gnawed at his vitals, and the
sorrow he felt at being parted for ever from Little Peter, his
condition was an utterly miserable one. He could not battle against
such influences; they were too powerful for him. He felt an
irresistible conviction that he should never see Little Peter again.
"I wonder if he ever thinks of me?" Grif mused; and in his then
despondent mood he groaned at the thought that all remembrance of him
was wiped out of Little Peter's mind. "No matter, it was all for his
good. He's a precious sight better off where he is, I'll be bound. I
suppose he's got good clothes and good boots, and plenty of grub.
That's jolly for him, poor Little Peter! If he was here to-day, it'd
pretty well settle him, I think." There was some small consolation in
this reflection, and Grif tried to make the most of it.
From this it will be perceived how unfortunate Grif had been in his
new vocation. Honesty and morality had not taken to him kindly. As a
moral shoeblack, his career had been the very reverse of prosperous,
notwithstanding that he had striven to deserve better. He had attended
some meetings of the Moral Bootblacking Boys' Reformatory, and had
heard a great deal about morality; and, albeit he would have been
considerably perplexed if he had been asked to define the meaning of
the word, it could not but be presumed that he had been much edified
by the moral essays and exhortations to which he had listened. And yet
his mental condition, when he came away from those meetings, was one
of perplexity. He could not see the connection between morality and a
bellyful of food. "It's all very well," he would mutter, "for them
coves who's got lots to eat and drink to talk about morality; but what
good does it do me?" Exhortations, moral lessons, pious sermons, would
often be given by well-meaning men at the meetings of the Moral
Bootblacking Boys' Reformatory. At one of these meetings, the speaker
had fixed Grif with his eye during the whole of his discourse, which
occupied nearly an hour. The burden of his exhortation was an
oppressive beseeching to Grif to "look up." By day and by night, awake
or asleep, standing still or walking, always through his life, Grif
was entreated to "look up." Never mind how persistent misfortune might
be in persecuting him, never mind what calamities might overtake him,
everything would come right if he would continue to "look up." "But
how _can_ I do that," Grif asked of himself, "when I'm forced to be
always lookin' down?" whereby he meant, literally, looking down at the
boots of the passers-by to see if they wanted polishing. Which coarse
perversion of the pious speaker's exhortation was another proof of the
baseness of Grif's nature.
Many such sermons did Grif hear; they sounded well, all of them. But
they shrank into very nothingness when he applied them to his own
case. To him they were nothing; they did him no good. Grif wanted
practical arguments. Theory was valueless to him. As for good advice
he had enough of that, goodness knows. He received it by the bushel;
it was literally heaped upon him. But he did not get an ounce of meat
out of it for all its virtue. He was an especial object of attention
to Mr. Zachariah Blemish. That great man and princely merchant had at
various times condescended to be gracious to Grif by word of mouth.
Mr. Blemish would inquire of Grif how he was getting along, and Grif
did not have courage to answer that he was getting along badly, or
rather that he was not getting along at all. It would have sounded
like an impeachment of the conduct of the great man in providing him
with the implements of his occupation. "That is right--that is right,"
Mr. Blemish would remark. "You are moral, are you not?" "Very moral,
Sir," Grif would answer, humbly. "Very good; mind you keep moral," Mr.
Blemish would exhort. And Grif invariably ducked his head and promised
that he would keep very moral. But when the great merchant was gone,
Grif would shrug his shoulders, and ponder and puzzle over the good
advice given him without arriving at any satisfactory conclusion.
Occasionally he visited Alice, and argued matters with her. Alice
truly was his good angel. Many and many a time had they two sat
together, he listening to her gentle voice, she striving to impress
upon him truths which would have seemed to him the bitterest of lies
if he had judged them by the light of his hard experience. But Grif
did not interpret her words by that light. If he did not understand,
he believed; his nature did not rebel against her sweet words and
gentle voice as it did against the sermons preached at the Moral
Reformatory. What Alice said to him was good, was true, and he was
satisfied. It was happiness to hear her, to sit near her, to look up
into her face now and then: it was more than happiness, it was heaven.
With such an influence upon him, Grif could not be otherwise than
good. She kept him from crime. Bad promptings had no chance with him
when he thought of her. Ill as she could afford it, poor girl, she fed
him often, although every day her means grew less and less, and
although Hunger, with its white eyes and despairing face, crept nearer
and nearer at every turn of the hour-glass. All she could do was to
wait for it, and shudder at its near approach. The first few weeks
after her husband left her, she had heard regularly from him, and had
received long letters filled with love, and tenderness, and hope. And
she would read them again and again, and cry for joy over them, and
press them to her lips, to her heart, and place them under her pillow
at night. Many a happy dream did they bring her, and she would rise in
the morning with a light heart, hopeful and smiling. But lately his
letters had become shorter and shorter, and the intervals between them
longer. And now three weeks had passed, and she had received no
letter. Three or four times every day she went to the post-office,
until her face became so familiar to the clerk that, directly he saw
it looking almost beseechingly through the little window, he would
shake his head without waiting for her to speak. How hurriedly she
would throw on her bonnet and shawl, and hasten to the little window,
and how sadly and slowly she would walk back to her poor lodgings,
heartsore and disappointed! That little window! It might have been
likened unto heaven's gate, or the gate of despair. Sometimes, when
she reached it, panting, she lingered before she asked, as if fearful
to have her hope destroyed. That would be mostly when there were no
other applicants; but when there was a crowd round it, drawn thither
by the arrival of an important mail, she would take her stand among
them, and burn with impatience until her turn came. Then she would
think it cruel that others had letters and she had none. Many of them
had three, four, a dozen, and she not one! The pleased expressions
upon the faces of women who opened their letters and read as they
walked, made her feel as she ought not to have felt; and to drive away
envious thoughts she would lower her veil, and soon could see nothing
through her blinding tears. The last letter she had received from
Richard was written in a very despondent mood, and that made her more
anxious to hear from him. There are some men who cannot fight with the
world--who cannot battle with misfortune. The first blow floors them,
and they lie helpless, and make no effort to rise. There are others
who, at every knock-down blow, jump up again, hurt but not killed, and
who, to speak metaphorically, square up at misfortune with courage and
vigour. Richard Handfield was one of the former, and because he did
not find a rich patch of gold at the bottom of the first hole he sank,
he whimpered at Fate, and did not care to try again. All that Alice
could glean from his last letter was, that misfortune pursued him and
mocked at his efforts. That was the way he expressed it; he chose to
believe that the world had a special spite against him, and that he,
of all the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who are fighting life's
battles, was singled out for the victim. The fault, which was in
himself, he laid upon fate; he was partial to the common platitude,
"fate was against him." He was naturally indolent, and if he had known
how to work he would scarcely have cared to do so. There are thousands
of men of this type in the world.
Alice often fed Grif. But Grif was shrewd enough to perceive that
Alice was daily more unable to spare him the food she pressed upon and
forced him to eat. One evening, when he was in the midst of eating a
thick slice of bread and butter which Alice had given him, he stopped
suddenly, and, looking at her, was overcome with remorse at the
thought that he was eating her meal. He could not eat any more; he
placed the bread upon the table, and said, with his eyes filled with
tears, that he was satisfied. From that day, he never tasted food in
her room. Often when he was hungry, often, when he had stood about all
the day patiently, without earning sixpence, he refrained from going
to her, and crept, supperless, to sleep. At other times he waited
until he knew Alice had finished her poor meal, and then, in answer to
her inquiry as to whether he had had his tea, would say that he had
had a jolly good tuck-out, and would make his mouth water by
particularising what he had eaten.
On this afternoon Grif was particularly miserable. He had suffered
much during the day from heat, and although he had plenty of cold
water to drink, it must be admitted that that was but poor
satisfaction to a hungry boy. He would have gone to his pie-shop, but
the old woman had been gathered to her foremothers, and the pie-shop
had passed into other hands. Grif had stood behind his boot-stand all
the day broiling in the sun. No passer-by had been mad enough to stay
blistering for a quarter of an hour in the heat, while his boots were
being blackened. And, when evening came, it found Grif faint, and
weary, and unhappy. The tears actually welled into his eyes as the
sense of his forlorn condition came upon him. He could not stand it
any longer! He looked round, with such a sense of desolation expressed
in his face, that if any humane person had noticed it, it must have
touched his heart with pity. He thought of the exhortations he had
listened to, and of the good advice which had been heaped upon him. He
thought of the promise he had given Mr. Blemish that he would continue
to be moral. To break that promise would not pain Grif much; but there
was the pledge he had given to Alice. He was about to be false to her.
But he could not starve; she wouldn't ask him to do that, he knew.
"No, she wouldn't arks me to do that," he muttered. "I'd die for her
yes, this minute. If I went to her now, she would give me somethin' to
eat--in course she would! But I _won't_ go to her; I'll starve first!
She stinted herself the other night, and didn't have enough to eat,
because I was there. I know what I'll do. I'll go to Old Flick's, and
sell my stand and brushes. He'll give me a bob for 'em, I dessay. Ally
won't like it when she hears it, but I can't help it; I'm hungry."
Then the thought came upon him that, although he might have some right
not to be moral if he pleased, he had no right to sell the stand and
brushes. They were the property of the Reformatory. But he was stung
to desperation, and he drove the thought from his mind.
"I don't care," he said recklessly. "I've been moral long enough. It
ain't a bit of good! I ain't agoin' to starve any more. If they find
it out, they can put me in quod agin, that's all. They'll give me my
grab and a blanket there, at all events, and that's what I can't get
here. I s'pose I am a bad lot, and I shall never be no good. How can I
be good when I haven't got nothin' to eat?"
Asking this question of himself with much sternness, Grif put his
stand and brushes under his arm, and wended his way towards Old
Flick's Thoroughfare.