Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration: "What is it? Haven't you got anything to eat?"
she asked.]
SAVED BY LOVE
A Story of London Streets.
By
EMMA LESLIE.
[Illustration]
London:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW.
EDINBURGH; DUBLIN; AND NEW YORK.
1913
Contents.
CHAPTER
I. ALL ALONE IN LONDON
II. GETTING A LIVING
III. OUR FATHER
IV. ELFIE'S SIXPENCE
V. SAVED BY LOVE
VI. WILL SHE CONQUER?
VII. CONCLUSION
SAVED BY LOVE.
CHAPTER I.
ALL ALONE IN LONDON.
THERE are some places in London where King Dirt holds a carnival all
the year round—narrow back streets, where the tall houses, almost
meeting at the top, shut out every gleam of sunlight, except during
the longest and hottest days of summer; and then only a narrow rift
of golden glory lights up a strip in the centre, and makes the shady
corners look more dark and desolate than ever.
In one of the shadowed nooks of such a street sat a little girl, her
head leaning against the brick wall for a pillow; and you might have
thought her fast asleep, but for an occasional sob. She had cried so
long that her eyes were swollen and heavy; and even the faint light of
Fisher's Lane made them ache so much that she was glad to close them.
No one noticed her for some time, but at length a girl about her own
age stopped and looked at her, and at last spoke.
"What's the matter?" she said, touching her shoulder.
With a sob and a start the girl opened her eyes.
"O Elfie, is it you?" she said; and then her tears broke out afresh.
"What is it? Haven't you got anything to eat?" she asked.
"I shall never want to eat anything again," sobbed the other. "O Elfie,
mother's dead!"
"Dead, is she?" said Elfie, but looking as though she could not
understand why that should cause any one to cry.
"I shall never be happy again, Elfie. O mother, mother, why didn't you
take me with you?" wailed the poor little orphan.
"Just because she didn't want you, I guess," said Elfie, but at the
same time sitting down to soothe the grief she could not understand.
"There, don't cry," she went on in a matter-of-fact tone. "My mother's
gone away, but I don't cry after her; not a bit of it; I know better
than that, Susie Sanders."
Susie shrank from her companion's touch as she said this, and thought
of what her mother had said about making companions of the children
in the street, and half regretted having spoken to Elfie. There was
a great difference in the two girls, any one could see, though both
might be equally poor. Elfie was unmistakably a street child, ragged,
dirty, sharp-looking, with bright cunning eyes shining out of a
good-tempered-looking face; while Susie, in her patched black frock and
tidy pinafore, and timid, shrinking ways, showed unmistakably that,
poor as she might be, there had been some one to love and take care of
her. Alas for her, poor child! Her only friend in the wide world had
died that morning, leaving her alone in the streets of London.
It was the old, old story: a widow striving to work for herself and her
only child, and sinking at last beneath the stroke of disease, after
giving up one by one every article of furniture, and moving from place
to place, until at last she was glad to find a refuge in the garret of
one of these gaunt houses, where she had not lived many weeks before
God called her to the mansion he had prepared for her.
She had talked to Susie of this, and tried to prepare the child's mind
for the coming of the sad trial; but the little girl had hoped that her
mother would get better "by-and-by." And so, when at last she woke up
that morning and leaned over her mother, and found that she could not
speak, nor even return the caresses lavished on her cold lips and brow,
she grew frightened at the unwonted stillness, but yet could not think
her mother was dead, until some of the neighbours came in and told her
so.
Mrs. Sanders had not made friends with her neighbours, and they had
thought her proud, because she did not talk to them of her affairs.
And so, beyond telling Susie to go to the overseer of the parish, and
ask him to send some one to bury her mother, they did not trouble
themselves.
Susie had just been on this errand, and had wandered out again into the
street to cry there, when Elfie saw her. They had spoken to each other
before, but there had not been much acquaintance, for Mrs. Sanders kept
her little girl in-doors as much as possible. But Elfie had taken a
fancy to Susie, and resolved to befriend her now; so instead of moving
away when she was repulsed, she put her bare grimy arms round Susie's
neck, and said—
"Tell us all about it, Susie; the boys shan't hit you while I'm here."
To tell "all about it" was just what Susie wanted. No one else had
asked about her mother, except the few hard questions put by the
overseer, and so she gladly nestled close up to Elfie, and told of her
waking that morning to find her mother cold and dead.
A grief like Susie's was quite beyond Elfie's comprehension. Her mother
had left her six months before—gone off no one knew where, and no one
cared—at least Elfie did not. No one beat her now, she said; and if she
was hungry sometimes, it was better to be hungry than bruised, and no
one dared to do that now, so that she was rather glad to be left free
to do as she pleased. But Susie shook her head very sadly when told she
ought to be glad.
"I can't," she said, "though mother told me that God would take care of
me when she was gone. I wanted to go with her; and be happy in heaven
now."
"And why didn't she take you?" said Elfie, whose ideas about heaven
were not at all clear.
"She said I must stay here a bit longer, and do the work God meant me
to do."
"What work's that?" asked Elfie.
Susie shook her head. "I don't know, unless it's sewing shirts like
mother did," she said.
"Sewing shirts!" repeated Elfie; "People starve at that, and have to
sit still too. I'd rather go about and see places, and starve that way
than the other," she added, shrugging her shoulders.
"You don't like sewing, then," said Susie. "What do you do, Elfie, to
earn money?"
Elfie laughed. "Oh, it ain't much money I earns; but I manage to get
something to eat somehow, and that's what you've got to do now, I
suppose."
Again the tears came into Susie's eyes. "I don't know what I'm going
to do," she said. "Mother told me to read last night about the ravens
taking food to Elijah, and she said God would send his angels here to
take care of me."
"Then that shows she knew nothing about this place," said Elfie in her
hard, matter-of-fact tone. "Angels don't come down Fisher's Lane—at
least I never see 'em, and I'm out pretty near all hours, night and day
too."
Susie sighed. "I don't think it was quite an angel with white wings
mother meant, but somebody who would be kind and take care of me—a lady
or gentleman perhaps," she said.
Elfie laughed. "Catch a lady or gentleman coming down here!" she said.
And the idea of such a thing seemed so ridiculous that she burst into a
second peal of laughter, until Susie looked offended.
And then she said more gravely, "It's all a mistake, Susie, about the
angels or anybody else caring for you. I know all about it, for I've
lived in Fisher's Lane ever since I was born, and people have got to
take care of themselves, I can tell you."
"But how shall I take care of myself?" asked Susie. "I know there's
some money to pay the rent next week, but when that's gone what am I to
do?"
"Get some more," said Elfie shortly. "I'll help you," she added.
"Thank you. Will you come home with me and stay to-night? I'm dull by
myself," said Susie with a deep sigh.
Her companion joyfully assented, and went off to the market in search
of some stale fruit to share with Susie at once. Then they went back
together to Susie's home, and, going up the stairs, overheard two of
the women talking to the man who had come to see about the funeral.
Susie was too much overcome with grief to pay any attention to what was
said; but Elfie had had all her wits sharpened, and she laid her hand
on Susie's arm and made her sit down on the stairs, while she listened
to the conversation going on just above them.
When they reached the garret, and Elfie had shut the door and glanced
round the room, she said, "Look here, Susie, which will you like
best;—to stop here and work for yourself, and go out when you like; or
have somebody come and shut you up in a horrible place, with high walls
like a prison, and make you work there?"
Susie shivered. "Nobody would do that to me," she said, looking across
at the bed where her mother lay covered with the sheet, and thinking
what she had said of God caring for her.
"But they will, though, if you don't look sharp, for I heard the woman
say you'd better go to the work-house," replied Elfie.
She had heard the work-house spoken of very often, but did not know
what it was like, or that the life of children there was far less
hard than hers. She only knew they were not allowed to run about the
streets; and the idea of being shut up in any place was dreadful to
Elfie, and must be to everybody else, she thought.
She succeeded in making Susie dread being taken there.
"But what shall I do to pay the rent here?" she asked.
"Well, it would be nice to stop here," said Elfie; "but I manage
without paying rent anywhere and that's a saving of money."
"But where do you go to bed?" asked Susie.
"Well, I ain't been to bed in that sort of bed for nearly six months,"
she said, pointing towards the corner. "I sleep under a cart, or on a
heap of straw, or anywhere I can find a nice place; it don't matter
much when you're asleep where you are, so long as you're out of the way
of the rats."
Susie shook her head. "I shouldn't like that," she said.
"Well, no, I suppose you wouldn't," said Elfie, again looking round the
room. "People that's always been used to tables and chairs, and them
sort of things, like you've got here, wouldn't like to sleep out under
a waggon, I guess."
"How can people do without tables and chairs?" said Susie. "How can
they live?"
"Oh, pretty well! Lots of us have to do without them, and other things
besides," said Elfie carelessly; "but you couldn't, I suppose, and so
we must try to keep these."
"How shall we do it?" asked Susie.
"Well, you can sew shirts, and I can get a job now and then at the
market, and sometimes I clean steps for people, and that all brings
money. How much do you pay for this little room?" she asked.
"A shilling a week," answered Susie. "Mother's put the shilling away
for next week, and she paid the landlord yesterday."
"All right. Have you got any shirts to sew?" asked Elfie.
Susie opened her mother's bundle of work, and took out two that were
unfinished.
"I'll finish them and take them home, and ask them to give me some,"
she said.
Elfie took one and examined it. "Well, I shouldn't know how to put all
them bits in the right places," she said.
This was a difficulty that had never struck Susie. She had helped her
mother to make these coarse blue shirts—sewing, hemming, and stitching
in turn; but she had never put one together entirely by herself. She
looked up in a little dismay.
"I don't think I know how to do it either," she said in a tone of
perplexity.
But Elfie turned and turned the shirt about, and at last she said,
"Look here, Susie; you'll have to keep one of these back when you take
the others home, and then we'll find out how they're to be done between
us."
Susie began to think Elfie almost as wise as her mother. She seemed to
know how to manage everything, and before evening came she began to
look up to her as a friend as well as a companion.
Elfie hardly liked sleeping in the room with that long stretch of
whiteness at the farther end. She had never seen Susie's mother while
living, and would not have raised the sheet now to look at the still,
calm face for anything. She would rather have gone out to sleep in
one of the holes or corners of the Adelphi arches, even risking an
encounter with the rats, than sleep there; but for Susie's sake she
determined to stay.
The next morning she persuaded Susie to sit down to her sewing, while
she went out to look for something to eat. Meals taken in the ordinary
way Elfie had no idea of; she was used to look about the streets for
any scraps of food she could pick up, in the same way that a homeless,
hungry dog might do, and so it was no hardship for her to go without
her breakfast. Susie had often had to wait for it lately—wait all day,
feeling faint and hungry, but obliged to sew and stitch on still, that
her mother might get the work home in time. She had to do this to-day,
and then could not finish all. But she tied up her bundle, leaving the
unfinished one out for a pattern; and then put on her bonnet to go
forth to tell the sad story to another—that her mother was dead, and
would never sew shirts any more.
As the man counted the shirts over, she said, "Please, sir, I've left
one at home, it ain't quite finished; but mother—"
"There, there, child, I can't listen to tales about your mother,"
interrupted the man; "she's always been honest, and I won't grumble
about the shirt this time; but it must not occur again. I can't give
you so many either this time, trade is getting dull now."
And pushing Susie's bundle towards her, he turned to another workwoman,
and Susie went out wishing she had had the courage to say her mother
was dead; for she felt as though she was deceiving him, taking this
work to do by herself.
As she went back, Elfie met her. "I've got a nice lot of cold potatoes
at home," she said, "and a big handful of cherries that I picked up in
the market; and I've seen the work-house man, and told him you ain't
going with him."
"What did you say?" asked Susie.
"I told him somebody was coming to live here and take care of you. It's
just what I mean to do, Susie," she added; "for I like you, and it'll
be fair, you see, if I comes to sleep here when it's cold and wet; for
it ain't nice out-of-doors then, I can tell you."
So the compact was formed between these two, and they agreed to help
each other and live together, if only the neighbours and work-house
people would leave them alone.
They need not have troubled themselves very much about this. The
neighbours thought they had done enough when they told the man he had
better take Susie to the work-house; while he evidently thought the
parish need not be troubled, if she had some one to come and live with
and take care of her.
And so, after the coffin was taken out and carried to its lowly
resting-place, no one troubled himself to visit the little garret, or
look after the lonely orphan. Elfie did not stay in-doors much; but
whenever she found anything extra nice, she always ran home to share it
with Susie, and faithfully brought in every penny she earned, to put
into the tin box where the rent money was kept. Susie succeeded in her
shirt-making better than she expected; but life was very hard, and she
sorely missed her mother, and shed many bitter tears when she thought
of her.