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MATTIE:--A STRAY.
BY F. W. ROBINSON
THE AUTHOR OF "HIGH CHURCH," "NO CHURCH," "OWEN:-A WAIF," &c., &c.
"By bestowing blessings upon others, we entail them on ourselves."
HORACE SMITH.
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,
18, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1864.
_The right of Translation is reserved._
LONDON:
PRINTED BY MACDONALD AND TUGWELL, BLENHEIM HOUSE,
BLENHEIM STREET, OXFORD STREET.
INSCRIBED
TO
ALFRED EAMES, ESQ.,
ROYAL NAVAL SCHOOL, NEW CROSS,
BY
HIS OLD AND ATTACHED FRIEND
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
BOOK I. FIGURES IN OUTLINE.
I. LIFE IN GREAT SUFFOLK STREET
II. MATTIE
III. LODGERS
IV. MR. HINCHFORD'S EXPERIMENT
V. SET UP IN BUSINESS
VI. THE END OF THE PROLOGUE
BOOK II. THE NEW ESTATE.
I. HOME FOR GOOD
II. A GIRL'S ROMANCE
III. OUR CHARACTERS
IV. A NEW ADMIRER
V. PERSEVERANCE
VI. "IN THE FULNESS OF THE HEART," ETC.
VII. CONFIDENCE
VIII. SIDNEY STATES HIS INTENTIONS
BOOK III. UNDER SUSPICION.
I. AN OLD FRIEND
II. STRANGE VISITORS TO GREAT SUFFOLK STREET
III. SIDNEY'S SUGGESTION
IV. PERPLEXITY
V. MR. WESDEN TURNS ECCENTRIC
VI. A BURST OF CONFIDENCE
VII. THE PLAN FRUSTRATED
VIII. A SUDDEN JOURNEY
MATTIE: A STRAY.
BOOK I.
FIGURES IN OUTLINE.
CHAPTER I.
LIFE IN GREAT SUFFOLK STREET.
It was not an evening party of the first water, or given by people of
first-rate position in society, or held in a quarter whither the
fashionable classes most do congregate. It was a small party--ostensibly
a juvenile party--held on the first floor of a stationer's shop in Great
Suffolk Street, Southwark.
Not even a first-rate stationers', had the shutters been down and the
fog less dense to allow us to inspect Mr. Wesden's wares; but an
emporium, which did business in no end of things--cigars, tobacco-pipes,
children's toys, glass beads by the skein or ounce, fancy work, cottons
and tapes. These, the off-shoots from the stationery business, the
news-vending, the circulating of novels in four, five, and six volumes
at one penny per volume, if not detained more than three days; a
stationery business which report said had not turned out badly for old
Wesden, thanks to old Wesden's patience, industry and care, say
we--thanks to his screwing and his close-fistedness that would not have
trusted his own mother, had she lived, said the good people--for there
are good people everywhere--in Great Suffolk Street. Certainly, there
were but small signs of "close-fistedness" about the premises on that
particular evening; the shop had been closed at an earlier hour than
business men would have considered suitable. They were wasting the gas
in Mr. Wesden's drawing-room; feasting and revelry held dominion there.
There had been three separate knocks given at the door from three
separate Ganymedes--No. 1, with oranges; No. 2, with tarts from the
pastry-cook; No. 3, with beer, which last was left in a tin can of
colossal proportions, supper not being ready, and beer being liable to
flatness in jugs--especially the beer from the Crown.
We watch all this from the outside, in the thick fog which made things
unpleasant in Great Suffolk Street. There is more life, and life that
appertains to this chapter of our history, outside here than in that
first floor front, where the sons and daughters of Mr. Wesden's
neighbours are playing at forfeits, romping, jumping, and laughing, and
thoroughly enjoying themselves. They are not thinking of the fog, the
up-stairs folk shut away from the rawness of that January night; it
would have troubled Mr. Wesden had his shop been open, and led him to
maintain a stricter watch over the goods, and upon those customers whose
faces might be strange to him; but he had forgotten the weather at that
juncture, and sat in the corner of the drawing-room, smoking his pipe,
and keeping his daughter--a bright-faced, golden-haired girl of
twelve--within his range of vision. The fog and the cold troubled no one
at Mr. Wesden's--only "outsiders" objected, and remarked upon them to
friends when they met, coughing over one, and shivering through the
other, as lungs and scanty clothes necessitated. The establishment of
Mr. Wesden, stationer, troubled or attracted, an outsider though, who
had passed and repassed it three or four times between the hours of
eight and nine, p.m., and at half-past nine had backed into the recess
of Mr. Wesden's doorway. A small outsider, of uncertain age--a boy, a
nondescript, an anything, judging by the pinched white face and unkempt
hair; a girl, by the rag of a frock that hung upon her, and from which
her legs and feet protruded.
Subject matter of great interest was there for this small
watcher--huddled in the doorway, clutching her elbows with her bony
fingers, and listening at the keyhole, or varying proceedings now and
then by stepping on to the clammy pavement, and looking up, through the
fog, at the lighted blinds, once or twice indulging in a flat-footed
kind of jig, to keep her feet warm. She was one of few loiterers in
Great Suffolk Street that uncomfortable night--men, women, and boys
hurried rapidly past, and thinned in number as the night stole on--only
a policeman slouched by occasionally, and dismayed her somewhat, judging
by her closer proximity to Mr. Wesden's street door, whenever his heavy
tread jarred upon her nerves.
When the majority of the shops was closed, when the fog grew denser as
the lights went out, and the few stragglers became more phantom-like and
grey, quite a regiment of policemen marched down Great Suffolk Street,
changing places at certain corners with those officials who had done
day-duty, and glad to have done, for that day at least.
The new policeman who crawled upon Mr. Wesden's side of the way, was a
sharper man than he who had left off crawling, and gone home at a gallop
to his wife and thirteen children; for the new-comer was not deceived by
the deep-doorway and the dense fog, but reached forth a hand and touched
the figure cowering in the shadows.
A red-faced young man, with a bull neck, was this Suffolk Street
official--an abrupt young man, who shook people rather violently by the
shoulder, and hurt them.
"Oh!--stash that, please," ejaculated the child, at last; "you hurts!"
"What do you want here?"
"Nothin' partickler. If the young gal inside knows I'm here, she'll send
out somethin' prime. That's all. Last thing, afore she goes to bed, she
comes and looks, mostly. She's a good 'un."
"Ah! you'd better go home."
"Can't manage to make it up tuppence--and square the last penny with
Mother Watts. You know Mother Watts?"
"Ah!"
"Well, she's down upon me, Watts is--so I can't go home."
"You must go somewhere--you can't stop here."
"Lor bless you, this is the comfortablest doorway in the street, if you
don't mind, p'leesman. I often turn in here for the night, and some of
you fine fellers lets a gal bide, and ain't so down upon her as you are.
You're new to this beat."
"Am I, really?" was the ironical rejoinder.
"You used to do Kent Street and stir up Mother Watts. You locked up
Mother Watts once--don't you remember?"
"Yes--I remember. Are you going?"
"If you won't let a gal stay, o' course I am. They've got a jolly
kick-up here--that gal with the blue frock's birthday--old Wesden's gal,
as I just told you about--I wish I was her! Did you ever see her of a
Sunday?"
"Not that I know on."
"Just like the little gals at the play--spruce as carrots--and gloves
on, and such boots! Fust rate, I can tell you."
"I wouldn't jaw any more, but go home," suggested the policeman.
"All right, master. I say, don't you twig how the fog has got on my
chest?"
"Well, you _are_ hoarse-ish."
"Spilt my woice yesterday, and made it wus by tryin' it on in Union
Street to-day. Gave it up, and bought a haporth of lucifers, and got the
boxes in my pocket now. Hard lines to-night, mate."
Familiarity breeds contempt and engenders rebuke--the loquacity of the
child offended the official, who drew her from the doorway with a jerk,
totally unexpected upon her side, and placed her in the roadway.
"Now be off from here--I've had enough of _you_."
"Werry well--why didn't you say so afore?"
And, without waiting for a reply to her query, the child went down Great
Suffolk Street towards the Borough, sullenly and slowly. The policeman
watched her vanish in the fog, and resumed his way; he had done his duty
to society, and "moved on" one who had insulted it by her helplessness
and squalor; there was a woman shrieking denunciations on the pot-man of
the public house at the corner--a man who had turned her unceremoniously
into the street--let him proceed to business in a new direction.
Twenty steps on his way, and the ill-clad, sharp-visaged girl, stealing
back in the fog to the welcome doorway whence he had abruptly expelled
her.
"He's not everybody," she ejaculated, screwing herself comfortably into
her old quarters, "though he thinks he is. I wonder what they're up to
now? Don't I wish it was my buff-day, and somebody had somethink to give
me, that's all. Don't I--oh! gemini."
"Hillo!--I beg pardon--I didn't know anyone was hiding here--have I hurt
you?" inquired a youth, who, running down Great Suffolk Street at a
smart pace, had turned into this doorway, and nearly jammed its occupant
to death with the sudden concussion.
"You've done for my lights, young un," was the grave assertion.
"Your--your what?"
"My congreve lights--there's a kiver gone--I heered it scrunch. S'pose
you'll pay like a--like a man?"
"I--I'm very sorry, but really I'm rather scarce of pocket-money just
now--in fact, I've spent it all," stammered the lad. "You see, it was
your fault, hiding here, and playing about here at this time of night,
and I was in a hurry, being late."
"There isn't anyone inside who'd stand a ha-penny, is there?" whined the
girl; "I'm the gal that's allus about here, you know--I've had nuffin'
to eat to-day, and ain't no money for a night's lodging. I'm hard
up--wery hard up, upon my soul. I don't remember being so druv since
mother died o' the fever--never. And I'm not well--got a sore throat,
which the fog touches up--awful."
"I'll--I'll ask my pa'; but I don't think there is anything to give
away."
The youth knocked at the door, and presently rushed by the servant who
opened it, paying no heed to the remark of--
"Well, you are late, Master Sidney, I must say!"
The door closed again, and Master Sidney--a tall lad of fourteen, with
long brown hair, brown eyes, and a white face--tore up the stairs two
steps at a time, and dashed with but little ceremony into the
dining-room, where the supper was laid by that time, and the juveniles
were ranged round the table, large-eyed and hungry.
A shout from the boys assembled there--"Here's Sidney Hinchford;" a
reproof from a stiff-backed, white-haired old gentleman in the
corner--"Where _have_ you been, boy?" a light-haired fairy in white
muslin and blue sash darting towards him, crying, "Sidney, Sidney, I
thought you were lost!"
"So I have been--lost in the fog--such a mull of it! I'll tell you
presently when I've spoken to pa' for a moment. And, oh! Harriet,
here's--here's a little brooch I've bought, and with many happy, happy
returns of the day from a tiresome playfellow, and--and--_stolen, by
Jingo_!"
The hand withdrew itself from the side pocket of his jacket, and was
passed over the forehead, the lower jaw dropped, the brown eyes glared
round the room, across at the opposite wall, and up at the gas branch--a
two-burner of a bronze finger-post pattern,--and then Master Sidney
doubled up suddenly and collapsed.
CHAPTER II.
MATTIE.
Mrs. Sarah Jane Watts, better known to society and society's guardians
by the cognomen of Mother Watts, kept a lodging-house in Kent Street.
They who know where Kent Street, Borough is, and what Kent Street is
like by night and day, can readily imagine that the establishment of
Mrs. Watts was not a large one, or the prices likely to be high. Mrs.
Watts' house, in fact, belonged not to Kent Street proper, but formed
No. 2 of a cut-throat-looking court, crossing Kent Street at right
angles. Here beds, or shares of beds, or shelves arranged horizontally
under beds, were let out at twopence per head, or three-halfpence
without the blankets, which were marked, "Stop Thief!"
Whether Mrs. Watts did badly with her business, or whether business
prospered with her, it was difficult to determine by the landlady's
external appearance, Mrs. W. being ever in rags, ever full of complaints
and--drink. "Times" were always hard with her--the police were hard with
her--her Kent Street contemporaries were hard with her--didn't treat her
fair, undersold her, put more in a bed and charged less--"split upon her
when things weren't on the square. Kent Street wasn't what it was when
she was a gal!"
People constantly breathing the same atmosphere may notice a change in
the "surroundings," but to common observers, or prying people paying
occasional visits to this place, Kent Street seems ever the same--an
eye-sore to public gaze, a satire on parish cleanliness and care, a
disgrace to parish authorities in general, and landlords and ground
landlords in particular.
Ever to common eyes the same appearances in Kent Street. The bustle of a
cheap trade in its shops; the knots of thieves and loose-livers at every
narrow turning; the murmurs of unseen disputants, in the true London
vernacular, welling from dark entries and up-stairs rooms; the shoals of
children, hatless, shoeless, almost garmentless--all a medley of sights
and sounds, increasing towards night-fall, when Kent Street is full of
horror, and lives and purses are not safe there.
It is eleven in the evening of the same day, in which our story opens,
and Mrs. Sarah Jane Watts, baggy as regards costume, and unsteady as
regards her legs, was standing in the doorway of her domicile,
inspecting, by the light of the candle in her hand, a trinket of some
kind, which had been proffered her by a smaller mortal, infinitely more
ragged than herself.
"You got it honestly--I takes your word for it--you allers was a gal who
spoke the truth, I will say that for you--it's a sham affair, and brassy
as a knocker--say eightpence?"
"It's really gold, Mrs. Watts--it's worth a heap of money."
"It's the brassiest thing that ever I clapped eyes on--say eightpence
and a bit of supper?"
"What sort o' supper?"
"Hot supper--tripe and inguns--as much as you can pad with."
"It's worth a sight more, if it's gold."
"I'll ask Simes--go up-stairs and wait a minit'--Simes'll tell us if
it's gold, and praps stand more for it. I don't want the thing--I don't
think it's safe to keep, myself; and if you've prigged it, Mattie, why,
you'd better let it go."
"Very well."
Mattie--the girl whom we have watched in the dark entry of Mr. Wesden's
door, wearied out with Mrs. Watts' loquacity, or overpowered by her
arguments, went up-stairs into a room on the first floor. A long,
low-ceilinged room, containing three beds, and each bed containing four
women and a few supplementary children, one affected with a
whooping-cough that was evidently fast racking it to death. This was the
feminine dormitory of Mrs. Watts--a place well known to London women in
search of a night's rest, Southwark way--a place for the ballad singer
who had twopence to spend, or a soul above the workhouse; for the
beggar-women who had whined about the streets all day; for the tramps
passing from Surrey to Essex, and taking London _en route_; for women of
all callings, who were deplorably poor, idle or vicious--it mattered
not, so that they paid Mrs. Watts her claim upon them.
Mattie sat down by the fire, and began shivering with more violence than
had characterized her in the cold and fog. The disturbed shadow, flung
by the fire-light--the only light there--on the wall, shivered and
danced grotesquely in the rear. No one took notice of the
new-comer--although more than one woman lay awake in the background. A
wrinkled hag, reposing with her basket of stay-laces under her head for
security's sake, winked and blinked at her for a while, and then went
off into a disjointed snore--the young mother with the sick child, sat
up in her share of the bed, and rocked the coughing infant backwards and
forwards, till her neighbour, with an oath, swore at her for letting the
cold in; then all was as Mattie had found it upon entering.
Presently Mrs. Watts returned, candle in hand, smelling more
aromatically of something hot and strong than ever.
"Simes says it's brass, and worth eightpence, and here's the money.
Strike me dead, if he said more than eightpence, there!--strike him
blind, if he'll get a farden out of it!"
"Where's the money?"
"Here's fippence--tuppence for to-night, and a penny you owe me, that
makes eightpence; and as for supper, why, I'll keep my word--no one can
ever say of Mother Watts that she didn't keep her word in anythink she
undertooked."
"I--I don't care so much about supper as I did--ain't I just husky? No
singing to-morrow, mother."
"Only singing small," was the rejoinder with a grunt at her own wit;
"you'd do better picking up brooches--you was allers clever with your
fingers, mind you. I only wish I'd been 'arf as sharp when I was young."
"I--I only wish I hadn't--found the thing," commented the girl,
sorrowfully.
"Well, I'm blest!"
Mrs. Watts was taking off the lid of her saucepan, and probing the
contents with a fork.
"Fippence isn't a fortun, and the young chap gave me a ha-penny once
when I was singing in Suffolk Street--I didn't mean it, somehow--I said
I never would again! Don't you remember when mother died here, how she
went on just at the last as to what was to become o' me; and didn't I
say I'd grow up good, and stick to singing and begging, and all that
_fun_--or go to the workus--or anythink?"
"Ah! your mother was a fine 'un to go on sometimes."
"And then I----"
"Now, I don't want to hear anythink about your goings on--I don't know
where you found that brassy brooch--I don't want to know--Simes don't
want to know! We takes your word for it, that it was come by proper, and
the less you say about it, the better; and the sooner you turns into
bed, if you don't want no supper, the better too."
"I don't see a good twopen'orth over there," commented Mattie; "they're
as full as ever they can stick."
"Take the rug, gal, and have it all to yourself, here by the fire."
"Well, it's not so bad. I say--you know old Wesden?"
"What, in Suffolk Street?--well."
"He's got a party to-night--I have been a listening to the
music--they've been dancing and all manner. And laughing--my eye! they
just have been a-laughing, Mother Watts--I've been laughing myself to
hear 'em."
"Um," was the unsympathetic response.
"It's a buff-day--Wesden's gal's buff-day. You know Wesden's gal--proud
of herself rather, and holds her head up in furst-rate style, as well
she may with such a shop as her father's got in Suffolk Street, and good
and pretty as she is, Lor bless her! I s'pose old Wesden's worth pounds
and pounds now?"
"Hundreds."
"Hundreds and hundreds of pounds," commented Mattie, coiling herself in
the rug upon the floor; "ah! I s'pose so. I often thinks, do you know, I
should like to be Wesden's little gal--what a lucky thing it'd be to be
turned somehow into Wesden's little gal, just at Christmas time, when
fairies are about."
"What!"
"Real fairies, on course--not the gals with the legs in the pantermines.
If there was any real fairies on course too, but I'm too knowing to
b'lieve that. But if there was, I'd say, please turn me into Wesden's
little gal, and give me the big doll by the parler door, and dress me
like a lady in a blue meriner."
"Well, you are going on nicely about Wesden's gal. That was allus your
fault, Mattie--such a gal to jaw, jaw, jaw--such a clapper, clapper,
clapper about everythink and everybody."
"I was just a-thinking that I _was_ going it rather, but I ain't a bit
sleepy, and I thought you wouldn't mind me while you was having your
supper, and my throat's so awful sore, and you ain't so sharp quite, as
you are sometimes. Do you know what I'd do, if I was a boy?"
"How should I know?"
"Go to sea--get away from here, and grow up 'spectable. I wouldn't stop
in Kent Street--I hate Kent Street--I'd walk into the country--oh! ever
so far--until I came to the sea, and then I'd find a ship and turn
sailor."
"Lookee here, you young drab," cried the stay-lace woman, suddenly
opening her eyes, and shrieking out in a shrill falsetto, "I'll turn out
and skin you, if you can't keep that tongue still. What am I here
for?--what did I pay tuppence for?--isn't that cussed coughing baby
enough row at a time?"
"If you've got anythink to say aginst my baby," said a husky voice in
the next bed, "say it out to his mother, and mind your cat's head while
you say it, you disagreeable baggage!"
"Well, the likes of that!"
"And the likes of you, for that matter--don't give me any more of your
sarse, or I'll----"
A tapping on the door with a stick diverted the general attention.
"Who's there?"
"Only me, Mrs. Watts."
"Oh! _only_ you," was the response; "come in, will yer? I've no need to
lock myself in, while I hide the swag away. _Now_, what's the matter?"
The door was opened, and enter a policeman, a man in private clothes,
with a billycock hat and a walking-stick, accompanied by a pale-faced,
long-haired youth, of fourteen years of age.
"Nothing particular the matter--only something lost as usual, Mrs.
Watts," said the man in private dress, politely. "Where's Mattie
to-night?"
"There she is. She's been in all the evening with a bad throat."
"Poor girl--throats _is_ bad at this time of the year."
The speaker looked at the lad at his side, after giving the first turn
backward to the rug.
"Is this the girl?"
The policeman took the candle from the table, and held the light close
to the girl's face--white, pinched, and haggard, with black eyes full of
horror.
"Don't say it's me, please," she gasped, in a low voice; "I'm the gal
that sings in Suffolk Street on a Saturday night, and they gives wittles
to at Wesden's. It isn't me."
Mattie had intended to brave it out at first, to have remained stolid,
sullen, and defiant, after the manners of her class; but she felt ill
and nervous, and the shadow of the prison-house loomed before her and
made her heart sink. Prison was a comfortable place in its way, but she
had never taken to it--one turn at it had been enough for her. If it had
been a policeman, or old Wesden, or anybody but this boy three years her
senior in age, many years her junior in knowledge of the world, she
would have been phlegmatic to the last; but this boy had been kind to
her twice in life--once on Christmas-eve, and once on a Saturday night
before that, and she gave way somewhat, partly from her new and
unaccountable weakness, partly because it was not a very stern face that
looked down into hers.
"That's her, sure enough--eh, young gentleman?" remarked the police
officer in private clothes.
There was another pause--the girl's face blanched still more, and the
look in her eyes became even more intense and eager; the boy glanced
over his shoulder at the servants of the law.
"No--this isn't the girl. Oh! no."
"Are you quite certain? Stand up, Mattie."
Mattie turned out of her rug and stood up, erect and motionless, with
her hands to her side, and her sharp black eyes still on Master
Hinchford.
"Oh! no, policeman. Ever so much taller!"
"Then we're on the wrong scent it seems, and you'd better go home and
leave it to us. Good night, Mrs. Watts."
"Good night," was the muttered response.
Policeman, detective, and Master Hinchford went down the stairs to the
court, out of the court into Kent Street, black and noisome--a turgid
current, that wore only a semblance of stillness at hours more late than
that.
"We'll let you know in the morning if there's any clue," said the
detective. "Jem," to the policeman, "see this lad out of Kent Street."
"All right. I think I'd try old Simes for the brooch."
"I'll drop on him presently. Good night, Jem."
"Good night."
The boy and policeman went to the end of Kent Street together, then the
boy bade the policeman good night, ran across the road, recrossed in the
fog a little lower down, and edged his way round St. George's Church
into the old objectionable thoroughfare. A few minutes afterwards, he
walked cautiously into the up-stairs room of Mrs. Watts, startling that
good lady at her late tripe supper very considerably.
"Hollo! young gemman, what's up now?"
Mattie, who had been crouching before the fire, shrank towards it more,
with her hands spread out to the blaze. She looked over her shoulder at
the door, anticipating his two unwelcome companions to follow in his
wake.
"Look here, Mattie," said he, in a very cool and business-like manner,
"fair's fair, you know. I've let you off in a handsome manner, but I'm
not going to lose the brooch. If it had been a trumpery brooch, I
shouldn't have cared so much."
"Was it real gold?"
"A real gold heart. I gave twelve and sixpence for it--I've been saving
up for it ever since last April."
"I'll get it--I'll try and get it," said Mattie; "I haven't it myself
now--it's been passed on. Upon my soul, I'll try my hardest to get it
back, see if I don't."
"We'll all try our werry hardest, sir," remarked Mrs. Watts, blandly.
"Ah! I daresay you will," said the boy, dubiously; "p'raps it had been
better if I'd told the truth--my pa always says 'Stick to the truth,
Sidney;' but you did look such a poor body to lock up, that I told a lie
for once. And who would have thought that you were a regular thief,
Mattie!"
"I'm not a reg'lar--I don't like thieving--I've only thove when I've
been werry--werry--hard druv; and I wasn't thinking of thieving, ony of
getting warm, when you came bump aginst me in the doorway. I meant to
have knocked and asked for a scrap to eat after awhile, when they'd all
got good-tempered over the beer and things. I'll bring the brooch--I'll
get it back--leave it to me, Master Hinchford."
"How did you know my name?"
"Oh! I know everybody about here--everybody at your place, 'specially.
Old Wesden and his gal in the blue meriner--and you, and your father
with the red face and the white mustache and hair--and the servant, and
the boy who takes the papers out, and is allus dropping them out of the
oil-skin kiver, and everybody. I'll bring the brooch, because you let me
off. Trust me," she repeated again.
"Well, I'll trust you. Fair play, mind."
"And now, cut out of this--it isn't quite a safe place for you, and the
people can't sleep if you talk, and you may catch the whooping
cough----"
"And you'll bring the brooch back? It's a bargain between us, Mattie."
"It's all right."
The youth re-echoed "all right," and went down-stairs, watched from the
dark landing by the girl who had robbed him. After a while the girl
closed the door and followed slowly down-stairs also. She was going in
search of old Simes.
CHAPTER III.
LODGERS.
"Depend upon it, Sidney, you'll never set eyes on that brooch again."
"I'm not so sure about that," was the half-confident reply.
"And depend upon it, you don't deserve to see it, boy--and that I for
one shall be glad if it never turns up."
"Pa!--you really can't mean it."
"You told a lie about it, Sidney, and though you saved the girl from
prison, yet it was a big, black lie all the same; and if luck follows
it, why it's clean against the Bible."
"The girl looked so pitifully at me, you see--and I did think she might
give the brooch back, out of gratitude."
"Gratitude in a young thief out of Kent Street?" laughed the father;
"well, it's a lesson in life to you, boy, and, after all, it only cost
twelve and sixpence."
"Ah!" sighed Sidney, "it was a long pull."
"You'll have learned by this that a lie never prospers--that in the long
run it confronts you again when least expected, to make your cheek burn
with your own baseness. I wonder now," gravely surveying his son,
"whether you would have let that girl off, if there had been no hope of
the brooch coming to light."
The boy hesitated--then looked full at his sire.
"Well--I think I should."
"I think you told a lie for twelve and sixpence--the devil got a bargain
from a Hinchford."
"You're rather hard upon me, pa," complained the boy, "and it wasn't for
twelve and sixpence, because I never got the brooch back; and if I ever
tell another lie, may I never see twelve and sixpence of my own again.
There!"
"Bravo, Sid!--that's a promise I'm glad to have wormed out of you,
somehow. And yet--ye gods!--what a promise!"
"I'll keep it--see if I don't," said Master Sidney, with his lips
compressed, and his cheeks a little flushed.
The father shook his head slowly.
"You are going into business--you will be a business man,--presently a
City man--one who will drive hard bargains, make hard bargains, and have
to fight his way through a hundred thousand liars. In the pursuit of
money--above all, in the scraping together of that fugitive article, you
must lie, or let a good chance go by to turn an honest penny. I can't
expect you _much_ better than other men, Sid."
"I wonder whether uncle lied much before----"
"He lied as little as he could, I daresay," quickly interrupted the
father, "but he became a rich man, and he rose from City trading. But I
told you once before--I think I have told you more than once--that I
never wish to hear that uncle's name."
"Yes, but I had forgotten it for the moment--speaking of money-making,
and City men, threw me a little off my guard."
"Yes, yes, I saw that, my boy--drop the curtain over the old grievance,
and shut the past away from you and me. I don't complain--I'm happy
enough--a little contents me. In the future, with a son to love and be
proud of, I see the old man's happiest days!"
"We'll try our best, sir, to make them so," exclaimed the boy.
"The Hinchfords are a buoyant race, and are not to be always kept down.
I never heard of more than one of us, a poor man in the same generation;
the Hinchfords have intelligence, perseverance, and pluck, and they make
their way in the world. If I have been unlucky in my time, and have
dropped down to a lodging in Great Suffolk Street, I see the next on the
list," laying his hand lightly on his boy's shoulder, "making his way to
the higher ground, God willing."
"I haven't made much way yet," remarked the son, checking quietly the
ambitious dreaming of the father. "I have only left school two months,
and an office-boy in Hippen's firm is not a very great affair, after
all."
"It's a step forward--don't grumble--you'll push your way--you're a
Hinchford."
"I'll do my best--I never was afraid of work."
"No--rather too fond of it, I fear. Sometimes I think there is no
occasion to pore, pore, pore over those books of an evening, studying a
lot of dry works, which can never be of service to a City man."
"I should like to be _precious_ clever!" was the boy's exclamation.
The father laughed, and added, with more satire than the boy detected--
"The precious clever ones seek out-of-the-way roads to fortune, and miss
them--die in the workhouse, occasionally. It is only respectable
mediocrity that jogs on to independence."
This strange dialogue between father and son occurred in the first-floor
of the little stationer's shop in Great Suffolk Street. Father and son
had lodged there eight years at least; Mrs. Hinchford, a delicate woman,
several years her husband's junior, had died there--the place was home
to the stiff-backed, white-haired man, who had prophesied a rise in life
for his son. Eight or nine years ago, the three Hinchfords had walked
into Mr. Wesden's shop, and looked at the apartments that had been
announced to be let from the front pane of the first-floor windows; had,
after a little whispering together, decided on the rooms, and had never
left them since, the wife excepted, who had died with her husband's hand
in hers, praying for her boy's future. The Hinchfords had settled as
firmly to those rooms on the first-floor, as Mr. Wesden, stationer, had
settled to Great Suffolk Street in ages remote. The rent was low, the
place was handy for Mr. Hinchford, who was clerk and book-keeper to a
large builders, Southwark Bridge Road way; the attendance was not a
matter of trouble to the Hinchfords, and the landlord and his wife were
unobtrusive people, and preferred the lodgers rent to their society.
For three years and a half the Hinchfords and Wesdens had only exchanged
good mornings in their meetings on the stairs--the Wesdens were humble,
taciturn folk, and the Hinchfords proud and stand-offish. After that
period Mrs. Hinchford fell ill, and Mrs. Wesden became of service to
her; helped, at last, to nurse her, and keep her company during the long
hours of her husband's absence at business, even to take care of her
noisy boy down-stairs, when his boisterousness in the holidays made his
presence--much as the mother loved him--unbearable. The Wesdens were
kind to the Hinchfords, and Mr. Hinchford, a man to be touched by true
sympathy, unbent at that time. He was a proud man, but a sensible one,
and he never forgot a kindness proffered him. He had belonged to a
higher estate once, and, dropping suddenly to a lower, he had brought
his old notions with him, to render him wretched and uneasy. He had
thought himself above those Wesdens--petty hucksters, as they
were--until the time when Mrs. Wesden became a kind nurse to his wife,
almost a mother to his boy; and then he felt his own inferiority to a
something in them, or belonging to them, and was for ever after that
intensely grateful.
When Mrs. Hinchford died, and the lonely man had got over his first
grief, he sought Mr. Wesden's company more often, smoked a friendly pipe
with him in the back parlour now and then--begged to do so, for refuge
from that solitary drawing-room up-stairs, filled with such sad memories
as it was then. Hinchford and Wesden did not talk much, the latter was
not fond of talking; and they were odd meetings enough, either in the
parlour, or in the up-stairs room, as business necessitated.
They exchanged a few words about the weather, and the latest news in the
papers, and then subsided into their tobacco-smoke till it was time to
say good night; but Wesden was company for Hinchford in his trouble, and
when time rendered the trouble less acute, each had fallen into the
habit of smoking a pipe together once or twice a week, and did not care
to break it.
In the parlour meetings, Mrs. Wesden would bring her spare form and
pinched countenance between them, and would sit darning socks and saying
little to relieve the monotony--unless the little girl were sitting up
late, and her vivacity required attention or reprimand. They were quiet
evenings with a vengeance, and Hinchford took his cue from the couple
who managed business in Great Suffolk Street--and managed it well, for
they minded their own, and were not disturbed by other people's.
Whilst we are looking back--taking a passing glimpse over our shoulder
at the bygones--we may as well add, that the Wesdens were naturally
quiet people, and did not put on company-manners for Mr. Hinchford in
particular. Thirty years ago they had married and opened shop in Great
Suffolk Street; struggled for a living without making a fuss about it;
lived frugally, pinched themselves in many ways which the world never
knew anything about; surmounted the first obstacles in their way, and
then, in the same quiet manner, saved a little money, then a little
more, and then, as if by habit, continued saving, maintaining the same
appearance in themselves, and the same quaint stolidity towards their
neighbours. They had even borne their family troubles quietly, losing
three children out of four without any great demonstration of
grief--keeping their lamentations for after-business hours, and their
inflexible faces for their curious neighbours, to whom they seldom
spoke, and from whom they chose no friends. They were a couple contented
with themselves and their position in society,--a trifle too frugal, if
not near--staid, jogtrot, business people of week days, church-goers who
patronized free seats for economy's sake on Sundays.
Once a year the Wesdens launched out--celebrating, in the month of
January, the natal day of the bright-faced girl in whom so much love was
centred, for whom they were working steadily and persistently still.
They had a juvenile party on that day always, and Harriet's school
friends came in shoals to the feast, and Mr. Wesden presented his
compliments to Mr. Hinchford, and begged the favour of borrowing the
drawing-room for one night, and hoped also to have the honour of Mr.
Hinchford's company, and Master Hinchford's company, on that
occasion--all of which being responded to in the affirmative, affairs
went off, as a rule, satisfactorily, until that momentous night in
January, when Master Sidney Hinchford lost his brooch.
This incident altered many things, and led to many things undreamed of
by the characters yet but in outline in these pages; without it we
should not have sat down to tell the history of these people--bound up
so inextricably with that poor wanderer of the streets whom we have
heard called Mattie.
CHAPTER IV.
MR. HINCHFORD'S EXPERIMENT.
The middle of March; six weeks since the robbery of Master Hinchfords'
gold heart; a wet night in lieu of a foggy one; a cold wind sweeping
down the street and dashing the rain all manner of ways; pattens and
clogs clicking and shuffling about the pavement of Great Suffolk Street;
the stationery shop open, and Mr. Wesden at seven o'clock sitting behind
the counter waiting patiently for customers.
Being a wet night, and customers likely to be scarce in consequence, Mr.
Wesden had carefully turned out one gas burner and lowered the two
others in the window to imperceptible glimmers of a despondent
character, and then taken his seat behind the counter ready for any
amount of business that might turn up between seven and half-past nine
p.m. The gas was burning more brightly in the back parlour, through the
closed glass door of which Mrs. Wesden was cutting out shirts, and Miss
Wesden learning, or feigning to learn, her school lessons for the
morrow.
Mr. Wesden was devoting his mind purely to business; in his shop he
never read a book, or looked at a newspaper, but waited for customers,
always in one position, with his head slightly bent forwards, and his
hands clutching his knees. In that position the largest order had not
the power to stagger him--the smallest order could not take him off his
guard. He bent his mind to business--he was "on duty" for the evening.
Mr. Wesden was a short, spare man, with a narrow chest, a wrinkled face,
a sharp nose, and a sandy head of hair--a man whose clothes were shabby,
and ill fitted him, the latter not to be wondered at, Mrs. Wesden being
the tailor, and making everything at home. This saved money, and
satisfied Mr. Wesden, who cared not for appearances, had a soul above
the fashion, and a faith in his wife's judgment. In the old days Mrs.
Wesden was forced to turn tailor and trouser-maker, or see her husband
without trousers at all; tailoring had become a habit since then, and
agreed with her--it saved money still, and economy was ever a virtue
with this frugal pair.
Mr. Wesden in his shop-suit then--that was his shabbiest suit, and
exceedingly shabby it was--sat and waited for customers. He waited
patiently; to those who strayed in for sheets of note-paper, books to
read, shirt-buttons, tapes, or beads, he was very attentive, settling
the demands with promptitude and despatch, saying little save "a wet
evening," and not to be led into a divergence about a hundred matters
foreign to business, until the articles were paid for, and the money in
his till. Then, if a few loquacious customers _would_ gossip about the
times, he condescended to listen, regarding them from his meaningless
grey eyes, and responding in monosyllables, when occasion or politeness
required some kind of answer. But he was always glad to see their faces
turned towards the door--they wearied him very much, these people, and
it was odd they could not take away the articles they had purchased, and
go home in quietness.
To people in the streets who, caught by some attraction in his window,
stopped and looked thereat, he was watchful from behind his
counter--speculating as to whether they were probable purchasers, or had
felonious designs. He was a suspicious man to a certain extent as well
as a careful one, and no one lingered at his window without becoming an
object of interest from behind the tobacco-jars and penny numbers. On
this evening a haggard white face--whether a girl or woman's he could
not make out for the mist on the window-panes--had appeared several
times before the shop-window, and looked in, over the beads, and tapes,
and through packets of paper, _at him_. Not interested at anything for
sale, but keeping an eye on him, he felt assured.
He had a bill in the window--"A BOY WANTED"--and if it had been a boy's
face flitting about in the rain there, he should not have been so full
of doubts as to the object with which he was watched; but there was a
battered bonnet on the head of the watcher, and therefore no room for
speculation concerning sex, at least.
After an hour's fugitive dodging, Mattie--for it was she--came at a slow
rate into the shop. She walked forwards very feebly, and took a firm
grip of the counter to steady herself.
Mr. Wesden critically surveyed her from his post of observation; she did
not speak, but she kept her black eyes directed to the face in front of
her.
"Well--what do you want, Mattie?" asked Mr. Wesden, finally.
"Nothin'--that is to buy."
"Ah! then we've nothing to give away for you any more."
"I want to speak to Master Hinchford," said Mattie; "I've come about the
brooch."
"Not brought it back!" exclaimed Mr. Wesden, roused out of his apathetic
demeanour by this assertion.
"I wish I had--no, I on'y want to see him."
Mr. Wesden called to his wife, and delivered Mattie's request through
the glass, keeping one eye on the new comer all the while. Mrs. Wesden
sent her daughter up-stairs with the message, and presently from a side
door opening into the shop Miss Wesden made her appearance.
"If you please, will you walk up-stairs?"
Harriet Wesden spoke very kindly, and edged away from Mattie as she
advanced--Mattie was the girl who had stolen the brooch, a strange
creature from an uncivilized world, and the stationer's little daughter
was afraid of her old pensioner.
The girl from the streets stared at Harriet Wesden in her turn, looked
very intently at her warm dress and white pinafore, and then looked back
at Mr. Wesden.
"May I go up, sir?"
"I don't see why they can't come down here," he grumbled, "but you must
go up if they want to see you. Stop here, Harriet, and call Ann--you
might catch something, girl."
Ann was called, and presently a broad-faced, red-armed girl made her
appearance.
"Show a light to this girl up-stairs, Ann."
"This girl--here?"
"Yes--that girl there."
"Oh! lawks--so _you've_ turned up agin."
Mattie did not answer--she seemed very weak and ill, and not inclined to
waste words foreign to her motive in appearing there. She followed the
servant up-stairs, pausing on the first landing to take breath.
"What's the matter with you--ain't you well?" asked the servant-maid.
"No, I ain't--I'm just the tother thing."
"Been ill?"
"Scarlet fever--that's all."
"Oh! lor a mussy on us!--keep further off! I can't bide fevers. We shall
all be as red as lobsters in the morning."
"It ain't catching now--Mother Watts didn't catch it--I wish she had!"
"Will you go up-stairs now?"
"Let's get a breath--I ain't so strong as I used to be--now then."
Up the next flight, to the door of the first-floor front, where Sidney
Hinchford, pale with suspense, was standing.
"Have you got it?--have you got it, Mattie?"
"No--I ain't got nothin'."
"'Cept a fever, Master Sidney--tell your father to look out."
A thin, large-veined hand protruded from the door, and dragged Master
Hinchford suddenly backwards into the room; a tall, military-looking old
gentleman, with white hair and white moustache, the instant afterwards
occupied the place, and looked down sternly at the small intruder.
"Keep where you are--I didn't know you had a fever, girl. Ann Packet,
put the light on the bracket. That will do."
Ann Packet set the chamber candlestick on a little bracket outside the
drawing-room, drew her clothes tightly round her limbs, and keeping
close to the wall, scuttled past the girl, whom fever had sorely
stricken lately. Mattie dropped on to the stairs, placed her elbows on
her knees, took her chin between her claw-like hands, and stared up at
Mr. Hinchford.
"I don't think you can catch anythin' from me, guv'nor."
Governor looked down at Mattie, and reddened a little.
"I'm not afraid of fever--it's only the boy I'm thinking about. Sidney,"
he called.
"Yes, pa."
"You can hear, if I leave the door open. Now, girl," addressing the
diminutive figure on the stairs, "if you haven't brought the brooch,
what was the good of coming here?"
"To let you know I tried--that's all. I thought that all you might think
that I'd stuck to it, you see. But I did try my hardest to get it
back--because the young gent let me off when the bobbies would have
walked me to quod. Lor bless you, sir, I'm not a reg'lar!"
"A what?"
"A reg'lar thief, sir. They've been trying hard to make me--Mother Watts
and old Simes, and the rest--but it don't do. I was locked up once afore
mother died, and mother was sorry--awful sorry, for _her_--you should
have just heard her go on, when I come out agin. Oh! no, I'm not a
reg'lar--I sings about the street for ha'pence, and goes to fairs, and
begs--and so on, but I don't take things werry often. I'm a stray, sir!"
"Ah!--God help you!" murmured the old gentleman.
"I never had no father--and mother's dead now. I'm 'bliged to shift for
myself. And oh! I just was hard up when I tooked the brooch."
"And what became of it?"
"Old Simes stuck to it, sir. I went to him on the werry night after I
had seen Master Hinchford, and he said he'd sold it for tenpence, but
he'd try and get it back for me, which he never did, sir--never."
"No--I suppose not," was the dry response.
"And the next day I caught the fever, and got in the workus, somehow;
and when I came back to Kent Street, last week that was, old Simes had
seen nothin' more of the brooch, and Mother Watts had forgot all about
it--so she said!" was the disparaging comment.
"And you came hither to tell us all this?"
"Yes--I thought you'd like to know I _did_ try, and that they were too
deep for me. My eye! they just are deep, those two!"
"Why didn't you stay in the workhouse?"
"Can't bide the workus, sir--they drop upon you too much. It's the wust
place going, sir, and no one takes to it."
"You're an odd girl."
Mr. Hinchford leaned his back against the door-post, and surveyed the
ragged and forlorn girl on the lower stair. He was perplexed with this
child, and her wistful eyes--keen and glittering as steel--made him feel
uncomfortable. Here was a mystery--a something unaccountable, and he
could not probe to its depths, or tell which was false and which was
genuine in the character of this motherless girl before him. He had
prided himself all his life in being a judge of character--a man of
observation, who saw the flaw in the diamond--the real face behind the
paint, varnish, and pasteboard. He had judged his own brother in times
past--he had mixed much with the world, and gleaned much from hard
experience thereof, and yet a child like this disturbed him. He fancied
that he could read a struggle for something better and more pure in
Mattie's life, and that Fate was against her and drawing her back to the
shadows from which she, as if by a noble instinct, was endeavouring to
emerge.
He felt curious concerning her.
"What do you intend to do now?"
"Lor, sir, I don't know. It depends upon what turns up."
"You will not thieve any more?"
"Not if I can help it--but if I can't help it, sir, I must go to school
at Simes's. He teaches lots of gals to get a living!"
Mr. Hinchford shuddered. There was a pause, during which the head of
Master Hinchford peered through the door to note how affairs were
progressing. The father detected the movement, and when the head was
hastily withdrawn, he drew the door still closer, and retained a grip of
the handle for precaution's sake.
"You don't know what your next step will be? You'll try to live
honestly, you say?"
"I'll try the ingun dodge. You get's through a heap of inguns at a
ha'penny a lot, if the perlice will ony let you be."
"And your stock in trade?"
"What's that?"
"How will you begin? Where are the onions to come from?"
"I shall sing for them to-morrow--my woice is comin' round a bit, Mother
Watts says."
Mr. Hinchford pulled at his long white moustache--the girl's confidence
and coolness induced him to linger there--something in his own heart led
him to continue the conversation. He was a philosopher, a student of
human nature, and this was a singular specimen before him.
"What could you live and keep honest upon?"
"Tuppence a day in summer--fourpence in winter. Summer a gal can sleep
anywhere--there's some prime places in the Borough Market, and lots o'
railway arches, Dockhead way; but it nips you awful hard when the
frost's on."
"Well--here's sixpence to set up in business with, Mattie--and as long
as you can show me an honest front, and can come here every Saturday
night and say, 'I've been honest all the week,' why, I'll stand the same
amount."
Mattie's eyes sparkled at this rise in life.
"I'll borrow a basket, and buy some inguns to-morrow. P'raps _you_ buy
inguns sometimes, and old--Mr. Wesden down-stairs, too. Yes, sir, it's
the connexion that budges one up!" she said, with the gravity of an old
woman.
"I see. I'll speak to Mr. Wesden about his custom, Mattie. You can go
now."
"Thankee, sir."
She rose to her feet, went a few steps down-stairs, paused, and looked
back.
"What is it, Mattie?"
"I hope the young gen'leman isn't a fretting much about his _broach_."
"Here, young gentleman," called the father, "do you hear that?"
Master Hinchford laughed from within.
"Oh, no!--I don't fret."
"P'raps some day I shall have saved up enuf to pay him back. That's a
_rum_ idea, isn't it, sir?"
"Not a bad one, Mattie. Think it over."
"Yes, sir."
Mattie departed, and Mr. Hinchford returned to the sitting-room. Master
Hinchford, buried in books, was sitting at the centre table.
"Are you going at figures to-night?"
"Just for a little while, I think."
"You'll ruin your eyes--I've said so fifty times."
"Better have weak eyes than weak brains, sir."
"Not the general idea, lad."
After a while, and when Master Hinchford was scratching away with his
pen, the father said--
"You don't say anything about Mattie."
"I think it was very kind of you," said the youth; "and I
think--somehow--that Mattie will be grateful."
"Pooh! pooh!" remarked the father, "you'll never make a first-rate city
man, if you believe in gratitude. Look at the world sternly, boy. Put
not your trust in anything turning out the real and genuine
article--work everything by figures."
Master Hinchford looked at his sire, as though he scarcely understood
him.
"I must bring you up to understand human nature, Sid--what a bad article
it is--plated with a material that soon wears off, if rubbed smartly.
Human nature is everywhere the same, and if you be only on your guard,
you may take advantage of it, instead of letting it take advantage of
you. Now, this girl is a specimen, which, at my own expense, we will
experimentalize upon. In that stray, my boy, you shall see the natural
baseness of mankind--or girl-kind."
"Don't you think that she'll come again?"
"For the sixpence, to be sure! Every Saturday night, with a long story
of how honest she has been all the week. Here we shall see a girl, who,
by her own statement, and with a struggle, can keep honest now--note the
effect of indiscriminate alms-giving."
"Of rewarding a girl for stealing my brooch, pa."
"Ah!--exactly. Some people who didn't understand me, would set me down
for a weak-minded old fool. In studying human nature, one must act oddly
with odd specimens. And this girl--who came to tell us she had not
brought the brooch back--I am just a little--curious--concerning!"
CHAPTER V.
SET UP IN BUSINESS.
I am afraid that the reader will be very much disgusted with us as
story-tellers, when we inform him that all these details are but
preliminary to our story proper--a kind of prologue in six chapters to
the comedy, melodrama or tragedy--which?--that the curtain will rise
upon in our next book. Still they are details, without which our
characters, and their true positions on our stage, would not have been
clearly defined; and in the uphill struggles of our stray, perhaps some
student of human nature, like Mr. Hinchford, may take some little
interest.
For they were real uphill struggles to better herself, and, therefore,
worthy of notice. Remarking them, and knowing their genuineness, it has
struck us that even from these crude materials a kind of heroine might
be fashioned--not the heroine of a high-class book--that is, a "book for
the Boudoir"--but of a book that will at least attempt to draw a certain
phase of life as plainly as it passed the writer's eyes once.
Let us, ere we _begin_ our story, then, speak of this Mattie a little
more--this girl, who was not a "reg'lar"--who had never been brought up
to "the profession"--who was merely a Stray! Let us even watch her in
her new vocation--set up in life with Mr. Hinchford's sixpence--and note
by what strange accident it changed the tenor of _her_ life; and at
least set her above the angry dash of those waves which, day after day,
engulph so many.
All that we know of Mattie, all that Mattie knew of herself, the reader
is fully acquainted with. Mattie's mother, a beggar, a tramp,
occasionally a thief, died in a low lodging-house, and, with some flash
of the better instincts at the last, begged her child to keep good, _if
she could_. And the girl, by nature impressionable, only by the force of
circumstance callous and cunning, tried to subsist on the streets
without filching her neighbours' goods--wavered in her best intentions,
as well she might, when the world was extra vigorous with her--grew more
worldly with the world's hardness, and stole now and then for bread,
when there was no bread offered her; made friends with young
thieves--"reg'lars"--of both sexes; constituted them her playmates, and
rehearsed with them little dramas of successful peculation; fell into
bad hands--receivers of stolen goods, and owners of dens where thieves
nightly congregated; regarded the police as natural enemies, the streets
as home, and those who filled them as men and women to be imposed upon,
to be whined out of money by a beggar's plaint, amused out of it by a
song in a shrill falsetto, tricked out of it by a quick hand in the
depths of their pockets. Still Mattie never became a "reg'lar;" she
earned money enough "to keep life in her"--she had become inured to the
streets, and had a fear, a very uncommon one in girls of her age and
mode of living, of the police-station and the magistrate. Possibly her
voice saved her; she had sung duets with her mother before death had
stepped between them, and she sold ballads on her own account when the
world was all before her where to choose. She was a girl, too, whom a
little contented; one who could live on a little, and make
shift--terrible shift--when luck run against her; above all, her
tempters, the Watts, Simes', and others, festering amongst the Kent
Street courts, were cruel and hard with her, and she kept out of their
way so long as it was possible.
Given the same monotony of existence for a few more years, and Mattie
would have become a tramp perhaps, oscillating from fair to fair,
race-course to race-course, losing true feeling, modesty, heart and
soul, at every step. She had already tried the fairs within ten
miles--the races at Hampton and Epsom, &c., and had earned money at
them--she was seeing her way to business next summer, at the time she
was interested in one particular house in Great Suffolk Street, Borough.
Mattie was fond of pictures, and therefore partial to Mr. Wesden's shop,
where the cheap periodicals and tinsel portraits of celebrated
stage-ranters, in impossible positions, were displayed--fond, too, of
watching Mr. Wesden's daughter in her perambulations backwards and
forwards to a day-school in Trinity Street, and critically surveying her
bright dresses, her neat shoes and boots, her hats for week days, and
drawn bonnets for Sundays, with a far-off longing, such as a destitute
child entertains for one in a comfortable position--such a feeling as we
envious children of a larger growth may experience when our big friends
flaunt their wealth in our eyes, and talk of their hounds, their horses,
and their princely estates.
"Oh! to be only Harriet Wesden," was Mattie's secret wish--to dress like
her, look like her, be followed by a mother's anxious eyes down the
street; to have a father to see her safely across the broad thoroughfare
lying between Great Suffolk Street and school; to go to school, and be
taught to read and write and grow up good--what happiness, unattainable
and intangible to dream of!
Eugene Sue, I think, tried to show the bright side of Envy, and the good
it might effect; and I suppose there are many species of Envy, or else
that we do not call things invariably by their right names. Mattie at
least envied the stationer's daughter; Miss Wesden was a princess to
her, and lived in fairy-land; and in seeing how happy she was, and what
good spirits she had, Mattie's own life seemed dark enough; but that
other life which Mattie tried to keep aloof from, denser and viler
still. Harriet Wesden was the heroine of her story, and in a far-off
distant way--never guessed at by its object--Harriet Wesden was loved,
especially after she had begun to notice Mattie's attention to the
pictures in the window, and to change them for her sole edification more
often than was absolutely necessary.
Mattie was well known in Great Suffolk Street; they knew her at
Wesden's--nearly every shopkeeper knew her, and exchanged a word or two
with her occasionally--Great Suffolk Street was her _beat_. In health
Mattie was a good-tempered, sharp-witted girl--bearing the ills of her
life with composure--selling lucifers and singing for a living.
They trusted her in Great Suffolk Street; the poor folk living at the
back thereof bought lucifers of her of a Saturday night, and asked how
she was getting on--the boys guarding their masters' shop-boards nodded
in a patronizing way at her--now and then, a plate of broken victuals
was tendered her from some well-to-do shopkeeper, who could afford to
part with it, and not miss it either--before her fever, she had had a
little "c'nexion," and she set to work to get it up again, when the
Hinchford sixpence heaped her basket with onions.
That was the turning-point of Mattie's life; after that, a little woman
with an eye to business; a small female costermonger with a large basket
before her suspended by a strap--troubled and kept moving on by
policemen--but earning her fair modicum of profit; quick with her eyes,
ready with her answers, happy as a queen whose business was brisk, and
lodging away from Mother Watts and old Simes, whose acquaintance she had
quietly dropped.
Mattie still watched Harriet Wesden from a distance; still felt the same
strange interest in that girl, one year her senior, growing up so pretty
whilst she became so plain and weather-beaten; experiencing still the
same attraction for that house in particular; knowing each of its
inmates by heart, and feeling, since the brooch defalcation, a part of
the history attached to the establishment. When the Wesdens made up
their minds to send Harriet to boarding-school, by way of a finish to
her education, Mattie learned the news, and was there to see the cab
drive off; Mattie even told Ann Packet, servant to the Wesdens, and
regular purchaser of Mattie's "green stuff," that she should miss her
werry much, and Suffolk Street wouldn't be half Suffolk Street after she
was gone--which observation being reported to Mrs. Wesden, directed more
attention to the stray from that quarter, and made one more friend at
least.
_One more_--for Mattie had found a friend in the tall, stiff-backed,
stern-looking old gentleman of the name of Hinchford. The lodger's
philosophy had all gone wrong; his knowledge of human nature had been at
fault; his prophecies concerning Mattie's ingratitude had proved
fallacious, and her steady application to business had greatly
interested him. He was a sterling character, this old gentleman, for he
confessed that he had been wrong; and he now held forth Mattie's
industry as an example of perseverance in the world to his son, just as
in the past he had intended her as a striking proof of the world's
ingratitude.
The climax was reached two years after his dialogue with Mattie on the
stairs--when Mattie was thirteen years of age, and Master Hinchford
sixteen--when Mattie still hawked goods in Suffolk Street--quite a woman
of the world, and deeply versed in market prices--one who had not even
at that time attained to the dignity of shoes and stockings.
Mr. Wesden, the quiet man of business, was in his shop as usual, when
Mattie walked in, basket and all.
Mr. Wesden regarded her gravely, and shook his head. Onions and some
sweet herbs had been speculated in that morning, and no further articles
were required at that establishment.
"If you please, I don't want you to buy, Mr. Wesden--" said she, "but
will you be good enough to send that up to Master Hinchford?"
Mr. Wesden looked at the small, dirty piece of paper in which something
was wrapped, and then at Mattie.
"It's honestly come by, sir," said Mattie.
"I never said it wasn't," he responded.
Mattie retired into the street--it was a Saturday night, and there were
many customers abroad--she was doing a flourishing trade, when a tall
youth caught her by the arm, and dragged her round the corner of the
first street.
"Oh! don't pinch my arm so, Master Hinchford."
"What's the twelve and sixpence for, Mattie--not for the--not for
the----"
"Yes, the _broach_! I've been a-saving up, and keeping myself down for
it, and now it's easy on my mind."
"I won't have it. I've been thinking about it, and I won't have it,
Mattie."
"Please do. I've been trying so hard to wipe _that_ off. I'm quite well
now. I've got the c'nexion all right, and shall save it all up agin, and
the winter's arf over, and when Miss Wesden comes back, you can buy her
another brooch with it, and nobody disapinted."
The youth laughed, and coloured, and shook his head.
"I won't take twelve and sixpence from you, I tell you. Why, Mattie, you
don't know the value of money, or you'd never fling it away like this.
Why, it's a fortune to you."
"No--it's been a _weight_--that twelve and six, somehow. I've been a
thief until to-night--now it's wiped clean. Don't try to make me a thief
agin by giving it on me back. Oh! don't please stop my trade like this!"
"Well, I shall make you out in time, Mattie--_perhaps_."
Master Hinchford pocketed the money, and walked away slowly. Mattie
returned to her "c'nexion." Mr. Hinchford sat and philosophized to
himself all the evening on the impracticability of arriving at a
thorough understanding of human nature, as exemplified in "girl-kind."
CHAPTER VI.
THE END OF THE PROLOGUE.
Hard times set in after that night. The winter was half over, Mattie had
said; but the worst half was yet to come, and for that she, with many
thousands like her, had made but little preparation. The worst half of
the frost of that year set in like a blight upon the London streets,
froze the gutters, raised the price of coals, sent provisions up to
famine figures, cut off all the garden stuff, and threw such fugitive
traders as Mattie completely out of work. Hers became a calling that
required capital now; even the greengrocers' shops, Borough way, were
scantily stocked--the market itself was not what it used to be when
things were flourishing, and oh! the prices that were asked in those
times!
Poverty of an ill aspect set in soon after the frost; crime set in soon
after poverty--when the workhouses are besieged by hungry claimants for
relief, the prisons are always extra full. Suffolk Street, the streets
branching thitherwards to Southwark Bridge, the narrow lanes and
turnings round the Queen's Bench, in the Borough Road and verging
towards Union Street, were all haunted by those phantoms that had set in
with the frost--there was danger in the streets as well as famine, and
money was hard to earn, and hold when earned! Small shopkeepers with
large families closed their shutters and locked themselves in with
desolation; men out of work grew desperate--the streets were empty of
the basket women and costermongers, and swarming in lieu thereof with
beggars and thieves; even the police, nipped at the heart by the frost,
were harder on society that stopped the way, and had little mercy even
on old faces. Mattie's was an old face which stopped the way at that
time--Mattie, basketless and onionless, and trying lucifers again, and
essaying on Saturday nights--when workmen's wages were paid--a song or
two opposite the public-houses.
In this old fashion, Mattie earned a few pence at times; she was small
for her age--very small--and the anxious-looking face touched those who
had odd coppers to spare. But it was a task to live notwithstanding, and
Mattie fought hard with the rest of the waifs and strays who had a tough
battle to wage that winter time. "Luck went dead against her," as she
termed it; she was barred from the market by want of capital--one lot of
goods that she had speculated in never went off her hands, or rather her
basket, on which they withered more and more with the frost, until they
became unsaleable products--and there was no demand for lucifers or
anything!
Mattie was nearly starving when the old tempter turned up in Great
Suffolk Street--at the time when she was weak, and the police had been
more than commonly "down on her," and she had not taken a halfpenny that
day--at a time when the tempter _does_ turn up as a general pile, that
is, when we are waiting very anxiously for an EXCUSE.
"What! Mattie!--Lor! the sight o' time since I set eyes on you!"
"What! Mrs. Watts!"
"What are you doing, girl?--not much for yourself, I should think," with
a disparaging glance at the tattered habiliments of our heroine.
"Not much just now, Mrs. Watts--hard lines it is."
"Ah! well, it may be--you allus wanted pluck, Mattie, like your mother.
And hard lines it is just now, for those who stand nice about trifles.
What's that in your hand, gal?"
"Congreve lights."
"What! still at Congreve lights--if I shouldn't hate the werry sight and
smell on 'em by this time."
"So I do," said Mattie, sullenly.
"Come home with me, and let's have a bit o' talk together,
Mattie--there's a friend or two o' your age a-coming to have a little
talk with me to-night."
"Don't you keep a lodging house now?"
"No--a little shop for bones and bottles and such things; and we has a
party in the back parler twice a week, and something nice and hot for
supper."
"A school--on your own hook?" said Mattie, quickly.
"Oh! how sharp we gets as we grows up!--but you allus was as sharp as
any needle, and I was only saying to Simes but yesterday, if I could
just drop on little Mattie, she'd be the werry gal to do us credit--she
would."
"I've been shifting for myself these last two years and odd, and I got
on tidy till the frost set in, and now it's--_all up_!"
"Ah!--all up--precisely so."
Mrs. Watts did not detect the tragic element in Mattie's peroration; she
had sallied forth in search of her, and had found her in the streets
ragged and penniless and hungry. It was worth while to speculate in
Mattie now--to show her some degree of kindness--to lure her back to the
old haunts, and something worse than the old life. She began her
temptations, and Mattie listened and trembled--the night was cold, and
she had not tasted food that day. Mrs. Watts kept her hand upon the
girl, and expatiated upon the advantages she had to offer now--even
attempted to draw Mattie along with her.
"Wait a bit--don't be in a hurry," said Mattie; "I'll come presently
p'raps--not just now."
"Oh! I'm not so sweet on you," said Mrs. Watts, aggrieved; "come if you
like--stop away if you like--it's all one to me. I'll go about my
rump-steaks for supper, and you can stay here and starve, if you prefer
it."
This dialogue occurred only a short distance from Mr. Wesden's shop,
when Mr. Wesden was putting up the shutters in his own quiet way, with
very little noise, his boy having left him at a moment's notice. Mrs.
Wesden, who had her fears for his back--Mr. W. had had a sensitive back
for years--was dragging the shutters out from under the shop-board--thin
slips of wood, that required not any degree of strength to manage. There
were six shutters--at the third Mr. Wesden said--
"There's Mattie."
"Ah! poor girl!"
At the fifth he added--
"With an old woman that I don't like the style of very much."
Mrs. Wesden went to the door, and looked down the street at the tempter
and the tempted--Mattie was under the lamp, and the face was a troubled
one, on which the gas jet flickered. When the sixth shutter was up, and
the iron band that secured them all firmly screwed into the door-post,
the quiet couple stood side by side and watched the conflict to its
abrupt conclusion. Both guessed what the subject had been--there was
something of the night-bird and the gaol-bird about Mrs. Watts, that was
easy of detection.
Mrs. Wesden touched her husband's arm.
"Danger, John."
"Ah!"
"And that girl has been a-going on so quietly for years, and getting her
own living, and she without a father and a mother to care for her--not
like our Harriet."
"No."
"And the way she brought back the money for that brooch."
"Yes--that was funny."
"I don't see the fun of it, John."
"That was good of her."
"Do you know, I've been thinking, John, we might find room for
her--those boys are a great trouble to us, and if we had a girl, it
might answer better to take the papers out, and she might serve in the
shop."
"Serve in MY shop--good Lord!"
"Some day when we could trust her, I mean--and she could sleep with Ann;
and I daresay she would come for her keep in these times. And we might
be saving her--God knows from what!"
"Mrs. Wesden, you're as full of fancies as ever you can stick."
"I've a fancy to help her in these hard times, John; and when helping
her won't ruin us--us who have put by now a matter of three thou----"
"Hush!"
"And when helping her won't ruin us, but get rid of those plagues of
boys, John. Fancy our Harriet in the streets like that!"
She pointed to Mattie standing alone there, still under the gas lamp,
deep in thought. Mr. Wesden looked, but his lined face was expressive of
little sympathy, his wife thought.
"We're hard pushed for a boy--the bill's no sooner down than up
again--try a girl, John!"
"If you'll get in out of the cold, Mrs. W., I'll think of it."
Mrs. Wesden retired, and Mr. Wesden kept his place by the open door, and
his quiet eyes on Mattie. He was a man who did nothing in a hurry, and
whose actions were ruled by grave deliberation. He did not confess to
his wife that of late years he had been interested in Mattie; watched
her from under his papers in the shop-window; saw her business-like
habits, her method, her briskness over her scanty wares, her cleverness
even in dodging her _bete noire_ the policeman. He was a man, moreover,
who went to church and read his Bible, and had many good thoughts
beneath his occasional brusqueness and invariable immobility. A very
quiet man, a man more than ordinarily cautious, hard to please, and
still harder to rouse.
In shutting up his shop that night, he had caught one or two fragments
of the dialogue, and he knew more certainly than his wife that Mattie
was being tempted back to the old life. Of that life he knew everything;
he had learned it piece by piece without affecting to take an interest
in the matter; he even knew that Mattie had long taken a fancy--an odd
fancy--to his daughter, that she often inquired about her, and her
boarding-school, of Ann Packet, domestic to the house of Wesden.
He thought of Mattie's temptation, then of Mrs. Wesden's extraordinary
suggestion. He was a lord of creation, and if he had a weakness it was
in pooh-poohing the suggestions of his helpmate, although he adopted
them in nine cases out of ten, disguising them, as he thought, by some
little variation, and bringing them forward in due course as original
productions of his own teeming brain.
And boys _had_ worried him for years--lost his numbers, been behind-hand
with the _Times_ to his best customers, insulted those customers when
reprimanded, and set the blame of delay at his door, played and fought
with other boys before his very shop-front, broken his windows in
putting up the shutters, had even paid visits to his till, and
surreptitiously made off with stock, and had never in his memory of
boys--industrious or otherwise--possessed one civil, clean-faced, decent
youth.
"Suppose I had Mattie on trial for a week," he said at last, and looked
towards the lamp-post. Mattie was gone--a black shadow, exactly like
her, was hurrying away down the street towards the Borough--running
almost, and with her hands to her head, as though a crowd of thoughts
was stunning her!
Mr. Wesden never accounted for leaving his shop-door open without
warning his wife--for running at his utmost speed after the girl.
At the corner of Great Suffolk Street he overtook her.
"Where are you going?--what are you running for?" he asked, indignantly.
Mattie started, looked at him, recognized him.
"Nothin--partic'ler--is anythink the matter?"
"How--how--should you--like--to be--_a news boy_?" he panted.
No circumlocution in Mr. Wesden--straight to the point as an arrow.
"Yours!--you wouldn't trust me--you never gives trust."
"I've--I've thought of trying you."
"You?" she said again.
"Yes--_me_."
"Well, I'd do anythink to get an honest living--but I was giving up the
thoughts o' it--it's so hard for the likes of us, master."
"Come back, and I'll tell you what I've been thinking about, Mattie."
Not a word about what Mrs. Wesden had been thinking about--such is man's
selfishness and narrow-mindedness.
Mattie went back--for good!
* * * * *
On this prologue to our story we can afford to drop the curtain, leaving
our figures in outline, and waiting a better time to paint our
characters--such as they are--more fully. We need not dwell upon
Mattie's trial, upon Mattie's change of costume, and initiation into an
old frock and boots of the absent Harriet--of the many accidents of life
at Wesden, stationer's, accidents which led to the wanderer's settling
down, a member of the household, an item in that household expenditure.
Let the time roll on a year or two, during which Mr. Wesden's back grew
worse, and Mrs. Wesden's hair more grey, and let the changes that have
happened to our friends speak for themselves in the story we have set
ourselves to write.
Leave we, then, the Stray on the threshold of her new estate, standing
in Harriet Wesden's dress, thinking of her future; the shadow-land from
which she has emerged behind her, and new scenes, new characters beyond
there--beneath the bright sky, where all looks so radiant from the
distance.
END OF THE FIRST BOOK.
BOOK II.
THE NEW ESTATE.
CHAPTER I.
HOME FOR GOOD.
Three years make but little difference in the general aspect of a poor
neighbourhood. The same shops doing their scanty business; the same
loiterers at street corners; the same watch from hungry eyes upon the
loaves and fishes behind the window-glass; the same slip-shod men, women
and children hustling one another on the pavement, in all weathers,
"doing their bit of marketing;" the same dogs sniffing about the
streets, and prowling round the butchers' shops.
An observer might detect many changes in the names over the shop fronts,
certainly. Business goes wrong with a great many in three years--capital
is small to work with in most instances, and when the rainy day comes,
in due course, by the stern rule by which rainy days are governed, the
resistance is feeble, and the weakest put the shutters up, sell off at
an alarming sacrifice, and go, with wives and children, still further on
the downhill road. There are seizures for rent, writs issued on
delinquents, stern authority cutting off the gas and water, sterner
authorities interfering with the weights and measures, which, in poor
neighbourhoods, _will_ get light occasionally; brokers' men making their
quarterly raids, and still further perplexing those to whom life is a
struggle, desperate and intense.
Amidst the changes in Great Suffolk Street, one business remains firm,
and presents its wonted aspect. Over the little stationer's shop, the
old established emporium for everything in a small way, is still
inscribed the name of Wesden--has been repainted the name of Wesden in
white letters, on a chocolate ground, as though there were nothing in
the cares of business to daunt the tradesman who began life there, young
and blooming!
There are changes amongst the papers in the windows--the sensation
pennyworths--the pious pennyworths--the pennyworths started for the
amelioration and mental improvement of the working classes, unfortunate
pennyworths, that never get on, and which the working classes turn their
backs upon, hating a moral in every other line as naturally as we do.
The stock of volumes in the library is on the increase; the window,
counter, shelves and drawers, are all well filled; Mr. Wesden deals in
postage and receipt stamps--ever a good sign of capital to spare--and
has turned the wash-house into a warehouse, where reams of paper,
envelopes, and goods too numerous to mention, are biding their time to
see daylight in Great Suffolk Street.
Changes are more apparent in the back-parlour, which has been home to
Mr. and Mrs. Wesden for so many years. Let us look in upon them after
three years' absence, and to the best of our ability note the alteration
there.
Mr. and Mrs. Wesden are seated one on each side of the fire--Mr. Wesden
in a new arm-chair, bought of an upholsterer in the Borough, an easy and
capacious chair, with spring seats and sides, and altogether a luxury
for that establishment. Mrs. Wesden has become very feeble and rickety;
rheumatic fever--that last year's hard trial, in which she was given
over, and the quiet man collapsed into a nervous child for the
nonce--has left its traces, and robbed her of much energy and strength.
She is a very old woman at sixty-three, grey-haired and sallow, with two
eyes that look at you in an amiable, deer-like fashion--in a motherly
way that gives you an idea of what a kind woman and good Christian she
is.
Mr. Wesden, sitting opposite his worn better-half, was originally
constructed from much tougher material. The lines are deeper in his
face, the nose is larger, the eyes more sunken, perhaps the lips more
thin, but there is business energy in him yet; no opportunity to earn
money is let slip, and if it were not for constant twinges in his back,
he would be as agile as in the old days when there were doubts of
getting on in life.
But who is this sitting with them, like one of the family?--a
dark-haired, pale-faced girl of sixteen, short of stature, neat of
figure, certainly not pretty, decidedly not plain, with an everyday
face, that might be passed fifty times, without attracting an observer;
and then, on the fifty-first, startle him by its intense expression. A
face older than its possessor's years; at times a grave face, more
often, despite its pallor, a bright one--lit-up with the cheerful
thoughts, which a mind at ease naturally gives to it.
Neatly, if humbly dressed--working with a rapidity and regularity that
would have done credit to a stitching machine--evidently at home there
in that back-parlour, to which her dark wistful eyes had been so often
directed, in the old days; this is the Mattie of our prologue--the
stray, diverted from the dark course it was taking, by the hand of John
Wesden.
"Wesden, what's the time now?"
"My dear, it's not five minutes since you asked last," is the mild
reproof of the husband, as he tugs at his copper-gilt watch chain for a
while; "it's close on ten o'clock."
"I hope nothing has happened to the train--"
"What should happen, Mrs. Wesden?" says a brisk, clear ringing voice;
"just to-night of all nights, when Miss Harriet is expected. Why, she
didn't give us hope of seeing her till nine; and trains are always
behind-hand, I've heard--and it's very early hours to get fidgety, isn't
it, sir?"
"Much too early."
"I haven't seen my dear girl for twelve months," half moans the mother;
"she'll come back quite a lady--she'll come back for good, Wesden, and
be our pride and joy for ever. Never apart from us again."
"No, all to ourselves we shall have her after this. Well," with a
strange half sigh, "we've done our duty by her, Mrs. W."
"I hope so."
"It's cost a heap of money--I don't regret a penny of it."
"Why should you, Wesden, when it's made our girl a lady--fit for any
station in the world."
"But this perhaps," says Mr. Wesden, thoughtfully; "and this can't
matter, now we----"
He does not finish the sentence, but takes his pipe down from the
mantel-piece, and proceeds to fill it in a mechanical fashion. Mrs.
Wesden looks at him quietly--her lord and husband never smokes before
supper, without his mind is disturbed--the action reminds his wife that
the supper hour is drawing near, and that nothing is prepared for
Harriet's arrival.
"She will come home tired and hungry--oh! dear me--and nothing ready,
perhaps."
"I'll help Ann directly," says Mattie.
The needle that has been plying all the time--that did not cease when
Mattie attempted consolation--is stuck in the dress she is hemming; the
work is rolled rapidly into a bundle; the light figure flits about the
room, clears the table, darts down-stairs into the kitchen; presently
appears with Ann Packet, maid-of-all-work, lays the cloth, sets knives
and forks and plates; varies proceedings by attending to customers in
the shop--Mattie's task more often, now Mr. Wesden's back has lost its
flexibility--flits back again to the task of preparing supper in the
parlour.
With her work less upon her mind, Mattie launches into small talk--her
tongue rattles along with a rapidity only equal to her needle. She is in
high spirits to-night, and talks more than usual, or else that loquacity
for which a Mrs. Watts rebuked her once, has known no diminution with
expanding years.
"We shall have her in a few more minutes, mistress," she says,
addressing the feeble old woman in the chair; "just as if she'd never
been away from us--bless her pretty face!--and it was twelve days,
rather than twelve months, since we all said good-bye to her. She left
you on a sick bed, Mrs. Wesden, and she comes back to find you well and
strong again--to find home just as it should be--everything going on
well, and everybody--oh! so happy!"
"And to find you, Mattie--what?" asks Mr. Wesden, in his quiet way.
"To find me very happy, too--happy in having improved in my scholarship,
such as it is, sir--happy with you two friends, to whom I owe--oh! more
than I ever can think about, or be grateful enough for," she adds with
an impetuosity that leads her to rush at the quiet man and kiss him on
the forehead.
"We're square, Mattie--we're perfectly square now," he replies, settling
his silver-rimmed spectacles more securely on his nose.
"Oh! that is very likely," is the sharp response.
"You nursed the old lady like a daughter--you saved her somehow. If it
hadn't been for you----"
"She would have been well weeks before, only I was such a restless girl,
and wouldn't let her be quiet," laughs Mattie.
She passes into the shop again with the same elastic tread, serves out
two ounces of tobacco, detects a bad shilling, and focuses the customer
with her dark eyes, appears but little impressed by his apologies, and
more interested in her change, locks the till, and is once more in the
parlour, talking about Miss Harriet again.
"She is on her way now," she remarks; "at London Bridge by this time,
and Master Hinchford--we must say Mr. Hinchford now, I suppose--helping
her into the cab he's been kind enough to get for her."
"What's the time now, Wesden?" asks the mother.
"Well," after the usual efforts to disinter--or disembowel--the silver
watch, "it's certainly just ten."
"And by the time Tom's put the shutters up, she'll be here!" cries
Mattie; "see if my words don't come true, Mr. Wesden."
"Well, I hope they will; if they don't, I--I think I'll just put on my
hat, and walk down to the station."
Presently somebody coming down-stairs with a heavy, regular tread,
pausing at the side door in the parlour, and giving two decisive raps
with his knuckles on the panels.
"Come in."
Enter Mr. Hinchford, senior, with his white hair rubbed the wrong way,
and his florid face looking somewhat anxious.
"Haven't they come yet?"
"Not yet, sir."
"Ah! I suppose not," catching Mattie's glance directed towards him
across the needlework which she has resumed again, and at which she is
working harder than ever; "there's boxes to find, and pack on the cab,
and Miss Harriet's no woman if she do not remember at the last minute
something left behind in the carriage."
"Won't you sit down, sir?" asks Mrs. Wesden.
"N--no, thank you," he replies; "you'll have your girl home in a minute,
and we mustn't over-crowd the little parlour. I shall give up my old
habit of smoking here, now the daughter comes back--you must step up
into my quarters, Wesden, a little more often."
"Thank you."
"Temporary quarters, I suppose, we must say, now the boy's getting on so
well. Thank God," with a burst of affection, "that I shall see that boy
in a good position of life before I die."
"He's a clever lad."
"Clever, sir!" ejaculates the father, "he's more than clever, though I
don't sing his praises before his face. He has as clear a head-piece as
any man of forty, and he's as good a man of business."
"And so steady," adds Mrs. Wesden.
"God bless you! madam, yes."
"And so saving," is the further addition of Mr. Wesden,--"that's a good
sign."
"Ah! he knows the value of money better than his father did at his age,"
says the old man; "with his caution, energy, and cleverness we shall see
him, if we live, a great man. Whoever lives to see him--a great man!"
"It's a comfort when our children grow up blessings to us," remarks Mrs.
Wesden, dreamily looking at the fire; "neither you nor I, sir, have any
cause to be sorry for those we love so very, very much."
"No, certainly not. We're lucky people in our latter days--good night."
"You can't stop, then?" asked Wesden.
"Not just now. Don't keep the boy down here, please--he'll stand and
talk, forgetting that he's in the way to-night, unless you give him a
hint to the contrary. Out of business, he's a trifle inconsiderate,
unless you plainly tell him he's not wanted. Good night--I shall see
Harriet in the morning."
"Yes--good night."
Mr. Hinchford retires again, and in a few minutes afterwards, before
there is further time to dilate upon the danger of railway travelling,
and the uncertainty of human hopes, the long-expected cab dashes up to
the door. There is a bustle in Great Suffolk Street; the cabman brings
in the boxes amidst a little knot of loungers, who have evidently never
seen a box before, or a cab, or a young lady emerge therefrom assisted
by a tall young man, or listened to an animated dispute about a
cab-fare, which comes in by way of sequence whilst the young lady is
kissing everybody in turn in the parlour.
"My fare's eighteenpence, guv'nor."
"Not one shilling, legally," affirmed the young man.
"I never did it for a shilling afore--I ain't a going now--I'll take a
summons out first."
"Take it."
"You won't stand another sixpence, guv'nor?"
"No."
"Then," bundling on to his box, and lashing his horse ferociously, "I
won't waste my time on a tailor--it's much too valuable for that!"
The young man laughs at this withering sarcasm, and passes through the
shop into the parlour, where the animation has scarcely found time to
subside.
Harriet Wesden is holding Mattie at arm's length, and looking steadily
at her--the stationer's daughter is taller by a head than the stray.
"And you, Mattie, have been improving, I see--learning all the lessons
that I set you before I went away--becoming of help to father and
mother, and thinking of poor _me_ sometimes."
"Ah! very often of 'poor me.'"
"Oh! how tired I am!--how glad I shall be to find myself in my room!
Now, Mr. Sidney, I'm going to bid you good night at once, thanking you
for all past services."
"Very well, Miss Harriet."
"And, goodness me!--I did not notice those things before! What!
spectacles, Sidney--at your age?"
The tall young man colours and laughs--keeping his position at the
door-post all the while.
"Can't afford to have weak eyes yet, and so have sacrificed all my
personal charms for the sake of convenience in matters of business. You
don't mean to say that they look so very bad, though?"
"You look nearer ninety than nineteen," she replies. "Oh! I wouldn't
take to spectacles for ever so much."
"That's a very different affair," remarks Sidney.
"Why?"
"Oh! because it _is_--that's all. Well, I think I'll say good night
now--shall I take that box up-stairs for you, Miss Harriet?"
"Ann and I can manage it, Mr. Hinchford," says Mattie.
"Yes, and put a rib out, or something. Can't allow the gentler sex to be
black slaves during my sojourn in Great Suffolk Street. Good night all."
"Good night."
He closes the shop door, seizes the box which has been deposited in the
shop, swings it round on his shoulders, and marches up-stairs with it
two steps at a time, and whistling the while. On the landing, outside
the sitting-room, and double-bedded room, which his father occupies, Ann
Packet, domestic servant, meets him with a light.
"Lor a mussy on us!--is that you, Master Sidney?"
"Go a-head, up-stairs, wench, and let us find a place to put the box
down. This is Miss Harriet's box."
"Orful heavy, ain't it, sir?"
"Well--it's not so light as it might be," asserts Master Sidney;
"forward, there."
Meanwhile, too tired to repair to her room for any toilette arrangements
at that hour of the night, Harriet Wesden sits down between her mother
and father, holding her bonnet on her lap. Mr. and Mrs. Wesden regard
her proudly, as well they may, Harriet being a girl to be proud
of--tall, graceful, and pretty, something that makes home bright to the
parents, and has been long missed by them. No one is aware of all that
they have sacrificed in their desire to make a lady of their only
child--or of one-half of the hopes which they have built upon concerning
her.
"This always seems such an odd, _little_ box to come back to after the
great Brighton school," she says, wearily; "oh, dear! how tired I am!"
"Get your supper, my dear, at once, and don't sit up for anybody
to-night," suggests the mother.
"I don't want any supper. I--I think I'll go up-stairs at once and keep
all my little anecdotes of school and schooling till the morrow. Shall
I?"
"By all means, Harriet, if you're tired," says the father, "but after a
long journey I would take something. You don't feel poorly, my dear?"
"Who?--I--oh! no," she answered, startled at the suggestion; "but I have
been eating biscuits and other messes all the journey up to London, and
therefore my appetite is spoiled for the night. To-morrow I shall be
myself again--and we will have a long talk about all that has happened
since I left here last year--by to-morrow, we shall have settled down so
comfortably!"
"I hope so."
She looks timidly towards her father, but he is smoking his pipe, and
placidly surveying her. She kisses him, then her mother, lastly Mattie,
and leaves the room;--the instant afterwards Mattie remembers the
unwieldy box, which Master, or Mr. Hinchford has carried up-stairs.
"She'll never uncord the box--I should like to help her, if you can
spare me."
"Knots always did try the dear girl," affirms Mrs. Wesden, "go and help
her by all means--my dear."
Mattie needs no second bidding; she darts from the room, and in a few
minutes is at the top of the house; in her forgetfulness inside the room
without so much as a "By your leave, Miss Wesden."
"Oh! dear, I forgot to knock--and oh! dear, dear!" rushing forward to
Harriet sitting by the bedside and rocking herself to and fro, as though
in pain, "what is the matter?--can I help you?--what has happened!"