Chapter Four.
A Morning with Misery
I give these as so many random recollections of my life or narratives related to me from time to time, and I have, as being more in keeping with the mood in which they are written, naturally given prominence to those which lean towards the sad and pathetic side of life. My dealings with little Bill encouraged me to visit here and there in the poorer portions of London, at first in fear and trembling, for the rougher men that hung about the entrances to the courts and often blocked the way inspired me with horror and dread, but somehow before long I found that I had become known, and I and my basket were welcome visitors in many a dark home, and at last I had no hesitation in penetrating the worst portions of that doleful district, back of Drury Lane and the portion swept away to make room for the Courts of Justice.
I remember well one morning that I had with misery in its haunts and my search for a house of whose occupants I had been told. I had been considering for some few minutes rather at fault, when I came upon a group of boys engaged in a game of buttons upon the pavement, and my inquiring for Burt’s Buildings created quite a little scene of excitement.
“Burt’s Buildings, ma’am?” said one, as all rose to stare at me. “It’s first turning to the left after you gets down Popper’s Court.”
“No ’tain’t now,” cried another, “you let me tell the lady. It’s the first turning to the left past old Blacke’s where the lamp hangs as Jim Pikehurst broke; and then you goes – ”
“No you don’t ma’am, it’s up this way, ma’am. He means Burt’s Court, where they’re pulling down. I’ll show you ma’am.”
“But are you sure you know?” I said.
“No, ma’am,” cried half-a-dozen in chorus, “he don’t know, ma’am, not a bit.”
Here there was a threatening gesture from my would be guide, and a defiant war-whoop in reply, but uttered in retreat, and the next minute I was standing amongst the rags of one of the inns of court, in company with a little sallow skinned boy about ten, dressed in a great deal of trousers and very little shirt. The weather being warm, this completed his costume, if I except the dirt with which he was largely decorated.
In company with a similarly costumed boy of his own age, he was now making a light repast off a piece of black, gristly stuff which they called “fungus;” but whose odour announced it to be the composition of glue and treacle used by printers for their ink-rollers. My boy – that is to say, the one who became my guide – was at the same time forming designs upon the broken pavement by placing one of his bare feet in the black gutter, full of unutterable abominations, and then printing the foot – heel, sole, and toes – upon various dry spots. Now he would contract his toes, now expand them, and then seem to derive much pleasure from making the foul black mud of the gutter ooze up between them in little gushes which met and formed a dirty stream upon his instep.
Whose house did I want? Well, I only wanted leading to the place itself; and after divers wanderings in and out, I stood in Burt’s Buildings, and looked about, with more than one curious pair of eyes watching me. On my right were a couple of uninhabited tenements – tenements untenable – the grating in front rusty and worn, the walls foul with mud, every window that could be reached by stick or stone broken, every available ledge loaded with an assortment of stones, bones, cabbage-stumps, oyster shells mingled with those of the cockle, periwinkle, and whelk; while the remaining eight or nine houses in the court were at first sight in the same predicament, though the second glance told that all their windows were not broken, while further inspection showed that attempts had been made in a variety of ways to repair the breaches made by time and the smaller builders of the place. Paper seemed much in favour in some sashes; wood and pieces of slate in others; one gashly breach was stopped by an old rusty tea tray, which well covered four broken squares; while rags, straw, and a variety of articles which would have required analysation to catalogue, displayed themselves obtrusively at every turn.
By slow degrees little signs showed that, although the inhabitants presented themselves but little, yet there were dwellers here. At one window a bright red and yellow tulip grew in an old black teapot, whose nose and handle evidently helped to form the rubbish heap down one of the gratings. At another window there was a small bird-cage – such a small cage for the restless linnet within, which breasted the wires incessantly, ever twittering and bringing thoughts of far-off blue-arched campaigns, where the trees were delicate with their bright golden green, and the emerald turf was spangled with the flowers of spring. Again, at another window, two or three articles of washed clothing had been hung out to dry, and secured by shutting the window down upon them. While the next instant came a whoop and a yell, and a troop of children swept back into the before silent court, from which they had evidently been drawn by some foreign attraction. The babies were there, tied in the customary drabby, washed-out shawl, swaying in the most top-heavy manner. The mothers were there now, at door and window, to shriek out warning or threat; while now appeared the first male inhabitant in the shape of a closely-cropped man, with a bull head and a black pipe, a villainous countenance, and a little dog which he nursed as he looked out of one of the windows, and stopped at intervals to spit upon one particular broken slab in the court below.
“This here’s Burt’s Buildings,” said my guide; who then spun the penny I gave him into the air, caught at it, struck it upon the edge, when down it fell, and rolled to the grating of an empty house and was gone; but hardly quicker than the little boy had leaped forward and thrown himself down upon his face, to peer between the rusty bars.
Who could have resisted the dismay and misery of that boy’s face as he raised it to mine? or have failed to enjoy the sudden change to hope and delight as the hand which went to a pocket placed another coin in his hand, to send him turning the wheel along the court till he had disappeared; while half a score of the young builders formed themselves into a committee of inspection, and wedged their noses down between the bars in their endeavour to catch a glimpse of the lost coin.
And now I was at Burt’s Buildings, for what had I come, but to see misery; and I saw her, gaunt, and foul, and wan, looking at me from every landing as I slowly ascended step by step the creaking old stairs, which threatened to give way once and for all beneath my weight, as they hung to the wall, while the balustrade seemed to have disappeared a bit at a time for firewood. I saw misery looking out at me from the dark eyes of a woman, who coughed painfully at intervals, as she told me of how she found bread for herself and three children.
“It came hard on me, you see, ma’am, when my poor master died. We were out of the country, and come up here for work, and very good work he got till the accident that laid him up for six weeks. Out-patient of the hospital he was, and they were very kind to him; and though he never took regularly to his bed, he seemed to dwindle away, and he was took. Don’t think me hard-hearted because I don’t cry about it, ma’am; I’ve cried till the tears seem as if they would not come any more, and what one has to do for a bit of bread is so trying at times that one has no time to be fretting.
“You see, children are so thoughtless, and yet you can’t wonder at it – but as long as they have their meal’s victuals that’s all they think about. But then they’re very young, you see, and don’t know any better. That big one’s seven, and she minds the two others while I go out, and I always manage not to be gone more than three hours at a time, though it hinders me a good deal from taking longer beats, for you see I’m out now-a-days in this pleasant spring weather with flowers. I’d do needlework, so as to be at home with them, but, oh! it’s heart-breaking work. It was hard enough, I dare say, before there were sewing machines, but it’s dreadful now, and you may work day and night almost to live. Just fancy being paid so many farthings for making a garment that has taken hours, while the poor children have been fretful and miserably cooped up in this one room – half-a-crown a week I pay for it, because it’s one of the most decent, and I like being up at the top of the house, here, for one seems to get a little more fresh air, even if it’s smoky. The poor bairns didn’t seem to breathe down below there, and grew more white and pasty-looking every day till I got them up here.
“I’m not particular what I sell as long as it is in season and people will buy. But it’s no matter what one takes to, there’s scores about selling the very same thing, and it’s quite a fight sometimes for the next penny. Flowers always did, and I suppose always will, sell well, and I do the best I can with mine by sprinkling and keeping them fresh, and setting them out as tasty as I can, so as to catch people’s eyes. There’s very few people, no matter how hard they are, but what you can make the way to their hearts with a pretty, sweet-smelling blossom or two. I suppose as God made them, He’s given them that power, and I’ve had your hard City men, who make money all the day long, stop in front of my basket with the lines softening out of their faces, and a brightness coming into their eyes that seems to stop for long enough; and if they buy, say, a bunch of violets or a few wallflowers, they’ll stop about them, not picking and choosing and beating you down, but pretending to, so that they may hang about the basket, and smell them, and look at their simple beauty.
“I keep at flowers all I can, for it’s a good trade for a poor woman like me; and even in that one gets one’s regular customers. One simple-looking boy comes and buys rosebuds of me; and I smile to myself, sadly enough though, for it reminds me of old times, when one’s eyes were bright, and one’s face was smooth and fresh-coloured, and Tom used to say – Well, never mind, ma’am, I won’t bother you with that nonsense; but this customer of mine buys those rosebuds to give to some proud girl, I feel sure – one as will never look at him; and the poor fellow always sighs when he buys his roses. One gentleman buys a bunch regularly to take home to his wife; another for his children; and work-girls love them dearly, to keep them in water in their rooms. I call regular at one house, and somehow I always make up my best bunch for there. You see, it’s for a sick girl who has been lying months and months, and they tell me she will never get better; while the thought of her seems to remind me of my own trouble, and I feel sorry for her; and after the servant has taken the sweet, fresh bunch, and paid me for it, I seem to picture it all – the poor invalid smiling and brightening up at the sight of the pretty flowers, as she holds out her poor, thin, white hands for them, and perhaps kisses them, and holds them to her poor pale face. I don’t know that she does – I only seem to fancy it is so.
“Rich and poor, ma’am, all alike, and ready to be customers for a few flowers; and I often felt cut to see the eager looks some poor creatures give at them, and how ready they are to part with almost their last coin to get hold of them. Why, I’ve known boys who had perhaps a penny to get a bit of bread-and-butter for their tea come and spend it with me; and once, bad off as I was myself, I could not take the longing little fellow’s penny, but gave him the flowers.
“You see, it seems to come into the hearts of all God’s creatures, I think, to love the bright country; and when tiny bits of it like are held before them, it sets them longing, and makes them eager to get them. But it’s hard work at times to know what to do, for flowers fade and die, and after one has come down to the lavender, and cried that round the streets, it’s getting a hard matter to know what to sell. I’ve come home here o’ nights before now, and gone down on my knees by that bit of a bed and cried to be taught what to do next to get a bit of bread for the little ones, whom I’ve found huddled together fast asleep – after crying, perhaps, for long enough because mother did not come home. And shall I tell you why mother did not come home, ma’am? Well, it was because she had tramped hour after hour, street after street, to find a customer, and then came home disappointed and heart-sick. Then, perhaps it would be the crying, or perhaps better thoughts came into one’s ignorant heart; but I’ve got up better, and somehow the sun would shine a bit for me the next day, so that I could make a few pence; and one way and another we manage to live, while others starve.”
Was it one’s heart that had grown heavier with listening to the widow’s sorrows? Perhaps so; for certainly the stairs creaked more loudly as I went down past misery staring from more than one lair, hollow-eyed and gaunt, as though speaking as the flower-selling widow; and then I stood once more in the court, threaded my way past the children that flocked there, several of whom were fishing with bits of string for the lost coin, and, on reaching the embouchure, encountered young Trousers, who grinned a welcome as I passed, and ceased printing black feet upon the pavement.
“I ain’t spint that there copper,” he shouted after me.
“Haven’t you?” I said. “What shall you do with it, my man?”
“Give it to mother,” said the grimy young rascal, with an earnestness that there was no mistaking; and I passed on, thinking what a fine lad that little fellow would have made if planted in different soil with some one to carefully watch him and tend.
Chapter Five.
Ruth’s Stepfather
I feel a shrinking – a strange kind of hesitation in narrating some of these adventures lest the reader should think me full of egotism, and that I told of my little charities as if proud of what I had done. Pray chase any such idea from your minds, for I can honestly say that no feeling of vanity ever existed in mine. I am merely relating the pleasures of my life, my rambles amongst weeds and flowers – the weeds and sad lined blossoms of our town.
I was much troubled in my mind as to how I could most help the widow of Burt’s Buildings, and I knew that I could best assist her by helping her to help herself. One of her great troubles was that she had to leave her little ones so long, and a strange sense of pain had shot through me as she spoke of finding them huddled together as they had cried themselves to sleep. What could I do then?
The thought came: A sewing machine! that which had been her enemy to be now her friend; and the next morning I was in one of our busiest streets in front of a large establishment within whose plate-glass doors I saw a pretty lady-like young woman, busy winding thread upon one of some dozen of the ingenious little pieces of mechanism, and upon stating my wants she led me up to a bluff, sharp-looking, grey man whose face seemed to soften as she spoke before returning to her task.
“Sewing machine ma’am, eh?” he said, eyeing me very sharply. “Own use?”
“No,” I said, “I want it for a poor woman to enable her to earn her living.”
“Instalments, ma’am,” he said sharply.
“I beg your pardon.”
“Want to pay for it by instalments?” he said.
“Oh! no, I will pay for it at once, and you can deliver it to her.”
“Oh,” he said smiling, “that’s twenty per cent, discount.”
I looked at him wonderingly, for I did not know what twenty per cent discount might be.
“I always take twenty per cent discount off these machines,” he said, and I left pleasurably impressed by his ways and those of the young girl he introduced to me as his daughter, and that little new machine was the first of several in which I had Mr Smith’s kind co-operation and advice in what were doubtful cases.
The result was a warm intimacy, in the course of which he told me his little history and that of his daughter – stepdaughter he called her – Ruth.
“Mine’s a curious trade to have taken to,” he said, “and I had plenty of up-hill work, but it has grown to be profitable. Things were at a low ebb with me when I took it up, while now – ”
There, I won’t boast, only say that I’m thankful for it. Poverty comes in at the door, and love flies out of the window, so they say; but that’s all nonsense, or else your poor people would be always miserable, while according to my experience your poor man is often more lighthearted than the man with thousands.
I was at my wits’ end for something to do, and sat nibbling my nails one day, and grumbling horribly.
“Don’t go on like that, Tom,” says my wife; “things might be worse.”
“How?” I said.
“Why, we might have Luke at home, and he is doing well.”
Luke’s our boy, you know, and we had got him into a merchant’s office, where he seemed likely to stay; but I was in a grumbling fit then, and there was a clickety-click noise going on in the next room which fidgeted me terribly.
“Things can’t be worse,” I said angrily; and I was going to prove myself in the wrong by making my wife cry, when there was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” I said, and a fellow-lodger put in his head.
“Are you good at works, Mr Smith?” he said.
“What works?” I said; “fireworks – gasworks?”
“No, no; I mean works of things as goes with wheels and springs.”
“Middling,” I said, for I was fond of pulling clocks to pieces, and trying to invent.
“I wish you’d come and look at this sewing machine of mine, for I can’t get it to go.”
Sewing machines were newish in those days, and I got up to have a look at it, and after about an hour’s fiddling about, I began to see a bit the reason why – the purpose, you know, of all the screws and cranks and wheels; I found out too why our neighbour’s wife – who was a dressmaker, and had just started one – could not get it to go; and before night, by thinking, and putting this and that together, had got her in the way of working it pretty steadily, though with my clumsy fingers I couldn’t have done it myself.
I had my bit of dinner and tea with those people, and they forced half-a-crown upon me as well, and I went back feeling like a new man, so refreshing had been that bit of work.
“There,” said my wife, “I told you something would come.”
“Well, so you did,” I said; “but the something is rather small.”
But the very next day – as we were living in the midst of people who were fast taking to sewing machines – if the folks from the next house didn’t want me to look at theirs; and then the news spreading, as news will spread, that there was somebody who could cobble and tinker machinery, without putting people to the expense that makers would, if the jobs didn’t come in fast, so that I was obliged to get files and drills and a vice – regular set of tools by degrees; and at last I was as busy as a bee from morning to night, and whistling over my work as happy as a king.
Of course every now and then I got a breakage, but I could generally get over that by buying a new wheel, or spindle, or what not. Next we got to supplying shuttles, and needles, and machine cotton. Soon after I bought a machine of a man who was tired of it. Next week I sold it at a good profit; bought another, and another, and sold them; then got to taking them and money in exchange for new ones; and one way and the other became a regular big dealer, as you see.
Hundred? Why, new, second-hand, and with those being repaired upstairs by the men, I’ve got at least three hundred on the premises, while if anybody had told me fifteen years ago that I should be doing this, I should have laughed at him.
That pretty girl showing and explaining the machine to a customer? That’s Ruth, that is. No, not my daughter – yet, but she soon will be. Poor girl, I always think of her and of bread thrown upon the waters at the same time.
Curious idea that, you will say, but I’ll tell you why.
In our trade we have strange people to deal with. Most of ’em are poor, and can’t buy a machine right off, but are ready and willing to pay so much a week. That suits them, and it suits me, if they’ll only keep the payments up to the end.
You won’t believe me, perhaps, but some of them don’t do that. Some of them leave their lodgings, and I never see them again: and the most curious part is that the sewing machine disappears with them, and I never see that again. Many a one, too, that has disappeared like that, I do see again – perhaps have it brought here by some one to be repaired, or exchanged for a bigger, or for one of a different maker; for if you look round here, you’ll see I’ve got all kinds – new and old, little domestics and big trades – there, you name any maker, and see if I don’t bring you out one of his works.
Well, then I ask these people where they got the machine – for I always know them by the number – it turns out that they’ve bought it through an advertisement, or at a sale-room, or maybe out of a pawnbroker’s shop.
But I’ve had plenty of honest people to deal with too – them as have come straightforward, and told me they couldn’t keep up their payments, and asked me to take their machine back, when I’d allow them as much as I thought fair, and ’twould be an end of a pleasant transaction.
The way I’ve been bitten though, by some folks, has made me that case-hardened that sometimes I’ve wondered whether I’d got any heart left, and the wife’s had to interfere, telling me I’ve been spoiled with prosperity, and grown unfeeling.
It was she made me give way about Ruth, for one day, after having had my bristles all set up by finding out that three good sound machines, by best makers, had gone nobody knew where, who should come into the shop but a lady-like woman in very shabby widow’s weeds. She wanted a machine for herself and daughter to learn, and said she had heard that I would take the money by instalments. Now just half-an-hour before, by our shop clock, I had made a vow that I’d give up all that part of the trade, and I was very rough with her – just as I am when I’m cross – and said, “No.”
“But you will if the lady gives security,” says my wife hastily.
The poor woman gave such a woe-begone look at us that it made me more out of temper than ever, for I could feel that if I stopped I should have to let her have one at her own terms. And so it was; for, there, if I didn’t let her have a first-class machine, as good as new, she only paying seven and six down, and undertaking to pay half-a-crown a week, and no more security than nothing!
To make it worse, too, if I didn’t send the thing home without charge! – Luke going with it, for he was back at home now keeping my books, being grown into a fine young fellow of five-and-twenty; and I sat and growled the whole of the rest of the day, calling myself all the weak-minded idiots under the sun, and telling the wife that business was going to the dogs, and I should be ruined.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom,” she said.
“So I am,” says I. “I didn’t think I could be such a fool.”
“Such a fool as to do a good kind action to one who was evidently a lady born, and come down in the world!”
“Yes,” I says, “to living in Bennett’s Place, where I’ve sunk no less than ten machines in five years.”
“Yes,” says the wife, “and cleared hundreds of pounds. Tom, I’m ashamed of you – you a man with twenty workmen busy upstairs, a couple of thousand pounds’ worth of stock, and in the bank – ”
“Hold your tongue, will you!” I said roughly, and went out into the shop to try and work it all off.
Luke came back just after, looking very strange, and I was at him directly.
“Where’s the seven and six,” I said, angrily.
He didn’t answer, but put three half-crowns down on the desk, took out the book, made his entries – date of delivery, first payment, when the other’s due, and all the rest of it – and was then going into the house.
“Mind,” I says, sharply, “those payments are to be kept up to the day; and to-morrow you go to Rollys, who live nearly opposite to ’em, and tell ’em to keep an eye on the widow, or we shall lose another machine.”
“You needn’t be afraid, father,” he says coldly; “they’re honest enough, only poor.”
I was just in that humour that I wanted to quarrel with somebody, and that did it.
“When I ask you for your opinion, young man, you give it me; and when I tell you to do a thing, you do it,” I says, in as savage a way as ever I spoke to the lad. “You go over to-morrow and tell Rollys to keep a strict look-out on those people – do you hear?”
“Father,” he says, looking me full in the face, “I couldn’t insult them by doing such a thing,” when without another word he walked quietly out of the shop, leaving me worse than ever.
For that boy had never spoken to me like that before, and I should have gone after him feeling mad like, only some people came in, and I didn’t see him again till evening, and a good thing too, for I’m sure I should have said all sorts of things to the boy, that I should have been sorry for after. And there I was fuming and fretting about, savage with everybody, giving short answers, snapping at the wife, and feeling as a man does feel when he knows that he has been in the wrong and hasn’t the heart to go and own it.
It was about eight o’clock that I was sitting by the parlour fire, with the wife working and very quiet, when Luke came in from the workshop with a book under his arm, for he had been totting up the men’s piecework, and what was due to them; and the sight of him made me feel as if I must quarrel.
He saw it too, but he said nothing, only put the accounts away and began to read.
The wife saw the storm brewing, and she knew how put out I was, for I had not lit my pipe, nor yet had my evening nap, which I always have after tea. So she did what she knew so well how to do – filled my pipe, forced it into my hand, and just as I was going to dash it to pieces in the ashes, she gave me one of her old looks, kissed me on the forehead, as with one hand she pressed me back into my chair, and then with the other she lit a splint and held it to my tobacco.
I was done. She always gets over me like that; and after smoking in silence for half-an-hour, I was lying back, with my eyes closed, dropping off to sleep, when my wife said – what had gone before I hadn’t heard —
“Yes, he’s asleep now.”
That woke me up of course, and if I didn’t lie there shamming and heard all they said in a whisper!
“How came you to make him more vexed than he was, Luke?” says the wife; and he told her.
“I couldn’t do it, mother,” he said, excitedly. “It was heart-breaking. She’s living in a wretched room there with her daughter; and, mother, when I saw her I felt as if – there, I can’t tell you.”
“Go on, Luke,” she said.
“They’re half-starved,” he said in a husky way. “Oh, mother! it’s horrible. Such a sweet, beautiful girl, and the poor woman herself dying almost with some terrible disease.”
The wife sighed.
“They told me,” he went on, “how hard they had tried to live by ordinary needlework, and failed, and that as a last resource they had tried to get the machine.”
“Poor things!” says the wife; “but are you sure the mother was a lady?”
“A clergyman’s widow,” says Luke hastily; “there isn’t a doubt about it. Poor girl! and they’ve got to learn to use it before it will be of any use.”
“Poor girl, Luke?” says the wife softly; and I saw through my eyelashes that she laid a hand upon his arm, and was looking curiously at him, when if he didn’t cover his face with his hands, rest his elbows on the table, and give a low groan! Then the old woman got up, stood behind his chair, and began playing with and caressing his hair like the foolish old mother would.
“Mother,” he says suddenly, “will you go and see them?”
She didn’t answer for a minute, only stood looking down at him, and then said softly —
“They paid you the first money?”
“No,” he says hotly. “I hadn’t the heart to take it.”
“Then that money you paid was yours, Luke?”
“Yes, mother,” he says simply; and those two stopped looking one at the another, till the wife bent down and kissed him, holding his head afterwards, for a few moments, between her hands; for she always did worship that chap, our only one; and then I closed my eyes tight, and went on breathing heavy and thinking.
For something like a new revelation had come upon me. I knew Luke was five-and-twenty, and that I was fifty-four, but he always seemed like a boy to me, and here was I waking up to the fact that he was a grown man, and that he was thinking and feeling as I first thought and felt when I saw his mother, nigh upon eight-and-twenty years ago.
I lay back, thinking and telling myself I was very savage with him for deceiving me, and that I wouldn’t have him and his mother laying plots together against me, and that I wouldn’t stand by and see him make a fool of himself with the first pretty girl he sets eyes on, when he might marry Maria Turner, the engineer’s daughter, and have a nice bit of money with her, to put into the business, and then be my partner.
“No,” I says; “if you plot together, I’ll plot all alone,” and then I pretended to wake up, took no notice, and had my supper.
I kept rather gruff the next morning, and made myself very busy about the place, and I dare say I spoke more sharply than usual, but the wife and Luke were as quiet as could be; and about twelve I went out, with a little oil-can and two or three tools in my pocket.
It was not far to Bennett’s Place, and on getting to the right house I asked for Mrs Murray, and was directed to the second-floor, where, as I reached the door, I could hear the clicking of my sewing machine, and whoever was there was so busy over it that she did not hear me knock; so I opened the door softly, and looked in upon as sad a scene as I shall ever, I dare say, see.
There in the bare room sat, asleep in her chair, the widow lady who came about the machine, and I could see that in her face which told plainly enough that the pain and suffering she must have been going through for years would soon be over; and, situated as she was, it gave me a kind of turn.