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Title: Tales of Mean Streets
Author: Arthur Morrison
* A Project Gutenberg Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0800371.txt
Language:  English
Date first posted: April 2008
Date most recently updated: April 2008

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Title: Tales of Mean Streets
Author: Arthur Morrison




The Street
Lizerunt
Without Visible Means
To Bow Bridge
That Brute Simmons
Behind the Shade
Three Rounds
In Business
The Red Cow Group
On the Stairs
Squire Napper
A Poor Stick
A Conversion
All that Messuage



PREFACE.

After a quarter of a century these, brief and searching tales of Arthur
Morrison's still keep the breath of life in them--modest but precious
salvages from the high washings and roarings of the eighteen-nineties.
The decade--the last of the Victorian age, as of the century--was so fecund
that some Englishman has spread out its record to the proportions of a
book. It was a time of youngsters, of literary rebellions, of adventures
in new forms. No great three-decker sailed out of it, but what a host
there was of smaller craft, rakish and impudent--the first "Jungle Book,"
the "Dolly Dialogues," "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," the first plays and
criticisms of George Bernard Shaw, "Sherlock Holmes," the matriculation
pieces of H.G. Wells, Jerome K. Jerome, Hewlett, "Dodo" Benson, Hichens
and so on, and all the best of Gissing and Wilde. Think of the novelties
of one year only, 1894: "The Green Carnation," "Salomé," "The Prisoner of
Zenda," the "Dolly Dialogues," Gissing's "In the Year of Jubilee," the
first "Jungle Book," "Arms and the Man," "Round the Red Lamp," and, not
least, these "Tales of Mean Streets."

In the whole lot there was no book or play, save it be Wilde's "Salomé,"
that caused more gabble than the one here printed again, nor was any
destined to hold its public longer. "The Prisoner of Zenda," chewed to
bits on the stage, is now almost as dead as Baal; not even the stock
companies in the oil towns set any store by it. So with "The Green
Carnation," "Round the Red Lamp," the "Dolly Dialogues," and even "Arms
and the Man," and, I am almost tempted to add, the "Jungle Book." But
"Tales of Mean Streets" is still on its legs. People read it, talk about
it, ask for it in the bookstores; periodically it gets out of print.
Well, here it is once more, and perhaps a new generation is ready for it,
or the older generation--so young and full of fine enthusiasm in
1894!--will want to read it again.

The causes of its success are so plain that they scarcely need pointing
out. It was not only a sound and discreet piece of writing, with people
in it who were fully alive; there was also a sort of news in it, and even
a touch of the truculent. What the news uncovered was something near and
yet scarcely known or even suspected: the amazing life of the London East
End, the sewer of England and of Christendom. Morrison, in brief, brought
on a whole new company of comedians and set them to playing novel pieces,
tragedy and farce. He made them, in his light tales, more real than any
solemn Blue Book or polemic had ever made them, and by a great deal; he
not only created plausible characters, but lighted up the whole dark
scene behind them. People took joy in the book as fiction, and pondered
it as a fact. It got a kind of double fame, as a work of art and as
social document--a very dubious and dangerous kind of fame in most cases,
for the document usually swallows the work of art. But here the document
has faded, and what remains is the book.

At the start, as I say, there was a sort of challenge in it as well as
news: it was, in a sense, a flouting of Victorian complacency, a headlong
leap into the unmentionable. Since Dickens' time there had been no such
plowing up of sour soils. Other men of the decade, true enough, issued
challenges too, but that was surely not its dominant note. On the
contrary, it was rather romantic, ameliorative, sweet-singing; its high
god was Kipling, the sentimental optimist. The Empire was flourishing;
the British public was in good humor; life seemed a lovely thing. In the
midst of all this the voice of Morrison had a raucous touch of it. He was
amusing and interesting, but he was also somewhat disquieting, and even
alarming. If this London of his really existed--and inquiry soon showed
that it did--then there was a rift somewhere in the lute, and a wart on
the graceful body politic.

Now all such considerations are forgotten, and there remains only the
book of excellent tales. It has been imitated almost as much as "Plain
Tales From the Hills," and to much better effect. The note seems likely
to be a permanent one in our fiction. Now and then it appears to die out,
but not for long. A year ago I thought it was doing so--and then came the
"Limehouse Nights" of Thomas Burke, and James Stephens' "Hunger." Both go
back to "Tales of Mean Streets" as plainly as vers libre goes back to
Mother Goose.

H.L. MENCKEN.
Baltimore, 1918.



INTRODUCTION - THE STREET


This street is in the East End. There is no need to say in the East End
of what. The East End is a vast city, as famous in its way as any the
hand of man has made. But who knows the East End? It is down through
Cornhill and out beyond Leadenhall Street and Aldgate Pump, one will say:
a shocking place, where he once went with a curate; an evil plexus of
slums hat hide human creeping things; where filthy men and women live on
penn'orths of gin, where collars and clean shirts are decencies unknown,
where every citizen wears a black eye, and none ever combs his hair. The
East End is a place, says another, which is given over to the unemployed.
And the unemployed is a race whose token is a clay pipe, and whose enemy
is soap: now and again it migrates bodily to Hyde Park with banners, and
furnishes adjacent police courts with disorderly drunks. Still another
knows the East End only as a place whence begging letters come; there are
coal and blanket funds there, all perennially insolvent, and everybody
always wants a day in the country. Many and misty are people's notions of
the East End; and each is commonly but the distorted shadow of a minor
feature. Foul slums there are in the East End, of course, as there are in
the West; want and misery there are, as wherever a host is gathered
together to fight for food. But they are not often spectacular in kind.

Of this street there are about one hundred and fifty yards--on the same
pattern all. It is not pretty to look at. A dingy little brick house
twenty feet high, with three square holes to carry the windows, and an
oblong hole to carry the door, is not a pleasing object; and each side of
this street is formed by two or three score of such houses in a row, with
one front wall in common. And the effect is as of stables.

Some who inhabit this street are in the docks, some in the gas-works,
some in one or other of the few shipbuilding yards that yet survive on
the Thames. Two families in a house is the general rule, for there are
six rooms behind each set of holes: this, unless "young men lodgers" are
taken in, or there are grown sons paying for bed and board. As for the
grown daughters they marry as soon as may be. Domestic service is a
social descent, and little under millinery and dressmaking is compatible
with self-respect. The general servant may be caught young among the
turnings at the end where mangling is done; and the factory girls live
still further off, in places skirting slums.

Every morning at half past five there is a curious demonstration. The
street resounds with thunderous knockings, repeated upon door after door,
and acknowledged ever by a muffled shout from within. These signals are
the work of the night-watchman or the early policeman, or both, and they
summon the sleepers to go forth to the docks, the gas-works, and the
ship-yards. To be awakened in this wise costs fourpence a week, and for
this fourpence a fierce rivalry rages between night-watchmen and
policemen. The night-watchman--a sort of by-blow of the ancient "Charley,"
and himself a fast vanishing quantity--is the real professional performer;
but he goes to the wall, because a large connection must be worked if the
pursuit is to pay at fourpence a knocker. Now, it is not easy to bang at
two knockers three quarters of a mile apart, and a hundred others lying
between, all punctually at half past five. Wherefore the policeman, to
whom the fourpence is but a perquisite, and who is content with a smaller
round, is rapidly supplanting the night-watchman, whose cry of "Past nine
o'clock," as he collects orders in the evening, is now seldom heard.

The knocking and shouting pass, and there comes the noise of opening and
shutting of doors, and a clattering away to the docks, the gas-works and
the ship-yards. Later more door-shutting is heard, and then the trotting
of sorrow-laden little feet along the grim street to the grim board
school three grim streets off. Then silence, save for a subdued sound of
scrubbing here and there, and the puny squall of croupy infants. After
this, a new trotting of little feet to docks, gas-works, and ship-yards
with father's dinner in a basin and a red handkerchief, and so to the
board school again. More muffled scrubbing and more squalling, and
perhaps a feeble attempt or two at decorating the blankness of a square
hole here and there by pouring water into a grimy flower-pot full of
dirt. Then comes the trot of little feet toward the oblong holes,
heralding the slower tread of sooty artisans; a smell of bloater up and
down; nightfall; the fighting of boys in the street, perhaps of men at
the corner near the beer-shop; sleep. And this is the record of a day in
this street; and every day is hopelessly the same.

Every day, that is, but Sunday. On Sunday morning a smell of cooking
floats round the corner from the half-shut baker's and the little feet
trot down the street under steaming burdens of beef, potatoes, and
batter-pudding--the lucky little feet these, with Sunday boots on them,
when father is in good work and has brought home all his money; not the
poor little feet in worn shoes, carrying little bodies in the threadbare
clothes of all the week, when father is out of work, or ill, or drunk,
and the Sunday cooking may very easily be done at home--if any there be to
do.

On Sunday morning one or two heads of families appear in wonderful black
suits, with unnumbered creases and wrinklings at the seams. At their
sides and about their heels trot the unresting little feet, and from
under painful little velvet caps and straw hats stare solemn little faces
toweled to a polish. Thus disposed and arrayed, they fare gravely through
the grim little streets to a grim Little Bethel where are gathered
together others in like garb and attendance; and for two hours they
endure the frantic menace of hell-fire.

Most of the men, however, lie in shirt and trousers on their beds and
read the Sunday paper; while some are driven forth--for they hinder the
housework--to loaf, and await the opening of the beer-shop round the
corner. Thus goes Sunday in this street, and every Sunday is the same as
every other Sunday, so that one monotony is broken with another. For the
women, however, Sunday is much as other days, except that there is rather
more work for them. The break in their round of the week is washing day.

No event in the outer world makes any impression in this street. Nations
may rise, or may totter in ruin; but here the colorless day will work
through its twenty-four hours just as it did yesterday, and just as it
will to-morrow. Without there may be party strife, wars and rumors of
wars, public rejoicings; but the trotting of the little feet will be
neither quickened nor stayed. Those quaint little women, the
girl-children of this street, who use a motherly management toward all
girl-things younger than themselves, and toward all boys as old or older,
with "Bless the child!" or "Drat the children!"--those quaint little women
will still go marketing with big baskets and will regard the price of
bacon as chief among human considerations. Nothing disturbs this
street--nothing but a strike.

Nobody laughs here--life is too serious a thing; nobody sings. There was
once a woman who sung--a young wife from the country. But she bore
children, and her voice cracked. Then her man died, and she sung no more.
They took away her home, and with her children about her skirts she left
this street forever. The other women did not think much of her. She was
"helpless."

One of the square holes in this street--one of the single, ground-floor
holes--is found, on individual examination, to differ from the others.
There has been an attempt to make it into a shop-window. Half a dozen
candles, a few sickly sugar-sticks, certain shriveled bloaters, some
bootlaces, and a bundle or two of firewood compose a stock which at night
is sometimes lighted by a little paraffine lamp in a tin sconce, and
sometimes by a candle. A widow lives here--a gaunt bony widow with sunken,
red eyes. She has other sources of income than the candles and the
bootlaces: she washes and chars all day, and she sews cheap shirts at
night. Two "young men lodgers," moreover, sleep upstairs, and the
children sleep in the back room; she herself is supposed not to sleep at
all. The policeman does not knock here in the morning--the widow wakes the
lodgers herself; and nobody in the street behind ever looks out of window
before going to bed, no matter how late, without seeing a light in the
widow's room where she plies her needle. She is a quiet woman, who speaks
little with her neighbors, having other things to do: a woman of
pronounced character, to whom it would be unadvisable--even dangerous--to
offer coals or blankets. Hers was the strongest contempt for the helpless
woman who sung: a contempt whose added bitterness might be traced to its
source. For when the singing woman was marketing, from which door of the
pawnshop had she twice met the widow coming forth?

This is not a dirty street, taken as a whole. The widow's house is one of
the cleanest, and the widow's children match the house. The one house
cleaner than the widow's is ruled by a despotic Scotch woman, who drives
every hawker off her whitened step, and rubs her door handle if a hand
have rested on it. The Scotch woman has made several attempts to
accommodate "young men lodgers," but they have ended in shrill rows.

There is no house without children in this street, and the number of them
grows ever and ever greater. Nine tenths of the doctor's visits are on
this account alone, and his appearances are the chief matter of such
conversation as the women make across the fences. One after another the
little strangers come, to live through lives as flat and colorless as the
day's life in this street. Existence dawns, and the doctor-watchman's
door-knock resounds along the row of rectangular holes. Then a muffled
cry announces that a small new being has come to trudge and sweat its way
in the appointed groove. Later, the trotting of little feet and the
school; the mid-day play hour, when love peeps even into this street;
after that more trotting of little feet--strange little feet, new little
feet--and the scrubbing, and the squalling, and the barren flowerpot; the
end of the sooty day's work; the last home-coming; nightfall; sleep.

When love's light falls into some corner of the street, it falls at an
early hour of this mean life, and is itself but a dusky ray. It falls
early, because it is the sole bright thing which the street sees, and is
watched for and counted on. Lads and lasses, awkwardly arm-in-arm, go
pacing up and down this street, before the natural interest in marbles
and doll's houses would have left them in a brighter place. They are
"keeping company;" the manner of which proceeding is indigenous--is a
custom native to the place. The young people first "walk out" in pairs.
There is no exchange of promises, no troth-plight, no engagement, no
love-talk. They patrol the streets side by side, usually in silence,
sometimes with fatuous chatter. There are no dances, no tennis, no
water-parties, no picnics to bring them together: so they must walk out,
or be unacquainted. If two of them grow dissatisfied with each other's
company, nothing is easier than to separate and walk out with somebody
else. When by these means each has found a fit mate (or thinks so), a
ring is bought, and the odd association becomes a regular engagement; but
this is not until the walking out has endured for many months. The two
stages of courtship are spoken of indiscriminately as "keeping company,"
but a very careful distinction is drawn between them by the parties
concerned. Nevertheless, in the walking out period it would be almost as
great a breach of faith for either to walk out with more than one, as it
would be if the full engagement had been made. And love-making in this
street is a dreary thing, when one thinks of love-making in other places.
It begins--and it ends--too soon.

Nobody from this street goes to the theatre. That would mean a long
journey, and it would cost money which might buy bread and beer and
boots. For those, too, who wear black Sunday suits it would be sinful.
Nobody reads poetry or romance. The very words are foreign. A Sunday
paper in some few houses provides such reading as this street is disposed
to achieve. Now and again a penny novel has been found among the private
treasures of a growing daughter, and has been wrathfully confiscated. For
the air of this street is unfavorable to the ideal.

Round the corner there are a baker's, a chandler's and a beer-shop. They
are not included in the view from any of the rectangular holes; but they
are well known to every denizen; and the chandler goes to church on
Sunday and pays for his seat. At the opposite end, turnings lead to
streets less rigidly respectable: some where "Mangling done here" stares
from windows, and where doors are left carelessly open; others where
squalid women sit on doorsteps, and girls go to factories in white
aprons. Many such turnings, of as many grades of decency, are set between
this and the nearest slum.

They are not a very noisy or obtrusive lot in this street. They do not go
to Hyde Park with banners, and they seldom fight. It is just possible
that one or two among them, at some point in a life of ups and downs, may
have been indebted to a coal and blanket fund; but whosoever these may
be, they would rather die than publish the disgrace, and it is probable
that they very nearly did so ere submitting to it.

Yet there are aspirations. There has lately come into the street a young
man lodger who belongs to a Mutual Improvement Society. Membership in
this society is regarded as a sort of learned degree, and at its meeting
debates are held and papers smugly read by lamentably self-satisfied
young men lodgers, whose only preparation for debating and writing is a
fathomless ignorance. For ignorance is the inevitable portion of dwellers
here: seeing nothing, reading nothing, and considering nothing.

Where in the East End lies this street? Everywhere. The hundred and fifty
yards is only a link in a long and mightily tangled chain--is only a turn
in a tortuous maze. This street of the square holes is hundreds of miles
long. That it is planned in short lengths is true, but there is no other
way in the world that can more properly be called a single street,
because of its dismal lack of accent, its sordid uniformity, its utter
remoteness from delight.



LIZERUNT


I.

Somewhere in the register was written the name Elizabeth Hunt; but
seventeen years after the entry the spoken name was Lizerunt. Lizerunt
worked at a pickle factory, and appeared abroad in an elaborate and
shabby costume, usually supplemented by a white apron. Withal she was
something of a beauty. That is to say, her cheeks were very red, her
teeth were very large and white, her nose was small and snub, and her
fringe was long and shiny; while her face, new-washed, was susceptible of
a high polish. Many such girls are married at sixteen, but Lizerunt was
belated, and had never a bloke at all.

Billy Chope was a year older than Lizerunt. He wore a billycock with a
thin brim and a permanent dent in the crown; he had a bobtail coat, with
the collar turned up at one side and down at the other, as an expression
of independence; between his meals he carried his hands in his breeches
pockets; and he lived with his mother, who mangled. His conversation with
Lizerunt consisted long of perfunctory nods; but great things happened
this especial Thursday evening, as Lizerunt, making for home, followed
the fading red beyond the furthermost end of Commercial Road. For Billy
Chope, slouching in the opposite direction, lurched across the pavement
as they met, and taking the nearest hand from his pocket, caught and
twisted her arm, bumping her against the wall.

"Garn," said Lizerunt, greatly pleased: "le' go!" For she knew that this
was love.

"Where yer auf to, Lizer?"

"'Ome, o' course, cheeky. Le' go;" and she snatched--in vain--at Billy's
hat.

Billy let go, and capered in front of her. She feigned to dodge by him,
careful not to be too quick, because affairs were developing.

"I say, Lizer," said Billy, stopping his dance and becoming
business-like, "going anywhere Monday?"

"Not along o' you, cheeky; you go 'long o' Beller Dawson, like wot you
did Easter."

"Blow Beller Dawson; she ain't no good. I'm goin' on the Flats. Come?"

Lizerunt, delighted but derisive, ended with a promise to "see." The
bloke had come at last, and she walked home with the feeling of having
taken her degree. She had half assured herself of it two days before,
when Sam Cardew threw an orange peel at her, but went away after a little
prancing on the pavement. Sam was a smarter fellow than Billy, and earned
his own living; probably his attentions were serious; but one must prefer
the bird in hand. As for Billy Chope, he went his way, resolved himself
to take home what mangling he should find his mother had finished, and
stick to the money; also, to get all he could from her by blandishing and
bullying, that the jaunt to Wanstead Flats might be adequately done.

There is no other fair like Whit Monday's on Wanstead Flats. Here is a
square mile and more of open land where you may howl at large; here is no
danger of losing yourself as in Epping Forest; the public-houses are
always with you; shows, shines, swings, merry-go-rounds, fried-fish
stalls, donkeys are packed closer than on Hampstead Heath; the ladies'
tormentors are larger, and their contents smell worse than at any other
fair. Also, you may be drunk and disorderly without being locked up--for
the stations won't hold everybody--and when all else has palled, you may
set fire to the turf. Hereinto Billy and Lizerunt projected themselves
from the doors of the Holly Tree on Whit Monday morning. But through
hours on hours of fried fish and half-pints both were conscious of a
deficiency. For the hat of Lizerunt was brown and old; plush it was not,
and its feather was a mere foot long and of a very rusty black. Now, it
is not decent for a factory girl from Limehouse to go bank-holidaying
under any but a hat of plush, very high in the crown, of a wild blue or a
wilder green, and carrying withal an ostrich feather, pink or scarlet or
what not; a feather that springs from the fore-part, climbs the crown,
and drops as far down the shoulders as may be. Lizerunt knew this, and,
had she had no bloke, would have stayed at home. But a chance is a
chance. As it was, only another such hapless girl could measure her
bitter envy of the feathers about her, or would so joyfully have given an
ear for the proper splendor. Billy, too, had a vague impression, muddled
by but not drowned in half-pints, that some degree of plush was condign
to the occasion and to his own expenditure. Still, there was no quarrel;
and the pair walked and ran with arms about each other's necks; and
Lizerunt thumped her bloke on the back at proper intervals; so that the
affair went regularly on the whole: although, in view of Lizerunt's
shortcomings, Billy did not insist on the customary exchange of hats.

Everything, I say, went well and well enough until Billy bought a ladies'
tormentor and began to squirt it at Lizerunt. For then Lizerunt went
scampering madly, with piercing shrieks, until her bloke was left some
little way behind, and Sam Cardew, turning up at that moment, and seeing
her running alone in the crowd, threw his arms about her waist and swung
her round him again and again, as he floundered gallantly this way and
that, among the shies and the hokeypokey barrows.

"'Ullo, Lizer! where are y' a-comin' to? If I 'adn't laid 'old o' ye--!"
But here Billy Chope arrived to demand what the 'ell Sam Cardew was doing
with his gal. Now Sam was ever readier for a fight than Billy was; but
the sum of Billy's half-pints was large: wherefore the fight began. On
the skirt of a hilarious ring Lizerunt, after some small outcry,
triumphed aloud. Four days before, she had no bloke; and here she stood
with two, and those two fighting for her! Here in the public gaze, on the
Flats! For almost five minutes she was Helen of Troy.

And in much less time Billy tasted repentance. The haze of half-pints was
dispelled, and some teeth went with it. Presently, whimpering and with a
bloody muzzle, he rose and made a running kick at the other. Then, being
thwarted in a bolt, he flung himself down; and it was like to go hard
with him at the hands of the crowd. Punch you may on Wanstead Flats, but
execration and worse is your portion if you kick anybody except your
wife. But, as the ring closed, the helmets of two policemen were seen to
be working in over the surrounding heads, and Sam Cardew, quickly
assuming his coat, turned away with such air of blamelessness as is
practicable with a damaged eye; while Billy went off unheeded in an
opposite direction.

Lizerunt and her new bloke went the routine of half-pints and
merry-go-rounds, and were soon on right thumping terms; and Lizerunt was
as well satisfied with the issue as she was proud of the adventure. Billy
was all very well; but Sam was better. She resolved to draw him for a
feathered hat before next bank holiday. So the sun went down on her and
her bloke hanging on each other's necks and straggling toward the Romford
Road with shouts and choruses. The rest was tram-car, Bow Music Hall,
half-pints, and darkness.

Billy took home his wounds, and his mother, having moved his wrath by
asking their origin, sought refuge with a neighbor. He accomplished his
revenge in two installments. Two nights later Lizerunt was going with a
jug of beer, when somebody sprung from a dark corner, landed her under
the ear, knocked her sprawling, and made off to the sound of her
lamentations. She did not see who it was, but she knew; and next day Sam
Cardew was swearing he'd break Billy's back. He did not however, for that
same evening a gang of seven or eight fell on him with sticks and belts.
(They were Causeway chaps, while Sam was a Brady's Laner, which would
have been reason enough by itself, even if Billy Chope had not been one
of them.) Sam did his best for a burst through and a run, but they pulled
and battered him down; and they kicked him about the head, and they
kicked him about the belly; and they took to their heels when he was
speechless and still.

He lay at home for near four weeks, and when he stood up again it was in
many bandages. Lizerunt came often to his bedside, and twice she brought
an orange. On these occasions there was much talk of vengeance. But the
weeks went on. It was a month since Sam had left his bed; and Lizerunt
was getting a little tired of bandages. Also, she had begun to doubt and
to consider bank holiday--scarce a fortnight off. For Sam was stone broke,
and a plush hat was further away than ever. And all through the later of
these weeks Billy Chope was harder than ever on his mother, and she, well
knowing that if he helped her by taking work home he would pocket the
money at the other end, had taken to finishing and delivering in his
absence, and threats failing to get at the money, Billy Chope was
impelled to punch her head and grip her by the throat.

There was a milliner's window, with a show of nothing but fashionable
plush-and-feather hats, and Lizerunt was lingering hereabouts one
evening, when some one took her by the waist, and some one said: "Which
d'yer like, Lizer? The yuller un?"

Lizerunt turned and saw that it was Billy. She pulled herself away, and
backed off, sullen and distrustful. "Garn!" she said.

"Straight," said Billy, "I'll sport yer one...No kid, I will."

"Garn!" said Lizerunt once 'more. "Wot yer gittin' at now?"

But presently, being convinced that bashing wasn't in it, she approached
less guardedly; and she went away with a paper bag and the reddest of all
the plushes and the bluest of all the feathers; a hat that challenged all
the Flats the next bank holiday, a hat for which no girl need have
hesitated to sell her soul. As for Billy, why, he was as good as another;
and you can't have everything; and Sam Cardew, with his bandages and his
grunts and groans, was no great catch after all.

This was the wooing of Lizerunt: for in a few months she and Billy
married under the blessing of a benignant rector, who periodically set
aside a day for free weddings, and, on principle, encouraged early
matrimony. And they lived with Billy's mother.

II.

When Billy Chope married Lizerunt there was a small rejoicing. There was
no wedding-party, because it was considered that what there might be to
drink would be better in the family. Lizerunt's father was not, and her
mother felt no interest in the affair, not having seen her daughter for a
year, and happening, at the time, to have a month's engagement in respect
of a drunk and disorderly. So that there were but three of them; and
Billy Chope got exceedingly tipsy early in the day; and in the evening
his bride bawled a continual chorus, while his mother, influenced by that
unwonted quartern of gin the occasion sanctioned, wept dismally over her
boy, who was much too far gone to resent it.

His was the chief reason for rejoicing. For Lizerunt had always been able
to extract ten shillings a week from the pickle factory, and it was to be
presumed that as Lizer Chope her earning capacity would not diminish; and
the wages would make a very respectable addition to the precarious
revenue, depending on the mangle, that Billy extorted from his mother. As
for Lizer, she was married. That was the considerable thing; for she was
but a few months short of eighteen, and that, as you know, is a little
late.

Of course there were quarrels very soon; for the new Mrs. Chope, less
submissive at first than her mother-in-law, took a little breaking in,
and a liberal renewal of the manual treatment once applied in her
courting days. But the quarrels between the women were comforting to
Billy; a diversion and a source of better service.

As soon as might be, Lizer took the way of womankind. This circumstance
brought an unexpected half-crown from the evangelical rector who had
married the couple gratis; for, recognizing Billy in the street by
accident, and being told of Mrs. Chope's prospects, as well as that Billy
was out of work (a fact undeniable), he reflected that his principles did
on occasion lead to discomfort of a material sort. And Billy, to whose
comprehension the half-crown opened a new field of receipt, would
doubtless have long remained a client of the rector, had not that zealot
hastened to discover a vacancy for a warehouse porter, the offer of
presentation whereunto alienated Billy Chope forever. But there were
meetings and demonstrations of the unemployed; and it was said that
shillings had been given away; and, as being at a meeting in a street was
at least as amusing as being in a street where there was no meeting,
Billy often went, on the off chance. But his lot was chiefly
disappointment: wherefore he became more especially careful to furnish
himself ere he left home.

For certain weeks cash came less freely than ever from the two women.
Lizer spoke of providing for the necessities of the expected child: a
manifestly absurd procedure, as Billy pointed out, since, if they were
unable to clothe or feed it, the duty would fall on its grandmother. That
was law, and nobody could get over it. But even with this argument, a
shilling cost him many more demands and threats than it had used, and a
deal more general trouble.

At last Lizer ceased from going to the pickle factory, and could not even
help Billy's mother at the mangle for long. This lasted for near a week,
when Billy, rising at ten with a bad mouth, resolved to stand no
nonsense, and demanded two shillings.

"Two bob! Wot for?" Lizer asked.

"'Cos I want it. None o' yer lip!"

"Ain't got it," said Lizer, sulkily.

"That's a bleed'n' lie!"

"Lie yerself!"

"I'll break y'in 'arves, ye blasted 'eifer!" He ran at her throat and
forced her back over a chair. "I'll pull yer face auf! If y' don't give
me the money, gawblimy, I'll do for ye!"

Lizer strained and squalled. "Le' go! You'll kill me an' the kid too!"
she grunted, hoarsely. Billy's mother ran in and threw her arms about
him, dragging him away. "Don't, Billy!" she said, in terror. "Don't,
Billy--not now! You'll get in trouble. Come away. She might go auf, an'
you'd get in trouble!"

Billy Chope flung his wife over and turned to his mother. "Take yer 'ands
auf me," he said; "go on, or I'll gi' ye somethin' for yerself!" And he
punched her in the breast by way of illustration.

"You shall 'ave what I've got, Billy, if it's money," the mother said.
"But don't go an' git yerself in trouble, don't. Will a shillin' do!"

"No, it won't. Think I'm a bloomin' kid? I mean 'avin' two bob this
mornin'."

"I was a-keepin' it for the rent, Billy but--"

"Yus; think o' the bleed'n' lan'lord 'fore me, doncher?" And he pocketed
the two shillings. "I ain't settled with you yut, my gal," he added to
Lizer; "mikin' about at 'ome an' 'idin' money. You wait a bit!"

Lizer had climbed into an erect position, and, gravid and slow, had got
as far as the passage. Mistaking this for a safe distance, she replied
with defiant railings.

Billy made for her with a kick that laid her on the lower stairs, and,
swinging his legs round his mother as she obstructed him, entreating him
not to get in trouble, he attempted to kick again in a more telling spot.
But a movement among the family upstairs and a tap at the door hinted of
interference, and he took himself off.

Lizer lay doubled up on the stairs, howling; but her only articulate cry
was: "Gawd 'elp me, it's comin'!"

Billy went to the meeting of the unemployed, and cheered a proposal to
storm the Tower of London. But he did not join the procession following a
man with a handkerchief on a stick, who promised destruction to every
policeman in his path: for he knew the fate of such processions. With a
few others he hung about the nearest tavern for awhile, on the chance of
the advent of a flush sailor from St. Katherine's, disposed to treat
out-o'-workers. Then he went alone to a quieter beer-house and took a
pint or two at his own expense. A glance down the music-hall bills
hanging in the bar having given him a notion for the evening, he
bethought himself of dinner, and made for home.

The front door was open, and in the first room, where the mangle stood,
there were no signs of dinner. And this was at three o'clock! Billy
pushed into the room behind, demanding why.

"Billy," Lizer said, faintly, from her bed, "look at the baby!"

Something was moving feebly under a flannel petticoat. Billy pulled the
petticoat aside, and said: "That? Well, it is a measly snipe." It was a
blind, hairless humunculus, short of a foot long, with a skinny face set
in a great skull. There was a black bruise on one side from hip to
armpit. Billy dropped the petticoat and said: "Where's my dinner?"

"I dunno," Lizer responded, hazily. "Wot's the time?"

"Time? Don't try to kid me. You git up; go on. I want my dinner!"

"Mother's gittin' it, I think," said Lizer. "Doctor had to slap 'im like
anythink 'fore 'e'd cry. 'E don't cry now much. 'E--"

"Go on; out ye git. I do' want no more damn jaw. Git my dinner!"

"I'm a-gittin' of it, Billy," his mother said, at the door. She had begun
when he first entered. "It won't be a minute."

"You come 'ere; y'aint alwis s' ready to do 'er work, are ye? She ain't
no call to stop there no longer, an' I owe 'er one for this mornin'. Will
ye git out, or shall I kick ye?"

"She can't, Billy," his mother said. And Lizer sniveled and said: "You're
a damn brute. Y'ought to be bleedin' well booted!"

But Billy had her by the shoulder and began to haul; and again his mother
besought him to remember what he might bring upon himself. At this moment
the doctor's dispenser, a fourth-year London Hospital student of many
inches, who had been washing his hands in the kitchen, came in. For a
moment he failed to comprehend the scene. Then he took Billy Chope by the
collar, hauled him pell-mell along the passage, kicked him (hard) into
the gutter, and shut the door.

When he returned to the room, Lizer, sitting up and holding on by the
bed-frame, gasped hysterically: "Ye bleedin' makeshift, I'd 'ave yer
liver out if I could reach ye! You touch my 'usband, ye long pisenin'
'ound you! Ow!" And, infirm of aim, she flung a cracked teacup at his
head. Billy's mother said: "Y'ought to be ashamed of yourself, you low
blaggard. If 'is father was alive 'e'd knock yer 'ead auf. Call yourself
a doctor--a passel o' boys! Git out! Go out o' my 'ouse, or I'll give y'in
charge!"

"But--why, hang it, he'd have killed her." Then to Lizer. "Lie down."

"Sha'n't lay down. Keep auf; if you come near me I'll corpse ye. You go
while ye're safe!"

The dispenser appealed to Billy's mother. "For God's sake, make her lie
down. She'll kill herself. I'll go. Perhaps the doctor had better Come."
And he went: leaving the coast clear for Billy Chope to return and avenge
his kicking.

III.

Lizer was some months short of twenty-one when her third child was born.
The pickle factory had discarded her some time before, and since that her
trade had consisted in odd jobs of charing. Odd jobs of charing have a
shade the better of a pickle factory in the matter of respectability, but
they are precarious, and they are worse paid at that. In the East End
they are sporadic and few. More over, it is in the household where paid
help is a rarity that the bitterness of servitude is felt. Also, the
uncertainty and irregularity of the returns were a trouble to Billy
Chope. He was never sure of having got them all. It might be ninepence,
or a shilling, or eighteenpence. Once or twice, to his knowledge, it had
been half a crown, from a chance job at a doctor's or a parson's, and
once it was three shillings. That it might be half a crown or three
shilling again, and that some of it was being kept back, was ever the
suspicion evoked by Lizer's evening homing. Plainly, with these
fluctuating and uncertain revenues, more bashing than ever was needed to
insure the extraction of the last copper; empty-handedness called for
bashing on its own account; so that it was often Lizer's hap to be
refused a job because of a black eye.

Lizer's self was scarcely what it had been. The red of her cheeks, once
bounded only by the eyes and the mouth, had shrunk to a spot in the depth
of each hollow; gaps had been driven in her big white teeth; even the
snub nose had run to a point, and the fringe hung dry and ragged, while
the bodily outline was as a sack's. At home, the children lay in her arms
or tumbled at her heels, puling and foul. Whenever she was near it, there
was the mangle to be turned; for lately Billy's mother had exhibited a
strange weakness, sometimes collapsing with a gasp in the act of brisk or
prolonged exertion, and often leaning on whatever stood hard by, and
grasping at her side. This ailment she treated, when she had twopence, in
such terms as made her smell of gin and peppermint; and more than once
this circumstance had inflamed the breast of Billy her son, who was
morally angered by this boozing away of money that was really his.

Lizer's youngest, being seven or eight months old, was mostly taking care
of itself, when Billy made a welcome discovery after a hard and pinching
day. The night was full of blinding wet, and the rain beat on the window
as on a drum. Billy sat over a small fire in the front room smoking his
pipe, while his mother folded clothes for delivery. He stamped twice on
the hearth, and then, drawing off his boot, he felt inside it. It was a
nail. The poker-head made a good anvil, and, looking about for a hammer,
Billy bethought him of a brick from the mangle. He rose, and, lifting the
lid of the weight-box, groped about among the clinkers and the other
ballast till he came upon a small but rather heavy paper parcel.
"'Ere--wot's this?" he said, and pulled it out.

His mother, whose back had been turned, hastened across the room, hand to
breast (it had got to be her habit). "What is it Billy?" she said. "Not
that; there's nothing there. I'll get anything you want, Billy." And she
made a nervous catch at the screw of paper. But Billy fended her off, and
tore the package open. It was money, arranged in little columns of
farthings, halfpence, and three penny pieces, with a few sixpences, a
shilling or two, and a single half-sovereign. "Oh," said Billy, "this is
the game, is it?--'idin' money in the mangle! Got any more?" And he
hastily turned the brickbats.

"No, Billy, don't take that--don't!" implored his mother. "There'll be
some money for them things when they go 'ome--'ave that. I'm savin' it,
Billy, for something partic'ler; s'elp me Gawd, I am, Billy!"

"Yus," replied Billy, raking diligently among the clinkers, "savin' it
for a good ol' booze. An' now you won't 'ave one. Bleedin' nice thing,
'idin' money away from yer own son!"

"It ain't for that, Billy--s'elp me, it ain't; it's case anything 'appens
to me. On'y to put me away decent, Billy, that's all. We never know, an'
you'll be glad of it t'elp bury me if I should go any time--"

"I'll be glad of it now," answered Billy, who had it in his pocket; "an'
I've got it. You ain't a dyin' sort, you ain't; an' if you was, the
parish 'ud soon tuck you up. P'r'aps you'll be straighter about money
after this."

"Let me 'ave some, then--you can't want it all. Give me some, an' then
'ave the money for the things. There's ten dozen and seven, and you can
take 'em yerself if ye like."

"Wot-in this 'ere rain? Not me! I bet I'd 'ave the money if I wanted it
without that. 'Ere--change these 'ere fardens at the draper's wen you go
out: there's two bob's worth an' a penn'orth; I don't want to bust my
pockets wi' them."

While they spoke, Lizer had come in from the back room. But she said
nothing: she rather busied herself with a child she had in her arms. When
Billy's mother, despondent and tearful, had tramped out into the rain
with a pile of clothes in an oilcloth wrapper, she said sulkily, without
looking up: "You might 'a' let'er kept that; you git all you want."

At another time this remonstrance would have provoked active hostilities;
but now, with the money about him, Billy was complacently disposed. "You
shutcher 'ead," he said, "I got this any'ow. She can make it up out o' my
rent if she likes." This last remark was a joke, and he chuckled as he
made it. For Billy's rent was a simple fiction, devised, on the
suggestion of a smart canvasser, to give him a parliamentary vote.

That night Billy and Lizer slept, as usual, in the bed in the back room,
where the two younger children also were. Billy's mother made a bedstead
nightly with three chairs and an old trunk in the front room by the
mangle, and the eldest child lay in a floor-bed near her. Early in the
morning Lizer awoke at a sudden outcry of the little creature. He clawed
at the handle till he opened the door, and came staggering and tumbling
into the room with screams of terror. "Wring 'is blasted neck!" his
father grunted, sleepily. "Wot's the kid 'owlin' for?"

"I's 'f'aid o' g'anny--I's 'f'aid o' g'anny!" was all the child could say;
and when he had said it, he fell to screaming once more.

Lizer rose and went to the next room; and straightway came a scream from
her also. "Oh, oh, Billy! Billy! Oh, my Gawd! Billy come 'ere!"

And Billy, fully startled, followed in Lizer's wake. He blundered in,
rubbing his eyes, and saw.

Stark on her back, in the huddled bed of old wrappers and shawls, lay his
mother. The outline of her poor face, strained in an upward stare of
painful surprise, stood sharp and meager against the black of the grate
beyond. But the muddy old skin was white, and looked cleaner than its
wont, and many of the wrinkles were gone.

Billy Chope, half-way across the floor, recoiled from the corpse, and
glared at it pallidly from the door-way.

"Good Gawd!" he croaked, faintly, "is she dead?"

Seized by a fit of shuddering breaths, Lizer sunk on the floor, and, with
her head across the body, presently broke into a storm of hysterical
blubbering, while Billy, white and dazed, dressed hurriedly and got out
of the house.

He was at home as little as might be until the coroner's officer carried
away the body two days later. When he came for his meals, he sat doubtful
and querulous in the matter of the front room door's being shut. The dead
once clear away, however, he resumed his faculties, and clearly saw that
here was a bad change for the worse. There was the mangle, but who was to
work it? If Lizer did there would be no more charing jobs--a clear loss of
one third of his income. And it was not at all certain that the people
who had given their mangling to his mother would give it to Lizer.
Indeed, it was pretty sure that many would not, because mangling is a
thing given by preference to widows, and many widows of the neighborhood
were perpetually competing for it. Widows, moreover, had the first call
in most odd jobs where unto Lizer might turn her hand: an injustice
whereon Billy meditated with bitterness.

The inquest was formal and unremarked, the medical officer having no
difficulty in certifying a natural death from heart disease. The bright
idea of a collection among the jury, which Billy communicated, with
pitiful representations, to the coroner's officer, was brutally swept
aside by that functionary, made cunning by much experience. So the
inquest brought him naught save disappointment and a sense of injury...

The mangling orders fell away as suddenly and completely as he had
feared: they were duly absorbed among the local widows. Neglect the
children as Lizer might, she could no longer leave them as she had done.
Things, then, were bad with Billy, and neither threats nor thumps could
evoke a shilling now.

It was more than Billy could bear; so that: "'Ere," he said, one night,
"I've 'ad enough o' this. You go and get some money; go on."

"Go an' git it?" replied Lizer. "Oh, yus. That's easy, ain't it? 'Go an'
git it,' says you. 'Ow?"

"Any'ow--! don't care. Go on."

"Wy," replied Lizer, looking up with wide eyes, "d'ye think I can go an'
pick it up in the street?"

"Course you can. Plenty others does, don't they?"

"Gawd, Billy! wot d'ye mean?"

"Wot I say; plenty others does it. Go on; you ain't so bleed'n' innocent
as all that. Go an' see Sam Cardew. Go on--'ook it."

Lizer, who had been kneeling at the child's floor-bed, rose to her feet,
pale-faced and bright of eye.

"Stow kiddin', Billy," she said. "You don't mean that. I'll go round to
the fact'ry in the mornin'; p'r'aps they'll take me on temp'ry."

"Damn the fact'ry!"

He pushed her into the passage. "Go on--you git me some money, if ye don't
want yer bleed'n' 'ead knocked auf."

There was a scuffle in the dark passage, with certain blows, a few broken
words, and a sob. Then the door slammed, and Lizer Chope was in the windy
street.



WITHOUT VISIBLE MEANS


All East London idled, or walked in a procession, or waylaid and bashed,
or cried in an empty kitchen; for it was the autumn of the great strikes.
One army of men, having been prepared, was ordered to strike--and struck.
Other smaller armies of men, with no preparation, were ordered to strike
to express sympathy--and struck. Other armies still were ordered to strike
because it was the fashion--and struck. Then many hands were discharged
because the strikes in other trades left them no work. Many others came
from other parts in regiments to work, but remained to loaf in
gangs--taught by the example of earlier regiments, which, the situation
being explained (an expression devised to include mobbings and kickings
and flingings into docks), had returned whence they came. So that East
London was very noisy and largely hungry; and the rest of the world
looked on with interest, making earnest suggestions, and comprehending
nothing. Lots of strikers, having no strike pay and finding little
nourishment in processions, started off to walk to Manchester,
Birmingham, Liverpool or Newcastle, where work might be got. Along the
Great North Road such men might be seen in silent companies of a dozen or
twenty, now and again singly or in couples. At the tail of one such gang,
which gathered in the Burdett Road and found its way into the Enfield
Road by way of Victoria Park, Clapton, and Stamford Hill, walked a little
group of three: a voluble young man of thirty, a stolid workman rather
older, and a pale, anxious little fellow, with a nasty spasmic cough and
a canvas bag of tools.

The little crowd straggled over the footpath and the road, few of its
members speaking, most of them keeping to their places and themselves. As
yet there was nothing of the tramp in the aspect of these mechanics. With
their washed faces and well-mended clothes they might have been taken for
a jury coming from a local inquest. As the streets got broken and
detached, with patches of field between, they began to look about them.
One young fellow in front (with no family to think of), who looked upon
the enterprise as an amusing sort of tour, and had even brought an
accordion, began to rebel against the general depression, and attempted a
joke about going to the Alexandra Palace. But in the rear, the little man
with the canvas bag, putting his hand abstractedly into his pocket,
suddenly stared and stopped. He drew out the hand, and saw in it three
shillings.

"S'elp me!" he said, "the missis is done that--shoved it in unbeknown when
I come away. An' she's on'y got a bob for 'erself an' the kids." He broke
into a sweat of uneasiness. "I'll 'ave to send it back at the next
post-office, that's all."

"Send it back? Not you!" Thus with deep scorn the voluble young man at
his side. "She'll be all right, you lay your life. A woman allus knows
'ow to look after 'erself. You'll bleed'n' soon want it, an' bad. You do
as I tell you, Joey; stick to it. That's right, Dave, ain't it?"

"Matter o' fancy," replied the stolid man. "My missis cleared my pockets
out 'fore I got away. Shouldn't wonder at bein' sent after for leavin'
'er chargeable if I don't soon send some more. Women's different."

The march continued, and grew dustier. The cheerful pilgrim in front
produced his accordion. At Palmer's Green four went straight ahead to try
for work at the Enfield Arms Factory. The others, knowing the thing
hopeless, turned off to the left for Potter's Bar.

After a long silence: "Which'll be nearest, Dave," asked little Joey
Clayton, "Newcastle or Middlesborough?"

"Middlesborough," said Dave; "I done it afore."

"Trampin' ain't so rough on a man, is it, after all?" asked Joey,
wistfully. "You done all right, didn't you?"

"Got through. All depends, though it's rough enough. Matter o' luck. I
'ad the bad weather."

"If I don't get a good easy job where we're goin'," remarked the voluble
young man, "I'll 'ave a strike there too."

"'Ave a strike there?" exclaimed Joey.

"'Ow? Who'd call 'em out?"

"Wy, I would. I think I'm equal to doin' it, ain't I? An' when
workin'-men stand idle an' 'ungry in the midst o' the wealth an' the
lukshry an' the igstravagance they've produced with the sweat of their
brow, why, then, feller-workmen, it's time to act. It's time to bring the
nigger-drivin' bloated capitalists to their knees."

"'Ear, 'ear!" applauded Joey Clayton; tamely, perhaps, for the words were
not new. "Good on yer, Newman!" Newman had a habit of practicing this
sort of thing in snatches whenever he saw the chance. He had learned the
trick in a debating society; and Joey Clayton was always an applausive
audience. There was a pause, the accordion started another tune, and
Newman tried a different passage of his harangue.

"In the shop they call me Skulky Newman. Why? 'Cos I skulk, o' course"
("'Ear, 'ear!" dreamily--from Dave this time). "I ain't ashamed of it, my
friends. I'm a miker out an' out, an' I 'ope I shall always remain a
miker. The less a worker does the more 'as to be imployed, don't they?
An' the more the toilers wrings out o' the capitalists, don't they? Very
well then, I mike, an' I do it as a sacred dooty."

"You'll 'ave all the mikin' you want for a week or two," said Dave Burge,
placidly. "Stow it."

At Potter's Bar the party halted and sat under a hedge to eat hunks of
bread and cheese (or hunks of bread and nothing else) and to drink cold
tea out of cans. Skulky Newman, who had brought nothing, stood in with
his two friends.

As they started anew and turned into the Great North Road he said,
stretching himself and looking slyly at Joey Clayton: "If I'd got a bob
or two I'd stand you two blokes a pint apiece."

Joey looked troubled. "Well, as you ain't, I suppose I ought to," he
said, uneasily, turning toward the little inn hard by. "Dave," he cried
to Burge, who was walking on, "won't you 'ave a drink?" And, "Well, if
you are goin' to do the toff, I ain't proud," was the slow reply.

Afterward, Joey was inclined to stop at the post-office to send away at
least two shillings. But Newman wouldn't. He enlarged on the improvidence
of putting out of reach that which might be required on an emergency; he
repeated his axiom as to a woman's knack of keeping alive in spite of all
things, and Joey determined not to send--for a day or so at any rate.

The road got looser and dustier; the symptoms of the tramp came out
stronger and stronger on the gang. The accordion struck up from time to
time, but ceased toward the end of the afternoon. The player wearied, and
some of the older men, soon tired of walking, were worried by the noise.
Joey Clayton, whose cough was aggravated by the dust, was especially
tortured, after every fit, to hear the thing drawling and whooping the
tune it had drawled and whooped a dozen times before; but he said
nothing, scarce knowing what annoyed him.

At Hatfield Station two of the foremost picked up a few coppers by
helping with a heavy trap-load of luggage. Up Digswell Hill the party
tailed out lengthily, and Newman, who had been letting off a set speech,
was fain to save his wind. The night came, clear to see and sweet to
smell. Between Welwyn and Codicote the company broke up to roost in such
barns as they might possess; all but the master of the accordion, who had
stayed at a little public-house at Welwyn, with the notion of earning a
pot of beer and a stable-corner (or better) by a tune in the tap-room.
Dave Burge lighted on a lone shed of thatched hurdles with loose hay in
it, and Newman straightway curled in the snuggest corner on most of the
hay. Dave Burge pulled some from under him, and, having helped Joey
Clayton to build a nest in the best place left, was soon snoring. But
Joey lay awake all night, and sat up and coughed and turned restlessly,
being unused to the circumstances and apprehensive of those months in
jail, which (it is well known) are rancorously dealt forth among all them
that sleep in barns.

Luck provided a breakfast next morning at Codicote; for three bicyclists,
going north, stood cold beef and bread round at The Anchor. The man with
the accordion caught up. He had made his lodging and breakfast and
eightpence. This had determined him to stay at Hitchin, and work it for
at least a day, and then to diverge into the towns and let the rest go
their way. So beyond Hitchin there was no music.

Joey Clayton soon fell slow. Newman had his idea; and the three were left
behind, and Joey staggered after his mates with difficulty. He lacked
sleep, and he lacked stamina. Dave Burge took the canvas bag, and there
were many rests, when Newman, expressing a resolve to stick by his
fellow-man through thick and thin, hinted at drinks. Dave Burge made
twopence at Henlow level crossing by holding an unsteady horse while a
train passed. Joey saw little of the rest of the day; the road was yellow
and dazzling, his cough tore him, and things were red sometimes and
sometimes blue. He walked without knowing it, now helped, now lurching on
alone. The others of the party were far ahead and forgotten. There was
talk of a windmill ahead, where there would be rest; and the three men
camped in an old boat-house by the river just outside Biggleswade. Joey,
sleeping as he tottered, fell in a heap and lay without moving from
sunset to broad morning.

When he woke Dave Burge was sitting at the door, but Newman was gone.
Also there was no sign of the canvas bag.

"No use lookin'," said Dave; "'e's done it."

"Eh?"

"Skulky's 'opped the twig an' sneaked your tools. Gawd knows where 'e is
by now."

"No!" the little man gasped, sitting up in a pale, sweat..."Not sneaked
'em...is 'e?...S'elp me! there's a set o' callipers worth fifteen bob
in that bag...'E ain't gawn...?"

Dave Burge nodded inexorably.

"Best feel in your pockets," he said, "p'r'aps 'e's bin there."

He had. The little man broke down. "I was a-goin' to send 'ome that two
bob--s'elp me, I was!...An' what can I do without my tools? If I'd got
no job I could 'a pawned 'em--an' then I'd 'a sent 'ome the money--s'elp
me, I would...! Oh, it's crool!"

The walking, with the long sleep after it, had left him sore and stiff,
and Dave had work to put him on the road again. He had forgotten
yesterday afternoon, and asked, at first, for the others. They tramped in
silence for a few miles, when Joey suddenly flung himself upon a tussock
by the wayside.

"Why won't nobody let me live?" he sniveled. "I'm a 'armless bloke
enough. I worked at Ritterson's, man and boy, very nigh twenty year. When
they come an' ordered us out, I come out with the others, peaceful
enough; I didn't want to chuck it up, Gawd knows, but I come out promp'
when they told me. And when I found another job on the Island, four big
blokes set about me an' 'arf killed me. I didn't know the place was
blocked. And when two o' the blokes was took up, they said I'd get
strike-pay again if I didn't identify 'em; so I didn't. But they never
give me no strike-pay--they laughed an' chucked me out. An' now I'm
a-starvin' on the 'igh road. An' Skulky...blimy...'e's done me too!"

There were days wherein Joey learned to cat a swede pulled from behind a
wagon, and to feel thankful for an early turnip; might have learned, too,
just what tramping means in many ways to a man unskilled both in begging
and in theft, but was never equal to it. He coughed, and worse, holding
to posts and gates, and often spitting blood. He had little to say, but
trudged mechanically, taking note of nothing.

Once, as though aroused from a reverie, he asked: "Wasn't there some
others?"

"Others?" said Dave, for a moment taken aback. "Oh, yes, there was some
others. They're gone on ahead, y'know."

Joey tramped for half a mile in silence. Then he said: "Expect they're
'avin' a rough time too."

"Ah, very like," said Dave.

For a space Joey was silent, save for the cough. Then he went on: "Comes
o' not bringing 'cordions with 'em. Every one ought to take a 'cordion
what goes trampin.' I knew a man once that went trampin', an' 'e took a
'cordion. He done all right. It ain't so rough for them as plays on the
'cordion." And Dave Burge rubbed his cap about his head and stared, but
answered nothing.

It was a bad day. Crusts were begged at cottages. Every rise and every
turn, the eternal yellow road lay stretch on stretch before them,
flouting their unrest. Joey, now unimpressionable, endured more placidly
than even Dave Burge. Late in the afternoon, "No," he said, "it ain't so
rough for them as plays the 'cordion. They 'as the best of it...S'elp
me," he added, suddenly, "we're all 'cordions!" He sniggered
thoughtfully, and then burst into a cough that left him panting. "We're
nothin' but a bloomin' lot o' 'cordions ourselves," he went on, having
got his breath, "an' they play any toon they like on us; and that's 'ow
they make their livin'. S'elp me, Dave, we're all 'cordions." And he
laughed.

"Um--yus," the other man grunted. And he looked curiously at his mate; for
he had never heard that sort of laugh before.

But Joey fondled the conceit, and returned to it from time to time; now
aloud, now to himself. "All 'cordions; playin' any toon as it's ordered,
blimy...Are we 'cordions? I don't b'lieve we're as much as that--no,
s'elp me! We're on'y the footlin' little keys; shoved about to soot the
toon. Little tin keys, blimy--footlin' little keys. I've bin played on
plenty, I 'ave."

Dave Burge listened with alarm, and tried to talk of other things. But
Joey rarely heard him. "I've bin played on plenty, I 'ave," he persisted.
"I was played on once by a pal, and my spring broke."

At nightfall there was mote bad luck. They were driven from a likely barn
by a leather-gaitered man with a dog, and for some distance no dormitory
could be found. Then it was a cut haystack, with a nest near the top and
steps to reach it.

In the night Burge was wakened by a clammy hand upon his face. There was
a thick mist.

"It's you, Dave, ain't it?" Clayton was saying. "Good Gawd! I thought I'd
lawst you. What's all this 'ere--not the water, is it?--not the dock? I'm
soppin' wet."

Burge himself was wet to the skin. He made Joey lie down, and told him to
sleep; but a coughing fit prevented that. "It was them 'cordions woke
me," he explained when it was over.

So the night put on the shuddering gray of the fore-dawn. And the two
tramps left their perch, and betook them, shivering and stamping, to the
road.

That morning Joey had short fits of dizziness and faintness.

"It's my spring broke," he would say after such an attack. "Bloomin'
little tin key put out o' toon." And once he added, "I'm up to one toon,
though, now: this 'ere bloomin' Dead March."

Just at the outskirts of a town, where he stopped to cough over a gate, a
stout old lady, walking out with a shaggy little dog, gave him a
shilling. Dave Burge picked it up as it dropped from his incapable hand,
and "Joey, 'ere's a bob," he said, "a lady give it you. You come an' git
a drop o' beer."

They carried a twopenny loaf into the tap-room of a small tavern, and
Dave had mild ale himself, but saw that Joey was served with stout with a
penn'orth of gin in it. Soon the gin and stout reached Joey's head, and
drew it to the table. And he slept, leaving the rest of the shilling
where it lay.

Dave arose, and stuffed the last of the twopenny loaf into his pocket. He
took a piece of chalk from the bagatelle board in the corner, and wrote
this on the table: "dr. sir, for god sake take him to the work House."

Then he gathered up the coppers where they lay, and stepped quietly into
the street.



TO BOW BRIDGE


The eleven-five tram-car from Stratford started for Bow a trifle before
its time. The conductor knew what he might escape by stealing a march on
the closing public-houses; as also what was in store for all the
conductors in his wake till there were no more revelers left to swarm the
cars. For it was Saturday night, and many a week's wages were a-knocking
down; and the publicans this side of Bow Bridge shut their doors at
eleven under Act of Parliament, whereas beyond the bridge, which is the
county of London, the law gives them another hour, and a man may drink
many pots therein. And for this, at eleven every Saturday, there is a
great rush westward, a vast migration over Lea, from all the length of
High Street. From the nearer parts they walk, or do their best to walk;
but from further Stratford, by the town hall, the church, and the
Martyrs' Memorial, they crowd the cars. For one thing, it is a long half
mile, and the week's work is over. Also, the car being swamped, it is
odds that a man shall save his fare, since no conductor may fight his way
a quarter through his passengers before Bow Bridge, where the vehicle is
emptied at a rush. And that means yet another half-pint.

So the eleven-five car started sooner than it might have done. As it was
spattering with rain, I boarded it, sharing the conductor's forlorn hope,
but taking care to sit at the extreme fore-end inside. In the broad
street the market clamored and flared, its lights and shadows flickering
and fading about the long church-yard and the steeple in the midst
thereof; and toward the distant lights, the shining road sparkled in long
reaches, like a blackguard river.

A gap fell here and there among the lights where a publican put his gas
out; and at these points the crowds thickened. A quiet mechanic came in,
and sat near a decent woman with children, a bundle, a basket, and a
cabbage. Thirty yards on the car rumbled, and suddenly its hinder end was
taken in a mass of people, howling, struggling and blaspheming, who
stormed and wrangled in at the door and up the stairs. There were lads
and men whooping and flushed, there were girls and women screaming
choruses; and in a moment the seats were packed, knees were taken, and
there was not an inch of standing room. The conductor cried "All full!"
and tugged at his bell-strap, whereunto many were hanging by the hand;
but he was swept from his feet, and made to push hard for his own place.
And there was no more foothold on the back platform nor the front, nor
any vacant step upon the stairway; and the roof was thronged; and the
rest of the crowd was fain to waylay the next car.

This one moved off slowly, with shrieks and howls that were racking to
the wits. From divers quarters of the roof came a bumping thunder as of
cellar-flapping clogs. Profanity was sluiced down, as it were, by
pailfuls from above, and was swilled back, as it were, in pailfuls from
below. Blowsers in feathered bonnets bawled hilarious obscenity at the
jiggers. A little maid with a market-basket hustled and jostled and
elbowed at the far end, listened eagerly, and laughed when she could
understand; and the quiet mechanic, whose knees had been invaded by an
unsteady young woman in a crushed hat, tried to look pleased. My own
knees were saved from capture by the near neighborhood of an enormous
female, seated partly on the seat and partly on myself, snorting and
gulping with sleep, her head upon the next man's shoulder. (To offer your
seat to a standing woman would, as beseems a foreign antic, have been
visited by the ribaldry of the whole crowd.) In the midst of the riot the
decent woman sat silent and indifferent, her children on and about her
knees. Further along, two women eat fish with their fingers and
discoursed personalities in voices which ran strident through the uproar,
as the odor of their snack asserted itself in the general fetor. And
opposite the decent woman there sat a bonnetless drab, who said nothing
but looked at the decent woman's children as a shoeless brat looks at the
dolls in a toyshop window.

"So I ses to 'er, I ses"--this from the snacksters--"I'm a respectable
married woman, I ses. More'n you can say you barefaced hussy, I ses."
Then a shower of curses, a shout, and a roar of laughter; and the
conductor, making slow and laborious progress with the fares nearest him,
turned his head. A man had jumped upon the footboard and a passenger's
toes. A scuffle and a fight, and both had rolled off into the mire, and
got left behind. "Ain't they fond o' each other?" cried a girl. "They're
a-goin' for a walk together." And there was a guffaw. "The silly bleeders
'll be too late for the pubs," said a male voice; and there was another,
for the general understanding was touched.

Then--an effect of sympathy, perhaps--a scuffle broke out on the roof. But
this disturbed not the insides. The conductor went on his plaguey task.
To save time, he passed over the one or two that, asked now or not,
seemed likely to pay at the journey's end. The snacking women resumed
their talk; the choristers their singing; the rumble of the wheels lost
in a babel of vacant ribaldry; the enormous woman choked and gasped and
snuggled lower down upon her neighbor's shoulder; and the shabby strumpet
looked at the children.

A man by the door vomited his liquor; whereat was more hilarity, and his
neighbors, with many yaups, shoved further up the middle. But one of the
little ones, standing before her mother, was pushed almost to falling;
and the harlot, seeing her chance, snatched the child upon her knee. The
child looked up, something in wonder, and smiled; and the woman leered as
honestly as she might, saying a hoarse word or two.

Presently the conflict overhead, waxing and waning to an accompaniment of
angry shouts, afforded another brief diversion to those within, and
something persuaded the standing passengers to shove toward the door. The
child had fallen asleep in the streetwalker's arms. "Jinny!" cried the
mother, reaching forth and shaking her. "Jinny! wake up now--you mustn't
go to sleep." And she pulled the little thing from her perch to where she
had been standing.

The bonnetless creature bent forward, and, in her curious voice (like
that of one sick with shouting): "She can set on my knee, m'm if she
likes," she said; "she's tired."

The mother busied herself with a jerky adjustment of the child's hat and
shawl. "She mustn't go to sleep," was all she said, sharply, and without
looking up.

The hoarse woman bent further forward, with a propitiatory grin. "'Ow old
is she?...I'd like to--give 'er a penny."

The mother answered nothing, but drew the child close by the side of her
knee, where a younger one was sitting, and looked steadily through the
fore windows.

The hoarse woman sat back, unquestioning and unresentful, and turned her
eyes upon them that were crowding over the conductor; for the car was
rising over Bow Bridge. Front and back they surged down from the roof,
and the insides made for the door as one man. The big woman's neighbor
rose, and let her fall over on the seat, whence, awaking with a loud
grunt and an incoherent curse, she rolled after the rest. The conductor,
clamant and bedeviled, was caught between the two pellmells, and,
demanding fares and gripping his satchel, was carried over the footboard
in the rush. The stramash overhead came tangled and swearing down the
stairs, gaining volume and force in random punches as it came; and the
crowd on the pavement streamed vocally toward a brightness at the bridge
foot--the lights of the Bombay Grab.

The woman with the children waited till the footboard was clear, and
then, carrying one child and leading another (her marketings attached
about her by indeterminate means), she set the two youngsters on the
pavement, leaving the third on the step of the car. The harlot,
lingering, lifted the child again, lifted her rather high, and set her on
the path with the others. Then she walked away toward the Bombay Grab. A
man in a blue serge suit was footing it down the turning between the
public-house and the bridge with drunken swiftness and an intermittent
stagger; and, tightening her shawl, she went in chase.

The quiet mechanic stood and stretched himself, and took a corner seat
near the door; and the tram-car, quiet and vacant, bumped on westward.



THAT BRUTE SIMMONS


Simmons's infamous behavior toward his wife is still matter for profound
wonderment among the neighbors. The other women had all along regarded
him as a model husband, and certainly Mrs. Simmons was a most
conscientious wife. She toiled and slaved for that man, as any woman in
the whole street would have maintained, far more than any husband had a
right to expect. And now this was what she got for it. Perhaps he had
suddenly gone mad.

Before she married Simmons, Mrs. Simmons had been the widowed Mrs. Ford.
Ford had got a berth as donkeyman on a tramp steamer, and that steamer
had gone down with all hands off the cape--a judgment, the widow woman
feared, for long years of contumacy which had culminated in the
wickedness of taking to the sea, and taking to it as a donkeyman, an
immeasurable fall for a capable engine-fitter. Twelve years as Mrs. Ford
had left her still childless, and childless she remained as Mrs. Simmons.

As for Simmons, he, it was held, was fortunate in that capable wife. He
was a moderately good carpenter and joiner, but no man of the world, and
he wanted to be one. Nobody could tell what might not have happened to
Tommy Simmons if there had been no Mrs. Simmons to take care of him. He
was a meek and quiet man, with a boyish face and sparse, limp whiskers.
He had no vices (even his pipe departed him after his marriage), and Mrs.
Simmons had ingrafted on him divers exotic virtues. He went solemnly to
chapel every Sunday, under a tall hat, and put a penny--one returned to
him for the purpose out of his week's wages--in the plate. Then, Mrs.
Simmons overseeing, he took off his best clothes and brushed them with
solicitude and pains. On Saturday afternoons he cleaned the knives, the
forks, the boots, the kettles and the windows, patiently and
conscientiously. On Tuesday evenings he took the clothes to the mangling.
And on Saturday nights he attended Mrs. Simmons in her marketing, to
carry the parcels.

Mrs. Simmons's own virtues were native and numerous. She was a wonderful
manager. Every penny of Tommy's thirty-six or thirty-eight shillings a
week was bestowed to the greatest advantage, and Tommy never ventured to
guess how much of it she saved. Her cleanliness in housewifery was
distracting to behold. She met Simmons at the front door whenever he came
home, and then and there he changed his boots for slippers, balancing
himself painfully on alternate feet on the cold flags. This was because
she scrubbed the passage and doorstep turn about with the wife of the
down-stairs family, and because the stair-carpet was her own. She
vigilantly supervised her husband all through the process of "cleaning
himself" after work, so as to come between her walls and the possibility
of random splashes; and if, in spite of her diligence, a spot remained to
tell the tale, she was at pains to impress the fact on Simmons's memory,
and to set forth at length all the circumstances of his ungrateful
selfishness. In the beginning she had always escorted him to the
ready-made clothes shop, and had selected and paid for his clothes--for
the reason that man are such perfect fools, and shopkeepers do as they
like with them. But she presently improved on that. She found a man
selling cheap remnants at a street corner, and straightway she conceived
the idea of making Simmons's clothes herself. Decision was one of her
virtues, and a suit of uproarious check tweeds was begun that afternoon
from the pattern furnished by an old one. More: it was finished by
Sunday, when Simmons, overcome by astonishment at the feat, was indued in
it, and pushed off to chapel ere he could recover his senses. The things
were not altogether comfortable, he found; the trousers clung tight
against his shins, but hung loose behind his heels; and when he sat, it
was on a wilderness of hard folds and seams. Also his waistcoat collar
tickled his nape, but his coat collar went straining across from shoulder
to shoulder, while the main garment bagged generously below his waist.
Use made a habit of his discomfort, but it never reconciled him to the
chaff of his shopmates; for as Mr. Simmons elaborated successive suits,
each one modeled on the last, the primal accidents of her design
developed into principles, and grew even bolder and more hideously
pronounced. It was vain for Simmons to hint--as hint he did--that he
shouldn't like her to overwork herself, tailoring being bad for the eyes,
and there was a new tailor's in the Mile End Road, very cheap, where...
"Ho yus," she retorted, "you're very consid'rit I dessay sittin' there
actin' a livin' lie before your own wife Thomas Simmons as though I
couldn't see through you like a book a lot you care about overworkin' me
as long as your turn's served throwin' away money like dirt in the street
on a lot o' swindling' tailors an' me workin' an' slavin' 'ere to save a
'apenny an' this is my return for it any one 'ud think you could pick up
money in the 'orseroad an' I b'lieve I'd be thought better of if I laid
in bed all day like some would that I do." So that Thomas Simmons avoided
the subject, nor even murmured when she resolved to cut his hair.

So his placid fortune endured for years. Then there came a golden summer
evening when Mrs. Simmons betook herself with a basket to do some small
shopping, and Simmons was left at home. He washed and put away the
tea-things, and then he fell to meditating on a new pair of trousers,
finished that day and hanging behind the parlor door. There they hung, in
all their decent innocence of shape in the seat, and they were shorter of
leg, longer of waist, and wilder of pattern than he had ever worn before.
And as he looked on them the small devil of original sin awoke and
clamored in his breast. He was ashamed of it, of course, for well he knew
the gratitude he owed his wife for those same trousers, among other
blessings. Still, there the small devil was, and the small devil was
fertile in base suggestions, and could not be kept from hinting at the
new crop of workshop gibes that would spring at Tommy's first public
appearance in such things.

"Pitch 'em in the dust-bin!" said the small devil, at last; "it's all
they're fit for."

Simmons turned away in sheer horror of his wicked self, and for a moment
thought of washing the tea-things over again by way of discipline. Then
he made for the back room, but saw from the landing that the front door
was standing open, probably by the fault of the child down-stairs. Now, a
front door standing open was a thing that Mrs. Simmons would not abide;
it looked low. So Simmons went down, that she might not be wroth with him
for the thing when she came back; and, as he shut the door, he looked
forth into the street.

A man was loitering on the pavement, and prying curiously about the door.
His face was tanned, his hands were deep in the pockets of his unbraced
blue trousers, and well back on his head he wore the high-crowned peaked
cap topped with a knob of wool, which is affected by Jack ashore about
the docks. He lurched a step nearer to the door, and: "Mrs. Ford ain't
in, is she?" he said.

Simmons stared at him for a matter of five seconds, and then said: "Eh?"

"Mrs. Ford as was, then--Simmons now, ain't it?"

He said this with a furtive leer that Simmons neither liked nor
understood.

"No," said Simmons, "she ain't in now."

"You ain't her 'usband, are ye?"

"Yus."

The man took his pipe from his mouth, and grinned silently and long.
"Blimy," he said, at length, "you look the sort o' bloke she'd like." And
with that he grinned again. Then, seeing that Simmons made ready to shut
the door, he put a foot on the sill and a hand against the panel. "Don't
be in a 'urry, matey," he said; "I come 'ere t'ave a little talk with
you, man to man, d'ye see?" And he frowned fiercely.

Tommy Simmons felt uncomfortable, but the door would not shut, so he
parleyed. "Wotjer want?" he asked. "I dunno you."

"Then if you'll excuse the liberty, I'll interdooce meself, in a manner of
speaking." He touched his cap with a bob of mock humility. "I'm Bob
Ford," he said, "come back out o' kingdom-come, so to say. Me as went
down with the 'Mooltan'--safe dead five years gone. I come to see my
wife."

During this speech Thomas Simmons's jaw was dropping lower and lower. At
the end of it he poked his fingers up through his hair, looked down at
the mat, then up at the fanlight, then out into the street, then hard at
his visitor. But he found nothing to say.

"Come to see my wife," the man repeated. "So now we can talk it over--as
man to man."

Simmons slowly shut his mouth, and led the way upstairs mechanically, his
fingers still in his hair. A sense of the state of affairs sunk gradually
into his brain, and the small devil woke again. Suppose this man was
Ford? Suppose he did claim his wife? Would it be a knock-down blow? Would
it hit him out?--or not? He thought of the trousers, the tea-things, the
mangling, the knives, the kettles and the window; and he thought of them
in the way of a backslider.

On the landing Ford clutched at his arm, and asked, in a hoarse whisper:
"'Ow long 'fore she's back?"

"'Bout a hour, I expect," Simmons replied, having first of all repeated
the question in his own mind. And then he opened the parlor door.

"Ah," said Ford, looking about him, "you've bin pretty comf'table. Them
chairs an' things"--jerking his pipe toward them--"was hers--mine, that is
to say, speaking straight, and man to man." He sat down, puffing
meditatively at his pipe, and presently: "Well," he continued, "'ere I am
agin, ol' Bob Ford dead an' done for--gawn down in the 'Mooltan.' On'y I
ain't done for, see?"--and he pointed the stem of his pipe at Simmons's
waistcoat--"I ain't done for, 'cause why? Cons'kence o' bein' picked up by
a ol' German sailin'-'utch an' took to 'Frisco 'fore the mast. I've 'ad a
few years o' knockin' about since then, an' now"--looking hard at
Simmons--"I've come back to see my wife."

"She--she don't like smoke in 'ere," said Simmons, as it were, at random.

"No, I bet she don't," Ford answered, taking his pipe from his mouth, and
holding it low in his hand. "I know 'Anner. 'Ow d'you find 'er? Do she
make ye clean the winders?"

"Well," Simmons admitted, uneasily, I--I do 'elp 'er sometimes, o'
course."

"Ah! An' the knives too, I bet, an' the bloomin' kittles. I know. Wy"--he
rose and bent to look behind Simmons's head--"s'elp me, I b'lieve she cuts
yer 'air! Well, I'm damned! Jes' wot she would do, too."

He inspected the blushing Simmons from divers points of vantage. Then he
lifted a leg of the trousers hanging behind the door. "I'd bet a trifle,"
he said, "she made these 'ere trucks. Nobody else 'ud do 'em like that.
Damme--they're wuss'n wot you're got on."

The small devil began to have the argument all its own way. If this man
took his wife back, perhaps he'd have to wear those trousers.

"Ah!" Ford pursued, "she ain't got no milder. An' my davy, wot a jore!"

Simmons began to feel that this was no longer his business. Plainly,
'Anner was this other man's wife, and he was bound in honor to
acknowledge the fact. The small devil put it to him as a matter of duty.

"Well," said Ford, suddenly, "time's short, an' this ain't business. I
won't be 'ard on you, matey. I ought prop'ly to stand on my rights, but
seein' as you're a well-meanin' young man, so to speak, an' all settled
an' a-livin 'ere quiet an' matrimonual, I'll"--this with a burst of
generosity--"damme, yus, I'll compound the felony, an' take me 'ook. Come,
I'll name a figure, as man to man, fust an' last, no less an' no more.
Five pound does it."

Simmons hadn't five pounds--he hadn't even five pence--and he said so. "An'
I wouldn't think for to come between a man an' 'is wife," he added, "not
on no account. It may be rough on me, but it's a dooty. I'll 'ook it."

"No," said Ford, hastily, clutching Simmons by the arm, "don't do that.
I'll make it a bit cheaper. Say three quid--come, that's reasonable, ain't
it? Three quid ain't much compensation for me goin' away forever--where
the stormy winds do blow, so to say--an' never as much as seein' me own
wife agin for better nor wuss. Between man an' man now--three quid; an'
I'll shunt. That's fair, ain't it?"

"Of course it's fair," Simmons replied, effusively. "It's more'n fair;
it's noble--downright noble, I call it. But I ain't goin' to take a mean
advantage o' your good-'artedness, Mr. Ford. She's your wife, an' I
oughtn't to 'a' come between you. I apologize. You stop an' 'ave yer
proper rights. It's me as ought to shunt, an' I will." And he made a step
toward the door.

"'Old on," quoth Ford, and got between Simmons and the door; "don't do
things rash. Look wot a loss it'll be to you with no 'ome to go to, an'
nobody to look after ye, an' all that. It'll be dreadful. Say a
couple--there, we won't quarrel, jest a single quid, between man an' man,
an' I'll stand a pot o' the money.

"You can easy raise a quid--the clock 'ud pretty nigh do it. A quid does
it; an' I'll--"

There was a loud double-knock at the front door. In the East End a
double-knock is always for the upstairs lodgers.

"Oo's that?" asked Bob Ford, apprehensively.

"I'll see," said Thomas Simmons in reply, and he made a rush for the
staircase.

Bob Ford heard him open the front door. Then he went to the window, and
just below him, he saw the crown of a bonnet. It vanished, and borne to
him from within the door there fell upon his ear the sound of a
well-remembered female voice.

"Where ye goin' now with no 'at?" asked the voice, sharply.

"Awright, 'Anner--there's--there's somebody upstairs to see you," Simmons
answered. And, as Bob Ford could see, a man went scuttling down the
street in the gathering dusk. And behold, it was Thomas Simmons.

Ford reached the landing in three strides. His wife was still at the
front door, staring after Simmons. He flung into the back room, threw
open the window, dropped from the wash-house roof into the back-yard,
scrambled desperately over the fence, and disappeared into the gloom. He
was seen by no living soul. And that is why Simmons's base
desertion--under his wife's very eyes, too--is still an astonishment to the
neighbors.



BEHIND THE SHADE


The street was the common East End street--two parallels of brick pierced
with windows and doors. But at the end of one, where the builder had
found a remnant of land too small for another six-roomer, there stood an
odd box of a cottage, with three rooms and a wash-house. It had a green
door with a well-blacked knocker round the corner; and in the lower
window in front stood a "shade of fruit"--a cone of waxen grapes and
apples under a glass cover.

Although the house was smaller than the others, and was built upon a
remnant, it was always a house of some consideration. In a street like
this, mere independence of pattern gives distinction. And a house
inhabited by one sole family makes a figure among houses inhabited by two
or more, even though it be the smallest of all. And here the seal of
respectability was set by the shade of fruit--a sign accepted in those
parts. Now, when people keep a house to themselves, and keep it clean;
when they neither stand at the doors nor gossip across back-fences; when,
moreover, they have a well-dusted shade of fruit in the front window;
and, especially, when they are two women who tell nobody their
business--they are known at once for well-to-do, and are regarded with the
admixture of spite and respect that is proper to the circumstances. They
are also watched.

Still, the neighbors knew the history of the Perkinses, mother and
daughter, in its main features, with little disagreement, having told it
to one another, filling in the details when occasion seemed to serve.
Perkins, ere he died, had been a shipwright; and this was when
shipwrights were the aristocracy of the work-shops, and he that worked
more than three or four days a week was counted a mean slave; it was long
(in fact) before depression, strikes, iron plates, and collective
blindness had driven shipbuilding to the Clyde. Perkins had labored no
harder than his fellows, had married a tradesman's daughter, and had
spent his money with freedom; and some while after his death his widow
and daughter came to live in the small house, and kept a school for
tradesmen's little girls in a back room over the wash-house. But as the
school board waxed in power, and the tradesmen's pride in regard
thereunto waned, the attendance, never large, came down to twos and
threes. Then Mrs. Perkins met with her accident. A dweller in Stidder's
Rents overtook her one night, and, having vigorously punched her in the
face and breast, kicked her and jumped on her for five minutes as she lay
on the pavement. (In the dark, it afterward appeared, he had mistaken her
for his mother.) The one distinct opinion the adventure bred in the
street was Mrs. Webster's, the Little Bethelite, who considered it a
judgment for sinful pride--for Mrs. Perkins had been a church-goer. But
the neighbors never saw Mrs. Perkins again. The doctor left his patient
"as well as she ever would be," but bed-ridden and helpless. Her daughter
was a scraggy, sharp-faced woman of thirty or so, whose black dress hung
from her hips as from a wooden frame; and some people got into the way of
calling her Mrs. Perkins, seeing no other thus to honor. And, meantime,
the school had ceased, although Miss Perkins essayed a revival, and
joined a Dissenting chapel to that end.

Then, one day, a card appeared in the window, over the shade of fruit,
with the legend "Pianoforte Lessons." It was not approved by the street.
It was a standing advertisement of the fact that the Perkinses had a
piano, which others had not. It also revealed a grasping spirit on the
part of people able to keep a house to themselves, with red curtains and
a shade of fruit in the parlor window; who, moreover, had been able to
give up keeping a school because of ill-health. The pianoforte lessons
were eight-and-sixpence a quarter, two a week. Nobody was ever known to
take them but the relieving officer's daughter, and she paid sixpence a
lesson, to see how she got on, and left off in three weeks. The card
stayed in the window a fortnight longer, and none of the neighbors saw
the cart that came in the night and took away the old cabinet piano with
the channeled keys, that had been fourth-hand when Perkins bought it
twenty years ago. Mrs. Clark, the widow who sewed far into the night, may
possibly have heard a noise and looked; but she said nothing if she did.
There was no card in the window next morning, but the shade of fruit
stood primly respectable as ever. The curtains were drawn a little closer
across, for some of the children playing in the street were used to
flatten their faces against the lower panes, and to discuss the piano,
the stuff-bottomed chairs, the antimacassars, the mantel-piece ornaments,
and the low table with the family Bible and the album on it.

It was soon after this that the Perkinses altogether ceased from
shopping--ceased, at any rate, in that neighborhood. Trade with them had
already been dwindling, and it was said that Miss Perkins was getting
stingier than her mother--who had been stingy enough herself. Indeed, the
Perkins demeanor began to change for the worse, to be significant of a
miserly retirement and an offensive alienation from the rest of the
street. One day the deacon called, as was his practice now and then; but,
being invited no further than the doorstep, he went away in dudgeon, and
did not return. Nor, indeed, was Miss Perkins seen again at chapel.

Then there was a discovery. The spare figure of Miss Perkins was seldom
seen in the streets, and then almost always at night; but on these
occasions she was observed to carry parcels of varying wrappings and
shapes. Once, in broad daylight, with a package in newspaper, she made
such haste past a shop-window where stood Mrs. Webster and Mrs. Jones,
that she tripped on the broken sole of one shoe, and fell headlong. The
newspaper broken away from its pins, and although the woman reached and
recovered her parcel before she rose, it was plain to see that it was
made up of cheap shirts, cut out ready for the stitching. The street had
the news the same hour, and it was generally held that such a taking of
the bread out of the mouths of them that wanted it by them that had
plenty was a scandal and a shame, and ought to be put a stop to. And Mrs.
Webster, foremost in the setting right of things, undertook to find out
whence the work came, and to say a few plain words in the right quarter.

All this while nobody watched closely enough to note that the parcels
brought in were fewer than the parcels taken out. Even a hand-truck, late
one evening, went unremarked, the door being round the corner, and most
people within. One morning, though, Miss Perkins, her best foot foremost,
was venturing along a near street with an outgoing parcel--large and
triangular and wrapped in white drugget--when the relieving officer turned
the corner across the way.

The relieving officer was a man in whose system of etiquette the
Perkinses had caused some little disturbance. His ordinary female
acquaintances (not, of course, professional) he was in the habit of
recognizing by a gracious nod. When he met the minister's wife he lifted
his hat, instantly assuming an intense frown, in the event of irreverent
observation. Now he quite felt that the Perkinses were entitled to some
advance upon the nod, although it would be absurd to raise them to a
level with the minister's wife. So he had long since established a
compromise. He closed his finger and thumb upon the brim of his hat, and
let his hand fall forthwith. Preparing now to accomplish this salute, he
was astounded to see that Miss Perkins, as soon as she was aware of his
approach, turned her face, which was rather flushed, away from him, and
went hurrying onward, looking at the wall on her side of the street. The
relieving officer, checking his hand on its way to his hat, stopped and
looked after her as she turned the corner, hugging her parcel on the side
next the wall. Then he shouldered his umbrella and pursued his way,
holding his head high, and staring fiercely straight before him; for a
relieving officer is not used to being cut.

It was a little after this that Mr. Crouch, the landlord, called. He had
not been calling regularly, because of late Miss Perkins had left her
five shillings of rent with Mrs. Crouch every Saturday evening. He noted
with satisfaction the whitened sills and the shade of fruit, behind which
the curtains were now drawn close and pinned together. He turned the
corner and lifted the bright knocker. Miss Perkins half opened the door,
stood in the opening, and began to speak.

His jaw dropped. "Beg pardon--forgot something. Won't wait--call next
week--do just as well." And he hurried round the corner and down the
street, puffing and blowing and staring. "Why, the woman frightened me,"
he afterward explained to Mrs. Crouch. "There's something wrong with her
eyes, and she looked like a corpse. The rent wasn't ready--I could see
that before she spoke; so I cleared out."

"P'r'aps something's happened to the old lady," suggested Mrs. Crouch.
"Anyhow, I should thing the rent 'ud be all right." And he thought it
would.

Nobody saw the Perkinses that week. The shade of fruit stood in its old
place, but was thought not to have been dusted after Tuesday. Certainly
the sills and the doorstep were neglected. Friday, Saturday and Sunday
were swallowed up in a choking brown fog, wherein men lost their
bearings, and fell into docks, and stepped over Embankment edges. It was
as though a great blot had fallen, and had obliterated three days from
the calendar. It cleared on Monday morning, and, just as the women in the
street were sweeping their steps, Mr. Crouch was seen at the green door.
He lifted the knocker, dull and sticky now with the foul vapor, and
knocked a gentle rat-tat. There was no answer. He knocked again, a little
louder, and waited, listening. But there was neither voice nor movement
within. He gave three heavy knocks, and then came round to the front
window. There was a shade of fruit, the glass a little duller on the top,
the curtains pinned close about it, and nothing to see beyond them. He
tapped at the window with his knuckles, and backed into the road-way to
look at the one above. This was a window with a striped holland blind and
a short net curtain; but never a face was there. The sweepers stopped to
look, and one from opposite came and reported that she had seen nothing
of Miss Perkins for a week, and that certainly nobody had left the house
that morning. And Mr. Crouch grew excited, and bellowed through the
keyhole.

In the end they opened the sash-fastening with a knife, moved the shade
of fruit, and got in. The room was bare and empty, and their steps and
voices resounded as those of people in an unfurnished house. The
wash-house was vacant, but it was clean, and there was a little net
curtain in the window. The short passage and the stairs were bare boards.
In the back room by the stair-head was a drawn window-blind, and that was
all. In the front room, with the striped blind and the short curtain,
there was a bed of rags and old newspapers, also a wooden box, and on
each of these was a dead woman.

Both deaths, the doctor found, were from syncope, the result of
inanition; and the better-nourished woman--she on the bed--had died the
sooner; perhaps by a day or two. The other case was rather curious; it
exhibited a degree of shrinkage in the digestive organs unprecedented in
his experience. After the inquest the street had an evening's fame; for
the papers printed coarse drawings of the house, and in leaderettes
demanded the abolition of something. Then it became its wonted self. And
it was doubted if the waxen apples and the curtains fetched enough to pay
Mr. Crouch his fortnight's rent.



THREE ROUNDS


At six o'clock the back streets were dank and black; but once in the
Bethnal Green Road, blots and flares of gas and naphtha shook and
flickered till every slimy cobble in the cart-way was silver-tipped.
Neddy Milton was not quite fighting-fit. A day's questing for an odd job
had left him weary in the feet; and a lad of eighteen can not comfortably
go unfed from breakfast to nightfall. But box he must, for the shilling
was irrecoverable, and so costly a chance must not be thrown away. It was
by a bout with the gloves that he looked to mend his fortunes. That was
his only avenue of advancement. He could read and write quite decently,
and in the beginning might even have been an office-boy, if only the
widow, his mother, had been able to give him a good send-off in the
matter of clothes. Also, he had had one chance of picking up a trade, but
the firm already employed as many boys as the union was disposed to
allow. So Neddy had to go, and pick up such stray jobs as he might.

It had been a bad day, without a doubt. Things were bad generally. It was
nearly a fortnight since Ned had lost his last job, and there seemed to
be no other in the world. His mother had had no slop-waistcoat finishing
to do for three or four days, and he distinctly remembered that rather
less than half a loaf was left after breakfast; so that it would never do
to go home, for at such a time the old woman had a trick of pretending
not to be hungry, and of starving herself. He almost wished that shilling
of entrance-money back in his pocket. There is a deal of stuff to be
bought for a shilling: fried fish, for instance, whereof the aromas, warm
and rank, met him thrice in a hundred yards, and the frizzle, loud or
faint, sung in his cars all along the Bethnal Green Road.

His shilling had been paid over but two days before the last job gave
out, and it would be useful now. Still, the investment might turn out a
gold mine. Luck must change. Meanwhile, as to being hungry--well, there
was always another hole in the belt!

The landlord of the Prince Regent public-house had a large room behind
his premises, which, being moved by considerations of sport and profit in
doubtful proportions, he devoted two nights a week to the uses of the
Regent Boxing Club. Here Neddy Milton, through a long baptism of
pummelings, had learned the trick of a straight lead, a quick counter,
and a timely duck; and here, in the nine-stone competition to open this
very night, he might perchance punch wide the gates of Fortune. For some
sporting publican, or discriminating bookmaker from Bow, might see and
approve his sparring, and start him fairly, with money behind him--a
professional. That would mean a match in six or eight weeks' time, with
good living in the meanwhile; a match that would have to be won, of
course. And after that...!

Twice before he had boxed in competition. Once he won his bout in the
first round, and was beaten in the second; and once he was beaten in the
first, but that was by the final winner, Tab Rosser, who was now matched
for a hundred a side, sparred exhibition bouts up west, wore a light
Newmarket coat, and could stand whisky and soda with anybody. To be
"taken up" on the strength of these early performances was more than he
could reasonably expect. There might be luck in the third trial; but he
would like to feel a little fitter. Breakfast (what there was of it) had
been ten hours ago, and since, there had been but a half-pint of
four-ale. It was the treat of a well-meaning friend, but it lay cold on
the stomach for want of solid company.

Turning into Cambridge Road, he crossed, and went on among the by-streets
leading toward Globe Road. Now and again a slight aspersion of fine rain
come down the gusts, and further damped his cap and shoulders and the
ragged hair that hung over his collar. Also a cold spot under one foot
gave him fears of a hole in his boot-sole as he tramped in the chilly
mud.

In the Prince Regent there were many at the bar, and the most of them
knew Neddy.

"Wayo, Ned," said one lad with a pitted face, "you don't look much of a
bleed'n' champion. 'Ave a drop o' beer."

Ned took a sparing pull at the pot, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. A
large man behind him guffawed, and Neddy reddened high. He had heard the
joke. The man himself was one of the very backers that might make one's
fortune, and the man's companion thought it would be unsafe to back Neddy
to fight anything but a beefsteak.

"You're drawed with Patsy Beard," one of Ned's friends informed him.
"You'll 'ave to buck up."

This was bad. Patsy Beard, on known form, stood best chance of winning
the competition, and to have to meet him at first set-off was ill luck,
and no mistake. He was a thickset little butcher, and there was just the
ghost of a hope that he might be found to be a bit over the weight.

A lad by the bar looked inquiringly in Ned's face and then came toward
him, shouldering him quietly out of the group. It was Sam, Young, whom
Neddy had beaten in an earlier competition.

"'ungry, Neddy?" he asked, in a corner.

It was with a shamed face that Neddy confessed; for among those in peril
of hunger it is disgraceful to be hungry. Sam unpocketed a greasy paper
enveloping a pallid sausage-roll. "'Ave 'alf o' this," he said. It was a
heavy and a clammy thing, but Ned took it, furtively swallowed a large
piece, and returned the rest with sheepish thanks. He did not turn again
toward the others, but went through to the room where the ring was
pitched.

The proceedings began. First there were exhibition bouts, to play in the
company. Neddy fidgeted. Why couldn't they begin the competition at once?
When they did, his bout would be number five. That would mean at least an
hour of waiting; and the longer he waited the less fit he would feel.

In time the exhibition sparring was ended, and, the real business began.
He watched the early bouts feverishly, feeling unaccountably anxious. The
lads looked strong and healthy. Patsy Beard was as strong as any of them,
and heavy. Could he stand it? This excited nervousness was new and
difficult to understand. He had never felt like it before. He was almost
trembling; and that lump of sausage-ball had struck half-way, and made
breathing painful work. Patsy Beard was at the opposite corner,
surrounded by admirers. He was red-faced, well-fed, fleshy, and
confident. His short hair clung shinily about his bullet head. Neddy
noted a small piece of court-plaster at the side of his nose. Plainly
there was a tender spot, and it must be gone for, be it cut, or scratch,
or only pimple. On the left side, too, quite handy. Come, there was some
comfort in that.

He felt to watching the bout. It was a hard fight, and both the lads were
swinging the right again and again for a knock-out. But the pace was too
hot, and they were soon breathing like men about to sneeze, wearily
pawing at each other while their heads hung forward. Somebody jogged him
in the back, and he found he must get ready. His dressing was simple. An
ill-conditioned old pair of rubber gymnasium shoes replaced his equally
ill-conditioned bluchers, and a cotton singlet his shirt; but his baggy
corduroys, ragged at the ankles and doubtful at the seat, remained.

Presently the last pair of boxers was brought into the dressing-room, and
one of the seconds, a battered old pug with one eye, at once seized
Neddy. "Come along, young 'un," he said. "I'm your bloke. Got no
flannels? Awright. jump on the scales."

There was no doubt as to the weight. He had scaled at eight stone
thirteen; now it was eight stone bare. Patsy Beard, on the other hand,
weighed the full nine, without an ounce to spare.

"You're givin' 'im a stone," said the old pug; "all the more credit
'idin' of 'im. 'Ere, let's shove 'em on. Feel 'em." He grinned and
blinked his solitary eye as he pulled on Neddy's hand one of a very black
and long-worn pair of boxing-gloves. They were soft and flaccid; Neddy's
heart warmed toward the one-eyed man, for well he knew from many knocks
that the softer the glove the harder the fist feels through it. "Sawftest
pair in the place, s'elp me," grunted the second, with one glove hanging
from his teeth. "My lad 'ad 'em last time. Come on."

He snatched a towel and a bottle of water, and hurried Neddy from the
dressing-room to the ring. Neddy sat in his chair in the ring-corner, and
spread his arms on the ropes; while his second, arms uplifted, stood
before him and ducked solemnly forward and back with the towel flicking
overhead. While he was fanning, Neddy was still conscious of the lump of
sausage-roll in his chest. Also he fell to wondering idly why they called
Beard Patsy, when his first name was Joe. The same reflection applied to
Tab Rosser, and Hocko Jones, and Tiggy Magson. But certainly he felt
hollow and sick in the belly. Could he stand punching? It would never do
to chuck it half through. Still--

"Ready!" sung the timekeeper.

The old pug threw the towel over his arm. "'Ave a moistener," he said,
presenting the water-bottle to Neddy's mouth. "Don't swallow any," he
added, as his principal took a large gulp. "Spit it out."

"Seconds out of the ring!"

The old prize-fighter took his bottle and climbed through the ropes.
"Don't go in-fightin'," he whispered from behind. "Mark 'im on the
stickin'-plaster; an' if you don't give 'im a 'idin', bli' me, I'll give
you one!"

"Time!"

The seconds seized the chairs and dragged them out of the ring, as the
lads advanced and shook hands. Patsy Beard flung back his right foot, and
made a flashy prance with his left knee as they began to spar for an
opening; it was Patsy's way. All Neddy's anxiety was gone. The moment his
right foot dropped behind his left, and his left hand rocked, knuckles
UP, before him, he was a competent workman, with all his tools in order.
Even the lump of dough on his chest he felt no more.

"Buy, buy!" bawled a wag in the crowd, as a delicate allusion to Beard's
more ordinary occupation. Patsy grinned at the compliment, but Neddy
confined his attention to business. He feinted with his left, and got
back; but Patsy was not to be drawn. Then Neddy stepped in and led
quickly, ducking the counter and repeating before getting away. Patsy
came with a rush and fought for the body, but Neddy slipped him, and got
in one for nothing on the ear. The company howled.

They sparred in the middle. Patsy led perfunctorily with the left now and
again, while his right elbow undulated nervously. That foretold an
attempt to knock out with the right: precautious, a straight and
persistent left and a wary eye. So Neddy kept poking out his left, and
never lost sight of the court-plaster, never of the shifty right. Give
and take was the order of the round, and they fought all over the ring,
Patsy Beard making for close quarters, and Neddy keeping off, and
stopping him with the left. Neddy met a straight punch on the nose that
made his eyes water, but through the tears he saw the plaster displaced,
and a tiny stream of blood trickling toward the corner of Patsy's mouth.
Plainly it was a cut. He broke ground, stopped half-way, and banged in
left and right. He got a sharp drive on the neck for his pains, and took
the right on his elbow; but he had landed on the spot, and the tiny
streak of blood was smeared out wide across Patsy's face. The company
roared and whistled with enthusiasm. It was a capital rally.

But now Neddy's left grew slower, and was heavy to lift. From time to
time .Patsy got in one for nothing, and soon began to drive him about the
ring. Neddy fought on, weak and gasping, and longed for the call of time.
His arms felt as if they were hung with lead, and he could do little more
than push feebly. He heard the yell of many voices: "Now then, Patsy,
hout him I 'Ave 'im out I That's it, Patsy, another like that! Keep on,
Patsy!"

Patsy kept on. Right and left, above and below, Neddy could see the blows
coming. But he was powerless to guard or to return. He could but stagger
about, and now and again swing an ineffectual arm as it hung from the
shoulder. Presently a flush hit on the nose drove him against the ropes,
another in the ribs almost through them. But a desperate wide whirl of
his right brought it heavily on Patsy's tender spot, and tore open the
cut. Patsy winced, and--

"Time!"

Neddy was grabbed at the waist and put in his chair. "Good lad!" said the
one-eyed pug in his ear as he sponged his face. "Nothink like pluck. But
you mustn't go to pieces 'alf through the round. Was it a awk'ard poke
upsetcher?"

Neddy, lying back and panting wildly, shook his head as he gazed at the
ceiling.

"Awright; try an' save yourself a bit. Keep yer left goin'--you roasted
'im good with that; 'e'll want a yard o' plaster tonight. An' when 'e
gits leadin' loose, take it auf an' give him the right straight from the
guard--if you know the trick. Point o' the jaw that's for, mind. 'Ave a
cooler." He took a mouthful of water and blew it in a fine spray in
Neddy's face, wiped it down, and began another overhead fanning.

"Seconds out of the ring!" called the timekeeper.

"Go, it, my lad"--thus a whisper from behind--"you can walk over 'im!" And
Neddy felt the wet sponge squeezed against the back of his neck, and the
cool water tickling down his spine.

"Time!"

Neddy was better, though there was a worn feeling in his arm muscles.
Patsy's cut had been well sponged, but it still bled, and Patsy meant
giving Neddy no rest. He rushed at once, but was met by a clean
right-hander, slap on the sore spot. "Bravo, Neddy!" came a voice, and
the company howled as before. Patsy was steadied. He sparred with some
caution, twitching the cheek next the cut. Neddy would not lead (for he
must save himself), and so the two sparred for a few seconds. Then Patsy
rushed again, and Neddy got busy with both hands. Once he managed to get
the right in from the guard as his second had advised, but not heavily.
He could feel his strength going--earlier than in the last round--and Patsy
was as strong and determined as ever. Another rush carried Neddy against
the ropes, where he got two heavy body blows and a bad jaw-rattler. He
floundered to the right in an attempt to slip, and fell on his face. He
rolled on his side, however, and was up again, breathless and unsteady.
There was a sickening throbbing in the crown of his head, and he could
scarce lift his arms. But there was no respite; the other lad was at him
again, and he was driven across the ring and back, blindly pushing his
aching arms before him, while punch followed punch on nose, ears, jaws,
and body, till something began to beat inside his head, louder and harder
than all beside, stunning and sickening him. He could hear the crowd
roaring still, but it seemed further off; and the yells of "That's it,
Patsy! Now you're got 'im! Keep at 'im! Hout 'im this time!"--came from
some other building close by where somebody was getting a bad licking.
Somebody with no control of his legs, and no breath to spit away the
blood from his nose as it ran and stuck over his lips. Somebody praying
for the end of the three minutes that seemed three hours, and groaning
inwardly because of a lump of cold lead in his belly that had once been
sausage-roll. Somebody to whom a few called--still in the other
building--"Chuck it, Neddy; it's no good. Why don'cher chuck it?" while
others said, "Take 'im away, tyke 'im away!" Then something hit him
between the eyes, and some other thing behind the head; that was one of
the posts. He swung an arm, but it met nothing; then the other, and it
struck somewhere; and then there was a bang that twisted his head, and
hard boards were against his face. Oh, it was bad, but it was a rest.

Cold water was on his face, and somebody spoke. He was in his chair
again, and the one-eyed man was sponging him.

"It was the call o' time as saved ye then," he said; "you'd never 'a' got
up in the ten seconds. Y'ain't up to another round, are ye? Better chuck
it. It's no disgrace, after the way you've stood up." But Neddy shook his
head. He had got through two of the three rounds, and didn't mean
throwing away a chance of saving the bout.

"Awright, if you won't," his mentor said. "Nothink like pluck. But you're
no good on points--a knock-out's the only chance. Nurse yer right, an'
give it 'im good on the point. 'E's none so fresh 'isself; 'e's blowed
with the work, an' you pasted 'im fine when you did 'it. Last thing, just
before 'e sent ye down, ye dropped a 'ot 'un on 'is beak. Didn't see it,
didyer?" The old bruiser rubbed vigorously at his arms, and gave him a
small, but welcome, drink of water.

"Seconds out of the ring!"

The one-eyed man was gone once more, but again his voice came from
behind. "Mind--give it ''im 'ard and give it 'im soon, an' if you feel
groggy, chuck it d'rectly. If ye don't, I'll drag ye out by the' slack o'
yer trousis an' disgrace ye."

"Time!"

Neddy knew there was little more than half a minute's boxing left in
him--perhaps not so much. He must do his best at once. Patsy was showing
signs of hard wear, and still blew a little; his nose was encouragingly
crimson at the nostrils, and the cut was open and raw. He rushed in with
a lead which Neddy ducked and cross-countered, though ineffectually.
There were a few vigorous exchanges, and then Neddy staggered back from a
straight drive on the mouth. There was a shout of "Patsy!" and Patsy
sprung in, right elbow all a-jerk, and flung in the left. Neddy guarded
wildly, and banged in the right from the guard. Had he hit? He had felt
no shock, but there was Patsy lying on his face.

The crowd roared and roared again. The old pug stuffed his chair hastily
through the ropes, and Neddy sunk into it, panting, with bloodshot eyes.
Patsy lay still. The timekeeper watched the seconds-hand pass its ten
points, and gave the word, but Patsy only moved a leg. Neddy Milton had
won.

"Brayvo, young 'un!" said the old fighter, as he threw his arm about
Neddy's waist, and helped him to the dressing-room. "Cleanest knock-out I
ever see--smack on the point o' the jaw. Never thought you'd 'a' done it.
I said there was nothink like pluck, didn't? 'Ave a wash now, an you'll
be all the better for the exercise. Give us them gloves--I'm off for the
next bout." And he seized another lad, and marched him out.

"'Ave a drop o' beer," said one of Neddy's new-won friends, extending a
tankard. He took it, though he scarcely felt awake. He was listless and
weak, and would not have moved for an hour had he been left alone. But
Patsy was brought to, and sneezed loudly, and Neddy was hauled over to
shake hands with him.

"You give me a 'ell of a doin'," said Neddy. "I never thought I'd beat
you."

"Beat me? Well, you ain't, 'ave you? 'Ow?"

"Knock-out," answered several at once. "Well, I'm damned said Patsy
Beard."

In the bar, after the evening's business, Neddy sat and looked wistfully
at the stout red-faced men who smoked fourpenny cigars and drank special
Scotch; but not one noticed him. His luck had not come after all. But
there was the second round of bouts, and the final, in a week's
time--perhaps it would come then. If he could only win the final--then it
must come. Meanwhile, he was sick and faint, and felt doubtful about
getting home. Outside it was, raining hard. He laid his head on the bar
table at which he was sitting, and at closing time there they found him
asleep.



IN BUSINESS


There was a great effervescence of rumor in Cubitt Town when Ted Munsey,
came into money. Ted Munsey, commonly alluded to as Mrs. Munsey's
'usband, Was a molder with a regular job at Moffatt's; a large, quiet man
of forty-five, the uncomplaining appurtenance of his wife. This was
fitting, for she had married beneath her, her father having been a dock
timekeeper.

To come into money is an unusual feat in Cubitt Town; a feat,
nevertheless, continually contemplated among possibilities by all Cubitt
Towners, who find nothing else in the Sunday paper so refreshing as the
paragraphs headed "Windfall for a Cabman" and "A Fortune for a Pauper,"
and who cut them out to pin over the mantel-piece. The handsome coloring
of such paragraphs was responsible for many bold flights of fancy in
regard to Ted Munsey's fortune, Cubitt Town, left to itself, being
sterile soil for the imagination. Some said that the Munseys had come in
for chests packed with bank-notes, on the decease of one of Mrs. Munsey's
relations, of whom she was wont to hint. Others put it at a street full
of houses, as being the higher ideal of wealth. A few, more romantically
given, imagined vaguely of ancestral lands and halls, which Mrs. Munsey
and her forebears had been "done out of" for many years by the lawyers.
All which Mrs. Munsey, in her hour of triumph, was at little pains to
discount, although, in simple fact, the fortune was no more than a legacy
of a hundred pounds from Ted's uncle, who had kept a public-house in
Deptford.

Of the hundred pounds Mrs. Munsey took immediate custody. There was no
guessing what would have become of it in Ted's hands; probably it would
have been, in chief part, irrecoverably lent; certainly it would have
gone and left Ted a molder at Moffat's, as before. With Mrs. Munsey there
was neither hesitation nor difficulty. The obvious use of a hundred
pounds was to put its possessors into business--which meant a shop; to
elevate them socially at a single bound beyond the many grades lying
between the molder and the small tradesman. Wherefore the Munseys
straightway went into business. Being equally ignorant of every sort of
shopkeeping, they were free to choose the sort they pleased; and thus it
was that Mrs. Munsey decided upon drapery and haberdashery, Ted's
contribution to the discussion being limited to a mild hint of
green-grocery and coals, instantly suppressed as low. Nothing could be
more genteel than drapery, and it would suit the girls. General
chandlery, sweetstuff, oil and firewood--all these were low,
comparatively. Drapery it was, and quickly; for Mrs. Munsey was not wont
to shilly-shally. An empty shop was found in Bromley, was rented, and was
stocked as far as possible. Tickets were hung upon everything, bearing a
very large main figure with a very small three farthings beside it, and
the thing was done. The stain of molding was washed from the scutcheon;
the descent thereunto from dock timekeeping was redeemed fivefold; the
dock timekeeping itself was left far below, with carpentering,
shipwrighting, and engine-fitting. The Munseys were in business.

Ted Munsey stood about helplessly and stared, irksomely striving not to
put his hands in his pockets, which were low; any lapse being instantly
detected by Mrs. Munsey, who rushed from all sorts of unexpected places
and corrected the fault vigorously.

"I didn't go for to do it, Marier," he explained, penitently. "It's
'abit. I'll get out of it soon. It don't look well, I know, in a
business, but it do seem a comfort, somehow."

"Oh, you an' your comfort! A lot you study my comfort, Hedward!"--for he
was Ted no more--"a-toilin' an' a-moilin' with everything to think of
myself, while you look on with your 'ands in your pockets. Do try an' not
look like a stuck ninny, do!" And Hedward, whose every attempt at help or
suggestion had been severely repulsed, slouched uneasily at the door, and
strove to look as businesslike as possible.

"There you go again, stickin' in the door-way and starin' up an' down the
street, as though there was no business doin'." There was none, but that
might not be confessed. "D'y' expect people to come in with you a-fillin'
up the door? Do come in, do! You'd be better out o' the shop altogether."

Hedward thought so too, but said nothing. He had been invested with his
Sunday clothes of lustrous black, and brought into the shop to give such
impression of a shop-walker as he might. He stood uneasily on alternate
feet, and stared at the ceiling, the floor, or the space before him, with
an unhappy sense of being on show and not knowing what was expected of
him. He moved his hands purposelessly, and knocked things down with his
elbows; he rubbed his hair all up behind, and furtively wiped the
resulting oil from his hand on his trousers, never looking in the least
degree like a shop-walker.

The first customer was a very small child who came for a ha'porth of
pins, and on whom Hedward gazed with much interest and respect, while
Mrs. Munsey handed over the purchase, abating not a jot of his
appreciation when the child returned, later, to explain that what she
really wanted was sewing cotton. Other customers were disappointingly
few. Several old neighbors came in from curiosity, to talk and buy
nothing. One woman, who looked at many things without buying, was
discovered after her departure to have stolen a pair of stockings, and
Hedward was duly abused for not keeping a sharp lookout while his wife's
back was turned. Finally, the shutters went up on a day's takings of
three and sevenpence farthing, including a most dubious threepenny bit.
But then, as Mrs. Munsey said, when you are in business you must expect
trade to vary; and of course there would be more customers when the shop
got known, although Hedward certainly might have taken the trouble to
find one in a busier thoroughfare. Hedward, whose opinion in that matter,
as in others, had never been asked, retired to the back-yard to smoke a
pipe--a thing he had been pining for all day; but was quickly recalled
(the pipe being a clay) upon Mrs. Munsey's discovery that the act could
be observed from a neighbor's window. He was continually bringing the
family into disgrace, and Mrs. Munsey despaired aloud over him far into
the night.

The days came and went, and trade varied, as a fact, very little indeed.
Between three and sevenpence farthing and nothing the scope for
fluctuation is small, and for some time the first day's record was never
exceeded. But on the fifth day a customer bought nearly seven shillings'
worth all at once. Her husband had that day returned from sea with money,
and she, after months of stint, indulged in an orgy of haberdashery at
the nearest shop. Mrs. Munsey was reassured. Trade was increasing;
perhaps an assistant would be needed soon, in addition to the two girls.

Only the younger of the girls, by the bye, had as yet taken any active
interest in the business, Emma, the elder, spending much of her time in a
bedroom, making herself unpresentable by inordinate blubbering. This was
because of Mrs. Munsey's prohibition of more company-keeping with Jack
Page. Jack was a plumber, just out of his time--rather a catch for a
molder's daughter, but impossible, of course, for the daughter of people
in business, as Emma should have had the proper feeling to see for
herself. This Emma had not; she wallowed in a luxury of woe, exacerbated
on occasions to poignancy by the scoldings and sometimes by the thumpings
of her mar, and neglected even the select weekly quadrille class,
membership whereof was part of the novel splendor.

But there was never again a seven-shilling customer. The state of trade
perplexed Mrs. Munsey beyond telling. Being in business, one must, by the
circumstance, have a genteel competence; this was an elementary axiom in
Cubitt Town. But where was the money? What was the difference between
this and other shops? Was a screw loose anywhere? In that case it
certainly could not be her fault; wherefore she nagged Hedward.

One day a polite young man called in a large pony-trap and explained the
whole mystery. Nobody could reasonably expect to succeed in a business of
this sort who did not keep a good stock of the fancy aprons and lace bows
made by the firm he was charged to represent. Of course, he knew what
business was, and that cash was not always free, but that need never
hinder transactions with him.

Three months' credit was the regular thing with any respectable,
well-established business concern, and in three months one would
certainly sell all the fancy aprons and lace bows of this especial kind
and price that one had room for. And he need scarcely remind a lady of
Mrs. Munsey's business experience that fancy aprons and lace bows--of the
right sort--were by far the most profitable goods known to the trade.
Everybody knew that. Should they say a gross of each, just to go on with?
No? Well, then half a gross. These prices were cut so near that it really
did not pay to split the gross, but this time, to secure a good customer,
he would stretch a point. Mrs. Munsey was enlightened. Plainly the secret
of success in business was to buy advantageously, in the way the polite
young man suggested, sell at a good price, and live on the profits,
merely paying over the remainder at the end of three months. Nothing
could be simpler. So she began the system forthwith. Other polite young
men called, and further certain profits were arranged for on similar
terms.

The weak spot in the plan