James Greenwood: The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“How d’ yer mean what sort of boy, mum?”

“Are you a downright bad ’un, born to bad, bad to the bone like all the other young scoundrels, he has brought here?”

She looked at me very hard as she asked me, and I could feel the colour mounting to my forehead. How did she want me to answer? The sort of boy I was had induced Mr. Hopkins to take me in hand and make me his lodger; still, it was not because I was a good boy I was very well aware.

“I don’t know about a downright bad ’un, mum,” I answered, “I hope I ain’t quite that: I’m good at some things and bad at other things I s’pose. You ask Mr. Hopkins, he’ll tell you what I’m good at.”

“How long have you been a thief?”

“Oh, a good many weeks.”

“Only weeks! How often have you been in prison?”

“Never.”

“Never! Have you got a mother?”

“No. Used to have one, but she died when I was ever so little.”

“A father?”

“I’d ’n know; he’s dead, too, for all I knows. It don’t make much odds to me whether he is or no.”

“He’s a thief I suppose. Always in prison almost, eh?”

“What, my father! who se’s so? It wouldn’t be good for ’em if he heard ’em sayin’ it Why, he’s a reg’ler honest cove my father is.” And her unjust insinuations against my father’s character for a moment lent me courage to look her in the face in a way that made her smile.

“Then, how came you to turn thief?” she asked. “How came you to take up with George? Do you like him?”

“Yes, very much,” I promptly replied; “I think he’s a nice sort of a genelman.”

“Yes! he is a nice sort of a gentleman,” observed Mrs. Hopkins, with a bitter little laugh. “Shall I tell you what he is? He’s the devil in man’s shape, if one ever lived; he’s a spider, curse him, who gets you into his web before you know it, and sucks your blood to the last drop: then you’re flung off.”

“Sucks my blood, ma’am?” Mrs. Hopkins spoke with a vehemence that alarmed and astonished me, even more than her expressions of hatred and contempt for Long George.

“Anybody’s blood, he lives on it, the vampire,” she replied, her swollen eyes flashing vindictively; “of course, he’ll suck your blood: what do you think you are brought here for?”

If she didn’t know what I was brought there for perhaps it wouldn’t please Long George if I told her; if she did know she didn’t want telling. Most likely after all she was acting in this manner to set me against Long George, with whom, as I knew, she had had a row; and if I took her part, come to-morrow she’d most likely tell him all that I had said against him! My experience of this phase of human weakness as developed in Mrs. Burke, was a sufficient safeguard to defend me from such a trap. Partly on these grounds, and partly that Mrs. Hopkins’s demeanour (especially as each moment I grew more and more convinced that she was not tipsy) began to frighten me, I edged towards the door and laid my hand on the latch so as to be in a position to bolt upstairs at a moment’s warning, and lock myself in my bedroom if necessary.

“Oh, it’s all right, mum, I dessay,” I observed, in as conciliatory a tone as I could assume, “if it ain’t, we’ll see about it in the mornin’.”

She looked at me for a few seconds with a pitying look that was scarcely less embarrassing than her fury. “Please God you say that because you don’t know, and not because you don’t care,” said she. “All right, is it? Is it all right to be shut up in prison for months—years, perhaps; to be branded with a name that will never wear off, and will be a curse and disgrace to you and all who know you as long as you live? Is that all right? Supposing that you have no mother or father that cares for you, is there no one who was ever kind to you, and whom you would think of when you were shut up in prison—a felon?”

Was there anyone? Ay, there was indeed; there was one especially, and to that one she seemed particularly to point, (which, after all, I suppose was not extraordinary, considering that with the exception of Ripston there was none other)—to Mrs. Winkship! Decidedly, I should not like that dear, kind old soul to know that I was a felon shut up in prison. I had only to reflect for an instant on that memorable night when she and Martha brought me in out of the streets and fed me, and clothed me, and did her best to set me in the right way, to feel that I should have some one to think a great deal about if ever so terrible a calamity as that which Mrs. Hopkins hinted at befell me. Still, there was Long George’s promise that, if he could avoid it, it never should befall me.

“I shouldn’t be sure to shut up in prison,” I answered, it’an’t likely I’d—I’d go on if I was sure.”

“But you are sure— certain , as you stand there alive.”

“I don’t see why, mum; I’ve kept out on it more’n eight weeks, and that wirrout anbody to help me.”

I was conscious of fluttering for a moment out of the dumps into which her strange conversation had cast me, as I made this last observation. It was the boy of “talent” who spoke.

“You’ve got some one to help you now, God help you,” replied she, shaking her head; “he’ll help you as he has helped seven boys before you, since I’ve known him, the coward; he’ll help you to the hulks. It’s part of his plan to do it, I tell you. He’s got that in view from the very first hour you start working for him. What have I heard him say a hundred times? ‘Never take up with a fresh hand till you’ve shopped your scarecrow.’ The scarecrow is the boy who has served him until he is well-known to the police, and is so closely watched that he may as well stay at home as go out. Now, perhaps, you understand.”

It was impossible to misunderstand.

“He told me different to that,” said I, with a sensation of quaking at the ugly picture of Mr. George Hopkins as the woman drew it; “he told me that he could get people to swear to anything if he paid ’em for it, and that he’d get me out of a mess when I got into one.”

“He told you true about the paying and swearing, curse him; there’s no doubt of that,” replied she bitterly. “Well I know it; well my poor Ted, ten thousand miles away, knows it. I wish I was dead. If I could kill him by wishing, he’d die this minute wherever he is, if they hung me for it to-morrow. Lord send I could kill him where he is now! I’d give ten lives if I had ’em to be able to do it.”

The pitying look her face had worn during the last few minutes faded as she gave utterance to these wicked wishes, and her swollen eyes flashed as before, and I could hear her teeth grate as she ground one foot against the floor as though in imagination crushing and killing some crawling thing hateful and abominable.

“Was Ted one of the seven boys, mum?”

“No: my husband,” she answered abruptly; “but there, it ain’t for me to speak of him now; least of all to a child such as you are. Never mind why I hate the other one, the traitor, so that you get good out of it. I durst not have said a quarter as much to the last boy, nor any other that has lived here since he set me hating him, but I think I may trust you. May I? You may tell him to-morrow all I have told you tonight; and you will have the pleasure of hearing him beat me—punch me with his fists and kick me, the coward, until I can neither stand nor speak—as he has done fifty times before. You may tell him if you like: I don’t much care if you do, I’m so sick of it all; so heartily sick.”

And she sank down on to a chair, and laying her face flat on her hands on the table, began to cry and sob in a way that brought tears to my eyes, little ruffian though I was.