James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“Father, are you asleep?”

“No, Jimmy, I’m awake. Why?”

“When is ‘never’ father?”

The question fairly startled him on his elbows. No doubt it did come rather suddenly on him.

“Hus—sh! lay down, Jim. You’ve been a-dreaming,” said he.

“I haven’t been to sleep yet, father. I can’t go for thinking of it. Can’t you tell me when ‘never’ is? Mother’s ‘never,’ I mean?”

“Mother’s ‘never!’” repeated he. “Well, that’s rather a queer question for a young ’un like you to ask. I don’t understand you, Jimmy. What has ‘never’ got to do with mother?”

“That’s what I can’t make out,” I replied; “I thought you might be able to tell me.”

“You go to sleep, that’s a good boy,” said my father, putting my head down on to the pillow, and tucking me in to make me comfortable; “you go to sleep, Jimmy; don’t you trouble your head about ‘never;’ ‘never’ is a long day.” “Only a day? only a long day? I’m glad of that. I’m glad it ain’t more; ain’t you, father?”

“Not particular glad, Jimmy; what’s it got to do with me? Long day or short day, it’s about the same, I reckon.”

“It isn’t the same to mother, is it, father?”

“There you are again,” replied my father, once more rising on his elbows and looking down on me; “what’s it got to do with mother?”

“‘Never’ is the time when mother is coming back to us. You ’ll be glad to see her come back, won’t you, father?”

He rose up high on his elbows when I said this, and regarded me, as I could see by the dim moonlight that came in at the window, with not a little dismay.

“Who’s been putting that into his young head?” said he.

“Mrs. Jenkins, father,” I promptly replied.

“Mrs. Jenkins is a precious jackass for her pains, then,” said my father, savagely. “Don’t you mind what she says, Jimmy. It isn’t no use of her trying to keep your pluck up by telling you a parcel of lies. Mother’s gone, Jimmy. She isn’t coming back. She can’t come back. Bushels and sackfuls of money wouldn’t fetch her back. How can she, Jimmy, when she’s dead? You knew that mother was dead, didn’t you?”

“Dead!”

“Dead!” echoed my father, in a whisper. “You see that bird on the shelf there” (one which young Joe Jenkins had taken in hand, and was preparing for stuffing. By the dim moonlight I could make it out pretty well; and a terribly grim sight it was, without eyes, with its beak wide agape, and with bright iron skewers run through all parts of its body.) “You see that, Jimmy; well, that’s death. Mother can no more come to life again, and get up and walk, than that bullfinch can hop down off the shelf and begin to pick up crumbs, and sing, and fly about the room.”

“And is that ‘never,’ too, father?” I asked, eyeing the horrible bullfinch. “Does death mean the same as ‘never?’”

“Pretty much, I suppose,” returned he. “How-somever, that’s being dead, my boy, and so you see.”

“I thought ‘dead’ meant ‘gone,’ father. The finch hasn’t gone. Hasn’t mother gone? Is she up-stairs with sharp things all stuck in her?”

“No, no! good Lord! what a fancy for a kid to lay bold on! Beggar that mother Jenkins! Look here; you know what keeps you going, don’t you?”

“Keeps me going, father?” I didn’t know. How should I.

“Keeps you walking and breathing, and that; and makes you—well, blest if I know how to bring it home to him!—makes you know what things are when you look at ’em.”

“I know,” said I. “My eyes.”

“No; more than that Your eyes ain’t no more than your hands to see with, ’cept for the power what’s give to ’em. It’s your soul what’s the power, Jimmy. It’s your soul what keeps you going. What goes out-of you and brings you to be like that finch, is your soul, my boy—what God’ll save, if you be a good boy, like the doctor told you, and say your prayers. And when it has gone out of you, there you are; can’t cry out, can’t move, nor hear, nor breathe, nor see. You can’t feel the least in the world. If you was pinned through and through, like that finch is, it would be all the same to you as leaving you alone. It doesn’t matter who it comes to, Jimmy; it’s the same thing. Death don’t know nothing about Lord Mayors, nor magistrates, nor nobs and swells, as ride about in carriages; they’re all the same as crossing-sweepers to him. And your mother’s dead; and by and by they will bring a coffin and lay her in it, and carry her out on their shoulders and lay her in the pit-hole. My poor Polly! my poor cherry-lipped gal! and that’s what they will do,” continued my father, carried sheer out of his depth in his earnest (though, I am bound to confess, not completely successful) endeavours to make me understand what death was; “that is what they will do to my poor gal; and me laying here without having kissed you before you went, as you wanted me, or even bidding you good-bye.”

At this point he broke down completely, and, burying his face in the pillow, fairly shook the scissor bedstead with the strength of his grief. The sorrow he had manifested in the early part of the evening was as nothing compared with it; and I take it to be a lucky circumstance that, affrighted by the dismal turn affairs had taken, I, too, now began to cry, and howl, and shriek, setting my pipes to the highest pitch. It was lucky for this reason, that lest every lodger in the house should be roused and alarmed by the tremendous row I was creating, my father exerted himself to stanch his grief, that he might be at liberty to abate mine.

But I was not to be easily pacified. The terrible picture of death that my father had drawn filled me with horror. The truth was bad enough before, seen as I had seen it through a haze of uncertainty and ignorance; but now, when, in his rough way, he whipped up the curtain, and exposed to my gaze the hard, grisly reality, it was altogether more than I could bear. It was all in vain that he endeavoured to quiet me. He in turn tried threats, coaxing, and compensation. He volunteered to tell me a story; and at once plunged, to the best of his ability, into one in which a dreadful ogre, with seven heads, had little children boiled regularly every morning for his breakfast. As may be imagined, I derived no sort of comfort from such a narrative. He felt out of bed for his trousers, and taking his canvas bag, gave it me with its contents. He promised me a ride on his barrow to Covent Garden Market in the morning. Knowing how much I liked Yarmouth bloaters, he pledged his word that if I would hold my row, I should have a whole one all to myself for my breakfast in the morning. There was a rocking-horse maker out in Aylesbury Street, and often had I expressed a desire to possess one of the splendid saddled and stirruped steeds exhibited in the shop—a desire that had invariably met with refusal, uncompromising and hopeless: now the handsomest rocking-horse to be bought for money should be mine in the morning, if I would only lie down and be a good boy.

No! no! no! I wanted my mother, and would be satisfied with nothing less. According to my father’s own statement, she was lying all alone, speared through and through with spikes, as was Joe Jenkins’s bullfinch, (or, if not, she was reduced to that deplorable condition, that whether they run spikes through or no would make no difference to her—which was much the same thing;) and what I insisted on, and would consent to leave off crying on no other terms, was that my father and I should go up-stairs and let mother out. He had the key of the door under his pillow, I reminded him; and begged and implored that he would go up and see what could be done for poor mother.