James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

I had been very dull all the afternoon, but that was not much to take notice of. The dark arches always are very dull on Sundays; for though you are very welcome to wander about in your rags, and grub for a living as best you can on weekdays, the police and the street-keepers in the neighbourhood of the Adelphi don’t permit anything of the sort on Sundays. “Get out;” “Move off, young gallows.” It’s all very well to give the order, but it isn’t everybody that can “move off”—that is, right off—for they don’t live anywhere. They have only got lodgings, and when they go out in the morning, the door is shut against them till night

For this, and other reasons into which it is not worth while here to enter, the arches were never without plenty of company all day on Sunday. The company was not of a comfortable sort—or rather there were two sorts,—and unless you belonged to one or the other, you were, in a manner of speaking, as much alone as though you had all the arches to yourself. One of these comprised the miserable and moping ones, who came to the arches for no other purpose than to hide and wear the day out, and who lounged about by themselves, smoking the bits of cigars they had picked up in the morning, if they were men, while the females of the same tribe huddled together in twos and threes, and dozed or talked in whispers. The men and women of the other sort were livelier, certainly, but scarcely as pleasant, being blackguards and petty ruffians of the worst class, who swore, and gambled, and got sport out of ill-using the quiet and miserable ones. With this last-mentioned ruffianly set, I am happy to record that neither myself, nor Mouldy, nor Ripston ever had any dealings. On Sunday afternoons, if the weather was fine and the tide favourable, we three usually took a walk on the shore, (the policemen didn’t interfere with us there,) and early in the evening we retired to our van, (it belonged to a greengrocer who lived in Bedfordbury, and the man who drove it gave us permission to sleep in it,) and there passed the time in telling stories until we fell asleep.

This was the way in which we spent the evening of the Sunday on which I was taken ill. Mouldy and Ripston had been out as usual in the afternoon; but I felt not at all inclined for walking, and stayed in the van until they came back. We had been lucky enough to pick up a few halfpence the night before, and had a half-quartern loaf and a pennyworth of treacle for dinner; that is to say, Ripston and Mouldy so dined; but for my part, I had no stomach for bread and treacle; indeed, I had eaten nothing since Saturday at dinner-time. I was hot and shivery; my tongue was dry, and my eyes smarted with a burning pain. I had had headache before, but never as now; it throbbed as though it was being tapped with hammers; or rather—for I very well remember the sensation—with door-knockers about which a bit of wash-leather had been tied by way of dulling the sound. There was a little straw luckily left in the van the day before, and, with more consideration than might have been expected in them, my companions let me have it all to myself. But I could get no comfort out of it. It was no use shaking it and punching it up; my head was so heavy, that as soon as I laid it down every bit of spring was taken out of the straw instantly.

As it grew later I grew worse. It was my turn to be “pillow;” but Ripston kindly offered to take my place, and Mouldy, with an equal show of goodnature, insisted on my taking Ripston’s body part, although the choice was fairly with him, he having been “pillow” the previous night. They even went to bed an hour before their usual time, in order that I might lie comfortably.

But Ripston couldn’t stand it. My head, he declared, scorched him through his jacket and waistcoat, and made his ribs too hot for him to bear; besides, I shook so as to cause his legs to move, and to disturb Mouldy. Although a very fair-tempered boy in the day-time—indeed, whenever he was awake—when he was half-asleep he was about as nasty-tempered a chap as can well be imagined. He gave the calf of Ripston’s leg a severe and sudden punch.

“Wot’s that for?” inquired the naturally indignant Ripston.

“I’ll show yer wot it’s for if you don’t lay still—jiggin’ yer leg about as if you was practisin’ a hornpipe!” replied Mouldy, savagely.

“Well, jest you hit the right ’un next time,” said Ripston. “It ain’t me jiggin’ at all; it’s Smiffield.”

“Wot’s the matter, Smiffield?” asked Mouldy. “Hain’t you warm enough?”

“I should rather think he was,” said Ripston; “warm ain’t the word for it; he’s blazin’ hot.”

“Then wot’s he a-shiverin’ for?” Mouldy fiercely demanded.

“How should I know? Jes’ you keep your hands to yourself, and arks him if you wants to know.”

“Wot are you shakin’ about in that way for, Smiff?”

“’Cos I’m so cold,” I answered. “I’m as cold as ice, Mouldy.”

“Jolly funny sort of ice as ain’t colder than you. Just you feel of him, Mouldy,” observed Ripston.

Mouldy did as requested, putting his hand up to my cheek.

“Take that, for tellin’ lies!” said be, savagely, at the same time giving me a cruel back-handed slap; “and now begin to snivel, and I’ll give yer another.”

Although I had struggled hard to conceal it, I had been very nigh to crying all the evening; and this unkind act of Mouldy’s set me off. I think I must have wanted very much to cry. No doubt that the slap on the cheek that Mouldy had given me would have drawn tears from my eyes at any time, but for no longer a time than the smart lasted; but now, although I scarcely felt the smart at all, I felt choked with sobs, and the tears fell faster than I could wipe them away. I couldn’t leave off. I seemed bereft of all power to try even. It was as though I was full of sorrow, and must be emptied of it. It wasn’t sorrow of the bellowing sort; for as I lay with my face to the waggon-floor, if it had not been for the sound of my sobbing, neither of my companions would have been aware that I was crying.

It was one of the oddest fits of crying that ever happened to me or any other boy, I believe. Ever since that day when I had seen my father and his neighbour looking out for me in Covent Garden Market, I had resolved to think no more about home, but go on free and easy as it were, and taking matters just as they came. When on the night of the day on which I had seen him from between the chinks of the gooseberry sieves with the donkey whip in his hand, and heard what he had to say about me, when I lay down in the van that night, I reckoned up the whole business, and, as I at the time thought, settled it for good and all. “Now look here,” I had said to myself, “you’ve seen your father and you’ve heard him, and there’s no sort of doubt as to what you’ll get if you goes home. Are you going home? Certainly not. Very well, then; that’s a settler. If you are not going home, you’ve got to do as other people do; and it’s no use funking, and making yourself miserable about them that don’t care a pin’s head about you, and are only waiting to lay hold on you, to whack you within an inch of your life. So let’s have no more snivelling and whispering, ‘Good night, father, and little Polly,’ and saying your prayers to yourself like a sneak, and all the while pretending to listen to the jolly good story Mouldy’s telling.” From that night my heart seemed set to freezing, as one may say, and it bad been freezing ever since; so that, until and within the last day or two, any moderate weight of rascality might slide over it smooth and slick, and without the least danger of breaking in at a soft part. It was frozen over strongly enough almost to bear anything. Now, however, there was a thaw. The rain had come, and the frost was broken up completely. The thaw seemed to begin right at the core, softening my hard starved-up little heart, setting it free, and swelling and heaving in a manner that was altogether too much for me.