James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

Sprawling on the barge, with his white head craning over the black prow of it, the old fellow regarded my up-turned, muddy, tear-stained visage searchingly, and, as it seemed, found enough of truth in it to shake his previous suspicions.

“You are such a awfully artful crew, that there’s no believin’ one o’ you; howsomever, since it’s only a match you want, here it is, and welcome. Here’s two, ’fear one goes out.”

And to land them to me dry and sound, he stuck them into a crack at the end of the boathook, and lowered them down to me.

But, alas! my endeavours were fruitless. I had half stripped and begrimed myself—I had borne the pelting of the brutal coal-heavers—all in vain. I had coals, and I had wood, and I had a bit of paper; but the whole were damp; and with deep sorrow I saw my two lucifers one after the other expire, leaving no result behind them. I looked out on to the shore, and though the jolly coal-heavers were still at work, the barge on which the friendly old man had been working was now quite deserted. Therefore there remained nothing for me to do but to go down to the water’s edge and wash the mud off my arms and legs and face, leaving them to dry in the wind for want of a towel. Then I put on my stockings and shoes, and my cap, and my swallow-tail coat, and, by way of promoting the circulation of my blood, performed several walking matches, from one end of the arches to the other, against the quarter chimes of Saint Clements Danes.

At two o’clock, or thereabouts, it began to snow steadily and heavily; but so far from being sorry to see this, I was delighted. Thought I, it will soon be all right now; they can’t stand much of this; they’ll soon be home. But though I sat on the bottom step of the flight down which they always used to come till I was chilled to the bones, they didn’t come. Other people did—some whose faces I knew, and others who were strange to me; but I kept in the dark. I didn’t want a mob round me, asking a lot of questions as to why I didn’t go home to the workhouse.

I waited till dark—till the churches chimed seven—but neither of my old friends made their appearance, and I was dead-beat and heart-sick. I was beset every way—by hunger, (I was too full of my plan to eat much breakfast,) by disappointment, and by anxiety to make up my mind what to do.

And now it was made clear to me—if I had not known it before—how completely my plans were centred in making up to Mouldy and Ripston once more; for now that they had failed me, I was all adrift. All I had done—all I had risked, and dared, and overcome—had gone for nothing. What could I possibly do, but—go home?

I had been working up to this decision for hours; since, indeed, the setting in of the heavy snow which should have driven my friends to the arches, and did not. The idea had come forward with wonderfully short and shy steps. When it first just began to whisper, it was whistled off—stuff and nonsense! rubbish! the last thing to be done!—but as my hopes of the two boys coming home fell away, it edged in bolder and bolder, and now took tight hold of me, and would let me think of nothing else.

And, after all, it was not such a dreadful thing to think of. More than nine months had passed since I had set eyes on anyone at home, and how did I know but that they would be very glad to see me, or, at the very worst, that my father would let me off with a good talking to? Besides, I was a bigger boy than when they had last seen me, (I had grown wonderfully while I was ill,) and knew how to seek work and to set about it, so that it wasn’t as if I meant going home to be an encumbrance.

So I tried to screw up my courage. Nevertheless, when I got out into the Adelphi, (it was still snowing at a tremendous rate,) I lingered round about, and at last ran as far as the market to take just one last look round for Mouldy and Ripston; but they were not to be found, and I set my face towards Fryingpan Alley.

My resolve at starting was to march into the alley without stopping or taking notice of anyone; since I had got to face my father, it had better be done at a dash. But by the time I reached Smithfield, and turned into Cowcross, I found myself walking slower and slower, till, by the time I reached the distillery wall, I pulled up altogether, and began to question myself whether, considering the sort of man my father was, it would be safe to approach him at a dash. It was Tuesday, and Tuesday was generally a good day with him. Would it not be better to wait till he came out of the “Dog and Stile?” He was never so soft-hearted as when a little gone in liquor. I would not go to the house; I would hang about the alley till I saw my father.

Unless my father’s habits were altered, he would go home to his supper a little after ten, and now it was nearly nine. It was a very dark night, and I was able to get pretty close to the alley without any great risk of being seen. I stood on the opposite side of the way. I find now, that Fryingpan Alley is faced by a boarding hemming in the new railway; but at the time of which I am writing there were houses, and courts, and alleys, as on the other side, and it was just inside the entrance of one of these alleys that I took my stand.

The thought of seeing my father, and wondering what he would do and say to me, kept me up, and saved me from feeling either cold or hungry; but I waited and waited till it was ten o’clock and past, and he didn’t come, and then I began to be afraid either that for once in a while he had taken his pipe and his pint indoors, or else that he was at the public-house getting very drunk, in which case he would be harder to deal with than if he were quite sober. I began to feel cold, and hungry, and faint, and all the rest of it, when these thoughts came into my head, and I must needs go as far as the “Dog and Stile,” and, creeping cautiously up, take a peep through the chinks of the swinging door.

But a very small portion of the bar of the “Dog and Stile” could be seen in this way; and, as it happened, my ears were better served than my eyes by approaching the door so closely. There was a row in the tap-room. I could plainly make out Mr. Piggot’s voice, and an Irishwoman’s voice, and many other voices, all swearing and laughing, and threatening and persuading, at one and the same time. All in a minute the Irishwoman’s loud abusive clacking became a screech of rage and pain; there was a staggering of the people quarrelling towards the door; and I had barely time to get out of the way before it was swung open, and a woman was pushed out.

She had a child in her arms, and, as might be seen by the light that shone through the windows of the public-house, her clothes were slouched about her, and tattered and bedraggled in a shameful way. She had long red hair, all touzled and hanging about her eyes, and her lips were cut and bleeding. There was no mistaking her—she was my stepmother; and the child in her arms—a poor little dirty-faced thing in an old bed-gown, and with a rag of a shawl wrapped about her—was my own sister Polly.

Evidently Mrs. Burke was drunk, or as near that state as was in the power of intoxicating liquor to reduce her to. It was a man that had thrust her out of the “Dog and Stile,” and so vengefully that she was sent tottering into the gutter, and only by great exertion saved herself from falling on her face there. She was not defeated, however. Gaining her legs, she reeled back to the door, and hammered at it with her bony fist, (how well I knew it!) shrieking out in horrible language for her bonnet. She would have her bonnet or she would smash every blessed and beatific window in the angelic house—send her to heaven if she wouldn’t!—and as she spoke she aimed a shoulder hit at a square of glass, and drew back her red fist through the jagged hole. This brought the man who had thrust her out once more to the door; he had a ragged bonnet in one hand, and he clapped it, wrong side in front, on her fiery head, and, raising his other hand, would have given her a frightful blow in the face had not some one behind caught him by the waist and jerked him back just in the nick of time.