James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“Come, that’s enough of it, Jim Ballisat,” exclaimed Mr. Piggot. “My house ain’t goin’ to be made a randywoo for this sort o’ caper. What d’yer mean by it, Jim? Wallop her at home, can’t yer? You’re more like a devil than a man!”

As before observed, despite Mrs. Burke’s rags and dirt—despite her tangled hair and disfigured face—I knew her as soon as I set eyes on her; but I didn’t know my father, and when Mr. Pig-got addressed him as Jim Ballisat I was very much amazed. This my father! True, he was in his shirt-sleeves, and never in my life had I before seen him out of the house without his flannel jacket, so that doubtless made all the difference in his appearance; but then his shirt-sleeves were torn, and filthy dirty—not at all like the shirt-sleeves I had been accustomed to see about his arms. Moreover, this man had not my father’s face. It was altogether a different face. My father, as I knew him, was a smartish man, and by no means indifferent to personal appearance. When the work of the day was at an end, as soon as he had finished his tea, he would have a bowl of warm water, and taking off his jacket and waistcoat, tidily unbutton his shirt-front, and tucking it under his braces, have a good wash, and brush his hair, putting plenty of oil on it to soften and take the obstinacy out of it, and tie on his silk neckerchief, and all this with no more important business before him than to go round to the “Stile” and smoke a pipe with his chums. When he has been going to the play, he was so fastidious as to black and shine his ankle-jacks and go to the expense of new laces. On such occasions I have seen my mother spend a good half-hour curling his hair with bits of hot tobacco-pipe. But here Jim Ballisat, as Mr. Piggot declared him to be, was a very different figure—a man with an unwashed, bloated face and puffy eyes, with a head of hair that evidently had not known a brush or comb since that distant period when his face was last washed, with a beard a week old at least, and his thick hairy throat all bare. Tall hats, I think I have mentioned, were an abomination against which my father, in common with every other decent male inhabitant of Fryingpan Alley, most resolutely set his countenance. Now, however, cocked a-top of his uproarious hair was a hat of the tall sort, dirty-white and dreadfully battered. There he stood on the snowy pavement, yelling horrid oaths and flourishing his great fists, and threatening to stave Mrs. Burke’s jaws in if he could get hold on her; while she, depending that those who held him would keep him tight, stuck the arm that was not engaged a-kimbo, and wagged her hideous bleary face within two yards of him, shrieking defiance. I do think that if he could have got at her he would have murdered her. If one blow of his fist would have done it, I am sure it would have been done had they given him the chance. However, with persuasion and pulling they got him to come back into the house, and shut the door.

“You go home, marm,” exclaimed a well-meaning bystander. “You take my advice, and make yerself scarce.”

“And what for, may I ax?”

“You’ll have him at yer again if yer don’t”

“And indade I ’ll not go home!” screeched Mrs. Burke, tearing from her head the bonnet, about the safety of which a minute before she had expressed so much anxiety, and dashing it into the gutter, and demoniacally jumping upon it “Whirroo! Is it me that’s to be frightened by the likes of a dhrunken, dirthy bla’gard baste sich as him?” (Here she plucked a hair-pin from her “back knot,” and allowed the full shock of fiery hair to fall about her bruised and bloody face.) “Don’t I owe me ruin to the schoundhril? Hasn’t he sowld out of me dacent home the bits of shticks me own first dear man—the man as you ain’t fit to clane the shoes of, Jim Ballisat—lift me? Doesn’t he dhrink ivery pinny he can borry or shtale, and lave me to shupport the brat in me arms, which, Hiven be praised, is none o’ mine, but of the shthrumpit as consoorted wid him afore he pershwaded me to have him? Don’t I work me fingers to the bones for the lazy shpalpeen? Don’t I”—

What else Mrs. Burke did for my unfortunate father the attentive mob was cheated of hearing, for at that moment a policeman came up and unceremoniously pushed her off towards Fryingpan Alley.

My stepmother

I followed my stepmother and the mob as far as Fryingpan Alley, and saw the policeman, who seemed to know very well where she lived, hustle her unceremoniously into the arched entrance.

Now, what was I to do? Clearly, it was no use following Mrs. Burke any farther. Had she been the same Mrs. Burke I had known of old, the experiment would have been sufficiently dangerous; but now it was altogether out of the question. Young as I was, it was quite apparent to me that she was a greater fury than ever; and how she was likely to receive me, were I rash enough to make myself known, was plain from what I had heard her say about my little sister Polly. Poor little thing! Grievous as it was to see her in such a deplorable condition, to see her at all lifted a great weight from my mind. Not only was she alive, (and, judging from Jerry Pape’s singular behaviour and my father’s lasting malignancy, I very often had doubts about it,) but from the hasty view I had been enabled to obtain of her, she was not in the least maimed or disfigured.

Were my chances of finding a friend in my father any better? It did not seem so. He had become a drunkard, and, as I had heard them say, more like a devil than a man. I had seen him drunk many a time, and observed what a spiteful and dangerous man he was under such circumstances; but never before had I seen him so drunk as he now was. Yet, if I went away, where should I go? I was starving with cold and hunger. I durst not go back to the workhouse. The dark arches, now that they were deserted by my old friends Mouldy and Ripston, were no longer inviting. I was as much alone in the world as though there was no other living creature in it. After all, my father might take compassion on me. No doubt Mrs. Burke had done her best to set him against me, and had kept his wrath hot for me. Now, however, she was out of favour. Perhaps my father had found her out, and would be even glad to take me back again, were it only to spite her. Reckoning affairs up in this miserable manner, I crept slowly back towards the “Dog and Stile,’’ the door of which, now that the nuisance had been removed, was once more open, and business progressing the same as usual.

The taproom window faced the street, and I stooped down under it and listened. The company were singing. “This day a stag must die!” was the song of the moment, and presently it was completed amidst the “brayvos” and hammering of pewter pots on the tables.

“Who d’yer call on for the next harmony, Sam?” somebody asked.

“I calls on Nosey Warren.”

“Nosey Warren be butcher’d! I’m a-goin’ to sing.”

“Never mind him. Pipe up, Nosey.”

“I’ll see him butcher’d fust, and then he shan’t! I’m a-goin’ to sing my song, I tell yer; and them as don’t like to jine in the chorus can do the t’other thing.”

And then the speaker struck up “The death of Nelson.” I knew the song, and I knew the voice that was singing it. There was a water-spout attached to the wall by the side of the tap-room window, and I climbed up it and peeped in. It was my father. It gave me quite a thrill of delight to hear him—he was singing it so like himself and so unlike the dirty, blear-eyed man who had bundled Mrs. Burke into the gutter. He looked more like himself, too, and stood upright, waving his hand, and pointing out the enemy with his forefinger, exactly as Lord Nelson did it. Perhaps it was being in such a dreadful passion that had made him look so different. He seemed all right enough now; indeed, he seemed especially tender-hearted, so that when he came to “At length the fatal wownd,” his voice quite failed him, and he passed the sleeve of his shirt across his eyes before he could proceed any further. Should I go in and make myself known to him? It was no use shillyshallying about it. If I meant to do it, I had best do it at once.