James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

I pushed open the door, and made my way to the tap-room. My father had just finished his song, and the company were “knocking it down” in the most complimentary manner. As I stood at the tap-room door, gulping down my lingering remnant of hesitation, the potman came behind me with some pots of beer in his hands.

“Now, then, in you go, young feller, if you’re goin’!” said he, at the same time urging me forward with his knee, so that I was pushed against the door, opening it; and in I went.

The room was tolerably full of company; but, looking round, I failed to see my father, which was no wonder, as, having concluded his song, he had dropped his arms on the table before him, and his head on his arms, so that the battered white hat being still on his head, that and the dirty shirt-sleeves were all that was visible of him.

Awaiting the fresh supply of beer, and having nothing at the moment to engage their attention, the company generally favoured me by turning their inquiring glances in my direction.

“Well, work’us!” observed the potman, “what are you arter?”

“Please, sir, isn’t my father here?”

“Well, that’s a good ’un, arstin’ me! ain’t yer got two English eyes in yer head?”

“He was here just now; I saw him.”

“What sort of a cove is he?”

Now I caught sight of the white hat.

“There he is!” I answered, pointing towards him, with my heart in my mouth, as people say.

The potman, (who was a stranger to me, and a new hand at the “Stile,”) seemed much tickled at my answer, and laughed and winked at the company.

“Lord’s truth! Carrots ought to be here now,” said he; “it ’ud be as good as a pantermine to see her slip into Jim—wouldn’t it?”

“What’s the name of your father, my boy?” somebody asked.

“Mr. Ballisat, sir.”

“Strike me blind if I didn’t think so!” replied somebody, and whom I now knew to be a hare and rabbit-skin man living in our alley. “I thought I know’d him soon as he showed his head inside the door. Hi, Jim! Wake him up, some on yer. Jim! wake up, old man. Here’s your boy come back agin.” And being a lame man, and having his crutch with him, he reached over, and gave my father a tap on the head with the handle of it.

“You go to—,” growled my father, rubbing his head without raising it. “You keep your stick your own side, or p’r’aps I might get rusty.”

“But look up, Jim. Here he is, a-standin’ before you.”

“Gammon!”

“Speak to him, young Jim,” said the man. “He’ll know your woice, I’ll wager.”

“It is me, father,” said I, laying a shaking hand on his arm. “It is me. I’ve come back again.”

Slowly raising his heavy head off the table, my father gave me a scowling glance that made me back a yard or so away from him. He remained so long with his eyes fixed on me that I grew hopeful. I knew his passionate nature, and it seemed to me certain that if he meant to ill-use me he would have started up at once. I actually began to indulge in the blissful expectation that he would presently extend his hand to me, and tell me that I was forgiven.

He did nothing of the kind. As he looked at me, his eyes grew steadier; and taking his arms off the table, he deliberately arose and came round to where I was standing. Taking all my collars at a grip, and hurting my throat cruelly with the knuckles of his big fist, he thrust me down upon a form.

“Now I’ve got yer! B——t yer young eyes! now I’ve got yer!”

And still holding me tight with one hand, he proceeded to unbuckle the terrible waist-strap with the other.

“Why, what are you a-goin’ to do with him, Jim?” asked the lame hare and rabbit-skin man; “you’re a-hurtin’ his neck, Jim. Let go on him; he’s a-goin’ quite black in the face!”

“He’ll be black somewheres else besides his face, and green and yaller too, afore I’ve done with him,” replied my father, with awful coolness, as his hand, less sober than his head, fumbled at the buckle of the waist-strap.

“Why, you wouldn’t go a-latherin’ of him—would you, Jim?” exclaimed the potman.

“What have you got to say agin it?” asked my father, fiercely.

“Oh, it’s no odds of mine, of coorse; on’y when a kid comes and chucks hisself on your mercy, as one may say, it seems gallus cruel to take adwantage on him.”

“Let him go, Jim; you was a kid yerself once, reccoleck.”

“Ay, let him go; let him go, Jim! he seems more’n half dead now,” said the company.

“Now I’ve got yer,” repeated my father, as the buckle-tongue at last yielded, and he whipped the strap off with a flourish. For a moment he hesitated as to which would be the most convenient posture to place me in while he flogged me, and then lifting me up by the collar, he flung me flat with my face on to the table. He thus obtained a full-length view of me, and, as it seemed for the first time, noticed the strangeness of my attire. With a grunt of scorn he took the bagginess of my breeches between his finger and thumb, and so turned me over on to my back.

“Why, what d’yer mean by wearin’ this Bartlemy Fair rig? Where did yer get it from?”

I was so full of terror that I couldn’t answer him a word.

“D’yer hear, yer young cuss? What game have yer been up to? Who’s been a-dressin’ of yer up in this style?”

“It’s summat like the Penitensherry,” some one suggested.

“Refermatery, I think,” said another; “the cut o’ the hair is werry much like the Refermatery.”

“Can’t yer open yer lyin’ young jaws?” exclaimed my father, giving me a shake; “ is it Penitensherry?”

“Penitensherry be blowed!” observed the potman; “they ain’t that, and they ain’t t’other crack-jaw word; they’re work’us, that’s what they are.”

“What! work’us!” and, in the extremity of his horror, my father withdrew his hand from my, throat. “It’s a lie,” roared he; “they’re Penitensherry togs, that’s what they are.”

“No, father; they’re workhouse clothes,” I ventured to explain; “they’re the clothes what they gave me when I was carried to the workhouse with the fever.”

Had he suspected that “the fever” still lurked in the green bob-tail or the smalls, my father could not have regarded them with greater consternation. He actually shrank away from the table, thus enabling me to assume a less ignominious position.

“Here’s trouble for a cove!” he exclaimed, in a voice tremulous with emotion, and looking round appealingly on the company. “He comes and he tells me to my head that he’s bin and disgraced me and mine by chuckin’ hisself on the union! Penitensherry would ha’ been a corker; but work’us! work’us!” and he took to weeping. “You heard him, all on yer, didn’t yer? Ain’t it enough to make a feller werry nigh bust hisself with his feelin’s? He goes off arter werry nearly killin’ our other kid, and I goes a-losin arternoon arter arternoon, and can’t find no tale or tidin’s on him. Werry well; that I shouldn’t so much ha’ minded; but what does he go a-doin’ next? Why, he goes and ketches fevers, and chucks hisself on the parish, purpose that he might come here and show hisself off in pauper togs, and make me look little! Yet all on you set on me and say, ‘Let him be.’ Yes! I’ll let him be. Cuss him, I’ll make a jelly on him.”

“Not in my house you won’t. I’ve had enough of you, what with broken winders and bisness upset, for one day.”

It was Mr. Piggot that spoke. Attracted by the loud tone in which my father was speaking, and dreading a revival of the quarrel so recently quelled, he had left his bar to peep into the tap-room and see what the row was about. As luck would have it, he entered the room in the very nick of time to do me a service—just in time to catch the buckle-end of the strap as it was whirling in the air. But father had hold on the other end of the strap, with a turn of it round his hand, so that Mr. Piggot was unable to snatch it away, and only got his knuckles rapped by the brass buckle for his pains. This made the publican savage.