James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

Although much exasperated by her refusal, he neither pulled her hair nor kicked her this time, but vented his rage by turning from her and facing the company, rolling his eyeballs, and grinding his teeth, while he brooded further schemes for her persecution. Suddenly he smote himself violently on the forehead with his open palm, and clicked his finger and thumb, as much as to Say, “I’ve got it!” and then turning to his wife, he pointed the way to the street, and took to, walking up and down the stage with the mincing air of a young lady waiting for somebody.

The action was simple, even to unintelligibility, to the audience at large, but the outraged, down-trodden wife appeared to discover something in the ruffian’s gestures at once curiously exasperating and strengthening. With a cry of indignation and scorn she suddenly regained her legs, and stood before the monster erect as a police-inspector, and after regarding him with flashing eyes for fully a minute, she delivered fairly on the bridge of his nose a sounding right-handed hit from the shoulder, and down he went like a log, while she stood over him, and taking from her bosom a scroll of paper, and unrolling it like a charity boy’s Christmas piece, displayed it to the audience, neatly inscribed with the words, “Woman’s Virtue is her Brightest Jewel.”

This was another decided hit, and the applause that greeted it, if anything, exceeded that which was called forth by the exhibition of the pawn-tickets in the empty bread-tray, and continued until the drunkard put an end to it by suddenly starting up and flooring his wife by a single blow of the gin-bottle. The applause that followed this feat was not uproarious, but a deep murmur went through the house that plainly showed that this touch of real life, melancholy though it was, was recognized and appreciated by the beholders.

“How do you like the piece, Smiff?” inquired Ripston, as the curtain fell on this the first step.

“I think it’s a stunnin’ piece,” I replied, with a sigh, and thinking of my own mother, and that time when she turned on my father on account of his observation about Turkey, and he up with his fist and knocked her down over the fender.

“So do I. I think it one of the stunninest pieces I’ve seen for this month,” answered Ripston, emphatically; “if there’s a fault to find with it, it’s too cuttin’.”

“It is cuttin’.”

“It’ll be cuttiner as it goes on, or it’s werry strange to me,” observed Ripston, shaking his head sagely. “It’s the kid wot’s in its mother’s arms as goes to Tyburn in the Seven Steps; least-ways I reckon so; don’t you, Smiff?”

“That’s what I reckon.”

“He’ll break her ’art ’bout the third step,” continued he, with a dismal relish, and speaking, doubtless, out of his extensive knowledge of the gaff and its drama.

“I hope he won’t; it’ll be a gallus shame if he does,” I answered heartily.

“P’r’aps he’ll welt her like the old man does, soon as he gets big enough,” pursued Ripston;

“like your old man used to welt your old woman—your fust old woman I mean, Smiff, eh!”

And this reflection of Ripston’s calling up others, he sat a few moments, occasionally looking at me, and muttering incoherently such words as “jest ezackly!” “how rum!” “well, I’m blowed!” Somehow I seemed to know what he was thinking of, and it gave me no surprise when he presently whispered—

“I say, Smiff, it was jolly lucky that you changed, wasn’t it?”

I could do no more than nod my head in reply to so cruel a question.

“You must have felt queer not to have no old woman to go home to—no reg’ler mother, I mean, when you changed,” continued Rip; “it couldn’t ha’ been half such a settler with you as wot it was with me. Oh! when it come to that, don’t yer know, and that ’orspidle cove what I was tellin’ you on, ses he, ‘Don’t think on him as the wicked boy wot run away, mum,’ ses he; ‘but take him to yer arms,’ ses he, ‘like as if he was a kid what was jest born—like he was (that was me, don’t yer know) when he was first born, and begin afresh;’ blest if I didn’ think my old woman would have busted herself; I thought she would ha’ busted me too, a squeedging so jolly hard. Ah! that was a settler, I can tell yer, Smiff.”

I felt the tears in my eyes, and Ripston’s hand resting on my knee, I laid mine on it; and, only for shame’s sake, would have there and then unburdened my guilty mind to him. There was a man came round with ginger-beer and biscuits between the acts, and he happening to approach our box at this moment, I called for and stood two two-penny bottles, and the change of the sixpence in biscuits, for the satisfaction of my secret self, and to convince that extremely private individual how lightly I held the money supplied me by the thief-training George Hopkins. It was shockingly rubbishy ginger-beer, and the biscuits were insipid as dry oatmeal, which seemed so like further spiting of George Hopkins, that while Ripston made wry faces at his, I consumed mine to the last dreg and crumb with infinite relish.

There appeared to be a long stride between the first and second steps, a stride of several years’ length, for the curtain rising showed poor Mrs. Wildeye (the drunkard’s wife) in widow’s weeds, sitting in a wretched garret stitching shirts; while Frank Wildeye, (the Stepper, and late the infant,) a tallish boy, pale and emaciated as chalk and burnt cork could make him, reclined at the widow’s feet, and did his humble best to assist her by threading the needles as fast as she exhausted them, which was at the rate of five or six per minute. Despite her misfortunes, the widow had contrived to preserve her furniture, as seen in the opening act, even to the bread-tray, which now, however, was not quite empty, inasmuch as it contained a solitary crust about the size of two fingers.

After working away at a rate that certainly would have secured her, had she been able to maintain it, several shillings a day, even at the fixed slop price of seven farthings a shirt, the widow suddenly paused, seeming for the first time to have observed the pale and famished appearance of her offspring. Frantically catching up the crust with one hand and her offspring with the other, she pressed him to eat. With tears and gesticulations he refuses; soliciting her with all manner of dumb entreaty to eat the crust herself; and then ensued a poking to and fro of the crust from the offspring’s mouth to the mother’s, making a scene that might have melted the heart of a blackamoor. At last, with a wild cry of delight, the mother succeeded in forcing the crust between the offspring’s lips, and while he tearfully munched it to the slow music of the harp and violin, the mother carolled the pathetic ballad of “Poor Dog Tray,” with a strength of voice happily significant of the fact that seven years’ poverty and privation had not affected her already disordered lungs.

This scene was a triumphant success. Compassion moved the audience as though it were but a single body with a great melting heart in it, and instantly there ensued a clinking and a chinking, and copper money flung from pit, boxes, and gallery, pattered on to the stage and rolled this way and that This, as I knew, was the ordinary way in which the patrons of the gaff expressed their approval of a favourite actor, but in this case it was evident that at least a portion of them were actuated by feelings superior to mere admiration. Wholes and halves of penny loaves, apples, oranges, and a bit of seed cake, large enough to make considerable noise as it struck the boards, were generously contributed to the relief of the starving family. Nor was the family slow to garner the gifts so liberally showered. Without pausing in her song, Mrs. Wildeye bowed her acknowledgments left and right, (which, together with the action necessary to dodging the most bulky of the contributions, kept her pretty constantly on the move,) and scraped the halfpence together with her feet, while Frank, eking out his crust so that it might last as long as his mother’s song lasted, arose from his recumbent posture and went about the stage with a business air, picking up the money, and having counted and pocketed it, he went and reclined by the bottomless chair again, to which Mrs. Wildeye, “Poor Dog Tray” concluded, presently staggered and sank down on it. The cause of her staggering was presently made painfully apparent.