Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished: A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure, - [sight word readers .txt] 📗
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“Thash right.—You’re a berrer feller than I took you for,” said the sot at his elbow.
To avoid further attention Sammy took his beer into a dark corner and was quickly forgotten.
He had not been seated more than a few minutes when the door opened, and a man with a mild, gentle, yet manly face entered.
“Have a glass, ol’ feller?” said the sot, the instant he caught sight of him.
“Thank you, no—not to-day,” replied John Seaward, for it was our city missionary on what he sometimes called a fishing excursion—fishing for men! “I have come to give you a glass to-day, friends.”
“Well, that’s friendly,” said a gruff voice in a secluded box, out of which next minute staggered Ned Frog. “Come, what is’t to be, old man?”
“A looking-glass,” replied the missionary, picking out a tract from the bundle he held in his hand and offering it to the ex-prize-fighter. “But the tract is not the glass I speak of, friend: here it is, in the Word of that God who made us all—made the throats that swallow the drink, and the brains that reel under it.”
Here he read from a small Bible, “‘But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way.’”
“Bah!” said Ned, flinging the tract on the floor and exclaiming as he left the place with a swing; “I don’t drink wine, old man; can’t afford anything better than beer, though sometimes, when I’m in luck, I have a drop of Old Tom.”
There was a great burst of ribald laughter at this, and numerous were the witticisms perpetrated at the expense of the missionary, but he took no notice of these for a time, occupying himself merely in turning over the leaves of his Bible. When there was a lull he said:—
“Now, dear sisters,” (turning to the women who, with a more or less drunken aspect and slatternly air, were staring at him), “for sisters of mine you are, having been made by the same Heavenly Father; I won’t offer you another glass,—not even a looking-glass,—for the one I have already held up to you will do, if God’s Holy Spirit opens your eyes to see yourselves in it; but I’ll give you a better object to look at. It is a Saviour—one who is able to save you from the drink, and from sin in every form. You know His name well, most of you; it is Jesus, and that name means Saviour, for He came to save His people from their sins.”
At this point he was interrupted by one of the women, who seemed bent on keeping up the spirit of banter with which they had begun. She asked him with a leer if he had got a wife.
“No,” he said, “but I have got a great respect and love for women, because I’ve got a mother, and if ever there was a woman on the face of this earth that deserves the love of a son, that woman is my mother. Sister,” he added, turning to one of those who sat on a bench near him with a thin, puny, curly-haired boy wrapped up in her ragged shawl, “the best prayer that I could offer up for you—and I do offer it—is, that the little chap in your arms may grow up to bless his mother as heartily as I bless mine, but that can never be, so long as you love the strong drink and refuse the Saviour.”
At that moment a loud cry was heard outside. They all rose and ran to the door, where a woman, in the lowest depths of depravity, with her eyes bloodshot, her hair tumbling about her half-naked shoulders, and her ragged garments draggled and wet, had fallen in her efforts to enter the public-house to obtain more of the poison which had already almost destroyed her. She had cut her forehead, and the blood flowed freely over her face as the missionary lifted her. He was a powerful man, and could take her up tenderly and with ease. She was not much hurt, however. After Seaward had bandaged the cut with his own handkerchief she professed to be much better.
This little incident completed the good influence which the missionary’s words and manner had previously commenced. Most of the women began to weep as they listened to the words of love, encouragement, and hope addressed to them. A few of course remained obdurate, though not unimpressed.
All this time young Sam Twitter remained in his dark corner, with his head resting on his arms to prevent his being recognised. Well did he know John Seaward, and well did Seaward know him, for the missionary had long been a fellow-worker with Mrs Twitter in George Yard and at the Home of Industry. The boy was very anxious to escape Seaward’s observation. This was not a difficult matter. When the missionary left, after distributing his tracts, Sammy rose up and sought to hide himself—from himself, had that been possible—in the lowest slums of London.
Now it must not be supposed that Mrs Frog, having provided for her baby and got rid of it, remained thereafter quite indifferent to it. On the contrary, she felt the blank more than she had expected, and her motherly heart began to yearn for it powerfully.
To gratify this yearning to some extent, she got into the habit of paying frequent visits, sometimes by night and sometimes by day, to the street in which Samuel Twitter lived, and tried to see her baby through the stone walls of the house! Her eyes being weak, as well as her imagination, she failed in this effort, but the mere sight of the house where little Matty was, sufficed to calm her maternal yearnings in some slight degree.
By the way, that name reminds us of our having omitted to mention that baby Frog’s real name was Matilda, and her pet name Matty, so that the name of Mita, fixed on by the Twitters, was not so wide of the mark as it might have been.
One night Mrs Frog, feeling the yearning strong upon her, put on her bonnet and shawl—that is to say, the bundle of dirty silk, pasteboard, and flowers which represented the one, and the soiled tartan rag that did duty for the other.
“Where are ye off to, old woman?” asked Ned, who, having been recently successful in some little “job,” was in high good humour.
“I’m goin’ round to see Mrs Tibbs, Ned. D’you want me?”
“No, on’y I’m goin’ that way too, so we’ll walk together.”
Mrs Frog, we regret to say, was not particular as to the matter of truth. She had no intention of going near Mrs Tibbs, but, having committed herself, made a virtue of necessity, and resolved to pay that lady a visit.
The conversation by the way was not sufficiently interesting to be worthy of record. Arrived at Twitter’s street an idea struck Mrs Frog.
“Ned,” said she, “I’m tired.”
“Well, old girl, you’d better cut home.”
“I think I will, Ned, but first I’ll sit down on this step to rest a bit.”
“All right, old girl,” said Ned, who would have said the same words if she had proposed to stand on her head on the step—so easy was he in his mind as to how his wife spent her time; “if you sit for half-an-hour or so I’ll be back to see you ’ome again. I’m on’y goin’ to Bundle’s shop for a bit o’ baccy. Ain’t I purlite now? Don’t it mind you of the courtin’ days?”
“Ah! Ned,” exclaimed the wife, while a sudden gush of memory brought back the days when he was handsome and kind,—but Ned was gone, and the slightly thawed spring froze up again.
She sat down on the cold step of a door which happened to be somewhat in the shade, and gazed at the opposite windows. There was a light in one of them. She knew it well. She had often watched the shadows that crossed the blind after the gas was lighted, and once she had seen some one carrying something which looked like a baby! It might have been a bundle of soiled linen, or undarned socks, but it might have been Matty, and the thought sent a thrill to the forlorn creature’s heart.
On the present occasion she was highly favoured, for, soon after Ned had left, the shadows came again on the blind, and came so near it as to be distinctly visible. Yes, there could be no doubt now, it was a baby, and as there was only one baby in that house it followed that the baby was her baby—little Matty! Here was something to carry home with her, and think over and dream about. But there was more in store for her. The baby, to judge from the shadowy action of its fat limbs on the blind, became what she called obstropolous. More than that, it yelled, and its mother heard the yell—faintly, it is true, but sufficiently to send a thrill of joy to her longing heart.
Then a sudden fear came over her. What if it was ill, and they were trying to soothe it to rest! How much better she could do that if she only had the baby!
“Oh! fool that I was to part with her!” she murmured, “but no. It was best. She would surely have bin dead by this time.”
The sound of the little voice, however, had roused such a tempest of longing in Mrs Frog’s heart, that, under an irresistible impulse, she ran across the road and rang the bell. The door was promptly opened by Mrs Twitter’s domestic.
“Is—is the baby well?” stammered Mrs Frog, scarce knowing what she said.
“You’ve nothink to do wi’ the baby that I knows on,” returned Mrs Twitter’s domestic, who was not quite so polite as her mistress.
“No, honey,” said Mrs Frog in a wheedling tone, rendered almost desperate by the sudden necessity for instant invention, “but the doctor said I was to ask if baby had got over it, or if ’e was to send round the—the—I forget its name—at once.”
“What doctor sent you?” asked Mrs Twitter, who had come out of the parlour on hearing the voices through the doorway, and with her came a clear and distinct yell which Mrs Frog treasured up in her thinly clad but warm bosom, as though it had been a strain from Paradise. “There must surely be some mistake, my good woman, for my baby is quite well.”
“Oh! thank you, thank you—yes, there must have been some mistake,” said Mrs Frog, scarce able to restrain a laugh of joy at the success of her scheme, as she retired precipitately from the door and hurried away.
She did not go far, however, but, on hearing the door shut, turned back and took up her position again on the door-step.
Poor Mrs Frog had been hardened and saddened by sorrow, and suffering, and poverty, and bad treatment; nevertheless she was probably one of the happiest women in London just then.
“My baby,” she said, quoting part of Mrs Twitter’s remarks with a sarcastic laugh, “no, madam, she’s not your baby yet!”
As she sat reflecting on this agreeable fact, a heavy step was heard approaching. It was too slow for that of Ned. She knew it well—a policeman!
There are hard-hearted policemen in the force—not many, indeed, but nothing is perfect in this world, and there are a few hard-hearted policemen. He who approached was one of these.
“Move on,” he said in a stern voice.
“Please, sir, I’m tired. On’y restin’ a bit while I wait for my ’usband,” pleaded Mrs Frog.
“Come, move on,” repeated the unyielding constable in a tone that there was no disputing. Indeed it was so strong that it reached the ears of Ned
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