Again little Di interrupted the butler by asking excitedly where the boy"s home was.
"In the neighbour"ood of W"itechapel, Miss Di."
"Then, papa, we will go straight off to see him," said the child, in the tone of one whose mind is fully made up. "You and I shall go together-- won"t we? good papa!"
"That will do, b.a.l.l.s, you may go. No, my dear Di, I think we had better not. I will write to one of the city missionaries whom I know, and ask him to--"
"No, but, papa--dear papa, we _must_ go. The city missionary could never say how very, _very_ sorry I am that he should have broken his leg while helping me. And then I should _so_ like to sit by him and tell him stories, and give him his soup and gruel, and read to him. Poor, _poor_ boy, we _must_ go, papa, won"t you?"
"Not to-day, dear. It is impossible to go to-day. There, now, don"t begin to cry. Perhaps--perhaps to-morrow--but think, my love; you have no idea how dirty--how _very_ nasty--the places are in which our lower orders live."
"Oh! yes I have," said Di eagerly. "Haven"t I seen our nursery on cleaning days?"
A faint flicker of a smile pa.s.sed over the knight"s countenance.
"True, darling, but the places are far, far dirtier than that. Then the smells. Oh! they are very dreadful--"
"What--worse than _we_ have when there"s cabbage for dinner?"
"Yes, much worse than that."
"I don"t care, papa. We _must_ go to see the boy--the poor, _poor_ boy, in spite of dirt and smells. And then, you know--let me up on your knee and I"ll tell you all about it. There! Well, then, you know, I"d tidy the room up, and even wash it a little. Oh, you can"t think how nicely I washed up my doll"s room--her corner, you know,--that day when I spilt all her soup in trying to feed her, and then, while trying to wipe it up, I accidentally burst her, and all her inside came out--the sawdust, I mean. It was the worst mess I ever made, but I cleaned it up as well as Jessie herself could have done--so nurse said."
"But the messes down in Whitechapel are much worse than you have described, dear," expostulated the parent, who felt that his powers of resistance were going.
"So much the better, papa," replied Di, kissing her sire"s lethargic visage. "I should like _so_ much to try if I could clean up something worse than my doll"s room. And you"ve promised, you know."
"No--only said `perhaps,"" returned Sir Richard quickly.
"Well, that"s the same thing; and now that it"s all nicely settled, I"ll go and see nurse. Good-bye, papa."
"Good-bye, dear," returned the knight, resigning himself to his fate and the newspaper.
CHAPTER THREE.
POVERTY MANAGES TO BOARD OUT HER INFANT FOR NOTHING.
On the night of the day about which we have been writing, a woman, dressed in "unwomanly rags" crept out of the shadow of the houses near London Bridge. She was a thin, middle-aged woman, with a countenance from which sorrow, suffering, and sin had not been able to obliterate entirely the traces of beauty. She carried a bundle in her arms which was easily recognisable as a baby, from the careful and affectionate manner in which the woman"s thin, out-spread fingers grasped it.
Hurrying on to the bridge till she reached the middle of one of the arches, she paused and looked over. The Thames was black and gurgling, for it was intensely dark, and the tide half ebb at the time. The turbid waters chafed noisily on the stone piers as if the sins and sorrows of the great city had been somehow communicated to them.
But the distance from the parapet to the surface of the stream was great. It seemed awful in the woman"s eyes. She shuddered and drew back.
"Oh! for courage--only for one minute!" she murmured, clasping the bundle closer to her breast.
The action drew off a corner of the scanty rag which she called a shawl, and revealed a small and round, yet exceedingly thin face, the black eyes of which seemed to gaze in solemn wonder at the scene of darkness visible which was revealed. The woman stood between two lamps in the darkest place she could find, but enough of light reached her to glitter in the baby"s solemn eyes as they met her gaze, and it made a pitiful attempt to smile as it recognised its mother.
"G.o.d help me! I can"t," muttered the woman with a shiver, as if an ice-block had touched her heart.
She drew the rag hastily over the baby"s head again, pressed it closer to her breast, retraced her steps, and dived into the shadows from which she had emerged.
This was one of the "lower orders" to whom Sir Richard Brandon had such an objection, whom he found it, he said, so difficult to deal with, (no wonder, for he never tried to deal with them at all, in any sense worthy of the name), and whom it was, he said, useless to a.s.sist, because all _he_ could do in such a vast acc.u.mulation of poverty would be a mere drop in the bucket. Hence Sir Richard thought it best to keep the drop in his pocket where it could be felt and do good--at least to himself, rather than dissipate it in an almost empty bucket. The bucket, however, was not quite empty--thanks to a few thousands of people who differed from the knight upon that point.
The thin woman hastened through the streets as regardless of pa.s.sers-by as they were of her, until she reached the neighbourhood of Commercial Street, Spitalfields.
Here she paused and looked anxiously round her. She had left the main thoroughfare, and the spot on which she stood was dimly lighted.
Whatever she looked or waited for, did not, however, soon appear, for she stood under a lamp-post, muttering to herself, "I _must_ git rid of it. Better to do so than see it starved to death before my eyes."
Presently a foot-fall was heard, and a man drew near. The woman gazed intently into his face. It was not a pleasant face. There was a scowl on it. She drew back and let him pa.s.s. Then several women pa.s.sed, but she took no notice of them. Then another man appeared. His face seemed a jolly one. The woman stepped forward at once and confronted him.
"Please, sir," she began, but the man was too sharp for her.
"Come now--you"ve brought out that baby on purpose to humbug people with it. Don"t fancy you"ll throw dust in _my_ eyes. I"m too old a c.o.c.k for that. Don"t you know that you"re breaking the law by begging?"
"I"m _not_ begging," retorted the woman, almost fiercely.
"Oh! indeed. Why do you stop me, then?"
"I merely wished to ask if your name is Thompson."
"Ah hem!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the man with a broad grin, "well no, madam, my name is _not_ Thompson."
"Well, then," rejoined the woman, still indignantly, "you may move on."
She had used an expression all too familiar to herself, and the man, obeying the order with a bow and a mocking laugh, disappeared like those who had gone before him.
For some time no one else appeared save a policeman. When he approached, the woman went past him down the street, as if bent on some business, but when he was out of sight she returned to the old spot, which was near the entrance to an alley.
At last the woman"s patience was rewarded by the sight of a burly little elderly man, whose face of benignity was unmistakably genuine.
Remembering the previous man"s reference to the baby, she covered it up carefully, and held it more like a bundle.
Stepping up to the newcomer at once, she put the same question as to name, and also asked if he lived in Russell Square.
"No, my good woman," replied the burly little man, with a look of mingled surprise and pity, "my name is _not_ Thompson. It is Twitter-- Samuel Twitter, of Twitter, Slime and--, but," he added, checking himself, under a sudden and rare impulse of prudence, "why do you ask my name and address?"
The woman gave an almost hysterical laugh at having been so successful in her somewhat clumsy scheme, and, without uttering another word, darted down the alley. She pa.s.sed rapidly round by a back way to another point of the same street she had left--well ahead of the spot where she had stood so long and so patiently that night. Here she suddenly uncovered the baby"s face and kissed it pa.s.sionately for a few moments. Then, wrapping it in the ragged shawl, with its little head out, she laid it on the middle of the footpath full in the light of a lamp, and retired to await the result.
When the woman rushed away, as above related, Mr Samuel Twitter stood for some minutes rooted to the spot, lost in amazement. He was found in that condition by the returning policeman.
"Constable," said he, c.o.c.king his hat to one side the better to scratch his bald head, "there are strange people in this region."
"Indeed there are, sir."
"Yes, but I mean _very_ strange people."
"Well, sir, if you insist on it, I won"t deny that some of them are _very_ strange."