by Unknown
No, not for her own. When Tommy was wandering the pretty parts of London with James Gloag and other boys from Thrums Street in search of Jean Myles, whom they were to know by her carriage and her silk dress and her son in blue velvet, his mother was in bed with bronchitis in the wretched room we know of, or creeping to the dancing school, coughing all the way.
Some of the fits of coughing were very near being her last, but she wrestled with her trouble, seeming at times to stifle it, and then for weeks she managed to go to her work, which was still hers, because Shovel’s old girl did it for her when the bronchitis would not be defied. Shovel’s old slattern gave this service unasked and without payment; if she was thanked it was ungraciously, but she continued to do all she could when there was need; she smelled of gin, but she continued to do all she could.
The wardrobe had been put upon its back on the floor, and so converted into a bed for Tommy and Elspeth, who were sometimes wakened in the night by a loud noise, which alarmed them until they learned that it was only the man in the next room knocking angrily on the wall because their mother’s cough kept him from sleeping.
Tommy knew what death was now, and Elspeth knew its name, and both were vaguely aware that it was looking for their mother; but if she could only hold out till Hogmanay, Tommy said, they would fleg it out of the house. Hogmanay is the mighty winter festival of Thrums, and when it came round these two were to give their mother a present that would make her strong. It was not to be a porous plaster. Tommy knew now of something better than that.
“And I knows too!” Elspeth gurgled, “and I has threepence a’ready, I has.”
“Whisht!” said Tommy, in an agony of dread, “she hears you, and she’ll guess. We ain’t speaking of nothing to give to you at Hogmanay,” he said to his mother with great cunning. Then he winked at Elspeth and said, with his hand over his mouth, “I hinna twopence!” and Elspeth, about to cry in fright, “Have you spended it?” saw the joke and crowed instead, “Nor yet has I threepence!”
They smirked together, until Tommy saw a change come over Elspeth’s face, which made him run her outside the door.
“You was a-going to pray!” he said, severely.
“‘Cos it was a lie, Tommy. I does have threepence.”
“Well, you ain’t a-going to get praying about it. She would hear yer.”
“I would do it low, Tommy.”
“She would see yer.”
“Oh, Tommy, let me. God is angry with me.”
Tommy looked down the stair, and no one was in sight. “I’ll let yer pray here,” he whispered, “and you can say I have twopence. But be quick, and do it standing.”
Perhaps Mrs. Sandys had been thinking that when Hogmanay came her children might have no mother to bring presents to, for on their return to the room her eyes followed them woefully, and a shudder of apprehension shook her torn frame. Tommy gave Elspeth a look that meant “I’m sure there’s something queer about her.”
There was also something queer about himself, which at this time had the strangest gallop. It began one day with a series of morning calls from Shovel, who suddenly popped his head over the top of the door (he was standing on the handle), roared “Roastbeef!” in the manner of a railway porter announcing the name of a station, and then at once withdrew.
He returned presently to say that vain must be all attempts to wheedle his secret from him, and yet again to ask irritably why Tommy was not coming out to hear all about it. Then did Tommy desert Elspeth, and on the stair Shovel showed him a yellow card with this printed on it: “S.R.J.C. — Supper Ticket;” and written beneath, in a lady’s hand: “Admit Joseph Salt.” The letters, Shovel explained, meant Society for the somethink of Juvenile Criminals, and the toffs what ran it got hold of you when you came out of quod. Then if you was willing to repent they wrote down your name and the place what you lived at in a book, and one of them came to see yer and give yer a ticket for the blow-out night. This was blow-out night, and that were Shovel’s ticket. He had bought it from Hump Salt for fourpence. What you get at the blow-out was roast-beef, plum-duff, and an orange; but when Hump saw the fourpence he could not wait.
A favor was asked of Tommy. Shovel had been told by Hump that it was the custom of the toffs to sit beside you and question you about your crimes, and lacking the imagination that made Tommy such an ornament to the house, the chances were that he would flounder in his answers and be ejected. Hump had pointed this out to him after pocketing the fourpence. Would Tommy, therefore, make up things for him to say; reward, the orange.
This was a proud moment for Tommy, as Shovel’s knowledge of crime was much more extensive than his own, though they had both studied it in the pictures of a lively newspaper subscribed to by Shovel, senior. He became patronizing at once and rejected the orange as insufficient.
Then suppose, after he got into the hall, Shovel dropped his ticket out at the window; Tommy could pick it up, and then it would admit him also.
Tommy liked this, but foresaw a danger: the ticket might be taken from Shovel at the door, just as they took them from you at that singing thing in the church he had attended with young Petey.
So help Shovel’s davy, there was no fear of this. They were superior toffs, what trusted to your honor.
Would Shovel swear to this?
He would.
But would he swear dagont?
He swore dagont; and then Tommy had him. As he was so sure of it, he could not object to Tommy’s being the one who dropped the ticket out at the window?
Shovel did object for a time, but after a wrangle he gave up the ticket, intending to take it from Tommy when primed with the necessary tale. So they parted until evening, and Tommy returned to Elspeth, secretive but elated. For the rest of the day he was in thought, now waggling his head smugly over some dark, unutterable design and again looking a little scared. In growing alarm she watched his face, and at last she slipped upon her knees, but he had her up at once and said, reproachfully:
“It were me as teached yer to pray, and now yer prays for me! That’s fine treatment!”
Nevertheless, after his mother’s return, just before he stole out to join Shovel, he took Elspeth aside and whispered to her, nervously:
“You can pray for me if you like, for, oh, Elspeth; I’m thinking as I’ll need it sore!” And sore he needed it before the night was out.
CHAPTER VIII
THE BOY WITH TWO MOTHERS
“I love my dear father and my dear mother and all the dear little kids at ‘ome. You are a kind laidy or gentleman. I love yer. I will never do it again, so help me bob. Amen.”
This was what Shovel muttered to himself again and again as the two boys made their way across the lamp-lit Hungerford Bridge, and Tommy asked him what it meant.
“My old gal learned me that; she’s deep,” Shovel said, wiping the words off his mouth with his sleeve.
“But you got no kids at ‘ome!” remonstrated Tommy. (Ameliar was now in service.)
Shovel turned on him with the fury of a mother protecting her young. “Don’t you try for to knock none on it out,” he cried, and again fell a-mumbling.
Said Tommy, scornfully: “If you says it all out at one bang you’ll be done at the start.”
Shovel sighed.
“And you should blubber when yer says it,” added Tommy, who could laugh or cry merely because other people were laughing or crying, or even with less reason, and so naturally that he found it more difficult to stop than to begin. Shovel was the taller by half a head, and irresistible with his fists, but tonight Tommy was master.
“You jest stick to me, Shovel,” he said airily. “Keep a grip on my hand, same as if yer was Elspeth.”
“But what was we copped for, Tommy?” entreated humble Shovel.
Tommy asked him if he knew what a butler was, and Shovel remembered, confusedly, that there had been a portrait of a butler in his father’s news-sheet.
“Well, then,” said Tommy, inspired by this same source
, “there’s a room a butler has, and it is a pantry, so you and me we crawled through the winder and we opened the door to the gang. You and me was copped. They catched you below the table and me stabbing the butler.”
“It was me what stabbed the butler,” Shovel interposed, jealously.
“How could you do it, Shovel?”
“With a knife, I tell yer!”
“Why, you didn’t have no knife,” said Tommy, impatiently.
This crushed Shovel, but he growled sulkily:
“Well, I bit him in the leg.”
“Not you,” said selfish Tommy. “You forgets about repenting, and if I let yer bite him, you would brag about it. It’s safer without, Shovel.”
Perhaps it was. “How long did I get in quod, then, Tommy?”
“Fourteen days.”
“So did you?” Shovel said, with quick anxiety.
“I got a month,” replied Tommy, firmly.
Shovel roared a word that would never have admitted him to the hall.
Then, “I’m as game as you, and gamer,” he whined.
“But I’m better at repenting. I tell yer, I’ll cry when I’m repenting.” Tommy’s face lit up, and Shovel could not help saying, with a curious look at it:
“You — you ain’t like any other cove I knows,” to which Tommy replied, also in an awestruck voice:
“I’m so queer, Shovel, that when I thinks ‘bout myself I’m — I’m sometimes near feared.”
“What makes your face for to shine like that? Is it thinking about the blow-out?”
No, it was hardly that, but Tommy could not tell what it was. He and the saying about art for art’s sake were in the streets that night, looking for each other.
The splendor of the brightly lighted hall, which was situated in one of the meanest streets of perhaps the most densely populated quarter in London, broke upon the two boys suddenly and hit each in his vital part, tapping an invitation on Tommy’s brain-pan and taking Shovel coquettishly in the stomach. Now was the moment when Shovel meant to strip Tommy of the ticket, but the spectacle in front dazed him, and he stopped to tell a vegetable barrow how he loved his dear father and his dear mother, and all the dear kids at home. Then Tommy darted forward and was immediately lost in the crowd surging round the steps of the hall.
Several gentlemen in evening dress stood framed in the lighted doorway, shouting: “Have your tickets in your hands and give them up as you pass in.” They were fine fellows, helping in a splendid work, and their society did much good, though it was not so well organized as others that have followed in its steps; but Shovel, you may believe, was in no mood to attend to them. He had but one thought: that the traitor Tommy was doubtless at that moment boring his way toward them, underground, as it were, and “holding his ticket in his hand.” Shovel dived into the rabble and was flung back upside down. Falling with his arms round a full-grown man, he immediately ran up him as if he had been a lamp-post, and was aloft just sufficiently long to see Tommy give up the ticket and saunter into the hall.
The crowd tried at intervals to rush the door. It was mainly composed of ragged boys, but here and there were men, women, and girls, who came into view for a moment under the lights as the mob heaved and went round and round like a boiling potful. Two policemen joined the ticket-collectors, and though it was a good-humored gathering, the air was thick with such cries as these:
“I lorst my ticket, ain’t I telling yer? Gar on, guv’nor, lemme in!”
“Oh, crumpets, look at Jimmy! Jimmy never done nothink, your honor; he’s a himposter”’
“I’m the boy what kicked the peeler. Hie, you toff with the choker, ain’t I to step up?”
“Tell yer, I’m a genooine criminal, I am. If yer don’t lemme in I’ll have the lawr on you.”
“Let a poor cove in as his father drownded hisself for his country.”
“What air yer torking about? Warn’t I in larst year, and the cuss as runs the show, he says to me, ‘Allers welcome,’ he says. None on your sarse, Bobby. I demands to see the cuss what runs—”
“Jest keeping on me out ‘cos I ain’t done nothin’. Ho, this is a encouragement to honesty, I don’t think.”
Mighty in tongue and knee and elbow was an unknown knight, ever conspicuous; it might be but by a leg waving for one brief moment in the air. He did not want to go in, would not go in though they went on their blooming knees to him; he was after a viper of the name of Tommy. Half an hour had not tired him, and he was leading another assault, when a magnificent lady, such as you see in waxworks, appeared in the vestibule and made some remark to a policeman, who then shouted:
“If so there be hany lad here called Shovel, he can step forrard.”
A dozen lads stepped forward at once, but a flail drove them right and left, and the unknown knight had mounted the parapet amid a shower of execrations. “If you are the real Shovel,” the lady said to him, “you can tell me how this proceeds, ‘I love my dear father and my dear mother—’ Go on.”
Shovel obeyed, tremblingly. “And all the dear little kids at ‘ome. You are a kind laidy or gentleman. I love yer. I will never do it again, so help me bob. Amen.”
“Charming!” chirped the lady, and down pleasant-smelling aisles she led him, pausing to drop an observation about Tommy to a clergyman: “So glad I came; I have discovered the most delightful little monster called Tommy.” The clergyman looked after her half in sadness, half sarcastically; he was thinking that he had discovered a monster also.
At present the body of the hall was empty, but its sides were lively with gorging boys, among whom ladies moved, carrying platefuls of good things. Most of them were sweet women, fighting bravely for these boys, and not at all like Shovel’s patroness, who had come for a sensation. Tommy falling into her hands, she got it.
Tommy, who had a corner to himself, was lolling in it like a little king, and he not only ordered roast-beef for the awestruck Shovel, but sent the lady back for salt. Then he whispered, exultantly: “Quick, Shovel, feel my pocket” (it bulged with two oranges), “now the inside pocket” (plum-duff), “now my waistcoat pocket” (threepence); “look in my mouth” (chocolates).
When Shovel found speech he began excitedly: “I love my dear father and my dear—”
“Gach!” said Tommy, interrupting him contemptuously. “Repenting ain’t no go, Shovel. Look at them other coves; none of them has got no money, nor full pockets, and I tell you, it’s ‘cos they has repented.”
“Gar on!”
“It’s true, I tells you. That lady as is my one, she’s called her ladyship, and she don’t care a cuss for boys as has repented,” which of course was a libel, her ladyship being celebrated wherever paragraphs penetrate for having knitted a pair of stockings for the deserving poor.
“When I saw that,” Tommy continued, brazenly, “I bragged ‘stead of repenting, and the wuss I says I am, she jest says, ‘You little monster,’ and gives me another orange.”
“Then I’m done for,” Shovel moaned, “for I rolled off that ‘bout loving my dear father and my dear mother, blast ‘em, soon as I seen her.”
He need not let that depress him. Tommy had told her he would say it, but that it was all flam.
Shovel thought the ideal arrangement would be for him to eat and leave the torking to Tommy. Tommy nodded. “I’m full, at any rate,” he said, struggling with his waistcoat. “Oh, Shovel, I am full!”
Her ladyship returned, and the boys held by their contract, but of the dark character Tommy seems to have been, let not these pages bear the record. Do you wonder that her ladyship believed him? On this point we must fight for our Tommy. You would have believed him. Even Shovel, who knew, between the bites, that it was all whoppers, listened as to his father reading aloud. This was because another boy present half believed it for the moment also. When he described the eerie darkness of the butler’s pantry, he shivered involuntarily, and he shut his eyes once — ugh! — that was because he saw the blood spouting out of the butler.
He was turning up his trousers to show the mark of the butler’s boot on his leg when the lady was called away, and then Shovel shook him, saying: “Darn yer, doesn’t yer know as it’s all your eye?” which brought Tommy to his senses with a jerk.
“Sure’s death, Shovel,” he whispered, in awe, “I was thinking I done it, every bit!”
Had her ladyship come back she would have found him a different boy. He remembered now that Elspeth, for whom he had filled his pockets, was praying for him; he could see her on her knees, saying, “Oh, God, I’se praying for Tommy,” and remorse took hold of him and shook him on his seat. He broke into one hysterical laugh and then immediately began to sob. This was the moment when Shovel should have got him quietly out of the hall.
Members of the society discussing him afterwards with bated breath said that never till they died could they forget her ladyship’s face while he did it. “But did you notice the boy’s own face? It was positively angelic.” “Angelic, indeed; the little horror was intoxicated.” No, there was a doctor present, and according to him it was the meal that had gone to the boy’s head; he looked half starved. As for the clergyman, he only said: “We shall lose her subscription; I am glad of it.”
Yes, Tommy was intoxicated, but with a beverage not recognized by the faculty. What happened was this: Supper being finished, the time had come for what Shovel called the jawing, and the boys were now mustered in the body of the hall. The limited audience had gone to the gallery, and unluckily all eyes except Shovel’s were turned to the platform. Shovel was apprehensive about Tommy, who was not exactly sobbing now; but strange, uncontrollable sounds not unlike the winding up of a clock proceeded from his throat; his face had flushed; there was a purposeful look in his usually unreadable eye; his fingers were fidgeting on the board in front of him, and he seemed to keep his seat with difficulty.
The personage who was to address the boys sat on the platform with clergymen, members of committee, and some ladies, one of them Tommy’s patroness. Her ladyship saw Tommy and smiled to him, but obtained no response. She had taken a front seat, a choice that she must have regretted presently.