It was quite as well that they did not, or perhaps one would have stopped, then another, till a mob had got round, and the policeman had come up to inquire what was the matter.
And when I come to reflect on the deplorable pickle I was in, I wonder that somebody did not take notice of me. To be sure, it was a neighbourhood in which ragged and outcast little boys were not scarce, but my appearance was ten times worse than that of the ordinary ragged outcast. Naturally, I had begun to cry when Mrs. Burke took to punishing me with such diabolical cruelty. I had cried all the way as I ran, and I was crying now. Panting from my long run, sobbing with rage, and pain, and spite, with my tears mingling with the blood that trickled from the wounds Mrs. Burke’s nails had inflicted on my cheeks and on my nose; with my hair all uproarious and uncovered by a cap; with my naked feet all muddy, and my jacket all torn and tattered; there I sat on a bar in the pig-shambles on the noon of a Wednesday in the merry month of May.
This is the picture I see on looking back on those dismal times. When it happened, however, I thought nothing about it particularly, I’ll be bound. Ever since my mother died, how nearly a year and a quarter ago, I had had but one pair of boots; and the navy cap with the big peak, in which I followed the black load to Clerkenwell church-yard, was the last that covered my head. As for my tears, they had grown to be more familiar with me than smiles, and a scratch or a bruise more or less was, thanks to the Irishwoman’s liberality, not worth thinking about.
I had ears, eyes, thoughts but for one thing, and that was Mrs. Burke’s coming after me. Knowing the sort of woman she was, I was the more apprehensive. Though she had been sure of me by running me down fairly and openly, I knew that she would very much prefer lying in wait for me in the rear and suddenly pouncing out on me. It was to guard against so terrible a calamity that I had to keep a sharp look-out It was not until the church clocks chimed four that I began seriously to reflect on what I should do.
Should I go home? How dare I? She would kill me; she would wring my head about again, and punch me with her bony knuckles. More than once she had threatened to cut my liver out No doubt she was cruel enough, and, worse than all, now she had excuse enough; for, however she might treat me, it would be enough for her to hold up her thumb to compel my father to acknowledge that it served me right What could I say to my father in justification of my savage act? (for I had come to the conclusion that it was a savage act.) I had dropped the baby! With nothing else expected of me than to sit still and hold her tight, I had let her go and hurt her, I didn’t know how much. This was a feature of the business which hitherto had altogether escaped me—how much was Polly hurt? She went down a tremendous bump, and she screamed in a very frightful manner. Perhaps some of her bones were broken! Perhaps that was the solution to the otherwise unaccountable circumstance of my mother-in-law not following me. Clearly it was no use to think of going home.
Where, then, should I go? By this time it was dusk and the lamplighter was about, and the pig-market became a very dismal place to stay in. I wound my way through the pens till I got to the front row, which is in a line with the thoroughfare called Long Lane, and there I once more sat for further reflection.
I daresay I sat there—on the second bar, with my legs dangling towards the path, my body within the pen, and my arms resting on the top bar—for half-an-hour or more, trying hard to think of my affairs, leaving the “home” aspect quite out of the question; but it was of no use: the darker it got the hungrier I grew. I found myself thinking more and more on What Would be my probable fate if I did go home. I called to my mind the most severe whacking I had ever received, with how much it hurt, and whether, supposing on this occasion I got double, (that was the least I could expect,) I could possibly stand it. I really believe that I had almost convinced myself that I could, when suddenly I felt something touch my hand, and looking up, saw a gentleman holding two penny-pieces between his finger and thumb.
“Here, you poor little wretch,” said he, “take this and buy bread with it and before I could recover from my surprise, he passed on and was lost in the darkness.
I had not even said “thanky” for it, and I didn’t know whether to be sorry or glad on that score. It was such a queer sort of twopence. I had not earned it I had not worked for it. I had not expected it. He had voluntarily given it to me. Other people had given me halfpence many a time, and I had spent them without further thought beyond settling what I should buy. But I did not feel at liberty to spend the strange gentleman’s twopence so.
Confound his twopence! If he had twopence to give a boy, why didn’t he say, “Here’s twopence for you,” and have done with it? True, I was a poor little wretch, and as far as I remember I did not feel particularly hurt at being so called; it was his ordering me to buy bread with his money that made it seem so much like—well—so much like a beggar’s twopence. His words rang in my ears till they tingled as though Mrs. Burke had recently pulled them, and I looked up the street and down the street, and was very much relieved to discover that no one had witnessed the little transaction. Finding that it was so, I soothed my injured dignity by uttering aloud and defiantly towards the way the benevolent man had taken, “You be blowed! who are you ordering? I shan’t buy bread neither; I shall buy what I like.”
So I did. Feeling that the stranger was mine enemy, and one whom it would give me much satisfaction to disobey, I walked down towards Barbican, resolutely turning my gaze from the bakers’ shops, (it was, in my hungry condition, no easy matter to do so,) and with my mind bent on luxuries. There was at that time a little old-fashioned shop in Barbican where jams and preserves were sold. It was a wholesale sort of a shop, and the jams were deposited in great gallon jars, each one of which was ticketed with the price per pound of its contents. One in particular took my fancy; it was labelled “greengage,” and the mouth of the jar was deliciously smeared with it. Eighteenpence a pound this jar was marked, and after working a difficult sum in long division on my fingers, I discovered that two ounces of it would come to twopence farthing. This was an insurmountable difficulty. True, I might go in and ask for twopen’orth. Twopence was a goodish bit of money. It wasn’t like going in and asking for a ha’porth. “Two pen’orth of greengage jam, please.” And, after this brief rehearsal, I stepped firmly to the shop door, but had hardly placed a foot on the threshold than I received a box on the ear that sent me reeling.
“Now be off,” exclaimed the old woman belonging to the shop, and who, it seems, had mistaken her customer. “I’ve been watching you these ten minutes, you little prig,” and she slammed the door hard and put the catch on.
Hard as I thought my luck at the time, I have no doubt that the old woman did me a real service. What did I want with greengage jam? It was as much as anything out of wanton malice towards my benefactor that I thought of buying it, and I was very properly checked, and at the same time punished. No such proper reflections were mine at that time, however; indeed, I am ashamed to confess that it was when I had rushed vengefully into the road to find a convenient stone to shy through the jam-shop window, that an odour assailed my nostrils of so enticing a sort, that my anger was instantly appeased.
It proceeded from a neighbouring cook-shop. The peas-pudding as well as the baked faggots were “just up,” and their fragrance blended, producing a result potent enough to drive a cold and hungry boy mad. Fancy what would have been my sensations if I had invested my twopence in that miserable mite of jam and afterwards approached the cook-shop!