“You go home, marm,” exclaimed a well-meaning bystander. “You take my advice, and make yerself scarce.”
“And what for, may I ax?”
“You’ll have him at yer again if yer don’t”
“And indade I ’ll not go home!” screeched Mrs. Burke, tearing from her head the bonnet, about the safety of which a minute before she had expressed so much anxiety, and dashing it into the gutter, and demoniacally jumping upon it “Whirroo! Is it me that’s to be frightened by the likes of a dhrunken, dirthy bla’gard baste sich as him?” (Here she plucked a hair-pin from her “back knot,” and allowed the full shock of fiery hair to fall about her bruised and bloody face.) “Don’t I owe me ruin to the schoundhril? Hasn’t he sowld out of me dacent home the bits of shticks me own first dear man—the man as you ain’t fit to clane the shoes of, Jim Ballisat—lift me? Doesn’t he dhrink ivery pinny he can borry or shtale, and lave me to shupport the brat in me arms, which, Hiven be praised, is none o’ mine, but of the shthrumpit as consoorted wid him afore he pershwaded me to have him? Don’t I work me fingers to the bones for the lazy shpalpeen? Don’t I”—
What else Mrs. Burke did for my unfortunate father the attentive mob was cheated of hearing, for at that moment a policeman came up and unceremoniously pushed her off towards Fryingpan Alley.
Chapter XXI. In which, by a miracle, I escape my father’s just vengeance, incurred by bringing disgrace on “his and his’n.”
My stepmother
I followed my stepmother and the mob as far as Fryingpan Alley, and saw the policeman, who seemed to know very well where she lived, hustle her unceremoniously into the arched entrance.
Now, what was I to do? Clearly, it was no use following Mrs. Burke any farther. Had she been the same Mrs. Burke I had known of old, the experiment would have been sufficiently dangerous; but now it was altogether out of the question. Young as I was, it was quite apparent to me that she was a greater fury than ever; and how she was likely to receive me, were I rash enough to make myself known, was plain from what I had heard her say about my little sister Polly. Poor little thing! Grievous as it was to see her in such a deplorable condition, to see her at all lifted a great weight from my mind. Not only was she alive, (and, judging from Jerry Pape’s singular behaviour and my father’s lasting malignancy, I very often had doubts about it,) but from the hasty view I had been enabled to obtain of her, she was not in the least maimed or disfigured.
Were my chances of finding a friend in my father any better? It did not seem so. He had become a drunkard, and, as I had heard them say, more like a devil than a man. I had seen him drunk many a time, and observed what a spiteful and dangerous man he was under such circumstances; but never before had I seen him so drunk as he now was. Yet, if I went away, where should I go? I was starving with cold and hunger. I durst not go back to the workhouse. The dark arches, now that they were deserted by my old friends Mouldy and Ripston, were no longer inviting. I was as much alone in the world as though there was no other living creature in it. After all, my father might take compassion on me. No doubt Mrs. Burke had done her best to set him against me, and had kept his wrath hot for me. Now, however, she was out of favour. Perhaps my father had found her out, and would be even glad to take me back again, were it only to spite her. Reckoning affairs up in this miserable manner, I crept slowly back towards the “Dog and Stile,’’ the door of which, now that the nuisance had been removed, was once more open, and business progressing the same as usual.
The taproom window faced the street, and I stooped down under it and listened. The company were singing. “This day a stag must die!” was the song of the moment, and presently it was completed amidst the “brayvos” and hammering of pewter pots on the tables.
“Who d’yer call on for the next harmony, Sam?” somebody asked.
“I calls on Nosey Warren.”
“Nosey Warren be butcher’d! I’m a-goin’ to sing.”
“Never mind him. Pipe up, Nosey.”
“I’ll see him butcher’d fust, and then he shan’t! I’m a-goin’ to sing my song, I tell yer; and them as don’t like to jine in the chorus can do the t’other thing.”
And then the speaker struck up “The death of Nelson.” I knew the song, and I knew the voice that was singing it. There was a water-spout attached to the wall by the side of the tap-room window, and I climbed up it and peeped in. It was my father. It gave me quite a thrill of delight to hear him—he was singing it so like himself and so unlike the dirty, blear-eyed man who had bundled Mrs. Burke into the gutter. He looked more like himself, too, and stood upright, waving his hand, and pointing out the enemy with his forefinger, exactly as Lord Nelson did it. Perhaps it was being in such a dreadful passion that had made him look so different. He seemed all right enough now; indeed, he seemed especially tender-hearted, so that when he came to “At length the fatal wownd,” his voice quite failed him, and he passed the sleeve of his shirt across his eyes before he could proceed any further. Should I go in and make myself known to him? It was no use shillyshallying about it. If I meant to do it, I had best do it at once.
I pushed open the door, and made my way to the tap-room. My father had just finished his song, and the company were “knocking it down” in the most complimentary manner. As I stood at the tap-room door, gulping down my lingering remnant of hesitation, the potman came behind me with some pots of beer in his hands.
“Now, then, in you go, young feller, if you’re goin’!” said he, at the same time urging me forward with his knee, so that I was pushed against the door, opening it; and in I went.
The room was tolerably full of company; but, looking round, I failed to see my father, which was no wonder, as, having concluded his song, he had dropped his arms on the table before him, and his head on his arms, so that the battered white hat being still on his head, that and the dirty shirt-sleeves were all that was visible of him.
Awaiting the fresh supply of beer, and having nothing at the moment to engage their attention, the company generally favoured me by turning their inquiring glances in my direction.
“Well, work’us!” observed the potman, “what are you arter?”
“Please, sir, isn’t my father here?”
“Well, that’s a good ’un, arstin’ me! ain’t yer got two English eyes in yer head?”
“He was here just now; I saw him.”
“What sort of a cove is he?”