“It’ll be cuttiner as it goes on, or it’s werry strange to me,” observed Ripston, shaking his head sagely. “It’s the kid wot’s in its mother’s arms as goes to Tyburn in the Seven Steps; least-ways I reckon so; don’t you, Smiff?”
“That’s what I reckon.”
“He’ll break her ’art ’bout the third step,” continued he, with a dismal relish, and speaking, doubtless, out of his extensive knowledge of the gaff and its drama.
“I hope he won’t; it’ll be a gallus shame if he does,” I answered heartily.
“P’r’aps he’ll welt her like the old man does, soon as he gets big enough,” pursued Ripston;
“like your old man used to welt your old woman—your fust old woman I mean, Smiff, eh!”
And this reflection of Ripston’s calling up others, he sat a few moments, occasionally looking at me, and muttering incoherently such words as “jest ezackly!” “how rum!” “well, I’m blowed!” Somehow I seemed to know what he was thinking of, and it gave me no surprise when he presently whispered—
“I say, Smiff, it was jolly lucky that you changed, wasn’t it?”
I could do no more than nod my head in reply to so cruel a question.
“You must have felt queer not to have no old woman to go home to—no reg’ler mother, I mean, when you changed,” continued Rip; “it couldn’t ha’ been half such a settler with you as wot it was with me. Oh! when it come to that, don’t yer know, and that ’orspidle cove what I was tellin’ you on, ses he, ‘Don’t think on him as the wicked boy wot run away, mum,’ ses he; ‘but take him to yer arms,’ ses he, ‘like as if he was a kid what was jest born—like he was (that was me, don’t yer know) when he was first born, and begin afresh;’ blest if I didn’ think my old woman would have busted herself; I thought she would ha’ busted me too, a squeedging so jolly hard. Ah! that was a settler, I can tell yer, Smiff.”
I felt the tears in my eyes, and Ripston’s hand resting on my knee, I laid mine on it; and, only for shame’s sake, would have there and then unburdened my guilty mind to him. There was a man came round with ginger-beer and biscuits between the acts, and he happening to approach our box at this moment, I called for and stood two two-penny bottles, and the change of the sixpence in biscuits, for the satisfaction of my secret self, and to convince that extremely private individual how lightly I held the money supplied me by the thief-training George Hopkins. It was shockingly rubbishy ginger-beer, and the biscuits were insipid as dry oatmeal, which seemed so like further spiting of George Hopkins, that while Ripston made wry faces at his, I consumed mine to the last dreg and crumb with infinite relish.
There appeared to be a long stride between the first and second steps, a stride of several years’ length, for the curtain rising showed poor Mrs. Wildeye (the drunkard’s wife) in widow’s weeds, sitting in a wretched garret stitching shirts; while Frank Wildeye, (the Stepper, and late the infant,) a tallish boy, pale and emaciated as chalk and burnt cork could make him, reclined at the widow’s feet, and did his humble best to assist her by threading the needles as fast as she exhausted them, which was at the rate of five or six per minute. Despite her misfortunes, the widow had contrived to preserve her furniture, as seen in the opening act, even to the bread-tray, which now, however, was not quite empty, inasmuch as it contained a solitary crust about the size of two fingers.
After working away at a rate that certainly would have secured her, had she been able to maintain it, several shillings a day, even at the fixed slop price of seven farthings a shirt, the widow suddenly paused, seeming for the first time to have observed the pale and famished appearance of her offspring. Frantically catching up the crust with one hand and her offspring with the other, she pressed him to eat. With tears and gesticulations he refuses; soliciting her with all manner of dumb entreaty to eat the crust herself; and then ensued a poking to and fro of the crust from the offspring’s mouth to the mother’s, making a scene that might have melted the heart of a blackamoor. At last, with a wild cry of delight, the mother succeeded in forcing the crust between the offspring’s lips, and while he tearfully munched it to the slow music of the harp and violin, the mother carolled the pathetic ballad of “Poor Dog Tray,” with a strength of voice happily significant of the fact that seven years’ poverty and privation had not affected her already disordered lungs.
This scene was a triumphant success. Compassion moved the audience as though it were but a single body with a great melting heart in it, and instantly there ensued a clinking and a chinking, and copper money flung from pit, boxes, and gallery, pattered on to the stage and rolled this way and that This, as I knew, was the ordinary way in which the patrons of the gaff expressed their approval of a favourite actor, but in this case it was evident that at least a portion of them were actuated by feelings superior to mere admiration. Wholes and halves of penny loaves, apples, oranges, and a bit of seed cake, large enough to make considerable noise as it struck the boards, were generously contributed to the relief of the starving family. Nor was the family slow to garner the gifts so liberally showered. Without pausing in her song, Mrs. Wildeye bowed her acknowledgments left and right, (which, together with the action necessary to dodging the most bulky of the contributions, kept her pretty constantly on the move,) and scraped the halfpence together with her feet, while Frank, eking out his crust so that it might last as long as his mother’s song lasted, arose from his recumbent posture and went about the stage with a business air, picking up the money, and having counted and pocketed it, he went and reclined by the bottomless chair again, to which Mrs. Wildeye, “Poor Dog Tray” concluded, presently staggered and sank down on it. The cause of her staggering was presently made painfully apparent.
In cases of consumption, as is well known, and as was vividly illustrated on the present occasion, appearances are treacherous; she had finished the ballad with the quaver of a hearty and robust woman, but now she rapidly sank and hurriedly blessing her offspring, expired.
The widow’s demise was the signal for Frank Wildeye to enter seriously into the business of the drama. For a while he was overwhelmed by the suddenness of his bereavement, and wept and pulled his hair as though he held a grudge against it; but after about two minutes he recovered, and began to think about how his mother was to be buried. In dumb show he dug a grave, and lowered her into it, and filled it in, and planted flowers all over it; and then he wrung his hands and shook his head, signifying that, much as he desired it, he did not see how anything of the kind could possibly be done. At last a sudden idea seemed to strike him—an idea of so brilliant a nature as to quite dazzle him and induce him to turn his head from it, and put up both his hands as though the idea was coming it altogether too strong for him. By degrees, however, he seemed to grow used to it, and to be able to stare it boldly in the face. The idea in question seemed to have settled on the shirts his mother had been making, for, hurrying to where they lay, he pounced on them, gathered them in a bundle, and waving his cap, darted out, and disappeared.
In about three-quarters of a minute he returned empty-handed, and accompanied by an undertaker with a coffin on his back. What the bright idea was, and what he had done with the slop shirts, was now equally apparent—he had sold them to buy his mother a coffin! Indeed, any lingering doubts as to this being the state of the case, were speedily dissipated; for, scarcely had the undertaker set down his burden, when in walked two policemen and a gentleman, unmistakably a Jew slop-seller, from his countenance and the tape measure about his neck. In vain Frank Wildeye seized the bottomless chair and dared the owner of the misappropriated property, or the minions of the law, to approach so much as another inch; they rushed at him in a body, and doing no more damage than flooring the Jew by a blow of the chair-back, the heroic boy was secured and led away heavily handcuffed; being allowed, through the kind permission of the police, to pause at every third step and take a lingering and affectionate look at his dead parent This was the second step.