Kitabı oku: «The Little Princess of Tower Hill», sayfa 10

CHAPTER III.
TOM JONES' TRICK

The neighbors were full of suggestions to Billy at this crisis of his fate.

It was ascertained beyond all doubt that Mrs. Andersen would be six weeks, if not two months, away; and this being the case, the neighbors one and all declared roundly that there was nothing whatever for Sarah Ann but to become a workhouse baby. One of them would carry her to the house the very next morning, and of course she would be admitted without a moment's difficulty, and there would be an end of her.

Billy might manage to earn a precarious living by running messages, by opening cab-doors, and by the thousand-and-one things an active boy could undertake, and so he might eke out a livelihood till his mother came back; but there was no hope whatever for Sarah Ann – there was no loophole for her but the workhouse.

To these admonitions on the part of his friendly neighbors, Billy responded in a manner peculiar to himself. First of all, he raised two blue and very innocent eyes, and let them rest slowly and thoughtfully on each loquacious speaker's face; then he suddenly and without the slightest warning winked one of the said eyes in a manner that was so knowing as to be almost wicked, and then without the slightest word or comment he dashed into his attic and locked the door on himself and Sarah Ann.

"Sarah Ann, darling," he said, placing the baby on the floor and kneeling down a few paces from her, "will yer go to the workhouse, or will yer stay with yer h'own Billy?"

Sarah Ann's response to this was to wriggle as fast as possible up to her affectionate nurse, and rub her little dirty face against his equally dirty trousers.

"That's settled, then," said Billy; "yer has chosen, Sarah Ann, and yer ain't one as could ever abear contradictions, so we 'as got to see how we two can live."

This was a problem not so easily managed, for the neighbors took offense with Billy not following their advice, and it was almost impossible for him to leave Sarah Ann long at home by herself. True to this terrible infant's character, she now refused to sleep by day, as she had hitherto done, thus cutting off poor Billy's last loophole of earning his bread and her own with any comfort.

Billy had two reasons which made it almost impossible for him to leave the baby in the attic; the first was his fear that Tom Jones, who still hovered dangerously about, might find her and carry her off; the second was the undoubted fact that if Sarah Ann was left to enjoy her own solitary company, she would undoubtedly scream herself into fits and the neighbors into distraction.

There was nothing whatever for it but for Billy to carry the baby with him when he went in search of their daily bread.

Poor little brave man, he had certainly a hard time during those next two months, and except for the undoubted fact that he and the baby were two of the sparrows whom our Father feeds, they both must have starved; but perhaps owing to a certain look in Billy's eyes, which were as blue as blue could be, in the midst of his freckled face, and also, perhaps, to a certain pathetic turn which the baby's ugliness had now assumed, the two always managed to secure attention.

With attention, came invariably a few pence – fourpence one day – sixpence and even eightpence another. The greater portion of the food thus obtained was given to Sarah Ann, but neither of the two quite starved. Billy counted and counted and counted the days until his mother would be home again; and as, fortunately for him, Mrs. Andersen had paid the rent of their attic some weeks in advance, the children still had a shelter at night.

All went tolerably well with the little pair until a certain bitter day in the beginning of November. Billy was very hopeful on the morning of that day, for his mother's time of captivity in the hospital had nearly expired, and soon now she would be back to take the burden of responsibility off his young shoulders.

Sarah Ann had hitherto escaped cold; indeed, her life in the open air seemed to agree with her, and she slept better at nights, and was really becoming quite a nice tempered baby.

Billy used to look at her with the most old fatherly admiration, and assured her that she was such a darling duck of a cherub that he could almost eat her up.

No, Sarah Ann had never taken cold, but Billy felt a certain amount of uneasiness on this particular morning, which was as sleety, as gusty, as altogether melancholy a day as ever dawned on the great London world.

There was no help for it, however, the daily bread must be found; and he and the baby must face the elements. He wrapped an old woolen comforter several times round Sarah Ann's throat, and beneath the comforter secured a very thin and worn Paisley shawl of his mother's, and then buttoning up his own ragged jacket, and shuffling along in his large and untidy boots, he set forth. Whether it was the insufficient food he had lately partaken of or that the baby was really growing very heavy, poor Billy almost staggered to-day under Sarah Ann's weight. He found himself obliged to lean for support against a pillar box, and then he discovered to his distress that the baby began to sneeze, that her tiny face was blue, and that her solemn black eyes had quite a weary and tearful look.

"She's a-catchin' cold, the blessed, blessed babby," exclaimed poor Billy; "oh, Sairey Ann, darlin', don't you go and take the brownchitis, and break the heart of your h'own Billy. Oh! lady, lady, give us a 'ap'enny, or a penny. Give us a copper, please, kind lady."

The lady so aprostrophized was good-natured enough to bestow a few pence on the starved-looking children, and after a certain miserable fashion the morning passed away.

This was, however, Billy's only money success, and he was just making up his mind to go home, and to prefer starvation in his attic to running the feeble chance of securing any more charities.

Sarah Ann still continued to sneeze and her eyes still looked watery, and Billy was sorrowfully giving up his hope of receiving any more coppers, when he came face to face with his old adversary and tormentor, Tom Jones.

In the anxiety of these latter few weeks, Billy had lost his old fear of Tom, and he was now so spent and exhausted that he greeted him with almost pleasure.

"Oh! Tom, do hold the babby just for one minute, just for me to get a wee bit of breath. I'm all blown like, and I'm afeard as Sarah Ann 'as taken cold; jest hold her for one minute – will yer?"

Tom, who was looking rather white and shaken himself, just glanced into Billy's face, and some gibing words, which were on the tip of his tongue, were restrained.

"Why, yer does look bad, Billy Andersen," he said, and then, without another word, he lifted the baby out of the little lad's trembling arms, and held her in an awkward but not altogether untender fashion.

"Look you here, Billy," he said, "ef yer likes to round quick this 'ere corner, there are two cabs coming up to a house as I passed, and they are sure to want a boy to help in with the boxes, and you maybe earn sixpence or a bob; run round this yere minute – quick, Billy, quick."

"I'd like to, awful well," said Billy, "and the run will warm me, and wouldn't the bob be fine – but, oh! Tom, will yer hold Sairey Ann? and will yer promise not to run away with her? will yer promise sure and faithful, Tom?"

"What in the world should I do that for?" said Tom. "What good would yer Sairey Ann be to me? My h'eyes – I has work enough to get my h'own victuals. There, Billy, I'll not deprive you of the babby; you jest run round the corner, or yer'll lose the chance. There, Billy, be quick; you'll find Sairey Ann safe enough when yer comes back."

The poor thin and cold baby gave a little cry as Billy ran off, but the chance was too good for him to lose; and, after all, what earthly use could Tom have with Sairey Ann?

CHAPTER IV.
WHAT IT MEANT

Poor Billy! After all, Tom had told him a story, for there was no cab whatever waiting in the long and dreary street, into which he ran so eagerly. He ran up and down its entire length, and even stopped at the very number Tom had indicated. A little girl was coming slowly down the steps, and Billy could not help saying to her, "Oh, missy, am I too late, and have all the boxes been stowed away afore I come?"

"There have been no boxes stowed away," said the little girl, stopping and staring in astonishment at the ragged boy.

"Oh, but, missy, out of the two cabs, yer knows."

"There have been no cabs here for many a day," replied the child in a sorrowful, dull kind of tone, which seemed to say that she only wished anything half so nice and interesting would arrive.

Billy saw then that the whole thing had been a hoax, and he flew back down the long street, with a great terror in his heart. Oh! what did Tom mean, and was the baby safe?

There was no Tom anywhere in sight when the poor little boy returned to the more crowded thoroughfare; but a policeman was stooping down and looking curiously at something on the pavement, and one or two people were beginning to collect round him.

Billy arrived just in time to see the policeman pick up a little shivering, crying, half-naked baby. Yes, this baby was his own Sarah Ann, but her woolen comforter, and mother's old Paisley shawl, and even a little brown winsey frock had all disappeared.

"Oh! give her to me, give her to me," sobbed poor Billy; "oh, Sairey Ann, Sairey Ann, yer'll have brownchitis and hinflammation now, sure and certain; oh, wot a wicked boy Tom Jones is."

The policeman asked a few leading questions, and then finding that the baby was Billy's undoubted property, he was only too glad to deliver her into his arms. The poor baby was quiet at once, and laid her little head caressingly against Billy's cheek. Billy tore off his own ragged jacket and wrapped it round her, and then flew home, with the energy and terror of despair. A pitiless sleet shower overtook him, however, and the two were wet to the skin when they arrived at their attic.

CHAPTER V.
BILLY'S ILLNESS

All that day Billy anxiously watched the baby; he tore off her wet clothes, and wrapped the blanket and the sheet tightly round her, and then he coaxed a neighbor to expend one of his pennies on milk, which he warmed and gave with some broken bread to the little hungry creature. He forgot all about himself in his anxiety for Sarah Ann, and as the day passed on, and she did not sneeze any more, but sat quite warm and bright and chirrupy in his arms, he became more and more light-hearted, and more and more thankful. In his thankfulness he would have offered a little prayer to God, had he known how, for his mother was just sufficiently not a heathen to say to him, now and then, "Don't go out without saying your prayers, Billy, be sure you say your prayers," and once or twice she had even tried to teach him a clause out of Our Father. He only remembered the first two words now, and, looking at the baby, he repeated them solemnly several times. At last it was time to go to bed, and as Sarah Ann was quite nice and sleepy, Billy hoped they would have a comfortable night. So they might have had, as far as the baby was concerned, for she nestled off so peacefully, and laid her soft head on Billy's breast.

But what ailed the poor little boy himself? His head ached, his pulse throbbed as he lay with the scanty blankets covering him; he shivered so violently that he almost feared he should wake Sarah Ann. Yes, he, not the baby, had taken cold. He, not the baby, was going to have brownchitis or that hinflammation which he dreaded.

The mischief had been done when he tore off his jacket and ran home, through the pitiless sleet, in his ragged shirt-sleeves. Well, he was glad it was not Sairey Ann, and mother would soon be home now, and find her baby well, and not starved, and perhaps she would praise him a little bit, and tell him he was a good boy. He had certainly tried to be a good boy.

All through the night – while his chest ached and ached, and his breath became more and more difficult, and the baby slumbered on, with her little downy head against his breast – he kept wondering, in a confused sort of way, what his mother would say to him, and if the Our Father, in the only prayer he ever knew, was anything like the father who had been cruel, and who had run away from him and his mother a year ago.

All his thoughts, however, were very vague, and as the morning broke, and his suffering grew worse, he was too ill to think at all.

CHAPTER VI.
THE END OF HIS TROUBLES

Tom Jones, having secured the baby's comforter, the thin Paisley shawl, and the little winsey frock, ran as fast as he could to a pawnbroker's hard by.

There he received a shilling on the articles, and with this shilling jingling pleasantly in his pocket he entered an eating-house which he knew, and prepared to enjoy some pea pudding and pork.

Tom expended exactly the half of the shilling on his dinner; he ate it greedily, for he was very hungry indeed, and then he went back into the street, with sixpence still to the good in his trouser pocket.

With sixpence in his pocket, and a comfortable dinner inside of him, Tom felt that his present circumstances were delightfully easy. He might walk about the streets with quite fine gentlemanly airs for an hour or two, if he so willed. Or he might flatten his nose against the shop windows, or he might play halfpenny pitch and toss. His circumstances were really affluent, and of course he ought to have been correspondingly happy. The odd thing was that he was not very happy; he could not get Billy's white face out of his head, and he could not altogether forget the icy cold feel of the baby's little arms, when he slipped off that brown winsey frock.

Tom was as hard a boy as ever lived, and a year ago his conscience might not have troubled him, even for playing so wicked a prank as he had done that day. But since then he had met with a softening influence. Tom Jones had been very ill with a bad fever, and during that time had been taken care of in the London fever hospital.

In that hospital, the wild, rough street boy had listened to many kind and gentle words and had witnessed many noble and self-denying actions.

Two or three children had died while Tom was in the hospital, and the nurses had told the other children that this death only meant going home for the little ones, and that they were now safely housed, and free from any more sin and any more temptation.

Tom had listened to the gentle words of the kind Sister nurse, without heeding them much.

But the memory of the whole scene came back to him to-day, all mingled strangely with Billy's pale face and the baby's cold little form, until he became quite compunctious and unhappy, and finally felt that he could not spend that remaining sixpence, but must let it burn a hole in his pocket, and do anything, in short, rather than provide him with food and shelter. Tom was accustomed to spending his nights under archways and huddled up in any sheltered corner he could discover.

This particular night he was lucky enough to find a cart half-full of hay, and here he would doubtless have had a delicious sleep, had not the baby and Billy come into his dreams. The baby and Billy between them managed to give poor Tom a horrible time of it, and at last he felt that he could bear it no longer: he must go and give Billy the sixpence which remained out of his shilling.

He started tolerably early the next morning, and carefully turning his face away from the bakers' shops and coffee-stalls as he passed them, he found himself presently in Aylmer's Court.

He had conquered himself in the matter of the bakers' shops and the coffee stalls, and in consequence he felt a good deal elated, his conscience became easier, and he began to say to himself that very few boys would restore even a stolen sixpence when they were starving. He ran up the stairs, calling out to a neighbor to know if Billy Andersen was within.

"I believe yer," she replied; "jest listen to That 'ere blessed babby, a-screamin' of itself into fits; oh! bother her for as ill-mannered a child as ever I came across."

Tom ran up the remainder of the stairs, and entered Billy's attic without knocking.

There he saw a sight which made him draw in his breath with a little start of surprise and terror; the baby was sitting up in bed and crying lustily, and Billy was lying with his back to her, quite motionless, and apparently deaf to her most piteous wails.

Billy's usual white face was flushed a fiery red, and his breathing, loud and labored, fell with solemn distinctness on Tom's ears.

Tom knew these signs at a glance; he had seen them so often in the fever hospital.

Shutting the door softly behind him, and first of all taking the baby in his arms and thrusting a sticky lollipop, which he happened to have in his waistcoat pocket, into her mouth:

"Be yer werry bad, Billy Andersen?" he said, stooping down over the sick boy.

"Our Father," replied Billy, raising his blue eyes and fixing them in a pathetic manner on Tom. "'Tis our Father I wants."

"Why, he were a bad'un," said Tom; "he runned away from yer, he did; I wouldn't be fretting about him, if I was you, Billy lad."

"'Tis the other one – 'tis t'other one I means," said Billy in a weak gasping voice. "I has 'ad the words afore me all night long – our Father; tell us what it means, Tom, do."

"I know all about it," said Tom in a tone of wisdom; "I larned about it in hospital. There, shut up, Sairey Ann, do; what a young 'un yer are for squallin'. Our Father lives in heaven, Billy, and he'll – he'll – oh! I am sure I forgets – look yere, wouldn't yer like some breakfast, old chap?"

"Water," gasped Billy, "and some milk for the babby."

Tom found himself, whether he wished it or not, installed as Billy's nurse.

He had to run out and purchase a penny-worth of milk, and he had also the forethought to provide himself with a farthing's worth of bull's eyes, one of which he popped into Sarah Ann's mouth whenever she began to howl.

Never had Tom Jones passed so strange a day. It did not occur to him that Billy was in any danger, but neither did it come into his wild, untutored, hard little heart to desert his sick comrade.

By means of the lollipops, he managed to keep Sarah Ann quiet, and then he kindled a tiny fire in the grate, and sat down by Billy, and gave him plentiful drinks of cold water whenever he asked for them.

Billy shivered and flushed alternately, and his blue eyes had a glassy look, and his breath came harder and faster as the slow sad day wore away.

Tom, however, never deserted his post, satisfying his own hunger with a hunk of dry bread, and managing to keep Sarah Ann quiet.

Toward evening, Billy seemed easier; the dreadful oppression of his breathing was not quite so intense, and the flush on his face had given way to pallor.

Tom lit a morsel of candle and placed it in a tin sconce, and then he once more sat down by his little comrade. For the first time then Tom noticed that solemn and peculiar look which Billy's well-known features wore. He puzzled his brain to recall where he had last seen such an expression; then it came back to him – it was in the fever hospital, and the little ones who had worn it had soon gone home.

Was Billy going home? The baby lay asleep in Tom's arms, and he looked from her to the sick child whose eyes were now closed, and whose breath was faint and light.

"Shall I fetch a doctor, old chap?" he whispered.

Billy shook his head.

"Tell us wot yer knows about our Father," he said in a very low and feeble voice.

"Our Father," began Tom. "He lives in heaven, he do. He's kind and he gives lots of good things to the young 'uns as lives with him in heaven. It sounds real fine," continued Tom, "the way as our Father treats them young 'uns, only the worst of it is," he added with the air of a philosopher, "we 'as to die first."

"To die," said Billy, "yes, and wot then?"

"I 'spect," continued Tom, "as our Father fetches us up 'ome somehow, but I'm very ignorant; I don't know nothing, but jest that there's a home and a Father somewheres. Look yere, Billy, old chap, you ain't going to die, be yer?"

"I 'spect I be," said Billy; "a home somewheres, and our Father there, it sounds werry nice."

Then he closed his eyes again, and his breath came a little quicker and a little weaker, and the solemn look grew and deepened on his white face.

"Give me my babby," he said an hour later; "lay her alongside o' me; oh! my darling, darling Sairey Ann; and I'll tell mother when she comes in."

But mother never got her message, for when next Billy spoke, it was in the safe home of our Father.

Billy's baby grew up by and by, but no one ever loved her better than Billy did.