Mattie:-A Stray Volume I Part 1

Mattie:--A Stray.

Vol 1.

by Frederick William Robinson.

BOOK I.

FIGURES IN OUTLINE.

CHAPTER I.

LIFE IN GREAT SUFFOLK STREET.

It was not an evening party of the first water, or given by people of first-rate position in society, or held in a quarter whither the fashionable cla.s.ses most do congregate. It was a small party--ostensibly a juvenile party--held on the first floor of a stationer's shop in Great Suffolk Street, Southwark.

Not even a first-rate stationers', had the shutters been down and the fog less dense to allow us to inspect Mr. Wesden's wares; but an emporium, which did business in no end of things--cigars, tobacco-pipes, children's toys, gla.s.s beads by the skein or ounce, fancy work, cottons and tapes. These, the off-shoots from the stationery business, the news-vending, the circulating of novels in four, five, and six volumes at one penny per volume, if not detained more than three days; a stationery business which report said had not turned out badly for old Wesden, thanks to old Wesden's patience, industry and care, say we--thanks to his s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g and his close-fistedness that would not have trusted his own mother, had she lived, said the good people--for there are good people everywhere--in Great Suffolk Street. Certainly, there were but small signs of "close-fistedness" about the premises on that particular evening; the shop had been closed at an earlier hour than business men would have considered suitable. They were wasting the gas in Mr. Wesden's drawing-room; feasting and revelry held dominion there.

There had been three separate knocks given at the door from three separate Ganymedes--No. 1, with oranges; No. 2, with tarts from the pastry-cook; No. 3, with beer, which last was left in a tin can of colossal proportions, supper not being ready, and beer being liable to flatness in jugs--especially the beer from the Crown.

We watch all this from the outside, in the thick fog which made things unpleasant in Great Suffolk Street. There is more life, and life that appertains to this chapter of our history, outside here than in that first floor front, where the sons and daughters of Mr. Wesden's neighbours are playing at forfeits, romping, jumping, and laughing, and thoroughly enjoying themselves. They are not thinking of the fog, the up-stairs folk shut away from the rawness of that January night; it would have troubled Mr. Wesden had his shop been open, and led him to maintain a stricter watch over the goods, and upon those customers whose faces might be strange to him; but he had forgotten the weather at that juncture, and sat in the corner of the drawing-room, smoking his pipe, and keeping his daughter--a bright-faced, golden-haired girl of twelve--within his range of vision. The fog and the cold troubled no one at Mr. Wesden's--only "outsiders" objected, and remarked upon them to friends when they met, coughing over one, and shivering through the other, as lungs and scanty clothes necessitated. The establishment of Mr. Wesden, stationer, troubled or attracted, an outsider though, who had pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed it three or four times between the hours of eight and nine, p.m., and at half-past nine had backed into the recess of Mr. Wesden's doorway. A small outsider, of uncertain age--a boy, a nondescript, an anything, judging by the pinched white face and unkempt hair; a girl, by the rag of a frock that hung upon her, and from which her legs and feet protruded.

Subject matter of great interest was there for this small watcher--huddled in the doorway, clutching her elbows with her bony fingers, and listening at the keyhole, or varying proceedings now and then by stepping on to the clammy pavement, and looking up, through the fog, at the lighted blinds, once or twice indulging in a flat-footed kind of jig, to keep her feet warm. She was one of few loiterers in Great Suffolk Street that uncomfortable night--men, women, and boys hurried rapidly past, and thinned in number as the night stole on--only a policeman slouched by occasionally, and dismayed her somewhat, judging by her closer proximity to Mr. Wesden's street door, whenever his heavy tread jarred upon her nerves.

When the majority of the shops was closed, when the fog grew denser as the lights went out, and the few stragglers became more phantom-like and grey, quite a regiment of policemen marched down Great Suffolk Street, changing places at certain corners with those officials who had done day-duty, and glad to have done, for that day at least.

The new policeman who crawled upon Mr. Wesden's side of the way, was a sharper man than he who had left off crawling, and gone home at a gallop to his wife and thirteen children; for the new-comer was not deceived by the deep-doorway and the dense fog, but reached forth a hand and touched the figure cowering in the shadows.

A red-faced young man, with a bull neck, was this Suffolk Street official--an abrupt young man, who shook people rather violently by the shoulder, and hurt them.

"Oh!--stash that, please," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the child, at last; "you hurts!"

"What do you want here?"

"Nothin' partickler. If the young gal inside knows I'm here, she'll send out somethin' prime. That's all. Last thing, afore she goes to bed, she comes and looks, mostly. She's a good 'un."

"Ah! you'd better go home."

"Can't manage to make it up tuppence--and square the last penny with Mother Watts. You know Mother Watts?"

"Ah!"

"Well, she's down upon me, Watts is--so I can't go home."

"You must go somewhere--you can't stop here."

"Lor bless you, this is the comfortablest doorway in the street, if you don't mind, p'leesman. I often turn in here for the night, and some of you fine fellers lets a gal bide, and ain't so down upon her as you are.

You're new to this beat."

"Am I, really?" was the ironical rejoinder.

"You used to do Kent Street and stir up Mother Watts. You locked up Mother Watts once--don't you remember?"

"Yes--I remember. Are you going?"

"If you won't let a gal stay, o' course I am. They've got a jolly kick-up here--that gal with the blue frock's birthday--old Wesden's gal, as I just told you about--I wish I was her! Did you ever see her of a Sunday?"

"Not that I know on."

"Just like the little gals at the play--spruce as carrots--and gloves on, and such boots! Fust rate, I can tell you."

"I wouldn't jaw any more, but go home," suggested the policeman.

"All right, master. I say, don't you twig how the fog has got on my chest?"

"Well, you _are_ hoa.r.s.e-ish."

"Spilt my woice yesterday, and made it wus by tryin' it on in Union Street to-day. Gave it up, and bought a haporth of lucifers, and got the boxes in my pocket now. Hard lines to-night, mate."

Familiarity breeds contempt and engenders rebuke--the loquacity of the child offended the official, who drew her from the doorway with a jerk, totally unexpected upon her side, and placed her in the roadway.

"Now be off from here--I've had enough of _you_."

"Werry well--why didn't you say so afore?"

And, without waiting for a reply to her query, the child went down Great Suffolk Street towards the Borough, sullenly and slowly. The policeman watched her vanish in the fog, and resumed his way; he had done his duty to society, and "moved on" one who had insulted it by her helplessness and squalor; there was a woman shrieking denunciations on the pot-man of the public house at the corner--a man who had turned her unceremoniously into the street--let him proceed to business in a new direction.

Twenty steps on his way, and the ill-clad, sharp-visaged girl, stealing back in the fog to the welcome doorway whence he had abruptly expelled her.

"He's not everybody," she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g herself comfortably into her old quarters, "though he thinks he is. I wonder what they're up to now? Don't I wish it was my buff-day, and somebody had somethink to give me, that's all. Don't I--oh! gemini."

"Hillo!--I beg pardon--I didn't know anyone was hiding here--have I hurt you?" inquired a youth, who, running down Great Suffolk Street at a smart pace, had turned into this doorway, and nearly jammed its occupant to death with the sudden concussion.

"You've done for my lights, young un," was the grave a.s.sertion.

"Your--your what?"

"My congreve lights--there's a kiver gone--I heered it scrunch. S'pose you'll pay like a--like a man?"

"I--I'm very sorry, but really I'm rather scarce of pocket-money just now--in fact, I've spent it all," stammered the lad. "You see, it was your fault, hiding here, and playing about here at this time of night, and I was in a hurry, being late."

"There isn't anyone inside who'd stand a ha-penny, is there?" whined the girl; "I'm the gal that's allus about here, you know--I've had nuffin'

to eat to-day, and ain't no money for a night's lodging. I'm hard up--wery hard up, upon my soul. I don't remember being so druv since mother died o' the fever--never. And I'm not well--got a sore throat, which the fog touches up--awful."

"I'll--I'll ask my pa'; but I don't think there is anything to give away."