And to bed I would go, an empty-bellied and wretched little boy, not daring to utter a word in explanation.
One day. she served me an especially villainous trick, and one that is among the greenest of a hundred such in my memory. A woman called on Mrs. Burke one morning shortly after breakfast, and they drank gin between them until every farthing of the half-crown my father had left to buy our dinner and his supper was consumed. When the woman was gone, and she recovered from her half-fuddled condition, Mrs. Burke began to feel alarm. The money to buy my father’s supper must be raised somehow; but how? Her other gown—the flat-irons—the china butter-boat, even—were already at the “leaving shop,” and there was no one in the neighbourhood that would lend to her, or trust her with their goods without cash down. Presently she went out, and in a little while returned in a condition of sad distress, and took to rocking herself in a chair, and crying and moaning in a way that went to my heart to hear.
“Ow, what ’ll I do? what ’ll I do?” cried she.
“Your daddy ’ll be comin’ home by and by, Jimmy, dear, and there ’ll be no supper for him, and he’ll be beating me till I’m dead. Ow! what ’ll a poor lone craytur do widout a frind in the world to help her?”
I never could bear to see any one crying. Had Mrs. Burke intimated to me with tearless eyes and in her usual manner of talking, that there was danger of my father falling on her and beating her to death, whatever answer I might have made, I should undoubtedly have thought in my inmost mind that it was exactly what I wished; and I verily believe that I wouldn’t have given a button—certainly not a “livery” one—to have turned him from his purpose. But her moaning and weeping, and calling me Jimmy dear, was altogether more than I could bear; and approaching her, I tried to console her, and told her how willingly I would help her if I knew how.
“So you say, Jimmy; so you say; but you don’t mane it,” replied Mrs. Burke, wringing her hands in the extremity of her woe. “How can yer mane it, Jimmy, afther me bad tratement of you?—which I sore repint of, me little jewel, and sorra a bit will I ever raise a finger against you agin, Jimmy, while I’ve a ar-rm hanging to me body.”
“You only tell me how I can help you, and you shall see, ma’am,” said I, eagerly, and catching hold of her speckled hand, so carried away was I to see her so filled with remorse and penitence; “you only just tell me how, now!”
“Shure, and there is a way of helpin’ me, Jimmy, me little fellow, but it goes agin me to ask it of you. Still, you are a good boy for so kindly offerin’, and here’s three-ha’pence to spend and do just as you like wid.”
I suppose she must have borrowed the three-half-pence when she went out, as I know I took her last fourpence for the last quartern o’ gin I fetched. Her generosity completely astonished me: never before, since she had been my father’s housekeeper, had she given me so much as a single farthing. Now, more than ever, I pressed her to tell me in what way I could help her out of her scrape.
“I was thinkin’, Jimmy, that you might tell your daddy that you lost the half-crown,” said she, patting my head kindly.
“How could I lose it? You changed it. It was a shilling I took when I went to buy the first quartern of gin.”
“Whist about gin, Jimmy dear! Mightn’t we say that I sint you for a pen’ofth of aniseed for the baby, wid the half-crown to pay for it, and you made a shlip, and dropt it down a gully hole? That’ud be aisy to say, Jimmy dear.”
“Ah! but see the tow’lling I should get”
“Devil a bit of tow’lling, Jimmy, while I was wid you. Be shure, dear, I ’ll tell him as how that a great hulkin’ chap run agin you, and that you couldn’t help it a bit. Never fear for the tow’lling, Jimmy; I’ll bring you clane out of that, you may freely depind. And you may cut away now, and spind the three-ha’pence as fast as you like.”
I went off, though not without some misgivings; and I spent the three-halfpence. It was some time since I had had a ramble, and I thought as she was in such a wonderfully kind humour, I might venture to indulge in one. I went as far as Farringdon Market, and I spent the afternoon there. The market clock striking five reminded me that it was high time I went home.
But I didn’t hurry. Thought I, I’ll let father get home first, and Mrs. Burke will tell him about the half-crown, and it will be all over when I go in.
I don’t know how long he had been home, but when I went up and opened the door, there he was, standing up, and waiting for me, with the waist-belt in his hand. I was for dodging out again, but he caught me by the ear.
“Stop a minnit, young feller,” said he, quite pale with passion; “I warnts a whisper with you. What have you done with that there half-crown?”
“I lost it, father,” said I, in a terrible fright, and looking appealingly towards Mrs. Burke.
“Oh, you lost it! Where did you lose it?”
“Down a gully-hole, father. Ask Mrs. Burke—she knows.”
“I ain’t a-talkin’ to Mrs. Burke; I’m a-talkin’ to you. Now then, out with it, and—mind yer—let us have no lies.” And as he spoke he spat in his hand, and wagged the strap in it.
“Well,” said I, “I was a-going for a pen’orth of stuff for baby, and a chap ran against me, and—and—knocked the money out of my hand.”
“And you ’spect I’m a-going to believe that, do yer?”
I was not much surprised to hear my father say this; but what did surprise me—what completely astounded and appalled me—was to hear Mrs. Burke exclaim, with a derisive laugh—“Yes; that’s how he expicts to come it over us, Jim; that’s the purty yarn he pitched to me when he came back wid the empty cup. Ask him where he has been all the afthernoon, Jim, and how them shtains came on the breast ov his pinafore.”
There were stains on the breast of my pinafore. I had bought a kidney pie with a penny of my three-halfpence, and in the ardour of enjoyment must have overlooked a leak in the bottom of the pastry, through which the gravy had oozed.
“D——n your young eyes,” said my father, shaking me by the shoulder, “you’ve been and prigged that arf-crown, and you’ve been appending it all the arternoon.”
“And so it’s my belief, Jim; but it wasn’t my place to shpeak first,” said the wicked wretch; “and though it goes to the heart of me to recommend it, if you’ll take my advice you’ll let him have it hot and shtrong, Jim. ‘Shpare the rod and spile the child,’ as the scriptur ses, bear in mind.”
And she stood by while my father laid into me with the thick leather strap till the blood trickled. As well as I could, and as plain as my agony would let me, I cried out the whole story to him while the beating was going on, but he heeded not a word that I said, and flogged away till his arm was tired. I felt brimful of fury against her. When the flogging was over, and I had been kicked into the back-room to wait there in the dark till bed-time, she presently came in to fetch something. Loud enough for my father to hear, said she—
“I hope the dressin’ you’ve had will do you good, me boy. Mind you don’t forget when you go to bed to say your prayers for forgiveness.”
“Hang you, I hate you!” I raged at her; and then thinking of the worst thing I had ever heard to say to her, I called out as she went sniggering out at the door—
“Judas! Judas! you ought to live in Turkey.”
But the words did not seem to affect her in the least! she merely turned, with the same ugly smile on her face, to tell me that she hoped I would keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from lying for the future.