Crying for the Light: or, Fifty Years Ago. Volume 1 of 3. James Ewing Ritchie
he took long draughts of his favourite beverage.
Meanwhile the actress and her attendant guardian angels continued walking, she rapidly striving to recollect old shops and old faces, whilst they mechanically uttered the unmeaning nothings that at times – and the present was one of them – are quite as acceptable as real talk. As if by magic, the news spread that the actress was walking to the station, and great was the joy of the young men who served in all the fine shops in the market-place, who had never seen a real live actress from London in the daytime before, and whose remarks were of a highly complimentary order. The shop-girls, who stared, were equally excited, but perhaps a little more disposed to be critical. Further from the town centre the excitement was less evident. People in the genteel villas scarce deigned to turn their heads. To be emotionless and self-possessed is the object of gentility all the world over. People in genteel villas are not easily excited. In the low neighbourhood nearer the station, inhabited by guards and porters and stokers and signalmen, where engines are perpetually whistling and screaming and letting off steam, there was no excitement at all. In such places, during business hours, one has something to think of besides actors and actresses, and so the station yard was very quickly gained. Only were to be seen a few young swells of the town, who turned very red if the actress looked their way, simply gazing respectfully from afar, wishing that they had been walking with the actress instead of the Town Clerk, the Vicar, or the Mayor. The latter worthy was a little proud of his position. He had by his side and under his protection one whom he remarked, aside to his friends, was not only an actress, but a deuced fine woman. The influence of a fine woman on the male mind, especially in the provinces, where overpowering female beauty is scarce, is marvellous. Even the reverend Vicar was not insensible to its fascination; while the Town Clerk, who was a bachelor, was, therefore, very legitimately in the seventh heaven, wherever that may be; and when Sir Watkin Strahan’s family coach, with the three old maids of that old family, drove up, those excellently disposed ladies, to whom all Sloville was in the habit of grovelling, for the first time in their lives almost found themselves slighted, though as to what there was extraordinary to look at in that actor-woman from London they could none of them see.
Suddenly the aspect of affairs was changed.
Just outside the railway-station, on the bare earth, sweltering in the summer sun, was a bundle of rags. The actress was the first to perceive it
‘What is that?’ she exclaimed,
‘A bundle of rags,’ said one.
‘And of very dirty ones too,’ said another.
‘Good heavens,’ said the lady, ‘it is a living child.’
‘A child! Impossible.’
‘Yes, I tell you it is, and we must save it.’
The actress led the way to the bundle of rags. They were the only clothes of a little lad who, hatless and shoeless and shirtless, was lying on the ground – to be trampled on by horses or men, it seemed to matter little to him. To him approached the awfulness of respectability as embodied in the persons of the Mayor and the Vicar, but he never moved; he was too tired, too weak, too ill to rise. Half awake and half asleep there he lay, quite unconscious, as they looked in his face – thin with want, grimy with dirt, shaded with brown curling hair. Presently the lad got upon his legs with a view to running away – that’s the invariable etiquette on the part of ragged boys in such cases – but it was too late. Already the enemy were on him. Holding his right hand across his brow so as to shade his eyes, he plucked up his courage and prepared for the encounter.
‘Hulloa, you little ragamuffin, what are you up to here?’ said the Mayor, in a tone which frightened the poor boy at once.
‘Pray don’t speak so, Mr. Mayor,’ said the actress; ‘you’ll frighten the poor boy.’
‘Dear madam,’ said the august official, ‘what are we to do?’
‘Save the child.’
‘Ah! that’s easier said than done. Besides, what is the use of saving one? There are hundreds of such lads in Sloville, and we can’t save ’em all.’
‘Quite true,’ said the Vicar, professionally shaking his head.
‘What’s the matter, my poor boy?’ said the actress, as, heedless of the remarks of her companions, she stooped down to kindly pat the head of the little waif, who was at first too frightened to reply.
Slowly and reluctantly he opened his big blue eyes and stared, then he screwed up his mouth and began to cry.
‘Come, my little man,’ continued the actress, in her gentlest tone, ‘tell us what is the matter with you.’
‘Yes, tell the good lady what’s the matter with you!’ said the Vicar, who thought it was now high time for him to say something.
Even then the boy sulked. He was of a class apparently for whom respectability has few kind words or looks, who, in this wicked world, get more kicks than half-pence. Respectability has quite enough to do to look after her own children, especially now that taxes and butchers’ bills and School Board rates, to say nothing of coals, run up to such formidable items, to give herself much trouble about the children of other people. I have myself little pity for the heartless vagabonds who bring children into existence merely that they may rot and die. Of the devilish cruelty of such fathers and mothers no tongue can give an adequate idea; hanging is too good for them. It is to them we owe the pauperism which, apparently, it is beyond the power of the State to cure. I am sick of the cant ever uttered of population versus property; one is born of self-denial, industry, foresight, all the qualities which we as a nation require, while population is too often the result of unspeakable vice or consummate folly, qualities against which it becomes the nation to set its face.
But I must not forget the actress. More tenderly and coaxingly she repeated the question. To the charm of that voice and manner resistance was impossible.
Swallowing the rising tear with a great effort, slowly opening his eyes and mouth at the same time, and looking terribly frightened all the while, the poor lad replied:
‘Oh, ma’am, I’ve got such a pain in my head.’
‘Of course you’ve got a headache, lying like that in the sun. Why don’t you get away and run home?’
‘I ain’t got a home.’
‘Then, what are you doing here?’ said the Mayor.
‘Nothin’,’ said the boy.
‘So it seems,’ said the Vicar.
‘Where’s your father?’ asked the actress,
‘I ain’t got one.’
‘Then, where’s your mother?’
‘Gone off with a tramp, and she took brother with her.’
‘But why did not she take you as well?’
‘’Cause she said I was big enough to earn my own wittles and drink. But I must be off; here comes a bobby,’ said the boy, frightened at the appearance of one of the town police. Alas! he was too weak to run; he had had no food all day, and his only bed by night had been under some old waggon or in some old barn or loft, and, barefooted, he fell an easy prey to the representative of law and order.
‘Now, you young rascal,’ said the policeman, as he gave the lad a good shaking, apparently in order to test the strength of his ragged clothes, and, if possible, to make matters worse, ‘get out of this, and be off,’ an order which the poor lad would have obeyed had not the actress held his hand.
‘You know him,’ said she to the policeman.
‘Know him! of course I do. It was only last week I had him up before the magistrate.’
‘What for?’
‘For sleeping in the open air, and now here he is again. ’Tis very aggrawatin’. What’s the use of trying to do one’s duty if this sort of thing goes on?’
‘Is it a crime to sleep in the open air?’ asked the actress.
‘Well, you see, ma’am, it ain’t