Poverty corner : {"A little world") ; a city story

Front matter

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Chapter II. An Important Letter

JARED PELLET sat in the front parlour—pro tem. his workshop—while to keep the sun from troubling him, Patty had been pinning up the broad-sheet of a newspaper in the window, and now descended by means of a chair. For Jared was busy working a curious-looking pair of bellows with his foot, and making a little tongue of metal to vibrate with a most ear-piercing but doleful note in the process of being tuned, before being returned to the German concertina, where its duty was to occupy the part of leading note in the major scale of C.

“ Hum-um!” sang Jared, checking the current of air, and striking a tuning-fork upon his little bench. “ Hum-um! A bit flat, eh, Patty?”

“Just a little,’ said Patty, looking up from her work. f

“But there, only think!” cried Jared, dropping the

tuning-fork, leaving his task, and crossing to an old

AN. IMPORTANT LETTER. 5 harmonium, over whose keys he ran his bony fingers— “only think, if I could—only think, if I could get it! Fifty pounds a year for two practices a week, and duty three times on Sundays. Black, of course, for your mother ; but what coloured silk shall it be for you, eh, Patty?”

“Silk?” said Patty wonderingly, and her eyes grew rounder.

“ Yes, silk—dress, you know,” said Jared, jumping up again from the harmonium, and walking excitedly about the room. “Only think, if I could get it—Jared Pellet —no, Mr. Jared Pellet—or ought it to be esquire, eh, Patty ’—organist of St. Runwald’s. But there,” he continued, with a grim smile, ‘‘this is counting your chickens before they are hatched, and when you have not heard one solitary peck at the shell. Heigho, Patty! if the wind has not been and blown down my card house !”

Then, reseating himself at his bench, he began to make the metal tongue vibrate furiously, sending a very storm of wind through it, as he worked his foot—now making the note too sharp, now too flat, and taking twice as long as usual to complete his task, which, however, was at length accomplished, when Jared rose hastily from his bench, and went to the table to write a letter.

For be it known that the post of organist to St. Runwald’s was vacant—the church that everybody knows, situated as it is in a corner, with houses all round it, turning their backs as if ashamed, and hiding it, lest people should see what a patch Sir Christopher Wren made of the fine old Gothic building when he restored it: squaring the windows, putting up a vinegar-cruet steeple, padding, curtaining, brass rodding, and cushioning the interior, to make calm the slumbers of miserable sinners ; and one way and another so changing it that, could the monks of old once more have gazed upon the place, they would have groaned in their cowls, and called Sir Christopher a barbarian.

But the only groans proceeding from cowls were those which were heard upon windy nights, when showers of Wacks were whirled round and round, and then deposited in the corners of the window sills, or against the lead framing, whence they could filter through in a dust of the blackest, which would gather upon the pew edges, in despite of the pew-opener’s duster, ready to be tranferred to faces by fingers, or to rise of itself and to make churchgoers sneeze, and accuse the old place of being damp, the churchwarden of being stingy with the coals, the pew-opener of not lighting the fires at proper time to air the church, the vicar of spinning out his sermons, finishing off by accounting for the smallness of the attendance by a declaration that it was impossible for a parish to be religious where there was such a damp church.

And all this through the sootiness of the neighbouring houses ; for St. Runwald’s was as dry as a bone—as the bones of the old fathers who lay below in the vaults, placed there hundreds of years ago, when Borgle’s Yard was occupied by a monastery, and matins and vespers were rung out from the church tower. Jared Pellet, in after times, could have told you it was not damp, in spite of the words of Sampson Purkis, the beadle, who said that there were ‘‘sympsons,” else why did the steel fastening of the poor boxes grow rusty, unless—but thereby hangs a tale. Jared could have told you the place was not damp, by the organ; for would not the stops have stuck and the notes refused to speak had there been moisture? But at this period he was in ignorance ; for, incited thereto by the doctor, his wife, his daughter Patty, and Mr. Timson the churchwarden, Jared Pellet was about to offer himself as a candidate, to perform which task he had now settled himself at a table —some four or five small faces that had come peeping in at the door being warned off by divers very alarminglooking frowns and shakes of the head.

But it was no easy task to write a letter at Jared Pellet’s. True, there had been a pennyworth of the best cream-laid, and envelopes to match, obtained for the occasion ; but the ink in the penny bottle was thick, and when thinned with vinegar, to prevent it from coming off the nibs upon the paper in beads, it looked brown and bitty. Then the pen spluttered, partly from rust, partly from having been turned into a tool for raising the

AN IMPORTANT LETTER. 7

~ tongues of silent harmonium notes. So fresh pens and ink had to be purchased, when Jared wrote one application, and smeared his name, and then said, “Tut, tut, tut!” He wrote a second, but that did not look well ; for there was a hair in the pen, and he put two n’s in candidate. He then wrote a third, but only to find that he had done so with the paper upside down, when he exclaimed—

“There never was a letter yet that didn’t get more and more out of tune—I mean didn’t get worse—the more you tried.”

Patty did not speak, only looked sympathetic, and as if she would gladly have written the letter herself. But Jared tried again, and this time a proper missive was written, passed round, and approved by both Mrs. Pellet and her daughter. Then the postage stamp was affixed to the envelope with paste, for Jared had managed to lick off all the gum; and at last, when the important document had been safely posted, its writer recollected half a score of things he ought to have said ; and, after fidgeting all the evening, went off despairingly to bed, feeling certain that the post of organist could never be his.

Chapter III. Little Pine And Her Teacher

CARNABY STREET, Golden Square, where the private doors have their jambs ornamented with a series of bell-pulls like the stops of an organ, and the knockers seem intended to form handles that shall lift up and display rows of keys ; but, generally speaking, the doors stand open, and the sills bear a row of as many children as can squeeze themselves in. The population is dense and the odours many ; but the prevailing smell is that described by a celebrated character as of warm flat-irons, the ear corroborating nose and palate, for an occasional chink tells that the iron—not a flat one—has been placed upon the stand, while the heavy dull thump, thump, tells that some garment is being pressed. For this is one of the strongholds of the London tailors, and the chances are that the cloth cut upon the counter of Poole has been built into shape in Carnaby Street.

It was in the first-floor back, and in two small rooms, that Tim Ruggles—always Tim, though christened Timothy-—-a steady-going, hard-working, Dutch-clock kind of ' man, carried on the trade popular in the district. With his family of a wife and a little girl, he considered the two rooms ample; the larger serving for parlour, kitchen, workshop, and bedroom for little Pine, the other being devoted exclusively to sleeping purposes.

But you might have entered Tim’s room a score of times without detecting little Pine’s bed—an ingeniously contrived affair like a cupboard, which doubled up and doubled down, and creaked, and groaned, and sprawled about when in use, but had a bad habit of bursting open its doors when closed, and coming out when least expected in the shape of a bedding avalanche. But these accidents only occurred when Mrs. Ruggles had ventured upon the doubling of that piece of furniture; for Tim was the only person who thoroughly understood its idiosyncrasies, and possessed the skill and ingenuity to master its obtrusiveness. In effect, the first thing to be done was to make the bed, which Tim did regularly ; then, when all was well tucked in, to double back clothes and mattress, and with one rapid acrobatic evolution, performed in all its intricacies without a moment’s hesitation, to kick its legs from beneath it as you seized it at the foot, force your knee vigorously into its stomach, and then, as it folded, to drive all before you back into a state of collapse, banging to and bolting the doors in its face before it had time to recover. For if you were not rapid in your motions, down you went with the recoil, to be pinned to the floor by an incubus of wood and sacking. But manage the matter as did Tim Ruggles, taking care that no corners of sheet, blanket, or quilt stood out between cracks, and to all appearance that bed might have been a secretary.

When work of any kind is going on there is generally a tendency towards untidiness, and to a certain extent it was so here; for in a corner there stood Tim’s trestlesupported board, and the scraps and shreds snipped in

LITTLE PINE AND HER TEACHER. 9 his business occasionally fell to the floor ; otherwise the place was scrupulously clean. j

Tim was not a large man, either in person or ways. In fact, when crossed-legged upon the board, he often seemed half lost under the garment he made. Dry he was, and shrunken, as if overbaked—a waster, in fact, from nature’s pottery. The effect of the shrinking was most visible in his face, whose skin seemed not to fit, but fell into pucker, crease, and fold, above which shone— clear, white, and firm—his bald forehead and crown, fringing which, and standing out on either side, was a quantity of grizzled, frizzly, tufty hair, imparting a fierce look that was perfectly unreal.

Tim had just fetched his hot iron from the fire, and gone back to press off the garment he was completing. He had run his finger along the bars of a canary cage, and had it pecked by the bird within; gazed at the external prospect of back windows, cisterns, and drying clothes; sighed; wiped his nose upon a piece of cloth kept for the purpose; and then sat, sleeveboard in one hand, sponge in the other, the image of despair, as smothered cries, the pattering of blows, and half-heard appeals as of one who dared not cry out, fell upon his ear.

As Tim Ruggles sat over his work, with quite a shudder running through his frame, there rang out, in thrilling tones—

“Oh! oh! oh! Please not this time—not this time! Oh, don’t beat me!”

Now louder, now half-smothered, till Tim twisted, and shuffled, and writhed, as if the blows so plainly to be heard were falling upon his own shoulders—each stroke making him wince more sharply, while his face grew puckered and lined, so as to be hardly recognisable.

“T can’t stand it,” he groaned at last. And now he gave a start, for he had inadvertently placed his hand upon the hot iron.”

Then came again the anguished appeals for pardon, accompanied by cry after cry that seemed to have burst forth in spite of the utterer’s efforts to crush them down, till Tim, as he listened to the wailing voice, the whistling of stick or cane, and the dull thud of falling blows, seemed to shrink into himself as he turned his back to the sounds, stopped his ears with his finger and a wet sponge, and there sat crouched together, regardless of trickling water making its way within the collar of his shirt. |

At last the cries ceased, and the silence was only broken by an occasional suppressed sob; but Tim moved not, though the door opened, and from the inner room came a tall, hard, angular woman, rigid as the old whalebone umbrella rib she held in one hand, leading, or rather dragging, in a child with the other. She was a woman of about forty, such as in an upper class of life would have been gifted with a mission, and let people know of the fact. As it was, she was but a tailor’s wife, with a stiff neck: not the stiff neck of a cold, which calls for hartshorn, friction, and flannel, but a natural rigidity, which caused her to move as upon a pivot when turning to address a speaker, at a time when with other people a movement of the head would have sufticed.

“Tim,” she cried, as she moved into the room, opening and closing her cruel-looking mouth with a snap.

Tim heard the meaning cry, and starting quickly, the next moment he was busily at work, as if nothing had happened.

Mrs. Ruggles said no more, only proceeded to place her whalebone rod upon a perch over the fire-place. Her back was turned—a fact of which Tim took advantage to kiss his hand to the cowering child, when, save at distant intervals, she ceased to sob.

“T don’t think you need beat poor Pine so,” said Tim, at last, in a hesitating way. ‘ What was it for?”

“Come here,” shouted Mrs. Ruggles. ‘ What did I beat you for?”

With the cowering aspect of a beaten dog, the child came slowly forward into the light: sharp-featured, tangled of hair, red-eyed, cheek-soiled with weeping. Tim Ruggles winced again as he looked upon her thin bare arms and shoulders, lined by the livid weals made by the sharp

LITTLE PINE AND HER TEACHER. 11 elastic rod of correction, ink-like in its effects, the dark marks seeming to run along the flesh as the vicious blows fell. The poor child crept slowly forward, as if drawn by some strange influence, towards Mrs. Ruggles, her eyes resting the while upon Tim, whose face was working, and whose fingers opened and closed as if he were anxious to snatch the child to his heart.

“Now, ask her what she was whipped for,” shouted Mrs. Ruggles. “Tell him. What was it for?”

“‘ For—for—taking—”

“Ah! What’s that? For what?” shouted Mrs. Ruggles.

“For—for—for stealing—for—for—Oh!—Oh !—Oh!” cried the child, bursting into an uncontrollable fit of sobbing, ‘‘I didn’t do it—I didn’t do it!”

There she stopped short: the words, the sobs, the wailing tone, all ceased as if by magic, as Mrs. Ruggles snatched the whalebone from its supporting nails.

“‘ Yes—yes!”’ the child shrieked in haste, as the rigid figure and the instrument of torture approached—“ for stealing the cake from the cupboard.”

Then teeth were set fast, lips nipped together, hands clenched, and eyes closed, and the whole of the child’s nine years’ old determination seemed to be summoned up to bear the blow she could hear about to descend. Then the whalebone whistled through the air, and, in spite of every effort, the cut which fell upon the bare shoulders elicited a low wail of suffering.

A deep sigh burst from Tim Ruggles’ breast, and he bent lower over his work, moving his iron, but over the wrong places, as he closed his eyes, not to see the child fall upon her knees, and press both hands tightly over her lips to keep back the cry she could not conquer ; her every act displaying how long must have been the course of ill-treatment that had drawn forth such unchild-like resolution and endurance.

“ Now,” cried Mrs. Ruggles, ‘no noise!” though her own sharp, unfeminine tones must have penetrated to the very attics as she spoke. ‘‘ There—that will do. Now, get up this minute.”

“ But,” said the little tailor, humbly, “you should always ask before you punish, Mary. I—TI took the piece of cake out of the cupboard, because I hardly ate any breakfast.”

“Tim—Tim—Tim !” cried Mrs. Ruggles; and as she spoke, she looked at him sideways, her eyes gleaming . sharply out of the corners. “ You false man, you! But the more you try to screen her that way, the more I'll punish. How many times does this make that Pve found you out?”

“Times—found out?” stammered Tim.

“Yes; times found out,” retorted Mrs. Ruggles. “But Pll have no more of it; and so long as she’s here she shall behave herself. I'll cut her thievish ways out of her.”

‘¢ But, indeed,” cried Tim, pitifully, ‘“‘it was me, upon my soul. It was me, Mary. Just look—here’s some of the crumbs left now.” And he pointed to a few splintery scales of paste lying upon the board.

Mrs. Ruggles gave a nod that might have meant anything.

‘“‘T’m sure you should not beat her so,” whimpered Tim. ‘“‘ Beating does no good, and may hurt—”

“Didn’t I say I would not have her talked about,” exclaimed Mrs. Ruggles, in threatening tones. “ And how do you know? If she did not want whipping this time it will do for next. Children are always doing something, and a good beating sometimes loosens their skins and makes ’em grow. You never had children to teach.”

‘Taint my dooty to have children,” muttered Tim.

‘‘ What's that?” shouted Mrs. Ruggles. ‘“ Now, don’t aggravate ; you know I can’t abear nagging.”

“T only said, my dear, that it wasn’t my dooty to have children, but yours.”

Mrs. Ruggles gave her husband a look composed of half scorn and half contempt—a side look, which, coming out of the corners of her eyes, was so sharpened in its exit that, though Tim would not look up and meet it, he could feel what was going on, and shivered accordingly. Meanwhile, Mrs. Ruggles took a bonnet from a peg, and tied the string tightly, as if in suicidal intent, snatched

LITTLE PINE AND HER TEACHER. 13 herself into a shawl, and rummaged out a_ basket, preparatory to starting upon a marketing expedition.

“‘ Now then, don’t grovel there, but go to your work,” shouted Mrs. Ruggles to the kneeling child, who bent down as if she were the evil deity presiding over her fate.

Then the child’s hands dropped from before her mouth as she flinchingly rose, and taking a copper lid from a side table, began with a piece of dirty rag to rub and polish the already bright metal, giving at the same time stealthy furtive glances, first at Tim and then at Mrs. Ruggles; while, in spite of every effort, a sob would swell her little breast, beat down her puny efforts, and burst forth to make her shiver in dread of further blows.

Chapter IV. The Ninth Part Of A Man

THE room door had closed on Mrs. Ruggles’ rigid figure, her loud step, indicative of the woman’s firmness, was heard, and then Tim and little Pine ceased from their tasks, and listened till an echoing bang announced the shutting of the front-door, when, half rising and leaning forward, Tim dashed down the garment he was making, opened his arms, the child gave a series of bounds, and the next moment had buried her face in Tim’s breast, winding her bare little arms about his neck, wringing her thin fingers as she clasped and unclasped them, moaning piteously the while.

“ Just what I expected,” exclaimed Mrs. Ruggles, in her hard sharp tones. And, starting up, the guilty couple found that she had stolen back, and softly opened the door. But the next instant the child had seized lid and rag, and Tim was busily stitching away at a piece of lining which belonged nowhere, as he looked confusedly in his wife’s face.

“Call yourself a man?” exclaimed Mrs. Ruggles, with that peculiar bitterness so much used by women of her class. “Ah! I’ve a great mind to!” she exclaimed again, looking sidewise at little Pine, and making a dash at the whalebone ; “ but I don’t know which deserves it most.”

The child set her teeth hard, and shrank towards the wall, and Tim drew a long breath and clutched the big iron by his side, but without the slightest intention of using it for offence or defence, when Mrs. Ruggles again spoke—

‘Don’t let me come back again ; that’s all.”

If his looks were a faithful index of Timothy Ruggles’ mind, his heart evidently just then whispered, “ I wish to goodness I could take you at your word.”

Then the door was once more closed, the step heard again, the bang down-stairs, and then there was silence in the room, broken only by the half-suppressed sobs of little Pine, and the impatient restless pecking of the bird in the cage.

Five minutes passed, and still there was silence, when Tim softly took up a yard measure from the board, stole nimbly off on to his shoeless feet, opened the door and peered through the crack ; and then, reaching out one hand, he touched a bell with the yard measure, making it ring loudly twice over. Then he softly closed the door, replaced himself and his measure upon the board, before leaping boldly and noisily off to cross the room, open the door loudly, and trot down-stairs to answer the bell, the child earnestly watching his motions the while.

Down the stairs trotted Tim, and along the passage to the front door, to open it, look, and peer up and down the street, till apparently satisfied, when, closing the door once more, his face wore an aspect of full belief as he muttered—

“A runaway ring.”

Tim hurried up-stairs once more, but had his descent oeen made a minute sooner he would have seen the graceful form of his lady some half a dozen doors lower down, as she stood in conversation with a neighbour; but apparently satisfied, he climbed upon his board, placed his work ready to hand, and then, and then only, he held out his arms to the child, who was sobbing the next instant upon his breast.

“ Don’t, don’t cry my pet,’ he whispered, puzzling the

THE NINTH PART OF A MAN. 15 while a couple of real tears which had escaped from his eyes, and, finding no friendly handkerchief at hand, were dodging in and out amongst the main-lines, and sidings, and crossings, and switches of the course of life, as mapped out in Tim’s face, till one tear was shunted into his left ear and the other paused by the corner of his mouth.

“ Don’t cry, my pet,” said Tim, caressing the child with all a woman’s tenderness. ‘Come, I say, you must cheer up; for see what I’ve been making for you. There, don’t cry, my darling;” and he pressed his cool, soft, womanly hand upon weal and burning score. “ Now look,” he continued; and from under a heap of cloth patches he produced a quaint-looking rag doll, evidently the work of many a stolen five minutes. “‘ Now, then!” he cried, in the tones people adopt towards children, ‘“‘ what do you think of that ?”

Then there was silence, while Tim eagerly watched the child, whose little mind seemed to be struggling hard between the ideas natural to its age and those of a forced and premature character. First she looked at the doll, then at its donor, and then, half laughing, half crying, she looked pitifully in Tim’s face, before once more throwing herself, sobbing loudly, in his arms, where she clung tightly, as the little man patted her head, and smoothed and caressed her.

“ T thought she'd have liked it,” muttered Tim, looking down upon the little head in a disconcerted way, his face growing more and more puckered as he rocked himself to and fro, humming the snatch of some old ditty, treating the suffering little one as though she were a baby, till by slow degrees the sobs ceased, and Tim seemed more puzzled than ever, when the child raised her head, gazed in his face, her little wan aspect seeming to make her years older, as she kissed him, saying—

“ Please put it away, now.”

Tim stared hard at the little thin face, as with one hand he reluctantly placed the doll beneath the cloth shreds, holding her tightly with the other, till in a strange old-fashioned way she kissed him again, saying—

“ It was very kind of you.”

Then she slipped out of his arms, crossed the room to the glass, and smoothed her hair ; wetted Tim’s sponge. and removed the tear marks from her face, placing, too, the cool, grateful water against the smarting weals upon her arms. Afterwards she returned to her task, and went on polishing the metal lid, a sob still rising at intervals, to make Tim Ruggles flinch.

T'im’s work was again in hand, but progressing very slowly, as he sat musing to himself, and wondering whose child the little one was; whether she would be fetched away—a proceeding which he dreaded, in spite of the pain it gave him to see her suffer.

‘“Tve no spirit to stop it,” he muttered, “though it nips me horribly. I suppose it’s from stitching so much that I aint like most men. It’s all right, though, I s‘pose—she knows best. Here, I say, though, my wig and pickles, we shall have the missus home directly,” he cried, fiercely, ‘‘and no work done. Now, then, bustle —polish away !”

He set the example for work by snatching up the trousers in course of making, and working more fiercely than ever.

oo eeeesés ——

Chapter V. Organic

A Busy day at St. Runwald’s. Mrs, Nimmer, the pew-opener, with a clean cap, like a white satin raised pie. Mr. Purkis, the beadle—of ‘“ Purkis’s shoe emporium,” in private life—in full uniform and dignity. He had cuffed Ichabod Gun: is, the organ-blower, for spinning his top in the porch, and sent that young gentleman howling up the stairs leading to the loft, where he thrust off his big charity-boy shoes, and stole down again in his soft, speckled-grey worsted stockings, to where, from a darkened corner, he could catch sight of his portly enemy, and relieve his mind by turning his back, doubling down and grinning between his legs, distorting his face after the fashion of the corbels of the old church, the tongue being a prominent feature as to the effect. For quite five minutes Ichabod showed his utter contempt for is

ORGANIC. 19 the church dignitary in question, who was all the time in a brown study, calculating the amount he would probably receive by way of what he called “donus,’ upon the appointment of a new organist; a train of thought interrupted by the consideration of the verses he should distribute at the coming Christmas, the last set having been unsatisfactory, from having been used by the beadle of the neighbouring parish, “a common man and low.”

But there was soon an interruption to this second train of thought; for people began to congregate, and he had to lend his aid to Mrs. Nimmer, and assist the worthy old lady in imprisoning the new comers in the big old pews, where, if they could not see, they would at all events be able to hear, this being the day for the organ competition.

People assembled under the impression that they were about to hear something grand, eight competitors having been selected from a very host of applicants; for the post, without taking into consideration the fifty pounds per annum, was one of honour, St. Runwald’s organ being famous.

Through the influence of his medical friend—only a slight return on that gentleman’s part, for Jared had been a good friend to him—the Clerkenwell music cobbler, as he called himself, was one of the select, and now sat in nervous guise where the vicar and churchwardens were assembled to elect the new organist.

Hight competitors, with testimonials to prove that though there might have been Mozarts, Beethovens, and a long roll of worthy names in harmony, yet there never had yet lived such able, such enthusiastic musicians as Edward Barrest, Mus. Doc., Oxon.; Philip Keyes, Mus. Doc., Cantab. ; Herr Schtopffz, Handel Smith, R.A., and Corelli Sweller. There were other names read, but Mr. Timson, the vicar’s churchwarden, stumbled so that Jared Pellet could not catch them; but his ear-drum vibrated when his own was given out, and he shivered horribly. There were stout and important men, and men thin and insignificant,’but conspicuous for his shabby aspect was Jared Pellet.

The testimonials did not have their due weight ; for

C the vicar’s churchwarden, Mr. Timson—a short, stout, peg-top style of man, a tea-dealer—threw himself into a violent perspiration by trying to keep each man’s papers separate as he turned them over and over, with a peck here and peck there, then laid them in heaps, just as if he were sorting tea-papers for pounds, halves, and quarters ; and at last, what with confusion and his formidable double eyeglass—which was rather weak in the back, and given to shutting up when it should have kept open—he got himself into such a knot that he did what was best for him under the circumstances—handed the paper chaos over to his brother official, who hurriedly put on his gold-rimmed spectacles and did not read a word.