“Dauntless the slug-horn
to my lips I set. And blew ’Childe Roland
to the Dark Tower came.’” Browning.
Fifty years before, the Hospital of
the Good Samaritan had been the pet “charity”
of a residential suburb. Factories and slums
had since crowded in upon it, ousting the residents
and creeping like a tide over the sites of their gardens
and villas. The street kept its ancient width,
and a few smoke-blackened trees lilacs,
laburnums, limes, and one copper-beech still
dignified the purlieus. Time, ruthless upon
these amenities, had spared, and even enlarged, the
hospital.
It stood on the shaded side of the
street. Nevertheless, the sunshine, reflected
from the façade of mean houses across the way, dazzled
Tilda as she crossed the threshold of the great doorway
and hopped down the steps. There were five steps,
and on the lowest she paused, leaning a moment on
her crutch before taking the final plunge into liberty.
Then, while she stood blinking, of
a sudden a yellowish brown body bounded at her out
of the sun-dazzle, pushed her tottering, danced back,
and leapt at her again, springing to lick her face,
and uttering sharp, inarticulate noises from a throat
bursting with bliss.
“’Dolph! O ’Dolph!”
Tilda sank on the lowest step and
stretched out both arms. The dog, rushing between
them, fairly bowled her backwards; lit in her lap and
twisted his body round ecstatically, thrusting, nuzzling
at her bosom, her neck, her face devouring
her with love. In her weakness she caught him
around the chest, close behind the forelegs, and hugged
him to her. So for a quarter of a minute the
two rocked together and struggled.
“’Dolph! O good dog! . . . Did
Bill send yer?”
’Dolph, recoiling, shook his
neck-ruff and prepared for another spring; but Tilda
pushed him back and stood up. “Take me
along to him,” she commanded, and lifted her
face impudently to the clock-face of St. Barnabas
above the mean roofs. “Barnabas, are yer?
Then give my compliments to the doctor, you Barnabas,
an’ tell ’im to cheese it.”
’Dolph short for Godolphus pricked
both ears and studied the sky-line. Perceiving
nothing there not even a swallow to be chased he
barked twice (the humbug!) for sign that he understood
thoroughly, and at once fell to new capers by way
of changing the subject. Tilda became severe.
“Look here, Godolphus,” she explained,
“this is biz-strict biz. You may wag your
silly Irish tail, but that don’t take me
in. Understand? . . . Well, the first thing
you ’ave to do is take me to Bill.”
Godolphus was dashed; hurt, it may
be, in his feelings. Being dumb, he could not
plead that for three weeks daily he had kept watch
on the hospital door; that, hungry, he had missed
his meals for faith, which is the substance of things
unseen; that, a few hours ago, having to choose between
half-gods assured and whole gods upon trust an
almost desperate trust he had staked against
the odds. Or, it may be, he forgot all this,
and only considered what lay ahead for the child.
At any rate, his tail, as he led the way, wagged
at a sensibly lower angle.
“Bill can read any kind of ’andwriting,”
said Tilda, half to herself and half to the dog.
“What’s more, and whatever’s the
matter, Bill ’elps.”
So she promised herself. It
did not strike her that ’Dolph who
in an ordinary way should have been bounding ahead
and anon bounding back to gyrate on his hind legs
and encourage her preferred to trot ahead
some thirty or forty yards and wait for her to overtake
him; nor that, when she came up, he avoided her eyes,
pretending that here a doorstep, there a grating or
water-main absorbed his curiosity. Once or twice,
indeed, before trotting off again, he left these objects
of interest to run around Tilda’s heels and
rub against her crutch. But she was busy with
her own plans.
So through a zig-zag of four or five
dingy streets they came to one she recognised as that
leading into the Plain, or open space where the show-people
encamped. At its far end ’Dolph halted.
His tail still wagged, but his look was sidelong,
furtive, uneasy.
Tilda, coming up with him, stood still
for a moment, stared, and caught her breath with a
little gasp of dismay.
The Plain was empty.
Circus and menagerie, swing-boats,
roundabouts, shooting-galleries all were
gone. The whole area lay trampled and bare, with
puddles where the steam-engines had stood, and in
the puddles bedabbled relics of paper brushes, confetti
bags, scraps torn from feminine flounces, twisted
leaden tubes of “ladies’ tormentors”
cast away and half-trodden into the mire; the whole
an unscavenged desolation. Her folk the
show-folk had deserted her and vanished,
and she had not a penny in her pocket. It cost
Tilda all her pluck to keep what she called a tight
upper lip. She uttered no cry, but seated herself
on the nearest doorstep apparently with
deliberation, actually not heeding, still less caring,
to whom the doorstep belonged.
“Oh, ’Dolph!” she murmured.
To her credit, in the act of appealing
to him, she understood the dog’s heroism, and
again stretched forth her arms. He had been waiting
for this sprang at her, and again was caught
and hugged. Again the two forlorn ones rocked
in an embrace.
Brief ecstasy! The door behind
them was constructed in two portions, of which the
upper stood wide, the lower deceptively on the latch.
Against this, as she struggled with Godolphus’s
ardour, Tilda gave a backward lurch. It yielded,
flew open, and child and dog together rolled in across
the threshold, while a shop-bell jangled madly above
them.
“Get out of this you and your nasty
cur!”
Tilda picked up herself and her crutch,
and stood eyeing the shopwoman, who, summoned by the
bell, had come rushing from an inner room, and in
no sweet temper. From the woman she glanced around
the shop a dairy-shop with a marble-topped
counter, and upon the counter a pair of scales and
a large yellow block of margarine.
“It was a naccident,”
said Tilda firmly and with composure. “And
my dog isn’ a nasty cur; it only shows your
ignorance. Be quiet, ’Dolph!”
She had to turn and shake her crutch
at Godolphus, who, perceiving his mistress’s
line of action, at once, in his impulsive Irish way,
barked defiance at the shopwoman.
But the shopwoman’s eyes rested
on the crutch, and the sight of it appeared to mollify
her.
“My gracious! I do believe
you ’re the child was hurt at Maggs’s Circus
and taken to hospital.”
Tilda nodded.
“Did you see me?”
“Carried by on a stretcher and
your face the colour of that.” The
woman pointed to the marble counter-top.
“I was a serious case,”
said Tilda impressively. “The people at
the Good Samaritan couldn’ remember admittin’
the likes of it. There were complications.”
“You don’t say!”
“But what’s become of Maggs’s?”
“Maggs’s left a week ago
come Tuesday. I know, because they used to buy
their milk of me. They were the first a’most,
and the last was the Menagerie and Gavel’s Roundabouts.
They packed up last night. It must be
a wearin’ life,” commented the shopwoman.
“But for my part I like the shows, and so I
tell Damper that’s my ’usband.
They put a bit of colour into the place while they
last, besides bein’ free-’anded with their
money. Light come light go, I reckon; but anyway,
it’s different from cows. So you suffered
from complications, did you?”
“Internal,” Tilda assured
her in a voice as hollow as she could make it.
“I must have spit up a quart of blood, first
an’ last. An’ the medicine I ‘ad
to take! You wouldn’ think it, but the
colour was pale ’eliotrope.”
“I wonder,” said Mrs.
Damper sympathetically “I wonder
it stayed in the stomach.”
“It didn’.”
“Wouldn’ you fancy a glass o’ milk,
now?”
“It’s very kind of you.”
Tilda put on her best manners. “And ’ere’s
’ealth!” she added before sipping, when
the milk was handed to her.
“And the dog wouldn’ ’e
like something?”
“Well, since you mention it but
it’s givin’ you a ’eap of trouble.
If you ’ave such a thing as a bun, it
don’t matter ’ow stale.”
“I can do better ’n that.”
Mrs. Damper dived into the inner room, and re-emerged
with a plateful of scraps. “There’s
always waste with children,” she explained,
“and I got five. You can’t think
the load off one’s shoulders when they’re
packed to school at nine o’clock. And that,
I dessay,” she wound up lucidly, “is what
softened me t’ards you. Do you go to school,
now?”
“Never did,” answered
Tilda, taking the plate and laying it before Godolphus,
who fell-to voraciously.
“I ’d like to tell that
to the attendance officer,” said Mrs. Damper
in a wistful tone. “But p’r’aps
it might get you into trouble?”
“You ’re welcome.”
“He do give me a lot of worry;
and it don’t make things easier Damper’s
threatenin’ to knock his ‘ead off if ever
he catches the man darkenin’ our door.
Never been to school, aven’t you? I ’d
like to tell ’im, and that, if there’s
a law, it ought to be the same for all. But all
my children are ’ealthy, and that’s one
consolation.”
“’Ealth’s the first
thing in life,” agreed Tilda. “So
they’ve all cleared out? the shows,
I mean.”
“Every one exceptin’ the Theayter.”
“Mortimer’s?” Tilda
limped to the open door. “But I don’t
see him, neither.”
“Mortimer’s is up the
spout. First of all, there was trouble with the
lodgings; and on top of that, last Monday, Mr. Hucks
put the bailiffs in. This mornin’ he sent
half a dozen men, and they took the show to pieces
and carried it off to Hucks’s yard, where I hear
he means to sell it by public auction.”
“Who’s Mr. Hucks?”
“He’s the man that farms
the Plain here farms it out, I mean,”
Mrs. Damper explained. “He leases the
ground from the Corporation and lets it out for what
he can make, and that’s a pretty penny.
Terrible close-fisted man is Mr. Hucks.”
“Oh!” said Tilda, enlightened.
“When you talked of farmin’, you made
me wonder . . .So they’re all gone? And
Wolverhampton-way, I reckon. That was to be the
next move.”
“I’ve often seen myself
travellin’ in a caravan,” said Mrs. Damper
dreamily. “Here to-day an’ gone to-morrow,
and only to stretch out your hand whether ’tis
hairpins or a fryin’-pan; though I should never
get over travellin’ on Sundays.”
Here, while her eyes rested on the child, of a sudden
she came out of her reverie with a sharp exclamation.
“Lord’s sake! You ain’t goin’
to tell me they’ve left you in ’ospital,
stranded!”
“That’s about it,”
said Tilda bravely, albeit with a wry little twist
of her mouth.
“But what’ll you do?”
“Oh, I dunno . . . We’ll
get along some’ow eh, ’Dolph?
Fact is, I got a job to do, an’ no time to
lose worryin’. You just read that.”
Tilda produced and handed her scrap
of paper to Mrs. Damper, who took it, unfolded it,
and perused the writing slowly.
“Goin’ there?” she inquired at length.
“That depends.” Tilda
was not to be taken off her guard. “I want
you to read what it says.”
“Yes, to be sure I
forgot what you said about havin’ no schoolin’.
Well, it says: ’Arthur Miles, surname Chandon,
b. Kingsand, May 1st, 1888. Rev. Dr. Purdie
J. Glasson, Holy Innocents’ Orphanage, Bursfield,
near Birmingham ’ leastways, I can’t
read the last line clear, the paper bein’ frayed;
but it’s bound to be what I’ve said.”
“Why?”
“Why, because that’s the
address. Holy Innocents, down by the canal
I know it, o’ course, and Dr. Glasson.
Damper supplied ’em with milk for over six
months, an’ trouble enough we had to get our
money.”
“How far is it?”
“Matter of half a mile, I should
say close by the canal. You cross
it there by the iron bridge. The tram’ll
take you down for a penny, only you must mind and
get out this side of the bridge, because once you’re
on the other side it’s tuppence. Haven’t
got a penny? Well,” Mrs. Damper
dived a hand into her till “I’ll
give you one. Bein’ a mother, I can’t
bear to see children in trouble.”
“Thank you,” said Tilda.
“It’ll come in ’andy; but I ain’t
in no trouble just yet.”
“I ’spose,” Mrs.
Damper ventured after a pause, “you don’t
feel like tellin’ me what your business might
be down at the orphanage? Not that I’m
curious.
“I can’t.”
This was perfectly true, for she herself did not know.
“You see,” she added with a fine air of
mystery, “there’s others mixed up in this.”
Mrs. Damper sighed.
“Well, I mustn’ detain
you . . . This Arthur Miles Chandon he’s
not a friend of yours by any chance?”
“He’s a sort
of connection,” said Tilda. “You
know ’im, p’r’aps?”
“Dear me, no!”
“Oh,” the child,
without intending it, achieved a fine irony
“I thought you seemed interested. Well,
so long! and thank you again there’s
a tram stoppin’ at the corner! Come along,
’Dolph!”
She was not she had said
it truthfully by any means in trouble just
yet. On the contrary, after long deprivation
she was tasting life again, and finding it good.
The streets of this Bursfield suburb were far from
suggestive of the New Jerusalem a City of
which, by the way, Tilda had neither read nor heard.
They were, in fact, mean and squalid, begrimed with
smoke and imperfectly scavenged. But they were,
at least, populous, and to Tilda the faces in the
tram and on the pavements wore, each and all, a friendly almost
an angelic glow. The tram-car rolled
along like a celestial chariot trailing clouds of glory,
and ’Dolph, running beside it and threading
his way in and out between the legs of the passers-by,
was a hound of heaven in a coat effluent of gold.
Weariness would come, but as yet her body felt no weariness,
buoyed upon a spirit a-tiptoe for all adventure.
The tram reached the iron bridge and
drew up. She descended, asked the conductor
to direct her to Holy Innocents, and was answered with
a jerk of the thumb.
It stood, in fact, just beyond the
bridge, with a high brick wall that turned off the
street at right angles and overhung the towpath of
the canal. Although in architecture wholly dissimilar,
the building put her in mind of the Hospital of the
Good Samaritan, and her spirits sank for a moment.
Its façade looked upon the street over a strip of
garden crowded with dingy laurels. It contained
a depressingly large number of windows, and it seemed
to her that they were at once bare and dirty.
Also, and simultaneously, it occurred to her that she
had no notion what step to take next, nor how, if
she rang the bell, to explain herself. She temporised
therefore; whistled to ’Dolph, and turned aside
down the steps leading to the towpath. She would
con the lie of the land before laying siege the
strength of the castle before summoning the defence.
The castle was patently strong strong
enough to excuse any disheartenment. Scarcely
a window pierced its narrow butt-end, four stories
high, under which the steps wound. It ended just
where they met the towpath, and from its angle sprang
a brick wall dead-blank, at least twelve feet high,
which ran for eighty or ninety yards along the straight
line of the path. Across the canal a row of unkempt
cottage gardens sloped to the water, the most of them
fenced from the brink of it with decayed palings,
a few with elder bushes and barbed wire to fill up
the gaps, while at least two ended in moraines
of old meat tins and shards of crockery. And
between these containing banks wound the canal, shallow
and waveless, with noisome weeds trailing on its surface
afloat amid soot and iridescent patches or pools of
tar. In the cottage gardens not a soul was at
work, nor, by their appearance, had a soul worked
in them for years past. The canal, too, was deserted,
save for one long monkey-boat, black as Charon’s
barge, that lay moored to a post on the towpath, some
seventy-odd yards up stream, near where the wall of
the Orphanage ended. Beyond this, and over a
line of ragged thorns, the bulk of a red-brick Brewery its
roof crowned with a sky-sign closed the
view.
The monkey-boat lay with her stem
down-stream, and her after-part her habitable
quarters covered by a black tarpaulin.
A solitary man was at work shovelling coal out of
her middle hold into a large metal bucket. As
Tilda hobbled towards him he hoisted the full bucket
on his shoulders, staggered across the towpath with
it, and shot its contents into a manhole under the
brick wall. Tilda drew near and came to a halt,
watching him.
“Afternoon,” said the man, beginning to
shovel again.
“Afternoon,” responded Tilda.
He was a young man she
could detect this beneath his mask of coal dust.
He wore a sack over his shoulders, and a black sou’wester
hat with a hind-flap that fell low over his neck.
But she liked the look in his eyes, though the rims
of them were red and the brows caked with grit.
She liked his voice, too. It sounded friendly.
“Is this the Orph’nige? What they
call ’Oly Innercents?” she asked.
“That’s so,” the young coalheaver
answered. “Want to get in?”
“I do an’ I don’t,” said Tilda.
“Then take my advice an’ don’t.”
He resumed his shovelling, and Tilda watched him for
a while.
“Nice dorg,” said he,
breaking off and throwing an affable nod towards Godolphus
who, having attracted no attention by flinging himself
on the grass with a lolling tongue and every appearance
of fatigue, was now filling up the time in quest of
a flea. “No breed, but he has points.
Where did you pick him up?”
“He belongs to a show.”
“Crystal Pallus?”
“And,” pursued Tilda,
“I was wonderin’ if you’d look after
him while I step inside?”
She threw back her head, and the man whistled.
“You’re a trustin’ one, I must say!”
“You’d never be mean enough
to make off with ‘im, an’ I won’t
believe it of you,” spoke up Tilda boldly.
“Eh? I wasn’ talkin
of the dorg,” he explained. “I was
meanin’ the Orph’nage. By all accounts
‘tisn’ so easy to get in an’
’tis a sight harder to get out.”
“I’ve got to get in,” urged
Tilda desperately.
“I’ve a message for someone inside.
His name’s Arthur Miles Chandon.”
The young coalheaver shook his head.
“I don’t know ‘im,”
he said. “I’m new to this job, an’
they don’t talk to me through the coal-’olé.
But you seem a well-plucked one, and what with your
crutch How did you come by it?”
“Kick of a pony.”
“Seems to me you’ve been
a good deal mixed up with animals, for your age.
What about your pa and ma?”
“Never ’ad none, I thank Gord.”
“Eh?” The young man laid
down his shovel, lifted the flap of his sou’wester,
and scratched the back of his head slowly. “Let
me get the hang o’ that, now.”
“I’ve seen fathers and
mothers,” said the sage child, nodding at him;
“and them as likes ’em is welcome to ’em.”
“Gor-a-mussy!” half-groaned
the young man. “If you talk like that,
they’ll take you in, right enough; but as to
your gettin’ out ”
“I’ll get out, one way
or ’nother you see!” Tilda promised.
“All you ‘ave to do is to take charge
o’ this crutch an’ look after the dog.”
“Oh, I’ll look after ’im!”
The child shook a forefinger at ’Dolph,
forbidding him to follow her. The dog sank on
his haunches, wagging a tail that swept the grasses
in perplexed protest, and watched her as she retraced
her way along the towpath.
Tilda did not once look back.
She was horribly frightened; but she had pledged
her word now, and it was irredeemable. From the
hurrying traffic of the street she took a final breath
of courage, and tugged at the iron bell-pull depending
beside the Orphanage gate. A bell clanged close
within the house, and the sound of it almost made her
jump out of her boots.