VII
There was no chance all along Meakin Street. The chandlers and the keepers of cookshops knew their neighbourhood too well to leave articles unguarded. Soon Dickey reached Shoreditch High Street. There things were a little more favourable. There were shops, as he well remembered, where goods were sometimes exhibited at the doors and outside the windows; but to-day there seemed to be no chance of the sort. As for the people, he was too short to try pockets, and, indeed, the High Street rarely gave passage to a more unpromising lot. Moreover, from robbery from the person he knew he must abstain, except for such uncommon opportunities as that of the Bishop's watch, for some years yet.
He hung about the doors and windows of shop after shop, hoping for a temporary absence of the shopkeeper which might leave something snatchable, but he hoped in vain. From most shops he was driven away, for the Shoreditch trader is not slow to judge the purpose of a loitering boy. So he passed nearly two hours; when at last he saw his chance. It came in an advantageous part of High Street, not far from the "Posties," though on the opposite side of the way. A nurse-girl had left a perambulator at a shop door while she bought inside, and on the perambulator lay loose a little skin rug, from which a little fat leg stuck and waved aloft. Dicky set his back to the shop and sidled to within reach of the perambulator. But it chanced that at this moment the nurse-girl stepped to the door, and she made a snatch at his arm as he lifted the rug. This he dropped at once, and was swinging leisurely away (for he despised the chase of any nurse-girl) when a man took him suddenly by the shoulder. Quick as a weasel, Dicky ducked under the man's arm, pulled his shoulder clear, dropped forward and rested an instant on the tips of his fingers to avoid the catch of the other hand, and shot out into the road. The man tried to follow, but Dicky ran under the belly of a standing horse, under the head of another that trotted, across the fore-platform of a tram-car—behind the driver's back—and so over to the "Posties."
He slouched into the Jago disappointed. As he crossed Edge Lane, he was surprised to perceive a stranger—a toff, indeed—who walked slowly along, looking up, right and left, at the grimy habitations about him. He wore a tall hat, and his clothes were black, and of a pattern that Dicky remembered to have seen at the Elevation Mission; they were, in fact, the clothes of a clergyman. For himself, he was tall and soundly built, with a certain square muscularity of face, and of age about thirty-five. He had ventured into the Jago because the police were in possession, Dicky thought; and wondered in what plight he would leave had he come at another time. But losing view of the stranger and making his way along Old Jago Street, Dicky perceived that indeed the police were gone, and that the Jago was free.
He climbed the broken stairs and pushed into the first floor back, hopeful, though more doubtful, of dinner. There was none. His mother, tied about the neck with rags, lay across the bed, nursing the damage of yesterday, and commiserating herself. A yard from her lay Looey, sick and ailing in a new way, but disregarded. Dicky moved to lift her but at that she cried the more, and he was fain to let her lie. She rolled her head from side to side and raised her thin little hand vaguely toward it, with feverishly-working fingers. Dicky felt her head and she screamed again. There was a lump at the side, a hard sharp lump; got from the stones of the roadway yesterday. And there was a curious quality, a rather fearful quality, in the little wails: uneasily suggestive of the screams of Sally Green's victims.
Father was out, prowling. There was nothing eatable in the cupboard, and there seemed nothing at home worth staying for. He took another look at Looey, but refrained from touching her, and went out.
The opposite door on the landing was wide open, and Dicky could hear nobody in the room. He had never seen this door open before, and now he ventured on a peep; for the tenants of the front room were strangers, late arrivals, and interlopers. Their name was Roper. Roper was a pale cabinet-maker, fallen on evil times and out of work. He had a pale wife, disliked because of her neatly-kept clothes, her exceeding use of soap and water, her aloofness from gossip. She had a deadly pale baby; also there was the pale hunchbacked boy of near Dicky's age. Collectively, the Ropers were disliked as strangers, because they furnished their own room, in an obnoxiously complete style; because Roper did not drink, nor brawl, nor beat his wife, nor do anything all day but look for work; because all these things were a matter of scandalous arrogance, impudently subversive of Jago custom and precedent. Mrs. Perrott was bad enough, but such people as these. . . . . .
Dicky had never before seen quite such a room as this. Everything was so clean; the floor, the windows, the bedclothes. Also there was a strip of old carpet on the floor. There were two perfectly sound chairs, and two pink glass vases on the mantelpiece; and a clock. Nobody was in the room, and Dicky took a step farther. The clock attracted him again. It was a small, cheap, nickel-plated cylindrical thing, of American make, and it reminded him at once of the Bishop's watch. It was not gold, certainly, but it was a good deal bigger, and it could go—it was going. Dicky stepped back and glanced at the landing; then he darted into the room, whipped the clock under the breast of the big jacket and went for the stairs.
Half-way down he met the pale hunchback ascending. Left at home alone, he had been standing in the front doorway.
He saw Dicky's haste; saw also the suspicious bulge under his jacket, and straightway seized Dicky's arm.
"Where 'a' you bin?" he asked sharply. "Bin in our room? What you got there?"
"Nothin' o' yours, 'ump. Git out o' that!" Dicky pushed him aside. "If ye don't le' go, I'll corpse ye!"
But one arm and hand was occupied with the bulge, and the other was for the moment unequal to the work of driving off the assailant. The two children wrangled and struggled downstairs, through the doorway and into the street; the hunchback, weak but infuriate, buffeting, biting and whimpering; Dicky infuriate too, but alert for a chance to break away and run. So they scrambled together across the street, Dicky dragging away from the house at every step; and just at the corner of Luck Row, getting his fore-arm across the other's face, he back-heeled him, and the little hunchback fell heavily, and lay breathless and sobbing, while Dicky scampered through Luck Row and round the corner into Meakin Street.
Mr. Weech was busier now, for there were customers. But Dicky and his bulge he saw ere they were well over the threshold.
"Ah, yus, Dicky," he said, coming to meet him. "I was expectin' you. Come in—
In the swe-e-et by an' by
We shall meet on that beautiful shaw-er!
Come in 'ere."
Still humming his hymn, Mr. Weech led Dicky into the shop parlour. Here Dicky produced the clock, which Mr. Weech surveyed with no great approval.
"You'll 'ave to try an' do better than this, you know," he said. "But any 'ow 'ere it is, sich as it is. It about clears auf wot you owe, I reckon. Want some dinner?"
This was a fact, and Dicky admitted it.
"Awright—
- In the swe-e-e-t by an' by,—
Come out an' set down. I'll bring you somethink 'ot."
This proved to be a very salt bloater, a cup of the usual muddy coffee, tasting of burnt toast and a bit of bread, afterwards supplemented by a slice of cake. This to Dicky was a banquet. Moreover, there was the adult dignity of taking your dinner in a coffee-shop; which Dicky supported indomitably now that he began to feel at ease in Mr. Weech's; leaning back in his seat, swinging his feet, and looking about at the walls with the grocers' almanacks hanging thereto, and the Sunday School Anniversary bills of past date, gathered from afar to signalise the elevated morals of the establishment.
"Done?" queried Mr. Weech in his ear. "Awright, don't 'ang about 'ere then. Bloater's a penny, bread a 'a'peny, cawfy a penny, cake a penny. You'll owe thrippence-'a'peny now."