Toilers of Babylon: A Novel. Farjeon Benjamin Leopold

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      "You had it in your mind?"

      "I did, sir."

      "But," said Mr. Loveday, glancing at the lad, "there is one most important question-the question of respectability."

      "There's nothing against me, sir. You may inquire of everybody I've worked for."

      "I mean the question of a respectable appearance. Now, Timothy, you will not have the assurance to assert that you present a respectable appearance?"

      "Cluck! cluck! cluck?" went the fowl in the basket.

      Timothy's eyes wandered dolefully over his ragged garments.

      "If my new suit of clothes hadn't been burnt," he murmured-

      "But they are burnt. Spilled milk, you know. The long and the short of it is, if you can obtain a decent suit of clothes, I'll give you a trial, Timothy."

      "Cluck! cluck! cluck! Cluck! cluck! cluck!" from the basket. A jubilant, noisy, triumphant flourish of trumpets, to force upon the world the knowledge of a great event. Timothy knelt down, put his hand in the basket, and drew forth a new-laid egg.

      "The world's mine oyster, which I with knife will ope." But surely that knife never presented itself, as it did at the present moment, in the form of a new laid-egg.

      CHAPTER XI

      Church Alley, in which Mr. Loveday's second-hand bookshop was situated, was not in the most squalid part of the East, wherein may be found horrible patches, in comparison with which the haunts of heathens in savage lands are a veritable paradise. It was, indeed, in close contiguity to the most respectable part of it, lying to the eastward of the famous butchers' mart, which, in the present day, is shorn of its doubtful glories. The alley was a slit in the main thoroughfare, running parallel with it, about sixty yards in length, and containing thirty-four tenements, sixteen of which were private dwellings and eighteen places of business. In the flourishing West it would have been converted into an arcade, and dignified with an imposing name drawn from royal or martial records; in the toiling East it was simply what it professed to be-an alley, very narrow, very shabby, and generally very dark. When winter fogs lay thick upon the mighty city they reached perfection by the time they floated to Church Alley and settled there. Then was the darkness truly Egyptian, and there the gloom remained, as if in proud assertion of the fitness of things, long after surrounding thoroughfares were bright. The sun rose later there and set earlier, and in freezing time it was a very heaven of slides days after surrounding space was thawing. The explanation of these unusual phenomena may be found in the circumstance that when "weather" got into Church Alley it could not easily get out. There was no roadway for horses and carts; between the rows of houses ran a footpath ten feet in width. The enterprising builder who purchased the land and designed the estate had husbanded his inches with a shrewd eye to the greatest possible number of rents to be squeezed out of them, and it must be confessed that his efforts were crowned with complete success.

      "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen," and this applies to weeds as well as flowers. Persons not acquainted with the intricacies of the neighborhood would have passed Church Alley without noticing it, even without being aware that there was such a thoroughfare within hail; it seemed, as it were, to shrink from notice, and to have been formed with a view to the enjoyment of the pleasures of obscurity, notwithstanding that it had at one end a public-house and a pawnbroker's shop, and at the other end a pawnbroker's shop and a public-house. These four establishments may be said to have been the archways to the paradise of Church Alley, and from the commencement to the end of the year, in rain or shine, in winter or summer, lost and wretched Peris could always be seen there, lingering at the gates. Public-houses and pawnbroker's shops are as the very breath of life in the East of London, and are important and degrading elements in the education of the dwellers therein. Children from their earliest days are familiar with them, and grow into the knowledge (which fair minds cannot dispute) that these institutions are planted there especially for their behoof. Brewers and distillers grow fat upon vice, and go smilingly through the world, conveniently blind to the fact that the richer they grow the more crowded become the ranks of those wretched ones from whose midst our prisons are filled, and whose lives are a standing reproach to humanity and civilization. It is not the fair use, but the gross abuse, of a system which is here deplored. The axe should be laid to it, despite the Moloch called vested interests, which is set up at the least remonstrance to frighten the timid. Let there be beer-shops and public-houses within limits, but it is infamous legislation which sanctions and encourages (as is to be verified to-day in slices of the East) every fifth or sixth tenement to be either one or the other. To contend, in respect of these hot-beds of vice, that the law of supply follows the law of demand, is an unblushing falsehood; they are distinctly forced upon the people by the very men who fatten upon the degradation, and who are often to be seen upon public platforms deploring the evils of which they are the creators. The sermons these moralists preach-to win votes, or to prove themselves qualified for public office, or to air their spurious philanthropy-are the bitterest of mockeries.

      Between the particular public-houses and pawnbrokers' shops which flanked Church Alley were dotted other notable places of business. To wit, Mr. Joseph Loveday's second-hand bookshop, to which we have been already introduced, a sweet-stuff shop, a cook-shop, a wardrobe-shop, and a printer's office, in which the master worked at case and press as his own journeyman. To the small boys and girls in the vicinity of Church Alley these shops were a great attraction, and they patronized them generously. The wardrobe-shop, which, like the bookshop, dealt only in second-hand goods, was as alluring to the grown-up folk of the female sex as it was to the youngsters, and longing were the eyes cast upon the faded silks and satins displayed in the dingy window. A shrewd, wise woman was Mrs. Peeper, the keeper thereof, a woman deeply and strangely versed in the desires and temptations of the lowly female heart. A woman of attainments, too, who might have won a name as a writer of fiction had her steps been led in that direction. In her shop-window would be displayed a much-worn and frayed satin dress, with a train so long as to set female mouths watering, and to this dress would be attached the legend, "From the wardrobe of her Royal Highness the P-ss of W-s." The legend set afloat would go the rounds, and girls and women would flock to gaze at the dress which had once adorned the figure of a royal princess. At another time Mrs. Peeper would arrange in her window several pairs of shoes, boots, and silk stockings, which she would announce as "Direct from B-cking-m P-l-ce;" at another time a flounced petticoat from a duchess; at other times hats, feathers, gloves, trimmings, capes, and various items of vanity, which she would cunningly bait with tempting legends to catch her fish. Mrs. Peeper might be accounted somewhat of a magician, for she filled the minds of many females with fancies which played their parts in dreams, changing charwomen into duchesses, young girls into princesses, and garrets into palaces. Mrs. Peeper seldom failed to land her fish, and the royal garments would be sold at singularly moderate prices, and, moreover, payment taken at so much per week.

      Then there was the printer, Mr. Edenborough. In his window were displayed specimens of cheap printing, cards, billheads, handbills, and what not, but there were clear spaces through which the children could peep at the master printer at his work. His stock in trade consisted of one frame, containing about a dozen cases of fancy type, which, with three pairs of cases of small pica, comprised his treasures in metal; there was also a rack of large wood letter for display bills; also an old Albion press. The youngsters stared their eyes out at him as he stood before the frame, composing-stick in hand, picking up the types with that swaying motion of his body which the spectators did not know was the sign of an inferior workman, for the skilful and expert compositor, the one who has generally earned his reputation as a "whip," keeps his body still as his hands travel over the case; they stared the harder when they saw him lock up the chase in which the card or handbill was inserted; and they stared the harder still when he worked ink-roller and press, and pulled off the impressions of the job in hand. He was rather proud of his audience, and made no attempt to disperse them; their admiration was a tribute, and it sweetened СКАЧАТЬ