Читать книгу The Black Police - A. J. Vogan - Страница 8

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“Sweet Puck,

You do their work; and they shall have good luck.”

UR fourth chapter left our hero, like Mahommed’s coffin, “twixt earth and heaven.” Luckily, however, for our story, if not for Claude, Providence dipped her umpire’s flag, after merely a momentary hesitation, to the first-named of the opposing attractive forces, with the result that marvellously little harm happened to the chief actor in the tragedy.

We mentioned the empty boxes, crates, and barrels lying in cumbersome confusion about the stony seclusion of the railway yard. It was the presence of certain of these husks from the city’s great dinner-table that saved Claude Angland’s life.

Some good fairy, early in the afternoon previous to the assault upon the viaduct, had whispered into the grimy little ears of one of the numerous shock-headed waifs of the neighbouring alleys to play at building houses with the smaller cases in the yard.

It was a glorious idea. And the diminutive owner of the aforesaid shock-headed and dirty oral appendages got the credit of it, and was unanimously elected master-mason by his juvenile compatriots of the gutter. How do we know how often this same good fairy raises us humans above our natural level, for her own good ends, whilst we are fondly priding ourselves upon our specially gifted brains, and natural superiority to our fellow-men?

But see! The ragged troupe frisks noisily to the yard. The corners of the sorrowful little mouths forget to turn downwards for a time, and the tear-stained, dirty cheeks wrinkle up with mirthful lines. Shouts of glee, and the usual noisy revelry of happy urchindom, echoes back from the grim, dark, smoky arches. The tiny workers gradually build up, under the unfelt gentle influence of some wonderful directive power, a pyramid of perilous construction, about ten or twelve feet in height.

Little did those baby builders, under the mystic architect, know for what purpose their labours were invoked. The work is completed, and the little tools of Providence, tired with their game, move and pass out of our story, leaving their structure to fulfil its appointed duty.

Now the would-be murderers come into view, and commit their crime, as described in Chapter IV., as far as their power will permit them; and decamp forthwith, so much the more soul-soiled than they were before.

Instead, however, of Claude’s body coming down upon the pavements with a fall of some thirty feet, as poor human ingenuity had intended, our young friend fell upon the yielding, unstable erection of cases, barrels, and the like, and was saved from serious injury. Save that he received a severe shock, and remained for a time unconscious from the combined effects of partial asphyxiation,—for the overcoat still remained round his face,—and a slight blow upon the back of the head, he was really, but for a few bruises and cuts, little the worse for his adventure.

Only a crash, followed by the brief tattoo of falling boxes, signalled the occurrence through the silent, still dark air. The night-watchman upon the premises, who alone heard the noise besides the two would-be assassins, awoke with a start, and had time to call down the curse of the Immortal Jove upon “them blank, blank larrikins” before he again fell into his well-earned and peaceful repose. By-and-by the cool, early morning harbour breezes arrive and aid Nature to bring Claude back to the world and consciousness. Gradually, even before he is quite himself again, his arms, working on their own account, have freed themselves from the loosely-tied line that has hitherto bound them together.

He moves his head at last. The muffling overcoat falls partly off, and his strong lungs eagerly suck in their full supply of life-giving oxygen in a series of sob-like gasps. Consciousness dawns upon him, and he realizes his position and feels his bruises. It is some time, however, before he can move his limbs, he is so stiff; but he does at last, and sits up on the edge of a broken crate.

All is silent. It is still dark, and he cannot at first make out where he is. One thing is certain, he must wait for more light ere he can make a move comfortably. Presently, with the instinct of a smoker, he feels for his pipe and matches, and solaces his lonely reflections by puffing peace-bringing, but unseen, clouds of fragrant smoke from his lips, and sits waiting for daylight to appear. A dead stillness is all around, broken only by the sound of a far-off steamboat’s droning whistle from time to time, the rumble of a distant vehicle, or the occasional silver chiming hour-bells from some clock-tower close at hand. Looking upward from where he sits, Claude can see the dark mass of the viaduct standing out against the sky; and, not knowing of the children’s pyramid of boxes, for it had utterly collapsed after performing its appointed duty, wonders with a shudder how he could possibly have escaped as he has done. Why should these men have attempted to destroy him? His uncle’s warning, which he now remembers in conjunction with his late experience, seems to show that some mystery attaches to the work he has to do, and that the late explorer had reason in telling him to travel incognito. He thinks of how nearly, through his own carelessness, he might have been now a shattered corpse; he pictures his mother’s grief, and half-rising utters an exclamation of impatience against himself out loud. As he does so, he hears a slight noise near him, and becomes aware that he is not alone amongst the boxes, that, like the ruined sarcophagi of some Babylonian graveyard, are just visible piled around him. The soft regular sound of snoring reaches his ears, and comes from a corner close by. Claude listens for a few minutes, and tries to guess what kind of animal is the cause of those tender nasal notes. He quickly determines that the midnight music does not proceed from the vibrating mucous membrane of a man, nor is it a drunken snore. It is either that of a woman or a child. But who is it sleeping out here to-night without roof-cover, in this wealthy city? And why does she or it do so?

A mixed feeling of curiosity and compassion makes him determined to solve the mystery: so, lighting a match, he painfully scrambles towards the sleeper, making as little noise as possible. His search is soon rewarded by finding a little ragged body curled up upon some paper-packing in a corner. It is that of a small-limbed boy-child of about eight years, clothed in a torn, dirty linen shirt and ragged trousers,—the latter innocent even of the traditional single brace of street-arabism. The little sleeper is resting face downwards, on his left side, and a thin little bare arm is hugging the dark matted coat of a well-fed puppy, which nestles close to the child’s bosom. Claude gets but a brief sight of all this before another match is needed, the noise of striking which causes both the boy and dog to awake,—the former putting up his arm, as if instinctively to ward off a blow, even before he quite opens his eyes.

“Well, youngster, what are you doing here?” asks Claude, oblivious of the fact that the same question might with equal right have been put to himself. “Don’t be afraid, I sha’n’t hurt you.”

“I hain’t a’ doin’ o’ nothin’, mister,” whimpers the child, in a hoarse dry tone. “Them Star boys collared me ticket, an I’ll get (sob), I’ll get dollied if fayther cotched me back at ’ome without a thick ’un fur ’im.”

“Well, jump up, youngster, and show me the way out of this place, and I’ll get you another ticket,” Claude says kindly, not knowing in the least what a “ticket” may be, or for the matter of that “Star boys” either. “I’ve lost my way here, and,” giving the boy a coin, which that diminutive creature immediately put in his mouth, as the only safe pocket available, “and I hope you’ll be able to sleep at home to-morrow night.”

“Oh, I’ll show er the way, mister,”—here the “arab” made a noise like ough, much after the style of a Red Indian’s expression of surprise. “Guess yer’d better not let ald Sandie cotch yer lightin’ matchers ’ere,” he continued in the same hoarse whisper, looking slyly at Claude out of the corners of his eyes, as our hero strikes another light.

Then taking the aforementioned shaggy-coated puppy carefully up, and placing it in straddle-legged wonder upon his poor thin pointed shoulder, the little guide bobs away into the gloom, his bare feet moving quietly over the boxes, and his dirty shirt forming a sort of sartorial “pillar of fire” leading the way out of the wilderness of the yard. Painfully and slowly Claude scrambles after the diminutive ghostly form in front of him, and at last finds himself once more in Liverpool Street. The boy stands there under a gas lamp, his pup in his arms, but edges off into the road, as if in suspicion of Claude, as the young man hobbles forward. “Now, youngster, could you get me a cab, d’you think?”

“If yer’ll mind er pup,” the hoarse-voiced baby skeleton replies, after hesitation for a minute, and then, like a spirit, he silently and suddenly disappears. Claude is glad to sit down on the curb, and has only waited a few moments when the well-known regular pulsation of an approaching policeman’s walk is heard upon the viaduct. Presently the form of a splendidly-built sub-inspector of city police, in forage-cap and cloak, and holding a riding-whip in his hand, appears, and comes to a halt where Claude is seated.

“What’s up, mate?” asks a powerful but musical bass voice.

Claude has had time to think what answer he will make in case of being questioned, and has decided that his would-be murderers had better go free for the time being, than let a police inquiry retard his search for his uncle’s body; so, turning his head a bit, he lets loose the first lie he has used since a boy at school: “I’m waiting for a cab; have sent a boy for it. I got knocked down by a cab or something an hour or two ago, maybe more, and have been sitting down in the yard there till just now.”

“You don’t know who ran you down?”

“Haven’t the faintest notion. I’m not much hurt, and it was my own fault.”

“Ah! it was you then lighting matches just now in there?”

“It was I. I found a boy sleeping in the yard, and have sent him for a cab. Will he have far to go?”

“To the Town Hall, sir. Were there many boys camped in the yard?”

“Only saw one,—said he had been robbed by ‘Star boys,’ whatever they may be, and was afraid to go home. By-the-bye, Inspector, if you’re not in a hurry, may I ask you something about these youngsters one sees about the streets here? Haven’t had an opportunity before. Am a stranger in Sydney. I think you have more ‘street arabs’ here, as we used to call them in England, than ever I remember seeing in London, or any of our large towns at home.”

“Well, sir, fact is, I can’t spare much time now, but you can come round with me some night if you like. I’m a Londoner, and can tell you that you’ll see all the old familiar scenes in Sydney of houseless beggars, and starving children driven out into the streets by drunken parents, and suchlike, camping around where they can find the softest pavements. But you’ve hit it when you notice the number of ‘larrikins,’ we call them. We’ve got a larger percentage of youthful criminals amongst our bad classes than at home; and it’s a growing percentage, more’s the pity.”

“Well,” observes Claude, “I’ve always been interested in these subjects; and I guessed what you’ve just confirmed, namely, that parental supervision is almost a dead-letter here, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” answered the Inspector, stroking his splendid flaxen beard, and glancing up and down the road, that was now lightening up with approaching sunrise. “Yes; it’s a fact youthful crime is increasing here, faster than it used to do in past years. It is my opinion that the Government will have to look after the children altogether before long, just as it schools them now. The parents wouldn’t or couldn’t see to the schooling business, and the State had to step in and do it. The Government will have to look after the young people altogether pretty soon, if we are not to have a nation of criminals growing up around us.”

“Well, Inspector, from a professional point of view, you don’t object to a decent sprinkling of criminals amongst the population, I suppose?” laughed Claude; but he continued gravely, “I’m very glad to have met you, and sincerely hope to have a chat with you again.”

The subject Angland has broached is a favourite one of the sub-inspector’s, moreover, he is anxious to know who Claude is. So he determines to wait a few minutes longer.

“Thank you, sir,” he goes on, acknowledging Claude’s compliment. “One word more: the parents here, if they can spare threepence a week for schooling their children, pack them off there to get them out of the way, and Sunday Schools are in favour chiefly as a means of getting a quiet afternoon. The kids are bundled off to school; whether they go there or not is another thing.”

“Now that boy I found amongst the barrels, how does he get a living? Does he go to school?”

“Oh, he’s a newspaper boy, likely enough,” replies the police-officer. “He told you about his ticket, didn’t he? The boys get a dozen papers for 9d., and on handing over that sum to the publisher they receive a ticket, which, when presented at another part of the paper office, brings them the required number of ‘Evening Newses,’ or ‘Stars,’ as the case may be.”

“These boys? Well, they’re a class really worth study, sir. That is, if you’re fond of such things. They’re a wild, untamable herd of free-lances, that’s what they are.”

“I suppose there’s a large army of them?”

“Yes. And I suppose nearly half of them are on their own hook, and many of them combine the professions of loafer, thief, and larrikin with their legitimate calling. They’re bright lads,—have to be,—with any amount of courage, and hard as nails. They’re worth protecting; and they should be, by the newspaper proprietors or the Government. But here’s your cab, sir, I think. Any time you like, you’ll find me at the ‘Central,’ or my whereabouts if I’m away. My name? Sub-Inspector Chime, at your service, sir. Good-night.”

The cab rattles up. Claude bids adieu to his small guide, and leaves him with more silver in his mouth than it has ever held before. Then our hero gets back to his hotel, and finds himself so far recovered next day as to be able to set forth for a stroll in the evening. It is not long before the genus Newsboy forces itself upon his notice, and he sets to work to study them carefully. Who that has done so has not been amply repaid? A new class established in the community by the necessities of an advancing civilization,—a class composed, for the most part, of neglected youth, whose useful services to the needs of the public are recompensed by starvation wages and ill-usage. Of course there are many bad ones amongst these newsboys,—these poor, little, ragged, dirty-faced, barefooted arabs of our colonial streets,—but on the whole they are wonderfully honest, hard-working little souls. Amongst the best of them are the paid boys in the employ of some one who has purchased the sole right of street sale of certain thoroughfares or parts of thoroughfares.

Let the unattached newspaper boy, who, finding trade slack amongst the idlers at his own particular corner, come poaching upon a preserve. In such a case, the reception of a yellow ant which has fallen upon a black ant camp, or the welcome of a stranger dog in a country town by the local canines of the place, is tepid, compared with the fever heat of combined patriotism shown by the “regular boys” in driving off the intruder. Throwing papers and petty jealousy to the winds, the unwary invader is soon hurried over the frontier.

Near the book-stall at the corner of King Street Claude finds six or seven very small newsboys. Amongst them is a little, bare-legged, fairy-like girl-child in a dirty red frock, also engaged in disposing of mental food from one of the great “Fourth-Estate” mills of the city.

The girl dodges in and out amongst the crowd that is waiting for the trams, selling her papers, quite heedless of the boys’ angry voices, which follow her with abuse. But as Claude comes upon the scene one youthful protectionist has caught the diminutive object of his wrath, and gives her several blows in the face with his open hand. No one interferes. A newsgirl getting a beating for cutting into the trade of the “regular” boys is to be seen any night in Sydney, and consequently is not worth interfering about. In this case, however, the boy goes off howling instead of the girl, the result of a cut from Claude’s cane. Angland is immediately surrounded by a contingent of youthful “regulars,” and a little hubbub of flat-toned voices rains upon him—

“What er you a-hittin of ’im fur?”

“The gent’s mad cos ’is gurl hain’t met ’im!”

“Yah, you wid the stick; ’it a man yur hown size!”

Claude of course does not heed the abuse, but firmly impresses upon the erring lad he had chastened that if he touches the girl again he will thrash him soundly.

“Hain’t ’e got er right ter ’it ’er?” shrieks a catfish-mouthed manikin, resting his head against an adjacent verandah-post, as street-curs sometimes do when they howl. “Hain’t ’e got er right ter ’it ’er? She’s ’is sister.”

This evidence in favour of the accused is hailed with a cackling chorus of approval by the remainder of the boys, amidst which Claude takes the girl aside to question her a bit.

She informs him, in better English than the boys employ, that she must sell two dozen “Stars” and “Nooses” before she can go home.

“How long will that take you to do?”

“Ten o’clock; p’r’aps a bit later; p’r’aps a bit hearlier.”

“Have you any parents?”

“Dunno, mister. Mother hired me out er to Missus Bowen a year ago. I live at Woolloomooloo Bay. Buy a ‘Noose,’ sir?”

“And if you don’t sell all your papers, what then?”

“Guess I’d get a lickin’, or p’r’aps have ter sleep in er yard.”

“Was that your brother hit you?”

“Dunno, sir. He’s got ter look after me. That’s all I know. Buy a ‘Star,’ sir? Mother Bowen has three gurls as sells papers. ‘Star,’ sir? ’ere you hare. Jack, he’s got ter look arter two gurls, and Johnnie, that’s he, he looks arter another down the Royal Arcade.”

“How old are you?”

“’Bout ten, sir.”

“Do you go to school? Can you read?”

“No, sir. I hain’t swell enough. I used ter, when huncle sended me, but the missus at the school, she said, ‘Yer a dirty little gal, yer are,’ that what she said. ‘Yer a dirty little gal, and yer must get a tidy gownd afore yer come agin.’ I hain’t been since, sir. Buy a ‘Noose’?”

“Of course I will,” and Claude buys all her papers, straightway returning them to her. Then he walks down Elizabeth Street, and seeing two gruesome juveniles with large mouths and shock heads, who are howling out “Even’ Noose! Even’ Noose!” he gets them to come into a tea-shop and have a feed.

Seated at the clean, white-topped table, Claude is glad to recognize one of the boys as his little friend in need of the night before. The motherly dark-eyed mistress of the tea-shop, in reply to a question put to her, smiles kindly on the trio, and wagging her head slightly, with the air of knowing more than she cares to tell, says, “They know me well enough. Don’t you, boys?”

“Er yes, missus,” from both.

“Do they come here for their meals, then?” asks Claude with surprise.

“They’re always coming in, sir, and saying, ‘Missus, are yer got er stale bun?’ and sometimes they buy a cup of cocoa on a cold night.”

“Is that all they get to eat, d’you think?”

To the casual observer, the boys look as if food was a rarity rather than a regularly recurring feature in the day’s landscape.

“Well, sir, I sees a lot of them, and I don’t think they get more than breakfast at ’ome and a bun, or a stale roll during the afternoon, which they call supper, poor things. They lie long abed of a morning, I believe, and have their breakfast at half-past nine or ten,—they’re up so late, you know.”

The dark-eyed ministering female trots off, and Claude watches the dirty smudged faces of his little guests, as the rolls and sweet tea disappear. They eat but little, however, and that very slowly.

Of the two boys only one, Claude’s friend, possesses a hat, or rather the remnants of one. The happy possessor of this ghastly semblance of a chapeau has carefully removed it on coming into the shop; and our hero notes his well-formed head, and falls to musing over the probable future of the owner. Neither of the little craniums before him is that of a weak or poor intellect, and the faces would be beautiful if the shadows of sorrow, hunger, and neglect were but removed. The dirty, unkempt, elfin locks are growing vigorously around a brain clearly worth cultivating,—an active brain that will expend a vast amount of energy in the world, for weal or for woe, as its budding inclinations are directed. The boys answer Claude’s questions promptly, and to the point. They are little business-men with no time to waste. One tells how he sells three dozen papers a day “fur me bruther;” the other is working on his own account.

Says the hatless youth: “I sells ‘Nooses,’ sir, an’ I ’ave ter give one er ter me mother, and one er ter me sister.” He continues: “I sells more ‘Sunday Times’ ner ‘Nooses.’ I gets a dozen ‘Times’ fur a thick ’um and a narf, and I sells em fur three shillin’.”

“And if you don’t sell your papers?”

“I’ll get a hidin’, that’s all.”

“Does your father whack you?”

“No, mother does the lickin’.”

“Does your father do any work?”

“Mostly no, mister. He ain’t much out of the ’ouse. He’s a wool-packer, an’ he’s mostly out of work.”

“How old are you and your friend there?”

“I’m ten, Don’s ’bout nine.”

It is the same old story which one can get repeated from hundreds of children in the busy Sydney streets. Another phase of the utter neglect to which the parents of the poorer classes consign their children, to the danger and trouble of the State. Grim old London cannot show, in proportion, so many unhappy human fledgelings slaving and starving through the dusty streets,—driven out to work for their parents’ gin money, or hired out to slave-drivers with the same end in view.

Claude listens with a tear of sympathy in his eyes as the boy aged ten tells how he has “runned hisself two year,” and mostly “sleeps out er nights” by the Circular Quay. And how he would like to go to school, but has not a coat to go in, nor a threepence a week to spare to invest in education. Then the children get fidgety, and the dark-eyed, kind-hearted shop-woman, with true feminine intuitiveness, whispers to Claude that they “want to join their mates.” And so off they go, each gravely saying, “Thank ye, sir,” and each pocketing his shilling in his capacious mouth, but neither showing any capability of pleasure nor of gratification. Claude wishes them “good-night,” and finishes up the evening with a visit to the Circular Quay at twelve o’clock, and there finds a solitary policeman standing under one of the wonderful electric lights, who shows him where to look for the newsboys sleeping out.

“But don’t you go a-questioning of ’em, hif you don’t want to get mobbed by them blessed larrikins,” was the constable’s last good-night.

Not much hunting is required. Down amongst the cases, the barrels, the timber, and the great iron water-pipes, Claude counts over ninety boys camping out. He wisely follows the policeman’s advice, however, and does not disturb their slumbers, and goes home more puzzled with Sydney than ever.