Читать книгу A Little World - Fenn George Manville - Страница 9

The room door closed upon Mrs Ruggles’ rigid figure, her loud step, indicative of the woman’s firmness, was heard upon the stairs, 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 little bare 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 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 sideways 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, while Tim drew a long breath, and clutched the big iron by his side, though without the slightest intention of using it for offence or defence.

Mrs Ruggles again spoke —

“Don’t let me come back again, that’s all,” she exclaimed; and 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 out, and peer up and down the street, when, apparently satisfied, he closed the door once more, his face wearing an aspect of full belief as he muttered, “A runaway ring.”

Had Tim Ruggles made his descent 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 now, no one being in sight, he hurried up-stairs again, 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 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 again, caressing the child with all a woman’s tenderness. “But come, I say, you must cheer up, for see what I’ve been making for you. But there, don’t cry, my darling;” and he pressed his cool, soft, womanly hand upon weal and burning sore. “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 tone 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.

“I 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. By slow degrees the sobs ceased, and Tim seemed more puzzled than ever, when the child raised her head, and 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.” And 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 rising at intervals to make Tim Ruggles flinch.

Tim’s work was again in hand, but progressing very, very slowly as he then sat musing, and wondering whose child the little one was; also whether she would be fetched away, a proceeding which he dreaded, in spite of the pain it gave him to see her suffer. “I’ve no spirit to stop it,” he muttered, “though it nips me horribly. I suppose it’s from stitching so much that I ain’t 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;” and he set the example of industry by snatching up the trousers in course of making, and sewing more fiercely than ever.