Read Ebook: Sixpenny Pieces by Lyons A Neil Albert Neil

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Ebook has 1246 lines and 61145 words, and 25 pages

I was a beautiful evening in the month of May.

The stars were shining.

The beautiful moon looked beautifully forth from her beautiful throne.

A nightingale greeted her with a beautiful sonnet. England--our England--bore upon her bosom the beautiful perfume of woodruff and the wild clover. In Bovingdon Street, London, E., a lover was kicking his sweetheart.

That was the beginning of this book. I happened to be standing at Mr. Wilson's coffee stall. And I heard the screaming. And I saw some shadows moving briskly, like the funny silhouettes on the blind at a pantomime. And some of us laughed and some of us whined and one of us blew a whistle. And the constabulary arrived, and with their coming the tumult died. And they brought the girl to the light of the stall, and her face was bruised and swollen and she lost her voice. But before doing so she was able to assure us that "'E done it in drink." "'E" was removed under escort.

They did not take her to a hospital, because there was a round little man at the stall who prevented them from doing so. "Lemme alone," the lady had remarked, upon regaining speech. "Don't you worry me. I'm all right, I am. I got my doctor 'ere: this genelman in the top 'at. Ain't that right, sir? You are my doctor, ain't you?"

"That is so," said the round little man, "I'm her doctor. Shift your dam carcases and give the woman some air."

"She can't stop 'ere you know, Dr. Brink," expostulated a constable.

"I'll take her home," said the round man.

"Be a lot better in the 'orspital," muttered the constable.

It was your servant who had the honour to be addressed as Sonny, and he hastened to do the little round man's bidding. When we had got the lady into a perpendicular attitude, the doctor put his arm about her, and, anticipating the little man's commands, your servant did the same. And so we led her from the stall, all the cut-throats of Bovingdon Street following reverently behind us. Happily our march was not a long one, for the patient lived in Smith Street; and Smith Street, as everybody knows, is the second turning past the African Chief beer-house in Bovingdon Street. Short as the journey was, however, I could have wished it to be shorter: for the cut-throats pressed us close, breathing thickly about our ears; and the woman weighed heavy, having no manner of use for her legs and being stupid in the head. She only spoke once during the walk, and that was to say, in a drowsy sort of monotone: "'E done it--in drink."

We came at last to 13, Smith Street, and the fact that eighteen eager faces were already distributed among the six small windows of that dwelling-house removed my latent fears that our arrival would disturb "the neighbours." The owners of these faces were entirely mute, save for one, an elderly woman, who, in a loud wail, made certain representations to Providence in regard to one 'Erry Barber, whom I understood to be the lusty gallant primarily responsible for this adventure. Having repeated these commands a great number of times, and having exercised undoubted talent in describing 'Erry and 'Erry's parentage, the old woman proceeded to chronicle her views respecting a vast number of alien subjects. At last this lady had the great misfortune to "catch her breath," at which the doctor cut in.

"Stop that beastly noise!" he shouted, "and shut the window, and put on a respectable garment, and come downstairs and let us in."

The lady looked benignly down upon us.

At that moment the door was opened by some other dweller in the house. And the doctor and his patient entered in. Not knowing the neighbourhood and not liking it, and being also of a curious nature, I awaited the doctor's return. I had not long to wait. He came out very soon, and we walked away together into clearer air. And the doctor spoke.

"It is a deuced queer thing," he said, "that a man can't stop for five minutes at a dam coffee stall without some fool or other finding work for him. I'll never go to that stall again. I'll be damned if I will. I ought to have got home half an hour ago."

"Don't talk foolishness, young man," replied the round little doctor. "You are talking dam nonsense. Infirmary--pooh! With a baby almost due, and with all those bruises! They would have made a complete job of it there. They would have kept her there for the lying-in and all--a six weeks' job at least."

"And would that matter?"

"Matter? Of course it would. That man will be out in a week, even if our local humorist doesn't let him off with a fine. What's to become of that poor girl's home, do you suppose, while she's in and he's out?"

"Would he touch it?"

"Do you live in this neighbourhood, sir?" The doctor wore a visage as of painful wonder.

I explained that I didn't.

The doctor's wonder grew. "What under heaven are you doing in the purlieus of Mile End Road at two in the morning, then?" he demanded.

"Never mind the 'ases,'" interpolated the doctor. "My name is Brink. I like your politics."

"I have no politics," I explained. "But ... I hate my job."

"I do."

"Then come inside, and have some. And have a look at James. James will do you good. James is unique. And I can give you a bed, and I can tell you stories, and show you some fun, too--sideways sort of fun--at sixpence a time."

"Sixpenny pieces," I suggested, as his key turned in the lock.

I have confused impressions of that first visit to the house of Dr. Brink. It was so late when we entered, you see, and all within the house was strange and unexpected, and the duck and Burgundy were very peace-provoking.

One knows that sort of house, I say, and likewise the gentle, murmuring press of sufferers which lays siege to it. But the spot-cash practitioners of Mile End Road are rather strange and foreign to us. We do not go into their little, weird consulting-hatches nor sweat amid the tumult of their vulgar patrons. We can imagine what the thing is like: and there are some of us perhaps who imagine truthfully. I didn't.

My imagination did not run to Japanese colour prints and pastel studies, and neatly framed examples of the art of Mr. Nicholson. And yet these things were hung upon the white distempered walls of Dr. Brink's infirmary. I figured the tumult as gazing speechlessly upon these curious East End substitutes for Landseer. "What do they think of them?" I asked the doctor.

"They are much amused," said he. We were standing before a pastel when he spoke--a thing of heavy shadows with purple deeps, wherefrom there stood forth dimly the figures of a crippled man and an old sick woman, and the face of a child with brazen eyes. "Out Patients" was the title of this drawing, and it preached of a divine torture. "They are much amused," said the doctor.

But this was in the morning. That night we did not look at pictures, nor at patients. We sat above and supped off duck and Burgundy. I saw confusedly--it was a pleasant confusion--that there were many good pictures in the house, and that books were everywhere--everywhere. And the bottle was a full one. And we spoke of olives and the Norfolk women.

Then he took me to a little brown room with more books in it, and a bedstead which was of oak and carven.

"Good-night," said the doctor. "You shall see old James to-morrow. You will like old James. Good-night."

When morning came, I had the pleasure of viewing Bovingdon Street in the sunshine.

It was a queer sort of sunshine, to be sure--weak and uncertain and rather dirty: a sort of actinic heel-taps. But I remember thinking that any less shabby form of sunshine would have carried with it an air of disrespect, as though it had come forth to mock at the gloom and ugliness of the thing beneath it. A gloomier, sillier, dirtier street than Bovingdon Street I do not wish to see. But I have seen such all the same. Indeed, I have looked upon some filth and squalor beside which Bovingdon Street is as the Mall compared to Worship Street. So much I must admit in common fairness.

There was at least no actual squalor in the street on which I looked: only dirt and gloom and ugliness. The houses which faced me were comparatively new, and they were small and neat, and of a square and thick-set build. But there happened to be one hundred and sixty of them, each exactly like its neighbour, and having each before its doorway a small pale or enclosure containing--cinders and rags and pieces of paper and battered cans and smudgy babies and hungry cats. And there was grime on all the windows, and in front of them a very vulgar man was selling bloaters, loudly. Also, in all that soot-brown avenue there was one white thing: a hawthorn tree in bloom, which shuddered gently in the fog-shine like a discontented spectre. And those ridiculous fat houses stood there stoutly, shoulder to shoulder, one hundred and sixty of them, eyeing her with dolour. And a voice beneath my window made speech, saying loudly: "You give me my daughter's combings back, ye thievin' slut." So I left the window and lighted a pipe and crawled back into bed.

And then, as the story writers say, a strange thing happened. There came a sudden tap upon my bedroom door, and without further warning there entered in a--a lady. She was rather a young lady, to be sure, some fifteen years of age, perhaps. And she was wearing a petticoat--a striped petticoat--and her hair was dressed into innumerable pigtails, and her top was covered by--by a--a--don't they call it a camisole? And she bade me "Good-morning," very calmly.

"G--G--Good-morning!" I responded. I hoped to heaven that I was not blushing.

"Don't trouble to scream," said the lady, in an off-hand manner. "It is all right: I have come for my stockings."

The voice of the inmate interrupted me. "It's quite all right, really it is. I'm not accusing you of theft or anything else. I only want to get my stockings from this cupboard. Mrs. Gomm, our 'char,' she mixes things up so. And I want a brown pair, because this is my day for being respectable with my aunt at Ealing, and you wear your brown dress and a neat toque for that sort of thing; and where the devil that woman has--oh, here we are. Want darning, of course. Damn!"

Swearing seemed to be a widespread habit in this unusual household. I coughed--the sort of cough you use when children are present and your deaf Uncle David is reviving his recollections of India in the sixties.

"Pardon me," I cried, "but who is Fatty?"

"I know all that," I assured her.

"Oh, you do know all about it, then," quoth she; "I wasn't sure, you know. Most of the strange people that I find in my bedroom if I happen to look in for anything don't know anything at all about us. Fatty finds them--gathers them up, you know--and brings them home and feeds them and converts them to Socialism and puts them to bed, and when they wake up in the morning they have to have it all explained to them. Fatty is Dr. Brink, you know. One always calls him Fatty, because his proper names are Theobald Henry de la Rue, and you simply haven't time in the mumps season. You're a reformer, I suppose? What do you reform?"

"I adore them," said your servant.

"Me," cried a voice from behind the door--"me? Oh ... I am James."

"What do you put in all those pockets?" I inquired, as she tripped in with the bacon.

"That is quite so," I responded. "The dear, dumb creatures! I--I idolise them."

"Because," I answered, "because they--they are so dumb and--and so white."

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