“Wot’s yer name, Blue Eyes?” had been his first question.
A startled look in the blue eyes thus apostrophised, and a little smile came with the reply.
“Kate. Kate O’Boyne. Mother calls me Kitty.”
“That’s so? Reely now! Good day, Miss O’Boyne!”
And with this elaborate salutation, accompanied by an alarming leap into the air, terminating in a “double cut and shuffle,” the irrepressible Batsby had disappeared, leaving “Miss O’Boyne” gazing after him, half terrified, half pleased, with the house-flannel steaming in her hands, and her work, for just half a minute, forgotten. But the very next morning, as she was patiently rubbing out an obstinate tobacco stain on the third marble step from the top of the flight, a voice, hoarsely calling up from below, made her start and look round.
“Ullo! Wot cheer, Kittums!”
Kittums, thus suddenly named, smiled, and her blue eyes shone timidly through her untidy cloud of hair.
“‘Ullo!” she said; “I can’t leave the pail; I’m washing down as I come.”
“So I beholds!” responded Jim, who had occasionally attended the theatre, and at times was fond of using the grandiloquent language of the penny novelettes, — then, scampering up the steps three at a time, he squatted down beside her. “Lor’!
Ain’t the water ‘ot! Bully! I say, Kittums, ‘ow old are yer?”
“Ten.”
“I’m goin’ on fifteen!”
“My!” said Kittums. “You are quite old!”
“Quite!” said Jim complacently. “Think of buying the tobacconist’s round the corner next year, and settin’ up for myself!”
Kittums’ eyes opened very wide. What a wonderful hero was ‘Owlin’ Jim, she thought, and how friendly and kind it was of such a wealthy grownup person to call her “Kittums!”
“I say!” pursued Jim presently, “Why do you do this ’ere?”
“Wot ’ere?”
“This ’ere washin’ down of Messrs. Moses and Aaron’s bloomin’ steps?”
“I gits tuppence.”
“Gits tuppence, does yer? Every mornin’ ‘cept Sundays?”
“Yis.”
“Makes a bob a wek. ‘Ow does yer spend it?”
“I eats it,” admitted Kittums, bashfully “Eats it? In toffy, or butter-scotch?”
“No,” said Kittums, getting up from her knees for a moment, and straightening down her thin, childish figure with her little wet, swollen hands. “Round at coffee-stall I gits a pennuth of bread and a pennuth of coffee. Sometimes I takes a pennuth of cocoa ‘stead of coffee; sometimes tea. I goes to school on that.”
“I see!” said Jim thoughtfully. “Yer goes to school on that. Precious lot yer larns at school, I reckon?”
“Not much,” confessed Kittums. “It’s mighty queer there. We be all alike. We does everythink at the same moment — book-readin’, ‘ritin’, ‘rith-metic and jography. Teacher says:— ‘Now jography class,’ and we does jography. Then teacher says: ‘Now ‘rithmetic,’ and we does sums. They all goes wrong with me.”
“Don’t talk to me about it!” said Jim, scornfully. “I’ve been through the mill. Lor’ love yer! I larn more in one day’s news vendin’ than all the schools put together could ever teach me!”
“Does yer now?” said Kittums admiringly. “That’s reel s’prising, ain’t it? ‘Ow does yer do it?”
“‘Ow does I do it?” and Jim’s mouth expanded into a broad grin; “Yer grammar wants mendin’, Kittums!— ‘scuse me for mentionin’ it, but it’s the truth. I spect it’s one o’ the many things the Government don’t teach yer, bein’ ser ungrammatical itself in many of its Parliamentary observashuns. Which you was a askin’, Kittums, ‘Ow does I do my larnin’? Out of the papers I sells! Hall the skandyls, par hexample (that’s French — never mind understand’ it), and hall the nice perlite things the newspaper people sez of each other’s opinions, when they doesn’t agree, or asn’t got the chinks to make it worth agreein’. I tell yer, there’s informashun, Kittums! — not to be got out of disrespectable parsons, an’ wot they calls kertailed school-books! Knowledge o’ life, Kittums! — knowledge o’ life! That’s wot’s goin’ to make or break me!”
Kittums looked, as she felt, utterly bewildered. She was quite unable to understand the profound conversation of one who was “quite old” like the experienced Batsby. So, having nothing to say, she proceeded with her work, and began steadily to pursue her cleaning process, moving herself, pail and washing implements, gradually down the marble stairs, one step at a time, while Jim, sliding from point to point on a soft part of himself, with equal steadiness, accompanied her.
“Ivir seen Moses and Aaron, the owners of these ’ere steps?” he presently enquired.
Kittums shook her head in the negative.
“One on ’em rides a bike,” pursued Jim; “Ikey Bikey, I calls him. Wish ‘ee’d tumble horf and ‘urt his proboscis, I do! You don’t know what a ‘proboscis’ is? Ah! You ain’t been at school long enough! Government ‘ull teach yer that by and by! The proboscis of Mr. Moses is a long ‘un and a red ‘un. T’other old chap reg’ler keeps me in tobaccer!”
“Do ‘ee?” and Kittums forgot all the rules of grammar again in the extremity of her surprise. “Ain’t that kind of ’im?”
“Kind? Whew!” and Jim’s whistle was like the shriek of an engine getting up steam. “’E wouldn’t do it if ’e knew it, you bet! It’s his wilful waste, Kittums, that does me in smoke. ‘Wilful waste makes woeful want!’ I wrote that out in my copy-book a hundred times, till I knew how to make the double-yous. Yer see, he smokes what is called ‘Chice Havans’ and ‘Turkwish Cigarettes,’ just to show he kin do it if he likes. Out of two ‘Turkwish’ I makes one ‘special.’ And out erf two ‘Chice’ ends, I rolls one fust-rate cigar. Same brand as used by His Majesty! Give ‘ee my word!” —
Jim nearly fell off the steps, in the extremity of his bliss at this condition of things. The idea that he, Jim Batsby, smoked the same brand of cigars as those smoked by King Edward the Seventh, seemed to affect him with a kind of convulsion, but whether of mirth or pride, it was impossible to tell. As for Kittums, she was stupefied with amazement. ‘Owlin’ Jim appeared to her in the light he had thus thrown upon his social surroundings, almost as important a personage as the King himself.
“Tell yer wot!” said Jim presently, “We’ll have a spree together. You meet me here Saturday arternoon, an’ I’ll take yer to a ‘All to see a Shiny-me-toe.”
Kittums, with a gasp, tried to realise what a Shiny-me-toe might be, unaware that the name was ‘Owlin’ Jim’s abbreviation for a cinematograph, but after a minute’s struggle with the problem, she put away the temptation of going to make acquaintance with this mysterious something, and said with a little tremor in her voice —
“I can’t do that, thank you kindly all the same! On Saturdays I cleans up for mother and puts her tidy. She’s a cripple.”
At this simple statement, Jim became suddenly very quiet. He, too, had known trouble. His mother and father were both dead, but he had until this last year possessed a sister who supplied the place of both parents, and had always been kind and cheery with him, and she — oh, well! — she had been knocked down by a bicycle and run over by a motor-car — quite a “common” incident, — these things are always happening to “common” people, — and being terribly mutilated, she had succumbed to her injuries an hour after her admission to the hospital. Her loss didn’t matter to anyone — but Jim. He, left all alone since her death, had grown more cynical in some things, but more sympathetic in others, and the fact that the mother of Kittums was a cripple, made Kittums herself more interesting in his eyes. After a respectful pause, he said, with considerable fervour —
“All right! Have it yer own way! I guess y’are on the square, Kittums! I’ll come and see yer mother some day. We’ll have a chat next week about it. We’ll manage the Shiny-me-toe somehow. At present, fare-thee-well!” And he sprang down the steps li
ghtly with an approved stage gesture, such as he had often seen and admired. “I leaves thee, though I loves thee! Ta-ta!”
And in another moment he was heard ‘owlin’ at the utmost height of his voice: —
“Mornin’ Speshull! Harfrican Difficulty! ‘Orrid Skandyl! ‘Troshus Revelashuns! Pussnal Details! ‘Igh Life! ‘Stocratic Divoss!”
Kittums looked after him with a smile and listened to his stentorian shouting, till it died away under the roar of the City traffic; then she resumed her work and finished it almost gaily, feeling that she was not quite so lonely in her little hard-working life as before, having found this friend.
The two often met and talked together after that, and each learned by degrees the whole history of the other. Jim began to save up pennies for Kittums, and at the end of a week he gave her twelve of these useful coins all in one heap.
“Got ’em by opening cab doors for fat old ladies,” he explained briefly.
“But I mustn’t take ’em,” said Kittums; “Dear Jim!” at which term of affection Jim’s heart swelled exultantly; “You know I mustn’t take all these from you!”
“You must,” answered Jim with a lofty air; “You’re goin’ to be my wife when you’ve growed up, so you can just begin livin’ a bit on me now. I shan’t feel it!”
“Going to be your wife!” cried Kittums. “Oh, my!”
She quite lost her breath at the idea, — then she began to laugh — and her blue eyes danced as they had never danced before; “You funny boy!” she said, with a delicious little touch of baby coquetry - and condescension, a touch which, essentially feminine, had the extraordinary effect of causing the redoubtable Jim Batsby to blush and look sheepish, the while he scraped one foot nervously against the other.
“Don’t go for to make game of me, Kittums,” he expostulated, “You’re only a kiddie now, but in six or seven years you’ll be a woman growed, — an’ — onlikelier things might happen than you an’ me gittin’ married. Eh, now?”
Kittums looked quite merry. As a matter of fact, she began to feel very young indeed.
“I shouldn’t mind it,” she admitted, with a little chuckle; “’Twould be grand, bein’ Missis Batsby.”
And she laughed again, and Jim laughed with her, rubbing his hands together and scraping his feet in a fresh paroxysm of nervous agitation.
“Then you’ll take the pennies?” he pleaded; “Just as a beginning?”
“All right,” said Kittums, and her small face grew serious and old again; “I’ll take ’em for Mother. Thank you, Jim!”
And reaching up on tiptoe, she kissed him without warning, in the most natural and pretty way in the world.
After that, Jim appeared to have secured a new interest in life, and began to be seized with a desire to make money. Anything and everything that came into his way he would do “to turn an honest penny.” He would open cab doors, guard motorcars, watch bicycles, carry parcels, — in fact, he was “always on the go.” Men in the City began to know him as a “willing lad” — ready to run errands when no one else came handy. By and by he opened a Savings Bank Account, and put away Ten Shillings. No Royal Personage ever wore a more lofty air than Jim, the day he came out of the Post Office with his “book” in his pocket. But the very next morning after that, his pride and equanimity were completely upset by the sight of Kittums in trouble. Kittums was washing down Messrs. Moses and Aaron’s steps with tears, as well as hot water, and her little frail figure was convulsed by hoarse sobs, while she scrubbed and rubbed out the imprints of men’s dirty feet with a kind of desperate energy, born of despair.
“Why, Kittums!” cried Jim; “What’s the row?”
Kittums looked round at him pathetically. Her pretty eyes were swollen and blurred — her thin face washed with the grime of dirt and hard weeping together, and her lips trembled with the vain effort she made at self-repression.
“Mother’s got to be fined,” she said, woefully, “‘Gistrate sez so!”
“Whativer for?” demanded the astonished Jim.
“It’s this way,” sobbed Kittums— “Teacher made a report of me and said as ‘ow I wosn’t fit to be at school — I ‘adn’t no proper clothes. An’ mother said she couldn’t afford no more’n I’d got.
Then teacher sez, sez she— ‘Don’t come ’ere till you’re dressed ‘spectable.’ So I didn’t go, d’ye see? Then they makes another report, and sez I’m kep away from school. Then Mother gits a summons to ‘pear before ‘Gistrate, an’ she can’t go cos she’s a cripple. Then they sends to her an’ takes ‘er down, an’ she sez she can’t afford to buy me no clothes cos we aint got no money ‘cept for eatin’ and lodgin’. Then they sez to her she must pay a fine, an’ cost o’ summons. Oh dear, oh dear! An’ we aint got nothin’ — not a penny to pay it!”
“Wot’s the matter wi’ yer clothes?” asked the perplexed Batsby.
“Why, I ain’t got nothin’ underneath,” replied the unabashed Kittums, lifting her often-darned cotton frock, and showing her little bare legs up to the knee without hesitation; — such poor, thin, weary little legs, worn with work!— “See! It aint ‘spectable.”
“‘Spect it aint!” said Jim ruefully— “Aint yer ivir cold, Kittums?”
“Often,” she replied— “But then, so’s Mother. We don’t mind if we can just pay rent an’ have a bit an’ sup.”
Jim pondered the problem thus presented to him. It was a difficult one — one that has frequently been dismissed with scorn by the gentlemen of the British Government. Here was Kittums — trying to do her duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call her, according to the Catechism, — earning her breakfast, helping her mother, and going to school “regier” in obedience to the laws laid down. But because neither she nor her mother had money to buy proper clothes, she was told not to attend school till she could be dressed respectably. Then, when she obeyed that mandate, out of sheer necessity, her mother was “summoned” for not sending her to school — and fined.
“It’s a muddle!” said Jim presently, after scratching his head awhile— “Government don’t know what it is to do without a meal — do ’em good to try! Clear their brains a bit before they makes laws for poor folk! Don’t cry, Kittums! I’ll see inter this for yer. I’ll come round tomorrow an’ fix it up all straight.”
Kittums strove to choke back her tears.
“I’m ‘fraid yer can’t!” she said— “Mother’s takin’ on orful!”
“Never mind!” said Jim sturdily. “You git ‘ome quick as yer can an’ tell her I’ll pay the fine. An’ ask ‘er to make you some flannel things — you know — wot goes underneath, an’ I’ll pay for that, too. I’ll be ‘sponsible for the ‘spectability of the future Missis Batsby! Cheer up, Kittums! What ho!”
Kittums strove to smile, but it was difficult. Her little limbs were aching badly, and the worry and confusion of mind, brought on by the summons served on her poor, helpless mother, made her feel very strange indeed. Her head seemed suddenly too large, and her feet too small to support the weight of it, and when she had finished her morning’s work, she crept home slowly like an aged person enfeebled by long want and pain.
Meanwhile, ‘Owlin’ Jim set to work with indefatigable zeal to make “a pile” as he termed it, in one day. Chance favoured him, for about twelve o’clock, as he was keeping sharp watch on City restaurants and offices, from whence “swagger” folk might issue and toss him a penny, or even a sixpence for getting a cab, or taking charge of a bicycle, he saw a very fashionably dressed young woman standing near the steps of Messrs. Moses and Aaron’s premises. He recognised her as one of the “Variety” stars, and he had seen her more than once in the motor-car of Mr. Moses. Approaching her with a jaunty air, he smiled familiarly.
“‘Ullo, Miss! Want the governor?”
The young woman eyed him up and down superciliously.
“What do you mean, boy?”
“Beg pardon, Miss! Seed you in the motor with Mr. Moses many a time an�
� hoft I ‘Star of the ‘Alls!’ Thought you might be a-wantin’ ’im! If so, I’m on! I’m ’is ‘speshul’ for confy-dential tips!”
The “Star of the ‘Alls” hesitated — but her eyes sparkled shrewdly.
“Could you give him a letter from me, quite privately?”
“Corse I could!” And Jim sidled up to her propitiatingly; “Make It wuth my while, Disy dear!”
“Disy dear” burst out laughing; then she appeared to decide the matter suddenly. Holding up a letter, she said “There! If you give that to old Moses, and bring me an answer to the ‘Variety’ before five this afternoon, I’ll give you a sovereign. But, if you don’t, I know somebody who’ll give you a jolly good licking instead.”
Jim took the letter.
“Right you are!” he said, with a profane wink; “Rely on me, Miss! Your servant!”
“What is your name?” she said.
“Jim Batsby. All the City men knows me.”
“I shall know you!” said the “star” with a dark smile— “And you’ll know me if you play the fool! Before five, remember!”
“Before five, Miss!” said Jim— “If old Moses don’t come round to-day, I’ll bring you back this ’ere — but if he do, you’ll have the answer straight!”
She nodded — and after a moment or two of hesitation, left him. Highly excited at the prospect of earning a whole sovereign, Jim pranced up and down in front of the Moses and Aaron premises for more than an hour, the precious letter tucked inside his ragged vest, — the while he called out the most attractive features of the mid-day “Speshuls” he had remaining under his arm; — and presently his patience was rewarded by the sight of a motor-car speeding towards him with an irritating cog-wheel noise, and emitting a detestable smell, in which ungraceful conveyance sat Mr. Moses, with all the signs of a good luncheon marked on his countenance, and a surplus of champagne apparently oozing at every pore of his multicoloured complexion. Jim was up by the car in a moment, and, as Mr. Moses alighted, swiftly sidled up to him, and with an indescribable air of mingled slyness and confidence, held out the letter from the “star of the ‘Alls,”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 939
