Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished: A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure

“What a thing it is,” she muttered to herself on her way home, “to put things into the hands of a man—one you can feel sure will do everything sensibly and well, and without fuss.” The good lady meant no disparagement to her sex by this—far from it; she referred to a manly man as compared with an unmanly one, and she thought, for one moment, rather disparagingly about the salute which her Samuel’s bald pate had given to the door that morning. Probably she failed to think of the fussy manner in which she herself had assaulted the superintendent of police, for it is said that people seldom see themselves!

But Mrs Twitter was by no means bitter in her thoughts, and her conscience twitted her a little for having perhaps done Samuel a slight injustice.

Indeed she had done him injustice, for that estimable little man went about his inquiries after the lost Sammy with a lump as big as a walnut on the top of his head, and with a degree of persistent energy that might have made the superintendent himself envious.

“Not been at the office for two days, sir!” exclaimed Mr Twitter, repeating—in surprised indignation, for he could not believe it—the words of Sammy’s employer, who was a merchant in the hardware line.

“No, sir,” said the hardware man, whose face seemed as hard as his ware.

“Do—you—mean—to—tell—me,” said Twitter, with deliberate solemnity, “that my son Samuel has not been in this office for two days?”

“That is precisely what I mean to tell you,” returned the hardware man, “and I mean to tell you, moreover, that your son has been very irregular of late in his attendance, and that on more than one occasion he has come here drunk.”

“Drunk!” repeated Twitter, almost in a shout.

“Yes, sir, drunk—intoxicated.”

The hardware man seemed at that moment to Mr Twitter the hardest-ware man that ever confronted him. He stood for some moments aghast and speechless.

“Are you aware, sir,” he said at last, in impressive tones, “that my son Samuel wears the blue ribbon?”

The hardware man inquired, with an expression of affected surprise, what that had to do with the question; and further, gave it as his opinion that a bit of blue ribbon was no better than a bit of red or green ribbon if it had not something better behind it.

This latter remark, although by no means meant to soothe, had the effect of reducing Mr Twitter to a condition of sudden humility.

“There, sir,” said he, “I entirely agree with you, but I had believed—indeed it seems to me almost impossible to believe otherwise—that my poor boy had religious principle behind his blue ribbon.”

This was said in such a meek tone, and with such a woe-begone look as the conviction began to dawn that Sammy was not immaculate—that the hardware man began visibly to soften, and at last a confidential talk was established, in which was revealed such a series of irregularities on the part of the erring son, that the poor father’s heart was crushed for the time, and, as it were, trodden in the dust. In his extremity, he looked up to God and found relief in rolling his care upon Him.

As he slowly recovered from the shock, Twitter’s brain resumed its wonted activity.

“You have a number of clerks, I believe?” he suddenly asked the hardware man.

“Yes, I have—four of them.”

“Would you object to taking me through your warehouse, as if to show it to me, and allow me to look at your clerks?”

“Certainly not. Come along.”

On entering, they found one tying up a parcel, one writing busily, one reading a book, and one balancing a ruler on his nose. The latter, on being thus caught in the act, gave a short laugh, returned the ruler to its place, and quietly went on with his work. The reader of the book started, endeavoured to conceal the volume, in which effort he was unsuccessful, and became very red in the face as he resumed his pen.

The employer took no notice, and Mr Twitter looked very hard at the hardware in the distant end of the warehouse, just over the desk at which the clerks sat. He made a few undertoned remarks to the master, and then, crossing over to the desk, said:—

“Mr Dobbs, may I have the pleasure of a few minutes’ conversation with you outside?”

“C–certainly, sir,” replied Dobbs, rising with a redder face than ever, and putting on his hat.

“Will you be so good as to tell me, Mr Dobbs,” said Twitter, in a quiet but very decided way when outside, “where my son Samuel Twitter spent last night?”

Twitter looked steadily in the clerk’s eyes as he put this question. He was making a bold stroke for success as an amateur detective, and, as is frequently the result of bold strokes, he succeeded.

“Eh! your—your—son S–Samuel,” stammered Dobbs, looking at Twitter’s breast-pin, and then at the ground, while varying expressions of guilty shame and defiance flitted across his face.

He had a heavy, somewhat sulky face, with indecision of character stamped on it. Mr Twitter saw that and took advantage of the latter quality.

“My poor boy,” he said, “don’t attempt to deceive me. You are guilty, and you know it. Stay, don’t speak yet. I have no wish to injure you. On the contrary, I pray God to bless and save you; but what I want with you at this moment is to learn where my dear boy is. If you tell me, no further notice shall be taken of this matter, I assure you.”

“Does—does—he know anything about this?” asked Dobbs, glancing in the direction of the warehouse of the hardware man.

“No, nothing of your having led Sammy astray, if that’s what you mean,—at least, not from me, and you may depend on it he shall hear nothing, if you only confide in me. Of course he may have his suspicions.”

“Well, sir,” said Dobbs, with a sigh of relief, “he’s in my lodgings.”

Having ascertained the address of the lodgings, the poor father called a cab and soon stood by the side of a bed on which his son Sammy lay sprawling in the helpless attitude in which he had fallen down the night before, after a season of drunken riot. He was in a heavy sleep, with his still innocent-looking features tinged with the first blight of dissipation.

“Sammy,” said the father, in a husky voice, as he shook him gently by the arm; but the poor boy made no answer—even a roughish shake failed to draw from him more than the grumbled desire, “let me alone.”

“Oh! God spare and save him!” murmured the father, in a still husky voice, as he fell on his knees by the bedside and prayed—prayed as though his heart were breaking, while the object of his prayer lay apparently unconscious through it all.

He rose, and was standing by the bedside, uncertain how to act, when a heavy tread was heard on the landing, the door was thrown open, and the landlady, announcing “a gentleman, sir,” ushered in the superintendent of police, who looked at Mr Twitter with a slight expression of surprise.

“You are here before me, I see, sir,” he said.

“Yes, but how did you come to find out that he was here?”

“Well, I had not much difficulty. You see it is part of our duty to keep our eyes open,” replied the superintendent, with a peculiar smile, “and I have on several occasions observed your son entering this house with a companion in a condition which did not quite harmonise with his blue ribbon, so, after your good lady explained the matter to me this morning I came straight here.”

“Thank you—thank you. It is very kind. I—you—it could not have been better managed.”

Mr Twitter stopped and looked helplessly at the figure on the bed.

“Perhaps,” said the superintendent, with much delicacy of feeling, “you would prefer to be alone with your boy when he awakes. If I can be of any further use to you, you know where to find me. Good-day, sir.”

Without waiting for a reply the considerate superintendent left the room.

“Oh! Sammy, Sammy, speak to me, my dear boy—speak to your old father!” he cried, turning again to the bed and kneeling beside it; but the drunken sleeper did not move.

Rising hastily he went to the door and called the landlady.

“I’ll go home, missis,” he said, “and send the poor lad’s mother to him.”

“Very well, sir, I’ll look well after ’im till she comes.”

Twitter was gone in a moment, and the old landlady returned to her lodger’s room. There, to her surprise, she found Sammy up and hastily pulling on his boots.

In truth he had been only shamming sleep, and, although still very drunk, was quite capable of looking after himself. He had indeed been asleep when his father’s entrance awoke him, but a feeling of intense shame had induced him to remain quite still, and then, having commenced with this unspoken lie, he felt constrained to carry it out. But the thought of facing his mother he could not bear, for the boy had a sensitive spirit and was keenly alive to the terrible fall he had made. At the same time he was too cowardly to face the consequences. Dressing himself as well as he could, he rushed from the house in spite of the earnest entreaties of the old landlady, so that when the distracted mother came to embrace and forgive her erring child she found that he had fled.

Plunging into the crowded thoroughfares of the great city, and walking swiftly along without aim or desire, eaten up with shame, and rendered desperate by remorse, the now reckless youth sought refuge in a low grog-shop, and called for a glass of beer.

“Well, I say, you’re com—comin’ it raither strong, ain’t you, young feller?” said a voice at his elbow.

He looked up hastily, and saw a blear-eyed youth in a state of drivelling intoxication, staring at him with the expression of an idiot.

“That’s no business of yours,” replied Sam Twitter, sharply.

“Well, thash true, ’tain’t no b–busnish o’ mine. I—I’m pretty far gone m’self, I allow; but I ain’t quite got the l–length o’ drinkin’ in a p–public ’ouse wi’ th’ bl–blue ribb’n on.”

The fallen lad glanced at his breast. There it was,—forgotten, desecrated! He tore it fiercely from his button-hole, amid the laughter of the bystanders—most of whom were women of the lowest grade—and dashed it on the floor.

“Thash right.—You’re a berrer feller than I took you for,” said the sot at his elbow.

To avoid further attention Sammy took his beer into a dark corner and was quickly forgotten.

He had not been seated more than a few minutes when the door opened, and a man with a mild, gentle, yet manly face entered.

“Have a glass, ol’ feller?” said the sot, the instant he caught sight of him.

“Thank you, no—not to-day,” replied John Seaward, for it was our city missionary on what he sometimes called a fishing excursion—fishing for men! “I have come to give you a glass to-day, friends.”

“Well, that’s friendly,” said a gruff voice in a secluded box, out of which next minute staggered Ned Frog. “Come, what is’t to be, old man?”

“A looking-glass,” replied the missionary, picking out a tract from the bundle he held in his hand and offering it to the ex-prize-fighter. “But the tract is not the glass I speak of, friend: here it is, in the Word of that God who made us all—made the throats that swallow the drink, and the brains that reel under it.”

Here he read from a small Bible, “‘But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way.’”

“Bah!” said Ned, flinging the tract on the floor and exclaiming as he left the place with a swing; “I don’t drink wine, old man; can’t afford anything better than beer, though sometimes, when I’m in luck, I have a drop of Old Tom.”

There was a great burst of ribald laughter at this, and numerous were the witticisms perpetrated at the expense of the missionary, but he took no notice of these for a time, occupying himself merely in turning over the leaves of his Bible. When there was a lull he said:—

“Now, dear sisters,” (turning to the women who, with a more or less drunken aspect and slatternly air, were staring at him), “for sisters of mine you are, having been made by the same Heavenly Father; I won’t offer you another glass,—not even a looking-glass,—for the one I have already held up to you will do, if God’s Holy Spirit opens your eyes to see yourselves in it; but I’ll give you a better object to look at. It is a Saviour—one who is able to save you from the drink, and from sin in every form. You know His name well, most of you; it is Jesus, and that name means Saviour, for He came to save His people from their sins.”

At this point he was interrupted by one of the women, who seemed bent on keeping up the spirit of banter with which they had begun. She asked him with a leer if he had got a wife.

“No,” he said, “but I have got a great respect and love for women, because I’ve got a mother, and if ever there was a woman on the face of this earth that deserves the love of a son, that woman is my mother. Sister,” he added, turning to one of those who sat on a bench near him with a thin, puny, curly-haired boy wrapped up in her ragged shawl, “the best prayer that I could offer up for you—and I do offer it—is, that the little chap in your arms may grow up to bless his mother as heartily as I bless mine, but that can never be, so long as you love the strong drink and refuse the Saviour.”

At that moment a loud cry was heard outside. They all rose and ran to the door, where a woman, in the lowest depths of depravity, with her eyes bloodshot, her hair tumbling about her half-naked shoulders, and her ragged garments draggled and wet, had fallen in her efforts to enter the public-house to obtain more of the poison which had already almost destroyed her. She had cut her forehead, and the blood flowed freely over her face as the missionary lifted her. He was a powerful man, and could take her up tenderly and with ease. She was not much hurt, however. After Seaward had bandaged the cut with his own handkerchief she professed to be much better.

This little incident completed the good influence which the missionary’s words and manner had previously commenced. Most of the women began to weep as they listened to the words of love, encouragement, and hope addressed to them. A few of course remained obdurate, though not unimpressed.

All this time young Sam Twitter remained in his dark corner, with his head resting on his arms to prevent his being recognised. Well did he know John Seaward, and well did Seaward know him, for the missionary had long been a fellow-worker with Mrs Twitter in George Yard and at the Home of Industry. The boy was very anxious to escape Seaward’s observation. This was not a difficult matter. When the missionary left, after distributing his tracts, Sammy rose up and sought to hide himself—from himself, had that been possible—in the lowest slums of London.

Chapter Thirteen.

Tells of some Curious and Vigorous Peculiarities of the Lower Orders

Now it must not be supposed that Mrs Frog, having provided for her baby and got rid of it, remained thereafter quite indifferent to it. On the contrary, she felt the blank more than she had expected, and her motherly heart began to yearn for it powerfully.

To gratify this yearning to some extent, she got into the habit of paying frequent visits, sometimes by night and sometimes by day, to the street in which Samuel Twitter lived, and tried to see her baby through the stone walls of the house! Her eyes being weak, as well as her imagination, she failed in this effort, but the mere sight of the house where little Matty was, sufficed to calm her maternal yearnings in some slight degree.

By the way, that name reminds us of our having omitted to mention that baby Frog’s real name was Matilda, and her pet name Matty, so that the name of Mita, fixed on by the Twitters, was not so wide of the mark as it might have been.

One night Mrs Frog, feeling the yearning strong upon her, put on her bonnet and shawl—that is to say, the bundle of dirty silk, pasteboard, and flowers which represented the one, and the soiled tartan rag that did duty for the other.

“Where are ye off to, old woman?” asked Ned, who, having been recently successful in some little “job,” was in high good humour.

“I’m goin’ round to see Mrs Tibbs, Ned. D’you want me?”

“No, on’y I’m goin’ that way too, so we’ll walk together.”

Mrs Frog, we regret to say, was not particular as to the matter of truth. She had no intention of going near Mrs Tibbs, but, having committed herself, made a virtue of necessity, and resolved to pay that lady a visit.

The conversation by the way was not sufficiently interesting to be worthy of record. Arrived at Twitter’s street an idea struck Mrs Frog.

“Ned,” said she, “I’m tired.”

“Well, old girl, you’d better cut home.”

“I think I will, Ned, but first I’ll sit down on this step to rest a bit.”

“All right, old girl,” said Ned, who would have said the same words if she had proposed to stand on her head on the step—so easy was he in his mind as to how his wife spent her time; “if you sit for half-an-hour or so I’ll be back to see you ’ome again. I’m on’y goin’ to Bundle’s shop for a bit o’ baccy. Ain’t I purlite now? Don’t it mind you of the courtin’ days?”

“Ah! Ned,” exclaimed the wife, while a sudden gush of memory brought back the days when he was handsome and kind,—but Ned was gone, and the slightly thawed spring froze up again.

She sat down on the cold step of a door which happened to be somewhat in the shade, and gazed at the opposite windows. There was a light in one of them. She knew it well. She had often watched the shadows that crossed the blind after the gas was lighted, and once she had seen some one carrying something which looked like a baby! It might have been a bundle of soiled linen, or undarned socks, but it might have been Matty, and the thought sent a thrill to the forlorn creature’s heart.

On the present occasion she was highly favoured, for, soon after Ned had left, the shadows came again on the blind, and came so near it as to be distinctly visible. Yes, there could be no doubt now, it was a baby, and as there was only one baby in that house it followed that the baby was her baby—little Matty! Here was something to carry home with her, and think over and dream about. But there was more in store for her. The baby, to judge from the shadowy action of its fat limbs on the blind, became what she called obstropolous. More than that, it yelled, and its mother heard the yell—faintly, it is true, but sufficiently to send a thrill of joy to her longing heart.

Then a sudden fear came over her. What if it was ill, and they were trying to soothe it to rest! How much better she could do that if she only had the baby!

“Oh! fool that I was to part with her!” she murmured, “but no. It was best. She would surely have bin dead by this time.”

The sound of the little voice, however, had roused such a tempest of longing in Mrs Frog’s heart, that, under an irresistible impulse, she ran across the road and rang the bell. The door was promptly opened by Mrs Twitter’s domestic.

“Is—is the baby well?” stammered Mrs Frog, scarce knowing what she said.

“You’ve nothink to do wi’ the baby that I knows on,” returned Mrs Twitter’s domestic, who was not quite so polite as her mistress.

“No, honey,” said Mrs Frog in a wheedling tone, rendered almost desperate by the sudden necessity for instant invention, “but the doctor said I was to ask if baby had got over it, or if ’e was to send round the—the—I forget its name—at once.”

“What doctor sent you?” asked Mrs Twitter, who had come out of the parlour on hearing the voices through the doorway, and with her came a clear and distinct yell which Mrs Frog treasured up in her thinly clad but warm bosom, as though it had been a strain from Paradise. “There must surely be some mistake, my good woman, for my baby is quite well.”

“Oh! thank you, thank you—yes, there must have been some mistake,” said Mrs Frog, scarce able to restrain a laugh of joy at the success of her scheme, as she retired precipitately from the door and hurried away.

She did not go far, however, but, on hearing the door shut, turned back and took up her position again on the door-step.

Poor Mrs Frog had been hardened and saddened by sorrow, and suffering, and poverty, and bad treatment; nevertheless she was probably one of the happiest women in London just then.

“My baby,” she said, quoting part of Mrs Twitter’s remarks with a sarcastic laugh, “no, madam, she’s not your baby yet!”

As she sat reflecting on this agreeable fact, a heavy step was heard approaching. It was too slow for that of Ned. She knew it well—a policeman!

There are hard-hearted policemen in the force—not many, indeed, but nothing is perfect in this world, and there are a few hard-hearted policemen. He who approached was one of these.

“Move on,” he said in a stern voice.

“Please, sir, I’m tired. On’y restin’ a bit while I wait for my ’usband,” pleaded Mrs Frog.

“Come, move on,” repeated the unyielding constable in a tone that there was no disputing. Indeed it was so strong that it reached the ears of Ned Frog himself, who chanced to come round the corner at the moment and saw the policeman, as he imagined, maltreating his wife.

Ned was a man who, while he claimed and exercised the right to treat his own wife as he pleased, was exceedingly jealous of the interference of others with his privileges. He advanced, therefore, at once, and planted his practised knuckles on the policeman’s forehead with such power that the unfortunate limb of the law rolled over in one direction and his helmet in another.

As every one knows, the police sometimes suffer severely at the hands of roughs, and on this occasion that truth was verified, but the policeman who had been knocked down by this prize-fighter was by no means a feeble member of the force. Recovering from his astonishment in a moment, he sprang up and grappled with Ned Frog in such a manner as to convince that worthy he had “his work cut out for him.” The tussle that ensued was tremendous, and Mrs Frog retired into a doorway to enjoy it in safety. But it was brief. Before either wrestler could claim the victory, a brother constable came up, and Ned was secured and borne away to a not unfamiliar cell before he could enjoy even one pipe of the “baccy” which he had purchased.

Thus it came to pass, that when a certain comrade expected to find Ned Frog at a certain mansion in the West-end, prepared with a set of peculiar tools for a certain purpose, Ned was in the enjoyment of board and lodging at Her Majesty’s expense.

The comrade, however, not being aware of Ned’s incarceration, and believing, no doubt, that there was honour among thieves, was true to his day and hour. He had been engaged down somewhere in the country on business, and came up by express train for this particular job; hence his ignorance as to his partner’s fate.

But this burglar was not a man to be easily balked in his purpose.

“Ned must be ill, or got a haccident o’ some sort,” he said to a very little but sharp boy who was to assist in the job. “Howsever, you an’ me’ll go at it alone, Sniveller.”

“Wery good, Bunky,” replied Sniveller, “’ow is it to be? By the winder, through the door, down the chimbly, up the spout—or wot?”

“The larder windy, my boy.”

“Sorry for that,” said Sniveller.

“Why?”

“’Cause it is so ’ard to go past the nice things an’ smell ’em all without darin’ to touch ’em till I lets you in. Couldn’t you let me ’ave a feed first?”

“Unpossible,” said the burglar.

“Wery good,” returned the boy, with a sigh of resignation.

Now, while these two were whispering to each other in a box of an adjoining tavern, three police-constables were making themselves at home in the premises of Sir Richard Brandon. One of these was Number 666.

It is not quite certain, even to this day, how and where these men were stationed, for their proceedings—though not deeds of evil—were done in the dark, at least in darkness which was rendered visible only now and then by bull’s-eye lanterns. The only thing that was absolutely clear to the butler, Mr Thomas Balls, was, that the mansion was given over entirely to the triumvirate to be dealt with as they thought fit.

Of course they did not know when the burglars would come, nor the particular point of the mansion where the assault would be delivered; therefore Number 666 laid his plans like a wise general, posted his troops where there was most likelihood of their being required, and kept himself in reserve for contingencies.