Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/277

264 the child was not my friend of the previous night.

“Enter Antonio to redeem his bond!” Phillips, loquitur.

He stood for a few minutes diving and rummaging into the recesses of his rags; at last little Tom Thumb said:

“Are you the gentleman that boucht fewzees frae Sandy yesterday?”

“Yes, my little man.”

“Weel here’s sevenpence (counting out divers copper coins), Sandy canna come; he’s no weel; a cart ran ow'r him the day, and broken his legs, and lost his bannet, and his fewzees, and your fourpence-piece, and his knife, and he’s no weel. He’s no weel ava, and the doc—tor says—says he’s dee—dee—in, and—and that’s a’ he can gie you, noo.” And the poor child, commencing with sobs, ended in a sore fit of crying.

I gave him food, for, though his cup of sorrow was full enough, his stomach was empty, as he looked wistfully at the display on the tea-table.

“Are you Sandy’s brother?”

“Aye, sir;” and the flood-gates of his heart again opened.

“Where do you live? Are your father and mother alive?”

“We bide in Blackfriars Wynd in the Coogate. My mither’s dead, and father’s awa; and we bide whiles wi’ our gudemither,” sobbing bitterly.

“Where did this accident happen?”

“Near the college, sir.”

Calling a cab, we were speedily set down at Blackfriars Wynd. I had never penetrated the wretchedness of these ancient closes by day, and here I entered one by night, and almost alone. Preceded by my little guide, I entered a dark, wide, winding stair, until, climbing many flights of stairs in total darkness, he opened a door, whence a light maintained a feeble unequal struggle with the thick, close-smelling, heavy gloom. My courage nearly gave way as the spectacle of that room burst upon me. In an apartment, certainly spacious in extent, but scarcely made visible by one guttering candle stuck in a bottle, were an overcrowded mass of wretched beings sleeping on miserable beds spread out upon the floor, or squatted or reclining upon the cold unfurnished boards.

Stepping over a prostrate quarrelling drunkard, I found little Sandy on a bed of carpenter’s shavings on the floor. He was still in his rags, and a torn and scanty coverlet had been thrown over him. Poor lad! he was so changed. His sharp pallid face was clammy and cold—beads of the sweat of agony standing on his brow—his bruised and mangled body lay motionless and still, except when sobs and moaning heaved his fluttering breast. A bloated woman, in maudlin drunkenness (the dead or banished father’s second wife, and not his mother), now and then bathed his lips with whiskey-and-water, while she applied to her own a bottle of spirits to drown the grief she hiccuped and assumed. A doctor from the Royal Infirmary had called and left some medicine to soothe the poor lad’s agony (for his case was hopeless, even though he had been taken at first, as he ought to have been, to the Infirmary in the neighbourhood), but his tipsy nurse had forgotten to administer it. I applied it, and had him placed upon a less miserable bed of straw; and feeing a woman, an occupant of the room, to attend him during the night, I gave what directions I could, and left the degraded, squalid home.

Next morning I was again in Blackfriars Wynd. Its close, pestilential air, and towering, antique, dilapidated mansions (the abode of the peerage in far-off times) now struck my senses. Above a doorway was carved upon the stone,—“Except ye Lord do build ye house ye builders build in vain.”

I said the room was spacious: it was almost noble in its proportions. The walls of panelled oak sadly marred, a massive marble mantelpiece of cunning carving, ruthlessly broken and disfigured, enamelled tiles around the fireplace, once representing some Bible story, now sore despoiled and cracked, and the ceiling festooned with antique fruit and flowers, shared in the general vandal wreck. With the exception of a broken chair, furniture there was none in that stifling den. Its occupants, said the surgeon, whom I found at the sufferer’s bed, were chiefly of our cities’ pests, and the poor lad’s stepmother—who had taken him from the ragged school that she might drink of his pitiful earnings—was as sunk in infamy as any there.

For the patient medical skill was naught, for he was sinking fast. The soul looking from his light blue eyes was slowly ebbing out, his pallid cheeks were sunk and thin, but consciousness I \\returned, and his lamp was flickering up before it sunk for ever. As I took his feeble hand, a flicker of recognition seemed to gleam across his face.

“I got the change, and was comin’”

“My poor boy, you were very honest. Have you any wish—anything, poor child, I can do for you? I promise to”

“Reuby, I’m sure I’m deein’, wha will take care o’ you noo?”

Little Reuben was instantly in a fit of crying, and threw himself prostrate on the bed. “Oh, Sandy! Sandy! Sandy!” sobbed his little heart.

“I will see to your little brother.”

“Thank you, sir! Dinna—dinna leave me, Reu—Reu—by. I’m com—comin’, comin’”

“Wisht! wisht!” cried little Reub, looking up, and turning round to implore some silence in the room. That moment the calm faded smile, that seemed to have alighted as a momentary visitant upon his face, slowly passed away, the eyes became blank and glazed, and his little life imperceptibly rippled out.

The honest boy lies in the Canongate churchyard, not far from the gravestone put up by Burns to the memory of Ferguson, his brother poet, and I have little Reuben at Dr. Guthrie’s ragged school, and receive excellent accounts of him, and from him.

“What of your young Arab, Turner?” said Phillips, the following afternoon. “Was he honest, and is he really ill?”

“Yes, Phillips, he was an honest Arab; but now he is ‘where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. ” G. T.