a request from a lady before. In his distress he appealed to the Vicar for aid. His reverence was equal to the occasion, actually going so far as to quote St. Paul, and to tell how he recommended Timothy to take a glass of wine for his stomach’s sake and his often infirmities. His reverence did more: he enforced his argument by example, taking a glass himself, and at the same time recommending the rest of the committee to do the same. ‘Fine port that,’ said he, smacking his lips and holding up the glass to the light to see the beeswing.
‘Yes,’ said the Mayor; ‘it was a present to the Corporation from Sir Watkin Strahan.’
The lady coloured as she heard the name. It was observed by the committee, whose inferences were not of the most charitable construction. Everyone knew that Sir Watkin was rather fast, and was supposed to have great weaknesses as far as actresses were concerned. The situation was becoming embarrassing.
‘Had we not better be moving?’ asked the lady, rising from her seat.
‘Well,’ said the Mayor, ‘if we start at once, we shall get to the station in ample time.’
The procession was then formed, the Mayor and the lady walking first, the Vicar and the Town Clerk bringing up the rear. Only one of the committee had gone home. He was new to his office; he had made a lot of money in the shoe trade, and had recently retired from business, and was rather doubtful as to the propriety of being seen by daylight walking with an actress in the streets.
On they went. The general public, consisting of school-boys out of school, and of the usual loafers who stand idle all the day long in the market-place, or at the corners of public-houses and livery stables, were not a little shocked as the actress from the Royal Theatre, Covent Garden, walked along the streets as an ordinary Mrs. Jones or Brown might have done.
‘Well, I would ’ave ’ad a cab, at any rate,’ said the ostler of the leading hotel in the town, as the party passed, a remark cordially accepted by his hearers, a seedy and bloated set of horsey-looking men, who seemed to have nothing particular to do, and took a long time to do it in.
‘’Ow the dickens are fellows like me to get a livin’ if tip-top actresses like that ’ere young ooman take to walkin’? It’s wot I call downright mean. She’s been ’ere and took a lot of money out o’ the town, and han’t spent a blessed bob on a cab.’ Here the speaker, overcome with emotion, dived into the pockets of his ragged corduroys, and finding unexpectedly there the price of a pot of beer, repaired to the neighbouring bar, there to solve the question he had anxiously asked; or to forget it, as he took long draughts of his favourite beverage.
Meanwhile the actress and her attendant guardian angels continued walking, she rapidly striving to recollect old shops and old faces, whilst they mechanically uttered the unmeaning nothings that at times – and the present was one of them – are quite as acceptable as real talk. As if by magic, the news spread that the actress was walking to the station, and great was the joy of the young men who served in all the fine shops in the market-place, who had never seen a real live actress from London in the daytime before, and whose remarks were of a highly complimentary order. The shop-girls, who stared, were equally excited, but perhaps a little more disposed to be critical. Further from the town centre the excitement was less evident. People in the genteel villas scarce deigned to turn their heads. To be emotionless and self-possessed is the object of gentility all the world over. People in genteel villas are not easily excited. In the low neighbourhood nearer the station, inhabited by guards and porters and stokers and signalmen, where engines are perpetually whistling and screaming and letting off steam, there was no excitement at all. In such places, during business hours, one has something to think of besides actors and actresses, and so the station yard was very quickly gained. Only were to be seen a few young swells of the town, who turned very red if the actress looked their way, simply gazing respectfully from afar, wishing that they had been walking with the actress instead of the Town Clerk, the Vicar, or the Mayor. The latter worthy was a little proud of his position. He had by his side and under his protection one whom he remarked, aside to his friends, was not only an actress, but a deuced fine woman. The influence of a fine woman on the male mind, especially in the provinces, where overpowering female beauty is scarce, is marvellous. Even the reverend Vicar was not insensible to its fascination; while the Town Clerk, who was a bachelor, was, therefore, very legitimately in the seventh heaven, wherever that may be; and when Sir Watkin Strahan’s family coach, with the three old maids of that old family, drove up, those excellently disposed ladies, to whom all Sloville was in the habit of grovelling, for the first time in their lives almost found themselves slighted, though as to what there was extraordinary to look at in that actor-woman from London they could none of them see.
Suddenly the aspect of affairs was changed.
Just outside the railway-station, on the bare earth, sweltering in the summer sun, was a bundle of rags. The actress was the first to perceive it
‘What is that?’ she exclaimed,
‘A bundle of rags,’ said one.
‘And of very dirty ones too,’ said another.
‘Good heavens,’ said the lady, ‘it is a living child.’
‘A child! Impossible.’
‘Yes, I tell you it is, and we must save it.’
The actress led the way to the bundle of rags. They were the only clothes of a little lad who, hatless and shoeless and shirtless, was lying on the ground – to be trampled on by horses or men, it seemed to matter little to him. To him approached the awfulness of respectability as embodied in the persons of the Mayor and the Vicar, but he never moved; he was too tired, too weak, too ill to rise. Half awake and half asleep there he lay, quite unconscious, as they looked in his face – thin with want, grimy with dirt, shaded with brown curling hair. Presently the lad got upon his legs with a view to running away – that’s the invariable etiquette on the part of ragged boys in such cases – but it was too late. Already the enemy were on him. Holding his right hand across his brow so as to shade his eyes, he plucked up his courage and prepared for the encounter.
‘Hulloa, you little ragamuffin, what are you up to here?’ said the Mayor, in a tone which frightened the poor boy at once.
‘Pray don’t speak so, Mr. Mayor,’ said the actress; ‘you’ll frighten the poor boy.’
‘Dear madam,’ said the august official, ‘what are we to do?’
‘Save the child.’
‘Ah! that’s easier said than done. Besides, what is the use of saving one? There are hundreds of such lads in Sloville, and we can’t save ’em all.’
‘Quite true,’ said the Vicar, professionally shaking his head.
‘What’s the matter, my poor boy?’ said the actress, as, heedless of the remarks of her companions, she stooped down to kindly pat the head of the little waif, who was at first too frightened to reply.
Slowly and reluctantly he opened his big blue eyes and stared, then he screwed up his mouth and began to cry.
‘Come, my little man,’ continued the actress, in her gentlest tone, ‘tell us what is the matter with you.’
‘Yes, tell the good lady what’s the matter with you!’ said the Vicar, who thought it was now high time for him to say something.
Even then the boy sulked. He was of a class apparently for whom respectability has few kind words or looks, who, in this wicked world, get more kicks than half-pence. Respectability has quite enough to do to look after her own children, especially now that taxes and butchers’ bills and School
