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THE EARRING.
"Come oot o' the gutter, ye nickum!" cried, in harsh, half-masculine
voice, a woman standing on the curbstone of a short, narrow, dirty
lane, at right angles to an important thoroughfare, itself none of
the widest or cleanest. She was dressed in dark petticoat and print
wrapper. One of her shoes was down at the heel, and discovered a
great hole in her stocking. Had her black hair been brushed and
displayed, it would have revealed a thready glitter of grey, but all
that was now visible of it was only two or three untidy tresses that
dropped from under a cap of black net and green ribbons, which
looked as if she had slept in it. Her face must have been handsome
when it was young and fresh; but was now beginning to look tattooed,
though whether the colour was from without or from within, it would
have been hard to determine. Her black eyes looked resolute, almost
fierce, above her straight, well-formed nose. Yet evidently
circumstance clave fast to her. She had never risen above it, and
was now plainly subjected to it.
About thirty yards from her, on the farther side of the main street,
and just opposite the mouth of the lane, a child, apparently about
six, but in reality about eight, was down on his knees raking with
both hands in the grey dirt of the kennel. At the woman's cry he
lifted his head, ceased his search, raised himself, but without
getting up, and looked at her. They were notable eyes out of which
he looked -- of such a deep blue were they, and having such long
lashes; but more notable far from their expression, the nature of
which, although a certain witchery of confidence was at once
discoverable, was not to be determined without the help of the whole
face, whose diffused meaning seemed in them to deepen almost to
speech. Whatever was at the heart of that expression, it was
something that enticed question and might want investigation. The
face as well as the eyes was lovely -- not very clean, and not too
regular for hope of a fine development, but chiefly remarkable from
a general effect of something I can only call luminosity. The hair,
which stuck out from his head in every direction, like a round fur
cap, would have been of the red-gold kind, had it not been sunburned
into a sort of human hay. An odd creature altogether the child
appeared, as, shaking the gutter-drops from his little dirty hands,
he gazed from his bare knees on the curbstone at the woman of
rebuke. It was but for a moment. The next he was down, raking in
the gutter again.
The woman looked angry, and took a step forward; but the sound of a
sharp imperative little bell behind her, made her turn at once, and
re-enter the shop from which she had just issued, following a man
whose pushing the door wider had set the bell ringing. Above the
door was a small board, nearly square, upon which was painted in
lead-colour on a black ground the words, "Licensed to sell beer,
spirits, and tobacco to be drunk on the premises." There was no
other sign. "Them 'at likes my whusky 'ill no aye be speerin' my
name," said Mistress Croale. As the day went on she would have more
and more customers, and in the evening on to midnight, her parlour
would be well filled. Then she would be always at hand, and the
spring of the bell would be turned aside from the impact of the
opening door. Now the bell was needful to recall her from house
affairs.
"The likin' 'at craturs his for clean dirt! He's been at it this
hale half-hoor!" she murmured to herself as she poured from a black
bottle into a pewter measure a gill of whisky for the pale-faced
toper who stood on the other side of the counter: far gone in
consumption, he could not get through the forenoon without his
morning. "I wad like," she went on, as she replaced the bottle
without having spoken a word to her customer, whose departure was
now announced with the same boisterous alacrity as his arrival by
the shrill-toned bell -- "I wad like, for's father's sake, honest man!
to thraw Gibbie's lug. That likin' for dirt I canna fathom nor
bide."
Meantime the boys attention seemed entirely absorbed in the gutter.
Whatever vehicle passed before him, whatever footsteps behind, he
never lifted his head, but went creeping slowly on his knees along
the curb still searching down the flow of the sluggish, nearly
motionless current.
It was a grey morning towards the close of autumn. The days began
and ended with a fog, but often between, as golden a sunshine
glorified the streets of the grey city as any that ripened purple
grapes. To-day the mist had lasted longer than usual -- had risen
instead of dispersing; but now it was thinning, and at length, like
a slow blossoming of the sky-flower, the sun came melting through
the cloud. Between the gables of two houses, a ray fell upon the
pavement and the gutter. It lay there a very type of purity, so
pure that, rest where it might, it destroyed every shadow of
defilement that sought to mingle with it. Suddenly the boy made a
dart upon all fours, and pounced like a creature of prey upon
something in the kennel. He had found what he had been looking for
so long. He sprang to his feet and bounded with it into the sun,
rubbing it as he ran upon what he had for trousers, of which there
was nothing below the knees but a few streamers, and nothing above
the knees but the body of the garment, which had been -- I will not
say made for, but last worn by a boy three times his size. His
feet, of course, were bare as well as his knees and legs. But
though they were dirty, red, and rough, they were nicely shaped
little legs, and the feet were dainty.
The sunbeams he sought came down through the smoky air like a
Jacob's ladder, and he stood at the foot of it like a little
prodigal angel that wanted to go home again, but feared it was too
much inclined for him to manage the ascent in the present condition
of his wings. But all he did want was to see in the light of heaven
what the gutter had yielded him. He held up his find in the
radiance and regarded it admiringly. It was a little earring of
amethyst-coloured glass, and in the sun looked lovely. The boy was
in an ecstasy over it. He rubbed it on his sleeve, sucked it to
clear it from the last of the gutter, and held it up once more in
the sun, where, for a few blissful moments, he contemplated it
speechless. He then caused it to disappear somewhere about his
garments -- I will not venture to say in a pocket -- and ran off, his
little bare feet sounding thud, thud, thud on the pavement, and the
collar of his jacket sticking halfway up the back of his head, and
threatening to rub it bare as he ran. Through street after street
he sped -- all built of granite, all with flagged footways, and all
paved with granite blocks -- a hard, severe city, not beautiful or
stately with its thick, grey, sparkling walls, for the houses were
not high, and the windows were small, yet in the better parts,
nevertheless, handsome as well as massive and strong.
To the boy the great city was but a house of many rooms, all for his
use, his sport, his life. He did not know much of what lay within
the houses; but that only added the joy of mystery to possession:
they were jewel-closets, treasure-caves, indeed, with secret
fountains of life; and every street was a channel into which they
overflowed.
It was in one of quite a third-rate sort that the urchin at length
ceased his trot, and drew up at the door of a baker's shop -- a
divided door, opening in the middle by a latch of bright brass. But
the child did not lift the latch -- only raised himself on tiptoe by
the help of its handle, to look through the upper half of the door,
which was of glass, into the beautiful shop. The floor was of
flags, fresh sanded; the counter was of deal, scrubbed as white
almost as flour; on the shelves were heaped the loaves of the
morning's baking, along with a large store of scones and rolls and
baps -- the last, the best bread in the world -- biscuits hard and soft,
and those brown discs of delicate flaky piecrust, known as buns.
And the smell that came through the very glass, it seemed to the
child, was as that of the tree of life in the Paradise of which he
had never heard. But most enticing of all to the eyes of the little
wanderer of the street were the penny-loaves, hot smoking from the
oven -- which fact is our first window into the ordered nature of the
child. For the main point which made them more attractive than all
the rest to him was, that sometimes he did have a penny, and that a
penny loaf was the largest thing that could be had for a penny in
the shop. So that, lawless as he looked, the desires of the child
were moderate, and his imagination wrought within the bounds of
reason. But no one who has never been blessed with only a penny to
spend and a mighty hunger behind it, can understand the interest
with which he stood there and through the glass watched the bread,
having no penny and only the hunger. There is at least one powerful
bond, though it may not always awake sympathy, between mudlark and
monarch -- that of hunger. No one has yet written the poetry of
hunger -- has built up in verse its stairs of grand ascent -- from such
hunger as Gibbie's for a penny-loaf up -- no, no, not to an alderman's
feast; that is the way down the mouldy cellar-stair -- but up the
white marble scale to the hunger after righteousness whose very
longings are bliss.
Behind the counter sat the baker's wife, a stout, fresh-coloured
woman, looking rather dull, but simple and honest. She was
knitting, and if not dreaming, at least dozing over her work, for
she never saw the forehead and eyes which, like a young ascending
moon, gazed at her over the horizon of the opaque half of her door.
There was no greed in those eyes -- only much quiet interest. He did
not want to get in; had to wait, and while waiting beguiled the time
by beholding. He knew that Mysie, the baker's daughter, was at
school, and that she would be home within half an hour. He had seen
her with tear-filled eyes as she went, had learned from her the
cause, and had in consequence unwittingly roused Mrs. Croale's
anger, and braved it when aroused. But though he was waiting for
her, such was the absorbing power of the spectacle before him that
he never heard her approaching footsteps.
"Lat me in," said Mysie, with conscious dignity and a touch of
indignation at being impeded on the very threshold of her father's
shop.
The boy started and turned, but instead of moving out of the way,
began searching in some mysterious receptacle hid in the recesses of
his rags. A look of anxiety once appeared, but the same moment it
vanished, and he held out in his hand the little drop of amethystine
splendour. Mysie's face changed, and she clutched it eagerly.
"That's rale guid o' ye, wee Gibbie!" she cried. "Whaur did ye get
it?"
He pointed to the kennel, and drew back from the door.
"I thank ye," she said heartily, and pressing down the thumbstall of
the latch, went in.
"Wha's that ye're colloguin' wi', Mysie?" asked her mother, somewhat
severely, but without lifting her eyes from her wires. "Ye maunna be
speykin' to loons i' the street."
"It's only wee Gibbie, mither," answered the girl in a tone of
confidence.
"Ou weel!" returned the mother, "he's no like the lave o' loons."
"But what had ye to say till him?" she resumed, as if afraid her
leniency might be taken advantage of. "He's no fit company for the
likes o' you, 'at his a father an' mither, an' a chop (shop). Ye
maun hae little to say to sic rintheroot laddies."
"Gibbie has a father, though they say he never hid nae mither," said
the child.
"Troth, a fine father!" rejoined the mother, with a small scornful
laugh. "Na, but he's something to mak mention o'! Sic a father,
lassie, as it wad be tellin' him he had nane! What said ye till
'im?"
"I bit thankit 'im, 'cause I tint my drop as I gaed to the schuil i'
the mornin', an' he fan't till me, an' was at the chopdoor waitin'
to gie me't back. They say he's aye fin'in' things."
"He's a guid-hertit cratur!" said the mother, -- "for ane, that is,
'at's been sae ill broucht up."
She rose, took from the shelf a large piece of bread, composed of
many adhering penny-loaves, detached one, and went to the door.
"Here, Gibbie!" she cried as she opened it; "here's a fine piece to
ye."
But no Gibbie was there. Up and down the street not a child was to
be seen. A sandboy with a donkey cart was the sole human
arrangement in it. The baker's wife drew back, shut the door and
resumed her knitting.
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