Chapter Eight.
A Ghost in the Cellar.
In the confusion that immediately ensued, Flo found herself torn away from her kind companion, and brought very near to Police Constable 21 B. and his charge. Like most children of her class she had been taught to consider policemen very dreadful people, but she had no fear of this one now: her whole desire was to save Dick. She went boldly up and laid her little dirty hand on the great tall man’s arm.
“Please—please,” said Flo, “it ain’t Dick as tuk them things. Indeed I thinks as Dick is an honest boy.”
“Oh! yes, and I suppose you are an honest girl,” said the policeman, looking down with some contempt at the queer disreputable-looking little figure. “Tell me now, what do you know about Dick? and which of the two is Dick to begin with?”
“That ’ere little chap wot yer ’ave such a grip of,” said Flo, “that’s Dick, and I be ’is sister, I be.”
“Oh! so you are his sister. And what’s the name of the big fellow? you are his sister too?”
“No, I ain’t,” said Flo, “I ain’t that, but ’ee lives wid Dick and me.”
“He does—does he? Perhaps you saw what he did just now?”
Flo had seen—she coloured and hesitated.
“You need not speak unless you wish to,” said the policeman more kindly, “but I perceive you know all about these boys, so you must appear as witness. See! where do you live?”
“Cellar number 7, Duncan Street, Saint Giles,” said Flo promptly.
“Ah!” said the policeman, “I thought those cellars was shut up. They ain’t fit for pigs. Well, my dear, ’tis a nice-sounding, respectable address, and I’ll serve you a notice to-morrow to appear as witness. Don’t you go hiding, for wherever you are I’ll find you. On Thursday morning at 10 o’clock at Q— Police-Station.” And nodding to Flo, he walked off, bearing his sullen, ashamed, crest-fallen prisoners with him.
“Come ’ome wid me, dear,” said a poor miserable-looking neighbour, an occupant of another Duncan Street cellar. “Come ’ome wid me,” she said, touching the dazed, stunned-looking child; “I’ll take care of yer the rest of the way,” and she took her hand and led her out of the crowd.
“There now,” said the woman kindly, “don’t yer fret, dearie—it ain’t so bad, and it won’t be so bad. Dick, ’ee’ll on’y get a month or two at the ’formatary, and t’other chap a bit longer, and hout they’ll come none the worse. Don’t yer fret, dearie.”
“No, ma’am,” answered Flo with a little smile, “I ain’t frettin’.” Nor was she exactly. She had an awful vision before her of mother’s dead face, that was all. During the rest of the long walk home that patient, tired face was before her. She was not fretting, she was too stunned as yet—that would come by and by.
Her neighbour tried to make her talk, tried to smooth matters for her, but they could not be smoothed, nothing could soften the awful fact that Dick was going to prison, that he had broken his word to his dying mother. It was quite dusk, past 9 o’clock, when they reached Duncan Street, and the cellar door of number 7, which the children had fastened when they had started so light-hearted and happy for the Derby the day before, was now open. Flo hardly noticed this. She ran down, eager to throw her arms round Scamp’s neck, and weep out her heart with his faithful head on her bosom.
“But—what had happened?”
Flo expected to hear his eager bark of welcome the moment she entered the cellar, but there was no sound. She called to him, no answer. She struck a match and lit the tallow candle,—Scamp’s place was empty, Scamp was gone. She stooped down and examined the spot carefully. If he had freed himself there would have been some pieces of the rope hanging to the table, but no, all trace of it was gone.
It was quite plain, then, some one had come and stolen Scamp, some one had come meanly while they were away and carried him off—he was gone. One extra drop will overflow a full cup, and this extra trial completely upset the little tired, sad child. She sat down on the floor, that damp wretched floor, surely an unfit resting-place for any of God’s creatures, and gave way to all the agony of intense desolation.
Had the dog been there he would have soothed her: the look in his eyes, the solemn slow wag of his unwieldy tail, would have comforted her, would have spoken to her of affection, would have prevented her feeling utterly alone in the world.
And this now was Flo’s sensation.
When this awful storm of loneliness comes to the rich, and things look truly hard for them, they still have their carpeted floors, and easy-chairs, and soft beds, and though at such times they profess not to value these things in the least, yet they are, and are meant to be, great alleviations.
Only the poor, the very, very poor know what this storm is in all its terrors, and the desolate little child sitting there in this dark cellar felt it in its full power that night. Dick was gone from her, Dick was a thief, he was in prison, gone perhaps never to come back—and Jenks was gone, he had done wrong and tempted Dick, and broken his word to her, so perhaps it was right for him to go—and Scamp, dear Scamp, who had done no harm whatever, was stolen away.
Yes, she was alone, alone with the thought of her mother’s face, all alone in the damp, dark, foul cellar, and she knew nothing of God.
Just then a voice, and a sweet voice too, was heard very distinctly at the mouth of the cellar.
“Sing glory, glory, glory,” tuned the voice.
“Janey,” said Flo, starting to her feet and speaking eagerly.
“Oh dear!” said the voice at the cellar door, “ain’t you a fool to be settin’ there in the dark. Strike a light, do—I’m a comin’ down.”
Flo struck a match, and lit a small end of tallow candle, and the lame girl tumbled down the ladder and squatted on the floor by her side.
“Oh dear!” she said, “ain’t this a stiflin’ ’ole? why ’tis worse nor ’ourn.”
“Wot’s ‘Read and Pray,’ Janey?” asked Flo.
“My!” said Janey, “ef yer ain’t a real worry, Flo Darrell. Read—that’s wot the Board teaches—and pray—Our—Father—chart—’eaven—that’s pray.”
“And ‘Sing Glory,’ wot’s that?” continued Flo.
“That!” laughed Janey, “why that’s a choros, you little goose. Niggers ’ave alwis choroses to their songs—that ain’t nothink else.”
“Well, ’tis pretty,” sighed Flo, “not that I cares for nothink pretty now no more.”
“Oh! yes yer will,” said Janey with the air of a philosopher. “Yer just a bit dumpy to-night, same as I wor wen I broke my leg, and I wor lyin’ in the ’orspital, all awful full o’ pain hup to my throat, but now I ’as on’y a stiff joint, and I doesn’t mind it a bit. That’s just ’ow you’ll feel ’bout Dick by and by. ’Ee’ll be lyin’ in prison, and you won’t care, no more nor I cares fur my stiff joint.”
Flo was silent, not finding Janey’s conversation comforting.
“Come,” said that young person after a pause, “I thought you’d want a bit o’ livenin’ hup. Wot does yer say to a ghost story?”
Flo’s eyes, slightly startled, were turned on her companion.
“As big a ghost story as hever was got up in any gaff,” continued Janey, her naughty face growing full of mischief, “and it ’appened in this ’ere cellar, Flo.”
“Oh! it worn’t mother come back, wor it?” asked Flo. “Just you wait heasy. No, it worn’t yer mother, ef you must know, but as real a ghost as hever walked fur all that.”
“Tell us,” said Flo, really roused and interested.
“Oh, you wants fur to know at last! Well, I must be paid. I’m poor and clemmed, and I can’t tell my tale fur nothink, not I.”
“’Ow can I pay you, Janey?”
“Oh, yer can, heasy enough. Why mother said as yer sold quite a ’eap o’ dolls to-day at the races, there! I’ll tell ’bout the ghost fur a penny, no fur three ha’pence—there!”
“Well, tell away,” said Flo, throwing the coins into her companion’s lap.
Janey thrust them into her mouth, then taking them out rubbed them bright with her pinafore, and held them firmly in her bony little hand.
“Pease puddin’ fur the ha’penny,” she said, “meat and taters fur the penny—’tis real mean o’ yer not to make it tuppence. Now I’ll begin. Were’s that ere dawg? were’s that hawful, ’owlin’ dawg?”
“Oh! I don’t know,” said Flo, “I don’t know nothink ’bout my dear Scamp.”
“Oh yes, ’ees dear Scamp to be sure,” said Janey. “Well, I’ll tell yer ’bout Scamp, and hall I ’opes is that we may never lay heyes on ’im no more.”
“Why?” asked Flo.
“There! I’m a comin’ to wy. Last night wen you, and Dick, and Jenks, and mother was orf to the Derby, and I mad like at bein’ left, which mother would do ’cause I was lame, I came hover and sat close to the cellar, a-listenin’ to Scamp, who was ’owlin’ real orfle, and I thought as it ’ud be a lark to go down into the cellar, fur I knew he wor tied, and hanger ’im a bit, and I tried the door, but it wor locked as firm as firm, so arter a bit I went away, and I got a little stool and sat up on the ground houtside our cellar, and there I dropped orf asleep. And wen I ’woke it wor dark, and on’y the ‘twinkle, twinkle, little stars’ hout, and there wor a noise, and I looked, and hout o’ your cellar, as was locked as firm as no one could move it, wor a man’s ’ead a comin’—a man wid a round ’ead, and thick body, and bandy legs, and in ’is arms, a ’owlin’ and a struggling that ’ere blessed dawg.”
“Oh! the willan!” said Flo. “’Ee stole my dawg. Did yer foller ’im, Janey?”
“No, I didn’t,” said Janey; “I foller ’im—I’d like it. Wy, Flo Darrell, ’ee worn’t a man at all. ’Ow was a man in yer locked hup cellar? No, ’ee wor a ghost—that’s wot ’ee wor. And Scamp ain’t a real dawg, but a ghost dawg, and yer well rid o’ ’im, Flo Darrell.”