Rogues and Vagabonds

by George R. Sims

‘I know what I shall do,’ answered Master Shakspeare; ‘I shall get mother and father to call a rehearsal here afore we start on the tower, and then you shall see it. I should like you to see it. I’ve called the lady in it Bess, after you.’

Mrs. Smith sighed. It was many a long day since anyone had called her Bess. Young Jarvis had found out that it was her name quite by accident.

Mrs. Smith had come some time since to lodge in this little house in Lambeth. She took the top room and kept it to herself, and the other lodgers, who were as curious as most lodgers are about their neighbours, could find out nothing about her except that she worked for one of the City houses, and was a married woman whose husband was never seen.

But old Mrs. Jarvis, the landlady, finding her a quiet, nice young woman, always ready to sympathise with her rheumatics and other ailments, gradually made a friend and confidant of her, and Bess, when she could spare the time, was invited to come down into the little parlour and listen to her landlady’s trials and tribulations.

Thus it was that she learned the Jarvis’s family history. She learned how Mr. Jarvis, the old lady’s son, had a travelling theatrical show; how he had invested a portion of his savings in house property, partly as a home for his old mother, and partly as a refuge for himself and family when in town, which wasn’t often. By letting off a portion of the house, and leaving the old lady in charge, this arrangement became a profitable one, for the strolling players had ‘a drum’ to come to between their tours where they could live rent free.

Mrs. Smith had lived in the little top room for about six months when the Jarvises came home for a fortnight to reorganize their company and arrange for some novelties; and then Shakspeare, the boy, fell ill—so ill that there was nothing to do but leave him at home with granny.

Granny had her hands full with the lodgers and wanted cosseting herself, so that when Mrs. Smith saw the poor boy, who was like a caged bird, and pined for the roving life, tossing on the bed of sickness, she sat by his side and comforted him, and did little womanly things for him, which helped him to bear his pain more patiently.

At last he grew to look for her, to fret if she did not come and sit by him; he would take his medicine from no one else; and poor-old granny’s stock of patience was soon exhausted by what she called his ‘whims and contrarinesses.’ Then Mrs. Smith would be called in and would act as peacemaker, soothing the irritable boy and the irritated old lady at the same time.

So it came about that at last she was regularly installed as Shakspeare’s nurse, and she would bring her work down into the room where he lay, and sit beside him for hours together. A firm friendship grew up between them. All that was best in the lad’s Bohemian but honest nature blossomed in the sunshine of Bess’s gentle care, and he looked upon her as a sort of angel—an angel who was deserving a much better fate than to be oppressed by some terrible grief, and to have to work for slop-houses in the City for her living.

Shakspeare could write, and was what his mother called a ‘scholard’; and so from time to time, as he grew better, he had written her full, true, and particular accounts of his recovery, and of the lady-lodger’s kindness to him.