One of the women touched Amelius on the shoulder, and whispered to him. “He’s no more her father, sir, than I am. She’s a helpless creature—and he takes advantage of her. If I only had a place to take her to, he should never set eyes on her again. Show the gentleman your bosom, Sally.”
She opened her poor threadbare little shawl. Over the lovely girlish breast, still only growing to the rounded beauty of womanhood, there was a hideous blue-black bruise. Simple Sally smiled, and said, “That did hurt me, sir. I’d rather have the knife.”
Some of the nearest drinkers at the bar looked round and laughed. Amelius tenderly drew the shawl over the girl’s cold bosom. “For God’s sake, let us get away from this place!” he said.
The influence of the cool night air completed Simple Sally’s recovery. She was able to eat now. Amelius proposed retracing his steps to the provision-shop, and giving her the best food that the place afforded. She preferred the bread-and-butter at the coffee-stall. Those thick slices, piled up on the plate, tempted her as a luxury. On trying the luxury, one slice satisfied her. “I thought I was hungry enough to eat the whole plateful,” said the girl, turning away from the stall, in the vacantly submissive manner which it saddened Amelius to see. He bought more of the bread-and-butter, on the chance that her appetite might revive. While he was wrapping it in a morsel of paper, one of her elder companions touched him and whispered, “There he is, sir!” Amelius looked at her. “The brute who calls himself her father,” the woman explained impatiently.
Amelius turned, and saw Simple Sally with her arm in the grasp of a half-drunken ruffian; one of the swarming wild beasts of Low London, dirtied down from head to foot to the colour of the street mud—the living danger and disgrace of English civilization. As Amelius eyed him, he drew the girl away a step or two. “You’ve got a gentleman this time,” he said to her; “I shall expect gold to-night, or else—!” He finished the sentence by lifting his monstrous fist, and shaking it in her face. Cautiously as he had lowered his tones in speaking, the words had reached the keenly sensitive ears of Amelius. Urged by his hot temper, he sprang forward. In another moment, he would have knocked the brute down—but for the timely interference of the arm of the law, clad in a policeman’s great-coat. “Don’t get yourself into trouble, sir,” said the man good-humouredly. “Now, you Hell-fire (that’s the nice name they know him by, sir, in these parts), be off with you!” The wild beast on two legs cowered at the voice of authority, like the wild beast on four: he was lost to sight, at the dark end of the street, in a moment.
“I saw him threaten her with his fist,” said Amelius, his eyes still aflame with indignation. “He has bruised her frightfully on the breast. Is there no protection for the poor creature?”
“Well, sir,” the policeman answered, “you can summon him if you like. I dare say he’d get a month’s hard labour. But, don’t you see, it would be all the worse for her when he came out of prison.”
The policeman’s view of the girl’s position was beyond dispute. Amelius turned to her gently; she was shivering with cold or terror, perhaps with both. “Tell me,” he said, “is that man really your father?”
“Lord bless you, sir!” interposed the policeman, astonished at the gentleman’s simplicity, “Simple Sally hasn’t got father or mother—have you, my girl?”
She paid no heed to the policeman. The sorrow and sympathy, plainly visible in Amelius, filled her with a childish interest and surprise. She dimly understood that it was sorrow and sympathy for her. The bare idea of distressing this new friend, so unimaginably kind and considerate, seemed to frighten her. “Don’t fret about me, sir,” she said timidly; “I don’t mind having no father nor mother; I don’t mind being beaten.” She appealed to the nearest of her two women-friends. “We get used to everything, don’t we, Jenny?”