Arthur followed Mrs. Blatherwick down dark and damp stairs into a cellar-kitchen, where the principal light was that emitted by a large fire. On the fire was a frying-pan, in which was at that moment hissing and spluttering a goodly beef-steak, the odour of which filled the kitchen and made poor Arthur’s mouth water. Otherwise it was a vile place, reeking with moisture, foul with indescribable filth, the ceiling black with the smoke of hundreds of fires, the floor marked here and there with the corpse of a crushed black-beetle. On a wooden table, drawn up to the fire, stood the preparations for the good lady’s mid-day meal, and to that, having discovered that the steak was just done, Mrs. Blatherwick accordingly addressed herself. Arthur sat on a broken chair, meanwhile, eyeing the woman with hungry eyes, and doing his best to satisfy his own stomach with the scraps of dry bread and meat which remained to him.

Whilst she was in the midst of her meal a step was heard descending the stairs, a heavy, reeling, uncertain step. A moment after a man entered. He looked about twenty-two or twenty-three. His face was that of a hopeless sot, a flabby, meaningless, bestial face, which only on occasions was enlivened by a twinkle of evil in one of the dull, fishy eyes. He was very tall, and his body seemed to be insecurely jointed; when he staggered across the kitchen and dropped himself into a chair, it seemed as though the shock would dislocate his limbs. Arthur knew this individual; it was Mrs. Blatherwick’s eldest son, by name Bill.

Bill was not at present more drunk than usual, though a casual observer would certainly have concluded that he had been indulging past his wont. He had so soaked himself with brutalising liquors ever since he had been able to raise a can to his mouth, that the present state of bodily laxity and mental obfuscation was normal to him. As he sat gazing with half-opened eyes at Arthur, apparently not quite able to recall his identity, his mother commenced to abuse him on the score of his idleness and drunkenness.

A conversation ensued which I shall not endeavour to repeat, under fear of being stigmatised as a “realist” by the critical world.

Arthur took no special heed of it. Alas! his ears were but too well accustomed to sounds such as these. He was, moreover, so weary with his journey that, under the influence of the fire, he sank to sleep in his chair.

When he awoke daylight had long since passed away. The fire blazed more cheerfully than ever, and, with the assistance of a tallow dip standing on the table, effectually lighted up the room. Bill Blatherwick had disappeared, most probably had long since assumed his wonted corner in the “Rose and Crown;” but his mother was at present busy in preparing a cup of tea.

“Are y’ ‘ungry?” she snarled at Arthur, as soon as his moving proclaimed him awake.

He replied in the affirmative, and received a hunch of very stale bread.

“If ye’re thirsty, there’s the tap,” added the woman, pointing to a foul corner of the kitchen, where at intervals spots of water dripped from a tap on to a stone slab.

Arthur walked to it, held his hands cuplike, to receive the water, and quenched his thirst.

In the meantime Mrs. Blatherwick poured out for herself a cup of strong tea, and assumed a seat in the full glow of the fire.

“Well, young un,” she began sharply, after a few minutes’ thought, “what are you come back ’ere for, eh?”

The suddenness and fierce tone of the question seemed all at once to bring, for the first time, the full sense of his position before the child’s mind. Casting a glance of helpless pleading, first at the woman, then round the bare walls of the cellar, he suddenly> burst into tears.

“Where have they buried my father?” he sobbed out, after giving full vent for a minute to the distress which overmastered him. “Will you please to tell me, Mrs. Blatherwick?”

“How the devil should I know?” replied the woman, with a croaking laugh. “Is that all ye’re ’ere for — to arst questens like that?”

There was silence for a moment; then Mrs. Blatherwick resumed.

“Where ‘ev yer been livin’?”

“I — I don’t know,” sobbed Arthur.

“Well, how did yer get back ’ere? Yer know that, I s’pose?”

The boy recounted his adventures between Bloomford and London. As he concluded, Mrs. Blatherwick shrugged her shoulders.

“Well,” she said, “if ye stay ’ere to-night yer’ll ‘ev to pay, as I s’pose yer know.”

Arthur thrust his hand eagerly into his pocket and drew out the few coppers his unknown friend had given him.

Mrs. Blatherwick appropriated them without hesitation.

“An’ what are yer goin’ to do for a livin’, eh?” she then asked.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied Arthur, still sobbing. “Could you help me to find something, Mrs. Blatherwick?”

“Maybe I could,” said the woman. “I’ve got somethink i’ my ‘cad, but I doubt it’s too good for yer.”

“Do you think so, Mrs. Blatherwick? What is it?”

“No, no; it’s too good for yer.”

“Please tell me what it is, Mrs. Blatherwick. I’d try my best.”

“Yer would, eh?”

“I’m sure I would.”

“What d’yer say, then, to go round singin’ with Bill? Now didn’t I say as it was too good for yer? Yer couldn’t sing well enough, could yer, now?”

“I — I’d try my best, Mrs. Blatherwick,” stammered Arthur. “I think I could if someone told me how.”

“Yer do, eh?”

“Yes, Mrs. Blatherwick. Might I live here if I did that?”

“I don’t know but yer might, if ye did well.”

“In father’s room, Mrs. Blatherwick?” asked the boy, eagerly.

“P’r’aps.”

“Oh, I’m sure I could do it, if only someone would show me how,” cried Arthur, drawing his chair nearer to the woman.

“Then I’ll learn yer,” replied Mrs. Blatherwick, taking a draught of her tea. “I’ll say the words first, an’ then you say ’em arfter; an’ when yer know the words, I’ll learn yer the tune.”

The lesson began. It was a somewhat singular picture, that of the old hag on one side of the fire, her repulsive features lit up by its blaze, her hand heating time upon her knee, as she recited the words in a sing-song tone which showed clearly that she had no understanding of their meaning; opposite to her the handsome-faced boy, neatly dressed, with his light hair waving over his temples and shining like gold in the blaze from the grate, his lips parted in his eagerness to learn the words of the song — or, as it seemed, hymn — and his blue eyes still glistening with the moisture of recent tears. The words recited were these: —

Behold the lilies of the field,

They toil not, neither spin,

But yet our Father gives to them

The raiment they stand in.

Behold the little birds in air,

They care not for the morrow,

And yet our Heavenly Father sees

They have no need to borrow.

So we will trust to God above,

For we are better far

Than lilies and than sparrows both;

For his children we are.

Arthur’s quick memory had soon caught up the rhythm of these beautiful lines, greatly to Mrs. Blatherwick’s astonishment; whereupon the latter proceeded to chant them to their appropriate melody, bidding Arthur pay good heed and learn the air. The air was lugubrious in the extreme, just fitted for being sung by a sturdy mendicant of the streets, and it lost nothing in effect when rendered by the now croaking, now whining, now snarling falsetto of Mrs. Blatherwick. So she began: —

Be — ‘old — thee — lee — lees — hof — thee — field,

They — tile — not — nei — ther — spin;

and at the end of each verse Arthur took up the strain and did his best to imitate the whining nasality which his instructress exhibited in such perfection. It was not to be expected that he should all at once reach the summits of his new art, but he did so far well as to earn Mrs. Blatherwick’s approbation. By about nine o’clock he had thoroughly learnt both words and air. Accordingly his landlady gave him leave to ascend to the garret in which he had formerly lived with his father, and there to remain for the rest of the night.

This room had not been occupied since poor Golding had left it in his coffin, and now contained neither more nor less furniture than on the night of his death. Somehow or other the pieces of brown paper supplying the places of the broken panes of glass had got torn off, and the wind blew into the room with chilling breath. Despite all this discomfort, poor Arthur heaved a sigh of relief as he entered the door. Having done his best to make it fast behind him, by drawing with difficulty a very rusty bolt, he ran with a low cry to the corner in which his father had lain when last he saw him, and flinging himself on the spot, wept aloud in the bitterness of his heart. Outside it was raining hard, and each fierce gust of wind swept large drops through the gaps in the windows, making the floor quite wet. The room would have been perfectly dark, save for a slight gleam which shone from a window directly opposite, where there was no blind to conceal the bright fire and the oil lamp by which two women were sitting at their needles. The child did not notice the darkness; it was nothing to him, for the terrible gloom within his heart would have made the lightest chamber seem black as midnight. For half an hour he lay upon the floor, a prey to anguish such as few grown men are capable of experiencing.

He was roused from a species of lethargy at length by the sound of ten o’clock pealing from a church hard by. Feeling tired, he took off his coat, rolled it up to form a pillow, and lay down with the intention of sleeping. But it was long before he succeeded in attaining that happy oblivion. The noises outside attracted his attention irresistibly; he endeavoured to separate the different elements out of the mingled sounds which made themselves heard amid the wind and rain. Presently the latter ceased, and surprised by a ray of strange light which suddenly streamed through the window and made a large white square upon the floor, he looked up and saw that. the full moon was struggling for life amid surging billows of clouds. Shortly ensued noises in the room below his; there were angry voices, followed by blows and the smashing of crockery. It was nothing new, he was aware of the quarrelsome habits of the people underneath. Then the court grew suddenly lively with a gathering of children, who had eagerly escaped from the houses on the cessation of the rain. No matter that it was drawing on towards midnight, there were the voices of children four or five years old, screaming and calling as if it were noonday; for the wholesome division of time made for the children of the rich is all unknown to these nurselings of Whitecross Street. They seemed at length to be joining in a game, which consisted partly in going round and round in a circle, chanting a song the while. Arthur knew the game and the song well enough; the latter began with the words: —

There is a happy land, far, far away;

and as he listened to the shrill chorus of young voices he found himself unconsciously joining with them. And so at length, blending the words of this song with those of the hymn which Mrs. Blatherwick had just taught him, he was overcome with weariness and fell asleep.

It wanted three days to Christmas; accordingly no time was to be lost in making the most of that spasmodic spirit of charity which appears to possess certain people at this period of the year. Mrs. Blatherwick roused Arthur from his slumbers about seven the next morning, and bade him get up quickly. He was not, however, to continue to wear the clothes in which Mr. Norman had clad him; instead of these the landlady made him assume a pair of trousers and a coat so ragged and filthy that they would scarcely hold together, and were absolutely no protection against the cold. The other clothes Mrs. Blatherwick took away with her; doubtless she had an object in so doing.

Though roused so early it was not till shortly after nine o’clock that Bill Blatherwick issued forth upon his day’s work, accompanied by the shivering and wretched child. Bill’s scene of action lay for the most part in the wealthier neighbourhood of the West End, and the charitable persons who ministered to his support were not in the habit of rising with the lark. Arthur had never as yet seen Bill in professional costume, and the appearance of the latter slightly surprised him. The mendicant wore his ordinary garments, for it would have been impossible to find worse, but over each eye he had tied a large green shade, the pair being not unlike the blinkers of horses, which signified that he had sustained the irreparable misfortune of loss of eyesight. He had, moreover, all at once become one-armed, the left being so skilfully disposed that nothing but a close examination could have shown that it was not in reality amputated. On his head was a chimney-pot hat, terribly battered, around which was wrapped a piece of white cardboard, bearing these words, half in written, half in printed, characters: —

“CHRISTIEN FRENDS!

Pray concider a widood Father

The victim of a Explogion

And may God bless you.”

In his right hand he held a stick, and he directed Arthur to guide him by the empty sleeve on the other side. In this manner they issued out of Whitecross Street and proceeded westwards.

The morning was dry and cold, and before long large flakes of snow began to fall. Bill was rather glad of this than otherwise; it enhanced the pathos of the situation; and abundant were the coppers thrown down from windows for the relief of the blind widower and his motherless boy. Truly it was not without cause that the mendicant whined out his trust that in proportion as he excelled in moral worth the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, a kindly Providence would take thought for his future sustenance. It was a bad street indeed which did not produce three pennies, and when it is taken into consideration that Bill did, as a rule, thirty streets a day, there will no longer be wonder as to how he procured the means of spending such pleasant evenings at the “Rose and Crown.” The severity of the weather was nothing to him, for underneath his miserable outward clothing he always took care to have good warm shirts wherewith to ward off the onslaughts of the northeast wind. But poor Arthur possessed no such means of comfort, and the suffering he underwent was indeed cruel. For all the protection that his rags afforded him he might as well have been naked, every blast which swept along the white-lined streets sent a shower of snow-flakes through the interstices of his garments on to his very skin. The first hour of his torture sufficed to render his hands and feet numb beyond perception of pain, which was perhaps a blessing; but the other parts of his body were kept in constant suffering from other sources than the cold. For Bill, who was as rank a bully and coward as ever sang hymns to procure the wherewithal for a glass of gin, found a constant source of amusement in secretly torturing the poor boy. One moment he would unexpectedly pinch his arm till his nails almost met in the flesh; or, when he thought himself secure from observation, he would deal him a severe blow with the stick he held in his hand, hissing terrific threats in his ear when a cry of pain burst from the sufferer’s lips; or he would purposely tread with his heavy-soled boots upon the boy’s almost bare feet; in short he was inexhaustible in the discovery of exquisite tortures, grinning with delight as he saw them take effect to the full extent of his wishes. When at noon he retreated into a miserable den in the regions of Holborn, where he was well known, and there partook of a very substantial meal, he took a fierce delight in eyeing from beneath his raised blinkers the hungry glances of the boy, who, with pinched lips and hollow cheeks, sat gazing with wolfish eagerness at the fare which he was forbidden to touch. When Bill had finished his meal, Arthur received a dry crust, which he seized upon thankfully, and gnawed as they once more took their way through the driving snow. He felt as though it would have relieved him to have cried, but the very source of tears seemed frozen within him.

With the falling night they turned their steps homewards, and another piece of dry bread, together with a steaming cup of what it pleased Mrs. Blatherwick to style coffee, formed Arthur’s supper, after which he was bidden to betake himself once more to the garret, where he found a mattress and one or two old blankets — signs of his landlady’s growing consideration. In the morning once more began his sufferings.

At length it was Christmas Eve, — an occasion celebrated in Whiteross Street just as much as in the homes of wealth and refinement. With dusk the revels began, and, till the hour of closing, the public-houses swarmed with men, women, and children doing their best to welcome with due rejoicing the birthday of Christianity. Far be it from me to emulate the skill of those numberless holy men who have exhausted their inventions in describing those regions which are to be the future home of no inconsiderable portion of the human race; but, had I a tithe of their descriptive power, 0, what a hell could I depict in the Whitecross Street of this Christmas Eve! Out of the very depths of human depravity bubbled up the foulest miasmata which the rottenness of the human heart can breed, usurping the dominion of the pure air of heaven, stifling a whole city with their infernal reek.

The very curs that had followed their masters into the gin-palaces shrank out into the street again, affrighted by the brutal din. Here was a dense, surging crowd around the doors of such a house, surrounding two men who had been flung bodily forth by half a dozen policemen, and who now wallowed in the filth of the gutter, rending each other with tooth and nail, till one of them was carried off insensible or dead. Here rushed along the street a band of women, raving mad with drink and the passions it had aroused, rendering the gift of speech a hideous curse by the language they yelled aloud. Here were children, all but naked, wrangling and fighting for the possession of a jug of liquor which they had somehow procured. And, amid all, the shops and booths, ablaze with light, were doing the briskest trade of any day of the year. Here was poverty cheating poverty of its last pence; here was garbage sold for meat and poison for bread; from every hole and corner of the street and its foul alleys peered vice and crime. Nay, as the newspapers will shortly tell us, even murder was not absent from this Christmas Eve. Walk here with me hand-inhand, 0 cynic, thou who holdest that the roots of humanity spring from the seed of evil, walk here with me, and, if thou wilt, declare thy belief confirmed.

Christmas Eve!. There are midnight services to-night in London churches, and voices are lifted up in hymn and praise, glorification of God that he has sent His Son to proclaim peace on earth and goodwill to men, to be the herald of a time when universal love shall rule the earth. In the great houses of the West End — those from which rained the coppers which Bill Blatherwick was at present spending at the “Rose and Crown,” the very heart of the hell I have described — in these houses there are Christmas trees to-night, and gaily-dressed children sport beneath the flash of the magnificent chandeliers, half mad with the enjoyment of the merriest night of the year. What if Bill Blatherwick himself, bestially drunk as he now is, were to be transported bodily into one of these mansions and then thrown down upon the carpet — a novel excitement for these Christmas guests! Would it strike any of them, with the terrific force of a God-sent revelation, that to them individually was due a share of the evil which has bred such an unutterable abomination? Alas! Whitecross Street is very far off in that shocking East End which it is quite improper to think of, let alone visit, and there is but little possibility that its reek, powerful as it is, would pierce these stone walls and make itself felt above the perfumes which fill the dazzling chambers.

And in all this Arthur Golding bore his part. Mrs. Blatherwick, having got completely drunk long before dark, was quite extravagant in her benevolence to him. She even gave him the pot out of which she was drinking “four-half” from the nearest public-house, and bade him, with a curse, drink as much as he would. He did so, and, shortly after, finding himself unnoticed by the people who streamed in and out of the house, wandered into the streets and looked about him. He had no playmates here, and was perforce alone, for the boisterousness of the children. terrified him, and an instinctive delicacy made him shrink from their rude games.

Intent upon the varied scenes surrounding him he wandered out of Whitecross Street into the larger streets beyond, pausing at each large shop he passed, and doing his best to imagine that the lights warmed him. The grocers’ shops particularly attracted his attention, laid out in all the magnificence of Christmas provisions, and his eyes gloated over what seemed to him the priceless delicacies which flashed and glistened in the light of the gas-jets.

Before one shop in particular he stood a long while, gazing at a vast array of crystallised fruits which filled the window. He could imagine, though he had never tasted, the delicious sweetness of these fruits, and, all insensible to the fierce blasts which were cutting him to the very bone, he enjoyed in fancy such feasts as only the Prophet’s faithful in Paradise would be capable of realising. Tearing himself from these delights he came to an eating-house, and here, instead of a sweet, enjoyed in fancy a savoury repast. The window was filled with large beef-steak pies, placed on perforated tin, from beneath which issued clouds of steam and kept the pies warm. Now and again a brawny arm, bared to the elbow, would appear through the steam,. and with a great knife, would pierce into one of these succulent delicacies, causing such streams of gravy to flow, and exposing to the view such luscious gobbets of fat, that a cry of envious pleasure broke from the child’s hungry lips.

Not Schecabac at the Barmecide’s table, not Sancho Panza, when Dr. Rizio seemed to bid fair to starve him in his island, ever suffered so from the tortures of stimulated but unsatisfied appetite as did poor little Arthur in front of these shops. And when shortly after he came to one where a whole roast pig was exposed to view, dressed in such a manner as to suggest delights which only Charles Lamb could fitly celebrate, the ravenous boy felt he could have pounced upon it like a beast of prey and torn it limb from limb in the ferocity of his hunger.

He had strayed as far as the corner of Old Street and City Road, when his eye was caught by the glow of a little fire which marked the spot where a baked-potato man had his stand. The man was doing a brisk trade just now, and Arthur was tempted to join the small group which stood around him and timidly held out his hands towards the warmth of the fire. This was grateful to his half-frozen limbs, but even more so was the delightful odour which exhaled as often as the man opened the little iron door and took out a potato to hand to a customer.

Oh, could he but afford a baked potato! He well knew the price of them was one half-penny, and yet they were as much out of his reach as if they had cost a pound. With greedy eyes he followed the man’s every movement, saw him, as each customer advanced, draw out a brown-jacket, open it, and sprinkle on the inside salt and pepper. Then he watched the purchaser taking the first bite as he walked away, and was half persuaded to spring upon him like a young tiger and rend the food from his grasp.

Again and again he walked away, and as often returned. The potato-man had not been unobservant of his comings and goings; once or twice he had been on the point of bidding him be off, but he was not a hasty-tempered man, and something in the boy’s face forbade harshness. At length, when no customer was by, and Arthur had been standing for several minutes warming himself, the man suddenly inquired —

“What for you, my man?”

Arthur started and turned to hurry away, but the man called him back.

“Here, young un, don’t look so scared. Give us your ‘arfpenny, an’ ’ere’s a big un for you.”

Arthur stammered that he had not a halfpenny.

“Ain’t got a ‘arfpenny? D’yer mean to say you’ve spent all your earnin’s already?”

“They never give me anything to spend,” replied the boy.

“Yer look ‘ungry,” said the man, after looking at him for a moment.

“I’m very hungry,” was all that Arthur could reply.

“Hum! I thought as much. Maybe you could eat a tater?”

“That I could,” said the hungry boy.

The man took out a large floury potato and broke it open.

“D’yer like pepper, young un?”

“Yes, please.”

“And salt? — of course you does. ‘Ere goes. Now let’s see if yer know how to eat.”

Arthur seized the potato with almost savage eagerness, and devoured it, steaming hot as it was. He was then going off, after thanking his friend, but the latter put another potato in his hands and bade him eat it on his way home. He seemed to have a certain pleasure in the boy’s look of gratitude.

“Well, well, it’s Christmas Eve,” he muttered to himself as he watched Arthur walk away; “and a penny ain’t so much arter all. Poor little devil!”

And if every man in London had been as judiciously charitable that night as was the baked-potato man, the Christmas Day which followed would have been rich with a blossoming of unwonted happiness.