Dead Man's Shoes Torrent
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A LONDON dust-yard is, I think, the ne plus ultra of ugliness.It stands most likely in the midst of a dingy, miry chaos of straddling railwayarches and coal sidings. The whitewash on the pens of neighbouring cattlestations only, by its contrast, makes the circumjacent dirt more noticeable.Very likely, too, there is a gloomy gas works near at hand, and a muddy canal,burdened with grimy, gritty, splashed, mal-odorous barges, creeping past theyard. When rain falls on its "soil," how different is the odourexhaled from that sent up from garden-mould beneath a summer shower! There is ahuddle of black mounds, big and little, whose bulk tilted carts are increasingwith shot loads, that send out clouds of blinding, stifling dust. Besides the dust-heaps, sifted and unsifted, [-128-]there are piles of old metal, old shoes, brick- bats, oyster shells,rags, bones and cinders. Think of pigs and poultry routing and pecking in thegolden straw around a farm-house, and then look at the melancholy swine, thedismal ducks, and penitential hens which grub, with Lenten ashes not only ontheir heads but all over them, within the dust-yard. When the cocks try to crow,they seem, like the Ancient Mariner and his companions, to have been"choked with soot." In such a dreary place of industry a row of dust-dredged,leather-aproned women were sifting as usual, with their little ones grubbingnear them, very much like the pigs, only with perhaps a shade more cheerfulness,- since even in a dust-yard, thank heaven, a child can manage to be merry, -when one of the sifters suddenly exclaimed, "It beats me, it do, however Jack come to take up wi' aweak young gal like she. She didn't ought to ha' come to the yard this mornin'.'Old up, can't yer" The woman addressed the last words to a young fellow-worker,about to become a mother, who had fallen face foremost into the dust she hadbeen sifting. " 'Old up, can't yer My ole man would ha' licked me -an' surve me jolly well right - if I'd been sich a chicken. You're a nice 'unfor a smart chap like Jack to take up with!" [-129-] Bet might have a roughtongue, but she had, after a fashion, a kind heart, and accordingly, when"Madam Sal" had come a little to herself, she helped her home. Bill,the man who was "feeding" the sieves, and the other sifters resumedtheir work as if nothing had happened; but as the sultry day wore on and Bet didnot return, their curiosity was excited. One of the youngsters was despatched toJack's house, or rather room, to learn what was "up," and brought backthis news,- "Sal's dead; an' there's two kids, a b'y an' a gal, an'Bet's a-nussin' on 'em." The extemporized nurse was partly actuated by a genuinefeeling of motherly and sisterly pity. She called to mind the babies she hadlost, and was sorry for the wailing little twins up on' her lap. She felt sorry,too, for the young creature she had pulled off the dust-heap. The grime had beenwashed off "Madam Sal's" comely face - still comely, although wasted -but Bet no longer felt envious of its good looks. (The "Madam" had been added to Sal's name by hercomrades, partly in envious satire, partly in reluctant compliment; she was notonly far handsomer than they, but also morally superior. She did not get drunk.swear, or fight; she had insisted on having "marriage lines," and hadalways been true to her Jack; and she had some dim notion of a God and ahereafter.) [-130-] The corpse had beenstreeked as decently as circumstances would permit. With the moty afternoonsunlight pouring in upon the washed face, it lay at rest in the dusty, crowdedlittle room - no yard but the grave-yard now for it to go to. Bet and hergossips, out of respect to the dead, talked as if they had all got very badcolds; but neither their hoarse whispers nor the unchecked laughter andwrangling going on as usual outside the chamber of death, were anything to theyoung mother who could not hear the cries of her two poor helpless little babes.She was at peace, having done her duty in her