the celebrated tommy first comes into view on a dirty london stair, and he was in sexless garments, which were all he had, and he was five, and so though we are looking at him, we must do it sideways, lest he sit down hurriedly to hide them. that inscrutable face, which made the clubmen of his later days uneasy and even puzzled the ladies while he was making love to them, was already his, except when he smiled at one of his pretty thoughts or stopped at an open door to sniff a potful. on his way up and down the stair he often paused to sniff, but he never asked for anything; his mother had warned him against it, and he carried out her injunction with almost unnecessary spirit, declining offers before they were made, as when passing a room, whence came the smell of fried fish, he might call in, "i don't not want none of your fish," or "my mother says i don't not want the littlest bit," or wistfully, "i ain't hungry," or more wistfully still, "my mother says i ain't hungry." his mother heard of this and was angry, crying that he had let the neighbors know something she was anxious to conceal, but what he had revealed to them tommy could not make out, and when he questioned her artlessly, she took him with sudden passion to her flat breast, and often after that she looked at him long and woefully and wrung her hands.
the only other pleasant smell known to tommy was when the water-carts passed the mouth of his little street. his street, which ended in a dead wall, was near the river, but on the doleful south side of it, opening off a longer street where the cabs of waterloo station sometimes found themselves when they took the wrong turning; his home was at the top of a house of four floors, each with accommodation for at least two families, and here he had lived with his mother since his father's death six months ago. there was oil-cloth on the stair as far as the second floor; there had been oil-cloth between the second floor and the third—tommy could point out pieces of it still adhering to the wood like remnants of a plaster.
this stair was nursery to all the children whose homes opened on it, not so safe as nurseries in the part of london that is chiefly inhabited by boys in sailor suits, but preferable as a centre of adventure, and here on an afternoon sat two. they were very busy boasting, but only the smaller had imagination, and as he used it recklessly, their positions soon changed; sexless garments was now prone on a step, breeches sitting on him.
shovel, a man of seven, had said, "none on your lip. you weren't never at thrums yourself."
tommy's reply was, "ain't my mother a thrums woman?"
shovel, who had but one eye, and that bloodshot, fixed it on him threateningly.
"the thames is in london," he said.
"'cos they wouldn't not have it in thrums," replied tommy.
"'amstead 'eath's in london, i tell yer," shovel said.
"the cemetery is in thrums," said tommy.
"there ain't no queens in thrums, anyhow."
"there's the auld licht minister."
"well, then, if you jest seed trafalgar square!"
"if you jest seed the thrums town-house!"
"st. paul's ain't in thrums."
"it would like to be."
after reflecting, shovel said in desperation, "well, then, my father were once at a hanging."
tommy replied instantly, "it were my father what was hanged."
there was no possible answer to this save a knock-down blow, but though tommy was vanquished in body, his spirit remained stanch; he raised his head and gasped, "you should see how they knock down in thrums!" it was then that shovel sat on him.
such was their position when an odd figure in that house, a gentleman, passed them without a word, so desirous was he to make a breath taken at the foot of the close stair last him to the top. tommy merely gaped after this fine sight, but shovel had experience, and "it's a kid or a coffin." he said sharply, knowing that only birth or death brought a doctor here.
watching the doctor's ascent, the two boys strained their necks over the rickety banisters, which had been polished black by trousers of the past, and sometimes they lost him, and then they saw his legs again.
"hello, it's your old woman!" cried shovel. "is she a deader?" he asked, brightening, for funerals made a pleasant stir on the stair.
the question had no meaning for bewildered tommy, but he saw that if his mother was a deader, whatever that might be, he had grown great in his companion's eye. so he hoped she was a deader.
"if it's only a kid," shovel began, with such scorn that tommy at once screamed, "it ain't!" and, cross-examined, he swore eagerly that his mother was in bed when he left her in the morning, that she was still in bed at dinner-time, also that the sheet was over her face, also that she was cold.
then she was a deader and had attained distinction in the only way possible in that street. shovel did not shake tommy's hand warmly, the forms of congratulation varying in different parts of london, but he looked his admiration so plainly that tommy's head waggled proudly. evidently, whatever his mother had done redounded to his glory as well as to hers, and somehow he had become a boy of mark. he said from his elevation that he hoped shovel would believe his tales about thrums now, and shovel, who had often cuffed tommy for sticking to him so closely, cringed in the most snobbish manner, craving permission to be seen in his company for the next three days. tommy, the upstart, did not see his way to grant this favor for nothing, and shovel offered a knife, but did not have it with him; it was his sister ameliar's knife, and he would take it from her, help his davy. tommy would wait there till shovel fetched it. shovel, baffled, wanted to know what tommy was putting on hairs for. tommy smiled, and asked whose mother was a deader. then shovel collapsed, and his wind passed into tommy.
the reign of thomas sandys, nevertheless, was among the shortest, for with this question was he overthrown: "how did yer know she were cold?"
"because," replied tommy, triumphantly, "she tell me herself."
shovel only looked at him, but one eye can be so much more terrible than two, that plop, plop, plop came the balloon softly down the steps of the throne and at the foot shrank pitifully, as if with ameliar's knife in it.
"it's only a kid arter all!" screamed shovel, furiously. disappointment gave him eloquence, and tommy cowered under his sneers, not understanding them, but they seemed to amount to this, that in having a baby he had disgraced the house.
"but i think," he said, with diffidence, "i think i were once one."
then all shovel could say was that he had better keep it dark on that stair.
tommy squeezed his fist into one eye, and the tears came out at the other. a good-natured impulse was about to make shovel say that though kids are undoubtedly humiliations, mothers and boys get used to them in time, and go on as brazenly as before, but it was checked by tommy's unfortunate question, "shovel, when will it come?"
shovel, speaking from local experience, replied truthfully that they usually came very soon after the doctor, and at times before him.
"it ain't come before him," tommy said, confidently.
"how do yer know?"
"'cos it weren't there at dinner-time, and i been here since dinner-time."
the words meant that tommy thought it could only enter by way of the stair, and shovel quivered with delight. "h'st!" he cried, dramatically, and to his joy tommy looked anxiously down the stair, instead of up it.
"did you hear it?" tommy whispered.
before he could control himself shovel blurted out: "do you think as they come on their feet?"
"how then?" demanded tommy; but shovel had exhausted his knowledge of the subject. tommy, who had begun to descend to hold the door, turned and climbed upwards, and his tears were now but the drop left in a cup too hurriedly dried. where was he off to? shovel called after him; and he answered, in a determined whisper: "to shove of it out if it tries to come in at the winder."
this was enough for the more knowing urchin, now so full of good things that with another added he must spill, and away he ran for an audience, which could also help him to bait tommy, that being a game most sportive when there are several to fling at once. at the door he knocked over, and was done with, a laughing little girl who had strayed from a more fashionable street. she rose solemnly, and kissing her muff, to reassure it if it had got a fright, toddled in at the first open door to be out of the way of unmannerly boys.
tommy, climbing courageously, heard the door slam, and looking down he saw—a strange child. he climbed no higher. it had come.
after a long time he was one flight of stairs nearer it. it was making itself at home on the bottom step; resting, doubtless, before it came hopping up. another dozen steps, and—it was beautifully dressed in one piece of yellow and brown that reached almost to its feet, with a bit left at the top to form a hood, out of which its pert face peeped impudently; oho, so they came in their sunday clothes. he drew so near that he could hear it cooing: thought itself as good as upstairs, did it!
he bounced upon her sharply, thinking to carry all with a high hand. "out you go!" he cried, with the action of one heaving coals.
she whisked round, and, "oo boy or oo girl?" she inquired, puzzled by his dress.
"none of your cheek!" roared insulted manhood.
"oo boy," she said, decisively.
with the effrontery of them when they are young, she made room for him on her step, but he declined the invitation, knowing that her design was to skip up the stair the moment he was off his guard.
"you don't needn't think as we'll have you," he announced, firmly. "you had best go away to—go to—" his imagination failed him. "you had best go back," he said.
she did not budge, however, and his next attempt was craftier. "my mother," he assured her, "ain't living here now;" but mother was a new word to the girl, and she asked gleefully, "oo have mother?" expecting him to produce it from his pocket. to coax him to give her a sight of it she said, plaintively, "me no have mother."
"you won't not get mine," replied tommy doggedly.
she pretended not to understand what was troubling him, and it passed through his head that she had to wait there till the doctor came down for her. he might come at any moment.
a boy does not put his hand into his pocket until every other means of gaining his end has failed, but to that extremity had tommy now come. for months his only splendid possession had been a penny despised by trade because of a large round hole in it, as if (to quote shovel) some previous owner had cut a farthing out of it. to tell the escapades of this penny (there are no adventurers like coin of the realm) would be one way of exhibiting tommy to the curious, but it would be a hard-hearted way. at present the penny was doubly dear to him, having been long lost and lately found. in a noble moment he had dropped it into a charity box hanging forlorn against the wall of a shop, where it lay very lonely by itself, so that when tommy was that way he could hear it respond if he shook the box, as acquaintances give each other the time of day in passing. thus at comparatively small outlay did he spread his benevolence over weeks and feel a glow therefrom, until the glow went, when he and shovel recaptured the penny with a thread and a bent pin.
this treasure he sadly presented to the girl, and she accepted it with glee, putting it on her finger, as if it were a ring, but instead of saying that she would go now she asked him, coolly,
"oo know tories?"
"stories!" he exclaimed, "i'll—i'll tell you about thrums," and was about to do it for love, but stopped in time. "this ain't a good stair for stories," he said, cunningly. "i can't not tell stories on this stair, but i—i know a good stair for stories."
the ninny of a girl was completely hoodwinked; and see, there they go, each with a hand in the muff, the one leering, oh, so triumphantly; the other trusting and gleeful. there was an exuberance of vitality about her as if she lived too quickly in her gladness, which you may remember in some child who visited the earth for but a little while.
how superbly tommy had done it! it had been another keen brain pitted against his, and at first he was not winning. then up came thrums, and—but the thing has happened before; in a word, blücher. nevertheless, tommy just managed it, for he got the girl out of the street and on to another stair no more than in time to escape a ragged rabble, headed by shovel, who, finding their quarry gone, turned on their leader viciously, and had gloomy views of life till his cap was kicked down a sewer, which made the world bright again.
of the tales told by tommy that day in words scotch and cockney, of thrums, home of heroes and the arts, where the lamps are lit by a magician called leerie-leerie-licht-the-lamps (but he is also friendly, and you can fling stones at him), and the merest children are allowed to set the spinning-wheels a-whirling, and dagont is the swear, and the stairs are so fine that the houses wear them outside for show, and you drop a pail at the end of a rope down a hole, and sometimes it comes up full of water, and sometimes full of fairies—of these and other wonders, if you would know, ask not a dull historian, nor even go to thrums, but to those rather who have been boys and girls there and now are exiles. such a one tommy knows, an unhappy woman, foolish, not very lovable, flung like a stone out of the red quarry upon a land where it cannot grip, and tearing her heart for a sight of the home she shall see no more. from her tommy had his pictures, and he colored them rarely.
never before had he such a listener. "oh, dagont, dagont!" he would cry in ecstasy over these fair scenes, and she, awed or gurgling with mirth according to the nature of the last, demanded "'nother, 'nother!" whereat he remembered who and what she was, and showing her a morsel of the new one, drew her to more distant parts, until they were so far from his street that he thought she would never be able to find the way back.
his intention had been, on reaching such a spot, to desert her promptly, but she gave him her hand in the muff so confidingly that against his judgment he fell a-pitying the trustful mite who was wandering the world in search of a mother, and so easily diddled on the whole that the chances were against her finding one before morning. almost unconsciously he began to look about him for a suitable one.
they were now in a street much nearer to his own home than the spurts from spot to spot had led him to suppose. it was new to him, but he recognized it as the acme of fashion by those two sure signs; railings with most of their spikes in place, and cards scored with, the word "apartments." he had discovered such streets as this before when in shovel's company, and they had watched the toffs go out and in, and it was a lordly sight, for first the toff waggled a rail that was loose at the top and then a girl, called the servant, peeped at him from below, and then he pulled the rail again, and then the door opened from the inside, and you had a glimpse of wonder-land with a place for hanging hats on. he had not contemplated doing anything so handsome for the girl as this, but why should he not establish her here? there were many possible mothers in view, and thrilling with a sense of his generosity he had almost fixed on one but mistrusted the glint in her eye and on another when she saved herself by tripping and showing an undarned heel.
he was still of an open mind when the girl of a sudden cried, gleefully, "ma-ma, ma-ma!" and pointed, with her muff, across the street. the word was as meaningless to tommy as mother had been to her, but he saw that she was drawing his attention to a woman some thirty yards away.
"man—man!" he echoed, chiding her ignorance; "no, no, you blether, that ain't a man, that's a woman; that's woman—woman."
"ooman—ooman," the girl repeated, docilely, but when she looked again, "ma-ma, ma-ma," she insisted, and this was tommy's first lesson that however young you catch them they will never listen to reason.
she seemed of a mind to trip off to this woman, and as long as his own mother was safe, it did not greatly matter to tommy whom she chose, but if it was this one, she was going the wrong way about it. you cannot snap them up in the street.
the proper course was to track her to her house, which he proceeded to do, and his quarry, who was looking about her anxiously, as if she had lost something, gave him but a short chase. in the next street to the one in which they had first seen her, a street so like it that tommy might have admired her for knowing the difference, she opened the door with a key and entered, shutting the door behind her. odd to tell, the child had pointed to this door as the one she would stop at, which surprised tommy very much.
on the steps he gave her his final instructions, and she dimpled and gurgled, obviously full of admiration for him, which was a thing he approved of, but he would have liked to see her a little more serious.
"that is the door. well, then, i'll waggle the rail as makes the bell ring, and then i'll run."
that was all, and he wished she had not giggled most of the time. she was sniggering, as if she thought him a very funny boy, even when he rang the bell and bolted.
from a safe place he watched the opening of the door, and saw the frivolous thing lose a valuable second in waving the muff to him. "in you go!" he screamed beneath his breath. then she entered and the door closed. he waited an hour, or two minutes, or thereabout, and she had not been ejected. triumph!
with a drum beating inside him tommy strutted home, where, alas, a boy was waiting to put his foot through it.
