Nowhere in the streets of London may one escape the sight of abject poverty, while five minutes' walk from almost any point will bring one to a slum; but the region my hansom was now penetrating was one unending slum.The streets were filled with a new and different race of people, short of stature, and of wretched or beer-sodden appearance.We rolled along through miles of bricks and squalor, and from each cross street and alley flashed long vistas of bricks and misery.Here and there lurched a drunken man or woman, and the air was obscene with sounds of jangling and squabbling.At a market, tottery old men and women were searching in the garbage thrown in the mud for rotten potatoes, beans, and vegetables, while little children clustered like flies around a festering mass of fruit, thrusting their arms to the shoulders into the liquid corruption, and drawing forth morsels, but partially decayed, which they devoured on the spot.
Not a hansom did I meet with in all my drive, while mine was like an apparition from another and better world, the way the children ran after it and alongside.And as far as I could see were the solid walls of brick, the slimy pavements, and the screaming streets; and for the first time in my life the fear of the crowd smote me.It was like the fear of the sea; and the miserable multitudes, street upon street, seemed so many waves of a vast and malodorous sea, lapping about me and threatening to well up and over me.
'Stepney, sir; Stepney Station,' the cabby called down.
I looked about.It was really a railroad station, and he had driven desperately to it as the one familiar spot he had ever heard of in all that wilderness.
'Well?' I said.
He spluttered unintelligibly, shook his head, and looked very miserable.'I'm a strynger 'ere,' he managed to articulate.'An' if yer don't want Stepney Station, I'm blessed if I know wotcher do want.'
'I'll tell you what I want,' I said.'You drive along and keep your eye out for a shop where old clothes are sold.Now, when you see such a shop, drive right on till you turn the corner, then stop and let me out.'
I could see that he was growing dubious of his fare, but not long afterward he pulled up to the curb and informed me that an old clothes shop was to be found a bit of the way back.
'Won'tcher py me?' he pleaded.'There's seven an' six owin' me.'
'Yes,' I laughed, 'and it would be the last I'd see of you.'
'Lord lumme, but it'll be the last I see of you if yer don't py me,'
he retorted.
But a crowd of ragged onlookers had already gathered around the cab, and I laughed again and walked back to the old clothes shop.
Here the chief difficulty was in making the shopman understand that I really and truly wanted old clothes.But after fruitless attempts to press upon me new and impossible coats and trousers, he began to bring to light heaps of old ones, looking mysterious the while and hinting darkly.This he did with the palpable intention of letting me know that he had 'piped my lay,' in order to bulldoze me, through fear of exposure, into paying heavily for my purchases.Aman in trouble, or a high-class criminal from across the water, was what he took my measure for- in either case, a person anxious to avoid the police.
But I disputed with him over the outrageous difference between prices and values, till I quite disabused him of the notion, and he settled down to drive a hard bargain with a hard customer.In the end I selected a pair of stout though well-worn trousers, a frayed jacket with one remaining button, a pair of brogans which had plainly seen service where coal was shovelled, a thin leather belt, and a very dirty cloth cap.My underclothing and socks, however, were new and warm, but of the sort that any American waif, down in his luck, could acquire in the ordinary course of events.
'I must sy yer a sharp 'un,' he said, with counterfeit admiration, as I handed over the ten shillings finally agreed upon for the outfit.
'Blimey, if you ain't ben up an' down Petticut Lane afore now.Yer trouseys is wuth five bob to hany man, an' a docker'ud give two an'
six for the shoes, to sy nothin' of the coat an' cap an' new stoker's singlet an' hother things.'
'How much will you give me for them?' I demanded suddenly.'I paid you ten bob for the lot, and I'll sell them back to you, right now, for eight.Come, it's a go!'
But he grinned and shook his head, and though I had made a good bargain, I was unpleasantly aware that he had made a better one.
