第24章

The street on which we stood, from wall to wall, was barely twenty feet wide.The sidewalks were three feet wide.It was a residence street.At least workmen and their families existed in some sort of fashion in the houses across from us.And each day and every day, from one in the afternoon till six, our ragged spike line is the principal feature of the view commanded by their front doors and windows.One workman sat in his door directly opposite us, taking his rest and a breath of air after the toil of the day.His wife came to chat with him.The doorway was too small for two, so she stood up.Their babes sprawled before them.And here was the spike line, less than a score of feet away- neither privacy for the workman, nor privacy for the pauper.About our feet played the children of the neighborhood.To them our presence was nothing unusual.We were not an intrusion.We were as natural and ordinary as the brick walls and stone curbs of their environment.They had been born to the sight of the spike line, and all their brief days they had seen it.

At six o'clock the line moved up, and we were admitted in groups of three.Name, age, occupation, place of birth, condition of destitution, and the previous night's 'doss,' were taken with lightning-like rapidity by the superintendent; and as I turned I was startled by a man's thrusting into my hand something that felt like a brick, and shouting into my ear, 'Any knives, matches, or tobacco?' 'No, sir,' I lied, as lied every man who entered.As Ipassed downstairs to the cellar, I looked at the brick in my hand, and saw that by doing violence to the language it might be called 'bread.'

By its weight and hardness it certainly must have been unleavened.

The light was very dim down in the cellar, and before I knew it some other man had thrust a pannikin into my other hand.Then I stumbled on to a still darker room, where were benches and tables and men.The place smelled vilely, and the sombre gloom, and the mumble of voices from out of the obscurity, made it seem more like some anteroom to the infernal regions.

Most of the men were suffering from tired feet, and they prefaced the meal by removing their shoes and unbinding the filthy rags with which their feet were wrapped.This added to the general noisomeness, while it took away from my appetite.

In fact, I found that I had made a mistake.I had eaten a hearty dinner five hours before, and to have done justice to the fare before me I should have fasted for a couple of days.The pannikin contained skilly, three-quarters of a pint, a mixture of Indian corn and hot water.The men were dipping their bread into heaps of salt scattered over the dirty tables.I attempted the same, but the bread seemed to stick in my mouth, and I remembered the words of the Carpenter: 'You need a pint of water to eat the bread nicely.'

I went over into a dark corner where I had observed other men going, and found the water.Then I returned and attacked the skilly.It was coarse of texture, unseasoned, gross, and bitter.This bitterness which lingered persistently in the mouth after the skilly had passed on, I found especially repulsive.I struggled manfully, but was mastered by my qualms, and half a dozen mouthfuls of skilly and bread was the measure of my success.The man beside me ate his own share, and mine to boot, scraped the pannikins, and looked hungrily for more.

'I met a "towny," and he stood me too good a dinner,' I explained.

'An' I 'aven't 'ad a bite since yesterday mornin',' he replied.

'How about tobacco?' I asked.'Will the bloke bother with a fellow now?'

'Oh, no,' he answered me.'No bloody fear.This is the easiest spike goin'.Y'oughto see some of them.Search you to the skin.'

The pannikins scraped clean, conversation began to spring up.

'This super'tendent 'ere is always writin' to the papers 'bout us mugs,' said the man on the other side of me.

'What does he say?' I asked.

'Oh, 'e sez we're no good, a lot o' blackguards an' scoundrels as won't work.Tells all the ole tricks I've bin 'earin' for twenty years an' w'ich I never seen a mug ever do.Las' thing of 'is I see, 'e was tellin' 'ow a mug gets out o' the spike, wi' a crust in 'is pockit.An' w'en 'e sees a nice ole gentleman comin' along the street 'e chucks the crust into the drain, an' borrows the old gent's stick to poke it out.An' then the ole gent gi'es 'im a tanner'

[sixpence].

A roar of applause greeted the time-honored yarn, and from somewhere over in the deeper darkness came another voice, orating angrily:-'Talk o' the country bein' good for tommy [food].I'd like to see it.I jest came up from Dover, an' blessed little tommy I got.They won't gi' ye a drink o' water, they won't, much less tommy.'

'There's mugs never go out of Kent,' spoke a second voice, 'an' they live bloomin' fat all along.'

'I come through Kent,' went on the first voice, still more angrily, 'an' Gawd blimey if I see any tommy.An' I always notices as the blokes as talks about 'ow much they can get, w'en they're in the spike can eat my share o' skilly as well as their bleedin' own.'

'There's chaps in London,' said a man across the table from me, 'that get all the tommy they want, an' they never think o' goin' to the country.Stay in London the year 'round.Nor do they think of lookin' for a kip [place to sleep), till nine or ten o'clock at night.'

A general chorus verified this statement.

'But they're bloody clever, them chaps,' said an admiring voice.

'Course they are,' said another voice.'But it's not the likes of me an' you can do it.You got to be born to it, I say.Them chaps 'ave ben openin' cabs an' sellin' papers since the day they was born, an'

their fathers an' mothers before 'em.It's all in the trainin', I say, an' the likes of me an' you 'ud starve at it.'

This also was verified by the general chorus, and likewise the statement that there were 'mugs as lives the twelvemonth 'round in the spike an' never get a blessed bit o' tommy other than spike skilly an'

bread.'

'I once got arf a crown in the Stratford spike,' said a new voice.