Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished: A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure

But it was not till Bob Frog got his mother all to himself, under the trees, near the waterfall, down by the river that drove the still unmended saw-mill, that they had real and satisfactory communion. It would have been interesting to have listened to these two—with memories and sympathies and feelings towards the Saviour of sinners so closely intertwined, yet with knowledge and intellectual powers in many respects so far apart. But we may not intrude too closely.

Towards the end of their walk, Bob touched on a subject which had been uppermost in the minds of both all the time, but from which they had shrunk equally, the one being afraid to ask, the other disinclined to tell.

“Mother,” said Bob, at last, “what about father?”

“Ah! Bobby,” replied Mrs Frog, beginning to weep, gently, “I know’d ye would come to that—you was always so fond of ’im, an’ he was so fond o’ you too, indeed—”

“I know it, mother,” interrupted Bob, “but have you never heard of him?”

“Never. I might ’ave, p’r’aps, if he’d bin took an’ tried under his own name, but you know he had so many aliases, an’ the old ’ouse we used to live in we was obliged to quit, so p’r’aps he tried to find us and couldn’t.”

“May God help him—dear father!” said the son in a low sad voice.

“I’d never ’ave left ’im, Bobby, if he ’adn’t left me. You know that. An’ if I thought he was alive and know’d w’ere he was, I’d go back to ’im yet, but—”

The subject was dropped here, for the new mill came suddenly into view, and Bob was glad to draw his mother’s attention to it.

“See, we were mending that just before we got the news you were so near us. Come, I’ll show it to you. Tim Lumpy and I made it all by ourselves, and I think you’ll call it a first-class article. By the way, how came you to travel first-class?”

“Oh! that’s all along of Sir Richard Brandon. He’s sitch a liberal gentleman, an’ said that as it was by his advice we were goin’ to Canada, he would pay our expenses; and he’s so grand that he never remembered there was any other class but first, when he took the tickets, an’ when he was show’d what he’d done he laughed an’ said he wouldn’t alter it, an’ we must go all the way first-class. He’s a strange man, but a good ’un!”

By this time they had reached the platform of the damaged saw-mill, and Bob pointed out, with elaborate care, the details of the mill in all its minute particulars, commenting specially on the fact that most of the telling improvements on it were due to the fertile brain and inventive genius of Tim Lumpy. He also explained the different kinds of saws—the ripping saw, and the cross-cut saw, and the circular saw, and the eccentric saw—just as if his mother were an embryo mill-wright, for he felt that she took a deep interest in it all, and Mrs Frog listened with the profound attention of a civil engineer, and remarked on everything with such comments as—oh! indeed! ah! well now! ain’t it wonderful? amazin’! an’ you made it all too! Oh! Bobby!—and other more or less appropriate phrases.

On quitting the mill to return to the house they saw a couple of figures walking down another avenue, so absorbed in conversation that they did not at first observe Bob and his mother, or take note of the fact that Matty, being a bouncing girl, had gone after butterflies or some such child-alluring insects.

It was Tim Lumpy and Hetty Frog.

And no wonder that they were absorbed, for was not their conversation on subjects of the profoundest interest to both?—George Yard, Whitechapel, Commercial Street, Spitalfields, and the Sailor’s Home, and the Rests, and all the other agencies for rescuing poor souls in monstrous London, and the teachers and school companions whom they had known there and never could forget! No wonder, we say, that these two were absorbed while comparing notes, and still less wonder that they were even more deeply absorbed when they got upon the theme of Bobby Frog—so much loved, nay, almost worshipped, by both.

At last they observed Mrs Frog’s scarlet shawl—which was very conspicuous—and her son, and tried to look unconscious, and wondered with quite needless surprise where Matty could have gone to.

Bobby Frog, being a sharp youth, noted these things, but made no comment to any one, for the air of Canada had, somehow, invested this waif with wonderful delicacy of feeling.

Although Bob and his mother left off talking of Ned Frog somewhat abruptly, as well as sorrowfully, it does not follow that we are bound to do the same. On the contrary, we now ask the reader to leave Brankly Farm rather abruptly, and return to London for the purpose of paying Ned a visit.

Chapter Twenty Seven.

A Strange Visit and its Results

Edward Frog, bird-fancier, pugilist, etcetera, (and the etcetera represents an unknown quantity), has changed somewhat like the rest, for a few years have thinned the short-cropped though once curly locks above his knotted forehead, besides sprinkling them with grey. But in other respects he has not fallen off—nay he has rather improved, owing to the peculiar system of diet and discipline and regularity of life to which, during these years, he has been subjected.

When Ned returned from what we may style his outing, he went straight to the old court with something like a feeling of anxiety in his heart, but found the old home deserted and the old door, which still bore deep marks of his knuckle, on the upper panels and his boots on the lower, was padlocked. He inquired for Mrs Frog, but was told she had left the place long ago,—and no one knew where she had gone.

With a heavy heart Ned turned from the door and sauntered away, friendless and homeless. He thought of making further inquiries about his family, but at the corner of the street smelt the old shop that had swallowed up so much of his earnings.

“If I’d on’y put it all in the savin’s bank,” he said bitterly, stopping in front of the gin-palace, “I’d ’ave bin well off to-day.”

An old comrade turned the corner at that moment.

“What! Ned Frog!” he cried, seizing his hand and shaking it with genuine goodwill. “Well, this is good luck. Come along, old boy!”

It was pleasant to the desolate man to be thus recognised. He went along like an ox to the slaughter, though, unlike the ox, he knew well what he was going to.

He was “treated.” He drank beer. Other old friends came in. He drank gin. If good resolves had been coming up in his mind earlier in the day he forgot them now. If better feelings had been struggling for the mastery, he crushed them now. He got drunk. He became disorderly. He went into High Street, Whitechapel, with a view to do damage to somebody. He succeeded. He tumbled over a barrow, and damaged his own shins. He encountered Number 666 soon after, and, through his influence, passed the night in a police cell.

After this Ned gave up all thought of searching for his wife and family.

“Better let ’em alone,” he growled to himself on being discharged from the police-office with a caution.

But, as we have said or hinted elsewhere, Ned was a man of iron will. He resolved to avoid the public-house, to drink in moderation, and to do his drinking at home. Being as powerful and active as ever he had been, he soon managed, in the capacity of a common labourer, to scrape enough money together to enable him to retake his old garret, which chanced to be vacant. Indeed its situation was so airy, and it was so undesirable, that it was almost always vacant. He bought a few cages and birds; found that the old manager of the low music-hall was still at work and ready to employ him, and thus fell very much into his old line of life.

One night, as he was passing into his place of business—the music-hall—a man saw him and recognised him. This was a city missionary of the John Seaward type, who chanced to be fishing for souls that night in these troubled waters. There are many such fishermen about, thank God, doing their grand work unostentatiously, and not only rescuing souls for eternity, but helping, more perhaps than even the best informed are aware of, to save London from tremendous evil.

What it was in Ned Frog that attracted this man of God we know note but, after casting his lines for some hours in other places, he returned to the music-hall and loitered about the door.

At a late hour its audience came pouring out with discordant cries and ribald laughter. Soon Ned appeared and took his way homeward. The missionary followed at a safe distance till he saw Ned disappear through the doorway that led to his garret. Then, running forward, he entered the dark passage and heard Ned’s heavy foot clanking on the stone steps as he mounted upwards.

The sound became fainter, and the missionary, fearing lest he should fail to find the room in which his man dwelt—for there were many rooms in the old tenement—ran hastily up-stairs and paused to listen. The footsteps were still sounding above him, but louder now, because Ned was mounting a wooden stair. A few seconds later a heavy door was banged, and all was quiet.

The city missionary now groped his way upwards until he came to the highest landing, where in the thick darkness he saw a light under a door. With a feeling of uncertainty and a silent prayer for help he knocked gently. The door was opened at once by a middle-aged woman, whose outline only could be seen, her back being to the light.

“Is it here that the man lives who came up just now?” asked the missionary.

“What man?” she replied, fiercely, “I know nothink about men, an’ ’ave nothink to do with ’em. Ned Frog’s the on’y man as ever comes ’ere, an’ he lives up there.”

She made a motion, as if pointing upwards somewhere, and banged the door in her visitor’s face.

“Up there!” The missionary had reached the highest landing, and saw no other gleam of light anywhere. Groping about, however, his hand struck against a ladder. All doubt as to the use of this was immediately banished, for a man’s heavy tread was heard in the room above as he crossed it.

Mounting the ladder, the missionary, instead of coming to a higher landing as he had expected, thrust his hat against a trap-door in the roof. Immediately he heard a savage human growl. Evidently the man was in a bad humour, but the missionary knocked.

“Who’s there?” demanded the man, fiercely, for his visitors were few, and these generally connected with the police force.

“May I come in?” asked the missionary in a mild voice—not that he put the mildness on for the occasion. He was naturally mild—additionally so by grace.

“Oh! yes—you may come in,” cried the man, lifting the trap-door.

The visitor stepped into the room and was startled by Ned letting fall the trap-door with a crash that shook the whole tenement. Planting himself upon it, he rendered retreat impossible.

It was a trying situation, for the man was in a savage humour, and evidently the worse for drink. But missionaries are bold men.

“Now,” demanded Ned, “what may you want?”

“I want your soul,” replied his visitor, quietly.

“You needn’t trouble yourself, then, for the devil’s got it already.”

“No—he has not got it yet, Ned.”