Part 6

Before we parted, he showed me casually a green diamond. This is the most rare form of stone, and there are only six known examples in the world. No, he didn't steal it. It had just been handed to him for setting, and he was carrying it in his waistcoat-pocket in the careless manner of all stone-dealers.

After he and a sure thousand pounds had vanished into the night, I sat for awhile in the café listening to the chatter of the cigarette-girls of the quarter.

It was all of war. Of Stefan, who had been repatriated; of Abramovitch, who had evaded service by bolting to Ireland with a false green form for which he had paid £100; of Sergius, who had been hiding in a cellar.

When one thinks of cigarette-girls one thinks at once of Marion Crawford's _Cigarette-maker's Romance_ and of Martin Harvey's super-sentimental performance in that play, so dear to the Streatham flapper. But Sonia Karavitch, though soaked in the qualities of her race--dark beauty, luxurious curls, brooding temper, and spiritual melancholy--would, I fear, repel those who only know her under the extravagantly refining rays of the limelight. But those who love humanity in the raw will love her.

Sonia Karavitch is seventeen. She wears a black frock, with many sprigs of red ribbon at her neck and in her raven hair. Her fingers are stained brown with tobacco; but, though she has heavy eyes and lounges languorously, like a drowsy cat in the sunshine, she works harder than most other factory-girls.

From six o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock at night she is at her table, rolling by the thousand those hand-made cigarettes which command big prices in Piccadilly. When she speaks she has a lazy voice with a curious lisp, and it is full of sadness.

Yet she is not sad. She has a pleasant little home in one of the big tenements, where she lives with her mother and little brother, and, in her own demonstrative way, is happy. The harder she works, the more money there is for luxuries for the little brother. Often of an evening her friends come home with her, and drink tea-and-lemon with her, and make music.

Sonia Karavitch is very shy, and never mixes with the folk who are not of her own colony. She was born in Stepney of Russian parents, and she never goes out of Stepney. And why should she? For in the half-dozen streets where she lives her daily life she can speak the language of her parents, can buy clothes such as her mother wore in Odessa, and can find all those little touches that mean home to the homeless or the exiled.

Every morning she goes straight to the factory; at noon she goes home to dinner; and in the evening she goes straight home again. Sometimes on Saturday afternoons--which is her Sunday, for Sonia is of Jewish faith--she takes a walk in Whitechapel High Street, because, you see, there is much life in Whitechapel High Street; there are her compatriots, and there are street-organs, and violets are a penny a bunch.

When she has had a good week she sometimes takes her mother and brother for kvass to one of the many Russian restaurants in Osborn Street and Little Montagu Street.

Sometimes you see Sonia Karavitch at a table, sipping her tea, and listening to the talk, and you may wonder why that sad, far-away look in her eyes. She is not in Stepney. Her soul has flown to her native land--to the steppes, to the cold airs of Russia, whither a certain Russian lad, who used to work by her side in the cigarette factory in Osborn Street, was dispatched by a repatriation order.

But then she remembers mother and little brother, and stops her dreamings, and hurries on to work.

Many wild folk have sat in these cafés and discoursed on the injustices of civilization; and at one time private presses in the neighbourhood gave forth inflammatory sheets bearing messages from international warriors in the cause of freedom.

If ever you are tired of the solemn round of existence, don't take a holiday at the seaside, don't go to the war. Edit an anarchist news-sheet, and your life will be full of quick perils and alarms.

Another of my Stepney friends is Jane, the flower-girl, who tramps every day from Stepney to Covent Garden, and sells her stock from a pitch near Leicester Square. Here's another ardent war-worker.

Some worthy people may not think that the selling of violets comes properly under the fine exclusive label of War Work; but these are the neurotics whose only idea of doing their bit is that of twisting their soiling fingers about anything that carries a message of grace; who fume at a young man because he isn't in khaki, and, when he is in uniform, kill him with a look because he isn't in hospital blue, and, when he is in hospital, regard him askance because he isn't eager to go back.

"Flowers!" they snort or wheeze. "Fiddling with flowers in war-time! It ought to be stopped. Look at the waste of labour. Look at the press on transport. Will the people never realize," etc.

Yet, good troglodytes, because the world is at war, shall we then wipe from the earth everything that links us, however lightly, to God--and save Germany the trouble? Must everything be lead and steel? Old Man--dost thou think, because thou art old, that glory and loveliness have passed away with the corroding of thy bones? Nay, youth shall still take or make its pleasure; fair girls shall still adorn their limbs with silks, and flowers shall still be sweet to the nose.

Old Man--on many occasions when I could get no food--not even war-bread--the sight and smell of bunches of violets have furnished sustenance for mind and body. So fill thy belly, if thou wilt, with the waxy potato; put the Army cheese where the soldier puts the pudding; shovel into thy mouth the frozen beef and offal that may renew thy energies for further war-work; but, if there be any grace of God still left in thee, if there be any virtue, any charity--leave, for those who are shielding thy senescent body, the flower-girls about Piccadilly Circus on a May morning.

"Vi'lerts! Swee' Vi'lerts! Pennyer bunch!"

Good morning, Jane! How sweet you and your violets look in the tangle of traffic that laces and interlaces itself about Alfred Gilbert's Mercury.

Morning by morning, fair or foggy, she stands by the fountain; and if you give her more than a passing glance you will note that her tumbled hair is of just the right shade of red, and in her eyes are the very violets that she holds to your indifferent nose, and under her lucent skin beat the imperious pulses of youth.

Jane is fourteen, and Jane is always smiling; not because she is fourteen, but because it's such fun to be alive and to be selling flowers. Indeed, she looks herself like a little posy, sweet and demure. Times may be bad, but they are not reflected in Jane's appearance.

Of education she has only what the Council School gave her in the odd hours when she choose to attend; of religion she has none, but she has a philosophy of her own, which, in a sentence, is To Get All The Fun You Can Out of Things.

That's why Jane's smile is a smile that certain people look for every morning as they alight from their bus in the Circus. But you must not imagine that Jane is good in the respectable sense of the word. Let anyone annoy her, or try to "dish" her of one of her customers. Then, when it comes to back-chat, Jane can more than hold her own in the matter of language; and once I saw an artillery officer's face turn livid during a discussion between her and a rival flower-girl.

The war has hit Jane very badly. The young bloods who frequented her stall in the old days, and bought the most expensive buttonholes every morning, are now in khaki, and a thoughtless Army Order forbids an officer to decorate his tunic with a spray of carnations or a moss-rose.

There are only the old bounders remaining, and their custom depends so much on such a number of things--the morning's news, the fact that they are not ten years younger, the weather, and the state of their digestions.

Jane always reads the paper before she starts work, because, as she says, then you know what to expect. She doesn't believe in meeting trouble halfway, but she believes in being prepared for it. When there's good news, stout old gentlemen will buy a bunch of violets for themselves, and perhaps a cluster of blossoms for the typist. But when the news is bad, nobody is in the mood for flowers. They want to band themselves together and tell one another how awful it is; which, as Jane says, is all wrong.

"If they'd only buy a bunch of violets and stick it in their coats, other people would feel better by looking at them, and they'd forget the bad news in the jolly old smell in their buttonhole."

Yes, Jane's fourteen years have given her much wisdom, and she is doing as fine war-work as any admiral or field-marshal.

While in Stepney we mustn't forget good Mrs. Joplin. Mrs. Joplin lives up a narrow court of menacing aspect, and in her window is a printed card, bearing the cryptic legend--"Mangling Done Here"--which, to an American friend of mine, suggested that atrocities of a German kind were going on downstairs. But I calmed his fears by assuring him that Mrs. Joplin's business card was a simple indication of her willingness to receive from her neighbours bundles of newly-washed clothes, and put them through a machine called a mangle, from which they were discharged neatly pressed and folded. The remuneration for this service is usually but a few coppers--beer-money, nothing more; so to procure the decencies of existence Mrs. Joplin lets her basement rooms for--What's that? Yes, I daresay you've had a few pewter half-crowns and florins passed on you lately, but what's that to do with me--or Mrs. Joplin? Do you want me to suggest that good Mrs. Joplin is a twister; a snide-merchant? Never let it be said. Good Mrs. Joplin, unlike so many of her neighbours, has never seen the inside of a police-court, much less a prison.

Speaking of prisons, it was in Stepney that I was told how to carry myself if ever I came within the grip of the law on frequent occasions. The English prison is not an establishment to which one turns with anticipation of happiness; but there is one prison which is as good as a home of rest for those suffering from the pain of the world. There is but one condition of eligibility: you must be a habitual criminal.

If you fulfilled that condition, you were dispatched to the Camp Hill Detention Prison in the Isle of Wight.

A most comfortable affair, this Camp Hill. It stands in pleasant grounds, near Newport; and the walls are not the grey, scowling things that enclose Holloway, or Reading, or Wandsworth, but walls of warm brown stone, such as any good fellow of reputable fame might build about his mansion. Close-shaven lawns and flower-beds delight the eye, and the cells are roomy apartments with real windows. The guests do not dine in solitude; they are marched together to the dining-hall, and there nourished, not with skilly or stew, with its hunk of bread and a pewter platter, but with meat and plum-duff, sometimes fish, greenstuffs, and cocoa. This, of course, in peace-time; the menu has no doubt suffered variations in these latter days. The tables are covered. After the meal the good fellows may sit for a few minutes and enjoy a pipe of tobacco, even as the respectable citizen. A fair number of marks for good behaviour carries with it the privilege of smoking after the night meal as well, and one of the most severe punishments is the docking of this smoking privilege.

Also, a canteen is provided. Not only do they wallow in luxury; they are paid for it. Twopence a day is given to each prisoner for exceptional conduct, and one penny of this may be spent at the canteen. This is by way of payment for work done--the work being of a much lighter kind than that given to ordinary "second division" prisoners. In cases where conduct fulfils every expectation of the authorities, the good lad is rewarded, every six months, with a stripe. Six stripes entitle the holder to a cash reward, half of which he may spend, the other half being banked. The canteen sells sweets, mineral waters, cigarettes, apples, oranges, nuts etc. Those inclined to the higher forms of nourishment may use the library. There are current magazines, novels of popular "healthy" writers (it would be unfair to give their names; they might not appreciate the epithet), and--uplifting thought--the works of Spencer, Huxley, Darwin, and some French highbrows.

On special occasions bioscope shows of an educative kind are given. Oh, I do love my virtue, but I wish I were a habitual criminal. Why wasn't I born in Stepney, and born a vagabond?

Whether the prison is still running on the old lines I know not. Most likely the British habitual convicts have been served with ejectment notices to make room for German prisoners. I wouldn't wonder.

THE KIDS' MAN

"I'll learn yeh, y' little wretch!"

"Oowh! Don't--don't!"

The lady, savagely wielding a decayed carpet-beater, bent over the shrinking form of the child--a little storm of short skirts and black hair. Her arm ached and her face steamed, but she continued to shower blows wherever she could get them in, until suddenly the storm limply subsided into a small figure which doubled up and fell.

A step sounded in the doorway, and the lady looked up, frayed at the edges and panting. A small, slight man, in semi-official dress, stood just inside the room, which gave directly on to a byway of Homerton.

"Na then, Feet--mind yer dirty boots on my carpet, cancher? What's the----"

"N.S.P.C.C.," replied Feet. He stooped over the child, lifted her, and set her on a slippery sofa. "Had my eye on you for some time. Thought there were something dicky with this child."

"'Ere, look 'ere--I mean, can't 'er muvver 'it 'er----"

"Steady, please. Let me warn you----"

The lady threatened with glances, but Kids' Man met them.

She fumed. "Ow! You waltz in, do yeh? Well, strikes me yeh'll waltz out quicker'n yeh came in. 'Ere--Arfer!" Her raucous voice scraped up the narrow stairway leading from the room, and in answer came a misty voice, suggesting revelries by night. The lady roared again: "Ar-ferr! Get up an' come daown. 'Ere's a little swab insultin' yer wife! Kids' Man insultin' yer wife!"

Kids' Man made no move, but stood over the sofa with sober face, ministering to the heavily breathing bundle. Overhead came bumps and a prayer for delivery from women.

Then on the lower step of the stairway appeared a symbol of Aurora in velveteen breeches and a shirt of indeterminate colour. His braces hung dolefully at the rear as he bleared on the situation. His furry head moved from side to side. "Wodyeh want me t'do?"

"Cosh 'im! Insultin' yer wife!"

He stared. Then his lip moved and he grinned. He hitched up his trousers, belted them with braces, and expectorated on both hands with gusto. "Git aout, else I'll split yer faice!"

No answer. "Righto!" He descended from the stair, and, hands down, fists closed, chin protruded, advanced on the bending Inspector with that slow, insidious movement proper to street-fighters. "Won't git aout, woncher? Grrr--yeh!"

Kids' Man looked up and met him with a steady stare. But the stare annoyed him, so he lifted up his fist and smote Kids' Man between the eyes. Then things happened. He towered over the Inspector. "Want another?" The Inspector lifted a short and apparently muscleless arm.

Bk! Aurora reeled as the fist met his jaw, and was followed by a swift one under the ear. For a moment astonishment seemed to hold him as he bleared at the slight figure; then he seemed about to burst with wrath; then he became a cold sportsman. The wife screamed for aid.

"Aoutside--come on!" He shoved Kids' Man before him into the walk, which, torpid a moment ago, now flashed with life and movement. Quickly the auditorium was filled with a moist, unlovely crowd of sloppy rags and towzled heads. While Kids' Man ministered to his nose, Arfer hitched his trousers, fingered his shirt-sleeves, and talked in staccato to his seconds, about a dozen in number. The crowd grunted and grinned. It seemed evident that Kids' Man was about to get it in the neck. One or two went to his side as he quietly turned back his sleeves, not for purposes of encouragement, but merely in order to preserve the correct niceties of the scrap.

A light tap on the body from either party, and then more things happened. "Go it, Arfer, flatten 'im! Cosh 'im! Rip 'im back, Arfer. Give 'im naughty-naughty, Arfer!"

But, as the crowd scraped and shuffled this way and that, they gave a panicky clearing to a spry retreat by Kids' Man. He was done for; Arfer was chasing him. They capered and chi-iked. Then, with a smart turn, he landed beautifully on the point, and sent the pursuing Arfer flat to the ground. The crowd murmured and oathfully exhorted Arfer to fink what he was doin' of. Flatten the Kids' Man--that was his job. They met again, and this time the Society received one on the mouth and another on the nose. He sat heavily down, and his seconds flashed wet handkerchiefs. The crowd cheered. "'Ad enough?"

But with a sudden spurt he came up again. His right landed on Arfer's nose, a natty upper-cut followed it. He got in another with his right, and pressed his man. The lady screamed, and disregarding the ethics of the ring, splurged in and seized the Society's coat-tails. But the crowd begged her to desist. Then the child, who, with the toughness of her class, had found her legs again, flitted fearfully about the fringe of the crowd.

"Wade in, mister! 'It the old woman--fetch 'er a swipe across the snitch!"

Now Kids' Man began to take an interest in the affair. Dodging a swinging blow of his lumbering opponent, he got in a half-arm jab. They closed, and embraced each other, and swayed, and the crowd chanted "Dear Old Pals." For a moment they strained; then Kids' Man lifted his enemy bodily held him, and with a peculiar twist dropped him. He lay still....

A murmur of wonder swelled quickly to a broad roar. The crowd surged in, squirming and hustling. For a moment it seemed that Kids' Man would get torn. It was just a hair's-breadth question between lynching and triumphal chairing. The sporting spirit prevailed, and: "Raaay! Good on yeh, mate! Well done th' S'ciety!" The lads swung in and gathered admiringly around the victor, who tenderly caressed a damaged beetroot of a face, while half a dozen helpers impeded each other's efforts to render first aid to the prostrate Arfer.

"Where's the blankey twicer? Lemme git 'old of 'im. Lemme git 'old of 'im!" implored the lady. But she was no longer popular, and they hustled her aside, so that in impotent rage she smote her prostrate husband with her foot for failing to uphold her honour before a measly little Kids' Man what she could have torn in two wiv one hand.

"Well, 'e's gotter nerve, ain't 'e?"

"Firs' chap ever I knew stand up t'old Arfer. Fac'!"

"Yerce--'e's--e's gotter nerve!"

"Tell yeh what I say, boys--three cheers for th' Kids' Man!"

And as the bruised and discoloured Kids' Man gripped the hand of Orphan Dora and led her, brave with new importance, from the Walk to headquarters, a round of beery cheering made sweet music in their rear.

"Well, fancy a little chap like that.... Well, 'e's gotter blasted nerve!"

* * * * *

The Kids' Man. That is his title--used sometimes affectionately and sometimes bitterly. He is the children's champion, and often he is met with curses, and that plea of parenthood which is supposed to justify all manner of gross and unnameable abominations: "Can't a farver do what he likes wiv his own child?"

The Society employs two hundred and fifty Inspectors, whose work is to watch over the welfare of the children in their allotted district. But, since most ill-treatment takes place behind closed doors, it is difficult for an outsider to obtain direct evidence, and neighbours, even when they know that children are being starved and daily tortured, are shy of lodging information, lest it may lead to the publicity of the police-court and the newspapers, and subsequently to open permanent enmity from the people next whom they have to live.

The Kids' Man is usually an old Army or Navy man, accustomed to making himself heard, and able to hold his own. The chief qualities for such a post are: a real love of children; tact and knowledge of men; and ability to deal with a hostile reception. It is by no means pleasant, as you have seen, to pay a warning visit to a house up a narrow alley, whose inhabitants form something of a clan or freemasonry lodge.

The motto of the Society, however, is persuasion. Prosecutions are extremely distasteful, and are only used when all other means have failed. In any case that comes to the Inspector's knowledge, his first thought is the children's well-being. If they are being starved, he provides them with food, clothes, bedding and baths, or sees that the parish does so without any of the delays incident to parish charity. Then he has a quiet talk with the parents, and gives a warning. Usually this is enough. In cases where the neglect is due to lack of work, he is sometimes an employment agency, and finds work for the father. But, if necessary, there are more warnings, and then, with great reluctance, an appearance in court is called for.

Cruelty is of two kinds--active and passive. The passive cruelty is the cruelty of neglect--lack of proper food, clothing, sanitation, etc. The other kind--the active cruelty of a diabolical nature--comes curiously enough, not so much from the lower, but from the upper classes. It is seldom that the rough navvy is deliberately cruel to his children; but Inspectors can tell you some appalling stories of torture inflicted on children by leisured people of means and breeding. Among their convictions are doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and many women of position.

There was one terrible case of a woman in county society--you will remember her Cornish name--who had been guilty of atrocious cruelty to a little girl of twelve. The Kids' Man called. The woman maintained that a mother had a perfect right to correct her own child. She called the child and fondled it to prove that rumour of tortures was wrong. But the Kids' Man knows children; and the look in the child's eyes told him of terrorizing. He demanded a medical examination.

The case was proved in court. A verdict of "Guilty" was given. And the punishment for this fair degenerate--£50 fine! The punishment for the Kids' Man was a kind of social ostracism. There lies the difficulty of the work. The woman's position had saved her.

The Kids' Man needs to have his eyes open everywhere and at every time for signs of suffering among the little ones. And often, where a father won't listen to advice from him, he is found amenable to suggestions from Mrs. Inspector.

In every big town in this country you will find the N.S.P.C.C. bureau, but, in spite of their efforts, too much cruelty is going on that might be stopped if the British people, as a race, were not too fond of "minding their own business" and shutting their eyes to everyday evils.

If you still think England a Christian and enlightened country, you had better accompany an N.S.P.C.C. man on his daily round. Before you do so, inspect the record at their offices. Read the verbatim reports of some of their cases. Look at their "museum" which Mr. Parr, the secretary, will show you; a museum more hideous than any collection of inquisition relics or than anything in the Tower. You will then know something of the hideous conditions of child-life in "this England of ours," and you will be prepared for what you shall see on your tour with the Kids' Man.

CROWDED HOURS