Spring-Heel'd Jack, The Terror of London — page 229: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SPRING-HEEL D JACK: On the walls were pasted, or held up by pins, Some common engravings of sporting life, the margin of which were much torn—Bill having a propensity for stripping off pieces to light his pipe with. The woman’s face wore a troubled, care-worn look, while that of Bill’s was clouded, for he knit his heavy brows as he puffed vigorously at the dirty pipe between his teeth. Jack did not hesitate to draw near to the window, for he well knew that though he could well see them, they could not observe him, and he was anxious to hear what they were con- versing about. But several moments passed ere either the man or his wife gave utterance to a syllable that he could catch ; but at length Bill, after thrusting the bowl of his pipe between the bars of the broken stove, and drawing it out with a hot cinder balanced on the top of the bowl, and taking two or three fierce draws through the stem, remarked— ‘““ Now, look here. ’'m master, and I’ll do what I like. I’ve had enough of your jaw, and I don’t want no more.” ; “Yow'll suffer for it, if you don’t mind, yet, Bill,” said the woman, meekly. “ How would you like to have a gal of yours, if she went mad, taken to some place by an old scoundrel as ain’t after no good.” | “Well, I ain't got a gal as is mad,” said Bill. “But you might have.” “Perhaps I might.” “ How would you feel, then, if some rascal of a fellow who had got a little money took her away for no good ?” asked the woman. “Why, Pd make him hand something over to me, that’s all,’ said Bill. ‘“ He’d have to put a coutre or two in my pocket, and that’s what this bloke’s promised to do, though the gal don’t belong to me.”’’ Jack involuntarily clenched his hands, and the features beneath his mask became suffused with a blush of indignation and horror. “Oh, Bill!” cried the woman, as she shook hor head, sadly. “There, I don’t want no more of your preach- ing, I tell you,’ said the ruffian. I’m hard-up, and I’ll make a pound if I can, anyhow. It’s no business of mine if she ain’t really his wife. She fancies she is, now she’s off her chump, and that’ll do just as well for him, and for me too.” “ But you know she ain’t,” said his wife. “ You know she’s some poor woman whom grief or misfortune has driven out of her mind, and you know that he is a hoary-headed villain who would take advantage of her imbecile, state to destroy her peace of mind for -ever, if she ‘should again have her senses. You know this, Bill 2’ ‘Perhaps I does, and perhaps I don’t,” srowled the fellow, savagely. “ But you do.” “Do Ll?’ Ves,” “ Shut up, then.” ‘“T can’t shut up. I feel I must speak, if you won’t let me do more to help her,” said the woman. THE TERROR OF LONDON. 731 “You better not try it, that’s all,” was the brutal remark ; ‘* for if you did‘ should be down on you lke asledge hammer.” The woman sighed, and was silent. Poor, crushed, heart-broken thing! She knew what it was too well to feel the hand of the man who had sworn to love and cherish her fall with violence upon her person. She felt she could not say more without again exciting the villain to strike her, and so she buried her pale, wan face in her hands, and remained silent. “Oh! how lost, how depraved must that wretch be,’ exclaimed Jack to himself, as he turned from the window, ‘‘when he can thus speak and act! He is but a man in form, a beast in soul, a brute in nature, a disgrace to the earth he inhabits, a foul blot on humanity— and yet he is but the type of many. Poor woman! I pity her, from my soul, for her’s must be a hard fate to be allied to such a ruihan. And yet I dare venture to assert that the man who would stand forward to protect her from the violence of her ruffian husband would be assailed by her. Spite of his ill-usage she would cling to him, and him alone; protect him with teeth and hands as fiercely as the panther would protect its young, though she might feel that the next moment his ruffanly hands would again assail her. I cannot understand this trait in woman. Were I a woman, I imagine that I could feel nothing but contempt and horror for the wretch who could thus outrage all decency and self-respect. Well, it is indeed a strange world, this! and the moreI see of it, the more it puzzles me.”’ Thus soliloquising, Jack vaulted on to a shed built up against the house, and composed of some old and rotten wainscoting, but which was sufficiently firm to bear his weight, but he made a great clatter among some loose pieces of board which were placed on the roof, two or three of which fell to the ground just beneath the window of the room in which Bill and his wife sat. . The noise alarmed both, and, taking up the candle, they came to see what it was. Jack had no wish to be discovered just then, so he flung himself flat down upon the roof of the shed, intending to remain there till the husband and wife had again gone into the house. “What was it?” asked Bill, peering, half- frightened, out of the back door into the yard. ‘“ Why, the wind has blown down some of the boards on the roof of the shed,’’ said the woman, as she stooped to pick one up. “ We shall be having the windows broke with *em some of these times.”’ “Oh! is that all?” said Bull. and Vl chuck it up again.” Jack at this began to fear lest he should get a knock with the missile as it came bounding on to the roof; but, fortunately for him, Pill flung it over the spot on which he lay. ‘‘ Here’s another,” said the woman. Up came this one, falling with a clatter close to Jack’s head. ‘Ts there any more ?”’ said Bill. ‘¢ Don’t see any,” replied the woman, and the “Give it us, | IOOK (COINMIUCG