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قراءة كتاب A London Baby The Story of King Roy
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
love him, or care for him as he ought to be loved and tended? The agony of this idea took all fear away from Faith. Without a particle of hesitation now, she went back to her father. He was so busy he did not even hear her swift step, and started when her voice sounded at his elbow.
“Please, father, I must know where you ha’ tuk Roy. It ’ull kill me unless I know that much at once.”
The agony and consternation in her tone caused Warden to raise his head in surprise.
“I don’t know what you mean, Faith. I only took Roy into the bedroom. There! go, and put him to bed, and don’t act more foolishly than you can help.”
“You only tuk him inter the bedroom?” repeated Faith. She did not stay another second with her father, she rushed away from him and back to the inner room. A fear even more terrible than her first fear had come to her. She remembered that the door leading into the passage was open. Was it possible, possible that little Roy, her little sweet baby Roy, had gone out through that open door, had slipped down-stairs, and into the street? Oh! no, it never could be possible. However angry God was with her, He could never allow such an awful punishment as this to overtake her. She rushed wildly up-stairs and down-stairs, looking into every room, calling everywhere for Roy. No one had seen him, no one had heard the baby steps as they stole away. The whole house was searched in vain for little Roy. He was not to be found. In five minutes, Faith came back to her father. She came up to him, her breath a little gone, her words coming in gasps. She laid her hand on his shoulder.
“Yes, father,” she said, “you wor quite, quite right. God h’Almighty’s werry angry wid me. I don’t know how I’ll h’ever bear it. Little Roy ain’t in the house, father. When you put him in the bedroom he runned out by the other door, he ran inter the street. We ha’ searched h’all the house over, and he ain’t there. My little Roy is quite, quite lost.”
“Lost!” echoed Warden. He sprang to his feet. “Roy not in the house! Roy lost!” Back over his memory came the picture of the lovely sleeping boy, of the real love and pride with which he had kissed him. His prize essay became as nothing to him. But swift through his hard, cold heart passed an arrow of intolerable pain. “Roy, lost?” he repeated. “God help me! and I wor werry rough to the little chap.”
They were the humblest words that had ever passed his lips. He rushed from the room, for he must find his son.
Chapter Six.
Meanwhile, little Roy pursued his way down the long street which led from his home to another, which on weekdays was full of shops and gay with light and many-coloured windows. To-day, being Sunday, the shops were closed, and the place looked dull. Sobbing slightly under his breath, and a very little alarmed at the temerity of his own act, little Roy ran down this street. His object lay very clear before his baby mind—he was going to meet Faith. Faith was out, and, as he too had gone out, he would, of course, find her very soon. At the corner of this second street he came suddenly upon a flaring gin-palace, which, Sunday though it was, was brilliant with light and full of people. The bright light streaming right out into the street attracted little Roy. He stopped his sobbing, paused in his short, running gait, and pressed his little face against the pane. “Pitty, pitty!” he said to himself—he even forgot Faith in the admiration which filled his baby soul. After a time it occurred to him that Faith would be very likely to be in such a lovely place. The swing-doors were always opening and shutting. Roy, watching his opportunity, pushed his way in by the side of a ragged woman and two coarse men. They advanced up to the counter to ask for gin, but the baby child remained on the threshold. He looked around him with the wide open eyes of admiration, innocence, and trust. Anything so lovely gazing at anything so evil had been seldom seen; certainly never seen before within those walls. The men and women drinking themselves to the condition of beasts, stopped, and a kind of shocked feeling pervaded the whole assembly. It was as though an angel had alighted on that threshold, and was showing those poor hardened wretches what some of them had once been—what, alas! none of them could ever be again. Little Roy’s cheeks were slightly flushed; his tangled yellow hair, ruffled more than ever by his running in the wind, surrounded his head like a halo; and as gradually it dawned upon him that all those people surrounding him were strangers, his blue eyes filled with tears. The directness of his aim, the full certainty of his thought were brought to a stand-still; all movement was arrested by the terrible certainty that Faith was not there.
“Bless us! who h’ever h’is the little ’un?” said the ragged woman who had come into the gin-palace with him. “Wot’s yer name, my little dear, and wot h’ever do yer want?”
“’Ittle ’Oy want Fate,” said the boy in a clear high tone.
The woman laughed. “Hark to the young ’un,” she said, turning to her companions. “Did yer h’ever hear the like o’ that afore? He says as he wants his fate. Pretty lamb, it ’ull come to him soon enough.”
“’Oy want Fate—’Oy do want Fate,” said the little child again.
The woman bent down and took his hand.
“No, no, my dear,” she said. “You run away home, and never mind yer fate; it ’ull come h’all in good time; and babies have no cause to know sech things.”
“’Oy do want Fate,” repeated the boy. Two other women had now come round him, and also a man.
“It don’t seem no way canny like, to hear him going on like that,” said one of the group. “And did yer h’ever see sech a skin, and sech ’air? I don’t b’lieve a bit that he’s a real flesh-and-blood child.”
A coarse red-faced woman pushed this speaker away.
“Shame on yer, Kate Flarherty; the child ain’t nothink uncanny. He’s jest a baby boy. Bless us! I ’ad a little ’un wid ’air as yaller as he. You ha’ got lost, and run away. Ain’t that it, dear little baby boy?”
This woman, for all her red face, had a kind voice, and it won little Roy at once.
“Will ’oo take me to Fate?” he said; and he went up to the woman, and put his little hand in hers. She gave almost a scream when the little hand touched her; but, catching him in her arms, and straining him to her breast, she left the gin-palace at once.