Urged by Sybil's entreaties the cab-driver hurried on. With
all the skilled experience of a thorough cockney charioteer he
tried to conquer time and space by his rare knowledge of short
cuts and fine acquaintance with unknown thoroughfares. He
seemed to avoid every street which was the customary passage
of mankind. The houses, the population, the costume, the
manners, the language through which they whirled their way, were of a different state and nation to those with which the dwellers in the dainty quarters of this city are acquainted. Now dark streets of frippery and old stores, new market-places of entrails and carrion with gutters running gore, sometimes the way was enveloped in the yeasty fumes of a colossal brewery, and sometimes they plunged into a labyrinth of lanes teeming with life, and where the dog-stealer and the pick-pocket, the burglar and the assassin, found a sympathetic multitude of all ages; comrades for every enterprise; and a market for every booty.
The long summer twilight was just expiring, the pale shadows
of the moon were just stealing on; the gas was beginning to
glare in the shops of tripe and bacon, and the paper lanthorns
to adorn the stall and the stand. They crossed a broad street
which seemed the metropolis of the district; it flamed with
gin-palaces; a multitude were sauntering in the mild though
tainted air; bargaining, blaspheming, drinking, wrangling: and
varying their business and their potations, their fierce
strife and their impious irreverence, with flashes of rich
humour, gleams of native wit, and racy phrases of idiomatic
slang.
Absorbed in her great mission Sybil was almost insensible to
the scenes through which she passed, and her innocence was
thus spared many a sight and sound that might have startled
her vision or alarmed her ear. They could not now he very
distant from the spot; they were crossing this broad way, and
then were about to enter another series of small obscure dingy
streets, when the cab-driver giving a flank to his steed to
stimulate it to a last effort, the horse sprang forward, and
the wheel of the cab came off.
Sybil extricated herself from the vehicle unhurt; a group
immediately formed round the cab, a knot of young thieves, almost young enough for infant schools, a dustman, a woman nearly naked and very drunk, and two unshorn ruffians with brutality stamped on every feature, with pipes in their mouths, and their hands in their pockets.
"I can take you no further," said the cabman: "my fare is
three shillings."
"What am I to do?" said Sybil, taking out her purse.
"The best thing the young lady can do," said the dustman, in a
hoarse voice, "is to stand something to us all."
"That's your time o'day," squeaked a young thief.
"I'll drink your health with very great pleasure my dear," hiccupped the woman.
"How much have you got there?" said the young thief making a
dash at the purse, but he was not quite tall enough, and
failed.
"No wiolence," said one of the ruffians taking his pipe out of
his mouth and sending a volume of smoke into Sybil's face, "we'll take the young lady to Mother Poppy's, and then we'll make a night of it."
But at this moment appeared a policeman, one of the permanent
garrison of the quarter, who seeing one of her Majesty's
carriages in trouble thought he must interfere. "Hilloa," he
said, "what's all this?" And the cabman, who was a good
fellow though in too much trouble to aid Sybil, explained in
the terse and picturesque language of Cockaigne, doing full
justice to his late fare, the whole circumstances.
"Oh! that's it," said the policeman, "the lady's respectable
is she? Then I'd advise you and Hell Fire Dick to stir your
chalks, Splinter-legs. Keep moving's the time of day, Madam; you get on. Come;" and taking the woman by her shoulder he gave her a spin that sent her many a good yard. "And what do you want?" he asked gruffly of the lads.
"We wants a ticket for the Mendicity Society," said the
captain of the infant hand putting his thumb to his nose and
running away, followed by his troop.
"And so you want to go to Silver Street?" said her official
preserver to Sybil, for she had not thought it wise to confess
her ultimate purpose, and indicate under the apprehended
circumstances the place of rendezvous to a member of the
police.