FullReads

“The woman was a street singer. She was even paler, thinner, and more destitute-looking than such women usually are. In some past time there had been beauty and feeling in her face, but the traces of both were well-nigh gone. An indifference almost amounting to vacancy was there now, and, except that she sang, you might almost have fancied her a corpse. In her voice, also, there had once been beauty and feeling, and here again the traces were small indeed. From time to time, she was stopped by fits of coughing, when an ill-favoured hunchback, who accompanied her on a tambourine, swore and scowled at her. She sang a song of sentiment, with a refrain about

‘Love and truth,
And joys of youth–‘

on which the melody dwelt and quavered as if in mockery. As she sang, a sailor came down the street. His collar was very large, his trousers were very wide, his hat hung on the back of his head more as an ornament than for shelter; and he had one of the roughest faces and the gentlest hearts that ever went together since Beauty was entertained by the Beast. His hands were in his pockets, where he could feel one shilling and a penny, all the spare cash that remained to him after a friendly stroll through the town. When he saw the street singer, he stopped, pulled off his hat, and scratched his head, as was his custom when he was puzzled or interested.

“‘It’s no good keeping an odd penny,’ he said to himself; ‘poor thing, she looks bad enough!’ And, bringing the penny to the surface out of the depths of his pocket, he gave it to the woman. The hunchback came forward to take it, but the sailor passed him with a shove of his elbow, and gave it to the singer, who handed it over to her companion without moving a feature, and went on with her song.

“‘I’d like to break every bone in your ugly body,’ muttered the sailor, with a glance at the hunchback, who scowled in return.

“‘I shall die of this close street, and of all I have suffered,’ thought the thrush.

“‘Green leaves! green leaves!’ he sang, for it was the only song he knew.

“‘My voice is gone,’ thought the hunchback’s companion. ‘He’ll beat me again to-night; but it can’t last long:

“Love and truth,
And joys of youth”‘–

she sang, for that was the song she had learned; and it was not her fault that it was inappropriate.

“But the ballad-singer’s captivity was nearly at an end. When the hunchback left her that evening to spend the sailor’s penny with the few others which she had earned, he swore that when he came back he would make her sing louder than she had done all day. Her face showed no emotion, less than it did when he saw it hours after, when beauty and feeling seemed to have returned to it in the peace of death, when he came back and found the cage empty, and that the long-prisoned spirit had flown away to seek the face of love and truth indeed.

“But how about the thrush?

“The sailor had scarcely swallowed the wrath which the hunchback had stirred in him, when his ear was caught by the song of the thrush above him.

“‘You sing uncommon well, pretty one,’ he said, stopping and putting his hat even farther back than usual to look up. He was one of those good people who stop a dozen times in one street, and look at everything as they go along; whereby you may see three times as much of life as other folk, but it is a terrible temptation to spend money. It was so in this instance. The sailor looked till his kindly eye perceived that the bird was ill-cared for.

“‘It should have a bit of sod, it should,’ he said emphatically, taking his hat off, and scratching his head again; ‘and there’s not a crumb of food on board. Maybe, they don’t understand the ways of birds here. It would be a good turn to mention it.’