Fan | Page 9

thinning, the doors of the public-houses swinging to and fro less frequently. As Fan hurried anxiously along, she peeped carefully through the clouded window-panes into the "public bar" department of each drinking place in search of her mother, and paused for a few moments whenever she came to a group of spectators gathered round some object of curiosity at a street corner. After satisfying herself that her mother was not in the crowd, she would remain for a few moments looking on with the others.
At one spot her attention was painfully held by a short, dark, misshapen man with no hands nor arms, but only the stump of an arm, with a stick tied to it. Before him on a rough stand was a board, with half a dozen thick metal wires stretched across it. Rapidly moving his one poor stump, he struck on the wires with his stick and so produced a succession of sounds that roughly resembled a tune. Poor man, how she pitied him; how much more miserable seemed his life than hers! It was cold and damp, yet the perspiration stood in great drops on his sallow, wasted face as he violently wriggled his deformed body about, playing without hands on his rude instrument--all to make a few pence to save himself from starvation, or from that living tomb into which, with a humanity more cruel than Nature's cruelty, we thrust the unfit ones away out of our sight! No one gave him anything for his music, and with a pang in her heart she hurried away on her quest.
Not all the street scenes were ghastly or painful. She came to one crowd, ranged motionless and silent before a large, fat, dignified-looking man, in good broad-cloth garments, white tie, and wearing a fez; he was calmly sitting on a camp-stool, and held a small phial in one hand. Not a word did he speak for a long time. At length one of the onlookers, a tipsy working-man, becoming impatient, addressed him:
"Ain't you going to do nothing, mister? Here I've been a-waiting with these other ladies and gentl'men more'n ten minutes, and you ain't done nothing yet, nor yet said nothing."
The fat man placed a hand on his broad shirt-front, rolled up his eyes, and solemnly shook his head.
"Fools, fools!" he said, as if speaking to himself. "But what does it matter to me if they won't be saved--if they'd rather die of their complaints? In the East it's different, because I'm known there. I've been to Constantinople, and Morocco, and everywhere. Let them ask the heathen what I have done for them. Do they think I cure them for the sake of their dirty pence? No, no; those that like gold, and jewels, and elephants to ride on, can have it all in the East, and I came away from there. Because why? I care more for these. I don't ask them what's the matter with them! Is there such a thing as a leper in this crowd? Let them bring me a leper here, and I'll cure him for nothing, just to show them what this medicine is. As for rheumatics, consumption, toothache, palpitations of the 'art--what you like, that's all nothing. One drop and it's gone. Sarsaparilla, and waters this, and pills that, what they give their pence for, and expect it's going to do them good. Rubbish, I call it. They buy it, as much as they can put in their insides, and die just the same. This is different. Twenty years in the East, and this is what I got. Doctors! I laugh at such people."
Here, with a superior smile, he cast down his eyes again and relapsed into silence.
No one laughed. Then Fan heard someone near her remark: "He has book- learning, that's what he has"; to which another voice replied, "Ah, you may say it, and he has more'n that."
Next to Fan stood a gaunt, aged woman, miserably dressed, and she, too, listened to these remarks; and presently she pushed her way to the wise man of the East, and began, "Oh, sir, my heart's that bad--"
"Hush, hush! don't say another word," he interrupted with a majestic wave of his hand. "You needn't tell me what you have. I saw it all before you spoke."
He uncorked the phial. "One drop on your tongue will make you whole for ever. Poor woman! poor woman! how much you have suffered. I know it all. Sixpence first, if you please. If you were rich I would say a hundred pounds; but you are poor, and your sixpence shall be more to you in the Day of Judgment than the hundred pounds of the rich man."
With trembling fingers she brought out her money and counted out fivepence-halfpenny.
"It's ahl I have," she sorrowfully said, offering