The Loom of Destiny/Premonitions
PREMONITIONS
Then all the World seemed but a game,
A shadowy thing at Eventide,
Where thro' the Twilight children came,
And sowed and reaped, and lived and died.
Yes, bought and sold their lives away,
And when the old Nurse said good-night
Remembered in the Dusk that they
Must go to Bed without a Light.
PREMONITIONS
ON the ragged skirts of the great city, where a steady stream of lorries and electric cars rumble over the Canal Bridge, stand twenty high-fenced, grimy acres of coal heaps.
All day long, year in and year out, the blackened and lumbering coal-carts ply back and forth between those high-fenced acres of bituminous blackness and the switching yard of the railway, stopping only at the weigh scales as they go.
As these loaded carts jolt over the stony road, a ragged band of cadaverous and hungry-eyed urchins, trailing behind them ludicrously improvised wheeled things, follow them like vultures, waiting to pounce down on any loose chunk of coal that may jolt unnoticed from the big cart.
At times, when the roads are not so bad as usual, they deliberately fling mud and stones at the drivers of the carts. When the drivers become angry at this, and hurl pieces of coal at them, they passively gather up the pieces and put them in their two-wheeled carts. If one of the band chances to be hit, the others fight for the piece while he limps away unnoticed. As they rush out, ankle deep in mud, it is a sort of standing joke and a time-honoured custom for the big drivers to cut at the half-bare legs of the ragged youngsters with their great keen, long-lashed whips.
The Child was one of this band, and he stood in the quiet rain watching for his chance. His pudgy face was scratched and bore a scar or two. He gazed out abstractedly from the edge of the broken sidewalk, oblivious of the rain that was soaking through his tattered dress. He could not have been much more than four years of age, and certainly not five. He had no cart, like his more opulent rivals. But, clutched in his chubby little dirt-stained hand, he held a rusty, dinted-in tin pail. In the bottom of this tin pail were two or three miserable little shreds of coal and half a dozen wet chips. He knew well enough that he dare not go home with them.
On one foot he wore a toeless button shoe, on the other a man's rubber over-shoe, tied at the top with string. From a hole in this rubber shoe a small bare toe curled up impertinently. His ragged and mud-stained plaid skirt did not come quite to his knees, and his legs were bare, and chafed, and scratched. On the skirt, which he wore with supreme unconcern, remained three quite unnecessary buttons showing it must once have belonged to another—probably some departed or grown-up sister. But none of all these things seemed to trouble the Child.
He stood in the rain at the roadside, tranquilly watching with wide, childish eyes, the more agile fuel-hunters as they dodged in and out, swallow-like, among the passing lorries and electric cars, in quest of their alluring fragments of coal.
Occasionally his baby eyes stole furtively toward a deserted cart, made of a soap-box and two wire-bound perambulator wheels. In the cart lay several pieces of coal, many of them weighing almost a pound.
Suddenly the jubilant owner dodged back to his cart with a great piece of coal, almost the size of the Child's head. The possessor of the tin pail eyed the cart-owner with a certain reverential awe. Such wealth seemed fabulous to him. As the coal king dropped his precious burden into the soap-box, a man driving past in a yellow dog-cart flung his cigar stub into the neighbouring gutter. The quick eye of the coal king saw the act, and again he dived out into the mud. He picked up the cigar stub with exultant fingers and carefully wiped it off on his trousers.
Then he took the one dirty match from his pocket and went behind a telegraph pole to light up.
In the meantime the Child's gaze was fastened hungrily on the piece of coal in the soap-box. A green light came into his wondering baby eyes. His childish brow puckered up into a defiant, ominous, anarchistic frown. With twitching fingers he crept step by step nearer the soap-box and the precious coal chunk. The owner of the cart was still struggling with his cigar stub behind the telegraph pole. The Child put his hand tentatively on the soap-box, and let it rest there a moment with subtle nonchalance. Then he leaned over it. In another second his baby fingers had closed like talons on the coveted chunk of coal. Then he backed off, cautiously, slily, with his eyes ever on the threatening telegraph pole.
Before he could reach his tin pail on the sidewalk the coal king with the cigar stub looked up and saw the Child with the piece of coal. And he saw that it was his coal.
He descended on the fleeing Child like a whirlwind, swearing and screeching as he came.
The Child clutched the chunk of precious wealth to his breast, and ran as he had never run before. But it was useless. The owner of the cart caught him easily in ten yards. He pushed the Child forward on his face, and kicked him two or three times in the stomach. As he went down the Child still hugged the piece of coal. The owner of the stolen goods stooped down, and tried to force it from the little claw-like fingers. They held like steel. So the owner of the coal kicked the stubborn fingers a few times with his boot. Bleeding and discoloured, the baby claws at last limply unclosed and straightened numbly out. The owner took his coal, gave the Child a good-bye kick in the stomach, and went back to his soap-box.
As he passed the Child's tin pail he kicked it vigorously into the road. Then only did the Child utter a sound. He groaned weakly and sat up in the mud. He saw the coal king sitting on his soap-box, luxuriously, opulently, puffing at his cigar stub. The Child's heart, of a sudden, seemed to wither up with an inexpressible, ominous, helpless hate!