Luigi looked still bewildered, and now I fought with sharp elbows, and managed to get to the front rank. The man's shaking finger pointed at Luigi's feet. "D'you know what you done, Italiano? You made a mistake. A blasted mistake. Aw ... yeh damn fool!" I looked too. There was no woman at Luigi's feet. There was a bundle of sheets, blanket, and carpet. A scream came from the house. Every window filled with flame. The roof fell inwards with a crash and a rain of sparks. Clerkenwell has never forgiven Luigi. Luigi has never forgiven himself. A BASHER'S NIGHT HOXTON _LONDON JUNE_ _Rank odours ride on every breeze; Skyward a hundred towers loom; And factories throb and workshops wheeze, And children pine in secret gloom. To squabbling birds the roofs declaim Their little tale of misery; And, smiling over murk and shame, A wild rose blows by Bermondsey._ _Where every traffic-thridden street Is ribboned o'er with shade and shine, And webbed with wire and choked with heat; Where smokes with fouler smokes entwine; And where, at evening, darkling lanes Fume with a sickly ribaldry-- Above the squalors and the pains, A wild rose blows by Bermondsey._ _Somewhere beneath a nest of tiles My little garret window squats, Staring across the cruel miles, And wondering of kindlier spots. An organ, just across the way, Sobs out its ragtime melody; But in my heart it seems to play: A wild rose blows by Bermondsey!_ _And dreams of happy morning hills And woodlands laced with greenest boughs Are mine to-day amid the ills Of Tooley Street and wharfside sloughs, Though Cherry Gardens reek and roar, And engines gasp their horrid glee; I mark their ugliness no more: A wild rose blows by Bermondsey._ A BASHER'S NIGHT HOXTON Hoxton is not merely virile; it is virulent. Life here hammers in the blood with something of the insistence of ragtime. The people--men, women, and children--are alive, spitefully alive. You feel that they are ready to do you damage, with or without reason. Here are antagonism and desire, stripped for battle. Little children, of three years old, have the spirit in them; for they lean from tenement landings that jut over the street, and, with becoming seriousness, spit upon the passing pedestrians, every hit scoring two to the marksman.