Esther Waters Part 26

"And you'll take the child off my hands for ever for five pounds?"

"Yes; and if you likes to go out again as wet-nurse, I'll take the second off yer 'ands too, and at the same price."

"You wicked woman; oh, this is awful!"

"Come, come.... What do you mean by talking to me like that? And because I offered to find someone who would adopt your child."

"You did nothing of the kind; ever since I've been in your house you have been trying to get me to give you up my child to murder as you are murdering those poor innocents in the cradles."

"It is a lie, but I don't want no hargument with yer; pay me what you owe me and take yerself hoff. I want no more of yer, do you 'ear?"

Esther did not shrink before her as Mrs. Spires expected. Clasping her baby more tightly, she said: "I've paid you what I owe you, you've had more than your due. Mrs. Rivers gave you ten s.h.i.+llings for a doctor which you didn't send for. Let me go."

"Yes, when yer pays me."

"What's all this row about?" said a tall, red-bearded man who had just come in; "no one takes their babies out of this 'ere 'ouse before they pays. Come now, come now, who are yer getting at? If yer thinks yer can come here insulting of my wife yer mistaken; yer've come to the wrong shop."

"I've paid all I owe," said Esther. "You're no better than murderers, but yer shan't have my poor babe to murder for a five-pound note."

"Take back them words, or else I'll do for yer; take them back," he said, raising his fist.

"Help, help, murder!" Esther screamed. Before the brute could seize her she had slipped past, but before she could scream again he had laid hold of her. Esther thought her last moment had come.

"Let 'er go, let 'er go," cried Mrs. Spires, clinging on her husband's arm. "We don't want the perlice in 'ere."

"Perlice! What do I care about the perlice? Let 'er pay what she owes."

"Never mind, Tom; it is only a trifle. Let her go. Now then, take yer hook," she said, turning to Esther; "we don't want nothing to do with such as you."

With a growl the man loosed his hold, and feeling herself free Esther rushed through the open doorway. Her feet flew up the wooden steps and she ran out of the street. So shaken were her nerves that the sight of some men drinking in a public-house frightened her. She ran on again. There was a cab-stand in the next street, and to avoid the cabmen and the loafers she hastily crossed to the other side. Her heart beat violently, her thoughts were in disorder, and she walked a long while before she realised that she did not know where she was going. She stopped to ask the way, and then remembered there was no place where she might go.

She would have to spend the night in the workhouse, and then?

She did not know.... All sorts of thoughts came upon her unsolicited, and she walked on and on. At last she rested her burden on the parapet of a bridge, and saw the London night, blue and gold, vast water rolling, and the spectacle of the stars like a dream from which she could not disentangle her individuality. Was she to die in the star-lit city, she and her child; and why should such cruelty happen to her more than to the next one? Steadying her thoughts with an effort, she said, "Why not go to the workhouse, only for the night?... She did not mind for herself, only she did not wish her boy to go there. But if G.o.d willed it...."

She drew her shawl about her baby and tried once more to persuade herself into accepting the shelter of the workhouse. It seemed strange even to her that a pale, gla.s.sy moon should float high up in the sky, and that she should suffer; and then she looked at the lights that fell like golden daggers from the Surrey sh.o.r.e into the river. What had she done to deserve the workhouse? Above all, what had the poor, innocent child done to deserve it? She felt that if she once entered the workhouse she would remain there. She and her child paupers for ever. "But what can I do?" she asked herself crazily, and sat down on one of the seats.

A young man coming home from an evening party looked at her as he pa.s.sed.

She asked herself if she should run after him and tell him her story. Why should he not a.s.sist her? He could so easily spare it. Would he? But before she could decide to appeal to him he had called a pa.s.sing hansom and was soon far away. Then looking at the windows of the great hotels, she thought of the folk there who could so easily save her from the workhouse if they knew. There must be many a kind heart behind those windows who would help her if she could only make known her trouble. But that was the difficulty. She could not make known her trouble; she could not tell the misery she was enduring. She was so ignorant; she could not make herself understood. She would be mistaken for a common beggar.

Nowhere would she find anyone to listen to her. Was this punishment for her wrong-doing? An idea of the blind cruelty of fate maddened her, and in the delirium of her misery she asked herself if it would not have been better, perhaps, if she had left him with Mrs. Spires. What indeed had the poor little fellow to live for? A young man in evening dress came towards her, looking so happy and easy in life, walking with long, swinging strides. He stopped and asked her if she was out for a walk.

"No, sir; I'm out because I've no place to go."

"How's that?"

She told him the story of the baby-farmer and he listened kindly, and she thought the necessary miracle was about to happen. But he only complimented her on her pluck and got up to go. Then she understood that he did not care to listen to sad stories, and a vagrant came and sat down.

"The 'copper,'" he said, "will be moving us on presently. It don't much matter; it's too cold to get to sleep, and I think it will rain. My cough is that bad."

She might beg a night's lodging of Mrs. Jones. It was far away; she did not think she could walk so far. Mrs. Jones might have left, then what would she do? The workhouse up there was much the same as the workhouse down here. Mrs. Jones couldn't keep her for nothing, and there was no use trying for another situation as wet-nurse; the hospital would not recommend her again.... She must go to the workhouse. Then her thoughts wandered. She thought of her father, brothers, and sisters, who had gone to Australia. She wondered if they had yet arrived, if they ever thought of her, if--She and her baby were on their way to the workhouse. They were going to become paupers. She looked at the vagrant--he had fallen asleep.

He knew all about the workhouse--should she ask him what it was like? He, too, was friendless. If he had a friend he would not be sleeping on the Embankment. Should she ask him? Poor chap, he was asleep. People were happy when they were asleep.

A full moon floated high up in the sky, and the city was no more than a faint shadow on the gla.s.sy stillness of the night; and she longed to float away with the moon and the river, to be borne away out of sight of this world.

Her baby grew heavy in her arms, and the vagrant, a bundle of rags thrown forward in a heap, slept at the other end of the bench. But she could not sleep, and the moon whirled on her miserable way. Then the gla.s.sy stillness was broken by the measured tramp of the policeman going his rounds. He directed her to Lambeth Workhouse, and as she walked towards Westminster she heard him rousing the vagrant and bidding him move onward.

XX

Those who came to the workhouse for servants never offered more than fourteen pounds a year, and these wages would not pay for her baby's keep out at nurse. Her friend the matron did all she could, but it was always fourteen pounds. "We cannot afford more." At last an offer of sixteen pounds a year came from a tradesman in Chelsea; and the matron introduced Esther to Mrs. Lewis, a lonely widowed woman, who for five s.h.i.+llings a week would undertake to look after the child. This would leave Esther three pounds a year for dress; three pounds a year for herself.

What luck!

The shop was advantageously placed at a street corner. Twelve feet of fronting on the King's Road, and more than half that amount on the side street, exposed to every view wall papers and stained gla.s.s designs. The dwelling-house was over the shop; the shop entrance faced the kerb in the King's Road.

The Bingleys were Dissenters. They were ugly, and exacted the uttermost farthing from their customers and their workpeople. Mrs. Bingley was a tall, gaunt woman, with little grey ringlets on either side of her face.

She spoke in a sour, resolute voice, when she came down in a wrapper to superintend the cooking. On Sundays she wore a black satin, fastened with a cameo brooch, and round her neck a long gold chain. Then her manners were lofty, and when her husband called "Mother," she answered testily, "Don't keep on mothering me." She frequently stopped him to settle his necktie or collar. All the week he wore the same short jacket; on Sundays he appeared in an ill-fitting frock-coat. His long upper lip was clean shaven, but under his chin there grew a ring of discoloured hair, neither brown nor red, but the neutral tint that hair which does not turn grey acquires. When he spoke he opened his mouth wide, and seemed quite unashamed of the empty s.p.a.ces and the three or four yellow fangs that remained.

John, the elder of the two brothers, was a silent youth whose one pa.s.sion seemed to be eavesdropping. He hung round doors in the hopes of overhearing his sisters' conversation and if he heard Esther and the little girl who helped Esther in her work talking in the kitchen, he would steal cautiously halfway down the stairs. Esther often thought that his young woman must be sadly in want of a sweetheart to take on with one such as he. "Come along, Amy," he would cry, pa.s.sing out before her; and not even at the end of a long walk did he offer her his arm; and they came strolling home just like boy and girl.

Hubert, John's younger brother, was quite different. He had escaped the family temperament, as he had escaped the family upper lip. He was the one spot of colour in a somewhat sombre household, and Esther liked to hear him call back to his mother, "All right, mother, I've got the key; no one need wait up for me. I'll make the door fast."

"Oh, Hubert, don't be later than eleven. You are not going out dancing again, are you? Your father will have the electric bell put on the door, so that he may know when you come in."

The four girls were all ruddy-complexioned and long upper-lipped. The eldest was the plainest; she kept her father's books, and made the pastry.

The second and third entertained vague hopes of marriage. The youngest was subject to hysterics, fits of some kind.

The Bingleys' own house was representative of their ideas, and the taste they had imposed upon the neighbourhood. The staircase was covered with white drugget, and the white enamelled walls had to be kept scrupulously clean. There were no flowers in the windows, but the springs of the blinds were always in perfect order. The drawing-room was furnished with substantial tables, cabinets and chairs, and antimaca.s.sars, long and wide, and china ornaments and gla.s.s vases. There was a piano, and on this instrument, every Sunday evening, hymns were played by one of the young ladies, and the entire family sang in the chorus.

It was into this house that Esther entered as general servant, with wages fixed at sixteen pounds a year. And for seventeen long hours every day, for two hundred and thirty hours every fortnight, she washed, she scrubbed, she cooked, she ran errands, with never a moment that she might call her own. Every second Sunday she was allowed out for four, perhaps for four and a half hours; the time fixed was from three to nine, but she was expected to be back in time to get the supper ready, and if it were many minutes later than nine there were complaints.

She had no money. Her quarter's wages would not be due for another fortnight, and as they did not coincide with her Sunday out, she would not see her baby for another three weeks. She had not seen him for a month, and a great longing was in her heart to clasp him in her arms again, to feel his soft cheek against hers, to take his chubby legs and warm, fat feet in her hands. The four lovely hours of liberty would slip by, she would enter on another long fortnight of slavery. But no matter, only to get them, however quickly they sped from her. She resigned herself to her fate, her soul rose in revolt, and it grew hourly more difficult for her to renounce this pleasure. She must p.a.w.n her dress--the only decent dress she had left. No matter, she must see the child. She would be able to get the dress out of p.a.w.n when she was paid her wages. Then she would have to buy herself a pair of boots; and she owed Mrs. Lewis a good deal of money.

Five s.h.i.+llings a week came to thirteen pound a year, leaving her three pound a year for boots and clothes, journeys back and forward, and everything the baby might want. Oh, it was not to be done--she never would be able to pull through. She dare not p.a.w.n her dress; if she did she'd never be able to get it out again. At that moment something bright lying on the floor, under the basin-stand, caught her eye. It was half-a-crown.

She looked at it, and as the temptation came into her heart to steal, she raised her eyes and looked round the room.

She was in John's room--in the sneak's room. No one was about. She would have cut off one of her fingers for the coin. That half-crown meant pleasure and a happiness so tender and seductive that she closed her eyes for a moment. The half-crown she held between forefinger and thumb presented a ready solution of the besetting difficulty. She threw out the insidious temptation, but it came quickly upon her again. If she did not take the half-crown she would not be able to go Peckham on Sunday. She could replace the money where she found it when she was paid her wages. No one knew it was there; it had evidently rolled there, and having tumbled between the carpet and the wall had not been discovered. It had probably lain there for months, perhaps it was utterly forgotten. Besides, she need not take it now. It would be quite safe if she put it back in its place; on Sunday afternoon she would take it, and if she changed it at once--It was not marked. She examined it all over. No, it was not marked. Then the desire paused, and she wondered how she, an honest girl, who had never harboured a dishonest thought in her life before, could desire to steal; a bitter feeling of shame came upon her.

It was a case of flying from temptation, and she left the room so hurriedly that John, who was spying in the pa.s.sage, had not time either to slip downstairs or to hide in his brother's room. They met face to face.

"Oh, I beg pardon, sir, but I found this half-crown in your room."

"Well, there's nothing wonderful in that. What are you so agitated about?

I suppose you intended to return it to me?"

"Intended to return it! Of course."