by George Moore
“There’s no use talking no more about it; what’s done is done.”
The cottage door was open, and in the still evening they could see their child swinging on the gate. The moment was tremulous with responsibility, and yet the words as they fell from their lips seemed accidental.
At last he said —
“Esther, I can get a divorce.”
“You’d much better go back to your wife. Once married, always married, that’s my way of thinking.”
“I’m sorry to hear you say it, Esther. Do you think a man should stop with his wife who’s been treated as I have been?”
Esther avoided a direct reply. Why should he care about the child? He had never done anything for him. William said that if he had known there was a child he would have left his wife long ago. He believed that he loved the child just as much as she did, and didn’t believe in marriage without children.
“That would have been very wrong.”
“We ain’t getting no for’arder by discussing them things,” he said, interrupting her. “We can’t say good-bye after this evening and never see one another again.”
“Why not? I’m nothing to you now; you’ve got a wife of your own; you’ve no claim upon me; you can go your way and I can keep to mine.”
“There’s that child. I must do something for him.”
“Well, you can do something for him without ruining me.”
“Ruining you, Esther?”
“Yes, ruining me. I ain’t going to lose my character by keeping company with a married man. You’ve done me harm enough already, and should be ashamed to think of doing me any more. You can pay for the boy’s schooling if you like, you can pay for his keep too, but you mustn’t think that in doing so you’ll get hold of me again.”
“Do you mean it, Esther?”
“Followers ain’t allowed where I am. You’re a married man. I won’t have it.”
“But when I get my divorce?”
“When you get your divorce! I don’t know how it’ll be then. But here’s Mrs. Lewis; she’s a-scolding of Jackie for swinging on that ’ere gate. Naughty boy; he’s been told twenty times not to swing on the gate.”
Esther complained that they had stayed too long, that he had made her late, and treated his questions about Jackie with indifference. He might write if he had anything important to say, but she could not keep company with a married man. William seemed very downcast. Esther, too, was unhappy, and she did not know why. She had succeeded as well as she had expected, but success had not brought that sense of satisfaction which she had expected it would. Her idea had been to keep William out of the way and hurry on her marriage with Fred. But this marriage, once so ardently desired, no longer gave her any pleasure. She had told Fred about the child. He had forgiven her. But now she remembered that men were very forgiving before marriage, but how did she know that he would not reproach her with her fault the first time they came to disagree about anything? Ah, it was all misfortune. She had no luck. She didn’t want to marry anyone.
That visit to Dulwich had thoroughly upset her. She ought to have kept out of William’s way — that man seemed to have a power over her, and she hated him for it. What did he want to see the child for? The child was nothing to him. She had been a fool; now he’d be after the child; and through this fever of trouble there raged an acute desire to know what Jackie thought of his father, what Mrs. Lewis thought of William.
And the desire to know what was happening became intolerable. She went to her mistress to ask for leave to go out. Very little of her agitation betrayed itself in her demeanour, but Miss Rice’s sharp eyes had guessed that her servant’s life was at a crisis. She laid her book on her knee, asked a few kind, discreet questions, and after dinner Esther hurried towards the Underground.
The door of the cottage was open, and as she crossed the little garden she heard Mrs. Lewis say —
“Now you must be a good boy, and not go out in the garden and spoil your new clothes.” And when Esther entered Mrs. Lewis was giving the finishing touches to the necktie which she had just tied. “Now you’ll go and sit on that chair, like a good boy, and wait there till your father comes.”
“Oh, here’s mummie,” cried the boy, and he darted out of Mrs. Lewis’s hand. “Look at my new clothes, mummie; look at them!” And Esther saw her boy dressed in a suit of velveteen knickerbockers with brass buttons, and a sky-blue necktie.
“His father — I mean Mr. Latch — came here on Thursday morning, and took him to — —”
“Took me up to London — —”
“And brought him back in those clothes.”
“We went to such a big shop in Oxford Street for them, and they took down many suits before they could get one to fit. Father is that difficult to please, and I thought we should go away without any clothes, and I couldn’t walk about London with father in these old things. Aren’t they shabby?” he added, kicking them contemptuously. It was a little grey suit that Esther had made for him with her own hands.
“Father had me measured for another suit, but it won’t be ready for a few days. Father took me to the Zoological Gardens, and we saw the lions and tigers, and there are such a lot of monkeys. There is one —— But what makes you look so cross, mummie dear? Don’t you ever go out with father in London? London is such a beautiful place. And then we walked through the park and saw a lot of boys sailing boats. Father asked me if I had a boat. I said you couldn’t afford to buy me toys. He said that was hard lines on me, and on the way back to the station we stopped at a toy-shop and he bought me a boat. May I show you my boat?”
Jackie was too much occupied with thoughts of his boat to notice the gloom that was gathering on his mother’s face; Mrs. Lewis wished to call upon him to desist, but before she could make up her mind what to do, he had brought the toy from the table and was forcing it into his mother’s hands. “This is a cutter-rigged boat, because it has three sails and only one mast. Father told me it was. He’ll be here in half-an-hour; we’re going to sail the boat in the pond on the Rye, and if it gets across all right he’ll take me to the park where there’s a big piece of water, twice, three times as big as the water on the Rye. Do you think, mummie, that I shall ever be able to get my boat across such a piece of water as the — I’ve forgotten the name. What do they call it, mummie?”
“Oh, I don’t know; don’t bother me with your boat.”
“Oh, mummie, what have I done that you won’t look at my boat? Aren’t you coming with father to the Rye to see me sail it?”
“I don’t want to go with you. You want me no more. I can’t afford to give you boats…. Come, don’t plague me any more with your toy,” she said, pushing it away, and then in a moment of convulsive passion she threw the boat across the room. It struck the opposite wall, its mast was broken, and the sails and cords made a tangled little heap. Jackie ran to his toy, he picked it up, and his face showed his grief. “I shan’t be able to sail my boat now; it won’t sail, its mast and the sails is broke. Mummie, what did you break my boat for?” and the child burst into tears. At that moment William entered.
“What is the child crying for?” he asked, stopping abruptly on the threshold. There was a slight tone of authority in his voice which angered Esther still more.
“What is it to you what he is crying for?” she said, turning quickly round. “What has the child got to do with you that you should come down ordering people about for? A nice sort of mean trick, and one that is just like you. You beg and pray of me to let you see the child, and when I do you come down here on the sly, and with the present of a suit of clothes and a toy boat you try to win his love away from his mother.”
“Esther, Esther, I never thought of getting his love from you. I meant no harm. Mrs. Lewis said that he was looking a trifle moped; we thought that a change would do him good, and so — —”
“Ah! it was Mrs. Lewis that asked you to take him up to London. It is a strange thing what a little money will do. Ever since you set foot
in this cottage she has been curtseying to you, handing you chairs. I didn’t much like it, but I didn’t think that she would round on me in this way.” Then turning suddenly on her old friend, she said, “Who told you to let him have the child?… Is it he or I who pays you for his keep? Answer me that. How much did he give you — a new dress?”
“Oh, Esther, I am surprised at you: I didn’t think it would come to accusing me of being bribed, and after all these years.” Mrs. Lewis put her apron to her eyes, and Jackie stole over to his father.
“It wasn’t I who smashed the boat, it was mummie; she’s in a passion. I don’t know why she smashed it. I didn’t do nothing.”
William took the child on his knee.
“She didn’t mean to smash it. There’s a good boy, don’t cry no more.”
Jackie looked at his father. “Will you buy me another? The shops aren’t open to-day.” Then getting off his father’s knee he picked up the toy, and coming back he said, “Could we mend the boat somehow? Do you think we could?”
“Jackie, dear, go away; leave your father alone. Go into the next room,” said Mrs. Lewis.
“No, he can stop here; let him be,” said Esther. “I want to have no more to say to him, he can look to his father for the future.” Esther turned on her heel and walked straight for the door. But dropping his boat with a cry, the little fellow ran after her and clung to her skirt despairingly. “No, mummie dear, you mustn’t go; never mind the boat; I love you better than the boat — I’ll do without a boat.”
“Esther, Esther, this is all nonsense. Just listen.”
“No, I won’t listen to you. But you shall listen to me. When I brought you here last week you asked me in the train what I had been doing all these years. I didn’t answer you, but I will now. I’ve been in the workhouse.”
“In the workhouse!”
“Yes, do that surprise you?”
Then jerking out her words, throwing them at him as if they were half-bricks, she told him the story of the last eight years — Queen Charlotte’s hospital, Mrs. Rivers, Mrs. Spires, the night on the Embankment, and the workhouse.
“And when I came out of the workhouse I travelled London in search of sixteen pounds a year wages, which was the least I could do with, and when I didn’t find them I sat here and ate dry bread. She’ll tell you — she saw it all. I haven’t said nothing about the shame and sneers I had to put up with — you would understand nothing about that, — and there was more than one situation I was thrown out of when they found I had a child. For they didn’t like loose women in their houses; I had them very words said about me. And while I was going through all that you was living in riches with a lady in foreign parts; and now when she could put up with you no longer, and you’re kicked out, you come to me and ask for your share of the child. Share of the child! What share is yours, I’d like to know?”
“Esther!”
“In your mean, underhand way you come here on the sly to see if you can’t steal the love of the child from me.”
She could speak no more; her strength was giving way before the tumult of her passion, and the silence that had come suddenly into the room was more terrible than her violent words. William stood quaking, horrified, wishing the earth would swallow him; Mrs. Lewis watched Esther’s pale face, fearing that she would faint; Jackie, his grey eyes open round, held his broken boat still in his hand. The sense of the scene had hardly caught on his childish brain; he was very frightened; his tears and sobs were a welcome intervention. Mrs. Lewis took him in her arms and tried to soothe him. William tried to speak; his lips moved, but no words came.
Mrs. Lewis whispered, “You’ll get no good out of her now, her temper’s up; you’d better go. She don’t know what she’s a-saying of.”
“If one of us has to go,” said William, taking the hint, “there can’t be much doubt which of us.” He stood at the door holding his hat, just as if he were going to put it on. Esther stood with her back turned to him. At last he said —
“Good-bye, Jackie. I suppose you don’t want to see me again?”
For reply Jackie threw his boat away and clung to Mrs. Lewis for protection. William’s face showed that he was pained by Jackie’s refusal.
“Try to get your mother to forgive me; but you are right to love her best. She’s been a good mother to you.” He put on his hat and went without another word. No one spoke, and every moment the silence grew more paralysing. Jackie examined his broken boat for a moment, and then he put it away, as if it had ceased to have any interest for him. There was no chance of going to the Rye that day; he might as well take off his velvet suit; besides, his mother liked him better in his old clothes. When he returned his mother was sorry for having broken his boat, and appreciated the cruelty. “You shall have another boat, my darling,” she said, leaning across the table and looking at him affectionately; “and quite as good as the one I broke.”
“Will you, mummie? One with three sails, cutter-rigged, like that?”
“Yes, dear, you shall have a boat with three sails.”
“When will you buy me the boat, mummie — to-morrow?”
“As soon as I can, Jackie.”
This promise appeared to satisfy him. Suddenly he looked —
“Is father coming back no more?”
“Do you want him back?”
Jackie hesitated; his mother pressed him for an answer.
“Not if you don’t, mummie.”
“But if he was to give you another boat, one with four sails?”
“They don’t have four sails, not them with one mast.”
“If he was to give you a boat with two masts, would you take it?”
“I should try not to, I should try ever so hard.”
There were tears in Jackie’s voice, and then, as if doubtful of his power to resist temptation, he buried his face in his mother’s bosom and sobbed bitterly.
“You shall have another boat, my darling.”
“I don’t want no boat at all! I love you better than a boat, mummie, indeed I do.”
“And what about those clothes? You’d sooner stop with me and wear those shabby clothes than go to him and wear a pretty velvet suit?”
“You can send back the velvet suit.”
“Can I? My darling, mummie will give you another velvet suit,” and she embraced the child with all her strength, and covered him with kisses.
“But why can’t I wear that velvet suit, and why can’t father come back? Why don’t you like father? You shouldn’t be cross with father because he gave me the boat. He didn’t mean no harm.”
“I think you like your father. You like him better than me.”
“Not better than you, mummie.”
“You wouldn’t like to have any other father except your own real father?”
“How could I have a father that wasn’t my own real father?”
Esther did not press the point, and soon after Jackie began to talk about the possibility of mending his boat; and feeling that something irrevocable had happened, Esther put on her hat and jacket, and Mrs. Lewis and Jackie accompanied her to the station. The women kissed each other on the platform and were reconciled, but there was a vague sensation of sadness in the leave-taking which they did not understand. And Esther sat alone in a third-class carriage absorbed in consideration of the problem of her life. The life she had dreamed would never be hers — somehow she seemed to know that she would never be Fred’s wife. Everything seemed to point to the inevitableness of this end.
She had determined to see William no more, but he wrote asking how she would like him to contribute towards the maintenance of the child, and this could not be settled without personal interviews. Miss Rice and Mrs. Lewis seemed to take it for granted that she would marry William when he obtained his divorce. He was applying himself to the solution of this difficulty, and professed himself to be perfectly satisfied with the course that events were taking. And whenever she saw Jackie he inquired after his father; he hoped, too, that she
had forgiven poor father, who had never meant no harm at all. Day by day she saw more clearly that her instinct was right in warning her not to let the child see William, that she had done wrong in allowing her feelings to be overruled by Miss Rice, who had, of course, advised her for the best. But it was clear to her now that Jackie never would take kindly to Fred as a stepfather; that he would never forgive her if she divided him from his real father by marrying another man. He would grow to dislike his stepfather more and more; and when he grew older he would keep away from the house on account of the presence of his stepfather; it would end by his going to live with him. He would be led into a life of betting and drinking; she would lose her child if she married Fred.
XXVII
IT WAS ONE evening as she was putting things away in the kitchen before going up to bed that she heard some one rap at the window. Could this be Fred? Her heart was beating; she must let him in. The area was in darkness; she could see no one.
“Who is there?” she cried.
“It’s only me. I had to see you to-night on — —”
She drew an easier breath, and asked him to come in.
William had expected a rougher reception. The tone in which Esther invited him in was almost genial, and there was no need of so many excuses; but he had come prepared with excuses, and a few ran off his tongue before he was aware.
“Well,” said Esther, “it is rather late. I was just going up to bed; but you can tell me what you’ve come about, if it won’t take long.”
“It won’t take long…. I’ve seen my solicitor this afternoon, and he says that I shall find it very difficult to get a divorce.”
“So you can’t get your divorce?”
“Are you glad?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean? You must be either glad or sorry.”
“I said what I mean. I am not given to telling lies.” Esther set the large tin candlestick, on which a wick was spluttering, on the kitchen table, and William looked at her inquiringly. She was always a bit of a mystery to him. And then he told her, speaking very quickly, how he had neglected to secure proofs of his wife’s infidelity at the time; and as she had lived a circumspect although a guilty life ever since, the solicitor thought that it would be difficult to establish a case against her.