Esther Waters Part 16

Esther tried to pa.s.s by her mother. "I don't want to stop where I'm not wanted; I wants no one's charity. Let me go, mother."

"No, no, Esther. 'Aven't yer 'eard what 'e says? Ye are my child if you ain't 'is, and it would break my 'eart, that it would, to see you go away among strangers. Yer place is among yer own people, who'll look after you."

"Now, then, Esther, why should there be ill feeling. I didn't mean any 'arm. There's a lot of us 'ere, and I've to think of the interests of my own. But for all that I should be main sorry to see yer take yer money among strangers, where you wouldn't get no value for it. You'd better stop. I'm sorry for what I said. Ain't that enough for yer?"

"Jim, Jim, dear, don't say no more; leave 'er to me. Esther, for my sake stop with us. You are in trouble, and it is right for you to stop with me.

Jim 'as said no more than the truth. With all the best will in the world we couldn't afford to keep yer for nothing, but since yer can pay yer way, it is yer duty to stop. Think, Esther, dear, think. Go and shake 'ands with 'im, and I'll go and make yer up a bed on the sofa."

"There's no b.l.o.o.d.y need for 'er to shake my 'and if she don't like," Jim replied, and he pulled doggedly at his pipe.

Esther tried, but her fierce and heavy temper held her back. She couldn't go to her father for reconciliation, and the matter might have ended quite differently, but suddenly, without another word, Jim put on his hat and went out to join "his chaps" who were waiting for him about the public-house, close to the cab-rank in the Vauxhall Bridge Road. The door was hardly closed behind him when the young children laughed and ran about joyously, and Jenny and Julia went over to Esther and begged her to stop.

"Of course she'll stop," said Mrs. Saunders. "And now, Esther, come along and help me to make you up a bed in the parlour."

XIV

Esther was fast asleep next morning when Mrs. Saunders came into the parlour. Mrs. Saunders stood looking at her, and Esther turned suddenly on the sofa and said----

"What time is it, mother?"

"It's gone six; but don't you get up. You're your own mistress whilst you're here; you pays for what you 'as."

"I can't afford them lazy habits. There's plenty of work here, and I must help you with some of it."

"Plenty of work here, that's right enough. But why should you bother, and you nearly seven months gone? I daresay you feels that 'eavy that you never care to get out of your chair. But they says that them who works up to the last 'as the easiest time in the end. Not that I've found it so."

The conversation paused. Esther threw her legs over the side of the sofa, and still wrapped in the blanket, sat looking at her mother.

"You can't be over-comfortable on that bit of sofa," said Mrs. Saunders.

"Lor, I can manage right enough, if that was all."

"You is that cast down, Esther; you mustn't give way. Things sometimes turns out better than one expects."

"You never found they did, mother."

"Perhaps I didn't, but that says nothing for others. We must bear up as best we can."

One word led to another, and very soon Esther was telling her mother the whole tale of her misfortune--all about William, the sweepstakes, the ball at the Sh.o.r.eham Gardens, the walks about the farm and hillside.

"Service is no place for a girl who wants to live as we used to live when father was alive--no service that I've seen. I see that plain enough.

Mistress was one of the Brethren like ourselves, and she had to put up with betting and drinking and dancing, and never a thought of the Lord.

There was no standing out against it. They call you Creeping Jesus if you say your prayers, and you can't say them with a girl laughing or singing behind your back, so you think you'll say them to yourself in bed, but sleep comes sooner than you expect, and so you slips out of the habit.

Then the drinking. We was brought up teetotal, but they're always pressing it upon you, and to please him I said I would drink the 'orse's 'ealth.

That's how it began.... You don't know what it is, mother; you only knew G.o.d-fearing men until you married him. We aren't all good like you, mother. But I thought no harm, indeed I didn't."

"A girl can't know what a man is thinking of, and we takes the worst for the best."

"I don't say that I was altogether blameless but--"

"You didn't know he was that bad."

Esther hesitated.

"I knew he was like other men. But he told me--he promised me he'd marry me."

Mrs. Saunders did not answer, and Esther said, "You don't believe I'm speaking the truth."

"Yes, I do, dearie. I was only thinking. You're my daughter; no mother had a better daughter. There never was a better girl in this world."

"I was telling you, mother--"

"But I don't want no telling that my Esther ain't a bad girl."

Mrs. Saunders sat nodding her head, a sweet, uncritical mother; and Esther understood how unselfishly her mother loved her, and how simply she thought of how she might help her in her trouble. Neither spoke, and Esther continued dressing.

"You 'aven't told me what you think of your room. It looks pretty, don't you think? I keeps it as nice as I can. Jenny hung up them pictures. They livens it up a bit," she said, pointing to the coloured supplements, from the ill.u.s.trated papers, on the wall. "The china shepherd and shepherdess, you know; they was at Barnstaple."

When Esther was dressed, she and Mrs. Saunders knelt down and said a prayer together. Then Esther said she would make up her room, and when that was done she insisted on helping her mother with the housework.

In the afternoon she sat with her sisters, helping them with their dogs, folding the paper into the moulds, pasting it down, or cutting the skins into the requisite sizes. About five, when the children had had their tea, she and her mother went for a short walk. Very often they strolled through Victoria Station, amused by the bustle of the traffic, or maybe they wandered down the Buckingham Palace Road, attracted by the shops. And there was a sad pleasure in these walks. The elder woman had borne years of exceeding trouble, and felt her strength failing under her burdens, which instead of lightening were increasing; the younger woman was full of nervous apprehension for the future and grief for the past. But they loved each other deeply. Esther threw herself in the way to protect her mother, whether at a dangerous crossing or from the heedlessness of the crowd at a corner, and often a pa.s.ser-by turned his head and looked after them, attracted by the solicitude which the younger woman showed for the elder.

In those walks very little was said. They walked in silence, slipping now and then into occasional speech, and here and there a casual allusion or a broken sentence would indicate what was pa.s.sing in their minds.

One day some flannel and shirts in a window caught Mrs. Saunder's eye, and she said--

"It is time, Esther, you thought about your baby clothes. One must be prepared; one never knows if one will go one's full time."

The words came upon Esther with something of a shock, helping her to realise the imminence of her trouble.

"You must have something by you, dear; one never knows how it is going to turn out; even I who have been through it do feel that nervous. I looks round the kitchen when I'm taken with the pains, and I says, 'I may never see this room again.'"

The words were said in an undertone to Esther, and the shop-woman turned to get down the ready-made things which Mrs. Saunders had asked to see.

"Here," said the shopwoman, "is the gown, longcloth, one-and-sixpence; here is the flannel, one-and-sixpence; and here is the little shirt, sixpence."

"You must have these to go on with, dear, and if the baby lives you'll want another set."

"Oh, mother, of course he'll live; why shouldn't he?"

Even the shopwoman smiled, and Mrs. Saunders, addressing the shopwoman, said--

"Them that knows nothing about it is allus full of 'ope."

The shopwoman raised her eyes, sighed, and inquired sympathetically if this was the young lady's first confinement.