Esther Waters Part 38

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 bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, 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 pa.s.sion 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 ap.r.o.n 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 pa.s.sion. 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.