Part 52 (1/2)

Another time she talked about her profession as an actress. 'Acting,'

she said, 'cannot be otherwise than delightful--but it takes an actor away from himself. When one has been two or three years on the stage nothing is left but the stage and the dressing-room: the company behind the scenes and the audience in front. Nothing is real. Everything that happens is but a scene in a play. When the curtain drops upon this Act, that is, when they let me go, I shall rest for five minutes while the next Act is getting ready: the play of _Clarinda_, or the _Orange Girl_, has some excellent scenes. You remember that scene when the mob wrecked the house: and the scene when the mob pelted Mr. Merridew--well, I should not be in the least surprised to meet Mr. Merridew himself walking along Holborn with one eye on a young thief in training for a shoplifter: and I might look in at the Black Jack and see my mother taking her morning dram and Doll adding up the scores upon the slate. In five minutes after the curtain has dropped what has happened is little more to me than the last scene in the play at Drury. Why, if I were put into the cart and carried out to Tyburn I should still be the heroine playing my part to a breathless house. And I believe I should enjoy that part of the performance as much as anything. You saw how I played the Virgin Martyr in Court.'

'Yet this is real enough, G.o.d knows,' I said, looking round the place.

'I dare say it looks so to you. To me, it is part of the Play. Will, the Play is nearly over. I knew all along that disaster was coming upon me.

But the worst is over--the worst is over. I know that the worst is over.

I can now foretell what is coming next.' She looked straight before her, her eyes luminous in the dark cell. 'I can see,' she said, 'a time of peace and calm. Well, Will, reality or not, that scene will be pleasant.

I shall go out of this place very soon--But I know not when, and I cannot see myself at any time again upon the boards of Drury. I am certain that I shall never go back there. I cannot see myself in Soho Square either. I shall never go back there. I see fields and hills and woods'--she shuddered and with a gesture pushed the vision from her.

'Will--it is strange, all is strange: it is a beautiful country, but I know it not--I cannot understand it.'

It was not the first time, as you have seen, that she showed this strange power of peering into the future. Whether this fair-haired and blue-eyed woman was really a child of the gipsies, or, as Lord Brockenhurst conjectured, a stolen child, she had the powers that we commonly find in gipsy women who are fortune-tellers all the world over.

That she compelled all men to become her servants you have seen: that she could also compel women to follow and obey her was proved by what she did during that three or four weeks which she spent in the condemned cell: the same magic arts--yet she was no witch: and she could read the future--a gift which is marvellous in our eyes.

Her power over others, even the most savage people, was shown by the changed behaviour of the poor girl waiting for execution. I have mentioned her: she was at first a wild creature: she fled to the darkest corner of the cell and there crouched with eyes of suspicion and terror: she s.n.a.t.c.hed her food and ran into her corner to eat it: she was altogether unwashed and altogether in rags: she was bare-footed, bare-legged and bare-armed: her hair which should have been light--like Jenny's own hair, was matted with dirt: it looked as if it had never known a comb: yet long and beautiful hair: her eyes were blue, large and limpid. She had never known kindness, or love, or care since the day when her mother was marched away to Newgate wearing handcuffs. She was, I say, a mere savage. The child might have been sixteen, but she looked thirteen. Still, sixteen is young for Tyburn. Jenny found this child in her cell: condemned like herself; and she tamed her. Not in a single day, but in a few days. She tamed her with kindness; with soft words in the language which the child understood best: with soft touches: with gifts of pretty things: I suppose she gave her sweetmeats--I know not what she did, but in a few days I found the savage wild creature converted into a shy, timid girl--clinging to Jenny and following her about like a favourite spaniel. She was washed and combed and dressed from head to foot: she wore stockings and shoes: her hair, just confined by a ribbon, hung over her shoulders in lovely tresses: she had become an interesting child who promised to grow into a lovely maiden. And yet she was to be carried out to Tyburn and there hanged.

Then, when the girl had a.s.sumed a civilized look, Jenny began to lament her approaching fate of which the poor creature seemed herself unconscious. Indeed, I think the child understood nothing at her trial or her sentence except that she was horribly frightened and was carried out of court crying.

'Is it not terrible,' she asked, 'that we must hang children--ignorant children?'

'It is the law of the land, Jenny. Judges have only to administer the law of the land.'

'Then it is a cruel law, and the Judges ought to say so. A man is a murderer who condemns a child to death, even if it is the law, without declaring against it.'

'Nay, Jenny'--this she could not understand for the reasons I have already given--'we must remember that the children suffer for the sins of the fathers, unto the third and fourth generation.'

She stared. 'Why,' she said, 'the poor child has been taught no better.'

And, indeed, there seems no answer to this plea. If in the mysteries of Providence we must so suffer, the Law of men should not punish ignorance. 'To hang children!' she insisted. 'To destroy their lives before they have well begun! And for what? For taking something not their own--Oh! Will, it is monstrous. Just for a bit of cloth--only a bit of cloth off a counter. Oh! the poor child! the poor child!'

Then, just as she had spared no trouble to get me out of my danger so she now began to work for the rescue of this child. She spoke to the Governor about it. He looked astonished: children of fifteen, or so, were frequently executed for one offence or the other: the Law was doubtless severe: but criminals of all kinds were multiplying: after all, they were out of the way when they were hanged: this girl, for instance, would only grow up like the rest, a plague and a curse to the community. Still he gave Jenny advice, and by her instruction I drew up a Pet.i.tion from the child herself addressed to no less a person than her Gracious Majesty the young Queen, who was said to have a kindly heart.

The pet.i.tion, with certain changes, might almost have been that of Jenny herself for her own case. Here is a piece of it.

'Your Pet.i.tioner humbly submits that she was born and brought up in a part of London occupied entirely by thieves, rogues, and vagabonds: that she was taught from infancy that the only way by which she could earn her daily bread was by stealing: that the only art or trade she had ever learned was that of stealing without being detected: that she was never at any school or Church or under any kind of instruction whatever: that she was never taught the meaning of right or wrong: that she had learned no religion and no morals and knew not what they meant; and that being caught in the act of stealing a piece of cloth value six s.h.i.+llings from a shop, she is now lying under sentence of death.'

To make a long story short, Jenny entrusted this Pet.i.tion to Lord Brockenhurst, who generously interested himself in the girl and undertook that the Pet.i.tion should reach the hands of Her Majesty the Queen--with the result, as you shall presently hear, that the girl's life was spared.

This incident has nothing to do with the story, save that it shows Jenny's generous nature and her good heart; thus in the midst of her own anxieties to think of the troubles of others. Nay, she not only saved the life of this girl, but she brought her to a new mind and to new thoughts: and, whereas she had been before what you have seen, she converted the child into a decent, well conducted civil girl, worthy of better things--even to marry an honest man and to become the mother of stout lads and st.u.r.dy wenches. Let us consider how many lives might have been destroyed had they hanged this young girl. I have sometimes calculated that if they hang a hundred women every year, most of them young, they deprive the country of five hundred children whose loss may mean the loss of two thousand five hundred grandchildren, and so on. Can any country afford to lose so many valuable soldiers and sailors every year, the number still mounting up? Why, then, cannot we take the children when they are still young out of Roguery and place them in some house where they will be taught religion and morals and a craft? At present the cry is all 'Hang! Hang! Hang!' or 'Flog! Flog! Flog!' So the soldiers and the sailors and the wretched women are tied up and flogged well nigh to death: and the carts go rumbling along Holborn loaded with the poor creatures on their way to be hanged: but the rogues increase and multiply. Since hanging and flogging do no good cannot we try Jenny's method of kindness? I say this writing many years afterwards--because at that time I did not understand the law of kindness which I now perceive to be the Heavenly Law of Charity. Jenny, who had no glimmer of religion, poor thing, in her quick way divined the Law of Charity.

Why, she changed even the women in the Prison Yard. There was great suffering among them. Many of them had no friends to bring them food: they had nothing but the daily dole of the penny loaf. Presently, I observed that they looked more contented and better fed: they were less noisy: there was less quarrelling and fighting: they were even cleaner to look at. All this was Jenny's doing. She fed them first: then when their craving for food, which made them quarrelsome, was allayed, she went among them and talked to them one at a time. I have seen her, I have seen how the rough coa.r.s.e common creatures would respond, little by little, to words of kindness. She advised them about their affairs: she made them confess what they had done: why, was she not one of themselves?

'I knew you,' she said to one, 'long ago in Hog's Lane: you lived in the Old Bell Alley: we were girls together. Come into my cell and I will find you something more to put on; and your hair wants to be combed and put up, doesn't it? And your face would look so much better if it were washed. Come with me----' and so on with one after the other: not the least case being the girl who had laid information and committed perjury against her. It was what Jenny said--though the saying was then too hard for me. They are women: as are all men and women, whether we call some Yahoos or not: they are women: there is not such very great difference between the greatest lady and the lowest woman: both are women: both are ruled by the same irresistible forces of love. Some day, perhaps, some gentlewoman will put the part of the Christian religion--I mean the Law of Charity--into practice. It is strange that a woman who was not a Christian, and had no religion, should first teach me that Charity means more than the giving of alms.

'Let me,' said Jenny, 'do something for these poor creatures while I am among them. That will not be for long. Then they will fall back again into their own ways.'

'But, Jenny, you are spending all your money.'

'An actress never wants money. When I get out of this place I have made up my mind what to do. I will not return to Drury Lane: I will go over to Dublin. That is the strange country with hills and woods which I see before me always. It is Ireland. I will go on the Dublin stage. As for the money, I brought with me all there was in the house when I left it: and all my jewels--but they are not worth much. These women have had some of the money, and the turnkeys have had some, and Mr. Dewberry has had some: and I think there is not much left.'

The question of money pressed hard because I had none, and as yet no new situation, and when Jenny was released she would certainly want money to carry her on.

She laughed, seeing my seriousness. 'Oh! Will--Will,' she said. 'You are a musician and yet you are anxious about money. But you were born in the City. Now in a theatre n.o.body thinks about money. When the money is plenty it is freely lent: when there is none it is freely borrowed.