Part 28 (1/2)
The stairs up which I make my difficult way are strung with was.h.i.+ng as far as the first bend. The dampness of the atmosphere has converted the dust and grime on banisters, wall, and stairs into a muddy dew. The little doll's-house of a place reeks with the suffocating odour of gas, fried fish, onions, and steam. In one of the two rooms on the first floor, the door of which stands open, I see--and myself am seen, not to say scowled at, by a couple of pipe-smoking navvies, three or four ragged children, and a little rabbit of a flat-chested woman whose complexion and the colour of her garments bear a striking resemblance to moleskin, and whose thin hair is twisted up in front and held comfortably in its place by a single steel curling-pin which seems to occupy the whole breadth of her forehead.
My rap on the panel of the other door is soon answered by a shrill, cracked voice like the sputtering of a cheap phonograph, and opening the flimsy door I find myself in a tiny topsy-turvy chamber, with all its furniture dragged out of place, a pail of water in the centre of the floor, a piece of scrubbing-soap on the table, and an unwrung house-flannel soaking on the seat of a wooden chair. There is a nice, old-fas.h.i.+oned, round-fronted chest-of-drawers with bra.s.s handles in the room, but the most striking detail of its equipment is a stumpy and amazingly abrupt bedstead against the wall, which is just big enough for a big doll. The bedclothes of this eerie little cot are thrown back, and in the centre of the rumpled mattress, in the hollow made by my heroine's rec.u.mbent form, curled up in a sublime indifference to the puffing and blowing of its mistress on the hearth, lies a shabby, emaciated, and disgusting cat.
At first I suppose Miss Stipp--Miss Emma Jane Stipp--who is polis.h.i.+ng the grate, to be _kneeling_ on the hearthstone; but when a bird-like claw is stretched out to me, and the shrill, cracked voice says, ”I'm dirty, but hearty; sit down and enjoy yourself,” I observe that the little dwarf is actually _standing_ on the hearthstone, although her big head does not come within several inches of the mantelpiece. Indeed, with her twisted feet crossed over one another, so that the left foot appears to be kicking and worrying the right foot, in order to take its place, and the right foot, which turns upward, appears to be trying to creep away from its enemy, as though it wanted to crawl up that enemy's leg to laugh at it from the mocking vantage of its own knee--the little old lady walks up and down on the hearthstone, her hand blacking and polis.h.i.+ng the grate as she goes, just as you may see another lady walking up and down and taking the air on her doorstep.
The little dwarf is familiar to hundreds of Londoners. Always nursing the wall, and using a miniature crooked stick exactly like a question-mark, she hobbles through the streets like a half-human beetle, until she reaches some such place as the approach to a railway station, where she finds it profitable to stand as though in great pain, rolling sheep's eyes at the hurrying crowd. And many of those tenderhearted gentlemen and kind old ladies, and dear little overdressed children returning from a visit to Old Drury or the Tower of London, who have slipped a penny or a sixpenny-bit into the claw of the dwarf, must often have asked themselves at the time what manner of woman she is, and bothered themselves to imagine how on earth she lives. The old creature--for she is over seventy--is counted in statistics among the proud population of this Seat of Empire, and she is as much subject to the cosmic laws and as much a member of the human family as the tallest and most swaggering Lifeguards-man who ever had ”Cook's Son!” shouted at him by irreverent urchin.
How she views the universe from her alt.i.tude of a yard, or a yard and three inches; what her att.i.tude is to G.o.d and man, and how life goes with the old veteran after seventy odd years of its buffeting--these were some of the mysteries which I brought with me into her back room by the riverside for their unveiling by Miss Emma Stipp herself.
”I'm late this mornin', I am,” she says, in her shrill fas.h.i.+on, standing right against the fire like a demon that no flame can consume, and vigorously rubbing at the grate with her black-lead brush. ”The cause is _'im_,” she continues, turning to point the brush at the cat sleeping on her bed, after she has rubbed the red tip of her long nose with a portion of her knuckles and a portion of the brush. ”Oh, he's a villain, a dreadful villain he is,” she cries, with exasperation, returning to her work; ”he worries my life out, he do, the 'orrid varmint. Last night he didn't come home, he didn't. I set up for him, but he didn't come.
'Oh,' I says, 'if you're keepin' low company again,' I says, 'you can stop out all night,' I says, 'for I'll sit up for you no longer; so there, my ugly beauty.' And then in the middle of the night I wake up, I do, feeling that cold, and sneezin' and snuffin', and irritatin' I was from top to toe; and blest if Master Tom hadn't got upon the window-sill, bust open that there piece of brown paper I had pasted over the broken pane, I had, and let hisself in Yankee-doodle fas.h.i.+on, and left me to perish with the cold.”
Her lined and wrinkled face, when she turns it to us, is not without the vestiges of attraction. The head, with its grey hair parted down the centre, is well-shaped; the forlorn-looking eyes are a pale-blue, like faded forget-me-nots; the thin, flexible nose, which is always moist, and the long, firm chin incline towards the formation known as the nut-cracker. But for her abbreviated trunk, and those few pathetic inches of twisted leg--chiefly feet--she might have pa.s.sed for a matronly-looking and rather handsome old harridan, half Scotch and half Irish.
”What with the cat,” she says, and then, letting her voice run up to a screech, she proceeds furiously, ”and that devil of a woman downstairs!
Oh! she's a wicked woman, she is, a _wicked_ woman, a _very_ wicked woman; she's got some of my things because I'm behind-hand in my rent, and she says she won't give them up; but she _shall_. I'll see that she do. Ah! I'll have the law on her--the nasty, swearing, beastly--Oh!
she's a _wicked_ woman.”
Think of the majesty of the English law which enables this pathetic yard of twisted womanhood to hold her own in a foul court against ”a wicked woman” with arms like a bluejacket! But Miss Stipps is used to fighting her own battles. When children yell after her, ”Old Goody Witch!” she swings about and takes her stick to them, pouring out such a flow of imprecation upon their young heads that they run away in a panic of alarm. Moreover, I have it on reliable authority that when Miss Stipps steps over the way with her jug for a pint of porter, she is in the habit, after reaching up her arm to receive the jug back from the barman, of telling the young man pretty sharply that she isn't buying froth, and that she'll trouble him to do a blow at the jug and to give another pull to his tap, which won't hurt him, it won't, as he ain't yet the proprietor of the place, and not likely to be, neither, if he treats poor ladies in sich a wulgar and Sheeny fas.h.i.+on.
I beg Miss Stipp to desist from her labour of dabbing the grate with streaky spots of black-lead, and implore her to take a seat and indulge herself for an easy hour in anecdotal reminiscences. Miss Stipp yields to my blandishments--that is to say, she backs against a little cobbler's stool, a stool which the Baby Bear in that immortal legend of ”The Three Bears” would have found several sizes too small for it, and appears to slope half an inch to the rear. By the action of crossing her hands in her lap, and by the society smile on her face as she turns her dewy nose in my direction, I gather, though I should never have discovered it for myself, that Miss Stipp is seated.
We are now in for a thoroughly comfortable and intimate conversation.
The cat is fast asleep. The spinster's mantelpiece, which is decorated with pictorial advertis.e.m.e.nts of such highly inappropriate commodities as baby's food and tobacco, wears an aspect which I am content to regard as social. And the cupboard beside the fireplace, although the bottom floor is used as a coal-cellar, suggests, with its crowded shelves of dishes, egg-cups, plates, biscuit-boxes, and paper bags, that we are in for a little friendly banquet, which, if not good enough for his Grace of Canterbury, might yet have inspired him of a.s.sisi to ask a blessing.
”Well, you must know,” says Miss Stipp, looking at the fire, and nodding her head as she speaks, ”that I am one of ten, that I was born in Blackfriars--born in Blackfriars, I was--and that all the boys died, and that only me, who was born a cripple--born a cripple, I was--and my two sisters ever grew up to be a comfort to my poor mother. What father was, if ever he was anythin' at all, I _don't_ know; and if I ever did know I think it was somethin' connected in some roundabout fas.h.i.+on, it was, with drains. But he died early, and that was an end of _him_. My poor mother, she was a laundress--a beautiful laundress she was, a very beautiful laundress--and she used to do for a gentleman who was a dissentin' minister--a dissentin' minister he was--and most particular about his linen, and lived in the big square just by the church at the corner, number five; and I've knowed my poor mother fret herself almost to death, she would, if one of them little blisters ever come up on the gentleman's s.h.i.+rt-fronts. And I used to help my poor mother, I did, by carryin' the gentleman's linen to number five in the big square, and that was the fust job I ever did for my poor mother, and proud she was, and proud I was, too, that I could be sich a help to her.
”We was poorer than 'most anybody in Blackfriars, where we lived, and a terribly poor neighbourhood it were--terribly poor; and so one of my sisters got married, she did, and a wonderfully big family she had, but most of 'em died sharp, so _that_ was all right, excep' that the berryin' cost a tidy bit of money, it did. Then my other sister went out to service in Brixton. I useter go there one day a week--Toosday it was--to clean the silver and the soup tureens, and they give me a s.h.i.+llin', they did, I useter help sister in the kitchen--not a cook I wasn't, you must understand, but I useter help with the vegetables and the dis.h.i.+n'-up, and they give me a s.h.i.+llin'. It was a very nice house; a nice house, and no mistake about it. The lady had married a gardener--a gentleman's gardener, he was; and there was a carpet all over the dining-room floor--a nice carpet, a Brussels carpet, an ol' Brussels carpet; and she kep' a parrot--oh, a nasty, spiteful parrot, it was--I useter hate it, I did, the nasty, squawlin' beast; and it was more to her than any baby; and I useter clean the silver and the soup tureens, and do the vegetables and dish-up, Toosdays it was; and they give me a s.h.i.+llin'.
”All by meself I useter go, there and back, and one night”--she lifts her claws and gurgles at the memory, with a slow smile creepin'
gradually through all the wrinkles on her face--”Oh, didn't I give my poor mother a fright, and no mistake about it! It was one of them nasty, stinkin' cold, freezin' nights; the streets like ice, they was, and the 'bus horses couldn't get along nohow, for all they was roughed; and it was past eleven o'clock, it was--yes, past eleven o'clock, it was--before ever I got home; and there was my poor mother standing at the door of the alms-house where we was livin' in Blackfriars--my poor mother and me--and cryin' and wringin' her hands and makin' a to-do, she was, thinking as how she had lost me altogether.
”Then my poor mother died,” says Miss Stipp sadly, drawing her hand across the end of her nose. ”I forgit the year, but it was the fust year that ever there come a August Bank Holiday. And she died on that day, my poor mother did. Yuss, she died on that day. She didn't seem like dyin'
at all that there mornin,' she didn't. She eat a beautiful dinner, a bit of boiled meat--I forgit whether it was beef or mutton--mutton, I think it was, but anyway boiled meat; and she eat a beautiful dinner, my poor mother did--boiled meat, greens, and pertaters; and she eat a nice tea--well, nothin' partickler in the way of a tea, but a _comfortable_ tea; and when I came home, 'Oh Emma Jane,' she says, 'I wish I hadn't never let you go to church this day; for this here,' she says, 'is my very last day on earth,' she says, 'and I'm goin',' she says, 'to your father in heaven, to take care of _him_, and I shall have to leave _you_ all alone,' she says, 'to look after yourself; and I'm most afeard,' my poor mother said, 'what'll become of you,' she says; 'and don't forgit,'
she says, 'to say your prayers, and go reggeler to the Communion, and always be good and obedient, and don't git doin' no vile sin, and please G.o.d we'll all meet in heaven,' she says, 'and be more happy,' she says, 'nor what we have ever been here in Blackfriars.' And it was August Bank Holiday, the first August Bank Holiday that ever was; and it was a beautiful day, lovely weather it was, and my poor mother had a fit, and never was quite the same; and she died.”
Miss Stipp fetches a sigh, and shakes her head at the fire. She has been living in the past, watching with the mind's eye her poor mother fade slowly into eternity on that beautiful August day--the little almshouse bedroom flooded, let us hope, with golden light, for all it was in Blackfriars. She comes to herself with a little jerk, turns her head slowly round to us, and smiles one of her poor, pathetic, half-entreating smiles which make her seem like another Maggie.
And, strange to relate, Miss Stipp was confirmed in St. George's Church, on whose muddied steps Little Dorrit, Little Mother, sat in far-off days with the big head of poor Maggie on her lap. ”It was beautiful, beautiful it was, that there Confirmation,” says Miss Stipp. ”The bishop, he put his hands on my head, just there he did, put 'em on, and I was kneelin' at his feet, and he said the words, whatever they was, and I felt his hands pressin' on my hair; of course, I had done it werry nice for the occasion; and I was quite a public character; yuss! and many's the time I've been up to St. George's Church since those days and fancied to myself that I was actin' the part again.”
Upon the death of her mother the orphan went to live with her married sister, whose large family was always reducing itself by the most surprising feats in infant mortality. She helped in the house. She earned her keep by doing little things for the dying babies, and interviewing the undertaker and bargaining for special terms, seeing what a good customer her sister was, when those poor babies were dead.