Part 17 (1/2)
”Then ye ought. What do ye ken anent the Pacific? Which is maist to your business?--thae bare-backed hizzies that play the harlot o' the other side o' the warld, or these--these thousands o' bare-backed hizzies that play the harlot o' your ain side--made out o' your ain flesh and blude? You a poet! True poetry, like true charity, my laddie, begins at hame. If ye'll be a poet at a', ye maun be a c.o.c.kney poet; and while the c.o.c.kneys be what they be, ye maun write, like Jeremiah of old, o' lamentation and mourning and woe, for the sins o' your people. Gin you want to learn the spirit o' a people's poet, down wi' your Bible and read thae auld Hebrew prophets; gin ye wad learn the style, read your Burns frae morning till night; and gin ye'd learn the matter, just gang after your nose, and keep your eyes open, and ye'll no miss it.”
”But all this is so--so unpoetical.”
”Hech! Is there no the heeven above them there, and the h.e.l.l beneath them?
and G.o.d frowning, and the deevil grinning? No poetry there! Is no the verra idea of the cla.s.sic tragedy defined to be, man conquered by circ.u.mstance?
Canna ye see it there? And the verra idea of the modern tragedy, man conquering circ.u.mstance?--and I'll show you that, too--in mony a garret where no eye but the gude G.o.d's enters, to see the patience, and the fort.i.tude, and the self-sacrifice, and the luve stronger than death, that's s.h.i.+ning in thae dark places o' the earth. Come wi' me, and see.”
We went on through a back street or two, and then into a huge, miserable house, which, a hundred years ago, perhaps, had witnessed the luxury, and rung to the laughter of some one great fas.h.i.+onable family, alone there in their glory. Now every room of it held its family, or its group of families--a phalanstery of all the fiends;--its grand staircase, with the carved bal.u.s.trades rotting and crumbling away piecemeal, converted into a common sewer for all its inmates. Up stair after stair we went, while wails of children, and curses of men, steamed out upon the hot stifling rush of air from every doorway, till, at the topmost story, we knocked at a garret door. We entered. Bare it was of furniture, comfortless, and freezing cold; but, with the exception of the plaster dropping from the roof, and the broken windows, patched with rags and paper, there was a scrupulous neatness about the whole, which contrasted strangely with the filth and slovenliness outside. There was no bed in the room--no table. On a broken chair by the chimney sat a miserable old woman, fancying that she was warming her hands over embers which had long been cold, shaking her head, and muttering to herself, with palsied lips, about the guardians and the workhouse; while upon a few rags on the floor lay a girl, ugly, small-pox marked, hollow eyed, emaciated, her only bed clothes the skirt of a large handsome new riding-habit, at which two other girls, wan and tawdry, were st.i.tching busily, as they sat right and left of her on the floor. The old woman took no notice of us as we entered; but one of the girls looked up, and, with a pleased gesture of recognition, put her finger up to her lips, and whispered, ”Ellen's asleep.”
”I'm not asleep, dears,” answered a faint, unearthly voice; ”I was only praying. Is that Mr. Mackaye?”
”Ay, my la.s.sies; but ha' ye gotten na fire the nicht?”
”No,” said one of them, bitterly, ”we've earned no fire to-night, by fair trade or foul either.”
The sick girl tried to raise herself up and speak, but was stopped by a frightful fit of coughing and expectoration, as painful, apparently, to the sufferer as it was, I confess, disgusting even to me.
I saw Mackaye slip something into the hand of one of the girls, and whisper, ”A half-hundred of coals;” to which she replied, with an eager look of grat.i.tude that I never can forget, and hurried out. Then the sufferer, as if taking advantage of her absence, began to speak quickly and eagerly.
”Oh, Mr. Mackaye--dear, kind Mr. Mackaye--do speak to her; and do speak to poor Lizzy here! I'm not afraid to say it before her, because she's more gentle like, and hasn't learnt to say bad words yet--but do speak to them, and tell them not to go the bad Way, like all the rest. Tell them it'll never prosper. I know it is want that drives them to it, as it drives all of us--but tell them it's best to starve and die honest girls, than to go about with the shame and the curse of G.o.d on their hearts, for the sake of keeping this poor, miserable, vile body together a few short years more in this world o' sorrow. Do tell them, Mr. Mackaye.”
”I'm thinking,” said he, with the tears running down his old withered face, ”ye'll mak a better preacher at that text than I shall, Ellen.”
”Oh, no, no; who am I, to speak to them?--it's no merit o' mine, Mr.
Mackaye, that the Lord's kept me pure through it all. I should have been just as bad as any of them, if the Lord had not kept me out of temptation in His great mercy, by making me the poor, ill-favoured creature I am. From that time I was burnt when I was a child, and had the small-pox afterwards, oh! how sinful I was, and repined and rebelled against the Lord! And now I see it was all His blessed mercy to keep me out of evil, pure and unspotted for my dear Jesus, when He comes to take me to Himself. I saw Him last night, Mr. Mackaye, as plain as I see you now, ail in a flame of beautiful white fire, smiling at me so sweetly; and He showed me the wounds in His hands and His feet, and He said, 'Ellen, my own child, those that suffer with me here, they shall be glorified with me hereafter, for I'm coming very soon to take you home.'”
Sandy shook his head at all this with a strange expression of face, as if he sympathized and yet disagreed, respected and yet smiled at the shape which her religious ideas had a.s.sumed; and I remarked in the meantime that the poor girl's neck and arm were all scarred and distorted, apparently from the effects of a burn.
”Ah,” said Sandy, at length, ”I tauld ye ye were the better preacher of the two; ye've mair comfort to gie Sandy than he has to gie the like o' ye. But how is the wound in your back the day?”
Oh, it was wonderfully better! the doctor had come and given her such blessed ease with a great thick leather he had put under it, and then she did not feel the boards through so much. ”But oh, Mr. Mackaye, I'm so afraid it will make me live longer to keep me away from my dear Saviour.
And there's one thing, too, that's breaking my heart, and makes me long to die this very minute, even if I didn't go to Heaven at all, Mr. Mackaye.”
(And she burst out crying, and between her sobs it came out, as well as I could gather, that her notion was, that her illness was the cause of keeping the girls in ”_the bad ivay_,” as she called it.) ”For Lizzy here, I did hope that she had repented of it after all my talking to her; but since I've been so bad, and the girls have had to keep me most o' the time, she's gone out of nights just as bad as ever.”
Lizzy had hid her face in her hands the greater part of this speech. Now she looked up pa.s.sionately, almost fiercely--
”Repent--I have repented--I repent of it every hour--I hate myself, and hate all the world because of it; but I must--I must; I cannot see her starve, and I cannot starve myself. When she first fell sick she kept on as long as she could, doing what she could, and then between us we only earned three s.h.i.+llings a week, and there was ever so much to take off for fire, and twopence for thread, and fivepence for candles; and then we were always getting fined, because they never gave us out the work till too late on purpose, and then they lowered prices again; and now Ellen can't work at all, and there's four of us with the old lady, to keep off two's work that couldn't keep themselves alone.”
”Doesn't the parish allow the old lady anything?” I ventured to ask.
”They used to allow half-a-crown for a bit; and the doctor ordered Ellen things from the parish, but it isn't half of 'em she ever got; and when the meat came, it was half times not fit to eat, and when it was her stomach turned against it. If she was a lady she'd be c.o.c.kered up with all sorts of soups and jellies, and nice things, just the minute she fancied 'em, and lie on a water bed instead of the bare floor--and so she ought; but where's the parish'll do that? And the hospital wouldn't take her in because she was incurable; and, besides, the old'un wouldn't let her go--nor into the union neither. When she's in a good-humour like, she'll sit by her by the hour, holding her hand and kissing of it, and nursing of it, for all the world like a doll. But she won't hear of the workhouse; so now, these last three weeks, they takes off all her pay, because they says she must go into the house, and not kill her daughter by keeping her out--as if they warn't a killing her themselves.”
”No workhouse--no workhouse!” said the old woman, turning round suddenly, in a clear, lofty voice. ”No workhouse, sir, for an officer's daughter!”
And she relapsed into her stupor.
At that moment the other girl entered with the coals--but without staying to light the fire, ran up to Ellen with some trumpery dainty she had bought, and tried to persuade her to eat it.