In prison and out

The small back room, which was the home of a family, was not much larger than a prison cell, and in point of cleanliness, light, and ventilation, was far inferior to it. There was a fair-sized sash window, but more than half the panes were broken, and the place of the glass supplied by paper, or rags so worn as to be useless for any other purpose. Besides this, the next row of houses, in this thick knot of dwelling-places, was built so close as to shut out even a glimpse of the sky from the rooms on the ground-floor of a house four stories high. The whole street had been originally built for tenants of a better class, but from some reason or other it had fallen into the occupation of the poorest, and each room was considered sufficient accommodation for a separate family.

This small, dark, back room had been intended for a kitchen. Close against the window stood the dust-bin, into which was emptied all the waste of the house, when it was not cast out into the street.

Fortunately there was very little waste of food; for every scrap that could be eaten was greedily devoured, except in very extraordinarily good times. It was fortunate, for the dust-bin was seldom looked after, as the inmates of the crowded dwelling knew little and cared less for sanitary laws. Even the poor hard-working woman, who had been struggling for years to pay the rent of this dark unwholesome den as a home for herself and her children, hardly gave a thought to the tainted air they breathed whether the window was open or shut. She sighed now and then for better light, and the cool freshness of free air; but darkness and a sickly atmosphere seemed to be the natural lot of all about her, and she was not given to murmur. She had grown so weary with the long and monotonous battle of life that she had no longer energy enough to murmur. It was God's will, she said to herself, finding something like peace in the belief. There was a darker depth of misery to which she had not yet sunk--that of feeling there was no God at all.

Her husband had been dead for ten years; and she had had two little children to hamper all her efforts to lift herself and them out of their poverty. She had often failed to procure necessaries, and she had never been so successful as to be able to provide for more than their barest wants. They had all learned how to pinch hard, how to eat little enough, and how to wear the scantiest clothing. They were always trying to trick Nature, who never ceased to demand urgently more than they could give, but who consented to take less than her claim, though the landlord would not.

The children spent most of their waking hours in the street, for there was a small boiler in the kitchen, and the mother took in washing, with which every inch of the small room was crowded. When the weather was too bad for them to be in the streets, they lived on the common staircase or in the passages, hearing and seeing every form of evil, and a few forms of good also, swarming about them; growing up amongst them, as other children grow up amid the peaceful influences of well-ordered homes.

In the mother's mind there were still lingering dim memories of a very different childhood, and of better times before her marriage. Sometimes there came to her as there comes to all of us, sudden flashes of light out of the misty past; and she saw again her cottage home down in the country, and the village school she went to, and her first place as a young servant in the vicarage, where the clergyman's wife had taken care she should keep up her acquaintance with the collects and the catechism. Most of the collects and nearly all the catechism had faded away from her remembrance; but many a quiet Sunday afternoon she had talked to her children of the vicarage garden, where flowers grew all the year round, and of the village green, where boys and girls could play unmolested and unnoticed; and how she left home to come to London for high wages, and had never seen it again. Then she told them of the gay and grand doings there had been in the great houses where she had been in service, until she met with their father, and gave up all the grandeur and luxury for love of him. And then her voice would falter a little as she talked to them of his death, and of all her troubles following quickly one after another, till she was thankful to have even such a home as this.

The poor mother was ignorant, but her ignorance was light and knowledge compared with that of her children. They knew nothing and thought of nothing beyond what they saw and heard about them. David could read a little, but Bess not at all. The thick knot of streets was swarming with children, and it was not difficult to escape the notice of the school inspector on his occasional visits, especially as Bess was thirteen, and David nearly fourteen years of age. The boy had begun to earn a few pence in the streets as soon as he could sell matches; and he was now getting a precarious and uncertain living for himself by "hob-jobbing" as he called it. The Sunday afternoons and evenings, when their mother's work stood still for a few short hours, were their holidays. She had no longer a Sunday gown to wear, but she never failed to put on her wedding-ring, which on week-days was carefully laid aside whilst she was washing, lest it should get too much worn with her hard work. Bess and David felt that their mother was different from most other women in the street. She did not drink, or swear, or brawl; and all their little world knew she was honest. They were vaguely fond of her good character, and David was beginning to feel for her a protecting tenderness he could not have put into words.

For a long while neither of them knew that she was suffering from that fatal and painful disease of cancer, which had thrust its deep roots into her very life. When he did know it, David's heart burned within him to see her standing bravely at her washing-tub, enduring her agony as patiently as she could. At last she was compelled to seek help from the parish; and the relieving officer, after visiting her, recommended out-door relief. There was no doubt what the end must be, and not much uncertainty as to how soon the end must come. Four or five shillings a week would cost the parish less than taking the woman and her girl, even if the boy was left to care for himself, into the house, and provide for her the necessaries and comforts the medical officer would certainly pronounce indispensable. He advised a carefully reckoned dole of four and eightpence a week.

Mrs. Fell was more than satisfied. Separation from her children would have been more bitter than death itself; but now she would have Bess and David with her as long as she could keep death at bay. The four shillings and eightpence would pay her rent, and leave almost fourpence a day for other expenses! If she could only drag on through the winter, and keep a home for Bess and David, she would not murmur however hard her pain was. She could bear worse anguish than she had yet borne for their sakes.

But there was one enemy she had not thought of. The wasting caused by her malady produced a craving hunger, worse to endure, if possible, than the malady itself. It was no longer possible to cheat herself, as she had been used to do in former years, with putting off her hunger until it changed into a dull faintness. The gnawing pain showed itself too plainly in the desperate clenching of her teeth, and the wistful craving of her sunken eyes. Threepence and three farthings a day--one penny and one farthing a piece--could do little towards maintaining a truce with this deadly foe, who must surely conquer her before the winter could be ended.

"It's just as if a wolf was gnawin' me," she said to David, one evening when he came in with a loaf of bread, and a slice of cooked fish from a stall in the street; "not as ever I see a wolf, save once when father was alive, and you was a baby, and we all went to the Zoological Gardens for a holiday. It feels as if all the hunger I ever had had hidden itself away somewhere, and heaped itself up, and is all let loose on me now. You children, take your share first, for fear I'd eat it all, and not leave enough for you."

"It's all for you and Bess, mother," he answered; "I ate my supper at the stall."

He did not say that he had made his supper of a crust of mouldy bread he had found lying in the street, and was still as hungry as a growing lad generally is. Like his mother he was quite used to disregard the urgent claims of his appetite. But he sat down at the end of her ironing-board, and watched her by the feeble light of the candle, as she greedily devoured the food he had brought. It seemed as if his eyes were opened to see her more clearly than he had ever done before, and her face was indelibly impressed upon his memory. For the first time, as it appeared to him, he noticed her thin sunken cheeks, her scanty hair turning grey, her eager bright eyes, and the suffering that filled her whole face. The tears dimmed his sight for an instant, and a slight shiver ran through him, as he gazed intently on her.

"Mother," he said, "I only took fourpence all day for running two errands, for all I've been on the look-out sharp. Mother, I must take to beggin'".

"No, no!" she answered, looking up for a moment from the food she was so eagerly eating.

"I must," he went on; "there's lots o' money to be got that way. They all says so. I couldn't make myself look hungrier than I am; and I'll tell the truth, as you're dyin' of a cancer, ay! and dyin' of hunger. I know there'd be folks as would help us. I hate the thought of it as much as you; but it's better me than Bess. Little Bess 'ud be frightened," he added, looking at his ragged sister, for whose sake he had fought many a battle, and borne many a beating in the streets.

"I never thought it 'ud come to beggin'," said his mother in a sorrowful, faltering voice.

"Nor me," continued David, "but there's hardly no work for such as me, as don't know nothink. I'd have chose to be a carpenter, like father; but there's no chance of that. Don't you cry, mother; you've done your best for us, and it's my turn to do my best for you. And beggin's the best as I can do."

David felt it a bitter pass to come to. Untaught and ignorant as he was, he had his own dream of ambition to be a carpenter, and earn wages like his father. He had gone now and then to a nightschool, and learned after a fashion to read and write a little; but there was no school where a ragged boy like him could learn any kind of handicraft, by which he could earn a livelihood. If there had been such a place, how gladly would he have gone to it, and how heartily would he have set himself to work! There was no one to blame perhaps; but still he felt it to be a hard and bitter lot to turn out as a beggar.

"I'll do it," he said, after a long silence, "not just round here, you know, mother; but out in the country, where folks ain't all in such a hurry. I'll take care of the police; and I'll be back again afore Sunday, and you've got Bess with you, so as you won't be lonesome. If I've luck I'll try again next week. There's kind rich folk as 'ud do some-think for you, if they only knew; and I'll go and find 'em out. Don't you take on and fret, mother. It ain't thievin', you know."

"I'll think about it in the night, Davy," she answered sadly.

In the painful, wakeful hours of the night, the poor mother thought of her boy tramping the roads in his ragged clothing, and with his almost bare feet, and stopping the passers-by to ask for alms. It had been the aim of her long-laborious life to save herself and her children from beggary. Oh! if this cruel malady had only spared her another two or three years, until David had been more of a man, and Bess a grown-up girl! She could have lain down to die thankfully then, though now she had a terrible dread of dying. But as far as she could see there was nothing else to be done than to let David try his luck. There were good rich folks, as he said, if he could only find them. She must let him go and search for them.

"You may go," she said, in the morning, after they had eaten together the few fragments her hunger had been able to spare the night before, "and God bless you, Davy! Don't you never do nothink save beg. That's bad enough, but remember both of yer, what I always said, 'Keep thy hands from pickin' and stealin''. Them's good words to go by. And, Davy, come back as soon as you can, for I'll be hungrier for a sight of you than I am for victuals. Always tell out your tale quiet and true, as your mother's dying of cancer and famishin' with hunger; and if they answer 'No,' or shakes their heads, turn away at once, and try somebody else. Don't stop folks as are in a hurry. Kiss me afore you go, Davy."

It seemed a solemn thing to do; he felt half choked, and could not speak a word as he bent down to kiss her tenderly. He put his arm round his sister's neck, and kissed her too; and then, catching up his threadbare cap, he went to the door, trying to whistle a cheery street tune. He paused in the doorway, and looked back on them.

"Good-bye, mother," he cried; "don't you fret after me."