John Greenleaf Whittier - "The Conflict With Slavery, Part 1, From Vol. VII,"

George Moore - "Spring Days"

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The Unclassed

G >> George Gissing >> The Unclassed




"Do you like me to be with you, mother?" she asked, when a timid
question had at length elicited assurance of this joy. "Does it make
you feel better?"

"Yes, yes. But it's my throat, and you can't make that better; I
only wish you could. But you are a comfort to me, for all that; I
don't know what I should do without you. Oh, I sha'n't be able to
speak a word soon, I sha'n't!"

"Don't, don't talk, dear. I'll talk instead, and you listen. Don't
you think, mother dear, I could--could always sleep with you? I
wouldn't disturb you; indeed, indeed I wouldn't! You don't know how
quiet I lie. If I'm wakeful ever I seem to have such a lot to think
about, and I lie so still and quiet, you can't think. I never wake
Mrs. Led ward, indeed. Do let me, mother; just try me!"

Lotty broke out into passionate weeping, wrung her hands, and hid
her face in the pillow. Ida was terrified, and exerted every effort
to console this strange grief. The outburst only endured a minute or
two, however; then a mood of vexed impatience grew out of the
anguish and despair, and Lotty pushed away the child fretfully.

"I've often told you, you can't, you mustn't bother me. There,
there; you don't mean any harm, but you put me out, bothering me,
Ida. Tell me, what do you think about when you lay awake? Don't you
think you'd give anything to get off to sleep again? I know I do; I
can't bear to think; it makes my head ache so."

"Oh, I like it. Sometimes I think over what I've been reading, in
the animal book, and the geography-book; and--and then I begin my
wishing-thoughts. And oh, I've such lots of wishing-thoughts, you
couldn't believe!"

"And what are the wishing-thoughts about?" inquired the mother, in a
matter-of-fact way.

"I often wish I was grown up. I feel tired of being a child; I want
to be a woman. Then I should know so much more, and I should be able
to understand all the things you tell me I can't now. I don't care
for playing at games and going to school."

"You'll be a woman soon enough, Ida," said Lotty, with a quiet
sadness unusual in her. "But go on; what else?"

"And then I often wish I was a boy. It must be so much nicer to be a
boy. They're stronger than girls, and they know more. Don't you wish
I was a boy, mother?"

"Yes, I do, I often do!" exclaimed Lotty. "Boys aren't such a
trouble, and they can go out and shift for themselves."

"Oh, but I won't be a trouble to you," exclaimed Ida. "When I'm old
enough to leave school--"

She interrupted herself, for the moment she had actually forgotten
the misfortune which had come upon her. But her mother did not
observe the falling of her countenance, nor yet the incomplete
sentence.

"Ida, have I been a bad mother to you?" Lotty sobbed out presently.
"If I was to die, would you be sorry?"

"Mother!"

"I've done my best, indeed I've done my best for yon! How many
mothers like me would have brought you up as I've done? How many,
I'd like to know? And some day you'll hate me; oh yes, you will!
Some day you'll wish to forget all about me, and you'll never come
to see where I'm buried, and you'll get rid of everything that could
remind you of me. How I wish I'd never been born!"

Ida had often to comfort her mother in the latter's fits of low
spirits, but had never heard such sad words as these before. The
poor child could say nothing in reply; the terrible thought that she
herself was bringing new woes to be endured almost broke her heart
She clung about her mother's neck and wept passionately.

Lotty shortly after took a draught from a bottle which the child
reached out of a drawer for her, and lay pretty still till
drowsiness came on. Ida undressed and crept to her side. They had a
troubled night, and, when the daylight came again, Lotty was no
better. Ida rose in anguish of spirit, torturing herself to find a
way of telling what must be told. Yet she had another respite; her
mother said that, as it was Saturday, she might as well stay away
from school and be a little nurse. And the dull day wore through;
the confession being still postponed.

But by the last post at night came Miss Rutherford's letter. Ida was
still sitting up, and Lotty had fallen into a doze, when the
landlady brought the letter upstairs. The child took it in, answered
an inquiry about her mother in a whisper, and returned to the
bedside. She knew the handwriting on the envelope. The dreaded
moment had come.

She must have stood more than a quarter of an hour, motionless,
gazing on her mother's face, conscious of nothing but an agonised
expectation of seeing the sleeper's eyes open. They did open at
length, and quickly saw the letter.

"It's from Miss Rutherford, mother," said Ida, her own voice
sounding very strange to herself.

"Oh, is it?" said Lotty, in the hoarse whisper which was all she
could command "I suppose she wants to know why you didn't go. Read
it to me."

Ida read, and, in reading, suffered as she never did again
throughout her life.

"DEAR MRS. STARR,--I am very sorry to have to say that Ida must not
return to school. I had better leave the explanation to herself; she
is truthful, and will tell you what has compelled me to take this
step. I grieve to lose her, but have really no choice.--I am, yours
truly,

H. RUTHERFORD."

No tears rose; her voice was as firm as though she had been reading
in class; but she was pale and cold as death.

Lotty rose in bed and stared wildly.

"What have you done, child?--what ever have you done? Is--is it
anything--about _me_"

"I hit Harriet Smales with a slate, and covered her all over with
blood, and I thought I'd killed her."

She could not meet her mother's eyes; stood with head hung down, and
her hands clasped behind her.

"What made you do it?" asked Lotty in amazement.

"I couldn't help it, mother; she--she said you were a bad woman."

Ida had raised her eyes with a look of love and proud confidence.
Lotty shrank before her, clutched convulsively at the bed-clothes,
then half raised herself and dashed her head with fearful violence
against the wall by which the bed stood. She fell back, half
stunned, and lay on the pillows, whilst the child, with outstretched
hands, gazed horror-struck. But in a moment Ida had her arms around
the distraught woman, pressing the dazed head against her breast.
Lotty began to utter incoherent self-reproaches, unintelligible to
her little comforter; her voice had become the merest whisper; she
seemed to have quite exhausted herself. Just now there came a knock
at the door, and Ida was relieved to see Mrs. Ledward, whose help
she begged. In a few minutes Lotty had come to herself again, and
whispered that she wished to speak to the landlady alone. The latter
persuaded Ida to go downstairs for a while, and the child, whose
tears had begun to flow, left the room, sobbing in anguish.

"Ain't you better then?" asked the woman, with an apparent effort to
speak in a sympathetic tone which did not come easily to her.

"I'm very bad," whispered the other, drawing her breath as if in
pain.

"Ay, you've got a bad cold, that's what it is. I'll make you some
gruel presently, and put some rum in it. You don't take care of
yourself: I told you how it 'ud be when you came in with those
wringin' things on, on Thursday night."

"They've found out about me at the school," gasped Lotty, with a
despairing look, "and Ida's got sent away."

"She has? Well, never mind, you can find another, I suppose. I can't
see myself what she wants with so much schoolin', but I suppose you
know best about your own affairs."

"Oh, I feel that bad! If I get over this, I'll give it up--God help
me, I will! I'll get my living honest, if there's any way. I never
felt so bad as I do now."

"Pooh!" exclaimed the woman. "Wait a bit till you get rid of your
sore throat, and you'll think different. Poorly people gets all
sorts o' fancies. Keep a bit quiet now, and don't put yourself out
so."

"What are we to do? I've only got a few shillings--"

"Well, you'll have money again some time, I suppose. You don't
suppose I'll turn you out in the streets? Write to Fred on Monday,
and he'll send you something."

They talked till Lotty exhausted herself again, then Ida was allowed
to re-enter the room. Mrs. Ledward kept coming and going till her
own bed-time, giving what help and comfort she could in her hard,
half-indifferent way. Another night passed, and in the morning Lotty
seemed a little better. Her throat was not so painful, but she
breathed with difficulty, and had a cough. Ida sat holding her
mother's hand. It was a sunny morning, and the bells of neighbouring
churches began to ring out clearly on the frosty air.

"Ida," said the sick woman, raising herself suddenly, "get me some
note-paper and an envelope out of the box; and go and borrow pen and
ink, there's a good child."

The materials were procured, and, with a great effort, Lotty managed
to arrange herself so as to be able to write. She covered four pages
with a sad scrawl, closed the envelope, and was about to direct it,
but paused.

"The bells have stopped," she said, listening. "It's half-past
eleven. Put on your things, Ida."

The child obeyed, wondering.

"Give me my purse out of the drawer. See, there's a shilling. Now,
say this after me: Mr. Abra'm Woodstock, Number--, St. John Street
Road."

Ida repeated the address.

"Now, listen, Ida. You put this letter in your pocket; you go down
into the Mary'bone road; you ask for a 'bus to the Angel. When you
get to the Angel, you ask your way to Number--, St. John Street
Road; it isn't far off. Knock at the door, and ask if Mr. Abra'm
Woodstock is in. If he is, say you want to see him, and then give
him this letter,--into his own hands, and nobody else's. If he
isn't in, ask when he will be, and, if it won't be long, wait."

Ida promised, and then, after a long gaze, her mother dropped back
again on the pillow, and turned her face away. A cough shook her for
a few moments. Ida waited.

"Well, ain't you gone?" asked Lotty faintly.

"Kiss me, mother."

They held each other in a passionate embrace, and then the child
went away.

She reached Islington without difficulty, and among the bustling and
loitering crowd which obstructs the corner at the Angel, found some
one to direct her to the street she sought. She had to walk some
distance down St. John Street Road, in the direction of the City,
before discovering the house she desired to find. When she reached
it, it proved to be a very dingy tenement, the ground-floor
apparently used as offices; a much-worn plate on the door exhibited
the name of the gentleman to whom her visit was, with his
professional description added. Mr. Woodstock was an accountant.

She rang the bell, and a girl appeared. Yes, Mr. Woodstock was at
home. Ida was told to enter the passage, and wait.

A door at her right hand as she entered was slightly ajar, and
voices could be heard from the other side of it. One of these voices
very shortly raised itself in a harsh and angry tone, and Ida could
catch what was said.

"Well, Mr. What's-your-name, I suppose I know my own business rather
better than you can teach me. It's pretty clear you've been doing
your best for some time to set the people against me, and I'm damned
if I'll have it! You go to the place on religious pretences, and
what your real object may be I don't know; but I do know one thing,
and that is, I won't have you hanging about any longer. I'll meet
you there myself, and if it's a third-floor window you get pitched
out of, well, it won't be my fault. Now I don't want any more talk
with you. This is most folks' praying-time; I wonder you're not at
it. It's _my_ time for writing letters, and I'd rather have your
room than your company. I'm a plain-spoken man, you see, a man of
business, and I don't mince matters. To come and dictate to me about
the state of my houses and of my tenants ain't a business-like
proceeding, and you'll excuse me if I don't take it kindly. There's
the door, and good morning to you!"

The door opened, and a young man, looking pale and dismayed, came
out quickly, and at once left the house. Behind him came the last
speaker. At the sight of the waiting child he stood still, and the
expression of his face changed from sour annoyance to annoyed
surprise.

"Eh? Well?" he exclaimed, looking closely at Ida, his eye-brows
contracting.

"I have a letter for Mr. Abra'm Woodstock, sir."

"Well, give it here. Who's it from?"

"Mrs. Starr, sir."

"Who's Mrs. Starr? Come in here, will you?"

His short and somewhat angry tone was evidently in some degree the
result of the interview that had just closed, but also pretty
clearly an indication of his general manner to strangers. He let the
child pass him, and followed her into the room with the letter in
his hand. He did not seem able to remove his eyes from her face.
Ida, on her side, did not dare to look up at him. He was a massively
built, grey-headed man of something more than sixty. Everything
about him expressed strength and determination, power alike of body
and mind. His features were large and heavy, but the forehead would
have become a man of strong intellect; the eyes were full of
astonishing vital force, and the chin was a physiognomical study, so
strikingly did its moulding express energy of character. He was
clean-shaven, and scarcely a seam or wrinkle anywhere broke the
hard, smooth surface of his visage, its complexion clear and rosy as
that of a child.

Still regarding Ida, he tore open the envelope. At the sight of the
writing he, not exactly started, but moved his head rather suddenly,
and again turned his eyes upon the messenger.

"Sit down," he said, pointing to a chair. The room was an
uncomfortable office, with no fire. He himself took a seat
deliberately at a desk, whence he could watch Ida, and began to
read. As he did so, his face remained unmoved, but he looked away
occasionally, as if to reflect.

"What's your name?" he asked, when he had finished, beginning, at
the same time, to tear the letter into very small pieces, which he
threw into a waste-paper basket.

"Ida, sir,--Ida Starr."

"Starr, eh?" He looked at her very keenly, and, still looking, and
still tearing up the letter, went on in a hard, unmodulated voice.
"Well, Ida Starr, it seems your mother wants to put you in the way
of earning your living." The child looked up in fear and
astonishment. "You can carry a message? You'll say to your mother
that I'll undertake to do what I can for you, on one condition, and
that is that she puts you in my hands and never sees you again."

"Oh, I can't leave mother!" burst from the child's lips
involuntarily, her horror overcoming her fear of the speaker.

"I didn't ask you if you could," remarked Mr. Woodstock, with
something like a sneer, tapping the desk with the fingers of his
right hand. "I asked whether you could carry a message. Can you, or
not?"

"Yes, I can," stammered Ida.

"Then take _that_ message, and tell your mother it's all I've got to
say. Run away."

He rose and stood with his hands behind him, watching her. Ida made
what haste she could to the door, and sped out into the street.





CHAPTER III

ANTECEDENTS




It would not have been easy to find another instance of a union of
keen intellect and cold heart so singular as that displayed in the
character of Abraham Woodstock. The man s life had been strongly
consistent from the beginning; from boyhood a powerful will had
borne him triumphantly over every difficulty, and in each decisive
instance his will had been directed by a shrewd intelligence which
knew at once the strength of its own resources and the multiplied
weaknesses of the vast majority of men. In the pursuit of his ends
he would tolerate no obstacle which his strength would suffice to
remove. In boyhood and early manhood the exuberance of his physical
power was wont to manifest itself in brutal self-assertion. At
school he was the worst kind of bully, his ferociousness tempered by
no cowardice. Later on, he learned that a too demonstrative bearing
would on many occasions interfere with his success in life; he toned
down his love of muscular victory, and only allowed himself an
outbreak every now and then, when he felt he could afford the
indulgence. Put early into an accountant's office, and losing his
father about the same time (the parent, who had a diseased heart,
was killed by an outburst of fury to which Abraham gave way on some
trivial occasion), he had henceforth to fight his own battle, and
showed himself very capable of winning it. In many strange ways he
accumulated a little capital, and the development of commercial
genius put him at a comparatively early age on the road to fortune.
He kept to the business of an accountant, and by degrees added
several other distinct callings. He became a lender of money in
several shapes, keeping both a loan-office and a pawnbroker's shop.
In middle age he frequented the race-course, but, for sufficient
reasons, dropped that pursuit entirely before he had turned his
fiftieth year. As a youth he had made a good thing of games of
skill, but did not pursue them as a means of profit when he no
longer needed the resource.

He married at the age of thirty. This, like every other step he
took, was well planned; his wife brought him several thousand
pounds, being the daughter of a retired publican with whom Woodstock
had had business relations.

Two years after his marriage was born his first and only child, a
girl whom they called Lotty. Lotty, as she grew up, gradually
developed an unfortunate combination of her parents' qualities; she
had her mother's weakness of mind, without her mother's moral sense,
and from her father she derived an ingrained stubbornness, which had
nothing in common with strength of character. Doubly unhappy was it
that she lost her mother so early; the loss deprived her of gentle
guidance during her youth, and left her without resource against her
father's coldness or harshness. The result was that the softer
elements of her character unavoidably degenerated and found
expression in qualities not at all admirable, whilst her obstinacy
grew the ally of the weakness from which she had most to fear.

Lotty was sent to a day-school till the age of thirteen, then had to
become her father's housekeeper. Her friends were very few, none of
them likely to be of use to her. Left very much to her own control,
she made an acquaintance which led to secret intimacy and open
disaster. Rather than face her father with such a disclosure, she
left home, and threw herself upon the mercy of the man who had
assisted her to go astray. He was generous enough to support her for
about a year, during which time her child was born. Then his help
ceased.

The familiar choice lay before her--home again, the streets, or
starvation. Hardship she could not bear; the second alternative she
shrank from on account of her child; she determined to face her
father. For him she had no affection, and knew that he did not love
her; only desperation could drive her back. She came one Sunday
evening, found Mr. Woodstock at home, and, without letting the
servant say who was come, went up and entered his presence, the
child in her arms. Abraham rose and looked at her calmly. Her
disappearance had not troubled him, though he had exerted himself to
discover why and whither she was gone, and her return did not
visibly affect him. She was a rebel against his authority--so he
viewed the matter--and consequently quite beyond the range of his
sympathies. He listened to all she had to say, beheld unmoved her
miserable tears, and, when she became silent, coolly delivered his
ultimatum. For her he would procure a situation, whereby she could
earn her living, and therewith his relations to her would end; the
child he would put into other hands and have it cared for, but Lotty
would lose sight of it for ever. The girl hesitated, but the
maternal instinct was very strong in her; the little one began to
cry, as if fearing separation from its mother; she decided to
refuse.

"Then I shall go on the streets!" she exclaimed passionately.
"There's nothing else left for me."

"You can go where you please," returned Abraham.

She tried to obtain work, of course fruitlessly. She got into debt
with her landlady, and only took the fatal step when at length
absolutely turned adrift.

That was not quite ten years gone by; she was then but eighteen. Let
her have lost her child, and she would speedily have fallen into the
last stages of degradation. But the little one lived. She had called
it Ida, a name chosen from some tale in the penny weeklies, which
were the solace of her misery. She herself took the name of Starr,
also from a page of fiction.

Balancing the good and evil of this life in her dark little mind,
Lotty determined that one thing there was for which it was worth
while to make sacrifices, one end which she felt strong enough to
keep persistently in view. Ida should be brought up "respectably"--
it was her own word; she should be kept absolutely free from the
contamination of her mother's way of living; nay, should, when the
time came, go to school, and have good chances. And at the end of
all this was a far-off hope, a dim vision of possibilities, a vague
trust that her daughter might perchance prove for her a means of
returning to that world of "respectability" from which she was at
present so hopelessly shut out. She would keep making efforts to get
into an honest livelihood as often as an occasion presented itself;
and Ida should always live with "respectable" people, cost what it
might.

The last resolution was only adhered to for a few months. Lotty
could not do without her little one, and eventually brought it back
to her own home. It is not an infrequent thing to find little
children living in disorderly houses. In the profession Lotty had
chosen there are, as in all professions, grades and differences. She
was by no means a vicious girl, she had no love of riot for its own
sake; she would greatly have preferred a decent mode of life, had it
seemed practicable. Hence she did not associate herself with the
rank and file of abandoned women; her resorts were not the crowded
centres; her abode was not in the quarters consecrated to her
business. In all parts of London there are quiet by-streets of
houses given up to lodging-letting, wherein are to be found many
landladies, who, good easy souls, trouble little about the private
morals of their lodgers, so long as no positive disorder comes about
and no public scandal is occasioned. A girl who says that she is
occupied in a workroom is never presumed to be able to afford the
luxury of strict virtue, and if such a one, on taking a room, says
that "she supposes she may have friends come to see her?" the
landlady will understand quite well what is meant, and will either
accept or refuse her for a lodger as she sees good. To such houses
as these Lotty confined herself. After some three or four years of
various experiences, she hit upon the abode in Milton Street, and
there had dwelt ever since. She got on well with Mrs. Ledward, and
had been able to make comfortable arrangements for Ida. The other
lodgers in the house were generally very quiet and orderly people,
and she herself was quite successful in arranging her affairs so as
to create no disturbance. She had her regular _elientele_; she
frequented the roads about Regent's Park and Primrose Hill; and she
supported herself and her child.

Ida Starr's bringing up was in no respect inferior to that she would
have received in the home of the average London artisan or small
tradesman. At five years old she had begun to go to school; Mrs.
Ledward's daughter, a girl of seventeen, took her backwards and
forwards every day. At this school she remained three years and a
half; then her mother took her away, and put her under the care of
Miss Rutherford, a better teacher. When at home, she either amused
herself in Lotty's room, or, when that was engaged, made herself
comfortable with Mrs. Ledward's family, with one or other of whom
she generally passed the night. She heard no bad language, saw
nothing improper, listened to no worse conversation than any of the
other children at Miss Rutherford's. Even at her present age of ten
it never occurred to her to inquire how her mother supported
herself. The charges brought by Harriet Smales conveyed to her mind
no conception of their true meaning; they were to her mere general
calumnies of vague application. Her mother "bad," indeed! If so,
then what was the meaning of goodness? For poor Lotty's devotion to
the child had received its due reward herein, that she was loved as
purely and intensely as any most virtuous parent could hope to be;
so little regard has nature for social codes, so utterly is she
often opposed to all the precepts of respectability. This phrase of
Harriet's was the very first breathing against her mother's
character that Ida had ever heard. Lotty had invented fables, for
the child's amusement, about her own earlier days. The legend was,
that her husband had died about a year after marriage. Of course Ida
implicitly believed all this. Her mind contained pictures of a
beautiful little house just outside London in which her mother had
once lived, and her imagination busied itself with the time when
they would both live in just that same way. She was going to be a
teacher, so it had been decided in confidential chats, and would one
day have a school of her own. In such a future Lotty herself really
believed. The child seemed to her extraordinarily clover, and in
four more years she would be as old as a girl who had assisted with
the little ones in the first school she went to. Lotty was
ambitious. Offers of Mrs. Ledward to teach Ida dressmaking, she had
put aside; it was not good enough.

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