Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  “Oh, shut up, or leave the room,” said Mr. Leopold; “we don’t want to hear any more about that.”

  “I started making the running according to orders. Ginger was within three-quarters of a length of me, being pulled out of the saddle. The Gaffer was standing at the three-quarters of the mile, and there Ginger won fairly easily, but they went on to the mile — them were the orders — and there the Demon won by half a length, that is to say if Ginger wasn’t a-kidding of him.”

  “A-kidding of me!” said the Demon. “When we was a hundred yards from ‘ome I steadied without his noticing me, and then I landed in the last fifty yards by half a length. Ginger can’t ride much better than any other gentleman.”

  “Yer see,” said Mr. Swindles, “he’d sooner have a box on the ear from the kitchen-maid than be told a gentleman could kid him at a finish. He wouldn’t mind if it was the Tinman, eh, Demon?”

  “We know,” said Mr. Leopold, “that Bayleaf can get the mile; there must have been a lot of weight between them. Besides, I should think that the trial was at the three-quarters of the mile. The mile was so much kid.”

  “I should say,” replied Mr. Swindles, “that the ‘orses were tried at twenty-one pounds, and if Silver Braid can beat Bayleaf at that weight, he’ll take a deal of beating at Goodwood.”

  And leaning forward, their arms on the table, with large pieces of cheese at the end of their knives, the maid-servants and the jockey listened while Mr. Leopold and Mr. Swindles discussed the chances the stable had of pulling off the Stewards’ Cup with Silver Braid.

  “But he will always keep on trying them,” said Mr. Swindles, “and what’s the use, says I, of trying ‘orses that are no more than ‘alf fit? And them downs is just rotten with ‘orse watchers; it has just come to this, that you can’t comb out an ‘orse’s mane without seeing it in the papers the day after. If I had my way with them gentry — —” Mr. Swindles finished his beer at a gulp, and he put down his glass as firmly as he desired to put down the horse watchers. At the end of a long silence Mr. Leopold said —

  “Come into my pantry and smoke a pipe. Mr. Arthur will be down presently. Perhaps he’ll tell us what weight he was riding this morning.”

  “Cunning old bird,” said Mr. Swindles, as he rose from the table and wiped his shaven lips with the back of his hand; “and you’d have us believe that you didn’t know, would you? You’d have us believe, would you, that the Gaffer don’t tell you everything when you bring up his hot water in the morning, would you?”

  Mr. Leopold laughed under his breath, and looking mysterious and very rat-like he led the way to his pantry. Esther watched them in strange trouble of soul. She had heard of racecourses as shameful places where men were led to their ruin, and betting she had always understood to be sinful, but in this house no one seemed to think of anything else. It was no place for a Christian girl.

  “Let’s have some more of the story,” Margaret said. “You’ve got the new number. The last piece was where he is going to ask the opera-singer to run away with him.”

  Sarah took an illustrated journal out of her pocket and began to read aloud.

  III

  ESTHER WAS ONE of the Plymouth Brethren. In their chapel, if the house in which they met could be called a chapel, there were neither pictured stories of saints, nor vestments, nor music, nor even imaginative stimulant in the shape of written prayers. Her knowledge of life was strictly limited to her experience of life; she knew no drama of passion except that which the Gospels relate: this story in the Family Reader was the first representation of life she had met with, and its humanity thrilled her like the first idol set up for worship. The actress told Norris that she loved him. They were on a balcony, the sky was blue, the moon was shining, the warm scent of the mignonette came up from the garden below, the man was in evening dress with diamond shirt studs, the actress’s arm was large and white. They had loved each other for years. The strangest events had happened for the purpose of bringing them together, and, fascinated against her will, Esther could not but listen. But at the end of the chapter the racial instinct forced reproval from her.

  “I am sure it is wicked to read such tales.”

  Sarah looked at her in mute astonishment. Grover said —

  “You shouldn’t be here at all. Can’t Mrs. Latch find nothing for you to do in the scullery?”

  “Then,” said Sarah, awaking to a sense of the situation, “I suppose that where you come from you were not so much as allowed to read a tale; … dirty little chapel-going folk!”

  The incident might have closed with this reproval had not Margaret volunteered the information that Esther’s box was full of books.

  “I should like to see them books,” said Sarah. “I’ll be bound that they are only prayer-books.”

  “I don’t mind what you say to me, but you shall not insult my religion.”

  “Insult your religion! I said you never had read a book in your life unless it was a prayer-book.”

  “We don’t use prayer-books.”

  “Then what books have you read?”

  Esther hesitated, her manner betrayed her, and, suspecting the truth, Sarah said:

  “I don’t believe that you can read at all. Come, I’ll bet you twopence that you can’t read the first five lines of my story.”

  Esther pushed the paper from her and walked out of the room in a tumult of grief and humiliation. Woodview and all belonging to it had grown unbearable, and heedless to what complaint the cook might make against her she ran upstairs and shut herself into her room. She asked why they should take pleasure in torturing her. It was not her fault if she did not know how to read. There were the books she loved for her mother’s sake, the books that had brought such disgrace upon her. Even the names she could not read, and the shame of her ignorance lay upon her heavier than a weight of lead. “Peter Parley’s Annual,” “Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands,” “Children of the Abbey,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Lamb’s “Tales of Shakespeare’s Plays,” a Cooking Book, “Roda’s Mission of Love,” the Holy Bible and the Common Prayer Book.

  She turned them over, wondering what were the mysteries that this print held from her. It was to her mysterious as the stars.

  Esther Waters came from Barnstaple. She had been brought up in the strictness of the Plymouth Brethren, and her earliest memories were of prayers, of narrow, peaceful family life. This early life had lasted till she was ten years old. Then her father died. He had been a house-painter, but in early youth he had been led into intemperance by some wild companions. He was often not in a fit state to go to work, and one day the fumes of the beer he had drunk overpowered him as he sat in the strong sunlight on his scaffolding. In the hospital he called upon God to relieve him of his suffering; then the Brethren said, “You never thought of God before. Be patient, your health is coming back; it is a present from God; you would like to know Him and thank Him from the bottom of your heart?”

  John Waters’ heart was touched. He became one of the Brethren, renouncing those companions who refused to follow into the glory of God. His conversion and subsequent grace won for him the sympathies of Mary Thornby. But Mary’s father would not consent to the marriage unless John abandoned his dangerous trade of house-painter. John Waters consented to do this, and old James Thornby, who had made a competence in the curiosity line, offered to make over his shop to the young couple on certain conditions; these conditions were accepted, and under his father-in-law’s direction John drove a successful trade in old glass, old jewellery, and old furniture.

  The Brethren liked not this trade, and they often came to John to speak with him on the subject, and their words were ——

  “Of course this is between you and the Lord, but these things” (pointing to the old glass and jewellery) “often are but snares for the feet, and lead weaker brethren into temptation. Of course, it is between you and the Lord.”

  So John Waters was tormented with scruples concerning the righteousness of his trade, but hi
s wife’s gentle voice and eyes, and the limitations that his accident, from which he had never wholly recovered, had set upon his life, overruled his scruples, and he remained until he died a dealer in artistic ware, eliminating, however, from his dealings those things to which the Brethren most strongly objected.

  When he died his widow strove to carry on the business, but her father, who was now a confirmed invalid, could not help her. In the following year she lost both her parents. Many changes were taking place in Barnstaple, new houses were being built, a much larger and finer shop had been opened in the more prosperous end of the town, and Mrs. Waters found herself obliged to sell her business for almost nothing, and marry again. Children were born of this second marriage in rapid succession, the cradle was never empty, and Esther was spoken of as the little nurse.

  Her great solicitude was for her poor mother, who had lost her health, whose blood was impoverished by constant child-bearing. Mother and daughter were seen in the evenings, one with a baby at her breast, the other with an eighteen months old child in her arms. Esther did not dare leave her mother, and to protect her she gave up school, and this was why she had never learnt how to read.

  One of the many causes of quarrel between Mrs. Saunders and her husband was her attendance at prayer-meetings when he said she should be at home minding her children. He used to accuse her of carrying on with the Scripture-readers, and to punish her he would say, “This week I’ll spend five bob more in the public — that’ll teach you, if beating won’t, that I don’t want none of your hypocritical folk hanging round my place.” So it befell the Saunders family to have little to eat; and Esther often wondered how she should get a bit of dinner for her sick mother and her hungry little brothers and sisters. Once they passed nearly thirty hours without food. She called them round her, and knelt down amid them: they prayed that God might help them; and their prayers were answered, for at half-past twelve a Scripture lady came in with flowers in her hands. She asked Mrs. Saunders how her appetite was. Mrs. Saunders answered that it was more than she could afford, for there was nothing to eat in the house. Then the Scripture lady gave them eighteen pence, and they all knelt down and thanked God together.

  But although Saunders spent a great deal of his money in the public-house, he rarely got drunk and always kept his employment. He was a painter of engines, a first-rate hand, earning good money, from twenty-five to thirty shillings a week. He was a proud man, but so avaricious that he stopped at nothing to get money. He was an ardent politician, yet he would sell his vote to the highest bidder, and when Esther was seventeen he compelled her to take service regardless of the character of the people or of what the place was like. They had left Barnstaple many months, and were now living in a little street off the Vauxhall Bridge Road, near the factory where Saunders worked; and since they had been in London Esther had been constantly in service. Why should he keep her? She wasn’t one of his children, he had quite enough of his own. Sometimes of an evening, when Esther could escape from her drudgery for a few minutes, her mother would step round, and mother and daughter, wrapped in the same shawl, would walk to and fro telling each other their troubles, just as in old times. But these moments were few. In grimy lodging-houses she worked from early morning till late at night, scrubbing grates, preparing bacon and eggs, cooking chops, and making beds. She had become one of those London girls to whom rest, not to say pleasure, is unknown, who if they should sit down for a few moments hear the mistress’s voice, “Now, Eliza, have you nothing to do, that you are sitting there idle?” Two of her mistresses, one after the other, had been sold up, and now all the rooms in the neighbourhood were unlet, no one wanted a “slavey,” and Esther was obliged to return home. It was on the last of these occasions that her father had taken her by the shoulders, saying ——

  “No lodging-houses that want a slavey? I’ll see about that. Tell me, first, have you been to 78?”

  “Yes, but another girl was before me, and the place was taken when I arrived.”

  “I wonder what you were doing that you didn’t get there sooner; dangling about after your mother, I suppose! Well, what about 27 in the Crescent?”

  “I couldn’t go there — that Mrs. Dunbar is a bad woman.”

  “Bad woman! Who are you, I should like to know, that you can take a lady’s character away? Who told you she was a bad woman? One of the Scripture-readers, I suppose! I knew it was. Well, then, just get out of my house.”

  “Where shall I go?”

  “Go to hell for all I care. Do you hear me? Get out!”

  Esther did not move — words, and then blows. Esther’s escape from her stepfather seemed a miracle, and his anger was only appeased by Mrs. Saunders promising that Esther should accept the situation.

  “Only for a little while. Perhaps Mrs. Dunbar is a better woman than you think for. For my sake, dearie. If you don’t he may kill you and me too.”

  Esther looked at her one moment, then she said, “Very well, mother, to-morrow I’ll take the place.”

  No longer was the girl starved, no longer was she made to drudge till the thought of another day was a despair and a terror. And seeing that she was a good girl, Mrs. Dunbar respected her scruples. Indeed, she was very kind, and Esther soon learnt to like her, and, through her affection for her, to think less of the life she led. A dangerous point is this in a young girl’s life. Esther was young, and pretty, and weary, and out of health; and it was at this critical moment that Lady Elwin, who, while visiting, had heard her story, promised Mrs. Saunders to find Esther another place. And to obviate all difficulties about references and character, Lady Elwin proposed to take Esther as her own servant for a sufficient while to justify her in recommending her.

  And now, as she turned over her books — the books she could not read — her pure and passionate mind was filled with the story of her life. She remembered her poor little brothers and sisters and her dear mother, and that tyrant revenging himself upon them because of the little she might eat and drink. No, she must bear with all insults and scorn, and forget that they thought her as dirt under their feet. But what were such sufferings compared to those she would endure were she to return home? In truth they were as nothing. And yet the girl longed to leave Woodview. She had never been out of sight of home before. Amid the violences of her stepfather there had always been her mother and the meeting-house. In Woodview there was nothing, only Margaret, who had come to console and persuade her to come downstairs. The resolution she had to call out of her soul to do this exhausted her, and she went downstairs heedless of what anyone might say.

  Two and three days passed without anything occurring that might suggest that the Fates were for or against her remaining. Mrs. Barfield continued to be indisposed, but at the end of the week Esther, while she was at work in the scullery, heard a new voice speaking with Mrs. Latch. This must be Mrs. Barfield. She heard Mrs. Latch tell the story of her refusal to go to work the evening she arrived. But Mrs. Barfield told her that she would listen to no further complaints; this was the third kitchen-maid in four months, and Mrs. Latch must make up her mind to bear with the faults and failings of this last one, whatever they were. Then Mrs. Barfield called Esther; and when she entered the kitchen she found herself face to face with a little red-haired woman, with a pretty, pointed face.

  “I hear, Waters — that is your name, I think — that you refused to obey cook, and walked out of the kitchen the night you arrived.”

  “I said, ma’am, that I would wait till my box came up from the station, so that I might change my dress. Mrs. Latch said my dress didn’t matter, but when one is poor and hasn’t many dresses — —”

  “Are you short of clothes, then?”

  “I have not many, ma’am, and the dress I had on the day I came — —”

  “Never mind about that. Tell me, are you short of clothes? — for if you are I daresay my daughter might find you something — you are about the same height — with a little alteration — —”

  “Oh, ma�
��am, you are too good. I shall be most grateful. But I think I shall be able to manage till my first quarter’s wages come to me.”

  And the scowl upon Mrs. Latch’s long face did not kill the pleasure which the little interview with that kind, sweet woman, Mrs. Barfield, had created in her. She moved about her work, happy at heart, singing to herself as she washed the vegetables. Even Mrs. Latch’s harshness didn’t trouble her much. She felt it to be a manner under which there might be a kind heart, and she hoped by her willingness to work to gain at least the cook’s toleration. Margaret suggested that Esther should give up her beer. A solid pint extra a day could not fail, she said, to win the old woman’s gratitude, and perhaps induce her to teach Esther how to make pastry and jellies.

  True that Margaret joined in the common laugh and jeer that the knowledge that Esther said her prayers morning and evening inspired. She sometimes united with Grover and Sarah in perplexing Esther with questions regarding her previous situations, but her hostilities were, on the whole, gentle, and Esther felt that this almost neutral position was the best that Margaret could have adopted. She defended her without seeming to do so, and seemed genuinely fond of her, helping her sometimes even with her work, which Mrs. Latch made as heavy as possible. But Esther was now determined to put up with every task they might impose upon her; she would give them no excuse for sending her away; she would remain at Woodview until she had learned sufficient cooking to enable her to get another place. But Mrs. Latch had the power to thwart her in this. Before beginning on her jellies and gravies Mrs. Latch was sure to find some saucepans that had not been sufficiently cleaned with white sand, and, if her search proved abortive, she would send Esther upstairs to scrub out her bedroom.

  “I cannot think why she is so down upon me,” Esther often said to Margaret.

  “She isn’t more down upon you than she was on the others. You needn’t expect to learn any cooking from her; her plan has always been to take care that she shall not be supplanted by any of her kitchen-maids. But I don’t see why she should be always sending you upstairs to clean out her bedroom. If Grover wasn’t so stand-offish, we might tell her about it, and she could tell the Saint — that’s what we call the missis; the Saint would soon put a stop to all that nonsense. I will say that for the Saint, she do like everyone to have fair play.”