by George Moore
At that moment a knock was heard and the housemaid came in.
“The woman who has charge of your baby has come to see you.”
Esther started up from her chair, and fat little Mrs. Spires waddled into the room, the ends of her shawl touching the ground.
“Where is my baby?” said Esther. “Why haven’t you brought him?”
“Why, you see, my dear, the sweet little thing didn’t seem as well as usual this afternoon, and I did not care to bring him out, it being a long way and a trifle cold…. It is nice and warm in here. May I sit down?”
“Yes, there’s a chair; but tell me what is the matter with him?”
“A little cold, dear — nothing to speak of. You must not excite yourself, it isn’t worth while; besides, it’s bad for you and the little darling in the cradle. May I have a look?… A little girl, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is a girl.”
“And a beautiful little girl too. ‘Ow ‘ealthy she do look! I’ll be bound you have made a difference in her. I suppose you are beginning to like her just as if she was your own?”
Esther did not answer.
“Yer know, all you girls are dreadful taken with their babies at first. But they is a awful drag on a girl who gets her living in service. For my part I do think it providential-like that rich folk don’t nurse their own. If they did, I dunno what would become of all you poor girls. The situation of wet-nurse is just what you wants at the time, and it is good money. I hope yer did what I told you and stuck out for a pound a week. Rich folk like these here would think nothing of a pound a week, nor yet two, when they sees their child is suited.”
“Never mind about my money, that’s my affair. Tell me what’s the matter with my baby?”
“‘Ow yer do ‘arp on it! I’ve told yer that ‘e’s all right; nothing to signify, only a little poorly, but knowing you was that anxious I thought it better to come up. I didn’t know but what you might like to ‘ave in the doctor.”
“Does he require the doctor? I thought you said it was nothing to signify.”
“That depends on ’ow yer looks at it. Some likes to ‘ave in the doctor, however little the ailing; then others won’t ‘ave anything to do with doctors — don’t believe in them. So I thought I’d come up and see what you thought about it. I would ‘ave sent for the doctor this morning — I’m one of those who ‘as faith in doctors — but being a bit short of money I thought I’d come up and ask you for a trifle.”
At that moment Mrs. Rivers came into the nursery and her first look went in the direction of the cradle, then she turned to consider curtseying Mrs. Spires.
“This is Mrs. Spires, the lady who is looking after my baby, ma’am,” said Esther; “she has come with bad news — my baby is ill.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. But I daresay it is nothing.”
“But Mrs. Spires says, ma’am — —”
“Yes, ma’am, the little thing seemed a bit poorly, and I being short of money, ma’am, I had to come and see nurse. I knows right well that they must not be disturbed, and of course your child’s ‘ealth is everything; but if I may make so bold I’d like to say that the little dear do look beautiful. Nurse is bringing her up that well that yer must have every satisfaction in ’er.”
“Yes, she seems to suit the child; that’s the reason I don’t want her upset.”
“It won’t occur again, ma’am, I promise you.”
Esther did not answer, and her white, sullen face remained unchanged. She had a great deal on her mind, and would have spoken if the words did not seem to betray her when she attempted to speak.
“When the baby is well, and the doctor is satisfied there is no danger of infection, you can bring it here — once a month will be sufficient. Is there anything more?”
“Mrs. Spires thinks my baby ought to see the doctor.”
“Well, let her send for the doctor.”
“Being a bit short of money — —”
“How much is it?” said Esther.
“Well, what we pays is five shillings to the doctor, but then there’s the medicine he will order, and I was going to speak to you about a piece of flannel; if yer could let me have ten shillings to go on with.”
“But I haven’t so much left. I must see my baby,” and Esther moved towards the door.
“No, no, nurse, I cannot hear of it; I’d sooner pay the money myself. Now, how much do you want, Mrs. Spires?”
“Ten shillings will do for the present, ma’am.”
“Here they are; let the child have every attendance, and remember you are not to come troubling my nurse. Above all, you are not to come up to the nursery. I don’t know how it happened, it was a mistake on the part of the new housemaid. You must have my permission before you see my nurse.” And while talking rapidly and imperatively Mrs. Rivers, as it were, drove Mrs. Spires out of the nursery. Esther could hear them talking on the staircase, and she listened, all the while striving to collect her thoughts. Mrs. Rivers said when she returned, “I really cannot allow her to come here upsetting you.” Then, as if impressed by the sombre look on Esther’s face, she added: “Upsetting you about nothing. I assure you it will be all right; only a little indisposition.”
“I must see my baby,” Esther replied.
“Come, nurse, you shall see your baby the moment the doctor says it is fit to come here. You can’t expect me to do more than that.” Esther did not move, and thinking that it would not be well to argue with her, Mrs. Rivers went over to the cradle. “See, nurse, the little darling has just woke up; come and take her, I’m sure she wants you.”
Esther did not answer her. She stood looking into space, and it seemed to Mrs. Rivers that it would be better not to provoke a scene. She went towards the door slowly, but a little cry from the cradle stopped her, and she said —
“Come, nurse, what is it? Come, the baby is waiting for you.”
Then, like one waking from a dream, Esther said: “If my baby is all right, ma’am, I’ll come back, but if he wants me, I’ll have to look after him first.”
“You forget that I’m paying you fifteen shillings a week. I pay you for nursing my baby; you take my money, that’s sufficient.”
“Yes, I do take your money, ma’am. But the housemaid has told me that you had two wet-nurses before me, and that both their babies died, so I cannot stop here now that mine’s ill. Everyone for her own; you can’t blame me. I’m sorry for yours — poor little thing, she was getting on nicely too.”
“But, Waters, you won’t leave my baby. It’s cruel of you. If I could nurse it myself — —”
“Why couldn’t you, ma’am? You look fairly strong and healthy.”
Esther spoke in her quiet, stolid way, finding her words unconsciously.
“You don’t know what you’re saying, nurse; you can’t…. You’ve forgotten yourself. Next time I engage a nurse I’ll try to get one who has lost her baby, and then there’ll be no bother.”
“It is a life for a life — more than that, ma’am — two lives for a life; and now the life of my boy is asked for.”
A strange look passed over Mrs. Rivers’ face. She knew, of course, that she stood well within the law, that she was doing no more than a hundred other fashionable women were doing at the same moment; but this plain girl had a plain way of putting things, and she did not care for it to be publicly known that the life of her child had been bought with the lives of two poor children. But her temper was getting the better of her.
“He’ll only be a drag on you. You’ll never be able to bring him up, poor little bastard child.”
“It is wicked of you to speak like that, ma’am, though it is I who am saying it. It is none of the child’s fault if he hasn’t got a father, nor is it right that he should be deserted for that… and it is not for you to tell me to do such a thing. If you had made sacrifice of yourself in the beginning and nursed your own child such thoughts would not have come to you. But when you hire a poor girl such as me to give the milk that belongs
to another to your child, you think nothing of the poor deserted one. He is but a bastard, you say, and had better be dead and done with. I see it all now; I have been thinking it out. It is all so hidden up that the meaning is not clear at first, but what it comes to is this, that fine folks like you pays the money, and Mrs. Spires and her like gets rid of the poor little things. Change the milk a few times, a little neglect, and the poor servant girl is spared the trouble of bringing up her baby and can make a handsome child of the rich woman’s little starveling.”
At that moment the baby began to cry; both women looked in the direction of the cradle.
“Nurse, you have utterly forgotten yourself, you have talked a great deal of nonsense, you have said a great deal that is untrue. You accused me of wishing your baby were dead, indeed I hardly know what wild remarks you did not indulge in. Of course, I cannot put up with such conduct — to-morrow you will come to me and apologise. In the meantime the baby wants you, are you not going to her?”
“I’m going to my own child.”
“That means that you refuse to nurse my baby?”
“Yes, I’m going straight to look after my own.”
“If you leave my house you shall never enter it again.”
“I don’t want to enter it again.”
“I shall not pay you one shilling if you leave my baby. You have no money.”
“I shall try to manage without. I shall go with my baby to the workhouse. However bad the living may be there, he’ll be with his mother.”
“If you go to-night my baby will die. She cannot be brought up on the bottle.”
“Oh, I hope not, ma’am. I should be sorry, indeed I should.”
“Then stay, nurse.”
“I must go to my baby, ma’am.”
“Then you shall go at once — this very instant.”
“I’m going this very instant, as soon as I’ve put on my hat and jacket.”
“You had better take your box with you. If you don’t I’ll shall have it thrown into the street.”
“I daresay you’re cruel enough to do that if the law allows you, only be careful that it do.”
XIX
THE MOMENT ESTHER got out of the house in Curzon Street she felt in her pocket for her money. She had only a few pence; enough for her ‘bus fare, however, and her thoughts did not go further. She was absorbed by one desire, how to save her child — how to save him from Mrs. Spires, whom she vaguely suspected; from the world, which called him a bastard and denied to him the right to live. And she sat as if petrified in the corner of the ‘bus, seeing nothing but a little street of four houses, facing some haylofts, the low-pitched kitchen, the fat woman, the cradle in the corner. The intensity and the oneness of her desire seemed to annihilate time, and when she got out of the omnibus she walked with a sort of animal-like instinct straight for the house. There was a light in the kitchen just as she expected, and as she descended the four wooden steps into the area she looked to see if Mrs. Spires was there. She was there, and Esther pushed open the door.
“Where’s my baby?”
“Lord, ’ow yer did frighten me!” said Mrs. Spires, turning from the range and leaning against the table, which was laid for supper. “Coming like that into other folk’s places without a word of warning — without as much as knocking at the door.”
“I beg your pardon, but I was that anxious about my baby.”
“Was you indeed? It is easy to see it is the first one. There it is in the cradle there.”
“Have you sent for the doctor?”
“Sent for the doctor! I’ve to get my husband’s supper.”
Esther took her baby out of the cradle. It woke up crying, and Esther said, “You don’t mind my sitting down a moment. The poor little thing wants its mother.”
“If Mrs. Rivers saw you now a-nursing of yer baby?”
“I shouldn’t care if she did. He’s thinner than when I left him; ten days ‘ave made a difference in him.”
“Well, yer don’t expect a child to do as well without its mother as with her. But tell me, how did yer get out? You must have come away shortly after me.”
“I wasn’t going to stop there and my child ill.”
“Yer don’t mean to tell me that yer ‘ave gone and thrown hup the situation?”
“She told me if I went out, I should never enter her door again.”
“And what did you say?”
“Told her I didn’t want to.”
“And what, may I ask, are yer thinking of doing? I ‘eard yer say yer ‘ad no money.”
“I don’t know.”
“Take my advice, and go straight back and ask ’er to overlook it, this once.”
“Oh, no, she’d never take me back.”
“Yes, she will; you suits the child, and that’s all they think of.”
“I don’t know what will become of me and my baby.”
“No more don’t I. Yer can’t stop always in the work’us, and a baby’ll be a ‘eavy drag on you. Can’t you lay ‘ands on ’is father, some’ow?”
Esther shook her head, and Mrs. Spires noticed that she was crying.
“I’m all alone,” she said; “I don’t know ’ow I’m ever to pull through.”
“Not with that child yer won’t — it ain’t possible…. You girls is all alike, yer thinks of nothing but yer babies for the first few weeks, then yer tires of them, the drag on yer is that ‘eavy — I knows yer — and then yer begins to wish they ‘ad never been born, or yer wishes they had died afore they knew they was alive. I don’t say I’m not often sorry for them, poor little dears, but they takes less notice than you’d think for, and they is better out of the way; they really is, it saves a lot of trouble hereafter. I often do think that to neglect them, to let them go off quiet, that I be their best friend; not wilful neglect, yer know, but what is a woman to do with ten or a dozen, and I often ‘as as many? I am sure they’d thank me for it.”
Esther did not answer, but judging by her face that she had lost all hope, Mrs. Spires was tempted to continue.
“There’s that other baby in the far corner, that was brought ’ere since you was ’ere by a servant-girl like yerself. She’s out a’nursing of a lady’s child, getting a pound a week, just as you was; well, now I asks ’ow she can ‘ope to bring up that ’ere child — a weakly little thing that wants the doctor and all sorts of looking after. If that child was to live it would be the ruin of that girl’s life. Don’t yer ‘ear what I’m saying?”
“Yes, I hear,” said Esther, speaking like one in a dream; “don’t she care for her baby, then?”
“She used to care for them, but if they had all lived I should like to know where she’d be. There ‘as been five of them — that’s the fifth — so, instead of them a-costing ’er money, they brings ’er money. She ‘as never failed yet to suit ‘erself in a situation as wet-nurse.”
“And they all died?”
“Yes, they all died; and this little one don’t look as if it was long for the world, do it?” said Mrs. Spires, who had taken the infant from the cradle to show Esther. Esther looked at the poor wizened features, twitched with pain, and the far-off cry of doom, a tiny tinkle from the verge, shivered in the ear with a strange pathos.
“It goes to my ‘eart,” said Mrs. Spires, “it do indeed, but, Lord, it is the best that could ‘appen to ’em; who’s to care for ’em? and there is ‘undreds and ‘undreds of them — ay, thousands and thousands every year — and they all dies like the early shoots. It is ‘ard, very ‘ard, poor little dears, but they is best out of the way — they is only an expense and a disgrace.”
Mrs. Spires talked on in a rapid, soothing, soporific voice. She had just finished pouring some milk in the baby’s bottle and had taken down a jug of water from the dresser.
“But that’s cold water,” said Esther, waking from the stupor of her despair; “it will give the baby gripes for certain.”
“I’ve no ‘ot water ready; I’ll let the bottle stand afore the
fire, that’ll do as well.” Watching Esther all the while, Mrs. Spires held the bottle a few moments before the fire, and then gave it to the child to suck. Very soon after a cry of pain came from the cradle.
“The little dear never was well; it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if it died — went off before morning. It do look that poorly. One can’t ‘elp being sorry for them, though one knows there is no ‘ouse for them ’ere. Poor little angels, and not even baptised. There’s them that thinks a lot of getting that over. But who’s to baptise the little angels?”
“Baptise them?” Esther repeated. “Oh, sprinkle them, you mean. That’s not the way with the Lord’s people;” and to escape from a too overpowering reality she continued to repeat the half-forgotten patter of the Brethren, “You must wait until it is a symbol of living faith in the Lord!” And taking the baby in her hands for a moment, the wonder crossed her mind whether he would ever grow up and find salvation and testify to the Lord as an adult in voluntary baptism.
All the while Mrs. Spires was getting on with her cooking. Several times she looked as if she were going to speak, and several times she checked herself. In truth, she didn’t know what to make of Esther. Was her love of her child such love as would enable her to put up with all hardships for its sake, or was it the fleeting affection of the ordinary young mother, which, though ardent at first, gives way under difficulties? Mrs. Spires had heard many mothers talk as Esther talked, but when the real strain of life was put upon them they had yielded to the temptation of ridding themselves of their burdens. So Mrs. Spires could not believe that Esther was really different from the others, and if carefully handled she would do what the others had done. Still, there was something in Esther which kept Mrs. Spires from making any distinct proposal. But it were a pity to let the girl slip through her fingers — five pounds were not picked up every day. There were three five-pound notes in the cradles. If Esther would listen to reason there would be twenty pounds, and the money was wanted badly. Once more greed set Mrs. Spires’ tongue flowing, and, representing herself as a sort of guardian angel, she spoke again about the mother of the dying child, pressing Esther to think what the girl’s circumstances would have been if they had all lived.
