After Three Miserable Hours Spent In This Way We Began
Inquiring At All The Shops, And Eventually At One Were Told Of
A Poor Woman In A Small House In A Street A Good Way Back From
The Front Who Would Perhaps Be Able To Taken Us In.
To this
place we went and knocked at a low door in a long blank wall
in a narrow
Street; it was opened to us by a pale thin
sad-looking woman in a rusty black gown, who asked us into a
shabby parlour, and agreed to take us in until we could find
something better. She had a gentle voice and was full of
sympathy, and seeing our plight took us into the kitchen
behind the parlour, which was living- and working-room as
well, to dry ourselves by the fire.
"The greatest pleasure in life," said once a magnificent young
athlete, a great pedestrian, to me, "is to rest when you are
tired." And, I should add, to dry and warm yourself by a big
fire when wet and cold, and to eat and drink when you are
hungry and thirsty. All these pleasures were now ours, for
very soon tea and chops were ready for us; and so strangely
human, so sister-like did this quiet helpful woman seem after
our harsh experiences on that rough rainy day - that we
congratulated ourselves on our good fortune in having found
such a haven, and soon informed her that we wanted no "better
place."
She worked with her needle to support herself and her one
child, a little boy of ten; and by and by when he came in
pretty wet from some outdoor occupation we made his
acquaintance and the discovery that he was a little boy of an
original character. He was so much to his mother, who, poor
soul, had nobody else in the world to love, that she was
always haunted by the fear of losing him. He was her boy, the
child of her body, exclusively her own, unlike all other boys,
and her wise heart told her that if she put him in a school he
would be changed so that she would no longer know him for her
boy. For it is true that our schools are factories, with a
machinery to unmake and remake, or fabricate, the souls of
children much in the way in which shoddy is manufactured. You
may see a thousand rags or garments of a thousand shapes and
colours cast in to be boiled, bleached, pulled to pieces,
combed and woven, and finally come out as a piece of cloth a
thousand yards long of a uniform harmonious pattern, smooth,
glossy, and respectable. His individuality gone, he would in
a sense be lost to her; and although by nature a weak timid
woman, though poor, and a stranger in a strange place, this
thought, or feeling, or "ridiculous delusion" as most people
would call it, had made her strong, and she had succeeded in
keeping her boy out of school.
Hers was an interesting story. Left alone in the world she
had married one in her own class, very happily as she
imagined. He was in some business in a country town, well off
enough to provide a comfortable home, and he was very good; in
fact, his one fault was that he was too good, too open-hearted
and fond of associating with other good fellows like himself,
and of pledging them in the cup that cheers and at the same
time inebriates. Nevertheless, things went very well for a
time, until the child was born, the business declined, and
they began to be a little pinched. Then it occurred to her
that she, too, might be able to do something. She started
dressmaking, and as she had good taste and was clever and
quick, her business soon prospered. This pleased him; it
relieved him from the necessity of providing for the home,
and enabled him to follow his own inclination, which was to
take things easily - to be an idle man, with a little ready
money in his pocket for betting and other pleasures. The
money was now provided out of "our business." This state of
things continued without any change, except that process of
degeneration which continued in him, until the child was about
four years old, when all at once one day he told her they were
not doing as well as they might. She was giving far too much
of her time and attention to domestic matters - to the child
especially. Business was business - a thing it was hard for a
woman to understand - and it was impossible for her to give her
mind properly to it with her thoughts occupied with the child.
It couldn't be done. Let the child be put away, he said, and
the receipts would probably be doubled. He had been making
inquiries and found that for a modest annual payment the boy
could be taken proper care of at a distance by good decent
people he had heard of.
She had never suspected such a thought in his mind, and this
proposal had the effect of a stunning blow. She answered not
one word: he said his say and went out, and she knew she would
not see him again for many hours, perhaps not for some days;
she knew, too, that he would say no more to her on the
subject, that it would all be arranged about the child with or
without her consent. His will was law, her wishes nothing.
For she was his wife and humble obedient slave; never had she
pleaded with or admonished him and never complained, even
when, after her long day of hard work, he came in at ten or
eleven o'clock at night with several of his pals, all excited
with drink and noisy as himself, to call for supper.
Nevertheless she had been happy - intensely happy, because of
the child.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 13 of 81
Words from 12263 to 13264
of 82198
