A Girl of the People by L. T. Meade (distant reading TXT) 📕

but none lived until two puny boys put in so feeble an appearance that the neighbors thought the miserable thing called life could not exist in their tiny persons more than a day or two. They were twins, and Mrs. Granger nearly died when she gave them birth. The neighbors said that it would be a good thing if the broken-down mother and the babes that nobody wanted all went away together.

"There's a deal too many children in the world," they said; "it would be good if they was took, poor lambs."

But here Bet, who overheard the words, gave way to one of her bursts of fury. She turned the offending but well-disposed neighbors out of the room; she locked the door, and kneeling down by the babies, gave them a perfect baptism of tears and kisses.

"Who says as they're not wanted?" she sobbed. "I want 'em—I'm allays a-wanting something, and maybe they'll fill my heart."

From this moment she constituted herself the babies' devoted nurse; and so, after a fashion, they throve, and did not die.

The darker the times grew for Mrs. Granger the more she clung to her religion. She had a real belief, a real although dim faith. The belief supported her tottering steps, and the faith kept her worn spirit from utterly fainting; but they did nothing to illumine or render happy the lives of those about her. She believed intensely in a God who punished. He saved—she knew He saved—but only through fire. In the dark winter evenings she poured out her stern thoughts, her unlovely ideas, into the ears of her young daughter. As a child Bet listened in terror; as a woman she simply ceased to believe.

"Ef God were like that, she'd have nought to do with Him,"—this was her thought of thoughts. She refused to accompany her mother to chapel on Sundays; she left the room when the Bible was read aloud; she made one or two friends for herself, and these friends were certainly not of her mother's choosing. She could read, and she loved novels—indeed, she would devour books of any kind, but she had to hide them from her mother, who thought it her duty, as she valued her daughter's immortal soul, to commit them to the flames.

The mother loved the girl, and never ceased to wrestle in prayer for her, and to believe she would shine as a jewel in her crown some day; and the girl also cared for the mother, respecting her stern sense of duty, admiring the length of her prayers, wondering at her ceaseless devotion; but both were outwardly hard to the other, showing no softness, and speaking of no love.

All Bet's up-bringing was hardening; and but for the presence of the boys she might have wondered if she possessed any heart at all.

She was nineteen when her mother suddenly broke down completely in health, and after the shortest of illnesses—too short to alarm anyone, too short for even the word danger to be whispered—closed her eyes on this world, leaving Bet in a state of bewildered and impotent rage.

There was no longer the faintest doubt in her orphaned heart that she loved her mother.

CHAPTER IV.

Bet wept silently for the greater part of the day which saw her motherless, but in the evening she went out as usual to sell her papers. Her eyes were swollen from the heavy and constant tears she shed, but she had neatly plaited her hair and wound it round her comely head, and she carried herself with even a little more defiance than usual. She was miserable to-night, and she felt that the whole world was against her.

The night, for the time of year was November, was quite in accordance with her feelings. It was damp, a drizzling mist was blown into her face, and the pavements were slippery with that peculiar Liverpool mud which exceeds even London mud in slipperiness. Bet's beat, however, was brightly lighted; there was a public-house at one corner, and a little further up were two gentlemen's clubs. All were brilliant with gaslight, and the girl, wrapping her shawl about her—she wore no hat or bonnet—took her accustomed stand. She always avoided the public-house—not because she feared its tipsy inhabitants, but because she knew no sale for her wares lay there. Her favorite stand was under a lamp post, close to the largest of the clubs. The light of the lamp fell full on her face and figure, and shone on the evening papers which she offered for sale. Her customers came up as usual, bought what they required of her, one or two giving her a careless and some a friendly "good-evening." No one noticed her pallid cheeks, nor the heavy depths of trouble in her red-brown eyes. Her luck, however, was good, and she had almost sold all her little stock of papers, when a vibrating and rather peculiar voice at her elbow caused her to start and turn quickly.

"Is that you, Hester Wright?" she said, speaking in an almost pettish voice. "Well, I can't go with you to-night, no how; I'm off home this minute."

"Why, Bet, is yer mother took worse?" asked the voice. It vibrated again, and two sweet though rather wild-looking eyes gazed full into Bet's tired, white face.

"Mother," said the girl. She made a valiant struggle, but no more words would come.

After about a moment she spoke in a strained and totally altered voice:

"Let me be for to-night, Hester. I've sold my papers, and I'm going home."

"No, you're not, honey; you're coming along o' me. Don't I see as yer white with the grief, and half distraught like. There, I'm alone tonight, unless Will should drop in; come and have a cup o' tea with me, Bet."

"My mother's dead, Hester," said Bet. She could speak without effort now, but the tears were raining down her cheeks.

"Poor lamb! Dead? Well, I thought as the blow would come. You come home with me, Elizabeth. Maybe I'll sing something to you."

At this proposition Bet changed color.

"I'm starved for that voice of yours, Hester," she said. And then she put her hand through her companion's arm, and they walked off at a quiet pace together. Hester was as tall as Bet, and about ten years her senior. She was very slender, and carried herself well; her eyes were dark and beautiful, otherwise she had a queer, irregularly formed face. Her jet-black hair grew low on her forehead, and when she smiled, which she only did occasionally, she showed the gleam of very white teeth. No one called Hester Wright handsome, but few women of her class in Liverpool had a wider influence. She had a peculiar voice, rather deep set, and, at least in speaking, only admitting of a limited range of compass; but every word spoken by her was so nicely adjusted, so carefully modulated, that the simplest and most ill-formed sentence acquired a rude eloquence. This was her speaking voice. When she sang, it rose into power; it was then a deep contralto, utterly untaught, but free and easy as the notes of a bird. Hester could do what she liked with men and women when she sang to them, and she knew her power. In her own circle she was more or less of a queen, and although she was no better and no richer than the poorest of the Liverpool girls, yet her smallest word of approbation was treasured almost as if it had been a royal gift. She had a great insight into character; she had large tact, and she was also affectionate.

Bet in her heart of hearts had a boundless admiration for this woman, and she felt a sense of comfort stealing over her as they walked quickly through the wet, slippery streets side by side.

Hester lived in a little room, which she managed to keep fairly neat and clean, quite close to the docks. In the daytime you could see the masts of the tall ships from her window, and the language of the sailors and the many shouts of the workers on the quays could be borne into her room on the breeze. Now the window was curtained, and a little fire shed a cheerful reflection on the dingy walls. Hester stirred the fire, threw on an additional lump or two of coal, and drawing a three-legged stool forward for Bet, motioned to her to seat herself. The room was fairly warm, and Bet was glad to dry her damp dress, and to spread out her hands before the cheerful blaze. As Hester bustled about, and laid a tiny table with plates for three, she gradually drew from Bet a little of the story of last night.

"I have promised," said Bet, in conclusion, "to keep the two littl'uns safe—that's my work now, and I told father this morning what he wor to expect."

"And how did he take it, honey?" said Hester. "He knew you, Bet. He knew as you weren't a girl to say one thing and mean another."

"Yes, he knew that," answered Bet. "Most folks know that of me," she continued, with a heavy sigh.

"Well, have some tea now, honey—draw up to the table. The butter's good, and the red-herring done to a turn. I expected Will Scarlett in, but we won't wait for him. Ah! here he is—just in the nick o' time."

The door was opened, and a young sailor, with a certain resemblance to Hester both in face and figure, stepped across the threshold. He colored up under his brown skin when he saw Bet, but she scarcely noticed him, and gave him her hand in limp fashion, her eves hardly raised.

"My ship sails to-morrow, Hester," he said, "the 'Good Queen Anne,'—I've got a rattling good berth this time, and no mistake."

He tossed off his cap as he spoke, again glanced at Bet with a certain shyness, and then dropped into the seat opposite to her.

"Help yourself, Will," said Hester. "Bet's in a bit o' trouble—you mustn't mind her; she wor telling me things, and she'll have a hard fight afore her, I can see. Well, I say she must keep up heart. Have some tea, honey? Will, don't you make two mouths of a cherry—put the whole of that herring on your plate—there are more in the bag for me to toast when this is finished."

"I can't eat, Hester—it's no use," said Bet.

She rose from the table, and went back once more to the little three-legged stool by the fire. Then she turned her back on Hester and the young sailor, and went on spreading out her hands to the warmth, as though she could never take the chill off.

"Don't mind her," whispered Hester to her cousin. "She's taking it hard, and I didn't know as it were in her. But presently she'll cry, and that'll bring her round. You tell me what your prospects are, Will. I'm loathe to part with ye, lad, and that's the truth."

"I'll be back by the summer, Hetty. We're going to Africa and back. I'm to be well paid, and it's a good ship to sail in. The cap'n ain't one of your rough and ready, and the rations are fair."

As he spoke he glanced again at Bet, who was leaning her cheek on her hand. Neither he nor Hester could catch any reflection of her face, which was completely hidden.

"We'll talk to her presently," whispered the elder woman. "Now push the table aside, Will, and let's have a sailor-song together, just for good luck."

"No, let's sing 'Barbara Allen,'" said Will. Again he glanced at Bet, and this time he sighed.

The two voices blended well, Will's being of nearly as rare a quality as his cousin's. When they sang, so great was the power of this gift bestowed upon them, they rose several degrees in the scale of refinement and even of education. Their voices lost all trace of dialect, their eyes shone with true feeling. The pathetic old words had never been more fitly rendered.

As the voices rose and swelled, and filled the little room with a perfect melody of sound, Bet ceased to sigh; her hands fell idly into her lap, and her face, which was now turned towards the singers, became filled with a sort of ecstasy. Her parted lips seemed scarcely to breathe, and her eyes reflected the emotions caused by the pathos of the story and the wonderful power of the singers like a mirror.

Will, who was watching her even more intently than Hester, now began to sing only for her. He looked directly at her; and a great many emotions surging in his own soul must have come to her just now, borne on the words of the old ballad—

When he was dead and laid in grave,
     Her heart was