NORAHtravelled through the streets all day, looking for her friend and fearing that every eye was fixed on her, that everybody knew the secret which she tried to conceal. Her feet were sore, her breath came in short, sudden gasps as she took her way into dark closes and climbed creaking stairs; and never were her efforts rewarded by success. Here in the poorer parts of the city, in the crooked lanes and straggling alleys, were dirt, darkness, and drunkenness. A thousand smells greeted the nostrils, a thousand noises grated on the ears; lights flared brightly in the beershops; fights started at the corners; ballad singers croaked out their songs; intoxicated men fell in the gutters; policemen stood at every turning, their helmets glistening, their faces calm, their eyes watchful. The evening had come and all was noise, hurry, and excitement.
“Isaac Levison, Pawnbroker; 2 Up,” Norah read on a plate outside the entrance of a close and went in.
“I wonder if Sheila will be here?” she asked herself, and smiled sadly as she called to mind the number of closes she had crawled into during the whole long trying day.
Dragging her feet after her, she made her way up the crooked stairs and rapped with her knuckles at a door onwhich the words “Caretaker’s office” were painted in black letters. A woman, with a string for a neck and wisps of red hair hanging over her face, poked out her head.
“Up yet,” was the answer when Norah asked if anybody named Sheila Carrol dwelt on the stairs.
“After all my searchin’ she’s here at last,” said the young woman. “It’s Sheila Carrol herself that’s in the place.”
The beansho opened the door when she heard a rapping outside. She knew her visitor at once.
“Come in, Norah Ryan,” she said, catching the girl’s hands and squeezing them tightly. “It’s good of ye to come. No one from Frosses, only Oiney Dinchy’s gasair, have I seen here for a long while. But ye’ll be tired, child?”
“It’s in an ill way that I come to see ye, Sheila Carrol,” said Norah. “It’s an ill way, indeed it is,” and then, sitting down, she told her story quietly as if that which she spoke of did not interest her in any way.
“Poor child!” said Sheila, when the pitiful tale came to an end. “Why has God put that burden on yer little shoulders? But there’s no use in pining, Norah. Mind that, child!”
“I would like to die, Sheila Carrol,” said Norah, looking round the bare room, but not feeling in the least interested in what she saw. One chair, a bed, a holy water stoup, a little black crucifix from which the arms of the Christ had fallen away, an orange box on which lay a pair of scissors and a pile of cloth: that was all the room contained. A feeble fire burned in the grate and a battered oil-lamp threw a dim light over the compartment.
“I once had thoughts that were like that, meself,” said Sheila. She placed a little tin pannikin on the fire and fanned the flame with her apron. “People face a terriblelot in body and in soul before they face death. That’s the way God made us, child. We do be like grains of corn under a mill-stone, and everything but the breath of our bodies squeezed out of us. Sometimes I do be thinkin’ that the word ‘hope’ is blotted from me soul; but then after a wee while I do be happy in my own way again.”
“But did ye not find yer own burden hard to bear, Sheila?”
“Hard indeed, child, but it’s trouble that makes us wise,” said the beansho, pouring tea into the pannikin that was now bubbling merrily. “The father of me boy died on the sea and me goin’ to be married to him when the season of Lent was by. The cold grey morning when the boat came in keel up on Dooey Strand was a hard and black one for me. Ah! the cold break of day; sorrow take it! The child came and I was not sorry at all, as the people thought I should be. He was like the man I loved, and if the bitin’ tongues of the Frosses people was quiet I would be very happy, I would indeed, Norah! But over here in this country it was sore and bitter to me. I mind the first night that I stopped in Glasgow with the little boy. He was between my arms and I was lookin’ out through the window of 47 at the big clock with the light inside of it. It was a lazy clock that night and I thought that the light of day would never put a colour on the sky. But the mornin’ did come and many mornin’s since then, and stone-cold they were too!”
Then Sheila told the story of her life in Scotland, and Norah, hardly realising what was spoken, listened almost dumbly, feeling at intervals the child within her moving restlessly, stretching out as if with a hand and pressing against her side, causing a quivering motion to run through her body.
Sheila’s story was a pitiful one. When first she cameto Glasgow she took an attic room at the top of a four-storeyed building and for this she paid a weekly rent of three shillings and sixpence.
“ ‘Twas the dirty place to live in, Norah, for all the smells and stinks of the houses down under came up to me,” said the woman. “And three white shillin’s and sixpence a week for that place that one wouldn’t put pigs into! The houses away at home may be bad, but there’s always the fresh air and no drunk men or bad women lyin’ across yer door every time ye go outside. 47 was a rotten place; worse even than this, and this is bad. Look at the sheets and blankets on the bed behind ye, Norah, look at the colour of them and the writin’ on them.”
Norah gazed at the bed and saw on every article of clothing, stamped in large blue letters, the words: “STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT.”
“That’s because someone may steal the rags,” said Sheila. “This room is furnished by the landlord, God forgive him for the furnishin’ of it! And he’s afraid that his tenants will run away and try to pawn the bedclothes. Lyin’ under the blankets all night with STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT writ on them is a quare way of sleepin’. But what can a woman like me do? And 47 was worse nor this; and the work! ’Twas beyond speakin’ about!
“The first job I got was the finishin’ of dongaree jackets, sewin’ buttons on them, and things like that! I was up in the mornin’ at six and went to bed the next mornin’ at one, and hard at it all the time I wasn’t sleepin’. Sunday was the same as any other day; always work, always the needle. I used to make seven shillin’s a week; half of that went in rent and the other half kept meself and my boy. Talk about teeth growin’ longwith hunger at times when the work was none too plentiful! Sometimes, Norah——”
Sheila paused. Norah was listening intently, her lips a little apart, like a child’s.
“Sometimes, Norah, I went out beggin’ on the streets—me, a Frosses woman too,” Sheila resumed with a sigh. “Then one night when I asked a gentleman for a few pence to buy bread he handed me over to the police. Said I was accostin’ him. I didn’t even know what it meant at the time; now—But I hope ye never know what it means.... Anyway I was sent to jail for three weeks.”
“To jail, Sheila!” Norah exclaimed.
“True as God, child, and my boy left alone in that dirty attic. There was I not knowin’ what was happenin’ to him, and when I came out of prison I heard that the police had caught him wanderin’ out in the streets and put him in a home. But I didn’t see him; I was slapped into jail again.”
“What for, Sheila?”
“Child neglect, girsha,” said the woman, lifting her scissors and cutting fiercely at a strip of cloth as she spoke. “I don’t know how they made it out again’ me, but the law is far beyond simple people like us. I was put in for three months that time and when I came out——”
A tear dropped from Sheila’s eyes and fell on the cloth which lay on her lap.
“The little fellow, God rest his soul! was dead,” said the woman. “Then I hadn’t much to live for and I was like to die. But people can stand a lot one way and another, a terrible lot entirely. After that I thought of making shirts and I got a sewin’ machine from a big firm on the instalment system. A shillin’ a week I had to pay for the machine. I could have done well at the shirt-makin’, but things seemed somehow to be again’ me. On the sixth week I couldn’t pay the shillin’. It was dueon a Friday and Saturday was my own pay day. I prayed to the traveller to wait for the morrow, but he wouldn’t, and took the machine away. ’Twas the big firm of —— too, that did that. Think of it! them with their mills and their riches and me only a poor woman. Nor it wasn’t as if I wasn’t wantin’ to pay neither. But that’s the way of the world, girsha; the bad, black world, cold as the rocks on Dooey Strand it is, aye, and colder.
“Sometimes after the sewin’ machine went I used to go out on the streets and sing songs, and at that sort of work, not at all becomin’ for a Frosses woman, I could always make the price of a bunk in the Rat-pit, the place where ye were last night, Norah. Ah! how often have I had my night’s sleep there! Then again I would come back to 47 and start some decent work that wasn’t half as easy or half as well paid as the singin’ of songs. So I went from one thing to another and here I am at this very minute.”
Sheila paused in her talk but not in the work which she had just started.
“Not much of a room, this one, neither,” she remarked, casting her eye on the bed, but not missing a stitch in her sewing as she spoke. “Four shillin’s I pay for it a week and it’s supposed to hold two people. Outside the door you can see that ticketed up, ‘To hold two adults,’ like the price marked on a pair of secondhand trousers. I’m all alone here; only the woman, old Meg, that stops in the room behind this one, passes through here on her way to work. But ye’ll stay here with me now, two Frosses people in the one room, so to speak.”
“What kind of work are ye doin’ here?” asked Norah, pointing to the cloth which Sheila was sewing.
“Shirt-finishin’,” Sheila replied. “For every shirt there’s two rows of feather-stitchin’, eight buttonholes and seven buttons sewed on, four seams and eight fasteners.It takes me over an hour to do each shirt and the pay is a penny farthing. I can make about fifteen pence a day, but out of that I have to buy my own thread. But ye’ll be tired, child, listenin’ to me clatterin’ here all night.”
“I’m not tired listenin’ to ye at all, but it’s sorrow that’s with me because life was so hard on ye,” said Norah. “Everything was black again’ ye.”
“One gets used to it all,” said Sheila with the air of resignation which sits on the shoulders of those to whom the keys of that delicious mystery known as happiness are forever lost. “One gets used to things, no matter how hard they be, and one doesn’t like to die.”
But now Norah listened almost heedlessly. Thoughts dropped into her mind and vanished with the frightful rapidity of things falling into empty space; and memories of still more remote things, faint, far away and almost undefined, were wafted against her soul.
The girl fell into a heavy slumber.
INthe morning she awoke to find herself lying in bed, the blankets on which the blue letters STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT were stamped wrapped tightly around her, and Sheila Carrol lying by her side. For a moment she wondered vaguely how she had got into the bunk, then raising herself on her elbow, she looked round the room.
The apartment was a very small one, with one four-paned window and two doors, one of which led, as Norah knew, out to the landing, and one, as she guessed, into the room belonging to old Meg, the woman whom Sheila had spoken of the night before. The window was cracked and crooked, the floor and doors creaked at every move, amusty odour of decay and death filled the whole place. A heap of white shirts was piled on the orange box that stood in the middle of the floor, one shirt, the “finishing” of which had not been completed, lay on an old newspaper beside the fireplace. It looked as if Sheila had become suddenly tired in the midst of her feather-stitching and had slipped into bed. She was now awake and almost as soon as she had opened her eyes was out of the blankets, had wrapped a few rags round her bony frame and was busy at work with her needle. Sleep for the woman was only a slight interruption of her eternal routine.
“Have a wee wink more,” she cried to Norah, “and I’ll just make a good warm cup of tay for ye when I get this row finished. Little rogue of all the world! ye’re tired out and worn!”
Norah smiled sadly, got up, dressed herself, and going down on her knees by the bedside, said her prayers.
“It’s like Frosses again,” said Sheila, when the girl’s prayers came to an end. “Even seein’ ye there on yer knees takes back old times. But often I do be thinkin’ that prayin’ isn’t much good. There was old Doalty Farrel; ye mind him talkin’ about politics the night yer father, God rest him! was underboard. Well, Doalty was a very holy man, as ye know yerself, and he used to go down on his knees when out in the very fields and pray and pray. Well and good; he went down one day on his knees in the snow and when he got home he had a pain in one of his legs. That night it was in his side, in the mornin’ Doalty was dead. Gasair Oiney Dinchy was tellin’ me all about it.”
“But they say in Frosses that God was so pleased with Doalty that He took him up to heaven before his time,” said Norah.
“But it’s not many that like to go to heaven beforetheir time,” Sheila remarked as she rose from her seat and set about to kindle the fire. At the same moment the door leading in from the compartment opened, and an old woman, very ugly, her teeth worn to the gums, the stumps unhealthily yellow, her eyes squinting and a hairy wart growing on her right cheek, entered the room.
“Good morra, Meg,” said Sheila, who was fanning the fire into flame with her apron. “Are ye goin’ to yer work?”
“Goin’ to my work,” replied Meg and turned her eyes to Norah. “A friend, I see,” she remarked.
“A countrywoman of my own,” said Sheila.
“Are ye new to Glesga?” Meg asked Norah, who was gazing absently out of the window.
“I have only just come here,” said the girl.
“Admirin’ the view!” remarked Meg with a wheezy laugh as she took her place beside the girl at the window. “A fine sight to look at, that. Dirty washin’ hung out to dry; dirty houses; everything dirty. Look down at the yard!”
A four-square block of buildings with outhouses, slaty grey and ugly, scabbed on to the walls, enclosed a paved courtyard, at one corner of which stood a pump, at another a stable with a heap of manure piled high outside the door. Two grey long-bodied rats could be seen running across from the pump to the stable, a ragged tramp who had slept all night on the warm dunghill shuffled up to his feet, rubbed the sleep and dirt from his eyes, then slunk away from the place as if conscious of having done something very wrong.
“That man has slept here for many a night,” said Meg; then pointing her finger upwards over the roofs of many houses to a spire that pierced high through the smoke-laden air, she said: “That’s the Municipal Buildin’s; that’s where the rich people meet and talk about the bestthing to be done with houses like these. It’s easy to talk over yonder; that house cost five hunner and fifty thousand pounds to build. A gey guid hoose, surely, isn’t it, Sheila Carrol?”
“It’s comin’ half-past five, Meg, and it’s time ye were settin’ out for yer work,” was Sheila’s answer. “Ye’d spend half yer life bletherin’.”
“A good, kindly and decent woman she is,” Sheila told Norah when Meg took her departure. “Works very hard and, God forgive her! drinks very hard too. Nearly every penny that doesn’t go in rent does in the crathur, and she’s happy enough in her own way although a black Prodesan.... Ah! there’s some quare people here on this stair when ye come to know them all!”
Over a tin of tea and a crust Sheila made plans for the future. “I can earn about one and three a day at the finishin’,” she said. “I have to buy my own thread out of that, three bobbins a week at twopence ha’penny a bobbin.
“Ye used to be a fine knitter, Norah,” Sheila continued. “D’ye mind the night long ago on Dooey Strand? God knows it was hardships enough for the strong women like us to sleep out in the snow, not to mention a young girsha like yerself. But ye were the great knitter then and ye’ll be nimble with yer fingers yet, I’ll go bail. Sewing ye might be able to take a turn at.”
“I used to be good with needle, Sheila,” said the girl.
“Then that’ll be what we’ll do. We’ll work together, me and yerself, and we’ll get on together well and cheaper. It’ll be only the one fire and the one light; and now, if ye don’t mind, we’ll begin work and I’ll show ye what’s to be done.”
THEYcame and went, days monotonously slow, each bearing with it its burden of sorrows and regrets, of fear and unhappiness. The life of the two women was ever the same: out of bed at five in the morning, a salutation exchanged with old Meg as she went to her work; breakfast—a crust of bread and a cup of tea; the light, weak and sickly, peeping through the narrow, murky window, the eternal scissors and needles, the white heaps of shirts, the feather-stitching and finishing. In the morning the cripple next door clattered downstairs on crutches, the card with the rude inscription, PARALYSED FOR LIFE, shaking to and fro as he moved. All day long he lay on the cold flagged pavement begging his daily bread. Tommy Macara, the lad with the rickets, came out singing to the landing on his way to the industrial school. He stuck his head through the door and shouted: “Ye twa women, warkin’ hard.” Both loved little Tommy, his cheery laugh, his childish carelessness, his poor body twisted out of shape by the humours of early disease. His legs would twitch as he stood at the door, making an effort to control the tremors; sometimes he would laugh awkwardly at this and hurry away. Thus the morning.
Noon.—A quarrel at No. 8. The two loose women who lived there argued about the spoils taken from adrunken sailor the night before, and came to blows. One was dressed, the other, just out of bed, had only time to wrap the blanket round her body. Both came out on the landing tearing at each other’s hair and swearing. All the doors in the place opened; women ragged to the point of nudity, men dirty and unshaven, hurried out to watch the fight, which was long and severe. The women bit and scratched, and the younger—Bessie was her name—a plump girl wearing the blanket on which the words STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT could be read at a distance—was deprived of her only article of apparel, and she scurried rapidly indoors. The onlookers laughed loudly and clapped their hands; the elder, a light-limbed lassie with very white teeth, returned to her room closing the door behind her. Now and again a shriek could be heard from the apartment, then a hoarse gurgle, as if somebody was getting strangled, afterwards silence. The watchers retired indoors, and peace settled on the stairhead. Only the two women, Sheila and Norah, never ceased work; the needles and scissors still sparkled over and through the white shirts.
Evening.—Meg returned half-tipsy and singing a chorus, half the words of which she had forgotten. The day’s work had been a very trying one, the dust rising from the rags did not agree with her asthma. On entering she looked fixedly at Sheila, shook her head sadly, ran her fingers over Norah’s hair and began the chorus again, but stopped in the middle of it and started to weep. After a while she reeled into her own room, closed the door behind her, and sank to sleep on the floor beside the dead fire.
Little Tom Macara came up the stair, looked in, the eternal smile on his pinched face, and cried out in a thin voice: “Ah! the women are warkin’ awa’ yet. They never have a meenit to spare!”
“Never a minute, Tom,” Sheila answered, and the boy went off, whistling a music-hall tune. Tom’s mother was consumptive, his father epileptic; he had two brothers and three sisters all older than himself. After Tom, the man with the crutches came upstairs. From the street to the top of the landing was a weary climb, but often he got helped on the journey; sometimes the two whores escorted him up, sometimes Sheila gave him an arm, and everybody on the stairs liked the man. He was always in good humour and could sing a capital song.
Later in the evening, those who indulged in intoxicants became drunk; an ex-soldier, with one sleeve of his coat hanging loosely from his shoulder, who lived with two women, kicked one unmercifully and got dragged off to prison; the two harlots netted two men, one of them a well-dressed fellow with a gold tie-pin and a ring on his finger, and took them to their room; the paralytic could be heard singing and his voice seemed to be ever so far away. Sheila and Norah were still busy with the shirts, sewing their lives into every stitch of their work.
“And them two women at No. 8, there’s not the least bit of harm in them at bottom,” Sheila would exclaim. “They help the old cripple up every time they meet him on the stairs. And to think of it! there’s seventeen thousand women like them in Glasgow!”
“God be good to us!”
Midnight came and quiet, and still the two women worked on. Outside on the landing into the common sink the water kept dripping from the tap. Sheila made a remark about the people away home in Frosses and wondered if they were all asleep at that moment. Outside, the city sank to its repose; only the unfortunate and the unwell were now awake. The epileptic’s wife coughed continually; Bessie, the plump girl, stole the pin from the tie of her lover; downstairs the caretaker, the womanwith the red wisps of hair, counted the number of men who went to No. 8; half the profits went to her.
One o’clock came and, as if by mutual consent, the Irish women left their work aside and looked out of the window for a moment. High up they could see the spire of the town hall prodding into the heavens; nearer and almost as high the tower of a church with the black hands passing on the lighted face of a clock; closer still the dark windows of the houses opposite. Glasgow with all its churches, its halls, with its shipping and commerce, its wharves and factories, its richness and splendour, its poor and unhappy, its oppressed and miserable, Glasgow, with its seventeen thousand prostitutes, was asleep.
NORAHand Sheila went to bed, wrapped the blue-lettered blankets round their bodies and placed their heads down on the condemnatory sentences: STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT. Almost immediately Sheila was asleep, her knees drawn up under her (for the bed was too short for her body) and her arms around Norah. The young girl could not sleep well now; short feverish snatches of slumber were followed by sudden awakenings, and fears and fancies, too subtle to define, constantly preyed on her mind. Sometimes, when under the influence of a religious melancholy that often took possession of her, she repeated theHail Maryover and over again, but at intervals she stopped in the midst of a prayer, started as if stung by an asp and exclaimed: “What does the Virgin think of me, me that has committed one of the worst mortal sins in the world!”
In the midst of a prayer she dropped to sleep, maybe for the third time in an hour, but immediately was awakenedby a sharp rapping at the door. Sheila heard nothing, she lay almost inert, and perspiring a little.
“Who’s there?” Norah called out.
“The sanitary,” a hoarse voice answered from the landing.
The girl slipped out of bed, hardly daring to breathe lest her companion was disturbed, fumbled round for the matches, lit the oil-lamp and opened the door. Two strangers in uniform stood outside; one, a tall man with a heavy beard, held a lamp, the other, a sallow-faced, shrunken individual, hummed a tune in a thin, monotonous voice and picked his nose with a claw-like finger. The two entered, brushing against the girl who took up her stand behind the door, making a slight rapping noise with her heels on the bare floor.
“How many here?” asked the tall man with the beard.
“Two,” Norah answered, “the woman in the bed and me.”
“No one else under the bed?”
“No one,” Norah replied, but the man knelt on the floor, lifted the bedclothes and peeped under.
“Only one in the next room?” asked the sallow-faced fellow, pointing at Meg’s door.
“Only one and nobody else.”
They chose not to believe the girl’s statement, rapped on the door, which was opened after a long delay by old Meg, who had risen naked from bed and was now hiding her withered body behind a blanket stamped with the blue lettering. The sentence STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT ran from the left knee to the right shoulder; the left shoulder was bare, as was also the left leg from ankle to hip.
“Only one here,” she croaked, glowering evilly at the men who had disturbed her slumber. “Christ! an auld body has no peace at all here, for there are always somefolk crawlin’ round when decent folk are in bed. Bed! callin’ it a bed and so particular about it. One would almost be as well off if they were thrown out a handful of fleas and allowed to sleep on the doorstep. God’s curse on ye both, comin’ at this hour of the night to pull an old woman like me from my scratcher.”
The bearded man entered the room, his companion took out a note-book and wrote something down, shut the book and placed it in his pocket. The tall man came out again; both bade Norah “Good-night” in apologetic tones and took their leave. Sheila had slept unmoved through it all.
The young girl closed the door, extinguished the light and re-entered the bed. She was very tired, but sleep would not come to her eyes. An hour passed. Sheila was snoring loudly, but Norah awake could hear the water dropping into the sink on the landing, and the vacant laugh of Bessie escorting a man upstairs. At night this woman never slept; her business was then in full swing.
Someone knocked at the door again, and Norah cried, “Who’s there?” “Is this No. 8?” enquired a man’s voice. Norah answered, “No,” and steps shuffled along the passage outside. Next instant the crash of someone falling heavily was heard, then a muttered imprecation, and afterwards silence.
Norah fell asleep again.
THREEweeks, laggard and leaden in movement, passed away. It was late evening; nine o’clock was just striking, and Sheila, true to her usual habit, counted the strokes aloud.
“The clock goes faster now than it did the first night I was here,” she said. “I suppose they’ll all be goin’ to bed in Frosses now, or maybe sayin’ the rosary. Are ye tired, Norah?” she suddenly asked her companion.
“No, not tired, only....”
“Maybe ye would like to go to bed,” said Sheila, anticipating Norah’s desires and looking very wise.
“I think that.... Oh! it’s all right,” answered Norah, an expression of pain passing across her face.
“I know,” said Sheila, laying down her scissors and stirring up the fire, which was brighter than usual. “Ye must go to bed now and keep yerself warm, child. Ye’ll be all right come the mornin’.”
“I’m very unwell, Sheila. I feel.... No, I’m better again,” said Norah, making a feeble attempt to smile and only succeeding in blushing.
She undressed to her white cotton chemise, lay down, and Sheila gathered the blankets round the young woman with tender hands. Norah appeared calm, her fingers for a moment toyed with the tresses over her brow, thenshe drew her hand under the blankets. Her face had taken on a new light; the cold look of despair had suddenly given place to a new and nervous interest in life and in herself. It seemed as if things had assumed a new character for her; as if she understood in a vague sort of way that a woman’s life is always woven of dreams, sorrow, love, and self-sacrifice. She was now waiting almost gladly, impatient for the most solemn moment in a woman’s life.
“I’m not one bit afraid,” she said to the serious Sheila who was bending over her. “Now don’t be frightened. One would think....” Norah did not proceed. It was a moment of words half-spoken and the listener understood.
Suddenly Norah sighed deeply, clutched Sheila’s dress in a fierce grip and closed her eyes tightly and tensely. She was suffering, but she endured silently.
“I’m better again,” she said after a moment. “Don’t heed about me, Sheila. I’m fine.”
The older woman went back to her work with the large shiny scissors and the bright little needle. Only the swish-swish of the cutting shears and the noise of a falling cinder could be heard for a long while. On the roof wave-shadows could be seen rushing together, forming into something very dark and breaking free again.
“Will ye have a drop of tea, Norah?”
“No, Sheila,” said the girl in the bed in a low strained voice: then after a moment she asked: “Sheila, will ye come here for a minute?”
A cinder fell into the grate with a sharp rattle, the scissors sparkled brightly as they were laid aside. Sheila rose and went towards the bed on tiptoe.
“I’m not needin’ ye yet,” said Norah. “I thought.... I’m better again.”
The woman went back to her work, stepping even moresoftly than before. The night slipped away; the noises on stair and street became less and less, the women of No. 8 had retired to their beds, a drunken man sang homewards, a policeman passed along with slow, solemn tread; even these signs of life suddenly abated, and the noise of the cutting scissors, the clock striking out the hours, and the wind beating against the window were all that could be heard in the room.
About three o’clock the sanitary inspectors called. Sheila whispered to them at the door and they went away muttering something in an apologetic voice.
The grey dawn was lighting up the street; the blind had been drawn aside and the lamp flickered feebly on the floor. Sheila turned it down and approached the bed. On Norah’s face there was the calmness of resignation and repose. She had suffered much during the night, but now came a quiet moment. Her brow looked very white and her cheeks delicately red. Her face was still as beautiful as ever; even so much the more was it beautiful.
“There’s great noises in the streets, Sheila,” she said to the woman bending over her.
“ ‘Tis the workers goin’ out to their work, child,” was the answer. “How are ye feelin’ now?”
“Better, Sheila, better.”
But even as she spoke the pain again mastered her and she groaned wearily. And Sheila, wise with a woman’s wisdom, knew that the critical moment had come.
THEchild who came to Norah, the little boy with the pink, plump hands, the fresh cheeks and pretty shoulders, filled nearly all the wants of her heart. The fear that she had had of becoming a mother was past andthe supreme joy of motherhood now was hers. She knew that she would be jealous of the father if he was with her at present; as matters stood the child was her own, her very own, and nothing else mattered much. Sometimes she would sit for an hour, her discarded scissors hanging from her fingers, gazing hungrily at the saffron-red downy face of the child, anticipating every movement on its part, following every quiver of its body with greedy eyes. In the child lay Norah’s hopes of salvation; it was the plank to which she clung in the shipwreck of her eternity. All her hopes, all her fortunes lay in the babe’s fragile bed; the sound of the little voice was heavenly music to her ears. In Norah’s heart welled up this incomparable love, in which are blended all human affections and all hopes of heaven, the love of a mother. The great power of motherhood held her proof against all evils; dimly and vaguely it occurred to her that if that restraining power was withdrawn for a moment she would succumb to any temptation and any evil which confronted her.
She found now a great joy in working with Sheila: both talked lovingly of home and those whom they had left behind. Sometimes Norah mingled tears with her recollections. Sheila Carrol never wept.
“Years ago I could cry my fill,” she told Norah, “but for a long while, save on the night yerself came here, the wells of my eyes have been very dry.”
At another time when the mother was giving the breast to the child Sheila said: “Ye look like the Blessed Virgin with the child, Norah.”
A difficulty arose about the child’s name: that of the father was out of the question.
“One of the Frosses names for me,” said Sheila. “Doalty, Dony, or Dermod, Murtagh, Shan, or Fergus; Oiney, Eamon, or Hudy; ah! shure, there’s hundreds ofthem! All good names they are and all belonging to our own arm of the glen. The trouble is that there’s too many to pick from. We’ll be like the boy with the apples; they were all so good that he didn’t know what one to take and he died of fargortha while lookin’ at them. Dermod or Fergus, which will it be?” asked the beansho.
“Dermod,” said Norah simply.
“I thought so,” said the woman. “And I hope another Dermod will come one of these days to see us. Then maybe ... Dermod Flynn was a nice kindly lad, comely and civil.”
ONCEa week, on Friday, Sheila took a bundle of finished shirts to the clothes-merchant’s office. Seven months after Norah’s arrival Sheila went out one day with her bundle and in the evening the woman did not return. Midnight came and went. From the window Norah watched the lazy hands of the clock crawl out the seconds of existence. Steps could be heard coming up and going down the stairs; then these suddenly ceased. Far away the flames flaring from the top of a chimney-stack glowed fiercely red against the dark sky. A policeman came along the dimly lighted street, walking with tired tread and examining the numbers on the closed entrances. He suddenly disappeared below; afterwards a knock came to the door.
“A woman was run down by a tram-car,” said the policeman, speaking through his heavy moustache, when Norah gave him admittance; “she was killed instantly.... She had a slip of paper ... this address ... maybe you can identify.”
Norah lifted the sleeping babe, wrapped it in her shawl and followed the man. At the police mortuary she recognised Sheila Carrol. The dead woman was in no way disfigured; she lay on a wooden slab, face upwards, and still, so very still!
“Sheila Carrol!... she’s only sleepin’!” said Norah.
“Sheila Carrol, you say,” said a uniformed man who had just entered and who overheard Norah’s remark. “Twice convicted, once for being on the streets, once for child neglect,” he muttered, looking not a little proud of his knowledge. “The back of the head and the spine that’s hurt. When one is struck hard in them places it’s all over.”
Norah felt like a cripple whose crutches have been taken away. That night when she returned to her room she slept none and wept bitterly, at times believing that the dead woman was with her in the room. Being very lonely she kept the light burning till morning, and as the fire had gone out she shivered violently at intervals and a dry tickling cough settled on her chest.
THEmerchant who supplied cloth to the two women had gone bankrupt. Probably Sheila was so much overwhelmed by this that she forgot to avoid the dangers of the crowded streets on her way home. Perhaps she was planning some scheme for the future, and as is the case when the mind dwells deeply on some particular subject, the outside world was for a while non-existent to her. An eye-witness of the tragedy said that Sheila had taken no heed of the oncoming tram; that death was instantaneous.
When morning came Norah Ryan was conscious of a dull sickly pain behind her left shoulder-blade. The child slept badly during the night and coughed feebly when it awoke. There were no matches to light the fire; a half-loaf, a pennyworth of tea and a quarter hundred-weight of coal was all that remained in the room.
Norah went into Meg’s compartment. The door waslying open. The woman sat by a dead fire, having just awakened from a drunken sleep on the floor. She was a kind-hearted soul, generous and sympathetic, but fond of drink. A glass of whisky made her very tipsy, two glasses made her very irritable.
“Ye’re up early, lass,” said the old woman, rising to her feet and scratching her head vigorously. “Is Sheila sleepin’ yet?”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead!” exclaimed old Meg, sitting down on the only chair in the room and raising both hands, palms outwards, to a level with her face.
“A tram struck her last night when she was comin’ home,” said Norah. “Killed at once, the policeman said that she was.”
Meg wept loudly for a few moments, then: “What are ye goin’ to do now?” she asked, drying her eyes.
“I don’t know.”
“There’s often a chance goin’ in the rag-store where I work and it’s not a hard job at all,” said the old woman. “The job may be a wee bit dirty and clorty, but think it over. Six shillin’s a week is the pay to start wi’, then it rises to eight.”
“Thanks for the help that ye are to me,” said Norah; “and when d’ye think that I’ll get the job?”
“Maybe at any time now, for there’s one of the young ones goin’ to get marrit a fortnight come to-morrow,” said the old woman. “Then there’s a woman that lives at No. 27 of this street, Helen McKay is her name; ‘Tuppenny Helen,’ the ones on the stairhead ca’ her. She takes care of children for twopence a day.”
“I’m not goin’ to leave my child,” cried Norah. She spoke fiercely, angrily. “D’ye think that I would give up my child to a woman like Tuppenny Helen? God seesthat I can keep my own child whatever happens to me!”
“Whatever ye say it’s not for me to say the word agen it,” said Meg, surprised at Norah’s wrath.
“Could I take the boy with me if I get a job?”
“Nae fear; nae fear of that,” said the old woman. “It would smother a child in a week in yon place. Dust flyin’ all over the place; dirty rags with creepin’ things and crawlin’ things and maybe diseases on them; it’s a foulsome den. But folks maun eat and folks maun earn siller, and that’s why some hae to wark in a place like a rag-store. But dinna take the child wi’ ye there. For one thing ye winna be allowed and for another the feelthy place would kill the dear little thing in less than a week.”
For a fortnight following Norah looked in vain for a job at which she might work with the child beside her. At the end of that time the old woman spoke again of a vacant post in the store where she laboured. Norah put the child out to Twopenny Helen, a stumpy little woman with very large feet and hacked hands, then applied for and obtained the vacant post in the rag-store.
INthe chill, damp air of the early morning the two women tramped to their work, wearing their boots to save the tram fare. The old woman always walked with her head down, humming little tunes through her nose and breaking into a run from time to time. Her long red tongue was always out, slipping backwards and forwards over her upper lip, her hair, grey as a dull spring morning, eternally falling into her eyes, and her arms swinging out in front of her like two dead things as she trotted along.
The rag-store opened out on a narrow, smelling lane;the office where a few collared clerks bent over grimy ledgers and endless rows of figures was on a level with the street; the place where the women sorted the rags was a basement under the office. There were in all thirty human machines working in this cellar, which stretched into the darkness on all sides save one, and there it now and again touched sunshine, the weak sunshine that streamed through a dirty cobwebbed window, green with moisture and framed with iron bars.
All day long two gas-jets flared timidly in the basement, spluttering as if in protest at being condemned to burn in such a cavern. The women, bowed over their work, were for the most part silent; all topics of conversation had been exhausted long ago. Sometimes Monday morning was lively; many came fresh to their work full of accounts of a fight in which half the women of the close joined and which for some ended in the lock-up, for others with battered faces and dishevelled hair. These accounts roused a certain interest which lasted a few hours, then came the obstinate dragging silence again.
All day long they worked together in the murky cavern sorting the rags. The smell of the place was awful, suffocating almost; the damp and mouldy rags gave forth an unhealthy odour; dust rose from those that were drier and filled the place and the throats of the workers. Each woman knew every wrinkle of her neighbour’s face, on all the yellowish white and almost expressionless faces of the spectres of the cellar. And now and again the spectres sang their ghost-songs, which died away in the lone corners of the basement like wind in a churchyard.
It was amongst these women that Norah started work.
“A new start!” exclaimed one, a little sallow-faced thing who looked as if she had been gradually drying upfor several years, on seeing the new-comer. “Ye’ll soon get the blush oot o’ yer cheeks here, lass!”
“D’ye know that there are only three people in the worl’ when all is said and done?” another woman called to Norah. “The rag-picker, the scavenger, and the grave-digger are the three folk who count most in the long run.”
Everybody but Norah laughed at this remark, though all, save Norah, had heard it made a thousand times before.
“Ah! lass, ye’ve the red cheek,” said a bow-legged girl of seventeen.
“They’ll soon be pale enough,” another interrupted.
“And such white teeth!”
“They’ll soon be yellow!”
“And such long hair!”
“It’ll soon be full o’ dust.”
But they said no more, perhaps because Norah was so beautiful, and beauty calls forth respect in even the coarsest people.
The new start had many troubles at first. Being new to the work and unable to do as much as the other women, she was paid only five shillings a week. After a while the natural dexterity of her fingers stood her in good stead, and she became more adept at the rag-picking than anyone in the basement. Therefore her companions who had before laughed at her inexperience became jealous of Norah and accused her of trying to find favour with the boss.
But the girl did not mind much what they said; her one great regret was in being separated from her boy for the whole livelong day. Her breasts were full of the milk of motherhood, and severance from the little child was one of the greatest crosses which she had to bear.
The master seldom came near the place; it didn’t agree with his health, he said. He was a stout, well-built manwith small, glistening eyes overhung with heavy red brows. The hairs of his nostrils reached half-way down his upper lip and he was very bald. When the women saw the bald head appear at the foot of the basement stairs, shining a little as the gaslight caught it, they whispered:
“There’s the full moon; turn yer money!” and one of the workers who was very fond of swearing would invariably answer: “There’s not much money in the pockets o’ them that’s workin’ in this damned hole!”
Whenever he came down into the rag-store he took the bow-legged girl to one side and spoke to her about something. The two seemed to be on very familiar terms and it was stated that the girl got a far higher wage than any of the other workers; ten shillings a week was paid to her, some hinted. Suddenly, however, she left the place and did not come back again: but now the master came down the stairs oftener than ever before. One evening just as work was stopping the moon-head appeared, shone for a moment under the gaslight, then came forward.
“There’s some linen rags here that I want sorted up to-night,” he said, licking his lips. “I want one of ye to stay here and do the work.”
He looked round as he spoke and his eyes rested on Norah, who was wrapping her shawl over her shoulders.
“Will ye stay here?” he asked.
“All right,” said Norah, and took off her shawl again.
The rest of the workers went upstairs, a bit envious perhaps of the girl who was picked out for special work in the fetid hole. Master and servant were left alone, but Norah wished that she had gone away with the rest; she wanted so much to see her child. The cough which the little boy had contracted on the night of Sheila Carrol’s death, ten months before, had never gone wholly away, and now it was worse than ever. The mother herself wasnot feeling very well; the sharp pain in her chest troubled her a great deal at night.
“Ye’re a good sorter, I hear,” said the master, licking his lips, and Norah noticed the hairs of his nostrils quivering as if touched by a breeze. “Ye’ll not live well on seven shillin’s a week, will ye?” he asked.
“One must live somehow,” said Norah, bending down and picking up a handful of rags from the floor. “And a few shillin’s goes a long way when one is savin’.”
She started even as she spoke, for a large soft hand had gripped her wrist and she looked up to find her master’s little glistening eyes looking into hers. She could see the wrinkles on his forehead, the red weal that the rim of his hat had left on the temples, the few stray hairs that yet remained on the top of the pink head.
“What would ye be wantin’ with me?” she asked.
“I could raise yer screw, say to ten bob a week,” said the man, slipping his arms round her waist and trying to kiss her on the lips. If one of the dirty rags had been thrust into her mouth she could not have experienced a more nauseous feeling of horror than that which took possession of her at that moment. She freed herself violently from the grasp of the man, seized her shawl and hurried upstairs, leaving him alone in the cellar. In the office she had a misty impression of a grinning clerk looking at her and passing some meaningless remark. When she got back to her room she told Meg of all that had happened.
“Ye’re a lucky lass, a gie lucky lass,” said the old woman enviously. “Just play yer cards well and ye’ll soon hae a pund a week in the store. I heard to-day about the bowdy girl that left us a month gone. The master had a fancy for her but a mistake happened and she was in straw. But it’s now all right and she’s gettin’ a pund a week. Just ye play yer cards well, Norah Ryan, and ye’ll have a gey guid time,” she added.
“Meg Morraws!”
“Ha, ha!” cried the old woman, laughing and showing her yellow stumps of teeth, worn to the gums. “That’s the way to act. Carry on like that with him and he’ll do onything ye ask, for ye’re a comely lass; a gey comely one! Often I wondered why ye stayed so long workin’ in the rag-store. Life could be made muckle easier by a girl wi’ a winnin’ face like yours, Norah Ryan. God! to think that a girl like ye are warkin’ in that dirty hole when ye could make ten times as muckle siller by doin’ somethin’ else!”
NORAHdid not go back to the rag-store. She took her child from Twopenny Helen and looked for other work. The boy with his round chubby legs and wonderful pink toes, which she never tired of counting, was a wonder and delight to her. Everything was so fresh about him, the radiant eyes, the red cheeks that made the mother so much long to bite them, the little soft lips and the white sharp teeth that were already piercing through the gums. The child was dressed poorly, but, as befitted a sanctuary before which one human being prostrated herself with all the unselfish devotion of a pure heart, with the best taste of the worshipper.
The cold which the child caught months before had never entirely gone away; whenever the cough that accompanied it seized him he curled up in his mother’s lap in agony, while she feared that the little treasure that she loved so much was going to be taken away. The thought of the boy dying occurred to her many times and almost shattered the springs of action within her. If he died! She shuddered in terror; her fear was somewhat akin to the fear which possesses a man who hangs over a precipiceand waits for the overstrained rope to break. If the child was gone she would have nothing more to live for.
Her funds were very low; when she left the rag-store she had only the sum of nineteen shillings in her possession. This would pay rent for a few weeks, but meanwhile food, fuel, and clothing were needed. What was she to do?
Then followed weary days searching for work. Norah went from house to house in the better parts of the city, offering herself for employment. She left the child lying on a bed on the floor and locked the place up. She no longer sent it out to Twopenny Helen; Norah could not now spare twopence a day.
Again she got work, this time finishing dongaree jackets, and made tenpence a day. She had now to work on Sunday as well as Saturday, and she usually spent eighteen hours a day at her task. Winter came and there was no coal. The child, whose cold got no better, was placed in bed while the mother worked. The dry and hacking cough shook the mother’s frame at intervals and she sweated at night when asleep. She ate very little; her breasts were sore when she suckled her child, and by and by milk refused to come. Her eyes became sore; she now did part of her work under the lamp on the landing and by the light from the window across the courtyard. Old Meg, when she was drunk, had pence to spare for the child.
“Just for the little thing to play wi’,” she would explain in an apologetic voice, as if ashamed of being found guilty of a good action. Afterwards she would add: “Ye should have taken the twa extra shillin’s a week when they were offered ye.”
One evening towards Christmas when the old woman was speaking thus, Norah asked:
“If I went back now, would I get a job?”
“The man has got marrit and the place, as ye know yerself, has been filled up ages and ages ago.”
A strange expression, perhaps one of regret, showed for a moment on the face of Norah Ryan.
WHENthe old woman left her, Norah sat for a while buried in thought, her scissors lying on one knee, one hand hanging idly by her side. The boy was very ill, the cough hardly left him for a moment and his eyes were bright and feverish.
“If he dies what am I to do?” Norah asked herself several times. “Then it would be that I’d have nothing to live for.”
She rose and followed Meg into the room. The woman sat beside the fire, humming an old song. A candle, stuck in the neck of a beer-bottle, was alight, and a cricket chirped behind the fireless grate. “I’m goin’ out for a while,” said Norah in a low, strained voice. “Will ye look after the boy until I come back? I’ll take him in here.”
“All right,” said the woman, rising to her feet. “Take the little thing in.”
When Norah re-entered her own room the boy was coughing weakly but insistently in the darkness. She lit a candle, sat down on the corner of the bed and was immediately deep in thought. Her money had now dwindled away; she had only one and threepence in her possession. She even felt hungry; for a long while this sensation was almost foreign to her. The weekly rent was due on the morrow, and the child needed the doctor,needed food, needed fresh air and, above all, the attention which she was unable to give him.
She lifted him tenderly from the bed and carried him in to Meg, who began to crow with delight when the child was placed in her withered arms. Once back in her own room Norah resumed her seat on the bedside and seemed to be debating some very heavy problem. The candle flared faintly in the sconce on the floor; large shadows chased one another on the grimy ceiling ... the cripple came upstairs, Norah could hear the rattle of his crutches ... the noise of the city was loud outside the windows.
Norah rose, swept the floor, lit the lamp, a thing which she had not done for many nights, candles being much cheaper than oil. She went out, bought some coal and a penny bundle of firewood: these she placed on the grate, ready for lighting. The bed she sorted with nervous care, sighing as she spread out the blankets and arranged the pillows.
She then began to dress herself carefully, brushing back her hair with trembling fingers as she looked into the little broken hand-mirror, one of Sheila Carrol’s belongings. Her well-worn dress still retained a certain coquetry of cut and suited her well, her broad-brimmed hat, which she had not worn for a long while, gave an added charm to her white brow and grey eyes.
When dressed she stood for a moment to listen to the child coughing in Meg’s room. Stifling with an effort the impulse to go in and have one look at the boy, she crossed herself on forehead and lips and went out on the landing. For a moment something seemed to perplex her; she stood and looked round on all sides. The place was deserted; nothing could be heard but the cripple singing “Annie Laurie” in a loud, melodious voice. Norah again crossed herself, stepped slowly down the stairs, and went out to the street.
ATmidnight she returned for her child. The boy was still coughing, but more quietly than before, and the old woman was lying flat upon her stomach, asleep by the fireside. Norah lifted the child, took him into her own room and placed the frail bundle, in which was wrapped up all her life and all her hopes, on the bed.
The fire was burning brightly, the oil-lamp gave out a clear, comforting light which showed up the whole room, the bare floor, the black walls enlivened by no redeeming feature save the crude picture of the Virgin and Child and the little black cross hanging from a rusty nail near the window; the pile of dongaree jackets shoved into a corner, the orange-box and the bed with the blankets, which Norah had sorted such a short time before, now in strange disorder.
Old Meg suddenly bustled into the room, a frightened look on her face. “I thought that some yin had stolen the little dear,” she cried, her breath reeking with alcohol. “Ah, here he is, the wee laddie,” she cooed on seeing the little pink face in the bed. “I hae got a fright, I hae indeed, Norah Ryan!”
The woman sat down on the orange box and looked curiously round, first at the lighted lamp, then at the fire, then at Norah, and afterwards back to the fire again.
“Hae ye got siller the noo, lassie?” she exclaimed at last. “Has yer rich uncle kicked the bucket? Fire and light the noo and everything? Ah! what’s this?” she exclaimed, bending down and lifting a half-smoked cigarette from the floor. She looked at it for a moment, then threw it into the flames.
“Has it come to this, Norah Ryan?” she asked, and a faint touch of regret mingled with the woman’s tones.
Norah, who was bending over the child, turned roundfiercely; for a moment she looked like some beautiful animal cornered in its own lair.
“It has come to this, Meg Morraws!” she shouted. “Did ye think that I couldn’t sell my soul? I would do anything under heaven to save my boy; that’s the kind of me, Meg Morraws. I’ve money now and Dermod won’t die. I won’t let him die!... What wouldn’t I do for him, child of my own and of my heart?... It’s ill luck that’s drawin’ me to ruin, Meg, but not the boy. He can’t help the sickness and it’s myself that has got to make him well again.... I had whisky this night: that made me brave. I could.... Isn’t it time that ye were in bed, Meg Morraws? I’m not feelin’ kind towards anyone but the child. I want no one here but Dermod, my little boy.”
Meg went into her room, closing the door softly behind her. Norah took some money—five shillings—from her pocket and put it on the mantelpiece, under the picture of the Virgin and Child. It made a tinkling sound as she put it down and the silver coins sparkled brightly.
Then she turned down the light, threw some more coals on the fire, and taking the child from the bed she sat down and held the little bundle of pink flesh against her bosom. She could hear the water bubbling from the tap out on the landing; the noise of footsteps on the stairs; loud, vacant laughter from No. 8. Why did those women laugh, Norah wondered.... The fire blazed brightly, and as she raised her eyes she could see the silver coins on the mantelpiece shining like stars.
SOMEONErapped; and receiving no answer, the caretaker, the woman with the red wisps of hair, and a string for a neck, poked her head through the door.
“Not in bed yet, Norah Ryan?” she asked.
“Just goin’,” the girl answered.
“They’re doin’ a big trade at No. 8 the night,” said the woman.
“I’m not wantin’ to hear; it’s nothing to me.”
The caretaker smiled, showing her teeth, sharp as a dog’s and in a good state of preservation.
“I’m only just tellin’ ye,” said the woman. “I suppose ye ken, lassie, that half the rooms up this stair are lyin’ idle, wi’ no yin to take them. What is the reason for that? I’ll tell ye. Some people, decent folk, ye ken, will not come to sic a place because they dinna like women of the kind at No. 8. If these two women were put away, this landing would be fillt ev’ry night. But I let the women stay. Why’s that? Because I like fair play. Give everyone a chance to live, is what I say. And they’re makin’ guid siller, them twa lassies at No. 8. Three pounds a night between them sometimes. And I wouldna turn them oot; wouldna do it for wurl’s, because I like fair play. But as ye ken yersel’, they must pay me a little more than other lodgers.”
“What do ye want me to pay extra?” asked Norah in a hard voice. “Tell me at once and leave me to meself.” “Say half and half,” answered the red-haired woman, glaring covertly at the Irish girl. “That’ll be fair, for ye’ll earn the money very easy, so to speak. And then ye can stay here as long as ye like. I wouldna turn ye oot, no for onything, because I like fair play. It’s not ev’ry house, ye ken, that would.... But ye know what I mean. I wish ye good-night, and I’ll make a note of all the men that come up. And if the police come along I’ll gi’e ye the wink. Good-night and good luck!”
The woman went out, but presently poked her red wisps in again. “I’ll take it that every man I see comin’ in here gies ye five bob. If they gie ye more ye can tell me;but five bob’ll be the least, and half and half is fair play. Good-night; good-night and good luck!”
“A dirty hag she is!” said old Meg, who had been listening at the door during the conversation and who now came into the room. “Dirty! and her makin’ piles of tin. Full of money she is and so is the woman that owns the buildin’. Mrs. Crawford they cry her, and she lives oot in Hillhead, the rich people’s place, and goes to church ev’ry Sunday with prayer books under her arm. Strike me dead! if she isn’t a swine, a swine unhung, a swine and a half. Has a motor car too, and is always writin’ to the papers about sanitary arrangements. ‘It isn’t healthy to have too many people in the one room,’ she says. But I ken what she’s up to, her with her sanitary and her fresh air and everything else, the swine! If few people stay in ev’ry room she can let more of them; God put her in the pit, the swine! And the woman downstairs, the thin-necked serpent! is just as bad. If the likes of her finds women like me and you goin’ to hell they try to rob us outright before Old Nick puts his mits on our shoulders.”
INthe days which followed, Norah learned much which may not be written down in books, sad things that many dare not read, but which some, under the terrible tyranny of destiny, dare to endure. It now seemed to the girl that all freedom of action, all the events of her life had been irrevocably decided before she was born. Deep down in her heart this thought, lacking expression and almost undefined, was always with her.
She bought new dresses, learned the art of making every curl on her white brow look tempting, and everymovement of her face and body to express desires which she did not feel. She followed up her new profession like one sentenced to death, with reason clogged, feeling deadened and intellect benumbed. As an alternative to this there was nothing but starvation and death, and even purity is costly at such a price. Dragged to the tribunal which society erects for the prosecution of the poor and pure, she was asked to renounce all that she cherished, all her hopes, her virginity, her soul. Society, sated with the labour of her hands, asked for her soul, and society, being the stronger, had its demand gratified.
But over it all, over the medley of pain and sorrow, over the blazing crucible of existence in which all fair dreams and hopes of the woman were melted away, greater and more powerful than anything else in Norah’s life, intense and enduring, unselfish and pure, shone the wonderful flame, the star of passionate love shining in the holy heaven of motherhood.
The child’s illness grew worse. One doctor was called in; then another. Both looked wise for a moment, strove to appear unconcerned, passed different verdicts and went away. One condemned the bedclothes; they were unsanitary. Norah procured new clothes; but the child became worse. Medicines were bought one day; they were condemned the next. A pretty pink dress was obtained for the child; it did not suit. When taken back to the clothes-seller he declared it was ruined and charged afresh for new garments.
So day after day, each full of a killing anxiety and bringing its own particular trouble, passed by. Her house had attained a certain fame as houses of the kind rapidly do.
The hooligans who stood at the street corner soon knew her by repute, for an ill name flies far and sticks fast. Little Tommy Macara looked in at her door no more; theboy’s mother had warned him against the woman. Life was now to Norah one vast intolerable burden that crushed her down. If only the child were dead things would be clearer; then she would know what to do. If Dermod died everything would be simplified; one easy plunge into the river where it swirled under Glasgow Bridge would for ever end all heartbreak and sorrow.
NORAHwent out into the city on her usual errand; she had now known the life of the streets for fully two months. It was nearly midnight, the streets were well nigh deserted, save for the occasional prowlers and drunken men who were coming home from their clubs or from the foul haunts of the city.
As she walked along, her head held down against the cutting breeze that had suddenly risen and was now whirling round every corner, she heard steps coming behind her, and in these steps she detected something strangely familiar. For a moment she felt like a wayfarer who goes alone, along a dark road, and waits for some horrible apparition to stretch out from the darkness and put a hand on his shoulder. The steps drew nearer, came closer ... somebody was passing her. Norah looked up, started a little and cried:
“Under God, the day and the night! It’s Dermod Flynn that’s in it!”
She was again looking at Dermod Flynn; he stood in front of her, his hand stretched out in welcome.
“Is this you, Norah?” he asked.
The crushing fatality of her years pressed down upon her; she suddenly realised that she had lost something very precious; that all her accidents and faults werebunched together and now laid before her. He had grown so big too; a man he looked.
“Is it yerself that’s in it, Dermod Flynn?” she asked. “I didn’t expect to meet you here. Have ye been away home since I saw ye last?” She thought she detected a wave of pity sweeping over Dermod’s face and resting in his eyes.
“I have never been at home yet,” he answered. “Have you?”
“Me go home!” she replied almost defiantly. “What would I be going home for now with the black mark of shame over me? D’ye think that I’d darken me mother’s door with the sin that’s on me, heavy on me soul? Sometimes I’m thinkin’ long, but I never let on to anybody, and it’s meself that would like to see the old spot again. It’s a good lot I’d give to see the grey boats of Dooey goin’ out beyond Trienna Bar in the grey duskus of the harvest evenin’. D’ye mind the time ye were at school, Dermod, and the way ye struck the master with the pointer?”
“I mind it well,” said Dermod with a laugh, “and you said that he was dead when he dropped on the form.”
“And d’ye mind the day that ye went over beyont the mountains with the bundle under yer arm? I met ye on the road and ye said that ye were never comin’ back.”
“You did not care whether I returned or not. You did not stop to bid me good-bye.”
“I was frightened of ye,” answered Norah, who noticed that Dermod spoke resentfully, as if she had been guilty of some unworthy action.
“Why were ye frightened?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“And you did not even turn to look after me!”
“That was because I knew that ye yerself was lookin’ round.”
“Do you remember the night on the Derry boat?” Dermod asked wistfully.
“Quite well, Dermod,” she replied. “I often be thinkin’ of them days, I do indeed.”
There was a momentary silence. Norah dreaded the next question which instinctively she knew Dermod would ask. He was better dressed than formerly, she noticed, and he was tall and strong. She felt that he was one in whom great reliance could be placed.
“Where are you going at this hour of the night?” he asked, and Norah read accusation in his tones.
“I’m goin’ out for a walk,” she answered.
“Where are you workin’?”
“How much does he know?” Norah asked herself. What could she tell him? That she was a servant in a gentleman’s house. But even as the lie was stammering on her tongue she faltered and burst into tears.
“Don’t cry,” said the young man awkwardly. “Is there—what’s wrong with ye, Norah?”
She did not answer, but low sobs shook her bosom. How much she wished to be away, and yet—how she liked to be beside him! Surely Dermod would think her a very funny girl to weep like that! A momentary remembrance of a morning long ago when she met him on the Glenmornan road flashed across her mind, and she held out her hand.
“Slan agiv, Dermod,” she said in a choking voice, “I must be goin’. It was good of ye to speak to me in that nice way of yers, Dermod.”
His hand closed on hers but he did not speak. The sound of far-off footsteps reached her ears.... A window was lifted somewhere near at hand ... a cab rattled on the streets. Norah withdrew her hand and went on her journey, leaving Dermod alone on the pavement.