SHE walked as though pressed for time, slipping like a shadow along the railings of the houses. With her skimpy figure, in its shabby, wispy black, she hardly looked as if she had borne six sons. She had beneath her arm a little bundle which she always carried to and fro from the houses where she worked. Her face, with tired brown eyes, and hair as black and fine as silk under a black sailor hat, was skimpy too; creased and angled like her figure, it seemed to deny that life had ever left her strength for bearing children.
Though not yet nine o’clock, she had already done the work of her two rooms, lighted the fire, washed the youngest boys, given the four at home their breakfast, swept, made one bed—in the other her husband was still lying—and to that husband she had served his tea. She had cut the mid-day ration of the two eldest boys, and, wrapping it in paper, had placed it on the window-sill in readiness for them to take to school; had portioned out the firing for the day, given the eldest boy the pence to buy the daily screws of tea and sugar, washed some ragged cloths, mended a little pair of trousers, put on her hat without consulting the cracked looking-glass, and hurried forth. And, since a penny was important to her, she had walked.
Having taken off the black straw hat, and changed the black and scanty dress for a blue linen frock which nearly hid her broken boots, worn to the thickness of brown paper, she was deemed ready to begin her labours. And while on her knees she scrubbed and polished, a certain sense of pleasurable rest would come to her; gazing into the depths of brass that she had made to shine, she thought of nothing. On some mornings she worked a little stiffly. This was when her husband, returning from late discussion at his public-house, had struck her with his belt, to show he was her master. On such mornings she was longer polishing the brass, often forced to clean it twice, having put her eyes too close to it. And she would think, over and over again: “He didn’t ought to hit me, he didn’t ought to treat me like he does, and me the mother of his children.” Thus far her thoughts would carry her, but—she was a simple soul—they carried her no further; nor did it ever penetrate her mind that her sons, born to and brought up by a drunken father, would some day carry on the glorious traditions of his life. But soon, because these things had happened to her many times, she would stop brooding, and over the mirroring brass, that gave a queer breadth and roundness to her face, would once more think of nothing.
Down in the kitchen, where she had her dinner, she never mentioned such unpleasant incidents, fearing they might harm her reputation. She talked, in fact, but little, not having much to talk of that would do her good in a social way of speaking. But every now and then something would break within her, and she would pour out a monotonous epic on her sons; as though, in spite of everything, she felt that to have borne them was a credit. In consequence of these outpourings, which came not less than once a week, it was usual to regard her as an incorrigible talker.
In the afternoon, though she no longer polished brass, she polished other things. She left at six o’clock. Then, in the dusk, once more dressed in black, she slipped along the railings of the houses, still hurrying, of course, and more like a shadow even than before. In one of her reddened hands—hands of which, holding them out before some fellow-woman whose soft, ringed fingers she admired, she would say, apologetically: “I’ve such dreadful ’ands, m’m”—in one of those red, roughened hands she grasped some little extra wrapped in newspaper, in the other the money she had earned.
She would cross the High Street, and, diving down a dim and narrow alley, make a purchase at a shop, and hurry on. Entering her door, she would pause, trying to tell by listening whether her husband had returned; this she always did, although in fact it made no difference to her going up, since in any case her sons were there, waiting to be fed. Silently passing up the narrow stairs, whose noticeable odour she never noticed, she would enter the front room. Here her four sons, their eyes fixed on the door, would be sitting or sprawling on the bed, teasing each other angrily, like young birds waiting for a meal. Taking off her hat, she would sit down to rest. But seeing her thus sitting, doing nothing, her sons would try to rouse her to activity, pulling her by the sleeve, jogging her chair, and the youngest, perhaps, kissing her with his little dirty mouth. Rising, she would begin to peel potatoes. She peeled them fast, working the upturned knife-blade close to her thin bosom, and round her the boys, affecting not to care now that they saw her working, resumed their restless teasing of each other, casting impatient glances at the busy knife-blade, the falling yellow slips of peel. At short intervals, when she was not too deadly tired, she would snap at them a little, but her power of speech was limited; the things she said had all been said before—her sons did not attend to them too much. Yet, they were good to her according to their lights, preferring her company to their father’s.
Presently her knife would stay suspended, the voices of her sons would cease; the footsteps of their father had been heard.
He would come in, in an old green overcoat, a muffler, and heavy boots; on his heavy face the look that says: My ways are what my life has made them—the proper ways for me to go! And according to his mood, sometimes jocular and sometimes sullen, there would be talk or silence, and through those silences the clipping of the knife at the potatoes would be heard, the sounds of cooking, and of washing, and of the making up of beds, and latest of all, the tiny sound of stitching.
But on Saturdays it would be different, for on Saturdays her man would not return until he was compelled by the closing of his public-house. On these evenings her heart would begin to beat at eight o’clock, and it would go on beating louder and louder as the hours went by, till, as she would have expressed it, she felt “fit to drop.” And yet, all those hours, while her sons were sleeping, there was at work a strange poison in her soul, a dull fever of revolt, in preparation for the blows that would be given her if he came in drunk—a sort of perverse spirit, vouchsafed by Providence, bringing those blows nearer, almost inviting them, yet keeping her alive beneath them. At the midnight striking of the nearest clock her heart would give a sickening leap under the malodorous and blackened quilt, and she would lie, trying to pretend to sleep. So old was that device, so useless—yet she never gave it up, for her brain was not a fertile one. Soon after would begin his footsteps, slow, wavering, coming up and up, with pauses, with mutterings, with now and then a heavy stumble. Her breath would come in gasps, and her eyes, just opening, would glue themselves to where the door showed dimly by the sputtering candlelight. Slowly that door would open, and he would enter. Through her slits of eyes she would look at him as he stood swaying there. And suddenly the angry thought that there he was—the sot that had drunken up her earnings and his own—would give her a dull buzzing in her head; and all fear left her. Not though he might tear away the blackened quilt, pull her out of bed, and shower blows, was there anything within her but a dull, shrill, waspish anger, shooting from her tongue and eyes. Only when he had finished, and rolled on to the bed to sleep like a dead man, did she feel the pains that he had given her. Then, dragging her feet slowly, she would creep back beneath the quilt, and cover up her face.
But some Saturdays he would come back before the clock had struck twelve; and, standing by the door, with the light falling on his face, would look at her, swaying but slightly with his lower lip hanging very loose. Over his face, as he stood there, would spread a leering smile, and he would call her by her name.
Then in her dingy bed she would know that she still had work to do. And with no smile on her tired face, no joy in her thin body, no thought of anything in her starved brain, not even of the countless children she had borne in her dim alleys to this half-drunken man, nor of the countless children she had still to bear—she would lie waiting.