Jill: A Flower Girl

The next morning Susy arrived in good time at the neat room in Westbourne Grove, where the flower girls who belonged to the Guild had the privilege of keeping their unsold flowers.

The room was arranged on the plan of a dairy, and was so thoroughly ventilated that even the flowers which were over from Saturday night were many of them still fresh and fit for sale.

Susy had bought a small supply of quite fresh flowers at Covent Garden, and she was not long in trimming up her basket and giving it a very presentable and tidy appearance. She did not possess Jill’s eye for colour nor her delicate touch. Everything Susy did was commonplace, but nevertheless when she started forth on her day’s work, refreshed by her good wash in the nice lavatory which adjoined the room where the flowers were stored, there was not a more presentable or trimmer-looking flower girl in London. Her fair hair was plaited up smooth and tight; the front portion of it being of course curled into a tight fringe. She wore the neat and serviceable costume of the Guild, having left her own clothes behind her at the rooms of the Institution.

A flower girl’s profits largely depend on the position where she can place her stand. These positions vary immensely in excellence, and the good ones, in the neighbourhood of railway stations, and certain street corners where the thoroughfare is large, are much prized and eagerly sought after.

Susy’s stand now, close to the Marble Arch, was one of the best in London. She had her regular customers, and it was not long before her basket was cleared of its contents, and her pockets were filled with substantial coins. Having nothing further to do in the way of business, she strolled quietly home, intending to go back to Westbourne Grove later in the day to change her costume, and get possession of her clothes.

She had nearly reached the low street where she and Nat lived, when a woman sprang suddenly from the shelter of a doorway where she was leaning, and clutched her by the arm. The woman was Poll Robinson.

So marked was the change in Poll since Susy had last seen her; so strong were the marks of suffering on her face, so untidy her dress, so unkempt her black hair, that the girl did not at first recognise her.

When she did, a sensation of repulsion came over her, and she shook Poll’s big hand from her shoulder.

“Well,” she said, “wot is it? I ’as got my orders to have nought to do with you and yourn. Oh, Mrs Robinson, you ’as been drinking; I can smell the gin on your breath.”

“Only a little drop, honey; the least drop – not more than two penn’orth. I ’ad a bad bout of pain, and the gin makes it easier. Susy, don’t walk so fast, for the love of heaven. My breath’s bitter short lately, and I can’t keep up with you.”

“But I said I were to have nought to do with yer; them were Nat’s orders, and I s’pose I has got to obey ’em.”

“Nat said you were to have nought to do with me?” said Poll. “Did Jill say that? Did she? You tell me that true.”

“I can’t, Mrs Robinson. I has nothing to do with Jill, nor with you, neither. Do let me go. It’s disgusting to smell sperits on a woman at this hour of the day.”

“It’s the pain, my dear; you’d take to sperits yourself ef you had my pain. And so Nat has found out! Oh, my God, and I thought to hide it from him! Oh, my God, this is bitter, bitter – this is cruel – this is too much! Oh, to think that arter all Nat has found out!”

“It’s a good thing he has,” said Susy, speaking at random, for she had not the least idea what Mrs Robinson meant. She liked, however, to show that she was quite mistress of the situation. “It’s a right good thing as Nat has found out,” she continued, “and a fine pepper he’s in, I can tell yer. I never in all my days seed him in sech a taking. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised ef Nat turned wicked, and he such a pattern as he allers were! There now, Mrs Robinson, I can’t be seen talking to yer any more. It’s as much as my life is worth. Good arternoon to you.”

Susy walked quickly away, and Poll turned down a side alley. Her sufferings and the irregular life she was now leading had weakened her, and she felt a queer trembling sensation running all over her frame.

She was accustomed to gin now, and the twopenn’orth she had indulged in this morning had little or no effect in disturbing her equilibrium. The gin warmed her, and eased the ceaseless, gnawing pain. It was not from the effects of the gin that Mrs Robinson was now shaking from head to foot. It was from the awful knowledge that her great sacrifice had been in vain; that she had given up Jill, and in giving her up had parted with all the sunshine, and all the love which life could offer, and yet had done it in vain.

Poll had gone away from the girl in order to save her from disgrace. She felt certain that Jill would fret for a little, that she would mourn for her and long to have her back again; but by-and-by Nat’s love would comfort her. She would marry Nat, and they would settle down in their comfortable and respectable home together. No need to tell Nat, who was so particular and so strict in his notions, that he had married the daughter of a woman who drank. He need never know that, for Jill would not tell. The secret, the dark, terrible secret would be safely buried and Jill would have a happy life. Poll. had gone away quite sure that this would be the case.

The knowledge had stayed with her during the two or three miserable days which had passed since she had left Howard’s Buildings. Poll was a great deal more ill than she had any idea of. Her constant pain was caused by a terrible malady; her fine constitution was being secretly undermined, and she was not at all fit for the hard, roaming, comfortless life to which she had voluntarily sacrificed herself.

She was in the state when she needed the tenderest care and the most loving nursing. Jill had done everything that a daughter could do for her mother’s comfort; she had given her good and nourishing meals; she had seen that she clothed herself well and rested well; in short, she had surrounded her with a life of comparative refinement and comfort.

Even in that life Poll could scarcely endure her own sufferings; how much greater were they now, when she was going through all the hardships which a roaming existence to a woman in her class meant!

She slept in a common lodging-house at night; she ate when she was hungry; and whenever the terrible thirst seized her she gratified it without a moment’s thought of self-control.

Therefore the three days which had passed had made sad havoc in Poll; she looked years older, her dark face had lost all its comeliness, it was drawn and haggard, and there were many white streaks in her thick raven-black hair. She was going down the hill very fast, both physically and mentally. She knew it, poor soul, and yet until this moment she had never repented of the step she had taken. She had done it with her eyes open, and she said to herself morning, noon, and night:

“I ain’t sorry, for I’m giving my Jill, the best gel as ever breathed, a happy life.”

But now Poll’s head did reel, and Poll’s limbs almost refused to keep her suffering body upright. She had made her sacrifice in vain, for in some way, some extraordinary, unaccountable way, Nat had found out her secret.

Nat knew that Jill was the daughter of a woman who debased herself by drink. The knowledge had come to him, and it had all the worst effects which Poll had dreaded; he was very angry, he was reckless in his anger.

Susy said that Nat himself would now go to the bad. Notwithstanding, therefore, Poll’s sacrifice, Jill’s life would be wrecked.

For some little time Mrs Robinson staggered down the ugly slum into which she had entered, then she ran against a wall, too dull and dazed to proceed another step. A child came up and touched her on the arm – a pinched gutter child, who looked up at her with big eyes partly of affright, partly of indifference.

“Shall I take yer to the nearest public?” she said; “do you want another drop? You’re half seas over now; mother’s orful when she’s only half seas over. You come along to the public and have another drop, and then you won’t know nothink; you’ll be all right then.”

“So you think I’m drunk?” said Poll; “no, I ain’t drunk, there’s a pain here,” panting to her breast, “and a swimming here,” clasping her hand to her forehead; “but I ain’t took enough to make me even half seas over. You seem a good-natured sort of a gel, and maybe ef you lend me your shoulder to lean on, I’d find a copper in my pocket for yer by-and-by.”

The child’s eyes glittered when Poll spoke of a copper.

“Yer may lean on me if yer, like, missis,” she said.

“I want yer to take me to a place called Howard’s Buildings, in Nettle Street,” said Poll. “I can’t see werry well for the giddiness in my head; and I can’t walk werry well, because I has a sort of a trembling all over me; but ef I may use your eyes, little gel, and ef you’ll be a crutch to me, why I’ll give yer thruppence, so there.”

“Howard’s Buildings,” said the child, “I never yered tell on ’em, nor of Nettle Street neither.”

“I can guide yer a bit, honey. Ef you’ll tell me the names of the streets as we pass, I’m most sure to know ’em, and I can tell yer ef we’re going right or wrong. You come close up to me, little gel, and let me lean on yer shoulder.”

The child came up as she was told, and Poll and she began a slow pilgrimage through the slums.

Poll’s head felt as giddy as ever; the pain which seemed to eat into her very life never ceased, the trembling in her legs grew greater, but still she struggled forward. As the sacrifice was in vain, and Jill was miserable without her, why she might at least go back to Howard’s Buildings. This was the only coherent thought she had. She would go back to Jill; she would kiss Jill once again.

Beyond this desire she was incapable of going. If she only kept on walking, putting one trembling foot before the other, she would at last reach the Buildings, and Jill and she would meet again. It seemed to Poll that a whole lifetime had already divided her from the girl; but now if only she could walk, the dreadful separation would come to an end.

“Can’t yer step out a bit faster, missis?” said the little gutter child. “You lean hard on me, and step out, missis; we won’t get to them Buildings – whatever you call ’em – to-night, ef you don’t step out.”

“I’ll try to, dearie,” said Poll; “I’m werry cold though. It’s late, ain’t it, honey? Seems as ef the place was werry dark.”

“Dark,” said the child, “it’s broad day; why, the sun’s shining all over us. Oh, my word, I’m melting up with the heat; and you’re no light weight, missis, I can tell yer.”

“Let me grip hold on yer ’and,” said Poll. “What street are we in now?”

“What street?” laughed the child; “why we’re in the street as we started in; we ain’t gone the length of Sulphur Row.”

“Oh, my God!” said Poll, “I thought as we were hours walking, and that the night had come; you must let me lean up against somethink, for I can’t see.”

“My thruppence first,” said the child.

Poll tried to fumble in her pocket; a waggon was heard lumbering down the street behind them. The driver shouted to the child and woman to get out of the way.

“Oh, missis, come, come!” screamed the little girl; “you’re standing in the road – you’ll be run over – let me pull yer on the path leastways.”

Poll with a great effort staggered forward. The waggon rushed by, almost grazing her feet.

The next instant the poor creature lay prone on the pavement, all consciousness having left her. The child uttered a cry and the usual crowd collected round the prostrate woman.

Two or three policemen came up and examined her.

“Drank,” said one of them impressively.

“No, she ain’t,” said the child; “I asked her that and she said no, she worn’t a bit drank; she had an orful pain and wor werry giddy, and werry trembling in the limbs, but it won’t drink, I tell yer. She spoke real sensible. I know ’em when they drinks, and thet worn’t what ailed her. She wanted me to take her to some Buildings or t’other, and she promised me thruppence. Do you think as I might take it out of her pocket?”

“No, no; get out of this, you little varmint,” said the police. They examined Poll more critically, and finally decided to take her on a shutter to the Bearcat hospital: this happened to be Saint Bartholomew’s.

Chapter Fourteen

Notwithstanding the uses of adversity, it is astonishing how well prosperity agrees with some people. It has much the same sort of effect on them that the sun has on fruit and flowers. All the graces within them which have been invisible while the rough winds of adversity blew, now blossom, and show sweet bits of colour, and little tender, gracious perfumes, which no one would have supposed consistent with such hard, crabbed, in short disagreeable products of nature.

Silas Lynn had all through his life, up to the present day, been visited by the harsh winds of adversity.

It is true they had not come to him in the form of poverty. He was too prudent, too hard-working for poverty to have anything to do with him. But a man can suffer adversity without being poor, and Silas’s life from his cradle up to the present had been a hard one.

Pleasure and he had kept at a distance. The relaxations of existence had never been permitted to him. In short, his life had been all lessons and no play.

Silas was aware of this fact himself, but up to the present he had looked upon it as a good and healthy sign of his soul’s state. His mother had taught him that chastening is the lot of the Christian.

“Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth,” she had said to him so many times, that he whispered it to himself with white lips and a haggard look on his strong face as he bent over her in her coffin.

When his fruit crop failed, and his flowers yielded but poor blooms, he repeated the old text again under his breath, and took comfort from it.

It was a great surprise, therefore, to Silas, when suddenly the old aspect of things altered, and the Lord whom he sincerely loved ceased to chasten. Life was so completely changed to Silas that he scarcely knew himself.

He was going to be married. There was nothing remarkable in the fact in itself – more than one middle-aged woman of the Wesleyan community in his own village would gladly have come to keep house for him. She would, as the expression goes, “make him and mend him.” She would cook for him, and keep his place clean, and spend his money, and be the mother of his children, whom she would bring up in the fear of the Lord.

Silas could have married Eliza Sparkes, or Mary Ann Hatton, or Hannah Martin, and he would have received the congratulations of his friends, and the sincerest good wishes from all quarters, and yet not have been able consciously to say in his heart, “The Lord has ceased to chasten.”

But he was not going to marry a middle-aged woman from the village. He was middle-aged himself, no doubt, nearly forty, but the bride who was soon coming to gladden the old cottage, and vie with the flowers in her beauty, was scarcely more than a child in years.

This wilful, pretty, dainty blossom which he had culled out of the London streets was just the very last wife any one would have expected him to take. She would not be to the taste of the Wesleyans, and he felt that the congratulations and “God speed you” from his friends would be few.

But what mattered these things, when his own heart was singing a psalm of thanksgiving from morning till night, when the flowers in his garden were absolutely riotous in the profusion of their blossoms, when the sun smiled on him, and the dews came at night to refresh him? What did he care for the neighbours, whether they were pleased or not?

During the first fortnight of his engagement to Jill, his own nature took a sudden late blossoming. His gruff voice became a shade lower and more refined in tone, and even Jonathan, his hard-working factotum, ceased to fear Silas.

Master and man were very busy, putting the tiny cottage in order, for the wedding was to be in another week.

On a certain Saturday evening, as Silas was standing in the middle of his flower-beds, contemplating a late crop of enormous carnations, and considering how many boxes he could fill with cut blooms for his Monday’s market, he heard the click of the gate at the far end of the garden path, and saw an elderly woman in a poke bonnet and long cloak advancing to meet him.

“Giminy! ef it ain’t Aunt Hannah!” he muttered under his breath, “Now, whatever’s bringing her bothering round?”

He walked down the path as he spoke, and held out his big hand to his relation.

“Wot’s this I hear, Silas?” said his aunt; “that you’re going to, contract marriage with an unbeliever?”

The little woman had an anxious, wizened face. It was raised now with a world of commiseration in it to Silas.

The man felt so happy that he absolutely smiled down at the audacious little intruder.

“That’s all you know,” he began.

“Oh, don’t I know, Silas! Wot would yer pore mother say ef she were to come alive again, and see this bitter day? Oh, Silas! you that has been brought up on the Bible – han’t you read your Scripter to some purpose? ‘Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain.’ Oh, Silas! Silas! it’s Mary Ann Hatton, or one of them other sober women you ought to be taking to wife.”

“Yes,” said Silas, “and wouldn’t both on us have been as cross as two sticks? I’m taking a bonny bit of a gel to wed, wot’s sweet as a rose to look at, and with a perfume o’ the lavender and the cherry-pie about her. Good inside and out is Jill, and I guess ef Solomon were alive, he’d say as the price of a gel like Jill were above rubies.”

“I heerd tell,” said Aunt Hannah, in a slow voice, “that you was quite gone off yer head, Silas, my man, but I didn’t go to believe it, until I had clapped my own two eyes on yer. I’m mournful, thinkin’ on yer pore mother. But there’s no manner of use in wasting words on a man wot’s gone silly, so I’ll wish yer a werry good-evening.”

“You stay a bit,” said Silas. “Jonathan and me, we are doing up the cottage, and you had ever a cute eye for a good bit of furniture. Come and see what I am doing. I doubt ef you’d know the place.”

With many sighs and groans, Aunt Hannah was induced to enter the cottage. She behaved in a melancholy way when she got inside, for the sight of her sister’s vacant chair provoked a sudden flood of tears, which embarrassed and annoyed Silas.

“Eh dear, eh dear,” she sobbed, “to think of the last time I ha’ seen pore Maria a-bolstered up in that cheer. She had the asthmey awful, and she said to me, ‘Hannah, it ketches me most when I lies down.’ She said them words over and over, and I don’t think I ever heerd anything more mournful. Eh, and ef that ain’t the lavender I see’d her put in with her own hands into that identical muslin bag, my name ain’t Hannah Royal! Oh, Silas! it’s wonderful how you can go agin a mother like that!”

“I ain’t a-going agin her,” said Silas; “you shet up now, Aunt Hannah, you has said enough. Wot do you think of this table and chair as I has bought? And this rug to put in front of the stove? Come now, give us your opinion; it’s worth having.”

Thus appealed to Aunt Hannah immediately wiped her tears, and going down on her knees began to feel the texture of the rug, and to put it up to her nose, and to sniff at it, and then hold it between herself and the light.

“I misdoubt me that it ain’t made with three threads across,” she said, laying it down with some contempt. “And the colour’s too flashy for my taste. I like a drab ground, with a teeny sprig of purple on it. Let me look at that ’ere table. You don’t mean to tell me, Silas, as you has gone and bought a meehogany table? Don’t yer know as sech a table is sinful waste to a man in your station?”

“It were goin’ dirt cheap,” said Silas, in an apologetic tone.

“I misdoubt me that it’s worm-eat,” said Aunt Hannah. “And as to this cheer, its creak would turn a body silly. Well, is there anything else for me to see?”

“There’s a crate in that corner, full of cups and saucers, and plates and dishes.”

“Chaney?” said Aunt Hannah, “I’m a jedge of that. I’ll unpack the crate ef you wish, Silas.”

“Well, do,” said Silas, “I’ll be obleeged. I can manage flowers, but I ’ates touching chaney. It seems to slip out of yer fingers, however careful you air. You unpack the crate, missis, and we’ll have a cup of tea together.”

Silas proceeded to light the fire, and put the kettle on to boil, and Aunt Hannah unpacked the crate which contained the cups and saucers, and plates, and dishes, with which Jill was to help to furnish her new home.

If there were one thing more than another for which Mrs Royal had a truly worldly affection, it was for “chaney.” She was a good judge of all house furniture, but with regard to “chaney” she felt herself a specialist. She was as knowing on this point as Silas was with regard to the best blooms and the choicest cuttings. The task, therefore, to which she now set herself was quite to her mind.

Silas had not dared to choose the tea-service and the plates and dishes himself – he had asked a friend of his to buy them for him, and to have them sent down to the cottage. When Aunt Hannah, therefore, removed the paper wrapper from a delicate cup of white and gilt, with a blue convolvulus lying across the saucer, and sending its delicate tendrils round the cup, he came and gazed at the lovely specimens with a certain quickening of his pulses, and a queer inclination in his eyes to water.

“I say!” he exclaimed, “I never thought as chaney would look like that.”

“It’s most onsuitable,” said Aunt Hannah. “But I don’t deny as it’s neat. My word, I only hope as that gel will have deft fingers, or she’ll be crackin’ and splittin’ this yere fragile chaney. You don’t mean to say, Silas, as you’ll use it hevery day? You are sinnin a’most past knowin’ you, but I don’t s’pose as you’ll go the awful depths of using this yere chaney hevery day.”

“That must be as Jill pleases,” said Silas.

“Giminy! I never did know as chaney could look like this, it seems to add a fresh pleasure to life – why, it a’most beats the flowers.”

“I won’t deny that it ain’t a werry neat pattern,” said Aunt Hannah, “the twist of convolvuly is werry cunnin’, but chaney like that is meant to lock up in a cupboard; there ain’t no one as ’ud use it daily.”

“Look here,” said Silas, “there’s a power of cups and saucers ain’t there, Aunt Hannah?”

“My word, yes,” said Aunt Hannah, “a whole, dozen, and plates to match, and four fruit dishes, and a couple of cake plates, and a slop-bowl and a teapot, and a cream jug and sugar basin – it’s the most complete thing I iver seed.”

“Well, then, look yere,” said Silas, “s’pose as we has a tea-drinkin’ out o’ it.”

“Silas!” Aunt Hannah dropped her lower jaw and her small eyes grew beady bright in their glance.

“S’pose,” continued Silas, “we had a tea-drinkin’ out of it, and we asked Jill down, and one or two o’ the neighbours to meet her, and you come and spend the night here, Aunt Hannah, and you ondertake the tea-drinkin’ – s’pose now you do that, eh?”

“Well,” said Aunt Hannah, “it seems like encouraging of you, Silas, in your mad folly.”

“Not a bit on it,” said Lynn, “for whether you come or whether you go, Jill and me we’ll be married at the church in the village come next Thursday. You can please yerself, Aunt Hannah, but I thought as we might have our tea-drinkin’ on Tuesday, and you’d see with your own eyes, and the neighbours ’ud see, what sort of a little gel were coming home to me to cheer up my life.”

“Well,” said Aunt Hannah, “I don’t go fer to deny that there’s something in your idee, Silas. I own as I’d like to say a word to that gel on the subject of chaney like this. Ef I found her teachable and humble in her notions, I don’t promise, mind, but I might give her three cracked delf cups of my own – white they was once, but they has turned yeller – she could use ’em for common and keep this chaney for best, for christenings, and sech-like, and the delf cups ’ud be a very suitable present from your aunt to her, Silas.”

“You can do that as you please,” said Silas. “Air we to have the tea-drinkin’, or air we not, Aunt Hannah?”

“I think, hall things considerin’, that it ’ud be right to have it,” said Aunt Hannah, in a solemn voice. “In a matter o’ this sort it’s right to consider the waluables, and this chaney is altogether out of the common. The first thing to be done is to scald it, and that I’ll manage for yer on Monday morning, Silas, for I’ll bring over my own wooden pail, and gradually heat each cup and each saucer in hot water, until it’ll bear the heat when it comes to the bile. It’s wonderful careless of gels in these days, they’ll crack the finest chaney for not knowing how properly to scald it afore usin’.”