“in this place, where infamy and well-deserved misery attend most of those who dwell in it, it is yours, as it should be mine, to keep burning continually the pure flame of a Christian life.”
“How sweet! how noble!” murmured the sisters.
Was it possible? The man whom we had just seen reading the service of Mother Church, which my father had taught me to regard as little less sacred than the words of the Bible itself, in a squalid room, reeking with the fumes of rum and stale tobacco, before a gang of half-drunken sailors, assumed naturally and easily, as if it belonged to him, the attitude and language of one devoted entirely to the contemplation and practice of virtue and good works. Why, his face glowed with goodness like the sun at noonday, or the sun after a shower, or, say, the sun after a good action. The Doctor, indeed, as I learned later, could assume almost any character he pleased. It pleased him, not out of hypocrisy, but because for a time it was a return to the promise of his youth, to be with these ladies the devout Christian priest. In that character he felt, I am convinced, the words which came spontaneously to his lips: for the moment he was that character. Outside, in the Fleet Market, he was the great Dr. Shovel – great, because among the Fleet parsons he was the most successful, the most learned, the most eloquent, the most important. In his own room he married all comers, after the manner we have seen; and it raised the envy of his rivals to see how the crowd flocked to him. But in the evening he received his friends, and drank and talked with them in such fashion as I never saw, but of which I have heard. Again, it raised their envy to witness how men came from all quarters to drink with the Doctor. At that time he was no longer the Christian advocate, nor the clergyman; he was a rollicking, jovial, boon companion, who delighted to tell better stories, sing better songs, and hold better talk – meaning more witty, not more spiritual talk – than any of those who sat with him. I have never been able to comprehend what pleasure men, especially men of mature years, can find in telling stories, and laughing, drinking, smoking tobacco, and singing with one another. Women find their pleasures in more sober guise: they may lie in small things, but they are innocent. Think what this world would be were the women to live like the men, as disorderly, as wastefully, as noisily!
“Now, good woman,” said my uncle to Mrs. Gambit, “are you satisfied that my niece is in safe hands?”
“The hands are good enough,” replied the woman, looking round her; “but the place – ”
“The place is what it is,” said the Doctor sharply; “we cannot alter the place.”
“Then I will go, sir.”
With that she gave me my parcel of money, kissed me and bade me farewell, curtsied to the ladies, and left us.
“I shall send up, ladies,” said the Doctor, “a few trifles of additional furniture: a couple of chairs, one of them an arm-chair – but not for this great, strong girl, if you please – a bed, a shelf for books; some cups and saucers we shall provide for you. And now, ladies, I wish you good-morning. And for your present wants – I mean the wants of this hungry country maid, who looks as if mutton hung in toothsome legs on every verdant hedge – this will, I think, suffice;” he placed money in Mrs. Esther’s hand – I could not but think how he had earned that money – and left us.
When he was gone the two ladies looked at each other with a strange, sad, and wistful expression, and Mrs. Esther, with the guineas in her hand, burst into tears.
CHAPTER VI
HOW KITTY BEGAN TO ENJOY THE LIBERTIES OF THE FLEET
Her tears disconcerted me extremely. What did she cry for? But she presently recovered and dried her eyes. Then she looked at me thoughtfully, and said —
“Sister, I suppose this child has been accustomed to have a dinner every day?”
“Surely,” replied Mrs. Deborah. “And to-day we shall dine.”
To-day we should all dine? Were there, then, days when we should all go hungry?
“You must know, my dear,” Mrs. Esther explained in a soft, sad voice, “that we are very poor. We have, therefore, on many days in a week to go without meat. Otherwise we should have to do worse” – she looked round the room and shuddered – “we should have to give up the independence of our solitude. Hunger, my child, is not the worst thing to bear.”
“A piece of roasting-beef, sister,” said Mrs. Deborah, who had now assumed a hat and a cloak, “with a summer cabbage, and a pudding in the gravy.”
“And I think, sister,” said Mrs. Esther, her eyes lighting up eagerly, “that we might take our dinner – the child might like to take her dinner – at twelve to-day.”
While Mrs. Deborah went into the market, I learned that the two sisters had taken no food except bread and water for a week, and that their whole stock now amounted to two shillings in money and part of a loaf. What a strange world was this of London, in which gentlewomen had their lodging in so foul a place and starved on bread and water!
“But,” she repeated with a wan smile, “there are worse things than hunger. First, we must pay our rent. And here we are at least alone; here we may continue to remember our breeding.”
Before Mrs. Deborah returned, I also learned that they were chiefly dependent on a cousin for supplies of money, which were made to them grudgingly (and indeed he was not rich), and that the Doctor had provided for my maintenance with the offer of so large a weekly sum that it promised to suffice for the wants of all.
“We are,” said Mrs. Esther, “but small eaters; a little will suffice for us. But you, child, are young; eat without fear, eat your fill; the money is for you, and we shall grudge you nothing.”
While the beef was roasting I noticed how their eyes from time to time, in spite of themselves, would be fixed upon the meat with a hungry and eager look. Nor had I any enjoyment of the meal till I had seen their pangs appeased. After the plenty of the Vicarage and the Hall, to think of bread and water, and not too much bread, for days together! Yet, hungry as they were, they ate but little; it shamed me to go on eating, being always a girl of a vigorous appetite and hard-set about the hour of noon; it shamed me at first, also, to observe their ways of thrift, so that not the least crumb should be wasted. Mrs. Deborah read my thoughts.
“In this place,” she said, “we learn to value what it takes money to procure. Yet there are some here poorer than ourselves. Eat, child, eat. For us this has been, indeed, a feast of Belteshazzar.”
Dinner over, we unpacked my box, and they asked me questions. I found that they were proud of their birth and breeding; the portrait over the fire was, they told me, that of their father, once Lord Mayor of London, and they congratulated me upon being myself a Pleydell, which, they said, was a name very well known in the country, although many great city families might be ignorant of it.
“No gift, my dear,” said Mrs. Esther, “is so precious as gentle blood. Everything else may be won, but birth never.”
All day long there went on the same dreadful noise of shouting, crying, calling, bawling, rolling of carts, cracking of whips, and trampling of horses’ feet. In the evening I asked, when the sun went down, but the noise decreased not, if it was always thus.
“Always,” they replied. “There is no cessation, day or night. It is part,” said Mrs. Deborah, “of our punishment. We are condemned, child; for the sin of having a negligent trustee, we go in captivity, shame, and degradation all our lives.”
“Nay,” said her sister, “not degradation, sister. No one but herself can degrade a gentlewoman.”
Truly,
