William went westward.
Amazed, I pursued him along two streets without realising that I was doing so. Then curiosity put me into a hansom. We followed William, and it proved to be a three-shilling fare, for, running when he was in breath and walking when he was out of it, he took me to West Kensington.
I discharged my cab, and from across the street watched William’s incomprehensible behaviour. He had stopped at a dingy row of workmen’s houses, and knocked at the darkened window of one of them. Presently a light showed. So far as I could see, someone pulled up the blind and for ten minutes talked to William. I was uncertain whether they talked, for the window was not opened, and I felt that, had William spoken through the glass loud enough to be heard inside, I must have heard him too. Yet he nodded and beckoned. I was still bewildered when, by setting off the way he had come, he gave me the opportunity of going home.
Knowing from the talk of the club what the lower orders are, could I doubt that this was some discreditable love-affair of William’s? His solicitude for his wife had been mere pretence; so far as it was genuine, it meant that he feared she might recover. He probably told her that he was detained nightly in the club till three.
I was miserable next day, and blamed the deviled kidneys for it. Whether William was unfaithful to his wife was nothing to me, but I had two plain reasons for insisting on his going straight home from his club: the one that, as he had made me lose a bet, I must punish him; the other that he could wait upon me better if he went to bed betimes.
Yet I did not question him. There was something in his face that – Well, I seemed to see his dying wife in it.
I was so out of sorts that I could eat no dinner. I left the club. Happening to stand for some time at the foot of the street, I chanced to see the girl Jenny coming, and – no; let me tell the truth, though the whole club reads: I was waiting for her.
‘How is William’s wife to-day?’ I asked.
‘She told me to nod three times,’ the little slattern replied; ‘but she looked like nothing but a dead one till she got the brandy.’
‘Hush, child!’ I said, shocked. ‘You don’t know how the dead look.’
‘Bless yer,’ she answered, ‘don’t I just! Why, I’ve helped to lay ’em out. I’m going on seven.’
‘Is William good to his wife?’
‘Course he is. Ain’t she his missis?’
‘Why should that make him good to her?’ I asked, cynically, out of my knowledge of the poor. But the girl, precocious in many ways, had never had any opportunities of studying the lower classes in the newspapers, fiction, and club talk. She shut one eye, and, looking up wonderingly, said:
‘Ain’t you green – just!’
‘When does William reach home at night?’
‘’Tain’t night; it’s morning. When I wakes up at half dark and half light, and hears a door shutting, I know as it’s either father going off to his work or Mr. Hicking come home from his.’
‘Who is Mr. Hicking?’
‘Him as we’ve been speaking on – William. We calls him mister, ’cause he’s a toff. Father’s just doing jobs in Covent Gardens, but Mr. Hicking, he’s a waiter, and a clean shirt every day. The old woman would like father to be a waiter, but he hain’t got the ’ristocratic look.’
‘What old woman?’
‘Go ’long! that’s my mother. Is it true there’s a waiter in the club just for to open the door?’
‘Yes; but–’
‘And another just for to lick the stamps? My!’
‘William leaves the club at one o’clock?’ I said, interrogatively.
She nodded. ‘My mother,’ she said, ‘is one to talk, and she says Mr. Hicking as he should get away at twelve, ’cause his missis needs him more’n the gentlemen need him. The old woman do talk.’
‘And what does William answer to that?’
‘He says as the gentlemen can’t be kept waiting for their cheese.’
‘But William does not go straight home when he leaves the club?’
‘That’s the kid.’
‘Kid!’ I echoed, scarcely understanding, for, knowing how little the poor love their children, I had asked William no questions about the baby.
‘Didn’t you know his missis had a kid?’
‘Yes; but that is no excuse for William’s staying away from his sick wife,’ I answered, sharply. A baby in such a home as William’s, I reflected, must be trying; but still – besides, his class can sleep through any din.
‘The kid ain’t in our court,’ the girl explained. ‘He’s in W., he is, and I’ve never been out of W.C.; leastwise, not as I knows of.’
‘This is W. I suppose you mean that the child is at West Kensington? Well, no doubt it was better for William’s wife to get rid of the child–’
‘Better!’ interposed the girl. ‘’Tain’t better for her not to have the kid. Ain’t her not having him what she’s always thinking on when she looks like a dead one?’
‘How could you know that?’
‘’Cause,’ answered the girl, illustrating her words with a gesture, ‘I watches her, and I sees her arms going this way, just like as she wanted to hug her kid.’
‘Possibly you are right,’ I said, frowning; ‘but William had put the child out to nurse because it disturbed his night’s rest. A man who has his work to do–’
‘You are green!’
‘Then why have the mother and child been separated?’
‘Along of that there measles. Near all the young ’uns in our court has ’em bad.’
‘Have you had them?’
‘I said the young ’uns.’
‘And William sent the baby to West Kensington to escape infection?’
‘Took him, he did.’
‘Against his wife’s wishes?’
‘Na-o!’
‘You said she was dying for want of the child?’
‘Wouldn’t she rayther die than have the kid die?’
‘Don’t speak so heartlessly, child. Why does William not go straight home from the club? Does he go to West Kensington to see it?’
‘’Tain’t a hit, it’s an ’e. Course he do.’
‘Then he should not. His wife has the first claim on him.’
‘Ain’t you green! It’s his missis as wants him to go. Do you think she could sleep till she
