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Esther Waters

<h2 id="id00735" style="margin-top: 4em">XIV</h2> Esther was fast asleep next morning when Mrs. Saunders came into the parlour. Mrs. Saunders stood looking at her, and Esther turned suddenly on the sofa and said—— "What time is it, mother?" "It's gone six; but don't you get up. You're your own mistress whilst you're here; you pays for what you 'as." "I can't afford them lazy habits. There's plenty of work here, and I must help you with some of it." "Plenty of work here, that's right enough. But why should you bother, and you nearly seven months gone? I daresay you feels that 'eavy that you never care to get out of your chair. But they says that them who works up to the last 'as the easiest time in the end. Not that I've found it so." The conversation paused. Esther threw her legs over the side of the sofa, and still wrapped in the blanket, sat looking at her mother. "You can't be over-comfortable on that bit of sofa," said Mrs. Saunders. "Lor, I can manage right enough, if that was all." "You is that cast down, Esther; you mustn't give way. Things sometimes turns out better than one expects." "You never found they did, mother." "Perhaps I didn't, but that says nothing for others. We must bear up as best we can." One word led to another, and very soon Esther was telling her mother the whole tale of her misfortune—all about William, the sweepstakes, the ball at the Shoreham Gardens, the walks about the farm and hillside. "Service is no place for a girl who wants to live as we used to live when father was alive—no service that I've seen. I see that plain enough. Mistress was one of the Brethren like ourselves, and she had to put up with betting and drinking and dancing, and never a thought of the Lord. There was no standing out against it. They call you Creeping Jesus if you say your prayers, and you can't say them with a girl laughing or singing behind your back, so you think you'll say them to yourself in bed, but sleep comes sooner than you expect, and so you slips out of the habit. Then the drinking. We was brought up teetotal, but they're always pressing it upon you, and to please him I said I would drink the 'orse's 'ealth. That's how it began…. You don't know what it is, mother; you only knew God-fearing men until you married him. We aren't all good like you, mother. But I thought no harm, indeed I didn't." "A girl can't know what a man is thinking of, and we takes the worst for the best." "I don't say that I was altogether blameless but—" "You didn't know he was that bad." Esther hesitated. "I knew he was like other men. But he told me—he promised me he'd marry me." Mrs. Saunders did not answer, and Esther said, "You don't believe I'm speaking the truth." "Yes, I do, dearie. I was only thinking. You're my daughter; no mother had a better daughter. There never was a better girl in this world." "I was telling you, mother—" "But I don't want no telling that my Esther ain't a bad girl." Mrs. Saunders sat nodding her head, a sweet, uncritical mother; and Esther understood how unselfishly her mother loved her, and how simply she thought of how she might help her in her trouble. Neither spoke, and Esther continued dressing. "You 'aven't told me what you think of your room. It looks pretty, don't you think? I keeps it as nice as I can. Jenny hung up them pictures. They livens it up a bit," she said, pointing to the coloured supplements, from the illustrated papers, on the wall. "The china shepherd and shepherdess, you know; they was at Barnstaple." When Esther was dressed, she and Mrs. Saunders knelt down and said a prayer together. Then Esther said she would make up her room, and when that was done she insisted on helping her mother with the housework. In the afternoon she sat with her sisters, helping them with their dogs, folding the paper into the moulds, pasting it down, or cutting the skins into the requisite sizes. About five, when the children had had their tea, she and her mother went for a short walk. Very often they strolled through Victoria Station, amused by the bustle of the traffic, or maybe they wandered down the Buckingham Palace Road, attracted by the shops. And there was a sad pleasure in these walks. The elder woman had borne years of exceeding trouble, and felt her strength failing under her burdens, which instead of lightening were increasing; the younger woman was full of nervous apprehension for the future and grief for the past. But they loved each other deeply. Esther threw herself in the way to protect her mother, whether at a dangerous crossing or from the heedlessness of the crowd at a corner, and often a passer-by turned his head and looked after them, attracted by the solicitude which the younger woman showed for the elder. In those walks very little was said. They walked in silence, slipping now and then into occasional speech, and here and there a casual allusion or a broken sentence would indicate what was passing in their minds. One day some flannel and shirts in a window caught Mrs. Saunder's eye, and she said— "It is time, Esther, you thought about your baby clothes. One must be prepared; one never knows if one will go one's full time." The words came upon Esther with something of a shock, helping her to realise the imminence of her trouble. "You must have something by you, dear; one never knows how it is going to turn out; even I who have been through it do feel that nervous. I looks round the kitchen when I'm taken with the pains, and I says, 'I may never see this room again.'" The words were said in an undertone to Esther, and the shop-woman turned to get down the ready-made things which Mrs. Saunders had asked to see. "Here," said the shopwoman, "is the gown, longcloth, one-and-sixpence; here is the flannel, one-and-sixpence; and here is the little shirt, sixpence." "You must have these to go on with, dear, and if the baby lives you'll want another set." "Oh, mother, of course he'll live; why shouldn't he?" Even the shopwoman smiled, and Mrs. Saunders, addressing the shopwoman, said— "Them that knows nothing about it is allus full of 'ope." The shopwoman raised her eyes, sighed, and inquired sympathetically if this was the young lady's first confinement. Mrs. Saunders nodded and sighed, and then the shopwoman asked Mrs. Saunders if she required any baby clothes. Mrs. Saunders said she had all she required. The parcel was made up, and they were preparing to leave, when Esther said— "I may as well buy the material and make another set—it will give me something to do in the afternoons. I think I should like to make them." "We have some first-rate longcloth at sixpence-half-penny a yard." "You might take three yards, Esther; if anything should happen to yer bairn it will always come in useful. And you had better take three yards of flannel. How much is yer flannel?" "We have some excellent flannel," said the woman, lifting down a long, heavy package in dull yellow paper; "this is ten-pence a yard. You will want a finer longcloth for the little shirts." And every afternoon Esther sat in the parlour by the window, seeing, when she raised her eyes from the sewing, the low brick street full of children, and hearing the working women calling from the open doors or windows; and as she worked at the baby clothes, never perhaps to be worn, her heart sank at the long prospect that awaited her, the end of which she could not see, for it seemed to reach to the very end of her life. In these hours she realised in some measure the duties that life held in store, and it seemed to her that they exceeded her strength. Never would she be able to bring him up—he would have no one to look to but her. She never imagined other than that her child would be a boy. The task was clearly more than she could perform, and in despair she thought it would be better for it to die. What would happen if she remained out of a situation? Her father would not have her at home, that she knew well enough. What should she do, and the life of another depending on her? She would never see William again—that was certain. He had married a lady, and, were they to meet, he would not look at her. Her temper grew hot, and the memory of the injustice of which she had been a victim pressed upon her. But when vain anger passed away she thought of her baby, anticipating the joy she would experience when he held out tiny hands to her, and that, too, which she would feel when he laid an innocent cheek to hers; and her dream persisting, she saw him learning a trade, going to work in the morning and coming back to her in the evening, proud in the accomplishment of something done, of good money honestly earned. She thought a great deal, too, of her poor mother, who was looking strangely weak and poorly, and whose condition was rendered worse by her nervous fears that she would not get through this confinement. For the doctor had told Mrs. Saunders that the next time it might go hard with her; and in this house, her husband growing more reckless and drunken, it was altogether a bad look-out, and she might die for want of a little nourishment or a little care. Unfortunately they would both be down at the same time, and it was almost impossible that Esther should be well in time to look after her mother. That brute! It was wrong to think of her father so, but he seemed to be without mercy for any of them. He had come in yesterday half-boozed, having kept back part of his money—he had come in tramping and hiccuping. "Now, then, old girl, out with it! I must have a few halfpence; my chaps is waiting for me, and I can't be looking down their mouths with nothing in my pockets." "I only have a few halfpence to get the children a bit of dinner; if I give them to you they'll have nothing to eat." "Oh, the children can eat anything; I want beer. If yer 'aven't money, make it." Mrs. Saunders said that if he had any spare clothes she would take them round the corner. He only answered— "Well, if I 'aven't a spare waistcoat left just take some of yer own things. I tell yer I want beer, and I mean to have some." Then, with his fist raised, he came at his poor wife, ordering her to take one of the sheets from the bed and "make money," and would have struck her if Esther had not come between them and, with her hand in her pocket, said, "Be quiet, father; I'll give you the money you want." She had done the same before, and, if needs be, she would do so again. She could not see her mother struck, perhaps killed by that brute; her first duty was to save her mother, but these constant demands on her little savings filled her with terror. She would want every penny; the ten shillings he had already had from her might be the very sum required to put her on her feet again, and send her in search of a situation where she would be able to earn money for the boy. But if this extortion continued she did not know what she would do, and that night she prayed that God might not delay the birth of her child. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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