Читать книгу Samuel Boyd of Catchpole Square: A Mystery - B. L. Farjeon - Страница 38

Had Dick timed his visit to Draper's Mews a couple of hours earlier he would have had a second instance in one day of female hands at the wash-tub--in this case not a wash-tub but a cracked and leaky basin, from the sides of which the soapy water dripped upon a very thin pair of female legs. In the second instance it would not have been a woman whom he would have seen, but a child--none other than little Gracie, who, with all the importance of budding washerwoman thick upon her (although, humanly speaking, her prospects of arriving at that stage of distinction appeared to be remote) was washing her brothers' and sisters' clothes. The garments were few and in woeful condition, the brothers and sisters were many, more or less in a state of nudity. There were Eddie, nine years of age, Bertie, eight, Nellie, six, Connie, five, Louie, three, Geordie, eighteen months. Six children, who, with Gracie, the eldest, comprised the young shoots of the genealogical tree belonging to the family of the Deaths. Their home comprised two small rooms, with holes in the wall that divided them.

All the children, with the exception of Gracie, were in bed, huddling together for warmth, and waiting for the drying of their clothes, which Gracie hung upon a line stretching from wall to wall, after wringing them out. The youngsters were not unhappy; the ten shillings from the poor box which the benevolent magistrate had given to Mrs. Death dropped upon her like manna from heaven. On their way home she and Gracie had spent fifteen pence, and the children had had a full meal. What cause for unhappiness when their little stomachs were filled? That is the test stone. Think of it, comfortable ones of the earth. Fifteen pence to make seven children happy!

Gracie alone recognised what was meant by the disappearance of their father, the breadwinner, their father with his anxious face and threadbare clothes. The other children could not understand. It was merciful. Father had gone away; he would come back again with a little paper bag of brandy balls for them to suck. Abel Death was fond of his children, and once a week he gave them this treat. How they looked forward to it--how they watched for his coming--how their faces would light up when he pulled the bag out of his pocket! Brandy balls are an economical sweet; there is a magic in the very name. Brandy balls! They are hard, not to say stony, and if they are sucked fair they last a long time. Eddie once bolted one whole. He never forgot it; the taste of the physic he was made to swallow, the shaking and the slapping, made him very repentant; but he thought of it ever afterwards with a fearful joy, as of one who had performed a rash and daring deed, and came out of it alive. Sometimes the children were in rivalry as to which brandy ball would last the longest. Sad to relate, the exultation of the victor made the others cry. The way of conquerors is always watered with tears.

On this afternoon Gracie was the mistress of the house. Mrs. Death had heard of a half day's washing-up of plates and dishes at a German club in the neighbourhood where a festival was being held; and she dared not neglect the opportunity of earning ninepence. She left careful instructions that if father should happen to come back during her absence Gracie was to run like lightning to the club and fetch her home. She had no hope of it, but she had read of miracles in the Bible.

So the child stood at the wash-tub, soaping poor little petticoats and stockings with zeal and diligence, holding each garment up to the light and criticising its condition with the eye of an expert. Now and then she shook her head, as though in answer to a question whether this or that tattered article of clothing could be mended; and, the point being settled, plunged it into the wash-tub again for an extra soaping to make up for tatters. And the marvellous patience with which she pursued her task, the absence of anything in the shape of rebellion or protest that she, so young in years, should be set to it! If ever suffering mortal deserved a medal for duty done in the teeth of adverse circumstance, against odds so terrible that the coldest heart must have been moved to pity to witness it, Gracie surely had earned it. But there is no established order on earth for the bestowal of honours in such a cause. Crosses and broad ribbons and sparkling stars are for deeds far different from the devoted heroism she displayed. But a record is kept in Heaven, Gracie, and angels are looking down upon you. How astonished would she have been to know it! She suffered--ah, how she suffered! Every few minutes she was compelled to stop and fight the demon in her chest that scraped and scraped her brittle bones with fiendish cruelty--tearing at her, choking her, robbing her of breath, while she stamped her feet and beat her hands together.

"Oh, I say! Gracie's going it," observed Bertie, the low comedian and mimic of the family, and as is the case with better known low comedians when they give utterance to nothing particularly witty, the young audience began to laugh.

"Show us, Bertie," they cried. "Do it!"

Whereupon, with his own vocal organs, Bertie reproduced Gracie's racking cough. The other children attempted the imitation, but none with success, and he accompanied the cough, moreover, with such an expression of woe upon his face, that the children were lost in admiration. Spurred to greater efforts by their approval he wound up with so faithful a reproduction of Gracie in the last exhausting stage of a paroxysm that it brought down the house.

"Is that like it, Gracie?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered, with unmoved face, "that's like it."

One of the children, burning with envy at her brother's histrionic triumph, expressed her feelings with her legs.

"Connie's kicking me, Gracie," cried Bertie, at the same time returning the kicks beneath the bedclothes.