Mord Em'ly/Chapter 8

became a half-timer, which, interpreted, meant that school claimed her only for an afternoon and the following morning, leaving her free for twenty-four hours to work in the dress-making room or in the laundry. Her conduct improved so much that small money prizes for excellent behaviour accumulated to her credit as the months and the seasons went on, and, when Mord Em'ly knew that the total of her personal property amounted to as much as fifteen-and-six, she felt aged and sobered by the responsibilities that possession of capital entails. Ronicker, her friend, went through the training stage, and a place being found for her in a family that possessed immaculate references, she was fitted out, and, on a morning that for Mord Em'ly was tinged with melancholy, left the Home, to test, with no great degree of hopefulness, a life of domestic service. Some changes had been made in the staff of the Home, and, amongst others, the young married secretary had finally left. Her place was taken by a tall, gaunt lady, with a sniff, who urged upon the directress so many reforms that the directress became quite bewildered, and agreed to them en bloc for the sake of quietude. Some of these were resented by the elder girls, and there were grim whisperings of rebellion. A new and gloomy chaplain had been appointed, and the two Sunday services in the chapel reduced those girls who listened to a state of great depression, because he was able to promise them in the next world nothing but terror.

For some time Mord Em'ly and one or two others repressed the mutinous whisperings of the wilder girls. Mord Em'ly discovered, eventually, that one of them was, as a fact, playing the part of provocating agent, and, in this character, was conveying news of the movement at each stage to the new secretary; and, upon this being explained, the revolt cooled down, and the attentions of the dissatisfied ones were directed to the traitress, whose life for a time lacked roses. The return of Ronicker from her first situation first revived for Mord Em'ly a feeling of restlessness.

"It was a bit too thick," explained Ronicker. ""There was me in a blooming religious 'ousehold, prayers going on mornin', noon, and night, and all the other servants a-pitying me like anything.""

"Why didn't you dot 'em one?" suggested Mord Em'ly. "Looks so silly to come back 'ere after you're once been started off."

"I don't mind looking silly," said Ronicker stolidly, "so long as I don't feel silly. Besides, I'd sooner do anything than be a slave. Talk sense."

"I am a-talking sense," declared Ronicker. "It's all very well for you, Mord Em'ly; you ain't tried it yet. But you'll feel jest as awk'ard and jest as miserable when you make a start as I did. Worse than you did at Peckham, I lay."

"You don't think that, do you, really?" asked Mord Em'ly nervously.

"I don't think nothing at all about it," said Ronicker acutely; "I know!"

"But all places ain't the same."

"Granted," said Ronicker drily. "Some are worse than others. I daresay I got 'old of one of the best."

"But how is it, then, that a lot of the girls get on all right? Look at Dor'thy Lane, for instance. She goes off to a place in the country; she sends 'ome 'ere 'alf her screw; her mistress writes a letter—I saw it—saying that a better servant she never saw."

"Dor'thy Lane's different."

"She started the same," argued Mord Em'ly. "She pinched some boots out of a shop at Norwood, and her father's a cabman, and her mother was born drunk. Yet that girl goes through this place; never gets sent to Pleasant Cottage; goes off one morning with her box, and gets along as right as ninepence. How is it some of 'em can do it?"

Simply because they're built for it. Me and you ain't. Me and you like a certain amount of liberty. Me and you don't want to live all our blooming lives in a blooming nunnery. Me and you want freedom. Me and you want to throw off what you may call the tyrint's shackle. Me and you want—"

"Your conversation, Ronicker," said Mord Em'ly, "’d be a lump more interestin' if  you knew what you were talkin' about. Get on with your ironin', 'r else you'll see your friend, the tawse."

"I'll tawse 'em," said Ronicker darkly, "if they talk to me."

Ronicker's pessimistic report on life in a large house as domestic servant impressed Mord Em'ly, in spite of her attitude of disbelief. She began to think seriously of her immediate future, and her young head became busy with ideas on the subject. Indeed, the ideas became so numerous that they jostled, and, in striving to get to the front, only impeded each other; it was some few weeks before Mord Em'ly was able to sort them and to select one or two for final approbation. She found herself getting out of her small camp bedstead at night, to peep through the blinds, and to watch a clumsy, over-grown goods train which went blunderingly and noisily along at about a certain hour, every truck in a temper with its neighbour, with sometimes a set fight between all when the engine tried to check them. She knew that the train was going to London, and, more than once, a vague, incomplete scheme had danced about her brain of dressing and running away to the station, and hiding in one of the trucks, and thus reaching town. The rage for the view of gaslights and shops, and the excitement that only town streets can give, possessed her now, as it had done, centuries ago, in Lucella Road, Peckham. In her desire for London, she unconsciously exaggerated and idealised its joys and its appearance; so that when the chaplain on Sundays tried, in a stumbling way, to describe Heaven, Mord Em'ly shut her ears to his confused efforts at description, and decided that the real facts were that it resembled the crowded, happy space near the Elephant and Castle, with roads leading to it from every quarter. There was a mammoth draper's just opposite the Elephant, the memory of which made Mord Em'ly feel dazed. In her stories she not infrequently permitted her heroines to spend as much as two pounds fifteen on a trousseau at Tarn's.

One afternoon, Mord Em'ly, trying not to think of London, was, with some bigger girls, walking in the lanes of the village. The woman in charge of the detachment walked by her side, commanding them to hold up their heads, to keep time, and to leave off fidgeting. Suddenly a sound of brass music came. Approaching they found that a meadow had been lent for the day to an excursion party of girls from London, and, as the girls from the Home marched past the low hedge separating the meadow from the roadway, they watched, from the corners of their eyes, the Londoners, who, hysterical with delight at finding themselves in novel environments, were shrieking, and dancing, and rushing, and fighting, and, to the music of the brass instruments, singing popular songs.

"That's what I call life," whispered Ronicker; "that's worth doing, that is. "

"Wonder whether they're reely enjoying 'emselves?" said Mord Em'ly wistfully, in an undertone.

"As for us," went on Ronicker, we're what we may term a lot of blithering machines; nothing more nor less; we go on, and on, and on, and one day's jest like another, only more so, and—"

"It'd seem odd to be free of the place, after all this time."

"Don't know about being odd," said Ronicker; "it'd most cert'n'y be pleasant."

"You don't think anybody would want to be back 'ere again, like—"

"Not unless they was dotty," said Ronicker.

"I wish," said Mord Em'ly, with sudden excitement, "I wish I could do it."

The shouts of the visitors and the music of the cornets followed the demure band of girls to the Home. As they reached the iron gates, they noticed that these were thrown open wide, and that a carriage, with footmen, stood just inside on the gravelled roadway. The well-bred horses pawed the ground with their hoofs, to express their annoyance at being in surroundings so unusual to horses possessing their excellent ancestry.

"Roy'lty!" exclaimed the mother.

Royalty it was. Royalty, in the person of two young women paying an unexpected visit in order to see over the Home. Bustle in the Home; a swift hurrying to and fro; girls, whose faces had evaded the attention of soap and water since morning, dispatched urgently to scrub their cheeks. The directress, the new secretary, and the gloomy chaplain giving tea to the two princesses, before proceeding upon the tour of inspection; the young mistress, who picked out accompaniments on the piano, looking anxiously for her copy of the National Anthem, and insisting that Mord Em'ly should be brought to her presence straightway in order that the solo part might be rehearsed. Every mother at every cottage running aimlessly up and down stairs; Mrs. Batson, of Pleasant Cottage, boxing every girl's ears, to prepare them for review, and declaring wildly that her snow-white dinner-table was filthy black, and that if this got to the ears of the Queen, she (Mrs. Batson) would never hear the last of it. Increased excitement when the two princesses came out into the grounds; some disappointment at the fact that they were not wearing golden crowns, and clad in white garments, and bearing a wand, but proving to be only two smiling, good-tempered, healthy English girls, in quiet dresses, and a tactful way of saying the right thing to the girls who were called up to curtsey to them.

"Maud Emily," called the directress.

"Yes, ma'am."

"This is one of our successes," explained the directress. "Let me see, now. What is her history?"

"Stealing pastry from a shop in Walworth, your Royal Highnesses," said the new secretary glibly. "Difficult to manage at first, but of late more amenable."

One of the young princesses desired to know Mord Em'ly's age.

"Sixteen next birthday, miss," said Mord Em'ly.

"You're short for sixteen, aren't you?"

"That ain't my fault, miss."

"Why, no, of course not." The princess laughed. "It is no very serious misfortune either."

"We've all got some drawback," said Mord Em'ly.

"True! And you will not be long before you leave this Home, where they have looked after you?"

"That's the idea, I spose, miss," said Mord Em'ly guardedly.

"Will you remember that my sister and I wish you success in the world, and that we shall be disappointed if you are not a credit to the Home after you leave it?"

"I'll bear it in mind, miss."

Other girls were singled out for an interview, and one fell so far short of her intentions that she was unable to call the two young women by any other title than "Your Worship." Mrs. Batson's worst tenant screamed, with a view of offering a dissonant and a treasonable remark, "Dahn with Wagstaff!" (Mr. Wagstaff having been an unpopular vestryman in the worst tenant's parish), and was instantly conveyed to Pleasant Cottage for her case to be considered by Mrs. Batson later on.

Presently the girls ranged in the schoolroom, and a brief, well-considered examination was given, where the smartest only were appealed to for information; then the National Anthem, with Mord Em'ly nervously singing the verses, and the whole school joining, with a roar, in the chorus:

The girls assembled near the gates to see the young princesses depart, and to cheer them shrilly. Mord Em'ly, in the front, and leading the applause, noticed something drop from the waving hand of one of the visitors as the impatient horses took the carriage out through the gates. Mord Em'ly ran and picked it up, found it to be a stout little purse, and rushed wildly after the swiftly-departing carriage. She had some distance to run before their attention was gained, and she returned to the gates hot and breathless.

"That was quite right," said the directress approvingly, when Mord Em'ly had explained. "I'm glad you were so sharp. Did the lady give you anything?"

"No, ma'am," with a tight clenching of her left hand.

"I'm very pleased with you."

"Well, ma'am," said Mord Em'ly frankly, "I ain't altogether annoyed with meself."