Another Mother and Daughter
In an ugly and dark room, an old woman, ugly and dark too, sat
listening to the wind and rain, and crouching over a meagre fire. More
constant to the last-named occupation than the first, she never changed
her attitude, unless, when any stray drops of rain fell hissing on the
smouldering embers, to raise her head with an awakened attention to the
whistling and pattering outside, and gradually to let it fall again
lower and lower and lower as she sunk into a brooding state of thought,
in which the noises of the night were as indistinctly regarded as is
the monotonous rolling of a sea by one who sits in contemplation on its
shore.
There was no light in the room save that which the fire afforded.
Glaring sullenly from time to time like the eye of a fierce beast half
asleep, it revealed no objects that needed to be jealous of a better
display. A heap of rags, a heap of bones, a wretched bed, two or three
mutilated chairs or stools, the black walls and blacker ceiling, were
all its winking brightness shone upon. As the old woman, with a
gigantic and distorted image of herself thrown half upon the wall
behind her, half upon the roof above, sat bending over the few loose
bricks within which it was pent, on the damp hearth of the chimney—for
there was no stove—she looked as if she were watching at some witch’s
altar for a favourable token; and but that the movement of her
chattering jaws and trembling chin was too frequent and too fast for
the slow flickering of the fire, it would have seemed an illusion
wrought by the light, as it came and went, upon a face as motionless as
the form to which it belonged.
If Florence could have stood within the room and looked upon the
original of the shadow thrown upon the wall and roof as it cowered thus
over the fire, a glance might have sufficed to recall the figure of
Good Mrs Brown; notwithstanding that her childish recollection of that
terrible old woman was as grotesque and exaggerated a presentment of
the truth, perhaps, as the shadow on the wall. But Florence was not
there to look on; and Good Mrs Brown remained unrecognised, and sat
staring at her fire, unobserved.
Attracted by a louder sputtering than usual, as the rain came hissing
down the chimney in a little stream, the old woman raised her head,
impatiently, to listen afresh. And this time she did not drop it again;
for there was a hand upon the door, and a footstep in the room.
“Who’s that?” she said, looking over her shoulder.
“One who brings you news, was the answer, in a woman’s voice.
“News? Where from?”
“From abroad.”
“From beyond seas?” cried the old woman, starting up.
“Ay, from beyond seas.”
The old woman raked the fire together, hurriedly, and going close to
her visitor who had entered, and shut the door, and who now stood in
the middle of the room, put her hand upon the drenched cloak, and
turned the unresisting figure, so as to have it in the full light of
the fire. She did not find what she had expected, whatever that might
be; for she let the cloak go again, and uttered a querulous cry of
disappointment and misery.
“What is the matter?” asked her visitor.
“Oho! Oho!” cried the old woman, turning her face upward, with a
terrible howl.
“What is the matter?” asked the visitor again.
“It’s not my gal!” cried the old woman, tossing up her arms, and
clasping her hands above her head. “Where’s my Alice? Where’s my
handsome daughter? They’ve been the death of her!”
“They’ve not been the death of her yet, if your name’s Marwood,” said
the visitor.
“Have you seen my gal, then?” cried the old woman. “Has she wrote to
me?”
“She said you couldn’t read,” returned the other.
“No more I can!” exclaimed the old woman, wringing her hands.
“Have you no light here?” said the other, looking round the room.
The old woman, mumbling and shaking her head, and muttering to herself
about her handsome daughter, brought a candle from a cupboard in the
corner, and thrusting it into the fire with a trembling hand, lighted
it with some difficulty and set it on the table. Its dirty wick burnt
dimly at first, being choked in its own grease; and when the bleared
eyes and failing sight of the old woman could distinguish anything by
its light, her visitor was sitting with her arms folded, her eyes
turned downwards, and a handkerchief she had worn upon her head lying
on the table by her side.
“She sent to me by word of mouth then, my gal, Alice?” mumbled the old
woman, after waiting for some moments. “What did she say?”
“Look,” returned the visitor.
The old woman repeated the word in a scared uncertain way; and, shading
her eyes, looked at the speaker, round the room, and at the speaker
once again.
“Alice said look again, mother;” and the speaker fixed her eyes upon
her.
Again the old woman looked round the room, and at her visitor, and
round the room once more. Hastily seizing the candle, and rising from
her seat, she held it to the visitor’s face, uttered a loud cry, set
down the light, and fell upon her neck!
“It’s my gal! It’s my Alice! It’s my handsome daughter, living and come
back!” screamed the old woman, rocking herself to and fro upon the
breast that coldly suffered her embrace. “It’s my gal! It’s my Alice!
It’s my handsome daughter, living and come back!” she screamed again,
dropping on the floor before her, clasping her knees, laying her head
against them, and still rocking herself to and fro with every frantic
demonstration of which her vitality was capable.
“Yes, mother,” returned Alice, stooping forward for a moment and
kissing her, but endeavouring, even in the act, to disengage herself
from her embrace. “I am here, at last. Let go, mother; let go. Get up,
and sit in your chair. What good does this do?”
“She’s come back harder than she went!” cried the mother, looking up in
her face, and still holding to her knees. “She don’t care for me! after
all these years, and all the wretched life I’ve led!”
“Why, mother!” said Alice, shaking her ragged skirts to detach the old
woman from them: “there are two sides to that. There have been years
for me as well as you, and there has been wretchedness for me as well
as you. Get up, get up!”
Her mother rose, and cried, and wrung her hands, and stood at a little
distance gazing on her. Then she took the candle again, and going round
her, surveyed her from head to foot, making a low moaning all the time.
Then she put the candle down, resumed her chair, and beating her hands
together to a kind of weary tune, and rolling herself from side to
side, continued moaning and wailing to herself.
Alice got up, took off her wet cloak, and laid it aside. That done, she
sat down as before, and with her arms folded, and her eyes gazing at
the fire, remained silently listening with a contemptuous face to her
old mother’s inarticulate complainings.
“Did you expect to see me return as youthful as I went away, mother?”
she said at length, turning her eyes upon the old woman. “Did you think
a foreign life, like mine, was good for good looks? One would believe
so, to hear you!”
“It ain’t that!” cried the mother. “She knows it!”
“What is it then?” returned the daughter. “It had best be something
that don’t last, mother, or my way out is easier than my way in.”
“Hear that!” exclaimed the mother. “After all these years she threatens
to desert me in the moment of her coming back again!”
“I tell you, mother, for the second time, there have been years for me
as well as you,” said Alice. “Come back harder? Of course I have come
back harder. What else did you expect?”
“Harder to me! To her own dear mother!” cried the old woman
“I don’t know who began to harden me, if my own dear mother didn’t,”
she returned, sitting with her folded arms, and knitted brows, and
compressed lips as if she were bent on excluding, by force, every
softer feeling from her breast. “Listen, mother, to a word or two. If
we understand each other now, we shall not fall out any more, perhaps.
I went away a girl, and have come back a woman. I went away undutiful
enough, and have come back no better, you may swear. But have you been
very dutiful to me?”
“I!” cried the old woman. “To my gal! A mother dutiful to her own
child!”
“It sounds unnatural, don’t it?” returned the daughter, looking coldly
on her with her stern, regardless, hardy, beautiful face; “but I have
thought of it sometimes, in the course of my lone years, till I have
got used to it. I have heard some talk about duty first and last; but
it has always been of my duty to other people. I have wondered now and
then—to pass away the time—whether no one ever owed any duty to me.”
Her mother sat mowing, and mumbling, and shaking her head, but whether
angrily or remorsefully, or in denial, or only in her physical
infirmity, did not appear.
“There was a child called Alice Marwood,” said the daughter, with a
laugh, and looking down at herself in terrible derision of herself,
“born, among poverty and neglect, and nursed in it. Nobody taught her,
nobody stepped forward to help her, nobody cared for her.”
“Nobody!” echoed the mother, pointing to herself, and striking her
breast.
“The only care she knew,” returned the daughter, “was to be beaten, and
stinted, and abused sometimes; and she might have done better without
that. She lived in homes like this, and in the streets, with a crowd of
little wretches like herself; and yet she brought good looks out of
this childhood. So much the worse for her. She had better have been
hunted and worried to death for ugliness.”
“Go on! go on!” exclaimed the mother.
“I am going on,” returned the daughter. “There was a girl called Alice
Marwood. She was handsome. She was taught too late, and taught all
wrong. She was too well cared for, too well trained, too well helped
on, too much looked after. You were very fond of her—you were better
off then. What came to that girl comes to thousands every year. It was
only ruin, and she was born to it.”
“After all these years!” whined the old woman. “My gal begins with
this.”
“She’ll soon have ended,” said the daughter. “There was a criminal
called Alice Marwood—a girl still, but deserted and an outcast. And she
was tried, and she was sentenced. And lord, how the gentlemen in the
Court talked about it! and how grave the judge was on her duty, and on
her having perverted the gifts of nature—as if he didn’t know better
than anybody there, that they had been made curses to her!—and how he
preached about the strong arm of the Law—so very strong to save her,
when she was an innocent and helpless little wretch!—and how solemn and
religious it all was! I have thought of that, many times since, to be
sure!”
She folded her arms tightly on her breast, and laughed in a tone that
made the howl of the old woman musical.
“So Alice Marwood was transported, mother,” she pursued, “and was sent
to learn her duty, where there was twenty times less duty, and more
wickedness, and wrong, and infamy, than here. And Alice Marwood is come
back a woman. Such a woman as she ought to be, after all this. In good
time, there will be more solemnity, and more fine talk, and more strong
arm, most likely, and there will be an end of her; but the gentlemen
needn’t be afraid of being thrown out of work. There’s crowds of little
wretches, boy and girl, growing up in any of the streets they live in,
that’ll keep them to it till they’ve made their fortunes.”
The old woman leaned her elbows on the table, and resting her face upon
her two hands, made a show of being in great distress—or really was,
perhaps.
“There! I have done, mother,” said the daughter, with a motion of her
head, as if in dismissal of the subject. “I have said enough. Don’t let
you and I talk of being dutiful, whatever we do. Your childhood was
like mine, I suppose. So much the worse for both of us. I don’t want to
blame you, or to defend myself; why should I? That’s all over long ago.
But I am a woman—not a girl, now—and you and I needn’t make a show of
our history, like the gentlemen in the Court. We know all about it,
well enough.”
Lost and degraded as she was, there was a beauty in her, both of face
and form, which, even in its worst expression, could not but be
recognised as such by anyone regarding her with the least attention. As
she subsided into silence, and her face which had been harshly
agitated, quieted down; while her dark eyes, fixed upon the fire,
exchanged the reckless light that had animated them, for one that was
softened by something like sorrow; there shone through all her wayworn
misery and fatigue, a ray of the departed radiance of the fallen angel.
Her mother, after watching her for some time without speaking, ventured
to steal her withered hand a little nearer to her across the table; and
finding that she permitted this, to touch her face, and smooth her
hair. With the feeling, as it seemed, that the old woman was at least
sincere in this show of interest, Alice made no movement to check her;
so, advancing by degrees, she bound up her daughter’s hair afresh, took
off her wet shoes, if they deserved the name, spread something dry upon
her shoulders, and hovered humbly about her, muttering to herself, as
she recognised her old features and expression more and more.
“You are very poor, mother, I see,” said Alice, looking round, when she
had sat thus for some time.
“Bitter poor, my deary,” replied the old woman.
She admired her daughter, and was afraid of her. Perhaps her
admiration, such as it was, had originated long ago, when she first
found anything that was beautiful appearing in the midst of the squalid
fight of her existence. Perhaps her fear was referable, in some sort,
to the retrospect she had so lately heard. Be this as it might, she
stood, submissively and deferentially, before her child, and inclined
her head, as if in a pitiful entreaty to be spared any further
reproach.
“How have you lived?”
“By begging, my deary.
“And pilfering, mother?”
“Sometimes, Ally—in a very small way. I am old and timid. I have taken
trifles from children now and then, my deary, but not often. I have
tramped about the country, pet, and I know what I know. I have
watched.”
“Watched?” returned the daughter, looking at her.
“I have hung about a family, my deary,” said the mother, even more
humbly and submissively than before.
“What family?”
“Hush, darling. Don’t be angry with me. I did it for the love of you.
In memory of my poor gal beyond seas.” She put out her hand
deprecatingly, and drawing it back again, laid it on her lips.
“Years ago, my deary,” she pursued, glancing timidly at the attentive
and stern face opposed to her, “I came across his little child, by
chance.”
“Whose child?”
“Not his, Alice deary; don’t look at me like that; not his. How could
it be his? You know he has none.”
“Whose then?” returned the daughter. “You said his.”
“Hush, Ally; you frighten me, deary. Mr Dombey’s—only Mr Dombey’s.
Since then, darling, I have seen them often. I have seen _him_.”
In uttering this last word, the old woman shrunk and recoiled, as if
with sudden fear that her daughter would strike her. But though the
daughter’s face was fixed upon her, and expressed the most vehement
passion, she remained still: except that she clenched her arms tighter
and tighter within each other, on her bosom, as if to restrain them by
that means from doing an injury to herself, or someone else, in the
blind fury of the wrath that suddenly possessed her.
“Little he thought who I was!” said the old woman, shaking her clenched
hand.
“And little he cared!” muttered her daughter, between her teeth.
“But there we were, said the old woman, “face to face. I spoke to him,
and he spoke to me. I sat and watched him as he went away down a long
grove of trees: and at every step he took, I cursed him soul and body.”
“He will thrive in spite of that,” returned the daughter disdainfully.
“Ay, he is thriving,” said the mother.
She held her peace; for the face and form before her were unshaped by
rage. It seemed as if the bosom would burst with the emotions that
strove within it. The effort that constrained and held it pent up, was
no less formidable than the rage itself: no less bespeaking the violent
and dangerous character of the woman who made it. But it succeeded, and
she asked, after a silence:
“Is he married?”
“No, deary,” said the mother.
“Going to be?”
“Not that I know of, deary. But his master and friend is married. Oh,
we may give him joy! We may give ’em all joy!” cried the old woman,
hugging herself with her lean arms in her exultation. “Nothing but joy
to us will come of that marriage. Mind me!”
The daughter looked at her for an explanation.
“But you are wet and tired; hungry and thirsty,” said the old woman,
hobbling to the cupboard; “and there’s little here, and little”—diving
down into her pocket, and jingling a few half—pence on the
table—“little here. Have you any money, Alice, deary?”
The covetous, sharp, eager face, with which she asked the question and
looked on, as her daughter took out of her bosom the little gift she
had so lately received, told almost as much of the history of this
parent and child as the child herself had told in words.
“Is that all?” said the mother.
“I have no more. I should not have this, but for charity.”
“But for charity, eh, deary?” said the old woman, bending greedily over
the table to look at the money, which she appeared distrustful of her
daughter’s still retaining in her hand, and gazing on. “Humph! six and
six is twelve, and six eighteen—so—we must make the most of it. I’ll go
buy something to eat and drink.”
With greater alacrity than might have been expected in one of her
appearance—for age and misery seemed to have made her as decrepit as
ugly—she began to occupy her trembling hands in tying an old bonnet on
her head, and folding a torn shawl about herself: still eyeing the
money in her daughter’s hand, with the same sharp desire.
“What joy is to come to us of this marriage, mother?” asked the
daughter. “You have not told me that.”
“The joy,” she replied, attiring herself, with fumbling fingers, “of no
love at all, and much pride and hate, my deary. The joy of confusion
and strife among ’em, proud as they are, and of danger—danger, Alice!”
“What danger?”
“I have seen what I have seen. I know what I know!” chuckled the
mother. “Let some look to it. Let some be upon their guard. My gal may
keep good company yet!”
Then, seeing that in the wondering earnestness with which her daughter
regarded her, her hand involuntarily closed upon the money, the old
woman made more speed to secure it, and hurriedly added, “but I’ll go
buy something; I’ll go buy something.”
As she stood with her hand stretched out before her daughter, her
daughter, glancing again at the money, put it to her lips before
parting with it.
“What, Ally! Do you kiss it?” chuckled the old woman. “That’s like me—I
often do. Oh, it’s so good to us!” squeezing her own tarnished
halfpence up to her bag of a throat, “so good to us in everything but
not coming in heaps!”
“I kiss it, mother,” said the daughter, “or I did then—I don’t know
that I ever did before—for the giver’s sake.”
“The giver, eh, deary?” retorted the old woman, whose dimmed eyes
glistened as she took it. “Ay! I’ll kiss it for the giver’s sake, too,
when the giver can make it go farther. But I’ll go spend it, deary.
I’ll be back directly.”
“You seem to say you know a great deal, mother,” said the daughter,
following her to the door with her eyes. “You have grown very wise
since we parted.”
“Know!” croaked the old woman, coming back a step or two, “I know more
than you think I know more than he thinks, deary, as I’ll tell you by
and bye. I know all.”
The daughter smiled incredulously.
“I know of his brother, Alice,” said the old woman, stretching out her
neck with a leer of malice absolutely frightful, “who might have been
where you have been—for stealing money—and who lives with his sister,
over yonder, by the north road out of London.”
“Where?”
“By the north road out of London, deary. You shall see the house if you
like. It ain’t much to boast of, genteel as his own is. No, no, no,”
cried the old woman, shaking her head and laughing; for her daughter
had started up, “not now; it’s too far off; it’s by the milestone,
where the stones are heaped;—to-morrow, deary, if it’s fine, and you
are in the humour. But I’ll go spend—”
“Stop!” and the daughter flung herself upon her, with her former
passion raging like a fire. “The sister is a fair-faced Devil, with
brown hair?”
The old woman, amazed and terrified, nodded her head.
“I see the shadow of him in her face! It’s a red house standing by
itself. Before the door there is a small green porch.”
Again the old woman nodded.
“In which I sat today! Give me back the money.”
“Alice! Deary!”
“Give me back the money, or you’ll be hurt.”
She forced it from the old woman’s hand as she spoke, and utterly
indifferent to her complainings and entreaties, threw on the garments
she had taken off, and hurried out, with headlong speed.
The mother followed, limping after her as she could, and expostulating
with no more effect upon her than upon the wind and rain and darkness
that encompassed them. Obdurate and fierce in her own purpose, and
indifferent to all besides, the daughter defied the weather and the
distance, as if she had known no travel or fatigue, and made for the
house where she had been relieved. After some quarter of an hour’s
walking, the old woman, spent and out of breath, ventured to hold by
her skirts; but she ventured no more, and they travelled on in silence
through the wet and gloom. If the mother now and then uttered a word of
complaint, she stifled it lest her daughter should break away from her
and leave her behind; and the daughter was dumb.
It was within an hour or so of midnight, when they left the regular
streets behind them, and entered on the deeper gloom of that neutral
ground where the house was situated. The town lay in the distance,
lurid and lowering; the bleak wind howled over the open space; all
around was black, wild, desolate.
“This is a fit place for me!” said the daughter, stopping to look back.
“I thought so, when I was here before, today.”
“Alice, my deary,” cried the mother, pulling her gently by the skirt.
“Alice!”
“What now, mother?”
“Don’t give the money back, my darling; please don’t. We can’t afford
it. We want supper, deary. Money is money, whoever gives it. Say what
you will, but keep the money.”
“See there!” was all the daughter’s answer. “That is the house I mean.
Is that it?”
The old woman nodded in the affirmative; and a few more paces brought
them to the threshold. There was the light of fire and candle in the
room where Alice had sat to dry her clothes; and on her knocking at the
door, John Carker appeared from that room.
He was surprised to see such visitors at such an hour, and asked Alice
what she wanted.
“I want your sister,” she said. “The woman who gave me money today.”
At the sound of her raised voice, Harriet came out.
“Oh!” said Alice. “You are here! Do you remember me?”
“Yes,” she answered, wondering.
The face that had humbled itself before her, looked on her now with
such invincible hatred and defiance; and the hand that had gently
touched her arm, was clenched with such a show of evil purpose, as if
it would gladly strangle her; that she drew close to her brother for
protection.
“That I could speak with you, and not know you! That I could come near
you, and not feel what blood was running in your veins, by the tingling
of my own!” said Alice, with a menacing gesture.
“What do you mean? What have I done?”
“Done!” returned the other. “You have sat me by your fire; you have
given me food and money; you have bestowed your compassion on me! You!
whose name I spit upon!”
The old woman, with a malevolence that made her ugliness quite awful,
shook her withered hand at the brother and sister in confirmation of
her daughter, but plucked her by the skirts again, nevertheless,
imploring her to keep the money.
“If I dropped a tear upon your hand, may it wither it up! If I spoke a
gentle word in your hearing, may it deafen you! If I touched you with
my lips, may the touch be poison to you! A curse upon this roof that
gave me shelter! Sorrow and shame upon your head! Ruin upon all
belonging to you!”
As she said the words, she threw the money down upon the ground, and
spurned it with her foot.
“I tread it in the dust: I wouldn’t take it if it paved my way to
Heaven! I would the bleeding foot that brought me here today, had
rotted off, before it led me to your house!”
Harriet, pale and trembling, restrained her brother, and suffered her
to go on uninterrupted.
“It was well that I should be pitied and forgiven by you, or anyone of
your name, in the first hour of my return! It was well that you should
act the kind good lady to me! I’ll thank you when I die; I’ll pray for
you, and all your race, you may be sure!”
With a fierce action of her hand, as if she sprinkled hatred on the
ground, and with it devoted those who were standing there to
destruction, she looked up once at the black sky, and strode out into
the wild night.
The mother, who had plucked at her skirts again and again in vain, and
had eyed the money lying on the threshold with an absorbing greed that
seemed to concentrate her faculties upon it, would have prowled about,
until the house was dark, and then groped in the mire on the chance of
repossessing herself of it. But the daughter drew her away, and they
set forth, straight, on their return to their dwelling; the old woman
whimpering and bemoaning their loss upon the road, and fretfully
bewailing, as openly as she dared, the undutiful conduct of her
handsome girl in depriving her of a supper, on the very first night of
their reunion.
Supperless to bed she went, saving for a few coarse fragments; and
those she sat mumbling and munching over a scrap of fire, long after
her undutiful daughter lay asleep.
Were this miserable mother, and this miserable daughter, only the
reduction to their lowest grade, of certain social vices sometimes
prevailing higher up? In this round world of many circles within
circles, do we make a weary journey from the high grade to the low, to
find at last that they lie close together, that the two extremes touch,
and that our journey’s end is but our starting-place? Allowing for
great difference of stuff and texture, was the pattern of this woof
repeated among gentle blood at all?
Say, Edith Dombey! And Cleopatra, best of mothers, let us have your
testimony!