HAPPINESS never stayed long with Nora Sansom. Little, indeed, had been
her portion, and it was a poor sort at best. But this new joy was so
great that it must needs be short of life; and in truth she saw good
reason. From the moment of parting with Johnny doubts had troubled her;
and doubts grew to distress--even to misery. She saw no end--no end but
sorrow. She had been carried away; she had forgotten. And in measure as
her sober senses awoke she saw that all this gladness could but end in
heart-break and bereavement. Better, then, end all quickly and have done
with the pang. But herein she misjudged her strength.
Doubts and perplexities assailed Johnny also, though for a time they grew
to nothing sharper. He would have gone home straightway, proud and
joyful, if a little sheepish, to tell his mother the tale of that
evening. But Nora had implored him to say nothing yet. She wanted time
to think things over, she said. And she left him at the familiar corner,
two streets beyond the Institute, begging him to come no farther, for
this time, at anyrate. Next evening was the evening of the dressmaking
class. He saw her for a few minutes, on her way through those two
familiar streets, and he thought she looked unwell.
A few nights later he saw her again. Plainly she had been crying. When
they came to a deserted street of shut-up wharves he asked her why.
"Only--only I've been thinking!" she said.
"What about?"
"About you, Johnny--about you and me. We--I think--we're very young,
aren't we?"
That had not struck him as a difficulty. "Well," he said, "I don't know
about that. I s'pose we are, like others. But I shall be out o' my time
in two years and a half, or not much more, and then--"
"Yes, then," she said, catching at the word, "p'raps then it will be
different--and--I mean we shall be older and know better, Johnny.
And--now--we can often see one another and talk like friends--and--" She
looked up to read his eyes, trembling.
Something cold took Johnny by the throat, and checked his voice.
"But--what--you don't mean--that?"
"Yes," she said, though it was bitter hard. "It'll be best--I'm sure,
Johnny!"
Johnny gulped, and his voice hardened. "Oh!" he said, "if you want to
throw me over you might say so, in straight English!"
"Oh--don't talk like that, Johnny!" she pleaded, and laid her hand on his
arm. "It's unkind! You know it's unkind!"
"No--it's only plain an' honest. I don't understand this half-and-half
business--seeing each other 'like friends' an' all that."
One more effort she made to hold her position--but her strength was near
gone. "It'll be better, Johnny--truly it will! You--you might meet
someone you'd like better, and--"
"That's my look-out; time to talk about that when it comes. The other
night you let me kiss you, and you kissed me back--told me you loved me.
Now you don't. Maybe you've met someone you like better."
She held out no more. Her head fell on his shoulder, and she broke into
an agony of tears. "O Johnny, Johnny, that is cruel! You don't know how
cruel it is! I shall never like anybody better than you--never half so
much. Don't be unkind! I've not one friend in the world but you, and I
do love you more than anything."
With that Johnny was ready to kick himself for a ruffian. He looked
about, but nobody else was in the shadowy street. He kissed Nora, he
called himself hard names, and he quieted her, though she still sobbed.
And there was no more talk of mere friendship. She had tried her
compromise, and had broken down. But presently Johnny ventured to ask if
she foresaw any difficulty with her parents.
"Father's dead," she said simply. "He's been dead for years." This was
the first word of her family matters that Johnny had heard. Should he
come to see her mother? The question struck her like a blow.
"No--no, Johnny," she said. "Not yet--no, you mustn't. I can't tell you
why--I can't really; at anyrate not now." Then after a pause, "O Johnny,
I'm in such trouble! Such trouble, Johnny!" And she wept again.
But tell her trouble she would not. At anyrate not then. And in the end
she left Johnny much mystified, and near as miserable as herself, because
of his blind helplessness in this unrevealed affliction.
Inexpert in mysteries, he was all incomprehension. What was this trouble
that he must not be told of? He did not even know where Nora lived. Why
shouldn't she tell him? Why did she never let him see her as far as
home? This much he knew: that she had a mother, but had lost her father
by death. And this he had but just learned from her under stress of
tears. He was not to see her mother--at least not yet. And Nora was in
sore trouble, but refused to say what the trouble was. That night he
moped and brooded. And at Maidment and Hurst's next morning--it was
Saturday--Mr. Cottam the gaffer swore, and made remarks about the
expedience of being thoroughly awake before dinner-time. More, at one
o'clock Johnny passed the pay-box without taking his money, and turned
back for it, when reminded, amid the chaff of his shopmates, many offers
of portership, and some suggestions to scramble the slighted cash.
Not far from the yard-gate he saw a small crowd of people about a
public-house; and as he neared he perceived Mother Born-drunk in the
midst of it. The publican had refused to serve her--indeed, had turned
her out--and now she swayed about his door and proclaimed him at large.
"'Shultin' a lady!" she screamed hoarsely. "Can't go in plashe 'thout
bein' 'shulted. 'Shulted by low common public-'oush. I won't 'ave it!"
"Don't you stand it, ducky!" sang out a boy. "You give 'em what for!"
For a moment she seemed inclined to turn her wrath on her natural enemy,
the boy, but her eye fell on a black bottle with a broken neck, lying in
the gutter. "Gi' 'em what for?" she hiccupped, stooping for the bottle,
"Yesh, _I'll_ gi' 'em what for!" and with that flung the bottle at the
largest window in sight.
There was a crash, a black hole in the midst of the plate glass, and a
vast "spider" of cracks to its farthest corners. Mother Born-drunk stood
and stared, perhaps a little sobered. Then a barman ran out, tucking in
his apron, and took her by the arm. There were yells and screams and
struggles, and cheers from blackguard boys; and Mother Born-drunk was
hauled off, screaming and sliding and stumbling, between a policeman and
the publican.
Johnny told his mother, when he reached home, that her old acquaintance
Emma Pacey was like to endure a spell of gaol. But what occupied his
mind was Nora's trouble, and he forgot Mother Born-drunk for three or
four days.
Then came the next evening of the dressmaking class at the Institute, and
he went, never doubting to meet Nora as she came away. At the door the
housekeeper, who was also hall-porter, beckoned, and gave him a letter,
left earlier in the day. It was addressed to him by name, in a weak and
straggling female hand, and for a moment he stared at it, not a little
surprised. When he tore open the envelope he found a blotchy,
tear-stained rag of a letter, and read this:--
"MY DEAREST JOHNNY,--It is all over now and I do hope you will
forgive me for not telling you before. This is to say good-bye and
God bless you and pray forget all about me. It was wrong of me to
let it go so far but I did love you so Johnny, and I could not help
it and then I didn't know what to do. I can never come to the
classes again with all this disgrace and everything printed in the
newspapers and I must get work somewhere where they don't know me. I
would rather die, but I must look after her as well as I can, Johnny,
because she is my mother. Burn this at once and forget all about me
and some day you will meet some nice girl belonging to a respectable
family and nothing to be ashamed of. Don't try to find me--that will
only make us both miserable. Good-bye and please forgive me.
Yours affectionately,
NORA SANSOM."
What was this? What did it all mean? He stood in the gymnasium
dressing-room to read it, and when he looked up, the gaslight danced and
the lockers spun about him. The one clear thing was that Nora said
good-bye, and was gone.
Presently his faculties assorted themselves, and he read the letter
again; and then once more. It was "all over" and she asked him to
forgive her for not telling him before. Telling him what? She told him
nothing now. She would never come to the Institute again, and he didn't
know her address, and he mustn't try to find her. But then there was
"everything printed in the newspapers." Of course, he must look at the
newspapers; why so long realising that? He went to the reading-room and
applied himself to the pile of papers and magazines that littered the
table. One paper after another he searched and searched again, but saw
nothing that he could connect with Nora, by any stretch of imagination.
Till he found a stray sheet of the day before, with rings of coffee-stain
on it. The "police intelligence" lay uppermost, and in the midst of the
column the name _Emma Sansom_, in italic letters, caught his eye. She
was forty-one, and was charged with drunkenness and wilful damage. A
sentence more, and everything stood displayed, as by a flash of
lightning; for he had witnessed the offence himself, on Saturday. Emma
Sansom was the married name of Emma Pacey, whom the boys called Mother
Born-drunk; and the woman was Nora's mother!
Now it was plain--all, from the very beginning, when the child wandered
in the night seeking her strayed and drunken mother, and inquired for her
with the shamed excuse that she was ill. This was why he was not to call
to see Nora's mother; and it was for this that Nora hindered him from
seeing her home.
There was the shameful report, all at length. The publican's tale was
simple and plain enough. He had declined to serve the prisoner because
she was drunk, and as she refused to leave, he had her turned out,
though, he said, she made no particular resistance. Shortly afterward he
heard a crash, and found a broken bottle and a great deal of broken glass
in the bar. He had gone outside, and saw the prisoner being held by his
barman. His plate-glass window was smashed, and it was worth ten pounds.
There was little more evidence. The police told his worship that the
prisoner had been fined small sums for drunkenness before, but she was
usually inoffensive, except for collecting crowds of boys. This was the
first charge against her involving damage. She was the widow of a ship's
officer lost at sea, and she had a small annuity, but was chiefly
supported of late by her daughter--a dressmaker--a very respectable young
woman. The daughter was present (the reporter called her "a
prepossessing young female in great distress"), and she wished to be
allowed to pay the damage in small instalments. But in the end her
mother was sent to prison for a month in default of payment of fine and
damage. For indeed the daughter was a minor, and her undertaking was
worthless.
One thing Johnny looked for eagerly, but did not find--the prisoner's
address. Whether consideration for the daughter had prompted the
reporter to that suppression, or whether it was due to accident, Johnny
could not guess. In other reports in the same column some addresses were
given and some not. But straightway Johnny went to beg the housekeeper
that he might rummage the store of old papers for those of the day
before. For to desert Nora now, in her trouble, was a thing wholly
inconceivable; and so far from burning the letter, he put it, envelope
and all, in his safest pocket, and felt there, more than once, to be
assured of its safety.
But the address was in none of the papers. In fact the report was in no
more than three, and in one of those it was but five lines long. What
should he do? He could not even write her one line of comfort. And he
had been going on with his work placidly all Monday while Nora had been
standing up in a police-court, weeping and imploring mercy for her
wretched mother! If he had known he could scarce have done anything to
aid her. But helplessness was no consolation--rather the cruellest of
aggravations.
Well, there stood the matter, and raving would not help it, nor would
beating the table--nor even the head--with the fist. He must somehow
devise a way to reach Nora.