PRUDENCE CALLS AT PLUMMER’S COTTAGES.
Next morning Prudence, after a restless night, was up betimes. Never in
the past had the placid, good-natured spinster known sleeplessness,
except in a very modified form. Since Augusta’s misfortune, however,
that was changed. She thought more than she ever had thought in her
life, and constant anxiety was making her face look drawn and worn. Her
brief triumph at having got her sister safely out of the house had
vanished with the unexpected and unwelcome visit of “good Mrs. Brown.”
Wearily tossing on her bed, waiting for the dawn, she pictured that
mistress of a comfortable home, pursuing her with threats; while babies,
cheques, Mrs. Dumaresq, and the medical lady whirled wildly past in a
waking dream.
At four, she rose, and beguiled the weary hours until the breakfast bell
rang, by watching the gardener sharpening his scythe to cut the grass,
and observing the sleepy maids unfastening the shutters of the opposite
houses, shaking mats, and washing the steps. She wished to go then and
there in search of her sister, her anxiety and impatience grew every
minute, and she fretted, as we all have done, at the restrictions that
prevent one paying a casual call at six in the morning, and the laziness
that fails to enforce the running of trains the twenty-four hours
through.
Not even a cab could she see. Many a time had she opened her window,
looked out, closed it again, taken a novel, put it by, looked at her
watch, walked up and down, re-arranged her hair, fidgeted, opened her
door, listened if anyone was moving, shut it and sat down, before the
welcome boom of the gong, struck by Müller’s stout arm, announced the
first meal of the day.
Poor Miss Prudence made but a dismal pretence at eating. She knew that
her queer visitor of the previous evening was remembered and discussed,
and she felt that every morsel of bread would choke her. She crumbled a
slice on her plate, drank a cup of tea, and then rose hastily from
table. Consciousness of terrible guilt could scarcely have made her more
miserable than she, good innocent creature, was at the moment.
Guilty people usually have a certain hardness of nature that makes them
indifferent to the opinion of others, while Prudence, with all her woes
upon her head, was a timid, unsheltered, soft-hearted body, to whom an
angry or contemptuous glance was as bad as a blow.
By half-past nine she had donned a black bonnet and mantle, and had left
the house, carrying in her hand an envelope on which she had written
“good Mrs. Brown’s” address. She hailed a passing omnibus that was going
in the direction, and, still pursued by her sombre thoughts, tried to
imagine what she should do with Augusta if, as she feared, Mrs. Brown’s
house was not the happy home she had anticipated.
Plummer’s Cottages were not easy to find. No one knew where they, were;
but then every civilian of whom one asks the way in London is sure to be
a stranger, so Prudence applied to a stalwart policeman.
“If I was you, mum, I shouldn’t wenture,” he said, “they’re a low lot
down there.”
“But I must,” urged Prudence nervously.
“Well, if you must, take the fourth to the right, and then the second to
the left, and the first to the right again. That’s Barker’s Rents. You
walks straight past the Model Dwellings, which models they are, and
you’ll find Plummer’s Cottages.”
Prudence, having laboriously counted her streets, followed his
directions. The second turn to the left brought her into a dingy byway,
and the first to the right again into a slum. Barker’s Rents towered up
to the sky, and at the door of the Model Dwellings a group of slatternly
women were discussing personal topics with much freedom, and a running
accompaniment of “sez he,” “sez I,” and “sez she.”
No. 42 was an inconspicuous cottage, with a battered green door, reached
by a single step. Prudence knocked at it with the handle of her umbrella
without any response. She repeated the summons, but in vain, and, having
shaken the door, which resisted her efforts to open it, she endeavoured
to peep through the dingy window. Her proceedings excited considerable
interest amongst the ladies standing at the Model Dwellings, as indeed
amongst all the residents in the neighbourhood, who came out by twos and
threes until at last, Prudence, turning round, was surprised and alarmed
to find herself the centre of an unwashed and, to her eyes, menacing
crowd.
“’Tis no good your rapping,” said a burly woman, pushing her way
through. “There ain’t no one there. The ’ouse is empty.”
“Empty!” ejaculated Prudence. “Since when?”
“They cleared out last night like winking.”
“Oh, but there must be some mistake. I am looking for a Mrs. Brown.”
“You bet!” said the woman, addressing the crowd, “she’s one o’ them.
Nice lot she must be to ’and ’er own flesh an’ blood hover to Sal
Brown.”
The crowd signified approval of this view by a series of hoots and cat
calls.
“But I don’t know what you mean,” cried the frightened and bewildered
Prudence, “I want to find a Mrs. Brown, who told me her address was 42,
Plummer’s Cottages, and now that I come here, I find the place shut up
and you say the woman is gone. Can anyone tell me where to find her?”
“I’ll tell ye fast enough,” said the burly woman. “She’s in the lock-up,
Sal Brown is; she’s to be brought up before the beak to-day on a drunk
and disorderly.”
“But good gracious! my sister! Where——where is the child she was taking
care of?”
“Oh! so you _are_ one o’ them. A nice ’uzzy you must be to give an
innercent byby hover to Sal. Blest if you’ll find it alive, an’ no doubt
that’s wot you wants. The perlice made a swoop on the lot last night,
an’ they say the Sercierty for the Prewention o’ Cruelty to Children’s
carted ’em off somewhere. I wish you just saw ’em, so I do.”
“Them? What do you mean by them?”
“As if yer didn’t know! Wy, the hinfants to be sure. The Sercierty took
the whole fifteen o’ them, an’ now they’re going to try to find the
parients. They’ll be glad to ’ear of you. They’ll ’ave somethink to say
t’ you wen they sees yer.”
“Fifteen infants! Why what do you mean? I only know of one child that
was given over to Mrs. Brown to take care of. She wanted to adopt it.
She said she was a respectable married woman, and would give it a
comfortable home.”
A burst of jeering laughter greeted this.
“Precious comfortable,” said a thin woman, “with Sal on the booze! Wy
d’you mean to tell us you didn’t know she wer a reglar wrong un?”
“A wrong one?”
“Yes, farmed kids and that?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” protested Prudence tearfully.
“Well, y’are a deep ’un, or a softy, blest if I know which, not t’ve
found all about ’er from the start, if yer not lyin’, as is most
likely.”
“But what am I to do?”
“Dunno. You go ’long to the perlice station, an’ p’raps the bobbies’ll
tell you.”
“Where is it?” asked Prudence wearily.
Several of the women pointed out the direction, and followed by a little
procession of interested but shock-headed observers, who made
unfavourable comments on her manners, morals, and appearance, the
younger Miss Semaphore took her way, for the first time in her life, to
the police station, and made tearful enquiries of a constable at the
door.
“Step this way, ma’am,” said he.
While the disappointed crowd hung about, and, foreseeing no startling or
tragic _dénouement_, gradually melted away, Prudence was ushered into
the presence of a severe official seated at a table covered with neatly
docketed papers.
The constable, a fresh-coloured young fellow from the country, saluted.
“Please, sir, this person’s called about the Plummer’s Cottages Baby
Farming Case. Says she’s mother to one of the hinfants.”
“Sister,” corrected Miss Semaphore timidly. “I am not a married lady, my
good man.”
“Will you kindly state your business,” said the inspector, after an
awful pause, during which he took no notice of the presence of Prudence,
but went on writing stolidly.
Prudence told how a few days ago she had entrusted her sister to the
care of a woman named Brown, and had paid her two sums of twenty and
thirty pounds respectively. That now she found the woman had left the
address given to her, that the house was shut up, and, having been told
Mrs. Brown was under arrest, she had come to the station to make
enquiries and to discover, if possible, the whereabouts of her sister.
The narrative was told in broken words interrupted by many sighs and
tears.
Inspector Smith had made a reputation in connection with baby farming
cases, and he looked on this Plummer’s Cottages business as one of the
worst transactions of the kind he had ever come across. Sal Brown he
considered less guilty than the wicked and unnatural parents who had
delivered over their offsprings to her. What he inwardly designated the
“crocodile tears” of Prudence did not move him a whit, and he surveyed
her with manifest disfavour. She might of course be a dupe, but he
inclined to believe her a criminal.
“Do you say that the child in question is your sister?”
“Yes.”
“But did you not tell the constable just now that you were her mother?”
“Oh dear no! He misunderstood me. I only said I had come to enquire
about a child.”
“But you must be aware that all the children found at the woman’s house
were extremely young—infants in fact. None of them were over two years
of age.”
“My sister is”—Prudence hesitated—“extremely young.”
“Well,” said the Inspector doubtfully, “of course I cannot compel you to
speak the truth. They’ll do that elsewhere. The babies are mostly in a
terrible way, starved, dirty, and diseased. We are trying to trace their
parents, as several names and addresses were found in the possession of
Brown, and you would probably have been subpœnæd to give evidence at her
trial. Meantime the children have been taken to the workhouse.”
What all this portended Prudence scarcely grasped. One fact, and one
fact alone, stood out luridly before her. Augusta was in the workhouse.
“Oh!” she gasped in dismay, “in the workhouse! My sister in the
workhouse. Where is it? Let me go at once. I must take her away.”
“I think you had better not attempt to do anything of the kind,” said
the Inspector stiffly. “The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children has taken the matter up, and you’ll hear more of it later. You
had better just leave the child alone. She is in good hands now anyway,
very different from those you put her into. My advice to you is to keep
quiet. You’ll see her all right later on, and may be you’ll have to tell
your share in the case.”
“My share in the case is easily told,” said poor Prudence. “As I
explained to you already, I thought I was placing her in a good home,
with a kind, respectable woman, but it seems I was mistaken.”
If anyone has formed an opinion that another is wily, the simplest
speech or action tends to confirm it. In the heart-moving accents of
Prudence, Inspector Smith heard only duplicity. In her open, though
tear-stained, countenance he read nothing but low cunning.
“It’s quite wonderful,” he said coldly, “to see how easy it is to
deceive people when it is to their interests to be deceived; they ask no
questions and they are told no lies, and a troublesome baby is got rid
of, that’s how it is.”
“Well, I did want to get rid of her for a little time,” admitted
Prudence, with the characteristic foolish candour that so often covers
the innocent with suspicion, “because it was not convenient to have her
where I live. If you knew the circumstances, sir, you would feel for me.
They are very peculiar and extraordinary, but indeed I asked questions
and Mrs. Brown told me lies.”
The Inspector looked at her under his shaggy brows, he did not quite
know what to make of her simplicity. She was either an admirable actress
or else—she seemed really white and ill and frightened, but with that
kind of woman one never knew how much was “fake.”
“Will you please give me your full name and address,” he said.
“Prudence Elizabeth Semaphore, 37, Beaconsfield Gardens, South
Kensington.”
“Condition?”
“Sir.”
“Condition, married or single?”
“I am unmarried, as you must have heard me say to the constable.”
“Unmarried, hem. Age?”
“Age?”
“Yes, age. How old are you?”
“That, sir,” said Prudence with dignity, “is no concern of yours; I
decline to answer.”
“Well,” said the Inspector grimly, “I won’t press the question. Perhaps
you may answer it later. That’ll do,” and with a nod he dismissed her.
“But the workhouse where my sister is, where is it? How can I get
there?”
“She is at St. Mark’s Workhouse, but you had better leave her alone.”
“Would you mind,” said Prudence pleadingly, “writing down the name and
the name of the street where it is situated? I must go there at once.”
“Oh, you can remember well enough,” said the Inspector rather gruffly.
“St. Mark’s Workhouse, Bush Street.”
With this Prudence had to be content.