My employer was a Polish Jew, named Israel Abramovitch.
He had come to England at the time of the religious persecution in the
Holy Cities of Russia, set himself up in his trade as a tailor in a
garret in Whitechapel, hired a "Singer," worked with "green" labour for
"slop" warehouses, and become in less than twenty years the richest
foreign Jew in the East End of London, doing some of the "best bespoke"
work for the large shops in the West and having the reputation (as I
afterwards found) of being the greatest of Jewish "sweaters."
In spite of this, however, he was in his own way a deeply religious man.
Strict, severe, almost superstitious in obeying the Levitical laws and
in practising the sad and rather gloomy symbolism of his faith. A famous
Talmudist, a pillar of the synagogue, one of the two wardens of the
Chevra in Brick Lane, and consequently a great upholder of moral
rectitude.
His house seemed to be a solid mass of human beings, chiefly Jewish
girls, who worked all day, and sometimes (when regulations could be
evaded or double gangs engaged) all night, for the Jew drove everybody
at high speed, not excepting his wife, who cooked the food and pressed
the clothes at the same time.
In this hive of industry I needed no spur to make me work.
Every morning Mrs. Abramovitch brought up a thick pile of vests to my
room, and every evening she took them down again, after counting my
earnings with almost preternatural rapidity and paying me, day by day,
with unfailing promptitude.
At the end of my first week I found I had made ten shillings. I was
delighted, but after I had paid for my room and my food there was not
enough for baby's board, so the second week I worked later in the
evenings, and earned fourteen shillings. This was still insufficient,
therefore I determined to take something from the other end of the day.
"Morning will be better," I thought, remembering the painful noises at
night, especially about midnight, when people were being thrown out of a
public-house higher up the street, where there was a placard in the
window saying the ale sold there could be guaranteed to "make anybody
drunk for fourpence."
Unfortunately (being a little weak) I was always heavy in the mornings,
but by great luck my room faced the east, so I conceived the idea of
moving my bed up to the window and drawing my blinds to the top so that
the earliest light might fall on my face and waken me.
This device succeeded splendidly, and for many weeks of the late summer
and early autumn I was up before the sun, as soon as the dawn had
broadened and while the leaden London daylight was filtering through the
smoke of yesterday.
By this means I increased my earnings to sixteen shillings, and, as my
fingers learned to fly over their work, to seventeen and even eighteen.
That was my maximum, and though it left a narrow margin for other needs
it enabled me at the end of a month to pay another pound for baby's
board and to put away a little towards her "shortening," which Mrs.
Oliver was always saying must be soon.
I had to stick close to maintain this average, and I grudged even the
time occupied in buying and eating my food, though that was not a long
process in the Mile End Road, which is full of shops where things can be
bought ready cooked. After the first week I did not even need to go out
for them, for they were brought round to my room every morning, thus
enabling me to live without leaving my work.
It was a stiff life, perhaps, but let nobody think I looked upon myself
as a slave. Though I worked so hard I felt no self-pity. The thought
that I was working for my child sweetened all my labours. It was such a
joy to think that baby depended upon me for everything she wanted.
Being so happy in those days I sang a great deal, though naturally not
in the middle of the day, when our house was going like a mill-wheel,
but in the early mornings before the electric trams began to clang, or
the hawkers with their barrows to shout, and when there was no sound
even in the East End except that ceaseless tramp, tramp, tramp in the
front street which always made me think of the children of Israel in
Egypt drawing burdens for Pharaoh.
Throwing open my window I sang all sorts of things, but, being such a
child myself and so fond of make-believe, I loved best to sing my
lullaby, and so pretend that baby was with me in my room, lying asleep
behind me in my bed.
"_Sleep, little baby, I love thee, I love thee,
Sleep, little Queen, I am bending above thee_."
I never knew that I had any other audience than a lark in a cage on the
other side of the street (perhaps I was in a cage myself, though I did
not think of that then) which always started singing when I sang, except
the washerwomen from a Women's Shelter going off at four to their work
at the West End, and two old widows opposite who sewed Bibles and
stitched cassocks, which being (so Miriam told me) the worst-paid of all
sweated labour compelled them to be up as early as myself.
It was not a very hopeful environment, yet for some time, in my little
top room, I was really happy.
I saw baby every day. Between six and nine every night, I broke off work
to go to Ilford, saying nothing about my errand to anybody, and leaving
the family of the Jew to think it was my time for recreation.
Generally I "trammed" it from Bow Church, because I was so eager to get
to my journey's end, but usually I returned on foot, for though the
distance was great I thought I slept better for the walk.
What joyful evenings those were!
Perhaps I was not altogether satisfied about the Olivers, but that did
not matter very much. On closer acquaintance I found my baby's nurse to
be a "heedless" and "feckless" woman; and though I told myself that all
allowances must be made for her in having a bad husband, I knew in my
secret heart that I was deceiving myself, and that I ought to listen to
the voices that were saying "Your child is being neglected."
Sometimes it seemed to me that baby had not been bathed--but that only
gave me an excuse for bathing her myself.
Sometimes I thought her clothes were not as clean as they might be--but
that only gave me the joy of washing them.
Sometimes I was sure that her feeding-bottle had not been rinsed and her
milk was not quite fresh--but that only gave me the pleasure of scalding
the one and boiling the other.
More than once it flashed upon me that I was paying Mrs. Oliver to do
all this--but then what a deep delight it was to be mothering my own
baby!
Thus weeks and months passed--it is only now I know how many, for in
those days Time itself had nothing in it for me except my child--and
every new day brought the new joy of watching my baby's development.
Oh, how wonderful it all was! To see her little mind and soul coming out
of the Unknown! Out of the silence and darkness of the womb into the
world of light and sound!
First her sense of sight, with her never-ending interest in her dear
little toes! Then her senses of touch and hearing, and the gift of
speech, beginning with a sort of crow, and ending in the "ma-ma-ma"
which the first time I heard it went prancing through and through me and
was more heavenly to my ears than the music of the spheres!
What evenings of joy I had with her!
The best of them (God forgive me!) were the nights when the bricklayer
had got into some trouble by "knocking people about" at the "Rising Sun"
and his wife had to go off to rescue him from the police.
Then, baby being "shortened," I would prop her up in her cot while I
sang "Sally" to her; or if that did not serve, and her little lip
continued to drop, I both sang and danced, spreading my skirts and
waltzing to the tune of "Clementina" while the kettle hummed over the
fire and the bricklayer's kitchen buzzed softly like a hive of bees.
Oh dear! Oh dear! I may have been down in the depths, yet there is no
place so dark that it may not be brightened by a sunbeam, and my sunbeam
was my child.
And then Martin--baby was constantly making me think of him. Devouring
her with my eyes, I caught resemblances every day--in her eyes, her
voice, her smile, and, above all, in that gurgling laugh that was like
water bubbling out of a bottle.
I used to talk to her about him, pouring all my sentimental secrets into
her ears, just as if she understood, telling her what a great man her
father had been and how he loved both of us--_would_ have done if he had
lived longer.
I dare say it was very foolish. Yet I cannot think it was all
foolishness. Many and many a time since I have wondered if the holy
saints, who knew what had really happened to Martin, were whispering all
this in my ear as a means of keeping my love for him as much alive as if
he had been constantly by my side.
The climax came when Isabel was about five months old, for then the
feeling about baby and Martin reached another and higher phase.
I hardly dare to speak of it, lest it should seem silly when it was
really so sacred and so exalted.
The idea I had had before baby was born, that she was being sent to
console me (to be a link between my lost one and me), developed into the
startling and rapturous thought that the very soul of Martin had passed
into my child.
"So Martin is not dead at all," I thought, "not really dead, because he
lives in baby."
It is impossible to say how this thought stirred me; how it filled my
heart with thankfulness; how I prayed that the little body in which the
soul of my Martin had come to dwell might grow beautiful and strong and
worthy of him; how I felt charged with another and still greater
responsibility to guard and protect her with my life itself if need be.
"Yes, yes, my very life itself," I thought.
Perhaps this was a sort of delirium, born of my great love, my hard
work, and my failing strength. I did not know, I did not care.
All that mattered to me then was one thing only--that whereas hitherto I
had thought Martin was so far gone from me that not Time but only
Eternity would bring us together, now I felt that he was coming back and
back to me--nearer and nearer and nearer every day.