In Liverpool there are, perhaps more than in any town in the world, all
sorts and conditions of men. The very wealthy and the very poor are to
be found within its precincts--also the very good and the very bad. Its
slums are black and awful; but it also contains some of the finest
public buildings, some of the most massive and comfortable houses, and
without any exception the largest and greatest docks, in the world. All
nationalities come to Liverpool. It sees life from beyond the seas, it
has a population of people always coming and going--Americans who go to
the theatre in London and arrive in Liverpool about three in the
morning, on their return to their own country; Irishmen, Scotchmen,
dwellers in Africa; in fact, people from all parts of the civilized
world find their way to Liverpool, to return from thence by way of the
sea to their native lands. On certain days in the week the hotels and
lodging-houses are packed to overflowing; the different piers present
scenes of activity and bustle; the great ships come and go, and the
people come and go with them--Liverpool is passed through and forgotten.
That is the case with those fleeting crowds who so largely contribute
to its trade and prosperity; but the _habitue'_ of Liverpool, the man
who spends his days there, is a totally different order of being. The
stranger sees the great city most generally through mist and fog; he
regards the pavements as rough and slippery; he thinks the public
buildings large, but ugly. Liverpool to him is another London, but
without London's attractions. But the true Liverpool man looks at his
native town from a very different point of view. He is part and parcel
of the place, and he loves it for its size and ugliness, its great
commerce, its thriving active business life. Liverpool to its citizens
means home; they are proud of their laws and their customs; they like
to dispense charity in their own way; they like to support and help
their own poor; they have, to an extent absolutely unknown in London,
the true spirit of neighborliness. This spirit is shared by all alike,
the rich and the poor feel it, and it binds them together; they regard
their town as the world, and look askance at inventions and ideas
imported from other places. There are bad slums in Liverpool, and
wicked deeds committed, and cruel rough men to be found in multitudes;
but the evil there compared to London seems at least to be
conquerable--the slums can be got at; nobody who chooses to apply in
the right quarter need die of famine or distress.
Most of the men are dock-laborers; they are often taken on only for
half a day at a time, and in this way their work is precarious, and,
except for the most steady-going and respectable, at many periods of
the year very hard to get. Almost all the men either work at the docks,
or take to a sea-faring life. Thus sailors are coming and going, and
there is scarcely a family belonging either to high or low who has not
a son, a brother, or a father on the sea. Perhaps this is one of the
facts which binds the people to one another--the rich lady in her
carriage, and the poor starved, gaunt woman who lives in one room up
many pairs of stairs in a dismal back slum, look alike out on the
waters of the Mersey for the boy who may come back any day with the
taste of the sea about him.
The Liverpool boy has his work cut out for him; those who wish to
belong emphatically to the place of their birth, either earn what they
can at the docks or go to sea. They need never debate as to their
profession or their calling in life; it is cut out for them--it lies at
their feet with that sea which is brought by the ships to their very
doors.
But the Liverpool girl--that is, the girl of the people--is not so
fortunate. She has no special work provided for her; she is not like
the Manchester girl, who is as certain to go into the factory as she is
to eat and drink--there are scarcely any factories in Liverpool, and a
very tiny proportion of girls find work there.
Domestic service is hated by the Liverpool lass. At one time, when
forced by necessity to adopt this means of earning her bread, she made
a stipulation that she should at least sleep at home--that her evenings
from seven o'clock out should be her own. Now that this rule is no
longer allowed, domestic service is held in less esteem than ever, and
only the most sensible girls dream of availing themselves of its
comforts.
While the boys, therefore, are earning and striking out independent
paths for themselves, the girls are under difficulties. They must earn
money; for life is not too easy to live in their native place, and each
must bring in his or her small portion of help to the family purse; but
how, is the difficulty. Some hawk fruit and vegetables, doing a fairly
brisk trade on Saturdays, and even on Sunday mornings; but the most
favored Liverpool girls earn their daily bread by selling newspapers
night after night in the streets. A good-looking girl will secure her
regular customers, have her own regular and undisturbed beat, and will
often earn from tenpence to a shilling a night; but the newspaper beats
have to be bought, and often at a high figure, for competition is very
keen, and the coveted corners where the greater number of gentlemen are
to be met that require evening papers are highly prized.
Bet Granger had been a newspaper girl for a couple of years now; her
mother had saved up money to buy her beat for her; it was one of the
best in the town, and she was always so trim and neat, so comely and
pleasant-looking, and her papers so clean and crisp and neatly cut,
that she did a fair trade, and largely helped to support her mother and
little brothers. Her trade occupied her for a couple of hours every
evening. In the morning, as the mood took her, she helped her mother
with plain needlework--Mrs. Granger worked for a wholesale shop at the
usual shop prices--or she went down to the docks.
Every Liverpool girl is fond of watching the ships as they come in or
go out; they connect her with the outer life, with the far-away
world--they give her a pleasing and ever-recurring sense of excitement
and exhilaration; but, as a rule, they never implant in her breast that
fever to be off and away which so soon affects the Liverpool boy.
Bet liked to watch the ships. She would stand erect and almost haughty
in her bearing, often quite close to the edge of the quays, speaking
very few words, and making scarcely any acquaintances, but thinking
many strange and undefined thoughts in her untutored heart.
The Grangers did not belong to the lowest of the people. Granger was a
clever workman. He was seldom out of employment; for although he drank
away his earnings, and gave no thought whatever to the comfort of his
wife and children, he was sober and steady by day. He had a clever,
shrewd head, as yet unaffected by drink, and he did the work allotted
to him in a superior manner to most of his class.
When first they were married, he and his wife had two bright, cheery
rooms. They were well furnished, and things promised brightly for the
couple. Granger, however, was the son of a drunkard, and the sins of
the father were soon to be abundantly visited on him. Mrs. Granger
meant well, but her religion was not of an inspiriting kind. Whenever
she saw her husband the worse for drink she reproached him, and spoke
to him about hell-fire. He soon ceased to care for her; and even when
Bet was a tiny child she scarcely ever remembered an evening which did
not find her mother in tears, and her father returning home, having
taken a great deal more than was good for him.
Years went by; children were born, only to live for a day or two and to
pass away. Mrs. Granger became more broken-down and unhappy-looking
every year, and Bet grew into a tall, comely girl. She was not
particularly gentle, nor particularly amiable, and she had the worst
possible training for such a nature as hers; but nevertheless she had a
certain nobility about her. For instance, no one had ever heard
Elizabeth Granger tell a lie. She was proud of her truthfulness, which
was simply the result of courage. She was afraid of no one, and no
circumstance had ever caused her cheek to blanch with fear. She quickly
acquired a name for truth and honesty of purpose, and then pride helped
her to live up to her character. She was not very quick to give
promises, but she often boasted that, once she gave one, nothing would
ever induce her to break it. She was very fiery and hot-tempered, but
as a rule she did not fly out about trifles, and there was a certain
grandeur about her nature which accorded well with her fine physique
and upright bearing.
Bet was an only child for several years. It is true that many little
brothers and sisters had been carried away to the cemetery, but none
lived until two puny boys put in so feeble an appearance that the
neighbors thought the miserable thing called life could not exist in
their tiny persons more than a day or two. They were twins, and Mrs.
Granger nearly died when she gave them birth. The neighbors said that
it would be a good thing if the broken-down mother and the babes that
nobody wanted all went away together.
"There's a deal too many children in the world," they said; "it would
be good if they was took, poor lambs."
But here Bet, who overheard the words, gave way to one of her bursts of
fury. She turned the offending but well-disposed neighbors out of the
room; she locked the door, and kneeling down by the babies, gave them a
perfect baptism of tears and kisses.
"Who says as they're not wanted?" she sobbed. "I want 'em--I'm allays
a-wanting something, and maybe they'll fill my heart."
From this moment she constituted herself the babies' devoted nurse; and
so, after a fashion, they throve, and did not die.
The darker the times grew for Mrs. Granger the more she clung to her
religion. She had a real belief, a real although dim faith. The belief
supported her tottering steps, and the faith kept her worn spirit from
utterly fainting; but they did nothing to illumine or render happy the
lives of those about her. She believed intensely in a God who punished.
He saved--she knew He saved--but only through fire. In the dark winter
evenings she poured out her stern thoughts, her unlovely ideas, into
the ears of her young daughter. As a child Bet listened in terror; as a
woman she simply ceased to believe.
"Ef God were like that, she'd have nought to do with Him,"--this was
her thought of thoughts. She refused to accompany her mother to chapel
on Sundays; she left the room when the Bible was read aloud; she made
one or two friends for herself, and these friends were certainly not of
her mother's choosing. She could read, and she loved novels--indeed,
she would devour books of any kind, but she had to hide them from her
mother, who thought it her duty, as she valued her daughter's immortal
soul, to commit them to the flames.
The mother loved the girl, and never ceased to wrestle in prayer for
her, and to believe she would shine as a jewel in her crown some day;
and the girl also cared for the mother, respecting her stern sense of
duty, admiring the length of her prayers, wondering at her ceaseless
devotion; but both were outwardly hard to the other, showing no
softness, and speaking of no love.
All Bet's up-bringing was hardening; and but for the presence of the
boys she might have wondered if she possessed any heart at all.
She was nineteen when her mother suddenly broke down completely in
health, and after the shortest of illnesses--too short to alarm anyone,
too short for even the word danger to be whispered--closed her eyes on
this world, leaving Bet in a state of bewildered and impotent rage.
There was no longer the faintest doubt in her orphaned heart that she
loved her mother.