Little Meg as a Mourner
For the next day, and the night following, the corpse of the mother lay
silent and motionless in the room where her three children were living.
Meg cried bitterly at first; but there was Robin to be comforted, and
the baby to be played with when it laughed and crowed in her face.
Robin was nearly six years old, and had gained a vague, dim knowledge
of death by having followed, with a troop of other curious children,
many a funeral that had gone out from the dense and dirty dwellings to
the distant cemetery, where he had crept forward to the edge of the
grave, and peeped down into what seemed to him a very dark and dreadful
depth. When little Meg told him mother was dead, and lifted him up to
kneel on the bedside and kiss her icy lips for the last time, his
childish heart was filled with an awe which almost made him shrink from
the sight of that familiar face, scarcely whiter or more sunken now
than it had been for many a day past. But the baby stroked the quiet
cheeks, whilst chuckling and kicking in Meg's arms, and shouted, 'Mam!
mam! mam!' until she caught it away, and pressing it tightly to her
bosom, sat down on the floor by the bed, weeping.
'You've got no mam but me now, baby,' cried little Meg. She sat still
for a while, with Robin lying on the ground beside her, his face hidden
in her ragged frock; but the baby set up a pitiful little wail, and she
put aside her own grief to soothe it.
'Hush! hush!' sang Meg, getting up, and walking with baby about the
room. 'Hush, hush, my baby dear! By-by, my baby, by-by!'
Meg's sorrowful voice sank into a low, soft, sleepy tone, and presently
the baby fell fast asleep, when she laid it upon Robin's little
mattress, and covered it up gently with an old shawl. Robin was
standing at the foot of the bed, gazing at his mother with wide-open,
tearless eyes; and little Meg softly drew the sheet again over the pale
and rigid face.
'Robbie,' she said, 'let's sit in the window a bit.'
They had to climb up to the narrow window-sill by a broken chair which
stood under it; but when they were there, and Meg had her arm round
Robin, to hold him safe, they could see down into Angel Court, and into
the street beyond, with its swarms of busy and squalid people. Upon
the stone pavement far below them a number of children of every age and
size, but all ill-clothed and ill-fed, were crawling about, in and out
of the houses, and their cries and shrieks came up to them in their
lofty seat; but of late their mother had not let them run out to play
in the streets, and they were mostly strangers to them except by sight.
Now and then Meg and Robin cast a glance inwards at the quiet and still
form of their mother, lying as if silently watching them with her
half-closed eyes, and when they spoke to one another they spoke in
whispers.
'Mother is going to live with the angels,' said Meg.
'What are angels?' asked Robin, his glittering black eyes glancing at
the bed where she lay in her deep sleep.
'Oh, I'm not quite sure,' answered Meg. 'Only they're beautiful
people, who are always white and clean, and shining, like that big
white cloud up in the sky. They live somewhere up in the sky, where
it's always sunny, and bright, and blue.'
'How 'll mother get up there?' inquired Robin.
'Well, I suppose,' replied Meg, after some reflection, 'after they've
put her in the ground, the angels 'll come and take her away. I read
once of a poor beggar, oh such a poor beggar! full of sores, and he
died, and the angels carried him away somewhere. I thought, may be,
they'd come for mother in the night; but I suppose they let people be
buried first now, and fetch 'em away after.'
'I should like to see some angels,' said Robin.
They were silent again after that, looking down upon the quarrelling
children, and the drunken men and women staggering about the yard
below. Now and then a sharper scream rang through the court, as some
angry mother darted out to cuff one or another of the brawling groups,
or to yell some shrill reproach at the drunken men. No sound came to
the ears of the listening children except the din and jarring tumult of
the crowded city; but they could see the white clouds floating slowly
across the sky over their heads, which seemed to little Meg like the
wings of the waiting angels, hovering over the place where her mother
lay dead.
'Meg,' said Robin, 'why do they call this Angel Court? Did the angels
use to live here?'
'I don't think they ever could,' she answered sadly, 'or it must have
been a long, long time ago. Perhaps they can't come here now, so
they're waiting for mother to be taken out to the burying-ground afore
they can carry her up to the sky. May be that's it.'
'Meg,' whispered Robin, pressing closer to her side, 'what's the devil?'
'Oh, I don't know,' cried Meg; 'only he's dreadfully, dreadfully
wicked.'
'As wicked as father is when he's drunk?' asked Robin.
'Oh, a hundred million times wickeder,' answered Meg eagerly. 'Father
doesn't get drunk often; and you mustn't be a naughty boy and talk
about it.'
It was already a point of honour with little Meg to throw a cloak over
her father's faults; and she spoke so earnestly that Robin was strongly
impressed by it. He asked no more questions for some time.
'Meg,' he said at last, 'does the devil ever come here?'
'I don't think he does,' answered Meg, with a shrewd shake of her small
head; 'I never see him, never. Folks are bad enough without him, I
guess. No, no; you needn't be frightened of seeing him, Robbie.'
'I wish there wasn't any devil,' said Robin.
'I wish everybody in London was good,' said Meg.
They sat a while longer on the window-sill, watching the sparrows, all
fluffy and black, fluttering and chattering upon the house-tops, and
the night fog rising from the unseen river, and hiding the tall masts,
which towered above the buildings. It was dark already in the court
below; and here and there a candle had been lit and placed in a window,
casting a faint twinkle of light upon the gloom. The baby stirred, and
cried a little; and Meg lifted Robin down from his dangerous seat, and
put two or three small bits of coal upon the fire, to boil up the
kettle for their tea. She had done it often before, at the bidding of
her mother; but it seemed different now. Mother's voice was silent,
and Meg had to think of everything herself. Soon after tea was over
she undressed Robin and the baby, who soon fell asleep again; and when
all her work was over, and the fire put out, little Meg crept in beside
them on the scanty mattress, with her face turned towards the bed, that
she might see the angels if they came to carry her mother away. But
before long her eyelids drooped over her drowsy eyes, and, with her arm
stretched lightly across both her children, she slept soundly till
daybreak.
No angels had come in the night; but early in the morning a
neighbouring undertaker, with two other men, and Mr Grigg, the
landlord, who lived on the ground-floor, carried away the light burden
of the coffin which contained Meg's mother. She waited until all were
gone, and then she locked the door carefully, and with baby in her
arms, and Robin holding by her frock, she followed the funeral at a
distance, and with difficulty, through the busy streets. The brief
burial service was ended before they reached the cemetery, but Meg was
in time to show Robin the plate upon the coffin before the grave-digger
shovelled down great spadefuls of earth upon it. They stood watching,
with sad but childish curiosity, till all was finished; and then Meg,
with a heavy and troubled heart, took them home again to their lonely
attic in Angel Court.