III

Mrs Bowerbank had let her know she would meet her, almost at the

threshold of the dreadful place; and this thought had sustained Miss

Pynsent in her long and devious journey, performed partly on foot,

partly in a succession of omnibuses. She had had ideas about a cab, but

she decided to reserve the cab for the return, as then, very likely,

she should be so shaken with emotion, so overpoweringly affected, that

it would be a comfort to escape from observation. She had no confidence

that if once she passed the door of the prison she should ever be

restored to liberty and her customers; it seemed to her an adventure as

dangerous as it was dismal, and she was immensely touched by the

clear-faced eagerness of the child at her side, who strained forward as

brightly as he had done on another occasion, still celebrated in Miss

Pynsent’s industrious annals, a certain sultry Saturday in August, when

she had taken him to the Tower. It had been a terrible question with

her, when once she made up her mind, what she should tell him about the

nature of their errand. She determined to tell him as little as

possible, to say only that she was going to see a poor woman who was in

prison on account of a crime she had committed years before, and who

had sent for her, and caused her to be told at the same time that if

there was any child she could see—as children (if they were good) were

bright and cheering—it would make her very happy that such a little

visitor should come as well. It was very difficult, with Hyacinth, to

make reservations or mysteries; he wanted to know everything about

everything, and he projected the light of a hundred questions upon Miss

Pynsent’s incarcerated friend. She had to admit that she had been her

friend (for where else was the obligation to go to see her?); but she

spoke of the acquaintance as if it were of the slightest (it had

survived in the memory of the prisoner only because every one else—the

world was so very hard!—had turned away from her), and she

congratulated herself on a happy inspiration when she represented the

crime for which such a penalty had been exacted as the theft of a gold

watch, in a moment of irresistible temptation. The woman had had a

wicked husband, who maltreated and deserted her, and she was very poor,

almost starving, dreadfully pressed. Hyacinth listened to her history

with absorbed attention, and then he said—

“And hadn’t she any children—hadn’t she a little boy?”

This inquiry seemed to Miss Pynsent a portent of future embarrassments,

but she met it as bravely as she could, and replied that she believed

the wretched victim of the law had had (once upon a time) a very small

baby, but she was afraid she had completely lost sight of it. He must

know they didn’t allow babies in prisons. To this Hyacinth rejoined

that of course they would allow him, because he was—really—big. Miss

Pynsent fortified herself with the memory of her other pilgrimage, to

Newgate, upwards of ten years before; she had escaped from that ordeal,

and had even had the comfort of knowing that in its fruits the

interview had been beneficent. The responsibility, however, was much

greater now, and, after all, it was not on her own account she was in a

nervous tremor, but on that of the urchin over whom the shadow of the

house of shame might cast itself.

They made the last part of their approach on foot, having got

themselves deposited as near as possible to the river and keeping

beside it (according to advice elicited by Miss Pynsent, on the way, in

a dozen confidential interviews with policemen, conductors of

omnibuses, and small shopkeepers), till they came to a big, dark

building with towers, which they would know as soon as they looked at

it. They knew it, in fact, soon enough, when they saw it lift its dusky

mass from the bank of the Thames, lying there and sprawling over the

whole neighbourhood, with brown, bare, windowless walls, ugly,

truncated pinnacles, and a character unspeakably sad and stern. It

looked very sinister and wicked, to Miss Pynsent’s eyes, and she

wondered why a prison should have such an evil face if it was erected

in the interest of justice and order—an expression of the righteous

forces of society. This particular penitentiary struck her as about as

bad and wrong as those who were in it; it threw a blight over the whole

place and made the river look foul and poisonous, and the opposite

bank, with its protrusion of long-necked chimneys, unsightly gasometers

and deposits of rubbish, wear the aspect of a region at whose expense

the jail had been populated. She looked up at the dull, closed gates,

tightening her grasp of Hyacinth’s small hand; and if it was hard to

believe anything so blind and deaf and closely fastened would relax

itself to let her in, there was a dreadful premonitory sinking of the

heart attached to the idea of its taking the same trouble to let her

out. As she hung back, murmuring vague ejaculations, at the very goal

of her journey, an incident occurred which fanned all her scruples and

reluctances into life again. The child suddenly jerked his hand out of

her own, and placing it behind him, in the clutch of the other, said to

her respectfully but resolutely, while he planted himself at a

considerable distance—

“I don’t like this place.”

“Neither do I like it, my darling,” cried the dressmaker, pitifully.

“Oh, if you knew how little!”

“Then we will go away. I won’t go in.”

She would have embraced this proposition with alacrity if it had not

become very vivid to her while she stood there, in the midst of her

shrinking, that behind those sullen walls the mother who bore him was

even then counting the minutes. She was alive, in that huge, dark tomb,

and it seemed to Miss Pynsent that they had already entered into

relation with her. They were near her, and she knew it; in a few

minutes she would taste the cup of the only mercy (except the reprieve

from hanging!) she had known since her fall. A few, a very few minutes

would do it, and it seemed to Miss Pynsent that if she should fail of

her charity now the watches of the night, in Lomax Place, would be

haunted with remorse—perhaps even with something worse. There was

something inside that waited and listened, something that would burst,

with an awful sound, a shriek, or a curse, if she were to lead the boy

away. She looked into his pale face for a moment, perfectly conscious

that it would be vain for her to take the tone of command; besides,

that would have seemed to her shocking. She had another inspiration,

and she said to him in a manner in which she had had occasion to speak

before—

“The reason why we have come is only to be kind. If we are kind we

shan’t mind its being disagreeable.”

“Why should we be kind, if she’s a bad woman?” Hyacinth inquired. “She

must be very low; I don’t want to know her.”

“Hush, hush,” groaned poor Amanda, edging toward him with clasped

hands. “She is not bad now; it has all been washed away—it has been

expiated.”

“What’s expiated?” asked the child, while she almost kneeled down in

the dust, catching him to her bosom.

“It’s when you have suffered terribly—suffered so much that it has made

you good again.”

“Has _she_ suffered very much?”

“For years and years. And now she is dying. It proves she is very good

now, that she should want to see us.”

“Do you mean because _we_ are good?” Hyacinth went on, probing the

matter in a way that made his companion quiver, and gazing away from

her, very seriously, across the river, at the dreary waste of

Battersea.

“We shall be good if we are pitiful, if we make an effort,” said the

dressmaker, seeming to look up at him rather than down.

“But if she is dying? I don’t want to see any one die.”

Miss Pynsent was bewildered, but she rejoined, desperately, “If we go

to her, perhaps she won’t. Maybe we shall save her.”

He transferred his remarkable little eyes—eyes which always appeared to

her to belong to a person older than herself, to her face; and then he

inquired, “Why should I save her, if I don’t like her?”

“If she likes you, that will be enough.”

At this Miss Pynsent began to see that he was moved. “Will she like me

very much?”

“More, much more than any one.”

“More than you, now?”

“Oh,” said Amanda quickly, “I mean more than she likes any one.”

Hyacinth had slipped his hands into the pockets of his scanty

knickerbockers, and, with his legs slightly apart, he looked from his

companion back to the immense dreary jail. A great deal, to Miss

Pynsent’s sense, depended on that moment. “Oh, well,” he said, at last,

“I’ll just step in.”

“Deary, deary!” the dressmaker murmured to herself, as they crossed the

bare semicircle which separated the gateway from the unfrequented

street. She exerted herself to pull the bell, which seemed to her

terribly big and stiff, and while she waited, again, for the

consequences of this effort, the boy broke out, abruptly—

“How can she like me so much if she doesn’t know me?”

Miss Pynsent wished the gate would open before an answer to this

question should become imperative, but the people within were a long

time arriving, and their delay gave Hyacinth an opportunity to repeat

it. So the dressmaker rejoined, seizing the first pretext that came

into her head, “It’s because the little baby she had, of old, was also

named Hyacinth.”

“That’s a queer reason,” the boy murmured, staring across again at the

Battersea shore.

A moment afterwards they found themselves in a vast interior dimness,

with a grinding of keys and bolts going on behind them. Hereupon Miss

Pynsent gave herself up to an overruling providence, and she

remembered, later, no circumstance of what happened to her until the

great person of Mrs Bowerbank loomed before her in the narrowness of a

strange, dark corridor. She only had a confused impression of being

surrounded with high black walls, whose inner face was more dreadful

than the other, the one that overlooked the river; of passing through

gray, stony courts, in some of which dreadful figures, scarcely female,

in hideous brown, misfitting uniforms and perfect frights of hoods,

were marching round in a circle; of squeezing up steep, unlighted

staircases at the heels of a woman who had taken possession of her at

the first stage, and who made incomprehensible remarks to other women,

of lumpish aspect, as she saw them erect themselves, suddenly and

spectrally, with dowdy untied bonnets, in uncanny corners and recesses

of the draughty labyrinth. If the place had seemed cruel to the poor

little dressmaker outside, it may be believed that it did not strike

her as an abode of mercy while she pursued her tortuous way into the

circular shafts of cells, where she had an opportunity of looking at

captives through grated peepholes and of edging past others who had

temporarily been turned into the corridors—silent women, with fixed

eyes, who flattened themselves against the stone walls at the brush of

the visitor’s dress and whom Miss Pynsent was afraid to glance at. She

never had felt so immured, so made sure of; there were walls within

walls and galleries on top of galleries; even the daylight lost its

colour, and you couldn’t imagine what o’clock it was. Mrs Bowerbank

appeared to have failed her, and that made her feel worse; a panic

seized her, as she went, in regard to the child. On him, too, the

horror of the place would have fallen, and she had a sickening

prevision that he would have convulsions after they got home. It was a

most improper place to have brought him, no matter who had sent for him

and no matter who was dying. The stillness would terrify him, she was

sure—the penitential dumbness of the clustered or isolated women. She

clasped his hand more tightly, and she felt him keep close to her,

without speaking a word. At last, in an open doorway, darkened by her

ample person, Mrs Bowerbank revealed herself, and Miss Pynsent thought

it (afterwards) a sign of her place and power that she should not

condescend to apologise for not having appeared till that moment, or to

explain why she had not met the bewildered pilgrims near the principal

entrance, according to her promise. Miss Pynsent could not embrace the

state of mind of people who didn’t apologise, though she vaguely envied

and admired it, she herself spending much of her time in making excuses

for obnoxious acts she had not committed. Mrs Bowerbank, however, was

not arrogant, she was only massive and muscular; and after she had

taken her timorous friends in tow the dressmaker was able to comfort

herself with the reflection that even so masterful a woman couldn’t

inflict anything gratuitously disagreeable on a person who had made her

visit in Lomax Place pass off so pleasantly.

It was on the outskirts of the infirmary that she had been hovering,

and it was into certain dismal chambers dedicated to sick criminals,

that she presently ushered her companions. These chambers were naked

and grated, like all the rest of the place, and caused Miss Pynsent to

say to herself that it must be a blessing to be ill in such a hole,

because you couldn’t possibly pick up again, and then your case was

simple. Such simplification, however, had for the moment been offered

to very few of Florentine’s fellow-sufferers, for only three of the

small, stiff beds were occupied—occupied by white-faced women in tight,

sordid caps, on whom, in the stale, ugly room, the sallow light itself

seemed to rest without pity. Mrs Bowerbank discreetly paid no attention

whatever to Hyacinth; she only said to Miss Pynsent, with her hoarse

distinctness, “You’ll find her very low; she wouldn’t have waited

another day.” And she guided them, through a still further door, to the

smallest room of all, where there were but three beds, placed in a row.

Miss Pynsent’s frightened eyes rather faltered than inquired, but she

became aware that a woman was lying on the middle bed, and that her

face was turned toward the door. Mrs Bowerbank led the way straight up

to her, and, giving a business-like pat to her pillow, looked

invitation and encouragement to the visitors, who clung together not

far within the threshold. Their conductress reminded them that very few

minutes were allowed them, and that they had better not dawdle them

away; whereupon, as the boy still hung back, the little dressmaker

advanced alone, looking at the sick woman with what courage she could

muster. It seemed to her that she was approaching a perfect stranger,

so completely had nine years of prison transformed Florentine. She

felt, immediately, that it was a mercy she hadn’t told Hyacinth she was

pretty (as she used to be), for there was no beauty left in the hollow,

bloodless mask that presented itself without a movement. She _had_ told

him that the poor woman was good, but she didn’t look so, nor,

evidently, was he struck with it as he stared back at her across the

interval he declined to traverse, kept (at the same time) from

retreating by her strange, fixed eyes, the only portion of all her

wasted person in which there was still any appearance of life. She

looked unnatural to Amanda Pynsent, and terribly old; a speechless,

motionless creature, dazed and stupid, whereas Florentine Vivier, in

the obliterated past, had been her idea of personal, as distinguished

from social, brilliancy. Above all she seemed disfigured and ugly,

cruelly misrepresented by her coarse cap and short, rough hair. Amanda,

as she stood beside her, thought with a sort of scared elation that

Hyacinth would never guess that a person in whom there was so little

trace of smartness—or of cleverness of any kind—was his mother. At the

very most it might occur to him, as Mrs Bowerbank had suggested, that

she was his grandmother. Mrs Bowerbank seated herself on the further

bed, with folded hands, like a monumental timekeeper, and remarked, in

the manner of one speaking from a sense of duty, that the poor thing

wouldn’t get much good of the child unless he showed more confidence.

This observation was evidently lost upon the boy; he was too intensely

absorbed in watching the prisoner. A chair had been placed at the head

of her bed, and Miss Pynsent sat down without her appearing to notice

it. In a moment, however, she lifted her hand a little, pushing it out

from under the coverlet, and the dressmaker laid her own hand softly

upon it. This gesture elicited no response, but after a little, still

gazing at the boy, Florentine murmured, in words no one present was in

a position to understand—

“_Dieu de Dieu, qu’il est beau!_”

“She won’t speak nothing but French since she has been so bad—you can’t

get a natural word out of her,” Mrs Bowerbank said.

“It used to be so pretty when she spoke English—and so very amusing,”

Miss Pynsent ventured to announce, with a feeble attempt to brighten up

the scene. “I suppose she has forgotten it all.”

“She may well have forgotten it—she never gave her tongue much

exercise. There was little enough trouble to keep _her_ from

chattering,” Mrs Bowerbank rejoined, giving a twitch to the prisoner’s

counterpane. Miss Pynsent settled it a little on the other side and

considered, in the same train, that this separation of language was

indeed a mercy; for how could it ever come into her small companion’s

head that he was the offspring of a person who couldn’t so much as say

good morning to him? She felt, at the same time, that the scene might

have been somewhat less painful if they had been able to communicate

with the object of their compassion. As it was, they had too much the

air of having been brought together simply to look at each other, and

there was a grewsome awkwardness in that, considering the delicacy of

Florentine’s position. Not, indeed, that she looked much at her old

comrade; it was as if she were conscious of Miss Pynsent’s being there,

and would have been glad to thank her for it—glad even to examine her

for her own sake, and see what change, for her, too, the horrible years

had brought, but felt, more than this, that she had but the thinnest

pulse of energy left and that not a moment that could still be of use

to her was too much to take in her child. She took him in with all the

glazed entreaty of her eyes, quite giving up his poor little

protectress, who evidently would have to take her gratitude for

granted. Hyacinth, on his side, after some moments of embarrassing

silence—there was nothing audible but Mrs Bowerbank’s breathing—had

satisfied himself, and he turned about to look for a place of patience

while Miss Pynsent should finish her business, which as yet made so

little show. He appeared to wish not to leave the room altogether, as

that would be a confession of a vanquished spirit, but to take some

attitude that should express his complete disapproval of the unpleasant

situation. He was not in sympathy, and he could not have made it more

clear than by the way he presently went and placed himself on a low

stool, in a corner, near the door by which they had entered.

“_Est-il possible, mon Dieu, qu’il soit gentil comme ça?_” his mother

moaned, just above her breath.

“We are very glad you should have cared—that they look after you so

well,” said Miss Pynsent, confusedly, at random; feeling, first, that

Hyacinth’s coldness was perhaps excessive and his scepticism too

marked, and then that allusions to the way the poor woman was looked

after were not exactly happy. They didn’t matter, however, for she

evidently heard nothing, giving no sign of interest even when Mrs

Bowerbank, in a tone between a desire to make the interview more lively

and an idea of showing that she knew how to treat the young, referred

herself to the little boy.

“Is there nothing the little gentleman would like to say, now, to the

unfortunate? Hasn’t he any pleasant remark to make to her about his

coming so far to see her when she’s so sunk? It isn’t often that

children are shown over the place (as the little man has been), and

there’s many that would think they were lucky if they could see what he

has seen.”

“_Mon pauvre joujou, mon pauvre chéri_,” the prisoner went on, in her

tender, tragic whisper.

“He only wants to be very good; he always sits that way at home,” said

Miss Pynsent, alarmed at Mrs Bowerbank’s address and hoping there

wouldn’t be a scene.

“He might have stayed at home then—with this wretched person moaning

after him,” Mrs Bowerbank remarked, with some sternness. She plainly

felt that the occasion threatened to be wanting in brilliancy, and

wished to intimate that though she was to be trusted for discipline,

she thought they were all getting off too easily.

“I came because Pinnie brought me,” Hyacinth declared, from his low

perch. “I thought at first it would be pleasant. But it ain’t

pleasant—I don’t like prisons.” And he placed his little feet on the

cross-piece of the stool, as if to touch the institution at as few

points as possible.

The woman in bed continued her strange, almost whining plaint. “_Il ne

veut pas s’approcher, il a honte de moi_.”

“There’s a many that begin like that!” laughed Mrs Bowerbank, who was

irritated by the boy’s contempt for one of her Majesty’s finest

establishments.

Hyacinth’s little white face exhibited no confusion; he only turned it

to the prisoner again, and Miss Pynsent felt that some extraordinary

dumb exchange of meanings was taking place between them. “She used to

be so elegant; she _was_ a fine woman,” she observed, gently and

helplessly.

“_Il a honte de moi—il a honte, Dieu le pardonne!_” Florentine Vivier

went on, never moving her eyes.

“She’s asking for something, in her language. I used to know a few

words,” said Miss Pynsent, stroking down the bed, very nervously.

“Who is that woman? what does she want?” Hyacinth asked, his small,

clear voice ringing over the dreary room.

“She wants you to come near her, she wants to kiss you, sir,” said Mrs

Bowerbank, as if it were more than he deserved.

“I won’t kiss her; Pinnie says she stole a watch!” the child answered

with resolution.

“Oh, you dreadful—how could you ever?” cried Pinnie, blushing all over

and starting out of her chair.

It was partly Amanda’s agitation, perhaps, which, by the jolt it

administered, gave an impulse to the sick woman, and partly the

penetrating and expressive tone in which Hyacinth announced his

repugnance: at any rate, Florentine, in the most unexpected and violent

manner, jerked herself up from her pillow, and, with dilated eyes and

waving hands, shrieked out, “_Ah, quelle infamie!_ I never stole a

watch, I never stole anything—anything! _Ah, par exemple!_” Then she

fell back, sobbing with the passion that had given her a moment’s

strength.

“I’m sure you needn’t put more on her than she has by rights,” said Mrs

Bowerbank, with dignity, to the dressmaker, laying a large red hand

upon the patient, to keep her in her place.

“Mercy, more? I thought it so much less!” cried Miss Pynsent, convulsed

with confusion and jerking herself, in a wild tremor, from the mother

to the child, as if she wished to fling herself upon one for contrition

and upon the other for revenge.

“_Il a honte de moi—il a honte de moi!_” Florentine repeated, in the

misery of her sobs, “_Dieu de bonté, quelle horreur!_”

Miss Pynsent dropped on her knees beside the bed and, trying to possess

herself of Florentine’s hand again, protested with a passion almost

equal to that of the prisoner (she felt that her nerves had been

screwed up to the snapping-point, and now they were all in shreds) that

she hadn’t meant what she had told the child, that he hadn’t

understood, that Florentine herself hadn’t understood, that she had

only said she had been accused and meant that no one had ever believed

it. The Frenchwoman paid no attention to her whatever, and Amanda

buried her face and her embarrassment in the side of the hard little

prison-bed, while, above the sound of their common lamentation, she

heard the judicial tones of Mrs Bowerbank.

“The child is delicate, you might well say! I’m disappointed in the

effect—I was in hopes you’d hearten her up. The doctor’ll be down on

_me_, of course; so we’ll just pass out again.”

“I’m very sorry I made you cry. And you must excuse Pinnie—I asked her

so many questions.”

These words came from close beside the prostrate dressmaker, who,

lifting herself quickly, found the little boy had advanced to her elbow

and was taking a nearer view of the mysterious captive. They produced

upon the latter an effect even more powerful than his unfortunate

speech of a moment before; for she found strength to raise herself,

partly, in her bed again, and to hold out her arms to him, with the

same thrilling sobs. She was talking still, but she had become quite

inarticulate, and Miss Pynsent had but a glimpse of her white, ravaged

face, with the hollows of its eyes and the rude crop of her hair.

Amanda caught the child with an eagerness almost as great as

Florentine’s, and drawing him to the head of the bed, pushed him into

his mother’s arms. “Kiss her—kiss her, and we’ll go home!” she

whispered desperately, while they closed about him, and the poor

dishonoured head pressed itself against his young cheek. It was a

terrible, irresistible embrace, to which Hyacinth submitted with

instant patience. Mrs Bowerbank had tried at first to keep her

_protégée_ from rising, evidently wishing to abbreviate the scene;

then, as the child was enfolded, she accepted the situation and gave

judicious support from behind, with an eye to clearing the room as soon

as this effort should have spent itself. She propped up her patient

with a vigorous arm; Miss Pynsent rose from her knees and turned away,

and there was a minute’s stillness, during which the boy accommodated

himself as he might to his strange ordeal. What thoughts were begotten

at that moment in his wondering little mind Miss Pynsent was destined

to learn at another time. Before she had faced round to the bed again

she was swept out of the room by Mrs Bowerbank, who had lowered the

prisoner, exhausted, with closed eyes, to her pillow, and given

Hyacinth a business-like little push, which sent him on in advance.

Miss Pynsent went home in a cab—she was so shaken; though she

reflected, very nervously, on getting into it, on the opportunities it

would give Hyacinth for the exercise of inquisitorial rights. To her

surprise, however, he completely neglected them; he sat in silence,

looking out of the window, till they re-entered Lomax Place.