THE RAG-STORE
I
Once a week, on Friday, Sheila took a bundle of finished shirts to the
clothes-merchant’s office. Seven months after Norah’s arrival Sheila
went out one day with her bundle and in the evening the woman did not
return. Midnight came and went. From the window Norah watched the lazy
hands of the clock crawl out the seconds of existence. Steps could be
heard coming up and going down the stairs; then these suddenly ceased.
Far away the flames flaring from the top of a chimney-stack glowed
fiercely red against the dark sky. A policeman came along the dimly
lighted street, walking with tired tread and examining the numbers on
the closed entrances. He suddenly disappeared below; afterwards a knock
came to the door.
“A woman was run down by a tram-car,” said the policeman, speaking
through his heavy moustache, when Norah gave him admittance; “she was
killed instantly.... She had a slip of paper ... this address ... maybe
you can identify.”
Norah lifted the sleeping babe, wrapped it in her shawl and followed the
man. At the police mortuary she recognised Sheila Carrol. The dead woman
was in no way disfigured; she lay on a wooden slab, face upwards, and
still, so very still!
“Sheila Carrol!... she’s only sleepin’!” said Norah.
“Sheila Carrol, you say,” said a uniformed man who had just entered and
who overheard Norah’s remark. “Twice convicted, once for being on the
streets, once for child neglect,” he muttered, looking not a little
proud of his knowledge. “The back of the head and the spine that’s hurt.
When one is struck hard in them places it’s all over.”
Norah felt like a cripple whose crutches have been taken away. That
night when she returned to her room she slept none and wept bitterly, at
times believing that the dead woman was with her in the room. Being very
lonely she kept the light burning till morning, and as the fire had gone
out she shivered violently at intervals and a dry tickling cough settled
on her chest.
II
The merchant who supplied cloth to the two women had gone bankrupt.
Probably Sheila was so much overwhelmed by this that she forgot to avoid
the dangers of the crowded streets on her way home. Perhaps she was
planning some scheme for the future, and as is the case when the mind
dwells deeply on some particular subject, the outside world was for a
while non-existent to her. An eye-witness of the tragedy said that
Sheila had taken no heed of the oncoming tram; that death was
instantaneous.
When morning came Norah Ryan was conscious of a dull sickly pain behind
her left shoulder-blade. The child slept badly during the night and
coughed feebly when it awoke. There were no matches to light the fire; a
half-loaf, a pennyworth of tea and a quarter hundred-weight of coal was
all that remained in the room.
Norah went into Meg’s compartment. The door was lying open. The woman
sat by a dead fire, having just awakened from a drunken sleep on the
floor. She was a kind-hearted soul, generous and sympathetic, but fond
of drink. A glass of whisky made her very tipsy, two glasses made her
very irritable.
“Ye’re up early, lass,” said the old woman, rising to her feet and
scratching her head vigorously. “Is Sheila sleepin’ yet?”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead!” exclaimed old Meg, sitting down on the only chair in the room
and raising both hands, palms outwards, to a level with her face.
“A tram struck her last night when she was comin’ home,” said Norah.
“Killed at once, the policeman said that she was.”
Meg wept loudly for a few moments, then: “What are ye goin’ to do now?”
she asked, drying her eyes.
“I don’t know.”
“There’s often a chance goin’ in the rag-store where I work and it’s not
a hard job at all,” said the old woman. “The job may be a wee bit dirty
and clorty, but think it over. Six shillin’s a week is the pay to start
wi’, then it rises to eight.”
“Thanks for the help that ye are to me,” said Norah; “and when d’ye
think that I’ll get the job?”
“Maybe at any time now, for there’s one of the young ones goin’ to get
marrit a fortnight come to-morrow,” said the old woman. “Then there’s a
woman that lives at No. 27 of this street, Helen McKay is her name;
‘Tuppenny Helen,’ the ones on the stairhead ca’ her. She takes care of
children for twopence a day.”
“I’m not goin’ to leave my child,” cried Norah. She spoke fiercely,
angrily. “D’ye think that I would give up my child to a woman like
Tuppenny Helen? God sees that I can keep my own child whatever happens
to me!”
“Whatever ye say it’s not for me to say the word agen it,” said Meg,
surprised at Norah’s wrath.
“Could I take the boy with me if I get a job?”
“Nae fear; nae fear of that,” said the old woman. “It would smother a
child in a week in yon place. Dust flyin’ all over the place; dirty rags
with creepin’ things and crawlin’ things and maybe diseases on them;
it’s a foulsome den. But folks maun eat and folks maun earn siller, and
that’s why some hae to wark in a place like a rag-store. But dinna take
the child wi’ ye there. For one thing ye winna be allowed and for
another the feelthy place would kill the dear little thing in less than
a week.”
For a fortnight following Norah looked in vain for a job at which she
might work with the child beside her. At the end of that time the old
woman spoke again of a vacant post in the store where she laboured.
Norah put the child out to Twopenny Helen, a stumpy little woman with
very large feet and hacked hands, then applied for and obtained the
vacant post in the rag-store.
III
In the chill, damp air of the early morning the two women tramped to
their work, wearing their boots to save the tram fare. The old woman
always walked with her head down, humming little tunes through her nose
and breaking into a run from time to time. Her long red tongue was
always out, slipping backwards and forwards over her upper lip, her
hair, grey as a dull spring morning, eternally falling into her eyes,
and her arms swinging out in front of her like two dead things as she
trotted along.
The rag-store opened out on a narrow, smelling lane; the office where a
few collared clerks bent over grimy ledgers and endless rows of figures
was on a level with the street; the place where the women sorted the
rags was a basement under the office. There were in all thirty human
machines working in this cellar, which stretched into the darkness on
all sides save one, and there it now and again touched sunshine, the
weak sunshine that streamed through a dirty cobwebbed window, green with
moisture and framed with iron bars.
All day long two gas-jets flared timidly in the basement, spluttering as
if in protest at being condemned to burn in such a cavern. The women,
bowed over their work, were for the most part silent; all topics of
conversation had been exhausted long ago. Sometimes Monday morning was
lively; many came fresh to their work full of accounts of a fight in
which half the women of the close joined and which for some ended in the
lock-up, for others with battered faces and dishevelled hair. These
accounts roused a certain interest which lasted a few hours, then came
the obstinate dragging silence again.
All day long they worked together in the murky cavern sorting the rags.
The smell of the place was awful, suffocating almost; the damp and
mouldy rags gave forth an unhealthy odour; dust rose from those that
were drier and filled the place and the throats of the workers. Each
woman knew every wrinkle of her neighbour’s face, on all the yellowish
white and almost expressionless faces of the spectres of the cellar. And
now and again the spectres sang their ghost-songs, which died away in
the lone corners of the basement like wind in a churchyard.
It was amongst these women that Norah started work.
“A new start!” exclaimed one, a little sallow-faced thing who looked as
if she had been gradually drying up for several years, on seeing the
new-comer. “Ye’ll soon get the blush oot o’ yer cheeks here, lass!”
“D’ye know that there are only three people in the worl’ when all is
said and done?” another woman called to Norah. “The rag-picker, the
scavenger, and the grave-digger are the three folk who count most in the
long run.”
Everybody but Norah laughed at this remark, though all, save Norah, had
heard it made a thousand times before.
“Ah! lass, ye’ve the red cheek,” said a bow-legged girl of seventeen.
“They’ll soon be pale enough,” another interrupted.
“And such white teeth!”
“They’ll soon be yellow!”
“And such long hair!”
“It’ll soon be full o’ dust.”
But they said no more, perhaps because Norah was so beautiful, and
beauty calls forth respect in even the coarsest people.
The new start had many troubles at first. Being new to the work and
unable to do as much as the other women, she was paid only five
shillings a week. After a while the natural dexterity of her fingers
stood her in good stead, and she became more adept at the rag-picking
than anyone in the basement. Therefore her companions who had before
laughed at her inexperience became jealous of Norah and accused her of
trying to find favour with the boss.
But the girl did not mind much what they said; her one great regret was
in being separated from her boy for the whole livelong day. Her breasts
were full of the milk of motherhood, and severance from the little child
was one of the greatest crosses which she had to bear.
The master seldom came near the place; it didn’t agree with his health,
he said. He was a stout, well-built man with small, glistening eyes
overhung with heavy red brows. The hairs of his nostrils reached
half-way down his upper lip and he was very bald. When the women saw the
bald head appear at the foot of the basement stairs, shining a little as
the gaslight caught it, they whispered:
“There’s the full moon; turn yer money!” and one of the workers who was
very fond of swearing would invariably answer: “There’s not much money
in the pockets o’ them that’s workin’ in this damned hole!”
Whenever he came down into the rag-store he took the bow-legged girl to
one side and spoke to her about something. The two seemed to be on very
familiar terms and it was stated that the girl got a far higher wage
than any of the other workers; ten shillings a week was paid to her,
some hinted. Suddenly, however, she left the place and did not come back
again: but now the master came down the stairs oftener than ever before.
One evening just as work was stopping the moon-head appeared, shone for
a moment under the gaslight, then came forward.
“There’s some linen rags here that I want sorted up to-night,” he said,
licking his lips. “I want one of ye to stay here and do the work.”
He looked round as he spoke and his eyes rested on Norah, who was
wrapping her shawl over her shoulders.
“Will ye stay here?” he asked.
“All right,” said Norah, and took off her shawl again.
The rest of the workers went upstairs, a bit envious perhaps of the girl
who was picked out for special work in the fetid hole. Master and
servant were left alone, but Norah wished that she had gone away with
the rest; she wanted so much to see her child. The cough which the
little boy had contracted on the night of Sheila Carrol’s death, ten
months before, had never gone wholly away, and now it was worse than
ever. The mother herself was not feeling very well; the sharp pain in
her chest troubled her a great deal at night.
“Ye’re a good sorter, I hear,” said the master, licking his lips, and
Norah noticed the hairs of his nostrils quivering as if touched by a
breeze. “Ye’ll not live well on seven shillin’s a week, will ye?” he
asked.
“One must live somehow,” said Norah, bending down and picking up a
handful of rags from the floor. “And a few shillin’s goes a long way
when one is savin’.”
She started even as she spoke, for a large soft hand had gripped her
wrist and she looked up to find her master’s little glistening eyes
looking into hers. She could see the wrinkles on his forehead, the red
weal that the rim of his hat had left on the temples, the few stray
hairs that yet remained on the top of the pink head.
“What would ye be wantin’ with me?” she asked.
“I could raise yer screw, say to ten bob a week,” said the man, slipping
his arms round her waist and trying to kiss her on the lips. If one of
the dirty rags had been thrust into her mouth she could not have
experienced a more nauseous feeling of horror than that which took
possession of her at that moment. She freed herself violently from the
grasp of the man, seized her shawl and hurried upstairs, leaving him
alone in the cellar. In the office she had a misty impression of a
grinning clerk looking at her and passing some meaningless remark. When
she got back to her room she told Meg of all that had happened.
“Ye’re a lucky lass, a gie lucky lass,” said the old woman enviously.
“Just play yer cards well and ye’ll soon hae a pund a week in the store.
I heard to-day about the bowdy girl that left us a month gone. The
master had a fancy for her but a mistake happened and she was in straw.
But it’s now all right and she’s gettin’ a pund a week. Just ye play yer
cards well, Norah Ryan, and ye’ll have a gey guid time,” she added.
“Meg Morraws!”
“Ha, ha!” cried the old woman, laughing and showing her yellow stumps of
teeth, worn to the gums. “That’s the way to act. Carry on like that with
him and he’ll do onything ye ask, for ye’re a comely lass; a gey comely
one! Often I wondered why ye stayed so long workin’ in the rag-store.
Life could be made muckle easier by a girl wi’ a winnin’ face like
yours, Norah Ryan. God! to think that a girl like ye are warkin’ in that
dirty hole when ye could make ten times as muckle siller by doin’
somethin’ else!”
IV
Norah did not go back to the rag-store. She took her child from Twopenny
Helen and looked for other work. The boy with his round chubby legs and
wonderful pink toes, which she never tired of counting, was a wonder and
delight to her. Everything was so fresh about him, the radiant eyes, the
red cheeks that made the mother so much long to bite them, the little
soft lips and the white sharp teeth that were already piercing through
the gums. The child was dressed poorly, but, as befitted a sanctuary
before which one human being prostrated herself with all the unselfish
devotion of a pure heart, with the best taste of the worshipper.
The cold which the child caught months before had never entirely gone
away; whenever the cough that accompanied it seized him he curled up in
his mother’s lap in agony, while she feared that the little treasure
that she loved so much was going to be taken away. The thought of the
boy dying occurred to her many times and almost shattered the springs of
action within her. If he died! She shuddered in terror; her fear was
somewhat akin to the fear which possesses a man who hangs over a
precipice and waits for the overstrained rope to break. If the child
was gone she would have nothing more to live for.
Her funds were very low; when she left the rag-store she had only the
sum of nineteen shillings in her possession. This would pay rent for a
few weeks, but meanwhile food, fuel, and clothing were needed. What was
she to do?
Then followed weary days searching for work. Norah went from house to
house in the better parts of the city, offering herself for employment.
She left the child lying on a bed on the floor and locked the place up.
She no longer sent it out to Twopenny Helen; Norah could not now spare
twopence a day.
Again she got work, this time finishing dongaree jackets, and made
tenpence a day. She had now to work on Sunday as well as Saturday, and
she usually spent eighteen hours a day at her task. Winter came and
there was no coal. The child, whose cold got no better, was placed in
bed while the mother worked. The dry and hacking cough shook the
mother’s frame at intervals and she sweated at night when asleep. She
ate very little; her breasts were sore when she suckled her child, and
by and by milk refused to come. Her eyes became sore; she now did part
of her work under the lamp on the landing and by the light from the
window across the courtyard. Old Meg, when she was drunk, had pence to
spare for the child.
“Just for the little thing to play wi’,” she would explain in an
apologetic voice, as if ashamed of being found guilty of a good action.
Afterwards she would add: “Ye should have taken the twa extra shillin’s
a week when they were offered ye.”
One evening towards Christmas when the old woman was speaking thus,
Norah asked:
“If I went back now, would I get a job?”
“The man has got marrit and the place, as ye know yerself, has been
filled up ages and ages ago.”
A strange expression, perhaps one of regret, showed for a moment on the
face of Norah Ryan.