FullReads

“Yes, but the poor children are not to blame for it?”

“No, but they remind me of ‘er, an’ I ‘ate the very sight of ’em.” There is such concentrated hatred in her voice t
hat the woman shrinks.”I ain’t ‘ad any money to send ‘er this long time, but my sister’s ‘usband is as fond of ‘er as ‘is own; they ‘ave seven of their own. I ‘ate to see things in the shop windows, I used to keep ‘er so pretty. I got a letter a while ago sayin’ she wasn’t very well, an’ that set me off. You’ve spoken kind to me since you’ve been here, that’s w’y I tell you, you won’t think worse of me now than I deserve.”

She clears away the things sullenly, with her jaw set, and the strange oblique light flickering in her eyes. It oppresses the other woman; she feels as if she is facing one of the lurid tragedies that outsiders are powerless to prevent. This woman with her fierce devotion to the child of the man who betrayed her; her marriage, into which she has been cheated by a promise never meant to be kept; and the step-children fanning her fierce dislike by the very childish attributes that waken love in other circumstances. She stays a week longer, but every whimper of the children, every fresh outburst wears upon her, and she leaves, not without speaking with all the earnestness and sympathy of her nature to the woman of whose fate she has an oppressive, inexplicable presentiment.

The tears in her eyes at leaving have touched the girl, for she is little more, and she has promised to try and be better, as she childishly puts it. Things have gone pleasantly for some days, and she has been patient with the children. One of them has been ill and she has nursed it, and today she has made them an apple-cake and sent them to the park, and she is singing to herself over her work; she is cleaning out her bedroom. It is Derby Day. He has the day off, and has gone to the races. He gave her five shillings before he started in the morning, telling her she might send it to the “young ‘un.”

It touched her, and she brushed his coat and kissed him of her own accord. She has felt kindly to him all the morning for it. She notices a button dangling off his working coat and takes it out to the kitchen to sew it on; he seldom brings it home. There is nothing in the pockets except a slip of “events” cut out of some sporting paper; but the lining of the breast-pocket is torn, and as she examines it, the rustle of paper catches her ear. She smiles; what if it is a “fiver”? She knows all about his betting. She slips two fingers down between the lining and works it up–a telegram. She still smiles, for she thinks she will find a clue to some of his winnings. She opens it, and reads, and her face changes; the blood rushes to it, until a triangular vein stands out on her forehead like a purple whipcord. Her throat looks as if it would burst; a pulse beats in her neck; her upper lip is completely sucked in by the set line of her under one, and her eyes positively squint. A fly that keeps buzzing on the pane rouses her to such a pitch that she seizes a boot off the table and sends it crashing through the pane of glass into the yard, liberating the fly at the same time. Then she tries to reread it, but there is a red blaze before her eyes. She goes out, up the lane, towards the unfinished houses, to where the bricklayers are at work, and hands it to the little man, saying hoarsely: