Jill: A Flower Girl

Chapter Twelve

Quite early in the afternoon Jill returned to the humble little flat in Howard’s Buildings. She had felt nervous and excited until she got there. Nat might be waiting for her. Nat might have come and discovered her not there and gone away again, and the first suspicion of cold doubt might already have reached him. But when Jill discovered that Nat Carter had not yet arrived; when she questioned Mr Stanley, who assured her emphatically that that handsome young man, her sweet-heart, had not put in an appearance, she suddenly felt a strange quiet and almost apathy stealing over her.

She sat quietly in her mother’s chair and folded her hands on her lap.

She had got a task to perform, but the pain, the agony, which such work ought to cause her was not present at this moment. Nat should have his mate’s money back again, but Jill must tell him that she could never be his wife.

“There’s no help for it,” she muttered. “I must tell Nat as I can’t never wed him. I must make myself seem bad in his eyes. There ain’t nothing else for me to do. He’ll never know now, never to his dying day, that poor mother stole that ere money. The money part ’ull seem all right to him, but Jill – he’ll allers think o’ Jill as fickle and false. I must make him think that – there’s no help for me. I’ll wed Silas, and I’ll try to be good to him, and I must forget Nat wot I loves.”

Thoughts like these passed swiftly through the tired girl’s brain. She knew that she must soon speak cruel words. She must say good-bye to Nat.

“And I love him mor’n aught else in all the wide world,” she groaned. “I love mother – oh, I do love mother – but Nat – Nat comes first. If it were a case o’ choosing, perhaps I’d be mean enough to cling on to Nat, and let poor mother go, but it ain’t a case of choosing. Nat’s young and strong; he ha’ got a true, true heart, and an honest face, and he’s ’spectable – oh, he’s bitter ’spectable. There are lots of nice girls in the world, and Nat ’ull get his pick, and it’s best for him to have nothing to say to a girl what have a mother what drinks. Nat’s all right; he’ll comfort hisself soon; it’ll be easy for Nat to get another wife; but poor mother, she has no one but me, for the boys they don’t count. Mother suffers bad pain, and she’s nearly distraught with one sorrow and another. It ain’t a case o’ choice. I must cling to poor mother.”

When Jill came to this point in her reflections she rose and went into the inner room. Seeing her dishevelled and untidy appearance in the little square of looking-glass, her first instinct was to brush her black hair smooth, and wash her face, and bring her whole little person back to the absolute order and fresh neatness which was part of her beauty; but on second thoughts she refrained from doing this. Her object now was to put Nat against her.

“It’ll cut him much less to the ’art ef he sees for his own self that I ain’t the Jill he thought I were,” she murmured.

She threw off her shawl, therefore, and, with a sigh of physical discomfort, came back again to the kitchen.

She had scarcely done so before Nat’s knock was heard at the door. She went at once and opened it for him.

“Is that you?” she said. “You might ha’ come sooner. I were getting tired o’ waiting; it’s dull settin’ indoors on a fine Sunday. Come in ef you want to, though.”

Her tone was almost flippant. Nat opened his blue eyes in astonishment. He himself was in the most irreproachable Sunday go-to-meeting dress. He wore a button-hole of carnations. The sweet scent of that special flower gave Jill a sick, faint feeling for many a day afterwards. His hair was brushed from his broad white forehead. There was a fresh colour in his cheeks, and his happy eyes looked like a bit of the sky.

Jill’s untidy, almost slovenly, appearance distressed him nearly as much as her change of voice, but he determined to take no notice. He came in and sat down, therefore, and said after a very brief pause in a gentle voice:

“It wor Clara Williams wot kep’ me. The poor thing is nearly distraught with misery. It’s quite piteous to see her. And as to those four little orphans, wot is to come o’ them? I’m sorry I were late, Jill, but we can go out now and have a real jolly time. I can give you the rest of the day, sweet-heart. Ain’t yer mother home, Jill? Wor yer alone all the morning, my little love?”

“Indeed, no,” said Jill, “I had company, and fine company too, but it worn’t mother. Mother’s out. She ain’t very well, and she wants lots o’ air and exercise, but I hadn’t a dull time, so don’t you think it, Nat.”

“Well, I’m glad on it. You may be quite sure I were thinking on yer when I were doing things for Clara Williams. I’m right glad you worn’t dull. Shall we go out now, Jill?”

“No, thank yer, I’m dead beat. I have been out already for hours. I s’pose you has come for the money, Nat. Here it is back. You count it and see ef I ain’t stole none.”

Nat raised his eyes in astonishment. Jill, who was standing with her back slightly turned to him, held out the money in the identical brown-paper wrapper which he had given her the five sovereigns in.

“Here, take it, I’m well rid on it,” she said impatiently.

Nat held out his hand and took the little parcel.

“Open it,” she said; “count the sovereigns. You ’member as you give me five sovereigns. See for yerself that they are all there.”

“Why, what is come to you, Jill?” said Nat. “You speak queer. I don’t seem to know you to-day.”

Jill gave a short little laugh.

“I has many sides,” she said. “Sometimes I’m all honey, sometimes I’m all winegar. It’s best as the man what mates me should know me all round.”

“Yes,” said poor Nat, “and I thought I did know yer all round, Jill: I made sure on it. I allers said as I’d never marry in haste. It’s an orful thing, marriage. Once done it can’t be undone; and I said as the gel what I took for wife should be my friend for many and many a day first. You ’member when we wor at school together, Jill. How I took yer part, and how yer sat near me, and how straight you always wor, never skulking away from yer lessons and never shirking the truth. You wor a bit o’ tomboy, no doubt, but you wor true and sweet all round. You has growed up true and sweet, and more beautiful nor any picter. There’s no winegar in you, my own Jill, but there’s a cloud over yer. Come and tell me about it. Put yer head here on my breast and tell me all ’bout, it.”

“No, no, Nat,” said Jill; “I don’t say as there ain’t a cloud. I don’t want, even on this bitter day, to say words what ain’t true, but there’s no goin’ to you for comfort any more, for we must part.”

“Part!” said Nat, “part!” His lips fell apart, his blue eyes flashed an angry fire. Then he closed his mouth firmly, and a hard look settled down on his handsome face. “Do yer mean as you’re tired on me?” he said. “You ha’ spoke werry strange since I come in, and you ha’ looked werry strange. Do you repent o’ our bargain? Do you want not to be my mate? Why do you keep your back turned to me, Jill? Look into my face – look up into my face and tell me the truth.”

“It’s quite true as I can’t mate you, Nat.”

Jill turned swiftly as she spoke; out of her big beautiful eyes looked for a second an agonised soul; but Nat could not catch a glimpse of this frightened, steadfast, loving soul, in the cruel agony which her words gave him.

“You’re tired of our bargain?” he repeated.

“Yes, that’s it; I’m tired o’ it.”

“And you don’t want to wed me?”

“No.”

“Then I’d best be goin’,” said Nat.

He took up his hat and walked as far as the door. “Ha’ you counted the money – are you sure as it’s all right?” called Jill after him.

“’Course it’s all right; what matters the money? You go and break a chap’s ’eart, and you talk to him o’ money. You send a chap right away to the devil, and you talk to him o’ money. What’s money to me to-day! I say, curse all women, curse goodness. I say – oh, Jill, Jill, you don’t mean it. It’s a trick you’re playing on me. Jill, my little love, my little sweet-heart, come back to me – come back.”

Nat’s voice was broken. He flung his hat on the floor, and, rushing up to the young girl, clasped her tightly in a passionate embrace.

For just a quarter of a minute she yielded to it. She felt the strength of the arms she loved. She said to herself:

“I can’t go on. Even for mother’s sake, I can’t go on with this.”

But then the remembrance of Nat’s words of the night before, the remembrance of that cruel creed of his, which only believed in honesty, sobriety, and truth, came back like a cold wave to turn aside the warm impulses of nature.

“No, Nat,” she said, detaching herself from him, “you must believe wot I say. We ha’ got to part. I did think as I loved yer, and it did seem nice and beautiful to me, the thought of living with yer – but you’re too high – too high for the likes o’ Jill. Ef you wedded me, you’d turn bitter agen me, for I ain’t what you think; I must ha’ my fling. May be I don’t think them things wrong that you hold by. Wot’s a lie now and then, if it serves a good purpose, and wot’s jest not being too perticler ’bout change, and returning all the pennies you get, and selling withered flowers for fresh! There’s a lot of fuss made by some folks about that sort of thing – I know what you thinks; but I call that sort of thing soft. Poor folks has got to live, and they can’t be over perticler. And then, Nat – you holds a deal on to sobriety – mother, she has a horror even o’ a drop o’ beer; but me, when I’m werry tired, it’s comfortin’. I don’t go for to deny that it’s werry comfortin’. Wot’s the matter, Nat? How white you ha’ got. I’m up to the average gel, ain’t I, Nat? I’m not all white like an angel; but I ain’t black neither, am I, Nat?”

“I has got a blow,” said Nat Carter. “You’re right, Jill. I don’t know yer all round. I has promised to wed yer, and I’ll stick to it, if you’re o’ that mind. God forgive you, Jill, you’re not what I thought, but I’ll be a good husband to yer, if yer wishes it.”

“Do I wish it?” said Jill with sudden scorn and passion. “Let the righteous wed with the righteous, and the sinner with the sinner. I’m as God made me; I’m full of passion, and I’m full of weakness. You’re white, and I’m black; but, Nat, where I loves I don’t see the sin. Ef you were as black as a coal, Nat, and loved me, I’d love you back again. Oh me, me, my heart’s broke, but I can’t never, never be yer mate now, Nat Carter.”

“And yet it seemed all right last night,” said the young man.

“No. I had my doubts last night, and now they’re certainties. I doubted then as you was too high, and me too low for us to come together, now my doubts is turned to certainties. Good-bye, Nat, good-bye; choose a gel that never telled a lie, what would scorn to steal, and what wouldn’t touch a drop o’ beer to save her life; good-bye, Nat.”

“Good-bye,” said Nat. He took up his hat in earnest this time. Jill’s words had frozen him. There was a numbness all over him, which prevented his feeling the real agony of the parting; he turned the handle of the room door and went out. Jill listened to his footsteps going down the stairs, till they died away in the distance.

Chapter Thirteen

Susy Carter was one of those self-reliant people who are not over-troubled with conscience. Her nerves were in excellent order. She did not consider herself vain, but she was thoroughly satisfied with her life, with her ways, with her ideas. She utterly scorned the flower girls who did not live up to the high standard which she had set herself. Had Susy been born in a different station of life, she would have gone in for the education craze, for the women’s suffrage question, and for all those extreme ideas of so-called emancipation which agitated the breasts of the sterner members of her sex.

Susy was not lovable, nor did she greatly love anyone but herself. She was ambitious and intended to rise in the world. Even a London flower girl can have ambition. As in all other callings, that of the flower girl has many grades. Between the poor, little, sloppy, ragged victim, who hawks miserable, withered flowers, reeking with stale vegetation and the infection of badly ventilated rooms, and such a flower girl as Susy Carter, there is a very vast gulf fixed.

Susy heard of the Flower Girls’ Guild, she was one of the first to join this admirable band, she delighted in the sanitary conditions imposed upon her. She paid her shilling a week regularly, and enjoyed all the advantages of the room where the flowers were kept at night, and the nice wash which she could give herself there in the morning.

Nature had made Susy fair and pretty, and the becoming uniform of the Guild suited her to perfection. Since she had joined it she had become more popular as a flower girl than ever. Her flowers were better in quality, and the ladies who bought from her, finding this fact out, were only too glad to come to her again; week after week she was steadily putting away money. If this state of things went on Susy hoped that in a few years she might have saved enough either to marry a respectable costermonger or to start a barrow, or even a shop for herself. Susy had not the least idea of marrying for love, she was thoroughly satisfied with her present life, which had a certain amount of excitement without undue hardship.

Nat and Susy Carter had neither father nor mother, they were somewhat alike in appearance, and had certain traits of character in common. They were both ambitious, hard-working, honest, respectable, but where Susy’s soul was small and crabbed, shrinking indeed from its normal size from want of any due care or attention, Nat’s was strong and brave, for Nat’s soul was saved by the intense love which he had felt for some years now for Jill. Nat and Susy shared the same rooms, and these rooms were by no means to their taste. They were in a low part of the town, not exactly in Drury Lane, but in that poor neighbourhood. The situation was most convenient, not far from the market and in the very thick of the life which they were obliged to lead, but the rooms occupied by the brother and sister, though fairly clean in themselves, were by no means to the taste of either. Nat would not have stayed there but for the hope that he and Jill would soon set up housekeeping together, and Susy quite made her mind to share Nat’s home whenever he made it. She was sitting on this particular Sunday afternoon in their little kitchen, leaning somewhat discontentedly out of the window, and wishing that the long dull Sabbath would come to an end, when to her surprise the door of the room was suddenly opened and Nat came in. Susy could not help giving a start of astonishment. Nat had left her some hours ago with a distinct understanding that he would not return until night. Susy had given him a slightly contemptuous look when he had told her what his day’s work would be.

“Yes, yes,” she muttered, “don’t tell me no more; you’ll be a good Samaritan all the morning, and a lover all the arternoon. Each one to their taste, don’t tell me no more.”

“It ’ud do you good, Susy, to have a lover of your own,” said Nat, in reply to these bitter words; “a right good ’ansome feller as ’ud draw the ’eart out of yer, and make yer feel.”

“’Ow?” said Susy, looking at him with mocking eyes.

Nat reddened. A vision of Jill as she had looked the night before with the moonlight shining all over her passionate, tender face flashed before him.

“I can’t say,” he replied. “You wait and see.”

“No, I’ll never see that sight,” said Susy; “there ain’t a man living as ’ud make a fool on me. Give me a tidy bit of money, and I don’t mind what the man is like.”

Nat closed the door behind him with a faint sigh. It was the first touch of that depression which was to seize him in such a mighty clutch later in the day. Susy, in spite of herself, felt dull after he had left her. She wondered if she should go to church, but decided against this effort, and seating herself in the window began to unpick the trimming off an old hat, and to put it on again in a fresher style. She then warmed some tea for her dinner, and boiled an egg to eat with her stale bread and butter. Afterwards she took up a penny novelette which she had borrowed from her landlady, and tried to interest herself in the impossible story which it contained. The hero of the tale was of course a duke, and the heroine was in a very slightly more exalted position than Susy herself. The duke loved the maiden, and the romance ended in a brilliant wedding, in a shower of rice, and old satin slippers. Susy threw down the novelette with an impatient sigh. With all her faults she had plenty of sense, and the mawkish, impossible tale sickened her.

“I call it stuff,” she said to herself. “Dooks don’t marry gels like me. I’d a sight rayther read about a costermonger. A costermonger’s flesh and blood to me, a dook ain’t nothing but a sort of a sperit. Oh, my word, is that you, Nat? ’Ow you did startle me!”

“I come in quietly enough,” said Nat. “I suppose I needn’t come into my own room on tiptoe, need I?”

Susy gave her brother a long attentive stare.

“My, how crusty you’ve turned!” she exclaimed in her mocking voice. “Wot’s up with yer? ’As Jill been giving yer a spice of her mind? I allers said that gel ’ad the ’eart of a tiger.”

“Look here, Susy,” said Nat, “you stop that!” He came over and took the slim girl by her shoulders, and whirled her suddenly out into the centre of the room. “You and me,” continued Nat, “are brother and sister, ain’t we?”

“Yes, Nat, yes. Oh, my word; ’ow you sets my ’eart a-thumping.”

“Stop talking, and listen to me. I want to say something.”

“Well, well.”

“Will yer stop talking? I’ll shake the breath out of yer if yer don’t. Now, then, you listen. Oh, you poor good-for-nothing, you poor small good-for-nothing bit of a thin soul, you belong to me, I s’pose, and I must stick to yer. I’m yer brother, and I must hold on to yer till you gets a husband of some sort. But look yere, Susy, ef yer mentions Jill Robinson’s name agen to me, whether you speaks for Jill, or agen Jill, it’s all the same, I’ll leave yer. I’ll leave Lunnon and I’ll go where you can’t find me. I’ll tell you a thing about Jill now, and then she’ll be atween us not as ef she were dead, for we can speak of our dead, but as if she had never lived, and never died. That’s how Jill is to be atween you and me, in all the days that are to come. There never wor a Jill. That’s how things are to be. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Nat; you – you frighten me, Nat.”

“Wot’s a little fright to you? I’m nigh to hell with torture. Jill’s broke with me. We’ll never be wed, never. But that ain’t the worst. The worst is there never wor a Jill, ’twas but a dream I ’ad. I dreamt it all the time I were a-growing up, and all the years sence I come to manhood. And to-day I woke. There’s no Jill. Do you hear me, Susy? Do you understand?”

“Yes, Nat, I try to. And there’ll be no wedding, and no nice little flat, and no room for me at ’arf a crown a week, and the run of the kitchen thrown in? My word, the ways of some gels is past bearing.”

“Not another word, Susy. You know our bargain. Ef you breathe Jill’s name even once again, we part, and you may take care on yourself for all I care.”

“No, I’ll not speak on her no more,” said Susy. “You needn’t pinch me so ’ard, Nat, and you needn’t glare at me. I can’t help it ef I don’t go into big passions like other folk. I’m made quiet, and with control of my feelin’s, and I don’t see as I’m to be spurned for it. I’m quite willin’ to drop that gel; she worn’t never a mate for you, ’cordin’ to my way of thinkin’. Oh, for mercy’s sake don’t shake me agen, I expect my shoulders are black and blue as it is, from your pinches. Wot I want to know now is this. Are we to stay on in these loathsome rooms, or are we to move somewhere else? You and me could take that flat in Howard’s Buildings, and live there by ourselves – why not? Oh, good gracious, wot is the matter now, Nat?”

“I’m goin’ out,” said Nat. “You may expect me back when you see me, not afore.”

“Ain’t you coming back to-night?”

“No!”

The door of the room was banged to with a loud report. Susy waited until Nat’s footsteps ceased to sound. Then she threw herself into the nearest chair, and gave vent to a gentle sigh.

“Talk of tigresses! Why, Nat’s turned into a tiger,” she moaned. “Oh, my poor shoulders, how they does ache!”