Among the by-ways of Clerkenwell you might, with some difficulty, have discovered an establishment known in its neighbourhood as ‘Whitehead’s.’ It was an artificial-flower factory, and the rooms of which it consisted were only to be reached by traversing a timber-yard, and then mounting a wooden staircase outside a saw-mill. Here at busy seasons worked some threescore women and girls, who, owing to the nature of their occupation, were spoken of by the jocose youth of the locality as ‘Whitehead’s pastepots.’
Naturally they varied much in age and aspect. There was the child who had newly left school, and was now invited to consider the question of how to keep herself alive; there was the woman of uncertain age, who had spent long years of long days in the atmosphere of workrooms, and showed the result in her parchmenty cheek and lack-lustre eye; and between these extremes came all the various types of the London crafts-girl: she who is young enough to hope that disappointments may yet be made up for by the future; she who is already tasting such scanty good as life had in store for her; she who has outlived her illusions and no longer cares to look beyond the close of the week. If regularly engaged as time-workers, they made themselves easy in the prospect of wages that allowed them to sleep under a roof and eat at certain intervals of the day; if employed on piece-work they might at any moment find themselves wageless, but this, being a familiar state of things, did not trouble them. With few exceptions, they were clad neatly; on the whole, they plied their task in wonderful contentment. The general tone of conversation among them was not high; moralists unfamiliar with the ways of the nether world would probably have applied a term other than negative to the laughing discussions which now and then enlivened this or that group; but it was very seldom indeed that a child newly arriving heard anything with which she was not already perfectly familiar.
One afternoon at the end of May there penetrated into the largest of the workrooms that rarest of visitants, a stray sunbeam. Only if the sun happened to shine at given moments could any of its light fall directly into the room I speak of; this afternoon, however, all circumstances were favourable, and behold the floor chequered with uncertain gleam. The workers were arranged in groups of three, called ‘parties,’ consisting of a learner, an improver, and a hand. All sat with sleeves pushed up to their elbows, and had a habit of rocking to and fro as they plied their mechanical industry. Owing to the movement of a cloud, the sunlight spread gradually towards one of these groups; it touched the skirt, the arms, the head of one of the girls, who, as if gladdened by the kindly warmth, looked round and smiled. A smile you would have been pleased to observe — unconscious, gently thoughtful, rich in possibilities of happiness. She was quite a young girl, certainly not seventeen, and wore a smooth grey dress, with a white linen collar; her brown hair was closely plaited, her head well-shaped, the bend of her neck very graceful. From her bare arms it could be seen that she was anything but robustly made, yet her general appearance was not one of ill-health, and she held herself, even thus late in the day, far more uprightly than most of her companions. Had you watched her for a while, you would have noticed that her eyes occasionally strayed beyond the work-table, and, perhaps unconsciously, fixed themselves for some moments on one or other of the girls near her; when she remembered herself and looked down again upon her task, there rose to her face a smile of the subtlest meaning, the outcome of busy reflection.
By her side was a little girl just beginning to learn the work, whose employment it was to paper wires and make ‘centres.’ This toil always results in blistered fingers, and frequent was the child’s appeal to her neighbour for sympathy.
‘It’ll be easier soon,’ said the latter, on one of these occasions, bending her head to speak in a low voice. ‘You should have seen what blisters I had when I began.’
‘It’s all very well to say that. I can’t do no more, so there Oh, when’ll it be five o’clock?’
‘It’s a quarter to. Try and go on, Annie.’
Five o’clock did come at length, and with it twenty minutes’ rest for tea. The rule at Whitehead’s was, that you could either bring your own tea, sugar, and eatables, or purchase them here from a forewoman; most of the workers chose to provide themselves. It was customary for each ‘party’ to club together, emptying their several contributions of tea out of little twists of newspaper into one teapot. Wholesome bustle and confusion succeeded to the former silence. One of the learners, whose turn it was to run on errands, was overwhelmed with commissions to a chandler’s shop close by; a wry-faced, stupid little girl she was, and they called her, because of her slowness, the ‘funeral horse.’ She had strange habits, which made laughter for those who knew of them; for instance, it was her custom in the dinner-hour to go apart and eat her poor scraps on a doorstep close by a cook-shop; she confided to a companion that the odour of baked joints seemed to give her food a relish. From her present errand she returned with a strange variety of dainties — for it was early in the week, and the girls still had coppers in their pockets; for two or three she had purchased a farthing’s-worth of jam, which she carried in paper. A bite of this and a taste of that rewarded her for her trouble.
The quiet-mannered girl whom we were observing took her cup of tea from the pot in which she had a share, and from her bag produced some folded pieces of bread and butter. She had begun her meal, when there came and sat down by her a young woman of very different appearance — our friend, Miss Peckover. They were old acquaintances; but when we first saw them together it would have been difficult to imagine that they would ever sit and converse as at present, apparently in all friendliness. Strange to say, it was Clem who, during the past three years, had been the active one in seeking to obliterate disagreeable memories. The younger girl had never repelled her, but was long in overcoming the dread excited by Clem’s proximity. Even now she never looked straight into Miss Peckover’s face, as she did when speaking with others; there was reserve in her manner, reserve unmistakable, though clothed with her pleasant smile and amiable voice.
‘I’ve got something to tell you, Jane,’ Clem began, in a tone inaudible to those who were sitting near. ‘Something as’ll surprise you.’
‘What is it, I wonder?’
‘You must swear you won’t tell nobody.’
Jane nodded. Then the other brought her head a little nearer, and whispered:
‘I’m goin’ to be married!’
‘Are you really?’
‘In a week. Who do you think it is? Somebody as you know of, but if you guessed till next Christmas you’d never come right.’
Nor had Clem any intention of revealing the name, but she laughed consumedly, as if her reticence covered the most amusing situation conceivable.
‘It’ll be the biggest surprise you ever had in your life. You’ve swore you won’t speak about it. I don’t think I shall come to work after this week — but you’ll have to come an’ see us. You’ll promise to, won’t you?’
Still convulsed with mirth, Clem went off to another part of the room. From Jane’s countenance the look of amusement which she had perforce summoned soon passed; it was succeeded by a shadow almost of pain, and not till she had been at work again for nearly an hour was the former placidity restored to her.
When final release came, Jane was among the first to hasten down the wooden staircase and get clear of the timber yard. By the direct way, it took her twenty minutes to walk from Whitehead’s to her home in Hanover Street, but this evening she had an object in turning aside. The visit she wished to pay took her into a disagreeable quarter, a street of squalid houses, swarming with yet more squalid children. On all the doorsteps Bat little girls, themselves only just out of infancy, nursing or neglecting bald, red-eyed, doughy-limbed abortions in every stage of babyhood, hapless spawn of diseased humanity, born to embitter and brutalise yet further the lot of those who unwillingly gave them life. With wide, pitiful eyes Jane looked at each group she passed. Three years ago she would have seen nothing but the ordinary and the inevitable in such spectacles, but since then her moral and intellectual being had grown on rare nourishment; there was indignation as well as heartache in the feeling with which she had learnt to regard the world of her familiarity. To enter the house at which she paused it was necessary to squeeze through a conglomerate of dirty little bodies. At the head of the first flight of stairs she came upon a girl sitting in a weary attitude on the top step and beating the wood listlessly with the last remnant of a hearth-brush; on her lap was one more specimen of the infinitely-multiplied baby, and a child of two years sprawled behind her on the landing.
‘Waiting for him to come home, Pennyloaf?’ said Jane.
‘Oh, is that you, Miss Snowdon!’ exclaimed the other, returning to consciousness and manifesting some shame at being discovered in this position. Hastily she drew together the front of her dress, which for the baby’s sake had been wide open, and rose to her feet. Pennyloaf was not a bit more womanly in figure than on the day of her marriage; her voice was still an immature treble; the same rueful irresponsibility marked her features; but all her poor prettiness was wasted under the disfigurement of pains and cares, Incongruously enough, she wore a gown of bright-patterned calico, and about her neck had a collar of pretentious lace; her hair was dressed as if for a holiday, and a daub recently made on her cheeks by the baby’s fingers lent emphasis to the fact that she had but a little while ago washed herself with much care.
‘I can’t stop,’ said Jane, ‘but I thought I’d just look in and speak a word. How have you been getting on?’
‘Oh, do come in for just a minute!’ pleaded Pennyloaf, moving backwards to an open door, whither Jane followed. They entered a room — much like other rooms that we have looked into from time to time. Following the nomadic custom of their kind, Bob Hewett and his wife had lived in six or seven different lodgings since their honeymoon in Shooter’s Gardens. Mrs. Candy first of all made a change necessary, as might have been anticipated, and the restlessness of domestic ill-being subsequently drove them from place to place. ‘Come in ’ere, Johnny,’ she Called to the child lying on the landing. ‘What’s the good o’ washin’ you, I’d like to know? Just see, Miss Snowdon, he’s made his face all white with the milk as the boy spilt on the stairs! Take this brush an’ play with it, do! I can’t keep ’em clean, Miss Snowdon, so it’s no use talkin’.’
‘Are you going somewhere to-night?’ Jane inquired, with a glance at the strange costume.
Pennyloaf looked up and down in a shamefaced way.
‘I only did it just because I thought he might like to see me. He promised me faithful as he’d come ‘ome to-night, and I thought — it’s only somethink as got into my ‘ed today, Miss Snowdon.’
‘But hasn’t he been coming home since I saw you last?’
‘He did just once, an’ then it was all the old ways again. I did what you told me; I did, as sure as I’m a-standin’ ’ere! I made the room so clean you wouldn’t have believed; I scrubbed the floor an’ the table, an’ I washed the winders — you can see they ain’t dirty yet. An’ he’d never a’ paid a bit o’ notice if I hadn’t told him, He was jolly enough for one night, just like he can be when he likes. But I knew as it wouldn’t last, an’ the next night he was off with a lot o’ fellers an’ girls, same as ever. I didn’t make no row when he came ‘ome; I wish I may die if I said a word to set his back up! An’ I’ve gone on just the same all the week; we haven’t had not the least bit of a row; so you see I kep’ my pro............