The Hired Baby

Her strange petition, or rather discourse, concluded, she rose and walked away. The great doors of the church swung heavily behind her as she stepped out and stood once more in the muddy street. It was raining steadily—a fine, cold, penetrating rain. But the coin she held was a talisman against outer discomforts, and she continued to walk on till she came to a clean-looking dairy, where for a couple of pence she was able to replenish the infant's long ago emptied feeding bottle; but she purchased nothing for herself. She had starved all day, and was now too faint to eat. Soon she entered an omnibus, and was driven to Charing Cross, and alighting at the great station, brilliant with its electric light, she paced up and down outside it, accosting several of the passers-by and imploring their pity. One man gave her a penny; another, young and handsome, with a flushed, intemperate face, and a look of his fast-fading boyhood still about him, put his hand in his pocket and drew out all the loose coppers it contained, amounting to three pennies and an odd farthing, and, dropping them into her outstretched palm, said, half gaily, half boldly: "You ought to do better than that with those big eyes of yours!" She drew back and shuddered; he broke into a coarse laugh, and went his way. Standing where he had left her, she seemed for a time lost in wretched reflections; the fretful, wailing cry of the child she carried roused her, and hushing it softly, she murmured, "Yes, yes, darling, it is too wet and cold for you; we had better go." And acting suddenly on her resolve, she hailed another omnibus, this time bound for Tottenham Court Road, and was, after some dreary jolting, set down at her final destination—a dirty alley in the worst part of Seven Dials. Entering it, she was hailed with a shout of derisive laughter from some rough-looking men and women, who were standing grouped round a low gin-shop at the corner.

"Here's Liz!" cried one. "Here's Liz and the bloomin' kid!"

"Now, old gel, fork out! How much 'ave you got, Liz? Treat us to a drop all round!"

Liz waked past them steadily; the conspicuous curve of her upper lip came into full play, and her eyes flashed disdainfully, but she said nothing. Her silence exasperated a tangle-haired, cat-faced girl of seventeen years, who, more than half drunk, sat on the ground, clasping her knees with both arms and rocking herself lazily to and fro.

"Mother Mawks!" cried she, "Mother Mawks! You're wanted! Here's Liz come back with your babby!"

As if her words had been a powerful incantation to summon forth an evil spirit, a door in one of the miserable houses was thrown open, and a stout woman, nearly naked to the waist, with a swollen, blotched, and most hideous countenance, rushed out furiously, and darting at Liz, shook her violently by the arm.

"Where's my shullin'?" she yelled, "where's my gin? Out with it! Out with my shullin' an' fourpence! None of yer sneakin' ways with me; a bargain's a bargain all the world over! Yer're making a fortin' with my babby—yer know y' are; pays yer a good deal better than yer old trade! Don't say it don't—yer know it do. Yer'll not find such a sickly kid anywheres, an' it's the sickly kids wot pays an' moves the 'arts of the kyind ladies an' good gentlemen"—this with an imitative whine that excited the laughter and applause of her hearers. "Yer've got it cheap, I kin tell yer, an' if yer don't pay up reg'lar, there's others that'll take the chance, an' thankful too!"

She stopped for lack of breath, and Liz spoke quietly:

"It's all right, Mother Mawks," she said, with an attempt at a smile; "here's your shilling, here's the four pennies for the gin. I don't owe you anything for the child now." She stopped and hesitated, looking down tenderly at the frail creature in her arms; then added, almost pleadingly, "It's asleep now. May I take it with me to-night?"

Mother Mawks, who had been testing the coins Liz had given her by biting them ferociously with her large yellow teeth, broke into a loud laugh.

"Take it with yer! I like that! Wot imperence! Take it with yer!" Then, with her huge red arms akimbo, she added, with a grin, "Tell yer wot, if yer likes to pay me 'arf a crown, yer can 'ave it to cuddle, an' welcome!"

Another shout of approving merriment burst from the drink-sodden spectators of the little scene, and the girl crouched on the ground removed her encircling hands from her knees to clap them loudly, as she exclaimed:

"Well done, Mother Mawks! One doesn't let out kids at night for nothing! 'T ought to be more expensive than daytime!"

The face of Liz had grown white and rigid.

"You know I can't give you that money," she said, slowly. "I have not tasted bit or drop all day. I must live, though it doesn't seem worth while. The child"—and her voice softened involuntarily—"is fast asleep; it's a pity to wake it, that's all. It will cry and fret all night, and—and I will make it warm and comfortable if you'd let me." She raised her eyes hopefully and anxiously. "Will you?"

Mother Mawks was evidently a lady of an excitable disposition. The simple request seemed to drive her nearly frantic. She raised her voice to an absolute scream, thrusting her dirty hands through her still dirtier hair as the proper accompanying gesture to her vituperative oratory.

"Will I! Will I!" she screeched. "Will I let out my hown babby for the night for nuthin'? Will I? No, I won't! I'll see yer blowed into the middle of next week fust! Lor' 'a' mussey! 'ow 'igh an' mighty we are gittin', to be sure! The babby'll be quiet with you, Miss Liz, will it, hindeed! An' it will cry an' fret with its hown mother, will it, hindeed!" And at every sentence she approached Liz more nearly, increasing in fury as she advanced. "Yer low hussy! D'ye think I'd let ye 'ave my babby for a hour unless yer paid for 'it? As it is, yer pays far too little. I'm an honest woman as works for my livin' an' wot drinks reasonable, better than you by a long sight, with yer stuck-up airs! A pretty drab you are! Gi' me the babby; ye 'a'n't no business to keep it a minit longer." And she made a grab at Liz's sheltering shawl.

"Oh, don't hurt it!" pleaded Liz, tremblingly. "Such a little thing—don't hurt it!"

Mother Mawks stared so wildly that her blood-shot eyes seemed protruding from her head.

"'Urt it! Hain't I a right to do wot I likes with my hown babby? 'Urt it! Well, I never! Look 'ere!"—and she turned round on the assembled neighbours—"hain't she a reg'lar one? She don't care for the law, not she! She's keepin' back a child from its hown mother!" And with that she made a fierce attack on the shawl, and succeeded in dragging the infant from Liz's reluctant arms. Wakened thus roughly from its slumbers, the poor mite set up a feeble wailing; its mother, enraged at the sound, shook it violently till it gasped for breath.

"Drat the little beast!" she cried. "Why don't it choke an' 'ave done with it!"

And, without heeding the terrified remonstrances of Liz, she flung the child roughly, as though it were a ball, through the open door of her lodgings, where it fell on a heap of dirty clothes, and lay motionless; its wailing had ceased.

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