LITMIR.BIZ

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the opportunity she had had of letting him see the wretched woman before she died. She knew Mr. Vetch would read her troubled thoughts, but she hoped he would say they were natural and just: she reflected that as he took an interest in Hyacinth he wouldn’t want him to be subjected to a mortification that might rankle forever and perhaps even crush him to the earth. She related Mrs. Bowerbank’s visit, while he sat upon the sofa, in the very place where that majestic woman had reposed, and puffed his smoke-wreaths into the dusky little room. He knew the story of the child’s birth, had known it years before, so she had no startling revelation to make. He was not in the least agitated at learning that Florentine was dying in prison, and had managed to get a message conveyed to Amanda; he thought this so much in the usual course that he said to Miss Pynsent, “Did you expect her to live on there forever, working out her terrible sentence, just to spare you the annoyance of a dilemma, or any reminder of her miserable existence, which yon have preferred to forget?” That was just the sort of question Mr. Vetch was sure to ask, and he inquired, further, of his dismayed hostess, whether she was sure her friend’s message (he called the unhappy creature her friend) had come to her in the regular way. The warders, surely, had no authority to introduce visitors to their captives; and was it a question of her going off to the prison on the sole authority of Mrs. Bowerbank? The little dressmaker explained that this lady had merely come to sound her, Florentine had begged so hard. She had been in Mrs. Bowerbank’s ward before her removal to the infirmary, where she now lay, ebbing away, and she had communicated her desire to the Catholic chaplain, who had undertaken that some satisfaction — of inquiry, at least — should be given her. He had thought it best to ascertain first whether the person in charge of the child would be willing to bring him, such a course being perfectly optional, and he had some talk with Mrs. Bowerbank on the subject, in which it was agreed between them that if she would approach Miss Pynsent and explain to her the situation, leaving her to do what she thought best, he would answer for it that the consent of the governor of the prison should be given to the interview. Miss Pynsent had lived for fourteen years in Lomax Place, and Florentine had never forgotten that this was her address at the time she came to her at Newgate (before her dreadful sentence had been commuted), and promised, in an ontgush of pity for one whom she had known in the days of her honesty and brightness, that she would save the child, keep it from the workhouse and the streets, keep it from the fate that had clutched the mother. Mrs. Bowerbank had a half-holiday, and a sister living also in the north of London, to whom she had been for some time intending a visit; so that after her domestic duty had been performed, it had been possible for her to drop in on Miss Pynsent in a kind of natural, casual way, and put the case before her. It would be just as she might be disposed to view it. She was to think it over a day or two, but not long, because the woman was so ill, and then write to Mrs. Bowerbank, at the prison. If she should consent, Mrs. Bowerbank would tell the chaplain, and the chaplain would obtain the order from the governor and send it to Lomax Place; after which Amanda would immediately set out with her unconscious victim. But should she — must she — consent? That was the terrible, the heart-shaking question, with which Miss Pynsent’s unaided wisdom had been unable to grapple.

      “After all, he isn’t hers any more, — he’s mine, mine only and mine always. I should like to know if all I have done for him doesn’t make him so!” It was in this manner that Amanda Pynsent delivered herself, while she plied her needle, faster than ever, in a piece of stuff that was pinned to her knee.

      Mr. Vetch watched her awhile, blowing silently at his pipe, with his head thrown back on the high, stiff, old-fashioned sofa, and his little legs crossed under him like a Turk’s. “It’s true you have done a good deal for him. You are a good little woman, my dear Pinnie, after all.” He said “after all,” because that was a part of his tone. In reality he had never had a moment’s doubt that she was the best little woman in the north of London.

      “I have done what I could, and I don’t want no fuss made about it. Only it does make a difference when you come to look at it — about taking him off to see another woman. And such another woman — and in such a place! I think it’s hardly right to take an innocent child.”

      “I don’t know about that; there are people that would tell you it would do him good. If he didn’t like the place as a child, he would take more care to keep out of it later.”

      “Lord, Mr. Vetch, how can you think? And him such a perfect little gentleman!” Miss Pynsent cried.

      “Is it you that have made him one?” the fiddler asked. “It doesn’t run in the family, you ‘d say.”

      “Family? what do you know about that?” she replied, quickly, catching at her dearest, her only hobby.

      “Yes, indeed, what does any one know? what did she know herself?” And then Miss Pynsent’s visitor added, irrelevantly, “Why should you have taken him on your back? Why did you want to be so good? No one else thinks it necessary.”

      “I didn’t want to be good. That is, I do want to, of course, in a general way: but that wasn’t the reason then. But I had nothing of my own, — I had nothing in the world but my thimble.”

      “That would have seemed to most people a reason for not adopting a prostitute’s bastard.”

      “Well, I went to see him at the place where he was (just where she had left him, with the woman of the house), and I saw what kind of a shop that was, and felt it was a shame an innocent child should grow up in such a place.” Miss Pynsent defended herself as earnestly as if her inconsistency had been of a criminal cast. “And he wouldn’t have grown up, neither. They wouldn’t have troubled themselves long with a helpless baby. They ‘d have played some trick on him, if it was only to send him to the workhouse. Besides, I always was fond of small creatures, and I have been fond of this one,” she went on, speaking as if with a consciousness, on her own part, of almost heroic proportions.

      “He was in my way the first two or three years, and it was a good deal of a pull to look after the business and him together. But now he’s like the business — he seems to go of himself.”

      “Oh, if he flourishes as the business flourishes, you can just enjoy your peace of mind,” said the fiddler, still with his manner of making a small dry joke of everything.

      “That’s all very well, but it doesn’t close my eyes to that poor woman lying there and moaning just for the touch of his little and before she passes away. Mrs. Bowerbank says she believes I will bring him.”

      “Who believes? Mrs. Bowerbank?”

      “I wonder if there’s anything in life fearful enough for you to take it seriously,” Miss Pynsent rejoined, snapping off a thread, with temper. “The day you stop laughing I should like to be there.”

      “So long as you are there, I shall never stop. What is it you want me to advise you? to take the child, or to leave the mother to groan herself out?”

      “I want you to tell me whether he’ll curse me when he grows older.”

      “That depends upon what you do. However, he will probably do it in either case.”

      “You don’t believe that, because you like him,” said Amanda, with acuteness.

      “Precisely; and he’ll curse me too. He’ll curse every one. He won’t be happy.”

      “I don’t know how you think I bring him up,” the little dressmaker remarked, with dignity.

      “You don’t bring him up; he brings you up.”

      “That’s what you have always said; but you don’t know. If you mean that he does as he likes, then he ought to be happy. It ain’t kind of you to say he won’t be,” Miss Pynsent added, reproachfully.

      “I would say anything you like, if what I say would help the matter. He’s a thin-skinned, morbid, mooning little beggar, with a good deal of imagination and not much perseverance, who will expect a good deal more of life than he will find in it. That’s why he won’t be happy.”

      Miss Pynsent listened to this description of her protege with an appearance of

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