Meg

Chapter I. Meg

TOE was dying. " Joe AA'as dying. His oavii mother said so, and so did Meg's. They came in and out, and the former did Avhat she could for him ; but times Avere hard, and her husband had been earning little lately, so it Avas not much help she could give Joe, though he had always been her favourite son, and ex cepting when the drink Avas on him — " and where's the man that isn't beside himself iioav and then? — as good a lad as ever breathed," as she would say. Still it Avas not much, except in the way of attendance, VOL. I. B MEG and occasionally sitting up at night, she was able to do for her boy. She minded the baby, too, when its wailings disturbed its father, and so did what she could ; but as to Meg's mother, who ever expected anything from her ? Not Meg, certainly — not Meg, who a year before had thrown off her mother's control to pass under Joe's, and who now sat dry-eyed and silent, with her sleep ing baby in her arms, watching him intently, and wondering if it could be true what the two old women had told her.

Joe to die ! Joe — her Joe ! — her dear, kind, brave, handsome Joe — Joe Avho had never given her a rough word, or struck her a blow, but when he had taken a httle too much — Joe the father of her child, and — no, not her husband ; but the wedding ring and the priest's blessing were not consi dered indispensable in Swamp Town, where Meg and Joe were dwelling. They might MEG, 3 have lived together to the end of theh days Avithout feeling the necessity of either. Joe's mother and father were elderly folks, and well-to-do in their way, but they had always considered themselves sufficiently married without ever having entered a church or a registrar's office for the purpose ; and why should Meg and Joe be more sensitive on such points than their elders ? In truth, they had never thought of it ; and had they done so, it is doubtful Avhether the elder ladies, Meg's mother as well as Joe's, would not have scouted the idea as a piece of needless extravagance, and advised the young couple to spend the money in a more sensible manner.

Banns and the parson's fees ! Why, Joe might buy himself a truck with the money that such superfluities would cost, or Meg be newly dressed from head to foot, in a style that would drive half her companions Avild Avith envy. So Meg sat there looking at b MEG, Joe, with Uttle thought that their union had been one that any would have a right to re proach either with — even her baby forgot ten at the time, in the one great paramount thought that Joe was dying. Dying ! What did it mean? — what could it be? Was Joe — her Joe — to be taken from her, and put into a deep hole under ground ; and was that to be the end of all ? Was she never more to hear his voice, or listen for his footstep ? — never more to see hhn come home thed and footsore, and sit down by the fire, and count his earnings, and tell her what fresh investment he meant to start in on the morrow ?

Was she never to stmt and contrive, and pinch her own young appetite, that Joe might have plenty, and his supper be savoury and tempting ? Joe to die — Joe to be cold and stiff — a white, stark, ugly thing like others she had seen ? So cold, that to touch him Avould almost MEG, 5 freeze her blood ! — she had placed her hand once on the dead child of a neighbour, and never forgotten the awful feeling — so deaf, that he Avould never hear her voice — so mute, that he would never speak her name — so still, that neither hand nor foot could move, — Joe, Joe — her Joe — to be all tins, and nothing more ? Nothing more. The darkness of utter death was all around her — a thick, hlack, palpable darkness — and weighed her doAvn Avith its dread horror. A Avorld beyond for Joe and her to meet in ? Another life for them to share together ?

She had not an idea of either one or the other, — this hea then, who had groAvn up in the midst of our civilization, and had heard neither of Christ nor of heaven, — of God, but in an oath or a curse. It Avas a small, sparely furnished chamber Avhere Joe Avas lying, the upper room in VOL. I. MEG one of the better houses in SAvamp Town ; for Joe had thriven very well in his trade as a costermonger, till he caught the cold which had ended in rheumatic fever ; and Meg had a natural turn for housewifery, and a talent for making the best of their small means. There were a few attempts at adornment — a couple of small plaster figures, bought of an Italian image boy, but with a grace and beauty in their forms that showed some perception in the purchaser ; tAvo or three cheap coloured engravings that had been issued in various periodicals; and a small bunch of wallfloAvers on the mantelpiece, in a cheap but pretty vase, which Meg had picked up at a low price, on account of a chip in its brim.

The trestle bed on which Joe lay was covered with a patchwork quilt, Meg's handi work. The pieces were gaudy and of irregu lar form, and not too neatly sewn together. MEG, Meg had almost had to teach herself the art of needlework; and her friends, who had contributed the pieces, hked bright colours in their attire, so she had had to make the best she could of the poor materials at her disposal ; but even here there was some choice of colours displayed, and an eye to the general effect, which made this cotton patchwork quilt a different thing altogether from what it would have become under the hands of any other ghl in Swamp Town. And under this qudt Joe lay breathing heavily, unconscious of the presence of the ghl who sat there with her large eyes fixed on him. His pale wasted face looked the more ghastly yet from its contrast with the bright reds and blues of the qudt ; and the dark matted hah, the hair which Meg had been so proud of, had lost its curl and glos siness, and lay a tangled mass upon the pillow.

There were dark rings round his eyes, MEG, and his clammy lips Avere half open. The fever had left him, but had destroyed him first. Not yet nineteen, though the father of Meg's child, life had begun and ended early with him, and Joe was noAv dying from sheer exhaustion. His mother had not long left him — she had sat up the previous night, and been busy washing all the day, and after paying Joe a short visit, had gone back home, telling Meg she would be round early in the morning. It would not be over before then. So Meg kept her dreary watch alone — alone, but for the baby, whom Mrs. Blake had of fered to take away with her ; but she could not bear to part with it. The little one would be very quiet, and even if it were not, Joe was past hearing it. As to her own mother, she had been out all day selling matches, and telling servant-girls their for tunes, and having come home tired, and a MEG, little the worse for a visit to the "Noah's Ark," had contented herself Avith looking in on Meg, and telling her that Joe Avas going; another twelve hours, and all would be over.

And then she had gone to the little den, ten feet square, wliich she shared in company with a couple of other itinerant vendors. So there Meg sat hushing her baby, and look ing on Joe by the light of the long unsnuffed tallow candle, and wondering how it could be that Joe, her Joe, was to die. She was not yet seventeen, and beautiful with a beauty rarely seen in such places as SAvanip Town. It was a face that would have been a fortune to a tragic actress — mobile, express ive, and finely formed, almost a perfect oval, with a finely-moulded chin, and a broad, open forehead; a forehead that a phrenologist would have delighted in, as an artist would in the large, dark wild eyes, the MEG, arched eyebrows, the rich red lips, the clear dark skin, with the peach-like bloom upon the cheeks, and the wealth of dark hair that noAv fell around her in disorder.

A face that might have suited either a martyr or a murderess, the face of one capable both of strong endurance and of passion, of loring recklessly and hating madly, of self-sacrifice even unto death, of resentment, or of grati tude that even death itself could not efface. But it was the last face that one would have thought Swamp Town could have produced. The baby slept on, and Joe lay with no sign of life but his heavy breathing, and the thick, clammy sweat that now and again broke out on his forehead. After a time Meg laid the little one down in his cradle, and took her place close by Joe, wiping his forehead at intervals, or moistening his lips. It was all she could do, and it seemed so little — there was the sting of it. To sit there MEG, helpless and poAverless, and to know that the life she prized the most of all was ebbing away before her eyes.

Hour after hour passed on, and Meg still kept her watch. At last the cold grey light began to break, and Joe opened his eyes and fixed them on her ; then he seemed to try and murmur something, and Meg bent down to catch the words — they were the last Joe ever spoke — " Good-bye, Meg — good-bye !" So famt, so indistinct ; and then the eyes fixed themselves in a stiff set glare, and the under-jaAV dropped, and Meg shrieked in her despair, as she felt the hand she held in hers stiffen in her grasp. It was well that her cry aroused the baby, well for her that she had something else to do than sit and moan in her despair, well for her that the chdd's wailings could not be easdy appeased, for at last the tears came pouring down like a MEG. summer storm, and she found words in which to speak the anguish of her heart, and cry, " Oh ! baby, father's gone !" O

Chapter II. Savamp Town

CiWAMP TOWN. Have you ever been there, reader? It is situated in one of the northern suburbs of London, and within the present Avriter's recollection, the ground it occupies Avas a pleasant open green, through which a canal sloAvly Avound its Avay. But the land was let out on short leases, and as no one cared to invest much in building property that Avould not be theirs for more than twenty-one years, one toav of wretched, ill-built tenements Avas run up after the other — small four-roomed houses, mostly built of old materials, and letting the rain in through their wretched roofs, the Avind MEG. through their draughty, ill-hung doors and windows, and the wet ooze up from below the flooring, which had been laid almost flat on the soil beneath. As to roads through Swamp Town, they " grew," like Topsy ; there were lines of mud and quag mire, that washed into the doorways of the dwellings on either side of them, which were called Prospect Row and Paradise Place ; and in the summer the mud dried and pulverized into fine dust, through which pedestrians had to wade ankle deep, and horses sometimes sunk in almost to theh knees.

At the back of Swamp Town ran the canal, near the great dust heaps, which gave employment to so many of its inhabi tants — nearly all who did not get their livelihood in this manner occupying them selves as costermongers, or hawkers of small articles. Drainage there was none in Swamp Town ; and sometimes in summer SWAMP TOWN. the stench and miasma were frightful, gene rating all kinds of fevers, and mercifully sweeping off the children in numbers. At the time of which I speak, about a dozen years ago, there was neither church nor chapel, but there had at last been some talk of building the former ; and meanwhile a clergyman had been engaged to officiate as Home Missionary amongst the pagans of Swamp Town. He was a good, well-meaning man enough, but Avhether or not he was fit for his work, there was little as yet to show for it ; but indeed he had not been long in the field, and it was early days as yet to look for any result of his labours.

There had come other workers, too, in the last few months. A band of ladies had been stirred by the wretchedness and squalor of the place to see what they could do for it, had started a soup-kitchen, organized a plan of house-to-house visiting, Avere trying MEG. to establish seAving parties for the girls, and get them to join classes for instruction in reading. The inhabitants of SAA'amp Town looked at first suspiciously upon both the clergy man and the ladies, but some of the latter Avere women not easily daunted, and they had the gifts so essential to those who visit amongst the poor — great patience, great hopefulness, and tact. Meg had seen little of them. She had her baby to mind, and her small household affairs to see to, so she avouM not go with the other girls to the sewing and reading classes ; and she had a dogged pride of her oavii, Avhieh, Avhen Joe's illness came on, prevented her applying to the soup kitchen for relief.

She had sold nearly all her own and Joe's wearing apparel to supply him with necessaries, and the furniture must have gone next, had not Joe been taken SWAMP TOWN. aAvay as he was — which Avas a mercy, her mother told her, for he might have gone " lingerin' on for Aveeks, till she had had to sell the very bed from under him." As it was, the parish had to perform the last poor duties for Joe. Meg followed him to the grave, carrying her baby; and then she Avent back to her home, which, her mother told her, she was going to share Avith her. " For you'll be terrible lonely, Meg, girl, all by yourself, and perhaps it'll be best for us to take it turn and turn about to go out, or stop in and mind the baby. Or I don't know but what it'll be as Avell for you to go out altogether. Vi'lets is coming in, and you'll make a better hand at selling them than I shall — 'specially with the gentlemen.

So Meg went out with her violets, and had, as her mother had expected, far better fortune with them than she would ever C - VOL. I. MEG have had herself. Gentlemen bought be cause the vendor Avas so fair to look upon, and ladies because they pitied thc poor young thing out in the chill March air, who was so young, and looked so innocent. It was a great trouble to have to leave her baby, but her mother thought that the child might spoil her trade, especially with the ladies, giving Meg, as a reason, however, for not allowing her to take the child, the fact that it was delicate, and the keen winds Avould increase the cold under which it was labouring. So Avhen Meg had disposed of her violets, she would hasten home to her baby, which she always found quiet, and generally asleep, and having nursed and fed it, would go out again to sell play-bills at the doors of the theatres ; then, when the half-price visitors had gone in, and there was no chance of selling any more, go back again to her cheerless home, and sit by the SWAMP T0AVN. fire, with her baby on her lap, thinking of Joe, till her mother's querulous voice told her it AA'as time to so to bed.

Poor Meg ! it was a comfort to find the little one ahvays " so good." In her ignor ance she was not aware that the most vio lent crying, the most " fractious " temper that ever wore out a nurse's patience, would have been better than that over-quietness. The child had been born Aveak, Avith but little hold on life, but what it had had been pretty well dosed out of it by its grandmother. The old woman had ahvays some thing " comforting " handy to give it when ever it opened its little mouth to utter a feeble cry, and the poor babe would fall asleep again, and give no further trouble for some hours to its grandmother. " It saved a deal o' trouble," Mrs. Blount said, " and the child was better so than al ways pesterin' in arms." c2 MEG, Meg gave her all her earnings — they were few enough after aU — her mother had com pletely regained the ascendancy she had had OArer her before she began housekeeping with Joe; or rather, since the great trouble had be fallen her, the girl had been too tame and spiritless to oppose her OAvn avUI to Mrs. Blount's. " And after all, if mother had her ways, she was good to baby, an' where was the good of troublin' ?"

Where indeed ? Where was the use of troubling about anything, now Joe was in his grave, and Meg's heart buried with him. Mrs. Blount certainly had her ways — not altogether agreeable ones, and although some of them were too common to most of the dAvellers in Swamp Town to cause much re mark, others were of a more pecuhar nature, and distinguished Mrs. Blount unpleasantly from her neighbours. She drank whenever she could get the wherewithal ; but that Avas SWAMP T0AVN. not at all an uncommon thing for an elderly lady to do in Swamp Toavii, and Mrs. Blount was not quarrelsome in her cups, had never been known to pull a friend's hah, tear her cap, or call her rude names, let her have taken what amount of gin she might. But I think the other ladies in Swamp Toavu Avould have forgiven her if she had occasionally for gotten herself in this manner; for, after all, it was what they were accustomed to in one another, and they had no want of forbear ance towards such occasional aberrations.

But Mrs. Blount "gave herself airs" Avhen she was not sober, and Avas a " stuck-up thing, without any call to be so," the ladies in Swamp Town said; for, after all, what had her first husband been but a convict, and as to Meg's father, if he'd been good for any thing would he ever have left her to shift for the child and herself as he had done? But Mrs. Blount treated all their remarks, MEG when she heard them, with a disdainful sdence. They came from " a Ioav lot, and she never troubled herself to listen to sich." Swamp ToAvnwas good enough for Mrs. Blount sober; but SAvamp Town, when she was otherwise, was regarded by her Avith supreme disdain. And, unhappily, to be sober was with Mrs. Blount the exception, not the rule — her normal con dition, Avhen at all in funds, being a sort of half-way stage between the tAvo extremes of drunkenness and sobriety.

She was apt to be rather sharp and querulous Avith Meg, and to look keenly after her, to see that she ex erted herself to the utmost in selling play bills and haAvking violets. Let the weather be what it might, out Meg must go, and she had a hard time of it when she came home if she had not disposed of her stock in trade. But Meg was used to hardships — she had begun life by selling Avater-cresses and matches, and she had become so accustomed to the streets, SWAMP TOAVN. they seemed more her home than her little room that Joe no longer shared. It had been such a happy time that one year with Joe — with Joe, who Avas a man, and worked for her and himself too, and kept her indoors out of the cold wind and pattering rain, that he was always ready himself to brave. Poor Joe ! he had not been altogether per fect, apt to swear, and use coarse words ; and when the drink was on him, he had some times struck her, as is the custom Avith men of his class.

But what did that matter ? If he could only have been living now to strike her as he pleased ! The spring ripened into summer, and Meg changed her violets for pinks and roses, and the sunshine, that even hi great cities is a glad and blessed thing, found its Avay into the girl's darkened soul, and lightened it of some of its heaviness. She was so young, and it is not so easy for the young to be kill- MEG, ed by grief as they imagine, and life was strong in her, so after a time Meg found herself able to laugh with her companions, and sometimes join in their coarse jokes. Not always, though — they had never been much to her taste — the girls around some times said of her, " Meg was a lady, and took after her mother." And on Sundays she went out with her baby, taking long walks with it, till they reached the green fields, where she would sit down to hsten to the twitter of the birds, and look up to the blue sky, and think if only Joe had been there to enjoy it all Avith her.

Only Joe ! and he was stdl in his grave, down, doAvn with the clods and the worms, where never voice of birds could reach, or sunshine cheer him more. And then Meg would cry in her despair, weeping the pas sionate rain of tears which save young hearts from breaking, and wish that she and baby, SAVAMP TOAVN. 25 too, were both with Joe ; for what right had they to live and look on the floAvers, and the light, and the fresh green earth, while Joe kneAV nothing of them ?

Chapter III. Taken Away

QjO the summer passed on. Meg heard her companions sometimes speak of the clergyman's visits to theh homes, and she knew that he had been to her own once or tAvice when she Avas absent. Tavo or three of the ladies had called, but Meg saw nothing of them either, as she was so little at home till the evening. She would have been glad to have seen them, and wondered " what like they Avere, to come to folks in SAvamp ToAvn !" But her mother had not much to tell her of them. "The parson was like all other parsons, and talked a lot of stuff that there was no TAKEN AWAY. 27 Understanding ; as to the ladies — well, they were ladies — she would say that of them; but folks were better at home, to her thinking, than prying and poking about other people's houses, where they were not wanted, and finding fault with everything they saw.

Things was changed — once there was a thne when she'd sat doAvn with such, and drunk her tea out of silver and chaney, and no one would have thought of finding fault with her management of a baby then ; but folks thought they might say what they liked, to such as weren't so well off as they had been." Mrs. Blount, indeed, had been seriously offended by oneof the visitors, a widow lady and a mother, who, mistrusting the baby's appearance and quietness, had ques tioned her so closely that she had at last elicited the nature of " baby's comfort," and the frequency of its administration. She MEG, was so urgent in her appeals to Mrs. Blount to discontinue it, that that worthy matron had received the advice as a personal affront, and a slur upon her own good management of infancy, and hence was not inclined to look too favourably upon any future visits she might receive.

It would have been a good thing for Meg had she been at home on these occasions. These women had chosen a difficult work, and they were doing it well. They had an idea — some of them, at least — that the right way to reach the hearts and waken the minds of those lost in dense, stolid, brutaliz ing ignorance, was not by attempting to ex plain the highest and most intricate mysteries which the minds of a Newton or a Locke would fail to pierce — that it was of little use talking to men of saving faith before you had made them feel that they had souls for that faith to save; that it was of doubtful TAKEN AWAY. 29 utility to expect those Avho Avere Avorn out with privation, or soddened with drink, to comprehend the hard things of Avhieh Paul wrote, and Avhieh even Peter found it difficult to understand.

There were some of Meg's companions — girls of her own age — who could not have told you the name of the country they lived in, or the Queen who governed them ; there Avere mothers, too, amongst these girls — mothers who had not formed the compara tively respectable connection Meg had Avith Joe, and which, possibly, had his life been trebled in length, might have endured as long — mothers with children that called no man father, and which they were as proud and fond of — for the instincts of mother hood were strong in many of them — as the happiest and most honoured wife could be of hers. Yes, they were mothers like the brutes, and with no more sense of wrong or MEG, shame in being so. Lost ? do you say. Why, like Meg, they were that from their birth ! What chance had any girl groAving up in SAvanip ToAvn, of learning Avhat is pure and chaste, lovely, and of good re port ?

The very shamelessness with which they would show a visitor their babies, Avas, in one sense, theh most redeeming point. They had sinned in ignorance, and, after all, tiresome and wearying as the little ones might be, on the whole they were not ill treated. Human nature is not all bad, even in SAvamp Town, as I think the motherliness of these unAvedded mothers might go some way to prove. So it was in these that the visitors of SAvamp Town tried to aAvaken a sense of better things — of womanly ways, of neatness, cleanliness, and modesty — be ginning AAdth small things, in the hope of leading them on to better. But, as I said, Meg was never in the way TAKEN AAVAY. when they called, and her mother was not one to profit much by such gentle ministrations. So the summer Avent on, and even Meg's eyes could not fail to perceive that the baby was growing weaker and punier every day, and at last she insisted on having her own way, and taking the child to a doctor who saw patients gratis every morning.

He was a rising man, pushing his way fast into an ex tensive practice, and not disposed to waste much time or many amenities upon his poorer patients. He looked at the tiny creature, now nearly nine months old, and no heavier or larger than many a healthy babe of one, listened to its breathing, felt its little flicker ing pulse, asked its age, and then told Meg she would never rear it. It had water on the brain, and he suspected inflammation on the chest was fast setting in. Meg gave a great cry, and looked at him in wide-eyed horror. Was she to lose this too ? Was MEG. this — this to go as well ? And she flung herself on her knees to the doctor, and asked him if he couldn't save her little one. " I can't spare him !" she gasped ; " Joe's gone, and I've nothing iioav but Willie ! He mustn't die ! — he can't die !

Oh ! doctor, folks say you can do such Avonderful things, can't you — can't you save my little baby for me ?" Meg was getting troublesome, and the doctor was used to scenes of distress ; but she must be got quietly out of the surgery. He asked her where she lived, told her he would come and see the chdd the next time he came that Avay, gave her a Uttle medicine for it, and so got Meg out of the room, and turned his attention to another patient. On she went with her little burthen, Avalking like one in a dream, tdl a heavy shoAver of rain came on, and Meg had to look for shelter. There was none in the street — the TAKEN AWAY. houses Avere all private, and not a single door had a portico. She took off her thin, old shawl, and wrapped it round the baby, but it was of little more protection than so much thin paper, and she ran on as fast as she could ; but still she could not run fast enough to prevent herself and the little one being wet through.