Two Prisoners

Excerpt

Squeezed in between other old dingy houses down a dirty, narrow street paved with cobble-stones, and having, in place of sidewalks, gutters filled with gray slop-water, stood a house, older and dingier than the rest. It had a battered and knock-kneed look, and it leant on the houses on either side of it, as if it were unable to stand up alone. The door was just on a level with the street, and in rainy weather the water poured in and ran through the narrow little passage leaving a silt of mud in which the children played and made tracks. The windows were broken in many places, and were stuffed with old rags, or in some places had bits of oilcloth nailed over the holes. It looked black and disreputable even in that miserable quarter, and it was. Only the poorest and the most unfortunate would stay in such a rookery. It seemed to be in charge of or, at least, ruled over by a woman named Mrs. O'Meath, a short, red faced creature, who said she had once been "a wash lady," but who had long given up a profession which required such constant use of water, and who now, so far as could be seen, used no liquid in any way except whiskey or beer.

The dingiest room in this house was, perhaps, the little hall-cupboard at the head of the second flight of rickety stairs. It was small and dim. Its single window looked out over the tops of wretched little shingled houses in the bottom below to the backs of some huge warehouses beyond. The only break in the view of squalor was the blue sky over the top of the great branching elm shading the white back-portico of a large house up in the high part of the town several squares off. In this miserable cupboard, hardly fit to be called a room, unfurnished except with a bed and a broken chair, lived a person—a little girl—if one could be said to live who lies in bed all the time. You could hardly tell her age, for the thin face looked much older than the little crooked body. There were lines around the mouth and about the white face which might have been worn by years or only by suffering. The bed-ridden body was that of a child of ten or twelve. The arms and long hands looked as the face did—older—and as she lay in her narrow bed she might have been any moderate age. Her sandy hair was straight and faded; her dark eyes were large and sad. She was known to Mrs. O'Meath and the few people who knew her at all as "Molly." If she had any other name, it was not known. She had no father or mother, and was supposed by the lodgers to be some relative, perhaps a niece, of Mrs. O'Meath. She had never known her father. Her mother she remembered dimly, or thought she did; she was not sure. It was a dim memory of a great brightness in the shape of a young woman who was good to her and who seemed very beautiful, and it was all connected with green trees and grass, and blue skies, and birds flying about. The only other memory was of a parting, the lady covering her with kisses, and then of a great loneliness, when she did not come back, and then of a woman dropping her down the stairs—and ever since then she had been lying in bed. At least, that was her belief; she was not sure that the memory was not a dream. At least, all but the bed, that was real.

Ever since she knew anything she had been lying a prisoner in bed, in that room or some other. She did not know how she got there. She must belong in some way to Mrs. O'Meath, for Mrs. O'Meath looked after her and kept others away. It was not much "looking after," at best. Mrs. O'Meath used to bring her her food, such as it was—it was not very much—and attend to her wants, and bring her things to sew, and make her sew them. Molly suffered sometimes, for she could not walk; she had never walked—at least, unless that vague recollection was true. She had once or twice asked Mrs. O'Meath about her mother, but she had soon stopped it. It always made Mrs. O'Meath angry, and she generally got drunk after it and was cross with her.

Sometimes when Mrs. O'Meath got drunk she did not come up-stairs at all during the day. She was always kinder to her next day, however, and explained, with much regret, that she had been sick—too sick to get a mouthful for herself even; but other people who lived in the house told Molly that she was "just drunk," and Molly soon got to know the signs....