My father died, curiously enough, on the morning of his birthday. We had not expected the end to arrive for some time, and at first did not know that it had come.
"I have left him sleeping," said my mother, who had slipped out very quietly in her dressing-gown. "Washburn gave him a draught last night. We won't disturb him."
So we sat round the breakfast table, speaking in low tones, for the house was small and flimsy, all sound easily heard through its thin partitions. Afterwards my mother crept upstairs, I following, and cautiously opened the door a little way.
The blinds were still down, and the room dark. It seemed a long time that my mother stood there listening, her ear against the jar. The first costermonger--a girl's voice, it sounded--passed, crying shrilly: "Watercreases, fine fresh watercreases with your breakfast-a'penny a bundle watercreases;" and further off a hoarse youth was wailing: "Mee-ilk-mee-ilk-oi."
Inch by inch my mother opened the door wider and we stole in. He was lying with his eyes still closed, the lips just slightly parted. I had never seen death before, and could not realise it. All that I could see was that he looked even younger than I had ever seen him look before. By slow degrees only, it came home to me, the knowledge that he was gone away from us. For days--for weeks, I would hear his step behind me in the street, his voice calling to me, see his face among the crowds, and hastening to meet him, stand bewildered because it had mysteriously disappeared. But at first I felt no pain whatever.
To my mother it was but a short parting. Into her placid faith had never fallen fear nor doubt. He was waiting for her. In God's good time they would meet again. What need of sorrow! Without him the days passed slowly: the house must ever be a little dull when the good man's away. But that was all. So my mother would speak of him always--of his dear, kind ways, of his oddities and follies we loved so to recall, not through tears, but smiles, thinking of him not as of one belonging to the past, but as of one beckoning to her from the future.
We lived on still in the old house though ever planning to move, for the great brick monster had crept closer round about us year by year, devouring in his progress all things fair. Field and garden, tree and cottage, time-mellowed house suggesting story, kind hedgerow hiding hideousness beyond--the few spots yet in that doomed land lingering to remind one of the sunshine, one by one had he scrunched them between his ugly teeth. A world apart, this east end of London, this ghetto of the poor for ever growing, dreariness added year by year to dreariness, hopelessness stretching ever farther its long, shrivelled arms, these endless rows of reeking cells where London herds her slaves. Often of a misty afternoon when we knew that without this city of the dead life was stirring in the sunshine, we would fare forth to house-hunt in pleasant suburbs, now themselves added to the weary catacomb of narrow streets--to Highgate, then a tiny town connected by a coach with leafy Holloway; to Hampstead with its rows of ancient red-brick houses, from whose wind-blown heath one saw beyond the woods and farms, far London's domes and spires, to Wood Green among the pastures, where smock-coated labourers discussed their politics and ale beneath wide-spreading elms; to Hornsey, then a village consisting of an ivy-covered church and one grass-bordered way. But though we often saw "the very thing for us" and would discuss its possibilities from every point of view and find them good, we yet delayed.
"We must think it over," would say my mother; "there is no hurry; for some reasons I shall be sorry to leave Poplar."
"For what reasons, mother?"
"Oh, well, no particular reason, Paul. Only we have lived there so long, you know. It will be a wrench leaving the old house."
To the ****** of man go all things, even to the instincts of the clinging vine. We fling our tendrils round what is the nearest castle-keep or pig-stye wall, rain and sunshine fastening them but firmer. Dying Sir Walter Scott--do you remember?--hastening home from Italy, fearful lest he might not be in time to breathe again the damp mists of the barren hills. An ancient dame I knew, they had carried her from her attic in slumland that she might be fanned by the sea breezes, and the poor old soul lay pining for what she called her "home." Wife, mother, widow, she had lived there till the alley's reek smelt good to her nostrils, till its riot was the voices of her people. Who shall understand us save He who fashioned us?
So the old house held us to its dismal bosom; and not until within its homely but unlovely arms, first my aunt, and later on my mother had died, and I had said good-bye to Amy, crying in the midst of littered emptiness, did I leave it.
My aunt died as she had lived, grumbling.
"You will be glad to get rid of me, all of you!" she said, dropping for the first and last time I can recollect into the retort direct;
"and I can't say I shall be very sorry to go myself. It hasn't been my idea of life."
Poor old lady! That was only a couple of weeks before the end. I do not suppose she guessed it was so certain or perhaps she might have been more sentimental.
"Don't be foolish," said my mother, "you're not going to die!"
"What's the use of talking like an idiot," retorted my aunt, "I've got to do it some time. Why not now, when everything's all ready for it.
It isn't as if I was enjoying myself."
"I am sure we do all we can for you," said my mother. "I know you do," replied my aunt. "I'm a burden to you. I always have been."
"Not a burden," corrected my mother.
"What does the woman call it then," snapped back my aunt. "Does she reckon I've been a sunbeam in the house? I've been a trial to everybody. That's what I was born for; it's my metier."
My mother put her arms about the poor old soul and kissed her. "We should miss you very much," she said.
"I'm sure I hope they all will!" answered my aunt. "It's the only thing I've got to leave 'em, worth having."
My mother laughed.