The Silent Dead

Chapter I.—The Child of the Slum.-1

Chapter I.—The Child of the Slum.I have just seen my babies put to bed and made cosy for the night. I know I could not have two better nurses looking after them, but my own childhood was so hard and lacking in affection that I am perhaps over-anxious to be sure that my own children do not want for love and tenderness. My dear husband laughs at me, but I know it pleases him that, with all my social duties, the children always come first.

Today is my twenty-eighth birthday and I know I shall never be able to take in as fully as I should what wonderful things have happened to me from my early teens onwards. Still, all my life has been wonderful, as it can be little short of a miracle that, with the truly dreadful promise of my early days, I should have come to my present very prosperous and happy position.

Certainly I am a most fortunate woman, as life could surely be giving me no greater happiness than it is giving now. I have a husband who loves and respects me as much as any husband could love and respect his wife, I have two lovely children, and we are happily situated, socially and financially. Last year I had the thrill of being presented at Court.

If, too, I am not by any means a beautiful woman, I am grateful for other qualities which are equally desirable. My husband declares that I possess the rare gift of charm, derived, he says, half seriously, half whimsically, from the French family of the ancien régime from which I am supposed to be descended.

Yet—I was born in a London slum, my mother had been a general servant and my father was, and indeed still is, a keeper in one of the animal houses of Max's Menagerie.

My so humble origin is one of the two deeply buried secrets of my life, and my dear husband, least of all, must never learn them. Thank Heaven, he never will now, as all save one who could give me away are dead. Strangely enough, this one who still lives is my own father, but he has quite forgotten me and probably does not even imagine that I any longer exist.

For a long time, however, he was a great anxiety to me, as there was always the nagging fear at the back of my mind that one day we might meet somewhere, perhaps in the street, and he would stop me and call out, “Hullo, you're my daughter, Polly, aren't you?” Oh, how awful it would have been and in time the very thought of it so came to haunt me that at last I determined I would put it to the test.

I went to the Menagerie to see if he were still there and found that he was. Though all those years had passed and he was much altered, I recognised him at once. I did not dare then to approach him close, but kept well away. Still, I knew I should have no real peace of mind until I was sure he would not recognise me, and so, a few days later, made a little party of friends and we went to the Menagerie to see the big African lioness, whom we had read in the newspapers had just had twin cubs.

Going into the Lions' House, I saw my father standing in front of one of the cages and, with my heart beating painfully and my legs shaking under me, forced myself to go up to him and ask if we could see the new cubs. He looked at me uninterestedly and, nodding curtly, took us round to the back of the cages and shewed them to us. After we had duly admired them, I gave him a half-crown as a tip and he thanked me with a blank look of no recognition. Oh, how relieved I was! Since then I have never given him another thought, and he doesn't deserve one either, as he was a bad father to me and an even worse husband to my mother.

Still I am quite sure that were everything known about me many would say that I have been both bad and wicked myself, but I do insist that with all my faults I have never wilfully brought pain or sorrow upon anyone. Wherever, too, I have sinned against the conventions of our times, it is I who have been the sufferer and no one else. Speaking there, however, it is not for nothing that woman has been always called the weaker s*x. As long as time was she has been the natural prey of Man and if, in temptation, it has happened she has been strong enough to resist her inclinations—then to most people that very strength will have detracted not a little from those endearing qualities which are both the crown and glory of her s*x.

My life-story is an unusual one.

I was born in Rocker Street, a dreadful squalid little street in Camden Town, upon July the tenth, nineteen hundred and three, and I was known as Polly Wiggs. Our house was the poorest and most mean-looking of all the miserable ones there, and as a child, I remember we had very little furniture, with what there was being so worn-out and shabby that even in my very early years I was always ashamed for anyone to come inside.

Directly I was old enough to take notice of things I came to realise what a disgrace my father was to us. Upon his weekly 'off days' when he was not wearing his keeper's uniform he went about unshaven and unwashed and with no collar or tie. I don't think he ever washed anywhere except his hands or face; the smell of the animals he looked after at the Menagerie always clung to him. Upon entering our house I could always tell whether he was at home or not by the smell in the passage. He drank a lot and spent most of his wages in the public-house. As I grew up he took no interest in me except to slap me hard whenever he could make out that I had done something wrong, and I came to hate and avoid him as much as possible.

My poor mother was a most unhappy woman, always tired and always complaining. She had good cause for complaining, as with my father's drinking habits we were always short of money, always in debt and with the landlord continually threatening to turn us out.

Before her marriage she must have been pretty in a dolly sort of way, but worry, chronic ill-health and an almost annual child-bearing had aged her very early and, taking no pride in her appearance, at thirty she looked many years older than she really was. Happily, perhaps, for my little brothers and sisters, they never lived long, infantile diseases generally taking them off in the first year. Such mortality was not unusual in Rocker Street and was symptomatic of the conditions of life for so many of the poorer classes in the early years of this century.

So, when I was about twelve years old and my mother stopped having babies, I was the only child, and I remember so well what I looked like then. As I went to and from school every day I used always to take a glimpse at myself in the big mirror in the window of the barber's shop, and saw a pale-faced, skinny, weedy-looking little horror, with hollow cheeks and eyes seeming to occupy the greater part of her face.

Still, as I came to realise later, if I were indeed weedy-looking, there must yet have been something of the vitality of the strong unwanted weed about me, as I flourished while so many of the other children in the street sickened and died. Croup, measles, scarlet fever and other children's ailments passed me by and, ill-nourished as I undoubtedly was, diseases of malnutrition got no hold upon me. I remember, I was proud, too, that while so many of the other children had warped and crooked little bodies mine was as straight as a willow.

Certainly, no one would have called me pretty then, but the woman at the sweet-shop where I used to spend a very occasional 'halfpenny' told me once over a small wrapping of acid drops that, when I grew up and my face filled out, my eyes would be lovely. She said, too, the shape of my face would one day make a lot of girls envious. I came to be quite a favourite with her and sometimes, when I had nothing to spend and she saw me looking at the good things in her window, she would darkly beckon me inside and give me a farthing sugar-stick. Then I thought she was the kindest woman in all the world.

At the Board School I attended I didn't get on as well as I should have done, as I was generally not interested in much which they taught me. Still, with any effort, I could always beat all the other girls in poetry and reading. I remember one of the teachers saying once that when I like I could be as sharp as a weasel, but I was too what she called apathetic to bestir myself. She didn't take in that I was always hungry and my poor little stomach never more than half-filled. Often for breakfast, all I had was a slice of bread and a scrape of dripping on it, and a cup of almost milkless tea. Milk by itself was a very rare treat.

With the other girls at the school, I was very unpopular, as I kept myself as aloof as possible and made no friends. It was not that I would not have liked to have friends, but, with the cruelty of children, they were always jeering at me about my shabby clothes. Certainly my clothes were dreadful. Always of the cheapest and poorest quality they would become in time so patched and darned that it was a wonder they held together. Then, when at last as a matter of dire necessity I had to have something new or be unable to go to school, my father always quarrelled with my mother about it and would slap me angrily for having, as he insisted, played so roughly that no clothes would stand the resulting wear and tear.

Altogether, my school days were most unhappy ones and I slunk through them an unhappy, unwanted and ostracised little leper. Even now, I shudder when I think of my miserable childhood, and wonder its cruelty did not leave its mark upon me all my life. Looking back, I really think I was saved from that by my becoming so callous to the wretchedness of my surroundings that I let it pass over me like the proverbial water on a duck's back.

At any rate, better times were coming to me and at fourteen, just half my number of years now, I started upon a new life, the turning-point, as I realise now. I left school and went out as a daily girl at, what was considered then a good wage, eighteen pence a day to a childless widow who ran a small newspaper business and 'tuppenny library' in the Camden Road.

From the beginning she was very kind to me and, out of pity I am sure, at once took a great interest in the gawky, awkward and uneducated girl whom she was now employing. She had been a school-teacher once and, with nice gentle manners, always spoke most grammatically and in refined and educated tones.

“But, my child,” she said to me when I had only been with her a day or two, “why do you talk so horribly? There's no need to. You've got a nicely-modulated voice if you use it properly and from your face I can tell you are something of a little actress, too. So, try straightaway to improve yourself or you'll never get on in life.”

Anxious to do everything she wanted, I did try, at first almost as a joke, but very soon I was taking a great pride in it and she became so very pleased with me. After a few weeks with her, to talk quietly and pronounce my words correctly without dropping any aitches became quite the natural thing. Even my father noticed it. “Play-acting now, are you?” he scowled. “Then the way we brought you up ain't good enough for you?” but my mother bade him be quiet and said that if I spoke nicely it would mean more money coming in. That silenced him, as some of my weekly money always went his way for beer.

My employer became particular, too, about my hands and, telling me they were pretty ones and might easily belong to an artist, made me take care of them and see they never became rough and red. Also, making out it was a sort of uniform to serve in the tuppenny library, she bought me a new dress of, to me at all events, amazing quality. She accompanied it with the gift of a pair of shoes.

Making my father's acquaintance once when he called me to the shop door one evening to get some money off me, she was so shocked at his general appearance that the next day she suggested I should come to 'live in' with her. I was to have food and lodging and £26 a year. I jumped at her offer and, accordingly visited our squalid home only for a short time on Sunday afternoons.