Court Royal/Chapter XIII
CHAPTER XIII.
THE EMS WATER.
She had spoken to Mr. Cheek with force and freedom on the distinction between the lots of rich and poor. She had spoken more strongly than she felt. Her ideas formulated on her tongue as she spoke. She had no sympathy with the poor; they were the proper prey of a usurer. That they brought wretchedness on themselves by their own recklessness, improvidence, and idleness, she knew very well. She took advantage of their necessities without compunction. But she felt keenly her own condition and her powerlessness to escape from it. The enigmas of life, that lie unperceived in savagedom, rise into prominence with civilisation, and as culture advances become more perplexing and insoluble.
Joanna sat up under the counter. Lazarus was asleep. She could hear his snoring. He was a noisy sleeper, and though his door was shut and locked, his nasal trumpetings were audible in the shop, and annoyed the girl. On the counter above her was a tin case containing a ball of twine; the end of the twine hung down over the edge, and as she tossed on her sack touched and tickled her face. She laid hold of the end of string and threw it up, but it fell back on her face. Then she began to pull at it, and unwind the ball, and rewind on her fingers. The ball seemed interminable. She was engaged on it half an hour, running the twine out and rolling it again. She did it for a distraction, and as she did it the thought came on her that it was thus with her life; she was drawing out yard after yard of existence, all alike, with a knot here and there, all much the same, and then, suddenly—there was an end. It mattered nothing when the end came, the entire string was so utterly uninteresting.
As sleep would not come to her, she shook off the rug and crawled from her bed. The night was cold, and she was partially undressed. Therefore she drew on the military greatcoat. Thus attired, in her stocking soles, she stole out of the shop to the stairs. She had a favourite retreat on the roof, where she could be quiet and think. There she had a few pots of flowers and a little stool. Perhaps the night air would bring drowsiness to her lids. A problem was perplexing her restless mind; she could not sleep with that unsolved. The problem was this: Why were artisans and domestic servants dissatisfied, and why were shopkeepers content with their lot? All were workers alike. Lazarus worked harder than most day labourers; the man at the ham and pork shop worked like a slave, so did the greengrocer, so did the paperhanger next door but one. These were cheery folk, and did not grumble at their condition. It was otherwise with the journeyman plumber, and carpenter, and the factory hand, and the maid-of-all work. These were impatient of their position and hated their labour.
Joanna traversed the storerooms. The gas-lamp in the street threw in sufficient light for her to see the furniture, and to thread her way without touching and upsetting anything. Had the lamp indeed been extinguished she would have found her way noiselessly about those rooms, and brought from them whatever was required. She went to the window, and looked across the way at the ruin of the house that had been consumed the night before. Every pane of glass was broken; the entire roof had fallen in. Then Joanna went into the room from which the carpets had been removed to protect the roof, and which still covered it. Here alone was an empty space. Joanna cast off the thick coat, and sprang lightly into the middle, stood on tiptoe and threw about her arms and twirled as she had seen in pictures of ballet-dancers. Then she hummed to herself a waltz of Strauss, and began to dance, with fantastic gesture, the step she had acquired that evening from Charles Cheek.
Presently, fearing lest her tread should disturb the Jew, she reinvested herself in the long grey overcoat, and ascended the ladder to the roof.
The cold air made her shiver, but it was fresh after the close, dust-laden atmosphere of the house. The stars were burning brightly overhead.
She looked at her plants; several of the pots were knocked down. One was broken, and the earth had fallen from the roots. She had the ball of twine in the pocket of the coat, and she took from it sufficient to bind together the broken sherds. She cut the string with her teeth; then she put in the earth again. The geranium in the spoutless teapot must come in, and sleep for the winter. The fuchsia must have fresh earth about the roots; the Guernsey lily needed to be divided. All this would have to be done by daylight on the morrow. Then she took up a pot in which was heather, a little heather in peat she had taken up wild and carried home on one rare occasion when she had been in the country for a holiday, on Roborough Down. She loved the heather above every flower she had, yet it was sickly in confinement. Perhaps it was cold up there on the slates. So she took the pot in her arms seated herself, hugging it, with the greatcoat wrapped round her and the heather, and began to think. She could not see into the streets from where she sat, as the parapet cut them off, but she saw the yellow haze that hung over Plymouth, the reflection of the lights in the fine vapour that overarched it. The taverns were shut; no drunken men were about the Barbican. The outline of the citadel stood dark above the harbour. She could see the lighthouse at the pier-head, and far out, reflected in the quivering water, the spark of Mount Batten light. Joanna thought first of her flowers, and then, last of all, of the problem she had climbed to the roof to solve: Why did the labouring class hate work, and the trading class love it greedily? The girls from the country streamed into Plymouth, because they had been taught to read and write—to read novels and write love-letters—and therefore counted themselves superior to feeding pigs and making butter. They went into service, and when they found that there they were expected to dust chairs and wash up breakfast things they went on the streets. That was an everyday story. They fled work because work was hateful. The young men poured into town from the country to escape the plough and the spade, and when they found that they were expected to work at a trade, they earned their bread with resentment at their hearts, because prava necessitas insisted on labour; and they blasphemed God and dreamed of upsetting the social order because forced to work. Why was this? The moment, however, that the parlour-maid became a married woman and had a home to care for, she toiled without grudging time or labour. The moment the artisan opened a shop and worked for himself, he was reconciled with Providence and the social system. Why was this? Unconsciously, Joanna had struck the solution. Content came when man or woman worked for self. Discontent was consequent on working for others. ‘This is it,’ she exclaimed; ‘to be happy and good one must care only for self, and not a brass farthing for anyone besides.’ That was Joanna’s philosophy of life, hammered out of her experience and observation.
Having arrived at this conclusion she stood up. ‘I am cold,’ she said, ‘so is the pot of heath. We must go in.’ Then she stole downstairs.
Joanna descended very softly, lest she should rouse Lazarus. She listened on the stair for his snore. If that were inaudible, it would behove her to walk warily. He might be lurking in a corner or behind a door, ready to leap forth with his stick and batter her. No—she did not hear it. She put foot after foot before her most cautiously, listening and peering about her in the dark. Then—she heard a sound, an unusual sound, which made her heart stand still; she stood with poised foot and uplifted hand to her ear.
The sound came from the back kitchen, and simultaneously she heard the choking snort of Mr. Lazarus in his bedroom.
She crept so noiselessly down the last steps that she would not have scared a mouse, and craned her neck to see who or what was in the back kitchen. In that back kitchen was a low, square window over the sink. Her eyes were sufficiently accustomed to the dark for her to see that the window was obscured by a dark body. She made out that the sash had been thrown up, and that a man was crawling in at the narrow opening. She saw also, by a feeble glimmer, that a second man stood in the outer kitchen, holding a dark lantern, waiting for his fellow to enter as he had come in.
Joanna did not scream. Her lungs were more powerful than when, as a child, her mother had commended her powers of screaming. She knew that if she set up an alarm the first impulse of the burglar would be to stop her voice, and that he would have no scruples as to the manner in which he attained his object. Joanna had matches within reach, but she did not strike a light. She was too wise to expose herself to observation. She preferred observing unseen. She considered what she had better do, and, having rapidly determined, proceeded to take her course with celerity, circumspection, and silence. She stepped, unobserved, from the stair into the passage leading to the chamber of her master and to the shop. She was sure that the burglars would not ascend to the storerooms, to burden themselves with sets of bedroom crockery or chests of drawers. They would look for what was most valuable in the smallest portable form, money and jewels and plate; and all these were in the bedroom of Lazarus. This was the point of attack that must be defended.
Now the thought crossed the mind of Joanna that she might slip into the shop, close the door between and open the shop door, run into the street and give the alarm; but her blood was up. She was a brave girl, she was also a girl quickly roused to anger, and she was now, not afraid, but furious. If men had dared to break into her master’s house, she was determined they should not leave it without a lasting lesson not to do so again, at least while she was there to protect it.
Joanna was unprovided with firearms. Lazarus had a revolver in his room, always loaded; but he took time to rouse, being a heavy sleeper. Against the wall ranged in the passage were the bottles of Ems water. Above, on nails hung a large locked saw. She took it down, and removed the wooden cover to the teeth. Then she crouched on the ground, waiting, watching like a terrier at a rat-hole. Her eyes were on the back kitchen door.
Presently she saw the faint light of the closed lantern in the front kitchen, and heard the fall of bare feet on the floor. She raised her arm with deliberation, with eyes riveted on her object, and flung a bottle of Ems water, not under hand, as a girl casts, but as a boy hurls. A gasp, a crash, and a smothered cry! The lantern fell on the kitchen floor. At once Joanna glided forward, secured the lantern, and retired whence she had crept, and covered the light with her coat. The kitchen was dark as pitch. She heard a spluttering and grumbling, then a whispered query from the second burglar—what was the matter? where was the light? Suddenly she sent a ray across the space; it fell on a face with staring eyes, a coarse ragged beard, and a great cut across the brow from which blood was running. That was all. With a click the lantern was closed, the light cut off, and with level directness another bottle struck the same mark.
Then came a scuffle, a cry, and curses. She listened, holding the light under the flap of her greatcoat, and did not stir till she was sure that the burglars, hurt, frightened, bewildered, were scrambling back through the outer kitchen, one falling over or clinging to the other. Then, once again, she sent a beam of light upon them. She let it travel from one to the other. She marked both faces. One man had his hand to his head, and hand and face were smeared with blood. Again she flung a bottle, and the man went down. Then she retired to the shop and put on her shoes. She drew on her shoes because the floor of the kitchen was strewn with broken bottles, and she did not choose to cut her feet. Then she took the saw and pursued the burglars. One was already through the window over the sink, the other was making his way through. With that generosity which is found even among criminals, the uninjured burglar had helped his wounded companion through before he attempted escape himself, Joanna attacked this man with the saw.
Hitherto the only sounds to which they had given vent were muffled cries and groans. Now this second burglar uttered screams terrible to hear.
Presently Lazarus appeared in his nightgown, holding a candle, white with fear, with a pistol in his trembling hand.
‘Put down the revolver,’ called Joanna. ‘I’ve done the job without you.’
‘What is the matter? What is it? Joanna! Lord! Lord! Whose are these horrible shrieks?’
‘He is like to shriek,’ said the girl, wiping her brow with the left hand; ‘you’d shriek, I reckon, if sawed at whilst crawling through a little window.’
‘What are you doing?’ asked the bewildered, frightened Jew.
‘Sawing, I tell you,’ answered the girl. ‘Don’t come forward; you’ll cut your feet on the broken bottles. There! we are clear of them.’
‘Clear of what?’
Joanna quietly shut the sash of the window over the sink.
‘I see how it was done,’ she said; ‘they removed a pane, and so got their hands in to turn the hasp.’
‘Who, child, who?’
‘Burglars, of course. Who else?’
‘Burglars in my house?’
‘They won’t come again,’ said the girl dryly. ‘Stay where you are, and let them get away through the back-yard door. They came over the wall, but neither of them is in a fit condition for scrambling now.’
‘But, Joanna!’
‘When my mother pawned me,’ said the girl, ‘she said I could scream enough to scare away robbers. I’m older now. I make the robbers scream.’
So Joanna was false to her philosophy ten minutes after having formulated her view of life.