Who Was My Father?

Who was my father?

You don’t know what youre asking. I can’t tell you.

Oh yes you can, if you like. I have a right to know; and you know very well that I have that right. You can refuse to tell me if you please; but if you do, you will see the last of me tomorrow morning.

Oh, it’s too horrible to hear you talk like that. You wouldn’t—you couldn’t leave me.

Yes, without a moment’s hesitation, if you trifle with me about this.

How can I feel sure that I may not have the contaminated blood of that brutal waster in my veins?

No, no. On my oath it’s not he, nor any of the rest that you have ever met. I’m certain of that, at least.

You are certain of that, at least. Ah! You mean that that is all you are certain of.

I see.

Don’t do that, mother: you know you don’t feel it a bit.

Well, that is enough for tonight. At what hour would you like breakfast? Is half-past eight too early for you?

My God, what sort of woman are you?

The sort the world is mostly made of, I should hope. Otherwise I don’t understand how it gets its business done.

Come: pull yourself together. Thats right.

Youre very rough with me, Vivie.

Nonsense. What about bed? It’s past ten.

Whats the use of my going to bed? Do you think I could sleep?

Why not? I shall.

You! you’ve no heart.

Oh, I wont bear it: I won’t put up with the injustice of it. What right have you to set yourself up above me like this? You boast of what you are to me—to me, who gave you a chance of being what you are. What chance had I? Shame on you for a bad daughter and a stuck-up prude!

Don’t think for a moment I set myself above you in any way. You attacked me with the conventional authority of a mother: I defended myself with the conventional superiority of a respectable woman. Frankly, I am not going to stand any of your nonsense; and when you drop it I shall not expect you to stand any of mine. I shall always respect your right to your own opinions and your own way of life.

My own opinions and my own way of life! Listen to her talking! Do you think I was brought up like you? able to pick and choose my own way of life? Do you think I did what I did because I liked it, or thought it right, or wouldn’t rather have gone to college and been a lady if I’d had the chance?

Everybody has some choice, mother. The poorest girl alive may not be able to choose between being Queen of England or Principal of Newnham; but she can choose between ragpicking and flowerselling, according to her taste. People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

Oh, it’s easy to talk, isn’t it? Here! would you like to know what my circumstances were?

Yes: you had better tell me. Won’t you sit down?

Oh, I’ll sit down: don’t you be afraid.

D’you know what your gran’mother was?

No.

No, you don’t. I do. She called herself a widow and had a fried-fish shop down by the Mint, and kept herself and four daughters out of it. Two of us were sisters: that was me and Liz; and we were both good-looking and well made. I suppose our father was a well-fed man: mother pretended he was a gentleman; but I don’t know.

The other two were only half sisters: undersized, ugly, starved looking, hard working, honest poor creatures: Liz and I would have half-murdered them if mother hadn’t half-murdered us to keep our hands off them. They were the respectable ones. Well, what did they get by their respectability? I’ll tell you.

One of them worked in a whitelead factory twelve hours a day for nine shillings a week until she died of lead poisoning. She only expected to get her hands a little paralyzed; but she died. The other was always held up to us as a model because she married a Government laborer in the Deptford victualling yard, and kept his room and the three children neat and tidy on eighteen shillings a week—until he took to drink. That was worth being respectable for, wasn’t it?

Did you and your sister think so?

Liz didn’t, I can tell you: she had more spirit. We both went to a church school—that was part of the ladylike airs we gave ourselves to be superior to the children that knew nothing and went nowhere—and we stayed there until Liz went out one night and never came back.

I know the schoolmistress thought I’d soon follow her example; for the clergyman was always warning me that Lizzie’d end by jumping off Waterloo Bridge. Poor fool: that was all he knew about it! But I was more afraid of the whitelead factory than I was of the river; and so would you have been in my place.

That clergyman got me a situation as a scullery maid in a temperance restaurant where they sent out for anything you liked. Then I was a waitress; and then I went to the bar at Waterloo station: fourteen hours a day serving drinks and washing glasses for four shillings a week and my board. That was considered a great promotion for me.

Well, one cold, wretched night, when I was so tired I could hardly keep myself awake, who should come up for a half of Scotch but Lizzie, in a long fur cloak, elegant and comfortable, with a lot of sovereigns in her purse.

My aunt Lizzie!

Yes; and a very good aunt to have, too. She’s living down at Winchester now, close to the cathedral, one of the most respectable ladies there. Chaperones girls at the country ball, if you please. No river for Liz, thank you! You remind me of Liz a little: she was a first-rate business woman—saved money from the beginning—never let herself look too like what she was—never lost her head or threw away a chance.

When she saw I’d grown up good-looking she said to me across the bar “What are you doing there, you little fool? wearing out your health and your appearance for other people’s profit!” Liz was saving money then to take a house for herself in Brussels; and she thought we two could save faster than one. So she lent me some money and gave me a start; and I saved steadily and first paid her back, and then went into business with her as a partner.

Why shouldn’t I have done it? The house in Brussels was real high class: a much better place for a woman to be in than the factory where Anne Jane got poisoned. None of the girls were ever treated as I was treated in the scullery of that temperance place, or at the Waterloo bar, or at home. Would you have had me stay in them and become a worn out old drudge before I was forty?

No; but why did you choose that business? Saving money and good management will succeed in any business.