CHAPTER XV.

PRUDENCE CALLS AT PLUMMER’S COTTAGES.

Next morning Prudence, after a restless night, was up betimes. Never in the past had the placid, good-natured spinster known sleeplessness, except in a very modified form. Since Augusta’s misfortune, however, that was changed. She thought more than she ever had thought in her life, and constant anxiety was making her face look drawn and worn. Her brief triumph at having got her sister safely out of the house had vanished with the unexpected and unwelcome visit of “good Mrs. Brown.”

Wearily tossing on her bed, waiting for the dawn, she pictured that mistress of a comfortable home, pursuing her with threats; while babies, cheques, Mrs. Dumaresq, and the medical lady whirled wildly past in a waking dream.

At four, she rose, and beguiled the weary hours until the breakfast bell rang, by watching the gardener sharpening his scythe to cut the grass, and observing the sleepy maids unfastening the shutters of the opposite houses, shaking mats, and washing the steps. She wished to go then and there in search of her sister, her anxiety and impatience grew every minute, and she fretted, as we all have done, at the restrictions that prevent one paying a casual call at six in the morning, and the laziness that fails to enforce the running of trains the twenty-four hours through.

Not even a cab could she see. Many a time had she opened her window, looked out, closed it again, taken a novel, put it by, looked at her watch, walked up and down, re-arranged her hair, fidgeted, opened her door, listened if anyone was moving, shut it and sat down, before the welcome boom of the gong, struck by Müller’s stout arm, announced the first meal of the day.

Poor Miss Prudence made but a dismal pretence at eating. She knew that her queer visitor of the previous evening was remembered and discussed, and she felt that every morsel of bread would choke her. She crumbled a slice on her plate, drank a cup of tea, and then rose hastily from table. Consciousness of terrible guilt could scarcely have made her more miserable than she, good innocent creature, was at the moment.

Guilty people usually have a certain hardness of nature that makes them indifferent to the opinion of others, while Prudence, with all her woes upon her head, was a timid, unsheltered, soft-hearted body, to whom an angry or contemptuous glance was as bad as a blow.

By half-past nine she had donned a black bonnet and mantle, and had left the house, carrying in her hand an envelope on which she had written “good Mrs. Brown’s” address. She hailed a passing omnibus that was going in the direction, and, still pursued by her sombre thoughts, tried to imagine what she should do with Augusta if, as she feared, Mrs. Brown’s house was not the happy home she had anticipated.

Plummer’s Cottages were not easy to find. No one knew where they, were; but then every civilian of whom one asks the way in London is sure to be a stranger, so Prudence applied to a stalwart policeman.

“If I was you, mum, I shouldn’t wenture,” he said, “they’re a low lot down there.”

“But I must,” urged Prudence nervously.

“Well, if you must, take the fourth to the right, and then the second to the left, and the first to the right again. That’s Barker’s Rents. You walks straight past the Model Dwellings, which models they are, and you’ll find Plummer’s Cottages.”

Prudence, having laboriously counted her streets, followed his directions. The second turn to the left brought her into a dingy byway, and the first to the right again into a slum. Barker’s Rents towered up to the sky, and at the door of the Model Dwellings a group of slatternly women were discussing personal topics with much freedom, and a running accompaniment of “sez he,” “sez I,” and “sez she.”

No. 42 was an inconspicuous cottage, with a battered green door, reached by a single step. Prudence knocked at it with the handle of her umbrella without any response. She repeated the summons, but in vain, and, having shaken the door, which resisted her efforts to open it, she endeavoured to peep through the dingy window. Her proceedings excited considerable interest amongst the ladies standing at the Model Dwellings, as indeed amongst all the residents in the neighbourhood, who came out by twos and threes until at last, Prudence, turning round, was surprised and alarmed to find herself the centre of an unwashed and, to her eyes, menacing crowd.

“’Tis no good your rapping,” said a burly woman, pushing her way through. “There ain’t no one there. The ’ouse is empty.”

“Empty!” ejaculated Prudence. “Since when?”

“They cleared out last night like winking.”

“Oh, but there must be some mistake. I am looking for a Mrs. Brown.”

“You bet!” said the woman, addressing the crowd, “she’s one o’ them. Nice lot she must be to ’and ’er own flesh an’ blood hover to Sal Brown.”

The crowd signified approval of this view by a series of hoots and cat calls.

“But I don’t know what you mean,” cried the frightened and bewildered Prudence, “I want to find a Mrs. Brown, who told me her address was 42, Plummer’s Cottages, and now that I come here, I find the place shut up and you say the woman is gone. Can anyone tell me where to find her?”

“I’ll tell ye fast enough,” said the burly woman. “She’s in the lock-up, Sal Brown is; she’s to be brought up before the beak to-day on a drunk and disorderly.”

“But good gracious! my sister! Where——where is the child she was taking care of?”

“Oh! so you _are_ one o’ them. A nice ’uzzy you must be to give an innercent byby hover to Sal. Blest if you’ll find it alive, an’ no doubt that’s wot you wants. The perlice made a swoop on the lot last night, an’ they say the Sercierty for the Prewention o’ Cruelty to Children’s carted ’em off somewhere. I wish you just saw ’em, so I do.”

“Them? What do you mean by them?”

“As if yer didn’t know! Wy, the hinfants to be sure. The Sercierty took the whole fifteen o’ them, an’ now they’re going to try to find the parients. They’ll be glad to ’ear of you. They’ll ’ave somethink to say t’ you wen they sees yer.”

“Fifteen infants! Why what do you mean? I only know of one child that was given over to Mrs. Brown to take care of. She wanted to adopt it. She said she was a respectable married woman, and would give it a comfortable home.”

A burst of jeering laughter greeted this.

“Precious comfortable,” said a thin woman, “with Sal on the booze! Wy d’you mean to tell us you didn’t know she wer a reglar wrong un?”

“A wrong one?”

“Yes, farmed kids and that?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” protested Prudence tearfully.

“Well, y’are a deep ’un, or a softy, blest if I know which, not t’ve found all about ’er from the start, if yer not lyin’, as is most likely.”

“But what am I to do?”

“Dunno. You go ’long to the perlice station, an’ p’raps the bobbies’ll tell you.”

“Where is it?” asked Prudence wearily.

Several of the women pointed out the direction, and followed by a little procession of interested but shock-headed observers, who made unfavourable comments on her manners, morals, and appearance, the younger Miss Semaphore took her way, for the first time in her life, to the police station, and made tearful enquiries of a constable at the door.

“Step this way, ma’am,” said he.

While the disappointed crowd hung about, and, foreseeing no startling or tragic _dénouement_, gradually melted away, Prudence was ushered into the presence of a severe official seated at a table covered with neatly docketed papers.

The constable, a fresh-coloured young fellow from the country, saluted.

“Please, sir, this person’s called about the Plummer’s Cottages Baby Farming Case. Says she’s mother to one of the hinfants.”

“Sister,” corrected Miss Semaphore timidly. “I am not a married lady, my good man.”

“Will you kindly state your business,” said the inspector, after an awful pause, during which he took no notice of the presence of Prudence, but went on writing stolidly.

Prudence told how a few days ago she had entrusted her sister to the care of a woman named Brown, and had paid her two sums of twenty and thirty pounds respectively. That now she found the woman had left the address given to her, that the house was shut up, and, having been told Mrs. Brown was under arrest, she had come to the station to make enquiries and to discover, if possible, the whereabouts of her sister. The narrative was told in broken words interrupted by many sighs and tears.

Inspector Smith had made a reputation in connection with baby farming cases, and he looked on this Plummer’s Cottages business as one of the worst transactions of the kind he had ever come across. Sal Brown he considered less guilty than the wicked and unnatural parents who had delivered over their offsprings to her. What he inwardly designated the “crocodile tears” of Prudence did not move him a whit, and he surveyed her with manifest disfavour. She might of course be a dupe, but he inclined to believe her a criminal.

“Do you say that the child in question is your sister?”

“Yes.”

“But did you not tell the constable just now that you were her mother?”

“Oh dear no! He misunderstood me. I only said I had come to enquire about a child.”

“But you must be aware that all the children found at the woman’s house were extremely young—infants in fact. None of them were over two years of age.”

“My sister is”—Prudence hesitated—“extremely young.”

“Well,” said the Inspector doubtfully, “of course I cannot compel you to speak the truth. They’ll do that elsewhere. The babies are mostly in a terrible way, starved, dirty, and diseased. We are trying to trace their parents, as several names and addresses were found in the possession of Brown, and you would probably have been subpœnæd to give evidence at her trial. Meantime the children have been taken to the workhouse.”

What all this portended Prudence scarcely grasped. One fact, and one fact alone, stood out luridly before her. Augusta was in the workhouse.

“Oh!” she gasped in dismay, “in the workhouse! My sister in the workhouse. Where is it? Let me go at once. I must take her away.”

“I think you had better not attempt to do anything of the kind,” said the Inspector stiffly. “The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has taken the matter up, and you’ll hear more of it later. You had better just leave the child alone. She is in good hands now anyway, very different from those you put her into. My advice to you is to keep quiet. You’ll see her all right later on, and may be you’ll have to tell your share in the case.”

“My share in the case is easily told,” said poor Prudence. “As I explained to you already, I thought I was placing her in a good home, with a kind, respectable woman, but it seems I was mistaken.”

If anyone has formed an opinion that another is wily, the simplest speech or action tends to confirm it. In the heart-moving accents of Prudence, Inspector Smith heard only duplicity. In her open, though tear-stained, countenance he read nothing but low cunning.

“It’s quite wonderful,” he said coldly, “to see how easy it is to deceive people when it is to their interests to be deceived; they ask no questions and they are told no lies, and a troublesome baby is got rid of, that’s how it is.”

“Well, I did want to get rid of her for a little time,” admitted Prudence, with the characteristic foolish candour that so often covers the innocent with suspicion, “because it was not convenient to have her where I live. If you knew the circumstances, sir, you would feel for me. They are very peculiar and extraordinary, but indeed I asked questions and Mrs. Brown told me lies.”

The Inspector looked at her under his shaggy brows, he did not quite know what to make of her simplicity. She was either an admirable actress or else—she seemed really white and ill and frightened, but with that kind of woman one never knew how much was “fake.”

“Will you please give me your full name and address,” he said.

“Prudence Elizabeth Semaphore, 37, Beaconsfield Gardens, South Kensington.”

“Condition?”

“Sir.”

“Condition, married or single?”

“I am unmarried, as you must have heard me say to the constable.”

“Unmarried, hem. Age?”

“Age?”

“Yes, age. How old are you?”

“That, sir,” said Prudence with dignity, “is no concern of yours; I decline to answer.”

“Well,” said the Inspector grimly, “I won’t press the question. Perhaps you may answer it later. That’ll do,” and with a nod he dismissed her.

“But the workhouse where my sister is, where is it? How can I get there?”

“She is at St. Mark’s Workhouse, but you had better leave her alone.”

“Would you mind,” said Prudence pleadingly, “writing down the name and the name of the street where it is situated? I must go there at once.”

“Oh, you can remember well enough,” said the Inspector rather gruffly. “St. Mark’s Workhouse, Bush Street.”

With this Prudence had to be content.