"'Yes, mother, I'll swear.' No girl of thirteen is keen on marriage, particularly with a father like ours, and I took up the book light-heartedly and swore 'So help me, God.'
"'Thank Heaven, my dear! Now kiss me.'
"I kissed a bit of rag where her mouth had been, and I saw that the black eye was dim and glazed, and the eyelid fell down as if she were sleeping. I sat on till the nurses changed watch, and then they told me she was dead.
"Father got a life sentence, the boys were sent to workhouse schools, and some ladies found me a situation in the country near Oxford. When I was about seventeen the under-gardener came courting me. He was a straight, well-set-up young chap, and I fell in love with him at once, but when he talked about marriage—having good wages—I remembered my oath. Jem said an oath like that wasn't binding; and when I said I'd live with him if he liked, he was very shocked, having honourable intentions, and he went and fetched the vicar to talk to me. He was a very holy man, with the peace of God shining through his eyes, and he talked so kind and clever, telling me that mother was dying and half-mad with pain and weakness, and that she would be the first to absolve me from such a vow. I couldn't argue with him, and so I forgot my manners, and ran out of the room for fear he'd master me. When Jem saw nothing would move me he went off one morning to America, leaving a letter to say as he had gone away for fear he should take me at my word and be my ruin.
"Things were very black after that; I had not known what he was to me till the sea was between us, and, worse than the sea, my oath to the dying. I left my good situation because I could not bear it any longer without him, and I came up to London and got into bad places and saw much wickedness, and got very lonely and very miserable, and learnt what temptation is to girls left alone. I used to go into the big Catholic cathedral by Victoria Station and kneel down by the image of the Virgin and just say, 'Please help me to keep my oath.'
"Then one day in spring, when all the flowers were out in the park, and all the lovers whispering under the trees, I remembered I was twenty-seven, and though I could never have a husband at least I might have a child. A great wave of longing came over me that I could not resist, and so I fell. And then later, when I knew what was coming to me, I was filled with terrible remorse—leastways one day I was full of joy because of my baby, and the next day I was fit to drown myself in shame. Then the Sunday before I was brought in here I went to service in St. Paul's. I had felt sick and queer all day, and I just sat down on one of the seats at the back and listened to the singing high and sweet above my head, like the chanting of the heavenly host. I was always fond of going to St. Paul's, and once on my Sunday out I even went to the Sacrament, and I says, 'O God, I've lost my character, but I've kept my oath. You made me so fond of children; please don't let me eat and drink my own damnation.'
"I sat and thought of this, puzzling and puzzling, and the hot air out of the gratings made me drowsy, and I fell asleep and dreamt it was the Judgment Day, and I stood with my baby before the Throne, and a great white light shone on me, bleak and terrible, so that I felt scorched with blinding cold. And the angel from his book read out: 'Hester French and her bastard child.'
"Then there came a little kind voice: 'She kept her oath to her dying mother, and remember, she was a woman and all alone'; and I knew it was the Virgin Mary pleading for me. And then a voice like thunder sounded: 'Blot out her sin!' and all the choirs of heaven sang together; and I awoke, but it was only the organ crashing out very loud, and the verger shaking me because he wanted to lock up. Oh, ma'am, do you think as my sin will be forgiven? At least I kept my vow."