She had a name, a niche in the waking world. Marks, Greengrocer, was the inscription of the shop. She was Elsie Marks. Her father was a stout, florid man of maybe fifty years, with a chin-beard and light-blue eyes. Good-humoured he seemed, and prosperous, something of a ready wit, a respected and respectable man, who stamped his way about the solid ground in a way which defied dreams.
If I had been experienced, I should have remarked the mother, but in fact I barely remember her, though I spoke with her one day. She was somewhat heavy and grave, I think, downcast and yet watchful. She did her business efficiently, without enthusiasm, and did not enter into general conversation with her customers. Her husband did that part of the business. Marks was a merry Jew. I bought oranges of her once for the sake of hearing her speak, and while she was serving me the child came into the shop and stood by her. She leaned against her rather than stood, took the woman's disengaged arm and put it round her neck. Looks passed between them; the mother's sharply down, the child's searchingly up. On either side there was pain, as if each tried to read the other.
I was very shy with strangers. The more I wanted to get on terms with them the less I was able to do it. I asked the child whether she liked oranges.
I asked the child, but the mother answered me, measuring her words.
"She likes nothing of ours. It's we that like and she that takes." That was her reply.
"I am sure that she likes you at any rate," I said. Her hold on the child tightened, as if to prevent an escape.
"She should, since I bore her. But she has much to forgive me."
Such a word left me dumb. I was not then able to meet women on such terms. Nor did I then understand her as I do now.
Here is another case. There was a slatternly young woman whom I caught, or who caught me, unawares; who suddenly threw open the windows and showed me things I had never dreamed.
Opposite the chambers in R—— Buildings where I worked, or was intended to work, and across a wall, there was a row of tenements called, if I remember, Gaylord's Rents. Part mews, part warehouses, and all disreputable, the upper story of it, as it showed itself to me over the wall, held some of the frowsiest of London's horde. Exactly before my eyes was one of the lowest of these hovels, the upper part of a stable, I imagine, since it had, instead of a window, a door, of which half was always shut and half always open, so that light might get in or the tenants lean out to take the air.