The woman smiled, showing blackened teeth, and mumbled something in reply. She had a large, shambling figure, and Dominic would have judged her to be about fifty. He did not understand a word of her speech.
Carlisle led him on a few yards to where half a dozen children sat unpicking old trousers, some of them no more than three or four years old.
“Three of these are Bessie’s.” He looked at them. “They used to work at home, before putting the new railway through caused the slum clearance, and the house their room was in was demolished. Her husband and older children made match boxes at tuppence ha’ penny for a hundred and forty-four, and out of that they found their own twine and paste. Bessie herself worked in the Bryant and Mays match factory. That’s why she speaks so oddly—phossy jaw—a necrosis of the jaw caused by the phosphorus in the matches. She’s three years older than Alicia Fitzroy-Hammond—you wouldn’t think it, would you?”
It was too much. Dominic was bewildered and appalled. “I want to get out of here,” he said quietly.
“So do we all.” Carlisle embraced the room in a gesture. “Do you know third of London lives no better than this, either in the rookeries or the workhouses?”
“What can anybody do?” Dominic said helplessly. “It’s—it’s so—vast!”
Carlisle spoke to one or two more people; then he led Dominic back out into the square again, bidding Mr. Eades a tart farewell on the doorstep. After the thick air inside, even the gray drizzle seemed cleaner.
“Change some of the laws,” Carlisle replied. “The meanest ledger clerk who can write or add is a prince compared with these. Get pauper children educated and apprenticed. There’s little you can do for their parents, except charity; but we can try for the children.”
“Possibly.” Dominic had to walk sharply to keep up with him. “But what is the point in showing me? I can’t change laws!”
Carlisle stopped. He passed a few pence to a child begging and saw him immediately hand them over to an old man.
“Fancy sending your grandchild out to beg for you,” Dominic muttered.
“He’s more likely no relation.” Carlisle kept on walking. “He probably bought the child. Children make better beggars, especially if they are blind or deformed. Some women even cripple them on purpose; gives them a better chance of survival. To answer your question, you can talk to people like Lord Fleetwood and his friends, persuade them to go to the House and vote.”
Dominic was horrified. “I can’t tell them about this sort of thing! They’d—” He realized what he was saying.
“Yes,” Carlisle agreed. “They would be disgusted and offended. Most distasteful. Not the sort of subject a gentleman embarrasses others with. I think I rather spoiled your luncheon the other day. You don’t get the same pleasure out of roast goose when you think about something like this, do you? And yet how far do you think it is from Gadstone Park church pews to Seven Dials?” They turned the corner into another street and saw a cab at the far end. Carlisle increased his pace, and Dominic had almost to trot to keep up with him. “But if I can court a cold-blooded sod like St. Jermyn,” Carlisle continued, “to get a bill introduced, I think you can manage a little discomfort with Fleetwood, can’t you?”
Dominic spent a wretched evening and woke the next morning feeling no better. He told his valet to have all his clothes cleaned, and if the smell would not come out, then to give them away to whosoever would take them. But nothing so simple would get rid of the pictures from his mind. Part of him hated Carlisle for obliging him to see things he would much rather not ever have known of. Of course, he had always appreciated in his head that there was poverty, but he had never actually seen it before, one did not really see the faces of beggars in the streets; they were simply faces, there—like lamp posts or railings. One was always about some business of one’s own and too occupied to think of them.
But worse than the sight was the taste of it in his mouth, the smell that stayed at the back of the throat and tainted everything he ate. Perhaps it was guilt?
He had arranged to take Alicia on an errand she had some little distance away, and he had taken a carriage for the occasion. He called for her at a quarter-past ten, and she was ready, waiting for him, although of course she did not allow it to be obvious, in fact, might even have imagined he did not see it. Possibly she forgot he had been married and was acquainted with at least some of women’s habits.
She was dressed in black and looked particularly fine, her hair bright and her skin flawless, with the delicacy of alabaster. Everything about her was impeccably clean. It was impossible to equate her in any way with the woman in the workhouse.
She had been talking to him, and he was not listening. “Dominic?” she said again. “Are you unwell?”
He needed to share the turmoil inside him; indeed, he could not keep his mind upon anything else. “I met your friend Carlisle yesterday,” he said harshly.
She looked surprised, surely at his tone rather than the information. “Somerset? How was he?”
“We had luncheon together; then he tricked me into going with him into the most awful place I have ever seen in my life! I have never imagined anything so wretched—”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was full of concern. “Were you hurt? Are you sure you are well now? I can easily put off this call; it is not urgent.”
“No, I wasn’t hurt!” His voice was uglier than he meant it to be, but it would not stay in his control. Confusion and anger were boiling up inside him. He wanted someone to explain it away, to give back the ignorance that had been so much easier.
She obviously did not understand. She had never seen a workhouse in her life. She had never been permitted to read newspapers, and she did not handle money. The housekeeper kept the accounts, and her husband had paid the bills. The nearest she had ever come to poverty was a restriction in her dress allowance when her father had suffered a reverse in his investments.
He wanted to explain what he had seen and, above all, how he felt about it; but the only words for it were unseemly, and anyway, they described things that were completely beyond anything she could imagine. He gave it up and sank into silence.
After they returned from the visit he dropped her off at Gadstone Park, and then, feeling miserable and dissatisfied, he sent the carriage away and sat in front of his own fire for an hour. Finally he got up again and called a hansom.
Charlotte had put the matter of the corpses from her mind. Indeed, she had far too much of her own to do to interest herself in most of Pitt’s cases, and the identity of a corpse that had, so far as anyone knew, died quite naturally was not of concern to her. Jemima had sat in a puddle and required a complete change of clothing. She was now busy with a larger laundry then usual, and ironing was not quite one of her favorite chores.
She was startled when the doorbell rang because she was not expecting anyone. People seldom called in the middle of the day; they all had their own duties and meals to prepare. She was even more surprised when she saw Dominic standing on the step.
“May I come in?” he asked before she had time to speak.
She opened the door wider.
“Yes, of course. What’s wrong? You look—” She wanted to say “miserable” but decided “unwell” would be more tactful.
He passed her into the hall, and she closed the door and led the way to the kitchen again. Jemima was building bricks in her playpen in the corner. Dominic sat down on the wooden chair in front of the table. The room was warm, and the washed wood smelled good. There were sheets hanging from the airing rail on the ceiling, and he looked with curiosity at the rope and pulleys for hauling it up and down. The flatiron was warming on the stove.
“I’ve interrupted you,” he said without moving.
“No, you haven’t.” She smiled and picked up the iron to continue. “What’s the matter?”