THE SCHOOL OF ADVERSITY: THE SIXTH FORM THEREOF
WHEN Zachariah came to himself he was in a large, long, whitewashed room,
with twenty beds or more in it. A woman in a greyish check dress was
standing near him.
“Where am I?” he said.
“Where are yer?” she said; “why, in the workus infirmary, to be sure,
with me a-looking after yer. Where would yer be?”
Zachariah relapsed and was still. The next time he opened his eyes the
woman had left him. It was true he was in the workhouse, and a workhouse
then was not what it is now. Who can possibly describe what it was? Who
can possibly convey to anybody who has not known what it was by actual
imprisonment in it any adequate sense of its gloom; of the utter,
callous, brutal indifference of the so-called nurses; of the neglect of
the poor patients by those who were paid to attend to them; of the
absence of even common decency; of the desperate persistent attempts made
by everybody concerned to impress upon the wretched mortals who were
brought there that they were chargeable to the parish and put there for
form’s sake, prior to being shovelled into a hole in the adjoining
churchyard? The infirmary nurses were taken from the other side of the
building—sometimes for very strange reasons. The master appointed them,
and was not bound to account to anybody for his preferences. One woman
had given him much trouble. She was a stout, lazy brute, who had no
business in the House, and who went in and out just as she liked. One
day something displeased her, and she attacked him with such fury and
suddenness that he would have been a dead man in a few minutes if she had
not been pulled off. But he dared not report her. She knew too much
about him, and she was moved a few days afterwards to look after the
sick. She it was who spoke to Zachariah. She, however, was not by any
means the worst. Worse than her were the old, degraded, sodden,
gin-drinking hags, who had all their lives breathed pauper air and pauper
contamination; women with not one single vestige of their Maker’s hand
left upon them, and incapable, even under the greatest provocation, of
any human emotion; who would see a dying mother call upon Christ, or cry
for her husband and children, and would swear at her and try to smother
her into silence. As for the doctor, he was hired at the lowest possible
rate, and was allowed a certain sum for drugs. It was utterly
insufficient to provide anything except the very commonest physic; and
what could he do in the midst of such a system, even if he had been
inclined to do anything? He accordingly did next to nothing; walked
through the wards, and left his patients pretty much to Providence. They
were robbed even of their food. They were not much to be pitied for
being robbed of the stimulants, for every drop, including the “port
wine,” was obtained by the directors from those of their number or from
their friends who were in the trade, and it was mostly poisonous. Death
is always terrible—terrible on the battlefield; terrible in a sinking
ship; terrible to the exile—but the present writer, who has seen Death in
the “House” of years gone by, cannot imagine that he can ever be so
distinctively the King of Terrors as he was there. The thought that
thousands and thousands of human beings, some of them tender-hearted,
have had to face him there is more horrifying than the thought of French
soldiers freezing in their blood on the Borodino, or of Inquisitional
tortures. It is one of those thoughts which ought not to be thought—a
thought to be suppressed, for it leads to atheism, or even something
worse than mere denial of a God. Thank Heaven that the present
generation of the poor has been relieved at least of one argument in
favour of the creed that the world is governed by the Devil! Thank
Heaven that the modern hospital, with its sisters gently nurtured,
devoted to their duty with that pious earnestness which is a true
religion, has supplied some evidence of a Theocracy.
Zachariah looked round again. There was an old male attendant near him.
He had on a brown rough coat with brass buttons, and shoes which were
much too big for him. They were supplied in sizes, and never fitted.
The old men always took those that were too large. They had as their
place of exercise a paved courtyard surrounded by high brick walls, and
they all collected on the sunny side, and walked up and down there,
making a clapping noise with their feet as the shoes slipped off their
heels. This sound was characteristic of the whole building. It was to
be heard everywhere.
“You’ve been very bad,” said the old man, “but you’ll get better now; it
a’nt many as get better here.”
He was a poor-looking, half-fed creature, with a cadaverous face. He had
the special, workhouse, bloodless aspect—just as if he had lived on
nothing stronger than gruel and had never smelt fresh air. The air, by
the way, of those wards was something peculiar. It had no distinctive
odour—that is to say, no odour which was specially this or that; but it
had one that bore the same relation to ordinary odours which well-ground
London mud bears to ordinary colours. The old man’s face, too, had
nothing distinctive in it. The only thing certainly predicable of him
was, that nothing could be predicated of him. He was neither selfish nor
generous; neither a liar nor truthful; neither believed anything, nor
disbelieved anything; was neither good nor bad; had no hope hereafter,
nor any doubt.
“Who are you?” said Zachariah.
“Well, that ain’t easy to say. I does odd jobs here as the nurses don’t
do, and I gets a little extra ration.”
“How long have I been here?”
“About a fortnight.”
Zachariah was too weak to say anything more, and fell asleep again. Next
day he was better, and he then thought of his wife; he thought of
Caillaud, the Major, and Pauline; but he had no power to reflect
connectedly. He was in that miserable condition in which objects present
themselves in a tumbling crowd, one following the other with
inconceivable rapidity, the brain possessing no power to disentangle the
chaos. He could not detach the condition of his wife, for example, and
determine what ought to be done; he could not even bring himself to
decide if it would be best to let her know where he was. No sooner did
he try to turn his attention to her, even for a moment, than the Major
came before him, and then his other friends, and then the workhouse and
the dread of death there. Mercifully he went to sleep again, and after
another long night’s rest he was much stronger. He was able now—first
sign of restored power—to settle that he ought before everything to
communicate with Mrs. Carter, and he inquired of the old man if he could
write.
“Oh, yes, I can write,” said he, and something like a gleam of light
passed over his countenance at being asked to practise an art almost
forgotten in those walls.
A letter was accordingly written to Mrs. Carter, at her sister’s address,
telling her briefly what had happened, but that she was not to be
alarmed, as the writer was rapidly recovering. He was able to sign his
name; but when the letter was finished, he reflected that he had not got
a coin in his pocket with which to pay the postage. One of the
institutions of the workhouse was, however, a kind of pawnshop kept by
one of the under-masters, as they were called, and Zachariah got a
shilling advanced on a pocket-knife. The letter, therefore, was duly
despatched, and he gave his secretary a penny for his trouble. This led
to a little further intimacy, and Zachariah asked him how he came there.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I was born in the country, and when I was
fourteen, my father apprenticed me to the watchmaking. He was well
off—my father was—and when I was out of my time he set me up in business
in Liverpool. It was a business as had been established some time—a
fairish business it was. But when I came to Liverpool I felt dull.”
“What do you mean by dull? Stupid?”
“No, not exactly that. You know what dull means, don’t you?—low-spirited
like—got nothing to talk about. Well, I can’t tell how it come about,
but I was always dull, and have been so ever since. I got married soon
after I was settled. My wife was a good sort of woman, but she wasn’t
cheerful, and she wasn’t very strong. Somehow the business fell off.
Customers as used to come didn’t come, and I got no new ones. I did my
work pretty well; but still, for all that, things went down and down by
degrees. I never could make out why, except that people liked to be
talked to, and I had nothing particular to say to any of them when they
came in. The shop, too, ought to have been painted more often, and I
ought to have had something in the window, but, as I say, I was always
dull, and my wife wasn’t strong. At last I was obliged to give up and go
to journey-work; but when I got old I couldn’t see, and was put in here.”
“But,” said Zachariah, “is that all? Why, you are nearly seventy years
old. You must have something more to tell me.”
“No. I don’t know as I have; that seems about all.”
“But what became of your father? He was well off. What became of his
money when he died?”
“I’d had my share.”
“Had you no brothers nor sisters to help you?”
“Yes, I had some.”
“Did they let you come here?”
“Why, you see, as I’ve told you before, I was dull, and my wife wasn’t
strong. They never came much to see me. It was my fault; I never had
nothing to say to them.”
“Had you no children?”
“Yes, I had a son and daughter.”
“Are they alive now?”
“Yes—both of them; at least I haven’t heard as they are dead.”
“And able to keep themselves?”
“They used to be.”
“And do you mean that your son and daughter let you go to the workhouse?”
The old man was a little disturbed, and for a moment some slight sign of
nervous excitement revealed itself in his lustreless eyes.
“I haven’t see anything of ’em for years.”
“Did you quarrel?”
“No, we didn’t quarrel; but they left off visiting us. They both of them
married, and went out a good bit, and were gayer than we were. We used
to ask them, and then they’d look in sometimes: but never except when
they were asked, and always seemed to wish to get away. We never had
nothing to show anybody, nor nothing to give anybody; for we didn’t drink
and I never smoked. They went away too, both of them, from Liverpool,
somewhere towards London.”
“But when you broke down didn’t you inform them?”
“No. I hadn’t heard anything of them for so long. I thought I might as
well get into the House. It will do very well.”
“Didn’t you know anybody belonging to your church or chapel?”
“Well, we went to church; but when the business dropped we left off
going, for nothing much seemed to come of it, and nobody ever spoke to
us.”
“Wouldn’t you like to get out of this place?”
“No—I don’t know as I should now; I shouldn’t know what to do, and it
won’t last long.”
“How old are you?”
“Sixty-five.”
It puzzled Zachariah that the man’s story of his life was so short—all
told in five minutes.
“But did you never have any adventures? Did you never hear about
anything, or see anybody worth remembering? Tell me all about yourself.
We’ve got nothing to do.”
“I don’t recollect anything particular after I came to Liverpool. Things
seemed to go on pretty much in the same way.”
“But you got married, and your wife died?”
“Yes—I got married, and she died.”
“What was your wife’s name?”
“Her name was Jenkins; she was the daughter of the saddler that lived
next door.”
“Couldn’t her friends have helped you?”
“After she died they had nothing more to do with me.”
“And you really cannot tell me any more?”
“No—how can I? What more is there to tell? It’s all alike.”
The old pauper was called away, and went shuffling along to the door,
leaving Zachariah to his meditations.
Another day passed, and he was lying half asleep when a visitor was
announced, and close upon the announcement stood before him—who should it
be?—no other than Mrs. Carter, out of breath, radiant, healthy,
impetuous.
“God bless the poor dear man!” she burst out; “to think of finding you
here, and not to have told us before. But I suppose you couldn’t.
Directly as I got your letter off I came, and here I am, you see.”
Her presence was like the south-west wind and sunlight after long
north-easterly gloom and frost. Astonishing is that happy power which
some people possess which enables them at once to dispel depression and
even disease. A woman like Mrs. Carter comes into a house where there is
misery and darkness; where the sufferer is possessed by demons;
unnameable apprehensions, which thicken his blood and make him cry for
death, and they retreat precipitately, as their brethren were fabled to
retreat at the sign of the cross. No man who is so blessed as to have a
friend with that magnetic force in him need disbelieve in much of what is
recorded as miraculous. Zachariah felt as if a draught of good wine had
been poured down his throat. But he instantly asked:
“How is my wife?”
“She is all right; but you mustn’t bother about her. You must come out
at once. You mustn’t go back to Manchester just yet—not as they’d care
much about you now; Nadin’s got plenty of work to do, and wouldn’t
concern himself about you—but you aren’t well enough and are better away.
Now, look here—I’ll tell you what I’ve been and done. I’ve got a cousin
living here in Liverpool, as good a soul as ever lived. I goes to her
and tells her you must stay there.”
“But how can I? Just think of the trouble and expense. I don’t know
her.”
“Lord a mercy, there you are again—trouble and expense! What trouble
will you be? And as for expense, one would think you’d been living like
a Lord Mayor to hear you talk. What are we made for if not to help one
another?”
“I can’t walk; and shouldn’t I be obliged to get the doctor’s
permission?”
“Walk! Of course you can’t. And what did my husband say to me before I
started? Says he, ‘You’ll have to get a conveyance to take him.’ ‘Leave
me alone for that,’ says I; ‘although right you are.’ And I says to my
cousin’s husband, who drives a hackney coach, ‘Just you drop down and
carry him home. It won’t be ten minutes out of your time.’ So he’ll be
here in about a quarter of an hour. As for the doctor, I understand as
much about you as he does, and, doctor or no doctor, you won’t sleep in
this bed to-night. I’ll go and tell the head nurse or master, or
somebody or the other, that you are off. You just put on your clothes.”
In a short time she returned, found Zachariah dressed, wrapped him round
in shawls and rugs, helped him downstairs, put him into the coach, and
brought him to her cousin’s. It was a little house, in a long uniform
street; but a good deal of pains had been taken with it to make it
something special. There were two bedroom windows in front, on the upper
storey, and each one had flowers outside. The flower-pots were prevented
from falling off the ledge by a lattice-work wrought in the centre into a
little gate—an actual little gate. What purpose it was intended to
answer is a mystery; but being there the owner of the flower-pots
unfastened it every morning when the sill was dusted, and removed them
through it, although lifting them would have been a much simpler
operation. There were flowers in the sitting-room downstairs too; but
they were inside, as the window was flush with the pavement. This
sitting-room was never used except on Sundays. It was about nine feet
square, and it had in it a cupboard on either side of the fireplace, a
black horse-hair sofa alongside the wall on the right-hand side of the
door, red curtains, a black horse-hair arm-chair, three other chairs to
match, a little round table, two large shells, a framed sampler on the
wall representing first the letters of the alphabet, then the figures 1,
2, 3, &c., and, finally, a very blue Jesus talking to a very red woman of
Samaria on a very yellow well—underneath, the inscription and date,
“Margaret Curtin, 10th March 1785.” The only other decorations—for
pictures were dear in those days—were two silhouettes, male, and female,
one at each corner of the mantelpiece, and two earthenware dogs which sat
eternally looking at one another on the top of one of the cupboards. On
the cupboard farthest away from the window was a large Bible with
pictures in it and notes, and, strange to say, a copy of Ferguson’s
Astronomy and a handsome quarto edition in three volumes of Cook’s First
Voyage. Everything was as neat and clean as it could possibly be; but
Mr. and Mrs. Hocking had no children, and had saved a little money.
Into this apartment Zachariah was brought. There was a fire burning,
though it was not cold, and on the table, covered with a perfectly white
cloth, stood a basin of broth, with some toast, a little brandy in a
wine-glass, a jug of water, and a tumbler. The books, including the
Bible, had apparently not been read much, and were probably an heirloom.
As Zachariah began to recover strength he read the Ferguson. It was the
first time he had ever thought seriously of Astronomy, and it opened a
new world to him. His religion had centred all his thoughts upon the
earth as the theatre of the history of the universe, and although he knew
theoretically that it was but a subordinate planet, he had not realised
that it was so. For him, practically, this little globe had been the
principal object of the Creator’s attention. Ferguson told him also, to
his amazement, that the earth moved in a resisting medium, and that one
day it would surely fall into the sun. That day would be the end of the
world, and of everything in it. He learned something about the magnitude
of the planets and the distances of the fixed stars, and noted that his
author, pious as he is, cannot admit that planets or stars were created
for the sake of man. He dwelt upon these facts, more especially upon the
first till the ground seemed to disappear under his feet, and he fell
into that strange condition in which people in earthquake countries are
said to be when their houses begin to tremble. We may laugh, and call
him a fool to be disturbed by a forecast of what is not going to happen
for millions of years; but he was not a fool. He was one of those
unhappy creatures whom an idea has power to shake, and almost to
overmaster. Ferguson was a Christian, and the thought of the destruction
of our present dwelling-place, with every particle of life on it, did not
trouble him. He had his refuge in Revelation. Zachariah too was a
Christian, but the muscles of his Christianity were—now at any rate,
whatever they may once have been—not firm enough to strangle this new
terror. His supernatural heaven had receded into shadow; he was giddy,
and did not know where he was. He did not feel to their full extent the
tremendous consequences of this new doctrine, and the shock which it has
given to so much philosophy and so many theories, but he felt quite
enough, and wished he had never opened the volume. There are many
truths, no doubt, which we are not robust enough to bear. In the main it
is correct that the only way to conquer is boldly to face every fact,
however horrible it may seem to be, and think, and think, till we pass it
and come to a higher fact; but often we are too weak, and perish in the
attempt. As we lie prostrate, we curse the day on which our eyes were
opened, and we cry in despair that it would have been better for us to
have been born oxen or swine than men. It is an experience, I suppose,
not new that in certain diseased conditions some single fear may fasten
on the wretched victim so that he is almost beside himself. He is
unaware that this fear in itself is of no importance, for it is nothing
but an index of ill-health, which might find expression in a hundred
other ways. He is unconscious of the ill-health except through his
fancy, and regards it as an intellectual result. It is an affliction
worse ten thousand times than any direct physical pain which ends in
pain. Zachariah could not but admit that he was still physically weak;
he had every reason, therefore, for supposing that his mental agony was
connected with his sickness, but he could not bring himself to believe
that it was so, and he wrestled with his nightmares and argued with them
as though they were mere logical inferences. However, he began to get
better, and forthwith other matters occupied his mind. His difficulty
was not fairly slain, pierced through the midst by some heaven-directed
arrow, but it was evaded and forgotten. Health, sweet blood, unimpeded
action of the heart, are the divine narcotics which put to sleep these
enemies to our peace and enable us to pass happily through life. Without
these blessings a man need not stir three steps without finding a foe
able to give him his death-stroke.
Zachariah longed to see his wife again; but he could not bring her to
Liverpool until he had some work to do. At last the day came when he was
able to say that he was once more earning his living, and one evening
when he reached home she was there too. Mrs. Carter had herself brought
her to Liverpool, but had gone back again to Manchester at once, as she
could not stay the night. When he first set eyes on his wife he was
astonished at the change in her. She was whiter, if possible, than ever,
thin in the face, dark-ringed about the eyes, and very weak. But
otherwise she was what she had always been. The hair was just as smooth,
everything about her just as spotlessly clean and unruffled, and she sat
as she always did, rather upright and straight, as if she preferred the
discomfort of a somewhat rigid position to the greater discomfort of
disarranging her gown.
Zachariah had much to say. During the whole of the four hours before
bedtime he did not once feel that drying-up of conversation which used to
be so painful to him. It is true she herself said little or nothing, but
that was of no moment. She was strengthless, and he did not expect her
to talk. So long as he could speak he was happy. The next morning came,
and with it came Hope, as it usually came to him in the morning, and he
kissed her with passionate fervour as he went out, rejoicing to think
that, although she was so feeble, she was recovering; that he could once
more look forward as in earlier days, to the evening, and forgetting
every cloud which had ever come between them. Alas, when the night of
that very day came he found his little store exhausted, and he and the
companion of his life sat together for a quarter of an hour or more
without speaking a word. He proposed reading a book, and took up the
Ferguson, thinking he could extract from it something which might
interest her; but she was so irresponsive, and evidently cared so little
for it, that he ceased. It was but eight o’clock, and how to fill up the
time he did not know. At last he said he would just take a turn outside
and look at the weather. He went out and stood under the stars of which
he had been reading. The meeting, after such a separation, was scarcely
twenty-four hours old, and yet he felt once more the old weariness and
the old inability to profit by her society or care for it. He wished, or
half wished, that there might have existed such differences between them
that they could have totally disregarded or even hated one another. The
futility, however, of any raving was soon perfectly clear to him. He
might as well have strained at a chain which held him fast by the leg,
and he therefore strove to quiet himself. He came back, after being
absent longer than he intended and found she was upstairs. He sat down
and meditated again, but came to no conclusion, for no conclusion was
possible. The next evening, after they had sat dumb for some moments, he
said, “My dear; you don’t seem well.”
“I am not well, as you know. You yourself don’t seem well.”
He felt suddenly as if he would have liked to throw himself on his knees
before her, and to have it all out with her; to say to her all he had
said to himself; to expose all his misery to her; to try to find out
whether she still loved him; to break or thaw the shell of ice which
seemed to have frozen round her. But he could not do it. He was on the
point of doing it, when he looked at her face, and there was something in
it which stopped him. No such confidence was possible, and he went back
into himself again.
“Shall I read to you?”
“Yes, if you like.”
“What shall I read?”
“I don’t care; anything you please.”
“Shall it be Cook’s Voyages?”
“I have just said I really do not care.”
He took down the Cook’s Voyages; but after about ten minutes he could not
go on and he put it back in its place.
“Caillaud’s trial is to take place next week,” he observed after a long
pause.
“Horrible man!” she exclaimed, with a sudden increase of energy. “I
understand that it was in defending him Major Maitland lost his life.”
“My dear, you are quite wrong. He was defending Major Maitland, and shot
the soldier who killed him.”
“Quite wrong, am I? Of course I am quite wrong!”
“I was at head-quarters, you remember.”
“Yes, you were; but you were not near Major Maitland.”
Zachariah raised his eyes; he thought he detected, he was sure he
detected, in the tone of this sentence a distinct sneer.
“I was not with Major Maitland; my duties called me elsewhere; but I am
more likely to know what happened than any gossiping outsider.”
“I don’t believe in your foreign infidels.”
“_My_ foreign infidels! You have no right to call them my infidels, if
you mean that, I am one. But let me tell you again you are mistaken.
Besides, supposing you are right, I don’t see why he should be a horrible
man. He will probably be executed for what he did.”
“It was he and that daughter of his who dragged you and the Major into
all this trouble.”
“On the contrary, Caillaud, as well as myself and the Major, did all we
could to prevent the march. You must admit I understand what I am
talking about. I was at every meeting.”
“As usual, nothing I say is right. It was to be expected that you would
take the part of the Caillauds.”
Zachariah did not reply. It was supper-time; the chapter from the Bible
was duly read, the prayer duly prayed, and husband and wife afterwards
once more, each in turn, silently at the bedside, with more or less of
sincerity or pathos, sought Him who was the Maker of both. It struck
Zachariah during his devotions—a rather unwelcome interruption—that his
wife as well as himself was in close communication with the Almighty.