much accuracy, and knitting more even than that of many of us who can
see.
As I rose to go she took my finger and laid it upon the cabalistic signs
of the "Book."
"Don't you understand it? That's my own text, as I reads when things are
worse than general: 'Our light affliction, which is but for a moment,
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.' Yes,
there'll be glory for me--glory for me--glory for me."
I heard the shrill, hoarse voice piping out the old revival hymn, very
much out of tune, as I passed down the ward.
I had a nasty lump in my throat when I got back to the Board Room, and I
can't exactly remember what I said to the Committee. I think I cleared
Nurse Smith from any definite charge of cruelty, something after the
fashion of the Irish jurymen: "Not guilty, but don't do it again,"
adding the rider that Mary Grant was blind and deaf, and if she grumbled
it was not surprising.
It is possible my report was incoherent and subversive of discipline,
and my feelings were not hurt because it was neither "received," nor
"adopted," nor "embodied," nor "filed for future reference," but,
metaphorically speaking, "lay on the table" to all eternity.
"AND, BEHOLD, THE BABE WEPT"
And, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion upon him.
The night-porter sat in his lodge at 1 a.m., trying hard to keep off the
sleep that weighed his eyelids down--that heavy sleep that all
night-watchers know when nothing in the world seems worth a longer
vigil.
But the man before him had been dismissed for sleeping on duty, and our
night-porter had had six months out of work, so, with resolute
determination, he dragged up his leaden limbs and began to pace the
corridors towards the Mental Ward, where he knew the screams of the
insane were generally to be relied upon to keep sleep away from any one
in the neighbourhood. To-night all was quiet, and it was with a brief
prayer of thanksgiving that he heard the insistent note of the electric
bell, and rushed to answer it, the lethargy leaving him under the
necessity of action.
A policeman entered in a blast of wind and rain, drops off his cape,
making black runlets on the white stone floor. From under his arm he
drew a red bundle and laid it carefully down on a mat in front of the
fire. "Evening, porter, I've brought you a present from the cabbage-bed.
What do you think of that for a saucy girl? Hush, my dear! don't cry,"
as the babe, unsettled from his warm arms, gave forth a shrill cry of
displeasure. "Pretty little thing, ain't she? and left out under a
laurel-bush this bitter night. Some women are worse than brutes."
The porter, who was himself a married man, picked up the babe and
soothed it in practised arms. "And 'ow about the father? Something as
calls itself a man 'as 'ad an 'and in this business, and druv the gal to
it, may be. My old dad allus says, 'God cuss the scoundrel who leaves a
poor lass to bear her trouble alone!'"
"And now," said the policeman, when the nurse, summoned by telephone,
had borne off the indignant babe to the Children's Ward, "I suppose you
must enter the case. I found the kid under a laurel-bush at 7, Daventry
Terrace. A lady blew a whistle out of the window and said she could not
sleep for a whining outside. I tried to put her off as it was cats, but
she stuck to it; so, just to quiet her, I cast round with my lantern,
and, sure enough, she was right. Mighty upset about it, poor woman, she
was, being a single lady. However, as I told her, such things may happen
in any garden, married or single."
A name was chosen for her by an imaginative member of the House
Committee, remembering his classical education--Daphne Daventry--the
Christian name as an everlasting reminder of her foster parent the
laurel-bush.
In due season the familiar notices were posted at the police-stations
offering "a reward for the discovery of person or persons unknown who
had abandoned a female infant in the garden of 7, Daventry Terrace,
whereby the aforesaid female infant had become chargeable to the
parish"; and, the Press giving publicity to the affair, offers of
adoption poured in to the Guardians--pathetic letters from young mothers
whose children had died, and business-like communications from
middle-aged couples, who had "weighed the matter" and were "prepared to
adopt the foundling."
The Board discussed the question at their next meeting, and the Clerk
was directed to inquire into the character and circumstances of the most
likely applicants.
"One thing to which I should like to draw the attention of the Board,"
said a conscientious Guardian, "is the importance of bringing up a child
in the religion of its parents."
"Seems to me, in this case," retorted a working-man member, who was also
a humorist, "that it might be a good thing to try a change."
And then the Clerk, in his clear legal way, pointed out that the
religious question had better not be pressed, as there was small
evidence before him as to the theological tenets of the person or
persons unknown who had exposed the female infant.
Meantime, the latest workhouse character slumbered in the nursery in
passive enjoyment of the excellent rate-supported fires, and was fed
with a scientific fluid, so Pasteurized and sterilized and generally
Bowdlerized that it seemed quite vulgar to call it milk. The nurses
adorned the cot with all the finery they could collect, and all the
women in the place managed to evade the rules of classification, and got
into the nursery, where they dandled the infant and said it was "a
shame."
One of the most devoted worshippers at the shrine of Daphne Daventry was
a lady Guardian, a frail and tiny little woman, with a pair of wide-open
eyes, from which a look of horror was never wholly absent. She was
always very shabbily dressed--so shabbily, indeed, that a new official
had once taken her for a "case" and conducted her to the waiting-room of
applicants for relief. After such an object-lesson, any other woman
would have gone to do some shopping; but not so the little lady
Guardian--she did not even brighten her dowdiness with a new pair of
bonnet-strings. Though she wrote herself down in the nomination-papers
as a "married woman," no one had ever seen or heard of her husband, and
report said that he was either a lunatic or a convict.
This mystery of her married life, combined with her "dreadful
appearance" and a certain reckless generosity towards the poor, made her
many enemies amongst scientific philanthropists. Her large-hearted
charity had been given to the just and the unjust, to the drunk as well
as the sober, and the Charity Organization Society complained that her
investigations were not thorough, and that the quality of her mercy was
neither strained nor trained. But the little lady Guardian opened her
old silk purse again and quoted the Scriptures: "Give to him that asketh
thee, and from him that would borrow turn not thou away."
The C.O.S. replied, such precepts had proved to be out of date
economically, and nominated a more modern lady, who had missed a great
career as a private detective.
But the little lady Guardian had a faithful majority, and her name was
always head of the poll.
One afternoon, as the little lady Guardian sat by the fire with Daphne
Daventry on her shabby serge lap, a prospective parent, Mrs. Annie
Smith, was brought up to see if she "took to the child."
"Oh, what a lovely baby!" she cried, falling on her knees to adore.
"What nice blue eyes, and what dear little hands! And her hair is
beginning to grow already! Both my children died five years ago; I have
never had another, and I just feel as if I could not live without a
baby. It is terrible to lose one's children."
"It is worse to have none."
"Oh, no, no!"
"Yes, it is," said the little lady Guardian in a low voice, as if she
were talking to herself. "When I was a little girl I had six sailor-boy
dolls, and I always meant to have six sons; but directly after my
marriage I realized it could never be."
Mrs. Smith had known sorrow, and, feeling by intuition that she was in
the presence of no ordinary tragedy, she held her peace.
"Perhaps," she asked presently, "you are going to adopt this baby? You
seem very fond of her."
"I love all babies, but I don't think I could adopt one; these workhouse
children don't start fair, and I should be too frightened. If the child
went wrong later, I don't think I could bear it."
Mrs. Smith had been a pupil-teacher, and in the last five years of
leisure she had read widely, if confusedly, at the free library. "But
people now no longer believe in heredity. Weissman's theory is that
environment is stronger then heredity."
"Oh!" said the little lady Guardian.
"Do read him," said Mrs. Smith excitedly, "and then you won't feel so
low-spirited, and perhaps the Guardians will let you adopt the next
foundling. But please let me have this one. I have taken to her more
than I thought. Oh! please, please----"
"I will vote for you at the next Board meeting," said the little lady
Guardian, "and may she make up to you for the children you have lost."
A few days later Mrs. Annie Smith, her honest face beaming with joy,
arrived again at the workhouse, followed by a small servant with a big
bundle. The attiring of the infant was long and careful, and many came
to help, and then Daphne Daventry was whirled away in a flutter of
purple and fine linen, and the burden of the rates was lightened.
"MARY, MARY, PITY WOMEN!"
A woman sat alone with folded hands in a dark fireless room. There was
little or no furniture to hold the dust, and one could see that the
pitiful process known as "putting away" had been going on, for the
cleanly scrubbed boards and polished grate showed the good housewife's
struggle after decency. On a small table in the centre of the room stood
half a loaf of bread, a jug of water, and a cup of milk. The woman bore
traces of good looks, but her face was grey and pinched with hunger, and
in her eyes was a smouldering fire of resentment and despair.
Presently the silence and gloom was broken by the entrance of a troop of
children returning noisily from school. Their faces fell when they saw
the scanty meal, and the youngest, a child of four or five, threw
himself sobbing into his mother's arms: "Oh, mother, I'se so hungry; we
only had that bit of bread for dinner."
"Hush, dear! There is a little milk for you and Gladys; you can drink as
far as the blue pattern, and the rest is for her."
The mother kissed him and tried to dry his tears; but it is hard to hear
one's children crying for food; and presently her fortitude gave way,
and she began to sob too. The older children, frightened at her
breakdown, clung round her, weeping; and the room echoed like a
torture-chamber with sobs and wails.
Presently a knock sounded at the door, and a stout, motherly woman
entered. "Good evening, Mrs. Blake; I've just looked in to know if you'd
bring the children to have a cup of tea with me. I'm all alone, and I
like a bit of company. H'albert is always the boy for my money. I just
opened a pot of my home-made plum jam on purpose for him. There, my
dear, have your cry out, and never mind me! Things have gone badly with
you, I know, and nothing clears the system so well as a good cry; you
feel a sight better after, and able to face the world fair and square.
Now, kiddies, leave mother to herself for a bit and come and help me set
the tea things. Let's see, we shall be seven all told; so, Lily, will
you run upstairs to Mrs. Johnson--my compliments, and will she oblige
with a cup and saucer, as we are such a big party."
The landlady's kitchen was warmed with a big fire, and hermetically
sealed against draughts; a big bed took up the greater part of the room,
and this formed a luxurious divan for the four children, to whom the hot
tea and toast, the tinned lobster, and the home-made jam were nectar and
ambrosia. Mrs. Blake had the place of honour by the fire, and when the
meal was over the children were advised to run out for a game in the
street, and Mrs. Wells, turning her chair round to the cheerful blaze,
said soothingly--
"Now, my dear, you look a bit better. Tell us all about it."
"Yes, you were quite right; we have to go into the workhouse. I went
round to the Rev. Walker, and he advised me to go to the police-station,
and they told me there as I and the children had better become a burden
to the rates as we are destitute, and they can start looking for Blake,
to make him pay the eighteen shillings a week separation order. To think
of me and my children having to go into the House, and me first-class in
the scholarship examination! It breaks my heart to think of it."
"Yes; you've 'ad a rough time, my dear--worse than the rest of us, and
we all have our troubles. I remember when you came a twelvemonth ago to
engage the room, and you said you was a widow. I passed the remark to
Wells that evening: 'The lidy in the top-floor back ain't no widow; mark
my words, there's a 'usband knocking about somewhere!' On the faces of
them as are widows I have noticed a great peace, as if they were giving
of thanks that they are for ever free from the worritings of men, and
that look ain't on your face, my dear--not by a long chalk!"
"Yes, he's alive all right; I got a separation order from him a couple
of years ago. He went off with a woman in the next street, and though he
soon tired of her and came back again, I felt I could not live with him
any longer; the very sight of him filled me with repulsion and loathing.
Father and mother always warned me against him; father told me he saw he
wasn't any good; but then, I was only nineteen, and obstinate as girls
in love always are, and I wouldn't be said. Poor father! I often wish as
I'd listened to him, but I didn't, and I always think it was the death
of him when I went home and told him what my married life was. He had
been so proud of me doing so well at school and in all the examinations.
Just at first we were very happy after our marriage. He earned good
money as a commercial traveller in the drapery business; we had a little
house in Willesden, and a piano, and an india-rubber plant between the
curtains in the parlour, and a girl to help with the housework, and I,
like a fool, worshipped the very ground he walked on. Then, after a
time, he seemed to change; he came home less and took to going after
women as if he were a boy of eighteen instead of a married man getting
on for forty. He gave me less and less money for the house, and spent
his week-ends at the sea for the good of his health. One very hot summer
the children were pale and fretting, and I was just sick for a sight of
the sea, but he said he could not afford to take us, not even for a
day-trip; afterwards I heard as Mrs. Bates was always with him, there
was plenty of money for that. That summer it seemed as if it never would
get cool again, and one evening in late September my Martin was taken
very queer. I begged my husband not to go away, I felt frightened
somehow, but he said as some sea-air was necessary for his health, and
that there was nothing the matter with the boy, only my fussing. That
night Martin got worse and worse; towards morning a neighbour went for
the doctor, but the child throttled and died in my arms before he came.
I was all alone. I didn't even know my husband's address, and when I
went with the little coffin all alone to the cemetery it seemed as if I
left my heart there in the grave with the boy. He was my eldest, and
none of the others have been to me what he was. Later on all the girls
caught the diphtheria, but they got well again, only Martin was taken.
Blake seemed a bit ashamed when he got back; but he left Willesden, some
of the neighbours speaking out plain to him about Mrs. Bates, and he not
to be found to follow his child's funeral. He tried to make it up with
me; but I told him I was going to get a separation order, as I'd taken a
sort of repulsion against looking at him since Martin had died alone
with me, and the magistrate made an order upon him for eighteen
shillings a week--little enough out of the five or six pounds a week he
could earn before he took to wine and women and Mrs. Bates. My little
home and the piano were sold up, and I soon found eighteen shillings a
week did not go far with four hungry children to clothe and feed, and
rent beside. I tried to get back in my old profession, but I had been
out of it too long, no one would look at me, and I could only get
cooking and charing to do--very exhausting work when you haven't been
brought up to it. At first I got the money pretty regular, but lately it
has been more and more uncertain, some weeks only eight or ten
shillings, and sometimes missing altogether. He owes me now a matter of
twenty pound or more, and last week I braced myself up and determined to
do what I could to recover it. If it was only myself, I'd manage, but,
work hard as I can, I can't keep the five of us, and it has about broke
my heart lately to hear the children crying with hunger and cold. Mrs.
Robins, where I used to work, died a fortnight ago, and I shan't find
any one like her again. When one of the ladies goes, it is a job to get
another, so many poor creatures are after the charing and cleaning. The
Rev. Walker has been a good friend to me, but he says I ought to go into
the House. 'A man ought to support his wife and children,' he says, 'and
I hope as they'll catch him,' he says."
"'Yes,' I says, but it is awful to go into the House when we haven't
done anything wrong, and my father an organist.'
"'Very cruel, Mrs. Blake,' he says, 'but I see no other way. I will
write to the Guardians to ask if they will allow you out-relief, but I
fear they will say you are too destitute!'
"And now, Mrs. Wells, we had better be starting. I hope if they find him
I shall be able to pay up the back rent; the table and chairs left I
hope you will keep towards the payment of the debt. Thank you for all
your kindness."
"All right, Mrs. Blake, don't you worry about that, my dear. Wells is in
good work, thank God, and I don't miss a few 'apence. I'm such a one for
children, and your H'albert is a beauty, he is; I've been right glad to
give them a bite and sup now and again. I know children sent out with
empty stomachs aren't in a fit state to absorb learning; it leads to
words and rows with the teachers and canings afore the day's over. I
can't abear to see people cross with children, and I'd do anything to
save them the cane. Well, I hope, my dear, as they'll soon nail that
beauty of yours, and that we shall see you back again. Perhaps I ought
to tell you that a chap calling 'isself a sanitary inspector called this
morning to say as five people mustn't sleep in the top-back floor. I
told 'im as the room was let to a widow lady in poor circumstances, and
was he prepared to guarantee the rent of two rooms. That made him huffy.
It wasn't his business, he said, but overcrowding was agen his Council's
rules."
And the old lady held up the document upside down and then consigned it
to the flames.
"There will be no overcrowding to night," said Mrs. Blake bitterly.
The children were collected and scrubbed till their faces shone with
friction and yellow soap, and then the little procession started to the
workhouse. Mr. Wells, returned from work, announced his intention of
giving his arm up the hill to Mrs. Blake, and the young man of the
second floor volunteered his services to help carry "H'albert," who was
heavy and sleepy, and his contribution of a packet of peppermints
cheered the journey greatly. When the cruel gates of the House closed on
the weeping children the two men walked home silently. Once Wells swore
quietly but forcibly under his breath.
"You're right, mate," said the young man. "This job has put me off my
tea. I'll just turn into the 'King of Bohemia,' and drink till I forget
them children's sobs."
_Note._--I understand that under a separation order the police have
authority to search for the husband without forcing the family into the
House. I called at the police-station to inquire why this was not done,
and was informed that the woman's destitution was so great that they
feared the children might die of starvation before the man was brought
to book.
THE SUICIDE
In she plunged boldly,
No matter how coldly
The rough river ran;
Over the brink of it--
Picture it--think of it,
Dissolute man.
She lay in bed, in the long, clean Sick Ward--a fine-grown and
well-favoured young woman with masses of black hair tossed over the
whiteness of the ratepayers' sheets. Such a sight is rare in a workhouse
infirmary, where one needs the infinite compassion of Christian charity
or the hardness of habit to bear the pitiful sights of disease and
imbecility.
"She looks as if she ought not to be here?" I observed interrogatively
to the nurse.
"Attempted suicide. Brought last night by the police, wrapped in a
blanket and plastered in mud from head to foot. Magnificent hair?--yes,
and a magnificent job I had washing of it, and my corridor and bathroom
like a ploughed field. Usual thing--might have killed her?--oh, no;
these bad girls take a deal of killing."
I sat down beside the bed, and heard the usual story--too common to
excite either interest or compassion in an official mind.
She had been a nursemaid, but had left service for the bar; and there
one of the gentlemen customers had been very kind to her and had walked
out with her on Sundays and taken her to restaurants and the theatre.
Then followed the usual promise of marriage and the long delay, till her
work had become impossible, "and the governor had spoken his mind and
given her the sack."
"I wrote to the gentleman, but the letter came back through the Returned
Letter Office. He must have given me a false name, because when I called
at the house no one had heard of him. I had no money, and had to pawn my
clothes and the jewellery he had given me to pay for food and the rent
of my room. I dared not go home; they are very strict Chapel people, and
they told me I never was to come near them after I became a barmaid.
Then one day the gentleman wrote, giving no address, and saying that his
wife had found out about me, and our friendship must come to an end. He
enclosed two pounds, which was all he could afford, and asked me to
forgive him the wrong he had done me. I seemed to go clean mad after
that letter. I did not know he was married, and I had kept hoping it
would be all right, and that he would make an honest woman of me. I
thought I should have died in the night. I was taken with dreadful
pains, so that I could not move from my bed, and though I shouted for
help no one heard till the next morning, when my landlady came to me,
and she went for the doctor. The two pounds lasted me about a month, and
then I had nothing left again--nothing to eat and nothing to pawn, and
the rent always mounting up against me. My landlady was very kind to me,
but her husband had gone off with another woman and left her with three
children. She was often in want herself, and I couldn't take anything
from her. There seemed nothing but the pond; and after the gentleman had
played it down so low the whole world looked black and inky before my
eyes. I just seemed to long for death and peace before every one knew my
disgrace. I came up twice to chuck myself into the pond, and twice I
hadn't the pluck. Then last night I had been so sick and dizzy all day
with hunger I did not feel a bit of a coward any longer, so I waited
about till it was dark and then I climbed up on the railings and threw
myself backwards. The water was bitterly cold, and like a fool I
hollered; then I sank again, and the water came strangling and choking
down my throat, and I remember nothing more till I felt something
raising my head and a dark-lantern shining in my face. The nurse came
about half an hour ago to tell me that I must go before the magistrates
to-morrow; it seems rather hard, when one cannot live, that the police
will not even let you die. No, I did not know that girls like me might
come to the workhouse. I thought it was only for the very old and the
very poor; perhaps if I had known that I need not have made a hole in
the water. But must I go with the police to the court all alone amongst
a lot of men? Oh, ma'am, I can't; I should be so shamed. And think of
the questions they will ask me! And I was a good girl till such a short
time ago. Won't one of the nurses come with me, or will you?"