keeps a hat and jacket to lend to girls who ain't got none. Oh! it is
beautiful to see the sun shining, and the shops, and the horses, and the
ladies walking about, and the dear little children. I love children.
Often when the Labour Mistress wasn't about I ran up to the nursery to
kiss the babies. Juliet's third misfortune is a lovely boy with curls. I
haven't been out of doors for three months--the young women mayn't go
out in the workhouse, only the old people--so you can guess I like it:
but the air makes me hungry. We had our gruel at seven this morning. We
don't have no tea for breakfast, but girls do in situations, I know, and
as much sugar as they like--at least, in most places. Thank you, ma'am,
I should love a bun. I love cakes. Yes; I have a cold in my head, and I
ain't got no pocket-handkerchief. I've lost it, and it wasn't very
grand. An old bit of rag I call it. It would be so kind of you to buy me
one, ma'am. I know it looks bad to go to see ladies without one. I ain't
an ignorant girl; the kind lady who takes an interest in my case always
said so. Isn't that barrel-organ playing beautiful! It makes me want to
dance, only I don't know how. Daisy White--she that pinched the silk
petticoat--can dance beautiful; some of us sing tunes in the Young
Women's Room, and she'd dance. I love music--that's why I liked the
Cartholic Home best; the nuns sang lovely in the chapel.
"Is this the house? Ain't it lovely! I never saw such a beautiful
droring-room in all my life. Just look at the carpet and the flowers and
the pictures! Ain't that a beautiful one, ma'am, with the trees and the
water running down the rocks, and the old castle at the back! The nuns
at the Cartholic Home once took us an excursion by train to a place just
like that, and whilst we were having our tea the old castle turned
sudden all yellow in the sun--just like Jerusalem the Golden.
"Do you think the lady will have me, ma'am? I shan't never want to run
away here. I will be a good girl, ma'am; I promise I will be good."
IN THE PHTHISIS WARD
Why, O my God, hast Thou forsaken Me?
Not so My mother; for behold and see,
She steadfast stands! O Father, shall it be
That she abides when Thou forsakest Me?
Three days of frost had brought the customary London fog--dense, yellow,
and choking. Londoners groped their way about with set, patient faces,
breaking out, however, into wild jubilation in the bowels of the earth,
where the comparative purity and brightness of the atmosphere of the
Tube railway seemed to rush to their heads like cheap champagne.
In the Open-air Ward of the workhouse infirmary the sufferers coughed
and choked away their last strength in the poisonous atmosphere; the
cold was very great, but the fever in their veins kept the patients
warm, though the nurses went about blue and shivering, and on the side
of the ward open to the elements the snow had drifted in, melted, and
frozen again, making a perilous slide for the unwary. The sky was black
as at midnight, but according to the clock the long night had ended, the
long day had begun, the patients were washed, the breakfast was served,
and a few, who were well enough, got up, dressed themselves, and
occupied themselves with a book or paper. One man worked furiously at
rug-making, his knotted fingers dragging the hanks of wool through the
canvas as if his life depended on speed. By the side of the ward open to
the fog lay a young man so wasted and shrunken that he looked almost
like a child. When the nurse brought him his breakfast he raised his
head eagerly: "Has mother come?"
"Why, Teddy, you're dreaming! Your mother has only just gone; it's
morning, my dear, and she had to get back to the factory; but she'll be
here again this evening, never fear. You have a mother in ten thousand,
lucky boy! Now get your breakfast."
Teddy's head fell back again in apathetic indifference, and he listened
forlornly to a dispute between two men who had been playing dominoes.
One had accused the other of cheating, and an angry wrangle had arisen,
till at length the nurse had stepped in and stopped the game.
Later on the same men began to dispute about horse-racing, and the
world-renowned names of Ladas and Persimmon and Minoru, etc., figured
largely.
"I tell you Persimmon was the King's 'oss, and he won the Derby in 1898.
I know I'm right, because it was the year I got the Scripture Prize at
Netherwood Street."
"No, that warn't till 1900, and I'll tell you why--"
"I tell you it war!"
"I tell you it warn't!"
Again the nurse intervened, and tried to distract the disputants with a
copy of a newspaper, but the warfare was renewed after her back was
turned, to the amusement or irritation of the sufferers.
In the farther corner of the ward a man in delirium raved and
blasphemed, occasionally giving rapid character-sketches of some
woman--not complimentary either to her taste or morals; then he would
relapse into semi-unconsciousness and wake with a loud, agonized cry for
his mother.
In the afternoon a visitor came to see Teddy Wilson. Teddy had sung in
the choir and his vicar called often to visit him. Teddy had been a
prize-scholar of the L.C.C. schools; from scholarship to scholarship he
had passed to a lawyer's office in the City; and then one day he had
begun to cough and to shiver, and the hospital to which he had been
taken had seen that phthisis was galloping him to the grave. They did
not keep incurable cases, and Teddy had been passed on to die in the
workhouse infirmary. When Teddy found himself a pauper he had raged
furiously and futilely, and the gallop to the grave went at double pace.
He lifted his head eagerly when the nurse brought the clergyman to his
bedside. "Has mother come?" he asked, and then fell back apathetically.
Yes, he was getting better; it was only the remains of pleurisy. Would
he like prayers read? Oh, yes, he didn't mind. Teddy was always docile.
Screens were fetched, and the clergyman knelt down by his bedside. The
two men noisily resumed their quarrel about horse-racing in order to
show their contempt for the Church, till the nurse stuck thermometers
into their mouths to secure some silence.
The man in delirium raved on, cursing in picturesque variety the woman
of his love and hate. All around the sick and dying coughed and choked
in their agonized struggle for breath.
"Consider his contrition, accept his tears, assuage his pain.... We
humbly commend the soul of this Thy servant, our dear brother, into Thy
hands.... Wash it, we pray Thee, in the blood of the immaculate Lamb ...
that whatsoever defilements it may have contracted in the midst of this
miserable and naughty world ... it may be presented pure and without
spot before Thee."
As the vicar read on silence fell upon the ward; the question of
Persimmon was dropped, and even the delirious man ceased to blaspheme
and lay quiet for a time. It seemed to the young priest as if the peace
of God for which he had prayed had fallen upon this place of pain and
terror.
Before he went he stopped for a word or a hand-shake with the patients,
and settled the vexed question of Persimmon's victory.
"Fancy his knowing that!" said the first disputant. "Not so bad for a
devil-dodger."
"They aren't all quite fools. There was a bloke down at Bethnal Green, a
real good cricketer and sportsman; they've made him a bishop now, and
as I allus says, there's bigger liars knocking about London than that
there bishop."
After tea visitors began to arrive; most of the patients in the Open-air
Ward were on the danger list and could see their friends at any time,
and now at the close of the day fathers and mothers and wives and
sweethearts were coming straight from factory and workshop to comfort
their sick. Teddy Wilson, propped up with pillows, watched the door, and
presently, when a frail little woman entered, the faces of both mother
and son lit up with the light of joy and love ineffable.
"At last!" said Teddy. "Oh, mother, you have been long!"
"I came straight from the factory, dear. I did not even wait for a cup
of tea or to get washed. Here are some grapes for you."
The grapes were best hot-house--the poor always give recklessly--and
Mrs. Wilson and a bright-eyed little girl who was sweeping up
scholarships and qualifying as a typist and _tisica_ would go short of
food for a week.
Ten years ago Mr. Wilson had grown weary of monogamy and had
disappeared. His wife, scorning charity and the parish, had starved and
fought her own way. Latterly she had found employment at the tooth
factory, but food was not abundant on a weekly wage varying from seven
to fifteen shillings, and the L.C.C. had worked the brains of the
growing children on a diet chiefly of dry bread and tea.
Through the long night she sat by her son--the long night of agony and
suffering which she was powerless to relieve--and the nurse, who was
reputed a hard woman, looked at her with tearful eyes, and muttered to
herself: "Thank God, I never bore a child!"
In the early hours of morning Teddy began to sing, in strange, raucous
fashion, fragments of oratorios. "'My God, my God,'" sang Teddy in the
recitative of Bach's Passion music, "'why hast Thou forsaken Me?' Oh,
mother, don't leave me!"
The next time the nurse came round Teddy lay quiet, and his mother
looked up with eyes tearless and distraught. "He has stopped coughing,"
she said; "I think I am glad."
AN IRISH CATHOLIC
Godliness is great riches if a man be content with that which he
hath.
"God bless all the kind ratepayers for my good dinner and a good cup o'
tay to wash it down with, and a nice bit of fire this cold day. You
paupers never give thanks unto the Lord, a nasty Protestant lot without
a ha'porth of manners between you, a-cursing and swearing, and
blaspheming; they have not the grace of God. Say 'Good afternoon' to the
lady, Betsy Brown, and don't be so rude; they never do have a word of
thanks to the kind ladies and gentlemen who come a-visiting them, and we
don't get many visitors just now; all the dear ladies are away
a-paddling in the ocean. The gentleman Guardians come sometimes, but
they are not so chatty as the ladies, don't seem to know what to say to
us old women. You don't happen to have a bit of snuff about you, my
lady?--excuse me asking you, but some of the ladies carries a bit for
me. I ain't allowed my pipe in here, and I misses it cruel; at first I
had gripes a-seizing my vitals through missing the comfort of a bit of
'baccy, and the doctor he seemed much gratified with the symtims of my
sufferings, and says I was attacked by the pensis, I think he termed
it, the royal disease of the King, and he was all for cutting me up at
once. But I up and says, 'Young man, don't talk to your elders. It's
nothing but my poor hinnards a-craving for a pipe and a drop o' Irish,
and you'll kindly keep your knives and hatchets off me. The King can be
cut up if he likes, but I'll go before my Judge on the Resurrection
morning with my poor old body undisfigured by gaping holes and wounds!'
Yes, I frets cruel in the work'us, lady. If I could only get away back
to Kensington, where I belong, I'd be all right. I have no friends
here--only you and the Almighty God. I'm a poor old blind Irishwoman,
lady; and my sons is out in Ameriky and seems to have forgotten the
mother that bore them, and my husband's been dead these forty years, and
he was not exakly one to thank God for on bare knees--God rest his poor
black sowl! Yes, I've been blind now these thirty years (I was ninety on
the Feast of the Blessed Lady of Mount Carmel), and one day in the
winter we'd just been saying Mass for the sowl of the Cardinal Newman,
and when I got back home I put up a bit of gunpowder to clane the
chimbly, which smoked cruel (I always was a decent, clane body) and the
wicked stuff turned round on me very vindictious, and blew down into the
room, burning red-hot into my poor, innocent eyes. They cut one out at
St. Bartholomew's 'Orspital, and they hoped to save the other, but it
took to weeping itself away voluntarious, and a-throbbing like
steam-engines, and the young chaps fetched it out a few weeks later.
But I'm a very happy blind woman. Yes, lady, it was dreadful at first,
and I'll not deny that the cross seemed too heavy for my poor back--as
if God Himself had forsaken me--great, black, thundering darkness all
round as I couldn't cut a peep-show in nohow. All night I'd be a raging
and a-fighting to get one little ray of light, and then I'd howl and
shriek to the Blessed Virgin and all the saints, and then I'd curse and
blaspheme and call to all the devils in hell; but no one heard, and the
darkness continued dark. But, glory be to the saints! it's astonishing
how used you get to things. At the end of a couple of months you seems
to forget as there was ever anything else but darkness around, and by
the grace of God and the favour of the angels I gets about most
nimblous. No, I don't belong to this parish at all; that's why I hopes
one day to get sixpence and get back to Kensington. But, you see, lady,
it was like this--I came up to call on my poor sister at the top of the
hill, and when I got there they told me she was dead and buried (God
rest her sowl!), and the shock was so great I fell down overcome, as you
may say, by emotion, and a kind gentleman picked me up and brought me in
here, and there I lay stretched out on a bed of pain with a great bruise
all down my poor side, and my poor hinnards a-struggling amongst
theirselves for a bit of comfort, which they've never got since I've
been here, and the young chap of a doctor a-talking in long and
indecent words to the nusses. (I hear you inmates a-smiling again!) But
I was not in liquor lady--s'help me it's God's truth! (May your lips
stiffen for ever, sitting there a-grinning and a-mocking at God's
truth!) I've allus been a sober woman, and I've always conducted myself.
(God blast you all, and your children and children's children!) Yes, my
lady, I know it's not a prison and I can take my discharge; but, you
see, I don't know the way to the 'bus as'll take me to Kensington, and I
ain't got sixpence--a most distressful and unpleasant circumstance not
to have sixpence. May the Holy Mother preserve you in wealth and
prosperity so that you may never know! If I had sixpence of my own do
you think I'd stay in this wicked Bastille, ordered about by the ladies
of the bar? I calls them ladies of the bar, not as they ever give you a
drop to cheer you, but because as they is puffed up with vanity and
three-ha'porth of starched linen. Yes, my lady, I know as they calls
theirselves nusses, but when you're ninety you won't like to be ordered
about by a parcel of girls. Oh, my lady, if you would only put me in the
'bus that goes to Kensington and give me a sixpence here in my poor old
hand, then may the Blessed Mother keep you for ever, you and your good
children, and may the crown of glory that is waiting for you before the
Great White Throne be studded with di'monds and rubies brighter than the
stars! How could I get on? I'd be all right if I only got to Kensington;
there's the praists!--God love 'em!--they knows me and helps me, and
kind ladies who give me the tickets for meat and groceries; and there's
the landlord of the 'Fish and Quart'--he'll be near you, lady, before
the Great White Throne--and on wet days, when the quality don't come
out, I go round to him and there's always a bite and a sup for old
Bridget. I hear you paupers smiling again, but believe me, lady, it is
the black wickedness of their iniquitous hearts. Ask the perlice,
lady--God bless the bhoys for leading the old pauper over many a
tumultuous street!--they will tell you my excellent character for
temperance and sobriety and cleanliness. They give me a paper from
Scotland Yard, which lets me walk in the High Street. I sells nothing
and I asks nothing, but I just stands, and the ladies and gentlemen
rains pennies in my hand thick as hail in May-time. And do I get enough
to live on? I should think I did, and enough to fill the belly of
another woman who clanes my room and cooks my food and leads me about.
No, I shan't get run over by no motor-car. The Lord may have taken the
sight of my eyes, but He has left me an uncommon sharp pair of ears and
a nose like a ferret, and by this special mercy I can hear the things
stinking and rampaging long afore they're near me. You needn't be afeard
for me, lady--old Bridget can take care of herself, being always a sober
and temperate woman. Any one who tells you different in this wicked
Bastille is a liar and a slanderer, a child of the Devil and Satan, who
shall have their portion in hell-fire. Matron says I've no clothes,
does she?--and after the beautiful dress as I came up to see my poor
sister with? Yes, I know as I must have a decent gown on in a
fashionable neighbourhood. I like to be in the fashion, even if I am
blind; but you'll find me an old one of yours, lady, and I shall look so
beautiful in it the bhoys will be all for eloping with me as I stand.
"Most peculiar joyful feeling there is about a sixpence if you've not
felt one these fower months. The other night I'd been worriting my poor
old head shocking all day how to get sixpence in this den of paupers,
and when I fell asleep I had a vision of our Blessed Lady a-smiling most
gracious like and a-stretching out a silver sixpence bright as the glory
round her most blessed head. I cried cruel when I woke, sixpence seemed
so far off; but now, thanks be to God and to all His howly angels, my
dream is true!"
AN OBSCURE CONVERSATIONIST
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
* * * * *
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
"Aye, lass, but you ain't been to see me for a long time, and me been
that queer and quite a fixture in bed all along of catching cold at that
funeral. Been abroad, have you? Oh, well, you're welcome, for I've been
a bit upset about not seeing you and because of a dream I 'ad. I dreamt
I was up in 'eaven all along of the Great White Throne and the golden
gates, with 'oly angels all around a-singing most vigorous. Mrs. Curtis
was there, and my blessed mother and my niece Nellie and the Reverent
Walker--you know the Reverent Walker, ma'am, 'im as I sits under?--yes,
I like little Walker, what there is of him to like, for I wish he was
bigger; but he was all right in my dream, larger than life, with a crown
on 'im; but I missed some of you, and I says to myself: 'Mrs. Nevinson
ain't 'ere,' so I'm glad, lass, as you're safe like.
"Yes, I've been that queer I couldn't know myself, and though I'm better
I'm that bone-lazy I can't move, but I'll be all right again soon and
I'll get those petticoats of yourn finished which I am ashamed of having
cluttering about still. I've 'ad what's called brownchitis. Mrs. Curtis
fetched the doctor when I was took bad, and they built me up a sort of
tent with a sheet, and a kettle a-spitting steam at me through a roll of
brown paper they fixed on the spout, and I 'alf-killed myself with
laughing at such goings-on. I was that hot and smothered I had to get up
in the middle of the night and get to the open window to take a breath
of fog, for you can't call it air; I felt just like a boiled lobster. I
ain't had nothing to do with doctors before and I don't understand their
ways. This young chap 'e got 'old on a piece of wood and planked it down
on my chest with 'is ear clapped to the other end. 'Say ninety-nine,' 'e
says as grave as a judge. 'Sir,' I says, 'I'm not an imbecile, and not
having much breath to spare I'll keep it to talk sense.'
"He burst hisself with laughing, and then 'e catches 'old on my 'and as
men do when they go a-courting. 'Sir,' I says, 'a fine young chap like
you 'ad better 'ang on with some young wench.'
"He guffawed again fit to split 'isself. 'It's a treat to come and see
you,' 'e says, 'but you're really ill this time, you know, and you ought
to go into the infirmary and get properly nursed up.' 'Never,' I says,
'never!' and 'e went away cowed like.
"No, lass, I ain't a-going to no work'us with poor critturs a-gasping
and a-groaning all round. I've kept myself to myself free and
independent all my life, and free and independent I'll die. Little
Walker catched it 'ot the other day sending a sort of visiting lady
'ere--the Organization lady she calls 'erself, so Mrs. Curtis said.
Well, she asked so many questions and wanted to know why I had not had
thrift, as she called it, that I turned on 'er and I says: 'I think
you've made a little mistake in the number. I ain't got no 'idden crime
on my conscience, but I'm a lady of independent means, and must ask for
the peace and quiet which is due to wealth.'
"I was that angry with the Reverend Walker!--did it for the best, he
said, thought as I might have got a little 'elp from the Organization if
I hadn't been so rude. The very idea! I 'ate help. I've hung by mine own
'ed like every proper herring and human ought to, and when I can't 'ang
no longer I'll drop quiet and decent into my grave.
"No, I never got married--what I saw of men in service did not exactly
set me coveting my neighbours' husbands, a set of big babies as must
have the moon if they want it--to say nothing of the wine, and the
women, and the trotting horses, and the betting on them silly cards.
Besides, to tell the truth, lass, no man of decent stature ever asked me
to wed; being a big woman, all the little scrubs came a-following me,
but I would not go with any of them, always liking Grenadier Guards, six
foot at least. Perhaps it was as well; I should never have had patience
to put up with a man about the place, being so masterful myself;
besides, ain't I been sort of father and 'usband to my sister Cordelia?
Mother died when Cordelia was born, and she says to me: 'Ruth, take care
of this 'elpless babby,' and, God help me! I done my best, though the
poor girl made a poor bargain with life, 'er husband getting queerer and
more cantankerous, wandering the country up and down as fast as they
brought 'im 'ome and having to be shut up in Colney Hatch at the end. I
was not going to satisfy that Organization lady's curiosity and boast
how I helped to bring up that family, and a deal of 'thrift' that lady
would have managed on the two shillings a week I kept of my wages, the
missus often passing the remark that, considering the good money she
paid, she liked her servants better dressed. Cordelia was left with
three little ones, and I couldn't abide the thought of 'er coming to the
parish and having them nice little kids took from 'er and brought up in
them work'us schools, so I agreed to give 'er eight shillings week out
of my wages, and that with the twelve shillings she got cooking at the
'Pig and Whistle' kept the 'ome together. Poor lass! she's had no luck
with her boys either, poor Tim going off weak in his head and having to
be put away, and Jonathan killed straight off at Elandslaagter with a
bullet through his brain. Yes, there's Ambrose--no, I don't ask Ambrose
to help me; 'e's got his mother to 'elp and a heavy family besides. No,
I don't take food out of the stomachs of little children, a-stunting of
their growth, as nothing can be done for them later, and a-starving of
their brains--I pulls my belt a bit tighter, thank you. Yes, I know what
I am talking about--didn't I spend nearly every Sunday afternoon for
nigh on twenty years at Colney Hatch? Well, the will of the Lord be
done--but why if He be Almighty He lets folks be mad when He might
strike 'em dead has always puzzled and tried my faith.
"Yes, I lives on my five-shilling pension and what my last master left
me; half a crown rent doesn't leave me much for food. I allus had a good
appetite, I'm sorry to say, and I often dream of grilled steaks--not
since the brownchitis, though; I'm all for lemons and fizzy drinks. The
folks 'ere are very kind and often bring me some of their dinner, but
Lord! they are poor cooks, and if their 'usbands drink I for one ain't
surprised. I can grill a steak with any one, and I attribute my
independent income to my steaks; at my last place the master thought the
world of them, and when there was rumpuses in the kitchen I used to hear
'im say: 'Sack the whole blooming lot, but remember Brooks stays,' and
stay I did till the old gentleman died and remembered his steaks in his
will.
"Well, I was going to tell you how I caught this cold, only you will
keep on interrupting of me. I saw as how there was going to be a funeral
at St. Paul's, and I thought I'd go. I allus was one for looking at men,
and having been kitchen-maid at York Palace, I took on a taste for
cathedrals and stained windows and music and such-like, as a sort of
respite from the troubles and trials of life.
"It was just beautiful to hear the organ play and to see the gold cross
carried in front of the dear little chorister-boys, and I says to
myself: 'Their mas are proud of them this day.' Then came the young
chaps who sing tenor and bass--fine upstanding young men--and then the
curates with their holy faces, but at the end were the bishops and deans
and such-like, and they were that h'old and h'ugly I was quite ashamed.