woman whom I had seen visiting at the asylum got in after me, and we
were alone together. She glanced at me shyly several times, as if she
wished to say something; and then, suddenly clutching my hand, she burst
into tears: "Oh! I am so thankful--so thankful! Did you see my poor girl
to-day? Yes, I know you did, for I saw you look at her beautiful golden
hair--whenever I see the sun shining on cornfields I think of my Mabel's
hair. Well, for nigh three years Mabel has sat in that awful place; she
has never taken her hands away from her face, nor looked up, nor spoken
a word, till this afternoon; and then, whether it was the doctor, or
your blue cloak--but, as you saw, she stood up and spoke, and after that
she ate some grapes, and knew me again, and grumbled at the way they had
done her hair--the nurse says that is the best sign of all, and so does
the doctor. Oh! thank God! thank God!" and the poor woman sobbed in
choking spasms of joy.
I felt that I and my blue cloak were such unconscious agents in the
restoration of reason that her gratitude was quite embarrassing.
"Yes, she has been in there just on three years; acute melancholia, they
call it, brought on by nervous shock. Our doctor at home always gave me
some hope, but not the people in there. I suppose they see such a lot of
misery, they get into the habit of despair. Mabel is my only child; my
husband died just after she was born, so you can guess what she has
been to me. Fortunately, I understood the greengrocery business; so when
I lost my husband I went on with the shop just the same, and was able to
give her a good education. She took to her books wonderful, and got a
scholarship on to the High School; she learnt French and German, and
went on to Pitman's College for shorthand and typewriting; and at
eighteen she got an engagement as typist and secretary to a City firm.
She was a wonderful pretty girl, my Mabel; just like a lily, with her
slight figure and golden head; and the men came about her like flies;
but she would never go with any of them; she was such a one to come home
and spend her evenings quietly with me, reading or sewing. Then suddenly
I saw a change had come over my girl; one of the gentlemen in the office
had been after her, and she had fallen in love with him, head over
heels, as girls will. I wasn't glad; perhaps it was a mother's jealousy,
perhaps it was second-sight a-warning of me; but I couldn't be pleased
nohow. He came up to tea on Sunday afternoon, and I hated him at once;
if ever liar and scoundrel was written on a man's face, it was there
plain for all to read, except my poor child, and she was blind as folks
in love always are. Then, though he wasn't a gentleman as I count
gentlemen, he was above her in station, and I could see as he looked
down on me and the shop; and, as I told my poor girl, them unequal
marriages don't lead to no good. But there, I saw it was no use
a-talking; we only fell out over the wretch--the only time she ever
spoke nasty to me was over him--I saw she would only marry him on the
sly if I said 'No'--we must let our children go to their doom when they
are in love--and so I took my savings out of the bank and gave her a
trousseau of the best; and all the time my heart was heavy as lead.
Folks used to laugh at me and tell me I looked as if I were getting
ready for a funeral instead of a wedding. There's many a true word
spoken in jest; and that was how I felt all the time--a great, black
cloud of horror over everything.
"You should have seen my Mabel on her wedding-day. She looked just
beautiful in her plain white dress and long veil. The two bridesmaids
wore white muslin, with blue sashes; and Mrs. Allen--my first-floor
lodger--said as they might have been three angels of heaven. I drove in
the cab to give my girl away. God only knows how I felt. Folks have told
me since that I was white and rigid like a corpse, and that I sat in
church with my hand held up before Mabel as if to ward off a blow. We
sat, and waited, and waited, and waited. It was summer-time; and, being
in the trade, I had not spared the flowers; and the church was heavy
with the scent of roses and sweet-peas--I have sickened every summer
since at the smell of them. The organist played all the wedding tunes
through, and then began them over again--I have hated the sound of them
ever since--and still we waited. The best man went out to telephone for
the bridegroom; and my eldest nephew took a motor to drive round to
fetch him. The clock struck three, and the vicar, looking very troubled
for Mabel, came out in his surplice to say the ceremony could not take
place that day; so we all drove home again. Mabel never spoke; but she
sat up in her bedroom cold as a stone, with her face buried in her
hands, just as you saw her this afternoon, leaning her arms on the
little writing-table where she used to sit to do her lessons. She would
not speak, nor eat, nor move; and by sheer force we tore off her wedding
finery and got her into bed. The doctor came and said she was suffering
from nervous shock, and if she could cry she might recover. We pitied
her and called him, and the bridesmaids swelled up their eyes with
crying, hoping to infect her; but not a tear could we get out of her;
not even when my nephew came back with a note the scoundrel had left. He
was a married man all the time; and the crime of bigamy was too much for
him at the end. My sister and I sat up all night, but we could do
nothing with her; and at the end of the week the doctor said she must be
put away, as it was not safe for her to be at home. Ah, well! we live
through terrible things; and when I left my pretty, clever girl at the
lunatic asylum I did not think I could bear it; but I went on living.
That is three years ago now and never once has Mabel looked up or spoken
till to-day, I think it was your blue cloak; her going-away dress was
just that colour, and it seemed to rouse her somehow."
The train drew up at the terminus, and she held out her hand in
farewell. "Good-bye. Please think of my Mabel sometimes. I don't know
what religion you are, but if you would sometimes say this prayer for
her, perhaps God might hear." She held out a little bit of paper, soiled
and smudged as if with many tears; and then the crowds surged between
us, and we parted.
THE SWEEP'S LEGACY
(1900)
Most visitors among the poor have come across the person who believes
that he has a large fortune kept back from him by the Queen, aided and
abetted by the gentlemen of Somerset House and other public offices.
I once knew a sweep in Whitechapel who was firmly persuaded that he had
a legacy of five hundred pounds in the Bank of England. "Yes, lady, if I
had my rights, I should not be so poor. My aunt, Lady Cable Knight--she
married a tip-top nobleman, she did--left me on her dying bed five
hundred pounds in gold. The money's in the Bank of England. I seed it
there myself on a shelf, labelled A. A.--Anthony Adams--but I ain't no
scholard, and the gentleman behind the counter said I must have a
scholard to speak for me. The money is there right enough, and I've got
my aunt's marriage lines, so that proves it clear."
At first I paid little heed to his story, but after a time I got fond of
the old sweep, and began to wonder if I could not help him to obtain
this legacy. He was a good old man--always serene, always "trustful in
the Lord," though he well knew the pangs of hunger and cold, for
younger and stronger men were crushing him out of his profession. A
poor deformed creature lived with him--one of those terrible abortions
found in the homes of the poor--epileptic, crippled, hydrocephalous,
whom I took for the son of the house but on inquiry I found he was no
relation.
"We were neighbours up George Yard, lady; no, he ain't no son of mine,
H'albert ain't. He's very afflicted, poor chap, and 'is own family would
have nothing to do with 'im, so I gave 'im a 'ome. The lad don't eat
much, and the Lord will reward me some day. If I only had that money,
though, we might live comfortable!" Of course it was strictly against
the rules of the Buildings for "H'albert" to share the room, but even
women rent-collectors have hearts.
"If you only had some proof of your claim to the money, I would try to
help you," I said one day when the rent had been missed. I had noticed
the little room getting barer and shabbier week by week, and to-day the
old man, his wife, and "H'albert" looked pinched and blue with cold and
hunger. Already I had secretly paid a visit to Somerset House to inspect
the will of Lady Cable Knight.
"Well, I've got my aunt's marriage lines; doesn't that prove it? But the
Queen she gets 'old of us poor people's money. We've no chance against
the rich; we're no scholards--they never larnt us nothing when I was a
boy. The man in a paper 'at, that sells whelks in Whitechapel, knows all
about it, but he's no scholard neither."
Touched by the want of scholarship amongst his friends, I put my
attainments at his service, and we went together to claim five hundred
pounds in gold, labelled "A. A." on a shelf in the Bank of England.
I half hoped that, after the habit of his class, the old man would not
"turn up." But when I got out of the train at Broad Street, our place of
rendezvous, I saw him waiting at the corner, "cleaned" for the occasion,
in a strange old swallow-tail coat that might have figured at stately
Court dances when George III was king. On his arm he carried a coarse
bag of sacking, not quite cleansed from soot. We attracted no small
attention as we passed through the City, and it was quite a relief when
the classic walls of the Bank hid us from the vulgar gaze, though it was
no small ordeal to face the clerks and explain our errand. But I suppose
those gentlemen are used to monetary claims of this kind, and to their
eternal honour be it said that they never smiled, not even at the
production of the sooty marriage certificate by way of establishing our
claim.
When at last we passed out again into the roar and glare of the street,
the bag provided for the spoil empty as before, I saw the old man draw
his sleeve across his eyes, leaving a long sooty trail. "It's no good,
ma'am; the poor have no chance against the rich. I didn't even see the
bag marked A. A. this time. Most likely the Queen and those gentlemen
have spent it all long ago. But I thank you, lady, all the same, and
will you allow me to pay your fare for coming down to speak for me?"
When his offer was refused, he wrung my hand in silence, and then turned
eastwards towards his home.
I watched him till he disappeared in the crowd, a forlorn and pathetic
figure, not without dignity in his strange old-world garb.
AN ALIEN[1]
"No, I ain't got it, ma'am; he says I'm a foreigner. I filled up the
papers same as you told me, and then the gentleman called and asked for
the birth-certificate, same as you said he would. 'I ain't got it,' I
says. 'I suppose when I was born children were too common and folks too
busy to go twenty miles down the hillside to crow over a baby at
Carlisle Town Hall. There were fifteen of us all told, and my father
only a farm labourer; if he went abroad the work stayed at 'ome, and
'e'd no time for gallivanting with seventeen mouths to fill. But I've
got my baptism here all right; my mother was a pious body, and as soon
as she could stand up she went to be churched and take the new stranger
to be washed free of original sin in font-water; 'ere's the date written
on it, 1837--year Queen Victoria began her most happy reign--you'll
believe that, I suppose, in a parson's 'andwriting? Stands to reason I
was born afore I was christened; they couldn't put the cross on my
forehead, now could they, till my face was out in the world? Silly
talk, I calls it, so now don't say no more, but pay me that five
shillings and give me the book with the tickets--same as other ladies!'
"'You've lost your domicile,' he says.
"'Don't know what that is,' I says.
"'Married a foreigner,' he says.
"'Well, and if I did, that ain't no business of yours, my lad; you
weren't born nor thought of and he died afore you come near this wicked
world. He's been dead wellnigh on fifty year, so 'e didn't cross your
path to worry you. Couldn't talk English? I says as 'e talked a deal
better than you. I understood what 'e says, and I can't make 'ead nor
tail of your silly talk, my lad, so there. Coverture? No--I ain't 'eard
of that--no, nor naturalization either; you go down and fetch up Mrs.
Nash--she's a rare scholard, she is--such a one for her books and
poetry. Perhaps she'll make sense of your long words, for I can't. I
lived afore the school-boards, and all the schooling I got I found out
for myself sitting up in bed at night a-teaching myself to read and
write. Not as I think much of all the larning myself; the girls can't
keep a 'ome together as we used, and though the boys sit at the school
desks a-cyphering till they are grown young men, they seem allus out of
work at the end of it,' I says.
"'Yes, yes, you needn't olloa, my lad; I'm not deaf, though I am old and
grey-headed. So I can't have the pension because fifty years ago I fell
in love and married a steady young man, who worked hard, and knew how to
treat his wife (which 'alf you Englishmen don't), though 'e was a
Frenchman? I tell you marriage don't matter; 'usbands are come-by-chance
sort of people--you go a walk in the moonlight, and you kisses each
other, and then, afore you're clear in your mind, you're standing at the
altar, and the "better for worse" curse a-thundering over you. Ah! well,
poor Alphonse didn't live long enough to get worse, and his death made
me a widow indeed, and though I was only twenty-two, and plenty of men
came after me, I never took none of 'em. I didn't want no nasty bigamous
troubles on the Resurrection morning. Why should five years out of my
seventy-two change me into a Frenchy? What counts is my father and
mother, and my childhood by Helvellyn,' I says. 'I'm British-born, of
British parents, on British soil. I've never stirred from my land, and I
can't speak a word of nowt but English, so stop your silly talk, my lad.
And then,' I says, 'if my husband made me a Frenchy, ain't I English
again by my sons? (it says in the Book a woman shall be saved by
child-bearing)--two of 'em in the Navy and one of 'em killed and buried
at Tel-el-Kebir, and a dozen grandsons or more a-serving of Her Majesty
in furrin parts--yes, I allus say "Her Majesty"; I've been used to the
Queen all my life, and Kings don't seem right in England somehow.
"What stumps me is that you gone and paid a pension to that woman
opposite; now, she's an alien and a foreigner if you like--can't speak a
word of English as a body can understand, and she hates England--allus
a-boasting about Germany and the Emperor and their army, and how they'll
come and smash us to pieces--she married an Englishman, so that makes
her English--'eavens, what rubbish! Why, 'e died a few years after the
wedding, and she's only been here a couple of years at the most; I
remember them coming quite well. So she's English, with her German
tongue and her German ways, just because she belonged for a couple of
years to an English corpse in the cemetery; and I, with my English birth
and life and sons, am French because of my poor Alphonse rotted to dust
fifty years ago. Well, England's a nice land for women, a cruel
step-dame to her daughters; seems as if English girls 'ad better get
theirselves born in another planet, where people can behave decent-like
to them, and not make it a crime and a sin at seventy for marrying nice
young men who court them at eighteen. I pray as God will send a plague
of boys in the land and never a girl amongst them, so that the English
people shall die out by their own wickedness, or have to mate only with
furriners."
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Since this monologue was spoken the old lady has received her
pension. By the order of September 1911 twenty years of widowhood
cleanse from alien pollution.
"WIDOWS INDEED"
Mrs. Woods had just returned from her search after work, worn and weary
after a day of walking and waiting about on an empty stomach; the
Educational Committee of Whitelime had informed her that they had
decided to take no deserted wives as school-scrubbers, only widows need
apply. Outside she heard the voices of her children at play in the fog
and mist, and remembered with dull misery that she had neither food nor
firing for them, and she shuddered as she heard the language on their
youthful lips; she had been brought up in the godly ways of the
North-country farmhouse and the struggle against evil seemed too hard
for her.
She fitted the key into the lock of her little bare room and lit the
evil-smelling lamp, then she sank into a chair overpowered by deadly
nausea; strange whirligigs of light flashed before her eyes, and then
she collapsed on the floor in a dead faint.
When she came to herself she was sitting by a bright little fire in the
next room and friendly neighbours were chafing her hands and pouring a
potent spirit down her throat.
"That's right, my dear, you're coming round nicely; have another sip of
gin and then a good cup of tea will put you right; faint you were, my
dear, I know, and I suppose you had no luck at them Board Schools?"
Mrs. Woods raised a weary hand to her dazed head and thought dully
before she answered--
"They asked me if I was a widow, and when I said my husband had deserted
me over a month ago they said as they were sorry they could not give me
any work, they were keeping it for the widows of the Borough."
"Yes, I 'eard that from Mrs. James, but why didn't you have the sense to
say as you were a widow?"
"I never thought on that. I am a truthful woman, I am."
"Can't afford to be truthful if you are a deserted woman; men on boards
and committees don't like the breed, thinks you did something to drive
the old man away, but widows moves the 'ardest 'earts. What you wants is
a crape fall and Mrs. Lee's black-bordered 'ankerchief."
"You'll have to get work, my dear. All the pack will be loose on you
soon--school-board visitors and sanitaries, and cruelty-men to say as
your children have not enough food----"
"There, there, don't upset her again; we'll fix you up all right, my
dear, only you must remember, Mrs. Woods, that you are young and
ignorant and must be guided by them as knows the world," said Mrs. Lee,
a shrewd-eyed old dame of great wisdom and experience, who, like some of
the curés in Brittany, was consulted by all her friends and neighbours
in all problems spiritual and temporal.
"First of all, my dear, you must get out of this, you're getting too
well known in this locality. Go into London Street right across the 'igh
road. I 'ave a daughter as can give you a room, and there you become a
widow, Mrs. Spence--just buried 'im in Sheffield. You're from Yorkshire,
I reckon?"
Mrs. Woods nodded.
"You talk queer just like my old man did, so that'll sound true. You
takes your children from Nightingale Lane, and you sends them to that
big Board School by the docks--my Muriel knows the name--and you enters
them as Spence, not Woods--mind you tells them they are Spence. Then you
starts a new life. There are cleaners wanted in that idiot school just
built by Whitelime Church, and I'll be your reference if you want one.
I'll lend you my crape fall, and I'll wash my black-bordered
'ankerchief, which has mourned afore boards and committees for the last
ten years or more; mind you use it right and sniff into it when they
asks too many questions, and be sure and rub it in as 'ow you've buried
'im in Sheffield. I've 'eard all the women talking at the laundry as 'ow
they're refusing work to deserted wives, says as the Council don't want
to make it easy for 'usbands to dump families on the rates--good Gawd!
as if a man eat up body and soul with a fancy for another woman stops
to think of his family and where they will get dumped. Well, I mustn't
grumble. Lee was a good man to me and I miss 'im sad, but there is my
Gladys, the prettiest of the bunch, the flower of the flock as 'er dad
used to call 'er, left within three year of 'er wedding by 'er 'usband,
who was the maddest and silliest lover I ever seed till she said 'Yes'
to 'im, though dad and I always told 'er 'e was no good. No, my dear,
I'm afraid as it isn't the truth, but if folks play us such dirty tricks
we must be even with them. Think of your little 'ome and your little
kiddies and rouse yourself for their sakes. You are a strong and 'earty
woman when you stop crying for 'im and get some victuals into you, and
you don't want the Board to get at 'em and take 'em away, protecting
them against you and sending them to that great Bastille. Don't give
way, dearie. I'll come with you to-morrow. And I'd better be your
mother-in-law; folks know me round 'ere, and 'ow me and the old dad 'ad
fifteen of 'em, and a daughter-in-law more or less won't matter. Don't
give way, I tell you. Give us another cup of tea, Mrs. Hayes."
The next morning a deep-crape-veiled Mrs. Spence, propped up by an
equally funereal Mrs. Lee, the black-bordered handkerchief much in
evidence, sought and obtained work at the new L.C.C. School for the
Mentally Defective, and the terrors of the workhouse, the Poor Law
Schools, or even prison were temporarily averted.
THE RUNAWAY
He sat alone, in a corner of the playing field, a white-faced child of
the slums, in a dumb agony of loneliness and despair.
He was frightened and appalled at the wide stretches of green woodland
around and the great dome of the blue sky above. It made him feel
smaller and more deserted than ever, and his head was sore with
home-sickness for his mother and Mabel, the sister next him, and the
baby, his especial charge, for whose warm weight his little arms ached
with longing.
He had always been his mother's special help. He had minded the younger
ones when she got a job at washing or charing, and helped her to sew
sacks with little fingers quickly grown deft with practice. They had
been very happy, even though food was often short, and spent many
pleasant hours amongst the graves of their churchyard playgrounds, or
sitting on the Tower Wharf watching the river and the big ships.
The nightmare of his short life had been a man called Daddy, who came
back when they were all asleep, smelling strong and queer, and then
there would be furious words and the dull thuds of blows falling on his
mother's slender body, and he would throw himself screaming to protect
his beloved against the wild beast that was attacking her. Once in the
fray his arm had got broken, and he had seen, as in an evil dream, a
dreaded "cop" enter the room, and Daddy had been hailed to prison, after
which there was long peace and joy in the little home.
Then the man came out, and the quarrels were worse than ever, till a
kindly neighbour took Percy to sleep on the rag bed with her other
children, out of the way of Daddy, who had conceived a violent hatred
against his firstborn.
Then one day Daddy was brought home, straight and stiff, on a stretcher.
There had been a drunken row at the "Pig and Whistle," and Daddy had
fallen backwards on the pavement, and died of a fractured skull. An
inquest was held, and much more interest was shown in Daddy's dead body
than any one had evinced in his living one. A coroner and a doctor and
twelve jurymen "sat" gravely on the corpse, and decided he had died "an
accidental death."
Then there was a funeral and a long drive in a carriage with much crape
and black about, and Daddy was left in a deep yellow hole with muddy
water at the bottom. And peace came again to the widow and orphans.
Peace, but starvation, for the mother's wage did not suffice to buy
bread for them all. The rent got behind, and finally, with many tears
and much pressure from various black-coated men, who seemed always
worrying at the door, he and Mabel had been taken to a big, terrible
place called a workhouse. And, after some preliminary misery at another
place, called a "Receiving Home," wretchedness had culminated in this
strange vastness of loneliness and greenery. Only two days had passed,
but they seemed like years, and he trembled lest his sentence here
should be a life-one, and he would never see his mother again. He had
not killed nor robbed nor hurt any one, and he wondered with the
bewilderment of seven years why men and women could be so cruel to him.
Then he determined to run away. It had not taken long in the train. If
he started soon, he would be home by bedtime.
"Where's London?" he asked a boy who was hitting a smaller one to pass
the time.
"Dunno. You go in a train."
"I know. But which way?"
"Dunno, I tell you."
Near him stood one of the teachers, but as a natural enemy the boy felt
he was not to be trusted, and did not ask him.