Part 5

A week or so later I heard of the death of old "Inky." He had been found in a half-dying condition on one of the benches on the heath, and had been brought by the police into the infirmary, where he passed away without recovering consciousness. As we "rattled his bones over the stones" to his pauper grave I said a sincere _Laus Deo_ that another man of war had been delivered from poverty and the hated workhouse.

A DAUGHTER OF THE STATE

Quis est homo, qui non fleret?

"No, ma'am, I've never had no misfortune; I'm a respectable girl, I am. Why am I in the workhouse, then? Well, you see, it was like this: I had a very wicked temper, and I can't control it somehow when the mistresses are aggravating, and I runned from my place. I always do run away. No, there was nothing agen the last mistress--it was just my nasty temper. Then I got wandering about the streets, and a policeman spoke to me and took me to a kind lady, and she put me here to prove me, and left me to learn my lesson. She takes great interest in my case. Yes, Matron says it is a disgrace for a strong girl to be on the rates, but what am I to do? I ain't got no clothes and no character, so I suppose I shall always be here now. No, it ain't nice; we never go out nor see nothing--leastways, the young women don't. There's no sweet puddings and no jam. Some of the girls say jail's far better. Yes, I am an orphan--at least, father died when I was very little, and the Board gentlemen put me and my brothers into the schools. No, I never heard any more of them. Mother came to see me at first, but she ain't been nor wrote for five years; perhaps she is dead or married again. No, I don't know how old I am; Matron says she expects about eighteen. Oh, yes, I have been in places. The Board ladies got me my first place at a butcher's, only he was always coming after me trying to kiss me, and the missis did not seem to like it somehow and she cut up nasty to me, and there was words and I went off in a temper. No gentleman! I should think not. A damned low scoundrel I call him. I beg your pardon, ma'am, I know 'damned' isn't a word for ladies. I ain't an ignorant girl, but there's worse said in the Young Women's Room sometimes. Then after that the Salvation Army took me in and found me a place in a boarding-house. Heaps to do I had, and such a lot of glasses and plates and things for every meal. I always got muddled laying the table, and the missis had an awful nasty temper, quite as bad as mine, and one day she blew me up cruel, and I ran away. Then this time some nuns took me to their Home, and there I made a great mistake; I thought it was a Church of England Home, but they was Cartholics. Oh, yes, the nuns were very kind to me--real good ladies--but the lady who takes an interest in my case said as I had made a great mistake; I don't know why except that I always was a Church of England girl. No, ma'am, I hope I may never make a worse mistake--for they was good, and they sang beautiful in the chapel. Then the nuns found a place for me with two old homespun people; they was very dull and often ill, and I was always getting muddled over the spoons and forks, an that made them _urri_table, and one day I felt so low-spirited and nasty-tempered that I ran away again. The worst of places for me is, no porters sit at the front doors and I run away before I think, and then I get no character. But this time I have been proved, and I have learnt my lesson. I won't do it any more. No, ma'am, I never knew I could be taken to the police-courts just for running away--none of the ladies never told me; I thought you were only copped for murders and stealing. Daisy White--she pinched her missis's silk petticoat to go out in on Sunday, and now she's out of jail no one won't have her any more. But it's mostly misfortunes that brings girls here, and fits of course. Blanche, that big girl with the squint eye, went off in a fit yesterday as we were scrubbing the wards. No, I don't have no fits, and I'm honest as the day. Would I be a good girl and not run away if you get me a place? Oh, ma'am, only try me. The kind ladies quote textesses to me, but they never get me a job. No, I don't mind missing my dinner. Matron will keep it hot for me, but it's only suet pudding to-day with very little sugar. In situations they give you beautiful sweet puddings nearly every day, and Juliet Brown--she that's in with her third misfortune--she says she's lived with lords and ladies near the King's Palace at Buckingham--at least, she pretends she has--well, she says in her places the servants had jam with their tea every day.

"No, I haven't got no clothes but these workhouse things, but Matron 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.