Part 8

[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.

Then the bell rang for dinner, and they took their seats round the long, bare tables, in front of a steaming plate of stewed meat and vegetables. His pulses were beating with excitement at his secret plot, and the food was like sawdust in his mouth. Afternoon school began, and he sat with the resigned boredom of his kind, chanting in shrill chorus the eternal truths of the multiplication table.

Then some other subject, equally dull, was started, when suddenly his heart leaped to his mouth, and he nearly fell off the bench with the unexpected joy of it, for the teacher had brought up the intimate question of his soul: "Which is the way to London?"

The blood throbbed so loud in his ears that he could scarcely hear the answer. "London lies south of this schoolroom. If you walked out of that window, and followed your nose up the white road yonder, it would take you to London."

Other strange instruction followed--how to find north and south, and all about the sun and moon--but he purposely refrained from attending. By the act of God the position of London had been miraculously revealed to him, and he clung fast to that knowledge, so that his brain was burning with the effort of concentration.

At last the bell rang, and they flocked out again into the playing field. He stood alone with his great knowledge and reconnoitred the situation like an experienced general; a high fence with barbed wire ran round the field (clearly boys had run away before), but on the left of the square school-house he could see the shrubbery and the big locked gates by which he had been brought in with fellow-prisoners two days before.

Clearly, there was no escape but by going back to the house and facing perils unspeakable. So, humming softly to himself, he walked back through the long corridors to the entrance-hall, and out at the front door, which was standing open, for the day was hot. He sneaked along like a cat under the laurel bushes.

The big gates were locked, but farther down, hidden in the ivy of the wall, was a small door which yielded to his push, and then, by the favour of the angels, he stood free, and ran for his life up the white road which led to London. At the top of the hill he paused and panted for breath. The windows of the great school-house glared at him like the eyes of some evil beast, and, small as he was, he was painfully conscious of his conspicuousness on the white highway. A farmer's cart passed him, and the man turned round and gazed after him curiously. A motor-bus thundered past in a cloud of white, and again it seemed as if every head turned to watch him.

Hot and faint and thirsty, he still plodded on. London, with its beloved chimneys and friendly crowds, would soon burst into view, and his mother, with her cheery "What-ho, Percy!" would be welcoming him. The new shoes of the school were pinching badly. He longed to take them off, but funked the knots, which some female person had tied that morning with damnable efficiency. The sun had suddenly tumbled into a dangerous-looking pool of red fire, and the shadows which ran beside him had grown so gigantic he felt alarmed. Such terrifying phenomena were unknown in the blessed streets of London. The queer night noises of the countryside had begun around him: strange chirrups and cries from unseen beasts, which seemed to follow and run beside him; and every now and then a horned monster stuck its head over the gate and roared hungrily for its prey.

At length, wearied and hungry, and terrified by the sinister darkness stealing over the landscape, he threw himself down by the wayside. He heard the sound of footsteps behind, and braced himself to meet the knife of the murderer, when a cheerful voice greeted him: "What-ho, sonnie! You are out late. Time for little boys to be in bed."

"Please, sir," said the child, "I am going home to mother."

"Where does your mother live?"

"In London."

"London, eh! But you've a long way to go."

A sob rose and tore at his throat. Still a long way to go, and darkness was coming on--black, inky darkness, uncut by familiar street-lamps.

"Come home with me, Tommy, and my missis will sleep you for the night."

With a feeling of perfect confidence, the child slipped his small fingers into the horny hand of the farm labourer, and half an hour later, washed and fed, he was sleeping in a big bed amongst a heterogeneous collection of curly heads.

"Look 'ere, Bill," said the labourer's wife as she folded up the neat little garments provided by unwilling ratepayers, "'e's runned away from that there barrack school."

"I knowed that," said Bill, knocking the ashes out from his clay pipe. "It ain't the first time as I've met youngsters on the road, and, mebbe, it won't be the last, as folks in the village have been before the beak for harbouring them, poor little devils!"

"A GIRL! GOD HELP HER!"

The Lady Catherine Castleton lay dying in the stately bed-chamber of Castleton Hall. Night and day they had sought for my lord in clubs and gambling dens and well-known haunts of vice and pleasure, but they did not know of the rose-grown cottage on the Thames which he had taken for his latest inamorata.

When they told my lady the child was a girl she had given a low cry, "God help her!" and had turned her face to the wall. Great obstetricians summoned by telephone had sped in flying motors from town, but they stood baffled and helpless by the bedside of the young woman, who lay so still and indifferent, making no effort to live.

In the library the family lawyer and the white-haired admiral, her father, sat signing cheques for the great specialists, who had done so little and charged so much.

When they had gone the admiral, who loved his daughter, swore long and vigorously with the gorgeous powers of the seafaring man, and the lawyer listened with fascinated approval.

"I told her what her life would be with a loose-living scoundrel like Castleton, but she would not listen--madly in love with him and his handsome face, and now he has killed her at twenty-two!"

"I had a very distressing interview with Lady Catherine a few weeks ago. She went away in disgust and despair when I had to tell her that I did not think she had sufficient evidence for a divorce, and that she must prove cruelty or desertion as well as adultery."

"D---d shameful law, sir; can't think how the country puts up with it. But she shall be safe from him if she lives, my poor little girl!"

Then they were silent, for the shadow of death crept nearer.

* * * * *

Outside the park gates at the end of the village, in Castleton Union, another girl lay dying. The local practitioner had been called in on his way back from consultation with the great gynæcologists, and as at the hall, so in the workhouse, he found his patient sinking. "She came in late last night, sir," said the nurse, "and the child was born almost immediately. Her pulse is very weak, and I can't rouse her; she won't even look at the child."

"I hear it is Jennie Appleton, the carpenter's daughter at Kingsford--very respectable people. How did she get here?"

"Usual thing. Got into trouble at her situation in London; the man promised to marry her, but he kept putting it off, and then one day he disappeared, and wrote to her from Glasgow saying that he was a married man. She came back home, but her father drove her out with blows and curses, and she walked here from Kingsford--goodness knows how. It is a sad case, and the relieving officer tells me she will probably not be able to get any affiliation order enforced, as the man has evaded liability by going to Scotland."

"Abominable!" said the doctor; then he went towards the bedside of his patient, felt her pulse, glanced at the temperature chart, and his face grew grave.

Taking the babe from the cradle, he laid it beside the mother: "You have a pretty little girl."

The eyelids flickered, and, as the Countess had spoken, so spoke the pauper: "God help her!"

"He will," said the doctor, who was a religious man.

"He didn't help me. He let me come to this, and I was born respectable. She is only a little come-by-chance maid."

"Cheer up, my lass! My wife will help you: she knows it has not been your fault."

The doctor gave a few directions, and then left, looking puzzled and worried. He was a good _accoucheur_, and hated to lose a case. What was the matter with the women that they seemed to have lost the will to live?

* * * * *

Three days later, in the glory of the May sunshine, there was a double funeral in Castleton churchyard.

ON THE PERMANENT LIST

(1905)

Now also when I am old and grey-headed, O God, forsake me not.

"Spend but a few days in the police-court," says Juvenal, "and then call yourself an unhappy man if you dare." Had he sat on a Board of Guardians, he would doubtless have included that also as a school of personal contentment.

All sorts of griefs and tragedies are brought up before us, some of them abnormal and Theban in horror, some of them so common that we seem to hear them unmoved: an honest man who cannot find employment, women with unborn babes kicked, starved, and deserted, children neglected or tortured, poor human beings marred in the making, the crippled, the diseased, the defective physically and mentally, too often the pitiful scapegoats for the sins of the race.

All these things seem too terrible for words or tears; it is the cheeriness and humour of the poor, their pluck and endurance, their kindness and generosity one to another, that bring a lump to the throat and a dimness to the eyes.

We are a very careful Board, and pride ourselves on the strict way in which we administer our small amount of out-relief; to get it at all one must be, as an applicant observed, "a little 'igher than an angel," and so it is the very aristocracy of labour that files past us this morning, men and women against whom even the Charity Organization Society could find no fault, a brave old army, seventy and eighty odd years of age, some of them bent and crippled with rheumatism and weight of years, short of breath, asthmatic, hard of hearing, dim in vision, but plucky to the last, always in terror of looking too ill or too old, and being forced into the workhouse.

A few, like Moses, do not suffer the usual stigmata of age. "Their eye is not dim, nor their natural force abated."

"How do you keep so young?" said our chairman, half-enviously, to an applicant eighty years of age, but upright still, with hair thick and untinged with grey.

"'Igh living does it, sir," replied the old man, as he took his food tickets for the week, amounting to 3s. 1¾d. One old lady of eighty-two runs a private school, and, in spite of the competition of free education and palatial school buildings, she has six pupils, whose parents value individual attention and "manners" at sixpence per head a week. She is fully qualified and certificated, and is a person of strong views and much force of character, and not only holds Solomon's opinions upon corporal punishment in theory, but still puts them into practice. I wonder which of us will have the conviction and energy to cane boys at eighty-two?

We are a very clean Board, and every half-year the relieving officer brings a report as to the condition of the homes; but some of the old people are so withered and shrunken, and their span of remaining life is so short, that there seems little left both of time and space in which dirt can collect, and I always hope death will free them before they are brought into the bleak cleanliness of the House.

Lately in the workhouse one old man took such an affectionate leave of me that I asked him if he felt ill. "Not yet, ma'am, but I have got to have a bath to-night, and the last one I took turned me so queer I was laid up ten weeks in the infirmary. It does you no 'arm, ma'am, very likely--I've 'eard say as the gentry is born and bred to it--but when they starts a-bathing of us poor people for the first time at eighty in them great long coffins full of water, no wonder our rheumatics comes on worse than ever. And then, ma'am, you forget as you ladies and gentlemen 'ave a drop of something hot to keep the cold out afterwards, and I don't blame you for it, but that we never gets."

On the whole, the old ladies keep themselves wonderfully clean and smart, and the cheap drapery stores in the vicinity of the workhouse do a great trade twice a year in violets and rosebuds at 1¾d. a dozen for the adornment of bonnets; feminine instinct is not atrophied by age, and the applicants know the value of a good appearance before "the gentlemen." The old men are not so clever, and when deprived of the ministrations of a wife they seem to have no idea of "mackling" for themselves, and too often lapse into a fatal condition of dirt and hugger-mugger. Sometimes the reports are brought by daughters, nieces, or neighbours, or sometimes "only the landlady"--that abused class showing often much Christian charity and generosity.

Some of the old people have led such blameless lives that members of the C.O.S. offer to take them up and save them from the Poor Law, a privilege they do not always fully appreciate.

"No, thank you, sir, I don't want to go there. I've 'eard of the Charity Organization, and the questions as they ask--Mrs. Smith told me they sifted and sifted her case and give her nothing in the end. I'd rather have a few ha'pence from you, sir."

"But you will be a pauper!" said one of the Guardians, in a sepulchral voice of horror.

"Oh! I don't mind that a bit, sir. My mother was left a widow and on the parish at forty. I'm sixty-seven, and I'd work if I could, but they turned me off at the laundry because the rheumatics has stiffened up my fingers, and I can't wash any more, and I don't see why I shouldn't come on the parish now."

Having no vote, and being accustomed to be classed in the category of "lunatics, criminals, and idiots," no wonder the term "pauper" conveys little opprobrium to women.

"Bother the House!" says another spirited old laundress, who complains that "a parcel of girls" are preferred before her. "I'm too young to come in there. I'm only seventy, and I'll wait till I'm eighty."

One poor old man has his relief stopped because his wife is reported as "a drinking woman," though he is told he may still draw the money if his wife enters the House. "Thank you, sir, my wife does not come into the workhouse. She has a glass sometimes, but she is never the worse for liquor, and she's been a good wife to me. Spiteful gossip, sir. Good morning!" and he walks out, an honourable and loyal gentleman fallen on evil days.