Essays in Rebellion Part 9

"Four," said Mrs. Reeve, and she thought of them asleep in the firelight.

The old woman--a mere bundle with a pair of eyes in it--looked at her for a moment, and pretending out of delicacy to be talking to herself, she muttered loud enough to be heard: "Oh, that's where it is, is it?

There's four, same as I've buried. And a deal too many to bring up decent on ten shillin' a week. Why, I'd sooner let the Poor Law 'ave 'em, though me and the old man 'ad to go into the 'Ouse for it. And that's what I said to Mrs. Green when Mrs. Turner was left with six. And Mrs. Turner she went and done it. An uncommon sensible woman, was Mrs.

Turner, not like some as don't care what comes to their children, so long as they're 'appy theirselves."

In the woman's words Mrs. Reeve heard the voice of mankind condemning her. She knew it was all true. The thought had haunted her for days, and that she might not hear more, she drowned the words by sousing about the dirty water under the hiss of the scouring brush.

But when she reached home just before midnight, her mind was made up.

Her husband had always insisted that the children should be well fed and healthy. He had spoken with a countryman's contempt of the meagre c.o.c.kney bodies around them. One at least should go. She lit the candle, and stood listening to their sleep. Suddenly the further question came--which of the four? Should it be Alfred, the child of her girlhood, already so like his father, though he was only just nine? She couldn't get on without him, he was so helpful, could be trusted to light the lire, sweep the room and wash up. It could not possibly be Alfred.

Should it be Lizzie, her little girl of five, so pretty and nice to dress in the old days when even her father would look up from his book with a grunt of satisfaction at her bits of finery on Sundays? But a girl must always need the mother's care. It couldn't possibly be Lizzie.

Or should it be little Ben, lying there with eyes sunk deep in his head, and one arm outside the counterpane? Why, Ben was only three. A few months ago he had been the baby. It couldn't possibly be little Ben. And then there was the baby herself--well, of course, it couldn't be the baby.

So the debate went on, in a kind of all-night sitting. At half-past five she started for the offices again, sleepless and undecided.

That afternoon she went to the relieving officer at the workhouse. Two days later she was waiting among other "cases" in a pa.s.sage there, under an illuminated text: "I have not seen the righteous forsaken." In her turn she was ushered into the presence of the Board from behind a black screen. A few questions were put with all the delicacy which time and custom allowed. There was a brief discussion.

"Quite a simple case," said the chairman. "My good woman, the Guardians will undertake to relieve you of two children to prevent the whole lot of you coming on the rates. Send the two eldest to the House at once, and they will be drafted into our school in due course. Good morning to you. Next case, please."

She could do nothing but obey. Alfred and Lizzie were duly delivered at the gate. Bewildered and terrified, hoping every hour to be taken home, they hung about the workhouse, and became acquainted with the flabby pallor and desperate sameness of the pauper face. After two days they were whirled away, they knew not where, in something between a brougham and an ambulance cart.

"You lay, Liz, they're goin' to make us Lord Mayors of London, same as Whittington, and we'll all ride in a coach together," said Alfred, excited by the drive, and amazed at the two men on the box. Then they both laughed with the cheerful irony of London children.

II

It was an afternoon in early October, the day after Alfred and Lizzie had been removed from the workhouse. They were now in the probation ward of one of the great district schools. Lizzie was sitting in the girls'

room, whimpering quietly to herself, and every now and then saying, "I want my mother." To which the female officer replied, "Oh, you'll soon get over that."

Alfred was standing on the outside of a little group of boys gathered in idleness round a stove in a large whitewashed room on the opposite side of the building. Nearest the warmth stood Clem Bowler, conscious of the dignity which experience gives. For Clem had a reputation to maintain. He was a redoubtable "in and out." Four times already within a year his parents had entrusted themselves and him to the care of the State, and four times, overcome by individualistic considerations, they had recalled him to their own protection. His was not an unusual case.

The superintendent boasted that his "turn-over" ran to more than five hundred children a year. But there was distinction about Clem, and people remembered him.

"You 'ear, now," he said, looking round with a veteran's contempt upon the squad of recruits in pauperism, "if none on yer don't break out with somethink before the week's over, I'll flay the lot. I'm not pertikler for what it is. Last time it was measles first, and then ringworm. Nigh on seven weeks I stopt 'ere with nothink to do only eat, and never got so much as a smell of the school. What's them teachers got to learn _me_, I'd like to know?"

He paused with rhetorical defiance, but as no one answered he proceeded to express the teachers and officers in terms of unmentionable quant.i.ties. Suddenly he turned upon a big, vacant-looking boy at his side.

"What's yer name, fat-'ead?" he asked.

The boy backed away a pace or two, and stood gently moving his head about, and staring with his large pale eyes, as a calf stares at a dog.

"Speak, you dyin' oyster!" said Clem, kicking his shins.

"Ernest," said the boy, with a sudden gasp, turning fiery red and twisting his fingers into knots.

"Ernest what?" said Clem. "But it don't matter, for your sort always belongs to the fine old family of Looney. You're a deal too good for the likes of us. Why, you ought to 'ave a private asylum all to yerself. Hi, Missus!" he shouted to the porter's wife who was pa.s.sing through the room. "This young n.o.bleman's name's Looney, isn't it?"

"Looks as if it 'ad ought to be," she answered, with a smile, for she avoided unnecessary difficulties. It was her duty to act as mother to the children in the probation ward, and she had already mothered about five thousand.

"Well, Looney," Clem went on as soon as she had gone, "I'll give you a fair run for your money. By next Sunday week you must 'ave a sore 'ead or sore eyes, or I'll see as you get both. But p'raps I may as well take two of the lot of yer in 'and at once."

He seized the daft creature and Alfred by the short hair at the back of their heads, and began running them up and down as a pair of ponies. The others laughed, partly for flattery, partly for change.

"That don't sound as if they was un'appy, do it, sir?" said the porter's wife, coming in again at that moment with one of the managers, who was paying a "surprise visit" to the school.

"No, indeed!" he answered heartily. "Well, boys, having a real good time, are you? That's right. Better being here than starving outside, isn't it?"

"Oh yuss, sir, a deal better!" said Clem. "Plenty to eat 'ere, sir, and n.o.body to be crule to yer, and nice little lessons for an hour in the afternoon!"

It was getting dark, and as the gas was lit and cast its yellow glare over the large room, Alfred thought how his mother must just then be lighting the candle to give Ben and the baby their tea.

III

So the children waited the due fortnight for the appearance of disease.

But no one "broke out." Looney, it is true, developed a very sore head, but the doctor declared there was nothing contagious about it; at which neglect of scientific precaution Clem expressed justifiable disgust.

For, indeed, he could have diagnosed the case completely himself, as a sore due to compulsory friction of the epidermis against an iron bedstead. But as science remained deaf to his protests, he hastened to get first pick of the regulation suits and shoes, and when fairly satisfied with the fit, he bit private marks on their various parts, helped to put on Looney's waistcoat wrong way before, split Alfred's shirt down the back to test its age, and with an emphatic remark upon the perversity of mortal things, marched stoically up to the school with the rest of the little band. Little Lizzie followed with the girls about a hundred yards behind. Alfred pretended not to see her. Somehow he was now becoming rather ashamed of having a sister.

The great bell was just ringing for dinner. Alfred and the other new boys were at once arranged according to height in the phalanx of fours mustered in the yard. At the word of command the whole solid ma.s.s put itself in motion, shortest in front, and advanced towards the hall with the little workhouse shuffle. Dividing this way and that, the boys filed along the white tables. At the same moment the girls entered from another door, and the infants from a third. By a liberal concession, "the s.e.xes" had lately been allowed to look at each other from a safe distance at meals.

A gong sounded: there was instant silence. It sounded again: all stood up and clasped their hands. Many shut their eyes and a.s.sumed an expression of intensity, as though preparing to wrestle with the Spirit.

Clem, having planted both heels firmly on Looney's foot, screwed up his face, and appeared to wrestle more than any. A note was struck on the harmonium. All sang the grace. The gong sounded: all sat down. It sounded again: all talked.

"Yes, we allow them to talk at meals now," said the superintendent to a visitor who was standing with him in the middle of the room. "We find it helps to counteract the effects of over-feeding on the digestion."

"What a beautiful sight it all is!" said the visitor. "Such precision and obedience! Everything seems satisfactory."

"Yes," said the superintendent, "we do our very best to make it a happy home. Don't we, Ma?"

"We do, indeed," said the matron. "You see, sir, it has to be a home as well as a school."

The superintendent had been employed in workhouse schools for many years, and had gradually worked himself up to the highest position. On his appointment he had hoped to introduce many important changes in the system. Now, at the end of nine years, he could point to a few improvements in the steam-laundry, and the subst.i.tution of a decent little cap for the old workhouse Glengarry. At one time he had conceived the idea of allowing the boys brushes and combs instead of having their hair cropped short to the skin. But in this and other points he had found it better to let things slide rather than throw the whole place out of gear for a trifle. Changes received little encouragement; and the public didn't really care what happened until some cruel scandal in the evening papers made their blood boil for half a minute as they went home to dinner in the suburbs.

The gong sounded. All stood up again with clasped hands, and again Looney suffered while Clem joined in the grace. As the boys marched out at one door, Alfred looked back and caught sight of Lizzie departing flushed and torpid with the infants after her struggle to make a "clean plate" of her legal pound of flesh and solid dough. In the afternoon he was sent to enjoy the leisure of school with his "standard," or to creep about in the howling chaos of play-time in the yard. After tea he was herded with four hundred others into a day-room quite big enough to allow them to stand without touching each other. Hot pipes ran round the sides under a little bench, and the whitewashed walls were relieved by diagrams of the component parts of a sweet pea and scenes from the life of Abraham. As usual an attempt was made at hide-and-seek under strange conditions. Some inglorious inventor had solved the problem of playing that royal game in an empty oblong room. His method was to plant out the "juniors" in cl.u.s.ters or copses on the floor, whilst the "seniors"

lurked and ran and hunted in and out their undergrowth. To add zest to the chase, Clem now let Looney slip as a kind of bag-fox, and the half-witted creature went lumbering and blubbering about in real terror of his life, whilst his pursuers encouraged his speed with artifices in which the animated spinnies and coverts deferentially joined. Unnoticed and lonely in the crowd, Alfred was almost sorry he was not half-witted too.

At last he was marched off to his dormitory with fifty-five others, and lay for a long time listening with the fascination of innocence whilst Clem in a low voice described with much detail the scenes of "human nature" which he had recently witnessed down hopping with his people.

Almost before he was well asleep, as it seemed, the strange new life began again with the bray of a bugle and the flaring of gas, and he had to hurry down to the model lavatory to wash under his special little jet of warm spray, so elaborately contrived in the hope of keeping ophthalmia in check.

So, with drills and scrubbings and breakfasts and schools, the great circles of childhood's days and nights went by, each distinguished from another only by the dinner and the Sunday services. And from first to last the pauper child was haunted by the peculiar pauper smell, containing elements of whitewash, damp boards, soap, steam, hot pipes, the last dinner and the next, corduroys, a little chlorate of lime, and the bodies of hundreds of children. It was not unwholesome.

IV

One thing shed a light over the days as it approached, and then left them dark till the hope of its return brought a dubious twilight. Once a month, on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, Mrs. Reeve had promised to come and see the two children. She might have come oftener, for considerable allowance was made for family affection. But it was difficult enough in four weeks to lay by the few pence which would take her down to the suburb. Punctually at two she was at the gate, and till four she might sit with the children in the lodge. Not much was said. They clung to each other in silence. Or she undid the boy's stiff waistcoat, and looked at his grey shirt, and tried to accustom herself to her Lizzie's short hair and heavy blue dress. Many others came too, and sat in the same room--eloquent drunkards appealing to heaven, exuberant relatives with apples and sweets, unsatisfied till the children howled in answer to their pathos, girls half-ashamed to be seen, and quiet working mothers. As four struck, good-bye was said, and with Lizzie's crying in her ears Mrs. Reeve walked blindly back through the lines of suburban villas to the station. Twice she came, and, counting the days and weeks, the children had made themselves ready for the third great Sat.u.r.day.

Carefully washed and brushed, they sat in their separate day-rooms, and waited. Two o'clock struck, but no message came. All the afternoon they waited, sick with disappointment and loneliness. At last, seeing the matron go by, Alfred said: "Please, mum, my mother ain't come to-day."

"Not come?" she answered. "Oh, that _is_ a cruel mother! But they're all the same. Each time, sure as fate, there's somebody forgotten, so you're no worse off than anybody else. Look, here's a nice big sweet for you instead! Oh yes, I'll tell them about your little sister. What's your name, did you say?"

As he went out along the corridor, Alfred came upon Looney hiding behind an iron column, and crying to himself. "Why, what's the matter with you?" he asked.