Workhouse Characters Part 3

The porter, who was himself a married man, picked up the babe and soothed it in practised arms. "And 'ow about the father? Something as calls itself a man 'as 'ad an 'and in this business, and druv the gal to it, may be. My old dad allus says, 'G.o.d cuss the scoundrel who leaves a poor la.s.s to bear her trouble alone!'"

"And now," said the policeman, when the nurse, summoned by telephone, had borne off the indignant babe to the Children's Ward, "I suppose you must enter the case. I found the kid under a laurel-bush at 7, Daventry Terrace. A lady blew a whistle out of the window and said she could not sleep for a whining outside. I tried to put her off as it was cats, but she stuck to it; so, just to quiet her, I cast round with my lantern, and, sure enough, she was right. Mighty upset about it, poor woman, she was, being a single lady. However, as I told her, such things may happen in any garden, married or single."

A name was chosen for her by an imaginative member of the House Committee, remembering his cla.s.sical education--Daphne Daventry--the Christian name as an everlasting reminder of her foster parent the laurel-bush.

In due season the familiar notices were posted at the police-stations offering "a reward for the discovery of person or persons unknown who had abandoned a female infant in the garden of 7, Daventry Terrace, whereby the aforesaid female infant had become chargeable to the parish"; and, the Press giving publicity to the affair, offers of adoption poured in to the Guardians--pathetic letters from young mothers whose children had died, and business-like communications from middle-aged couples, who had "weighed the matter" and were "prepared to adopt the foundling."

The Board discussed the question at their next meeting, and the Clerk was directed to inquire into the character and circ.u.mstances of the most likely applicants.

"One thing to which I should like to draw the attention of the Board,"

said a conscientious Guardian, "is the importance of bringing up a child in the religion of its parents."

"Seems to me, in this case," retorted a working-man member, who was also a humorist, "that it might be a good thing to try a change."

And then the Clerk, in his clear legal way, pointed out that the religious question had better not be pressed, as there was small evidence before him as to the theological tenets of the person or persons unknown who had exposed the female infant.

Meantime, the latest workhouse character slumbered in the nursery in pa.s.sive enjoyment of the excellent rate-supported fires, and was fed with a scientific fluid, so Pasteurized and sterilized and generally Bowdlerized that it seemed quite vulgar to call it milk. The nurses adorned the cot with all the finery they could collect, and all the women in the place managed to evade the rules of cla.s.sification, and got into the nursery, where they dandled the infant and said it was "a shame."

One of the most devoted worshippers at the shrine of Daphne Daventry was a lady Guardian, a frail and tiny little woman, with a pair of wide-open eyes, from which a look of horror was never wholly absent. She was always very shabbily dressed--so shabbily, indeed, that a new official had once taken her for a "case" and conducted her to the waiting-room of applicants for relief. After such an object-lesson, any other woman would have gone to do some shopping; but not so the little lady Guardian--she did not even brighten her dowdiness with a new pair of bonnet-strings. Though she wrote herself down in the nomination-papers as a "married woman," no one had ever seen or heard of her husband, and report said that he was either a lunatic or a convict.

This mystery of her married life, combined with her "dreadful appearance" and a certain reckless generosity towards the poor, made her many enemies amongst scientific philanthropists. Her large-hearted charity had been given to the just and the unjust, to the drunk as well as the sober, and the Charity Organization Society complained that her investigations were not thorough, and that the quality of her mercy was neither strained nor trained. But the little lady Guardian opened her old silk purse again and quoted the Scriptures: "Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow turn not thou away."

The C.O.S. replied, such precepts had proved to be out of date economically, and nominated a more modern lady, who had missed a great career as a private detective.

But the little lady Guardian had a faithful majority, and her name was always head of the poll.

One afternoon, as the little lady Guardian sat by the fire with Daphne Daventry on her shabby serge lap, a prospective parent, Mrs. Annie Smith, was brought up to see if she "took to the child."

"Oh, what a lovely baby!" she cried, falling on her knees to adore.

"What nice blue eyes, and what dear little hands! And her hair is beginning to grow already! Both my children died five years ago; I have never had another, and I just feel as if I could not live without a baby. It is terrible to lose one's children."

"It is worse to have none."

"Oh, no, no!"

"Yes, it is," said the little lady Guardian in a low voice, as if she were talking to herself. "When I was a little girl I had six sailor-boy dolls, and I always meant to have six sons; but directly after my marriage I realized it could never be."

Mrs. Smith had known sorrow, and, feeling by intuition that she was in the presence of no ordinary tragedy, she held her peace.

"Perhaps," she asked presently, "you are going to adopt this baby? You seem very fond of her."

"I love all babies, but I don't think I could adopt one; these workhouse children don't start fair, and I should be too frightened. If the child went wrong later, I don't think I could bear it."

Mrs. Smith had been a pupil-teacher, and in the last five years of leisure she had read widely, if confusedly, at the free library. "But people now no longer believe in heredity. Weissman's theory is that environment is stronger then heredity."

"Oh!" said the little lady Guardian.

"Do read him," said Mrs. Smith excitedly, "and then you won't feel so low-spirited, and perhaps the Guardians will let you adopt the next foundling. But please let me have this one. I have taken to her more than I thought. Oh! please, please----"

"I will vote for you at the next Board meeting," said the little lady Guardian, "and may she make up to you for the children you have lost."

A few days later Mrs. Annie Smith, her honest face beaming with joy, arrived again at the workhouse, followed by a small servant with a big bundle. The attiring of the infant was long and careful, and many came to help, and then Daphne Daventry was whirled away in a flutter of purple and fine linen, and the burden of the rates was lightened.

"MARY, MARY, PITY WOMEN!"

A woman sat alone with folded hands in a dark fireless room. There was little or no furniture to hold the dust, and one could see that the pitiful process known as "putting away" had been going on, for the cleanly scrubbed boards and polished grate showed the good housewife's struggle after decency. On a small table in the centre of the room stood half a loaf of bread, a jug of water, and a cup of milk. The woman bore traces of good looks, but her face was grey and pinched with hunger, and in her eyes was a smouldering fire of resentment and despair.

Presently the silence and gloom was broken by the entrance of a troop of children returning noisily from school. Their faces fell when they saw the scanty meal, and the youngest, a child of four or five, threw himself sobbing into his mother's arms: "Oh, mother, I'se so hungry; we only had that bit of bread for dinner."

"Hush, dear! There is a little milk for you and Gladys; you can drink as far as the blue pattern, and the rest is for her."

The mother kissed him and tried to dry his tears; but it is hard to hear one's children crying for food; and presently her fort.i.tude gave way, and she began to sob too. The older children, frightened at her breakdown, clung round her, weeping; and the room echoed like a torture-chamber with sobs and wails.

Presently a knock sounded at the door, and a stout, motherly woman entered. "Good evening, Mrs. Blake; I've just looked in to know if you'd bring the children to have a cup of tea with me. I'm all alone, and I like a bit of company. H'albert is always the boy for my money. I just opened a pot of my home-made plum jam on purpose for him. There, my dear, have your cry out, and never mind me! Things have gone badly with you, I know, and nothing clears the system so well as a good cry; you feel a sight better after, and able to face the world fair and square.

Now, kiddies, leave mother to herself for a bit and come and help me set the tea things. Let's see, we shall be seven all told; so, Lily, will you run upstairs to Mrs. Johnson--my compliments, and will she oblige with a cup and saucer, as we are such a big party."

The landlady's kitchen was warmed with a big fire, and hermetically sealed against draughts; a big bed took up the greater part of the room, and this formed a luxurious divan for the four children, to whom the hot tea and toast, the tinned lobster, and the home-made jam were nectar and ambrosia. Mrs. Blake had the place of honour by the fire, and when the meal was over the children were advised to run out for a game in the street, and Mrs. Wells, turning her chair round to the cheerful blaze, said soothingly--

"Now, my dear, you look a bit better. Tell us all about it."

"Yes, you were quite right; we have to go into the workhouse. I went round to the Rev. Walker, and he advised me to go to the police-station, and they told me there as I and the children had better become a burden to the rates as we are dest.i.tute, and they can start looking for Blake, to make him pay the eighteen shillings a week separation order. To think of me and my children having to go into the House, and me first-cla.s.s in the scholarship examination! It breaks my heart to think of it."

"Yes; you've 'ad a rough time, my dear--worse than the rest of us, and we all have our troubles. I remember when you came a twelvemonth ago to engage the room, and you said you was a widow. I pa.s.sed the remark to Wells that evening: 'The lidy in the top-floor back ain't no widow; mark my words, there's a 'usband knocking about somewhere!' On the faces of them as are widows I have noticed a great peace, as if they were giving of thanks that they are for ever free from the worritings of men, and that look ain't on your face, my dear--not by a long chalk!"

"Yes, he's alive all right; I got a separation order from him a couple of years ago. He went off with a woman in the next street, and though he soon tired of her and came back again, I felt I could not live with him any longer; the very sight of him filled me with repulsion and loathing.

Father and mother always warned me against him; father told me he saw he wasn't any good; but then, I was only nineteen, and obstinate as girls in love always are, and I wouldn't be said. Poor father! I often wish as I'd listened to him, but I didn't, and I always think it was the death of him when I went home and told him what my married life was. He had been so proud of me doing so well at school and in all the examinations.

Just at first we were very happy after our marriage. He earned good money as a commercial traveller in the drapery business; we had a little house in Willesden, and a piano, and an india-rubber plant between the curtains in the parlour, and a girl to help with the housework, and I, like a fool, worshipped the very ground he walked on. Then, after a time, he seemed to change; he came home less and took to going after women as if he were a boy of eighteen instead of a married man getting on for forty. He gave me less and less money for the house, and spent his week-ends at the sea for the good of his health. One very hot summer the children were pale and fretting, and I was just sick for a sight of the sea, but he said he could not afford to take us, not even for a day-trip; afterwards I heard as Mrs. Bates was always with him, there was plenty of money for that. That summer it seemed as if it never would get cool again, and one evening in late September my Martin was taken very queer. I begged my husband not to go away, I felt frightened somehow, but he said as some sea-air was necessary for his health, and that there was nothing the matter with the boy, only my fussing. That night Martin got worse and worse; towards morning a neighbour went for the doctor, but the child throttled and died in my arms before he came.

I was all alone. I didn't even know my husband's address, and when I went with the little coffin all alone to the cemetery it seemed as if I left my heart there in the grave with the boy. He was my eldest, and none of the others have been to me what he was. Later on all the girls caught the diphtheria, but they got well again, only Martin was taken.

Blake seemed a bit ashamed when he got back; but he left Willesden, some of the neighbours speaking out plain to him about Mrs. Bates, and he not to be found to follow his child's funeral. He tried to make it up with me; but I told him I was going to get a separation order, as I'd taken a sort of repulsion against looking at him since Martin had died alone with me, and the magistrate made an order upon him for eighteen shillings a week--little enough out of the five or six pounds a week he could earn before he took to wine and women and Mrs. Bates. My little home and the piano were sold up, and I soon found eighteen shillings a week did not go far with four hungry children to clothe and feed, and rent beside. I tried to get back in my old profession, but I had been out of it too long, no one would look at me, and I could only get cooking and charing to do--very exhausting work when you haven't been brought up to it. At first I got the money pretty regular, but lately it has been more and more uncertain, some weeks only eight or ten shillings, and sometimes missing altogether. He owes me now a matter of twenty pound or more, and last week I braced myself up and determined to do what I could to recover it. If it was only myself, I'd manage, but, work hard as I can, I can't keep the five of us, and it has about broke my heart lately to hear the children crying with hunger and cold. Mrs.

Robins, where I used to work, died a fortnight ago, and I shan't find any one like her again. When one of the ladies goes, it is a job to get another, so many poor creatures are after the charing and cleaning. The Rev. Walker has been a good friend to me, but he says I ought to go into the House. 'A man ought to support his wife and children,' he says, 'and I hope as they'll catch him,' he says."

"'Yes,' I says, but it is awful to go into the House when we haven't done anything wrong, and my father an organist.'

"'Very cruel, Mrs. Blake,' he says, 'but I see no other way. I will write to the Guardians to ask if they will allow you out-relief, but I fear they will say you are too dest.i.tute!'

"And now, Mrs. Wells, we had better be starting. I hope if they find him I shall be able to pay up the back rent; the table and chairs left I hope you will keep towards the payment of the debt. Thank you for all your kindness."

"All right, Mrs. Blake, don't you worry about that, my dear. Wells is in good work, thank G.o.d, and I don't miss a few 'apence. I'm such a one for children, and your H'albert is a beauty, he is; I've been right glad to give them a bite and sup now and again. I know children sent out with empty stomachs aren't in a fit state to absorb learning; it leads to words and rows with the teachers and canings afore the day's over. I can't abear to see people cross with children, and I'd do anything to save them the cane. Well, I hope, my dear, as they'll soon nail that beauty of yours, and that we shall see you back again. Perhaps I ought to tell you that a chap calling 'isself a sanitary inspector called this morning to say as five people mustn't sleep in the top-back floor. I told 'im as the room was let to a widow lady in poor circ.u.mstances, and was he prepared to guarantee the rent of two rooms. That made him huffy.

It wasn't his business, he said, but overcrowding was agen his Council's rules."

And the old lady held up the doc.u.ment upside down and then consigned it to the flames.

"There will be no overcrowding to night," said Mrs. Blake bitterly.

The children were collected and scrubbed till their faces shone with friction and yellow soap, and then the little procession started to the workhouse. Mr. Wells, returned from work, announced his intention of giving his arm up the hill to Mrs. Blake, and the young man of the second floor volunteered his services to help carry "H'albert," who was heavy and sleepy, and his contribution of a packet of peppermints cheered the journey greatly. When the cruel gates of the House closed on the weeping children the two men walked home silently. Once Wells swore quietly but forcibly under his breath.