Workhouse Characters Part 6

IN THE PHTHISIS WARD

Why, O my G.o.d, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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, a.s.suage 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, I never bore a child!"

In the early hours of morning Teddy began to sing, in strange, raucous fashion, fragments of oratorios. "'My G.o.d, my G.o.d,'" sang Teddy in the recitative of Bach's Pa.s.sion 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

G.o.dliness is great riches if a man be content with that which he hath.

"G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d for on bare knees--G.o.d 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 Ma.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l; 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 G.o.d 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 (G.o.d 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 G.o.d's truth! (May your lips stiffen for ever, sitting there a-grinning and a-mocking at G.o.d's truth!) I've allus been a sober woman, and I've always conducted myself.

(G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstance 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!--G.o.d 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--G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l-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 G.o.d 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 G.o.ds 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, la.s.s, 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, la.s.s, as you're safe like.

"Yes, I've been that queer I couldn't know myself, and though I'm better I'm that bone-lazy I can't move, but I'll be all right again soon and I'll get those petticoats of yourn finished which I am ashamed of having cluttering about still. I've 'ad what's called brownchitis. Mrs. Curtis fetched the doctor when I was took bad, and they built me up a sort of tent with a sheet, and a kettle a-spitting steam at me through a roll of brown paper they fixed on the spout, and I 'alf-killed myself with laughing at such goings-on. I was that hot and smothered I had to get up in the middle of the night and get to the open window to take a breath of fog, for you can't call it air; I felt just like a boiled lobster. I ain't had nothing to do with doctors before and I don't understand their ways. This young chap 'e got 'old on a piece of wood and planked it down on my chest with 'is ear clapped to the other end. 'Say ninety-nine,' 'e says as grave as a judge. 'Sir,' I says, 'I'm not an imbecile, and not having much breath to spare I'll keep it to talk sense.'

"He burst hisself with laughing, and then 'e catches 'old on my 'and as men do when they go a-courting. 'Sir,' I says, 'a fine young chap like you 'ad better 'ang on with some young wench.'