Workhouse Characters Part 9

"'Married a foreigner,' he says.

"'Well, and if I did, that ain't no business of yours, my lad; you weren't born nor thought of and he died afore you come near this wicked world. He's been dead wellnigh on fifty year, so 'e didn't cross your path to worry you. Couldn't talk English? I says as 'e talked a deal better than you. I understood what 'e says, and I can't make 'ead nor tail of your silly talk, my lad, so there. Coverture? No--I ain't 'eard of that--no, nor naturalization either; you go down and fetch up Mrs.

Nash--she's a rare scholard, she is--such a one for her books and poetry. Perhaps she'll make sense of your long words, for I can't. I lived afore the school-boards, and all the schooling I got I found out for myself sitting up in bed at night a-teaching myself to read and write. Not as I think much of all the larning myself; the girls can't keep a 'ome together as we used, and though the boys sit at the school desks a-cyphering till they are grown young men, they seem allus out of work at the end of it,' I says.

"'Yes, yes, you needn't olloa, my lad; I'm not deaf, though I am old and grey-headed. So I can't have the pension because fifty years ago I fell in love and married a steady young man, who worked hard, and knew how to treat his wife (which 'alf you Englishmen don't), though 'e was a Frenchman? I tell you marriage don't matter; 'usbands are come-by-chance sort of people--you go a walk in the moonlight, and you kisses each other, and then, afore you're clear in your mind, you're standing at the altar, and the "better for worse" curse a-thundering over you. Ah! well, poor Alphonse didn't live long enough to get worse, and his death made me a widow indeed, and though I was only twenty-two, and plenty of men came after me, I never took none of 'em. I didn't want no nasty bigamous troubles on the Resurrection morning. Why should five years out of my seventy-two change me into a Frenchy? What counts is my father and mother, and my childhood by Helvellyn,' I says. 'I'm British-born, of British parents, on British soil. I've never stirred from my land, and I can't speak a word of nowt but English, so stop your silly talk, my lad.

And then,' I says, 'if my husband made me a Frenchy, ain't I English again by my sons? (it says in the Book a woman shall be saved by child-bearing)--two of 'em in the Navy and one of 'em killed and buried at Tel-el-Kebir, and a dozen grandsons or more a-serving of Her Majesty in furrin parts--yes, I allus say "Her Majesty"; I've been used to the Queen all my life, and Kings don't seem right in England somehow.

"What stumps me is that you gone and paid a pension to that woman opposite; now, she's an alien and a foreigner if you like--can't speak a word of English as a body can understand, and she hates England--allus a-boasting about Germany and the Emperor and their army, and how they'll come and smash us to pieces--she married an Englishman, so that makes her English--'eavens, what rubbish! Why, 'e died a few years after the wedding, and she's only been here a couple of years at the most; I remember them coming quite well. So she's English, with her German tongue and her German ways, just because she belonged for a couple of years to an English corpse in the cemetery; and I, with my English birth and life and sons, am French because of my poor Alphonse rotted to dust fifty years ago. Well, England's a nice land for women, a cruel step-dame to her daughters; seems as if English girls 'ad better get theirselves born in another planet, where people can behave decent-like to them, and not make it a crime and a sin at seventy for marrying nice young men who court them at eighteen. I pray as G.o.d will send a plague of boys in the land and never a girl amongst them, so that the English people shall die out by their own wickedness, or have to mate only with furriners."

FOOTNOTE:

[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 G.o.dly 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 c.r.a.pe 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 cures 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 c.r.a.pe 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-c.r.a.pe-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 c.r.a.pe 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 pa.s.sed, 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. .h.i.tting a smaller one to pa.s.s 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 G.o.d 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.