Chapter II: Part 2

"One thing, ma'am, as pleased her was some dirty old lace one of the lidies brought for her one afternoon. She was just as 'appy as most females are with a babby, a-fingering of it and calling it all manner of queer names. There isn't a sight of old lace knocking about 'ere," and her one eye twinkled merrily; "I guess we lidies willed it all away to our h'ancestry afore seeking retirement. Our gowns aren't hexactly trimmed with priceless guipure, though there's some fine 'and embroidery on my h'apern," and she thrust the coarsely darned linen between the delicate fingers.

"Garn!--they're always a-kiddin' of me. Yes, ma'am, I love to feel real lace; I can still tell them all by the touch--Brussels and Chantilly and Honiton and rose-point; it reminds me of the lovely things I used to mend up for the ladies to go to see the Queen in."

They showed me her needlework--handkerchiefs and dusters hemmed with much accuracy, and knitting more even than that of many of us who can see.

As I rose to go she took my finger and laid it upon the cabalistic signs of the "Book."

"Don't you understand it? That's my own text, as I reads when things are worse than general: 'Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.' Yes, there'll be glory for me--glory for me--glory for me."

I heard the shrill, hoarse voice piping out the old revival hymn, very much out of tune, as I passed down the ward.

I had a nasty lump in my throat when I got back to the Board Room, and I can't exactly remember what I said to the Committee. I think I cleared Nurse Smith from any definite charge of cruelty, something after the fashion of the Irish jurymen: "Not guilty, but don't do it again," adding the rider that Mary Grant was blind and deaf, and if she grumbled it was not surprising.

It is possible my report was incoherent and subversive of discipline, and my feelings were not hurt because it was neither "received," nor "adopted," nor "embodied," nor "filed for future reference," but, metaphorically speaking, "lay on the table" to all eternity.

"AND, BEHOLD, THE BABE WEPT"

And, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion upon him.

The night-porter sat in his lodge at 1 a.m., trying hard to keep off the sleep that weighed his eyelids down--that heavy sleep that all night-watchers know when nothing in the world seems worth a longer vigil.

But the man before him had been dismissed for sleeping on duty, and our night-porter had had six months out of work, so, with resolute determination, he dragged up his leaden limbs and began to pace the corridors towards the Mental Ward, where he knew the screams of the insane were generally to be relied upon to keep sleep away from any one in the neighbourhood. To-night all was quiet, and it was with a brief prayer of thanksgiving that he heard the insistent note of the electric bell, and rushed to answer it, the lethargy leaving him under the necessity of action.

A policeman entered in a blast of wind and rain, drops off his cape, making black runlets on the white stone floor. From under his arm he drew a red bundle and laid it carefully down on a mat in front of the fire. "Evening, porter, I've brought you a present from the cabbage-bed. What do you think of that for a saucy girl? Hush, my dear! don't cry," as the babe, unsettled from his warm arms, gave forth a shrill cry of displeasure. "Pretty little thing, ain't she? and left out under a laurel-bush this bitter night. Some women are worse than brutes."

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, 'God cuss the scoundrel who leaves a poor lass 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 classical 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 circumstances 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 passive 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 classification, 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 fortitude 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 destitute, 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-class 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 passed 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 destitute!'

"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 God, 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 circumstances, 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 document 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.

"You're right, mate," said the young man. "This job has put me off my tea. I'll just turn into the 'King of Bohemia,' and drink till I forget them children's sobs."

_Note._--I understand that under a separation order the police have authority to search for the husband without forcing the family into the House. I called at the police-station to inquire why this was not done, and was informed that the woman's destitution was so great that they feared the children might die of starvation before the man was brought to book.

THE SUICIDE

In she plunged boldly,
No matter how coldly
The rough river ran;
Over the brink of it--
Picture it--think of it,
Dissolute man.

She lay in bed, in the long, clean Sick Ward--a fine-grown and well-favoured young woman with masses of black hair tossed over the whiteness of the ratepayers' sheets. Such a sight is rare in a workhouse infirmary, where one needs the infinite compassion of Christian charity or the hardness of habit to bear the pitiful sights of disease and imbecility.

"She looks as if she ought not to be here?" I observed interrogatively to the nurse.

"Attempted suicide. Brought last night by the police, wrapped in a blanket and plastered in mud from head to foot. Magnificent hair?--yes, and a magnificent job I had washing of it, and my corridor and bathroom like a ploughed field. Usual thing--might have killed her?--oh, no; these bad girls take a deal of killing."

I sat down beside the bed, and heard the usual story--too common to excite either interest or compassion in an official mind.

She had been a nursemaid, but had left service for the bar; and there one of the gentlemen customers had been very kind to her and had walked out with her on Sundays and taken her to restaurants and the theatre. Then followed the usual promise of marriage and the long delay, till her work had become impossible, "and the governor had spoken his mind and given her the sack."

"I wrote to the gentleman, but the letter came back through the Returned Letter Office. He must have given me a false name, because when I called at the house no one had heard of him. I had no money, and had to pawn my clothes and the jewellery he had given me to pay for food and the rent of my room. I dared not go home; they are very strict Chapel people, and they told me I never was to come near them after I became a barmaid. Then one day the gentleman wrote, giving no address, and saying that his wife had found out about me, and our friendship must come to an end. He enclosed two pounds, which was all he could afford, and asked me to forgive him the wrong he had done me. I seemed to go clean mad after that letter. I did not know he was married, and I had kept hoping it would be all right, and that he would make an honest woman of me. I thought I should have died in the night. I was taken with dreadful pains, so that I could not move from my bed, and though I shouted for help no one heard till the next morning, when my landlady came to me, and she went for the doctor. The two pounds lasted me about a month, and then I had nothing left again--nothing to eat and nothing to pawn, and the rent always mounting up against me. My landlady was very kind to me, but her husband had gone off with another woman and left her with three children. She was often in want herself, and I couldn't take anything from her. There seemed nothing but the pond; and after the gentleman had played it down so low the whole world looked black and inky before my eyes. I just seemed to long for death and peace before every one knew my disgrace. I came up twice to chuck myself into the pond, and twice I hadn't the pluck. Then last night I had been so sick and dizzy all day with hunger I did not feel a bit of a coward any longer, so I waited about till it was dark and then I climbed up on the railings and threw myself backwards. The water was bitterly cold, and like a fool I hollered; then I sank again, and the water came strangling and choking down my throat, and I remember nothing more till I felt something raising my head and a dark-lantern shining in my face. The nurse came about half an hour ago to tell me that I must go before the magistrates to-morrow; it seems rather hard, when one cannot live, that the police will not even let you die. No, I did not know that girls like me might come to the workhouse. I thought it was only for the very old and the very poor; perhaps if I had known that I need not have made a hole in the water. But must I go with the police to the court all alone amongst a lot of men? Oh, ma'am, I can't; I should be so shamed. And think of the questions they will ask me! And I was a good girl till such a short time ago. Won't one of the nurses come with me, or will you?"

It is one thing to promise to chaperone a beautiful, forlorn young woman lying in bed, a type of injured youth and innocence, and another to meet her in the cold light of 9 a.m. arrayed in the cheap finery of her class. Her flimsy skirt was shrunk and warped after its adventure in the pond, and with the best will in the world the nurses had been unable to brush away the still damp mud which stuck to the gauged flounces and the interstices of the "peek-a-boo" blouse. A damp and shapeless mass of pink roses and chiffon adorned the beautiful hair, which had been tortured and puffed into vulgarity, and to complete the scarecrow appearance, her own boots being quite unwearable, she had been provided with a pair of felt slippers very much _en evidence_ owing to the shrinkage of draperies.

I am afraid I longed for a telegram or sudden indisposition--anything for an excuse decently to break faith. There are not even cabs near our workhouse, and so, under the escort of a mighty policeman, the forlorn little procession set forth to brave the humorous glances of the heartless street-boys until the walls of the police-court hid us, along with other human wreckage, from mocking eyes.

Presently a boy of seventeen or eighteen, small and slight, in the dress of a clerk, came up to my companion and hoped in a very hoarse voice that she had not taken cold.

"This is the gentleman," said the girl, "who saved my life the other night in the pond."

"I don't know how I managed it," said the boy, "but I was passing along the Heath when I heard you screaming so dreadfully that I rushed down to the pond and into the water before I really knew what I was doing, for I can't swim a stroke. I just managed to catch your dress before you sank, but the mud was so slippery I could hardly keep my footing, and your weight was dragging me down into deep water. Fortunately I managed to catch hold of the sunk fence, and that steadied me so that I could lift your head out, and you came round. Yes, I have had a very bad cold. I had to walk a long way in my wet clothes, and the night air was sharp. But never mind that--what I did want to say to you is that you must buck up, you know, and not do this sort of thing. We are here now, and we've got to make the best of it." And, all unconscious of the tragedy of womanhood, the boy read her a simple, straightforward lesson on the duty of fortitude and trust in God.

Whilst he talked my eye wandered round the court and the motley collection of plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses. The preponderance of the male sex bore witness to the law-abiding qualities of women, for, with the exception of the girl and myself, the only other woman was a thin, grey-haired person very primly dressed.

"Yes, that is mother," said the girl, "but she won't speak to me. She has taken no notice of me for more than a year. I've been such a bad example to the younger girls, and they're all strict Chapel folks."

"Lily Weston!" cried a stentorian voice, and our "case" was bundled into the inner court, mother and daughter walking next to each other in silent hostility. The poor girl was placed in the prisoner's dock between iron bars as if she were some dangerous wild beast, whilst "the gentleman" who was the real offender ranged free and unmolested. Constable X 172 told the story of attempted suicide, and then the boy followed. Then the mother spoke shortly and bitterly as to the girl's troubles being of her own making.

"Anything to say?" asked the magistrate; but the girl hung her head low in shame and confusion, whilst the magistrate congratulated the boy on his pluck and presence of mind.

The clerk came round and whispered in the ear of his chief, who looked at the prisoner with grave kindliness under his bushy white eyebrows; he had more sympathy than the laws he administered.

"Call Miss Sperling," he said to the policeman, and then to the prisoner: "If I discharge you now, will you go away with this lady, who will find a home for you?"

"Oh, yes, sir," cried the prisoner with a burst of hysterical weeping as the bolts rattled from the dock and the kindly hand of the lady missionary clasped hers.

A distinguished Nonconformist once told me that our Anglican Prayer Book was a mass of ungranted petitions, which, after careful thought, I had to admit was true; but at least on the whole I think our prayers for this particular magistrate have been answered.

PUBLICANS AND HARLOTS

Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and harlots go into the
kingdom of God before you.

It was 7.30 p.m., and in the Young Women's Ward of the workhouse the inmates were going to bed by the crimson light of the July sunset. Most of the women had babies, and now and then a fretful cry would interrupt a story that was being listened to with much interest and laughter and loud exclamations: "Oh, Daisy, you are a caution!"

Had a literary critic been present, he would have classed the tale as belonging to the French realistic school of Zola and Maupassant. The _raconteuse_, Daisy Crabtree, who might have sat as a model for Rossetti's Madonna of the Annunciation, was a slight, golden-haired girl, known to philanthropists as a "daughter of the State," and an object-lesson against such stepmothering. Picked up as an infant under a crab-tree by the police, and christened later in commemoration of the discovery, she had been brought up in a "barrack-school," and a "place" found for her at fifteen, from which she had "run" the following day; the streets had called to their daughter, and she had obeyed. Since then she had been "rescued" twenty-seven times--by Catholics, Anglicans, Wesleyans, Methodists, Baptists, and Salvationists--but not even the great influence of "Our Lady of the Snows" or "The Home of the Guardian Angels" could save this child of vice, and most Homes in London being closed against her, she perpetually sought shelter in the various workhouses of the Metropolis, always being "passed" back to the parish of the patronymic crab-tree where she was "chargeable." Here she resided at the expense of the rates, till some lady visitor, struck by her beauty and seeming innocence, provided her with an outfit and a situation.

"Shut up, Daisy!" said one girl, quiet and demure as her namesake Priscilla. "You're only fit for a pigsty."

"'The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork,'" sang Musical Meg, a half-witted girl, who had given two idiots to the guardianship of the ratepayers. She was possessed of a soprano voice, very clear and true, and, having been brought up in a High Church Home, she punctiliously chanted the offices of _Prime_ and _Compline_, slightly muddling them as her memory was bad.

"Hold your noise, Meg; we want to hear the tale."

"'Brethren, be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour, whom resist, steadfast in the faith,'" chanted Musical Meg again.

The door opened and the white-capped attendant entered, leading by the hand two little girls of about twelve and fourteen, who were sobbing pitifully.

"Less noise here, if you please. Meg, you know you have been forbidden to sing at bedtime. Now, my dears, don't cry any more; get undressed and into bed at once; you'll see your mother in the morning."

"Why are you here, duckies? Father run away and left you all starving?" asked an older woman who had been walking about the room administering medicine, opening windows, and generally doing the work of wardswoman.

"Yes," sobbed the children; "they've put mother in another room, and we are so frightened."

"There, stop crying, my dears," said Priscilla; "come and look at my baby."

"What a lot of babies!" said the elder girl. "Have all your husbands run away and left you?"

"Oh, Lor'! child, don't ask questions; get into bed, quick." The children donned their pink flannelette nightgowns and then knelt down beside their beds, making the sign of the Cross. There was deep silence, some of the girls began to cry, "Irish Biddy" threw herself on her knees and recited the Rosary with sobs and gasps.

"Oh, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow,
Whiter than snow, whiter than snow,"

sang a blear-eyed girl in a raucous, tuneless chant.

Musical Meg put her fingers to her ears. "You've got the wrong tune, Rosie; listen, I'll hum it to you," but finding her attempts after musical correctness were unheeded, she started herself the _Qui habitat_ of the _Compline_ office.

"Good Lord, girls!" came the shrill voice of Daisy Crabtree; "what's up now? It gives me the hump to hear you sniffing and sobbing over your psalm tunes; let's have something cheerful with a chorus: ''Allo! 'allo! 'allo! it's a different girl again----'"

"Oh! do be quiet, Daisy; wait until the poor little things has said their prayers," came the gentle voice of Priscilla.

"'Different eyes and a different nose----'"

"Stow that, Daisy, or I'll drive those teeth you're so proud of down your throat," said the tall wardswoman.

Temperance Hunt (known to her associates as "Tipsy Tempie," all unconscious of the classical dignity of the oxymoron) was a clear starcher and ironer, so skilled in the trade that it was said she could command her own terms in West End laundries, but like many "shirt and collar hands," she was given to bouts of terrible drunkenness, during which she would pawn her furniture and her last rag for gin. Then she would retire to the workhouse for a time, get some clothes out of the charitable, sign another pledge, and come forth again, to the comfort and peace of many households--for the wearers of Tempie's shirts dressed for dinner without a murmur, and "never said a single 'damn.'"

Tipsy Tempie was a very powerful woman, and the song died on Daisy's lips as she came towards her, a threatening light in her eyes. "All right, keep your 'air on; if I mayn't sing I'll tell you another tale. When I was in the Haymarket last Boat-race night----"

"Now, duckies, you go and get washed; your poor faces are all swelled with crying--can't go to bed like that, you know; we lidies in this ward are most particular."

"Please, teacher," said the elder child, "governess downstairs said as we were to go straight to bed; we had a bath yesterday directly we came in."

"Do what I tell you. A little drop of water'll stop the smarting of all your tears, and you'll get to sleep quicker."

"Now, then, Daisy," she exclaimed, as the two children obediently departed, "if you tell any more of your beastly stories before them two innocent dears, I'll throttle you."

"Then you will be hung," said Daisy airily.

"Do you think I'd care? Good riddance of bad rubbish, as can't help making a beast of itself. But one thing I insists on--don't let us corrupt these 'ere little girls; we're a bad lot in here; most of you are--well, I won't say what, for it ain't polite, and I don't 'old with the pot calling the kettle black, and I know as I'm a drunkard. My father took me to church hisself and had me christened 'Temperance,' hoping as that might counterrack the family failing; but drink is in the blood too deep down for the font-water to get at. Poor father! he struggled hard hisself; but he kicked my blessed mother wellnigh to death, and then 'anged hisself in the morning when he found what he done; so I ain't got no manner of chance, and though I take the pledge when the lidies ask me, I know it ain't no good. Well, as I said before, we're a rotten lot, but not so bad that we can't respect little kiddies, and any one can see that these little girls aren't our sort. I ask you all--all you who are mothers, even though your children ain't any fathers in particular--to back me in this." ("'Ear, 'ear!" said Priscilla.) "I ain't had the advantage some of you have; I ain't been in twenty-seven religious homes like Daisy, and I don't know psalms and hymns like Meg; but I've got as strong a pair of fists as ever grasped irons, and those shall feel 'em who says a word as wouldn't be fit for the lady Guardian's ears."

The frightened Daisy had crept meekly into bed; the two little children came back, and Tempie tucked them up with motherly hands, kissing the little swollen faces; Musical Meg started a hymn.

The assistant matron came up from supper, and her brows knitted angrily as she heard the singing. But at the door of the ward she paused, handle in hand, for, from the lips of the fallen and the outcast, of the wanton and the drunkard, led by the strangely beautiful voice of the half-witted girl, rose the hymn of high Heaven--

Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise Thy Name, in earth, and sky, and sea;
Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and Mighty;
God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity.

OLD INKY

There be two things that grieve my heart; and the third maketh
me angry:
A man of war that suffereth poverty.

A cab stood at the door of the workhouse, and a crowd of children and idlers collected at once. A cab there often contained a lunatic or a "d.t." case, or some person maimed or unconscious--generally something sensational. The cabman slashed his whip several times across the window to apprise the fares of his arrival, but there was no movement from within, and an enterprising boy, peering in through the closed windows, announced gleefully: "Why, it's old Inky and his wife, drunk as lords!"

A volunteer rang the bell, and an aged inmate at once opened the door, and finding that matters were beyond him, fetched a liveried officer, who gazed contemptuously at the cabman and asked satirically what he had got there.

"I have just driven back the Dook and Duchess of Hinkerman to the quiet of their suburban residence after the h'arduous festivities of the season. Her Grace was a little overcome by the 'eat at the crowded reception of the King of Bohemia, and was compelled to withdraw. I sent the footman round to the town 'ouse to say as their Graces would not dine at 'ome this evening, so I must ask you kindly to assist her Grace to alight."

The crowd roared loudly at this sally, and the porter, opening the cab door, drew out an aged and infirm man, whom he dragged off roughly through the whitewashed lobby. Then he returned for the wife, a shrunken little body in a state of stupefaction, whom he flung over his shoulder like a baby, and then the hall door shut with a bang.

The cabman looked rather crestfallen, and requested that the bell might be rung again, and again the aged inmate blinked forth helplessly.

"I am waiting," said the cabman, "for a little gratuity from his Grace; his own brougham not being in sight, I volunteered my services."

The liveried officer again appeared, and a heated altercation ensued, in the midst of which the Master of the workhouse arrived and endeavoured to cut short the dispute, observing that his workhouse not being Poplar, he had no power to pay cab fares for drunken paupers out of the rates. The cabman gulped, and, dropping his Society manner, appealed to the Master as man to man, asking what there was about his appearance that caused him to be taken for "such a ---- fool as to have driven a ---- pair of ---- paupers to a ---- workhouse unless he had seen the colour of a florin a kind-'earted lady had put into the old man's hand afore the perlice ran them both in."

He appealed to the public to decide "whether he looked a greater fool than he was, or whether they took him for a greater fool than he looked." In either case, he "scorned the himputation," and if the Master thought cabmen were so easy to be had he (the Master) had better withdraw to a wing of his own work'us, where, he understood, a ward was set apart for the "h'observation of h'alleged lunatics."

The crowd roared approval, and orders were sent that the old couple should be searched, and after a breathless ten minutes, spent by the cabman with his pink newspaper, a florin was brought out by the aged inmate, reported to have been found in the heel of the old lady's stocking. The crowd roared and cheered, and the cabman drove off triumphant, master of the situation.

I found old "Inky" a few days later sitting in a corner, surly and sullen and pipeless, having been cut off tobacco and leave of absence for four weeks. I suppose discipline must be maintained, but there is something profoundly pathetic in the sight of hoary-headed men and women, who have borne life's heavy load for seventy and eighty years, cut off their little comforts and punished like school-children.

He stood up and saluted at my approach; his manners to what he called "his betters" were always irreproachable. I brought him a message from a teetotal friend urging him to take the pledge, but he sniffed contemptuously; like many a hard drinker, he never would admit the offence.

"I warn't drunk, not I; never been drunk in my life. 'Cos why? I've got a strong 'ed; can take my liquor like a man. Small wonder, though, ma'am, if we old soldiers do get drunk now and then. Our friends are good to us and stand us a drop; and we need it now and then when we get low-spirited, and this work'us and them clothes"--and he glanced contemptuously at his fustians--"do take the pluck out of a man. We ain't got nothing to live for and nothing to be proud on; and it takes our self-respeck--that's what it does--the self-respeck oozes out of our finger-tips. Old Blowy, at St. Pancras Work'us, 'e says just the same. Don't you know Old Blowy, ma'am--'im as had the good luck to ride at Balaclava? I'm told some gentleman's got 'im out of there and boards 'im out independent for the rest of his life. Can't you get me out, ma'am? I ain't done nothin' wrong, and 'ere I am in prison. If it weren't for the missis I'd starve outside. I can play a little mouth-organ and pick up a few pence, and my pals at the 'King of Bohemia' are very good to me. I can rough it, but my missis can't--females are different--and so we was druv in 'ere. The Guardians wouldn't give me the little bit of out-relief I asked for--four shillings would have done us nicely. They listened to some foolish women's cackle--teetotal cant, I call it--and refused me anything. 'Offered the 'Ouse,' as they say; and, though me and the missis half-clemmed afore we accepted the kind invitation, a man can't see 'is wife starve; and so 'ere we are--paupers. Yes, I fought for the Queen"--and he saluted--"Gawd bless 'er! all through the Crimean War; got shot in the arm at Inkermann and half-frozen before Sebastopol, and I didn't think as I should come to the work'us in my old age; but one never knows. The world ain't been right to us old soldiers since the Queen went. I can't get used to a King nohow, and it's no good pretending; and Old Blowy at St. Pancras says just the same. I suppose we're too old. I can't think why the Almighty leaves us all a-mouldering in the work'uses when she's gone. However, I'm a-going out; I shall take my discharge, if it's only to spite 'im and show my independent spirit," and he shook an impotent fist at the Master, who passed through the hall. "It's warm weather now, and we can sleep about on the 'eath a bit. We shan't want much to eat--we're too old."

* * * * *

A week or so later I heard of the death of old "Inky." He had been found in a half-dying condition on one of the benches on the heath, and had been brought by the police into the infirmary, where he passed away without recovering consciousness. As we "rattled his bones over the stones" to his pauper grave I said a sincere _Laus Deo_ that another man of war had been delivered from poverty and the hated workhouse.

A DAUGHTER OF THE STATE

Quis est homo, qui non fleret?