WORKHOUSE
CHARACTERS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

IN THE WORKHOUSE

A PLAY IN ONE ACT

The International Suffrage Shop, John St., Strand, W.C.2 (6d.)

Press Notices

"Dull talk none the less offensive because it may have been life-like."—Daily Mail.

"The piece though mere talk is strong talk."—Morning Advertiser.

"The play is clean and cold and humorous. The main value of the piece is that it is a superb genre picture. One or two of the flashes from this strange, generally unknown world are positive sparks of life."—Sheffield Daily Telegraph.

"I found it interesting and convincing; but then I am prepared to believe that our laws always will be rotten till lawyers are disqualified from sitting in Parliament."—Reynolds'.

"The masculine portion of the audience walked with heads abashed in the entr'acte; such things had been said upon the stage that they were suffused with blushes."—Standard.

"Delicate matters were discussed with much knowledge and some tact."—Morning Post.

"'In the Workhouse' reminds us forcibly of certain works of M. Brieux, which plead for reform by painting a terrible, and perhaps overcharged, picture of things as they are.... The presence of the idiot girl helps to point another moral in Mrs. Nevinson's arraignment, and is therefore artistically justifiable; and the more terrible it appears the better have the author and the actress done their work.... Such is the power of the dramatic pamphlet, sincerely written and sincerely acted. There is nothing to approach it in directness and force. It sweeps all mere prettiness into oblivion."—Pall Mall Gazette.

"It is one of the strongest indictments of our antiquated laws relating to married women. A man seated behind the present writer called the play immoral! and as Mrs. Nevinson says in her preface to the published edition, the only apology she makes for its realism is that it is true."—Christian Commonwealth.

"The whole thing left an unpleasant taste."—Academy.

Note.—Two years after this piece was given by the Pioneer Players the law was altered.

WORKHOUSE
CHARACTERS
AND OTHER SKETCHES OF
THE LIFE OF THE POOR
BY MARGARET WYNNE NEVINSON

L.L.A.

The depth and dream of my desire,

The bitter paths wherein I stray.

Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,

Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay.

One stone the more swings to her place

In that dread Temple of Thy Worth—

It is enough that through Thy grace

I saw naught common on Thy earth.

Rudyard Kipling.

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1

Almost the whole of these sketches have appeared in the Westminster Gazette; the last two were published in the Daily News, and "Widows Indeed" and "The Runaway" in the Herald. It is by the courtesy of the Editors of the above papers that they are reproduced in book form.

First published in 1918

(All rights reserved.)

TO MY SON
C. R. W. NEVINSON

PREFACE

These sketches have been published in various papers during the last thirteen years. Many of the characters are life portraits, and the wit and wisdom of the common people have been faithfully recorded in a true Boswellian spirit; others are Wahrheit und Dichtung (if one may still quote Goethe), but all have been suggested by actual fact and experience.

During the last ten years great reforms have been taking place in the country. In 1908 the Old Age Pensions Act came into force, and the weekly miracle of 5s. a week (now 7s. 6d.) changed the world for the aged, giving them the liberty and independence, which ought to be the right of every decent citizen in the evening of life.

The order by which a pauper husband had the right to detain his wife in the workhouse by "his marital authority" is now repealed. A case some years ago of this abominable breach of the law of Habeas Corpus startled the country, especially the ratepayers, and even the House of Commons were amazed at their own laws. The order was withdrawn in 1913 on the precedent of the judgment given in the case of the Queen v. Jackson (1891), when it was decided "that the husband has no right, where his wife refuses to live with him, to take her person by force and restrain her of her liberty" (60 L. J. Q. B. 346).

Many humane reforms and regulations for the classification of inmates were made in 1913, and the obnoxious words "pauper" and "workhouse" have been abolished; but before the authorities rightly grasped the changes the war was upon us, the workhouses were commandeered as military hospitals, the inmates sent into other institutions, and all reforms lapsed in overcrowded and understaffed buildings.

Once again the Poor Law is in the melting-pot, and it seems as if now it will pass into the limbo of the past with other old, unhappy far-off things.

CONTENTS

WORKHOUSE CHARACTERS

EUNICE SMITH—DRUNK

The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes,

But Here and There as strikes the Player goes;

And He that toss'd you down into the Field,

He knows about it all—He knows—He knows.

"Eunice Smith, drunk, brought by the police."

The quaint Scriptural name, not heard for years, woke me up from the dull apathy to which even the most energetic Guardian is reduced at the end of a long Board meeting, and I listened intently as the Master of the workhouse went on to explain that the name Smith had been given by the woman, but her clothes and a small book, which the doctor said was Homer, in Greek, were marked Eunice Romaine.

Eunice Romaine—the name took me back down long vistas of years to a convent school at Oxford, to the clanging bells of Tom Tower, to the vibrant note of boys' voices in college chapels, to the scent of flowers and incense at early celebrations, to the high devotions and ideals of youth, to its passionate griefs and joys. Eunice Romaine had been the genius of our school—one of those gifted students in whom knowledge seems innate; her name headed every examination list, and every prize in the form fell to her; other poor plodders had no chance where she was. From school she had gone with many a scholarship and exhibition to Cambridge, where she had taken a high place in the Classical Tripos; later I heard she had gone as Classical Mistress to one of the London High Schools, then our paths had separated, and I heard no more.

I went down to the Observation Ward after the meeting, where between a maniacal case lying in a strait-waistcoat, alternately singing hymns and blaspheming, and a tearful melancholic who begged me to dig up her husband's body in the north-east corner of the garden, I saw my old friend and classmate.

She was lying very quiet with closed eyes; her hair had gone grey before her time, and her face was pinched and scored with the deep perpendicular lines of grief and disappointment; but I recognized the school-girl Eunice by the broad, intellectual brow and by the delicate, high-bred hands.

"She is rather better," said the nurse in answer to my question, "but she has had a very bad night, screaming the whole time at the rats and mice she thought she saw, and the doctor fears collapse, as her heart is weak; but if she can get some sleep she may recover."

Sleep in the crowded Mental Ward, with maniacs shrieking and shouting around! But exhausted Nature can do a great deal, and when I called some days later I found my old friend discharged to the General Sick Ward, a placard above her head setting forth her complaint as "chronic alcoholism, cirrhosis of the liver, and cardiac disease."

She recognized me at once, but with the apathy of weakness she expressed neither surprise nor interest at our meeting, and only after some weeks had passed I found her one evening brighter and better, and anxious to go out. Over an impromptu banquet of grapes and cakes we fell into one of those intimate conversations that come so spontaneously but are so impossible to force, and I heard the short history of a soul's tragedy.

"Just after I left Cambridge mother died. She told me on her death-bed that I had the taint of drink in the blood, and urged me never to touch alcohol. My father—a brilliant scholar and successful journalist—had killed himself with drink whilst we were all quite young; mother had kept us all away at school, so that we should not know, and had borne her burden alone. I promised light-heartedly; I was young and strong, and had not known temptation. After mother died I was very lonely: both my brothers had gone to Canada. My father's classical and literary abilities had come only to me: their talents were purely mechanical and they had never been able to acquire book knowledge. I was not very happy teaching. Classics had come to me so easily—hereditary question again—that I never could understand the difficulties of the average girl, and I had very little patience with dullness and stupidity. However, very soon I became engaged to be married, and lived for some time in a fool's paradise of love and joy. My fiancé was a literary man—I will not tell you his name, as he is one of those who have arrived—but it is difficult to start, and we waited about two years before he got an appointment sufficiently secure to make marriage possible. I was very busy; we had taken a flat, and I was engaged in choosing furniture and preparing my humble trousseau. I had given notice at the school, and the wedding-day was within a fortnight, when one morning I got a letter from my fiancé, couched in wild, allegorical language, bemoaning his unworthiness, but asking me to release him from his engagement, as he found his love for me had been a mirage now that he had come across his twin-soul. I read the letter over and over again, hardly grasping the meaning, when there fell from the envelope a little newspaper cutting that I had overlooked—it was the announcement of his marriage three days before to his twin-soul.

"Still I was unable to realize what had happened. I kept saying over and over to myself, 'Charlie is married,' but in my heart I did not believe it. That afternoon the head-mistress came to see me; she was very kind, and took me herself to a brain specialist, who said I had had a nervous shock, that I ought to have a rest, and mountain air would be best for me. The council of my school agreed to take me back again, and allow me a term's holiday on full pay. One of my colleagues (it was holiday-time) came with me to Switzerland, and there, amid the ice and snow of the high latitudes, the full understanding of what had come to me dawned upon my mind, and I realized the pangs of despised love, of jealousy, and hate. A Nachschein of Christianity suddenly made me rush back to England in terror of what might happen; it is easy to commit suicide in Switzerland, and a certain black precipice near the hotel drew me ever towards it with baleful fascination. Some one dragged me again to Harley Street, and this time the great specialist advised sea air and cheerful society. The latter prescription is not available for lonely and jilted high-school mistresses in London, but I tried sea air, and it did me good. I don't think for a moment that the doctor realized that I was practically off my head; the terribly obsession of love and jealousy had me in its grip. It had taken me some time to fall in love, and I could not fall out again to order, whilst the knowledge that the man who had broken his promise to me now belonged to another woman was driving me to madness. One day I went down to bathe, and suddenly determined to end my woe. I swam out far to sea—so far that I judged it beyond my force ever to get back; but though my will commanded my limbs to cease their work they refused to obey. I was always a very strong swimmer, and I landed again more humiliated than ever: I had not even the pluck to end my sorrows.

"After that I went back to work; mountains and sea had no message for me. I was better sitting at my desk in the class-room, trying to drill Latin and Greek into the unresponsive brains of girls.

"I got through the days, but the nights were terrible; all the great army of forsaken lovers know that the nights are the worst. I used to lie awake hour after hour, sobbing and crying for mercy and strength to endure, and I used to batter my head against the floor, not knowing any one could hear. One night a fellow-lodger, who slept in the next room, came in and begged me to be quiet; she had her work to do, and night after night I kept her awake with my sobbing. 'I suppose it is all about some wretched man,' she observed coolly; 'but, believe me, they are not worth the love we give them. I left my husband some years ago, finding that he had been carrying on with a woman who called herself my friend. At first I cried and sobbed just as you do now; but I felt such a fool making such a fuss about a man who had played it down so low, that I made up my mind I would forget him; and in time you will get over this, and give thanks that you have been delivered from a liar and a traitor.'

"She gave me a glass of strong brandy and water; it was the first I had ever tasted, and I remember how it ran warm through my veins, and how I slept as I had not slept for months.

"My fellow-lodger and I became great friends; she was quite an uneducated woman, the matron of a laundry, but she braced me up like a tonic with her keen humour and experience of life.

"How strange it seems for a middle-aged drunkard in a pauper infirmary to be telling this ancient love-tale, and posing as one of 'the aristocracy of passionate souls,' But tout passe tout casse, and after years of anguish and strife I woke up one bright spring morning and felt that I was cured and for ever free of the wild passion of love. That day always stands out as the happiest of my life. I shall never forget it. It was Saturday, and a holiday; and I got on my bicycle and rode off for miles far into the country singing the Benedicite for pure joy. I lunched at a little inn on the Thames, and ordered some champagne to celebrate the recovery of my liberty.

"But by strange irony of fate the very day I escaped from the toils of love I fell under another tyranny—that of alcohol. Now, Peg"—I started at the unfamiliar old nickname of my school days—"I believe you are crying. Having shed more than my own share of tears, nothing irritates me so much as to see other women cry, and if you don't stop I'll not say another word."

I drew my handkerchief across my eyes and admitted to a cold in the head.

"Shortly afterward I received notice to leave the High School. I did not mind—I always hated teaching, and I found that I had the power of writing; an article that I could flash off in a few hours would keep me for a week, and I could create my own paradise for half a crown—now, Peg, you are crying again. But of late life was not so bad. I enjoyed writing, and shall always be thankful I can read Greek; besides, I was not always drunk; the craving only takes me occasionally, and at its worst alcohol is a kinder master than love. I shall be well enough to go out in a few days; bring me some pens and paper, and my editor will advance me some money. I am going to write an article on workhouse infirmaries that will startle the public. What do you know of workhouses? You are only a Guardian; 'tis we musicians (or rather inmates) who know."

The article never got written. The next day I found Eunice very ill; she was unconscious and delirious till her death, reeling off sonorous hexameters from Homer and Virgil and stately passages from the Greek tragedians.

We spared her a pauper funeral, and a few old school and college friends gathered round the grave. A white-haired professor of world fame was there also, and he shook hands with us as we parted at the cemetery gates. "Poor Eunice!" he said, his aged face working painfully. "One of the best Greek scholars of the day, and the daughter of my oldest friend. Both of them geniuses, and both of them with the same taint in the blood; but I feel I ought not to have let her come to this."

I think we all felt the same as we walked sadly home.

DETAINED BY MARITAL AUTHORITY

(By the law of England the mothers of illegitimate children are often in a better position than their married sisters.)

An unusual sense of expectancy pervaded the young women's ward; Mrs. Cleaver had gone down "to appear before the Committee," and though the ways of committees are slow, and pauper-time worthless, it was felt that her ordeal was being unduly protracted.

"She's having a dose, she is," said a young woman walking up and down, futilely patting the back of a shrieking infant. "I 'ate appearing afore them committees; last time I was down I called the lady 'Sir' and the gentleman 'Mum,' and my 'eart went pitter-patter in my breast so that you might have knocked me down with a feather. 'Ere she is—well, my dear, and you do look bad——"

"Them committees allus turn me dead sick, and, being a stout woman, my boots feel too tight for me, and I goes into a perspiration, and the great drops go rolling off my forehead. Well, 'e's kept 'is word, and got the law and right of England behind 'im."

What reporters call a "sensation" made itself felt through the ward; the inmates gathered closer round Mrs. Cleaver, and screaming infants were rocked and patted and soothed with much vigour and little result.

"Well," said Mrs. Cleaver, sinking on to the end of a bed, "I went afore the Committee and I says, 'I want to take my discharge,' I says; I applied last week to the Master, but mine got at 'im first, and Master up and says—

"'No, Mrs. Cleaver, you can't go,' he says; 'your 'usband can't spare you,' he says, 'wants you to keep 'im company in 'ere,' he says.

"'Is that true, Master?' says the little man wot sits lost in the big chair.

"'That is so, sir,' says Master, and then 'e outs with a big book and reads something very learned and brain-confusing that I did not rightly understand, as to how a 'usband may detain his wife in the workhouse by his marital authority.

"'Good 'eavens!' says the little lady Guardian 'er wot's dressed so shabby. 'Is that the law of England?'

"Then they all began talking at once most excited, and the little man in the big chair beat like a madman on the table with a 'ammer, and no one took the slightest notice, but when some quiet was restored the little man asked me to tell the Board the circumstances. So I says 'ow he lost his work through being drunk on duty, which was the lying tongue of the perlice, for 'is 'ed was clear, the drink allus taking him in the legs, like most cabmen, and the old 'oss keeps sober. It was a thick fog, and he'd just got off the box to lead the 'oss through the gates of the mews, and the perliceman spotted 'is legs walking out in contrary directions, though 'is 'ed was clear as daylight, and so the perlice ran 'im in and the beak took his licence from 'im, and 'ere we are.

"Now I've got over my confinement, and the child safe in 'eaven, after all the worrit and starvation, I thought I'd like to go out and earn my own living—I'm a dressmaker by trade, and my sister will give me a 'ome; I 'ate being 'ere—living on the rates, and 'e not having done better for us than this Bastille—though I allus says as it was the lying tongue of a perliceman—it seems fair I should go free. The lady wot comes round Sundays told me I ain't got no responsibility for my children being a married lady with the lines. Then the little man flew out most violent: 'Don't talk like that, my good woman; of course you have responsibility to your children; you must not believe what ignorant people tell you.'

"Then I heard the tall, ginger-haired chap wot sits next to the little man—'im as you unmarried girls go before to try and father your children—I 'eard 'im say quite distinct: 'The woman is right, sir; married women are not responsible for their children, but I believe the husband is within his rights in refusing to allow her to leave the workhouse without him.'

"Then they asked me to retire, and the Master told me to come back 'ere, and I should know the result later. Oh, Lord! I'm that 'ot and upset with the worry of it all, I feel I'll never cool again," and Mrs. Cleaver wiped her brow and fanned herself with her apron.

"Single life has its advantages," said a tall, handsome woman, who was nursing a baby by the window. "You with the lines ain't been as perlite as might be to us who ain't got 'em, but we 'as the laugh over you really. I'm taking my discharge to-morrow morning, and not one of 'em dare say me nay; I needn't appear afore Boards and be worried and upset with 'usbands and Guardians and things afore I can take myself off the parish and eat my bread independent."

"But why weren't you married, Pennyloaf? Not for want of asking, I'll be bound."

"No, it warn't for want of asking; fact is, I was put off marriage at a very early age. I 'ad a drunken beast of a father as spent his time a-drinking by day and a-beating mother by night—one night he overdid it and killed 'er; he got imprisonment for life, and we was put away in the workhouse schools; it would have been kinder of the parish to put us in the lethal chamber, as they do to cats and dogs as ain't wanted. But we grew up somehow, knowing as we weren't wanted, and then the parish found me a situation, under-housemaid in a big house; and then I found as the young master wanted me, the first time as any human soul had taken any interest in me, and, oh, Lord! I laughs now when I think what a 'appy time it was. Since then I've had four children, and I have twenty-five shillings a week coming in regular besides what I can make at the cooking. I lives clean and respectable—no drinking, no bad language; my children never see nor hear what I saw and heard, and they are mine—mine—mine. I always comes into the House for confinement, liking quiet and skilled medical attendance. I never gets refused—the law daren't refuse such as me. I always leaves the coming in till the last moment; then there are no awkward questions, and when they begin to inquire as to settlement, I'm off. All the women in our street are expecting next week, their husbands all out of work, and not a pair of sheets or the price of a pint of milk between them, all lying in one room, too, with children and husbands about, as I don't consider decent, but having the lines, it's precious hard for them to get in here, and half of them daren't come for fear he and some one else will sell up the 'ome whilst they're away. You remember Mrs. Hall, who died here last week? Well, she told me that her husband swore at her so fearful for having twins that the doctor sent her in here out of his way, and what with all the upset and the starvation whilst she was carrying the children, she took fever and snuffed out like a candle. No, the neighbours don't know as I'm a bad woman; I generally moves before a confinement, and I 'as a 'usband on the 'igh seas.

"Well, I'm going back to-morrow to my neat little home, that my lady-help has been minding for me, to my dear children and to my regular income, and I don't say as I envies you married ladies your rings or your slavery."

A WELSH SAILOR

I will go back to the great sweet mother,

Mother and lover of men, the sea.

The Master of the Casual Ward rattled his keys pompously in the lock of the high workhouse gates, and the shivering tramps entered the yard, a battered and footsore procession of this world's failures, the outcast and down-trodden in the fierce struggle for existence. Some of them were young and strong, some old and feeble, all wan and white with hunger and the chill of the November fog which wrapped like a wet blanket round their ill-clothed bodies. Amongst them was an old man with ear-rings, and thick, curly white hair, with broad shoulders and rolling gait, and as he passed I seemed to feel the salt wind of the sea blowing in my face, and the plunge of the good ship in the billows of the bay. One by one the master shut them up in the dreary little cell where each man is locked for thirty-six hours on a dietary of porridge, cheese, and bread, and ten hours' work a day at stone-breaking or fibre-picking. And yet the men walk in with something approaching relief on their weary faces; the hot bath will restore circulation; and really to appreciate a bed one should wander the streets through a winter's night, or "lodge with Miss Green" as they term sleeping on the heath.

Half an hour later, as I sat in one of the sick-wards, I felt once again the salt freshness of the air above the iodoform and carbolic, and lying on the ambulance I saw the curly white head of the old sailor, his face blanched under its tan.

"Fainted in the bath, no food for three days; we get them in sometimes like that from the Casual Ward. Wait a moment till I put the pillow straight," said the nurse, as quickly and deftly she raised the hoary head, which has been called a crown of glory.

A few weeks later I passed through the ward, and saw the old man still lying in bed; his sleeves were rolled up, and his nightshirt loose at the throat, and I saw his arms and chest tattooed gorgeously with ships and anchors and flags, with hearts and hands and the red dragon of Wales.

"He's been very bad," said the nurse; "bronchitis and great weakness—been starving for weeks, the doctor thinks. Talks English all right when his temperature is down, but raves to himself in a sort of double-Dutch no one can understand, though we have French and Germans and Russians in the ward."

"Fy Nuw, fy Nuw, paham y'm gadewaist?" cried the old man, and I recognized the cry from the Cross, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

"Oh! lady," he exclaimed as I sat down beside him—"oh! lady, get me out of this. My mates tell me as I'm in the workhouse, and if my old mother knew it would kill her—it would, indeed. Yes, lady, I follow the sea—went off with my old dad when I was eight year old; we sailed our old ship Pollybach for wellnigh forty years; and then she foundered off Bushy Island Reef, Torres Straits, and we lost nearly all we had. After that I've sailed with Captain Jones, of the Highflyer, as first mate; but now he's dead I can't get a job nohow. I'm too old, and I've lost my left hand; some tackle got loose in a storm and fell upon it, and though the hook is wonderful handy, they won't enter me any more as an A.B.

"I'm a skipper of the ancient time—a Chantey-man and a fiddler. I can navigate, checking the chronometer by lunar observation. I can rig a ship from rail to truck; I can reef, hand-steer, and set and take in a top-mast studding sail; and I can show the young fools how to use a marlin-spike. Yes, indeed! But all this is no good now.

"I came up to London to find an old shipmate—Hugh Pugh. We sailed together fifty years ago, but he left the sea when he got married and started in the milk business in London. We was always good mates, and he said to me not long ago, down in Wales, that the Lord had prospered him, and that I was to turn to him in any trouble. So when my skipper died I remembered me of Hugh Pugh, and slung my bundle to come and find him. Folks was wonderful kind to me along the road, and I sailed along in fair weather till I got to London; and then I was fair frightened; navigation is very difficult along the streets—the craft's too crowded—and folks were shocking hard and unkind. I cruised about for a long time, but London's a bigger place than I thought, knowing only the docks; and David Evans doesn't seem to have got the address quite ship-shape, and I just drifted and lost faith. Somehow it's harder to trust the Lord in London than on the high seas. Then the mates tell me I fainted and was brought into the ship's hospital; and here I've lain, a-coughing, and a-burning, and a-shivering, with queer tunes a-playing in my head; couldn't remember the English, they say, and talked only Welsh; and they thought I was a Dutchman. This morning I felt a sight better, and though the nurse told me not to get up, I just tried to put on my clothes and go; but blowed if my legs didn't behave shocking—rolled to larboard, rolled to starboard, and then pitched me headlong, so that I thought I'd shivered all my timbers. So I suppose I must lie at anchor a bit longer; my legs will never stand the homeward voyage, they're that rotten and barnacled; but I'll never get better here; what I'm sickening for is the sea—the sight of her, and the smell of her, and the noise of the waves round the helm; she and me's never been parted before for more than two days, and I'm as sick for her as a man for his lass. Oh, dear! oh, dear! If I could only find Hugh Pugh——"

I suggested that there was a penny post. "Yes, lady; but, to tell the truth, I haven't got a stamp, nor yet a penny; and David Evans hasn't got the address ship-shape. The policeman laughed in my face when I asked him where Hugh Pugh lived, and said I must get it writ down better than that for London." Out of his locker he drew a Welsh Testament containing a piece of tobacco-stained paper, on which was written—

Hugh Pugh, Master Mariner, now Dairyman;
In a big house in a South-Eastern Road,
Off the North-road, out of London, Nor-East by Nor.

Fortunately, Hugh Pugh is not a common name—a visit to the library, a search in the trade directory, and a telephonic communication saved all further cruising.

A couple of days later I got a letter from Hugh Pugh—

Dear Madam,

I thank you for your communication with regard to my old friend and shipmate, Joshua Howell, of whom I had lost sight. I am glad to say I am in a position to find him some work at once, having given up my London business to my sons, and taken a house down by the sea. I am in want of a good waterman to manage a ferryboat over the river and to take charge of a small yacht, and I know that I can trust old Joshua with one hand better than most men with two. There is a cottage on the shore where he can live with his mother; and tell him we shall all be delighted to welcome an old friend and shipmate. My daughter is coming down here shortly with her children, and will be very glad for Joshua to travel with her; she will call and make arrangements for him to go to her house as soon as he is well enough to be moved. I enclose £5 for clothes or any immediate expenses, and am sorry that my old friend has been through such privations. As to any expenses for his keep at the infirmary, I will hold myself responsible.

Yours faithfully,
Hugh Pugh.

Llanrhywmawr, December 6.

A Welsh letter was enclosed for the old sailor, over which he pored with tears of joy running down his cheeks.

A few days later Hugh Pugh's daughter's motor throbbed at the door of the workhouse, and the old tar rolled round shaking hands vigorously with the mates: "Good-bye; good-bye, maties; the Lord has brought me out of the stormy waters, and it's smooth sailing now. He'll do the same for you, mates, if you trust Him."

Then the door closed, and the fresh breeze dropped, and it seemed as if the ward grew dark and grey.

THE VOW

Better thou shouldest not vow than thou shouldest vow and not pay.

The heavy machines in the steam-laundry clanked and groaned, and the smell of soap and soda, cleansing the unspeakable foulness of the infirmary linen, rose up strong and pungent, as the women carried out the purified heaps to blow dry in the wind and sunshine.

The inmates worked hard and steadily under the keen eye of the matron; many of them knew by bitter experience that inattention or gossip might cost them the loss of fingers at the calenders and wringing machines. Most of the women were strong and able-bodied, and yet the briefest inquiry would reveal some moral flaw rendering them incapable of competing in the labour market—drink, dishonesty, immorality, feeble-mindedness. Amongst the heavy, uncomely figures I noticed a young woman, tall and well-grown, with a face modest and refined, framed in masses of dark hair under the pauper cap. She was folding sheets and table-cloths, working languidly as if in pain, and I drew the matron's attention to the fact.

"Yes, I don't think she'll finish the day's work. I told her to go over to the infirmary if she liked, but she said she would rather stay here as long as she could. Yes, usual thing, but she is a better class than we get here as a rule."

A few days later I saw her again in the lying-in ward, a black-haired babe in the cradle beside her, and her hair in two rope-like plaits hanging over the pillow nearly to the ground.

She looked so healthy, handsome, and honest amongst the disease and ugliness and vice around that one wondered how she came to the workhouse. "Yes," said the nurse, in answer to my thoughts, "she is not the sort we have here generally. No, I don't know anything about her; she is very silent, and they say she refused to answer the relieving officer." I sat down beside her and tried to talk about her future, but the girl answered in monosyllables, with tightly shut lips, as if she were afraid to speak.

"Won't the father of your child do anything for you?"

"I do not wish him to."

I had been a Guardian long enough to respect reticence, and I rose to go. The darkness of the December afternoon had fallen in the long, half-empty ward, the sufferers dozed, the wailing of babes was hushed, all was strangely quiet, and as I reached the door I heard a voice, "Please come back, ma'am; I should like to ask you something." Then, as I turned to her bedside again, "I have not told any one my story here; I don't think they would believe me; but it is true all the same. But please tell me first, do you hold with keeping a vow?"

"Yes, certainly I do."

"That is why I am here. I swore an oath to my dying mother, and I have kept it. I did not know how hard it would be to keep, but because I would not break it I have come to disgrace. When we were children we had a cruel, drunken father, and I seem to remember mother always crying, and at night we would be wakened with screams, and we used to rush in and try and stop father beating her to death, and the cruel blows used to half shatter our poor little bodies. One night we were too late, and we saw mother wrapped in a sheet of flame—and her shrieks! It is fifteen years ago now, but they still ring in my ears. The neighbours came and the police, and they put out the fire, and took mother to the hospital and father to the lock-up. Mother did not live long and she suffered cruel. The next day they took us children to see her. We hardly knew it was mother; she was bandaged up with white like a mummy, and only one black eye blazing like a live coal out of the rags—she had beautiful eyes—made us know her. The little boys cried, so that nurse took them out again, but they let me stay with her all night, holding a bit of rag where her hand had once been. Just as the grey dawn came in at the windows mother spoke, very low so that I had to stoop down to hear: 'Hester, my child, swear to me you will never marry, and I will die happy. The boys can look after themselves, but I cannot bear to think of you suffering as I have suffered.'

"'Yes, mother, I'll swear.' No girl of thirteen is keen on marriage, particularly with a father like ours, and I took up the book light-heartedly and swore 'So help me, God.'

"'Thank Heaven, my dear! Now kiss me.'

"I kissed a bit of rag where her mouth had been, and I saw that the black eye was dim and glazed, and the eyelid fell down as if she were sleeping. I sat on till the nurses changed watch, and then they told me she was dead.

"Father got a life sentence, the boys were sent to workhouse schools, and some ladies found me a situation in the country near Oxford. When I was about seventeen the under-gardener came courting me. He was a straight, well-set-up young chap, and I fell in love with him at once, but when he talked about marriage—having good wages—I remembered my oath. Jem said an oath like that wasn't binding; and when I said I'd live with him if he liked, he was very shocked, having honourable intentions, and he went and fetched the vicar to talk to me. He was a very holy man, with the peace of God shining through his eyes, and he talked so kind and clever, telling me that mother was dying and half-mad with pain and weakness, and that she would be the first to absolve me from such a vow. I couldn't argue with him, and so I forgot my manners, and ran out of the room for fear he'd master me. When Jem saw nothing would move me he went off one morning to America, leaving a letter to say as he had gone away for fear he should take me at my word and be my ruin.

"Things were very black after that; I had not known what he was to me till the sea was between us, and, worse than the sea, my oath to the dying. I left my good situation because I could not bear it any longer without him, and I came up to London and got into bad places and saw much wickedness, and got very lonely and very miserable, and learnt what temptation is to girls left alone. I used to go into the big Catholic cathedral by Victoria Station and kneel down by the image of the Virgin and just say, 'Please help me to keep my oath.'

"Then one day in spring, when all the flowers were out in the park, and all the lovers whispering under the trees, I remembered I was twenty-seven, and though I could never have a husband at least I might have a child. A great wave of longing came over me that I could not resist, and so I fell. And then later, when I knew what was coming to me, I was filled with terrible remorse—leastways one day I was full of joy because of my baby, and the next day I was fit to drown myself in shame. Then the Sunday before I was brought in here I went to service in St. Paul's. I had felt sick and queer all day, and I just sat down on one of the seats at the back and listened to the singing high and sweet above my head, like the chanting of the heavenly host. I was always fond of going to St. Paul's, and once on my Sunday out I even went to the Sacrament, and I says, 'O God, I've lost my character, but I've kept my oath. You made me so fond of children; please don't let me eat and drink my own damnation.'

"I sat and thought of this, puzzling and puzzling, and the hot air out of the gratings made me drowsy, and I fell asleep and dreamt it was the Judgment Day, and I stood with my baby before the Throne, and a great white light shone on me, bleak and terrible, so that I felt scorched with blinding cold. And the angel from his book read out: 'Hester French and her bastard child.'

"Then there came a little kind voice: 'She kept her oath to her dying mother, and remember, she was a woman and all alone'; and I knew it was the Virgin Mary pleading for me. And then a voice like thunder sounded: 'Blot out her sin!' and all the choirs of heaven sang together; and I awoke, but it was only the organ crashing out very loud, and the verger shaking me because he wanted to lock up. Oh, ma'am, do you think as my sin will be forgiven? At least I kept my vow."

BLIND AND DEAF

Oh, human soul! as long as thou canst so

Set up a mark of everlasting light,

Above the howling senses' ebb and flow,

To cheer thee and to right thee if thou roam—

Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night!

Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.

Mary Grant, pauper, of Sick Ward 42, had been making charges of unkindness against Nurse Smith, and I had been appointed by the House Committee to inquire into the matter. I found a somewhat harassed-looking nurse filling up temperature-charts in a corner of the ward, and she began volubly to deny the charges.

"The woman's deaf, so it is no good shouting at her, and I believe she is angry because I can't talk on my fingers; but what with looking after both wards and washing and bathing them all, and taking their temperatures and feeding them, and giving them their medicine, I have not time to attend to the fads and fancies of each one. Granny Hunt, too, takes half my time seeing that she does not break her neck with her antics; and as to scraping the butter off Grant's bread I hope as the Committee did not attend to such a tale."

The last accusation, I assured her, had not even been brought before us, and I passed down the long clean ward where lay sufferers of all ages and conditions—the mighty head of the hydrocephalus child side by side with the few shrivelled bones of an aged paralytic. I passed the famous Mrs. Hunt—a "granny" of ninety-six, who "kept all her limbs very supple" and herself in excellent condition by a system of mattress gymnastics which she had evolved for herself. Two comparatively young people of seventy and eighty, who were unfortunate enough to lie next her, complained bitterly of Granny's restlessness; but the old lady was past discipline and "restraining influences," and, beyond putting a screen round her to check vanity and ensure decency, the authorities left her to her gymnastic displays. On the whole, though, the ward was very proud of Granny; she was the oldest inhabitant, not only in the House but also in the parish, and even female sick-wards take a certain pride in holding a record. The old lady cocked a bright eye, like a bird, upon me as I passed her bed, and, cheerfully murmuring "Oh, the agony!" executed a species of senile somersault with much agility.

Round the blazing fire at the end of the ward (for excellent fires commend me to those rate-supported) sat a group of "chronics" and convalescents—a poor girl, twisted and racked with St. Vitus's dance, white-haired "grannies" in every stage of rheumatic or senile decay, and a silent figure with bowed head, still in early middle life, who, they told me, was Mary Grant.

I shouted my inquiries down her ear crescendo fortissimo, without the smallest response—not even the flicker of an eyelid—whilst the grannies listened with apathetic indifference.

"Not a bit of good, ma'am," they said presently, when I paused, exhausted; "she's stone deaf."

Then I drew a piece of paper from my pocket and wrote my questions, big and clear.

"Not a bit of good, ma'am," shouted the grannies again; "she's stone blind."

I gazed helplessly at the silent figure, with the blood still flowing in her veins, and yet living, as it were, in the darkness and loneliness of the tomb.

"If she is blind and deaf and dumb, how does she manage to complain?"

"Oh! she manages that all right, ma'am," said a granny whose one eye twinkled humorously in its socket; "she's not dumb—not 'alf. The nuss that's left and Mrs. Green, the other blind lidy, talk on her fingers to her, and she grumbles away, when the fit takes 'er, a treat to 'ear; not as I blimes her, poor sowl; most of us who comes 'ere 'ave something to put up with; but she 'as more than 'er share of trouble. No, none of us know 'ow to do it—we aren't scholards; but you catches 'old on 'er 'and, and mauls it about in what they call the deaf-and-dumb halphabet, and she spells out loud like the children."

I remembered with joy that I also was "a scholard," for one of the few things we all learned properly at school was the art of talking to each other on our fingers under the desks during class. A good deal of water had flowed under London Bridge since then, but for once I felt the advantage of what educationists call "a thorough grounding."

"How are you?" spelt out a feeble, harsh voice as I made the signs—I had forgotten the "w" and was not sure of the "r," but she guessed them with ready wit—then in weird rasping tones, piping and whistling into shrill falsetto like the "cracking" voice of a youth, she burst into talk: "Oh! I am so thankful—so thankful. It seems years since any one came to talk to me—the dear nurse has left, and the other blind lady's gone to have her inside taken out, and the blind gentleman is taking a holiday, and I have been that low I have not known how to live. 'Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit; in a place of darkness and in the deep. Thine indignation lieth hard upon me; and Thou hast vexed me with all Thy storms.' David knew how I feel just exactly—might have been a deaf and blind woman himself, shut up in a work'us. I have been here nigh on two year now; I used to do fine sewing and lace-mending for the shops, and earned a tidy bit, being always very handy with my needle; then one day, as I was stitching by the window—finishing a job as had to go home that night—a flash of lightning seemed to come and hit me in the eye somehow—I remember how the fire shone bright zig-zag across the black sky, and then there was a crash, and nothing more.

"No, it was not a very nice thing to happen to anybody; two year ago now, and there has been nothing but fierce, aching blackness round me ever since, and great silence except for the rumblings in my ears like trains in a tunnel; but I hear nothing, not even the thunder. At first I fretted awful; I felt as if I must have done something very wicked for God to rain down fire from heaven on me as if I had been Sodom and Gomorrah; but I'd not done half so bad as many; I'd always kept myself respectable, and done the lace-mending, and earned enough for mother, too—fortunately, she died afore the thunder came and hit me, or she'd have broken her heart for me. It was very strange. Mother was such a one to be frightened at thunder, and when we lived in the country before father died she always took a candle and the Book and went down to the cellar out of the way of the lightning—seemed as if she knew what a nasty trick the thunder was going to play me—she was always a very understanding woman, was mother—she came from Wales, and had what she called 'the sight.'

"Yes; I went on fretting fearful about my sins until the blind gentleman found me out—him as comes oh Saturdays and teaches us blind ladies to read. Oh, he was a comfort! He learned me the deaf alphabet, and how to read in the Braille book, and it's not so bad now. He knows all about the heavenly Jerusalem, and the beautiful music and the flowers blossoming round the Throne of God. I think he's what they calls a Methody, and mother and I were Church. I used to go to the Sunday School, and learnt the Catechism, and 'thus to think of the Trinity.' However, he's a very good man all the same, and a great comfort—and he found me a special text from God: 'Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.' That is the promise to me and to him; being blind, he understands a bit himself, though what the hullaballoo in my ears is no tongue can tell.

"Mrs. Green, the other blind lady, is such a one to be talking about the diamonds and pearls in the crowns of glory; but I don't understand nothing about no jewels. What I seem to want to see again is the row of scarlet geraniums that used to stand on our window-sill; the sun always shone in on them about tea-time, and mother and I thought a world of the light shining on them red Jacobys. But the blind gentleman says as I shall see them again round the Throne."

"She wanders a bit," said the one-eyed granny, touching her forehead significantly; "she's such a one for this Methody talk."

I have noticed that the tone of the workhouse, though perfectly tolerant and liberal, is inclined to scepticism, in spite of the vast preponderance of the Church of England (C. of E.) in the "Creed Book."

"Let her wander, then," retorted another orthodox member; "she ain't got much to comfort her 'ere below—the work'us ain't exactly a paradise. For Gawd's sake leave 'er 'er 'eaven and 'er scarlet geraniums."

"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?"