Out of the Workhouse

Front matter

Out of the Workhouse. BY Mrs. Herbert Martin, AUTHOR OF " BONNIE LESLEY," " liRITOMART," "HER DEBIT," ETC. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, PUBLISHERS in ORDINARY to HER MAJESTY. 1896. (All rights reserved.) DEDICATED TO MY OLD FRIEND L. W.-W., TO WHOM THIS STOET OWES ITS EXISTENCE. CONTENTS. CHAPlJr.lt PAGE I. The Prison-house of Old Age ... 1 II. The Vigil of St. Valentine ... 15 III. "Wonderful, out of all Whooping" 33 IV. A Pauper Transformed ... 49 V. In New Character ... ... 64 VI. The Joys of Revenge and Riches 80 VII. Young Mr. Wilbraham ... ... 92 VIII. Bell's Escape from her Chrysalis 109 IX. Bell's Education continues ... 127 X. A New Departure ... ... 144 XI. Mk. Matthew Lucas comes to Town 158 XII. An Undesired Office ... ... 175 XIII. Parting, but not Sweet Sorrow ... 191 XIV. " Dwining and Pining" ... 207 XV.

Old Friends with New Faces ... 223 XVI. Explanations ... ... ... CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE XVII. Womanhood and Childhood meet ... 257 XVIII. Peter and his Fortune part Company 270 XIX. The Unwelcome Guest... ... 286 XX. The Vultures gather Bound ... 301 XXI. Exit Matthew ... .. 314 XXII. The Last ... ... ...

Chapter I. The Prison-house Of Old Age

M COPPERY, dull afternoon sunshine, which neither cheered nor warmed, had turned the glaring whitewash of the old men's ward in Codlington Workhouse into a dull yellow, which only seemed to make it more boldly, aggressively ugly. The old men sat on wooden forms, dull and motionless, battered statues of discontent, staring at the fire which burnt as agreeably as it could behind its iron cage. At any rate, it was the only agreeable thing there was to look at. Some ladies of the Plymouth Brethren faith, who paid weekly visits to the House, had pinned up large, severely plain texts, on which such cheerful ideas were set forth in 1 ri staring print as " The Wages of Sin is Death," or that " All our Righteousness is as Filthy Rags." Poor old men ! Very likely they had been something of sinners in their unfinished way, when they had the chance.

They had spent the money that ought to have been their wives' at the public-house, and now — so the text said — their wages were death. Yes ! So they were — a living death — clean, blank. drear, unutterably null. And as for " filthy rags " — well, they knew all about that, if not so much of righteousness. Some of them, in their normal state, had been very filthy and ragged ; the enforced cleanliness, the ugly, tidy fustian garments were part of the grievance of their poor old lives. They preferred rags with the liberty to roam the streets or lanes, with the occasional pipe of rank tobacco, the rare and savoury dainty of chitterling or black pudding bestowed by charity, to the neat, warm clothing, the endless confinement, the plentiful, monotonous food which had never any element of surprise.

The bent figures, brown and leathery, made THE PRISON-HOUSE OF OLD AGE. 3 a mournful, if inartistic picture. They seldom spoke. What had they to talk about ? A muttered grumble at the rations, or the weather, or their own numerous individual aches and pains — this was all there was of conversation, except in the case of one old chap who had grown childish, who babbled of green fields, and was foolish enough to be cheerful. Moreover, even here, there were classes, rivalries, jealousies. There is an aristocracy even in the " House." The decent old fellows, who had worked hard iu their day, paid their debts, scooped together a few savings, reared children respectably, and had only occasionally been the " worse for liquor," who had come to this dull and hopeless haven by misfortune, not fault, looked down on such as Billy Carter, who was always in and out of the workhouse, and, when at liberty to indulge his natural tastes, was as dirty, disgraceful, and boozy an old reprobate as the county could produce, who gave as much trouble and was as cheeky as he dared to master, chaplain, and doctor.

Some of the inmates had been bright enough specimens of English yeomanry in their day — ay, and good-looking once, when they drove their teams afield under the blue, white-dappled spring sky, and cracked jokes over the midday bread and bacon. Now their more substantial meals tasted only of discon tent and pauperism ; the snacks of old had a flavour of open air, of the good odorous brown earth, of liberty, and the honest hunger born of work. The breaks in the long, long day were few : meal-times, an occa sional walk for those who could still crawl in the sunshine, incursions from the master, nurse, doctor, chaplain, the good ladies who read the Bible and left what they called " trackses," and a few visitors of their own from the outside world. Old Peter Lucas had a visitor that after noon, a weekly visitor who hardly ever failed him — his granddaughter, Bell Robertson, maid of-all-work to Mrs. Jenkins, the baker's wife in Hart Street.

The rest of the company never took any particular notice of Bell Robertson, her shabby little figure was too familiar to them. They did not even reckon her a " well-favoured wench." IHE PRISON-HOUSE OF OLD AGE. 5 She was too small and thin, and dressed in too ill-cut and ill-fitting garments, to attract notice. So pale, too, a doctor's eye would instantly have detected " anæmia " in the (had white, almost a blueish white, of her face, the lips being only a faint pink, the violet shade under her grey eyes, and the short, panting breath. Bell's slight form was disfigured by an old black-cloth jacket of strange cut, which Mrs. Jenkins had worn till it was too much out of fashion for a baker's wife, her small feet by coarse boots at least three sizes too big for her, the thick, untidy pre-Raphaelite red hair, and the small featured, delicate, sad face by a high-crowned, hideous hat.

But well or ill-dressed, plain or pretty, one face brightened at her coming — the weather beaten old countenance of her grandfather. She was the one creature in all the world he loved, as her mother had been before her, and her grandmother first of all. In proportion to his love for Bell was his hatred for his son Matthew and Matthew's wife. Bell's mother, Lucy Lucas, had been a gentle, yielding, affectionate creature — the sort who are born to be deceived aud down trodden. There had been a large family, though all had died young except the eldest, Matthew, and Lucy, who was the only girl they had ever had, and the " moral " of her mother ; and for whom Peter, in his silent, gruff way, had petted and cared, and, though seldom expressing his love in words, had done all he could to shield and make happy.

But, poor little fool, she had not known how to choose good from evil. She slighted an honest lad's love, and took up, when only nineteen, with a travelling pedlar who paid periodical visits to Codlington, at the outskirts of which small country town the Lucas' cottage stood. The man was a hopeless ne'er do-well, though not badly educated ; but he had a gay, careless, amusing way with him which silly, gentle Lucy found fascinating. She wasn't a bad girl, and she insisted on going to a registry office with him ; but the fact of the marriage very little softened the blow to her father when he found she had gone off with the pedlar, to travel about the IHE PRISON-HOUSE OF OLD AGE. 7 country, and to sleep at nights in cheap lodging-houses. The mau was not cruel to her ; but her life was hard enough without that, till he got inflammation of the lungs and died, and she crept back with her little red-haired girl of three to take shelter in her father's cottage, where he was living alone, for his wife had been dead some years.

Angry as Peter had been with her marriage, he had no reproaches now to throw at his favourite ; he accepted her and her little one, outwardly with dogged resolution, but with a secret warmth at the heart, which was as like joy as anything he had ever felt. He could earn little enough, for that cruel foe of rustic old age, rheumatism, was beginning to creep on and cripple him, and the two addi tional mouths made the struggle harder ; but he did not " throwT it up " to Lucy, who did her best, poor soul, to earn sixpence or a shilling, when her health would let her, at field-work or washing. He left it to Matthew and Matthew's wife Martha to say all the hard things of that " poor, shiftless creature " that occurred to their niggardly, self-righteous, OUT OF IHE WORKHOUSE. 8 uncharitable minds.

They hardly ventured to say them before old Lucas, who had a fierce and bitter tongue whenever he was sufficiently roused to use it. Matthew had married at thirty, after he'd saved a " smart bit o' money " by rigorous skimping, a widow with savings and three children. They had two of their own, aud this family was a perpetual excuse to them to urge that they " was noways bound to help " old Lucas under the circumstances ; they had " their own " to feed. Yet they were secretly well-to-do, though they concealed it as if it had been a crime. Matthew had first rented a few acres of garden ground (Codlington lies in a "garden of cucumbers" and asparagus), and had gradually bought more and more till he was a small landed proprietor ; he had a six-roomed house, pigs, a horse and cart, a cow, and a balance at the bank.

But he could not spare even skim milk for his sister Lucy, when she fell ill. Not that old Peter would have asked him ; he had the sturdy independence and fierce pride of his kind. He struggled on to get what Lucy and the THE PRISON-HOUSE OF OLD AGE. 9 child wanted, in spite of rheumatism and the long drain of her illness. He sold his few silver spoons, the old oak dresser, the eight day clock, a little bit or two of Worcester china which had belonged to his wife's mother, yet withal he could not get Lucy or Bell what they needed, and at last, when the end of the mother's life came, when Bell was fourteen, he had no. means of keeping up his home any longer, he could work no more, and every penny he had was spent on Lucy's funeral. He was ill himself. Matthew came to tell him that he was very sorry, but he saw nothing before his old father but the " Union."

Matthew was rather a good-lookingman, tall, freshcoloured, and plausible. His comely exterior gave the lie to the hardness of the sordid soul within. He shrugged his large shoulders at the " draughty place " which Peter still called home, and said his father would be a " sight more comfortable " in the workhouse infirmary, where he would have warmth, a comfortable bed, nursing and doctoring free. " Bell could get a little place quite easy," he said — she was old enough for that now. It was the first and only time that Peter Lucas appealed to his son. His proud spirit shrank with intolerable pain from the idea of being a pauper, nothing else could have driven him to ask a favour of Matthew. He fixed his once bright, now dim, blue eyes on his son's complacent face, and faltered out in hard, difficult words that he might be able to work again, and keep the place together — after a bit — if Mat would allowance him for a whde — he didn't want much to live on — yet even while he spoke he knew it was hopeless, before Mat slowly and quite blandly shook his large head.

" Nay, I can't afford to keep you, father, that I raly can't. I've got too many mouths to fill at 'ome, me and the missus and her three, and them two besides, to feed and clothe and pay schooling for. Not one on 'em is arning yet. You've got a right to be kep' by the parish, and you needn't feel it no sart o' disgrace. You're an old man now, over seventy, and you've kep' yourself all this time, let the rates do it now. You can't expect a man with five children to have his father and THE PRISON-HOUSE OF OLD AGE. 11 an idle wench, too, on his hands. Five children — and fruit selling that ehe-ap, 'es 'arclly worth the picking ! The rent raised too, and rates awful 'igh. You couldn't live for less than five shillun, and I couldn't give you more nor 'arf a crown." Half a crown ! The old man heard the offer with a bitterness like death.

Half a crown from his own son, who had money in the bank, and made a hundred pounds by "grass" alone that spring ! He lay still, digesting the offer for a moment, thinking of the days when Mat was a fine handsome little lad, and his mother had been proud of him ; how they had often gone short that the "childer" should be full ; how he had toiled all his long life — to end like this ! He broke the silence in a loud, harsh, trembling voice. "Nay, damn thy half-crowns! Take 'em along to hell with thee. I'll none of 'em. Get out of my sight ; go and see the reliev ing-officer, and tell him to fetch me along. I'll go to the workus, to shame thee." Matthew slunk away, and the old man went. Bell was found a place as drudge to Mrs. Jenkins, on nothing a year to begin with but her clothes and " vittles," such as they were ; plenty of work and more scolding gratis.

After a year of this, she received the liberal wage of eighteen-pence a week, and out of this had managed to have an occasional sixpence to buy granddad a little tobacco or a few sweets. She had been three years at the same place now, and was eighteen. She might have bettered herself, but she was too timid and diffident to dare to give notice and look after another situation, and in her clinging, soft, affectionate way, had grown attached to the Jenkinses just because she was used to them, and poor little Davy, the youngest, was sickly, and so fond of her she couldn't bear to think of his crying after his Bell. She had attained a few privileges, she had two shillings a week now, and was allowed an afternoon out on which to visit her grandfather. This was her day, and she was punctual, coming stealing in like a little ghost, but for the squeak of her big boots as she crossed the THE PRISON-HOUSE OF OLD AGE. 13 clean wooden floor, and sitting down by grandfather with a small roughened hand in his, and soft grey eyes full of affection, asking him mutely how he fared.

There was pleasure visible in old Lucas's roughened face and brightening eyes, but all he found to say, in a growling undertone, was, " Well, my wench, how List tha ? Thee hasn't forgot old granddad." She did not kiss him — she had never learnt the girlish art of kissing — she only sat close to his knee, with her hand on it. The other old men just glanced stolidly at her ; the only interest about her visit to them was the question whether she'd " brought summat " for Lucas. They were apt to be " begrudgeful," as she called it. She slipped her little offering of cheap tobacco into his side pocket, hoping no one saw, and spoke in her low shy voice that somehow managed to be refined. " How's the pain beeu, granddad ? " " 'Bout as usual. Seen anything of 'em up yonder ? " He jerked his thumb vaguely towards the setting sun ; but Btdl knew what he meant.

" I heard," she said, " as they've bought four more pigs." " Ay," with a growl of concentrated bitter ness, " dang 'em, they can buy pigs ! Pigs is more to him than his own flesh and blood. The Lard give him the measure he've give me — heaped up, and pressed down, and running over." Bell was not shocked. She had nothing of vindictiveness in her gentle nature, yet as much as in her lay, she, too, hated Matthew and Martha Lucas. The old man let his grey head fall forward on his chest, and there was a long silence in the room, only broken by the murmured incoherence of Silly Charley in the corner. The February sunshine faded from the wall, and it was dead white again.

Chapter II. The Vigil Of St

VALENTINE. l^jjLD Lucas broke the silence in his panting, hoarse voice. " Bist well, my wench . Thee's looking wisht and dwindly like. The missus hain't been illtreating of thee ? " " Oh no. She's a bit sharp, but she don't mean to be unkind." " Thee's enough victuals . " " Yes," but there was a faint hesitation in the tone. " Art sure V " Y-yes. Not overmuch meat ; but I don't care a lot for meat." " You ought to care, then. Doctor says as that's what you needs. She've had a good servant in you, and should gi' you according. They feeds us well enough in this darned hole, if one cared to eat. I'd rather have a hunk of bread and che-ase under a hedge than their meat and pudden iu here." "Is't as bad as it was for you, granddad?" The words were whispered ; the voice was tender, full of pity for the worn-out old grandfather.

He looked hard in her face, the once bright blue eyes full of dogged despair, like an animal that faces death. " Bad ? What do I look for but bad ? My comfort is that a man past seventy can't have long to bide anywhere, and if the parson's right, there'll be summat better up there — a breath o' fresh air, maybe, and the sun on one's back — p'raps a sight of the old 'ooman again, and the lass as is gone. Whatever there be, it can't be no worser nor this. The Lard won't forget, I reckon, as I lived honest and paid my way for nigh seventy year. I've wronged no one, as I knows on, and I did my best by the childer — though Mat's turned out so cruel ongrateful." " If only I could earn enough to keep you out of this ! " THE VIGIL OF ST. VALENTINE. 17 ' You would if you could, my wench, and well I knows it ; but a slip of a delicate thing like you can't do nothing.

Anyways, it's summat as you has the xoish to help your old grand dad. When I lays my case afore the Lard, child, on the Day 0' Judgment, I'll not forget to tell Him as you sarved me well. Maybe He'll be easier to deal with than the Board 0' Gardeens. Maybe I'll have justice. It didn't ought to be possible for a chap as has toiled and moiled and sweated for his bread as I have, to have no better an 'ome to come to lay his old head in than this'n." There was silence again. Bell was too much depressed by the dreary surroundings of the place and the wooden stillness of those brown, dogged old figures to care to talk of the small gossip of the town, and Lucas had nothing worth bringing out of the profound gloom within him. He was too full of a vague but deep-seated resentment against his fate to be able to put it by.

Yet he liked having her near him as much as he was capable of liking anything. The touch of her hand on his knee, the kindness of her soft grey eyes — these were thc only links left of fondness that bound him to humanity. Dry and dead were all other feelings, like the leaves of last autumn, stirred only by a bitter wind of hate and discontent ; but the one green spot left in the arid waste was the love of this slight girl whose future seemed to promise not much more brightness than his had known, but to ensure whose happiness the old man would have been willing — not to die, for that was easy and pleasant — but to live on as he was, bereft of hope, of joy, of ease. When she had to leave him, he sat in the dark thinking of her, fondly if dimly, recalling the days of her childhood when he took her out clinging to one rough finger to " help feed the pig," and he mixed these up with memories of his own girls.

When Lucy was little, he had been a hearty, hopeful sort of fellow, who could lead the laugh amongst his compeers ; he had known what it was to be proud and pleased and jolly — now it was years since he had laughed. People never laughed out loud (unless they were idiotic) in Codling ton Workhouse. Each dull hour ticked itself TIIE VIGIL OF ST. VALENTINE. 19 into eternity, unlighted by anything brighter than the dim satisfaction of a rather better meal than usual, a pipe, or the weekly visit of Bell. The eight-o'clock bell rang the paupers to bed that chill February evening with its clanging monotony as it had done to the moment every night through the year he had been there, and old Peter Lucas laid his grey head on his hard pillow, little dreaming that it was the last time it would ring him to bed in Codlington Workhouse.

Bell, meanwdiile, had started almost running when the big iron gates closed behind her. It was rather later than usual ; she had three quarters of a mile to go, and dreaded a scolding when she reached home. The House stood out of the town on rather a lonely road, with scattered cottages and a " public," whence came sounds of rude revelry and a flood of light through the unshuttered windows. Like many another agricultural centre, Codlington was a place where much muddy beer and cider and doctored spirits were consumed ; where many shillings of the rather high wages that the market-gardeners' labourers received went into the tills of the numerous public-houses, and the language that echoed from them was anything but choice. It was on the whole a flourishing little town, and the people worked hard ; but the publicans reaped the most profit, after all, out of the abundant crops of thc fertile valley where a slow and gentle river wound.

As soon as Bell reached the Black Horse Inn, she hurried more than ever ; she was a timid, nervous thing, and now that her blood was poor and watery, her pulses seemed to jump and quiver at every alarm till she thought her heart beat at her throat. A coarse voice calling her made her hurry all the more. She knew well enough it was the butcher's young man, Tom Culverhouse, who had been trying for months to get her to " walk out " with him. Other servant-girls admired Tom's red cheeks, curly black hair, and very prononce style of wooing, and Bell was considered a little fool for being so " stand off." So far, she had kept company with no one, had never gone walks with a " lad," and had few friends of her own sex. Something of shrinking refinement, a native delicacy of mind, and a great shyness, kept her modest and cold as ice to such advances as Tom's. She was not one of the girls who promenaded up Broad Hill, which was the favourite rendez vous on Sundays, shrieking aud giggling with the " chaps " who sauntered alongside or behind them, halfpenny smoke in mouth, flower in buttonhole, and exchanged "chaff" which would not bear repetition in polite society, but, being spoken in broad Midlandshire, fortunately sounded like a foreign language to the uninitiated.

In Codlington, one-syllable words are prolonged into two, the teeth are kept closed so that the sound is strange and not beautiful, but in Bell's low voice the accent was not ugly — the word " ple-ase " had something of entreaty in it ; she oddly missed being vulgar, and she shrank from coarse contact, she knew not why. She could not get out of Tom's reach, how ever, her breath was too short, he was soon by her side, and grasping her arm. " Now, Bell, what be you running away like thatu from a chap as is willing to favour you OUT OF TIIE WORKHOUSE. with his company ? What makes you so con founded proud and stand-off with me? I reckons I'm as good as thee any day in the week. There be lots o' girls as'd be glad to have me walk wi 'em." " I ain't proud," Bell murmured ; " but please let me get on.

I'm late, and I don't want no one to walk with me." " Ah, you're afraid of ketching it from Mother Jenk ! Been alonger the old man in the Union ? Come, Bell, folks as has grand fathers in there ain't got no call to be stuck up nayther ! " Bell shook off his arm more angrily than her wont. " I don't want you with me," she said, " so you needn't be throwing that up to me, Tom Culverhousc. Wherever he be, my grandfather's no call to be ashamed of himself — let them be that leaves him bide there." " Ay, well, you needn't be such a spit fire nayther, Miss Bell Robertson ! I ain't one to thrust my company on any gal as thinks herself too good for a civil word. As for the old man, I wasn't a-blaming of him. It is them as is to blame, as you say, as has plenty theirselves, and lets him be in the House.

Why, your uncle Matthew has his sirloin every Sunday as reg'lar as the Squire — nothing less'll do for him. Now, I say, Bell, you're a queer sort, but somehow I've took a bit 0' fancy to your little white face. If you'll be civil, and let a chap have a chance, I'll take you out for the" da)T, and treat you 'andsome, when there's the next trip to Brum. You'll not be overdone with such like offers, I reckon, for you ain't every one's meat, my lady." " I don't want to go out with you," Bell said, half sobbing with haste and a sort of fright. " I don't want to go out with no one. Let me be — let me go on — I'm not wanting to be uncivil, but — ■ — " " Go on then, you little proud devil," Tom returned, with a sudden change from coaxing to fierceness common to all his tribe. " I ain't hard enough up for a wench to stop begging and praying you, a little half-starved, shabby bit of a servant -gal !

You'll not get a sweetheart in a hurry with your nesh ways and fool of a white face. You may wish me back, when you'll have to whistle for me, and be hanged to your stand-off humbug." He fell back in sullen disgust, and Bell hurried on in spite of her throbbing heart. The chimes from the church tower were going half-past five, and she had to get tea for the family by six. She was glad to reach the baker's shoj) in Hart Street, and hurried into her kitchen to find her mistress irate, as she expected, at the slight delay. It never occurred to her that as soon as Bell had got the substantial tea for the " parlour " she might want something herself. She'd been out at her teatime, and therefore could not have that meal. Things that did not concern herself, her husband and children, were not ajit to occur to Mrs. Jenkins.

She thought herself, and j^erhaps meant to be, a kind mistress to " poor BeU," as she was wont to call her in her milder moods, "a respectable girl, but shiftless ; " but she was very chary of praise, and very conscientious in the duty of " not passing over things." She was a woman who frequently thanked God she was not as other women, and had been known to say that it was a comfort to feel that you had nothing to reproach yourself with ! She honestly considered herself a model in every relation of life, and had no shyness in telling the world so. In point of fact, there were many worse women than Mrs. Jenkins, and few more self-righteous. Per haps Mrs. Matthew Lucas might have " gone one better " in this particular, but it is hard to say. Bell was boasted of, out of her hearing, to Mrs. Jenkins' neighbours as a treasure — a girl you could trust with untold lumps of sugar, and who had never had a young man — but Mrs. Jenkins was much too afraid of making her " think a lot of herself" to praise her to her face, and Bell had a humble opinion of her own failings.