Women of the Country

by Gertrude Bone

CHAPTER XIV

In the afternoon of the following day Anne entered the common room of the Infirmary. In this large room, with high windows spotlessly clean, a fireplace at one end in which a sufficiently generous fire was burning, and before which were two wicker cradles; women for the most part in extreme old age of body rather than years were sitting in every possible attitude on the wooden seat which ran round the wall on three sides of the room. At the far end, near the fire, a blind woman was knitting men's stockings. Two very old women sat with their chins in their hands and heads bent, motionless, neither hearing nor seeing anything outward. Three others, their white pleated caps nodding at different angles, were making aprons. A young woman with a healthy but sullen face was nursing a large baby. Another, younger, but early-developed, as girls are in the country, sat nearest the fire, a shawl half off her shoulders, her foot rocking one of the cradles. There seemed no trace of coarseness in her face, refined now by illness and days indoors; only an infinite ignorance and bewilderment. She seemed not more than seventeen. The tone of the Matron in speaking to her was not unkind, but had in it the mixture of impatience and contempt, which sensible middle-aged women have for foolish girls who can't look after themselves. There was, too, unknown to herself, for she would have looked upon herself as a kind woman, a slight feeling of satisfaction that, though the silly girl was sheltered in this place and everyone was kind to her, she'd find out what it meant to get herself in that state when she went outside. In the meantime, being really kind, if sensible, she said.

"Keep your shawl over your shoulders, Maggie. You mustn't catch cold your first day out of bed!"

"She doesn't look fit for much does she?" said the other young mother contemptuously. "Ten days and then to be as washed out as that."

One of the old women, who had remained motionless, got up slowly and stretched out her hand, pointing at the girl vindictively.

"That girl's next the fire! That was my place before she come."

"Oh, you're all right, mother," said the Matron cheerfully, pushing her gently back to her seat. The old woman mumbled to herself as she sank back into the same stupor, in the midst of which she brooded on her grievance. The other old woman began in a hard, high voice without raising her head:

"That's the way they do in this place. Push out the old ones."

"Now you two don't begin talking and grumbling," interrupted the Matron decidedly. "You're as well treated as anyone else."

At this moment Anne made a movement in the corner where she had stood unnoticed. From every bench withered hands were thrust at her, some grasping her arm, some her mantle, some were held open at her face.

"Give me a ha'penny—just a ha'penny!" screamed a dozen old voices. "A ha'penny! Spare a ha'penny!"

"Now then," interrupted the Matron, taking two of the women and leading them back to their places. "What good would a ha'penny do to any of you?" She touched two other women, and they retired grumbling to their seats, all except one tall, bony old creature, with a frightful palsy, who kept hold of Anne by the arm, repeating in a voice which was more like an angry scream than the whisper which her deaf ears imagined it to be.

"Those other women'll all beg from you. They'd take the bread out of anybody's mouth. Give me a ha'penny Missis, only a ha'penny," and her avaricious, bony hand pinched Anne's arm tightly as though she already clutched the coin. The Matron, using both her own hands, unfastened her hands as she might have done a knot. The old woman shook with rage and palsy, and fell rather than sat down on her seat under the flowering geraniums in the window.

"Now, I knew there was somebody strange in the room," said the blind woman. "Just let me have a look at her."

She tucked her knitting needles into her apron-string. She had been for many years in the workhouse infirmary, where she knitted and repaired the thick stockings worn by the inmates. She had become a kind of pride of the ward. Beyond the misfortune of her blindness she had no defect, and her mind was alert and cheerful.

"She calls it 'looking,'" said the Matron with a laugh. "Just you see her knitting, Miss Hilton. She's re-footing those stockings. See if you can tell where she's patched them." She took up a bright blue stocking from the bench. The blind woman took the other end and felt it carefully.

"That's not my work," she said with amused contempt. "It's too like patchwork. Here's mine."

Anne took the stocking and looked. "It's beautiful," she said. "I could never have told there was a join." The blind woman's hand touched her arm and wandered slowly upwards, over her face and neck and head.

"I've not seen you before, have I?" she said. "No, I don't think I have."

The Matron had already turned to leave the room. Anne, held by the blind woman, looked again round the big room with its clean floor and battered inmates. The uneventful peace broken by the bickering of the old women, the babies bringing a double burden to their mothers, the blind woman, to whom all days were alike, seemed to be imprisoned for ever.

She followed the Matron into the courtyard. Several men in bottle-green corduroys loitered there, and a tiny old woman shrivelled and imbecile, who ran to Anne the moment she appeared, holding her skirts high to her knees, skipping on one foot and then on the other.

"I'll dance for a ha'penny! I'll dance for a ha'penny!" she whined.

"Go on! dance, old lady," said one of the men who was carrying an empty drawer, which had just been scrubbed, to dry in the sunshine of the yard. He set it down, end upwards, and stood expectantly. The two other men paused also.

"Go on! Aren't you going to begin?" said one of them.

"She's a funny old thing, this one," said the Matron to Anne, stopping to watch, as the old woman, holding her skirts to her knees, her clogs clacking, and with a smile of imbecility fixed on her face, began to hop from one thin leg to the other, stamping slowly round on her heels in the artless manner of a child. All at once she stopped, and, pulling up her apron, put a corner of it in her mouth, hanging her head and giggling.

"They're all looking at me, all them men," she giggled. "Fancy me dancing with all them men looking." One of the men broke into a laugh, which was changed immediately into an attack of asthma.

"Dance again, old lady!" called a younger man, with the effects of hard drinking visible in his face.

The shrunken and pitiful figure revolved several times, stamping on her heels, then stopped with the same grotesque coquetry.

"She's a funny old thing, isn't she?" said the Matron to Anne. "She gives us many a laugh."

"It's too humbling to look at. I cannot laugh," said Anne. "Poor old thing, to have come to that."

"She doesn't know, you know," said the Matron. "You're wasting your pity. They're most of them better off in the infirmary here than they were outside. You've no idea what a dirty state she was found in for one."

"It's the painfulness of such a sight—age without honour," repeated
Anne.

"I've no time to think of that sort of thing," replied the Matron, as they began to ascend the wide stairs to the bed rooms, a woman, who was scrubbing the steps with sand, standing aside to let them pass.

Several women were sitting up in bed, with starched night-caps nodding at different angles. Over the fireplace was a lithograph of Queen Victoria giving the Bible as the source of England's greatness to an Indian potentate, and beneath it, sitting very still in a large armchair, was Jane Evans staring into the fire. She was very quiet, broken, and helplessly docile. Her stillness was alarming. She seemed to be already dead in spirit. Even the child soon to be separated from her scarcely concerned her. She was quite neat. Thin and fatigued as her face was, she did not appear to have suffered greatly in health.

"Jane, my dear, I've not come to blame you," began Anne, "I've come to see if there's anything I can do to make it easier for you to face the future and what's coming. I only heard of you coming here by accident or you shouldn't have been left alone. You mustn't think everybody's forsaken you and you've no friend left to you. It's often the case that you know your true friends in trouble," she continued sententiously. "And if only you could find the best Friend of all now when you need Him most." Her prim phrasing changed to earnestness. "There was a woman once that they dragged out in front of everybody for evil-doing. But He wouldn't have it. He put them to silence, and then when she was all alone with Him He showed her how tender He was to them that do wrong. If you only knew Him and His kindness, and how He can understand any kind of trouble. There's a good deal you think none of us can understand, but He can if you tell Him." She wiped her eyes. Jane did not seem to have heard.

"I don't want to worry you," continued Anne; "you've got a good deal to bear and to think of, and you've got to keep up for the sake of the child. He'll need you to be father and mother both. Matron thinks you'll be better here for the present, but you mustn't give up and think you're to stay in the Union all your life. But try to think of the child, and how God'll help you if you try to do the right."

It was like speaking to a person a very long way off, and Anne desisted.

"She's very quiet, isn't she?" said the Matron. "That'll have to break down soon. The doctor thinks she'll be all right when the child comes. The labour'll give her a shock and rouse her. She comes of a better class than the usual ones. It's the disgrace she can't get over. She'll do anything she's told to do. I sometimes get tired of making the other women do as they're told, but I wish sometimes she'd be a bit more like them. You'll be ready for your tea soon, won't you, Jane?" she added in the cheerful professional tone intended to deceive the sick.

"Yes, please," said Jane, without looking round.

"Here's Miss Hilton come all this way to see you," said the Matron a little more sharply. "Can't you say anything to her? you may not have so many friends come to see you as you expect, you know."

There was no echo from the abyss of misery in which Jane was sunken. She neither replied nor stirred. With the flight of Burton all hope had been killed within her; and without hope she had fallen like a bird with one wing broken. She was defenceless, and her misery laid open to all. She could only keep still, lest it should be tortured by being handled.

"You must think of the child, you know," said the Matron. "He'll depend on you altogether, and you mustn't give in like this. She doesn't care," she added to Anne as Jane still sat without a tremor of understanding. "It's a bad sign. I can't even rouse her with speaking of Burton. She's given up hope of him. It's like as if something's dead inside her. Doctor says it's shock."

"I should say it's temper," said a voice from one of the beds. "Petting and spoiling all day long." The voice came from an old woman, with a soft, withered face and infantile blue eyes.

"Now then, where did you hide that thermometer?" said the Matron, with a good-natured laugh. "You know, Miss Hilton, this old lady's a famous hand at taking anything that's about, and keeping it for herself. She doesn't call it stealing, don't you see. Why, the other day she was having her temperature taken, and when the nurse turned her head away there was no thermometer to be seen. 'What have you done with it?' she says. 'Why, I declare, I must have etten it,' says this old lady. What do you think of that?"

The old woman turned over in bed, and her innocent eyes closed with a patient expression.

"I don't know what people are allowed to come talking here for when it isn't visiting day," she said. "Nobody can go to sleep for such talking."

Anne sat down beside Jane and began to sing—

"I was a wandering sheep;
I did not love the fold."

The Matron watched with an air of curiosity. Jane did not cease staring into the fire.

"It's no use, Miss Hilton. I daresay the old lady's a bit right. There's a slice of temper in it too. But we can't waste all day over her."

Anne took Jane's hand. "I'll come and see you again in a little while," she said. "And remember, there's always One that'll hear all that you can't tell to any one else. He's with you here waiting to hear and help you." She lingered. There was no response. The Matron walked briskly towards the door.

"Well, the old ones are easier to manage," she said. She led the way downstairs and left Anne on the doorstep of the big front door. The porter shut it with a clang.

The pony was pawing the gravel outside the gate and pulling hard with his head. He backed the cart vigorously into the road as Anne untied his head, and set off at a good pace towards the town.

"I'll go up to-morrow and see Mrs Hankworth," said Anne. "She'll perhaps be able to say something to help."