IN THE PHTHISIS WARD
Why, O my God, hast Thou forsaken Me?
Not so My mother; for behold and see,
She steadfast stands! O Father, shall it be
That she abides when Thou forsakest Me?
Three days of frost had brought the customary London fog—dense, yellow, and choking. Londoners groped their way about with set, patient faces, breaking out, however, into wild jubilation in the bowels of the earth, where the comparative purity and brightness of the atmosphere of the Tube railway seemed to rush to their heads like cheap champagne.
In the Open-air Ward of the workhouse infirmary the sufferers coughed and choked away their last strength in the poisonous atmosphere; the cold was very great, but the fever in their veins kept the patients warm, though the nurses went about blue and shivering, and on the side of the ward open to the elements the snow had drifted in, melted, and frozen again, making a perilous slide for the unwary. The sky was black as at midnight, but according to the clock the long night had ended, the long day had begun, the patients were washed, the breakfast was served, and a few, who were well enough, got up, dressed themselves, and occupied themselves with a book or paper. One man worked furiously at rug-making, his knotted fingers dragging the hanks of wool through the canvas as if his life depended on speed. By the side of the ward open to the fog lay a young man so wasted and shrunken that he looked almost like a child. When the nurse brought him his breakfast he raised his head eagerly: "Has mother come?"
"Why, Teddy, you're dreaming! Your mother has only just gone; it's morning, my dear, and she had to get back to the factory; but she'll be here again this evening, never fear. You have a mother in ten thousand, lucky boy! Now get your breakfast."
Teddy's head fell back again in apathetic indifference, and he listened forlornly to a dispute between two men who had been playing dominoes. One had accused the other of cheating, and an angry wrangle had arisen, till at length the nurse had stepped in and stopped the game.
Later on the same men began to dispute about horse-racing, and the world-renowned names of Ladas and Persimmon and Minoru, etc., figured largely.
"I tell you Persimmon was the King's 'oss, and he won the Derby in 1898. I know I'm right, because it was the year I got the Scripture Prize at Netherwood Street."
"No, that warn't till 1900, and I'll tell you why—"
"I tell you it war!"
"I tell you it warn't!"
Again the nurse intervened, and tried to distract the disputants with a copy of a newspaper, but the warfare was renewed after her back was turned, to the amusement or irritation of the sufferers.
In the farther corner of the ward a man in delirium raved and blasphemed, occasionally giving rapid character-sketches of some woman—not complimentary either to her taste or morals; then he would relapse into semi-unconsciousness and wake with a loud, agonized cry for his mother.
In the afternoon a visitor came to see Teddy Wilson. Teddy had sung in the choir and his vicar called often to visit him. Teddy had been a prize-scholar of the L.C.C. schools; from scholarship to scholarship he had passed to a lawyer's office in the City; and then one day he had begun to cough and to shiver, and the hospital to which he had been taken had seen that phthisis was galloping him to the grave. They did not keep incurable cases, and Teddy had been passed on to die in the workhouse infirmary. When Teddy found himself a pauper he had raged furiously and futilely, and the gallop to the grave went at double pace. He lifted his head eagerly when the nurse brought the clergyman to his bedside. "Has mother come?" he asked, and then fell back apathetically. Yes, he was getting better; it was only the remains of pleurisy. Would he like prayers read? Oh, yes, he didn't mind. Teddy was always docile.
Screens were fetched, and the clergyman knelt down by his bedside. The two men noisily resumed their quarrel about horse-racing in order to show their contempt for the Church, till the nurse stuck thermometers into their mouths to secure some silence.
The man in delirium raved on, cursing in picturesque variety the woman of his love and hate. All around the sick and dying coughed and choked in their agonized struggle for breath.
"Consider his contrition, accept his tears, assuage his pain.... We humbly commend the soul of this Thy servant, our dear brother, into Thy hands.... Wash it, we pray Thee, in the blood of the immaculate Lamb ... that whatsoever defilements it may have contracted in the midst of this miserable and naughty world ... it may be presented pure and without spot before Thee."
As the vicar read on silence fell upon the ward; the question of Persimmon was dropped, and even the delirious man ceased to blaspheme and lay quiet for a time. It seemed to the young priest as if the peace of God for which he had prayed had fallen upon this place of pain and terror.
Before he went he stopped for a word or a hand-shake with the patients, and settled the vexed question of Persimmon's victory.
"Fancy his knowing that!" said the first disputant. "Not so bad for a devil-dodger."
"They aren't all quite fools. There was a bloke down at Bethnal Green, a real good cricketer and sportsman; they've made him a bishop now, and as I allus says, there's bigger liars knocking about London than that there bishop."
After tea visitors began to arrive; most of the patients in the Open-air Ward were on the danger list and could see their friends at any time, and now at the close of the day fathers and mothers and wives and sweethearts were coming straight from factory and workshop to comfort their sick. Teddy Wilson, propped up with pillows, watched the door, and presently, when a frail little woman entered, the faces of both mother and son lit up with the light of joy and love ineffable.
"At last!" said Teddy. "Oh, mother, you have been long!"
"I came straight from the factory, dear. I did not even wait for a cup of tea or to get washed. Here are some grapes for you."
The grapes were best hot-house—the poor always give recklessly—and Mrs. Wilson and a bright-eyed little girl who was sweeping up scholarships and qualifying as a typist and tisica would go short of food for a week.
Ten years ago Mr. Wilson had grown weary of monogamy and had disappeared. His wife, scorning charity and the parish, had starved and fought her own way. Latterly she had found employment at the tooth factory, but food was not abundant on a weekly wage varying from seven to fifteen shillings, and the L.C.C. had worked the brains of the growing children on a diet chiefly of dry bread and tea.
Through the long night she sat by her son—the long night of agony and suffering which she was powerless to relieve—and the nurse, who was reputed a hard woman, looked at her with tearful eyes, and muttered to herself: "Thank God, I never bore a child!"
In the early hours of morning Teddy began to sing, in strange, raucous fashion, fragments of oratorios. "'My God, my God,'" sang Teddy in the recitative of Bach's Passion music, "'why hast Thou forsaken Me?' Oh, mother, don't leave me!"
The next time the nurse came round Teddy lay quiet, and his mother looked up with eyes tearless and distraught. "He has stopped coughing," she said; "I think I am glad."