“Stop with her while I goes for help,” says the p’leeceman, and I nodded, staring all the while at the poor thing on the bed; and as soon as he had gone, I goes a tiptoe to the winder, pulls a little bill out of my bag, lays on the paste, and pops it over one of the broken panes; and then does the same by two more, which was some improvement, you know, only when I looks on the first, if it wasn’t in big letters, “Coffin!” for the “Dr” was tucked round outer sight one side, and the “s” and the “Pills” the other.
“That won’t do,” I says, and I fetches out another bill from another parcel. Nice thing that for a sick woman to see as a transparency—“Coffin!” so I pastes the other bill and sets up, but snatches it down again directly, for it was “The Dead Letter,” and there was only “The Dead” to be seen. But the next one did service, for it was “Good Words.”
“Ah!” I says, she wants some bad enough, and then I spoke and said something or another, but there was no answer; so thinking it best, I waited quietly till the p’leeceman came back, when he whispered to me as they were going to take her in a cab to the House.
“House? What house?” somebody cries all at once in a horrid cracked, hoarse voice, “No—no—no—no!” And there, sitting up in the bed, with her blue bony fingers stretched out, and her dull eyes straining, the poor thing kept motioning the p’leeceman away, and no one tried to touch her.
“Little bread—little water—that’s all;” she says again so pitifully; “Let me stay here till I’m gone, and I shan’t be long now;” and then sinking back on the bed, she closed her eyes and lay muttering, with her poor thin, bony arms stretched across her breast.
I looked at the p’leecemen, and they looked at me, and not being men much given to softness, they were about to lift the poor thing up and carry her down, only I stopped ’em, for there was something about the poor soul then as made me hold up my hand; and when they saw what I did, one of them went down to send away the cab and fetch a doctor, while me and t’other stood looking on to see the look of horror and fear go off her face, while the hands kept their place across her poor breast—to see her eyes stopping shut, then open widely for a minute, and then close again, as she lay quiet and still—gone to sleep to wake elsewhere.
P’leeceman went out werry quietly and stopped at the door, beckoning me to come, but I couldn’t see him, for I was seeing that poor woman sitting on that broken chair, close to the broken window, in the early morning, and through the long day, and right into the night, by the light of a cheap candle, stitching away at tailor’s slopwork hour after hour, to make at first 7 shillings 6 pence a week, then, as her eyes grew feebler, and the stitches less regular, six shillings—five shillings—four shillings—two shillings—nothing! for flesh and blood is cheap in London, and when one bone and gristle machine wears out, there are plenty more to take its place. Sitting there in the bitter cold wet autumn of this year, sick at heart, sick in body, weak, old, and helpless—too feeble to work, too proud to tell of her sufferings; and with the horror of the poor against the tender mercies of the parish, where the feeble sink amidst the horrors of the infirmary. Working on till she could work no more, and then, with bloodless limbs and pallid face, when work and food were given, and she took both, the strength failed, and the stomach unused to sustenance could not bear it—the lamp was going out, the flame trembling, and the oil for which it was sinking drowned out the last flickering ray.
No fiction—no tale of imagination—but true! true! true! Not in the past times, before there were visitations, and poor-law boards, and plenty of missionary enterprise, but now—now, within the past few days—in Christian England, whose wealth makes the fabled greatness of the East turn pale and shine with diminished lustre. Here—at home—in our great city—lying down to die, listening to the hurrying tramp of thousands; with help ready to come when it was too late; with coroner and jury ready to sit, and wag their sapient heads, and the twelve to smoke it in their pipes in the evening, saying, “How dreadful!” The coroner saying, too, that such things came before him weekly. And what is done to amend the misery? Where is the plaister for this hideous boil? There was no canting whine here for aid, but the act of the stricken one who knew full well that she would be told to go to the House,—than enter which she would sooner die.
“I’d have taken her a drop of brandy if I’d known how bad she was; but, poor soul, she always kep herself to herself.” God bless you for it, woman! You told me with an earnestness and truthful air that none could doubt: it was the fruition of that loving sympathy that prompts the poor to give of their little to aid distress. Where does the beggar make his harvest? Where do the canting hypocrites who trade upon sympathy fatten? Amidst the thronging streets of East and South London, finding the heart that has felt the pinchings of poverty ever ready to open in their favour. But such sad tales need veiling, ’neath the medium of fiction, and one seeks again to soften the tale.