"'Yes, yes, you needn't olloa, my lad; I'm not deaf, though I am old and grey-headed. So I can't have the pension because fifty years ago I fell in love and married a steady young man, who worked hard, and knew how to treat his wife (which 'alf you Englishmen don't), though 'e was a Frenchman? I tell you marriage don't matter; 'usbands are come-by-chance sort of people—you go a walk in the moonlight, and you kisses each other, and then, afore you're clear in your mind, you're standing at the altar, and the "better for worse" curse a-thundering over you. Ah! well, poor Alphonse didn't live long enough to get worse, and his death made me a widow indeed, and though I was only twenty-two, and plenty of men came after me, I never took none of 'em. I didn't want no nasty bigamous troubles on the Resurrection morning. Why should five years out of my seventy-two change me into a Frenchy? What counts is my father and mother, and my childhood by Helvellyn,' I says. 'I'm British-born, of British parents, on British soil. I've never stirred from my land, and I can't speak a word of nowt but English, so stop your silly talk, my lad. And then,' I says, 'if my husband made me a Frenchy, ain't I English again by my sons? (it says in the Book a woman shall be saved by child-bearing)—two of 'em in the Navy and one of 'em killed and buried at Tel-el-Kebir, and a dozen grandsons or more a-serving of Her Majesty in furrin parts—yes, I allus say "Her Majesty"; I've been used to the Queen all my life, and Kings don't seem right in England somehow.
"What stumps me is that you gone and paid a pension to that woman opposite; now, she's an alien and a foreigner if you like—can't speak a word of English as a body can understand, and she hates England—allus a-boasting about Germany and the Emperor and their army, and how they'll come and smash us to pieces—she married an Englishman, so that makes her English—'eavens, what rubbish! Why, 'e died a few years after the wedding, and she's only been here a couple of years at the most; I remember them coming quite well. So she's English, with her German tongue and her German ways, just because she belonged for a couple of years to an English corpse in the cemetery; and I, with my English birth and life and sons, am French because of my poor Alphonse rotted to dust fifty years ago. Well, England's a nice land for women, a cruel step-dame to her daughters; seems as if English girls 'ad better get theirselves born in another planet, where people can behave decent-like to them, and not make it a crime and a sin at seventy for marrying nice young men who court them at eighteen. I pray as God will send a plague of boys in the land and never a girl amongst them, so that the English people shall die out by their own wickedness, or have to mate only with furriners."
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Since this monologue was spoken the old lady has received her pension. By the order of September 1911 twenty years of widowhood cleanse from alien pollution.
"WIDOWS INDEED"
Mrs. Woods had just returned from her search after work, worn and weary after a day of walking and waiting about on an empty stomach; the Educational Committee of Whitelime had informed her that they had decided to take no deserted wives as school-scrubbers, only widows need apply. Outside she heard the voices of her children at play in the fog and mist, and remembered with dull misery that she had neither food nor firing for them, and she shuddered as she heard the language on their youthful lips; she had been brought up in the godly ways of the North-country farmhouse and the struggle against evil seemed too hard for her.
She fitted the key into the lock of her little bare room and lit the evil-smelling lamp, then she sank into a chair overpowered by deadly nausea; strange whirligigs of light flashed before her eyes, and then she collapsed on the floor in a dead faint.
When she came to herself she was sitting by a bright little fire in the next room and friendly neighbours were chafing her hands and pouring a potent spirit down her throat.