Part 20 (1/2)

”Yes, ma'am,” replied Grannie solemnly; ”it is the hand that has brought me here. I was good at needlework in my day, ma'am, but 'twas writing as did it.”

”Writing! did you write much?” asked the matron.

”No, ma'am, only twice a year at the most, but even them two letters cost me sore; they brought on a disease in the hand; it is called writers' cramp. It is an awful complaint, and it has brought me here, ma'am.”

The labor matron looked very hard at Grannie. She did not understand her words, nor the expression on her brave face. Grannie by no means wore the helpless air which characterizes most old women when they come to the workhouse.

”Well,” she said, after a pause, ”hurry with your bath; you needn't have another for a fortnight; but once a fortnight you must wash here.

At your age, and with your hand so bad, you won't be expected to do any manual work at all.”

”I'd rayther, ef you please, ma'am,” said Grannie. ”I'm not accustomed to settin' idle.”

”Well, I don't see that you can do anything; that hand is quite past all use, but perhaps the doctor will take a look at it to-morrow. Now get through that bath, and I'll take you to the room where the other old women are.”

”Good Lord, keep me from thinkin' o' the past,” said Grannie when the door closed behind her.

She got through the bath and put on her workhouse dress, and felt, with a chill all through her little frame, that she had pa.s.sed suddenly from life to death. The matron came presently to fetch her.

”This way, please,” she said, in a tart voice. She had treated Grannie with just a shadow of respect as long as she wore her own nice and dainty clothes, but now that she was in the workhouse garb, she looked like any other bowed down little woman. She belonged, in short, to the failures of life. She was hurried down one or two long pa.s.sages, then through a big room, empty at present, which the matron briefly told her was the ”Able-bodied Women's Ward,” and then into another very large room, where a bright fire burnt, and where several women, perhaps fifty or sixty, were seated on benches, doing some light jobs of needlework, or pretending to read, or openly dozing away their time. They were all dressed just like Grannie, and took little or no notice when she came in. She was only one more failure, to join the failures in the room.

These old women were all half dead, and another old woman was coming to share their living grave. The matron said something hastily, and shut the door behind her. Grannie looked round; an almost wild light lit up her blue eyes for a moment, then it died out, and she went softly and quietly across the room.

”Ef you are cold, ma'am, perhaps you'll like to set by the fire,” said an old body who must have been at least ten years Grannie's senior.

”Thank you, ma'am, I'll be much obleeged,” said Grannie, and she sat down.

Her bath had, through some neglect, not been properly heated; it had chilled her, and all of a sudden she felt tired, old, and feeble, and a long s.h.i.+ver ran down her back. She held out her left hand to the blaze. A few of the most active of the women approached slowly, and either stood and looked at her, or sat down as near her as possible.

She had very lately come from life; they were most of them accustomed to death. Their hearts were feebly stirred with a kind of dim interest, but the life such as Grannie knew was dull and far off to them.

”This is a poor sort of place, ma'am,” said one of them.

Grannie roused herself with a great effort.

”Ef I begin to grumble I am lost,” she said stoutly to herself. ”Well, now, it seems to me a fine airy room,” she said. ”It is all as it strikes a body, o' course,” she added, very politely; ”but the room seems to me lofty.”

”You aint been here long, anybody can see that,” said an old woman of the name of Peters, with a sniff. ”Wait till you live here day after day, with nothin' to do, and nothin' to think of, and nothin' to hear, and nothin' to read, and, you may say, nothin' to eat.”

”Dear me,” said Grannie, ”don't they give us our meals?”

”Ef you like to _call_ 'em such,” said Mrs. Peters, with a sniff. And all the other women sniffed too. And when Mrs. Peters emphasized her condemnation of the food with a groan, all the other old women groaned in concert.

Grannie looked at them, and felt that she had crossed an impa.s.sable gulf. Never again could she be the Grannie she had been when she awoke that morning.

CHAPTER XIV.

It was bitterly cold weather when Grannie arrived at the workhouse.

Not that the workhouse itself was really cold. Its sanitary arrangements were as far as possible perfect; its heating arrangements were also fairly good. Notwithstanding the other old women's groans, the food was pa.s.sable and even nouris.h.i.+ng, and beyond the fact that there was an absence of hope over everything, there were no real hards.h.i.+ps in the great Beverley workhouse. There were a good many old women in this workhouse--in fact, two large wards full--and these were perhaps the most melancholy parts of the establishment. They slept on clean little narrow beds in a huge ward upstairs. There was a part.i.tion about eight feet high down the middle of this room. Beds stood in rows, back to back, at each side of this part.i.tion; beds stood in rows along the walls; there were narrow pa.s.sages between the long rows of beds. The room was lighted with many windows high up in the walls, and there was a huge fireplace at either end. By a curious arrangement, which could scarcely be considered indulgent, the fires in very cold weather were lit at nine o'clock in the morning, after the paupers had gone downstairs, and put out again at five in the afternoon. Why the old creatures might not have had the comfort of the fires when they were in their ward, it was difficult to say, but such was the rule of the place.

Grannie's bed was just under one of the windows, and when she went upstairs the first night, the chill, of which she had complained ever since she had taken her bath, kept her awake during the greater part of the hours of darkness. There were plenty of blankets on her little bed, but they did not seem to warm her. The fact is, there was a great chill at her heart itself. Her vitality was suddenly lowered; she was afraid of the long dreary future; afraid of all those hopeless old women; afraid of the severe cleanliness, the life hedged in with innumerable rules, the dinginess of the new existence. Her faith burned dim; her trust in G.o.d himself was even a little shaken. She wondered why such a severe punishment was sent to her; why she, who wrote so little, should get a disease brought on by writing. It seemed all incomprehensible, unfathomable, too dark for any ordinary words, or any ordinary consolation to reach.