In the Workhouse Christmas Day by George R. Simms. It is Christmas Day
in the workhouse, and the cold bare walls are bright with garlands of green
and holly, and the place is a pleasant sight for with clean washed hands
and faces. In a long and hungry line, the paupers sit at the
tables, for this is the hour they dine. And the guardians and their
ladies, although the wind is eased, have come in their furs and wrappers
to watch their charges feast, to smile and be condescending, put pudding on
pauper plates to be host at the workhouse banquet they've paid for with their rates.
Oh, the paupers are meek and lowly with their thank ye kindly mums.
So long as they fill their stomachs, what matter at whence it comes
but one of the old men and mutters and pushes his plate aside. Great
God, he cries, but it chokes me, for this is the day
she died. The guardians gazed in horror. The master's face went white.
Did a pauper refuse the pudding? Could their ears believe aright? Then the
ladies clutch their husbands, thinking the man would die, struck by a bolt
or something by the outraged one on high. But the pauper sat for a
moment, then rose mid a silence, grim, for the others had ceased
to chatter and trembled in every limb. He looked at the guardians ladies,
then eyeing their lords, he said, I eat not the food of villains
whose hands are foul and red, whose victims cry for vengeance from their dank,
unhallowed graves. He's drunk, said the workhouse master. Or else he's
mad and raves. Not drunk or mad, cried the pauper. But only
a hunted beast, who torn by the hounds and mangled, declines the vulture's
feast. Keep your hands off me, curse you, hear me right out
to the end. You come here to see how paupers the season of Christmas
spend. You come here to watch us feeding as they watch the captured beast.
Hear why a penniless spauper spits on your paltry feast. Do you think
I will take your bounty and let you smile and think you're doing a noble
action with the perish's meat and drink. Where's my wife, you traitors?
The poor old wife you slew yes by the God above us. My nance
was killed by you. Last winter my wife lay dying, starved in a
filthy den. I'd never been to the parish. I came to the perish.
Then I swallowed my pride in coming for ere the ruin came. I
heul up my head as a trader, and I bore a spotless name.
I came to the parish, craving break for a starving wife, bread for
the woman who'd loved me through fifty years of life. And what do you
think? They told me, mocking my awful grief, that the house was
open to us, but they wouldn't give out relief. I slunk to the
filthy alley. Twas a cold, raw Christmas Eve, and the baker's shops
were open, tempting a man to thieve. But I clenched my fists together,
holding my head awry. So I came to her empty handed and mournfully
told her why. Then I told her the house was open. She had
heard of the ways of that, for her bloodless cheeks went crimson and up
in her rags. She sat crying by the Christmas Here, John, we've
never had one apart, I think I can bear the hunger, the other
would break my heart. All through that eve I watched her holding her hand
in mine, praying the Lord, and weeping till my lips where salt is
brine. I asked her once if she hungered, And as she answered no,
the moon shone in at the window, set in a wreath of snow.
Then the room was bathed in glory, and I saw my darling's eyes
the far away look of wonder that comes when the spirit flies. And her
lips were parched and parted, and her reason came and went. For she
raved of our home in Devon, where our happiest years were spent, and
the accents long forgotten came back to the tongue once more, for she talked
like the country lassie I wooed by the Devon shore. Then she rose to
her feet and trembled, and fell on the rags and moaned, And give
me a crust. I'm famished, for the love of God, she groaned.
I rushed from the room like a madman and flew to the workhouse gate,
crying food for a dying woman. And the answer came too late.
They drove me away with curses. Then I fought with a dog in the
street, and tore from the mongol's clutches a crust he was trying to eat
back through the filthy bye lanes, back through the trampled slush, up to
the crazy garret, wrapped in an awful hush. My heart sank down at
the threshold, and I paused with a sudden thrill, for there in the
silvery moonlight, my nance lay cold and still. Up to the black and
ceiling, the sunken eyes were cast. I knew on those lips, all
bloodless, my name had been the last she called for her absent husband.
Oh God, had I but known, had called in vain and in anguish,
had died in that den alone. Yes, there, in a land
of plenty lay a loving woman dead, cruelly starved and murdered for a loaf
of the parish bread at yonder Gate last Christmas, I craved for a human
life. You who had feast us paupers, what of my murdered wife?
There? Get ye gone to your dinners. Don't mind me in the least.
Think of the happy paupers eating your Christmas feast, And when you recount
their blessings in your smug, parochial way say what you did for me too,
Only last Christmas Day. End of in the Workhouse Christmas Day by George
R. Simms