CHAPTER IV.
SOMEBODY 'PITCHED INTO.'
How do the poor manage to pull through illness? Through distress, through hunger, through cold, through nakedness; above all, through the close, unwholesome atmosphere in which too many of them are obliged to live, they struggle on from sickness back to health. Look at the children of Robert Darby. The low fever which attacked them had in some inexplicable way been subdued, without its going on to the dreaded typhus. If typhus had appeared at that untoward time in Daffodil's Delight, why, then, no earthly power could have kept many from the grave. Little pale, pinched forms, but with the disease gone, there sat Darby's children. Colder weather had come, and they had gathered round the bit of fire in their close room: fire it could scarcely be called, for it was only a few decaying embers. All sat on the floor, save Willy; he was in a chair, leaning his head back on a pillow. The boy had probably never been fitted by constitution for a prolonged life, though he might have lasted some years more under favourable surroundings; as it was, fever and privation had done their work with him, and the little spirit was nearly worn out. Mrs. Darby had taken him round to Mr. Rice. 'He does not want me, he wants good nourishment, and plenty of it,' was the apothecary's announcement! And Mrs. Darby took him home again. 'Mother, the fire's nearly out.'
'I can't help it, Willy. There's no coal, and nothing to buy it with.'—'Take something, mother.'
You may or may not, as you are acquainted or not with the habits of the poor, be aware that this sentence referred to the pawnbroker: spoken out fully it would have been, 'Take something and pledge it, mother.' In cases of long-continued general distress, the children of a family know just as much about its ways and means as the heads do. Mrs. Darby cast her eyes round the kitchen. There was nothing to take, nothing that would raise them help, to speak of. As she stood over Willy, parting the hair with her gentle finger upon his little pale brow, her tears dropped upon his face. The pillow on which his head leaned? Ay; she had thought of that with longing; but how would his poor aching head do without it? The last things put in pledge had been Darby's tools. The latch of the door opened, and Grace entered. She appeared to be in some deep distress. Flinging herself on a chair, she clasped hold of her mother, sobbing wildly, clinging to her as if for protection. 'Oh, mother, they have accused me of theft; the police have been had to me!' were the confused words that broke from her lips. Grace had taken a service in a baker's family, where there was an excessively cross mistress. She was a well-conducted, honest girl, and, since the distress had commenced at home, had brought her wages straight to her mother, whenever they were paid her. For the last week or two, the girl had brought something more. On the days when she believed she could get a minute to run home in the evening, she had put by her allowance of meat at dinner—they lived well at the baker's—and made it upon bread and potatoes. Had Grace for a moment suspected there was anything wrong or dishonest in this, she would not have done it: she deemed the meat was hers, and she took it to Willy. On this day, two good slices of mutton were cut for her; she put them by, ate her potatoes and bread, and after dinner, upon being sent on an errand past Daffodil's Delight, was taking them out with her. The mistress pounced upon her. She abused her, she reproached her with theft, she called her husband to join in the accusation; and finally, a policeman was brought in from the street, probably more to frighten the girl than to give her in charge. It did frighten her in no measured degree. She protested, as well as she could do it for her sobs, that she had no dishonest thought; that she had believed the meat to be hers to eat it or not as she pleased, and that she was going to take it to her little brother, who was dying. The policeman decided that it was not a case for charge at the police-court, and the baker's wife ended the matter by turning her out. All this, with sobs and moans, she by degrees explained now.
Robert Darby, who had entered during the scene, placed his hand, more in sorrow than in anger, upon Grace's shoulder, in his stern honesty. 'Daughter, I'd far rather we all dropped down here upon the floor and died out with starvation, than that you should have brought home what was not yours to bring.'
'There's no need for you to scold her, Robert,' spoke Mrs. Darby, with more temper than she, meek woman that she was, often betrayed: and her conscience told her that she had purposely kept these little episodes from her husband. 'It is the bits of meat she has fed him with twice or thrice a week that has just kept life in him; that's my firm belief.'
'She shouldn't have done it; it was not hers to bring,' returned Robert Darby.
'What else has he had to feed him?' proceeded the wife, determined to defend the girl. 'What do any of us have? You are getting nothing.' The tone was a reproachful one. With her starving children before her, and one of them dying, the poor mother's wrung heart could but speak out.
'I know I am getting nothing. Is it my fault? I wish I could get something. I'd work my fingers to the bone to keep my children.'
'Robert, let me speak to you,' she said in an imploring tone, the tears gushing from her eyes. 'I have sat here this week and asked myself, every hour of it, what we shall do. All our things, that money can be made on, are gone; the pittance we get allowed by the society does not keep body and soul together; and this state of affairs gets worse, and will get worse. What is to become of us? What are we to do?' Robert Darby leaned in his old jacket—one considerably the worse for wear—against the kitchen wall, his countenance gloomy, his attitude bespeaking misery. He knew not what they were to do, therefore he did not attempt to say. Grace had laid down her inflamed face upon the edge of Willy's pillow and was sobbing silently. The others sat on the floor: very quiet; as semi-starved little ones are apt to be. 'You have just said you would work your fingers to the bone to keep your children,' resumed Mrs. Darby to her husband.
'I'd work for them till the flesh dropped off me. I'd ask no better than to do it,' he vehemently said. 'But where am I to get work to do now?'
'Baxendale has got it,' she rejoined in a low tone.
Grace started from her leaning posture.
'Oh, father, do as Baxendale has done! don't let the children quite starve. If you had been in work, this dreadful thing would not have happened. It will be a slur upon me for life.'
'So I would work, girl, but for the Trades' Unions.'
'Father, the Trades' Unions seem to bring you no good; nothing but harm. Don't trust them any longer; trust the masters now.'
Never was there a better meaning man than Robert Darby; but he was too easily swayed by others. Latterly it had appeared to him that the Trades' Unions did bring him harm, and his trust in them was shaken. He stood for a few moments, revolving the question in his own mind. 'They'd cast me off, you see, the Trades' Unions would,' he observed to his wife, in an irresolute tone.
'What if they did? The masters would take you on. Stand right with the masters–'
Mrs. Darby was interrupted by a shriek from Grace. Little Willy, whom nobody had been giving attention to, was lying back with a white face, senseless. Whether from the weakness of his condition, or from the unusual excitement of the scene going on around him, certain it was that the child had fainted. There was some little bustle in bringing him to, and Mrs. Darby sat down, the boy upon her lap.
'What ailed you, deary?' said Robert Darby, bending down to him.
'I don't know, father,' returned the child. And his voice was fainter than ever.
Mrs. Darby pulled her husband's ear close to her lips. 'When the boy's dead, you'll wish you had cared for him more than for the Trades' Unions; and worked for him.'
The words told upon the man. Perhaps for the first time he had fully realized to his imagination the moment when he should see his boy lying dead before him. 'I will work,' he exclaimed. 'Willy, boy, father will go and get work; and he'll soon bring you home something good to eat, as he used to.' Willy's hot lips parted with a pleasant smile of response; his blue eyes glistened brightly. Robert Darby bent his rough, unshaven face, and took a kiss from the child's smooth one. 'Yes, my boy; father will work.'
He went out, bending his steps towards Slippery Sam's—who, by the way, had latterly tried to exact the title of 'Mr. Shuck.' There was a code of honour—as they regarded it—amidst these operatives of the Hunters, to do nothing underhanded. That is, not to resume work without first speaking to the Unions' man, Sam Shuck—as was mentioned in the case of Baxendale. It happened that Mr. Shuck was standing in the strip of garden before his house, carrying on a wordy war over the palings with Mrs. Quale, when Darby came up. Peter Quale had of course been locked out with the rest, but with the first hour that Mr. Hunter's yard was opened, Peter returned to his work. He did not belong to the Trades' Unions—he never had belonged to them and never would; therefore, he was a free man. Strange to say, he was left to do as he liked in peace; somehow the Union did not care to interfere with Peter Quale—for one thing, he occupied a better position in the yard than most of the men. Peter pursued his own course quietly—going to his work and returning from it, saying little to the malcontents of Daffodil's Delight. Not so Mrs. Quale; she exercised her tongue upon them whenever she got the chance. Her motive was a good one: she was at heart sorry for the privation at present existing in Daffodil's Delight, and would have liked to shame the men into going to work again.
'Now, Robert Darby! how are them children of your'n?' began she. 'Starved out yet?'
'Next door to it,' was Darby's answer.
'And whose is the fault?' she went on. 'If I had children, and my husband wouldn't work to keep 'em out of their graves, through getting some nasty mistaken crotchet in his head, and holding out when the work was going a-begging, I'd go before a magistrate and see if I couldn't have the law of him.'
'You'd do a good many things if you wore the breeches,' interposed Sam Shuck, with a sneer; 'but you don't, you know.'
'You be wearing whole breeches now, which you get out of the blood and marrow of the poor misguided men,' retorted Mrs. Quale. 'They won't last out whole for ever, Slippery Sam.'
'They'll last out as long as I want 'em to, I dare say,' said Sam. 'Have you come up for anything particular, Darby?'
'I have come to talk a bit, Shuck,' answered Darby, inwardly shrinking from his task, and so deferring for a minute the announcement. 'There seems no chance of this state of things coming to an end.'
'No, that there doesn't. You men are preventing that.'—'Us men!' exclaimed Robert Darby in surprise. 'What do you mean?'
'I don't mean you; I don't mean the sturdy, honest fellows who hold out for their rights like men—I mean the other lot. If every operative in the kingdom had held out, to a man, the masters would have given in long ago—they must have done it; and you would all be back, working in triumph the nine hours per day. I spoke of those rats who sneak in, and take the work, to the detriment of the honest man.'
'At any rate, the rats are getting the best of it just now,' said Robert Darby.
'That they are,' said Mrs. Quale, exultingly, who would not lose an opportunity of putting in her word. She stood facing the men, her arms resting on the palings that divided the gardens. 'It isn't their children that are dropping into their winding-sheets through want of food.'
'If I had my way, I'd hang every man who in this crisis is putting his hand to a stroke of work,' exclaimed Sam Shuck. 'Traitors! to turn and work for the masters after they had resorted to a lock-out! It was that lock-out floored us.'
'Of course it was,' assented Mrs. Quale, with marked complaisance. 'If the Union only had money coming in from the men, they'd hold out for ever. But the general lock-out stopped that.'
'Ugh!' growled Sam, with the addition of an ugly word.
'Well, Shuck, as things seem to be getting worse instead of better, and prospects look altogether so gloomy, I shall go back to work myself,' resumed Darby, plucking up courage to say it.
'Chut,' said Shuck.
'Will you tell me what I am to do? I'd rather turn a thousand miles the other way than I'd put my foot indoors at home, and see things as they are there. If a man can clam himself, he can't watch those belonging to him clam. Every farthing of allowance I had from the society last week was–'
'You had your share,' interrupted Sam, who never cared to contend about the amount received. 'Think of the thousands there is to divide it among. The subscriptions have come in very well as yet, but they be falling off now.'
'And think of the society's expenses,' interposed Mrs. Quale, with suavity. 'The scores of gentlemen, like Mr. Shuck, there is to pay, and keep on the fat of the land. He'll be going into Parliament next!'
'You shut up, will you?' roared Sam. 'Ryan,' called out he to the Irishman, who was lounging up, 'here's Darby saying he thinks he shall go to work.'
'Oh, but that would be rich,' said Ryan, with a laugh, as he entered the garden, and took his standing beside Sam Shuck. 'Darby, man, you'd never desert the society! It couldn't spare you.'
'I want to do for the best,' said Darby; 'and it seems to me that to hold out is for the worse. Shuck, just answer me a question or two, as from man to man. If the masters fill their yards with other operatives, what is to become of us?'
'They can't fill their yards with other operatives,' returned Shuck. 'Where's the use of talking nonsense?'
'But they can. They are doing it.'
'They are not. They have just got a sprinkling of men for show—not many. Where are they to get them from?'
'Do you know what I heard? That Mr. Henry Hunter has been over to Belgium, and one or two of the other masters have also been, and–'
'There's no fear of the Beljim workmen,' interrupted Ryan. 'What English master 'ud employ them half-starved frogs?'
'I heard that Mr. Henry Hunter was quite thunderstruck at their skill,' continued Darby, paying no attention to the interruption. Their tools are bad: they are not to be called tools, compared to ours; but they turn out finished work. Their decorative work is beautiful. Mr. Henry Hunter put the question to them, whether they would like to come to England and earn five-and-sixpence per day, instead of three shillings as they do there, and they jumped at it. He told them that perhaps he might be sending for them.'
'Where did you bear that fine tale?' asked Slippery Sam?'
'It's going about among us. I dare say you have heard it also, Shuck. Mr. Henry was away somewhere for nine or ten days.'
'Let 'em come, them Beljicks,' sneered Ryan. 'Maybe they'd go back with their heads off. It couldn't take much to split the skull of them French beggars.'
'Not when an Irishman holds the stick,' cried Mrs. Quale, looking the man steadily in the face, as she left the palings.
Ryan watched her away, and resumed. 'How dare the masters think of taking on forringers? Leaving us to starve!'
'The preventing of it lies with us,' said Darby. 'If we go back to work, there'll be no room for them.'
'Listen, Darby,' rejoined Shuck, in a persuasive tone of confidence, the latter in full force, now that his enemy, Mrs. Quale, had gone. 'The bone of contention is the letting us work nine hours a day instead of ten: well, why should they not accord it? Isn't there every reason why they should? Isn't there men, outsiders, willing to work a full day's work, but can't get it? This extra hour, thrown up by us, would give employment to them. Would the masters be any the worse off?'
'They say they'd be the hour's wages out of pocket.'
'Flam!' ejaculated Sam. 'It would come out of the public's pocket, not out of the masters'. They would add so much the more on to their contracts, and nobody would be the worse. It's just a dogged feeling of obstinacy that's upon 'em; it's nothing else. They'll come-to in the end, if you men will only let them; they can't help doing it. Hold out, hold out, Darby! If we are to give into them now, where has been the use of this struggle? Haven't you waited for it, and starved for it, and hoped for it?'
'Very true,' replied Darby, feeling in a perplexing maze of indecision.
'Don't give in, man, at the eleventh hour,' urged Shuck, with affectionate eloquence: and to hear him you would have thought he had nothing in the world at heart so much as the interest of Robert Darby. 'A little longer, and the victory will be ours. You see, it is not the bare fact of your going back that does the mischief, it's the example it sets. But for that scoundrel Baxendale's turning tail, you would not have thought about it.'
'I don't know that,' said Darby.
'One bad sheep will spoil a flock,' continued Sam, puffing away at a cigar which he was smoking. He would have enjoyed a pipe a great deal more; but gentlemen smoked cigars, and Sam wanted to look as much like a gentleman as he could; it had been suggested to him that it would add to his power over the operatives. 'Why, Darby, we have got it all in our own hands—if you men could but be brought to see it. It's as plain as the nose before you. Us, builders, taking us in all our branches, might be the most united and prosperous body of men in the world. Only let us pull together, and have consideration for our fellows, and put away selfishness. Binding ourselves to work on an equality, nine hours a day being the limit; eight, perhaps, after a while–'
'It's a good thing you have not got much of an audience here, Sam Shuck! That doctrine of yours is false and pernicious; its in opposition to the laws of God and man.' The interruption proceeded from Dr. Bevary. He had come into the garden unperceived by Sam, who was lounging on the side palings, his back to the gate. The doctor was on his way to pay a visit to Mary Baxendale. Sam started up. 'What did you say, sir?'
'What did I say!' repeated Dr. Bevary. 'I think it should be, what did you say? You would dare to circumscribe the means of usefulness God has given to man—to set a limit to his talents and his labour! You would say, "So far shall you work, and no farther!" Who are you, and all such as you, that you should assume such power, and set yourselves up between your fellow-men and their responsibilities?'
'Hear, hear,' interrupted Mrs. Quale, putting her head out at her window—for she had gone indoors. 'Give him a bit of truth, sir.'
'I have been a hard worker for years,' continued Dr. Bevary, paying no attention, it must be confessed, to Mrs. Quale. 'Mentally and practically I have toiled—toiled, Sam Shuck—to improve and make use of the talents entrusted to me. My days are spent in alleviating, so far as may be, the sufferings of my fellow-creatures; when I go to rest, I often lie awake half the night, pondering difficult questions of medical science. What man living has God endowed with power to come and say to me, "You shall not do this; you shall only work half your hours; you shall only earn a limited amount of fees?" Answer me.'
'It's not a parallel case, sir, with ours,' returned Sam.
'It is a parallel case,' said Dr. Bevary. 'There's your friend next door, Peter Quale; take him. By diligence he has made himself into a finished artizan; by dint of industry in working over hours, he is amassing a competence that will keep him out of the workhouse in his old age. What reason or principle of justice can there be in your saying, "He shall not do this; he shall receive no more than I do, or than Ryan, there, does? Because Ryan is an inferior workman, and I love idleness and drink and agitation better than work, Quale and others shall not work to have an advantage over us; we will share and fare alike." Out upon you, Slippery Sam, for promulgating doctrines so false! You must be the incarnation of selfishness, or you could not do it. If ever they obtain sway in free and enlightened England, the independence of the workman will be at an end.' The Doctor stepped in to Shuck's house, on his way to Mary Baxendale, leaving Sam on the gravel. Sam put his arm within Darby's, and led him down the street, out of the Doctor's way, who would be coming forth again presently. There he set himself to undo what the Doctor's words had done, and to breathe persuasive arguments into Darby's ear. Later, Darby went home. It had grown dusk then, for Sam had treated him to a glass at the Bricklayers' Arms, where sundry other friends were taking their glasses. There appeared to be a commotion in his house as he entered; his wife, Grace, and the young ones were standing round Willy.
'He has had another fainting fit,' said Mrs. Darby to her husband, in explanation. 'And now—I declare illness is the strangest thing!—he says he is hungry.' The child put out his hot hand. 'Father!' Robert Darby advanced and took it. 'Be you better, dear? What ails you this evening?'
'Father,' whispered the child, hopefully, 'have you got the work?'
'When do you begin, Robert?' asked the wife. 'To-morrow?'
Darby's eyes fell, and his face clouded. 'I can't ask for it; I can't go back to work,' he answered. 'The society won't let me.'
A great cry. A cry from the mother, from Grace, from the poor little child. Hope, sprung up once more within them, had been illumining the past few hours. 'You shall soon have food; father's going to work again, darlings,' the mother had said to the hungry little ones. And now the hopes were dashed! The disappointment was hard to bear. 'Is he to die of hunger?' exclaimed Mrs. Darby, in bitterness, pointing to Willy. 'You said you would work for him.'
'So I would, if they'd let me. I'd work the life out of me, but what I'd get a crust for ye all; but the Trades' Union won't have it,' panted Darby, his breath short with excitement. 'What am I to do?'
'Work without the Trades' Union, father,' interposed Grace, taking courage to speak. She had always been a favourite with her father. 'Baxendale has done it.'
'They are threatening Baxendale awfully,' he answered. 'But it is not that I'd care for; it's this. The society would put a mark upon me: I should be a banned man: and when this struggle's over, they say I should be let get work by neither masters nor men. My tools are in pledge, too,' he added, as if that climax must end the contest.
Mrs. Darby threw her apron over her eyes and burst into tears; Grace was already crying silently, and the boy had his imploring little hands held up. 'Robert, they are your own children!' said the wife, meekly. 'I never thought you'd see them starve.'
Another minute, and the man would have cried with them. He went out of doors, perhaps to sob his emotion away. Two or three steps down the street he encountered John Baxendale. The latter slipped five shillings into his hand. Darby would have put it back again.
'Tut, man; don't be squeamish. Take it for the children. You'd do as much for mine, if you had got it and I hadn't. Mary and I have been talking about you. She heard you having an argument with that snake, Shuck.'
'They be starving, Baxendale, or I wouldn't take it,' returned the man, the tears running down his pinched face. 'I'll pay you back with the first work I get. You call Shuck a snake; do you think he is one?'
'I'm sure of it,' said Baxendale. 'I don't know that he means ill, but can't you see the temptation it is?—all this distress and agitation that's ruining us, is making a gentleman of him. He and the other agents are living on the fat of the land, as Quale's wife calls it, and doing nothing for their pay, except keeping up the agitation. If we all went to work again quietly, where would they be? Why, they'd have to go to work also, for their pay must cease. Darby, I think the eyes of you union men must be blinded, not to see this.'
'It seems plain enough to me at times,' assented Darby. 'I say, Baxendale,' he added, wishing to speak a word of warning to his friend ere he turned away, 'have a care of yourself; they are going on again you at a fine rate.'
Come what would, Darby determined to furnish a home meal with this relief, which seemed like a very help from heaven. He bought two pounds of beef, a pound of cheese, some tea, some sugar, two loaves of bread, and a lemon to make drink for Willy. Turning home with these various treasures, he became aware that a bustle had arisen in the street. Men and women were pressing down towards one particular spot. Tongues were busy; but he could not at first obtain an insight into the cause of the commotion.
'An obnoxious man had been set upon in a lonely corner, under cover of the night's darkness, and pitched into,' was at length explained. 'Beaten to death.' Away flew Darby, a horrible suspicion at his heart. Pushing his way amidst the crowd collected round the spot, as only a resolute man can do, he stood face to face with the sight. One, trampled on and beaten, lay in the dust, his face covered with blood.
'Is it Baxendale?' shouted Darby, for he was unable to recognise him.
'It's Baxendale, as sure as a trivet. Who else should it be? He have caught it at last.'
But there were pitying faces around. Humanity revolted at the sight; and quiet, inoffensive John Baxendale, had ever been liked in Daffodil's Delight. Robert Darby, his voice rising to a shriek with emotion, held out his armful of provisions.
'Look here! I wanted to work, but the Union won't let me. My wife and children be a starving at home, one of them dying: I came out, for I couldn't bear to stop indoors in the misery. There I met a friend—it seemed to me more like an angel—and he gave me money to feed my children; made me take it; he said if I had money and he had not, I'd do as much for him. See what I bought with it: I was carrying it home for my poor children when this cry arose. Friends, the one to give it me was Baxendale. And you have murdered him!' Another great cry, even as Darby concluded, arose to break the deep stillness. No stillness is so deep as that caused by emotion.
'He is not dead!' shouted the crowd. 'See! he is stirring! Who could have done this!'