All Sorts and Conditions of Men: An Impossible Story

After dinner they frolicked and romped, though as yet in an untaught way, until two, when they began work again.

Miss Kennedy then made them another speech.

She told them that the success of their enterprise depended in great measure upon their own industry, skill, and energy; that they were all interested in it, because they were to receive, besides their wages, a share in the profits; this they only partly understood. Nor did they comprehend her scheme much more when she went on to explain that they had the house and all the preliminary furniture found for them, so that there would be nothing, at first, to pay for rent. They had never considered the question of rent, and the thing did not go home to them. But they saw in some vague way that here was an employer of a kind very much unlike any they had ever before experienced, and they were astonished and excited.

Later on, when they might be getting tired again, they had a visitor. It was no other than Captain Sorensen. He said that by permission of Miss Kennedy he would read to them for an hour, and that, if she permitted and they liked, as he was an old man with nothing to do, he would come and read to them often.

So this astonishing day passed on.

They had tea at five, with another half-hour's rest. As the evening was so fine, it was served in the garden.

At seven they found that it was time to strike work – an hour at least earlier than at any other house. What could these things mean?

And then fresh marvels. For when the work was put away, Miss Kennedy invited them all to follow her upstairs. There she formally presented them with a room for their own use in the evening if they pleased. There was a piano in it; but, unfortunately, nobody could play. The floor was polished for dancing, but then no one could dance; and there was a table with games upon it, and magazines and illustrated papers. In this room, Miss Kennedy told them, they could sing, dance, play, read, talk, sit, or do anything else in reason, and within the limits of modest recreation. They might also, on Saturday evenings, bring their friends, brothers, and so forth, who would also be expected to behave within the limits of modesty and good breeding. In short, the place was to be a drawing-room, and Angela proposed to train the girls by example and precept into a proper feeling as regards the use of a drawing-room. There was to be no giggling, no whispering in corners, nor was there to be any horseplay. Good manners lie between horseplay on the one hand and giggling on the other.

The kind of evening proposed by their wonderful mistress struck the girls at first with a kind of stupefaction. Outside, the windows being open, they could hear the steps of those who walked, talked, and laughed on Stepney Green. They would have preferred to be among that throng of idle promenaders; it seemed to them a more beautiful thing to walk up and down the paths than to sit about in a room and be told to play. There were no young men. There was the continual presence of their employer. They were afraid of her; there was also Miss Hermitage, of whom also they were afraid; there was, in addition, Miss Sorensen, of whom they might learn to be afraid. As for Miss Kennedy, they were the more afraid of her because not only did she walk, talk, and look like a person out of another world, but, oh, wonderful! she knew nothing – evidently nothing – of their little tricks. Naturally one is afraid of a person who knows nothing of one's wicked ways. This is the awkwardness in entertaining angels. They naturally assume that their entertainers stand on the same elevated level as themselves; this causes embarrassment. Most of us, like Angela's shop-girls, would, under the circumstances, betray a tendency to giggle.

Then she tried to relieve them from their awkwardness by sitting down to the piano and playing a lively galop.

"Dance, girls," she cried.

In their early childhood, before they went to school or workshop, the girls had been accustomed to a good deal of dancing. Their ballroom was the street; their floor was the curbstone; their partners had been other little girls; their music the organ-grinder's. They danced with no step but such as came by nature, but their little feet struck true and kept good time. Now they were out of practice; they were grown big, too; they could no longer seize each other by the waist and caper round and round. Yet the music was inspiriting; eyes brightened, their heels became as light as air. Yet, alas! they did not know the steps.

Angela stopped playing and looked round her. The girls were crowded together.

Rebekah Hermitage sat apart at the table. There was that in her face which betokened disapproval, mingled with curiosity, for she had never seen a dance, and never, except on a barrel-organ, heard dance music. Nelly Sorensen stood beside the piano watching the player with the devotion which belongs to the disciple who loves the most. Whatever Miss Kennedy did was right and sweet and beautiful. Also, whatever she did filled poor Nelly with a sense of humiliation, because she herself felt so ignorant.

"Rebekah! Nelly!" cried Angela. "Can you not help me?"

Both shook their heads.

"I cannot dance," said Rebekah, trying to show a little scorn, or, at least, some disapprobation. "In our Connection we never dance."

"You never dance?" Angela forgot for the moment that she was in Stepney, and among a class of girls who do not dance. "Do you sing?"

"If any is merry," replied Rebekah, "let him sing hymns."

"Nelly, can you help me?"

She, too, shook her head. But, she said, "her father could play the fiddle. Might he come?"

Angela begged her to invite him immediately, and on her way to ask Mr. Goslett, at Mrs. Bormalack's, to bring his fiddle too. Between them they would teach the girls to dance.

Then she sat down and began to sing. First she sang, "By the Banks of Allen Water," and then "The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington," and next, "Drink to me only with thine eyes" – sweet and simple ditties all. Then came Captain Sorensen, bearing his fiddle, and happy to help, and while he played, Angela stood all the girls in a row before her, headed by Nelly, and gave them their first lesson in the giddy dance.

Then came Harry Goslett, and at the sight of his cheerful countenance and at the mere beholding how he bowed to Miss Kennedy, and asked to be allowed, and put his arm round her waist and whirled her round in a galop, their hearts were lifted up, and they longed no more for Stepney Green. Then he changed Miss Kennedy for Nelly; and though she was awkward at first, she soon fell into the step, while Miss Kennedy danced with another; and then Mr. Goslett with another, and so on till all had had a practical lesson. Then they ceased altogether to long for the jest of the gallant 'prentice; for what were jests to this manly, masterful seizure by the waist, this lifting almost off the feet, this whirl round and round to the music of the fiddle which the brave old captain played as merrily as any bo's'n's mate or quartermaster on an East Indiaman? In half an hour the feet of all but one – the one who, poor girl, was lame – felt that noble sympathy with the music so readily caught by those intelligent organs, and —they could dance. Perhaps for the first time in the annals of Stepney, her daughters had learned to dance.

The rest would be easy. They tried a quadrille, then another galop. Harry endeavored to do his duty, but there were some who remarked that he danced twice, that second galop, with Nelly Sorensen, and they were jealous. Yet it was only an unconscious tribute paid to beauty. The young fellow was among a bevy of dressmakers; an uncommon position for a man of his bringing-up. One of them, somehow, was, to all appearance, and to any but perhaps the most practised eye, a real genuine lady – not a copy at all; the other was so graceful and sweet that she seemed to want but a touch to effect the transformation. As for the other girls, they were simple young persons of the workroom and counter – a common type. So common, alas! that we are apt to forget the individuality of each, her personal hopes, and her infinite possibilities. Yet, however insignificant is the crowd, the individual is so important.

Then he was interested in the dark-eyed girl who sat by herself at the table, looking on, anxiously, at an amusement she had always heard of as "soul-destroying." She was wondering why her ears were pleased with the playing, and why her brain was filled with strange images, and why it was so pleasant to watch the girls dancing, their eyes aglow and their cheeks flushed.

"Do not tempt me," she said, when Harry ventured to invite her, too, to join the giddy throng. "Do not tempt me – no – go away!"

Her very brusqueness showed how strong was the temptation. Was she, already, giving way to the first temptation?

Presently the evening was over, the girls had all trooped noisily out of the house, and Angela, Captain Sorensen, Nelly, and the young workman were walking across the green in the direction of the Almshouse.

When Angela got home to the boarding-house the dreariness of the evening was in full blast. The boarders were sitting in silence, each wrapped in his own thoughts. The professor lifted his head as she entered the room, and regarded her with thoughtful eyes, as if appraising her worth as a clairvoyante. David Fagg scowled horribly. His lordship opened his mouth as if to speak, but said nothing. Mr. Maliphant took his pipe out of his mouth, and began a story. "I remember," he said, "the last time but one that he was ruined" – he did not state the name of the gentleman – "the whole town was on fire, and his house with them. What did he do? Mounted his horse and rode around, and bought up all the timber for twenty miles around. And see what he's worth now!" When he had told this story he relapsed into silence. Angela thought of that casual collection of unsympathetic animals put into a cage and called a "Happy Family."

CHAPTER XII.

SUNDAY AT THE EAST END

Sunday morning in and about the Whitechapel and Mile End roads Angela discovered to be a time of peculiar interest. The closing of the shops adds to the dignity of the broad thoroughfares, because it hides so many disagreeable and even humiliating things. But it by no means puts a stop to traffic, which is conducted with an ostentatious disregard of the Fourth Commandment or Christian custom. At one end, the city end, is Houndsditch, crowded with men who come to buy and sell; and while the bells of St. Botolph call upon the faithful with a clanging and clashing which ring like a cry of despair, the footpath is filled with the busy loungers, who have long since ceased to regard the invitation as having anything at all to do with them.

Strange and wonderful result of the gathering of men in great cities! It is not a French, or an English, or a German, or an American result – it is universal. In every great city of the world, below a certain level, there is no religion – men have grown dead to their higher instincts; they no longer feel the possibilities of humanity; faith brings to them no more the evidence of things unseen. They are crowded together, so that they have ceased to feel their individuality. The crowd is eternal – they are part of that eternity; if one drops out, he is not missed; nobody considers that it will be his own turn some day so to drop out. Life is nothing for ever and ever, but work in the week with as much beer and tobacco as the money will run to, and loafing on Sundays with more beer and tobacco. This, my friends, is a truly astonishing thing, and a thing unknown until this century. Perhaps, however, in ancient Rome the people had ceased to believe in their gods; perhaps, in Babylon, the sacred bricks were kicked about by the unthinking mob; perhaps, in every great city, the same loss of individual manhood may be found.

It was on a Sunday morning in August that Angela took a little journey of exploration, accompanied by the young workman who was her companion in these excursions. He led her into Houndsditch and the Minories, where she had the pleasure of inspecting the great mercantile interest of old clothes, and of gazing upon such as buy and sell therein. Then she turned her face northward, and entered upon a journey which twenty years ago would have been full of peril, and is now, to one who loves his fellow-man, full of interest.

The great boulevard of the East was thronged with the class of men who keep the Sabbath in holy laziness with tobacco. Some of them lounge, some talk, some listen, all have pipes in their mouths. Here was a circle gathered round a man who was waving his arms and shouting. He was an Apostle of Temperance; behind him stood a few of his private friends to act as a claque. The listeners seemed amused but not convinced. "They will probably," said Harry, "enjoy their dinner beer quite as much as if they had not heard this sermon." Another circle was gathered round a man in a cart, who had a flaming red flag to support him. He belonged, the flag told the world, to the Tower Hamlets Magna Charta Association. What he said was listened to with the same languid curiosity and tepid amusement. Angela stopped a moment to hear what he had to say. He was detailing, with immense energy, the particulars of some awful act of injustice committed upon a friend unknown, who got six months. The law of England is always trampling upon some innocent victim, according to this sympathizer with virtue. The working-men have heard it all before, and they continue to smoke their pipes, their blood not quickened by a single beat. The ear of the people is accustomed to vehemence; the case must be put strongly before it will listen at all; and listening, as most brawlers discover, is not conviction.

Next to the Magna Charta brethren a cheap-jack had placed his cart. He drove a roaring trade in two-penn'orths, which, out of compliment to a day which should be devoted to good works, consisted each of a bottle of sarsaparilla, which he called "sassaple," and a box of pills. Next to him the costers stood beside their carts loaded with cheap ices, ginger-beer, and lemonade – to show that there was no deception, a great glass jar stood upon each cart with actual undeniable slices of lemon floating in water and a lump of ice upon the top; there were also piles of plums, plums without end, early August apples, and windfall pears; also sweet things in foot-long lumps sticky and gruesome to look upon; Brazil nuts, also a favorite article of commerce in certain circles, though not often met with at the tables of the luxurious; late oranges, more plums, many more plums, plums in enormous quantities; and periwinkles, which last all the year round, with whelks and vinegar, and the toothsome shrimp. Then there came another circle, and in the midst stood a young man with long fair hair and large blue eyes. He was preaching the Gospel, as he understood it; his face was the face of an enthusiast: a little solitude, a little meditation among the mountains, would have made this man a seer of visions and a dreamer of dreams. He was not ridiculous, though his grammar was defective and his pronunciation had the cockney twang and his aspirates were wanting: nothing is ridiculous that is in earnest. On the right of the street they had passed the headquarters of the Salvation Army; the brave warriors were now in full blast, and the fighting, "knee-drill," singing, and storming of the enemy's fort were at their highest and most enjoyable point; Angela looked in and found an immense hall crammed with people who came to fight, or look on, to scoff, or gaze. Higher up, on the left, stands a rival in red-hot religion, the Hall of the Jubilee Singers, where another vast crowd was worshipping, exhorting, and singing.

"There seems," said Angela, "to be too much exhorting; can they not sit down somewhere in quiet for praise and prayer?"

"We working-people," replied her companion, "like everything loud and strong. If we are persuaded to take a side, we want to be always fighting on that side."

Streams of people passed them, lounging or walking with a steady purpose. The former were the indifferent and the callous, the hardened and the stupid, men to whom preachers and orators appealed in vain; to whom Peter the Hermit might have bawled himself hoarse, and Bernard would have thrown all his eloquence away; they smoked short pipes, with their hands in their pockets, and looked good-tempered; with them were boys, also smoking short pipes, with their hands in their pockets. Those who walked were young men dressed in long frock-coats of a shiny and lustrous black, who carried Bibles and prayer-books with some ostentation. They were on their way to church; with them were their sisters, for the most part well-dressed, quiet girls, to whom the noise and the crowds were a part of life – a thing not to be avoided, hardly felt as a trouble.

"I am always getting a new sensation," said Angela.

"What is the last?"

"I have just realized that there are thousands and thousands of people who never, all their lives, get to a place where they can be quiet. Always noise, always crowds, always buying and selling."

"Here, at least," said Harry, "there is no noise."

They were at the wicket-gate of the Trinity Almshouse.

"What do you think, Miss Kennedy?"

"It is a haven of rest," she replied, thinking of a certain picture. "Let us, too, seek peace awhile."

It was just eleven o'clock, and the beadsmen were going to their chapel. They entered the square, and joined the old men in their weekly service. Angela discovered, to her disappointment, that the splendid flight of steps leading to the magnificent portal was a dummy, because the real entrance to the chapel was a lowly door beneath the stone steps, suited, Mr. Bunker would have said, to the humble condition of the moneyless.

It is a plain chapel, with a small organ in the corner, a tiny altar, and over the altar the ten commandments in a black wood frame – rules of life for those whose life is well-nigh done – and a pulpit, which serves for reading the service as well as delivering the sermon. The congregation consisted of about thirty of the almsmen, with about half as many old ladies; and Angela wondered why these old ladies were all dressed in black, and all wore crape. Perhaps they desired by the use of this material to symbolize mourning for the loss of opportunities for making money; or for the days of beauty and courtship, or for children dead and gone, or to mark the humility which becomes an inmate, or to do honor to the day which is still revered by many Englishwomen as a day of humiliation and rebuke, or in the belief that crape confers dignity. We know not, we know nothing; the love which women bear for crape is a mystery; man can but speculate idly on their ways. We are like the philosopher picking up pebbles by the seaside. Among the old people sat Nelly Sorensen, a flower of youth and loveliness, in her simple black dress, and her light hair breaking out beneath her bonnet. The Catholics believe that no church is complete without a bone of some dead saint or beatified person. Angela made up her mind, on the spot, that no act of public worship is complete without the assistance of youth as well as of age.

The men were all dressed alike in blue coats and brass buttons, the uniform of the place; they seemed all, with the exception of one who was battered by time, and was fain to sit while the rest stood, to be of the same age, and that might be anything between a hearty sixty-five and a vigorous eighty. After the manner of sailors, they were all exact in the performance of their share in public worship, following the prayers in the book and the lessons in the Bible. When the time came for listening they straightened themselves out, in an attitude comfortable for listening. The Scotch elder assumes, during the sermon, the air of a hostile critic; the face of the British rustic becomes vacant; the eyes of the ordinary listener in church show that his thoughts are far away; but the expression of a sailor's face, while he is performing the duty – part of the day's duty – of listening to the sermon, shows respectful attention, although he may have heard it all before.

Angela did not listen much to the sermon: she was thinking of the old men for whom that sermon was prepared. There was a fresh color upon their faces, as if it was not so very long since their cheeks had been fanned by the strong sea-breeze; their eyes were clear, they possessed the bearing which comes of the habit of command, and they carried themselves as if they were not ashamed of their poverty. Now Bunker, Angela reflected, would have been very much ashamed, and would have hung his head in shame. But then Bunker was one of the nimble-footed hunters after money, while these ignoble persons had contented themselves with the simple and slavish record of duty done.

The service over, they were joined by Captain Sorensen and his daughter, and for half an hour walked in the quiet court behind the church, in peaceful converse. Angela walked with the old man, and Nelly with the young man. It matters little what they talked about, but it was something good, because when the Captain went home to his dinner he kissed his daughter, and said it seemed to him that it was the best day's work he ever did when he let her go to Miss Kennedy.

In the evening Angela made another journey of exploration with the same escort. They passed down Stepney Green, and plunged among the labyrinth of streets lying between the Mile End Road and the Thames. It is as unlovely a collection of houses as may be found anywhere, always excepting Hoxton, which may fairly be considered the Queen of Unloveliness. The houses in this part are small, and they are almost all of one pattern. There is no green thing to be seen; no one plants trees, there seem to be no gardens; no flowers are in the windows; there is no brightness of paint or of clean windows; there is nothing of joy, nothing to gladden the eye.

"Think," said Harry, almost in a whisper, as if in homage to the Powers of Dirt and Dreariness, "think what this people could be made if we could only carry out your scheme of the Palace of Delight."

"We could make them discontented, at least," said Angela. "Discontent must come before reform."

"We should leave them to reform themselves," said Harry. "The mistake of philanthropists is to think that they can do for people what can only be done by the people. As you said this morning, there is too much exhorting."

Presently they struck out of a street rather more dreary than its neighbors, and found themselves in a broad road with a great church.

"This is Limehouse Church," said Harry. "All round you are sailors. There is East India Dock Road. Here is West India Dock Road. There is the Foreign Sailors' Home; and we will go no farther, if you please, because the streets are all full, you perceive, of the foreign sailors and the English sailors and the sailors' friends."

Angela had seen enough of the sailors. They turned back. Harry led her through another labyrinth into another broad street, also crowded with sailors.

"This is Shadwell," said her guide; "and if there is anything in Shadwell to interest you, I do not know what it is. Survey Shadwell!"

Angela looked up the street and down the street; there was nothing for the eye in search of the beautiful or the picturesque to rest upon. But a great bawling of rough voices came from a great tent stuck up, oddly, beside the road. A white canvas sheet with black letters proclaimed this as the place of worship of the "Happy Gypsies." They were holding their Sunday Function.

"More exhorting!" said Angela.

"Now, this," he said, as they walked along, "is a more interesting place. It used to be called Ratcliffe Highway, and had the reputation of being the wickedest place in London. I dare say it was all brag, and that really it was not much worse than its neighbors."

It is a distinctly squalid street, that now called St. George's-in-the-East. But it has its points; it is picturesque, like a good many dirty places; the people are good-tempered, though they do not wash their faces even on Sundays. They have quite left off knocking down, picking pockets, kicking, and robbing the harmless stranger; they are advancing slowly toward civilization.

"Come this way," said Harry.

He passed through a narrow passage, and led the way into a place at the sight of which Angela was fain to cry out in surprise.