All Sorts and Conditions of Men: An Impossible Story

"Think of the girls.

"They have no protection but a Government act forbidding more than ten hours' work. Who cares for a Government act? It is defied daily. Those who frame these acts know very well that they are powerless to maintain them; because, my friends, the power is with the people – you. If you resolve that an act shall become a law, you make it so. Everything, in the end, is by the people and through the people.

"You have done nothing for your girls – you leave them to the mercies of employers, who have got to cut down expenses to the last farthing. They are paid starvation wages. They are kept in unwholesome rooms. They are bound to the longest hours. They are oppressed with fines. The girls grow up narrow-chested, stooping, consumptive – they are used up wholesale. And what do you do for them. Nothing. There are girls and women in this hall: can any one of them here get up and say that the working-men have raised a finger for them?

"The worst charge any man can bring against you is that you care nothing for your girls.

"Why, it is only the other day that a Dressmakers' Association has been opened among you – you all know where it is. You all know what it tries to do for the girls. Yet, what single man among you has ever had the pluck to stand up for his sisters who are working in it?"

Then Harry stepped right to the edge of the platform and spread out his hands, changing his voice.

"You are good fellows," he said, "and you've given me fair play. There isn't a country in the world, except Ireland, where I could have had this fair play. Don't misunderstand me – I tell you, and I don't think you knew it before, that the time has come when the people should leave off caring much about the Government, or expecting any good thing for themselves from any government; because it can't be done in that way. You must find out for yourselves what you want, and then you must have that done. You must combine for these things as you did for wages, and you will get them. And if you spend half the energy in working for yourselves that you have spent in working for things that do you no good you will be happy indeed.

"Your politics, I say again, will do nothing for you – do you hear – nothing at all; but yours is the power. Let us repeat it again and again – all the power is yours. Try what Government can do. Send Dick Coppin into Parliament – he's a clever chap – and tell him to do what he can for you. He will do nothing. Therefore, work for yourselves, and by yourselves. Make out what you want, and resolve to have it – nobody can prevent you. The world is yours to do what you like with. Here in England, as in America, the working-man is master – provided the working-man knows what he wants. The first thing you want, I reckon, is good lodging. The second, is good food. The third is good drink – good, unadulterated beer, and plenty of it. The fourth is good and sensible education. The fifth is holiday and pleasure; and the last, which is also the first, is justice for our girls. But don't be fools. I have been among you in this club a good many times. It goes to my heart every time I come to see so many clever men and able men wasting their time in grievances which don't hurt them, when they are surrounded by a hundred grievances which they have only to perceive in order to sweep them away.

"I am a Radical, like yourselves; but I am a Social Radical. As for your political jaw, it plays the game of those who use you. Politics is a game of lying accusations and impossible promises. The accusations make you angry – the promises make you hopeful. But you get nothing in the long run; and you never will. Because – promise what they may – it is not laws or measures that will improve our lot; it is by our own resolution that it shall be improved. Hold out your hands and take the things that are offered you – everything is yours if you like to have it. You are in a beautiful garden filled with fruits, if you care to pick them; but you do not. You lie grubbing in the mud, and crying out for what will do you no good. Voices are calling to you – they offer you such a life as was never yet conceived by the lordliest House of Lords – a life full of work, and full of pleasure. But you don't hear – you are deaf. You are blind – you are ignorant."

He stopped; a hoarse shout greeted his peroration. Harry wondered for a moment if this was applause or disapproval. It was the former. Then one man rose and spoke.

"Damn him!" he cried. Yet the phrase was used in no condemnatory spirit; as when a mother addresses her boy as a naughty little rogue-pogue. "Damn him! He shall be our next member."

"No," said Harry, clapping his cousin on the shoulder, "here is your next member; Dick Coppin is your boy. He is clever – he is ambitious. Tell him what you want, and he'll get it for you if any one can. But, O men! find out what you want, and have it. Yours – yours – yours is the power. You are the masters of the world. Leave the humbug of Radicalism, and Liberalism, and Toryism. Let dead politics bury their dead – learn to look after your own interests. You are the kings and lords of humanity. The old kings and lords are no more – they are swept away! They are only shadows of the past. With you are the sceptre and the crown. You sit upon the throne, and when you know how to reign, you shall reign as never yet king was known to reign; but first find out what you want."

He lightly leaped from the platform and stepped down the hall – he had said his say, and was going. The men laughed and shouted – half angry, half pleased, but wholly astonished; and Dick Coppin, with a burning cheek, sat humiliated yet proud of his cousin.

At the door Harry met Miss Kennedy, with Captain Sorensen and Nelly.

"We have heard your speech," said Angela, with brightened eyes and glowing cheeks. "Oh, what did I tell you? You can speak, you can persuade; you can lead. What a career – what a career lies before the man who can persuade and lead!"

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE FIGUREHEADS

It was Sunday morning, after breakfast, and Harry was sitting in the boarding-house common room, silently contemplating his two fellow-boarders, Josephus and Mr. Maliphant. The circle at Bormalack's was greatly broken up. Not to speak of the loss of the illustrious pair, Daniel Fagg had now taken to live entirely among the dressmakers, except in the evenings, when their music and dancing drove him away; in fact, he regarded the place as his own, and had so far forgotten that he took his meals there by invitation as to criticise the dinners, which were always good, although plain, and to find fault with the beer, which came from Messenger's. Miss Kennedy, too, only slept at the boarding-house, though by singular forgetfulness she always paid the landlady every Saturday morning in advance for a week's board and lodging. Therefore Josephus and the old man for the most part sat in the room alone, and were excellent company, because the ill-used junior clerk never wanted to talk with anybody, and the aged carver of figureheads never wanted a listener.

Almost for the first time Harry considered this old man, the rememberer of fag-ends and middle-bits of anecdote, with something more than a passing curiosity and a sense of irritation caused by the incongruity of the creature. You know that whenever you seriously address yourself to the study of a person, however insignificant in appearance, that person assumes an importance equal to any lord. A person, you see, is an individual, or an indivisible thing. Wherefore, let us not despise our neighbor. The ancient Mr. Maliphant was a little, thin old man, with a few gray hairs left, but not many; his face was inwrapped, so to speak, in a pair of very high collars, and he wore a black silk stock, not very rusty, for he had been in the reign of the fourth George a dapper young fellow, and possessed a taste in dress beyond the lights of Limehouse. But this was in his nautical days, and before he developed his natural genius for carving ship's figureheads. He had no teeth left, and their absence greatly shortened the space between nose and chin, which produced an odd effect; he was closely shaven; his face was all covered over like an ocean with innumerable wrinkles, crows-feet, dimples, furrows, valleys, and winding watercourses, which showed like the universal smile of an accurate map. His forehead, when the original thatch was thick, must have been rather low and weak; his eyes were still bright and blue, though they wandered while he talked; when he was silent they had a far-off look; his eyebrows, as often happens with old men, had grown bushy and were joined across the bridge; when his memory failed him, which was frequently the case, they frowned almost as terribly as those of Daniel Fagg; his figure was spare and his legs thin, and he sat on one side of the chair with his feet twisted beneath it; he never did anything, except to smoke one pipe at night; he never took the least notice of anybody; when he talked, he addressed the whole company, not any individual; and he was affected by no man's happiness or suffering. He had lived so long that he had no more sympathy left; the world was nothing more to him; he had no further interest in it; he had gone beyond it and out of it; he was so old that he had not a friend left who knew him when he was young; he lived apart; he was, perforce, a hermit.

Harry remembered, looking upon this survival, that the old man had once betrayed a knowledge of his father and of the early history of the Coppin and Messenger families. He wondered now why he had not tried to get more out of him. It would be a family chronicle of small beer, but there could be nothing, probably, very disagreeable to learn about the career of the late sergeant, his father, nor anything painful about the course of the Coppins. On this Sunday morning, when the old man looked as if the cares of the week were off his mind, his memory should be fresh – clearer than on a week-day.

In the happy family of boarders, none of whom pretended to take the least interest in each other, nobody ever spoke to Mr. Maliphant, and nobody listened when he spoke, except Mrs. Bormalack, who was bound by rules of politeness, or took the least notice of his coming or his going; nobody knew how he lived or what he paid for his board and lodging, or anything else about him. Once, it was certain, he had been in the mercantile marine. Now he had a "yard;" he went to his yard every day; it was rumored that in this yard he carved figureheads all day for large sums of money; he came home in the evening in time for supper; a fragrance, as of rum and water, generally accompanied him at that time; and after a pipe and a little more grog, and a few reminiscences chopped up in bits and addressed to the room at large, the old fellow would retire for the night. A perfectly cheerful and harmless old man, yet not companionable.

"Did you know my father, Mr. Maliphant?" asked Harry, by way of opening up the conversation. "He was a sergeant, you know, in the army."

Mr. Maliphant started and looked bewildered; he had been, in imagination, somewhere off Cape Horn, and he could not get back at a moment's notice. It irritated him to have to leave his old friends.

"Your father, young gentleman?" he asked in a vexed and trembling quaver. "Did I know your father? Pray, sir, how am I to know that you ever had a father?"

"You said, the other day, that you did. Think again. My father, you know, married Caroline Coppin."

"Ay, ay – Caroline Coppin – I remember Caroline Coppin. Oh, yes, sister, she was, to Bob – when Bob was third mate of an East Indiaman; a devil of a fellow was Bob, though but a boy, and if living now, which I must misdoubt, would be but sixty or thereabouts. Everybody, young man, knew Bob Coppin," … here he relapsed into silence. When he spoke again, he carried on aloud the subject of his thoughts – "below he did his duty. Such a man, sir, was Bob Coppin."

"Thank you, Mr. Maliphant. I seem to know Bob quite well from your description. And now he's gone aloft, hasn't he? And when the word comes to pass all hands, there will be Bob with a hitch of his trousers and a kick of the left leg. But about my mother."

"Young gentleman, how am I to know that you were born with a mother? Law, law! One might as well" – Here his voice dropped again, and he finished the sentence with the silent motion of his lips.

"Caroline Coppin, you know; your old friend."

He shook his head.

"No – oh, no! I knew her when she was as high as that table. My young friend, not my old friend, she was. How could she be my old friend? She married Sergeant Goslett, and he went out to India and – and – something happened there. Perhaps he was cast away. As many get cast away in those seas."

"Is that all you can remember about her?"

"I can remember," said the old man, "a wonderful lot of things at times. You mustn't ask any man to remember all at once. Not at his best, you mustn't, and I doubt I am hardly at what you may call my tip-top ripest – yet. Wait a bit, young man; wait a bit. I've been to a many ports and carved figureheads for a many ships, and they got cast away, one after the other, but dear to memory still, and paid for. Like Sergeant Goslett. A handsome man he was, with curly brown hair, like yours, young gentleman. I remember how he sang a song in this very house when Caroline – or was it her sister? – had it, and I forget whether it was Bunker married her sister or after Caroline's baby was born, which was when the child's father was dead. A beautiful evening we had."

Caroline's baby, Harry surmised, was himself.

"Where was Caroline's baby born?" Harry asked.

"Where should he be? Why, o' course, in his mother's own house."

"Why should he be born in his mother's own house? I did not know that his mother had a house."

The old man looked at him with pity.

"Young man," he said, "you know nothing. Your ignorance is shameful."

"But why?"

"Enough said, young gentleman," replied Mr. Maliphant with dignity. "Enough said: youth should not sport with age; it doth not become gray hairs to – to – "

He did not finish the sentence, except to himself, but what he did say was something emphatic and improving, because he shook his head a good deal over it.

Presently he got up and left the room. Harry watched him getting his hat and tying his muffler about his neck. When things were quite adjusted the old man feebly tottered down the steps. Harry took his hat and followed him.

"May I walk with you, sir?" he asked.

"Surely, surely!" Mr. Maliphant was surprised. "It is an unusual thing for me to have a companion. Formerly they came – ah – all the way from Rotherhithe to – to – sing and drink with me."

"Will you take my arm?" Harry asked.

The little old man, who wore black trousers and a dress-coat out of respect of the day, but, although the month was December, no great-coat – in fact he had never worn a great-coat in all his life – was trotting along with steps which showed weakness, but manifest intention. Harry wondered where he meant to go. He took the proffered arm, however, and seemed to get on better for the support.

"Are you going to church, sir," asked Harry, when they came opposite the good old church of Stepney, with its vast acres of dead men, and heard the bells ringing.

"No, young gentleman; no, certainly not. I have more important business to look after."

He quickened his steps, and they left the church behind them.

"Church?" repeated Mr. Maliphant with severity. "When there's property to look after the bells may ring as loud as they please. Church is good for paupers and church-wardens. Where would the property be, do you think, if I were not on the spot everyday to protect it?"

He turned off the High Street into a short street of small houses neither better nor worse than the thousands of houses around: it was a cul-de-sac, and ended in a high brick wall, with a large gateway in the middle, and square stone pillars, and a ponderous pair of wooden gates, iron-bound as if they guarded things of the greatest value. There was also a small wicket beside it, which the old man carefully unlocked and opened, looking round to see that no burglars followed.

Harry saw within a tolerably large yard, in the middle of which was a little house of one room. The house was a most wonderful structure; it was built apparently of packing-cases nailed on four or eight square posts; it was furnished with a door, a window, and a chimney, all complete; it was exactly like a doll's house, only that it was rather larger, being at least six feet high and eight feet square. The house was painted green; the roof was painted red; the door blue; there was also a brass knocker; so that in other respects it was like a doll's house.

"Aha!" cried the old man, rubbing his hands and pointing to the house. "I built it, young man. That is my house, that is; I laid the foundations; I put up the walls; I painted it. And I very well remember when it was. Let me see. Mr. Messenger, who was a younger man than me by four years, married in that year, or lost his son – I forget which" – (his voice lowered, and he went on talking to himself). "Caroline's grandfather went bankrupt in the building trade; or her father perhaps, who afterward made money and left houses. And here I am still. This is my property, young gentleman, and I come here every day to execute orders. Oh! yes" – he looked about him in mild kind of doubt – "I execute orders. Perhaps the orders don't come in so thick as they did. But here I am – ready for work – always ready, and I see my old friends, too, aha! They come as thick as ever, bless you, if the orders don't. Quite a gathering in here some days." Harry shuddered, thinking who these old friends might be. "Sundays and all I come here, and they come too. A merry company!"

The garrulous old man opened the door of the little house. Harry saw that it contained a cupboard with some simple cooking utensils, and a fireplace, where the proprietor began to make a fire, and one chair, and a little table, and a rack with tools; there were also one or two pipes and a tobacco jar.

He looked about the yard. A strange place, indeed! It was adorned, or rather furnished, with great ships' figureheads, carved in wood, standing in rows and circles, some complete, some half-finished, some just begun; so that here was a Lively Peggy with rudimentary features just emerging from her native wood, and here a Saucy Sal of Wapping still clothed in oak up to her waist; and here a Neptune, his crowned head only as yet indicated, though the weather-beaten appearance of his wood showed that the time was long since he was begun; or a Father Thames, his god-like face as yet showing like a blurred dream. Or there were finished and perfect heads, painted and gilded, waiting for the purchaser who never came. They stood, or sat – whichever a head and shoulder can be said to do – with so much pride, each so rejoicing in himself, and so disdainful of his neighbor, in so haughty a silence that they seemed human and belonging to the first circles of Stepney; Harry thought, too, that they eyed him curiously, as if he might be the long-expected ship-owner come to buy a figurehead.

"Here is property, young man!" cried the old man; he had lit his fire now and came to the door, craning forward and spreading his hands, "Look at the beauties. There's truth! There's expression! Mine, young man, all mine. Hundreds – thousands of pounds here, to be protected."

"Do you come here every day?" Harry asked.

"Every day. The property must be looked after."

"And do you sit here all day by yourself?"

"Why, who else should I sit with? And a man like me never sits alone. Bless your heart, young gentleman, of a morning when I sit before the fire and smoke a pipe, this room gets full of people. They crowd in, they do. Dead people, I mean, of course. I know more dead men than living. They're the best company, after all. Bob Coppin comes, for one."

Harry began to look about, wondering whether the ghost of Bob might suddenly appear at the door. On the whole he envied the old man his company of departed friends.

"So you talk," he said; "you and the dead people?" By this time the old man had got into his chair and Harry stood in the doorway, for there really was not room for more than one in the house at the same time, to say nothing of inconveniencing and crowding the merry company of ghosts.

"You wouldn't believe," said the old man, "the talks we have nor the yarns we spin, when we're here together."

"It must be a jovial time," said Harry. "Do they drink?"

Mr. Maliphant screwed up his lips and shook his head mysteriously.

"Not of a morning," he replied, as if in the evening the old rollicking customs were still kept up.

"And you talk about old times – eh?"

"There's nothing else to talk about, as I know."

"Certainly not. Sometimes you talk about my – about Caroline Coppin's father, I suppose. I mean the one who made money, not the one who went bankrupt."

"Houses," said Mr. Maliphant; "houses it was."

"Oh!"

"Twelve houses there were, all his own. Two sons and two daughters to divide among. Bob Coppin sold his at once – Bunker bought 'em – and we drank up the money down Poplar-way, him and me and a few friends together, in a friendly and comfortable spirit. A fine time we had, I remember. Jack Coppin was in his father's trade and he lost his money; speculated, he did. Builders are a believin' people. Bunker got his houses too."

"Jack was my cousin Dick's father, I suppose," said Harry. "Go ahead, old boy. The family history is reeling on beautifully. Where did the other houses go?"

But the old man had gone off on another tack. "There were more Coppins," he said. "When I was a boy, to be a Coppin of Stepney was a thing of pride. Josephus' father was church-warden, and held up his head."

"Did he, really?"

"If I hadn't the property to look after, I would show you his tombstone in Stepney church-yard."

"That," said Harry, "would be a great happiness for me. As for Caroline Coppin, now – "

"She was a pretty maid, she was," the old man went on. "I saw her born and brought up. And she married a sojer."

"I know, and her three houses were lost, too, I suppose?"

"Why should her houses be lost, young man?" Mr. Maliphant asked with severity. "Houses don't run away. This property doesn't run away. When she died she left a baby, she did, and when the baby was took – or was stolen – or something – Bunker said those houses were his. But not lost. You can't lose a house. You may lose a figurehead." He got up and looked outside to see if his were safe. "Or a big drum. But not a house."

"Oh!" Harry started. "Bunker said the houses were his, did he?"

"Of course he did."

"And if the baby had not died, those houses would still be the property of that baby, I suppose."

But Mr. Maliphant made no reply. He was now in the full enjoyment of the intoxication produced by his morning-pipe, and was sitting in his arm-chair with his feet on the fender, disposed, apparently, for silence. Presently he began to talk, as usual, to himself. Nor could he be induced, by any leading questions, to remember anything more of the things which Harry wanted him to remember. But he let his imagination wander. Gradually the room became filled with dead people, and he was talking with them. Nor did he seem to know that Harry was with him at all.

Harry slipped quietly away, shutting the door after him, so that the old man might be left quite alone with the ghosts.

The yard, littered with wood, crowded with the figureheads, all of which seemed turning inquiring and jealous eyes upon the stranger, was silent and ghostly. Thither came the old man every day, to sit before the fire in his little red-and-green doll's house, to cook his own beefsteak for himself, to drink his glass of grog after dinner, to potter about among his carved heads, to talk to his friends the ghosts, to guard his property, and to execute the orders which never came. For the shipbuilders who had employed old Mr. Maliphant were all dead and gone, and nobody knew of his yard any more, and he had it all to himself. The tide of time had carried away all his friends and left him alone; the memory of him among active men was gone; no one took any more interest in him, and he had ceased to care for anything: to look back was his only pleasure. No one likes to die at any time, but who would wish to grow so old?