All Sorts and Conditions of Men: An Impossible Story

It was not unnatural, considering how much she was with Harry at this time, and how long were their talks with each other, that she should have him a great deal in her mind. For these ideas were certainly his, not hers. Newnham, she reflected humbled, had not taught her to originate. She knew that he was but a cabinet-maker by trade. Yet, when she involuntarily compared him, his talk, his manners, his bearing, with the men whom she had met, the young Dons and the undergraduates of Cambridge, the clever young fellows in society who were reported to write for the Saturday, and the Berties and the Algies of daily life, she owned to herself that in no single point did this cabinet-maker fellow compare unfavorably with any of them. He seemed as well taught as the last-made Fellow of Trinity who came to lecture on Literature and Poetry at Newnham; as cultivated as the mediæval Fellow who took Philosophy and Psychology, and was supposed to entertain ideas on religion so original as to amount to a Fifth Gospel: as quick as the most thorough-going society man who has access to studios, literary circles, musical people, and æsthetes; and as careless as any Bertie or Algie of the whole set. This it was which made her blush, because if he had been a common man, a mere Bunker, he might, with his knowledge of his class, have proved so useful a servant to her; so admirable a vizier. Now, unfortunately, she felt that she could only make him useful in this way after she had confided in him; and that to confide in him might raise dangerous thoughts in the young man's head. No: she must not confide in him.

It shows what a thoughtful young person Angela was, that she would blush all by herself only to think of danger to Harry Goslett.

She passed all that night and the whole of the next day and night in a dream over the Palace of Delight and the college for educating people in the sweet and pleasant things – the College of Art.

On the next morning a cold chill fell upon her, caused I know not how; not by the weather, which was the bright and hot weather of last July; not by any ailment of her own, because Angela owned the most perfect mechanism ever constructed by Nature; nor by any unpleasantness in the house, because, now that she had her own room, she generally breakfasted alone; nor by anything in the daily papers – which frequently, by their evil telegrams and terrifying forebodings, do poison the spring and the fountain-head of the day; nor by any letter, because the only one she had was from Constance Woodcote at Newnham, and it told the welcome news that she was appointed Mathematical Lecturer with so much a head for fees, and imploring Angela to remember her promise that she would endow Newnham with a scholarship. Endow Newnham! Why, she was going to have a brand-new college of her own, to say nothing of the high schools for boys and girls. Perhaps the cause of her depression was the appearance of Bunker, who came to tell her that he had at last found the house which would suit her. No other house in the neighborhood was in any way to compare with it; the house stood close by, at the southwest corner of Stepney Green. It was ready for occupation, the situation was as desirable as that of Tirzah the Beautiful; the rent was extremely low, considering the many advantages; all the nobility and gentry of the place, he declared, would flock around a dressmaker situated in Stepney Green itself; there were rooms for show-rooms, with plenty of other rooms and everything which would be required; finally, as if this were an additional recommendation, the house belonged to himself.

"I am ready," he said, with a winning smile, "to make a sacrifice of my own interests in order to oblige a young lady, and I will take a lower rent from you than I would from anybody else."

She went with him to "view" the house. One looks at a picture, a horse, an estate, a book, but one "views" a house. Subtle and beautiful distinction, which shows the poetry latent in the heart of every house agent! It was Bunker's own. Surely that was not the reason why it was let at double the rent of the next house, which belonged to Angela herself, nor why the tenant had to undertake all the repairs, paper, and painting, external and internal, nor why the rent began from that very day, instead of the half-quarter or the next quarter-day. Bunker himself assured Miss Kennedy that he had searched the whole neighborhood for a suitable place, but could find none so good as his own house. As for the houses of the Messenger property, they were liable, he said, to the demands of a lawyer's firm, which had no mercy on a tenant, while, as for himself, he was full of compassion, and always ready to listen to reason. He wanted no other recommendation than a year's rent paid in advance, and would undertake to execute, at the tenant's cost, the whole of the painting, papering, whitewashing, roofing, pipes, chimneys, and general work himself; "whereas, young lady," he added, "if you had taken one of those Messenger houses, you cannot tell in what hands you would have found yourself, nor what charges you would have had to pay."

He shook his fat head, and rattled his keys in his pocket. So strong is the tendency of the human mind to believe what is said, in spite of all experience to the contrary, that his victim smiled and thanked him, knowing very well that the next minute she would be angry with herself for so easily becoming a dupe to a clumsy rogue.

She thanked him for his consideration, she said, yet she was uneasily conscious that he was overreaching her in some way, and she hesitated.

"On the Green," he said. "What a position! Looking out on the garden! With such rooms! And so cheap!"

"I don't know," she replied; "I must consult some one."

"As to that," he said, "there may be another tenant; I can't keep offers open. Take it, miss, or leave it. There!"

While she still hesitated, he added one more recommendation.

"An old house it is, but solid, and will stand forever. Why, old Mr. Messenger was born here."

"Was he?" she cried, "was my – was Mr. Messenger actually born here?"

She hesitated no longer. She took the house at his own price; she accepted his terms, extortionate and grasping as they were.

When the bargain was completed – when she had promised to sign the agreement for a twelvemonth, pay a year in advance, and appoint the disinterested one her executor of repairs, she returned to Bormalack's. In the doorway, a cigarette in his mouth, lounged the idle apprentice.

"I saw you," he said, "with the benevolent Bunker. You have fallen a prey to my uncle?"

"I have taken a house from him."

"The two phrases are convertible. Those who take his houses are his victims. I hope no great mischief is done."

"Not much, I think."

The young man threw away his cigarette.

"Seriously, Miss Kennedy," he said, "my good uncle will possess himself of all the money he can get out of you. Have a care."

"He can do me no harm, thank you all the same. I wanted a house soon, and he has found me one. What does it matter if I pay a little more than I ought?"

"What does it matter?" Harry was not versed in details of trade, but he knew enough to feel that this kind of talk was unpractical. "What does it matter? My dear young lady, if you go into business, you must look after the sixpences."

Miss Kennedy looked embarrassed. She had betrayed herself, she thought. "I know – I know. But he talked me over."

"I have heard," said the practical man, looking profoundly wise, "that he who would save money must even consider that there is a difference between a guinea and a sovereign; and that he shouldn't pay a cabman more than twice his fare, and that it is wrong to pay half-a-guinea for Heidsieck Monopole when he can get Pommery and Greno at seven-and-sixpence."

Then he, too, paused abruptly, because he felt as if he had betrayed himself. What have cabinet-makers to do with Pommery and Greno? Fortunately, Angela did not hear the latter part of the speech. She was reflecting on the ease with which a crafty man – say Bunker – may compass his ends with the simple – say herself.

"I do not pretend," he said, "to know all the ropes, but I should not have allowed you to be taken in quite so readily by this good uncle. Do you know – " His eyes, when they were serious, which was not often, were really good. Angela perceived they were serious now: "Do you know that the name of the uncle who was indirectly, so to speak, connected with the Robin Redbreasts was originally Bunker? He changed it after the children were dead, and he came into the property."

"I wish you had been with me," she said simply. "But I suppose I must take my chance, as other girls do."

"Most other girls have got men to advise them. Have you no one?"

"I might have" – she was thinking of her lawyers, who were paid to advise her if required. "But I will find out things for myself."

"And at what a price! Are your pockets lined with gold, Miss Kennedy?" They certainly were, but he did not know it.

"I will try to be careful. Thank you."

"As regards going with you, I am always at your command. I will be your servant, if you will accept me as such."

This was going a step further than seemed altogether safe. Angela was hardly prepared to receive a cabinet-maker, however polite and refined he might seem, as a lover.

"I believe," she said, "that in our class of life it is customary for young people to 'keep company,' is it not?"

"It is not uncommon," he replied, with much earnestness. "The custom has even been imitated by the higher classes."

"What I mean is this, that I am not going to keep company with any one; but, if you please to help me, if I ask your advice, I shall be grateful."

"Your gratitude," he said with a smile, "ought to make any man happy!"

"Your compliments," she retorted, "will certainly kill my gratitude; and now, Mr. Goslett, don't you really think that you should try to do some work? Is it right to lounge away the days among the streets? Are your pockets, I may ask, lined with gold?"

"I am looking for work. I am hunting everywhere for work. My uncle is going to find me a workshop. Then I shall request the patronage of the nobility and gentry of Stepney, Whitechapel, and the Mile End Road. H. G. respectfully solicits a trial." He laughed as if there could be no doubt at all about the future, and as if a few years of looking around were of no importance. Then he bowed to Angela in the character of the Complete Cabinet-maker. "Orders, madame, orders executed with neatness and despatch. The highest price given for second-hand furniture."

She had got her house, however, though she was going to pay far too much for it. That was a great thing, and, as the more important schemes could not be all commenced at a moment's notice, she would begin with the lesser – her dressmaker's shop.

Here Mr. Goslett could not help her. She applied, therefore, again to Mr. Bunker, who had a registry office for situations wanted. "My terms," he said, "are five shillings on application and five shillings for each person engaged."

He did not say that he took half a crown from each person who wanted a place and five shillings on her getting the place. His ways were ways of pleasantness, and on principle he never spoke of things which might cause unpleasant remarks. Besides, no one knew the trouble he had to take in suiting people.

"I knew," he said, "that you would come back to me. People will only find out my worth when I am gone."

"I hope you will be worth a great deal, Mr. Bunker," said Angela.

"Pretty well, young lady. Pretty well. Ah! my nephews will be the gainers. But not what I might have been if it had not been for the meanness, the – the – Hunxiness of that wicked old man."

"Do you think you can find me what I want, Mr. Bunker?"

"Can I?" He turned over the leaves of a great book. "Look at this long list; all ready to better themselves. Apprentices anxious to get through their articles, and improvers to be dressmakers, and dressmakers to be forewomen, and forewomen to be mistresses. That is the way of the world, young lady. Sweet contentment, where art thou?" The pastoral simplicity of his words and attitude were inexpressibly comic.

"And how are you going to begin, Miss Kennedy?"

"Quietly at first."

"Then you'll want a matter of one or two dressmakers, and half a dozen improvers. The apprentices will come later."

"What are the general wages in this part of London?"

"The dressmakers get sixteen shillings a week; the improvers six. They bring their own dinners, and you give them their tea. But, of course, you know all that."

"Of course," said Angela, making a note of the fact, notwithstanding.

"As for one of your dressmakers, I can recommend you Rebekah Hermitage, daughter of the Rev. Percival Hermitage. She cannot get a situation, because of her father's religious opinions."

"That seems strange. What are they?"

"Why, he's minister of the Seventh-Day Independents. They've got a chapel in Redman's Row; they have their services on Saturday because, they say – and it seems true – that the Fourth Commandment has never been abolished any more than the rest of them. I wonder the bishops don't take it up. Well, there it is. On Saturdays she won't work, and on Sundays she don't like to, because the other people don't."

"Has she any religious objection," asked Angela, "to working on Monday and Tuesday?"

"No; and I'll send her over, Miss Kennedy, this evening, if you will see her. You'll get her cheap, because no one else will have her. Very good. Then there is Nelly Sorensen. I know she would like to go out, but her father is particular. Not that he's any right to be, being a pauper. If a man like me or the late Mr. Messenger, my friend, chooses to be particular, it's nothing but right. As for Captain Sorensen – why, it's the pride after the fall, instead of before it. Which makes it, to a substantial man, sickenin'."

"Who is Captain Sorensen?"

"He lives in the asylum along the Whitechapel Road, only ten minutes or so from here. Nelly Sorensen is as clever a work-woman as you will get. If I were you, Miss Kennedy, I would go and find her at home. Then you can see her work and talk to her. As for her father, keep him in his right place. Pride in an almshouse! Why, you'd hardly believe it; but I wanted to put his girl in a shop where they employ fifty hands, and he wouldn't have it, because he didn't like the character of the proprietor. Said he was a grinder and an oppressor. My answer to such is, and always will be, 'Take it or leave it.' If they won't take it, there's heaps that must. As old Mr. Messenger used to say, 'Bunker, my friend,' or 'Bunker, my only friend,' sometimes, 'Your remarks is true wisdom.' Yes, Miss Kennedy, I will go with you to show you the way." He looked at his watch. "Half-past four. I dare say it will take half an hour there and back, which with the last quarter of an hour's talk, we shall charge as an hour's time, which is half a crown. Thank you. An hour," he added, with great feeling; "an hour, like a pint of beer, cannot be divided. And on these easy terms, Miss Kennedy, you will find me always ready to work for you from sunrise to sunset, thinking of your interests, even at meals, so as not to split an hour or waste it, and to save trouble in reckoning up."

CHAPTER VII.

THE TRINITY ALMSHOUSE

From Stepney Green to the Trinity Almshouse is not a long way; you have, in fact, little more than to pass through a short street and to cross the road. But the road itself is noteworthy; for, of all the roads which lead into London or out of it, this of Whitechapel is the broadest and the noblest by nature. Man, it is true, has done little to embellish it. There are no avenues of green and spreading lime and plane trees, as, one day, there shall be; there are no stately buildings, towers, spires, miracles of architecture – but only houses and shops, which, whether small or big, are all alike mean, unlovely, and depressing. Yet, in spite of all, a noble road.

This road, which is the promenade, breathing-place, place of resort, place of gossip, place of amusement, and place of business for the greater part of East London, stretches all the way from Aldgate to Stratford, being called first Whitechapel Road, and then the Mile End Road, and then the Stratford Road. Under the first name the road has acquired a reputation of the class called, by moralists, unenviable. The history of police courts records, under the general heading of Whitechapel Road, shows so many free fights, brave robberies, gallant murders, dauntless kickings, cudgellings, pummellings, pocket-pickings, shop-liftings, watch-snatchings, and assaults on constables, with such a brave display of disorderly drunks, that the road has come to be regarded with admiration as one of those Alsatian retreats, growing every day rarer, which are beyond and above the law. It is thought to be a place where manhood and personal bravery reign supreme. Yet the road is not worthy this reputation; it has of late years become orderly; its present condition is dull and law-abiding, brilliant as the past has been, and whatever greatness may be in store for the future. Once out of Whitechapel, and within the respectable regions of Mile End, the road has always been eminently respectable; and as regards dangers, quite safe, ever since they built the bridge over the river Lea, which used now and again to have freshets, and at such times tried to drown harmless people in its ford. Since that bridge was built, in the time of Edward I., it matters not for the freshets. There is not much in the Bow Road when the stranger gets there, in his journey along this great thoroughfare, for him to visit, except its almshouses, which are many; and the beautiful old church of Bow, standing in the middle of the road, crumbling slowly away in the East End fog, with its narrow strips of crowded church-yard. One hopes that before it has quite crumbled away some one will go and make a picture of it – an etching would be the best. At Stratford the road divides, so that you may turn to the right and get to Barking, or to the left and get to Epping Forest. And all the way, for four miles, a broad and noble road, which must have been carved originally out of No Man's Land, in so generous a spirit is it laid out. Angela is now planting it with trees; beneath the trees she will set seats for those who wish to rest. Here and there she will erect drinking-fountains. Whitechapel Road, since her improvements begun, has been transformed; even the bacon shops are beginning to look a little less rusty; and the grocers are trying to live up to the green avenues.

Angela's imagination was fired by this road from the very first, when the idle apprentice took her into it as into a new and strange country. Here, for the first times she realized the meaning of the universal curse, from which only herself and a few others are unnaturally exempted; and this only under heavy penalties and the necessity of finding out their own work for themselves, or it will be the worse for them. People think it better to choose their own work. That is a great mistake. You might just as well want to choose your own disease. In the West End, a good many folk do work – and work pretty hard, some of them – who need not, unless they please; and a good many others work who must, whether they please or no: but somehow the forced labor is pushed into the background. We do not perceive its presence: people drive about in carriages, as if there were nothing to do; people lounge; people have leisure; people do not look pressed or in a hurry, or task-mastered, or told to make bricks without straw.

Here, in the East End, on the other hand, there are no strollers. All day long the place is full of passengers, hasting to and fro, pushing each other aside, with set and anxious faces, each driven by the invisible scourge of necessity which makes slaves of all mankind. Do you know that famous picture of the Israelites in Egypt? Upon the great block of stone, which the poor wretches are painfully dragging, while the cruel lash goads the weak and terrifies the strong, there sits one in authority. He regards the herd of slaves with eyes terrible from their stony gaze. What is it to him whether the feeble suffer and perish, so that the Pharaoh's will be done? The people of the East reminded Angela, who was an on-looker, and had no work to do, of these builders of pyramids: they worked under a taskmaster as relentless as that stony-hearted captain or foreman of works. If the Israelites desisted, they were flogged back to work with cats of many tails; if our workmen desist, they are flogged back by starvation.

"Let us hope," said Harry, to whom Angela imparted a portion of the above reflection and comparison – "let us hope the Pharaoh himself means well and is pitiful." He spoke without his usual flippancy, so that perhaps his remark had some meaning for himself.

All day long and all the year round there is a constant fair going on in Whitechapel Road. It is held upon the broad pavement, which was benevolently intended, no doubt, for this purpose. Here are displayed all kinds of things: bits of second-hand furniture, such as the head of a wooden bed, whose griminess is perhaps exaggerated, in order that a purchaser may expect something extraordinarily cheap. Here are lids of pots and saucepans laid out, to show that in the warehouse, of which these things are specimens, will be found the principal parts of the utensils for sale; here are unexpected things, such as rows of skates, sold cheap in summer; light clothing in winter; workmen's tools of every kind, including, perhaps, the burglarious jimmy; second-hand books – a miscellaneous collection, establishing the fact that the readers of books in Whitechapel – a feeble and scanty folk – read nothing at all except sermons and meditations among the tombs; second-hand boots and shoes; cutlery; hats and caps; rat-traps and mouse-traps and bird-cages; flowers and seeds; skittles; and frames for photographs. Cheap-jacks have their carts beside the pavement, and with strident voice proclaim the goodness of their wares, which include in this district bloaters and dried haddocks, as well as crockery. And one is amazed, seeing how the open-air fair goes on, why the shops are kept open at all.

And always the same. It saddens one, I know not why, to sit beside a river and see the water flowing down with never a pause. It saddens one still more to watch the current of human life in this great thoroughfare and feel that, as it is now, so it was a generation ago, and so it will be a generation hence. The bees in the hive die, and are replaced by others exactly like them, and the honey-making goes on merrily still. So, in a great street, the wagons always go up and down; the passengers never cease; the shopboy is always behind the counter; the work-girl is always sewing; the workman is always carrying his tools as he goes to his work; there are always those who stay for half a pint, and always those who hurry on. In this endless drama, which repeats itself like a musical box, the jeune premier of to-day becomes to-morrow the lean and slippered pantaloon. The day after to-morrow he will have disappeared, gone to join the silent ones in the grim, unlovely cemetery belonging to the Tower Hamlets, which lies beyond Stepney, and is the reason why on Sundays the "frequent funeral blackens all the road.

"One can moralize," said Harry one day, after they had been exchanging sentiments of enjoyable sadness, "at this rate forever. But it has all been done before."

"Everything, I suppose," replied Angela, "has been done before. If it has not been done by me, it is new – to me. It does not make it any better for a man who has to work all the days of his life, and gets no enjoyment out of it, and lives ignobly and dies obscurely, that the same thing happens to most people."

"We cannot help ourselves." This time it was the cabinet-maker who spoke to the dressmaker. "We belong to the crowd, and we must live with the crowd. You can't make much glory out of a mercenary lathe nor out of a dressmaker's shop, can you, Miss Kennedy?"

It was by such reminders, one to the other, that conversations of the most delightful kind, full of speculations and comparisons, were generally brought up short. When Angela remembered that she was talking to an artisan, she froze. When Harry reflected that it was a dressmaker to whom he was communicating bits of his inner soul, he checked himself. When, which happened every day, they forgot their disguises for a while, they talked quite freely, and very prettily communicated all sorts of thoughts, fancies, and opinions to each other; insomuch that once or twice a disagreeable feeling would cross the girl's mind that they were perhaps getting too near the line at which "keeping company" begins; but he was a young workman of good taste, and he never presumed.