Demos

Whatever might be her secret suffering, with the little ones Emma was invariably patient and tender. However dirty they had made, themselves during the day, however much they cried when hunger made them irritable, they went to their aunt’s side with the assurance of finding gentleness in reproof and sympathy with their troubles. Yet once she was really angry. Bertie told her a deliberate untruth, and she at once discovered it. She stood silent for a few moments, looking as Bertie had never seen her look. Then she said:

‘Do you know, Bertie, that it is wrong to try and deceive?’

Then she tried to, make him understand why falsehood was evil, and as she spoke to the child her voice quivered, her breast heaved. When the little fellow was overcome, and began to sob, Emma checked herself, recollecting that she had lost sight of the offender’s age, and was using expressions which he could not understand. But the lesson was effectual. If ever the brother and sister were tempted to hide anything by a falsehood they remembered ‘Aunt Emma’s’ face, and durst not incur the danger of her severity.

So she told her stories to the humming of the machine, and when it was nearly the children’s bedtime she broke off to ask them if they would like some bread and butter. Among all the results of her poverty the bitterest to Emma was when she found herself hoping that the children would not eat much. If their appetite was poor it made her anxious about their health, yet it happened sometimes that she feared to ask them if they were hungry lest the supply of bread should fail. It was so to-night. The week’s earnings had been three shillings; the rent itself was four. But the children were as ready to eat as if they had had no tea. It went to her heart to give them each but one half-slice and tell them that they could have no more. Gladly she would have robbed herself of breakfast next morning on their account, but that she durst not do, for she had undertaken to scrub out an office in Goswell Road, and she knew that her strength would fail if she went from home fasting.

She put them to bed—they slept together on a small bedstead, which was a chair during the day—and then sat down to do some patching at a dress of Kate’s. Her face when she communed with her own thoughts was profoundly sad, but far from the weakness of self-pity. Indeed she did her best not to think of herself; she knew that to do so cost her struggles with feelings she held to be evil, resentment and woe of passion and despair. She tried to occupy herself solely with her sister and the children, planning how to make Kate more home-loving and how to find the little ones more food.

She had no companions. The girls whom she came to know in the workroom for the most part took life very easily; she could not share in their genuine merriment; she was often revolted by their way of thinking and speaking. They thought her dull; and paid no attention to her. She was glad to be relieved of the necessity of talking.

Her sister thought her hard. Kate believed that she was for ever brooding over her injury. This was not true, but a certain hardness in her character there certainly was. For her life, both of soul and body, was ascetic; she taught herself to expect, to hope for, nothing. When she was hungry she had a sort of pleasure in enduring; when weary she worked on as if by effort she could overcome the feeling. But Kate’s chief complaint against her was her determination to receive no help save in the way of opportunity to earn money. This was something more than, ordinary pride. Emma suffered intensely in the recollection that she had lived at Mutimer’s expense during the very months when he was seeking the love of another woman, and casting about for means of abandoning herself. When she thought of Alice coming with the proposal that she and her sister should still occupy the house in Wilton Square, and still receive money, the heat of shame and anger never failed to rise to her cheeks. She could never accept from anyone again a penny which she had not earned. She believed that Daniel Dabbs had been repaid, otherwise she could not have rested a moment.

It was her terrible misfortune to have feelings too refined for the position in which fate had placed her. Had she only been like those other girls in the workroom! But we are interesting in proportion to our capacity for suffering, and dignity comes of misery nobly borne.

As she sat working on Kate’s dress, she was surprised to hear a heavy step approaching. There came a knock at the door; she answered, admitting Daniel.

He looked about the room, partly from curiosity, partly through embarrassment. Dusk was falling.

‘Young ‘uns in bed?’ he said, lowering his voice.

‘Yes, they are asleep,’ Emma replied.

‘You don’t mind me coming up?’

‘Oh no!’

He went to the window and looked at the houses opposite, then at the flushed sky.

‘Bank holiday to-morrow. I thought I’d like to ask you whether you and Mrs. Clay and the children ‘ud come with me to Epping Forest. If it’s a day like this, it’ll be a nice drive—do you good. You look as if you wanted a breath of fresh air, if you don’t mind me sayin’ it.’

‘It’s very kind of you, Mr. Dabbs,’ Emma replied. ‘I am very sorry I can’t come myself, but my sister and the children perhaps—’

She could not refuse for them likewise, yet she was troubled to accept so far.

‘But why can’t you come?’ he asked good-naturedly, slapping his hat against his leg.

‘I have some work that’ll take me nearly all day.’

‘But you’ve no business to work on a bank holiday. I’m not sure as it ain’t breakin’ the law.’

He laughed, and Emma did her best to show a smile. But she said nothing.

‘But you will come, now? You can lose just the one day? It’ll do you a power o’ good. You’ll work all the better on Tuesday, now see if you don’t. Why, it ain’t worth livin’, never to get a holiday.’

‘I’m very sorry. It was very kind indeed of you to think of it, Mr. Dabbs. I really can’t come.’

He went again to the window, and thence to the children’s bedside. He bent a little and watched them breathing.

‘Bertie’s growin’ a fine little lad.’

‘Yes, indeed, he is.’

‘He’ll have to go to school soon, I s’pose—I’m afraid he gives you a good deal of trouble, that is, I mean—you know how I mean it.’

‘Oh, he is very good,’ Emma said, looking at the sleeping face affectionately.

‘Yes, yes.’

Daniel had meant something different; he saw that Emma would not understand him.

‘We see changes in life,’ he resumed, musingly. ‘Now who’d a’ thought I should end up with having more money than I. know how to use? The ‘ouse has done well for eight years now, an’ it’s likely to do well for a good many years yet, as far as I can see.’

‘I am glad to hear that,’ Emma replied constrainedly.

‘Miss Vine, I wanted you to come to Epping Forest to-morrow because I thought I should have a chance of a little talk. I don’t mean that was the only reason; it’s too bad you never get a holiday, and I should like it to a’ done you good. But I thought I might a’ found a chance o’ sayin’ something, something I’ve thought of a long time, and that’s the honest truth. I want to help you and your sister and the young ‘uns, but you most of all. I don’t like to see you livin’ such a hard life, ‘cause you deserve something better, if ever anyone did. Now will you let me help you? There’s only one way, and it’s the way I’d like best of any. The long an’ the short of it is, I want to ask you if you’ll come an’ live at the ‘ouse, come and bring Mrs. Clay an’ the children?’

Emma looked at him in surprise and felt uncertain of his meaning, though his speech had painfully prepared her with an answer.

‘I’d do my right down best to make you a good ‘usband, that I would, Emma!’ Daniel hurried on, getting flustered. ‘Perhaps I’ve been a bit too sudden? Suppose we leave it till you’ve had time to think over? It’s no good talking to you about money an’ that kind o’ thing; you’d marry a poor man as soon as a rich, if only you cared in the right way for him. I won’t sing my own praises, but I don’t think you’d find much to complain of in me. I’d never ask you to go into the bar, ‘cause I know you ain’t suited for that, and, what’s more, I’d rather you didn’t. Will you give it a thought?’

It was modest enough, and from her knowledge of the man Emma felt that he was to be trusted for more than his word. But he asked an impossible thing. She could not imagine herself consenting to marry any man, but the reasons why she could not marry Daniel Dabbs were manifold. She felt them all, but it was only needful to think of one.

Yet it was a temptation, and the hour of it might have been chosen. With a scarcity of food for the morrow, with dark fears for her sister, suffering incessantly on the children’s account, Emma might have been pardoned if she had taken the helping hand. But the temptation, though it unsteadied her brain for a moment, could never have overcome her. She would have deemed it far less a crime to go out and steal a loaf from the baker’s shop than to marry Daniel because he offered rescue from destitution.

She refused him, as gently as she could, but with firmness which left him no room for misunderstanding her. Daniel was awed by her quiet sincerity.

‘But I can wait,’ he stammered; ‘if you’d take time to think it over?’

Useless; the answer could at no time be other.

‘Well, I’ve no call to grumble,’ he said. ‘You say straight out what you mean. No woman can do fairer than that.’

His thought recurred for a moment to Alice, whose fault had been that she was ever ambiguous.

‘It’s hard to bear. I don’t think I shall ever care to marry any other woman. But you’re doin’ the right thing and the honest thing; I wish all women was like you.’

At the door he turned.

‘There’d be no harm if I take Mrs. Clay and the children, would there?’

‘I am sure they will thank you, Mr. Dabbs.’

It did not matter now that there was a clear understanding.

At a little distance from the house door Daniel found Mrs. Clay waiting.

‘No good,’ he said cheerlessly.

‘She won’t go?’

‘No. But I’ll take you and the children, if you’ll come.’

Kate did not immediately reply. A grave disappointment showed itself in her face.

‘Can’t be helped,’ Daniel replied to her look. ‘I did my best’

Kate accepted his invitation, and they arranged the hour of meeting. As she approached the house to enter, flow looking ill-tempered, a woman of her acquaintance met her. After a few minutes’ conversation they walked away together.

Emma sat up till twelve o’clock. The thought on which she was brooding was not one to make the time go lightly; it was—how much and how various evil can be wrought by a single act of treachery. And the instance in her mind was more fruitful than her knowledge allowed her to perceive.

Kate appeared shortly after midnight. She had very red cheeks and very bright eyes, and her mood was quarrelsome. She sat down on the bed and began to talk of Daniel Dabbs, as she had often done already, in a maundering way. Emma kept silence; she was beginning to undress.

‘There’s a man with money,’ said Kate, her voice getting louder; ‘money, I tell you, and you’ve only to say a word. And you won’t even be civil to him. You’ve got no feeling; you don’t care for nobody but yourself. I’ll take the children and leave you to go your own way, that’s what I’ll do!’

It was hard to make no reply, but Emma succeeded in commanding herself. The maundering talk went on for more than an hour. Then came the wretched silence of night.

Emma did not sleep. She was too wobegone to find a tear. Life stood before her in the darkness like a hideous spectre.

In the morning she told her sister that Daniel had asked her to marry him and that she had refused. It was best to have that understood. Kate heard with black brows. But even yet she knew something of shame when she remembered her return home the night before; it kept her from giving utterance to her anger.

There followed a scene such as had occurred two or three times during the past six months. Emma threw aside all her coldness, and with passionate entreaty besought her sister to draw back from the gulf’s edge whilst there was yet time. For her own sake, for the sake of Bertie and the little girl, by the memory of that dear dead one who lay in the waste cemetery!

‘Pity me, too! Think a little of me, Kate dear! You are driving me to despair.’

Kate was moved, she had not else been human. The children were looking up with frightened, wondering eyes. She hid her face and muttered promises of amendment.

Emma kissed her, and strove hard to hope.

CHAPTER XXXI

With his five hundred pounds lodged in the bank, Mutimer felt ill at ease in the lodgings in Pentonville. He began to look bout for an abode more suitable to the dignity of his position, and shortly discovered a house in Holloway, the rent twenty-eight pounds, the situation convenient for his purposes. By way of making some amends to Adela for his less than civil behaviour, he took the house and had it modestly furnished (at the cost of one hundred and ten pounds) before saying anything to her of his plans. Then, on the pretext of going to search for pleasanter lodgings, he one day took her to Holloway and led her into her own dwelling. Adela was startled, but did her best to seem grateful.

They returned to Pentonville, settled their accounts, packed their belongings, and by evening were able to sit down to a dinner cooked by their own servant—under Adela’s supervision. Mutimer purchased a couple of bottles of claret on the way home, that the first evening might be wholly cheerful. Of a sudden he had become a new man; the sullenness had passed, and he walked from room to room with much the same air of lofty satisfaction as when he first surveyed the interior of Wanley Manor. He made a show of reading in the hour before dinner, but could not keep still for more than a few minutes at a time; he wanted to handle the furniture, to survey the prospect from the windows, to walk out into the road and take a general view of the house. When their meal had begun, and the servant, instructed to wait at table, chanced to be out of the room, he remarked:

‘We’ll begin, of course, to dine at the proper time again. It’s far better, don’t you think so?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘And, by-the-by, you’ll see that Mary has a cap.’

Adela smiled.

‘Yes, I’ll see she has.’

Mary herself entered. Some impulse she did not quite understand led Adela to look at the girl in her yet capless condition. She said something which would require Mary to answer, and found herself wondering at the submissive tone, the repeated ‘Mum.’

‘Yes,’ she mused with herself, ‘she is our creature. We pay her and she must attire herself to suit our ideas of propriety. She must remember her station.’

‘What is it?’ Mutimer asked, noticing that she had again smiled.

‘Nothing.’

His pipe lit, his limbs reposing in the easy-chair, Mutimer became expansive. He requested Adela’s attention whilst he rendered a full account of all the moneys he had laid out, and made a computation of the cost of living on this basis.

‘The start once made,’ he said, ‘you see it isn’t a bit dearer than the lodgings. And the fact is, I couldn’t have done much in that hole. Now here, I feel able to go to work. It isn’t in reality spending money on ourselves, though it may look like it. You see I must have a place where people can call to see me; we’d no room before.’

He mused.

‘You’ll write and tell your mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t say anything about the money. You haven’t done yet, I suppose?’

‘No.’

‘Better not That’s our own business. You can just say you’re more comfortable. Of course,’ he added, ‘there’s no secret. I shall let people understand in time that I am carrying out the wishes of a Socialist friend. That’s simple enough. But there’s no need to talk about it just yet. I must get fairly going first.’

His face gathered light as he proceeded.

‘Ah, now I’ll do something! see if I don’t. You see, the fact of the matter is, there are some men who are cut out for leading in a movement, and I have the kind of feeling—well, for one thing, I’m readier at public speaking than most. You think so, don’t you?’

Adela was sewing together some chintzes. She kept her eyes closely on the work.

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Now the first thing I shall get done,’ her husband pursued, a little disappointed that she gave no warmer assent, ‘is that book, “My Work at New Wanley.” The Union ‘ll publish it. It ought to have a good sale in Belwick and round about there. You see I must get my name well known; that’s everything. When I’ve got that off hand, then I shall begin on the East End. I mean to make the East End my own ground. I’ll see if something can’t be done to stir ‘em up. I haven’t quite thought it out yet. There must be some way of getting them to take an interest in Socialism. Now we’ll see what can be done in twelve months. What’ll you bet me that I don’t add a thousand members to the Union in this next year?’

‘I dare say you can.’

‘There’s no “dare say” about it. I mean to! I begin to think I’ve special good luck; things always turn out right in the end. When I lost my work because I was a Socialist, then came Wanley. Now I’ve lost Wanley, and here comes five hundred a year for ten years! I wonder who that poor fellow may be? I suppose he’ll die soon, and then no doubt we shall hear his name. I only wish there were a few more like him.’

‘The East End!’ he resumed presently. ‘That’s my ground. I’ll make the East End know me as well as they know any man in England. What we want is personal influence. It’s no use asking them to get excited about a movement; they must have a man. Just the same in bourgeois politics. It isn’t Liberalism they care for; it’s Gladstone. Wait and see!’

He talked for three hours, at times as if he were already on the platform before a crowd of East Enders who were shouting, ‘Mutimer for ever!’ Adela fell into physical weariness; at length she with difficulty kept her eyes open. His language was a mere buzzing in her ears; her thoughts were far away.

‘My Work at New Wanley’ was written and published; Keene had the glory of revising the manuscript. It made a pamphlet of thirty-two pages, and was in reality an autobiography. It presented the ideal working man; the author stood as a type for ever of the noble possibilities inherent in his class. Written of course in the first person, it contained passages of monumental self-satisfaction. Adela, too, was mentioned; to her horror she found a glowing description of the work she had done among the women and children. After reading that page she threw the pamphlet aside and hid her face in her hands. She longed for the earth to cover her.

But the publication had no sale worth speaking of. A hundred copies were got rid of at the Socialist centres, and a couple of hundred more when the price was reduced from twopence to a penny. This would not satisfy Mutimer. He took the remaining three hundred off the hands of the Union and sowed them broadcast over the East End, where already he was actively at work. Then he had a thousand more struck off, and at every meeting which he held gave away numerous copies. Keene wrote to suggest that in a new edition there should be a woodcut portrait of the author on the front. Mutimer was delighted with the idea, and at once had it carried out.

Through this winter and the spring that followed he worked hard. It had become a necessity of his existence to hear his name on the lips of men, to be perpetually in evidence. Adela saw that day by day his personal vanity grew more absorbing. When he returned from a meeting he would occupy her for hours with a recitation of the speeches he had made, with a minute account of what others had said of him. He succeeded in forming a new branch of the Union in Clerkenwell, and by contributing half the rent obtained a room for meetings. In this branch he was King Mutimer.

In the meantime the suit against Rodman was carried through, it could have of course but one result. Rodman was sold up; but the profit accruing to Hubert Eldon was trifling, for the costs were paid out of the estate, and it appeared that Rodman, making hay whilst the sun shone, had spent all but the whole of his means. There remained the question whether he was making fraudulent concealments. Mutimer was morally convinced that this was the case, and would vastly have enjoyed laying his former friend by the heels for the statutable six weeks, but satisfactory proofs were not to be obtained. Through Mr. Yottle, Eldon expressed the desire that, as far as he was concerned, the matter might rest. But it was by no means with pure zeal for justice that Mutimer had proceeded thus far. He began the suit in anger, and, as is wont to be the case with litigants, grew more bitter as it went on. The selling up of Rodman’s house was an occasion of joy to him; he went about singing and whistling.

Adela marvelled that he could so entirely forget the sufferings of his sister; she had had so many proofs of his affection for Alice. In fact he was far from forgetting her, but he made strange distinction between her and her husband, and had a feeling that in doing his utmost to injure Rodman he was in a manner avenging Alice. His love for Alice was in no degree weakened, but—if the state can be understood—he was jealous of the completeness with which she had abandoned him to espouse the cause of her husband. Alice had renounced her brother; she never saw him, and declared that she never would speak to him again. And Mutimer had no fear lest she should suffer want. Rodman had a position of some kind in the City; he and his wife lived for a while in lodgings, then took a house at Wimbledon.

One of Mutimer’s greatest anxieties had been lest he should have a difficulty henceforth in supporting his mother in the old house. The economical plan would have been for Adela and himself to go and live with the old woman, but he felt that to be impossible. His mother would never become reconciled to Adela, and, if the truth must be told, he was ashamed to make known to Adela his mother’s excessive homeliness. Then again he was still estranged from the old woman. Though he often thought of what Alice had said to him on that point, month after month went by and he could not make up his mind to go to Wilton Square. Having let the greater part of her house, Mrs. Mutimer needed little pecuniary aid; once she returned money which he had sent to her ‘Arry still lived with her, and ‘Arry was a never-ending difficulty. After his appearance in the police court, he retired for a week or two into private life; that is to say, he contented himself with loafing about the streets of Hoxton and the City, and was at home by eleven o’clock nightly, perfectly sober. The character of this young man was that of a distinct class, comprising the sons of mechanics who are ruined morally by being taught to consider themselves above manual labour. Had he from the first been put to a craft, he would in all likelihood have been no worse than the ordinary English artisan—probably drinking too much and loafing on Mondays, but not sinking below the level of his fellows in the workshop. His positive fault was that shared by his brother and sister—personal vanity. It was encouraged from the beginning by immunity from the only kind of work for which he was fitted, and the undreamt-of revolution in his prospects gave fatal momentum to all his worst tendencies. Keene and Rodman successively did their best, though unintentionally, to ruin him. He was now incapable of earning his living by any continuous work. Since his return to London he had greatly extended his circle of acquaintances, which consisted of idle fellows of the same type, youths who hang about the lowest fringe of clerkdom till they definitely class themselves either with the criminal community or with those who make a living by unrecognised pursuits which at any time may chance to bring them within the clutches of the law. To use a coarse but expressive word, he was a hopeless blackguard.

Let us be just; ‘Arry had, like every other man, his better moments. He knew that he had made himself contemptible to his mother, to Richard, and to Alice, and the knowledge was so far from agreeable that it often drove him to recklessness. That was his way of doing homage to the better life; he had no power of will to resist temptation, but he could go to meet it doggedly out of sheer dissatisfaction with himself. Our social state ensures destruction to such natures; it has no help for them, no patient encouragement. Naturally he hardened himself in vicious habits. Despised by his own people, he soothed his injured vanity by winning a certain predominance among the contemptible. The fact that he had been on the point of inheriting a fortune in itself gave him standing; he told his story in public-houses and elsewhere, and relished the distinction of having such a story to tell. Even as his brother Richard could not rest unless he was prominent as an agitator, so it became a necessity to ‘Arry to lead in the gin-palace and the music-hall. He made himself the aristocrat of rowdyism.