"Just one of the usual January processions—I expect we shall see a good many before we are through."
"I guess they look ugly, anyway—see that fellow with the lantern jaw and the club? It will want a pretty big baker to stop him if he's hungry!"
"We are stopping him by food—the government must help us."
"And buy Faber's corn?" chimed in Morris, "he's about two or three hundred cargoes to sell—at a price," and he laughed as though it were the finest of jokes. Trevelle, however, was too busy with his neighbour on the footboard to say anything at all. A swarthy ruffian with a ragged crimson tie had grabbed at his watch and chain, and discovered a fifteen shilling enamelled timepiece, which annoyed him.
"A —— fine gentleman, you are—I don't fink!"and he went off, rattling the money-box, which he had dropped for the purpose of this assault.
It was an aggressive procession—long, disorganized, revolting in aspect. Men of all ages had set out upon the long march to Trafalgar Square, where they would demand of the government work or bread. You may see the same any winter; but this winter of surpassing cold had given the wolf's jowl to many who were pleasant-faced without it, and the fire of hunger shone from many eyes. A few girls of brazen mien walked by the ragged coats and occasionally danced a few steps to keep themselves warm. With them went grandfathers and grandsons; old men, whose backs were bent by the labours of distant years; mere lads looking for a row with the "coppers."
"What do those fellows think they will do?" Faber asked of Trevelle. He had seen the same kind of thing in his own country—but there, as he put it, the club of the policeman was more powerful than the brotherhood of man. Trevelle admitted that it was so. He had been three days in New York. Therefore, he knew it must be so.
"If the frost holds, they will loot the shops. They've done it before with an embryo Cabinet Minister to lead them. I tell my journalistic friends that they are going to do a finer thing than they have ever done before—they are going to help the mob to loot Bond Street. We are on the top of a volcano; we have been really, for twenty years. The wonder is that we have never discovered it before."
"Meaning to say that the volcano is now about to take a hand in it! Well, Bertie here will be onthe spot if there's any looting to be done. I guess the side-track won't see much of him."
Morris was rather flattered.
"I was up among the lakes one winter," he said, "and I saw the wolves pull down a buck. He came out of the woods like a race-horse on the straight. There were twenty snarling devils at his heels, and they had eyes like live coals. Presently one jumped at the buck's throat, and you could not have struck a match before the others had fixed their teeth in him. He bleated for about two minutes; then he was so many gnawed bones on the ice. Well, that's what I think of the social system sometimes. Let the cold get a cinch on those particular wolves, and you'll count some bones! It has got to be—hunger is going to make it so!"
No one contradicted him, for the scenes on the side-walk were too engrossing. All Whitechapel appeared to be abroad that day as though curiosity drove it out of the mean houses. Wan women stood at their doors seeking vainly for some tidings which should be carried to the famished children within. Hulking labourers took their leisure with their broad backs supported by friendly posts. Paradoxical as the thing seemed, the public-houses were beset by fierce mobs of ruffians, both sexes being fairly represented in the mêlée. By here and there some anxious philanthropist in a black coat moved amid the throngs, and spoke words of good cheer to all. There were ministers of religion whose faith knew nothing of new theology but much of bread.
Through this press, by many a filthy street, the carconveyed the strangers to their destination. This lay some way down the Commercial Road and was officially in Stepney. Long before they reached it, the increasing throngs spoke of its whereabouts. A vast mob of the hungry, the homeless, and the desperate strove to reach a square-fronted building over whose doors were written in golden letters the words "The Temple." A shabby structure of dull red brick, this day it had become a house of salvation to the multitude. And high above them, upon the topmost step of a stairway which led to its unadorned halls, stood Gabrielle Silvester speaking to the people.
She was dressed from head to foot in grey furs, and her flaxen hair showed golden beneath the round cap of silver-fox which crowned it. The excitement of her task had brought a rich flood of colour to her round girlish cheeks, and her eyes were wonderfully bright. The nation's tragedy had dowered her with a rare part, and finely she played it. All this publicity, this movement, this notoriety of charity was life to her. She worked with a method and an energy which surprised even her most intimate friends. In Stepney they had come to call her "Princess Charming"—a title taken from their halfpenny stories and apt for them. Whenever she drove, men doffed their caps, while the eyes of the women filled with tears. This very day she was feeding the people even as Christ, her Master, had fed them. And, looking on with new wonder and pleasure, was the man who knew that she was necessary to him—she and none other.
The car came within a hundred yards of the Temple and then was held up by the press. Faber called asergeant of police, and slipped a sovereign into his hand.
"Get us up to the door and there's another," he said, and immediately five sturdy policemen drove a way through the hungry throngs with shoulders hardened by such tasks. The car followed them slowly, and as it went Faber threw silver among the people. It was a mad act, for they fell upon it like wolves, and when the police had quelled the riot, two of those who had come to the Temple for bread lay stark dead upon the pavement.
III
There were two long counters running down the centre of the Temple, and between them lay piles of new crisp loaves. Many servers handed them out to whoever asked for them, and continued so to do until the day's supply was exhausted. It was a study to watch the faces of those who came for relief—cunning faces, pitiful faces, the faces of mean desire. Some of these people would go out with their bread and return immediately for more, trusting to the press to remain undiscovered. Others were given to wild words of thanks; but these were few, and in the main it would seem that natural greed dominated other thoughts.
Gabrielle shook hands with Faber a little coldly; her manner toward Trevelle was cordial; she hardly noticed Bertie Morris. A habit of authority is easily assumed by some women, and it sat upon her gracefully. With unfailing dignity, she moved amid herassistants, directing, criticising, applauding them. When the mere man ventured a word of suggestion, he perceived very plainly that he was no hero in her eyes.
"Why," Faber remarked, "have you nothing in the ticket line? Do they all come in here on the nod?"
"Absolutely. Why should we have tickets?"
"Well, I've seen one old woman stow away five loaves since I came in. Is that your idea of it?"
"Oh, we can't stoop to trifles. And we have so much to give away. Mr. Trevelle is so wonderful. He has done a beautiful thing."
"A good collector, eh? So he's doing it all?"
"Indeed, and he is. It would not last a day without him. We are coming to a time when the others will have no bread to give away. He says that we can go on for weeks and weeks."
"I shouldn't wonder. Trevelle is a bit of a hustler, anyway. I suppose you've no time to tell me the news?"
She shrugged her shoulders, almost impatient of the mere cynic who could watch all this and say nothing in its favour.
"She is much better—of course, you are thinking of Maryska? I don't think she wishes to go to Italy now."
"Then you will take that house we spoke of?"
"I will talk to you about it when all this is over. If you could only live a few weeks among these people! And they say it is but the beginning. There will be downright starvation soon. Thousands dying in the very streets."
"Just because God Almighty has sent an extra turn of winter. Well, you are doing fine things, anyway. This is better than the Temple we spoke of."
"Why is it better?"
"Because there are brains behind it. They are the only things which count in the story of great causes—brains and money. I put them in their proper order."
"Ah!" she exclaimed; "of course you think of the money."
"How can I help it? What is feeding these people? Bread! But you don't buy bread with a stone."
She smiled.
"There will be always money for those who really suffer. I count upon Mr. Trevelle for all that. He is a miracle."
And then she said:
"I suppose he has begged of you?"
He brushed the question aside.
"Trevelle knows me better. You don't come to rich men unless you have a proposition. What are all these people to me? I didn't starve them, anyway. Why should I give them money?"
She thought him quite brutal, and went away presently to speak to some of "her guests," who had nearly fallen to blows on the far side of the hall. The heaps of bread were vanishing at an alarming rate, and the sea of faces beyond the doors of the building declared its tragedies of want and hope. In many a street in Stepney and Whitechapel that day the bakers had no bread to sell. Men told you that the government were at grips with the affair, but couldany government compel men to work when they had the mind to be idle? A panic of threatened starvation drove the women to frenzy—the men to oaths. There is always hope in the meanest house; but there could be no hope if this frost endured and England were paralysed by strikes. So they fought for the gifts of the Temple, the strong triumphant, the weak to the wall.
"Guess you will have to lay on those tickets," Faber said to her when next she came round to his side of the room. She listened, now impressed by the reason of it.
"We could feed ten times the number," she said—"it is awful to turn them away!"
"Why not take your Temple across the road? I saw an empty factory as I came along; rent that, and see that each man and woman comes but once a day. Trevelle will do it for you."
She said that it must be done, and went away to speak to the unwearying aide-de-camp about it. Later on, with hardly another word to him, Faber saw her enter a plain hired carriage and drive off through the streets, followed by a howling mob whose moods were twain: gratitude on the part of some, rage and disappointment of others. She was going down to Leman Street to the children's institute there, Trevelle said; but he did not suggest that they should follow her.
"By the lord Harry! you've let me in for something!" he protested, mopping a perspiring face when Gabrielle had gone. Faber replied that he would let him in for a good deal more yet."Anyway, you're a hero in her eyes," he said—and as he said it, he reflected once more upon the meaning of that quality to women, and how far he seemed, from its possession where they were concerned.
CINDERELLA
I
Gordon Silvester's mission to the East, as he would call his work beyond Aldgate, was really a charity of ten years' standing, and one that often proved a thorn in the flesh to Gabrielle, who, at heart, had no great love for poor people.
When the memorable winter came, it was a natural thing to use the resources of this mission for the purposes of that undiscriminating charity the season required; and so we had the Temple (suggested by Rupert Trevelle and other organizations not less useful). Silvester himself went into this work with the ardour of a man of twenty. His sermons at Hampstead were masterpieces of eloquence; his labours at Stepney would have wearied a giant. The national necessity demanded heroism—there will always be many in England to answer such a call when it comes.
Gabrielle herself had been handicapped somewhat by Maryska's illness; but the child responded quickly to the devoted care bestowed upon her, and youth emerged triumphant. Her every whim gratified, as Faber dictated, she was nevertheless often alone in thelittle house now, and many were the solitary hours she spent there. Harry Lassett alone saved her from despair; and so much did she come to rely upon him, that she would send a note round by hook or by crook whenever Gabrielle went out, and sometimes when she was at home.
One of these letters went up the fifth morning after Faber's visit to the Temple. Silvester was to address a big meeting at the Mansion House upon that day, and Gabrielle to open the factory as a second centre for the distribution of bread. Maryska, who heard with impatience all this talk of things she failed utterly to understand, sulked for an hour in the lonely house, and then dispatched a letter by a friendly butcher to Harry's rooms, near the Holly Bush Inn. To her great joy, he came at once, wrapped in a monstrous fur coat and evidently amiable. This little waif from the unknown was already growing into his life, though he would have been angry had his oldest friend told him as much.
"Hallo, little Gipsy!—and what's up this morning?" he asked, as he came like a great bear into Silvester's puny dining-room. "Gipsy" was his favourite name for her, and she liked it well enough.
"Oh!" she said, "they've all gone praying again, Harry—they're not fed up with it, even yet! I'm sick of this house! Oh! I'm d——d sick of it, Harry. Won't you take me out?"
He always laughed at this trick of strong expression, caught by the child from a Bohemian father; an anathema to Gabrielle and the Reverend Gordon. Harry rather liked it, for it seemed to him somehowthat he was talking to a man when he and Maryska were alone together.
"Why, Gipsy!" he cried, taking both her hands, "you do look blue, upon my word! Where do you want to go to now? Where shall I take you if we have a spree?"
She thought upon it with a quick and serious glance aside.
"To a café!" she said at length. "Let us go and eat bouillabaisse at a café!Healways did when the drawing had tired him. Let us melt the old pot, and drink it—that's what he used to say!"
"But, Maryska! If I haven't got any money?"
She laughed at that.
"Oh!" she cried, "I've got lots! Here's a whole bank-note. Cannot we buy bouillabaisse with that, Harry?"
Harry took the bank-note and perceived with astonishment that it was for no less a sum than one hundred pounds.
"Guess Papa Faber gave you this, now, didn't he? Generous old daddy, too. Have you seen him lately, Gipsy?"
She was a little troubled by his question.
"He came—it would be many days ago. He is going to take me back to Italy. Why do you say he is generous? Was he nothisfriend?"
"Do you mean your father's? Well, but we don't always give a lot of money to the daughters of our friends—not in this country, anyway! You ought to think yourself very lucky, Maryska!"
She did not understand that.
"He is very old," she said. "Once I thought that he looked at me as other men do—as you do sometimes, Harry! It was when I first saw him at Ragusa. Then it became different! He took us to Ranovica, and I saw dreadful things. Jesus Christ, what things I saw! Oh! if you had known—but I try to forget them now.Hewould wish that—he never let me speak of yesterday."
Her eyes were very wide open and shining; the expressive face spoke of woe most piteous. And this memory of suffering affected the boy also, destitute of sentiment as he was in a general way. He stooped suddenly and kissed her warm lips.
"Never mind, Gipsy dear! You've got some jolly good friends, and old Papa Faber will see you through. I know he means to, for Gabrielle told me so. Just think of it!; one of the richest men in the world your godfather! Aren't you in luck?"
She smiled. Money, by hook or by crook, had been Louis de Paleologue's gospel; how could she forget it?
"He's in love with Gabrielle," she said, making no shadow of a resistance to his kisses, but rather lifting her lips to his, "I know it, and so does she! Why aren't you angry with them, Harry—don't you care? Doesn't it make any difference to you?"
"Oh," he said with just a touch of hardness in his voice, "I'm not going to be jealous of an old bounder like that. He's old enough to be her father. Let's go and spend some of your money, Maryska. Does the doctor say you may go?"
She made a wry grimace.
"Heused to say doctors were——But no, I mustn't tell you. I hate them! How can they know what's inside us and why we feel it? Of course I shall go! Why are you such a fool?"
He gave way with a shrug, and she went up to get her furs. It was a clear day with little wind and a fine red sun. The frost had not broken, and these two went down toward a city over which loomed the menace of a peril terrible beyond imagination. But of this the suburbs said nothing. Here and there a baker would have a flaring bill in his window; there were advertisements and appeals upon some of the hoardings, but few stopped to read them. Such idlers as gathered at the street corners had long exhausted the only topic of conversation and smoked in silence when they did not beg in companies. "Bread, for the love of God!" was the chant of gangs of impostors whose corduroys were no ornament to streets of red brick. 'Buses, trams and taxis seemed quite unaware of a crisis. The newspapers alone were hysterical. They were covered with flaring black headlines.
Harry had engaged a taxi, and he took her for a drive round Hyde Park before going on to the Savoy Café for luncheon. There were a few horsemen in the Row, but they looked cold enough, and Maryska, who had seen the Italian cavalry ride, thought but little of their performance. For the most part, the big houses in the West End were left to Jeames and his humours. It would have been unfair to the owners of these to say that panic had driven them away. They were just wintering at Cannes or Monte or Aix as they always did. Out there, the news from England seemedvery dubious; it was almost impossible to believe that such consequences had attended the severity of the winter. Here in Western London, the intensity of the cold, the relentless winds, the bitter weather taught men to incline an ear to every rumour. Perhaps even the sanest critic experienced a new sensation when he stood apart and asked himself if it were true that the sea might freeze from Calais to Dover. A menace of an unknown peril troubled all; the East End alone gave tongue to it.
They went down St. James' Street and turned into Pall Mall. Here their taxi was held up by a howling mob, indulging in the ancient and amusing pastime of breaking the windows of the clubs. Did a politician as much as show a nose at a window-pane and a shower of stones rewarded long years of salaried labour or unfeed eloquence. Was he not one of those who pocketed the profits the bakers were making?—and if he did not, was he not, at any rate, "capital in a black coat"; and where would you have a better target? The hulking youths, who rattled their money-boxes offensively in every face, cared much about beer and little about bread, but that little had become rather a grim reality these later days. They saw men, and, women, too, dying, down East of absolute starvation—the ghosts of the "might be" stood at their elbow and whispered "Better the jewellers' shops than the mortuaries." And to Bond Street they went, adding to their numbers quickly and uttering bolder threats. "Bread or death!" An odour of beer was the incense to this prayer.
Maryska regarded these gangs of loafers with inquiringeyes. She had seen nothing of the kind in any country, and they excited her contempt. When she asked Harry why none of them carried guns, his laughter seemed to her quite silly.
"The police would never let them do that in Austria," she said emphatically. "Each side would have guns and they would kill each other. The English are afraid, I think. They should not let such people be in London."
"But, Gipsy, don't you know this winter is killing them by thousands? Haven't you read it in the newspapers?"
"Oh!" she said. "He would never believe what was in the newspapers. He said it was—but you would be angry. Are we going to have bouillabaisse soon? I am dreadfully hungry; I could eat a man, truly I could."
"Then I mustn't take you where any man is. This is the Strand, the place a lot of your people come to. Do you see that sign over yonder? We are going to eat there."
"But, Harry, it's a tailor shop! Oh, you little beast! You would not take me to a tailor's shop? You can't mean to take me there!"
"Cheer up!" he said, squeezing her arm, "they cut very well," and so they drove into the courtyard, and seeing the actresses in weird furs at the door of the café, Maryska leaped down from the taxi and laughed with pleasure.
"I could kiss you if it were English," she said.
Evidently she was of the opinion that it was not English, and so no more on that point was said.
II
Her idea was still a café chantant, and the Savoy met it badly.
She had seen a number of well-dressed women in Berlin, in Madrid, and in Paris; but these, apparently, had belonged to the undesirable classes, and she could hardly believe that any showy creature in the neighbourhood of the ancient hospice of the Fratres de Monte Jovis—a fraternity unknown, may be, to the courtly Gustave—could be of any other kidney. Twenty times during the elegant repast must Harry say, "Do shut up, Gipsy!" and as often must her eyes express wonder. What had she done?
There were odd moments when the mere girl in her came out with a bang, and the boy blushed up to his ears. She laughed uproariously at two waiters who cannoned each other off the soup, and when a clumsy fellow dropped her box of chocolates on the floor, she was after it in a twinkling and down on her paws like a cat. This was a depressing interlude which alarmed her conventional cavalier. Harry hated "scenes" with the distaste habitual to the Englishman of strait laced manners.
He forbade her to smoke, moreover, and that was a grievance. She had smoked cigarettes since she could remember anything at all, and were not other women, especially the daughter-in-law of a personage famous in great circles, were not they smoking? Maryska knew nothing about palaces, but much about tobacco, and this was a question which nearly led to the resignation of the Cabinet.
"I shall tell the waiter to bring me a cigar," she exclaimed at last, resting her pretty face upon her clasped hands and dealing him out a look which was feline in its intensity. Harry gave up the contest at that and ordered her a little box of Russian cigarettes upon the spot.
"What would Mr. Silvester say?" he asked her. He might as well have talked of the weather.
"I don't care a ——, and if you provoke me, I will say it. Am I a little, little child that the priests shall beat me? Give me a liqueur, and I will call you a good boy. If you do not, I will go away."
He did not wish her to go away, and he gave her the liqueur. When, at length, he escaped, she besought him to take her to "the café chantant," and for very importunity they went over to the Coliseum. Here both theConnaisseuseand the child were in evidence. She called the echo of a tenor "a beast," was dreadfully bored by a comic sketch, but enraptured by the "plate-breakers." When a Russiandanseuseappeared, her eyes sparkled, and all her body swayed to the rhythm of the graceful movements. She would like to be a dancer—she said so.
"When I leave the Silvesters, I will come to the man who owns this theatre, and ask him to let me dance. How much will he give me for that, Harry?"
He was watching the Russian when she spoke, and hardly noticed it—but she persisted, and would be heard.
"I used to dance forhim, sometimes—after we had been to the cafés together. He played the fiddle—oh, so badly!—and he said I was born to it. Why shouldI not dance when those Silvester people are tired of me?"
The man said, "Oh, rot!"—but chancing to look at her presently, he was startled to see the expression upon her face, and the evidences of an ecstasy she could not conceal. The music had entered into her very soul. She bent to it; seemed to suffer a trance because of it, while her eyes watched the scene as though this were a house of visions. Harry Lassett wondered; she was, indeed, an extraordinary child. When the ballet was over, and they were in the cab again, he told her so.
"What about this dancing nonsense? Did you say your father put it into your head?"
"I used to dance for him—very well,hesaid. I would like to be that woman, Harry! The Russian one, with the diamonds in her hair."
"Don't be a fool, Maryska! She's been dancing ever since she was four, I suppose. I expect she's got a husband who drinks champagne and thrashes her with a horse-whip. If you tried that game, they'd laugh at you."
She leaned back upon the cushions of the cab, and looked straight before her.
"No one laughs when I try to do things. I know what I am saying. I could dance as well as the Russian woman, and they would give me a lot of money. Why should I not do it? I have no one who cares for me! Mr. Faber is going to America—the Silvesters do not like me because I am tired of praying. There, I shall come to the theatre, and they will keep me."
Harry was not a sentimentalist, very far from it;but the restrained dolour of this confession made a curious appeal to him, while, at the same time, the childishness of it exasperated him. Was she not in reality one of the most fortunate women in London that day? Her failure to realise what John Faber's friendship meant was incomprehensible, and yet it could not be disputed that she did fail to realise it.
"Look here, Maryska!" he said emphatically, "you don't want me to be angry with you, do you, now?"
"No," she said very quickly, "not you, Harry." And she laid her hand in his. He did not repulse her, but went on with the argument.
"If you don't want me to be angry, talk sense! Faber has adopted you, and he is one of the richest men in the world. Very well, you'll never want for anything on this planet. You're going into life on a good pitch, and the bowling is bilge. I expect they'll speak of you as a famous heiress presently, and half the men in London be after you! What's the good of romancing, then, or pretending you don't understand? I'm sure you understand just as well as I do—and if it were me, I'd knock up a century, certain! Don't you think you're rather foolish, little Gipsy?"
She shook her head, and put her arms about him in a gesture she could not control.
"No," she said, "I am very lonely, Harry!"—and she spoke no other word until the cab drove up to the house in Well Walk.
III
These excursions were no secrets between a boy and a girl, and Maryska would recite every detail of themupon her return to Hampstead. She was spared the necessity upon this occasion by the appearance in the road of another taxi, bringing Silvester and Gabrielle from Stepney. The four met upon the pavement, and immediately fell to a narrative of events. So much had been done, Gabrielle said; it had been a day of triumphs, and they had been achieved by Rupert Trevelle in the face of great odds.
Harry looked at his fiancée while she was talking of her success, and he could not but realise that the recent days had changed her greatly. She had won dignity, he thought, and a new outlook upon life, which could not be a transient influence. There was in her manner towards him a sense of superiority, which the inferior intellect resented; while her good-natured badinage upon his "holiday" suggested anew his inability to play any serious part in the grave affairs which now occupied her. But, beyond this, was her utter indifference to his attempts to make her jealous, and he knew that she hardly listened to him when he spoke of Maryska and the theatre.
"She wants to be a dancer! Oh! every child wants to be that some time or other. Were you not going to be an engine-driver yourself when you were seven? You told me so."
"Yes, but she's a jolly lot more than seven, and if you don't look out, she'll catch and bowl the three of you."
"My dear Harry, that is nonsense. Are you going skating to-night?"
"Yes, if you are coming."
"I can't. Mr. Trevelle is going to dine with us."
"What! hasn't he done talking yet? Someone ought to take away the key. That man is wound up!"
"At any rate, he is the life and soul of things. He's got nearly twenty thousand pounds for us in five days."
"I'll have to borrow a monkey of him. Is your tame millionaire coming also? They say in the papers that he's been sent for by the Cabinet! Is he going to sell some of his wheat cheap, or what?"
Gabrielle froze perceptibly.
"I have seen very little of Mr. Faber. It is not to be supposed that he is interested in what we do. They say he is going to America from Queenstown. All the steamers are to sail from there next week."
"If the strike lets them! Is Maryska going with him?"
"I don't think so; we are to have charge of her. Won't you come in, or must you go? I am perishing here!"
"Oh!" he said with chagrin, "I must go, as usual"—and he lurched off down the street without even offering his hand to her.
The truth was that he was angry both with himself and with her. Brief as their odd engagement had been, he knew that it had been a great mistake. He felt vaguely that his brains were no match for hers, and that she was coming to understand the fact. And then there was his new attitude towards Maryska. How strangely the child could influence him! He remembered almost every word she had said since they set out for the Savoy together. The memory of the manyfaux passhe had made was so humorous thathe stood upon the pavement to laugh at them again. There followed a recollection of the moment when she had put her arms about him, and he had kissed her. His whole soul had gone out into that kiss! The warm lips upon his own, the hands which thrilled him, the hair brushing his face lightly—all had moved him in a transport of desire he could not resist. And he was engaged to Gabrielle! His step quickened when he remembered it, and he tried to sweep the inevitable accusation aside. He was engaged to Gabrielle, who trusted him. A silent voice asked, was it cricket?—and he could make no answer.
In his own rooms, by the Holly Bush Inn, the hag who robbed him had stirred up a splendid fire in the grate and set the teacups for two, a suggestion which caused him some irritation. Here was his holy of holies, chiefly devoted to cricket bats and tennis rackets. The walls were decorated by a number of "groups" of the teams for which he had played, including two English elevens against Australia, and at least six which had opposed the Players. Elsewhere, and chiefly upon the writing table at which he rarely wrote, were smaller pictures, including one of Gabrielle which had been taken in New York, and another which he called "the Flapper" portrait. The latter showed a chubby-faced child of fourteen with her hair down her back, and legs of such ample proportions that she might have been in training as an athlete. The picture had been his ideal for many years, but he regarded it a little wistfully now. When he sat down to tea, he took with him a little book between whose leaves was a miniature of Maryska, doneby her father some three years ago. Such an exquisite painting had never been in his possession before. It had been one of her few treasures, and yet she had given it to him.
Louis de Paleologue had painted this in Paris, intending to sell it; but Maryska stole it when he was at the café one day, and neither threats nor persuasion had robbed her of it subsequently. It showed her head and shoulders, a veil of gauze about her, and a Turkish cap upon her head. The note of it was the passionate intensity of the girl's eyes, glowing like jewels in the picture, but with a depth of human feeling art is rarely able to convey. For the rest it might have been a miniature of the Bologna School and it had all the virtues of colour of which those masters were capable. Harry understood its value, and he thought that he knew why Maryska had given it to him. He did not ask himself why the gift had been kept secret, or why he had no courage to speak of it to Gabrielle.
He was at the stage when he knew that something must be done, and yet would consent to drift upon the tide of circumstances. The inevitable had happened, and this boy and girl, thrown by the chance of confidence into each other's society, were lovers already. What the future had in store neither dared to ask. Vanity and John Faber were driving him into a speedy marriage with Gabrielle, and they had spoken already of the week previous to Lent. This was to say that in five weeks' time he would be her husband. It seemed impossible to contemplate. Harry drank his tea with his eyes still upon the picture of Maryska.
THE MAN OF THE MOMENT
I
It was quite true that Faber had been summoned to Downing Street; equally true to declare that not even the wit of that engaging Paul Pry, Master Bertie Morris, would have divined the nature of the interview.
Perhaps good common sense might have helped him had he trusted to such a cicerone rather than to his ears.
Here was the head of one of the most famous engineering firms in the world held prisoner in London during these days of national tribulation. The house of John Faber and Son had achieved colossal undertakings in all quarters of the globe. Its transport mechanism was beyond question the finest in existence. The genius of it was known to be the man who had recently sold some millions of rifles to Germany—a man accredited by rumour with such sagacity that he had cornered the wheat-market during the earliest days of this memorable winter. The latter proceeding did not help his popularity in England, though it was ignored by the politicians who invited him to Downing Street. In a word, they desired to know how he was going to bring his wheat into England.
Faber was some hours at the conference, and directly it was over he left London with Rupert Trevelle, and set off for Liverpool. Unusually quiet and obviously troubled by a "brain fit," he delved into a mass of newspapers while the train rolled on over the frozen fields, and it was not until they had passed Crewe that he laid the paper aside and addressed a remark to his ready friend.
"I guess London is pretty well like a rat pit just now; at least these newspaper men make it so. Hunger's a useful sort of dog when his dander is risen. I suppose Miss Silvester has found that out already?"
Trevelle, who smoked an immense cigar, and wore a fur coat with a wonderful collar of astrachan, rose to the occasion immediately.
"We are living on a volcano," he said. "The government knows it, and others must guess it. I am waiting every day to see the shell burst and the lava come out. We want imagination to understand just what is going on in England at the present time. That is where we are short. All the way down here, I have been looking at these cottages and asking myself in how many of them the children have no bread this night. My God! think of the women who are bearing the burden—but, of course, you are the man who has thought of it. I wonder sometimes how much you would have made but for certain things. You didn't buy corn to give it away in Stepney, Mr. Faber; that wasn't in your mind a month ago. I'll swear you had very different intentions."
"No need to swear at all. I'm not a philanthropist; I never was. I bought that wheat because the cleverestweather man in New York promised a winter which, anyway, would make the market sure. I went in as any other speculator. How I am coming out is a different proposition. They don't seem to think much of me in England—not by what these writers say. I guess if I were a prize fighter, I'd be doing better business in the popularity line."
Trevelle was a little upset about it.
"It can all be put right in a day if you wish it."
"But I don't wish it."
"I know you don't; you are wanting the girl to have the credit of it."
"Why not? It's a bagatelle to me. And the game will soon be up. I can feed a few thousands in London, but I can't feed a nation. Either I send a cable to Charleston surrendering to my men or I do not. If I do, it will cost me half my fortune; if I don't and this frost holds, you'll see red hell in England before twenty days have run."
"Then the rumours about the strike breaking at Liverpool are true? There is something in them?"
"There is everything in them. The government can deal with this side if I deal with the other. It's up to me in the end and I must say 'Yes,' or 'No.' If I say 'Yes,' all America will laugh at me—if I don't, well who's to charge me? That's the situation, that and your own people, who are going to give the politicians their day. I tell you, it's a considerable proposition and is going to make me older before I have done with it."
He was unusually earnest, and his manner forbade any inquiry as to what had happened in DowningStreet, a matter Trevelle's curiosity would have probed if it could. To be candid, this polished gentleman, who indirectly had brought the fact of Faber's presence in England to the notice of the government, was immensely pleased by the part he had played in the stirring events of recent days. Not a lover of money, but a persistent seeker after social credit, when it could be gained by worthy ends, Trevelle had won distinction in twenty ways: as a founder of boys' camps, an officer of Territorials, and a promoter of some schemes which had become national. And here he was in these critical days by the side of the man whose genius might well be the salvation of his fellow-countrymen.
Then entered Liverpool a little late in the afternoon, and went at once to the scene of the strike. It was bitterly cold weather, but nothing to justify the fearsome stories which had delighted London for some days past. The strike itself appeared to be the result as much of lack of work as of any fundamental discontent; starvation had been busy here, and the fruits of starvation were now to be reaped. As in London, haggard gangs paraded the streets and clamoured for bread; there were turbulent scenes in the darker quarters of the city, and not a little of that unmeasured mischief which ever treads upon the heels of want. An interview with the men's leaders convinced Faber that America alone could unlock the doors of this compulsory idleness, and it set his own responsibility once more in a lurid light. Let him cable that message of surrender and the end would be at hand; but in that case his own people would call him a genius no more and Wall Street would deride him. He saw himselfas the enemy of the British people, dominant in victory and yet upon the eve of a defeat which never could be retrieved. And if this befell him a woman must answer for it—an ancient story truly.
From Liverpool he journeyed to Fishguard, thence to the south coast. A greater rigour of the frost was here, and it was possible for the dreamer to understand some of those fears which had haunted the timorous during the eventful days. Perhaps a man of large imagination might have been justified in looking across the still seas and asking himself what would befall the island kingdom if the prophets were justified.
At Dover, even John Faber dreamed a dream and did not hesitate to speak of it to Trevelle. Sleeping lightly because of the bitter cold, he imagined that the Channel had become but a lake of black ice in which great ships were embedded, and that far and wide over the unbroken surface went the sledges of the adventurous. Driven to imitate the leaders in this fair emprise, he himself embarked also upon an ice-ship presently, and went out into the night over that very silver streak which had been the salvation of England during the centuries. The white cliffs behind him disappeared anon in the mist; a great silence fell all about; he passed an ice-yacht moving before the lightest breeze, and she was but a shadow picture. Ultima Thule and the frozen wastes were here.
It was a dream of the darkness, and it carried him many miles from the English shore; he perceived that the coastwise lights blazed out as usual, and he could discern in the far distance the magnificent beams fromCape Grisnez and nearer to them the splendid message of the Forelands. A phantom light upon his own ship was powerful enough to cut a golden path over the frozen sea and show him its wonders and its solitudes. Here where great steamers went westward to the Americas, eastward to the city's ports; here where many thousands crossed daily at the bidding of many interests; here a man might stand alone and hear no other sounds than that of the freshening winds of eventide or the groaning of the ice when the sea refuses its harbourage. A weird, wild scene, stupendous in its suggestion, an hour of Nature's transcendent victory. And yet but a dream of his sleep, after all.
II
Such was the vision which reality supported but ill.
There was ice in the southern harbours, but there had been ice there before, and nothing but the imagination of discerning journalists had bridged the peaceful seas and put upon the frozen way the armies of the invader. Faber perceived immediately that a few of his ice-dredges from Charleston could undo any mischief that Nature had done, and he sent a cable to America there and then, as a sop to the fears of the timorous rather than a measure of real necessity.
It was odd how, through it all, this man whose name was known to so few Englishmen had become the arbiter of the nation's destiny. He held the bulk of the wheat which could be shipped from the West if the men who loaded the ships were willing; with him lay that "Yes" or "No" which should unlock thegates and bid a starving population enter the granaries. Once in his younger days he had heard a preacher who took for his text the words, "Sell that thou hast," and he remembered how that this man had declared the need of an all-embracing sacrifice once in the course of every life. The words haunted him, and could not be stilled. He had become as a King or Emperor of old time who could make war or end it by a word. Irony reminded him that he was an apostle of war, and that a sentiment which would deride it had no place in his creed. Why, and for whom, should he beggar himself to serve this people? His financial empire would come down with a crash if he surrendered now—he believed that he would never surrender, and yet he sent a compromising cable to America that day.
This was just before Trevelle and he returned to London through a country which seemed to have no other thoughts than the pleasures of the frost. Everywhere the villages kept carnival upon the ice with merriment and music and the pageantry of snows.
To Faber this seemed a wonderful trait in the national character, and not to be met by Trevelle's cheery reminiscence of the gladiatorial salute. These people had not saluted the frost because they believed that they were about to die, but because they thought that the national intellect would enable them to live. It had been the same during the Boer War and far back during the Crimea. Beneath the veil of tribulation lay the enduring faith that the nation would emerge, purified by the ordeal and greater for the knowledge of its own strength.
"You see yourselves worrying through, and that's all you care about," he said, as the morning train carried them to London, and the daily papers were strewn about him like the monstrous leaves of an unhealthy plant: "the skin of this nation is the thickest on the globe, and perhaps its most wonderful asset. When you do get into a panic, you show it chiefly in the smoking-room or over the dinner-table. This time you've the biggest chunk to chew I can remember, and yet you are only beginning to see how big it is. The mob is teaching you something, and you'll learn more."
He took up a journal from the seat, and passing it over to Trevelle, indicated some immense headlines.
"See, here! the crowd has burned down your Temple, and is asking for another to keep 'em warm. That's British right through, I guess, and something to go on with. It's just what a man should expect when he turns philanthropist on his own account. You give them what they want, and they are mad because they want it. It's a pretty story, and you should read it. It will certainly interest you."
Trevelle took up the paper and read the report to the last line. Yesterday at five o'clock, an enormous rabble had surrounded the factory by Leman Street, and there being no one in charge who could deal with them, the hooligans had set the place on fire and burned it to the ground. From that they had gone on to other pleasantries, chiefly connected with the philanthropic agencies in the East End. A mission had been burned at Stepney; a boys' institute at Bethnal Green. There was hardly a baker's shop in the locality which had not been looted, while some of thelarger stores were but shattered ruins. The report added that a vast horde of ruffians, numbering at least two hundred thousand men, was then marching upon Pall Mall, and that troops were being hurried to London. It was altogether the most sensational affair since the beginning of the frost.
"Poor little Gabrielle!" said Trevelle, thinking first of the woman. "I'm glad she wasn't there. This will be an awful blow to her!"
"Not if she's got the common sense I credit her with. Women's ideals are not readily shaken, and Miss Silvester has some big ones, which are permanent. I'll see her to-day, and we'll know what's to be done. Tell her as much when we get to London."
"If there is any London left to get to——"
"Oh! there'll be a nook and corner somewhere. Your fellows have a genius for dealing with mobs. I would back the police in London against all the riff-raff east of St. Paul's. But they'll do some mischief, none the less—and even this may not help us for the moment. Do you guess what's in that cable, Mr. Trevelle—why, how should you? And yet it might mean more to your people to-day than ten million sovereigns, counted out on the floor of Westminster Hall!"
He held up the familiar dirty paper upon which the Post Office writes the most momentous of messages, and then showed his companion that it had come from Queenstown.
"The men on my side have given in," he said, adding nothing of his own act in that great matter, "the steamers will be sailing inside twenty-four hours. It'sa race, sir, between me and the worst side of your nation. And I guess I'll win."
"If you do," said Trevelle earnestly, "there is nothing our government can do to repay the debt."
"Unless they teach the people the lesson of it; do you think it is nothing to an American to see this great country at the mercy of the first food panic which overtakes her? I tell you, it is as much to my countrymen as to yours. Teach them that they have a precious possession in this island kingdom, and you are doing a great work. I shall be a proud man to have a hand in it——"
"You certainly will have that. It's a lesson we all need. I don't think I could have repeated it myself, but for these weeks. Now, I know—and the man who knows can never forget."
He fell to silence upon it, and regarding the drear country from the blurred window, perceived a barren field and a drift of snow falling from a sullen sky. Yet sore afflicted as she was, he remembered that this was Mother England, and that he and countless others had been but ungrateful sons in the days of her glory.
Would it be otherwise when the shadows had passed?
Ah! who could tell?
BOOK IV
MERELY MEN AND WOMEN
AFTER THE DEBACLE
I
Gabrielle was at her club in Burlington Gardens when the news of the riot in Stepney was brought by her father. She determined to go back at once that she might know the worst.
"How can they say such things?" she protested while a footman helped her on with her furs, and her father watched her humbly, as latterly it was his wont to do. "Why! everything is going so well, father. I had a perfect ovation this morning; it was nearly half an hour before I could get away from the people. Why should they have done this?"
Silvester said that he could not tell her. All that he knew he had learned by the mouth of a messenger, who had been dispatched headlong from Stepney and came panting with the news.
"You should not have listened to Mr. Faber, my dear. He is an American, and he does not understand our people. The ticket idea was quite wrong. It led to many jealousies, and now to this. The people think there is a great store of bread in Leman Street, and that it is being given only to our friends. I am sorry the story got abroad, very sorry! Charity cannot discriminate in such times as these."
He would have gone on to preach quite a little sermon to the hall porter and the footmen, who told each other afterward that the young lady gave it to him "'ot"—but Gabrielle, amazed and chagrined beyond all experience, immediately ordered them to get a taxi and drive without any delay to Stepney. It was then about seven o'clock of the evening; a bitter cold night with a wraith of snow in the air. The West End seemed entirely deserted at such an hour—even the music-halls had no queues at their doors, while the theatrical managers complained dolefully of their financial sorrows. London had awakened to the truth of the situation at last, and London was frightened. Even the unobservant Silvester could realise the omens of menace, and say that the city was in peril.
"I don't know what it means," he told Gabrielle, as they drove, "but I passed a regiment of cavalry as I came here, and it was going toward Oxford Circus. Do you notice how many police there are about, and mounted police? There is hardly a shop in the West End which is not boarded up. Perhaps they are wise—this has taught them what lies on the other side of Aldgate, and it is a lesson they should have learned a long time ago. My own opinion is that we are upon the brink of a revolution; though, of course, I would not say as much to any of these newspaper people!"
"If you think it, father, why not say it? Surely the day has gone by for the old foolish ideas. The government has left the people to starve, and must take the consequences. We have done our best, but we are not policemen. I feel tempted to go back toHampstead and having nothing more to do with it. Think of the ingratitude, the shame of it all—and we have worked so hard!"
"You should not have listened to Mr. Faber, my dear; I said as much at the beginning. He is very ignorant of English people; it was a mistake to listen to him."
"You didn't think that on the steamer, father, when we came over from America. You were his bravest advocate; you called him one of the world's geniuses, I remember it."
Silvester admitted it.
"I hoped much from him. If we could have won him, it would have been the greatest victory in the cause of peace we have ever achieved. I fear now he must be called our evil genius. He has undoubtedly sold all those rifles to Germany, and that is to say that we shall have the old foolish scares again and very soon. A man like that is a terrible instrument of mischief. I think we shall have to dissociate ourselves from him altogether when the little girl is well enough to leave us."
Gabrielle sighed as though all these things had become a burden on her mind. An innate sympathy for John Faber prevented her saying what otherwise it would have been a truth to say. How much he could have done for them had he chosen to do it! His money would have helped them so—an inconsequent thought, for her charities had never wanted money.
"He was certainly wrong about the tickets," she admitted. "I know Mr. Trevelle thought so, but he gave way. If it is really true that he is keeping breadfrom the people to serve his own ends, nothing bad enough can be said about it, but I want to know that it is true. It has been very unkind of him to do nothing for us when he might have done so much. My opinion of him is greatly changed; I do not think he is really our friend."
Silvester was quite of that opinion also.
"He made us such extravagant promises. A house in the West End, motors—every luxury. I really thought he was quite serious when I left Ragusa. Sir Jules Achon did not wish us to go. He knows these people; he thought I was ill-advised to give up Yonkers for such vague promises. I wish I had listened to him now; he is still on those delightful waters, far away from all this. We should have been with him but for our foolish generosity."
Gabrielle avoided the difficult subject. She must have been a little ashamed of it when she remembered the gifts John Faber had lavished upon them already and the concern he displayed for Maryska. The conversation, indeed, carried her back to a somewhat commonplace reality from which she had emerged to win this temporary triumph as a ministering angel in the East End. And now they had burned her Temple and the idol was cast down. Her father would send Maryska away, and they must return to the old humdrum life. John Faber and his riches would pass as a ship of the night. Harry Lassett and the dead leaves of a withered passion remained.
"Oh," she said at last, "how vain is all we do! How vain, how hopeless! We are just like ants crawling about the earth and trying to set ourselves up forgods. We talk of peace and war, of good and evil, of what we shall accomplish and what we have done, and then down comes the great flat foot of circumstance and out we go. I lose the power even to hope sometimes. Why should we not let things drift? Who is the better for our work?"
Her father would not agree to that.
"Every stone cast into the lake of the world's ills is an asset in humanity's balance sheet," he said. "You have cast many, Gabrielle, and will add to the number. Look out there at those poor people. Is it all vain when you remember how many of their kind you have succoured? This American hardness is no good influence; I wish we could shake it off forever. Indeed, it were better so."
"We shall do that," she said quietly. "Mr. Faber will not be many days in England when the frost will let him get away."
He remained silent. They had passed Charing Cross, and now their way was blocked by a vast torchlight procession of women, debouching upon the Strand from the neighbourhood of the Old Kent Road. It was a sorry spectacle, for here were young and old, white-haired women with their backs bent toward the earth which soon would receive them; drabs in rags who flaunted their tattered beauty in the face of every male; quiet workers whose children were starving in garrets; women from mean streets who had never begged in all their lives; children who wondered if the end of the world had come. Headed by a lank harridan who wore a crimson shawl and carried an immense torch, these miserables trampedstolidly toward the West End, seeking God knows what relief from the shuttered houses. And after them went a dozen mounted policemen, good-humoured, chubby-cheeked fellows, who had never wanted bread and were never out of patience with others less fortunate.
A thousand expressions were to be read upon the faces of this haggard crew, and not a little fine determination. Here would be a woman reeling in drink; yonder a young mother hardly strong enough to walk the streets. There were sluts and shapely girls, creatures of a shabby finery, and hopeless woebegone figures of an unchanging poverty. From time to time wistful glances would be cast up at the lighted windows of the houses as though succour might be cast down thence. All moved with rapid, shuffling steps, an orderly concourse which concealed the forces of disorder. By here and there, some of the younger members broke into a mournful song, which was checked at intervals to permit of the exchange of coarse wit with the passers-by on the pavements. The whole throng seemed driven relentlessly on toward a nameless goal which must break their hope when at last they reached it.
"Isn't it dreadful to see them?" said Gabrielle when the last of the procession had passed by and traffic in the Strand was resumed once more. "This sort of thing affects me terribly; it makes me feel sorry that there are women in the world at all. Think of the children of such creatures! What can we hope for them?"
"It is the children for whom we must work," rejoinedthe father. "I should think of England with despair if it were not for the children."
Worthy man! Despair had always been among the wares in his basket; and yet, how often had this unhappy British people gone laughing by with never a thought for him or his melancholy gospel?
II
The menace of the streets was not less when the women had passed by and the traffic flowed again.
London was full of wild mobs that night; of savage men and men made savage by hunger, and they were drifted to and fro upon the shifting seas of authority and stranded on many a relentless shore. There was riot, too, and upon riot, pillage and the incendiary. Now for the first time since the winter set in, hunger drove even the orderly to the West in the wild search for the food the East could not give them. Long through the dark hours, in Bond Street, in Piccadilly, by Hyde Park, away in the remotest suburbs, sleepers were awakened to listen fearfully to the tramp of feet and the hoarse voices of the multitudes. Those who had the curiosity to look from their windows beheld a sky quivering with light, a glorious iridescence above many a flaming building the rioters had fired. It was the beginning of the end, men said; a visitation of Almighty God against which all were impotent. Who shall wonder that those whose faith was sure prayed for the salvation of their country in that hour of her need?
There were enormous crowds about Aldgate, andthe taxi containing Gabrielle and her father made but slow headway. When at last it entered Leman Street, they perceived in an instant the whole extent of the disaster; and so irreparable it seemed that the girl's pride broke down utterly, and she shed bitter tears of shame and grief. How she had worked for these people! What a heroine they had made of her! This very morning there had been a kind of triumphal procession from the old Temple to the new. She had been followed by a vast concourse of thankful people, who cheered her as she went; while the bishop had addressed the throngs from the doors of the mission, and spoken of the "noble lady," whose services to them had been priceless. This was just eight hours ago, and now there were but reddening ashes where the workers had stood to give the children bread.
The cab made its way to the doors of the wrecked building and an inspector of police received them. The few who had been admitted within the barriers were evidently ashamed of what had been done, but quite unable to apologise for it. The inspector put it down to the hooligans.
"We breed too many of them in these days, sir," he said, "the country finds it out when there's hard times, and God knows they're hard enough now. It must have been set afire after Mr. Gedding had locked it up for the day. There were flames as tall as chimneys coming out of the roof when I was called."
This was a man who took tragedy as a matter of course, and would have used the same words if St. Paul's had been burned. When asked if the incendiary were taken, he replied that he was not, but that actingupon "information received," he hoped to make an arrest before morning. His anxiety for the "young lady" was real, and he advised that she should return immediately to her home.
"Now that there's this spirit abroad, I'll answer for nothing at all," he said; "you'd be better the other side of Aldgate, and that's certain. There's nothing but a pack of foreign cut-throats in the streets to-night, and no man is safe. Just you take my advice, sir, and come back in the morning, when they've had time to cool awhile. This is no place for the young lady, whatever it may be for us."
Silvester agreed with him, but he found it impossible to influence Gabrielle. She seemed strangely moved by the melancholy glamour of the scene; by the savage figures shadowed in the after-glow; by the reddening skeleton of the Temple which stood up so proudly a few hours ago. To-morrow there would be but a pit of ashes, where to-day a sacrifice had been offered to the nation. She suffered profoundly when she surveyed this wreck of her handiwork, and it seemed to her that her work among the people was done.
"Let us go on to the old Temple," she said with what resignation she could command, "if they have burned that also, then I will return with you, father, for I can do nothing more."
Silvester disliked the idea of it. He would have been pleased enough to have been back in his little study at Hampstead, where he might have composed a sermon upon "ingratitude," as an obstacle; but he had long been schooled to obedience when his daughtercommanded, and so they re-entered the cab and drove to the old Temple. A silent multitude watched them as they went, but none cheered. The bitter cold night either sent people to their houses, where they might shiver upon heaps of rags, or it drove them to the open street where many a huge fire had been kindled that the outcasts might warm themselves. Hereabouts you would often see a whole family lying upon a filthy pallet of straw, and so huddled together for warmth that it had the appearance of some fearsome animal which had crawled from the darkness to the light. The shadows gave pictures more terrible, husbanding the dying and the dead. Starvation abetted the rigour of the winter. Nature waged war here in these silent alleys, and no sound attended her stealthy victories, which were multitudinous.
In London beyond "the gate" there were other anxieties, but these poor people knew nothing of them. War and its menace: the chimera of fabled foes crossing the black ice in endless columns; cannon rumbling where ships had sailed; England no longer an island, her ramparts of blue waters gathered up; her gates thrown open to any who would affront her—if the West End discussed all this covertly and as though afraid, the East knew nothing of it. Here the danger was not of to-morrow, but of to-night! The peril, ever present, fell upon them now at the bidding of the natural law. For the first time since the outcasts of the world had found sanctuary beyond Aldgate, their city of refuge had been unable to feed them. And now hunger bade them go forth to the land of promise, so near, so rich in all they needed. Shall wewonder that starving mobs gathered in every square; that the courts were full of desperadoes with murder in their eyes; that even the honest would listen and admit that this or that might be done?
Upon the other side were the police and the soldiers, many thousands hidden prudently from the eyes of the mobs. If the Government could do little to feed these people, it could, at least, protect the people who were fed for the time being, at any rate. Commanded by the "man of iron," the cavalry were marched hither and thither, but always to form a cordon about the dangerous areas. Special drafts of constables came from the distant suburbs to overawe poor devils whose greatest crime was their hunger. Stepney was besieged by authority, fearful that men would go out to get the children bread, and ashamed that bread should be withheld. Here had Nature's war become one of a civil people, paying a debt they long had owed to their exacting creditors, "Want of Forethought and Economy." The sword of a foreign enemy would have been the lesser peril—it was evident enough now to everyone!