CHAPTER XXXI.
THE GREAT INSURRECTION BEGINS.
Lookingback now upon the time of which I am writing, I cannot altogether acquit myself of criminal negligence for failing to realise—until it was too late to take action—how insidiously and how thoroughly the Dumpling was doing his work. Nash's warning—though I was by no means disposed to take it seriously—had not been altogether a surprise to me, for I knew already that inflammatory speeches were being delivered, inflammatory literature circulated broadcast. To these I attached small importance, having too much faith in the common sense and in the conservatism of my fellow-countrymen to believe that the Dumpling could induce them to take concerted action upon any considerable scale. I have since learned that secret meetings were held nearly every night; but instead of one mass meeting, which must inevitably have attracted the attention of the police, the Dumpling, a prince of organisers, had arranged forinnumerable small gatherings in every part of London. At each of these meetings some member of the General Council, and therefore in close touch with the Dumpling himself, would preside, and in this way their leader's plans were made known, a plan of campaign laid down, and concerted action arranged in the most secret yet thorough way. Immense sums of money, so I afterwards learned, were expended in the purchase and in the secret storage of arms; and foreign mercenaries and expert marksmen, whose services the Dumpling had requisitioned, were constantly pouring into London to place themselves at his orders.
Had I still been engaged in detective work, something of all this must, I think, have come to my notice; but I am so constituted as to be able to do one thing only at a time. Whatever pursuit I take up, into that pursuit I throw myself heart and soul, to the exclusion of everything else. This temperamental defect—if a defect it be—may be the secret of some of my many failures; it may be the secret of my few successes. Concentration of interests generally means limitation of interests, and whether one be racking the heavens nightly througha telescope in search of new worlds, or only peering through a microscope, to isolate bacilli of this or that disease—one is equally apt to become absent-minded in other matters. So entirely had I given myself up to studying the problem of the poor, that I had eyes for nothing else.
It is not, however, my intention further to describe, in these pages, the harrowing scenes I witnessed while so occupied. Were I a commissioner, appointed to report to a Committee of Inquiry upon the condition of the poor, I should, it is true, have painful, revolting, and even incredible facts to recount. I could give chapter and verse in proof of inconceivable infamy. I could give instances of men, women, and even children living under circumstances more degrading than could be found in any so-called savage race. I should, in common honesty, be compelled to admit that by many of these who are most in evidence, as in search of work—work is the very last thing in the world that they really desire to find. Hymn-bawling in the streets is the nearest most of them have ever come to earning their bread by the sweat of their brow; a few hours processioning and posing as unemployed, thehardest day's work many of them ever did.
And yet, admitting all this, and speaking as one who has seen something of the poor, and of their homes, I say, and in all sincerity, of the very poor as a whole, that I find it hard to express my admiration, my respect, and my reverence for the unselfishness, the courage, and the nobility which I have known them to display.
There came a time at last when the strenuousness of the work I was doing began to tell terribly upon me. It has been said that profound sympathies are always in association with keen sensibilities, and that keen sensibilities expose their possessor to a depth of anguish utterly unintelligible to those who are differently constituted. In my own case the hopelessness of the struggle in which I was engaged weighed constantly upon me. Men and women—and, worst of all, little children—were starving literally by the thousand, and all my efforts could do no more than bring relief each day to perhaps a dozen. My money was gone; the health by which I could earn more money was fast giving way, and what I had accomplished, and could hope to accomplish,seemed, when compared with what remained to be done, like the taking of a drop of water from the sea.
One evening, after visiting a case of destitution and misery so harrowing that it was only by a tremendous effort I was able to control myself, and to speak cheerfully and hopefully to the sufferers, I came out into the dark street, and, once alone, to my unspeakable disgust and dismay, burst into tears.
When a man of strong physique, normal by nature, and in no sense hysterical, gets into a condition so over-wrought as this, he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, as was proved in my own person.
The next morning I was so seriously ill that I was compelled to keep my bed for some days, after which I was ordered to Brighton.
I returned to my chambers in Adelphi Terrace on Sunday morning, to find London dull to the very point of stagnation. So few people I do not ever remember, even on a Sunday, to have seen in the streets. The Strand was for once justified of its name, for it was like some sea strand orbeach from which the tide has withdrawn, leaving a long stretch of untenanted sands. Yet that same night the returning up-gathered tidal wave swept and broke over London like a devastating sea.
A meeting of the unemployed was, I saw by the papers, to be held that afternoon in Victoria Park. Instead of the few thousands whom the public had expected to assemble, the meeting—no doubt by pre-concerted action—mustered nearly half a million. The organisation of this unwieldy mob was wonderful.
At five minutes to three the people were sullenly, suspiciously silent. At three a bugle-call was heard, and suddenly in their midst the red flag was raised, and at that sight the hounds of insurrection gave tongue, baying for blood, in one prolonged and awful roar, that might have been heard a mile away.
Then the Dumpling, who was standing on the pedestal of a drinking fountain, raised his hand, and again the bugle-call rang out. Another roar burst forth as, in every part of the open space of the park, poles were set up, on the top of which were immense black boards, each with a letterof the alphabet printed prominently upon it in white. With one accord the multitude broke up to sort itself into huge companies, according to the letter of the alphabet under which each had been previously instructed to place himself. Another bugle-call, and from hundreds of houses, surrounding the park, companies of men were seen to come forth, carrying weapons for distribution. For months this secret storage of weapons in private houses had been going on all over London, with the result that when the outbreak came, every man knew where to obtain a weapon. In the neighbourhood of the park itself it was, of course, not possible to store a sufficient number of rifles to arm more than some few thousands of men; but those so armed had been more or less drilled and trained to shoot. They were placed in the van of the Labour army with the foreign mercenaries—expert riflemen—immediately in the forefront, ready to resist the first attacking force, whether of the military or of the police.
Then, at a signal from the Dumpling, the bugle was once again sounded, and the westward march commenced by a route soplanned that weapons for those still unarmed could be picked up at the various storage centres on the way.
The rebel army, more than half a million strong, and led by its new Napoleon, was marching on London. The Revolution of which the Dumpling had so often boasted had begun.