SARTWELL showed little sign of the wear and tear of the struggle. He walked from the station to his office every morning at his usual hour, as if everything were going on to his entire satisfaction. He was always dressed with scrupulous neatness, and he invariably carried in his hand a trimly folded umbrella, which no one had ever seen him undo, for when it rained he took a cab. The umbrella seemed a part of him, and a purely ornamental part; he was never met on the street without it. No man could say when Sartwell purchased a new suit of clothes; each suit was precisely the same as the one that preceded it, and it was always put on before its predecessor began to show signs of wear.
There was as little change in Sartwell’s demeanour towards his men as there was in his clothes. He did not keep his eyes on the ground as he passed along the street to the gates, nor was there, on the other hand, any belligerency in his manner. The men had gone out; that was their affair; he nodded to them or bade them a curt “Good-morning,” as had been his habit before the trouble. Few of them had the presence of mind to do otherwise than raise their fingers to their caps or answer, with the customary mumble, “Mornin’, sir.” Habit is strong in the human animal, as has often been pointed out.
No one of all those concerned was more anxious for the strike to end than Sartwell, but none the less was he determined that it should end his way. He saw the openings in his armour through which, with a blindness not understandable to the manager, Gibbons neglected to thrust.
Curiously enough, it was not Gibbons that Sartwell feared in this contest, but Marsten. He knew the young man had been strongly against the strike, but he also knew that he had thrown in his lot with the men; and although the leaders of the strike, up to that time, had held aloof from Marsten, pretending to look upon him as a covert traitor to the cause, still Sartwell feared they might take him into their counsels at last, and that he would show them the way out of their difficulties. The manager had made it his business to learn all he could of what was done by his opponents, and he had been amazingly successful. He knew of Marsten’s visit to Barney and of the generally futile result of that conference; but he had so slight a confidence in Barney’s good sense, that he feared some hint might have been dropped by the artist which would show the men how anxious Monkton & Hope were for a settlement on almost any terms. As time passed, and Sartwell saw that Gibbons still held Marsten at arm’s length, he became less and less anxious. Affairs were rapidly approaching a crisis when Marsten’s aid would be useless.
A few days after the announcement of the reduction in strike pay had been made, Sartwell, approaching the gates in the morning, saw Marsten standing alone at the street corner. The manager had almost passed him without greeting on either side, when the elder man suddenly stopped, turned half around, and said sharply:
“On picket duty, Marsten?”
“No, Mr. Sartwell.”
“Not in their confidence, perhaps.”
“I suppose I am neither in their confidence, nor in yours, Mr. Sartwell.”
“Rather an uncomfortable position, is it not? I should like to be one thing or the other if I were in your place, Marsten.”
“I am one thing. I am entirely with the men.”
“Perhaps in that case you are afraid to be seen talking with me. Some of the men might happen to pass this way.”
“I am not afraid to be seen speaking with anybody, Mr. Sartwell.”
“Ah, you are young; therefore you are brave. I have known a smaller thing than this conversation to cost a man his life, but perhaps times and methods have changed since my early days. It is a pity you are on the wrong side for your bravery to be appreciated. The masters of this world always value talent and courage, and pay well for them. The men do neither. That is why they are usually beaten in a fight, and it is one of the many reasons why they should be. I have a few words to say to you; the street corner is not a good place for a private conversation; will you come to my office in an hour’s time?”
“Do you wish to speak about the strike?”
“Yes,” said Sartwell, looking with some intentness at the young man. “We have no other subject of mutual interest that I know of.”
“Very good. I merely asked, because whatever you may have to tell me, I shall use in the interests of the men.”
Sartwell shrugged his shoulders.
“You are quite welcome,” he said, “to make what use you please of the information I shall give you. I am well aware that your advice is in demand by the men and their leaders.”
The elder man walked briskly on; the younger reddened at the covert sneer in his last remark.
“My God,” he said to himself, angrily, “I would like to fight that man.”
Marsten turned and walked rapidly to the strike headquarters. There he found Gibbons and the committee in consultation, while a few of the men lounged about the place. The talk ceased as Marsten entered the room, the committee and its chairman looking loweringly at him.
“What do you want?” asked Gibbons, shortly.
“I met Mr. Sartwell a moment ago in the street and he said he had something to tell me about the strike; he asked me to call at his office in an hour’s time. I promised to do so, but told him any information he gave me I should use in the interests of the men.”
“And so you came here, I suppose, to get some information to give in return?”
Marsten had resolved not to allow himself to be taunted into anger, but he saw he had no easy task before him. He was going to do his duty, he said to himself, and help his comrades if he could; the situation was too serious for recrimination.
“No. I shall tell him nothing. If he wants information I shall refer him to you. I thought he perhaps might say something that would be of value for us to know, and so I came to tell you that I am going to his office.”
“Us? Who do you mean by us?”
“The men on strike. I am on strike as well as the others. I have lost a situation, even if you haven’t,” retorted the young man, knowing as he spoke that he was not keeping to his resolution.
“Well,” said Gibbons, taking no notice of the other’s insinuation, “you don’t need to come here for permission to visit Sartwell’s office. I suppose you have often been there before.”
“I have not been there since the strike began.”
“Oh, haven’t you?”
“No, I haven’t. Do you mean to assert that I have?”
“I assert nothing. It merely seems strange to me that you should come bawling here, saying you are going to consult Sartwell. It has nothing to do with us. Go and come as you please, for all I care.”
The members of the committee murmured approval of the chairman’s firm stand, and Marsten, seeing there was little use in further delay, turned on his heel and left them. The men lounging around the door nodded to him in a friendly manner as he went out, and the committee presumably continued its deliberations, untroubled by the interruption.
The young man walked down the street, looking neither to the right nor to the left, sick at heart, rather than angry, with the fatuous pettiness of Gibbons’s resentment, who would rather wound and humiliate a man he disliked, than accept help when it was freely offered.
“How different,” said Marsten to himself, “is the conduct of Sartwell! He has more cause to detest me than Gibbons has, yet he asks me to confer with him. He does not despise the smallest card in his hand, while Gibbons may be throwing away a trump, if I were mean enough, and traitor enough to the men, to refuse to tell what I may learn. Sartwell, parting with me in anger, hails me on the street, merely because he thinks he can use me to serve his employers. That he likes me no better than he did when I left him, is shown by the sting in his talk, yet he puts down his personal feelings, hoping to win a trick; while Gibbons, the fool, although approached in a friendly way, does his sneaking little best to drive a man over to the enemy. I wonder what Sartwell wants to discover. I’ll tell him nothing; but what a man he is to fight for—or against!”
“Hold hard, youngster. Where are you going?” cried the picket at the gate.
“I’m going to see Mr. Sartwell.”
“Oh, no, you’re not.”
“It’s all right, mate; I’ve just come from headquarters. I am going with the committee’s consent and Gibbons’s permission.”
“What’s on?” asked the picket in a whisper, while others of the strikers crowded around.
“Is the jig up? Are we going to give in?”
“There’s nothing new. I’ll know more when I come out. Perhaps Sartwell has something to propose; we haven’t.”
The men drew back, with a simultaneous sigh that may have indicated relief, or perhaps disappointment. The sternness of their resolution to hold out did not increase under reduced strike pay. Their organization was disintegrating, rotting; each man knew it and was suspicious of his comrades. The heart had gone out of the fight.
Marsten, crossing the deserted and silent yard, mounted the stairs, and rapped at the manager’s door. He found Sartwell alone, standing at his desk, with some papers before him.
“Now, Marsten,” began the manager brusquely, turning from his desk, “you think I’ve asked you here to learn something from you, and you have firmly resolved to tell me nothing. That’s right. I like to see a man stick to his colours. We save the ship if we can; if she sinks we go down with her. You may be surprised then to know that I am not going to ask you a single question. That will relieve your mind and enable you to give full attention to what I have to tell you. I hope, however, that you will keep your word and remember the promise you made me a short time since on the street.”
“What promise?”
“Have you forgotten it? Perhaps you thought it was a threat. You said you would give the men the information you received. I hold you to that. To tell Gibbons is not necessarily to tell the men. You said you would let the men know.”
“I will repeat your conversation to Gibbons and the committee.”
“Ah, that’s not what you said. Neither Gibbons nor the committee were mentioned in our talk this morning.”
“As near as I can recollect, I said I would use what information I received in the interests of the men.”
“Quite so. I am as anxious about the men’s welfare as you are, and what I have to say to you must reach them. If you tell it to Gibbons and the committee, and if they do not pass it on to the men, as they will take precious good care not to do, I shall then learn whether you are a man of your word or not. The strikers meet to-night at the Salvation Hall. If Gibbons does not inform them what he will then know, I shall expect you to stand up in your place and add to the enlightenment of the situation. When you were here last I showed you a sheet of paper, at the top of which was written the resources, for the moment, of the Union. The remainder of the sheet was blank, but it is now filled up. It shows the expenditure, week by week, up to the last payment made to those on strike. If you cast your eye over this sheet, you will see that the Union is now bankrupt.”
“If that is all you have to tell me, Mr. Sartwell, it is no news. The men already know they are depending on public subscriptions.”
“And they still believe in Gibbons as a leader?”
“Yes.”
“Very good. Now, I come to what is news—news to you, to Gibbons, and to the men. Most of this money has gone to loafers from the east end of London. I had such unlimited confidence in Gibbons’s foolishness and in the stupidity of the committee, that I have sent through the gates, not workmen like you, but such unfortunate wretches as were out of work and willing to absorb strike pay merely on condition that they would keep their mouths shut. It never seemed to occur to Gibbons that, if I were able to fill up the works with men transported to our river-steps on a steamer, I could either have fed and lodged them here, or taken them back and forth in the same way they came. He gathered them into the Union with a whoop, which was just what I expected him to do, but he never tried to find out whether they were genuine workmen or not.”
“You mean, then, that by a trick you have bankrupted the Union.”
Sartwell shrugged his shoulders.
“Call it a trick, if you like. A strike is war; you must not expect it to be fought with rose-leaves. But aside from that, I have borne in mind the real interests of the men. I could have filled the works with competent men—yes, ten times over. If I had done so, where would the strikers be at the end of the fight? Some would be in prison, some would have broken heads, all would be out of employment. I want my own men back here. I want them to understand they have got a fool for a leader. They have had a nice little play spell; they have eaten and drank their money—the vacation has come to an end. If they return to work now, there is work for them; if they delay much longer, I shall fill the shops with genuine workmen, and the Union has no money now to bribe them with.”
“If I tell the men all this, there will be a riot. They will mob the bogus workmen who have taken their money.”
“Oh, no, they won’t. I have told the bogus workmen just how long the money would continue to be paid, if they held their tongues. With last week’s reduced payment the loafers have scattered. The men may mob Gibbons, and I think he richly deserves it.”
“They will be much more likely to attack you.”
“They are welcome to try it. Now, I think that is all I have to say, Marsten. I have required no answers from you, and I imagine I have given you some interesting information. I am ready to get to work, with the former employees of the firm, or without them, just as they choose. The best friend of the men will be he who advises them to call off this foolish strike and buckle down to business once more.”
Albert Langly found himself compelled to search for a cheaper room. The thin young man bitterly regretted that good money had to be wasted on food, clothes and rent. A person cannot live without food; Langly had tried it, not as an economical experiment, but largely through forgetfulness, and he found, to his astonishment, that hunger actually forced itself upon his attention, after a sufficient lapse of time. The changeable English climate, not to mention the regulations of that moral body the police force, compelled him to cover himself; and a room he needed mainly to keep his stacks of music dry. The church of St. Martyrs-in-the-East afforded a very good living to its rector and a very poor one for its organist, although if people were paid according to professional efficiency in this world, the salaries of clergyman and musician might have been reversed. Those who entered the church door came, not to hear the sermon, but to listen to the music.
Langly never applied for more remuneration, because deep down in his musical soul he knew he was already taking advantage of the generosity of the church authorities, and he lived in constant fear that some day they would discover this and righteously dismiss him. To be allowed to play on that splendid instrument, erected at the cost of an unbelievable amount of money, was a privilege which he felt he ought to pay for, if he were the honest man the deacons thought him. He tried to soothe his troubled conscience, by telling it that he would refuse to take money were it not that sheet music was so dear, even when bought from the man who gave the largest discount in London, to whose shop Langly tramped miles once a week; but thus the guilty have ever endeavoured to lull the inward monitor, well knowing, while they did so, the sophistry of their excuses. The consciousness of deceit told on Langly’s manner; he cringed before the rector and those in authority. Never did one of the kindly but deluded men accost their organist without causing a timorous fear to spring up in his heart that the hour of his dismissal had arrived. Yet, let moralists say what they will, the wicked do prosper sometimes on this earth when they shouldn’t, while the innocent suffer for the misdeeds done by others. There was the case of Belcher, for example, and although it must in justice be admitted that Belcher’s hard luck caused the organist many twinges of conscience, still of what avail are twinges of conscience when the harm is wrought? If, in our selfishness, we bring disaster on a fellow-creature, after-regret can scarcely be called reparation.
Belcher was the hard-working industrious man who pumped the organ in St. Martyrs, and, besides labouring during the regular service, it was also his duty to attend when the organist wished to practice the selections which afterwards delighted the congregation. This was Belcher’s grievance. Langly had no “mussy,” as the overworked pumper told his sympathizing comrades at the “Rose and Crown.” He would rather follow the vestry-cart all day with a shovel, would Belcher, than suffer the slavery he was called upon to endure by the unthinking organist, who never considered that bending the back to a lever was harder work than crooking the fingers to the keys. Besides, Langly could sit down to his labour, such as it was, while Belcher couldn’t. Naturally the put-upon man complained, and Langly at once admitted the justice of the complaint, at the same time exhibiting a craven fear that a rumour of his unjustifiable conduct might reach the ears of the church authorities. The honest Belcher now regretted that he had borne his burden so long, for the reprehensible organist immediately offered to compound with the blower by paying him something extra each week, if he would say nothing about the additional labour. It was Belcher’s misfortune rather than his fault that mathematical computation was not one of his acquirements, and he failed to appreciate the fact that there was a limit to the musician’s income; a limit very speedily reached. He was an ill-used man and he knew it, so he struck often for higher pay and got it, up to the point where Langly insisted that there was not enough left to keep body and soul together, not to speak of the purchase of music. Belcher yearned for the tail of the vestry-cart, and threatened to complain to the rector; which at last he did, not mentioning, however, that he had received extra remuneration, because he did not wish to exhibit the organist’s culpability in all its repulsiveness. He told the rector that he would rather accompany the vestry-cart in its rounds than accompany an organist who had no “mussy” on a “pore” man. He was always ready to pump a reasonable quantity of air, but if an organist knew his trade so badly that he needed to practice so much, it was hard that the man at the lever should bear the brunt of his incompetence. The rector thanked Belcher for his musical criticism, and said he would see about it.
While the virtuous Belcher took his walks abroad with his chin in the air, as befits one who has done his duty, the transgressor crept along by-ways and scarcely dared to enter the silent church. He dodged the rector as long as he could, but was at length run to earth. The kindly old man put his hand on the culprit’s shoulder, and said:
“You have been overworking Belcher, I hear.”
“I shall be more thoughtful in future, sir,” murmured the nervous organist in excuse. “I’m afraid I’ve been playing too much, but it is a difficult art——”
“Of course it is,” interrupted the clergyman. “I have made arrangements to satisfy the ambition of Belcher, which appears to tend in the direction of a vestry-cart, and we are putting in a hydraulic blower which we should have put in years ago. You will find it a great convenience in your practice, Mr. Langly, for it is always ready and never complains.”
The organist tried to thank the rector, but his throat seemed not at his command for other effort than a gulp or two. The good man smiled at the grotesque twistings of Langly’s mouth and the rapid winking of his eyelids; then the organist turned abruptly and walked away, tortured afterwards with the fear that the rector might have thought him rude and ungrateful; but the old man knew the musician much better than the musician knew himself.
After that, when Langly chanced upon the indignant and gravely wronged Belcher, at the tail of his oft-mentioned but entirely unexpected cart, the young man shrank from the encounter, and felt that inward uneasiness which is termed a troubled conscience.
“Call that Christianity!” Belcher would say to his mate when their rounds took them near St. Martyrs,—“a-puttin’ a squirtin’ water-pump in there, to tyke th’ bread out o’ a pore man’s mouth, an’ a-cuttin’ down o’ ’is livin’ wyge! Yus, an’ the lawr a-forcin’ us to support the Church too.”
But Belcher was really of a forgiving spirit, and should not be judged by his harsh language towards the Establishment which, he was under the impression, rigourous legal enactment compelled him to subsidize; for he so far overlooked Langly’s conduct as to call upon him occasionally, and accept a few pence as conscience-money.
“I don’t blime ’im,” said Belcher magnanimously, over his pot of beer, “as much as I do the mean old duffer wot preaches there. ’E put me on the cart.”
Langly, as has been said, found it necessary to secure cheaper lodgings, and this was his own fault as much as it was the fault of his limited income. A London landlady in the more impoverished districts carries on a constant fight against circumstances. Her tenants pay her as seldom and as little as they can; sometimes they disappear, and she loses her money; while if they stay, there are no chances of extracting extras, those elastic exactions which often waft a West End boarding-house keeper to affluence. Terms are close and invariably inclusive. The organist’s conduct towards his numerous and successive landladies admits of no defence. These good women, when he had taken his departure, spoke bitterly of his sneaky and deceptive ways, as indeed they had just cause to do. On first arriving at a new place, he was so apologetic and anxious not to give any trouble; so evidently a person who did not really live in bustling, elbowing London, but in some dreamy mental world of his own, that his good hostess, merely as an experiment and entirely without prejudice, as the legal man puts it, tentatively placed on his bill for the week some trifling item, that, strictly speaking, was merely placed there to be taken off again, if complaint were made, or allowed to stand if overlooked. Of course, under these circumstances, the landlady was in expectation of a row, during which epithets reflecting upon her financial probity might be hurled at her, when she, with voluble excuses for her unfortunate mistake, would correct the error and assure the lodger that such a thing would not occur again. After a few essays of this kind, all perfectly just and proper in a commercial country, and in fact the only means of discovering to what extent the lodger could be depended upon as an asset, life would flow on with that calm serenity which adds so much to the comfort and enjoyment of a furnished apartment in the Borough or a palace overlooking the Park.
But Langly never took a straightforward course with his landladies. Instead of finding fault at the proper time, he meekly said nothing and paid the bills as long as he was able—bills which mounted higher and higher each week. Thus the deluded woman had no chance, as she could not be expected to know when she had reached the limit of his weekly income. At last the organist would take his bundle of music under his arm, and would sneak away like a thief in the night, to search for a cheaper abode, after leaving a week’s money in lieu of notice, wrapped in a piece of paper, in a conspicuous place, for he had never had the courage to face a landlady and baldly tell her he was going.
In Rose Garden Court there was more than one family that might be likened to an accordion, because of the facility with which it could be compressed or extended. The Scimmins household could occupy the three rooms it rented in the court, or it could get along with two, or even one if need be. The spare space was sub-let whenever opportunity offered, and here Langly found lodging that had at least the merit of cheapness. The policeman at the entrance of the court looked suspiciously after the new-comer, and resolved to keep an eye on him. The organist had a habit of muttering truculently to himself as he walked the streets, and his nervous hands were never a moment at rest, the long slim fingers playing imaginary keys or chords, inaudible outside of his own musical imagination.
When the already suspicious policeman at the entrance of the court saw the musician come out, clawing the empty air with the two forefingers of either hand crooked like talons, a fearful frown on his brow, and an ominous muttering in his throat, the officer said to himself:
“There goes a hanarchist, if ever there was one,” not knowing that the poor little man was merely pulling the stops of a mythical organ, immense in size and heavenly in tone. The police always looked askance at Langly when he moved into a new locality, until they learned that he was the organist at St. Martyrs-in-the-East.
One night, shortly after he took the back room two flights up at No. 3, Langly came down the common stairway, and paused in amaze at the landing opposite Braunt’s door. He heard some one within, slowly and fearfully murdering Chopin’sFuneral March, part first. The sound made him writhe, and he crouched by the door, his fingers mechanically drumming against the panel, repressing with difficulty a desire to cry out against the profanation of a harmony that seemed sacred to him. The drone stopped suddenly, and next instant the door was jerked open, causing the amazed listener to stumble into the room, where, as it seemed to him, a giant pounced down, clutched his shoulders, and flung him in a heap on the floor by the opposite wall. Then, kicking the door shut, the giant, with fists clenched and face distorted with rage, towered over the prostrate man.
“You miserable sneaking scoundrel!” cried Braunt. “So that’s why you took a room with the Scimminses—to ferret and spy on me. I’ve seen you crawling up these stairs, afraid to look any honest man in the face. Because I took no strike pay Gibbons wants to know how I live, does he? I’m up to his tricks. You’re Gibbons’s spy, and he has sent you to live with that other sneak, Scimmins. Scimmins himself was afraid, for he knows already the weight of my hand. Now,” continued Braunt, rolling up his sleeves, “I’ll serve you as I did Scimmins. I’ll throw you over the banisters, and you can report that to Gibbons, and tell him to come himself next time, and I’ll break every bone in his body.”
Jessie clung to her father, begging him in tears not to hurt the poor man. Braunt shook her off, but not unkindly.
“Sit thee down, Jessie, lass, and don’t worrit me. I’ll but drop the bag o’ bones on the stairs, and serve him right for a sneak.”
Langly, encouraged by his antagonist’s change of tone in speaking to the girl, ventured to falter forth:
“I assure you, sir——”
“Don’t ‘sir’ me, you hound,” cried Braunt, turning fiercely upon him, “and don’t dare to deny you are one of Gibbons’s spies. I caught you at it, remember.”
“I’ll deny nothing, if it displeases you; but I never heard of Gibbons in my life, and I’m only a poor organist. I stopped at the door on hearing the harmonium. For no other reason, I assure you. I know I oughtn’t to have done it, and I suppose I am a sneak. I’ll never do it again, never, if you will excuse me this time.”
There was something so abject in the musician’s manner that Braunt’s resentment was increased rather than diminished by the appeal. He had a big man’s contempt for anything small and cringing.
“Oh, you’re an organist, are you? Likely story! Organists don’t live in Garden Court. But we’ll see, we’ll see. Get up.”
Langly gathered himself together, and rose unsteadily to his feet. Every movement he made augmented the other’s suspicion.
“Now,” said Braunt, with the definite air of a man who has his opponent in a corner, “sit down at the harmonium and play. You’re an organist, remember.”
“Yes,” protested Langly, “but I don’t know that I can play on that instrument at all. I play a church organ.”
“An organ’s an organ, whether it is in church or out. If you can play the one, you can play the other.”
The young man hesitated, and was nearly lost. Braunt’s fingers itched to get at him, and probably only the presence of the girl restrained him so far.
“Have you any music?” asked Langly.
“No, we haven’t. She plays by ear.”
“Will you allow me to go up-stairs and bring some sheet music?”
This was a little too transparent.
“Now, by God!” cried Braunt, bringing his fist down on the table. “Stand there chattering another minute, and I’ll break thy neck down the stair. Sit thee down, Jessie, an’ don’t interfere. The man plays or he doesn’t. I knew he was a liar, an’ he quakes there because it’s to be proven. Now, coward, the organ or the stairs—make thy choice quickly.”
The driven musician reluctantly took the chair before the instrument. He had played on the harmonium in his early days, and knew it was harsh and reedy at the best. But under his gentle touch the spirit of all the harmonies seemed to rise from it, and fill the squalid room. Braunt stood for a moment with fallen jaw, his hands hanging limply by his sides; then he sank into his arm-chair. Jessie gazed steadfastly, with large pathetic eyes, at their guest, who seemed himself transformed, all the lines of dismay and apprehension smoothed away from his face, replaced by an absorbed ecstacy, oblivious to every surrounding. He played harmony after harmony, one apparently suggesting and melting into another, until at last a minor chord carried the music into the solemn rhythm of Chopin’s march; then the organ, like a sentient creature, began to sob and wail for the dead. The girl’s eyes, never moving from the wizard of the keys, filled with unshed tears, and her father buried his face in his hands.
When at last the organist’s magic fingers slipped from the keys, and the exultant light faded from his face as the dying music merged into silence, Braunt sprang to his feet.
“Curse me for a brutish clown!” he cried. “To think that I mishandled thee, lad, an’ thou playest like an angel. I never heard music before.”
He laid his huge hand on the other’s shoulder gently and kindly, although the youth, hardly yet awake from his dream, timidly shrank from the touch. “Forgive me, lad? I misdoubt I hurt thee.”
“No, no; it is all nothing. So you like the music?”
“The music! I shall never forget it; never. That march rings in my head all day. The whole world seems tramping to it.”
The young man for the first time looked up at him, the light of brotherhood in his eyes.
“I feel it, too,” he said, “that there is nothing around us but good music. It smooths away the ruder sounds of earth, or uses them as undertones—as—as a background. I sometimes fancy that the gates of heaven are left ajar, and we—a few of us—are allowed to listen, to compensate us for any trouble we have, or to show us the triviality of everything else.”
The young man’s thin face flushed in confused shame at finding himself talking thus to another man, although what he said was merely the substance of many a former soliloquy. With a hasty apologetic glance at the girl, who regarded him like one in a trance, with wide unwinking eyes, Langly continued hurriedly:
“The march is a difficult one and should not be attempted except after many lessons. I shall be pleased to teach your daughter, if you will let me. She has a correct ear.”
Braunt shook his head.
“We have no money for music lessons,” he said.
“I have very little myself. I am poor, and therefore need none,” said the organist, as if that were a logical reason. “The poor should help the poor. If they don’t, who else will? The poor have always been kind to me.” He thought of his many landladies, and how they had robbed themselves to sustain him, as they had often admitted, little thinking he would desert them one by one. “Aye, and the rich too,” he added, remembering the hydraulic motor in the church, and of the continued endurance of the authorities with their organist.
“Well, lad,” said Braunt, with a sigh, “come in when you can, and if nowt else, you’ll be sure of a hearty northern welcome.”
SARTWELL prided himself on being a man who made few mistakes. He was able to trace an event from cause to effect with reasonable certainty, and this slight merit made him perhaps a trifle impatient with others who could not be credited with similar foresight, as his own wife would not have hesitated to bear witness. It would probably have filled that just woman with subdued, if pardonable, gratification had she known how wide of the mark her husband was in his estimate of the result on the strikers of the news he had committed to the care of Marsten. Sart-well imagined that the men, in their fury at being outwitted, would turn on Gibbons and rend him. He believed that Gibbons would not dare tell his dupes, as Sartwell persisted in calling them, how the Union had been befooled into supporting for weeks the bogus workmen whom the manager had flung into its credulous lap. After wreaking their vengeance on Gibbons and deposing him, they must return to the works, reasoned the manager. Their money was gone, interest in the strike had all but died out, fresher events had compressed it into a two-line item in the papers, subscriptions had practically ceased; what then was there left but a return or starvation, that powerful ally of masters all the world over?
But Sartwell forgot that the Englishman knows how to starve. No Indian ever tightens his belt another notch with grimmer determination to compress hunger than an Englishman sets his teeth and starves, if need be. He has starved on the ice near the Pole, and under the burning sun in the desert.
He has met famine face to face in beleaguered fort with no thought of surrender, and has doled with scrupulous exactitude the insufficient portions of food on a raft in mid-ocean. The poet has starved in his garret, making no outcry, and the world has said, “If we had only known.” In the forests and on the plains, in the jungle and on the mountains, and—perhaps worst of all—in the great cities, amidst plenty, the Englishman has shown he knows how to starve, saying with the poet:
“I have not winced nor cried aloud.”
When Gibbons heard what Marsten had to tell, he promptly said, “It is a lie”; but the committee looked one at the other with apprehension in their faces, fearing it was the truth.
“The question is,” said Marsten, “are you going to let the men know this?”
“Certainly, if I find it is true; but I don’t believe a word of it. Perhaps you want the pleasure of being the bearer of bad news to the men.”
“I intend to tell them, if you do not.”
“Of course. I’m sorry we can’t gratify you.”
The committee dismissed Marsten, and went into secret session; shortly afterwards separating, to meet again in the evening just before the large gathering in the Salvation Hall. In the interval, Gibbons and his fellow-members made active search for the alleged fraudulent workmen, but they found none; the birds had flown. It was evident the word had been passed, and that, fearing the vengeance of the legitimate claimants to the Union funds, the former “blacklegs” had taken themselves off, out of the reach of possible harm.
When the committee met for the second time that day, the members were divided among themselves as to the advisability of taking the men fully into their confidence. Some thought it best to break the doleful news gradually; others, that the worst should be known at once. Gibbons, however, said there was in reality no choice; the men must be told the whole truth, for if the committee tried any half measures, Marsten would undoubtedly rise in his place and relate what Sartwell had told him. So the whole truth and nothing but the truth was resolved upon.
When Gibbons faced his audience that night in the large hall, he saw he had to deal with a body of men whose mood was totally different from that of the crowd which light-heartedly voted, with a hurrah, to go on strike. There was now little jocularity among the men; they sat in their places in sullen silence. A feeling that something ominous was in the air seemed to pervade the hall, and, as Gibbons stepped to the front of the platform, he felt that the atmosphere of the place was against him; that he had to proceed with great caution, or his hold on the men was lost. He knew he was a good speaker, but he knew also that the men were just a trifle impatient with much talk and such small result from it all.
“Combination,” he began, “is the natural consequence of the modern conditions of labour. A workingman of to-day may be likened to a single pipe in a large organ. He can sound but one note. He spends his life doing part of something. He does not begin any article of commerce, go on with it, and finish it, as did the workmen of former days; he merely takes it from a fellow-workman who has put a touch on it, puts his own touch on it, and passes it on to another; and thus the article travels from hand to hand until it reaches the finisher. The workman of to-day is merely a small cog on a very large wheel, and so, if he does not combine with his fellows, he is helpless. The workman of former times was much more independent. He began his work and completed it. If he was a cooper, he made the whole barrel, hooping it and heading it. If one of us may be compared to a single pipe in an organ, the workman of yesterday might be likeened to a flute, on which a whole tune could be played. He——”
“Ah, chuck it!” cried a disgusted man in front. “We don’t want no philosophy; we wants strike pay or master’s pay.”
“’Ear, ’ear!” rang through the hall; the interrupter quite evidently voicing the sentiment of the meeting. Gibbons stood for a second or two looking at them.
“Yes,” he cried, his voice like a trumpet call, “Iwillchuck it. This is not the time for philosophy, as our friend said; it is the time to act. When a man strips to fight, what does he expect?”
“A d——d good thrashing,” was the unlooked-for reply.
It is never safe for an orator to depend on his audience for answers to his questions; but the laugh that went up showed Gibbons that the crowd was getting into better humour, which was what he most desired.
“When an Englishman takes off his coat to fight, he asks no favour from his opponent; but he does expect fair play, and if Englishmen are the onlookers he gets it, whether they like him or whether they don’t. He doesn’t expect to be struck below the belt; he doesn’t expect to be strangled on the ropes; he doesn’t expect to be hit when he is down. We stripped for a square and fair fight with Manager Sartwell, and we have fought as men should. We have broken no law; we have raised no disturbance. The police, always eager enough to arrest a striker, have laid hands on none of us. It has been a square, stand-up, honourable fight. It has been a fair fight on our side, and I am proud to have been connected with it. But in this struggle I have made one mistake. I made the mistake of thinking we were fighting an honourable opponent—with a man who would not break the rules of the ring. I was not on the outlook for foul play—for trickery. Knowing what I do to-night, I say—and I am ready to take the consequences of my words—that Sartwell is a thief, and a cowardly thief in the estimation of any honest man. He knew that the life of our fight was our money. He knew that starvation for the helpless wives and families of our men was his most powerful ally. He did not dare to break in and steal our money, because he was afraid of the law, but he took a meaner and more cowardly way of accomplishing the robbery. He appealed to the cupidity of men out of work—poor devils! I don’t blame them; they were doubtless starving—and he told them that if they masqueraded as employees of his, the Union would take them in, and pay them wages, as long as there was no suspicion aroused—that is, if these men kept their mouths shut they could draw strike pay. Much as I have always despised Sartwell, I did not think he would stoop to a trick like this. A man who robs a bank has some courage, but a man who tempts poverty-stricken wretches to commit the crime, while he stands safely aside and reaps the benefit—there is no decent word in the language to characterize him. Now, men, you know what has been done, and the result is that our treasury is as empty as if Sartwell had broken into it with a jimmy. The manager is waiting expectantly for the reward of his burglary. He will throw the gates of the works open to-morrow for you to enter and complete his triumph. The question before the meeting to-night is—Are you going in?”
A universal shout of, “Never! We’ll starve first!” rose to the rafters of the building.
When he first confronted the meeting that night, Gibbons feared he could not rouse the men from their evident coldness toward him; as the speech went on, increasing murmurs among the men and at length savage outbursts of rage showed him that he held them in the hollow of his hand; at the end, a word from him, and all the police in that part of London could not have saved the works from wreck and flames.
“To the works!” was the cry, and there was a general movement in response to it.
“No, men!” shouted Gibbons, his stentorian voice dominating the uproar. “Not to the works. Everyman home to-night, but be on the ground in the morning. We must not play into the enemy’s hands by any attempt at violence. To-morrow we will intercept Monkton and Hope, and demand our rights from them in person. Let them refuse at their peril. We’ll have no more dealings with Sartwell.”
There was a cheer at this, and the meeting disbanded quietly.
Next morning the men were out in force at the still closed gates, and there were angry threats against the manager. It was all right enough, they said, for Gibbons to counsel moderation, but the time for moderation was past. There was an increased body of police, who kept the crowd moving as much as was possible, having for the first time during the strike a most difficult task to perform. The strikers were in ugly temper, and did not obey orders or take pushes with the equanimity they had formerly displayed; but the police showed great forbearance, and evidently had instructions not to use their truncheons except as a last resort.
Sartwell, knowing a crisis was at hand, had slept in his office, and the ever-increasing mob hooted when he did not appear at his usual time.
Gibbons, by word and action, moving about everywhere, tried to keep his men in hand and prevent a conflict. They cheered him, but paid little attention to what he said.
Shortly after ten o’clock, a hansom drove to the outskirts of the mob, and was received with a chorus of groans. Gibbons quickly stepped in front of it and addressed the occupant.
“Mr. Hope——” he began.
“Stand back there!” cried the officer in charge.
“Mr. Hope,” cried Gibbons, “I want ten words with you.”
Little Mr. Hope shrank into a corner of the hansom, speechless, his face as white as a sheet of paper.
“Stand back, I say!” The officer pushed Gibbons, striking him with some force on the breast.
“Let him answer. Will you speak for one minute with your men—the men who have made you rich?”
“Stand back!” reiterated the officer, pushing him a step further.
The hansom moved inch by inch nearer the gates. The crowd seethed like an uneasy sea, but every man held his breath.
“Listen to me, Mr. Hope. Your men are starving. They ask only——”
The officer pushed the speaker back once more. Gibbons’s heel caught on a cobble-stone, and he went down backwards.
The crowd broke like a wave, submerging the police for a moment, flooding the street as if a dam had given way. The cabby on his lofty seat, trying to control his frightened horse, looked like a castaway perched on a buoy in an angry ocean. He made the tactical mistake of lashing around him with his whip. In an instant the hansom was over and down, with a crash of splintering glass. The police, edging together, struck right and left with a fury that quite matched the less disciplined rage of the mob. The officers fought their way until there was a ring around the prostrate cab; two of them picked up Mr. Hope, who was helpless with fear and horror, and these two, with the little man between them, surrounded by a squad that stood shoulder to shoulder, simply clove their way through the dense mass to the gates, where the small door in the large gate was quickly opened and shut, with Mr. Hope and one supporting policeman inside.
Gibbons, his hat gone, his coat in rags and his face smeared with blood, a wild unkempt figure, rose above the struggling mob, and stood on the top of the fallen cab.
“For God’s sake, men,” he screamed, “don’t resist the police! Fallback! Fallback!”
He might as well have shouted to the winds. The police laid about them like demons, and the crowd was rapidly falling back, but not because Gibbons ordered them to. In an incredibly short space of time the police in a body marched down the street, and there was none to oppose them. The remnants of what a few minutes before seemed an irresistible force, lay on the pavement and groaned, or leaned against the walls, the more seriously wounded to be taken to the hospitals, the others to the police station.
In spite of their defeat in the morning, the men gathered once more about the works in the afternoon, and the threatening crowd was even greater than before, because the evening papers had spread over London startling accounts of the riot, as they called it, and the news had attracted idlers from all parts of the metropolis. The wildest rumours were afloat: the men were going to wreck the works; they were going to loot the bread-shops in Light Street; they had armed themselves and were about to march on Trafalgar Square. With a resolute and desperate leader, there is no saying what they might have attempted; but Gibbons, who had put another coat on his back, and much sticking-plaster on his face, moved about counselling moderation and respect for the law. They would forfeit public sympathy, he said, by resorting to violence; although some of his hearers growled that “a bleedin’ lot o’ good” public sympathy had done for them. “What we want, and what we mean to have,” said Gibbons, “is a word with the owners. They are bound to come out soon.”
They did come out ultimately together, and two more frightened men than Monkton and Hope it would have been hard to find in all the land that day. They were surrounded by a dozen policemen, whose resolute demeanour showed they were not to be trifled with. The gates immediately closed behind this formidable procession, and it quickly made its way up the street, the crowd jeering and groaning as it passed through.
“We’ve got nothing against them,” shouted one. “Bring out Sartwell, and we’ll show you wot for.”
Hatred for the manager rather than the owners was plainly the dominant sentiment of the gathering. They cheered the remark, and gave three groans for the unpopular manager.
When the protected men disappeared, the vigilance of the force relaxed, and the crowd surged into the gap the police had cleared. With the masters safe and out of reach, the critical moment of the day seemed to have passed. The police could not be expected to know that the real resentment of the mob was not directed against the man whose cab had been overturned that morning.
“I hope Sartwell won’t venture out to-night,” said Marsten to Braunt. “It will take more than twelve policemen to guard him if he does.”
“He has some sense,” replied Braunt, “and will stay where he is.”
Neither Braimt nor Marsten had been present during the morning’s battle; but they, like many others with nothing to do, had come in the afternoon.
As Braunt spoke the small door in the gate opened, and Sartwell, entirely alone, stepped out. He had no more formidable weapon in his hand than his customary slim and trim umbrella. His silk hat was as glossy and his clothes as spick and span as if he were a tailor’s model. He seemed to have aged a trifle since the strike began, but his wiry well-knit body was as erect as ever, and in his eye was that stern look of command before which, at one time or another, every man in his employ had quailed.
An instantaneous hush fell upon the crowd. The cry of a hawker in a distant street was heard. Every man knew that the flinging of a missile or the upraising of an arm even, would be as a spark in a powder-mill. Let but a stroke fall, and all the police in London could not have saved the life of the man walking across the cleared space from the gates towards the crowd. The mass of silent humanity had but to move forward, and Sartwells life would be crushed out on the paving-stones.
Sartwell, without pause and without hurry, walked across the intervening space with evident confidence that the men would make way for him. There was no sign of fear in his manner, nor on the other hand was there any trace of swaggering authority about him; but there was in the glance of his steely eye and the poise of his head that indefinable something which stamps a man master,—which commands obedience, instant and unquestioned.
The crowd parted before him, and he cast no look over his shoulder. Habit being strong, one or two raised hand to forelock as he passed, getting in return the same curt nod that had always acknowledged such salutation. The human ocean parted before him as did the Red Sea before the Hebrew leader, and the manager passed through as unscathed.
“God!” cried Braunt, towering above his fellows and shaking his fist at the unoffending sky, “I have seen in my life one brave man.”