Ishbel"I will hef none but Ishbel."—p. 127.
"I will hef none but Ishbel."—p. 127.
"I will hef none but Ishbel."—p. 127.
She found herself in the little boat, and rowing towards the cave before she knew she had consented. The night seemed only a paler day. They rowed close into the shore, till they discovered a place where the rock-face was cleft, and showed a pale light within.There was just space for the boat to float in, passing through a low, overhanging archway. Ishbel drew her breath sharply and clasped her hands, as Duncan paused, watching her face, once they were through it.
boat"It is a pretty boat to take a lass out in."
"It is a pretty boat to take a lass out in."
"It is a pretty boat to take a lass out in."
They were in a deep circular basin, the water, a lovely pale green, darker in the shadows. The rocky sides were cut, here and there, into long narrow openings, into one of which Catriona's piper must have wandered; here Ishbel saw the water lying dark and mysterious, shadow-haunted.
Bending over the edge of the boat, she could see the yellow sand far below; in bright sunshine her own fair face would have been reflected. Tiny jelly-fish edged with lilac spots, and with long white fringe, floated beside the seaweed, like strange jewels, and far above them they could see the pale opalescence of the summer sky, soft, exquisite, pearly. Fringing the opening were ferns and heather, and tall fox-gloves, but the fairy bells did not stir in the breathless air. Were the wee folk, the good folk, the green folk, lurking within? If she watched, would she see a tiny face peep out? She waited—watched—and waited—and the time passed.
"Duncan, I do not see anything!" Ishbel spoke at last, breathlessly, eagerly. She had forgotten Rory, she had forgotten everything but her desire. "Row me further in, Duncan."
He pushed the boat forward, and Ishbel sat with her dark blue eyes—they seemed black in the shadow—strained eagerly forward, listening, waiting. Nothing moved, except that now and then little waves would break with a plashing ripple against the boat. Far up on the rocks, a passing breath of wind now and then swayed the flowers and the grasses; but no fairy face peeped anywhere, there was no tap of dancing feet, no note of elfin music.
"Duncan, Duncan, there is nothing, nothing at all!"
The note of bitter disappointment in her voice roused Duncan. Once or twice he had essayed to speak, having no desire for a silent adventure, but Ishbel had raised her little brown hand sharply. He might disturb the fairies. At last the silence had chilled evenher. It was all of no use. She could see and hear nothing.
"We will chust be going home then," he said practically, caring not at all for her disappointment, for, of course, it was all "foolishness." "Maybe they are not dancing to-night; we will better chust go home."
"She said I would be sure to see them."
There was a sob in her voice; as he pushed the boat out, she crushed the rowans bitterly in her lap, and they fell into the bottom of the boat. She remembered Rory suddenly, as, once outside, she noticed that the weather had changed during her long waiting, that the light seemed obscured, that there were white horses leaping in the distance, and that the wind swept sharply in their faces as they looked seaward. It would be dangerous now to keep quite close to the rocks, for a heavy groundswell had risen. Duncan, glancing round, expended some forcible Gaelic, for he knew he would need all his muscles to row the clumsy boat, if they were to be safe, and he hated trouble. He would have to keep out to sea to avoid the rocks.
During the long pull home, through the now angry waters, Ishbel sat quite silent. When Duncan bade her "Bale!" almost furiously, the boat having an ugly leak, she did so almost mechanically.
Nothing seemed to matter. There were no fairies, and she would have to tell Rory she had broken her word!
They found a sandy, sheltered bay at last where they could land. Duncan alone knew how hard had been the struggle against wind and tide in the clumsy and leaky craft; but Ishbel did not see a tall waiting figure on the shore, till she was preparing to leap from the boat.
Then a strong hand took hers, and she glanced, with a startled cry, to see Rory himself, grim, grave, silent, with something new in his face which chilled her through and through. How was he there?
He helped Duncan to pull up the boat, almost disdainfully, looking at it when it lay out of the water with a kind of scornful rage.
"It is a pretty boat," he said then in Gaelic, "a pretty boat to take a lass out in, I will be saying that, Duncan MacLeod."
MacLeod called to Ishbel sharply, making no reply, and all three walked up to the cottage in heavy silence. The night, grown gusty and wet, seemed to have changed as suddenly and mysteriously as Ishbel's life.
At the door she paused and faced her lover; his silence galled and tormented her.
"Well!" she said, "well!"
If she had pleaded with him—been penitent, sorrowful! Alas! it was no penitent face which met his, and jealousy and wrath broke forth fiercely, sweeping love aside.
"Are you asking what I am thinking, Ishbel?" he cried, "of the lass who promised me, and who broke her word, and went out with Duncan MacLeod? Well, I am thinking chust nothing at all of her! I hef warned her that the boat was not safe, and of the squalls, and that it was not the thing for a lass like her to go so late; and she had promised, and yet she went! And this was the claymore brooch made of Iona pebbles I hef bought for you; and it can go there!" He flung the little packet remorselessly into the heather. "And as for yourself, I think nothing of you at all, and everything is over. And I am sailing for New Zealand with Mr. Campbell to-morrow. He asked me, and I said 'No,' but I will go now, and will walk into Portree this very night!Beannachd leibh(good-bye)."
He had turned away then, furiously. It had all passed as suddenly, swept up as unexpectedly as had the squall outside the Cave of Gold. Ishbel stood as if dazed, staring straight before her. A Highlander's rage is like a Highland storm; one bends before it instinctively. Ishbel did so now.
Rory did not look back. Duncan, in the doorway, saw him stride on to the road, through the little patch of oats before the door. He set his face towards the high road for Portree. In a very few moments the sound of his footsteps died away and the night swallowed him. That was all right, Duncan thought. New Zealand! Capital!
"There follows a mist, and a weeping rain,And life is never the same again!"
Ishbel might have thought of these words, if she had known them, on the morrow and on many morrows that followed. For Rory MacPhee was not the man to come back, or to speak lightly. He sailed with the agent to Glasgow—was believed to have started for New Zealand within the week. There, as far as his Skye friends were concerned, he vanished. They were the days of rare and slow communication, and Rory never wrote.
But Ishbel did not marry her cousin, as everyone expected, including MacLeod. She answered him "No," listlessly, but quite doggedly, and nothing that he could say, or that Catriona could threaten, served to change her. Once the old woman muttered vengefully that she would never see the fairies, for she had lost her luck, and Ishbel turned on her almost fiercely.
"It is all false," she cried in Gaelic, "for there are no green folk at all, and I do not care!"
The mystery and the charm had fled; sheno longer dreamed on the green grass circle, no longer wondered at the night-song of the burn, no longer watched for the kelpies under the boulders in the burns or in the Rowan Pool. Belief in the fairies had faded on the night in which Rory left her. Except in the little bald, white kirk on the hill-side, Ishbel never sang. Song dies on the lips when care and sorrow lie heavy on the heart.
It was five years now since that fatal visit to the Gave of Gold—Ishbel never mentioned it—and she was returning, in the soft, golden haze of a September evening, from the castle. Catriona was growing feeble, and Ishbel did everything; the old woman only spinning a little, and wandering out to gather sticks and twigs for the fire. The girl had been taking up carded wool to the castle, and giving the great London ladies there a spinning lesson.
Before the cottage came in view, with its surrounding field of poor and thinly growing oats and yellow daisies (there being, indeed, a far more plentiful crop of the latter), she paused to look up the fairy knoll. There, on the top was the fairy ring. Something made Ishbel suddenly turn and mount the little hill.
The sea-loch lay beneath her, tinged with red; the sky was a wonder and a glory, but Ishbel was not looking at the sky, or at the loch. She was thinking how strange it was that she should go on living, and living much as usual, when all that was best and fairest in life was gone.
She sighed, looking down at the burn, plashing and leaping over the grey boulders. There was that story about the kelpies; her grandmother rarely spoke of them now. Were there really no kelpies—no brownies? And yet——
A step behind her made her start violently, and she gave a sharp cry. A man's tall figure was there, not ten yards off, and there flashed across Ishbel suddenly the thought that perhaps, after all, it was all true, for this was a ghost! And if there were ghosts, why not wee folk and kelpies?
"I believe it is Ishbel, herself. Do you not know me, Ishbel?"
He spoke in a new voice. The fluent Gaelic was gone, and the stiff, translated English; he spoke easily, with a strange accent. And yet, ah! she knew him at once! It was Rory! Rory, well-dressed, handsome, upright, with a different and more independent carriage, but Rory all the same!
Ishbel rose and stood quite wordless for a moment. And then—"You are a great stranger," she said. "It is a very long time, I believe, since you hef been in Skye."
He almost smiled. He was looking down at her earnestly, intently. Was it possible that she should be so little changed? Had the five years been a dream? Just as he remembered her—with the pale, clear skin, the deep sloe-eyes, the ruddy crisp hair, the little droop of the head! Ishbel! The girl he had turned his back on, and been furious with, and quite forgotten—oh, yes! quite forgotten, though he had come back to the Winged Island—well, just to see how all the old folks were!
"It is five years," he said deliberately, "five years! Are you—are you married, Ishbel?"
The girl raised her eyes and looked at him. It was getting dark, and the burn was beginning its night-song. Ishbel noticed that, and remembered just how the water used to sing, quite suddenly. The lovely, indescribable breath of the muir wind swept in their faces. How sweet it was—how entrancing! And oh! me, the velvety deeps of her eyes, the little half-sad, half-humorous mouth!
Was she married? Was she?
He repeated the question, but with a new and eager ring in his voice, and Ishbel shook her head.
"Though there will have been a good many marriages since you left. There was Mari MacLean and Dougal Nicolson, and there was Colin——"
"What about MacLeod, your cousin?"
"He is to be married this year," she said, "to an English lass."
"So you did not marry him, after all, Ishbel?"
"Who said that I would?" she cried, as if stung. "You knew better than that! Who said that I would?"
"He did; and that you would go with him that night, if he asked you. And you did, Ishbel! It was very cruel, but——" Rory paused then, and suddenly spoke in Gaelic, as if it all came back to him. "But I am beginning to think that I was cruel, too. Was I?"
He waited, watching her.
Ishbel nodded gently. She also spoke in Gaelic, as if they had parted only yesterday.
"Yes, you were cruel, Rory, and you were very hasty. It is true that I was a foolish lass, but you might have given me another chance. I believed in my grandmother's stories. I wanted to see the good folk." She looked away, and sadness and disillusion crept over her face. "But I do not believe in them any more, not any more."
"Poor little Ishbel. Poor wee lassie!"
It could not be five years. It could not! They had only parted yesterday!
"But it does not matter," Ishbel said, rousing, "and now perhaps you will call and see my grandmother? Are you on your way to Uig?"
He did not answer that.
"Ishbel," he said, "I was very cruel, andI was just as angry as a man could be, and for five years I have been mad and sore; but deep down, deep down, I never forgot you. I hated him, but I loved you. I will come and see your grandmother; but—first—first, will you give me a kiss, Ishbel, for the sake of the old days?"
Would she? Perhaps, after all, he did not wait for her consent. He had her in his arms, and they closed round her, and Isabel's head fell on his shoulder with a little sob that was an epitome of all the five years' sorrow and heartache.
CatrionaCatriona heard his story in silence.
Catriona heard his story in silence.
Catriona heard his story in silence.
"Muirnean(darling)," Rory whispered, "I love you; and when I leave Skye, you will come too, or I will be staying on here with you. You shall choose Ishbel—you shall choose; and to-morrow I will buy you something better than the claymore brooch that I was cruel enough to throw away!"
They walked down to the cottage, and Catriona, who was never surprised at anything, shook hands sourly with him; she heard his story in silence, and nodded consent when he told her that he and Ishbel were to be married, after all. He could look after the croft, she said, or buy Colin MacDougal's farm, just above, if he had money enough. Would he have money enough? For Duncan kept her very close now. Rory laid a packet smilingly in her lap, and said he thought he had money enough.
Next forenoon Catriona saw him coming up the road; Ishbel ran to meet him, and together they wandered off to the burn-side. They came back by-and-by, and Ishbel stood smiling in the cottage door, her arms full of rowan branches; Rory had a spray in his coat, and the red berries nestled under her chin.
"I have brought you back luck," the girl cried happily. "We found the rowans down by the pool. And Rory says that there are maybe good folk in the world, after all! Who knows, grandmother?"
Catriona's peat-brown old face was bent over her wheel. She allowed there might be one or two, with a half-grunt of satisfaction.
party(Photo: H. V. Hornville, Gawber Street, E.)THE "MOTHERS'" GARDEN PARTY GROUP.(Showing the Bishop in the Background.)
(Photo: H. V. Hornville, Gawber Street, E.)THE "MOTHERS'" GARDEN PARTY GROUP.(Showing the Bishop in the Background.)
(Photo: H. V. Hornville, Gawber Street, E.)
THE "MOTHERS'" GARDEN PARTY GROUP.
(Showing the Bishop in the Background.)
East London is a very different place from what many people expect it to be. There are not a few who still think that they will have their throats cut if they venture into it, and I remember one visitor who turned up very late for dinner one night at Oxford House, and gave as the reason for his lateness that his landlord had got one side of him and his landlady on the other, and had held him by his coat-tails to prevent him coming to be murdered in Bethnal Green.
EOLD "OXFORD HOUSE."
OLD "OXFORD HOUSE."
OLD "OXFORD HOUSE."
As a matter of fact, East London is probably, by daylight or by night, one of the safest parts of London, except in a very few selected streets, well known to the police; and one of my predecessors, the much-lamented Bishop Billing, was quite right when he used to say to the West-End mother, anxious about her daughter's safety, if she came to work in East London, "See her as far as Temple Bar, and then she will be all right."
What strikes one at first is the extreme brightness and cheerfulness of the people, often under very adverse circumstances. I remember giving a series of garden-parties when I was Rector of Bethnal Green, in the little garden attached to the rectory. There was not much room for anything, and the only amusements were skittles and races, whilst tea and cake and bread-and-butter were the simplerefreshments; but not only—as you will see by the photograph—were the visitors very content with themselves, but one of them, from one of the poorest streets, met me the day after a "party" and said:
"Rector, we did enjoy ourselves yesterday."
"I am very glad of it," I replied.
Oxford(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)"OXFORD HOUSE"—THE PRESENT BUILDING.
(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)"OXFORD HOUSE"—THE PRESENT BUILDING.
(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)
"OXFORD HOUSE"—THE PRESENT BUILDING.
"But we very nearly didn't come."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Oh! You see, a man down our street, 'e said, 'Don't go—the Rector only wants to show you a few old gravestones.' But we tell 'im now we couldn't have enjoyed ourselves better if we'd been at Marlborough 'Ouse."
Then the children of East London are truly delightful. Poor little bairns! they often get pale enough spending the year in those crowded courts and alleys—and few things are doing better work in London than the Children's Country Holiday Fund, which sends about thirty-one thousand each year for a fortnight into the country—but still nothing daunts their spirits or dims their affection. Often have I been cheered through an afternoon's visiting by a group of children who would spend their half-holiday afternoon in waiting quite quietly outside a sick-room in order to knock at the door of the next sick case to which they were quite 'cute enough to know that I was going, and so on right down the street. Many of the clergy organise Band of Hope entertainments, and teach the children to act little plays of their own, and there are no quicker and apter pupils than the children of East London, as the prizes carried off yearly at the Crystal Palace will show.
The East-End boy, again, is quite a character; we had four hundred at Oxford House in one club, besides some hundreds of others in brigades. Whenyou told an East-End mother that fact, she would generally say, "My word, I findonequite enough!" And certainly, on a Whit Monday, when one had at least a hundred and fifty to convoy to London Bridge and get safely down to some friend's house and back again, they were a fine handful.
palace(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)THE PEOPLE'S PALACE.
(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)THE PEOPLE'S PALACE.
(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)
THE PEOPLE'S PALACE.
One day I noticed the express stopping pretty often, and wondered why, as it was not advertised to stop anywhere. At last the guard came to see me at a wayside station, with a very red face, and said he would hold me responsible for what my boys were doing; he said that they had pulled the danger connecting-rod three times. I went round to see what was happening, and asked whether any of them had done it. "Oh, yes," said a little chap at once; "it was me;I was only 'anging my 'at up on it!"
Few things abash the East-End boy. At the end of the journey, my friend, who lived near a very magnificent house, was showing us through the rooms, and I heard a little boy say confidentially to his neighbour, without meaning to be overheard, "'Em! just like our little back parlour at home!" The good result of all the trouble which such expeditions involved, was shown by the contempt they displayed—as they marched back crowned with flowers, with horses curveting round them, and cabs charging through them, in consequence of the inspiriting notes of the band—for the groups of drunken men and women we used to meet, who had spent their Bank Holiday in quite another way. Once implant in a boy the love of a "better way" of spending a holiday, and you have got a long way on the road to make him love "a better way" of spending his life altogether. Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do, but if those hands are employed in handling a musket, or playing a flute, or clinging on to a horizontal bar—they have ceased to be idle at all.
But space will soon fail me if I go through all the component parts of the population in detail. The young girls, with their limbs aching for active recreation after long confinement in factories or workshops, have been graphically depicted by Sir Walter Besant, and few people are doing more good in the district than those ladies who, at great trouble, often with real self-sacrifice, are running girls' clubs every evening for the girls after their work.
As, of course, is well known, it was one great object of the People's Palace to provide this sort of innocent recreationfor the people, and though it has thrown its strength lately rather into its excellent technical classes, it has not left out of sight its original mission.
The gymnastic instructor at the People's Palace told me a year or two ago that he had no better and more spirited class than a large factory girls' class; and I have seen the magnificent Queen's Hall filled to overflowing for a nigger entertainment on a Saturday night, and more than half-full for a sacred concert on Sunday afternoon.
When one is asked, then, what is the matter with East London, and what lies behind those great thoroughfares, which look so broad and inviting on a fine summer's afternoon, one can only reply by taking one's questioner away from the broad thoroughfares into the crowded streets and alleys which lie behind them and between. Here is a photograph of a crowded back street, which gives an idea of what is going on, say, of a Sunday morning during the Bird Fair in Slater Street, or the Dog Fair at the top of Bethnal Green Road, or the old clothes sale down by Petticoat Lane. We are too thick on the ground, that is what it is; the census does not rise, because itcan'trise: we are crammed so full that we can take no more.
I remember once a young ladies' school used to send roses once a week from a pretty suburb of London; they used to bring them to school in the morning from their gardens, make them at twelve into bouquets, send them up by three, and they were in East London homes by five. As I used to take the bouquets of beautiful flowers round on trays—followed, I may say, by a mob of children yelling for a flower, for old and young have a touching love for flowers in East London—I always found that I required four bouquets for each house, for each house contained at least four families. This is a fact which escapes the notice of the casual visitor, who sees a harmless-looking house outside, but does not know what is inside.
We are overcrowded, and what overcrowding means from the point of view of health and morality only those who reside in the district and the local medical officer really know. I used to have sent me by the excellent Medical Officer for Bethnal Green—Dr. Bate—the death-rate each month compared with the death-rate for the whole of London, and there is no reason that I know of to account for the 22-27 per 1,000 registered for Bethnal Green compared with the 18 per 1,000 of the rest of London, except the overcrowded and sometimes insanitary conditions in which the people live.
petticoat(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)A CROWD IN PETTICOAT LANE.
(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)A CROWD IN PETTICOAT LANE.
(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)
A CROWD IN PETTICOAT LANE.
Things, however, are much better than they used to be. The London CountyCouncil has done a good deal in pulling down rookeries and rehousing large areas—as, for instance, the famous Boundary Street area between Shoreditch and Bethnal Green. The Mansion House Council for the Dwellings of the Poor has done much through its local committees to stimulate local effort; and the district authorities are far more active than they were, and alive to the responsibilities which fall upon them.
Many an afternoon have I spent with the Sanitary Committee of the Vestry of Bethnal Green, condemning insanitary property, and many are the sad sights which I have seen when I have been round with them.
I remember vividly one or two large houses abutting on a little court. As we went with difficulty through the narrow passages and looked into the different rooms, we found women sitting silent and patient, too busy to say much to us, pasting match-boxes together, for which they were to get twopence-farthing a gross. Needless to say that these houses had to be condemned; but the difficulty is by no means over when such dwellings are condemned. As a man said caustically and truly at a meeting held on the subject, "A rat in a hole is better than a rat out, any day"; and great consideration has to be shown in not turning out too quickly those who have found these poor tenements their home before provision has been made elsewhere for them.
If those in the West-End and other places who have property in the slums would only look after it themselves, and not be content with taking the rents without seeing that the places for which they take their money are fit to house men and women, and not mere animals, great progress would be made. We should be happy to show them the best models on which to rebuild their houses, or they may see for themselves by observing the pretty two-storeyed houses now built, which constitute Hart's Lane, abutting on the Bethnal Green Road, and which, being always in demand, pay, we hope, the intelligent landlord who built them.
But it is not merely that we are too thick on the ground; for a long time we were too much left to ourselves. Those that ate jam lived in one place and those that made it lived in another, and naturally therefore the "city of the poor," left to itself, generated standards, habits, and traditions of its own, some of which are the reverse of edifying.
Take, for instance, the prevalence of drink and gambling. A young man came to me one night in East London with a face as pale as death. I had known him as a boy, but he had dropped out of our club system on growing too old for the boys' club, and had got drawn into a drinking set. "Save me!" he cried, as he fell upon his knees and took my hand. He had, he said, been led in the public-house to put his money on horses of which he knew nothing, and had finally spent nine pounds belonging to a shop club, of which he was treasurer. He had to meet his mates next morning; he was only twenty-one, of respectable parents, and engaged to a respectable girl, and with only three months to run out of his apprenticeship. "If you don't help me, sir, I am ruined for life!"
I did lend him the money, to be repaid by instalments, but the story will show the dangers to our young population, and the need of strong and definite work among them from their earliest years. With a public-house at every corner, and a bookmaker's clerk waiting for them during dinner hour, what chance have the poor lads and girls unless someone will go down and live among them and teach them better things? I remember running-in a man who had the insolence to stand outside Oxford House and take money from boys and girls, as well as men and women, during dinner hour, and though he was fined five pounds at once, he had more than twenty pounds on him in coppers and small silver. The fine ought to be raised, as the present maximum—five pounds—is easily paid, and they think nothing of it, and go on again just the same next day.
palace(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)THE GREAT HALL AT THE PEOPLE'S PALACE.
(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)THE GREAT HALL AT THE PEOPLE'S PALACE.
(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)
THE GREAT HALL AT THE PEOPLE'S PALACE.
It was no doubt the growing necessity of bringing a higher standard of life into the "city of the poor" and bridging over the gulf between rich and poor, establishing counter-attractions to the public-house and the gambling-hell, which led Canon Barnett, some fifteen years ago, to suggest the formation of settlements among the poor. His visit to Oxford in 1884, backed up by Bishop Walsham How and Miss Octavia Hill,led to the establishment of Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel, and later on in the same year of Oxford House in Bethnal Green. Of the former excellent institution, which still owes so much to its founder and present Warden, Canon Barnett, much has been written in past years, and, as space is limited even inThe Quiver, I have only room to say a few words more about Oxford House. It was founded on a definite Church basis, and its workers were and are members of the Church of England, but it threw open its clubs and its doors to men of all creeds and all kinds.
When I was myself called to be Head of the House in 1880, it was situated in a back street in Bethnal Green, and consisted of a disused Church school knocked into rooms. As residents increased, we found so small a house quite inadequate, and the present Oxford House was built on a disused site in the next street, and opened by the Duke of Connaught five or six years ago. It has had a full complement of twenty men ever since, and the acquisition of the rectory of Bethnal Green when I became Rector of Bethnal Green in 1895, enabled us for some time to have thirty workers—all laymen with the exception of myself.
museum(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)A VIEW OF BETHNAL GREEN MUSEUM.
(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)A VIEW OF BETHNAL GREEN MUSEUM.
(Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd.)
A VIEW OF BETHNAL GREEN MUSEUM.
The residents do whatever work is entrusted to them by the Head, in the daytime working at the Charity Organisation offices, Children's Country Holiday Fund, Sanitary Aid Committee; in the evening running boys' clubs and men's clubs and Church Lads' Brigades, visiting in the London Hospital on Mondays, visiting the sick and others in the parish of St. Matthew's, now specially connected with the House, and doing innumerable odd jobs for the parish clergy round, with whom they are all on the most friendly footing.
And that brings me lastly to the definitely religious work of East London. It is here that the result of leaving for so long one million people to themselves shows itself in the most disastrous form. The habit of church-going or chapel-going has been almost entirely lost, and it is only after the most patient efforts on the part of the clergy and others that it can be brought again into the district. After sampling on several occasions eighty men (invited to the garden parties spoken of above) out of different streets taken in turn, I discovered that only about one in eighty went either to church or chapel, and out of a thousand boys of the age of fourteen or fifteenwho were questioned on entering one of our large boys' clubs, nine hundred were found to have "g.n." written after their names, which means "goes nowhere." Now, to the readers ofThe QuiverI know that this will seem a very appalling thing, and will show that we have what is practically, from a religious point of view, a pagan population at our very doors.
On whom, then, does the great stress and strain of converting this pagan population fall? Let us give all credit to the good work done by Nonconformists in the district, with whom we are on excellent terms: let us acknowledge the wonderful gatherings in Mr. Charrington's Hall: and in the Pavilion, under the preaching of Mr. George Nokes; the good work by Dr. Stephenson in his Children's Homes; and by Dr. Barnardo in his boys' work at Stepney Causeway; and by other workers scattered up and down the district; but I think all would admit that the great strain and stress of the work falls upon those who actually live in the very midst of the people, each of them with their seven thousand to ten thousand, and sometimes twenty thousand, souls to look after.
It is they whose door-bell rings continuously; it is they to whom everyone comes in the hour of distress, whether they attend the church or not; and it is they and the band of workers they have gathered round them who are laying deep the foundations of the future City of God, and who are working, with a few exceptions, day and night to bring wanderers into the fold.
The people are not irreligious, only non-religious, and all they need is patient and loving work in their midst. To attend a parish gathering is like going to a happy family party, on such excellent terms are the clergy and their workers with the people, and when in some churches you find five hundred East-End communicants in the early morning on Easter Day, no one can question the self-sacrifice and earnestness of those who have once been thoroughly converted.
The great need, of course, is more workers and it is to supply more workers that the East London Church Fund exists. It is spent wholly on workers, not on buildings at all; and it is my earnest desire, with the help of the Bishop of Islington, who is an experienced East-End worker himself, and who has now taken over the North London district, to raise that fund to £20,000 this year to meet the urgent appeals for more workers which come to us from the poorer parts of East and North London. The Fund covers an area of 1,800,000 people, most of whom are poor.
Barnett(Photo: C. E. Fry and Son, Gloucester Terrace, S.W.)CANON BARNETT.(Warden of Toynbee Hall.)
(Photo: C. E. Fry and Son, Gloucester Terrace, S.W.)CANON BARNETT.(Warden of Toynbee Hall.)
(Photo: C. E. Fry and Son, Gloucester Terrace, S.W.)
CANON BARNETT.
(Warden of Toynbee Hall.)
Such, then, so far as it can be described in a short article, is East London, with all its virtues and its vices, its aspirations, its hopes, its possibilities, and its failings. It is a land flowing with milk and honey, with the milk of human kindness and the honey of human love; but, like the old Canaan, it is not yet fully occupied by the host of God. When Christianity is, however, fully "in possession," we shall see a great deepening and ripening of all the good that lies there, and the East London Church of the future will have a character of its own, and will shed a new glory on the Christianity which has slowly converted the world.
pledged
I"And you liked her, Kitty?" said Anthony Trevithick.
"And you liked her, Kitty?" said Anthony Trevithick.
It was the morning after his return, and Lady Jane had left them alone.
"I liked her amazingly," said Lady Kitty; "and, what is more surprising, she liked me."
"It would be surprising if she didn't, Kitty"—looking at her with brotherly fondness. "Do you know, Kitty, I used to like you because you were pretty, and couldn't help being charming?"
Lady Kitty made a mocking bow.
"But still there is some change in you of late. What is it? You have given up being smart and cynical and all that. You are ever so much lovelier now than I remember you."
Lady Kitty laughed, but her eyes softened.
"I'm glad you think I'm lovelier, Anthony."
He looked at her sharply.
"What is it, Kitty?"
"Something that must not be told yet, Anthony."
"Oh, it isthat!"
His voice had an incredulous relief in it.
"It is reallythat, Kitty?"
Lady Kitty laughed up at him out of her chair, and her glance was at once shy and proud.
"Yes, it is that, Anthony."
"Do I know him, Kitty?"
"Very well, Anthony. But no one knows yet—only he and I."
"Who, Kitty?"
"Ask Mr. Leslie, Anthony."
"It isn't Jack, Kitty? You don't mean to say it is Jack! Why—you deceitful little person!—Jack was just the one man you never tried to make captive to your bow and spear; at least, so far as I could see."
"My poor Anthony, you never saw very far where I was concerned."
"No, then, Kitty, I didn't."
His face was a little rueful as he said it.
"But I am glad beyond measure," he went on. "There is, perhaps, only one thing could make me happier."
He stooped and touched Lady Kitty's soft cheek with his lips.
"You can tell Jack, Kitty," he said. "We are like sister and brother, aren't we?"
"I am very fond of you, Anthony. Next to your mother—excluding Jack, of course—I think I'm as fond of you as anyone."
"I'm glad you're fond of my mother, Kitty. She doesn't care for many people."
"I've been trying to get up courage to tell her, Anthony. I hate to keep her in the dark."
"It will be a blow to her, Kitty."
They both laughed and blushed a little consciously.
"Yes, I'm afraid it will."
"But Pamela, Kitty—tell me about Pamela. Did she ever talk about me?"
"I can't say that she did, Anthony."
"I suppose she wouldn't," said the lover, a little disappointed, nevertheless.
"You're fond of her, Anthony?" said Lady Kitty, looking up at him with eyes of alarm. "Really fond of her?"
"I love her and she loves me. As soon as I have established Uncle Wilton comfortably with Knowles to look after him, I shall go to claim her."
"Sheknowsyou love her, Anthony?"
"Oh, yes, she knows."
The young fellow laughed happily, and there was no shadow of doubt or of apprehension in his eyes. He had begun to walk up and down the room now, impatiently, as if he wanted to be off.
"Why didn't you claim her before you went off to nurse your uncle, Anthony? Uncertainty of that kind is hard on a girl."
"I did write. Not, indeed, to her, but to her father, and gave him a broad hint of the state of the case. I have often wondered he never sent me a word: he was such a good sort."
"He has been very ill, Anthony."
"Ill? My mother never told me."
"He was at death's door, but is out of danger; he must be getting strong again by this time."
"My poor little Pam—and all of them! They adore their father, and they had no one to help or comfort them!"
"Why didn't you write to Pamela herself?"
"My mother asked me not to till I came back. But now all that is over. I am going to her at once."
"You say you wrote to her father, Anthony? Do you know I have a kind of idea she said you had not written?"
"I wrote, Kitty, all right, and put it in the letter-box in the hall the night before I left. You must have mistaken what she said. Of course, her father's illness explains his not having written. And now there is no use in writing. I can be there almost as soon as a letter."
Lady Kitty's face was troubled as she looked at him.
"You're quite sure you posted the letter, Anthony? Perhaps they didn't get it. Letters sometimes go wrong, don't they?"
"Not one out of a million. What are you thinking of, Kitty?"
Lady Kitty jumped up out of her chair and went to him.
"My poor old Anthony," she said, "there's something horribly wrong. I wish I hadn't to tell you. Pamela's engaged to a Lord Glengall."
Anthony"My poor old Anthony, there's something horribly wrong."
"My poor old Anthony, there's something horribly wrong."
"My poor old Anthony, there's something horribly wrong."
Trevithick looked at her as if he could not take in what he heard.
"You are mad, Kitty," he said slowly. "She is engaged to me."
"I have her word for it, Anthony. There is something wrong, I am sure. She has just written it to me."
"Show me the letter, Kitty."
She went to an escritoire in the corner of the room, found the letter, and brought it to him. He read it with staring eyes.
"She won't marry him," he said when he had finished.
"My poor Anthony!"
"An engagement is nothing. She wasengaged to me. She let me kiss her. He is a man with money—I remember now. Do women sell their souls for money, Kitty?"
"Some women might, Anthony, but I don't think Pamela would. There is something wrong, Anthony, I am sure of it."
"I am going to find out, Kitty."
attitudeSomething in the attitude smote her.—p. 446.
Something in the attitude smote her.—p. 446.
Something in the attitude smote her.—p. 446.
He turned his angry, miserable young face upon her, and her heart was wrung for him.
"I am going over there to-night, Kitty."
"You will do nothing rash, Anthony?"
"If I find that anything but her own will has come between us, I will do my best to win her back from him. I have the right, Kitty. I was the first, and she let me kiss her."
"You say she was engaged to you, Anthony? Do you mean formally?"
"Everythingbutformally. Ah! I wish I had settled it then—put a ring on her before them all. It was my mother. She made me promise to do nothing till I came back."
"Oh! she knew, then?"
"I told her, Kitty, and she was bitterly angry. And I, mad that I was, I yielded to her will. Afterwards, when I heard she had found them out, and got Pam over here, I thought her heart had softened to me after all those years, and that she was helping me towards my happiness."
"Why did she make you promise that?"
"I am ashamed to say it, Kitty—because she persuaded me you cared for me, and ought not to be told suddenly. I beg your pardon, Kitty; I was not ass enough to think it of myself!"
"Ah!" said Lady Kitty again, and her eyes were thoughtful, "and poor little Pam was miserable. I don't believe they ever had that letter, Anthony."
"If she was miserable for me"—and the lover's face lightened—"she loves me still, and she must give up the other man for me. If she loves me, he has no right to her. I am going to find out, Kitty."
"Where are you going now, Anthony?"
"There are twenty things to be done. I have to see Uncle Wilton and tell him I am going. Knowles understands what to do for him, and to call Dr. Berners if he were ill."
He took up her hand and kissed it.
"You've been a good little girl to me, Kitty," he said. "Afterwards I am going to fight for my love."
As the door closed behind him Lady Kitty went thoughtfully upstairs and knocked at Lady Jane's boudoir door.
"May I come in, Auntie Jane?" she said; "are you very busy?"
Lady Jane looked up from her books with an air of expectation, as if there might be something pleasant to hear; but her expression changed immediately.
"What is the matter, Kitty?" she asked.
"A good deal. Anthony has been telling me that he is in love with Pamela Graydon."
"My darling——"
Kitty lifted her hand.
"It only affects me in so far as it affects Anthony. Pamela is engaged to Lord Glengall."'
"I remember him. I saw him when I was there. He looked like a ploughman, and I thought he was one. I suppose she marries him for the title."
"She marries him—if she does—because she is in love with Anthony, and thinks he has played her false."
"You are too romantic, Kitty."
"It is the first time I have been called so. Forgive me for something I must ask you. Are you at the root of the mischief?"
"What do you mean, Kitty?"
"I begin to have a glimmering of why you brought her here."
"Kitty, tell me first. Do you not mind at all about Anthony?"
"Not in the way you mean. He never cared for me, not in that way. It is no use trying to bring these things about."
"It has been my dream, Kitty, since you were quite a little girl. I never loved Anthony; but if you were his wife, I think I should begin to love him. I thought you cared for him always."
"I should not have let you think that. Some of all this trouble is my fault. It is better to be open all the way through. I kept it from you because I feared the sharp disappointment it would be to you."
"That you did not love Anthony?"
"More than that, Auntie Janie, I loved someone else. I couldn't help it. I would have pleased you, if I could, but it did not seem to be in my hands. There is a fatality about such things. We might have cared for each other if we had not always known you wanted us to."
Lady Jane looked about her with a bewildered air, as though her world were crumbling.
"I have thought of it for so many years," she said at last, "that I cannot realise how, between you, you have destroyed the one solid hope of my life."
"I love you so much, Auntie Janie, that I think I would have married Anthony, without love, to please you, if there had not been someone else."
Lady Jane turned and looked at her, and her face was tragical.
"I would not have wished that, Kitty. A marriage without love! You don't know what it is, child, especially if there has been—or might have been—someone else. I only wanted you to have the wish of your heart, and to bind you closer to me at the same time."
"Nothing can ever undo our love, Auntie Janie—nothing, nothing."
"Wait till your husband intervenes, Kitty. Who is it, by the way? I have seen no sign of such an one in our circle."
"It is Mr. Leslie," said Lady Kitty with bent head.
"Anthony's friend? Yes, I know you liked him, but I thought it was for Anthony's sake."
"I am so sorry," Lady Kitty said again. Then she went on, with a timidity foreign to her: "Anthony is very unhappy, Auntie Janie. Can nothing be done?"
Lady Jane turned away her head.
"What do you expect me to do, Kitty?"
"He is your own son, and he loves Pamela Graydon. She loves him too. Why, it was written on her face, if only I had had eyes to see. Yet she has engaged herself to another man! What is the meaning of it?"
"I am bad at riddles, Kitty."
"Anthony will unravel it—unless you will. Forgive me, Auntie Janie, but he had better know—that his letter to Mr. Graydon remained unposted. I do not know if there is anything else, but there is that."
"How do you know that, Kitty?"
"I couldn't help knowing it. A few days after Anthony had gone you sent me to the little inner drawer of your desk to find Madame Lefevre's address. Anthony's letter to Mr. Graydon lay on the top with the address uppermost. I never thought of it again till to-day."
"What do you want me to do, Kitty? It is quite true that I abstracted the letter from the hall-box before it was emptied for the night-post. If you go to my desk again you will find the letter there with its seal unbroken. I guessed what it might contain. Curiously enough, the habits of a lifetime kept me from opening the letter, though I had stolen it."
Lady Kitty made a deprecating gesture, but the elder woman went on coldly:
"I wrote myself to Mr. Graydon—a merely formal letter explaining Anthony's absence. Afterwards I made an excuse of the Verschoyles—people I had almost forgotten—to go myself and see for myself. They lived in a barbarous way, as I thought they would; and I mistook Miss Graydon'sfiancéfor an elderly mountain farmer. Then I asked the girl over here with the design—which you frustrated to some extent—of making her detest us. I also told her that you and Anthony were to be married, and that you had always been lovers."
"Auntie Janie!"
"Yes, Kitty; you may as well know the full extent of my wickedness."
"But how could you do it? I have always known you as a proud and honourable woman."
"I did it first of all for your sake, Kitty. I did think you cared for Anthony; and I thought that if this entanglement were out of the way he would care for you. I was mistaken all round."
"I ought to have spoken, Auntie Janie. Ah! I see now how much trouble can come from even a little deceit."
"What do you want me to do, Kitty?"
"Anthony must know."
"You have no thought but for Anthony."
"The wrong must be undone—if it is possible now."
"He will turn his back on me for ever."
"He will remember that you are his mother."
"I have given him no motherhood. All I had I gave to you—and I have lost you, too."
"You have not lost me. Whatever you did we should be the same."
"You think that now. But we can never be the same. However, about Anthony. I daresay I can live without Anthony. What do you want me to do?"
"He must be told. Shall I tell him, Auntie Janie?"
"No, I will tell him myself. You had better keep out of it. I shall tell him as soon as he comes here. Where is he?"
"He went to let his uncle know he was called away. He will soon be back."
"Send him here when he comes in. And now, Kitty, go. I have business to do."
Lady Kitty went to the door slowly, and, as she turned the handle, looked back at the tall figure standing in the middle of the room. Something in the attitude smote her. She went back impulsively, and flung her arms round Lady Jane.
"If you love me at all as you loved me yesterday, be comforted," she cried. "I know it all came through your love for me, and my wretched deceit, and I shall always love you, always."
She could not say if there was an answering caress.
"Things will come right," she whispered, "and Anthony will forget his anger. We have all need of forgiveness."
"I shall never ask Anthony's," said Lady Jane. "And I do not pretend to repent. But he will marry that man's daughter in spite of me, and I shall be punished. Go now, Kitty. If Anthony has come in, send him to me."
Lady Kitty went. As the door closed behind her, after a last glimpse of the erect figure, she had an odd fancy about a picture she remembered to have seen of a ship going down at sea with all its flags flying.
But as the days passed the happiness which Pamela had expected did not come. Perhaps at first the atmosphere of approval in which she lived made a species of false happiness; but in a very short space of time things became workaday, and the future, with a husband old enough to be her father, showed itself naked of glamour.
Her soul was loyal to her betrothed, though her heart betrayed her. She kept perpetually within her sight his unselfishness, his patience, his simple-mindedness, his devotion. And yet, if her bridegroom were to be no paladin at all, but a certain ordinary young gentleman of ordinary good looks and good qualities, instead of Lord Glengall, how wildly happy she could have been! It was something she dared not think upon—what might have been, instead of what was going to be.
It was another hot summer, and Pamela's step grew languid, and her eyes had heavy rings about them. Her white cheeks, that were so firm and full of health, lost something of their glow.
She spurred herself up to be brisk and cheerful, and apologised for her flagging energy with accusations against the weather. And all the time Lord Glengall watched her with the anxiety of a loving dog in his eyes.
They were to be married at the beginning of September, to have a month's honeymoon at Killarney, and then to take Mr. Graydon abroad, that so he might escape the damp of the Irish winter.
In August, Pamela was to go to Dublin to see about her frocks. They were not to be very many nor very magnificent. Afterwards, said her bridegroom, there would be a visit to Paris, and plenty of shopping.
Pamela loved pretty things as well as any girl, and none the less because they had never been within her reach. But now her interest in such matters seemed feeble. The times when she derived a certain quiet happiness from her engagement were when she talked with Lord Glengall about what was to be done for the others.
"Is there nothing for yourself, Pam?" he asked once; "you never ask for anything for yourself."
And then he stroked the soft pale cheek with a loving finger, and the concern in his eyes grew deeper.
Once he said to Pamela that he wished it were all done, and that he was free to take care of her; but as he said it, putting a protecting arm about her, he felt a quick shudder run through her.
"What is it, Pam?" he asked anxiously.
"Someone walking on my grave," said Pamela lightly.
"Don't talk about such things, child," he implored. "You have all your life, the life that I am going to endeavour to make so happy, before you. What have you to do with graves?"
And yet another time he said to her that he could almost wish that he might give her his love and his care and his fortune without marriage.
"I suppose I couldn't adopt you, Pam?" he said lightly, yet his mood was a serious one.
"Ah! don't talk about such things," said Pam, in her turn, and her heart was sore lest she had grieved him. "No girl could have a happier fate than to be your wife."
And since she felt what she said for the moment she contrived to set his fears at rest.
It was the most humdrum betrothal from the point of view of young and romantic persons. Lord Glengall was no ardent wooer. His manner was more the manner of a father than of a lover, and his moments of greatest contentment were only marked by a deeper quiet. While Pam and he were much together, their talk, unlike the talk of young lovers, was of everything but themselves. Lord Glengall had plans for the disposal of the great wealth he had brought from the gold-fields; but they were plans in which personal ambition had no share.
Mr. Graydon was still languid after his illness, and during those summer days a great quietness seemed to have descended upon Carrickmoyle.
"Sorra's in it!" said Bridget, complaining. "'Tis as if there wasn't a bit of young life about the place. 'Tis more like as if there was goin' to be a funeral thin a weddin'."
"I'll tell you what, Miss Sylvia," she protested to her prime favourite; "there's one-legged Grady the gardener, above at his Lordship's, an' his mouth is dry axin' me. I declare I'll take him, if only to make a bit av a stir. They say he used to bate the first wife wid the wooden leg, but he'll not look crooked at me, never fear."
Sylvia, too, shared in the depressing quiet, and even the dogs lay and blinked all day in the hot sun, and were too lazy to go out on the bog for a dip in the icy-cold water.
Sylvia had her troubles. Her friend Miss Spencer, to whom she was oddly attached, was failing. No illness of a violent kind, but simply a wasting away and decline had seized upon the poor little spinster; and it was a case in which doctor's prescriptions were of no use. Miss Spencer's time had come.
Sylvia visited her friend indefatigably, sitting with her long hours daily, within doors if the weather were bad, by her wheeled sofa on the lawn during the fine hot days. She took her grief with a certain bitterness of wrath against that man of long ago who had wronged the poor little lady so irreparably. It made her curt of speech, and little disposed to notice what was happening where other folk were concerned, and her engrossment made Pamela's lot more lonely.
Sylvia's court had in no way diminished its loyalty or its numbers, but just for the present the young men were put on one side, and accepted their position. They were able to sympathise with one another, for their lady had never bestowed a mark of preference on any one over the others, that jealousy could be excited. But their absence from Carrickmoyle, while it sensibly brightened other houses, made that more lonesome.
Pamela had not seen Miss Spencer for some time, when one day Sylvia announced to her that the old lady wished to see her.
"You must go, of course," she said, with the brusqueness of grief. "I shall come afterwards and relieve you, so that you will be at home in time for Glengall."
Pamela went over after lunch, and found Miss Spencer on the sofa on the open lawn of Dovercourt, with its delightful views of the distant hills.
"It is a fine world to be leaving," said the old lady, nodding at the distances, when she had made Pamela take the low chair beside her.
Pamela had noticed at once an indefinable change in Miss Spencer. The old, half-crazy, brooding look had disappeared, and though the face seemed vanishing and melting away in its wasting and fragility, the eyes were clear, as if a film had rolled off from them.
Pamela said nothing. The change in Miss Spencer, even since she had last seen her, shocked her.
"There, there, child!" said the little woman, patting her hand. "Why talk about gloomy things on such a day as this, and with your great day approaching? But what is the matter?"—scrutinising her closely—"you don't look very bride-like."
"It is the heat," said Pamela languidly; "I haven't felt very lively since it set in so hot."
"I remember the time I would have danced at my wedding in the crater of Vesuvius. Things are not the same nowadays. There, child," she went on kindly, "you will have some tea? I shall have more made for Minx, when she comes. She told you I wanted to see you?"
"Yes," said Pamela, "and I shall like the tea, Miss Spencer. It was hot crossing the bog. I shall go home through the woods."
The tea was brought, and when Pamelahad had hers, Miss Spencer, who had been watching her with kind intentness all the time, said suddenly—
"I made my will yesterday, Pam."
Pamela looked up in surprise.
"I have provided for Minx. I have left her this place, and a good deal of money. She will look after my poor for me."
Pamela nodded her head.
"I've left you nothing, Pam. But I've given Mary what will start her in housekeeping.Youare going to marry a rich man."
"You are good to think of Mary."
"It is easier to do now than if I had lived longer. Between my legacy and what Glengall will do she need not want."
"She deserves to be happy."
"But what is the matter with you, Pam? Why aren'tyouhappy?"
"I am happy."
"With that face, child! There was a woman once—perhaps you know her—whose lover went away and never came back. Perhaps he was dead; perhaps he had forgotten. You look as if your lover had never come back."
Pamela covered her face with her hands.
"There, child! I don't want to distress you, but I am in trouble about you. What if he came back, after all?"
"He never will."
"He looked as if he would. Anyhow, if he never did, it would be better to be like that woman—a little cracked, perhaps, and always expecting her lover, till she woke up one day dying, and in her right mind—it would be better to be like her than to marry without love."
Pamela trembled, but her face was hidden.
"Tell me, Pam. You won't mind confiding in an old woman who has only a few days more to live. What did you do it for? It wasn't the money, and all it could bring, attracted you?"