Sir George Tressady Volume Ii Part 4

At the same time, as George had soon observed, Naseby was no blind follower of the Maxwells. In truth, under his young gaiety and coolness he had the temper of the student, who was more in love with his problem itself than with any suggested solution of it. As he had told Lady Betty, he had "no opinions"--would himself rather leave the sweated trades alone, and trust to much slower and less violent things than law-making. All this the Maxwells knew perfectly, and liked and trusted him none the less.

Now, however, it seemed there was a new development. If the Bill pa.s.sed, Naseby had a plan. He was already a rich man, independently of the marquisate to come. His grandmother had left him a large preliminary fortune, and through his friends and connections besides he seemed to command as much money as he desired. And of this money, supposing the Bill pa.s.sed, he proposed to make original and startling use. He had worked out the idea of a syndicate furnished with, say, a quarter of a million of money, which should come down upon a given district of the East End, map it out, buy up all the existing businesses in its typical trade, and start a system of new workshops proportioned to the population, supplying it with work just as the Board schools supply it with education. The new scheme was to have a profit-sharing element: the workers were to be represented on the syndicate, and every nerve was to be strained to secure the best business management. The existing middlemen would be either liberally bought out, or absorbed into the new machine. It was by no means certain that they would show it any strong resistance.

Tressady made a number of unfriendly comments on the scheme as Watton detailed it. A bit of amateur economics, which would only help the Bill to ruin a few more people than would otherwise have gone down!

"Ah! well," said Watton, "if this thing pa.s.ses there are bound to be experiments, and Naseby means to be in 'em. So do I, only I haven't got a quarter of a million. Here's our road! We're late, of course--the meeting's begun. I say, just look at this!"

For Manx Road, as they turned into it, was already held by another big meeting of its own. The room in the Board school which crossed the end of the street must be full, and this crowd represented, apparently, those who had been turned away.

As the two friends pushed their way through, Tressady's quick eye recognised in the throng a number of familiar types. Well-to-do "pressers" and machinists, factory-girls of different sorts, hundreds of sallow women, representing the home-workers of Mile End, Bow, and Stepney--poor souls bowed by toil and maternity, whose marred fingers labour day and night to clothe the Colonies and the army; their husbands and brothers, too, English slop-tailors for the most part, of the humbler sort--the short side-street was packed with them. It was an anxious, sensitive crowd, Tressady thought, as he elbowed his pa.s.sage through it.

A small thing might inflame it; and he saw a number of rough lads on the skirts of it.

Jews, too, there were in plenty. For the stress of this Bill had brought Jew and Gentile together in a new comrades.h.i.+p that amazed the East End.

Here were groups representing the thrifty, hard-working London Jew of the second generation,--small masters for the most part, pale with the confinement and "drive" of the workshop,--men who are expelling and conquering the Gentile East Ender, because their inherited pa.s.sion for business is not neutralised by any of the common English pa.s.sions for spending--above all by the pa.s.sion for drink. Here, too, were men of a far lower type and grade--the waste and refuse of the vast industrial mill. Tressady knew a good many of them by sight--sullen, quick-eyed folk, who buy their "greeners" at the docks, and work them day and night at any time of pressure; whose workshops are still flaring at two o'clock in the morning, and alive again by the winter dawn; who fight and flout the law by a hundred arts, and yet, brutal and s.h.i.+fty as many of them are, have a curious way of winning the Gentile inspector's sympathy, even while he fines and hara.s.ses them, so clearly are they and their "hands" alike the victims of a huge world-struggle that does but toss them on its surge.

These gentry, however, were hard hit by more than one clause of the Maxwell Bill, and they were here to-night to protest, as they had been already protesting at many meetings, large and small, all over the East End. And they had their slaves with them,--ragged, hollow-eyed creatures, newly arrived from Russian Poland, Austria, or Romania, and ready to shout or howl in Yiddish as they were told,--men whose strange faces and eyes under their matted shocks of black or reddish hair suggested every here and there the typical history and tragic destiny of the race which, in other parts of the crowd, was seen under its softer and more cosmopolitan aspects.

As the two men neared the door of the school, where the press was densest, they were recognised as probably belonging to the Maxwell party, and found themselves a good deal jeered and hustled, and could hardly make any way at all. However, a friendly policeman came to their aid.

They were pa.s.sed into a lobby, and at last, with much elbowing and pus.h.i.+ng, found themselves inside the schoolroom.

So crowded was the place and so steaming the atmosphere, that it was some minutes before Tressady could make out what was going on. Then he saw that Naseby was speaking--Naseby, looking remarkably handsome and well curled, and much at his ease, besides, in the production of a string of Laodicean comments on the Bill, his own workshop scheme, and the general prospects of East End labour. He described the scheme, but in such a way as rather to d.a.m.n it than praise it; and as for the Bill itself, which he had undertaken to compare with former Factory Bills, when he sat down he left it, indeed, in a parlous case--a poor, limping, doubtful thing, quite as likely to ruin the East End as to do it a hand's turn of good.

Just as the speaker was coming to his peroration Tressady suddenly caught sight of a delicate upraised profile on the platform, behind Naseby. The repressed smile on it set him smiling, too.

"What on earth do they make Naseby speak for!" said Watton, indignantly.

"Idiocy! He spoils everything he touches. Let him give the money, and other people do the talking. You can see the people here don't know what to make of him in the least. Look at their faces.--Who's he talking to?"

"Lady Madeleine, I think," said Tressady. "What amazing red hair that girl has! and what queer, scared eyes! It is like an animal--one wants to stroke her."

"Well, Naseby strokes her," said Watton, laughing. "Look at her; she brightens up directly he comes near."

Tressady thought of the tale Fontenoy had just told him, and wondered.

Consolation seemed to come easy to maidens of quality.

Meanwhile various trade-unionists--st.u.r.dy, capable men, in black coats--were moving and seconding resolutions; flinging resentful comments, too, at Naseby whenever occasion offered. Tressady heard very little of what they had to say. His eyes and thoughts were busy with the beautiful figure to the left of the chair. Its dignity and charm worked upon him like a spell--infused a kind of restless happiness.

When he woke from his trance of watching, it was to turn upon Watton with impatience. How long was this thing going on? The British workman spoke with deplorable fluency. Couldn't they push their way through to the platform?

Watton looked at the crowd, and shrugged his shoulders.

"Not yet--I say! who's this they've put up. Come, my dear fellow, that looks like the real thing!"

Tressady turned, and saw an old man, a Jew, with a long greyish beard, coming slowly to the front of the platform. His eyes were black and deep, sunk under white brows; he was decently but poorly dressed; and he began to speak with a slight German accent, in an even, melancholy voice, rather under-pitched, which soon provoked the meeting. He was vociferously invited to speak up or sit down; and at the first interruption he stopped timorously, and looked towards the Chair.

An elderly, grey-haired woman was presiding--no doubt to mark the immense importance of the Bill for the women of the East End. She came forward at the man's appeal.

"My friends," she said quietly, "you let this man speak, and don't you be hard on him. He's got a sad story to tell you, and he won't be long about it. You give him his chance. Some of you shall have yours soon."

Up. The speaker was the paid secretary of one of the women's unions; but she had been a tailoress for years, and had known a tragic life. Once, at a meeting where some flippant speaker had compared the reality and frequency of "starvation" in London to the reality and frequency of the sea serpent, Tressady had seen her get up and, with a sudden pa.s.sion, describe the death of her own daughter from hards.h.i.+p and want, with the tears running down her cheeks. Her appeal to the justice of the meeting succeeded, and the old man was allowed to go on. It soon appeared that he had been put up by one of the tailoring unions to denounce the long hours worked in some of the Whitechapel and Spitalfields workshops. His H facts were appalling. But he put them badly, with a dull, stumbling voice, and he got no hold on the meeting at all till suddenly he stepped forward, paused,--his miserable face working, his head turning from if side to side,--and finally said, with a sharp change of note:

"And now, if you please, I will tell you how it was about Isaac--my brother Isaac. It was Mr. Jacobs "--he looked round, and pointed to the tradeunion secretary who had been speaking before him--"Mr. Jacobs it was that put it in my mind to come here and tell you about Isaac. For the way Isaac died was like this. He and I were born in Spitalfields; he wasn't one of your greeners--he was a reg'lar good worker, first-rate general coat-hand, same as me. But he got with a hard master. And last winter season but one there came a rush. And Isaac must be working six days a week--and he must be working fourteen hours a day--and, more'n that, he must be doing his bastes overtime, two hours one time, and an hour or so, perhaps, another; anyway, they made it up to half a day--eight hours and more in the week. _You_ know how they reckon it."

He stopped, grinning feebly. The trade-unionists about the platform shouted or groaned in response. The masters round the door, with their "greeners," stood silent.

"And about Wednesday in the third week," he went on, "he come to the master, and he says--Isaac was older than me, and his chest it would be beginning to trouble him pretty bad, so he says: 'I'm done,' he says; 'I must go home. You can get another chap to do my bastes to-night--will you?' And the master says to Isaac: 'If you don't do your bastes overtime, if you're too high and mighty,' he says, 'why, there's plenty as will, and you don't need to come to-morrow neither.' And Isaac had his wife Judith at home, and four little uns; and he stopped and done his bastes, of _course_. And next night he couldn't well see, and he'd been dreadful sick all day, and he says to the master again, he says as he must go home. And the master, he says the same to him--and Isaac stops.

And on Friday afternoon he come home. And the shop had been steamin hot, but outside it was a wind to cut yer through. And his wife Judith says to him, 'Isaac, you look starved!' and she set him by the fire. And he sat by the fire, and he didn't say nothing. Then his hands fell down sudden like that--"

The old man let his hands drop heavily by his side with a simple dramatic gesture. By this time there was not a sound in the crowded room. Even the wildest and most wolfish of the greeners were staring silently, craning brown necks forward.

"And his wife ran to him, and he falls against her; and he says, 'Lay me down, Judith, and don't you let em wake me--not the young uns,' he says 'not for nothing and n.o.body. For if it was the trump of the Most High,'

he says--and Isaac was a religious man, and careful in his speech--'I must have my sleep.' And she laid him down, and the children and she watched--and by midnight Isaac turned himself over. He just opened his eyes once, and groaned. And he never spoke no more--he was gone before mornin.--And his master gave Judith five s.h.i.+llings towards the coffin, and the men in the shop, they raised the rest."

The old man paused. He stood considering a moment, his face and ragged beard thrown out--a spot of greyish white--against the figures behind, his eyes blinking painfully under the gas.

"Well, we've tried many things," he said at last. "We've tried strikes and unions, and it isn't no good. There's always one treading on another, and if you don't do it, someone else will. It's the _law_ as'll have to do it. You may take that and smoke it!--you won't get nothing else. Why!"--his hoa.r.s.e voice trembled--"why, they use us up cruel in the sort of shop I work for. Ten or twelve years, and a man's all to pieces.

It's the irons, and the heat, and the sitting--_you_ know what it is.

I've lasted fifteen year, but I'm breaking up now. If my master give me the sack for speaking here I'll have nothing but the Jewish Board of Guardians to look to. All the same, I made up my mind as I'd come and say how they served Isaac."

He stopped abruptly, and stood quite still a moment, fronting the meeting, as though appealing to them, through the mere squalid physical weakness he could find no more words to express. Then, with a sort of shambling bow, he turned away, and the main body of the meeting clapped excitedly, while at the back some of the "sweaters" grinned, and chatted sarcastic things in Yiddish with their neighbours. Tressady saw Lady Maxwell rise eagerly as the old man pa.s.sed her, take his hand, and find him a seat.

"That, I suppose, was an emotion," said Tressady, looking down upon his companion.

"Or an argument," said Watton--"as you like!"

One other "emotion" of the same kind--the human reality at its simplest and cruellest--Tressady afterwards remembered.

A "working-woman" was put up to second an amendment condemning the workshops clause, which had been moved in an angry speech by one of "Fontenoy's ladies," a shrill-voiced, fas.h.i.+onable person, the secretary to the local branch of the Free Workers' League. Tressady had yawned impatiently through the speech, which had seemed to him a violent and impertinent performance. But as the speaker sat down he was roused by an exclamation from a man beside him.

"_That_ woman!" cried a tall curate, straining on tiptoe to see. "No!

They ought to be ashamed of themselves!"

Tressady wondered who and why; but all that he saw was that a thin, tall woman was being handed along the bench in front of him, while her neighbours and friends clapped her on the back as she pa.s.sed, laughing and urging her on. Then, presently, there she stood on the platform, a thin, wand-like creature, with her battered bonnet sideways on her head, a woollen crossover on her shoulders, in spite of July, her hands clasped across her chest, her queer light eyes wandering and smiling hither and thither. In her emaciation, her weird cheerfulness, she was like a figure from a Dance of Death. But what was amazing was her self-possession.

"Now yer laffin' at me," she began in a conversational tone, nodding towards the group of women she had just left. "You go 'long! I told the lidy I'd speak, an I will. Well, they comes to me, an they ses, Mrs.

d.i.c.kson, yer not to work at 'ome no longer--they'll put yer in prison if yer do't, they ses; yer to go out ter work, same as the shop 'ands, they ses; and what's more, if they cotch Mr. b.u.t.terford--that's my landlord; p'raps yer dunno 'im--"

She looked down at the meeting with a whimsical grin, her eyes screwed up and her crooked brows lifted, so that the room roared merely to look at her. The trim lady-secretary, however, bent forward with an air of annoyance. She had not, perhaps, realised that Mrs. d.i.c.kson was so much of a character.

"If they cotch Mr. b.u.t.terford, they'll make 'im pay up smart for lettin yer do such a thing as make knickers in 'is 'ouse. So I asks the lidy, Wot's ter become o' me an the little uns? An she says she done know, but yer mus come and speak Tuesday night, she says--Manx Road Schools, she says--if yer want to perwent em making a law ov it. Which I'm a doin of--aint I?"

Fresh laughter and response from the room. She went on satisfied.

"An, yer know, if I can't make the knickers at 'ome, I can't make 'em awy from 'ome. For ther aint no shops as want kids squallin round, as fer as I can make out. An Jimmy's a limb, as boys mos'ly are in my egsperience. Larst week 'e give the biby a 'alfpenny and two o' my biggest b.u.t.tons to swaller, an I ony jest smacked 'em out of 'er in time. Ther'd be murder done if I was to leave 'em. An 'ow 'ud I be able to pay anyone fer lookin' after em? I can't git much, yer know, shop or no shop. I aint wot I was."

She stopped, and pointed significantly to her chest. Tressady shuddered as the curate whispered to him.

"I've been in orspital--cut about fearful. I can't go at the pace them shops works at. They'd give me the sack, double-quick, if I was to go try in 'em. No, it's _settin_ as does it--settin an settin. I'm at it by seven, an my 'usband--yer can see im there--e'll tell yer."

She stopped, and pointed to a burly ruffian standing amid a group of "pals" round the door. This gentleman had his arms folded, and was alternately frowning and grinning at this novel spectacle of his wife as a public performer. Bribes had probably been necessary to bring him to consent to the spectacle at all. But he was not happy, and when his wife pointed at him, and the meeting turned to look, he suddenly took a dive head-foremost into the crowd about him; so that when the laughter and horse-play that followed had subsided, it was seen that Mr. Tom d.i.c.kson's place knew him no more.