Johnny Ludlow First Series Part 96

"Our poor-rates are getting higher every day; what do you suppose they'll come to if this is to go on?" continued the Squire. "I'd be glad for the men to get better pay if they are underpaid now: whether they are or not, I cannot tell; but rely upon it, striking is not the way to attain to it. It's a way that has ruined many a hopeful workman, who otherwise would have gone on contentedly to the end of his days; ay, and has finally killed him. It will ruin many another. Various interests are at stake in this; you must perceive it for yourself, Johnny lad, if you have any brains; but none so great as that of the workmen themselves.

With all my heart I wish, for their own sakes, they had not taken this extreme step."

"And if the poor children starve, sir?" I ventured to say.

"Fiddlestick to starving! They need not starve while there's a workhouse to go to. And _won't_; that's more. _Can't_ you see how all this acts, Mr. Johnny? The men throw themselves out of work; and when matters come to an extremity the parish must feed the children, and we, the rate-payers, must pay. A pleasant prospect! How many scores of children are there in Crabb Lane alone?"

"A few dozens, I should say, sir."

"And a few to that. No, Johnny; let the men look to their families'

needs. For their own sakes; I repeat it; for their own best interests, I'll have them left alone. They have entered on this state of things of their own free will, and they must themselves fight it out.--And now get you off to bed, boys."

"The Pater's right, Johnny," cried Tod, stepping into my room as we went up, his candle flaring in the draught from the open staircase window; "right as right can be on principle; but it _is_ hard for the women and children----"

"It is hard for themselves, too, Tod: only they have the unbending spirit of Britons, to hold out to the death and make no bones over it."

"I wish you'd not interrupt a fellow," growled Tod. "Look here; I've got four-and-sixpence, every farthing I can count just now. You take it and give it to Eliza. The Pater need know nothing."

He emptied his trousers pocket of the silver, and went off with his candle. I'm not sure but that he and I both enjoyed the state of affairs as something new. Had any one told us a year ago that our quiet neighbourhood could be disturbed by a public ferment such as this, we should never have believed it.

The next morning I went over to South Crabb with the four-and-sixpence.

Perhaps it was not quite fair to give it, after what the Squire had said--but there's many a worse thing than that done daily in the world.

Eliza caught her breath when I gave it to her, and thanked me with her eyes as well as her lips. She had on a frightfully old green gown--green once--shabby and darned and patched, and no cap; and she was on her knees wiping up some spilt water on the floor.

"Mind, Eliza, you must not say a word to any one. I should get into no end of a row."

"You were always generous, Master Johnny. Even when a baby----"

"Never mind that. It is not I who am generous now. The silver was given me for you by some one else; I am cleared out, myself. Where's d.i.c.ky?"

"He's upstairs in his bed, sir: too stiff to move. Mr. Cole, too, said he might as well lie there to-day. Would you like to go up and see him?"

As I ran up the staircase, open from the room, a vision of her wan face followed me--of the catching sob again--of the smooth brown hair which she was pressing from her temples. We have heard of a peck of troubles: she seemed to have a bushel of them.

d.i.c.ky was a sight, as far as variety of colours went. There was no mistake about his stiffness.

"It won't last long, d.i.c.k; and then you'll be as well as ever."

d.i.c.k's grey eyes--they were just like his mother's--looked up at mine. I thought he was going to cry.

"There. You will never take anything again, will you?"

d.i.c.k shook his head as emphatically as his starched condition allowed.

"Father says as he'd kill me the next time if I did."

"When did he say that?"

"This morning; afore he went out."

d.i.c.ky's room had a lean-to roof, and was about the size of our jam closet at Crabb Cot. Not an earthly article was in it but the mattress he was lying on.

"Who sleeps here besides you, d.i.c.ky?"

"Jacky and little Sam. 'Liza and Jessy sleeps by father and mother."

"Well, good day, d.i.c.ky."

Whom should I come upon at the end of Crabb Lane, but the Squire and h.o.a.r. The Squire had his gun in his hand and was talking his face red: h.o.a.r leaned against the wooden palings that skirted old Ma.s.sock's garden, and looked as sullen as he had looked yesterday. I thought the Pater had been blowing him up for beating the boy; but it seemed that he was blowing him up for the strike. Cole, the surgeon, hurrying along on his rounds, stopped just as I did.

"Not your fault, h.o.a.r!" cried the Squire. "Of course I know it's not your fault alone, but you are as bad as the rest. Come; tell me what good the strike has done for you."

"Not much as yet," readily acknowledged h.o.a.r, in a tone of incipient defiance.

"To me it seems nothing less than a crime to throw yourself out of work.

There's the work ready to your hands, _spoiling_ for want of being done--and yet you won't do it!"

"I do but obey orders," said h.o.a.r: who seemed to be miserable enough, in spite of the incipient defiance.

"But is there any sense in it?" reasoned the Squire. "If you men could drop the work and still keep up your homes and, their bread-and-cheese, and their other comforts, I'd say nothing. But look at your poor suffering wives and children. I should be _ashamed_ to be idle, when my idleness bore such consequences."

The man answered nothing. Cole put in his word.

"There are times when I feel _I_ should like to run away from my work, and go in for a few weeks' or months' idleness, Jacob h.o.a.r; and drink my two or three gla.s.ses of port wine after dinner of a day, like a lord; and be altogether independent of my station and my patients, and of every other obligation under the sun. But I can't. I know what it would do for _me_--bring me to the parish."

"D'ye think we throw up the work for the sake o' being idle?" returned h.o.a.r. "D'ye suppose, sirs,"--with a burst of a sigh--"that this state o'

things is a _pleasure_ to us? We are doing it for future benefit. We are told by them who act for us, and who must know, that great benefit will come of it if we be only firm; that our rights be in our own hands if we only persevere long enough in standing out for 'em. Us men has our rights, I suppose, as well as other folks."

"Those who, as you term it, act for you, may be mistaken, h.o.a.r," said the Squire. "I'll leave that point: and go on to a different question.

Do you think that the future benefit (whatever that may be: it's vague enough now) _is worth the cost you are paying for it_?"

No reply. A look crossed h.o.a.r's face that made me think he sometimes asked the same question of himself.

"It does appear to be a very _senseless_ quarrel, h.o.a.r," went on the Squire. Cole had walked on. "One-sided too. There's an old saying, 'Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face,' and your strike seems just an ill.u.s.tration of it. You see, it is only _you men_ that suffer. The rulers you speak of don't suffer: while they are laying down rules for you, they are flouris.h.i.+ng on the meat and corn of the land; the masters, in one sense, do not suffer, for they are not reduced to any extremity of any kind. But you, my poor fellows, _you_ bear the brunt of it all.

Look at your homes, how they are bared; look at your hungry children.

What but hunger drove little d.i.c.k to crib that bun yesterday?"

h.o.a.r took off his hat and pa.s.sed his hand over his brow and his black hair. It seemed to be a favourite action of his when in any worry of thought.

"It is just ruin, Jacob h.o.a.r. If some great shock--say a mountain of snow, or a thunderbolt--descended suddenly from the skies and destroyed everything there was in your home, leaving but the bare walls standing, what a dreadful calamity you would think it. How bitterly you'd bemoan it!--perhaps almost feel inclined, if you only dared, to reproach Heaven for its cruelty! But you--you bring on this calamity yourself, of your own free and deliberate will. You have dismantled your home with your own fingers; you have taken out your goods and sold or pledged them, to buy food. I hear you have parted with all."

"A'most," a.s.sented h.o.a.r readily; as if it quite pleased him the Squire should show up the case at its worst.

"Put it that you resume work to-morrow, you don't resume it as a free man. You'll have a load of debt and embarra.s.sment on your shoulders.

You will have your household goods to redeem--if they are then still redeemable: you will have your clothes and shoes to buy, to replace present rags: while on your mind will lie the weight of all this past time of trouble, cropping up every half-hour like a nightmare. Now--is the future benefit you hint at worth all this?"

h.o.a.r twitched a th.o.r.n.y spray off the hedge behind the pales, and twirled it about between his teeth.

"Any way," he said, the look of perplexity clearing somewhat on his face, "I be but doing as my mates do; and we are a-doing for the best.

So far as we are told and believe, it'll be all for the best."