Mildred Arkell Volume I Part 31

"I'll try, sir," replied Henry.

"Do. I shall not lose sight of you." And, with a general nod to the rest, he departed, taking his daughter's hand.

For a full minute there was a dead silence. It was so entirely unusual a thing for the dean to shake hands familiarly with a college boy, that those gentry did not at first decide how to take it. Then one of them, more impudent than the rest, bowed his body down before the new junior with mock gravity.

"If you please, sir, wouldn't you be pleased to make yourself c.o.c.k of the school after this, and cut out St. John?"

"Take care of your tongue, Marshall," admonished St. John, who made one of the throng.

"I _am_ blowed, though!" returned Marshall. "_Did_ anybody ever see such a go as this?"

"What's the row?" demanded Hennet, a fine youth, one of Mr.

Wilberforce's private pupils, and who only now came up.

"Oh, my! you should have been here, Hennet," responded Marshall. "We have got a lord, or something else, among us. The Dean of Westerbury has been bowing down to wors.h.i.+p him."

Hennet, not understanding, looked at St. John.

"No. Tras.h.!.+" explained St. John. "Marshall is putting his tongue and his foot into it to-day. I'm off to breakfast."

The word excited antic.i.p.ations of the meal, and all the rest were off to breakfast too--making the grounds echo with their shouts as they ran.

CHAPTER XVI.

A CITY'S DESOLATION.

Henry Arkell had been in the college school rather more than a year, and also in the choir--for he entered the two almost simultaneously, his fine voice obtaining him the place before any other candidate--when the rank and fas.h.i.+on of Westerbury found itself in a state of internal, pleasurable commotion, touching an amateur concert about to be given for the benefit of the distressed Poles.

Mrs. Lewis, the daughter of the late Squire Carr, Mrs. Aultane, and a few more of the lesser satellites residing near the cathedral clergy, suddenly found themselves, from some cause never clearly explained to Westerbury, aroused into a state of sympathy and compa.s.sion for that ill-starred country, Poland, and its ill-used inhabitants. Casting about in their minds what they could do to help those _miserables_--the French word slipped out at my pen's end--they alighted on the idea of an amateur morning concert, and forthwith set about organizing one.

Painting in glowing colours the sufferings and hards.h.i.+ps of this distant people, they contrived to gain the ear of the good-natured dean, and of Mrs. St. John of the Palmery, and the rest was easy. Canons and minor canons followed suit; all the gentry of the place took the concert under their especial patronage; and everybody with the slightest pretension to musical skill, intimated that they were ready to a.s.sist in the performances, if called upon. In fact, the miniature scheme grew into a gigantic undertaking; and no expense, trouble, or time was spared in the getting up of this amateur concert. Ladies of local rank and fas.h.i.+on were to sing at it; the mayor accorded the use of the guildhall; and Westerbury had not been in so delightful a state of excited antic.i.p.ation for years and years.

But it is impossible to please everybody--as I dare say you have found out for yourselves at odd moments, in going through life. So it proved with this concert; and though it was productive of so much satisfaction to some, it gave great dissatisfaction to others. This arose from a cause which has been a bone of contention even down to our own days: the overlooking near distress, to a.s.sist that very far off. There are ill-conditioned spirits amidst us who protest that the dear little interesting black Ashantees should not be presented with nice fine warm stockings, while our own common-place young Arabs have to go without shoes. While the dest.i.tution in Westerbury was palpably great, crying aloud to Heaven in its extent and helplessness, it seemed to some inhabitants of the city--influential ones, too--that the movement for the relief of the far-off Poles was strangely out of place; that the amateur concert, if got up at all, ought to have been held for the relief of the countrymen at home. This opinion gained ground, even amidst the supporters of the concert. The dean himself was heard to say, that had he given the matter proper consideration, he should have advised postponement of this concert for the foreigners to a less inopportune moment.

You, my readers, may know nothing of the results following the opening of the British ports for the introduction of French goods, as they fell on certain local places. When the bill was brought into the House of Commons by Mr. Huskisson, these results--ruin and irrecoverable distress--were foreseen by some of the members, and urged as an argument against its pa.s.sing. Its defenders did not deny the probable fact; but said that in all great political changes the FEW must be content to suffer for the good of the MANY. An unanswerable argument; all the more plain that those who had to discuss it were not of the few. That the few did suffer, and suffered to an extremity, none will believe who did not witness it, is a matter of appalling history. Ask Coventry what that bill did for it. Ask Worcester. Ask Yeovil. Ask other places that might be named. These towns lived by their staple trade; their respective manufactures; and when a cheaper, perhaps better article was introduced from France, so as to supersede, or nearly so, their own, there was nothing to stand between themselves and ruin.

Ah! my aged friends! if you were living in those days, you may have taken part in the congratulations that attended the opening of the British ports to French goods. The popular belief was, that the pa.s.sing of the measure was as a boon falling upon England; but you had been awed into silence had you witnessed, but for a single day, the misery and confusion it entailed on these local isolated places. Take Westerbury: half the manufacturers went to total ruin, their downfall commencing with that year, and going on with the following years, until it was completed. It was but a question of the extent of private means. Those who had none to fly to, sunk at once in a species of general wreck; their stock of goods was sold for what it would fetch; their manufactories and homes were given up; their furniture was seized; and with beggary staring them in the face, they went adrift upon the cold world. Some essayed other means of making their living; essayed it as they best could without money and without hope, and struggled on from year to year, getting only the bread that nourished them. Others, more entirely overwhelmed with the blow, made a few poor efforts to recover themselves, in vain, in vain; and their ending was the workhouse.

Honourable citizens once, good men, as respectable and respected as you are, who had been reared and lived in comfort, bringing up their families as well-to-do manufacturers ought; these were reduced to utter dest.i.tution. Some drifted away, seeking only a spot where they might die, out of sight of men; others found an asylum in their old age in the paupers' workhouse! You do not believe me? you do not think it could have been quite so bad as this? As surely as that this hand is penning the words, I tell you but the truth. For no fault of theirs did they sink to ruin; by no prudence could they have averted it.

The manufacturers who had private property--that is, property and money apart from the capital employed in their business--were in a different position, and could either retire from business, and make the best of what they had left, or keep on manufacturing in the hope that they should retrieve their losses, and that times would mend. For a very, very long time--for years and years--a great many cherished the delusive hope that the ports would be reclosed, and English goods again fill the markets. They kept on manufacturing; content, perforce, with the small profit they made, and drawing upon their private funds for what more they required for their yearly expenditure. How they could have gone on for so many years, hoping in this manner, is a marvel to them now. But the fact was so. There were but very few who did this, or who, indeed, had money to do it; but amidst them must be numbered Mr.

Arkell.

But, if the masters suffered, what can you expect was the fate of the workmen? Hundreds upon hundreds were thrown out of employment, and those who were still retained in the few manufactories kept open, earned barely sufficient to support existence; for the wages were, of necessity, sadly reduced, and they were placed on short work besides.

What was to become of this large body of men? What did become of them?

G.o.d only knew. Some died of misery, of prolonged starvation, of broken hearts. _Their_ end was pretty accurately ascertained; but those who left their native town to be wanderers on the face of the land, seeking for employment to which they were unaccustomed, and perhaps finding none--who can tell what was their fate? The poor rates increased alarmingly, little able as were the impoverished population to bear an increase; the workhouses were filled, and lamentations were heard in the streets. Poor men! They only asked for work, work; and of work there was none. Small bodies of famished wretches, deputations from the main body, perambulated the town daily, calling in timidly at the manufactories still open, and praying for a little work. How useless! when those manufactories had been obliged to turn off many of their own hands.

It will not be wondered at, then, if, in the midst of this bitter distress, the grand scheme for the relief of the Poles, which was turning the town mad with excitement, did not find universal favour. The workmen, in particular, persisted in cheris.h.i.+ng all sorts of obstinate notions about it. Why should them there foreign Poles be thought of and relieved, while _they_ were starving? Would the Polish clergy and the grand folks, over there, think of _them_, the Westerbury workmen, and get up a concert for 'em, and send 'em the proceeds? There was certainly rough reason in this. The discontent began to be spoken aloud, and altogether the city was in a state of semi-rebellion.

Some of the men were gathered one evening at a public-house they used; their grievances, as a matter of course, the theme of discussion. So many years had elapsed since the blow had first fallen on the city by the pa.s.sing of the bill, almost a generation as it seemed, that the worn-out theme of closing the ports was used threadbare; and the men chiefly confined themselves to the hards.h.i.+ps of the present time. Bad as the trade was at Westerbury, it was expected to be worse yet, for the more wealthy of the manufacturers were beginning to say they should be forced at last to close their works. The men lighted their pipes, and called for pints or half pints of ale. Those who were utterly penniless, and could, in addition, neither beg nor borrow money for this luxury, sat gloomily by, their brows lowering over their gaunt and famished cheeks.

"James Jones," said the landlord, a surly sort of man, speaking in reply to a demand for a half pint of ale, "I can't serve you. You owe five and fourpence already."

What Mr. James Jones might have retorted in his disappointment, was stopped by the entrance of several men who came in together. It was the "deputation;" the men chosen to go round the city that day and ask for work or alms. The interest aroused by their appearance overpowered petty warfare.

"Well, and how have ye sped?" was the eager general question, as the men found seats.

"We went round, thirteen of us, upon empty stomachs, and we left them at home empty too," replied a tidy-looking man with a stoop in his shoulders; "but we've done next to no good. Thorp, he has gone home; we gave him the money out of what we've collected for a loaf o' bread, for his wife and children's bad a-bed, and nigh clammed besides. The tale goes, too, that things are getting worse."

"They can't get worse, Read."

"Yes, they can; there was a meeting to-day of the masters. Did you hear of it?"

Of course the men had heard of it. Little took place in the town, touching on their interests, that they did not hear of.

"Then perhaps you've heard the measure that was proposed at it--to reduce the wages again. It was carried, too. George Arkell & Son's was the only firm that held out against it."

"n.o.body has held out for us all along like Mr. Arkell," observed one who had not yet spoken. "He was a young man when these troubles first fell on the city, and he's middle-aged now, but never once throughout all the years has his voice been raised against us."

"True," said Read; "and when he speaks to us it is kindly and sympathizingly, like the gentleman he is, and as if _we_ were fellow human beings, which they don't all do. Some of the masters don't care whether we starve or live; they are as selfish as they are high. Mr.

Arkell has large means and an open hand; it's said he has the interests of us operatives at heart as much as he has his own; for my part, I believe it. His contribution to-day was a sovereign--more than twice as much as anybody else gave us."

"And why not!" broke in Mr. James Jones "If Arkells have got plenty--and it's well known they have--it's only right they should help us."

"As to their having such plenty, I can't say about that," dissented Markham--a superior man, and the manager of a large firm. "They have kept on making largely, and they must lose at times. It stands to reason, as things have been. Of course they had plenty of money to fall back upon. Everybody knows that; and Mr. Arkell has preferred to sacrifice some of that money--all honour to him--rather than turn off to dest.i.tution the men who have grown old in his service, and in his father's before him."

"It's true, it's true," murmured the men. "G.o.d bless Mr. William Arkell!"

"It's said that young Mr. Travice is to be brought up to the business, so things can't be very bad with them."

"Yah! bad with 'em!" roared a broad-shouldered old man. "It riles me to sit here and hear you men talk such foolery. Haven't he got his close carriage and his horses? and haven't he got his fine house and his servants? Things bad with the Arkells!"

"You should not cast blame to the masters," continued Markham. "How many of them are there who still keep on making, but whose resources are nearly exhausted!"

"No, no, 'taint right," murmured some of the more just-thinking of the men. "The masters' troubles must be ten-fold greater than ours."

"I should be glad to hear how you make that out?" grumbled a malcontent.

"I have got seven mouths to feed at home, and how am I to feed 'em, not earning a penny? We was but six, but our Betsey, as was in service as nuss-girl at Mrs. Omer's, came home to-day. I won't deny that Mrs. Omer have been kind to her, keeping her on after they failed, and that; but she up and told her yesterday that she couldn't afford it any longer. I remember, brethren, when Mr. and Mrs. Omer held up their heads, and paid their way as respectable as the first manufacturer in Westerbury. Good people they was."

"Mr. Omer came to our place to-day," interrupted Markham, "to pray the governor to give him a little work at his own home, as a journeyman. But we had none to give, without robbing them that want it worse than he. I think I never saw our governor so cut up as he was, after being obliged to refuse him."

"Ay," returned the former speaker; "and our Betsey declares that her missis cried to her this morning, and said she didn't know but what they should come to the parish. Betsey, poor girl," he continued, "can't bear to be a burden upon us; but there ain't no help for it. There be no places to be had; what with so many of the girls being throwed out of employment, and the families as formerly kept two or three servants keeping but one, and them as kept one keeping none. There's nothing that she can do, brethren, for herself or for us."

"The Lord keep her from evil courses!" uttered a deep, earnest voice.

"If I thought as her, or any of my children, was capable of taking to _them_," thundered the man, his breast heaving as he raised his sinewy, lean arm in a threatening att.i.tude, "I'd strike her flat into the earth afore me!"