"It is quite finished now," said Daniel Fagg, blotting the last page.
When he began to live with the dressmakers, Angela, desiring to find him some employment, had suggested that he should rewrite the whole of his book, and redraw the illustrations. It was not a large book, even though it was stuffed and padded with readings of inscriptions and tablets. An ordinary writer would have made a fair copy in a fortnight. But so careful an author as Daniel, so anxious to present his work perfect and unassailable, and so slow in the mere mechanical art of writing, wanted much more than a fortnight. His handwriting, like his Hebrew, had been acquired comparatively late in life; it was therefore rather ponderous, and he had never learned the art of writing half a word and leaving the other half to be guessed. Then there were the Hebrew words, which took a great deal of time to get right; and the equilateral triangles, which also caused a considerable amount of trouble. So that it was a good six weeks before Daniel was ready with a fair copy of his manuscript. He was almost as happy in making this transcript as he had been with the original document; perhaps more so, because he was now able to consider his great discovery as a whole, to regard it as an architect may regard his finished work, and to touch up, ornament, and improve his translations.
"It is quite complete," he repeated, laying the last page in its place and tapping the roll affectionately. "Here you will find the full account of the two tables of stone and a translation of their contents, with notes. What will they say to that, I wonder?"
"But how," asked Angela—"how did the tables of stone get to the British Museum?"
Mr. Fagg considered his reply for a while.
"There are two ways," he said, "and I don't know which is the right one. For either they were brought here when we, the descendants of Ephraim, as everybody knows, landed in England, or else they were brought here by Phœnician traders after the Captivity. However, there they are, as anybody may see with the help of my discovery. As for the scholars, how can they see anything? Wilful ignorance, miss, is their sin: pride and wilful ignorance. You're ignorant because you are a woman, and it is your nature too. But not to love darkness!"
"No, Mr. Fagg. I lament my ignorance."
"Then there's the story of David and Jonathan, and the history of Jezebel and her great wickedness, and the life and death of King Jehoshaphat, and a great deal more. Now read for the first time from the arrow-headed character—so called—by Daniel Fagg, self-taught scholar, once shoemaker in the colony of Victoria, discoverer of the Primitive Alphabet and the Universal Language."
"That is, indeed, a glorious thing to be able to say, Mr. Fagg."
"But now it is written, what next?"
"You mean how can you get it printed?"
"Of course—that's what I mean," he replied almost angrily. "There's the book and no one will look at it. Haven't I tried all the publishers? What else should I mean?"
The old disappointment, kept under and forgotten during the excitement of re-writing the book, was making itself felt again. How much further forward was he—the work had been finished long before. All he had done the last six weeks was to write it afresh.
"I've only been wasting my time here," he said querulously. "I ought to have been up and about. I might have gone to Oxford, where, I am told, there are young men who would, perhaps, give me a hearing. Or, there's Cambridge—where they have never heard of my discovery. You've made me waste six weeks and more."
Angela forbore to ask him how he would have lived during those six weeks. She replied softly: "Nay, Mr. Fagg; not wasted the time. You were overworked; you wanted rest. Besides, I think, we may find a plan to get this book published."
"What plan—how?"
"If you would trust the manuscript to my hands. Yes, I know well how precious it is, and what a dreadful thing it would be to lose it. But you have a copy, and you can keep that while I take the other."
"Where are you going to take it?"
"I don't know yet—to one of the publishers, I suppose."
He groaned.
"I have been to every one of them—not a publisher in London but has had the offer of my book. They won't have it, any of them. Oh, it's their loss—I know that. But what is it to me?"
"Will you let me try—will you trust me with the manuscript?"
He reluctantly and jealously allowed her to take away the precious document. When it was out of his hands he tried to amuse himself with the first copy, but found no pleasure in it at all; because he thought continually of the scorn which had been hurled upon him and his discovery. He saw the heads of departments, one after the other, receiving him politely and listening to what he had to say. He saw them turning impatient—interrupting him, declining to hear any more—referring him to certain books in which he would find a refutation of his theories; and finally refusing even to see him.
Never was discoverer treated with such contempt—even the attendants at the Museum took their cue from the chiefs, and received his advances with scorn. Should they waste their time—the illiterate—in listening unprofitably to one whom the learned Dr. Birch and the profound Mr. Newton had sent away in contempt? Better sit in the spacious halls, bearing the wand of office and allowing the eyelids to fall gently, and the mind to wander away among pleasant pastures, where there was drink with tobacco. Then there were the people who had subscribed. Some of them were gentlemen connected with Australia. They had tossed him the twelve-and-sixpence in the middle of his talk, as if to get rid of him. Some of them had subscribed in pity for his poverty—some persuaded by his importunity. There was not one among them all (he reflected with humiliation) who subscribed because he believed. Stay—there was this ignorant dressmaker. One convert out of all to whom he had explained his discovery; one, only one.
There have been many religious enthusiasts—prophets, preachers, holders of strange doctrines—who have converted women so that they believed them inspired of heaven. Yet these men made other converts; whereas he (Fagg) had but this one, and she was not in love with him, because he was old now and no longer comely. This was a grand outcome of that Australian enthusiasm!
That day Mr. Fagg was disagreeable, considered as a companion. He found fault with the dinner, which was excellent, as usual. He complained that the beer was thick and flat; whereas it sparkled like champagne, and was as clear as a bell. He was cross in the afternoon, and wanted to prevent the child who sat in the drawing-room from practising her music; and he went out for his walk in a dark and gloomy mood.
Angela let him have his querulous way unrebuked, because she knew the cause of it. He was suffering from that dreadful, hopeless anger which falls upon the unappreciated. He was like some poet, who brings out volume after volume, yet meets with no admirers, and remains obscure. He was like some novelist who has produced a masterpiece—which nobody will read—or like some actor (the foremost of his age) who depletes the house; or like a dramatist, from whose acted works the public fly; or like a man who invents something which is to revolutionize things. Only people prefer their old way!
Good heavens! Is it impossible to move this vast inert mass called the world? Why, there are men who can move it at their will—even by a touch of their little finger—and the unappreciated with all their efforts cannot make the slightest impression. This, from time to time, makes them go mad! and at such periods they are unpleasant persons to meet. They growl at their clubs, they quarrel with their blood relations—they snarl at their wives, they grumble at their servants!
Daniel was having such a fit.
It lasted two whole days, and on the second Rebekah took upon herself to lead him aside and reprove him for the sin of ingratitude—because it was very well known to all that the man would have gone to the workhouse but for Miss Kennedy's timely help.
She asked him sternly what he had done to merit that daily bread which was given him without a murmur? And what excuse he could make for his bad temper and his rudeness toward the woman who had done so much for him?
He had no excuse to make—because Rebekah would not have understood the true one—wherefore she bade him repent and reform, or he would hear more from her. This threat frightened him, though it could not remove his irritation and depression; but, on the third day, sunshine and good cheer and hope, new hope and enthusiasm, returned to him. For Miss Kennedy announced to him with many smiles that a publisher had accepted his manuscript; and that it had already been sent to the printers.
"He will publish it for you," she said, "at no cost to yourself. He will give you as many copies as you wish to have for presentation among your friends and among your subscribers. You will like to send copies to your subscribers, will you not?"
He rubbed his hands and laughed aloud.
"That," he said, "will prove that I did not eat up the subscriptions."
"Of course,"—Angela smiled, but did not contradict the proposition—"of course, Mr. Fagg. And if ever there was any doubt in your own mind about that money it is now removed, because the book will be in their hands; and all they wanted was the book."
"Yes, yes; and no one will be able to say—you know what. Will they?"
"No, no; you will have proofs sent you."
"Proofs," he murmured, "proofs in print!—will they send me proofs soon?"
"I believe you will have the whole book set up in a few weeks."
"Oh, the whole book! My book set up in print?"
"Yes. And if I were you, I would send an announcement of the work by the next mail to your Australian friends. Say that your discovery has at length assumed its final shape, and is now ripe for publication, after being laid before all the learned societies of London; and that it has been accepted by Messrs. ——, the well-known publishers, and will be issued almost as soon as this announcement reaches Melbourne. Here is a slip that I have prepared for you."
He took it with glittering, eyes and stammering voice. The news seemed too good to be true.
"Now, Mr. Fagg, that this has been settled, there is another thing which I should like to propose for your consideration. Did you ever hear of that great Roman who saved his country in a time of peril, and then went back to the plough?"
Daniel shook his head.
"Is there any Hebrew inscription about him?" he asked.
"Not that I know of. What I mean is this: When your volume is sent, Mr. Fagg—when you have sent it triumphantly to all the learned societies and all your subscribers, and all the papers and everywhere (including your Australian friends), because the publisher will let you have as many copies as you please—would it not be a graceful thing, and a thing for future historians to remember, that you left England at the moment of your greatest fame, and went back to Australia to take up—your old occupation?"
Daniel never had considered the thing in this light, and showed no enthusiasm at the proposal.
"When your friends in Victoria prophesied fortune and fame, Mr. Fagg, they spoke out of their hopes and their pride in you. Of course, I do not know much about these things. How should I? Yet I am quite certain that it takes a long time for a learned discovery to make its way. There are jealousies—you have experienced them—and unwillingness to admit new things. You have met with that, too; and reluctance to unlearn old things. Why, you have met with that as well."
"I have," he said, "I have."
"As for granting a pension to a scholar—or a title, or anything of that sort—it is really never done. So that you would have to make your own living if you remained here."
"I thought that when the book was published people would buy it."
Angela shook her head.
"Oh, no! That is not the kind of book which is bought—very few people know anything about inscriptions. Those who do will go to the British Museum and read it there—one copy will do for all."
Daniel looked perplexed.
"You do not go back empty-handed," she said. "You will have a fine story to tell of how the great scholars laughed at your discovery, and how you got about and told people, and they subscribed, and your book was published, and how you sent it to all of them—to show the mistake they had made—and how the English people have got the book now, to confound the scholars; and how your mission is accomplished, and you are at home again—to live and die among your own people. It will be a glorious return, Mr. Fagg. I envy you the landing at Melbourne—your book under your arm. You will go back to your old township—you will give a lecture in the schoolroom on your stay in England, and your reception. And then you will take your old place again and follow your old calling, exactly the same as if you had never left it, but for the honor and reverence which people will pay you!"
Daniel cooed like a dove.
"It may be," the siren went on, "that people will pay pilgrimages to see you in your old age. They will come to see the man who discovered the Primitive Alphabet and the Universal Language. They will say: 'This in Daniel Fagg—the great Daniel Fagg, whose unaided intellect overset and brought to confusion all the scholars, and showed their learning was but vain pretence; who proved the truth of the Scriptures by his reading of tablets and inscriptions; and who returned when he had finished his task, with the modesty of a great mind, to his simple calling.'"
"I will go," said Daniel, banging the table with his fist; "I will go as soon as the book is ready."
After the celebrated debate on the abolition of the Lords, Dick Coppin found that he took for the moment a greatly diminished interest in burning political questions. He lost, in fact, confidence in himself, and went about with hanging head. The Sunday evening meetings were held as usual, but the fiery voice of Dick the Radical was silent, and people wondered. This was the effect of his cousin's address upon him. As for the people, it had made them laugh, just as Dick's had made them angry. They came to the Hall to get these little emotions, and not for any personal or critical interest in the matter discussed; and this was about all the effect produced by them.
One evening the old Chartist who had taken the chair met Dick at the club.
"Come out," he said, "come out and have a crack while the boys wrangle."
They walked from Redman's Lane, where the club stands, to the quiet side pavement of Stepney Green, deserted now because the respectable people were all in church, and it was too cold for the lounging of the more numerous class of those who cannot call themselves respectable. The ex-Chartist belonged, like Daniel Fagg, to the shoemaking trade in its humbler lines. The connection between leather and Socialism, Chartism, Radicalism, Atheism, and other things detrimental to old institutions, has frequently been pointed out, and need not be repeated. It is a reflecting trade, and the results of meditation are mainly influenced by the amount of knowledge the meditation brings with it. In this respect the Chartist of thirty years ago had a great advantage over his successors of the present day, for he had read. He knew the works of Owen, of Holyoke, and of Cobbett. He understood something of what he wanted, and why he wanted it. The proof of which is that they have got all they wanted, and we still survive.
When next the people make up their minds that they want another set of things they will probably get them, too.
"Let us talk," he said. "I've been thinking a bit about that chap's speech the other night—I wanted an answer to it."
"Have you got one?"
"It's all true what he said—first of all, it's true. The pinch is just the same. Whether the Liberals are in or the Tories, Government don't help us. Why should we help them?"
"Is that all your answer?"
"Wait a bit, lad—don't hurry a man. The chap was right. We ought to co-operate and get all he said, and a deal more; and once we do begin, mind you, there'll be astonishment—because you see, Dick, my lad, there's work before us. But we must be educated; we must all be got to see what we can do if we like. That chap's clever now, though he looks like a swell."
"He's got plenty in him. But he'll never be one of us."
"If we can use him, what matter whether he is one of us or not? Come to that—who is 'us'? You don't pretend before me that you call yourself one of the common workmen, do you? That does for the club; but, between ourselves, why, man! you and me, we're leaders. We've got to think for 'em. What I think is—make that chap draw up a plan, if he can, for getting the people to work together—for we've got all the power at last, Dick. We've got all the power. Don't forget when we old 'uns are dead and gone, who done it for you."
He was silent for a moment. Then he went on:
"We've got what we wanted—that's true; and we seem to be no better off—that's true, too. But we are better off, because we feel that every man has his share in the rule of the nation. That's a grand thing. We are not kept out of our vote—we don't see, as we used to see, our money spent for us without having a say. That's a very grand thing, which he doesn't understand, nor you neither, because you are too young. Everything we get, which makes us feel our power more, is good for us. The chap was right; but he was wrong as well. Don't give up politics, lad."
"What's the good if nothing comes?"
"There's a chance now for the working-man, such as he has never had before in history. You are the lad to take that chance. I've watched you, Dick, since you first began to come to the club—there's life in you. Lord! I watch the young fellows one after the other. They stamp and froth, but it comes to nothing. You're different—you want to be something better than a bellows; though your speech the other night came pretty nigh to the bellows kind."
"Well, what is the chance?"
"The House, Dick. The working-men will send you there, if you can show them that you've got something in you. It isn't froth they want—it's a practical man, with knowledge. You go on reading, go on speaking, go on debating. Keep it up. Get your name known; don't demean yourself. Get reported; and learn all that there is to learn. Once in the House, Dick, if you are not afraid——"
"I shall not be afraid."
"Humph! Well, we shall see. Well, there's your chance. A working-man's candidate—one of ourselves. That's a card for you to play; but not so ignorant as your mates. Eh? Able (if you want) to use the swell's sneerin' talk—so's to call a man a liar, without sayin' the words. To make him feel like a fool and a whipped cur, with just showing your white teeth! Learn them ways, Dick—they'll be useful."
"But if," said the young man doubtfully, "if I am to keep on debating, what subjects shall we take up at the club?"
"I should go in for practical subjects. Say that the club is ready to vote for the abolition of the Lords and the Church, and reform of the land laws when the time comes. You haven't got the choice of subjects that we had. Lord! what with rotten boroughs and the black Book of Pensions, and younger sons, and favoritism in the service, why, our hands were full."
"What practical subjects?"
"Why, them as your cousin talked about. There's the wages of the girls—there's food and fish and drink. There's high rent—there's a world of subjects. You go, and find out all about them. Give up the rest for a spell, and make yourself master of all these questions. If you do, Dick, I believe your fortune is made."
Dick looked doubtful—it seemed disheartening to be sent back to the paltry matter of wages, prices, and so on, when he was burning to lead in something great. Yet the advice was sound.
"Sometimes I think, Dick," the old man went on, "that the working-man's best friend would be the swells, if they could be got hold of. They've got nothing to make out of the artisan. They don't run factories, nor keep shops. They don't care, bless you, how high his wages are. Why should they? They've got their farmers to pay the rent; and their houses, and their money in the funds. What does it matter to them? They're well brought up, most of them—civil in their manner, and disposed to be friendly if you're neither standoffish nor familiar; but know yourself, and talk accordin'."
"If the swells were to come to us, we ought to go to them—remember that, Dick. Very soon there will be no more questions of Tory and Liberal; but only what is the best thing for us. You play your game by the newest rules. As for the old ones, they've seen their day."
Dick left him; but he did not return to the club. He communed beneath the stars, turning over these and other matters in his mind.
"Yes, the old man was right. The old indignation times were over. The long list of crimes which the political agitator could bring against King, Church, Lords, and Commons thirty, forty, fifty years ago, are useless now. They only serve to amuse an audience not too critical."
He was ashamed of what he had himself said about the Lords. Such charges are like the oratory of an ex-minister on the stump—finding no accusation too reckless to be hurled against his enemies.
He was profoundly ambitious. To some men, situated like himself, it might have been a legitimate and sufficient ambition to recover by slow degrees and thrift, and in some trading way, the place in the middle class from which the Coppins had fallen. Not so to Dick Coppin—he cared very little about the former greatness of the Coppins, and the position once occupied by Coppin the builder (his father), before he went bankrupt. He meant secretly something very much greater for himself. He would be a member of Parliament—he would be a working-man's member. There have already been half a dozen working-men's members in the House. Their success has not hitherto been marked, probably because none of them have shown that they know what they want—if, indeed, they want anything. Up to the last few days Dick simply desired in the abstract to be one of them; only, of course, a red-hot Radical—an Irreconcilable.
Now, however, he desired more. His cousin's words and the Chartist's words fell on fruitful soil. He perceived that to become a power in the House one must be able to inform the House on the wants—the programme of his constituents—what they desire, and mean to have. Dick always mentally added that clause, because it belongs to the class of speech in which he had been brought up—"and we mean to have it." You accompany the words with a flourish of the left hand, which is found to be more effective than the right for such purposes. They don't really mean to have it, whatever it may be. But with their audiences it is necessary to put on the appearance of strength before there arises any confidence in strength. Disestablishers of all kinds invariably mean to have it, and the phrase is, perhaps, getting played out.
Dick went home to his lodgings and sat among his books, thinking. He was a man who read. For the sake of being independent, he became a teetotaler—so that, getting good wages, he was rich. He would not marry, because he did not want to be encumbered. He bought such books as he thought would be useful to him, and read them, but no others. He was a man of energy and tenacity, whose chief fault was the entire absence as yet of sympathy and imagination—if these could be supplied in any way, Dick Coppin's course would be assured. For with them would come play of fancy, repartee, wit, illustration, and the graces as well as the strength of oratory.
He went on Monday evening to see Miss Kennedy. He would find out from her, as a beginning, all that she could tell him about the wages of women.
"But I have told you," she said, "I told you all the first night you came here—have you forgotten? Then, I suppose, I must tell you again."
The first time he was only bored with the story, because he did not see how he could use it for his own purposes—therefore he had forgotten the details.
She told him the sad story of woman's wrongs, which go unredressed while their sisters clamor for female suffrage and make school boards intolerable by their squabbles. The women do but copy the men; therefore, while the men neglect the things that lie ready to their hand and hope for things impossible, under new forms of government, what wonder if the women do the like?
This time Dick listened, because he now understood that a practical use might be made out of the information. He was not a man of highly sensitive organization, nor did he feel any indignation at the things Angela told him, seeing that he had grown up among these things all his life, and regarded the inequalities of wages and work as part of the bad luck of being born a woman. But he took note of all, and asked shrewd questions and made suggestions.
"If," he said, "there's a hundred women asking for ten places, of course the governor'll give them to the cheapest."
"That," replied Angela, "is a matter of course as things now are. But there is another way of considering the question. If we had a Woman's Trade Union, as we shall have before long, where there are ten places only ten women should be allowed to apply, and just wages be demanded."
"How is that to be done?"
"My friend, you have yet a great deal to learn."
Dick reddened and replied rudely, that if he had, he did not expect to learn it from a woman.
"A great deal to learn," she repeated gently. "Above all, you have got to learn the lesson which your cousin began to teach you the other night, the great lesson of finding out what you want and then getting it for yourselves. Governments are nothing; you must help yourselves; you must combine."
He was silent. The girl made him angry, yet he was afraid of her because no other woman he had ever met spoke as she did or knew so much.
"Combine," she repeated. "Preach the doctrine of combination; and teach us the purposes for which we ought to combine."
The advice was just what the cobbler had given.
"Oh, Mr. Coppin"—her voice was as winning as her eyes were kind and full of interest—"you are clever; you are persevering; you are brave; you have so splendid a voice; you have such a natural gift of oratory, that you ought to become—you must become—one of the leaders of the people."
Pride fell prone, like Dagon—before these words. Dick succumbed to the gracious influence of a charming woman.
"Tell me," he said, reddening, because it is humiliating to seek help of a girl, "tell me what I am to do."
"You are ambitious, are you not?"
"Yes," he replied coldly, "I am ambitious. I don't tell them outside," he jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the Advanced Club, "but I mean to get into the 'Ouse—I mean the House." One of his little troubles was the correction of certain peculiarities of speech common among his class. It was his cousin who first directed his attention to this point.
"Yes: there is no reason why you should not get into the House," said Angela. "But it would be a thousand pities if you should get in yet."
"Why should I wait, if they will elect me?"
"Because, Mr. Coppin, you must not try to lead the people till you know whither you would lead them: because you must not pretend to represent the people till you have learned their condition and their wants; because you must not presume to offer yourself till you are prepared with a programme."
"Yet plenty of others do."
"They do; but what else have they done?"
"Only tell me—then—tell me what to do. Am I to read?"
"No; you have read enough for the present. Rest your eyes from books; open them to the world; see things as they are. Look out of this window. What do you see?"
"Nothing; a row of houses; a street; a road."
"I see, besides, that the houses are mean, dirty, and void of beauty: but I see more. I see an organ player; on the curbstone the little girls are dancing; in the road the ragged boys are playing. Look at the freedom of the girls' limbs; look at the careless grace of the children. Do you know how clever they are? Some of them, who sleep where they can and live as they can, can pick pockets at three, go shop-lifting at four, plot and make conspiracies at five; see how they run and jump and climb."
"I see them. They are everywhere. How can we help that?"
"You would leave these poor children to the Government and the police. Yet I think a better way to redeem these little ones is for the working-men to resolve together that they shall be taken care of, taught, and apprenticed. Spelling, which your cousin says constitutes most of the School Board education, does not so much matter. Take them off the streets and train them to a trade. Do you ever walk about the streets at night? Be your own police and make your streets clean. Do you ever go into the courts and places where the dock laborers sleep? Have a committee for every one such street or court, and make them decent. When a gang of roughs make the pavement intolerable, you decent men step off and leave them to the policeman, if he dares interfere. Put down the roughs yourselves with a strong hand. Clear out the thieves' dens, and the drinking shops; make roughs and vagabonds go elsewhere. I am always about among the people; they are full of sufferings which need not be; there are a great many workers—ladies, priests, clergymen—among them trying to remove some of the suffering. But why do you not do this for yourselves? Be your own almoners. I find everywhere, too, courage and honesty, and a desire for better things. Show them how their lot may be alleviated."
"But I don't know how," he replied, humbly.
"You must find out, if you would be their leader. And you must have sympathy. Never was there yet a leader of the people who did not feel with them as they feel."
This saying was too hard for the young man, who had, he knew, felt hitherto only for himself.
"You say what Harry says. I sometimes think——" he stopped short, as if an idea had suddenly occurred to him. "Look here, is it true that you and Harry are keeping company?"
"No, we are not," Angela replied with a blush.
"Oh! I thought you were. Is it off, then?"
"It never was—more—on—than it is at present, Mr. Coppin."
"Oh!" he looked doubtful. "Well," he said, "I suppose there is no reason why a girl should tell a lie about such a simple thing." He certainly was a remarkably rude young man. "Either you are, or you ain't. That's it, isn't it? And you ain't?"
"We are not," said Angela, with a little blush, for the facts of the case were, from one point of view, against her.
"Then if you are not—I don't care—though it's against my rules, and I did say I would never be bothered with a woman.... Look here—you and me will."
"Will what?"
"Will keep company," he replied firmly. "Oh! I know it's a great chance for you—but then, you see, you ain't like the rest of 'em, and you know things, somehow, that may be useful—though how you learned 'em, nor where you came from, nor what's your character—there—I don't care, we'll keep company!"
"Oh!"
"Yes; we'll begin next Sunday. You'll be useful to me, so that the bargain is not all one side." It was not till afterward that Angela felt the full force of this remark. "As for getting married, there's no hurry; we'll talk about that when I'm member. Of course it would be silly to get married now."
"Of course," said Angela.
"Let's get well up the tree first. Lord help you! how could I climb, to say nothing o' you, with a round half-dozen o' babies at my heels?"
"But, Mr. Coppin," she said, putting aside these possibilities, "I am sorry to say that I cannot possibly keep company with you. There is a reason—I cannot tell you what it is—but you must put that out of your thoughts."
"Oh!" his face fell, "if you won't, you won't. Most girls jump at a man who's in good wages and a temperance man, and sought after, like me. But—there—if you won't, there's an end. I'm not going to waste my time cryin' after any girl."
"We will remain friends, Mr. Coppin?" She held out her hand.
"Friends? what's that? We might ha' been pals—I mean partners."
"But I can tell you all I think; I can advise you in my poor way still, whenever you please to ask my advice, even if I do not share your greatness. And believe me, Mr. Coppin, that I most earnestly desire to see you not only in the House, but a real leader of the people, such a leader as the world has never yet beheld. To begin with, you will be a man of the very people."
"Ay!" he said, "one of themselves!"
"A man not to be led out of his way by flatterers."
"No," he said with a superior smile, "no one, man or woman, can flatter me."
"A man who knows the restless unsatisfied yearnings of the people, and what they mean, and has found out how they may be satisfied."
"Ye—yes!" he replied, doubtfully, "certainly."
"A man who will lead the people to get what is good for themselves and by themselves, without the help of Government."
And no thunders in the Commons? No ringing denunciation of the Hereditary House? Nothing at all that he had looked to do and to say? Call this a leadership? But he thought of the Chartist and his new methods. By different roads, said Montaigne, we arrive at the same end.
The end of the year drew near—the end of that last year of '81, which, whatever its shortcomings, its burning heat of July and its wretched rain of August, went out in sweet and gracious sunshine, and a December like unto the April of a poet.
For six months Angela had been living among her girls. The place was become homelike to her. The workwomen were now her friends—her trusted friends. The voice of calumny about her antecedents was silent, unless it was the voice of Bunker. The Palace of Delight (whose meaning was as yet unknown and unsuspected,) was rising rapidly, and indeed was nearly complete—a shell which had to be filled with things beautiful and delightful, of which Angela did not trust herself to speak. She had a great deal to think of in those last days of the year '81. The dressmaking was nothing—that went on. There was some local custom, and more was promised. It seemed as if (on the soundest principles of economy) it would actually pay. There was a very large acquaintance made at odd times among the small streets and mean houses of Stepney. It was necessary to visit these people and to talk with them.
Angela had nothing to do with the ordinary channels of charity. She would help neither curate nor Sister of Mercy, nor Bible-woman. Why, she said, do not the people stand shoulder to shoulder and help themselves? To be sure, she had the great advantage over professional visitors that she was herself only a work-woman, and was not paid for any services; and, as if there was not already enough to make her anxious, there was that lover of hers.
Were she and Harry keeping company? Dick Coppin asked this question; and Angela (not altogether truthfully) said that they were not. What else were they doing, indeed? No word of love now. Had he not promised to abstain? Yet she knew his past—she knew what he had given up for her sake, believing her only a poor dressmaker; all for love of her, and she could not choose but let her heart go forth to so loyal and true a lover. Many ladies, in many tales of chivalry, have demanded strange services from their lovers: none so strange as that asked by Angela when she ordered her lover not only to pretend to be a cabinet-maker, and a joiner, but to work at his trade and to live by it. Partly in self-reproach—partly in admiration—she watched him going and coming to and from the Brewery, where he now earned (thanks to Lord Jocelyn's intervention) the sum of a whole shilling an hour. For there was nothing in his bearing or his talk to show that he repented his decision. He was always cheerful, always of good courage—more, he was always in attendance on her. It was he who thought for her; invented plans to make her evenings attractive; brought raw lads (recruits in the army of culture) from the Advanced Club and elsewhere, and set them an example of good manners; and was her prime minister, her aide-de-camp, her chief vizier.
And the end of it all—nay, the thing itself being so pleasant, why hasten the end? And, if there was to be an end, could it not be connected with the opening of the Palace? Yes. When the Palace was ready to open its gates then would Angela open her arms.
For the moment it was the sweet twilight of love—the half-hour before the dawn. The sweet uncertainty, when all was certainty. And, as yet, the palace was only just receiving its roof. The fittings and decorations, the organ and the statues, and all, had still to be put in. When everything was ready, then—then—Angela would somehow, perhaps, find words to bid her lover be happy, if she could make him happy.
There could be but one end.
Angela came to Whitechapel incognito—a princess disguised as a milkmaid; partly out of curiosity, partly to try her little experiment for the good of work-girls, with the gayety and light heart of youth—thinking that before long she would return to her old place, just as she had left it. But she could not. Her old views of life were changed, and a man had changed them. More than that—a man whose society, whose strength, whose counsel had become necessary to her.
"Who," she asked herself, "would have thought of the Palace except him? Could I, could any woman? I could have given away money—that is all. I could have been robbed and cheated; but such an idea—so grand, so simple; it is a man's, not a woman's. When the Palace is completed; when all is ready for the opening, then——" And the air became musical with the clang and clash of wedding bells—up the scale, down the scale; in thirds, in fifths; with triple bob-majors and the shouts of the people, and the triumphant strains of a wedding march.
How could there be any end but one?—seeing that not only did this young man present himself nearly every evening at the drawing-room, when he was recognized as the director of ceremonies or the leader of the cotillon or deviser of sports, from an acting proverb to a madrigal; but that later the custom was firmly established that he and Angela should spend their Sundays together. When it rained, they went to church together, and had readings in the drawing-room in the afternoon, with, perhaps, a little concert in the evening, of sacred music, to which some of the girls would come. If the day was sunny and bright, there were many places where they might go—for the East is richer than the West in pretty and accessible country places. They would take the tram along the Mile End Road, past the delightful old church of Bow, to Staring Stratford, with its fine town-hall and its round dozen of churches and chapels; a town of 50,000 people, and quite a genteel place, whose residents preserve the primitive custom of fetching the dinner-beer themselves from its native public-houses on Sunday, after church. At Stratford there are a good many ways open if you are a good walker, as Angela was.
You may take the Romford road, and presently turn to the left and find yourself in a grand old forest (only there is not much of it left) called Hainault Forest. When you have crossed the Forest you get to Chigwell; and then, if you are wise, you will take another six miles (as Angela and Harry generally did) and get to Epping, where the toothsome steak may be found, or haply the simple cold beef—not to be despised after a fifteen miles' walk—and so home by tram. Or you may take the Northern road at Stratford, and walk through Leytonstone and Woodford; and, leaving Epping Forest on the right, walk along the bank of the River Lea till you come to Waltham Abbey, where there is a church to be seen, and a cross and other marvels. Or you may go still further afield and take train all the way to Ware, and walk through country roads and pleasant lanes, if you have a map, to stately Hatfield, and on to St. Albans; but do not try to dine there, even if you are only one-and-twenty, and a girl.
All these walks and many more were taken by Angela with her companion on that blessed day, which should be spent for good of body as well as soul. They are walks which are beautiful in the winter as well as in the summer—though the trees are leafless, there is an underwood faintly colored with its winter tint of purple; and there are stretches of springy turf and bushes hung with catkins; and, above all, there was nobody in the Forest or on the roads except Angela and Harry. Sometimes night fell on them when they were three or four miles from Epping. Then, as they walked in the twilight, the trees on either hand silently glided past them like ghosts, and the mist rose and made things look shadowy and large; and the sense of an endless pilgrimage fell upon them—as if they would always go on like this, side by side. Then their hearts would glow within them, and they would talk; and the girl would think it no shame to reveal the secret thoughts of her heart, although the man with her was not her accepted lover.
As for her reputation, where was it? Not gone, indeed, because no one among her old friends knew of these walks and this companionship, but in grievous peril.
Or, when the day was cloudy, there was the city. I declare there is no place which contains more delightful walks for a cloudy Sunday forenoon, when the clang of the bells has finished, and the scanty worshippers are in their places, and the sleepy sextons have shut the doors, than the streets and lanes of the old city.
You must go as Harry did, provided with something of ancient lore, otherwise the most beautiful places will quite certainly be thrown away and lost for you. Take that riverside walk from Billingsgate to Blackfriars. Why, here were the quays, the ports, the whole commerce of the city in the good old days. Here was Cold Herbergh, that great many-gabled house, where Harry, Prince of Wales, "carried on" with Falstaff and his merry crew. Here was Queen Hithe—here Dowgate with Walbrook. Here Baynard's Castle, and close by the Tower of Montfichet; also, a little to the north, a thousand places dear to the antiquarian—even though they have pulled down so much. There is Tower Royal, where Richard the Second lodged his mother. There is the Church of Whittington, close by the place where his college stood. There are the precincts of Paul's, and the famous street of Chepe. Do people ever think what things have been done in Chepe? There is Austin Friars, with its grand old church now given to the Dutch, and its quiet city square, where only a few years ago lived Lettice Langton (of whom some of us have heard). There is Tower Hill, on which was the residence of Alderman Medlycott, guardian of Nelly Carellis; and west of Paul's there is the place where once stood the house of Dr. Gregory Shovel, who received the orphan Kitty Pleydell. But, indeed, there is no end to the histories and associations of the city; and a man may give his life profitably to the mastery and mystery of its winding streets.
Here they would wander in the quiet Sunday forenoon, while their footsteps echoed in the deserted street, and they would walk fearless in the middle of the road, while they talked of the great town, and its million dwellers, who come like the birds in the morning, and vanish like the birds in the evening.
Or they would cross the river and wander up and down the quaint old town of Rotherhithe, or visit Southwark, the town of hops and malt, and all kinds of strange things; or Deptford, the deserted, or even Greenwich; and if it was rainy they would go to church. There are a great many places of worship about Whitechapel, and many forms of creed, from the Baptist to the man with the biretta; and it would be difficult to select one which is more confident than another of possessing the real Philosopher's Stone—the thing for which we are always searching, the whole truth. And everywhere church and chapel filled with the well-to-do and the respectable, and a sprinkling of the very poor; but of the working-men—none.
"Why have they all given up religion?" asked Angela. "Why should the work-men all over the world feel no need of religion—if it were only the religious emotion?"
Harry, who had answers ready for many questions, could find none for this. He asked his cousin Dick, but he could not tell. Personally, he said, he had something else to do; but if the women wanted to go to church they might. And so long as the parsons and priests did not meddle with him, he should not meddle with them.
But these statements hardly seemed an answer to the question. Perhaps in Berlin or in Paris they could explain more clearly how this strange thing has come to pass.
To possess pure truth—and to know it—is a thing which affects people in two ways, both of them uncomfortable to their fellow-creatures. It impels some to go pointing out the purity of truth to the world at large, insisting upon it, dragging unwilling people along the road which leads to it, and dwelling upon the dangers which attend the neglect of so great a chance. Others it affects with a calm and comfortable sense of superiority. The latter was Rebekah's state of mind. To be a Seventh Day Independent was only one degree removed from belonging to the Chosen People, to begin with: and that there is but one chapel in all England where the truth reposes for a space as the Ark of the Covenant reposed in Shiloh, "in curtains," is, if you please, a thing to be proud of! It brings with it elevation of soul.
There is at present, whatever there may once have been, no proselytizing zeal about the Seventh Day Independents; they are, in fact, a torpid body; they are contented with the conviction—a very comforting one, and possessed by other creeds besides their own—that, sooner or later, the whole world will embrace their faith. Perhaps the Jews look forward to a day when, in addition to the Restoration, which they profess to desire, all mankind will become proselytes in the court of the Gentiles: it is something little short of this that the congregation of Seventh Day Independents expect in the dim future. What a splendid, what a magnificent field for glory—call it not vain-glory!—does this conviction present to the humble believer! There are, again, so very few of them, that each one may feel himself a visible pillar of the Catholic Church, bearing on his shoulders a perceptible and measurable quantity of weight. Each is an Atlas. It is, moreover, pleasing to read the Holy Scriptures, especially the books of the Prophets, as written especially for a Connection which numbers just one chapel in Great Britain and seven in the United States. How grand is the name of Catholic applied to just one church! Catholicity is as yet all to come, and exists only as a germ or seedling! The early Christians may have experienced the same delight.
Rebekah, best and most careful of shopwomen and accountants, showed her religious superiority more by the silence of contempt than by zeal for conversion. When Captain Tom Coppin, for instance, was preaching to the girls, she went on with her figures, casting up, ruling in red ink, carrying forward in methodical fashion, as if his words could not possibly have any concern with her; and when a church bell rang, or any words were spoken about other forms of worship, she became suddenly deaf and blind and cold. But she entreated Angela to attend their services. "We want everybody to come," she said; "we only ask for a single hearing; come and hear my father preach."
She believed in the faith of the Seventh Day. As for her father—when a man is paid to advocate the cause of an eccentric or a ridiculous form of belief; when he has to plead that cause week by week to the same slender following, to prop up the limp, and to keep together his small body of believers: when he has to maintain a show of hopefulness, to strengthen the wavering, to confirm the strong, to encourage his sheep in confidence; when he gets too old for anything else, and his daily bread depends upon this creed and no other—who shall say what, after a while, that man believes or does not believe? Red-hot words fall from his lips, but they fall equally red-hot each week; his arguments are conclusive, but they were equally conclusive last week; his logic is irresistible; his encouragement is warm and glowing; but logic and encouragement alike are those of last week and many weeks ago. Surely, surely there is no worse fate possible for any man than to preach, week by week, any form whatever of dogmatic belief, and to live by it; surely, nothing can be more deadly than to simulate zeal, to suppress doubt, to pretend certainty. But this is dangerous ground, because others besides Seventh Day Independents may feel that they are upon it, and that beneath them are quagmires.
"Come," said Rebekah. "We want nothing but a fair hearing."
Their chapel was endowed, which doubtless helped the flock to keep together. It had a hundred and ten pounds a year belonging to it, and a little house for the minister, and there were scanty pew rents, which almost paid for the maintenance of the fabric and the old woman who cleaned the windows and dusted the pews. If the Reverend Percival Hermitage gave up that chapel he would have no means of subsistence at all. Let us not impute motives. No doubt he firmly believed what he taught: but his words, like his creed, were stereotyped; they had long ceased to be persuasive; they now served only to preserve.
If Angela had accepted that invitation for any given day there would have been, she knew very well, a sermon for the occasion, conceived, written, and argued out expressly for herself. And this she did not want. Therefore, she said nothing at all of her intentions, but chose one Saturday when there was little doing and she could spare a forenoon for her visit.
The chapel of the Seventh Day Independents stands at Redman's Lane, close to the Advanced Club House. It is a structure extremely plain and modest in design. It was built by an architect who entertained humble views—perhaps he was a Churchman—concerning the possible extension of the Connection, because the whole chapel if quite filled would not hold more than two hundred people. The front, or façade, is flat, consisting of a surface of gray brick wall, with a door in the middle and two circular windows, one on each side. Over the door there are two dates—one of erection, the other of restoration. The chapel within is a well-proportioned room, with a neat gallery running round three sides, resting on low pillars, and painted a warm and cheerful drab; the pews are painted of the same color. At the back are two windows with semi-circular arches, and between the windows stands a small railed platform with a reading-desk upon it for the minister. Beside it are high seats with cushions for elders, or other ministers if there should be any. But these seats have never been occupied in the memory of man. The pews are ranged in front of the platform, and they are of the old and high-backed kind. It is a wonderful—a truly wonderful—thing that clergymen, priests, ministers, padres, rabbis, and church architects, with church-wardens, sidesmen, vergers, bishops, and chapel-keepers of all persuasions, are agreed, whatever their other differences, in the unalterable conviction that it is impossible to be religious, that is, to attend services in a proper frame of mind, unless one is uncomfortable. Therefore we are offered a choice. We may sit in high-backed, narrow-seated pews, or we may sit on low-backed, narrow-seated benches: but sit in comfort we may not. The Seventh Day people have got the high-backed pew (which catches you on the shoulder-blade and tries the backbone, and affects the brain, causing softening in the long run) and the narrow seat (which drags the muscles and brings on premature paralysis of the lower limbs). The equally narrow, low-backed bench produces injurious effects of a different kind, but similarly pernicious. How would it be to furnish one aisle, at least, of a church with broad, low, and comfortable chairs having arms? They should be reserved for the poor who have so few easy-chairs of their own. Rightly managed and properly advertised, they might help toward a revival of religion among the working classes.
Above the reading platform in the little chapel they have caused to be painted on the wall the Ten Commandments—the fourth emphasized in red—with a text or two, bearing on their distinctive doctrine; and in the corner is a little door leading to a little vestry; but, as there are no vestments, its use is not apparent.
As for the position taken by these people it is perfectly logical, and, in fact, impregnable. There is no answer to it. They say, "Here is the Fourth Commandment. All the rest you continue to observe. Why not this? When was it repealed? And by whom?" If you put these questions to Bishop or Presbyter, he has no reply. Because that law has never been repealed. Yet as the people of the Connection complain, though they have reason and logic on their side, the outside world will not listen, and go on breaking the commandment with a light and unthinking heart. It is a dreadful responsibility—albeit a grand thing—to be in possession of so simple a truth of such vast importance; and yet to get nobody ever to listen. The case is worse even than that of Daniel Fagg.
Angela noted all these things as she entered the little chapel a short time after the service had commenced. It was bewildering to step out of the noisy streets, where the current of Saturday morning was at flood, into this quiet room with its strange service and its strange flock of Nonconformists. The thing, at first, felt like a dream: the people seemed like the ghosts of an unquiet mind.
There were very few worshippers; she counted them all: four elderly men, two elderly women, three young men, two girls, one of whom was Rebekah, and five boys. Sixteen in all. And standing on the platform was their leader.
Rebekah's father, the Rev. Percival Hermitage, was a shepherd who from choice led his flock gently, along peaceful meadows and in shady, quiet places; he had no prophetic fire; he had evidently long since acquiesced in a certain fact that under him, at least, whatever it might do under others, the Connection would not greatly increase. Perhaps he did not himself desire an increase, which would give him more work. Perhaps he never had much enthusiasm. By the simple accident of birth he was a Seventh Day Christian; being of a bookish and unambitious turn, and of an indolent habit of body, mentally and physically unfitted for the life of a shop, he entered the ministry; in course of time he got this chapel, where he remained, tolerably satisfied with his lot in life, a simple, self-educated, mildly pious person, equipped with the phrases of his craft, and comforted with the consciousness of superiority and separation. He looked up from his book in gentle surprise when Angela entered the chapel. It was seldom that a stranger was seen there—once, not long ago, there was a boy who had put his head in at the door and shouted "Hoo!" and ran away again; once there was a drunken sailor who thought it was a public-house, and sat down and began to sing and wouldn't go, and had to be shoved out by the united efforts of the whole small congregation. When he was gone they sang an extra hymn to restore a religious calm—but never a young lady before. Angela took her seat amid the wondering looks of the people, and the minister went on in a perfunctory way with his prayers and his hymns and his exposition. There certainly did seem to an outsider a want of heart about the service, but that might have been due to the emptiness of the pews. When it came to the sermon, Angela thought the preacher spoke and looked as if the limit of endurance had at last almost arrived, and he would not much longer endure the inexpressible dreariness of the conventicle. It was not so; he was always mildly sad; he seemed always a little bored; it was no use pretending to be eloquent any more; fireworks were thrown away; and as for what he had to say, the congregation always had the same thing, looked for the same thing, and would have risen in revolt at the suggestion of a new thing. His sermon was neither better nor worse than may be heard any day in church or chapel; nor was there anything in it to distinguish it from the sermons of any other body of Christians. The outsider left off listening and began to think of the congregation. In the pew with her was a man of sixty or so, with long black hair streaked with gray, brushed back behind his ears. He was devout and followed the prayers audibly, and sang the hymns out of a manuscript music-book, and read the text critically. His face was the face of a bulldog for resolution. The man, she thought, would enjoy going to the stake for his opinions, and if the Seventh Day Independents were to be made the National Established Church he would secede the week after and make a new sect, if only by himself. Such men are not happy under authority; their freedom of thought is as the breath of their nostrils, and they cannot think like other people. He was not well dressed, and was probably a shoemaker or some such craftsman. In front of her sat a family of three. The wife was attired in a sealskin rich and valuable, and the son, a young man of one or two and twenty, had the dress and appearance of a gentleman—that is to say, of what passes for such in common city parlance. What did these people do in such a place? Yet they were evidently of the religion. Then she noticed a widow and her boy. The widow was not young; probably, Angela thought, she had married late in life. Her lips were thin and her face was stern. "The boy," thought Angela, "will have the doctrine administered with faithfulness." Only sixteen altogether; yet all, except the pastor, seemed to be grimly in earnest and inordinately proud of their sect. It was as if the emptiness of their benches and their forsaken condition called upon them to put on a greater show of zeal and to persuade themselves that the cause was worth fighting for. The preacher alone seemed to have lost heart. But his people, who were accustomed to him, did not notice this despondency.
Then Angela, while the sermon went slowly on, began to speculate on the conditions belonging to such a sect. First of all, with the apparent exception of the lady in sealskin and her husband and son, the whole sixteen—perhaps another two or three were prevented from attending—were of quite the lower middle class; they belonged to the great stratum of society whose ignorance is as profound as their arguments are loud. But the uncomfortableness of it! They can do no work on the Saturday—"neither their man-servant nor their maid-servant"—their shops are closed and their tools put aside. They lose a sixth part of the working time. The followers of this creed are as much separated from their fellows as the Jews. On the Sunday they may work if they please, but on that day all the world is at church or at play. Angela looked round again. Yes; the whole sixteen had upon their faces the look of pride; they were proud of being separated; it was a distinction, just as it is to be a Samaritan. Who would not be one of the recipients, however few they be in number, of Truth? And what a grand thing, what an inspiriting thing, it is to feel that some day or other, perhaps not to-day nor to-morrow, nor in one's lifetime at all, the whole world will rally round the poor little obscure banner, and shout all together, with voice of thunder, the battle-cry which now sounds no louder than a puny whistle-pipe! Yet, on the whole, Angela felt it must be an uncomfortable creed; better be one of the undistinguished crowd which flocks to the parish church and yearns not for any distinction at all. Then the sermon ended and they sang another hymn—the collection in use was a volume printed in New York, and compiled by the committee of the Connection, so that there were manifestly congregations on the other side of the Atlantic living in the same discomfort of separation.
At the departure of the people Rebekah hurried out first, and waited in the doorway to greet Angela.
"I knew you would come some day," she said, "but oh! I wish you had told me when you were coming, so that father might have given one of his doctrine sermons. What we had to-day was one of the comfortable discourses to the professed members of the church which we all love so much. I am so sorry. Oh, he would convince you in ten minutes!"
"But, Rebekah," said Angela, "I should be sorry to have seen your service otherwise than usual. Tell me, does the congregation to-day represent all your strength?"
Rebekah colored. She could not deny that they were, numerically, a feeble folk.
"We rely," she said, "on the strength of our cause—and some day—oh! some day—the world will rally round us. See, Miss Kennedy, here is father; when he has said good-by to the people"—he was talking to a lady in sealskin—"he will come and speak to us."
"I suppose," said Angela, "that this lady is a member of your chapel?"
"Yes," Rebekah whispered. "Oh, they are quite rich people—the only rich people we have. They live at Leytonstone; they made their money in the book-binding, and are consistent Christians. Father,"—for at this moment Mr. Hermitage left his rich followers in the porch—"this is Miss Kennedy, of whom you have heard so much."
Mr. Hermitage took her hand with a weary smile, and asked Rebekah if Miss Kennedy would come home with her.
They lived in a small house next door to the chapel. It was so small that there was but one sitting-room, and this was filled with books.
"Father likes to sit here," said Rebekah, "by himself all day. He is quite happy if he is let alone. Sometimes, however, he has to go to Leytonstone."
"To the rich people?"
"Yes," Rebekah looked troubled. "A minister must visit his flock, you know: and if they were to leave us it would be bad for us, because the endowment is only a hundred and ten pounds a year, and out of that the church and the house have got to be kept in repair. However, a clergyman must not be dictated to, and I tell father he should go his own way and preach his own sermons. Whatever people say, truth must not be hidden away as if we were ashamed of it! Hush! Here he is."
The good man welcomed Angela, and said some simple words of gratitude about her reception of his daughter. He had a good face, but he wore an anxious expression as if something was always on his mind; and he sighed when he sat down at his table.
Angela stayed for half an hour, but the minister said nothing more to her; only when she rose to go he murmured with another heavy sigh, "There's an afternoon service at three."
It is quite impossible to say whether he intended this announcement as an invitation to Angela, or whether it was a complaint, wrung from a heavy heart, of a trouble almost intolerable.