The rest would be easy. They tried a quadrille, then another galop. Harry endeavored to do his duty, but there were some who remarked that he danced twice, that second galop, with Nelly Sorensen, and they were jealous. Yet it was only an unconscious tribute paid to beauty. The young fellow was among a bevy of dressmakers; an uncommon position for a man of his bringing-up. One of them, somehow, was, to all appearance, and to any but perhaps the most practised eye, a real genuine lady—not a copy at all; the other was so graceful and sweet that she seemed to want but a touch to effect the transformation. As for the other girls, they were simple young persons of the workroom and counter—a common type. So common, alas! that we are apt to forget the individuality of each, her personal hopes, and her infinite possibilities. Yet, however insignificant is the crowd, the individual is so important.
Then he was interested in the dark-eyed girl who sat by herself at the table, looking on, anxiously, at an amusement she had always heard of as "soul-destroying." She was wondering why her ears were pleased with the playing, and why her brain was filled with strange images, and why it was so pleasant to watch the girls dancing, their eyes aglow and their cheeks flushed.
"Do not tempt me," she said, when Harry ventured to invite her, too, to join the giddy throng. "Do not tempt me—no—go away!"
Her very brusqueness showed how strong was the temptation. Was she, already, giving way to the first temptation?
Presently the evening was over, the girls had all trooped noisily out of the house, and Angela, Captain Sorensen, Nelly, and the young workman were walking across the green in the direction of the Almshouse.
When Angela got home to the boarding-house the dreariness of the evening was in full blast. The boarders were sitting in silence, each wrapped in his own thoughts. The professor lifted his head as she entered the room, and regarded her with thoughtful eyes, as if appraising her worth as a clairvoyante. David Fagg scowled horribly. His lordship opened his mouth as if to speak, but said nothing. Mr. Maliphant took his pipe out of his mouth, and began a story. "I remember," he said, "the last time but one that he was ruined"—he did not state the name of the gentleman—"the whole town was on fire, and his house with them. What did he do? Mounted his horse and rode around, and bought up all the timber for twenty miles around. And see what he's worth now!" When he had told this story he relapsed into silence. Angela thought of that casual collection of unsympathetic animals put into a cage and called a "Happy Family."
Sunday morning in and about the Whitechapel and Mile End roads Angela discovered to be a time of peculiar interest. The closing of the shops adds to the dignity of the broad thoroughfares, because it hides so many disagreeable and even humiliating things. But it by no means puts a stop to traffic, which is conducted with an ostentatious disregard of the Fourth Commandment or Christian custom. At one end, the city end, is Houndsditch, crowded with men who come to buy and sell; and while the bells of St. Botolph call upon the faithful with a clanging and clashing which ring like a cry of despair, the footpath is filled with the busy loungers, who have long since ceased to regard the invitation as having anything at all to do with them.
Strange and wonderful result of the gathering of men in great cities! It is not a French, or an English, or a German, or an American result—it is universal. In every great city of the world, below a certain level, there is no religion—men have grown dead to their higher instincts; they no longer feel the possibilities of humanity; faith brings to them no more the evidence of things unseen. They are crowded together, so that they have ceased to feel their individuality. The crowd is eternal—they are part of that eternity; if one drops out, he is not missed; nobody considers that it will be his own turn some day so to drop out. Life is nothing for ever and ever, but work in the week with as much beer and tobacco as the money will run to, and loafing on Sundays with more beer and tobacco. This, my friends, is a truly astonishing thing, and a thing unknown until this century. Perhaps, however, in ancient Rome the people had ceased to believe in their gods; perhaps, in Babylon, the sacred bricks were kicked about by the unthinking mob; perhaps, in every great city, the same loss of individual manhood may be found.
It was on a Sunday morning in August that Angela took a little journey of exploration, accompanied by the young workman who was her companion in these excursions. He led her into Houndsditch and the Minories, where she had the pleasure of inspecting the great mercantile interest of old clothes, and of gazing upon such as buy and sell therein. Then she turned her face northward, and entered upon a journey which twenty years ago would have been full of peril, and is now, to one who loves his fellow-man, full of interest.
The great boulevard of the East was thronged with the class of men who keep the Sabbath in holy laziness with tobacco. Some of them lounge, some talk, some listen, all have pipes in their mouths. Here was a circle gathered round a man who was waving his arms and shouting. He was an Apostle of Temperance; behind him stood a few of his private friends to act as a claque. The listeners seemed amused but not convinced. "They will probably," said Harry, "enjoy their dinner beer quite as much as if they had not heard this sermon." Another circle was gathered round a man in a cart, who had a flaming red flag to support him. He belonged, the flag told the world, to the Tower Hamlets Magna Charta Association. What he said was listened to with the same languid curiosity and tepid amusement. Angela stopped a moment to hear what he had to say. He was detailing, with immense energy, the particulars of some awful act of injustice committed upon a friend unknown, who got six months. The law of England is always trampling upon some innocent victim, according to this sympathizer with virtue. The working-men have heard it all before, and they continue to smoke their pipes, their blood not quickened by a single beat. The ear of the people is accustomed to vehemence; the case must be put strongly before it will listen at all; and listening, as most brawlers discover, is not conviction.
Next to the Magna Charta brethren a cheap-jack had placed his cart. He drove a roaring trade in two-penn'orths, which, out of compliment to a day which should be devoted to good works, consisted each of a bottle of sarsaparilla, which he called "sassaple," and a box of pills. Next to him the costers stood beside their carts loaded with cheap ices, ginger-beer, and lemonade—to show that there was no deception, a great glass jar stood upon each cart with actual undeniable slices of lemon floating in water and a lump of ice upon the top; there were also piles of plums, plums without end, early August apples, and windfall pears; also sweet things in foot-long lumps sticky and gruesome to look upon; Brazil nuts, also a favorite article of commerce in certain circles, though not often met with at the tables of the luxurious; late oranges, more plums, many more plums, plums in enormous quantities; and periwinkles, which last all the year round, with whelks and vinegar, and the toothsome shrimp. Then there came another circle, and in the midst stood a young man with long fair hair and large blue eyes. He was preaching the Gospel, as he understood it; his face was the face of an enthusiast: a little solitude, a little meditation among the mountains, would have made this man a seer of visions and a dreamer of dreams. He was not ridiculous, though his grammar was defective and his pronunciation had the cockney twang and his aspirates were wanting: nothing is ridiculous that is in earnest. On the right of the street they had passed the headquarters of the Salvation Army; the brave warriors were now in full blast, and the fighting, "knee-drill," singing, and storming of the enemy's fort were at their highest and most enjoyable point; Angela looked in and found an immense hall crammed with people who came to fight, or look on, to scoff, or gaze. Higher up, on the left, stands a rival in red-hot religion, the Hall of the Jubilee Singers, where another vast crowd was worshipping, exhorting, and singing.
"There seems," said Angela, "to be too much exhorting; can they not sit down somewhere in quiet for praise and prayer?"
"We working-people," replied her companion, "like everything loud and strong. If we are persuaded to take a side, we want to be always fighting on that side."
Streams of people passed them, lounging or walking with a steady purpose. The former were the indifferent and the callous, the hardened and the stupid, men to whom preachers and orators appealed in vain; to whom Peter the Hermit might have bawled himself hoarse, and Bernard would have thrown all his eloquence away; they smoked short pipes, with their hands in their pockets, and looked good-tempered; with them were boys, also smoking short pipes, with their hands in their pockets. Those who walked were young men dressed in long frock-coats of a shiny and lustrous black, who carried Bibles and prayer-books with some ostentation. They were on their way to church; with them were their sisters, for the most part well-dressed, quiet girls, to whom the noise and the crowds were a part of life—a thing not to be avoided, hardly felt as a trouble.
"I am always getting a new sensation," said Angela.
"What is the last?"
"I have just realized that there are thousands and thousands of people who never, all their lives, get to a place where they can be quiet. Always noise, always crowds, always buying and selling."
"Here, at least," said Harry, "there is no noise."
They were at the wicket-gate of the Trinity Almshouse.
"What do you think, Miss Kennedy?"
"It is a haven of rest," she replied, thinking of a certain picture. "Let us, too, seek peace awhile."
It was just eleven o'clock, and the beadsmen were going to their chapel. They entered the square, and joined the old men in their weekly service. Angela discovered, to her disappointment, that the splendid flight of steps leading to the magnificent portal was a dummy, because the real entrance to the chapel was a lowly door beneath the stone steps, suited, Mr. Bunker would have said, to the humble condition of the moneyless.
It is a plain chapel, with a small organ in the corner, a tiny altar, and over the altar the ten commandments in a black wood frame—rules of life for those whose life is well-nigh done—and a pulpit, which serves for reading the service as well as delivering the sermon. The congregation consisted of about thirty of the almsmen, with about half as many old ladies; and Angela wondered why these old ladies were all dressed in black, and all wore crape. Perhaps they desired by the use of this material to symbolize mourning for the loss of opportunities for making money; or for the days of beauty and courtship, or for children dead and gone, or to mark the humility which becomes an inmate, or to do honor to the day which is still revered by many Englishwomen as a day of humiliation and rebuke, or in the belief that crape confers dignity. We know not, we know nothing; the love which women bear for crape is a mystery; man can but speculate idly on their ways. We are like the philosopher picking up pebbles by the seaside. Among the old people sat Nelly Sorensen, a flower of youth and loveliness, in her simple black dress, and her light hair breaking out beneath her bonnet. The Catholics believe that no church is complete without a bone of some dead saint or beatified person. Angela made up her mind, on the spot, that no act of public worship is complete without the assistance of youth as well as of age.
The men were all dressed alike in blue coats and brass buttons, the uniform of the place; they seemed all, with the exception of one who was battered by time, and was fain to sit while the rest stood, to be of the same age, and that might be anything between a hearty sixty-five and a vigorous eighty. After the manner of sailors, they were all exact in the performance of their share in public worship, following the prayers in the book and the lessons in the Bible. When the time came for listening they straightened themselves out, in an attitude comfortable for listening. The Scotch elder assumes, during the sermon, the air of a hostile critic; the face of the British rustic becomes vacant; the eyes of the ordinary listener in church show that his thoughts are far away; but the expression of a sailor's face, while he is performing the duty—part of the day's duty—of listening to the sermon, shows respectful attention, although he may have heard it all before.
Angela did not listen much to the sermon: she was thinking of the old men for whom that sermon was prepared. There was a fresh color upon their faces, as if it was not so very long since their cheeks had been fanned by the strong sea-breeze; their eyes were clear, they possessed the bearing which comes of the habit of command, and they carried themselves as if they were not ashamed of their poverty. Now Bunker, Angela reflected, would have been very much ashamed, and would have hung his head in shame. But then Bunker was one of the nimble-footed hunters after money, while these ignoble persons had contented themselves with the simple and slavish record of duty done.
The service over, they were joined by Captain Sorensen and his daughter, and for half an hour walked in the quiet court behind the church, in peaceful converse. Angela walked with the old man, and Nelly with the young man. It matters little what they talked about, but it was something good, because when the Captain went home to his dinner he kissed his daughter, and said it seemed to him that it was the best day's work he ever did when he let her go to Miss Kennedy.
In the evening Angela made another journey of exploration with the same escort. They passed down Stepney Green, and plunged among the labyrinth of streets lying between the Mile End Road and the Thames. It is as unlovely a collection of houses as may be found anywhere, always excepting Hoxton, which may fairly be considered the Queen of Unloveliness. The houses in this part are small, and they are almost all of one pattern. There is no green thing to be seen; no one plants trees, there seem to be no gardens; no flowers are in the windows; there is no brightness of paint or of clean windows; there is nothing of joy, nothing to gladden the eye.
"Think," said Harry, almost in a whisper, as if in homage to the Powers of Dirt and Dreariness, "think what this people could be made if we could only carry out your scheme of the Palace of Delight."
"We could make them discontented, at least," said Angela. "Discontent must come before reform."
"We should leave them to reform themselves," said Harry. "The mistake of philanthropists is to think that they can do for people what can only be done by the people. As you said this morning, there is too much exhorting."
Presently they struck out of a street rather more dreary than its neighbors, and found themselves in a broad road with a great church.
"This is Limehouse Church," said Harry. "All round you are sailors. There is East India Dock Road. Here is West India Dock Road. There is the Foreign Sailors' Home; and we will go no farther, if you please, because the streets are all full, you perceive, of the foreign sailors and the English sailors and the sailors' friends."
Angela had seen enough of the sailors. They turned back. Harry led her through another labyrinth into another broad street, also crowded with sailors.
"This is Shadwell," said her guide; "and if there is anything in Shadwell to interest you, I do not know what it is. Survey Shadwell!"
Angela looked up the street and down the street; there was nothing for the eye in search of the beautiful or the picturesque to rest upon. But a great bawling of rough voices came from a great tent stuck up, oddly, beside the road. A white canvas sheet with black letters proclaimed this as the place of worship of the "Happy Gypsies." They were holding their Sunday Function.
"More exhorting!" said Angela.
"Now, this," he said, as they walked along, "is a more interesting place. It used to be called Ratcliffe Highway, and had the reputation of being the wickedest place in London. I dare say it was all brag, and that really it was not much worse than its neighbors."
It is a distinctly squalid street, that now called St. George's-in-the-East. But it has its points; it is picturesque, like a good many dirty places; the people are good-tempered, though they do not wash their faces even on Sundays. They have quite left off knocking down, picking pockets, kicking, and robbing the harmless stranger; they are advancing slowly toward civilization.
"Come this way," said Harry.
He passed through a narrow passage, and led the way into a place at the sight of which Angela was fain to cry out in surprise.
In it was nothing less than a fair and gracious garden planted with flowers, and these in the soft August sunshine showed sweet and lovely. The beds were well kept; the walks were of asphalt; there were seats set about, and on them old women and old men sat basking in the evening sun. The young men and maidens walked along the paths—an Arcadian scene.
"This little strip of Eden," said Harry, "was cut out of the old church-yard."
The rest of the church-yard was divided from the garden by a railing, and round the wall were the tombstones of the departed obscure. From the church itself was heard the rolling of the organ and the soft singing of a hymn.
"This," said Angela, "is better than exhortation. A garden for meditation and the church for prayer. I like this place better than the Whitechapel Road."
"I will show you a more quiet place still," said her guide. They walked a little way farther down the main street; then he turned into a narrow street on the north, and Angela found herself in a square of clean houses round an inclosure of grass. Within the inclosure was a chapel, and tombs were dotted on the grass.
They went into the chapel, a plain edifice of the Georgian kind with round windows, and the evening sun shone through the window in the west. The high pews were occupied by a congregation of forty or fifty, all men. They all had light-brown hair, and as they turned round to look at the new-comers, Angela saw that they all had blue eyes. The preacher, who wore a black gown and bands, was similarly provided as to hair and eyes. He preached in a foreign tongue, and as it is difficult to be edified by a sermon not in one's native speech, they shortly went out again. They were followed by the verger, who seemed not indisposed to break the monotony of the service by a few minutes' walk.
He talked English imperfectly, but he told them that it was the church of the Swedes. Angela asked if they were all sailors. He said, with some seeming contempt for sailors, that only a few of them were sailors. She then said that she supposed they were people engaged in trade. He shook his head again, and informed her with a mysterious air that many of the Swedish nobility lived in that neighborhood. After this they came away, for fear of greater surprises.
They followed St. George's-in-the-East to the end of the street. Then they turned to the right, and passed through a straight and quite ignoble road leading north. It is a street greatly affected by Germans. German names are over every shop and on every brass plate. They come hither, these honest Germans, because to get good work in London is better than going after it to New York or Philadelphia, and nearer home. In the second generation their names will be Anglicized, and their children will have become rich London merchants, and very likely Cabinet ministers. They have their churches, too, the Reformed and the Lutheran, with nothing to choose between them on the score of ugliness.
"Let us get home," said Angela; "I have seen enough."
"It is the joylessness of the life," she explained, "the ignorant, contented joylessness, which weighs upon one. And there is so much of it. Surely there is no other city in the world which is so utterly without joy as this East London."
"No," said Harry, "there is not in the whole world a city so devoid of pleasant things. They do not know how to be happy. They are like your work-girls when you told them to dance."
"Look!" she cried, "what is that?"
There was a hoarse roar of many voices from a court leading out of the main road; the roar became louder; Harry drew the girl aside as a mob of men and boys and women rushed headlong out of the place. It was not a fight apparently, yet there was beating with sticks and kicking. For those who were beaten did not strike back in return. After a little the beaters and kickers desisted, and returned to their court as to a stronghold whose rights they had vindicated.
Those who had been beaten were a band of about a dozen, men and women. The women's shawls were hanging in tatters, and they had lost their bonnets. The men were without hats, and their coats were grievously torn. There was a thing among them which had been a banner, but the pole was broken and the flag was dragged in the dirt and smirched.
One of them who, seemed to be the leader—he wore a uniform coat something like a volunteer's coat—stepped to the front and called upon them all to form. Then with a loud voice he led off a hymn, in which all joined as they marched down the street.
He was hatless, and his cheek was bleeding from an open wound. Yet he looked undaunted, and his hymn was a song of triumph. A wild-set-up young fellow with thick black hair and black beard, but pale cheeks. His forehead was square and firm; his eyes were black and fierce.
"Good heavens!" cried Harry. "It is my cousin Tom, captain in the Salvation Army. And that, I suppose, is his regiment. Well, if standing still to be kicked means a victory, they have scored one to-night."
The pavement was even more crowded than in the morning. The political agitators bawled more fiercely than in the forenoon to their circle of apathetic listeners; the preachers exhorted the unwilling more fervently to embrace the faith. Cheap-jacks was dispensing more volubly his two penn'orths of "sassaple." The workmen lounged along, with their pipes in their mouths, more lazily than in the morning. The only difference was that the shop-boys were now added to the crowd, every lad with a "twopenny smoke" between his lips; and that the throng was increased by those who were going home from church.
"Let us, too, go home," said Angela; "there is too much humanity here; we shall lose ourselves among the crowd."
"No, Constance," Angela wrote, "I cannot believe that your lectures will be a failure, or that your life's work is destined to be anything short of a brilliant success—an 'epoch-making' episode in the history of Woman's Rise. If your lectures have not yet attracted reading men, it must be because they are not yet known. It is unworthy of faith in your own high mission to suppose that personal appearance or beauty has anything to do with popularity in matters of mind. Who asks—who can ask?—whether a woman of genius is lovely or not? And to take lower ground: every woman owns the singular attractiveness of your own face, which has always seemed to me, apart from personal friendship, the face of pure intellect. I do not give up my belief that the men will soon begin to run after your lectures as they did after those of Hypatia, and yet will become in the University as great a teacher of mathematics as Sir Isaac Newton himself. Meantime, it must be, I own, irksome to lecture on vulgar fractions, and the First Book of Euclid, and unsatisfactory to find, after you have made a research and arrived at what seemed a splendid result, that some man has been before you. Patience, Constance!"
At this point the reader, who was of course Constance Woodcote, paused and smiled bitterly. She was angry because she had advertised a course of lectures on some desperately high mathematical subject and no one came to hear them. Had she been, she reflected, a pink-and-white girl with no forehead and soft eyes, everybody would have rushed to hear her. As it was, Angela, no doubt, meant well, but she was always disposed to give men credit for qualities which they did not possess. As if you could ever persuade a man to regard a woman from a purely intellectual point of view! After all, she thought, civilization was only just begun; we live in a world of darkness; the reign of woman is as yet afar off. She continued her reading with impatience. Somehow, her friends seemed to have drifted away; their lines were diverging; already the old enthusiasms had given place to the new, and Angela thought less of the great cause which she had once promised to further with her mighty resources.
"As regards the scholarship which I promised you, I must ask you to wait a little, because my hands are full—so full of important things that even a new scholarship at Newnham seems a small thing. I cannot tell you in a letter what my projects are, and how I am trying to do something new with my great wealth. This, at least, I may tell you, partly because I am intoxicated with my own schemes, and, therefore, I must tell everybody I speak to; and partly because you are perfectly certain not to sympathize with me, and therefore you will not trouble to argue the point with me. I have found out, to begin with, a great truth. It is that would-be philanthropists and benefactors and improvers of things have all along been working on a false assumption. They have taught and believed that the people look up to the 'better class'—phrase invented by the well-to-do in order to show riches and virtue go together—for guidance and advice. My dear, it is the greatest mistake; they do not look up to us at all; they do not want to copy our ways; they are perfectly satisfied with their own ways; they will naturally take as much money as we choose to give them, and as many presents; and they consider the exhortations, preachings, admonitions, words of guidance, and advice as uncomfortable but unavoidable accompaniments of this gift. But we ourselves are neither respected nor copied. Nor do they want our culture."
"Angela," said the mathematician, "is really very prolix."
"This being so, I am endeavoring to make such people as I can get at discontented as a first step. Without discontent, nothing can be done. I work upon them by showing, practically, and by way of example, better things. This I can do because I am here as simply one of themselves—a workwoman among other workwomen. I do not work as much as the others in our newly formed association, because I am supposed to run the machine, and to go to the West End for work. Miss Messenger is one of our customers. So much am I one of them, that I take my wages on Saturday, and am to have the same share, and no more, in the business as my dressmakers. I confess to you that in the foundation of my Dressmakers' Association I have violated most distinctly every precept of political and social economy. I have given them a house rent-free for a year; I have fitted it up with all that they want; I have started them with orders from myself; I have resolved to keep them going until they are able to run alone; I give wages, in money and in food, higher than the market-value. I know what you will say. It is all quite true scientifically. But outside the range of science there is humanity. And only think what a great field my method opens for the employment of the unfortunate rich—the unhappy, useless, heavily burdened rich. They will all follow my example and help the people to help themselves.
"My girls were at first and for the most part uninteresting, until I came to know them individually: every one, when you know her, and can sympathize with her, becomes interesting. Some are, however, more interesting than others; there are two or three, for instance, in whom I feel a special interest. One of them, whom I love for her gentleness and for her loyalty to me, is the daughter of an old ship-captain now in an almshouse. She is singularly beautiful, with an air of fragility which one hopes is not real; she is endowed by nature with a keenly sensitive disposition, and has had the advantage, rare in these parts, of a father who learned to be a gentleman before he came to the almshouse. The other is a religious fanatic, a sectarian of the most positive kind. She knows what is truth more certainly than any Professor of Truth we ever encountered; she is my manager and is good at business. I think she has come to regard me with less contempt, from a business point of view, than she did at first, because in the conduct of the showroom and the trying-on room she has all her own way.
"My evenings are mostly spent with the girls in the garden and 'drawing-room.' Yes, we have a drawing-room over the workroom. At first we had tea at five and struck work at seven; now we strike work at half past six and take tea with lawn tennis. I assure you my dressmakers are as fond of lawn tennis as the students of Newnham. When it is too dark to play, we go upstairs and have music and dancing."
Here followed a word which had been erased. The mathematical lecturer held the letter to the light and fancied the word was "Harry." This could hardly be; it must be Hetty, or Kitty, or Lotty, or some such feminine abbreviation. There could be no Harry. She looked again. Strange! It certainly was Harry. She shook her head suspiciously and went on with the letter.
"The girls' friends and sisters have begun to come, and we are learning all kinds of dances. Fortunately my dear old captain from the almshouse can play the fiddle, and likes nothing better than to play for us. We place him in the corner beside the piano and he plays as long as we please, being the best of all old captains. We are not well off for men, having at present to rely principally on a superior young cabinet-maker, who can also play the fiddle on occasion. He dances very well, and perhaps he will fall in love with the captain's daughter.
"What I have attempted is, in short, nothing less than the introduction of a love of what we call culture. Other things will follow, but at present I am contented with an experiment on a very humble scale. If I were to go among the people in my name, most of them would try to borrow or steal from me; as I am only a poor dressmaker, only those who have business with me try to take me in. I do not go on a platform and lecture the people; nor do I open a school to teach them; nor do I print and circulate tracts. I simply say, 'My dears, I am going to dance and sing, and have a little music, and play lawn tennis; come with me, and we will dance together.' And they come. And they behave well. I think it is a strange thing that young women of the lower class always prefer to behave well when they can, while young men of their own station take so much pleasure in noise and riot. We have no difficulty in our drawing-room, where the girls behave perfectly and enjoy themselves in a surprising manner. I find already a great improvement in the girls. They have acquired new interests in life, they are happier: consequently, they chatter like birds in spring and sunshine; and whereas, since I came into these regions, it has been a constant pain to listen to the querulous and angry talk of work-girls in omnibuses and in streets, I rejoice that we have changed all this, and while they are with me my girls can talk without angry snapping of the lips, and without the 'sezi' and 'sezee' and 'seshee' of the omnibus. This is surely a great gain for them.
"Next, I observe that they are developing a certain amount of pride in their own superiority; they are lifted above their neighbors, if only by the nightly drawing-room. I fear they will become unpopular from hauteur; but there is no gain without some loss. If only one felt justified in doubling the number of the girls! But the Stepney ladies have hitherto shown no enthusiasm in the cause of the Association. The feeling in these parts is, you see, commercial rather than co-operative.
"The dinner is to me the most satisfactory as well as the most unscientific part of the business. I believe I have no right to give them a dinner at all; it is against the custom in dressmakers' shops, where girls bring their own dinners, poor things; it costs quite a shilling a head every day to find the dinner, and Rebekah, my forewoman, tells me that no profits can stand against such a drain: but I must go on with the dinner even if it swallows up all the profits.
"On Sundays the drawing-room is kept open all day long for those who like to come. Some do, because it is quiet. In the evening we have sacred music. One of the young men plays the violin"—the reader turned back and referred to a previous passage—yes; she had already mentioned a cabinet-maker in connection with a fiddle—no doubt it must be the same—"and we have duets, but I fear the girls do not care much yet for classical music——"
Here the reader crumpled up the letter in impatience.
"And this," she groaned, "is the result of two years at Newnham! After her course of political economy, after all those lectures, after actually distinguishing herself and taking a place, this is the end! To play the piano for a lot of work-girls; with a cabinet-maker; and an old sailor; and to be a dressmaker! That is, alas! the very worst feature in the case: she evidently likes it; she has no wish to return to civilization; she has forgotten her science; she is setting a most mischievous example; and she has forgotten her distinct promise to give us a mathematical scholarship.
"O Angela!"
She had imagined that the heiress would endow Newnham with great gifts, and she was disappointed. She had imagined this so very strongly that she felt personally aggrieved and injured. What did she care about Stepney work-girls? What have mathematics to do with poor people in an ugly and poor part of town?
Angela's letter did not convey the whole truth, because she herself was ignorant of the discussions, gossips, rumors, and reports which were flying about in the neighborhood of Stepney Green concerning her venture. There were some, for instance, who demonstrated that such an institution must fail for reasons which they learnedly expounded; among these was Mr. Bunker. There were some who were ready to prove, from the highest authorities, the wickedness of trying to do without a proprietor, master, or boss; there were some who saw in this revolutionary movement the beginning of those troubles which will afflict mankind toward the coming of the end; there were others, among whom was also Mr. Bunker, who asked by what right this young woman had come among them to interfere, where she had got her money, and what were her antecedents? To Bunker's certain knowledge, and no one had better sources of information, hundreds had been spent by Miss Kennedy in starting the association; while, whether it was true that Miss Messenger supported the place or not, there could never be enough work to get back all that money, pay all the wages, and the rest, and the dinners, and hot dinners every day! There was even talk of getting up a memorial praying Miss Messenger not to interfere with the trade of the place, and pointing out that there were many most respectable dressmakers where the work could be quite as well done as by Miss Kennedy's girls, no doubt cheaper, and the profit would go to the rightful claimant of it, not to be divided among the workwomen.
As for the privileges bestowed upon the girls, there was in certain circles but one opinion—they were ridiculous. Recreation time, free dinner of meat and vegetables, short hours, reading aloud, and a club-room or drawing-room for the evening; what more could their betters have? For it is a fixed article of belief, one of the Twenty-nine Articles in certain strata of society, that people "below them" have no right to the enjoyment of anything. They do not mean to be cruel, but they have always associated poverty with dirt, discomfort, disagreeable companions, and the absence of pleasantness; for a poor person to be happy is either to them an impossibility, or it is a flying in the face of Providence. But then, these people know nothing of the joys which can be had without money. Now, when the world discovers and realizes how many these are and how great they are, the reign of the almighty dollar is at an end. Whatever the Stepney folk thought, and however diverse their judgment, they were all extremely curious, and after the place had been open for a few weeks and began to get known, all the ladies from Whitechapel Church to Bow Church began with one consent to call. They were received by a young person of grave face and grave manners, who showed them all they wanted to see, answered all their questions and the showrooms, the dining-room and the drawing-room; they also saw most beautiful dresses which were being made for Miss Messenger; those who went there in the morning might see with their own eyes dressmaker girls actually playing lawn tennis, if in the afternoon they might see an old gentleman reading aloud while the girls worked; they might also observe that there were flowers in the room; it was perfectly certain that there was a piano upstairs, because it had been seen by many, and the person in the showroom made no secret at all that there was dancing in the evening, with songs, and reading of books, and other diversions.
The contemplation of these things mostly sent the visitors away in sorrow. They did not dance or sing or play; they never wanted to dance or sing; lawn tennis was not played by their daughters; they did not have bright-covered books to read. What did it mean, giving these things to dressmaker girls? Some of them not only resolved not to send their custom to the association, but directed tracts to the house.
They came, however, after a time, and had their dresses made there, for a reason which will appear in the sequel. But at the outset they held aloof.
Far different was the reception given to the institution by the people for whose benefit it was designed. When they had quite got over their natural suspicion of a strange thing; when the girls were found to bring home their pay regularly on a Saturday; when the dinner proved a real thing and the hours continued to be merciful; when the girls reported continuously kind treatment; when the evenings spent in the drawing-room were found to be delightful, and when other doubts and whisperings about Miss Kennedy's motives, intentions, and secret character gradually died away, the association became popular, and all the needle-girls of the place would fain have joined Miss Kennedy. The thing which did the most to create the popularity was the permission for the girls to bring some of their friends and people on the Saturday evening. They "received" on Saturday evening—they were at home; they entertained their guests on that night; and, though the entertainment cost nothing but the lights, it soon became an honor and a pleasure to receive an invitation. Most of those who came at first were other girls; they were shy and stood about all arms; then they learned their steps; then they danced; then the weariness wore out of their eyes and the roses came back to their cheeks; they forgot the naggings of the workroom, and felt for the first time the joy of their youth. Some of them were inclined at first to be rough and bold, but the atmosphere calmed them; they either came no more or if they came they were quiet; some of them affected a superior and contemptuous air, not uncommon with "young persons" when they are jealous or envious, but this is a mood easily cured; some of them were frivolous, but these were also easily subdued. For always with them was Miss Kennedy herself, a Juno, their queen, whose manner was so kind, whose smile was so sweet, whose voice was so soft, whose greeting was so warm, and yet—yet ... who could not be resisted, even by the boldest or the most frivolous. The first step was not to be afraid of Miss Kennedy; at no subsequent stage of their acquaintance did any cease to respect her.
As for Rebekah, she would not come on Saturday evening, as it was part of her Sabbath; but Nelly proved of the greatest use in maintaining the decorum and in promoting the spirit of the evenings, which wanted, it is true, a leader.
Sometimes the girls' mothers would come, especially those who had not too many babies; they sat with folded hands and wondering eyes, while their daughters danced, while Miss Kennedy sang, and Mr. Goslett played the fiddle. Angela went among them, talking in her sympathetic way, and won their confidence so that they presently responded and told her all their troubles and woe. Or sometimes the fathers would be brought, but very seldom came twice. Now and then a brother would appear, but it was many weeks before the brothers began to come regularly; when they did, it became apparent that there was something in the place more attractive than brotherly duty or the love of dancing. Of course, sweethearts were bound to come whether they liked it or not. There were, at first, many little hitches, disagreeable incidents, rebellious exhibitions of temper, bad behavior, mistakes, social sins, and other things of which the chronicler must be mute, because the general result is all that we desire to record. And this was satisfactory. For the first time the girls learned that there were joys in life, joys even within their reach, with a little help, poor as they were; joys which cost them nothing. Among them were girls of the very humblest, who had the greatest difficulty in presenting a decent appearance, who lived in crowded lodgings or in poor houses with their numerous brothers and sisters; pale-faced girls, heavy-hearted girls; joyless maidens, loveless maidens—girls who from long hours of work, and from want of open air and good food, stooped their shoulders and dragged their limbs—when Angela saw them first, she wished that she was a man to use strong language against their employers. How she violated all principles of social economy, giving clothes, secretly lending money, visiting mothers, paying rent, and all without any regard to supply and demand, marketable value, price current, worth of labor, wages rate, averages, percentages, interest, capital, commercial rules, theory of trade, encouragement of over-population, would be too disgraceful to narrate; indeed, she blushed when she thought of the beautiful and heart-warming science in which she had so greatly distinguished herself, and on which she trampled daily. Yet if, on the one side, there stood cold science, and on the other a suffering girl, it is ridiculous to acknowledge that the girl always won the day.
Among the girls was one who interested Angela greatly, not because she was pretty, for she was not pretty at all, but plain to look upon, and lame, but because she bore a very hard lot with patience and courage very beautiful to see. She had a sister who was crippled and had a weak back, so that she could not sit up long, nor earn much. She had a mother who was growing old and weak of sight, so that she could not earn much; she had a young brother who lived like the sparrows; that is to say, he ran wild in the streets and stole his daily bread, and was rapidly rising to the dignity and rank of an habitual criminal. He seldom, however, came home, except to borrow or beg for money. She had a father, whose name was never mentioned, so that he was certainly an undesirable father, a bad bargain of a father, a father impossible, viewed in connection with the fifth commandment. This was the girl who burst into tears when she saw the roast beef for the first time. Her tears were caused by a number of reasons: first, because she was hungry and her condition was low; secondly, because roasted beef to a hungry girl is a thing too beautiful; thirdly, because while she was feasting, her sister and mother were starving. The crippled sister presently came to the house and remained in it all day. What special arrangements were made with Rebekah, the spirit of commerce, as regards her pay, I know not; but she came, did a little work, sat or lay down in the drawing-room most of the time; and presently, under Miss Kennedy's instruction, began to practise on the piano. A work-girl, actually a work-girl, if you please, playing scales, with a one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, just as if she was a lady living in the Mile End Road and the daughter of a clerk in the brewery!
Yes, the girls, who had formerly worked in unhealthy rooms till half-past eight, now worked in well-ventilated rooms till half-past six; they had time to rest and run about; they had good food, they had cheerful talk, they were encouraged; Captain Sorensen came to read to them; in the evening they had a delightful room to sit in, where they could read and talk, or dance, or listen. While they read the books which Miss Kennedy laid on the table for them, she would play and sing. First, she chose simple songs and simple pieces, and as their taste for music grew, so her music improved; and every day found the drawing-room more attractive, and the girls more loath to go home. She watched her experiment with the keenest interest; the girls were certainly growing more refined in manner and in thought. Even Rebekah was softening daily; she looked on at the dance without a shudder, even when the handsome young workman clasped Nelly Sorensen by the waist and whirled her round the room; and she owned that there was music in the world, outside her little chapel, far sweeter than anything they had within it. As for Nelly, she simply worshipped. Whatever Miss Kennedy did was right and beautiful and perfect in her eyes; nor, in her ignorance of the world, did she ponder any more over that first difficulty of hers, why a lady, and such a lady, had come to Stepney Green to be a dressmaker.
It is always a dangerous thing for two young persons of opposite sexes to live together under the same roof, even when the lady is plain and at first sight unattractive, and when the young man is stupid. For they get to know one another. Now, so great is the beauty of human nature, even in its second-rate or third-rate productions, that love generally follows when one of the two, by confession or unconscious self-betrayal, stands revealed to the other. It is not the actual man or woman, you see, who is loved—it is the ideal, the possible, the model or type from which the specimen is copied, and which it distinctly resembles. But think of the danger when the house in which these young people find themselves is not a large country-house, where many are gathered together of like pursuits, but an obscure boarding-house in a society-forgotten suburb, where these two had only each other to talk to. Add to this that they are both interested in an experiment of the greatest delicacy, in which the least false step would be fatal. Add, further, the fact that each is astonished at the other: the one to find in a dressmaker the refinement and all the accomplishments of a lady; the other, to find in a cabinet-maker the distinguishing marks of a gentleman; the same way of looking at things and talking about them; the same bearing and the same courtesy.
The danger was even made greater by what seemed a preventive—namely, by the way in which at the beginning Angela so very firmly put down her foot on the subject of "keeping company;" there was to be no attempt at love-making; on that understanding the two could, and did, go about together as much as they pleased. What followed naturally was that more and more they began to consider each the other as a problem of an interesting character. Angela observed that the young workman, whom she had at first considered of a frivolous disposition, seemed to be growing more serious in his views of things, and even when he laughed there was method in his folly. No men are so solemn, she reflected, as the dull of comprehension; perhaps the extremely serious character of the place in which they lived was making him dull, too. It is difficult, certainly, for any one to go on laughing at Stepney; the children, who begin by laughing, like children everywhere, have to give up the practice before they are eight years of age, because the streets are so insufferably dull; the grown-up people never laugh at all; when immigrants arrive from livelier quarters, say Manchester or Sheffield, after a certain time of residence—the period varies with the mercurial temperament of the patient—they laugh no more. "Surely," thought Angela, "he is settling down; he will soon find work; he will become like other men of his class; and then, no doubt, he will fall in love with Nelly. Nothing could be more suitable."
By saying to herself, over and over again, that this arrangement should take place, she had got to persuade herself that it certainly would. "Nelly possessed," she said, "the refinement of manner and nature, without which the young man would be wretched; she was affectionate and sensible; it would certainly do very well." And she was hardly conscious, while she arranged this in her own head, of a certain uneasy feeling in her mind, which in smaller creatures might have been called jealousy.
So far, there had been little to warrant the belief that things were advancing in the direction she desired. He was not much more attentive to Nelly than to any other of the girls; worse still, as she reflected with trepidation, there were many symptoms by which he showed a preference for quite another person.
As for Harry, it was useless for him to conceal from himself any longer the fact that he was by this time head-over-ears in love. The situation offered greater temptations than his strength could withstand. He succumbed—whatever the end might be, he was in love.
If one comes to think of it, this was rather a remarkable result of a descent into the lower regions. One expects to meet in the Home of Dull Ugliness things repellent, coarse; enjoying the freedom of nature, unrestrained, unconventional. Harry found, on the contrary, the sweetness of Eden, a fair garden of delights, in which sat a peerless lady, the Queen of Beauty, a very Venus. All his life, that is, since he had begun to think about love at all, he had stoutly held and strenuously maintained that it was lèse majesté, high treason to love, for a man to throw away—he used to say "throw away"—upon a maiden of low degree the passion which should be offered to a lady—a demoiselle. The position was certainly altered, inasmuch as he was no longer of gentle birth. Therefore, he argued, he would no longer pretend to the hand of a lady. At first he used to make resolutions, as bravely as a board of directors: he would arise and flee to the desert—any place would be a desert without her; he would get out of temptation; he would go back to Piccadilly, and there forget her. Yet he remained; yet every day he sought her again; every day his condition became more hopeless; every day he continued to walk with her, play duets with her, sing with her, dance with her, argue with her, learn from her, teach her, watch over her, and felt the sunshine of her presence, and at meeting and parting touched her fingers.
She was so well educated, he said, strengthening his faith; she was so kindly and considerate; her manners were so perfect; she was so beautiful and graceful; she knew so well how to command, that he was constrained to own that no lady of his acquaintance was, or could be, her superior. To call her a dressmaker was to ennoble and sanctify the whole craft. She should be to that art what Cecilia is to music—its patron saint; she should be to himself—yet, what would be the end? He smiled grimly, thinking that there was no need to speculate on the end, when as yet there had been no beginning. He could not make a beginning. If he ventured on some shy and modest tentative in the direction of—call it an understanding—she froze. She was always on the watch; she seemed to say: "Thus far you may presume, but no farther." What did it mean? Was she really resolved never to receive his advances? Did she dislike him? That could hardly be. Was she watching him? Was she afraid to trust him? That might be. Or was she already engaged to some other fellow—some superior fellow—perhaps with a shop—gracious heavens!—of his own? That might be, though it made him cold to think it possible. Or did she have some past history, some unhappy complication of the affections, which made her as cold as Dian? That, too, might be.
The ordinary young man, thrown into the society of half a dozen working-girls, would have begun to flirt and talk nonsense with all of them together, or with one after the other. Harry was not that kind of young man. There is always, by the blessing of kind Heaven, left unto us a remnant of those who hold woman sacred, and continually praise, worship, and reverence the name of love. He was one of those young men. To flirt with a milliner did not seem a delightful thing to him at any time. And in this case there was another reason why he should not behave in the manner customary to the would-be Don Juan; it was simply foi de gentilhomme; he was tolerated among them all on a kind of unspoken but understood parole. Miss Kennedy received him in confidence that he would not abuse her kindness.
One Sunday afternoon when they were walking together—it was in one of the warm days of last September—in Victoria Park, they had a conversation which led to really important things. There are one or two very pretty walks in that garden, and though the season was late, and the leaves mostly yellow, brown, crimson, or golden, there were still flowers, and the ornamental water was bright, and the path crowded with people who looked happy, because the sun was shining; they had all dined plentifully, with copious beer, and the girls had got on their best things, and the swains were gallant with a flower in the buttonhole and a cigar between the lips. There is, indeed, so little difference between the rich and the poor—can even Hyde Park in the season go beyond the flower and the cigar? In certain tropical lands, the first step in civilization is to buy a mosquito-curtain, though your dusky epidermis is as impervious as a crocodile's to the sting of a mosquito. In this realm of England the first step toward gentility is the twopenny smoke, to which we cling, though it is made of medicated cabbage, though it makes the mouth raw, the tongue sore, the lips cracked, the eyes red, the nerves shaky, and the temper short. Who would not suffer in such a cause?
It began with a remark of Angela's about his continued laziness. He replied, evasively, that he had intended to take a long holiday, in order to look round and consider what was best to be done; that he liked holidays; that he meant to introduce holidays into the next trade dispute; that his holidays enabled him to work a little for Miss Kennedy, without counting his lordship, whose case he had now drawn up; that he was now ready for work whenever, he added airily, work was ready for him; and that he was not, in fact, quite sure that Stepney and its neighborhood would prove the best place for him to work out his life.
"I should think," said Angela, "that it would be as good a place as any you would find in America."
"If you tell me to stay, Miss Kennedy," he replied, with a sudden earnestness, "I will stay."
She instantly froze, and chillingly said that if his interests required him to go, of course he would go.
Therefore Harry, after a few moments' silence, during which he battled with the temptation to "have it out" there and then, before all the happy shepherds and shepherdesses of Bethnal Green, returned to his original form, and made as if those words had not been spoken and that effect not been produced. You may notice the same thing with children who have been scolded.
"Did you ever consider, Miss Kennedy, the truly happy condition of the perfect cabinet-maker?"
"No: I never did. Is he happy above his fellows?"
"Your questions betray your ignorance. Till lately—till I returned from America—I never wholly realized what a superior creature he is. Why, in the first place, the cabinet-maker is perhaps the only workman who never scamps his work; he is a responsible man; he takes pride in producing a good and honest thing. We have no tricks in our trade. Then, if you care to hear——"
"Pray go on: let me learn all I can."
"Then we were the first to organize ourselves. Our society was founded eighty years ago. We had no foolish strike, but we just met the employers and told them we were going to arrange with them what our share should be; and we made a book about wages—I do not think so good a book has been put together this century. Then, we are a respectable lot; you never hear of a cabinet-maker in trouble at a police-court; very few of us get drunk; most of us read books and papers, and have opinions. My cousin Dick has very strong opinions. We are critical about amusements, and we prefer Henry Irving to a music-hall; we do not allow rough talk in the workshops; we are mostly members of some church, and we know how to value ourselves."
"I shall know how to value your craft in future," said Angela, "especially when you are working again."
"Yes. I do not want to work in a shop, you know; but one may get a place, perhaps, in one of the railway-carriage depots, or a hotel, or a big factory, where they always keep a cabinet-maker in regular pay. My cousin Dick—Dick the radical—is cabinet-maker in a mangle-factory. I do not know what he makes for his mangles, but that is what he is."
"I have seen your cousin Tom, when he was rolled in the mud and before he led off the hymn and the procession. You must bring me your cousin Dick."
"Dick is better fun than Tom. Both are terribly in earnest; but you will find Dick interesting."
"Does he walk about on Sunday afternoons? Should we be likely to meet him here?"
"Oh, no! Dick is forging his speech for to-night. He addresses the Advanced Club almost every Sunday evening on the House of Lords, or the Church, or the Country Bumpkin's Suffrage, or the Cape question, or Protection, or the Nihilists, or Ireland, or America, or something. The speech must be red-hot, or his reputation would be lost. So he spends the afternoon sticking it into the furnace, so to speak. It doesn't matter what the subject is, always provided that he can lug in the bloated aristocrat and the hated Tory. I assure you Dick is a most interesting person."
"Do you ever speak at the Advanced Club?"
"I go there; I am a member; now and then I say a word. When a member makes a red-hot speech, brimful of insane accusations, and sits down amid a round of applause, it is pleasant to get up and set him right on matters of fact, because all the enthusiasm is killed when you come to facts. Some of them do not love me at the club."
"They are real and in earnest, while you——"
"No, Miss Kennedy, they are not real, whatever I may be. They are quite conventional. The people like to be roused by red-hot, scorching speeches; they want burning questions, intolerable grievances; so the speakers find them or invent them. As for the audience, they have had so many sham grievances told in red-hot words that they have become callous, and don't know of any real ones. The indignation of the speakers is a sham; the enthusiasm of the listeners is a sham; they applaud the eloquence, but as for the stuff that is said, it moves them not. As for his politics, the British workman has got a vague idea that things go better for him under the Liberals. When the Liberals come in, after making promises by the thousand, and when, like their predecessors, they have made the usual mess, confidence is shaken. Then he allows the Conservatives, who do not, at all events, promise oranges and beer all round, back again, and gives them another show. As if it matters which side is in to the British workman!"
"And they are not discontented," asked Angela, "with their own lives?"
"Not one bit. They don't want to change their own lives. Why should they?"
"All these people in the park to-day," she continued, "are they working-men?"
"Yes: some of them—the better sort. Of course"—Harry looked round and surveyed the crowd—"of course, when you open a garden of this sort for the people, the well-dressed come, and the ragged stay away and hide. There is plenty of ragged stuff round and about us, but it hides. And there is plenty of comfort which walks abroad and shows itself. This end of London is the home of little industries. Here, for instance, they make the things which belong to other things."
"That seems a riddle," said Angela.
"I mean things like card-boxes, pill-boxes, ornamental boxes of all kinds, for confectioners, druggists, and drapers; they make all kinds of such things for wholesale houses. Why, there are hundreds of trades in this great neglected city of East London, of which we know nothing. You see the manufacturers. Here they are with their wives, and their sons, and their daughters; they all lend a hand, and between them the thing is made."
"And are they discontented?" asked Angela with persistence.
"Not they; they get as much happiness as the money will run to. At the same time, if the Palace of Delight were once built——"
"Ah!" cried Angela with a sigh. "The Palace of Delight; the Palace of Delight! We must have it, if it is only to make the people discontented."
They walked home presently, and in the evening they played together, one or two of the girls being present, in the "drawing-room." The music softens—Angela repented her coldness of the afternoon. When the girls were gone, and they were walking side by side beneath moonlight on the quiet green, she made shyly a little attempt at compensation.
"If," she said, "you should find work here in Stepney, you would be willing to stay?"
"I would stay," he replied, "if you bid me stay—or go, if you bid me go."
"I would bid you stay," she replied, speaking as clearly and as firmly as she could, "because I like your society, and because you have been, and will still be, I hope, very helpful to us. But if I bid you stay," she laid her hand upon his arm, "it must be on no misunderstanding."
"I am your servant," he said, with a little agitation in his voice. "I understood nothing but what you wish me to understand."