by Ellen Wood
No clue whatever had been obtained to the assailants of John Baxendale. The chief injury lay in the ribs. Two or three of them were broken: the head was also much bruised and cut. He had been taken into his own home and there attended to: it was nearer than the hospital: though the latter would have been the better place. Time had gone on since, and he was now out of danger. Never would John Baxendale talk of the harshness of masters again — though, indeed, he never much talked of it. The moment Mr. Hunter heard of the assault, he sent round his own surgeon, directed Austin to give Baxendale a sovereign weekly, and caused strengthening delicacies to be served from his own house. And that was the same man whom you heard forbidding his wife and daughter to forward aid to Darby’s starving children. Yes; but Mr. Hunter denied the aid upon principle: Darby would not work. It pleased him far more to accord it to Baxendale than to deny it to Darby: the one course gladdened his heart, the other pained it. The surgeon who attended was a particular friend of Dr. Bevary’s, and the Doctor, in his quaint, easy manner, contrived to let Baxendale know that there would be no bill for him to pay.
It was late when Austin reached Baxendale’s room the evening of Mrs. Hunter’s death. Tidings of which had already gone abroad. ‘Oh, sir,’ uttered the invalid, straining his eyes on him from the sick-bed, before Austin had well entered, ‘is the news true?’
‘It is,’ sadly replied Austin. ‘She died this afternoon.’
‘It is a good lady gone from among us. Does the master take on much?’
‘I have not seen him since. Death came on, I believe, rather suddenly at the last.’
‘Poor Mrs. Hunter!’ wailed Baxendale. ‘Hers is not the only spirit that is this evening on the wing,’ he added, after a pause. ‘That boy of Darby’s is going, Mary’ — looking on the bright sovereign put into his hands by Austin— ‘suppose you get this changed, and go down there and take ’em a couple of shillings? It’s hard to have a cupboard quite empty when death’s a visitor.’
Mary came up from the far end of the room, and put on her shawl with alacrity. She looked but a shadow herself. Austin wondered how Mr. Hunter would approve of any of his shillings finding their way to Darby’s; but he said nothing against it. But for the strongly expressed sentiments of Mr. Hunter, Austin would have given away right and left, to relieve the distress around him: although, put him upon principle, and he agreed fully with Mr. Hunter. Mary got change for the sovereign, and took possession of a couple of shillings. It was a bitterly cold evening; but she was well wrapped up. Though not permanently better, Mary was feeling stronger of late: in her simple faith, she believed God had mercifully spared her for a short while, that she might nurse her father. She knew, just as well as did Dr. Bevary, that it would not be for long. As she went along she met Mrs. Quale.
‘The child is gone,’ said the latter, hearing where Mary was going.
‘Poor child! Is he really dead?’
Mrs. Quale nodded. Few things upset her equanimity. ‘And I am keeping my eyes open to look out for Darby,’ she added. ‘His wife asked me if I would. She is afraid’ — dropping her voice— ‘that he may do something rash.’
‘Why?’ breathed Mary, in a tone of horror, understanding the allusion.
‘Why!’ vehemently repeated Mrs. Quale; ‘why, because he reflects upon himself — that’s why. When he saw that the breath was really gone out of the poor little body — and that’s not five minutes ago — he broke out like one mad. Them quiet natures in ordinary be always the worst if they get upset; though it takes a good deal to do it. He blamed himself, saying that if he had been in work, and able to get proper food for the boy, it would not have happened; and he cursed the Trades Unions for misleading him, and bringing him to what he is. There’s many another cursing the Unions on this inclement night, or my name’s not Nancy Quale.’ She turned back with Mary, and they entered the home of the Darbys. Grace, unable to get another situation, partly through the baker’s wife refusing her a character, partly because her clothes were in pledge, looked worn and thin, as she stood trying to hush the youngest child, then crying fretfully. Mrs. Darby sat in front of the small bit of fire, the dead boy on her knees, pressed to her still, just as Mrs. Quale had left her.
‘He won’t hunger any more,’ she said, lifting her face to Mary, the hot tears running from it.
Mary stooped and kissed the little cold face. ‘Don’t grieve,’ she murmured. ‘It would be well for us all if we were as happy as he.’
‘Go and speak to him,’ whispered the mother to Mrs. Quale, pointing to a back door, which led to a sort of open scullery. ‘He has come in, and is gone out there.’
Leaning against the wall, in the cold moonlight, stood Robert Darby. Mrs. Quale was not very good at consolation: finding fault was more in her line. ‘Come, Darby, don’t take on so: it won’t do no good,’ was the best she could say. ‘Be a man.’ He seized hold of her, his shaking hands trembling, while he spoke bitter words against the Trades Unions. ‘Don’t speak so, Robert Darby,’ was the rejoinder of Mrs. Quale. ‘You are not obliged to join the Trades’ Unions; therefore there’s no need to curse ‘em. If you and others kept aloof from them, they’d soon die away.’
‘They have proved a curse to me and mine’ — and the man’s voice rose to a shriek, in his violent emotion. ‘But for them, I should have been at work long ago.’
‘Then I’d go to work at once, if it was me, and put the curse from me that way,’ concluded Mrs. Quale.
With the death of the child, things had come to so low an ebb in the Darby household, as to cause sundry kind gossipers to suggest, and to spread the suggestion as a fact, that the parish would have the honour of conducting the interment. Darby would have sold himself first. He was at Mr. Hunter’s yard on the following morning before daylight, and the instant the gates were opened presented himself to the foreman as a candidate for work. That functionary would not treat with him. ‘We have had so many of you old hands just coming on for a day or two, and then withdrawing again, through orders of the society, or through getting frightened at being threatened, that Mr. Clay said I was to take back no more shilly-shallyers.’
‘Try me!’ feverishly cried Darby. ‘I will not go from it again.’
‘No,’ said the foreman. ‘You can speak to Mr. Clay.’
‘Darby,’ said Austin, when the man appeared before him, ‘will you pass your word to me to remain? Here men come; they sign the document, they have work assigned them; and in a day or so, I hear that they have left again. It causes no end of confusion to us, for work to be taken up and laid down in that way.’
‘Take me on, and try me, sir. I’ll stick to it as long as there’s a stroke of work to do — unless they tread me to pieces as they did Baxendale. I never was cordial for the society, sir. I obeyed it, and yet a doubt was always upon me whether I might not be doing wrong. I am sure of it now. The society has worked harm to me and mine, and I will never belong to it again.’
‘Others have said as much of the society, and have returned to it the next day,’ remarked Mr. Clay.
‘Perhaps so, sir. They hadn’t seen one of their children die, that they’d have laid down their own lives to save — but that they had not worked to save. I have. Take me on, sir! He can’t be buried till I have earned the wherewithal to pay for it. I’ll stand to my work from henceforth — over hours, if I can get it.’
Austin wrote a word on a card, and desired Darby to carry it to the foreman. ‘You can go to work at once,’ he said.
‘I’ll take work too, sir, if I can get it,’ exclaimed another man, who had come up in time to hear Austin’s last words.
‘What! is it you, Abel White?’ exclaimed Austin, with a half-laugh. ‘I thought you made a boast that if the whole lot of hands came back to work, you never would, except upon your own terms.’
‘So I did, sir. But when I find I have been in the wrong, I am not above owning it,’ was the man’s reply, who looked in a far better physical condition than the pinched, half-sta
rved Darby. ‘I could hold out longer, sir, without much inconvenience; leastways, with a deal less inconvenience than some of them could, for I and father belong to one or two provident clubs, and they have helped us weekly, and my wife and daughters don’t do amiss at their umbrella work. But I have come over to my old father’s views at last; and I have made my mind up, as he did long ago, never to be a Union man again — unless the masters should turn round and make themselves into a body of tyrants; I don’t know what I might do then. But there’s not much danger of that — as father says — in these go-a-head days. You’ll give me work, sir?’
‘Upon certain conditions,’ replied Austin. And he sat down and proceeded to talk to the man.
CHAPTER VII. MR. DUNN’S PIGS BROUGHT TO MARKET.
Daffodil’s Delight and its environs were in a state of bustle — of public excitement, as may be said. Daffodil’s Delight, however low its condition might be, never failed to seize hold upon any possible event, whether of a general public nature, or of a private local nature, as an excuse for getting up a little steam. On that cold winter’s day, two funerals were appointed to take place: the one, that of Mrs. Hunter; the other, of little William Darby: and Daffodil’s Delight, in spite of the black frost, turned out in crowds to see. You could not have passed into the square when the large funeral came forth so many had collected there. It was a funeral of mutes and plumes and horses and trappings and carriages and show. The nearer Mr. Hunter had grown to pecuniary embarrassment, the more jealous was he to guard all suspicion of it from the world. Hence the display: which the poor unconscious lady they were attending would have been the first to shrink from. Mr. Hunter, his brother, and Dr. Bevary were in the first mourning-coach: in the second, with two of the sons of Henry Hunter, and another relative, sat Austin Clay. And more followed. That took place in the morning. In the afternoon, the coffin of the boy, covered by something black — but it looked like old cloth instead of velvet — was brought out of Darby’s house upon men’s shoulders. Part of the family followed, and pretty nearly the whole of Daffodil’s Delight brought up the rear. There it is, moving slowly down the street. Not over slowly either; for there had been a delay in some of the arrangements, and the clergyman must have been waiting for half an hour. It was a week since Darby resumed work; a long while to keep the child, but the season was winter. Darby had paid part of the expense, and had been trusted for the rest. It arrived at the burial place; and the little body was buried, there to remain until the resurrection at the last day. As Darby stood over the grave, the regret for his child was nearly lost sight of in that other and far more bitter regret, the remorse of which was telling upon him. He had kept the dead starving for months, when work was to be had for the asking!
‘Don’t take on so,’ whispered a neighbour, who knew his thoughts. ‘If you had gone back to work as soon as the yards were open, you’d only have been set upon and half-killed, as Baxendale was.’
‘Then it would not, in that case, have been my fault if he had starved,’ returned Darby, with compressed lips. ‘His poor hungry face ‘ll lie upon my mind for ever.’
The shades of evening were on Daffodil’s Delight when the attendants of the funeral returned, and Mr. Cox, the pawnbroker, was busily transacting the business that the dusk hour always brought him. Even the ladies and gentlemen of Daffodil’s Delight, though they were common sufferers, and all, or nearly all, required to pay visits to Mr. Cox, imitated their betters in observing that peculiar reticence of manner which custom has thrown around these delicate negotiations. The character of their offerings had changed. In the first instance they had chiefly consisted of ornaments, whether of the house or person, or of superfluous articles of attire and of furniture. Then had come necessaries: bedding, and heavier things; and then trifles — irons, saucepans, frying-pans, gowns, coats, tools — anything; anything by which a shilling could be obtained. And now had arrived the climax when there was nothing more to take — nothing, at least, that Mr. Cox would speculate upon.
A woman went banging into the shop, and Mr. Cox recognised her for the most troublesome of his customers — Mrs. Dunn. Of all the miserable households in Daffodil’s Delight, that of the Dunns’ was about the worst: but Mrs. Dunn’s manners and temper were fiercer than ever. The non-realization of her fond hope of good cheer and silk dresses was looked upon as a private injury, and resented as such. See her as she turns into the shop: her head, a mass of torn black cap and entangled hair; her gown, a black stuff once, dirty now, hanging in jags, and clinging round her with that peculiar cling which indicates that few, if any, petticoats are underneath; her feet scuffling along in shoes tied round the instep with white rag, to keep them on! As she was entering, she encountered a poor woman named Jones, the wife of a carpenter, as badly reduced as she was. Mrs. Jones held out a small blanket for her inspection, and spoke with the tears running down her cheeks. Apparently, her errand to Mr. Cox had been unsuccessful.
‘We have kept it till the last. We said we could not lie on the sack of straw this awful weather, without the blanket to cover us. But to-day we haven’t got a crumb in the house, or a ember in the grate; and Jones said, says he, “There ain’t no help for it, you must pledge it.”’
‘And Cox won’t take it in?’ shrilly responded Mrs. Dunn. The woman shook her head, and the tears fell fast on her thin cotton shawl, as she walked away. ‘He says the moths has got into it.’
‘A pity but the moths had got into him! his eyes is sharper than they need be,’ shrieked Mrs. Dunn. ‘Here, Cox,’ dashing up to the counter, and flinging on it a pair of boots, ‘I want three shillings on them.’
Mr. Cox took up the offered pledge — a thin pair of woman’s boots, black cloth, with leather tips; new, they had probably cost five shillings, but they were now considerably the worse for wear. ‘What is the use of bringing these old things?’ remonstrated Mr. Cox. ‘They are worth nothing.’
‘Everything’s worth nothing, according to you,’ retorted Mrs. Dunn. ‘Come! I want three shillings on them.’
‘I wouldn’t lend you eighteen-pence. They’d not fetch it at an auction.’
Mrs. Dunn would have very much liked to fling the boots in his face. After some dispute, she condescended to ask what he would give. ‘I’ll lend a shilling, as you are a customer, just to oblige you. But I don’t care to take them in at all.’ More dispute; and she brought her demand down to eighteen-pence. ‘Not a penny more than a shilling,’ was the decisive reply. ‘I tell you they are not worth that, to me.’ The boots were at length left, and the shilling taken. Mrs. Dunn solaced herself with a pint of half-and-half in a beer-shop, and went home with the change.
Upon no home had the strike acted with worse effects than upon that of the Dunns: and we are not speaking now as to pecuniary matters. They were just as bad as they could be. Irregularity had prevailed in it at the best of times; quarrelling and contention often; embarrassment, the result of bad management, frequently. Upon such a home, distress, long continued bitter distress, was not likely to work for good. The father and a grown-up son were out of work; and the Misses Dunn were also without employment. Their patronesses, almost without exception, consisted of the ladies of Daffodil’s Delight, and, as may be readily conjectured, they had no funds just now to expend upon gowns and their making. Not only this: there was, from one party or another, a good bit of money owing to the sisters for past work, and this they could not get. As a set-off to this — on the wrong side — they were owing bills in various directions for materials that had been long ago made up for their customers, some of whom had paid them and some not. Any that had not been paid before the strike came, remained unpaid still. The Miss Dunns might just as well have asked for the moon as for money, owing or not owing, from the distressed wives of Daffodil’s Delight. So, there they were, father, mother, sons, daughters, all debarred from earning money; while all, with the younger children in addition, had to be kept. It was wearying work, that forced idleness and that forced famine; and it worke
d badly, especially on the girls. Quarrelling they were accustomed to; embarrassment they did not mind; irregularity in domestic affairs they had lived in all their lives; but they could not bear the distress that had now come upon them. Added to this, the girls were unpleasantly pressed for the settlement of the bills above alluded to. Mrs. Quale had from the first recommended the two sisters to try for situations: but when was advice well taken? They tossed their heads at the idea of going out to service, thereby giving up their liberty and their idleness. They said that it might prevent them getting together again their business, when things should look up; they urged that they were not fitted for service, knowing little of any sort of housework; and, finally, they asked — and there was a great deal in the plea — how they were to go out while the chief portion of their clothes was in pledge.
For the past few days certain mysterious movements on the part of Mary Ann Dunn had given rise to some talk (the usual expression for gossiping and scandal) in Daffodil’s Delight. She had been almost continually out from home, and when asked where, had evaded an answer. Ever ready, as some people are, to put a bad construction upon things, it was not wanting in this case. Tales were carried home to the father and mother, and there had been a scene of attack and abuse, on Mary Ann’s presenting herself at home at mid-day. The girl had a fierce temper, inherited probably from her mother; she returned abuse for abuse, and finally rushed off in a passion, without having given any satisfactory defence of herself. Dunn cared for his children after a fashion, and the fear that the reports must be true, completely beat him down; cowed his spirit, as he might have put it. Mrs. Dunn, on the contrary, ranted and raved till she was hoarse; and then, being excessively thirsty, stole off surreptitiously with the boots to Mr. Cox’s, and so obtained a pint of half-and-half.
She returned home again, the delightful taste of it still in her mouth. The room was stripped of all, save a few things, too old or too useless for Mr. Cox to take; and, except for a little fire, it presented a complete picture of poverty. The children lay on the boards crying; not a loud cry, but a distressed moan. Very little, indeed, even of bread, got those children; for James Dunn and his wife were too fond of beer, to expend in much else the trifle allowed them by the Trades Union. James Dunn had just come in. After the scene with his daughter, when he had a little recovered himself, he went out to keep an appointment. Some of the workmen, in a similarly distressed condition to himself, had been that day to one of the police courts, hoping to obtain pecuniary help from the magistrates. The result had been a complete failure, and Dunn sat, moody and cross, upon a bench, his depression of spirit having given place to a sort of savage anger; chiefly at his daughter Mary Ann, partly at things altogether. The pint of half-and-half upon an empty stomach had not tended to render Mrs. Dunn of a calmer temper. She addressed him snappishly. ‘What, you have come in! Have you got any money?’ Mr. Dunn made no reply; unless a growl that sounded rather defiant constituted one. She returned to the charge. ‘Have you got any money, I ask? Or be you come home again with a empty pocket?’