Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “Are you going already, Johnny?”

  “Yes, sir. I must catch the next train, and it’s a good way to the station.”

  “You can take a fly. Wait a few minutes.”

  He went into his bedroom, on the same floor. When he came back, he held a piece of paper in his hand.

  “There, Johnny. But it is my loan; not yours.”

  It was a cheque for a hundred pounds. He had listened, after all! The surprise was so great that I am afraid my eyes were dim.

  “The loan is mine, Johnny,” he repeated. “I am not going to risk your money, and prove myself a false trustee. When Todhetley can repay it, it will be to me, not to you. But now — understand: unless he gives you a solemn promise never to play with that ‘Honourable’ again, or with either of the Pells, you will not use the cheque, but return it to me.”

  “Oh, Mr. Brandon, there will be no difficulty. He only wants to be quit of them.”

  “Get his promise, I say. If he gives it, present this cheque at Robarts’s in Lombard Street to-morrow, and they’ll pay you the money over the counter.”

  “It is made out to my order!” I said, looking at the cheque: “not to Crayton!”

  “To Crayton!” retorted Mr. Brandon. “I wouldn’t let a cheque of mine, uncrossed, fall into his hands. He might add an ought or two to the figures. I drew it out for an even hundred, you see: the odd money may be wanted. You’ll have to sign your name at the back: do it at the bank. And now, do you know why I have let you have this?”

  I looked at him in doubt.

  “Because you have obeyed the injunctions I gave you — to bring any difficulty you might have to me. I certainly never expected it so soon, or that it would take this form. Don’t you get tumbling into another. Let people take care of themselves. There: put it into your breast-pocket, and be off.”

  I don’t know how I got back to town. There was no accident, and we were not pitched into next week. If we had been, I’m not sure that I should have minded it; for that cheque in my pocket seemed a panacea for all human ills. The Pells were at dinner when I entered: and Tod was lying outside his bed, with one of his torturing headaches. He did not often have them: which was a good thing, for they were rattlers. Taking his hand from his head, he glanced at me.

  “Where have you been all day, Johnny?” he asked, hardly able to speak. “That was a short note of yours.”

  “I’ve been to Brighton.”

  Tod opened his eyes again with surprise. He did not believe it.

  “Why don’t you say Bagdad, at once? Keep your counsel, if you choose, lad. I’m too ill to get it out of you.”

  “But I don’t want to keep it: and I have been to Brighton. Had dinner there, too. Tod, old fellow, the mouse has done his work. Here’s a cheque for you for a hundred pounds.”

  He looked at it as I held it out to him, saw it was true, and then sprang off the bed. I had seen glad emotion in my life, even at that early period of it, but hardly such as Tod’s then. Never a word spoke he.

  “It is lent by Mr. Brandon to you, Tod. He bade me say it. I could not get any of mine out of him. The only condition is — that, before I cash it, you shall promise not to play again with Crayton or the Pells.”

  “I’ll promise it now. Glad to do it. Long live old Brandon! Johnny, my good brother, I’m too ill to thank you — my temples seem as if they were being split with a sledge-hammer — but you have saved me.”

  I was at Robarts’s when it opened in the morning. And signed my name at the back of the cheque, and got the money. Fancy me having a hundred pounds paid to me in notes and gold! The Squire would have thought the world was coming to an end.

  XXII.

  OUR STRIKE.

  It was September, and they were moving to Crabb Cot for a week or two’s shooting. The shooting was not bad about there, and the Squire liked a turn with his gun yet. Being close on the Michaelmas holidays, Tod and I were with them.

  When the stay was going to be short, the carriages did not come over from Dyke Manor. On arriving at South Crabb station, there was a fly waiting. It would not take us all. Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley, the two children, and Hannah got into it, and some of the luggage was put on the top.

  “You two boys can walk,” said the Pater. “It will stretch your legs.”

  And a great deal rather walk, too, than be boxed up in a crawling fly!

  We took the way through Crabb Lane: the longest but merriest, for it was always lively with noise and dirt. Reports had gone abroad long before that Crabb Lane was “out on strike:” Tod and I thought we would take a look at it in this new aspect.

  There were some great works in the vicinity — I need not state here their exact speciality — and the men employed at them chiefly inhabited Crabb Lane. It was setting-up these works that caused the crowded dwellings in Crabb Lane to be built — for where a number of workmen congregate together, habitations must of necessity follow.

  You have heard of Crabb Lane before — in connection with what I once told you about Harry Lease the pointsman. It was a dingy, over-populated, bustling place, prosperous on the whole, its inhabitants as a rule well-to-do. A strike was quite a new feature, bringing to most of them a fresh experience in life. England had strikes in those past days, but they were not common.

  Crabb Lane during working hours had hitherto been given over to the children, who danced in the gutters and cried and screamed themselves hoarse. Women also would be out of doors, idling away their time in gossip, or else calling across to each other from the windows. But now, as I and Tod went down it, things looked different. Instead of women and children, men were there. Every individual man, I believe, out of every house the lane contained; for there appeared to be shoals of them. They lounged idly against the walls, or stood about in groups. Some with pipes, some without; some laughing and jeering, apparently in the highest spirits, as if they had climbed the tree of fortune; some silent and anxious-looking.

  “Well, Hoar, how are you?”

  It was Tod who spoke. The man he addressed, Jacob Hoar, was one of the best of the workmen: a sober, steady, honest fellow, with a big frame and a resolute face. He had the character of being fierce in temper, sometimes savage with his fellow-men, if put out. Alfred Hoar — made pointsman at the station in poor Harry Lease’s place — was his brother.

  Hoar did not answer Tod at all. He was standing quite alone near the door of his house, a strangely defiant look upon his pale face, and his firm lips drawn in. Unless I was mistaken, some of the men over the way were taking covert glances at him, as though he were a kangaroo they had to keep aloof from. Hoar turned his eyes slowly upon us, took off his round felt hat, and smoothed back his dark hair.

  “I be as well as matters’ll let me be, young Mr. Todhetley,” he then said.

  “There’s a strike going on, I hear,” said Tod. “Has been for some time.”

  “Yes, there’s a strike a-going on,” assented Hoar, speaking in a deliberate, sullen manner, as a man resenting some special grievance. “Has been for some time, as you say. And I don’t know when the strike ‘ll be a-going off.”

  “How is Eliza?” I asked.

  “Much as usual, Mr. Johnny. What should ail her?”

  Evidently there was no sociability to be got out of Jacob Hoar that afternoon, and we left him. A few yards further, we passed Ford’s, the baker’s. No end of heads were at the shop door, and they seemed to be staring at Hoar.

  “He must have been dealing out a little abuse to the public generally, Tod,” said I.

  “Very likely,” answered Tod. “He seems bursting with some rage or other.”

  “Nay, I don’t think it’s rage so much as vexation. Something must have gone wrong.”

  “Well, perhaps so.”

  “Look here, Tod. If we had a home to keep up and a lot of mouths to feed and weekly rent to pay, and a strike stopped the supplies, we might be in a worse humour than Hoar is.”

  “Right, Johnny.” And Tod went off at a strappin
g pace.

  How it may be with other people, I don’t know: but when I get back to a place after an absence, I want to see every one, and am apt to go dashing in at doors without warning.

  “It won’t take us a minute to look in on Miss Timmens, Tod,” I said, as we neared the school-house. “She’ll tell us the news of the whole parish.”

  “Take the minute, then, if you like,” said Tod. “I am not going to bother myself with Miss Timmens.”

  Neither perhaps should I, after that, for Tod swayed me still; but in passing the door it was opened wide by one of the little scholars. Miss Timmens sat in her chair, the lithe, thin cane, three yards long, raised in her hand, its other end descending, gently enough on the shoulders of a chattering girl.

  “I don’t keep it to beat ‘em,” Miss Timmens was wont to say of her cane, “but just to tap ’em into attention when they are beyond the reach of my hand.” And, to give her her due, it was nothing more.

  “It’s you, is it, Master Johnny? I heard you were all expected.”

  “It’s me, safe enough. How goes the world with you, Miss Timmens?”

  “Cranky,” was the short answer. “South Crabb’s going out of its senses, I think. The parson is trying to introduce fresh ways and doings, in my school: new-fangled rubbish, Master Johnny, that will bring more harm than good. I won’t have it, and so he and I are at daggers drawn. And there’s a strike in the place!”

  I nodded. While she spoke, it had struck me, looking at the room, that it was not so full as usual.

  “It’s the strike does that,” she said, in a sort of triumph. “It’s the strike that works all the ill and every kind of evil” — and it was quite evident the strike found no more favour with her than the parson’s fresh ways.

  “But what has the strike to do with the children’s absence from school?”

  “The strike has carried all the children’s best things to the pawn-shop, and they’ve nothing decent left to come abroad in. That is one cause, Johnny Ludlow,” she concluded, very tartly.

  “Is there any other?”

  “Don’t you think that sufficient? I am not going to let them appear before me in rags — and so Crabb Lane knows. But there is another cause, sir. This strike has so altered the course of things that the whole order of ordinary events is turned upside down. Even if the young ones’ frocks were home again, it would be ten to one against their coming to school.”

  “I don’t see the two little Hoars.” And why I had been looking for those particular children I can’t say, unless it was that Hoar and his peculiar manner had been floating in my mind ever since we passed him.

  “‘Liza and Jessy — no, but they’ve been here till to-day,” was the reply, given after a long pause. “Are you going, Mr. Johnny? — I’ll just step outside with you.”

  She drew the door close behind her, keeping the handle in her hand, and looked straight into my face.

  “Jacob Hoar has gone and beat his boy almost to death this morning — and the strike’s the cause of that,” she whispered, emphatically.

  “Jacob Hoar has! — Why, how came he to do it?” — I exclaimed, recalling more forcibly than ever the man’s curious look, and the curious looks of the other men holding aloof from him. “Which of his boys is it?”

  “The second of them; little Dick. Yes, he is black and blue all over, they say; next door to beat to death; and his arm’s broken. And they have the strike to thank for it.”

  She repeated the concluding words more stingingly than before. That Miss Timmens was wroth with the strike, there could be no mistake. I asked her why the strike was to be thanked for the beating and the broken arm.

  “Because the strike has brought misery; and that is the source of all the ill going on just now in Crabb Lane,” was her reply. “When the men threw themselves out of work, of course they threw themselves out of wages. Some funds have been furnished to them, weekly I believe, from the Trades Union League — or whatever they call the thing — but it seems a mere nothing compared with what they used to earn. Household goods, as well as clothes, have been going to the pawn-shop, but they have now pledged all they’ve got to pledge, and are, it is said, in sore straits: mothers and fathers and children alike hungry. It is some time now since they have had enough to eat. Fancy that, Mr. Johnny!”

  “But why should Dicky be beaten for that?” I persisted, trying to keep her to the point — a rather difficult matter with Miss Timmens at all times.

  “It was in this way,” she answered, dropping her voice to a lower key, and giving a pull at the door to make sure it had not opened. “Dicky, poor fellow, is half starved; he’s not used to it, and feels it keenly: resents it, I dare say. This morning, when out in the lane, he saw a tray of halfpenny buns, hot from the oven, put on old Ford’s counter. The sight was too much for him, the temptation too great. Dicky Hoar is naturally honest; has been, up to now, at all events: but I suppose hunger was stronger than honesty to-day. He crept into the shop on all fours, abstracted a bun with his fingers, and was creeping out again, when Ford pounced upon him, bun in hand. There was a fine outcry. Ford was harsh, roared out for the policeman, and threatened him with jail, and in the midst of the commotion Hoar came up. In his mortification at hearing that a boy of his had been caught pilfering, he seized upon a thick stick that a bystander happened to have, and laid it unmercifully upon poor Dick.”

  “And broke his arm?”

  “And broke his arm. And covered him with weals beside. He’ll be all manner of colours to-morrow.”

  “What a brutal fellow Hoar must be!”

  “To beat him like that? — well, yes,” assented Miss Timmens, in accents that bore rather a dubious sound. “Passion must have blinded him and urged him further than he intended. The man has always been upright; prided himself on being so, as one may say; and there’s no doubt that to find his child could be a thief shook him cruelly. This strike is ruining the tempers of the men; it makes them feel at war with everything and everybody.”

  When I got home I found them in the thick of the news also, for Cole the doctor was there telling it all. Mrs. Todhetley, sitting on the sofa with her bonnet untied and her shawl unpinned, was listening in a kind of horror.

  “But surely the arm cannot be broken, Mr. Cole!” she urged.

  “Broken just above the wrist, ma’am. I ought to know, for I set it. Wicked little rascal, to steal the bun! As to Hoar, he is as fierce as a tiger when really enraged.”

  “Well, it sounds very shocking.”

  “So it does,” said Cole. “I think perhaps it may be productive of one good — keep the boy from picking and stealing to the end of his life.”

  “He was hungry, you say.”

  “Famished, ma’am. Most of the young ones in Crabb Lane are so just now.”

  The Squire was walking up and down the room, his hands in his pockets. He halted, and faced the Doctor.

  “Look here, Cole — what has brought this state of things about? A strike! — and prolonged! Why, I should as soon have expected to hear the men had thrown up their work to become Merry Andrews! Who is in fault? — the masters or the men?”

  Cole lifted his eyebrows. “The masters lay the blame on the men, the men lay it on the masters.”

  “What is it the men are holding out for?”

  “To get more wages, and to do less work.”

  “Oh, come, that’s a twofold demand,” cried the Pater. “Modest folk generally ask for one favour at a time. Meanwhile things are all at sixes-and-sevens, I suppose, in Crabb Lane?”

  “Ay,” said the Doctor. “At worse than sixes-and-sevens, indoors and out. There are empty cupboards and empty rooms within; and there’s a good deal of what’s bad without. It’s the wives and children that suffer, poor things.”

  “The men must be senseless to throw themselves out of work!”

  “The men only obey orders,” cried Mr. Cole. “There’s a spirit of disaffection abroad: certain people have constituted themselves rulers
, and they say to the men, ‘You must do this,’ and ‘You must not do that.’ The men have yielded themselves up to be led, and do do what they are told, right or wrong.”

  “I don’t say they are wrong to try to get more wages if they can; it would be odd if we were to be debarred from bettering ourselves,” spoke the Squire. “But to throw up their work whilst they are trying, there’s the folly; there’s where the shoe must tighten. Let them keep on their work whilst they agitate.”

  “They’d tell you, I expect, that the masters would be less likely to listen then than they are now.”

  “Well, they’ve no right, in common sense, to throw up their wives’ and children’s living, if they do their own,” concluded the Squire.

  Cole nodded. “There’s some truth in that,” he said as he got up to leave. “Any way, things are more gloomy with us than you’d believe, Squire.”

  You may remember that I told you, when speaking of the Court and my early home, how, when I was a little child of four years old, Hannah my nurse, and Eliza one of her fellow-servants, commented freely in my hearing on my father’s second marriage, and shook me well because I was wise enough to understand them. Eliza was then housemaid at the Court; and soon after this she had left it to marry Jacob Hoar. She was a nice sort of young woman (in spite of the shaking), and I kept up a great acquaintance with her, and was free, so to say, of her house in Crabb Lane, running in and out of it at will, when we were at Crabb Cot. A tribe of little Hoars arrived, one after another. Jacky, the eldest, over ten now, had a place at the works, and earned two shillings a week. “‘Twarn’t much,” said Hoar the father, “but ’twas bringing his hand in.” Dick, the second, he who had just had the beating, was nine; two girls came next, and there was a young boy of three.

  Hoar earned capital wages — to judge by the comfortable way in which they lived: I should think not less than forty shillings a week. Of course they spent it all, every fraction; as a rule, families of that class never put by for a rainy day. They might have done it, I suppose; in those days provisions were nothing like as dear as they are now; the cost of living altogether was less.