Part 39

"It's to be hoped he is! Why did he go and set upon the child in that cruel way? It's the men that goes in for the strike; 'tisn't us: and when the worry of it makes 'em so low they hardly know where to turn, they must vent it upon us. Master Johnny, there are minutes now when I could wish myself dead but for the children."

I went home with my head full of a scheme--getting Mrs. Todhetley and perhaps the Coneys to do something for poor Eliza Hoar. But I soon found I might as well have pleaded the cause of the public hangman.

Who should come into our house that evening but old Coney himself. As if the strike were burning a hole in his tongue, he began upon it before he was well seated, and gave the Squire his version of it: that is, his opinion. It did not differ in substance from what had been hinted at by Eliza Hoar. Mr. Coney did not speak _for_ the men or _against_ them; he did not speak for or against the masters; that question of conflicting interests he said he was content to leave: but what he did urge, and very strongly, was, that strikes in themselves must be productive of an incalculable amount of harm; they brought misery on the workmen, pecuniary embarrassment on the masters, and they most inevitably would, if persisted in, eventually ruin the trade of the kingdom; therefore they should, by every possible means, be discouraged. The Squire, in his hot fashion, took up these opinions for his own and enlarged upon them.

When old Coney was gone and we had our slippers on, I told them of my visit to Eliza, and asked them to help her just a little.

"Not by a crust of bread, Johnny," said the Squire, more firmly and quietly than he usually spoke. "Once begin to assist the wives and children, and the men would have so much the less need to bring the present state of things to an end."

"I am so sorry for Eliza, sir."

"So am I, Johnny. But the proper person to be sorry for her is her husband: her weal and woe can lie only with him."

"If we could help her ever so little!"

The Squire looked at me for a full minute. "Attend to me, Johnny Ludlow. Once for all, NO! The strike, as Coney says, must be discouraged by every means in our power. _Discouraged_, Johnny. Otherwise these strikes may come into fashion, and grow to an extent of which no man can foresee the end. They will bring the workmen to one of two things--starvation, or the workhouse. That result seems to me inevitable."

"I'm sure it makes me feel very uncomfortable," said the Mater. "One can hardly see where one's duty lies."

"Our poor-rates are getting higher every day; what do you suppose they'll come to if this is to go on?" continued the Squire. "I'd be glad for the men to get better pay if they are underpaid now: whether they are or not, I cannot tell; but rely upon it, striking is not the way to attain to it. It's a way that has ruined many a hopeful workman, who otherwise would have gone on contentedly to the end of his days; ay, and has finally killed him. It will ruin many another. Various interests are at stake in this; you must perceive it for yourself, Johnny lad, if you have any brains; but none so great as that of the workmen themselves. With all my heart I wish, for their own sakes, they had not taken this extreme step."

"And if the poor children starve, sir?" I ventured to say.

"Fiddlestick to starving! They need not starve while there's a workhouse to go to. And _won't_; that's more. _Can't_ you see how all this acts, Mr. Johnny? The men throw themselves out of work; and when matters come to an extremity the parish must feed the children, and we, the rate-payers, must pay. A pleasant prospect! How many scores of children are there in Crabb Lane alone?"

"A few dozens, I should say, sir."

"And a few to that. No, Johnny; let the men look to their families' needs. For their own sakes; I repeat it; for their own best interests, I'll have them left alone. They have entered on this state of things of their own free will, and they must themselves fight it out.--And now get you off to bed, boys."

"The Pater's right, Johnny," cried Tod, stepping into my room as we went up, his candle flaring in the draught from the open staircase window; "right as right can be on principle; but it _is_ hard for the women and children----"

"It is hard for themselves, too, Tod: only they have the unbending spirit of Britons, to hold out to the death and make no bones over it."

"I wish you'd not interrupt a fellow," growled Tod. "Look here; I've got four-and-sixpence, every farthing I can count just now. You take it and give it to Eliza. The Pater need know nothing."

He emptied his trousers pocket of the silver, and went off with his candle. I'm not sure but that he and I both enjoyed the state of affairs as something new. Had any one told us a year ago that our quiet neighbourhood could be disturbed by a public ferment such as this, we should never have believed it.

The next morning I went over to South Crabb with the four-and-sixpence. Perhaps it was not quite fair to give it, after what the Squire had said--but there's many a worse thing than that done daily in the world. Eliza caught her breath when I gave it to her, and thanked me with her eyes as well as her lips. She had on a frightfully old green gown--green once--shabby and darned and patched, and no cap; and she was on her knees wiping up some spilt water on the floor.

"Mind, Eliza, you must not say a word to any one. I should get into no end of a row."

"You were always generous, Master Johnny. Even when a baby----"

"Never mind that. It is not I who am generous now. The silver was given me for you by some one else; I am cleared out, myself. Where's Dicky?"

"He's upstairs in his bed, sir: too stiff to move. Mr. Cole, too, said he might as well lie there to-day. Would you like to go up and see him?"

As I ran up the staircase, open from the room, a vision of her wan face followed me--of the catching sob again--of the smooth brown hair which she was pressing from her temples. We have heard of a peck of troubles: she seemed to have a bushel of them.

Dicky was a sight, as far as variety of colours went. There was no mistake about his stiffness.

"It won't last long, Dick; and then you'll be as well as ever."

Dick's grey eyes--they were just like his mother's--looked up at mine. I thought he was going to cry.

"There. You will never take anything again, will you?"

Dick shook his head as emphatically as his starched condition allowed. "Father says as he'd kill me the next time if I did."

"When did he say that?"

"This morning; afore he went out."

Dicky's room had a lean-to roof, and was about the size of our jam closet at Crabb Cot. Not an earthly article was in it but the mattress he was lying on.

"Who sleeps here besides you, Dicky?"

"Jacky and little Sam. 'Liza and Jessy sleeps by father and mother."

"Well, good day, Dicky."

Whom should I come upon at the end of Crabb Lane, but the Squire and Hoar. The Squire had his gun in his hand and was talking his face red: Hoar leaned against the wooden palings that skirted old Massock's garden, and looked as sullen as he had looked yesterday. I thought the Pater had been blowing him up for beating the boy; but it seemed that he was blowing him up for the strike. Cole, the surgeon, hurrying along on his rounds, stopped just as I did.

"Not your fault, Hoar!" cried the Squire. "Of course I know it's not your fault alone, but you are as bad as the rest. Come; tell me what good the strike has done for you."

"Not much as yet," readily acknowledged Hoar, in a tone of incipient defiance.

"To me it seems nothing less than a crime to throw yourself out of work. There's the work ready to your hands, _spoiling_ for want of being done--and yet you won't do it!"

"I do but obey orders," said Hoar: who seemed to be miserable enough, in spite of the incipient defiance.

"But is there any sense in it?" reasoned the Squire. "If you men could drop the work and still keep up your homes and, their bread-and-cheese, and their other comforts, I'd say nothing. But look at your poor suffering wives and children. I should be _ashamed_ to be idle, when my idleness bore such consequences."

The man answered nothing. Cole put in his word.

"There are times when I feel _I_ should like to run away from my work, and go in for a few weeks' or months' idleness, Jacob Hoar; and drink my two or three glasses of port wine after dinner of a day, like a lord; and be altogether independent of my station and my patients, and of every other obligation under the sun. But I can't. I know what it would do for _me_--bring me to the parish."

"D'ye think we throw up the work for the sake o' being idle?" returned Hoar. "D'ye suppose, sirs,"--with a burst of a sigh--"that this state o' things is a _pleasure_ to us? We are doing it for future benefit. We are told by them who act for us, and who must know, that great benefit will come of it if we be only firm; that our rights be in our own hands if we only persevere long enough in standing out for 'em. Us men has our rights, I suppose, as well as other folks."

"Those who, as you term it, act for you, may be mistaken, Hoar," said the Squire. "I'll leave that point: and go on to a different question. Do you think that the future benefit (whatever that may be: it's vague enough now) _is worth the cost you are paying for it_?"

No reply. A look crossed Hoar's face that made me think he sometimes asked the same question of himself.

"It does appear to be a very _senseless_ quarrel, Hoar," went on the Squire. Cole had walked on. "One-sided too. There's an old saying, 'Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face,' and your strike seems just an illustration of it. You see, it is only _you men_ that suffer. The rulers you speak of don't suffer: while they are laying down rules for you, they are flourishing on the meat and corn of the land; the masters, in one sense, do not suffer, for they are not reduced to any extremity of any kind. But you, my poor fellows, _you_ bear the brunt of it all. Look at your homes, how they are bared; look at your hungry children. What but hunger drove little Dick to crib that bun yesterday?"

Hoar took off his hat and passed his hand over his brow and his black hair. It seemed to be a favourite action of his when in any worry of thought.

"It is just ruin, Jacob Hoar. If some great shock--say a mountain of snow, or a thunderbolt--descended suddenly from the skies and destroyed everything there was in your home, leaving but the bare walls standing, what a dreadful calamity you would think it. How bitterly you'd bemoan it!--perhaps almost feel inclined, if you only dared, to reproach Heaven for its cruelty! But you--you bring on this calamity yourself, of your own free and deliberate will. You have dismantled your home with your own fingers; you have taken out your goods and sold or pledged them, to buy food. I hear you have parted with all."

"A'most," assented Hoar readily; as if it quite pleased him the Squire should show up the case at its worst.

"Put it that you resume work to-morrow, you don't resume it as a free man. You'll have a load of debt and embarrassment on your shoulders. You will have your household goods to redeem--if they are then still redeemable: you will have your clothes and shoes to buy, to replace present rags: while on your mind will lie the weight of all this past time of trouble, cropping up every half-hour like a nightmare. Now--is the future benefit you hint at worth all this?"

Hoar twitched a thorny spray off the hedge behind the pales, and twirled it about between his teeth.

"Any way," he said, the look of perplexity clearing somewhat on his face, "I be but doing as my mates do; and we are a-doing for the best. So far as we are told and believe, it'll be all for the best."

"Then _do_ it," returned the Squire in a passion; and went stamping away with his gun.

"Johnny, they are all pig-headed together," he presently said, as we crossed the stile into the field of stubble whence the corn had been reaped. "One can't help being sorry for them: they are blinded by specious arguments that will turn out, I fear, to be all moonshine. Hold my gun, lad. Where's that dog, now? Here, Dash, Dash, Dash!"

Dash came running up; and Tod with him.

* * * * *

In a fortnight's time, Crabb Cot was deserted again. Tod and I returned to our studies, the Squire and the rest to Dyke Manor. As the weeks went on, scraps of news would reach us about the strike. There were meetings of the masters alone: meetings of the men and what they called delegates; meetings of masters and men combined. It all came to nothing. The masters at length offered to concede a little: the men (inwardly wearied out, sick to death of the untoward state of things) would have accepted the slight concession and returned to work with willing feet; but their rulers--the delegates, or whatever they were--said no. And so the idleness and the pinching distress continued: the men got more morose, and the children more ragged. After that (things remaining in a chronic state of misery, I suppose) we heard nothing.

* * * * *

"Another lot of faggots, Thomas; and heap up the coal. This is weather! Goodness, man! Don't put the coal on gingerly, as if you were afraid of it. Molly's a fool."

We were in the cozy sitting-room again at Crabb Cot. The Squire was right: it _was_ weather: the coldest I have ever felt in December. Old Thomas's hands were frozen with the drive from the station. Molly, who had come on the day before, had put about a handful of fire in the grate to greet us with. Naturally it put the Squire's temper up.

"That there strike's a-going on still, sir," began Thomas, as he waited to watch his wood blaze up.

"No!" cried the Squire. For we had naturally supposed it to be at an end.

"It is, though, sir. Ford the driver telled me, coming along, that Crabb Lane was in a fine state for distress."

"Oh dear! I wish I knew whose fault it is!" bewailed Mrs. Todhetley. "What more did the driver say, Thomas?"

"Well, ma'am, _he_ said it must be the men's fault--because there the work is, still a-waiting for 'em, and they won't do it."

"The condition the poor children must be in!"

"Like hungry wolves," said old Thomas. "'Twas what Ford called 'em, and he ought to know: own brother to Ford the baker, as lives in the very thick of the trouble!"

Scarcely anything was talked of that evening but the strike. Its long continuance half frightened some of us. Old Coney, coming in to smoke his pipe with the Squire, pulled a face as long as his arm at the poor-rate prospect: the Squire wondered how much work would stay in the country.

It was said the weekly allowance made to the men was not so much as it had been at first. It was also said that the Society, making it, considered Crabb Lane in general had been particularly improvident in spending the allowance, or it would not have been reduced to its present distressed condition. Which was not to be wondered at, in Mr. Coney's opinion: people used to very good wages, he said, could not all at once pull up habits and look at every farthing as a miser does. Crabb Lane was reproachfully assured by the Society that other strikes had kept themselves quite respectable, comparatively speaking, upon just the same allowance, and had not parted with _all_ their pots and pans.

That night I dreamt of the strike. It's as true as that I am writing this. I dreamt I saw thousands and thousands of red-faced men--not pale-faced ones--each tossing a loaf of bread up and down.

"I suppose I may go over and see Eliza," I said to Mrs. Todhetley, after breakfast in the morning.

"There is no reason why you should not, Johnny, that I know of," she answered, after a pause. "Excepting the cold."

As if I minded the cold! "I hope the whole lot, she and the young ones, won't look like skeletons, that's all. Tod, will you come?"

"Not if I know it, old fellow. I have no fancy for seeing skeletons."

"Oh, that was all my nonsense."

"I know that. A pleasant journey to you."

The hoar frost had gathered on the trees, the ice hung fantastically from their branches: it was altogether a beautiful sight. Groups of Miss Timmens's girls, coming to school with frozen noses, were making slides as they ran. As to Crabb Lane, it looked nearly deserted: the cold kept the men indoors. Knocking at Hoar's door with a noise like a fire-engine, I went in with a leap.

The scene I came upon brought me up short. Just at first I did not understand it. In the self-same corner by the fireplace where Dicky's bed had been that first day, was a bed now, and Eliza lay on it: and by her side, wedged against the wall, was what looked like a bundle of green baize with a calico nightcap on. The children--and really and truly they were not much better than living skeletons--sat on the floor.

"What's to do here, you little mites? Is mother ill?"

Dicky, tending the fire (I could have put it into a cocoa-nut), turned round to answer me. He had got quite well again, arm and all.

"Mother's _very_ ill," said he in a whisper. "That's the new baby."

"The new what?"

"The new baby," repeated Dick, pointing to the green bundle. "It's two days old."

An old tin slop-pail, turned upside down, stood in the corner of the hearth. I sat down on it to revolve the news and take in the staggering aspect of things.

"What do you say, Dick? A baby--two days old?"

"Two days," returned Dick. "I'd show him to you but for fear o' waking mother."

"He came here the night afore last, he did, while we was all asleep upstairs," interposed the younger of the little girls, Jessy. "Mr. Cole brought him in his pocket: father said so."

"'Twasn't the night afore last," corrected 'Liza. "'Twas the night afore that."

Poor, pale, pinched faces, with never a smile on any one of them! Nothing takes the spirit out of children like long-continued famine.

Stepping across, I looked down at Mrs. Hoar. Her eyes were half open as if she were in a state of stupor. I don't think she knew me: I'm not sure she even saw me. The face was fearfully thin and hollow, and white as death.

"Wouldn't mother be better upstairs, Dick?"

"She's here 'cause o' the fire," returned Dick, gently dropping on a bit of coal the size of a marble. "There ain't no bed up there, neither; they've brought it down."

The "bed" looked like a sack of shavings. From my heart I don't believe it was anything else. At that moment, the door opened and a woman came in; a neighbour, I suppose; her clothes very thin.

"It's Mrs. Watts," said Dick.

Mrs. Watts curtsied. She looked as starved as they did. It seemed she knew me.

"She be very bad. Mr. Ludlow, sir."

"She seems so. Is it--fever?"

"Law, sir! It's more famine nor fever. If her strength can last out--why, well and good; she may rally. If it don't, she'll go, sir."

"Ought she not to have things, Mrs. Watts? Beef-tea and wine, and all that."

Mrs. Watts stared a minute, and then her lips parted with a sickly smile. "I don't know where she'd get 'em from, sir! Beef-tea and wine! A drop o' plain tea is a'most more nor us poor can manage to find now. The strike have lasted long, you see, sir. Any way, she's too weak to take much of anything."

"If I--if I could bring some beef-tea--or some wine--would it do her good?"

"It might just be the saving of her life, Mr. Ludlow, sir."

I went galloping home through the snow. Mrs. Todhetley was stoning raisins in the dining-room for the Christmas puddings. Telling her the news in a heap, I sat down to get my breath.

"Ah, I was afraid so," she said quietly, and without surprise. "I feared there might be another baby at the Hoars' by this time."

"Another baby at the Hoars'!" cried Tod, looking up from my new Shakespeare that he was skimming. "How is it going to get fed?"

"I fear that's a problem none of us can solve, Joseph," said she.

"Well, folk must be daft, to go on collecting a heap more mouths together, when there's nothing to feed them on," concluded Tod, dropping his head into the book again. Mrs. Todhetley was slowly wiping her fingers on the damp cloth, and looking doubtful.

"Joseph, your papa's not in the way and I cannot speak to him--_do_ you think I might venture to send something to poor Eliza under the circumstances?"

"Send and risk it," said Tod, in his prompt manner. "_Of course._ As to the Pater--at the worst, he'll only storm a bit. But I fancy he would be the first to send help himself. He wouldn't let her die for the want of it."

"Then I'll despatch Hannah at once."

Hoar was down by the bed when Hannah got there, holding a drop of ale to his wife's lips. Mr. Cole was standing by with his hat on.

"_Ale!_" exclaimed Hannah to the surgeon. "May she take _that_?"

"Bless me, yes," said he, "and do her good."

Hannah followed him outside the door when he was leaving. "How will it go with her, sir?" she asked. "She looks dreadfully ill."

"Well," returned the Doctor, "I think the night will about see the end of it."

The words frightened Hannah. "Oh, my goodness!" she cried. "What's the matter with her that she should die?"

"Famine and worry have been the matter with her. What she will die of is exhaustion. She has had a sharpish turn just now, you understand; and has no stamina to bring her up again."

It was late in the afternoon when Hannah came home again. There was no change, she said, for the better or the worse. Eliza still lay as much like one dead as living.

"It's quite a picter to see the poor little creatures sitting on the bare floor and quiet as mice, never speaking but in a whisper," cried Hannah, as she shook the snow from her petticoats on the mat. "It's just as if they had an instinct of what is coming."

The Squire, far from being angry, wanted to send over half the house. It was not Eliza's fault, he said, it was the strike's--and he hoped with all his heart she'd get through it. Helping the men's wives in ordinary was not to be thought of; but when it came to dying, that was a different matter. In the evening, between dinner and tea, I offered to go over and see whether any progress had been made. Being curious on the point themselves, they said yes.

The snow was coming down smartly. My great-coat and hat were soon white enough for me to be taken for a ghost enjoying the air at night. Knocking at the Hoars' door gently, it was opened by Jacky. He asked me to go in.

To my surprise they were again alone--Eliza and the children. Mrs. Watts had gone home to put her own flock to bed; and Hoar was out. 'Liza sat on the hearthstone, the sleeping bundle on her lap.

"Father's a-went to fetch Mr. Cole," said Jacky. "Mother began a talking queer--dreams, like--and it frightened him. He told us to mind her till he run back with the Doctor."

Looking down, I thought she was delirious. Her eyes were wide open and glistening, a scarlet spot shone on her cheeks. She began talking to me. Or rather to the air: for I'm sure she knew no one.

"A great bright place it is, up there; all alight and shining. Silvery, like the stars. Oh, it's beautiful! The people be in white, and no strikes can come in!"

"She've been a-talking about the strikes all along," whispered Jacky, who was kneeling on the mattress. "Mother! Mother, would ye like a drop o' the wine?"

Whether the word mother aroused her, or the boy's voice--and she had always loved Jacky with a great love--she seemed to recognize him. He raised her head as handy as could be, and held the tea-cup to her lips. It was half full of wine; she drank it all by slow degrees, and revived to consciousness.

"Master Johnny!" she said then in a faint tone.

I could not help the tears filling my eyes as I knelt down by her in Jacky's place. She knew she was dying. I tried to say a word or two.