Erb/Chapter 6

HE particular blend of trouble which Willow Walk was occupied in brewing proved highly attractive to Erb, and one that gave to all the men concerned a taste of the joys that must have come in the French Revolution. A few impetuous young spirits who had been brooding on grievances since the days when they were van boys were responsible. Erb recognised that here was the first opportunity of justifying his appointment. Warned, however, by the example of other organisers within memory, who had sometimes in similar experiments shown a tendency to excess, Erb took care. He wrote letters to the General Manager, letters for which he received a printed form of acknowledgment and no other, he wrote to the Directors, and received a brief reply to the effect that they could not recognise Mr. Herbert Barnes in the matter, and that the grievances of the staff concerned only the staff and themselves; the men were bitterly annoyed at this, but Erb, because he had anticipated the reply, showed no concern. He worked from dawn near to dawn again, sending letters to members of Parliament, going round to the depôts of other railways, attending meetings, and in many ways devoting himself to the work of what he called directing public opinion. In point of fact, he had first to create it. For a good fortnight he gave up everything to devote himself to this one object, gave up everything but his lessons in Camberwell. One of the halfpenny evening papers said, amongst other things, “Mr. Herbert Barnes made an impassioned but logical and excellently delivered speech.” Erb knew the deplorable looking man with a silk hat of the early seventies who had reported this, but that did not prevent him from being highly gratified on seeing the words in print; Louisa spent eighteenpence on a well-bound manuscript book, and in it commenced to paste these notices. The point at issue being that the men demanded better payment of overtime, Erb found here a subject that lent itself to oratorical argument; the story of the man who was so seldom at home that one Sunday his little girl asked the other parent, “Mother, who's this strange man?” never failed to prove effective, and Erb felt justified in leaving out the fact that the carman in question was one accustomed, when his work finished at night, to go straight from the stables to a house in Old Kent Road, where he usually remained until the potman cried “Time! gentlemen, time!”

The men had sent in their ultimatum to the head office, and had held their last meeting. The Directors had remained adamant on the question of receiving Erb as spokesman, and the men, not having an orator of equal power in their ranks, and fearful of being worsted in a private interview, had insisted either that Erb should accompany the deputation or that there should be no deputation at all, but only a strike on the following Monday morning. (The advanced party protested against the idea of giving this formal notice of an unlikely event but Erb insisted and the moderates supported him. “If we can get what we want,” argued the moderates, “by showing a certain amount of what you may call bluff, by all means let us stop at that.”)

It gave Erb a sensation of power to find that not one of these uniformed men in their brass-bound caps was strong-minded enough or sufficiently clear of intellect to carry out any big scheme by himself; they could only keep of one mind by shoring each other up, and he felt that he himself was the one steady, upright person who prevented them all from slipping. He not only kept them together, but he guided them. A suggestion from him on some minor point of detail, and they followed as a ship obeys the helm; if any began a remark with doubting preface of “Ah, but” the others hushed them down and begged them to have some sense. Erb had made all his plans for the possible stop of work; the other stations and depôts were willing to contribute something infinitesimal every week with much the same spirit that they would have paid to see a wrestling match. All the same, Erb showed more confidence than he felt, and when he left the men, declining their invitation to drink success to the movement (clear to them that Fortune was a goddess only to be appeased and gained over by the pouring out of libations of mild-and-bitter), he took cheerfulness from his face, and walked, his collar up, along Bermondsey New Road to call for his young sister at her workshop. The sellers on the kerb appealed to him in vain, a shrill-voiced little girl thrust groundsel in his face, and he took no notice. Gay bunches of flowers were flourished in front of his eyes, and he waved them aside. If the men went weak at the knees at the last moment it would be deplorable, but it would be an incident for which he could not blame himself; if he himself were to make some blunder in the conduct of the negotiations, it would be fatal to his career, and all other secretaries of all other organisations would whisper about it complacently.

“Anxious times, my girl,” said Erb to Louisa. “Anxious times. We'll have a tram-ride down to Greenwich and back, and blow dull care away.”

“I've just finished,” said Louisa in a whisper. “I'll pop on me hat, Erb, and be with you in 'alf a moment.”

“This work's beginning to affect your chest,” said Erb.

“Funny thing,” remarked Louisa, with great good temper, halfway up the wooden stairs of the workshop, “but my medical man ordered me carriage exercise. Shan't be two ticks.”

When Louisa returned, stabbing her hat in one or two places before gaining what seemed to be a satisfactory hold, she was accompanied by giggling young women who had been sent by the rest as a commission to ascertain whether it was Louisa's own brother or some other girl's brother who had called for her; Louisa's own statement appearing too absurd to have any relationship to truth. Moreover, presuming it were Louisa's young man who had called for her, it was something of a breach of etiquette, as understood by the girls of the workshop, for one young couple to go out alone, the minimum number for such an expedition being four, in which case they talked not so much to their immediate companion as to the other half of the square party, with whom they communicated by shouting. Having ascertained, to their surprise, that Louisa had spoken the exact and literal truth, they saw the brother and sister off from the doorway, warning Louisa to wrap up her neck, and begging Erb to smile and think of something pleasant.

“Never mind their chaff,” said Louisa, in her deep whisper. “I'd a jolly sight rather be going out a bit of an excursion with you than I would with—well, you know.”

“Wish you hadn't lost your voice,” said Erb, with concern. “I don't like the sound of it, at all.”

“There's some girls in our place never get it back, and after about four or five years of it Don't cross over here.”

“Why not?”

“He makes my 'ead ache,” said Louisa promptly. “I've only been going out with him for a fortnight, and I know all what he's going to say as though I'd read it in a printed book. He talks about the weather first, then about his aunt's rheumatics, then about the day he had at Brighton when he was a kid, then about where he thinks of spendin' his 'oliday next year, then about how much his 'oliday cost him last year” A mild gust of wind came and struck Louisa on the mouth; she stopped to cough, holding her hand the while flat on her blouse.

“Keep your mouth shut, youngster,” advised Erb kindly, “until you've got used to the fresh air.”

Because both brother and sister felt that in sailing down to New Cross Gate on the top of a tram, and then along by a line less straight and decided to Greenwich, that they were escaping from worry, they enjoyed the evening's trip. Going through Hatcham, Louisa declared that one might be in the country, and thereupon, in her own way, declared that they were in the country, that she and her brother had been left a bit of money, which enabled her to give up work at the factory and wear a fresh set of cuffs and collars every day: this sudden stroke of good fortune also permitted Erb to give up his agitating rigmarole (the phrase was Louisa's own, and Erb accepted it without protest), and they had both settled down somewhere near Epping Forest; Erb, as lord of the manor, with the vicar of the parish church for slave, and Louisa as the generous Lady Bountiful, giving blankets and home-made jam to all those willing to subscribe to Conservative principles. They had a stroll up the hill to Greenwich Park, Lady Louisa forced to go slowly on account of some aristocratic paucity of breath, and Sir Herbert, her brother, playing imaginary games of golf with a stick and some pebbles, and going round the links in eighty-two. At the Châlet near the Blackheath side of the park they took tea, Louisa's insistence on addressing her brother by a full title astonishing the demure people at other wooden tables, puzzling them greatly, and causing, after departure, acrimonious debate between husbands and wives, some deciding that Erb and Louisa were really superior people and others making reference to escapes from Colney Hatch. Louisa, delighted with the game of fooling people, darted down the hill, with Erb following at a sedate trot; she stopped three parts of the way down, and Erb found her leaning against a tree panting with tears in her eyes. These tears she brushed away, declaring that something had come to her mind that had made her laugh exhaustedly, and the two went on more sedately through the open way at the side of the tall iron gates, happy in each other's company, and showing this in the defiant way with which some people hide real emotions.

“You're a bright companion,” said Louisa satirically, as the tram turned with a jerk at the foot of Blackheath Hill. “You 'aven't made me laugh for quite five minutes.”

“I've been thinking, White Face.”

“My face isn't white,” protested his sister, leaning back to get a reflection of herself in a draper's window. “I've got quite a colour. Besides, why don't you give up thinking for a bit? You're always at it. I wonder your brain—or whatever you like to call it—stands the tax you put on it.”

“You'd be a rare old nagger,” said Erb, hooking the tarpaulin covering carefully and affectionately around his sister, “if ever anybody had the misfortune to marry you. It'd be jor, jor, jor, from morning, noon, till night.”

“And if ever you was silly enough to get engaged, Erb That's Deptford Station down there,” said Louisa, as the tram stopped for a moment's rest. “I used to know a boy who's ticket collector now. He got so confused the other day when I come down here to go to a lecture that he forgot to take my ticket.” She laughed out of sheer exultation at the terrifying powers of her sex. “Take my advice, Erb, don't you never get married, even if you are asked to. Not even if it was young Lady Frances.”

“Young idiot,” said Erb. “Think I ever bother my head about such matters? I've got much more important work in life. This business that I've got on now”

“Our girls are always asking about you,” said Louisa musingly. “It's all, 'Is he engaged?' 'Does he walk out with anybody?' 'Is he a woman 'ater?' and all such rot.”

Erb looked down at the traffic that was speeding at the side of the leisurely tram and gave himself up for a while to the luxury of feeling that he had been the subject of this discussion. He thought of his young elocution teacher, and wondered whether he had any right to accept this position of a misogynist when he knew so well that it was made by adverse circumstances and the existence of a good-looking youth with an unreliable chin and hair in waves. The driver below whistled aggrievedly at a high load of hops that was coolly occupying the tram lines; the load of hops seemed to be asleep, and the tram driver had to pull up and whistle again. In a side road banners were stretched across with the word “Welcome,” signifying thus that a church bazaar was being held, where articles could be bought at quite six times the amount of their real value. A landau, drawn by a pair of conceited greys, came out of the side street, with a few children following and crying, “Ipipooray!” the proud horses snorted indignantly to find that they were checked by a bucolic waggon and a plebeian tram. A young woman with a scarlet parasol in the landau looked out over the door rather anxiously.

“It's her ladyship,” cried Louisa, clutching Erb's arm.

“Good shot,” agreed Erb.

“If only she'd look up and recognise us,” said Louisa. The other people on the tram began to take an interest in the encounter, and Louisa's head already trembled with pride.

“She wouldn't recognise us.”

“Go on with you,” contradicted his sister.

Louisa was afflicted with a sudden cough of such eccentric timbre that some might have declared it to be forced. People on the pavement looked up at her surprisedly, and Lady Frances just then closing her scarlet parasol, for the use of which, indeed, the evening gave but little reason, also glanced upwards. Erb took off his hat and jerked a bow, and Louisa noticed that the closed scarlet parasol was being waved invitingly. She unhooked the tarpaulin cover at once, and, despite Erb's protestation that they had paid fares to the Bermondsey's New Road, hurried him down the steps. To Louisa's great delight, the tram, with its absorbedly interested passengers, did not move until the two had reached the open landau, and Lady Frances's neatly-gloved hand had offered itself in the most friendly way. Louisa declared later that she would have given all that she had in the Post Office Savings Bank to have heard the comments of the passengers.

“This,” said Lady Frances pleasantly, “is the long arm of coincidence. Step in both of you, please, and let me take you home to your place.”

“If you don't mind excusing us” began Erb.

“Oh you—you man,” said his sister to herself. “I can't call you anything else.”

“Please, please,” begged Lady Frances. They stepped in. By a great piece of good luck,' Erb remembered that amongst the recipes and axioms and words of advice on the back page of an evening paper he had a night or two previously read that gentlemen should always ride with their backs to the horses, and he took his seat opposite to Lady Frances: that young woman, with a touch on Louisa's arm, directed the short girl to be seated at her side.

“Bricklayers' Arms Station, Old Kent Road,” said Lady Frances. Mr. Danks, in livery, and his hair prematurely whitened, had jumped down to close the door. Mr. Danks touched his hat, and, without emotion, resumed his seat at the side of the coachman. “You are keeping well, I hope?” To Louisa.

“I have been feeling a bit chippy,” said Erb's sister, trying to loll back in the seat, but fearful of losing her foothold.

“So sorry,” said Lady Frances. “And you?”

“Thank you,” said Erb, “middlin'. Can't say more than that. Been somewhat occupied of late with various matters.”

“I know, I know,” she remarked briskly. “It is that that makes it providential I should have met you. My uncle is a director on one of the railways, and he was talking about you only last night at dinner.”

“Very kind of the gentleman. What name, may I ask?” Lady Frances gave the information, gave also an address, and Erb nodded. “Me and him are somewhat in opposite camps at the present time.”

“My uncle was anxious to meet you,” said young Lady Frances, in her agreeable way.

“Just at this moment I scarcely think”

“Under a flag of truce,” she suggested. “I was going to write to you, but this will save me from troubling you with a note.”

“No trouble.”

“I've been opening a bazaar down here,” went on Lady Frances with a determined air of vivacity. “The oddest thing. Do you ever go to bazaars?”

“Can't say,” said Erb cautiously, “that I make a practice of frequenting them.”

Louisa sat, bolt upright, her feet just touching the floor of the carriage, and feeling, as she afterwards intimated, disinclined to call the Prince of Wales her brother. Her ears listened to Lady Frances's conversation, and she made incoherent replies when an opinion was demanded, but her eyes were alert on one side of the carriage or the other, sparkling with anxiety to encounter someone whom she knew. Nearly everybody turned to look at them, but it was not until they reached the Dun Cow at the corner of Rotherhithe New Road (the hour being now eight o'clock), at a moment when Louisa had begun to tell herself regretfully no one would believe her account of this gratifying and epoch-making event, that into Old Kent Road, chasing each other, came two girls belonging to her factory. The foremost dodged behind a piano-organ that made a fruitless effort to make its insistent jangle heard above the roar and the murmur of traffic; seeing her pursuer stand transfixed, with a cheerful scream of vengeance half finished, she turned her head. At the sight of Louisa bowing with a genteel air of half recognition the first girl staggered back and sat down helplessly on the handles of the piano-organ, jerking that instrument of music and causing the Italian lady with open bodice to remonstrate in the true accents of Clerkenwell. When near to Bricklayers' Arms Station Louisa saw again her current young man morbid with the thought of a wasted evening, but still waiting hopefully for his fiancée, now three hours behind time; the young gentleman's eyesight being dimmed with resentfulness, it became necessary for her to wave a handkerchief that might, she knew, have been cleaner, and thus engage his attention. At the very last possible moment he signalled astonished acknowledgment.

For Erb, on the other hand, the journey had something less of exultation. From the moment of starting from St. James's Road, Hatcham, the fear possessed him that he might be seen by some member of his society, who would thereupon communicate facts to colleagues. Thus would his character for independence find itself bruised; thus would the jealousy of the men be aroused; thus would the Spanswick party be able to whisper round the damaging report that Erb had been by the capitalists. Wherefore Erb, anxious for none of these eventualities, tipped his hat well over his forehead, and, leaning forward, with his face down, listened to Lady Frances's conversation. The carriage had a scent of refinement; the young woman opposite in her perfect costume was something to be worshipped respectfully, and he scarce wondered when, at one point of the journey up the straight Old Kent Road, he heard one loafer say to another, “Where's there an election on to-day?” Lady Frances, having completed her account of the bazaar, had information of great importance to communicate, and this she gave in a confidential undertone that was pleasant and flattering.

“From what my uncle says, it appears there is a strike threatening, and—you know all about it perhaps?”

“Heard rumours,” said Erb guardedly.

“He is anxious that you should call upon him at the earliest possible moment to discuss the affair privately, but he is most anxious that it should not appear that he has sought the meeting. You quite see, don't you? It's a question of amour-propre.”

“Ho!” said Erb darkly.

“And I should be so glad,” she went on, with the excitement of a young diplomatist, “if I could bring you two together. It would be doing so much good.”

“To him?”

“I could drive you on now,” she suggested hesitatingly, “and we should catch my uncle just after his dinner; an excellent time.”

“I think,” said Erb stolidly, “that we'd better let events work out their natural course.”

“You're wrong, quite wrong, believe me. Events left alone work out very clumsily at times.” Lady Frances touched him lightly on the knee. “Please do me this very small favour.”

“Since you put it like that then, I don't mind going up to see him to-night. Not that anything will come from it, mind you. Don't let's delude ourselves into thinking that.”

“This,” cried Lady Frances, clapping her hands, “is excellent. This is just what I like to be doing.” Erb, still watching fearfully for acquaintances, glanced at her excited young face, with respectful admiration. “Now, I shall drive you straight on”

“If you don't mind,” said Erb, “no; we'll hop out at the corner of Page's Walk.”

“And not drive up to the dwellings?” asked Louisa disappointed.

“And not drive up to the dwellings,” said Erb firmly. “I'll get on somehow to see your uncle to-night.”

“You won't break your word?”

“I should break a lot of other things before I did that.”

Thus it was. Lady Frances shook hands; Erb stepped out, looking narrowly through the open gateway of the goods station, and offering assistance to Louisa absently. As he did so, he saw William Henry, his old van boy, marching out of the gates in a violently new suit of corduroys, and with the responsible air of one controlling all the railways in the world.

“Get better soon,” said Lady Frances to Louisa. “Mr. Barnes, to-night.” Danks, down from his seat and closing the door (Erb and his sister standing on the pavement, Erb wondering whether he ought to give the footman threepence for himself, and Louisa coming down slowly from heaven to earth), Mr. Danks received the order, “Home, please.”

Erb went half an hour later by tram to Westminster Bridge and walked across. He perceived the necessity for extreme caution; reading and natural wisdom told him that many important schemes had been ruined by the interference of woman. He looked at the lights that starred the borders of the wide river, saw the Terrace where a member of Parliament walked up and down, following the red glow of a cigar, and he knew that if he were ever to get there it would only be by leaping successfully over many obstacles similar to the one which at present confronted him; to allow himself to be distracted from the straight road of progress would be to court disaster.

“Boy,” said the porter at the Mansions, “show No. 124A.” In a lift that darted to the skies Erb was conveyed and ordered to wait in a corridor whilst Boy, who wore as many buttons as could be crowded on his tight jacket, went and hunted for Lady Frances's uncle and presently ran him to earth in the smoking room, bringing him out triumphantly to the corridor. Erb found himself greeted with considerable heartiness, invited to come into the smoking room that looked down at a height suggesting vertigo at St. James's Park, taken to a corner, and furnished with a big cigar. Men in evening dress, with the self-confidence that comes after an adequate meal, were telling each other what they would do were they Prime Minister, and Erb was surprised to hear the drastic measures proposed for stamping out opposition; some of these seemed to be scarcely within the limits of reason. And what had Erb to say? A plain man, remarked Lady Frances's uncle of himself (which, in one respect at any rate, was a statement bearing the indelible stamp of truth), always of opinion that it was well to plunge in medias res. On Erb replying that at present he had no remark to offer, the purple-faced Director seemed taken aback, and diverted the conversation for a time to Trichinopolies and how best to keep them, a subject on which Erb was unable to speak with any pretence of authority.

“Little whiskey?” suggested the Director, with his thumb on the electric bell, “just to keep one alive.”

Lady Frances's uncle sighed on receiving Erb's reply, and proceeded to relate a long and not very interesting anecdote concerning an attempt that had once been made to swindle him by an hotel proprietor at Cairo, and the courageous way in which he had resisted the overcharge. On Erb looking at his silver watch, the colour of the Director's face, from sheer anxiety deepened, and he waved into the discussion with a Pall Mall Gazette a silent friend who had been sitting in a low easy chair, with hands clasped over his capacious dress waistcoat, gazing at the room with the fixed stare of repletion. The silent friend craned himself into an upright position and lumbered across the room to the window. The Director, thus usefully reinforced, proceeded to open the affair of the impending strike, and, having done this, urged that there never was a difficulty yet that had not a way out, and demanded that Erb should show this way out instantly. Erb suggested that the Director's colleagues should receive him and the men, listen to their arguments, and concede their requests, or some of them. Director, appealing for the support of the silent man, but receiving none, replied explosively, “That be hanged for a tale!” On which Erb remarked that he had some distance to go, and if the Director would excuse him Director said, fervently, “For goodness gracious' sake, let us sit down, and let us thresh this matter out.”  Giving up now his original idea of an exit, he remarked that a golden bridge must be built. Why should not Erb simply stand aside, and let the men alone seek consultation with the Directors? Erb declared that he would do this like one o'clock (intimating thus prompt and definite action), providing there was good likelihood of the men's requests being complied with. Director, looking at silent friend, and trying to catch that gentleman's lack-lustre eye, inquired how on earth he could pledge his colleagues. Erb, now interested in the game, suggested that Lady Frances's uncle probably had some idea of the feelings entertained by his fellow-directors, and the host, giving up all efforts to get help from his silent friend, admitted that there was something in this. Pressed by Erb to speak as man to man, Director gave the limits of concession that had been decided upon—limits which would not, however, come within sight unless the men came alone, and quite alone, to plead their cause. Erb thought for a few moments, the glare of the silent friend now directed upon him, and then said that he would take Director's word as the word of a gentleman; the men should send a deputation the following day in their luncheon hour, and he (Erb) would stand aside to watch the result. Director offered a hand, and Erb, instinctively rubbing his palm on his trousers, took it, and the silent friend thereupon suddenly burst into speech (which was the last thing of which one would have thought him capable) saying huskily, and with pompous modesty, that he was very pleased to think that any poor efforts of his should have brought about such a happy agreement; it was not the first time, and probably would not be the last, that he had presided over a meeting of reconciliation, and that his methods were always—if he might say so—tact, impartiality, and a desire to hear both sides.

“Quite glad to have met you,” said the Director, also gratified in having accomplished something that would give him the halo of notoriety at to-morrow's Board meeting. “You'll go far. Your head is screwed on the right way, my man. Not a liqueur?”

“I take partic'lar care it ain't screwed in any other fashion,” said Erb.

“Good-bye,” said the Director.

“Be good,” said Erb.