The Frobishers/Chapter 31

"COME OVER AND HELP US!"

The girls quickly departed. They were aware that for this one evening they would have to keep away. As Polly said, nudging Bessie Callear, "Put yourself in her place. We must leave her with her young man."

Then said Hector to little Tom&mdash;

"Mannikin! let me carry you upstairs."

He gathered the boy in his blankets in his arms.

"And here is your bundle," said Joan. "New garments for you to dress yourself out in to-morrow morning, and select the suit that is most becoming."

"I may have a squint at 'em to-night?" asked the lad.

"Certainly, and dream of them all the night."

"Look 'ere," said the urchin, "print across my back and weskit and down the breeches, 'Tom Treddlehoyle, Esquire,' wi' markin' ink, or blowed if the guv'ner won't put 'em up the spout and drink what he gets by 'em."

When Tom had been consigned to his bed, and Cissie had been instructed to administer to him a bowl of hot bread and milk, then Joan and Hector were alone in the little parlour.

They seated themselves at the table.

"Joan," said the young man, "what are your intentions with regard to this urchin Tom, now that he is on the mend, is clean, and about to be re-clothed?"

"I do not know what to do. His father has not been near the place to inquire after or see him since he has been ill. I dare not send him back to the horrible den whence I plucked him. The doing so would spoil all the good effected. He will need care for some time and plenty of good food to nourish him, neither of which would he get there. Oh, the horrors of the place where his father lives! No child can grow up in it and become other than a moral cripple. It is a corner heaped up with social wreckage."

"I am able to assist you," said Hector. "I have a caretaker with his wife at Rosewood. He is a worthy man, who attends to the garden, and she is a motherly body, who keeps the house ventilated and dry. I will send the little imp to them; there he will enjoy pure air, receive good nourishment, and be given healthy occupation. In time we shall be able to judge where to put him and on what to employ him permanently."

"Thank you, Hector. You have lifted a burden from my mind. I was at a loss what to do with the boy, how to open to the little waif some future. Already, although you have not been here for long, you have supplied the means of saving a little life and soul from destruction."

"That is settled, then," said Hector. "Now let us clear away ambiguities, and arrange the terms of our convention. When are we to be married?"

"Not till next Easter twelvemonth. I want you to become thoroughly acquainted with this potter people. I want you to become interested in them. Then we shall be united in a common purpose of life."

"Very well&mdash;and if, looking so far ahead, I may ask it, where are we to be married ?"

"Of course, it can be nowhere but here."

"And do you mean, Joan, that till we are old and grey-headed we are to spend every year half here and half at Pendabury?"

"No, Hector, I am not so inconsiderate and extravagant as that. I bound you to five years only. In that period you and I will have had time to become intimate with the needs, prejudices, deficiencies, as well as with the sterling good qualities of the operative class, so as to be able to take such practical steps as lie within our scope to remedy the former, and I trust we shall be able to interest and engage others in the same work. What is wanted is to set the ball rolling, not to kick it into the goal."

"But assuredly, what with primary and technical schools, the new generation will become cultivated and more intelligent than the old."

"That may be. The schools will sharpen the brain and give edge to the wit, but will never supply that which underlies all greatness, and that is&mdash;principle. That they make no attempt to inculcate, nor again that which grows out of and becomes a necessary adjunct to principle &mdash; self-control. What would you think of whetting knives and putting them in the hands of lunatics? Let knives be made keen by all means, but make sure that those to whom they are given have sound heads. Our schools are engaged in creating intellectual monsters, as did Frankenstein&mdash;very clever, very cunning, entirely selfish, and absolutely unscrupulous. To other quarters the mass of our population must look to acquire principle and the power of self-government. Religion might be assumed to furnish this need, but the popular religion is mere emotionalism, stimulated by sensationalism, and is a feeling and not a rule of life. I look to the upper classes, in whom self-rule has become a habit, through centuries of training, to bring this quality among the masses by their example. Let members of the classes enter into and be among the masses, and infuse into them this element of greatness. You do not leaven a lump by putting the yeast on the surface, but by working it into the body. That is why I do not consider that a great work will be wrought by parson and Sisters and all the ecclesiastical organisations employed for a good purpose. But I do think that a truly glorious result will be attained by the social fusion that I advocate, for by that means you bring the very highest acquisition of Christian civilisation into the very heart of the vast mass of our population, to permeate it in every part. But to come back to ourselves. I do not desire you to be bound down for more than five years to the bench of an artisan. By that time you will have become so thoroughly acquainted with the English working man, that you can leave your stool to another and a younger, and&mdash;who can say?&mdash;aim at a seat in the House of Commons, where you can enforce by word and vote what you have learned by experience to be imperative. Is it not strange, Hector, that our young people are put through a course of mathematics, classics, natural science, foreign languages, and then are sent out into the world without any knowledge of mankind, which is the supreme study of all? We encourage them to take up the pursuit of botany, or chemistry, or geology; we bid them collect fossils, mosses, moths&mdash;go down even to postage-stamps; we are glad to find them engaged in observing the habits of the earthworm, and studying the life evolution of the daddy-longlegs, but never think of urging them to descend among our people and probe the deep mysteries of their existence. I would have every young fellow, before he takes up a career or profession, as soldier, priest, or politician, pass a twelvemonth at least in a dockyard, a factory, or a mine, as an ordinary working hand. Then he would be qualified for life in a way incalculably better than if he can write Greek verses and do quadratic equations. Do not for a moment suppose that the scheme I suggest will be all and only for the benefit of the masses. It will be of the mightiest avail to the members of the classes also, who have the hardihood to follow my proposal."

"That is all very well in theory, Joan, but would not this result in some deterioration&mdash;the acquisition of bad habits and low tastes?"

"There always will be certain men who, like Falstaff, have a certain alacrity in sinking, men who are morally limp, and cannot stand unless supported,&mdash;but such will be of no use anywhere, and such are precisely the men who will stand shivering on the brink and never muster courage for the plunge. To one who breaks down there will be twenty who will be braced up."

"It seems to me to be very risky for girls of good breeding and education to step into such association as is inevitable in a factory or a potbank."

"Of course there is risk. All could not stand it. That has been the case with Sibyll. But some can, and will gain immeasurably by so doing, and will give as well as gain. But I dispute the suggestion made, that they will be treated with anything but respect. An Englishman, to whatever class he belongs, respects a woman, if she respects herself. I have not met with any insolence, only with courtesy and kindliness. No girl need fear association with the English artisan, if she hold herself erect. However, it is rather to you young men that I look with great hopes. The universities have their missions among costermongers and dockers&mdash;to which they send down their enthusiastic best blood&mdash;but these are religious and ecclesiastical. I want social missionaries, such as may become leaders with an immense army behind them. I have no faith whatever in your Radical and Socialistic demagogues, but I have immense confidence in the cream and flower of our young men of culture, if they will buckle to their work, and get into touch with the people. It seems to me, Hector, that a new and grinding tyranny has to be fought; it is no longer royal despotism, nor feudalism, but it is the pressure of modern civilisation. That which the public demands is cheap fabrics and cheap ware of every kind; and cheap fabrication means the oppression of the worker. I presume that one of the most deadly of all pursuits is that of the rubber collector in the swamps of South America. No man engaged in that lives six years, and his life as a collector is one of solitude, famine, and torture from mosquitoes. Who drive them into those malarial marshes? Who use up lives at such a rate? The general public, that will have its india-rubber cycle tyres. At home, what is perhaps the most dreadful and destructive to life of all trades is the making of bleaching-powder; yet the wife and daughter of the man who sacrifices his life in the manufacture would scorn to use calico that had not been dressed with this destructive powder. What disease is more horrible than that produced by the manufacture of lucifer matches? yet the mother of the girl whose jaw is corroded will squander a box of matches with total disregard. The public is the Juggernaut of to-day, under whose wheels thousands of lives are ground into the earth, or, if the lives are spared, all beauty and joy of life are crushed out of them. Now what the workers need are men who can see both sides of every question, who can stand high enough to command the entire horizon, and who can use their cultivated energies and their skilled abilities to defend the workers against the tyranny of modern civilisation, and to force home on the mind of the general public the necessity for considering the artisan who ministers to its well-being. The public is tender-hearted and is easily roused, but it is nevertheless selfish and exacting, and it is easily lulled back into indifference. We want the men to search and find out what are the hardships, and then to seek the remedies, which will not be worse than the ills they cure. Then we want them to insist on reforms that are sound and justifiable, insist in season and out of season, and insist that the artisan shall not be brutalised by the trade he practises to satisfy the hunger of the general public for the cheap and nasty."

"You are on fire, Joan."

"You will be when you have been for a few months in the same situation as myself, and surrounded by the same society. I have come so to identify myself with the people, so to love them, that I am ready to sacrifice you unless you are fired with the same enthusiasm as myself."

"Joan, I have no thought but of endeavouring, in my poor way and to the best with my poor abilities, to do what I can in the cause."

"God bless you for saying that!" exclaimed she, her eyes filling as she stretched out her hand across the table to him.

"And now, Joan," said he, taking her hand and pressing his lips to it, "one thing more: I don't like the looks of your girl Cissie."

"No&mdash;she is poisoned with the lead."

"Nor of that other, who, for all that she is bleached and crippled, has a mind full of force."

"What&mdash;Polly, my pal?"

"Yes, she does not look healthy."

"She also has been poisoned."

"And that pallid woman with the short breath and hacking cough?"

"She has the potters' rot."

"It seems to me that they need fresh air, abundance of milk, and complete change of surroundings."

"There is no doubt about that&mdash;and these are but a few out of many."

"Then, Joan, why not send them to Rosewood Cottage?"

"Do you mean it?"

"I do. It is entirely at your service as a sanitarium. The only difficulty I can see is&mdash;who will look after them and see that they are properly attended to, according to their several needs?"

"Julie."

"Will she come?"

"I am certain that she will. Oh, Hector, you have touched only the fringe of all this misery, and already you have opened the way to effecting incalculable good. Pass me my writing-book&mdash;I will write at once to Julie. I have her promise."

Then she took pen and paper, and wrote&mdash;

"Come over and help us!"