A Life's Secret Part 19

Mr. Hunter retained the yard where the business was at present carried on. Mr. Henry Hunter found other premises to suit him; not far off; a little more to the west. Considerably surprised were Mrs. Hunter and Mrs. Henry Hunter; but the same plausible excuse was given to them; and they were left in ignorance of the true cause.

'Will you remain with me?' pointedly asked Mr. Hunter of Austin Clay. 'I particularly wish it.'

'As you and Mr. Henry may decide, sir,' was the reply given. 'It is not for me to choose.'

'We could both do with you, I believe. I had better talk it over with him.'

'That will be the best plan,' sir.

'What do you part for?' abruptly inquired Dr. Bevary one day of the two brothers, coming into the counting-house and catching them together.

Mr. Henry raised his eyebrows. Mr. Hunter spoke volubly.

'The business is getting too large. It will be better divided.'

'Moonshine!' cried the doctor, quietly. 'That's what you have been cramming your wives with; it won't do for me. When a concern gets unwieldy, a man takes a partner to help him on with it; _you_ are separating. There's many a firm larger than yours. Do you remember the proverb of the bundle of sticks?'

But neither Dr. Bevary nor anybody else got at a better reason than that for the measure. The dissolution of partnership took place; it was duly gazetted, and the old firm became two. Austin remained with Mr. Hunter, and he was the only living being who gave a guess, or who could give a guess, at the real cause of separation--the drawing out of that five thousand pounds.

And yet--it was not the drawing out of that first five thousand pounds, that finally decided Mr. Henry Hunter to enforce the step, so much as the thought that other thousands might perhaps be following it. He could not divest his mind of the fear.

PART THE SECOND.

CHAPTER I.

A MEETING OF THE WORKMEN.

For several years after the separation of Hunter and Hunter, things went on smoothly; at least there was no event sufficiently marked that we need linger to trace it. Each had a flourishing business, though Mr.

Hunter had some difficulty in staving off embarra.s.sment in the financial department: a fact which was well known to Austin Clay, who was now confidential manager--head of all, under Mr. Hunter.

He, Austin Clay, was getting towards thirty years of age. He enjoyed a handsome salary, and was putting by money yearly. He still remained at Peter Quale's, though his position would have warranted a style of living far superior. Not that it could have brought him more respect: of that he enjoyed a full share, both from master and men. Clever, energetic, firm, and friendly, he was thoroughly fitted for his post--was liked and esteemed. But for him, Mr. Hunter's business might not have been what it was, and Mr. Hunter knew it. _He_ was a broken-spirited man, little capable now of devoting energy to anything.

The years, in their progress, had terribly altered James Hunter.

A hot evening in Daffodil's Delight; and Daffodil's Delight was making it a busy one. Uninterrupted prosperity is sometimes nearly allied to danger; or, rather, danger may grow out of it. Prosperity begets independence, and independence often begets a.s.sumption--very often, a selfish, wrong view of surrounding things. If any workmen had enjoyed of late years (it may be said) unlimited prosperity, they were those connected with the building trade. Therefore, being so flourishing, it struck some of their body, who in a degree gave laws to the rest, that the best thing they could do was to make themselves more flourishing still. As a preliminary, they began to agitate for an increase of wages: this was to be accomplished by reducing the hours of labour, the proposition being to work nine hours per day instead of ten. They said nothing about relinquishing the wages of the extra hour: they would be paid for ten hours and work nine. The proposition was first put by the men of a leading metropolitan firm to their princ.i.p.als, and, failing to obtain it, they threatened to strike. This it was that was just now agitating Daffodil's Delight.

In the front room of one of the houses that ab.u.t.ted nearly on the gutter, and to which you must ascend by steps, there might be read in the window, inscribed on a piece of paper, the following notice: 'The Misses Dunn's, Milliner and Dressmakers. Ladies own materiels made up.'

The composition of the _affiche_ was that of the two Miss Dunns jointly, who prided themselves upon being elegant scholars. A twelvemonth's apprenticeship had initiated them into the mysteries of dressmaking; millinery had come to them, as Mark Tapley would say, spontaneous, or by dint of practice. They had set up for themselves in their father's house, and could boast of a fair share of the patronage of Daffodil's Delight. Showy damsels were they, with good-humoured, turned-up noses, and light hair; much given to gadding and gossiping, and fonder of dressing themselves than of getting home the dresses of their customers.

On the above evening, they sat in their room, an upper one, st.i.tching away. A gown was in progress for Mrs. Quale, who often boasted that she could do any work in the world, save make her own gowns. It had been in progress for two weeks, and that lady had at length come up in a temper, as Miss Jemima Dunn expressed it, and had demanded it to be returned, done or undone. They, with much deprecation, protested it should be home the first thing in the morning, and went to work. Four or five visitors, girls of their own age, were performing the part of lookers-on, and much laughter prevailed.

'I say,' cried out Martha White--a pleasant-looking girl, who had perched herself aloft on the edge of a piece of furniture, which appeared to be a low chest of drawers by day, and turn itself into a bed at night--'Mary Baxendale was crying yesterday, because of the strike; saying, it would be bad for all of us, if it came. Ain't she a soft?'

'Baxendale's again it, too,' exclaimed Miss Ryan, Pat Ryan's eldest trouble. 'Father says he don't think Baxendale 'll go in for it all.'

'Mary Baxendale's just one of them timid things as is afraid of their own shadders,' cried Mary Ann Dunn. 'If she saw a cow a-coming at the other end of the street, she'd turn tail and run. Jemimer, whatever are you at? The sleeves is to be in plaits, not gathers.'

'She do look ill, though, does Mary Baxendale,' said Jemima, after some attention to the sleeve in hand. 'It's my belief she'll never live to see Christmas; she's going the way her mother went. Won't it be prime when the men get ten hours' pay for nine hours' work? I shall think about getting married then.'

'You must find somebody to have you first,' quoth Grace Darby. 'You have not got a sweetheart yet.'

Miss Jemima tossed her head. 'I needn't to wait long for that. The chaps be as plentiful as sprats in winter. All you have got to do is to pick and choose.'

'What's that?' interrupted Mrs. Dunn, darting into the room, with her sharp tongue and her dirty fine cap. 'What's that as you're talking about, miss?'

'We are a-talking of the strike,' responded Jemima, with a covert glance to the rest. 'Martha White and Judy Ryan says the Baxendales won't go in for it.'

'Not go in for it? What idiots they must be!' returned Mrs. Dunn, the attractive subject completely diverting her attention from Miss Jemima and her words. 'Ain't nine hours a-day enough for the men to be at work?

I can tell the Baxendales what--when we have got the nine hours all straight and sure, we shall next demand eight. 'Taint free-born Englishers as is going to be put upon. It'll be glorious times, girls, won't it? We shall get a taste o' fowls and salmon, may be, for dinner then!'

'My father says he does not think the masters will come-to, if the men do strike,' observed Grace Darby.

'Of course they won't--till they are forced,' retorted Mrs. Dunn, in a spirit of satire. 'But that's just what they are a-going to be. Don't you be a fool, Grace Darby!'

Lotty Cheek rushed in, a girl with a tongue almost as voluble as Mrs.

Dunn's, and rough hair, the colour of a tow-rope. 'What d'ye think?'

cried she, breathlessly. 'There's a-going to be a meeting of the men to-night in the big room of the Bricklayers' Arms. They are a-filing in now. I think it must be about the strike.'

'D'ye suppose it would be about anything else?' retorted Mrs. Dunn. 'I'd like to be one of 'em! I'd hold out for the day's work of eight hours, instead of nine, I would. So 'ud they, if they was men.'

Mrs. Dunn's speech was concluded to an empty room. All the girls had flown down into the street, leaving the parts of Mrs. Quale's gown in closer contact with the dusty floor than was altogether to their benefit.

The agitation in the trade had hitherto been chiefly smouldering in an under-current: now, it was rising to the surface. Lotty Cheek's inference was right; the meeting of this evening had reference to the strike. It had been hastily arranged in the day; was quite an informal sort of affair, and confined to the operatives of Mr. Hunter.

Not in a workman's jacket, but in a brown coat dangling to his heels, with a slit down the back and ventilating holes for the elbows, first entered he who had been chiefly instrumental in calling the meeting. It was Mr. Samuel Shuck; better known, you may remember, as Slippery Sam.

Somehow, Sam and prosperity could not contrive to pull together in the same boat. He was one of those who like to live on the fat of the land, but are too lazy to work for their share of it. And how Sam had contrived to exist until now, and keep himself and his large family out of the workhouse, was a marvel to all. In his fits of repentance, he would manage to get in again at one or other of the yards of the Messrs.

Hunter; but they were growing tired of him.

The room at the Bricklayers' Arms was tolerably commodious, and Sam took up a conspicuous position in it.

'Well,' began Sam, when the company had a.s.sembled, and were furnished with pipes and pewter pots, 'you have heard that that firm won't accept the reduction in the hours of labour, so the men have determined on a strike. Now, I have got a question to put to you. Is there most power in one man, or in a few dozens of men?'

Some laughed, and said, 'In the dozens.'

'Very good,' glibly went on Sam, whose tongue was smoother than oil, and who was gifted with a sort of oratory and some learning when he chose to put it out. 'Then, the measure I wish to urge upon you is, make common cause with those men; we are not all obliged to strike at the same time; it will be better not; but by degrees. Let every firm in London strike, each at its appointed time,' he continued, raising his voice to vehemence. 'We must stand up for ourselves; for our rights; for our wives and children. By making common cause together, we shall bowl out the masters, and bring them to terms.'

'Hooroar!' put in Pat Ryan.

'Hooroar!' echoed a few more.

An aged man, Abel White's father, usually called old White, who was past work, and had a seat at his son's chimney corner, leaned forward and spoke, his voice tremulous, but distinct. 'Samuel Shuck, did you ever know strikes do any good, either to the men or the masters? Friends,' he added, turning his venerable head around, 'I am in my eightieth year: and I picked up some experience while them eighty years was pa.s.sing.

Strikes have ruined some masters, in means; but they have ruined men wholesale, in means, in body, and in soul.'