Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet Part 48

I could not finish the sentence.

"You wrote? He has warned us, but he never mentioned your name. He spoke of his knowledge as having been picked up by himself at personal risk to his clerical character."

"The risk, I presume, of being known to have actually received a letter from a Chartist; but I wrote--on my honour I wrote--a week ago; and received no word of answer!"

"Is this true?" she asked.

"A man is not likely to deal in useless falsehoods, who knows not whether he shall live to see the set of sun!"

"Then you are implicated in this expected insurrection?"

"I am implicated," I answered, "with the people; what they do I shall do.

Those who once called themselves the patrons of the tailor-poet, left the mistaken enthusiast to languish for three years in prison, without a sign, a hint of mercy, pity, remembrance. Society has cast me off; and, in casting me off, it has sent me off to my own people, where I should have stayed from the beginning. Now I am at my post, because I am among my cla.s.s. If they triumph peacefully, I triumph with them. If they need blood to gain their rights, be it so. Let the blood be upon the head of those who refuse, not those who demand. At least, I shall be with my own people. And if I die, what better thing on earth can happen to me?"

"But the law?" she said.

"Do not talk to me of law! I know it too well in practice to be moved by any theories about it. Laws are no law, but tyranny, when the few make them, in order to oppress the many by them."

"Oh!" she said, in a voice of pa.s.sionate earnestness, which I had never heard from her before, "stop--for G.o.d's sake, stop! You know not what you are saying--what you are doing. Oh! that I had met you before--that I had had more time to speak to poor Mackaye! Oh! wait, wait--there is a deliverance for you! but never in this path--never. And just while I, and n.o.bler far than I, are longing and struggling to find the means of telling you your deliverance, you, in the madness of your haste, are making it impossible!"

There was a wild sincerity in her words--an almost imploring tenderness in her tone.

"So young!" said she; "so young to be lost thus!"

I was intensely moved. I felt, I knew, that she had a message for me. I felt that hers was the only intellect in the world to which I would have submitted mine; and, for one moment, all the angel and all the devil in me wrestled for the mastery. If I could but have trusted her one moment....

No! all the pride, the spite, the suspicion, the prejudice of years, rolled back upon me. "An aristocrat! and she, too, the one who has kept me from Lillian!" And in my bitterness, not daring to speak the real thought within me, I answered with a flippant sneer--

"Yes, madam! like Cordelia, so young, yet so untender!--Thanks to the mercies of the upper cla.s.ses!"

Did she turn away in indignation? No, by Heaven! there was nothing upon her face but the intensest yearning pity. If she had spoken again she would have conquered; but before those perfect lips could open, the thought of thoughts flashed across me.

"Tell me one thing! Is my cousin George to be married to ----" and I stopped.

"He is."

"And yet," I said, "you wish to turn me back from dying on a barricade!"

And without waiting for a reply, I hurried down the street in all the fury of despair.

I have promised to say little about the Tenth of April, for indeed I have no heart to do so. Every one of Mackaye's predictions came true. We had arrayed against us, by our own folly, the very physical force to which we had appealed. The dread of general plunder and outrage by the savages of London, the national hatred of that French and Irish interference of which we had boasted, armed against us thousands of special constables, who had in the abstract little or no objection to our political opinions. The practical common sense of England, whatever discontent it might feel with the existing system, refused to let it be hurled rudely down, on the mere chance of building up on its ruins something as yet untried, and even undefined. Above all, the people would not rise. Whatever sympathy they had with us, they did not care to show it. And then futility after futility exposed itself. The meeting which was to have been counted by hundreds of thousands, numbered hardly its tens of thousands; and of them a frightful proportion were of those very rascal cla.s.ses, against whom we ourselves had offered to be sworn in as special constables. O'Connor's courage failed him after all. He contrived to be called away, at the critical moment, by some problematical superintendent of police. Poor Cuffy, the honestest, if not the wisest, speaker there, leapt off the waggon, exclaiming that we were all "humbugged and betrayed"; and the meeting broke up pitiably piecemeal, drenched and cowed, body and soul, by pouring rain on its way home--for the very heavens mercifully helped to quench our folly--while the monster-pet.i.tion crawled ludicrously away in a hack cab, to be dragged to the floor of the House of Commons amid roars of laughter--"inextinguishable laughter," as of Tennyson's Epicurean G.o.ds--

Careless of mankind.

For they lie beside their nectar, and their bolts are hurled Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world.

There they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, _and praying hands.

But they smile, they find a music, centred in a doleful song, Steaming up, a lamentation, and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong_ Chanted by an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, Sow the seed and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing little yearly dues of wheat, and wine, and oil; Till they perish, and they suffer--some, 'tis whispered, down in h.e.l.l Suffer endless anguish!--

Truly--truly, great poets' words are vaster than the singers themselves suppose!

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

THE LOWEST DEEP.

Sullen, disappointed, desperate, I strode along the streets that evening, careless whither I went. The People's Cause was lost--the Charter a laughing-stock. That the party which monopolizes wealth, rank, and, as it is fancied, education and intelligence, should have been driven, degraded, to appeal to brute force for self-defence--that thought gave me a savage joy; but that it should have conquered by that last, lowest resource!--That the few should be still stronger than the many, or the many still too cold-hearted and coward to face the few--that sickened me. I hated the well-born young special constables whom I pa.s.sed, because they would have fought. I hated the gent and shop-keeper special constables, because they would have run away. I hated my own party, because they had gone too far--because they had not gone far enough. I hated myself, because I had not produced some marvellous effect--though what that was to have been I could not tell--and hated myself all the more for that ignorance.

A group of effeminate shop-keepers pa.s.sed me, shouting, "G.o.d save the Queen!" "Hypocrites!" I cried in my heart--"they mean 'G.o.d save our shops!'

Liars! They keep up willingly the useful calumny, that their slaves and victims are disloyal as well as miserable!"

I was utterly abased--no, not utterly; for my self-contempt still vented itself--not in forgiveness, but in universal hatred and defiance. Suddenly I perceived my cousin, laughing and jesting with a party of fashionable young specials: I shrank from him; and yet, I know not why, drew as near him as I could, un.o.bserved--near enough to catch the words.

"Upon my honour, Locke, I believe you are a Chartist yourself at heart."

"At least I am no Communist," said he, in a significant tone. "There is one little bit of real property which I have no intention of sharing with my neighbours."

"What, the little beauty somewhere near Cavendish Square?"

"That's my business."

"Whereby you mean that you are on your way to her now? Well, I am invited to the wedding, remember."

He pushed on laughingly, without answering. I followed him fast--"near Cavendish Square!"--the very part of the town where Lillian lived! I had had, as yet, a horror of going near it; but now an intolerable suspicion scourged me forward, and I dogged his steps, hiding behind pillars, and at the corners of streets, and then running on, till I got sight of him again.

He went through Cavendish Square, up Harley Street--was it possible? I gnashed my teeth at the thought. But it must be so. He stopped at the dean's house, knocked, and entered without parley.

In a minute I was breathless on the door-step, and knocked. I had no plan, no object, except the wild wish to see my own despair. I never thought of the chances of being recognized by the servants, or of anything else, except of Lillian by my cousin's side.

The footman came out smiling, "What did I want?"

"I--I--Mr. Locke."

"Well you needn't be in such a hurry!" (with a significant grin). "Mr.

Locke's likely to be busy for a few minutes yet, I expect."

Evidently the man did not know me.

"Tell him that--that a person wishes to speak to him on particular business." Though I had no more notion what that business was than the man himself.

"Sit down in the hall."

And I heard the fellow, a moment afterwards, gossiping and laughing with the maids below about the "young couple."

To sit down was impossible; my only thought was--where was Lillian?

Voices in an adjoining room caught my ear. His! yes--and hers too--soft and low. What devil prompted me to turn eavesdropper? to run headlong into temptation? I was close to the dining-room door, but they were not there--evidently they were in the back room, which, as I knew, opened into it with folding-doors. I--I must confess all.--Noiselessly, with craft like a madman's, I turned the handle, slipped in as stealthily as a cat--the folding-doors were slightly open. I had a view of all that pa.s.sed within.

A horrible fascination seemed to keep my eyes fixed on them, in spite of myself. Honour, shame, despair, bade me turn away, but in vain.