Johnny Ludlow First Series Part 95

"I don't say they are wrong to try to get more wages if they can; it would be odd if we were to be debarred from bettering ourselves," spoke the Squire. "But to throw up their work whilst they are trying, there's the folly; there's where the shoe must tighten. Let them keep on their work whilst they agitate."

"They'd tell you, I expect, that the masters would be less likely to listen then than they are now."

"Well, they've no right, in common sense, to throw up their wives' and children's living, if they do their own," concluded the Squire.

Cole nodded. "There's some truth in that," he said as he got up to leave. "Any way, things are more gloomy with us than you'd believe, Squire."

You may remember that I told you, when speaking of the Court and my early home, how, when I was a little child of four years old, Hannah my nurse, and Eliza one of her fellow-servants, commented freely in my hearing on my father's second marriage, and shook me well because I was wise enough to understand them. Eliza was then housemaid at the Court; and soon after this she had left it to marry Jacob h.o.a.r. She was a nice sort of young woman (in spite of the shaking), and I kept up a great acquaintance with her, and was free, so to say, of her house in Crabb Lane, running in and out of it at will, when we were at Crabb Cot. A tribe of little h.o.a.rs arrived, one after another. Jacky, the eldest, over ten now, had a place at the works, and earned two shillings a week.

"'Twarn't much," said h.o.a.r the father, "but 'twas bringing his hand in."

d.i.c.k, the second, he who had just had the beating, was nine; two girls came next, and there was a young boy of three.

h.o.a.r earned capital wages--to judge by the comfortable way in which they lived: I should think not less than forty shillings a week. Of course they spent it all, every fraction; as a rule, families of that cla.s.s never put by for a rainy day. They might have done it, I suppose; in those days provisions were nothing like as dear as they are now; the cost of living altogether was less.

Of course the h.o.a.rs had to suffer in common with the rest under the strike. But I did not like to hear of empty cupboards in connection with Eliza; no, nor of her boy's broken arm; and in the evening I went back to Crabb Lane to see her. They lived next door but one to the house that had been Lease the pointsman's; but theirs was far better than that tumble-down hut.

Well, it was a change! The pretty parlour looked half dismantled. Its ornaments and best things had gone, as Miss Timmens expressed it, to adorn the p.a.w.nshop. The carpet also. Against the wall, on a small mattress brought down for him, lay d.i.c.ky and his bruises. Some of the children sat on the floor: Mrs. h.o.a.r was kneeling over d.i.c.ky and bathing his cheek, which was big enough for two, for it had caught the stick kindly.

"Well, Eliza!"

She got up, sank into a chair, flung her ap.r.o.n up to her face, and burst into tears. I suppose it was at the sight of me. Not knowing what to say to that, I pulled the little girls' ears and then sat down on the floor by d.i.c.ky. _He_ began to cry.

"Oh come, d.i.c.k, don't; you'll soon be better. Face smarts, does it?"

"I never thought to meet you like this, Master Johnny," said Eliza, getting up and speaking through her tears. "'Twas hunger made him do it, sir; nothing else. The poor little things be so famished at times it a'most takes the sense out of 'em."

"Yes, I am sure it was nothing else. Look up, d.i.c.k. Don't cry like that." One would have thought the boy was going into hysterics.

I had an apple in my pocket and gave it to him. He kept it in his hand for some time, and then began to eat it ravenously, sobbing now and then. The left arm, the broken one, lay across him, bound up in splints.

"I didn't mean to steal the bun," he whispered, looking up at me through his tears. "I'd ha' give Mrs. Ford the first ha'penny for it that I'd ever got. I was a-hungered, I was. We be always a-hungered now."

"It is hard times with you, I am afraid, Eliza," I said, standing by her.

Opening her mouth to answer, a sob caught her breath, and she put her hand to her side, as if in pain. Her poor face, naturally patient and meek, was worn, and had a bright hectic spot upon it. Eliza used to be very pretty, and was young-looking still, with smooth brown hair, and mild grey eyes: she looked very haggard now and less tidy. But, as to being tidy, how can folk be that, when all their gowns worth a crown are hanging up at the p.a.w.nbroker's?

"It's dreadful times, Master Johnny. It's times that frighten me. Worse than all, I can't see when it is to end, and what the end is to be."

"Don't lose heart. The end will be that the men will go to work again: I dare say soon."

"The Lord send it!" she answered. "That's the best we can hope for, sir; and that'll be hard enough. For we shall have to begin life again, as 'twere; with debts all around us, and our household things and our clothes in pledge."

"You will get them out again then."

"Ay, but how long will it take to earn the money to do it? This strike, as I look upon it, has took at the rate of five years of prosperity out of our lives, Master Johnny."

"The league--or whatever it is--allows you all money to live, does it not?"

"We get some, sir. It's not a great deal. They tell us that there's strikes a-going on in many parts just now; these strikes have to be helped as well as the operatives here; and so it makes the allowance small. We have no means of knowing whether that's true or not, us women, I mean; but I dare say it is."

"And the allowance is not enough to keep you in food?"

"Master Johnny, there's so many other things one wants, beside bare food," she answered, with a sigh. "We must pay our rent, or the landlord would turn us out; we must have a bit o' coal for firing: we must have soap; clothes must be washed, sir, and we must be washed; we must have a candle these dark evenings; shoes must be mended: and there's other trifles, too, that I needn't go into, as well as what h.o.a.r takes for himself----"

"But does he take much?" I interrupted.

"No, sir, he don't: nothing to what some of 'em takes: he has always been a good husband and father. The men, you see, sir, must have a few halfpence in their pockets to pay for their smoke and that, at their meetings in the evening. There's not much left for food when all this comes to be taken out--and we are seven mouths to fill."

No wonder they were hungry!

"Some of the people you've known ought to help you, Eliza. Mrs. Sterling at the old home might: or Mrs. Coney. Do they?"

Eliza h.o.a.r shook her head. "The gentlemen be all again us, sir, and so the ladies dare not do anything. As to Mrs. Sterling--I don't know that she has so much as heard of the strike--all them miles off."

"You mean the gentlemen are against the strike!"

"Yes, sir; dead again it. They say strikes is the worst kind of evil that can set in, both for us and for the country; that it will increase the poor-rates to a height to be afraid of, and in the end drive the work away from the land. Sitting here with my poor children around me at dusk to save candle, I get thinking sometimes that the gentlemen may not be far wrong, Master Johnny."

Seeing the poor quiet faces lifted to me, from which every bit of spirit seemed to have gone, I wished I had my pockets full of buns for them.

But buns were not likely to be there; and of money I had none: buying one of the best editions of Shakespeare had just cleared me out.

"Where's h.o.a.r?" I asked, in leaving.

A hot flush overspread her face. "He has not shown himself here, Master Johnny, since what he did to _him_," was her resentful answer, pointing to d.i.c.k. "Afraid to face me, he is."

"I'd not say too much to him, Eliza. It could not undo what's done, and might only make matters worse. I dare say h.o.a.r is just as much vexed about it as you are."

"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 h.o.a.r. 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 h.o.a.r. 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 embarra.s.sment 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 a.s.sist 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."