The Revolution in Tanner's Lane Part 13

Poor dear man!--there, there--of course it's hard to bear--poor dear man!"--and the good creature put her hand affectionately on his shoulder.

"I don't know how it is," she continued, wiping her eyes with her ap.r.o.n, "I can't a-bear to see a man cry. It always upsets me. My husband ain't done it above once or twice in his life, and, Lord, I'd sooner a cried myself all night long. Good-bye, my dear, good-bye, good-bye; G.o.d bless you! It will all come right."

In another minute Zachariah was out of doors. It was dark, and getting late. The cold air revived him but he could not for some time come to any determination as to what he ought to do next. He was not well acquainted with the country round Manchester, and he could not decide to what point of the compa.s.s it would be safest to bend his steps. At last he remembered that at any rate he must escape from the town boundaries, and get a night's lodging somewhere outside them. With the morning some light would possibly dawn upon him.

Pauline's warning was well-timed, for the constables made a descent upon Caillaud's lodgings as soon as they got him into jail, and thence proceeded to Coleman's. They insisted on a search, and Mrs.

Carter gave them a bit of her mind, for they went into every room of the house, and even into Mrs. Coleman's bedroom.

"I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Nadin," she said, turning towards the notorious chief constable, "if G.o.d A'mighty had to settle who was to be hung in Manchester, it wouldn't be any of them poor Blanketeers.

Wouldn't you like to strip the clothes off the bed? That would be just in your line."

"Hold your d.a.m.ned tongue!" quoth Mr. Nadin; but, nevertheless, seeing his men grinning and a little ashamed of themselves, he ordered them back.

Meanwhile Zachariah pursued his way north-westward unchallenged, and at last came to a roadside inn, which he thought looked safe. He walked in, and found half a dozen decent-looking men sitting round a fire and smoking. One of them was a parson, and another was one of the parish overseers. It was about half-past ten, and they were not merry, but a trifle boozy and stupid. Zachariah called for a pint of beer and some bread and cheese, and asked if he could have a bed.

The man who served him didn't know; but would go and see. Presently the overseer was beckoned out of the room, and the man came back again and informed Zachariah that there was no bed for him, and that he had better make haste with his supper, as the house would close at eleven. In a minute or two the door opened again, and a poor, emaciated weaver entered and asked the overseer for some help. His wife, he said, was down with the fever; he had no work; he had had no victuals all day, and he and his family were starving. He was evidently known to the company.

"Ah," said the overseer, "no work, and the fever and starving; that's what they always say. I'll bet a sovereign you've been after them Blanketeers."

"It's a judgment on you," observed the parson. "You and your like go setting cla.s.s against cla.s.s; you never come near the church, and then you wonder G.o.d Almighty punishes you."

"You can come on your knees to us when it suits you, and you'd burn my rick to-morrow," said a third.

"There's a lot of fever amongst 'em down my way," said another, whose voice was rather thick, "and a d.a.m.ned lot of expense they are, too, for physic and funerals. It's my belief that they catch it out of spite."

"Aren't you going to give me nothing?" said the man. "There isn't a mouthful of food in the place, and the wife may be dead before the morning."

"Well, what do you say, parson?" said the overseer.

"I say we've got quite enough to do to help those who deserve help,"

he replied, "and that it's flying in the face of Providence to interfere with its judgment." With that he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and took a great gulp of his brandy-and-water.

There was an echo of a.s.sent.

"G.o.d have mercy on me!" said the man, as he sat down on the form by the table. Zachariah touched him gently, and pushed the plate and jug to him. He looked at Zachariah, and without saying a word, devoured it greedily. He just had time to finish, for the landlord, entering the room, roughly ordered them to turn out. Out they went accordingly.

"The Lord in heaven curse them!" exclaimed Zachariah's companion when they were in the road. "I could have ripped 'em up, every one of 'em. My wife is in bed with her wits a-wandering, and there a'nt a lump of coal, nor a crumb of bread, nor a farthing in the house."

"Hush, my friend, cursing is of no use."

"Ah! it's all very well to talk; you've got money maybe."

"Not much. I too have no work, no lodging, and I'm driven away from home. Here's half of what's left."

"What a sinner I am!" said the other. "You wouldn't think it, to hear me go on as I did, but I am a Methodist. The last two or three days, though, I've been like a raving madman. That's the worst of it. Starvation has brought the devil into me. I'm not a-going to take all that though, master; I'll take some of it; and if ever I prayed to the Throne of Grace in my life, I'll pray for you. Who are you? Where are you going?"

Zachariah felt that he could safely trust him, and told him what had happened.

"I haven't got a bit of straw myself on which to put you; but you come along with me."

They walked together for about half a mile, till they came to a barn.

There was a haystack close by, and they dragged some of the dry hay into it.

"You'd better be away from these parts afore it's light, and, if you take my advice, Liverpool is the best place for you."

He was right. Liverpool was a large town, and, what was of more consequence, it was not so revolutionary as Manchester, and the search there for the suspected was not so strict. The road was explained, so far as Zachariah's friend knew it, and they parted.

Zachariah slept but little, and at four o'clock, with a bright moon, he started. He met with no particular adventure, and in the evening found himself once more in a wilderness of strange streets, with no outlook, face to face with the Red Sea. Happy is the man who, if he is to have an experience of this kind, is trained to it when young, and is not suddenly brought to it after a life of security.

Zachariah, although he was desponding, could now say he had been in the same straits before, and had survived. That is the consolation of all consolations to us. We have actually touched and handled the skeleton, and after all we have not been struck dead. {132}

"O socii, neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum, O pa.s.si graviora, dabit Deus his quoque finem.

Vos et Scyllaeam rabiem penitusque sonantes Accestis scopulos; vos et Cyclopia saxa Experti. Revocate animos, moestumque timorem Mitt.i.te; forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit."

He wandered down to the water and saw a ship cleared for some port across the Atlantic. A longing seized him to go with her. Over the sea,--he thought there he would be at rest. So we all think, and as we watch the vessels dropping below the horizon in the sunset cloud, we imagine them bound with a happy crew to islands of the blest, the truth being that the cloud is a storm, and the destined port is as commonplace and full of misery as the one they have left. Zachariah, however, did not suffer himself to dream. He went diligently and systematically to work; but this time all his efforts were fruitless.

He called on every printing-office he could find, and there was not one which wanted a hand, or saw any prospect of wanting one. He thought of trying the river-side; but he stood no chance there, as he had never been accustomed to carry heavy weights. His money was running short, and at last, when evening came on the third day, and he was faint with fatigue, his heart sank. He was ill, too, and sickness began to cloud his brain. As the power of internal resistance diminishes, the circ.u.mstance of the external world presses on us like the air upon an exhausted gla.s.s ball, and finally crushes us. It saddened him, too, to think, as it has saddened thousands before him, that the fight which he fought, and the death which, perhaps, was in front of him, were so mean. Ophelia dies; Juliet dies, and we fancy that their fate, although terrible, is more enviable than that of a pauper who drops undramatically on London stones. He came to his lodging at the close of the third day, wet, tired, hungry, and with a headache. There was n.o.body to suggest anything to him or offer him anything. He went to bed, and a thousand images, uncontrolled, rushed backwards and forwards before him. He became excited, so that he could not rest, and after walking about his room till nearly daylight, turned into bed again. When morning had fairly arrived he tried to rise, but he was beaten. He lay still till about eleven, and then the woman who kept the lodging- house appeared and asked him if he was going to stay all day where he was. He told her he was very bad; but she went away without a word, and he saw nothing more of her. Towards night he became worse and finally delirious.

CHAPTER XIV--THE SCHOOL OF ADVERSITY THE SIXTH FORM THEREOF

When Zachariah came to himself he was in a large, long, whitewashed room, with twenty beds or more in it. A woman in a greyish check dress was standing near him.

"Where am I?" he said.

"Where are yer?" she said; "why, in the workus infirmary, to be sure, with me a-looking after yer. Where would yer be?"

Zachariah relapsed and was still. The next time he opened his eyes the woman had left him. It was true he was in the workhouse, and a workhouse then was not what it is now. Who can possibly describe what it was? Who can possibly convey to anybody who has not known what it was by actual imprisonment in it any adequate sense of its gloom; of the utter, callous, brutal indifference of the so-called nurses; of the neglect of the poor patients by those who were paid to attend to them; of the absence of even common decency; of the desperate persistent attempts made by everybody concerned to impress upon the wretched mortals who were brought there that they were chargeable to the parish and put there for form's sake, prior to being shovelled into a hole in the adjoining churchyard? The infirmary nurses were taken from the other side of the building-- sometimes for very strange reasons. The master appointed them, and was not bound to account to anybody for his preferences. One woman had given him much trouble. She was a stout, lazy brute, who had no business in the House, and who went in and out just as she liked.

One day something displeased her, and she attacked him with such fury and suddenness that he would have been a dead man in a few minutes if she had not been pulled off. But he dared not report her. She knew too much about him, and she was moved a few days afterwards to look after the sick. She it was who spoke to Zachariah. She, however, was not by any means the worst. Worse than her were the old, degraded, sodden, gin-drinking hags, who had all their lives breathed pauper air and pauper contamination; women with not one single vestige of their Maker's hand left upon them, and incapable, even under the greatest provocation, of any human emotion; who would see a dying mother call upon Christ, or cry for her husband and children, and would swear at her and try to smother her into silence. As for the doctor, he was hired at the lowest possible rate, and was allowed a certain sum for drugs. It was utterly insufficient to provide anything except the very commonest physic; and what could he do in the midst of such a system, even if he had been inclined to do anything? He accordingly did next to nothing; walked through the wards, and left his patients pretty much to Providence. They were robbed even of their food. They were not much to be pitied for being robbed of the stimulants, for every drop, including the "port wine,"

was obtained by the directors from those of their number or from their friends who were in the trade, and it was mostly poisonous.

Death is always terrible--terrible on the battlefield; terrible in a sinking ship; terrible to the exile--but the present writer, who has seen Death in the "House" of years gone by, cannot imagine that he can ever be so distinctively the King of Terrors as he was there.

The thought that thousands and thousands of human beings, some of them tender-hearted, have had to face him there is more horrifying than the thought of French soldiers freezing in their blood on the Borodino, or of Inquisitional tortures. It is one of those thoughts which ought not to be thought--a thought to be suppressed, for it leads to atheism, or even something worse than mere denial of a G.o.d.

Thank Heaven that the present generation of the poor has been relieved at least of one argument in favour of the creed that the world is governed by the Devil! Thank Heaven that the modern hospital, with its sisters gently nurtured, devoted to their duty with that pious earnestness which is a true religion, has supplied some evidence of a Theocracy.

Zachariah looked round again. There was an old male attendant near him. He had on a brown rough coat with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, and shoes which were much too big for him. They were supplied in sizes, and never fitted. The old men always took those that were too large.

They had as their place of exercise a paved courtyard surrounded by high brick walls, and they all collected on the sunny side, and walked up and down there, making a clapping noise with their feet as the shoes slipped off their heels. This sound was characteristic of the whole building. It was to be heard everywhere.

"You've been very bad," said the old man, "but you'll get better now; it a'nt many as get better here."

He was a poor-looking, half-fed creature, with a cadaverous face. He had the special, workhouse, bloodless aspect--just as if he had lived on nothing stronger than gruel and had never smelt fresh air. The air, by the way, of those wards was something peculiar. It had no distinctive odour--that is to say, no odour which was specially this or that; but it had one that bore the same relation to ordinary odours which well-ground London mud bears to ordinary colours. The old man's face, too, had nothing distinctive in it. The only thing certainly predicable of him was, that nothing could be predicated of him. He was neither selfish nor generous; neither a liar nor truthful; neither believed anything, nor disbelieved anything; was neither good nor bad; had no hope hereafter, nor any doubt.

"Who are you?" said Zachariah.

"Well, that ain't easy to say. I does odd jobs here as the nurses don't do, and I gets a little extra ration."

"How long have I been here?"