THE LITTLE BOY AT REST.
No clue whatever had been obtained to the assailants of John Baxendale.
The chief injury lay in the ribs. Two or three of them were broken: the
head was also much bruised and cut. He had been taken into his own home
and there attended to: it was nearer than the hospital: though the
latter would have been the better place. Time had gone on since, and he
was now out of danger. Never would John Baxendale talk of the harshness
of masters again--though, indeed, he never much talked of it. The moment
Mr. Hunter heard of the assault, he sent round his own surgeon, directed
Austin to give Baxendale a sovereign weekly, and caused strengthening
delicacies to be served from his own house. And that was the same man
whom you heard forbidding his wife and daughter to forward aid to
Darby's starving children. Yes; but Mr. Hunter denied the aid upon
principle: Darby would not work. It pleased him far more to accord it to
Baxendale than to deny it to Darby: the one course gladdened his heart,
the other pained it. The surgeon who attended was a particular friend of
Dr. Bevary's, and the Doctor, in his quaint, easy manner, contrived to
let Baxendale know that there would be no bill for him to pay.
It was late when Austin reached Baxendale's room the evening of Mrs.
Hunter's death. Tidings of which had already gone abroad. 'Oh, sir,'
uttered the invalid, straining his eyes on him from the sick-bed, before
Austin had well entered, 'is the news true?'
'It is,' sadly replied Austin. 'She died this afternoon.'
'It is a good lady gone from among us. Does the master take on much?'
'I have not seen him since. Death came on, I believe, rather suddenly at
the last.'
'Poor Mrs. Hunter!' wailed Baxendale. 'Hers is not the only spirit that
is this evening on the wing,' he added, after a pause. 'That boy of
Darby's is going, Mary'--looking on the bright sovereign put into his
hands by Austin--'suppose you get this changed, and go down there and
take 'em a couple of shillings? It's hard to have a cupboard quite empty
when death's a visitor.'
Mary came up from the far end of the room, and put on her shawl with
alacrity. She looked but a shadow herself. Austin wondered how Mr.
Hunter would approve of any of his shillings finding their way to
Darby's; but he said nothing against it. But for the strongly expressed
sentiments of Mr. Hunter, Austin would have given away right and left,
to relieve the distress around him: although, put him upon principle,
and he agreed fully with Mr. Hunter. Mary got change for the sovereign,
and took possession of a couple of shillings. It was a bitterly cold
evening; but she was well wrapped up. Though not permanently better,
Mary was feeling stronger of late: in her simple faith, she believed God
had mercifully spared her for a short while, that she might nurse her
father. She knew, just as well as did Dr. Bevary, that it would not be
for long. As she went along she met Mrs. Quale.
'The child is gone,' said the latter, hearing where Mary was going.
'Poor child! Is he really dead?'
Mrs. Quale nodded. Few things upset her equanimity. 'And I am keeping my
eyes open to look out for Darby,' she added. 'His wife asked me if I
would. She is afraid'--dropping her voice--'that he may do something
rash.'
'Why?' breathed Mary, in a tone of horror, understanding the allusion.
'Why!' vehemently repeated Mrs. Quale; 'why, because he reflects upon
himself--that's why. When he saw that the breath was really gone out of
the poor little body--and that's not five minutes ago--he broke out like
one mad. Them quiet natures in ordinary be always the worst if they get
upset; though it takes a good deal to do it. He blamed himself, saying
that if he had been in work, and able to get proper food for the boy,
it would not have happened; and he cursed the Trades Unions for
misleading him, and bringing him to what he is. There's many another
cursing the Unions on this inclement night, or my name's not Nancy
Quale.' She turned back with Mary, and they entered the home of the
Darbys. Grace, unable to get another situation, partly through the
baker's wife refusing her a character, partly because her clothes were
in pledge, looked worn and thin, as she stood trying to hush the
youngest child, then crying fretfully. Mrs. Darby sat in front of the
small bit of fire, the dead boy on her knees, pressed to her still, just
as Mrs. Quale had left her.
'He won't hunger any more,' she said, lifting her face to Mary, the hot
tears running from it.
Mary stooped and kissed the little cold face. 'Don't grieve,' she
murmured. 'It would be well for us all if we were as happy as he.'
'Go and speak to him,' whispered the mother to Mrs. Quale, pointing to a
back door, which led to a sort of open scullery. 'He has come in, and is
gone out there.'
Leaning against the wall, in the cold moonlight, stood Robert Darby.
Mrs. Quale was not very good at consolation: finding fault was more in
her line. 'Come, Darby, don't take on so: it won't do no good,' was the
best she could say. 'Be a man.' He seized hold of her, his shaking hands
trembling, while he spoke bitter words against the Trades Unions. 'Don't
speak so, Robert Darby,' was the rejoinder of Mrs. Quale. 'You are not
obliged to join the Trades' Unions; therefore there's no need to curse
'em. If you and others kept aloof from them, they'd soon die away.'
'They have proved a curse to me and mine'--and the man's voice rose to a
shriek, in his violent emotion. 'But for them, I should have been at
work long ago.'
'Then I'd go to work at once, if it was me, and put the curse from me
that way,' concluded Mrs. Quale.
With the death of the child, things had come to so low an ebb in the
Darby household, as to cause sundry kind gossipers to suggest, and to
spread the suggestion as a fact, that the parish would have the honour
of conducting the interment. Darby would have sold himself first. He was
at Mr. Hunter's yard on the following morning before daylight, and the
instant the gates were opened presented himself to the foreman as a
candidate for work. That functionary would not treat with him. 'We have
had so many of you old hands just coming on for a day or two, and then
withdrawing again, through orders of the society, or through getting
frightened at being threatened, that Mr. Clay said I was to take back no
more shilly-shallyers.'
'Try me!' feverishly cried Darby. 'I will not go from it again.'
'No,' said the foreman. 'You can speak to Mr. Clay.'
'Darby,' said Austin, when the man appeared before him, 'will you pass
your word to me to remain? Here men come; they sign the document, they
have work assigned them; and in a day or so, I hear that they have left
again. It causes no end of confusion to us, for work to be taken up and
laid down in that way.'
'Take me on, and try me, sir. I'll stick to it as long as there's a
stroke of work to do--unless they tread me to pieces as they did
Baxendale. I never was cordial for the society, sir. I obeyed it, and
yet a doubt was always upon me whether I might not be doing wrong. I am
sure of it now. The society has worked harm to me and mine, and I will
never belong to it again.'
'Others have said as much of the society, and have returned to it the
next day,' remarked Mr. Clay.
'Perhaps so, sir. They hadn't seen one of their children die, that
they'd have laid down their own lives to save--but that they had not
_worked_ to save. I have. Take me on, sir! He can't be buried till I
have earned the wherewithal to pay for it. I'll stand to my work from
henceforth--over hours, if I can get it.'
Austin wrote a word on a card, and desired Darby to carry it to the
foreman. 'You can go to work at once,' he said.
'I'll take work too, sir, if I can get it,' exclaimed another man, who
had come up in time to hear Austin's last words.
'What! is it you, Abel White?' exclaimed Austin, with a half-laugh. 'I
thought you made a boast that if the whole lot of hands came back to
work, you never would, except upon your own terms.'
'So I did, sir. But when I find I have been in the wrong, I am not above
owning it,' was the man's reply, who looked in a far better physical
condition than the pinched, half-starved Darby. 'I could hold out
longer, sir, without much inconvenience; leastways, with a deal less
inconvenience than some of them could, for I and father belong to one or
two provident clubs, and they have helped us weekly, and my wife and
daughters don't do amiss at their umbrella work. But I have come over to
my old father's views at last; and I have made my mind up, as he did
long ago, never to be a Union man again--unless the masters should turn
round and make themselves into a body of tyrants; I don't know what I
might do then. But there's not much danger of that--as father says--in
these go-a-head days. You'll give me work, sir?'
'Upon certain conditions,' replied Austin. And he sat down and proceeded
to talk to the man.