In almost any other country than England the name by which the
evil-smelling cul-de-sac off Light Street was known might be supposed to
have been given it by some cynical humourist. It was called Rose Garden
Court. As there is a reason for almost everything in this world, the
chances are that once upon a time a garden stood there, and that
roses probably bloomed in it. The entrance to the court was through
an archway, over which, on the Light Street side, was the name of the
court. At the right hand of this tunnel stood the “Rose and Crown,”
locally known as the “pub,” and the door of the jug and bottle
department opened into the passage, which was convenient for the
inhabitants of the court. On the left of the archway there was a
second-hand clothing shop, the wares, exceedingly second hand, hanging
in tattered festoons about the door.
A street lamp stood at the edge of the pavement, opposite the entrance
to the court, and threw its rays under the archway, which somewhat
feeble illumination was supplemented by a gas jet over the door of the
jug and bottle department. At the blind end of Rose Garden Court stood
another lamp post. The court was unevenly paved with large slabs of
stone, sloppy, as a rule, from the overflow of a tap which supplied the
inhabitants with water.
The court was walled about with five-story buildings, and in the oblong
well, formed by these rather dilapidated edifices, the air hung dank
and heavy, laden with many smells. Breezes blowing over London from the
south, or the north, or the west, produced no movement of the noxious
air in Rose Garden Court. “Come out,” the gale from the Surrey hills
might cry as it whistled merrily over the house-tops; “come out, and
give the people a chance to breathe,”--but there was no answering rustle
in the court--the air there was silent and sullen, as if it had taken
its temper from the inhabitants of the place.
Sometimes, in early spring, the insistent east wind roared boisterously
through the tunnel, catching the mephitic atmosphere unawares and
flinging it headlong over the roofs, filling the court with a biting
whirlwind, scattering loose bits of paper and rags skywards, but the
inhabitants of the court didn’t like it. They closed their windows,
shivered, and wished the gale would cease. Next day the air would
settle down quietly in the court, collect its odours once more, and then
everybody felt that things were as they should be.
The court was a property that paid handsomely. No one residing there
knew who owned the buildings or the ground. The man who collected the
room rents did so promptly in advance, and he had once told the
landlord of the “Rose and Crown” that the court was more lucrative as
an investment than if it had been situated in the Grosvenor Square
district. The owner was popularly supposed to have farmed the property
to a company, and the rent-collector represented this organization. The
company could not be expected to spend money on repairs, the owner could
not be reached, and, aside from all that, the rooms were in constant
demand; so if a tenant did not like the arrangement he could get
out--there were a dozen others ready to take his place.
The people who lived in this human warren were not criminals. Most of
them did something useful for the living they received. Criminals, when
convicted, are housed in a much more sanitary manner, and they are
sure of enough to eat--which the denizens of the court were not. If
any prison in the kingdom were as fetid as Rose Garden Court, the great
heart of the nation would be stirred with indignation, and some wretch
in authority would feel the lash of righteous public scorn. The court
was merely fairly representative of the home of the British workingman,
in the wisest, largest, proudest, most wealthy city in the world, at the
end of the nineteenth century, after a thousand years, more or less,
of progress. Some homes of the workingmen are better; but then some are
worse, for we must never forget that we have the “artisan’s improved
dwellings” amongst us. The occupants of the “improved dwellings” are
hedged about with restrictions, but in the court was freedom: freedom to
come and go as you liked; freedom to get drunk; freedom to loaf or work;
freedom to starve.
The personal predilections of the courtites were much the same as those
of _habitués_ of first-class West End clubs. They liked to drink and
gamble. The “pub” was at the entrance, and there, or at the barbershop,
they could place a little on a horse they knew nothing of. One of the
advantages of a free country is that a man can get quite as drunk on
beer as he can on champagne, and at a much less cost. The results
are wonderfully similar. It is popularly believed that a policeman in
Piccadilly is kinder to a client in a dress coat, than a fellow-officer
on Waterloo Road is to a man in moleskins.
Rose Garden Court had little trouble with the police, although the
court--especially the feminine portion of it--looked somewhat askance at
the force. All a policeman asked of a drunken dweller in the court was,
that if he wanted to fight he should fight in the court, and not on
a busy thoroughfare like Light Street. In the court the wives of the
combatants usually took charge of them before the battle had been fought
to a finish, and sometimes a tall policeman watched over the separation
of temporary foes, saying little unless one of the fighters resisted the
wife who was vociferously shoving him towards his own doorway, when
the officer would say: “Come now, my man, none of that,” whereupon,
strangely enough, it was the woman who resented the officer’s
interference for her protection, though when her man proceeded to abuse
a member of the force also, she quickly told him to “shut his ------
mouth,” using an adjective that was at once sanguinary and descriptive.
Often a stalwart policeman would take by the scruff of the neck an
inhabitant of the court staggering along Light Street, filling the air
with melody or defiance, and walk him rapidly down the street, the man’s
legs wobbling about uncertainly, as if he were a waxwork automaton,
until they were opposite the entrance of the court; then, having
received the required impetus from the officer, the man shot under the
archway and was presumably taken care of when he got inside: anyhow,
once in the court he could not get out again except by the way he
entered, and few ever became drunk enough to forget there was always a
policeman in the neighbourhood. The thrust under the archway was merely
the kindly Light Street way of doing the Piccadilly act of placing a
man tenderly in a cab and telling the driver where to go. Few were ever
actually arrested in the Light Street district, and their conduct had
to be particularly flagrant to bring upon them this last resort of the
force.
Along Light Street came Marsten, with the elastic springy energetic
step of a young man in good health, who takes this world seriously and
believes there is something to be done in it. He paused for a moment
opposite the “Rose and Crown,” and nodded to some men who were lounging
there.
“Are you going to the meeting to-night, men?” he asked.
One shook his head, another shrugged his shoulders; it was evident at a
glance that none of them had any interest in the meeting while the “pub”
remained open.
“It’s important,” said Marsten. “The committee reports to-night, and
‘strike or no strike’ will likely be put to vote. You are not in favor
of a strike, surely? Then come along and vote against it.”
“I dunno’ ’bout that,” said one, removing his pipe. “Strike pay is as
good as master’s pay, an’ less work to get it. I could do with a bit of
an ’oliday.”
“Strike pay may be as good as master’s while it lasts, but it won’t
last,” rejoined Marsten.
“When it gives out we’ll go back to work,” returned the man. The others
laughed.
“Some of you won’t get back,” said Marsten. “That’s always the way after
a strike. Better keep a good job while we have it.”
“Oh, I could do with a bit of an ’oliday,” repeated the spokesman of
the “pub” crowd, indifferently.
“My God!” cried Marsten, indignantly, “if you take no more interest in
your condition than that, how can you ever expect to better it?”
“Well, I thort,” answered the other, good-naturedly, “when I sees you
a-comin’ along, as ’ow you’d better it by arstin’ us to ’ave a drop
o’ beer with you.”
“You’re muddled with beer already,” said the young man shortly, as he
turned and disappeared up the court.
The crowd smoked on in silence for some minutes after he had left them.
“Cocky young feller that,” said one at last, jerking his pipe over his
shoulder in the direction Marsten had gone.
“Oh, ’e knows a bit, ’e does,” remarked another, sarcastically.
There was a longer pause, when the spokesman, who had been ruminating
over the matter, said:
“Wot d’ ye s’y t’ ’avin another pint insoide? Then we go t’ th’
meetin’ and wote for th’ stroike. Larn ’im a lesson. I like ’is
impidence, I do. Tork ’bout muddlin’; we’ll show ’oose muddled.”
This was unanimously agreed to as illuminating the situation. It
is perhaps a pity that Marsten did not know the result of his brief
conversation with his felow-workmen.
He was young and had to learn many things. He did not know that the
desire for improving one’s condition is not at all universal, and that
even where there may be the germ of a desire, people do not wish to be
dragooned into bettering themselves. Tact, as Mrs. Hope might have told
him, goes farther than good intentions. A drop of beer and a friendly
smite on the shoulder would have got him several votes against the
strike. As it was, he had merely strengthened the arms of “that ass
Gibbons,” by making the mistake of supposing that the average human
being is actuated by reason.
Meanwhile, the young man had passed under the archway and up the court,
until he came to doorway No. 3. The hall, and the five pairs of grimy
stairs, were only less public than the court, which in its turn was
only less public than Light Street, because fewer feet trod thereon. He
ascended the first flight of stairs and paused at one of the doors of
the landing. From within came the droning notes of a harmonium, and
Marsten forebore to knock as he listened to the sound. A slatternly
woman came down the second flight with a water-jug in her hand. She
stopped, on seeing a stranger standing there, and listened to the music
also. The dirge being played did not soothe whatever savageness there
was within the breast of the woman, for she broke out against the
inmates of the rooms.
“Oh, yes,” she cried. “Fine goin’s on for the likes o’ them. A harmonyum,
if you please. Gawd save us! we ain’t good enough for the likes o’
’im. A harmonyum! In Garden Court! No good can come o’ ’stravagance
like that. Wot’s ’e, I’d like to know? Bah!”
The woman, with a wave of her hand, expressed her contempt for such
goings on and departed down the stairs with her jug. Her husband spent
his spare cash at the “pub,” as a man should, and not in such vanities
as a second-hand musical instrument. She had, very properly, no patience
with extravagance.
Marsten rapped when the playing ceased, and Joe Braunt himself came to
the door.
“Come in, my boy,” he said cordially, and Marsten went in.
A tall girl, who might have been fourteen, or sixteen, or eighteen,
rose from a chair at the harmonium. She was pale and thin, with large
pathetic eyes that gave a melancholy beauty to her face. Shaking hands
with her,--“How are you, Jessie?” said Marsten. “Is the cough any
better?”
“I think it’s always about the same,” answered the girl.
“It is hard to get better in this hole,” said her father, gruffly.
Braunt spoke with the accent of a Yorkshireman. He was a man who in
stature and build did credit to his county, and it was “hard to believe
that the slender girl was his daughter. However much Joe Braunt’s
neighbours disapproved of his putting on airs and holding himself and
his slim useless daughter above their betters, they took good care not
to express their opinions in his hearing, for he was a rough masterful
man, taciturn and gloomy, whose blow was readier than his speech; not
only prompt, but effective. The whole court was afraid of him, and it
acted on the principle of letting sleeping dogs lie. The woman with the
jug in her hand had good cause for resentment against Joe Braunt.
She had been getting her “man” home one evening from the “pub” with
difficulty, and in spite of many breakings away on his part. She had
succeeded in pushing and hauling him as far as the first landing, when
he, overcome by a sudden realization of her unnecessary cruelty in
dragging him from the brilliantly lighted public bar filled with
jollity, gin, and good comradeship, to the dismal back room two flights
up, with nothing but her own bitter tongue for company, clenched his
fist and felled her to the floor, the back of her head striking against
Braunt’s door as she went down. Braunt, pulling open his door, found
the husband walking over--or perhaps it would be more accurate to
say, staggering over--the prostrate body of his wife. Joe clutched the
drunkard and flung him airily over the landing rail. The ill-used man
rolled down the stair and out into the court, where he lay in a heap and
groaned. Braunt lifted the woman and carried her up to her room. She had
a dazed idea of what had happened, and at once, rather incoherently at
first, began to give her rescuer her opinion of him. Who was he, she
would like to know, to interfere between man and wife, great strong
brute that he was. If her man had been sober he’d have given him what
for, takin’ advantage of a man wot ‘ad a drop too much. Braunt went down
stairs and picked up the “pore” man, who had certainly had one drop too
much, carried him up, and laid him in his room with his wife.
“You’ve killed the pore man, as never did no ’arm to you,” screamed
the wife.
“No such luck,” said Braunt; “he’s too drunk to hurt.”
Which was, indeed, the case. Joe drew the door shut behind him, and left
them to fight it out if they wanted to.
Mrs. Scimmins had much sympathy from the court when she related the
incident. The women were more indignant than the men. It was a fine
state of things if a great, hulking, sulky brute like Braunt was
to interfere in little matrimonial discussions that happen in all
well-regulated families. Much as they disliked the police, it seemed
that now, if ever, their aid should be invoked.
“If he’d tried to break every bone in _my_ man’s body, Mrs. Scimmins,”
said one bulky woman, “I’d ’a ’ad ’im by the ’air.”
“I donno ‘bout that, Sarah,” said Mrs. Scimmins, who did not wish
to rest under the imputation of not doing all she could, under the
circumstances, for her husband in his comparatively helpless state. “Wot
with bein’ ’it in the ’ead, an’ the face, an’ the back, an’ then
my ’ead strikin’ the door; an’ one eye as I couldn’t see out o’, an’
yer ’usban’ a-tramplin’ of yer, yer wouldn’t ’ave breath enough to
’ave anybody by the ’air.”
Mrs. Scimmins pressed tenderly the bruised and still swollen portion
of her face under the eye, and felt that she had made out her case; in
fact, her defence was accepted as a strong plea that only made Braunt’s
inhuman and uncalled for conduct stand out the darker by comparison.
The men were astonished, of course, but not so emphatic in their
denunciation of Braunt as the wives had been. Scimmins bore no
particular malice against his assailant, although what he had thrown
him over the stairs for, he expressed himself as unable to conceive. In
answer to sympathetic inquiries from his pals at the public bar of the
“Rose and Crown,” he informed them that, although shaky, he was still in
the ring.
“Gawd ’elp us!” he went on, more in sorrow than in anger, “wot’s this
world a-comin’ to? If you arsts me I gives it up. Wot with Braunt an’
the police both on a chap’s shoulders, if he raises ’is ’and to
’is own wife, the court’s no fit place for a pore ’ard-workin’ man
to live in.”
But nobody ventured to remonstrate with the York-shireman, least of all
Scimmins, although the court as a community held more aloof from him
than ever.
“Are you coming to the meeting to-night, Mr. Braunt?” asked young
Marsten, when he had greeted father and daughter.
“Not me.”
“Why not?”
“Why go?”
“Well, you see, Mr. Braunt, there is a crisis on. The committee is to
report. Mr. Sartwell has refused to meet them, and this will likely
anger Gibbons and the others. Strike or no strike will be put to vote,
and I for one don’t want to see a strike--at least not just now.”
“No more do I,” said Braunt.
“Then come on to the meeting and speak up against a strike.”
“I’m no speaker. You speak.”
“They won’t listen to me, but they would pay attention to what you would
say.”
“Not a bit of it, my lad. But it doesn’t matter to me, not a haporth.”
“What doesn’t? Whether there is a strike or not?”
“I’m not going to strike. They can do as they’ve a mind.”
“But if the Union orders us out we’ll have to go.”
“Not me.”
“Supposing the strike succeeds, as it may--the Union’s very
strong,--what will you do then?”
“Stick to my work, and mind my own business.”
“But the Union won’t let you. If the strike fails you’ll merely get the
ill will of all the men; if it succeeds they’ll force you out of the
works. There’s no use running your head against a brick wall, Mr.
Braunt.”
“You speak; you’ve got the gift o’ the gab,” said Braunt.
“I’m too young. They won’t listen to me now. But a day will come when
they will--aye, and the masters, too. I’d willingly devote my life to
the cause of the workingman.”
Marsten spoke with the fire of youthful enthusiasm, and was somewhat
disconcerted when the other took his pipe from his mouth and laughed.
“Why do you laugh?”
“I’m laughing at you. I’m glad to know there’s some one that believes in
us, but as thou says, thou ’art yoong; thou’ll know better-later on.”
“Don’t you believe in yourself and your fellow-workers?”
“Not me. I know ’em too well. By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn
thy bread. Them’s not the right words, happen; but that’s the meaning.
It has been, is now, and ever shall be. Amen.”
“I don’t object to that, Mr. Braunt,” cried the young man, rising and
pacing the floor in his excitement. “Don’t think it. But I want to see
everybody work. What I object to is earning your bread by the sweat
of the hired man’s brow, as someone has said. Bless me! look at our
numbers. We outnumber the loafers ten to one; yes, a hundred to one in
every country in the world. All we need is an unselfish leader.”
The elder man looked at him with a quizzical smile on his stern lips.
“Look at the number of the sands on the seaside. Will any leader make
a rope out of them? Numbers are nothing, my lad. Take care of yourself,
Marsten, and never mind the workers; that’s the rule of the world. You
may pull yourself up, but you can’t lift them with you. They’ve broken
the hearts--aye, and the heads too, of many a one that tried to better
them. You think you have only the masters and capital to fight. The
masters won’t hurt you; it’s the men you’re fighting for that will down
you. Wait till your head is an inch above the crowd, then you’ll catch
it from the sticks of every rotten one of them that thinks he’s got as
much right as you have to be in command. It isn’t money that helps the
masters, it’s because they’ve the sense to know a good man when they
see him, and to stand by him when they’ve got him. Don’t be deluded by
numbers. What’s the good of them? One determined man who doesn’t need to
bother about his backing--who knows his principals will back him through
thick and thin--will beat any mob. Why can a small company of soldiers
put down a riot? It’s because they’re commanded by one man. When he says
‘jump,’ they jump; when he says ‘shoot,’ they shoot. That’s the whole
secret of it.”
Braunt resumed his pipe, and smoked vigorously to get back to his usual
state of taciturnity. Marsten had never heard him talk so long before,
and he stood pondering what had been said. Braunt was the first to
speak.
“Play the _Dead March_, Jessie,” he said, gruffly.
The girl hesitated a moment, evidently loath to begin when Marsten was
in the room, a slight hectic colour mounting to her cheek: but obedience
was strong in her; her father was not a man to be disobeyed. She drew up
her chair, and began Chopin’s _Funeral March_, playing it very badly,
but still recognizably.
Peace seemed to come over Braunt as he listened to the dirge. He sat
back in the chair, his eyes on the ceiling, smoking steadily. Marsten
sat down, meditating on what Braunt had said. He was not old enough to
have his opinions fixed, and to be impervious to argument, so Braunt’s
remarks troubled him. He hoped they were not true, but feared they might
be. The mournful cadence of the music, which seemed to soothe the soul
of the elder man, wound itself among the younger’s thoughts, and dragged
them towards despair; the indifference of the men in front of the
public-house flashed across his memory and depressed him. He wished
Jessie would stop playing.
“Ah,” said Braunt, with a deep sigh when she did stop. “That’s the
grandest piece of music ever made. It runs in my head all day. The throb
of the machinery at the works seems to be tuned to it. It’s in the roar
of the streets. Come, my lad, I’ll go with you, because you want me to,
not that it will do any good. I’ll speak if you like, not that they’ll
care much for what I say--not hearken, very like. But come along, my
lad.”