THE DAY BEFORE THE FIRST.
Mr. Bunker, _en bon chrétien_, dissembled his wrath, and continued his
good work of furnishing and arranging the house for Angela, insomuch
that before many days the place was completely ready for opening.
In the mean time, Miss Kennedy was away--she went away on business--and
Bormalack's was dull without her. Harry found some consolation in
superintending some of the work for her house, and in working at a grand
cabinet which he designed for her: it was to be a miracle of
wood-carving; he would throw into the work all the resources of his art
and all his genius. When she came back, after the absence of a week, she
looked full of business and of care. Harry thought it must be money
worries, and began to curse Bunker's long bill; but she was gracious to
him in her queenly way. Moreover, she assured him that all was going on
well with her, better than she could have hoped. The evening before the
"Stepney Dressmakers' Association" was to open its doors, they all
gathered together in the newly furnished house for a final
inspection--Angela, her two _aids_ Rebekah and Nelly, and the young man
against whose companionship Mr. Bunker had warned her in vain. The
house was large, with rooms on either side the door. These were
showrooms and workrooms. The first floor Angela reserved for her own
purposes, and she was mysterious about them. At the back of the house
stretched a long and ample garden. Angela had the whole of it covered
with asphalt; the beds of flowers or lawns were all covered over. At the
end she had caused to be built a large room of glass, the object of
which she had not yet disclosed.
As regards the appointments of the house, she had taken one
precaution--Rebekah superintended them. Mr. Bunker, therefore, was fain
to restrict his enthusiasm, and could not charge more than twenty or
thirty per cent. above the market value of the things. But Rebekah,
though she carried out her instructions, could not but feel disappointed
at the lavish scale in which things were ordered and paid for. The
show-rooms were as fine as if the place were Regent Street; the
workrooms were looked after with as much care for ventilation as if, Mr.
Bunker said, work-girls were countesses.
"It is too good," Rebekah expostulated, "much too good for us. It will
only make other girls discontented."
"I want to make them discontented," Angela replied. "Unless they are
discontented, there will be no improvement. Think, Rebekah, what it is
that lifts men out of the level of the beasts. We find out that there
are better things, and we are fighting our way upward. That is the
mystery of discontent--and perhaps pain, as well."
"Ah!" Rebekah saw that this was not a practical answer. "But you don't
know yet the competition of the East End, and the straits we are put to.
It is not as at the West End."
The golden West is ever the Land of Promise. No need to undeceive; let
her go on in the belief that the three thousand girls who wait and work
about Regent Street and the great shops are everywhere treated
generously, and paid above the market-value of their services. I make no
doubt, myself, that many a great mercer sits down, when Christmas warms
his heart, in his mansion at Finchley, Campden Hill, Fitz John's Avenue,
or Stoke Newington, and writes great checks as gifts to the
uncomplaining girls who build up his income.
"She would learn soon," said Rebekah, hoping that the money would last
out till the ship was fairly launched.
She was not suspicious, but there was something "funny," as Nelly said,
in a girl of Miss Kennedy's stamp coming among them. Why did she choose
Stepney Green? Surely, Bond Street or Regent Street would be better
fitted for a lady of her manners. How would customers be received and
orders be taken? By herself, or by this young lady, who would certainly
treat the ladies of Stepney with little of that deferential courtesy
which they expected of these dressmakers? For, as you may have remarked,
the lower you descend, as well as the higher you climb, the more
deference do the ladies receive at the hands of their trades-folk. No
duchess sweeps into a milliner's showroom with more dignity than her
humble sister at Clare Market on a Saturday evening displays when she
accepts the invitation of the butcher to "Rally up, ladies," and selects
her Sunday piece of beef. The ladies of Stepney and the Mile End Road,
thought Rebekah, looked for attentions. Would Miss Kennedy give it to
them? If Miss Kennedy herself did not attend to the showroom, what would
she do?
On this evening, after they had walked over the whole house, visited the
asphalted garden, and looked into the great glass-room, Angela unfolded
her plans.
It was in the workroom. She stood at the head of the table, looking
about her with an air of pride and anxiety. It was her own design--her
own scheme; small as it was, compared with that other vast project, she
was anxious about it. It _had_ to succeed; it _must_ succeed.
All its success, she thought, depended upon that sturdy little fanatical
seventh-day young person. It was she who was to rule the place and be
the practical dressmaker. And now she was to be told.
"Now," said Angela, with some hesitation, "the time has come for an
explanation of the way we shall work. First of all, will you, Rebekah,
undertake the management and control of the business?"
"I, Miss Kennedy? But what is your department?"
"I will undertake the management of the girls"--she stopped and
blushed--"_out of their work-time_."
At this extraordinary announcement the two girls looked blankly at their
employer.
"You do not quite understand," Angela went on. "Wait a little. Do you
consent, Rebekah?"
The girl's eyes flashed and her cheeks became aflame. Then she thought
of the sudden promotion of Joseph, and she took confidence. Perhaps she
really was equal to the place; perhaps she had actually merited the
distinction.
"Very well, then," Miss Kennedy went on, as if it was the most natural
thing in the world that a humble workwoman should be suddenly raised to
the proud post of manager. "Very well; that is settled. You, Nelly, will
try to take care of the workroom when Rebekah is not there. As regards
the accounts----"
"I can keep them, too," said Rebekah. "I shall work--on Sundays," she
added with a blush.
Miss Kennedy then proceeded to expound her views as regards the
management of her establishment.
"The girls will be here at nine," she said.
Rebekah nodded. There could be no objection to that.
"They will work from nine till eleven," Rebekah started. "Yes, I know
what I mean. The long hours of sitting and bending the back over the
work are just as bad a thing for girls of fifteen or so as could be
invented. At eleven, therefore, we shall have, all of us, half an hour's
exercise."
Exercise? Exercise in a dressmaker's shop? Was Miss Kennedy in her
senses?
"You see that asphalt. Surely some of you can guess what it is for?" She
looked at Harry.
"Skittles?" he suggested frivolously.
"No. Lawn tennis. Well! why not?"
"What is lawn tennis?" asked Nelly.
"A game, my dear; and you shall learn it."
"I never play games," said Rebekah. "A serious person has no room in her
life for games."
"Then call it exercise, and you will be able to play it without wounding
your conscience." This was Harry's remark. "Why not, indeed, Miss
Kennedy? The game of lawn tennis, Nelly," he went on to explain, "is
greatly in vogue among the bloated aristocracy, as my cousin Dick will
tell you. That it should descend to you and me and the likes of us is
nothing less than a social revolution."
Nelly smiled, but she only half understood this kind of language. A man
who laughed at things, and talked of things as if they were meant to be
laughed over, was a creature she had never before met with. My friends,
lay this to heart, and ponder. It is not until a certain standard of
cultivation is reached that people do laugh at things. They only began
in the last century, and then only in a few _salons_. When all the world
laughs, the perfection of humanity will have been reached, and the
comedy will have been played out.
"It is a beautiful game," said Angela--meaning lawn tennis, not the
comedy of humanity. "It requires a great deal of skill and exercises a
vast quantity of muscles; and it costs nothing. Asphalt makes a perfect
court, as I know very well." She blushed, because she was thinking of
the Newnham courts. "We shall be able to play there whenever it does not
rain. When it does, there is the glass-house."
"What are you going to do in the glass-house?" asked Harry; "throw
stones at other people's windows? That is said to be very good
exercise."
"I am going to set up a gymnasium for the girls."
Rebekah stared, but said nothing. This was revolutionary indeed.
"If they please, the girls can bring their friends; we will have a
course of gymnastics as well as a school for lawn tennis. You see, Mr.
Goslett, that I have not forgotten what you said once."
"What was that, Miss Kennedy? It is very good of you to remember
anything that I have said. Do you mean that I once, accidentally, said a
thing worth hearing?"
"Yes: you said that money was not wanted here so much as work. That is
what I remembered. If you can afford it, you may work with us, for there
is a great deal to do."
"I can afford it for a time."
"We shall work again from half-past eleven until one. Then we shall
stop for dinner."
"They bring their own dinner," said Rebekah. "It takes them five minutes
to eat it. You will have to give them tea."
"No: I shall give them dinner too. And because growing girls are dainty
and sometimes cannot fancy things, I think a good way will be for each
of them, even the youngest, to take turns in ordering the dinner and
seeing it prepared."
Rebekah groaned. What profits could stand up against such lavish
expenditure as this?
"After an hour for dinner we shall go to work again. I have thought a
good deal about the afternoon, which is the most tedious part of the
day, and I think the best thing will be to have reading aloud."
"Who is to read?" cried Rebekah.
"We shall find somebody or other. Tea at five, and work from six to
seven. That is my programme."
"Then, Miss Kennedy," cried her forewoman, "you will be a ruined woman
in a year."
"No"--she shook her head with her gracious smile--"no, I hope not. And I
think you will find that we shall be very far from ruined. Have a little
faith. What do you think, Nelly?"
"Oh, I think it beautiful!" she replied, with a gaze of soft worship in
her limpid eyes. "It is so beautiful that it must be a dream, and cannot
last."
"What do you say, Mr. Goslett?"
"I say that cabinet-making ought to be conducted in the same liberal
spirit. But I'm afraid it won't pay."
Then Miss Kennedy took them to the room on the first floor. The room at
the back was fitted as a dining-room, quite simply, with a dozen chairs
and a long table. Plates, cups, and things were ranged upon shelves as
if in a kitchen.
She led them to the front room. When her hand was on the lock she turned
and smiled, and held up her finger as if to prepare them for a surprise.
The floor was painted and bare of carpet; the windows were dressed with
pretty curtains. There were sconces on the walls for candles; in the
recess stood her piano; and for chairs there were two or three
rout-seats ranged along the wall.
"What is this?" asked Rebekah.
"My dear, girls want play as well as work. The more innocent play they
get, the better for them. This is a room where we shall play all sorts
of things: sometimes we shall dance; sometimes we shall act; sometimes
we shall sing; sometimes we shall read poetry or tales; sometimes we
shall romp; the girls shall bring their friends here as well as to the
gymnasium and the lawn tennis, if they please."
"And who is to pay for all this?" asked Rebekah.
"My friends," said Angela, coloring, because this was a crisis, and to
be suspected at such a point would have been fatal--"my friends, I have
to make a confession to you. I have worked out the design by myself. I
saw how the girls in our workshops toil for long hours and little pay.
The great shops, whose partners are very rich men, treat them no better
than do the poor traders whose living has to be got by scraping it off
their wages. Now, I thought that if we were to start a shop in which
there was to be no mistress, but to be self-governed, and to share the
proceeds among all in due order and with regard to skill and industry,
we might adjust our own hours for the general good. This kind of shop
has been tried by men, but I think it has never succeeded, because they
wanted the capital to start with. What could we three girls have done
with nothing but our own hands to help us? So I wrote to a young lady
who has much money. Yes, Mr. Goslett, I wrote to that Miss Messenger of
whom we have so often talked."
"Miss Messenger!" Rebekah gasped; "she who owns the great brewery?"
"The same. She has taken up our cause. It is she who finds the funds to
start us, just as well as if we had capital. She gives us the rent for a
year, the furniture, the glass-house--everything, even this piano. I
have a letter from her in my pocket." She took it out and read it. "Miss
Messenger begs to thank Miss Kennedy for her report of the progress made
in her scheme. She quite approves of the engagements made, particularly
those of Rebekah Hermitage and Nelly Sorensen. She hopes, before long,
to visit the house herself and make their acquaintance. Meanwhile she
will employ the house for all such things as she requires, and begs Miss
Kennedy to convey to Miss Hermitage the first order for the workshop."
This gracious letter was accompanied by a long list of things, at sight
of which the forewoman's eyes glittered with joy.
"Oh, it is a splendid order!" she said. "May we tell everybody about
this Miss Messenger?"
"I think," Angela replied, considering carefully, "that it would be
better not. Let people only know that we have started; that we are a
body of workwomen governing ourselves, and working for ourselves. The
rest is for our private information."
"While you are about it," said Harry, "you might persuade Miss Messenger
to start the Palace of Delight and the College of Art."
"Do you think she would?" asked Angela. "Do you really think it would be
of any use at all?"
"Did she haggle about your Co-operative Association?"
"No, not at all. She quite agreed with me from the beginning."
"Then, try her for the palace. See, Miss Kennedy--" the young man had
become quite earnest and eager over the palace--"it is only a question
of money. If Miss Messenger wants to do a thing unparalleled among the
deeds of rich men, let her build the Palace of Delight. If I were she, I
should tremble for fear some other person with money got to hear of the
idea, and should step in before her. Of course, the grand thing in these
cases is to be the first."
"What is a Palace of Delight?" asked Nelly.
"Truly wonderful it is," said Harry, "to think how monotonous are the
gifts and bequests of rich men. Schools, churches, almshouses,
hospitals--that is all; that is their monotonous round. Now and again, a
man like Peabody remembers that men want houses to live in, not hovels;
or a good woman remembers that they want sound and wholesome food, and
builds a market; but, as a rule, schools, churches, almshouses,
hospitals. Look at the lack of originality. Miss Kennedy, go and see
this rich person; ask her if she wants to do the grandest thing ever
done for men; ask her if she will, as a new and startling point of
departure, remember that men want joy. If she will ask me, I will
deliver a lecture on the necessity of pleasure, the desirableness of
pleasure, the beauty of pleasure."
"A Palace of Delight!" Rebekah shook her head. "Do you know that half
the people never go to church?"
"When we have got the palace," said Harry, "they will go to church,
because religion is a plant that flourishes best where life is happiest.
It will spring up among us, then, as luxuriantly as the wild
honeysuckle. Who are the most religious people in the world, Miss
Hermitage?"
"They are the worshippers in Red Man's Lane, and they are called the
Seventh-Day Independents."
The worst of the Socratic method of argument is that, when the wrong
answer is given, the whole thing comes to grief. Now, Harry wanted her
to say that the people who go most to church are the wealthy classes.
Rebekah did not say so, because she knew nothing of the wealthy classes;
and in her own circle of sectarian enthusiasts, nobody had any money at
all.