THE TENDER PASSION.
It is always a dangerous thing for two young persons of opposite sexes
to live together under the same roof, even when the lady is plain and at
first sight unattractive, and when the young man is stupid. For they get
to know one another. Now, so great is the beauty of human nature, even
in its second-rate or third-rate productions, that love generally
follows when one of the two, by confession or unconscious self-betrayal,
stands revealed to the other. It is not the actual man or woman, you
see, who is loved--it is the ideal, the possible, the model or type from
which the specimen is copied, and which it distinctly resembles. But
think of the danger when the house in which these young people find
themselves is not a large country-house, where many are gathered
together of like pursuits, but an obscure boarding-house in a
society-forgotten suburb, where these two had only each other to talk
to. Add to this that they are both interested in an experiment of the
greatest delicacy, in which the least false step would be fatal. Add,
further, the fact that each is astonished at the other: the one to find
in a dressmaker the refinement and all the accomplishments of a lady;
the other, to find in a cabinet-maker the distinguishing marks of a
gentleman; the same way of looking at things and talking about them; the
same bearing and the same courtesy.
The danger was even made greater by what seemed a preventive--namely, by
the way in which at the beginning Angela so very firmly put down her
foot on the subject of "keeping company;" there was to be no attempt at
love-making; on that understanding the two could, and did, go about
together as much as they pleased. What followed naturally was that more
and more they began to consider each the other as a problem of an
interesting character. Angela observed that the young workman, whom she
had at first considered of a frivolous disposition, seemed to be growing
more serious in his views of things, and even when he laughed there was
method in his folly. No men are so solemn, she reflected, as the dull of
comprehension; perhaps the extremely serious character of the place in
which they lived was making him dull, too. It is difficult, certainly,
for any one to go on laughing at Stepney; the children, who begin by
laughing, like children everywhere, have to give up the practice before
they are eight years of age, because the streets are so insufferably
dull; the grown-up people never laugh at all; when immigrants arrive
from livelier quarters, say Manchester or Sheffield, after a certain
time of residence--the period varies with the mercurial temperament of
the patient--they laugh no more. "Surely," thought Angela, "he is
settling down; he will soon find work; he will become like other men of
his class; and then, no doubt, he will fall in love with Nelly. Nothing
could be more suitable."
By saying to herself, over and over again, that this arrangement should
take place, she had got to persuade herself that it certainly would.
"Nelly possessed," she said, "the refinement of manner and nature,
without which the young man would be wretched; she was affectionate and
sensible; it would certainly do very well." And she was hardly
conscious, while she arranged this in her own head, of a certain uneasy
feeling in her mind, which in smaller creatures might have been called
jealousy.
So far, there had been little to warrant the belief that things were
advancing in the direction she desired. He was not much more attentive
to Nelly than to any other of the girls; worse still, as she reflected
with trepidation, there were many symptoms by which he showed a
preference for quite another person.
As for Harry, it was useless for him to conceal from himself any longer
the fact that he was by this time head-over-ears in love. The situation
offered greater temptations than his strength could withstand. He
succumbed--whatever the end might be, he was in love.
If one comes to think of it, this was rather a remarkable result of a
descent into the lower regions. One expects to meet in the Home of Dull
Ugliness things repellent, coarse; enjoying the freedom of nature,
unrestrained, unconventional. Harry found, on the contrary, the
sweetness of Eden, a fair garden of delights, in which sat a peerless
lady, the Queen of Beauty, a very Venus. All his life, that is, since he
had begun to think about love at all, he had stoutly held and
strenuously maintained that it was _lèse majesté_, high treason to love,
for a man to throw away--he used to say "throw away"--upon a maiden of
low degree the passion which should be offered to a lady--a demoiselle.
The position was certainly altered, inasmuch as he was no longer of
gentle birth. Therefore, he argued, he would no longer pretend to the
hand of a lady. At first he used to make resolutions, as bravely as a
board of directors: he would arise and flee to the desert--any place
would be a desert without her; he would get out of temptation; he would
go back to Piccadilly, and there forget her. Yet he remained; yet every
day he sought her again; every day his condition became more hopeless;
every day he continued to walk with her, play duets with her, sing with
her, dance with her, argue with her, learn from her, teach her, watch
over her, and felt the sunshine of her presence, and at meeting and
parting touched her fingers.
She was so well educated, he said, strengthening his faith; she was so
kindly and considerate; her manners were so perfect; she was so
beautiful and graceful; she knew so well how to command, that he was
constrained to own that no lady of his acquaintance was, or could be,
her superior. To call her a dressmaker was to ennoble and sanctify the
whole craft. She should be to that art what Cecilia is to music--its
patron saint; she should be to himself--yet, what would be the end? He
smiled grimly, thinking that there was no need to speculate on the end,
when as yet there had been no beginning. He could not make a beginning.
If he ventured on some shy and modest tentative in the direction
of--call it an understanding--she froze. She was always on the watch;
she seemed to say: "Thus far you may presume, but no farther." What did
it mean? Was she really resolved never to receive his advances? Did she
dislike him? That could hardly be. Was she watching him? Was she afraid
to trust him? That might be. Or was she already engaged to some other
fellow--some superior fellow--perhaps with a shop--gracious heavens!--of
his own? That might be, though it made him cold to think it possible. Or
did she have some past history, some unhappy complication of the
affections, which made her as cold as Dian? That, too, might be.
The ordinary young man, thrown into the society of half a dozen
working-girls, would have begun to flirt and talk nonsense with all of
them together, or with one after the other. Harry was not that kind of
young man. There is always, by the blessing of kind Heaven, left unto us
a remnant of those who hold woman sacred, and continually praise,
worship, and reverence the name of love. He was one of those young men.
To flirt with a milliner did not seem a delightful thing to him at any
time. And in this case there was another reason why he should not behave
in the manner customary to the would-be Don Juan; it was simply _foi de
gentilhomme_; he was tolerated among them all on a kind of unspoken but
understood parole. Miss Kennedy received him in confidence that he would
not abuse her kindness.
One Sunday afternoon when they were walking together--it was in one of
the warm days of last September--in Victoria Park, they had a
conversation which led to really important things. There are one or two
very pretty walks in that garden, and though the season was late, and
the leaves mostly yellow, brown, crimson, or golden, there were still
flowers, and the ornamental water was bright, and the path crowded with
people who looked happy, because the sun was shining; they had all dined
plentifully, with copious beer, and the girls had got on their best
things, and the swains were gallant with a flower in the buttonhole and
a cigar between the lips. There is, indeed, so little difference between
the rich and the poor--can even Hyde Park in the season go beyond the
flower and the cigar? In certain tropical lands, the first step in
civilization is to buy a mosquito-curtain, though your dusky epidermis
is as impervious as a crocodile's to the sting of a mosquito. In this
realm of England the first step toward gentility is the twopenny smoke,
to which we cling, though it is made of medicated cabbage, though it
makes the mouth raw, the tongue sore, the lips cracked, the eyes red,
the nerves shaky, and the temper short. Who would not suffer in such a
cause?
It began with a remark of Angela's about his continued laziness. He
replied, evasively, that he had intended to take a long holiday, in
order to look round and consider what was best to be done; that he liked
holidays; that he meant to introduce holidays into the next trade
dispute; that his holidays enabled him to work a little for Miss
Kennedy, without counting his lordship, whose case he had now drawn up;
that he was now ready for work whenever, he added airily, work was ready
for him; and that he was not, in fact, quite sure that Stepney and its
neighborhood would prove the best place for him to work out his life.
"I should think," said Angela, "that it would be as good a place as any
you would find in America."
"If you tell me to stay, Miss Kennedy," he replied, with a sudden
earnestness, "I will stay."
She instantly froze, and chillingly said that if his interests required
him to go, of course he would go.
Therefore Harry, after a few moments' silence, during which he battled
with the temptation to "have it out" there and then, before all the
happy shepherds and shepherdesses of Bethnal Green, returned to his
original form, and made as if those words had not been spoken and that
effect not been produced. You may notice the same thing with children
who have been scolded.
"Did you ever consider, Miss Kennedy, the truly happy condition of the
perfect cabinet-maker?"
"No: I never did. Is he happy above his fellows?"
"Your questions betray your ignorance. Till lately--till I returned from
America--I never wholly realized what a superior creature he is. Why, in
the first place, the cabinet-maker is perhaps the only workman who never
scamps his work; he is a responsible man; he takes pride in producing a
good and honest thing. We have no tricks in our trade. Then, if you care
to hear----"
"Pray go on: let me learn all I can."
"Then we were the first to organize ourselves. Our society was founded
eighty years ago. We had no foolish strike, but we just met the
employers and told them we were going to arrange with them what our
share should be; and we made a book about wages--I do not think so good
a book has been put together this century. Then, we are a respectable
lot; you never hear of a cabinet-maker in trouble at a police-court;
very few of us get drunk; most of us read books and papers, and have
opinions. My cousin Dick has very strong opinions. We are critical about
amusements, and we prefer Henry Irving to a music-hall; we do not allow
rough talk in the workshops; we are mostly members of some church, and
we know how to value ourselves."
"I shall know how to value your craft in future," said Angela,
"especially when you are working again."
"Yes. I do not want to work in a shop, you know; but one may get a
place, perhaps, in one of the railway-carriage depots, or a hotel, or a
big factory, where they always keep a cabinet-maker in regular pay. My
cousin Dick--Dick the radical--is cabinet-maker in a mangle-factory. I
do not know what he makes for his mangles, but that is what he is."
"I have seen your cousin Tom, when he was rolled in the mud and before
he led off the hymn and the procession. You must bring me your cousin
Dick."
"Dick is better fun than Tom. Both are terribly in earnest; but you will
find Dick interesting."
"Does he walk about on Sunday afternoons? Should we be likely to meet
him here?"
"Oh, no! Dick is forging his speech for to-night. He addresses the
Advanced Club almost every Sunday evening on the House of Lords, or the
Church, or the Country Bumpkin's Suffrage, or the Cape question, or
Protection, or the Nihilists, or Ireland, or America, or something. The
speech must be red-hot, or his reputation would be lost. So he spends
the afternoon sticking it into the furnace, so to speak. It doesn't
matter what the subject is, always provided that he can lug in the
bloated aristocrat and the hated Tory. I assure you Dick is a most
interesting person."
"Do you ever speak at the Advanced Club?"
"I go there; I am a member; now and then I say a word. When a member
makes a red-hot speech, brimful of insane accusations, and sits down
amid a round of applause, it is pleasant to get up and set him right on
matters of fact, because all the enthusiasm is killed when you come to
facts. Some of them do not love me at the club."
"They are real and in earnest, while you----"
"No, Miss Kennedy, they are not real, whatever I may be. They are quite
conventional. The people like to be roused by red-hot, scorching
speeches; they want burning questions, intolerable grievances; so the
speakers find them or invent them. As for the audience, they have had so
many sham grievances told in red-hot words that they have become
callous, and don't know of any real ones. The indignation of the
speakers is a sham; the enthusiasm of the listeners is a sham; they
applaud the eloquence, but as for the stuff that is said, it moves them
not. As for his politics, the British workman has got a vague idea that
things go better for him under the Liberals. When the Liberals come in,
after making promises by the thousand, and when, like their
predecessors, they have made the usual mess, confidence is shaken. Then
he allows the Conservatives, who do not, at all events, promise oranges
and beer all round, back again, and gives them another show. As if it
matters which side is in to the British workman!"
"And they are not discontented," asked Angela, "with their own lives?"
"Not one bit. They don't want to change their own lives. Why should
they?"
"All these people in the park to-day," she continued, "are they
working-men?"
"Yes: some of them--the better sort. Of course"--Harry looked round and
surveyed the crowd--"of course, when you open a garden of this sort for
the people, the well-dressed come, and the ragged stay away and hide.
There is plenty of ragged stuff round and about us, but it hides. And
there is plenty of comfort which walks abroad and shows itself. This end
of London is the home of little industries. Here, for instance, they
make the things which belong to other things."
"That seems a riddle," said Angela.
"I mean things like card-boxes, pill-boxes, ornamental boxes of all
kinds, for confectioners, druggists, and drapers; they make all kinds of
such things for wholesale houses. Why, there are hundreds of trades in
this great neglected city of East London, of which we know nothing. You
see the manufacturers. Here they are with their wives, and their sons,
and their daughters; they all lend a hand, and between them the thing is
made."
"And are they discontented?" asked Angela with persistence.
"Not they; they get as much happiness as the money will run to. At the
same time, if the Palace of Delight were once built----"
"Ah!" cried Angela with a sigh. "The Palace of Delight; the Palace of
Delight! We must have it, if it is only to make the people
discontented."
They walked home presently, and in the evening they played together, one
or two of the girls being present, in the "drawing-room." The music
softens--Angela repented her coldness of the afternoon. When the girls
were gone, and they were walking side by side beneath moonlight on the
quiet green, she made shyly a little attempt at compensation.
"If," she said, "you should find work here in Stepney, you would be
willing to stay?"
"I would stay," he replied, "if you bid me stay--or go, if you bid me
go."
"I would bid you stay," she replied, speaking as clearly and as firmly
as she could, "because I like your society, and because you have been,
and will still be, I hope, very helpful to us. But if I bid you stay,"
she laid her hand upon his arm, "it must be on no misunderstanding."
"I am your servant," he said, with a little agitation in his voice. "I
understood nothing but what you wish me to understand."