HARRY'S DECISION.
He spent the afternoon wandering about the streets of Stepney, full of
the new thought that here might be his future home. This reflection made
him regard the place from quite a novel point of view. As a mere
outsider, he had looked upon the place critically, with amusement, with
pity, with horror (in rainy weather), with wonder (in sunshiny days). He
was a spectator, while before his eyes were played as many little
comedies, comediettas, or tragedies or melodramas as there were
inhabitants. But no farces, he remarked, and no burlesques. The life of
industry contains no elements of farce or of burlesque. But if he took
this decisive step he would have to look upon the East End from an
inside point of view; he would be himself one of the actors; he would
play his own little comedy. Therefore he must introduce the emotion of
sympathy, and suppress the critical attitude altogether.
There was once an earl who went away and became a sailor before the
mast; he seems to have enjoyed sailoring better than legislating, but
was, by accident, ingloriously drowned while so engaged. There was also
the Honorable Timothy Clitheroe Davenant, who was also supposed to be
drowned, but in reality exercised until his death, and apparently with
happiness, the craft of wheelwright. There was another unfortunate
nobleman, well known to fame, who became a butcher in a colony, and
liked it. Precedents enough of voluntary descent and eclipse, to say
nothing of the involuntary obscurations, as when an _émigré_ had to
teach dancing, or the son of a royal duke was fain to become a village
schoolmaster. These historical parallels pleased Harry's fancy until he
recollected that he was himself only a son of the people, and not of
noble descent, so that they really did not bear upon his case, and he
could find not one single precedent in the whole history parallel with
himself. "Mine," he said, formulating the thing, "is a very remarkable
and unusual case. Here is a man brought up to believe himself of gentle
birth and educated as a gentleman, so that there is nothing in the most
liberal training of a gentleman that he has not learned, and no
accomplishment which becomes a gentleman that he has not acquired. Then
he learns that he is not a gentleman by birth, and that he is a pauper;
wherefore, why not honest work? Work is noble, to be sure, especially if
you get the kind of work you like, and please yourself about the time of
doing it; nothing could be a more noble spectacle than that of myself
working at the lathe for nothing, in the old days; would it be quite as
noble at the brewery, doing piece-work?"
These reflections, this putting of the case to himself, this grand
dubiety, occupied the whole afternoon. When the evening came, and it was
time for him to present himself in the drawing-room, he was no further
advanced toward a decision.
The room looked bright and restful; wherever Angela went, she was
accompanied and surrounded by an atmosphere of refinement. Those who
conversed with her became infected with her culture; therefore, the
place was like any drawing-room at the West End, save for the furniture,
which was simple. Ladies would have noticed, even in such little things,
in the way in which the girls sat and carried themselves, a note of
difference. To Harry these minutiæ were unknown, and he saw only a room
full of girls quietly happy and apparently well-bred; some were reading;
some were talking, one or two were "making" something for themselves,
though their busy fingers had been at work all day. Nelly and Miss
Kennedy were listening to the captain, who was telling a yarn of his old
East Indiaman. The three made a pretty group, Miss Kennedy seated on a
low stool at the captain's knee, while the old man leaned forward in his
arm-chair, his daughter beside him watching, in her affectionate and
pretty way, the face of her patron.
The quiet, peaceful air of the room, the happy and contented faces which
before had been so harassed and worn, struck the young man's heart. Part
of this had been his doing; could he go away and leave the brave girl
who headed the little enterprise to the tender mercies of a Bunker? The
thought of what he was throwing up--the club-life, the art-life, the
literary life, the holiday-time, the delightful roving in foreign lands,
which he should enjoy no more--all seemed insignificant considered
beside this haven of rest and peace in the troubled waters of the East
End. He was no philanthropist; the cant of platforms was intolerable to
him; yet he was thinking of a step which meant giving up his own
happiness for that of others; with, of course, the constant society of
the woman he loved. Without that compensation the sacrifice would be
impossible. Miss Kennedy looked up and nodded to him kindly, motioning
him not to interrupt the story, which the captain presently finished.
Then they had a little music and a little playing, and there was a
little dancing--all just as usual; a quiet, pleasant evening; and they
went away.
"You are silent to-night, Mr. Goslett," said Angela, as they took their
customary walk in the quiet little garden called Stepney Green.
"Yes. I am like the parrot; I think the more."
"What is in your mind?"
"This: I have had an offer--an offer of work--from the brewery. Miss
Messenger herself sent the offer, which I am to accept or to refuse
to-morrow morning."
"An offer of work? I congratulate you. Of course you will accept?" She
looked at him sharply, even suspiciously.
"I do not know."
"You have forgotten," she said--in other girls the words and the tone of
her voice would have sounded like an encouragement--"you have forgotten
what you said only last Sunday evening."
"No: I have not forgotten. What I said last Sunday evening only
increases my embarrassment. I did not expect, then--I did not think it
possible that any work here would be offered to me."
"Is the pay insufficient?"
"No: the pay is to be at the usual market-rate."
"Are the hours too long?"
"I am to please myself. It seems as if the young lady had done her best
to make me as independent as a man who works for money can be."
"Yet you hesitate. Why?"
He was silent--thinking what he should tell her. The whole truth would
have been best; but then, one so seldom tells the whole truth about
anything, far less about one's self. He could not tell her that he had
been masquerading all the time, after so many protestations of being a
real working-man.
"Is it that you do not like to make friends among the East End workmen?"
"No." He could answer this with truth. "It is not that. The working-men
here are better than I expected to find them. They are more sensible,
more self-reliant, and less dangerous. To be sure, they profess to
entertain an unreasoning dislike for rich people, and, I believe, think
that their lives are entirely spent over oranges and skittles. I wish
they had more knowledge of books, and could be got to think in some
elemental fashion about art. I wish they had a better sense of beauty,
and I wish they could be got to cultivate some of the graces of life.
You shall teach them, Miss Kennedy. Also, I wish that tobacco was not
their only solace. I am very much interested in them. That is not the
reason."
"If you please to tell me----" she said.
"Well, then"--he would tell that fatal half-truth--"the reason is this;
you know that I have had an education above what fortune intended for me
when she made me the son of Sergeant Goslett."
"I know," she replied. "It was my case, as well; we are companions in
this great happiness."
"The man who conferred this benefit upon me, the best and
kindest-hearted man in the world, to whom I am indebted for more than I
can tell you, is willing to do more for me. If I please, I may live with
him in idleness."
"You may live in idleness? That must be, indeed, a tempting offer!"
"Idleness," he replied, a little hurt at her contempt for what certainly
was a temptation for him, "does not always mean doing nothing."
"What would you do, then?"
"There is the life of culture and art----"
"Oh, no!" she replied. "Would you really like to become one of those
poor creatures who think they lead lives devoted to art? Would you like
to grow silly over blue china, to quarrel about color, to worship form
in poetry, to judge everything by the narrow rules of the latest
pedantic fashion?"
"You know this art world, then?"
"I know something of it, I have heard of it. Never mind me--think of
yourself. You would not, you could not, condemn yourself to such a
life."
"Not to such a life as you picture. But, consider, I am offered a life
of freedom instead of servitude."
"Servitude! Why, we are all servants one of the other. Society is like
the human body, in which all the limbs belong to each other. There must
be rich and poor, idlers and workers; we depend one upon the other; if
the rich do not work with and for the poor, retribution falls upon them.
The poor must work for the rich, or they will starve; poor or rich, I
think it is better to be poor; idler or worker, I know it is better to
be worker."
He thought of Lord Jocelyn; of the pleasant chambers in Piccadilly, of
the club, of his own friends, of society, of little dinners, of stalls
at the theatre; of suppers among actors and actresses; of artists and
the smoking-parties; of the men who write, and the men who talk, and the
men who know everybody, and are full of stories; of his riding, and
hunting, and shooting; of his fencing, and billiards, and cards.
All these things passed through his brain swiftly, in a moment. And then
he thought of the beautiful woman beside him, whose voice was the
sweetest music to him that he had ever heard.
"You must take the offer," she went on, and her words fell upon his ear
like the words of an oracle to a Greek in doubt. "Work at the brewery is
not hard. You will have no task-master set over you; you are free to go
and come, to choose your own time; there will be in so great a place,
there must be, work, quite enough to occupy your time. Give up yearning
after an idle life, and work in patience."
"Is there anything," he said, "to which you could not persuade me?"
"Oh, not for me!" she replied impatiently. "It is for yourself. You have
your life before you, to throw away or to use. Tell me," she hesitated a
little; "you have come back to your own kith and kin, after many years.
They were strange to you at first, all these people of the East
End--your own people. Now that you know them, should you like to go away
from them, altogether away and forget them? Could you desert them? You
know, if you go, that you will desert them, for between this end of
London and the other there is a great gulf fixed, across which no one
ever passes. You will leave us altogether if you leave us now."
At this point Harry felt the very strongest desire to make it clear that
what concerned him most would be the leaving her, but he repressed the
temptation and merely remarked that, if he did desert his kith and kin,
they would not regret him. His Uncle Bunker, he explained, had even
offered him five-and-twenty pounds to go.
"It is not that you have done anything, you know, except to help us in
our little experiment," said Angela. "But it is what you may do, what
you shall do, if you remain."
"What can I do?"
"You have knowledge; you have a voice; you have a quick eye and a ready
tongue; you could lead, you could preside. Oh! what a career you might
have before you!"
"You think too well of me, Miss Kennedy. I am a very lazy and worthless
kind of man."
"No." She shook her head and smiled superior. "I know you better than
you know yourself. I have watched you for these months. And then we must
not forget, there is our Palace of Delight."
"Are we millionaires?"
"Why, we have already begun it. There is our drawing-room; it is only a
few weeks old, yet see what a difference there is already. The girls are
happy; their finer tastes are awakened; their natural yearnings after
things delightful are partly satisfied; they laugh and sing now; they
run about and play. There is already something of our dream realized.
Stay with us, and we shall see the rest."
He made an effort and again restrained himself.
"I stay, then," he said, "for your sake--because you command me to
stay."
Had she done well? She asked herself the question in the shelter of her
bedroom, with great doubt and anxiety. This young workman, who might if
he chose be a--well--yes--a gentleman--quite as good a gentleman as most
of the men who pretend to the title--was going to give up whatever
prospects he had in the world, at her bidding, and for her sake. For
her sake! Yet what he wished was impossible.
What reward, then, had she to offer him that would satisfy him? Nothing.
Stay, he was only a man. One pretty face was as good as another; he was
struck with hers for the moment. She would put him in the way of being
attracted by another. Yes: that would do. This settled in her own mind,
she put the matter aside, and, as she was very sleepy, she only murmured
to herself, as her eyes closed, "Nelly Sorensen."