DICK THE RADICAL.
In the early days of winter, the walls of the palace being now already
well above the hoarding, Angela made another important convert. This was
no other than Dick Coppin, the cousin of whom mention has been already
made.
"I will bring him to your drawing-room," said Harry. "That is, if he
will come. He does not know much about drawing-rooms, but he is a great
man at the Stepney Advanced Club. He is a reddest of red-hot Rads, and
the most advanced of Republicans. I do not think he would himself go
a-murdering of kings and priests, but I fancy he regards these things as
accidents naturally rising out of a pardonable enthusiasm. His manners
are better than you will generally find, because he belongs to my own
gentle craft. You shall tame him, Miss Kennedy."
Angela said she would try.
"He shall learn to waltz," Harry went on. "This will convert him from a
fierce Republican to a merely enthusiastic Radical. Then he shall learn
to sing in parts; this will drop him down into advanced Liberalism. And
if you can persuade him to attend your evenings, talk with the girls, or
engage in some art, say painting, he will become, quite naturally, a
mere Conservative."
With some difficulty Harry persuaded his cousin to come with him. Dick
Coppin was not, he said of himself, a dangler after girls'
apron-strings, having something else to think of; nor was he attracted
by the promise, held out by his cousin, of music and singing. But he
came under protest, because music seemed to him an idle thing while the
House of Lords remained undestroyed, and because this cousin of his
could somehow make him do pretty nearly what he pleased.
He was a man of Harry's own age; a short man, with somewhat rough and
rugged features--strong, and not without the beauty of strength. His
forehead was broad; he had thick eyebrows, the thick lips of one who
speaks much in public, and a straight chin--the chin of obstinacy. His
eyes were bright and full; his hair was black; his face was oval; his
expression was masterful; it was altogether the face of a man who
interested one. Angela thought of his brother, the captain in the
Salvation Army; this man, she felt, had all the courage of the other,
with more common-sense; yet one who, too, might become a fanatic--who
might be dangerous if he took the wrong side. She shook hands with him
and welcomed him. Then she said that she wanted dancing men for her
evenings, and hoped that he could dance. It was the first time in his
life that Mr. Coppin had been asked that question, and also the first
time that he had thought it possible that any man in his senses, except
a sailor, should be expected to dance. Of course he could not, and said
so bluntly, sticking his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, which is a
gesture peculiar to the trade, if you care to notice so small a fact.
"Your cousin," said Angela, "will teach you. Mr. Goslett, please give
Mr. Coppin a lesson in a quadrille. Nelly, you will be his partner. Now,
if you will make up the set, I will play."
An elderly bishop of Calvinistic principles could not have been more
astonished than was this young workman. He had not the presence of mind
to refuse. Before he realized his position, he was standing beside his
partner: in front of him stood his cousin, also with a partner; four
girls made up the set. Then the music began, and he was dragged, pushed,
hustled, and pulled this way and that. He would have resented this
treatment but that the girls took such pains to set him right, and
evidently regarded the lesson as one of the greatest importance. Nor did
they cease until he had discerned what the mathematician called the Law
of the Quadrille, and could tread the measure with some approach to
accuracy.
"We shall not be satisfied, Mr. Coppin," said Angela, when the quadrille
was finished, "until we have taught everybody to dance."
"What is the good of dancing?" he asked good-humoredly, but a good deal
humiliated by the struggle.
"Dancing is graceful; dancing is a good exercise; dancing should be
natural to young people; dancing is delightful. See--I will play a
waltz; now watch the girls."
She played. Instantly the girls caught each other by the waist and
whirled round the room with brightened eyes and parted lips. Harry took
Nelly in the close embrace which accompanies the German dance, and
swiftly, easily, gracefully, danced round and round the room.
"Is it not happiness that you are witnessing, Mr. Coppin?" asked Angela.
"Tell me, did you ever see dressmakers happy before? You, too, shall
learn to waltz. I will teach you, but not to-night."
Then they left off dancing and sat down, talking and laughing. Harry
took his violin and discoursed sweet music, to which they listened or
not as they listed. Only the girl who was lame looked on with rapt and
eager face.
"See her!" said Angela, pointing her out. "She has found what her soul
was ignorantly desiring. She has found music. Tell me, Mr. Coppin, if it
were not for the music and this room, what would that poor child be?"
He made no reply. Never before had he witnessed, never had he
suspected, such an evening. There were the girls whom he despised, who
laughed and jested with the lads in the street, who talked loud and were
foolish. Why, they were changed! What did it mean? And who was this
young woman, who looked and spoke as no other woman he had ever met, yet
was only a dressmaker?
"I have heard of you, Mr. Coppin," this young person said, in her
queen-like manner, "and I am glad that you have come. We shall expect
you, now, every Saturday evening. I hear that you are a political
student."
"I am a Republican," he replied. "That's about what I am." Again he
stuck his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets.
"Yes. You do not perhaps quite understand what it is that we are doing
here, do you? In a small way--it is quite a little thing--it may
interest even a political student like yourself. The interests of
milliners and dressmakers are very small compared with the House of
Lords. Still--your sisters and cousins----"
"It seems pleasant," he replied, "if you don't all get set up with high
notions. As for me, I am for root-and-branch Reform."
"Yes: but all improvement in government means improvement of the people,
does it not? Else, I see no reason for trying to improve a government."
He made no reply. He was so much accustomed to the vague denunciations
and cheap rhetoric of his class that a small practical point was strange
to him.
"Now," said Angela, "I asked your cousin to bring you here, because I
learn that you are a man of great mental activity, and likely, if you
are properly directed, to be of great use to us."
He stared again. Who was this dressmaker who spoke about directing him?
The same uncomfortable feeling came over him--a cold doubt about
himself, which he often felt when in the society of his cousin. No man
likes to feel that he is not perfectly and entirely right, and that he
must be right.
"We are a society," she went on, "of girls who want to work for
ourselves; we all of us belong to your class: we therefore look to you
for sympathy and assistance. Yet you hold aloof from us. We have had
some support here already, but none from the people who ought most to
sympathize with us. That is, I suppose, because you know nothing about
us. Very well, then. While your cousin is amusing those girls, I will
tell you about our association."
* * * * * * *
"Now you understand, Mr. Coppin. You men have long since organized
yourselves--it is our turn now; and we look to you for help. We are not
going to work any longer for a master: we are not going to work long
hours any longer; and we are going to get time every day for fresh air,
exercise, and amusement. You are continually occupied, I believe, at
your club, denouncing the pleasures of the rich. But we are actually
going to enjoy all those pleasures ourselves, and they will cost us
nothing. Look round this room--we have a piano lent to us: there is your
cousin with his fiddle, and Captain Sorensen with his; we are learning
part-songs, which cost us three-halfpence each; we dance; we play; we
read--a subscription to Smith's is only three guineas a year; we have
games which are cheap: the whole expense of our evenings is the fire in
winter and the gas. On Saturday evenings we have some cake and lemonade,
which one of the girls makes for us. What can rich people have more than
society, lights, music, singing, and dancing?"
He was silent, wondering at this thing.
"Don't you see, Mr. Coppin, that if we are successful we shall be the
cause of many more such associations? Don't you see, that if we could
get our principle established, we should accomplish a greater revolution
than the overthrow of the Lords and the Church, and one far more
beneficial?"
"You can't succeed," he said. "It's been tried before."
"Yes--by men: I know it. And it has always broken down because the
leaders were false to their principles and betrayed the cause."
"Where are the girls to get the money to start with?"
"We are fortunate," Angela replied. "We have this house and furniture
given to us by a lady interested in us. That, I own, is a great thing.
But other rich people will be found to do as much. Why, how much better
it is than leaving money to hospitals!"
"Rich people!" he echoed with contempt.
"Yes: rich people, of whom you know so little, Mr. Coppin, that I think
you ought to be very careful how you speak of them. But think of
us--look at the girls. Do they not look happier than they used to look?"
He replied untruthfully, because he was not going to give in to a woman,
all of a sudden, that he did not remember how they used to look, but
that undoubtedly they now looked very well. He did not say--which he
felt--that they were behaving more quietly and modestly than he had ever
known them to behave.
"You," Angela went on, with a little emphasis on the pronoun, which made
her speech a delicate flattery--"you, Mr. Coppin, cannot fail to observe
how the evening's relaxation helps to raise the whole tone of the girls.
The music which they hear sinks into their hearts and lifts them above
the little cares of their lives; the dancing makes them merry; the
social life, the talk among ourselves, the books they read, all help to
maintain a pure and elevated tone of thought. I declare, Mr. Coppin, I
no longer know these girls. And then they bring their friends, and so
their influence spreads. They will not, I hope, remain in the workrooms
all their lives. A woman should be married; do not you think so, Mr.
Coppin?"
He was too much astonished at the whole conversation to make any
coherent reply.
"I think you have perhaps turned your attention too much to politics,
have you not? Yet practical questions ought to interest you."
"They say, at the club," he answered, "that this place is a sham and a
humbug."
"Will you bring your friends here to show them that it is not?"
"Harry stood up for you the other night. He's plucky, and they like him
for all he looks a swell."
"Does he speak at your club?"
"Sometimes--not to say speak. He gets up after the speech, and says so
and so is wrong. Yet they like him--because he isn't afraid to say what
he thinks. They call him Gentleman Jack."
"I thought he was a brave man," said Angela, looking at Harry, who was
rehearsing some story to the delight of Nelly and the girls.
"Yes--the other night they were talking about you, and one said one
thing and one said another, and a chap said he thought he'd seen you in
a West End music-hall, and he didn't believe you were any better than
you should be."
"Oh!" She shrank as if she had been struck some blow.
"He didn't say it twice. After he'd knocked him down, Harry invited that
chap to stand up and have it out. But he wouldn't."
It was a great misfortune for Harry that he lost the soft and glowing
look of gratitude and admiration which was quite wasted upon him. For he
was at the very point, the critical point, of the story.
Angela had made another convert. When Dick Coppin went home that night,
he was humbled but pensive. Here was a thing of which he had never
thought; and here was a woman the like of whom he had never imagined.
The House of Lords, the Church, the Land Laws, presented no attraction
that night for his thoughts. For the first time in his life he felt the
influence of a woman.