"UPROUSE YE THEN, MY MERRY, MERRY MEN."
At nine in the morning Harry presented himself at the house, no longer
his own, for the signing of certain papers. The place was closed for a
holiday, but the girls were already assembling in the show-room, getting
their dresses laid out, trying on their gloves, and chattering like
birds up in the branches on a fine, spring morning. He found Angela
sitting with an elderly gentleman--none other than the senior partner of
the firm of her solicitors. He had a quantity of documents on the table
before him, and as Harry opened the door he heard these remarkable
words:
"So the young man does not know--even at the eleventh hour?"
What it was he would learn, Harry cared not to inquire. He had been told
that there was a secret of some sort which he would learn in the course
of the day.
"These papers, Harry," said his bride, "are certain documents which you
have to sign, connected with that little fortune of which I told you."
"I hope," said Harry, "that the fortune, whatever it is, has all been
settled upon yourself absolutely."
"You will find, young gentleman," said the solicitor, gravely, "that
ample justice--generous justice--has been done you. Very well, I will
say no more."
"Do you want me to sign without reading, Angela?"
"If you will so far trust me."
He took the pen and signed where he was told to sign, without reading
one word. If he had been ordered to sign away his life and liberty, he
would have done so blindly and cheerfully at Angela's bidding. The deed
was signed, and the act of signature was witnessed.
So that was done. There now remained only the ceremony. While the
solicitor, who evidently disliked the whole proceeding, as irregular and
dangerous, was putting up the papers, Angela took her lover's hands in
hers, and looked into his face with her frank and searching look.
"You do not repent, my poor Harry?"
"Repent?"
"You might have done so much better: you might have married a lady----"
The solicitor, overhearing these words, sat down and rubbed his nose
with an unprofessional smile.
"Shall I not marry a lady?"
"You might have found a rich bride: you might have led a lazy life, with
nothing to do, instead of which--O Harry, there is still time! We are
not due at the church for half an hour yet. Think. Do you deliberately
choose a life of work and ambition--with--perhaps--poverty?"
At this point the solicitor rose from his chair and walked softly to the
window, where he remained for five minutes looking out upon Stepney
Green with his back to the lovers. If Harry had been watching him, he
would have remarked a curious tremulous movement of the shoulders.
"There is one thing more, Harry, that I have to ask you."
"Of course, you have only to ask me, whatever it is. Could I refuse you
anything, who will give me so much?"
Their fingers were interlaced, their eyes were looking into each other.
No; he could refuse her nothing.
"I give you much? O Harry! what is a woman's gift of herself?"
Harry restrained himself. The solicitor might be sympathetic; but, on
the whole, it was best to act as if he were not. Law has little to do
with love; Cupid has never yet been represented with the long gown.
"It is a strange request, Harry. It is connected with my--my little
foolish secret. You will let me go away directly the service is over,
and you will consent not to see me again until the evening, when I shall
return. You, with all the girls, will meet me in the porch of the Palace
at seven o'clock exactly. And, as Miss Messenger will come too, you will
make your--perhaps your last appearance--my poor boy--in the character
of a modern English gentleman in evening-dress. Tell your best man that
he is to give his arm to Nelly; the other girls will follow two and two.
Oh, Harry, the first sound of the organ in your Palace will be your own
wedding march: the first festival in your Palace will be in your own
honor. Is not that what it should be?"
"In your honor, dear, not mine. And Miss Messenger? Are we to give no
honor to her who built the Palace?"
"Oh, yes--yes--yes!" She put the question by with a careless gesture.
"But any one who happened to have the money could do such a simple
thing. The honor is yours because you invented it."
"From your hands, Angela, I will take all the honor that you please to
give. So am I doubly honored."
There were no wedding bells at all: the organ was mute; the parish
church of Stepney was empty; the spectators of the marriage were Mrs.
Bormalack and Captain Sorensen, besides the girls and the bridegroom,
and Dick, his best man. The captain in the Salvation Army might have
been present as well; he had been asked, but he was lying on the
sick-bed from which he was never to rise again. Lord and Lady Davenant
were there: the former sleek, well contented, well dressed in broadcloth
of the best; the latter agitated, restless, humiliated, because she had
lost the thing she came across the Atlantic to claim, and was going
home, after the splendor of the last three months, to the monotonous
level of Canaan City. Who could love Canaan City after the West End of
London! What woman would look forward with pleasure to the dull and
uneventful days, the local politics, the chapel squabbles, the little
gatherings for tea and supper, after the enjoyment of a carriage and
pair and unlimited theatres, operas, and concerts, and footmen, and such
dinners as the average American, or the average Englishman either,
seldom arrives at seeing, even in visions? Sweet content was gone; and
though Angela meant well, and it was kind of her to afford the ambitious
lady a glimpse of that great world into which she desired to enter, the
sight--even this Pisgah glimpse--of a social paradise to which she could
never belong destroyed her peace of mind, and she will for the rest of
her life lie on a rock deploring. Not so her husband: his future is
assured; he can eat and drink plentifully; he can sleep all the morning
undisturbed; he is relieved of the anxieties connected with his Case;
and, though the respect due to rank is not recognized in the States, he
has to bear none of its responsibilities, and has altogether abandoned
the grand manner. At the same time, as one who very nearly became a
British peer, his position in Canaan City is enormously raised.
They, then, were in the church. They drove thither, not in Miss
Messenger's carriage, but with Lord Jocelyn.
They arrived a quarter of an hour before the ceremony. When the curate
who was to perform the ceremony arrived, Lord Jocelyn sought him in the
vestry and showed him a special license by which it was pronounced
lawful, and even laudable, for Harry Goslett, bachelor, to take unto
wife Angela Marsden Messenger, spinster.
And at sight of that name did the curate's knees begin to tremble, and
his hands to shake.
"Angela Marsden Messenger? is it then," he asked, "the great heiress?"
"It is none other," said Lord Jocelyn. "And she marries my ward--here is
my card--by special license."
"But--but--is it a clandestine marriage?"
"Not at all. There are reasons why Miss Messenger desires to be married
in Stepney. With them we have nothing to do. She has, of late,
associated herself with many works of benevolence, but anonymously. In
fact, my dear sir"--here Lord Jocelyn looked profoundly knowing--"my
ward, the bridegroom, has always known her under another name, and even
now does not know whom he is marrying. When we sign the books we must,
just to keep the secret a little longer, manage that he shall write his
own name without seeing the names of the bride."
This seemed very irregular in the eyes of the curate, and at first he
was for referring the matter to the rector, but finally gave in, on the
understanding that he was to be no party to any concealment.
And presently the wedding party walked slowly up the aisle, and Harry,
to his great astonishment, saw his bride on Lord Jocelyn's arm. There
were cousins of the Messengers in plenty who should have done this duty,
but Angela would invite none of them. She came alone to Stepney; she
lived and worked in the place alone; she wanted no consultation or
discussion with the cousins; she would tell them when all was done; and
she knew very well that so great an heiress as herself could do nothing
but what is right, when one has time to recover from the shock, and to
settle down and think things over.
No doubt, though we have nothing to do with the outside world in this
story, there was a tremendous rustling of skirts, shaking of heads,
tossing of curls, wagging of tongues, and uplifting of hands, the next
morning when Angela's cards were received, and the news was in all the
papers. And there was such a run upon interjections that the vocabulary
broke down, and people were fain to cry to one another in foreign
tongues.
For thus the announcement ran:
"On Thursday, March 20, at the parish church, Stepney, Harry, son
of the late Samuel Goslett, Sergeant in the 120th Regiment of the
Line, to Angela Marsden, daughter of the late John Marsden
Messenger, and granddaughter of the late John Messenger, of Portman
Square and Whitechapel."
This was a pretty blow among the cousins. The greatest heiress in
England, who they had hoped would marry a duke, or a marquis, or an earl
at least, had positively and actually married the son of a common
soldier--well, a non-commissioned officer--the same thing. What did it
mean? What _could_ it mean?
Others, who knew Harry and his story, who had sympathy with him on
account of his many qualities--who owned that the obscurity of his birth
was but an accident, shared with him by many of the most worthy,
excellent, brilliant, useful, well-bred, delightful men of the
world--rejoiced over the strange irony of fate which had first lifted
this soldier's son out of the gutter, and then, with apparent
malignity, dropped him back again, only, however, to raise him once more
far higher than before. For, indeed, the young man was now rich--with
his vats and his mashtubs, his millions of casks, his Old and his Mild
and his Bitter, and his Family at nine shillings the nine-gallon cask,
and his accumulated millions, "beyond the potential dream of avarice."
If he chooses to live more than half his time in Whitechapel, that is no
concern of anybody's; and if his wife chooses to hold a sort of court at
the abandoned East, to surround herself with people unheard of in
society, not to say out of it, why should she not? Any of the royal
princes might have done the same thing if they had chosen and had been
well-advised. Further, if, between them, Angela and her husband have
established a superior Aquarium, a glorified Crystal Palace, in which
all the shows are open, all the performers are drilled and trained
amateurs, and all the work actually is done for nothing; in which the
management is by the people themselves, who will have no interference
from priest or parson, rector or curate, philanthropist or agitator; and
no patronage from societies, well-intentioned young ladies, meddling
benevolent persons and officious promoters, starters, and shovers-along,
with half an eye fixed on heaven and the remaining eye and a half on
their own advancement--if, in fact, they choose to do these things, why
not? It is an excellent way of spending their time, and a change from
the monotony of society.
Again, it is said that Harry, now Harry Messenger by the provision of
old John Messenger's will, is the President, or the Chairman, or the
Honorary Secretary--in fact, the spring and stay and prop of a new and
most formidable Union or Association, which threatens, unless it be
nipped in the bud, very considerable things of the greatest importance
to the country. It is, in fact, a League of Working-men for the
promotion and advancement of their own interests. Its prospectus sets
forth that, having looked in vain among the candidates for the House of
Commons for any representative who had been in the past, or was likely
to be in the future, of the slightest use to them in the House; having
found that neither Conservatives, nor Liberals, nor Radicals have ever
been, or are ever likely to be, prepared with any real measure which
should in the least concern themselves and their own wants; and fully
recognizing the fact that in the debates of the House the interests of
labor and the duties of Government toward the laboring classes are never
recognized or understood--the working-men of the country hereby form
themselves into a General League or Union, which shall have no other
object whatever than the study of their own rights and interests. The
question of wages will be left to the different unions, except in such
cases where there is no union, or where the men are inarticulate (as in
the leading case, now some ten years old, of the gas-stokers) through
ignorance and drink. And the immediate questions before the union will
be, first, the dwelling-houses of the working-men, which are to be made
clean, safe, and healthy; next, their food and drink, which are to be
unadulterated, pure, and genuine, and are to pass through no more hands
than is necessary, and to be distributed at the actual cost price
without the intervention of small shops; next, instruction, for which
purpose the working-men will _elect their own school boards_, and burn
all the foolish reading-books at present in use, and abolish spelling as
a part of education, and teach the things necessary for all trades;
next, clothing, which will be made for them by their own men working for
themselves, without troubling the employers of labor at all; next, a
newspaper of their own, which will refuse any place to political
agitators, leaders, partisans, and professional talkers, and be devoted
to the questions which really concern working-men, and especially the
question of how best to employ the power which is in their hands, and
report continually what is doing, what must be done, and how it must be
done. And lastly, emigration, so that in every family it shall be
considered necessary for some to go, and the whole country shall be
mapped out into districts, and only a certain number be allowed to
remain.
Now, the world being so small as it is, and Englishmen and Scotchmen
being so masterful that they must needs go straight to the front and
stay there, it cannot but happen that the world will presently--that is,
in two generations, or three at the most--be overrun with the good old
English blood: whereupon till the round earth gets too small, which will
not happen for another ten thousand years or so, there will be the
purest, most delightful, and most heavenly Millennium. Rich people may
come into it if they please, but they will not be wanted: in fact, rich
people will die out, and it will soon come to be considered an unhappy
thing, as it undoubtedly is, to be born rich.
--"Whose daughters ye are," concluded the curate, closing his book, "as
long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement."
He led the way into the vestry, where the book lay open, and sitting at
the table he made the proper entries.
Then Harry took his place and signed. Now, behold! as he took the pen in
his hand, Lord Jocelyn artfully held blotting-paper in readiness, and in
such a manner as to hide the name of the bride; then Angela signed; then
the witnesses, Lord Jocelyn and Captain Sorensen. And then there were
shaking of hands and kissing. And before they came away the curate
ventured timidly to whisper congratulations and that he had no idea of
the honor. And then Angela stopped him, and bade him to her
wedding-feast that evening at the new Palace of Delight.
Then Lord Jocelyn distributed largess, the largest kind of largess,
among the people of the church.
But it surely was the strangest of weddings. For when they reached the
church door the bride and bridegroom kissed each other, and then he
placed her in the carriage, in which the Davenants and Lord Jocelyn also
seated themselves, and so they drove off.
"We shall see her again to-night," said Harry. "Come, Dick, we have got
a long day to got through--seven hours. Let us go for a walk. I can't
sit down; I can't rest; I can't do anything. Let us go for a walk and
wrangle."
They left the girls and strode away, and did not return until it was
past six o'clock, and already growing dark.
The girls, in dreadful lowness of spirits, and feeling as flat as so
many pancakes, returned to their house and sat down with their hands in
their laps, to do nothing for seven hours. Did one ever hear that the
maidens at a marriage--do the customs of any country present an example
of such a thing--returned to the bride's house without either bride or
bridegroom? Did one ever hear of a marriage where the groom left the
bride at the church door, and went away for a six hours' walk?
As for Captain Sorensen, he went to the Palace and pottered about,
getting snubbed by the persons in authority. There was still much to be
done before the evening, but there was time: all would be done.
Presently he went away; but he, too, was restless and agitated; he could
not rest at home; the possession of the secret, the thought of his
daughter's future, the strange and unlooked-for happiness that had come
to him in his old age--these things agitated him; nor could even his
fiddle bring him any consolation; and the peacefulness of the Almshouse,
which generally soothed him, this day irritated him. Therefore he
wandered about, and presently appeared at the House, were he took dinner
with the girls, and they talked about what would happen.
The first thing that happened was the arrival of a cart--a
spring-cart--with the name of a Regent Street firm upon it. The men took
out a great quantity of parcels and brought them into the show-room. All
the girls ran down to see what it meant, because on so great a day
everything, said Nelly, must mean something.
"Name of Hermitage?" asked the man. "This is for you, miss. Name of
Sorensen? This is for you." And so on, a parcel for every one of the
girls.
Then he went away, and they all looked at each other.
"Hadn't you better," asked Captain Sorensen, "open the parcels, girls?"
They opened them.
"Oh--h!"
Behold! for every girl such a present as none of them had ever imagined!
The masculine pen cannot describe the sweet things which they found
there; not silks and satins, but pretty things; with boots, because
dressmakers are apt to be shabby in the matter of boots; and with
handkerchiefs and pretty scarfs and gloves and serviceable things of all
sorts.
More than this: there was a separate parcel tied up in white paper for
every girl, and on it, in pencil, "For the wedding supper at the Palace
of Delight." And in it gauze, or lace, for bridemaid's head-dress, and
white kid gloves, and a necklace with a locket, and inside the locket a
portrait of Miss Kennedy, and outside her Christian name, Angela. Also,
for each girl a little note, "For ----, with Miss Messenger's love;" but
for Nelly, whose parcel was like Benjamin's mess, the note was, "For
Nelly, with Miss Messenger's kindest love."
"That," said Rebekah, but without jealousy, "is because you were Miss
Kennedy's favorite. Well! Miss Messenger _must_ be fond of her, and no
wonder!"
"No wonder at all," said Captain Sorensen.
And nobody guessed. Nobody had the least suspicion.
While they were all admiring and wondering, Mrs. Bormalack ran over
breathless.
"My dears!" she cried, "look what's come!"
Nothing less than a beautiful black silk dress.
"Now go away, Captain Sorensen," she said; "you men are only hindering.
And we've got to try on things. Oh, good gracious! To think that Miss
Messenger would remember me, of all people in the world! To be sure, Mr.
Bormalack was one of her collectors, and she may have heard about
me----"
"No," said Rebekah, "it is through Miss Kennedy; no one has been
forgotten who knew her."
At seven o'clock that evening the great hall of the Palace was pretty
well filled with guests. Some of them, armed with white wands, acted as
stewards, and it was understood that on the arrival of Miss Messenger a
lane was to be formed, and the procession to the dais at the end of the
hall was to pass through that lane.
Outside, in the vestibule, stood the wedding-party, waiting: the
bridegroom, with his best man, and the bridemaids in their white
dresses, flowing gauze and necklaces, and gloves, and flowers--a very
sweet and beautiful bevy of girls; Harry for the last time in his life,
he thought with a sigh, in evening-dress. Within the hall there were
strange rumors flying about. It was said that Miss Messenger herself had
been married that morning, and that the procession would be for her
wedding; but others knew better: it was Miss Kennedy's wedding; she had
married Harry Goslett, the man they called Gentleman Jack; and Miss
Kennedy, everybody knew, was patronized by Miss Messenger.
At ten minutes past seven, two carriages drew up. From the first of
these descended Harry's bride, led by Lord Jocelyn; and from the second
the Davenants.
Yes, Harry's bride. But whereas in the morning she had been dressed in a
plain white frock and white bonnet like her bridemaids--she was now
arrayed in white satin, mystic, wonderful, with white veil and white
flowers, and round her white throat a necklace of sparkling diamonds,
and diamonds in her hair.
Harry stepped forward with beating heart.
"Take her, boy," said Lord Jocelyn, proudly. "But you have married--not
Miss Kennedy at all--but Angela Messenger."
Harry took his bride's hand in a kind of stupor. What did Lord Jocelyn
mean?
"Forgive me, Harry," she said, "say you forgive me."
Then he raised her veil and kissed her forehead before them all. But he
could not speak, because all in a moment the sense of what this would
mean poured upon his brain in a great wave, and he would fain have been
alone.
It was Miss Kennedy, indeed, but glorified into a great lady;
oh!--oh--MISS MESSENGER!
The girls, frightened, were shrinking together; even Rebekah was afraid
at the great and mighty name of Messenger.
Angela went among them, and kissed them all with words of encouragement.
"Can you not love me, Nelly," she said, "as well when I am rich as when
I was poor?"
Then the chief officers of the brewery advanced, offering
congratulations in timid accents, because they knew now that Miss
Kennedy, the dressmaker, of whom such hard things had been sometimes
said in their own presence and by their own wives, was no other than the
sole partner in the brewery, and that her husband had worked among them
for a daily wage. What did these things mean? They made respectable men
afraid. One person there was, however, who at sight of Miss Messenger,
for whom he was waiting with anxious heart, having a great desire to
present his own case of unrewarded zeal, turned pale, and broke through
the crowd with violence and fled. It was Uncle Bunker.
And then the stewards appeared at the open doors, and the procession was
formed.
First the stewards themselves--being all clerks of the brewery--walked
proudly at the head, carrying their white wands like rifles. Next came
Harry and the bride, at sight of whom the guests shouted and roared;
next came Dick Coppin with Nelly, and Lord Jocelyn with Rebekah, and the
chief brewer with Lady Davenant, of course in her black velvet and
war-paint, and Lord Davenant with Mrs. Bormalack, and the chief
accountant with another bridesmaid, and Captain Sorensen with another,
and then the rest.
Then the organ burst into a wedding march, rolling and pealing about the
walls and roof of the mighty hall, and amid its melodious thunder, and
the shouts of the wedding-guests, Harry led his bride slowly through the
lane of curious and rejoicing faces, till they reached the dais.
When all were arranged with the bride seated in the middle, her husband
standing at her right and the bridemaids grouped behind them, Lord
Jocelyn stepped to the front and read in a loud voice part of the deed
of gift, which he then gave with a profound bow to Angela, who placed it
in her husband's hands.
Then she stepped forward and raised her veil, and stood before them all,
beautiful as the day, and with tears in her eyes. Yet she spoke in firm
and clear accents which all could hear. It was her first and last public
speech; for Angela belongs to that rapidly diminishing body of women who
prefer to let the men do all the public speaking.
"My dear friends," she said, "my kind friends: I wish first that you
should clearly understand that this Palace has been invented and
designed for you by my husband. All I have done is to build it. Now it
is yours, with all it contains. I pray God that it may be used worthily,
and for the joy and happiness of all. I declare this Palace of Delight
open, the property of the people, to be administered and governed by
them, and them alone, in trust for each other."
This was all she said; and the people cheered again, and the organ
played "God Save the Queen."
With this simple ceremony was the Palace of Delight thrown open to the
world. What better beginning could it have than a wedding party? What
better omen could there be than that the Palace, like the Garden of
Eden, should begin with the happiness of a wedded pair?
At this point there presented itself, to those who drew up the
programme, a grave practical difficulty. It was this. The Palace could
only be declared open in the great hall itself. Also, it could be only
in the great hall that the banquet could take place. Now, how were the
fifteen hundred guests to be got out of the way and amused while the
tables were laid and the cloth spread? There could not be, it is true,
the splendor and costly plate and épergnes and flowers of my Lord
Mayor's great dinner, but ornament of some kind there must be upon the
tables; and even with an army of drilled waiters it takes time to lay
covers for fifteen hundred people.
But there was no confusion. Once more the procession was formed and
marched round the hall, headed by the band of the Guards, visiting first
the gymnasium, then the library, then the concert-room, and lastly the
theatre. Here they paused, and the bridal party took their seats. The
people poured in; when every seat was taken, the stewards invited the
rest into the concert-room. In the theatre a little sparkling comedy was
played; in the concert-room a troupe of singers discoursed sweet
madrigals and glees. Outside the waiters ran backward and forward as
busy as Diogenes with his tub, but more to the purpose.
When, in something over an hour, the performances were finished, the
stewards found that the tables were laid, one running down the whole
length of the hall, and shorter ones across the hall. Everybody had a
card with his place upon it; there was no confusion, and, while
trumpeters blared a welcome, they all took their places in due order.
Angela and her husband sat in the middle of the long table; at Angela's
left hand was Lord Jocelyn, at Harry's right Lady Davenant. Opposite the
bride and bridegroom sat the chief brewer and the chief accountant. The
bridemaids spread out right and left. All Angela's friends and
acquaintances of Stepney Green were there, except three. For old Mr.
Maliphant was sitting as usual in the boarding-house, conversing with
unseen persons, and laughing and brandishing a pipe; and with him Daniel
Fagg sat hugging his book. And in his own office sat Bunker, sick at
heart. For he remembered his officious private letter to Miss Messenger,
and he felt that he had indeed gone and done it.
The rest of the long table was filled up by the clerks and superior
officers of the brewery; at the shorter tables sat the rest of the
guests, including even the draymen and errand-boys. And so the feast
began, while the band of the Guards played for them.
It was a royal feast, with the most magnificent cold sirloins of roast
beef and rounds of salt beef, legs of mutton, saddles of mutton, loins
of veal, ribs of pork, legs of pork, great hams, huge turkeys, capons,
fowls, ducks, and geese, all done to a turn; so that the honest guests
fell to with a mighty will, and wished that such a wedding might come
once a month at least, with such a supper. And Messenger's beer, as much
as you pleased, for everybody. At a moment like this, would one, even at
the high table, venture to ask, to say nothing of wishing for, aught but
Messenger's beer?
After the hacked and mangled remains of the first course were removed,
there came puddings, pies, cakes, jellies, ices, blanc-mange, all kinds
of delicious things.
And after this was done and eating was stayed and only the memory left
of the enormous feed, the chief brewer rose and proposed in a few words
the health of the bride and bridegroom. He said that it would be a
lasting sorrow to all of them that they had not been present at the
auspicious event of the morning; but that it was in some measure made up
to them by the happiness they had enjoyed together that evening. If
anything, he added, could make them pray more heartily for the happiness
of the bride, it would be the thought that she refused to be married
from her house in the West End, but came to Stepney among the workmen
and managers of her own brewery, and preferred to celebrate her
wedding-feast in the magnificent hall which she had given to the people
of the place. And he had one more good thing to tell them. Miss
Messenger, when she gave that precious thing, her hand, retained her
name. There would still be a Messenger at the head of the good old
house.
Harry replied in a few words, and the wedding-cake went round. Then Dick
Coppin proposed success to the Palace of Delight.
"Harry," whispered Angela, "if you love me, speak now, from your very
heart."
He sprang to his feet, and spoke to the people as they had never heard
any yet speak.
After telling them what the Palace was, what it was meant to be, a place
for the happiness and recreation of all; how they were to make their own
amusements for themselves; how there were class-rooms where all kinds of
arts and accomplishments would be taught; how, to insure order and good
behavior, it was necessary that they should form their own volunteer
police; how there were to be no politics and no controversies within
those walls, and how the management of all was left to committees of
their own choosing, he said:
"Friends all, this is indeed such a thing as the world has never yet
seen. You have been frequently invited to join together and combine for
the raising of wages; you are continually invited to follow leaders who
promise to reform land laws, when you have had no land and never will
have any; to abolish the House of Lords, in which you have no part,
share, or lot; to sweep away a church which does not interfere with you;
but who have nothing--no nothing to offer you, out of which any help or
advantage will come to you. And you are always being told to consider
life as a long period of resignation under inevitable suffering; and you
are told to submit your reason, your will, yourselves, to authority,
and all will be well with you. No one yet has given you the chance of
making yourselves happy. In this place you will find, or you will make
for yourselves, all the things which make the lives of the rich happy.
Here you will have music, dancing, singing, acting, painting, reading,
games of skill, games of chance, companionship, cheerfulness, light,
warmth, comfort--everything. When these things have been enjoyed for a
time they will become a necessity for you, and a part of the education
for your young people. They will go on to desire other things which
cannot be found by any others for you, but which must be found by
yourselves and for yourselves. My wife has placed in your hands the
materials for earthly joy; it lies with you to learn how to use them; it
lies with you to find what other things are necessary; how the people,
who have all the power there is, must find out what they want, and help
themselves to it, standing shoulder to shoulder by means of that power;
how those enemies are not the rich, whom your brawlers in Whitechapel
Road ignorantly accuse, but quite another kind--and you must find out
for yourselves who these are. It is not by setting poor against rich, or
by hardening the heart of rich against poor, that you will succeed; it
is by independence and by knowledge. All sorts and conditions of men are
alike. As are the vices of the rich, so are your own; as are your
virtues, so are theirs. But, hitherto, the rich have had things which
you could not get. Now all that is altered: in the Palace of Delight we
are equal to the richest; there is nothing which we, too, cannot have;
what they desire we desire; what they have we shall have; we can all
love; we can all laugh; we can all feel the power of music; we can dance
and sing; or we can sit in peace and meditate. In this Palace, as in the
outer world, remember that you have the power. The time for envy,
hatred, and accusations has gone by; because we working-men have, at
last, all the power there is to have. Let us use it well. But the Palace
will be for joy and happiness, not for political wrangles. Brothers and
sisters, we will no longer sit down in resignation; we will take the
same joy in this world that the rich have taken. Life is short for us
all; let us make the most of it for ourselves and for each other. There
are so many joys within our reach; there are so many miseries we can
abolish. In this house, which is a Temple of Praise, we shall all
together continually be thinking how to bring more sunshine into our
lives, more change, more variety, more happiness."
A serious ending; because Harry spoke from his heart. As he took his
seat in deep silence, the organ broke forth again and played, while the
people stood, the grand Old Hundredth Psalm.
A serious ending to the feast; but life is serious.
Ten minutes later the bride rose, and the band played a joyful march,
while the wedding-procession once more formed and marched down the hall,
and the people poured out into the streets to cheer, and Angela and her
husband drove away for their honeymoon.
The Palace of Delight is in working order now, and Stepney is already
transformed. A new period began on the opening night for all who were
present. For the first time they understood that life may be happy; for
the first time they resolved that they would find out for themselves the
secret of happiness. The angel with the flaming sword has at last
stepped from the gates of the earthly Paradise, and we may now enter
therein and taste, unreproved, of all the fruits except the apples of
the Tree of Life--which has been removed, long since, to another place.
THE END.