THE FACTORY
Caleb was in such a turmoil of jealous agitation for several hours
after the grand finale as to be almost beside himself; and although
Madame Oriano, in high good humour over the success of the fireworks,
offered to sew up the split in his pantaloons, she could not sew up the
rents that Letizia’s behaviour was tearing in her manager’s peace of
mind. Once he ventured to approach the alcove where she sat drinking
and flirting with half-a-dozen hopeful courtiers, and asked her to
come with him. Letizia shrieked with laughter at such a notion and
shrieked louder when her companions began to pelt Caleb with crusts of
bread; and maybe she would not have laughed much less loudly if they
had gone on to pelt him with bottles as they threatened they would do
unless he quickly took himself off and ceased to annoy them. Caleb, to
do him justice, would not have cared a jot if he could have rescued
Letizia from their company at the cost of a broken crown; but he did
not want to expose himself to the mortification of being vanquished
and, since he felt positive that this could be the only result of his
intervention, he retreated to brood over his wrongs in a secluded
arbour, from which he had the minor satisfaction of driving away the
amorous couples that in turn hopefully sought its dark protection
throughout that warm and starry July night.
Was Madame Oriano dependent enough yet upon his help in the business
to insist on her daughter’s marrying him? That was the question. Caleb
felt convinced that she would not object, but if the little hussy
herself refused, would her mother compel her? Brought up in the
egocentric gloom of an obscure Protestant sect known as the Peculiar
Children of God, Caleb’s first thought was always the salvation of
his own soul. This, as often happens, had become a synonym for the
gratification of his own desires. He desired Letizia. Therefore he must
have her, or his soul would be imperilled. What she felt about it was
of little importance. Besides, she so clearly had in her the makings of
a wanton that it was his duty to save her soul as well, which he had
every reason to suppose he should be able to do could he but safely
secure her for a wife. The state of affairs could not continue as it
was at present. His imagination must not remain for ever the tortured
prey of carnal visions. Letizia’s white neck ... Letizia’s girlish
breasts ... Letizia’s red alluring lips ... Letizia’s twining fingers
... and at this moment in the alcove those drunken sons of Belial
were gloating upon her.... No, it could not go on like this! She must
be his with God’s benign approval. Caleb sat for an hour, two hours,
three hours maybe, in a dripping trance of thwarted passion, burning as
fiercely with the hot itch of jealousy as if he had actually been flung
into a steaming nettle-bed.
Dawn, a lucid primrose dawn, was bright beyond the towers of Lambeth
Palace when the hackney-coach with Madame Oriano, Letizia, and Caleb
went jogging homeward over Westminster Bridge. Even now, though Letizia
had fallen deliciously asleep on his shoulder, Caleb was not at peace,
for the semioctagonal turrets which were set at intervals along the
parapet to serve as refuges for the homeless, reminded him of the
alcoves at “Neptune’s Grotto,” and his mind was again tormented by the
imagination of her behaviour that night. She reeked too, of wine, in
this fresh morning air. He shook her roughly:
“Wake up! We’re nearly home.”
Madame Oriano was snoring on the opposite seat.
“Why don’t you poke mamma like that?” Letizia cried out resentfully.
An impulse to crush her to his heart surged over Caleb, but he beat
off the temptation, panting between desire of her and fear for himself.
Kisses would forge no chain to bind this wanton, and he, should he
once yield to kissing her, would be led henceforth by a Delilah. The
hackney-coach jogged on into the Westminster Road.
Madame Oriano’s factory consisted of the unused rooms in an ordinary
York Street dwelling-house. Special precautions to isolate the
dangerous manufacture were practically unknown at this date. All
firework-making by an Act of Dutch William was still illegal, and from
time to time prosecutions of pyrotechnists were set on foot at the
instigation of the magistrates when the boys of a neighbourhood became
too great a nuisance on the Fifth of November. Inasmuch, however, as
firework displays were a feature of coronations, peace declarations,
births of royal heirs, and other occasions of public rejoicing, the
Law adopted then as ambiguous an attitude as it does now in this early
twentieth century, toward betting. Until Caleb arrived in London from
the Cheshire town where he had been born and bred, Madame Oriano
produced her fireworks in fits and starts of inventive brilliance that
were symbolical of the finished product. Most of her workmen were
habitual drunkards. No kind of attempt was made to run the business
side with any financial method. From time to time the proprietress put
a card in the window advertising her need for an accountant. Clerks
came and clerks went until she began to look on the whole class as no
better than predatory nomads. It was in answer to one of these cards in
her window that Caleb presented himself. His conscience troubled him at
first when he found with what mountebank affairs firework-making was
likely to bring him into contact, but he was seized by a missionary
fervour and began to devote all his energy to making the business
respectable. Only John Gumm, the chief firer, managed to survive
Caleb’s cleansing zeal. The rest of the drunken workmen were sacked
one after another, and their places taken wherever it was possible
by young lads and girls that Caleb procured from the poorhouse. The
long hours and bad food he inflicted upon these apprentices seemed to
bring the business nearer to genuine respectability. It showed sound
economy, and the most censorious Puritan could not discover in those
workrooms filled with listless children anything that pandered to the
gratification of human pleasure. One could feel that when the fireworks
left the factory there was nothing against their morality. Their
explosion under the direction of Madame Oriano and drunken John Gumm
was of course regrettably entertaining, but the rest of the business
was impeccably moral. Not only did Caleb attend to the accounts, to the
management of the workers, and to the judicious purchase of materials,
but he also studied the actual art of pyrotechny, and early this
very year he had discovered how to apply chlorate of potash to the
production of more brilliant colours than any that had hitherto been
seen. He had not yet revealed this discovery to Madame Oriano, because
he was planning to use the knowledge of it as a means of persuading her
to insist on Letizia’s marrying him. She would be so much astonished by
the green he had evolved by combining nitrate of baryta with chlorate
of potash that she would give him anything he demanded. And as for the
red he could now produce by adding nitrate of strontia to his chlorate
of potash, why, if such a red could only be bought in the ultimate
depths of Hell, Madame would have to buy.
The hackney-coach drew up in front of the dingy house in York Street,
and by the time Caleb had done arguing with the driver about his fare
mother and daughter had tumbled into bed. In spite of the nervous
strain he had been enduring all night Caleb could not make up his
mind to go to sleep himself. He was indeed feeling very much awake.
It was now full day. The sunlight was glinting on the grimy railings
of the area, and the footsteps of early workers shuffled past along
the pavement at intervals. Caleb looked round the room and frowned at
the tools lying idle on the tables and benches. He was filled with
indignation at the thought that all those misbegotten apprentices
should be snoring away these golden hours of the morning in their
garret. He was too lenient with them, far too lenient. It would do
the brats good to be awakened a little earlier than usual. He was up
and dressed; why should they still be snoring? The back of his mind,
too, itched with an evil desire to make somebody pay for what he had
suffered last night. Caleb set off upstairs to rouse the apprentices.
As he drew near the bedroom where Madame Oriano and Letizia slept
together in that gilded four-poster which so much revolted his sense
of decency, Caleb paused, for the door was wide open. He tried to keep
his face averted while he hurried past; but his will failed him and,
turning, he beheld the vision of Letizia, so scantily wrapped in her
cloak of sky-blue that her white body appeared as shamelessly unclad as
the vicious little Cupids that supported the canopy of the bed. Caleb
staggered back. Had there been a knife in his hand, he might have cut
Letizia’s throat, such an intolerable loathing of her beauty seized
him. He rushed madly past the open door, and a moment or two afterwards
he stood in the garret, surveying with hate the sleeping forms of the
apprentices. A sunbeam glinting through the broken lattice of the
dormer lit up the four flushed faces, spangled the hair of the youngest
and fairest, and for Caleb pointed at the spectacle of brazen sloth.
“Get up, you charity brats,” he shouted, pulling off the dirty
coverlet. “Get up and work, or I’ll report you to the overseers for
incorrigibles.”
The children sat up in bed dazed by this sudden awakening.
“Don’t loll there, rubbing your eyes and staring at me,” Caleb snarled.
“If you aren’t downstairs and hard at work on those composition stars
in five minutes, I’ll see what a good flogging will do for you.”
From the boys’ garret Caleb went across to visit the girls’.
“Get down to your scissors and paste, you lazy hussies,” he bellowed in
the doorway.
The little girls, the eldest of whom was hardly twelve, sat up in a
huddle of terror. The shift of the youngest, who might be ten, was torn
so that her bare shoulder protruded to affront Caleb’s gaze. He strode
into the room and struck the offending few inches of skin and bone.
“Will nothing teach you modesty?” he gibbered. “Aren’t you afraid of
burning in Hell for your wickedness? Shame on you, I say. Have you no
needle and thread, Amelia Diggle? You ought to be whipped, and I hope
Madame will whip you well. Now stop that blubbering and dress yourself,
and in five minutes let me find you all hard at work.”
Caleb retired to his own bedroom, where after a miserly use of soap
and water he changed out of his rusty black evening clothes into the
drab of daily life. He was then able to bend down and say his prayers,
partly because the drab breeches were not as tight as the black
pantaloons and partly because they did not show the dust so easily.
In contemplating Caleb while he is kneeling to ask his savage deity to
give him Letizia and to bless his discovery of chlorate of potash as a
colour intensifier and to fructify his savings and to visit His wrath
upon all unbelievers, one may feel that perhaps it was being unduly
sentimental last night, a trifle wrought upon by music and starshine
and coloured lamps, to wish that this tale might remain in the year of
grace 1829.
Caleb rose from his knees and, fortified by his prayers, succeeded this
time in passing the open door of Letizia’s bedroom without so much as
one swift glance within. He came down to the basement and with a good
deal of complacency gloated over the sight of those children all so
beautifully hard at work. He would have liked to tell them how lucky
they were to be in the care of somebody who took all this trouble to
rouse them early and teach them the joys of industry. The thought of
how many more composition stars would be made to-day than were made
yesterday was invigorating. He regarded the tousled heads of the
apprentices with something like good-will.
“That’s the way, boys, work hard and well and in three hours you’ll be
enjoying your breakfast,” he promised. Then suddenly he looked sharply
round the room. “Why, where’s Arthur Wellington?”
At this moment the foundling thus christened, a fair-haired child of
eleven, appeared timidly in the doorway, and shrank back in terror when
his master demanded where he had been.
“Please, Mr. Fuller, I was looking for my shoe,” he stammered,
breathing very fast.
“Oh, you were looking for your shoe, were you, Arthur Wellington? And
did you find your shoe?”
“No, Mr. Fuller,” the boy choked. “I think it must have fell out of the
window.”
His blue eyes were fixed reproachfully, anxiously, pleadingly, on Joe
Hilton the eldest apprentice who bent lower over his task of damping
with methylated spirit the composition for the stars, the while he
managed to scowl sideways at Arthur.
“So you’ve been loitering about in your room while your companions have
been hard at work, Arthur Wellington?”
“I haven’t been loitering. I’ve been looking for my shoe.”
“Contradict me, will you, Arthur Wellington?” said Caleb softly. “Show
me your other shoe. Come nearer, Arthur. Nearer. Take it off and give
it to me.”
The boy approached, breathing faster; but he still hesitated to take
off the shoe.
“Don’t keep me waiting, Arthur,” Caleb said. “You’ve kept me waiting
long enough this lovely summer morning. Give me the shoe.”
Arthur did as he was told.
“Don’t go away, Arthur Wellington. I’m talking to you for your good.
This lovely summer morning, I said. Perhaps you didn’t hear me? Eh?
Perhaps you’re deaf? Deaf, are you, you workhouse brat?”
Caleb gripped the boy’s puny shoulder and banged him several times on
the head with the shoe.
“Perhaps you won’t be so deaf when I’ve knocked some of the deafness
out of you,” he growled. “Blubbering now, eh, you miserable little
bastard? Look up, will you! Look up, I say! Oh, very well, look down,”
and Caleb pushed the boy’s head between his own legs and thrashed
him with the first weapon that came to hand, which was a bundle of
rocket-sticks.
“Button yourself up, Arthur Wellington,” said Caleb, when he had
finished with him and flung him to the floor where he lay writhing
and shrieking and unbraced. “If I were you, Arthur Wellington, I’d be
ashamed to make such an exhibition of myself in front of girls. That’s
enough! Stop that blubbering. Do you hear? Stop it, and get to work.
Stop it, will you, Arthur Wellington, unless you want another thrashing
twice as bad.”
One of the apprentices was placing the stars on the fender to dry them
before the fire which Caleb had lighted to make himself the tea.
“Be careful, Edward Riggs, not to put those stars too close, or you’ll
be having an accident.”
“They’re all right where they are, aren’t they, Mr. Fuller?”
“Yes, as long as you’re careful,” said Caleb. “Now I’m going upstairs
to my office to work. We all have our work to do, you know. And if I
hear any laughing or chattering down here, I’ll make some of you see
more stars than you’ll ever make in a week.”
One of the girls managed to titter at this and was rewarded by one of
Caleb’s greasy smiles. Then he left the apprentices to their work and
went into the question of accounts, hidden in his sanctum, which was on
the first floor and hardly bigger than a powder-closet. Indeed, Caleb’s
high stool and desk with two ledgers and an iron box chained to a
staple in the floor filled it so nearly full that when the manager was
inside and hard at work nobody could get in unless he squeezed himself
into the corner. Caleb’s expressed object in keeping Madame Oriano’s
books so meticulously was that if at any moment a purchaser came along
with a firm offer for the business, lock, stock, and barrel, he would
obtain a better price for it. It was useless for the owner to protest
that no inducement or offer of any kind would tempt her into a sale,
Caleb insisted. He was as always outwardly subservient to his mistress,
but he insisted. And she would tire of arguing with him when she had
fired off a few Italian oaths and shrugged her shoulders in contempt of
such obstinacy.
“Besides,” Caleb used to point out, “so long as I keep my books
properly, anybody can see my honesty. If I kept no books, people would
be saying that I was robbing you.”
“I would notta believe them.”
“No, you mightn’t believe them until you were angry with me about
something else; but you might believe it then, and I shouldn’t care to
be accused of robbing you. It would hurt me very deeply, ma’am.”
As a matter of fact Caleb had robbed Madame Oriano with perfect
regularity for the last five years. The humble savings, to which from
time to time with upturned eyes he would allude, were actually the
small clippings and parings he had managed to make from her daily
profits. He did not feel the least guilt in thus robbing her, for not
merely could he claim that he was the only person who did rob her
nowadays, but he could also claim that these robberies practically
amounted to the dowry of her daughter. It was not as if the money
were going out of the family. Whether, in the event of his failing to
marry Letizia, Caleb would have made the least reparation is doubtful.
He would have found another excuse for his behaviour. One of his
principles was never to admit even to his tribal deity that he had
been or was wrong. He could imagine nothing more corruptly humiliating
than the Popish habit of confession. On the other hand, he was always
willing to admit that he was liable to err, and he always prayed most
devoutly to be kept free from temptation.
In his dusty little office that morning the various emotions to which
he had been subjected since yesterday began to react at last upon
Caleb’s flabby body. Leaning forward upon his desk, he put his head
down upon his folded arms and fell into a heavy sleep.
He was awakened by a series of screams, and jumping off his stool
he hurried out into the passage just as one of the girl apprentices
enveloped in flames came rushing up the stairs from the basement. He
tried to stop her from going higher, but she eluded him, and as she
went flashing up the stairs toward the upper part of the house she
screamed:
“It was Arthur Wellington done it! Don’t laugh at him, Joe Hilton.
Don’t laugh at him no more, or he’ll throw the stars on to the fire.
Where’s a window? Where’s a window?”
The wretched child vanished from sight, and the moment after a ghastly
scream announced that she had found a window and flung herself from it
into the street.
Letizia’s spaniel came barking down from the room above. Simultaneously
there was a frenzied knocking on the front door, flashes and crashes
everywhere, smoke, more shrieks of agony, and at last a deafening
explosion. It seemed to Caleb that the whole house was falling to
pieces on top of him, as indeed when he was dragged out of the ruins he
found that it had.