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A SAFETY MATCH
* * * * *
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
Crown 8vo, 6s.
A MAN'S MAN.
Fourth Impression.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
THE RIGHT STUFF.
_Fifth Impression._
Popular Edition, Cloth, 1s. net.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
PIP.
_Fourth Impression._
Popular Edition, Cloth, 1s. net.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS.
Edinburgh and London.
* * * * *
A SAFETY MATCH
by
IAN HAY
Author of 'The Right Stuff,' 'A Man's Man,' 'Pip,' etc.
Third Impression
William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London
1911
All Rights Reserved
_TO
H. M. S._
CONTENTS.
BOOK ONE.
THE STRIKING OF THE MATCH.
CHAP. PAGE
I. HAPPY FAMILIES 3
II. WANTED, A MAN 23
III. THE WHEELS OF JUGGERNAUT 36
IV. THE DEVIL A MONK WOULD BE 55
V. A SABBATH DAY'S JOURNEY 76
VI. DAPHNE AS MATCHMAKER 94
VII. THE MATCH IS STRUCK 105
VIII. _MORITURA TE SALUTAT_ 115
BOOK TWO.
FLICKERINGS.
IX. A HORSE TO THE WATER 129
X. A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SOCIAL SUCCESS 145
XI. _DIES IRAE_ 165
XII. CILLY; OR THE WORLD WELL LOST 184
XIII. THE COUNTERSTROKES 197
XIV. INTERVENTION 219
XV. JIM CARTHEW 232
BOOK THREE.
THE LIGHTING OF THE CANDLE.
XVI. SOME ONE TO CONFIDE IN 243
XVII. THE CANDLE LIT 250
XVIII. _ATHANASIUS CONTRA MUNDUM_ 263
XIX. _LABORARE EST ORARE_ 276
XX. BLACK SUNDAY 284
XXI. _VEILLESSE SAIT_ 289
XXII. HOLD THE FORT! 296
XXIII. THE LAST TO LEAVE 308
XXIV. ANOTHER ALIAS 317
BOOK ONE.
THE STRIKING OF THE MATCH.
CHAPTER ONE.
HAPPY FAMILIES.
"Nicky, please, have you got Mr Pots the Painter?"
"No, Stiffy, but I'll trouble you for Mrs Bones the Butcher's Wife.
_Thank_ you. And Daph, have you got Master Bones the Butcher's Son?
_Thank_ you. Family! One to me!"
And Nicky, triumphantly plucking from her hand four pink-backed cards,
slaps them down upon the table face upwards. They are apparently
family portraits. The first--that of Bones _pere_--depicts a smug
gentleman, with appropriate mutton-chop whiskers, mutilating a
fearsome joint upon a block; the second, Mrs Bones, an ample matron in
apple-green, proffering to an unseen customer a haunch of what looks
like anaemic cab-horse; the third, Miss Bones, engaged in extracting
nourishment from a colossal bone shaped like a dumb-bell; the fourth,
Master Bones (bearing a strong family likeness to his papa), creeping
unwillingly upon an errand, clad in canary trousers and a blue
jacket, with a sirloin of beef nestling against his right ear.
It was Saturday night at the Rectory, and the Vereker family--"those
absurdly handsome Rectory children," as old Lady Curlew, of Hainings,
invariably called them--sat round the dining-room table playing "Happy
Families." The rules which govern this absorbing pastime are simple.
The families are indeed happy. They contain no widows and no orphans,
and each pair of parents possesses one son and one daughter--perhaps
the perfect number, for the sides of the house are equally balanced
both for purposes of companionship and in the event of sex-warfare. As
for procedure, cards are dealt round, and each player endeavours, by
requests based upon observation and deduction, to reunite within his
own hand the members of an entire family,--an enterprise which, while
it fosters in those who undertake it a reverence for the unities of
home life, offers a more material and immediate reward in the shape of
one point for each family collected. We will look over the shoulders
of the players as they sit, and a brief consideration of each hand and
of the tactics of its owner will possibly give us the key to the
respective dispositions of the Vereker family, as well as a useful
lesson in the art of acquiring that priceless possession, a Happy
Family.
Before starting on our tour of the table we may note that one member
of the company is otherwise engaged. This is Master Anthony Cuthbert
Vereker, aged ten years--usually known as Tony. He is the youngest
member of the family, and is one of those fortunate people who are
never bored, and who rarely require either company or assistance in
their amusements. He lives in a world of his own, peopled by folk of
his own creation; and with the help of this unseen host, which he can
multiply to an indefinite extent and transform into anything he
pleases, he organises and carries out schemes of recreation beside
which all the Happy Families in the world become humdrum and suburban
in tone. He has just taken his seat upon a chair opposite to another
chair, across the arms of which he has laid the lid of his big box of
bricks, and is feeling in his pocket for an imaginary key, for he is
about to give an organ recital in the Albert Hall (which he has never
seen) in a style modelled upon that of the village organist, whom he
studies through a chink in a curtain every Sunday.
Presently the lid is turned back, and the keyboard--a three-manual
affair, ingeniously composed of tiers of wooden bricks--is exposed to
view. The organist arranges unseen music and pulls out invisible
stops. Then, having risen to set up on the mantelpiece hard by a
square of cardboard bearing the figure 1, he resumes his seat, and
embarks upon a rendering of Handel's "Largo in G," which its composer,
to be just, would have experienced no difficulty in recognising,
though he might have expressed some surprise that so large an
instrument as the Albert Hall organ should produce so small a volume
of sound. But then Handel never played his own Largo in a room full of
elder brothers and sisters, immersed in the acquisition of Happy
Families and impatient of distracting noises.
The Largo completed, its executant rises to his feet and bows again
and again in the direction of the sideboard; and then (the applause
apparently having subsided) solemnly turns round the cardboard square
on the mantelpiece so as to display the figure 2, and sets to work
upon "The Lost Chord."
Meanwhile the Happy Families are being rapidly united. The houses of
Pots the Painter, Bun the Baker, and Dose the Doctor lie neatly piled
at Nicky's right hand; and that Machiavellian damosel is now engaged
in a businesslike quest for the only outstanding member of the family
of Grits the Grocer.
Nicky--or Veronica Elizabeth Vereker--was in many respects the most
remarkable of the Rectory children. She was thirteen years old, was
the only dark-haired member of the family, and (as she was fond of
explaining) was possessed of a devil. This remarkable attribute
was sometimes adduced as a distinction and sometimes as an
excuse,--the former when impressionable and nervous children came
to tea, the latter when all other palliatives of crime had failed.
Certainly she could lay claim to the brooding spirit, the entire
absence of fear, the unlimited low cunning, and the love of sin for
its own sake which go to make the master-criminal. At present she
was enjoying herself in characteristic fashion. Her brother
Stephen--known as "Stiffy"--Nicky's senior by one year, a
transparently honest but somewhat limited youth, had for the
greater part of the game been applying a slow-moving intellect to
the acquisition of one complete Family. Higher he did not look.
Nicky's habit was to allow Stiffy, with infinite labour, to collect
the majority of the members of a Family in which she herself was
interested, and then, at the eleventh hour, to swoop down and strip
her unconscious collaborator of his hardly-earned collection.
Stiffy, sighing patiently, had just surrendered Mr, Mrs, and Miss
Block (Hairdressers and Dealers in Toilet Requisites) to the
depredatory hands of Nicky, and was debating in his mind whether he
should endeavour when his next chance came to complete the
genealogical tree of Mr Soot the Sweep or corner the clan of Bung the
Brewer. Possessing two Bungs to one Soot, he decided on the latter
alternative.
Presently he was asked by his elder sister, Cilly (Monica Cecilia),
for a card which he did not possess, and this gave him the desired
opening.
"I say, Nicky," he began deferentially, "have you got Master Bung?"
Nicky surveyed her hand for a moment, and then raised a pair of
liquid-blue eyes and smiled seraphically.
"No, Stiffy, dear," she replied; "but I'll have Mr Bung and Mrs Bung."
Stiffy, resigned as ever, handed over the cards. Suddenly Sebastian
Aloysius Vereker, the eldest son of the family (usually addressed as
"Ally"), put down his cards and remarked, slowly and without heat--
"Cheating again! My word, Nicky, you are the absolute _edge_!"
"_Who_ is cheating?" inquired Veronica in a shocked voice.
"You. Either you _must_ have Master Bung, or else you are asking for
Stiffy's cards without having any Bungs at all; because I've got Miss
myself."
He laid the corybantic young lady in question upon the table to
substantiate his statement.
Nicky remained entirely unruffled.
"Oh--_Bung_!" she exclaimed. "Sorry! I thought you said 'Bun,' Stiffy.
You should spit out your G's a bit more, my lad. _Bung-gah_--like
that! I really must speak to dad about your articulation."
In polite card-playing circles a lady's word is usually accepted as
sufficient; but the ordinary courtesies of everyday life do not
prevail in a family of six.
"Rot!" said Ally.
"Cheat!" said Cilly.
"Never mind!" said loyal and peaceable Stiffy. "I don't care, really.
Let's go on."
"It's not fair," cried Cilly. "Poor Stiffy hasn't got a single Family
yet. Give it to him, Nicky, you little beast! Daph, make her!"
Daphne was the eldest of the flock, and for want of a mother dispensed
justice and equity to the rest of the family from the heights of
nineteen. For the moment she was assisting the organist, who had
inadvertently capsized a portion of his keyboard. Now she returned to
the table.
"What is it, rabble?" she inquired maternally.
A full-throated chorus informed her, and the arbitress detached the
threads of the dispute with effortless dexterity.
"You said you thought he was asking for Miss Bun and not Bung?" she
remarked to the accused.
"Yes--that was all," began Nicky. "You see," she continued
pathetically, "they're all so beastly unjust to me, and----"
Daphne picked up her small sister's pile of completed Families and
turned them over.
"You couldn't have thought Stiffy wanted _Buns_," she said in measured
tones, "because they're here. You collected them yourself. You've
cheated again. Upstairs, and no jam till Wednesday!"
It is a tribute to Miss Vereker's disciplinary methods that the
turbulent Nicky rose at once to her feet and, with a half-tearful,
half-defiant reference to her Satanic inhabitant, left the room and
departed upstairs, there to meditate on a Bun-strewn past and a
jamless future.
Daphne Vereker was perhaps the most beautiful of an extraordinarily
attractive family. Her full name was Daphne Margaret. Her parents,
whether from inherent piety or on the _lucus a non lucendo_ principle,
had endowed their offspring with the names of early saints and
martyrs. The pagan derivative Daphne was an exception. It had been the
name of Brian Vereker's young bride, and had been bestowed,
uncanonically linked with that of a saint of blameless antecedents,
upon the first baby which had arrived at the Rectory. Mrs Vereker had
died eleven years later, two hours after the birth of that fertile
genius Anthony Cuthbert, and Brian Vereker, left to wrestle with the
upbringing of six children on an insufficient stipend in a remote
country parish, had come to lean more and more, in the instinctive but
exacting fashion of lonely man, upon the slim shoulders of his eldest
daughter.
There are certain attributes of woman before which the male sex, whose
sole knowledge of the ways of life is derived from that stern
instructor Experience, can only stand and gape in reverent awe. When
her mother died Daphne Vereker was a tow-headed, long-legged,
irresponsible marauder of eleven. In six months she looked like a
rather prim little nursery-governess: in two years she could have
taken the chair at a Mother's meeting. Circumstance is a great
forcing-house, especially where women are concerned. Her dreamy,
unpractical, affectionate father, oblivious of the expectant presence
in the offing of numerous female relatives-in-law, had remarked in
sober earnest to his little daughter, walking erect by his side in her
short black frock on the way home from the funeral:--"You and I will
have to bring up the children between us now, Daphne;" and the child,
with an odd thrill of pride at being thus promoted to woman's highest
office at the age of eleven, had responded with the utmost gravity--
"You had better stick to the parish, dad, and I'll manage the kids."
And she had done it. As she presides at the table this Saturday
evening, with her round chin resting on her hands, surveying the
picturesque crew of ragamuffins before her, we cannot but congratulate
her on the success of her methods, whatever those may be. On her right
lolls the apple of her eye, the eldest son, Ally. He is a handsome
boy, with a ready smile and a rather weak mouth. He is being
educated--God knows by what anxious economies in other directions--at
a great public school. When he leaves, which will be shortly, the
money will go to educate Stiffy, who is rising fourteen.
Next to Ally sprawls Cilly, an amorphous schoolgirl with long rippling
hair and great grey eyes that are alternately full of shy inquiry and
hoydenish exuberance. Then comes the chair recently vacated by the
Madonna-like Nicky; then the ruddy countenance and cheerful presence
of the sunny-tempered Stiffy, completing the circle. In the corner
Master Anthony Cuthbert, cherubic and rapturous, is engaged, with
every finger and toe in action, upon the final frenzy of the
"Hallelujah Chorus." The number 6 stands upon the mantelpiece, for the
recital is drawing to a close.
To describe Daphne herself is not easy. One fact is obvious, and that
is that she possesses an instinct for dress not as yet acquired by any
of her brothers and sisters. Her hair is of a peculiarly radiant
gold, reflecting high lights at every turn of her head. Her eyes are
brown, of the hue of a Highland burn on a sunny afternoon, and her
eyebrows are very level and serene. Her colouring is perfect, and when
she smiles we understand why it is that her unregenerate brothers and
sisters occasionally address her as "Odol." When her face is in
repose--which, to be frank, is not often--there is a pathetic droop at
the corners of her mouth, which is perhaps accounted for by the cares
of premature responsibility. She is dressed in brown velvet, with a
lace collar--evening dress does not prevail in a household which
affects high tea, but Daphne always puts on her Sunday frock on
Saturday evenings--and, having discovered that certain colours suit
her better than others, she has threaded a pale blue ribbon through
her hair.
Altogether she is a rather astonishing young person to find sitting
contentedly resting her elbows upon a dingy tablecloth in an untidy
dining-room which smells of American leather and fried eggs. It is as
if one had discovered the Venus de Milo presiding at a Dorcas Society
or Helen of Troy serving crumpets in an A.B.C. shop.
The "Hallelujah Chorus" has just stopped dead at that paralysing
hiatus of two bars which immediately precedes the final crash, when
the door opens and the Reverend Brian Vereker appears. A glance at
his clear-cut aristocratic features goes a long way towards deciding
the question of the origin of the good looks of "those Rectory
children."
He is a tall man--six feet two,--and although he is barely fifty his
hair is specklessly white. He looks more like a great prelate or
statesman than a country parson. Perhaps he might have been one or the
other, had he been born the eldest son of the eldest son of a peer,
instead of the youngest son of the youngest. And again, perhaps not.
The lines of his face indicate brain rather than character, and after
all it is character that brings us out top in this world. There are
furrows about his forehead that tell of much study; but about the
corners of his mouth, where promptitude and decision usually set their
seal, there is nothing--nothing but a smile of rare sweetness. His
gentle blue eyes have the dreamy gaze that marks the saints and poets
of this world: the steely glitter of the man of action is lacking.
Altogether you would say that Brian Vereker would make a noble
figurehead to any high enterprise; but you would add that if that
enterprise was to succeed, the figurehead would require a good deal of
imported driving-power behind it. And you would be right.
The Rector paused in the doorway and surveyed the lamp-lit room.
... "_Halle-lu-u-ja-ah!_" vociferated the Albert Hall organ with an
air of triumphant finality. Brian Vereker turned to his youngest son
with the ready sympathy of one child for another child's games.
"That's right, Tony! That's the stuff! Good old George Frederick! _He_
knew the meaning of the word music--eh?"
"Yes--George Fwederick!" echoed the organist. "_And_ Arthur Seymour,
daddy! You've just missed 'The Lost Chord.'"
"Ah," said the Rector in a tone of genuine regret, "that's a pity. But
we had the Seventy-Eighth Psalm to-night, and I'm later than usual."
"Quadruple chant?" inquired Tony professionally.
"Rather! But is your recital quite over, boyo?"
"Yes--bedtime!" replied the organist, with a reproachful glance in the
direction of his eldest sister.
"Run along, dear!" was all the comfort he received from that
inflexible despot.
"All right! I must lock up, though."
Master Tony removed the last number from the mantelpiece,
disintegrated his keyboard and packed it up with the other bricks, and
drawing aside the window-curtain remarked solemnly into the dark
recess behind it--
"That will be all to-night, organ-blower. You can go home now."
To which a husky and ventriloquial voice replied--
"Thank you kindly, Mr Handel, sir. Good-night."
"Now," concluded Mr Handel, turning to his elders with the air of a
martyr addressing a group of arena lions, "I'm ready!"
"Take him up, Cilly dear," said Daphne. "I must look after dad's
supper."
"Come on, Tony," said Cilly, uncoiling her long legs from under her
and rising from the hearthrug.
"Righto!" said Tony. "You be a cart-horse and I'll be a broken-down
motor."
Monica Cecilia Vereker meekly complied, and departed upstairs, towing
the inanimate mechanism of the inventive Anthony behind her bump by
bump, utilising her sash, which she had removed for the purpose, as a
tow-rope.
"Ally and Stiffy," commanded Daphne, turning to the two remaining
members of the family, "you'd better go and pump the cistern full.
Saturday night, you know, and the kids' baths have just been filled;
so look sharp before the boiler bursts."
Stiffy, obliging as ever, rose at once; Ally, cumbered by that majesty
which doth hedge a sixth-form boy and a member of the school Fifteen
(especially when ordered about by a female), was more deliberate in
his acquiescence. However, presently both the boys were gone, and
five minutes later Daphne, with the assistance of the one little maid
whom the establishment supported, had laid the Rector's supper. She
installed her father in his seat on one side of the table, and took
her own on the other, assisting the progress of the meal from time to
time, but for the most part sitting with her chin resting upon her two
fists, and contemplating the tired man before her with serious brown
eyes. Twice she had to leave her seat, once to remove the butter from
the vicinity of her parent's elbow, and once to frustrate an attempt
on the part of that excellent but absent-minded man to sprinkle sugar
over a lettuce.
"Well, my daughter," remarked the Rector presently, "what of the
weekly report?"
Saturday night at the Rectory was reserved for a sort of domestic
budget.
"Here are the books," said Daphne. "They're much as usual, except that
I had to pay two bob on Wednesday for a bottle of embrocation for
Ally. He is in training for the mile in the sports at the beginning of
next term, and it does his muscles so much good."
"When I won the mile at Fenner's, Daphne," began the Reverend Brian,
with a sudden glow of reminiscence in his dreamy eyes, "I did it
without embrocation, or any other new-fashioned----"
"Yes, dear, but they have to run so much _faster_ now than they did,"
explained Daphne soothingly. "Then, about the kitchen chimney----"
"But I only took four minutes, twenty-eight----"
"Yes, old man, and I'm _proud_ of you!" said Daphne swiftly. "Well,
the sweep is coming in on Wednesday, when you'll be away at Wilford,
so _that's_ all right." She was anxious to get away from the question
of the embrocation. It had been a rank extravagance, and she knew it;
but Ally was ever her weak spot. "Then, I've got three-and-nine in
hand out of current expenses just now, and if I take two half-crowns
out of the emergency bag and we go without a second joint this week, I
can get Nicky a new pair of boots, if you don't mind. (Don't cut the
cheese with a spoon, dear; take this knife.) Of course, we ought not
to have to go to the emergency bag for boots at all. It's rather
upsetting. To-day I find that a perfectly ducky pair of Sunday shoes,
which I outgrew just before I stopped growing, and was keeping
specially for that child, are too small for her by yards. (I had tried
them on Cilly a year ago, but she simply couldn't get her toe in.) And
now they'll be wasted, because there are no more of us girls. My feet
are _most_ exasperating."
"Your mother had tiny feet," said the Rector, half to himself.
He pushed away his plate, and gazed absently before him into that
land where his son Tony still spent so much of his time, and whither
Tony's young and pretty mother had been borne away eleven years
before. Daphne permitted him a reverie of five minutes, while she
puckered her brow over the account-books. Then she rose and took down
a pipe from a rack on the mantelpiece. This she filled from a cracked
jar thirty years old, adorned with the coat-of-arms of one of the
three royal colleges of Cambridge, and laid it by her father's left
hand.
"Then there's another thing," she continued, lighting a spill at the
fire. "Isn't it time to enter Stiffy for school? Mr Allnutt asked us
to say definitely by April whether he was coming to fill Ally's place
after summer or not, otherwise he would be obliged to give the vacancy
to some one else. It's the end of March now."
The Rector lit his pipe--his one luxury--in a meditative fashion, and
then leaned back to contemplate his daughter, with her glinting hair
and troubled little frown.
"Mr Allnutt? To be sure! Of course! A ripe scholar, Daphne, and a
long-standing personal friend of my own. He took the Porson and Craven
in successive years. His Iambics----"
All this was highly irrelevant, and exceedingly characteristic. Daphne
waited patiently through a _resume_ of Mr Allnutt's achievements as a
scholar and a divine, and continued:--
"Will you enter Stiffy at once, then? It would be a pity not to get
him into Ally's old house."
Brian Vereker, suddenly recalled to business, laid down his pipe and
sighed.
"Boys are terribly expensive things, little daughter," he said. "And
we are so very very poor. I wonder if they are worth it."
"Of _course_ they are, the dears!" said Daphne, up in arms at once.
"Of course, of course," agreed the Rector apologetically. "You are
right, child; you are always right. It is ungrateful and un-Christian
of me to give expression to such thoughts when God has granted me
three good sons. Still, I admit it _was_ a disappointment to me when
Ally failed to gain a scholarship at Cambridge. He may have been right
in his assertion that there were an exceptionally strong set of
candidates up on that occasion, but it was unfortunate that he should
have overslept himself on the morning of the Greek Prose Paper, even
though, as he pointed out, Greek Prose is his weak subject. What a
pity! Strange lodgings, probably! Still, his disappointment must be
far greater than ours, so it would be ungenerous to dwell further on
the matter. But I fail to see at present how he can be started in life
now. If only one had a little money to spare! I have never felt the
need of such a thing before."
"Yes, we could do with a touch of it," assented Miss Vereker
elegantly. She began to tick off the family requirements on her
fingers. "There's Ally to be started in life; and Cilly ought to be
sent somewhere and finished--she's tragically gawky, and she'd be
perfectly lovely if she was given half a chance; and Stiffy has to be
sent to school; and the two kiddies are growing up, and this house is
simply tumbling down for want of repairs; and it's really time you had
a curate for long-distance visiting."
"Never!" said Brian Vereker firmly.
"All right. Never, if you like, but he'll have to come some day," said
Daphne serenely. (The question of the curate cropped up almost as
regularly as that of the second joint on Wednesdays.) "And all we've
got to run the whole show on," she concluded, with a pathetic little
frown which many a man would gladly have given his whole estate to
smooth away, "is--two pounds seventeen and ninepence in the emergency
bag! It's a bit thick, isn't it?"
Brian Vereker surveyed his daughter's troubled countenance with
characteristic placidity. Simple faith--some called it unpractical
optimism--was the main article of his creed.
"The Lord will provide, my daughter," he said.
At this moment the door opened with a flourish, and, the crimson and
enraged countenance of Master Anthony Cuthbert Vereker having been
thrust into the room, its owner inquired, in a voice rendered husky
by indignation, how any one could be expected to impersonate a
Dreadnought going into action in the bath, when the said bath was
encumbered with the flotsam and jetsam of a previous occupant. In
other words, was he to be bathed in the same water as Nicky?
It was an old grievance, arising from the insufficient nature of the
Rectory water-supply (which had to be pumped up by hand from the
garden) and the smallness of the kitchen boiler; and Daphne had
perforce to go upstairs to adjust it. Consequently the sitting of the
Committee of Ways and Means, with all its immediate necessities and
problems for the future, was incontinently suspended.
CHAPTER TWO.
WANTED, A MAN.
Five gentlemen sat side by side along a baize-covered table in a dingy
room in a dingier building not far from the principal pit-head of
Mirkley Colliery. They were the representatives of the local Colliery
Owners' Association, and they were assembled and met together for the
purpose of receiving a deputation representing the united interests
and collective wisdom of their _employes_.
It should be noted that although there were five gentlemen present,
six chairs were set along the table.
Now a deputation may be defined as an instrument designed to extract
from you something which you have not the slightest desire to give up.
Consequently the reception of such, whether you be a damsel listening
for the rat-a-tat of an undesired suitor who has written asking for an
interview, or a dethroned Royal Family sitting in its deserted abode
awaiting the irruption of a Committee of Public Safety composed of
the greater part of its late loyal subjects armed with billhooks and
asking for blood, is always an uncomfortable business at the best. Our
five gentlemen do not appear to be enjoying their present position any
more than the two examples cited above. In fact, they look so
exceedingly averse to interviews or arguments of any description, that
we will leave them for a moment and divert our attention to the
deputation itself, which is delicately skirting puddles of coal-black
water and heaps of pit refuse on its way from the boiler-house, where
its members have assembled, to the office-buildings of the colliery.
They are six in number, and we will describe them _seriatim_.
Mr Tom Winch is a professional agitator, though he calls himself
something else. He is loud-voiced, and ceaseless in argument of a
sort. His notion of a typical member of the upper classes is a
debilitated imbecile suffering from chronic alcoholism and various
maladies incident on over-indulgence, who divides his time between
gloating over money-bags and grinding the faces of the poor. He
privately regards Trades Unions as an antiquated drag upon the wheels
of that chariot at the tail of which he hopes one day to see Capital
led captive, gentlemen like Mr Tom Winch handling the reins and plying
the whip.
Mr Amos Entwistle is a working collier, and is rightly regarded by
both parties as a safe man. He is habitually sober, scrupulously
honest, and has worked at Belton Pit for nearly forty years. He looks
upon Trades Unions as his father and mother.
Mr Jacob Entwistle is the Nestor of the party. (Amos is his son.) He
is a patriarchal old gentleman, with a long white beard, the manner of
an ambassador, the deafness of an adder, and the obstinacy of a mule.
Altogether he is just the sort of man to prove a valuable asset to any
properly constituted deputation. He is the senior member of the local
branch of the _Employes'_ Association. He regards himself as the
father and mother of Trades Unions.
Mr Albert Brash is an expert in the art of what may be called
Righteous Indignation. Never was there such an exploiter of
grievances. Is short time declared? Mr Brash calls for an Act of
Parliament. Is there an explosion of fire-damp? Mr Brash mutters
darkly that one of these days a director must swing. Does a careless
worker remove a pit-prop and bring down an avalanche of coal on
himself? Mr Brash raises clenched hands to heaven and clamours for a
revolution. So persistently and so methodically does Mr Brash lay upon
the shoulders of Capital the responsibility for all the ills to which
flesh is liable, from a hard winter to triplets, that he has
ultimately (as is the way in this short-sighted world of ours)
achieved the position of Sir Oracle. His deportment is that of a
stage conspirator, and he rarely speaks above a hoarse and arresting
whisper. He calls himself an Anarchist, but he quails at the passing
of the most benevolent policeman. He regards Trades Unions as
well-meaning institutions, with but little discrimination as to their
choice of leaders.
Mr James Killick is a thoroughly honest, thoroughly muddle-headed
Socialist of a rather common type. Like many a wiser and more
observant man before him, he has realised something of the grinding
misery and suffering of this world, and a great and vague desire to
better things is surging inarticulately within him. He has come to
the conclusion, as most half-educated philosophers usually do, that
the simplest remedy would be to take from those who have and give
the proceeds to those who have not. The fact that the world is
divided into men to whose hands money sticks like glue and men
through whose fingers it slips like water, and that consequently a
Utopian re-distribution of property would have to be repeated at
inconveniently frequent intervals in order to preserve the social
balance, has not yet been borne in on him. He regards Trades Unionism
as a broken reed.
Mr Adam Wilkie is a Scot of the dourest and most sepulchral
appearance. Native reticence and an extremely cautious manner of
expressing himself have invested him with that halo of business acumen
which appears to be inevitable to the Scot as viewed by the Sassenach,
and his very silence is regarded with respectful admiration by his
more verbose colleagues. In reality, he is an intensely stupid,
entirely placid individual. Still, he has kept himself by native
thrift in tolerable comfort all his life without extraneous
assistance, and he consequently regards Trades Unionism as an
institution specially and mercifully introduced by Providence for the
purpose of keeping the weak-kneed English out of the poorhouse.
"Who's to be there?" inquired Mr Brash of Mr Entwistle senior.
That patriarch, who was negotiating a mountainous waste-heap, made no
reply.
"Who are we going to meet?" repeated Mr Brash in a louder tone.
"Eh?" inquires Mr Entwistle, giving his invariable answer to any
sudden question.
"Who are we going to _meet_?" bawled Mr Winch.
Mr Entwistle, who was never at a loss a second time, smiled
benignantly and replied--
"Ay, that's so. But maybe we can manage to dry 'em at the fire in the
office."
"I expect there will be five of them, Mr Winch," interpolated Amos,
coming to the rescue. "Kirkley, Thompson, Crisp, Aymer, Montague----"
There was a grunt of disapproval from Mr Wilkie as the last name was
mentioned.
"Yon felly!" he observed darkly. "Aha! Mphm!"
Then he relapsed into silence. It was upon such safe utterances as
these that Mr Wilkie's reputation for profound wisdom was based.
"Is that all?" said Winch. "Because if it is, I'll undertake to learn
that lot right enough! Kirkley, of course, is just an empty-headed
aristocrat: he don't count. Then that Crisp--he's too cautious to do
anything. We can talk Thompson round all right: done it half a dozen
times meself. Aymer never knows his own mind two minutes together, and
Moses is a coward. But _is_ that all? Ain't the big man going to be
there? He's the lad that counts in that crowd."
"He was away in London yesterday," said Entwistle junior. "But you
never know----"
"Wallowing in the vice and luxury of the metropolis!" chanted Mr Brash
suddenly, as if from some internal missal. "The master absent,
squandering his tainted millions, while we stay here and starve! If I
was a Member o' Parliament----"
"Talk sense," said Amos Entwistle curtly. "He may be back for all we
know. Anyway, they're certain to bring him up if they can, because
they know they can't do without him. Mind that tank-engine, father."
He impelled his aged parent, who, oblivious to delirious whistling,
was resolutely obstructing the progress of a diminutive locomotive
hauling a string of trucks, on to safer ground.
"Well, we'll hope for the best," said Mr Winch piously. "It would be
something if he was to come late, even. Give me twenty minutes with
the rest before he can get his oar in, and I'll undertake to make them
outvote him."
By this time the deputation had arrived at the managerial offices, and
five minutes later they were admitted to the presence of the Board.
They did not know that they had been immediately preceded by an
orange-coloured envelope, which was eagerly torn open by Lord Kirkley,
the deputy-chairman.
"Good egg!" observed his lordship, with a sigh of heartfelt relief.
"Juggernaut's coming."
A gentle murmur of satisfaction was audible. Evidently the Board felt
the need of a little stiffening. We may as well describe them.
The Marquis of Kirkley was more accustomed to exercising a kindly
despotism over rustics who lived contentedly on fourteen shillings
a-week than to splitting hairs with unbending mechanics earning four
pounds, whose views on the relations between master and man were
dictated by a cast-iron bureaucracy, and who regarded not the elastic
laws of Give and Take. He was a handsome, breezy, kind-hearted
patrician of thirty-four, and considered Trades Unions a damned
interfering nuisance.
James Crisp was a solicitor, and represented the Dean and Chapter of
Kilchester, beneath the very foundation of whose mighty cathedral ran
a very profitable little seam of coal, which was chiefly responsible
for making the bishopric of the diocese one of the richest
ecclesiastical plums in England. He was a shrewd man of business,
probably the best qualified of those present to take the lead in the
present instance. Consequently he remained studiously in the
background. He regarded Trades Unions as inevitable, but by no means
invulnerable.
Sir Nigel Thompson had inherited great possessions, including a
colliery, from his father. There was no vice in him, but he loved coal
about as much as a schoolboy loves irregular verbs, and his only
passions in life were old furniture and chemical research. He attended
under compulsion, having torn himself from his comfortable house in
London at the bidding of his manager, in whose hands he was reported
(not altogether unjustly) to be as wax. He was full of theoretical
enthusiasm for Trades Unions, which he identified in some mysterious
way with the liberty of the individual; but wished mildly that people
could contrive to settle their affairs without dragging him north.
Altogether a pleasant but entirely useless member of the Board.
Mr Alfred Aymer was the owner of Cherry Hill Colliery. He was
middle-aged, timorous, and precipitate. Left to himself, he would
probably have been a kind and fair-dealing employer. But it was his
misfortune to be so constituted that his opinions on any subject were
invariably those of the last man with whom he had discussed it.
Consequently his line of action in the affairs of life was something
in the nature of an alternating electric current. After an interview
with his manager he would issue a decree of unparalleled ferocity:
after five minutes with a deputation of _employes_ he would rescind
all previous resolutions and promise a perfectly fabulous bonus next
pay-day. In his present company he was an adamantine Capitalist, and
regarded Trades Unions as the most pernicious of institutions.
Last of all came Mr Montague, whose surname at an earlier and less
distinguished period in his history had probably rhymed with "noses."
He came from London, where he earned a livelihood by acquiring the
controlling interest in various commercial ventures, and making these
pay cent per cent. He had recently become proprietor of Marbledown
Colliery, and it was said that he was making a better thing out of it
than his _employes_. He regarded Trade Unions as an impertinent
infringement of the right of the upper classes to keep the lower
classes in their proper place. From which the intelligent reader will
have no difficulty in deciding to which class Mr Montague considered
that he himself belonged.
The deputation was introduced with the usual formalities. Its object
was to effect the reinstatement of two _employes_ at Marbledown
Colliery, an engineman and a hewer, who had been summarily dismissed
from their positions for endeavouring, in a society whose relations
had never been of the most cordial, to heighten dissension between
master and man.
Mr Tom Winch's version of the case, delivered with great wealth of
detail and a good deal of unnecessary shouting, was different. The
men, it appeared, were models of what enginemen and hewers should be.
Their sole offence consisted in having incurred the dislike of the
mine-manager, Mr Dodd--whether through their own sturdy independence
as true-born Englishmen (_applause from Mr Brash_), or the natural
jealousy of an incompetent official towards two able and increasingly
prominent subordinates, it was not for Mr Winch to say. Proceeding,
the orator warmed to his work, and mentioned that one man was as good
as another. Indeed, but for the merest accident of fortune, Lord
Kirkley himself might be delving for coal in the bowels of the earth,
what time Messrs Conlin and Murton, the dismissed _employes_, sate in
the House of Lords smoking cigars and drinking champagne.
After this singularly convincing peroration Mr Winch fell back into
line with his companions, amid the _sotto voce_ commendations of
Messrs Brash and Killick. Mr Aymer, who had been taking notes on a
sheet of paper, tore it up with a resigned air of finality. The case
was clear: these poor fellows must be reinstated.
The chairman conferred briefly with Mr Crisp.
"Would any other of you gentlemen like to say anything?" he inquired.
The question was communicated to Mr Entwistle senior, who stepped
forward and delivered himself of a courtly but rambling discourse,
consisting chiefly of reminiscences of something portentous but
unintelligible which had happened forty years ago, and even to the
most irrelevant mind presented no sort of bearing upon the case
whatsoever.
After this Lord Kirkley replied. His remarks were not convincing, for
he was hampered in dealing with the question by complete inability to
understand where the men's grievance came in, and said so. The owners,
he explained, tried to do the fair thing, and most of them did
considerably more. Sick funds, pensions, benevolent schemes, and all
that sort of thing, didn't they know? He quite admitted that an
employer of labour had grave responsibilities and duties laid upon
him, and he for one had always tried to live up to them. But hang it!
surely an employer had the right to get rid of a couple of fellows who
went about preaching anarchy and red revolution in all the
public-houses in the district--what? He did not mind ordinary
grousing. It did everybody good to blow off steam periodically: he did
it himself. But there was grousing and grousing: and when it came to
the sort of game that Messrs Conlin and Murton were playing, it was
his lordship's opinion that a _ne plus ultra_ of thickness had been
attained.
The chairman concluded a somewhat colloquial address amid a deathly
silence, and the deputation and the board glared uncomfortably at one
another. An _impasse_ had been reached, it was clear.
"It's all very well, gentlemen," broke in Killick suddenly, "for you
aristocrats----"
Lord Kirkley, who was not without a certain sense of proportion,
glanced involuntarily at Mr Montague and then at Mr Killick. Did this
omniscient and self-opinionated son of toil really see no moral
difference between a Peer of the realm, with centuries of clean-bred
ancestry behind him, and a man who wore diamond rings and
elastic-sided boots? Mr Montague looked up, and regarded Mr Killick
with something akin to affection.
There was a sudden rumble underneath the windows, accompanied by the
hoot of a motor-horn.
The drama having run itself to a deadlock, the _deus_ had duly
arrived--in his _machina_.
CHAPTER THREE.
THE WHEELS OF JUGGERNAUT.
There was a dead silence, unbroken until Juggernaut entered the room.
"Good-morning, gentlemen," he said briskly. "I am glad to see that the
deputation has only just arrived."
He turned to the clerk who had shown him in.
"Andrews," he said, "bring chairs for these gentlemen, and then we can
get to business."
Chairs were brought, and the deputation, which had been balancing
itself on alternate legs for nearly half an hour, sat down with an
enhanced sense of comfort and importance to what they realised at once
was to be the interview proper.
Juggernaut took the seat at the middle of the table vacated by Lord
Kirkley, and inquired--
"Has any one spoken yet?"
Progress was reported by Mr Crisp.
"I wonder if I might trouble the deputation again," said the chairman.
"Not you, Mr Winch, thank you!" as that Demosthenes cleared his
throat in a threatening manner. "In the first place, you don't
represent the men in any sense. In fact, considering that you are
engaged in no employment in this district, I think it would have been
much wiser on the part of those responsible for this deputation to
have left you out altogether. You are not even a properly accredited
Trades Union official."
"Gentlemen of the Board," began Mr Winch portentously, "I appeal----"
"Don't trouble, really, Mr Winch," broke in Juggernaut with inflexible
cheerfulness. "You see, I know exactly what you are going to say. I
have heard it so often in other places where you have been kind enough
to come forward and champion the cause--of--of--the oppressed millions
of this country. That's right, isn't it?"
A muffled sound proceeded from the interior of Mr Wilkie--his first
contribution to the debate--and the chairman proceeded.
"I wonder if Mr Entwistle junior would kindly give us the facts."
Amos Entwistle, rising from his seat, re-stated the case of the two
men. They were competent and industrious workmen, he maintained, and
so long as they gave satisfaction in their situations their private
lives and leisure occupations were entirely their own concern.
Possibly their views on the relations of Labour and Capital were
extreme, but the speaker begged respectfully to point out that there
were extremists on both sides; and since many employers might and did
regard the men they paid as dirt beneath their feet, it seemed only
natural that a section of the men should regard their employers as
bullies and tyrants. Mr Entwistle followed up this undoubted
home-thrust with a request for a categorical list of the offences
alleged against the two men, and solemnly but respectfully warned the
Board against risking a serious upheaval by endeavouring to stifle
legitimate criticism of its actions. With apologies for plain-speaking
he resumed his seat, and Mr Aymer tore up a sheet of paper upon which
he had commenced operations on the arrival of the chairman.
"Would any other gentleman like to say anything?" inquired Juggernaut.
"Mr Brash? Mr Wilkie?"
No, the gentlemen addressed had nothing to say. Their _forte_ was
plainly that of chorus.
"Very well," said Juggernaut. "In the first place, I am going to
accede to Mr Entwistle's perfectly just request that a definite reason
should be given for the dismissal of these men. I agree with him that
it is a foolish thing to stifle legitimate criticism. Unfortunately, I
don't agree with him that the criticisms of Messrs Conlin and Murton
_are_ legitimate. I have been making inquiries into the antecedents of
these two. Murton is a paid agitator. He is not a local man. He came
here less than a year ago, and has been making deliberate mischief
ever since. He has money to spend: he backs his arguments with beer. I
shouldn't be surprised if he drew his salary from the organisation
which retains your services, Mr Winch."
Mr Winch's small eyes began to protrude. He did not relish this line
of argument. In dealing with Boards and other representatives of
bloated Capital he preferred to keep to the high moral and sentimental
plane--the sufferings of the downtrodden sons of Labour, the equality
of all men in the sight of God, and so on. Mundane personalities,
coupled with the suggestion that he, a high priest of altruism, was
making a good thing out of his exertions on behalf of his
fellow-toilers, took him below the belt, he considered.