Three-quarters of a mile east of the Jago's outermost limit was the East
End Elevation Mission and Pansophical Institute: such was the amazing
success whereof, that a new wing had been built, and was now to be
declared open by a Bishop of great eminence and industry.
The triumphs of the East End Elevation Mission and Pansophical Institute
were known and appreciated far from East London, by people who knew less
of that part than of Asia Minor. Indeed, they were chiefly appreciated
by these. There were kept, perpetually on tap for the aspiring East
Ender, the Higher Life, the Greater Thought, and the Wider Humanity:
with other radiant abstractions, mostly in the comparative degree,
specifics all for the manufacture of the Superior Person. There were
many Lectures given on still more subjects. Pictures were borrowed and
shown, with revelations to the Uninformed of the morals ingeniously
concealed by the painters. The Uninformed were also encouraged to debate
and to produce papers on literary and political matters, while still
unencumbered with the smallest knowledge thereof: for the Enlargement of
the Understanding and the Embellishment of the Intellect. And there were
classes, and clubs, and newspapers, and games of draughts, and musical
evenings, and a brass band, whereby the life of the Hopeless Poor might
be coloured, and the Misery of the Submerged alleviated. The wretches
who crowded to these benefits were tradesmen's sons, small shop-keepers
and their families, and neat clerks, with here and there a smart young
artisan of one of the especially respectable trades. They freely
patronised the clubs, the musical evenings, the brass band, and the
bagatelle board; and those who took themselves seriously debated and
Mutually-Improved with pomp. Others, subject to savage fits of
wanting-to-know, made short rushes at random evening classes, with
intervals of disgusted apathy. Altogether, a number of decently-dressed
and mannerly young men passed many evenings at the Pansophical Institute
in harmless pleasures, and often with an agreeable illusion of
intellectual advance.
Other young men, more fortunately circumstanced, with the educational
varnish fresh and raw upon them, came from afar, equipped with a foreign
mode of thought and a proper ignorance of the world and the proportions
of things, as Missionaries. Not without some anxiety to their parents,
they plunged into the perilous deeps of the East End, to struggle--for a
fortnight--with its suffering and its brutishness. So they went among
the tradesmen's sons and the shopmen, who endured them as they endured
the nominal subscription; and they came away with a certain relief, and
with some misgiving as to what impression they had made, and what they
had done to make it. But it was with knowledge and authority that they
went back among those who had doubted their personal safety in the dark
region. The East End, they reported, was nothing like what it was said
to be. You could see much worse places up West. The people were quite a
decent sort, in their way: shocking Bounders, of course; but quite clean
and quiet, and very comfortably dressed, with ties and collars and
watches.
But the Missionaries were few, and the subscribers to the Elevation
Mission were many. Most had been convinced, by what they had been told,
by what they had read in charity appeals, and perhaps by what they had
seen in police-court and inquest reports, that the whole East End was a
wilderness of slums: slums packed with starving human organisms without
minds and without morals, preying on each other alive. These subscribers
visited the Institute by twos and threes, on occasions of particular
festivity among the neat clerks, and were astonished at the wonderful
effects of Pansophic Elevation on the degraded classes, their aspect and
their habits. Perhaps it was a concert where nobody was drunk: perhaps a
little dance where nobody howled a chorus, nor wore his hat, nor punched
his partner in the eye. It was a great marvel, whereunto the observers
testified: so that more subscriptions came, and the new wing was built.
The afternoon was bright, and all was promising. A small crowd of idlers
hung about the main door of the Institute, and stared at a string of
flags. Away to the left stood the new wing, a face of fair, clean brick;
the ornamentation, of approved earnestness, in terra-cotta squares at
regular intervals. Within sat many friends and relations of the shopmen
and superior mechanics, and waited for the Bishop; the Eminences of the
Elevation Mission sitting apart on the platform. Without, among the
idlers, waited Dicky Perrott. His notions of what were going on were
indistinct, but he had a belief, imbibed through rumour and tradition,
that all celebrations at such large buildings were accompanied by the
consumption, in the innermost recesses, of cake and tea. Even to be near
cake was something. In Shoreditch High Street was a shop where cake
stood in the window in great slabs, one slab over another, to an
incalculable value. At this window--against it, as near as possible,
his face flattened white--Dicky would stand till the shop-keeper drove
him off: till he had but to shut his eyes to see once more, in the
shifting black, the rich yellow sections with their myriad raisins. Once
a careless errand-boy, who had bought a slice, took so clumsy a bite as
he emerged that near a third of the whole piece broke and fell; and this
Dicky had snatched from the paving and bolted with, ere the owner quite
saw his loss. This was a superior sort of cake, at a penny. But once he
had managed to buy himself a slice of an inferior sort for a halfpenny,
in Meakin Street.
Dicky Perrott, these blessed memories in his brain, stood unobtrusively
near the door, with the big jacket buttoned over as decently as might
be, full of a desperate design: which was to get inside by whatsoever
manner of trick or opportunity he might, and so, if it were humanly
possible, to the cake.
The tickets were being taken at the door by an ardent young
Elevator--one of the missionaries. Him, and all such washed and
well-dressed people, Dicky had learnt to hold in serene contempt when
the business in hand was dodging. There was no hurry: the Elevator might
waste his vigilance on the ticket-holders for some time yet. And Dicky
knew better than to betray the smallest sign of a desire for entrance
while his enemy's attention was awake.
Carriages drew up, and yielded more Eminences: toward the end the Bishop
himself, whom Dicky observed but as a pleasant-looking old gentleman in
uncommon clothes; and on whom he bestowed no more thought than a passing
wonder at what might be the accident to his hat which had necessitated
its repair with string.
But at the spikes of the Bishop's carriage came another; and out of that
there got three ladies, friends of the ticket-receiver, on whom they
closed, greeting and shaking hands; and in a flash Dicky Perrott was
beyond the lobby and moving obscurely along the walls of the inner hall,
behind pillars and in shadow, seeking cake.
The Choral Society sang their lustiest, and there were speeches.
Eminences expressed their surprise and delight at finding the people of
the East End, gathered in the Institute building, so respectable and
clean, thanks to persistent, indefatigable, unselfish Elevation.
The good Bishop, amid clapping of hands and fluttering of handkerchiefs,
piped cherubically of everything. He rejoiced to see that day, whereon
the helping hand of the West was so unmistakably made apparent in the
East. He rejoiced also to find himself in the midst of so admirably
typical an assemblage--so representative, if he might say so, of that
great East End of London, thirsting and crying out for--for Elevation:
for that--ah--Elevation which the more fortunately circumstanced
denizens of--of other places, had so munificently--laid on. The people
of the East End had been sadly misrepresented--in popular periodicals
and in--in other ways. The East End, he was convinced, was not so black
as it was painted. (Applause.) He had but to look about him. _Etcetera,
etcetera._ He questioned whether so well-conducted, morally-given, and
respectable a gathering could be brought together in any West End parish
with which he was acquainted. It was his most pleasant duty on this
occasion--and so on and so forth.
Dicky Perrott had found the cake. It was in a much smaller room at the
back of the hall, wherein it was expected that the Bishop and certain
Eminences of the platform would refresh themselves with tea after the
ceremony. There were heavy, drooping curtains at the door of this room,
and deep from the largest folds the ratling from the Jago watched. The
table was guarded by a sour-faced man--just such a man as drove him from
the window of the cake shop in Shoreditch High Street. Nobody else was
there yet, and plainly the sour-faced man must be absent or busy ere the
cake could be got at.
There was a burst of applause in the hall: the new wing had been
declared open. Then there was more singing, and after that much
shuffling and tramping, for everybody was free to survey the new rooms
on the way out; and the Importances from the platform came to find the
tea.
Filling the room and standing about in little groups; chatting,
munching, and sipping, while the sour-faced man distractedly floundered
amid crockery: not a soul of them all perceived an inconsiderable small
boy, ducking and dodging vaguely among legs and round skirts, making,
from time to time, a silent snatch at a plate on the table: and
presently he vanished altogether. Then the amiable Bishop, beaming over
the tea-cup six inches from his chin, at two courtiers of the clergy,
bethought him of a dinner engagement, and passed his hand downward over
the rotundity of his waistcoat.
'Dear, dear,' said the Bishop, glancing down suddenly, 'why--what's
become of my watch?'
There hung three inches of black ribbon, with a cut end. The Bishop
looked blankly at the Elevators about him.
* * * * *
Three streets off, Dicky Perrott, with his shut fist deep in his
breeches pocket, and a gold watch in the fist, ran full drive for the
Old Jago.