On an autumn day four years after his first coming to the Jago, the
Reverend Henry Sturt left a solicitor's office in Cheapside, and walked
eastward, with something more of hope and triumph in him than he had
felt since the Jago fell to his charge. For the ground was bought
whereon should be built a church and buildings accessory, and he felt,
not that he was like to see any great result from his struggle, but that
perhaps he might pursue it better armed and with less of grim despair
than had been his portion hitherto.
It had taken him four years to gather the money for the site, and some
of it he was paying from his own pocket. He was unmarried, and had
therefore no reason to save. Still, he must be careful, for the sake of
the parish: the church must be built, and some of the money would
probably be wanted for that. Moreover, there were other calls. The
benefice brought a trifle less than L200 a year, and out of that, so far
as it would go, he paid (with some small outside help) L130 for rent of
the temporary church and the adjacent rooms; the organist's salary; the
rates and the gas-bills; the cost of cleaning, care, and repair; the
sums needed for such relief as was impossible to be withheld; and a
thousand small things beside. While the Jagos speculated wildly among
themselves as to the vast sums he must make by his job. For what toff
would come and live in the Jago except for a consideration of solid
gain? What other possible motive could there be, indeed?
Still, he had an influence among them such as they had never known
before. For one thing, they feared in him what they took for a sort of
supernatural insight. The mean cunning of the Jago, subtle as it was,
and baffling to most strangers, foundered miserably before his
relentless intelligence; and crafty rogues--'wide as Broad Street,' as
their proverb went--at first sulked, faltered and prevaricated
transparently, but soon gave up all hope or effort to deceive him. Thus
he was respected. Once he had made it plain that he was no common
milch-cow in the matter of gratuities: to be bamboozled for shillings,
cajoled for coals, and bullied for blankets: then there became apparent
in him qualities of charity and lovingkindness, well-judged and
governed, that awoke in places a regard that was in a way akin to
affection. And the familiar habit of the Jago slowly grew to call him
Father Sturt.
Father Sturt was not to be overreached: that was the axiom gloomily
accepted by all in the Jago who lived by what they accounted their wits.
You could not juggle shillings and clothing (convertible into shillings)
out of Father Sturt by the easy fee-faw-fum of repentance and salvation
that served with so many. There were many of the Jagos (mightily
despised by some of the sturdier ruffians) who sallied forth from time
to time into neighbouring regions in pursuit of the profitable
sentimentalist: discovering him--black-coated, earnest, green--sometimes
a preacher, sometimes a layman, sometimes one having authority on the
committee of a charitable institution; dabbling in the East End on his
own account, or administering relief for a mission, or disbursing a
Mansion House Fund. He was of two chief kinds: the Merely-Soft,--the
'man of wool' as the Jago word went,--for whom any tale was good enough,
delivered with the proper wistful misery: and the Gullible-Cocksure,
confident in a blind experience, who was quite as easy to tap, when
approached with a becoming circumspection. A rough and ready method,
which served well in most cases with both sorts, was a profession of
sudden religious awakening. For this, one offered an aspect either of
serene happiness or of maniacal exaltation, according to the customer's
taste. A better way, but one demanding greater subtlety, was the
assumption of the part of Earnest Inquirer, hesitating on the brink of
Salvation. For the attitude was capable of indefinite prolongation, and
was ever productive of the boots, the coats, and the half-crowns used to
coax weak brethren into the fold. But with Father Sturt, such trouble
was worse than useless; it was, indeed, but to invite a humiliating
snub. Thus, when Fluffy Pike first came to Father Sturt with the
intelligence that he had at last found Grace, the Father Sturt asked if
he had found it in a certain hamper--a hamper hooked that morning from a
railway van--and if it were of a quality likely to inspire an act of
restoration to the goods office. Nothing was to be done with a man of
this disgustingly practical turn of mind, and the Jagos soon ceased from
trying.
Father Sturt had made more of the stable than the make-shift church he
had found. He had organised a club in a stable adjoining, and he lived
in the rooms over the shut-up shop. In the club he gathered the men of
the Jago indiscriminately, with the sole condition of good behaviour on
the premises. And there they smoked, jumped, swung on horizontal bars,
boxed, played at cards and bagatelle, free from interference save when
interference became necessary. For the women there were sewing-meetings
and singing. And all governed with an invisible discipline, which, being
brought to action, was found to be of iron.
Now there was ground on which might be built a worthier church; and
Father Sturt had in mind a church which should have by its side a
cleanly lodging-house, a night-shelter, a club, baths and washhouses.
And at a stroke he would establish this habitation and wipe out the
blackest spot in the Jago. For the new site comprised the whole of Jago
Court and the houses that masked it in Old Jago Street.
This was a dream of the future--perhaps of the immediate future, if a
certain new millionaire could only be interested in the undertaking--but
of the future certainly. The money for the site alone had been hard
enough to gather. In the first place the East London Elevation Mission
and Pansophical Institute was asking very diligently for funds--and was
getting them. It was to that, indeed, that people turned by habit when
minded to invest in the amelioration of the East End. Then about this
time there had arisen a sudden quacksalver, a Panjandrum of
philanthropy, a mummer of the market-place, who undertook, for a fixed
sum, to abolish poverty and sin together; and many, pleased with the new
gaudery, poured out before him the money that had gone to maintain
hospitals and to feed proved charities. So that gifts were scarce and
hard to come by--indeed, were apt to be thought unnecessary, for was not
misery to be destroyed out of hand? Moreover, Father Sturt wanted not
for enemies among the Sentimental-Cocksure. He was callous and cynical
in face of the succulent penitence of Fluffy Pike and his kind. He
preferred the frank rogue before the calculating snivelmonger. He had a
club at which boxing was allowed, and dominoes--flat ungodliness. He
shook hands familiarly every day with the lowest characters: his tastes
were vulgar and brutal. And the company at his club was really dreadful.
These things the Cocksure said, with shaking of heads; and these they
took care should be known among such as might give Father Sturt money.
Father Sturt!--the name itself was sheer papistry. And many comforted
themselves by writing him anonymous letters, displaying hell before his
eyes, and dealing him vivid damnation.
So Father Sturt tramped back to the Jago, and to the strain and struggle
that ceased not for one moment of his life, though it left never a mark
of success behind it. For the Jago was much as ever. Were the lump once
leavened by the advent of any denizen a little less base than the rest,
were a native once ridiculed and persuaded into a spell of work and
clean living, then must Father Sturt hasten to drive him from the Jago
ere its influence suck him under for ever; leaving for his own community
none but the entirely vicious. And among these he spent his life:
preaching little, in the common sense, for that were but idle vanity in
this place; but working, alleviating, growing into the Jago life,
flinging scorn and ridicule on evil things, grateful for tiny negative
successes--for keeping a few from ill-behaviour but for an hour;
conscious that wherever he was not, iniquity flourished unreproved; and
oppressed by the remembrance that albeit the Jago death-rate ruled full
four times that of all London beyond, still the Jago rats bred and bred
their kind unhindered, multiplying apace and infecting the world.
In Luck Row he came on Josh Perrott, making for home with something
under the skirt of his coat 'How d'ye do, Josh?' said Father Sturt,
clapping a hand on Josh's shoulder, and offering it as Josh turned
about.
Josh, with a shifting of the object under his coat, hastened to tap his
cap-peak with his forefinger before shaking hands. He grinned broadly,
and looked this way and that, with mingled gratification and
embarrassment, as was the Jago way in such circumstances. Because one
could never tell whether Father Sturt would exchange a mere friendly
sentence or two, or, with concealed knowledge, put some disastrous
question about a watch, or a purse, or a breast-pin, or what not.
'Very well, thanks, Father,' answered Josh, and grinned amiably at the
wall beyond the vicar's elbow.
'And what have you been doing just lately?'
'Oo--odd jobs, Father.' Always the same answer, all over the Jago.
'Not quite such odd jobs as usual, I hope, Josh, eh?' Father Sturt
smiled, and twitched Josh playfully by the button-hole as one might
treat a child. 'I once heard of a very odd job in the Kingsland Road
that got a fine young man six months' holiday. Eh, Josh?'
Josh Perrott wriggled and grinned sheepishly; tried to frown, failed,
and grinned again. He had only been out a few weeks from that six moon.
Presently he said:--'Awright, Father; you do rub it into a bloke, no
mistake.'
The grin persisted as he looked first at the wall, then at the pavement,
then down the street, but never in the parson's face.
'Ah, there's a deal of good in a blister sometimes, isn't there, Josh?
What's that I see--a clock? Not another odd job, eh?'
It was indeed a small nickel-plated American clock which Josh had under
his coat, and which he now partly uncovered with positive protests. 'No,
s'elp me, Father, it's all straight--all fair trade, Father--jist a swop
for somethink else, on me solemn davy. That's wot it is,
Father--straight.'
'Well, I'm glad you thought to get it, Josh,' Father Sturt pursued,
still twitching the button-hole. 'You never have been a punctual
churchgoer, you know, Josh, and I'm glad you've made arrangements to
improve. You'll have no excuse now, you know, and I shall expect you on
Sunday morning--promptly. Don't forget: I shall be looking for you.' And
Father Sturt shook hands again, and passed on, leaving Josh Perrott
still grinning dubiously, and striving to assimilate the invitation to
church.
The clock was indeed an exchange, though not altogether an innocent one:
the facts being these. Early that morning Josh had found himself
scrambling hastily along a turning out of Brick Lane, accompanied by a
parcel of nine or ten pounds of tobacco, and extremely conscious of the
hasty scrambling of several other people round the corner. Some of these
people turned that corner before Josh reached the next, so that his
course was observed, and it became politic to get rid of his parcel
before a possible heading-off in Meakin Street. There was one place
where this might be done, and that was at Weech's. A muddy yard, one of
a tangle of such places behind Meakin Street, abutted on Weech's
back-fence; and it was no uncommon thing for a Jago on the crook, hard
pressed, to pitch his plunder over the fence, double out into the
crowd, and call on Mr Aaron Weech for the purchase-money as soon as
opportunity served. The manoeuvre was a simple one, facilitated by the
plan of the courts; but it was only adopted in extreme cases, because Mr
Aaron Weech was at best but a mean paymaster, and with so much of the
upper hand in the bargain as these circumstances conferred, was apt to
be meaner than ever. But this case seemed to call for the stratagem, and
Josh made for the muddy yard, dropped the parcel over the fence, with a
loud whistle, and backed off by the side passage in the regular way.
When he called on Mr Aaron Weech a few hours later, that talented
tradesman, with liberal gestures, told out shillings singly in his hand,
pausing after each as though that were the last. But Josh held his hand
persistently open, till Mr Weech, having released the fifth shilling,
stopped altogether, scandalised at such rapacity. But still Josh was not
satisfied, and as he was not quite so easy a customer to manage as the
boys who commonly fenced at the shop, Mr Weech compromised, in the end,
by throwing in a cheap clock. It had been in hand for a long time; and
Josh was fain to take it, since he could get no more. And thus it was
that Dicky, coming in at about five o'clock, was astonished to see on
the mantel-piece, amid the greasy ruins of many candle ends, the clock
that had belonged to the Ropers four years before.