There was much talk of Father Sturt's announcement. Many held it a shame
that so much money, destined for the benefit of the Jago, should be
spent in bricks and mortar, instead of being distributed among
themselves. They fell to calculating the price of the land and houses,
and to working it out laboriously in the denomination of pots and
gallons. More: it was felt to be a grave social danger that Jago Court
should be extinguished. What would become of the Jago without Jago
Court? Where would Sunday morning be spent? Where would the fights come
off, and where was so convenient a place for pitch and toss? But mainly
they feared the police. Jago Court was an unfailing sanctuary, a city of
refuge ever ready, ever secure. There were times when two or three of
the police, hot in the chase, would burst into the Jago at the heels of
a flying marauder. Then the runaway would make straight for the archway,
and, once he was in Jago Court, danger was over. For he had only to run
into one of the ever-open doors at right or left, and out into
back-yards and other houses; or, better, to scramble over the low fence
opposite, through the back door before him, and so into New Jago Street.
Beyond the archway the police could not venture, except in large
companies. A young constable who tried it once, getting ahead of two
companions in his ardour, was laid low as he emerged from the passage,
by a fire-grate adroitly let drop from an upper window.
The blotting out of such a godsend of a place as this would be a
calamity. The Jago would never be the same again. As it was, the Old
Jago was a very convenient, comfortable sort of place, they argued. They
could not imagine themselves living anywhere else. But assuredly it
would be the Jago no longer without Jago Court. And this thing was to be
done, too, with money got together for their benefit! The sole
explanation the Jago could supply was the one that at last, with
arithmetical variations, prevailed. The landlords were to be paid a sum
(varying in Jago estimation from a hundred pounds to a hundred thousand)
for the houses and the ground, and of this they were secretly to return
to Father Sturt a certain share (generally agreed on as half), as his
private fee for bringing about so desirable a transaction. Looked at
from all points, this appeared to be the most plausible explanation: for
no other could reasonably account for Father Sturt's activity. No wonder
he could afford to reduce some of the rents! Was he not already
receiving princely wages (variously supposed to be something from ten
pounds to thirty pounds a week) from the Government, for preaching every
Sunday?
Still the rents were to be reduced: that was the immediate
consideration, and nothing but an immediate consideration carried weight
in the Jago, where a shilling to-day was to be preferred to a constant
income beginning in a month's time. The first effect of the announcement
was a rush of applications for rooms in the doomed houses, each
applicant demanding to be accommodated by the eviction of somebody
already established, but now disinterestedly discovered to be a bad
tenant. They were all disappointed, but the residents had better luck
than they had hoped. For the unexpected happened, and the money for a
part of the new buildings was suddenly guaranteed. Wherefore Father
Sturt, knowing that many would be hard put to it to find shelter when
the houses came down, and guessing that rents would rise with the
demand, determined to ask none for the little while the tenements
endured. Scarce had he made his decision known ere he regretted it,
popular as it was. For he reflected that the money saved would merely
melt, and that at the inevitable turning out, not a soul would be the
better off for the relief, but, indeed, might find it harder than ever
to pay rent after the temporary easement. It would have been better
rigidly to exact the rent, and return it in lump to each tenant as he
left. The sum would have been an inducement to leave peaceably--a matter
in which trouble was to be expected. But then, what did any windfall of
shillings bring in the Jago? What but a drunk? This was one of Father
Sturt's thousand perplexities, and he could but hope that, perhaps, he
had done right after all.
The old buildings were sold, as they stood, to the house-wreckers, and
on the house-wreckers devolved the work of getting the lodgers out. For
weeks the day was deferred, but it drew very near at last, and a tall
hoarding was put up. Next morning it had vanished; but there was a loud
crackling where the Jagos boiled their pots; Dicky Perrott and Tommy
Rann had a bonfire in Edge Lane; and Jerry Gullen's canary sweated
abroad before a heavy load of cheap firewood.
Then Josh Perrott and Billy Leary, his old enemy, were appointed joint
guardians of the new hoarding, each to get half-a-crown on every morning
when the fence was found intact. And in the end there came eviction day,
and once more the police held the Jago in force, escorting gangs of men
with tumbrils.
As for the Perrotts, they could easily find another room, at the high
rent always charged for the privilege of residence in the Jago. To have
remained in one room four or five years, and to have paid rent with
indifferent good regularity was a feat sufficiently rare to be
notorious, and to cause way to be made for them wherever a room was
falling vacant, or could be emptied. They went no farther than across
the way, to a room wherein a widow had died over her sack-making two
days before, and had sat on the floor with her head between her knees
for hours, while her children, not understanding, cried that they were
hungry. These children were now gone to the workhouse: more fortunate
than the many they left behind. And the room was a very fair one, ten
feet square or so.
The rest of the tenants thought not at all of new quarters, and did
nothing to find them, till they found themselves and their belongings
roofless in Old Jago Street. Then with one accord they demanded lodgings
of the vicar. Most of them had never inhabited any rooms so long as they
had these which they must now leave--having been ejected again and
again because of unpaid rent. Nevertheless, they clamoured for redress
as they might have clamoured had they never changed dwellings in their
lives.
Nobody resisted the police; for there were too many of them. Moreover,
Father Sturt was there, and few had hardihood for any but their best
behaviour in his presence. Still, there were disputes among the Jagos
themselves, that sometimes came very near to fights. Ginger Stagg's
missis professed to recognise a long-lost property in a tin kettle
brought into the outer air among the belongings of Mrs Walsh. The
miscellaneous rags and sticks that were Cocko Harnwell's household goods
got mingled in the roadway with those appertaining to the Fishers; and
their assortment without a turn of family combat was a task which tried
the vicar's influence to the utmost. Mrs Rafferty, too, was suspected of
undue pride in a cranky deal wash-stand, and thereby of a disposition to
sneer at the humbler turn-out of the Regans from the next floor: giving
occasion for a shrill and animated row.
The weather was dry, fortunately, and the evicted squatted in the
roadway, by their heaps, or on them, squabbling and lamenting. Ginger
Stagg, having covered certain crockery with the old family mattress,
forgetfully sat on it, and came upon Father Sturt with an indignant
demand for compensation.
Father Sturt's efforts to stimulate a search for new lodgings met with
small success at first. It was felt that, no doubt, there were lodgings
to be had, but they would be open to the fatal objection of costing
something; and the Jago temperament could neither endure nor understand
payment for what had once been given for nothing. Father Sturt, the
Jagos argued, had given them free quarters for so long. Then why should
he stop now? If they cleared out in order to make room for his new
church, in common fairness he should find them similar lodging on the
same terms. So they sat and waited for him to do it.
At length the vicar set to work with them in good earnest, carried away
with him a family or two at a time, and inducted them to rooms of his
own finding. And hereat others, learning that in these cases rent in
advance was exacted, bestirred themselves: reflecting that if rent must
be paid they might as well choose their own rooms as take those that
Father Sturt might find. Of course the thing was not done without
payments from the vicar's pocket. Some were wholly destitute; others
could not muster enough to pay that advance of rent which alone could
open a Jago tenancy. Distinguishing the genuine impecuniosity from the
merely professed, with the insight that was now a sixth sense with him,
Father Sturt helped sparingly and in secret; for a precedent of
almsgiving was an evil thing in the Jago, confirming the shiftlessness
which was already a piece of Jago nature, and setting up long affliction
for the almsgiver. Enough of such precedents existed; and the inevitable
additions thereto were a work of anxious responsibility and jealous
care.
So the bivouac in Old Jago Street melted away. For one thing, there were
those among the dispossessed who would not waste time in unproductive
inactivity just then; for war had arisen with Dove Lane, and spoils were
going. Dove Lane was no very reputable place, but it was not like the
Jago. In the phrase of the district, the Dove Laners were pretty thick,
but the Jagos were thick as glue. There were many market-porters among
the Dove Laners, and at this, their prosperous season, they and their
friends resorted to a shop in Meakin Street, kept by an 'ikey' tailor,
there to buy the original out-and-out downy benjamins, or the celebrated
bang-up kicksies, cut saucy, with artful buttons and a double fakement
down the sides. And hereabout they were apt to be set upon by Jagos;
overthrown by superior numbers; bashed; and cleaned out. Or, if the
purchases had been made, they were flimped of their kicksies, benjies or
daisies, as the case might be. So that a fight with Dove Lane might be
an affair of some occasional profit; and it became no loyal Jago to idle
in the stronghold.
Father Sturt's task was nearly over, when, returning to Old Jago Street,
he saw Dicky Perrott sitting by a still-remaining heap--a heap small and
poor even among those others. The Perrotts had been decorously settled
in their new home since early morning; but here was Dicky, guarding a
heap with a baby on it, and absorbed in the weaving of rush bags.
'That's right, Dicky my boy,' said Father Sturt in the approving voice
that a Jago would do almost anything--except turn honest--to hear. And
Dicky, startled, looked up, flushed and happy, over his shoulder.
'Rush bags, eh?' the vicar went on, stooping and handing Dicky another
rush from the heap. 'And whose are they?'
The bags, the rushes, the heap, and the baby belonged to Mrs Bates, the
widow, who was now in search of a new room. Dicky had often watched the
weaving of fishmongers' frails, and, since it was work in which he had
had no opportunity of indulging, it naturally struck him as a
fascinating pastime. So that he was delighted by the chance which he had
taken, and Mrs Bates, for her part, was not sorry to find somebody to
mind her property. Moreover, by hard work and the skill begot of much
practice, she was able to earn a sum of some three farthings an hour at
the rush bags: a profit which her cupidity made her reluctant to lose,
for even half an hour. And thus to have Dicky carry on the business--and
in his enthusiasm he did it very well--was a further consideration.
Father Sturt chatted with Dicky till the boy could scarce plait for very
pride. Would not Dicky like to work regularly every day, asked Father
Sturt, and earn wages? Dicky could see no graceful answer but the
affirmative; and in sober earnest he thought he would. Father Sturt took
hold of Dicky's vanity. Was he not capable of something better than
other Jago boys? Why should he not earn regular wages, and live
comfortably, well fed and clothed, with no fear of the police, and no
shame for what he did? _He_ might do it, when others could not. They
were not clever enough. They called themselves 'clever' and 'wide;'
'but,' said Father Sturt, 'is there one of them that can deceive me?'
And Dicky knew there was not one. Most did no work, the vicar's argument
went on, because they had neither the pluck to try nor the intelligence
to accomplish. Else why did they live the wretched Jago life instead of
take the pleasanter time of the decent labourer?
Dicky, already zealous at work as exampled in rush bag-making, listened
with wistful pride. Yes, if he could, he would work and take his place
over the envious heads of his Jago friends. But how? Nobody would employ
a boy living in the Jago. That was notorious. The address was a
topsy-turvy testimonial for miles round.
All the same when Mrs Bates at last took away her belongings, Dicky ran
off in delighted amaze to tell his mother and Em that he was going to
tea at Father Sturt's rooms.
And the wreckers tore down the foul old houses, laying bare the secret
dens of a century of infamy; lifting out the wide sashes of the old
'weavers' windows'--the one good feature in the structures; letting
light and air at last into the subterraneous basements where men and
women had swarmed, and bred, and died, like wolves in their lairs; and
emerging from clouds of choking dust, each man a colony of vermin. But
there were rooms which the wreckers--no jack-a-dandies neither--flatly
refused to enter; and nothing would make them but much coaxing, the
promise of extra pay, and the certainty of much immediate beer.