Sister Gertrude. by D. F. E. Sykes, LL.B.
Sister Gertrude,
A Tale of the
West Riding.
BY
D. F. E. SYKES, LL.B.
Author of “The History of Huddersfield,”
“The History of the Colne Valley,”
“Ben o’ Bill’s, the Luddite,”
“Tom Pinder, Foundling,”
Etc., Etc.
SIXTH THOUSAND.
WORKER PRESS, 47, MARKET STREET, HUDDERSFIELD.
About the author.
D F E Sykes was a gifted scholar, solicitor, local politician and
newspaper proprietor. He listed his own patrimony as ‘Fred o’ Ned’s o’
Ben o’ Billy’s o’ the Knowle’ a reference to Holme village above
Slaithwaite in the Colne Valley. As the grandson of a clothier, his
association with the woollen trade would be a valuable source of
material for his novels, but also the cause of his downfall when, in
1883, he became involved in a bitter dispute between the weavers and
the mill owners.
When he was declared bankrupt in 1885 and no longer able to practise as
a solicitor he left the area and travelled abroad to Ireland and Canada.
On his return to England he struggled with alcoholism and was prosecuted
by the NSPCC for child neglect. Eventually he was drawn back to
Huddersfield and became an active member of the Temperance Movement. He
took to researching local history and writing, at first in a local
newspaper, then books such as ‘The History of Huddersfield and its
Vicinity’. He also wrote four novels. It was not until the 1911
Census, after some 20 years as a writer, that he finally states his
profession as ‘author’.
In later life he lived with his wife, the daughter of a Lincolnshire
vicar, at Ainsley House, Marsden. He died of a heart attack following an
operation at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary on 5th June 1920 and was
buried in the graveyard of St Bartholomew’s in Marsden.
Introduction.
In all of Sykes’ novels he draws heavily on his own life experiences
though none more so than in this, his third, semi-autobiographical
novel. The Edward Beaumont of the novel is indeed Sykes; his solicitors
practice and early political aspirations are featured along with his
romance of the daughter of a Lincolnshire vicar. From newspaper articles
we can also confirm that he was a councillor and a potential
parliamentary candidate for the West Staffordshire constituency; his
embroilment with the weavers dispute, bankruptcy and his dependency on
alcohol are also well documented. He is however selective in what he
chooses to reveal about himself and uses artistic licence to make the
book more readable. He does give us an insight into his ideas, opinions
and aspirations and the turmoil he must have endured before turning his
life around. It is a salutary lesson in how a talented man can be
destroyed for his convictions and his struggle, with support, to regain
his self-respect.
SISTER GERTRUDE.
CHAPTER I.
It was a summer evening of the early eighties, and market-day in the
ancient manufacturing town of Huddersfield, in the West Riding. The town
is called a manufacturing town in the geographies, and its name may be
found therein among the leading centres of the great cloth industry. As
a matter of fact, though, to be sure, there are still some few mills in
the lower quarters and outskirts of the town, and hard by the inky river
that runs through it, the cloth for which Huddersfield is noted is
manufactured for the most part in the adjacent villages, and the town
itself is its central mart. On market-days the manufacturers of the
rural districts, if rural is a term to be applied with any propriety to
clusters of mills situate on lofty steeps, betake themselves to the
town, attend the Cloth Market, or may be seen in their town warehouses
or at the corners of the streets converging on the Cloth Hall, dine
heavily at the market ordinary of their favourite hostelry, see their
bankers and their lawyers, and not uncommonly, in the late afternoon,
join their buxom wives or comely daughters at an accustomed rendezvous,
assist in the weekly household shopping of their frugal dames, and by
them are driven home in that outward and visible sign of commercial
prosperity and social respectability, the family gig or trap. By the
time the worthy owner of mill and loom is seated at his ample board,
surrounded by his Lares and Penates, consuming the home-fed ham and
domestic muffin, and quaffing his fragrant Souchong, his mill hands,
male and female, donned in their second-best, have in their turn betaken
themselves townwards to see the sights, and indulge the mild dissipation
of strolling the streets, gazing in the shop-windows, making a modest
purchase—it is then that the Phyllis of the loom buys for Corydon the
meerschaum pipe he is afraid to smoke except on Sundays, and that
Corydon wastes his substance on sweet-meats for the ripe lips of his
charmer. Or maybe Phyllis and Corydon, amorously-linked, seek the
pit-door of the town theatre to suck oranges and furtive peppermints,
whilst the buskined villain struts upon the none too ample stage and
declaims his stilted speech.
It was, then, about eight of the evening of a certain Summer market-day
when two young men, arm in arm, lounged leisurely past the Market Place,
and stopped for no other reason than to see why others had stopped, for
a small and shifting crowd had gathered round the base of the Market
Cross, and were giving, some a rapt and sustained attention, others but
the brief hearing of a soon-sated curiosity to a speaker standing upon
the Cross’s pedestal. The audience were, for the most part, of young
and little heedful holiday-makers, who took the speaking as part of
their outing, and one of the many wonderful things to be heard of
market-days, and to be mused upon at leisure, amid the clack of the loom
and the hum of the revolving wheels, or discussed in the interchange of
feminine experiences for which the all too brief dinner-hour avails.
There was, however, a fringe of the more serious-minded, who listened to
the speaker with solemn attention, and regarded her with respectful
appreciation. These, one may surmise, were in their several homes
Sunday-school teachers or chapel members themselves, with some
experience of spiritual exhorting, and feeling under some compulsion to
lend their countenance, if only, by the way, even to an unauthorised
Evangelist. Nearer to the speaker stood a body of men and women, some
with cymbals or other instruments of music or of noise, wearing the
scarlet tunic and German-band cap, or the close-fitting serge costume
and coal-scuttle bonnet by which the gentler soldiers of the Salvation
Army seek to conceal what fairness of feature it has pleased the good
God to give them.
These militant believers served not only as a body-guard of the central
figure of the gathering, but as a chorus; a stalwart, rugged-featured
soldier, whose secular calling was the ungentle craft of a butcher,
evoking an occasional subdued note from the drum he beat o’ nights to
the praise and glory of God; whilst a neat and modest maiden, once the
slattern scullery-maid of the Red Lion, gently tinkled a tambourine,
that served also as a collection-box for stray coppers earnestly
entreated; and their brethren of both sexes punctuated the address of
their leader by fervent “Amens,” “Glorys,” and “Hallelujahs,”
ejaculated at frequent intervals and interspersed with as little regard
to their appropriateness to the spoken word as a ’prentice compositor
displays in the sprinkling of his commas in the printed line.
The speaker, to whom all faces were turned, was young and of a rare
beauty. Her features were of Grecian cast, her eye of a soft, dark
violet hue, her lips of that Cupid arch so seldom seen, her complexion
pure, and suffused now with the glow of health or excitement, and her
wealth of rippling hair was of dark chestnut hue, just touched by the
parting rays of the westerning sun as it declined behind the roofs of
the Bank on the opposite side of New Street, off which the Market Place
stood. Her dress was of blue serge, fitting closely to a form of just
proportions and unrelieved by any kind of ornament, unless a small cross
of chased silver suspended round the neck might deserve the term. The
hand, which was occasionally moved to emphasise a sentence or point a
remark, was white and soft and well-formed. The voice in which she spoke
was soft, sweet, pure, musical, almost caressing; her diction the chaste
speech of education and refinement.
_“Que diable, fait-elle dans cette galère?”_ muttered Edward
Beaumont to his companion, as the two young men above-mentioned lingered
on the fringe of the crowd.
“Oh! it’s one of that Salvation Army lot,” replied his friend, Sam
Storth. “Come along, Beaumont. The usual thing, you know: hell and
brimstone, blood and fire, and a collection.”
“Poachers on the preserves of the Church, eh, Sam? Well, you’ll
admit the saint is pretty enough for a sinner. Let us listen.”
Sam Storth shrugged his shoulders, stretched his little legs apart,
thrust his hands into his trousers’ pockets, yawned drearily, and
fixed his big and bulging eyes upon the speaker, eyeing her beauty with
the calmly critical survey he was wont to bestow upon the Coryphées of
the local ballet. Edward Beaumont, whom two or three of the more
respectably clad of the audience recognised and saluted, turned to the
speaker with respectful and serious attention, already repenting of his
jesting allusion to her good looks.
“Dear friends,” the girl was saying, as Beaumont and Storth joined
the crowd, “believe me, we plead with you for your good. I cannot
think it right so many of you should lead the lives you do. Some of you,
I fear, live very far apart from Christ, living only, as it were, that
you may continue to live. All your efforts, all your anxieties, are
summed up in that—to continue to live. If you can live honestly you
are the more content, because you do not like the risks of dishonesty.
If you are unhappily compelled to live meanly, meagrely, you put up with
it as best you may, hoping, for a turn of your luck. If you are not so
compelled how do you show your gratitude to the Almighty giver and
disposer? By faring sumptuously every day, caring only for raiment and
fine linen, for dainty dishes, good cheer, soft living. Perhaps you are
of the foolish ones that cannot be quite happy without the envy of your
neighbours. Then you spend your money upon vanities that give you no
real pleasure, except the poor delight of making someone jealous of your
good fortune. You work very hard to get more money than you have any
need for to buy luxuries that are hurtful to you body and soul. You are
really very foolish so to waste this precious life in vain strivings.
How much of the misery and poverty of this world are caused because one
man conceives he cannot be happy till he has amassed a large fortune. It
does not seem to matter to him that the price of his wealth is the
abject misery of many whom in church on Sundays he calls his brothers.
So have I seen a greedy pig snouting in the trough long after he has
eaten his fill, and pushing aside some half-starved weakling of the same
litter. The vaunted brotherhood of man is like that. Do you think that
you have solved all problems when you have spoken glibly of supply and
demand, or this new doctrine of the survival of the fittest? Methinks I
see one of your sleek manufacturers, an alderman, maybe, perhaps a
magistrate. He is well clad, housed sumptuously; he has money always at
command, enough and to spare. I can fancy how sweet to him must be that
smooth saying, ‘the survival of the fittest.’ Pshaw! The man
mistakes a letter. He means the survival of the fattest. Do you think
Jesus Christ died for the survival of the fittest, for the sacred law of
supply and demand? It seems to me that the fittest do not survive. They
are _too_ fit, and the world crucifies them. That is the world’s way
of dealing with the fittest. No! Jesus taught a very different doctrine,
and His teaching will square with that of neither your Huxleys nor your
Spencers, and still less will it square with your consecrated supply and
demand. You have tried to carry on the world with theories of men’s
devising. Are you satisfied with the result? Does Dives enjoy his dinner
the more because he has perforce heard the moans of Lazarus at his gate?
Is anybody who has a head to think and eyes to see and a heart to feel
content with things as they now are? Oh, no! They tell me you people in
Huddersfield are great Radicals and are going to set everything right by
Act of Parliament. Well, you have tried Parliament tinkering a many
centuries. Is the world so very much better for your Acts of Parliament?
Don’t you think it is time to try a little of Christ’s doctrine? And
Christ’s doctrine means what? In a word, Christ’s doctrine is Christ
living. But you profess Christ on Sunday. Where do you put Him on
Monday? On the shelf with the Family Bible. He is too sacred a Being,
you think, perhaps, for the mill, the warehouse, the shop.
“Christ, I think, meant that the lives of the people should be more
joyous, more free from carking care, from grinding poverty. I cannot
think Christ meant the world should always have its Dives and always its
Lazarus. Surely there is a happy board of solid comfort midway between
the insolent ostentation and sinful waste of the rich man’s table, and
the floor on which the dogs fight for the fallen crumbs. Let us find
that happy mean, and there will be more of the brotherhood of man and
more kinship with Christ.
“But you tell me that a working-man has only one use for good
wages—to spend his superfluity in drink. I know full well how prone so
many are to besot themselves with drink. But you—” and here the
speaker looked full at Beaumont and the other well-dressed men, now not
a few, who stood on the skirts of the growing gathering, “you who have
never known want can scarcely credit me if I tell you that the most part
of the fearful, sickening drunkenness of the people comes not from too
much money, but from too little. When people are stupefied by drink they
forget for a time their hunger, their rags, their mean, despicable
condition, their empty, dirty homes, their squalid courts, their unkempt
children, their slattern wives, in a word, they lose their real selves
and become for an hour or two _your_ equals. A drunken man is only
dreaming with his eyes open, and when the waking life is so cold, so
bare, so unlovely, do you wonder that men love to dream?
“Do I then excuse drunkenness? God forbid. Nay, rather do I plead with
all that they should quit the accursed thing and not purchase for
themselves that Fool’s Paradise, so costly, and from which they awake
to find the world still harder. But I am here to-night to plead with all
who may hear me, rich or poor, high or low, master or man, to try to
live in all things the Christ-life. There are miserable sinners enough
besides the poor drunkard. I daresay some of you have stopped to listen
just on purpose to hear the faults and vices of the very poor and very
lost denounced. It is soothing, no doubt, to see other people soundly
trounced, to hear vices _we_ haven’t got, and imagine we are never
likely to have, scathingly lashed. But I think we’ll let the _poor_
sinner have a rest to-night. There are sins in high as well as in low
places, and first and foremost I count the sin and folly of setting all
your heart and all your mind on the mad haste to be rich, caring to
stand well with the world, to have the seat of honour at the feast, to
surround yourself with all the garb and trappings of wealth—in a word,
to get on. It is a mean and paltry ambition. Who are you that you should
want to thrust yourself head and shoulders above your fellows? When the
final judgment comes, what will it avail you to have piled up riches and
be driven to church in a carriage and pair.
“I tell you, there are a few other matters that will have to be
inquired into there—”
“Oh! come along, Beaumont,” said Storth, “we’ve had about enough
of this bally rot. Canting humbug, I call it. Chuck the girl a bob, and
let’s slide,” and he flung the silver coin towards the tambourine of
Happy Sal and moved away. Beaumont flung no coin, but, raising his hat,
followed his companion.
“I’d have liked to hear the end of it, Storth,” he said. “The
young lady, for she’s that you can see with half an eye, has tackled a
big subject. I fancy that’s not the usual kind of Salvation Army
harangue. If it is, I think I must hunt up their barracks.”
“A lot of blooming nonsense, I call it. That is so far as I could
understand what the dickens the girl was driving at. But I say, though,
if she’s a fair sample of Salvation Army lasses, I think I’ll put in
an hour or two at the Barracks myself. Face like a Mary Magdalene,
hasn’t she? ’Spose that’s about the time of day with her, eh,
Beaumont?”
“You’ll have to read faces better than that, Sam, or you’ll never
be any good in Court,” said Beaumont. “Do you believe in anything or
anybody? Is there no good thing under the sun?”
“Believe in anything or anybody? Rather. Not many bodies, but a good
many things. I believe in Sam Storth. I’ve a very great respect for
him too, and mean to do him well. I believe in a good dinner, and if
somebody else is fool enough to pay for it, that won’t spoil my
appetite, you bet. I believe in good wine, and it won’t break my heart
if it comes out of your or any other fellow’s cellar, and if I can’t
get good wine at your expense, I’ll be thankful for good beer at my
own. There’s a very good tap of it at the Royal, let me tell you. And
I believe in good clothes, and I’d rather drive than walk. Third-class
riding’s better than first-class walking, let me tell you. And I like
a good play, not Shakespeare, you know, nor anything classic, but
something you can take easy, with plenty of leg in it, don’t you know!
And I like a pretty girl, too, but not enough to chuck myself away on
one, and I like a coin or two in an old stocking, for I’ve an eye for
a rainy day, and don’t mean to be out in the wet when it comes. There,
that’s about my _credo_, Beaumont, and if I can only get a fair share
of what I want, there isn’t a heartier singer of the doxology in
church than yours truly.”
“You’re a Sybarite, Sam, a frankly brutal sensualist. Well, I give
you credit for making no pretences. You aren’t a hypocrite anyway.”
“It isn’t worth while with you, Beaumont. There’s nothing to be
got out of you by make-believe. But I can pull a long face and snivel
and turn up the whites of my eyes and groan on occasion. It’s in the
family, you know. But I’m not paid for doing it. My uncle is. That’s
all the difference. But here we are at the club. Don’t think I’ll go
in just yet. I’ll do a half-time at the theatre. So long.”
Beaumont entered the reading-room of the club. There was no library in
this feeble imitation of a London club. He took up the current number of
the “Nineteenth Century Review.” He had to cut its leaves. The
members of the club, manufacturers, merchants, and the larger
shopkeepers preferred to have their monthlies boiled down for them by
Mr. Stead in the “Review of Reviews.” But Edward could not
concentrate his mind on the weighty problems discussed by the sages of
the century. His thoughts wandered to the scene in the Market Place.
“Which is right,” he mused, “that girl or Sam? The girl, of
course. But am I any better, _au fond_, than Storth, the epicurean
little beast? Is there any difference between us, except that he is
honest with himself? I spend my leisure in political agitation, and
rather plume myself on being a Town Councillor and Vice-President of the
Liberal Two Hundred at twenty-four, and would rather any day wag my
tongue on a public platform for nothing than earn a couple of guineas by
exercising the same useful member in the County Court or Police Court.
But do I really care for the political reforms for which I agitate, and
am I really indignant at the wrongs about which I wax eloquent? How much
of my wrath against the House of Lords, I wonder, arises from the fact
that I am not myself the ‘tenth transmitter of a foolish face?’ When
I thunder against the iniquity of a restricted franchise, is it not,
perhaps, mainly because it tickles my ears to hear the answering
plaudits of the great unfranchised? Sam Storth likes soft living, and
says so, and in that he is honest. I like _monstrari digito et diceri
hic Niger est_. But I call my liking public spirit, intelligent
Liberalism, and look to be, and indeed am, patted on the back for it by
others and myself. His liking I call sensuality and scorn. But aren’t
his ways and my ways equally a self-gratification in different forms?
Now, that girl does really seem to care for people. I’ll be bound she
feels like a sister to the poor wretches of the slums. There’s a screw
loose with you somewhere, Edward, my boy. What’s the matter with you?
That girl’s got religion. She believes in Christ. Curious; but I’ll
bet she does. What a facility women have for accepting myths for facts.
The clear, cold light of science is a grand thing, but I sometimes feel
inclined to say, ‘Hang the clear, cold light of science.’ Heigho!
the ‘Nineteenth’s’ deadly dull, and the ‘Contemporary’ attain
a deeper depth of Bœotian opacity. I wonder if I can cut in at a
rubber.” And Beaumont threw his magazine aside and ascended to the
higher regions of the Club, where two or three rooms were set aside for
the devotees of whist, nap and poker.
Edward Beaumont and Sam Storth, though both solicitors, and partners in
the practice of a much and perhaps undeservedly abused profession, were
in almost every particular in which men may be compared or contrasted as
dissimilar as two men may well be. Beaumont was a native of
Huddersfield, and his family connections with the town and district were
numerous and intricate. The Beaumonts of that vicinity are a numerous
progeny, and may be found in every calling, in every trade and every
craft. The Squire of White Meadows is a Beaumont, and traces an unbroken
line of descent from one of the most intrepid of the Crusaders, whose
effigy may be seen to this day in the small, time-worn church on the
ancestral domain. The Beaumonts, or de Bellomontes, were, aforetime,
lords of the manor of Huddersfield itself, but that position passed from
them many centuries ago. Whether or no our Edward Beaumont was of the
Beaumonts of White Meadows is a matter which Edward himself affected to
regard as of absolutely no importance. His father had been, like
himself, a solicitor, and had founded the present firm of Beaumont and
Storth. His grandfather had been a cloth manufacturer, and as to his
great grandfather, Edward declared that he, too, had been either a cloth
manufacturer of the smallest, or, more likely, a handloom weaver of a
saving disposition. As in Huddersfield it is quite exceptional for
anyone to be able to refer to a grandfather at all, Edward could very
well afford to affect indifference on the score of his great
grand-sire’s status.
If looks go for anything Beaumont might certainly have pretended to
aristocratic lineage. He was tall above the ordinary, and well
proportioned, his frame well-knit and active, his features regular, his
hair abundant, of the hue of the raven, and with the natural sheen of
perfect health. His eyes, well shaped, were dark and full of fire and
expression. He had a well-formed mouth, mobile lips, of that fullness
that may betoken either the orator, the poet, or the sensualist, a
rounded, dimpled chin, the long White hand commonly supposed to be
indicative of gentle birth. But the tips of the fingers were square
rather than finely pointed, a trait which a palmist had assured him
indicated stubborness of character or resoluteness of will, but which
Edward asserted more probably suggested that one of his female ancestors
had been engaged in the manual exercise of “twisting,” one of the
many processes of cloth manufacture, and one eminently calculated to
stub the fingers of the artist.
Edward Beaumont had been carefully educated, and had taken to books like
a duck to water. His natural aptitude and facility of apprehension made
his studies easy to him, and though no one who knows what is properly
implied in the term scholarship, would have called him a scholar, he had
taken a fair degree at his University, at that time a somewhat uncommon
attainment in the lower branch of the legal profession, and could no
doubt hold his own indifferent will among other educated gentlemen. He
was reputed to be a sound and careful lawyer, when he could be induced
to take the necessary trouble, but none questioned that he was always a
ready one, and it is not, therefore, surprising that he preferred the
change and excitement and rivalry of the Courts to the more prosaic and
monotonous and retired, if also more profitable, exercise of the dreary
art of conveyancing. The same alertness of mind and nimbleness of speech
that served him well in the forum inclined him to the political
platform, and already he was a warm favourite of the working-classes at
the meetings under the auspices of the Liberal Party with which the
adults of the West Riding beguile the tedium of the winter months.
Edward was wont to declare that he had imbibed Radicalism with his
mother’s milk, and certain it is he could point with equal truth and
pride to more than one of his relations who had suffered in the popular
cause. His partner Sam Storth, used to complain that Edward’s
political engagements took him a great deal away from the office, and if
Edward laughingly pleaded that his public appearances were a capital
advertisement of the firm, his more sagacious partner retorted that
Edward’s “clap-trap clientèle,” as he was pleased to stigmatise
it, wasn’t worth half the time it took to attend to it, and that for
every decent client Beaumont’s Radicalism attracted it frightened a
dozen better ones away.
“Depend upon it, Beaumont,” he said one day, “Leatham’s is the
right tip.”
Now, Mr. Leatham was the respected member for Huddersfield, and sat, of
course, in the Liberal interest.
“Expound, most sapient Sam,” said Edward.
“Why, somebody said to him the other day, ‘How is it you never take
your seat on the Borough Bench when you’re in town?’ _‘Pas si
bete,’_ replied Leatham; ‘every time I fine a man or send one down I
make at least one enemy, and they count at elections.’ So it is with
your informal spouting, Beaumont. You make a lot of admirers, perhaps,
among a lot of greasy, dirty, unwashed mill-hands, who shout themselves
hoarse about a policy they don’t understand, and they bring you a
dirty, greasy guinea or so if they get into trouble with an equally
dirty, greasy mill-girl. But who prepares the conveyances and mortgages
and settlements for the big-pots? We don’t, anyhow. Why! Leatham
himself takes his work to that sheaf of parchment skins, old
Heatherington, who has consistently voted against him ever since he
first contested the borough. Politics don’t pay, Beaumont, at least,
not your sort.”
“Ah! well, Sam, suppose we say I like ’em. I think they’re my only
serious dissipation. You know I don’t go in much for beer and
skittles, and am bored at a ballet. Supposing we call politics my little
vice. You don’t want them all yourself, Sam.”
Certainly no one could with justice accuse Sam Storth of having any
enthusiasms political or otherwise. He called himself a Conservative,
and plumed himself on his gentility, and had undoubtedly an uncle in
holy orders, to whom, on occasion, he would casually allude. He chose
his associates, so far as he could, among the _jeunesse doree_ of the
wealthy manufacturers and merchants of the town, who patronised a Bond
Street tailor—“can’t get a decent cut in the country, don’t you
know,”—were much concerned about the fit of their boots and the
colour of their ties and gloves; affected a languid drawl, crawled on
the sunny side of New Street of a Saturday morning, found life a
“doosid bore,” avoided a reference to the paternal mill or
counting-house themselves, and thought any such reference by others
uncommon bad form; held commissions in the Yeomanry or Volunteers and
were rigorous in the use of their pseudo… military titles in season
and out of season; had a club of their own, from which the retailer of
the goods their fathers manufactured were jealously excluded; and, in a
word, were as innocent a set of sucking young snobs, without knowing it,
as one could well wish to encounter. As Storth had lived much in London
before condescending upon Huddersfield, he was rather a favourite at
this club, though he had to surmount a certain amount of prejudice
arising from his connection with that low Radical chap, Beaumont.
In person, the junior partner of the firm of Beaumont and Storth was
small, stout and stodgy, with a broad, flat nose, and eyes that a
disparaging critic had likened to boiled onions. In address he was
suavely deferential to the verge of obsequiousness to the local
magnates, who liked the implied homage of his voice and look, and voted
him a sensible young fellow who knew his place. In revenge for his own
lackeydom he bullied and swore at his clerks and the waiters and the
billiard-markers who ministered to his needs, and they, too, no doubt,
had their opinion of Mr. Sam Storth. He was careful in his dress,
without being an exquisite, took in the “Daily Telegraph” and
“Bell’s Life,” affected a patriotic interest in the national
sport, and played a very judicious hand at whist and other games, as the
young nabobs of the club knew to their cost. He had the reputation, in a
darkly, mysterious way, of being somewhat of a Lothario among the women,
and it was known that he had access to the green-room of the local
theatre. But if, indeed, Sam were a sad dog, of which this veracious
history alleges nothing, he was a very discreet sad dog, and never
imperilled his reputation by any open indiscretion. He was careful, too,
to attend church every Sunday morning, and uttered the responses with
that modulated fervour that is the hall-mark of good breeding, having
neither the perfunctoriness of custom or inattention nor the warmth of
spiritual exaltation.
How two men so diverse as Edward Beaumont and Sam Storth came to be
partners in the same business had puzzled many, but the explanation was
simple enough. Beaumont had been in want of a managing clerk, and a
mutual acquaintance had recommended Storth as a safe chamber-man, and a
safe chamber-man or desk-lawyer Storth proved himself to be. He made no
pretence of knowing more law than had sufficed to satisfy the not very
exacting examiners of Carey Street; but he had a very considerable
endowment of the not very common faculty called common-sense.
“Law, sir,” was Storth’s favourite axiom, delivered oracularly,
“law is the embodiment of common-sense,” and though the reader can
scarcely be expected to believe it, Common law is largely common-sense.
At all events with common-sense and a tincture of technicalities and a
very considerable knowledge of the shady side of human nature, and a
very small opinion of that nature in the general. Storth’s did very
well the kind of work that Beaumont wanted him for, and left that
somewhat fastidious young gentleman free to lift his voice in the courts
without being harassed by the petty details of a lawyer’s practice.
Beaumont thought Sam a soulless little animal, but shrewd and steady;
Storth thought Beaumont a stuck-up enthusiast with a bee in his bonnet,
but a good hand with a brief, and as they saw very little of each other
except business hours, there was little friction in the busy office of
the well-established and prosperous firm of Beaumont and Storth.
But if there was no friction there was no cordiality between the
partners. Beaumont’s attitude to Storth was almost of good-humoured
contempt. Storth retaliated with undisguised scorn for his partner’s
unpracticability and want of worldly wisdom.
“What do you want sitting in the Town Council?” he grumbled at
times. “There’s no honour in it. Why, hang it, the barber fellow
that shaves me sits on the Town Council.”
“And a very good councillor he makes, too. Why not? Does he shave you
any the worse for being on the Council. I’m sure his opinion on
matters municipal is none the worse for his being a barber. Shaving is
really, if you think of the matter dispassionately, a most reputable
occupation. The profession of a barber, you cannot call it a trade, is
an ancient and an honourable one. It was formerly, as you know connected
with the profession of a surgeon. Probably the barbers cut the surgeons,
and that led to a split. But if you reflect you will see that most
exceptional qualities are required by a good barber. Sobriety is
indispensable cleanliness, which everyone knows to be nearer to
godliness than many people attain, some degree of polish and a pleasing
loquacity and an intelligent acquaintance with the topics of the day.
People trust their barber more than their lawyer, for would you offer
your bared throat to anyone armed with a deadly weapon, unless you had
the supremest confidence in him? Surely we can confide the gas-pipes and
water-pipes of a town to a man to whom we entrust our own wind-pipes. I
protest your barber is a most inestimable profession brother.”
“Oh! dry up,” said Storth, “you aren’t in court now. Beaumont, I
say again, you get neither profit nor _kudos_ from being in the Council,
and it takes up a lot of your time. But that’s a small matter. Do you
think, now, it will add to your professional or social status or do you
or the office a blessed scintilla of good, to take the chair for that
fellow Bradlaugh, as I see you are advertised to do?”
“That fellow Bradlaugh, as you are pleased to call him, is worth
half-a-dozen such respectabilities as either you or I, Sam. In mere
ability as a lawyer he is worth a round dozen of us lumped together. But
he is more than that, he is a very fair scholar, though entirely
self-educated. He has done more for his brains and with his brains than
many do who have had hundreds of pounds spent upon their education by
fond parents. He has not only brains but a conscience; he might have
earned a fat living as a lawyer or a parson. He has not only a
conscience but a character, and a good one, too, and besides all that,
he’s the elected member for Northampton, has as much right legally to
sit for that borough as Churchill has for Woodstock, and a great deal
better right morally.”
“The man’s an atheist,” said Storth.
“I don’t know that he is; but even so, that’s his concern and
Northampton’s. What are you, Sam? What, indeed, is anyone of us that
we should throw stones at such a man as Bradlaugh?”
“Well, I call myself a Christian and I rather flatter myself I am one,
at least, an indifferent one,” replied Sam. “I don’t set up for a
saint, of course.”
“I should think not, indeed.” replied Beaumont, smiling, as he
recalled certain gossip that had floated from the _coulisses_ of the
theatre to the club. “I Suppose you fancy yourself what we may call a
so-so Christian. So are we all, so-so Christians. Why, man alive, I’d
guarantee to empty any church in Christendom simply by preaching
Christianity in it. I mean the pure, unadulterated article, as Jesus of
Nazareth is reported to have preached it, not as it is watered down to
suit the weak stomachs of your latter-day saints, or more likely to
square with our conceptions of social necessity.”
“Look here, Beaumont;” Storth said, stretching his arms lazily and
yawning long and loud, “I’m not going to be drawn into an argument
on theology with you. I’d almost said another member of our
illustrious family attends to that department. But I don’t think
you’d catch the Rev. Jacob arguing about it, either. He’s far too
downy for that. It pays better to treat matters you’re paid to believe
as beyond question, and a man who questions them as a moral leper. Now,
I don’t say you’re a moral leper any more than I say I’m a saint.
But I do say that, from a business point of view, it’s just as bad to
be thought one as to be one; worse, in fact, for you get damned as a
sinner without the fun of the sin.”
“Oh, Sam, you’re just incorrigible. I’ve said in my haste you
believe in nothing. But you do believe in Mrs. Grundy.”
“I do,” said Storth, devoutly. “Great is the Grundy of the British
Philistine.”
“Hang the fellow, with his affectation of being so superior to another
fellow,” he added to himself. “Mind you don’t carry your head so
high in the clouds, Master Edward, that you trip and fall over a very
little obstacle, and if that obstacle’s Sam Storth thank your own
infernal folly. I’ll back common-sense against ideals any day, and if
you’ll allow me the one. You’re welcome to my share of the other.”