"There follows a mist, and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again!"
Ishbel might have thought of these words, if she had known them,
on the morrow and on many morrows that followed. For Rory MacPhee
was not the man to come back, or to speak lightly. He sailed with
the agent to Glasgow--was believed to have started for New Zealand
within the week. There, as far as his Skye friends were concerned,
he vanished. They were the days of rare and slow communication, and
Rory never wrote.
But Ishbel did not marry her cousin, as everyone expected, including
MacLeod. She answered him "No," listlessly, but quite doggedly, and
nothing that he could say, or that Catriona could threaten, served
to change her. Once the old woman muttered vengefully that she would
never see the fairies, for she had lost her luck, and Ishbel turned
on her almost fiercely.
"It is all false," she cried in Gaelic, "for there are no green folk
at all, and I do not care!"
The mystery and the charm had fled; she no longer dreamed on the
green grass circle, no longer wondered at the night-song of the
burn, no longer watched for the kelpies under the boulders in the
burns or in the Rowan Pool. Belief in the fairies had faded on the
night in which Rory left her. Except in the little bald, white kirk
on the hill-side, Ishbel never sang. Song dies on the lips when care
and sorrow lie heavy on the heart.
It was five years now since that fatal visit to the Gave of
Gold--Ishbel never mentioned it--and she was returning, in the
soft, golden haze of a September evening, from the castle. Catriona
was growing feeble, and Ishbel did everything; the old woman only
spinning a little, and wandering out to gather sticks and twigs for
the fire. The girl had been taking up carded wool to the castle, and
giving the great London ladies there a spinning lesson.
Before the cottage came in view, with its surrounding field of poor
and thinly growing oats and yellow daisies (there being, indeed, a
far more plentiful crop of the latter), she paused to look up the
fairy knoll. There, on the top was the fairy ring. Something made
Ishbel suddenly turn and mount the little hill.
The sea-loch lay beneath her, tinged with red; the sky was a wonder
and a glory, but Ishbel was not looking at the sky, or at the loch.
She was thinking how strange it was that she should go on living,
and living much as usual, when all that was best and fairest in life
was gone.
She sighed, looking down at the burn, plashing and leaping over
the grey boulders. There was that story about the kelpies; her
grandmother rarely spoke of them now. Were there really no
kelpies--no brownies? And yet----
A step behind her made her start violently, and she gave a sharp
cry. A man's tall figure was there, not ten yards off, and there
flashed across Ishbel suddenly the thought that perhaps, after all,
it was all true, for this was a ghost! And if there were ghosts, why
not wee folk and kelpies?
"I believe it is Ishbel, herself. Do you not know me, Ishbel?"
He spoke in a new voice. The fluent Gaelic was gone, and the stiff,
translated English; he spoke easily, with a strange accent. And yet,
ah! she knew him at once! It was Rory! Rory, well-dressed, handsome,
upright, with a different and more independent carriage, but Rory
all the same!
Ishbel rose and stood quite wordless for a moment. And then--"You
are a great stranger," she said. "It is a very long time, I believe,
since you hef been in Skye."
He almost smiled. He was looking down at her earnestly, intently.
Was it possible that she should be so little changed? Had the five
years been a dream? Just as he remembered her--with the pale, clear
skin, the deep sloe-eyes, the ruddy crisp hair, the little droop
of the head! Ishbel! The girl he had turned his back on, and been
furious with, and quite forgotten--oh, yes! quite forgotten, though
he had come back to the Winged Island--well, just to see how all the
old folks were!
"It is five years," he said deliberately, "five years! Are you--are
you married, Ishbel?"
The girl raised her eyes and looked at him. It was getting dark,
and the burn was beginning its night-song. Ishbel noticed that, and
remembered just how the water used to sing, quite suddenly. The
lovely, indescribable breath of the muir wind swept in their faces.
How sweet it was--how entrancing! And oh! me, the velvety deeps of
her eyes, the little half-sad, half-humorous mouth!
Was she married? Was she?
He repeated the question, but with a new and eager ring in his
voice, and Ishbel shook her head.
"Though there will have been a good many marriages since you left.
There was Mari MacLean and Dougal Nicolson, and there was Colin----"
"What about MacLeod, your cousin?"
"He is to be married this year," she said, "to an English lass."
"So you did not marry him, after all, Ishbel?"
"Who said that I would?" she cried, as if stung. "You knew better
than that! Who said that I would?"
"He did; and that you would go with him that night, if he asked you.
And you did, Ishbel! It was very cruel, but----" Rory paused then,
and suddenly spoke in Gaelic, as if it all came back to him. "But I
am beginning to think that I was cruel, too. Was I?"
He waited, watching her.
Ishbel nodded gently. She also spoke in Gaelic, as if they had
parted only yesterday.
"Yes, you were cruel, Rory, and you were very hasty. It is true that
I was a foolish lass, but you might have given me another chance.
I believed in my grandmother's stories. I wanted to see the good
folk." She looked away, and sadness and disillusion crept over her
face. "But I do not believe in them any more, not any more."
"Poor little Ishbel. Poor wee lassie!"
It could not be five years. It could not! They had only parted
yesterday!
"But it does not matter," Ishbel said, rousing, "and now perhaps you
will call and see my grandmother? Are you on your way to Uig?"
He did not answer that.
"Ishbel," he said, "I was very cruel, and I was just as angry as a
man could be, and for five years I have been mad and sore; but deep
down, deep down, I never forgot you. I hated him, but I loved you. I
will come and see your grandmother; but--first--first, will you give
me a kiss, Ishbel, for the sake of the old days?"
Would she? Perhaps, after all, he did not wait for her consent. He
had her in his arms, and they closed round her, and Isabel's head
fell on his shoulder with a little sob that was an epitome of all
the five years' sorrow and heartache.
[Illustration: Catriona heard his story in silence.]
"_Muirnean_ (darling)," Rory whispered, "I love you; and when I
leave Skye, you will come too, or I will be staying on here with
you. You shall choose Ishbel--you shall choose; and to-morrow I will
buy you something better than the claymore brooch that I was cruel
enough to throw away!"
They walked down to the cottage, and Catriona, who was never
surprised at anything, shook hands sourly with him; she heard his
story in silence, and nodded consent when he told her that he and
Ishbel were to be married, after all. He could look after the croft,
she said, or buy Colin MacDougal's farm, just above, if he had money
enough. Would he have money enough? For Duncan kept her very close
now. Rory laid a packet smilingly in her lap, and said he thought he
had money enough.
Next forenoon Catriona saw him coming up the road; Ishbel ran to
meet him, and together they wandered off to the burn-side. They came
back by-and-by, and Ishbel stood smiling in the cottage door, her
arms full of rowan branches; Rory had a spray in his coat, and the
red berries nestled under her chin.
"I have brought you back luck," the girl cried happily. "We found
the rowans down by the pool. And Rory says that there are maybe good
folk in the world, after all! Who knows, grandmother?"
Catriona's peat-brown old face was bent over her wheel. She allowed
there might be one or two, with a half-grunt of satisfaction.
_THE REAL EAST LONDON._
By the Lord Bishop of Stepney.
[Illustration: (_Photo: H. V. Hornville, Gawber Street, E._)
THE "MOTHERS'" GARDEN PARTY GROUP.
(_Showing the Bishop in the Background._)]
East London is a very different place from what many people expect
it to be. There are not a few who still think that they will have
their throats cut if they venture into it, and I remember one
visitor who turned up very late for dinner one night at Oxford
House, and gave as the reason for his lateness that his landlord had
got one side of him and his landlady on the other, and had held him
by his coat-tails to prevent him coming to be murdered in Bethnal
Green.
[Illustration: Old "Oxford House"]
As a matter of fact, East London is probably, by daylight or
by night, one of the safest parts of London, except in a very
few selected streets, well known to the police; and one of my
predecessors, the much-lamented Bishop Billing, was quite right when
he used to say to the West-End mother, anxious about her daughter's
safety, if she came to work in East London, "See her as far as
Temple Bar, and then she will be all right."
What strikes one at first is the extreme brightness and cheerfulness
of the people, often under very adverse circumstances. I remember
giving a series of garden-parties when I was Rector of Bethnal
Green, in the little garden attached to the rectory. There was not
much room for anything, and the only amusements were skittles and
races, whilst tea and cake and bread-and-butter were the simple
refreshments; but not only--as you will see by the photograph--were
the visitors very content with themselves, but one of them, from one
of the poorest streets, met me the day after a "party" and said:
"Rector, we did enjoy ourselves yesterday."
"I am very glad of it," I replied.
[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)
"OXFORD HOUSE"--THE PRESENT BUILDING.]
"But we very nearly didn't come."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Oh! You see, a man down our street, 'e said, 'Don't go--the
Rector only wants to show you a few old gravestones.' But we tell
'im now we couldn't have enjoyed ourselves better if we'd been at
Marlborough 'Ouse."
Then the children of East London are truly delightful. Poor little
bairns! they often get pale enough spending the year in those
crowded courts and alleys--and few things are doing better work in
London than the Children's Country Holiday Fund, which sends about
thirty-one thousand each year for a fortnight into the country--but
still nothing daunts their spirits or dims their affection. Often
have I been cheered through an afternoon's visiting by a group of
children who would spend their half-holiday afternoon in waiting
quite quietly outside a sick-room in order to knock at the door of
the next sick case to which they were quite 'cute enough to know
that I was going, and so on right down the street. Many of the
clergy organise Band of Hope entertainments, and teach the children
to act little plays of their own, and there are no quicker and apter
pupils than the children of East London, as the prizes carried off
yearly at the Crystal Palace will show.
The East-End boy, again, is quite a character; we had four hundred
at Oxford House in one club, besides some hundreds of others in
brigades. When you told an East-End mother that fact, she would
generally say, "My word, I find _one_ quite enough!" And certainly,
on a Whit Monday, when one had at least a hundred and fifty to
convoy to London Bridge and get safely down to some friend's house
and back again, they were a fine handful.
[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)
THE PEOPLE'S PALACE.]
One day I noticed the express stopping pretty often, and wondered
why, as it was not advertised to stop anywhere. At last the guard
came to see me at a wayside station, with a very red face, and said
he would hold me responsible for what my boys were doing; he said
that they had pulled the danger connecting-rod three times. I went
round to see what was happening, and asked whether any of them had
done it. "Oh, yes," said a little chap at once; "it was me; _I was
only 'anging my 'at up on it!_"
Few things abash the East-End boy. At the end of the journey, my
friend, who lived near a very magnificent house, was showing us
through the rooms, and I heard a little boy say confidentially to
his neighbour, without meaning to be overheard, "_'Em! just like our
little back parlour at home!_" The good result of all the trouble
which such expeditions involved, was shown by the contempt they
displayed--as they marched back crowned with flowers, with horses
curveting round them, and cabs charging through them, in consequence
of the inspiriting notes of the band--for the groups of drunken men
and women we used to meet, who had spent their Bank Holiday in quite
another way. Once implant in a boy the love of a "better way" of
spending a holiday, and you have got a long way on the road to make
him love "a better way" of spending his life altogether. Satan finds
some mischief still for idle hands to do, but if those hands are
employed in handling a musket, or playing a flute, or clinging on to
a horizontal bar--they have ceased to be idle at all.
But space will soon fail me if I go through all the component parts
of the population in detail. The young girls, with their limbs
aching for active recreation after long confinement in factories or
workshops, have been graphically depicted by Sir Walter Besant, and
few people are doing more good in the district than those ladies
who, at great trouble, often with real self-sacrifice, are running
girls' clubs every evening for the girls after their work.
As, of course, is well known, it was one great object of the
People's Palace to provide this sort of innocent recreation for the
people, and though it has thrown its strength lately rather into
its excellent technical classes, it has not left out of sight its
original mission.
The gymnastic instructor at the People's Palace told me a year or
two ago that he had no better and more spirited class than a large
factory girls' class; and I have seen the magnificent Queen's Hall
filled to overflowing for a nigger entertainment on a Saturday
night, and more than half-full for a sacred concert on Sunday
afternoon.
When one is asked, then, what is the matter with East London, and
what lies behind those great thoroughfares, which look so broad and
inviting on a fine summer's afternoon, one can only reply by taking
one's questioner away from the broad thoroughfares into the crowded
streets and alleys which lie behind them and between. Here is a
photograph of a crowded back street, which gives an idea of what is
going on, say, of a Sunday morning during the Bird Fair in Slater
Street, or the Dog Fair at the top of Bethnal Green Road, or the old
clothes sale down by Petticoat Lane. We are too thick on the ground,
that is what it is; the census does not rise, because it _can't_
rise: we are crammed so full that we can take no more.
I remember once a young ladies' school used to send roses once a
week from a pretty suburb of London; they used to bring them to
school in the morning from their gardens, make them at twelve into
bouquets, send them up by three, and they were in East London homes
by five. As I used to take the bouquets of beautiful flowers round
on trays--followed, I may say, by a mob of children yelling for
a flower, for old and young have a touching love for flowers in
East London--I always found that I required four bouquets for each
house, for each house contained at least four families. This is a
fact which escapes the notice of the casual visitor, who sees a
harmless-looking house outside, but does not know what is inside.
We are overcrowded, and what overcrowding means from the point of
view of health and morality only those who reside in the district
and the local medical officer really know. I used to have sent me
by the excellent Medical Officer for Bethnal Green--Dr. Bate--the
death-rate each month compared with the death-rate for the whole
of London, and there is no reason that I know of to account for
the 22-27 per 1,000 registered for Bethnal Green compared with the
18 per 1,000 of the rest of London, except the overcrowded and
sometimes insanitary conditions in which the people live.
[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)
A CROWD IN PETTICOAT LANE.]
Things, however, are much better than they used to be. The London
County Council has done a good deal in pulling down rookeries
and rehousing large areas--as, for instance, the famous Boundary
Street area between Shoreditch and Bethnal Green. The Mansion
House Council for the Dwellings of the Poor has done much through
its local committees to stimulate local effort; and the district
authorities are far more active than they were, and alive to the
responsibilities which fall upon them.
Many an afternoon have I spent with the Sanitary Committee of the
Vestry of Bethnal Green, condemning insanitary property, and many
are the sad sights which I have seen when I have been round with
them.
I remember vividly one or two large houses abutting on a little
court. As we went with difficulty through the narrow passages and
looked into the different rooms, we found women sitting silent and
patient, too busy to say much to us, pasting match-boxes together,
for which they were to get twopence-farthing a gross. Needless to
say that these houses had to be condemned; but the difficulty is
by no means over when such dwellings are condemned. As a man said
caustically and truly at a meeting held on the subject, "A rat in
a hole is better than a rat out, any day"; and great consideration
has to be shown in not turning out too quickly those who have found
these poor tenements their home before provision has been made
elsewhere for them.
If those in the West-End and other places who have property in the
slums would only look after it themselves, and not be content with
taking the rents without seeing that the places for which they take
their money are fit to house men and women, and not mere animals,
great progress would be made. We should be happy to show them the
best models on which to rebuild their houses, or they may see for
themselves by observing the pretty two-storeyed houses now built,
which constitute Hart's Lane, abutting on the Bethnal Green Road,
and which, being always in demand, pay, we hope, the intelligent
landlord who built them.
But it is not merely that we are too thick on the ground; for a long
time we were too much left to ourselves. Those that ate jam lived in
one place and those that made it lived in another, and naturally
therefore the "city of the poor," left to itself, generated
standards, habits, and traditions of its own, some of which are the
reverse of edifying.
Take, for instance, the prevalence of drink and gambling. A young
man came to me one night in East London with a face as pale as
death. I had known him as a boy, but he had dropped out of our club
system on growing too old for the boys' club, and had got drawn into
a drinking set. "Save me!" he cried, as he fell upon his knees and
took my hand. He had, he said, been led in the public-house to put
his money on horses of which he knew nothing, and had finally spent
nine pounds belonging to a shop club, of which he was treasurer.
He had to meet his mates next morning; he was only twenty-one, of
respectable parents, and engaged to a respectable girl, and with
only three months to run out of his apprenticeship. "If you don't
help me, sir, I am ruined for life!"
I did lend him the money, to be repaid by instalments, but the
story will show the dangers to our young population, and the need
of strong and definite work among them from their earliest years.
With a public-house at every corner, and a bookmaker's clerk waiting
for them during dinner hour, what chance have the poor lads and
girls unless someone will go down and live among them and teach them
better things? I remember running-in a man who had the insolence
to stand outside Oxford House and take money from boys and girls,
as well as men and women, during dinner hour, and though he was
fined five pounds at once, he had more than twenty pounds on him
in coppers and small silver. The fine ought to be raised, as the
present maximum--five pounds--is easily paid, and they think nothing
of it, and go on again just the same next day.
[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)
THE GREAT HALL AT THE PEOPLE'S PALACE.]
It was no doubt the growing necessity of bringing a higher standard
of life into the "city of the poor" and bridging over the gulf
between rich and poor, establishing counter-attractions to the
public-house and the gambling-hell, which led Canon Barnett, some
fifteen years ago, to suggest the formation of settlements among the
poor. His visit to Oxford in 1884, backed up by Bishop Walsham How
and Miss Octavia Hill, led to the establishment of Toynbee Hall
in Whitechapel, and later on in the same year of Oxford House in
Bethnal Green. Of the former excellent institution, which still owes
so much to its founder and present Warden, Canon Barnett, much has
been written in past years, and, as space is limited even in THE
QUIVER, I have only room to say a few words more about Oxford
House. It was founded on a definite Church basis, and its workers
were and are members of the Church of England, but it threw open its
clubs and its doors to men of all creeds and all kinds.
When I was myself called to be Head of the House in 1880, it was
situated in a back street in Bethnal Green, and consisted of a
disused Church school knocked into rooms. As residents increased,
we found so small a house quite inadequate, and the present Oxford
House was built on a disused site in the next street, and opened
by the Duke of Connaught five or six years ago. It has had a full
complement of twenty men ever since, and the acquisition of the
rectory of Bethnal Green when I became Rector of Bethnal Green in
1895, enabled us for some time to have thirty workers--all laymen
with the exception of myself.
[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)
A VIEW OF BETHNAL GREEN MUSEUM.]
The residents do whatever work is entrusted to them by the Head, in
the daytime working at the Charity Organisation offices, Children's
Country Holiday Fund, Sanitary Aid Committee; in the evening running
boys' clubs and men's clubs and Church Lads' Brigades, visiting in
the London Hospital on Mondays, visiting the sick and others in the
parish of St. Matthew's, now specially connected with the House, and
doing innumerable odd jobs for the parish clergy round, with whom
they are all on the most friendly footing.
And that brings me lastly to the definitely religious work of East
London. It is here that the result of leaving for so long one
million people to themselves shows itself in the most disastrous
form. The habit of church-going or chapel-going has been almost
entirely lost, and it is only after the most patient efforts on the
part of the clergy and others that it can be brought again into the
district. After sampling on several occasions eighty men (invited to
the garden parties spoken of above) out of different streets taken
in turn, I discovered that only about one in eighty went either to
church or chapel, and out of a thousand boys of the age of fourteen
or fifteen who were questioned on entering one of our large boys'
clubs, nine hundred were found to have "g.n." written after their
names, which means "goes nowhere." Now, to the readers of THE
QUIVER I know that this will seem a very appalling thing, and
will show that we have what is practically, from a religious point
of view, a pagan population at our very doors.
On whom, then, does the great stress and strain of converting
this pagan population fall? Let us give all credit to the good
work done by Nonconformists in the district, with whom we are on
excellent terms: let us acknowledge the wonderful gatherings in Mr.
Charrington's Hall: and in the Pavilion, under the preaching of Mr.
George Nokes; the good work by Dr. Stephenson in his Children's
Homes; and by Dr. Barnardo in his boys' work at Stepney Causeway;
and by other workers scattered up and down the district; but I think
all would admit that the great strain and stress of the work falls
upon those who actually live in the very midst of the people, each
of them with their seven thousand to ten thousand, and sometimes
twenty thousand, souls to look after.
It is they whose door-bell rings continuously; it is they to whom
everyone comes in the hour of distress, whether they attend the
church or not; and it is they and the band of workers they have
gathered round them who are laying deep the foundations of the
future City of God, and who are working, with a few exceptions, day
and night to bring wanderers into the fold.
The people are not irreligious, only non-religious, and all they
need is patient and loving work in their midst. To attend a parish
gathering is like going to a happy family party, on such excellent
terms are the clergy and their workers with the people, and when in
some churches you find five hundred East-End communicants in the
early morning on Easter Day, no one can question the self-sacrifice
and earnestness of those who have once been thoroughly converted.
The great need, of course, is more workers and it is to supply more
workers that the East London Church Fund exists. It is spent wholly
on workers, not on buildings at all; and it is my earnest desire,
with the help of the Bishop of Islington, who is an experienced
East-End worker himself, and who has now taken over the North London
district, to raise that fund to £20,000 this year to meet the urgent
appeals for more workers which come to us from the poorer parts of
East and North London. The Fund covers an area of 1,800,000 people,
most of whom are poor.
[Illustration: (_Photo: C. E. Fry and Son, Gloucester Terrace, S.W._)
CANON BARNETT.
(_Warden of Toynbee Hall._)]
Such, then, so far as it can be described in a short article, is
East London, with all its virtues and its vices, its aspirations,
its hopes, its possibilities, and its failings. It is a land flowing
with milk and honey, with the milk of human kindness and the honey
of human love; but, like the old Canaan, it is not yet fully
occupied by the host of God. When Christianity is, however, fully
"in possession," we shall see a great deepening and ripening of all
the good that lies there, and the East London Church of the future
will have a character of its own, and will shed a new glory on the
Christianity which has slowly converted the world.
PLEDGED
[Illustration: PLEDGED]
By Katharine Tynan, Author of "A Daughter of Erin," Etc.