THE BLACKLEG
The foreman shrugged his shoulders. He avoided looking at the
applicant, an undersized man, with straggling black beard and dull
eyes. Even now, while pressing his appeal, he wore an air of being
but slightly interested.
'You know, Jones, what the conditions of employ were--keep on the
works.'
'But my little girl's ill!'
'Sorry to hear it; but you don't want to have any trouble. You heard
how they treated your wife when she came in; they'd be much worse to
you if I was to let you out. They're pretty near beat, and they know
it, and they don't like it, and before they quite knock under they'd
like to make a mark of someone. If it was you, they might make a mark
too many; they're not overfond of you just now, as you know very
well. And then where will you be, eh? How would your little girl be
any better for their laying you out?'
Jones turned to his wife, a sort of feminine replica of himself. She
had her shawl drawn over her head.
'You hear, Jane, what Mr. Mason says?'
Mrs. Jones sighed; even in her sigh there was a curious reproduction
of her husband's lack of interest.
'All I know is that the doctor don't seem to have no great 'opes
about Matilda, and that she keeps a-calling for you, Tom.'
'Does she? Then I go! Mr. Mason, I'm a-goin'.'
'All right, Jones, go! Don't think that I don't feel for yer, 'cause
I do, but as to coming back again, that's another matter. Mind, we
can do without yer, and we don't want no fuss, that's all. Things
have been bad enough up to now, and we don't want 'em to be no
worse.'
Outside the gates there was a considerable crowd. Among the crowd
were the pickets and a fair leaven of the men on strike; but a large
majority of the people might have been described as sympathisers.
Unwise sympathisers they for the most part were; more bent on
striking than the strikers; more resolute to fight the battle to the
bitter end. The knowledge that already surrender was in the air
angered them. They were in an ugly temper, disposed to 'take it out
of' the first most convenient object.
As Mrs. Jones had made her way through them towards the gates she had
been subjected to gibes and jeers, and worse. She had been pushed and
hustled. More than one hand had been laid rudely on her. Someone had
thrown a shovelful of dirt with such adroitness that it had burst in
a shower on her head. While she was still nearly blinded she had been
pushed hither and thither with half good-humoured horse-play, which
was near akin to something else.
Tom Jones was an unpopular figure. He was one of the most notorious
of the blacklegs, in a sense their leader. He had persisted in being
master of his own volition; asserted his right to labour for whom he
pleased, at whatever terms he chose. Such men are the greatest
enemies of trades unions. Allow a man his freedom, and unionism, in
its modern sense, is at an end. It is one of the questions of the
moment whether the good of the greatest number does not imperatively
demand special legislation which shall hold such men in bonds; which
shall make it a penal offence for them to consider themselves free.
Word had gone round that Jones's little girl was ill; that the doctor
had decided she was dying; that Mrs. Jones had come to fetch him home
to bid the child good-bye. By most of those there it was
unhesitatingly agreed that this was as it should be; that Jones was
being served just right; that he was only getting a bit of what he
ought to have, which, it was quite within the range of possibility,
they would supplement with something else.
It was because of Jones and his like that the strike was failing, had
failed; that they were beaten and broken, brought to their knees, in
spite of all their organisation, of what they had endured. Jones! It
was currently reported that the idea of giving the blacklegs food and
lodging on the premises, and so rendering the wiles of the pickets of
no avail, was Jones's. At any rate, he had been among the first to
fall in with the proposition, and for many days he had not been
outside the gates. Jones! Let him put his face outside those gates
now and he would see what they would show him.
When the gates were opened, and Mrs. Jones had entered, they waited,
murmuring and muttering, with twitching fingers and lowering brows,
wondering if the prospect of being able to bid his dying child
good-bye would be sufficient inducement to him to trust himself
outside there in the open. And while they wondered he came.
Again the gate was opened. Out came Jones; close behind him was his
wife. Then the gate was shut to with a bang.
He was known by sight to many in the crowd. By them the knowledge of
who he was was instantly communicated to all the rest. He was not
greeted with any tumult; they were too much in earnest to be noisy.
But, with one accord, they cursed him, and their curses, though not
loudly uttered, reached him, every one. He stood fronting the array
of angry faces, all inclined in his direction.
The three policemen, who kept a clear space in front of the works,
and saw that ingress and egress was gained with some sort of ease,
hardly seemed to know what to make of him, or of the situation. They
glanced at Jones, then at the crowd, then at each other. All the
morning the people had been gathering round the gate, the number
increasing as the minutes passed. Except that they could not be
induced to move away, there had been little to object to in their
demeanour until now. As Jones appeared with his wife they formed
together into a more compact mass. Another shovelful of dust was
thrown by someone at the back with the same dexterity as before, so
that it lighted on the man and the woman, partially obscuring them
beneath a cloud of dust. That same instant perhaps a dozen stones
were thrown, some of which struck both Mr. and Mrs. Jones, the rest
rattling against the gate.
It was done so quickly that the police had not a chance to offer
interference. They had been instructed to make as little show of
authority as possible, to bear as much as could be borne, and, until
the last extremity, to do nothing to rouse the rancour of the
strikers. In the face of this sudden assault the trio hesitated. Then
the one nearest to the gate held his hand up to the crowd, shouting:
'Now, you chaps, none of that! Don't you go making fools of
yourselves, or you'll be sorry!' He turned to the Joneses. 'You'd
better go back and try to get out some other way. There'll be trouble
if you stop here.'
Tom Jones asked him stolidly, gazing with his lack-lustre eyes
intently at the crowd:
'Which other way?'
'I don't know--any other way. You can't get this way, that's plain--
they mean mischief. Back you go, before you're sorry.'
The constable endeavoured to hustle the pair back within the gate.
But Jones would not have it.
'My child's dying; this is the nearest way to her. I'm going this
way.'
The officer persisted in his attempt to persuade him to change his
mind.
'Don't be silly! You won't do your child any good by getting yourself
knocked to pieces, will you?'
Tom Jones was obstinate.
'I'm going this way.'
Slipping past the constable, he moved towards the crowd. The people
confronted him like a solid wall.
'Let me pass, you chaps.'
That moment the storm broke. The man's stolid demeanour, the complete
indifference with which he faced their rage, might have had something
to do with it. The effect of his request to be allowed to pass was as
if he had dropped a lighted match into a powder-magazine. An
explosion followed. The air was rent by curses; the people became all
at once like madmen. Possessed with sudden frenzy, they crowded round
the man, raining on him a hail of blows, each man struggling with his
fellow in order to reach the object of his rage. Their very fury
defeated their purpose. Not a few of the blows which were meant for
Jones fell on their own companions. With the commencement of the
attack Jones's stolidity completely vanished. He was transformed into
a fiend, and behaved like one. His voice was heard above the others,
pouring forth a flood of objurgations on the heads of his assailants.
His wife was his slavish disciple. Her shrill tones were mingled with
his deeper ones; they were at least as audible. Her language was no
better, her passion was no less. The man and the woman fought like
wild beasts. And so blinded by fury were the efforts of their
assailants that the pair were able to give back much more than they
received.
The attempts of the police at pacification were useless. They were
not in sufficient force. And there is a point in the temper of a
crowd at which its rage is not to be appeased until it has vented
itself on the object of its fury. All that the officers succeeded in
doing was to lose their own tempers. Under certain circumstances
there is irresistible contagion in a madman's frenzy. Presently they
themselves were mingling in the frantic melee, apparently with as
little show of reason as the rest.
Suddenly the crowd gave way towards the centre. Those in the middle
were borne down by those who persisted in pressing on. There was a
struggling, heaving, mouthing mass upon the ground, with the Joneses
underneath. And, as the writhings and contortions of this heap grew
less and less, there came One, before whose touch men gave way, so
that, before they knew it, He stood there, in their very midst,
before them all. In His presence their rage was stilled. Ceasing to
contend, they drew back, looking towards Him with their bloodshot
eyes. Where had been the pile of living men was a clear space, in
which He stood. At His feet were two forms--Tom Jones and his wife.
The woman cried and groaned, twisting her limbs; but the man lay
still.
'What is it that you would do?'
With the sorrowful inflexion of the voice was blended a satiric
intonation which seemed to strike some of those who heard as with a
thong. One man, a big, burly fellow, chose to take the question as
addressed to himself. He still trembled with excess of rage; his
voice was husky; from his mouth there came a volley of oaths.
'Bash the ---- to a jelly--that's what we'd like to do to
his ---- carcase! It's through the likes of him that our homes are
broken up, our kids starving, our wives with pretty near nothing on.
Killing's too good for such a----!'
'Who are you that you should judge your brother?'
The man spat on the pavement.
'He's no brother of mine--not much he ain't! If I'd a brother like
him, I'd cut my throat!'
'Since all men are brethren, and this is a man, if he is not your
brother, what, then, are you?'
'He's no man! If he is, I hope I ain't.'
The Stranger was for a moment silent, looking at the speaker, who,
drawing the back of his hand across his mouth, averted his glance.
'You are a man--as he is. Would that you both were more than men, or
less. Go, all of you that would shed innocent blood, knowing not what
it is you do. Wash the stain from off your hands; for if your hands
are clean, so also are your hearts. As your ignorance is great, so
also is God's mercy. Go, I say, and learn who is your brother.'
And the people went, slinking off, for the most part, in little
groups of threes and fours, muttering together. Some there were who
made haste, and ran, thinking that the man was dead, and fearful of
what might follow.
When they were all gone, the Stranger turned to the woman, who still
cried and made a noise.
'Cease, woman, and go to your daughter, lest she be dead before you
come.'
And stooping, he touched the man upon the shoulder, saying:
'Rise!'
And the man stood up, and the Stranger said to him:
'Haste, and go to your daughter, who calls for you continually.'
And the man and the woman went away together, without a word.