THE TENTH OF APRIL.
And he was gone at last! Kind women, whom his unknown charities had saved
from shame, laid him out duly, and closed his eyes, and bound up that face
that never would beam again with genial humour, those lips that would
never again speak courage and counsel to the sinful, the oppressed, the
forgotten. And there he lay, the old warrior, dead upon his shield; worn
out by long years of manful toil in The People's Cause; and, saddest
thought of all, by disappointment in those for whom he spent his soul.
True, he was aged; no one knew how old. He had said, more than eighty
years; but we had shortened his life, and we knew it. He would never see
that deliverance for which he had been toiling ever since the days when as
a boy he had listened to Tooke and Cartwright, and the patriarchs of the
people's freedom. Bitter, bitter were our thoughts, and bitter were our
tears, as Crossthwaite and I stood watching that beloved face, now in death
refined to a grandeur, to a youthful simplicity and delicacy, which we had
never seen on it before--calm and strong--the square jaws set firm even
in death--the lower lip still clenched above the upper, as if in a divine
indignation and everlasting protest, even in the grave, against the
devourers of the earth. Yes, he was gone--the old lion, worn out with many
wounds, dead in his cage. Where could we replace him? There were gallant
men amongst us, eloquent, well-read, earnest--men whose names will ring
through this land ere long--men who had boon taught wisdom, even as he, by
the sinfulness, the apathy, the ingratitude, as well as by the sufferings
of their fellows. But where should we two find again the learning, the
moderation, the long experience, above all the more than women's tenderness
of him whom we had lost? And at that time, too, of all others! Alas! we had
despised his counsel: wayward and fierce we would have none of his reproof;
and now God has withdrawn him from us; the righteous was taken away from
the evil to come. For we knew that evil was coming. We felt all along that
we should _not_ succeed. But we were desperate; and his death made us more
desperate; still at the moment it drew us nearer to each other. Yes--we
were rudderless upon a roaring sea, and all before us blank with lurid
blinding mist: but still we were together, to live and die; and as we
looked into each other's eyes, and clasped each other's hands above the
dead man's face, we felt that there was love between us, as of Jonathan and
David, passing the love of woman.
Few words passed. Even our passionate artizan-nature, so sensitive
and voluble in general, in comparison with the cold reserve of the
field-labourer and the gentleman, was hushed in silent awe between the
thought of the past and the thought of the future. We felt ourselves
trembling between two worlds. We felt that to-morrow must decide our
destiny--and we felt rightly, though little we guessed what that destiny
would be!
But it was time to go. We had to prepare for the meeting, We must be at
Kennington Common within three hours at furthest; and Crossthwaite hurried
away, leaving Katie and me to watch the dead.
And then came across me the thought of another deathbed--my mother's--How
she had lain and lain, while I was far away--And then I wondered whether
she had suffered much, or faded away at last in a peaceful sleep, as he
had--And then I wondered how her corpse had looked; and pictured it to
myself, lying in the little old room day after day, till they screwed the
coffin down--before I came!--Cruel! Did she look as calm, as grand in death
as he who lay there? And as I watched the old man's features, I seemed
to trace in them the strangest likeness to my mother's. The strangest
likeness! I could not shake it off. It became intense--miraculous. Was it
she, or was it he, who lay there? I shook myself and rose. My loins ached,
my limbs were heavy; my brain and eyes swam round. I must be over fatigued
by excitement and sleeplessness. I would go down stairs into the fresh air,
and shake it off.
As I came down the passage, a woman, dressed in black, was standing at the
door, speaking to one of the lodgers. "And he is dead! Oh, if I had but
known sooner that he was even ill!"
That voice--that figure-surely, I knew them!--them, at least, there was
no mistaking! Or, was it another phantom of my disordered brain! I pushed
forward to the door, and as I did so, she turned and our eyes met full. It
was she--Lady Ellerton! sad, worn, transformed by widow's weeds, but that
face was like no other's still. Why did I drop my eyes and draw back at the
first glance like a guilty coward? She beckoned me towards her, went out
into the street, and herself began the conversation, from which I shrank, I
know not why.
"When did he die?"
"Just at sunrise this morning. But how came you here to visit him? Were you
the lady who, as he said, came to him a few days since?"
She did not answer my question. "At sunrise this morning?--A fitting time
for him to die, before he sees the ruin and disgrace of those for whom he
laboured. And you, too, I hear, are taking your share in this projected
madness and iniquity?"
"What right have you," I asked, bristling up at a sudden suspicion that
crossed me, "to use such words about me?"
"Recollect," she answered, mildly but firmly, "your conduct, three years
ago, at D * * * *."
"What," I said, "was it not proved upon my trial, that I exerted all my
powers, endangered my very life, to prevent outrage in that case?"
"It was proved upon your trial," she replied, in a marked tone; "but we
were informed, and alas! from authority only too good, namely, from that of
an ear-witness, of the sanguinary and ferocious language which you were not
afraid to use at the meeting in London, only two nights before the riot."
I turned white with rage and indignation.
"Tell me," I said--"tell me, if you have any honour, who dared to forge
such an atrocious calumny! No! you need not tell me. I see well enough now.
He should have told you that I exposed myself that night to insult, not by
advocating, but by opposing violence, as I have always done--as I would
now, were not I desperate--hopeless of any other path to liberty. And as
for this coming struggle, have I not written to my cousin, humiliating as
it was to me, to beg him to warn you all from me, lest--"
I could not finish the sentence.
"You wrote? He has warned us, but he never mentioned your name. He spoke of
his knowledge as having been picked up by himself at personal risk to his
clerical character."
"The risk, I presume, of being known to have actually received a letter
from a Chartist; but I wrote--on my honour I wrote--a week ago; and
received no word of answer!"
"Is this true?" she asked.
"A man is not likely to deal in useless falsehoods, who knows not whether
he shall live to see the set of sun!"
"Then you are implicated in this expected insurrection?"
"I am implicated," I answered, "with the people; what they do I shall do.
Those who once called themselves the patrons of the tailor-poet, left
the mistaken enthusiast to languish for three years in prison, without a
sign, a hint of mercy, pity, remembrance. Society has cast me off; and,
in casting me off, it has sent me off to my own people, where I should
have stayed from the beginning. Now I am at my post, because I am among my
class. If they triumph peacefully, I triumph with them. If they need blood
to gain their rights, be it so. Let the blood be upon the head of those who
refuse, not those who demand. At least, I shall be with my own people. And
if I die, what better thing on earth can happen to me?"
"But the law?" she said.
"Do not talk to me of law! I know it too well in practice to be moved by
any theories about it. Laws are no law, but tyranny, when the few make
them, in order to oppress the many by them."
"Oh!" she said, in a voice of passionate earnestness, which I had never
heard from her before, "stop--for God's sake, stop! You know not what you
are saying--what you are doing. Oh! that I had met you before--that I
had had more time to speak to poor Mackaye! Oh! wait, wait--there is a
deliverance for you! but never in this path--never. And just while I, and
nobler far than I, are longing and struggling to find the means of telling
you your deliverance, you, in the madness of your haste, are making it
impossible!"
There was a wild sincerity in her words--an almost imploring tenderness in
her tone.
"So young!" said she; "so young to be lost thus!"
I was intensely moved. I felt, I knew, that she had a message for me. I
felt that hers was the only intellect in the world to which I would have
submitted mine; and, for one moment, all the angel and all the devil in me
wrestled for the mastery. If I could but have trusted her one moment....
No! all the pride, the spite, the suspicion, the prejudice of years, rolled
back upon me. "An aristocrat! and she, too, the one who has kept me from
Lillian!" And in my bitterness, not daring to speak the real thought within
me, I answered with a flippant sneer--
"Yes, madam! like Cordelia, so young, yet so untender!--Thanks to the
mercies of the upper classes!"
Did she turn away in indignation? No, by Heaven! there was nothing upon her
face but the intensest yearning pity. If she had spoken again she would
have conquered; but before those perfect lips could open, the thought of
thoughts flashed across me.
"Tell me one thing! Is my cousin George to be married to ----" and I
stopped.
"He is."
"And yet," I said, "you wish to turn me back from dying on a barricade!"
And without waiting for a reply, I hurried down the street in all the fury
of despair.
* * * * *
I have promised to say little about the Tenth of April, for indeed I have
no heart to do so. Every one of Mackaye's predictions came true. We had
arrayed against us, by our own folly, the very physical force to which we
had appealed. The dread of general plunder and outrage by the savages of
London, the national hatred of that French and Irish interference of which
we had boasted, armed against us thousands of special constables, who had
in the abstract little or no objection to our political opinions. The
practical common sense of England, whatever discontent it might feel with
the existing system, refused to let it be hurled rudely down, on the mere
chance of building up on its ruins something as yet untried, and even
undefined. Above all, the people would not rise. Whatever sympathy they had
with us, they did not care to show it. And then futility after futility
exposed itself. The meeting which was to have been counted by hundreds of
thousands, numbered hardly its tens of thousands; and of them a frightful
proportion were of those very rascal classes, against whom we ourselves had
offered to be sworn in as special constables. O'Connor's courage failed him
after all. He contrived to be called away, at the critical moment, by some
problematical superintendent of police. Poor Cuffy, the honestest, if not
the wisest, speaker there, leapt off the waggon, exclaiming that we were
all "humbugged and betrayed"; and the meeting broke up pitiably piecemeal,
drenched and cowed, body and soul, by pouring rain on its way home--for
the very heavens mercifully helped to quench our folly--while the
monster-petition crawled ludicrously away in a hack cab, to be dragged to
the floor of the House of Commons amid roars of laughter--"inextinguishable
laughter," as of Tennyson's Epicurean Gods--
Careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and their bolts are hurled
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world.
There they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, _and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music, centred in a doleful song,
Steaming up, a lamentation, and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong_
Chanted by an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing little yearly dues of wheat, and wine, and oil;
Till they perish, and they suffer--some, 'tis whispered, down in hell
Suffer endless anguish!--
Truly--truly, great poets' words are vaster than the singers themselves
suppose!