Erb/Chapter 9

by W. Pett Ridge

 

CHAPTER IX

THIS being a period of his life when Erb could do nothing wrong, the unpremeditated experiment with fists had a result that seldom attends efforts of the kind. Railton sent to Erb by post the following day an elaborate letter of apology, in which he argued that Erb, by a quite excusable error, had misunderstood what he (Railton) had intended to convey; that he honoured Mr. Barnes for the attitude he had taken up (which, under similar circumstances, would have been his own), that he should of course carry out his engagement with the young lady whose name it was unnecessary to mention, that he should ever retain an agreeable memory of Mr. Barnes (to whose efforts in the cause of labour he begged in passing to offer his best wishes), he trusted very sincerely that their friendship would not be impaired by the unfortunate incident of the preceding night. Thus Mr. Railton, with many an emphasising underline and note of exclamation, and a flourish under the signature, intended to convey the impression that here was a document of value to be preserved for all time. On Erb discovering his elocution teacher—whose lessons he now scarce required, but whose services as instructress in the art of public oratory he continued for the sheer pleasure of listening to her private speech—on Erb discovering her at his next visit with traces of recent tears he insisted on knowing the cause, and was told, first, that father had been borrowing seventeen shillings and sixpence, which she would have to pay back, amount required in order, the Professor had explained to the credulous lender, to enable him to purchase a comedy which had a part that would fit the Professor like a glove (“I can see myself in it,” the Professor declared); and on Erb dismissing this incident as too common for tears, Rosalind reluctantly showed him a letter from the admirable Railton, written by that young gentleman at the same time apparently that he had penned the communication to Erb: in this he regretted time had not permitted him to call at Camberwell Gate, the loss was his; but what he particularly wanted to say was that the farce of their engagement need no longer be allowed to run. On neither side, wrote Mr. Railton, had there been any real affection, and he was sure that this formal intimation would be as great a relief to Rosalind as to himself; he trusted she would find another good fiancé, and he was, with all regards, her friend and well-wisher, Lawrence Railton. Erb, greatly concerned for Rosalind, told her nothing of the incident of the benefit performance, but tried to comfort her with the suggestion that Railton had probably written without thought.

“I am beginning to see,” said Rosalind presently, “I am beginning to see that I have at least one real friend in the world.”

“One's ample,” replied Erb stolidly.

With the men of the Society the occurrence gave to Erb distinct promotion. Something to have a quick mind with figures, something to be ready of speech, something to be always at hand wherever in London a railway carman was in trouble, but better than all these things was it to be able to think of their secretary as one able to put up his fists. Wherever he went, for a time, congratulations were shouted from the hood of parcels carts or the high seat of pair-horse goods vans; boys hanging by ropes at the tail-boards giving a cheer as they went.

There is nothing quite so dear and precious as the world's applause, and if here and there a man should announce his distaste for it, the world may be quite sure that this is said only to extort an additional and an undue share. At the next committee meeting Erb was requested, with a good deal of importance, by Payne, as chairman, to be good enough to leave the room for ten minutes: on his return it was announced to him that, moved by G. Spanswick, and seconded by H. R. Bates, a resolution had been carried, according to Herbert Barnes, secretary, an increase in salary of twenty pounds per annum. Erb announced this to his young white-faced sister, and added to the announcement an order directing her to leave her factory and look after the home in Page's Walk; but Louisa would not hear of this, declaring that a humdrum life would never suit her, that she should mope herself into a state of lunacy if Erb insisted, and that the money could be laid out much more usefully on, first, a pianoforte; second, a new suite of chairs for the sitting room in place of furniture which had been in the Barnes family for two generations; third, in articles of costume for Erb, and—if any sum remained—in something for herself. They argued the point with desperate good humour from either side of the table, until Erb found that she was really in earnest, and then he gave in.

“You always have your own way, Louisa.”

“Precious little use having anybody else's,” she retorted.

“You've got a knack of deciding questions,” complained her brother, good-temperedly, “that makes you a little debating society in yourself.”

“There's something in connection with your Society,” went on Louisa, encouraged, “that you might arrange if you'd got any gumption.”

“Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that I have.”

“It's this. When one of your single chaps gets engaged let him begin paying into a wedding fund. You've got your strike funds and what not, but you ain't got no wedding fund.”

“We haven't any wedding fund,” corrected Erb.

“Oh, never mind about grammar,” said his young sister impetuously, “I'm talking sense. Let them all pay a bob or so a week, and the one that draws a good number gets his ten pound and goes off and gets married like a shot. See what an interest it'd make the girls take in your society. See how it'd make your young carmen sought after. See how fine it'd be for them to start life on their own, instead of having to go on paying so much a week for 'ire to the furniture shops.”

“A reg'lar little orator,” said Erb approvingly. “It must run in the blood, I think. Besides, there's an idea in what you say.”

“I never speak,” said his sister with confidence, “without I say something.” She paused for a moment. “I suppose, Erb, that—that with all this money coming in, you'll begin to think about getting married.”

He put his knife and fork down and rose from his chair.

The marriage club was only one of the new features that Erb introduced to the society, but it was the one which had a tinge of melancholy, in that it appeared to him that he was almost alone in not having in hand a successful affair of the heart. Lady Frances came frequently to Bermondsey, where she threw herself with great earnestness into the excellent work of providing amusing hours for children—children who had never been taught games, and knew no other sport than that of imperilling their little lives in the street. Erb was seen with her one evening as she returned from a Board School, and there ensued at the next committee meeting considerable badinage of a lumbering type; Payne declared that Erb should join the wedding club in order that the happy pair should be in a position to set up a house in Portman Square together; Spanswick remarked with less of good temper, that some people's heads were getting too big for their hats; whilst other members, ever ready to take part in the fine old London sport of chipping, offered gibes. Erb retorted with his usual readiness, and laughed at the suggestion; but afterwards found himself fearing whether Lady Frances was, in point of fact, lavishing upon him a hopeless affection. He had almost persuaded himself to admit that this was the case, when his sister Alice made one of her condescending calls at Page's Walk and gave, with other information, the fact that the sweetheart of Lady Frances, a lieutenant, the Honourable Somebody, had some time since been ordered away on a mission to the North-West Coast of Africa; her young ladyship was, by this desperate interest in the juveniles of Bermondsey, endeavouring to distract her mind from thoughts of her absent lover. Erb breathed again and gave assistance in managing the most trying boys at the “Happy Evenings.” One night, as he performed the duty of seeing Lady Frances through the dimly-lighted streets to Spa Road Station, they met Rosalind and her father. Rosalind flushed hotly, and Erb wondered why. He demanded of her the reason at the next elocution lesson, and Rosalind said calmly, that it was because at that moment she had given her second-best ankle a twist.

Lady Frances brought to Erb an invitation that flattered him. Her uncle, of Queen Anne's Mansions, a man in most of the money-making schemes of London, but one never anxious to obtrude his own name or his own personality, felt desirous of starting a movement. This Lady Frances explained to him, with her usual vivacity, the while both kept an eye on some noisy Bermondsey infants, who were playing in the hall of the Board School.

“Other countries are getting ahead of us, my uncle says, and unless something is done at once, British trade—(now, children, do play without quarrelling, please, to oblige me!)—British trade will go down, and down, and down, and there will be nothing left.”

“Are things really so bad?”

“Oh, they're terrible,” declared Lady Frances, with great cheerfulness. “Apparently the bed-rock has almost been reached, and it is only by a great and a unanimous effort that Great Britain will ever again be enabled to get its head above water. So, at any rate, my uncle tells me.”

“I don't know—(young Tommy Gibbons, if I catch you at that again you know what will happen)—I don't know that I've ever studied the subject in the large. My own society takes up nearly all my time, and other work I leave to other people.”

“Exactly, Mr. Barnes, exactly! I quite understand your position. But I have such faith in my uncle. Do you know that nearly everything he touches turns into money.”

“Very agreeable gift.”

“But the point is this, that nothing can be done unless capital and labour work in unison for a common end. One is affected quite as much as the other, and alone neither can do anything. British trades are being snapped up by America, by France, by Germany, even by Belgium, the only remedy, my uncle says, is for us to take some of their manufactures and plant them here—(I was sure you'd fall down and hurt your knee, little boy. Come here and let me kiss the place and make it well)—I don't know whether I make myself quite plain to you, Mr. Barnes?”

“In one sense you do,” said Erb. “Only thing I can't see is, where your uncle imagines that I come in.”

A dispute between two children over a doll necessitated interference, based on the judgment of Solomon.

“Obviously,” replied the girl, delighted at the importance of her task, “obviously, your work will be to organise.”

“Organise what?”

“Meetings of working men to take up the idea, discussion in the halfpenny papers, argument in workshops. In this way,” she said, with her engaging frankness, “in this way, you see, you could strengthen my uncle's hands.”

“Not sure that that is the one desire of my life.”

“If you would only see my uncle and argue it out! He, I am sure, would succeed where I,”—with a sigh—“where I so horribly fail.”

“Look here,” said Erb, hastily, “if it's any satisfaction to you, I'll say at once that I'm with the movement, heart, body, and soul.”

Lady Frances took his big hand and patted it thankfully.

“Can't tell you how pleased I am,” she declared. “I'll send on all the circulars and figures and things when I reach Eaton Square to-night—(children, children, you are tiresome, really)—and then you can start work directly, can't you?”

A busy man always has time to spare; it is only your lazy person who can never place a minute at anyone's disposal. Thus it was that Erb tacked on to his other duties, the work of making known the Society for Anglicising Foreign Manufactures, pressing into the service all the young orators of his acquaintance, and furnishing them with short and easy arguments. Our import trade was so many millions in excess of our outgoing trade: why should this be so? Our villages were becoming deserted, and country manufactories dwindled day by day: this must be stopped. Vague talk about technical education; praise for the English working man, and adulation of his extraordinary, but sometimes dormant brain power; necessity of providing tasks for the rising generation that they might not push men of forty out of berths. An agreeable programme, one that could be promulgated without those submissive inquiries addressed to the labour leaders in the House, which always had a suggestion of servility. Erb, the following Sunday, spoke at Southwark Park in the morning, at Peckham Rye in the afternoon, and Deptford Broadway in the evening, and, the subject being new, he found himself invited to address several working men's clubs during the week. Paragraphs, slipped into the newspapers, sometimes contained his name: Lady Frances wrote that her uncle was delighted, and had asked to be especially remembered. A later note mentioned that it was intended to hold a mass meeting at St. James's Hall, to bring the subject well before the people of London: her uncle would not be able to be present, but he had begged her to request Mr. Barnes to speak on this occasion: there would be a Duchess of philanthropic tendencies in the chair, and several members of Parliament had promised to speak. “Don't disappoint us!” said the letter appealingly. Erb sent an agreeable post-card in reply, and a friend of his, an assistant-librarian in the Free Library, promised to devote himself to work of research and ascertain how one addressed a lady of such distinguished rank as the wife of a Duke. The assistant-librarian urged that evening-dress was the correct thing, and offered to lend a suit which he and his brother wore when they went out into society, patronising dances at the Surrey Masonic Hall but here Erb's common-sense interfered. The meeting was advertised in the daily papers and on hoardings, his name given as Herbert Barnes, Esquire, with full qualifications set out: he never saw one of the posters without stopping to enjoy the sight, and it pained him extremely to find that on one or two in the neighbourhood of home some friend had erased the affix. Louisa went boldly one evening to the offices of the new society, in College Street, Westminster, and obtained a copy of the poster; this she would have exhibited in the front window, but compromised by sticking it at its four corners on the wall of the sitting-room.

St. James's Hall was not overcrowded on the evening, and a wealthy member of the committee went about telling everybody that a smaller room would have been cheaper, but it was full enough to please Erb as he took a view of it from the stairs leading to the platform. The platform was fringed with palms; on the walls were hung banners, with quotations from Shakespeare down to the newest poet—quotations that appeared to give vague support to the movement. Lady Frances, hovering about in the manner of an anxious butterfly, introduced Erb to the Duchess, and the Duchess, without using her lorgnon, said beamingly that she had read all of Mr. Barnes's works, and felt quite too delighted to meet the author; Erb protested nervously that he had never written a book, but the Duchess waved this aside as ineffective badinage, and went on talking, the while she looked away through her glasses at arriving people. So delightful, said the Duchess absently, to mingle with men of talent; it took one into another atmosphere. The Duchess, for her part, claimed to have powers of observation, and trusted piously that she was not altogether without a sense of humour, but these exceptional qualities, she said, had never availed her when she took pen in hand. Erb, perceiving the futility of contradiction, suggested that she should one day, when a spare moment arrived, have another dash at it, and the Duchess, bringing her gaze by a process of exhaustion round to him, stared at him wonderingly for a moment, and then promised to act upon his advice. A shy little man of letters being submitted just then to her consideration, the Duchess dropped Erb, and engaged in animated monologue on the subject of labour and how to conciliate it: her own method seemed to be to treat it as an elephant and give it buns. Erb stood about the room, whilst well-dressed people flew one to the other with every sign of gratification; he felt all his usual difficulty of not knowing what to do with his hands. The people had a manner of speech that he could scarcely understand; they talked of things that for him were a sealed book. Three clergymen who came in a bunch and seemed similarly out of the movement, gave him a feeling of companionship. When they all formed in a line and marched up on the platform to a mild, whispered cheering from the Hall, Erb's interest quickened, and the slight feeling of nervousness came which always affected him when he was going to speak.

“And I do think,” said the Duchess, with shrill endeavour to make her voice reach the back of the hall, “I do think that the more we consider such matters the more likely we are to understand them and to realise what they mean, and to gain a better and a wider and a truer knowledge.” The three clergymen said, “Good, good!” in a burst of respectful approbation, as men suddenly illuminated by a new thought. “I am tempted to go further,” said the Duchess, waving her notes threateningly at the audience, “to go further, and express myself, if I may so say, that having put our hands to the plough—” She looked round at the straight line of folk behind her, and they endeavoured to convey by their looks that if a Duchess could not be allowed the use of daring metaphor, then it would have to be denied to everybody. “Having put our hands to the plough, we shall not turn back—(slight cheering)—we shall not falter—(renewed slight cheering)—we shall not loiter by the roadside, but we shall go steadily on, knowing well that—that——” Here the Duchess found her notes and read the last words of her peroration carefully, “Knowing well that our goal is none other than the rising sun, which symbolises so happily the renaissance——” Here she looked down at the reporters' table, and seemed about to spell the word, but refraining contented herself by saying it again with great distinctness. “The renaissance of British Trade and British Supremacy!”

A service member of Parliament proposed the first resolution, and did so in a speech that would have suited any and every occasion on sea or land, in that it was made up entirely of platitudes, and included not one argument that could be seized by the most contentious; the whole brightened by what the member of Parliament himself described as a most amusing discussion which he had held with a man of the labouring classes not many years since (on which occasion the member had travelled second, this being notoriously the only way of discovering the true aspirations of the lower classes), and the member had subjected the man to a rigid cross-examination of the most preposterous and useless nature which he now repeated with many an “Ah, but I said——” and “Now listen to me, my good fellow——” and “Permit me to explain what I mean in simple words so that even you can understand,” the labouring man eventually giving in, admitting that the gallant member had won the game at every point—the probability being that the poor fellow, bullied and harried by a talkative bore, had done so in the interests of peace and with a desire to be let alone and allowed to read his evening paper. The service member clearly prided himself not only on the acuteness which he had displayed in the argument, but also on the wonderful imitative faculty which enabled him to reproduce the dialect of his opponent, a dialect which seemed to have been somewhat mixed, for in one instance he spoke Lancashire with, “Aye, ah niver thowt o' that,” and the next broad Somerset, “There be zummat in what yew zay, zir,” and anon in a strange blend of Irish and Scotch.

“'That this meeting calls upon the working classes to put aside all differences and to contribute their indispensable assistance to the new movement, from which they themselves have so much to gain.' Will Mr. Herbert Barnes please second?”

This was written on the slip of paper, and passed along to Erb at a moment when the grisly fear had begun to possess him that he might not be called upon at all. He nodded to the secretary, and felt that the audience, now tired of listening to spoken words, looked at him doubtfully. One of the three clergymen being selected to move the resolution, the other two looked at their shoes with a pained interest, and presently tugged at their black watch-guards, ascertained the time, and, just before the chosen man arose, slipped quietly out. Fortunately for Erb, the remaining clergyman started on a line of reasoning excellently calculated to annoy and to stimulate. He began by pointing out that everybody nowadays worked excepting the working man, doubted whether it was of much use offering to him help, but declaring himself in doleful tones an optimist, congratulated the new movement on its courage, its altruism, its high nobility of purpose, and managed, before sitting down, to intimate very defiantly that unless labour seized this unique opportunity, then labour must be left to shift for itself and could no longer expect any assistance from him.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” said Erb distinctly,—the promise of listening to a voice that could be heard without difficulty aroused the hall—“I should be glad if the gentleman who spoke last could spare just three minutes of his time, and refrain for that space from making a hurried and somewhat undignified departure from the Hall.” The clergyman who had adopted the crouching attitude of those who desire to escape furtively from close confinement, returned and sat, his back straightened. “He has spoke—I should say, he has spoken—in a patronising way of labour, and I want to tell him that we resent very strongly his condescending and almost contemptuous words.”

His predecessor rose and said, “May it please your——”

“No, no, no!” said Erb, with but a slight modification of his Southwark Park manner, “I didn't interrupt the reverend gentleman, and I'm not going to allow him to interrupt me, or to assume the duties, your Grace,” with a nod to the chair, “which you perform with such conspicuous charm and ability.”

The Duchess, who, fearing a row, had been anxiously consulting those around her in order to gain hints as to procedure, recovered confidence on receiving this compliment, and gave a smile of relief. Men at the table below adjusted their black leaves of carbonic paper and began to write.

“Now, I've been into the details almost as carefully as the reverend gentleman has, and what I want to say, in order that this audience should not consider that we are absolutely silly fools, is, that so far from this movement having been arranged in order to benefit the workers exclusively, it is very clear to me that there's a few behind the scenes who are going to make a bit out of it.”

One cry of approval came from the distant gallery, but this scarcely counted, for it was a voice that had applauded contrary statements with the same decision. Erb knew the owner of the voice, a queer old crank, who went about to public meetings, his pockets bursting with newspapers, more than content if in the Free Library the next day he should find but one of his solitary cries of “Hear, hear!” reported in the daily press.

“I've no doubt they feel pretty certain of a safe eight or ten per cent.; if they didn't, this meeting would never have been held, and we should have been denied the pleasure of listening to that lucid and illuminating speech with which your Grace has favoured us. I say this that the previous speaker may see and that you all may recognise the fact that if those I represent give the cause any assistance, we do so with our eyes wide open, and that we are not blindfolded by the cheap flannel sort of arguments to which we have just listened. But let me go on. Because this is going to be a soft thing for the capitalists, it by no means follows that it is going to be a hard thing for the worker. On the contrary! I can see—or I think I can see—that this is likely to benefit both of us. (Cheers.) And whilst I repudiate the attitude and the arguments of the last speaker, I promise you that I am prepared to do all that I can for the scheme—(cheers)—not in the interests of capital, for capital can look after itself, but in the interests of labour, which sometimes wants a lot of looking after. Your Grace, I beg to second the resolution.”

The Hall liked the brevity of the speech; the subsequent speakers made genial references to it, and the Duchess, in acknowledging a vote of thanks, repaid Erb for his compliment to herself by prophesying that Mr. Barnes would prove a pillar of strength to the cause, declaring graciously that she should watch his career with interest, and gave him a fierce smile that seemed to hint that this in itself was sufficient to ensure success. (Later, when he said good-bye, the Duchess called him Mr. Blenkinsop, and begged him to convey her kindest regards to his dear wife.)

“I wonder,” said a gentleman with concave spectacles, “I wonder, now, whether you have a card about you?”

“Going to do a trick?” asked Erb.

“Here's mine. Have you ever thought of entering the House? Don't happen to be Welsh, I suppose, by any chance? Ah! a pity!”

For a moment it occurred to Erb that this might be a sample of aristocratic chaff; he stopped his retort on seeing that the other was talking with perfect seriousness. “But something else may happen at any moment. We live in strange times.”

“We always do,” said Erb.

“I shall keep you in my mind.”

Lady Frances eluded some dowagers who were bearing down upon her, and came to him; she took an envelope from a pretty hiding place.

“My uncle particularly begged me to give you this. You were so good, Mr. Barnes. (Don't open it until you get home.) Your speech was just what one wanted. You quite cleared the air.”

“Afraid I should clear the 'all.” Lady Frances seemed not to comprehend, and the knowledge came to Erb that he had missed an aspirate.

“My uncle will be so pleased. I shall be down at Bermondsey next week, and I can bring any message my uncle wishes to send. I don't bother you, Mr. Barnes?”

“Need you ask?” replied Erb.

“You're not going?” with her gloved hand held out.

Erb took the hint and made his exit with difficulty, because several ladies buzzed around him, humming pleasant words. The spectacled man walked with him along Piccadilly, talking busily, and expressed a desire to take Erb into the club for coffee—only that the place was so deucedly uncivil to visitors. He contented himself with a threat that Erb should most certainly hear from him again. “I shan't lose your address,” said the spectacled person.

It was not until the Committee Meeting of the R.C.S. had nearly finished one evening that Erb, in searching for a letter which some members desired to see, found the note from Lady Frances's uncle. He tore the flap casually, and, recognising it, placed the opened envelope aside, and pursued his searches for the required document. Spanswick, with a busy air of giving assistance, looked through the letters, and opened the communication which Lady Frances had brought.

“Pardon, old man,” whispered Spanswick confidentially. “Didn't know I was interfering with money matters.”