Ragged Trousered Philanthropists/Chapter 36
CHAPTER XXXVI
The End
About the middle of December there was a heavy fall of snow followed by a hard frost lasting several days. At ten o'clock one night a policeman found a man lying unconscious in the middle of a lonely road. At first he thought he was drunk, and after dragging him on to the footpath out of the way of passing vehicles he went for the stretcher. They took the man to the station and put him into a cell, already occupied by a man who had been caught in the act of stealing swede turnips from a barn. When the police surgeon came he pronounced the supposed drunken man to be dying from bronchitis and starvation; and further said that there was nothing to indicate that the man was addicted to drink. At the inquest the coroner remarked that it was the third case of death from destitution that had occurred in the town within six weeks.
The evidence showed that the man was a plasterer, who had walked from London with the hope of finding work somewhere in the country. He had no money in his possession when he was found by the policeman, all that his pockets contained being several pawn-tickets and a letter from his wife. The day before the inquest was held, the man who had been arrested for stealing the turnips had been taken before the magistrates. The poor wretch's defence was that he was starving, but Alderman Grinder, after telling him that starvation was no excuse for dishonesty, sentenced him to pay a fine of seven shillings and costs, or go to prison for seven days with hard labour. As the convict had neither money nor friends he went to jail, where he was, after all, better off than most of those who were still outside because they lacked either the courage or the opportunity to steal.
As time went on the long continued privation began to tell upon Owen and his family. Owen's cough grew worse, his eyes became deeply sunken and of remarkable brilliancy, and his thin face was always either deathly pale or dyed with a crimson flush.
Frankie also began to show the effects of being obliged to go so often without his porridge and milk. He became very pale and thin and his long hair came out in handfuls when his mother combed or brushed it. This was a great trouble to the boy, who since hearing the story of Samson read out of the Bible at school had ceased from asking to have his curls cut short, lest he should lose his strength also. He used to test himself by going through a certain exercise he had invented with a flat iron, and he was always much relieved when he found that notwithstanding the loss of the porridge, he was still able to lift the iron the proper number of times. But after a while, as he found it became increasingly difficult, he gave it up altogether, secretly resolving to wait until 'Dad' had more work to do, so that he could have the porridge and milk again. He was sorry to have to discontinue the exercise, but he said nothing about it to his father or mother because he did not want to 'worry' them.
Nora managed to get a 'charing' job at a boarding house where the servant was laid up. Owen did not want her to go, knowing how physically incapable she was of doing heavy work. On the second day in consequence of continually running up and down stairs with heavy cans of water she was in such intense pain that she was scarcely able to walk home, and for several days afterwards had to lie in bed through a recurrence of her old illness, which caused her to suffer untold agony whenever she tried to stand.
Alternately dejected and maddened by the knowledge of his own helplessness, Owen went about the town trying to find some other work, but with scant success. He did samples of show cards and window tickets and endeavoured to get orders by canvassing the shops in the town, but this was also a failure, for these people generally had a ticket writer to whom they gave their work, and when he did get a few trifling orders, they were scarcely worth doing at the price.
He used to feel like a criminal each time he entered a shop to ask for the work, because he realised that in effect, he was saying to them: 'Take your work away from the other man and employ me.' He was so conscious of this that it gave him a shamefaced manner, which, coupled as it was with his shabby clothing, did not create a very favourable impression on the shopkeepers, who usually treated him with about as much courtesy as they would have extended to any other sort of beggar. Generally, after a day's canvassing, he returned home unsuccessful and faint with hunger and fatigue.
One night, when a bitterly cold east wind was blowing, after he had been out on one of these canvassing expeditions, his chest became so bad that he found it almost impossible to speak, because the effort to do so often brought on a violent fit of coughing. A firm of drapers, for whom he had done some show-cards, sent him an order for one which they wanted in a hurry and which must be delivered the next morning, so he stayed up by himself till nearly midnight to do it. As he worked he felt a strange sensation in his chest: it was not exactly a pain, and he would have found it difficult to describe it in words.
He did not attach much importance to the symptom, thinking it was caused by the cold he had taken, but he could not help feeling conscious of the strange sensation all the time.
Frankie had been put to bed that evening at the customary hour, but did not seem to be sleeping as well as usual. Owen could hear him twisting and turning about and uttering little cries in his sleep. He left his work several times to go into the boy's room and cover him with the bed-clothes, which his restless movements had disordered. As the time wore on, the child became more tranquil, and about eleven o'clock, when Owen went in to look at him, he found him in a deep sleep, lying on his side with his head thrown back on the pillow, breathing so softly through his slightly parted lips that the sound was almost imperceptible. The fair hair that clustered round his forehead was damp with perspiration, and he was so still and pale and silent that one might have thought he was sleeping the sleep that knows no awakening.
About an hour later, when he had finished writing the showcard, Owen went out into the scullery to wash his hands before going to bed; and whilst he was drying them on the towel, the strange sensation he had been conscious of all the evening became more intense, and a few seconds afterwards he was terrified to find his mouth suddenly filled with blood.
For what seemed an eternity he fought for breath against the suffocating torrent, and when at length it stopped, he sank trembling into a chair by the side of the table, holding the towel to his mouth and scarcely daring to breathe, whilst a cold sweat streamed from every pore and gathered in large drops upon his forehead.
Through the deathlike silence of the night there came from time to time the chimes of the clock of a distant church, but he continued to sit there motionless, taking no heed of the passing hours, and possessed with an awful terror.
So this was the beginning of the end! And afterwards, the other two would be left by themselves at the mercy of the world. In a few years' time the boy would be like Bert White, in the clutches of some psalm-singing devil like Hunter or Rushton, who would use him as if he were a beast of burden, to be worked, driven, and bullied. His boyhood would be passed in carrying loads, dragging carts, and running here and there, trying his best to satisfy the brutal tyrants whose only thought would be to get profit out of him for themselves. As the vision of the future rose before him Owen resolved that it should never be. He would not leave his wife and child alone and defenceless in the midst of the 'Christian' wolves who were waiting to rend them as soon as he was gone. If he could not give them happiness, he could at least put them out of the reach of further suffering. If he could not stay and protect them, it would be kinder and more merciful to take them with him.
The End
EDINBURGH: AT THE MERCAT PRESS