Ragged Trousered Philanthropists/Chapter 5

by Robert Tressell

CHAPTER V

Owen at Home

Owen's wife and little son were waiting for him, in the living room of their small top-floor flat. Although the low ceiling showed the formation of the roof, the place was clean and comfortable, the tea was laid, and an old suit and some underclothing of Owen's hung by the fire to replace his wet garments on his return.

The woman was half sitting, half lying, on a couch by the other side of the fire. She was very thin, and her pale face bore the traces of much physical and mental suffering. She was sewing, a task which her reclining position rendered somewhat difficult. Although she was really only twenty-eight years of age, she appeared older.

The boy, who was sitting on the hearthrug playing with some toys, bore a strong resemblance to his mother. He also appeared very fragile, and in his childish face was reproduced much of the delicate prettiness which she had once possessed. His feminine appearance was increased by the fact that his yellow hair hung in long curls on his shoulders. The pride with which his mother regarded this long hair was by no means shared by Frankie, who was always entreating her to cut it off.

Presently the boy stood up and, walking gravely over to the window, looked down into the street, scanning the pavement for as far as he could see.

'I wonder wherever he's got to,' he said, as he returned to the fire.

'I'm sure I don't know,' returned his mother. 'Perhaps he's had to work overtime.'

'You know, I've been thinking lately,' observed Frankie, after a pause, 'that it's a great mistake for Dad to go out working at all. I believe that's the very reason why we're so poor.'

'Nearly everyone who works is more or less poor, dear, but if Dad didn't go out to work we'd be even poorer than we are now. We should have nothing to eat.'

'But Dad says that the people who do nothing get lots of everything.'

'Yes, and it's quite true that most of the people who never do any work get lots of everything; but where do they get it from, and how do they get it?'

'I'm sure I don't know,' replied Frankie, shaking his head in a puzzled fashion.

'Supposing Dad didn't go to work, or that he had no work to go to, or that he was ill and not able to do any work, then we'd have no money to buy anything. How should we get on then?'

'I'm sure I don't know,' repeated Frankie, looking round the room in a thoughtful manner. 'The chairs that's left aren't good enough to sell, and we can't sell the beds, or your sofa, but you might pawn my velvet suit.'

'But even if all the things were good enough to sell, the money we'd get for them wouldn't last very long, and what should we do then?'

'Well, I suppose we'd have to go without, that's all, the same as we did when Dad was in London. But how do the people who never do any work manage to get lots of money, then?' added Frankie.

'Oh, there's lots of different ways. For instance, you remember when Dad was in London, and we had no food in the house, I had to sell the easy chair.'

Frankie nodded. 'Yes,' he said; 'I remember you wrote a note and I took it to the shop, and afterwards old Didlum came up here and bought it, and then his cart came and a man took it away.'

'And do you remember how much he gave us for it?'

'Five shillings,' replied Frankie, promptly. He was well acquainted with the details of the transaction, having often heard his father and mother discuss it.

'And when we saw it in his shop window a little while afterwards, what price was marked on it?'

'Fifteen shillings.'

'Well, that's one way of getting money without working.'

Frankie played with his toys in silence for some minutes. At last he said:

'What other ways?'

'Some people who have some money already get more in this way: they find some people who have no money and say to them: "Come and work for us." Then the people who have no money go and work for the people that have the money. The people who have the money pay the workers just enough wages to keep them alive whilst they are at work. Then, when the things that the working people have been making are finished, the workers are sent away, and as they still have no money, they are soon starving. In the meantime the people who had the money take all the things that the workers have made and sell them for a great deal more money than they gave to the workers for making them. That's another way the idlers have of getting lots of money without doing any useful work.'

'When I'm grown up into a man,' said Frankie, with a flushed face, 'I'm going to be one of the workers, and when we've made a lot of things I shall stand up and tell the others what to do. If any of the idlers come to take our things away they'll get something they won't like.'

In a state of suppressed excitement and scarcely conscious of what he was doing, the boy began gathering up the toys and throwing them violently one by one into the box.

'I'll teach 'em to come taking our things away,' he exclaimed, relapsing momentarily into his street style of speaking. 'First of all we'll all stand quietly on one side. Then when the idlers come in and start touching our things, we'll go up to 'em and say: "'Ere, watcher doin' of? Just you put it down, will yer?" and if they don't put it down at once it'll be the worse for 'em, I can tell you.'

All the toys being collected, Frankie picked up the box and placed it noisily in its accustomed corner of the room.

'I should think the workers will be jolly glad when they see me coming to tell them what to do, shouldn't you, Mum?'

'I don't know, dear; you see so many people have tried to tell them, but they won't listen, they don't want to hear. They think it's quite right that they should work very hard all their lives, and quite right that most of the things they help to make should be taken away from them by the people who do nothing. The workers think that their children are not as good as the children of the idlers, and they teach their children that as soon as ever they are old enough they must be satisfied to work very hard and to have only very bad food and clothes and homes.'

'Then I should think the workers ought to be jolly well ashamed of themselves, Mum, don't you?'

'Well, in one sense they ought, but you must remember that that's what they've always been taught. But you have been taught differently. Do you remember what you told me the other day, when you came home from school, about the scripture lesson?'

'About St Thomas?'

'Yes. What did the teacher say St Thomas was?'

'She said he was a bad example; and she said I was worse than him because I asked too many foolish questions. She always gets in a wax if I talk too much.'

'Well, why did she call St Thomas a bad example?'

'Because he wouldn't believe what he was told.'

'Exactly. Well, when you told Dad about it what did he say?'

'Dad told me that really St Thomas was the only sensible man in the whole crowd of apostles. That is,' added Frankie, correcting himself, 'if there ever was such a man at all.'

'But did Dad say that there never was such a man?'

'No; he said he didn't believe there ever was, but he told me to just listen to what the teacher said about such things, and then to think about it in my own mind, and wait till I'm grown up and then I can use my own judgment.'

'Well now, that's what you were told, but all the other children's mothers and fathers tell them to believe, without thinking, whatever the teacher says. So it will be no wonder if those children are not able to think for themselves when they're grown up, will it?'

'Don't you think it will be any use, then, for me to tell them what to do to the idlers?' asked Frankie, dejectedly.

'Hark!' said his mother, holding up her finger.

'Dad!' cried Frankie, rushing to the door and flinging it open.

He ran along the passage and opened the staircase door before Owen reached the top of the last flight of stairs.

'Why ever do you come up at such a rate?' exclaimed Owen's wife reproachfully, as he came into the room exhausted from the climb upstairs and sank panting into the nearest chair.

'I al—ways—for—get,' he replied, when he had in some degree recovered.

As he lay back in the chair, his face haggard and of a ghastly whiteness, and with the water dripping from his saturated clothing, Owen presented a terrible appearance.

Frankie noticed with childish terror the extreme alarm with which his mother looked at his father.

'You're always doing it,' he said with a whimper. 'How many more times will Mother have to tell you about it before you take any notice?'

'It's all right, old chap,' said Owen, drawing the child nearer to him and kissing the curly head. 'Listen, and see if you can guess what I've got for you under my coat.'

In the silence the purring of the kitten was distinctly audible.

'A kitten!' cried the boy, taking it out of its hiding place. 'All black, and I believe it's half a Persian. Just the very thing I wanted.'

While Frankie amused himself playing with the kitten, which had been provided with another saucer of bread and milk, Owen went into the bedroom to put on the dry clothes, and as they were taking tea, he explained the reason of his late home coming.

'I'm afraid he won't find it very easy to get another job,' he remarked, referring to Linden; 'even in the summer nobody will be inclined to take him on. He's too old.'

'It's a dreadful prospect for the two children,' answered his wife,

'Yes,' replied Owen, bitterly, 'It's the children who will suffer most. As for Linden and his wife, although of course one can't help feeling sorry for them, at the same time there's no getting away from the fact that they deserve to suffer. All their lives they've been working like brutes and living in poverty. Although they have done more than their fair share of the work, they have never enjoyed anything like a fair share of the things they have helped to produce. And yet, all their lives they have supported and defended the system that robbed them, and have resisted and ridiculed every proposal to alter it. It's wrong to feel sorry for such people; they deserve to suffer.'

After tea, as he watched his wife clearing away the tea things and re-arranging the drying clothing by the fire, Owen for the first time noticed that she looked unusually ill.

'You don't look well to-night, Nora,' he said, crossing over to her and putting his arm around her.

'I don't feel well,' she replied, resting her head wearily against his shoulder. 'I've been very bad all day and I had to lie down nearly all the afternoon. I don't know how I should have managed to get the tea ready if it had not been for Frankie.'

'I set the table for you, didn't I, Mum?' said Frankie, with pride; 'and I tidied up the room as well,'

'Yes, darling, you helped me a lot,' she answered, and Frankie went over to her and kissed her hand.

'Well, you'd better go to bed at once,' said Owen. 'I can put Frankie to bed presently and do whatever else is necessary.'

'But there are so many things to attend to. I want to see that your clothes are properly dry and to put something ready for you to take in the morning before you go out, and then there's your breakfast to pack up——'

'I can manage all that.'

'1 didn't want to give way to it like this,' the woman said, 'because I know you must be tired out yourself, but I really do feel quite done up now.'

'Oh, I'm all right,' replied Owen, who was really so fatigued that he was scarcely able to stand. 'I'll go and draw the blinds down, and light the other lamp; so say good-night to Frankie and come at once.'

'I won't say good-night properly now, Mum,' remarked the boy, 'because Dad can carry me into your room before he puts me into bed.'

A little later, as Owen was undressing Frankie, the latter remarked, as he looked affectionately at the kitten, which was sitting on the hearthrug watching the child's every movement under the impression that it was part of some game:

'What name do you think we ought to call it, Dad?'

'You may give him any name you like,' replied Owen absently.

'I know a dog that lives down the road,' said the boy; 'his name is Major. How would that do? Or we might call him Sergeant.'

The kitten, observing that he was the subject of their conversation, purred loudly and winked as if to intimate that he did not care what rank was conferred upon him so long as the commissariat department was properly attended to.

'I don't know, though,' continued Frankie, thoughtfully. 'They're all right names for dogs, but I think they're too big for a kitten, don't you, Dad?'

'Yes, p'raps they are,' said Owen.

'Most cats are called Tom or Kitty, but I don't want a common name for him.'

'Well, can't you call him after someone you know?'

'I know! I'll call him after a little girl that comes to our school; a fine name—Maud! That'll be a good one, won't it, Dad?'

'Yes,' said Owen.

'I say, Dad,' said Frankie, suddenly realising the awful fact that he was being put to bed; 'you're forgetting all about my story, and you promised that you'd have a game of trains with me to-night.'

'I hadn't forgotten, but I was hoping that you had, because I'm very tired and it's very late, long past your usual bed-time, you know. You can take the kitten to bed with you to-night and I'll tell you two stories to-morrow and have the game as well. I shall have plenty of time to-morrow because it's Saturday.'

'All right, then,' said the boy, contentedly.

After the child was in bed, Owen sat alone by the table in the draughty sitting-room, thinking.

Although there was a bright fire the room was very cold, being so close to the roof. The wind roared loudly round the gables, shaking the house in a way that threatened every moment to hurl it to the ground.

The lamp on the table had a green glass reservoir which was half full of oil. Owen watched this with unconscious fascination. Every time a gust of wind struck the house the oil in the lamp was agitated, and rippled against the glass like the waves of a miniature sea.

Staring abstractedly at the lamp, he thought of the future.

A few years ago the future had seemed a region of wonderful and mysterious possibilities of good, but to-night the thought brought no such illusions, for he knew that the story of the future was to be much the same as the story of the past.

The story of the past would continue to repeat itself for a few years longer. He would continue to work and they would all three have to go without most of the necessaries of life.

When there was no work they would starve.

For himself he did not care much because he knew that at the best—or worst—it would only be a very few years. Even if he were able to have proper food and clothing and take reasonable care of himself, he could not live much longer; but when that time came, what was to become of them?

There would be some hope for the boy if he were more robust and if his character were less gentle and more selfish.

In order to succeed in the world it was necessary to be brutal, selfish and unfeeling: to push others aside and to take advantage of their misfortunes.

That was the ideal character.

Owen knew that Frankie's character did not come up to this lofty ideal.

Then there was Nora, how would she fare?

Owen stood up and began walking about the room, oppressed with a kind of terror. Presently he returned to the fire and began re-arranging his clothes that were drying. He found that the boots, having been placed too near the fire, had dried too quickly, and consequently the sole of one of them had begun to split away from the upper. He remedied this as well as he was able, and while turning the wetter parts of the clothing to the fire, he noticed the newspaper in the coat pocket. He drew it out with an exclamation of pleasure. Here was something to distract his thoughts. But as soon as he opened the paper his attention was rivetted by the staring headlines of one of the principal columns:

TERRIBLE DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

WIFE AND TWO CHILDREN KILLED.

SUICIDE OF THE MURDERER.

It was one of the ordinary crimes of poverty. The man had been without employment for many weeks and they had pawned or sold their furniture and other possessions. But even this resource must have failed at last, and one day the neighbours noticed that the blinds remained down and that there was a strange silence about the house. When the police entered they found, in one of the upper rooms, the dead bodies of the woman and the two children, with their throats cut, laid out side by side upon the bed, which was saturated with their blood.

There was no bedstead, and no furniture in the room except the straw mattress and the ragged clothes and blankets upon the floor.

The man's body was found in the kitchen, lying with outstretched arms face downwards on the floor, surrounded by the blood from the terrible wound in his throat, which had evidently been inflicted by the razor that was grasped in his right hand.

No particle of food was found, but attached to a nail in the kitchen wall was a piece of blood-smeared paper on which was written in pencil:

'This is not my crime, but Society's.'

The report went on to explain that the deed must have been perpetrated during a fit of temporary insanity, brought on by the sufferings the man had endured.

'Insanity!' muttered Owen, as he read this glib theory, 'Insanity! It seems to me that he would have been insane if he had not killed them.'

Surely it was wiser and better and kinder to send them all to sleep, than to let them continue to suffer.

At the same time it seemed strange that the man should have chosen to do it in that way, when there were so many other cleaner, easier and less painful ways of accomplishing his object.

One could take poison. Of course, there was a certain amount of difficulty in procuring it, and one would have to be very careful not to select one that would cause a lot of pain.

Owen went over to his bookshelf and took down 'The Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine,' an old, rather out-of-date book, which he thought might contain the required information. He was astonished to find what a number of poisons there were within easy reach of whoever wished to make use of them: poisons which could be relied upon to do their work certainly, quickly and without pain. Why, it was not even necessary to buy them; one could gather them from the hedges by the roadside and in the fields.

The more he thought of it the stranger it seemed that such a clumsy method as a razor should be so popular. Strangulation or even hanging would be better than that, though the latter method could scarcely be adopted in their flat, because there were no beams or rafters or anything from which it would be possible to suspend a cord. Still, he could drive some large nails or hooks into one of the walls. For that matter, there were already some clothes hooks on some of the doors. He began to think that this would be a more excellent way than poison: he could easily pretend to Frankie that he was going to show him some new kind of play. The boy would offer no resistance, and in a few minutes it would all be over.

He threw down the book and pressed his hands over his ears. He fancied he could hear the boy's hands and feet beating against the panels of the door as he struggled in his death agony.

Then, as his arms fell nervelessly by his side again, he thought he heard Frankie's voice calling:

'Dad! Dad!'

Owen hastily opened the door.

'Are you calling, Frankie?'

'Yes. I've been calling you quite a long time.'

'What do you want?'

'I want you to come here. I want to tell you something.'

'Well, what is it, dear? I thought you were asleep a long time ago,' said Owen, as he came into the room.

'That's just what I want to speak to you about. The kitten's gone to sleep all right, but I can't go. I've tried all different ways, counting and all, but it's no use, so I thought I'd ask you if you'd mind coming and staying with me, and letting me hold your hand for a little while, and then p'raps I could go.'

The boy twined his arms round Owen's neck and hugged him very tightly.

'Oh, Dad, I love you so much!' he said, 'I love you so much, I could squeeze you to death.'

'I'm afraid you will, if you squeeze me so tightly as that.'

The boy laughed softly as he relaxed his hold.

'That would be a funny way of showing you how much I loved you, wouldn't it, Dad? Squeezing you to death!'

'Yes, I suppose it would,' replied Owen, huskily, as he tucked the bedclothes round the child's shoulders. 'But don't talk any more, dear, just hold my hand and try to sleep.'

Lying there very quietly, holding his father's hand and occasionally kissing it, the child presently fell asleep.

Then Owen got up very gently and went into the bedroom. Nora was still awake.

'Are you feeling any better, dear?' he said.

'Yes; I'm ever so much better since I've been in bed, but I can't help worrying about your clothes. I'm afraid they'll never be dry enough for you to put on the first thing in the morning. Couldn't you stay at home till after breakfast, just for once?'

'No, I mustn't do that. If I did, Hunter would probably tell me to stay away altogether. I believe he would be glad of an excuse to get rid of another full price man just now.'

'But if it's raining like this in the morning, you'll be wet through before you get there.'

'It's no good worrying about that, dear; besides, I can wear this old coat that I have on now, over the other.'

'And if you wrap your old shoes in some paper, and take them with you, you can take off your wet boots as soon as you get to the place.'

'Yes, all right,' responded Owen. 'Besides,' he added, reassuringly, 'even if I do get a little wet, we always have a fire there, you know.'

'Well, I hope the weather will be a little better than this in the morning,' said Nora. 'Isn't it a dreadful night! I keep feeling afraid that the house is going to be blown down.'

Long after Nora was asleep, Owen lay listening to the howling of the wind and the noise of the rain as it poured heavily on the roof. But it was not the storm only that kept him awake. Through the dark hours of the night his thoughts were still haunted by the words on that piece of blood-stained paper on a kitchen wall: 'This is not my crime but Society's.'