Chapter XIX: Part 19

After that evening I did not see anything more of old Brandon. Upon calling at the Tavistock they said he had left for the rest of the week, but would be back on the following Monday.

And it was on the following Monday that Tod's affairs came to a climax.

* * * * *

We had had a regal entertainment. Fit for regal personages--as it seemed to us simple country people, inexperienced in London dinner giving. Mrs. Pell headed her table in green gauze, gold beetles in her hair, and a feathered-fan dangling. Mr. Pell, who had come to town for the party, faced her; the two girls, the two sons, and the guests were dispersed on either side. Eighteen of us in all. Crayton was there as large as life, and of the other people I did not know all the names. The dinner was given for some great gun who had to do with railway companies. He kept it waiting twenty minutes, and then loomed in with a glistening bald head, and a yellow rose in his coat: his wife, a very little woman in pink, on his arm.

"I saw your father yesterday," called out Pell down the table to Tod. "He said he was glad to hear you were enjoying yourselves."

"Ah--yes--thank you," replied Tod, in a hesitating sort of way. I don't know what _he_ was thinking of; but it flashed into my mind that the Squire would have been anything but "glad," had he known about the cards, and the billiards, and the twenty-five-pound debt.

Dinner came to an end at last, and we found a few evening guests in the drawing-room--mostly young ladies. Some of the dinner people went away. The railway man sat whispering with Pell in a corner: his wife nodded asleep, and woke up to talk by fits and starts. The youngest girl, Rose, who was in the drawing-room with Leonora and the governess, ran up to me.

"Please let me be your partner, Mr. Ludlow! They are going to dance a quadrille in the back drawing-room."

So I took her, and we had the quadrille. Then another, that I danced with Constance. Tod was not to be seen anywhere.

"I wonder what has become of Todhetley?"

"He has gone out with Gusty and Mr. Crayton, I think," answered Constance. "It is too bad of them."

By one o'clock all the people had left; the girls and Mrs. Pell said good night and disappeared. In going up to bed, I met one of the servants.

"Do you know what time Mr. Todhetley went out, Richard?"

"Mr. Todhetley, sir? He has not gone out. He is in the smoking-room with Mr. Augustus and Mr. Crayton. I've just taken up some soda-water."

I went on to the smoking-room: a small den, built out on the leads of the second floor, that no one presumed to enter except Gusty and Fabian. The cards lay on the table in a heap, and the three round it were talking hotly. I could see there had been a quarrel. Some stranger had come in, and was standing with his back to the mantel-piece. They called him Temply; a friend of Crayton's. Temply was speaking as I opened the door.

"It is clearly a case of obligation to go on; of honour. No good in trying to shirk it, Todhetley."

"I will not go on," said Tod, as he tossed back his hair from his hot brow with a desperate hand. "If you increase the stakes without my consent, I have a right to refuse to continue playing. As to honour; I know what that is as well as any one here."

They saw me then: and none of them looked too well pleased. Gusty asked me what I wanted; but he spoke quite civilly.

"I came to see after you all. Richard said you were here."

What they had been playing at, I don't know: whether whist, écarté, loo, or what. Tod, as usual, had been losing frightfully: I could see that. Gusty was smoking; Crayton, cool as a cucumber, drank hard at brandy-and-soda. If that man had swallowed a barrel of cognac, he would never have shown it. Temply and Crayton stared at me rudely. Perhaps they thought I minded it.

"I wouldn't play again to-night, were I you," I said aloud to Tod.

"No, I won't; there," he cried, giving the cards an angry push. "I am sick of the things--and tired to death. Good night to you all."

Crayton swiftly put his back against the door, barring Tod's exit. "You cannot leave before the game's finished, Todhetley."

"We had not begun the game," rejoined Tod. "_You_ stopped it by trebling the stakes. I tell you, Crayton, I'll not play again to-night."

"Then perhaps you'll pay me your losses."

"How much are they?" asked Tod, biting his lips.

"To-night?--or in all, do you mean?"

"Oh, let us have it all," was Tod's answer; and I saw that he had great difficulty in suppressing his passion. All of them, except Crayton, seemed tolerably heated. "You know that I have not the ready-money to pay you; you've known that all along: but it's as well to ascertain how we stand."

Crayton had been coolly turning over the leaves of a note-case, adding up some figures there, below his breath.

"Eighty-five before, and seven to-night makes just ninety-two. Ninety-two pounds, Todhetley."

I sprang up from the chair in terror. It was as if some blast had swept over me, "Ninety-two pounds! Tod! do you owe _that_?"

"I suppose I do."

"_Ninety-two pounds!_ It cannot be. Why, it is close upon a hundred!" Crayton laughed at my consternation, and Temply stared.

"If you'll go on playing, you may redeem some of it, Todhetley," said Crayton. "Come, sit down."

"I will not touch another card to-night," said he, doggedly. "I have said it: and I am not one to break my word: as Johnny Ludlow here can testify to. I don't know that I shall play again after to-night."

Crayton was offended. Cool though he was, I think he was somewhat the worse for what he had taken--perhaps they all were. "Then you'll make arrangements for paying your debts," said he, in scornful tones.

"Yes, I'll do that," answered Tod. And he got away. So did I, after a minute or two: Gusty kept me, talking.

In passing upstairs, for we slept on the third floor, Mr. Pell came suddenly out of a room on the left; a candle in one hand and some papers in the other, and a look on his face as of some great trouble.

"What! are you young men not in bed yet?" he exclaimed. "It is late."

"We are going up now. Is anything the matter, sir?" I could not help asking.

"The matter?" he repeated.

"I thought you looked worried."

"I am worried with work," he said, laughing slightly. "While others take their rest, I have to be up at my books and letters. Great wealth brings great care with it, Johnny Ludlow, and hard work as well. Good night, my lad."

Tod was pacing the room with his hands in his pockets. It was a terrible position for him to be in. Owing a hundred pounds--to put it in round numbers--for a debt of honour. No means of his own, not daring to tell his father. I mounted on the iron rail of my little bed opposite the window, and looked at him.

"Tod, what _is_ to be done?"

"For two pins I'd go and enlist in some African regiment," growled he. "Once over the seas, I should be lost to the world here, and my shame with me."

"Shame!"

"Well, and it is shame. An ordinary debt that you can't pay is bad enough; but a debt of honour----"

He stopped, and caught his breath with a sort of sob--as if there were no word strong enough to express the sense of shame.

"It will never do to tell the Pater."

"Tell _him_!" he exclaimed sharply. "Johnny, I'd cut off my right hand--I'd fling myself into the Thames, rather than bring such a blow on him."

"Well, and so I think would I."

"It would kill him as sure as we are here, Johnny. He would look upon it that I have become a confirmed gambler, and I believe the shock and grief would be such that he'd die of it. No: I have not been so particularly dutiful a son, that I should bring _that_ upon him."

I balanced myself on the bed-rail. Tod paced the carpet slowly.

"No, never," he repeated, as if there had not been any pause. "I would rather die myself."

"But what is to be done?"

"Heaven knows! I wish the Pells had been far enough before they had invited us up."

"I wish you had never consented to play with the lot at all, Tod. You might have stood out from the first."

"Ay. But one glides into these things unconsciously. Johnny, I begin to think Crayton is just a gambler, playing to win, and nothing better."

"Playing for his bread. That is, for the things that constitute it. His drink, and his smoke, and his lodgings, and his boots, and his rings. Old Brandon said it. As to his dinners, he generally gets them at friends' houses."

"Old Brandon said it, did he?"

"Why, I told you so the same day. And you bade me shut up."

"Do you know what they want me to do, Johnny? To sign a post-obit bond for two hundred, or so, to be paid after my father's death. It's true. Crayton will let me off then."

"And will you do it?" I cried, feeling that my eyes blazed as I leaped down.

"No, I _won't_: and I told them so to-night. That's what the quarrel was about. 'Every young fellow does it whose father lives too long and keeps him out of his property,' said that Temply. 'Maybe so; I won't,' I answered. Neither will I. I'd rather break stones on the road than speculate upon the good Pater's death, or anticipate his money in that manner to hide my sins."

"Gusty Pell ought to help you."

"Gusty says he can't. Fabian, I believe, really can't; he is in difficulties of his own: and sometimes, Johnny, I fancy Gus is. Crayton fleeces them both, unless I am mistaken. Yes, he's a sharper; I see through him now. I want him to take my I O U to pay him as soon as I can, and he knows I would do it, but he won't do that. There's two o'clock."

It was of no use sitting up, and I began to undress. The question reiterated itself again and again--what was to be done? I lay awake all night thinking, vainly wishing I was of age. Fanciful thoughts crossed my mind: of appealing to rich old Pell, and asking him to lend the money, not betraying Gusty and the rest by saying what it was wanted for; of carrying the story to Miss Deveen, and asking her; and lastly, of going to old Brandon, and getting _him_ to help. I grew to think that I _would_ do this, however much I disliked it, and try Brandon; that it lay in my duty to do so.

Worn and haggard enough looked Tod the next morning. He had sat up nearly all night. When breakfast was over, I started for the Tavistock, whispering a word to Tod first.

"Avoid the lot to-day, Tod. I'll try and help you out of the mess."

He burst out laughing in the midst of his perplexity. "_You_, Johnny! what next?"

"Remember the fable of the lion and the mouse."

"But you can never be the mouse in this, you mite of a boy! Thank you all the same, Johnny: you mean it well."

"Can I see Mr. Brandon?" I asked at the hotel, of a strange waiter.

"Mr. Brandon, sir? He is not staying here."

"Not staying here!"

"No, sir, he left some days ago."

"But I thought he was coming back again."

"So I believe he is, sir. But he has not come yet."

"Do you know where he is?"

"At Brighton, sir."

It was about as complete a floorer as I ever wished to get. All the way along, I had been planning which way to break it to him. I turned from the door, whistling and thinking. Should I go after him to Brighton? I had the money, and the time, why should I not do so? Heaven alone knew how much depended upon Tod's being released from trouble; Heaven alone knew what desperate course he might take in his shame, if not released from it.

Dropping a note to Tod, saying I should be out for the day, and getting a porter to take it up, I made the best of my way to the nearest Brighton station, and found a train just starting. Brighton was a large place, and they could not tell me at the Tavistock what hotel Mr. Brandon was staying at; except that one of the waiters "thought" it might be the Old Ship. And that's where I first went, on arrival.

No. No one of the name of Brandon was at the Old Ship. So there I was, like an owl in a desert, wondering where to go next.

And how many hotels and inns I tried before I found him, it would be impossible to remember now. One of the last was up Kemp Town way--the Royal Crescent Hotel.

"Is Mr. Brandon staying here?"

"Mr. Brandon of Warwickshire? Yes, sir."

It was so very unexpected an answer after all the failures, that I hardly believed my own ears. Mr. Brandon was not well, the waiter added: suffering from cold and sore throat--but he supposed I could see him. I answered that I must see him; I had come all the way from London on purpose.

Old Brandon was sitting in a long room, with a bow-window looking out on the sea; some broth at his elbow, and a yellow silk handkerchief resting cornerwise on his head.

"Mr. Ludlow, sir," said the waiter. And he dropped the spoon into the broth, and stared at me as if I were an escaped lunatic.

"Why!--you! What on earth brings _you_ here, Johnny Ludlow?"

To tell him what, was the hardest task I'd ever had in my life. And I did it badly. Sipping spoonfuls of broth and looking hard at me whilst he listened, did not help the process. I don't know how I got it out, or how confused was the way I told him that I wanted a hundred pounds of my own money.

"A hundred pounds, eh?" said he. "You are a nice gentleman, Johnny Ludlow!"

"I am very sorry, sir, to have to ask it. The need is very urgent, or I should not do so."

"What's it for?" questioned he.

"I--it is to pay a debt, sir," I answered, feeling my face flush hot.

"Whose debt?"

By the way he looked at me, I could see that he knew as plainly as though I had told him, that it was not my debt. And yet--but for letting him think it was mine, he might turn a deaf ear to me. Old Brandon finished up his broth, and put the basin down.

"You are a clever fellow, Johnny Ludlow, but not quite clever enough to deceive me. You'd no more get into such debt yourself, than I should. I have a better opinion of you than that. Who has sent you here?"

"Indeed, sir, I came of my own free will. No one knows, even, that I have come. Mr. Brandon, I hope you will help me: it is almost a matter of life or death."

"You are wasting words and time, Johnny Ludlow."

And I felt I was. Felt it hopelessly.

"There's an old saying, and a very good one, Johnny--Tell the whole truth to your lawyer and doctor. I am neither a lawyer nor a doctor: but I promise you this much, that unless you tell me the truth of the matter, every word of it, and explain your request fully and clearly, you may go marching back to London."

There was no help for it. I spoke a few words, and they were quite enough. He seemed to grasp the situation as by magic, and turned me, as may be said, inside out. In five minutes he knew by heart as much of it as I did.

"So!" said he, in his squeaky voice--ten times more squeaky when he was vexed. "Good! A nice nest you have got amongst. Want him to give post-obit bonds, do they! Which _is_ Todhetley--a knave or a fool?"

"He has refused to give the bonds, I said, sir."

"Bonds, who's talking of bonds?" he retorted. "For playing, _I_ mean. He must have been either a knave or a fool, to play till he owed a hundred pounds when he knew he had not the means to pay."

"But I have explained how it was, sir. He lost, and then played on, hoping to redeem his losses. I think Crayton had him fast, and would not let him escape."

"Ay. Got him, and kept him. That's your grand friend, the Honourable, Johnny Ludlow. There: give me the newspaper."

"But you will let me have the money, sir?"

"Not if I know it."

It was a woeful check. I set on and begged as if I had been begging for life: saying I hardly knew what. That it might save Tod from a downhill course--and spare grief to the poor old Squire--and pain to me. Pain that would lie on my mind always, knowing that I possessed the money, yet might not use it to save him.

"It's of no use, Johnny. I have been a faithful guardian to you, and done well by your property. Could your dead father look back on this world and see the income you'll come into when you are of age, he would know I speak the truth. You cannot suppose I should waste any portion of it, I don't care how slight a one, in paying young men's wicked gambling debts."

I prayed him still. I asked him to put himself in my place and see if he would not feel as I felt. I said that I should never--as I truly believed--have an opportunity of spending money that would give me half the pleasure of this, or do half the good. Besides, it was only a loan: Tod was sure to repay it when he could. No: old Brandon was hard as flint. He got up and rang the bell.

"We'll drop it, Johnny. What will you take? Have you had anything since breakfast?"

"No, sir. But I don't want anything."

"Bring up dinner for this young gentleman," he said, when the waiter appeared. "Anything you have that's _good_. And be quick about it, please."

They brought up a hastily prepared dinner: and very good it was. But I could scarcely eat for sorrow. Old Brandon, nursing himself at the opposite end of the table, the yellow handkerchief on his head, looked at me all the while.

"Johnny Ludlow, do you know what I think--that you'd give away your head if it were loose. It's a good thing you have me to take care of you."

"No, sir, I should not. If you would let me have this hundred pounds--it is really only ninety-two, though--I would repay it with two hundred when I came of age."

"Like the simpleton you are."

"I think I would give half my money, Mr. Brandon, to serve Todhetley in this strait. We are as brothers."

"No doubt you would: but you've not got it to give, Johnny. You can let him fight his own battles."

"And I would if he were able to fight them: but he is not able; it's an exceptional case. I must go back to London, and try there."

Old Brandon opened his eyes. "How?"

"I think perhaps Miss Deveen would let me have the money. She is rich and generous--and I will tell her the whole truth. It is a turning-point in Todhetley's life, sir: help would save him."

"How do you know but he'd return to the mire? Let him have this money, and he might go on gambling and lose another hundred. Perhaps hundreds at the back of it."

"No, sir, that he never would. He may go deeper into the mire if he does not get it. Enlist, or something."

"Are you going already, Johnny?"

"Yes, sir. I must catch the next train, and it's a good way to the station."

"You can take a fly. Wait a few minutes."

He went into his bedroom, on the same floor. When he came back, he held a piece of paper in his hand.

"There, Johnny. But it is my loan; not yours."

It was a cheque for a hundred pounds. He had listened, after all! The surprise was so great that I am afraid my eyes were dim.

"The loan is mine, Johnny," he repeated. "I am not going to risk your money, and prove myself a false trustee. When Todhetley can repay it, it will be to me, not to you. But now--understand: unless he gives you a solemn promise never to play with that 'Honourable' again, or with either of the Pells, _you will not use the cheque_, but return it to me."

"Oh, Mr. Brandon, there will be no difficulty. He only wants to be quit of them."

"Get his promise, I say. If he gives it, present this cheque at Robarts's in Lombard Street to-morrow, and they'll pay you the money over the counter."

"It is made out to my order!" I said, looking at the cheque: "not to Crayton!"

"To Crayton!" retorted Mr. Brandon. "I wouldn't let a cheque of mine, uncrossed, fall into _his_ hands. He might add an ought or two to the figures. I drew it out for an even hundred, you see: the odd money may be wanted. You'll have to sign your name at the back: do it at the bank. And now, do you know why I have let you have this?"

I looked at him in doubt.

"Because you have obeyed the injunctions I gave you--to bring any difficulty you might have to me. I certainly never expected it so soon, or that it would take this form. Don't you get tumbling into another. Let people take care of themselves. There: put it into your breast-pocket, and be off."

I don't know how I got back to town. There was no accident, and we were not pitched into next week. If we had been, I'm not sure that I should have minded it; for that cheque in my pocket seemed a panacea for all human ills. The Pells were at dinner when I entered: and Tod was lying outside his bed, with one of his torturing headaches. He did not often have them: which was a good thing, for they were rattlers. Taking his hand from his head, he glanced at me.

"Where have you been all day, Johnny?" he asked, hardly able to speak. "That was a short note of yours."

"I've been to Brighton."

Tod opened his eyes again with surprise. He did not believe it.

"Why don't you say Bagdad, at once? Keep your counsel, if you choose, lad. I'm too ill to get it out of you."

"But I don't want to keep it: and I have been to Brighton. Had dinner there, too. Tod, old fellow, the mouse has done his work. Here's a cheque for you for a hundred pounds."

He looked at it as I held it out to him, saw it was true, and then sprang off the bed. I had seen glad emotion in my life, even at that early period of it, but hardly such as Tod's then. Never a word spoke he.

"It is lent by Mr. Brandon to you, Tod. He bade me say it. I could not get any of mine out of him. The only condition is--that, before I cash it, you shall promise not to play again with Crayton or the Pells."

"I'll promise it now. Glad to do it. Long live old Brandon! Johnny, my good brother, I'm too ill to thank you--my temples seem as if they were being split with a sledge-hammer--but you have _saved_ me."

I was at Robarts's when it opened in the morning. And signed my name at the back of the cheque, and got the money. Fancy _me_ having a hundred pounds paid to me in notes and gold! The Squire would have thought the world was coming to an end.

XXII.

OUR STRIKE.

It was September, and they were moving to Crabb Cot for a week or two's shooting. The shooting was not bad about there, and the Squire liked a turn with his gun yet. Being close on the Michaelmas holidays, Tod and I were with them.

When the stay was going to be short, the carriages did not come over from Dyke Manor. On arriving at South Crabb station, there was a fly waiting. It would not take us all. Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley, the two children, and Hannah got into it, and some of the luggage was put on the top.

"You two boys can walk," said the Pater. "It will stretch your legs."

And a great deal rather walk, too, than be boxed up in a crawling fly!

We took the way through Crabb Lane: the longest but merriest, for it was always lively with noise and dirt. Reports had gone abroad long before that Crabb Lane was "out on strike:" Tod and I thought we would take a look at it in this new aspect.

There were some great works in the vicinity--I need not state here their exact speciality--and the men employed at them chiefly inhabited Crabb Lane. It was setting-up these works that caused the crowded dwellings in Crabb Lane to be built--for where a number of workmen congregate together, habitations must of necessity follow.

You have heard of Crabb Lane before--in connection with what I once told you about Harry Lease the pointsman. It was a dingy, over-populated, bustling place, prosperous on the whole, its inhabitants as a rule well-to-do. A strike was quite a new feature, bringing to most of them a fresh experience in life. England had strikes in those past days, but they were not common.

Crabb Lane during working hours had hitherto been given over to the children, who danced in the gutters and cried and screamed themselves hoarse. Women also would be out of doors, idling away their time in gossip, or else calling across to each other from the windows. But now, as I and Tod went down it, things looked different. Instead of women and children, men were there. Every individual man, I believe, out of every house the lane contained; for there appeared to be shoals of them. They lounged idly against the walls, or stood about in groups. Some with pipes, some without; some laughing and jeering, apparently in the highest spirits, as if they had climbed the tree of fortune; some silent and anxious-looking.

"Well, Hoar, how are you?"

It was Tod who spoke. The man he addressed, Jacob Hoar, was one of the best of the workmen: a sober, steady, honest fellow, with a big frame and a resolute face. He had the character of being fierce in temper, sometimes savage with his fellow-men, if put out. Alfred Hoar--made pointsman at the station in poor Harry Lease's place--was his brother.

Hoar did not answer Tod at all. He was standing quite alone near the door of his house, a strangely defiant look upon his pale face, and his firm lips drawn in. Unless I was mistaken, some of the men over the way were taking covert glances at him, as though he were a kangaroo they had to keep aloof from. Hoar turned his eyes slowly upon us, took off his round felt hat, and smoothed back his dark hair.

"I be as well as matters'll let me be, young Mr. Todhetley," he then said.

"There's a strike going on, I hear," said Tod. "Has been for some time."

"Yes, there's a strike a-going on," assented Hoar, speaking in a deliberate, sullen manner, as a man resenting some special grievance. "Has been for some time, as you say. And I don't know when the strike 'll be a-going off."

"How is Eliza?" I asked.

"Much as usual, Mr. Johnny. What should ail her?"

Evidently there was no sociability to be got out of Jacob Hoar that afternoon, and we left him. A few yards further, we passed Ford's, the baker's. No end of heads were at the shop door, and _they_ seemed to be staring at Hoar.

"He must have been dealing out a little abuse to the public generally, Tod," said I.

"Very likely," answered Tod. "He seems bursting with some rage or other."

"Nay, I don't think it's rage so much as vexation. Something must have gone wrong."

"Well, perhaps so."

"Look here, Tod. If we had a home to keep up and a lot of mouths to feed and weekly rent to pay, and a strike stopped the supplies, we might be in a worse humour than Hoar is."

"Right, Johnny." And Tod went off at a strapping pace.

How it may be with other people, I don't know: but when I get back to a place after an absence, I want to see every one, and am apt to go dashing in at doors without warning.

"It won't take us a minute to look in on Miss Timmens, Tod," I said, as we neared the school-house. "She'll tell us the news of the whole parish."

"Take the minute, then, if you like," said Tod. "I am not going to bother myself with Miss Timmens."

Neither perhaps should I, after that, for Tod swayed me still; but in passing the door it was opened wide by one of the little scholars. Miss Timmens sat in her chair, the lithe, thin cane, three yards long, raised in her hand, its other end descending, gently enough on the shoulders of a chattering girl.

"I don't keep it to beat 'em," Miss Timmens was wont to say of her cane, "but just to tap 'em into attention when they are beyond the reach of my hand." And, to give her her due, it was nothing more.

"It's you, is it, Master Johnny? I heard you were all expected."

"It's me, safe enough. How goes the world with you, Miss Timmens?"

"Cranky," was the short answer. "South Crabb's going out of its senses, I think. The parson is trying to introduce fresh ways and doings, in my school: new-fangled rubbish, Master Johnny, that will bring more harm than good. I won't have it, and so he and I are at daggers drawn. And there's a strike in the place!"

I nodded. While she spoke, it had struck me, looking at the room, that it was not so full as usual.

"It's the strike does that," she said, in a sort of triumph. "It's the strike that works all the ill and every kind of evil"--and it was quite evident the strike found no more favour with her than the parson's fresh ways.

"But what has the strike to do with the children's absence from school?"

"The strike has carried all the children's best things to the pawn-shop, and they've nothing decent left to come abroad in. That is one cause, Johnny Ludlow," she concluded, very tartly.

"Is there any other?"

"Don't you think that sufficient? I am not going to let them appear before me in rags--and so Crabb Lane knows. But there is another cause, sir. This strike has so altered the course of things that the whole order of ordinary events is turned upside down. Even if the young ones' frocks were home again, it would be ten to one against their coming to school."

"I don't see the two little Hoars." And why I had been looking for those particular children I can't say, unless it was that Hoar and his peculiar manner had been floating in my mind ever since we passed him.

"'Liza and Jessy--no, but they've been here till to-day," was the reply, given after a long pause. "Are you going, Mr. Johnny?--I'll just step outside with you."

She drew the door close behind her, keeping the handle in her hand, and looked straight into my face.

"Jacob Hoar has gone and beat his boy almost to death this morning--and the strike's the cause of _that_," she whispered, emphatically.

"Jacob Hoar has!--Why, how came he to do it?"--I exclaimed, recalling more forcibly than ever the man's curious look, and the curious looks of the other men holding aloof from him. "Which of his boys is it?"

"The second of them; little Dick. Yes, he is black and blue all over, they say; next door to beat to death; and his arm's broken. And they have the strike to thank for it."

She repeated the concluding words more stingingly than before. That Miss Timmens was wroth with the strike, there could be no mistake. I asked her why the strike was to be thanked for the beating and the broken arm.

"Because the strike has brought misery; and _that_ is the source of all the ill going on just now in Crabb Lane," was her reply. "When the men threw themselves out of work, of course they threw themselves out of wages. Some funds have been furnished to them, weekly I believe, from the Trades Union League--or whatever they call the thing--but it seems a mere nothing compared with what they used to earn. Household goods, as well as clothes, have been going to the pawn-shop, but they have now pledged all they've got to pledge, and are, it is said, in sore straits: mothers and fathers and children alike hungry. It is some time now since they have had enough to eat. Fancy that, Mr. Johnny!"

"But why should Dicky be beaten for that?" I persisted, trying to keep her to the point--a rather difficult matter with Miss Timmens at all times.

"It was in this way," she answered, dropping her voice to a lower key, and giving a pull at the door to make sure it had not opened. "Dicky, poor fellow, is half starved; he's not used to it, and feels it keenly: resents it, I dare say. This morning, when out in the lane, he saw a tray of halfpenny buns, hot from the oven, put on old Ford's counter. The sight was too much for him, the temptation too great. Dicky Hoar is naturally honest; has been, up to now, at all events: but I suppose hunger was stronger than honesty to-day. He crept into the shop on all fours, abstracted a bun with his fingers, and was creeping out again, when Ford pounced upon him, bun in hand. There was a fine outcry. Ford was harsh, roared out for the policeman, and threatened him with jail, and in the midst of the commotion Hoar came up. In his mortification at hearing that a boy of his had been caught pilfering, he seized upon a thick stick that a bystander happened to have, and laid it unmercifully upon poor Dick."

"And broke his arm?"

"And broke his arm. And covered him with weals beside. He'll be all manner of colours to-morrow."

"What a brutal fellow Hoar must be!"

"To beat him like that?--well, yes," assented Miss Timmens, in accents that bore rather a dubious sound. "Passion must have blinded him and urged him further than he intended. The man has always been upright; prided himself on being so, as one may say; and there's no doubt that to find his child could be a thief shook him cruelly. This strike is ruining the tempers of the men; it makes them feel at war with everything and everybody."

When I got home I found them in the thick of the news also, for Cole the doctor was there telling it all. Mrs. Todhetley, sitting on the sofa with her bonnet untied and her shawl unpinned, was listening in a kind of horror.

"But surely the arm cannot be _broken_, Mr. Cole!" she urged.

"Broken just above the wrist, ma'am. I ought to know, for I set it. Wicked little rascal, to steal the bun! As to Hoar, he is as fierce as a tiger when really enraged."

"Well, it sounds very shocking."

"So it does," said Cole. "I think perhaps it may be productive of one good--keep the boy from picking and stealing to the end of his life."

"He was hungry, you say."

"Famished, ma'am. Most of the young ones in Crabb Lane are so just now."

The Squire was walking up and down the room, his hands in his pockets. He halted, and faced the Doctor.

"Look here, Cole--what has brought this state of things about? A strike!--and prolonged! Why, I should as soon have expected to hear the men had thrown up their work to become Merry Andrews! Who is in fault?--the masters or the men?"

Cole lifted his eyebrows. "The masters lay the blame on the men, the men lay it on the masters."

"What is it the men are holding out for?"

"To get more wages, and to do less work."

"Oh, come, that's a twofold demand," cried the Pater. "Modest folk generally ask for one favour at a time. Meanwhile things are all at sixes-and-sevens, I suppose, in Crabb Lane?"

"Ay," said the Doctor. "At worse than sixes-and-sevens, indoors and out. There are empty cupboards and empty rooms within; and there's a good deal of what's bad without. It's the wives and children that suffer, poor things."

"The men must be senseless to throw themselves out of work!"

"The men only obey orders," cried Mr. Cole. "There's a spirit of disaffection abroad: certain people have constituted themselves rulers, and they say to the men, 'You must do this,' and 'You must not do that.' The men have yielded themselves up to be led, and _do_ do what they are told, right or wrong."

"I don't say they are wrong to try to get more wages if they can; it would be odd if we were to be debarred from bettering ourselves," spoke the Squire. "But to throw up their work whilst they are trying, there's the folly; there's where the shoe must tighten. Let them keep on their work whilst they agitate."

"They'd tell you, I expect, that the masters would be less likely to listen then than they are now."

"Well, they've no right, in common sense, to throw up their wives' and children's living, if they do their own," concluded the Squire.

Cole nodded. "There's some truth in that," he said as he got up to leave. "Any way, things are more gloomy with us than you'd believe, Squire."

* * * * *

You may remember that I told you, when speaking of the Court and my early home, how, when I was a little child of four years old, Hannah my nurse, and Eliza one of her fellow-servants, commented freely in my hearing on my father's second marriage, and shook me well because I was wise enough to understand them. Eliza was then housemaid at the Court; and soon after this she had left it to marry Jacob Hoar. She was a nice sort of young woman (in spite of the shaking), and I kept up a great acquaintance with her, and was free, so to say, of her house in Crabb Lane, running in and out of it at will, when we were at Crabb Cot. A tribe of little Hoars arrived, one after another. Jacky, the eldest, over ten now, had a place at the works, and earned two shillings a week. "'Twarn't much," said Hoar the father, "but 'twas bringing his hand in." Dick, the second, he who had just had the beating, was nine; two girls came next, and there was a young boy of three.

Hoar earned capital wages--to judge by the comfortable way in which they lived: I should think not less than forty shillings a week. Of course they spent it all, every fraction; as a rule, families of that class never put by for a rainy day. They might have done it, I suppose; in those days provisions were nothing like as dear as they are now; the cost of living altogether was less.

Of course the Hoars had to suffer in common with the rest under the strike. But I did not like to hear of empty cupboards in connection with Eliza; no, nor of her boy's broken arm; and in the evening I went back to Crabb Lane to see her. They lived next door but one to the house that had been Lease the pointsman's; but theirs was far better than that tumble-down hut.

Well, it was a change! The pretty parlour looked half dismantled. Its ornaments and best things had gone, as Miss Timmens expressed it, to adorn the pawnshop. The carpet also. Against the wall, on a small mattress brought down for him, lay Dicky and his bruises. Some of the children sat on the floor: Mrs. Hoar was kneeling over Dicky and bathing his cheek, which was big enough for two, for it had caught the stick kindly.

"Well, Eliza!"

She got up, sank into a chair, flung her apron up to her face, and burst into tears. I suppose it was at the sight of me. Not knowing what to say to that, I pulled the little girls' ears and then sat down on the floor by Dicky. _He_ began to cry.

"Oh come, Dick, don't; you'll soon be better. Face smarts, does it?"

"I never thought to meet you like this, Master Johnny," said Eliza, getting up and speaking through her tears. "'Twas hunger made him do it, sir; nothing else. The poor little things be so famished at times it a'most takes the sense out of 'em."

"Yes, I am sure it was nothing else. Look up, Dick. Don't cry like that." One would have thought the boy was going into hysterics.

I had an apple in my pocket and gave it to him. He kept it in his hand for some time, and then began to eat it ravenously, sobbing now and then. The left arm, the broken one, lay across him, bound up in splints.

"I didn't mean to steal the bun," he whispered, looking up at me through his tears. "I'd ha' give Mrs. Ford the first ha'penny for it that I'd ever got. I was a-hungered, I was. We be always a-hungered now."

"It is hard times with you, I am afraid, Eliza," I said, standing by her.

Opening her mouth to answer, a sob caught her breath, and she put her hand to her side, as if in pain. Her poor face, naturally patient and meek, was worn, and had a bright hectic spot upon it. Eliza used to be very pretty, and was young-looking still, with smooth brown hair, and mild grey eyes: she looked very haggard now and less tidy. But, as to being tidy, how can folk be that, when all their gowns worth a crown are hanging up at the pawnbroker's?

"It's dreadful times, Master Johnny. It's times that frighten me. Worse than all, I can't see when it is to end, and what the end is to be."

"Don't lose heart. The end will be that the men will go to work again: I dare say soon."

"The Lord send it!" she answered. "That's the best we can hope for, sir; and that'll be hard enough. For we shall have to begin life again, as 'twere; with debts all around us, and our household things and our clothes in pledge."

"You will get them out again then."

"Ay, but how long will it take to earn the money to do it? This strike, as I look upon it, has took at the rate of five years of prosperity out of our lives, Master Johnny."

"The league--or whatever it is--allows you all money to live, does it not?"

"We get some, sir. It's not a great deal. They tell us that there's strikes a-going on in many parts just now; these strikes have to be helped as well as the operatives here; and so it makes the allowance small. We have no means of knowing whether that's true or not, us women, I mean; but I dare say it is."

"And the allowance is not enough to keep you in food?"

"Master Johnny, there's so many other things one wants, beside bare food," she answered, with a sigh. "We must pay our rent, or the landlord would turn us out; we must have a bit o' coal for firing: we must have soap; clothes must be washed, sir, and we must be washed; we must have a candle these dark evenings; shoes must be mended: and there's other trifles, too, that I needn't go into, as well as what Hoar takes for himself----"

"But does he take much?" I interrupted.

"No, sir, he don't: nothing to what some of 'em takes: he has always been a good husband and father. The men, you see, sir, must have a few halfpence in their pockets to pay for their smoke and that, at their meetings in the evening. There's not much left for food when all this comes to be taken out--and we are seven mouths to fill."

No wonder they were hungry!

"Some of the people you've known ought to help you, Eliza. Mrs. Sterling at the old home might: or Mrs. Coney. Do they?"

Eliza Hoar shook her head. "The gentlemen be all again us, sir, and so the ladies dare not do anything. As to Mrs. Sterling--I don't know that she has so much as heard of the strike--all them miles off."

"You mean the gentlemen are against the strike!"

"Yes, sir; dead again it. They say strikes is the worst kind of evil that can set in, both for us and for the country; that it will increase the poor-rates to a height to be afraid of, and in the end drive the work away from the land. Sitting here with my poor children around me at dusk to save candle, I get thinking sometimes that the gentlemen may not be far wrong, Master Johnny."

Seeing the poor quiet faces lifted to me, from which every bit of spirit seemed to have gone, I wished I had my pockets full of buns for them. But buns were not likely to be there; and of money I had none: buying one of the best editions of Shakespeare had just cleared me out.

"Where's Hoar?" I asked, in leaving.

A hot flush overspread her face. "He has not shown himself here, Master Johnny, since what he did to _him_," was her resentful answer, pointing to Dick. "Afraid to face me, he is."

"I'd not say too much to him, Eliza. It could not undo what's done, and might only make matters worse. I dare say Hoar is just as much vexed about it as you are."

"It's to be hoped he is! Why did he go and set upon the child in that cruel way? It's the men that goes in for the strike; 'tisn't us: and when the worry of it makes 'em so low they hardly know where to turn, they must vent it upon us. Master Johnny, there are minutes now when I could wish myself dead but for the children."

I went home with my head full of a scheme--getting Mrs. Todhetley and perhaps the Coneys to do something for poor Eliza Hoar. But I soon found I might as well have pleaded the cause of the public hangman.

Who should come into our house that evening but old Coney himself. As if the strike were burning a hole in his tongue, he began upon it before he was well seated, and gave the Squire his version of it: that is, his opinion. It did not differ in substance from what had been hinted at by Eliza Hoar. Mr. Coney did not speak _for_ the men or _against_ them; he did not speak for or against the masters; that question of conflicting interests he said he was content to leave: but what he did urge, and very strongly, was, that strikes in themselves must be productive of an incalculable amount of harm; they brought misery on the workmen, pecuniary embarrassment on the masters, and they most inevitably would, if persisted in, eventually ruin the trade of the kingdom; therefore they should, by every possible means, be discouraged. The Squire, in his hot fashion, took up these opinions for his own and enlarged upon them.

When old Coney was gone and we had our slippers on, I told them of my visit to Eliza, and asked them to help her just a little.

"Not by a crust of bread, Johnny," said the Squire, more firmly and quietly than he usually spoke. "Once begin to assist the wives and children, and the men would have so much the less need to bring the present state of things to an end."

"I am so sorry for Eliza, sir."

"So am I, Johnny. But the proper person to be sorry for her is her husband: her weal and woe can lie only with him."

"If we could help her ever so little!"

The Squire looked at me for a full minute. "Attend to me, Johnny Ludlow. Once for all, NO! The strike, as Coney says, must be discouraged by every means in our power. _Discouraged_, Johnny. Otherwise these strikes may come into fashion, and grow to an extent of which no man can foresee the end. They will bring the workmen to one of two things--starvation, or the workhouse. That result seems to me inevitable."

"I'm sure it makes me feel very uncomfortable," said the Mater. "One can hardly see where one's duty lies."

"Our poor-rates are getting higher every day; what do you suppose they'll come to if this is to go on?" continued the Squire. "I'd be glad for the men to get better pay if they are underpaid now: whether they are or not, I cannot tell; but rely upon it, striking is not the way to attain to it. It's a way that has ruined many a hopeful workman, who otherwise would have gone on contentedly to the end of his days; ay, and has finally killed him. It will ruin many another. Various interests are at stake in this; you must perceive it for yourself, Johnny lad, if you have any brains; but none so great as that of the workmen themselves. With all my heart I wish, for their own sakes, they had not taken this extreme step."

"And if the poor children starve, sir?" I ventured to say.

"Fiddlestick to starving! They need not starve while there's a workhouse to go to. And _won't_; that's more. _Can't_ you see how all this acts, Mr. Johnny? The men throw themselves out of work; and when matters come to an extremity the parish must feed the children, and we, the rate-payers, must pay. A pleasant prospect! How many scores of children are there in Crabb Lane alone?"

"A few dozens, I should say, sir."

"And a few to that. No, Johnny; let the men look to their families' needs. For their own sakes; I repeat it; for their own best interests, I'll have them left alone. They have entered on this state of things of their own free will, and they must themselves fight it out.--And now get you off to bed, boys."

"The Pater's right, Johnny," cried Tod, stepping into my room as we went up, his candle flaring in the draught from the open staircase window; "right as right can be on principle; but it _is_ hard for the women and children----"

"It is hard for themselves, too, Tod: only they have the unbending spirit of Britons, to hold out to the death and make no bones over it."

"I wish you'd not interrupt a fellow," growled Tod. "Look here; I've got four-and-sixpence, every farthing I can count just now. You take it and give it to Eliza. The Pater need know nothing."

He emptied his trousers pocket of the silver, and went off with his candle. I'm not sure but that he and I both enjoyed the state of affairs as something new. Had any one told us a year ago that our quiet neighbourhood could be disturbed by a public ferment such as this, we should never have believed it.

The next morning I went over to South Crabb with the four-and-sixpence. Perhaps it was not quite fair to give it, after what the Squire had said--but there's many a worse thing than that done daily in the world. Eliza caught her breath when I gave it to her, and thanked me with her eyes as well as her lips. She had on a frightfully old green gown--green once--shabby and darned and patched, and no cap; and she was on her knees wiping up some spilt water on the floor.

"Mind, Eliza, you must not say a word to any one. I should get into no end of a row."