Part 8 (2/2)
”Then your cheeks they grows red, and your nose it grows thin, And your bones they stick out, till they comes through your skin:
”and then, when you've sufficiently covered the poor dear s.h.i.+vering bare backs of the hairystocracy--
”Die, die, die, Away you fly, Your soul is in the sky!
”as the hinspired Shakspeare wittily remarks.”
And the ribald lay down on his back, stretched himself out, and pretended to die in a fit of coughing, which last was, alas! no counterfeit, while poor I, shocked and bewildered, let my tears fall fast upon my knees.
”Fine him a pot!” roared one, ”for talking about kicking the bucket. He's a nice young man to keep a cove's spirits up, and talk about 'a short life and a merry one.' Here comes the heavy. Hand it here to take the taste of that fellow's talk out of my mouth.”
”Well, my young'un,” recommenced my tormentor, ”and how do you like your company?”
”Leave the boy alone,” growled Crossthwaite; ”don't you see he's crying?”
”Is that anything good to eat? Give me some on it if it is--it'll save me was.h.i.+ng my face.” And he took hold of my hair and pulled my head back.
”I'll tell you what, Jemmy Downes,” said Crossthwaite, in a voice which made him draw back, ”if you don't drop that, I'll give you such a taste of my tongue as shall turn you blue.”
”You'd better try it on then. Do--only just now--if you please.”
”Be quiet, you fool!” said another. ”You're a pretty fellow to chaff the orator. He'll slang you up the chimney afore you can get your shoes on.”
”Fine him a kivarten for quarrelling,” cried another; and the bully subsided into a minute's silence, after a _sotto voce_--”Blow temperance, and blow all Chartists, say I!” and then delivered himself of his feelings in a doggerel song:
”Some folks leads coves a dance, With their pledge of temperance, And their plans for donkey sociation; And their pockets full they crams By their patriotic flams, And then swears 'tis for the good of the nation.
”But I don't care two inions For political opinions, While I can stand my heavy and my quartern; For to drown dull care within, In baccy, beer, and gin, Is the prime of a working-tailor's fortin!
”There's common sense for yer now; hand the pot here.”
I recollect nothing more of that day, except that I bent myself to my work with a.s.siduity enough to earn praises from Crossthwaite. It was to be done, and I did it. The only virtue I ever possessed (if virtue it be) is the power of absorbing my whole heart and mind in the pursuit of the moment, however dull or trivial, if there be good reason why it should be pursued at all.
I owe, too, an apology to my readers for introducing all this ribaldry. G.o.d knows, it is as little to my taste as it can be to theirs, but the thing exists; and those who live, if not by, yet still besides such a state of things, ought to know what the men are like to whose labour, ay, lifeblood, they own their luxuries. They are ”their brothers' keepers,” let them deny it as they will. Thank G.o.d, many are finding that out; and the morals of the working tailors, as well as of other cla.s.ses of artisans, are rapidly improving: a change which has been brought about partly by the wisdom and kindness of a few master tailors, who have built workshops fit for human beings, and have resolutely stood out against the iniquitous and destructive alterations in the system of employment. Among them I may, and will, whether they like it or not, make honourable mention of Mr. Willis, of St. James's Street, and Mr. Stultz, of Bond Street.
But nine-tenths of the improvement has been owing, not to the masters, but to the men themselves; and who among them, my aristocratic readers, do you think, have been the great preachers and practisers of temperance, thrift, charity, self-respect, and education. Who?--shriek not in your Belgravian saloons--the Chartists; the communist Chartists: upon whom you and your venal press heap every kind of cowardly execration and ribald slander. You have found out many things since Peterloo; add that fact to the number.
It may seem strange that I did not tell my mother into what a pandemonium I had fallen, and got her to deliver me; but a delicacy, which was not all evil, kept me back; I shrank from seeming to dislike to earn my daily bread, and still more from seeming to object to what she had appointed for me. Her will had been always law; it seemed a deadly sin to dispute it. I took for granted, too, that she knew what the place was like, and that, therefore, it must be right for me. And when I came home at night, and got back to my beloved missionary stories, I gathered materials enough to occupy my thoughts during the next day's work, and make me blind and deaf to all the evil around me. My mother, poor dear creature, would have denounced my day-dreams sternly enough, had she known of their existence; but were they not holy angels from heaven? guardians sent by that Father, whom I had been taught _not_ to believe in, to s.h.i.+eld my senses from pollution?
I was ashamed, too, to mention to my mother the wickedness which I saw and heard. With the delicacy of an innocent boy, I almost imputed the very witnessing of it as a sin to myself; and soon I began to be ashamed of more than the mere sitting by and hearing. I found myself gradually learning slang-insolence, laughing at coa.r.s.e jokes, taking part in angry conversations; my moral tone was gradually becoming lower; but yet the habit of prayer remained, and every night at my bedside, when I prayed to ”be converted and made a child of G.o.d,” I prayed that the same mercy might be extended to my fellow-workmen, ”if they belonged to the number of the elect.” Those prayers may have been answered in a wider and deeper sense than I then thought of.
But, altogether, I felt myself in a most distracted, rudderless state. My mother's advice I felt daily less and less inclined to ask. A gulf was opening between us; we were moving in two different worlds, and she saw it, and imputed it to me as a sin; and was the more cold to me by day, and prayed for me (as I knew afterwards) the more pa.s.sionately while I slept.
But help or teacher I had none. I knew not that I had a Father in heaven.
How could He be my Father till I was converted? I was a child of the Devil, they told me; and now and then I felt inclined to take them at their word, and behave like one. No sympathizing face looked on me out of the wide heaven--off the wide earth, none. I was all boiling with new hopes, new temptations, new pa.s.sions, new sorrows, and ”I looked to the right hand and to the left, and no man cared for my soul.”
I had felt myself from the first strangely drawn towards Crossthwaite, carefully as he seemed to avoid me, except to give me business directions in the workroom. He alone had shown me any kindness; and he, too, alone was untainted with the sin around him. Silent, moody, and preoccupied, he was yet the king of the room. His opinion was always asked, and listened to.
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