I thought you had something to tell us about him, said Stephen.
So I have; I can put you in the way of getting hold of him and anything else. I havnt lived in Mowbray man and boy for fifty years; seen it a village, and now a great town full of first-rate institutions and establishments like this, added their host surveying the Temple with a glance of admiring complacency; I say I havnt lived here all this time and talked to the people for nothing.
Well, we are all attention, said Gerard with a smile.
Hush! said their host as a bell sounded, and he jumped up. Now ladies, now gentlemen, if you please; silence if you please for a song from a Polish lady. The Signora sings English like a new-born babe; and the curtain drew up amid the hushed voices of the company and the restrained clatter of their knives and forks and glasses.
The Polish lady sang Cherry Ripe to the infinite satisfaction of her audience. Young Mowbray indeed, in the shape of Dandy Mick and some of his followers and admirers, insisted on an encore. The lady as she retired curtseyed like a Prima Donna; but the host continued on his legs for some time, throwing open his coat and bowing to his guests, who expressed by their applause how much they approved his enterprise. At length he resumed his seat; Its almost too much. he exclaimed; the enthusiasm of these people. I believe they look upon me as a father.
And you think you have some clue to this Hatton? resumed Stephen.
They say he has no relations, said their host.
I have heard as much.
Another glass of the bar mixture, Master Gerard. What did we call it? Oh! the bricks and beansthe Mowbray bricks and beans; known by that name in the time of my grandfather. No more! No use asking Mr Morley I know. Water! well, I must sayand yet, in an official capacity, drinking water is not so unnatural.
And Hatton. said Gerard; they say he has no relations, eh?
They do, and they say wrong. He has a relation; he has a brother; and I can put you in the way of finding him.
Well, that looks like business, said Gerard; and where may he be?
Not here, said their host; he never put his foot in the Temple to my knowledge; and lives in a place where they have as much idea of popular institutions as any Turks or heathen you ever heard of.
And where might we find him? said Stephen.
Whats that? said their host jumping up and looking around him. Here boys, brush about. The American gentleman is a whittling his name on that new mahogany table. Take him the printed list of rules, stuck up in a public place, under a great coat, and fine him five shillings for damaging the furniture. If he resists (he has paid for his liquor), call in the police; X. Z. No. 5 is in the bar, taking tea with your mistress. Now brush.
And this place is
In the land of mines and minerals, said their host; about ten miles from . He works in metals on his own account. You have heard of a place called Hell-house Yard; well, he lives there; and his name is Simon.
And does he keep up any communication with his brother, think you? said Gerard.
Nay, I know no more; at least at present, said their host. The secretary asked me about a person absent without leave for twenty years and who was said to have no relations, I found you one and a very near one. You are at the station and you have got your ticket. The American gentlemans wiolent. Heres the police. I must take a high tone. And with these words Chaffing Jack quitted them.
In the meantime, we must not forget Dandy Mick and his two young friends whom he had so generously offered to treat to the Temple.
Well, what do you think of it? asked Caroline of Harriet in a whisper as they entered the splendid apartment.
Its just what I thought the Queen lived in, said Harriet; but indeed Im all of a flutter.
Well, dont look as if you were, said her friend.
Come along gals, said Mick; whos afraid? Here, well sit down at this table. Now, what shall we have? Here waiter; I say waiter!
Yes, sir, yes, sir.
Well, why dont you come when I call, said Mick with a consequential air. I have been hallooing these ten minutes. Couple of glasses of bar mixture for these ladies and go of gin for myself. And I say waiter, stop, stop, dont be in such a deuced hurry; do you think folks can drink without eating;sausages for three; and damme, take care they are not burnt.
Yes, sir, directly, directly.
Thats the way to talk to these fellows, said Mick with a self-satisfied air, and perfectly repaid by the admiring gaze of his companions.
Its pretty Miss Harriet, said Mick looking up at the ceiling with a careless nil admirari glance.
Oh! it is beautiful, said Harriet.
You never were here before; its the only place. Thats the Lady of the Lake, he added, pointing to a picture; Ive seen her at the Circus, with real water.
The hissing sausages crowning a pile of mashed potatoes were placed before them; the delicate rummers of the Mowbray slap-bang, for the girls; the more masculine pewter measure for their friend.
Are the plates very hot? said Mick;
Very sir.
Hot plates half the battle, said Mick.
Now, Caroline; here, Miss Harriet; dont take away your plate, wait for the mash; they mash their taters here very elegant.
It was a very happy and very merry party. Mick delighted to help his guests, and to drink their healths.
Well, said he when the waiter had cleared away their plates, and left them to their less substantial luxuries. Well, said Mick, sipping a renewed glass of gin twist and leaning back in his chair, say what they please, theres nothing like life.
At the Traffords, said Caroline, the greatest fun we ever had was a singing class.
I pity them poor devils in the country, said Mick; we got some of them at Collinsonscome from Suffolk they say; what they call hagricultural labourers, a very queer lot, indeed.
Ah! thems the himmigrants, said Caroline; theyre sold out of slavery, and sent down by Pickfords van into the labour market to bring down our wages.
Well teach them a trick or two before they do that, urged Mick. Where are you, Miss Harriet?
Im at Wiggins and Websters, sir.
Where they clean machinery during meal-time; that wont do, said Mick. I see one of your partners coming in, said Mick, making many signals to a person who very soon joined them. Well, Devilsdust, how are you?
This was the familiar appellation of a young gentleman, who really had no other, baptismal or patrimonial. About a fortnight after his mother had introduced him into the world, she returned to her factory and put her infant out to nurse, that is to say, paid threepence a week to an old woman who takes charge of these new-born babes for the day, and gives them back at night to their mothers as they hurriedly return from the scene of their labour to the dungeon or the den, which is still by courtesy called home. The expense is not great: laudanum and treacle, administered in the shape of some popular elixir, affords these innocents a brief taste of the sweets of existence, and keeping them quiet, prepares them for the silence of their impending grave. Infanticide is practised as extensively and as legally in England, as it is on the banks of the Ganges; a circumstance which apparently has not yet engaged the attention of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. But the vital principle is an impulse from an immortal artist, and sometimes baffles, even in its tenderest phasis, the machinations of society for its extinction. There are infants that will defy even starvation and poison, unnatural mothers and demon nurses. Such was the nameless one of whom we speak. We cannot say he thrived; but he would not die. So at two years of age, his mother being lost sight of, and the weekly payment having ceased, he was sent out in the street to play, in order to be run over. Even this expedient failed. The youngest and the feeblest of the band of victims, Juggernaut spared him to Moloch. All his companions were disposed of. Three months play in the streets got rid of this tender company,shoeless, half-naked, and uncombed,whose age varied from two to five years. Some were crushed, some were lost, some caught cold and fevers, crept back to their garret or their cellars, were dosed with Godfreys cordial, and died in peace. The nameless one would not disappear. He always got out of the way of the carts and horses, and never lost his own. They gave him no food: he foraged for himself, and shared with the dogs the garbage of the streets. But still he lived; stunted and pale, he defied even the fatal fever which was the only habitant of his cellar that never quitted it. And slumbering at night on a bed of mouldering straw, his only protection against the plashy surface of his den, with a dungheap at his head and a cesspool at his feet, he still clung to the only roof which shielded him from the tempest.
At length when the nameless one had completed his fifth year, the pest which never quitted the nest of cellars of which he was a citizen, raged in the quarter with such intensity, that the extinction of its swarming population was menaced. The haunt of this child was peculiarly visited. All the children gradually sickened except himself; and one night when he returned home he found the old woman herself dead, and surrounded only by corpses. The child before this had slept on the same bed of straw with a corpse, but then there were also breathing beings for his companions. A night passed only with corpses seemed to him in itself a kind of death. He stole out of the cellar, quitted the quarter of pestilence, and after much wandering laid down near the door of a factory. Fortune had guided him. Soon after break of day, he was woke by the sound of the factory bell, and found assembled a crowd of men, women, and children. The door opened, they entered, the child accompanied them. The roll was called; his unauthorized appearance noticed; he was questioned; his acuteness excited attention. A child was wanted in the Wadding Hole, a place for the manufacture of waste and damaged cotton, the refuse of the mills, which is here worked up into counterpanes and coverlids. The nameless one was prefered to the vacant post, received even a salary, more than that, a name; for as he had none, he was christened on the spotDEVILSDUST.
Devilsdust had entered life so early that at seventeen he combined the experience of manhood with the divine energy of youth. He was a first-rate workman and received high wages; he had availed himself of the advantages of the factory school; he soon learnt to read and write with facility, and at the moment of our history, was the leading spirit of the Shoddy-Court Literary and Scientific Institute. His great friend, his only intimate, was Dandy Mick. The apparent contrariety of their qualities and structure perhaps led to this. It is indeed the most assured basis of friendship. Devilsdust was dark and melancholy; ambitious and discontented; full of thought, and with powers of patience and perseverance that alone amounted to genius. Mick was as brilliant as his complexion; gay, irritable, evanescent, and unstable. Mick enjoyed life; his friend only endured it; yet Mick was always complaining of the lowness of his wages and the greatness of his toil; while Devilsdust never murmured, but read and pondered on the rights of labour, and sighed to vindicate his order.
I have some thoughts of joining the Total Abstinence, said Devilsdust; ever since I read Stephen Morleys address it has been in my mind. We shall never get our rights till we leave off consuming exciseable articles; and the best thing to begin with is liquors.
Well, I could do without liquors myself, said Caroline. If I was a lady, I would never drink anything except fresh milk from the cow.
Tea for my money, said Harriet; I must say theres nothing I grudge for good tea. Now I keep house, I mean always to drink the best.
Well, you have not yet taken the pledge, Dusty, said Mick: and so suppose we order a go of gin and talk this matter of temperance over.
Devilsdust was manageable in little things, especially by Mick; he acceded, and seated himself at their table.
I suppose you have heard this last dodge of Shuffle and Screw, Dusty, said Mick.
Whats that?
Every man had his key given him this eveninghalf-a-crown a week round deducted from wages for rent. Jim Plastow told them he lodged with his father and didnt want a house; upon which they said he must let it.
Their day will come, said Devilsdust, thoughtfully. I really think that those Shuffle and Screws are worse even than Truck and Trett. You knew where you were with those fellows; it was five-and-twenty per cent, off wages and very bad stuff for your money. But as for Shuffle and Screw, what with their fines and their keys, a man never knows what he has to spend. Come, he added filling his glass, lets have a toastConfusion to Capital.
Thats your sort, said Mick. Come, Caroline; drink to your partners toast, Miss Harriet. Moneys the root of all evil, which nobody can deny. Well have the rights of labour yet; the ten-hour bill, no fines, and no individuals admitted to any work who have not completed their sixteenth year.
No, fifteen, said Caroline eagerly.
The people wont bear their grievances much longer, said Devilsdust.
I think one of the greatest grievances the people have, said Caroline, is the beaks serving notice on Chaffing Jack to shut up the Temple on Sunday nights.
It is infamous, said Mick; aynt we to have no recreation? One might as well live in Suffolk, where the immigrants come from, and where they are obliged to burn ricks to pass the time.
As for the rights of labour, said Harriet, the people goes for nothing with this machinery.
And you have opened your mouth to say a very sensible thing Miss Harriet, said Mick; but if I were Lord Paramount for eight-and-forty hours, Id soon settle that question. Wouldnt I fire a broadside into their double deckers? The battle of Navarino at Mowbray fair with fourteen squibs from the admirals ship going off at the same time, should be nothing to it.
Labour may be weak, but Capital is weaker, said Devilsdust. Their capital is all paper.
I tell you what, said Mick, with a knowing look, and in a lowered tone, The only thing, my hearties, that can save this here nation, isagood strike.
Book 2 Chapter 11
Your lordships dinner is served, announced the groom of the chambers to Lord de Mowbray; and the noble lord led out Lady Marney. The rest followed. Egremont found himself seated next to Lady Maud Fitz-Warene, the younger daughter of the earl. Nearly opposite to him was Lady Joan.