Sybil - 08

“Plenty to tell you,” said their host putting his finger to his nose. “If information is wanted in this part of the world, I flatter myself—Come, Master Gerard, here’s a table; what shall I call for? glass of the Mowbray slap-bang? No better; the receipt has been in our family these fifty years. Mr Morley I know won’t join us. Did you say a cup of tea, Mr Morley? Water, only water; well, that’s strange. Boy alive there, do you hear me call? Water wanted, glass of water for the Secretary of the Mowbray Temperance and Teatotal. Sing it out. I like titled company. Brush!”

“And so you can give us some information about this—”

“Be back directly.” exclaimed their host: and darting off with a swift precision, that carried him through a labyrinth of tables without the slightest inconvenience to their occupiers. “Beg pardon, Mr Morley,” he said, sliding again into his chair; “but saw one of the American gentlemen brandishing his bowie-knife against one of my waiters; called him Colonel; quieted him directly; a man of his rank brawling with a help; oh! no; not to be thought of; no squabbling here; licence in danger.”

“You were saying—” resumed Morley.

“Ah! yes, about that man Hatton; remember him perfectly well; a matter of twenty or it may be nineteen years since he bolted. Queer fellow; lived upon nothing; only drank water; no temperance and teetotal then, so no excuse. Beg pardon, Mr Morley; no offence I hope; can’t bear whims; but respectable societies, if they don’t drink, they make speeches, hire your rooms, leads to business.”

“And this Hatton—” said Gerard.

“Ah! a queer fellow; lent him a one-pound note—never saw it again—always remember it—last one-pound note I had. He offered me an old book instead; not in my way; took a china jar for my wife. He kept a curiosity shop; always prowling about the country, picking up old books and hunting after old monuments; called himself an antiquarian; queer fellow, that Hatton.”

“And you have heard of him since?” said Gerard rather impatiently.

“Not a word,” said their host; “never knew any one who had.”

“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 havn’t 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 havn’t 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; “It’s 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 beans—the 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 say—and 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.

“What’s 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 gentleman’s wiolent. Here’s 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.

“It’s just what I thought the Queen lived in,” said Harriet; “but indeed I’m all of a flutter.”

“Well, don’t look as if you were,” said her friend.

“Come along gals,” said Mick; “who’s afraid? Here, we’ll sit down at this table. Now, what shall we have? Here waiter; I say waiter!”

“Yes, sir, yes, sir.”

“Well, why don’t 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, don’t 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.”

“That’s the way to talk to these fellows,” said Mick with a self-satisfied air, and perfectly repaid by the admiring gaze of his companions.

“It’s 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; it’s the only place. That’s the Lady of the Lake,” he added, pointing to a picture; “I’ve 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; don’t 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, there’s 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 Collinson’s—come from Suffolk they say; what they call hagricultural labourers, a very queer lot, indeed.”

“Ah! them’s the himmigrants,” said Caroline; “they’re sold out of slavery, and sent down by Pickford’s van into the labour market to bring down our wages.”

“We’ll teach them a trick or two before they do that,” urged Mick. “Where are you, Miss Harriet?”

“I’m at Wiggins and Webster’s, sir.”

“Where they clean machinery during meal-time; that won’t 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 Godfrey’s 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 spot—DEVILSDUST.

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 Morley’s 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 there’s 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.

“What’s that?”

“Every man had his key given him this evening—half-a-crown a week round deducted from wages for rent. Jim Plastow told them he lodged with his father and didn’t 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, “let’s have a toast—Confusion to Capital.”

“That’s your sort,” said Mick. “Come, Caroline; drink to your partner’s toast, Miss Harriet. Money’s the root of all evil, which nobody can deny. We’ll 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 won’t 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, I’d soon settle that question. Wouldn’t I fire a broadside into their ‘double deckers?’ The battle of Navarino at Mowbray fair with fourteen squibs from the admiral’s 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, is—a—good strike.”






Book 2 Chapter 11

“Your lordship’s 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.

The ladies Fitz-Warene were sandy girls, somewhat tall, with rather good figures and a grand air; the eldest very ugly, the second rather pretty; and yet both very much alike. They had both great conversational powers, though in different ways. Lady Joan was doctrinal; Lady Maud inquisitive: the first often imparted information which you did not previously possess; the other suggested ideas which were often before in your own mind, but lay tranquil and unobserved, till called into life and notice by her fanciful and vivacious tongue. Both of them were endowed with a very remarkable self-possession; but Lady Joan wanted softness, and Lady Maud repose.

This was the result of the rapid observation of Egremont, who was however experienced in the world and quick in his detection of manner and of character.

The dinner was stately, as becomes the high nobility. There were many guests, yet the table seemed only a gorgeous spot in the capacious chamber. The side tables were laden with silver vases and golden shields arranged on shelves of crimson velvet. The walls were covered with Fitz-Warenes, De Mowbrays, and De Veres. The attendants glided about without noise, and with the precision of military discipline. They watched your wants, they anticipated your wishes, and they supplied all you desired with a lofty air of pompous devotion.

“You came by the railroad?” enquired Lord de Mowbray mournfully, of Lady Marney.

“From Marham; about ten miles from us,” replied her ladyship.

“A great revolution!”

“Isn’t it?”

“I fear it has a very dangerous tendency to equality,” said his lordship shaking his head; “I suppose Lord Marney gives them all the opposition in his power.”

“There is nobody so violent against railroads as George,” said Lady Marney; “I cannot tell you what he does not do! He organized the whole of our division against the Marham line!”

“I rather counted on him,” said Lord de Mowbray, “to assist me in resisting this joint branch here; but I was surprised to learn he had consented.”

“Not until the compensation was settled,” innocently remarked Lady Marney; “George never opposes them after that. He gave up all opposition to the Marham line when they agreed to his terms.”

“And yet,” said Lord de Mowbray, “I think if Lord Marney would take a different view of the case and look to the moral consequences, he would hesitate. Equality, Lady Marney, equality is not our metier. If we nobles do not make a stand against the levelling spirit of the age, I am at a loss to know who will fight the battle. You many depend upon it that these railroads are very dangerous things.”

“I have no doubt of it. I suppose you have heard of Lady Vanilla’s trip from Birmingham? Have you not, indeed! She came up with Lady Laura, and two of the most gentlemanlike men sitting opposite her; never met, she says, two more intelligent men. She begged one of them at Wolverhampton to change seats with her, and he was most politely willing to comply with her wishes, only it was necessary that his companion should move at the same time, for they were chained together! Two of the swell mob, sent to town for picking a pocket at Shrewsbury races.”

“A countess and a felon! So much for public conveyances,” said Lord Mowbray. “But Lady Vanilla is one of those who will talk with everybody.”

“She is very amusing though,” said Lady Marney.

“I dare say she is,” said Lord de Mowbray; “but believe me, my dear Lady Marney, in these times especially, a countess has something else to do than be amusing.”

“You think as property has its duties as well as its rights, rank has its bores as well as its pleasures.”

Lord Mowbray mused.

“How do you do, Mr Jermyn?” said a lively little lady with sparkling beady black eyes, and a very yellow complexion, though with good features; “when did you arrive in the North? I have been fighting your battles finely since I saw you,” she added shaking her head, rather with an expression of admonition than of sympathy.

“You are always fighting one’s battles Lady Firebrace; it is very kind of you. If it were not for you, we should none of us know how much we are all abused,” replied Mr Jermyn, a young M.P.

“They say you gave the most radical pledges,” said Lady Firebrace eagerly, and not without malice. “I heard Lord Muddlebrains say that if he had had the least idea of your principles, you would not have had his influence.”

“Muddlebrains can’t command a single vote,” said Mr Jermyn. “He is a political humbug, the greatest of all humbugs; a man who swaggers about London clubs and consults solemnly about his influence, and in the country is a nonentity.”

“Well, that can’t be said of Lord Clarinel,” rejoined Lady Firebrace.

“And have you been defending me against Lord Clarinel’s attacks?” inquired Mr Jermyn.

“No; but I am going to Wemsbury, and then I have no doubt I shall have the opportunity.”

“I am going to Wemsbury myself,” said Mr Jermyn.

“And what does Lord Clarinel think of your pledge about the pension list?” said Lady Firebrace daunted but malignant.

“He never told me,” said Mr Jermyn.

“I believe you did not pledge yourself to the ballot?” inquired Lady Firebrace with an affected air of inquisitiveness.

“It is a subject that requires some reflection,” said Mr Jermyn. “I must consult some profound politician like Lady Firebrace. By the bye, you told my mother that the conservatives would have a majority of fifteen. Do you think they will have as much?” said Mr Jermyn with an innocent air, it now being notorious that the whig administration had a majority of double that amount.

“I said Mr Tadpole gave us a majority of fifteen,” said Lady Firebrace. “I knew he was in error; because I had happened to see Lord Melbourne’s own list, made up to the last hour; and which gave the government a majority of sixty. It was only shown to three members of the cabinet,” she added in a tone of triumphant mystery.

Lady Firebrace, a great stateswoman among the tories, was proud of an admirer who was a member of the whig cabinet. She was rather an agreeable guest in a country-house, with her extensive correspondence, and her bulletins from both sides. Tadpole flattered by her notice, and charmed with female society that talked his own slang, and entered with affected enthusiasm into all his dirty plots and barren machinations, was vigilant in his communications; while her whig cavalier, an easy individual who always made love by talking or writing politics, abandoned himself without reserve, and instructed Lady Firebrace regularly after every council. Taper looked grave at this connection between Tadpole and Lady Firebrace; and whenever an election was lost, or a division stuck in the mud, he gave the cue with a nod and a monosyllable, and the conservative pack that infests clubs, chattering on subjects of which it is impossible they can know anything, instantly began barking and yelping, denouncing traitors, and wondering how the leaders could be so led by the nose, and not see that which was flagrant to the whole world. If, on the other hand, the advantage seemed to go with the Canton Club, or the opposition benches, then it was the whig and liberal hounds who howled and moaned, explaining everything by the indiscretion, infatuation, treason, of Lord Viscount Masque, and appealing to the initiated world of idiots around them, whether any party could ever succeed, hampered by such men, and influenced by such means.

The best of the joke was, that all this time Lord Masque and Tadpole were two old foxes, neither of whom conveyed to Lady Firebrace a single circumstance but with the wish, intention, and malice aforethought, that it should be communicated to his rival.

“I must get you to interest Lord de Mowbray in our cause,” said Sir Vavasour Firebrace, in an insinuating voice to his neighbour, Lady Joan; “I have sent him a large packet of documents. You know, he is one of us; still one of us. Once a baronet, always a baronet. The dignity merges, but does not cease; and happy as I am to see one covered with high honours, who is in every way so worthy of them, still I confess to you it is not so much as Earl de Mowbray that your worthy father interests me, as in his undoubted character and capacity of Sir Altamont Fitz-Warene, baronet.”

“You have the data on which you move I suppose well digested,” said Lady Joan, attentive but not interested.

“The case is clear; as far as equity is concerned, irresistible; indeed the late king pledged himself to a certain point. But if you would do me the favour of reading our memorial.”

“The proposition is not one adapted to our present civilisation,” said Lady Joan. “A baronetcy has become the distinction of the middle class; a physician, our physician for example, is a baronet; and I dare say some of our tradesmen; brewers, of people of that class. An attempt to elevate them into an order of nobility, however inferior, would partake in some degree of the ridiculous.”

“And has the duke escaped his gout this year?” enquired Lord Marney of Lady de Mowbray.

“A very slight touch; I never knew my father so well. I expect you will meet him here. We look for him daily.”

“I shall be delighted; I hope he will come to Marney in October. I keep the blue ribbon cover for him.”

“What you suggest is very just,” said Egremont to Lady Maud. “If we only in our own spheres made the exertion, the general effect would be great. Marney Abbey, for instance, I believe one of the finest of our monastic remains,—that indeed is not disputed—diminished yearly to repair barns; the cattle browsing in the nave; all this might be prevented, If my brother would not consent to preserve or to restore, still any member of the family, even I, without expense, only with a little zeal as you say, might prevent mischief, might stop at least demolition.”

“If this movement in the church had only revived a taste for Christian architecture,” said Lady Maud, “it would not have been barren, and it has done so much more! But I am surprised that old families can be so dead to our national art; so full of our ancestors, their exploits, their mind. Indeed you and I have no excuse for such indifference Mr Egremont.”

“And I do not think I shall ever again be justly accused of it,” replied Egremont, “you plead its cause so effectively. But to tell you the truth, I have been thinking of late about these things; monasteries and so on; the influence of the old church system on the happiness and comfort of the People.”

“And on the tone of the Nobles—do not you think so?” said Lady Maud. “I know it is the fashion to deride the crusades, but do not you think they had their origin in a great impulse, and in a certain sense, led to great results? Pardon me, if I speak with emphasis, but I never can forget I am a daughter of the first crusaders.”

“The tone of society is certainly lower than of yore,” said Egremont. “It is easy to say we view the past through a fallacious medium. We have however ample evidence that men feel less deeply than of old and act with less devotion. But how far is this occasioned by the modern position of our church? That is the question.”

“You must speak to Mr St Lys about that,” said Lady Maud. “Do you know him?” she added in a lowered tone.

“No; is he here?”

“Next to mamma.”