“I F you are coming my way, Goddard, we may as well walk back together,” said the Member, putting on his fur-lined coat.
Mr. Aloysius Gleam, member for Sunington, was a spare, precisely dressed little man on the hither side of forty. He was somewhat bald, and clean-shaven all to a tightly-screwed fair moustache. A gold-rimmed eye-glass added a quaint air of alertness to a shrewd, sharp-featured face.
Goddard acquiesced readily, although on this particular evening his road lay in a different direction. But democrat though he was, he felt flattered by Mr. Gleam’s friendly proposal. He was young—eight and twenty, a cabinetmaker by trade, self-taught and consequently self-opinionated, yet humble enough before evident superiority of knowledge or experience. Besides, in coming to take the chair at his lecture on The New Trades Unionism, before the Sunington Radical Club, the Member had paid him a decided compliment. A member of Parliament has many pleasanter and more profitable ways of spending a precious spare evening during a busy session.
They formed a singular contrast as they stood side by side in the little knot of committee-men who had remained behind after the audience had left. Goddard was above the middle height, squarely built, deep-chested, large-limbed; his decent workman’s clothes hung loosely upon him. His features were dark and massive, chin and forehead square, nose somewhat fleshy, mouth shutting stubbornly with folds at the sides; the lip, on which, like the rest of his face, no hair grew, rather long; altogether it was a powerful face, showing a nature capable of strong passions both for good and evil. The accident of straight black hair generally falling across his forehead, and a humorous setting of his eyes, relieved the face of harshness. At the present moment it was alive with the frankness of youth, and flushed with the success that had attended his lecture.
The group walked slowly down the hall through the chairs, and lingered for a moment at the clubhouse door. It was a new quarter of London. Mr. Aloysius Gleam had lived in the neighbourhood most of his life, and had seen it spring up from fields and market-gardens into a bustling town, with arteries fed from the life-stream of Oxford Street and the Strand. Its development had been dear to him. There was strong local feeling, and he was deservedly popular. It was therefore some time before he could break away from his supporters. At last he did so, and started with Goddard at a brisk pace up the High Street.
“I have been wondering,” he said, after a short silence, “whether you would care to take to politics seriously.”
“I hope you don’t think I’m playing at it,” replied Goddard.
“Tut! don’t be so confoundedly touchy,” said Gleam good-humouredly. “By ‘seriously’ I meant entirely, professionally. Would you like to devote all your time to the work?”
“I should think I would,” replied Goddard quickly; “but I can’t. I have my bread and butter to earn. I don’t quite see why you ask me.”
“Would you accept a position if your bread and butter were assured to you?”
“As a paid agitator? Oh no, thanks! I couldn’t stand that. Work of that sort must be given, not sold.”
“That’s rubbish,” said the Member lightly. “The labourer is worthy of his hire. The notion is as cranky as Tolstoi’s.”
“It isn’t,” said Goddard. “The paid agitator is a fraud. He pretends to be a working-man and he isn’t. When I address a crowd I can say, ‘I am one of yourselves, the real thing. I belong to the Amalgamated Union of Cabinetmakers, and earn my forty bob a week with the work of my hands.’ Men listen to me, and respect me. What I could not swallow would be for a fellow to get up and tell me, ‘It’s all very well for you to talk; but you’re paid for talking, and make a jolly good thing of it. Instead of helping the working-man, you are simply growing fat on the working-man’s hard-earned money.’ I’ve heard that said to paid agitators myself.”
“Well, who said I wanted you to become a paid agitator?” asked Gleam. “I don’t want you to stand on a barrel and address people as ‘fellow-sufferers.’ You are a cut above that kind of thing. What I wanted to propose to you was work on our new National Progressive League. Of course, scores of men are giving their services; but they are men of a certain amount of leisure. They can afford it. The working-man has no leisure to speak of, and we would give anything for the services of a few well-educated, clearheaded working-men like yourself. We could manage three pounds a week—perhaps more. Well, there’s a chance for you.”
Goddard walked on a few steps in silence. He was young, earnest, a passionate champion of the great questions on the Progressive programme. He felt in himself a power to grip the attention of men. He had dreamed vague dreams of personal ambition. Gleam’s offer was a great temptation. But the consciousness that it was a temptation made him adhere all the more obstinately to his principles.
“You are very kind,” he said at last, “and I am flattered by your opinion of me. But I shouldn’t feel justified in giving up my trade: it wouldn’t seem right.”
“Well, do as you like, my good fellow,” replied the Member cheerily. “But I think you’re a bit of an idiot. You’ll find a thousand first-rate cabinetmakers for one competent politician. Anyhow, if you change your mind——”
“I don’t like changing my mind,” returned Goddard, with a laugh, “as if it were a shirt.”
“We are none of us infallible, not even the youngest,” quoted the Member below his breath.
But, taking a broad view of youth, he forbore to rebuke the young man, and turned the conversation upon certain points in the recently delivered lecture. When he reached his turning he shook hands and disappeared.
Goddard looked at his watch, and gave a little whistle of dismay. An omnibus from the west lumbered up. Goddard climbed on to the roof, and returned down the High Street. At the “Golden Stag,” where the ’bus route ended, he descended, and proceeded almost at a run down some side streets and lanes, and eventually knocked at a door in a row of workmen’s cottages.
“Well, you are late,” said a girl who opened the door to him. “I’ve been waiting with my ’at on for the last three-quarters of an hour. No; you ain’t going to kiss me. If you’d wanted to do that, you’d have found your way here before.”
“I’ve come as fast as I could, Lizzie,” said the young man, somewhat out of breath. “But I went back part of the way with Mr. Gleam, who wanted to speak to me.”
“That’s all very fine,” said Lizzie. “But I think I count for something.”
She led the way into a little front room, where a couple of girls were busy with dressmaking. One of them was bending over a sewing-machine. Bits of stuff and patterns littered the table. A few spotted fashion-plates adorned the walls. The air was heavy with the smell of new mercery.
“Here’s Dan at last!” said Lizzie. “It’s only a case of how d’ye do and good-bye. These are my two cousins. This one’s Emily, and that’s Sophie. Oh, look at the clock! It is a shaime!” Goddard shook hands with the two cousins of his affianced—pale, anemic girls, who giggled a little, while Lizzie saw to the straightness of her hat in the gilt mirror over the mantelpiece. When that was done, she admired herself for a moment. She was pretty—with the devil’s prettiness; fluffy fair hair, a pink complexion and small, watery blue eyes—a poetic but discarded admirer had termed them “liquid azure,” which had pleased her mightily. Her mouth had a ripe way of pouting that took the edge off tart speeches, at any-rate in a lover’s opinion, but otherwise it was loose and devoid of character.
“I can’t let him stop to talk,” she said, turning to her cousins. “Father’ll be in an awful stew. I’ll bring him round another day.”
“If he’ll come,” said Emily, the elder of the two.
“Oh, of course I will,” said Goddard. “I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance.”
He was feeling, somewhat abashed amid these feminine surroundings, and laughed awkwardly. When the door closed behind Lizzie and himself he was relieved.
“I hope you are not vexed with me, Lizzie,” he said humbly. “I really did not know it was so late.”
“It’s no use talking about it,” said Lizzie in an injured tone. “But just let me keep you waiting, and see how you’d like it.”
However, after a time, Lizzie was mollified, and in token thereof drew Daniel’s arm, correctly loverwise, within her own.
“The lecture was a great success,” he said at length. “Many more people than I had expected. I wish you had been there. Only they don’t admit ladies.”
“What was it about? Politics, wasn’t it?”
“Yes—broadly speaking. Strictly it was on the New Trades Unionism. I traced its development, you know, showing how the spirit has changed. The Old Trades Unions were intensely jealous of State interference, because they looked upon the Government as the natural enemy of labour. But now labour is a powerful element in the State, and means to legislate for itself, and so make State-control the very bulwark of its rights. Of course I went into all kinds of details, but that was the general run of it.”
“It must have been awfully clever,” said Lizzie, without much enthusiasm.
“Oh, I don’t know,” laughed the young man. “I was a little nervous at first. You see I have spoken often enough, both at the club and in the open air, and then the words come naturally. You get warmed up, you know, and you let them have it straight. But this is the first time I’ve given a set lecture in cold blood, where everything has got to be expressed in chosen language—but it went very well. Mr. Gleam told me I was quite academic.”
“He’s a great swell, isn’t he?” asked Lizzie. “Drives his carriage and pair, and lives in the big house with the griffins on the front gates. And you walked back with him?”
“Only to the top of the street,” replied Goddard, still sounding an apologetic note. “He wanted to ask me whether I would throw up the workshop and become a paid agent of the National Progressive League.”
“Oh, how nice!” said Lizzie.
“Yes, it was nice of him,” replied Goddard; “but, of course, I declined.”
“Oh, Daniel! How could you? It would have been so much more genteel.”
The word jarred upon him. It set the matter in a new light, and made it look very ugly. Besides, it afforded him a not very satisfactory peep into Lizzie’s spiritual horizon.
“You don’t mind my being a working-man, do you, Lizzie?” he asked, with some reproach.
“Oh, never mind. What’s the odds? We needn’t trouble about it. If you like to wear a dirty apron and have your ’ands all covered over with varnish and turpentine, I’m sure I don’t care.”
She tossed her head, and drew a little away from him, so that only his fingers touched her arm.
“I don’t think we need discuss that,” said Goddard stiffly—“unless you think I am not good enough for you. In that case you might as well tell me at once.”
“Now you’re unkind,” said Lizzie.
They walked a few steps in silence, and then Lizzie pulled out a pocket-handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. The young man’s heart softened miraculously. He slid back his arm beneath hers, and drew her a little closer.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Liz. Indeed, I didn’t. What can I do to say I’m sorry?”
“You think I don’t care for you,” whimpered Lizzie. “Every one knows I gave up Joe Forster just for you; and he’s got his own tobacco business and keeps an assistant.”
The main part of which statement was not exactly in accordance with facts. But Goddard was not in the current of local gossip, and did not suspect his sweetheart’s veracity.
“Then you’ll forgive me, and we’ll make it up?”
“You don’t want to break it off?”
“I? Good gracious, no. Why, Liz!”
There was another pause. They were in the middle of the High Street. Knots of loafers hung around the blazing entrances of the public-houses, but otherwise the pavement was more or less deserted.
“Why don’t you put your arm round my waist, then?” said Lizzie softly.
Goddard did as he was bidden. She laughed out loud at his shy awkwardness, and pulled his fingers tighter round her figure.
“One’d say I was the only girl you’d ever walked out with.”
“Well, you are,” replied Goddard simply. “I never bothered much with girls till I knew you.”
“I believe that’s a cracker,” said Lizzie, who was beginning to enjoy the walk.
“It isn’t, indeed. I swear it’s true.”
“Oh! How can you? Well, if it’s true it oughtn’t to have been. You ought to have had some one to practise on, and then you would have learned to do things nicely. Practice makes perfect, you know.”
A light argument followed, which ended in Goddard’s discomfiture, and left him with a vague feeling that he had missed one of the duties of man in letting his talent for lovemaking lie dormant, and also an uneasy wonder at the extent of Lizzie’s familiarity with the subject. But Lizzie was quite happy.
“You wouldn’t like any other girl, would you?”
She rested her head slightly against him. The glare of an electric-lighted shop-front fell on her pretty, upturned face, and the young man forgot everything, save that she had soft puckered lips and young, even teeth.
They were reconciled as far as harmony was ever possible between their natures. The rest of the walk home was undisturbed, and when they arrived at Lizzie’s door they were well pleased with each other. She opened the door with her latch-key and, holding it ajar, received his kiss prettily, and then with a desire to complete the reconciliation in all ways, said—
“I’m glad you decided to remain a workingman, Dan. I can’t bear them silly politics.”
She disappeared quickly. Dan remained for a moment looking vaguely at the knocker, as if to address it in confidential remonstrance; and then turning away, he let himself into the adjoining house, and slowly mounted the stairs to his room, with an all-pervading sense of the strange futility of the female mind.
She was the one thing feminine that had come across his path. He had stared at it like a new Adam. His original Eden lay at the back of the houses, and was divided by a low wall. Here, first, he used to lean, in his shirt-sleeves, pipe in mouth, on the late summer evenings, and exchange remarks with her as she removed the washing from the clothes’ lines, or idly took the air. How he had drifted into his present relations he would have found it difficult to determine. It never occurred to him to do so, his mind being filled with other things.
By degrees he had familiarised himself with the fact of her existence. Then it seemed natural that he should marry her. In his social sphere a wife formed a necessary part of everyday existence. And then she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. When he kissed the pouting lips, all kinds of strange tinglings ran through him. That was proof positive of his being in love. So one day he called on her father, a retired captain of a Thames steamboat, and obtained his consent to the marriage. He was earning good wages, had even a little put by. The old man, whose tastes were not of a domestic order, and who found a daughter an expensive luxury, got solemnly drunk all by himself to celebrate the occasion. Goddard considered him an abandoned old ruffian, as soon as he came to know more about him, and conceiving a tender pity for Lizzie, longed to get her out of his clutches.
It was hard work to carry on his trade, his self-education, his political pursuits, and his lovemaking, all at the same time. The last was distinctly pleasant, but it was sadly lacking in advantages from a utilitarian point of view. Until he had fallen in love with her over that back-garden wall, he had scouted the idea of “messing about” with girls as a criminal waste of precious hours Even now he felt somewhat guilty. He longed to be married, to settle down, to have Lizzie’s pretty face at his fireside definitely assured to him for the rest of his days, and to see before him a peaceful, undisturbed stretch of years wherein to further with all his heart and energies the great movement in which he was absorbed.
Perhaps Lizzie was right. A little previous practice in the art of love would have been for his good; but in a widely different sense from that which came within Lizzie’s philosophy.
A few evenings after he had given the lecture at the Radical Club, he took her to the theatre. Some weeks previously he had treated her to the Lyceum, not doubting in the guilelessness of his heart that her aesthetic appreciation would be as great as his own. But she had been bored to death, had come home cross, and the subject of play-going became a dangerous one. This time, however, by way of compensation, it was the Adelphi. Lizzie laughed and wept and squeezed Daniel’s arm, and enjoyed herself amazingly. She did not know with whom she was the more delighted, Mr. William Terriss or Daniel. On the top of the homeward ’bus she decided in favour of Daniel. She nestled close to him on the garden-seat, and brought his arm round her. Then she drew off her well-worn glove, so as to put her bare hand in his. He was touched, tightened his circling arm, and bent down his head till the fluffy fair curls brushed his lips.
“Why don’t you hug me oftener, Dan?” she murmured. “Like this. It makes me feel much more homey with you.”
“We are not always on top of a ’bus,” said Dan.
She gave him a little nudge to show him that she appreciated his jest, but she went on—
“I don’t mind your kissing me, Dan. I like it. Now we’re engaged you ought to be awfully spoony, you know, and squeeze me, and tell me how lovely I look, and all that.”
They were on the front seat of the ’bus; the people behind did not count as spectators; the hurrying roadway and crowded pavement below were remote as the clear-shining stars above. Daniel surrendered to the coaxing murmur, and kissed her a long lover’s kiss. When an inspector, a short time afterwards, demanded their tickets, Goddard forgot his Collectivist principles and became a fierce Individualist.
“What a confounded nuisance—these fellows disturbing us! It oughtn’t to be allowed,” he said, resettling himself. And Lizzie acquiesced.
Towards the end of the journey they grew silent. Lizzie, tired, dozed with her head on his shoulder. A sudden jolt of the ‘bus awakened her. She laughed, and rubbed her eyes.
“I do believe I’ve been asleep. What have you been doing all the time?”
“Thinking,” he replied, smiling at the question.
“What of?”
“Well, I was thinking of my speech on Saturday in Hyde Park, you know. There is an Eight Hour demonstration, and the League people have asked me to take a platform. I’m becoming quite an important person, you see, Liz.”