The Socialist

"Thank you, sir," the woman answered, subsiding heavily once more upon her stool. "I have never done away with any children yet, and I am glad you know it. I've never been up before any beak yet, and I does my best. They comes to me when they've got the insurances on the kids, and I ses, 'No,' I ses, 'you take 'em where you know wot you wants will be done. You won't have far to go,' I ses, and so they takes 'em away. 'My bizness,' I ses, 'is open and aboveboard.' I looks arter the kids for a penny a day, and I gives 'm back to their mothers when they comes 'ome, feeding them meanwhile as well as I can."

Mary was standing horror-struck in the middle of the room. She turned to Inspector Brown.

"Oh," she said, "how awful! How terrible! How utterly awful!"

The inspector looked down at her with grave face.

"You may well say so, miss," he answered. "I am a married man myself, and it goes to my heart. But you must know that all this woman says is absolutely true. She is dying of dropsy, and she looks after these children for their mothers while they are at the match factories in Bethnal Green or making shirts in some Jew sweater's den. She is not what you may call a 'baby-farmer.' She is not one of those women who make a profession of killing children by starvation and cold in order that their parents may get the insurance money. As she goes, this woman is honest."

"But look, look!" Mary answered, pointing with quivering finger to the swarming things upon the mattresses.

"I know," the inspector answered, "but, miss, there are worse things than this that you could see in the neighbourhood."

Suddenly Mary's blood, which had been cooled and chilled by the awful spectacle, rose to boiling point in a single second. She felt sick, she said, wheeling round and turning to Fabian Rose – she felt sick that all these terrible things should be. "Why should such things be allowed?"

"My dear," Rose answered very gravely, "it is the fault of our modern system. It is the fault of capitalism. This is one of the reasons why we are Socialists."

"Then," Mary said, her eyes flashing, her breast heaving, "then, Mr. Rose, I am a Socialist, too – from this day, from this hour."

As she spoke she did not see that Aubrey Flood, the actor-manager, was regarding her with a keen, intense scrutiny. He watched her every movement. He listened to every inflection of her voice, and then – even in that den of horror – he turned aside and smiled quietly to himself.

"Yes," he thought, "Fabian was right. Here, indeed, is the one woman who shall make our play a thing which shall beat at the doors of London like a gong."

Inspector Brown spoke to Mary in his calm official voice.

"Now, what should you think, miss," he said, "this woman – Mrs. Church – pays weekly for this room?"

"Pays?" Mary answered. "Pays? Does she pay for such a room as this?"

The fat woman upon the stool answered in a heavy, thick, watery voice: "Pye, miss? I pye eight shillings a week for this ere room."

Mary started; she could not understand it.

"What?" she said with a little stamp of her foot upon the ground.

"It is perfectly true, miss," the County Council inspector interposed. "The rents of these places – these single rooms – are extremely high."

"Then why do they pay them?" Mary asked.

"Because, miss," the inspector answered, "if they didn't they would have nowhere to go at all, except to the workhouse. You see, people of this sort cannot move from where they are. They are as much tied to places of this sort as a prisoner in gaol is confined in his cell. It is either this or the streets."

"But for all that money," Mary said, "surely they could give them a decent place to live in?"

"We are doing all we can, miss, on the County Council, of course," the man replied, "and the workmen's dwellings which are springing up all over London are, indeed, a great improvement, but they are taken up at once by the hard-working artisan class, in more or less regular employment. It would be impossible to let any of the County Council tenements to a woman like this. Her income is so precarious, and there are others far more thrifty and deserving who must have first choice."

"Who is the landlord?" Mary asked. She was standing next to the dropsical woman by the fireside as she spoke.

"Oh, missie" – the woman answered her question – "the 'ead-landlord is Colonel Simpson at the big estyte orffice in Oxford Street, but, of course, we don't never see 'im. The collectors comes raund week by week and we pyes them. If we wants anythink then we arsts them, and they ses they'll mention it at 'eadquarters, but, of course, nuthink does get done. I don't suppose Colonel Simpson ever 'ears of nuthink."

"It is perfectly true, miss," said the inspector. "It is only when we absolutely prosecute the estate agency for some flagrant breach of sanitary regulations that anything can be done in houses like this, and even then the lawyers in their employ are so conversant with all the recent enactments, and so shrewd in the science of evading them, that practically we can do nothing at all."

When Mary turned to Fabian Rose he was standing side by side with the Reverend Peter Conrad.

Both men were looking at her gravely and a little curiously.

"Who is this Colonel Simpson?" she asked. "Could not he be exposed in the Press? Could not he be held up to execration? Could not you, Mr. Goodrick," she said, flashing upon the editor, who had hitherto remained in the background and said no word, "could not you tell the world of the wickedness of this Colonel Simpson?"

The little man with the straw-coloured moustache and the keen eyes smiled.

"Miss Marriott," he said, "you realise very little as yet. You do not know what the forces of capitalism and monopoly mean. Day by day we are driving our chisels into the basis of the structure, and some day it will begin to totter; some day, again, it will fall, but not yet, not yet. Mr. Simpson is a mere nobody. He is a machine. His object in life is to get as much money as he can out of the vast properties which he controls for another. He is an agent, nothing more."

"Then who does this really belong to? Who is really responsible?" Mary asked.

Fabian Rose looked at her very meaningly.

"Once more," he said, "I will pronounce that ill-omened name – the Duke of Paddington."

"Let us go away," Mr. Conrad said suddenly. He noticed that Mary's face was very pale, and that she was swaying a little.

They went out into the hall and stood there for a moment undecided as to what to do.

Mary seemed about to faint.

Suddenly from the back of the hall, steps were heard coming towards them, and in a moment more the face of a clean-shaven man appeared. He was mounting from the stairs that led down into what had once been the kitchens or cellars of the old house.

Just half of his body was visible, when he stopped suddenly, as if turned to stone.

As he did so the bearded Inspector Brown stepped quickly forward and caught him by the shoulder.

"Ah, it is you, is it?" he said. "Come up and let us have a look at you."

The man's face grew absolutely white, then, with a sudden eel-like movement, he twisted away from under the inspector's hand and vanished down the stairs.

In a flash the inspector and his companion were after him.

"Come on!" they shouted to the others, "come on, we shall want you!"

Rose and Conrad dashed after them. Mary could hear them stumbling down the stairs, and then a confused noise of shouting as if from the bowels of the earth.

She was left alone, standing there with Mr. Goodrick, when she suddenly became aware that the staircase leading to the upper part of the house had become crowded with noiseless figures, looking down upon what was toward with motionless, eager faces.

"What shall we do?" Mary said. "What does it all mean?"

"I am sure I don't know," Goodrick answered, "but if you are not afraid, don't you think we had better follow our friends? I suppose the inspector is after some thief or criminal whom he has just recognised."

"I am not afraid," Mary said.

"Come along, then," he answered, and together they went to the end of the hall and stumbled down some greasy steps.