The Ivory Gate, a new edition

Checkley went back to his office.

'What did she mean by it, then?' Mr. Dering murmured. 'Who put her on to such a suspicion? What did she mean by it? Of course it's nonsense.' So reassuring himself, he yet remained disquieted. For he could not remember.

At half-past five or so, Mr. Edmund Gray arrived at his Chambers. The outer door was closed, but he found his disciple waiting for him. She had been there an hour or more, she said. She was reading one of the books he had recommended to her. With the words of Mr. Dering in her ears, she read as if two voices were speaking to her – talking to each other across her.

She laid down the book and rose to greet him. 'Master,' she said, 'I have come from Mr. Dering. He is your solicitor, you told me.'

'Assuredly. He manages my affairs.'

'It is curious – I asked him if he knew you – and he said that he knew nothing about you.'

'That is curious, certainly. My solicitor for – for many years. He must have mistaken the name. Or – he grows old – perhaps he forgets people.'

'Do you often see him?'

'I saw him this morning. I took him my letter to the Times. He is narrow – very narrow, in his views. We argued the thing for a bit. But, really, one might as well argue with a stick as with Dering when Property is concerned. So he forgets, does he? Poor old chap! He forgets – well – we all grow old together!' He sighed. 'It is his time to-day and mine to-morrow. – My Scholar, let us talk.'

The Scholar left her Master at seven. On her way out she ran against Checkley, who was prowling round the court. 'You!' he cried. 'You! Ah! I've caught you, have I? On Saturday afternoon I thought I see you going into No. 22. Now I've caught you coming out, have I?'

'Checkley,' she said, 'if you are insolent, I shall have to speak to Mr. Dering;' and walked away.

'There's another of 'em,' Checkley murmured, looking after her – 'a hardened one, if ever there was. All for her lover and her brother! A pretty nest of 'em. And calls herself a lady!'

CHAPTER XXVI

THE LESSON OF THE STREET

'Child,' said the Master, 'it is time that you should take another lesson.'

'I am ready. Let us begin.' She crossed her hands in her lap and looked up obedient.

'Not a lesson this time from books. A practical lesson from men and women, boys and girls, children and infants in arms. Let us go forth and hear the teaching of the wrecks and the slaves. I will show you creatures who are men and women mutilated in body and mind – mutilated by the social order. Come, I will show you, not by words, but by sight, why Property must be destroyed.'

It was seven o'clock, when Mr. Dering ought to have been thinking of his dinner, that Mr. Edmund Gray proposed this expedition. Now, since that other discourse on the sacredness of Property, a strange thing had fallen upon Elsie. Whenever her Master spoke and taught, she seemed to hear, following him, the other voice speaking and teaching exactly the opposite. Sometimes – this is absurd, but many true things are absurd – she seemed to hear both voices speaking together: yet she heard them distinctly and apart. Looking at Mr. Dering, she knew what he was saying: looking at Mr. Edmund Gray, she heard what he was saying. So that no sooner had these words been spoken, than, like a response in church, there arose the voice of Mr. Dering. And it said: 'Come. You shall see the wretched lives and the sufferings of those who are punished because their fathers or themselves have refused to work and save. Not to be able to get Property is the real curse of labour. It is no evil to work provided one chooses the work and creates for one's self Property. The curse is to have to work for starvation wages at what can never create property, if the worker should live for a thousand years.'

Of the two voices she preferred the one which promised the abolition of poverty and crime. She was young: she was generous: any hope of a return of the Saturnian reign made her heart glow. Of the two old men – the mad man and the sane man – she loved the mad man. Who would not love such a man? Why, he knew how to make the whole world happy! Ever since the time of Adam we have been looking and calling out and praying for such a man. Every year the world runs after such a man. He promises, but he does not perform. The world tries his patent medicine, and is no better. Then, the year after, the world runs after another man.

Elsie rose and followed the Master. It was always with a certain anxiety that she sat or talked with him. Always she dreaded lest, by some unlucky accident, he should awaken and be restored to himself suddenly and without warning – say in his Lecture Hall. How would he look? What should she say? 'See – in this place for many years past you have in course of madness preached the very doctrines which in hours of sanity you have most reprobated. These people around you are your disciples. You have taught them by reason and by illustration with vehemence and earnestness to regard the destruction of property as the one thing needful for the salvation of the world. What will you say now? Will you begin to teach the contrary? They will chase you out of the Hall for a madman. Will you go on with your present teaching? You will despise yourself for a madman.' Truly a difficult position. Habit, however, was too strong. There was little chance that Edmund Gray among his own people, and at work upon his own hobby, would become Edward Dering.

They went out together. He led her – whither? It mattered not. North and South and East and West you may find everywhere the streets and houses of the very poor hidden away behind the streets of the working people and the well-to-do.

The Master stopped at the entrance of one of those streets – it seemed to Elsie as if she was standing between two men both alike, with different eyes. At the corner was a public-house with swinging doors. It was filled with men talking, but not loudly. Now and then a woman went in or came out, but they were mostly men. It was a street long and narrow, squalid to the last degree, with small two-storied houses on either side. The bricks were grimy; the mortar was constantly falling out between them: the woodwork of doors and windows was insufferably grimy: many of the panes were broken in the windows. It was full of children: they swarmed: they ran about in the road, they danced on the pavement, they ran and jumped and laughed as if their lot was the happiest in the world and their future the brightest. Moreover, most of them, though their parents were steeped in poverty, looked well fed and even rosy. 'All these children,' said Mr. Edmund Gray, 'will grow up without a trade: they will enter life with nothing but their hands and their legs and their time. That is the whole of their inheritance. They go to school, and they like school: but as for the things they learn, they will forget them, or they will have no use for them. Hewers of wood and drawers of water shall they be: they are condemned already. That is the system: we take thousands of children every year, and we condemn them to servitude – whatever genius may be lying among them. It is like throwing treasures into the sea, or burying the fruits of the earth. Waste! Waste! Yet, if the system is to be bolstered up, what help?'

Said the other Voice: 'The world must have servants. These are our servants. If they are good at their work, they will rise and become upper servants. If they are good upper servants, they may rise higher. Their children can rise higher still, and their grandchildren may join us. Service is best for them. Good service, hard service, will keep them in health and out of temptation. To lament because they are servants is foolish and sentimental.'

Standing in the doorways, sitting on the door-steps, talking together, were women – about four times as many women as there were houses. This was because there were as many families as rooms, and there were four rooms for every house. As they stood at the end of the street and looked down, Elsie observed that nearly every woman had a baby in her arms, and that there were a great many types or kinds of women. That which does not surprise one in a drawing-room, where every woman is expected to have her individual points, is noticed in a crowd, where, one thinks, the people should be like sheep – all alike.

'A splendid place, this street, for such a student as you should be, my Scholar.' The Master looked up and down – he sniffed the air, which was stuffy, with peculiar satisfaction: he smiled upon the grubby houses. 'You should come often; you should make the acquaintance of the people: you will find them so human, so desperately human, that you will presently understand that these women are your sisters. Change dresses with one of them: let your hair fall wild: take off your bonnet – '

'Shall I then be quite like them?' asked Elsie. 'Like them, Master? Oh! not quite like them.'

'Not quite like them,' he said. 'No; you could never talk like them.'

He walked about among the people, who evidently knew him, because they made way for him, nodded to him, and pretended, such was their politeness, to pay no attention to the young lady who accompanied him.

'Every one of them is a study,' he continued. 'I could preach to you on every one as a text. Here is my young friend Alice Parden, for instance' – he stopped before a pale girl of seventeen or so, tall and slender, but of drooping figure, who carried a baby in her arms. 'Look at her. Consider. Alice is foolish, like all the Alices of this street. Alice must needs marry her chap a year ago, when she was sixteen and he was eighteen. Alice should be still at her club in the evening and her work in the daytime. But she must marry, and she is a child mother. – Is he out of work still?' Alice nodded, and hugged her baby closer. Mr. Edmund Gray shook his head in admonition, but gave her a coin, and went on. 'Now look at this good woman' – he stopped before a door where an Amazon was leaning – a woman five feet eight in height, with brawny arms and broad shoulders and a fiery furnace for a face – a most terrible and fearful woman. – 'How are you this evening, Mrs. Moss? And how is your husband?'

Long is the arm of coincidence. Mrs. Moss was just beginning to repose after a row royal; she was slowly simmering and slowly calming. There had been a row royal, a dispute, an argument, a quarrel, and a fight with her husband. All four were only just concluded. All four had been conducted on the pavement, for the sake of coolness and air and space. The residents stood around: the controversy was sharp and animated: the lady bore signs of its vehemence in a bruise, rapidly blackening, over one eye, and abrasions on her knuckles. The husband had been conducted by his friends from the spot to the public-house at the corner, where he was at present pulling himself together, and forgetting the weight of his consort's fists, and solacing his spirit with strong drink.

'How is my husband?' the lady repeated. 'Oh! I'll tell you. I'll tell you, Mr. Gray, how my husband is. Oh! how is he? Go, look for him in the public-house. You shall see how he is and what he looks like.' She descended two steps, still retaining the advantage of the lowest. Then, describing a semicircle with her right arm, she began an impassioned harangue. The residents fled, right and left, not knowing whether in her wrath she might not mistake the whole of them, collectively, for her husband. The men in the public-house hearing her voice, trembled, and looked apprehensively at the door. But Mr. Gray stood before her without fear. He knew her better than to run away. The lady respected his courage, and rejoiced in a sympathetic listener. Presently she ran down: she paused: she gasped: she caught at her heart: she choked: she wept. She sat down on the doorstep, this great strong woman, with the brawny arms and the fiery face, and she wept. The residents crept timidly back again and gathered round her, murmuring sympathy: the men in the public-house trembled again. Mr. Gray grasped her by the hand and murmured a few words of consolation; for indeed there were great wrongs, such as few wives even in this street expect, and undeniable provocations. Then he led his Scholar away.

At the next house he entered, taking Elsie with him to a room at the back where a woman sat making garments. She was a middle-aged woman, and though very poorly dressed, not in rags: the room was neat except for the garments lying about. She looked up cheerfully – her eyes were bright, her face was fine – and smiled. 'You here, Mr. Gray?' she said. 'Well, I was only thinking yesterday how long it is since you came to see me last. I mustn't stop working, but you can talk.'

'This is a very special friend of mine,' said the Master. 'I have known her for ten years, ever since I began to visit the street. She is always cheerful: though she has to live on sweating work and sweating pay. She never complains. She lives like the sparrows, and eats about as much as a sparrow: she is always respectable. She goes to church on Sundays: she is always neat in her dress. Yet she must be always hungry.'

'Ah!' said the woman, 'you'd wonder. Miss, if you knew how little a woman can live upon.'

'Oh! but,' said Elsie, 'to have always to live on that little!'

'She is the daughter of a man once thought well to do.' – 'He was most respectable,' said the woman. – 'He died, and left nothing but debts. The family were soon scattered, and – you see – this street contains some of those who have fallen low down as well as those who are born low down. It is Misfortune Lane as well as Poverty Lane. To the third and fourth generation, misfortune, when it begins – the reason of its beginning is the wickedness of one man – still persecutes and follows the family.'

'Thank you, Miss,' said the woman. 'And if you will come again sometimes – Oh! you needn't be afraid. No one would hurt a friend of Mr. Gray.' So they went out.

On the next doorstep and the next and the next, there sat women old and young, but all of these had the same look and almost the same features – they were heavy-faced, dull-eyed, thick-lipped, unwashed, and unbrushed. 'These,' said the Master, 'are the women who know of nothing better than the life they lead here. They have no hope of rising: they would be unhappy out of this street. They bear children: they bring them up, and they die. It is womanhood at its lowest. They want warmth, food, and drink, and that is nearly all. They are the children and grandchildren of women like themselves, and they are the mothers of women like themselves. Savage lands have no such savagery as this, for the worst savages have some knowledge, and these women have none. They are mutilated by our system. We have deprived them of their souls. They are the products of our system. In a better order these people could not exist: they would not be allowed parents or birth. The boy would still be learning his trade, and the girl would be working at hers. That little woman who meets her troubles with so brave a heart has been sweated all her life – ever since her misfortunes began: she takes it as part of the thing they call life: she believes that it will be made up to her somehow in another world. I hope it will.'

'All these people,' said the other Voice, 'are what they are because of the follies and the vices of themselves and their fathers. The boy-husband has no trade. Whose fault is that? The rickety boy and the rickety girl bring into the world a rickety baby. Whose fault is that? Let them grow worse instead of better until they learn by sharper suffering that vice and folly bring their punishment.'

'You see the children,' continued the Master, 'and the mothers. You do not see any old men, because this sort mostly die before they reach the age of sixty. Those who are past work and yet continue to live go into the House. The girls you do not see, because those who are not forced to work all the evening as well as all the day are out walking with their sweethearts. Nor the men, because they are mostly in the public-house. They are all hand-to-mouth working men: they live by the job when they can get any. When they are out of work, they live upon each other. We hide this kind of thing away in back streets like this, and we think it isn't dangerous. But it is. Formerly, the wreckage huddled together bred plagues and pestilences, which carried off rich and poor with equal hand, and so revenged itself. In other ways, the wreckage revenges itself still.'

'This kind of people,' said the other Voice, 'may be dangerous. We have a Police on purpose to meet the danger. They would be quite as dangerous if you were to give them free dinners and house them without rent. The class represents the untameable element. They are always a danger. To cry over them is silly and useless.'

They walked down the street. Everybody knew Mr. Edmund Gray. He had a word for all. It was evident that he had been a visitor in the street for a long time: he had the air of a proprietor: he entered the houses and opened doors and sat down and talked, his disciple standing beside him and looking on. He asked questions and gave advice – not of a subversive Socialistic kind, but sound advice, recognising the order that is, not the order that should be.

All the rooms in this street were tenanted, mostly a family to each. In many of them work was going on still, though it was already eight o'clock. Sometimes it would be a woman sitting alone in her room like a prisoner in a cell, stitching for dear life: sometimes three or four women or girls sitting all together, stitching for dear life: sometimes a whole family, little children and all, making matches, making canvas bags, making paper bags, making card-boxes, all making – making – making for dear life. And the fingers did not stop and the eyes were not lifted, though the visitors opened the door and came in and asked questions, to which one replied in the name of all the rest.

It is an old, old story – everybody knows the slum: people go to gaze upon it; it is one of the chief sights of Victorian London, just as a hundred and fifty years ago it was one of the sights to see the women flogged at Bridewell. Not such a very great advance in civilisation, perhaps, after all.

'It is a hive – the place is swarming with life,' said the girl, who had never before seen such a street.

'Life means Humanity. All these people are so like you, my Scholar, that you would be surprised. You would not be like them if you were dressed in these things, but they are like you. They want the same things as you – they have the same desires – they suffer the same pains. What makes your happiness? Food – warmth, sufficiency, not too much work. These are the elements for you as well as for them. In my system they will have all these – and then perhaps they will build up, as you have done, an edifice of Knowledge, Art, and Sweet Thoughts. But they are all like you. And most in one thing. For all women of all classes, there is one thing needful. These girls, like you, want love. They all want love. Oh, child! they are so like you, so very like you – these poor women of the lowest class. So very like their proud sisters.' He paused for a moment. Elsie made no reply. 'You see,' he continued, 'they are so hard at work that they cannot even lift their eyes to look at you – not even at you, though they seldom see a girl among them so lovely and so well dressed. One would have thought – but there is the Whip that drives – that dreadful Whip – it hangs over them and drives them all day long without rest or pause. Their work pays their rent and keeps them alive. It just keeps them alive, and that is all. No more. It must be hard to work all day long for another person – if you come to think of it. Happily, they do not think. And all this grinding poverty – this terrible work, that one family may be able to live in a great house and to do nothing.'

'They are working,' said the other Voice, 'because one man has had the wit to create a market for their work. His thrift, his enterprise, his clearness of sight, have made it possible for these girls to find the work that keeps them. If they would have the sense not to marry recklessly, there would be fewer working girls, and wages would go up. If their employer raised their wages only a penny a day, he would benefit them but little and would ruin himself. They must learn – if they can – the lesson of forethought by their own sufferings. No one can help them.'

As Mr. Edmund Gray walked into the houses and out again Elsie went with him, or she waited outside while he went in. Sometimes she heard the chink of coin: sometimes she heard words of thanks. The Socialist, whatever he taught, practised the elementary form of charity possible only for those who have money. Elsie remarked this little point, but said nothing.

'What you see here,' said the Master, 'is the lowest class of all – if one ever gets to the lowest level. For my own part, I have seen men and women so wretched that you would have called them miserrimi– of all created beings the most wretched. Yet have I afterwards found others more wretched still. In this street are those who make the lowest things: those who can make nothing, and have no trade, and live on odd jobs: and those who can neither make nor work, but thieve and lie about.'

'I see all that; but, dear Master, what will your new order do for such people? Will it make those who will not work industrious?'