Johnny Ludlow First Series Part 94

"Well, perhaps so."

"Look here, Tod. If we had a home to keep up and a lot of mouths to feed and weekly rent to pay, and a strike stopped the supplies, we might be in a worse humour than h.o.a.r is."

"Right, Johnny." And Tod went off at a strapping pace.

How it may be with other people, I don't know: but when I get back to a place after an absence, I want to see every one, and am apt to go das.h.i.+ng in at doors without warning.

"It won't take us a minute to look in on Miss Timmens, Tod," I said, as we neared the school-house. "She'll tell us the news of the whole parish."

"Take the minute, then, if you like," said Tod. "I am not going to bother myself with Miss Timmens."

Neither perhaps should I, after that, for Tod swayed me still; but in pa.s.sing the door it was opened wide by one of the little scholars. Miss Timmens sat in her chair, the lithe, thin cane, three yards long, raised in her hand, its other end descending, gently enough on the shoulders of a chattering girl.

"I don't keep it to beat 'em," Miss Timmens was wont to say of her cane, "but just to tap 'em into attention when they are beyond the reach of my hand." And, to give her her due, it was nothing more.

"It's you, is it, Master Johnny? I heard you were all expected."

"It's me, safe enough. How goes the world with you, Miss Timmens?"

"Cranky," was the short answer. "South Crabb's going out of its senses, I think. The parson is trying to introduce fresh ways and doings, in my school: new-fangled rubbish, Master Johnny, that will bring more harm than good. I won't have it, and so he and I are at daggers drawn. And there's a strike in the place!"

I nodded. While she spoke, it had struck me, looking at the room, that it was not so full as usual.

"It's the strike does that," she said, in a sort of triumph. "It's the strike that works all the ill and every kind of evil"--and it was quite evident the strike found no more favour with her than the parson's fresh ways.

"But what has the strike to do with the children's absence from school?"

"The strike has carried all the children's best things to the p.a.w.n-shop, and they've nothing decent left to come abroad in. That is one cause, Johnny Ludlow," she concluded, very tartly.

"Is there any other?"

"Don't you think that sufficient? I am not going to let them appear before me in rags--and so Crabb Lane knows. But there is another cause, sir. This strike has so altered the course of things that the whole order of ordinary events is turned upside down. Even if the young ones'

frocks were home again, it would be ten to one against their coming to school."

"I don't see the two little h.o.a.rs." And why I had been looking for those particular children I can't say, unless it was that h.o.a.r and his peculiar manner had been floating in my mind ever since we pa.s.sed him.

"'Liza and Jessy--no, but they've been here till to-day," was the reply, given after a long pause. "Are you going, Mr. Johnny?--I'll just step outside with you."

She drew the door close behind her, keeping the handle in her hand, and looked straight into my face.

"Jacob h.o.a.r has gone and beat his boy almost to death this morning--and the strike's the cause of _that_," she whispered, emphatically.

"Jacob h.o.a.r has!--Why, how came he to do it?"--I exclaimed, recalling more forcibly than ever the man's curious look, and the curious looks of the other men holding aloof from him. "Which of his boys is it?"

"The second of them; little d.i.c.k. Yes, he is black and blue all over, they say; next door to beat to death; and his arm's broken. And they have the strike to thank for it."

She repeated the concluding words more stingingly than before. That Miss Timmens was wroth with the strike, there could be no mistake. I asked her why the strike was to be thanked for the beating and the broken arm.

"Because the strike has brought misery; and _that_ is the source of all the ill going on just now in Crabb Lane," was her reply. "When the men threw themselves out of work, of course they threw themselves out of wages. Some funds have been furnished to them, weekly I believe, from the Trades Union League--or whatever they call the thing--but it seems a mere nothing compared with what they used to earn. Household goods, as well as clothes, have been going to the p.a.w.n-shop, but they have now pledged all they've got to pledge, and are, it is said, in sore straits: mothers and fathers and children alike hungry. It is some time now since they have had enough to eat. Fancy that, Mr. Johnny!"

"But why should d.i.c.ky be beaten for that?" I persisted, trying to keep her to the point--a rather difficult matter with Miss Timmens at all times.

"It was in this way," she answered, dropping her voice to a lower key, and giving a pull at the door to make sure it had not opened. "d.i.c.ky, poor fellow, is half starved; he's not used to it, and feels it keenly: resents it, I dare say. This morning, when out in the lane, he saw a tray of halfpenny buns, hot from the oven, put on old Ford's counter.

The sight was too much for him, the temptation too great. d.i.c.ky h.o.a.r is naturally honest; has been, up to now, at all events: but I suppose hunger was stronger than honesty to-day. He crept into the shop on all fours, abstracted a bun with his fingers, and was creeping out again, when Ford pounced upon him, bun in hand. There was a fine outcry. Ford was harsh, roared out for the policeman, and threatened him with jail, and in the midst of the commotion h.o.a.r came up. In his mortification at hearing that a boy of his had been caught pilfering, he seized upon a thick stick that a bystander happened to have, and laid it unmercifully upon poor d.i.c.k."

"And broke his arm?"

"And broke his arm. And covered him with weals beside. He'll be all manner of colours to-morrow."

"What a brutal fellow h.o.a.r must be!"

"To beat him like that?--well, yes," a.s.sented Miss Timmens, in accents that bore rather a dubious sound. "Pa.s.sion must have blinded him and urged him further than he intended. The man has always been upright; prided himself on being so, as one may say; and there's no doubt that to find his child could be a thief shook him cruelly. This strike is ruining the tempers of the men; it makes them feel at war with everything and everybody."

When I got home I found them in the thick of the news also, for Cole the doctor was there telling it all. Mrs. Todhetley, sitting on the sofa with her bonnet untied and her shawl unpinned, was listening in a kind of horror.

"But surely the arm cannot be _broken_, Mr. Cole!" she urged.

"Broken just above the wrist, ma'am. I ought to know, for I set it.

Wicked little rascal, to steal the bun! As to h.o.a.r, he is as fierce as a tiger when really enraged."

"Well, it sounds very shocking."

"So it does," said Cole. "I think perhaps it may be productive of one good--keep the boy from picking and stealing to the end of his life."

"He was hungry, you say."

"Famished, ma'am. Most of the young ones in Crabb Lane are so just now."

The Squire was walking up and down the room, his hands in his pockets.

He halted, and faced the Doctor.

"Look here, Cole--what has brought this state of things about? A strike!--and prolonged! Why, I should as soon have expected to hear the men had thrown up their work to become Merry Andrews! Who is in fault?--the masters or the men?"

Cole lifted his eyebrows. "The masters lay the blame on the men, the men lay it on the masters."

"What is it the men are holding out for?"

"To get more wages, and to do less work."

"Oh, come, that's a twofold demand," cried the Pater. "Modest folk generally ask for one favour at a time. Meanwhile things are all at sixes-and-sevens, I suppose, in Crabb Lane?"

"Ay," said the Doctor. "At worse than sixes-and-sevens, indoors and out.

There are empty cupboards and empty rooms within; and there's a good deal of what's bad without. It's the wives and children that suffer, poor things."

"The men must be senseless to throw themselves out of work!"

"The men only obey orders," cried Mr. Cole. "There's a spirit of disaffection abroad: certain people have const.i.tuted themselves rulers, and they say to the men, 'You must do this,' and 'You must not do that.'

The men have yielded themselves up to be led, and _do_ do what they are told, right or wrong."