Walter Besant
All Sorts and Conditions of Men: An Impossible Story
"Why have they all given up religion?" asked Angela. "Why should the work-men all over the world feel no need of religion – if it were only the religious emotion?"
Harry, who had answers ready for many questions, could find none for this. He asked his cousin Dick, but he could not tell. Personally, he said, he had something else to do; but if the women wanted to go to church they might. And so long as the parsons and priests did not meddle with him, he should not meddle with them.
But these statements hardly seemed an answer to the question. Perhaps in Berlin or in Paris they could explain more clearly how this strange thing has come to pass.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
TRUTH WITH FAITHFULNESS
To possess pure truth —and to know it– is a thing which affects people in two ways, both of them uncomfortable to their fellow-creatures. It impels some to go pointing out the purity of truth to the world at large, insisting upon it, dragging unwilling people along the road which leads to it, and dwelling upon the dangers which attend the neglect of so great a chance. Others it affects with a calm and comfortable sense of superiority. The latter was Rebekah's state of mind. To be a Seventh Day Independent was only one degree removed from belonging to the Chosen People, to begin with: and that there is but one chapel in all England where the truth reposes for a space as the Ark of the Covenant reposed in Shiloh, "in curtains," is, if you please, a thing to be proud of! It brings with it elevation of soul.
There is at present, whatever there may once have been, no proselytizing zeal about the Seventh Day Independents; they are, in fact, a torpid body; they are contented with the conviction – a very comforting one, and possessed by other creeds besides their own – that, sooner or later, the whole world will embrace their faith. Perhaps the Jews look forward to a day when, in addition to the Restoration, which they profess to desire, all mankind will become proselytes in the court of the Gentiles: it is something little short of this that the congregation of Seventh Day Independents expect in the dim future. What a splendid, what a magnificent field for glory – call it not vain-glory! – does this conviction present to the humble believer! There are, again, so very few of them, that each one may feel himself a visible pillar of the Catholic Church, bearing on his shoulders a perceptible and measurable quantity of weight. Each is an Atlas. It is, moreover, pleasing to read the Holy Scriptures, especially the books of the Prophets, as written especially for a Connection which numbers just one chapel in Great Britain and seven in the United States. How grand is the name of Catholic applied to just one church! Catholicity is as yet all to come, and exists only as a germ or seedling! The early Christians may have experienced the same delight.
Rebekah, best and most careful of shopwomen and accountants, showed her religious superiority more by the silence of contempt than by zeal for conversion. When Captain Tom Coppin, for instance, was preaching to the girls, she went on with her figures, casting up, ruling in red ink, carrying forward in methodical fashion, as if his words could not possibly have any concern with her; and when a church bell rang, or any words were spoken about other forms of worship, she became suddenly deaf and blind and cold. But she entreated Angela to attend their services. "We want everybody to come," she said; "we only ask for a single hearing; come and hear my father preach."
She believed in the faith of the Seventh Day. As for her father – when a man is paid to advocate the cause of an eccentric or a ridiculous form of belief; when he has to plead that cause week by week to the same slender following, to prop up the limp, and to keep together his small body of believers: when he has to maintain a show of hopefulness, to strengthen the wavering, to confirm the strong, to encourage his sheep in confidence; when he gets too old for anything else, and his daily bread depends upon this creed and no other – who shall say what, after a while, that man believes or does not believe? Red-hot words fall from his lips, but they fall equally red-hot each week; his arguments are conclusive, but they were equally conclusive last week; his logic is irresistible; his encouragement is warm and glowing; but logic and encouragement alike are those of last week and many weeks ago. Surely, surely there is no worse fate possible for any man than to preach, week by week, any form whatever of dogmatic belief, and to live by it; surely, nothing can be more deadly than to simulate zeal, to suppress doubt, to pretend certainty. But this is dangerous ground, because others besides Seventh Day Independents may feel that they are upon it, and that beneath them are quagmires.
"Come," said Rebekah. "We want nothing but a fair hearing."
Their chapel was endowed, which doubtless helped the flock to keep together. It had a hundred and ten pounds a year belonging to it, and a little house for the minister, and there were scanty pew rents, which almost paid for the maintenance of the fabric and the old woman who cleaned the windows and dusted the pews. If the Reverend Percival Hermitage gave up that chapel he would have no means of subsistence at all. Let us not impute motives. No doubt he firmly believed what he taught: but his words, like his creed, were stereotyped; they had long ceased to be persuasive; they now served only to preserve.
If Angela had accepted that invitation for any given day there would have been, she knew very well, a sermon for the occasion, conceived, written, and argued out expressly for herself. And this she did not want. Therefore, she said nothing at all of her intentions, but chose one Saturday when there was little doing and she could spare a forenoon for her visit.
The chapel of the Seventh Day Independents stands at Redman's Lane, close to the Advanced Club House. It is a structure extremely plain and modest in design. It was built by an architect who entertained humble views – perhaps he was a Churchman – concerning the possible extension of the Connection, because the whole chapel if quite filled would not hold more than two hundred people. The front, or façade, is flat, consisting of a surface of gray brick wall, with a door in the middle and two circular windows, one on each side. Over the door there are two dates – one of erection, the other of restoration. The chapel within is a well-proportioned room, with a neat gallery running round three sides, resting on low pillars, and painted a warm and cheerful drab; the pews are painted of the same color. At the back are two windows with semi-circular arches, and between the windows stands a small railed platform with a reading-desk upon it for the minister. Beside it are high seats with cushions for elders, or other ministers if there should be any. But these seats have never been occupied in the memory of man. The pews are ranged in front of the platform, and they are of the old and high-backed kind. It is a wonderful – a truly wonderful – thing that clergymen, priests, ministers, padres, rabbis, and church architects, with church-wardens, sidesmen, vergers, bishops, and chapel-keepers of all persuasions, are agreed, whatever their other differences, in the unalterable conviction that it is impossible to be religious, that is, to attend services in a proper frame of mind, unless one is uncomfortable. Therefore we are offered a choice. We may sit in high-backed, narrow-seated pews, or we may sit on low-backed, narrow-seated benches: but sit in comfort we may not. The Seventh Day people have got the high-backed pew (which catches you on the shoulder-blade and tries the backbone, and affects the brain, causing softening in the long run) and the narrow seat (which drags the muscles and brings on premature paralysis of the lower limbs). The equally narrow, low-backed bench produces injurious effects of a different kind, but similarly pernicious. How would it be to furnish one aisle, at least, of a church with broad, low, and comfortable chairs having arms? They should be reserved for the poor who have so few easy-chairs of their own. Rightly managed and properly advertised, they might help toward a revival of religion among the working classes.
Above the reading platform in the little chapel they have caused to be painted on the wall the Ten Commandments – the fourth emphasized in red – with a text or two, bearing on their distinctive doctrine; and in the corner is a little door leading to a little vestry; but, as there are no vestments, its use is not apparent.
As for the position taken by these people it is perfectly logical, and, in fact, impregnable. There is no answer to it. They say, "Here is the Fourth Commandment. All the rest you continue to observe. Why not this? When was it repealed? And by whom?" If you put these questions to Bishop or Presbyter, he has no reply. Because that law has never been repealed. Yet as the people of the Connection complain, though they have reason and logic on their side, the outside world will not listen, and go on breaking the commandment with a light and unthinking heart. It is a dreadful responsibility – albeit a grand thing – to be in possession of so simple a truth of such vast importance; and yet to get nobody ever to listen. The case is worse even than that of Daniel Fagg.
Angela noted all these things as she entered the little chapel a short time after the service had commenced. It was bewildering to step out of the noisy streets, where the current of Saturday morning was at flood, into this quiet room with its strange service and its strange flock of Nonconformists. The thing, at first, felt like a dream: the people seemed like the ghosts of an unquiet mind.
There were very few worshippers; she counted them all: four elderly men, two elderly women, three young men, two girls, one of whom was Rebekah, and five boys. Sixteen in all. And standing on the platform was their leader.
Rebekah's father, the Rev. Percival Hermitage, was a shepherd who from choice led his flock gently, along peaceful meadows and in shady, quiet places; he had no prophetic fire; he had evidently long since acquiesced in a certain fact that under him, at least, whatever it might do under others, the Connection would not greatly increase. Perhaps he did not himself desire an increase, which would give him more work. Perhaps he never had much enthusiasm. By the simple accident of birth he was a Seventh Day Christian; being of a bookish and unambitious turn, and of an indolent habit of body, mentally and physically unfitted for the life of a shop, he entered the ministry; in course of time he got this chapel, where he remained, tolerably satisfied with his lot in life, a simple, self-educated, mildly pious person, equipped with the phrases of his craft, and comforted with the consciousness of superiority and separation. He looked up from his book in gentle surprise when Angela entered the chapel. It was seldom that a stranger was seen there – once, not long ago, there was a boy who had put his head in at the door and shouted "Hoo!" and ran away again; once there was a drunken sailor who thought it was a public-house, and sat down and began to sing and wouldn't go, and had to be shoved out by the united efforts of the whole small congregation. When he was gone they sang an extra hymn to restore a religious calm – but never a young lady before. Angela took her seat amid the wondering looks of the people, and the minister went on in a perfunctory way with his prayers and his hymns and his exposition. There certainly did seem to an outsider a want of heart about the service, but that might have been due to the emptiness of the pews. When it came to the sermon, Angela thought the preacher spoke and looked as if the limit of endurance had at last almost arrived, and he would not much longer endure the inexpressible dreariness of the conventicle. It was not so; he was always mildly sad; he seemed always a little bored; it was no use pretending to be eloquent any more; fireworks were thrown away; and as for what he had to say, the congregation always had the same thing, looked for the same thing, and would have risen in revolt at the suggestion of a new thing. His sermon was neither better nor worse than may be heard any day in church or chapel; nor was there anything in it to distinguish it from the sermons of any other body of Christians. The outsider left off listening and began to think of the congregation. In the pew with her was a man of sixty or so, with long black hair streaked with gray, brushed back behind his ears. He was devout and followed the prayers audibly, and sang the hymns out of a manuscript music-book, and read the text critically. His face was the face of a bulldog for resolution. The man, she thought, would enjoy going to the stake for his opinions, and if the Seventh Day Independents were to be made the National Established Church he would secede the week after and make a new sect, if only by himself. Such men are not happy under authority; their freedom of thought is as the breath of their nostrils, and they cannot think like other people. He was not well dressed, and was probably a shoemaker or some such craftsman. In front of her sat a family of three. The wife was attired in a sealskin rich and valuable, and the son, a young man of one or two and twenty, had the dress and appearance of a gentleman – that is to say, of what passes for such in common city parlance. What did these people do in such a place? Yet they were evidently of the religion. Then she noticed a widow and her boy. The widow was not young; probably, Angela thought, she had married late in life. Her lips were thin and her face was stern. "The boy," thought Angela, "will have the doctrine administered with faithfulness." Only sixteen altogether; yet all, except the pastor, seemed to be grimly in earnest and inordinately proud of their sect. It was as if the emptiness of their benches and their forsaken condition called upon them to put on a greater show of zeal and to persuade themselves that the cause was worth fighting for. The preacher alone seemed to have lost heart. But his people, who were accustomed to him, did not notice this despondency.
Then Angela, while the sermon went slowly on, began to speculate on the conditions belonging to such a sect. First of all, with the apparent exception of the lady in sealskin and her husband and son, the whole sixteen – perhaps another two or three were prevented from attending – were of quite the lower middle class; they belonged to the great stratum of society whose ignorance is as profound as their arguments are loud. But the uncomfortableness of it! They can do no work on the Saturday – "neither their man-servant nor their maid-servant" – their shops are closed and their tools put aside. They lose a sixth part of the working time. The followers of this creed are as much separated from their fellows as the Jews. On the Sunday they may work if they please, but on that day all the world is at church or at play. Angela looked round again. Yes; the whole sixteen had upon their faces the look of pride; they were proud of being separated; it was a distinction, just as it is to be a Samaritan. Who would not be one of the recipients, however few they be in number, of Truth? And what a grand thing, what an inspiriting thing, it is to feel that some day or other, perhaps not to-day nor to-morrow, nor in one's lifetime at all, the whole world will rally round the poor little obscure banner, and shout all together, with voice of thunder, the battle-cry which now sounds no louder than a puny whistle-pipe! Yet, on the whole, Angela felt it must be an uncomfortable creed; better be one of the undistinguished crowd which flocks to the parish church and yearns not for any distinction at all. Then the sermon ended and they sang another hymn – the collection in use was a volume printed in New York, and compiled by the committee of the Connection, so that there were manifestly congregations on the other side of the Atlantic living in the same discomfort of separation.
At the departure of the people Rebekah hurried out first, and waited in the doorway to greet Angela.
"I knew you would come some day," she said, "but oh! I wish you had told me when you were coming, so that father might have given one of his doctrine sermons. What we had to-day was one of the comfortable discourses to the professed members of the church which we all love so much. I am so sorry. Oh, he would convince you in ten minutes!"
"But, Rebekah," said Angela, "I should be sorry to have seen your service otherwise than usual. Tell me, does the congregation to-day represent all your strength?"
Rebekah colored. She could not deny that they were, numerically, a feeble folk.
"We rely," she said, "on the strength of our cause – and some day – oh! some day – the world will rally round us. See, Miss Kennedy, here is father; when he has said good-by to the people" – he was talking to a lady in sealskin – "he will come and speak to us."
"I suppose," said Angela, "that this lady is a member of your chapel?"
"Yes," Rebekah whispered. "Oh, they are quite rich people – the only rich people we have. They live at Leytonstone; they made their money in the book-binding, and are consistent Christians. Father," – for at this moment Mr. Hermitage left his rich followers in the porch – "this is Miss Kennedy, of whom you have heard so much."
Mr. Hermitage took her hand with a weary smile, and asked Rebekah if Miss Kennedy would come home with her.
They lived in a small house next door to the chapel. It was so small that there was but one sitting-room, and this was filled with books.
"Father likes to sit here," said Rebekah, "by himself all day. He is quite happy if he is let alone. Sometimes, however, he has to go to Leytonstone."
"To the rich people?"
"Yes," Rebekah looked troubled. "A minister must visit his flock, you know: and if they were to leave us it would be bad for us, because the endowment is only a hundred and ten pounds a year, and out of that the church and the house have got to be kept in repair. However, a clergyman must not be dictated to, and I tell father he should go his own way and preach his own sermons. Whatever people say, truth must not be hidden away as if we were ashamed of it! Hush! Here he is."
The good man welcomed Angela, and said some simple words of gratitude about her reception of his daughter. He had a good face, but he wore an anxious expression as if something was always on his mind; and he sighed when he sat down at his table.
Angela stayed for half an hour, but the minister said nothing more to her; only when she rose to go he murmured with another heavy sigh, "There's an afternoon service at three."
It is quite impossible to say whether he intended this announcement as an invitation to Angela, or whether it was a complaint, wrung from a heavy heart, of a trouble almost intolerable.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
I AM THE DRESSMAKER
It happened on this very same Saturday that Lord Jocelyn, feeling a little low, and craving for speech with his ward, resolved that he would pay a personal visit to him in his own den, where, no doubt, he would find him girt with a fair white apron and crowned with brown paper, proudly standing among a lot of his brother workmen – glorious fellows! – and up to his knees in shavings.
It is easy to take a cab and tell the driver to go to the Mile End Road. Had Lord Jocelyn taken more prudent counsel with himself he would have bidden him drive straight to Messenger's Brewery; but he got down where the Whitechapel road ends and the Mile End road begins, thinking that he would find his way to the Brewery with the greatest ease. First, however, he asked the way of a lady with a basket on her arm; it was, in fact, Mrs. Bormalack going a-marketing, and anxious about the price of greens; and he received a reply so minute, exact, and bewildering, that he felt, as he plunged into the labyrinthine streets of Stepney, like one who dives into the dark and devious ways of the catacombs.
First of all, of course, he lost himself; but as the place was strange to him, and a strange place is always curious, he walked along in great contentment. Nothing remarkable in the streets and houses unless, perhaps, the entire absence of anything to denote inequality of wealth and position, so that, he thought with satisfaction, the happy residents in Stepney all receive the same salaries and make the same income, contribute the same amount to the tax collectors, and pay the same rent. A beautiful continuity of sameness; a divine monotony realizing partially the dreams of the socialist. Presently he came upon a great building which seemed rapidly approaching completion; not a beautiful building, but solid, big, well proportioned and constructed of real red brick, and without the "Queen Anne" conceits which mostly go with that material. It was so large and so well built that it was evidently intended for some special purpose; a purpose of magnitude and responsibility, requiring capital; not a factory, because the windows were large and evidently belonged to great halls, and there were none of the little windows in rows which factories must have in the nature of things; not a prison, because prisons are parsimonious to a fault in the matter of external windows; nor a school – yet it might be a school; then – how should so great a school be built in Stepney? It might be a superior almshouse, or union – yet this could hardly be. While Lord Jocelyn looked at the building, a working-man lounged along, presumably an out-of-working man, with his hands in his pockets and kicking stray stones in the road, which is a sign of the penniless pocket, because he who yet can boast the splendid shilling does not slouch as he goes, or kick stones in the road, but holds his head erect and anticipates with pleasure six half-pints in the immediate future. Lord Jocelyn asked that industrious idle, or idle industrious, if he knew the object of the building. The man replied that he did not know the object of the building; and to make it quite manifest that he really did not know he put an adjective before the word object, and another – that is, the same – before the word building. With that he passed upon his way, and Lord Jocelyn was left marvelling at the slender resources of our language which makes one adjective do duty for so many qualifications. Presently, he came suddenly upon Stepney Church, which is a landmark or initial point, like the man on the chair in the maze of Hampton Court. Here he again asked his way, and then, after finding it and losing it again six times more, and being generally treated with contumely for not knowing so simple a thing, he found himself actually at the gates of the Brewery, which he might have reached in five minutes had he gone the shortest way.
"So," he said, "this is the property of that remarkably beautiful girl, Miss Messenger; who could wish to start better? She is young; she is charming, she is queenly, she is fabulously rich; she is clever; she is – ah! if only Harry had met her before he became an ass!"
He passed the gate and entered the courtyard, at one side of which he saw a door on which was painted the word "Office." The Brewery was conservative; what was now a hive of clerks and writers was known by the same name and stood upon the same spot as the little room built by itself in the open court in which King Messenger I., the inventor of the Entire, had transacted by himself, having no clerks at all, the whole business of the infant Brewery for his great invention. Lord Jocelyn pushed open the door and stood irresolute, looking about him; a clerk advanced and asked his business. Lord Jocelyn was the most polite and considerate of men: he took off his hat, humbly bowed, and presented his card.
"I am most sorry to give trouble," he said. "I came to see – "
"Certainly, my lord." The clerk, having been introduced to Lord Davenant, was no longer afraid of tackling a title, however grand, and would have been pleased to show his familiarity with the great even to a Royal Highness. "Certainty, my lord. If your lordship will be so good as to write your lordship's name in the visitors' book, a guide shall take your lordship round the Brewery immediately."
"Thank you, I do not wish to see the Brewery," said the visitor. "I came to see a – a – a young man who, I believe, works in this establishment: his name is Goslett."
"Oh!" replied the clerk, taken aback, "Goslett? Can any one," he asked generally of the room he had just left, "tell me whether there's a man working here named Goslett?"
Josephus – for it was the juniors' room – knew and indicated the place and man.
"If, my lord," said the clerk, loath to separate himself from nobility, "your lordship will be good enough to follow me, I can take your lordship to the man your lordship wants. Quite a common man, my lord – quite. A joiner and carpenter. But if your lordship wants to see him – "
He led Lord Jocelyn across the court, and left him at the door of Harry's workshop.
It was not a great room with benches, and piles of shavings, and a number of men. Not at all; there were racks with tools, a bench, and a lathe; there were pieces of furniture about waiting repair; there was an unfinished cabinet with delicate carved work, which Lord Jocelyn recognized at once as the handiwork of his boy; and the boy himself stood in the room, his coat off and his cuffs turned up, contemplating the cabinet. It is one of the privileges of the trade that it allows – nay, requires – a good deal of contemplation. Presently Harry turned his head and saw his guardian standing in the doorway. He greeted him cheerfully and led him into the room, where he found a chair with four legs and begged him to sit down and talk.
"You like it, Harry?"
Harry laughed. "Why not?" he said. "You see I am independent, practically. They pay me pretty well according to the work that comes in. Plain work, you see – joiners' work."
"Yes, yes, I see. But how long, my boy – how long?"
"Well, sir, I cannot say. Why not all my life?"
Lord Jocelyn groaned.
"I admit," said Harry, "that if things were different I should have gone back to you long ago. But now I cannot, unless – "
"Unless what?"
"Unless the girl who keeps me here goes away herself or bids me go."
"Then you are really engaged to the dress – I mean – the young lady?"
"No, I am not. Nor has she shown the least sign of accepting me. Yet I am her devoted and humble servant."
"Is she a witch – this woman? Good heavens, Harry! Can you, who have associated with the most beautiful and best-bred women in the world, be so infatuated about a dressmaker?"
"It is strange, is it not? But it is true. The thought of her fills my mind day and night. I see her constantly. There is never one word of love, but she knows already, without that word."
"Strange, indeed," repeated Lord Jocelyn. "But it will pass. You will awake, and find yourself again in your right mind, Harry."
He shook his head.
"From this madness," he said, "I shall never recover – for it is my life. Whatever happens, I am her servant."
"It is incomprehensible," replied his guardian; "you were always chivalrous in your ideas of women. They are unusual in young men of the present day; but they used to sit well upon you. Then, however, your ideal was a lady."
"It is a lady still," said the lover, "and yet a dressmaker. How this can be, I do not know; but it is. In the old days men became the servants of ladies. I know now what a good custom it was, and how salutary to the men. Petit Jehan de Saintre, in his early days, had the best of all possible training."
"But if Petit Jehan had lived at Stepney – ?"
"Then there is another thing – the life here is useful."
"You now tinker chairs, and get paid a shilling an hour. Formerly, you made dainty, carved workboxes and fans, and pretty things for ladies, and got paid by their thanks. Which is the more useful life?"
"It is not the work I am thinking of – it is the – Do you remember what I said the last time I saw you?"
"Perfectly – about your fellow-creatures, was it not? My dear Harry, it seems to me as if our fellow-men get on very well in their own way without our interference."
"Yes – that is to say, no. They are all getting on as badly as possible; and somehow I want, before I go away, to find out what it is they want. They don't know; and how they should set about getting it – if it is to be got – as I think it is. You will not think me a prig, sir?"
"You will never be a prig, Harry, under any circumstances. Does, then, the lady of your worship approve of this? – this study of humanity?"
"Perfectly – if this lady did not approve of it, I should not be engaged upon it."
"Harry, will you take me to see this goddess of Stepney Green – it is there, I believe, that she resides?"
"Yes; I would rather not. Yet (the young man hesitated for a moment) – Miss Kennedy thinks that I have always been a working-man. I would not undeceive her yet. I would rather she did not know that I have given up, for her sake, such a man as you, and such companionship as yours."
He held out both his hands to his guardian, and his eyes for a moment were dim.
Lord Jocelyn made no reply for a moment – then he cleared his throat and said he must go; asked Harry rather piteously could he do nothing for him at all? and made slowly for the door. The clerk who received the distinguished visitor was standing at the door of the office, waiting for another glimpse of the noble and illustrious personage. Presently he came back and reported that his lordship had crossed the yard on the arm of the young man called Goslett, and that on parting with him he had shaken him by the hand, and called him "my boy." Whereat many marvelled, and the thing was a stumbling-block; but Josephus said it was not at all unusual for members of his family to be singled out by the great for high positions of trust; that his own father had been churchwarden of Stepney, and he was a far-off cousin of Miss Messenger's; and that he could himself have been by this time superintendent of his Sunday-school if it had not been for his misfortunes. Presently the thing was told to the chief accountant, who told it to the chief brewer; and if there had been a chief baker one knows not what would have happened.
