D. F. E. Sykes

“ Little wonder that the schoolmaster who is often spoken of as abroad is very much at home in Ealing. The illustrious men, distinguished in every pursuit of life, in arms, in commerce, in the calm of the cloister, and in the strife of the forum, in literature and in arts, who have drunk their first draughts of the Pierian Spring at Ealing, their names are many, illustrious, and historic. The most celebrated Private School in Great Britain, beyond question, was that kept in Ealing by Dr. Nicholas, and known as the Great Ealing School. ”

“ It passes the endurance of man to linger by the side of the murdered victim, so eloquent in its eternal silence, and to calmly await the coming of one who may or may not come. I knew and Jim knew that Tom was in the inn when Billy burst in. What then befell who shall say? I only know that if Billy had done the deed it was done in the very frenzy of a wrath justly stirred, and should I be the one to set the bloodhounds of the law upon him whose every thought and act was moved by love for Miriam? ”

“ To stand up in fair fight, to pit strength against strength, craft against craft, to stake limb for limb, life for life, why, that, who shall cry fie upon. But to steal upon your foe in the dark, to stab in the back, to smite him unawares, to speed him unsummoned and unfit to judgment—there is no cause so righteous as to redeem an act so dastard. And that George, so frank, so full of sunshine and gay candour, should do this cowardly deed, passed comprehension. ”

“ But now the last wild rose of the summer has blushed in the hedgerows, and the bracken of the moors is greying to sickly death; the brooks and rivulets fall from the heights in fuller stream and muttering a gloomier song and the long nights are at hand when men-folk of a social mind seek the creature comforts and the good-fellowship of taproom and bar. And this was the season which Ben and Tom deemed fitting for the launching of still another experiment. ”

“ Beaumont, nay, let me say I do not tremble, Edward, lest you should lack courage and high endeavour. ’Tis for myself I tremble. I had looked to spend my life, if not by my father’s side, at least near him. I had schooled myself to anticipate without other yearnings the serene uneventful round of a village life. But you have touched my soul to fiercer longings, you have opened my eyes to a wider vision. I do not fear poverty, and there can be no meanness in the life that contents you. ”

“ I forgot all about Jim, about my father, about Ruth, doubtless racking their brains in vain, wondering why I did not return to supper.
I walked across the moors and right on to Wrigley Mill Fold in a dream. Ah! love is your only wizard. It touches the eyes of maid and man, and lo! there is a new world that holds nothing commonplace, nothing tawdry, nothing mean. The heart that throbs with love’s exquisite pain knows no fear but that it lose its love. ”

“ Ben was a hand-loom weaver, and, of a week-day, by earliest day, til sunset in the spring and summer-tide, you could have heard the clack of his loom overhead as the nimble shuttle with its trail of weft sped across the warp. But to-day Ben has gone to stretch his legs on the moors, and it is Lucy’s mother who bids Dorothy welcome and relieves her of her parcels.
A long oaken settle runs under the deep window of the “house” or living room. ”

“ Clair’s well rid of you, or any other decent woman for that matter.”
“Oh, yes, I’m down, jump on me,” said Beaumont, savagely.
“It’s time somebody did jump on you to some purpose. I’ve no patience with you, man. Why, it’s just such nasty knocks as those that test a man. Life’s a fight for the best of us, a stand-up fight, shoulders squared, knees braced, fists clenched, lips tight-pressed, and eyes intent and steadfast. A fight not with your fellow-man, to see which can down the other, that’s a poor business, but with the world, the flesh, and the devil. ”

“ We could not make goods fast enough. The ports were once more open, and it seemed as if, all the world over, the nations were crying for our goods. It was as if the waters of commerce, frozen and banked up, had been thawed by a sudden heat and hounded forth in tumultuous volume. The church bells all over the Riding rang out the glad news. The manufacturers of our parts had a great dinner at the Cherry Tree and many another hostelry besides, and for the first time in my life and the last, I saw my father overcome by strong waters. ”

“ The man of business can be wafted almost without effort to the very heart of the business centre of the world, and yet his home lie in gracious avenues lined with stately trees, and far remote from the toil and turmoil of the city and its eternal din. In all Ealing there is not what may be reasonably called a slum, and its most confined and gloomy alley might almost claim to rank as an open space compared with the crowded courts of the East End. ”

“ I had the day before me, the rare treat of an extra holiday, the price of a luncheon of bread and cheese—with an onion—and a pint of ale, in my pocket, youth and health, a sunlit sky, the pure, fresh air of the far-flung moors, sweet thoughts of Miriam to warm my heart and many a scheme for the future to busy my brain—what more could man ask of life? ”

“ How save the little hoarded wealth; how bear the infirm mother, who by inglenook declined daily to her grave cheered by the babbling prattle of her daughter’s bairns; how save the bairns themselves! And even as Tom rode the cries behind him swelled in volume till they fell upon his ears as a hoarse roar, broken by shrill and piercing shriek, and if his ears betrayed him not, above the din of human voice he heard the growl of gathered waters loosed. No use to look behind, the darkening skies veiled the sight. Thank God! Here is Wilberlee. Well Tom knew the entrance to the yard. ”

“ A tiny fire burns dully in a tiny grate and emits rather less heat than the gas that blares with a sickly flame above Beaumont’s head. It is close upon ten of the night, and Edward has thrown down his pen, collected the sheets of “copy” that he hopes to turn into money if editors prove kind on the morrow, and is now, pipe in mouth and book in hand, trying to find a comfortable place in the rickety, horse-hair armchair, called by his landlady in some fit of uncanny humour, an easy chair, and trying, too, to so focus his book as to catch the rays from his solitary gas-jet. ”

“ The situation is near enough to the Thames to make the loveliest haunts of the river easily accessible, and it is distant enough to be free from the fogs and low humours of a riparian situation; it is remote enough from London to be almost pastoral in its charms yet close enough to be reached by many routes within an hour. The streets of the town and the urban roads are broad and well made, the latter lined with noble chestnuts that, in the spring, are a mass of spiked bloom, suggesting the boulevards of continental cities rather than the prosaic high ways of English life. ”

“ And yet some manufacturers persisted in putting in machines that could have but one effect, to turn adrift many of those who still had work. And with it all arose in the minds not only of the croppers but of all the working people for miles around a feeling of injustice, of oppression, a rankling sense of wrong. And the poor felt for the poor. They got it into their heads that the rich cared nought about them, that their only thought was to look after themselves, to fill their own pockets, and the working folk might rot in their rags for ought they cared. ”

“ But there is one thing in this world that is absolutely beyond the human will: it is the human heart. Love knows no reason, and is uninfluenced by the sternest logic. It is like the wind that bloweth where it listeth. School herself as Martha would she came, in time, to have a smouldering jealousy of little Dorothy, and the child’s quick perception taught it to shun the eye, and soon the company, of her aunt, and turn for comfort to buxom, homely Betty.
It is a Sunday afternoon in the Summer of the year ’45—a glorious summer’s afternoon. ”

“ We were loth to tell what we knew and yet we knew not what mischief our silence might entail. On one point we were clearly resolved: if any man’s life or liberty were clearly imperilled then, come what might, it was our clear duty to declare the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Two considerations closed our mouths. First and foremost I hated the very thought of having the name of my Miriam bandied about, blazoned in every newspaper, on the lips of every soaker in every pot house from Stalybridge to Huddersfield. ”

“ Edward Beaumont, as we have seen, was dreaming love’s young dream, than which we are all convinced there is nothing sweeter in this brief life of ours, and seeing visions of a glorious future rounded by the woolsack, and I know not what other suggestions of a lively imagination. Sam Storth, the partner whom he was fool enough to at the same time trust implicitly and regard with a sort of good-humoured contempt, was essaying the gentle art, desipere in loco, after a fashion of his own, in a word, combining business with pleasure. ”

“ There is the exhilaration of the strains of the brass band—which in all probability will be comfortably drunk before the day is out; there is the fluttering of the silken banners in the summer breeze, and, above all, there is the consciousness of being the beheld of all beholders. The boys look either bored or ashamed of themselves and wish they were nearer the buns and nuts, for which they are gloomily conscious they will have to pay by submitting to the humiliating exactions of kiss-in-the-ring. ”

“ But, alas! we don’t live in a perfect state, and human nature will have a long way to travel before it ceases to be true that if you want to get the best out of a man set him to work for himself. Anyhow—I’m no philosopher—Jim and I toiled in those early days at Mitchell Mill, and for many a long year thereafter, like galley-slaves. We had a long row to hoe, and we knew it. And were there not Miriam and Ruth to cheer us when we despaired, and to lighten our toil by all the arts of loving and good women. ”

“ Clair was glad that Edward’s stay at the Vicarage should be made pleasant to him, and that his daughter should find a visit that might have developed into a visitation an agreeable break in the monotony of rural life. It was, of course, eminently satisfactory that the stranger whom he had been advised to consult and to trust in a matter of the very gravest importance should turn out to be not only a sound and reliable lawyer and a shrewd business man, but also a well-educated, well-read man, with the manners of a gentleman. ”

“ Poor Lucy lies upon the couch, her cheeks so hollow, her skin so transparent, her brown soft eyes so unnaturally large and her look of patient suffering, and of the resignation of abandoned hope so heart-rending when it is stamped on the face of youth. But the large eyes brighten as Dorothy comes to the couch, and her thin hand, so white and bloodless, rests in loving, lingering caress upon Dorothy’s glossy tresses as she stoops over the invalid and leaves a kiss upon the pallid lips. ”

“ Wrigley cast her keen glance at her husband.
“I believe you’ve been arguing, John. It’s that horrid gin. It’s a strange thing a man can’t take spirits without wanting to argue. And you lost your temper, too. I heard you from the bedroom. That temper of yours will be your undoing, John, You must pray against it, mustn’t he, Mr. Holmes?”
“Oh Lord!” muttered Mr. Wrigley, feebly, mopping his brow with a large silk handkerchief.
“Now we’ll go in to tea. John, you’ll take Ruth; Abel, look after Mrs. Haigh; Jim must look after himself, for I want Miriam to sit by me.” ”

“ A time shall come when England shall be Merry England once more, aye, if we have to make a holocaust of the title-deeds by which its broad acres have been tied in parchment bonds; a time when honest toil shall be honestly rewarded; a time when he who toils not shall see himself and be seen as the parasite he is; a time when no man shall wield political power merely because he chances to be ‘the tenth transmitter of a foolish face’; a time when no man and no woman shall be poor who is willing and able to work ”

“ But you will not be a very bloated capitalist, will you, Tom?” she concluded mischievously.
“We aren’t going to be capitalists at all. I’m just going to start the concern with my bit of a fortune—it doesn’t look so much of a fortune as it did, now I know what a little way it will go. But any way Ben and I are going to work in it, side by side with the hands. We are all going to be hands together. Of course, in a sense, there’ll be a master; but he will be a master in a different sense from what we’re all used to. ”

“ Is it a law of Nature that one should spend his toil and another enjoy its fruits? Is it an immutable decree of heaven that there should be for ever and for aye the inordinately rich and the abjectly poor? Is it marked down in holy Writ that Dives should always be clad in purple and fine linen and fare sumptuously every day, whilst Lazarus lies at his gates and the dogs lick his sores? ”