Читать книгу Fame is the Spur - Howard Spring - Страница 9

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“Ah, my friends! Think of the poor whose lives, from the cradle to the grave, are blown this way and that by chance as dead leaves are blown by the wind. They cannot plan their lives. They cannot say ‘John, of course, will inherit the estate, George will go into the Army and Henry into the Church.’ No; they must take what offers. They must grasp at spectral chances. They must pick up the crumbs that fall from life’s rich table. And yet, all these lives, each so casual, drifting as tramps drift from one cold charity to another, all these lives, none of which can safely formulate its own plan—all these lives, I say, coalesce into that solid basis which is the very foundation on which the state rests, the inexhaustible arsenal from which alone we can draw the defence of the national being. Think, my friends, of the poor. I could tell a tale of one poor boy, weak and lonely, thrown to the wolves of chance, whom yet the wolves miraculously did not destroy but suckled, as the fabulous Roman children were suckled on the Seven Hills.” (The Rt. Hon. Hamer Shawcross, P.C., M.P., who liked a classical allusion. Aetat. 68.)

Hamer, at the age of fourteen, having done with school, was weak enough, but hardly lonely. Gordon Stansfield, Ellen, and Birley Artingstall were standing by, and the two men were resolved that Hamer’s fate was to be a Wesleyan parson. The wolves of chance to whom Hamer was thrown were not so very fierce. Indeed, getting behind the rhetoric of this fine-looking old man—white hair, elegant morning clothes, and the dusky red carnation which in his later years he always wore—getting behind all that, one found that there was only one wolf and that he appeared in the unfrightening guise of Mr. Suddaby.

Down there in his cavern at the heart of old Manchester, under the shadow of t’Owd Church, soon to be grandiloquently called the Cathedral—t’Owd Church that had stood beside the Irwell since Saxon days and whose steeple-rocking bells were the only things that disturbed the subterranean calm of his life, this old troglodyte of a bookseller turned his thoughts more and more towards the past. Drowsing beside the fire, with Sheba the white Persian cat drowsing upon the mat beside him, he thought of the time when he and Friedrich Engels had been young together, and together had codified all the data of misery and hunger that Manchester so abundantly afforded. How they had corresponded! In Leeds, London, Liverpool—in all the big industrial cities—there had been rebels, prophets of Utopia, revolutionaries, who saw in every strike, in every brush with the police, the signal that was going to topple to ruins a world that needed remaking. With all these they corresponded.

Whenever the bells of t’Owd Church came dinning down into his ears he would think, but now only with a drowsy and not excited reminiscence, of standing in Albert Square with Engels as the bells clanged in another year. Mary Burns was there, the working girl with whom Engels lived so happily, and her sister Lizzy; and as the bells clamoured they all four went walking up Oxford Street towards All Saints, talking excitedly of the things that filled their minds.

“Another year gone!” Engels shouted. “Another year begun. Charles, perhaps this dead and damned and rotten old year is the last year men will know in poverty and squalor. Perhaps this year that is now ten minutes old will be the Year One of truth and justice. Anything may set it going, Charles—anything in such a putrid world as this. It’s like a rotten old shed. How it will blaze!”

And Mr. Suddaby—young Charles Suddaby, aged 30—grasped Engels by the arm and cried: “Let’s drink to it, Friedrich, to the time all the poor devils of Hulme and Ancoats deserve to have.”

Midnight though it was, there was a bar open, and Charles Suddaby pulled the half-hearted Engels through its brass-bound swing doors. Dreaming over the memory, the old man could still see the white curve of Lizzy Burns’s throat as her shawled head leaned back and her hand held a glass to her lips. And Engels, with his beard and his solid broadcloth clothes, had a glass of ale, too, in his hand, standing there in the greeny-yellow gaslight upon the sawdust pocked with spittle. He looked uncomfortable among the labourers and artisans in their coarse clothes and clogs, filling the air with the fume of cheap tobacco smoked in clay.

Young Charles raised his glass of beer and cried: “To the slaves of Hulme and Ancoats. Freedom! This very year! Freedom!”

And then they were in the thick of an uproar. A burly chap, not too boozed to hear the word “slaves,” knocked the glass out of Suddaby’s hand. Mary Burns took Engels’ sleeve and said: “Get out! Get out quick!” But Engels wanted to stay and argue. He always wanted to argue. “Aren’t you slaves?” he demanded. “Put it to the test of reason.”

Poor Engels was so utterly reasonable. When the crowd had chased the four of them from the pub and they were walking again along the street, he said: “But despite everything, Charles, despite the slaves who hate the name of slavery but not the thing, it will come. Perhaps this year. I have heard from Karl Marx to-day. He says....”

And all the way to the lodgings, he told Charles what Karl Marx had said. But it didn’t come that year; it hadn’t come at all; and now Lizzy Burns whose throat had shone so white that night was dead, and so was Mary; and Engels had called merely to say that he would call no more. The bells rang on, and the old man dreamed away his memories. Lately, he had been feeling very old indeed. Once he was in his chair he didn’t want to get out of it. It was time he had someone to help him, even to look after him. He remembered that Gordon Stansfield had said his stepson was just leaving school. Not a bad boy.

So this was the grisly wolf to whom life threw Hamer Shawcross. When the venerable cabinet minister said that the wolf suckled him, it was no more than the truth. Suddaby had never married. Lizzy Burns, so full of Irish wit and vivacity, though she could neither read nor write, shone in his memory more brightly than any other woman. She had gone off to London with Engels when her sister Mary died. They had taken a house in Regents Park Road so as to be near Karl Marx. And now she was dead. Engels had married her on her death-bed. Well, Suddaby reflected, Engels had given her a better time than he could have done. She had travelled; she had met the great ones; while he, to whom even she now seemed no more than one flicker in the hot rebellious flame of his youth, had done nothing but burrow deeper and deeper into his catacombs.

Not a bad boy, the old man reflected. He sat by the fire, his thin, ivory-coloured hands resting on the knob of his ebony stick, his chin in his hands. He watched the boy as now and then he came into view, emerging from one of the aisles of books. A serious-looking child, anxious-looking, too, with the blue veins in the temples, the dark hair waving off the broad white brow. He had told him to look round, to get the hang of things, find out where the stuff was kept. And now there he was, hopping through the aisles that were labelled Poetry, Drama, Religion, Belles Lettres, Biography, History, Travel, Social Science, and all the rest. Ha! and now here he was, bearing down towards the warm fireside bay, his hand thrusting back his hair. This meant a question.

“Please, sir, what exactly is Social Science?”

With the end of his stick old Suddaby rolled Sheba over on to her back and delicately scratched her belly. Then, lifting his skull-cap, he scratched his own white hair.

“Social Science, eh? Where do you live?”

“Broadbent Street, sir.”

“Yes, Broadbent Street. I remember. How much a week does your father pay in rent?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Just call me Mr. Suddaby. And what shall I call you?”

“My name’s Hamer, sir—Mr. Suddaby.”

“I thought I had heard Mr. Stansfield calling you John?”

“John Hamer Shawcross is my name. I prefer Hamer.”

The old man cocked a sharp eye at him sideways, then went on tickling the complaisant cat.

“I see. Very well, Hamer. If I’m not mistaken, your father, and everybody else in Broadbent Street, pays five shillings a week. You see, there was a time when I used to collect information of that sort all over Manchester. Well, whom does he pay it to?”

“Mr. Richardson. He calls every Monday morning, and the money’s always ready under the clock.”

“Ah, now you’re wrong, Hamer. The money is not paid to Mr. Richardson. Mr. Richardson merely collects it. Have you ever heard of Lord Lostwithiel?”

“No, Mr. Suddaby. But there’s a public-house called the Lostwithiel Arms not far from our street—right opposite another called the Liskeard Arms.”

“Excellent, Hamer. Now we’re getting on with our lesson in Social Science. The Lostwithiel Arms is named after Lord Lostwithiel, who is no less a person than an earl. The Liskeard Arms is named after his son and heir, Lord Liskeard, who is no less a person than a viscount, and these two public-houses are named after these two gentlemen because Lord Lostwithiel owns the land they stand on, as well as the land your house stands on, as well as many miles of land in that region. Your rent is paid to Mr. Richardson, who pays it to Lord Lostwithiel’s agent, who pays it to Lord Lostwithiel, who has never seen Broadbent Street in all his born days and never drunk a pint in the Lostwithiel Arms. Lord Lostwithiel has very large estates in Yorkshire, where he shoots grouse and gets the Prince of Wales to help him to do it, and a house in Belgrave Square in London. Social Science, my dear Hamer, is the study of the why and wherefore of interesting things like that.”

“Why we pay our rent to a lord?”

“To be going on with, put it that way: why Gordon Stansfield helps to keep Lord Lostwithiel on the fat of the land.”

Hamer pushed up his hair and grinned. “That’d take a bit of thinking out, Mr. Suddaby.”

“Yes, John—I beg your pardon—Hamer. That’d take a bit of thinking out. And while you’re thinking it out, take that feather brush and start dusting Social Science. It’s a dusty subject.”

The boy went on with his work. The old man watched him, musing. That was attractive—the way his face lighted up when he grinned. Very attractive indeed. It could be a dangerous face when it was a bit older—that habitual gravity, almost sadness, that could suddenly dissolve in laughter.

It was said of Hamer Shawcross that he was the best-read man in the Labour Party and that his platform manner was that of a revivalist parson. Both these statements were true. The influences that shaped him that way were at work between his fourteenth and eighteenth years. There was a third thing about him, of which women were more aware than men. He had a body of great strength and beauty. Even towards the end, he was supple and erect, six feet high, with no stoop to the shoulders, and the easy assured carriage of a good actor. It was towards the end of his life that Sir Thomas Hannaway stopped him in Palace Yard, slapped him on the shoulder, and, with small sly eyes twinkling in the fat creases of his red face, said: “Eh! You’re still a gradely lad, Hamer. You’ve got me to thank for that, you know. Remember the punch-ball in the old bone-yard?”

Hamer Shawcross did not like being reminded of the old bone-yard. “Yes, I do, indeed, Sir Thomas,” he said, rather sourly.

“Tom, to you, I hope.”

“Very well, Tom if you wish, Sir Thomas.”

The tall, immaculate figure hurried away. Sir Thomas looked after him and shook his head, puzzled. Hamer had been more than a bit stand-offish when he was a member of the Labour Government. But now that he was a member of a National Government, and Sir Thomas was sitting as a National Conservative member, that ought to make a difference. They were both in the same boat. Well—not exactly. Sir Thomas saw the minister’s tall body double dexterously as he entered a waiting car. Thomas was a connoisseur of luxurious things. He knew that car. “Lostwithiel’s, or I’ll be damned,” he muttered. No; he was not in that boat. Poor vulgar Thomas would have liked to be. But he wasn’t, though his horse Darkie Cheap had beaten Lostwithiel’s Feu de Joie in the Derby.

Sir Thomas Hannaway was certain that he would win the Derby with Darkie Cheap, because Darkie Cheap was a lucky name for him. It was associated with his first successful business deal. He was just seventeen years old when he acquired Darkie Cheap’s bone-yard.

There was only one thing that young Tom Hannaway wanted to know, and that was where the old man sold the rubbish that found its way into his hands. It was incredible that any one would want to buy it: old iron, bones, bottles. But someone did; and when Tom knew where his outflow pipe from the business was, he set himself to dam the inflow.

Darkie was getting old. He couldn’t move around as he used to. He depended on Tom to do the collecting for him. It was a touch-and-go business that at best gave the old man a bare living. Tom was present one Monday morning when Mr. Richardson called for the rent of the bone-yard. Darkie was abject and apologetic. He hadn’t the money. “This is the third week,” Mr. Richardson said sternly. “The office won’t let it go on much longer.”

“Note that, my dear Hamer,” said Mr. Suddaby, when he heard of the affair. “The office is the secular arm of the Earl of Lostwithiel. The Earl must have even the marrow out of the bones that the poor have done with.”

Tom Hannaway set out with his handcart that morning, whistling gaily. Now was his moment. He went his usual rounds, and to half the people who brought their old junk out to him he said: “Store it up. There’s not much demand this week.” He used the word grandiloquently, like an economist who understands the laws governing these matters. Not much demand for Ancoats’ rags and bones! He smiled, baring his white even teeth. The women liked him. “Whatever you do, don’t throw your stuff away. It’ll all be wanted later.”

He continued to play this game, putting off more and more customers, till only a trickle of goods was coming into the bone-yard. A month later the news went round “The bums are in on Darkie Cheap.”

There was the customary rush to gaze with commiseration upon a misfortune that hung over every one’s head and now had fallen on the Darkie. Foul catcalls were showered on the hated bum-bailiffs who were in process of seizing the few wretched things that might be sold. There were the handcart and the scales and other odds and ends. Darkie Cheap himself was there in the depths of his malodorous fastness, the whites of his eyes calling for a sympathy that would have declared itself in an attack on the bailiffs if Mr. Richardson had not been standing by. Too many of the onlookers were themselves in Mr. Richardson’s bad books, so they held their hands.

Tom Hannaway came bustling through the crowd, pushing and thrusting the people aside, with his elbows, with his palms, his face alight with indignation, his black curls awry. “It’s a shame, Mr. Richardson. It’s a bloody shame!” he shouted. “If the man can’t pay, he can’t. And my job goes, too, if he goes. What about that? What about throwing innocent people out of work?”

“That’s reight, Tom Hannaway. That’s fair enough. Tell t’owd swine off,” the people began to mutter; but Mr. Richardson looked at him with amusement and contempt. “You’ve only got to put down the rent he owes and back goes his stuff,” he said.

Tom Hannaway put his hand into his pocket. There was a gasp of surprise when the chink of money was heard. “How much?” he demanded truculently.

Darkie Cheap had come trembling to the front of the yard. He held out his hands, the pink palms upwards. “Tom! You can’t afford it. It’s too much.”

“How much?” Tom repeated, dribbling the money through his fingers. Mr. Richardson named the sum.

“Give me your rent-book, Darkie. Let me confirm that,” Tom said importantly. “I don’t trust this chap.”

Darkie produced the book. Every one crowded round, but silently, awed, as he studied it. Then he took money from his pocket, counted it carefully, and handed it with the book to Mr. Richardson. “Sign for it,” he said. “And there’s sixpence change.”

Darkie Cheap broke out into wails of gratitude. “Oh, Tom, Tom!” he cried, hugging the youngster. “You’ve saved me.”

“He’s paid your rent, that’s all,” said Mr. Richardson. “And so we can’t seize these things.” He motioned to the bailiffs. “Take ’em back to the yard. And you,” he said to Darkie Cheap, “get ’em out before the week’s over. I’m giving you a week’s notice to quit—understand? You’re an unsatisfactory tenant.”

Tom Hannaway burst out into fresh indignation. “Well of all the——! You can’t do that, Mr. Richardson. You can’t take my money and then clear the old man out.”

“Can’t I! You try and contest it.”

Nobody did. Tom bought Darkie Cheap’s equipment at a dirt-cheap price. This, with the rent, cleared him out, but he had the bone-yard, his first business concern. For he was the next tenant when Darkie Cheap vanished no one knew whither. Tom had known he would be the next tenant. He had arranged it with Mr. Richardson. His experience with Mr. Richardson was to him the most amazing part of the whole business. He had been trembling with fright when he suggested to Mr. Richardson that it would be worth his while to make the Darkie quit. Tom Hannaway never again trembled when he had to suggest corruption. Mr. Richardson’s conduct had been a valuable lesson to him. An extra shilling a week on the rent (which of course would not go on the rent-book) was all it cost Tom to have Darkie Cheap turned out. His gallant conduct in trying to save the Darkie increased his already great popularity. The stuff he had caused to be hoarded was there to be picked up, and what with that, and short weight, and one or two other little tricks, he was soon able to recover all he had spent. He had noted, too, the fear of Mr. Richardson that held the crowd. He knew this was because many of them owed rent. Well, Tom thought, as he made his rounds, it would be easy, once he had a bit of free money again, to advance it to some of these rent-owing women who liked him so much. He had heard there was good interest to be made that way. Tom was already financier enough to know that not money, but interest on money, was the goal. He took lodgings, a shabby bed-sitting-room, as soon as the bone-yard was his. Another thing he knew was that he was going to be on his own. There were too many Hannaways. He didn’t consider that he owed them anything. They could be a weight round a rising man’s neck.

On a Saturday night in February of 1880, when Hamer Shawcross was advanced a few months into his fifteenth year, he watched Ellen perform her secretarial ritual as she had done on every Saturday night as long as he could remember. Gordon Stansfield sat down to his table, dipped pen in ink, but, instead of beginning to write, looked up suddenly at the boy who was about to leave for his own room upstairs.

“What are you doing up there to-night, John?” he asked.

“Oh, I shall read.”

“Good. D’you know, when I was your age I couldn’t read. I was nearly twenty before I could get on with a book.”

Ellen, who had her fingers outspread in the foot of a stocking wherein she sought the thin spots, looked up from her chair by the fire. “I doubt if he knows how lucky he is,” she said. “I don’t suppose there’s another boy in Ancoats with a father like you and a room of his own to read in.”

“I wish every boy could have such things,” said Gordon simply. “But what I wanted to say, John, was this: try a bit of writing some night. Don’t let it be all reading. Try to express yourself. I find it very hard,” he smiled. “I didn’t begin early enough. I was over thirty before I preached my first sermon.”

John was hesitating uneasily, on one leg after the other, anxious to escape. “Oh, sermons!” he said.

Gordon laid down the pen which he had been twiddling nervously in his fingers. “Yes,” he said. “Look at Mr. Spurgeon. He was little more than a boy when he was preaching to thousands. Charles Haddon Spurgeon. John Hamer Shawcross.” He mused over the names. “Eh?” There was an affectionate challenge in his voice. John did not take it up.

“Well,” said Gordon, “we can’t all be Spurgeons, but we can all bring such gifts as we have to the Master. I was a poor babbler when I began to preach. You’ll do better than that. Perhaps I shan’t be here much longer, and I’d like to know that you’d made a beginning.”

Ellen got up with brisk indignation, the Lancashire side of her tongue stirred to activity. “Eh, lad! Now tha’s talkin’ daft. Not ’ere much longer indeed! There’s nothing ails thee, so get on wi’ thi work and let child get on wi’ ’is’n.”

She was almost in tears beneath her asperity. She hated to think of illness coming to Gordon.

“Well,” Gordon said, dismissing the matter, “get up to your room, lad. But think on, now. Do some writing, and don’t let it be too long before I sit under you in a pulpit.”

It was probably this injunction to write which caused the boy to begin, that very night, to keep a diary. He went on keeping it almost to the day of his death. Who could guess from this opening that the diary would, as the years rolled on, record the thoughts and deeds of one living at the very hub of history as its wheel was in maddest whirl? This is what he wrote that night. It gives a valuable light on his mind as it was at last emerging from childhood:

“My father, as I call Gordon Stansfield, though he is not my father, said to-night: ‘John, why do you not write something?’ I cannot tell him that I prefer to be called Hamer. But I try to get every one else to call me Hamer, except people like Tom Hannaway and Arnold Ryerson, who have always called me John.

“My father said again to-night that he would like me to be a parson. I do not want to be a parson, but this is something I cannot tell him. He is very good to me, and I do not want to hurt his feelings. His friend, Mr. Birley Artingstall, also wants me to be a parson. They often mention it in an off-hand way, though never very seriously, but I expect that will come. Last Sunday was the Chapel Anniversary, and there was a special preacher. The chapel was packed. People were sitting on the pulpit steps and on the platform place round the communion table, and chairs were brought in and put in the aisles. All this caused an atmosphere of great excitement, and when the preacher came in there was a sort of hush, as if everybody was all strung up and he could do what he liked with them. Then I wished I was the preacher. He preached a very good sermon. When he had finished the chapel was very hot, and everybody sang the last hymn with tremendous voices, and you could feel again how powerful the preacher was, because they were singing like that in consequence of the way he had preached to them. Then I wished again that I was the preacher, because it must be very fine to have a great congregation in the hollow of your hand.

“So I shall learn to be a preacher, though I do not want to be a parson. I shall become a local preacher, because that will give me a chance to learn how to speak to large congregations of people. I do not know what I want to do, except that whenever I hear a good preacher like last Sunday I feel it would be very good to have large numbers of people hanging on my words.”

That was all he wrote as the first entry in his diary; but now that he had begun he kept it up. Indeed, that chance remark of Gordon Stansfield’s, setting the boy on this course of self-expression and self-examination, must be considered of vital importance in Hamer Shawcross’s career.

“I said in the first entry in this diary ‘I do not know what I want to do.’ Strangely enough, Mr. Suddaby, my employer, said to me this morning: ‘What are you going to do with yourself, Hamer? You can’t spend long in this place. There’s no future in it for you.’ I was glad to hear him call me Hamer. So far, he is the only person to do this. I told him I did not know what I was going to do with myself, and he said: ‘Well, make up your mind and then stick to it.’ He smiled, and added: ‘If you want to take up one of the learned professions, there’s enough stuff lying round you here to qualify you for any one of them.’

“Mr. Suddaby is always calling my attention in this way to the books. There is not much for me to do in his shop, and he says it is a pity to waste time. He asked me what books I have at home, and I told him about Samuel Bamford’s poems. He said: ‘Poor Sam! To think he was once a Radical!’ I asked him what he meant, and told him about the Old Warrior who had marched with Bamford to Peterloo, and about the sabre which I have in my room. He was interested to hear about the sabre and said: ‘That’s a grand relic, Hamer. Keep that,’ but he didn’t say much more about Samuel Bamford except: ‘He became a mild old buffer, Hamer—like me. I introduced him to Engels, who was furious with both of us that day. He shook his fist and said: “I wish to God I could shatter your faith in law and order.” He never did. I just became old and tired. Sam just became a bad poet who thought a poet was a respectable being who should set an example to his fellows. Oh, yes, Sam wrote awful things. I can still remember one of his poems. It begins:

How happy may we be, my love!

How happy may we be,

If we our humble means improve,

My wife, my child, and me.

You see, he felt that if he could get a few more shillings a week in his pocket, all would be well. And he was once at Peterloo and went to gaol for it! Take warning from Sam, Hamer, and from me.’

“Mr. Suddaby went back to his chair by the fire, and started talking to his cat. He said: ‘Sheba, you lazy old slut, I’ll have to call you Bamford or Suddaby. You used to be a fighter, and now you do nothing but lie around and purr for more milk.’

“I have just looked up Bamford’s poem in the book which Mr. Birley Artingstall bound in red leather for me. It is there all right, so I am sure the words above are correct.

“I thought about what my father said and what Mr. Suddaby said—that I ought to make up my mind what I want to be, but I cannot make up my mind. I told Mr. Suddaby this, last thing as I was leaving the shop, and he said: ‘Well, to begin with, make up your body.’ He took hold of my arm and felt it. ‘There seems to be nothing wrong with you,’ he said, ‘but there’s nothing to you. You ought to do something about that.’ So I shall attend Tom Hannaway’s gymnasium.”

And that is what Sir Thomas Hannaway meant when, so many years later, he said to the Rt. Hon. Hamer Shawcross: “Remember the punch-ball in the old bone-yard?”

In the mornings Tom went the rounds with his barrow. In the afternoon he was in attendance to deal with callers. In the evenings the doors of the bone-yard were closed and the light of a street lamp fell upon them. Tom Hannaway could often be seen shinning up the lamp with two cloths in his hand—one wet, one dry. With these he would clean and polish the glass of the lamp. He wanted the full value of every ray. He understood that illumination was publicity. He was one of the first men to use neon lighting in Manchester. When he bought Artingstall’s, he kept the name, recognising the importance of its immemorial sound in Manchester ears, but he wreathed it in lighted tubes of red, blue, green and yellow, even as he had wreathed in coloured chalks his earliest business announcements on the wall of the croft.

Falling upon the closed doors of the bone-yard, the light of the spotless street lamp illuminated these chalked words:

Hannaway’s Club

Entrance Threepence

Bars, Rings, Dumb-bells.

Boxing Instruction by

Professional

Threepence Extra.

The fitting-out of this place had cost Tom very little. The parallel bars were of his own manufacture. The rings fixed to the ends of ropes hanging down from the dim rafters had come in a lot of old junk. So had the dumb-bells and the two oil-burning hurricane lamps that cast a smoky light round the gaunt evil-smelling shed. Once or twice in his time Tom Hannaway had accepted a challenge to “step up” in a booth at the fair which occasionally took possession of the croft. The batterings he there received from broken-down old pugs were turned to good account, for those hammerings, he now made out, those brief and gory appearances in a public ring, constituted him a “professional” and justified the “threepence extra” for tuition.

On only one thing had he spent money, and he had spent it wisely. He had devised a badge with white cross-bones on a blue ground and the initials H.C., for Hannaway’s Club. After twelve attendances at the Club, a boy was entitled to a free badge, and he was then initiated into the secret gesture of Club members, which was simply to lay the index-finger of the left hand along the forehead, with the knuckle outwards. Soon there was a score of Ancoats boys wearing the badge and making this occult gesture, and making it proudly if to Tom Hannaway himself. Tom would return it with the grave punctiliousness of a field-marshal returning a private’s salute. A badge not greatly dissimilar was supplied to, and proudly worn by, thousands of children who, years later, belonged to the Artingstall Kiddies’ Klub. Qualification was by the purchase of a complete suit at the stores. From his earliest days you could teach Tom Hannaway nothing about sheep or about the importance of mumbo-jumbo in herding them.

There was a black winter cold over the town as Hamer made his way home. He was well clothed; there were good boots on his feet; but his teeth chattered as a north wind, edged like a knife, cut at him round a corner. “Go home by way of Stevenson Square,” Mr. Suddaby said. “You’ll see something interesting.”

The Square was not far out of Hamer’s way. The first interesting thing he saw was that fires were blazing in it, bursting out of the sides of punctured buckets, and filling the open space with thick tarry smoke that the rioting wind tore to shreds. Round the fires scores of wretched people were warming their hands. There was nothing new to Hamer in the sight of thin and badly-clothed folks, but about these, gathered there in the howling wind, in the open space round which tall black buildings rose, with the ruddy firelight dancing upon white bony faces and outstretched skinny hands, there was some macabre quality that instantly touched and held him. Old women with grey wisps of hair blown about their faces; old men clutching their rags around them and even so not hiding their all but nakedness; barefoot children with the elfin eerie faces of knowledge bitter and premature: no, he had never seen this. This was, after all, something new. These were not people acquainted with poverty but overwhelmed by it, crushed, hopeless, utterly defeated.

He saw that they all carried basins or saucepans or jam-jars. Presently, rumbling over the granite setts of the road, there came a horse-drawn lorry, and on the lorry was a boiler with a fire burning beneath it. As soon as it was sighted, every man, woman and child ran from the fires, brandishing their pots and pans, howling like animals whose time for feeding has come. In a confused, gesticulating mob, they surrounded the lorry, accompanying its progress, some running before it, behind it, on both sides of it, all waving their utensils aloft.

There were three men on the lorry, besides the driver. “Get back!” they shouted. “Get back. Some of those children will be run over. There’s plenty for all of you. Get back!”

But the starving scarecrows would not listen. They hung on to the lorry with their hands. They tried to leap upon it. They clung to the horse’s harness. They patted his nose and flanks.

The lorry came to a standstill in the space between the fires, little warmer in that snarling north wind than any other spot in the black square. The driver sprang down and threw a yellow blanket over the round sleek haunches of the horse. “Never mind t’bloody ’orse, mister! ’E’s warmer’n we are. Let’s ’ave t’soup!” someone shouted; and the whole tatterdemalion crew, rattling their pots upon the lorry, screeched: “Soup! Soup! Soup!”

The lid of the boiler was lifted. A white cloud billowed up into the air; the wind snatched upon a thick luscious aroma and threw it into the sniffing noses of the pack. A sound like a great sigh greeted it. “A-ah!”

The men upon the lorry compelled the crowd into a rude line. With a great iron ladle, one of them dished out the soup; another put into each out-thrust hand a hunk of bread. None, being served, lingered near the fires. All had, somewhere, holes and corners into which they could slink to eat their food. Mysteriously they disappeared into the dark streets leading to the square. The windy darkness swallowed them up.

Then all the soup was gone. A few old people, a few children, lingered disconsolately, no longer clamorous, no longer part of a yelping herd: nothing but hungry and deflated men and women and children. The men and women drifted away in ones and twos, carrying their empty pans, and soon were part of the darkness from which momentarily they had had the temerity to emerge. No one was left but two small children, a boy and a girl, both bare-legged, white-faced, thin as reeds. They said nothing, but side by side went to one of the fires and stood there, the boy’s left hand in the girl’s right, each with a hand warming at the blaze. Then the men came down from the lorry and said: “We’ve got to take these fires away. We aren’t allowed to leave ’em burning here.”

They doused the flames with buckets of water brought from the lorry. An acrid stink arose where the good smell of soup had been. The men put the fire-buckets on to the lorry, unblanketed the horse, and drove away. The wind howled in the square. The children, with tin mugs fastened by string round their necks, stood there looking at the place where the fire had been, and still were standing there when Hamer Shawcross hurried towards his home.

In the morning, old Suddaby said: “Well, Hamer. Did you see anything interesting in the square?”

Hamer had slept badly. He had said nothing to Gordon Stansfield or to Ellen about the scene in Stevenson Square. But he couldn’t get it out of his mind. For the first time in his life, he had encountered an experience that kept him awake, tossing in his bed, troubled in mind. The wind had persisted. It rattled the window; it howled “Loo! Loo” as it had done on the night following the Old Warrior’s burial. The flame of a street lamp, shaken by the wind, fell upon the sabre and shivered up and down its length in pale undulations. The weapon itself seemed to take on life, to stir and tremble upon the wall. It worried the boy so much that he got out of bed, and ran down his blind. Then he could not see the sabre any more, and he slept.

So when Mr. Suddaby asked him whether he had seen anything interesting in the square, he told him of this. The old man, leaning forward with both hands clasped on the head of his stick, said: “That’s a pity, Hamer, that’s a pity. It isn’t everybody is entrusted with a Peterloo sabre. Don’t run the blind down on it yet. Sam Bamford’s dead, and so is your Old Warrior, and I’m as lazy as Sheba and a lot older. You must excuse me. But don’t excuse yourself.”

He smiled, half-serious, half-mocking, and shook open his Manchester Guardian.

“Read, Tom Paine,” old Suddaby said. “Read Rousseau, read Cobbett, read Voltaire. Read the Communist Manifesto. Engels had a lot to do with that.” And Hamer read.

“Read your Bible,” Gordon Stansfield said; and Birley Artingstall backed him up. “Read Wesley’s sermons. Read Barnes on the Epistle to the Hebrews. Read Bunyan, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Holy Living and Dying.” And Hamer read.

“Get that punch right,” Tom Hannaway said. “No! Cover up with your right. Now then; put something behind your left. Don’t pat him, hit him. Put your body behind the clout. That’ll do. Chuck it now. Running to-morrow?”

“Yes.”

“Same time?”

“Yes—seven o’clock.”

And at seven o’clock—spring was coming now, and there was light at seven and the air smelled good—Hamer found Tom Hannaway waiting in Broadbent Street, and off they went together, no word spoken. They were not stylishly dressed for the occasion: they had no running shorts or shoes, but what of that?

“Shut your mouth,” Tom said. “Breathe through your nose. Pick your knees up. Head back. That’s better. No need to force it. Take it steady.”

Hard pavements, grim buildings all about them, no tree, no greenery of any sort, but a tender blue sky above and youth and ambition in their hearts. For Tom, an ambition already harsh, concrete, well-defined; for Hamer only a vague stirring, only this fever which has somehow awakened in his veins and that is now for ever unquenchable. To be someone. To do something. To hold people in the hollow of his hand. A full mind. A fit body. The tremulous and hardly-fledged desires fluttered through his mind as he lifted his knees and swung his arms and held back his head, breathing the spring air deeply, running through the stony streets of Ancoats. He didn’t want any more to drag his leg and look interesting. He never thought now that the Broadbent Street canal had a hint of Venice. He knew it was dirty water and that he wanted to see the last of it; he knew that in the life he was going to lead he would want to be strong. He could see a tall figure—straight—dominant—imposing itself. Ah, my friends ...

They were back at half-past seven, their chests heaving. “We’ve got to get it better than that,” Tom said. “We’ve got to get back as fresh as we started.”

“We’ll do it.”

“Ay, we’ll do it. Same time to-morrow?”

“Yes.”

He and Tom weighed themselves every week on the bone-yard scales. They were putting on weight. They were putting on breadth and height. They swung on the rings; they vaulted; they boxed; they ran. In the autumn, as Ellen and Gordon and Hamer were about to sit down to an evening meal, Ellen said: “You’re as tall as your father.”

“I’m taller,” said Hamer.

They stood in their socks, laughing, against the kitchen door. Ellen scratched their height on the varnish. Hamer was by half-an-inch the taller. Gordon looked at the boy affectionately; then looked at Ellen. He would say nothing while the boy was there, but she knew he was thinking of that Sunday night when she had sat by this very fireside more dead than alive, and he was hurrying back through the fog with a wizened mite in his arms.

“Tom Hannaway’s yard has done you some good, John,” he said. “I must say I didn’t much like the idea of your going there, but it’s certainly worked out all right.”

“He needs something like that, with all that old reading,” said Ellen. “I never knew such a boy.”

Hamer grinned at her. “I’m only just beginning,” he said. “I’m starting French when the winter comes.”

Ellen had lifted the tea-cosy from the pot. She sat with the grotesque black and yellow woollen thing crushed in her hand and stared at him. “French?” she said; and Gordon, who had bowed his head with the intent to say grace, raised his chin again. “Well, lad, that’s a bit off the usual track, isn’t it?”

Hamer had got it all worked out; he was beginning to make his own decisions. He said he had been round to see Mr. Heddle, his old board-school teacher, and Mr. Heddle had agreed to give him an hour twice a week. “I can pay him out of my wages,” Hamer said proudly.

“Ay, and I suppose you’re the only boy for miles round here who’s allowed to do what he likes with his wages,” said Ellen.

“Well,” Gordon said, “that’s all right. He’s never yet done anything that isn’t sensible.”

The life he was leading now certainly gave him little opportunity to go astray. At seven every morning, whatever the weather, he was running with Tom Hannaway. After breakfast he went to the bookshop. He walked with his chin up, his arms swinging. Every step he took now belonged to this campaign he was waging to make his body fit. During the day he found little enough to do for Mr. Suddaby. He lit the fire, kept the books clean, and ran errands, but there were few days when he did not read for two or three hours in the shop. When he had eaten his midday sandwiches, he walked again till two o’clock—head up—deep breaths—quick march.

At six o’clock he took his evening meal with Gordon and Ellen. At half-past six he went upstairs to his room and wrote in his diary for half-an-hour. At seven he set off for Tom Hannaway’s gymnasium where he swung, boxed and leapt till eight. Back in Broadbent Street, he went straight to his room and began to read. At nine Ellen brought him a mug of cocoa. At eleven he went to bed.

Out of this strict regimentation of his life he got a keen enjoyment. “Read Milton,” Birley Artingstall said. Read this, read that. Someone was always at him. He always obeyed. He read Milton. He read:

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights and live laborious days.

He murmured the words over to himself. “To scorn delights ...” He liked the sound of it, and it seemed to shed a ray on his condition. He loved the life he was leading; he loved every moment of it; but he hadn’t any idea why he had arranged his life that way. He read the lines again. “Fame is the spur....” Fame ... It buzzed in his head for days. He couldn’t get rid of it.

There were two days in the week when he changed his routine: on Sundays and Thursdays. On Sundays, if Gordon were preaching somewhere, he would go with him; if not, he would attend service, morning and evening, at Emmott Street. He liked doing this. Sermons and hymn-singing began to stir him. He stayed behind to the prayer-meeting with Gordon, when Ellen had slipped away to get supper ready. He listened to the fervent supplications of Birley Artingstall. And during that autumn he remained for his first communion service. Little thimbles, hygienically filled for each communicant, were not in use at Emmott Street. Kneeling on the long red cushion that edged the communion rails, with Gordon on one side of him and Birley on the other, he took from the hands of Mr. Wilder the large cup from which every one drank in turn. “This is My blood of the new Covenant,” Mr. Wilder murmured. “Do this, as oft as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of Me.”

Hamer surrendered the cup into a pair of long pale hands, and looked up into a long pale face. The Rev. Robert Wilder smiled down at him kneeling there, a smile which seemed to understand that this was a first communion, a smile quiet and comforting. He was a new minister. Hamer liked him. It was the persuasiveness of his sermon that had induced the boy to stay behind for the communion service.

An interesting thing about Hamer Shawcross’s diary is the ease with which it is composed. The lines flow on without erasure. The first sign of hesitation is when he comes to put down his impression of Harriet Wilder.

“In the chapel porch, after service last night,” the entry reads, “Mr. Wilder was shaking hands with the people as they left. He is a very tall man with a pale face and a long black silky moustache that droops down like Mr. Artingstall’s, only Mr. Artingstall’s is reddish. Father said to Mr. Wilder: ‘Will you come home and eat a bit of supper with us, Mr. Wilder?’ Mr. Wilder said that he would. This is the first time the parson has been to supper with us on a Sunday night. As a rule, he goes off with one of the toffs, but Mr. Wilder, who has only just come to Emmott Street, looks the sort of man you could ask. He said: ‘My girl Harriet is about here somewhere. I’ll find her and tell her to slip home.’ My father said it would be nice if she came, too, and so she did, as well as Mr. Birley Artingstall. All three of the men were wearing tall silk hats.

“My mother was surprised when we all trooped in. She had laid supper for three, and in the kitchen at that; and there were the three more than she had bargained for. She got into a terrible fluster, and started ordering my father to make a fire in the front room. She wanted to take off the cloth and carry everything in there. But Mr. Wilder said: ‘Please let us stay where we are, Mrs. Stansfield. This is a beautiful cosy room,’ and Mr. Birley Artingstall laughed and said: ‘Eh, Ellen lass, it’s a cut off the joint we’ve come for, not a seat in the stalls.’

“Miss Wilder then began to help my mother, and soon everything was ready. We had the beef that we had had for midday dinner served cold, with bread and butter and tea and pickles; and after that we had cake. It was all most enjoyable and friendly.

“After supper Miss Wilder borrowed an apron from my mother and helped her to wash up in the scullery. Mr. Wilder asked if he might light his pipe, and did so, and so did Mr. Artingstall. My father does not smoke. They all three started talking about the chapel and about Ancoats and how many people attend class-meetings, and all that sort of thing, and I felt rather out of it till Miss Wilder came out of the scullery and sat in a chair alongside me at the table. We talked in quiet voices so as not to interrupt the others. She told me about the places she had lived in, because Wesleyan ministers are changed from town to town. She said she found Ancoats dreadful. She had just come from Chester where she and her father could get out easily into the Welsh mountains. I told her about my work and even about seeing the poor people getting their soup in Stevenson Square, which I have not told any one else. She said she had always wanted to go to India as a medical missionary, but now she was going to stay with her father because her mother had died at Chester.

“Her name is Harriet. She is unattractive looking.” Those four words are crossed out, and he tries again. “Some people might not think her attractive. Her face is thin and sharp and brown.” Sharp is crossed out and “eager” written above it. “She is full of life and is about my age. When she is standing up she is fidgeting all the time.” Here again he has failed to say exactly what he means, and it is clear that he wants to get Harriet Wilder down as he saw her. The whole of that last sentence goes, and he writes in its place: “She is tranquil to sit and talk to, but once on her feet she is alert and animated. They stayed till hall-past ten.”

Altogether, one gets the impression of a thin, dark girl, not conventionally good-looking, but with an alert, intelligent face, perhaps, if Hamer had cared to risk the word, with an elfin touch. One gets the impression, too, that Harriet Wilder had impressed the boy pretty deeply.

The other night of the week when Hamer’s rigorous programme went by the board was Thursday. That was class-night. As the autumn deepened towards another winter, he did not abate his strenuous endeavours. Tom Hannaway would not turn up for the running now that the mornings were dark and blear. Hamer ran alone, through fog that hid the canal, through rain that pitted it, through wind and through exhilarating frosty mornings when even the air of Ancoats seemed a heavenly elixir, distilled by angels. And now, when he was back, his chest was not heaving. He was in control of himself. He could understand what Mr. Wilder was talking about when he preached on the text “They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.”

Now that Tom Hannaway was no longer with him, he changed the route of the run. He went down George Street, where Mr. Wilder’s house was. He never saw Harriet, but once or twice the gaslight was burning in the front bedroom, and that cheered him up, although he got no cheer from all the other planes of yellow light lying along the face of the street.

On a Wednesday morning he came out, dressed, on to the landing, ready to set off as usual, when the sound of coughing made him pause for a moment. The door facing him on the other side of the landing opened, and Ellen appeared. She, too, was dressed, and carried a lighted candle. She closed the door behind her, and began to whisper in a quiet conspiratorial voice. “Don’t go out this morning, John. Your father doesn’t seem well.”

Another burst of coughing came from the room. Ellen tiptoed down the stairs, the candle throwing grotesque shadows about her in the quiet house. Hamer followed. In the kitchen she said: “Light the fire and let’s have an early breakfast. I’ve had no sleep. He’s been restless and coughing all night.”

Hamer lit the fire, but he did not feel disturbed. His mother was always like this if Gordon had a bit of a cough. “I’d better let Mr. Artingstall know he won’t be coming to-day,” he said.

“Yes, do,” said Ellen.

Before going to work he went upstairs. Gordon was asleep now. He had never seen him in bed before. Gordon, with a night’s grey stubble on his chin, with a flush on his thin cheeks and the lids of his closed eyes blue-veined transparencies, looked older, frailer, than he had ever imagined him to be. A pang of pity touched the boy, strong, upright, proud of his condition, and a pang of fear, too. Suddenly he wondered what he and Ellen would do if Gordon should die, and then, banishing the thought as monstrous, incredible, he walked slowly out of the room.

Ellen was packing his sandwiches when he got downstairs. “Don’t bother with those,” Hamer said. “I’ll come home at midday. I’d like to see how he is.” The words surprised him. They admitted an anxiety that he was trying to push into the back of his mind. To reassure himself, he added: “I’ll run home, since I’m not running this morning.”

He did, and surprised himself by the urgency of his running. This was not the steady lope of the mornings. He was pelting hell-for-leather, disturbed by the memory of Gordon’s burning cheeks and shallow-rapid breath. Ellen was at the door, waiting for him to come. “He’s better!” she shouted when the boy was still ten yards away. He knew then, by the great surge of joy that went through him, how fearful his heart had been. He flung his cap upon its hook and went straight upstairs. A fire had been lit in the bedroom. Gordon was sitting up in bed, wearing a pink woollen jacket of Ellen’s over his night-shirt. His steel spectacles were on his nose, his Bible was in his hand; but he was not reading. He was gazing abstractedly, through the iron rails at the foot of the bed, at the fire. Even Hamer’s entrance did not at once shake him out of his preoccupation. When he saw the boy, he took the spectacles off his nose, folded them and laid them on the Bible, and smiled. “Well,” he said, “this is a nice thing—me sitting here dressed up like an old woman.”

Hamer sat on the edge of the bed, uncomfortable. He looked out of the window. There was nothing to see but the black face of the mill which stood there with its feet in the canal. It was a dark, brooding day. The mill windows were lit. “I’m glad you’re better, father,” he said.

“I think I’m a bit better. But I feel very tired, and I go hot all over, then cold. I won’t be able to take the class to-morrow night.” He hesitated for a moment, then said: “I should feel very happy if you would take it. It would be a—start.”

Hamer swung himself off the bed and took the few paces which brought him to the window. He stood there looking down at the sullen water of the canal, and at Mrs. Hannaway, chasing her smallest son to school, and at Mrs. Ryerson, setting off with her customary brisk step, cap on head, roll of coarse apron under her arm, on her way to tackle something. He was disturbed by a deep emotion. He knew that Gordon was no better. Gordon had never before admitted that he would be unable to do something on the morrow. He had always said: “I’ll be up all right in the morning.” Hamer felt that he wanted to do something—anything—to please Gordon. He turned from the window. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take the class. I’ll do my best.”

“Good boy!” Gordon said. “Your mother will give you the register. And you’ll find some pennies in a cup on the dresser. I always keep ’em there for the people who can’t pay class-money.”

“What about a doctor?” Hamer asked.

“Doctor? For a chap with a bit of a chill on the chest? Oh, no—oh dear, no.”

Suddenly he began to cough. It became very bad. He doubled up with the paroxysm, and Hamer saw sweat break out in little shining beads on his forehead. Ellen came running, and Hamer said: “I’d better go. I’m a bit late already. I’ll eat my sandwiches as I walk.”

He took the sandwiches with him, and when he was sure no one was watching him he dropped them into the canal. He felt that a mouthful would choke him. He began to run, and when he had turned the corner into Great Ancoats Street he saw Harriet Wilder walking ahead of him. Then he stopped running. He did not want her to think that he was running after her. But he went on at a good lick, so that he should overtake her nevertheless. When he came abreast, he said: “Good-afternoon, Miss Wilder,” and fumbled with his cap. He had not learned to make this gesture elegantly.

This was the first time he had spoken to Harriet since she had been to supper. She smiled at him frankly, the whole of her almost ugly but attractive and intelligent face lighting up. He was very glad to meet her. The misery in his heart lightened, and when she held out her thin brown bony hand he took it with gratitude for the warmth and sincerity of its clasp.

She was going into Market Street to do some shopping. They walked together as far as the steps leading down to Suddaby’s cavern. He had told her by then all about Gordon’s illness and his promise to take the class. He confessed to being nervous.

“Oh, you’ll find it’s nothing,” Harriet said comfortingly. “I take a Sunday school class. There’s nothing in it. Perhaps it helps the first time if there’s a friend with you. Would you like me to come? I’m a member of Father’s class, but I could come to yours for once.”

“Would you?” he said, with a tremble of excitement. “They’re all so old in that class. That’s what frightens me.”

She grinned, with a puckering of her little monkeyish face in which the golden-brown eyes were so bright. “How solemn you are,” she said. “I thought so the other night.”

And the idea that she had thought of him at all, whether as a solemn fellow or not, pleased him so much that a smile dawned in his eyes and spread to his mouth; and it was this smile that she remembered when he had waved his hand and dived down the cellar steps and she was going on through the grey afternoon towards Market Street.

It was strange to be walking on a Thursday night to Emmott Street by himself. It was strange to hear the class-money pennies chinking in his trousers pocket and to be aware of the words that he had prepared chinking through his mind. He had prepared them last night in his room, wrestling as with demons, pausing now and then to listen to Gordon’s cough sounding from across the landing. Ellen was there, sitting by Gordon’s bedside. She did not bring Hamer’s cocoa at nine o’clock that night. He went without it. At ten o’clock she looked into his room and said: “I’m going to turn in myself now. Are you all right?”

Hamer got up to ease his stiff limbs. They talked in whispers. “Yes, mother. I’m all right. Shall I go in and see him?”

“No; he’s just fallen off.”

“Why don’t you get a doctor?”

“He doesn’t need a doctor,” she said, almost fiercely. “He wants rest and quiet. Besides, doctors cost money.”

“I’ve saved up a bit,” he said. “I can do without the French lessons.”

She kissed him suddenly—a thing she did not often do—and she had not to stoop to kiss him. She kissed him on the cheek as they stood face to face. Then she went out, and there were tears in her eyes.

It was such a small house that presently he could hear the creaking of the bed as she got in beside Gordon. Gordon must have wakened, because there was a little more coughing and a quiet rumble of voices, and then silence, within the house and without. In the silence Hamer took up his pen again and went on writing the first of the millions of words he was to utter in public.

In the morning Ellen was almost gay. Once more she declared that Gordon was better. Her confidence cheered the boy so much that he went for his run as usual, and when he came back, shining with health, Gordon was sitting up in bed and able to smile at him. Hamer took his sandwiches to work; when he got home at night he was surprised to find Mrs. Ryerson in the kitchen. Each of the two middle fingers of her right hand now lacked its top joint, but she was nimble and handy.

“I’ve just been tackling a bit of fettling for your mother,” she explained, as though she had not fettling enough to do for herself and those who employed her, “and your supper won’t be two shakes. I’ve got t’kettle on and a bit o’ summat in t’oven.”

With her maimed hand she put back a wisp of greying hair that had strayed into her eyes, then, finger to lip, advanced her tough five foot of length towards him. “If you take my advice,” she whispered, “you’ll get t’doctor. Your mother carried on like mad when I suggested it. She will ’ave there’s nowt wrong wi’ ’im. But you get t’doctor, lad.”

She bent to peep into the oven, and Hamer tiptoed upstairs, his heart full of foreboding. Gordon was not sitting up now. He did not sit up again. His head, in the narrow valley it had worn in the pillow, was moving restlessly from side to side. His eyes were closed, the silvery stubble was lengthening on his face. As Hamer stood looking down on the man he had always known as father, whose hand had seemed so comforting in the mouldy cab on that bleak day when they buried the Old Warrior, whose hand indeed had been so comforting and dependable all the days of his life, he knew suddenly of a certainty that Gordon’s days were numbered. He said urgently: “I mustn’t go out to-night, mother. The class can look after itself.”

Ellen, sitting in a wicker chair by the tiny fire, had not stirred when Hamer entered the room. Now she stood upright and cried: “He’s better, I tell you! He’s better—better!”

Gordon’s head ceased to roll. The tired lids raised themselves from his eyes. “Ay, I’m all right,” he said feebly.

Hamer knelt by the bed and took one of the short stubby hands that had gone very white and burned in his own. “I shall stay with you to-night,” he said. “Let the class go hang.”

“Nay, lad,” said Gordon gently, “that’s no way to talk. This is your start. I’ll be awake when you get back. I’ll want to know how you got on. Don’t forget the pennies.”

He closed his eyes again. Hamer stood up and watched him for a moment, saw the head begin once more its frightening roll, then went down to the kitchen. Mrs. Ryerson had a hot-pot waiting for him. “Well, lad?” she asked.

“I’m going for the doctor,” he said. “Can you stay till he comes?”

“Ay, that I can,” she said. “There’s the washing-up to tackle yet an’ a two-three little jobs besides. My two are in bed. They’re all right. Francis’ll look after ’em.”

He had started off early and called at the doctor’s, and there he was making his way through the murky evening to Emmott Street. He passed the stunted elderberries dripping black moisture in the chapel yard, went down the descending path to the door opening into the subterranean rooms. The chapel-keeper whose business it was to attend to fires and gaslights had done his work and gone. The classroom, now so familiar to him, with its bare plank floor, its whining gas, its welcome fire, did not look so reassuring as usual. No one had yet come. He placed his Bible and hymn-book and class-register on the table, and slipped beneath them a postcard on which he had written the points of the address he had composed the night before.

Then he stood still and listened. Down here under the chapel it was eerie. A distant footstep sounded hollowly on a wooden floor. A door banged. A sound of feeble hymn-singing petered out and died. From a nearby room came the sound of a voice uplifted. It rose and fell; it swelled to impassioned supplication, diminished to soft entreaty; it went on and on. Birley Artingstall was before the Mercy Seat. Hamer stood there, lonely and unhappy, more than unhappy, utterly miserable and forsaken, thinking of the hot little bedroom in Broadbent Street, and Gordon’s hot hand, and Gordon’s head rolling, rolling, rolling, and Ellen despairing beneath her desperate defiance. He was on the point of seizing his hat and running, letting the class go hang, as he had said, when again the hollow sound of someone approaching broke the silence. Harriet Wilder came into the room.

He was not himself aware of the eagerness with which he started forward to greet her. He did not know that she had seen his face set in grim lugubrious lines, seen, too, those lines melt suddenly before the onset of happiness and relief. Any one young, friendly and familiar would at that moment have wrought this transfiguration in him, but how was Harriet Wilder to know that?

He took her hand and she spoke shyly. “The minister’s class—that is Father’s class—meets in his house. I’ve never been down here. Isn’t it grim and cold?”

In the distance Birley Artingstall’s voice rumbled to silence like thunder muttering to extinction beyond the horizon. Then there was utter quiet, save for the gnat-whine of the gas, and in the grate the tiny flapping of the flames like little shining banners. They stood listening for a moment to the silence, still holding one another’s hands. It was she at last who quietly took her hand from his and went to a chair in the front row. She knelt there, with her face right down on her hands that lay on the chair seat, and Hamer, who had gone to the armchair behind the table, could see that her brown hair was curly on the white nape of her neck. As she got up and dusted her knees two women came in, and presently all were there who might be expected. Hamer’s first audience was made up of Harriet Wilder, five old women gnarled by a lifetime of rough occupation, and two men; one who might be seen any day sweeping up the refuse of Great Ancoats Street, and one who was a teetotal cooper, torn continuously by doubts whether God would forgive him for making barrels which he knew were destined for the liquor trade.

It was Gordon Stansfield’s habit to remain seated in his chair and to discourse in his quiet, comfortable and rambling fashion for ten minutes or so. Hamer did not do this. When the moment came at which the class expected to hear the leader’s few words, he pushed back his chair, stood with his left hand grasping the lapel of his coat, and with his right quietly manœuvred his notes into view. Then he announced a text: “To him that hath shall be given,” and he proceeded to preach an austere doctrine of self-improvement. To him that hath the ability to read are opened all the continents of literature; to him that hath a body and the will to use it is given the satisfaction of feeling it develop into a strong and subtle instrument. As a concession to the religious nature of the occasion, he spoke of the hunger for God, of which, it may fairly be assumed, he then knew nothing and said that to those who cultivated this appetite would be added blessings beyond what they could ask or think.

But, taking it by and large, the address was a survey, undertaken not without satisfaction, of his own achievements up to that moment. Had the sermonette survived and fallen later into the bands of his enemies, they might well have said: “Ay, it’s the true Hamer touch. Ah, my friends, see what a good boy am I.” But the address did not survive. The diary only notes: “I was surprised to find that I could speak without feeling nervous, and managed to bring in on the spur of the moment one or two things that I had not written down. Harriet Wilder listened attentively.”

So did every one else, if it comes to that. They were a polite and not very spirited little assembly, and if they drifted away into the dark Ancoats night feeling that the occasion had missed something that Gordon Stansfield never failed to impart, they doubtless felt also that the fault was theirs.

Harriet lingered behind. Hamer put on his overcoat, turned out the gas, and in the darkness they groped their way towards the door. “Where are you?” she said, and reached out her hand and took hold of his arm. She held on to it till they were in the passage which led to the forecourt of the chapel. At the end of the passage they could see through an open door the oblong slab of wan light that was part of night over Ancoats. She released his arm then, and they went out into the open air together. He was tingling to know what she thought of his address, but, as he would not run to overtake her in the street, neither would he ask her. So, with nothing said between them, they covered the short distance along which their ways coincided. Then she said: “Good-night. I hope I’ll hear you again. You were good.”

His heart leapt up on hearing that. “Thank you,” he said. “Good-night.” And only when her light step had pattered to extinction did he remember that she need not have come at all, and that he had not thanked her for coming.

She was to do so much for him, and little thanks she was to get for any of it.