Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography by Charles Kingsley (best short novels txt) 📗

open, the thought of thoughts flashed across me.

"Tell me one thing! Is my cousin George to be married to ——" and I stopped.

"He is."

"And yet," I said, "you wish to turn me back from dying on a barricade!" And without waiting for a reply, I hurried down the street in all the fury of despair.

* * * * *

I have promised to say little about the Tenth of April, for indeed I have no heart to do so. Every one of Mackaye's predictions came true. We had arrayed against us, by our own folly, the very physical force to which we had appealed. The dread of general plunder and outrage by the savages of London, the national hatred of that French and Irish interference of which we had boasted, armed against us thousands of special constables, who had in the abstract little or no objection to our political opinions. The practical common sense of England, whatever discontent it might feel with the existing system, refused to let it be hurled rudely down, on the mere chance of building up on its ruins something as yet untried, and even undefined. Above all, the people would not rise. Whatever sympathy they had with us, they did not care to show it. And then futility after futility exposed itself. The meeting which was to have been counted by hundreds of thousands, numbered hardly its tens of thousands; and of them a frightful proportion were of those very rascal classes, against whom we ourselves had offered to be sworn in as special constables. O'Connor's courage failed him after all. He contrived to be called away, at the critical moment, by some problematical superintendent of police. Poor Cuffy, the honestest, if not the wisest, speaker there, leapt off the waggon, exclaiming that we were all "humbugged and betrayed"; and the meeting broke up pitiably piecemeal, drenched and cowed, body and soul, by pouring rain on its way home—for the very heavens mercifully helped to quench our folly—while the monster-petition crawled ludicrously away in a hack cab, to be dragged to the floor of the House of Commons amid roars of laughter—"inextinguishable laughter," as of Tennyson's Epicurean Gods—

  Careless of mankind.
  For they lie beside their nectar, and their bolts are hurled
  Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled
  Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world.
  There they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
  Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
  Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
  But they smile, they find a music, centred in a doleful song,
  Steaming up, a lamentation, and an ancient tale of wrong,
  Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong
  Chanted by an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
  Sow the seed and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
  Storing little yearly dues of wheat, and wine, and oil;
  Till they perish, and they suffer—some, 'tis whispered, down in hell
  Suffer endless anguish!—

Truly—truly, great poets' words are vaster than the singers themselves suppose!

CHAPTER XXXV. THE LOWEST DEEP.

Sullen, disappointed, desperate, I strode along the streets that evening, careless whither I went. The People's Cause was lost—the Charter a laughing-stock. That the party which monopolizes wealth, rank, and, as it is fancied, education and intelligence, should have been driven, degraded, to appeal to brute force for self-defence—that thought gave me a savage joy; but that it should have conquered by that last, lowest resource!—That the few should be still stronger than the many, or the many still too cold-hearted and coward to face the few—that sickened me. I hated the well-born young special constables whom I passed, because they would have fought. I hated the gent and shop-keeper special constables, because they would have run away. I hated my own party, because they had gone too far—because they had not gone far enough. I hated myself, because I had not produced some marvellous effect—though what that was to have been I could not tell—and hated myself all the more for that ignorance.

A group of effeminate shop-keepers passed me, shouting, "God save the
Queen!" "Hypocrites!" I cried in my heart—"they mean 'God save our shops!'
Liars! They keep up willingly the useful calumny, that their slaves and
victims are disloyal as well as miserable!"

I was utterly abased—no, not utterly; for my self-contempt still vented itself—not in forgiveness, but in universal hatred and defiance. Suddenly I perceived my cousin, laughing and jesting with a party of fashionable young specials: I shrank from him; and yet, I know not why, drew as near him as I could, unobserved—near enough to catch the words.

"Upon my honour, Locke, I believe you are a Chartist yourself at heart."

"At least I am no Communist," said he, in a significant tone. "There is one little bit of real property which I have no intention of sharing with my neighbours."

"What, the little beauty somewhere near Cavendish Square?"

"That's my business."

"Whereby you mean that you are on your way to her now? Well, I am invited to the wedding, remember."

He pushed on laughingly, without answering. I followed him fast—"near Cavendish Square!"—the very part of the town where Lillian lived! I had had, as yet, a horror of going near it; but now an intolerable suspicion scourged me forward, and I dogged his steps, hiding behind pillars, and at the corners of streets, and then running on, till I got sight of him again. He went through Cavendish Square, up Harley Street—was it possible? I gnashed my teeth at the thought. But it must be so. He stopped at the dean's house, knocked, and entered without parley.

In a minute I was breathless on the door-step, and knocked. I had no plan, no object, except the wild wish to see my own despair. I never thought of the chances of being recognized by the servants, or of anything else, except of Lillian by my cousin's side.

The footman came out smiling, "What did I want?"

"I—I—Mr. Locke."

"Well you needn't be in such a hurry!" (with a significant grin). "Mr.
Locke's likely to be busy for a few minutes yet, I expect."

Evidently the man did not know me.

"Tell him that—that a person wishes to speak to him on particular business." Though I had no more notion what that business was than the man himself.

"Sit down in the hall."

And I heard the fellow, a moment afterwards, gossiping and laughing with the maids below about the "young couple."

To sit down was impossible; my only thought was—where was Lillian?

Voices in an adjoining room caught my ear. His! yes—and hers too—soft and low. What devil prompted me to turn eavesdropper? to run headlong into temptation? I was close to the dining-room door, but they were not there—evidently they were in the back room, which, as I knew, opened into it with folding-doors. I—I must confess all.—Noiselessly, with craft like a madman's, I turned the handle, slipped in as stealthily as a cat—the folding-doors were slightly open. I had a view of all that passed within. A horrible fascination seemed to keep my eyes fixed on them, in spite of myself. Honour, shame, despair, bade me turn away, but in vain.

I saw them.—How can I write it? Yet I will.—I saw them sitting together on the sofa. Their arms were round each other. Her head lay upon his breast; he bent over her with an intense gaze, as of a basilisk, I thought; how do I know that it was not the fierceness of his love? Who could have helped loving her?

Suddenly she raised her head, and looked up in his face—her eyes brimming with tenderness, her cheeks burning with mingled delight and modesty—their lips met, and clung together…. It seemed a life—an eternity—before they parted again. Then the spell was broken, and I rushed from the room.

Faint, giddy, and blind, I just recollect leaning against the wall of the staircase. He came hastily out, and started as he saw me. My face told all.

"What? Eavesdropping?" he said, in a tone of unutterable scorn. I answered nothing, but looked stupidly and fixedly in his face, while he glared at me with that keen, burning, intolerable eye. I longed to spring at his throat, but that eye held me as the snake's holds the deer. At last I found words.

"Traitor! everywhere—in everything—tricking me—supplanting me—in my friends—in my love!"

"Your love? Yours?" And the fixed eye still glared upon me. "Listen, cousin Alton! The strong and the weak have been matched for the same prize: and what wonder, if the strong man conquers? Go and ask Lillian how she likes the thought of being a Communist's love!"

As when, in a nightmare, we try by a desperate effort to break the spell, I sprang forward, and struck at him, he put my hand by carelessly, and felled me bleeding to the ground. I recollect hardly anything more, till I found myself thrust into the street by sneering footmen, and heard them call after me "Chartist" and "Communist" as I rushed along the pavement, careless where I went.

I strode and staggered on through street after street, running blindly against passengers, dashing under horses' heads, heedless of warnings and execrations, till I found myself, I know not how, on Waterloo Bridge. I had meant to go there when I left the door. I knew that at least—and now I was there.

I buried myself in a recess of the bridge, and stared around and up and down.

I was alone—deserted even by myself. Mother, sister, friends, love, the idol of my life, were all gone. I could have borne that. But to be shamed, and know that I deserved it; to be deserted by my own honour, self-respect, strength of will—who can bear that?

I could have borne it, had one thing been left—faith in my own destiny—the inner hope that God had called me to do a work for him.

"What drives the Frenchman to suicide?" I asked myself, arguing ever even in the face of death and hell—"His faith in nothing but his own lusts and pleasures; and when they are gone, then comes the pan of charcoal—and all is over. What drives the German? His faith in nothing but his own brain. He has fallen down and worshipped that miserable 'Ich' of his, and made that, and not God's will, the centre and root of his philosophy, his poetry, and his self-idolizing æsthetics; and when it fails him, then for prussic acid, and nonentity. Those old Romans, too—why, they are the very experimentum crucis of suicide! As long as they fancied that they had a calling to serve the state, they could live on and suffer. But when they found no more work left for them, then they could die—as Porcia died—as Cato—as I ought. What is there left for me to do? outcast, disgraced, useless, decrepit—"

I looked out over the bridge into the desolate night. Below me the dark moaning river-eddies hurried downward. The wild west-wind howled past me, and leapt over the parapet downward. The huge reflexion of Saint Paul's, the great tap-roots of light from lamp and window that shone upon the lurid stream, pointed down—down—down. A black wherry shot through the arch beneath me, still and smoothly downward. My brain began to whirl madly—I sprang upon the step.—A man rushed past me, clambered on the parapet, and threw up his arms wildly.—A moment more, and he would have leapt into the stream. The sight recalled me to my senses—say, rather, it reawoke in me the spirit of manhood. I seized him by the arm, tore him down upon the pavement, and held him, in spite of his frantic struggles. It was Jemmy Downes! Gaunt, ragged, sodden, blear-eyed, drivelling, the worn-out gin-drinker stood, his momentary paroxysm of strength gone, trembling and staggering.

"Why won't you let a cove die? Why won't you let a cove die? They're all dead—drunk, and poisoned, and dead! What is there left?"—he burst out suddenly in his old ranting style—"what is there left on earth to live for? The prayers of liberty are answered by the laughter of tyrants; her sun is sunk beneath the ocean wave, and her pipe put out by the raging billows of aristocracy! Those starving millions of Kennington Common—where are they? Where? I axes you," he cried fiercely, raising his voice to a womanish scream—"where are they?"

"Gone home to bed, like sensible people; and you had better