Sybil - Benjamin Disraeli (books to read as a couple TXT) 📗

Lady St. Julians in a tone of mysterious alarm. “Do you see that?”

“No! what?”

“Do not look as if you observed them: Lord John and Mr. Egremont, in the furthest window, they have been there these ten minutes in the most earnest conversation. I am afraid we have lost him.”

“I have always been expecting it,” said Lady St. Julians. “He breakfasts with that Mr. Trenchard and does all those sorts of things. Men who breakfast out are generally Liberals. Have not you observed that? I wonder why?”

“It shows a restless revolutionary mind,” said Lady Firebrace, “that can settle to nothing; but must be running after gossip the moment they are awake.”

“Yes,” said Lady St. Julians. “I think those men who breakfast out or who give breakfasts are generally dangerous characters; at least, I would not trust them. The Whigs are very fond of that sort of thing. If Mr. Egremont joins them, I really do not see what shadow of a claim Lady Deloraine can urge to have anything.”

“She only wants one thing,” said Lady Firebrace, “and we know she cannot have that.”

“Why?”

“Because Lady St. Julians will have it.”

“You are too kind,” with many smiles.

“No, I assure you Lord Masque told me that her Majesty⁠—” and here Lady Firehrace whispered.

“Well,” said Lady St. Julians evidently much gratified, “I do not think I am one who am likely to forget my friends.”

“That I am sure you are not!” said Lady Firebrace.

VIII

Behind the printing office in the alley at the door of which we left Sybil, was a yard which led to some premises that had once been used as a workshop, but were now generally unoccupied. In a rather spacious chamber over which was a loft, five men, one of whom was Gerard, were busily engaged. There was no furniture in the room except a few chairs and a deal table, on which was a solitary light and a variety of papers.

“Depend upon it,” said Gerard, “we must stick to the National Holiday: we can do nothing effectively, unless the movement is simultaneous. They have not troops to cope with a simultaneous movement, and the Holiday is the only machinery to secure unity of action. No work for six weeks, and the rights of Labour will be acknowledged!”

“We shall never be able to make the people unanimous in a cessation of labour,” said a pale young man, very thin but with a countenance of remarkable energy. “The selfish instincts will come into play and will baulk our political object, while a great increase of physical suffering must be inevitable.”

“It might be done,” said a middle-aged, thickset man, in a thoughtful tone. “If the Unions were really to put their shoulder to the wheel, it might be done.”

“And if it is not done,” said Gerard, “what do you propose? The people ask you to guide them. Shrink at such a conjuncture, and our influence over them is forfeited and justly forfeited.”

“I am for partial but extensive insurrections,” said the young man. “Sufficient in extent and number to demand all the troops and yet to distract the military movements. We can count on Birmingham again, if we act at once before their new Police Act is in force; Manchester is ripe; and several of the cotton towns; but above all I have letters that assure me that at this moment we can do anything in Wales.”

“Glamorganshire is right to a man,” said Wilkins, a Baptist teacher. “And trade is so bad that the Holiday at all events must take place there, for the masters themselves are extinguishing their furnaces.”

“All the north is seething,” said Gerard.

“We must contrive to agitate the metropolis,” said Maclast, a shrewd carroty-haired paper-stainer. “We must have weekly meetings at Kennington and demonstrations at White Conduit House: we cannot do more here I fear than talk, but a few thousand men on Kennington Common every Saturday and some spicy resolutions will keep the Guards in London.”

“Ay, ay,” said Gerard; “I wish the woollen and cotton trades were as bad to do as the iron, and we should need no holiday as you say, Wilkins. However it will come. In the meantime the Poor-Law pinches and terrifies, and will make even the most spiritless turn.”

“The accounts today from the north are very encouraging though,” said the young man. “Stevens is producing a great effect, and this plan of our people going in procession and taking possession of the churches very much affects the imagination of the multitude.”

“Ah!” said Gerard, “if we could only have the Church on our side, as in the good old days, we would soon put an end to the demon tyranny of Capital.”

“And now,” said the pale young man, taking up a manuscript paper, “to our immediate business. Here is the draft of the projected proclamation of the Convention on the Birmingham outbreak. It enjoins peace and order, and counsels the people to arm themselves in order to secure both. You understand: that they may resist if the troops and the police endeavour to produce disturbance.”

“Ay, ay,” said Gerard. “Let it be stout. We will settle this at once, and so get it out tomorrow. Then for action.”

“But we must circulate this pamphlet of the Polish Count on the manner of encountering cavalry with pikes,” said Maclast.

“ ’Tis printed,” said the stout thickset man; “we have set it up on a broadside. We have sent ten thousand to the north and five thousand to John Frost. We shall have another delivery tomorrow. It takes very generally.”

The pale young man read the draft of the proclamation; it was canvassed and criticised sentence by sentence; altered, approved: finally put to the vote, and unanimously carried. On the morrow it was to be posted in every thoroughfare of the metropolis, and circulated in every great city of the provinces and populous district of labour.

“And now,” said Gerard, “I shall tomorrow to the north, where I am wanted. But before I go I propose, as suggested yesterday, that we five together with Langley, whom I counted on