Dr. and Mrs. Gold. An episode in the life of a cause

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THE ABEEDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS. AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A CAUSE BY EDITH A. BARNETT " I do not know if all matter will be found to be made of one element, as oxygen or hydrogen, at last ; but the world of manners and actions is wrought of one stuff, and, begin where we will, we are pretty sure in a short space to be mumbling our ten commandments." — Emerson. LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. PATERNOSTER SQUARE

Chapter I

The stream of life goes northward up Totten ham Court Road on summer afternoons. Five o'clock, and still more six o'clock, brings visions of tea and rest to weary men and women, boys and girls. And among the many streamlets that flow into the main current there is always one that comes from the eastward, not far from Oxford Street. By twos and threes it keeps on steadily. It is made up of women, youngish women, at this hour of the day. The men turn out of the Museum later. It keeps itself dis tinct from the main tide of business until far up the road. Is it the tinge of learning or of study that one distinguishes it by ? Is it the faint fluttering of long thin strips of printed paper, or the occasional flourish of a lead pencil ? Is it a smudge of paint on a skirt, or a trace of overflowing inkpots on an ungloved thumb ?

Is it the sight of hair ruffled for art's sake, or for comfort's sake during long hours of elbows on the table? Is it — ah! who can tell what it is that clings to the women students, wor shippers of the written or the painted word, whereby we distinguish them from other women who tramp along that straight, unaristocratic road evening after evening all the year round ; whether the sun is sinking over towards Har row, or whether it has set long ago, or whether its slanting beams greet them and bathe them in light and love as they turn the corner and mix with the throng that goes northward. A few years ago — the date is of no con sequence — one day in early summer, when the sun was still high behind the houses, two girls turned into the road together. I call them girls, though perhaps they were already women in years, because they had, and especially one ot them had, a frail, slim figure, and a habit of giving way to all comers that does not last through a lengthened experience of student-life in London.

As they continually waited for one another they advanced but slowly ; and pre sently they were overtaken by a third reader, who carried books and papers with a determined air, cleaving a rapid way along the crowded pavement. One of our earlier acquaintances bowed as she passed. "Who's that?" said her companion. "I didn't know you knew her. I've often seen her about this last year, and wondered who she was. " George Thompson told me about her. I know her a little. Her name's Clara David. They say her father died in Siberia. The Gil man-Turners picked her up somewhere, and have her to their house. They always have queer people. Mrs. Gilman-Turner says it makes her parties go off, and Ada Gilman- Turner told me that she's revolutionary and a red republican — this Clara David, I mean — and that she's writing for the papers to earn bread and cheese."

" She's clever, I suppose," said the younger girl. "She's a queer-looking mortal ; and how she covers the ground ! I don't think I want to know her. I should be afraid she'd explode under my eyes." " She has exploded pretty often. I expect. I don't know how George Thompson came to be sent for, but he was sent for to see her mother, when the two first came over here together. She was ill, and she's dead since — the mother, you know. And this Clara David's all alone, hasn't any belongings at all. George says she was put in prison once, in Russia or Germany or somewhere, and that she had hairbreadth es capes, and ate some papers to hide them, and that she arrived in England with no clothes and no money, and lived in a garret. But you never know if George means you to believe all he says. I don't suppose it's true.

I told him he'd read it in a penny dreadful." " It doesn't sound likely," said the younger girl. " Doesn't seem to fit in with Tottenham Court Road ; greys and drabs do best to paint with here. You'd want plenty of scarlet and orange to bring out that story well. Besides, I shouldn't think she'd be alive to tell the tale, should you ? The paper, and ink and that, would poison her, wouldn't it ? " she added, for, like many of her craft, she had a most matter of-fact mind. "See! here's our turn." And they went westward, where presently they will find the colours less dingy and dull, and the world brighter. Going northward the world does not soon become brighter. That there is sunshine far ahead, one knows ; as indeed there is at the end of most pathways of man's making ; but it needs faith to believe in it through the dreary waste of small houses and shops that stretch out in that direction.

You lose the trace of students soon after the tram starts : only a few of the more plodding or enthusiastic continue to remind you os their existence by reading in the car. Clara David did not read. She counted her money, then gazed long and earnestly over the head of a working man who sat opposite. When the tram stopped, she turned down a side street and went into an eating shop, where was a cauliflower, a couple of smoked herrings, and a metal teapot in the window. The stout, middle-aged woman, who was resting behind the counter during a slack hour, greeted her as an old customer. " Good evening, miss ! I thought we should have you in this afternoon. Tea is it, miss?" She touched a bell on the table, and a girl in a smutty apron appeared in the open doorway. "Tea, and bread and butter, please, Mrs. Snoad.

And I'm rather hurried for time." " And won't you take nothink with ver tea, miss ? Here's a beautiful pork chop as Halice'll cook yer in a minute. ■ Jest one nice one as is left from the dinners. Or a herring, now, for a relish, or a slice of this 'am. The gents this morning said it was a hextry good 'un." " No ; just bread and butter, thank you.' " There now, miss. You look tired to death, that you do. You'd better sit down to a good piece o' meat. We'll say 4d. for it, for it's the last one I got left, and I done well with that loin o' pork this morning. You look in to morrow, or the hend o' the week, and pay for it, miss. " Thank you, Mrs. Snoad, but I'm going out to-night to a party, and I shall get supper for nothing. It would be wasteful to eat a chop now and spoil my appetite. But you're empty to-night, or am I early ?

" " H early you are, miss. You come 'ere a hour later and you'll find the place full. Makes their teas and suppers together, does our gents. They don't get their suppers for nothing, you take your hoath. Blessed if I'd care to feed some of 'em at two shillings a 'ead." Here tea came, and Mrs. Snoad relapsed into silence. She had not too much breath to talk with, and talk was part of her stock-in-trade, spent with economy to keep her customers amused while they waited. " No message from my landlady, Mrs. Snoad? I was out last night, speaking at a meeting, and I haven't seen her to-day." " There now. If I 'adn't a forgotten. And Mrs. Vast looked in so particular when she went out to do her bit o' shopping. No ; she didn't leave no message. But she says to me : ' Martha, if Miss David should drop in to-night, do you tell her as how there's a letter for her with immediate wrote on the outside '.

And I said I'd tell you first thing, and I forgot it." " It's no matter, Mrs. Snoad. I am going straight home as it happens." Then the customer gathered up her books and went. Turning and turning again, with many a sharp glance to left and right, as if she had forgotten that in free England peaceable citizens are not spied on in the streets, Clara soon reached home. It is a small three-storied house, built for private occupation but at the time when Clara lived there the lower window showed a large sheet of white calico, on which was stencilled in black : " Mrs. Lavinia Vast, Millinerand Dressmaker. Ladies'and Children's own materials made up. Weekly Payments taken." Below this notice you could see a rusty black dress and a few trimmed hats inviting customers. Aprons, children's frocks, and pinafores filled up corners, and below was a pile of knitted stockings, from which I learned that Mrs. Vast found it necessary to turn a penny any way that she could, and to refuse no orders.

Drab Venetian blinds at the first floor window were a good deal broken, and hung askew ; but the lodger at the top indulged in the luxury of clean white curtains and a couple of geraniums. Mrs. Vast was on the doorstep, with her mouth full of pins, taking in an order from a servant girl who had not got leave to come out. She was a tall woman, spare, with pronounced features and iron-gray hair. There was an air of combat about her ; and if you could have seen her struggling with a refractory dress body, or haggling at the butcher's stall for her piece of Sunday's meat, you would perhaps think that her talents would have been wasted on an easy life. But if you believed that Mrs. Vast's struggles were for means of livelihood alone, you would have made a great mistake. Among her struggles was one long one to obtain books ; and her back parlour contained many a bargain, the price of which had been squeezed out of Saturday's shopping.

A few atheistic publications of a mild and antiquated type, and a couple of volumes in calf on the state of France before and during the Revolu tion, were among the best thumbed. She lived alone, and her imagination was active. I can understandhow deeplyinterestedshe wasin every detail of her lodger's career and work, and how she half regretted that things did not permit of a struggle with the police to conceal Clara David's identity. She planned many smart re torts to the myrmidons of the law, framed on the model of Foxes Martyrs (which belonged to her mother, and which she thought she had outgrown), and of a modern story book written concerning the French Revolution period. But plotting in London is dull work, sadly wanting dramatic embellishment ; Mrs. Vast was quite right to clothe her myrmidons with waving plumes, and to let them carry halberds.

The policeman's helmet and truncheon are in congruous trappings for the stately drama. She thinks she shows her independence by accosting her lodger (for whom she has pro found admiration) by her Christian name. "Good evening, Clara David," she says and nods, in spite of the pins, as Clara goes upstairs. On Mrs. Vast's drawing-room floor was, probably is still, a large room that had been used as a show-room by Mrs. Vast's prosperous predecessor, when the neighbourhood was more fashionable. Clara had fitted it up with a few benches and desks, a table or two much spotted with ink, a couple of old easy-chairs and a hearthrug. A pot on the mantelpiece had some peonies in it, and above, hanging on the wall, was a portrait of a man with a young face and white hair, looking out over the room as if he would control its occupants.

But the room for the present was empty, except for Clara, who stood looking into the man's face. The high words that came in gusts through the wall only meant that the piano-tuner next door was quarrelling with his wife. Clara did not stand long. She pulled up the Venetian blinds, fastening one torn strip of webbing with a large pin, shook the inkpots, dragged some exercise books from under a heap of newspapers, and had just taken that urgent letter from the shelf when there came a knock at the door, then another, and another. The large room was used as a school or class room, and these were the pupils. The first comers were a pretty-looking English work-girl with a stoop and a white face ; a tall dark man of Polish birth, such as may be seen among all coteries of revolutionaries ; a British workman, tall, fair, and hard-handed ; and another, short and sandy.

Most of them brought books or papers and exchanged them with Clara or with one another. And there was a bundle of papers and pamphlets, come by post, that she dis tributed among them. Then they fell to work : the Pole studied English, and the sandy-haired workman German ; the tall fair man strove to master some elementary mathematics ; and the work-girl, whom they called Polly Mart, turned listlessly the pages of an arithmetic book until Clara was ready to attend to her. They had worked for an hour or more when the stairs creaked under a light quick step, and all the pupils turned their heads towards the door. " Good evening to you all," said the new comer, in a clear, incisive voice, as he pulled off his coat. " Sorry I couldn't get here till just at your usual time for breaking up. How do the DR. A.\D MRS. GOLD. 14 mathematics get on, Knight?

Ah! here's the last number of the Social Regenerator. Do for you to read on your way home." Then he came across the room and shook hands with Clara. " I have an engagement to-night," he said, dropping his voice on a lower note. " I must have half-an-hour's chat with you before I go." Then he turned to the pupils with a very pleasant air of comradeship : " We all learn of Miss David. Her experience and knowledge gained under her father's tuition " — here he glanced at the portrait over the mantelshelf — " cannot be dispensed with in these critical times." It might have been noticed that the large fair man, whom they called Knight, displayed little alacrity in putting up his books. The others appeared to remember that it is pleasant out of doors on fine summer evenings, and that Fins bury Park is within a walk.

Polly Mart lingered a minute or two after the books were shut and put things tidy. Then she whispered : " Shall I look in to-morrow, miss, and do your bit o' needlework ? I can spare an hour or so, being Saturday." The late comer smiled, showing a row of small, white, pointed teeth. " Each according to ability," he said. "That is as it should be, Polly. You show us all the more excellent way." Polly blushed, and wondered if the gentlemen were laughing at her. Then the large man made his request. " I was going to put your blinds straight, miss. They looks very bad from the road of a day when the sun's shining. I put the things in my pockets handy when I cleaned myself. But not if it's ill-convenient to you to-night." "Do do them, Mr. Knight!" Clara said. "It won't take long, will it? Dr. Gold shall talk German to me if he has State secrets to tell."

Tom Knight hesitated. He spent his life in putting up blinds in one corner of a house while men and women who were not of his class talked in another corner, in language that he did not follow. He came here for variety. He loved to escape from his mates and from his garrulous old mother to spend his evenings in Clara's large front room. The other pupils were no great friends of his. The Pole was a foreigner, and Tom Knight was secretly in favour of a heavy tax on foreign workmen. Tom Knight decided to go. But he was not pleased with himself; and he did not so much as thank Polly Mart, who opened the door and slipped out into the street behind him. Clara's companion sank into the large easy chair with a sigh. " And now for our chat, my dear Miss David," he said, as he handed her his cigarette case.

She helped herself as a matter of course, and presently they were both en veloped in clouds of smoke, she standing on the hearthrug with one elbow on the mantelshelf, he reclining at his ease in the chair. Tobacco smoke is said to conduce to thought, but it is not the thought that bubbles over into words. The silence lasted for some minutes. Clara had a fine figure ; and in that easy at titude was a restful sight for a wearied man. And she, who ruled supreme over her pupils, was taking a holiday, and enjoyed handing over her authority for a brief season, even on her own hearthrug. "And how did your meeting go off last night, Dr. Gold ? " she asked, presently. " Was that what you wanted to talk to me about ? " " There was stormy discussion," the man replied. "Some fellows got in determined to make a row.

But we were there in great force, and I got ten minutes' silence to reply." He smoked on for a few seconds, and added as an afterthought: "The fellow who made the row was put outside, and I heard he got his head broken. Served him right ; but I wish it had been one of our own people. Martyrs should always suffer on the right side." And Dr. Gold smiled again, showing his small, white, pointed teeth beneath a black moustache. The woman did not smile. Her eyes flashed instead somewhat angrily. " I wish our people would see that it is not for us to stifle discussion," she said. " We all work only that truth may pre vail, and the more freedom for expression of opinion the more certain is the downfall of the present social tyranny. It is for them, not for us, to break the heads of the men who know no better.

When I see that sort of thing I want to help on the wrong side." The man sighed, took his cigarette from his lips, and appeared to be thinking deeply. Over his face flitted an expression of sorrow and sympathy. "That is what we thoughtful ones must always feel. But I fear that our revolution will not be sprinkled with rose water, any more than the revolutions that are past and gone. You do not know the British workman, my dear Miss David. When you have lived a few years longer among us you will find how slow he is to move with an idea, and how much faster the idea takes root if he is allowed to break somebody's head on its behalf before he quite under stands what it is. We must work with the material that we have, and if any change is to come in our time we must not be too careful as to means."

He glanced round the room and looked at Clara. " This is a poor place for you to be in, and poor work for you to be at. You're worthy of something better." " It's as good as I've ever had. Since I first remember, I've never lived in one place or one country for any length of time. Sometimes mother and I were left behind, but we didn't often have lodgings as good as these. They are a great deal better than Polly Mart can get. I don't want anything more for myself. And I can wait, even for the others, if only things will be better some day." "That is one of the points we have agreed to differ on," was the reply. " I mean to see things improved in my lifetime. What are we to wait for ? All these wretched creatures will be dead and forgotten before we are, and thousands more like them. Listen ! there's Chellon next door, beating his wife!

Do you'hear the children's voices chiming in ? What good is it to them that you've a school next door, and that Knight and Polly and all the rest of them are gaining knowledge at your expense?" " ' Through knowledge all good things come,' " she said softly, as if she were repeat ing the words of the portrait over her head. " But you are right ; it comes very slowly. As to my pupils : you know it was agreed that I could get more hold of these men by teaching them than in any other way. They come to learn mathematics and such like ; but they bor row books and talk to me. Mathematics is the least that they learn. Have you had any news from Paris ? Some of us think that I could do better work over there." " Nothing fresh. But I'll look in again to morrow night. I have to go to the Gilman- Turners, and it is late.

It is well to keep in with the monied folk. Funds are low at headquarters, and we find brains but not money. " Then I shall meet you," she said ; " I am going there also. I shall not know many people, but, as you say, it is our duty to go. If they see us they must at least recognise the fact of our existence. The sight of us familiarises them with the idea of social reform. We creep a few steps forward." Dr. Gold lit a fresh cigarette and went on foot to the corner of the street. He rattled some coins in his pocket, hailed a hansom, and, as he jumped into it, said within himself: " She's an uncommonly able woman, and in good hands ! A little too rigid in her principles, but that might mend. And, after all, thorough-going principles are what the public believes in, or thinks it does. They may be turned to excellent account.

Two together, we might climb up a good way." Clara David proceeded to make her toilet. From the ottoman on which the newspapers were thrown she took out a black velvet dress, and a small piece of old point lace. She opened a folding door, and in a tiny back room, half closet, half kitchen, set some water to boil over a gas stove while she reduced her abundant black curly hair to something like order. Over the bed hung another portrait, of a stout, middle aged lady, gentle and sad, arrayed in the identical piece of old point lace and a black velvet dress. The lady in the portrait wore jewels round her neck and rings on her fingers ; but these had been devoted to the Cause long ago. The black velvet dress had, like its owner, passed through many vicissitudes, but they made a brave show together when Clara called to Mrs. Vast from the top of the stairs : "I've got my latch-key, and I'll be home about twelve".

Mrs. Vast was proud of her lodger who went out in a black velvet dress to grand houses, and she retired to the parlour to finish an urgent order in cheerful spirits. "And a good thing I per suaded her to let me do up that black velvet," she said to herself. "And very glad I am that she gave it into good hands, for it's a good dress even now, and there's many would have scrimped it for to keep the pieces. But not me. ' Each according to his ability,' I say. And I make no doubt that when Clara David gets her due, and the good times come, she'll have a house at the West End, and well she'll grace it. And she's not one to turn her back on her friends : it's many a good piece of stuff I'll have the handling of then." So Mrs. Vast consoled herself as the night wore on, and she stitched and snipped the maid servant's afternoon gown.

From which it may be supposed that Mrs. Vast, in spite of all her reading, believed, as do many others, in levelling up rather than in levelling down.

Chapter II

The Gilman-Turner's parties are popular. I do not think I can say as much for each member of the family, taken singly. The chief cha racteristic of Mr. Gilman-Turner is, that he makes in the city the money that is lavishly spent on these occasions ; and his wife is credited with a sharp tongue and a short temper. Some say that she gets these parties together, and that, whether you like her or not, she must be a clever woman to do it ; others say that Miss Gilman-Turner is the attraction, and that it is her will and pleasure to fill the house with celebrities such as one meets no where else. Whoever does it, it is done, and done well. Ada studied art for a term or two at a well known studio, and affects the costume of the profession. As Paul Reuban says (and everyone allows that he is the best judge of women's dress in town just now), she shows thereby her taste, for she has not much style of her own, and that sort of thing sets her off.

Ada has also written a novel. All her friends have read it, and it is supposed to have been a success. Not even Ada's friends dare ask on what terms it was published. No one knows better than Ada how to repress undue familiarity, and it is understood that money is to her an absolutely uninteresting topic. She will give you a five-pound note if you happen to be in her favour ; and she can have plenty more for the asking, for she is an only child, and chief among her admirers are her fond papa and mamma. A young lady in this position is well able to fill her drawing-rooms with celebrities, should she so desire ; and everyone knows that every one is ready to come to a house frequented by people who are worth meeting. Even if the Gilman-Turners are not in your set, it is well worth while to go occasionally if you can spare the time.

There is Madame (you know whom I mean), about whom that case was on last year. There is that M.P., of whose opinions folks speak with bated breath in all strictly orthodox houses. The conversation is sure to turn on one or other of them at one or two of the next half-dozen dull dinner-parties you go to. Just let out that you met the person in question, and that you have first-hand information to give, though it be only as to the colour of the woman's hair, or the cut of the man's clothes. " Not at a house to which I habitually go," you will, of course, add, especially if you are talking with old-fashioned or ultra-particular people, though these are the hearers who will best enjoy your information if you serve it up palatably. Everyone is to be met at the Gilman-Turners: solid men from the city, ponderous matrons from the country, poor people whom the Gilman-Turners have helped, rich people who are not very ready to follow their example, students, artists, actors, writers, rising and risen doctors and barristers, are packed so tight, on the first Thursday in the month all through the season, that you have much ado to find your way to your hostess, and nothing short of a manœuvre or a fight gets you to Ada's side.

Nevertheless, when Clara arrived, there was Dr. Gold, faultlessly attired, smiling, talking, and making himself most agreeable to the heiress. Clara could see him through the open doorway. Our Polish acquaintance, Mr. Barratry, was there, also in the doorway, looking supremely uncomfortable, although Mrs. Gilman-Turner had thoughtfully provided him with German conversation in the form of a young and learned lady in spectacles. The Gilman-Turners always keep a supply of linguists on hand, and they are expected to make themselves useful. " But, my dear Ada, I couldn't make anything of him. I really could not. His German is so very peculiar. And he was so frightened I thought he meant to run away. He really is not quite tame enough. Next season, perhaps, if he isn't sent to Siberia before then, he may do.

There's something rather awful about him. He never laughs. I'm not sure that he even smiled. I like queer people. You know I do. But he is really not a lion. He is only a bear." Barratry put his heels together, and bowed low to Clara. But she had no idea of wasting her evening on a man who was on her side already. She spied in a corner an acquaintance, none other than the student in Tottenham Court Road, and made straight for her. " See ! She's coming this way. The dyna mite lady! Introduce me, do! " whispered the frail little person who was clinging as usual to her friend's side. " Miss David — Jessie Sanderson," said the friend, promptly, as she shook hands and made room for the new comer to sit down. Jessie screwed herself an inch or two further into the depths of a big arm chair and laughed nervously.