For many days Arthur’s mind was almost entirely occupied with troublous anticipations of Helen Norman visiting the shop. John Pether had said nothing with regard to the interview between the latter and himself, and Arthur still felt convinced that Helen would come.
Almost certainly she would hear of Mr. Tollady’s death from her guardian; but, even if she did not, a still small voice whispered flatteringly in the young man’s ear that his prolonged absence from the studio would cause her to try and see him, for she had always manifested a frank interest in him, which, he felt, could not all at once give way to indifference.
If she should interrogate him on the subject, how would Mr. Gresham explain his pupil’s sudden desertion?
Arthur trembled as he asked himself the question. So indignant had he become with Mr. Gresham that he could believe him guilty of almost any disingenuousness, even to an entire misrepresentation of what had taken place between them. When a week had passed, and still he had not seen Helen, the belief that the latter event must have occurred began to take firm possession of him. Doubtless the artist had so far defamed him in conversation with Helen that the latter could no longer experience any solicitude on his account. Who could tell what Mr. Gresham might not have accused him of? For it was plain to Arthur that, for some inscrutable reason, the artist had suddenly conceived a dislike to him. It was pain unspeakable to think of Helen viewing him in the light of false accusations, and losing all that interest in him which his talent — was it his talent alone? — had excited.
When the week had passed, and still he was disappointed, his mind entered upon another mood. What was Helen Norman to him, or he to Helen Norman? There was slight enough connection between them under the most favourable circumstances, and if Helen had so poor an opinion of him as to credit the first calumny she heard, then, indeed, she was of less than no account in his life.
Could he persuade himself that he had ever had especial interest in her? Impossible. That he had ever been on the point of loving her? Monstrous! Ignorant as he was of Helen’s daily life, her schemes and her aspirations, he had little difficulty in so representing her character to himself as to persuade himself that there was nothing to regret in losing her from sight. What if she had given a few pounds to Mr. Tollady to distribute among the poor? There was no great credit in that, seeing that she had most likely thousands at her disposal. Very likely this had been a solitary instance of charity, induced by some momentary curiosity, some lack of occupation.
She was beautiful; that he could not endeavour to deny; but what was physical beauty to him, a man with a serious life before him and no ignoble aims?
Thus he argued with himself sophistically, and thought he was convinced. But the very currents of his life-blood, had he been calm enough to listen to them, as they throbbed along his veins, gave the lie to every one of his arguments.
In an evil moment he took her picture out of the portfolio, with the intention of destroying it; but at the first glimpse of that pure and noble countenance, he fell on his knees before it with a sob of pain. After all, she was his idol, the embodiment, to his heart and mind, of all that is loftiest and most worthy of pursuit in life. With an irresistible rush all the poetry of his nature seized upon and swelled his anguished heart; he wept violently. No, no, he would never destroy her picture! To the end of his days it would remind him of a time of real, though foolish, happiness, and would be capable of awakening the purest emotions of his breast.
He was now anxious to leave the old house as soon as possible. Since Mr. Tollady’s death the shop had not been opened, and notice of the cessation of business had been forwarded to the few regular employers of the old man’s printing-press. It remained to dispose of all the moveables, with the exception of Mr. Tollady’s books, and the few articles of furniture which Arthur resolved to retain for his own use. The books he would not have allowed himself on any consideration to part with, so intimately were they connected with the happiest memories of his life; and with the furniture he proposed fitting up a little empty room somewhere in the neighbourhood of his work, wherever that might happen to be.
This matter of employment was naturally one of the first to be attended to. With the assistance of a few respectable tradesmen, with whom his work in former days had brought him into connection, he succeeded, after the lapse of a couple of weeks, in obtaining a situation as compositor in the office of a daily newspaper. During one week his work would occupy him throughout the day, during the next throughout the night, alternately.
This point happily gained, he was proceeding to look for a lodging, when a visit from Mark Challenger spared him the trouble. Mark (who had some time since given up his shop in Charlotte Place, and gone to work as a journeyman), occupied a bedroom in Gower Place, a small thoroughfare running out of Gower Street into Euston Square, and in the same house happened to be a small room, to be let unfurnished. Mark begged so earnestly that he would not go quite out of the neighbourhood, and represented with such sincerity what a delight it would be to him to have his young friend’s companionship, that Arthur consented to take the room.
On the following day his bed, table, and two or three chairs were transported thither, and the old house in Charlotte Place was abandoned for good. At the same time it was intimated to Mr. John Waghorn that, as it was impossible to pay the remaining hundred pounds on the mortgage, the property was waiting for him to take possession of it as soon as he chose.
Arthur was now to have his first experience — that is, since early childhood — of the ordinary London lodging-house.
His landlady’s name was Pettindund, and, besides her own family of grown-up sons and daughters, she had her house always full of lodgers. When Arthur grew to know these people with some degree of familiarity, they excited in him a feeling of unutterable disgust. Enthusiastic as were his hopes for the amelioration of the poor and ignorant, he saw at once that here he had come into contact with a class of people from whom it was vain to expect improvement save by the agency of time. They could not be called poor, since the weekly earnings of the family amounted to no small sum, the whole of which they regularly squandered in surfeit and vice; and their mental and moral debasement was to them no pain whatever. To attempt to influence these people by any powers of example or persuasion, which an individual could exercise, he saw at once would be waste of time. They were too completely sunk in their hoggish slough to be capable of rescue by any single hand. Many an hour did he spend in contemplating their condition, and not without good results to himself. He got thus by degrees truer views on the subject which most interested him. He had glimpses in time of the great truth that education, and education only, working perhaps through generations toward the same end, gaining here a point and there a point, could be the instrument of the redemption of the well-to-do labouring classes.
But, in the meantime, events occurred which were the instruments of bringing him into active spheres of life such as he longed for.
One evening, very shortly after the two had gone to live together in Gower Place, Mark Challenger announced to Arthur that he had joined a club of which he should like his friend also to become a member. He proposed to take Arthur to a meeting which would be held on the ensuing Sunday evening.
“It’s a club of working men,” he said, when describing it; “but men that are unmarried and have no one to support but themselves, and who come together just to do what good they can. Every man pays just what he likes every week; we have a box with a slit in it hung up in one corner, so that no one sees what you put in. And this money goes to form a fund, you see, out of which any member can have help if he really needs it. It isn’t like a public club that almost anyone can join. We mean to have no more than twenty in it, at all events just at present, and all those twenty, Arthur, must be men that feel the wrongs of the poor and are sworn to work tooth and nail for bettering them. You see, it’s more like a sort of committee for real working purposes. If any one of us knows someone that’s badly in want and deserves help, he’s only to tell the rest of the club, and they inquire into the matter. If they find it all right they either give help out of the funds of the club, or have a special subscription. We’re all teetotallers, mind you. If we drank away half our money every week we shouldn’t be able to contribute much; but as it is we make up a good purse, and, I can tell you, it goes to good uses.
“It seems to me a grand idea, if only it can be well carried out,” said Arthur. “But how much is it usual to contribute each week?”
“The best-to-do sometimes give two shillings. I earn thirty shillings a week, and out of that I manage to give five. But then, you see, I’ve no one dependent on me now, and I only pay six shillings rent.”
“Five shillings, Mr. Challenger!” exclaimed Arthur. “You indeed show yourself in earnest. I honour you for it.”
“Bah! It’s nothing. I have all I want to eat and drink, and before I get too old to work there’ll be better times coming, see if there won’t.”
“How many members have you at present?”
“Why, only twelve. You’ll make the thirteenth, if you join. You see, where there’s no fixed contribution, and where there’s serious work meant, we have to be quite sure of our men. Most working-men when they join a club just do it for their own advantage. But, as I’ve told you, that isn’t our aim. We help each other if we need it, but most of us have very little fear of wanting much as long as we’ve our heads and our hands on, and our object is to help those poor devils that haven’t had the strength or the good luck to hold out against the rich that we have. I should have been one of that sort still if it hadn’t been for old Sam Tollady. Aye, aye, Arthur Golding, we must never forget Sam. Gad! What a chairman he’d have made for us if he’d only been alive now!”
“What do you do at your meetings? Is there one every Sunday night?”
“Yes, every Sunday night, and sometimes an extra called in the week, when there’s any case to be considered. I’m told it was started by Will Noble. He’s a printer, like yourself, and a grand fellow. You must know Will. Will had an idea that we working-men have waited too long for other people to help us, and it’s time we turned to and helped ourselves. So he began to look round him, and before long he found half-a-dozen other men who were not miserably poor, but who had the same ideas as he had about doing what they could to help others. You’ll know them all if you’ll come down to-night, and I can tell you they’re worth knowing. What do we do at our meetings? Well, we have some settled subject for discussion, you see, each Sunday night. Last Sunday was my first night there, and then Will Noble got up and spoke what he thought about the best way of helping poor people without making them lose their independence. Will said some uncommonly good things, and the best was that it’s the poor must help the poor. The rich will never do it — till the day comes when they’re made, and that won’t be so long, either! He said that we working men had the best chances of going about and seeing just what people wanted and what they didn’t want. And when Will Noble had done, one or two of us got up and said what we thought, you see. The subject to-night is: ‘How are the poor to get possession of their rights?’ A man named Hodgson, a carpenter, will speak first. I don’t know him at all, but I’m curious to hear what he’s got to say.
“Does Mr. Pether belong to the club?” asked Arthur.
A look of perplexity rested for a moment on Mark’s countenance.
“Well, no, he doesn’t,” he said at length, hesitating slightly in his speech; “and, to tell you the truth, Arthur, I shouldn’t care for him to know about it. Poor John Pether has suffered more than any of us, and his wrongs have driven him half mad like. I’m getting almost afraid of John, he’s so terribly fierce at times; I often fear he’ll do either himself or some one else an injury. You see, he has brooded year after year in solitude, always growing poorer and poorer, till he couldn’t get his thoughts away from that one subject, however much he tried. John won’t hear of any other way of righting things except by violence, and it’s just that that our club won’t have anything to do with. Now you’ll hear to-night what Hodgson says, but I’ll warrant there won’t be a word about blood in the whole of his speech. So you can see the reason why John Pether couldn’t very well be a member; and things being so, I wouldn’t have him know of it at all. It would seem unkind, you know, to keep him out, and I wouldn’t have him think me unkind to him for the world. John and I have known each other hard upon thirty years, and we’ve been good friends all the time. I only wish he’d let me help him a bit now and then, but he gets into one of his fearful moods if ever I mention it. Poor fellow! I often wonder what’ll become of him.”
Eight o’clock was the time at which the club met, and about half-past seven Arthur and Mark set out together. Mark led his companion down Tottenham Court Road and across Oxford Street into Crown Street. Near the lower end of this they passed before the closed shop of a tin-worker, over which was written the name, “Isaac Spreadbrow.” Knocking, they were almost immediately admitted, and passed through the shop into a little yard at the back. It was a sort of small timber-yard, one side of which was occupied by a long carpenter’s shed. Here it was that the meetings of the club were held pro tempore.
Half-a-dozen men were already present in the yard, walking up and down, engaged in conversation. They were all hard-faced, hard-handed men, dressed with a decent care which betokened the tolerably well-to-do artisan.
Amongst them Arthur’s eye at once singled out one who, he felt sure, must be the leader. He was not mistaken. To this tall man Mark at once led him, whispering that it was Will Noble.
“Mr. Noble,” said Mark, “I’ve ventured to bring you a friend of mine, one I’ve known ever since he was a lad of ten or eleven. He’s heart and soul in this work of ours, I assure you, and he’d feel proud if he was made a member of the club. Wouldn’t you, Arthur?”
“I should indeed,” replied the young man, returning the hearty grasp of the hand with which the tall man greeted him “There is nothing I feel so much interest in as efforts such as yours, and I should think it a privilege to work with you Mr. Challenger forgot to tell you my name. It is Golding.”
“Well, Mr. Golding,” said Will Noble, in a full, deep voice which spoke the heartiness of the man’s nature, “I like the way in which you speak. You must know it is our rule that a new member must be introduced by at least two old ones who know him personally. You are one, Mr. Challenger; who is the other?”
“Why, it’s rather awkward,” returned Mark, looking round at the other men, who stood in a group apart. “I’m afraid there isn’t another of us that knows Arthur personally. But I’ll tell you just how it is. Arthur has lived and worked from a boy up with an old friend of mine called Tollady. You didn’t know him, Mr. Noble; I only wish you had, but — ha! here comes Spreadbrow. He knew him. Isaac!” he called out to a stumpy little man who was shaking hands with the members of the other group, “Did you know Sam Tollady?”
“Know him, by God!” exclaimed the tin-worker, energetically, “if I didn’t know Sam Tollady show me the man who did. Damn me if I didn’t!”
“Well, did you ever hear him speak of one Arthur Golding, who had lived with him?”
“Many a time, and a good lad he must have been, though I didn’t know him at all. Where’s he gone now that poor Sam’s dead?”
“Why, here he stands,” replied Mark, pointing to Arthur. “I want him to be a member, but unfortunately I’m the only one who knows him.”
“I know him, Will Noble,” cried Isaac, in a squeaking voice which he might appear to have caught from his trade. “Damn me, I’ll go bail for him. Now I see him, I remember his face too. I must have seen him in the shop. But I’ll go bail for whoever was Sam Tollady’s friend, damn me if I won’t!”
“Then I think that’s quite enough,” said Noble. “Wait till we’re all together, and we’ll have you elected, Mr. Golding. Mr. Challenger will take you to sign the book. Isaac, I wish you could get out of that habit of swearing. I’m no Puritan, as you know; but it don’t fall pleasantly on a man’s ears. Couldn’t you make shift to do without it, don’t you think?”
“I tell you what it is, Will Noble,” returned the little man, stroking a scrubby beard, “you’re about right in what you say, as you always are for the matter of that. I’ve had many a damned hard struggle with this habit; but, by God! it’s always been too much for me yet. But I’ll try again, if it’s only to please you, Will. I’m damned if I don’t!”
Will Noble turned away with a good-natured laugh, and Mark Challenger took Arthur into the shed, which was now illuminated by half-a-dozen tallow candles. The litter of the shop had been all pushed away into corners, and in the centre of the shed stood a long deal table, round which were placed benches. A chair was at the head, for the chairman, and on the table in front of it lay a small book containing the rules of the society, written out in Will Noble’s own bold hand.
Every member had to read these rules and sign them. They recapitulated pretty much what Mark had already told Arthur, the principal being — &l............