for that, Billy – s'elp me, it ain't; it's case anythink 'appens to me. On'y to put me away decent, Billy, that's all. We never know, an' you'll be glad of it t'elp bury me if I should go any time – "
"I'll be glad of it now," answered Billy, who had it in his pocket; "an' I've got it. You ain't a dyin' sort, you ain't; an' if you was, the parish 'ud soon tuck you up. P'raps you'll be straighter about money after this."
"Let me 'ave some, then, – you can't want it all. Give me some, an' then 'ave the money for the things. There's ten dozen and seven, and you can take 'em yerself if ye like."
"Wot – in this 'ere rain? Not me! I bet I'd 'ave the money if I wanted it without that. 'Ere – change these 'ere fardens at the draper's wen you go out: there's two bob's worth an' a penn'orth; I don't want to bust my pockets wi' them."
While they spoke Lizer had come in from the back room. But she said nothing: she rather busied herself with a child she had in her arms. When Billy's mother, despondent and tearful, had tramped out into the rain with a pile of clothes in an oilcloth wrapper, she said sulkily, without looking up, "You might 'a' let 'er kep' that; you git all you want."
At another time this remonstrance would have provoked active hostilities; but now, with the money about him, Billy was complacently disposed. "You shutcher 'ead," he said, "I got this, any'ow. She can make it up out o' my rent if she likes." This last remark was a joke, and he chuckled as he made it. For Billy's rent was a simple fiction, devised, on the suggestion of a smart canvasser, to give him a parliamentary vote.
That night Billy and Lizer slept, as usual, in the bed in the back room, where the two younger children also were. Billy's mother made a bedstead nightly with three chairs and an old trunk in the front room by the mangle, and the eldest child lay in a floor-bed near her. Early in the morning Lizer awoke at a sudden outcry of the little creature. He clawed at the handle till he opened the door, and came staggering and tumbling into the room with screams of terror. "Wring 'is blasted neck," his father grunted sleepily. "Wot's the kid 'owlin' for?"
"I's 'f'aid o' g'anny – I's 'f'aid o' g'anny!" was all the child could say; and when he had said it, he fell to screaming once more.
Lizer rose and went to the next room; and straightway came a scream from her also. "O – O – Billy! Billy! O my Gawd! Billy, come 'ere!"
And Billy, fully startled, followed in Lizer's wake. He blundered in, rubbing his eyes, and saw.
Stark on her back in the huddled bed of old wrappers and shawls lay his mother. The outline of her poor face – strained in an upward stare of painful surprise – stood sharp and meagre against the black of the grate beyond. But the muddy old skin was white, and looked cleaner than its wont, and many of the wrinkles were gone.
Billy Chope, half-way across the floor, recoiled from the corpse, and glared at it pallidly from the doorway.
"Good Gawd!" he croaked faintly, "is she dead?"
Seized by a fit of shuddering breaths, Lizer sank on the floor, and, with her head across the body, presently broke into a storm of hysterical blubbering, while Billy, white and dazed, dressed hurriedly and got out of the house. He was at home as little as might be until the coroner's officer carried away the body two days later. When he came for his meals, he sat doubtful and querulous in the matter of the front room door's being shut. The dead once clear away, however, he resumed his faculties, and clearly saw that here was a bad change for the worse. There was the mangle, but who was to work it? If Lizer did, there would be no more charing jobs – a clear loss of one-third of his income. And it was not at all certain that the people who had given their mangling to his mother would give it to Lizer. Indeed, it was pretty sure that many would not, because mangling is a thing given by preference to widows, and many widows of the neighborhood were perpetually competing for it. Widows, moreover, had the first call in most odd jobs whereunto Lizer might turn her hand: an injustice whereon Billy meditated with bitterness.
The inquest was formal and unremarked, the medical officer having no difficulty in certifying a natural death from heart disease. The bright idea of a collection among the jury, which Billy communicated, with pitiful representations, to the coroner's officer, was brutally swept aside by that functionary, made cunning by much experience. So the inquest brought him nought save disappointment and a sense of injury…
The mangling orders fell away as suddenly and completely as he had feared: they were duly absorbed among the local widows. Neglect the children as Lizer might, she could no longer leave them as she had done. Things, then, were bad with Billy, and neither threats nor thumps could evoke a shilling now.
It was more than Billy could bear: so that, "'Ere," he said one night, "I've 'ad enough o' this. You go and get some money; go on."
"Go an' git it?" replied Lizer. "O yus. That's easy, ain't it? 'Go an' git it,' says you. 'Ow?"
"Any'ow – I don't care. Go on."
"Wy," replied Lizer, looking up with wide eyes, "d'ye think I can go an' pick it up in the street?"
"Course you can. Plenty others does, don't they?"
"Gawd, Billy … wot d'ye mean?"
"Wot I say; plenty others does it. Go on – you ain't so bleed'n' innocent as all that. Go an' see Sam Cardew. Go on – 'ook it."
Lizer, who had been kneeling at the child's floor-bed, rose to her feet, pale-faced and bright of eye.
"Stow kiddin', Billy," she said. "You don't mean that. I'll go round to the fact'ry in the mornin': p'raps they'll take me on temp'ry."
"Damn the fact'ry."
He pushed her into the passage. "Go on – you git me some money, if ye don't want yer bleed'n' 'ead knocked auf."
There was a scuffle in the dark passage, with certain blows, a few broken words, and a sob. Then the door slammed, and Lizer Chope was in the windy street.
WITHOUT VISIBLE MEANS
All East London idled, or walked in a procession, or waylaid and bashed, or cried in an empty kitchen: for it was the autumn of the Great Strikes. One army of men, having been prepared, was ordered to strike – and struck. Other smaller armies of men, with no preparation, were ordered to strike to express sympathy – and struck. Other armies still were ordered to strike because it was the fashion – and struck. Then many hands were discharged because the strikes in other trades left them no work. Many others came from other parts in regiments to work, but remained to loaf in gangs: taught by the example of earlier regiments, which, the situation being explained (an expression devised to include mobbings and kickings and flingings into docks), had returned whence they came. So that East London was very noisy and largely hungry; and the rest of the world looked on with intense interest, making earnest suggestions, and comprehending nothing. Lots of strikers, having no strike pay and finding little nourishment in processions, started off to walk to Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, or Newcastle, where work might be got. Along the Great North Road such men might be seen in silent companies of a dozen or twenty, now and again singly or in couples. At the tail of one such gang, which gathered in the Burdett Road and found its way into the Enfield Road by way of Victoria Park, Clapton, and Stamford Hill, walked a little group of three: a voluble young man of thirty, a stolid workman rather older, and a pale, anxious little fellow, with a nasty spasmic cough and a canvas bag of tools.
The little crowd straggled over the footpath and the road, few of its members speaking, most of them keeping to their places and themselves. As yet there was nothing of the tramp in the aspect of these mechanics. With their washed faces and well-mended clothes they
