Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (read novel full TXT) 📖

bloody sight worse than Rushton or

Misery either! Who was it started the one-man, one-room dodge, eh?

Why, you, yer bleeder!’

 

`Knock ‘im orf ‘is bleedin’ perch,’ suggested Bundy.

 

Everybody seemed to think this was a very good idea, but when the

Semidrunk attempted to rise for the purpose of carrying it out, he

was thrown down by a sudden lurch of the carriage on the top of the

prostrate figure of the bugle man and by the time the others had

assisted him back to his seat they had forgotten all about their plan

of getting rid of Crass.

 

Meantime the speed of the vehicle had increased to a fearful rate.

 

Rushton and the other occupants of the little wagonette in front had

been for some time shouting to them to moderate the pace of their

horses, but as the driver of Crass’s brake was too drunk to understand

what they said he took no notice, and they had no alternative but to

increase their own speed to avoid being run down. The drunken driver

now began to imagine that they were trying to race him, and became

fired with the determination to pass them. It was a very narrow road,

but there was just about room to do it, and he had sufficient

confidence in his own skill with the ribbons to believe that he could

get past in safety.

 

The terrified gesticulations and the shouts of Rushton’s party only

served to infuriate him, because he imagined that they were jeering at

him for not being able to overtake them. He stood up on the footboard

and lashed the horses till they almost flew over the ground, while the

carriage swayed and skidded in a fearful manner.

 

In front, the horses of Rushton’s conveyance were also galloping at

top speed, the vehicle bounding and reeling from one side of the road

to the other, whilst its terrified occupants, whose faces were

blanched with apprehension, sat clinging to their seats and to each

other, their eyes projecting from the sockets as they gazed back with

terror at their pursuers, some of whom were encouraging the drunken

driver with promises of quarts of beer, and urging on the homes with

curses and yells.

 

Crass’s fat face was pallid with fear as he clung trembling to his

seat. Another man, very drunk and oblivious of everything, was

leaning over the side of the brake, spewing into the road, while the

remainder, taking no interest in the race, amused themselves by

singing - conducted by the Semidrunk - as loud as they could roar:

 

`Has anyone seen a Germin band,

Germin Band, Germin Band?

I’ve been Iookin’ about,

Pom - Pom, Pom, Pom, Pom!

 

`I’ve searched every pub, both near and far,

Near and far, near and far,

I want my Fritz,

What plays tiddley bits

On the big trombone!’

 

The other two brakes had fallen far behind. The one presided over by

Hunter contained a mournful crew. Nimrod himself, from the effects of

numerous drinks of ginger beer with secret dashes of gin in it, had

become at length crying drunk, and sat weeping in gloomy silence

beside the driver, a picture of lachrymose misery and but dimly

conscious of his surroundings, and Slyme, who rode with Hunter because

he was a fellow member of the Shining Light Chapel. Then there was

another paperhanger - an unhappy wretch who was afflicted with

religious mania; he had brought a lot of tracts with him which he had

distributed to the other men, to the villagers of Tubberton and to

anybody else who would take them.

 

Most of the other men who rode in Nimrod’s brake were of the

`religious’ working man type. Ignorant, shallow-pated dolts, without

as much intellectuality as an average cat. Attendants at various PSAs

and `Church Mission Halls’ who went every Sunday afternoon to be

lectured on their duty to their betters and to have their minds - save

the mark! - addled and stultified by such persons as Rushton, Sweater,

Didlum and Grinder, not to mention such mental specialists as the holy

reverend Belchers and Boshers, and such persons as John Starr.

 

At these meetings none of the `respectable’ working men were allowed

to ask any questions, or to object to, or find fault with anything

that was said, or to argue, or discuss, or criticize. They had to sit

there like a lot of children while they were lectured and preached at

and patronized. Even as sheep before their shearers are dumb, so they

were not permitted to open their mouths. For that matter they did not

wish to be allowed to ask any questions, or to discuss anything. They

would not have been able to. They sat there and listened to what was

said, but they had but a very hazy conception of what it was all

about.

 

Most of them belonged to these PSAs merely for the sake of the loaves

and fishes. Every now and then they were awarded prizes - Self-help

by Smiles, and other books suitable for perusal by persons suffering

from almost complete obliteration of the mental faculties. Besides

other benefits there was usually a Christmas Club attached to the

`PSA’ or `Mission’ and the things were sold to the members slightly

below cost as a reward for their servility.

 

They were for the most part tame, broken-spirited, poor wretches who

contentedly resigned themselves to a life of miserable toil and

poverty, and with callous indifference abandoned their offspring to

the same fate. Compared with such as these, the savages of New Guinea

or the Red Indians are immensely higher in the scale of manhood. They

are free! They call no man master; and if they do not enjoy the

benefits of science and civilization, neither do they toil to create

those things for the benefit of others. And as for their children -

most of those savages would rather knock them on the head with a

tomahawk than allow them to grow up to be half-starved drudges for

other men.

 

But these were not free: their servile lives were spent in grovelling

and cringing and toiling and running about like little dogs at the

behest of their numerous masters. And as for the benefits of science

and civilization, their only share was to work and help to make them,

and then to watch other men enjoy them. And all the time they were

tame and quiet and content and said, `The likes of us can’t expect to

‘ave nothing better, and as for our children wot’s been good enough

for us is good enough for the likes of them.’

 

But although they were so religious and respectable and so contented

to be robbed on a large scale, yet in small matters, in the

commonplace and petty affairs of their everyday existence, most of

these men were acutely alive to what their enfeebled minds conceived

to be their own selfish interests, and they possessed a large share of

that singular cunning which characterizes this form of dementia.

 

That was why they had chosen to ride in Nimrod’s brake - because they

wished to chum up with him as much as possible, in order to increase

their chances of being kept on in preference to others who were not so

respectable.

 

Some of these poor creatures had very large heads, but a close

examination would have shown that the size was due to the

extraordinary thickness of the bones. The cavity of the skull was not

so large as the outward appearance of the head would have led a casual

observer to suppose, and even in those instances where the brain was

of a fair size, it was of inferior quality, being coarse in texture

and to a great extent composed of fat.

 

Although most of them were regular attendants at some place of

so-called worship, they were not all teetotallers, and some of them

were now in different stages of intoxication, not because they had had

a great deal to drink, but because - being usually abstemious - it did

not take very much to make them drunk.

 

From time to time this miserable crew tried to enliven the journey by

singing, but as most of them only knew odd choruses it did not come to

much. As for the few who did happen to know all the words of a song,

they either had no voices or were not inclined to sing. The most

successful contribution was that of the religious maniac, who sang

several hymns, the choruses being joined in by everybody, both drunk

and sober.

 

The strains of these hymns, wafted back through the balmy air to the

last coach, were the cause of much hilarity to its occupants who also

sang the choruses. As they had all been brought up under `Christian’

influences and educated in `Christian’ schools, they all knew the

words: `Work, for the night is coming’, `Turn poor Sinner and escape

Eternal Fire’, `Pull for the Shore’ and `Where is my Wandering Boy?’

 

The last reminded Harlow of a song he knew nearly all the words of,

`Take the news to Mother’, the singing of which was much appreciated

by all present and when it was finished they sang it all over again,

Philpot being so affected that he actually shed tears; and Easton

confided to Owen that there was no getting away from the fact that a

boy’s best friend is his mother.

 

In this last carriage, as in the other two, there were several men who

were more or less intoxicated and for the same reason - because not

being used to taking much liquor, the few extra glasses they had drunk

had got into their heads. They were as sober a lot of fellows as need

be at ordinary times, and they had flocked together in this brake

because they were all of about the same character - not tame,

contented imbeciles like most of those in Misery’s carnage, but men

something like Harlow, who, although dissatisfied with their

condition, doggedly continued the hopeless, weary struggle against

their fate.

 

They were not teetotallers and they never went to either church or

chapel, but they spent little in drink or on any form of enjoyment -

an occasional glass of beer or a still rarer visit to a music-hall and

now and then an outing more or less similar to this being the sum

total of their pleasures.

 

These four brakes might fitly be regarded as so many travelling

lunatic asylums, the inmates of each exhibiting different degrees and

forms of mental disorder.

 

The occupants of the first - Rushton, Didlum and Co. - might be

classed as criminal lunatics who injured others as well as themselves.

In a properly constituted system of society such men as these would be

regarded as a danger to the community, and would be placed under such

restraint as would effectually prevent them from harming themselves or

others. These wretches had abandoned every thought and thing that

tends to the elevation of humanity. They had given up everything that

makes life good and beautiful, in order to carry on a mad struggle to

acquire money which they would never be sufficiently cultured to

properly enjoy. Deaf and blind to every other consideration, to this

end they had degraded their intellects by concentrating them upon the

minutest details of expense and profit, and for their reward they

raked in their harvest of muck and lucre along with the hatred and

curses of those they injured in the process. They knew that the money

they accumulated was foul with the sweat of their brother men, and wet

with the tears of little children, but they were deaf and blind and

callous to the consequences of their greed. Devoid of every ennobling

thought