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

a certain

hour on a particular morning. To do this he had to stay away from

work. The medicine they prescribed and which he had to buy did him no

good, for the truth was that it was not medicine that he - like

thousands of others - needed, but proper conditions of life and proper

food; things that had been for years past as much out of his reach as

if he had been dying alone in the middle of a desert.

 

Occasionally Nora contrived - by going without some other necessary -

to buy him a bottle of one of the many much-advertised medicines; but

although some of these things were good she was not able to buy enough

for him to derive any benefit from them.

 

Although he was often seized with a kind of terror of the future - of

being unable to work - he fought against these feelings and tried to

believe that when the weather became warmer he would be all right once

more.

 

When Barrington came in Owen was sitting in a deck-chair by the fire

in the sitting-room. He had been to work that day with Harlow, washing

off the ceilings and stripping the old paper from the walls of two

rooms in Rushton’s home, and he looked very haggard and exhausted.

 

`I have never told you before,’ said Barrington, after they had been

talking for a while, `but I suppose you have guessed that I did not

work for Rushton because I needed to do so in order to live. I just

wanted to see things for myself; to see life as it is lived by the

majority. My father is a wealthy man. He doesn’t approve of my

opinions, but at same time he does not interfere with me for holding

them, and I have a fairly liberal allowance which I spent in my own

way. I’m going to pass Christmas with my own people, but in the

spring I intend to fit out a Socialist Van, and then I shall come back

here. We’ll have some of the best speakers in the movement; we’ll

hold meetings every night; we’ll drench the town with literature, and

we’ll start a branch of the party.’

 

Owen’s eye kindled and his pale face flushed.

 

`I shall be able to do something to advertise the meetings,’ he said.

For instance, I could paint some posters and placards.’

 

`And I can help to give away handbills,’ chimed in Frankie, looking up

from the floor, where he was seated working the railway. `I know a

lot of boys who’ll come along with me to put ‘em under the doors as

well.’

 

They were in the sitting-room and the door was shut. Mrs Owen was in

the next room with Ruth . While the two men were talking the

front-door bell was heard to ring and Frankie ran out to see who it

was, closing the door after him. Barrington and Owen continued their

conversation, and from time to time they could hear a low murmur of

voices from the adjoining room. After a little while they heard some

one go out by the front door, and almost immediately afterward Frankie -

wild with excitement, burst into the room, crying out:

 

`Dad and Mr Barrington! Three cheers!’ And he began capering

gleefully about the room, evidently transported with joy.

 

`What are the cheers to be for?’ inquired Barrington, rather mystified

by this extraordinary conduct.

 

`Mr Easton came with Freddie to see Mrs Easton, and she’s gone home

again with them,’ replied Freddie, `and - she’s given the baby to us

for a Christmas box!’

 

Barrington was already familiar with the fact of Easton’s separation

from his wife, and Owen now told him the Story of their reconciliation.

 

Barrington took his leave shortly afterwards. His train left at

eight; it was already nearly half past seven, and he said he had a

letter to write. Nora brought the baby in to show him before he went,

and then she helped Frankie to put on his overcoat, for Barrington had

requested that the boy might be permitted to go a little way with him.

 

There was a stationer’s shop at the end of the street. He went in

here and bought a sheet of notepaper and an envelope, and, having

borrowed the pen and ink, wrote a letter which he enclosed in the

envelope with the two other pieces that he took out of his pocketbook.

Having addressed the letter he came out of the shop; Frankie was

waiting for him outside. He gave the letter to the boy.

 

`I want you to take this straight home and give it to your dad. I

don’t want you to stop to play or even to speak to anyone till you get

home.’

 

`All right,’ replied Frankie. `I won’t stop running all the way.’

 

Barrington hesitated and looked at his watch. `I think I have time to

go back with you as far as your front door,’ he said, `then I shall be

quite sure you haven’t lost it.’

 

They accordingly retraced their steps and in a few minutes reached the

entrance to the house. Barrington opened the door and stood for a

moment in the hall watching Frankie ascend the stairs.

 

`Will your train cross over the bridge?’ inquired the boy, pausing and

looking over the banisters.

 

`Yes. Why?’

 

`Because we can see the bridge from our front-room window, and if you

were to wave your handkerchief as your train goes over the bridge, we

could wave back.’

 

`All right. I’ll do so. Goodbye.’

 

`Goodbye.’

 

Barrington waited till he heard Frankie open and close the door of

Owen’s fiat, and then he hurried away. When he gained the main road

he heard the sound of singing and saw a crowd at the corner of one of

the side-streets. As he drew near he perceived that it was a

religious meeting.

 

There was a lighted lamp on a standard in the centre of the crowd and

on the glass of this lamp was painted: `Be not deceived: God is not

mocked.’

 

Mr Rushton was preaching in the centre of the ring. He said that they

had come hout there that evening to tell the Glad Tidings of Great Joy

to hall those dear people that he saw standing around. The members of

the Shining Light Chapel - to which he himself belonged - was the

organizers of that meeting but it was not a sectarian meeting, for he

was ‘appy to say that several members of other denominations was there

co-operating with them in the good work. As he continued his address,

Rushton repeatedly referred to the individuals who composed the crowd

as his `Brothers and Sisters’ and, strange to say, nobody laughed.

 

Barrington looked round upon the `Brothers’: Mr Sweater, resplendent

in a new silk hat of the latest fashion, and a fur-trimmed overcoat.

The Rev. Mr Bosher, Vicar of the Church of the Whited Sepulchre, Mr

Grinder - one of the churchwardens at the same place of alleged

worship - both dressed in broadcloth and fine linen and glossy silk

hats, while their general appearance testified to the fact that they

had fared sumptuously for many days. Mr Didlum, Mrs Starvem, Mr

Dauber, Mr Botchit, Mr Smeeriton, and Mr Leavit.

 

And in the midst was the Rev. John Starr, doing the work for which he

was paid.

 

As he stood there in the forefront of this company, there was nothing

in his refined and comely exterior to indicate that his real function

was to pander to and flatter them; to invest with an air of

respectability and rectitude the abominably selfish lives of the gang

of swindlers, slave-drivers and petty tyrants who formed the majority

of the congregation of the Shining Light Chapel.

 

He was doing the work for which he was paid. By the mere fact of his

presence there, condoning and justifying the crimes of these typical

representatives of that despicable class whose greed and inhumanity

have made the earth into a hell.

 

There was also a number of `respectable’, well-dressed people who

looked as if they could do with a good meal, and a couple of shabbily

dressed, poverty-stricken-looking individuals who seemed rather out of

place in the glittering throng.

 

The remainder of the Brothers consisted of half-starved, pale-faced

working men and women, most of them dressed in other people’s castoff

clothing, and with broken, patched-up, leaky boots on their feet.

 

Rushton having concluded his address, Didlum stepped forward to give

out the words of the hymn the former had quoted at the conclusion of

his remarks:

 

`Oh, come and jine this ‘oly band,

And hon to glory go.’

 

Strange and incredible as it may appear to the reader, although none

of them ever did any of the things Jesus said, the people who were

conducting this meeting had the effrontery to claim to be followers of

Christ - Christians!

 

Jesus said: `Lay not up for yourselves treasure upon earth’, `Love not

the world nor the things of the world’, `Woe unto you that are rich -

it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a

rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.’ Yet all these self-styled

`Followers’ of Christ made the accumulation of money the principal

business of their lives.

 

Jesus said: `Be ye not called masters; for they bind heavy burdens and

grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they

themselves will not touch them with one of their fingers. For one is

your master, even Christ, and ye are all brethren.’ But nearly all

these alleged followers of the humble Workman of Nazareth claimed to

be other people’s masters or mistresses. And as for being all

brethren, whilst most of these were arrayed in broadcloth and fine

linen and fared sumptuously every day, they knew that all around them

thousands of those they hypocritically called their `brethren’, men,

women and little children, were slowly perishing of hunger and cold;

and we have already seen how much brotherhood existed between Sweater

and Rushton and the miserable, half-starved wretches in their

employment.

 

Whenever they were asked why they did not practise the things Jesus

preached, they replied that it is impossible to do so! They did not

seem to realize that when they said this they were saying, in effect,

that Jesus taught an impracticable religion; and they appeared to

forget that Jesus said, `Wherefore call ye me Lord, Lord, when ye do

not the things I say?.. .’ `Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine

and doeth them not, shall be likened to a foolish man who built his

house upon the sand.’

 

But although none of these self-styled `Followers’ of Christ, ever did

the things that Jesus said, they talked a great deal about them, and

sang hymns, and for a pretence made long prayers, and came out here to

exhort those who were still in darkness to forsake their evil ways.

And they procured this lantern and wrote a text upon it: `Be not

deceived, God is not mocked.’

 

They stigmatized as `infidels’ all those who differed from them,

forgetting that the only real infidels are those who are

systematically false and unfaithful to the Master they pretend to love

and serve.

 

Grinder, having a slight cold, had not spoken this evening, but

several other infidels, including Sweater, Didlum, Bosher, and Starr,

had addressed the meeting, making a special appeal to the working

people, of whom the majority of the crowd was composed, to give up all

the vain pleasures of the world in which they at present indulged,

and, as Rushton had eloquently put it at the