The Revolution in Tanner’s Lane · Chapter 9 (1/2)

IX

A Strain on the Cable

Bow Street was completely at fault, and never discovered the secret of that assassination. It was clear that neither the Major nor Coleman were the murderers, as they had been noticed at some distance from the spot where the Secretary fell by several persons who described them accurately. Nor was Caillaud suspected, as the constable testified that he passed him on the opposite side of the street, as he followed the Secretary. The only conclusion, according to Bow Street, which was free from all doubt was, that whoever did the deed was a committee consisting of a single member. A reward of £500 did not bring forward anybody who knew anything about the business. As for Caillaud, his daughter and the Major, the next morning saw them far on the way to Dover, and eventually they arrived at Paris in safety. Zachariah, when he reached home, found his wife gone. A note lay for him there, probably from the same hand which warned the Major, telling him not to lose an instant, but to join in Islington one of the mails to Manchester. His wife would start that night from St. Martin’s le Grand by a coach which went by another road. He was always prompt, and in five minutes he was out of the house. The fare was carefully folded by his unknown friend in the letter. He just managed as directed, to secure a place, not by the regular Manchester mail, but by one which went through Barnet and stopped to take up passengers at the Angel. He climbed upon the roof, and presently was travelling rapidly through Holloway and Highgate. He found, to his relief, that nobody had heard of the murder, and he was left pretty much to his own reflections. His first thoughts were an attempt to unravel the mystery. Why was it so sudden? Why had no word nor hint of what was intended reached him? He could not guess. In those days the clubs were so beset with spies that frequently the most important resolutions were taken by one man, who confided in nobody. It was winter, but fortunately Zachariah was well wrapped up. He journeyed on, hour after hour, in a state of mazed bewilderment, one thought tumbling over another, and when morning broke over the flats he had not advanced a single step in the determination of his future path. Nothing is more painful to a man of any energy than the inability to put things in order in himself⁠—to place before himself what he has to do, and arrange the means for doing it. To be the passive victim of a rushing stream of disconnected impressions is torture, especially if the emergency be urgent. So when the sun came up Zachariah began to be ashamed of himself that the night had passed in these idiotic moonings, which had left him just where he was, and he tried to settle what he was to do when he reached Manchester. He did not know a soul; but he could conjecture why he was advised to go thither. It was a disaffected town, and Friends of the People were very strong there. His first duty was to get a lodging, his second to get work, and his third to find out a minister of God under whom he could worship. He put this last, not because it was the least important, but because he had the most time to decide upon it. At about ten o’clock at night he came to his journey’s end, and to his joy saw his wife waiting for him. They went at once to a small inn hard by, and Mrs. Coleman began to overwhelm him with interrogation; but he quietly suggested that not a syllable should be spoken till they had had some rest, and that they should swallow their supper and go to bed. In the morning Zachariah rose and looked out of the window. He saw nothing but a small backyard in which some miserable, scraggy fowls were crouching under a cart to protect themselves from the rain, which was falling heavily through the dim, smoky air. His spirits sank. He had no fear of apprehension or prosecution, but the prospect before him was depressing. Although he was a poor man, he had not been accustomed to oscillations of fortune, and he was in an utterly strange place, with five pounds in his pocket, and nothing to do.

He was, however, resolved not to yield, and thought it best to begin with his wife before she could begin with him.

“Now, my dear, tell me what has happened, who sent you here, and what kind of a journey you have had?”

“Mr. Bradshaw came about seven o’clock, and told me the Government was about to suppress the Friends of the People; that you did not know it; that I must go to Manchester; that you would come after me; and that a message would be left for you. He took me to the coach, and paid for me.”

“Mr. Bradshaw! Did he tell you anything more?”

“No; except that he did not think we should be pursued, and that he would send our things after us when he knew where we were.”

“You have not heard anything more, then?”

“No.”

“You haven’t heard that the Secretary was shot?”

“Shot! Oh dear! Zachariah, what will become of us?”

Her husband then told her what he knew, she listening with great eagerness and in silence.

“Oh, Zachariah, what will become of us?” she broke out again.

“There is no reason to worry yourself, Jane; it is perfectly easy for me to prove my innocence. It is better for us, however, to stay here for a time. The Government won’t go any further with us; they will search for the murderer⁠—that’s all.”

“Why, then, are we sent here and the others are let alone? I suppose the Major is not here?”

“I cannot say.”

“To think I should ever come to this! I haven’t got a rag with me beyond what I have on. I haven’t got any clean things; a nice sort of creature I am to go out of doors. And it all had nothing to do with us.”

“Nothing to do with us! My dear Jane, do you mean that we are not to help other people, but sit at home and enjoy ourselves? Besides, if you thought it wrong, why did you not say so before?”

“How was I to know what you were doing? You never told me anything; you never do. One thing I do know is that we shall starve and I suppose I shall have to go about and beg. I haven’t even another pair of shoes or stockings to my feet.”

Zachariah pondered for a moment. His first impulse was something very different; but at last he rose, went up to his wife, kissed her softly on the forehead, and said:

“Never mind, my dear; courage, you will have your clothes next week. Come with me and look out for a lodging.”

Mrs. Zachariah, however, shook herself free⁠—not violently, but still decidedly⁠—from his caresses.

“Most likely seized by the Government. Look for a lodging! That’s just like you! How can I go out in this pouring rain?”

Zachariah lately, at any rate, had ceased to expect much affection in his wife for him; but he thought she was sensible, and equal to any complexity of circumstances, or even to disaster. He thought this, not on any positive evidence; but he concluded, somewhat absurdly, that her coldness meant common sense and capacity for facing trouble courageously and with deliberation. He had now to find out his mistake, and to learn that the absence of emotion neither proves, nor is even a ground for suspecting, any good whatever of a person; that, on the contrary, it is a ground for suspecting weakness, and possibly imbecility.

Mrs. Coleman refused to go out, and after breakfast Zachariah went by himself, having first inquired what was a likely quarter. As he wandered along much that had been before him again and again once more recurred to him. He had been overtaken by calamity, and he had not heard from his wife one single expression of sympathy, nor had he received one single idea which could help him. She had thought of nothing but herself, and even of herself not reasonably. She was not the helpmeet which he felt he had a right to expect. He could have endured any defect, so it seemed, if only he could have had love; he could have endured the want of love if only he could have had a counsellor. But he had neither, and he rebelled, questioning the justice of his lot. Then he fell into the old familiar controversy with himself, and it was curiously characteristic of him, that, as he paced those dismal Manchester pavements, all their gloom disappeared as he re-argued the universal problem of which his case was an example. He admitted the unquestionable right of the Almighty to damn three parts of creation to eternal hell if so He willed; why not, then, one sinner like Zachariah Coleman to a weary pilgrimage for thirty or forty years? He rebuked himself when he found that he had all his life assented so easily to the doctrine of God’s absolute authority in the election and disposal of the creatures He had made, and yet that he revolted when God touched him, and awarded him a punishment which, in comparison with the eternal loss of His presence, was as nothing. At last⁠—and here, through his religion, he came down to the only consolation possible for him⁠—he said to himself, “Thus hath He decreed; it is foolish to struggle against His ordinances; we can but submit.” “A poor gospel,” says his critic. Poor!⁠—yes, it may be; but it is the gospel according to Job, and any other is a mere mirage. “Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom and stretch her wings towards the south?” Confess ignorance and the folly of insurrection, and there is a chance that even the irremediable will be somewhat mitigated. Poor!⁠—yes; but it is genuine; and this at least must be said for Puritanism, that of all the theologies and philosophies it is the most honest in its recognition of the facts; the most real, if we penetrate to the heart of it, in the remedy which it offers.

He found two small furnished rooms which would answer his purpose till his own furniture should arrive, and he and his wife took possession that same morning. He then wrote to his landlord in London⁠—a man whom he knew he could trust⁠—and directed him to send his goods. For the present, although he had no fear whatever of any prosecution, he thought fit to adopt a feigned name, with which we need not trouble ourselves. In the afternoon he sallied out to seek employment. The weather had cleared, but Mrs. Coleman still refused to accompany him, and she occupied herself moodily with setting the place to rights, as she called it, although, as it happened, it was particularly neat and clean. There was not so much printing done in Manchester then as now, and Zachariah had no success. He came home about seven o’clock, weary and disheartened. His wife was one of those women who under misfortune show all that is worst in them, as many women in misfortune show all that is best.

“You might have been sure you would get nothing to do here. If, as you say, there is no danger, why did you not stay in London?”

“You know all about it, my dear; we were warned to come.”

“Yes, but why in such a hurry? Why didn’t you stop to think?”

“It is all very well to say so now, but there were only a few minutes in which to decide. Besides, when I got home I found you gone.”

Mrs. Zachariah conveniently took no notice of the last part of this remark, which, of course, settled the whole question, but continued:

“Ah, well, I suppose it’s all right; but I’m sure we shall starve⁠—I am convinced we shall. Oh! I wish my poor dear mother were alive! I have no home to go to. What will become of us?”

He lost his patience a little.

“Jane,” he said, “what is our religion worth if it does not support us in times like these? Does it not teach us to bow to God’s will? Surely we, who have had such advantages, ought to behave under our trials better than those who have been brought up like heathens. God will not leave us. Don’t you remember Mr. Bradshaw’s sermon upon the passage through the Red Sea. When the Israelites were brought down to the very shore with nothing but destruction before them, a way was opened. What did Mr. Bradshaw bid us observe? The Egyptians were close behind⁠—so close that the Israelites saw them; the sea was in front. The road was not made till the enemy was upon them, and then the waters were divided and became a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left; the very waters, Mr. Bradshaw remarked, which before were their terror. God, too, might have sent them a different way; no doubt He might, but He chose that way.”

“Zachariah, I heard Mr. Bradshaw as well as yourself; I am a member of the church just as much as you are, and I don’t think it becoming of you to preach to me as if you were a minister.” Her voice rose and became shriller as she went on. “I will not stand it. Who are you that you should talk to me so?⁠—bad enough to bring me down here to die, without treating me as if I were an unconverted character. Oh! if I had but a home to go to!” and she covered her face with her apron and became hysterical.

What a revelation! By this time he had looked often into the soul of the woman whom he had chosen⁠—the woman with whom he was to be forever in this world⁠—and had discovered that there was nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing which answered anything in himself with a smile of recognition; but he now looked again, and found something worse than emptiness. He found lurking in the obscure darkness a reptile with cruel fangs which at any moment might turn upon him when he was at his weakest and least able to defend himself. He had that in him by nature which would have prompted him to desperate deeds. He could have flung himself from her with a curse, or even have killed himself in order to escape from his difficulty. But whatever there was in him originally had been changed. Upon the wild stem had been grafted a nobler slip, which drew all its sap from the old root, but had civilised and sweetened its acrid juices. He leaned over his wife, caressed her, gave her water, and restored her.

“God knows,” he said, “I did not mean to preach to you. God in heaven knows I need that somebody should preach to me.” He knelt down before her as she remained leaning back in the chair, and he repeated the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.” But will it be believed that as he rose from his knees, before he had actually straightened his limbs, two lines from the Corsair flashed into his mind, not particularly apposite, but there they were⁠—

“She rose⁠—she sprung⁠—she clung to his embrace

Till his heart heaved beneath her hidden face?”

Whence had they descended? He was troubled at their sudden intrusion, and he went silently to the window, moodily gazing into the street. His wife, left to herself, recovered, and prepared supper. There was no reconciliation, at least on her side. She was not capable of reconciliation. Her temper exhausted itself gradually. With her the storm never broke up nobly and with magnificent forgetfulness into clear spaces of azure, with the singing of birds and with hot sunshine turning into diamonds every remaining drop of the deluge which had threatened ruin; the change was always rather to a uniformly obscured sky and a cold drizzle which lasted all day.

The next morning he renewed his quest. He was away all day long, but he had no success. He was now getting very anxious. He was expecting his furniture, which he had directed to be sent to the inn where they had first stayed, and he would have to pay for the carriage. His landlord had insisted on a week’s rent beforehand, so that, putting aside the sum for the carrier, he had now two pounds left. He thought of appealing to his friends; but he had a great horror of asking for charity, and could not bring himself to do it.