Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (fiction novels to read .txt) 📕

one was almost certain to have some money every day, because it wasn’t

likely that a whole day would go by without someone or other coming

into the shop to buy something. When delivering the groceries with

the horse and cart, he would give rides to all the boys he knew, and

in the summertime, after the work was done and the shop shut up,

Mother and Elsie and Granny could also come for long rides into the

country.

The old grandmother - who had latterly become quite childish - used to

sit and listen to all this talk with a superior air. Sometimes she

argued with the children about their plans, and ridiculed them. She

used to say with a chuckle that she had heard people talk like that

before - lots of times - but it never came to nothing in the end.

One week about the middle of February, when they were in very sore

straits indeed, old Jack applied to the secretary of the Organized

Benevolence Society for assistance. It was about eleven o’clock in

the morning when he turned the corner of the street where the office

of the society was situated and saw a crowd of about thirty men

waiting for the doors to be opened in order to apply for soup tickets.

Some of these men were of the tramp or the drunken loafer class; some

were old, broken-down workmen like himself, and others were labourers

wearing corduroy or moleskin trousers with straps round their legs

under their knees.

Linden waited at a distance until all these were gone before he went

in. The secretary received him sympathetically and gave him a big

form to fill up, but as Linden’s eyes were so bad and his hand so

unsteady the secretary very obligingly wrote in the answers himself,

and informed him that he would inquire into the case and lay his

application before the committee at the next meeting, which was to be

held on the following Thursday - it was then Monday.

Linden explained to him that they were actually starving. He had been

out of work for sixteen weeks, and during all that time they had lived

for the most part on the earnings of his daughter-in-law, but she had

not done anything for nearly a fortnight now, because the firm she

worked for had not had any work for her to do. There was no food in

the house and the children were crying for something to eat. All last

week they had been going to school hungry, for they had had nothing

but dry bread and tea every day: but this week - as far as he could

see - they would not get even that. After some further talk the

secretary gave him two soup tickets and an order for a loaf of bread,

and repeated his promise to inquire into the case and bring it before

the committee.

As Jack was returning home he passed the Soup Kitchen, where he saw

the same lot of men who had been to the office of the Organized

Benevolence Society for the soup tickets. They were waiting in a long

line to be admitted. The premises being so small, the proprietor

served them in batches of ten at a time.

On Wednesday the secretary called at the house, and on Friday Jack

received a letter from him to the effect that the case had been duly

considered by the committee, who had come to the conclusion that as it

was a `chronic’ case they were unable to deal with it, and advised him

to apply to the Board of Guardians. This was what Linden had hitherto

shrunk from doing, but the situation was desperate. They owed five

weeks’ rent, and to crown their misfortune his eyesight had become so

bad that even if there had been any prospect of obtaining work it was

very doubtful if he could have managed to do it. So Linden, feeling

utterly crushed and degraded, swallowed all that remained of his pride

and went like a beaten dog to see the relieving officer, who took him

before the Board, who did not think it a suitable case for out-relief,

and after some preliminaries it was arranged that Linden and his wife

were to go into the workhouse, and Mary was to be allowed three

shillings a week to help her to support herself and the two children.

As for Linden’s sons, the Guardians intimated their Intention of

compelling them to contribute towards the cost of their parents’

maintenance.

Mary accompanied the old people to the gates of their future

dwelling-place, and when she returned home she found there a letter

addressed to J. Linden. It was from the house agent and contained a

notice to leave the house before the end of the ensuing week. Nothing

was said about the rent that was due. Perhaps Mr Sweater thought that

as he had already received nearly six hundred pounds in rent from

Linden he could afford to be generous about the five weeks that were

still owing - or perhaps he thought there was no possibility of

getting the money. However that may have been, there was no reference

to it in the letter - it was simply a notice to clear out, addressed

to Linden, but meant for Mary.

It was about half past three o’clock in the afternoon when she

returned home and found this letter on the floor in the front passage.

She was faint with fatigue and hunger, for she had had nothing but a

cup of tea and a slice of bread that day, and her fare had not been

much better for many weeks past. The children were at school, and the

house - now almost destitute of furniture and without carpets or

oilcloth on the floors - was deserted and cold and silent as a tomb.

On the kitchen table were a few cracked cups and saucers, a broken

knife, some lead teaspoons, a part of a loaf, a small basin containing

some dripping and a brown earthenware teapot with a broken spout.

Near the table were two broken kitchen chairs, one with the top

cross-piece gone from the back, and the other with no back to the seat

at all. The bareness of the walls was relieved only by a coloured

almanac and some paper pictures which the children had tacked upon

them, and by the side of the fireplace was the empty wicker chair

where the old woman used to sit. There was no fire in the grate, and

the cold hearth was untidy with an accumulation of ashes, for during

the trouble of these last few days she had not had time or heart to do

any housework. The floor was unswept and littered with scraps of

paper and dust: in one corner was a heap of twigs and small branches

of trees that Charley had found somewhere and brought home for the

fire.

The same disorder prevailed all through the house: all the doors were

open, and from where she stood in the kitchen she could see the bed

she shared with Elsie, with its heterogeneous heap of coverings. The

sitting-room contained nothing but a collection of odds and ends of

rubbish which belonged to Charley - his `things’ as he called them -

bits of wood, string and rope; one wheel of a perambulator, a top, an

iron hoop and so on. Through the other door was visible the

dilapidated bedstead that had been used by the old people, with a

similar lot of bedclothes to those on her own bed, and the torn,

ragged covering of the mattress through the side of which the flock

was protruding and falling in particles on to the floor.

As she stood there with the letter in her hand - faint and weary in

the midst of all this desolation, it seemed to her as if the whole

world were falling to pieces and crumbling away all around her.