An impulse to crush her to his heart surged over Caleb, but he beat off the temptation, panting between desire of her and fear for himself. Kisses would forge no chain to bind this wanton, and he, should he once yield to kissing her, would be led henceforth by a Delilah. The hackney-coach jogged on into the Westminster Road.
Madame Oriano’s factory consisted of the unused rooms in an ordinary York Street dwelling-house. Special precautions to isolate the dangerous manufacture were practically unknown at this date. All firework-making by an Act of Dutch William was still illegal, and from time to time prosecutions of pyrotechnists were set on foot at the instigation of the magistrates when the boys of a neighbourhood became too great a nuisance on the Fifth of November. Inasmuch, however, as firework displays were a feature of coronations, peace declarations, births of royal heirs, and other occasions of public rejoicing, the Law adopted then as ambiguous an attitude as it does now in this early twentieth century, toward betting. Until Caleb arrived in London from the Cheshire town where he had been born and bred, Madame Oriano produced her fireworks in fits and starts of inventive brilliance that were symbolical of the finished product. Most of her workmen were habitual drunkards. No kind of attempt was made to run the business side with any financial method. From time to time the proprietress put a card in the window advertising her need for an accountant. Clerks came and clerks went until she began to look on the whole class as no better than predatory nomads. It was in answer to one of these cards in her window that Caleb presented himself. His conscience troubled him at first when he found with what mountebank affairs firework-making was likely to bring him into contact, but he was seized by a missionary fervour and began to devote all his energy to making the business respectable. Only John Gumm, the chief firer, managed to survive Caleb’s cleansing zeal. The rest of the drunken workmen were sacked one after another, and their places taken wherever it was possible by young lads and girls that Caleb procured from the poorhouse. The long hours and bad food he inflicted upon these apprentices seemed to bring the business nearer to genuine respectability. It showed sound economy, and the most censorious Puritan could not discover in those workrooms filled with listless children anything that pandered to the gratification of human pleasure. One could feel that when the fireworks left the factory there was nothing against their morality. Their explosion under the direction of Madame Oriano and drunken John Gumm was of course regrettably entertaining, but the rest of the business was impeccably moral. Not only did Caleb attend to the accounts, to the management of the workers, and to the judicious purchase of materials, but he also studied the actual art of pyrotechny, and early this very year he had discovered how to apply chlorate of potash to the production of more brilliant colours than any that had hitherto been seen. He had not yet revealed this discovery to Madame Oriano, because he was planning to use the knowledge of it as a means of persuading her to insist on Letizia’s marrying him. She would be so much astonished by the green he had evolved by combining nitrate of baryta with chlorate of potash that she would give him anything he demanded. And as for the red he could now produce by adding nitrate of strontia to his chlorate of potash, why, if such a red could only be bought in the ultimate depths of Hell, Madame would have to buy.
The hackney-coach drew up in front of the dingy house in York Street, and by the time Caleb had done arguing with the driver about his fare mother and daughter had tumbled into bed. In spite of the nervous strain he had been enduring all night Caleb could not make up his mind to go to sleep himself. He was indeed feeling very much awake. It was now full day. The sunlight was glinting on the grimy railings of the area, and the footsteps of early workers shuffled past along the pavement at intervals. Caleb looked round the room and frowned at the tools lying idle on the tables and benches. He was filled with indignation at the thought that all those misbegotten apprentices should be snoring away these golden hours of the morning in their garret. He was too lenient with them, far too lenient. It would do the brats good to be awakened a little earlier than usual. He was up and dressed; why should they still be snoring? The back of his mind, too, itched with an evil desire to make somebody pay for what he had suffered last night. Caleb set off upstairs to rouse the apprentices. As he drew near the bedroom where Madame Oriano and Letizia slept together in that gilded four-poster which so much revolted his sense of decency, Caleb paused, for the door was wide open. He tried to keep his face averted while he hurried past; but his will failed him and, turning, he beheld the vision of Letizia, so scantily wrapped in her cloak of sky-blue that her white body appeared as shamelessly unclad as the vicious little Cupids that supported the canopy of the bed. Caleb staggered back. Had there been a knife in his hand, he might have cut Letizia’s throat, such an intolerable loathing of her beauty seized him. He rushed madly past the open door, and a moment or two afterwards he stood in the garret, surveying with hate the sleeping forms of the apprentices. A sunbeam glinting through the broken lattice of the dormer lit up the four flushed faces, spangled the hair of the youngest and fairest, and for Caleb pointed at the spectacle of brazen sloth.
“Get up, you charity brats,” he shouted, pulling off the dirty coverlet. “Get up and work, or I’ll report you to the overseers for incorrigibles.”
The children sat up in bed dazed by this sudden awakening.
“Don’t loll there, rubbing your eyes and staring at me,” Caleb snarled. “If you aren’t downstairs and hard at work on those composition stars in five minutes, I’ll see what a good flogging will do for you.”
From the boys’ garret Caleb went across to visit the girls’.
“Get down to your scissors and paste, you lazy hussies,” he bellowed in the doorway.
The little girls, the eldest of whom was hardly twelve, sat up in a huddle of terror. The shift of the youngest, who might be ten, was torn so that her bare shoulder protruded to affront Caleb’s gaze. He strode into the room and struck the offending few inches of skin and bone.
“Will nothing teach you modesty?” he gibbered. “Aren’t you afraid of burning in Hell for your wickedness? Shame on you, I say. Have you no needle and thread, Amelia Diggle? You ought to be whipped, and I hope Madame will whip you well. Now stop that blubbering and dress yourself, and in five minutes let me find you all hard at work.”