He looked furtively around him as if afraid of being overheard by eavesdroppers, and then repeated the sentence, "'God and Napoleon and the Dumpling strike with a granite arm!' That's the word, sir. Do you think you can remember it?"
Inwardly amused at the seriousness with which the foolish fellow was taking the Dumpling's rhodomontade, but hiding my amusement under a face portentously grave, lest I should give my well-meaning friend offence, I replied:
"Yes, I can remember it, and I'll be sure to bear your words in mind, if necessity comes. Thank you very much, Nash."
But to myself I said:
"A grown woman! Wheeled forty miles in a perambulator to undergo an operation! And for no other reason than that the doctor at Reading is kind and doesn't speak sharp to the poor! My God!"
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE GREAT INSURRECTION BEGINS.
Looking back now upon the time of which I am writing, I cannot altogether acquit myself of criminal negligence for failing to realise—until it was too late to take action—how insidiously and how thoroughly the Dumpling was doing his work. Nash's warning—though I was by no means disposed to take it seriously—had not been altogether a surprise to me, for I knew already that inflammatory speeches were being delivered, inflammatory literature circulated broadcast. To these I attached small importance, having too much faith in the common sense and in the conservatism of my fellow-countrymen to believe that the Dumpling could induce them to take concerted action upon any considerable scale. I have since learned that secret meetings were held nearly every night; but instead of one mass meeting, which must inevitably have attracted the attention of the police, the Dumpling, a prince of organisers, had arranged for innumerable small gatherings in every part of London. At each of these meetings some member of the General Council, and therefore in close touch with the Dumpling himself, would preside, and in this way their leader's plans were made known, a plan of campaign laid down, and concerted action arranged in the most secret yet thorough way. Immense sums of money, so I afterwards learned, were expended in the purchase and in the secret storage of arms; and foreign mercenaries and expert marksmen, whose services the Dumpling had requisitioned, were constantly pouring into London to place themselves at his orders.
Had I still been engaged in detective work, something of all this must, I think, have come to my notice; but I am so constituted as to be able to do one thing only at a time. Whatever pursuit I take up, into that pursuit I throw myself heart and soul, to the exclusion of everything else. This temperamental defect—if a defect it be—may be the secret of some of my many failures; it may be the secret of my few successes. Concentration of interests generally means limitation of interests, and whether one be racking the heavens nightly through a telescope in search of new worlds, or only peering through a microscope, to isolate bacilli of this or that disease—one is equally apt to become absent-minded in other matters. So entirely had I given myself up to studying the problem of the poor, that I had eyes for nothing else.
It is not, however, my intention further to describe, in these pages, the harrowing scenes I witnessed while so occupied. Were I a commissioner, appointed to report to a Committee of Inquiry upon the condition of the poor, I should, it is true, have painful, revolting, and even incredible facts to recount. I could give chapter and verse in proof of inconceivable infamy. I could give instances of men, women, and even children living under circumstances more degrading than could be found in any so-called savage race. I should, in common honesty, be compelled to admit that by many of these who are most in evidence, as in search of work—work is the very last thing in the world that they really desire to find. Hymn-bawling in the streets is the nearest most of them have ever come to earning their bread by the sweat of their brow; a few hours processioning and posing as unemployed, the hardest day's work many of them ever did.