A Life's Secret: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Leaning against the wall, in the cold moonlight, stood Robert Darby. Mrs. Quale was not very good at consolation: finding fault was more in her line. 'Come, Darby, don't take on so: it won't do no good,' was the best she could say. 'Be a man.' He seized hold of her, his shaking hands trembling, while he spoke bitter words against the Trades Unions. 'Don't speak so, Robert Darby,' was the rejoinder of Mrs. Quale. 'You are not obliged to join the Trades' Unions; therefore there's no need to curse 'em. If you and others kept aloof from them, they'd soon die away.'

'They have proved a curse to me and mine'—and the man's voice rose to a shriek, in his violent emotion. 'But for them, I should have been at work long ago.'

'Then I'd go to work at once, if it was me, and put the curse from me that way,' concluded Mrs. Quale.

With the death of the child, things had come to so low an ebb in the Darby household, as to cause sundry kind gossipers to suggest, and to spread the suggestion as a fact, that the parish would have the honour of conducting the interment. Darby would have sold himself first. He was at Mr. Hunter's yard on the following morning before daylight, and the instant the gates were opened presented himself to the foreman as a candidate for work. That functionary would not treat with him. 'We have had so many of you old hands just coming on for a day or two, and then withdrawing again, through orders of the society, or through getting frightened at being threatened, that Mr. Clay said I was to take back no more shilly-shallyers.'

'Try me!' feverishly cried Darby. 'I will not go from it again.'

'No,' said the foreman. 'You can speak to Mr. Clay.'

'Darby,' said Austin, when the man appeared before him, 'will you pass your word to me to remain? Here men come; they sign the document, they have work assigned them; and in a day or so, I hear that they have left again. It causes no end of confusion to us, for work to be taken up and laid down in that way.'

'Take me on, and try me, sir. I'll stick to it as long as there's a stroke of work to do—unless they tread me to pieces as they did Baxendale. I never was cordial for the society, sir. I obeyed it, and yet a doubt was always upon me whether I might not be doing wrong. I am sure of it now. The society has worked harm to me and mine, and I will never belong to it again.'

'Others have said as much of the society, and have returned to it the next day,' remarked Mr. Clay.