The Mutable Many: A Novel

by Robert Barr

The court was walled about with five-story buildings, and in the oblong well, formed by these rather dilapidated edifices, the air hung dank and heavy, laden with many smells. Breezes blowing over London from the south, or the north, or the west, produced no movement of the noxious air in Rose Garden Court. “Come out,” the gale from the Surrey hills might cry as it whistled merrily over the house-tops; “come out, and give the people a chance to breathe,”—but there was no answering rustle in the court—the air there was silent and sullen, as if it had taken its temper from the inhabitants of the place.

Sometimes, in early spring, the insistent east wind roared boisterously through the tunnel, catching the mephitic atmosphere unawares and flinging it headlong over the roofs, filling the court with a biting whirlwind, scattering loose bits of paper and rags skywards, but the inhabitants of the court didn’t like it. They closed their windows, shivered, and wished the gale would cease. Next day the air would settle down quietly in the court, collect its odours once more, and then everybody felt that things were as they should be.

The court was a property that paid handsomely. No one residing there knew who owned the buildings or the ground. The man who collected the room rents did so promptly in advance, and he had once told the landlord of the “Rose and Crown” that the court was more lucrative as an investment than if it had been situated in the Grosvenor Square district. The owner was popularly supposed to have farmed the property to a company, and the rent-collector represented this organization. The company could not be expected to spend money on repairs, the owner could not be reached, and, aside from all that, the rooms were in constant demand; so if a tenant did not like the arrangement he could get out—there were a dozen others ready to take his place.

The people who lived in this human warren were not criminals. Most of them did something useful for the living they received. Criminals, when convicted, are housed in a much more sanitary manner, and they are sure of enough to eat—which the denizens of the court were not. If any prison in the kingdom were as fetid as Rose Garden Court, the great heart of the nation would be stirred with indignation, and some wretch in authority would feel the lash of righteous public scorn. The court was merely fairly representative of the home of the British workingman, in the wisest, largest, proudest, most wealthy city in the world, at the end of the nineteenth century, after a thousand years, more or less, of progress. Some homes of the workingmen are better; but then some are worse, for we must never forget that we have the “artisan’s improved dwellings” amongst us. The occupants of the “improved dwellings” are hedged about with restrictions, but in the court was freedom: freedom to come and go as you liked; freedom to get drunk; freedom to loaf or work; freedom to starve.

The personal predilections of the courtites were much the same as those of habitués of first-class West End clubs. They liked to drink and gamble. The “pub” was at the entrance, and there, or at the barbershop, they could place a little on a horse they knew nothing of. One of the advantages of a free country is that a man can get quite as drunk on beer as he can on champagne, and at a much less cost. The results are wonderfully similar. It is popularly believed that a policeman in Piccadilly is kinder to a client in a dress coat, than a fellow-officer on Waterloo Road is to a man in moleskins.

Rose Garden Court had little trouble with the police, although the court—especially the feminine portion of it—looked somewhat askance at the force. All a policeman asked of a drunken dweller in the court was, that if he wanted to fight he should fight in the court, and not on a busy thoroughfare like Light Street. In the court the wives of the combatants usually took charge of them before the battle had been fought to a finish, and sometimes a tall policeman watched over the separation of temporary foes, saying little unless one of the fighters resisted the wife who was vociferously shoving him towards his own doorway, when the officer would say: “Come now, my man, none of that,” whereupon, strangely enough, it was the woman who resented the officer’s interference for her protection, though when her man proceeded to abuse a member of the force also, she quickly told him to “shut his ——— mouth,” using an adjective that was at once sanguinary and descriptive. Often a stalwart policeman would take by the scruff of the neck an inhabitant of the court staggering along Light Street, filling the air with melody or defiance, and walk him rapidly down the street, the man’s legs wobbling about uncertainly, as if he were a waxwork automaton, until they were opposite the entrance of the court; then, having received the required impetus from the officer, the man shot under the archway and was presumably taken care of when he got inside: anyhow, once in the court he could not get out again except by the way he entered, and few ever became drunk enough to forget there was always a policeman in the neighbourhood. The thrust under the archway was merely the kindly Light Street way of doing the Piccadilly act of placing a man tenderly in a cab and telling the driver where to go. Few were ever actually arrested in the Light Street district, and their conduct had to be particularly flagrant to bring upon them this last resort of the force.

Along Light Street came Marsten, with the elastic springy energetic step of a young man in good health, who takes this world seriously and believes there is something to be done in it. He paused for a moment opposite the “Rose and Crown,” and nodded to some men who were lounging there.

“Are you going to the meeting to-night, men?” he asked.

One shook his head, another shrugged his shoulders; it was evident at a glance that none of them had any interest in the meeting while the “pub” remained open.

“It’s important,” said Marsten. “The committee reports to-night, and ‘strike or no strike’ will likely be put to vote. You are not in favor of a strike, surely? Then come along and vote against it.”