“You should not,” Eddy said. “We were going to introduce that subject later on.”
The company, having arranged the date of the dinner, and of the final business meeting, dispersed and got back to their several jobs. No one minded particularly about Unity’s death, except Eddy. They were so used to that sort of thing, in the world of shifting fortunes in which writers for papers move.
But Eddy minded a good deal. For several months he had lived in and for this paper; he had loved it extraordinarily. He had loved it for itself, and for what, to him, it stood for. It had been his contribution to the cause that seemed to him increasingly of enormous importance; increasingly, as the failure of the world at large to appreciate it flung him from failure to failure, wrested opportunities one by one out of his grasp. People wouldn’t realise that they were all one; that, surely, was the root difficulty of this distressed world. They would think that one set of beliefs excluded another; they were blind, they were rigid, they were mad. So they wouldn’t read Unity, surely a good paper; so Unity must perish for lack of being wanted, poor lonely waif. Eddy rebelled against the sinking of the little ship he had launched and loved; it might, it would, had it been given a chance, have done good work. But its chance was over; he must find some other way.
To cheer himself up when he left the office at six o’clock, he went eastward, to see some friends he had in Stepney. But it did not cheer him up, for they were miserable, and he could not comfort them. He found a wife alone, waiting for her husband and sons, who were still out at the docks where they worked, though they ought to have been back an hour since. And they were blacklegs, and had refused to come out with the strikers. The wife was white, and red-eyed.
“They watch for them,” she whimpered. “They lay and wait for them, and set on them, many to one, and do for them. There was someone ’eard a Union man say he meant to do for my men one day. I begged my man to come out, or anyhow to let the boys, but he wouldn’t, and he says the Union men may go to ’ell for ’im. I know what’ll be the end. There was a man drowned yesterday; they found ’im in the canal, ’is ’ands tied up; ’e wouldn’t come out, and so they did for ’im, the devils. And it’s just seven, and they stop at six.”
“They’ve very likely stopped at the public for a bit on the way home,” Eddy suggested gently, but she shook her head.
“They’ve not bin stoppin’ anywhere since the strike began. Them as won’t come out get no peace at the public.... The Union’s a cruel thing, that it is, and my man and lads that never do no ’urt to nobody, they’ll lay and wait for ’em till they can do for ’em.... There’s Mrs. Japhet, in Jubilee Street; she’s lost her young man; they knocked ’im down and kicked ’im to death on ’is way ’ome the other day. Of course ’e was a Jew, too, which made ’im more rightly disliked as it were; but it were because ’e wouldn’t come out they did it. And there was Mrs. Jim Turner; they laid for ’er and bashed ’er ’ead in at the corner of Salmon Lane, to spite Turner. And they’re so sly, the police can’t lay ’ands on them, scarcely ever.... And it’s gone seven, and as dark as ’ats.”
She opened the door and stood listening and crying. At the end of the squalid street the trams jangled by along Commercial Road, bringing men and women home from work.
“They’ll be all right if they come by tram,” said Eddy.
“There’s all up Jamaica Street to walk after they get out,” she wailed.