The child acquiesced; and Strelitzki went on reading his paper. He seemed to find it difficult to concentrate his thoughts, however, for he soon tossed it aside, and stared into the fire with his shaggy brows contracted, and an evil smile on his heavy face.
“So—so, Herbert Karne,” he muttered softly in his native jargon. “You and I hate each other; and we have a long-standing account to settle. Revenge grows keener with delay. It shall be settled soon!”
CHAPTER X
STRELITZKI PAVES THE WAY FOR HIS REVENGE
The yard at Mendel’s factory was filled to its utmost capacity. Men jostled each other’s elbows, and trod on each other’s corns with good-natured indiscrimination. A jargon of Polish, Yiddish, Roumanian, and English of the Lancashire dialect smote the air with Babel-like confusion; and as each man spoke to his neighbour at the precise moment that his neighbour spoke to him, the amount of comprehension on either side was reduced to nil.
They had met for the discussion of a grievance. Herbert Karne, after further provocation, had put his threat into execution: the night-school, the dispensary, and the club were closed. A notice was pasted on the doors stating that they would remain closed until he received, signed by each one of the men, a full and satisfactory apology for the gratuitous insults levelled at his sister and himself; together with a promise of better behaviour in future.
The news produced a sensation, some of the men utterly refusing to believe it until they saw the notice for themselves. The club had been opened so long, and occupied such a prominent position in the recreative part of their work-a-day lives, that they had lost sight of the fact that it was kept up entirely at Herbert Karne’s expense. Nearly every evening they repaired thither to while away an hour or two in the comfortable reading or smoke rooms; which were always well heated in winter, well ventilated in summer. Here they could chat, or schmooze,[19] as they called it, to their heart’s content. They were also at liberty to play solo-whist, so long as they played for nominal stakes only, gambling being strictly prohibited; and in the winter evenings, Herbert Karne arranged numerous entertainments for their benefit, to which their women folks, in their Sabbath clothes, came as well.
The club closed, they would be obliged to have recourse to the bar-parlours of the public-houses; for the gregarious instinct was strong within them, and their home-life more or less unattractive. But they knew that, being foreigners and abstemious, they would not receive a cordial welcome there; nor, indeed, did they desire the society of public-house frequenters. They had the greatest respect for the British workman when sober; but they were aware that having waxed convivial by the aid of beer, he was apt to indulge in uncomplimentary remarks concerning “them furriners;” and being extremely sensitive, they did not care for jocularity at their own expense.
It became evident, therefore, that they must endeavour to get the club re-opened; and it was in order to effect this end, that the meeting was being held.
In the centre of the yard a number of heavy boxes had been piled up to serve as a rostrum; and from this a slender olive-skinned man addressed his fellow-workers. He was Emil Blatz, the foreman of the factory and manager of the club.
Their present attitude to their benefactor, he told them—when he could command silence—was senseless to the last degree. They had been indulging in foolish spleen, and incurring serious harm to themselves, as the closing of the club and dispensary testified. They were simply running their heads against a brick wall when they imagined they could go against a man in Mr. Karne’s position. He advised them to sign an apology which he himself would prepare; and voted that they should do all in their power to renew their former friendly relations with Herbert Karne.