Chapter Thirteen.
“Something in Soap.”
It was a still, sultry night in November. Archie’s balcony window was wide open, and if there had been a breath of air anywhere he would have had the benefit of it. That was one advantage of having a room high up above the town, and there were several others. For instance, it was quieter, more retired, and his companions did not often take him by storm, because they objected to climb so many stairs. Dingy, small, and dismal some might have called it, but Archie always felt at home up in his semi-attic. It even reminded him of his room in the dear old tower at Burley. Then his morsel of balcony, why that was worth all the money he paid for the room itself; and as for the view from this charming, though non-aristocratic elevation, it was simply unsurpassed, unsurpassable—looking far away over a rich and fertile country to the grand old hills beyond—a landscape that, like the sea, was still the same, but ever changing; sometimes smiling and green, sometimes bathed in tints of purple and blue, sometimes grey as a sky o’ercast with rain clouds. Yes, he loved it, and he would take a chair out here on a moonlight evening and sit and think and dream.
But on this particular night sleep, usually so kind to the young man, absolutely refused to visit his pillow. He tried to woo the goddess on his right side, on his left, on his back; it was all in vain. Finally, he sat bolt upright in his little truckle bed in silent defiance.
“I don’t care,” he said aloud, “whether I sleep or not. What does it matter? I’ve nothing to do to-morrow. Heigho!”
Nothing to do to-morrow! How sad! And he so young too. Were all his dreams of future fortune to fade and pass away like this—nothing to do? Why he envied the very boys who drove the mill wagons that went lazily rolling past his place every day. They seemed happy, and so contented; while he—why his very life—had come to be all one continued fever.
“Nothing to do yet, sir?” It was the ordinary salutation of his hard-working mite of a landlady when he came home to his meal in the afternoon. “I knows by the weary way ye walks upstairs, sir, you aren’t successful yet, sir.”
“Nothink to do yet, sir?” They were the usual words that the slavey used when she dragged upstairs of an evening with his tea-things.
“Nothink to do,” she would say, as she deposited the tray on the table, and sank sans cérémonie into the easy-chair. “Nothink to do. What a ’appy life to lead! Now ’ere’s me a draggin’ up and down stairs, and a carryin’ of coals and a sweepin’, and a dustin’ and a hanswering of the door, till, what wi’ the ’eat and the dust and the fleas, my poor little life’s well-nigh worrited out o’ me. Heigho! hif I was honly back again in merrie England, catch me ever goin’ to any Australia any more. But you looks a horned gent, sir. Nothink to do! My eye and Betty Martin, ye oughter to be ’appy, if you ain’t.”
Archie got up to-night, enrobed himself in his dressing-gown, and went and sat on his balcony. This soothed him. The stars were very bright, and seemed very near. He did not care for other companionship than these and his own all-too-busy thoughts. There was hardly a sound to be heard, except now and then the hum of a distant railway train increasing to a harsh roar as it crossed the bridge, then becoming subdued again and muffled as it entered woods, or went rolling over a soft and open country.
Nothing to do! But he must and would do something. Why should he starve in a city of plenty? He had arms and hands, if he hadn’t a head. Indeed, he had begun of late to believe that his head, which he used to think so much of, was the least important part of his body. He caught himself feeling his forearm and his biceps. Why this latter had got smaller and beautifully less of late. He had to shut his fist hard to make it perceptible to touch. This was worse and worse, he thought. He would not be able to lift a fifty-six if he wanted to before long, or have strength enough left to wield a stable broom if he should be obliged to go as gardener to Winslow.
“What next, I wonder?” he said to himself. “First I lose my brains, if ever I had any, and now I have lost my biceps; the worst loss last.”
He lit his candle, and took up the newspaper.
“I’ll pocket my pride, and take a porter’s situation,” he murmured. “Let us see now. Hullo! what is this? ‘Apprentice Wanted—the drug trade—splendid opening to a pushing youngster.’ Well, I am a pushing youngster. ‘Premium required.’ I don’t care, I have a bit of money left, and I’ll pay it like a man if there is enough. Why the drug trade is grand. Sydney drug-stores beat Glasgow’s all to pieces. Druggists and drysalters have their carriages and mansions, their town and country houses. Hurrah! I’ll be something yet!”
He blew out the candle, and jumped into bed. The gentle goddess required no further wooing. She took him in her lap, and he went off at once like a baby.
Rap—rap—rap—rap!
“Hullo! Yes; coming, Sarah; coming.”
It was broad daylight; and when he admitted Sarah at last, with the breakfast-tray, she told him she had been up and down fifty times, trying to make him hear. Sarah was given to a little exaggeration at times.
“It was all very well for a gent like he,” she said, “but there was her a-slavin’ and a-toilin’, and all the rest of it.”
“Well, well, my dear,” he cut in, “I’m awfully sorry, I assure you.”
Sarah stopped right in the centre of the room, still holding the tray, and looked at him.
“What!” she cried. “Ye ain’t a-going to marry me then, young man! What are ye my-dearing me for?”
“No, Sarah,” replied Archie, laughing; “I’m not going to marry you; but I’ve hopes of a good situation, and—”
“Is that all?” Sarah dumped down the tray, and tripped away singing.
Archie’s interview with the advertiser was of a most satisfactory character. He did not like the street, it was too new and out of the way; but then it would be a beginning.
He did not like his would-be employer, but he dared say he would improve on acquaintance. There was plenty in the shop, though the place was dingy and dirty, and the windows small. The spiders evidently had fine times of it here, and did not object to the smell of drugs. He was received by Mr Glorie himself in a little back sanctum off the little back shop.
The premium for apprenticing Archie was rather more than the young man could give; but this being explained to the proprietor of these beautiful premises, and owner of all the spiders, he graciously condescended to take half. Archie’s salary—a wretched pittance—was to commence at once after articles were signed; and Mr Glorie promised to give him a perfect insight into the drug business, and make a man of him, and “something else besides,” he added, nodding to Archie in a mysterious manner.
The possessor of the strange name was a queer-looking man; there did not appear much glory about him. He was very tall, very lanky, and thin, his shoulders sloping downwards like a well-pointed pencil, while his face was solemn and elongated, like your own, reader, if you look at it in a spoon held lengthways.
The articles were signed, and Archie walked home on feathers apparently. He went upstairs singing. His landlady ran to the door.
“Work at last?”
Archie nodded and smiled.
When Sarah came in with the dinner things she danced across the room, bobbing her queer, old-fashioned face and crying—
“Lawk-a-daisy, diddle-um-doo, Missus says you’ve got work to do!”
“Yes, Sarah, at long last, and I’m so happy.”
“’Appy, indeed!” sang Sarah. “Why, ye won’t be the gent no longer!”
Archie certainly had got work to do. For a time his employer kept him in the shop. There was only one other lad, and he went home with the physic, and what with studying hard to make himself au fait in prescribing and selling seidlitz powders and gum drops, Archie was pretty busy.
So months flew by. Then his long-faced employer took him into the back premises, and proceeded to initiate him into the mysteries of the something else that was to make a man of him.
“There’s a fortune in it,” said Mr Glorie, pointing to a bubbling grease-pot. “Yes, young sir, a vast fortune.”
“What is the speciality?” Archie ventured to enquire.
“The speciality, young sir?” replied Mr Glorie, his face relaxing into something as near a smile as it would permit of. “The speciality, sir, is soap. A transparent soap. A soap, young sir, that is destined to revolutionise the world of commerce, and bring my star to the ascendant after struggling for two long decades with the dark clouds of adversity.”
So this was the mystery. Archie was henceforward, so it appeared, to live in an atmosphere of scented soap; his hope must centre in bubbles. He was to assist this Mr Glorie’s star to rise to the zenith, while his own fortune might sink to nadir. And he had paid his premium. It was swallowed up and simmering in that ugly old grease-pot, and except for the miserable salary he received from Mr Glorie he might starve.
Poor Archie! He certainly did not share his employer’s enthusiasm, and on this particular evening he did not walk home on feathers, and when he sat down to supper his face must have appeared to Sarah quite as long and lugubrious as Mr Glorie’s; for she raised her hands and said:
“Lawk-a-doodle, sir! What’s the matter? Have ye killed anybody?”
“Not yet,” answered Archie; “but I almost feel I could.”
He stuck to his work, however, like a man; but that work became more and more allied to soap, and the front shop hardly knew him any more.
He had informed the fellows at the club-room that he was employed at last; that he was apprenticed to the drug trade. But the soap somehow leaked out, and more than once, when he was introduced to some new-comer, he was styled—
“Mr Broadbent,” and “something in soap.”
This used to make him bite his lips in anger.
He would not have cared half so much had he not joined this very club, with a little flourish of trumpets, as young Broadbent, son of Squire Broadbent, of Burley Old Castle, England.
And now he was “something in soap.”
He wrote home to his sister in the bitterness of his soul, telling her that all his visions of greatness had ended in bubbles of rainbow hue, and that he was “something in soap.” He felt sorry for having done so as soon as the letter was posted.
He met old Winslow one day in the street, and this gentleman grasped Archie’s small aristocratic hand in his great brown bear’s paw, and congratulated him on having got on his feet at last.
“Yes,” said Archie with a sneer and a laugh, “I’m ‘something in soap.’”
“And soap’s a good thing I can tell you. Soap’s not to be despised. There’s a fortune in soap. I had an uncle in soap. Stick to it, my lad, and it’ll stick to you.”
But when a new apprentice came to the shop one day, and was installed in the front door drug department, while he himself was relegated to the slums at the back, his cup of misery seemed full, and he proceeded forthwith to tell this Mr Glorie what he thought of him. Mr Glorie’s face got longer and longer and longer, and he finally brought his clenched fist down with such a bang on the counter, that every bottle and glass in the place rang like bells.
“I’ll have the law on you,” he shouted.
“I don’t care; I’ve done with you. I’m sick of you and your soap.”
He really did not mean to do it; but just at that moment his foot kicked against a huge earthenware jar full of oil, and shivered it in pieces.
“You’ve broke your indenture! You—you—”
“I’ve broken your jar, anyhow,” cried Archie.
He picked up his hat, and rushing out, ran recklessly off to his club.
He was “something in soap” no more.
He was beggared, but he was free, unless indeed Mr Glorie should put him in gaol.