XII
He strolled up a short street, and looked for and found a roomy, double bow-fronted house of warm old red brick, with huge capacious areas. "Vanity Fair" had been written there, he knew, perhaps "Esmond" too, though he was not sure. He took off his hat to the memory of the magician, and wondered where his other idol, the still living author of the "Cloister and the Hearth," and "Never Too Late to Mend" might be run to earth, and made up his mind to see Dickens's grave in Westminster Abbey on the morrow, whether it cost sixpence, or whether it did not.... And then he wavered, sixpence, as we know, being the moiety of his capital; and then he remembered that to-morrow could only be reached by the bridge of to-night. He walked very fast for some distance, trying to exorcise the demons that this thought evoked, and,—blinded by their buzzing and stinging—was in Piccadilly before he knew. The high railings of the Green Park, and the foggy solitude of the gravel-walks between the wintry lawns, tempted him to turn in and rest upon a seat a while, for he was still somewhat giddy and shaky, and the bump so confidently prophesied by the Infanta had appeared upon his brow.
He took off the old felt wideawake and stared at Piccadilly, brilliant with the paroquet-colors of passing omnibuses, green and royal blue, chocolate and white-and-gold. Behind the shining windows of the great Clubs, the members' heads, gleamingly bald, or affluent of hair and whiskers, alternately appeared and vanished. He caught brief passing glimpses of white-bosomed waiters, ... the twinkle of gilt buttons on livery coats.... Beer-drays, driven by burly red-faced men, frequently in shirt-sleeves, went by with a whiff of malt, and the thunder of heavy hoofs. Vans of business-houses passed with a clang of bells. Victorias and landaus with muffled, and furred, and veiled ladies in them; shut-up broughams, madly-daring velocipedists on the machine of the era, a giant wheel followed by a pigmy one, made fleeting pictures on the retina of P. C. Breagh. And the double river of traffic, and the eastward and westward-flowing stream of pedestrians went by without a break in them. Gas-lamps began to make islands of yellow light upon the fog, but showed no dwindling in their numbers. He wondered if they would go on like this all night? And then some one came up and sat down on the other end of the seat rather heavily, and the slight resultant shock and jar brought round P. C. Breagh's head.
He saw the thick-set, rather lax and round-shouldered figure of a man of middle age, dressed in a suit of tweeds patterned in giant checks of black and white and gray, the dernier cri in masculine morning-wear, had the observer but known it. His hat, a low-crowned chimney-pot in hard gray felt, was tilted backward, his hair, of a pale tow-color, tufted out from beneath the hat in a way that cried for the attention of the barber; his whiskers, and mustache, of the same shade as the hair, were raggedly in need of the shears. He wore a buttonhole-bouquet composed of a pink camellia with Neapolitan violets, and pale lemon kid gloves, and sucked the carved ivory knob of an ebony stick he carried, until,—upon his neighbor's looking round as above recorded,—he took it from a somewhat lax and swollen mouth, and observed that it was a nice afternoon. Adding, as P. C. Breagh made a sound which might have been assent or denial:
"If it is affernoon? Without my fellow to post me, I'm apt to be wrong about time. Not that that's remarable. Lots of people the same, don't you know? Nothing extra—nothing ex—oh, damn!"
A covert anxiety—and a very visible tremulousness were combined in the speaker's manner. His large watery blue eyes were painfully vague and blurred, with distended pupils that looked uneven; his gestures were uncertain, and his words, well chosen enough, and uttered with the tone and accent usually distinctive of a gentleman, came haltingly from a tongue that seemed to be too large for its owner's mouth:
"You don't regard it as extra ... Stop a minute!" A pause ensued, during which the vague-eyed gentleman waited, clutching his stick with both hands, and holding his swollen mouth ajar. And when he shut the mouth to shake his head, and looked at P. C. Breagh in the act of doing this, the perspiration shone upon his puffy cheeks and stood in beads upon his reddened forehead, as though it had been July instead of a foggy afternoon in January, and the pink-bordered cambric handkerchief with which he wiped his worried face became, after this usage, a very rag. And a queer, unwillingly-yielded-to sense of commiseration prompted Carolan to suggest:
"'Extraordinary' was the word you wanted, wasn't it?"
"Much obliged! The word, unnoutedly! 'Stror'nary how words do dodge one on occasion!" returned the uncertain gentleman in the large-patterned tweeds. He added, pulling at the ragged light mustache, with a gloved hand that was decidedly shaky: "I don't know that it matters parricurarly—but I'd prefer you to know that I'm not runk!"
"Not—what?..."
"Not runk!" repeated the vague-eyed gentleman emphatically. "Not cut, foozled, miffed, fizzed, screwed! Not that it's oblig—that's another of the words that perretually queer me!—or incumment on me to isplain, but I regard it as due to myself, by Gad! that you should clearly unnerstand the case. As I said to the manuscript upon the Bench when the bobby ran me in on Thursday—or was it Friray? ... Appearances are sally against me, but I have never been a rinking man! The doctors have a crajjaw name for my connition, which under the exissing circ—and that's another of the words that play the deuce and all with me! ... Look at my westick, buttoned all wrong!"
He slewed round upon the seat, and throwing back the large-patterned, fashionably cut-away coat, exhibited the garment mentioned, every buttonhole of which afforded hospitality to a button not its own. His necktie, the ample, sailor-knotted necktie of the period, was under his left ear, and his shirt had come unstudded. Being appealed to, P. C. Breagh admitted that the existing condition of things left something to be desired!
"When a man entirely ripends on valets and domessicks," explained his incoherent neighbor, "a man is apt to be neglected and so on. As a marrer of fact I live in that little joppa cottisit!" He waveringly pointed to a large, handsome private dwelling with an ornate portico, situated nearly opposite, and sandwiched between two Clubs. "An' as a narrural conquicense of my temorrary irrability to pronounce words of the most orinary nature, I am——" He drew an aimless figure in the muddy gravel with his ivory-topped, ebony stick, and went on with a weak laugh, "I am absoluly neglected by my own househol'. My own children seem ashamed or afray of me—all but Little Foxhall—splendid little chap is Little Foxhall! But his mother—my wife——" He broke off to say—"You will escuse my touching on these priva' matters in conversation with a perfec' stranger. I am quite conscience I trepsass against the orinary usages of propriety, especially in speaking of my wife! ... But—the fact is, sir! I am most desperately wretched. Six people imagine me runk—out of every half-dozen. While the other six—the irriots whisser it when they think I'm out of earshock—suppose me to be suffrig from Sofrig of the Bray!"
He began to tremble and shake, and put his stick between his knees to hold on to the edge of the seat with his lemon-kidded hands—and couldn't hold the stick in that position, and it fell, and P. C. Breagh picked it up and put it back.
"I am murrabliged," said the owner of the stick, "by your kind attention!" Something struggled and fought in the vague blue eyes that he turned upon Carolan,—it seemed as though in another moment Fear and Terror might have leaped glaring into sight. "And while I am boun' to ajopolize for thrussing my privarrafairs upon a stranger—I feel bound to put the quession; Why should thissorathing happen to ME? Goolor'! I've been no worse than lossa urra fellers!" He rose up shaking, and shakily sat down again, nearly missing the bench.
"Bessaran loss of 'em—if you come to that!" He turned to Carolan, and the vague eyes were piteous and desperate.... "You see the sort of chap my luck—my damble luck—has made o' me! Yet I used to be envied—envied ... you unnerstand! I have belonged to the best regiment in the Brigade of Guards—the devil another! I have played the bes' cards, driven the bes' turnouts, smoked the bes' cigars and had the most stunnin' women! Do you unnerstand me?—Have!" He brought down the uncertain hand in an attempt to strike his knee emphatically, and missed it; and tried to look as though he had not, and went on: "And I have belonged to the best gloves, by Gad! an' put on the clubs with the most celebrarred li'-weights! And I rode my steeplechase at York, and romped in first, and they toasted and speechified me at the Gimcrack dinner. And I won my Oaks and my Derby—and led in the winner, with all the cheeple reering;—the seeple peering—the—Goolor'! Goolor'! And the horse was Gladianor—and the victory was a popular one—and my name was a household word through the Unirred Kingom. A household word!..." He broke off, trembling and sweating, as the horse might have done after the race, and put the wavering hand to his head, and turned his empty blue eyes from Carolan's as though they hurt. "What was my name?" he asked himself in a dull, thick, shaky whisper, "Goolor'! Goolor'! What was my name? ... That you, Murchison?"
For a decent figure in the irreproachable dark clothing of a servant out of livery had passed and turned back, and now approached the bench, eyeing Carolan suspiciously even in the act of uncovering its well-brushed head, and saying in the smooth accents of servility:
"It is Murchison, your Grace. It's cold, your Grace, and you've not got on an overcoat. Your Grace had best come home now, before your Grace is missed!..."
"Home?" His Grace looked mildly from the authoritative Murchison to the stately "cottage opposite," and one of the uncertain hands in the pale lemon kid gloves, making as though to pluck at an untrimmed whisker, found itself imprisoned in a deferential but vigorous grip.
"Home, your Grace!" said Murchison, applying muscular leverage to raise the inert figure.
"All right. Prass I better, Murchison!" He rose to the perpendicular.... "Wish you a very good evening, sir!" With a faded reminiscence of what might have been a courtly manner, he touched his hat to P. C. Breagh, who returned the farewell greeting, avoiding the sharp glance of Murchison. Then valet and master moved off, leaving a little trail of dialogue behind them:
"You give us the fair slip that time, your Grace!..."
"Perhass I did, Murchison—now you happen to mention it."
"Might have been killed crossing Piccadilly, your Grace, and none of us the wiser."
"Goolor'! I'd wish I had, Murchison—if it wasn't for Little Foxhall!" ... Then in a high, quavering note of eagerness, the plea, pitiable and ridiculous and pathetic: "I—I say! ... Tell me the boy'd have minded, Murchison—whass a lie to you, you dam' smoo'-ranged Ananias!—and I'll give you my nex' week's sovereign—I'm dead broke now!"
And Murchison and His Grace went away together, the man steering, with deft guiding touches of the master's elbow, the latter stepping high and bringing his feet down with a peculiar thump that threw a light upon the situation in the eyes of P. C. Breagh. Not softening of the brain.... Donnerwetter! what were the London doctors thinking of? Had none of them read the "Dissertation on Tabes Dorsalis" of the Herr Doctor Max Baumgarten, published in Berlin only a twelvemonth previously, and dealing fully with that rare and curious disease of the nervous system? ... Fibrous degeneration of the posterior columns of the spinal cord, affecting the patient's sight, gait, and—in isolated cases—speech and memory.
"I'd like to have got him to let me rap his shins! Bet you anything there'd have been total absence of reflex action! Remember that peddler in the Nervous Ward of the Augusta Hospital at Schwärz-Brettingen! ... They cured that chap with spinal injections and regular massage. And this man—being a thundering swell and having the best advice possible—is naturally being treated all wrong! Hang it!—how cold I am! Better be moving!" He got up and stamped some warmth into his cold feet and flailed his cold ribs with his elbows until they tingled again. He had learned something of the wretchedness that may sometimes dwell in princely homes, yet be homeless; and fare delicately from plate of gold and silver, and yet go hungry,—and lie down to toss and stare through dreadful sleepless nights on soft luxurious beds. Therefore the bright reflections of great fires dancing on the plate-glass windows of the "cottage opposite" stung him to no comparisons. "Is it base in me that the knowledge of the misery of this wealthy nobleman makes me more contented with my own obscure poverty?" he asked himself, and the answer was: "Not if your content does not make you callous to his woe!"
"I hope that Little Foxhall would have minded!" he found himself saying; "and I wish to Heaven Baumgarten could get a chance of doing something for his father! I've half a mind to drop a postcard to him—or write a line to the Herr Professor! ... Stop, though!"
He remembered that he must break into his last remaining shilling to buy the postcard and pay for the stamps. Then he swung out through the Park side-gates, and now he was one of the crowd rolling Circus-wards, and all the street gas-lamps had been lighted by certain officials with poles, furnished with hooks for keying the gas on, and perforated iron sockets filled with blazing tow that had been soaked in naphtha; thus every shop or restaurant became an Aladdin's cave of brilliancy, and the down-drawn blinds of the houses and clubs hid splendor unspeakable—if only one had been able to pull them up....
Alas! to us who live in these pushful days of Electrical Power Supply, the glories of the illuminated capital in the year of grace 1870 would appear murky enough. We should sneer at the stumpy iron lamp-posts and the chandeliers yet adorned with Early Victorian crystal glass lusters. The wood pavement, an invention de luxe economically confined to the West End, and upon the greasy surface of which bus-horses broke legs as easily as the most aristocratic thoroughbreds—the loose iron gratings covering basement-lights, and incidentally presenting man-traps for unwary pedestrians, as receptacles for stray umbrellas, dead cats, wisps of packing straw, discarded newspapers and orange-peel—the untrapped gutter-drains and sewer-vents would awaken our ridicule and evoke our indignation, even as the displays in the shop windows, especially those of modistes, couturières, and tailors, would provoke us to mirth.
The extraordinary little hats, pot-shaped or plate-shaped, worn upon huge chignons, surmounting cascades of ringlets, couleur Impératrice. The preposterous frilled paniers, the bustles, the jupes of velvet or plush, flounced to the waist or kilted—sometimes to mid-leg, displaying boots—such as are worn to this hour by Principal Boys in Christmas Pantomimes and serio-comic ladies of the Varsity Stage, who are, we know, Principal Boys in the pupa, or chrysalis-state. All these things compel us to hold our sides when we review them in the illustrated papers of the Ladies' Mentor,—which illuminating periodical, in the dearth of Fashionable Intelligence from Paris, the hub and center of the modish world, came to a sudden end in the October of that year, and has defied all efforts at resuscitation.
Though it is possible that the wearers of these long-vanished modes—surveying the belles of Belgravia, with their humbler followers of Brompton and Bayswater,—in the present year of progress, might be moved to laughter or provoked to wrath. To-day, when the ambition of every properly constituted woman is to be shaped like a golliwog and dressed like a pen-wiper, or to acquire the sinuosities of a Bayadere and drape the same in cobwebs calculated to conceal nothing and suggest everything—can we honestly enlarge upon the bygone improprieties of our aunts, and moan over our mothers' taste in toilettes?
It was just six when P. C. Breagh crossed Piccadilly Circus and turned down toward the Haymarket. Why hurry, he asked himself, when you have nowhere to go? The restaurants were filling with diners who were going to the theaters, the smell of cooked meats made savory the fogginess. He shrugged his shoulders, dug his hands deep into his empty pockets, and tried to whistle as he loafed along.
Misery stalked these West End streets, rampant and clamorous. A burly man devoid of legs, shuffling along with his hands in a pair of woman's clogs, entreated P. C. Breagh in stentorian tones to buy a tin nutmeg-grater. A miserable creature, whose sole garment appeared to be the upper portion of an adult pair of trousers, begged him, in the professional whine, to spare a penny for the pore orphan boy! A dank female, in rusty weeds, stationary by the curb, displaying a baby and a row of ballads, besought of him, for the love of Gawd! to pity the unfortunate widow and her starving orphans.
"Buy a ballad, kind genl'man! On'y a penny—goes to a lovelly choone!"
"Ho! Dermot, you look 'ealthy now,
Your does is neat an' clean,
Hi never sees you drunk about,
W'erehever 'ave you been?"
The stave chanted as an appetizer for the music-lover, she wiped the baby's nose with her ostentatiously white apron, and protested it to be the image of its father—blowed up in a Mind.
"You mean a mine, don't you?" P. C. Breagh was beginning, when the widow once more burst into song.
"Your wife and Fam'ly—Har they well?
You once did use them strynge!
Ho! Har you kinder to them now?
And wence this 'appy chynge?"
Reverting to prose, as P. C. Breagh lounged listlessly on, she demanded why, if he wasn't going to buy, he had stopped and given a respectable female Tongue.
"And not even fork out a copper, you blistered swindler! You blindin', blazin'——"
"Come now, Chanting Poll, what's all this here row about?"
The gruff, not unkindly voice of a policeman broke in upon the rusty widow's eloquence. P. C. Breagh, yielding to a sudden impulse, wheeled and swung back again.
"It's all right, constable, the lady was only having a bit of chaff with me!"
"I know her!" said P. C. 999, C. Division, removing a heavy but not brutal hand from the lady in question, "and the kind o' chaff she slings. Done Time for it, too, she 'as—before now!"
But he moved on, huge in his belted greatcoat, walking with the elephantine, clumping step begotten of boots with iron toe-caps, and iron-nailed soles at least two inches in thickness; and the dank widow cocked a knowing eye at his retreating back, and the other at her unexpected champion.
"Good for you, my dear! Stand us a drain for luck, since you're so civil!"
He returned:
"I would if I'd got the tin! I believe I'm poorer than you are!"
"S'welp me bob! wot 'ave we 'ere? A haristocrat in distress, har yer?" she demanded.
"Not quite," he told her, as she turned the ponderous batteries of her raillery upon him. "I've seen an aristocrat in distress to-day, and he was worse than me. I'd not change!"
"Fer ten thousand jimmies hannual hincome, an' a 'ouse at Number One 'Yde Park Corner!" she jeered. "'Ow did yer lose the I'm-so-funny?—for if you 'aven't it now, you 'ave 'ad it, I'll tyke me Davy!"
"It's—a long story! Good-bye!"
He nodded and was moving on, when she shot out a gaunt hand and clutched him by the sleeve, crying:
"'Old 'ard, Mister! 'Ang on till I give this 'ere squealer to its mammy. About due now, she ought to be!"
"Isn't it..." His surprised look tickled the relict of the blown-up husband into a chuckle.
"Mine? Not by 'arf! A tizzy per workin'-day is wot I pays for the loan of 'er. Nothin' like a babby—specially in narsty weather like this 'ere—to touch the people's 'arts! Lil's mine, though, ain't you, deary?"
A preternaturally bright-eyed, white-faced, wizened little creature peeped out from the shelter of the ostentatiously clean apron, making a sound as of assent.
"Is she ill?" asked P. C. Breagh commiseratingly.
"Not 'er, that's her color!"
"Hungry, perhaps?" he asked.
"Why should she be? ... Wot did yer 'ave fer dinner, Lil? Speak up like a good gal an' tell the gen'lman!"
The small, grimy finger came out of the wide mouth. She lisped confidingly:
"Ay'po'rth o' gin 'ot, an' a stit o' totlit!"
"My God!" gasped P. C. Breagh in horror, "does that baby drink hot gin?"
"When she can get it! an' so does Hi!" explained the lady of the ballads, whom a short female in a plaid shawl and a battered brown bonnet had now relieved of the baby. She added hospitably: "Come an' 'ave two-pennorth o' comfort along o' me now! It's meat and drink both! as you'll find afore long! I'll stand treat—no blarney!"
But he groaned and fled from the tragic pair, seeing the blazing eyes of the drunkard, set in the small white childish face, staring at him from the gas-lamps and the hoardings, from the paving-stones beneath his hurrying feet, and from under the hats of passing strangers; and peering between the slowly-moving shoals of sooty smoke and muddy vapor, streaking the livid grayness overhead.