XIII
Pall Mall was some relief. He looked for the Junior United Service Club, and found it; for the Rag,—and for a time walked up and down in the vicinity of both of these stately institutions, heartened by the memory that his father had been a member of the former—listening with eager ears to scraps of conversation between soldierly, well-groomed, clear-voiced men in evening dress, lingering on the wide doorsteps to finish some animated discussion, or waiting for cabs and hansoms, the common hack, or the smart private vehicle, low on the wheels at that date, and more heavily built than the later S. and T.
Certain bald, mustached, and red-faced veterans, scrupulously attired for the evening—delighted him extremely.
"By George, General!" he heard one of them say, as he went by, his slouch forgotten, his shoulders squared, his head held up, "look at that seedy-looking chap there! Twelve to one in sixpences he's one of the 'supererogatory useless infantrymen,' kicked out by Cardwell, after twelve years' Service. D'ye take the bet or no?"
The reference to the unpopular War Secretary under whose effacing hand infantry regiments had not only lost their numbers, but in many cases vanished from the rolls of the Army, swallowed up in the New System of Amalgamation—had, as was intended, the effect of the red rag on the bull. The General bellowed:
"Confound me if I don't! Pay the cabman, McIntosh, while I put the fellow through his paces! Hi! Hi! Come here, you, sir!"
Then, as P. C. Breagh, summoned by an imperious wave of the umbrella, stepped out of the fogginess into the mellow circle of light streaming through the glass doors of the brilliant vestibule:
"What's your regiment? ... Give me the old designation! ... I know nothing of new-fangled names; ... All my eye and Betty Martin! and I don't care a dee who hears me say it! ... What is your rank, name and battalion-number? When were you discharged? ... Where's your small-book and certificate? ... Got 'em about you? ... Every soldier has 'em about him! And why don't you answer, dee you!—why don't you answer, man?"
The volley of interrogations left no room for reply. A second might have followed had not the General's crony, in unconcealed ecstasies at the sulky embarrassment of the victim and the determined attitude of the inquisitor, intervened:
"Dashed sorry! My mistake! Believe you've landed a civilian, after all, General!"
"Be dee'd! and so I have!" the General, after a raking stare, admitted. Then he took his crony's arm, they wheeled, and marched into the Club together. From whence issued, a moment later, a small boy in buttons, who, after a look up and a look down the street, pursued the retreating figure of the stalwart young man in the gray felt wide-awake and shaggy greatcoat, and arrested it with the words:
"'Arf a jiff, my covey!" He added, as the retreating figure wheeled and surveyed him in hard-eyed silence: "Wasn't it you what Old Fireworks went for just now on the 'Rag and Famish' steps?"
"The General called to me—mistaking me for——"
"I know!" The boy in buttons winked. "He's always a-pitching into somebody in mistake for somebody else! Catch hold! This is for you!"
This was a warm half-crown, thrust upon P. C. Breagh, without further ceremony. He flushed a murky, savage red, and shouted:
"What is this for? ... Who had the infernal insolence——"
He choked. Buttons, plainly regarding the tramp who could be insulted by half-a-crown as a new species, stared at him with circular orbs of astonishment, retorting:
"What's it for? How do I know, stoopid? He told me to catch you and give it you.... Cool that! Well, blow me!..."
These expressions being evoked by the swift, supple movement of arm and wrist that had sent the half-crown flying into the midst of the Pall Mall traffic. A sharp ring on the wood-pavement, a yell, and a flourish of naked heels, and a street Arab had seized the treasure. As the fog swallowed the wealthy imp, said Buttons icily:
"That's your game, is it?—pavin' Pall Mall with 'arf bulls for gutter-pads to pick up. Better ha' tipped it to me!—or sent it back to Old Fireworks. He ain't got too many of 'em. Signs too many toast-and-water tickets to be flush!"
Perhaps P. C. Breagh, scalding with wrath as he was, would have dived in among the traffic to recover the coin had it been recoverable. But the snows of yester-year were not more irretrievably gone. He realized it, hung his head and hunched his shoulders, and moved away from the region of clubs, where officers of the twin Services talked shop in sublime indifference to other subjects, as white-chokered attendants supplied them with savory meats and cheering drinks.
Be sorry for the boy with the gaunt wolf Hunger at his heels, and the black demon of Despair sitting on his shoulders. That determination of his to face what might come, and take his luck in a cheerful spirit, was to be put to a yet fiercer test before the dawn of a new day.
He was hungry and thirsty, and sorely tempted to break into his solitary shilling. But that silver barrier between himself and pennilessness was not to be lightly changed. He wondered, as he recalled to mind the many occasions upon which he had wantonly squandered and wasted money, whether an experience such as this, previously undergone, would not have been a valuable lesson in thrift?
He presently came by a well-known theater. It was too early for the frequenters of the Stalls and Boxes and Grand Circle. But playgoers of the humbler kind were pouring in to fill the unnumbered seats in the upper tiers, and a crowd composed of the usual elements had gathered at the doors of the Pit and Gallery, and filled the narrow side-alley in which these were situated, and overflowed into the Strand.
Queues not being officially recognized and regulated, there was a good deal of obstruction and pushing and persiflage. Pausing a moment under the gas-jet bordered, glazed shelter ornamenting the box-office entrance, his unseasoned eyes winced as they took in a sad, sad sight.
You saw her as a woman not past early middle-age, nobly proportioned, and even in her dreadful degradation, imperially beautiful. An old velvet mantle covered her, from which the torn and moth-eaten fur-trimming hung in draggled festoons. A trained silk gown, stained and torn and flounced with mud of many thicknesses, trailed upon the slushy Strand pavement; a broken bonnet perched on a palpably false and inconceivably dirty chignon, the false curls that cascaded from beneath it, hid a workhouse-crop of rusty gray.... And she lifted her skirts aside, disclosing muddy bare feet shod with a trodden-down, elastic-sided boot and a ragged slipper; and stepped across the threshold of the gilt and mirrored vestibule with a graceful, royal air....
"Now then, missus! Out of this, will you!"
A uniformed theater-attendant had advanced toward the intruder. But she did not retreat in terror at his truculence. She drew herself up, and folded her arms upon her bosom, and confronted the menial with a haughty, quelling stare.
"Man! who are you to drive me from this threshold? Out of the way! Clear!—and let me look at her. Do you ask whom? She! that woman who stands behind you smiling, with the white dove perched upon her whiter hand. Times have changed, my girl, since you and I last saw each other! Well, well! You are the same, whatever I may be!"
She laughed, a deep, melodious ha, ha, ha! not at all like the laughter of everyday people. Even P. C. Breagh, inexperienced as he was in such matters, recognized it as the artificial laughter of the stage. And, profiting by the momentary confusion of the functionary, she swept in her silken rags toward the person indicated; who looked back at her with beautiful stagey eyes from a life-sized canvas, wearing a stage costume; standing in a pose of the theater; fondling the bird that was palpably a property of the scene.
A long gilt-framed mirror hung beside the portrait, and to this she pointed with the tattered remnants of her theatrical manner, exclaiming with another of the stage laughs:
"Look upon this picture and on that! Ye gods!..." Adding, as the guardian of the vestibule, now wroth, advanced upon her: "No! Don't you hustle me. I'm off, governor! Farewell. Ta-ta!—until we meet again!"
She was gone, but she must have noted the boy who stared, fascinated by her haggard beauty and her dreadful misery. In fact, P. C. Breagh, passing on, had barely traversed a dozen yards of slushy pavement, before, with a bound and rush, a supple movement, predatory and feline, the woman emerged from an alley, and was by his side.
"Who are you? A waif, like me? Where do you come from? I saw you looking at me with all your eyes and your heart in them!—I played that scene with the picture and the mirror for you! You know——" She took P. C. Breagh's reluctant arm and leaned to his ear, being taller than he was, "There's always one person in the house you play to—and when that person's not there—the inspiration doesn't come. When it won't, you—shall I tell you what you do if God hasn't made you able to say 'No' to them?—you send out the devils to fetch you brandy and champagne!"
She laughed wildly and looked round suspiciously.
"Walk fast! A policeman's behind us, shadowing us. I'll tell you my story as we go. Did you ever hear of Anabel Foltringham? You must have! Everybody has! I drew crowds to that theater you've seen me kicked out of!—I was beautiful—great—famous! Men gloated over my beauty—they hung upon my every word. That made the devils jealous—the smooth, servile, obsequious devils in white aprons, that you find behind the scenes at every theater. They call them dressers, but I know better, you can't deceive me! You boy, I like your face! You look at me as if I were a Christian, and a man I knew had eyes like yours! ... Don't leave me! I'll make it worth your while to stay, only listen! ... I'll teach you all I know, make you a greater artist than any of them. For the things that you shall learn from me—I learned myself—in Hell!"
She hung upon the boy's wincing arm, her terrible breath scorched him, her burned-out eyes appalled—her greedy, long-nailed clutch found his flesh through his sleeve like the talons of a beast of prey. And he wrenched himself free, and fled, sick at heart; fancying that the old boot and shoe were running after him, and that the mud-trimmed silk gown flapped at his hurrying heels like leathery wings.
He broke into his shilling to pass the turnstile of Waterloo Bridge, stowed himself in a corner of one of the seated niches, and found relief in the presence of a stray kitten, sore-footed, hungry-eyed, ginger-haired, that rubbed against his legs and responded with appreciative purrs to his tentative back-strokings and ear-rubbings, administered half-unconsciously, as he wondered why human beings—under certain given circumstances, should be so much more beastly than the brutes?
The kitten jumped on his knee. He saw that its fur had been torn—probably by a dog—and shuddered at the remembrance of having more than once set a rough-haired terrier—a companion of his early boyhood—to worry stray cats—and enjoyed the carnage resulting. Why did he shudder now? Because by a feat of imagination only possible to one who was beginning to learn what it is to be homeless and hunted and desperate, he had got inside the ginger kitten's ragged skin, and established between himself and what we are content to call inferior creatures a bond of brotherhood.
"Don't you go, Kitty! though I can't make it much worth your while to stop," he muttered. "If I'd got the things—a scrap of lint and a saucer of clean water, a needleful of silk and a dab of carbolic ointment—I could patch up that tear—you'd be as good as new inside of a week."
He yawned, and the tramp of booted feet and the shuffle of naked ones grew faint in his ears; and presently the rush and roar of the Bridge roadway-traffic dulled to a hum—and he was deadly sleepy. With blundering fingers he undid two buttons of the frieze greatcoat and tucked the kitten inside—and after turning round three times, and making a great parade of clawing the surface soft enough for comfort, it curled up and fell asleep, and its host not only slept, but snored.
Even in sleep he was dogged and haunted by those three tragic figures;—the broken-down viveur, the child dying on gin, the lost creature who had once been Anabel Foltringham—they cropped up in his troubled dreams, over and over again. And he woke up, and it was dark, and a sleety rain was stinging him, and even the kitten in his breast was cold and cried.
He got up, aching and stiff, hungry and thirsty, realizing that he must have slept for hours. Big Ben boomed twelve. A midnight express from Charing Cross dragged its chain of yellow lights across the railway bridge with a hollow roar and rattle. One or two shapes passed, vaguely human in the wintry darkness; a Post Office van or so, with an official inside sorting bags by the light of a swinging lantern, three or four crawling cabs, a trolley with a formless mass upon it, pushed by two indistinct, slow-moving figures, coming from the Surrey side.
Toward the Strandward end of the Bridge there was a light, with murky figures moving about it. Revealed by its two flaring naphtha-lamps, the characteristic hostelry of the London gutters, with its gaudy paint and patriotic decorations, its clean shelves piled up with homely food, and hung with common crockery, its steaming urns of hot and comforting drink,—proved a Godsend to one more hungry and homeless vagrant.
The shipwrecked mariner of his analogy might have known the same sense of relief, seeing his signal answered and some stout vessel, flying the red ensign of the British Mercantile Marine, bearing down upon his tiny, wave-washed raft.... P. C. Breagh was guilty of prodigality at that coffee-stall. A penny cup of coffee, weak, but hot, and a twopenny sandwich, consisting of two slices of bread smeared with mustard and inclosing something by courtesy called ham, but really pertaining to that less stylish part of the pig known as "gammon," took the edge off his savage appetite. A ha'porth of milk for the kitten, and another ha'porth of ham-trimmings, left him lord of seven-pence halfpenny cash.
Thus, warmed and cheered, he went back to his seat in the niche again, noting that every stone bench he passed had now its seated group, or prone extended figures. His recently vacated place had its occupant, a thin, barefooted young man, indescribably ragged; who slept with his famished face—sharp and yellow as a wedge of cheese—turned to the sky, and the Adam's apple of his lean throat jerking, as though something alive, swallowed inadvertently, was madly struggling to get out.
And as he leaned upon the eastward parapet of the Bridge with the ginger kitten, now replete and happy, purring on his shoulder, and watched the wild welter of black water, pale-patched with foam and spume, rushing away beneath him, to plunge growling through the arches of Blackfriars Bridge, and speed away under Southwark and London Bridges, past the Custom House, Traitor's Gate and the Docks, between Wapping and Rotherhithe on its way to Greenwich and Poplar and Blackwell; and thence, by the verdant heights of Charlton to Woolwich, widening to a mile here; and so on past Gravesend and the Nore Light to where it flows between Whitstable and Foulness Point—eighteen miles broad; a kingly river, carrying on its back the commerce of the world.
The wind blew bitter cold from the heights of Hampstead. A livid moon blinked through rifts in ink-black cloud-wrack above the Shot Towers and a huge mass of brewery-buildings on the right. On the left, revealed in glimpses and suggestions by stray moonbeams and wind-blown lamp-flares, was a great confusion of trucks and trolleys; huge cranes rearing skeleton arms aloft, colossal cauldrons, heaps of clay beside yawning trenches, winking red eyes of warning for belated wanderers. All this beyond a banking-face of stone masonry with completed piers, showed where the Victoria Embankment would be by-and-by. Meanwhile chaos reigned; the area would have been an appropriate playground for the inhabitants of Bethlem Hospital, in hours of relaxation, or on national holidays.
P. C. Breagh laughed gallantly at his own conceit, and his chapped lips cracked and hurt him. He staunched the bleeding with his handkerchief, conscious that a day might come when he should cease to have any use for such an article. Habits die hard with us, but the cleanly ones go first, being acquired. We continue to desire food and drink long after we have left off caring about the color of our linen—nay! long after we have become indifferent to the fact that we wear no linen at all.
He was bone-weary; his thigh-bones seemed wearing through their sockets. His knees ached, his feet were heavy as solid lumps of lead. It occurred to him that the two things most desirable on earth were an arm-chair and a roasting fire to toast before. Failing that, a seat on a stone bench, with a north wind gnawing you was better than nothing.... He thought that by now one of the sleepers in the niches would have wakened up and moved on.
Vain hope. Where one had withdrawn, his place had been filled by three newcomers. Misery, Dirt, Drunkenness, Disease, and Wretchedness herded in those stony refuges, mercifully winked at by the patroling policeman with the unsavory-smelling bull's-eye. And strange beings perambulated or crept the pavement; 2 a.m. is the time when you may see them!—emerging from the foul hiding-places where they pass the daylight hours, to wander forth unseen....
Such goblin forms, such Gorgon faces, revealed by some fitful ray of watery moonlight, or the lamp of a languid, belated cab.... It was a waking nightmare, a Dantesque vision realized, inconceivably hideous to nerves already weakening. The Celtic strain derived from his father, in conjunction with the sensitive romantic nature bequeathed by Milly Fermeroy, might have urged their son to end things that bleak January night, with a leap from the parapet and a plunge into the wild black welter tumbling under the Bridge arches. But P. C. Breagh was not fated to join the procession of grim, unconscious voyagers, that wallow in the tides and circle in the eddies, flounder under the sides of barges, beat upon the piles and bridge-piers, and sink to slumber in the river-sludge a while, before they rise, more dreadful than before, to journey on again....
His mother's faith plucked him as before, from the desperate brink of the temptation; and—he had worked in the dissecting-rooms and walked the hospitals, toward that end of failure previously recorded,—and the hardening did yeoman's service now. But it went badly with him—at one period of that week-long night particularly.... He never liked to speak of that experience.... But long, long afterward he said to one who loved him:
"I held on to my reason, and prayed Our Lord for daylight. And—I don't know how I managed—but somehow, I got through!"
He found a seat at length, not knowing by whom or how it had been vacated, and dropped into it and slept like the dead. And he awoke in a windless lull,—to a strange bluish-yellow radiance in the sky beyond the great squat dome of St. Paul's and the crowding chimneys of the City: and felt the stir and thrill and quiver that is the sign of this sad world's waking to yet another day.
Three homeless women shared the seat with him. Two were awake, watching him not unkindly. A third slept, leaning forward in a huddled attitude, propped by the handle of a basket she held upon her knees. She breathed in whistling squeals,—a night on Waterloo Bridge in January encourages bronchitis.... He listened for a moment, then with a prodigal impulse, dropped twopence of his eightpence into the basket on her lap. And she woke, and said with an Irish accent:
"May the heavens be yer bed!" and slept again, heavily.
The second woman snuffled out in the accents of the East End:
"Gawd bless you, good gen'leman!"
The third lifted a tattered scarlet head-shawl, and flashed a pair of jet-black Oriental eyes upon him:
"Fortune and Life!"
To her he said, with a creditable effort at cheeriness:
"I've lost the fortune, mother! the life's about all I've got that's left to me!"
"And a good thing too, my gorgious! Don't yer complain of it! Come, tip us yer vast!" She added, as he stared uncomprehending—"Eight or left-hand dook—whichever the Line's brightest in. Have yer a—No! I'll give yer of my jinnepen for naught!"
He held out the broad, strong palm, grimy enough by dawn-light. She peered, spat on the chilly gray pavement and said:
"You keep up heart—there's a change a-coming soon!"
"Can't come too soon for me!" His smile was rueful.
"Keep up heart, I tell yer!" she bade him. "Yer'll travel a long road and a bloody road, and yer'll tramp it with the one yer love, and never know it. Until the end, that is, when tute is jasing. And there's a finer fortune than I meant yer to get o' me! Shake her up, Bet!" She explained, as the other woman turned to rouse the sleeper, "Taken a great cold, she has! We're fetching her to the Hospital. 'Tholomewses in Smithell, for the gorgio doctors to make her well. Though that's not where I would lie, my rye, and my pipes playing the death-tune. Shoon tu, dilya! Better shake her again!"
"Wake up, deer! There's a good soul!"
They stood up, supporting the bronchial Irishwoman between them, shaking and straightening their frowsy garments—tidying themselves as the poorest women will. Then with, a farewell word they moved on, northward. And P. C. Breagh, following them with reddened, night-weary eyes, saw his Fate coming, though he did not know it, in the person of a small and shabbily-attired elderly man.