XIV
He came striding from the Strand side, in a red-hot hurry, making as much noise with his boots as three ordinary pedestrians. He wore no overcoat, but was buttoned up in a decent black serge frock, having his throat protected by a large white cashmere wrapper. Also he wore gray mixture trousers, rather baggy at the knees, and shiny, and was crowned with a well-worn silk top-hat.
He walked at a great pace, swinging his arms, which were inordinately lengthy, and finished with hands of extra size, encased in white knitted woolen bags not distantly resembling boxing-gloves. When he reached the middle of the Bridge, he stopped and backed against the west parapet, folded his arms, and,—or so it seemed to P. C. Breagh, who was watching him for the sole reason that he happened to be the only cheerful-looking, decently-clad human being within his range of vision—snuffed the breeze, and considered the prospect with a consciously-possessive air. In moving his head sideways, so as to extend his view, his sharp black glance encountered that of his neighbor, and he nodded, and thus their acquaintance began.
"I'm glad to see, young gentleman," said the little man—and "My eye! Do I still look like anything of that sort?" was the young gentleman's unvoiced aside: "I'm glad to see that you don't number one among the many thousands—if I was to say Millions I shouldn't be guilty of exaggeration—who under-estimate the value of fresh morning air. For my part, without boasting, I may call myself a walking Monument to its healthiness, or as you can't put up a monument to a live man—I'll say, a Living Testimonial."
He had a yellow, tight-drawn, wearied skin, with a patch of rather hectic red on either cheekbone, and his bright black eyes twinkled at the bottom of hollow orbits, overshadowed by shaggy eyebrows of the deepest black. When he took off his hat to cool his head, from which quite a cloud of steam arose, you could perceive that he was baldish, and that his bristly hair and large mutton-chop side-whiskers owed, like his shaggy eyebrows, their intense and aggressive blackness to a conscientious but unskillful dyer, for by the cold and searching light of morning, delicate nuances of green and purple were seen to mingle with their youthful sable, and here and there the roots showed grayish-white.
"I was given up by the Doctors at the age of twenty," said the little man, "as I had been previously give up by 'em at eleven and fifteen. 'The boy's in Rapid Decline,' says one, 'keep him out o' drafts and give him boiled snails and asses' milk.' My poor mother did her best, stopping up window-cracks with paste and paper, and stuffing chimneys with old carpets. And living as we was at Hampstead Village, and the Heath being productive in snails and donkeys, the rest o' the prescription was easy to carry out. Still I got lankier and went on coughing o' nights. Says Doctor Number Two, 'It's a case of Galloping Consumption. Feed him up, clothe him warmly, encourage him to take gentle exercise, and avoid chills whatever you do!' So my mother swadged me up in flannel, made me eat a mutton chop every two hours, and trot up and down the front-garden for exercise between chops; and she'd pour half-a-pint o' porter down me whenever I stood still. And in spite of all her affectionate solicitude," said the little man with a twinkle, "I kep' on wasting, and coughing and spitting, and doing everything that a young fellow in a galloping consumption could do, short of galloping out o' this world into another. And Doctor Number Three says,—being called in when I was twenty: 'It's phthisis pulmonalis in the advanced and incurable stage. You can do nothing at all for this young man but get him into an Institute for Incurables. Codliver Oil, Care, and Kindness,' so says he, 'may prolong his miserable existence a month or two. For the rest, there's nothing to be done!' If you'll believe me, that news was the death of my poor mother. She'd expected nothing else for years—and yet it killed her at the end! And I acted as Chief Mourner at her funeral," ended the little man with a queer twist of his lean, sharp jaws and a momentary dimming of his keen black eyes, "in the pouring rain, and walked home without an overcoat—and got wet to the skin, and stripped, and rubbed myself dry, and made a rough supper of scalding oatmeal porridge, and went to bed and slep' with the windows open top and bottom. And that was over thirty years ago, and I've never missed my morning sponge-over with cold water since; nor never shut a window night or day, nor never run up a doctor's bill, and don't mean to! I left off coddling—once the blessed old soul was gone! Got better—better still—always expected to die by those who'd knowed mother. I traveled and saw Foreign Parts,—not specially going about to pick the 'ealthiest climates, knocked about abroad—came home and took to Business, and have taken to it ever since, as you may see. My health is robust," he made a show of hitting his chest again, but thought better of it. "I live plain, and make a point of getting Fresh Air into my system whenever possible.—This is the place I come to, as a rule, for the morning's supply. I take it on Blackfriars Bridge after the dinner-hour, the eating-house I patronize being on Ludgate Hill," he added. "And—I don't know whether you happen to be a student of old Bill Shakespeare, but there are some lines of his which might be twisted into applying to me." He drew a deep breath and delivered himself as follows:
"Some are born Tough, some achieve Toughness—others have Toughness thrust upon them."
He smote his chest hard with a muffled hand, and coughed in that rather hollow fashion, adding: "Without vanity, I may consider myself as belonging to the latter class! Eh?"
P. C. Breagh agreed that the speaker might be considered as belonging to the latter class.
"For at this moment I am as fresh as paint," said the little man proudly, "and as lively as a kitten, yet I have been up and about and on my legs all night! I left our place of business at 3.20 a.m., reached Charing Cross by 3.30, was on the platform when the Dover Boat Train steamed in—bringing mails and passengers that have crossed in the Night Boat from Cally—took over a shorthand report from a Special Correspondent—who has been to Paris to gather details of a political murder," he tapped the breast of his black frock-coat, which showed the bulging outline of a thick notebook. "And in the absence of our News Editor—who's been sent to Brummagem to report Mr. Bright's speech on Popular Education, Irish Amelioration, and Free Trade,—Parliamentary affairs being at a standstill this holiday season,—I shall hand 'em to the Senior Sub., who'll distribute the stuff and have it set up by the time the Chief drops in from Putney at eleven. It's for to-morrow's issue, following the ten-line telegram we publish this morning. A column-and-a-half of Latest Intelligence!" the little man screwed up his eyes and licked his lips as though reveling in the flavor of some rare gastronomic delicacy. "And if I had the say as to the setting of it—which I haven't!—and was free to indulge my predilection for showy printing—which I never shall be!—it should be headed with caps an inch high—and spaced and leaded all the way down."
His black eyes snapped: his hectic cheeks grew fiery.
"Headed with inch-high caps, ah! and spaced and leaded from the top to the bottom. Fancy how it 'ud lay siege to the Public Eye, and draw the Public's coppers! When I shut my eyes I can fair see the editions running out."
He recited, marking out the lines and spaces with a finger encased in white woolen:
A PRINCE MURDERS
ONE MAN AND
FIRES AT ANOTHER
IN HIS OWN
GILDED DRAWING-ROOM.
PARIS SENSATION.
COUSIN OF
THE FRENCH EMPEROR KILLS
A JOURNALIST
ON THE VERY DAY WHEN
THE FRENCH LEGISLATIVE
BODY
MEET TO INAUGURATE THE NEW ERA
OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT
UNDER NAPOLEON III.
His eyes snapped, his hectic cheeks flamed, he was evidently launched on a subject that was near the heart beating beneath the bulgy pocket-book. He talked fast; and as he talked he waved his arms, and gesticulated with the large hands encased in the woolly boxing-gloves.
"I cherish ambitions, perhaps you'll say, above my calling, which I don't mind owning is that of Newspaper Publishers' Warehouseman. Perhaps I do—perhaps I don't! My own opinion is I'm before my time, a kind of Anachronism the wrong way round," said the little man rather ruefully, "and rightly belong to—say forty years hence. As the poet Shakespeare says, and if it wasn't him it ought to have been! 'Sweet are the uses of Advertisement.' I'm a believer in Advertisement, always have been and always shall be!"
His garrulity was an individual and not unpleasant trait, implying confidence in others' sympathy. He went on:
"Being Nobody in particular, my views have never been took up and acted on. Though I enjoy a good deal of confidence and am—I hope I am!—respected in my place. For as Solomon said, somewhere in Proverbs—'Designs are strengthened by counsels,' and our Chief himself hasn't been too proud to say, on occasion: 'Knewbit, what would you do in this or that case?' Such as you see me, I am often at the 'Ouse of Commons, when sittings are late and speeches have to be jotted down in mouthfuls and carried away and set up in snacks.... For my constitution is of that degree of toughness—sleep or no sleep matters little to me, and that I am as fresh at this moment as you are," he bit off the end of a yawn, "I wouldn't mind betting a sixpence now!"
Said P. C. Breagh, at last getting in a word edgeways:
"If you lost—and you would lose!—and paid—and I expect you'd pay!—my capital would be doubled. I'm not a young swell who has got up early to look at London. I'm a vagrant on the streets—and it strikes me I must look like it. To-day I've got to find work of some kind. Can you give me a job in your warehouse? I'm strong and willing and honest—up to now! But by G—! if stealing a bunch of turnips off a costermonger's barrow will get me a full belly and a clean bed in prison, I expect I shall have to do it before long, if I can't find work anywhere!"
"Bless my soul!" said the garrulous little man excitedly. "And I thought you were a Medical Student or an artist (some of 'em aren't over-given to clothes-brushes and soap-and-water), and here I stood a-jawing and you starving all the time! ... Work—of course you shall have work, though I can't promise it'll be the kind o' work that's fit for an educated young gentleman——"
"Any work is fit for a gentleman," snarled P. C. Breagh, "that a decent man can do! What I want is——"
"What you want is—Breakfast and a wash and brush-up!" cried the little man excitedly. "And that you must go to Miss Ling and get. Say Mr. Knewbit sent you—I'm Knewbit,—Christian name Solomon. It's No. 288 Great Coram Street—second turn to your right above Russell Square. Cross the Strand and go up Wellington Street and Bow Street, cross Long Acre and ... but you're too dead-beat to walk it. Take a growler—it'll be eighteenpence from here unless the cabby's lost to every sense of decency. Borrow the money from me—here it is! I give you my word you shall be able to pay me back to-morrow. Here is a cab! Hi! Phew'w!" Mr. Knewbit whistled scientifically, and the preternaturally red-nosed driver of an old and jingling four-wheeler pulled up beside the curb as P. C. Breagh stammered out:
"I—I can't thank! ... You're too confoundedly kind! ... and I'd begun to think that all men were thieves or scoundrels—except a poor, sick beggar of a swell I met yesterday, whose wife and children shun him and whose valet bullies him! I can't refuse, you know! ... Things are too..."
"The fare will be two shillings if you talk one minute longer!" warned Mr. Knewbit, opening the door of the straw-carpeted, moldy-smelling vehicle. "I can see extortion in that man's eye. I'm a judge of character, that's what I am. Bless my soul! Is that kitten yours?"
For the ginger Tom, with arched back and erect tail, was walking round P. C. Breagh's legs, purring insinuatingly, and his companion of the night's vigil said hesitatingly, looking at the meager, homeless mite:
"He seems to think so! And—he helped me through last night. Would you mind if I took him? I'll pay for his keep as soon as ever I——"
Mr. Knewbit shouted in a violent hurry:
"In with you! Cat and all! Don't apologize! Miss Ling adores 'em! Three in the house already—waste bits left on the dustbin for needy strangers. Don't forget! 288 Great Coram Street, Russell Square. Drive on, cabby!"
He added, dancing up and down excitedly on the pavement, as the jingling four-wheeler rolled on, with the pair of castaways:
"Lord! if I only had the setting up of that young fellow's story, how I would give it 'em in leaded capitals!"
He closed his eyes in ecstasy and saw, in large black letters standing out across the clear horizon of the new day to which London was waking:
LONDON DRAMA.
BEGGARED HEIR TO WEALTH
ROBBED.
CAST ON THE STREETS!
SOLE COMPANION A KITTEN!
PATHETIC STORY.
"Not that I know he is the heir to wealth, but it looks well, uncommon! Uncommon well, it looks!" said Mr. Knewbit.