Chapter Twenty Four.
An Angel Unawares.
In a wretched garret of a house in Storr Alley, near Euston, at the sick-bed of his old enemy, Jeffreys reached a turning-point in his life. How he conveyed the half-drowned Jonah on the night of the rescue from the canal bank to his lodgings he scarcely knew.
The hand of a friend is often near when it is least expected. So Jonah had found, when he believed all hope and life to be gone; and so Jeffreys had found, when, with his poor burden in his arms, he met, beside a barge at daybreak, a dealer in vegetables for whom he had sometimes worked at Covent Garden, and who now, like a Good Samaritan, not only gave the two a lift in his cart, but provided Jeffreys with an opportunity of earning a shilling on the way.
This shilling worked marvels. For both Trimble and Jeffreys were on the verge of starvation; and without food that night rescue would have been but a farce.
It was soon evident that Jonah had far more the matter with him than the mere effects of his immersion. He was a wreck, body and soul. The dispensary doctor who called to see him gave him a fortnight to live, and the one or two brave souls who penetrated, on errands of mercy, even into Storr Alley, marked his hollow cough and sunken cheeks, and knew that before long one name more would drop out of their lists.
It was slowly, and in fragments only, that Jeffreys heard his story. Jonah was for ever reproaching him with what had happened on the canal bank.
“Why couldn’t you have left a fellow alone? I know, you wanted to gloat over me. Go on, be as happy as you like. Enjoy your revenge. I did you a bad turn; now you’ve done me one, so we’re quits!”
Here a fit of coughing would shake the breath out of the sufferer, and it would be a minute or two before he could proceed.
Jeffreys wisely avoided all expostulations or self-excuse. He smoothed the poor fellow’s pillow, and supported him in his arms till the cough was over and he could proceed. “It was a bad day you ever came to our school, John”—Jonah had adopted the name by which Jeffreys was known in Storr Alley—“I hated you the first time I saw you. You’ve got the laugh on your side now; but I can tell you you wouldn’t have had it then if you knew the way I followed you up. Yes”—and here came a shadow of his own sinister smile—“I made it all fit in like a puzzle. Did you never miss a letter you had that day you called at the York post-office—a letter about the dead burying their dead, and young Forrester? oh yes, you may start; I know all about it. I took that letter out of your pocket. And I know where you buried his body; do you suppose I didn’t see you throw yourself on the very place and say, ‘It was here’? You held your nose in the air, didn’t you, in the school, and palmed yourself off on Freddy and Teddy for a model? But I bowled you out. I showed you up. That was the day of my laugh. Now you’ve got yours.”
The cough again stopped him; and when he recovered his breath Jeffreys said quietly—
“Don’t talk, Jonah; you bring on your cough. Let me read to you.”
Then for the remainder of that day the story would rest; till later on Jonah would abruptly return to it.
“Mother believed in you, and cried a whole day after you had gone. Yes, and you’ll be glad to hear the school broke up all to pieces. Farmer Rosher took away his boys and spread a report about us; and at the end of a month we had scarcely a dozen urchins. Mother and I lived like cat and dog. I struck work, and she had to do everything, and it broke her up. It would never have happened if you hadn’t come into the place. I couldn’t live there any longer. Mother had a little bit saved, fifty pounds or so, and one night, after we had had a terrible row, I took every penny of it out of her money-box and came up to London. Now are you pleased? Hadn’t she something to bless you for? I say, John, get us some water quick, I’m parched!”
On another day Jeffreys heard the rest.
“I came up to London, but it wasn’t the fun I expected. Everybody I met I thought was a detective, and all night long I dreamed of my mother. I tried to drown it, and lived as wild a life as you like till my money was done. Then it would have been worth your while to see me. Everybody was against me. Fellows I’d stood treat to kicked me out into the street, and fellows who owed me money laughed in my face. I thought I’d go back to York after all and get mother to take me back; but when I came to start I couldn’t face it. That’s all. I stood it as long as I could. I pawned everything, and when that was done I stole—and got three months on the treadmill. How do you like that? When I got out, a city missionary heard of me and found me a job; but I stole again, and ran away. You wouldn’t have thought I had it in me at York, would you? I was a respectable young fellow there. But it was all there; and it was you brought it all out. Last week I made up my mind to put an end to it all. It took me a struggle to face it; but I was settled to do it—and then, as if you hadn’t done enough harm, you come and spoil my last chance.”
“Not your last chance, Jonah.”
“No. I’ve a week more to live. Then you’ll be rid of me. Who’s to save me then?”
“Some one, Jonah. We have both forgotten Him, but He’s not forgotten us.”
“Oh yes, I know,” said Jonah; “but it’s all very well for you, who’ve got years to get right in. It’s too short notice for me to begin all that over again. I don’t want to hear about it.”
He lingered on day after day, and it was absolutely necessary for Jeffreys to go and seek work in order to keep even that wretched roof above their heads.
One evening when he returned with a few coppers, Jonah met him with a face brighter than any that he had yet seen.
“I’ve had some one here to-day. A better sort than you. One that’s got a right to talk about what’s better. A lady, John, or else an angel. Did you send her?”
“I? No; I know no ladies.”
“I don’t know how it was, I could tell her anything—and, I say, John, it would make you cry to hear her voice. It did me. You never made me cry, or saw me; I hate to hear you preach; but she—why, she doesn’t preach at all, but she says all you’ve got to say a hundred times better.”
He was excited and feverish that night, and in his sleep murmured scraps of the gentle talk of his ministering angel, which even from his lips fell with a reflected sweetness on the trouble-tossed spirit of the watcher.
Jeffreys had succeeded in getting a temporary job which took him away during the next two days. But each night on his return he found his invalid brighter and softened in spirit by reason of his angel’s visits.
“She’ll come to-morrow, John. There’s magic in her, I tell you. I see things I never saw before. You’ve been kind to me, John, and given up a lot for me, but if you were to hear her—”
Here the dying youth could get no farther.
He seemed much the same in the morning when Jeffreys started for work. The last words he said as his friend departed were—
“She’s coming again to-day.”
When Jeffreys came home in the evening the garret was silent, and on the bed lay all that remained on earth of the poor wrecked life which had been so strangely linked with his own.
As he stood over the lifeless body his eyes fell on a scrap of paper lying on the pillow. It was folded and addressed in pencil, “To the fellow-lodger.”
Jeffreys caught it eagerly, and in a turmoil of agitation read the few lines within.
“Your friend was not alone when he died, peacefully, this afternoon. He left a message for you. ‘Tell him he was right when he told me I had a chance. If it had not been for him I should have lost it.’ He also said, ‘Some day he may see mother and tell her about me. Tell her I died better than I lived.’ Dear friend, whose name I do not know, don’t lose heart. God is merciful, and will be your friend when every one else is taken from you.”
It was not the words of this touching little message from the dead which brought a gasp to Jeffreys’ throat and sent the colour from his cheeks as he read it. The writing, hasty and agitated as it was, was a hand he had seen before. He had in his pocket an envelope, well-worn now, addressed to him months ago in the same writing, and as he held the two side by side he knew Raby had written both.
He quitted the garret hurriedly, and entered the room of a family of five who lived below him.
“Mrs Pratt,” said he to the ragged woman who sat nursing her baby in the corner, “did you see who Trimble had with him when he died?”
“He’s dead, then, sir”—these fellow-lodgers of Jeffreys called him “sir” in spite of his misery. “I knew that cough couldn’t last. My Annie’s begun with it: she’ll go too. It’s been hard enough to keep the children, but it will be harder to lose them!” she cried.
Jeffreys went to the bed where the little consumptive girl lay in a restless sleep, breathing heavily.
“Poor little Annie!” said he; “I did not know she was so ill.”
“How could you? Yes, I saw the lady come down—a pretty wee thing. She comes and goes here. Maybe when she hears of Annie she’ll come to her.”
“Do you know her name?”
“No. She’s a lady, they say. I heard her singing upstairs to Trimble; it was a treat! So Trimble’s dead. You’ll be glad of some help, I expect? If you’ll mind the children, Mr John, I’ll go up and do the best we can for the poor fellow.”
And so Jeffreys, with the baby in his arms, sat beside the little invalid in that lonely room, while the mother, putting aside her own sorrows, went up and did a woman’s service where it was most needed. Next day he had the garret to himself. That letter—how he treasured it!—changed life for him. He had expected, when Jonah’s illness ended, to drift back once more into the bitterness of despair. But that was impossible now.
He made no attempt to see the angel of whose visits to the alley he now and again heard. Indeed, whether he was in work or not, he left early and came back late on purpose to avoid a meeting. He had long been known by his neighbours only as John, so that there was no chance of her discovering who he was. Sometimes the memory of that October day in Regent’s Park came up to haunt him and poison even the comfort of the little letter. Yet why should she not have forgotten him? and why should not Scarfe, the man with a character, be more to her than he, the man with none? Yet he tried bravely to banish all, save the one thought that it was she who bade him hope and take courage.
He worked well and patiently at the temporary manual labour on which he was employed, and when that came to an end he looked about resolutely for more.
Meanwhile—do not smile, reader—he made an investment of capital! In other words, he spent threepence in pen, ink, paper, and a candle, and spent one night in his lonely garret writing. It was a letter, addressed to a stranger, on a public question. In other words, it was an article to a London paper on, “Life in a Slum, by One who Lives There.” It was a quiet, unsensational paper, with some practical suggestions for the improvement of poor people’s dwellings, and a few true stories of experiences in which the writer himself had taken a part.
He dropped it doubtfully into the editor’s box and tried to forget about it. He dared not look at the paper next day, and when two days passed and he heard nothing, he concluded that the bolt had missed fire.
But it was not so. A week later, the postman entered Storr Alley—an unheard-of event—and left a letter. It contained a money order for ten shillings, and read:—
“The editor encloses ten shillings for the letter on Slum Life, contributed by Mr John to the paper of the 23rd. He can take two more on the same subject at the same terms, and suggests that Mr John should deal specially with—” And here the editor gave an outline of the topics on which the public would be most likely to desire information.
With overflowing heart, and giving Raby the credit, he sat down and wrote the two articles.
His first half-sovereign went in a deed of mercy. Little Annie lay dead in her bed the night it arrived. Jeffreys that morning, before he started to work, had watched the little spark of life flicker for the last time and go out. The mother, worn-out by her constant vigils, lay ill beside her dead child. The father, a drunkard, out of work, deserted the place, and the two other children, the baby, and the sister scarcely more than baby, wailed all day for cold and hunger. What could he do but devote the first-fruits of his pen to these companions in distress? The half-sovereign sufficed for the child’s funeral, with a little over for the sick mother. For the rest, he took the baby to his own garret for a night or two, and tended it there as best he could.
The two fresh letters to the paper in due time brought a sovereign; but at the same time a chilling notification to the effect that the editor did not need further contributions, and would let Mr John know if at any future time he required his services.
It was the abrupt closing of one door of promise. Still Jeffreys, with hope big within him, did not sit and fret.
Literary work might yet be had, and meanwhile bodily labour must be endured.
Towards the beginning of December, any one taking up one of the London penny papers might have observed, had he been given to the study of such matters, three advertisements. Here they are in their proper order:—
“Should this meet the eye of John Jeffreys, late private secretary to a gentleman in Cumberland, he is earnestly requested to communicate with his friend and late employer.”
Readers of the agony column were getting tired of this advertisement. It had appeared once a week for the last six months, and was getting stale by this time.
The next advertisement was more recent, but still a trifle dull:—
“Gerard Forrester.
“If Gerard Forrester (son of the late Captain Forrester, of the—Hussars) who was last heard of at Bolsover School, in October, 18—, where he met with a serious accident, should see this, he is requested to communicate with Messrs Wilkins & Wilkins, Solicitors, Blank Street, W.C., from whom he will hear something to his advantage. Any person able to give satisfactory information leading to the discovery of the said Gerard Forrester, or, in the event of his death, producing evidence of his decease, will be liberally rewarded.”
The third advertisement, in another column, appeared now for the first time:—
“A young man, well educated, and a careful student of Bibliography, is anxious for literary work. Searches made and extracts copied.—Apply, J., 28a, Storr Alley, W.C.”
It would have puzzled any ordinary observer to detect in these three appeals anything to connect them together. Jeffreys, however, glancing down the columns of the borrowed paper for a sight of his own advertisement, started and turned pale as his eye fell first on his own name, then on Forrester’s.
It was like a conspiracy to bewilder and baffle him at the moment when hope seemed to be returning. He had convinced himself that his one chance was to break with every tie which bound him to his old life, and to start afresh from the lowest step of all. And here, at the outset, there met him two calls from that old life, both of which it was hard to resist. Mr Rimbolt, he decided to resist at all hazards. He still shuddered as he recalled the stiff rustle of a certain silk dress in Clarges Street, and preferred his present privations a hundredfold. Even the thought of Percy, and the library, and Mr Rimbolt’s goodness, could not efface that one overpowering impression.
The other advertisement perplexed and agitated him more. Who was this unknown person on whose behalf Messrs Wilkins & Wilkins were seeking information respecting young Forrester? It might be Scarfe, or Mr Frampton, or possibly some unheard-of relative, interested in the disposal of the late gallant officer’s effects. He could not assist the search. The little he knew was probably already known to the lawyers, yet it excited him wildly to think that some one besides himself was in search of the lad whose memory had haunted him for so many months, and whom, even in his most despairing moments, he had never quite given up for lost.
True, he had long since ceased to believe that he was really to be found by searching. Everything combined to baffle search, almost to forbid it, and yet he had constantly lived in a vague expectation of finding or hearing of him some day accidentally and unawares. But this advertisement filled him with self-reproach. What right had he to do anything, to rest a day, till he had found this lost boy—lost by his fault, by his sin? No wonder he had not prospered. No wonder the bad name had haunted him and dragged him down! One thing was certain—whether what he knew was known to others or not, it was his duty to aid now in this new search. So he wrote as follows to Messrs Wilkins & Wilkins:—
“Private and Confidential.
“The writer of this knew Gerard Forrester at Bolsover School two years ago, and was responsible almost wholly for the accident referred to. The writer left Bolsover in consequence, and has not seen Forrester since. In May of the following year he made inquiries at Grangerham, Forrester’s native place, where he ascertained that the boy had been removed there from Bolsover and had remained for some time with his grandmother, Mrs Wilcox. Mrs Wilcox, however, was ordered to the South for her health, and died at Torquay. Forrester, who appears to have been a cripple, and unable to help himself, was then left in charge of his old nurse, who left Grangerham shortly afterwards, it is said, in order to take the boy to a hospital—where, no one could say. That is the last the writer heard. Messrs W. & W. might do well to apply to the clergyman and Wesleyan minister at Grangerham, who may have some later news. The writer would be thankful to be of any service in helping to find one whom he has so terribly wronged; and any letter addressed ‘J., at Jones’s Coffee-House, Drury Lane,’ will find him.
“It should be said that when Forrester was last seen, only faint hopes were held out as to his recovery, even as a cripple.”
An anxious time followed. It was hard to work as usual - harder still to wait. The idea of Forrester being after all found took strange possession of his mind, to the exclusion of all else. The prospect which had seemed to open before him appeared suddenly blocked; he could think of nothing ahead except that one possible meeting.
So preoccupied was he, that his own advertisement for work was forgotten the day after it appeared; and when two days later he found a letter pushed under the door, his heart leaped to his mouth with the conviction that it could refer to nothing but the one object before him. It did not; it was a reply to his advertisement.
“J— is requested to call to-morrow, at 10 a.m., on Mr Trotter, 6, Porson Square, in reference to his advertisement for literary work.”
With some trepidation, and no particular expectations, Jeffreys presented himself at the appointed time, and found himself face to face with a testy little gentleman, with by no means large pretensions to literary authority.
He took in the shabby-looking advertiser at a glance, and suited his tone accordingly.
“So you’re the chap, are you? You’re the nice educated literary chap that wants a job, eh?”
“I am.”
“What can you do? Write poetry?”
“I never tried.”
“Write ’istory, or ’igh hart, and that sort of thing?”
“I have not tried. I know mostly about bibliography.”
“Bibli—who? You’ll turn your ’and to anything for a crust, I suppose. Do you ever do anything in the puff line?”
Jeffreys admitted he had not.
“’Cos I want a chap to crack up my ‘Polyglot Pickle’ in proper literary style. None of your commonplace maunderings, but something smart and startling. What do you say? Can you do it or not?”
Jeffreys heart sank low. “I’ll try—”
“Can you do it?” demanded the proud inventor.
“Yes,” said Jeffreys desperately.
“All right,” said Mr Trotter, greatly relieved. “I want a book of twenty pages. Write anything you like, only bring the pickles in on each page. You know the style. Twenty blood-curdling ballads, or Aesop’s fables, or something the public’s bound to read. Something racy, mind, and all ending in the pickle. It’s a good thing, so you needn’t be afraid of overdoing it. You shall have a bob a page, money down, or twenty-five bob for the lot if you let me have it this time to-morrow. Remember, nothing meek and mild. Lay it on thick. They’re the best thing going, and got a good name. Polyglot, that’s many tongues; everybody tastes ’em.”
Jeffreys, with a dismal sense of the humour of the situation, accepted his noble task meekly, and sat down in Mr Trotter’s back room with a bottle of the pickles on the table before him.
The reader shall be spared the rubbish he wrote. To this day he flares up angrily if you so much as mention the Polyglot Pickle to him.
The public, who laughed next week over the ridiculous bathos of those twenty loud-sounding ballads, little guessed the misery and disgust they had cost their author.
The one part of the whole business that was not odious was that in six hours Jeffreys had twenty-five shillings in his pocket; and to him twenty-five shillings meant a clear week and more in which to devote himself to the now all-absorbing task of seeking young Forrester.
On his way back to Storr Alley that evening he called as usual at the coffee-house, and found a further letter awaiting him:—
“Messrs Wilkins & Wilkins will be much obliged if the writer of the letter of the sixth inst. will favour them with a call on Wednesday forenoon, as he may be able to assist them materially in the search in which they are engaged. Messrs W. & W. will treat an interview as confidential.”