Sorrow, however, did not take away their appetite, and as Mr. Snape did not see fitting occasion for providing a banquet, they clubbed together, and among them managed to get a spread of beefsteaks and porter. Scatterall, as requested, went across the Strand to order it at the cookshop, while Corkscrew and Charley prepared the tables. 'And now mind it's the thing,' said Dick, who, with intimate familiarity, had penetrated into the eating-house kitchen; 'not dry, you know, or too much done; and lots of fat.'
And then, as the generous viands renewed their strength, and as the potent stout warmed their blood, happier ideas came to them, and they began to hope that the world was not all over. 'Well, I shall try for the Customs,' said the unhappy one, after a deep pull at the pewter. 'I shall try for the Customs; one does get such stunning feeds for tenpence at that place in Thames Street.' Poor youth! his ideas of earning his bread did not in their wildest flight spread beyond the public offices of the Civil Service.
For a few days longer they hung about the old office, doing nothing—how could men so circumstanced do anything?—and waiting for their fate. At last their fate was announced. Mr. Oldeschole retired with his full salary. Secretaries and such-like always retire with full pay, as it is necessary that dignity should be supported. Mr. Snape and the other seniors were pensioned, with a careful respect to their years of service; with which arrangement they all of them expressed themselves highly indignant, and loudly threatened to bring the cruelty of their treatment before Parliament, by the aid of sundry members, who were supposed to be on the look out for such work; but as nothing further was ever heard of them, it may be presumed that the members in question did not regard the case as one on which the Government of the day was sufficiently vulnerable to make it worth their while to trouble themselves. Of the younger clerks, two or three, including the unhappy one, were drafted into other offices; some others received one or more years' pay, and then tore themselves away from the fascinations of London life; among those was Mr. R. Scatterall, who, in after years, will doubtless become a lawgiver in Hong-Kong; for to that colony has he betaken himself. Some few others, more unfortunate than the rest, among whom poor Screwy was the most conspicuous, were treated with a more absolute rigour, and were sent upon the world portionless. Screwy had been constant in his devotion to pork chops, and had persisted in spelling blue without the final 'e.' He was therefore, declared unworthy of any further public confidence whatever. He is now in his uncle's office in Parliament Street; and it is to be hoped that his peculiar talents may there be found useful.
And so the Internal Navigation Office came to an end, and the dull, dingy rooms were vacant. Ruthless men shovelled off as waste paper all the lock entries of which Charley had once been so proud; and the ponderous ledgers, which Mr. Snape had delighted to haul about, were sent away into Cimmerian darkness, and probably to utter destruction. And then the Internal Navigation was no more.
Among those who were drafted into other offices was Charley, whom propitious fate took to the Weights and Measures. But it must not be imagined that chance took him there. The Weights and Measures was an Elysium, the door of which was never casually open.
Charley at this time was a much-altered man; not that he had become a good clerk at his old office—such a change one may say was impossible; there were no good clerks at the Internal Navigation, and Charley had so long been among navvies the most knavish or navviest, that any such transformation would have met with no credence—but out of his office he had become a much-altered man. As Katie had said, it was as though some one had come to him from the dead. He could not go back to his old haunts, he could not return like a dog to his vomit, as long as he had that purse so near his heart, as long as that voice sounded in his ear, while the memory of that kiss lingered in his heart.
He now told everything to Gertrude, all his debts, all his love, and all his despair. There is no relief for sorrow like the sympathy of a friend, if one can only find it. But then the sympathy must be real; mock sympathy always tells the truth against itself, always fails to deceive. He told everything to Gertrude, and by her counsel he told much to Norman. He could not speak to him, true friend as he was, of Katie and her love. There was that about the subject which made it too sacred for man's ears, too full of tenderness to be spoken of without feminine tears. It was only in the little parlour at Paradise Row, when the evening had grown dark, and Gertrude was sitting with her baby in her arms, that the boisterous young navvy could bring himself to speak of his love.
During these months Katie's health had greatly improved, and as she herself had gained in strength, she had gradually begun to think that it was yet possible for her to live. Little was now said by her about Charley, and not much was said of him in her hearing; but still she did learn how he had changed his office, and with his office his mode of life; she did hear of his literary efforts, and of his kindness to Gertrude, and it would seem as though it were ordained that his moral life and her physical life were to gain strength together.