He pressed her hand and took his leave. As he walked out of the rose garden with a dejected air, it was very evident that his wooing had not prospered. But Lucy Warrender never asked Haggard to pay his lost wager.
The Reverend Barnes Puffin bore his misfortune like a man. He felt that Lucy's determination was final, and that it would be hopeless to try his luck again with her; but she hadn't laughed at him, and that was something. Still, Mr. Puffin felt that it behoved him to leave King's Warren. Just as it is a matter of tradition, an un-written law, that a ministry when beaten on a great political question goes out of office, so it is the custom among curates who have been unsuccessful in their love affairs in the parish, if the parish is aware of the fact, to tender their resignation. The curate sought an interview with the Reverend John Dodd and announced his decision. The vicar did not attempt to combat it. A celibate clergyman has many advantages; but a celibate clergyman who is prepared to renounce his principles ceases to inspire respect among the female portion of his congregation. As a Celibate, rapturous maidens will go on sighing and weeping for him, for while he represents the Unattainable there is something almost saint-like about him; but as a curate who has been refused by a member of his own congregation, the nimbus suddenly disappears from his brow; he ceases to be a modern apostle, and turns out to be an ordinary and unsuccessful fisherman after all. And this is one reason why the modern fisherman always carries a creel. Isaac Walton was contented to bring home the spoils of his art strung upon an osier; but the modern creel conveys an impression of dignity; the natural supposition is that there is something in it, hence its popularity.
So the Reverend Barnes Puffin went back to hard work at the east end of London, and after a time attained the preferment which the archdeacon had prophesied; but he still retains the celibate garb, and in his dreams he sees a glorified Lucy Warrender—fair hair, brown eyes and all—and the lovely vision is quite sufficient for him. He thinks of her as he fondly fancied her, and looks on her as a sort of guardian angel still. Who shall grudge him the fond delusion?
CHAPTER X.
A RATHER SHADY CHARACTER.
The lower middle classes are a never-failing stalking-horse; we can all afford to laugh at them as ridiculous, vulgar, improvident and wicked. Even the mock hero, the good young man who tries to raise himself, has something comic in him. But we haven't seen anything of the lower orders in this history as yet, and it is only incidentally that we quit King's Warren for the grimy neighbourhood of St. Luke's. Just behind the great hospital for lunatics is Matilda Street. They are all private houses in Matilda Street, and from the number of brass plates it seems at first a professional sort of neighbourhood. Most of the houses are evidently occupied by at least three families, for the right-hand doorpost nearly always contains three bells, one for each floor. But the brass plates are not those of lawyers and doctors; many of them indicate the places of business of working jewellers and watchmakers, and the latter predominate; dial painters, engine turners, escapement makers, swivel manufacturers and so on, ad infinitum. Then there are pianoforte tuners, and dealers of many sorts. Those of the plates which have only a surname upon them, indicate that the place is a lodging house. Though we are in the black heart of London, in one of the darkest, poorest and most melancholy quarters, there is a great deal of window gardening going on; plants of every kind and sort may be seen on the window ledges, from ground floor to attic; the humble Creeping Jenny is a great favourite, and it seems to thrive wonderfully in the damp thick atmosphere. Some of the ground floor windows are discreetly screened by wonderful specimens of lank spindly geraniums—hapless plants which have never been known to bloom, but whose sickly-looking leaves of abnormal pallor struggle towards the light, what little there is of it. Matilda Street, being in the heart of St. Luke's, naturally contains many fanciers. Numerous bow-windowed, brass-bound cages, each with its little bit of turf, are hung outside the windows in all directions, and the imprisoned skylarks they contain warble away merrily, giving quite a rural air to Matilda Street, E.C. Seedy-looking men and boys, carrying tiny square cages carefully tied up in handkerchiefs, are continually popping in and out; these are the chaffinch fanciers, and each cage contains a sightless songster, who at his master's command is prepared to pour forth his simple rural melody at any hour of the day or night in a long unbroken series of cheeps and chirrups. In Matilda Street lives a trainer of piping bullfinches, a man who has passed his whole life turning a melodeon and teaching his pupils the tune of "Rule, Britannia." Dog-breeding and dog-dealing are favourite occupations in Matilda Street; mysterious men emerge at dusk, leading dogs and carrying them in their arms, their pockets, or their bosoms, to exhibit them at numerous local shows held in neighbouring pot-houses. The little back yards—they call them gardens in Matilda Street—are filled with sheds and wondrous home-made constructions, in which fancy poultry and rabbits are kept. Even the roofs of the houses bristle with pigeon-lofts and artful-looking structures for the capture of wandering birds. Should a stray pigeon alight on one of these contrivances, attracted by the hemp seed which is profusely scattered thereon, or by the presence of a decoy securely fastened by the leg, a sudden click may be heard, and the bird finds himself in an instant imprisoned in an artful arrangement of wire walls, which has closed on him with the rapidity of a conjuring trick. Matilda Street is a decidedly poor neighbourhood; but, strange to say, it is a favourite "pitch" for the bogus starving British workman and his interesting family, when he is upon what he terms the "kinchin lay." The man generally goes barefoot, his face is half covered by a stubbly crop of bristles, which pathetically indicate that he cannot even afford the cheap luxury of the British workman—a ha'penny shave. He doesn't let his beard grow—that would look far too comfortable; artful gashes in his trousers exhibit his knees, which appeal in a startling manner to the feelings of the benevolent; either elbow is clasped to show how he suffers from the inclemency of the weather; by his side walks his pattern wife, who always wears a large white apron; she invariably carries an infant of tender years; at either side of the pair march the rest of the family. They keep to the centre of the road; the woman watches the windows of one side of the street, the man those of the other; and from morning till night they howl a single verse of some hymn with monotonous obstinacy, varying it with a plaintive lament that "They've got no work to do." They are quite right in choosing places like Matilda Street, for there is little or no traffic to interrupt the effect of the procession; besides, in such a place as this no policeman would interrupt them; and, strange to say, it is in shy and poor neighbourhoods that the "kinchin lay" reaps its richest harvest.
Matilda Street is essentially a shy neighbourhood—perhaps that is why the tenant of number 13 has chosen it as his residence. On the door-plate of number 13 is the simple inscription, "Parsons, agent." It's rather a puzzle to make out what Mr. Parsons is agent for; no clients ever come to see him, and he seems to pass the greater part of his day in smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper. But Mr. Parsons has his profession—he was born in it, so to speak, and his father was a professor before him; but his father failed, and his father's unfortunate failure has been a lesson to him. The real fact is that Mr. Parson's father was a burglar of the fine old school. His was a life of vicissitude; and though an ambitious and fairly successful man, the law, against which he had waged war for many years, got the better of him at last; and after having passed nearly forty years of his life in Her Majesty's jails, death at length prevented his obtaining the ticket-of-leave he had almost earned, and his consequent return to business.
It is all very well for the majority of us to wonder why Mr. Parsons didn't attempt to earn an honest livelihood, but we must remember that he had been brought up to a profession of which most people disapprove from his earliest infancy. As quite a little fellow he had accompanied his father on many a successful nocturnal expedition; it had been his duty to keep watch for the guardians of public order, and to signal their approach. He had been taught to rapidly dispose of precious plunder in a neat little crucible, plunged in a fierce fire of coke; as he got bigger, he it was who sat ready at the corner of the street in a tax-cart, prepared to rapidly drive off with the "swag" when of a bulky nature.