“I don't know, John, dear. I wish I did, but whatever it is, its breakin' his heart.”
Chapter XI
The discovery of her lodger's title made but little difference to Kitty, nor did it raise him a whit in her estimation. At best, it only confirmed her first impression of his being a gentleman—every inch of him. She may have studied the more closely her lodger's habits, noting his constant care of his person, the way in which he used his knife and fork, the softness and cleanliness of his hands—all object-lessons to her, for she broke out on her husband the day after her talk with the Englishman in the hansom cab with:
“I want to tell ye that ye'll have to stop spatterin' yer soup around after this, John, dear. I'm going to have a clean table-cloth on every day, and a clean napkin for him, and as I'm doin' the washing myself ye've got to help an' not muss things. First thing ye know he'll sour on what we are giving him and be goin' off worse than ever, trampin' the streets till all hours of the night.” At which John had stretched his big frame and with a prolonged yawn, his arms over his head, had remarked: “All right, Kitty, you're boss. Sir or no sir, he's got no frills about him—just plain man like the rest of us.”
Neither would his title, had they known it, have made the slightest difference to any one of the habitues who gathered in Tim Kelsey's book-shop.
Who Felix was, or what he had done, or what he was about to do, were questions never considered, either by Kelsey or by his friends. That he was part of the driftwood left stranded and unrecognized on the intellectual shore was enough. All that any of them asked for was brains, and Felix, even before the first evening had ended, had uncovered a stock so varied, and of such unusual proportions, and of so brilliant a character that he was always accorded the right of way whenever he took charge of the talk.
And a queer lot they were who listened, and a queer lot they had to be, to enjoy Kelsey's confidence. “Men are like books,” he would often say to Felix. “It is their insides I care for, no matter how badly they are bound. The half-calf or all-morocco sort never appeal to me. Shelf fellows seldom handled, I call them, and a man who is not handled and rubbed up against, with a corner worn off here and there, is like a book kept under glass. Nobody cares anything about it except as an ornament, and I have no room for ornaments.”
That is why the door was kept shut at night, when some half-calf rapped and Tim would get a look at his binding through the shutter and tiptoe back, closing the door of the inner room behind him.
Among Kelsey's collection was old Silas Murford, the custom-house clerk—a fat, stupid-looking old fellow whose chin rested on his shirt-front and whose middle rested on his knees, the whole of him, when seated, filling Tim's biggest chair. Tim prized this volume most, for when Silas began to talk, the sheepish look would fade out of his placid face, his little pig eyes would vanish, and the listener would discover to his astonishment that not only was this lethargic lump of flesh a delightful conversationalist but that he had spent every hour he could spare from his custom-house in a study of the American system of immigration—and had at his tongue's end a mass of statistics about which few men knew anything.