XX
Huxtable’s advertisement in the ‘Morning Post’ had brought applications from 130 valets. It brought also a letter from a country clergyman, beseeking another chance for Prosser—ex-burglar, son of a country poacher, a reformed character—lately returned to his father’s humble home in penitence from Portland, after five years of penal servitude. The blameless, colourless remainder had no chance against him. Dwala was delighted. Prosser came—a little pale man, trim and finicking, with shining eyes; nothing of the brutal house-breaker in him; a man of patient, orderly mind, who had gone to Burglary as another man might go to the Bar, because he had ‘influence,’ and no aptitude for any other calling. With his father to back him, he had a connection ready-made among the ‘fences,’ or receivers of stolen goods. He had not thought himself justified in throwing away such chances with a wife and child to keep. He studied the arts of valeting and butlering; entered gentlemen’s houses with a good character from a friendly ‘fence,’ and left them with the jewellery and plate, till he was lagged over a wretched little job in the suburbs, and taken to Portland Bill, where one of his mates—a fraudulent low-church company-promoter—converted him and showed him the wickedness of what he had been doing in all its coarse enormity.
His wife had gone to the bad during his absence, and the little girl had been adopted and cared for by another friendly ‘fence’—an afflicted villain of the name of Hartopp. So much he had heard; but he had not enough the courage of his new innocence to go into that dangerous neighbourhood to find her.
Dwala elicited these facts in cross-examination. He was deeply interested in this new side of life; and we must, perforce, follow him into it, though it has little apparent relevance to the present course of the story.
For Dwala’s political eminence is a ‘set piece’ which took some time in the preparing; and in order to give the stage carpenters time to get through with their work, it is convenient at this point to get done with one or two necessary ‘flats.’ Besides, the social heights to which Fate brought him are giddy places for those who have not strong and accustomed heads, and it is safer to descend now and then and amble in the plain, among the greasy multitude that crawls so irrelevantly below—despicable to the mountaineers, who look down and mark the wind-borne cheers, risking their heroic lives at every step among the precipices, yet asking nothing more of the valley than a distant awe, and a handful of guides and porters, with baskets of meat, well-filled, and topped with bottles of good champagne.
Prosser passed under the trees to Hyde Park Corner, bound on his daily walk. His eyes were bright, and the world swam by as unimportant as a dream; for Prosser, in the respectable seclusion of his room, had taken to drinking—steady drinking day by day, without resistance or remorse. Life, to which he returned from jail with such hungry imagination, had suddenly revealed itself to him in its ugly arid nakedness: his conversion and good resolutions had stripped it of all its meaning; now it was an old worn billiard-table, with no balls or cues to it; cumbering the room, importunately present, grim and terrible in its powers of insistent boredom. To hide from it—to crouch and hide with his head between his hands, against the dirty floor—that was the only resource since he had renounced the game and sent the balls away. He drank and was happy; not actively happy, but deviating this way and that into dreamy vacancy and strong disgust, escaping the awful middle way of boredom. He felt his control going, and he smiled triumphantly at the coming of his hideous mistress. Often he thought of walking into the servants’ hall and boasting of his secret. But the coarse activity of real life dispelled the longing as soon as he neared his audience. He remained trim, upright, and serenely deferent, with shining eyes and pursed dry lips.
At Hyde Park Corner a little crowd was gathered about a musician—an old man, with a leg and a half and a crutch, and a placard ‘BLIND’ on his chest. He had just finished a last shrill bravura on the penny whistle. A respectable wet-eyed girl in black went round with a bag and collected money.
‘Pity the poor blind!’ shouted the musician in a sudden angry imperative.
Prosser wagged his head in a soliloquy of recognition; and gazed giddily at the little girl.
‘Nobody got a penny for the poor blind?’ asked the angry voice.