The actor stood still in the middle of the pavement to say this in his most impressive tone, and John perforce stood still with him, his bag in his hand, his coat on his arm, and confusion and annoyance in his face.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I know nobody. I’ve—no relations of that name. Pray let me go. I’ve a tremendous evening’s work before me. I can’t really, so far as I’m aware, be of the least use to your friend.’
‘Think it over,’ said Montressor, ‘think it over. Ye’ve too good a heart not to help if ye can. Think it over, me dear May. I will tell me wife and me chyild I have seen ye, which is what they always hear with pleasure—with pleasure,’ he said, with emphasis.
The actor looked very poor, very thin, very bare of everything. His appearance suddenly struck John as they stood side by side in the crowded street. The omnibus was already in sight, bearing down upon him with its freight of men. John was very eager to escape, to get to his own business, to plunge into the plans which he so confidently expected were to bring him fame and fortune. But it suddenly occurred to him what a contrast to his own confident youth was this poor man at the other end of life, who had made his try and failed: and who out of the depths of his poverty and downfall, was pleading for another who had failed more bitterly than himself. The pathos of it struck John in the midst of his impatience to escape from it, and his natural youthful disinclination to have painful matters which he had nothing to do with, thrust upon him like this. He hated it, he was impatient of it, he longed to escape and feel himself in face of his own success which he held to be so certain; but a certain glistening wistfulness in the actor’s eye, and his reluctance to be left behind, and the shabbiness of his garb and aspect altogether, moved John’s heart in spite of himself. The young man adopted that expedient which is so general, with which most of us are so willing to buy off distress and free ourselves from the sight of misery. He took out one of his few sovereings—for though he was sufficiently well off he did not abound in money—from his waistcoat pocket.
‘I have not seen Edie for a long time,’ he said, ‘and she must want much bigger dolls now than the one she used to be so fond of. Will you give her this for me, and tell her to buy something with it. And I’ll come and see her soon. Here’s my omnibus. I am sorry I can’t do anything for your friend. Good-bye.’
‘God bless ye,’ said the actor. ‘Ye’re always the same fine fellow. Edie will bless ye, me brave boy. But think over the other case that I’ve told ye of. Think it over, and good-bye, and be sure ye come. We’ll look for ye, and Edie—— Good-bye. Good-bye!’
John did not care that even the people on the omnibus should see the shiny hat which was waved to him with so much enthusiasm. But there was nobody he knew, and presently, as he bowled along, his former thoughts came back to him and he himself forgot this interruption which was only momentary. Montressor’s friend, whose name was May, attracted but little his preoccupied mind. There had, indeed, been a time when it might have excited him, when he had been so anxious about the mystery of his childhood that anyone bearing that name would have roused his attention. But that phase was altogether over. If he ever thought of his boyish visit to Liverpool, and the mayor whose name was May, and all the anxiety he was in to affiliate himself somehow, it was with a smile of mingled self-ridicule and shame. Nothing now could make him anything but John Sandford, which was as truly his name as any name could be, which he had made known as that of a young man sure to rise, one who had the ball at his foot and before whom the way was clear.
He was doomed to interruptions, however, that evening. He had just settled down to his work after a hearty meal, laying out his papers upon the table and disposing himself to a last inspection of all his calculations and diagrams, when his landlady, a woman who had the greatest respect for John, tapped seriously, with a tap that evidently meant something, at the door. She came in, when John bade her enter, with a grave face.
‘Mr. Sandford,’ she said, ‘there has been two men here asking for you as are not your sort at all. One is like a poor gentleman as has got into trouble, and the other’s no better than a rough off the streets. They’ve been here twice asking to see you. I don’t know if they’ve anything to do with the works. Once they was both the worse for liquor. I don’t like to have such folks seen at my door.’
‘I know nothing about them,’ said John. ‘I certainly expected no such visitors. Did they say what they wanted?’