"Wake up, deer! There's a good soul!"
They stood up, supporting the bronchial Irishwoman between them, shaking and straightening their frowsy garments—tidying themselves as the poorest women will. Then with, a farewell word they moved on, northward. And P. C. Breagh, following them with reddened, night-weary eyes, saw his Fate coming, though he did not know it, in the person of a small and shabbily-attired elderly man.
XIV
He came striding from the Strand side, in a red-hot hurry, making as much noise with his boots as three ordinary pedestrians. He wore no overcoat, but was buttoned up in a decent black serge frock, having his throat protected by a large white cashmere wrapper. Also he wore gray mixture trousers, rather baggy at the knees, and shiny, and was crowned with a well-worn silk top-hat.
He walked at a great pace, swinging his arms, which were inordinately lengthy, and finished with hands of extra size, encased in white knitted woolen bags not distantly resembling boxing-gloves. When he reached the middle of the Bridge, he stopped and backed against the west parapet, folded his arms, and,—or so it seemed to P. C. Breagh, who was watching him for the sole reason that he happened to be the only cheerful-looking, decently-clad human being within his range of vision—snuffed the breeze, and considered the prospect with a consciously-possessive air. In moving his head sideways, so as to extend his view, his sharp black glance encountered that of his neighbor, and he nodded, and thus their acquaintance began.
"I'm glad to see, young gentleman," said the little man—and "My eye! Do I still look like anything of that sort?" was the young gentleman's unvoiced aside: "I'm glad to see that you don't number one among the many thousands—if I was to say Millions I shouldn't be guilty of exaggeration—who under-estimate the value of fresh morning air. For my part, without boasting, I may call myself a walking Monument to its healthiness, or as you can't put up a monument to a live man—I'll say, a Living Testimonial."
He had a yellow, tight-drawn, wearied skin, with a patch of rather hectic red on either cheekbone, and his bright black eyes twinkled at the bottom of hollow orbits, overshadowed by shaggy eyebrows of the deepest black. When he took off his hat to cool his head, from which quite a cloud of steam arose, you could perceive that he was baldish, and that his bristly hair and large mutton-chop side-whiskers owed, like his shaggy eyebrows, their intense and aggressive blackness to a conscientious but unskillful dyer, for by the cold and searching light of morning, delicate nuances of green and purple were seen to mingle with their youthful sable, and here and there the roots showed grayish-white.
"I was given up by the Doctors at the age of twenty," said the little man, "as I had been previously give up by 'em at eleven and fifteen. 'The boy's in Rapid Decline,' says one, 'keep him out o' drafts and give him boiled snails and asses' milk.' My poor mother did her best, stopping up window-cracks with paste and paper, and stuffing chimneys with old carpets. And living as we was at Hampstead Village, and the Heath being productive in snails and donkeys, the rest o' the prescription was easy to carry out. Still I got lankier and went on coughing o' nights. Says Doctor Number Two, 'It's a case of Galloping Consumption. Feed him up, clothe him warmly, encourage him to take gentle exercise, and avoid chills whatever you do!' So my mother swadged me up in flannel, made me eat a mutton chop every two hours, and trot up and down the front-garden for exercise between chops; and she'd pour half-a-pint o' porter down me whenever I stood still. And in spite of all her affectionate solicitude," said the little man with a twinkle, "I kep' on wasting, and coughing and spitting, and doing everything that a young fellow in a galloping consumption could do, short of galloping out o' this world into another. And Doctor Number Three says,—being called in when I was twenty: 'It's phthisis pulmonalis in the advanced and incurable stage. You can do nothing at all for this young man but get him into an Institute for Incurables. Codliver Oil, Care, and Kindness,' so says he, 'may prolong his miserable existence a month or two. For the rest, there's nothing to be done!' If you'll believe me, that news was the death of my poor mother. She'd expected nothing else for years—and yet it killed her at the end! And I acted as Chief Mourner at her funeral," ended the little man with a queer twist of his lean, sharp jaws and a momentary dimming of his keen black eyes, "in the pouring rain, and walked home without an overcoat—and got wet to the skin, and stripped, and rubbed myself dry, and made a rough supper of scalding oatmeal porridge, and went to bed and slep' with the windows open top and bottom. And that was over thirty years ago, and I've never missed my morning sponge-over with cold water since; nor never shut a window night or day, nor never run up a doctor's bill, and don't mean to! I left off coddling—once the blessed old soul was gone! Got better—better still—always expected to die by those who'd knowed mother. I traveled and saw Foreign Parts,—not specially going about to pick the 'ealthiest climates, knocked about abroad—came home and took to Business, and have taken to it ever since, as you may see. My health is robust," he made a show of hitting his chest again, but thought better of it. "I live plain, and make a point of getting Fresh Air into my system whenever possible.—This is the place I come to, as a rule, for the morning's supply. I take it on Blackfriars Bridge after the dinner-hour, the eating-house I patronize being on Ludgate Hill," he added. "And—I don't know whether you happen to be a student of old Bill Shakespeare, but there are some lines of his which might be twisted into applying to me." He drew a deep breath and delivered himself as follows:
"Some are born Tough, some achieve Toughness—others have Toughness thrust upon them."