‘I wish I knew what a sandwich-man is,’ she murmured; ‘but it does not signify. Please go on.’
‘We struck up acquaintance, and I used to walk with him up and down his beat—he in the gutter, I on the kerb. He had been a soldier, and had helped to win India back for England at the storming of Lucknow. He was quite proud of the whole achievement, and of his share in it. “They was nigh slipping clean away, sir,” he would say of his Indian fellow-subjects. “You cannot think how nigh they was; but we just cotched ’em by the tail.” It was pleasant to see Swart proud of anything; it did so much to improve his air. At such moments, he seemed almost a man. They were but sun-rifts in a black sky, of course. Sometimes the policeman would threaten to run him in, for trespassing on the kerb with the edge of his board. This would tend to drive him wide of the gutter; then, his foreman would come by, and growl an oath at him for not walking straight in his furrow, and threaten him with the sack.’
‘“The sack!”’ said Victoria softly; ‘“run him in!” I am not interrupting, you know, I am only saving up.’
‘I asked Swart to let me go and see him, but he said “Not yet.” He was living in a common lodging-house, and he was not allowed to receive visitors. “If I was allowed,” he said frankly, “I shouldn’t like you to come. They really ain’t fit company for a gentleman, or, for that matter, for a common man. We had three took out of their beds last night for robberies from the person, and one for burglary and murder. What with the police coming in and out of the room, and flashing their lights on your faces, there was no getting a wink. There was sixty sleepin’ in our room, and the row woke most of us up. You may fancy what it was after that. Besides, I’m gettin’ too old to fight for my place by the kitchen fire, and I’m cold half the time. Then, if you ain’t got your fourpence every night, out you go; and I can’t tackle the Embankment no more. I want a place of my own.”’
‘You might tell me about the Embankment now,’ she said, ‘but, of course, we’ll make a note of it, if you are going to get cross.’
‘It is an open thoroughfare, the finest in London, bordered, on one side, by gardens and public palaces, on the other, by the river. The people who cannot afford to sleep as Swart sleeps are allowed to sleep there, as a favour, for it is against the law.’
‘But do you mean to say——?’
‘Yes, indeed, I do; that is just what I do mean.’
‘But how can the others go to bed, then?’
‘Well, how can you, for that matter, now you know it? You get used to such things.’