A thin gray fog hung over the city, and the streets were very cold; for summer was in England.
“It's a cheerful wilderness, and it hasn't the knack of altering much,” Dick thought, as he tramped from the Docks westward. “Now, what must I do?”
The packed houses gave no answer. Dick looked down the long lightless streets and at the appalling rush of traffic. “Oh, you rabbit-hutches!” said he, addressing a row of highly respectable semi-detached residences. “Do you know what you've got to do later on? You have to supply me with men-servants and maid-servants,”—here he smacked his lips,—“and the peculiar treasure of kings. Meantime I'll clothes and boots, and presently I will return and trample on you.” He stepped forward energetically; he saw that one of his shoes was burst at the side. As he stooped to make investigations, a man jostled him into the gutter. “All right,” he said. “That's another nick in the score. I'll jostle you later on.”
Good clothes and boots are not cheap, and Dick left his last shop with the certainty that he would be respectably arrayed for a time, but with only fifty shillings in his pocket. He returned to streets by the Docks, and lodged himself in one room, where the sheets on the bed were almost audibly marked in case of theft, and where nobody seemed to go to bed at all. When his clothes arrived he sought the Central Southern Syndicate for Torpenhow's address, and got it, with the intimation that there was still some money waiting for him.
“How much?” said Dick, as one who habitually dealt in millions.
“Between thirty and forty pounds. If it would be any convenience to you, of course we could let you have it at once; but we usually settle accounts monthly.”
“If I show that I want anything now, I'm lost,” he said to himself. “All I need I'll take later on.” Then, aloud, “It's hardly worth while; and I'm going to the country for a month, too. Wait till I come back, and I'll see about it.”
“But we trust, Mr. Heldar, that you do not intend to sever your
connection with us?”
Dick's business in life was the study of faces, and he watched the speaker
keenly. “That man means something,” he said. “I'll do no business till
I've seen Torpenhow. There's a big deal coming.” So he departed, making
no promises, to his one little room by the Docks. And that day was
the seventh of the month, and that month, he reckoned with awful
distinctness, had thirty-one days in it! It is not easy for a man of
catholic tastes and healthy appetites to exist for twenty-four days on
fifty shillings. Nor is it cheering to begin the experiment alone in
all the loneliness of London. Dick paid seven shillings a week for his
lodging, which left him rather less than a shilling a day for food and
drink. Naturally, his first purchase was of the materials of his craft;
he had been without them too long. Half a day's investigations and
comparison brought him to the conclusion that sausages and mashed
potatoes, twopence a plate, were the best food. Now, sausages once or
twice a week for breakfast are not unpleasant. As lunch, even, with
mashed potatoes, they become monotonous. At dinner they are impertinent.
At the end of three days Dick loathed sausages, and, going, forth,
pawned his watch to revel on sheep's head, which is not as cheap as it
looks, owing to the bones and the gravy. Then he returned to sausages
and mashed potatoes. Then he confined himself entirely to mashed
potatoes for a day, and was unhappy because of pain in his inside. Then
he pawned his waistcoat and his tie, and thought regretfully of money
thrown away in times past. There are few things more edifying unto
Art than the actual belly-pinch of hunger, and Dick in his few walks
abroad,—he did not care for exercise; it raised desires that could not
be satisfied—found himself dividing mankind into two classes,—those
who looked as if they might give him something to eat, and those who
looked otherwise. “I never knew what I had to learn about the human
face before,” he thought; and, as a reward for his humility, Providence
caused a cab-driver at a sausage-shop where Dick fed that night to leave
half eaten a great chunk of bread. Dick took it,—would have fought all
the world for its possession,—and it cheered him.
The month dragged through at last, and, nearly prancing with impatience, he went to draw his money. Then he hastened to Torpenhow's address and smelt the smell of cooking meats all along the corridors of the chambers. Torpenhow was on the top floor, and Dick burst into his room, to be received with a hug which nearly cracked his ribs, as Torpenhow dragged him to the light and spoke of twenty different things in the same breath.
“But you're looking tucked up,” he concluded.