A Barren Title: A Novel

by T. W. Speight

Among such a company as this it might almost have seemed as if a man like Mr. Fildew would hardly have felt himself at home; but such was by no means the case. The truth is, that the majority of the frequenters of the Brown Bear, that is to say, the small tradesmen portion of them, looked up to our friend and yet looked down upon him. They looked down upon him because they had a suspicion, which, in their case, was next to a certainty, that he was always in a chronic state of impecuniosity; because they themselves had their snug little investments in one form or other, and could have bought him up, root and branch, a hundred times over; and, finally, because it is one of the blessed privileges of those who have money to look down on those who have none. They looked up to Fildew because there was something about the man which told them he had at one time belonged to a sphere from which they were forever debarred. Through all his poverty and shabbiness, a faint aroma of fashion and high life seemed still to cling to him. The popular notion at the Brown Bear was that he had at one time been an officer in some crack regiment, who had ruined himself by gambling and been discarded by his friends. If he spoke of the aristocracy, which, to give him credit, was but rarely, he spoke as though he were one to the manner born. He seemed to know Eton and Oxford as well as he knew Tottenham-court Road, and to be familiar with most of the West End clubs. A nobleman's name could hardly be mentioned without his being able to tell something about him that the frequenters of the Brown Bear had never heard of before. In his very way of talking, in his mode of accentuating his words, there was an indefinable something which marked him out at once from the ordinary frequenters of the coffee-room of the B. B. They knew, these petty tradesmen, that "His Grace" looked down upon them from the height of some, to them, invisible pedestal; and they in turn looked down upon him from the serene height of their money-bags; and yet, as they argued among themselves when he was not by, he must, to a certain extent, have liked their company, else why did he seek it so persistently night after night the year round?

It was about half-past eight this evening when John Fildew walked into the bar of the Brown Bear. He nodded to the landlord, and that worthy at once touched a spring inside the bar which communicated with the door of the coffee-room, after which the door opened to Fildew's hand, and he entered. With one man in the room he shook hands, to the rest of the company be vouchsafed a general and comprehensive nod. Then he took a vacant chair, and having called for a "go" of brandy cold, he proceeded to select a churchwarden pipe from a heap on the table before him and to charge it with tobacco.

"How's the weather by this time, your grace?" asked Mr. Nutt, the shoemaker. "It was just wetting a bit when I came in."

"The stars are out again," said Fildew, answering to the title as a matter of course. "Not much likelihood of any rain to-night."

It was not often that he joined in the discussions, political or otherwise, that were pretty sure to crop up before the evening was at an end. He generally sat a silent if not an amused listener. If appealed to directly he would give his opinion, but not otherwise. That curious, sneering smile of his would now and then light up his features at the enunciation by one or other of his friends of some more wildly outrageous statement than common, but for the most part he and his pipe held silent session together and troubled no one with what they thought.

It was quite understood in the room why Mr. Fildew should shake hands with Mr. Denzil and no one else. Mr. Fildew was a man who rarely shook hands with any one. His reasons for making an exception in favor of the young law-writer may be told in a few words. One evening, about a year anterior to the particular evening to which we have now come, Mr. Denzil had made his appearance at the Brown Bear considerably the worse for liquor. At the moment of his entrance Mr. Fildew was explaining to the company the ceremonial in connection with a royal levée at St. James's. "What can a shabby dog like you know about the interior of a palace?" hiccoughed Denzil. "If you have ever been inside St. James's it must have been when you were sent for to sweep the chimneys."

"Silence, you drunken fool," said Mr. Fildew, in quietly contemptuous tones.

But Denzil was not in a mood to be silenced, and would probably have insulted the company all round had not three or four of his more intimate friends removed him as quietly as possible. After that evening he and Mr. Fildew spoke to each other no more.

Six or seven months had passed away when one evening somebody inquired what had become of Denzil, upwards of a week having gone by since his last appearance at the B. B.

"My pot man told me to-day that he had heard he was queer," remarked the landlord.