The chief object in the view is a certain second-rate square, named to commemorate a certain first-rate victory. But the square, second-rate though it be, is honored by a first-rate railing, a balustrade of bulky granite, which may be valuable for defence when Crapaud arrives to avenge Trafalgar. Inside the stone railing, which is further protected by a barricade of cabs, with drivers asleep and horses in nose-bags, are sundry very large stone fountains, of very smoky granite, trickling with very small trickles of water, which channel the basins as tears channel the face of a dirty boy. The square is on a slope, and seems to be sliding away, an avalanche of water-basins, cabs, and balustrade, from a certain very ugly edifice, severely classic in some spots, classic as a monkish Latin ballad in others, and well sprouted at the top with small sentry-boxes, perhaps shelters for sharp-shooters, should anybody venture to look mustard at the building. A bronze horseman, on a bronze horse sixteen hands high, is at work at the upper corner of the square, trying to drive it down hill. A bronze footman, on a column sixteen hundred feet high, or thereabouts, stands at the foot of the square, hailing that fugacious enclosure from under a nautical cocked hat to do its duty, as England expects everything English will, and not to run away from the ugly edifice above.
Such is the square at the very centre of the centre of the world, as I saw it from Smorley’s corner window, while dining in the June twilight, the evening of my arrival in London.
I sat after dinner looking complacently out upon the landscape. A man never attains to that stolidity of content except in England, where the air’s exciting oxygen is well weakened with fog, and the air’s exhilarating ozone is quite discharged from dancing attendance. London and England were not strange to me; but a great city is ever new, and after two years’ inane staring at a quartz-mine, town and townsfolk were still lively contrast to my mind.
I was quietly entertaining myself, sipping meanwhile my pint of Port,—Fine old Crusty, it was charged in the bill, when I saw coming down St. Martin’s Lane, between the cabs and the balustrade of the square, two gentlemen I knew.
Brent and Biddulph! Biddulph, surely. There could be no mistaking that blonde, manly giant, relapsed again into modified Anglicism of dress; but walking freely along, with a step that remembered the prairie.
But that pale, feeble fellow hanging on the other’s arm! Could that be John Brent? He was slouching along, looking upon the ground, a care-worn, dejected man. It cost me a sharp pang to see my brilliant friend so vanquished by a sorrow I could comprehend.
I sprang up, snatched my hat, and rushed out. Eight quiet men, dining systematically at eight tables in the coffee-room, were startled at a rapidity of movement quite unknown to the precincts of Smorley, and each of the eight choked over his mouthful, were it ox-tail, salmon, mutton, bread, or Fine old Crusty. Eight waiters, caught in the act of saying “Yessir! D’rectly Sir!” were likewise shocked into momentary paralysis.
I dashed across the street, knocking the nose-bag off the forlorn nose of a hungry cab-horse, and laid my hand on my friend’s shoulder. He turned, in the hasty, nervous manner of a man who is expecting something, and excited with waiting.
“I was half inclined to let you pass,” said I. “You have not written. I had no right to suppose you alive.”
“I could only write to pain you and myself. I have not found her. I am hardly alive. I shall not long be.”