But when presently I stood upon London Bridge, between two cities of men, between the millions I had escaped and the million I was to plunge among, a great despair grew heavier and heavier upon me.
This terrible throng, here as everywhere hurrying by me! And I compelled to note every man and every woman, and to say to myself, “This is not he,”—“This is not she,”—“These are not they!” All the while this stream of negatives rushing by, and every one bearing a little fraction of hope away.
In that great city—in its nests and its prisons—were people who had been living side by side for a life-time, and yet had never had one glimpse of each other’s form or feature; who were, each to each, but a name on a door, a step overhead, a tread on the stair, a moan of anguish, a laugh, or a curse. There were parallel streets, too, whose tenants moved parallel and never met, and never would meet. There were neighborhoods farther distant than Cornhill is from Cairo, or Pimlico from Patagonia. It was a dark den—that monster city—for any one who loved to lurk, or be buried away from sight of friend or foe; it was a maze, a clewless labyrinth for one who sought a foe to punish or a friend to save.
Evening was approaching. I must consider Short and his Cut-off, and all England wasting steam at the rate of millions of pounds a year (enough to save the income tax) until that Cut-off should be applied. In that populous realm were ten thousand cylinders devouring one third more steam than was healthy working allowance; and I was halting on London Bridge, staring like a New-Zealander at the passers, a mere obstacle to progress, a bad example, a stationary nuisance now, as I had been a mobile and intrusive one before.
I had some little difficulty in finding Padiham’s retiring-place. I had already dissected it out on the map, identified it by its neighborhood to a certain artery and its closer neighborhood to a certain ganglion. It was Lamely Court, a quiet retreat in a busy region. It looked, indeed, as if it had never taken a very active part in the world, or as if, when it offered itself to bustle and traffic, more enterprising localities had hustled it aside, and bade it decline into a lethargy. The withered brick houses had the air and visage of people who have seen better days, and subsided into the desponding by-ways, apart from the thoroughfares of the bold and sturdy. Mean misery and squalor did not abide there. It was not a den for the ragged, but a shy retreat for the patched,—for the decent and decorous poor.
Half-way down the court, on the sunny side, I found Padiham’s house. It was quietly, not obtrusively, neater and fresher than its neighbors. Its bricks had a less worm-eaten look, and its window-panes were all of glass and none of newspaper. The pot roses in an upper story window were in bloom, and had life enough to welcome the June sunshine, while sister plants in other garrets all about the court were too far blighted ever to dream of gayer product than some poor jaundiced bud. These roses up in Padiham’s window cheered the whole neighborhood greatly, with their lively coloring. It was as if some pretty maiden, with rosy cheeks and riper rosy lips, were looking down into that forlorn retreat, and warming every old, faded soul, within every shabby tenement, with bright reminiscence of days when life was in its perfume and its flower.
Such was the aspect of Padiham’s abode. His shop lurked in the basement.
CHAPTER XXXI.
A DWARF.
It was with much curiosity and interest in Padiham that I stepped down into the basement, and entered his shop. I reverence as much a great mechanic, in degree, perhaps in kind, as I do any great seer into the mysteries of Nature. He is a king, whoever can wield the great forces where other men have not the power. And none can control material forces without a profound knowledge, stated or unstated, of the great masterly laws that order every organism, from dust to man and a man-freighted world. A great mechanic ranks with the great chiefs of his time, prophets, poets, orators, statesmen.