It was about eight o’clock on a certain November evening in the year 188-, that I found myself one of a number of passengers disgorged from a train on the platform of the St Pancras Station. I was just turned nineteen years of age, and this was the first time I had set foot in London. My journey had been a long and tedious one, and I was thoroughly chilled and worn out when I stepped out of the carriage. I had started from home at six in the morning for a twelve miles’ walk to the nearest station, and after that, had spent hour after hour, first in one third-class carriage, and then in another, for my home was in a remote district many miles from any main line to the metropolis. I may just add that I had but lately recovered from a long illness, having outgrown my strength—or so my friends averred—and to that fact some portion of the weariness I now felt was no doubt attributable.
However, here I was at last, really and truly, in London—in the great city. It was the consummation of the dreams of my youth, as it is of the dreams of so many hundreds of ambitious, country-bred lads. I had no luggage to detain me, the sole article I had brought with me being a small handbag containing a few necessaries: my portmanteau was to follow in the course of a couple of days. As I was making my way towards the exit, I caught sight of the refreshment room. I had had nothing to eat since morning but a few biscuits, and now the pangs of hunger began to make themselves felt. I pushed open the swing-doors of the restaurant, and going up to the counter, I asked for a cup of coffee and a couple of sandwiches. While I was being served, I counted over again the small amount of money in my purse and asked myself whether I could afford to take a cab to my destination. Why not walk? The night was young, and the street in which my friend lived, being in the heart of London, could not be more than two or, at the most, three miles away. Besides, there seemed a spice of adventure, something that would serve me to talk about in time to come, in finding my way, utter stranger as I was, alone and by night through the streets of London—those streets about which I had read so much, and had so often pictured in my thoughts. I decided that I would walk.
Here it becomes needful to mention that my destination was the lodgings of a certain friend, whose name, for the purposes of this narrative, shall be Gascoigne. I call him my friend, and such he was, although he was four years older than myself. We were both natives of the same small country town; his parents and mine were old friends; and owing to the similarity of our tastes and pursuits, he and I had been much thrown together up to the date of his leaving home to push his fortunes in London. We had kept up an unbroken correspondence after his departure; and now that my father had lighted on evil days, and it became imperative that I should turn out into the world, Gascoigne had at once come to the rescue. I must leave home, he wrote, and take up my quarters with him till he should succeed in finding some situation that would be likely to suit me, which he had little doubt about being able to do in the course of a few weeks at the most. And thus it fell out that here I was in London.
Outside the station, I found a policeman, from whom I inquired my nearest way to the Strand, in a street off which thoroughfare Gascoigne’s rooms were situated. The night was damp and raw, with a sort of thin, wet mist in the atmosphere, which blurred the lamps and the lights in the shops a little way off, and made the pavement greasy and unpleasant to walk on. But little recked I about the weather. I was pacing London streets, and to me, for the time being, that was all-sufficient. The coffee had warmed me; the fatigue I had felt previously was forgotten as I walked on and on in a sort of waking dream. More than once I had to ask my way, and more than once I wandered from the direct road; but at length, after about an hour’s walking, I found the street I was in search of, and two minutes later I knocked at the door of No. 16. My summons was responded to by a middle-aged woman—Gascoigne’s landlady, as I afterwards found—who, in answer to my inquiry, informed me that my friend had been called out of town two days previously on important business, and was not expected home till the morrow. I turned from the door with a sinking heart, feeling more lost and lonely than I had ever felt before. I was in the heart of the great Babylon, and knew not a single soul out of all the teeming thousands around me. Presently, I found myself in the Strand again, and there I came to a halt for a little while, gazing on a scene so fresh and strange to me. The glare, the uproar, the interminable tangle of vehicles, the hundreds of human beings, young and old, rich and poor, passing ceaselessly to and fro, winding in and out without touching each other, like midges dancing in the sun—all these affected my spirits like a tonic, and in a very little while put all morbid fancies to flight. What if I were alone in London without a creature anywhere that I knew—there were thousands of others in a similar plight. Gascoigne would be back on the morrow, and for this one night I must make shift with a bed at some decent coffee-house or inexpensive hotel. It was too early yet to think of turning in; it would be time enough an hour hence to set about finding quarters for the night.
I wandered on, heedless whither my footsteps might lead me, my weariness all but forgotten in the novelty of the scenes which met my country-bred eyes at every turn. As the clocks were striking ten, I found myself on one of the bridges, gazing over the parapet at the black-flowing river as it washed and swirled through the arches under my feet. A thick fog was slowly creeping up, and even while I was gazing at the fringe of lamps on some other bridge, its dark mantle closed round them, and shut them in as completely as though they had never been. A few minutes later, the fog had reached the spot where I was standing, and had caught me in a damp, sickly embrace, which in a very little while sufficed to chill me to the marrow, and blotted out as completely as with a wet sponge all the seething world around me.
When I began to move again after my halt, I realised for the first time how thoroughly weary and dead-beat I was, and that I must no longer delay seeking out a lodging for the night. The fog was thickening fast, and it was impossible to see more than three or four yards in any direction. In my bewilderment, instead of turning back towards the Strand side of the bridge, as my intention was, I seem to have unwittingly crossed to the Surrey side, seeing that, a few minutes later, I found myself in a maze of narrow, tortuous streets, in which gin palaces and fried-fish shops seemed to be the chief places of entertainment.
I wandered on, turning from one thoroughfare into another, feeling in that thick, black fog more utterly lost and bewildered, even in the streets of London, than I should have done if set down at midnight in the heart of Salisbury Plain with nothing but the stars to guide me on my way. In the district in which I now found myself there seemed to be no small hotels where a stranger might find cheap but decent accommodation for the night—nothing but flaring taverns and low coffee-shops. Three or four of these latter I passed which, even dead-beat as I was, I could not summon up courage to enter—they looked too unsavoury and repulsive to a youth of countrified tastes like myself. At length I came to one which seemed more promising than any I had yet seen—cleaner and neater in every way, as far as I could judge by peering through the window. It was merely a coffee-shop, with some cups and saucers and a few muffins, teacakes, and other comestibles in the window; but what had more attraction for me than anything else was the welcome legend, ‘Good Beds,’ painted in black letters on the lamp over the door. I hesitated no longer, but pushed open the swing-doors and entered.
My first glance round showed me that the place was one much frequented by foreigners; and when the cafetier himself came down the room to inquire my pleasure, I saw at once that, whatever else his nationality might be, he was certainly not an Englishman. My wants were simple—a chop and some coffee. I put the question of bed aside for the present, till I should have seen more of the place and its frequenters. The cafetier answered me with much politeness, but in very broken English, that my requirements should be at once attended to, and that, meanwhile—with a comprehensive wave of his hand—the newspapers, English and foreign, were at the service of monsieur. He did not look much like a coffee-house keeper, with his long grizzled hair, his high bald forehead, his dark deep-set eyes, in each of which glowed a spark of vivid fire, and his thin white hands; there seemed about him too much of the air of a man of breeding and education for such an occupation.
He was still addressing himself to me, when there was a sudden irruption into the room of a little black-eyed, short-haired, bullet-headed waiter, French or Swiss most probably, in a black jacket and short white apron, who, dancing up to me, took possession of me at once, divined my wants in a moment, and pirouetted off to fetch me my coffee, pending the cooking of my chop, leaving his master extinguished, so to speak, both morally and physically. ‘Ah, Jean will attend to monsieur,’ said the latter, putting his hands to his sides and straightening his long thin back. ‘Jean, he is a good fellow, and will make monsieur comfortable.’ And with that he lounged slowly away to a small counter at the upper end of the room, behind which he seated himself, and became at once immersed in the perusal of some foreign journal.
I was still looking at him, sitting with my arms folded over the table, when my eyelids closed unconsciously, and I dropped asleep as I sat—but only for a few moments, for Jean was quickly at my side with the coffee and a roll, flicking some imaginary crumbs off the table with his serviette as a polite way of arousing me. A draught of coffee imparted new life to me for a time, and I could afford to look round with some degree of curiosity. In all, there were about a dozen people in the place. Two or three customers got up and went away, while others came in and took their places. Others there were who seemed habitual frequenters of the place, and sat playing draughts or dominoes, smoking their cigarettes, and sipping at their coffee or chocolate between times. Only one here and there was English; the rest of them were unmistakable foreigners, of various types and nationalities, but all readily recognisable as such even to my untutored eyes. Nimble-handed Jean was equal to the requirements of each and all.