The good man welcomed Angela, and said some simple words of gratitude about her reception of his daughter. He had a good face, but he wore an anxious expression as if something was always on his mind; and he sighed when he sat down at his table.
Angela stayed for half an hour, but the minister said nothing more to her; only when she rose to go he murmured with another heavy sigh, "There's an afternoon service at three."
It is quite impossible to say whether he intended this announcement as an invitation to Angela, or whether it was a complaint, wrung from a heavy heart, of a trouble almost intolerable.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. I AM THE DRESSMAKER.
It happened on this very same Saturday that Lord Jocelyn, feeling a little low, and craving for speech with his ward, resolved that he would pay a personal visit to him in his own den, where, no doubt, he would find him girt with a fair white apron and crowned with brown paper, proudly standing among a lot of his brother workmen—glorious fellows!—and up to his knees in shavings.
It is easy to take a cab and tell the driver to go to the Mile End Road. Had Lord Jocelyn taken more prudent counsel with himself he would have bidden him drive straight to Messenger's Brewery; but he got down where the Whitechapel road ends and the Mile End road begins, thinking that he would find his way to the Brewery with the greatest ease. First, however, he asked the way of a lady with a basket on her arm; it was, in fact, Mrs. Bormalack going a-marketing, and anxious about the price of greens; and he received a reply so minute, exact, and bewildering, that he felt, as he plunged into the labyrinthine streets of Stepney, like one who dives into the dark and devious ways of the catacombs.
First of all, of course, he lost himself; but as the place was strange to him, and a strange place is always curious, he walked along in great contentment. Nothing remarkable in the streets and houses unless, perhaps, the entire absence of anything to denote inequality of wealth and position, so that, he thought with satisfaction, the happy residents in Stepney all receive the same salaries and make the same income, contribute the same amount to the tax collectors, and pay the same rent. A beautiful continuity of sameness; a divine monotony realizing partially the dreams of the socialist. Presently he came upon a great building which seemed rapidly approaching completion; not a beautiful building, but solid, big, well proportioned and constructed of real red brick, and without the "Queen Anne" conceits which mostly go with that material. It was so large and so well built that it was evidently intended for some special purpose; a purpose of magnitude and responsibility, requiring capital; not a factory, because the windows were large and evidently belonged to great halls, and there were none of the little windows in rows which factories must have in the nature of things; not a prison, because prisons are parsimonious to a fault in the matter of external windows; nor a school—yet it might be a school; then—how should so great a school be built in Stepney? It might be a superior almshouse, or union—yet this could hardly be. While Lord Jocelyn looked at the building, a working-man lounged along, presumably an out-of-working man, with his hands in his pockets and kicking stray stones in the road, which is a sign of the penniless pocket, because he who yet can boast the splendid shilling does not slouch as he goes, or kick stones in the road, but holds his head erect and anticipates with pleasure six half-pints in the immediate future. Lord Jocelyn asked that industrious idle, or idle industrious, if he knew the object of the building. The man replied that he did not know the object of the building; and to make it quite manifest that he really did not know he put an adjective before the word object, and another—that is, the same—before the word building. With that he passed upon his way, and Lord Jocelyn was left marvelling at the slender resources of our language which makes one adjective do duty for so many qualifications. Presently, he came suddenly upon Stepney Church, which is a landmark or initial point, like the man on the chair in the maze of Hampton Court. Here he again asked his way, and then, after finding it and losing it again six times more, and being generally treated with contumely for not knowing so simple a thing, he found himself actually at the gates of the Brewery, which he might have reached in five minutes had he gone the shortest way.
"So," he said, "this is the property of that remarkably beautiful girl, Miss Messenger; who could wish to start better? She is young; she is charming, she is queenly, she is fabulously rich; she is clever; she is—ah! if only Harry had met her before he became an ass!"