CHAPTER VI

IN WHICH WE MEET THE FIRST-FLOOR-BACK AND FIND THAT THE MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS STILL RUNS

So far I agree with Mrs. Wiles in thinking Mr. Lacey the pick of the house; but my opinion is of less weight than it might be since I have not yet met the others, except in the most casual way, at the front door, when we say how fine it is or how exceedingly probable is rain, and so part. But no London house of apartments could possibly shelter two men as attractive as Mr. Lacey.

We came into knowledge of each other by the merest chance. I was returning very late at night, and found, seated on the top step fondling a cat, the first-floor-back. I knew him by sight, of course, owing to the organ-grinder scena, but we had not spoken.

"I'm glad you've come," he said; "I've been here for nearly an hour, and the bell's broken and I've left my latch-key somewhere. I was banking on the chance of one of the others coming in late."

I let him in and he bade farewell to his companion. "Poor thing," he said, "she's so miserable. She's just going to have kittens. It's a hard world for women."

Since then we have walked into London together now and then, and I have taken him to the Zoo on Sundays. He is at his best there. He seems to love and understand all animals, and he knows a good deal about them. In fact, it was he who introduced me to the giant toad who eats worms behind the scenes at the Reptile House. No one who has not seen this miracle of dining would believe either in the length or quickness of the toad's tongue.

Lacey is a little spare man, very active and restless, with a clean-cut aquiline nose, sensitive mouth, alert grey eyes, and a brow which extends to the back of his head. His hands are delicate and strong and always perfectly kept, although his clothes can be rather shabby. His nose and his name, Nathan, combined, have led people to suppose him a Jew; but he has no Jewish blood.

"Why my father gave me such a name beats me," he says, "and why I never had enough pluck to change it beats me even more. But he was a good old soul and he chose it deliberately; and I have gone back on him sufficiently as it is. But what chance has a Christian called Nathan? He is doubly handicapped, for everyone thinks him a Jew and acts accordingly, and not being a Jew he cannot profit or retaliate. If I had been a Jew I should be a millionaire to-day. The chances I've had! But it is my destiny to be unable to carry through any speculation. I acquire at top prices and sell at bottom: that's me. Or else I get bored with bargaining and give the infernal thing away. I have the wish, but not the instinct--that's the trouble. I make the most pathetic efforts to be cunning, but it's all no good."

Without such talk his face tells me that the world has dealt him some hard blows; but he has never given in. He has the finest of all breastplates--enthusiasm; and to this he adds that other trusty buckler against the arrows of fate, a short memory. I mean a short memory for his own troubles: it is long enough if he promises to do anything for you. The rapidity of his mental recovery is amazing. If he were sentenced to death and on his way to the Tyburn gallows from Newgate, he would see, long before the cart reached Chancery Lane, something in the streets so interesting that all recollection of the rope would be effaced.

Lacey is more intelligent and sympathetic than most persons, but the trait which distinguishes him chiefly from the mass of his fellows is his impulsive, generous helpfulness and his desire that you should share in any good secret. He simply cannot leave any house or any acquaintance quite as he finds them. He had not been in our sitting-room for five minutes the first time I invited him in, before he had noticed that we wanted new candle-shades. "You've got the wrong kind of holder too," he said. "You should get those heavy ones that slip down automatically as the candle burns. Give me a piece of paper and I'll let you have the address. And here's the address of a little woman who makes the most exquisite shades."

It is characteristic of Lacey that he knows so many little women who want a helping hand. Always little women or devilish unlucky women. In fact, he is the best friend the unlucky ever had: they gravitate to him as by a natural law.

He is the frankest man I ever met and certainly one of the most engaging. He has no reticences at all. His character is public property. And this without any swagger of disclosure, but naturally and simply. He says all that he feels and thinks at the same moment that he feels and thinks it: in fact, speech is a part of the feeling and the thought. Without this articulation both would be incomplete. But although so frank currently, he does not refer much to his past. His present occupation is secretary to one of the London Art clubs, and during their exhibitions he sits at a table and arranges for the sale of the few pictures which attract the few persons who can find money for such luxuries after having paid their chauffeur's bills. He always has a scheme for adding to his income. One day he has bought for a few shillings a grimy oil-painting which when cleaned and restored will fetch thousands. This morning he was all on fire to open a restaurant in a novel place, somewhere off Fleet Street or in the city itself. The novelty consists in limiting the food provided strictly to chops, hot, with hot buttered toast, and chops, cold, with salad. Nothing else at all, except drink. I don't see why the place should fail; but I feel sure that if it is started and made profitable Lacey will not be the chief receiver of the profits.

"You see," he says, "my difficulty. I can't run a restaurant. I should hate it too much. What I want--what men like me want--is a decent financier to pay us for our ideas and for assisting in making them practicable, and then to let us go. But the worst of it is, that few things succeed unless the man who invented them goes through with it. But how could I? There's not only the horror of spending beautiful days among chops hot and chops cold, but I should pay everyone too much."

"How did you come to think of it?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "I thought of it yesterday. I let my chop get cold owing to all kinds of distractions, and then found it delicious. 'This is the food for busy men,' I said, and in the late afternoon I walked down Fleet Street and looked for a suitable site. That's where I stopped. A really capable man would have found the site and arranged for the restaurant. But my fate," he said, "is to make money for other people; never for myself. I have never touched a scheme that did not fail, and I have never given anyone else a piece of financial advice that was not successful. All the horses I ever backed have fallen dead at the starting gate. That's my luck. But otherwise--except for money--I don't think I'm so unlucky. For one thing I can always sleep, and I'm never ill."

Lacey always has little odds and ends of information such as no one else can supply. The other day, for example, he had heard what muffin and crumpet men do in the summer. I don't say all of them, but one at any rate. He sews chenille spots on ladies' veils.

Lacey also collects strange names and words, and just now is in transports of delight over a country cobbler's bill which included a charge of fourpence for "unsqueakening" a pair of boots.

Naomi likes him no less than I do; and since husbands and wives, I have noticed, do not always agree about friends, this is most satisfactory. He likes her, too, and brings her little offerings which I feel sure he can ill afford. "You shouldn't buy all these things," Naomi says; to which he replies, "Buy! I never buy anything. Now and then I pick up something; but I never pay anything for it."

Last night, for example, he brought her a sampler for her collection--a peculiarly amusing one, made by Katherine Vallance, who finished it on the 5th of August 1783.

"It never ought to be given to you," said Mr. Lacey, "since it was obviously made for a plain woman; but I'm sure you'll like it."

The verse runs thus:

What is the blooming tincture of the skin To peace of mind and harmony within? What the bright sparkling of the finest eye To the soft soothing of a calm reply?

Can comeliness of form, of shape, of air, With comeliness of words or deeds compare? No, those at first th' unwary heart may gain, But these, these only, can the heart retain!

One wonders how the little Katherine came to set about embroidering those sentiments. But perhaps it was not a little Katherine at all, but a maturer one who had been jilted for a prettier face, and this was at once her consolation and revenge.

Naomi's samplers offer a complete scheme of placid rectitude. Whether it was really easier to be good a hundred and more years ago than now one cannot know; but the testimony of the woolwork of the time makes virtue almost automatic. Thus, one of Naomi's samplers (the work of Lydia Vickers, aged ten) begins with this inquiry:

How shall the young preserve their ways from all pollution free?

That was the question. The answer comes promptly:

By making still their course of life with Thy commands agree.

Nothing could be simpler; except perhaps the instructions of the dying Sir Walter Scott to his son-in-law and biographer: "My dear, be a good man; be virtuous; be religious. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here." Those surely were less complex times. To-day--well, my Utopia, if ever I framed one, would be a land where the laws demanded that people should be vicious. Then one would be able to count at any rate on a little virtue. If no man might live with a woman in any but an irregular union, there would be at once quite a run on honest matrimony and the Law Courts would be full of desperately wicked monogamists; while if everyone was expected to steal and swindle, there would soon be an extensive criminal class who respected property.