Part 12

It was Miss Ling, who had been crying, undoubtedly, for her Sunday bonnet-strings were spotted as with rain, and her clean handkerchief was reduced to a damp wad. Said she:

"I have talked to that poor thing upstairs, as a woman of my age is privileged to do. And she has softened wonderful, Solomon, and from what she has owned--has seen the shame and wickedness of her life clear, and longed to be delivered from it--this many and many a day, I'm sure! So if you'll kindly whistle up a four-wheeler, I'll make bold--being late for the speaking at the Judd Street Branch Hall!--to take her down to the Christian Mission Army Headquarters in the Whitechapel Road. Where I shall find not only the General, as they call Mr. Booth, but Mrs. Booth, ready and willing, please Heaven! to help the poor soul to a better life! And though Lilla has gone home to spend Sunday with her mother at Southampton Mews, I'll stop there passing and send a note in, and she'll come round and dish up dinner--and don't you, either of you, dream of waiting a minute for me! Now, I'm going back to Miss Morency--though her real name is nothing like so grand as that, poor creature!"

She turned at the door to nod and smile and say: "And her and me will carry down her box between us, so don't show yourselves to shame her poor swelled face before the cabman."

"There's a woman!" said Mr. Knewbit exultantly, a few minutes later, as the hall-door shut and the cab-door banged, and the vehicle containing the Daughter of Rahab and the Woman Above Rubies rattled away in the direction of Holborn Circus.

"I wonder you----" P. C. Breagh was beginning, when he stopped himself on the brink of an indiscretion.

"Eh?..." interrogated Mr. Knewbit. "What? ... Oh, but I did, though!"

Mr. Knewbit rubbed his chin, which needed shaving, and shook his head in a despondent way.

"I did. She was thirty-one when the Earl and Countess pensioned her--thirty-one pound a year For Life they promised.... And it's been paid regularly, going on for nineteen year now. And in the second year I came to lodge here early in January, and finding her a comfortable, cleanly, kindly creature, I stopped on--and all but asked her to marry me next time New Year came round. On the following anniversary I took the plunge! after reading a passage of Solomon's peculiarly applicable to my case. '_He that hath found a good wife hath found a good thing,_' it was. Turned it up by accident, and showed it to her, and asked her. And she said No! And goes on saying it--though I ask her for the last time regularly every year. Here's the gal coming down the area-steps. Now that meat and pudding's off my conscience, I shall put on my boots for an airing before dinner. And while I'm gone--try your hand at a neat article in moderate paragraphs describing the methods of that"--Mr. Knewbit cast about for a new term--"that Man-eating Alligator in the Euston Road. What was the name of the place? 'Royal Copenhagen Hotel!' ... Why, it fairly smells of roguery! 'Royal Greenhorn' would be pretty well up to the mark."

Mr. Knewbit returned, just as the little servant pronounced dinner to be in danger of spoiling--in a cab; and thereupon ensued much jolting and bumping, suggestive of the conveyance of heavy articles up the doorsteps into the hall. Where, being summoned from the kitchen by a bellow, P. C. Breagh recognized his own trunks and book-boxes, and wrung the hand of his good genius with a grateful swelling of the heart, and an irrepressible watering of the eyes.

"It was so kind!--and suppose I never am able to pay you--or keep you waiting a devil of a time?" he protested incoherently.

"Young fellow," said Mr. Knewbit, scowling with his heavy brows and twinkling pleasantly from under them. "You are a gentleman born and bred and taught. You must have your Books to keep up your Latin and Greek and other learning--and to keep up your appearance you must have your clothes. No man is so down in the world that he can afford to go downer. This is my opinion, and also Miss Ling's!"

"And to-morrow Mr. Breagh will find poor Miss Morency's room swept and scrubbed and got ready for him," said Miss Ling that evening, during Mr. Knewbit's absence. "And the rent is--including Kitchen Board with myself and Mr. Knewbit, who likes homeliness, sixteen shillings per week. And if I trust Mr. Breagh for a month--that will be a chance for him of getting work to do. And that he will turn from nothing that will bring him in an honest living, I am certain; and that he will justify the confidence of Mr. Knewbit, I am equally sure!"

Said P. C. Breagh, rather chokily:

"I hope to God I may one day be able to thank you both as I should like to! You don't know what you have done for me, either of you! But I will--will repay you, I swear!"

She said in her quaint way:

"What obligation there may be could be repaid now--with Mr. Breagh's permission. He saw that most unhappy girl to-day.... He has seen a-many--many like her! If he would promise me--never to bring about a fall like that, or help to drag a head so fallen, lower! Perhaps I take a liberty," said Miss Ling, "and presume, being almost a stranger.... Yet I ask it of Mr. Breagh, I do indeed!"

He gave the promise, in words that were broken and hurried, and with eyes that shunned her plain, kind, earnest face. She said:

"There will be a beautiful young lady, one of these days, all the happier for that promise Mr. Breagh has given. And I hope he won't think me unjust--because I am a woman! and blind to the wreck and ruin that my sex can bring about. I knew a young man, once; who was good, and honest, and worthy; and engaged to marry a young person of his own rank in life...."

Carolan remembered Mr. Knewbit's story of the faithless underbutler.

"He went Abroad to Foreign Countries," said Miss Ling, mildly, "sailing on a ship that voyaged for months at a time. I am told that the women are very beautiful in the islands that he visited; and somehow or another, he was led away...."

Though she looked at Carolan, her regard was curiously impersonal. It was as though she saw the wraith of some face once dear, and although changed, never to be forgotten, appear within the outlines of the face that looked back at her.

"The ship sailed Home without him. He wrote--by another vessel--to the young woman he was to have married, begging her forgiveness.... He had loved her, he said, and looked to be happy with her. But the sunshine and perfume and color of them foreign places, and the spell of the beauty of their wild brown foreign women was over him. He could not come back.... He never may come back again.... But if it happened so--and he, being old and worn, and weary of strange ways and distant places, was looking for an honest roof to shelter him, and a loving heart to lean upon at the last...."

"He would find both here, I know!" said Carolan, gently.

She started and, recalling herself, said in a changed tone:

"Mr. Breagh must excuse my having delayed him here a-talking. To work and bustle is more natural to me!"

He took her hand, and having learned in Germany to pay such pretty homage without looking foolish, he stooped above it and touched it with his lips. She smiled her wise, kind smile, and said with a touching simplicity:

"Mr. Breagh is good enough to honor a poor, hard, working hand!"

He said, and the tone had the ring of sincerity:

"I wish, with all my heart, I were worthier of touching it!"

And so went upstairs to sleep in Mr. Ticking's bed.

XVII

"My student-cap and _schläger_ and the silver-mounted beer-horn the English Colony gave me, and my mother's Crucifix" found their places on the walls of the clean and comfortable room, and upon cheap stained-deal shelves the books of which Mr. Knewbit had spoken so respectfully were ranged, waiting to refresh their owner's memory whenever he chose to dip into them.

The sharkish manager of the "Royal Copenhagen Hotel" had been cowed into giving up the detained luggage by Mr. Knewbit's assurance that the story of his knavery was even then taking literary form under the skilled hand of a young and aspiring journalist of his (Knewbit's) own acquaintance, and might shortly appear in a newspaper to the confusion of the said manager, unless the property was surrendered upon payment of a corrected version of the bill.

These terms being hastily accepted, the Rules of Fair Play, according to Mr. Knewbit, demanded that the written record of the manager's iniquity should be consigned to Miss Ling's kitchen-fire.

"Not that it ain't a pity, for it ain't half bad for a beginner, though wanting in what I call snap and sparkle. But honor is honor--and if Mr. Ticking reads this knowing you're not going to use it--you'll find the story cropping up presently in the _Camberwell Clarion_ or the _Islington Excelsior_.... Couldn't you do something else--just for a taster? Or haven't you something finished and put away and forgot?"

P. C. Breagh finally disinterred from the litter of manuscript notes at the bottom of a book-box, a scrawled description of a duel between two Freshmen at a well-known tavern and concert-room outside the walls of Schwürz-Brettingen. The humors of the battle, waged in a low-ceiled room in the upper story, crowded with chaffing, drinking, smoking students; the marvelous nature of the defensive armor worn by the inexperienced _Füchse_, the blows that fell flat, the final entanglement of their swords, and abandonment of these unfamiliar weapons in favor of fisticuffs, made Mr. Knewbit chuckle, and won the suffrages of Mr. Ticking; who said the fight and the bit of knock-about at the end was nearly good enough to be put on at the Halls.

Mr. Ticking was a journalist who possessed a knack of rhyme, penned comic ditties for Lion Comiques, when these gentlemen would sing them,--and lived in the hope of getting a Burlesque produced at a West-End Theater one day. He had educated himself because you couldn't get on if you were not educated. He could not have explained to you how the process had been carried out. By dexterously angling matter for short paragraphs from the swirl of happenings about him, he contrived--between the _Camberwell Clarion_, the _Islington Excelsior_, and the _Afternoon_, a late daily published in Fleet Street--to net some three pounds at the end of each week. Thirty shillings of this went to support an aged and invalid mother resident at Brixton; and if you had lauded Mr. Ticking as a heroic exemplar of filial virtues, he would have been excessively surprised. Though if you had told him that he wrote Burlesque better than Byron, he would have believed you implicitly.

Mr. Mounteney, Miss Ling's ladylike gentleman, proved to be a tall, stout, elderly, rather depressed individual, whose gold-rimmed glasses, attached to a broad black ribbon, sat a little crookedly upon a high, pink Roman nose. His light blue eyes were over-tried and rather watery, his hair had come off at the top, leaving his crown bald and shiny; his customary attire was a rather seedy black frock-coat, a drab vest with pearl buttons, and rather baggy brown trousers, and he wore turned-down collars and black ribbon neckties, and displayed onyx studs and links in a carefully preserved shirt. Pieces of paper protected his cuffs, invariably covered with memoranda written in violet-ink-pencil, referring to the most delicate and confidential affairs.

For Mr. Mounteney, under the _nom de guerre_ of "Araminta," edited the "Happiness, Health, and Beauty" column of that fashionable feminine monthly, the _Ladies' Mentor_, into whose bureau, according to Mr. Mounteney, a vast correspondence,--penned by the wives and daughters of what Mr. Mounteney termed the Flower of Britain's Nobility and Gentry, as by their governesses and maids, and the wives and daughters of their butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers,--continually flowed. Signing themselves by fancy names, these confiding ones would put questions concerning matters of the toilette and so forth, the Answers to which interrogations, with the pseudonyms prefixed, were inserted month by month.

"_Little Fairy_.--A lady who weighs fourteen stone need not necessarily give up waltzing.

"_Ruby_.--We should recommend you to powder it.

"_Ravenlocks_.--To stand in the sun too soon after applying is prejudicial to a successful result.

"_Peri_.--Try peppermint."

Or the bosom of Araminta, guarded by the onyx studs and the black pince-nez ribbon, would be made, according to its owner, the receptacle of confidences calculated, if revealed, to convulse Society to its core. Thus burdened with secrets, it weighed heavily on Mr. Mounteney. When lachrymose with gin-and-water, to which cooling beverage he was rather addicted, he would with tears deplore the wreck of a once noble constitution, caused by reason of emotional strain. But he never gave any of his correspondents away. And being of a kindly disposition, he induced the Editor of the _Ladies' Mentor_ to read and accept a brief, mildly-humorous article, descriptive of a German ladies' cake-and-coffee party; the details having been long ago previously supplied by a fellow-student at Schwärz-Brettingen, and worked up by P. C. Breagh.

Several other social paragraphs by the same hand found their way, thanks to Mr. Ticking's introduction, into the columns of the _Islington Excelsior_. In recognition, P. C. Breagh, producing pairs of basket-hilted swords, pads, cravats and goggles from one of the cases rescued from the hotel manager, instructed Mr. Ticking in the noble art of fence.

Their thrusts, lunges and stampings seriously threatening the stability of the third-floor landing, these combats were transferred to the back-yard in fine weather, and permitted in the kitchen when it was wet. And Mr. Ticking, though he never mastered the science of the _schläger_, inducted P. C. Breagh into the mysteries of boating and velocipeding,--having a cutter-rigged Thames sailing-boat in housing near Chelsea Bridge Stairs, and a huge-wheeled bone-shaker of the prevailing type stowed away in a decrepit conservatory adjoining the bathroom on Miss Ling's second floor.

Mr. Mounteney could not be prevailed upon to handle what he stigmatized as "deadly weapons," or to risk his person on the whirling wheel, while even fresh-water boating caused him to suffer from symptoms not distantly resembling those peculiar to the malady of the ocean. But, flabby as the ladylike gentleman appeared, he was a vigorous and tireless pedestrian, able to reduce Mr. Ticking, who was not unhandy in the usage of his feet, into a human pulp, and walk Mr. Knewbit, who had reason to pride himself upon his powers of locomotion, completely off his legs.

Expeditions were made to Addiscombe, in the green swelling Surrey country, where the once famous East India College was founded in 1812, and sold and dismantled in 1858 upon the transfer of the Company to the Crown. Of the 3,600 cadets who were trained here, the names of Lawrence, Napier, Durand, and Roberts are written upon the rolls in letters of undimming gold. Or to Sydenham with its acres of glittering crystal, its matchless fountains, and the view from the North Tower, extending over six counties and compassing the whole course of the Thames. Or to Ascot, with its stretches of sandy heathland, its noble racecourse and its woods of fir and birch, would the lady-like gentleman, accompanied by one or the other or both of his young friends, betake himself upon a highday or a holiday, when duchesses ceased from troubling and milliners were at rest. Or they would make for Hampton Court or Bushey Park, or the ancient manor of Cheshunt, or to Chigwell, immortalized by Dickens, where in the oak-wainscoted dining-room of the King's Head, such rare refreshment of cold beef and salad, apple pie and Stilton cheese could be had, and washed down by the soundest and brightest of ales; then even "Araminta" was tempted to forget the crushing responsibilities inseparable from the delicate position of adviser upon Health, Happiness, and Beauty to the feminine flower of England's nobility and gentry, and eat and drink like a navvy free from care.

And upon the return of the three wearied pedestrians from these excursions, there would be a cheery supper in Mr. Ticking's room, or in Mr. Mounteney's, or, best of all, in Miss Ling's clean and comfortable kitchen, with more beer and more tobacco,--though by reason of a digestion impaired by the continual wear and tear of his fair clients' confidences, or by excessive indulgence in tea, Mr. Mounteney restricted himself to the mildest of Turkish cigarettes.

Mr. Knewbit, who reveled in the growing popularity of his _protégé_, though he might in secret have shaken his head over the articles and paragraphs published in the _Ladies' Mentor_ and the _Islington Excelsior_, learned very willingly to whistle a beer-waltz, knocking the bottom of his tumbler on the table in time to the tune; to say "_Prosit_" when he drank, and vocally unite in the final melodic outburst of: "_O jerum, jerum, jerum, jerum, la la la!_" In which historic and legendary burden Miss Ling would also join, and laugh until the tears ran down.

Of the junior-staff room of the _Early Wire_, a bare, gaunt place, lighted by three seldom-washed windows looking on a sooty yard, or by six flaring gas-jets by night or in foggy weather, Carolan was, by the interest of Mr. Ticking, one day made free. Names of power were cut with penknives on the ink-splashed deal tables, and the bottoms of the cane-seated chairs had given way under the weight of personalities now famous, men who were paid for a single article as much as Ticking earned in a year.

And thus P. C. Breagh joined the gallant company of the Free Lances of Fleet Street, and very soon had its offices and eating-houses, its haunts and traditions by heart. What demi-gods walked upon those historic flags and cobblestones! Russell, the pioneer and King of War Correspondents, and Simpson of Crimean fame, whose war-sketches for the _Illustrated London News_ had set England ablaze in '54-5, and George Augustus Sala, and Macready--long since retired from the stage in 1870,--the veteran Charles Mathews and Byron of burlesque fame, and Bulwer Lytton, and Tennyson and Browning, and Planche and Edmund Yates, and genial, handsome Tom Robertson, who was to die, with his laurels green upon him, in another year. All these were pointed out to the young man, with certain places rendered for ever sacred by the footsteps of Dickens and Thackeray, and other of the Immortals who have passed beyond these voices into peace.

And into the world of Music and the Drama, our fortunate youth, by virtue of his initiation into the cheery brotherhood of Pressmen, was now admitted. There were free admissions for Popular Concerts where one could hear Professor Burnett and Signor Piatti play the piano and violoncello, and Santley most gloriously sing, and Sims Reeves deliver Beethoven's incomparable "Adelaida" with that splendor of voice and style that will never be surpassed. The Christy Minstrels of St. James's Hall beguiled our hero of a stealthy tear or two, and made him roar with laughter; and Blanchard's Drury Lane Pantomime of "Beauty and the Beast," with Kate Santley as Azalea, the Peri, and Miss Vokes as the lovely Zemira, was an eye-opener to a youth who had witnessed only provincial productions in his native country, and half a dozen performances of Schiller's "Robbers," "Don Carlos," and "The Stranger" of Kotzebu as given by a stock-company of Bavarian actors at the Theater of Schwärz-Brettingen.

Also our hero was privileged to witness the performances of Mrs. Wood as Miss Hardcastle in "She Stoops to Conquer," and afterwards in the extravaganza of "La Belle Sauvage," at the St. James's Theater, and J. S. Clarke, then drawing the town with "Amongst the Breakers" at the Strand.

At the Olympic, Patti Josephs was touching the hearts of the British Public as Little Em'ly, Rowe was tickling people to laughter with the unctuosities and impecuniosities of Micawber, a certain Mr. Henry Irving was holding his audiences spellbound with the sardonic slyness and hypocritical cunning displayed in his performance of Uriah Heep, and beautiful Mrs. Rousby was breaking hearts at the Queen's Theater. And evenings spent with these, or with Professor Pepper at the Polytechnic, or the German Reeds, who were playing Gilbert and Sullivan's little operas, and "Cox and Box" at the Gallery of Illustration,--were crowned by suppers in the grill-room of "The Albion" in Drury Lane, or at Evan's at the north-west corner of Covent Garden. And these were merry times and merry mimes, my masters, and we shall not look upon their like again.

And in the environment I have endeavored to depict, and with the associates I have tried to delineate, and with the pleasant hum and swirl of this new life setting the tune for his young pulses and mingling with his blood, Carolan's temperament recovered its elasticity, and his character developed apace. The magic gift of sympathy found in the gutter on that night of homeless, hungry wandering was his now, never to be lost or alienated. He had learned much when he had discovered how to fit himself inside the ginger kitten's ragged skin.

The bond of brotherhood, established between a shaggy-haired boy and all other created beings capable of joy and susceptible to suffering, would hold unbroken through all the years to come. We are aware that the confidence of Mr. Knewbit had been won that morning on Waterloo Bridge, and we have heard Miss Ling (not ordinarily given to broach the subject of the faithless underbutler) tell him in her simple way of the desertion that had left her kind heart empty and sore. We may know also that Mr. Ticking revealed, with the fact of the existence of the invalid mother resident at Brixton, the secret that he was beloved by a certain Annie, the orphan daughter of a deceased relative, who lived with the old lady as housekeeper and nurse. Annie, it seemed, had a little fortune of her own, and was so kind, so clever and so charming, that only the indiscreetly-evident anxiety of Ticking's mother to bring about a match, and the too plainly manifested willingness of Annie to accept the hand of Mr. Ticking, were it offered--held him back from becoming an engaged man. As it was, he spoke, in somber whispers, of an amatory entanglement with a splendid creature, not good as Annie was good, but possessing the beauty in whose baleful luster honest prettiness pales, and the charm whose sorcery kills the conscience, and wakens the scorching desires of man.

"Passion!--there's no going against that, you know!" he would say, wagging his head dismally, "and if ever you see Leah, you'll understand."