A Dog with a Bad Name Part 51

"Oh yes, I know," said Jonah; "but it's all very well for you, who've got years to get right in. It's too short notice for me to begin all that over again. I don't want to hear about it."

He lingered on day after day, and it was absolutely necessary for Jeffreys to go and seek work in order to keep even that wretched roof above their heads.

One evening when he returned with a few coppers, Jonah met him with a face brighter than any that he had yet seen.

"I've had some one here to-day. A better sort than you. One that's got a right to talk about what's better. A lady, John, or else an angel.

Did _you_ send her?"

"I? No; I know no ladies."

"I don't know how it was, I could tell her anything--and, I say, John, it would make you cry to hear her voice. It did me. _You_ never made me cry, or saw me; I hate to hear _you_ preach; but she--why, she doesn't preach at all, but she says all you've got to say a hundred times better."

He was excited and feverish that night, and in his sleep murmured sc.r.a.ps of the gentle talk of his ministering angel, which even from his lips fell with a reflected sweetness on the trouble-tossed spirit of the watcher.

Jeffreys had succeeded in getting a temporary job which took him away during the next two days. But each night on his return he found his invalid brighter and softened in spirit by reason of his angel's visits.

"She'll come to-morrow, John. There's magic in her, I tell you. I see things I never saw before. You've been kind to me, John, and given up a lot for me, but if you were to hear her--"

Here the dying youth could get no farther.

He seemed much the same in the morning when Jeffreys started for work.

The last words he said as his friend departed were--

"She's coming again to-day."

When Jeffreys came home in the evening the garret was silent, and on the bed lay all that remained on earth of the poor wrecked life which had been so strangely linked with his own.

As he stood over the lifeless body his eyes fell on a sc.r.a.p of paper lying on the pillow. It was folded and addressed in pencil, "To the fellow-lodger."

Jeffreys caught it eagerly, and in a turmoil of agitation read the few lines within.

"Your friend was not alone when he died, peacefully, this afternoon. He left a message for you. 'Tell him he was right when he told me I had a chance. If it had not been for him I should have lost it.' He also said, 'Some day he may see mother and tell her about me. Tell her I died better than I lived.' Dear friend, whose name I do not know, don't lose heart. G.o.d is merciful, and will be your friend when every one else is taken from you."

It was not the words of this touching little message from the dead which brought a gasp to Jeffreys' throat and sent the colour from his cheeks as he read it. The writing, hasty and agitated as it was, was a hand he had seen before. He had in his pocket an envelope, well-worn now, addressed to him months ago in the same writing, and as he held the two side by side he knew Raby had written both.

He quitted the garret hurriedly, and entered the room of a family of five who lived below him.

"Mrs Pratt," said he to the ragged woman who sat nursing her baby in the corner, "did you see who Trimble had with him when he died?"

"He's dead, then, sir"--these fellow-lodgers of Jeffreys called him "sir" in spite of his misery. "I knew that cough couldn't last. My Annie's begun with it: she'll go too. It's been hard enough to keep the children, but it will be harder to lose them!" she cried.

Jeffreys went to the bed where the little consumptive girl lay in a restless sleep, breathing heavily.

"Poor little Annie!" said he; "I did not know she was so ill."

"How could you? Yes, I saw the lady come down--a pretty wee thing. She comes and goes here. Maybe when she hears of Annie she'll come to her."

"Do you know her name?"

"No. She's a lady, they say. I heard her singing upstairs to Trimble; it was a treat! So Trimble's dead. You'll be glad of some help, I expect? If you'll mind the children, Mr John, I'll go up and do the best we can for the poor fellow."

And so Jeffreys, with the baby in his arms, sat beside the little invalid in that lonely room, while the mother, putting aside her own sorrows, went up and did a woman's service where it was most needed.

Next day he had the garret to himself. That letter--how he treasured it!--changed life for him. He had expected, when Jonah's illness ended, to drift back once more into the bitterness of despair. But that was impossible now.

He made no attempt to see the angel of whose visits to the alley he now and again heard. Indeed, whether he was in work or not, he left early and came back late on purpose to avoid a meeting. He had long been known by his neighbours only as John, so that there was no chance of her discovering who he was. Sometimes the memory of that October day in Regent's Park came up to haunt him and poison even the comfort of the little letter. Yet why should she not have forgotten him? and why should not Scarfe, the man with a character, be more to her than he, the man with none? Yet he tried bravely to banish all, save the one thought that it _was_ she who bade him hope and take courage.

He worked well and patiently at the temporary manual labour on which he was employed, and when that came to an end he looked about resolutely for more.

Meanwhile--do not smile, reader--he made an investment of capital! In other words, he spent threepence in pen, ink, paper, and a candle, and spent one night in his lonely garret writing. It was a letter, addressed to a stranger, on a public question. In other words, it was an article to a London paper on, "Life in a Slum, by One who Lives There." It was a quiet, unsensational paper, with some practical suggestions for the improvement of poor people's dwellings, and a few true stories of experiences in which the writer himself had taken a part.

He dropped it doubtfully into the editor's box and tried to forget about it. He dared not look at the paper next day, and when two days pa.s.sed and he heard nothing, he concluded that the bolt had missed fire.

But it was not so. A week later, the postman entered Storr Alley--an unheard-of event--and left a letter. It contained a money order for ten shillings, and read:--

"The editor encloses ten shillings for the letter on Slum Life, contributed by Mr John to the paper of the 23rd. He can take two more on the same subject at the same terms, and suggests that Mr John should deal specially with--" And here the editor gave an outline of the topics on which the public would be most likely to desire information.

With overflowing heart, and giving Raby the credit, he sat down and wrote the two articles.

His first half-sovereign went in a deed of mercy. Little Annie lay dead in her bed the night it arrived. Jeffreys that morning, before he started to work, had watched the little spark of life flicker for the last time and go out. The mother, worn-out by her constant vigils, lay ill beside her dead child. The father, a drunkard, out of work, deserted the place, and the two other children, the baby, and the sister scarcely more than baby, wailed all day for cold and hunger. What could he do but devote the first-fruits of his pen to these companions in distress? The half-sovereign sufficed for the child's funeral, with a little over for the sick mother. For the rest, he took the baby to his own garret for a night or two, and tended it there as best he could.

The two fresh letters to the paper in due time brought a sovereign; but at the same time a chilling notification to the effect that the editor did not need further contributions, and would let Mr John know if at any future time he required his services.

It was the abrupt closing of one door of promise. Still Jeffreys, with hope big within him, did not sit and fret.

Literary work might yet be had, and meanwhile bodily labour must be endured.

Towards the beginning of December, any one taking up one of the London penny papers might have observed, had he been given to the study of such matters, three advertis.e.m.e.nts. Here they are in their proper order:--

"Should this meet the eye of John Jeffreys, late private secretary to a gentleman in c.u.mberland, he is earnestly requested to communicate with his friend and late employer."

Readers of the agony column were getting tired of this advertis.e.m.e.nt.

It had appeared once a week for the last six months, and was getting stale by this time.

The next advertis.e.m.e.nt was more recent, but still a trifle dull:--

"Gerard Forrester.

"If Gerard Forrester (son of the late Captain Forrester, of the-- Hussars) who was last heard of at Bolsover School, in October, 18--, where he met with a serious accident, should see this, he is requested to communicate with Messrs. Wilkins & Wilkins, Solicitors, Blank Street, W.C., from whom he will hear something to his advantage. Any person able to give satisfactory information leading to the discovery of the said Gerard Forrester, or, in the event of his death, producing evidence of his decease, will be liberally rewarded."

The third advertis.e.m.e.nt, in another column, appeared now for the first time:--

"A young man, well educated, and a careful student of Bibliography, is anxious for literary work. Searches made and extracts copied.--Apply, J., 28a, Storr Alley, W.C."

It would have puzzled any ordinary observer to detect in these three appeals anything to connect them together. Jeffreys, however, glancing down the columns of the borrowed paper for a sight of his own advertis.e.m.e.nt, started and turned pale as his eye fell first on his own name, then on Forrester's.

It was like a conspiracy to bewilder and baffle him at the moment when hope seemed to be returning. He had convinced himself that his one chance was to break with every tie which bound him to his old life, and to start afresh from the lowest step of all. And here, at the outset, there met him two calls from that old life, both of which it was hard to resist. Mr Rimbolt, he decided to resist at all hazards. He still shuddered as he recalled the stiff rustle of a certain silk dress in Clarges Street, and preferred his present privations a hundredfold.

Even the thought of Percy, and the library, and Mr Rimbolt's goodness, could not efface that one overpowering impression.

The other advertis.e.m.e.nt perplexed and agitated him more. Who was this unknown person on whose behalf Messrs. Wilkins & Wilkins were seeking information respecting young Forrester? It might be Scarfe, or Mr Frampton, or possibly some unheard-of relative, interested in the disposal of the late gallant officer's effects. He could not a.s.sist the search. The little he knew was probably already known to the lawyers, yet it excited him wildly to think that some one besides himself was in search of the lad whose memory had haunted him for so many months, and whom, even in his most despairing moments, he had never quite given up for lost.