Aladdin of London Part 2

Alban despised himself for doing it, but he could never resist the temptation of staring through the windows of any mansion where a party happened to be held. The light and life of it all made a sure appeal to him. He could criticise the figures of beautiful women and remain ignorant of the impa.s.sable abyss between their sphere and his own.

Sometimes, he would try to study the faces thus revealed to him, as in the focus of a vision, and to say, "That woman is utterly vain," or again, "There is a doll who has not the sense of an East End flower girl." In a way he despised their ignorance of life and its terrible comedies and tragedies. Little Lois Boriskoff, he thought, must know more of human nature than any woman in those a.s.semblies where, as the half-penny papers told him, cards and horses and motor-cars were the subjects chiefly talked about. It delighted him to imagine the abduction of one of these society beauties and her forcible detention for a month in Thrawl Street. How she would shudder and fear it all--and yet what human lessons might not she carry back with her. Let them show him a woman who could face such an ordeal unflinchingly and he would fall in love with her himself. The impertinence of his idea never once dawned upon him. He knew that his father's people had been formerly well-to-do and that his mother had often talked of birth and family. "I may be better than some of them after all," he reflected; and this was his armor against humiliation. What did money matter? The fine idealist of twenty, with a few coppers in his pocket, declared stoically that money was really of no consequence at all.

He lingered some five minutes outside the great house in St. James'

Square, watching the couples in the rooms above, and particularly interested in one face which appeared in, and disappeared from, a brilliantly lighted alcove twice while he was standing there. A certain grace of girlhood attended this apparition; the dress was rich and costly and exquisitely made; but that which held Alban's closer attention was the fact that the wearer of it unquestionably was a Pole, and not unlike little Lois Boriskoff herself. He would not say, indeed, that the resemblance was striking--it might have been merely that of nationality. When the girl appeared for the second time, he admitted that the comparison was rather wild. None the less, he liked to think that she resembled Lois and might also have heard the news from Warsaw to-day. Evidently she was the daughter of some rich foreigner in London, for she talked and moved with Continental animation and grace. The type of face had always made a sure appeal to Alban. He liked those broad contrasts of color; the clear, almost white, skin; the bright red lips; the open expressive eyes fringed by deep and eloquent lashes. This unknown was taller than little Lois certainly--she had a maturer figure and altogether a better carriage; but the characteristics of her nationality were as sure--and the boy fell to wondering whether she was also capable of that winsome sentiment and jealous frenzy which dictated many of the seemingly inconsequent acts of the little heroine of Thrawl Street. This he imagined to be quite possible. "They are great as a nation," he thought, "but most of them are mad. I will tell Lois to-morrow that I have seen her sister in St. James' Square. I shouldn't wonder if she knew all about this house and the party--and Boriskoff will, if she doesn't."

He contented himself with this; and the girl having disappeared from the alcove and a footman announced, in a terrible voice, that Lady Smigg's carriage barred the way, he turned from the house and continued upon his way to the "caves." It was then nearly one o'clock, and save for an occasional hansom making a dash to a club door, St. James' Street was deserted. Alban took one swift look up and down, crossed the street at a run and disappeared down the court which led to those amazing "tombs"

of which few in London save the night-birds and the builders so much as suspect the existence.

He did not go alone; he was not, as he thought, unwatched. A detective, commissioned by an unknown patron to follow him, crossed the road directly he had disappeared, and saying, "So that's the game," began to wonder if he also might dare the venture.

He, at least, knew well what he was doing and the cla.s.s of person he would be likely to meet down there in the depths of which even the police were afraid.

CHAPTER IV

THE CAVES

The "labyrinth" beneath the West End of London was rediscovered in our own time when the foundations for the Carlton Hotel and his Majesty's Theatre were laid. It is a network of old cellars, subterranean pa.s.sages and, it may even be, of disused conduits, extended from the corner of Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, away to the confines of St. James' Park--and, as more daring explorers aver, to the river Thames itself. Here is a very town of tunnels and arches, of odd angled rooms, of veritable caves and depths as dark as Styx. If, in a common way, it be shut by the circ.u.mstance of the buildings above to the riff-raff and night-hawks who would frequent it, there are seasons, nevertheless, when the laying of new foundations, the building of hotels and the demolition of ancient streets in the name of "improvement" fling its gates open to the more cunning of the "dest.i.tutes," and they flock there as rooks to a field newly sown.

Of these welcome opportunities, the building of the Carlton Hotel is the best remembered within recent times; but the erection of new houses off St. James' Street in the year 1903 brought the ladies and the gentlemen of the road again to its harborage; and they basked there for many weeks in undisputed possession. Molesting none and by none molested, it was an affair neither for the watchmen (whose glances askance earned them many a handsome supper) or for the police who had sufficient to do in the light of the street lamps that they should busy themselves with supposed irregularities where that light was not. The orgies thus became a nightly feature of the vagrant's life. There was no more popular hotel in London than the "Coal Hole," as the wits of the company delighted to style their habitation.

A city below a city! Indeed imagination might call it that. A replica of famous catacombs with horrid faces for your spectres, ghoulish women and unspeakable men groping in the darkness as though, vampire-like, afraid of the light. Why Alban Kennedy visited this place, he himself could not have said. Possibly a certain morbid horror of it attracted him. He had, admittedly, such a pa.s.sport to the caves as may be the reward of a shabby appearance and a resolute air. The criminal company he met with believed that he also was a criminal. Enjoying their confidence because he had never excited their suspicion, they permitted him to lie his length before reddened embers and hear tales which fire the blood with every pa.s.sion of anger and of hate. Here, in these caverns, he had seen men fight as dogs--with teeth and claws and resounding yells; he had heard the screams of a woman and the cries of helpless children. A sufficient sense of prudence compelled him to be but an apathetic spectator of these infamies. The one battle he had fought had been impotent to save the object of his chivalry.

When first he came here, heroic resolutions followed him. He had thrashed a ruffian who struck a woman, and narrowly escaped with his life for doing so. Henceforth he could but a.s.sent to a truce which implied mutual toleration; and yet he understood that his presence was not without its influence even on these irredeemables. Men called him "The Hunter," or in mockery "The Dook." He had done small services for one or two of them--even written a begging letter for a rogue who could not write at all, but posed as an "old public school man," fallen upon evil days. Alban was perfectly well aware that this was a shameless imposition, but his ideas of morality as it affected the relations of rich and poor were ever primitive and unstable. "If this old thief gets half a sovereign, what's it matter?" he would argue; "the other man stole his money, I suppose, and can well afford to pay up." Here was a gospel preached every day in Thrawl Street. He had never stopped to ask its truth.

Alban crossed St. James' Street furtively, and climbed, as an athlete should climb, the boarding which defended the entrance to this amazing habitation. A contented watchman, dozing by a comfortable fire, cared little who came or went and rarely bestirred himself to ask the question. There were two entrances to the caves: one cramped and difficult, the other broad and open; and you took your choice of them according to the position of the policeman on the beat. This night, or rather this morning, of the day following upon the meeting in Union Street, discovered Alban driven to the more hazardous way. His quick eye had detected, on the far side of the enclosure, an amiable flirtation between a man of law and a lady of the dusters; and avoiding both discreetly, he slipped into a trench of the newly made foundations and crawled as swiftly through an aperture which this descent revealed.

Here, laid bare by the picks and shovels of twentieth-century Trade Unionism, was a veritable Gothic arch, bricked up to the height of a tall man's waist, but open at the tympanum. Alban hoisted himself to the aperture and, slipping through, his feet discovered the reeking floor of a dank and dripping subway; and guiding himself now by hands outstretched and fingers touching the fungi of the walls, he went on with confidence until the roof lifted above him and the watch-fires of the confraternity were disclosed. He had come by now into a vast cellar not very far from the Carlton Hotel itself. There were offshoots everywhere, pa.s.sages more remote, the arches as of crypts, smaller apartments, odd corners which had guarded the casks five hundred years ago. Each of these could show you its little company safe harbored for the night; each had some face from which Master Timidity might well avert his eyes. But Alban went in amongst them as though he had been their friend. They knew his very footstep, the older "lags" would declare.

"All well, Jack?"

"All well, old cove."

"The Panorama come along?"

"Straight art of the coffee shawp, s'help me blind."

"Ship come in?"

"Two tharsand next Toosday--same as usual."

A lanky hawker, lying full length upon a sack, his pipe glowing in the darkness, exchanged these pleasantries with Alban at the entrance. There were fires by here and there in these depths and the smoke was often suffocating. The huddled groups declared all grades of ill-fortune and of crime; from that of the "pauper parson" to the h.o.a.riest house-breaker "resting" for a season. Alban's little set, so far as he had a "set" at all, consisted of the sometime curate of a fashionable West End Church, known to the company as the Archbishop of Bloomsbury; the Lady Sarah, a blooming, red-cheeked girl who sold flowers in Regent Street, "the Panorama," an old showman's son who had not a sixpenny piece in his pocket, but whose schemes were invariably about to bring him in "two thousand next Tuesday morning"; and "Betty," a pretty, fair-haired lad, thrown on the streets G.o.d knows how or by what callous act of indifferent parentage. Regularly as the clock struck, this quartette would gather in a tiny "chapel" of the cellars and sleep about a fire kindled in a grate which might have baked meats for the Tudors. They spoke of the events of the day with moderation and wise philosophy. It would be different to-morrow. Such was ever their text.

"My lord the Duke is late. Does aught of fortune keep your n.o.bility?"

The ex-parson made way for Alban, grandiloquently offering a niche upon the bare floor and a view of the reddening embers. The boy "Betty" was already asleep, while the Lady Sarah and "the Panorama" divided a fourpenny pie most faithfully between them. A reeking atmosphere of spirit (but not of water) testified to the general conviviality. A hum of conversation was borne in upon them from the greater cellar--at odd times a rough oath of protest or the mad complainings of a drunkard. For the most part, however, the night promised to be uneventful. Alban had never seen the Lady Sarah more gracious, and as for "the Panorama" he had no doubt whatever that his fortune was made.

"My contract for America's going through and I shall be out there with a show in a month," this wild youth said--and added patronizingly, "When I come back, it will be dinner upstairs, old chaps--and some of the best.

Do you suppose that I could forget you? I would as soon forget my father's grave."

They heard him with respect--no one differing from him.

"I shall certainly be pleased to accept your kind invitation," said the Archbishop, "that is, should circ.u.mstance--and Providence--enable me to redeem the waistcoat, without which--eh--hem--I understand no visitor would be admitted to those n.o.ble precincts."

The Lady Sarah expressed her opinion even more decidedly.

"Don't 'e talk," she said pleasantly, "can't you 'ear the thick 'uns a rattlin' in his mouse-trap. Poor little man and 'im a horphin. Stun me mother if I ain't a goin' ter Jay's termerrer ter buy mournin' in honor of him."

"I presume," continued the Archbishop, "that we shall all be admitted to this entertainment as it were--that is--as the colloquial expression goes--on the nod. It will be enough to mention that we are the proprietor's friends."

"You shall have a season-ticket for life, Archbishop. Just you tell me where you want a church built and I'll see that it's done. Of course I don't mind your chaff--I'm dead in earnest and the money will be there."

"A real contract this time?" Alban suggested kindly.

"A real contract. I saw Philips about it to-day, and he knows a man who is Pierpont Morgan's cousin. We are to open in New York in September and be in San Francisco the following week."

"Rather a long journey, isn't it, old chap?"

"Oh, they do those things out there. I'm told you play Hamlet one night and Oth.e.l.lo six hours afterwards, which is really the next night because of the long distances and the differences in the lat.i.tudes. Ask the Archbishop. I expect he hasn't forgotten all his geography."

"A Cambridge man," said the Archbishop, loftily, "despises geography.

Heat, light, electricity, the pure and the impure mathematics--these are his proper study. I rise superior to the occasion and tell you that San Francisco is a long way from New York. The paper in which I wrapped a ham sandwich yesterday--the advertis.e.m.e.nt of a shipping company, I may inform you--brings that back to my recollection. San Francisco is the thickness of two slices of stale bread from the seaport you mention. And I believe there are Red Indians in between."

The Lady Sarah murmured lightly the refrain of the old song concerning houses which stood in that annoying position; but Alban had already lighted a cigarette and was watching the girl's face critically.

"You've had some luck to-day, Sarah?"

"A bloomin' prophet and that I won't deny. Gar'n, Dowie."

"But you did have some luck?"

"Sure and certain. What d'ye fink? A bit of a boy, same as 'Betty' 'ere, 'e comes up and says, 'What'll ye take fer the whole bloomin' caravan?'

he says, 'for ter send ter a lidy?' 'Gentleman,' I says, 'I'm only a poor girl and a widered muver ter keep, and, gentleman, I can't tike less than two pound fer 'em sure and certain as there's a G.o.d in 'eaven, I can't.' 'Well,' says he, 'it's a blarsted swindle but I'll take 'em--and mind you deliver 'em ter the lidy yerself.' 'They shall go this very minute,' says I, 'and, oh, sir, G.o.d bless you both and may yer have long life and 'appiness ter-gether.' Strike me dead, wot d'yer think he said next? Why he arst me fer my bloomin' name, same as if I wus a Countess a steepin' art of a moter-kar at the door of Buckingem Peliss.

'What's yer name, girl?' says 'e. 'Sarah Geddes, an it please yer capting,' says I. 'Then send the bally flowers to Sarah Geddes,' says 'e, 'and take precious good care as she gets 'em.' Gawd's truth, yer could 'ave knocked me darn with a 'at pin. I never was took so suddin in all me life."

"I wonder you didn't have your dinner in the Carlton Hotel, Sarah."

"So I would 'a' done if I'd hev bed time ter chinge me dress. You orter know, Dook, as no lidy ever goes inter them plices in wot she's bin a wearin' afore she cleaned herself. I'ad ter go ter Marlborough 'Ouse ter tell the Prince of Wales, and that's wot kept me."

"Better luck next time, Sarah. So it only ran to a 'fourpenny' between you and 'the Panorama.'"

"You shall all dine with me next week," said the young man in question.

"On my honor, I'll give you the best dinner you ever had in your life.

As for Sarah here, I'm going to put her in a flower shop in Bond Street."