Aladdin of London Part 3

"Gar'n, silly, what 'ud I do in Bond Street? Much better buy the Archbishop a church."

The erstwhile clergyman did not take the suggestion, in good part.

"I have always doubted my ability to conduct the affairs of a parish methodically," he said, "that is--a little habit--a slight partiality to the drug called morphia is not in my favor. This, I am aware, is a drawback. The world judges my profession very harshly. A man in the city who counts the collection indifferently will certainly become Lord Mayor. The Establishment has no use for him--he is _de trop_, or as we might say, a drop too much. This I recognize in frankly declining our young friend's offer--with grateful thanks."

Sarah, the flower girl, seemed particularly amused by this frank admission. Feeling in the depth of her shawl she produced a capacious flask and a bundle of cigars.

"'Ere, boys," she said, "let's talk 'am and heggs. 'Ere's a drop of the best and five bob's worth of chimney afire, stun me mother if there ain't. I'm sick of talkin' and so's 'the Panerawma.' Light up yer sherbooks and think as you're in Buckingem Peliss. There ain't no 'arm thinkin' anyways."

"I dreamed last night," said the Archbishop very sadly, "that this cellar had become a cottage and that the sun was shining in it."

"I never dream," said "the Panorama," stoically; "put my head on the floor and I won't lift it until the clock strikes ten."

"Then begin now, my dear," exclaimed the Lady Sarah with a sudden tenderness, "put it there now and forget what London is ter you and me."

The words were uttered almost with a womanly tenderness, not without its influence upon the company. Some phrase spoken of Frivolity's mouth had touched this group of outcasts and spoken straight to their hearts. They bandied, pleasantries no more, but lighting the cigars--the Lady Sarah boldly charging a small clay pipe--they fell to an expressive silence, of introspection, it may be, or even of unutterable despair. The woman alone amongst them had not been cast down from a comparative alt.i.tude to this very abyss of dest.i.tution. For the others life was a vista far behind them; a vista, perchance, of a cottage and the sunshine, as the parson had said; an echo of voices from a forgotten world; the memory of a hand that was cold and of dead faces reproaching them. Such pauses are not infrequent in the conversation of the very poor. Men bend their heads to destiny less willingly than we think. The lowest remembers the rungs of the ladder he has descended.

Alban had lighted one of the cigars and he smoked it stoically, wondering again why the caves attracted him and what there was in this company which should not have made him ashamed of such a.s.sociations.

That he was not ashamed admitted of no question. In very truth, the humanities were conquering him in spite of inherited prejudice. Had the full account of it been written down by a philosopher, such a sage would have said that the girl Sarah stood for a type of womanly pity, of sympathy, and, in its way, of motherhood; qualities which demand no gift of birth for their appeal. The unhappy parson, too, was there not much of good in him, and might he not yet prove a human field worthy to be tilled by a husbandman of souls? His humor was kindly; his disposition gentle; his faults punished none but himself. And for what did "the Panorama" stand if not for the whole gospel of human hope without which no life may be lived at all? Alban had some glimmering of this, but he could not have set down his reasons in so many words. As for the little lad "Betty"--was not the affection they lavished upon him that which manhood ever owes to the weak and helpless. Search London over and you will not find elemental goodness in a shape more worthy than it was to be found in the caves--nor can we forego a moment's reflection upon the cant which ever preaches the vice of the poor and so rarely stops to preach their virtues.

This was the human argument of Alban's a.s.sociation, but the romantic must not be forgotten. More imaginative than most youths of his age, his boyish delight in these grim surroundings was less to him than a real and inspiring sense of the power of contrast they typified. Was he not this very night sleeping beneath some famous London house, it might be below that very temple of the great G.o.d Mammon, the Carlton Hotel? Far above him were the splendid rooms, fair sleepers in robes of lace, tired men who had earned enough that very day perhaps to feed all the hungry children in Thrawl Street for a lifetime and to remain rich men afterwards. Of what were the dreams of such as those--not of sunshine and a cottage as the old parson had dreamed, surely? Not of these nor of the devoted sacrifice of motherhood or of that gentle sympathy which the unfortunate so readily give their fellows. Not this certainly--and yet who should blame them? Alban, at least, had the candor to admit that he would be much as they were if his conditions of life were the same. He never deceived himself, young as he was, with the false plat.i.tudes of boastful altruists. "I should enjoy myself if I were rich," he would say--and sigh upon it; for what a.s.sumption could be more grotesque?

No, indeed, there could be no sunshine for him to-morrow. Nothing but the shadows of toil; and, in the background, that grim figure of uncertainty which never fails to haunt the lives of the very poor.

CHAPTER V

DISMISSAL

Alban had been a disappointment to his employers, the great engineer of the Isle of Dogs, to whom Charity had apprenticed him in his fourteenth year. Faithful attempts to improve his position in the works were met, as it would seem, by indifference and ingrat.i.tude. He did his work mechanically but without enthusiasm. Had he confessed the truth, he would have said, "I was not born to labor with my hands." A sense of inherited superiority, a sure conviction, common to youth, that he would become a leader, of men, conduced to a restlessness and a want of interest which he could not master. He had the desire but not the will to please his employers.

To such a lad these excursions to the West End, these pilgrimages to the shrine of the outcast and the homeless were by way of being a mental debauch. He arose from them in the morning as a man may arise to the remembrance of unjustified excess, which leaves the mind inert and the body weary. His daily task presented itself in a revolting att.i.tude. Why had he been destined to this slavery? Why must he set out to his work at an hour of the chilly morning when the West End was still shuttered and asleep and the very footmen still yawned in their beds? If he had any consolation, it was that the others were often before him in that cunning debauch from the caves which the dawn compelled. The Lady Sarah would be at Covent Garden by four o'clock. The Archbishop, who rarely seemed to sleep at all, went off to the Serpentine for his morning ablutions when the clock struck five. "Betty," the pale-faced infant, disappeared as soon as the sun was up--and often, when Alban awoke in the cellar, he found himself the only tenant of that grim abode.

Sometimes, indeed, and this morning following upon the promise to little Lois Boriskoff was such an occasion, he overslept himself altogether and was shut out from the works for the day. This had happened before and had brought frequent reprimands. He feared them and yet had not the will to remember them.

Big Ben was striking seven when he quitted the cellar and London was awake in earnest. Alban usually spent twopence in the luxury of a "wash and brush up" before he went down to the river; but he hastened on this morning conscious of his tardiness and troubled at the possible consequences. The bright spring day did little to rea.s.sure him. Weather does not mean very much to those who labor in heated atmospheres, who have no profit of the sunshine nor gift of the seasons. Alban thought rather of the fateful clock and of the excuses which might pacify the timekeeper. He had never stooped to the common lies; he would not stoop to them this day. When, at the gate of the works, a heavy jowled man with a red beard asked him what he meant by coming there at such an hour, he answered as frankly that he did not know.

"Been out to supper with the Earl of Barkin, perhaps," the burly man suggested. "Well, young fellow, you go up and see Mr. Tucker. He's particularly desirous of making your acquaintance--that he is. Tell him how his lordship's doin' and don't you forget the ladies."

Alban made no reply, but crossing the open yard he mounted a little flight of stairs and knocked indifferently at the door of the dreaded office thus indicated. An angry voice, bidding him "come in," did not rea.s.sure him. He found the deputy manager frank but determined. There could be no doubt whatever of the issue.

"Kennedy," he said quietly, "I hope you understand why I have sent for you."

"For being late, sir. I am very sorry--I overslept myself."

"My boy, if your work was as honest as your tongue, your fortune would be made. I am afraid I must remember what pa.s.sed at our last meeting.

You promised me then--"

"I am quite aware of it, sir. The real truth is that I can't get up. The work here is distasteful to me--but I do my best."

The manager shook his head in a deprecating manner.

"We have given you many chances, Kennedy," he rejoined. "If it rested with me, I would give you another. But it doesn't rest with me--it rests with that necessary person. Example. What would the men say if I treated you as a privileged person? You know that the work could not go on. For the present, at any rate, you are suspended. I must see my directors and take instructions from them. Now, really, Kennedy, don't you think that you have been very foolish?"

"I suppose so, sir. That's what foolish people generally think. It must make a lot of difference to you whether a man comes at six or seven, even if he does a good deal more work than the early ones. I could do what you ask me to do in three hours a day. That's what puzzles me."

The amiable Mr. Tucker was up in arms in a moment.

"Now, come, I cannot discuss abstract propositions with you. Our hours are from six to six. You do not choose to keep them and, therefore, you must go. When you are a little more practically inclined, I will speak to the directors for you. You may come and tell me so when that is the case."

"I shall never come and tell you so, sir. I wish that I could--but it will never be the truth. The work that I could do for you is now what you want me to do. I am sure it is better for me to go, sir."

"Then you have something in your mind, Kennedy?"

"So many things, sir, that I could fill a book with them. That is why I am foolish. Good-by, Mr. Tucker. I suppose you have all been very kind to me--I don't rightly understand, but I think that you have. So good-by and thank you."

The discreet manager took the outstretched hand and shook it quite limply. There had been a momentary contraction of the brows while he asked himself if astute rivals might not have been tampering with this young fellow and trying to buy the firm's secrets. An instant's reflection, however, rea.s.sured him. Alban had no secrets worth the name to sell, and did he possess them, money would not buy them. "Half mad but entirely honest," was Mr. Tucker's comment, "he will either make a fortune or throw himself over London Bridge."

Alban had been quite truthful when he said that he had many things in his mind, but this confession did not mean to signify a possibility of new employment. In honest truth, he had hardly left the gates of the great yard when he realized how hopeless his position was. Of last week's wages but a few shillings remained in his pocket. He knew no one to whom he might offer such services as he had to give. The works had taught him the elements of mechanical engineering, and common sense told him that skilled labor rarely went begging if the laborer were worthy his hire. None the less, the prospect of touting for such employment affrighted him beyond words. He felt that he could not again abase himself for a few paltry shillings a week. The ambition to make of this misfortune a stepping-stone to better things rested on no greater security than his pride and yet it would not be wholly conquered. He spent a long morning by the riverside planning schemes so futile that even the boy's mind rejected them. The old copybook maxims recurred to him and were treated with derision. He knew that he would never become Lord Mayor of London--after a prosperous career in a dingy office which he had formerly swept out with a housemaid's broom.

The lower reaches of the Thames are a world of themselves; peopled by a nation of aliens; endless in the variety of their life; abounding in weird and beautiful pictures which even the landsman can appreciate.

Alban rarely tired of that panorama of swirling waters and drifting hulks and the majestic shapes of resting ships. And upon such a day as this which had made an idler of him, their interest increased tenfold; and to this there was added a wonder which had never come into his life before. For surely, he argued, this great river was the high road to an El Dorado of which he had often dreamed; to that shadowy land of valley and of mountain which his imagination so ardently desired. Let a man find employment upon the deck of one of those splendid ships and henceforth the whole world would be open to him. Alban debated this as a possible career, and as he thought of it the spell of the craving for new sights and scenes afar mastered him to the exclusion of all other thoughts. Who was to forbid him; who had the right to stand between him and his world hunger so irresistibly? When a voice within whispered a girl's name in his ear, he could have laughed aloud for very derision. A fine thing that he should talk of the love of woman or let his plans be influenced for the sake of a pretty face! Why, he would be a beggar himself in a week, it might be without a single copper in his pocket or a roof to shelter him! And he was just the sort of man to live on a woman's earnings--just the one to cast the glove to fortune and of his desperation achieve the final madness. No, no, he must leave London. The city had done with him--he had never been so sure of anything in all his life.

It was an heroic resolution, and shame that hunger should so maltreat it. When twelve o'clock struck and Alban remembered how poor a breakfast he had made, he did not think it necessary to abandon any of his old habits, at least not immediately; and he went, as he usually had done, to the shabby dining-room in Union Street where he and Lois had taken their dinners together for many a month past. Boriskoff's daughter was already at table and waiting for him when he entered; he thought that she was unusually pale and that her expectancy was not that of a common occasion. Was it possible that she also had news to tell him--news as momentous as his own? Alban feared to ask her, and hanging his cap on a peg above their table without a word, he sat down and began to study the greasy menu.

"What's the luck, Alb, dear--why do you look like that?"

Little Lois asked the question, struck by his odd manner and appearance.

He answered her with surprising candor--for the sudden determination came to him that he must tell Lois.

"No luck at all, Lois."

"Why, you don't mean--?"

"I do, and that's straight. There is no further need of my services--"

"You've got the sack?"

"The whole of it, Lois--and now I'm selling it cheap."

The girl laughed aloud, but there were tears in her eyes while she did so. What a day for them both. She was angry almost with him for telling her.

"Why, if father ain't a-gettin' on the prophet line--he said you would, Alb. So help me rummy, I was that angry with him I couldn't hear myself speak. And now it's all come true. Why, Alb, dear--and I wanted to tell you--"

She could not finish the sentence for a sob that almost choked her. The regular customers of the room had turned to stare at the sound of such unwonted hilarity. Dinner was far too serious a business for most of them that laughter should serve it.