Crying for the Light Volume I Part 10

'I am sorry to hear it,' said Mr. Wentworth.

'Yes, sir,' continued the deacon, not noticing the interruption, 'and he died universally respected. He never made an enemy. He was all things to all men. Every Christmas morning and Good Friday he went to church, and it was quite beautiful to see how humble and happy he looked. "I never interfere in politics," said he. "I am come here to preach the Gospel. I am not going to impair my usefulness by becoming a political partisan." I am sure,' continued the deacon, 'if he had forgotten this, and attended a Chartist meeting, we should never have got the money from the gentry we did, when we had the old meeting-house done up.'

'But,' said Wentworth, 'he might have made some of the Chartists Christians, and that would have been better. It's no use to get the meeting-house done up if the people don't come into it. It seems to me such conduct as you praise is the way to create the evils we deplore. In the Saviour's time the common people heard the Gospel gladly, and why should they not do so now?'

'Because they won't, sir,' said the deacon angrily. 'Because they are dead in trespa.s.ses and sins; because they're regular heathens-a drinking, swearing lot. Why, I should be ashamed to go near them, and if some of them were to come to chapel, I believe the members would leave the place at once. I am sure I should.'

The senior deacon was a good man, but he had his foibles. One of them was a due regard to his own worldly good. Most of the neighbouring gentry came to his shop. It was the best and the largest of the kind in the town. What would become of his customers if his minister went to a Chartist meeting? The thought was too horrible for words. Hence the interview with the parson, and his disappearance from the streets of Sloville for many a long day; not, however, till he gave a farewell address, which added fuel to the fire, or, in other words, made his deacons more implacable than ever.

CHAPTER VIII.

IN BOHEMIA.

'What a donkey I am!' was the exclamation of a tall, well-made young man, rather shabbily dressed-four or five years after the events recorded in the preceding chapter-as he stood clinging to a lamppost in Fleet Street very late one bright summer night. 'I have been to Fairlop Fair, with instructions to do a gushing article, and I'm blessed if I can recollect anything about it, nor where my notes are. I was to be back by ten, and it is now midnight. Thank Heaven,' continued the speaker, as he groped into his coat pocket, 'my notes are there. I thought I'd left them behind in that bar-room where I was waiting, where everyone was so tight and so talkative. Steady, boy-steady, boy!' continued the speaker, reluctantly depriving himself of the support of the lamp-post. 'We shall be all right, and in time, after all.'

Thus summoning his energies, the individual in question appeared to revive, and moved on with a gait ofttimes deviating from the straight line, but not so much as to call for special interference on the part of the police, and with that intense expression which always accompanies a certain state of alcoholic inspiration.

Diving down a side-street, he entered a door which seemed to be open all night long, and which led to the very innermost recesses of the _Daily Journal_. Giving a familiar nod to the porter as he pa.s.sed by, and steering for a room on an upper floor, he took off his hat, sat himself down at a writing-desk, lit his cigar, spread out a sheet of paper before him, and took a pen in his hand. The furniture of the room was of the barest description, and mostly aimed at usefulness, rather than show or comfort or luxury. There were two other men in the room, but they took no notice of the new-comer, except to ask him to be quiet, and not to kick up such a row. One was gorgeously got up in evening dress. He had come from a dinner at Willis's Rooms, with a Royal Duke in the chair.

The other was putting the final touch to a thrilling description of a fire in the Seven Dials, accompanied by great destruction of property and loss of life.

Thoroughly settling down to his work, the individual to whom I have already drawn the attention of the reader took out his note-book, and began studying its contents. At length, unable to find what he wanted, he exclaimed somewhat pettishly:

'Where the d.i.c.kens are my notes?'

'Why, in your hat, to be sure, you old fool!' said one of the men, who, having finished his report, was preparing to go home. 'I saw you put them into your hat directly you came in.'

'Well, you're right,' said the now sober pressman, looking into the last-named receptacle. 'The fact is, I've been lushing,' said he, 'a little too much. Indeed, it was only as I went into the pub, and saw the people, I could get up anything worth writing about.'

'Oh, there is no reason to explain, my dear fellow,' replied the gentleman thus addressed.

'No, but I wish you to understand I am the victim of circ.u.mstances over which I had no control. It was business, not love of liquor, which reduced me to this state.'

'Of course. We all know you're as virtuous as Father Mathew.'

But here the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of a small boy, sent by the sub-editor, to know if Mr. Wentworth was in, as he was waiting for copy.

'Tell that respected gentleman,' said the individual thus alluded to, 'Mr. Wentworth is in, and in a few minutes will let him have as much copy as he requires,' at the same time handing the boy a few slips for the printers to go on with.

The boy retired, and the speaker set to work, describing with great felicity the revelry of the night, and deploring the drunkenness which interfered with the pleasures of the day, and which marred the beauties of the sylvan spot. By turns he was humorous and moral, cla.s.sical or romantic, and so effective was the article that it was reprinted next day for gratuitous circulation, and with a view to prevent the repet.i.tion of such excesses on another occasion, by an 'Old Teetotaler' who lived in the neighbourhood of the revelry thus condemned.

'I think that will fetch the public,' said the worthy proprietor of the _Daily Journal_, as he lingered over the breakfast-table of his well-furnished mansion in an aristocratic square next morning. 'That, my dear,' said he to his better-half, 'is just what the British public likes-something light and airy, with a moral tag at the end. We are a very high-souled people, and mere flippancy soon palls. I never had any fellow for the right kind of article like poor MacAndrew. What a pity it is that he drank himself to death! One would have thought he was good for another ten years. As soon as he died we had quite a drop in our sale; but since we have got the new hand the sale has been steadily rising. Most of my writers are getting too high and mighty, and think a great deal more of themselves than the public do. But this new hand is more useful. I fancy he is rather hard up. I know he drinks a good deal, and as long as that is the case he will be glad to be on the staff of the _Daily Journal_.'

'Well,' said the lady of the house, 'ask him to our next soiree.'

'I would, but I don't think he'd care to come. The Cave of Harmony, or the Cider Cellars, is more in his line, and, then, there are the girls.

I'll not have these fellows come here and make love to them.'

'No danger of that,' said the proprietor's lady. 'My daughters have been far too well brought up to fall in love with newspaper writers. It might do in Paris, but not in London.'

'Dear old girl,' said the fond husband, 'you've not got over the prejudices of early education and the traditions of Minerva House. We've changed all that in these days, when illiterate young n.o.blemen make a living by scribbling scandals for the weekly journals, or are found to appear as amateur performers, or, what is worse still, on the real stage, jostling better men off, while the tuft-hunters applaud and wise men swear.'

'Perhaps I am a little faulty,' replied the wife. Her father was an old-fashioned City merchant, whose one standard of merit was wealth, and who thought his daughter had quite forgotten herself when she fell in love with a man who had anything to do with newspapers. 'At any rate, I am sure I shall be glad to do what is civil to the poor fellow, should you wish it.'

The poor fellow referred to was our old acquaintance-the pious youth, the village preacher, the brief occupant of the pulpit in Sloville.

Tottering home to his chambers at early morn, he met a shabbily-dressed man whom he remembered as a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge-a grand scholar, and one of his old professors.

'I suppose you're not got such a thing as a half-crown to lend a fellow,'

said the ex-professor, looking, unshorn and unwashed, particularly shady.

'I'm drying of hunger.'

'No, I've not; but if you come to my chambers in Clifford's Inn we'll have a jolly good breakfast.'

It is needless to say that the invitation was accepted. The bachelor's kettle was brought into play, and some good coffee was made. Soon the room was fragrant with the scent of Yarmouth bloaters, as they were being toasted, and after that came a smoke and some chat. The feast, if not stately, was satisfying, and the ex-professor, finding no more was to be had, departed with lingering steps, leaving Wentworth to moralize, ere he dropped into the arms of Morpheus, upon the strange fate that had reduced a man of such talent and standing to so low a condition; and then he went off to sleep, to dream of his early peaceful and happy home. That is what one never forgets, no matter what may be his after-life. To the last each of us may exclaim with Wordsworth:

'My eyes are filled with childish tears, My heart is idly stirred, And the same sounds are in my ears Which in my youthful days I heard.'

It was well on towards noon when Wentworth woke up, exclaiming:

'Ah, if life were a dream, and if dreams were life, what happiness there would be for poor devils like myself! What an infernal fool that old professor of mine has been! He must have played his cards very badly.'

Suddenly, reflecting that he was not much better himself, he looked at the gla.s.s, and was astonished at his seedy appearance.

'By Jove,' said he, 'this will never do,' and hastily dressing himself, he rushed off to Hampstead Heath for a mouthful of fresh air.

Fleet Street saw no more of him that day. Goldsmith tells us that, in all his foreign travel, he saw no finer view than that he enjoyed from the top of Hampstead Heath, and the view there is still fine, in spite of the damage done by the smoke of London rising in the distance, and the hostile attacks of that foe to the picturesque, the speculative builder.

On the Heath Wentworth met a fellow-reporter, looking as gay and respectable as a rising barrister or successful physician. He had his wife and children with him. They nodded to each other, and the lady asked:

'Who is that shabby, seedy-looking fellow?'

'Oh, it is Wentworth, of the _Daily Journal_.'

'He looks very sad and miserable.'

'Of course. He is quite a man about town. I fancy he drinks more than is good for him, and leads too fast a life.'

'What a pity! Has he no friends to look after him?'

'I believe not. It is said he was brought up to be a parson of some kind or other, but he gave it up. He has plenty of ability, and would do well if he would settle down quietly. But he will never do that. They tell me he is quite a vagabond.'

'Ask him to lunch, and let us see what we can do to reform him,' said the lady, with the instinctive tender-heartedness of her s.e.x.

'My dear, he would not come if we did,' and they pa.s.sed on.

'Ah, there goes Tomlinson,' said Wentworth to himself. 'How happy and respectable he looks! They tell me he has saved quite a lot of money, and has quite a nice little property about here. Such is destiny. He was born under a lucky star, I under an unfortunate one. Ah, if I had turned up trumps in matrimony, how different it would have been!'