The Caxtons: A Family Picture Part 29

CHAPTER II.

All this had been so sudden that, to use the trite phrase,--for no other is so expressive,--it was like a dream. I felt an absolute, an imperious want of solitude, of the open air. The swell of grat.i.tude almost stifled me; the room did not seem large enough for my big heart. In early youth, if we find it difficult to control our feelings, so we find it difficult to vent them in the presence of others. On the spring side of twenty, if anything affects us, we rush to lock ourselves up in our room, or get away into the streets or the fields; in our earlier years we are still the savages of Nature, and we do as the poor brute does: the wounded stag leaves the herd, and if there is anything on a dog's faithful heart, he slinks away into a corner.

Accordingly, I stole out of the hotel and wandered through the streets, which were quite deserted. It was about the first hour of dawn,--the most comfortless hour there is, especially in London! But I only felt freshness in the raw air, and soothing in the desolate stillness. The love my uncle inspired was very remarkable in its nature; it was not like that quiet affection with which those advanced in life must usually content themselves, but connected with the more vivid interest that youth awakens. There was in him still so much of viva, city and fire, in his errors and crotchets so much of the self-delusion of youth, that one could scarce fancy him other than young. Those Quixotic, exaggerated notions of honor, that romance of sentiment which no hardship, care, grief, disappointment, could wear away (singular in a period when, at two and twenty, young men declare themselves blases!), seemed to leave him all the charm of boyhood. A season in London had made me more a man of the world, older in heart than he was. Then, the sorrow that gnawed him with such silent sternness. No, Captain Roland was one of those men who seize hold of your thoughts, who mix themselves up with your lives. The idea that Roland should die,--die with the load at his heart unlightened,--was one that seemed to take a spring out of the wheels of nature, all object out of the aims of life,--of my life at least. For I had made it one of the ends of my existence to bring back the son to the father, and restore the smile, that must have been gay once, to the downward curve of that iron lip. But Roland was now out of danger; and yet, like one who has escaped shipwreck, I trembled to look back on the danger past: the voice of the devouring deep still boomed in my ears.

While rapt in my reveries, I stopped mechanically to hear a clock strike--four; and, looking round, I perceived that I had wandered from the heart of the City, and was in one of the streets that lead out of the Strand. Immediately before me, on the doorsteps of a large shop whose closed shutters were as obstinate a stillness as if they had guarded the secrets of seventeen centuries in a street in Pompeii, reclined a form fast asleep, the arm propped on the hard stone supporting the head, and the limbs uneasily strewn over the stairs.

The dress of the slumberer was travel-stained, tattered, yet with the remains of a certain pretence; an air of faded, shabby, penniless gentility made poverty more painful, because it seemed to indicate unfitness to grapple with it. The face of this person was hollow and pale, but its expression, even in sleep, was fierce and hard. I drew near and nearer; I recognized the countenance, the regular features, the raven hair, even a peculiar gracefulness of posture: the young man whom I had met at the inn by the way-side, and who had left me alone with the Savoyard and his mice in the churchyard, was before me. I remained behind the shadow of one of the columns of the porch, leaning against the area rails, and irresolute whether or not so slight an acquaintance justified me in waking the sleeper, when a policeman, suddenly emerging from an angle in the street, terminated my deliberations with the decision of his practical profession; for he laid hold of the young man's arm and shook it roughly: "You must not lie here; get up and go home!" The sleeper woke with a quick start, rubbed his eyes, looked round, and fixed them upon the policeman so haughtily that that discriminating functionary probably thought that it was not from sheer necessity that so improper a couch had been selected, and with an air of greater respect he said, "You have been drinking, young man,--can you find your way home?"

"Yes," said the youth, resettling himself, "you see I have found it!"

"By the Lord Harry!" muttered the policeman, "if he ben't going to sleep again. Come, come, walk on; or I must walk you off."

My old acquaintance turned round. "Policeman," said he, with a strange sort of smile, "what do you think this lodging is worth,--I don't say for the night, for you see that is over, but for the next two hours? The lodging is primitive, but it suits me; I should think a shilling would be a fair price for it, eh?"

"You love your joke, sir," said the policeman, with a brow much relaxed, and opening his hand mechanically.

"Say a shilling, then; it is a bargain! I hire it of you upon credit.

Good night, and call me at six o'clock."

With that the young man settled himself so resolutely, and the policeman's face exhibited such bewilderment, that I burst out laughing, and came from my hiding-place.

The policeman looked at me. "Do you know this--this--"

"This gentleman?" said I, gravely. "Yes, you may leave him to me;" and I slipped the price of the lodging into the policeman's hand. He looked at the shilling, he looked at me, he looked up the street and down the street, shook his head, and walked off. I then approached the youth, touched him, and said: "Can you remember me, sir; and what have you done with Mr. Peac.o.c.k?"

Stranger (after a pause).--"I remember you; your name is Caxton."

Pisistratus.--"And yours?"

Stranger.--"Poor devil, if you ask my pockets,--pockets, which are the symbols of man; Dare-devil, if you ask my heart. [Surveying me from head to foot.] The world seems to have smiled on you, Mr. Caxton! Are you not ashamed to speak to a wretch lying on the stones? but, to be sure, no one sees you."

Pisistratus (sententiously).--"Had I lived in the last century, I might have found Samuel Johnson lying on the stones."

Stranger (rising).--"You have spoilt my sleep: you had a right, since you paid for the lodging. Let me walk with you a few paces; you need not fear, I do not pick pockets--yet!"

Pisistratus.--"You say the world has smiled on me; I fear it has frowned on you. I don't say 'courage,' for you seem to have enough of that; but I say 'patience,' which is the rarer quality of the two."

Stranger.--"Hem! [again looking at me keenly.] Why is it that you stop to speak to me,--one of whom you know nothing, or worse than nothing?"

Pisistratus.--"Because I have often thought of you; because you interest me; because--pardon me--I would help you if I can,--that is, if you want help."

Stranger.--"Want? I am one want! I want sleep, I want food; I want the patience you recommend,--patience to starve and rot. I have travelled from Paris to Boulogne on foot, with twelve sous in my pocket. Out of those twelve sous in my pocket I saved four; with the four I went to a billiard-room at Boulogne: I won just enough to pay my pa.s.sage and buy three rolls. You see I only require capital in order to make a fortune.

If with four sous I can win ten francs in a night, what could I win with a capital of four sovereigns, and in the course of a year? That is an application of the Rule of Three which my head aches too much to calculate just at present. Well, those three rolls have lasted me three days; the last crumb went for supper last night. Therefore, take care how you offer me money (for that is what men mean by help). You see I have no option but to take it. But I warn you, don't expect grat.i.tude; I have none in me!"

Pisistratus.--"You are not so bad as you paint yourself. I would do something more for you, if I can, than lend you the little I have to offer. Will you be frank with me?"

Stranger.--"That depends; I have been frank enough hitherto, I think."

Pisistratus.--"True; so I proceed without scruple. Don't tell me your name or your condition, if you object to such confidence; but tell me if you have relations to whom you can apply? You shake your head.

Well, then, are you willing to work for yourself, or is it only at the billiard-table--pardon me--that you can try to make four sous produce ten francs?"

Stranger (musing).--"I understand you. I have never worked yet,--I abhor work. But I have no objection to try if it is in me."

Pisistratus.--"It is in you. A man who can walk from Paris to Boulogne with twelve sous in his pocket and save four for a purpose; who can stake those four on the cool confidence in his own skill, even at billiards; who can subsist for three days on three rolls; and who, on the fourth day, can wake from the stones of a capital with an eye and a spirit as proud as yours,--has in him all the requisites to subdue fortune."

Stranger.--"Do you work--you?"

Pisistratus.--"Yes--and hard."

Stranger.--"I am ready to work, then."

Pisistratus.--"Good. Now, what can you do?"

Stranger (with his odd smile).--"Many things useful. I can split a bullet on a penknife; I know the secret tierce of Coulon, the fencing-master; I can speak two languages (besides English) like a native, even to their slang; I know every game in the cards; I can act comedy, tragedy, farce; I can drink down Bacchus himself; I can make any woman I please in love with me,--that is, any woman good for nothing.

Can I earn a handsome livelihood out of all this,--wear kid gloves and set up a cabriolet? You see my wishes are modest!"

Pisistratus.--"You speak two languages, you say, like a native,--French, I suppose, is one of them?"

Stranger.--"Yes."

Pisistratus.--"Will you teach it?"

Stranger (haughtily). "No. Je suis gentilhomme, which means more or less than a gentleman. Gentilhomme means well born, because free born; teachers are slaves!"

Pisistratus (unconsciously imitating Mr. Trevanion).--"Stuff!"

Stranger (looks angry, and then laughs).--"Very true; stilts don't suit shoes like these! But I cannot teach. Heaven help those I should teach!

Anything else?"

Pisistratus.--"Anything else!--you leave me a wide margin. You know French thoroughly,--to write as well as speak? That is much. Give me some address where I can find you,--or will you call on me?"

Stranger.--"No! Any evening at dusk I will meet you. I have no address to give, and I cannot show these rags at another man's door."

Pisistratus.--"At nine in the evening, then, and here in the Strand, on Thursday next. I may then have found some thing that will suit you.

Meanwhile--" slides his purse into the Stranger's hand. N. B.--Purse not very full.

Stranger, with the air of one conferring a favor, pockets the purse; and there is something so striking in the very absence of all emotion at so accidental a rescue from starvation that Pisistratus exclaims,--

"I don't know why I should have taken this fancy to you, Mr. Dare-devil, if that be the name that pleases you best. The wood you are made of seems cross-grained, and full of knots; and yet, in the hands of a skilful carver, I think it would be worth much."

Stranger (startled).--"Do you? Do you? None, I believe, ever thought that before. But the same wood, I suppose, that makes the gibbet could make the mast of a man-of-war. I tell you, however, why you have taken this fancy to me,--the strong sympathize with the strong. You, too, could subdue fortune!"

Pisistratus.--"Stop! If so, if there is congeniality between us, then liking should be reciprocal. Come, say that; for half my chance of helping you is in my power to touch your heart."

Stranger (evidently softened).--"If I were as great a rogue as I ought to be, my answer would be easy enough. As it is, I delay it. Adieu.--On Thursday."

Stranger vanishes in the labyrinth of alleys round Leicester Square.