The Three Clerks Part 82

At last the thundercloud broke and the bolt fell. Mr. Oldeschole was informed that the Lords of the Treasury had resolved on breaking up the establishment and providing for the duties in another way. As the word duties pa.s.sed Sir Gregory's lips a slight smile was seen to hover round the mouth of the new commissioner. Mr. Oldeschole would, he was informed, receive an official notification to this effect on the following morning; and on the following morning accordingly a dispatch arrived, of great length, containing the resolution of my Lords, and putting an absolute extinguisher on the life of every navvy.

How Mr. Oldeschole, with tears streaming down his cheeks, communicated the tidings to the elder brethren; and how the elder brethren, with palpitating hearts and quivering voices, repeated the tale to the listening juniors, I cannot now describe. The boldest spirits were then cowed, the loudest miscreants were then silenced, there were but few gibes, but little jeering at the Internal Navigation on that day; though Charley, who had already other hopes, contrived to keep up his spirits. The men stood about talking in cl.u.s.ters, and old animosities were at an end.

The lamb sat down with the wolf, and Mr. Snape and d.i.c.k Scatterall became quite confidential.

'I knew it was going to happen,' said Mr. Snape to him. 'Indeed, Mr. Oldeschole has been consulting us about it for some time; but I must own I did not think it would be so sudden; I must own that.'

'If you knew it was coming,' said Corkscrew, 'why didn't you tell a chap?'

'I was not at liberty,' said Mr. Snape, looking very wise.

'We shall all have liberty enough now,' said Scatterall; 'I wonder what they'll do with us; eh, Charley?'

'I believe they will send the worst of us to Spike Island or Dartmoor prison,' said Charley; 'but Mr. Snape, no doubt, has heard and can tell us.'

'Oh, come, Charley! It don't do to chaff now,' said a young navvy, who was especially down in the mouth. 'I wonder will they do anything for a fellow?'

'I heard my uncle, in Parliament Street, say, that when a chap has got any _infested_ interest in a thing, they can't turn him out,' said Corkscrew; 'and my uncle is a parliamentary agent.'

'Can't they though!' said Scatterall. 'It seems to me that they mean to, at any rate; there wasn't a word about pensions or anything of that sort, was there, Mr. Snape?'

'Not a word,' said Snape. 'But those who are ent.i.tled to pensions can't be affected injuriously. As far as I can see they must give me my whole salary. I don't think they can do less.'

'You're all serene then, Mr. Snape,' said Charley; 'you're in the right box. Looking at matters in that light, Mr. Snape, I think you ought to stand something handsome in the shape of lunch.

Come, what do you say to chops and stout all round? d.i.c.k will go over and order it in a minute.'

'I wish you wouldn't, Charley,' said the navvy who seemed to be most affected, and who, in his present humour, could not endure a joke, As Mr. Snape did not seem to accede to Charley's views, the liberal proposition fell to the ground.

'Care killed a cat,' said Scatterall. 'I shan't break my heart about it. I never liked the shop--did you, Charley?'

'Well, I must say I think we have been very comfortable here, under Mr. Snape,' said Charley. But if Mr. Snape is to go, why the office certainly would be deuced dull without him.'

'Charley!' said the broken-hearted young navvy, in a tone of reproach.

Sorrow, however, did not take away their appet.i.te, and as Mr.

Snape did not see fitting occasion for providing a banquet, they clubbed together, and among them managed to get a spread of beefsteaks and porter. Scatterall, as requested, went across the Strand to order it at the cookshop, while Corkscrew and Charley prepared the tables. 'And now mind it's the thing,' said d.i.c.k, who, with intimate familiarity, had penetrated into the eating-house kitchen; 'not dry, you know, or too much done; and lots of fat.'

And then, as the generous viands renewed their strength, and as the potent stout warmed their blood, happier ideas came to them, and they began to hope that the world was not all over. 'Well, I shall try for the Customs,' said the unhappy one, after a deep pull at the pewter. 'I shall try for the Customs; one does get such stunning feeds for tenpence at that place in Thames Street.'

Poor youth! his ideas of earning his bread did not in their wildest flight spread beyond the public offices of the Civil Service.

For a few days longer they hung about the old office, doing nothing--how could men so circ.u.mstanced do anything?--and waiting for their fate. At last their fate was announced. Mr.

Oldeschole retired with his full salary. Secretaries and such-like always retire with full pay, as it is necessary that dignity should be supported. Mr. Snape and the other seniors were pensioned, with a careful respect to their years of service; with which arrangement they all of them expressed themselves highly indignant, and loudly threatened to bring the cruelty of their treatment before Parliament, by the aid of sundry members, who were supposed to be on the look out for such work; but as nothing further was ever heard of them, it may be presumed that the members in question did not regard the case as one on which the Government of the day was sufficiently vulnerable to make it worth their while to trouble themselves. Of the younger clerks, two or three, including the unhappy one, were drafted into other offices; some others received one or more years' pay, and then tore themselves away from the fascinations of London life; among those was Mr. R. Scatterall, who, in after years, will doubtless become a lawgiver in Hong-Kong; for to that colony has he betaken himself. Some few others, more unfortunate than the rest, among whom poor Screwy was the most conspicuous, were treated with a more absolute rigour, and were sent upon the world portionless.

Screwy had been constant in his devotion to pork chops, and had persisted in spelling blue without the final 'e.' He was therefore, declared unworthy of any further public confidence whatever. He is now in his uncle's office in Parliament Street; and it is to be hoped that his peculiar talents may there be found useful.

And so the Internal Navigation Office came to an end, and the dull, dingy rooms were vacant. Ruthless men shovelled off as waste paper all the lock entries of which Charley had once been so proud; and the ponderous ledgers, which Mr. Snape had delighted to haul about, were sent away into Cimmerian darkness, and probably to utter destruction. And then the Internal Navigation was no more.

Among those who were drafted into other offices was Charley, whom propitious fate took to the Weights and Measures. But it must not be imagined that chance took him there. The Weights and Measures was an Elysium, the door of which was never casually open.

Charley at this time was a much-altered man; not that he had become a good clerk at his old office--such a change one may say was impossible; there were no good clerks at the Internal Navigation, and Charley had so long been among navvies the most knavish or navviest, that any such transformation would have met with no credence--but out of his office he had become a much-altered man. As Katie had said, it was as though some one had come to him from the dead. He could not go back to his old haunts, he could not return like a dog to his vomit, as long as he had that purse so near his heart, as long as that voice sounded in his ear, while the memory of that kiss lingered in his heart.

He now told everything to Gertrude, all his debts, all his love, and all his despair. There is no relief for sorrow like the sympathy of a friend, if one can only find it. But then the sympathy must be real; mock sympathy always tells the truth against itself, always fails to deceive. He told everything to Gertrude, and by her counsel he told much to Norman. He could not speak to him, true friend as he was, of Katie and her love. There was that about the subject which made it too sacred for man's ears, too full of tenderness to be spoken of without feminine tears. It was only in the little parlour at Paradise Row, when the evening had grown dark, and Gertrude was sitting with her baby in her arms, that the boisterous young navvy could bring himself to speak of his love.

During these months Katie's health had greatly improved, and as she herself had gained in strength, she had gradually begun to think that it was yet possible for her to live. Little was now said by her about Charley, and not much was said of him in her hearing; but still she did learn how he had changed his office, and with his office his mode of life; she did hear of his literary efforts, and of his kindness to Gertrude, and it would seem as though it were ordained that his moral life and her physical life were to gain strength together.

CHAPTER XLVI

MR. NOGO'S LAST QUESTION

But at this time Charley was not idle. The fate of 'Crinoline and Maca.s.sar' has not yet been told; nor has that of the two rival chieftains, the 'Baron of Ballyporeen and Sir Anthony Allan-a-dale.'

These heartrending tales appeared in due course, bit by bit, in the pages of the _Daily Delight_. On every morning of the week, Sundays excepted, a page and a half of Charley's narrative was given to the expectant public; and though I am not prepared to say that the public received the offering with any violent acclamations of applause, that his name became suddenly that of a great unknown, that literary cliques talked about him to the exclusion of other topics, or that he rose famous one morning as Byron did after the publication of the 'Corsair,'

nevertheless something was said in his praise. The _Daily Delight_, on the whole, was rather belittled by its grander brethren of the press; but a word or two was said here and there to exempt Charley's fictions from the general pooh-poohing with which the remainder of the publication was treated.

Success, such as this even, is dear to the mind of a young author, and Charley began to feel that he had done something. The editor was proportionably civil to him, and he was encouraged to commence a third historiette.

'We have polished off poison and petticoats pretty well,' said the editor; 'what do you say to something political?'

Charley had no objection in life.

'This Divorce Bill, now--we could have half a dozen married couples all separating, getting rid of their ribs and buckling again, helter-skelter, every man to somebody else's wife; and the parish parson refusing to do the work; just to show the immorality of the thing.'

Charley said he'd think about it.

'Or the Danubian Princ.i.p.alities and the French Alliance--could you manage now to lay your scene in Constantinople?'

Charley doubted whether he could.

'Or perhaps India is the thing? The Cawnpore ma.s.sacre would work up into any lengths you pleased. You could get a file of the _Times_, you know, for your facts.'

But while the editor was giving these various valuable hints as to the author's future subjects, the author himself, with base mind, was thinking how much he should be paid for his past labours. At last he ventured, in the mildest manner, to allude to the subject.

'Payment!' said the editor.

Charley said that he had understood that there was to be some fixed scale of pay; so much per sheet, or something of that sort.

'Undoubtedly there will,' said the editor; 'and those who will have the courage and perseverance to work through with us, till the publication has obtained that wide popularity which it is sure to achieve, will doubtless be paid,--be paid as no writers for any periodical in this metropolis have ever yet been paid.

But at present, Mr. Tudor, you really must be aware that it is quite out of the question.'

Charley had not the courage and perseverance to work through with the _Daily Delight_ till it had achieved its promised popularity, and consequently left its ranks like a dastard. He consulted both Gertrude and Norman on the subject, and on their advice set himself to work on his own bottom. 'You may perhaps manage to fly alone,' said Gertrude; 'but you will find it very difficult to fly if you tie the whole weight of the _Daily Delight_ under your wings.'

So Charley prepared himself for solitary soaring.

While he was thus working, the time arrived at which Norman was to leave his office, and it occurred to him that it might be possible that he should bequeath his vacancy to Charley. He went himself to Sir Gregory, and explained, not only his own circ.u.mstances, and his former friendship with Alaric Tudor, but also the relationship between Alaric and Charley. He then learnt, in the strictest confidence of course, that the doom of the Internal Navigation had just been settled, and that it would be necessary to place in other offices those young men who could in any way be regarded as worth their salt, and, after considerable manoeuvring, had it so arranged that the ne'er-do-well young navvy should recommence his official life under better auspices.

Nor did Charley come in at the bottom of his office, but was allowed, by some inscrutable order of the great men who arranged those things, to take a position in the Weights and Measures equal in seniority and standing to that which he had held at the Navigation, and much higher, of course, in pay. There is an old saying, which the unenlightened credit, and which declares that that which is sauce for the goose is sauce also for the gander.

Nothing put into a proverb since the days of Solomon was ever more untrue. That which is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander, and especially is not so in official life. Poor Screwy was the goose, and certainly got the sauce best suited to him when he was turned adrift out of the Civil Service. Charley was the gander, and fond as I am of him for his many excellent qualities, I am fain to own that justice might fairly have demanded that he should be cooked after the same receipt. But it suited certain potent personages to make a swan of him; and therefore, though it had long been an a.s.sured fact through the whole service that no man was ever known to enter the Weights and Measures without the strictest examination, though the character of aspirants for that high office was always subjected to a rigid scrutiny, though knowledge, accomplishments, industry, morality, outward decency, inward zeal, and all the cardinal virtues were absolutely requisite, still Charley was admitted, without any examination or scrutiny whatever, during the commotion consequent upon the earthquake above described.

Charley went to the Weights some time during the recess. In the process of the next session Mr. Nogo gave notice that he meant to ask the Government a question as to a gross act of injustice which had been perpetrated--so at least the matter had been represented to him--on the suppression of the Internal Navigation Office.