Young Mr. Barter's Repentance Part 3

The girl would fain have asked, 'Why should you wait when I have enough for both by your gift? What does it matter which of us it is who has the money--you or I?' But this question went unspoken, for obvious reasons.

A woman is tongue-tied by the countless conventionalities of education.

She must often let her thoughts lie silent in her heart, though she burns to express them, and find what answer she can to questions she dare not offer. Philip had repaired her loss by beggaring himself. That was n.o.ble. But now he persisted in deferring their marriage, and had buried himself in that lofty sarcophagus in Gable Inn, resolved only to claim her, though she was all his own already, when he had reinstated his fortunes by his labour. That was n.o.ble also, perhaps, but in her own heart she thought it a trifle foolish--say Quixotic, not to be too severe. She would rather have seen his ardour find a more commonplace expression. She had a general sort of belief that whatever Philip did was bound to be right, and yet this actual experience rather jarred with that a.s.sumption.

They found other themes in a while, and talked of the future and the happiness it would bring. That Philip was going to be rich and famous was a prime article in Patty's creed, and he himself, though he had soberer hopes, was not likely to miss any chance of success which labour might bring him. He was more than modest enough in his conception of his own powers, and was often doubtful as to the fulfilment of the higher ambitions which are the necessary fuel of all artistic fires. Without those fires the chill of modesty will fall to the frost of cowardice, and in Art cowardice means indolence. In his moments of exultation--and these came generally at their strongest when he was in his sweetheart's society--success looked easy enough. The memory of her undoubted belief in him came upon him often with a glow reflected from those magnificently hopeful moments. But then at times of depression it grew to look no more than a foolish unattainable dream. All young artists have times when they are going to be great--when the glory proper to white hairs makes a halo round un-wrinkled fronts and curls, brown or golden. They have times when the smartest turn of verse, the most delightful inventions of narrative, the most exquisite contrast of colour or mould of form their genius can compa.s.s are stricken through and through with the horror of commonplace. But when a man of the artistic _genus_ has once so far learned his own nature he has made a great advance towards the fulfilment of his ambitions. He has to learn that just as the hot fit is followed by the cold the cold fit is succeeded by the hot. He knows how intermittent he is. He learns to mistrust his own mistrust of himself. The periods of depression grow less frequent, and the depression grows less lasting. And then, just as the cold fit becomes less chilling to the one, the fit of exultation grows less intoxicating. The halo beams less bright--loss near.

Yet Philip, with the girl's eyes worshipping him, and her sweet voice cooing hope and praise, and her hands knitted on his shoulder, and her warm breath fanning his cheek, gave himself up to the vision, and felt his heart warm with a world's welcome as yet far away from him.

The prose of life will a.s.sert itself, even to visionary eight-and-twenty and sweet eighteen in love with one another. On this occasion it came as a summons to supper. The summoner was a stout and jovial elderly gentleman, about whose somewhat commonplace British exterior there was, to Philip's mind, a reflection of the nimbus which glorified Patty to his mind, for he was Patty's father. He had been called Old Brown at school when he was young--he had been called Old Brown in the country, and the prefix had found him out in town without the need for anybody to breathe a whisper of it. He was Old Brown to his new acquaintances in London before a month had gone by. The name suggests a beverage which is not unlike Old Brown himself--being mild and nutty to the taste as he to the mental palate--ripe and genial. He had a moist twinkle of the eye,--the look which bespeaks the kindly humorist,--and his slightly protruding under lip seemed covertly to taste the flavour of unspoken jokes. Old Brown's jokes were mainly left unspoken, but he spent a good part of his life in laughing without any very apparent reason for laughter, and may have been internally the way he looked to be.

He shook hands with Philip, and chucked Patty under the chin with a waggish aspect, which called an appealing blush into the girl's face. Perhaps the blush stayed the intended quip, but any way the old gentleman contented himself with a beaming laugh, and led the way to the supper table, rubbing his hands and chuckling.

The meal was quietly jovial, and if, after it, Old Brown was not quite so fast asleep as he pretended to be, at least his patience gave the lovers the shelter they needed. He snored in mellow murmurs from behind his bandanna, and they sat and talked together in low tones lest they might awaken him, until the time came for parting.

Outside the mist had given place to a dull persistent rain, and a peevish wind was complaining in area and chimney cowl. Philip turned to the street with a pleasantly haunting vision of Patty's vivacious face outlined against the warmth and brightness of the hall. The touch of her good-night kiss lingered on his lips like live velvet, and he carried warmth and brightness enough within him to defy all the rain that ever rained, and all the wind that ever blew on smoky London.

The rain had cleared the streets, and the occasional gleam of a policeman's cape or a furtive figure seeking the shelter of a doorway against the drifting showers was all he saw as he bored his way against the rising wind to the corner of Holborn. He was so absorbed by that fancy of music to which his own quick tread kept time that a shuffling step behind him rapidly drawing nearer failed to reach his sense. But as he came to the corner, a hand clutched his arm.

He turned, with the quick defensive gesture natural to a man so accosted at such a time, and faced the unexpected figure. An old man, clad in filthy fluttering rags, stood staring at him, with both hands stretched out. The rags shook as much with the horrible cough that tore him as with the cruel wind. He was a dreadful creature, with watery eyes, and a head and moustache of dirty gray. His long and unvenerable hairs strayed loose beneath the dunghill relic which crowned them. The rain was in his hair and beard, and had so soaked his tattered dress that it clung to him like the feathers of a drenched fowl. He shook and wheezed and panted, and gripped the air with tremulous fingers, and through the rents in his clothing his white flesh gleamed in the gaslight.

The look of surprise and pity which Philip bent upon this unclean apparition was startled into one of sudden fear and horror. In the very instant when these emotions struck him, they were reflected in the other's face. The man made a motion to run, but Philip clutched his arm, and he stood cowering and unresisting.

'You! Here in London?'

'Phil,' said the spectre imploringly, 'for G.o.d's sake help me. I didn't know it was you, when I followed you. I thought----' his voice trailed into silence.

'You have come to this?'

'Yes, Phil; this is what I've come to.' The cough took him here again, and tore him so that he was fain to lean against the shutters of a shop near at hand.

'Why do you come back here? Are you mad?'

'I am--almost. What could I do? I'm as safe here as I am anywhere.

Who would know me? or, if they did, who would hurt a wretch like me?

I haven't slept in a bed for weeks, Phil. I haven't eaten a morsel for three days. For G.o.d's sake! give me some money. I'll--I'll go away; I'll never trouble you again.'

'I'll give you all I can. But you must go away from London.'

Philip thrust his hand into his pocket and brought up all the pocket's contents. He took his keys and an unvalued trifle or two from the handful, and held the rest out towards his father. The old man shrunk from him with a terrible appeal and shamefaced grat.i.tude which cut the son's heart like a knife.

'Where can I go to?'

'Anywhere out of London. You are not--safe here. Go away. Write to me here.' He thrust an envelope on which his name and address were written into the old man's dirty trembling hand. 'You must never come to see me.

Promise me that.'

'I promise,' he said; and, thrusting the money and the envelope somewhere among his rags, stood silent for a while. 'I'm afraid,' he said, 'I acted very foolishly and very----'

Then his voice trailed away again.

'G.o.d help you!' said Philip with a choking voice.

'You'll shake hands, won't you, Phil? 'said the old man. Phil took the proffered hand. 'It's something,' said Bommaney the elder, clinging to him, 'to feel an honest man's hand again, G.o.d bless you, Phil!--G.o.d bless you!'

Philip stood silent, and the old man, with another shame-stricken glance upon him, moved away. His son watched him for a second or two, as he slunk, coughing and shivering, along the gleaming pavement, and then turned and went his own way heavily.

Bommaney senior, discerning the welcome beacon of a public-house, shuffled eagerly towards it, hugging beneath his rags the money his son had given him.

'I beg your pardon, Mr. Bommaney; if you please, sir.' He started at the sound of a voice which had been familiar to him for years. 'I should like a word with you, sir; if you please.'

IV

James Hornett was less changed than his old employer, but it was evident that he too had fallen upon evil times. For a mere second the familiar tones of his voice were no more than familiar to Bommaney, whose mind was confused by long misery and hunger and sleeplessness, and the shock of his late encounter. But when he turned and saw Hornett's long thumb and finger sc.r.a.ping at his stubbly jaws, the gesture and the att.i.tude of apology brought him back to mind at once. Hornett's coat sleeve was torn, and showed his arm half way down to the elbow, but revealed no hint of linen, The collar of his frock-coat was b.u.t.toned tightly about his neck, and there was a sparkling metallic rime upon his cheeks and chin and upper lip. Bommaney was ashamed before him, and afraid of him, and only some faint reminder of self-respect and the pride of earlier days held him back from the impulse to run away.

'You're not afraid of me, sir?' said James Hornett. He had always smiled, and was smiling even now. The smile was no more than a contortion of the muscles of the face, which made a long mirthless crease on either cheek, and left the eyes untouched by the least light of sympathy. It gave him a propitiatory dog-like look, and there was a hint of fawning in his att.i.tude which matched it perfectly and carried out the likeness. 'You remember me, sir?' he went on, for Bommaney stared at him so wildly that there seemed room for reasonable doubt on that point. 'Hornett, sir. James Hornett Your faithful servant for thirty years, sir.' Bommaney looked at him with haggard watering eyes, and said nothing as yet 'It's a bit of a surprise, sir, at first, isn't it?' Hornett went on, with his unchanging smile. There was a good deal of hunger and even triumph in his small soul, but they found no other outward expression, and his att.i.tude and voice were as apologetic and retiring as of old. 'It was rather a surprise to me, sir, when I recognised you. Isn't it a little dangerous for you to be here, Mr.

Bommaney?'

They both started, and each looked about him at this mention of the fugitive's name.

'Hush!' said Bommaney. 'Don't call me by that name. Come away from here.'

A policeman strolled along the street, with an echoing tread, and as the two slunk past him he turned a casual glance upon them. The glance touched them like a galvanic shock, and they would have run if they had had courage for such an indiscretion.

'What do you want with me?' asked Bommaney, when the policeman was out of sight and hearing; Hornett walking beside him, with his lean, propitiatory fingers at his chin, looked up with hesitating meekness.

'Well, you see, sir,' he responded, 'your fall was mine, sir; I was supposed'--he coughed behind his hand here to indicate apology for the introduction of a theme so necessarily disagreeable to the other's feelings--' I was supposed, sir, to have been in your confidence. I made many applications for employment, and n.o.body would employ me. Young Mr.

Weatherall, sir, promised, personally, that if I called again, he'd kick me down the steps.'

Bommaney groaned.

'What do you want with me?' he asked again.

They were standing by this time outside the doors of a public-house, and the wind-driven rain was pelting down heavily.

'I thought, sir----' said Hornett; 'I'm very hard pressed, sir.' The dog-like, propitiatory smile never varied. 'I was following Mr. Phil myself, sir, in the hope that his kindness might run to a trifle.'

'Come in,' said Bommaney; and Hornett eagerly accepting the invitation, they entered the house together. There was an odour of frying in the room, and a hissing noise proceeded from a soft of metal caldron which stood over a row of gas-jets on the pewter counter. A printed legend, 'Sausage and Mashed, 3d.' was pasted on the wooden part.i.tion at the side of the box they entered, and on the mirror which faced them, and displayed their own squalid misery to themselves. A year ago the fare would have seemed uninviting to either at his hungriest moment, but now Bommaney called for it with a dreadful suppressed eagerness, and, the barman serving them with a tantalising leisure, they watched every movement with the eyes of famine.

'I've got a little place, sir, of my own,' whispered Hornett, when the pangs of hunger were appeased. 'It's very humble, but you could put up for the night there.' Bommaney made no answer, but the two set out again together through the rain, and, pausing once only for the purchase of a flat pint bottle of whisky, made straight for Fleeter's Rents.

All that nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand of the many thousands who pa.s.s it every day could tell you of Fleeter's Rents is that it makes a narrow black gash in the walls of the great thoroughfare, and that it neighbours Gable Inn. It is slimy in its very atmosphere all winter through, and its air in summer time is made of dust and grit and shadow. The old Inn elbows it disdainfully on one side, and on the other a great modern stuccoed pile overtops it with a parvenu insolence. It is the home naturally of the very poor; for no hermit or hater of the world, however disposed to shun his fellows, would hide in its dingy solitudes whilst he had but a mere shilling a day for lodging and bodily sustenance elsewhere.

Hornett led the way up a set of narrow and broken stairs, and having reached the uppermost story of the house, pushed open a broken door, which, depending from a single hinge, scratched, noisily upon the uneven flooring of the room. His guest stood shivering in the doorway until a match sputtered and fizzed in Hornett's fingers. Then, guided by that precarious light, he advanced. Hornett lit a candle which adhered by its own grease to the filthy wall and had already made a great cone of smoke with a tremulous outline there. There was a small grate, with a mere double-handful of shavings, chips, and coal behind its rusty bars.

Hornett applied the match to the shavings, and, as the fire leapt up, the two men knelt together, coughing and choking in the smoke, and bathing their chilled hands in the flame. Bommaney drew the flat bottle from a pocket hidden somewhere in his mult.i.tudinous rags, and drank.

Hornett watched him greedily, with hands involuntarily and unconsciously extended. Then when he had drunk in turn, they each shivered over the fire again, stealing furtive glances at each other, each mightily disconcerted when he met the other's eye. Bommaney had aged dreadfully during his year of hiding, and Hornett, who had drunk his employer's health upon his birthdays often enough to know his age to a day, could yet scarce believe that the dreadful spectre who knelt beside him numbered less than fourscore years.

One question perplexed Hornett's mind. How came it, he asked himself over and over again, that in the s.p.a.ce of a mere twelvemonths a man who started with at least eight thousand pounds could have fallen into such a depth of poverty? Eight thousand pounds, if absolutely nothing were done with it for its own increase, meant royal living for a score of years for an unenc.u.mbered man. Hornett longed to satisfy his own curiosity upon this point, and felt as if he dared not ask the question for his life. He framed a score of ways by which he might approach it, with a road of retreat behind him, and at last, as if in spite of himself, he said, with apologetic impudence,