WHAT LORD JOCELYN THOUGHT.
The subject of Angela's meditations was not where she thought him, in
his own bedroom. When he left his adviser, he did not go in at once, but
walked once or twice up and down the pavement, thinking. What he had
promised to do was nothing less than to reverse, altogether, the whole
of his promised life; and this is no light matter, even if you do it for
love's sweet sake. And, Miss Kennedy being no longer with him, he felt a
little chilled from the first enthusiasm. Presently he looked at his
watch; it was still early, only half-past ten.
"There is the chance," he said. "It is only a chance. He generally comes
back somewhere about this time."
There are no cabs at Stepney, but there are tramways which go quite as
fast, and, besides, give one the opportunity of exchanging ideas on
current topics with one's travelling companions. Harry jumped into one,
and sat down between a bibulous old gentleman, who said he lived in Fore
Street, but had for the moment mislaid all his other ideas, and a lady
who talked to herself as she carried a bundle. She was rehearsing
something dramatic, a monologue, in which she was "giving it" to
somebody unknown. And she was so much under the influence and emotion of
imagination that the young man trembled lest he might be mistaken for
the person addressed. However, happily, the lady so far restrained
herself, and Aldgate was reached in peace. There he took a hansom and
drove to Piccadilly.
The streets looked strange to him after his three months' absence; the
lights, the crowds on the pavements, so different from the East End
crowd; the rush of the carriages and cabs taking the people home from
the theatre, filled him with a strange longing. He had been asleep; he
had had a dream; there was no Stepney; there was no Whitechapel Road--a
strange and wondrous dream. Miss Kennedy and her damsels were only a
part of this vision. A beautiful and delightful dream. He was back again
in Piccadilly, and all was exactly as it always had been. So far all was
exactly the same, for Lord Jocelyn was in his chamber and alone.
"You are come back to me, Harry?" he said, holding the young man's hand;
"you have had enough of your cousins and the worthy Bunker. Sit down,
boy. I heard your foot on the stairs. I have waited for it a long time.
Sit down and let me look at you. To-morrow you shall tell me all your
adventures."
"It is comfortable," said Harry, taking his old chair and one of his
guardian's cigarettes. "Yes, Piccadilly is better, in some respects,
than Whitechapel."
"And there is more comfort the higher up you climb, eh?"
"Certainly, more comfort. There is not, I am sure, such an easy-chair as
this east of St. Paul's."
Then they were silent, as becomes two men who know what is in each
other's heart, and wait for it to be said.
"You look well," said Harry presently. "Where did you spend the summer?"
"Mediterranean. Yacht. Partridges."
"Of course. Do you stay in London long?"
And so on. Playing with the talk, and postponing the inevitable, Harry
learned where everybody had been, and who was engaged, and who was
married, and how one or two had joined the majority since his departure.
He also heard the latest scandal, and the current talk, and what had
been done at the club, and who had been blackballed, with divers small
bits of information about people and things. And he took up the talk in
the old manner, and fell into the old attitude of mind quite naturally,
and as if there had been no break at all. Presently the clock pointed to
one, and Lord Jocelyn rose.
"We will talk again to-morrow, Harry, my boy, and the day after
to-morrow, and many days after that. I am glad to have you back again."
He laid his hand upon the young man's shoulder.
"Do not go just yet," said Harry, blushing and feeling guilty, because
he was going to inflict pain on one who loved him. "I cannot talk with
you to-morrow."
"Why not?"
"Because--sit down again and listen--because I have made up my mind to
join my kith and kin altogether, and stay among them."
"What? Stay among them?"
"You remember what you told me of your motive in taking me. You would
bring up a boy of the people like a gentleman. You would educate him in
all that a gentleman can learn, and then you would send him back to his
friends, whom he would make discontented, and so open the way for
civilization."
"I said so--did I? Yes: but there were other things, Harry. You forget
that motives are always mixed. There was affection for my brave sergeant
and a desire to help his son; there were all sorts of things. Besides, I
expected that you would take a rough kind of polish only--like nickel,
you know, or pewter--and you turned out real silver. A gentleman, I
thought, is born, not made. This proved a mistake. The puddle blood
would show, I expected, which was prejudice, you see, because there is
no such thing as puddle blood. Besides, I thought you would be stupid
and slow to pick up ideas, and that you would pick up only a few;
supposing, in my ignorance, that all persons not 'born,' as the Germans
say, must be stupid and slow."
"And I was not stupid?"
"You? The brightest and cleverest lad in the whole world--you stepped
into the place I made for you as if you had been born for it. Now tell
me why you wish to step out of it."
"Like you, sir I have many motives. Partly, I am greatly interested in
my own people; partly, I am interested in the place itself and its
ways; partly, I am told, and I believe, that there is a great deal which
I can do there--do not laugh at me."
"I am not laughing, Harry; I am only astonished. Yes, you _are_ changed,
your eyes are different, your voice is different. Go on, my boy."
"I do not think there is much to say--I mean, in explanation. But of
course I understand--it is a part of the thing--that if I stay among
them I must be independent. I could no longer look to your bounty, which
I have accepted too long. I must work for my living."
"Work! And what will you do?"
"I know a lot of things, but somehow they are not wanted at Stepney, and
the only thing by which I can make money seems to be my lathe--I have
become a cabinet-maker."
"Heavens! You have become a cabinet-maker? Do you actually mean, Harry,
that you are going to work--with your hands--for money?"
"Yes; with my hands. I shall be paid for my work; I shall live by my
work. The puddle blood, you see."
"No, no," said Lord Jocelyn, "there is no proof of puddle blood in being
independent. But think of the discomfort of it."
"I have thought of the discomfort. It is not really so very bad. What is
your idea of the life I shall have to live?"
"Why," said Lord Jocelyn, with a shudder, "you will rise at six; you
will go out in working-clothes, carrying your tools, and with your apron
tied round and tucked up like a missionary bishop on his way to a
confirmation. You will find yourself in a workshop full of disagreeable
people, who pick out unpleasant adjectives and tack them on to
everything, and whose views of life and habits are--well, not your own.
You will have to smoke pipes at a street corner on Sundays; your tobacco
will be bad; you will drink bad beer--Harry! the contemplation of the
thing is too painful."
Harry laughed.
"The reality is not quite so bad," he said. "Cabinet-makers are
excellent fellows. And as for myself, I shall not work in a shop, but
alone. I am offered the post of cabinet-maker in a great place where I
shall have my own room to myself, and can please my own convenience as
to my hours. I shall earn about tenpence an hour--say seven shillings a
day, if I keep at it."
"If he keeps at it," murmured Lord Jocelyn, "he will make seven
shillings a day."
"Dinner in the middle of the day, of course." Harry went on, with a
cheerful smile. "At the East End everybody stokes at one. We have tea at
five and supper when we can get it. A simpler life than yours."
"This is a programme of such extreme misery," said Lord Jocelyn, "that
your explanations are quite insufficient. Is there, I wonder, a woman in
the case?"
Harry blushed violently.
"There _is_ a woman, then?" said his guardian triumphantly. "There
always is. I might have guessed it from the beginning. Come, Harry, tell
me all about it. Is it serious? Is she--can she be--at Whitechapel--a
lady?"
"Yes," said Harry, "it is quite true. There is a woman, and I am in love
with her. She is a dressmaker."
"Oh!"
"And a lady."
Lord Jocelyn said nothing.
"A lady." Harry repeated the words, to show that he knew what he was
saying. "But it is no use. She won't listen to me."
"That is more remarkable than your two last statements. Many men have
fallen in love with dressmakers, some dressmakers have acquired
partially the manners of a lady; but that any dressmaker should refuse
the honorable attentions of a handsome young fellow like you, and a
gentleman, is inconceivable."
"A cabinet-maker, not a gentleman. But do not let us talk of her, if you
please."
Then Lord Jocelyn proceeded, with such eloquence as was at his command,
to draw a picture of what he was throwing away compared with what he was
accepting. There was a universal feeling, he assured his ward, of
sympathy with him: everybody felt that it was rough on such a man as
himself to find that he was not of illustrious descent; he would take
his old place in society; all his old friends would welcome him back
among them, with much more to the same purpose.
It was four o'clock in the morning when their conversation ended and
Lord Jocelyn went to bed sorrowful, promising to renew his arguments in
the morning. As soon as he was gone, Harry went to his own room and put
together a few little trifles belonging to the past which he thought he
should like. Then he wrote a letter of farewell to his guardian,
promising to report himself from time to time, with a few words of
gratitude and affection. And then he stole quietly down the stairs and
found himself in the open street. Like a school-boy, he had run away.
There was nobody left in the streets. Half-past four in the morning is
almost the quietest time of any; even the burglar has gone home, and it
is too early for anything but the market-garden carts on their way to
Covent Garden. He strode down Piccadilly and across the silent Leicester
Square into the Strand. He passed through that remarkable thoroughfare,
and, by way of Fleet Street, where even the newspaper offices were
deserted, the leader-writers and the editor and the subeditors all gone
home to bed, to St. Paul's. It was then a little after five, and there
was already a stir. An occasional footfall along the principal streets.
By the time he got to the Whitechapel Road there were a good many up and
about, and before he reached Stepney Green the day's work was beginning.
The night had gone and the sun was rising, for it was six o'clock and a
cloudless morning. At ten he presented himself once more at the
accountant's office.
"Well?" asked the chief.
"I am come," said Harry, "to accept Miss Messenger's offer."
"You seem pretty independent. However, that is the way with you
working-men nowadays. I suppose you don't even pretend to feel any
gratitude?"
"I don't pretend," said Harry pretty hotly, "to answer questions outside
the work I have to do."
The chief looked at him as if he could, if he wished, and was not a
Christian, annihilate him.
"Go, young man," he said presently, pointing to the door, "go to your
work. Rudeness to his betters a working-man considers due to himself, I
suppose. Go to your work."
Harry obeyed without a word, being in such a rage that he could not
speak. When he reached his workshop, he found waiting to be mended an
office-stool with a broken leg. I regret to report that this unhappy
stool immediately became a stool with four broken legs and a kicked-out
seat.
Harry was for the moment too strong for the furniture.
Not even the thought of Miss Kennedy's approbation could bring him
comfort. He was an artisan, he worked by the piece--that was nothing.
The galling thing was to realize that he must now behave to certain
classes with a semblance of respect, because now he had his "betters."
The day before he was a gentleman who had no "betters." He was enriched
by this addition to his possessions, and yet he was not grateful.