DOWN ON THEIR LUCK.
Engaged in these pursuits, neither Angela nor Harry paid much heed to
the circle at the boarding-house, where they were still nominally
boarders. For Angela was all day long at her association, and her
general assistant, or prime-minister, after a hasty breakfast, hastened
to his daily labor. He found that he was left entirely to his own
devices: work came in which he did or left undone, Miss Messenger's
instructions were faithfully carried out, and his independence was
respected. During work-time he planned amusements and surprises for Miss
Kennedy and her girls, or he meditated upon the Monotony of Man, a
subject which I may possibly explain later on; or when he knocked off,
he would go and see the drayman roll about the heavy casks as if they
were footballs; or he would watch the machinery and look at the great
brown mass of boiling hops, or he would drop suddenly upon his cousin
Josephus, and observe him faithfully entering names, ticking off and
comparing, just as he had done for forty years, still a junior clerk.
But he gave no thought to the boarders.
One evening, however, in late September, he happened to look in toward
nine o'clock, the hour when the frugal supper was generally spread. The
usual occupants of the room were there, but there was no supper on the
table, and the landlady was absent.
Harry stood in the doorway, with his hands in his pockets, carelessly
looking at the group. Suddenly he became aware, with a curious sinking
of heart, that something was gone wrong with all of them. They were all
silent, all sitting bolt upright, no one taking the least notice of his
neighbor, and all apparently in some physical pain.
The illustrious pair were in their usual places, but his lordship,
instead of looking sleepy and sleepily content, as was his custom at the
evening hour, sat bolt upright and thrummed the arm of his chair with
his fingers, restless and ill at ease; opposite to him sat his consort,
her hands tightly clasped, her bright beady eyes gleaming with
impatience, which might at any moment break out into wrath. Yet the case
was completely drawn up, as Harry knew, because he had finished it
himself, and it only remained to make a clean copy before it was "sent
in" to the Lord Chancellor.
As for the professor, he was seated at the window, his legs curled under
the chair, looking moodily across Stepney Green--into space, and
neglecting his experiments. His generally cheerful face wore an anxious
expression as if he was thinking of something unpleasant, which would
force itself upon his attention.
Josephus was in his corner, without his pipe, and more than usually
melancholy. His sadness always, however, increased in the evening, so
that he hardly counted.
Daniel, frowning like a Rhine baron of the good old time, had his books
before him, but they were closed. It was a bad sign that even the
Version in the Hebrew had no attraction for him.
Mr. Maliphant alone was smiling. His smiles, in such an assemblage of
melancholy faces, produced an incongruous effect. The atmosphere was
charged with gloom--it was funereal: in the midst of it the gay and
cheerful countenance, albeit wrinkled, of the old man, beamed like the
sun impertinently shining amid fog and rain, sleet and snow. The thing
was absurd. Harry felt the force of Miss Kennedy's remark that the
occupants of the room reminded her of a fortuitous concourse of flies,
or ants, or rooks, or people in an omnibus, each of whom was profoundly
occupied with its own affairs and careless of its neighbors. Out of six
in the room, five were unhappy: they did not ask for, or expect, the
sympathies of their neighbors; they did not reveal their anxieties; they
sat and suffered in silence; the sixth alone was quite cheerful: it was
nothing to him what experiences the rest were having, whether they were
enjoying the upper airs, or enduring hardness. He sat in his own place
near the professor: he laughed aloud; he even talked and told stories,
to which no one listened. When Harry appeared, he was just ending a
story which he had never begun:
"So it was given to the other fellow. And he came from Baxter Street,
close to the City Hall, which is generally allowed to be the wickedest
street in New York City."
He paused a little, laughed cheerfully, rubbed his dry old hands
together, smoked his pipe in silence, and then concluded his story,
having filled up the middle in his own mind, without speech.
"And so he took to the coasting trade off the Andes."
Harry caught the eye of the professor, and beckoned him to come outside.
"Now," he said, taking his arm, "what the devil is the matter with all
of you?"
The professor smiled feebly under the gas-lamp in the street, and
instantly relapsed into his anxious expression.
"I suppose," he said, "that is, I guess, because they haven't told me,
that it's the same with them as with me."
"And that is----?"
The professor slapped his empty pockets:
"Want of cash," he said. "I'm used to it in the autumn, just before the
engagements begin. Bless you! It's nothing to me; though, when you've
had no dinner for a week, you do begin to feel as if you could murder
and roast a cat, if no one was looking. I've even begun to wish that the
Eighth Commandment was suspended during the autumn."
"Do you mean, man, that you are all hungry?"
"All except old Maliphant, and he doesn't count. Josephus had some
dinner, but he says he can't afford supper and dinner too at the rate
his heels wear out. Yes, I don't suppose there's been a dinner apiece
among us for the last week."
"Good heavens!" Harry hurried off to find the landlady.
She was in the kitchen sitting before the fire, though it was a warm
night. She looked up when her lodger entered, and Harry observed that
she, too, wore an air of dejection.
"Well, Mrs. Bormalack."
She groaned and wiped away a tear.
"My heart bleeds for them, Mr. Goslett," she said. "I can't bear to set
eyes on them; I can't face them. Because to do what I should like to do
for them, would be nothing short of ruin. And how to send them away I
cannot tell."
He nodded his head encouragingly.
"You are a young man, Mr. Goslett, and you don't consider--and you are
thinking day and night of that sweet young thing, Miss Kennedy. And she
of you. Oh! you needn't blush; a handsome fellow like you is a prize for
any woman, however good-looking. Besides, I've got eyes."
"Still, that doesn't help us much to the point, Mrs. Bormalack, which
is, what can we do for them?"
"Oh, dear me! the poor things don't board and lodge any more, Mr.
Goslett. They've had no board to-day. If I did what I should like to
do--but I can't. There's the rent and rates and all. And how I can keep
them in the house, unless they pay their rent, I can't tell. I've never
been so miserable since Captain Saffrey went away, owing for three
months."
"Not enough to eat?"
"Lady Davenant came to me this morning, and paid the rent for this week,
but _not the board_; said that her nephew Nathaniel hadn't sent the six
dollars, and they could only have breakfast, and must find some cheap
place for dinner somewhere else. In the middle of the day they went out.
Her ladyship put quite a chirpy face upon it; said they were going into
the city to get dinner, but his lordship groaned. Dinner! They came home
at two, and his groans have been heart-rending all the afternoon. I
never heard such groaning."
"Poor old man!"
"And there's the professor, too. It's low water with him. No one wants
conjuring till winter comes. But he's quite used to go without his
dinner. You needn't mind him!"
"Eels," said Harry, "are used to being skinned. Yet they wriggle a bit."
He produced a few coins and proffered a certain request to the landlady.
Then he returned to his fellow-lodgers.
Presently there was heard in the direction of the kitchen a cheerful
hissing, followed by a perfectly divine fragrance. Daniel closed his
eyes, and leaned back in his chair. The professor smiled. His lordship
rolled in his chair and groaned. Presently Mrs. Bormalack appeared, and
the cloth was laid. His lordship showed signs of an increasing
agitation. The fragrance increased. He leaned forward clutching the arm
of his chair, looking to his wife as if for help and guidance at this
most difficult crisis. He was frightfully hungry; all his dinner had
been a biscuit and a half, his wife having taken the other half. What is
a biscuit and a half to one accustomed to the flesh-pots of Canaan City?
"Clara Martha," he groaned, trying to whisper, but failing in his
agitation, "I must have some of that beefsteak or I shall----"
Here he relapsed into silence again.
It was not from a desire to watch the sufferings of the unlucky peer,
or in order to laugh at them, that Harry hesitated to invite him. Now,
however, he hesitated no longer.
"I am giving a little supper to-night, Lady Davenant, to--to--celebrate
my birthday. May I hope that you and his lordship will join us?"
Her ladyship most affably accepted.
Well, they were fed; they made up for the meagreness of the midday meal
by such a supper as should be chronicled, so large, so generous was it.
Such a supper, said the professor, as should carry a man along for a
week, were it not for the foolish habit of getting hungry twice at least
in the four-and-twenty hours. After supper they all became cheerful, and
presently went to bed as happy as if there were no to-morrow, and the
next day's dinner was assured.
When they were gone, Harry began to smoke his evening pipe. Then he
became aware of the presence of the two who were left--his cousin
Josephus and old Mr. Maliphant.
The former was sitting in gloomy silence, and the latter was making as
if he would say something, but thought better of it, and smiled instead.
"Josephus," said Harry, "what the devil makes you so gloomy? You can't
be hungry still?"
"No," he replied. "It isn't that; a junior clerk fifty-five years old
has no right to get hungry."
"What is it, then?"
"They talk of changes in the office, that is all. Some of the juniors
will be promoted; not me, of course, and some will have to go. After
forty years in the brewery, I shall have to go. That's all."
"Seems rough, doesn't it? Can't you borrow a handful of malt, and set up
a little brewery for yourself?"
"It is only starvation. After all, it doesn't matter--nobody cares what
happens to a junior clerk. There are plenty more. And the workhouse is
said to be well managed. Perhaps they will let me keep their accounts."
"When do you think--the--the reduction will be made?"
"Next month, they say."
"Come, cheer up, old man," said his cousin. "Why, if they do turn you
out--which would be a burning shame--you can find something better."
"No," replied Josephus sadly, "I know my place. I am a junior clerk.
They can be got to do my work at seven bob a week. Ah! in thousands."
"Well, but can't you do anything else?"
"Nothing else."
"In all these years, man, have you learned nothing at all?"
"Nothing at all."
Is there, thought Harry, gazing upon his luckless cousin, a condition
more miserable than that of the cheap clerk? In early life he learns to
spell, to read, to write, and perhaps keep books, but this only if he is
ambitious. Here his education ends; he has no desire to learn anything
more; he falls into whatever place he can get, and then he begins a life
in which there is no hope of preferment and no endeavor after better
things. There are, in every civilized country, thousands and thousands
of these helpless and hopeless creatures: they mostly suffer in silence,
being at the best ill-fed and ill-paid, but they sometimes utter a
feeble moan, when one of them can be found with vitality enough about
their pay and prospects. No one has yet told them the honest truth--that
they are already paid as much as they deserve; that their miserable
accomplishments cannot for a moment be compared with the skill of an
artisan; that they are self-condemned because they make no effort. They
have not even the energy to make a Union; they have not the sense of
self-protection; they are content if they are not hungry, if they have
tobacco to smoke and beer to drink.
"How long is it since you--did--whatever it was you did, that kept you
down?" asked the younger man, at length.
"I did nothing. It was an accident. Unless," added Josephus with a
smile--"unless it was the devil. But devils don't care to meddle with
junior clerks."
"What was the accident, then?"
"It was one day in June; I remember the day quite well. I was alone in
my office, the same office as I am in still. The others, younger than
myself, and I was then twenty-one, were gone off on business. The safe
stood close to my desk. There was a bundle of papers in it sealed up,
and marked 'Mr. Messenger, Private,' which had been there a goodish
while, so that I supposed they were not important: some of the books
were there as well, and Mr. Messenger himself had sent down, only an
hour before ... before.... It happened, a packet of notes to be paid
into the bank. The money had been brought in by our country
collectors--fourteen thousand pounds, in country bank-notes. Now
remember, I was sitting at the desk and the safe was locked, and the
keys were in the desk, and no one was in the office except me. And I
will swear that the notes were in the safe. I told Mr. Messenger that I
would take my oath to it, and I would still." Josephus grew almost
animated as he approached the important point in his history.
"Well?"
"Things being so--remember, no one but me in the office, and the
keys----"
"I remember. Get along."
"I was sent for."
"By Mr. Messenger?"
"Mr. Messenger didn't send for junior clerks. He used to send for the
heads of departments, who sent for the chief clerks, who ordered the
juniors. That was the way in those days. No, I was sent for to the chief
clerk's office and given a packet of letters for copying. That took
three minutes. When I came back the office was still empty, the safe was
locked, and the keys in my desk."
"Well?"
"Well--but the safe was empty!"
"What! all the money gone?"
"All gone, every farthing--with Mr. Messenger's private papers."
"What a strange thing!"
"No one saw anybody going into the office or coming out. Nothing else
was taken."
"Come--with fourteen thousand pounds in his hand, no reasonable thief
would ask for more."
"And what is more extraordinary still, not one of those notes has ever
since been presented for payment."
"And then, I suppose, there was a row."
Josephus assented.
"First, I was to be sacked at once; then I was to be watched and
searched; next, I was to be kept on until the notes were presented and
the thief caught. I have been kept on, the notes have not been
presented; and I've had the same pay, neither more nor less, all the
time. That's all the story. Now, there's to be an end of that. I'm to be
sent away."
Mr. Maliphant had not been listening to the story at all, being
pleasantly occupied with his own reminiscences. At this point one of
them made him laugh and rub his hands.
"When Mr. Messenger's father married Susannah Coppin, I have heard----"
Here he stopped.
"Halloo!" cried Harry. "Go on, Venerable. Why, we are cousins or
nephews, or something, of Miss Messenger. Josephus, my boy, cheer up!"
Mr. Maliphant's memory now jumped over two generations, and he went on:
"Caroline Coppin married a sergeant in the army, and a handsome lad--I
forget his name. But Mary Coppin married Bunker. The Coppins were a good
old Whitechapel stock, as good as the Messengers. As for Bunker, he was
an upstart, he was; and came from Barking, as I always understood."
Then he was once more silent.