THE END OF GEORGE GILBERT'S HOLIDAY.
The two young men acted very promptly upon that friendly warning
conveyed in Mrs. Sleaford's farewell message. The maid-of-all-work went
to the greengrocer's, and returned in company with a dirty-looking
boy--who was "Mrs. Judkin's son, please, sir"--and a truck. Mrs.
Judkin's son piled the trunks, portmanteau, and carpet-bag on the truck,
and departed with his load, which was to be kept in the custody of the
Judkin family until the next morning, when Sigismund was to take the
luggage away in a cab. When this business had been arranged, Mr. Smith
and his friend went out into the garden and talked of the surprise that
had fallen upon them.
"I always knew they were thinking of leaving," Sigismund said, "but I
never thought they'd go away like this. I feel quite cut up about it,
George. I'd got to like them, you know, old boy, and to feel as if I was
one of the family; and I shall never be able to partial-board with any
body else."
George seemed to take the matter quite as seriously as his friend,
though his acquaintance with the Sleafords was little more than
four-and-twenty hours old.
"They must have known before to-day that they were going," he said.
"People don't go to America at a few hours' notice."
Sigismund summoned the dirty maid-of-all-work, and the two young men
subjected her to a very rigorous cross-examination; but she could tell
them very little more than she had told them all in one breath in the
first instance.
"Mr. Sleaford 'ad 'is breakfast at nigh upon one o'clock, leastways she
put on the pertaturs for the boys' dinner before she biled 'is egg; and
then he went out, and he come tarin' 'ome agen in one of these 'ansom
cabs at three o'clock in the afternoon; and he told missus to pack up,
and he told the 'ansom cabman to send a four-wheeler from the first
stand he passed at six o'clock precise; and the best part of the luggage
was sent round to the greengrocer's on a truck, and the rest was took on
the roof of the cab, and Master 'Orace rode alongside the cabman, and
would smoke one of them nasty penny pickwicks, which they always made
'im bilious; and Mr. Sleaford he didn't go in the cab, but walked off as
cool as possible, swinging his stick, and 'olding his 'ead as 'igh as
hever."
Sigismund asked the girl if she had heard the address given to the
cabman who took the family away.
"No," the girl said. Mr. Sleaford had given no address. He directed the
cabman to drive over Waterloo Bridge, and that was all the girl heard.
Mr. Smith's astonishment knew no bounds. He walked about the deserted
house, and up and down the weedy pathways between the espaliers, until
long after the summer moon was bright upon the lawn, and every trailing
branch and tender leaflet threw its sharp separate shadow on the
shining ground.
"I never heard of such a thing in all my life," the young author cried;
"it's like penny numbers. With the exception of their going away in a
four-wheeler cab instead of through a sliding panel and subterranean
passage, it's for all the world like penny numbers."
"But you'll be able to find out where they've gone, and why they went
away so suddenly," suggested George Gilbert; "some of their friends will
be able to tell you."
"Friends!" exclaimed Sigismund; "they never had any friends--at least
not friends that they visited, or anything of that kind. Mr. Sleaford
used to bring home some of his friends now and then of an evening, after
dark generally, or on a Sunday afternoon. But we never saw much of them,
for he used to take them up to his own room; and except for his wanting
French brandy and cigars fetched, and chops and steaks cooked, and
swearing at the girl over the balusters if the plates weren't hot
enough, we shouldn't have known that there was company in the house. I
suppose his chums were in the law, like himself," Mr. Smith added,
musingly; "but they didn't look much like barristers, for they had
straggling moustachios, and a kind of would-be military way; and if they
hadn't been Sleaford's friends, I should have thought them
raffish-looking."
Neither of the young men could think of anything or talk of anything
that night except the Sleafords and their abrupt departure. They roamed
about the garden, staring at the long grass and the neglected
flower-beds; at the osier arbour, dark under the shadow of a trailing
vine, that was half-smothered by the vulgar luxuriance of wild
hops,--the osier arbour in which the spiders made their home, and where,
upon the rotten bench, romantic Izzie had sat through the hot hours of
drowsy summer days, reading her favourite novels, and dreaming of a life
that was to be like the plot of a novel.
They went into the house, and called for candles, and wandered from room
to room, looking blankly at the chairs and tables, the open drawers, the
disordered furniture, as if from those inanimate objects they might
obtain some clue to the little domestic mystery that bewildered them.
The house was pervaded by torn scraps of paper, fragments of rag and
string, morsels of crumpled lace and muslin, bald hair-brushes lying in
the corners of the bedrooms, wisps of hay and straw, tin-tacks, and old
kid-gloves. Everywhere there were traces of disorder and hurry, except
in Mr. Sleaford's room. That sanctuary was wide open now, and Mr. Smith
and his friend went into it and examined it. To Sigismund a
newly-excavated chamber in a long-buried city could scarcely have been
more interesting. Here there was no evidence of reckless haste. There
was not a single fragment of waste paper in any one of the half-dozen
open drawers on either side of the desk. There was not so much as an old
envelope upon the floor. A great heap of grey ashes upon the cold
hearthstone revealed the fact that Mr. Sleaford had employed himself in
destroying papers before his hasty departure. The candlestick that
Isabel had given him upon the previous night stood upon his desk, with
the candle burnt down to the socket. George remembered having heard his
host's heavy footsteps pacing up and down the room; and the occasional
opening and shutting of drawers, and slamming of the lids of boxes,
which had mixed with his dreams all through that brief summer's night.
It was all explained now. Mr Sleaford had of course been making his
preparations for leaving Camberwell--for leaving England; if it was
really true that the family were going to America.
Early the next morning there came a very irate gentleman from the Albany
Road. This was the proprietor of the neglected mansion, who had just
heard of the Sleaford hegira, and who was in a towering passion because
of those three quarter's rent which he was never likely to behold. He
walked about the house with his hands in his pockets, kicking the doors
open, and denouncing his late tenants in very unpleasant language. He
stalked into the back parlour, where George and Sigismumd were taking
spongy French rolls and doubtful French eggs, and glared ferociously at
them, and muttered something to the effect that it was like their
impudence to be making themselves so "jolly comfortable" in his house
when he'd been swindled by that disreputable gang of theirs. He used
other adjectives besides that word "disreputable" when he spoke of the
Sleafords; but Sigismund got up from before the dirty table-cloth, and
protested, with his mouth full, that he believed in the honesty of the
Sleafords; and that, although temporarily under a cloud, Mr. Sleaford
would no doubt make a point of looking up the three quarter's rent, and
would forward post-office orders for the amount at the earliest
opportunity. To this the landlord merely replied, that he hoped
his--Sigismund's--head would not ache till Mr. Sleaford _did_ send the
rent; which friendly aspiration was about the only civil thing the
proprietor of the mansion said to either of the young men. He prowled
about the rooms, poking the furniture with his stick, and punching his
fist into the beds to see if any of the feathers had been extracted
therefrom. He groaned over the rents in the carpets, the notches and
scratches upon the mahogany, the entire absence of handles and knobs
wherever it was possible for handles or knobs to be wanting; and every
time he found out any new dilapidation in the room where the two young
men were taking their breakfast, he made as if he would have come down
upon them for the cost of the damage.
"Is that the best teapot you're a-having your teas out of? Where's the
Britannia metal as I gave thirteen-and-six for seven year ago? Where did
that twopenny-halfpenny blown-glass sugar-basin come from? It ain't
mine; mine was di'mond-cut. Why, they've done me two hundred pound
mischief. I could afford to forgive 'em the rent. The rent's the least
part of the damage they've done me."
And then the landlord became too forcible to be recorded in these pages,
and then he went groaning about the garden; whereupon George and
Sigismund collected their toilet-apparatus, and such trifling
paraphernalia as they had retained for the night's use, and hustled them
into a carpet-bag, and fled hastily and fearfully, after giving the
servant-maid a couple of half-crowns, and a solemn injunction to write
to Sigismund at his address in the Temple if she should hear any tidings
whatever of the Sleafords.
So, in the bright summer morning, George Gilbert saw the last of the old
house which for nearly seven years had sheltered Mr. Sleaford and his
wife and children, the weedy garden in which Isabel had idled away so
many hours of her early girlhood; the straggling vines under which she
had dreamed bright sentimental dreams over the open leaves of her
novels.
The young men hired a cab at the nearest cab-stand, and drove to the
establishment of the friendly greengrocer who had given shelter to their
goods. It was well for them, perhaps, that the trunks and portmanteau
had been conveyed to that humble sanctuary; for the landlord was in no
humour to hesitate at trifles, and would have very cheerfully impounded
Sigismund's simple wardrobe, and the bran-new linen shirts which George
Gilbert had brought to London.
They bestowed a small gratuity upon Mrs. Judkin, and then drove to
Sigismund's chambers, where they encamped, and contrived to make
themselves tolerably comfortable, in a rough gipsy kind of way.
"You shall have Morgan's room," Sigismund said to his friend, "and I can
make up a bed in the sitting-room; there's plenty of mattresses and
blankets."
They dined rather late in the evening at a celebrated tavern in the near
neighbourhood of those sacred precincts where law and justice have their
head-quarters, and after dinner Sigismund borrowed the "Law List."
"We may find out something about Mr. Sleaford in that," he said.
But the "Law List" told nothing of Mr. Sleaford. In vain Sigismund and
George took it in turn to explore the long catalogue of legal
practitioners whose names began with the letter S. There were St. Johns
and Simpsons, St. Evremonds and Smitherses, Standishes and Sykeses.
There was almost every variety of appellation, aristocratic and
plebeian; but the name of Sleaford was not in the list: and the young
men returned the document to the waiter, and went home wondering how it
was that Mr. Sleaford's name had no place among the names of his
brotherhood.
* * * * *
I have very little to tell concerning the remaining days which the
conditions of George Gilbert's excursion ticket left him free to enjoy
in London. He went to the theatres with his friend, and sat in stifling
upper boxes, in which there was a considerable sprinkling of the "order"
element, during these sunshiny summer evenings. Sigismund also took him
to divers _al fresco_ entertainments, where there were fireworks, and
"polking," and bottled stout; and in the daytime George was fain to
wander about the streets by himself, staring at the shop-windows, and
hustled and frowned at for walking on the wrong side of the pavement; or
else to loll on the window-seat in Sigismund's apartment, looking down
into the court below, or watching his friend's scratching pen scud
across the paper. Sacred as the rites of hospitality may be, they must
yet give way before the exigencies of the penny press; and Sigismund was
rather a dull companion for a young man from the country who was bent
upon a week's enjoyment of London life.
For very lack of employment, George grew to take an interest in his
friend's labour, and asked him questions about the story that poured so
rapidly from his hurrying pen.
"What's it all about, Sigismund?" he demanded. "Is it funny?"
"Funny!" cried Mr. Smith, with a look of horror; "I should think not,
indeed. Who ever heard of penny numbers being funny? What the penny
public want is plot, and plenty of it; surprises, and plenty of 'em;
mystery, as thick as a November fog. Don't you know the sort of thing?
'The clock of St. Paul's had just sounded eleven hours;'--it's generally
a translation, you know, and St. Paul's stands for Notre Dame;--'a man
came to appear upon the quay which extends itself all the length between
the bridges of Waterloo and London.' There isn't any quay, you know; but
you're obliged to have it so, on account of the plot. 'This man--who had
a true head of vulture, the nose pointed, sharp, terrible; all that
there is of the most ferocious; the eyes cavernous, and full of a sombre
fire--carried a bag upon his back. Presently he stops himself. He
regards with all his eyes the quay, nearly desert; the water, black and
shiny, which stretches itself at his feet. He listens, but there is
nothing. He bends himself upon the border of the quay. He puts aside the
bag from his shoulders, and something of dull, heavy, slides slowly
downwards and falls into the water. At the instant that the heavy
burthen sinks with a dull noise to the bottom of the river, there is a
voice, loud and piercing, which seems to elevate itself out of the
darkness: 'Philip Launay, what dost thou do there with the corpse of thy
victim?'--That's the sort of thing for the penny public," said Mr.
Smith; "or else a good strong combination story."
"What do you call a combination story?" Mr. Gilbert asked, innocently.
"Why, you see, when you're doing four great stories a week for a public
that must have a continuous flow of incident, you can't be quite as
original as a strict sense of honour might prompt you to be; and the
next best thing you can do, if you haven't got ideas of your own, is to
steal other people's ideas in an impartial manner. Don't empty one man's
pocket, but take a little bit all round. The combination novel enables a
young author to present his public with all the brightest flowers of
fiction neatly arranged into every variety of garland. I'm doing a
combination novel now--the 'Heart of Midlothian' and the 'Wandering
Jew.' You've no idea how admirably the two stories blend. In the first
place, I throw my period back into the Middle Ages--there's nothing like
the Middle Ages for getting over the difficulties of a story. Good
gracious me! why, what is there that isn't possible if you go back to
the time of the Plantagenets? I make Jeannie Deans a dumb girl,--there's
twice the interest in her if you make her dumb,--and I give her a goat
and a tambourine, because, you see, the artist likes that sort of thing
for his illustrations. I think you'd admit that I've very much improved
upon Sir Walter Scott--a delightful writer, I allow, but decidedly a
failure in penny numbers--if you were to run your eye over the story,
George; there's only seventy-eight numbers out yet, but you'll be able
to judge of the plot. Of course I don't make Aureola,--I call my Jeannie
'Aureola;' rather a fine name, isn't it? and entirely my own
invention,--of course I don't make Aureola walk from Edinburgh to
London. What would be the good of that? why, anybody _could_ walk it if
they only took long enough about it. I make her walk from London to
ROME, to get a Papal Bull for the release of her sister from the Tower
of London. That's something like a walk, I flatter myself; over the
Alps--which admits of Aureola's getting buried in the snow, and dug out
again by a Mount St. Bernard's dog; and then walled up alive by the
monks because they suspect her of being friendly to the Lollards; and
dug out again by Cæsar Borgia, who happens to be travelling that way,
and asks a night's lodging, and heard Aureola's tambourine behind the
stone wall in his bedroom, and digs her out and falls in love with her;
and she escapes from his persecution out of a window, and lets herself
down the side of the mountain by means of her gauze scarf, and dances
her way to Rome, and obtains an audience of the Pope, and gets mixed up
with the Jesuits:--and that's where I work into the 'Wandering Jew,'"
concluded Mr. Smith.
George Gilbert ventured to suggest that in the days when the Plantagenet
ruled our happy isle, Ignatius Loyola had not yet founded his wonderful
brotherhood; but Mr. Smith acknowledged this prosaic suggestion with a
smile of supreme contempt.
"Oh, if you tie me down to facts," he said, "I can't write at all."
"But you like writing?"
"For the penny public? Oh, yes; I like writing for them. There's only
one objection to the style--it's apt to give an author a tendency
towards bodies."
Mr. Gilbert was compelled to confess that this last remark was
incomprehensible to him.
"Why, you see, the penny public require excitement," said Mr. Smith;
"and in order to get the excitement up to a strong point, you're obliged
to have recourse to bodies. Say your hero murders his father, and buries
him in the coal-cellar in No. 1. What's the consequence? There's an
undercurrent of the body in the coal-cellar running through every
chapter, like the subject in a fugue or a symphony. You drop it in the
treble, you catch it up in the bass; and then it goes sliding up into
the treble again, and then drops down with a melodious groan into the
bass; and so on to the end of the story. And when you've once had
recourse to the stimulant of bodies, you're like a man who's accustomed
to strong liquors, and to whose vitiated palate simple drinks seem flat
and wishy-washy. I think there ought to be a literary temperance pledge
by which the votaries of the ghastly and melodramatic school might bind
themselves to the renunciation of the bowl and dagger, the midnight
rendezvous, the secret grave dug by lantern-light under a black grove of
cypress, the white-robed figure gliding in the grey gloaming athwart a
lonely churchyard, and all the alcoholic elements of fiction. But, you
see, George, it isn't so easy to turn teetotaller," added Mr. Smith,
doubtfully; "and I scarcely know that it is so very wise to make the
experiment. Are not reformed drunkards the dullest and most miserable of
mankind? Isn't it better for a man to do his best in the style that is
natural to him than to do badly in another man's line of business? 'Box
and Cox' is not a great work when criticised upon sternly æsthetic
principles; but I would rather be the author of 'Box and Cox,' and hear
my audience screaming with laughter from the rise of the curtain to the
fall thereof, than write a dull five-act tragedy, in the unities of
which Aristotle himself could find no flaw, but from whose performance
panic-stricken spectators should slink away or ere the second act came
to its dreary close. I think I should like to have been Guilbert de
Pixérécourt, the father and prince of melodrama, the man whose dramas
were acted thirty thousand times in France before he died (and how many
times in England?); the man who reigned supreme over the playgoers of
his time, and has not yet ceased to reign. Who ever quotes any passage
from the works of Guilbert de Pixérécourt, or remembers his name? But to
this day his dramas are acted in every country theatre; his persecuted
heroines weep and tremble; his murderous scoundrels run their two hours'
career of villany, to be dragged off scowling to subterranean dungeons,
or to die impenitent and groaning at the feet of triumphant virtue.
Before nine o'clock to-night there will be honest country-folks
trembling for the fate of Theresa, the Orphan of Geneva, and simple
matrons weeping over the peril of the Wandering Boys. But Guilbert de
Pixérécourt was never a great man; he was only popular. If a man can't
have a niche in the Walhalla, isn't it something to have his name in big
letters in the play-bills on the boulevard? and I wonder how long my
friend Guilbert would have held the stage, if he had emulated Racine or
Corneille. He did what it was in him to do, honestly; and he had his
reward. Who would not wish to be great? Do you think I wouldn't rather
be the author of the 'Vicar of Wakefield' than of 'Colonel Montefiasco?'
I _could_ write the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' too, but--"
George stared aghast at his excited friend.
"But not Oliver Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield,'" Sigismund explained.
He had thrown down his pen now, and was walking up and down the room
with his hands thrust deep down in his pockets, and his face scarlet
with fierce excitement.
"I should do the Vicar in the detective pre-Raphaelite style. Moses
knows a secret of his father's--forged accommodation-bills, or something
of that kind; sets out to go to the fair on a drowsy summer morning, not
a leaf stirring in the vicarage garden. You hear the humming of the bees
as they bounce against the vicarage-windows; you see the faint light
trembling about Olivia's head, as she comes to watch her brother riding
along the road; you see him ride away, and the girl watching him, and
feel the hot sleepy atmosphere, and hear the swoop of the sickle in the
corn-fields on the other side of the road; and the low white gate
swings-to with a little click, and Miss Primrose walks slowly back to
the house, and says, 'Papa, it's very warm;' and you know there's
something going to happen.
"Then the second chapter comes, and Mr. Primrose has his dinner, and
goes out to visit his poor; and the two girls walk about the garden with
Mr. Burchell, watching for Moses, who NEVER COMES BACK. And then the
serious business of the story begins, and Burchell keeps his eye upon
the Vicar. Nobody else suspects good Mr. Primrose; but Burchell's eye is
never off him; and one night, when the curtains are drawn, and the girls
are sitting at their work, and dear Mrs. Primrose is cutting out
comfortable flannels for the poor, the Vicar opens his desk, and begins
to write a letter. You hear the faint sound of the light ashes falling
on the hearth, the slow ticking of an eight-day clock in the hall
outside the drawing-room door, the sharp snap of Mrs. Primrose's
scissors as they close upon the flannel. Sophia asks Burchell to fetch a
volume from the bookcase behind the Vicar's chair. He is a long time
choosing the book, and his eye looks over the Vicar's shoulder. He takes
a mental inventory of the contents of the open desk, and he sees amongst
the neatly-docketed papers, the receipted bills, and packets of
envelopes--what? a glove, a green kid-glove sewn with white, which he
distinctly remembers to have seen worn by Moses when he started on that
pleasant journey from which he never returned. Can't you see the Vicar's
face, as he looks round at Burchell, and knows that his secret is
discovered? I can. Can't you fancy the awful silent duel between the two
men, the furtive glances, the hidden allusions to that dreadful mystery,
lurking in every word that Burchell utters?
"That's how _I_ should do the 'Vicar of Wakefield,'" said Sigismund
Smith, triumphantly. "There wouldn't be much in it, you know; but the
story would be pervaded by Moses's body lying murdered in a ditch half a
mile from the vicarage, and Burchell's ubiquitous eye. I dare say some
people would cry out upon it, and declare that it was wicked and
immoral, and that the young man who could write about a murder would be
ready to commit the deed at the earliest convenient opportunity. But I
don't suppose the clergy would take to murdering their sons by reason of
my fiction, in which the rules of poetical justice would be sternly
adhered to, and Nemesis, in the shape of Burchell, perpetually before
the reader."
Poor George Gilbert listened very patiently to his friend's talk, which
was not particularly interesting to him. Sigismund preached "shop" to
whomsoever would listen to him, or suffer him to talk; which was pretty
much the same to this young man. I am afraid there were times when his
enthusiastic devotion to his profession rendered Mr. Smith a terrible
nuisance to his friends and acquaintance. He would visit a pleasant
country-house, and receive hospitable entertainment, and enjoy himself;
and then, when all that was morbid in his imagination had been
stimulated by sparkling burgundy and pale hochheimer, this wretched
young traitor would steal out into some peaceful garden, where dew-laden
flowers flung their odours on the still evening air, and sauntering in
the shadowy groves where the nightingale's faint "jug-jug" was beginning
to sound, would plan a diabolical murder, to be carried out in
seventy-five penny numbers. Sometimes he was honourable enough to ask
permission of the proprietor of the country mansion; and when, on one
occasion, after admiring the trim flower-gardens and ivied walls, the
low turreted towers and grassy moats, of a dear old place that had once
been a grange, he ventured to remark that the spot was so peaceful it
reminded him of slow poisoning, and demanded whether there would be any
objection to his making the quiet grange the scene of his next
fiction,--the cordial cheery host cried out, in a big voice that
resounded high up among the trees where the rooks were cawing, "People
it with fiends, my dear boy! You're welcome to people the place with
fiends, as far as I'm concerned."