TELLS OF A BETTER QUEST THAN THAT OF THE HOLY GRAIL.
Thomas Wanless set out for London, within a week after his daughter's
disappearance, on a dull, cold, January morning. His farewells were
cheerful, but his heart was downcast enough, and the further the slow,
crawling train took him from home the heavier his heart became. It was
dark long before he reached Paddington, to be there turned out upon the
murky bewilderment of London streets, knowing not where to turn his
footsteps.
Mechanically he followed the string of people and cabs flowing out of
the station into Praed Street, the lamps of which showed faintly through
damp, smoke-charged air. Then he paused irresolute. A sense of
loneliness and hopelessness stole over him, intensified probably by
hunger, for he had eaten nothing save a crust of bread and cheese since
early morning. He was as one lost, as helpless in the crush of whirling
humanity as a wind-driven clot of foam on a storm-tossed sea. Amid all
this hurry and bustle of human life, where could he go? how find
lodgings? Fairly overwhelmed by the sense of desolation, he leant
against a wall to try and collect his thoughts, and mentally prayed for
courage and guidance.
For some minutes he stood thus self-absorbed, when a rather kindly
voice, speaking almost in his ear, roused him with a
"Good evening, mate. Be you a stranger?"
"Yes," Thomas answered, looking up. "Yes, I came up from Warwick to-day,
and never was in London before."
"Be ye in want o' work then, or not?" the voice demanded.
"Why, yes, if I can get work I'll be glad of it; but it wasn't that
exactly as brought me here. You see----." But Thomas checked himself,
and turned a scrutinising gaze on his interlocutor. He saw a rather
grimy, ill-clad, thick-set man, whose face seemed as kindly as his
voice, though its expression was barely discernible, except by the eyes,
which shone brightly in the dull, yellow light of the neighbouring lamp.
By the sack-like covering which the man wore on his back, and by his
be-smudged appearance generally, Thomas judged that he must be a
labourer among coals. He was poor at any rate, and he looked kindly; so
after a brief inspection, to which the stranger submitted in silence,
and as a matter of course, Thomas resumed--
"You see, I'm come up to look for a lass of mine as has runned away."
"Ah!" ejaculated the stranger. "Ah!" and then he stopt with his mouth
open, as if embarrassed by this sudden confidence. But he soon recovered
himself, and after relieving his feelings with a "Well, I never! Who'd a
thowt it?" came back to practical business, by asking Thomas if he knew
of a bed anywhere.
Thomas said "No."
"Well, then," answered the man, "you just come along with me. You ain't
likely to find the gal to-night, and you can't stand there till mornin'!
Perhaps my missus can give you a shake-down in the corner somewhere."
Thomas was only too glad to accept the stranger's offer, and, hoisting
his bundle of clothes over his shoulder, with his stick through the
knot, he at once assented, and followed wheresoever the other led. They
trudged along for a good half-hour, mostly in silence, for Thomas was in
no mood for talking, and his companion appeared to have no gifts in that
direction. At length they reached the door of a dingy, tumble-down house
in that now happily abolished slum, Agar Town, and into this the
coal-heaver turned, saying--
"Mind the steps, friend. The stairs is rather out of repair." In this
rickety, filthy, old tenement the coal-heaver rented two rooms on the
third floor. He had a wife and three poor sallow-looking children, who
were frightened when they saw a strange man enter with their father. The
man introduced his wife as Mrs. Godbehere, and said his own name was
William. They invited Thomas, who in turn had given his name, to share
their supper, and he contributed to the feast the remainder of his bread
and cheese. Consulted about a bed, Mrs. Godbehere declared that it was
impossible for her to give Thomas one, and he agreed with her. She knew,
however, a neighbour who had a lodging to let; 2s. 6d. a-week she
charged for a small room with a bed in it--the lodger to find and cook
his own food. In this room Thomas was ultimately installed, and right
thankful he was to find a roof above his head in that appalling city.
The walk along Marylebone and Euston Roads had impressed him more
profoundly than ever with a sense of the vastness of London. It was like
a first lesson in the meaning of infinity, and it struck him with a
feeling of dread. Oft times did he ask himself that night whether he was
not, indeed, mad in attempting to trace Sarah in such a sea of human
beings. But mad or not, he resolved that his task should not be lightly
abandoned.
Thus occupied he passed a restless night, and got up weary next morning.
His bed, he found to his cost, was not over clean, and it was with a
depressing sense of comfortlessness that he went to seek the Godbeheres.
The coal-heaver had already gone to his work, but Mrs. Godbehere
directed him to an eating-house near by, where he went and had some
breakfast. Refreshed a little, he forthwith started on his quest. He
would wander the myriad streets of London till he found his lost one, he
had said to himself.
And day after day, night after night, he did wander hither and thither
through the most frequented thoroughfares of London, returning late and
worn-out to his miserable lodging. A growing hopelessness lay at his
heart, and made him sometimes almost unable to drag his limbs past each
other, but he held on with a dogged persistence that was almost sullen.
Through Godbehere's friendliness, and the pressure of his own heart
agony, he had scraped acquaintance with sundry policemen, but they could
give him no effective help. One would suggest that he ought to keep a
close watch about the Strand, another mentioned Oxford Street and the
Circus, or the Haymarket. All agreed, in their callous sort of way, that
"if she had followed a man to London, she was a'most sure to find her
way to the streets before long." Thomas did not doubt it. He knew the
pride of his daughter too well to doubt it. Rather than bear among her
kindred the brand which her unfallen sisterhood would put upon her, she
would face a life of open shame, where none could cast stones at her. So
Thomas held on his way, but never got a glimpse of his lost one. His
means were nearly exhausted, for, pinch as he might, it costs money to
live in London. Yet he would not surrender. No, he would work. But how
could he get work--he, a mere street loafer, and as lonely in London as
if it had been a desert. London with its hurrying crowds, its rush of
vehicles, its roar and bustle, and flowing lights, fairly broke down his
imagination. He felt himself a helpless atom amid a mass of atoms that
knew nothing of his misery, and grew too weak-hearted almost to seek for
work. But for his quest, he felt--sometimes even said to himself--that
he could lie down in the gutter and die. Possibly his wretched lodging
and the sleepless nights he had passed in his pain had much to do with
this utter collapse of mind. I cannot decide, but he has told me that
never till that time did he realise the sustaining power of a fixed
idea. "I came to find Sally," he said, "and I held to that." For that he
braved not only hunger and cold, but the horrors of the night in the
most abandoned thoroughfares of London. For that he mingled in the
crowds of educated and other roughs that frequented theatre doors, and
the doors of the coffee-houses and prostitute dens in the Haymarket and
Gardens. For that he endured cursing and foul language inconceivable,
stood to see men and women hurrying themselves into worse than a fiend's
condition by their self-indulgence and sin. Into low dancing rooms he
penetrated, often to be bundled out neck and crop as a spy, or at best
to be horrified by filthy jokes or still more filthy exhibitions of
obscenity. That very Agar Town, in which he lived, he again and again
explored, facing its stenches and miseries, its wantonness and riot, and
worst of all, its terrible crowds of weary, sin-rotting, broken-hearted,
down-beaten, and unfortunate humanity. Often did he see women there
peering out of their dingy, rag-stuffed windows, that bore traces of
having once been as fair as rash Sally. Nay, the very rag-pickers who
lodged in its garrets, Godbehere assured him, had many of them once been
"flaunting women of the town." Women of the town, indeed, and was not
the town doomed? Thomas thought that it was. To him London was already
hell. The fumes of abominations choked his mental senses, and made him
long to escape.
Nevertheless, his mind was fixed. He could not go without his child, and
in order to carry out his purpose he must work. By the friendly help of
Godbehere he ultimately obtained employment in the coal yard at
Paddington-wages 2s. 6d. per day. He felt rich and strong for his task
henceforth, and as soon as he could he removed to a rather better
lodging near his work. At a waste, as he considered it, of several
evenings' lodging-seeking, he found a small clean room in the
neighbourhood of Lindengrove, for which, including a plain breakfast, he
paid 5s. 6d. a-week. His landlady was an elderly widow who kept three
lodgers, and she rather demurred to Thomas's demand for a latch-key, so
that he might go in and out at nights as he pleased, but his sad,
earnest face, and his remark that he was looking for a lost daughter,
conquered her fears. Thomas had his key, and felt a kind of thankfulness
that if he did find Sally he could now bring her to a better refuge than
the vermin-filled hole in Agar Town.
Five weeks had well-nigh passed, and Thomas was no nearer his object, to
all appearance, than the day he arrived in London. But now that he had
work he felt more assured of his purpose, and therefore less sad. So he
sent home cheery letters to his wife, bidding her hope yet for Sally,
telling her he felt that God would not forsake her or them. All his
letters his wife got read to her by the schoolmaster, and then passed
them on to Jane. Money he would have sent, but could not. All that was
left after paying his food and the clothes he needed for his work he
spent in his quest. For work did not cause him to abate his vigilance,
nor did it much reduce his wanderings. As soon as the yard closed he
hurried home, changed his clothes, swallowed a cup of tea, and,
sometimes on foot, sometimes on the top of an omnibus, he made his way
to the usual haunts of vice. There he would wander, haunting theatre
doors, peering into refreshment bars, and sometimes spending sixpence
to get inside a low music hall. The sights he saw froze his very heart's
blood with horror, and he often asked himself--Is all this vice, then,
the product of our civilisation? Where is the Christianity in the habits
of a people who permit tens of thousands of their fellow beings to rot
and perish as a matter of course, and prate about the social evil in
their sleek respectable way as if it was a dispensation of heaven? How
many of these poor girls, whose lives had been blasted, who now brazenly
mocked "society," and laid snares for the destruction of its darlings,
had mothers, perhaps, even now weeping for them in secret? As he thought
of these things he felt as if he could wander, like Jonah, through the
streets, preaching the doom of this city of Sodom, whose streets already
savoured of the bottomless pit.
Thoughts of this kind were brought home to him with terrible force one
night that he saw Adelaide Codling. He was standing watching the
play-goers leaving Drury Lane, when his eye suddenly caught the face of
that girl amid a group of women and "swells," amongst the latter of whom
was Captain Wiseman. She was showily dressed, and had a profusion of
glaring jewellery scattered about her person, and she was talking fast,
and laughing in a loud, defiant sort of way. But Wanless could see that
she was not happy. As she drew near where he stood he could mark the
restlessness of her eye, and the nervous boldness of her manner, and he
pitied her. Is this what she has come to already? he thought to himself,
and involuntarily shivered. Ah! if his own sweet lass was now like this,
could he reclaim her? Would it not be too late? Adelaide Codling passed
on, unconscious of the presence of her fellow-villager, saw not the
pleading look that crossed his face, the eager step forward he took as
if to speak with her. She entered a cab with Wiseman and two others, and
disappeared from sight.
The eagerness of Thomas to find his lost one was intensified after that
night. Hardly a night-watchman in all the district escaped his
importunities, and from most of them the old man met with a rough
kindness that soothed him even in his absorbing grief. One old sergeant
he met in the Strand, and who had more than once listened to his
descriptions and his queries, advised him to alter his beat. "There are
a great many haunts of streetwalkers," he said, "besides the Strand and
the Haymarket. Why not try the south side of the river, or up Islington
way? There is the East-end, too, and Oxford Street and Holborn. Yes,
none knew where a girl may get to, once she cuts adrift in London. Such
heaps of them takes to the streets nowadays, that you can find some in
every thoroughfare in London."
Wanless felt the observation true, alas! too true, but what could he do?
His means would not allow him to search the whole city. He took a wider
range, however, going by turns to one part of the town, now another,
sometimes as far as the Angel and Upper Street, Islington, sometimes
south to the Elephant and Castle, and the vice haunts of Walworth and
the Borough. Occasionally, too, he searched the bridges across the
river, but always with a sort of dread that his doing so was a
confession that he believed his girl capable of drowning herself.