We are back again in London--in Mrs Roby's little cabin at the top of
the old tenement in Grubb's Court.
Captain Wopper is there, of course. So is Mrs Roby. Gillie White is
there also, and Susan Quick. The Captain is at home. The two latter
are on a visit--a social tea-party. Little Netta White, having
deposited Baby White in the mud at the lowest corner of the Court for
greater security, is waiting upon them--a temporary handmaiden,
relieving, by means of variety, the cares of permanent nursehood. Mrs
White is up to the elbows in soap-suds, taking at least ocular and vocal
charge of the babe in the mud, and her husband is--"drunk, as usual?"
No--there is a change there. Good of some kind has been somewhere at
work. Either knowingly or unwittingly some one has been "overcoming
evil with good," for Mrs White's husband is down at the docks toiling
hard to earn a few pence wherewith to increase the family funds. And
who can tell what a terrible yet hopeful war is going on within that
care-worn, sin-worn man? To toil hard with shattered health is burden
enough. What must it be when, along with the outward toil, there is a
constant fight with a raging watchful devil within? But the man has
given that devil some desperate falls of late. Oh, how often and how
long he has fought with him, and been overcome, cast down, and his
armoury of resolutions scattered to the winds! But he has been to see
some one, or some one has been to see him, who has advised him to try
another kind of armour--not his own. He knows the power of a "new
affection" now. Despair was his portion not long ago. He is now
animated by Hope, for the long uncared-for name of Jesus is now growing
sweet to his ear. But the change has taken place recently, and he looks
very weary as he toils and fights.
"Well, mother," said Captain Wopper, "now that I've given you a full,
true, an' partikler account of Switzerland, what d'ee think of it?"
"It is a strange place--very, but I don't approve of people risking
their lives and breaking their limbs for the mere pleasure of getting to
the top of a mountain of ice."
"But we can't do anything in life without riskin' our lives an' breakin'
our limbs more or less," said the Captain.
"An' think o' the interests of science," said Gillie, quoting the
Professor.
Mrs Roby shook her tall cap and remained unconvinced. To have expected
the old nurse to take an enlightened view on that point would have been
as unreasonable as to have looked for just views in Gillie White on the
subject of conic sections.
"Why, mother, a man may break a leg or an arm in going down stairs,"
said the Captain, pursuing the subject; "by the way, that reminds me to
ask for Fred Leven. Didn't I hear that _he_ broke his arm coming up his
own stair? Is it true?"
"True enough," replied Mrs Roby.
"Was he the worse of liquor at the time?"
"No. It was dark, and he was carrying a heavy box of something or other
for his mother. Fred is a reformed man. I think the sight of your poor
father, Gillie, has had something to do with it, and that night when his
mother nearly died. At all events he never touches drink now, and he
has got a good situation in one of the warehouses at the docks."
"That's well," returned the Captain, with satisfaction. "I had hopes of
that young feller from the night you mention. Now, mother, I'm off.
Gillie and I have some business to transact up the water. Very
particular business--eh, lad?"
"Oh! wery partickler," said Gillie, responding to his patron's glance
with a powerful wink.
Expressing a hope that Susan would keep Mrs Roby company till he
returned, the Captain left the room with his usual heavy roll, and the
spider followed with imitative swagger.
Captain Wopper was fond of mystery. Although he had, to some extent
made a confidant of the boy for whom he had taken so strong a fancy, he
nevertheless usually maintained a dignified distance of demeanour
towards him, and a certain amount of reticence, which, as a stern
disciplinarian, he deemed to be essential. This, however, did not
prevent him from indulging in occasional, not to say frequent,
unbendings of disposition, which he condescended to exhibit by way of
encouragement to his small _protege_; but these unbendings and
confidences were always more or less shrouded in mystery. Many of them,
indeed, consisted of nothing more intelligible than nods, grins, and
winks.
"That'll be rather a nice cottage when it's launched," said the Captain,
pointing to a building in process of erection, which stood so close to
the edge of the Thames that its being launched seemed as much a literal
allusion as a metaphor.
"Raither bobbish," assented the spider.
"Clean run fore and aft with bluff bows, like a good sea-boat," said the
Captain. "Come, let's have a look at it."
Asking permission to enter of a workman who granted the same with, what
appeared to Gillie, an unnecessarily broad grin, the Captain led the way
up a spiral staircase. It bore such a strong resemblance to the
familiar one of Grubb's Court that Gillie's eyes enlarged with surprise,
and he looked involuntarily back for his soapy mother and the babe in
the mud. There were, however, strong points of dissimilarity, inasmuch
as there was no mud or filth of any kind near the new building except
lime; and the stair, instead of leading like that of the Tower of Babel
an interminable distance upwards, ended abruptly at the second floor.
Here, however, there was a passage exactly similar to the passage
leading to Mrs Roby's cabin, save that it was well lighted, and at the
end thereof was an almost exact counterpart of the cabin itself. There
was the same low roof, the same little fireplace, with the space above
for ornaments, and the same couple of little windows looking out upon a
stretch of the noble river, from which you might have fished. There was
the same colour of paint on the walls, which had been so managed as to
represent the dinginess of antiquity. There was also, to all
appearance, Mrs Roby's own identical bed, with its chintz curtains.
Here, however, resemblance ended, for there was none of the Grubb's
Court dirt. The craft on the river were not so large or numerous, the
reach being above the bridges. If you had fished you not have hooked
rats or dead cats, and if you had put your head out and looked round,
you would have encountered altogether a clean, airy, and respectable
neighbourhood, populous enough to be quite cheery, with occasional
gardens instead of mud-banks, and without interminable rows of tall
chimney-pots excluding the light of heaven.
Gillie, not yet having been quite cured of his objectionable qualities,
at once apostrophised his eye and Elizabeth Martin.
"As like as two peas, barrin' the dirt!"
The Captain evidently enjoyed the lad's astonishment.
"A ship-shape sort o' craft, ain't it? It wouldn't be a bad joke to buy
it--eh?"
Gillie, who was rather perplexed, but too much a man of the world to
disclose much of his state of mind, said that it wouldn't be a bad move
for any feller who had got the blunt. "How much would it cost now?"
"A thousand pounds, more or less," said the Captain, with discreet
allowance for latitude.
"Ha! a goodish lump, no doubt."
"I've half a mind to buy it," continued the Captain, looking round with
a satisfied smile. "It would be an amoosin' sort o' thing, now, to
bring old Mrs Roby here. The air would be fresher for her old lungs,
wouldn't it?"
Gillie nodded, but was otherwise reticent.
"The stair, too, wouldn't be too high to get her down now and again, and
a boat could be handy to shove her into without much exertion. For the
matter of that," said the Captain, looking out, "we might have a slide
made, like a Swiss couloir, you know, and she could glissade comfortably
into the boat out o' the winder. Then, there's a beam to hang her ship
an' Chinee lanterns from, an' a place over the fireplace to stick her
knick-knacks. What d'ee think, my lad?"
Gillie, who had begun to allow a ray of light to enter his mind, gave,
as his answer, an emphatic nod and a broad grin.
The Captain replied with a nod and a wink, whereupon the other retired
behind his patron, for the purpose of giving himself a quiet hug of
delight, in which act, however, he was caught; the Captain being one who
always, according to his own showing, kept his weather-eye open.
"W'y, what's the matter with you, boy?"
"Pains in the stummick is aggrawatin' sometimes," answered Gillie.
"You haven't got 'em, have you?"
"Well, I can't exactly go for to say as I has," answered Gillie, with
another grin.
"Now, look 'ee here, youngster," said the Captain, suddenly seizing the
spider by his collar and trousers, and swinging him as though about to
hurl him through the window into the river, "if you go an' let your
tongue wag in regard to this matter, out you go, right through the
port-hole--d'ee see?"
He set the spider quietly on his legs again, who replied, with unruffled
coolness--
"Mum's the word, Cappen."
Gillie had been shorn of his blue tights and brass buttons, poor Mrs
Stoutley having found it absolutely necessary, on her return home, to
dismiss all her servants, dispose of all her belongings, and retire into
the privacy of a poor lodging in a back street. Thus the spider had
come to be suddenly thrown on the world again, but Captain Wopper had
retained him, he said, as a mixture of errand-boy, cabin-boy, and
powder-monkey, in which capacity he dwelt with his mother during the
night and revolved like a satellite round the Captain during the day. A
suit of much more appropriate pepper-and-salt had replaced the blue
tights and buttons. Altogether, his _tout-ensemble_ was what the
Captain styled "more ship-shape."
We have said that Mrs Stoutley and her family had made a descent in
life. As poor Lewis remarked, with a sad smile, they had quitted the
gay and glittering heights, and gone, like a magnificent avalanche, down
into the moraine. Social, not less than physical, avalanches multiply
their parts and widen their course during descent. The Stoutleys did
not fall alone. A green-grocer, a shoemaker, and a baker, who had long
been trembling, like human boulders, on the precipice of bankruptcy,
went tumbling down along with them, and found rest in a lower part of
the moraine than they had previously occupied.
"It's a sad business," said Lewis to Dr Lawrence one morning; "and if
you continue to attend me, you must do so without the most distant
prospect of a fee."
"My dear fellow," returned Lawrence, "have you no such thing as
gratitude in your composition?"
"Not much, and, if I had ever so much, it would be poor pay."
"Poor, indeed, if regarded as one's only source of livelihood," rejoined
Lawrence, "but it is ample remuneration from a friend, whether rich or
poor, and, happily, capable of being mixed with pounds, shillings and
pence without deterioration. In the present case, I shall be more than
rejoiced to take the fee unmixed, but, whether fee'd or not fee'd, I
insist on continuing attendance on a case which I have a right to
consider peculiarly my own."
"It would have been a bad case, indeed, but for you," returned Lewis, a
flush for a moment suffusing his pale cheek as he took his friend's hand
and squeezed it. "I am thoroughly convinced, Lawrence, that God's
blessing on your skill and unwearied care of me at the time of the
accident is the cause of my being alive to thank you to-day. But sit
down, my dear fellow, and pray postpone your professional inquiries for
a little, as I have something on my mind which I wish to ask you about."
Lawrence shook his head. "Business first, pleasure afterwards," he
said; "professional duties must not be postponed."
"Now," said Lewis when he had finished, "are you satisfied? Do you
admit that even an unprofessional man might have seen at a glance that I
am much better, and that your present draft on my gratitude is a mere
swindle?"
"I admit nothing," retorted the other; "but now, what have you got to
say to me?"
"I am going to make a confidant of you. Are you to be trusted?"
"Perhaps; I dare not say yes unconditionally, because I'm rather
sociable and communicative, and apt to talk in my sleep."
"That will do. Your answer is sufficiently modest. I will venture.
You know Captain Wopper, I mean, you are well acquainted with his
character; well, that kind and eccentric man has made a proposal to my
dear mother, which we do not like to accept, and which at the same time
we do not quite see our way to refuse. My mother, when in great
distress in Switzerland, was forced to borrow a small sum of money from
him, and thought it right to justify her doing so by letting him know--
what everybody, alas! may know now--that we were ruined. With that
ready kindness which is his chief characteristic he at once complied.
Since our return home he has, with great delicacy but much
determination, insisted that we shall accept from him a regular weekly
allowance until we have had time to correspond with our uncle Stout in
California. `You mustn't starve,' he said to my mother--I give you his
own words--`and you'd be sure to starve if you was to try to wegitate
for six months or so on atmospheric air. It'll take that time before
you could get a letter from Willum, an' though your son Lewis could an'
would, work like a nigger to keep your pot bilin' if he was well an'
hearty, it's as plain as the nose on your own face, ma'am, that he can't
work while he's as thin as a fathom of pump-water an' as weak as a
babby. Now, you know-at least I can tell 'ee--that my old chum Willum
is as rich as a East Injin nabob. You wouldn't believe, madam, what
fortins some gold-diggers have made. W'y, I've seed men light their
pipes with fi'-pun' notes for a mere brag out there. I've made a
goodish lump o' money myself too,--a'most more than I know what to do
with, an' as to Willum, I may say he's actooally rollin' in gold. He's
also chockfull of regard for you and yours, ma'am. That bein' so, he's
sure to send you somethin' to tide you over yer difficulties, an' he's
also sure to send somethin' to Lewis to help him start fair when he gits
well, and he's surest of all to send somethin' to Miss Emma for all the
kind letters she's writ to him doorin' the last five or six years.
Well, then, I'm Willum's buzzum friend, and, knowin' exactly what he'll
say an' do in the circumstances, what more nat'ral an' proper than that
Willum's chum should anticipate Willum's wishes, and advance the money--
some of it at least--say three thousand pounds to start with.' Now,
Lawrence," continued Lewis, "what should we do? Should we accept this
offer? The good fellow has evidently made a great deal of money at the
gold-fields, and no doubt speaks truly when he says he can afford to
advance that sum. And we know our uncle William's character well
enough, though we have never seen him, to be quite sure that he will
assist my dear mother until I am able to support her. What say you?"
"Accept the offer at once," said Lawrence. "From what I have seen of
the Captain, I am convinced that he is a warm friend and a genuine man.
No doubt he can well afford to do what he proposes, and his opinion of
William Stout's character is just, for, from what I know of him through
Mrs Roby, who knew him when he was a lad, when his life was saved by my
father, he must have a kind heart."
"I have no doubt of it, Lawrence, and a grateful heart too, if I may
judge from a few words that fell from Captain Wopper about your father
and yourself."
"Indeed! what did he say about us?"
"I have no right to repeat observations dropped inadvertently," said
Lewis, with a laugh.
"Nor to raise curiosity which you don't mean to satisfy," retorted his
friend; "however, my advice is, that you accept the Captain's offer, and
trust to your uncle's generosity."