"Dear Fred,--I hear to-day I have got the situation. I'm afraid that
means you have missed it. I'm awfully sorry, old boy, that's all I can
say. I hope in any case you will come to London. I'll write again.
Ever yours,--Jack."
I flung down the letter in a whirl of mingled feelings. That Jack Smith
had got the situation I could not help being glad. But that I had lost
it was simply crushing. Although I had kept reminding myself all along
in words that the chances were very remote, I yet discovered how I had
at heart been reckoning on my success almost to a certainty. And now I
was utterly floored.
All this was the first hurried impression caused on my mind by my friend
Smith's letter; and for a minute I quite forgot, in my mortification,
that I had in my hand another letter--a letter from Merrett, Barnacle,
and Company themselves. Then suddenly remembering it, I called to mind
also the vague rumour of two clerks being wanted in the office, and with
new hope and wild anxiety I tore open the envelope.
Could I believe my eyes?
"Frederick Batchelor is informed that his application for junior
clerkship is successful. He will be required to begin work on Monday
next at 9 a.m."
For the space of two minutes, reader, I knew not if I was standing on my
head or my feet. I will pass over the excited day or two which
followed. My uncle, of course, did what he could to check my glee. He
said Merrett, Barnacle, and Company must be easily pleased, but they
would soon find out their mistake, and that I might as well make up my
mind to be dismissed after the first fortnight, and so on. I didn't
take it much to heart; and after the first gush did not trouble my
relative much with my prospects.
I was, however, a little curious to know what proposal he would make
about my board and lodging in the great metropolis, which, after all,
was a matter of some little consequence to me.
He did not see fit to relieve my anxiety on this point until the very
eve of my departure from Brownstroke, when he said, abruptly, "You will
be gone before I'm down to-morrow, Frederick. Don't forget the train
starts at two minutes before six. I have arranged for you to lodge with
Mrs Nash, whose address is on this card. There will be time to take
your trunk round there before you go to your work. For the present I
shall pay for your lodging."
"Shall I get my meals there?" I ventured to ask.
"Eh! You must arrange about that sort of thing yourself; and take my
advice, and don't be extravagant."
As my salary was to be eight shillings a week, there wasn't much chance
of my eating my head off, in addition to providing myself decently with
the ordinary necessaries of life.
"I say I shall pay your lodging for the present, but before long I
expect you to support yourself entirely. I cannot afford it,
Frederick."
It had never occurred to me before that I cost anything to keep, but the
fact was slowly beginning to dawn on me, and the prospect of having
shortly to support myself cast rather a damper over the pictures I had
drawn to myself of my pleasant life in London.
"Good-bye," said my uncle. "Here is half-a-sovereign for you, which
remember is on no account to be spent. Keep it by you, and don't part
with it. Good-night."
And so my uncle and I parted.
It was with rather subdued feelings that next morning I set out betimes
for the station, lugging my small trunk along with me. That trunk and
the half-sovereign I was not to spend comprised, along with the money
which was to pay my fare, and the clothes I wore, the sum of my worldly
goods. The future lay all unknown before me. My work at Hawk Street,
my residence at Mrs Nash's, my eight shillings a week, I had yet to
find out what they all meant; at present all was blank--all, that is,
except one spot, and that was the spot occupied by my friend Smith. I
could reckon on him, I knew, whatever else failed me.
I caught my train without much difficulty, as I was at the station at
least half an hour before it was due, and had a third-class carriage to
myself all the way to London. There were not many people travelling at
that early hour, and when I reached the great metropolis at seven
o'clock the station and streets looked almost as deserted as on the
former occasion they had been crowded.
Mrs Nash's residence, so the card said, was in Beadle Square, wherever
that might be. I was, however, spared the anxiety of hunting the place
up, for my uncle had authorised me to spend a shilling in a cab for the
occasion; and thus conveyed, after twistings and turnings which
positively made my head ache, I arrived in state at my future lodging.
The "square" was, like many other City squares, a collection of
tumbledown dingy houses built round an open space which might once have
contained nothing but green grass and trees, but was now utterly
destitute of either. There was indeed an enclosure within rusty and
broken iron palings, but it contained nothing but mud, a few old beer-
cans, and a lot of waste-paper, and one dead cat and one or two half-
starved living ones. A miserable look-out, truly, as I stood on Mrs
Nash's doorstep with my trunk waiting to be let in.
A slatternly female, whom I supposed to be the servant, admitted me.
"Is Mrs Nash in?" said I.
"Yes, that's me," said the lady. "I suppose you're young Batchelor."
She spoke gruffly and like a person who was not very fond of boys.
"Yes," said I.
"All right," said she; "come in and bring your trunk."
I obeyed. The place looked very dark and grimy, far worse than ever
Stonebridge House had been. I followed her, struggling with my trunk,
up the rickety staircase of a house which a hundred years ago might have
been a stylish town residence, but which now was one of the forlornest
ghosts of a house you ever saw.