XII

He strolled up a short street, and looked for and found a roomy,

double bow-fronted house of warm old red brick, with huge capacious

areas. "Vanity Fair" had been written there, he knew, perhaps

"Esmond" too, though he was not sure. He took off his hat to the

memory of the magician, and wondered where his other idol, the still

living author of the "Cloister and the Hearth," and "Never Too Late

to Mend" might be run to earth, and made up his mind to see Dickens's

grave in Westminster Abbey on the morrow, whether it cost sixpence,

or whether it did not.... And then he wavered, sixpence, as we know,

being the moiety of his capital; and then he remembered that

to-morrow could only be reached by the bridge of to-night. He walked

very fast for some distance, trying to exorcise the demons that this

thought evoked, and,--blinded by their buzzing and stinging--was in

Piccadilly before he knew. The high railings of the Green Park, and

the foggy solitude of the gravel-walks between the wintry lawns,

tempted him to turn in and rest upon a seat a while, for he was still

somewhat giddy and shaky, and the bump so confidently prophesied by

the Infanta had appeared upon his brow.

He took off the old felt wideawake and stared at Piccadilly,

brilliant with the paroquet-colors of passing omnibuses, green and

royal blue, chocolate and white-and-gold. Behind the shining windows

of the great Clubs, the members' heads, gleamingly bald, or affluent

of hair and whiskers, alternately appeared and vanished. He caught

brief passing glimpses of white-bosomed waiters, ... the twinkle of

gilt buttons on livery coats.... Beer-drays, driven by burly

red-faced men, frequently in shirt-sleeves, went by with a whiff of

malt, and the thunder of heavy hoofs. Vans of business-houses passed

with a clang of bells. Victorias and landaus with muffled, and

furred, and veiled ladies in them; shut-up broughams, madly-daring

velocipedists on the machine of the era, a giant wheel followed by a

pigmy one, made fleeting pictures on the retina of P. C. Breagh. And

the double river of traffic, and the eastward and westward-flowing

stream of pedestrians went by without a break in them. Gas-lamps

began to make islands of yellow light upon the fog, but showed no

dwindling in their numbers. He wondered if they would go on like

this all night? And then some one came up and sat down on the other

end of the seat rather heavily, and the slight resultant shock and

jar brought round P. C. Breagh's head.

He saw the thick-set, rather lax and round-shouldered figure of a man

of middle age, dressed in a suit of tweeds patterned in giant checks

of black and white and gray, the _dernier cri_ in masculine

morning-wear, had the observer but known it. His hat, a low-crowned

chimney-pot in hard gray felt, was tilted backward, his hair, of a

pale tow-color, tufted out from beneath the hat in a way that cried

for the attention of the barber; his whiskers, and mustache, of the

same shade as the hair, were raggedly in need of the shears. He wore

a buttonhole-bouquet composed of a pink camellia with Neapolitan

violets, and pale lemon kid gloves, and sucked the carved ivory knob

of an ebony stick he carried, until,--upon his neighbor's looking

round as above recorded,--he took it from a somewhat lax and swollen

mouth, and observed that it was a nice afternoon. Adding, as P. C.

Breagh made a sound which might have been assent or denial:

"If it is affernoon? Without my fellow to post me, I'm apt to be

wrong about time. Not that that's remarable. Lots of people the

same, don't you know? Nothing extra--nothing ex--oh, damn!"

A covert anxiety--and a very visible tremulousness were combined in

the speaker's manner. His large watery blue eyes were painfully

vague and blurred, with distended pupils that looked uneven; his

gestures were uncertain, and his words, well chosen enough, and

uttered with the tone and accent usually distinctive of a gentleman,

came haltingly from a tongue that seemed to be too large for its

owner's mouth:

"You don't regard it as extra ... Stop a minute!" A pause ensued,

during which the vague-eyed gentleman waited, clutching his stick

with both hands, and holding his swollen mouth ajar. And when he

shut the mouth to shake his head, and looked at P. C. Breagh in the

act of doing this, the perspiration shone upon his puffy cheeks and

stood in beads upon his reddened forehead, as though it had been July

instead of a foggy afternoon in January, and the pink-bordered

cambric handkerchief with which he wiped his worried face became,

after this usage, a very rag. And a queer, unwillingly-yielded-to

sense of commiseration prompted Carolan to suggest:

"'Extraordinary' was the word you wanted, wasn't it?"

"Much obliged! The word, unnoutedly! 'Stror'nary how words do dodge

one on occasion!" returned the uncertain gentleman in the

large-patterned tweeds. He added, pulling at the ragged light

mustache, with a gloved hand that was decidedly shaky: "I don't know

that it matters parricurarly--but I'd prefer you to know that I'm not

runk!"

"Not--what?..."

"Not runk!" repeated the vague-eyed gentleman emphatically. "Not

cut, foozled, miffed, fizzed, screwed! Not that it's oblig--that's

another of the words that perretually queer me!--or incumment on me

to isplain, but I regard it as due to myself, by Gad! that you should

clearly unnerstand the case. As I said to the manuscript upon the

Bench when the bobby ran me in on Thursday--or was it Friray? ...

Appearances are sally against me, but I have never been a rinking

man! The doctors have a crajjaw name for my connition, which under

the exissing circ--and that's another of the words that play the

deuce and all with me! ... Look at my westick, buttoned all wrong!"

He slewed round upon the seat, and throwing back the large-patterned,

fashionably cut-away coat, exhibited the garment mentioned, every

buttonhole of which afforded hospitality to a button not its own.

His necktie, the ample, sailor-knotted necktie of the period, was

under his left ear, and his shirt had come unstudded. Being appealed

to, P. C. Breagh admitted that the existing condition of things left

something to be desired!

"When a man entirely ripends on valets and domessicks," explained his

incoherent neighbor, "a man is apt to be neglected and so on. As a

marrer of fact I live in that little joppa cottisit!" He waveringly

pointed to a large, handsome private dwelling with an ornate portico,

situated nearly opposite, and sandwiched between two Clubs. "An' as

a narrural conquicense of my temorrary irrability to pronounce words

of the most orinary nature, I am----" He drew an aimless figure in

the muddy gravel with his ivory-topped, ebony stick, and went on with

a weak laugh, "I am absoluly neglected by my own househol'. My own

children seem ashamed or afray of me--all but Little

Foxhall--splendid little chap is Little Foxhall! But his mother--my

wife----" He broke off to say--"You will escuse my touching on these

priva' matters in conversation with a perfec' stranger. I am quite

conscience I trepsass against the orinary usages of propriety,

especially in speaking of my wife! ... But--the fact is, sir! I am

most desperately wretched. Six people imagine me runk--out of every

half-dozen. While the other six--the irriots whisser it when they

think I'm out of earshock--suppose me to be suffrig from Sofrig of

the Bray!"

He began to tremble and shake, and put his stick between his knees to

hold on to the edge of the seat with his lemon-kidded hands--and

couldn't hold the stick in that position, and it fell, and P. C.

Breagh picked it up and put it back.

"I am murrabliged," said the owner of the stick, "by your kind

attention!" Something struggled and fought in the vague blue eyes

that he turned upon Carolan,--it seemed as though in another moment

Fear and Terror might have leaped glaring into sight. "And while I

am boun' to ajopolize for thrussing my privarrafairs upon a

stranger--I feel bound to put the quession; Why should thissorathing

happen to ME? Goolor'! I've been no worse than lossa urra fellers!"

He rose up shaking, and shakily sat down again, nearly missing the

bench.

"Bessaran loss of 'em--if you come to that!" He turned to Carolan,

and the vague eyes were piteous and desperate.... "You see the sort

of chap my luck--my damble luck--has made o' me! Yet I used to be

envied--envied ... you unnerstand! I have belonged to the best

regiment in the Brigade of Guards--the devil another! I have played

the bes' cards, driven the bes' turnouts, smoked the bes' cigars and

had the most stunnin' women! Do you unnerstand me?--Have!" He

brought down the uncertain hand in an attempt to strike his knee

emphatically, and missed it; and tried to look as though he had not,

and went on: "And I have belonged to the best gloves, by Gad! an' put

on the clubs with the most celebrarred li'-weights! And I rode my

steeplechase at York, and romped in first, and they toasted and

speechified me at the Gimcrack dinner. And I won my Oaks and my

Derby--and led in the winner, with all the cheeple reering;--the

seeple peering--the--Goolor'! Goolor'! And the horse was

Gladianor--and the victory was a popular one--and my name was a

household word through the Unirred Kingom. A household word!..." He

broke off, trembling and sweating, as the horse might have done after

the race, and put the wavering hand to his head, and turned his empty

blue eyes from Carolan's as though they hurt. "What was my name?" he

asked himself in a dull, thick, shaky whisper, "Goolor'! Goolor'!

What was my name? ... That you, Murchison?"

For a decent figure in the irreproachable dark clothing of a servant

out of livery had passed and turned back, and now approached the

bench, eyeing Carolan suspiciously even in the act of uncovering its

well-brushed head, and saying in the smooth accents of servility:

"It is Murchison, your Grace. It's cold, your Grace, and you've not

got on an overcoat. Your Grace had best come home now, before your

Grace is missed!..."

"Home?" His Grace looked mildly from the authoritative Murchison to

the stately "cottage opposite," and one of the uncertain hands in the

pale lemon kid gloves, making as though to pluck at an untrimmed

whisker, found itself imprisoned in a deferential but vigorous grip.

"Home, your Grace!" said Murchison, applying muscular leverage to

raise the inert figure.

"All right. Prass I better, Murchison!" He rose to the

perpendicular.... "Wish you a very good evening, sir!" With a faded

reminiscence of what might have been a courtly manner, he touched his

hat to P. C. Breagh, who returned the farewell greeting, avoiding the

sharp glance of Murchison. Then valet and master moved off, leaving

a little trail of dialogue behind them:

"You give us the fair slip that time, your Grace!..."

"Perhass I did, Murchison--now you happen to mention it."

"Might have been killed crossing Piccadilly, your Grace, and none of

us the wiser."

"Goolor'! I'd wish I had, Murchison--if it wasn't for Little

Foxhall!" ... Then in a high, quavering note of eagerness, the plea,

pitiable and ridiculous and pathetic: "I--I say! ... Tell me the

boy'd have minded, Murchison--whass a lie to you, you dam'

smoo'-ranged Ananias!--and I'll give you my nex' week's

sovereign--I'm dead broke now!"

And Murchison and His Grace went away together, the man steering,

with deft guiding touches of the master's elbow, the latter stepping

high and bringing his feet down with a peculiar thump that threw a

light upon the situation in the eyes of P. C. Breagh. Not softening

of the brain.... _Donnerwetter!_ what were the London doctors

thinking of? Had none of them read the "Dissertation on Tabes

Dorsalis" of the Herr Doctor Max Baumgarten, published in Berlin only

a twelvemonth previously, and dealing fully with that rare and

curious disease of the nervous system? ... Fibrous degeneration of

the posterior columns of the spinal cord, affecting the patient's

sight, gait, and--in isolated cases--speech and memory.

"I'd like to have got him to let me rap his shins! Bet you anything

there'd have been total absence of reflex action! Remember that

peddler in the Nervous Ward of the Augusta Hospital at

Schwärz-Brettingen! ... They cured that chap with spinal injections

and regular massage. And this man--being a thundering swell and

having the best advice possible--is naturally being treated all

wrong! Hang it!--how cold I am! Better be moving!" He got up and

stamped some warmth into his cold feet and flailed his cold ribs with

his elbows until they tingled again. He had learned something of the

wretchedness that may sometimes dwell in princely homes, yet be

homeless; and fare delicately from plate of gold and silver, and yet

go hungry,--and lie down to toss and stare through dreadful sleepless

nights on soft luxurious beds. Therefore the bright reflections of

great fires dancing on the plate-glass windows of the "cottage

opposite" stung him to no comparisons. "Is it base in me that the

knowledge of the misery of this wealthy nobleman makes me more

contented with my own obscure poverty?" he asked himself, and the

answer was: "_Not if your content does not make you callous to his

woe!_"

"I hope that Little Foxhall would have minded!" he found himself

saying; "and I wish to Heaven Baumgarten could get a chance of doing

something for his father! I've half a mind to drop a postcard to

him--or write a line to the Herr Professor! ... Stop, though!"

He remembered that he must break into his last remaining shilling to

buy the postcard and pay for the stamps. Then he swung out through

the Park side-gates, and now he was one of the crowd rolling

Circus-wards, and all the street gas-lamps had been lighted by

certain officials with poles, furnished with hooks for keying the gas

on, and perforated iron sockets filled with blazing tow that had been

soaked in naphtha; thus every shop or restaurant became an Aladdin's

cave of brilliancy, and the down-drawn blinds of the houses and clubs

hid splendor unspeakable--if only one had been able to pull them

up....

Alas! to us who live in these pushful days of Electrical Power

Supply, the glories of the illuminated capital in the year of grace

1870 would appear murky enough. We should sneer at the stumpy iron

lamp-posts and the chandeliers yet adorned with Early Victorian

crystal glass lusters. The wood pavement, an invention _de luxe_

economically confined to the West End, and upon the greasy surface of

which bus-horses broke legs as easily as the most aristocratic

thoroughbreds--the loose iron gratings covering basement-lights, and

incidentally presenting man-traps for unwary pedestrians, as

receptacles for stray umbrellas, dead cats, wisps of packing straw,

discarded newspapers and orange-peel--the untrapped gutter-drains and

sewer-vents would awaken our ridicule and evoke our indignation, even

as the displays in the shop windows, especially those of _modistes_,

_couturières_, and tailors, would provoke us to mirth.

The extraordinary little hats, pot-shaped or plate-shaped, worn upon

huge chignons, surmounting cascades of ringlets, _couleur

Impératrice_. The preposterous frilled _paniers_, the bustles, the

_jupes_ of velvet or plush, flounced to the waist or

kilted--sometimes to mid-leg, displaying boots--such as are worn to

this hour by Principal Boys in Christmas Pantomimes and serio-comic

ladies of the Varsity Stage, who are, we know, Principal Boys in the

pupa, or chrysalis-state. All these things compel us to hold our

sides when we review them in the illustrated papers of the _Ladies'

Mentor_,--which illuminating periodical, in the dearth of Fashionable

Intelligence from Paris, the hub and center of the modish world, came

to a sudden end in the October of that year, and has defied all

efforts at resuscitation.

Though it is possible that the wearers of these long-vanished

modes--surveying the belles of Belgravia, with their humbler

followers of Brompton and Bayswater,--in the present year of

progress, might be moved to laughter or provoked to wrath. To-day,

when the ambition of every properly constituted woman is to be shaped

like a golliwog and dressed like a pen-wiper, or to acquire the

sinuosities of a Bayadere and drape the same in cobwebs calculated to

conceal nothing and suggest everything--can we honestly enlarge upon

the bygone improprieties of our aunts, and moan over our mothers'

taste in toilettes?

It was just six when P. C. Breagh crossed Piccadilly Circus and

turned down toward the Haymarket. Why hurry, he asked himself, when

you have nowhere to go? The restaurants were filling with diners who

were going to the theaters, the smell of cooked meats made savory the

fogginess. He shrugged his shoulders, dug his hands deep into his

empty pockets, and tried to whistle as he loafed along.

Misery stalked these West End streets, rampant and clamorous. A

burly man devoid of legs, shuffling along with his hands in a pair of

woman's clogs, entreated P. C. Breagh in stentorian tones to buy a

tin nutmeg-grater. A miserable creature, whose sole garment appeared

to be the upper portion of an adult pair of trousers, begged him, in

the professional whine, to spare a penny for the pore orphan boy! A

dank female, in rusty weeds, stationary by the curb, displaying a

baby and a row of ballads, besought of him, for the love of Gawd! to

pity the unfortunate widow and her starving orphans.

"Buy a ballad, kind genl'man! On'y a penny--goes to a lovelly

choone!"

"Ho! Dermot, you look 'ealthy now,

Your does is neat an' clean,

Hi never sees you drunk about,

W'erehever 'ave you been?"

The stave chanted as an appetizer for the music-lover, she wiped the

baby's nose with her ostentatiously white apron, and protested it to

be the image of its father--blowed up in a Mind.

"You mean a mine, don't you?" P. C. Breagh was beginning, when the

widow once more burst into song.

"Your wife and Fam'ly--Har they well?

You once did use them strynge!

Ho! Har you kinder to them now?

And wence this 'appy chynge?"

Reverting to prose, as P. C. Breagh lounged listlessly on, she

demanded why, if he wasn't going to buy, he had stopped and given a

respectable female Tongue.

"And not even fork out a copper, you blistered swindler! You

blindin', blazin'----"

"Come now, Chanting Poll, what's all this here row about?"

The gruff, not unkindly voice of a policeman broke in upon the rusty

widow's eloquence. P. C. Breagh, yielding to a sudden impulse,

wheeled and swung back again.

"It's all right, constable, the lady was only having a bit of chaff

with me!"

"I know her!" said P. C. 999, C. Division, removing a heavy but not

brutal hand from the lady in question, "and the kind o' chaff she

slings. Done Time for it, too, she 'as--before now!"

But he moved on, huge in his belted greatcoat, walking with the

elephantine, clumping step begotten of boots with iron toe-caps, and

iron-nailed soles at least two inches in thickness; and the dank

widow cocked a knowing eye at his retreating back, and the other at

her unexpected champion.

"Good for you, my dear! Stand us a drain for luck, since you're so

civil!"

He returned:

"I would if I'd got the tin! I believe I'm poorer than you are!"

"S'welp me bob! wot 'ave we 'ere? A haristocrat in distress, har

yer?" she demanded.

"Not quite," he told her, as she turned the ponderous batteries of

her raillery upon him. "I've seen an aristocrat in distress to-day,

and he was worse than me. I'd not change!"

"Fer ten thousand jimmies hannual hincome, an' a 'ouse at Number One

'Yde Park Corner!" she jeered. "'Ow did yer lose the

I'm-so-funny?--for if you 'aven't it now, you 'ave 'ad it, I'll tyke

me Davy!"

"It's--a long story! Good-bye!"

He nodded and was moving on, when she shot out a gaunt hand and

clutched him by the sleeve, crying:

"'Old 'ard, Mister! 'Ang on till I give this 'ere squealer to its

mammy. About due now, she ought to be!"

"Isn't it..." His surprised look tickled the relict of the blown-up

husband into a chuckle.

"Mine? Not by 'arf! A tizzy per workin'-day is wot I pays for the

loan of 'er. Nothin' like a babby--specially in narsty weather like

this 'ere--to touch the people's 'arts! Lil's mine, though, ain't

you, deary?"

A preternaturally bright-eyed, white-faced, wizened little creature

peeped out from the shelter of the ostentatiously clean apron, making

a sound as of assent.

"Is she ill?" asked P. C. Breagh commiseratingly.

"Not 'er, that's her color!"

"Hungry, perhaps?" he asked.

"Why should she be? ... Wot did yer 'ave fer dinner, Lil? Speak up

like a good gal an' tell the gen'lman!"

The small, grimy finger came out of the wide mouth. She lisped

confidingly:

"Ay'po'rth o' gin 'ot, an' a stit o' totlit!"

"My God!" gasped P. C. Breagh in horror, "does that baby drink hot

gin?"

"When she can get it! an' so does Hi!" explained the lady of the

ballads, whom a short female in a plaid shawl and a battered brown

bonnet had now relieved of the baby. She added hospitably: "Come an'

'ave two-pennorth o' comfort along o' me now! It's meat and drink

both! as you'll find afore long! I'll stand treat--no blarney!"

But he groaned and fled from the tragic pair, seeing the blazing eyes

of the drunkard, set in the small white childish face, staring at him

from the gas-lamps and the hoardings, from the paving-stones beneath

his hurrying feet, and from under the hats of passing strangers; and

peering between the slowly-moving shoals of sooty smoke and muddy

vapor, streaking the livid grayness overhead.