XV

When the Editorial Staff of the _Early Wire_ had gone home, or to the

Club, by cab or private brougham or on foot, in the blackest hours of

the night or the smallest hours of the morning; when the Printing

Staff had filed out, pale and respectably attired, or thundered down

the iron-shod staircases in grimy, inky, oily _déshabillé_, then the

Publishing Staff trooped in and took possession. And, as the lines

of carts backed up to the curb, and were filled by brawny

shirt-sleeved men, who tossed the huge bales of newspapers from hand

to hand with the nonchalant skill of jugglers doing tricks with

willow-pattern plates and oranges, the Business Department began to

empty so much that you could see the eyebrows of clerks behind the

iron-nailed unplaned deal counters; and Mr. Knewbit, slackening in

his terrific energy, would cease keeping count, and tallying, and

writing cabalistic signs on huge packages with the stump of blue

pencil that never was used up. And he would mop his face and say--in

the same invariable formula:

"Well! we've broke the back of the day's work, and lucky if no one

can say no worse of us!"

Later on, when the last newspaper-cart had been gorged and rattled

away, and the last newspaper-boy had darted out with his armful, and

his mouth open for the yell that would issue from it the moment his

bare feet hit the pavement of Fleet Street, and the office of the

_Early Wire_ and all the other offices that had got off the Morning

Issue had an air of dozing with blinking eyes and mouths half

open--when the Evening Papers were at the height of strenuous

effort,--Mr. Knewbit would arrange the limited supply of hair

remaining on his cranium with a pocket-comb, titivate his whiskers by

the aid of a tiny scrap of looking-glass nailed inside his desk-lid,

dust the blacks off his collar, straighten his cravat--which boasted

a breastpin that was an oval plaque of china, painted with a

miniature of a young lady with flowing ringlets, rosy cheeks, white

arms and shoulders, pink legs and a diaphanous tutu, dancing, crowned

with roses in front of a sylvan waterfall,--and betake himself out to

dine.

Sometimes he would patronize the "Old Cheshire Cheese" chop-house,

where they gave you beefsteak puddings on Saturdays. Or "The Cock"

would have his custom, or he would drop in at an eating-house in St.

Paul's Churchyard, where Irish stew, boiled beef with dumplings and

carrots, or tripe and onions were the staple dishes in winter months.

In summer you got roast mutton and green peas and gooseberry tart

with custard; but whatever the season or the dish, it was always

washed down with whisky-and-water, or gin-and-lemonade, or the

strongest of strong beer.

For this particular tavern was patronized by the penny-a-liners of

Paternoster Row and the vicinity; out-at-elbows, and generally

seedy-looking literary free-lances, who picked up a living by

inditing touching tracts and poignant pamphlets for religious

Societies bearing arresting titles, such as:

"STOP! YOU ARE OUT AT THE GATHERS! Or, The Tale of a Skirt," and

"DEAD LOCKS FOR LIVE HEADS! By A Converted Hairdresser." Or

biographical accounts of the brief lives and protracted deaths of

Little E----, aged seven, or Miss Madeline P---- of X----.

Bearded men these, with bulbous noses, studded with ruby pimples;

full of strange oaths, reveling in profane jest and scurrilous talk.

Lanky youths with hollow eyes, uncut hair and crimson neckties, who

boasted of having cast off all shackles, bonds and fetters, civil,

social, moral and religious, and dreamed in their wilder moments of

the inauguration of a second British Commonwealth, and the reign of a

New Era of Socialism, and the planting of the Tree of Liberty in

Buckingham Palace Courtyard....

And over their strong meats, and the stronger liquors with which they

moistened them, these would discuss the plots of tracts, and so

forth, seasoning their discourse with highly-spiced pleasantries and

salacious witticisms, jesting in ribald sort at all things upon earth

and elsewhere; until--as Mr. Knewbit frequently said--you expected

the ceiling to come down and strike 'em speechless, and fancied you

saw wicked little hellish flames playing about the cutlery.

"Not that I ever read any of their stuff, you know!" he explained to

P. C. Breagh, "though I am a man that, to a certain extent, might be

considered a reader. You've seen my library on the shelf by my

bed-head, and though three books might be held--in the opinion of

some people--to constitute rather a limited library, they're the

three best books that ever were written or ever will be. Bar none!"

He was a Christian believer himself; of the easy-going,

undenominational, non-Church-going kind. And when Sunday came round,

Miss Ling, after seeing the beef and potatoes and Yorkshire-pudding

safely into the oven, would charge him to watch over the same and

guard them from burning; and put on her best bonnet and pop over to

the Christian Mission Army Hall that used to be in Judd Street, W.C.,

for a supply of red-hot doctrine sufficient to stand her in a week of

working-days, while Mr. Knewbit smoked, kept an eye on the cooking,

and occasionally dipped into his library.

A popular edition of the Plays and Poems by one William Shakespeare,

together with a stout and bulky volume, "Gallowglass's Encyclopaedia

of Literary and Typographical Anecdote," and a worm-eaten,

black-leather-bound copy of the Bible--as translated from the Latin

Vulgate and published by the English College at Douay A.D. 1609,

formed Mr. Knewbit's library. In the pages of these, their owner

frequently stated it as his opinion, might be found the finest

literature in the world. He always ended:

"And I bought Gallowglass for half-a-crown off a barrow in

Camberwell, and Shakespeare was give me by a young fellow who found

him dullish reading--and the Book that beats 'em both I picked up in

the fourpenny box at a second-hand bookseller's in Clement's Inn!"

King Solomon and the son of Sirach of Jerusalem, with the Prophets

Isaiah and Hosea, were Mr. Knewbit's favorite Old Testament authors.

Of the Books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus he never wearied. One

wonders how much he understood, but he quarried diligently in their

pages, and sometimes emerged into the light figuratively laden with

jewels. Marvelous passages would drive home to the brain of the man

in blinding flashes of illumination, and he would lose the place in

his excitement,--being an unmethodical if omnivorous reader,--and

never be able to find them again.... So he quoted his Prophets from

memory and generally inaccurately, yet seldom without point or

inappropriately. At other times, wearied with their glorious

obscurity, he reverted to the plainest and simplest of all the

stories ever written, and the sweetest and the saddest too....

He spoke of the Saviour as though he had known Him....

"I never could forgive them fellers"--I conceive he meant the

Disciples--"for cutting off and leaving Him to be pinched by that

gang in the Garden. It was mean, that's what I call it. Mean! But

I will say they owned up their shabbiness in their writings

afterward. Though you notice they hurry over that part. And I'm not

surprised! That young feller downstairs yet, Maria?"

This was at eight o 'clock on the Sunday morning following Mr.

Knewbit's meeting with Carolan on Waterloo Bridge. Miss Ling,

stepping nimbly about the big front kitchen in the basement, busy

with her task of getting breakfast, returned that "Mr. Breagh had got

up and gone out at half-past six."

"For a shave?"

Mr. Knewbit rubbed his own bristly chin rather dubiously as he asked

the question. Miss Ling, impaling a round of stale loaf upon a tin

toasting-fork, shook her neat head and answered in the negative. Mr.

Breagh had mentioned that he was going to church.

"To church.... We'll hope he has gone," said Mr. Knewbit still more

dubiously, "though between me and you and the toasting-fork it sounds

too good to be true.... And 'The Brunswick Arms' is handy round the

corner. If the young man don't rattle at the area-gate by the time

you've finished your toasting, I shall made bold to go and look for

him at the Bar. Hulloa! Here he is! Now, that's what you might

call a pleasant disappointment!"

For he had glanced up at the strip of area-railings commanded by the

upper panes of the kitchen window, and seen the legs of P. C. Breagh

stride by at a great rate, stop, turn back, and descend the

area-steps.

You are to see Miss Ling receiving his morning greeting with the wide

smile that revealed an unbroken row of sound white teeth ("every one

her own," as Mr. Knewbit would say) and made her thin, triangular

face so pleasant. She was a staid spinster, owning to forty-nine,

who would have died rather than confess to being fifty. Her

magnificent hair, genuinely black and shining like ebony, was coiled

upon the top of her head too tightly for beauty. Her well-marked

eyebrows and candid brown eyes slanted a little upward at the

temples, and her skin was rather yellowish than olive. She was of a

flat and bony figure, active and sound and tough, and, in a plain

way, a first-rate cook and caterer.

"Though when I left her Ladyship the Countess of Crowmarsh," said

Miss Ling, "after fourteen years spent in the Castle nurseries,

gradually rising from nursery-maid to under-nurse, and then becoming

what his Lordship was pleased to call Head of the Bottle

Department--a very humorous nobleman his Lordship was at times!--I

had forgotten all I ever knew of my dear mother's

kitchen-teaching--she was a cook, Mr. Breagh, who had lived with the

first in the land! and when--being pensioned by the family--I decided

to risk the step of taking this house, and letting it out to lodgers,

preferring single gentlemen--I was forced to engage a widowed person

to prepare their meals at first."

"I remember her," said Mr. Knewbit, with his mouth full of poached

eggs and bacon. "She could under-boil a pertater and calcine a chop

with any elderly female I ever yet come across. Here, pussy! if you

ain't too proud for rasher-rinds? And not you!" He leaned to the

hearth--he was sitting with his back to the glowing range, and

dropped his offering under the nose of the ginger kitten, which,

having already disposed of a saucer of bread-and-milk, instantly

grabbed.

"To-morrow," said P. C. Breagh, looking up from his rapidly-emptying

plate with the smile which Miss Ling had already decided was

pleasant, "I hope to prove to you that, like the kitten, I am not too

proud for anything that comes in my way."

"Presently, presently!" said Mr. Knewbit sharply. "Everything in

good time! ... I don't like to be hurried. And--what did you say was

the property you'd left with the--the Greedy Guts who runs that

Euston Road hotel?"

"There were three boxes of books--chiefly works on medicine and

surgery." Carolan reflected a moment, stirring his coffee with one

of Miss Ling's Britannia-metal spoons. "And two trunks, with clothes

and all that. Things I valued. My student's cap and _schläger_, and

the silver-mounted beer-horn the English Colony gave me, and--a

Crucifix that was my mother's." The speaker blinked and spoke a

little huskily: "Used to hang over my bed when I was a little chap in

frocks."

"Don't be cast down. Some wave o' luck may wash your property ashore

at your feet one of these days. What I will say is--I wish I had the

setting-up of that story for the paper!" said Mr. Knewbit, handing in

his plate for fried bread. "Supposing you,"--he jerked his eyes at

Carolan--"had any talent in the literary line, it 'ud be worth your

while to throw off a quarter-col. of descriptive stuff."

"Relating to my experiences in that fellow's bug-ridden

lodging-house? Why, I don't doubt I could--after a fashion," said P.

C. Breagh.

"After a fashion won't do. Write it the best you know! Sit down at

the kitchen-table here, when Maria's gone to her prayer-meeting and

I've got my pipe and Solomon to keep me quiet,--and blacken half a

quire o' paper--there's plenty in the drawer there!--with the

story--told short, crisp and plain, and with a dash o' humor, and

within four hundred words. It would space out lovely!" said Mr.

Knewbit, arranging imaginary head-lines on the clean coarse

tablecloth.

LONDON SHARK

VICTIMIZES STUDENT!

HE GRABS HIS GOODS

AND LETS HIM GO!

"Ah, dear me! If I had had your education. But it's too late to

alter that. What were you saying, Maria?"

Miss Ling was hoping that Mr. Breagh had passed a comfortable night?

"First rate, ma'am, many thanks to you!" returned the object of her

solicitude.

"For," said Miss Ling, with a homely kind of dignity, "if anything

was wanting, Mr. Breagh must make excuses. The arrival being

unlooked-for and the notice very short."

"Dropped on you out of the skies, didn't he, Maria?" chuckled Mr.

Knewbit. "And you've put him, for the present, in Mr. Ticking's bed!"

"In Mr. Ticking's bed!--Mr. Ticking," explained Miss Ling, turning to

the new arrival, "who rents our third-floor front, being in the

country for his holidays."

P. C. Breagh expressed the hope that Mr. Ticking would not be

offended.

"Lord bless you, no!" responded Mr. Knewbit. "Ticking's an agreeable

feller. He'd take you rather as a Boon than otherwise. Contributes

a column of cheerful, gossipy items weekly to half-a-dozen of the

suburban and district newspapers that are springing up around us

like--like mushrooms. Always on the look-out for copy--Ticking is!

Now Mounteney----"

"Mr. Mounteney--who is also away on his vacation, and rents the front

sitting-room on our ground-floor, and the bedroom behind it," said

Miss Ling, "is a gentleman who--owing to the nature of his

professional employment--is very refined and sensitive."

"Edits the Health and Beauty column of the _Ladies' Mentor_," said

Mr. Knewbit, crunching fried bread noisily, "and is altogether too

ladylike a gentleman to take a liberty with. For the rest, we are

Full Up. To begin with, I occupy a combined bed-and-sitting room

behind this kitchen, and Miss Ling occupies the large front garret

bedroom; the back one being partitioned off as a Box and Lumber room,

and a bedroom for the servant gal, who is now having her breakfast in

the scullery, as me and Miss Ling agreed would be more considerate

toward you.... Coming down again to the first-floor, the front

parlor and back bedroom are rented by a German gentleman, Mr. Van

Something----"

"Herr von Rosius," interpolated Miss Ling, "who is a teacher at the

Institute of Languages in Berners Street.... Second-floor front,

another combined bed-and-sitting ... Monsieur Meguet, a French

gentleman who is studying Prints at the British Museum. Second-floor

back, Miss Kindell, who is a copier of Pictures at the National

Gallery, and a sweet artist. Third-floor, Mr. Ticking----"

"You represent him for the present," said Mr. Knewbit, nodding at

Carolan.

"The trouble is, and I hope Mr. Breagh will forgive me for mentioning

it," hesitated Miss Ling, "that Mr. Ticking comes back to-morrow

night...."

"And when does Miss Morency go? ... Miss Morency," explained Mr.

Knewbit without waiting for an answer, "is a young person who don't

give satisfaction,--regarded as a lodger,--and there you have the

truth in a nutshell--Brazil for choice! And Miss Ling's good-nature

has led her, before now, to take in such people, and be taken in by

'em too, I'm bound to say!"

The little man broke off as Miss Ling, mindful of P. C. Breagh's

flushed and uneasy countenance, coughed warningly.

"Miss Morency has been brought up very well, and is--she has told

me,--the daughter of a clergyman in Hertfordshire," she explained as

Mr. Knewbit buried his confusion in his coffee-cup. "I cannot but

think it right--under the circumstances--to give Miss Morency a

little time to turn round."

"She's been turning round for eight weeks," said Mr. Knewbit, rubbing

his nose irritably. "And--if I was you, I'd have my latchkey back."

"To ask it would be a want of confidence, which would wound Miss

Morency, and upset her," returned Miss Ling, who had risen and was

gathering the breakfast things together in rather an agitated way.

She added: "And willfully to hurt a person's feelings is a thing I

could not bring myself to do, Solomon. And she goes out, evening

after evening, poor thing, to call on relatives who live in distant

parts of London, and is hardly ever back until very late indeed!"

"She come in at two o'clock this morning," said Mr. Knewbit, screwing

up his eyes meaningly at Carolan. "And--being comparatively early

myself on Saturdays--I heard her--just as I was getting between the

sheets. And being anxious to solve the problem as to Why a young

creature like that should go out walking on two feet--and them

remarkably small and pretty ones!--and come back with Four--and two

of 'em uncommon big and heavy ones, I slipped up the kitchen-stairs

and looked round the corner-post. '_The seeing eye and the hearing

ear,_' said my namesake, '_the Lord hath made them both_' ... and

then, just as I was a-going to ring the garret-bell and bring you

down out of bed in your curl-papers, Maria, I remembered, '_Lie not

in wait for wickedness in the house of the just, nor spoil his

rest,_' 'him' being understood as 'her,' for you're a just woman!

But judgment must be executed upon the daughter of Rahab, whether

it's Sunday or whether it ain't!"

"When you begin quoting from the prophets, it takes a cleverer than

me to understand you," said Miss Ling, flushed to the top of her high

cheekbones. "But as a woman that's her elder, I will stand up for

that poor unprotected young creature against any man that tries to

take her character away!"

"It's nearly time for the Prayer Meeting at the Headquarters Branch

Hall of your Christian Mission Army," said Mr. Knewbit, looking at an

enormous silver watch he wore, and always set by the Tower clock at

Westminster, and calmly taking the poker from the rail above the

kitchen-range. "If you'll put on your bonnet and go, what I have

made up my mind to do will be comfortably over before the General, or

the Colonel, or whichever of 'em is set down to give you Blood and

Fire this morning, has fairly warmed to the fight. But if you want

to be upset and made uncomfortable in your mind for a week

afterwards--you'll stop! You will? Very well, and why not in your

own house? Mr. Breagh, will you kindly follow with Miss Ling and act

as Reserve Force in this emergency? I thank you, young gentleman!"

And armed with the poker, Mr. Knewbit left the kitchen, followed by

Carolan and the landlady, closely attended by the ginger kitten, and

mounted the stairs to the third-floor back.