We have had enough of the roughs for a time, and I want now to deal with
a few of the wrecks that I see--wrecks that started their voyage with
every promise of prosperity. Let no young fellow who reads what follows
fancy that he is safe. He may be laborious; an unguarded moment after a
spell of severe work may see him take the first step to ruin. He may be
brilliant: his brilliancy of intellect, by causing him to be courted,
may lead him into idleness, and idleness is the bed whereon parasitic
vices flourish rankly. Take warning.
I was invited to go for a drive, but I had letters to write, and said
so. A quiet old man who was sitting in the darkest corner of the bar
spoke to me softly, "If your letters are merely about ordinary
business, you may dictate them to me here, and I will transcribe them
and send them off." I replied that I could do them as quickly myself.
The old man smiled. "You do not send letters in shorthand. I can take a
hundred and forty words a minute, and you can do your correspondence and
go away." The oddity of the proposal attracted me. I agreed to dictate.
The old man took out his notebook, and in ten minutes the work was done.
We came back in an hour, and by that time each letter was transcribed in
a beautiful, delicate longhand. I handed the scribe a shilling, and he
was satisfied. The Gentleman, as we called him, writes letters for
anyone who can spare him a glass of liquor or a few coppers; but I had
never tested his skill before. There was no one in the bar, so I sat
down beside the old man, and we talked.
"You seem wonderfully clever at shorthand. I am surprised that you
haven't permanent work."
"It would do me little good. I can go on for a long time, but when my
fit comes on me I am not long in losing any job. They won't have me,
friend--they won't have me."
"You've been well employed, then, in your time?"
"No one better. If I had command of myself, I might have done as well in
my way as my brother has in his. I could beat him once, and I was quite
as industrious as he was; but, when I came to the crossroads, I took the
wrong turning, and here I am."
"May I ask how your brother succeeded? I mean--what is he?"
"He is Chief Justice ----."
I found that this was quite true; indeed, the Gentleman was one of the
most veracious men I have known.
"Does your brother know how you are faring?"
"He did know, but I never trouble him. He was a good fellow to me, and I
have never worried him for years. I prefer to be dead to the world. I
have haunted this place, as you know, for six months; to-morrow I may
make a change, and live in another sty."
"But surely you could get chance work that would keep you in decent
clothes and food."
"I do get many chance jobs; but if the money amounts to much I am apt to
be taken up as drunk and incapable."
The sweet, quiet smile which accompanied this amazing statement was
touching. The old man had a fine, thoughtful face, and only a slight
bulbousness of the nose gave sign of his failing. Properly dressed, he
would have looked like a professor, or doctor, or something of that
kind. As it was, his air of good breeding and culture quite accounted
for the name the people gave him. I should have found it impossible to
imagine him in a police-cell had I not been a midnight wanderer for
long.
"How did you come to learn shorthand?"
"My father was a solicitor in large practice, and I found I could assist
him with the confidential correspondence, so I took lessons in White's
system for a year. My father said I was his right hand. Ah! He gave me
ten pounds and two days' holiday at Brighton when I took down his first
letter."
"Have you been a solicitor?"
"No. I had an idea of putting my name down at one of the Inns, but I
went wrong before anything came of the affair."
"You say you have had good employment. But how did you contrive to
separate from your father?"
"Oh! I wore out his patience. I was so successful that I thought it safe
to toast my success. We were in a south-country town--Sussex, you
know--and I began by hanging about the hotel in the market-place. Then I
played cards at night with some of the fast hands, and was useless and
shaky in the mornings. Then I began to have periodical fits of
drunkenness; then I became quite untrustworthy, and last of all I robbed
my father during a bad fit, and we parted."
"And then?"
"I picked up odd jobs for newspapers, or sponged on my brother. At last
I was sent to the House as reporter, and did very well until one night
when Palmerston was expected to make an important speech. My turn came,
and I was blind and helpless. Since then I have been in place after
place, but the end was always the same, and I have learned that I am a
hopeless, worthless wretch."
"But couldn't your brother, for his own credit's sake, keep you in his
house and put you under treatment?"
"My good friend, I should die under it. I revel in degradation. I
luxuriate in self-contempt. My time is short, and I want to pass it away
speedily. This life suits me, for I seldom have my senses, and there is
only the early morning to dread. I think then--think, think, think.
Until I can scrape together my first liquor I see ugly things. I should
be in my own town with my grandchildren round me. I might have been on
the Bench, like my brother, and all men would have respected me as they
do him. Sons and daughters would have gathered round me when I came to
my last hour. I gave it all up in order to sluice my throat with brandy
and gin. That is the way I think in the morning. Then I take a glass, or
beg one, as I shall from you presently, and then I forget. Once I went
out to commit suicide, and took three whiskies to string my nerve up. In
two minutes I was laughing at a Punch and Judy show. If you'll kindly
order a quartern of gin in a pint glass for me, I'll fill it up and be
quite content all the evening. No one ill-uses me. I'm a soft, harmless,
disreputable old ne'er-do-well. That is all."
We drank, and then the Gentleman said, "You come here a good deal too
much. Your hand was not quite right yesterday morning. Usually you keep
right, and I really don't know how far you are touched. If I had your
youth and your appearance, I think I should save myself in time by a
bold step. Join the temperance people and work publicly; then you are
committed, and you can't step back."
"But you don't think that I am likely to go to the dogs? I loaf around
here because I have no ambition, and my life was settled for me; but I
have command over myself."
"You _had_ command over yourself, you mean. I think you are in great
danger--very great indeed. My good friend, there are _no_ exceptions.
Meet me to-night, or say to-morrow, as I am to be drunk to-night; go to
the beer-house at the end of my street, and I'll show you something."
Just then the Ramper came up and hailed the Gentleman. "Here you old
swine! Are you sober enough to scratch off a letter?"
"I'm all right."
"Well, then, write to the usual, and tell him to put me on half-a-quid
Sunshine, and half-a-quid Dartmoor a shop--s.p. both."
Thus our conversation was stopped, and the brother of a judge earned
twopence by writing a letter for a racecourse thief.
Next night I went to a very shady public-house, and the Gentleman led me
into a dirty room, where a little old man was sitting alone. The man was
crooked, wizened, weak, and his bare toes stuck out of both shoes; his
half-rotten frock coat gaped at the breast and showed that he had no
shirt on; his hat must have been picked up from a dustheap, for it was
filthy, and broken in three or four places.
"For mercy's sake, give me a mouthful of something!" said this object,
turning the face of a mummy towards me. His dim eyes were rheumy, and
his chin trembled. An awful sight!