THE CAVES
The "labyrinth" beneath the West End of London was rediscovered in our
own time when the foundations for the Carlton Hotel and his Majesty's
Theatre were laid. It is a network of old cellars, subterranean passages
and, it may even be, of disused conduits, extended from the corner of
Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, away to the confines of St. James' Park--and,
as more daring explorers aver, to the river Thames itself. Here is a
very town of tunnels and arches, of odd angled rooms, of veritable caves
and depths as dark as Styx. If, in a common way, it be shut by the
circumstance of the buildings above to the riff-raff and night-hawks who
would frequent it, there are seasons, nevertheless, when the laying of
new foundations, the building of hotels and the demolition of ancient
streets in the name of "improvement" fling its gates open to the more
cunning of the "destitutes," and they flock there as rooks to a field
newly sown.
Of these welcome opportunities, the building of the Carlton Hotel is the
best remembered within recent times; but the erection of new houses off
St. James' Street in the year 1903 brought the ladies and the gentlemen
of the road again to its harborage; and they basked there for many weeks
in undisputed possession. Molesting none and by none molested, it was
an affair neither for the watchmen (whose glances askance earned them
many a handsome supper) or for the police who had sufficient to do in
the light of the street lamps that they should busy themselves with
supposed irregularities where that light was not. The orgies thus became
a nightly feature of the vagrant's life. There was no more popular hotel
in London than the "Coal Hole," as the wits of the company delighted to
style their habitation.
A city below a city! Indeed imagination might call it that. A replica of
famous catacombs with horrid faces for your spectres, ghoulish women and
unspeakable men groping in the darkness as though, vampire-like, afraid
of the light. Why Alban Kennedy visited this place, he himself could not
have said. Possibly a certain morbid horror of it attracted him. He had,
admittedly, such a passport to the caves as may be the reward of a
shabby appearance and a resolute air. The criminal company he met with
believed that he also was a criminal. Enjoying their confidence because
he had never excited their suspicion, they permitted him to lie his
length before reddened embers and hear tales which fire the blood with
every passion of anger and of hate. Here, in these caverns, he had seen
men fight as dogs--with teeth and claws and resounding yells; he had
heard the screams of a woman and the cries of helpless children. A
sufficient sense of prudence compelled him to be but an apathetic
spectator of these infamies. The one battle he had fought had been
impotent to save the object of his chivalry.
When first he came here, heroic resolutions followed him. He had
thrashed a ruffian who struck a woman, and narrowly escaped with his
life for doing so. Henceforth he could but assent to a truce which
implied mutual toleration; and yet he understood that his presence was
not without its influence even on these irredeemables. Men called him
"The Hunter," or in mockery "The Dook." He had done small services for
one or two of them--even written a begging letter for a rogue who could
not write at all, but posed as an "old public school man," fallen upon
evil days. Alban was perfectly well aware that this was a shameless
imposition, but his ideas of morality as it affected the relations of
rich and poor were ever primitive and unstable. "If this old thief gets
half a sovereign, what's it matter?" he would argue; "the other man
stole his money, I suppose, and can well afford to pay up." Here was a
gospel preached every day in Thrawl Street. He had never stopped to ask
its truth.
Alban crossed St. James' Street furtively, and climbed, as an athlete
should climb, the boarding which defended the entrance to this amazing
habitation. A contented watchman, dozing by a comfortable fire, cared
little who came or went and rarely bestirred himself to ask the
question. There were two entrances to the caves: one cramped and
difficult, the other broad and open; and you took your choice of them
according to the position of the policeman on the beat. This night, or
rather this morning, of the day following upon the meeting in Union
Street, discovered Alban driven to the more hazardous way. His quick eye
had detected, on the far side of the enclosure, an amiable flirtation
between a man of law and a lady of the dusters; and avoiding both
discreetly, he slipped into a trench of the newly made foundations and
crawled as swiftly through an aperture which this descent revealed.
Here, laid bare by the picks and shovels of twentieth-century Trade
Unionism, was a veritable Gothic arch, bricked up to the height of a
tall man's waist, but open at the tympanum. Alban hoisted himself to the
aperture and, slipping through, his feet discovered the reeking floor of
a dank and dripping subway; and guiding himself now by hands
outstretched and fingers touching the fungi of the walls, he went on
with confidence until the roof lifted above him and the watch-fires of
the confraternity were disclosed. He had come by now into a vast cellar
not very far from the Carlton Hotel itself. There were offshoots
everywhere, passages more remote, the arches as of crypts, smaller
apartments, odd corners which had guarded the casks five hundred years
ago. Each of these could show you its little company safe harbored for
the night; each had some face from which Master Timidity might well
avert his eyes. But Alban went in amongst them as though he had been
their friend. They knew his very footstep, the older "lags" would
declare.
"All well, Jack?"
"All well, old cove."
"The Panorama come along?"
"Straight art of the coffee shawp, s'help me blind."
"Ship come in?"
"Two tharsand next Toosday--same as usual."
A lanky hawker, lying full length upon a sack, his pipe glowing in the
darkness, exchanged these pleasantries with Alban at the entrance. There
were fires by here and there in these depths and the smoke was often
suffocating. The huddled groups declared all grades of ill-fortune and
of crime; from that of the "pauper parson" to the hoariest house-breaker
"resting" for a season. Alban's little set, so far as he had a "set" at
all, consisted of the sometime curate of a fashionable West End Church,
known to the company as the Archbishop of Bloomsbury; the Lady Sarah, a
blooming, red-cheeked girl who sold flowers in Regent Street, "the
Panorama," an old showman's son who had not a sixpenny piece in his
pocket, but whose schemes were invariably about to bring him in "two
thousand next Tuesday morning"; and "Betty," a pretty, fair-haired lad,
thrown on the streets God knows how or by what callous act of
indifferent parentage. Regularly as the clock struck, this quartette
would gather in a tiny "chapel" of the cellars and sleep about a fire
kindled in a grate which might have baked meats for the Tudors. They
spoke of the events of the day with moderation and wise philosophy. It
would be different to-morrow. Such was ever their text.
"My lord the Duke is late. Does aught of fortune keep your nobility?"
The ex-parson made way for Alban, grandiloquently offering a niche upon
the bare floor and a view of the reddening embers. The boy "Betty" was
already asleep, while the Lady Sarah and "the Panorama" divided a
fourpenny pie most faithfully between them. A reeking atmosphere of
spirit (but not of water) testified to the general conviviality. A hum
of conversation was borne in upon them from the greater cellar--at odd
times a rough oath of protest or the mad complainings of a drunkard. For
the most part, however, the night promised to be uneventful. Alban had
never seen the Lady Sarah more gracious, and as for "the Panorama" he
had no doubt whatever that his fortune was made.
"My contract for America's going through and I shall be out there with a
show in a month," this wild youth said--and added patronizingly, "When I
come back, it will be dinner upstairs, old chaps--and some of the best.
Do you suppose that I could forget you? I would as soon forget my
father's grave."
They heard him with respect--no one differing from him.
"I shall certainly be pleased to accept your kind invitation," said the
Archbishop, "that is, should circumstance--and Providence--enable me to
redeem the waistcoat, without which--eh--hem--I understand no visitor
would be admitted to those noble precincts."
The Lady Sarah expressed her opinion even more decidedly.
"Don't 'e talk," she said pleasantly, "can't you 'ear the thick 'uns a
rattlin' in his mouse-trap. Poor little man and 'im a horphin. Stun me
mother if I ain't a goin' ter Jay's termerrer ter buy mournin' in honor
of him."
"I presume," continued the Archbishop, "that we shall all be admitted to
this entertainment as it were--that is--as the colloquial expression
goes--on the nod. It will be enough to mention that we are the
proprietor's friends."
"You shall have a season-ticket for life, Archbishop. Just you tell me
where you want a church built and I'll see that it's done. Of course I
don't mind your chaff--I'm dead in earnest and the money will be there."
"A real contract this time?" Alban suggested kindly.
"A real contract. I saw Philips about it to-day, and he knows a man who
is Pierpont Morgan's cousin. We are to open in New York in September and
be in San Francisco the following week."
"Rather a long journey, isn't it, old chap?"
"Oh, they do those things out there. I'm told you play Hamlet one night
and Othello six hours afterwards, which is really the next night because
of the long distances and the differences in the latitudes. Ask the
Archbishop. I expect he hasn't forgotten all his geography."
"A Cambridge man," said the Archbishop, loftily, "despises geography.
Heat, light, electricity, the pure and the impure mathematics--these are
his proper study. I rise superior to the occasion and tell you that San
Francisco is a long way from New York. The paper in which I wrapped a
ham sandwich yesterday--the advertisement of a shipping company, I may
inform you--brings that back to my recollection. San Francisco is the
thickness of two slices of stale bread from the seaport you mention. And
I believe there are Red Indians in between."
The Lady Sarah murmured lightly the refrain of the old song concerning
houses which stood in that annoying position; but Alban had already
lighted a cigarette and was watching the girl's face critically.
"You've had some luck to-day, Sarah?"
"A bloomin' prophet and that I won't deny. Gar'n, Dowie."
"But you did have some luck?"
"Sure and certain. What d'ye fink? A bit of a boy, same as 'Betty' 'ere,
'e comes up and says, 'What'll ye take fer the whole bloomin' caravan?'
he says, 'for ter send ter a lidy?' 'Gentleman,' I says, 'I'm only a
poor girl and a widered muver ter keep, and, gentleman, I can't tike
less than two pound fer 'em sure and certain as there's a God in 'eaven,
I can't.' 'Well,' says he, 'it's a blarsted swindle but I'll take
'em--and mind you deliver 'em ter the lidy yerself.' 'They shall go this
very minute,' says I, 'and, oh, sir, God bless you both and may yer have
long life and 'appiness ter-gether.' Strike me dead, wot d'yer think he
said next? Why he arst me fer my bloomin' name, same as if I wus a
Countess a steepin' art of a moter-kar at the door of Buckingem Peliss.
'What's yer name, girl?' says 'e. 'Sarah Geddes, an it please yer
capting,' says I. 'Then send the bally flowers to Sarah Geddes,' says
'e, 'and take precious good care as she gets 'em.' Gawd's truth, yer
could 'ave knocked me darn with a 'at pin. I never was took so suddin in
all me life."
"I wonder you didn't have your dinner in the Carlton Hotel, Sarah."
"So I would 'a' done if I'd hev bed time ter chinge me dress. You orter
know, Dook, as no lidy ever goes inter them plices in wot she's bin a
wearin' afore she cleaned herself. I'ad ter go ter Marlborough 'Ouse ter
tell the Prince of Wales, and that's wot kept me."
"Better luck next time, Sarah. So it only ran to a 'fourpenny' between
you and 'the Panorama.'"
"You shall all dine with me next week," said the young man in question.
"On my honor, I'll give you the best dinner you ever had in your life.
As for Sarah here, I'm going to put her in a flower shop in Bond
Street."
"Gar'n, silly, what 'ud I do in Bond Street? Much better buy the
Archbishop a church."
The erstwhile clergyman did not take the suggestion, in good part.
"I have always doubted my ability to conduct the affairs of a parish
methodically," he said, "that is--a little habit--a slight partiality to
the drug called morphia is not in my favor. This, I am aware, is a
drawback. The world judges my profession very harshly. A man in the city
who counts the collection indifferently will certainly become Lord
Mayor. The Establishment has no use for him--he is _de trop_, or as we
might say, a drop too much. This I recognize in frankly declining our
young friend's offer--with grateful thanks."
Sarah, the flower girl, seemed particularly amused by this frank
admission. Feeling in the depth of her shawl she produced a capacious
flask and a bundle of cigars.
"'Ere, boys," she said, "let's talk 'am and heggs. 'Ere's a drop of the
best and five bob's worth of chimney afire, stun me mother if there
ain't. I'm sick of talkin' and so's 'the Panerawma.' Light up yer
sherbooks and think as you're in Buckingem Peliss. There ain't no 'arm
thinkin' anyways."
"I dreamed last night," said the Archbishop very sadly, "that this
cellar had become a cottage and that the sun was shining in it."
"I never dream," said "the Panorama," stoically; "put my head on the
floor and I won't lift it until the clock strikes ten."
"Then begin now, my dear," exclaimed the Lady Sarah with a sudden
tenderness, "put it there now and forget what London is ter you and me."
The words were uttered almost with a womanly tenderness, not without its
influence upon the company. Some phrase spoken of Frivolity's mouth had
touched this group of outcasts and spoken straight to their hearts. They
bandied, pleasantries no more, but lighting the cigars--the Lady Sarah
boldly charging a small clay pipe--they fell to an expressive silence,
of introspection, it may be, or even of unutterable despair. The woman
alone amongst them had not been cast down from a comparative altitude to
this very abyss of destitution. For the others life was a vista far
behind them; a vista, perchance, of a cottage and the sunshine, as the
parson had said; an echo of voices from a forgotten world; the memory of
a hand that was cold and of dead faces reproaching them. Such pauses are
not infrequent in the conversation of the very poor. Men bend their
heads to destiny less willingly than we think. The lowest remembers the
rungs of the ladder he has descended.
Alban had lighted one of the cigars and he smoked it stoically,
wondering again why the caves attracted him and what there was in this
company which should not have made him ashamed of such associations.
That he was not ashamed admitted of no question. In very truth, the
humanities were conquering him in spite of inherited prejudice. Had the
full account of it been written down by a philosopher, such a sage would
have said that the girl Sarah stood for a type of womanly pity, of
sympathy, and, in its way, of motherhood; qualities which demand no gift
of birth for their appeal. The unhappy parson, too, was there not much
of good in him, and might he not yet prove a human field worthy to be
tilled by a husbandman of souls? His humor was kindly; his disposition
gentle; his faults punished none but himself. And for what did "the
Panorama" stand if not for the whole gospel of human hope without which
no life may be lived at all? Alban had some glimmering of this, but he
could not have set down his reasons in so many words. As for the little
lad "Betty"--was not the affection they lavished upon him that which
manhood ever owes to the weak and helpless. Search London over and you
will not find elemental goodness in a shape more worthy than it was to
be found in the caves--nor can we forego a moment's reflection upon the
cant which ever preaches the vice of the poor and so rarely stops to
preach their virtues.
This was the human argument of Alban's association, but the romantic
must not be forgotten. More imaginative than most youths of his age, his
boyish delight in these grim surroundings was less to him than a real
and inspiring sense of the power of contrast they typified. Was he not
this very night sleeping beneath some famous London house, it might be
below that very temple of the great God Mammon, the Carlton Hotel? Far
above him were the splendid rooms, fair sleepers in robes of lace, tired
men who had earned enough that very day perhaps to feed all the hungry
children in Thrawl Street for a lifetime and to remain rich men
afterwards. Of what were the dreams of such as those--not of sunshine
and a cottage as the old parson had dreamed, surely? Not of these nor of
the devoted sacrifice of motherhood or of that gentle sympathy which the
unfortunate so readily give their fellows. Not this certainly--and yet
who should blame them? Alban, at least, had the candor to admit that he
would be much as they were if his conditions of life were the same. He
never deceived himself, young as he was, with the false platitudes of
boastful altruists. "I should enjoy myself if I were rich," he would
say--and sigh upon it; for what assumption could be more grotesque?
No, indeed, there could be no sunshine for him to-morrow. Nothing but
the shadows of toil; and, in the background, that grim figure of
uncertainty which never fails to haunt the lives of the very poor.