“_Seek you wine or seek you maid at the journey's end?_
_Give to me at every stage the welcome of a friend!_”
--Cyd.
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O not think that all this time I had lost sight of my new friends, the
fair-haired Dick Shafthead and the genial Teddy Lumme. On the contrary,
we had had more than one merry night together, and exchanged not a few
confidences. Very soon after I was settled, Dick had come round to
my rooms and criticised everything, from Halfred to the curtains. His
tastes were a trifle too austere to altogether appreciate these latter
rather sumptuous hangings.
“They'll do for waistcoats if you ever go on the music-hall stage,” he
observed, sardonically. “That's why you got 'em, perhaps?”
“The very reason, my friend,” I replied. “I cannot afford to get both
new waistcoats and new curtains; just as I am compelled to employ the
same person to get me out of jail and criticise my furniture.”
Dick laughed.
“You are too witty, mossyour.” (He came as near the pronunciation of my
title as that.) “You should write some of these things down before you
forget 'em.”
“For the French,” I retorted, “that precaution is unnecessary.”
For Halfred, I am sorry to say, he did not at first show that
appreciation I had expected.
“Your 'bus-man,” was the epithet he applied behind his back; though I am
bound to say his good-breeding made him so polite that Halfred, on his
side, conceived the highest opinion of my friend.
“A real gentleman, Mr. Shafthead is, sir,” he confided to me. “What I
calls a hunmistakable toff. He hasn't got no side on, and he speaks to
one man like as he would to another. In fact, sir, he reminds me of Lord
Haugustus I once seed at the Hadelphi; a nobleman what said, 'I treats
hevery fellow-Briton as a gentleman so long as Britannia rules the
waves and 'e behaves 'isself accordingly.'”
This may seem exaggerated praise, but, indeed, it would be difficult to
exaggerate my dear Dick's virtues. Doubtless his faults are being placed
in the opposite page of a ledger kept somewhere with his name upon the
cover; but that is no business of mine. To paste in parallel columns
the virtues of our friends and the faults of ourselves, that may be
unpleasant, but it is necessary if we are to turn the search-light
inward. Certain weak spots we must not look at too closely if we are to
keep our self-respect; but, my faith! we can well give the most of our
humanity an airing now and then; also, if possible, a fumigating. It was
Dick Shafthead, more than any other, who took my failings for a walk
in the sunshine, and somehow or other they always returned a little
abashed.
A very different person was his cousin Teddy Lumme, for whom,
by-the-way, I discovered Dick had a real regard carefully concealed
behind a most satirical attitude. Teddy was not clever--though shrewd
enough within strict limits; he was no moralist, no philosopher; _an
observer chiefly of the things least worth observing_--a performer
upon the tin-whistle of life. But, owing to his kindness of heart and
ingenuous disposition, he was wonderfully likable.
His leisure moments were devoted, I believe, to the discharge of some
duty in the foreign office, though what precisely it was I could never,
even by the most ingenious cross-examination, discover. His father held
the respectable position of Bishop of Battersea; his mother was the
Honorable Mrs. Lumme. These excellent parents had a high regard for
Teddy, whom they considered likely to make his mark in the world.
I was taken to the bishopric (sic), and discussed with the most
venerable Lumme, senior, many points of interest to a foreigner.
Note of a conversation with Bishop of Battersea, taken down from memory
a few days after: _Myself_. “What is the difference between a High
Church and a Low Church?”
_Bishop_. “A High Church has a high conception of its duties towards
mankind, religion, the apostolic succession, and the costume of its
clergymen. A Low Church has the opposite.”
_Myself_. “Are you Low Church?”
_Bishop_. “No.”
_Myself_. “I understand that the conversion of the Pope is one of your
objects. Is that so?” _Bishop_. “Should the Pope approach us in a proper
spirit we should certainly be willing to admit him into our fold.”
_Myself_. “Have you written many theological works?”
_Bishop_. “I believe tea is ready.”
Afterwards further discussion on tithes, doctrine, and the Thirty-nine
Articles, of which I forget the details.
My friend Teddy did not live at the bishopric with his parents, but in
exceedingly well-appointed chambers near St. James Street. Here I met
various other young gentlemen of fortune and promise, who discussed
with me many questions of international interest--such as the price of
champagne in foreign hotels, the status of the music-hall artiste at
home and abroad, the best knot for the full-dress tie, and so forth.
Dick Shafthead did not often appear in this company.
“Can't afford their amusements, and can't be bothered with their
conversation,” he explained to me. “Look in and have a pipe this evening
if you're doing nothing else. If you want cigars, bring your own; I've
run out.”
And, after all, learning to perform upon the briar-pipe in Dick's
society under the old roof of the Temple, applauding or disapproving of
our elders and our betters, had infinitely more charm to me than those
intellectual conclaves at his cousin's, for six nights in the week at
least. A different mood, a different friend. Sometimes one desires in a
companion congenial depravity; at others, more points of contact.
This Temple where Dick lived is not a church, though there is a church
within it. It is one of those surprising secrets that London keeps and
shows you sometimes to reconcile you to her fogs. Out of the heart of
the traffic and the noise you turn through an ancient archway into
a rabbit warren of venerable and sober red buildings; each court and
passage tidy, sedate, and, if I may say it of a personage of brick,
thoughtful and kindly disposed to its inhabitants. This is the Temple,
once the home of the Knight Templars, now of English law. In one
court Dick shared with a friend an austerely furnished office where he
received such work as the solicitors sent him, and was ready to receive
more. But it was on the top flight of another staircase in another
court-yard that he kept his household gods.
He had come there, as I have said before, during a period of financial
depression, and there he had stayed ever since. I do not wonder at
it; though, to be sure, I think I should find it rather solitary of an
evening, when the offices emptied, silence fell upon the stairs and
the quadrangles, and there were only left in the whole vast warren the
sprinkling of permanent inhabitants who dwelt under the slates. Yet
there was I know not quite what about those old rooms, an aroma of the
past, a link with romance, that made them lovable. The panelled walls,
the undulating floors, the odd angle which held the fireplace, the beam
across the ceiling, the old furniture to match these, all had character;
and to what but character do we link sentiment?
Also the prospect from the windows was delightful; an open court, a few
trees, the angles of other ancient buildings, a glimpse of green turf
in a garden, a peep of more stems and branches, with the Thames beyond.
Yes, it was quite the neighborhood for a romantic episode to happen. And
one day, as you shall hear in time, it happened.
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