A NEW FRIEND.
When they stood in the street, with the fresh night-wind blowing upon
them, the old man stopped, and, peering anxiously into his companion's
face, said abruptly--
"Better?"
"Much better, thank you; quite well, in fact. There's no occasion for
me to trouble you any more; I----"
"What? All gaff, eh? Old Jack Byrne sold, eh? Swallowed his brandy,
and want to cut--is that the caper?"
"I beg your pardon, I don't quite clearly understand you, I'm sorry to
say"--for Walter knew by the tone of his voice that the old man was
annoyed--"I'm very weak and rather stupid--I mean to say, in--in the
ways and the talk of London--and I don't clearly follow what you said
to me just now; only you were so kind to me at first, that----"
"Provinces!" muttered the old man to himself. "Just like me; treating
him to my pavement patter, and thinking he understood it! All right, I
think, as far as one can judge, though God knows that's often wrong
enough!" Then, aloud, "Kind! nonsense! I'm an odd old skittle, and
talk an odd language; but I've seen the ups and downs of life, my lad,
and can give you good advice if I can't give anything else. Have you
anything to do to-night? Nothing? Sure I'm not keeping you from the
Opera, or any swell party in Park Lane? No! Then come home with me and
have a bit o' pickled salmon and a glass of cold gin-and-water, and
let's talk matters out."
Before he had concluded his sentence, the old man had slipped Joyce's
arm through his own, and was making off at a great rate, and also with
an extraordinary shamble, in which his shoulder appeared to act as a
kind of cutwater, while his legs followed considerably in the rear.
Walter held on to him as best he could, and in this fashion they made
their way through the back streets, across St. Martin's Lane, and so
into Leicester Square. Then, as they arrived in front of a brilliantly
lighted establishment, at the door of which cabs laden with
fashionably dressed men and gaudily dressed women were continually
disgorging their loads, while a never-ceasing stream of pedestrians
poured in from the street, Jack Byrne came to a sudden halt, and said
to his companion----
"Now I'm going to enjoy myself!"
Walter Joyce had noticed the style of people pouring in through the
turnstiles and paying their admission money at the brilliantly lit
boxes; and as he heard these words he unconsciously drew back. You
see, he was but a country-bred young man, and had not yet been
initiated into the classical enjoyments of London life. Jack Byrne
felt the tug at his arm, and looked at him curiously.
"What is it?" said he. "You thought I was going in there? I? Oh, my
dear young friend, you'll have to learn a great deal yet; but you're
on the suspicious lay, and that's a chalk to you! You thought I'd
hocussed the brandy I gave you at Bliffkins's; you thought I was going
to take you into this devil's crib, did you? Not I, my dear boy; I'd
as soon take you in as myself, and that's saying a good deal. No; I
told you I was going to enjoy myself--so I am. My enjoyment is in
watching that door, and marking those who go through it, not in
speculating on what's going on inside, but in waiting for the end, my
young friend--in waiting for the end! Oh yes, jump out of your
brougham, my Lord Tomnoddy; but don't split your lavender gloves in
attempting to close the door behind you--the cad will do that, of
course! Beautiful linen, white as snow, and hair all stuck close to
his head, look. But mark his forehead--what's your name--Joyce? Mark
his forehead, Joyce; see how it slopes straight away back. Look at
that noble space between his nose and his upper lip--the ape type, my
friend--the ape type! That's one of your hereditary rulers, Joyce, my
boy! That fellow sits and votes for you and me, bless him! He's gone
in now to improve his mind with the literature of comic songs, and the
legs of the ballet, and the fascinations of painted Jezebels, and to
clear his brain with drinks of turpentine and logwood shavings! And
that's one of our hereditary legislators! Oh, Lord, how much
longer--how much longer!"
The policeman on duty at the door, whose mission it was to keep the
pathway clear, now sallied forth from the portico and promenaded in
the little crowd, gently pushing his way amongst them with a
monotonous cry of "Move on, there, please--move on!" Joyce noticed
that his companion regarded this policeman with a half-defiant,
half-pitying air, and the old man said to him, as they resumed their
walk--
"That's another of the effects of our blessed civilization! That
gawk in blucher boots and a felt helmet--that machine in a shoddy
great-coat, who can scarcely tell B from a bull's foot, and yet
has the power to tell you and me and other men, who pay for the
paving-rate--ay, and for the support of such scum as he is, for the
matter of that--to move on! Suppose you think I'm a rum un, eh?" said
Mr. Byrne, suddenly changing his voice of disgust into a bantering
tone. "Not seen many like me before; don't want to see any more,
perhaps?"
"I don't say that," said Joyce, with a half smile; "but I confess the
sentiments are new to me, and----"
"Brought up in the country; my lord or the squire, eh? So pleased to
receive notice coming out of church, 'plucks the slavish hat from the
villager's head,' and all that! Sorry I've not a manorial hall to ask
you into, but such as it is you're welcome. Hold hard, here."
The old man stopped before a private door in a small street of very
small shops running between Leicester Square and the Haymarket, took
out a key, and stood back for his companion to pass before him into a
dark and narrow passage. When the door was closed behind him, Mr.
Byrne struck a light, and commenced making his way up the narrow
staircase. Joyce followed him flight after flight, and past landing
after landing, until at length the top story was reached. Then Mr.
Byrne took out another key, and, unlocking the door immediately in
front of him, entered the room and bade his companion follow him.
Walter Joyce found himself in a long low room, with a truckle bed in
one corner, bookshelves ranged round three sides, and in the middle,
over which the curtains were now drawn, a large square table, with an
array of knives and scissors upon it, a heap of wool in one corner,
and an open case of needles of various kinds, polished bright and
shining. On one end of the mantelpiece stood a glass case containing a
short-horned white owl, stuffed, and looking wonderfully sagacious; on
the other a cock, with full crop and beady eye, and open bill, with
one leg advanced, full of self-sufficiency and conceit. Over the
mantlepiece, in a long low case, was an admirably carried out bit of
Byrne's art, representing the death-struggles of a heron struck by a
hawk. Both birds were stuffed, of course, but the characteristics of
each had been excellently preserved; the delicate heron lay completely
at the mercy of his active little antagonist, whose "pounce" had
evidently just been made, and who with beak and talons was settling
his prey.
While Joyce was looking round at these things, the old man had lit a
lamp suspended from the ceiling, and another standing on the square
work-table; had opened a cupboard, and from it had produced a black
bottle, two tumblers, and a decanter of water; had filled and lit a
mighty pipe, and had motioned his companion to make free with the
liquor and with the contents of an ancient-looking tobacco-jar, which
he pushed towards him.
"Smoke, man!" said he, puffing out a thin line of vapour through
his almost closed lips, and fanning it away lazily with his
hand--"smoke!--that's one thing they can't keep from us, though they'd
like. My lord should puff at his havannah while the commonalty, the
plebs, the _profanum vulgus_, who are hated and driven away, should
'exhale mundungus, ill-perfuming weed!' Thank God we've altered all
that since poor John Philips's day; he'd get better change for his
Splendid Shilling now than ever he did in his time, eh? Talking Greek
to you, am I? or worse than Greek, for that you'd understand, I dare
say, and you'll never understand my old mutterings and quotations. You
can read Greek?"
"Yes," Joyce said; "I am reckoned a tolerable Grecian."
"Indeed!" said the old man, with a grin; "ah! no doubt you were an
honour to your college."
"Unfortunately," said Walter, "I have never been to college."
"Then your state is the more gracious! By George! I thought I'd picked
up with a sucking don, all trencher-cap, and second aorist, and
Conservative principles, Church and State, a big Bible with a sceptre
stretched across it, and a fear of the 'swart mechanics' bloody
thumbs' printed off on my lord's furniture, as provided by Messrs.
Jackson and Graham! You don't follow me, young fellow? Like enough,
like enough. I think myself I'm a little enigmatical when I get on my
hobby, and it requires a good steady stare of honest wonderment, such
as I see on your face now, to bring me up short. I'm brought up short
now, and can attend to more sublunary matters, such as yours. Tell me
about yourself."
"What shall I tell you?" asked Joyce. "I can tell nothing beyond what
you already know, or can guess. I'm without friends, without work;
I've lost hope----"
"No, no, my boy not lost, only mislaid it. We never lose hope so long
as we're good for anything! Sometimes, when I've been most depressed
and down, about the only thing in life that has any interest for me
now--and you've no idea what that is, have you, Joyce, eh?"
"No, indeed; unless, perhaps, your children!"
"Children! Thank God, I never had a wife or a child to give me a care.
No; the People's cause, my boy, the People's cause! That's what I live
for, and sometimes, as I've been saying, I've been downhearted about
that. I've seen the blood beating us down on the one side, and the
money beating us down on the other, and I've thought that it was
useless kicking against the pricks, and that we had better cave in and
give up!"
"But you say you never lost hope?"
"Never, entirely. When I've been at my lowest ebb, when I've come home
here with the blood in my veins tingling from aristocratic insult, and
with worse than that, contempt for my own fellow working-men surging
up in my heart, I've looked up at that case there over the
mantelshelf, and my pluck's revived. That's a fine bit of work, that
is, done by an old pupil of mine, who worked his soul out in the
People's cause in '48, and died in a deep decline soon after. But what
a fancy the lad had! Look at that heron! Is not it for all the world
like one of your long, limp, yaw-yaw, nothing-knowing, nothing-doing
young swells? Don't you read 'used-up' in his delicate plumage,
drooping wings, lack-lustre eye? And remark how the jolly little hawk
has got him! No breed about him; keen of sight, swift of wing, active
with beak and talon--that's all he can boast of; but he's got the
swell in his grip, mind you! And he's only a prototype of what's to
come!"
The old man rose as he spoke, and taking the lamp from the table,
raised it towards the glass case. As he set it down again he looked
earnestly at Joyce, and said--
"You think I'm off my head, perhaps--and I'm not sure that I'm not
when I get upon this topic--and you're thinking that at the first
convenient opportunity you'll slip away, with a 'Thank ye!' and leave
the old lunatic to his democratic ravings? But, like many other
lunatics, I'm only mad on one subject, and when that isn't mentioned I
can converse tolerably rationally, can perhaps even be of some use in
advising one friendless and destitute. And you, you say, are both."
"I am, indeed; but I scarcely think you can help me, Mr. Byrne, though
I don't for an instant doubt your friendship or your wish to be of
service. But it happens that the only people from whom I can hope to
get anything in the way of employment, employment that brings money,
belong to that class against which you have such violent antipathies,
the--the 'swells,' as you call them."
"My dear young fellow, you mistake me. If you do as I should like you,
as an honest Englishman with a freeman's birthright, to do; if you do
as I myself--old Jack Byrne, one of the prisoners of '48; 'Bitter
Byrne,' as they call me at the club--if you do as I do, you'll hate
the swells with all your heart, but you'll use 'em. When I was a young
man, young and foolish, blind and headstrong, as all young men are, I
wouldn't take off my cap to a swell, wouldn't take a swell's orders,
wouldn't touch a swell's money! Lord bless you, I saw the folly of
that years ago! I should have been starved long since if I hadn't.
My business is bird-stuffing, as you may have heard or guessed; and
where should I have been if I'd had to live upon all the orders for
bird-stuffing I got from the labouring classes? They can't stuff
themselves enough, let alone their birds! The swells want owls, and
hawks, and pheasants, and what not, stuffed with outspread wings for
fire-screens, but the poor people want the fire itself, and want it so
badly that they never holloa for screens, and wouldn't use 'em if they
had 'em. No, no; hate the swells, my boy, but use 'em. What have you
been?"
"An usher in a school."
"Of course! I guessed it would be some of those delightful occupations
for which the supply is unlimited and the demand nothing, but I
scarcely thought it could be so bad as that! Usher in a school! hewer
in a coal-pit, stone-breaker on a country road, horse in a mill,
anything better than that!"
"What could I do?"
"What could you do? Sell your books, pawn your watch, take a steerage
passage and go out to Australia. Black boots, tend sheep, be cad to an
omnibus, or shopwalker to a store out there; every one of 'em better
than dragging on in the conventional torture of this played-out
staggering old country! That's gassy a little, you'll think, and so it
is; but I mean better than that. I've long-standing and intimate
connections with the Zoological Acclimatisation Society in Melbourne,
and if you can pay your passage out, I'll guarantee that, in the
introductions I give you, they'll find you something to do. If you
_can't_ find the money for your passage out, perhaps it can be found
for you!"
Not since James Ashurst's death, not for some weeks before that event,
indeed, when the stricken man had taken leave of his old pupil and
friend, had Walter Joyce heard the words of friendship and kindness
from any man. Perhaps, a little unmanned by the disappointment and
humiliation he had undergone since his arrival in London, he was a
little unmanned at this speech from his newly found friend; at all
events, the tears stood in his eyes, and his voice was husky as he
replied--
"I ought to be very much obliged to you, and indeed, indeed I am; but
I fear you'll think me an ungrateful cub when I tell you that I can't
possibly go away from England. Possibly is a strong word, but I mean,
that I can't think of it until I've exhausted every means, every
chance of obtaining the barest livelihood here!"
The old man eyed him from under his bent brows earnestly for a moment,
and then said abruptly, "Ties, eh? father?"
"No!" said Joyce, with a half blush--very young, you see, and country
bred--"as both my mother and father are dead, but--but there is----"
"Oh, Lord!" grunted Mr. Byrne, "of course there is; there always is in
such cases! Blind old bat I was not to see it at first! Ah, she was
left lamenting, and all the rest of it; quite knocks the Australian
idea on the head? Now let me think what can be done for you here!
There's Buncombe and Co., the publishers, want a smart young man,
smart and cheap they said in their letter, to contribute to their new
Encyclopaedia, the Naturalist. That'll be one job for you, though it
won't be much."
"But, Mr. Byrne," said Joyce, "I have no knowledge, or very little, of
natural history. Certainly not enough to----"
"Not too much to prevent your being too proud to take a hint or two
from Goldsmith's _Animated Nature_, my boy, as he took several from
those who preceded him. That, and a German book or two you'll find on
the shelves--you understand German? that's right--will help you to all
the knowledge Buncombe will require of you, or all they ought to
expect, for the matter of that, at ten-and-six the column. You can
come here of a morning--you won't interfere with me--and grind away
until dark, when we'll have a walk and a talk; you shall tell me all
about yourself, and we'll see what more can be done, and then we'll
have some food at Bliffkins's and learn all that's going on!"
"I don't know how to thank you," commenced Joyce.
"Then don't attempt to learn!" said the old man. "Does it suit you, as
a beginning only, mind! do you agree to try it--we shall do better
things yet, I hope; but will you try it?"
"I will indeed! If you only knew----"
"I do: good night! I got up at daybreak, and ought to have been in bed
long since. Good night!"
Not since he had been in London, had Walter Joyce been so light of
heart as when he closed Mr. Byrne's door behind him. Something to do
at last! He felt inclined to cry out for joy; he longed for some one
to whom he could impart his good fortune.
His good fortune! As he sat upon his wretched bed in his tiny lodging,
luxurious words rang in his ears. "And the chance of achieving fame
and fortune, keep that in the foreground!" Fame and fortune! And he
had been overjoyed because he had obtained a chance of earning a few
shillings as a bookseller's hack, a chance for which he was indebted
to a handicraftsman. But a poor first step towards fame and fortune,
Marian would think! He understood how utter had been her inexperience
and his own; he had learned the wide distance between the fulfilment
of such hopes as theirs, and the best of the bare possibilities which
the future held for them, and the pain which this knowledge brought
him, more for the sake of his own share in it, was doubly keen for
hers. It was very hard for Walter Joyce to have to suffer the terrible
disappointment and disenchantment of experience; but it was far harder
for him to have to cause her to share them. Marian would indeed think
it a "poor first step." He little knew how much more decisive a one
she was about to take herself.