Huxtable’s advertisement in the ‘Morning Post’ had brought applications
from 130 valets. It brought also a letter from a country clergyman,
beseeking another chance for Prosser--ex-burglar, son of a country
poacher, a reformed character--lately returned to his father’s humble
home in penitence from Portland, after five years of penal servitude.
The blameless, colourless remainder had no chance against him. Dwala
was delighted. Prosser came--a little pale man, trim and finicking,
with shining eyes; nothing of the brutal house-breaker in him; a man
of patient, orderly mind, who had gone to Burglary as another man
might go to the Bar, because he had ‘influence,’ and no aptitude for
any other calling. With his father to back him, he had a connection
ready-made among the ‘fences,’ or receivers of stolen goods. He had not
thought himself justified in throwing away such chances with a wife and
child to keep. He studied the arts of valeting and butlering; entered
gentlemen’s houses with a good character from a friendly ‘fence,’ and
left them with the jewellery and plate, till he was lagged over a
wretched little job in the suburbs, and taken to Portland Bill, where
one of his mates--a fraudulent low-church company-promoter--converted
him and showed him the wickedness of what he had been doing in all its
coarse enormity.
His wife had gone to the bad during his absence, and the little
girl had been adopted and cared for by another friendly ‘fence’--an
afflicted villain of the name of Hartopp. So much he had heard; but
he had not enough the courage of his new innocence to go into that
dangerous neighbourhood to find her.
Dwala elicited these facts in cross-examination. He was deeply
interested in this new side of life; and we must, perforce, follow him
into it, though it has little apparent relevance to the present course
of the story.
For Dwala’s political eminence is a ‘set piece’ which took some time
in the preparing; and in order to give the stage carpenters time to
get through with their work, it is convenient at this point to get
done with one or two necessary ‘flats.’ Besides, the social heights to
which Fate brought him are giddy places for those who have not strong
and accustomed heads, and it is safer to descend now and then and amble
in the plain, among the greasy multitude that crawls so irrelevantly
below--despicable to the mountaineers, who look down and mark the
wind-borne cheers, risking their heroic lives at every step among the
precipices, yet asking nothing more of the valley than a distant awe,
and a handful of guides and porters, with baskets of meat, well-filled,
and topped with bottles of good champagne.
Prosser passed under the trees to Hyde Park Corner, bound on his daily
walk. His eyes were bright, and the world swam by as unimportant as a
dream; for Prosser, in the respectable seclusion of his room, had taken
to drinking--steady drinking day by day, without resistance or remorse.
Life, to which he returned from jail with such hungry imagination,
had suddenly revealed itself to him in its ugly arid nakedness: his
conversion and good resolutions had stripped it of all its meaning;
now it was an old worn billiard-table, with no balls or cues to it;
cumbering the room, importunately present, grim and terrible in its
powers of insistent boredom. To hide from it--to crouch and hide with
his head between his hands, against the dirty floor--that was the only
resource since he had renounced the game and sent the balls away. He
drank and was happy; not actively happy, but deviating this way and
that into dreamy vacancy and strong disgust, escaping the awful middle
way of boredom. He felt his control going, and he smiled triumphantly
at the coming of his hideous mistress. Often he thought of walking into
the servants’ hall and boasting of his secret. But the coarse activity
of real life dispelled the longing as soon as he neared his audience.
He remained trim, upright, and serenely deferent, with shining eyes
and pursed dry lips.
At Hyde Park Corner a little crowd was gathered about a musician--an
old man, with a leg and a half and a crutch, and a placard ‘BLIND’ on
his chest. He had just finished a last shrill _bravura_ on the penny
whistle. A respectable wet-eyed girl in black went round with a bag and
collected money.
‘_Pity_ the poor blind!’ shouted the musician in a sudden angry
imperative.
Prosser wagged his head in a soliloquy of recognition; and gazed
giddily at the little girl.
‘Nobody got a penny for the poor blind?’ asked the angry voice.
‘’Ark at ’im,’ said a woman. ‘Why, the gal’s got a nole ’at full!’
‘What girl?’ said the old man sharply.
At that moment the girl dodged through the little crowd and
disappeared, bag and all, down Piccadilly.
‘Stop her! stop her!’ cried one or two ineffective voices.
The old man dashed his penny whistle angrily on the ground, buried his
face in his hands, turned to the wall, and broke into shoulder-shaking
sobs.
‘What, ain’t that your gal?’ asked a compassionate stout man in black,
with a worn leather bag, touching him gently on the heaving shoulder--a
dentist from the slums, one might guess him at.
‘Small girl in black, was it?’ asked the blind man.
‘Yes, I think so. I didn’t exactly notice.’
‘Sort of orphan-looking girl, very quiet?’
‘Yes, that’s her.’
‘That girl’s a----little blood-sucker!’ said the old man. ‘Wherever I
go, there’s that girl comes and collects the coppers kind people mean
for me. Leave me alone, all of you! Clear out! I’ve broke my whistle
now, and haven’t a copper to get another, let alone a crust of bread
these three days.’
‘What a shime!’ commented the crowd. ‘Call ’erself a gal! I’d gal ’er!
A reg’lar little Bulgarian, that’s what she is!’
‘Now, then, move on there,’ commanded a big policeman, bearing down on
the crowd, confident in his own broad momentum, like a punt among the
reeds. ‘What’s all this?’
‘They’ve been robbin’ a pore blind man, that’s what it is,’ said the
benevolent dentist; at which the policeman rounded on him sharply with
extended, directing arm.
‘Now then, _you_ move on there!’ And the dentist retired submissively
in the direction indicated, hovering in safety.
A benevolent, bent old gentleman, lately helped by the porter down the
steps of one of the big bow-windowed clubs, came hobbling up on three
legs, and stopped and asked questions. The policeman saluted. The
little crowd closed round them; the black helmet in the midst leaned
this way and that, arbitrating between misfortune and benevolence.
Judgment and award were soon achieved; the black helmet heaved and
turned about, and the crowd scattered obediently east and west.
‘What a nice old gentleman!’ said one of many voices passing Prosser.
‘Give ’im a sovring, did he?’
‘Don’t you wish _you_ was blind, Miss ’Ankin?’
‘Lot of sov’rings _you’d_ give me!’
‘Gow on!’
‘What did they take ’im up for then?’
‘On’y takin’ ’im over the road, stoopid.’
Prosser stood and watched the old man cross in the constable’s grip;
saw him loosed into Grosvenor Place; followed, and watched him as he
clumped his way along the blank brick wall, leaning forward from the
crutch, grotesquely and terribly, towards his extended arm, which beat
the pavement with a stick before him, driving pedestrians to right and
left, crying furiously as he went ‘_Pity_ the poor blind!’ and stopping
now and then to mumble the sovereign and chuckle to himself.
Near Victoria Station he stopped, and thrashed the kerb. A girl slipped
out from somewhere and took his arm; the same girl who had so lately
robbed him.
‘That you, Joey?’ said the blind man.
‘What luck, Toppin?’
The old man grinned.
‘Got a plunk, Joey; benevolent gent.’
‘My, what a soft!’
‘Just take me over to Victoria Street. Wait at the Monico; ain’t safe
here.’
Over the road he gave the sovereign into her keeping, and she frisked
up a side street. Prosser followed him down Victoria Street, helped
him silently over the crossings, and was still dreaming of one like
himself, meeting an old friend and lacking the energy to acknowledge
him; when the blind man turned suddenly and grabbed him by the arm.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Prosser,’ he faltered.
‘I thought so. You’ve been drinking, you ---- fool. Where have you been
all this time since you came out?’
‘I ... I’m in service.’
‘Ah?’
‘I’ve turned over a new leaf. Was that my little girl?’
‘That was Joey. Why?’
‘I only wanted to know.’
‘Ah! making conversation, as it were. Yes; you’re gentry now, of
course--joined the respectable classes.’ He fumbled Prosser’s coat as
he spoke, feeling round the cloth buttons to see if they were sound
and fat. ‘One has to talk for talking’s sake when one belongs to the
gentry. Well, I’m off. Don’t waste your elegant conversation on me;
go back to the Duchess.... _Pity_ the poor blind!’ He was off again,
crying hoarsely along the big grey blocks, and Prosser pursuing timidly.
‘Stop, stop, Mr. Hartopp! You didn’t mind my mentioning the little
girl?’
‘_Pity_ the poor blind!’
His appeal to the public was launched with an abrupt intonation which
implied a final ‘D---- you!’ as plain as words.
‘It’s _my_ little girl after all,’ said Prosser.
‘Don’t talk like a d----d drunken maudlin fool!’ growled the blind
man, stopping short again. People looked over their shoulders as they
went past, ladies from the Stores drew aside into the road and hurried
by, seeing this maimed old man leaning back over his extended crutch,
blaspheming at the trim underling who stood so mild and weak behind
him.
‘I know your sort! rotten gutless puppies that lose their grit as soon
as they get under. Portland; good conduct marks; conversion; piety;
ticket-of-leave, and then drink, drink, drink! “Gone into service!”
“My little girl!” Ugh! What do you want to do with your “little girl”?
Would you like the little pet to “go into service” too? and wear a
little muslin pinafore, with pockets in front? Speak up, man, speak up.
Don’t stand there like a sodden hog, dreaming over your next big drink
while I’m making conversation. Don’t you hear me, you elegant toff?’
Prosser started guiltily.
‘I’d been thinking perhaps my employer would find her a nice home
somewhere.’
‘A little cottage in the country somewhere, eh? with geraniums in the
window and a little watering pot all her own, eh? And what about me?
I’d make a pretty footman if you’d recommend me, and stand on the steps
in a salmon-coloured suit and help the gentlefolk in and out of their
carriages.’
‘He’d do something for you, I’m sure. He’s a very kind master.’
‘“A very kind master!” Oh, good Lord!... _Pity_ the poor blind!’
‘Mr. Hartopp, Mr. Hartopp!’
The old man stopped again and faced right round.
‘Prosser, if you follow me an inch further I’ll knock out your mucky
fuddled brains with my crutch all over the pavement. I swear I will. Go
home and soak, you sentimental skunk.’
Prosser stood still for some time watching the angry figure bobbing
down the road. Then he turned up by the Turkish Baths and made his way
home.
That evening he related the whole of his adventure to Prince Dwala, not
even omitting the confession of his own intemperance.
‘So you drink, do you? Drink too much of course, that is.’
‘You’re not angry, sir?’
‘Of course not. Not a bit.... It must be awfully expensive?’
‘I can’t help it, sir. I don’t want to help it. Of course I’ll have to
go?’
‘Go where?’
‘Leave you, I mean, sir.’
‘Oh, please don’t do that, Prosser. You shall have as much as you need.
Don’t have more than you really need. I’m sorry it’s you, of course,
because I like you so much. But now you explain it to me, I don’t see
how it could have been helped. I’m awfully sorry about it. That’s a
very wonderful old man.’
‘Mr. Hartopp? Yes, sir.’
‘Do you think he’d come and live here?’
‘He wouldn’t take service, sir.’
‘No, as a friend, I mean. You see, Prosser, this house is much bigger
than I really need. I have to live in it, of course, because I’m so
rich; besides, there’s poor Huxtable to think of.’
‘You needn’t pity Mr. Huxtable much, sir.’
‘No, that’s true: I suppose he’s very happy. Do you know anything about
Mr. Hartopp’s past life? One isn’t born a “Fence” I suppose?’
‘Oh no, sir, it takes a very intelligent man to be a Fence. Mr.
Hartopp’s a very intelligent man, and had a first-class education.’
‘What’s his story, then?’
‘Story, sir? There’s no story as far as I ever heard. Nothing out of
the ordinary, sir.’
‘How did he become blind?’
‘Overwork, sir. He was a schoolmaster as a young man down in our
part of the country, and overworked his eyes like at his work, sir.
That’s how he lost his place. He had a fever, and they took him to the
Workhouse Infirmary. It’s that what made him go to the bad, they say,
sir; he’d always had a horror of the rates. He often talks of himself
as a pauper, as if it was a disgrace like. He’d worked his way up like,
sir, and couldn’t stand being mixed up with pauperism. So when they
discharged him he came up to London and went to the bad.’
‘Drink, I suppose? It always begins that way, I’m told.’
‘Mr. Hartopp, sir? Oh no, sir, I never knew him drink anything, sir,
nor smoke neither. Drink and tobacco he says are ... some funny word,
painkillers sort of, to keep the workin’ classes from yellin’ out while
they’re bein’ skinned alive. He’s a very funny man, sir, always makin’
jokes. Not but what he’s fond of good livin’ too, sir. When trade was
good one time he used to go regular every day and lunch at the Carlton.
I only found out by chance; I was that surprised. Up till then I’d
always took him for a Socialist.’
‘How did he lose his leg?’
‘His leg, sir? I really don’t remember how that was. It wasn’t very
long ago, I know. Blind men often get knocked about like in the
traffic.’