I OBTAIN EMPLOYMENT.
It was broad day when we emerged from the inclosure, and sound was
awakening along the wintry streets. London stood before me rosy and
refreshed, so that she looked no longer formidably unapproachable as
she had in her garb of black and many jewels. I might have entered her
yesterday with the proverbial half-crown, so easily was my lot to fall
in accommodating places.
Duke Straw, whom I was henceforth to call my friend, conducted me by a
township of intricate streets to the shop of a law stationer, in a
petty way of business, which stood close by Clare market and abutted
on Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Here he had a little bedroom, furnished with
a cheap, oil-cooking stove, whereon he heated his coffee and grilled
his bacon.
Simon Cringle, the proprietor of the shop, was taking his shutters
down as we walked up. He was a little, spare man, with a vanity of
insignificance. His iron-gray hair fell in short, well-greased
ringlets and his thin beard in a couple more, that hung loose like
dangled wood shavings; his coiled mustaches reminded one of watch
springs; his very eyebrows, like bees’ legs, were humped in the middle
and twisted up into fine claws at the tips. Duke, in his search for
lodging and experience, had no sooner seen this curiosity than he
closed with him.
He gave my companion a grandiloquent “Good-morning.”
“Up with the lark, Mr. Straw,” said he, “and I hope, sir, with success
in the matter of getting the first worm?” Here he looked hard at me.
“He found me too much of a mouthful,” said I; “so he brought me home
for breakfast.”
Duke laughed.
“Come and be grilled,” said he. “Anyhow they roast malt-worms in a
place spoken of by Falstaff.”
We had a good, merry meal. I should not have thought it possible my
heart could have lightened so. But there was a fascinating
individuality about my companion that, I am afraid, I have but poorly
suggested. He gave me glimmerings of life in a higher plane than that
which had been habitual to me. No doubt his code of morals was
eccentric and here and there faulty. His manner of looking at things
was, however, so healthy, his breezy philosophy so infectious, that I
could not help but catch some of his complaint--which was, like that
of the nightingale, musical.
Perhaps, had I met him by chance six months ago, my undeveloped soul
would have resented his easy familiarity with a cubbish snarl or two.
Now my receptives were awakened; my armor of self-sufficiency eaten to
rags with rust; my heart plaintive for communion with some larger
influence that would recognize and not abhor.
At 8:45 he haled me off to the office, which stood a brief distance
away, in a thoroughfare called Great Queen street. Here he left me
awhile, bidding me walk up and down and observe life until his chief
should arrive, which he was due to do at the half-hour.
I thought it a dull street after some I had seen, but there were many
old book and curiosity shops in it that aroused my interest. While I
was looking into one of them I heard Duke call.
“Here,” he said, when I reached him; “answer out and I think Ripley
will give you work. I’m rather a favorite with him--that’s the truth.”
He led me into a low-browed room, with a counter. Great bales of print
and paper went up to the ceiling at the back, and the floor rumbled
with the clank of subterranean machinery. One or two clerks were about
and wedged into a corner of the room was a sort of glazed and wooden
crate of comfortable proportions, which was, in fact, the chapel of
ease of the minister of the place.
Into this den Duke conducted me with ceremony, and, retreating
himself, left me almost tumbling over a bald-headed man, with a matted
black beard, on which a protruding red upper lip lay like a splash of
blood, who sat at a desk writing.
“Shut the door,” he said, without looking up.
“It is shut, sir.”
He trailed a glance at me, as if in scrutiny, but I soon saw he could
only have been balancing some phrase, for he dived again and went on
writing.
Presently he said, very politely, indeed, and still intent on his
paper: “Are you a cadet of the noble family of Kinsale, sir?”
“No, sir,” I answered, in surprise.
“You haven’t the right to remain covered in the presence of the king?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, I’m king here. What the blazes do you mean by standing in a
private room with your hat on?”
I plucked it off, tingling.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Mr. Straw brought me in so suddenly, I lost my
head and my cap went with it, I suppose. But I see it’s not the only
thing one may lose here, including tempers!” And with that I turned on
my heel and was about to beat a retreat, fuming.
“Come back!” shouted Mr. Ripley. “If you go now, you go for good!”
I hesitated; the memory of my late comrade restored my equilibrium.
“I didn’t mean to be rude, sir,” I said. “I shall be grateful to you
if you will give me work.”
He had condescended to turn now, and was looking full at me with
frowning eyes, but with no sign of anger on his face.
“Well, you can speak out,” he said. “How do you come to know Straw?”
“I met him by chance and we got talking together.”
“How long have you been in London?”
“Since yesterday evening.”
“Why did you leave Winton?”
“To get work.”
“Have you brought a character with you?”
Here was a question to ask a Trender! But I answered, “No, I never
thought of it,” with perfect truth.
“What can you do?”
“Anything I’m told, sir.”
“That’s a compromising statement, my friend. Can you read and write?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Don’t you know anything now about the habits of birds and
beasts and fishes?”
“Oh, yes! I could tell you a heap about that.”
“Could you? Very well; I’ll give you a trial. I take you on Straw’s
recommendation. His opinion, I tell you, I value more than a score of
written characters in a case like this. You’ve to make yourself useful
in fifty different ways.”
I assented, with a light heart, and he took me at my word and the
further bargain was completed. My wages were small at first, of
course; but, with what I had in hand, they would keep me going no
doubt till I could prove myself worth more to my employer.
In this manner I became one of Ripley’s hands and later on myself a
pamphleteer in a small way. I wrote to my father that evening and
briefly acquainted him of my good fortune.
For some months my work was of a heterogeneous description. Ripley was
legitimately a job printer, on rather a large scale, and a bookbinder.
To these, however, he added a little venturesomeness in publishing on
his own account, as also a considerable itch for scribbling. Becoming
at a hint a virulent partisan in any extremist cause whatsoever, it
will be no matter for wonder that his private room was much the resort
of levelers, progressives and abolitionists of every creed and
complexion. There furious malcontents against systems they were the
first to profit by met to talk and never to listen. There fanatical
propagandists, eager to fly on the rudimentary wing stumps of first
principles, fluttered into print and came flapping to the ground at
the third line. There, I verily believe, plots were laid that would
presently have leveled powers and potentates to the ground at a nod,
had any of the conspirators ever possessed the patience to sit on them
till hatched. This, however, they never did. All their fiery
periphrastics smoked off into the soot of print and in due course
lumbered the office with piles of unmarketable drivel.
Mr. Ripley had, however, other strings to his bow, or he would not
have prospered. He did a good business in bookselling and was even now
and again successful in the more conventional publishing line. In this
connection I chanced to be of some service to him, to which
circumstance I owed a considerable improvement in my position after I
had been with him getting on a year. He had long contemplated, and at
length begun to work upon, a series of handbooks on British birds and
insects, dealt with county by county. In the compilation of these much
research was necessary, wherein I proved myself a useful and
painstaking coadjutor. In addition, however, my own knowledge of the
subject was fairly extensive as regarded Hampshire, which county, and
especially that part of it about Winton, is rich in lepidoptera of a
rare order. I may say I fairly earned the praise he bestowed upon me,
which was tinged, perhaps, with a trifle of jealousy on his part, due
to the fact that the section I touched proved to be undoubtedly the
most popular of the series, as judged subsequently by returns.
Not to push on too fast, however, I must hark back to the day of my
engagement, which was marked by my introduction to one who eventually
exercised a considerable influence over my destinies.
During the course of that first morning Mr. Ripley sent me for some
copies of a pamphlet that were in order of sewing down below. By his
direction I descended a spiral staircase of iron and found myself in
the composing-room. At a heavy iron-sheeted table stood my new-found
friend, who was, despite his youth, the valued foreman of this
department. He hailed me with glee and asked: “What success?”
“All right, thanks to you,” I said; “and where may the bookbinding
place be and Dolly Mellison?”
“Oh, you’re for there, are you?” he said, with I thought a rather
curious look at me, and he pointed to a side door.
Passing through this I found myself in a long room, flanked to the
left with many machines and to the right with a row of girls who were
classifying, folding or sewing the sheets of print recent from the
press.
“I’m to ask for Dolly Mellison,” I said, addressing the girl at my end
of the row.
“Well, you won’t have far to go,” she said. “I’m her.”
She was a pretty, slim lily of a thing, lithe and pale, with large
gray eyes and coiled hair like a rope of sun-burned barleystraw, and
her fingers petted her task as if that were so much hat-trimming.
“I’m sent by Mr. Ripley for copies of a pamphlet on ‘The Supineness of
Theologicians,’” I said.
“I’m at work on it,” she answered. “Wait a bit till I’ve finished the
dozen.”
She glanced at me now and again without pausing in her work.
“You’re from the country, aren’t you?”
“Yes. How do you know?”
“A little bird told me. What gave you those red cheeks?”
“The sight of you,” I said. I was growing up.
“I’m nothing to be ashamed of, am I?” she asked, with a pert laugh.
“You ought to be of yourself,” I said, “for taking my heart by storm
in that fashion.”
“Go along!” she cried, with a jerk of her elbow. “None of your gammon!
I’m not to be caught by chaff.”
“It wasn’t chaff, Dolly, though I may be a man of straw. Is that what
you meant?”
“You’re pretty free, upon my word. Who told you you might call me by
my name?”
“Why, you wouldn’t have me call you by any one else’s? It’s pretty
enough, even for you.”
“Oh, go away with you!” she cried. “I won’t listen.”
At that moment Duke put his head in at the door.
“The governor’s calling for you,” he said. “Hurry up.”
“Well, they’re ready,” said the girl--“here,” and she thrust the
packet into my hands, with a little blushing half-impudent look at me.
I forgot all about her in a few minutes. My heart was too full of one
only other girlish figure to find room in itself for a rival. What was
Zyp doing now?--the wonderful fairy child, whose phantom presence
haunted all my dreams for good and evil.
As I walked from the office with Duke Straw that afternoon--for, as it
was Saturday, we left early--a silence fell between us till we neared
Cringle’s shop. Then, standing outside, he suddenly stayed me and
looked in my face.
“Shall I hate or love you?” he said, with his mouth set grimly.
He made a gesture toward his deformed lower limbs with his hands, and
shrugged his shoulders.
“No,” he said; “what must be, must. I’ll love you!”
There was a curious, defiant sadness in his tone, but it was gone
directly. I could only stare at him in wonder.
“You’re to be my house-fellow and chum,” he said. “No, don’t protest;
I’ve settled it. We’ll arrange the rest with Cringle.”
And so I slept in a bed in London for the first time.
But the noise of a water wheel roared in my ears all night.