PERSEVERANCE.
Mattie in her self-conceit imagined that she had frightened the prowler
from Great Suffolk Street; in lieu thereof, she had only deterred him
from entering a second appearance on the premises. He had made a false
move, and reaped the bitter consequence. He must be more wary, if he
built upon making an impression on Harriet Wesden's heart--more
cautious, more of a strategist. So he continued to prowl at a distance,
and to watch his opportunity from the same point of view. Presently it
would come, and with the advantage of his winning tongue, which could
roll off elegant phrases by the yard, he trusted to make an impression
on a shopkeeper's daughter.
For a moment, and after his rebuff, he had hesitated as to the
expediency of continuing the siege; but his pride was aroused; it was an
unpleasant end to his plans, and the chance had not presented itself yet
of trying his fortune with Miss Wesden herself. Presently the hour would
come; he did not despair yet; he bided his time with great patience.
The time came a fortnight after that little incident in the Suffolk
Street shop. Harriet Wesden was coming down the Borough towards home one
wet night when he accosted her. It was getting late for one thing, and
rainy for another, and Harriet was making all the haste home that she
could, when he made her heart leap into her throat by his sudden "Good
evening, Miss."
One glance at him, the nipping of a little scream in the bud, and then
she increased her pace, the prowler keeping step with her.
"Will you favour me by accepting half my umbrella, Miss Wesden--for one
instant then, whilst I venture to explain what may seem conduct the
reverse of gentlemanly to you?"
"No, sir, I wish to hear nothing--I wish to be left alone."
"I have been very rude--I will ask your pardon, Miss Wesden, very
humbly. But let me beg of you to listen to this explanation of my
conduct."
"There is nothing to explain, sir."
"Pardon me, but there is. Pardon me, but this is not the way you would
have treated Mr. Darcy had he been in my place."
Harriet gasped for breath. Mr. Darcy, the hero of her Brighton folly,
the name which she had never confessed to a living soul, the only man in
the world who she thought could have taunted her with indiscretion, and
of being weak and frivolous rather than a rude and forward girl! Harriet
did not reply; she looked at him closely, almost tremblingly, and then
continued her hurried progress homewards; the prowler, seeing his
advantage, maintained his position by her side, keeping the umbrella
over her.
"Mr. Darcy was an intimate friend of mine before he went to India; we
were together at Brighton, Miss Wesden--more than once he has mentioned
your name to me."
"Indeed," she murmured.
"You would like to hear that he is well, perhaps."
"I am glad to hear that," Miss Wesden ventured to remark.
"He is in India still--I believe will remain there, marry and settle
down there for good."
"Have you been watching my house to tell me this?"
"Partly, and partly for other reasons, for which I have a better excuse.
I have been a wanderer--in search of happiness many years, and for the
first time in a life not unadventurous there crosses my----"
"Good evening, sir--I have been entrapped into a conversation--I must
beg you to leave me."
Harriet set off at the double again--in double quick time went the
prowler after her.
People abroad that night began to notice the agitated girl, and the tall
man marching on at her side, who, in his eagerness to keep step, trod on
people's feet, and sent one doctor's boy, basket and bottles, crunching
against a lamp-post; one or two stopped and looked after them and then
continued their way--it was a race between the prowler and his victim,
the prowler making a dead heat of it.
Harriet gave in at last--her spirit was not a very strong one, and she
stopped and burst into tears.
"Sir, will you leave me?--will you believe that I don't want to hear a
single word of your reasons for thus persecuting me?"
"Miss Wesden, only allow me to explain, and I will go my way and never
see you more. I will vanish away in the darkness, and let all the bright
hopes I have fostered float away on the current which bears you away
from me."
"Go, pray do go, if you are a gentleman. I must appeal to some one for
protection, if you----"
"Miss Wesden, you must hear me--you shall hear me. I am not a child; I
am----"
"A scoundrel, evidently," said a harsh voice in his ears, and the
instant afterwards Sidney Hinchford, with two fiery eyes behind his
spectacles, stood between him and the girl he was persecuting. Harriet,
with a little cry of joy, clung to the arm of her deliverer; the prowler
looked perplexed, then put the best face upon the matter that he could
extemporize for the occasion.
"Who are you, sir?" was the truly English expletive.
"My name is Hinchford--my address is at your service, if you wish it.
Now, sir, your name--and _business_?"
"I decline to give it."
"You have insulted this lady, a friend of mine. Apologize," cried young
Hinchford, in much such a tone as an irritable officer summons his
company to shoulder arms.
"Sir, your tone is not calculated to induce me to oblige _you_. If Miss
Wesden thinks that I----"
"APOLOGIZE!" shouted Hinchford, a second time. He had forgotten the
respect due to his charge, and shaken her hand from his arm; he was
making a little scene in the street, and convulsing Harriet with fright;
he was face to face with the prowler, his tall, well-knit form,
evidently a match for his antagonist; he was chivalrous, and scarcely
twenty years of age; above all, he was in a towering passion, and verged
a little on the burlesque, as passionate people generally do.
As if by the touch of a magic wand, a crowd sprang up around them;
respectable passers-by, the pickets of the Kent Street gang on duty in
the Borough, unwashed men and women who had been seeking shelter under
shop-blinds, the doctor's boy, who had been maltreated and had a claim
to urge for damages, a fish-woman, two tradesmen with their aprons on
fresh from business, and shoals of boys who might have dropped from
heaven, so suddenly did they take up the best places, and assume an
interest in the adventure.
The prowler turned pale, and flinched a little as Sidney approached,
flinched more as the audience seized the thread of discussion and
expressed its comments more vociferously.
"Punch his head if he don't 'pologize, sir--throw him into the mud,
sir--I'd cure him of coming after _my_ gal--knock the bloke's hat off,
and jump on it--lock him up!"
The prowler saw his danger; he had heard a great deal of the mercies of
a London mob, and it was hemming him in now--and, like most men of the
prowling class, he was at heart a coward. He succumbed.
"I never intended to insult the lady--if I have uttered a word to offend
her, I am very sorry. It is all a misconception. But if the lady
considers that I have taken a liberty in offering--in offering," he
repeated, rather disturbed in his harangue by a violent shove from
behind on to the unhappy doctor's boy, upon whose feet he alighted, "a
common courtesy, I apologise with all my heart. I----"
"That will do, sir," was the curt response; "you have had a narrow
escape. Take it as a lesson."
Sidney was glad to back out of the absurd position into which he had
thrust Harriet, to draw her hand through his arm and hasten away,
offering a a hundred excuses to her for his imprudence and
impulsiveness.
He had not moved twenty yards with her when the yell of the mob--and the
mob in that end of London possesses the finest blood-curdling yell in
the world--startled him and all within half a mile of him. It was a dull
night, and the wild elements of street life were fond of novelty; a
swell had been caught insulting a British female in distress, and the
unwashed hates swells like poison. An apology was not sufficient for the
lookers-on; prostration on bended knees and hands outstretched would not
have done; sackcloth and ashes vowed for the remainder of the
delinquent's existence, would have been treated with contumely--all that
was wanted was an uproar. The boys wanted an uproar because it was
natural to them; the representatives of Kent Street, because it was in
the way of trade, and one or two respectable gents had become interested
in the dispute, and wore watch-chains; the women, because "_he_ had not
been sarved out as he desarved, the wretch!"
So the prowler, backing out of the crowd, met with a sledge-hammer hand
upon his hat, and found his hat off, and mud in his face, and then
fists, and finally an upheaving of the whole mass towards him, sending
him into the roadway like a shell from an Armstrong gun. There was no
help for it, the prowler must run, and run he did, pursued by the
terrible mob and that more terrible yell which woke up every recess in
the Borough; and in this fashion the pursuer and the pursued sped down
the muddy road towards the Elephant and Castle.
An empty Hansom cab offered itself to the runaway; he leaped in whilst
it was being slowly driven down the Borough, and dashed his fist through
the trap.
"Drive fast--double fare--REFORM!"
The Hansom rattled off, the mob uttered one more despairing yell, and,
after a slight abortive effort, gave up the chase, and left the prowler
to his repentance.
And he did repent of mixing with life "over the water,"--for Great
Suffolk Street never saw him again.