Somebody's Luggage

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Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and finger puppets with paperHall “Christmas Stories”edition by David Price, email [email protected]

SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE

CHAPTER I—HIS LEAVING IT TILL CALLED FOR

The writer of these humble lines being a Waiter, and having comeof a family of Waiters, and owning at the present time five brotherswho are all Waiters, and likewise an only sister who is a Waitress,would wish to offer a few words respecting his calling; first havingthe pleasure of hereby in a friendly manner offering the Dedicationof the same unto Joseph, much respected Head Waiter at the SlamjamCoffee-house, London, E.C., than which a individual more eminently deservingof the name of man, or a more amenable honour to his own head and heart,whether considered in the light of a Waiter or regarded as a human being,do not exist.

In case confusion should arise in the public mind (which it is opento confusion on many subjects) respecting what is meant or implied bythe term Waiter, the present humble lines would wish to offer an explanation. It may not be generally known that the person as goes out to wait isnota Waiter.  It may not be generally known that the handas is called in extra, at the Freemasons’ Tavern, or the London,or the Albion, or otherwise, is nota Waiter.  Such handsmay be took on for Public Dinners by the bushel (and you may know themby their breathing with difficulty when in attendance, and taking awaythe bottle ere yet it is half out); but such are notWaiters. For you cannot lay down the tailoring, or the shoemaking, or the brokering,or the green-grocering, or the pictorial-periodicalling, or the second-handwardrobe, or the small fancy businesses,—you cannot lay down thoselines of life at your will and pleasure by the half-day or evening,and take up Waitering.  You may suppose you can, but you cannot;or you may go so far as to say you do, but you do not.  Nor yetcan you lay down the gentleman’s-service when stimulated by prolongedincompatibility on the part of Cooks (and here it may be remarked thatCooking and Incompatibility will be mostly found united), and take upWaitering.  It has been ascertained that what a gentleman willsit meek under, at home, he will not bear out of doors, at the Slamjamor any similar establishment.  Then, what is the inference to bedrawn respecting true Waitering?  You must be bred to it. You must be born to it.

Would you know how born to it, Fair Reader,—if of the adorablefemale sex?  Then learn from the biographical experience of onethat is a Waiter in the sixty-first year of his age.

You were conveyed,—ere yet your dawning powers were otherwisedeveloped than to harbour vacancy in your inside,—you were conveyed,by surreptitious means, into a pantry adjoining the Admiral Nelson,Civic and General Dining-Rooms, there to receive by stealth that healthfulsustenance which is the pride and boast of the British female constitution. Your mother was married to your father (himself a distant Waiter) inthe profoundest secrecy; for a Waitress known to be married would ruinthe best of businesses,—it is the same as on the stage. Hence your being smuggled into the pantry, and that—to add tothe infliction—by an unwilling grandmother.  Under the combinedinfluence of the smells of roast and boiled, and soup, and gas, andmalt liquors, you partook of your earliest nourishment; your unwillinggrandmother sitting prepared to catch you when your mother was calledand dropped you; your grandmother’s shawl ever ready to stifleyour natural complainings; your innocent mind surrounded by uncongenialcruets, dirty plates, dish-covers, and cold gravy; your mother callingdown the pipe for veals and porks, instead of soothing you with nurseryrhymes.  Under these untoward circumstances you were early weaned. Your unwilling grandmother, ever growing more unwilling as your foodassimilated less, then contracted habits of shaking you till your systemcurdled, and your food would not assimilate at all.  At lengthshe was no longer spared, and could have been thankfully spared muchsooner.  When your brothers began to appear in succession, yourmother retired, left off her smart dressing (she had previously beena smart dresser), and her dark ringlets (which had previously been flowing),and haunted your father late of nights, lying in wait for him, throughall weathers, up the shabby court which led to the back door of theRoyal Old Dust-Bin (said to have been so named by George the Fourth),where your father was Head.  But the Dust-Bin was going down then,and your father took but little,—excepting from a liquid pointof view.  Your mother’s object in those visits was of a house-keepingcharacter, and you was set on to whistle your father out.  Sometimeshe came out, but generally not.  Come or not come, however, allthat part of his existence which was unconnected with open Waiteringwas kept a close secret, and was acknowledged by your mother to be aclose secret, and you and your mother flitted about the court, closesecrets both of you, and would scarcely have confessed under torturethat you know your father, or that your father had any name than Dick(which wasn’t his name, though he was never known by any other),or that he had kith or kin or chick or child.  Perhaps the attractionof this mystery, combined with your father’s having a damp compartment,to himself, behind a leaky cistern, at the Dust-Bin,—a sort ofa cellar compartment, with a sink in it, and a smell, and a plate-rack,and a bottle-rack, and three windows that didn’t match each otheror anything else, and no daylight,—caused your young mind to feelconvinced that you must grow up to be a Waiter too; but you did feelconvinced of it, and so did all your brothers, down to your sister. Every one of you felt convinced that you was born to the Waitering. At this stage of your career, what was your feelings one day when yourfather came home to your mother in open broad daylight,—of itselfan act of Madness on the part of a Waiter,—and took to his bed(leastwise, your mother and family’s bed), with the statementthat his eyes were devilled kidneys.  Physicians being in vain,your father expired, after repeating at intervals for a day and a night,when gleams of reason and old business fitfully illuminated his being,“Two and two is five.  And three is sixpence.” Interred in the parochial department of the neighbouring churchyard,and accompanied to the grave by as many Waiters of long standing ascould spare the morning time from their soiled glasses (namely, one),your bereaved form was attired in a white neckankecher, and you wastook on from motives of benevolence at The George and Gridiron, theatricaland supper.  Here, supporting nature on what you found in the plates(which was as it happened, and but too often thoughtlessly, immersedin mustard), and on what you found in the glasses (which rarely wentbeyond driblets and lemon), by night you dropped asleep standing, tillyou was cuffed awake, and by day was set to polishing every individualarticle in the coffee-room.  Your couch being sawdust; your counterpanebeing ashes of cigars.  Here, frequently hiding a heavy heart underthe smart tie of your white neckankecher (or correctly speaking lowerdown and more to the left), you picked up the rudiments of knowledgefrom an extra, by the name of Bishops, and by calling plate-washer,and gradually elevating your mind with chalk on the back of the corner-boxpartition, until such time as you used the inkstand when it was outof hand, attained to manhood, and to be the Waiter that you find yourself.

I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on behalf of thecalling so long the calling of myself and family, and the public interestin which is but too often very limited.  We are not generally understood. No, we are not.  Allowance enough is not made for us.  For,say that we ever show a little drooping listlessness of spirits, orwhat might be termed indifference or apathy.  Put it to yourselfwhat would your own state of mind be, if you was one of an enormousfamily every member of which except you was always greedy, and in ahurry.  Put it to yourself that you was regularly replete withanimal food at the slack hours of one in the day and again at nine p.m.,and that the repleter you was, the more voracious all your fellow-creaturescame in.  Put it to yourself that it was your business, when yourdigestion was well on, to take a personal interest and sympathy in ahundred gentlemen fresh and fresh (say, for the sake of argument, onlya hundred), whose imaginations was given up to grease and fat and gravyand melted butter, and abandoned to questioning you about cuts of this,and dishes of that,—each of ’em going on as if him and youand the bill of fare was alone in the world.  Then look what youare expected to know.  You are never out, but they seem to thinkyou regularly attend everywhere.  “What’s this, Christopher,that I hear about the smashed Excursion Train?  How are they doingat the Italian Opera, Christopher?”  “Christopher,what are the real particulars of this business at the Yorkshire Bank?” Similarly a ministry gives me more trouble than it gives the Queen. As to Lord Palmerston, the constant and wearing connection into whichI have been brought with his lordship during the last few years is deservingof a pension.  Then look at the Hypocrites we are made, and thelies (white, I hope) that are forced upon us!  Why must a sedentary-pursuitedWaiter be considered to be a judge of horseflesh, and to have a mosttremendous interest in horse-training and racing?  Yet it wouldbe half our little incomes out of our pockets if we didn’t takeon to have those sporting tastes.  It is the same (inconceivablewhy!) with Farming.  Shooting, equally so.  I am sure thatso regular as the months of August, September, and October come round,I am ashamed of myself in my own private bosom for the way in whichI make believe to care whether or not the grouse is strong on the wing(much their wings, or drumsticks either, signifies to me, uncooked!),and whether the partridges is plentiful among the turnips, and whetherthe pheasants is shy or bold, or anything else you please to mention. Yet you may see me, or any other Waiter of my standing, holding on bythe back of the box, and leaning over a gentleman with his purse outand his bill before him, discussing these points in a confidential toneof voice, as if my happiness in life entirely depended on ’em.

I have mentioned our little incomes.  Look at the most unreasonablepoint of all, and the point on which the greatest injustice is doneus!  Whether it is owing to our always carrying so much changein our right-hand trousers-pocket, and so many halfpence in our coat-tails,or whether it is human nature (which I were loth to believe), what ismeant by the everlasting fable that Head Waiters is rich?  Howdid that fable get into circulation?  Who first put it about, andwhat are the facts to establish the unblushing statement?  Comeforth, thou slanderer, and refer the public to the Waiter’s willin Doctors’ Commons supporting thy malignant hiss!  Yet thisis so commonly dwelt upon—especially by the screws who give Waitersthe least—that denial is vain; and we are obliged, for our credit’ssake, to carry our heads as if we were going into a business, when ofthe two we are much more likely to go into a union.  There wasformerly a screw as frequented the Slamjam ere yet the present writerhad quitted that establishment on a question of tea-ing his assistantstaff out of his own pocket, which screw carried the taunt to its bitterestheight.  Never soaring above threepence, and as often as not grovellingon the earth a penny lower, he yet represented the present writer asa large holder of Consols, a lender of money on mortgage, a Capitalist. He has been overheard to dilate to other customers on the allegationthat the present writer put out thousands of pounds at interest in Distilleriesand Breweries.  “Well, Christopher,” he would say (havinggrovelled his lowest on the earth, half a moment before), “lookingout for a House to open, eh?  Can’t find a business to bedisposed of on a scale as is up to your resources, humph?” To such a dizzy precipice of falsehood has this misrepresentation takenwing, that the well-known and highly-respected OLD CHARLES, long eminentat the West Country Hotel, and by some considered the Father of theWaitering, found himself under the obligation to fall into it throughso many years that his own wife (for he had an unbeknown old lady inthat capacity towards himself) believed it!  And what was the consequence? When he was borne to his grave on the shoulders of six picked Waiters,with six more for change, six more acting as pall-bearers, all keepingstep in a pouring shower without a dry eye visible, and a concourseonly inferior to Royalty, his pantry and lodgings was equally ransackedhigh and low for property, and none was found!  How could it befound, when, beyond his last monthly collection of walking-sticks, umbrellas,and pocket-handkerchiefs (which happened to have been not yet disposedof, though he had ever been through life punctual in clearing off hiscollections by the month), there was no property existing?  Such,however, is the force of this universal libel, that the widow of OldCharles, at the present hour an inmate of the Almshouses of the Cork-Cutters’Company, in Blue Anchor Road (identified sitting at the door of oneof ’em, in a clean cap and a Windsor arm-chair, only last Monday),expects John’s hoarded wealth to be found hourly!  Nay, ereyet he had succumbed to the grisly dart, and when his portrait was paintedin oils life-size, by subscription of the frequenters of the West Country,to hang over the coffee-room chimney-piece, there were not wanting thosewho contended that what is termed the accessories of such a portraitought to be the Bank of England out of window, and a strong-box on thetable.  And but for better-regulated minds contending for a bottleand screw and the attitude of drawing,—and carrying their point,—itwould have been so handed down to posterity.

I am now brought to the title of the present remarks.  Having,I hope without offence to any quarter, offered such observations asI felt it my duty to offer, in a free country which has ever dominatedthe seas, on the general subject, I will now proceed to wait on theparticular question.

At a momentous period of my life, when I was off, so far as concernednotice given, with a House that shall be nameless,—for the questionon which I took my departing stand was a fixed charge for waiters, andno House as commits itself to that eminently Un-English act of morethan foolishness and baseness shall be advertised by me,—I repeat,at a momentous crisis, when I was off with a House too mean for mention,and not yet on with that to which I have ever since had the honour ofbeing attached in the capacity of Head, { 1}I was casting about what to do next.  Then it were that proposalswere made to me on behalf of my present establishment.  Stipulationswere necessary on my part, emendations were necessary on my part: inthe end, ratifications ensued on both sides, and I entered on a newcareer.

We are a bed business, and a coffee-room business.  We are nota general dining business, nor do we wish it.  In consequence,when diners drop in, we know what to give ’em as will keep ’emaway another time.  We are a Private Room or Family business also;but Coffee-room principal.  Me and the Directory and the WritingMaterials and cetrer occupy a place to ourselves—a place fendedof up a step or two at the end of the Coffee-room, in what I call thegood old-fashioned style.  The good old-fashioned style is, thatwhatever you want, down to a wafer, you must be olely and solely dependenton the Head Waiter for.  You must put yourself a new-born Childinto his hands.  There is no other way in which a business untingedwith Continental Vice can be conducted.  (It were bootless to add,that if languages is required to be jabbered and English is not goodenough, both families and gentlemen had better go somewhere else.)

When I began to settle down in this right-principled and well-conductedHouse, I noticed, under the bed in No. 24 B (which it is up a angleoff the staircase, and usually put off upon the lowly-minded), a heapof things in a corner.  I asked our Head Chambermaid in the courseof the day,

“What are them things in 24 B?”

To which she answered with a careless air, “Somebody’sLuggage.”

Regarding her with a eye not free from severity, I says, “WhoseLuggage?”

Evading my eye, she replied,

“Lor!  How should Iknow!”

—Being, it may be right to mention, a female of some pertness,though acquainted with her business.

A Head Waiter must be either Head or Tail.  He must be at oneextremity or the other of the social scale.  He cannot be at thewaist of it, or anywhere else but the extremities.  It is for himto decide which of the extremities.

On the eventful occasion under consideration, I give Mrs. Pratchettso distinctly to understand my decision, that I broke her spirit astowards myself, then and there, and for good.  Let not inconsistencybe suspected on account of my mentioning Mrs. Pratchett as “Mrs.,”and having formerly remarked that a waitress must not be married. Readers are respectfully requested to notice that Mrs. Pratchett wasnot a waitress, but a chambermaid.  Now a chambermaid maybe married; if Head, generally is married,—or says so.  Itcomes to the same thing as expressing what is customary.  (N.B.Mr. Pratchett is in Australia, and his address there is “the Bush.”)

Having took Mrs. Pratchett down as many pegs as was essential tothe future happiness of all parties, I requested her to explain herself.

“For instance,” I says, to give her a little encouragement,“who is Somebody?”

“I give you my sacred honour, Mr. Christopher,” answersPratchett, “that I haven’t the faintest notion.”

But for the manner in which she settled her cap-strings, I shouldhave doubted this; but in respect of positiveness it was hardly to bediscriminated from an affidavit.

“Then you never saw him?” I followed her up with.

“Nor yet,” said Mrs. Pratchett, shutting her eyes andmaking as if she had just took a pill of unusual circumference,—whichgave a remarkable force to her denial,—“nor yet any servantin this house.  All have been changed, Mr. Christopher, withinfive year, and Somebody left his Luggage here before then.”

Inquiry of Miss Martin yielded (in the language of the Bard of A.1.)“confirmation strong.”  So it had really and trulyhappened.  Miss Martin is the young lady at the bar as makes outour bills; and though higher than I could wish considering her station,is perfectly well-behaved.

Farther investigations led to the disclosure that there was a billagainst this Luggage to the amount of two sixteen six.  The Luggagehad been lying under the bedstead of 24 B over six year.  The bedsteadis a four-poster, with a deal of old hanging and valance, and is, asI once said, probably connected with more than 24 Bs,—which Iremember my hearers was pleased to laugh at, at the time.

I don’t know why,—when DO we know why?—but thisLuggage laid heavy on my mind.  I fell a wondering about Somebody,and what he had got and been up to.  I couldn’t satisfy mythoughts why he should leave so much Luggage against so small a bill. For I had the Luggage out within a day or two and turned it over, andthe following were the items:—A black portmanteau, a black bag,a desk, a dressing-case, a brown-paper parcel, a hat-box, and an umbrellastrapped to a walking-stick.  It was all very dusty and fluey. I had our porter up to get under the bed and fetch it out; and thoughhe habitually wallows in dust,—swims in it from morning to night,and wears a close-fitting waistcoat with black calimanco sleeves forthe purpose,—it made him sneeze again, and his throat was thathot with it that it was obliged to be cooled with a drink of Allsopp’sdraft.

The Luggage so got the better of me, that instead of having it putback when it was well dusted and washed with a wet cloth,—previousto which it was so covered with feathers that you might have thoughtit was turning into poultry, and would by-and-by begin to Lay,—Isay, instead of having it put back, I had it carried into one of myplaces down-stairs.  There from time to time I stared at it andstared at it, till it seemed to grow big and grow little, and come forwardat me and retreat again, and go through all manner of performances resemblingintoxication.  When this had lasted weeks,—I may say months,and not be far out,—I one day thought of asking Miss Martin forthe particulars of the Two sixteen six total.  She was so obligingas to extract it from the books,—it dating before her time,—andhere follows a true copy:

Coffee-Room.1856.            No. 4.            £  s. d.Feb. 2d, Pen and Paper             0  0  6         Port Negus                0  2  0         Ditto                     0  2  0         Pen and paper             0  0  6         Tumbler broken            0  2  6         Brandy                    0  2  0         Pen and paper             0  0  6         Anchovy toast             0  2  6         Pen and paper             0  0  6         Bed                       0  3  0Feb. 3d, Pen and paper             0  0  6         Breakfast                 0  2  6            Broiled ham            0  2  0            Eggs                   0  1  0            Watercresses           0  1  0            Shrimps                0  1  0         Pen and paper             0  0  6         Blotting-paper            0  0  6         Messenger to Paternoster             Row and back          0  1  6         Again, when No Answer     0  1  6         Brandy 2s., Devilled             Pork chop 2s.         0  4  0         Pens and paper            0  1  0         Messenger to Albemarle             Street and back       0  1  0         Again (detained), when             No Answer             0  1  6         Salt-cellar broken        0  3  6         Large Liquour-glass             Orange Brandy         0  1  6         Dinner, Soup, Fish,             Joint, and bird       0  7  6         Bottle old East India             Brown                 0  8  0         Pen and paper             0  0  6                                  £2 16  6

Mem.: January 1st, 1857.  He went out after dinner, directingluggage to be ready when he called for it.  Never called.

* * * *

So far from throwing a light upon the subject, this bill appearedto me, if I may so express my doubts, to involve it in a yet more luridhalo.  Speculating it over with the Mistress, she informed me thatthe luggage had been advertised in the Master’s time as beingto be sold after such and such a day to pay expenses, but no farthersteps had been taken.  (I may here remark, that the Mistress isa widow in her fourth year.  The Master was possessed of one ofthose unfortunate constitutions in which Spirits turns to Water, andrises in the ill-starred Victim.)

My speculating it over, not then only, but repeatedly, sometimeswith the Mistress, sometimes with one, sometimes with another, led upto the Mistress’s saying to me,—whether at first in jokeor in earnest, or half joke and half earnest, it matters not:

“Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome offer.”

(If this should meet her eye,—a lovely blue,—may shenot take it ill my mentioning that if I had been eight or ten year younger,I would have done as much by her!  That is, I would have made hera offer.  It is for others than me to denominate it a handsomeone.)

“Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome offer.”

“Put a name to it, ma’am.”

“Look here, Christopher.  Run over the articles of Somebody’sLuggage.  You’ve got it all by heart, I know.”

“A black portmanteau, ma’am, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case,a brown-paper parcel, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a walking-stick.”

“All just as they were left.  Nothing opened, nothingtampered with.”

“You are right, ma’am.  All locked but the brown-paperparcel, and that sealed.”

The Mistress was leaning on Miss Martin’s desk at the bar-window,and she taps the open book that lays upon the desk,—she has apretty-made hand to be sure,—and bobs her head over it and laughs.

“Come,” says she, “Christopher.  Pay me Somebody’sbill, and you shall have Somebody’s Luggage.”

I rather took to the idea from the first moment; but,

“It mayn’t be worth the money,” I objected, seemingto hold back.

“That’s a Lottery,” says the Mistress, foldingher arms upon the book,—it ain’t her hands alone that’spretty made, the observation extends right up her arms.  “Won’tyou venture two pound sixteen shillings and sixpence in the Lottery? Why, there’s no blanks!” says the Mistress; laughing andbobbing her head again, “you mustwin.  If you lose,you must win!  All prizes in this Lottery!  Draw a blank,and remember, Gentlemen-Sportsmen, you’ll still be entitled toa black portmanteau, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a sheet ofbrown paper, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a walking-stick!”

To make short of it, Miss Martin come round me, and Mrs. Pratchettcome round me, and the Mistress she was completely round me already,and all the women in the house come round me, and if it had been Sixteentwo instead of Two sixteen, I should have thought myself well out ofit.  For what can you do when they do come round you?

So I paid the money—down—and such a laughing as therewas among ’em!  But I turned the tables on ’em regularly,when I said:

“My family-name is Blue-Beard.  I’m going to openSomebody’s Luggage all alone in the Secret Chamber, and not afemale eye catches sight of the contents!”

Whether I thought proper to have the firmness to keep to this, don’tsignify, or whether any female eye, and if any, how many, was reallypresent when the opening of the Luggage came off.  Somebody’sLuggage is the question at present: Nobody’s eyes, nor yet noses.

What I still look at most, in connection with that Luggage, is theextraordinary quantity of writing-paper, and all written on!  Andnot our paper neither,—not the paper charged in the bill, forwe know our paper,—so he must have been always at it.  Andhe had crumpled up this writing of his, everywhere, in every part andparcel of his luggage.  There was writing in his dressing-case,writing in his boots, writing among his shaving-tackle, writing in hishat-box, writing folded away down among the very whalebones of his umbrella.

His clothes wasn’t bad, what there was of ’em. His dressing-case was poor,—not a particle of silver stopper,—bottleapertures with nothing in ’em, like empty little dog-kennels,—anda most searching description of tooth-powder diffusing itself around,as under a deluded mistake that all the chinks in the fittings was divisionsin teeth.  His clothes I parted with, well enough, to a second-handdealer not far from St. Clement’s Danes, in the Strand,—himas the officers in the Army mostly dispose of their uniforms to, whenhard pressed with debts of honour, if I may judge from their coats andepaulets diversifying the window with their backs towards the public. The same party bought in one lot the portmanteau, the bag, the desk,the dressing-case, the hat-box, the umbrella, strap, and walking-stick. On my remarking that I should have thought those articles not quitein his line, he said: “No more ith a man’th grandmother,Mithter Chrithtopher; but if any man will bring hith grandmother here,and offer her at a fair trifle below what the’ll feth with goodluck when the’th thcoured and turned—I’ll buy her!”

These transactions brought me home, and, indeed, more than home,for they left a goodish profit on the original investment.  Andnow there remained the writings; and the writings I particular wishto bring under the candid attention of the reader.

I wish to do so without postponement, for this reason.  Thatis to say, namely, viz. i.e., as follows, thus:—Before I proceedto recount the mental sufferings of which I became the prey in consequenceof the writings, and before following up that harrowing tale with astatement of the wonderful and impressive catastrophe, as thrillingin its nature as unlooked for in any other capacity, which crowned theole and filled the cup of unexpectedness to overflowing, the writingsthemselves ought to stand forth to view.  Therefore it is thatthey now come next.  One word to introduce them, and I lay downmy pen (I hope, my unassuming pen) until I take it up to trace the gloomysequel of a mind with something on it.

He was a smeary writer, and wrote a dreadful bad hand.  Utterlyregardless of ink, he lavished it on every undeserving object—onhis clothes, his desk, his hat, the handle of his tooth-brush, his umbrella. Ink was found freely on the coffee-room carpet by No. 4 table, and twoblots was on his restless couch.  A reference to the document Ihave given entire will show that on the morning of the third of February,eighteen fifty-six, he procured his no less than fifth pen and paper. To whatever deplorable act of ungovernable composition he immolatedthose materials obtained from the bar, there is no doubt that the fataldeed was committed in bed, and that it left its evidences but too plainly,long afterwards, upon the pillow-case.

He had put no Heading to any of his writings.  Alas!  Washe likely to have a Heading without a Head, and where was hisHead when he took such things into it?  In some cases, such ashis Boots, he would appear to have hid the writings; thereby involvinghis style in greater obscurity.  But his Boots was at least pairs,—andno two of his writings can put in any claim to be so regarded. Here follows (not to give more specimens) what was found in

CHAPTER II—HIS BOOTS

“Eh! well then, Monsieur Mutuel!  What do I know, whatcan I say?  I assure you that he calls himself Monsieur The Englishman.”

“Pardon.  But I think it is impossible,” said MonsieurMutuel,—a spectacled, snuffy, stooping old gentleman in carpetshoes and a cloth cap with a peaked shade, a loose blue frock-coat reachingto his heels, a large limp white shirt-frill, and cravat to correspond,—thatis to say, white was the natural colour of his linen on Sundays, butit toned down with the week.

“It is,” repeated Monsieur Mutuel, his amiable old walnut-shellcountenance very walnut-shelly indeed as he smiled and blinked in thebright morning sunlight,—“it is, my cherished Madame Bouclet,I think, impossible!”

“Hey!” (with a little vexed cry and a great many tossesof her head.)  “But it is not impossible that you are a Pig!”retorted Madame Bouclet, a compact little woman of thirty-five or so. “See then,—look there,—read!  ‘On the secondfloor Monsieur L’Anglais.’  Is it not so?”

“It is so,” said Monsieur Mutuel.

“Good.  Continue your morning walk.  Get out!”Madame Bouclet dismissed him with a lively snap of her fingers.

The morning walk of Monsieur Mutuel was in the brightest patch thatthe sun made in the Grande Place of a dull old fortified French town. The manner of his morning walk was with his hands crossed behind him;an umbrella, in figure the express image of himself, always in one hand;a snuffbox in the other.  Thus, with the shuffling gait of theElephant (who really does deal with the very worst trousers-maker employedby the Zoological world, and who appeared to have recommended him toMonsieur Mutuel), the old gentleman sunned himself daily when sun wasto be had—of course, at the same time sunning a red ribbon athis button-hole; for was he not an ancient Frenchman?

Being told by one of the angelic sex to continue his morning walkand get out, Monsieur Mutuel laughed a walnut-shell laugh, pulled offhis cap at arm’s length with the hand that contained his snuffbox,kept it off for a considerable period after he had parted from MadameBouclet, and continued his morning walk and got out, like a man of gallantryas he was.

The documentary evidence to which Madame Bouclet had referred MonsieurMutuel was the list of her lodgers, sweetly written forth by her ownNephew and Bookkeeper, who held the pen of an Angel, and posted up atthe side of her gateway, for the information of the Police: “Ausecond, M. L’Anglais, Propriétaire.”  On thesecond floor, Mr. The Englishman, man of property.  So it stood;nothing could be plainer.

Madame Bouclet now traced the line with her forefinger, as it wereto confirm and settle herself in her parting snap at Monsieur Mutuel,and so placing her right hand on her hip with a defiant air, as if nothingshould ever tempt her to unsnap that snap, strolled out into the Placeto glance up at the windows of Mr. The Englishman.  That worthyhappening to be looking out of window at the moment, Madame Boucletgave him a graceful salutation with her head, looked to the right andlooked to the left to account to him for her being there, consideredfor a moment, like one who accounted to herself for somebody she hadexpected not being there, and reëntered her own gateway. Madame Bouclet let all her house giving on the Place in furnished flatsor floors, and lived up the yard behind in company with Monsieur Bouclether husband (great at billiards), an inherited brewing business, severalfowls, two carts, a nephew, a little dog in a big kennel, a grape-vine,a counting-house, four horses, a married sister (with a share in thebrewing business), the husband and two children of the married sister,a parrot, a drum (performed on by the little boy of the married sister),two billeted soldiers, a quantity of pigeons, a fife (played by thenephew in a ravishing manner), several domestics and supernumeraries,a perpetual flavour of coffee and soup, a terrific range of artificialrocks and wooden precipices at least four feet high, a small fountain,and half-a-dozen large sunflowers.

Now the Englishman, in taking his Appartement,—or, as one mightsay on our side of the Channel, his set of chambers,—had givenhis name, correct to the letter, LANGLEY.  But as he had a Britishway of not opening his mouth very wide on foreign soil, except at meals,the Brewery had been able to make nothing of it but L’Anglais. So Mr. The Englishman he had become and he remained.

“Never saw such a people!” muttered Mr. The Englishman,as he now looked out of window.  “Never did, in my life!”

This was true enough, for he had never before been out of his owncountry,—a right little island, a tight little island, a brightlittle island, a show-fight little island, and full of merit of allsorts; but not the whole round world.

“These chaps,” said Mr. The Englishman to himself, ashis eye rolled over the Place, sprinkled with military here and there,“are no more like soldiers—”  Nothing being sufficientlystrong for the end of his sentence, he left it unended.

This again (from the point of view of his experience) was strictlycorrect; for though there was a great agglomeration of soldiers in thetown and neighbouring country, you might have held a grand Review andField-day of them every one, and looked in vain among them all for asoldier choking behind his foolish stock, or a soldier lamed by hisill-fitting shoes, or a soldier deprived of the use of his limbs bystraps and buttons, or a soldier elaborately forced to be self-helplessin all the small affairs of life.  A swarm of brisk, bright, active,bustling, handy, odd, skirmishing fellows, able to turn cleverly atanything, from a siege to soup, from great guns to needles and thread,from the broadsword exercise to slicing an onion, from making war tomaking omelets, was all you would have found.

What a swarm!  From the Great Place under the eye of Mr. TheEnglishman, where a few awkward squads from the last conscription weredoing the goose-step—some members of those squads still as totheir bodies, in the chrysalis peasant-state of Blouse, and only militarybutterflies as to their regimentally-clothed legs—from the GreatPlace, away outside the fortifications, and away for miles along thedusty roads, soldiers swarmed.  All day long, upon the grass-grownramparts of the town, practising soldiers trumpeted and bugled; allday long, down in angles of dry trenches, practising soldiers drummedand drummed.  Every forenoon, soldiers burst out of the great barracksinto the sandy gymnasium-ground hard by, and flew over the wooden horse,and hung on to flying ropes, and dangled upside-down between parallelbars, and shot themselves off wooden platforms,—splashes, sparks,coruscations, showers of soldiers.  At every corner of the town-wall,every guard-house, every gateway, every sentry-box, every drawbridge,every reedy ditch, and rushy dike, soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. And the town being pretty well all wall, guard-house, gateway, sentry-box,drawbridge, reedy ditch, and rushy dike, the town was pretty well allsoldiers.

What would the sleepy old town have been without the soldiers, seeingthat even with them it had so overslept itself as to have slept itsechoes hoarse, its defensive bars and locks and bolts and chains allrusty, and its ditches stagnant!  From the days when VAUBAN engineeredit to that perplexing extent that to look at it was like being knockedon the head with it, the stranger becoming stunned and stertorous underthe shock of its incomprehensibility,—from the days when VAUBANmade it the express incorporation of every substantive and adjectivein the art of military engineering, and not only twisted you into itand twisted you out of it, to the right, to the left, opposite, underhere, over there, in the dark, in the dirt, by the gateway, archway,covered way, dry way, wet way, fosse, portcullis, drawbridge, sluice,squat tower, pierced wall, and heavy battery, but likewise took a fortifyingdive under the neighbouring country, and came to the surface three orfour miles off, blowing out incomprehensible mounds and batteries amongthe quiet crops of chicory and beet-root,—from those days to thesethe town had been asleep, and dust and rust and must had settled onits drowsy Arsenals and Magazines, and grass had grown up in its silentstreets.

On market-days alone, its Great Place suddenly leaped out of bed. On market-days, some friendly enchanter struck his staff upon the stonesof the Great Place, and instantly arose the liveliest booths and stalls,and sittings and standings, and a pleasant hum of chaffering and hucksteringfrom many hundreds of tongues, and a pleasant, though peculiar, blendingof colours,—white caps, blue blouses, and green vegetables,—andat last the Knight destined for the adventure seemed to have come inearnest, and all the Vaubanois sprang up awake.  And now, by long,low-lying avenues of trees, jolting in white-hooded donkey-cart, andon donkey-back, and in tumbril and wagon, and cart and cabriolet, andafoot with barrow and burden,—and along the dikes and ditchesand canals, in little peak-prowed country boats,—came peasant-menand women in flocks and crowds, bringing articles for sale.  Andhere you had boots and shoes, and sweetmeats and stuffs to wear, andhere (in the cool shade of the Town-hall) you had milk and cream andbutter and cheese, and here you had fruits and onions and carrots, andall things needful for your soup, and here you had poultry and flowersand protesting pigs, and here new shovels, axes, spades, and bill-hooksfor your farming work, and here huge mounds of bread, and here yourunground grain in sacks, and here your children’s dolls, and herethe cake-seller, announcing his wares by beat and roll of drum. And hark! fanfaronade of trumpets, and here into the Great Place, resplendentin an open carriage, with four gorgeously-attired servitors up behind,playing horns, drums, and cymbals, rolled “the Daughter of a Physician”in massive golden chains and ear-rings, and blue-feathered hat, shadedfrom the admiring sun by two immense umbrellas of artificial roses,to dispense (from motives of philanthropy) that small and pleasant dosewhich had cured so many thousands!  Toothache, earache, headache,heartache, stomach-ache, debility, nervousness, fits, fainting, fever,ague, all equally cured by the small and pleasant dose of the greatPhysician’s great daughter!  The process was this,—she,the Daughter of a Physician, proprietress of the superb equipage younow admired with its confirmatory blasts of trumpet, drum, and cymbal,told you so: On the first day after taking the small and pleasant dose,you would feel no particular influence beyond a most harmonious sensationof indescribable and irresistible joy; on the second day you would beso astonishingly better that you would think yourself changed into somebodyelse; on the third day you would be entirely free from disorder, whateverits nature and however long you had had it, and would seek out the Physician’sDaughter to throw yourself at her feet, kiss the hem of her garment,and buy as many more of the small and pleasant doses as by the saleof all your few effects you could obtain; but she would be inaccessible,—gonefor herbs to the Pyramids of Egypt,—and you would be (though cured)reduced to despair!  Thus would the Physician’s Daughterdrive her trade (and briskly too), and thus would the buying and sellingand mingling of tongues and colours continue, until the changing sunlight,leaving the Physician’s Daughter in the shadow of high roofs,admonished her to jolt out westward, with a departing effect of gleamand glitter on the splendid equipage and brazen blast.  And nowthe enchanter struck his staff upon the stones of the Great Place oncemore, and down went the booths, the sittings and standings, and vanishedthe merchandise, and with it the barrows, donkeys, donkey-carts, andtumbrils, and all other things on wheels and feet, except the slow scavengerswith unwieldy carts and meagre horses clearing up the rubbish, assistedby the sleek town pigeons, better plumped out than on non-market days. While there was yet an hour or two to wane before the autumn sunset,the loiterer outside town-gate and drawbridge, and postern and double-ditch,would see the last white-hooded cart lessening in the avenue of lengtheningshadows of trees, or the last country boat, paddled by the last market-womanon her way home, showing black upon the reddening, long, low, narrowdike between him and the mill; and as the paddle-parted scum and weedclosed over the boat’s track, he might be comfortably sure thatits sluggish rest would be troubled no more until next market-day.

As it was not one of the Great Place’s days for getting outof bed, when Mr. The Englishman looked down at the young soldiers practisingthe goose-step there, his mind was left at liberty to take a militaryturn.

“These fellows are billeted everywhere about,” said he;“and to see them lighting the people’s fires, boiling thepeople’s pots, minding the people’s babies, rocking thepeople’s cradles, washing the people’s greens, and makingthemselves generally useful, in every sort of unmilitary way, is mostridiculous!  Never saw such a set of fellows,—never did inmy life!”

All perfectly true again.  Was there not Private Valentine inthat very house, acting as sole housemaid, valet, cook, steward, andnurse, in the family of his captain, Monsieur le Capitaine de la Cour,—cleaningthe floors, making the beds, doing the marketing, dressing the captain,dressing the dinners, dressing the salads, and dressing the baby, allwith equal readiness?  Or, to put him aside, he being in loyalattendance on his Chief, was there not Private Hyppolite, billeted atthe Perfumer’s two hundred yards off, who, when not on duty, volunteeredto keep shop while the fair Perfumeress stepped out to speak to a neighbouror so, and laughingly sold soap with his war-sword girded on him? Was there not Emile, billeted at the Clock-maker’s, perpetuallyturning to of an evening, with his coat off, winding up the stock? Was there not Eugène, billeted at the Tinman’s, cultivating,pipe in mouth, a garden four feet square, for the Tinman, in the littlecourt, behind the shop, and extorting the fruits of the earth from thesame, on his knees, with the sweat of his brow?  Not to multiplyexamples, was there not Baptiste, billeted on the poor Water-carrier,at that very instant sitting on the pavement in the sunlight, with hismartial legs asunder, and one of the Water-carrier’s spare pailsbetween them, which (to the delight and glory of the heart of the Water-carriercoming across the Place from the fountain, yoked and burdened) he waspainting bright-green outside and bright-red within?  Or, to gono farther than the Barber’s at the very next door, was therenot Corporal Théophile—

“No,” said Mr. The Englishman, glancing down at the Barber’s,“he is not there at present.  There’s the child, though.”

A mere mite of a girl stood on the steps of the Barber’s shop,looking across the Place.  A mere baby, one might call her, dressedin the close white linen cap which small French country children wear(like the children in Dutch pictures), and in a frock of homespun blue,that had no shape except where it was tied round her little fat throat. So that, being naturally short and round all over, she looked, behind,as if she had been cut off at her natural waist, and had had her headneatly fitted on it.

“There’s the child, though.”

To judge from the way in which the dimpled hand was rubbing the eyes,the eyes had been closed in a nap, and were newly opened.  Butthey seemed to be looking so intently across the Place, that the Englishmanlooked in the same direction.

“O!” said he presently.  “I thought as much. The Corporal’s there.”

The Corporal, a smart figure of a man of thirty, perhaps a thoughtunder the middle size, but very neatly made,—a sunburnt Corporalwith a brown peaked beard,—faced about at the moment, addressingvoluble words of instruction to the squad in hand.  Nothing wasamiss or awry about the Corporal.  A lithe and nimble Corporal,quite complete, from the sparkling dark eyes under his knowing uniformcap to his sparkling white gaiters.  The very image and presentmentof a Corporal of his country’s army, in the line of his shoulders,the line of his waist, the broadest line of his Bloomer trousers, andtheir narrowest line at the calf of his leg.

Mr. The Englishman looked on, and the child looked on, and the Corporallooked on (but the last-named at his men), until the drill ended a fewminutes afterwards, and the military sprinkling dried up directly, andwas gone.  Then said Mr. The Englishman to himself, “Lookhere!  By George!”  And the Corporal, dancing towardsthe Barber’s with his arms wide open, caught up the child, heldher over his head in a flying attitude, caught her down again, kissedher, and made off with her into the Barber’s house.

Now Mr. The Englishman had had a quarrel with his erring and disobedientand disowned daughter, and there was a child in that case too. Had not his daughter been a child, and had she not taken angel-flightsabove his head as this child had flown above the Corporal’s?

“He’s a ”—National Participled—“fool!”said the Englishman, and shut his window.

But the windows of the house of Memory, and the windows of the houseof Mercy, are not so easily closed as windows of glass and wood. They fly open unexpectedly; they rattle in the night; they must be nailedup.  Mr. The Englishman had tried nailing them, but had not driventhe nails quite home.  So he passed but a disturbed evening anda worse night.

By nature a good-tempered man?  No; very little gentleness,confounding the quality with weakness.  Fierce and wrathful whencrossed?  Very, and stupendously unreasonable.  Moody? Exceedingly so.  Vindictive?  Well; he had had scowling thoughtsthat he would formally curse his daughter, as he had seen it done onthe stage.  But remembering that the real Heaven is some pacesremoved from the mock one in the great chandelier of the Theatre, hehad given that up.

And he had come abroad to be rid of his repudiated daughter for therest of his life.  And here he was.

At bottom, it was for this reason, more than for any other, thatMr. The Englishman took it extremely ill that Corporal Théophileshould be so devoted to little Bebelle, the child at the Barber’sshop.  In an unlucky moment he had chanced to say to himself, “Why,confound the fellow, he is not her father!”  There was asharp sting in the speech which ran into him suddenly, and put him ina worse mood.  So he had National Participled the unconscious Corporalwith most hearty emphasis, and had made up his mind to think no moreabout such a mountebank.

But it came to pass that the Corporal was not to be dismissed. If he had known the most delicate fibres of the Englishman’s mind,instead of knowing nothing on earth about him, and if he had been themost obstinate Corporal in the Grand Army of France, instead of beingthe most obliging, he could not have planted himself with more determinedimmovability plump in the midst of all the Englishman’s thoughts. Not only so, but he seemed to be always in his view.  Mr. The Englishmanhad but to look out of window, to look upon the Corporal with littleBebelle.  He had but to go for a walk, and there was the Corporalwalking with Bebelle.  He had but to come home again, disgusted,and the Corporal and Bebelle were at home before him.  If he lookedout at his back windows early in the morning, the Corporal was in theBarber’s back yard, washing and dressing and brushing Bebelle. If he took refuge at his front windows, the Corporal brought his breakfastout into the Place, and shared it there with Bebelle.  Always Corporaland always Bebelle.  Never Corporal without Bebelle.  NeverBebelle without Corporal.

Mr. The Englishman was not particularly strong in the French languageas a means of oral communication, though he read it very well. It is with languages as with people,—when you only know them bysight, you are apt to mistake them; you must be on speaking terms beforeyou can be said to have established an acquaintance.

For this reason, Mr. The Englishman had to gird up his loins considerablybefore he could bring himself to the point of exchanging ideas withMadame Bouclet on the subject of this Corporal and this Bebelle. But Madame Bouclet looking in apologetically one morning to remark,that, O Heaven! she was in a state of desolation because the lamp-makerhad not sent home that lamp confided to him to repair, but that trulyhe was a lamp-maker against whom the whole world shrieked out, Mr. TheEnglishman seized the occasion.

“Madame, that baby—”

“Pardon, monsieur.  That lamp.”

“No, no, that little girl.”

“But, pardon!” said Madame Bonclet, angling for a clew,“one cannot light a little girl, or send her to be repaired?”

“The little girl—at the house of the barber.”

“Ah-h-h!” cried Madame Bouclet, suddenly catching theidea with her delicate little line and rod.  “Little Bebelle? Yes, yes, yes!  And her friend the Corporal?  Yes, yes, yes,yes!  So genteel of him,—is it not?”

“He is not—?”

“Not at all; not at all!  He is not one of her relations. Not at all!”

“Why, then, he—”

“Perfectly!” cried Madame Bouclet, “you are right,monsieur.  It is so genteel of him.  The less relation, themore genteel.  As you say.”

“Is she—?”

“The child of the barber?” Madame Bouclet whisked upher skilful little line and rod again.  “Not at all, notat all!  She is the child of—in a word, of no one.”

“The wife of the barber, then—?”

“Indubitably.  As you say.  The wife of the barberreceives a small stipend to take care of her.  So much by the month. Eh, then!  It is without doubt very little, for we are all poorhere.”

“You are not poor, madame.”

“As to my lodgers,” replied Madame Bouclet, with a smilingand a gracious bend of her head, “no.  As to all things else,so-so.”

“You flatter me, madame.”

“Monsieur, it is you who flatter me in living here.”

Certain fishy gasps on Mr. The Englishman’s part, denotingthat he was about to resume his subject under difficulties, Madame Boucletobserved him closely, and whisked up her delicate line and rod againwith triumphant success.

“O no, monsieur, certainly not.  The wife of the barberis not cruel to the poor child, but she is careless.  Her healthis delicate, and she sits all day, looking out at window.  Consequently,when the Corporal first came, the poor little Bebelle was much neglected.”

“It is a curious—” began Mr. The Englishman.

“Name?  That Bebelle?  Again you are right, monsieur. But it is a playful name for Gabrielle.”

“And so the child is a mere fancy of the Corporal’s?”said Mr. The Englishman, in a gruffly disparaging tone of voice.

“Eh, well!” returned Madame Bouclet, with a pleadingshrug: “one must love something.  Human nature is weak.”

(“Devilish weak,” muttered the Englishman, in his ownlanguage.)

“And the Corporal,” pursued Madame Bouclet, “beingbilleted at the barber’s,—where he will probably remaina long time, for he is attached to the General,—and finding thepoor unowned child in need of being loved, and finding himself in needof loving,—why, there you have it all, you see!”

Mr. The Englishman accepted this interpretation of the matter withan indifferent grace, and observed to himself, in an injured manner,when he was again alone: “I shouldn’t mind it so much, ifthese people were not such a”—National Participled—“sentimentalpeople!”

There was a Cemetery outside the town, and it happened ill for thereputation of the Vaubanois, in this sentimental connection, that hetook a walk there that same afternoon.  To be sure there were somewonderful things in it (from the Englishman’s point of view),and of a certainty in all Britain you would have found nothing likeit.  Not to mention the fanciful flourishes of hearts and crossesin wood and iron, that were planted all over the place, making it lookvery like a Firework-ground, where a most splendid pyrotechnic displaymight be expected after dark, there were so many wreaths upon the graves,embroidered, as it might be, “To my mother,” “To mydaughter,” “To my father,” “To my brother,”“To my sister,” “To my friend,” and those manywreaths were in so many stages of elaboration and decay, from the wreathof yesterday, all fresh colour and bright beads, to the wreath of lastyear, a poor mouldering wisp of straw!  There were so many littlegardens and grottos made upon graves, in so many tastes, with plantsand shells and plaster figures and porcelain pitchers, and so many oddsand ends!  There were so many tributes of remembrance hanging up,not to be discriminated by the closest inspection from little roundwaiters, whereon were depicted in glowing lines either a lady or a gentlemanwith a white pocket-handkerchief out of all proportion, leaning, ina state of the most faultless mourning and most profound affliction,on the most architectural and gorgeous urn!  There were so manysurviving wives who had put their names on the tombs of their deceasedhusbands, with a blank for the date of their own departure from thisweary world; and there were so many surviving husbands who had renderedthe same homage to their deceased wives; and out of the number theremust have been so many who had long ago married again!  In fine,there was so much in the place that would have seemed more fripperyto a stranger, save for the consideration that the lightest paper flowerthat lay upon the poorest heap of earth was never touched by a rudehand, but perished there, a sacred thing!

“Nothing of the solemnity of Death here,” Mr. The Englishmanhad been going to say, when this last consideration touched him witha mild appeal, and on the whole he walked out without saying it. “But these people are,” he insisted, by way of compensation,when he was well outside the gate, “they are so”—Participled—“sentimental!”

His way back lay by the military gymnasium-ground.  And therehe passed the Corporal glibly instructing young soldiers how to swingthemselves over rapid and deep watercourses on their way to Glory, bymeans of a rope, and himself deftly plunging off a platform, and flyinga hundred feet or two, as an encouragement to them to begin.  Andthere he also passed, perched on a crowning eminence (probably the Corporal’scareful hands), the small Bebelle, with her round eyes wide open, surveyingthe proceeding like a wondering sort of blue and white bird.

“If that child was to die,” this was his reflection ashe turned his back and went his way,—“and it would almostserve the fellow right for making such a fool of himself,—I supposewe should have him sticking up a wreath and a waiter in that fantasticburying-ground.”

Nevertheless, after another early morning or two of looking out ofwindow, he strolled down into the Place, when the Corporal and Bebellewere walking there, and touching his hat to the Corporal (an immenseachievement), wished him Good-day.

“Good-day, monsieur.”

“This is a rather pretty child you have here,” said Mr.The Englishman, taking her chin in his hand, and looking down into herastonished blue eyes.

“Monsieur, she is a very pretty child,” returned theCorporal, with a stress on his polite correction of the phrase.

“And good?” said the Englishman.

“And very good.  Poor little thing!”

“Hah!”  The Englishman stooped down and patted hercheek, not without awkwardness, as if he were going too far in his conciliation. “And what is this medal round your neck, my little one?”

Bebelle having no other reply on her lips than her chubby right fist,the Corporal offered his services as interpreter.

“Monsieur demands, what is this, Bebelle?”

“It is the Holy Virgin,” said Bebelle.

“And who gave it you?” asked the Englishman.

“Théophile.”

“And who is Théophile?”

Bebelle broke into a laugh, laughed merrily and heartily, clappedher chubby hands, and beat her little feet on the stone pavement ofthe Place.

“He doesn’t know Théophile!  Why, he doesn’tknow any one!  He doesn’t know anything!”  Then,sensible of a small solecism in her manners, Bebelle twisted her righthand in a leg of the Corporal’s Bloomer trousers, and, layingher cheek against the place, kissed it.

“Monsieur Théophile, I believe?” said the Englishmanto the Corporal.

“It is I, monsieur.”

“Permit me.”  Mr. The Englishman shook him heartilyby the hand and turned away.  But he took it mighty ill that oldMonsieur Mutuel in his patch of sunlight, upon whom he came as he turned,should pull off his cap to him with a look of pleased approval. And he muttered, in his own tongue, as he returned the salutation, “Well,walnut-shell!  And what business is it of yours?”

Mr. The Englishman went on for many weeks passing but disturbed eveningsand worse nights, and constantly experiencing that those aforesaid windowsin the houses of Memory and Mercy rattled after dark, and that he hadvery imperfectly nailed them up.  Likewise, he went on for manyweeks daily improving the acquaintance of the Corporal and Bebelle. That is to say, he took Bebelle by the chin, and the Corporal by thehand, and offered Bebelle sous and the Corporal cigars, and even gotthe length of changing pipes with the Corporal and kissing Bebelle. But he did it all in a shamefaced way, and always took it extremelyill that Monsieur Mutuel in his patch of sunlight should note what hedid.  Whenever that seemed to be the case, he always growled inhis own tongue, “There you are again, walnut-shell!  Whatbusiness is it of yours?”

In a word, it had become the occupation of Mr. The Englishman’slife to look after the Corporal and little Bebelle, and to resent oldMonsieur Mutuel’s looking after him.  An occupationonly varied by a fire in the town one windy night, and much passingof water-buckets from hand to hand (in which the Englishman renderedgood service), and much beating of drums,—when all of a suddenthe Corporal disappeared.

Next, all of a sudden, Bebelle disappeared.

She had been visible a few days later than the Corporal,—sadlydeteriorated as to washing and brushing,—but she had not spokenwhen addressed by Mr. The Englishman, and had looked scared and hadrun away.  And now it would seem that she had run away for good. And there lay the Great Place under the windows, bare and barren.

In his shamefaced and constrained way, Mr. The Englishman asked noquestion of any one, but watched from his front windows and watchedfrom his back windows, and lingered about the Place, and peeped in atthe Barber’s shop, and did all this and much more with a whistlingand tune-humming pretence of not missing anything, until one afternoonwhen Monsieur Mutuel’s patch of sunlight was in shadow, and when,according to all rule and precedent, he had no right whatever to bringhis red ribbon out of doors, behold here he was, advancing with hiscap already in his hand twelve paces off!

Mr. The Englishman had got as far into his usual objurgation as,“What bu-si—” when he checked himself.

“Ah, it is sad, it is sad!  Hélas, it is unhappy,it is sad!”  Thus old Monsieur Mutuel, shaking his gray head.

“What busin—at least, I would say, what do you mean,Monsieur Mutuel?”

“Our Corporal.  Hélas, our dear Corporal!”

“What has happened to him?”

“You have not heard?”

“No.”

“At the fire.  But he was so brave, so ready.  Ah,too brave, too ready!”

“May the Devil carry you away!” the Englishman brokein impatiently; “I beg your pardon,—I mean me,—I amnot accustomed to speak French,—go on, will you?”

“And a falling beam—”

“Good God!” exclaimed the Englishman.  “Itwas a private soldier who was killed?”

“No.  A Corporal, the same Corporal, our dear Corporal. Beloved by all his comrades.  The funeral ceremony was touching,—penetrating. Monsieur The Englishman, your eyes fill with tears.”

“What bu-si—”

“Monsieur The Englishman, I honour those emotions.  Isalute you with profound respect.  I will not obtrude myself uponyour noble heart.”

Monsieur Mutuel,—a gentleman in every thread of his cloudylinen, under whose wrinkled hand every grain in the quarter of an ounceof poor snuff in his poor little tin box became a gentleman’sproperty,—Monsieur Mutuel passed on, with his cap in his hand.

“I little thought,” said the Englishman, after walkingfor several minutes, and more than once blowing his nose, “whenI was looking round that cemetery—I’ll go there!”

Straight he went there, and when he came within the gate he paused,considering whether he should ask at the lodge for some direction tothe grave.  But he was less than ever in a mood for asking questions,and he thought, “I shall see something on it to know it by.”

In search of the Corporal’s grave he went softly on, up thiswalk and down that, peering in, among the crosses and hearts and columnsand obelisks and tombstones, for a recently disturbed spot.  Ittroubled him now to think how many dead there were in the cemetery,—hehad not thought them a tenth part so numerous before,—and afterhe had walked and sought for some time, he said to himself, as he struckdown a new vista of tombs, “I might suppose that every one wasdead but I.”

Not every one.  A live child was lying on the ground asleep. Truly he had found something on the Corporal’s grave to know itby, and the something was Bebelle.

With such a loving will had the dead soldier’s comrades workedat his resting-place, that it was already a neat garden.  On thegreen turf of the garden Bebelle lay sleeping, with her cheek touchingit.  A plain, unpainted little wooden Cross was planted in theturf, and her short arm embraced this little Cross, as it had many atime embraced the Corporal’s neck.  They had put a tiny flag(the flag of France) at his head, and a laurel garland.

Mr. The Englishman took off his hat, and stood for a while silent. Then, covering his head again, he bent down on one knee, and softlyroused the child.

“Bebelle!  My little one!”

Opening her eyes, on which the tears were still wet, Bebelle wasat first frightened; but seeing who it was, she suffered him to takeher in his arms, looking steadfastly at him.

“You must not lie here, my little one.  You must comewith me.”

“No, no.  I can’t leave Théophile. I want the good dear Théophile.”

“We will go and seek him, Bebelle.  We will go and lookfor him in England.  We will go and look for him at my daughter’s,Bebelle.”

“Shall we find him there?”

“We shall find the best part of him there.  Come withme, poor forlorn little one.  Heaven is my witness,” saidthe Englishman, in a low voice, as, before he rose, he touched the turfabove the gentle Corporal’s breast, “that I thankfully acceptthis trust!”

It was a long way for the child to have come unaided.  She wassoon asleep again, with her embrace transferred to the Englishman’sneck.  He looked at her worn shoes, and her galled feet, and hertired face, and believed that she had come there every day.

He was leaving the grave with the slumbering Bebelle in his arms,when he stopped, looked wistfully down at it, and looked wistfully atthe other graves around.  “It is the innocent custom of thepeople,” said Mr. The Englishman, with hesitation.  “Ithink I should like to do it.  No one sees.”

Careful not to wake Bebelle as he went, he repaired to the lodgewhere such little tokens of remembrance were sold, and bought two wreaths. One, blue and white and glistening silver, “To my friend;”one of a soberer red and black and yellow, “To my friend.” With these he went back to the grave, and so down on one knee again. Touching the child’s lips with the brighter wreath, he guidedher hand to hang it on the Cross; then hung his own wreath there. After all, the wreaths were not far out of keeping with the little garden. To my friend.  To my friend.

Mr. The Englishman took it very ill when he looked round a streetcorner into the Great Place, carrying Bebelle in his arms, that oldMutuel should be there airing his red ribbon.  He took a worldof pains to dodge the worthy Mutuel, and devoted a surprising amountof time and trouble to skulking into his own lodging like a man pursuedby Justice.  Safely arrived there at last, he made Bebelle’stoilet with as accurate a remembrance as he could bring to bear uponthat work of the way in which he had often seen the poor Corporal makeit, and having given her to eat and drink, laid her down on his ownbed.  Then he slipped out into the barber’s shop, and aftera brief interview with the barber’s wife, and a brief recourseto his purse and card-case, came back again with the whole of Bebelle’spersonal property in such a very little bundle that it was quite lostunder his arm.

As it was irreconcilable with his whole course and character thathe should carry Bebelle off in state, or receive any compliments orcongratulations on that feat, he devoted the next day to getting histwo portmanteaus out of the house by artfulness and stealth, and tocomporting himself in every particular as if he were going to run away,—except,indeed, that he paid his few debts in the town, and prepared a letterto leave for Madame Bouclet, enclosing a sufficient sum of money inlieu of notice.  A railway train would come through at midnight,and by that train he would take away Bebelle to look for Théophilein England and at his forgiven daughter’s.

At midnight, on a moonlight night, Mr. The Englishman came creepingforth like a harmless assassin, with Bebelle on his breast instead ofa dagger.  Quiet the Great Place, and quiet the never-stirringstreets; closed the cafés; huddled together motionless theirbilliard-balls; drowsy the guard or sentinel on duty here and there;lulled for the time, by sleep, even the insatiate appetite of the Officeof Town-dues.

Mr. The Englishman left the Place behind, and left the streets behind,and left the civilian-inhabited town behind, and descended down amongthe military works of Vauban, hemming all in.  As the shadow ofthe first heavy arch and postern fell upon him and was left behind,as the shadow of the second heavy arch and postern fell upon him andwas left behind, as his hollow tramp over the first drawbridge was succeededby a gentler sound, as his hollow tramp over the second drawbridge wassucceeded by a gentler sound, as he overcame the stagnant ditches oneby one, and passed out where the flowing waters were and where the moonlight,so the dark shades and the hollow sounds and the unwholesomely lockedcurrents of his soul were vanquished and set free.  See to it,Vaubans of your own hearts, who gird them in with triple walls and ditches,and with bolt and chain and bar and lifted bridge,—raze thosefortifications, and lay them level with the all-absorbing dust, beforethe night cometh when no hand can work!

All went prosperously, and he got into an empty carriage in the train,where he could lay Bebelle on the seat over against him, as on a couch,and cover her from head to foot with his mantle.  He had just drawnhimself up from perfecting this arrangement, and had just leaned backin his own seat contemplating it with great satisfaction, when he becameaware of a curious appearance at the open carriage window,—a ghostlylittle tin box floating up in the moonlight, and hovering there.

He leaned forward, and put out his head.  Down among the railsand wheels and ashes, Monsieur Mutuel, red ribbon and all!

“Excuse me, Monsieur The Englishman,” said Monsieur Mutuel,holding up his box at arm’s length, the carriage being so highand he so low; “but I shall reverence the little box for ever,if your so generous hand will take a pinch from it at parting.”

Mr. The Englishman reached out of the window before complying, and—withoutasking the old fellow what business it was of his—shook handsand said, “Adieu!  God bless you!”

“And, Mr. The Englishman, God bless you!” criedMadame Bouclet, who was also there among the rails and wheels and ashes. “And God will bless you in the happiness of the protected childnow with you.  And God will bless you in your own child at home. And God will bless you in your own remembrances.  And this fromme!”

He had barely time to catch a bouquet from her hand, when the trainwas flying through the night.  Round the paper that enfolded itwas bravely written (doubtless by the nephew who held the pen of anAngel), “Homage to the friend of the friendless.”

“Not bad people, Bebelle!” said Mr. The Englishman, softlydrawing the mantle a little from her sleeping face, that he might kissit, “though they are so—”

Too “sentimental” himself at the moment to be able toget out that word, he added nothing but a sob, and travelled for somemiles, through the moonlight, with his hand before his eyes.

CHAPTER III—HIS BROWN-PAPER PARCEL

My works are well known.  I am a young man in the Art line. You have seen my works many a time, though it’s fifty thousandto one if you have seen me.  You say you don’t want to seeme?  You say your interest is in my works, and not in me? Don’t be too sure about that.  Stop a bit.

Let us have it down in black and white at the first go off, so thatthere may be no unpleasantness or wrangling afterwards.  And thisis looked over by a friend of mine, a ticket writer, that is up to literature. I am a young man in the Art line—in the Fine-Art line.  Youhave seen my works over and over again, and you have been curious aboutme, and you think you have seen me.  Now, as a safe rule, you neverhave seen me, and you never do see me, and you never will see me. I think that’s plainly put—and it’s what knocks meover.

If there’s a blighted public character going, I am the party.

It has been remarked by a certain (or an uncertain,) philosopher,that the world knows nothing of its greatest men.  He might haveput it plainer if he had thrown his eye in my direction.  He mighthave put it, that while the world knows something of them that apparentlygo in and win, it knows nothing of them that really go in and don’twin.  There it is again in another form—and that’swhat knocks me over.

Not that it’s only myself that suffers from injustice, butthat I am more alive to my own injuries than to any other man’s. Being, as I have mentioned, in the Fine-Art line, and not the Philanthropicline, I openly admit it.  As to company in injury, I have companyenough.  Who are you passing every day at your Competitive Excruciations? The fortunate candidates whose heads and livers you have turned upsidedown for life?  Not you.  You are really passing the Crammersand Coaches.  If your principle is right, why don’t you turnout to-morrow morning with the keys of your cities on velvet cushions,your musicians playing, and your flags flying, and read addresses tothe Crammers and Coaches on your bended knees, beseeching them to comeout and govern you?  Then, again, as to your public business ofall sorts, your Financial statements and your Budgets; the Public knowsmuch, truly, about the real doers of all that!  Your Nobles andRight Honourables are first-rate men?  Yes, and so is a goose afirst-rate bird.  But I’ll tell you this about the goose;—you’llfind his natural flavour disappointing, without stuffing.

Perhaps I am soured by not being popular?  But suppose I AMpopular.  Suppose my works never fail to attract.  Supposethat, whether they are exhibited by natural light or by artificial,they invariably draw the public.  Then no doubt they are preservedin some Collection?  No, they are not; they are not preserved inany Collection.  Copyright?  No, nor yet copyright. Anyhow they must be somewhere?  Wrong again, for they are oftennowhere.

Says you, “At all events, you are in a moody state of mind,my friend.”  My answer is, I have described myself as a publiccharacter with a blight upon him—which fully accounts for thecurdling of the milk in thatcocoa-nut.

Those that are acquainted with London are aware of a locality onthe Surrey side of the river Thames, called the Obelisk, or, more generally,the Obstacle.  Those that are not acquainted with London will alsobe aware of it, now that I have named it.  My lodging is not farfrom that locality.  I am a young man of that easy disposition,that I lie abed till it’s absolutely necessary to get up and earnsomething, and then I lie abed again till I have spent it.

It was on an occasion when I had had to turn to with a view to victuals,that I found myself walking along the Waterloo Road, one evening afterdark, accompanied by an acquaintance and fellow-lodger in the gas-fittingway of life.  He is very good company, having worked at the theatres,and, indeed, he has a theatrical turn himself, and wishes to be broughtout in the character of Othello; but whether on account of his regularwork always blacking his face and hands more or less, I cannot say.

“Tom,” he says, “what a mystery hangs over you!”

“Yes, Mr. Click”—the rest of the house generallygive him his name, as being first, front, carpeted all over, his ownfurniture, and if not mahogany, an out-and-out imitation—“yes,Mr. Click, a mystery does hang over me.”

“Makes you low, you see, don’t it?” says he, eyeingme sideways.

“Why, yes, Mr. Click, there are circumstances connected withit that have,” I yielded to a sigh, “a lowering effect.”

“Gives you a touch of the misanthrope too, don’t it?”says he.  “Well, I’ll tell you what.  If I wasyou, I’d shake it of.”

“If I was you, I would, Mr. Click; but, if you was me, youwouldn’t.”

“Ah!” says he, “there’s something in that.”

When we had walked a little further, he took it up again by touchingme on the chest.

“You see, Tom, it seems to me as if, in the words of the poetwho wrote the domestic drama of The Stranger, you had a silent sorrowthere.”

“I have, Mr. Click.”

“I hope, Tom,” lowering his voice in a friendly way,“it isn’t coining, or smashing?”

“No, Mr. Click.  Don’t be uneasy.”

“Nor yet forg—”  Mr. Click checked himself,and added, “counterfeiting anything, for instance?”

“No, Mr. Click.  I am lawfully in the Art line—Fine-Artline—but I can say no more.”

“Ah!  Under a species of star?  A kind of malignantspell?  A sort of a gloomy destiny?  A cankerworm peggingaway at your vitals in secret, as well as I make it out?” saidMr. Click, eyeing me with some admiration.

I told Mr. Click that was about it, if we came to particulars; andI thought he appeared rather proud of me.

Our conversation had brought us to a crowd of people, the greaterpart struggling for a front place from which to see something on thepavement, which proved to be various designs executed in coloured chalkson the pavement stones, lighted by two candles stuck in mud sconces. The subjects consisted of a fine fresh salmon’s head and shoulders,supposed to have been recently sent home from the fishmonger’s;a moonlight night at sea (in a circle); dead game; scroll-work; thehead of a hoary hermit engaged in devout contemplation; the head ofa pointer smoking a pipe; and a cherubim, his flesh creased as in infancy,going on a horizontal errand against the wind.  All these subjectsappeared to me to be exquisitely done.

On his knees on one side of this gallery, a shabby person of modestappearance who shivered dreadfully (though it wasn’t at all cold),was engaged in blowing the chalk-dust off the moon, toning the outlineof the back of the hermit’s head with a bit of leather, and fatteningthe down-stroke of a letter or two in the writing.  I have forgottento mention that writing formed a part of the composition, and that italso—as it appeared to me—was exquisitely done.  Itran as follows, in fine round characters: “An honest man is thenoblest work of God.  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0.  £ s. d. Employment in an office is humbly requested.  Honour the Queen. Hunger is a 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 sharp thorn.  Chip chop, cherrychop, fol de rol de ri do.  Astronomy and mathematics.  Ido this to support my family.”

Murmurs of admiration at the exceeding beauty of this performancewent about among the crowd.  The artist, having finished his touching(and having spoilt those places), took his seat on the pavement, withhis knees crouched up very nigh his chin; and halfpence began to rattlein.

“A pity to see a man of that talent brought so low; ain’tit?” said one of the crowd to me.

“What he might have done in the coach-painting, or house-decorating!”said another man, who took up the first speaker because I did not.

“Why, he writes—alone—like the Lord Chancellor!”said another man.

“Better,” said another.  “I know his writing. He couldn’t support his family this way.”

Then, a woman noticed the natural fluffiness of the hermit’shair, and another woman, her friend, mentioned of the salmon’sgills that you could almost see him gasp.  Then, an elderly countrygentleman stepped forward and asked the modest man how he executed hiswork?  And the modest man took some scraps of brown paper withcolours in ’em out of his pockets, and showed them.  Thena fair-complexioned donkey, with sandy hair and spectacles, asked ifthe hermit was a portrait?  To which the modest man, casting asorrowful glance upon it, replied that it was, to a certain extent,a recollection of his father.  This caused a boy to yelp out, “Isthe Pinter a smoking the pipe your mother?” who was immediatelyshoved out of view by a sympathetic carpenter with his basket of toolsat his back.

At every fresh question or remark the crowd leaned forward more eagerly,and dropped the halfpence more freely, and the modest man gathered themup more meekly.  At last, another elderly gentleman came to thefront, and gave the artist his card, to come to his office to-morrow,and get some copying to do.  The card was accompanied by sixpence,and the artist was profoundly grateful, and, before he put the cardin his hat, read it several times by the light of his candles to fixthe address well in his mind, in case he should lose it.  The crowdwas deeply interested by this last incident, and a man in the secondrow with a gruff voice growled to the artist, “You’ve gota chance in life now, ain’t you?”  The artist answered(sniffing in a very low-spirited way, however), “I’m thankfulto hope so.”  Upon which there was a general chorus of “Youare all right,” and the halfpence slackened very decidedly.

I felt myself pulled away by the arm, and Mr. Click and I stood aloneat the corner of the next crossing.

“Why, Tom,” said Mr. Click, “what a horrid expressionof face you’ve got!”

“Have I?” says I.

“Have you?” says Mr. Click.  “Why, you lookedas if you would have his blood.”

“Whose blood?”

“The artist’s.”

“The artist’s?” I repeated.  And I laughed,frantically, wildly, gloomily, incoherently, disagreeably.  I amsensible that I did.  I know I did.

Mr. Click stared at me in a scared sort of a way, but said nothinguntil we had walked a street’s length.  He then stopped short,and said, with excitement on the part of his forefinger:

“Thomas, I find it necessary to be plain with you.  Idon’t like the envious man.  I have identified the cankerwormthat’s pegging away at yourvitals, and it’s envy,Thomas.”

“Is it?” says I.

“Yes, it is,” says be.  “Thomas, beware ofenvy.  It is the green-eyed monster which never did and never willimprove each shining hour, but quite the reverse.  I dread theenvious man, Thomas.  I confess that I am afraid of the enviousman, when he is so envious as you are.  Whilst you contemplatedthe works of a gifted rival, and whilst you heard that rival’spraises, and especially whilst you met his humble glance as he put thatcard away, your countenance was so malevolent as to be terrific. Thomas, I have heard of the envy of them that follows the Fine-Art line,but I never believed it could be what yours is.  I wish you well,but I take my leave of you.  And if you should ever got into troublethrough knifeing—or say, garotting—a brother artist, asI believe you will, don’t call me to character, Thomas, or I shallbe forced to injure your case.”

Mr. Click parted from me with those words, and we broke off our acquaintance.

I became enamoured.  Her name was Henrietta.  Contendingwith my easy disposition, I frequently got up to go after her. She also dwelt in the neighbourhood of the Obstacle, and I did fondlyhope that no other would interpose in the way of our union.

To say that Henrietta was volatile is but to say that she was woman. To say that she was in the bonnet-trimming is feebly to express thetaste which reigned predominant in her own.

She consented to walk with me.  Let me do her the justice tosay that she did so upon trial.  “I am not,” said Henrietta,“as yet prepared to regard you, Thomas, in any other light thanas a friend; but as a friend I am willing to walk with you, on the understandingthat softer sentiments may flow.”

We walked.

Under the influence of Henrietta’s beguilements, I now gotout of bed daily.  I pursued my calling with an industry beforeunknown, and it cannot fail to have been observed at that period, bythose most familiar with the streets of London, that there was a largersupply.  But hold!  The time is not yet come!

One evening in October I was walking with Henrietta, enjoying thecool breezes wafted over Vauxhall Bridge.  After several slow turns,Henrietta gaped frequently (so inseparable from woman is the love ofexcitement), and said, “Let’s go home by Grosvenor Place,Piccadilly, and Waterloo”—localities, I may state for theinformation of the stranger and the foreigner, well known in London,and the last a Bridge.

“No.  Not by Piccadilly, Henrietta,” said I.

“And why not Piccadilly, for goodness’ sake?” saidHenrietta.

Could I tell her?  Could I confess to the gloomy presentimentthat overshadowed me?  Could I make myself intelligible to her? No.

“I don’t like Piccadilly, Henrietta.”

“But I do,” said she.  “It’s dark now,and the long rows of lamps in Piccadilly after dark are beautiful. I willgo to Piccadilly!”

Of course we went.  It was a pleasant night, and there werenumbers of people in the streets.  It was a brisk night, but nottoo cold, and not damp.  Let me darkly observe, it was the bestof all nights—FOR THE PURPOSE.

As we passed the garden wall of the Royal Palace, going up GrosvenorPlace, Henrietta murmured:

“I wish I was a Queen!”

“Why so, Henrietta?”

“I would make youSomething,” said she, and crossedher two hands on my arm, and turned away her head.

Judging from this that the softer sentiments alluded to above hadbegun to flow, I adapted my conduct to that belief.  Thus happilywe passed on into the detested thoroughfare of Piccadilly.  Onthe right of that thoroughfare is a row of trees, the railing of theGreen Park, and a fine broad eligible piece of pavement.

“Oh my!” cried Henrietta presently.  “There’sbeen an accident!”

I looked to the left, and said, “Where, Henrietta?”

“Not there, stupid!” said she.  “Over by thePark railings.  Where the crowd is.  Oh no, it’s notan accident, it’s something else to look at!  What’sthem lights?”

She referred to two lights twinkling low amongst the legs of theassemblage: two candles on the pavement.

“Oh, do come along!” cried Henrietta, skipping acrossthe road with me.  I hung back, but in vain.  “Do let’slook!”

Again, designs upon the pavement.  Centre compartment, MountVesuvius going it (in a circle), supported by four oval compartments,severally representing a ship in heavy weather, a shoulder of muttonattended by two cucumbers, a golden harvest with distant cottage ofproprietor, and a knife and fork after nature; above the centre compartmenta bunch of grapes, and over the whole a rainbow.  The whole, asit appeared to me, exquisitely done.

The person in attendance on these works of art was in all respects,shabbiness excepted, unlike the former personage.  His whole appearanceand manner denoted briskness.  Though threadbare, he expressedto the crowd that poverty had not subdued his spirit, or tinged withany sense of shame this honest effort to turn his talents to some account. The writing which formed a part of his composition was conceived ina similarly cheerful tone.  It breathed the following sentiments:“The writer is poor, but not despondent.  To a British 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 Public he £ s. d. appeals.  Honour to ourbrave Army!  And also 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 to our gallant Navy. BRITONS STRIKE the A B C D E F G writer in common chalks would be gratefulfor any suitable employment HOME!  HURRAH!”  The wholeof this writing appeared to me to be exquisitely done.

But this man, in one respect like the last, though seemingly hardat it with a great show of brown paper and rubbers, was only reallyfattening the down-stroke of a letter here and there, or blowing theloose chalk off the rainbow, or toning the outside edge of the shoulderof mutton.  Though he did this with the greatest confidence, hedid it (as it struck me) in so ignorant a manner, and so spoilt everythinghe touched, that when he began upon the purple smoke from the chimneyof the distant cottage of the proprietor of the golden harvest (whichsmoke was beautifully soft), I found myself saying aloud, without consideringof it:

“Let that alone, will you?”

“Halloa!” said the man next me in the crowd, jerkingme roughly from him with his elbow, “why didn’t you senda telegram?  If we had known you was coming, we’d have providedsomething better for you.  You understand the man’s workbetter than he does himself, don’t you?  Have you made yourwill?  You’re too clever to live long.”

“Don’t be hard upon the gentleman, sir,” said theperson in attendance on the works of art, with a twinkle in his eyeas he looked at me; “he may chance to be an artist himself. If so, sir, he will have a fellow-feeling with me, sir, when I”—headapted his action to his words as he went on, and gave a smart slapof his hands between each touch, working himself all the time aboutand about the composition—“when I lighten the bloom of mygrapes—shade off the orange in my rainbow—dot the i of myBritons—throw a yellow light into my cow-cum-ber—insinuateanother morsel of fat into my shoulder of mutton—dart anotherzigzag flash of lightning at my ship in distress!”

He seemed to do this so neatly, and was so nimble about it, thatthe halfpence came flying in.

“Thanks, generous public, thanks!” said the professor. “You will stimulate me to further exertions.  My name willbe found in the list of British Painters yet.  I shall do betterthan this, with encouragement.  I shall indeed.”

“You never can do better than that bunch of grapes,”said Henrietta.  “Oh, Thomas, them grapes!”

“Not better than that, lady?  I hope for the timewhen I shall paint anything but your own bright eyes and lips equalto life.”

“(Thomas, did you ever?)  But it must take a long time,sir,” said Henrietta, blushing, “to paint equal to that.”

“I was prenticed to it, miss,” said the young man, smartlytouching up the composition—“prenticed to it in the cavesof Spain and Portingale, ever so long and two year over.”

There was a laugh from the crowd; and a new man who had worked himselfin next me, said, “He’s a smart chap, too; ain’t he?”

“And what a eye!” exclaimed Henrietta softly.

“Ah!  He need have a eye,” said the man.

“Ah!  He just need,” was murmured among the crowd.

“He couldn’t come that ’ere burning mountain withouta eye,” said the man.  He had got himself accepted as anauthority, somehow, and everybody looked at his finger as it pointedout Vesuvius.  “To come that effect in a general illuminationwould require a eye; but to come it with two dips—why, it’senough to blind him!”

That impostor, pretending not to have heard what was said, now winkedto any extent with both eyes at once, as if the strain upon his sightwas too much, and threw back his long hair—it was very long—asif to cool his fevered brow.  I was watching him doing it, whenHenrietta suddenly whispered, “Oh, Thomas, how horrid you look!”and pulled me out by the arm.

Remembering Mr. Click’s words, I was confused when I retorted,“What do you mean by horrid?”

“Oh gracious!  Why, you looked,” said Henrietta,“as if you would have his blood.”

I was going to answer, “So I would, for twopence—fromhis nose,” when I checked myself and remained silent.

We returned home in silence.  Every step of the way, the softersentiments that had flowed, ebbed twenty mile an hour.  Adaptingmy conduct to the ebbing, as I had done to the flowing, I let my armdrop limp, so as she could scarcely keep hold of it, and I wished hersuch a cold good-night at parting, that I keep within the bounds oftruth when I characterise it as a Rasper.

In the course of the next day I received the following document:

“Henrietta informs Thomas that my eyes are opento you.  I must ever wish you well, but walking and us is separatedby an unfarmable abyss.  One so malignant to superiority—Ohthat look at him!—can never never conduct

HENRIETTA

P.S.—To the altar.”

Yielding to the easiness of my disposition, I went to bed for a week,after receiving this letter.  During the whole of such time, Londonwas bereft of the usual fruits of my labour.  When I resumed it,I found that Henrietta was married to the artist of Piccadilly.

Did I say to the artist?  What fell words were those, expressiveof what a galling hollowness, of what a bitter mockery!  I—I—I—amthe artist.  I was the real artist of Piccadilly, I was the realartist of the Waterloo Road, I am the only artist of all those pavement-subjectswhich daily and nightly arouse your admiration.  I do ’em,and I let ’em out.  The man you behold with the papers ofchalks and the rubbers, touching up the down-strokes of the writingand shading off the salmon, the man you give the credit to, the manyou give the money to, hires—yes! and I live to tell it!—hiresthose works of art of me, and brings nothing to ’em but the candles.

Such is genius in a commercial country.  I am not up to theshivering, I am not up to the liveliness, I am not up to the wanting-employment-in-an-officemove; I am only up to originating and executing the work.  In consequenceof which you never see me; you think you see me when you see somebodyelse, and that somebody else is a mere Commercial character.  Theone seen by self and Mr. Click in the Waterloo Road can only write asingle word, and that I taught him, and it’s MULTIPLICATION—whichyou may see him execute upside down, because he can’t do it thenatural way.  The one seen by self and Henrietta by the Green Parkrailings can just smear into existence the two ends of a rainbow, withhis cuff and a rubber—if very hard put upon making a show—buthe could no more come the arch of the rainbow, to save his life, thanhe could come the moonlight, fish, volcano, shipwreck, mutton, hermit,or any of my most celebrated effects.

To conclude as I began: if there’s a blighted public charactergoing, I am the party.  And often as you have seen, do see, andwill see, my Works, it’s fifty thousand to one if you’llever see me, unless, when the candles are burnt down and the Commercialcharacter is gone, you should happen to notice a neglected young manperseveringly rubbing out the last traces of the pictures, so that nobodycan renew the same.  That’s me.

CHAPTER IV—HIS WONDERFUL END

It will have been, ere now, perceived that I sold the foregoing writings. From the fact of their being printed in these pages, the inference will,ere now, have been drawn by the reader (may I add, the gentle reader?)that I sold them to One who never yet—{ 2}

Having parted with the writings on most satisfactory terms,—for,in opening negotiations with the present Journal, was I not placingmyself in the hands of One of whom it may be said, in the words of Another,{ 2,}—resumed my usual functions.  But I too soon discoveredthat peace of mind had fled from a brow which, up to that time, Timehad merely took the hair off, leaving an unruffled expanse within.

It were superfluous to veil it,—the brow to which I alludeis my own.

Yes, over that brow uneasiness gathered like the sable wing of thefabled bird, as—as no doubt will be easily identified by all right-mindedindividuals.  If not, I am unable, on the spur of the moment, toenter into particulars of him.  The reflection that the writingsmust now inevitably get into print, and that He might yet live and meetwith them, sat like the Hag of Night upon my jaded form.  The elasticityof my spirits departed.  Fruitless was the Bottle, whether Wineor Medicine.  I had recourse to both, and the effect of both uponmy system was witheringly lowering.

In this state of depression, into which I subsided when I first beganto revolve what could I ever say if He—the unknown—was toappear in the Coffee-room and demand reparation, I one forenoon in thislast November received a turn that appeared to be given me by the fingerof Fate and Conscience, hand in hand.  I was alone in the Coffee-room,and had just poked the fire into a blaze, and was standing with my backto it, trying whether heat would penetrate with soothing influence tothe Voice within, when a young man in a cap, of an intelligent countenance,though requiring his hair cut, stood before me.

“Mr. Christopher, the Head Waiter?”

“The same.”

The young man shook his hair out of his vision,—which it impeded,—toa packet from his breast, and handing it over to me, said, with hiseye (or did I dream?) fixed with a lambent meaning on me, “THEPROOFS.”

Although I smelt my coat-tails singeing at the fire, I had not thepower to withdraw them.  The young man put the packet in my falteringgrasp, and repeated,—let me do him the justice to add, with civility:

“THE PROOFS.  A. Y. R.”

With those words he departed.

A. Y. R.?  And You Remember.  Was that his meaning? At Your Risk.  Were the letters short for thatreminder? Anticipate Your Retribution.  Did they stand for thatwarning? Out-dacious Youth Repent?  But no; for that, a O was happily wanting,and the vowel here was a A.

I opened the packet, and found that its contents were the foregoingwritings printed just as the reader (may I add the discerning reader?)peruses them.  In vain was the reassuring whisper,—A.Y.R.,All the Year Round,—it could not cancel the Proofs.  Tooappropriate name.  The Proofs of my having sold the Writings.

My wretchedness daily increased.  I had not thought of the riskI ran, and the defying publicity I put my head into, until all was done,and all was in print.  Give up the money to be off the bargainand prevent the publication, I could not.  My family was down inthe world, Christmas was coming on, a brother in the hospital and asister in the rheumatics could not be entirely neglected.  Andit was not only ins in the family that had told on the resources ofone unaided Waitering; outs were not wanting.  A brother out ofa situation, and another brother out of money to meet an acceptance,and another brother out of his mind, and another brother out at NewYork (not the same, though it might appear so), had really and trulybrought me to a stand till I could turn myself round.  I got worseand worse in my meditations, constantly reflecting “The Proofs,”and reflecting that when Christmas drew nearer, and the Proofs werepublished, there could be no safety from hour to hour but that He mightconfront me in the Coffee-room, and in the face of day and his countrydemand his rights.

The impressive and unlooked-for catastrophe towards which I dimlypointed the reader (shall I add, the highly intellectual reader?) inmy first remarks now rapidly approaches.

It was November still, but the last echoes of the Guy Foxes had longceased to reverberate.  We was slack,—several joints underour average mark, and wine, of course, proportionate.  So slackhad we become at last, that Beds Nos. 26, 27, 28, and 31, having tooktheir six o’clock dinners, and dozed over their respective pints,had drove away in their respective Hansoms for their respective NightMail-trains and left us empty.

I had took the evening paper to No. 6 table,—which is warmand most to be preferred,—and, lost in the all-absorbing topicsof the day, had dropped into a slumber.  I was recalled to consciousnessby the well-known intimation, “Waiter!” and replying, “Sir!”found a gentleman standing at No. 4 table.  The reader (shall Iadd, the observant reader?) will please to notice the locality of thegentleman,—at No. 4 table.

He had one of the newfangled uncollapsable bags in his hand (whichI am against, for I don’t see why you shouldn’t collapse,while you are about it, as your fathers collapsed before you), and hesaid:

“I want to dine, waiter.  I shall sleep here to-night.”

“Very good, sir.  What will you take for dinner, sir?”

“Soup, bit of codfish, oyster sauce, and the joint.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I rang the chambermaid’s bell; and Mrs. Pratchett marched in,according to custom, demurely carrying a lighted flat candle beforeher, as if she was one of a long public procession, all the other membersof which was invisible.

In the meanwhile the gentleman had gone up to the mantelpiece, rightin front of the fire, and had laid his forehead against the mantelpiece(which it is a low one, and brought him into the attitude of leap-frog),and had heaved a tremenjous sigh.  His hair was long and lightish;and when he laid his forehead against the mantelpiece, his hair allfell in a dusty fluff together over his eyes; and when he now turnedround and lifted up his head again, it all fell in a dusty fluff togetherover his ears.  This give him a wild appearance, similar to a blastedheath.

“O!  The chambermaid.  Ah!”  He was turningsomething in his mind.  “To be sure.  Yes.  I won’tgo up-stairs now, if you will take my bag.  It will be enough forthe present to know my number.—Can you give me 24 B?”

(O Conscience, what a Adder art thou!)

Mrs. Pratchett allotted him the room, and took his bag to it. He then went back before the fire, and fell a biting his nails.

“Waiter!” biting between the words, “give me,”bite, “pen and paper; and in five minutes,” bite, “letme have, if you please,” bite, “a”, bite, “Messenger.”

Unmindful of his waning soup, he wrote and sent off six notes beforehe touched his dinner.  Three were City; three West-End. The City letters were to Cornhill, Ludgate-hill, and Farringdon Street. The West-End letters were to Great Marlborough Street, New BurlingtonStreet, and Piccadilly.  Everybody was systematically denied atevery one of the six places, and there was not a vestige of any answer. Our light porter whispered to me, when he came back with that report,“All Booksellers.”

But before then he had cleared off his dinner, and his bottle ofwine.  He now—mark the concurrence with the document formerlygiven in full!—knocked a plate of biscuits off the table withhis agitated elber (but without breakage), and demanded boiling brandy-and-water.

Now fully convinced that it was Himself, I perspired with the utmostfreedom.  When he became flushed with the heated stimulant referredto, he again demanded pen and paper, and passed the succeeding two hoursin producing a manuscript which he put in the fire when completed. He then went up to bed, attended by Mrs. Pratchett.  Mrs. Pratchett(who was aware of my emotions) told me, on coming down, that she hadnoticed his eye rolling into every corner of the passages and staircase,as if in search of his Luggage, and that, looking back as she shut thedoor of 24 B, she perceived him with his coat already thrown off immersinghimself bodily under the bedstead, like a chimley-sweep before the applicationof machinery.

The next day—I forbear the horrors of that night—wasa very foggy day in our part of London, insomuch that it was necessaryto light the Coffee-room gas.  We was still alone, and no feverishwords of mine can do justice to the fitfulness of his appearance ashe sat at No. 4 table, increased by there being something wrong withthe meter.

Having again ordered his dinner, he went out, and was out for thebest part of two hours.  Inquiring on his return whether any ofthe answers had arrived, and receiving an unqualified negative, hisinstant call was for mulligatawny, the cayenne pepper, and orange brandy.

Feeling that the mortal struggle was now at hand, I also felt thatI must be equal to him, and with that view resolved that whatever hetook I would take.  Behind my partition, but keeping my eye onhim over the curtain, I therefore operated on Mulligatawny, CayennePepper, and Orange Brandy.  And at a later period of the day, whenhe again said, “Orange Brandy,” I said so too, in a lowertone, to George, my Second Lieutenant (my First was absent on leave),who acts between me and the bar.

Throughout that awful day he walked about the Coffee-room continually. Often he came close up to my partition, and then his eye rolled within,too evidently in search of any signs of his Luggage.  Half-pastsix came, and I laid his cloth.  He ordered a bottle of old Brown. I likewise ordered a bottle of old Brown.  He drank his. I drank mine (as nearly as my duties would permit) glass for glass againsthis.  He topped with coffee and a small glass.  I topped withcoffee and a small glass.  He dozed.  I dozed.  At last,“Waiter!”—and he ordered his bill.  The momentwas now at hand when we two must be locked in the deadly grapple.

Swift as the arrow from the bow, I had formed my resolution; in otherwords, I had hammered it out between nine and nine.  It was, thatI would be the first to open up the subject with a full acknowledgment,and would offer any gradual settlement within my power.  He paidhis bill (doing what was right by attendance) with his eye rolling abouthim to the last for any tokens of his Luggage.  One only time ourgaze then met, with the lustrous fixedness (I believe I am correct inimputing that character to it?) of the well-known Basilisk.  Thedecisive moment had arrived.

With a tolerable steady hand, though with humility, I laid The Proofsbefore him.

“Gracious Heavens!” he cries out, leaping up, and catchinghold of his hair.  “What’s this?  Print!”

“Sir,” I replied, in a calming voice, and bending forward,“I humbly acknowledge to being the unfortunate cause of it. But I hope, sir, that when you have heard the circumstances explained,and the innocence of my intentions—”

To my amazement, I was stopped short by his catching me in both hisarms, and pressing me to his breast-bone; where I must confess to myface (and particular, nose) having undergone some temporary vexationfrom his wearing his coat buttoned high up, and his buttons being uncommonhard.

“Ha, ha, ha!” he cries, releasing me with a wild laugh,and grasping my hand.  “What is your name, my Benefactor?”

“My name, sir” (I was crumpled, and puzzled to make himout), “is Christopher; and I hope, sir, that, as such, when you’veheard my ex—”

“In print!” he exclaims again, dashing the proofs overand over as if he was bathing in them.—“In print!! O Christopher!  Philanthropist!  Nothing can recompense you,—butwhat sum of money would be acceptable to you?”

I had drawn a step back from him, or I should have suffered fromhis buttons again.

“Sir, I assure you, I have been already well paid, and—”

“No, no, Christopher!  Don’t talk like that! What sum of money would be acceptable to you, Christopher?  Wouldyou find twenty pounds acceptable, Christopher?”

However great my surprise, I naturally found words to say, “Sir,I am not aware that the man was ever yet born without more than theaverage amount of water on the brain as would not find twenty poundsacceptable.  But—extremely obliged to you, sir, I’msure;” for he had tumbled it out of his purse and crammed it inmy hand in two bank-notes; “but I could wish to know, sir, ifnot intruding, how I have merited this liberality?”

“Know then, my Christopher,” he says, “that fromboyhood’s hour I have unremittingly and unavailingly endeavouredto get into print.  Know, Christopher, that all the Booksellersalive—and several dead—have refused to put me into print. Know, Christopher, that I have written unprinted Reams.  But theyshall be read to you, my friend and brother.  You sometimes havea holiday?”

Seeing the great danger I was in, I had the presence of mind to answer,“Never!”  To make it more final, I added, “Never! Not from the cradle to the grave.”

“Well,” says he, thinking no more about that, and chucklingat his proofs again.  “But I am in print!  The firstflight of ambition emanating from my father’s lowly cot is realisedat length!  The golden bow”—he was getting on,—“struckby the magic hand, has emitted a complete and perfect sound!  Whendid this happen, my Christopher?”

“Which happen, sir?”

“This,” he held it out at arms length to admire it,—“thisPer-rint.”

When I had given him my detailed account of it, he grasped me bythe hand again, and said:

“Dear Christopher, it should be gratifying to you to know thatyou are an instrument in the hands of Destiny.  Because you are.”

A passing Something of a melancholy cast put it into my head to shakeit, and to say, “Perhaps we all are.”

“I don’t mean that,” he answered; “I don’ttake that wide range; I confine myself to the special case.  Observeme well, my Christopher!  Hopeless of getting rid, through anyeffort of my own, of any of the manuscripts among my Luggage,—allof which, send them where I would, were always coming back to me,—itis now some seven years since I left that Luggage here, on the desperatechance, either that the too, too faithful manuscripts would come backto me no more, or that some one less accursed than I might give themto the world.  You follow me, my Christopher?”

“Pretty well, sir.”  I followed him so far as tojudge that he had a weak head, and that the Orange, the Boiling, andOld Brown combined was beginning to tell.  (The Old Brown, beingheady, is best adapted to seasoned cases.)

“Years elapsed, and those compositions slumbered in dust. At length, Destiny, choosing her agent from all mankind, sent You here,Christopher, and lo! the Casket was burst asunder, and the Giant wasfree!”

He made hay of his hair after he said this, and he stood a-tiptoe.

“But,” he reminded himself in a state of excitement,“we must sit up all night, my Christopher.  I must correctthese Proofs for the press.  Fill all the inkstands, and bringme several new pens.”

He smeared himself and he smeared the Proofs, the night through,to that degree that when Sol gave him warning to depart (in a four-wheeler),few could have said which was them, and which was him, and which wasblots.  His last instructions was, that I should instantly runand take his corrections to the office of the present Journal. I did so.  They most likely will not appear in print, for I noticeda message being brought round from Beauford Printing House, while Iwas a throwing this concluding statement on paper, that the ole resourcesof that establishment was unable to make out what they meant. Upon which a certain gentleman in company, as I will not more particularlyname,—but of whom it will be sufficient to remark, standing onthe broad basis of a wave-girt isle, that whether we regard him in thelight of,—{ 3}laughed, and put the corrections in the fire.

FOOTNOTES

{ 1}  Its nameand address at length, with other full particulars, all editoriallystruck out.

{ 2}  The remainderof this complimentary sentence editorially struck out.

{ 3}  The remainderof this complimentary parenthesis editorially struck out.

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