Volume Two – Chapter Two.
Grit in the Wheel
“You are precious quiet, Harry,” said Lionel, as they strolled on till they reached Trafalgar Square, almost without a word having been spoken.
“I was only thinking,” was the reply, and then they walked on again in silence; for Harry Clayton was indeed thinking, deeply too, of his position. There was a vague sense of danger, of disappointment, troubling him. One moment he felt ready to hurry back to the wretched street, and beg Patty to grant him an interview; the next he shrank from it, and asked himself how he could expect her, if she had any proper sense of pride, to listen to him again. Now, too, came a growing feeling of dislike to Lionel. He told himself that life with him would now be insupportable, and he fell to wondering again what the young man had seen. Would he jeer and banter him, and torture him by endeavouring to excite jealousy? However, he felt that he must let matters take their course.
How his thoughts ran riot, though! From time to time the busy traffic of the London streets faded from before his eyes, for a bright little vision to occupy the place – always a fair young face bent towards a dove, the startled look of confusion, and then the subsequent scene.
It was nothing new that it would come – that face; try as he would to drive it from him, there it was again and again, soft, gentle, and pleasing. He told himself that it was absurd; that he had seen in different society hundreds of sweeter faces, but no one had ever so impressed him before.
“Could she have been acting?” he muttered; “but what a place, and what associations!”
He could not have analysed his thoughts had he tried, for they were strangely mingled, and involuntarily he gazed uneasily from time to time at the careless frank-looking young fellow at his side, apparently now too much occupied with his dog to heed aught beside.
Harry roused himself at last, though, from his reverie as Lionel spoke.
“See you at dinner, I suppose, old fellow?”
“Are you going away? Anywhere in particular?”
“No – no – no!” was the reply. “May perhaps take the dog in the Park for a swim. Change for him, poor fellow!”
Harry hesitated, as if about to speak, and then they parted, taking different directions, but with thoughts centring at the same spot.
Involuntarily Harry glanced over his shoulder, when he had gone about fifty yards, and then he bit his lip with annoyance, for he had turned to encounter the sharp glance of Lionel, who was also looking back.
The young men then walked hastily on, each moody and frowning, and thinking that the possibility of their continuing to be dwellers beneath the same roof was hourly diminishing; for though Harry would gladly have stayed, there seemed to be a rock springing up between them, momentarily dividing more and more their course; and Harry began now to recapitulate the past, and to recollect that Lionel had during the last fortnight been growing more impatient of the slight control placed upon him.
“I shall be answerable to the father for the escapades of the son,” muttered Harry. “He trusts me, and I cannot shut my eyes to all the follies I shall be called upon to witness.”
He bit his lip again here, and asked himself if he were not becoming a hypocrite, and drawing too largely upon the future?
“We shall have to part,” he said, half aloud. “I can’t help it – we shall never get on together now. What a fool! what a weak idiot I am growing!” he exclaimed. “It will take very little to bring about a rupture now. Well, the sooner perhaps the better!” he added, moodily; and then he walked on and on, with the threatening rupture nearer at hand than he thought for, as, in spite of himself, he made his way back to Brownjohn Street, eliciting from D. Wragg the words uttered at the end of a previous chapter —
“It’s one of them swells as come about the dorg!”
D. Wragg accompanied his words with a great deal of pantomimic gesture, as he stood smiling at the two girls, heedless of the fact that Patty was shrinking from the encounter.
“It is not to see me – I cannot see anybody!” she stammered, crimsoning the while. And then a few hurried questions were put by Janet, and replied to by D. Wragg, the result being that hand-in-hand the young girls entered the little back-room, – Patty’s face flushing a still deeper crimson upon finding that Harry Clayton was already there, and standing with his back to the window.
“I was so completely taken by surprise,” exclaimed Harry, eagerly advancing with outstretched hand, “that I hardly knew – ”
He stopped short, for he saw in the manner in which Patty drew back how thoroughly she read his heart. He was ashamed of his past weakness, that would not own her before his friend; and with burning face and beating heart, Patty, ready to burst into tears though she was, held herself aloof. “He would not know her then,” she said to herself; “he should not know her now.” It was all at an end, and the old childish dream must be forgotten altogether.
What Patty would have said, what more Harry Clayton would have whispered in excuse, it is impossible to say; for while Janet scanned first one face and then the other, D. Wragg whispered, from just inside the shop, where he had gone to respond to a summons, “Here’s your friend come back. I ain’t told him as you’re here. Don’t you make no mistake; but shall I ask him in, too?”
For a moment Harry Clayton’s face was troubled, but the next instant he had recovered himself.
“Yes, Mr Wragg,” he said, quietly, “ask him to come in,” and the rough head of the dealer was drawn back into the shop.
If possible Patty’s flush grew deeper, and lines began to make their appearance in the forehead of Harry Clayton, as he scrutinised the young girl attentively, while a few words were heard in the shop.
Directly after, in a cool, insolent fashion, and with a smile upon his face, Lionel Redgrave sauntered in; but the smile faded on the instant as he saw who stood beside the door. The blood mounted to his boyish temples, and for a while youthful ingenuousness had the full sway.
He soon laughed it off, assuming the cool easy way of the man-about-town, and speaking lightly, he exclaimed —
“Quite a contretemps! I am rather late in the field, it seems. I was not aware that Mr Harry Clayton was turning gay. Not the first saint who has carried the world beneath his sackcloth. Good morning all!”
“Stop,” cried Harry, hastily, and he struggled to speak all he knew, and tell of the previous meeting at Norwood, but his courage failed. “Stop a moment! My visit here was for the purpose of giving advice.”
“Cheap, and always plenty on supply,” sneered Lionel.
” – Of uttering a few words of warning.”
“Exactly; to practise the part of mentor to the young. Rather selfish, though, Harry – rather selfish. Shouldn’t have thought it of you!”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh! nothing – nothing at all,” said Lionel, lightly – “nothing surprising in my coming; but for you to be here! Ah! Harry, I’m afraid the study of the classics is making you light and wild.”
It was now Harry’s turn to look conscious, for his heart seemed to whisper to him that the shafts let fly by his companion were not so badly aimed; and for a few moments he strove vainly for the composure he needed to carry on the wordy warfare with effect.
“Perhaps we had better bring this interview to a close,” he said at last; for, in spite of Lionel’s talk of withdrawing, he still stayed.
Clayton looked round as he spoke, to find Janet’s fierce dark eyes fixed upon him as if they would read his every thought. Then bowing to Patty, he turned as if to leave, hesitating though as he reached the door.
“Oh! I’m ready,” said Lionel, superciliously, as he rightly interpreted the other’s uneasiness. “Good morning, ladies.”
Then closely following Clayton, he once more passed through the shop, followed by the head-shakings of D. Wragg, and encountering the offensive stare of the heavy young man outside, who now followed the friends until they reached the streets traversed by a more respectable class than those who favoured the Decadian.
No words were spoken – the young men walking side by side – the one careless and indifferent, the other anxious and troubled in mind – more so even than he cared to own to himself.
Volume Two – Chapter Three.
Separation
On reaching Lionel’s chambers, a show of cordiality was kept up; but during the walk back, Harry, filled with bitterness, had decided upon his future course – rashly enough, he knew – but he was determined to put an end to what he told himself had been but a mad dream after one who was not worthy of his regard.
The young men lunched, walked out, and dined together, after which, with their coffee and cigars, they sat by the open window, where Lionel, who had evidently been turning something over in his mind – suddenly exclaimed —
“I don’t want to quarrel, Harry; but I have been thinking over that meeting this morning.”
“Hear me first,” exclaimed Harry, almost fiercely. “You spoke in a strangely supercilious way, Lionel – a way that cut severely; and I feel it due to myself and to my position to declare solemnly that my visit to that place this morning was prompted by the purest motives.” He hesitated for a moment, but the feeling of weak pride even now restrained him from telling Lionel who the object of this conversation was. “By a desire for the well-being of one who struck me as – ”
“Oh, yes!” burst in Lionel, “of course. I know what you would say. So was I moved by the purest motives.”
“Listen to me, Lionel,” said Harry, rising. “I am not blind. I am, for all my quiet life, perhaps as worldly wise as yourself. Do not think me so simple as not to see that you have a penchant for that young girl. And now, Lionel Redgrave, I ask you, as a gentleman and a man of honour, to give me your word that you will go there no more.”
“Pooh! rubbish!” exclaimed Lionel, angrily. “Do you think that I am blind – or a child – a little boy with his tutor, to be taken to task for every word and look. Perhaps we are both worldly wise – perhaps not. At any rate, I am going to bind myself by no absurd promises. Perhaps you had better yourself go there no more.”
“I do not intend!” said Harry, quietly.
“Frankly, then,” said Lionel, hotly, “I do. I told you that I should before, and – by Jove, where’s Luff? Why, I’ve not seen him since we came back. He was with me when I entered that shop the second time, I’ll swear, and then all this confounded humbug put him out of my mind. There! you see,” he continued, with a laugh, “I must go there again to enlist the services of Mr D. Wragg. Don’t you make no mistake, Mr Harry Clayton; I’m not going to lose my ‘dorg,’ if I can help it. But there, Harry, old fellow, as I said before, I don’t want to quarrel, and I’m quite out of breath now with this long-winded speechifying; only don’t be such a confounded nuisance.”
Harry Clayton, who was greatly moved, took a turn up and down the room.
“Here, shake hands,” cried Lionel, “and let’s have no more of it. Let’s be off out and see something. Why, stop! here! – where are you going?”
“To my room,” said Harry, speaking very slowly and seriously, as he took the hand held out to him.
“What for?” said Lionel.
“To write to your father!”
“Ha – ha – ha! Ha – ha – ha!” laughed Lionel, half angrily dashing away his companion’s hand, half with contempt. “Are you going to tell him that I have been a naughty boy, and to ask him to come up with a stick?”
“No!” said Harry, quietly, almost sadly, “but to ask him to relieve me of my responsibility;” and then he left the room.
“A confounded prig!” cried Lionel; “he grows insufferable.” Then throwing his half-smoked cigar from the window in his impatience, the lighted fragment struck a heavy-faced man who was leaning against a lamp-post, and staring up at the window of the well-lighted room.
The man dashed his hand to his face, growled, muttered, shook his fist at the window, and then stooped, picked up the piece of cigar, knocked away the few remaining sparks, and deposited it in his pocket, when he gave another glance upwards as he said, audibly —
“Look out, my fine fellow! – look out!”
Lionel lit a fresh cigar and strolled up and down the room for a few moments. “Coming to a nice pass,” he muttered. “Just as if one couldn’t indulge in a little piece of innocent flirtation without being taken to task like that!”
“No, Master Harry!” he said, after another turn or two. “I’m not blind either, saint as you look – St Anthony if you like. She really is uncommonly pretty, though. I liked that dove-scene, too; natural evidently – but she can’t be that old rag-and-famish dog-stealer’s daughter. The idea of Harry flying out like that! The beggar was jealous, I’ll swear. Well, let him go if he can’t act like a man of the world.”
Harry Clayton did not mutter as he went to his room, but thoughts of a troublous nature came quickly. It was only by an effort that he composed himself to write a calm cool letter to Sir Richard Redgrave, stating nothing relative to what had passed, but merely asking him to make fresh arrangements respecting his son, if he still wished him to have the counterpoise of a quiet companion, since it was the writer’s wish to return immediately to Cambridge.
“Like giving up the fight – a complete coward!” said Harry, as he read over his note, and then he sighed and closed it up so that he might not falter in his determination. Then he sat by the window thinking, but not as had been his wont, for strange thoughts would intrude themselves in spite of each angry repulse; and when at last he retired, it was not to rest, but to lie tossing in a fevered manner, fighting with fancies which he could not control.
The rising sun, as it gilded chimney and house-top, found Harry pale and wakeful as he had been through the night, and he rose to sit by the open window, gazing out upon the quiet streets, clear now and bright in the early morning, and with hardly a wayfarer to be seen; but even the calmness of the only quiet hour in London streets failed to bring the peace he sought.
In due course came a letter from Sir Richard Redgrave, expressing sorrow that Harry should so soon be obliged to return to the University, but wishing him all success in his studies, ending with a hope that the writer would see him high up in the honour-list, and hinting how gratifying it would have been could he have inoculated Lionel with a little of his application.
That same morning Harry had a hard fight with self.
“I’ve done all I could,” he exclaimed; “I’ll go back and forget.”
An hour after he was with Lionel, who could hardly at the last bring himself to believe that Harry was in earnest; but the affair was serious enough he found, as he accompanied his friend to the Shoreditch Station, staying upon the platform till Harry had taken his seat, and then, with rather a formal hand-shake, the young men parted.
They were not to separate, though, without Lionel sending a sharp pang through Harry’s breast, as he said, mockingly —
“Any message for Decadia?”
Harry Clayton’s reply was a cold, bitterly reproachful look; but as the train glided out into the open air, he threw himself back, smiling sadly as he gazed with a newly-awakened interest at the dense and wretched neighbourhood on either hand, with its thronging population, and roofs devoted often to the keeping of birds, many of which were also hung from miserable poverty-stricken windows, whose broken panes were patched with paper or stuffed with rags.
On went the train, momentarily gathering speed, till, as he saw one iridescent pigeon alight cooing upon a brick parapet, Harry Clayton’s brow wrinkled, and he compressed his lips as if with pain.
An instant and the train had glided by, and the pigeon was lost to view; and as he mused upon the troubles of the past, his broken home at Norwood, and his determination to leave London for a time, the young man whispered to himself softly —
“It’s a dream – a dream of folly and weakness, and it was time that I was rudely awakened.”
Volume Two – Chapter Four.
Jared’s Home
“Well, Mr Ruggles, and how is little Pine?” said Mrs Jared, entering the room in Duplex Street, where industrious Tim was busily at work.
“Don’t know what to say, ma’am,” said Tim; “but somehow I fancy she’s better since I changed her oil. This one seems to agree with her different to what the last one did. Oils varies a deal.”
“No doubt,” said Mrs Jared, smiling; “but I should have more faith in keeping her well wrapped up and out of the night air.”
“I do keep her out of it, ma’am,” said Tim, talking away, but busy still over his work. “I take all the care I can of her; but what we want is warm weather to bring her round. Summer weather’s what we want; and there’s such a very little of it yet. It’s like everything else in London, ma’am – terribly adulterated. The oil’s adulterated, the milk’s adulterated, bread’s adulterated; everything is, ma’am, more or less, that we poor people buy; and I know we pay ten per cent, more for our things, ma’am, than the rich do; while, because things ain’t bad enough for us, we get our fresh air stale and fouled with blacks. As for our summer, what we get of it, that’s all adulterated with cold biting easterly winds. Summers seem to me, ma’am, to get shorter every year; but, for all that, I shall be glad when the summer does come.” And then, to give emphasis to his remarks, Tim brought his iron down thump upon the floor where he was seated.
Then there was a busy pause, during which time Jared was inspecting the lungs of a concertina, and, by means of his glue-pot, affixing soft patches of leather inside where failing spots were visible, Mrs Jared dividing her time between helping Patty over some garment and nursing the youngest Pellet, who sat watching Janet, staying with them for the evening.
“Strange thing this – terribly strange thing this about our poor-box, isn’t it?” said Jared. “Seems that there’s no mistake about it; but that it has been robbed again and again. Mrs Ruggles told you, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir, yes,” said Tim; “quite startled me, it did. But there! Lord bless you, sir, there’s people in this great London of ours would rob themselves, let alone other people, or church, or poor-boxes.”
“Ah!” said Jared, “it is startling. Mr Timson’s been talking to me about it. Sovereign of the vicar’s one time, half-a-crown another, crown-piece another. No doubt about it, for it seems Mr Gray’s been trying experiments.”
“Experiments!” said Mrs Jared.
“Yes; setting traps to find out the offender.”
“But, surely, it must be a mistake,” said Patty. “No one would be so wicked as to rob a church.”
“Well, I don’t know, my dear; money’s money,” said Jared; “and your Uncle Richard says it’s everything. There are plenty of people who value money more than religion.”
Jared was silent for business reasons now, since he was holding a piece of leather in his mouth, his hands being occupied by the concertina-bellows and glue-brush.
“You’re about right, sir,” put in Tim, who was busy over a shrinking operation upon one of Jared’s waistcoats, a proceeding which left room for the elision of the worn parts, so that it might fit a small person. “No idea, I s’pose, of who it could be, sir?”
“Not the slightest,” replied Jared, after placing his piece of leather in situ, and then preparing, with his scissors, a scrap for another part. “Glad if I had, for the rascal deserves to be punished. A man who would rob the poor, would rob – would – would do anything. Stir the fire under the glue-pot, Patty, my dear. Puts one in mind of a camp-kettle, don’t it?” he said, as the young girl stirred the glowing coals, and made the flame dance about the little vessel, hung from a hook in the chimney.
The little iron kettle began to sing, and Tim raised his eyes above his spectacles to peer round the room before taking a fresh hold of the garment upon which he was employed.
“Ah!” said Jared, after an interval of silence, “it’s a strange thing about that money. Poor Mr Gray’s in a sad way about it. He named it to me – says it’s so grievous, and that he thinks more of the crime than of the value of the money twenty times over.”