Bennett Arnold
A Man from the North
CHAPTER VII
Albert Jenkins was nineteen years of age, and lived with his parents and seven brothers and sisters in Camberwell; his father managed a refreshment bar in Oxford Street. He had been in the employ of Messrs. Curpet and Smythe for seven years, – first as junior office boy, then as senior office boy, and finally as junior shorthand clerk. He was of the average height, with a shallow chest, and thin arms and legs. His feet were very small – he often referred to the fact with frank complacency – and were always encased in well-fitting hand-made boots, brightly polished. The rest of his attire was less remarkable for neatness; but at intervals an ambition to be genteel possessed him, and during these recurrent periods the nice conduct of his fingernails interfered somewhat with official routine. He carried his hat either at the back of his head or tilted almost upon the bridge of his nose. In the streets he generally walked with sedate deliberation, his hands deep in his pockets, his eyes lowered, and an enigmatic smile on his thin lips.
His countenance was of a pale yellow complexion just tinged with red, and he never coloured; his neck was a darker yellow. Upon the whole, his features were regular, except the mouth, which was large, and protruded like a monkey's; the eyes were grey, with a bold regard, which not seldom was excusably mistaken for insolence.
Considering his years, Jenkins was a highly accomplished person, in certain directions. Upon all matters connected with her Majesty's mail and inland revenue, upon cab fares, bus-routes, and local railways, upon "Pitman outlines," and upon chamber practice in Chancery, he was an unquestioned authority. He knew the addresses of several hundred London solicitors, the locality of nearly every street and square within the four-mile radius, and, within the same limits, the approximate distance of any one given spot from any other given spot.
He was the best billiard-player in the office, and had once made a spot-barred break of 49; this game was his sole pastime. He gambled regularly upon horse-races, resorting to a number of bookmakers, but neither winning nor losing to an appreciable extent; no less than three jockeys occasionally permitted him to enjoy their companionship, and he was never without a stable-tip.
His particular hobby, however, was restaurants. He spent half his income upon food, and quite half his waking hours either in deciding what he should consume, or in actual drinking and mastication. He had personally tested the merits of every bar and house of refreshment in the neighbourhood of the Law Courts, from Lockhart's to Gatti's, and would discourse for hours on their respective virtues and defects. No restaurant was too mean for his patronage, and none too splendid; for days in succession he would dine upon a glass of water and a captain biscuit with cheese, in order to accumulate resources for a delicate repast in one of the gilded establishments where the rich are wont to sustain themselves; and he had acquired from his father a quantity of curious lore, throwing light upon the secrets of the refreshment trade, which enabled him to spend the money thus painfully amassed to the best advantage.
Jenkins was a cockney and the descendant of cockneys; he conversed always volubly in the dialect of Camberwell; but just as he was subject to attacks of modishness, so at times he attempted to rid himself of his accent, of course without success. He swore habitually, and used no reticence whatever, except in the presence of his employers and of Mr. Alder the manager. In quick and effective retort he was the peer of cabmen, and nothing could abash him. His favourite subjects of discussion were restaurants, as before mentioned, billiards, the turf, and women, whom he usually described as "tarts." It was his custom to refer to himself as a "devil for girls," and when Mr. Alder playfully accused him of adventures with females of easy virtue, his delight was unbounded.
There were moments when Richard loathed Jenkins, when the gross and ribald atmosphere which attended Jenkins' presence nauseated him, and utter solitude in London seemed preferable to the boy's company; but these passed, and the intimacy throve. Jenkins, indeed, had his graces; he was of an exceedingly generous nature, and his admiration for the deep literary scholarship which he imagined Richard to possess was ingenuous and unconcealed. His own agile wit, his picturesque use of slang, his facility in new oaths, and above all his exact knowledge of the byways, and backwaters of London life, endowed him, in Richard's unaccustomed eyes, with a certain specious attractiveness. Moreover, the fact that they shared the same room and performed similar duties made familiar intercourse between them natural and necessary. With no other member of the staff did Richard care to associate. The articled clerks, though courteously agreeable to everyone, formed an exclusive coterie; and as for the rest, they were either old or dull, or both. He often debated whether he should seek out Mr. Aked, who was now recovered, and had once, unfortunately in Richard's absence, called at the office; but at length he timidly decided that the extent of their acquaintance would not warrant it.
"Where shall we go to lunch to-day?" was almost the first question which Richard and Jenkins asked each other in the morning, and a prolonged discussion would follow. They called the meal "lunch," but it was really their dinner, though neither of them ever admitted the fact.
Jenkins had a predilection for grill-rooms, where raw chops and steaks lay on huge dishes, and each customer chose his own meat and superintended its cooking. A steak, tender and perfectly cooked, with baked potatoes and half a pint of stout, was his ideal repast, and he continually lamented that no restaurant in London offered such cheer at the price of one shilling and threepence, including the waiter. The cheap establishments were never satisfactory, and Jenkins only frequented them when the state of his purse left no alternative. In company with Richard he visited every new eating-house that made its appearance, in the hope of finding the restaurant of his dreams, and though each was a disappointment, yet the search still went on. The place which most nearly coincided with his desires was the "Sceptre," a low, sombre room between the Law Courts and the river, used by well-to-do managing clerks and a sprinkling of junior barristers. Here, lounging luxuriously on red plush seats, and in full sight and hearing of a large silver grill, the two spent many luncheon hours, eating slowly, with gross, sensual enjoyment, and secretly elated by the proximity of men older and more prosperous than themselves, whom they met on equal terms.
Richard once suggested that they should try one of the French restaurants in Soho which Mr. Aked had mentioned.
"Not me!" said Jenkins, in reply. "You don't catch me going to those parley-voo shops again. I went once. They give you a lot of little messes, faked up from yesterday's dirty plates, and after you've eaten half a dozen of 'em you don't feel a bit fuller. Give me a steak and a potato. I like to know what I'm eating."
He had an equal detestation of vegetarian restaurants, but once, during a period of financial depression, he agreed to accompany Richard, who knew the place fairly well, to the "Crabtree" in Charing Cross Road, and though he grumbled roundly at the insubstantiality of the three-course dinner à la carte which could be obtained for sixpence, he made no difficulty, afterwards, about dining there whenever prudence demanded the narrowest economy.
An air of chill and prim discomfort pervaded the Crabtree, and the mingled odour of lentils and sultana pudding filled every corner. The tables were narrow, and the chairs unyielding. The customers were for the most eccentric as to dress and demeanour; they had pale faces, and during their melancholy meals perused volumes obviously instructive, or debated the topics of the day in platitudinous conversations unspiced by a single oath. Young women with whom their personal appearance was a negligible quantity came in large numbers, and either giggled to one another without restraint or sat erect and glared at the males in a manner which cowed even Jenkins. The waitresses lacked understanding, and seemed to resent even the most courteous advances.
One day, just as they were beginning dinner, Jenkins eagerly drew Richard's attention to the girl at the pay-desk. "See that girl?" he said.
"What about her? Is she a new one?"
"Why, she's the tart that old Aked used to be after."
"Was she at that A. B. C. shop in the Strand?" said Richard, who began to remember the girl's features and her reddish brown hair.
"Yes, that's her. Before she was at the A. B. C. she was cashier at that boiled-beef place opposite the Courts, but they say she got the sack for talking to customers too much. She and Aked were very thick then, and he went there every day. I suppose his courting interfered with business."
"But he's old enough to be her father!"
"Yes. He ought to have been ashamed of himself. She's not a bad kind, eh?"
"There wasn't anything between them, really, was there?"
"I don't know. There might have been. He followed her to the A. B. C, and I think he sometimes took her home. Her name's Roberts. We used to have him on about her – rare fun."
The story annoyed Richard, for his short tête-à-tête with Mr. Aked had remained in his mind as a pleasant memory, and though he was aware that the old man had been treated with scant respect by the youngsters in the office, he had acquired the habit of mentally regarding him with admiration, as a representative of literature. This attachment to a restaurant cashier, clearly a person of no refinement or intellect, scarcely fitted with his estimate of the journalist who had spoken to Carlyle.
During the meal he surreptitiously glanced at the girl several times. She was plumper than before, and her cough seemed to be cured. Her face was pleasant, and undoubtedly she had a magnificent coiffure.
When they presented their checks, Jenkins bowed awkwardly, and she smiled. He swore to Richard that next time he would mention Mr. Aked's name to her. The vow was broken. She was willing to exchange civilities, but her manner indicated with sufficient clearness that a line was to be drawn.
In the following week, when Richard happened to be at the Crabtree alone, at a later hour than usual, they had rather a long conversation.
"Is Mr. Aked still at your office?" she asked, looking down at her account books.
Richard told what he knew.
"Oh!" she said, "I often used to see him, and he gave me some lozenges that cured a bad cough I had. Nice old fellow, wasn't he?"
"Yes, I fancy so," Richard assented.
"I thought I'd just ask, as I hadn't seen him about for a long time."
"Good afternoon – Miss Roberts."
"Good afternoon – Mr. – "
"Larch."
They both laughed.
A trivial dispute with Jenkins, a few days later, disclosed the fact that that haunter of bars had a sullen temper, and that his displeasure, once aroused, was slow to disappear. Richard dined alone again at the Crabtree, and after another little conversation with Miss Roberts, having time at his disposal, he called at the public library in St. Martin's Lane. In a half-crown review he saw an article, by a writer of considerable repute, entitled "To Literary Aspirants," which purported to demonstrate that a mastery of the craft of words was only to be attained by a regular course of technical exercises; the nature of these exercises was described in detail. There were references to the unremitting drudgery of Flaubert, de Maupassant, and Stevenson, together with extracts chosen to illustrate the slow passage of the last-named author from inspired incompetence to the serene and perfect proficiency before which all difficulties melted. After an unqualified statement that any man – slowly if without talent, quickly if gifted by nature – might with determined application learn to write finely, the essayist concluded by remarking that never before in the history of literature had young authors been so favourably circumstanced as at that present. Lastly came the maxim, Nulla dies sine linea.
Richard's cooling enthusiasm for letters leaped into flame. He had done no writing whatever for several weeks, but that night saw him desperately at work. He took advantage of the quarrel to sever all save the most formal connection with Jenkins, dined always frugally at the Crabtree, and spent every evening at his lodging. The thought of Alphonse Daudet writing "Les Amoureuses" in a Parisian garret supported him through an entire month of toil, during which, besides assiduously practising the recommended exercises, he wrote a complete short story and began several essays. About this time his "City of Sleep" was returned upon his hands in a condition so filthy and ragged that he was moved to burn it. The short story was offered to an evening daily, and never heard of again.
It occurred to him that possibly he possessed some talent for dramatic criticism, and one Saturday evening he went to the first performance of a play at the St. George's theatre. After waiting for an hour outside, he got a seat in the last row of the pit. Eagerly he watched the critics take their places in the stalls; they chatted languidly, smiling and bowing now and then to acquaintances in the boxes and dress circle; the pit was excited and loquacious, and Richard discovered that nearly everyone round about him made a practice of attending first nights, and had an intimate knowledge of the personnel of the stage. Through the hum of voices the overture to "Rosamund" fitfully reached him. During whole bars the music was lost; then some salient note caught the ear, and the melody became audible again until another wave of conversation engulfed it.
The conclusion of the last act was greeted with frenzied hand-clapping, beating of sticks, and inarticulate cries, while above the general noise was heard the repeated monosyllable "'thor, 'thor." After what seemed an interminable delay the curtain was drawn back at one side and a tall man in evening dress, his face a dead white, stepped before the footlights and bowed several times; the noise rose to a thunderous roar, in which howls and hissing were distinguishable. Richard shook from head to foot, and tears unaccountably came to his eyes.
The whole of Sunday and Monday evening were occupied in writing a detailed analysis and appreciation of the play. On Tuesday morning he bought a weekly paper which devoted special attention to the drama, in order to compare his own view with that of an acknowledged authority, and found that the production was dismissed in ten curt lines as mere amiable drivel.
A few days afterwards Mr. Curpet offered him the position of cashier in the office, at a salary of three pounds a week. His income was exactly doubled, and the disappointments of unsuccessful authorship suddenly ceased to trouble him. He began to doubt the wisdom of making any further attempt towards literature. Was it not clear that his talents lay in the direction of business? Nevertheless a large part of his spare cash was devoted to the purchase of books, chiefly the productions of a few celebrated old continental presses, which he had recently learned to value. He prepared a scheme for educating himself in the classical tongues and in French, and the practice of writing was abandoned to make opportunity for the pursuit of culture. But culture proved to be shy and elusive. He adhered to no regular course of study, and though he read much, his progress towards knowledge was almost imperceptible.
Other distractions presented themselves in the shape of music and painting. He discovered that he was not without critical taste in both these arts, and he became a frequenter of concerts and picture-galleries. He bought a piano on the hire-purchase system, and took lessons thereon. In this and other ways his expenditure swelled till it more than swallowed up the income of three pounds a week which not long before he had regarded as something very like wealth. For many weeks he made no effort to adjust the balance, until his debts approached the sum of twenty pounds, nearly half of which was owing to his landlady. He had to go through more than one humiliating scene before an era of economy set in.
One afternoon he received a telegram to say that William Vernon had died very suddenly. It was signed "Alice Clayton Vernon." Mrs. Vernon was William's stately cousin-in-law, and Richard, to whom she had spoken only once, – soon after Mary's wedding, – regarded her with awe; he disliked her because he found it impossible to be at ease in her imposing presence. As he went into Mr. Curpet's room to ask for leave of absence, his one feeling was annoyance at the prospect of having to meet her again. William's death, to his own astonishment, scarcely affected him at all.
Mr. Curpet readily granted him two days' holiday, and he arranged to go down to Bursley the following night for the funeral.
CHAPTER VIII
Wearied of sitting, Richard folded his overcoat pillow-wise, put it under his head, and extended himself on the polished yellow wood. But in vain were his eyes shut tight. Sleep would not come, though he yawned incessantly. The monstrous beat of the engine, the quick rattle of windows, and the grinding of wheels were fused into a fantastic resonance which occupied every corner of the carriage and invaded his very skull. Then a light tapping on the roof, one of those mysterious sounds which make a compartment in a night-train like a haunted room, momentarily silenced everything else, and he wished that he had not been alone.
Suddenly jumping up, he put away all idea of sleep, and lowered the window. It was pitch dark; vague changing shapes, which might have been either trees or mere fancies of the groping eye, outlined themselves a short distance away; far in front was a dull glare from the engine, and behind twinkled the guard's lamp… In a few seconds he closed the window again, chilled to the bone, though May was nearly at an end.
The thought occurred to him that he was now a solitary upon the face of the earth. It concerned no living person whether he did evil or good. If he chose to seek ruin, to abandon himself to the most ignoble impulses, there was none to restrain, – not even a brother-in-law. For several weeks past, he had been troubled about his future, afraid to face it. Certainly London satisfied him, and the charm of living there had not perceptibly grown less. He rejoiced in London, in its vistas, its shops, its unending crowds, its vastness, its wickedness; each dream dreamed about London in childhood had come true; and surer than ever before was the consciousness that in going to London he had fulfilled his destiny. Yet there was something to lack in himself. His confidence in his own abilities and his own character was being undermined. Nearly a year had gone, and he had made no progress, except at the office. Resolutions were constantly broken; it was three months since he had despatched an article to a newspaper. He had not even followed a definite course of study, and though his acquaintance with modern French fiction had widened, he could boast no exact scholarship even in that piquant field. Evening after evening – ah! those long, lamplit evenings which were to be given to strenuous effort! – was frittered away upon mean banalities, sometimes in the company of some casual acquaintance and sometimes alone. He had by no means grasped the full import and extent of this retrogression; it was merely beginning to disturb his self-complacence, and perhaps, ever so slightly, his sleep. But now, hurrying to the funeral of William Vernon, he lazily laughed at himself for having allowed his peace of mind to be ruffled. Why bother about "getting on"? What did it matter?
He still experienced but little sorrow at the death of Vernon. His affection for the man had strangely faded. During the nine months that he had lived in London they had scarcely written to one another, and Richard regarded the long journey to attend William's obsequies as a tiresome concession to propriety.
That was his real attitude, had he cared to examine it.
At about four o'clock it was quite light, and the risen sun woke Richard from a brief doze. The dew lay in the hollows of the fields but elsewhere there was a soft, fresh clearness which gave to the common incidents of the flying landscape a new and virginal beauty – as though that had been the morn of creation itself. The cattle were stirring, and turned to watch the train as it slipped by.
Richard opened the window again. His mood had changed, and he felt unreasonably joyous. Last night he had been too pessimistic. Life lay yet before him, and time enough to rectify any indiscretions of which he might have been guilty. The future was his, to use as he liked. Magnificent, consoling thought! Moved by some symbolic association of ideas, he put his head out of the window and peered in the direction of the train's motion. A cottage stood alone in the midst of innumerable meadows; as it crossed his vision, the door opened, and a young woman came out with an empty pail swinging in her left hand. Apparently she would be about twenty-seven, plump and sturdy and straight. Her hair was loose about her round, contented face, and with her disengaged hand she rubbed her eyes, still puffed and heavy with sleep. She wore a pink print gown, the bodice of which was unfastened, disclosing a white undergarment and the rich hemispheres of her bosom. In an instant the scene was hidden by a curve of the line, and the interminable succession of fields resumed, but Richard had time to guess from her figure that the woman was the mother of a small family. He pictured her husband still unconscious in the warm bed which she had just left; he even saw the impress of her head on the pillow, and a long nightdress thrown hastily across a chair.
He was deeply and indescribably affected by this suggestion of peaceful married love set in so great a solitude. The woman and her hypothetical husband and children were only peasants, their lives were probably narrow and their intellects dormant, yet they aroused in him a feeling of envy which surged about his brain and for the moment asphyxiated thought…
Later on the train slackened speed as it passed through a shunting-yard. The steam from the light shunting-engine rose with cloud-like delicacy in the clear air, and an occasional short whistle seemed to have something of the quality of a bird's note. The men with their long poles moved blithely among the medley of rails, signalling one another with motions of the arm. The coupling-chains rang with a merry, giant tinkle, and when the engine brought its load of waggons to a standstill, and a smart, metallic bump, bump, bump ran diminuendo from waggon to waggon, one might have fancied that some leviathan game was being played. Richard forgot the girl with the pail, and soon after went to sleep.
At six o'clock the train reached Knype, where he had to change. Two women with several children also alighted, and he noticed how white and fatigued were their faces; the children yawned pitifully. An icy, searching wind blew through the station; the exhilaration of the dawn was gone, and a spirit of utter woe and disaster brooded over everything. For the first time William's death really touched him.
The streets of Bursley were nearly empty as he walked through the town from the railway station, for the industrial population was already at work in the manufactories, and the shops not yet open. Yet Richard avoided the main thoroughfares, choosing a circuitous route lest he might by chance encounter an acquaintance. He foresaw the inevitable banal dialogue: —
"Well, how do you like London?"
"Oh, it's fine!"
"Getting on all right?"
"Yes, thanks."
And then the effort of two secretly bored persons to continue a perfunctory conversation unaided by a single mutual interest.
A carriage was driving away from the Red House just as Richard got within sight of it; he nodded to the venerable coachman, who gravely touched his hat. The owner of the carriage was Mr. Clayton Vernon, William's cousin and an alderman of Bursley, and Richard surmised that Mrs. Clayton Vernon had put herself in charge of the place until the funeral should be over. He trembled at the prospect of a whole day to be spent in the company of these excellent people, whom William had always referred to with a smile, and yet not without a great deal of respect. The Clayton Vernons were the chief buttress of respectability in the town; rich, strictly religious, philanthropic, and above all dignified. Everyone looked up to them instinctively, and had they possessed but one vice between them, they would have been loved.
Mrs. Clayton Vernon herself opened the door. She was a stately woman of advanced middle age, with a suave, imperious manner.
"I left Clayton to have breakfast by himself," she said, as she led Richard into the sitting-room; "I thought you would like someone here to welcome you after your long night journey. Breakfast will be ready almost directly. How tired you must be! Clayton said it was a pity you should come by the night train, but of course it is quite right that you should inconvenience your employers as little as possible, quite right. And we admire you for it. Now will you run upstairs and wash? You've not forgotten the way?.."
The details of the funeral had been settled by Mr. Clayton Vernon, who was the chief mourner, and Richard had nothing to do but fall in with preconcerted plans and answer decorously when spoken to. The arrangement was satisfactory in that it relieved him from duties which would have been irksome, but scarcely gratifying to his pride. He had lived nearly all his life in that house, and had known the dead man perhaps more intimately than anyone else present. However, he found it convenient to efface himself.
In the evening there was an elaborate tea at which were present the Clayton Vernons and the minister who had conducted the funeral service. The minister and the alderman left immediately afterwards to attend a meeting, and when they were gone Mrs. Clayton Vernon said, —
"Now we are all alone, Richard. Go into the drawing-room and I will follow. I do want to have a chat with you."
She came in with needle and thread and scissors.
"If you will take off your coat, I will stitch on that button that is hanging by one thread. I noticed it this morning, and then it went quite out of my mind. I am so sorry!"
"Oh, thanks!" he blushed hotly. "But I can stitch myself, you know – "
"Come, you needn't be shy of an old woman seeing you in your shirt-sleeves. Do as I ask."
He doffed the coat.
"I always like young men to be immaculately neat," she said, cutting off a piece of cotton. "One's personal character is an index to one's character, don't you think? Of course you do. Here, thread the needle for me. I am afraid since your dear sister died you have grown a little careless, eh? She was most particular. Ah, what a mother she was to you!"
"Yes," said Richard.
"I was very grieved to see you go to the funeral in a soft hat – Richard, really I was. It wasn't respectful to your brother-in-law's memory."
"I never thought. You see, I started in rather a hurry." The fact was that he had no silk hat, nor could he easily afford to buy one.
"But you should think, my dear boy. Even Clayton was shocked. Are those your best clothes?"
Richard answered that they were. He sheepishly protested that he never bothered about clothes.
There was a silence, broken by her regular stitching. At last she handed him the coat and helped him to put it on. He went to the old green sofa, and somewhat to his dismay she sat down by his side.
"Richard," she began, in a changed, soft voice, and not without emotion, "do you know we are expecting great things from you?"
"But you shouldn't. I'm a very ordinary sort of person."
"No, no. That you are not. God has given you great talents, and you must use them. Poor William always used to say that you were highly gifted and might do great things."
"Might!"
"Yes – if you tried."
"But how am I gifted? And what 'great things' are expected?" he asked, perhaps angling for further flattering disclosures.
"I cannot answer that," said Mrs. Clayton Vernon; "it is for you to answer. You have given all your friends the impression that you would do something worth doing. You have raised hopes, and you must not disappoint them. We believe in you, Richard. That is all I can say."
"That's all very well; but – " He stopped and played with the seal on his watch-chain. "The fact is, I am working, you know. I want to be an author – at least a journalist."
"Ah!"
"It's a slow business – at first – " Suddenly moved to be confidential, he went on to give her some account, incomplete and judiciously edited, of his life during the past year.
"You have relieved my mind greatly, and Clayton will be so glad. We were beginning to think – "
"Why were you 'beginning to think'?"
"Well, never mind now."
"But why?"
"Never mind. I have full confidence in you, and I am sure you will get on. Poor boy, you have no near connections or relatives now?"
"No, none."
"You must look on Clayton and myself as very near relatives. We have no children, but our hearts are large. I shall expect you to write to me sometimes and to come and stay with us now and then."
