HUXTABLE’S advertisement in the ‘Morning Post’ had brought applications from 130 valets. It brought also a letter from a country clergyman, beseeking another chance for Prosser—ex-burglar, son of a country poacher, a reformed character—lately returned to his father’s humble home in penitence from Portland, after five years of penal servitude. The blameless, colourless remainder had no chance against him. Dwala was delighted. Prosser came—a little pale man, trim and finicking, with shining eyes; nothing of the brutal house-breaker in him; a man of patient, orderly mind, who had gone to Burglary as another man might go to the Bar, because he had ‘influence,’ and no aptitude for any other calling. With his father to back him, he had a connection ready-made among the ‘fences,’ or receivers of stolen goods. He had not thought himself justified in throwing away such chances with a wife and child to keep. He studied the arts of valeting and butlering; entered gentlemen’s houses with a good character from a friendly ‘fence,’ and left them with the jewellery and plate, till he was lagged over a wretched little job in the suburbs, and taken to Portland Bill, where one of his mates—a fraudulent low-church company-promoter—converted him and showed him the wickedness of what he had been doing in all its coarse enormity.
His wife had gone to the bad during his absence, and the little girl had been adopted and cared for by another friendly ‘fence’—an afflicted villain of the name of Hartopp. So much he had heard; but he had not enough the courage of his new innocence to go into that dangerous neighbourhood to find her.
Dwala elicited these facts in cross-examination. He was deeply interested in this new side of life; and we must, perforce, follow him into it, though it has little apparent relevance to the present course of the story.
For Dwala’s political eminence is a ‘set piece’ which took some time in the preparing; and in order to give the stage carpenters time to get through with their work, it is convenient at this point to get done with one or two necessary ‘flats.’ Besides, the social heights to which Fate brought him are giddy places for those who have not strong and accustomed heads, and it is safer to descend now and then and amble in the plain, among the greasy multitude that crawls so irrelevantly below—despicable to the mountaineers, who look down and mark the wind-borne cheers, risking their heroic lives at every step among the precipices, yet asking nothing more of the valley than a distant awe, and a handful of guides and porters, with baskets of meat, well-filled, and topped with bottles of good champagne.
Prosser passed under the trees to Hyde Park Corner, bound on his daily walk. His eyes were bright, and the world swam by as unimportant as a dream; for Prosser, in the respectable seclusion of his room, had taken to drinking—steady drinking day by day, without resistance or remorse. Life, to which he returned from jail with such hungry imagination, had suddenly revealed itself to him in its ugly arid nakedness: his conversion and good resolutions had stripped it of all its meaning; now it was an old worn billiard-table, with no balls or cues to it; cumbering the room, importunately present, grim and terrible in its powers of insistent boredom. To hide from it—to crouch and hide with his head between his hands, against the dirty floor—that was the only resource since he had renounced the game and sent the balls away. He drank and was happy; not actively happy, but deviating this way and that into dreamy vacancy and strong disgust, escaping the awful middle way of boredom. He felt his control going, and he smiled triumphantly at the coming of his hideous mistress. Often he thought of walking into the servants’ hall and boasting of his secret. But the coarse activity of real life dispelled the longing as soon as he neared his audience. He remained trim, upright, and serenely deferent, with shining eyes and pursed dry lips.
At Hyde Park Corner a little crowd was gathered about a musician—an old man, with a leg and a half and a crutch, and a placard ‘BLIND’ on his chest. He had just finished a last shrill bravura on the penny whistle. A respectable wet-eyed girl in black went round with a bag and collected money.
‘Pity the poor blind!’ shouted the musician in a sudden angry imperative.
Prosser wagged his head in a soliloquy of recognition; and gazed giddily at the little girl.
‘Nobody got a penny for the poor blind?’ asked the angry voice.
‘’Ark at ’im,’ said a woman. ‘Why, the gal’s got a nole ’at full!’
‘What girl?’ said the old man sharply.
At that moment the girl dodged through the little crowd and disappeared, bag and all, down Piccadilly.
‘Stop her! stop her!’ cried one or two ineffective voices.
The old man dashed his penny whistle angrily on the ground, buried his face in his hands, turned to the wall, and broke into shoulder-shaking sobs.
‘What, ain’t that your gal?’ asked a compassionate stout man in black, with a worn leather bag, touching him gently on the heaving shoulder—a dentist from the slums, one might guess him at.
‘Small girl in black, was it?’ asked the blind man.
‘Yes, I think so. I didn’t exactly notice.’
‘Sort of orphan-looking girl, very quiet?’
‘Yes, that’s her.’
‘That girl’s a——little blood-sucker!’ said the old man. ‘Wherever I go, there’s that girl comes and collects the coppers kind people mean for me. Leave me alone, all of you! Clear out! I’ve broke my whistle now, and haven’t a copper to get another, let alone a crust of bread these three days.’
‘What a shime!’ commented the crowd. ‘Call ’erself a gal! I’d gal ’er! A reg’lar little Bulgarian, that’s what she is!’
‘Now, then, move on there,’ commanded a big policeman, bearing down on the crowd, confident in his own broad momentum, like a punt among the reeds. ‘What’s all this?’
‘They’ve been robbin’ a pore blind man, that’s what it is,’ said the benevolent dentist; at which the policeman rounded on him sharply with extended, directing arm.
‘Now then, you move on there!’ And the dentist retired submissively in the direction indicated, hovering in safety.
A benevolent, bent old gentleman, lately helped by the porter down the steps of one of the big bow-windowed clubs, came hobbling up on three legs, and stopped and asked questions. The policeman saluted. The little crowd closed round them; the black helmet in the midst leaned this way and that, arbitrating between misfortune and benevolence. Judgment and award were soon achieved; the black helmet heaved and turned about, and the crowd scattered obediently east and west.
‘What a nice old gentleman!’ said one of many voices passing Prosser.
‘Give ’im a sovring, did he?’
‘Don’t you wish you was blind, Miss ’Ankin?’
‘Lot of sov’rings you’d give me!’
‘Gow on!’
‘What did they take ’im up for then?’
‘On’y takin’ ’im over the road, stoopid.’
Prosser stood and watched the old man cross in the constable’s grip; saw him loosed into Grosvenor Place; followed, and watched him as he clumped his way along the blank brick wall, leaning forward from the crutch, grotesquely and terribly, towards his extended arm, which beat the pavement with a stick before him, driving pedestrians to right and left, crying furiously as he went ‘Pity the poor blind!’ and stopping now and then to mumble the sovereign and chuckle to himself.
Near Victoria Station he stopped, and thrashed the kerb. A girl slipped out from somewhere and took his arm; the same girl who had so lately robbed him.
‘That you, Joey?’ said the blind man.
‘What luck, Toppin?’
The old man grinned.
‘Got a plunk, Joey; benevolent gent.’
‘Just take me over to Victoria Street. Wait at the Monico; ain’t safe here.’
Over the road he gave the sovereign into her keeping, and she frisked up a side street. Prosser followed him down Victoria Street, helped him silently over the crossings, and was still dreaming of one like himself, meeting an old friend and lacking the energy to acknowledge him; when the blind man turned suddenly and grabbed him by the arm.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Prosser,’ he faltered.
‘I thought so. You’ve been drinking, you —— fool. Where have you been all this time since you came out?’
‘I ... I’m in service.’
‘Ah?’
‘I’ve turned over a new leaf. Was that my little girl?’
‘That was Joey. Why?’
‘I only wanted to know.’
‘Ah! making conversation, as it were. Yes; you’re gentry now, of course—joined the respectable classes.’ He fumbled Prosser’s coat as he spoke, feeling round the cloth buttons to see if they were sound and fat. ‘One has to talk for talking’s sake when one belongs to the gentry. Well, I’m off. Don’t waste your elegant conversation on me; go back to the Duchess.... Pity the poor blind!’ He was off again, crying hoarsely along the big grey blocks, and Prosser pursuing timidly.
‘Stop, stop, Mr. Hartopp! You didn’t mind my mentioning the little girl?’
‘Pity the poor blind!’
His appeal to the public was launched with an abrupt intonation which implied a final ‘D—— you!’ as plain as words.
‘It’s my little girl after all,’ said Prosser.
‘Don’t talk like a d——d drunken maudlin fool!’ growled the blind man, stopping short again. People looked over their shoulders as they went past, ladies from the Stores drew aside into the road and hurried by, seeing this maimed old man leaning back over his extended crutch, blaspheming at the trim underling who stood so mild and weak behind him.
‘I know your sort! rotten gutless puppies that lose their grit as soon as they get under. Portland; good conduct marks; conversion; piety; ticket-of-leave, and then drink, drink, drink! “Gone into service!” “My little girl!” Ugh! What do you want to do with your “little girl”? Would you like the little pet to “go into service” too? and wear a little muslin pinafore, with pockets in front? Speak up, man, speak up. Don’t stand there like a sodden hog, dreaming over your next big drink while I’m making conversation. Don’t you hear me, you elegant toff?’
Prosser started guiltily.
‘I’d been thinking perhaps my employer would find her a nice home somewhere.’
‘A little cottage in the country somewhere, eh? with geraniums in the window and a little watering pot all her own, eh? And what about me? I’d make a pretty footman if you’d recommend me, and stand on the steps in a salmon-coloured suit and help the gentlefolk in and out of their carriages.’
‘He’d do something for you, I’m sure. He’s a very kind master.’
‘“A very kind master!” Oh, good Lord!... Pity the poor blind!’
‘Mr. Hartopp, Mr. Hartopp!’
The old man stopped again and faced right round.
‘Prosser, if you follow me an inch further I’ll knock out your mucky fuddled brains with my crutch all over the pavement. I swear I will. Go home and soak, you sentimental skunk.’
Prosser stood still for some time watching the angry figure bobbing down the road. Then he turned up by the Turkish Baths and made his way home.
That evening he related the whole of his adventure to Prince Dwala, not even omitting the confession of his own intemperance.
‘So you drink, do you? Drink too much of course, that is.’
‘You’re not angry, sir?’
‘Of course not. Not a bit.... It must be awfully expensive?’
‘I can’t help it, sir. I don’t want to help it. Of course I’ll have to go?’
‘Go where?’
‘Oh, please don’t do that, Prosser. You shall have as much as you need. Don’t have more than you really need. I’m sorry it’s you, of course, because I like you so much. But now you explain it to me, I don’t see how it could have been helped. I’m awfully sorry about it. That’s a very wonderful old man.’
‘Mr. Hartopp? Yes, sir.’
‘Do you think he’d come and live here?’
‘He wouldn’t take service, sir.’
‘No, as a friend, I mean. You see, Prosser, this house is much bigger than I really need. I have to live in it, of course, because I’m so rich; besides, there’s poor Huxtable to think of.’
‘You needn’t pity Mr. Huxtable much, sir.’
‘No, that’s true: I suppose he’s very happy. Do you know anything about Mr. Hartopp’s past life? One isn’t born a “Fence” I suppose?’
‘Oh no, sir, it takes a very intelligent man to be a Fence. Mr. Hartopp’s a very intelligent man, and had a first-class education.’
‘What’s his story, then?’
‘Story, sir? There’s no story as far as I ever heard. Nothing out of the ordinary, sir.’
‘How did he become blind?’
‘Overwork, sir. He was a schoolmaster as a young man down in our part of the country, and overworked his eyes like at his work, sir. That’s how he lost his place. He had a fever, and they took him to the Workhouse Infirmary. It’s that what made him go to the bad, they say, sir; he’d always had a horror of the rates. He often talks of himself as a pauper, as if it was a disgrace like. He’d worked his way up like, sir, and couldn’t stand being mixed up with pauperism. So when they discharged him he came up to London and went to the bad.’
‘Drink, I suppose? It always begins that way, I’m told.’
‘Mr. Hartopp, sir? Oh no, sir, I never knew him drink anything, sir, nor smoke neither. Drink and tobacco he says are ... some funny word, painkillers sort of, to keep the workin’ classes from yellin’ out while they’re bein’ skinned alive. He’s a very funny man, sir, always makin’ jokes. Not but what he’s fond of good livin’ too, sir. When trade was good one time he used to go regular every day and lunch at the Carlton. I only found out by chance; I was that surprised. Up till then I’d always took him for a Socialist.’
‘How did he lose his leg?’
‘His leg, sir? I really don’t remember how that was. It wasn’t very long ago, I know. Blind men often get knocked about like in the traffic.’