CHAPTER VIII.
A NIGHT ADVENTURE.
JOHN walked home to his lodging full of many thoughts. It cannot be unpleasant to anyone to find himself in possession of something unexpected, which can be called even a little fortune. Two hundred a year is not much, but it is a steady backing for a young man, bent, as John was, on making his way as well in money and worldly affairs as in matters of higher meaning. He appreciated the advantage, being full of good sense and practical faculty, and felt his foot the lighter on the pavement, and his spirit the more buoyant for it. Everything bore a very different aspect to him from the day when in his desolate boyhood he had discovered with a pang that he had no right even to what might eventually belong to him, nothing to do with it all, no power to keep the old house in monumental rest and quiet, in memory of its departed inhabitants; which had been his first thought. He was aware now that nothing could have been more foolish than such an idea, and that the despite and despair which filled his bosom at that time were boyish, childish, unworthy. He felt ashamed, now that he was a man in full independence, having surmounted all these miseries, of the petulance, the bitterness, the misery of the boy. He had thought then that his grievances were beyond enduring, that happiness was over for him, that the shadow of the injustice and unkindness with which he had been treated would never pass away from his life. He could not but smile at that fond impression as he walked home with light elastic step, everything so clear round him, his head full of fine undertakings, his heart at ease. A faint sense of shame as of having perhaps been unjust to his mother, only subdued his self-satisfaction. When he recollected the days in which it had been difficult to think of her save as Emily, a flush of self-annoyance, of self-condemnation went over him; and yet it had been natural that he should have that feeling. Now he had, like everybody else, a high respect for his mother. She filled her position with a dignity which elevated it. She was universally respected. He could not but feel that she was a woman worthy of all honour: and he had the satisfaction of knowing that she, who had begun with so much distrust and suspicion, had been forced to respect him. They had mutually achieved each other’s respect, and there was a certain friendliness between them. This was the furthest extent however to which John’s domestic affections had gone. He was fond, very fond of Susie: she was always sweet, always nice, pleasant to talk to, pleasant to look at, ever kind. But who could imagine the matron’s sitting-room to be home? It had never been home, or taken any homelike aspect to the boy; to the man it was the lodging of his nearest relations, just as his rooms, wherever they might be, were his own lodging—nothing more. Home did not exist in his world, save in imagination and memory. He was free of all such ties as he walked on this particular night, which was a night in May, from the one place of residence to the other. His own rooms were better than those with the horse-hair and red and blue covers of his boyhood. They had not even any associations in their favour, from that growing time. They had not been the scene of those evening studies which had made him what he was. They were more comfortable, in a better situation, but absolutely unconnected with anything save the most material side of life.
His life itself was much the same as his lodging. It was full of pleasant activity, and exercise, and employment. He had nothing to disturb him. He had been for some time earning quite enough for his needs, though he was still so young. But he did not feel young, having been upon the world, so to speak, so long, and having lived so much alone. His mind was full of engineering, of calculations, of expedients for carrying his road or his railway over a certain difficult pass, for getting the span of his bridge exact, for taking advantage of the geological formations of the country in which some special piece of work was going on, utilising the clay to make bricks, the wood for sleepers, to save time and the money of the firm. With these thoughts were mingled swift glances at many a problem, passing gleams of insight and understanding, but little that was more interesting; his heart had been quenched in his youth, and all that belonged to it pushed out of place. The process had been a hard one, and he had suffered much while it was going on: but it had been accomplished more than anyone would have thought possible who had known of John Sandford’s youthful life between the two old people who loved him in their old home. He was a man now, and as nearly living by the mind alone, and for the pursuits of the intelligence and reason without any softer intermixture, as any man of his age could be.
Yet, as he went along over the bridge with the fresh air blowing in his face, full of plans and purposes mostly theoretical or material, and with that buoyant consciousness of well-being and well-doing, of merit and the reward of merit in his whole being, little breaks of sentiment came in. Edgeley, which he had not seen so long, the dear, little old house which most likely would seem so shrunken and small, the rectory where he had been so familiar, and Elly—Elly who had kissed him so sedately when he bade her good-bye. A little quiver of silent laughter went over him now at the thought of that simple token of half-childish affection. It was strange to think how Elly would receive him when he went back—not with a kiss, that was certain. Would it be with the same friendship as of old? There had been changes at Edgeley, yet not anything to make a break in the perfection of the picture. Mr. Cattley had lately (and against his will, John felt sure) been promoted to a living; and Percy was coming as curate in his stead. Percy, the curate! that made him laugh within himself once more. He wondered if Percy would be as of old when he was one of the other boys—or if he would think John Sandford, the young engineer, not good enough for the close relations of schoolboy times. John smiled at this, with the smile of conscious worth, not likely to be moved one way or another by what Percy might think. But it would be curious to go back in so different a guise and position to that old familiar scene. He was glad to think of taking Susie for a holiday anywhere, but perhaps if truth were to be told he would rather have taken her anywhere else than there. With home she had no associations. She would interfere, even though she was too gentle, too unassuming, to interfere consciously, with a scene she had nothing to do with, and into which her image had never come. And he dismissed that mild image somewhat summarily from his thoughts. After all, she would be no more than a bystander. The interest of this revival of old associations lay entirely with himself.
He had to pass the office on the way to his rooms. It was in Great George Street, and all was very quiet, not very well lighted by the lamps, silent and vacant, with scarcely a light anywhere in the windows. There was a lamp, however, near Messrs. Barrett’s door, and he saw, for some time before he came up, a figure seated on the steps. What was anyone doing there? With a keen sense of proprietorship in the place, and a determination to have no loiterers about, John went up to the door. As it happened it was not one figure but two, dimly made visible by the lamp, one sitting half-erect propped up against the door, the other bending over him, calling him, shaking him occasionally.
‘Come along, can’t ye: take my arm, you’ll soon get your legs again. Get up, don’t ye ’ear me? This ain’t a place to stay.’
‘Let me alone,’ moaned the other, feebly, ‘I can go no further.’
‘Come along,’ cried the first. ‘Hi, mate! Don’t you go off to sleep, it’s dreadful bad for you. Take hold of my arm and come along. They won’t let you stay quiet here.’
John came up in time to hear some murmurings of this talk. He went forward briskly, with distinct determination to secure public order and quiet.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said, in a voice which, though it was peremptory, was too fresh and cheerful to be terrible. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s my mate as is uneasy on his legs,’ explained a man, whose face was not visible, and who did not seem to have much greater command of his legs than his mate; and he added, hastily, ‘It ain’t drink. A man that likes his glass as well as ’ere another is my mate, but it’s strangeness like. He’s’—here he turned round, put his hand before his mouth, and whispered hoarsely, with alcoholic breath—‘he’s out o’——, out o’ quod after fourteen year. Lord bless us, it’s you!’
John, too, started a little as the blear face became visible to him in the wavering light of the lamp, which a brisk air was blowing about. He had nearly made the same exclamation. He stepped back a pace, and said, curtly,
‘Yes, it’s me: you had better move on, you and your mate, before the policeman comes.’
‘Give us a bob,’ said the man, ‘for the sake o’ old times. Lor’, to think I should ha’ seen you so long ago, and al’ays when I was engaged in what ye may call a good work. Give us a bob, sir, for luck, and because what I’m doing is charity. He hasn’t got his legs, poor beggar. He’s dazed like, and a little drop o’ drink’s done for him. He couldn’t get no furder. Thinks he’s got home and a-going to turn in and make himself comfortable; that’s what he thinks.’
And there was a harsh laugh. Of all places to be taken for home, where a man might make himself comfortable, the steps leading up to that securely-closed door, to the empty and dark house in which there was nothing but business, no human habitation, not even the possible succour of a poor housekeeper—was about the most terrible and extraordinary. John looked at the almost unconscious figure of the man leaning up against the door, gaming a certain support from the recess it formed and the corner of the woodwork, with a pity in which there was a sort of derision, too. Could any wretchedness and friendlessness be greater than that which sought refuge in the doorway of an empty, black, and echoing office? The poorest cottage would have represented something more human.
‘Look here,’ said John, ‘you know as well as I do that he can’t stop here. Can’t you get him away? Don’t you live somewhere where you can take him—if—if he’s a friend of yours?’
‘No, I don’t live nowhere,’ said the man. ‘The likes of me don’t live more one place nor another. We likes change we do: but give me a bob and I’ll soon get him a lodging. I don’t say it’ll be so easy getting him there, for he ain’t used to the streets, and he’s dazed like, and a little drop of drink, a matter of nothing, a thimbleful’s done for him. Young chap,’ added the man, sinking his voice, ‘that man was born a gentleman, talks like you do when he’s hisself, and knows a lot. But when a man once goes over the traces that don’t do nothing for him, not a bit. Young ’un, you mind what I say.’
There was a tipsy gravity about this admonition which, blended with the pity and the horror, took away all inclination to laugh, although the situation was miserably ludicrous too.
‘This is the third time I’ve seen you,’ said John. ‘Last time you were working at a foundry.’
‘For a little bit,’ said the man, ‘but I’m not one to settle nowhere, that’s the truth. You see I never had no start to speak of, not like him there. I’ve al’ays been about the streets. It don’t make much difference in the end, if once you take to them sort of ways. See, there’s the p’liceman coming on, marching as if he was a whole regiment. Hi, mate! Wake up, there’s a good fellow. Wake up, I tell you. Ye can’t go to sleep on a doorstep. Hi, mate! I say.’
‘What’s the matter, sir?’ said the policeman, coming up; and at the same time a cab, driving along without a fare, drew up to see if anything which might produce a shilling or an excitement was going on in this dark corner. The policeman threw the light of his lantern upon the face of the man who, half asleep, half stupefied, leaned up against the corner of the door. Notwithstanding the dazed condition in which the unfortunate man was, the face was not in the least like that of his miserable companion or his kind. It was clear-cut in features and mild in expression, a sort of humorous smile about the mouth, the air as of a man taking his ease in the attitude with which he leaned back upon the hard support of the door. White eyelids, which seemed to conceal large and somewhat prominent eyes, with very light eyelashes, showed the extremely fair complexion, which exposure had browned and reddened in the lower part of his face. He was dressed in decent clothes of an old-fashioned cut. Altogether, he was much more like the victim than the mate of the hoarse ruffian, who kept bawling in his ears, and from time to time shaking him roughly by the arm.
‘I can’t tell you,’ said John; ‘I found the two on the steps of the office to which I belong. I can’t have them here. What can be done? The other man looks—respectable, don’t you think?’
‘I say, clear out of there,’ said the policeman, whose inspection of John’s first acquaintance had not been satisfactory. ‘Let’s have a look at the gentleman. Well, he’s had too much to drink, sir, so far as I can see. He is not one as I’ve ever seen about. He is a bit queer to look at. Them clothes is droll, to say the least, but decent enough so far as I can see.’
He was guarded, as became an official and representative of the law.
‘They’re fourteen years old,’ said the other man, ‘and that makes a difference in clo’es an’ most other things. He’s put them on to-day for the first time for fourteen year. Look at ’im. He’s come out o’ quod, poor beggar, and did not know nobody, and happened on me. I knew ’im onst, it don’t matter where. I’ve been taking him about for old acquaintance sake. And he’s dazed like, and no command over his legs, and a little drop o’ drink done for him. I call him my mate, along o’ this that we’ve been together in the same place. But he’s a born gentleman, as ye’d see if once you heard him talk: only not being used to it—a little drop of drink——’
‘You’ve been and hocussed him,’ said the policeman, with a sudden grasp of the man’s arm.
‘No, by—— No,—— my soul, if I ever——’ said the fellow, pouring out a flood of ready oaths.
The hoarse profanity, the entreaties and remonstrance of the rude voice, which made a clamour in the air of the night, roused the slumberer in the doorway to a state of half consciousness. He raised himself a little, and blinking at the light of the lantern with large, mild, light-coloured eyes, which were humorous and genial even in their stupefied condition, began to address the group around him with a smile.
‘It’s only—Joe,’ he said; ‘there’s not much harm in—Joe. He’s a—a—confirmed offender and all that. Never could get a—ticket; but he’s faithful, faithful—not bad company—on the whole. I take Joe—under my protection. I’ve a little money. Let him have—a comfortable bed—like mine,’ he added, falling back again with a smile full of good humour, yet not without a touch of ridicule in it, which seemed more conscious than the speaker was, and which touched the little group around with a curious mixture of feeling, subduing the tone even of the policeman, who looked at John with a bewildered air.
‘I could take him to the station, sir,’ he said, paying no attention to the exclamations of Joe, who evidently felt himself entirely rehabilitated and restored to the good opinions of his fellows by this strange statement: ‘he’d be safe enough there.’
‘It seems a pity,’ said John.
‘It do seem a pity,’ agreed the guardian of the night. ‘He don’t look a bad sort, though he’s been in trouble.’
Those who have been ‘in trouble’ come more natural to policemen than to those more prejudiced members of society who have no connection with the criminal classes. They stood round, looking at the unconscious, slumbering face supported against the blackness of the door, and lighted up still with the lingering remains of that conscious, self-ridiculing smile.
Now John’s old lodgings which he had abandoned, as he rose in the world, were near, and he felt a great melting of the heart over this man, whose face was so full of better things, yet who in all the world seemed to have only the wretched vagrant Joe, hoarse and ragged and miserable, to stand his friend. He was somewhat apt to act upon impulse, though his impulses were seldom of this reckless kind.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘a house where he might have a lodging: but how to get him there—for it does not seem possible to rouse him.’
‘Here you are, sir,’ cried the cabman from behind, who was almost as hoarse as Joe. ‘I’ll take the gentl’man. If the bobby will lend us a hand to get him into the cab——’
‘Lor’, I’ll get him on his feet in a moment,’ cried Joe. And presently by the help of John, the policeman affording such assistance as his lantern could supply, the half-smiling, half-sleeping unfortunate was got into the cab and slowly driven away, John following as in a dream. He had responded to Joe’s hoarse entreaty for ‘a bob,’ and he had bestowed another upon the unsoliciting but not unexpectant policeman. He was glad when he shook them all off, and found himself alone again, following the slow movement of the cab, which crept along keeping him within sight. What was this responsibility he was taking upon his shoulders? He laughed to himself after a moment at the curious sense of something new, something of undefined importance to which he was committing himself. What was it, after all, finding a night’s shelter in a decent house for a friendless being who could not concern him after, to whom he was but acting the part of the Samaritan? What more was there to say?