The Three Clerks Part 34

CHAPTER XX

A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES.--EVENING

'Excelsior!' said Charley to himself, as he walked on a few steps towards his lodgings, having left Norman at the door of his club. 'Remember it now--now, to-night.'

Yes--now is the time to remember it, if it is ever to be remembered to any advantage. He went on with stoic resolution to the end of the street, determined to press home and put the last touch to 'Crinoline and Maca.s.sar;' but as he went he thought of his interview with Mr. M'Ruen and of the five sovereigns still in his pocket, and altered his course.

Charley had not been so resolute with the usurer, so determined to get 5 from him on this special day, without a special object in view. His credit was at stake in a more than ordinary manner; he had about a week since borrowed money from the woman who kept the public-house in Norfolk Street, and having borrowed it for a week only, felt that this was a debt of honour which it was inc.u.mbent on him to pay. Therefore, when he had walked the length of one street on his road towards his lodgings, he retraced his steps and made his way back to his old haunts.

The house which he frequented was hardly more like a modern London gin-palace than was that other house in the city which Mr.

M'Ruen honoured with his custom. It was one of those small tranquil shrines of Bacchus in which the G.o.d is wors.h.i.+pped perhaps with as constant a devotion, though with less noisy demonstrations of zeal than in his larger and more public temples. None absolutely of the lower orders were encouraged to come thither for oblivion. It had about it nothing inviting to the general eye. No gas illuminations proclaimed its midnight grandeur. No huge folding doors, one set here and another there, gave ingress and egress to a wretched crowd of poverty-stricken midnight revellers. No reiterated a.s.sertions in gaudy letters, each a foot long, as to the peculiar merits of the old tom or Hodge's cream of the valley, seduced the thirsty traveller. The panelling over the window bore the simple announcement, in modest letters, of the name of the landlady, Mrs. Davis; and the same name appeared with equal modesty on the one gas lamp opposite the door.

Mrs. Davis was a widow, and her customers were chiefly people who knew her and frequented her house regularly. Lawyers' clerks, who were either unmarried, or whose married homes were perhaps not so comfortable as the widow's front parlour; tradesmen, not of the best sort, glad to get away from the noise of their children; young men who had begun the cares of life in ambiguous positions, just on the confines of respectability, and who, finding themselves too weak in flesh to cling on to the round of the ladder above them, were sinking from year to year to lower steps, and depths even below the level of Mrs. Davis's public-house. To these might be added some few of a somewhat higher rank in life, though perhaps of a lower rank of respectability; young men who, like Charley Tudor and his comrades, liked their ease and self-indulgence, and were too indifferent as to the cla.s.s of companions against whom they might rub their shoulders while seeking it.

The 'Cat and Whistle,' for such was the name of Mrs. Davis's establishment, had been a house of call for the young men of the Internal Navigation long before Charley's time. What first gave rise to the connexion it is not now easy to say; but Charley had found it, and had fostered it into a close alliance, which greatly exceeded any amount of intimacy which existed previously to his day.

It must not be presumed that he, in an ordinary way, took his place among the lawyers' clerks, and general run of customers in the front parlour; occasionally he condescended to preside there over the quiet revels, to sing a song for the guests, which was sure to be applauded to the echo, and to engage in a little skirmish of politics with a retired lamp-maker and a silversmith's foreman from the Strand, who always called him 'Sir,' and received what he said with the greatest respect; but, as a rule, he quaffed his Falernian in a little secluded parlour behind the bar, in which sat the widow Davis, auditing her accounts in the morning, and giving out orders in the evening to Norah Geraghty, her barmaid, and to an attendant sylph, who ministered to the front parlour, taking in goes of gin and screws of tobacco, and bringing out the price thereof with praiseworthy punctuality.

Latterly, indeed, Charley had utterly deserted the front parlour; for there had come there a pestilent fellow, highly connected with the Press, as the lamp-maker declared, but employed as an a.s.sistant shorthand-writer somewhere about the Houses of Parliament, according to the silversmith, who greatly interfered with our navvy's authority. He would not at all allow that what Charley said was law, entertained fearfully democratic principles of his own, and was not at all the gentleman. So Charley drew himself up, declined to converse any further on politics with a man who seemed to know more about them than himself, and confined himself exclusively to the inner room.

On arriving at this elysium, on the night in question, he found Mrs. Davis usefully engaged in darning a stocking, while Scatterall sat opposite with a cigar in his mouth, his hat over his nose, and a gla.s.s of gin and water before him.

'I began to think you weren't coming,' said Scatterall, 'and I was getting so deuced dull that I was positively thinking of going home.'

'That's very civil of you, Mr. Scatterall,' said the widow.

'Well, you've been sitting there for the last half-hour without saying a word to me; and it is dull. Looking at a woman mending stockings is dull, ain't it, Charley?'

'That depends,' said Charley, 'partly on whom the woman may be, and partly on whom the man may be. Where's Norah, Mrs. Davis?'

'She's not very well to-night; she has got a headache; there ain't many of them here to-night, so she's lying down.'

'A little seedy, I suppose,' said Scatterall.

Charley felt rather angry with his friend for applying such an epithet to his lady-love; however, he did not resent it, but sitting down, lighted his pipe and sipped his gin and water.

And so they sat for the next quarter of an hour, saying very little to each other. What was the nature of the attraction which induced two such men as Charley Tudor and d.i.c.k Scatterall to give Mrs. Davis the benefit of their society, while she was mending her stockings, it might be difficult to explain. They could have smoked in their own rooms as well, and have drunk gin and water there, if they had any real predilection for that mixture. Mrs.

Davis was neither young nor beautiful, nor more than ordinarily witty. Charley, it is true, had an allurement to entice him thither, but this could not be said of Scatterall, to whom the lovely Norah was never more than decently civil. Had they been desired, in their own paternal halls, to sit and see their mother's housekeeper darn the family stockings, they would, probably, both of them have rebelled, even though the supply of tobacco and gin and water should be gratuitous and unlimited.

It must be presumed that the only charm of the pursuit was in its acknowledged impropriety. They both understood that there was something fast in frequenting Mrs. Davis's inner parlour, something slow in remaining at home; and so they both sat there, and Mrs. Davis went on with her darning-needle, nothing abashed.

'Well, I think I shall go,' said Scatterall, shaking off the last ash from the end of his third cigar.

'Do,' said Charley; 'you should be careful, you know; late hours will hurt your complexion.'

'It's so deuced dull,' said Scatterall.

'Why don't you go into the parlour, and have a chat with the gentlemen?' suggested Mrs. Davis; 'there's Mr. Peppermint there now, lecturing about the war; upon my word he talks very well.'

'He's so deuced low,' said Scatterall.

'He's a b.u.mptious noisy blackguard too,' said Charley; 'he doesn't know how to speak to a gentleman, when he meets one.'

Scatterall gave a great yawn. 'I suppose you're not going, Charley?' said he.

'Oh yes, I am,' said Charley, 'in about two hours.'

'Two hours! well, good night, old fellow, for I'm off. Three cigars, Mrs. Davis, and two goes of gin and water, the last cold.' Then, having made this little commercial communication to the landlady, he gave another yawn, and took himself away. Mrs.

Davis opened her little book, jotted down the items, and then, having folded up her stockings, and put them into a basket, prepared herself for conversation.

But, though Mrs. Davis prepared herself for conversation, she did not immediately commence it. Having something special to say, she probably thought that she might improve her opportunity of saying it by allowing Charley to begin. She got up and pottered about the room, went to a cupboard, and wiped a couple of gla.s.ses, and then out into the bar and arranged the jugs and pots. This done, she returned to the little room, and again sat herself down in her chair.

'Here's your five pounds, Mrs. Davis,' said Charley; 'I wish you knew the trouble I have had to get it for you.'

To give Mrs. Davis her due, this was not the subject on which she was anxious to speak. She would have been at present well inclined that Charley should remain her debtor. 'Indeed, Mr.

Tudor, I am very sorry you should have taken any trouble on such a trifle. If you're short of money, it will do for me just as well in October.'

Charley looked at the sovereigns, and bethought himself how very short of cash he was. Then he thought of the fight he had had to get them, in order that he might pay the money which he had felt so ashamed of having borrowed, and he determined to resist the temptation.

'Did you ever know me flush of cash? You had better take them while you can get them,' and as he pushed them across the table with his stick, he remembered that all he had left was ninepence.

'I don't want the money at present, Mr. Tudor,' said the widow.

'We're such old friends that there ought not to be a word between us about such a trifle--now don't leave yourself bare; take what you want and settle with me at quarter-day.'

'Well, I'll take a sovereign,' said he, 'for to tell you the truth, I have only the ghost of a s.h.i.+lling in my pocket.' And so it was settled; Mrs. Davis reluctantly pocketed four of Mr.

M'Ruen's sovereigns, and Charley kept in his own possession the fifth, as to which he had had so hard a combat in the lobby of the bank.

He then sat silent for a while and smoked, and Mrs. Davis again waited for him to begin the subject on which she wished to speak.

'And what's the matter with Norah all this time?' he said at last.

'What's the matter with her?' repeated Mrs. Davis. 'Well, I think you might know what's the matter with her. You don't suppose she's made of stone, do you?'

Charley saw that he was in for it. It was in vain that Norman's last word was still ringing in his ears. 'Excelsior!' What had he to do with 'Excelsior?' What miserable reptile on G.o.d's earth was more p.r.o.ne to crawl downwards than he had shown himself to be?

And then again a vision floated across his mind's eye of a young sweet angel face with large bright eyes, with soft delicate skin, and all the exquisite charms of gentle birth and gentle nurture.

A single soft touch seemed to press his arm, a touch that he had so often felt, and had never felt without acknowledging to himself that there was something in it almost divine. All this pa.s.sed rapidly through his mind, as he was preparing to answer Mrs. Davis's question touching Norah Geraghty.

'You don't think she's made of stone, do you?' said the widow, repeating her words.

'Indeed I don't think she's made of anything but what's suitable to a very nice young woman,' said Charley.

'A nice young woman! Is that all you can say for her? I call her a very fine girl.' Miss Golightly's friends could not say anything more, even for that young lady. 'I don't know where you'll pick up a handsomer, or a better-conducted one either, for the matter of that.'

'Indeed she is,' said Charley.

'Oh! for the matter of that, no one knows it better than yourself, Mr. Tudor; and she's as well able to keep a man's house over his head as some others that take a deal of pride in themselves.'

'I'm quite sure of it,' said Charley.