Part 16 (1/2)

Three or four days later--the time seemed many years--an attorney came to see me. Not such an attorney as Mr. Probus: a gentleman of open countenance and pleasant manners. He came to tell me that my business was done, and that after certain dues were paid--which were provided for--I could walk out of the prison.

'Sir,' I said, I beg you to convey to Miss Jenny Wilmot, my benefactress, my heartfelt grat.i.tude.'

'I will, Mr. Halliday. I perceive that you know her name. Let me beg you not to wait upon her in person. To be sure, she has left Drury Lane and you do not know her present address. It is enough that she has been able to benefit you, and that you have sent her a becoming message of grat.i.tude. But, Sir, one word of caution. She bids you remember that you have an implacable enemy. Take care, therefore, take care.'

CHAPTER II

How I got a new place

So I was free. For twenty-four hours I was like a boy on the first day of his holidays. I exulted in my liberty: I ran about the meadows and along the Embankment: I got into a boat and rowed up and down the river.

But when the first rapture of freedom was spent I remembered that free or within stone walls, I had still to earn a living. I had but one way: I must find a place in an Orchestra. At the Dog and Duck, where my brother-in-law still led, there was no place for me.

There are, however, a great many taverns with gardens and dancing and singing places and bands of music. I set off to find one where they wanted a fiddle. I went, I believe, the whole round of them--from the Temple of Flora to the White Conduit House, and from Bermondsey Spa to the a.s.sembly Rooms at Hampstead. Had all the world turned fiddler?

Everywhere the same reply--'No vacancy.' Meantime we were living on the bounty of my brother-in-law whose earnings were scanty for his own modest house.

Then I thought of the organ. Of course my place at St. George's Borough was filled up. There are about a hundred churches in London, however: most of them have organs. I tried every one: and always with the same result: the place was filled. I thought of my old trade of fiddling to the sailors. Would you believe it? There was not even a tavern parlour where they wanted a fiddle to make the sailors dance and drink. Had Mr.

Probus been able to keep me out of everything?

Alice did her best to sustain my courage. She preserved a cheerful countenance: she brushed my coat and hat in the morning with a word of encouragement: she welcomed me home when I returned footsore and with an aching heart. Why, even in the far darker time that presently followed she preserved the outward form of cheerfulness and the inner heart of faith.

The weeks pa.s.sed on: my bad luck remained: I could hear of no work, not even temporary work: I began to think that even the Prison where I could at least earn my two or three s.h.i.+llings a day was better than freedom: I began also to think that Mr. Probus must have all the orchestras and music-galleries in his own power, together with all the churches that had organs. My shoes wore out and could not be replaced: my appearance was such as might be expected when for most of the time I had nothing between bread and cheese and beer for breakfast, and bread and cheese and beer for supper. And I think that the miserable figure I presented was often the cause of rejection.

Chance--say Providence--helped me. I was walking, sadly enough, by Charing Cross, one afternoon, being weary, hungry, and dejected, when I heard a voice cry out, 'Will Halliday! Will Halliday! Are you deaf?'

I turned round. It was Madame, my benefactress, my patroness. She was in a hackney coach.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”I TURNED AROUND; IT WAS MADAM.”]

'Come in,' she cried, stopping her driver. 'Come in with me.'

I obeyed, nothing loth.

'Why,' she said looking at me. 'What is the matter? Your cheeks are hollow: your face is pale: your limbs are shaking: worse still--you are shabby. What has happened?'

I could make no reply.

'Your sweet wife--and the lovely boy. They are well?'

When a man has been living for many weeks on insufficient food: when he has been turned away at every application, he may be forgiven if he loses, on small provocation, his self-control. I am not ashamed to say that her kind words and her kind looks were too much for me in my weak condition. I burst into tears.

She laid her hand on my arm, 'Will,' she said, as if she were a sister, 'you shall tell me all--but you shall go home with me and we will talk.'

I observed that the coachman drove up St. Martin's Lane and through a collection of streets which I had never seen before. It was the part called St. Giles's; a place which is a kind of laystall into which are shot every day quant.i.ties of the sc.u.m, dirt, and refuse of this huge and overgrown city. I looked out of the window upon a crowd of faces more villainous than one could conceive possible, stamped with the brand of Cain. They were lying about in the doorways, at the open windows, for it was the month of September and a warm day and on the doorsteps and in the unpaved, unlit, squalid streets. Never did I see so many ragged and naked brats; never did I see so many cripples, so many hunchbacks, so many deformed people: they were of all kinds--bandy-legged, knock-kneed, those whose s.h.i.+ns curve outward like a bow, round-backed, one-eyed, blind, lame.

'They are the beggars,' said my companion. 'Their deformities mean drink: they mean the mothers who drink and drop the babies about.

Beggars and thieves--they are the people of St. Giles's.'