Volume I Part 11 (1/2)

Thus talking to himself, our hero found himself in the neighbourhood of a well-known inn, and a smile from the barmaid-a showy specimen of her cla.s.s-was quite sufficient to induce him to enter. The fair creature, as she said, 'was a little low, and wanted a fellow to talk to.' Wentworth soon rose to the occasion, and when he left the hostelry, it was with a flushed cheek and a jaunty air. Indeed, he was quite mirthful till he reached a little cottage where he had spent many a riotous hour. To his consternation, the blinds were down, and there was an unspeakable air of desolation about the place, as if had come there the grim unbidden visitor whose name is Death. He summoned enough courage to enter, and came out, after a very short stay, looking pale and sad. Death had indeed been there, and taken away the breadwinner of the family, leaving wife and children desolate.

It was late when he reached the rendezvous of his companions, seedy fellows, but very happy, nevertheless, unshaven, with rather big beards and long hair, much given to smoking, and not over-clean in person or linen.

'You're late, young man,' said the eldest of the party, as Wentworth entered, 'and will have to stand gla.s.ses all round.'

'Certainly; but hear my excuse. I promised to be here at eight; it is now ten. I want an S. and B. I have not a rap in my pocket-absolutely cleared out.'

'Too bad! and yesterday was pay-day,' said the chairman. 'Wentworth, you profligate, I am ashamed of you. What an example you set these young people!'

'Shocking, shocking!' was the cry all round.

'Strike, but hear,' said Wentworth. 'You know poor Canning?' naming a comedian popular at the music-halls.

'Yes.'

'Well, he's dead; and there's a wife and five children, and an invalid aunt, without a halfpenny. I happened to come by the cottage as I was coming here, and I never saw a sadder sight. In one room the poor dead body; in another, women in hysterics, children weeping, and a vile harpy of a landlady standing at the door wanting her money. I paid her something to keep her quiet. That's why I'm cleaned out, knowing that you generous youths would give me something for the poor man's wife and family.'

Immediately every hand was put into its owner's pocket, and Wentworth was content with the result, and he prepared to enjoy himself after the fas.h.i.+on of the room, which was well patronized by gentlemen of the press, including the dreariest of shorthand writers and the most elegant of penny-a-liners. As one went out to deliver his copy another came in who had done so. The climax was reached when there came a gang of Parliamentary reporters from the Gallery with the news of a great division, a Ministerial defeat and a Parliamentary crisis, who seemed inclined to sit up late talking shop. Most of them had a cheerful gla.s.s, and when that is indulged in, it is astonis.h.i.+ng how witty a man becomes, and what a cause of wit in other men. A good deal of profane language was used, and now and then a little Latin or a sc.r.a.p of Greek. The atmosphere was as critical as it was clouded with tobacco. Wentworth took part in many a war of words, and

'Drank delight of battle with his peers.'

The sleepy waiter, reinforced by the sleepy landlord, had hard work to clear the room, which, however, was not done till the milkman might be heard going his early rounds, and the great world of London was preparing for the business of the day.

No wonder Wentworth rather liked that sort of life. It had for him the charm of novelty. At any rate, he breathed a freer air than he had ever done before. He could say what he meant. He had lived where that was impossible. There was little free speech or thought in pious circles, either Dissenting or Church, fifty years ago. Happily, the present generation lives and moves in a freer day, when a man is not sent to Coventry on account of honest doubt. The one drawback he felt was that he was rus.h.i.+ng to the other extreme.

When Johnson was about to write the life of Akenside, he asked Hannah More, as a friend of Sir James Stonehouse, Akenside's contemporary at the now far-famed borough of Northampton, if she could supply him with any information concerning him. On which she tells us she made an effort to recollect some sayings she had heard reported. This did not suit the Doctor, who impatiently exclaimed:

'Incident, child-incident is what a biographer wants. Did he break his leg?'

The great Doctor was but a superficial critic, after all. As a rule, writers nowadays care little about incident, and in this respect the public resembles them. Given a life of average duration and condition, and we know its inseparable incidents-incidents which are the general property and experience of the human family. In our day we like better to learn what is the hidden life-to see the springs and sources of action in the individual or the community at large-what are the seeds sown in the human heart, and what the fruit they bear. Nature works slowly and in order, and miracles are, if not impossible, at any rate rare. One can quite realize the feeling of the celebrated Rammohun Roy, when he contended that miracles were not the part of the Christian dispensation best adapted to the conversion of sceptics. Be that as it may, there was nothing of the miraculous in finding the ardent preacher of the Gospel now in the camp of the scorner. That was the result of causes long working unsuspected. He had been disgusted with the narrowness of the Church and people with whom he had come in contact. The G.o.d of his youth seemed to him hard, despotic, unmerciful, and unlovely. He had been bowed down to the earth with a great sorrow. Apparently the change was not for good. Once he was a preacher; now he never darkened church doors. Once he a.s.sociated with the G.o.dly; now he did nothing of the kind. In the language of the sects, now he was a son of perdition.

Of course a woman was at the bottom of it all. It was in Hamburg they met. There was a fas.h.i.+onable English boarding-school in that ancient city, and in the course of his travels Wentworth had spent a winter there. Indeed, it was on account of the beauty of one in particular that he had stopped there wasting his time and getting over head and ears in debt. It was all an accident; going up the old Steinweg, he had seen some of the young ladies of the English school coming down. One of them was Adele, blue-eyed, fresh and fair as the stars on a summer night.

Their eyes met, and Wentworth was over head and ears in love.

In a little while he managed to make the acquaintance of the lady at an evening party, where everyone was ravished with her musical genius. He was introduced to her, and found her English charming. It was evident that immense pains had been taken with her education. He had never met so brilliant a linguist before, French, German, Italian, English-in all she was equally at home. Again, he had met her at a fete without the gates, and had the honour of escorting her home. In a little while he had sent her a letter of which it is needless to describe the contents.

That letter was placed in her guardian's hands, and the result was an interview and a betrothal.

Had our hero been equal to the situation, had he had a proper amount of backbone, had he not been trained to lead an emotional life, had he attained to the true dignity of manhood, he either would have never thought of love of one in every way so much superior, or he would have returned to England at once to fight the battle of life for himself and to fit him for her. Alas! he was weak and intoxicated with love, hardly master of himself. He fell into bad society with men richer than himself, where he learned to drink and live recklessly. Away from her, loving her with the intensest and wildest pa.s.sion, he was utterly miserable. He returned to London, and got a little work to do in the way of reviewing.

In London he was worse off than in Hamburg. His mode of life lent itself easily to the wildest excesses. Had he brought back the lady with him as his wife it would have been otherwise. His was a nature that could not stand alone.

Some of his wealthy friends had married, and at their evening soirees he met men and women-authors, artists, statesmen, men of progress, men and women whose names the world yet gratefully remembers; and then away he would rush off to the lodgings of other friends-dissipated medical students as they were in those far-off days, types of the Bob Sawyer cla.s.s, and with gin-and-water would pa.s.s the night, unless, as was too frequently the case, they plunged into the debaucheries of London by night, when respectability had gone to bed.

Lower and lower did Wentworth fall, and then came the end. The lady discovered how romantic had been her dream, and the dismissed lover staggered under the blow. It is hard to realise what a moral wreck that pitiable wretch had become-how with no real excuse for his drink and dissipation, now almost a necessity of his life, all hope had vanished from his horizon, all faith in G.o.d or man.

For a time he led, as many do, a dual life-decent by day, the reverse by night. London is full of such men now. Fathers and mothers living far away in the quiet country home have no idea what London is by night, or was, for I write of a wild scene of dissipation which no longer exists.

A young man in business is sheltered more or less from the lowest abysses of London life. A young man in a decent home is also guarded to a certain extent. It is the stranger within the gates who, as a rule, falls the more easily to the allurements of vice. He is alone; he needs society. It is not good for man to be alone. If a man cannot have good society, the chances are he will have bad.

The Church at one time made no effort to bring back such lost ones. They drew a hard and fast line. They only admitted the hypocrite or the saint. Wentworth belonged to neither cla.s.s. In reality he had little altered. He left religious society because he could not with an honest conscience conform to its ideas, or speak its language, or adopt its conventionalisms. At one time he believed in it because he had been brought up in it. He had been taught phrases, and he used them without ever thinking of their meaning, and when the meaning did not come he went on using them, believing it would come. 'Preach faith till you have it,'

said an old divine to a young brother, 'and then you will preach it because you have it.' In Wentworth's case the remedy did not answer. He preached because he thought it his duty. He did not preach because he felt it dishonesty to use terms of doubtful meaning utilized in the pulpit in one sense, understood in the pew in another. He had not found light in Little Bethel or Cave Adullam. Was it to be found elsewhere, in the gaiety and dissipation of the world? Well, that was what he wanted to find out for himself. Like most of us, Wentworth was too impatient, and could not wait for the happy surrounding which comes to all true men soon or late. Religious people and he had parted. It seemed to him as if he could do no good, and as if the attempt to do so were harm. He had aimed high and fallen low. To save himself from starvation he did a little literary work, but that was a poor staff on which to lean. He had, as most of us have, daily wants, and, to meet them, required daily cash.