Part 22 (1/2)

'And now,' said Somerset, 'I have bought back my honour with every penny I possess. And I thank G.o.d, though there is nothing before me but starvation, I am free from all entanglement with Mr. Zero Pumpernickel Jones.'

'To starve?' cried Zero. 'Dear fellow, I cannot endure the thought.'

'Take your ticket!' returned Somerset.

'I think you display temper,' said Zero.

'Take your ticket,' reiterated the young man.

'Well,' said the plotter, as he returned, ticket in hand, 'your att.i.tude is so strange and painful, that I scarce know if I should ask you to shake hands.'

'As a man, no,' replied Somerset; 'but I have no objection to shake hands with you, as I might with a pump-well that ran poison or bell-fire.'

'This is a very cold parting,' sighed the dynamiter; and still followed by Somerset, he began to descend the platform. This was now bustling with pa.s.sengers; the train for Liverpool was just about to start, another had but recently arrived; and the double tide made movement difficult.

As the pair reached the neighbourhood of the bookstall, however, they came into an open s.p.a.ce; and here the attention of the plotter was attracted by a _Standard_ broadside bearing the words: 'Second Edition: Explosion in Golden Square.' His eye lighted; groping in his pocket for the necessary coin, he sprang forward-his bag knocked sharply on the corner of the stall-and instantly, with a formidable report, the dynamite exploded. When the smoke cleared away the stall was seen much shattered, and the stall keeper running forth in terror from the ruins; but of the Irish patriot or the Gladstone bag no adequate remains were to be found.

In the first scramble of the alarm, Somerset made good his escape, and came out upon the Euston Road, his head spinning, his body sick with hunger, and his pockets dest.i.tute of coin. Yet as he continued to walk the pavements, he wondered to find in his heart a sort of peaceful exultation, a great content, a sense, as it were, of divine presence and the kindliness of fate; and he was able to tell himself that even if the worst befell, he could now starve with a certain comfort since Zero was expunged.

Late in the afternoon, he found himself at the door of Mr. G.o.dall's shop; and being quite unmanned by his long fast, and scarce considering what he did, he opened the gla.s.s door and entered.

'Ha!' said Mr. G.o.dall, 'Mr. Somerset! Well, have you met with an adventure? Have you the promised story? Sit down, if you please; suffer me to choose you a cigar of my own special brand; and reward me with a narrative in your best style.'

'I must not take a cigar,' said Somerset.

'Indeed!' said Mr. G.o.dall. 'But now I come to look at you more closely, I perceive that you are changed. My poor boy, I hope there is nothing wrong?'

Somerset burst into tears.

_EPILOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN_

On a certain day of las.h.i.+ng rain in the December of last year, and between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, Mr. Edward Challoner pioneered himself under an umbrella to the door of the Cigar Divan in Rupert Street. It was a place he had visited but once before: the memory of what had followed on that visit and the fear of Somerset having prevented his return. Even now, he looked in before he entered; but the shop was free of customers.

The young man behind the counter was so intently writing in a penny version-book, that he paid no heed to Challoner's arrival. On a second glance, it seemed to the latter that he recognised him.

'By Jove,' he thought, 'unquestionably Somerset!'

And though this was the very man he had been so sedulously careful to avoid, his unexplained position at the receipt of custom changed distaste to curiosity.

'”Or opulent rotunda strike the sky,”' said the shopman to himself, in the tone of one considering a verse. 'I suppose it would be too much to say ”orotunda,” and yet how n.o.ble it were! ”Or opulent orotunda strike the sky.” But that is the bitterness of arts; you see a good effect, and some nonsense about sense continually intervenes.'

'Somerset, my dear fellow,' said Challoner, 'is this a masquerade?'

'What? Challoner!' cried the shopman. 'I am delighted to see you. One moment, till I finish the octave of my sonnet: only the octave.' And with a friendly waggle of the hand, he once more buried himself in the commerce of the Muses. 'I say,' he said presently, looking up, 'you seem in wonderful preservation: how about the hundred pounds?'

'I have made a small inheritance from a great aunt in Wales,' replied Challoner modestly.

'Ah,' said Somerset, 'I very much doubt the legitimacy of inheritance.

The State, in my view, should collar it. I am now going through a stage of socialism and poetry,' he added apologetically, as one who spoke of a course of medicinal waters.