But before he had done singing the “Bay of Biscay,” we were far away on the dark, starless, snowy country road. How we came there I have never to this day discovered; but there we were, huddled close together, and wrapped in one of the admiral’s greatcoats, and driven in the four-wheel chaise by the admiral’s confidential man, Jack Longshore. Mr. Longshore did not say a word to us; and though I sadly wanted to talk to him, and tell him all about his majesty’s ship the Gallant Bowster, somehow the words dried up, as it were, and stuck to my lips, and I couldn’t tell him anything: and after riding for a space of time, which seemed to me something between a century and a century and a half, Longshore pulled up with a sudden jerk, and told me to get out.
He told me to get out. He told me distinctly, this John Longshore, to get out. But, as I remonstrated with him, this was not Dr. Martinet’s, and not only was it not Dr. Martinet’s, but it was the churchyard of St. Mary’s, Market Kagster, and, as I told Longshore, I did not live in the churchyard, and I did not wish to live in the churchyard. Longshore only said again, “Get out and though I did not mean to comply with so absurd a request, somehow, in utter despite of myself, I did get out, and stood shivering just inside the gate of the churchyard, while Longshore and the two West-Indian pupils drove off in a flame of fire, and I for the first time noticed that instead of the fat brown pony, Longshore was driving the stuffed crocodile out of Bowster’s hall. They were all gone, and I was alone — alone among the oozy, wet, green, moss-grown, slimy tombstones; not a star in the sky above my head, not the twinkle of a light from the distant High-street of Market Kagster, not the sound of a human voice or the echo of a human footfall to be heard in the still winter’s night. I heard nothing but my own breathing, and the crisp crunch of my own feet on the new-fallen snow. I was only thirteen years of age, I was of a nervous temperament, and knew more ghost-stories than any other boy in the school, so I was rather frightened.
“So you’re come back at last,” he said.
I turned round and looked at him. He was a goblin — rather a good-tempered, easy-going-looking goblin, and he was sitting on the top of a tombstone, with a spade in his band, and his legs crossed one over the other. I know I wondered how he balanced himself.
“Come back, sir?” I said; for I didn’t quite catch his meaning.
“Come back. Yes, to be sure. Do you think we’re going to put up with this sort of thing?”
I knew he was a goblin, because he was not opaque like the general run of people; he was so transparent in fact, that I read “Sacred to the memory” through the calf of his leg as he talked to me.
“Do you think,” he said, “we can afford to have our boys” — he said most distinctly our boys—” gadding about in this sort of way, and over-eating themselves at old Crowsters’s?”
“I beg your pardon, sir, Bowster’s,” I remonstrated.
“O, very well,” he said rather snappishly; “Bowsters or Crowsters is all one to me; but what I say is this: we can’t have our graves empty in this manner; and we can’t have boys that have been buried on our property gadding about like this.”
“Buried on your property!” I ventured to exclaim. “I beg your pardon, sir, but I’ve never been buried, because” — I hesitated for a good reason—” because I’m not dead.”
The goblin gravedigger burst into a goblin laugh, such a tremendous laugh it was, though he was a little man, that all the urns and funeral decorations in the churchyard danced and rattled to its thunder.
“Not dead! That is a good one. Not dead! Why, don’t you remember dying of the measles in — let me see, what year did you die — I think it was 1803? Yes, it was 1803. Don’t you remember dying of the measles, and coming here to be buried?”
I told him that I couldn’t say that I did.
“You’ve a very short memory,” he said, “and so have many of our tenants. Why, I assure you, we’d an old gentleman buried here a month ago, who was always out, and we only enticed him back by showing him his beautiful new tombstone with a Latin epitaph. But my time is precious,” this goblin gravedigger added, “ so tumble in.”
And I looked down in the direction to which the goblin gravedigger looked, and, looking so, looked straight into a deep grave, so deep that I could no more see the bottom of it than I could see through to the antipodes.
“Tumble in,” he said; “that’s your number, forty-seven.”
I think I remonstrated; at least, I know I wanted to remonstrate — but I had a peculiar sensation, which I can only compare to the Highflyer mail-coach, outside and inside passengers, coachman and guard, and four horses — to say nothing of luggage — all lying on my chest, and the outside passengers seemed to be rising in my throat, and I couldn’t speak a word. So I tumbled in, tumbled into forty-seven. Into forty-seven! Into forty-seven millions of square miles of nothing. Into forty-seven trackless realms of space did I, boarder and pupil at Dr. Martinet’s, Market Kagster, fall, on falling into number forty-seven.
“A little salts and senna, and he’ll be all right,” said a voice at the bottom of number forty-seven. It was the voice of Martha Morris, the young person who looked after our linen, mended our socks, and washed our heads at Dr. Martinet’s academy.
I was in bed, in the eight-bedded room, and it was tomorrow morning; and I’d never been to St. Mary’s churchyard at all; and I had been brought home by John Longshore, fast asleep, and safe and sound, but rather the worse for Madeira, port, and rum-punch. But a dose of salts and senna made me all right again, and the admiral promised the Doctor that he would be more cautious another time. And as long as I stayed at Market Kagster, which was for five more years, I spent my Christmas-day at the dear old hospitable cottage, and ate my Christmas dinner off Admiral Bowsters groaning mahogany.
LOST AND FOUND
CHAPTER I. PICTURE-DEALING.
IT was a broiling day in August. The sun, blazing in his full summer splendour from early morning until three o’clock in the afternoon, had baked the flags of every street and alley, every square and highway, of the great metropolis; until weary foot-passengers well-nigh suffered the tortures of those martyrs of old who walked over red-hot ploughshares, without any hope of the same crown of martyrdom.
Far away, along the English coast, white cliffs glistened beneath the purple canopy of cloudless sky, and wavelets, bluer than the heaven above them, broke into silver fringe upon the yellow sands. Behind that natural rampart of white cliffs, great fields of waving corn grew riper in the sunshine, till every heavy ear of feathery oats and bearded barley changed to gold.
Who would have stayed in London at such a time as this, unless held prisoner by the iron hand of circumstance? Who would have stayed in this great prison-house of brick and stone, while far away, in sheltered bays, pleasant cottages were waiting to be let to any traveller who cared to live in them — and pay for them? Who would have been so mad as to linger in those stony streets, in which stale wall-fruit, piled upon the stalls, and flavoured with tobacco-smoke from the short clay pipes of Hibernian purveyors, was the only evidence of summer; when the same fruit, in pleasant gardens far away, mingled its luscious fragrance with the breath of myriad flowers, and waited till someone should have time to gather it?
Who would stop in London, where all the glorious expanse of sky was contracted to a narrow strip of blue, seen, by such passengers as looked high enough, between two rows of dingy houses? Who would stop in London, where the sweet air of summer-time, scented far away by a hundred perfumes, was tainted by the odours of stale fish and fading vegetables, hot roasted meats exposed in cook-shop windows, bone-burning factories, gas-works, soap-boiling, and asphalte — where in close courts and alleys the demon Cholera was a palpable presence, a hideous, vaporous shape, creeping to and fro in the stifling atmosphere?
Who would stop in London, when every ripple of the purple sea seemed a new note of music echoing in the balmy air — when the white sails of distant boats, transformed to silver in the glory of the sun, inv
ited roving spirits to explore the trembling pathways traced by golden light upon the restless bosom of the sea? Who would linger inland at a time like this, when drowsy Londoners, released from toil, were dozing behind the shelter of their newspapers upon the glistening beach of every watering-place in England — when children were wading knee-deep in the plashing water, and merry-hearted girls, sporting like children with the capricious waves, only less fickle and inconstant than their sweet coquettish selves? Who would stop in London when express-trains were starting from every terminus at every hour of the day, and rushing, like winged demons, through the land, and making flight of distances that to our grandfathers, cramped and stifled in the interior of a blundering stage-coach, would have been the toil of half a week? Who would stop in London in this sunny August season, when the cholera is rife, and dismal stories of sudden sickness and death are heard at every street-corner by those who care to stop and listen to the ghastly tidings; and grim placards on the walls warn hapless citizens that the dreaded small-pox is a guest among them, rubbing shoulders with them in every street? Who would stop in London — except the poor? The poor who have no money to pay express fares or expensive lodgings, luxuriously famished, and let for weekly rents that sound fabulous to those who find it hard work to pay eighteenpence a-week for a garret in a blind alley. The poor, who, having drawn blanks in the great lottery of life, must be content to huddle together and hide themselves in narrow courts and squalid places, where the hideous aspects of poverty are not likely to offend the gaze of well-bred citizens.
Who but the poor would care to stop in this vast labyrinth of brick, amid this seething mass of struggling humanity, made almost inhuman by the fury of the perpetual straggle — the eternal and unchanging struggle for that which decent people’s children hold it a punishment to be fed upon — BREAD?
Amidst the many wrestlers for this pitiful prize, amidst the many luckless wretches who fight for bread as richer men strive for titles and lands, honour and renown, a king’s favour or a nation’s admiration — amidst the numberless of earth’s creatures disputing with each other for the mere privilege of a joyless life — a young man, carrying something wrapped in green baize under his arm, tramped through the streets of London upon this sunny August afternoon.
He was handsome, nor could his shabby clothes — and they were very shabby — entirely disguise the air of high blood and good breeding which pervaded his appearance.
But there was something in that pale olive face, there was something in the sombre depths of those dark-gray eyes, which was not pleasant to see.
That something was despair.
Despair was stamped as plainly on the man’s face as if the letters that make up the word had been branded upon his forehead by a red-hot iron.
Defiance and despair had straggled for the mastery in this man’s breast. He had tried to defy the world, but the world had been too much for him. It had denied him bread. It had starved him, but it had not humiliated him. He held his head high still. If he could have become a cheat, a thief, a scoundrel, trading in some unholy merchandise for the sake of bread, the world would have starved him into crime. But he had been stronger than the world so far, and had not yet hearkened to the tempter; though Heaven knows he never passed a jeweller’s shop, he never saw the flash and scintillation of precious gems glittering in the sunlight, without hearing a diabolical voice, louder than the loudest traffic in the crowded street, crying in his ear, “These would buy bread.”
It is not to be supposed that it was for himself alone this strong man wanted to get bread. He was a great deal too reckless and indifferent to have tramped hither and thither on the burning flagstones of the City for that! For himself, he was well-nigh tired of existence, and he would have been content to lie down in any corner of the world in which he had been so badly treated, and die; or he would have taken the Queen’s shilling and gone away, anywhere, to be killed in her Majesty’s service.
For himself he was utterly reckless; but there was one at home, waiting for him: a little child of three years old, who for days and weeks past had been living face to face with the gaunt shadow of want, the horrible spectre of swiftly-approaching starvation.
The man’s name, or the name by which he was known to those amongst whom he had lived for the last few years, was Gervoise Gilbert. He was an artist, and the something which he carried under his arm was a picture, painted so lately that the varnish upon it was scarcely dry.
He had been wandering about since early morning, trying to sell this picture, and he had walked more miles than he had cared to count, going from shop to shop in hopes of finding a customer. He had applied to furniture-brokers and picture-dealers, to merchants, who dealt in all manner of old curiosities, and who had dingy, smoky-looking paintings in their windows, for which they demanded fabulous sums; but nobody would have anything to say to his picture, a simple careless sketch of a child sitting amongst the long grass of a meadow, with its lap full of daisies.
The young man called his picture the “Daisy-chain,” and the face of the child was a portrait of his own son; the little boy who was waiting for the food his father hoped to carry him — the child who was suffering the agony of hunger while the father was toiling backwards and forwards in those cruel streets.
At last, when the man had walked so far that he felt he must soon yield to sheer fatigue and crawl back to his wretched home empty-handed, succour came.
Gervoise Gilbert had wandered into a quiet street, where the shops were small, but tolerably prosperous-looking. He walked slowly, looking right and left as he went, but he saw no shop at which he could venture to offer his picture for sale.
No, there were no brokers or picture-dealers in that quiet street, and the young man was going to leave it, when the sight of three golden balls, the sign by which poverty recognises its last Mend, the pawnbroker, attracted his weary glance.
“That’s the last hope,” he muttered. “Some pawnbrokers refuse to take pictures such as mine; but this man may be better than the rest. I’ll try him.”
The shop was dark and dingy-looking, and the name of J. Moulem was painted above the door.
Mr. Moulem made some faint pretence of being a jeweller, and exhibited half a dozen fat silver watches, a child’s coral, two or three pairs of earrings, a set of shirt-studs, and a plated teapot in his window; but the greater part of the same window was devoted to the display of second-hand wearing apparel, sundry remnants of silk and velvet, a violin and flageolet, a rickety old guitar, innocent of any pretence to strings, and a few pictures.
The young painter looked rather hopefully at these pictures; they were a great deal worse than that which he carried under his arm; but then, on the other hand, they boasted gaudy, tarnished frames, and were on that account more saleable.
Gervoise Gilbert opened the door, and went into the shop, which was a perfect grove of faded garments, hanging from the ceiling.
Mr. Moulem emerged from his little den, or parlour, behind the shop, with his mouth full of bread-and-butter, and a shrimp between his fingers. It was half-past five o’clock, and the pawnbroker had just seated himself at the family tea-table.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1068