Despair's Last Journey Part 19

'Thank you, Mr. Armstrong, that will do.'

Paul went back to his case, and fell to work there, not caring to speculate much as to what had happened. The Father of the Chapel, accompanied by two or three of his companions, left the composing-room, were absent for some twenty minutes, and then filed solemnly back again.

Shortly afterwards a clerk came in, with a pen behind his ear. He stood by Paul's side, and p.r.o.nounced his name in a tone of question.

'Here,' said Paul, looking round at him.

'Just give your hands a bit of a rinse,' said the clerk, 'and put on your things and come down into the manager's office, will you?'

Paul nodded, and went off to the sink and the jack-towel, wondering a little. When in due time he presented himself before the manager he was at once enlightened.

'That is your week's money, Armstrong, and your services will not be required here further.'

'Why not?' Paul asked.

'No fault of yours,' the manager answered; 'but we find that you have not been regularly apprenticed to the trade. This is a Union house, and we are under Union rules.' Paul took up the half-sovereign and the small mound of silver the manager pushed towards him, and dropped it into his pocket coin by coin. 'I don't know your circ.u.mstances,' the manager continued, 'but if you're in want of work, I can put you in the way of it at once. There's a non-Union house close by, where I happen to know they're short of hands. I have written the address in case you care to try there. You needn't make it known to any of our men that I sent you there. Good-morning.'

'I'm not going home,' said Paul to himself, as he walked into the street 'I'm not going home, whatever happens.'

He consulted the address he held in his hand, and walked towards it.

His dinnerless wanderings of last week had taught him something of the intricacies of the City, if not much, and he chanced to know his way.

The place he sought was high up at the top of a ramshackle old house in a narrow court, and a score of dispirited-looking men and youths were at work there. A tired dyspeptic, with a dusty patch of hair and rabbit teeth, approached him when he entered.

'Yes,' he said, when Paul had explained his business; 'you can start in at once, and if you're any good you're safe for a month or two. I hope you're a steady worker,' he went on despondingly, as if he were quite hopeless. 'They're not a dependable lot here--not a dependable lot at all.'

Paul took his place amongst the depressed little crowd at two o'clock that afternoon, and worked away among them until two o'clock on the following Sat.u.r.day. A little before that hour it became evident that something was wrong. An excited little man ran into the dingy room, and began a whispered conversation with the tired dyspeptic.

'But, my G.o.d!' said the latter, in a tearful voice; 'I _must_ have it I've got my men to pay.'

At this everybody p.r.i.c.ked an ear.

'It's all right, old man,' said the other. 'Here's the cheque, and it's as good as the Bank of England. But I've only just this minute got it.

It's after one o'clock, and it's Sat.u.r.day, and the Bank's closed. What am I to do?

'I don't care what you do. Get somebody to cash it for you, I suppose.

I've got to have the money. Here's all the bills made out, and in ten minutes the men'll be waiting.'

'Well,' said the man, I'll try. It ain't my fault, Johnny.'

He ran out as excitedly as he had entered, and the men stopped work by common consent, and struggled into their coats.

'It's bad enough,' said one of them, 'to work for two-thirds money even when you get it.'

n.o.body else said anything. The dyspeptic foreman drew a case out of a rack near the wall, and sat down upon it. The rest hung about dispiritedly, and waited for what might transpire.

Two or three gathered round the imposing-surface.

'Have a jeff?' said one.

'If you like,' said another.

'Come along,' said a third, turning up the sleeves of his coat

Paul drew near, moved by curiosity.

One of the men picked up three em quadrats from a case near at hand.

An em quadrat is an elongated cube of type-metal, on which three of the elongated surfaces are plain, whilst the fourth bears grooved marks which indicate the fount of type to which it belongs. The cubes were used as dice. The men started with a halfpenny pool, and the first thrower cast three plain surfaces. He paid in three-halfpence. The second man threw with equal effect, and put in three-pence. The third man threw three nicked surfaces, and took the pool.

Two or three more of the men who were waiting for the messenger's return rose and drew near. Then others came, and, at last, all but Paul were playing. The rules were simple enough: Any man who turned up three blanks paid the whole of the pool. One nicked surface took a third, two nicked surfaces two-thirds, three nicked surfaces the whole. Somebody cleared the whole, and the game started afresh. Paul threw down a halfpenny and joined in. As last comer he was last to play. The first throw cleared the pool. It was renewed, and the next throw took fourpence. Twopence remained. Three blanks doubled it--fourpence.

Three blanks doubled it again--eightpence. Again three blanks doubled it--sixteenpence. A throw of one by common consent took sixpence. Three blanks made the s.h.i.+lling two. Three more blanks made two s.h.i.+llings four.

Three more made it eight, and three more sixteen. Faces began to pale and hands to tremble. A single took six s.h.i.+llings after a good deal of wrangling, and ten s.h.i.+llings were left Paul threw for the ten s.h.i.+llings and swept the pool In all his life he had never known such a sensation, though the money as yet was mainly of paper slips.

The cas.h.i.+er had negotiated his cheque somehow and somewhere, and was busy with the money. The men received their meagre wages, debts were paid, and the game went on. The stakes never again rose so high as at the first round in which Paul found himself engaged, but he still won heavily in proportion to the game, and continued to win until the end.

He was then the only winner, and one of the losers asked him to pay for drinks. Paul, with a certain feeling of splendour and magnanimity, threw down half a sovereign.

'Take it out of that,' he said.

One of the despoiled poor devils clutched it, and they all went off together, leaving Paul to struggle into his overcoat and follow, if he pleased.

'You made a pretty good thing out of that,'said the pockmarked cas.h.i.+er, swinging the key with which he waited to lock the door.

'I'll see,' Paul answered.

He emptied his pockets on the imposing-surface, and counted the pile. He had some fifty s.h.i.+llings over and above the week's wages.

'You've been up their s.h.i.+rts to the tune of about six bob a man,' said the cas.h.i.+er. 'They'll be sorry before the week's out.'

The winner was not affected by any consideration of that sort. He pouched the money, and took his way with a farewell nod. He had tasted a novel excitement, and the thrill was still in his blood He walked rapidly through the winter air towards his lodgings, dressed there in his best, and sallied out again, making straight for the c.o.c.k tavern.

What suggested the idea to him he never knew, but he meant to take a pint of port with Will Waterproof at that famous hostel, which then stood on its own cla.s.sic ground. The old c.o.c.k was not a palatial house, but it was splendid to the raw country lad, and he was half afraid to enter. He strode in looking as mannish and as townlike as he could, and seated himself in one of the boxes alone. A waiter approached him, a rotund man, in gouty-looking slippers, with a napkin across his arm.

Was this, he wondered, the steward of the can, 'a shade more plump than common '?

'Give me a chop,' said Paul, 'and a pint of port'

'Chop, sir,' said the waiter; 'yes, sir. And a pint of----'

'Port,' said Paul, and, being ignorant of the ways of such places, pulled out a handful of silver and asked 'How much?'

'Bring the bill in due course, sir,' said the water gravely, and moving away, called the order for the chop up the chimney, as it seemed to the visitor, and then rolled off stealthily in the gouty slippers in search of the port. He brought it in a small decanter, which he polished a.s.siduously as he walked along. Paul thought it looked very little for a pint, but made no comment. The waiter poured out a gla.s.s and retired.

The experimenter had tasted elderberry once, but he knew no more of wine. The draught had relish fiery new, and it seemed to warm him everywhere at once. His mind grew exquisitely bright, and his thoughts were astonis.h.i.+ngly vivid. He began to improvise verses, and they came with an ease which was quite startling. They seemed to unroll themselves before him, to reveal themselves line by line as if they had been in existence long ago, and some spell had suddenly made them visible to his intelligence. It was a moment of singular triumph, and it lasted until the grave waiter laid his chop before him. He ate keenly, and finished his pint of port A sort of beatific indolence was upon him, and he had no wish to move, but he thought the waiter looked at him, and he was uncertain as to whether he had a right to stay. He summoned the man and paid him, and gave him sixpence for himself. Then he walked into the street, but the exercise was not like walking. His step was quite firm and steady, but his whole frame felt light, as if he could have spurned the pavement with a foot, and have leaped the roadway at an easy bound.

He thought of young Hotspur, and 'methinks it were an easy leap to pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon.' He walked erect with his chin in the air, and regarded the men and women who pa.s.sed him with a strange sense of being able to understand them all. There seemed to be a story in every face, and he felt vaguely and yet positively that he could read it if he chose. He found himself for the first time in Oxford Street without knowing either by what route he had reached it or what was the name of the thoroughfare. The crowds, the lights, the movement and the din of traffic were in themselves an intoxication. It gave him a sense of strength to be alone among them. Then all his thoughts trembled into a sudden swimming laxity, and his mood changed to one of deep sadness.

He set himself to a.n.a.lyse an inward dumb reproach which filled him--to ask a reason for it--to trace it to some source. It seemed to form itself definitely on a sudden, and his winnings began to gall him bitterly. He had never gambled before, and now he felt the pa.s.sion of greed into which he had been betrayed disgusting. He was ashamed of having played at all, and still more ashamed of the callousness of triumph in which he had walked away with his gains. He had pitied his a.s.sociates. He had seen the misery of their estate quite clearly. And yet he had stooped to profit by their folly, and slattern wives and dirty little neglected children would be cold and hungry because of him before a week was over. He would return the money on Monday, every penny. He might have to pinch himself for a week or two, but he would do it.

His mood sank lower and lower, and self-reproach grew at once more insistent and more urgent He felt homesick, and the populous street was like a desert. All the people who had seemed so warmly near to him were aloof and cold. He would have welcomed any companions.h.i.+p. The ebbing forces of the wine left him comfortless.

In his complete ignorance and inexperience he supposed the pint of port to have had no effect on him. This up-and-down play of the emotions was not what he had read of as the result of wine on an unaccustomed drinker. His step was steady, his eye was clear, there was no confusion in his thoughts. It would be a perfectly safe thing to have another gla.s.s of wine and then go home. If he had been asked why he wished for more, he could not have given a reason. It was enough for the moment that he desired it.

He found himself outside a flaring house, with the words 'Wine Shades 'in a blaze of wind-fluttered gas above the door, and painted placards in the window: 'Wines from the Wood. Fine old Sherry, 10d., 8d., and 6d.

per dock gla.s.s.' He had never tasted sherry. Sherry surely was the drink of many heroes. Shakespeare and Jonson drank it at the Mermaid.

He entered the place, called for his wine--'Your best,' he said, as he threw his s.h.i.+lling on the counter--and sat down on a high stool to drink it. Before his gla.s.s was empty he had flashed back into high spirits again. He resumed his walk in a new exultation, and this time he knew enough to attribute it to the wine. What a superb boon it conferred upon the mind! How easy it seemed to soar out of sadness and loneliness into these exalted regions of friends.h.i.+p with all created things. He walked through the winter night with no knowledge of the route he took and with no care. He could ask his way home at any time.