The Tinted Venus Part 29

"LEANDER TWEDDLE.

"P.S.--You will see the condition of my feelings from my spelling--I haven't the hart to spell."

Dawn was breaking as he put the final touches to this appeal, and read it over with a gloomy approbation. He had always cherished the conviction that he could "write a good letter when he was put to it,"

and felt now that he had more than risen to the occasion.

"William shall take it down to Bayswater the first thing to-morrow--no, to-day, I mean," he said, rubbing his hot eyes. "I fancy it will do my business!"

And it did.

THE LAST STRAW

XIII.

"Thou in justice, If from the height of majesty we can Look down upon thy lowness and embrace it, Art bound with fervour to look up to me."

Ma.s.sINGER, _Roman Actor._

Haggard and distraught was Leander as he went about his business that morning, so mechanically that one customer, who had requested to have his luxuriant locks "trimmed," found himself reduced to a state of penal bullet-headedness before he could protest, and another sacrificed his whiskers and part of one ear to the hairdresser's uninspired scissors.

For Leander's eyes were constantly turning to the front part of his shop, where his apprentice might come in at any moment with the answer to his appeal.

At last the moment came when the bell fixed at the door sounded sharply, and he saw the sleek head and chubby red face he had been so anxiously expecting. He was busy with a customer; but that could not detain him then, and he rushed quickly into the outer shop. "Well, William," he said, breathlessly, "a nice time you've been over that message! I gave you the money for your 'bus."

"Yusser, but it was this way: you said a green 'bus, and I took a green 'bus with 'Bayswater' on it, and I didn't know nothing was wrong, and when it stopped I sez to the conductor, 'This ain't Kensington Gardings;' and he sez, 'No, it's Archer Street;' and I sez----"

"Never mind that now; you got to the shop, didn't you?"

"Yes, I got to the shop, sir, and I see the lady; but I sez to that conductor, 'You should ha' told me,' I sez----"

"Did she give you anything for me?" interrupted Leander, impatiently.

"Yessur," said the boy.

"Then where the dooce is it?"

"'Ere!" said William, and brought out an envelope, which his master tore open with joy. It contained his own letter!

"William," he said unsteadily, "is this all?"

"Ain't it enough, sir?" said the young scoundrel, who had guessed the state of affairs, and felt an impish satisfaction at his employer's rejection.

"None of that, William; d'ye hear me?" said Leander. "William, I ain't been a bad master to you. Tell me, how did she take it?"

"Well, she didn't seem to want to take it nohow at first," said the boy.

"I went up to the desk where she was a-sittin' and gave it her, and by-and-by she opened it with the tips of her fingers, as if it would bite, and read it all through very careful, and I could see her nose going up gradual, and her colour coming, and then she sez to me, 'You may go now, boy; there's no answer.' And I sez to her, 'If you please, miss, master said as I was not to go away without a answer.' So she sez, uncommon short and stiff, 'In that case he shall have it!'--like that, she says, as proud as a queen, and she scribbles a line or two on it, and throws it to me, and goes on casting up figgers."

"A line or two! where?" cried Leander, and caught up the letter again.

Yes, there on the last page was Matilda's delicate commercial handwriting, and the poor man read the cruel words, "_I have nothing to advise; I give you up to your 'G.o.ddess'!_"

"Very well, William," he said, with a deadly calm; "that's all. You young devil! what are you a-sn.i.g.g.e.ring at?" he added, with a sudden outburst.

"On'y something I 'eard a boy say in the street, sir, going along, sir; nothing to do with you, sir."

"Oh, youth, youth!" muttered the poor broken man; "boys don't grow feelings, any more than they grow whiskers!"

And he went back to his saloon, where he was instantly hailed with reproaches from the abandoned customer.

"Look here, sir! what do you mean by this? I told you I wanted to be shaved, and you've soaped the top of my head and left it to cool!

What"--and he made use of expletives here--"what are you about?"

Leander apologized on the ground of business of a pressing nature, but the customer was not pacified.

"Business, sir! your business is _here_: _I'm_ your business! And I come to be shaved, and you soap the top of my head, and leave me all alone to dry! It's scandalous! it's----"

"Look here, sir," interrupted Leander, gloomily; "I've a good deal of private trouble to put up with just now, without having _you_ going on at me; so I must ask you not to 'arris me like this, or I don't know what I might do, with a razor so 'andy!"

"That'll do!" said the customer, hastily. "I--I don't care about being shaved this morning. Wipe my head, and let me go; no, I'll wipe it myself,--don't you trouble!" and he made for the door. "It's my belief,"

he said, pausing on the threshold for an instant, "that you're a dangerous lunatic, sir; you ought to be shut up!"

"I dessay I shall have a mad doctor down on me after this," thought Leander; "but I shan't wait for _him_. No, it is all over now; the die is fixed! Cruel Tillie! you have spoke the mandrake; you have thrust me into the stony harms of that 'eathen G.o.ddess--always supposing the police don't nip in fust, and get the start of her."

No more customers came that day, which was fortunate, perhaps, for them.

The afternoon pa.s.sed, and dusk approached, but the hairdresser sat on, motionless, in his darkening saloon, without the energy to light a single gas-jet.

At last he roused himself sufficiently to go to the head of the stairs leading to his "labatry," and call for William, who, it appeared, was composing an egg-wash, after one of his employer's formulae, and came up, wondering to find the place in darkness.

"Come here, William," said Leander, solemnly. "I just want a few words with you, and then you can go. I can do the shutting-up myself. William, we can none of us foretell the future; and it may so 'appen that you are looking on my face for the last time. If it should so be, William, remember the words I am now about to speak, and lay them to 'art!...

This world is full of pitfalls; and some of us walk circ.u.mspect and keep out of 'em, and some of us, William--some of us don't. If there's any places more abounding in pitfalls than what others are, it is the noxious localities known under the deceitful appellation of 'pleasure'

gardens. And you may take that as the voice of one calling to you from the bottom of about as deep a 'ole as a mortal man ever plumped into.

And if ever you find a taste for statuary growing on you, William, keep it down, wrastle with it, and don't encourage it. Farewell, William! Be here at the usual time to-morrow, though whether you will find _me_ here is more than I can say."

The boy went away, much impressed by so elaborate and formal a parting, which seemed to him a sign that, in his parlance, "the guv'nor was going to make a bolt of it."

Leander busied himself in some melancholy preparations for his impending departure, dissolution, or incarceration; he was not very clear which it might be.

He went down and put his "labatry" in order. There he had worked with all the fiery zeal of an inventor at the discoveries which were to confer perpetual youth, in various sized bottles, upon a grateful world.

He must leave them all, with his work scarcely begun! Another would step in and perfect what he had left incomplete!

He came up again, with a heavy heart, and examined his till. There was not much; enough, however, for William's wages and any small debts. He made a list of these, and left it there with the coin. "They must settle it among themselves," he thought, wearily; "I can't be bothered with business now."

He was thinking whether it was worth while to shut the shop up or not; when a clear voice sounded from above--

"Leander, where art thou? Come hither!"