David Christie Murray

“ At first he fought against it, and would have none of it—the mere candid and honest offer of it was enough for him; but Philip was more resolute than himself, and the stronger man won. Phil should never have cause to repent his goodness, the old fellow declared to himself a thousand times. He should reap the proper reward of his own honour. Brown admired and loved Phil out of bounds for this little bit of natural honesty and justice. He thought there had never been a finer fellow in the world, and his heart warmed to him as if he had been a son of his own. ”

“ All young artists have times when they are going to be great—when the glory proper to white hairs makes a halo round un-wrinkled fronts and curls, brown or golden. They have times when the smartest turn of verse, the most delightful inventions of narrative, the most exquisite contrast of colour or mould of form their genius can compass are stricken through and through with the horror of commonplace. But when a man of the artistic genus has once so far learned his own nature he has made a great advance towards the fulfilment of his ambitions. ”

“ The striking of a wax vesta at the door of the chambers, the shaky hunt for the key, the well-known obstinacy of the lock, the opening of the door, the fevered working of Bommaney’s fingers, and the flushed eagerness of his face, were all memorable to young Barter for many and many a day. They entered together the room in which their interview had taken place; and Barter, nursing the remnant of the flaming vesta, lit the gas with it, and then, dropping it on the floor, set his foot upon it, and looked at his companion. ”

“ Barter rubbed shoulders with young men—very young men they were—who would one day have handles to their names, and enjoy the control of considerable estates. He sat at the same table with men whose birth and antecedents, like those of the immortal Jeames, were shrouded in a mystery. He met men of his own position, who like himself were desperately glad of being numbered in the same club society with men eminent on the turf, or familiar in the gilded saloons of the great. ”

“ One evening, dining at the old restaurant, he marked Barter, melancholy and alone. He was sitting in an attitude of apparent dejection, tapping upon the table with a fork, and deep sunk in what seemed to be an uncomfortable contemplation. But when the moth saw his candle he brightened, and fluttered over to it.
‘You might come over,’ said Barter, when they had sat together until the latest of the dining guests had gone away. ‘You might come over to my chambers and smoke a cigar if you’ve nothing else to do. ”

“ In the quiet of these legal chambers many chance noises from without had from time to time been clearly audible. He heard now a hurrying step upon the pavement of the quadrangle, and, with a palpitation at the heart, he moved swiftly to put out the light, and listened. The step stumbled at the entrance to the staircase, at the foot of which the outer door stood closed. Young Mr. Barter’s heart beat, if possible, faster than before; and the veins in his head so throbbed, that only the confining rim of his hat seemed to keep his head itself from bursting. ”

“ But there was an old friend of his, and an old friend of Brown’s into the bargain, a solicitor, keen as a needle and kindly as sunshine, one Barter, whose business chambers were in Gable Inn, and who was of all men the man he could confide in with least shame and best hope of help. He hailed a cab, and bade the driver drive his fastest. Gable Inn lay tranquil, the afternoon shadows already settling deeper on the little quadrangle than on the broad and roaring thoroughfare without. ”

“ There was nothing, since Bommaney had accepted his own disgrace and run away, to connect young Mr. Barter with the lost eight thousand pounds, yet it took much courage, and a considerable amount of inward spurring, to bring himself to talk about the business. When a man carries a secret of a quite harmless nature, it happens often, as almost everybody knows, that casual words and quite innocent glances startle him with hints of understanding and participation. What is it when the detection of the secret involves open shame and penal servitude? Can a man of genuine courage be a thief? ”

“ Said I couldn’t do better with it anywhere, and at last I told him, “Look here, Fellowes, I shall begin to think by and by there’s something wrong.” He went as red as a turkey-cock, begad, and drew a note on their London agent like a lord, and here I am with the money. Eight thousand pounds.’
By this time he had drawn a bundle of bank-notes from the pocket-book, and now sat flicking the edges of the notes with the tips of his great broad fingers. Bommaney heard the crisp music, and looked up with a momentary glance of hunger in his eyes. ”

“ He often carried about with him, in a pocket-book, or in neat little packages of grocer’s gay paper, borne in the waistcoat-pocket, a collection of gems of considerable value, and would show them to his intimates with the insouciance of a man who was accustomed to handling things of price. He never was without money, made little journeys at times, which rarely took him away from town for more than a day or two, and was, almost always, wholly unoccupied except for the cards.
Now young Barter had a prodigious idea of this gentleman’s astuteness. ”

“ Barter’s frank and engaging countenance, and in that ready smile in which the faultless teeth shone so conspicuously, there was no hint of danger to the most unwary. Even the wariest, listening to his genial mellow laughter, and seeing the jolly shoulders shake with mirth, were inclined to think him a loyal honest-hearted fellow. His loud swagger, his frank rollicking gait, his hail-good-fellow-well-met shake of the hand, the other hand clapped upon the shoulder, the noisy greeting, and that unfailing smile, not merely disarmed suspicion, but made the mere fancy of it impossibly absurd. ”

“ Is not courage after all at the very bottom of all manly honour, of all sound honesty, all true self-respect? How shall a thief be other than a lurking cur, whose whole soul, such as it is, is bent to a mean suspicion that he is suspected, a continuous terror-stricken watchfulness, a sleeping and waking dread of an awful hand-clap on the shoulder? ”

“ Bommaney tried to find a commonplace word by answer, and an inaudible something died drily in his throat. When his companion began to speak again, the bankrupt merchant wondered that he made no comment on his ghastly face—he knew his face was ghastly—or his shaking hands. There was an intuition in his mind so strong and clear that he trembled at its prophecy.
‘Patty,’ said the visitor, ‘will have everything in time, and a pretty good handful, too. But she’s bent on being independent, and she wants to have her own money in her own hands. ”

“ My clerk—I took him out of the gutter, you know that, Hornett! I took you out of the gutter and made a man of you, and lavished kindness on you. Nobody has a minute’s trust in me—nobody thinks of misfortune or disaster. I was right to run away and hide myself, for nobody would have believed me if I had stayed and told the truth.’
Hornett looked more frightened than before after this outburst, but Bommaney read incredulity in his face, and answered it with an added passion. ”

“ The prose of life will assert itself, even to visionary eight-and-twenty and sweet eighteen in love with one another. On this occasion it came as a summons to supper. The summoner was a stout and jovial elderly gentleman, about whose somewhat commonplace British exterior there was, to Philip’s mind, a reflection of the nimbus which glorified Patty to his mind, for he was Patty’s father. He had been called Old Brown at school when he was young—he had been called Old Brown in the country, and the prefix had found him out in town without the need for anybody to breathe a whisper of it. ”

“ The Steinberg spider was supposed to be waiting there, coldly patient and insatiable, and Barter dreaded him. Philip had never entered the rooms, but they had an attraction for him. He accepted his companion’s invitation, and they entered the chambers together. A fire lingered in the grate, and Barter replenished it, and, having produced a box of cigars and a bottle of cognac, proffered refreshment to his guest. The honest man began somewhat to recoil from himself and from his companion. ”

“ Bommaney made no movement at all, but stared before him with his blue-gray eyes filling more and more with tears, until two or three brimmed over and trickled down his cheeks. He said, ‘God bless my soul!’ once more, mechanically, and restored what remained of his bundle of papers to his pocket. Young Mr. Barter looked with one swift and vivid glance from the fallen bundle to his guest’s face, then back again. Bommaney rose from his seat, buttoned his overcoat with awkward and lingering fingers, and put on his hat. ”

“ All that nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand of the many thousands who pass it every day could tell you of Fleeter’s Rents is that it makes a narrow black gash in the walls of the great thoroughfare, and that it neighbours Gable Inn. It is slimy in its very atmosphere all winter through, and its air in summer time is made of dust and grit and shadow. The old Inn elbows it disdainfully on one side, and on the other a great modern stuccoed pile overtops it with a parvenu insolence. It is the home naturally of the very poor ”

“ One ruddy tongue of flame from the expiring fire in the grate played on the narrow walls and low ceiling, and woke twinkling reflections in the spare and battered furniture. A man’s dwelling-place is always an index to his character when its arrangement depends upon himself; and signs of Philip Bommaney’s nature and pursuits were visible in plenty here. ”

“ Barter, then, had eight thousand pounds in ready money, was liable, if discovered, to penal servitude, and was unable to touch a farthing of his ill-got gains. There are many men in the world, the world’s experience proves it hourly, who set so small a price upon their self-respect, that they will sell it for a shilling, for a drink, for a word. But there is hardly any man so lost to the natural human desire for self-approval that he will actually give away his self-respect for nothing. ”

“ That Philip was going to be rich and famous was a prime article in Patty’s creed, and he himself, though he had soberer hopes, was not likely to miss any chance of success which labour might bring him. He was more than modest enough in his conception of his own powers, and was often doubtful as to the fulfilment of the higher ambitions which are the necessary fuel of all artistic fires. Without those fires the chill of modesty will fall to the frost of cowardice, and in Art cowardice means indolence. ”

“ It has been already hinted that the young man was a gambler, and it is likely that most of the reasons which made the money seem so welcome to him had their sources at the gaming table. He belonged to one of those clubs which deserve to be numbered among the blessings of modern society—where men do not meet for social intercourse and good-fellowship, or for dining purposes, or for any of the common and amiable reasons which draw men into club-life, but simply and purely to the end that they may win one another’s money. ”

“ No wonder, sitting all alone all day long in those musty old chambers.’
‘Well, you see, Patty, the more I work, the sooner I shall cease to be all alone.’ The flush deepened again, and the hand trembled in his like a caught bird. ‘And as for working too much, I don’t believe that’s possible. Work never killed anybody yet, and idleness has killed a good many. It’s better to work than sit still and wait for briefs which never corns. ”

“ Their stately neighbour seems to be less grimy with the London smoke than they are, has always been less susceptible to outside evil influences, even of that unescapable sort, and drives them to an added shabbiness of senility by contrast with its own hale old age. The bedroom window was already open for the admission of such fresh air as, disguised in London blacks, the exhalations of moist spring pavements, and the reeking odours of the cuisine of Fleeter’s Rents, might choose to wander thither. ”

“ He knows how intermittent he is. He learns to mistrust his own mistrust of himself. The periods of depression grow less frequent, and the depression grows less lasting. And then, just as the cold fit becomes less chilling to the one, the fit of exultation grows less intoxicating. The halo beams less bright—loss near.
Yet Philip, with the girl’s eyes worshipping him, and her sweet voice cooing hope and praise, and her hands knitted on his shoulder, and her warm breath fanning his cheek, gave himself up to the vision, and felt his heart warm with a world’s welcome as yet far away from him. ”

“ Barter belonged, and within its limits every man proposed to himself to get the better of every other man by such means as lay in his power. A pigeon got in amongst them every now and then, of course—came in well-feathered and went out plucked, but for the main part the rooks pecked hungrily at one another, and made but little of their time and pains. The one solitary advantage of these corporations is that they gather the depredatory birds together, and lead them to prey upon themselves instead of wandering abroad for the defeathering of the innocent and artless who abound even in these days. ”

“ The face in the darkness started away from the window as he looked at it, as if his own robust health and the light that dwelt about him startled its pinched shabbiness into solitude. He set the tumbler of flowers upon the window-ledge, and closing the window, made his toilet and returned to the sitting-room. Then, having banked up the fire, and set the matches in such a position that he could easily find them, he blew out the lamp, left his chambers, and ran down the tortuous stairs. ”

“ A woman is tongue-tied by the countless conventionalities of education. She must often let her thoughts lie silent in her heart, though she burns to express them, and find what answer she can to questions she dare not offer. Philip had repaired her loss by beggaring himself. That was noble. But now he persisted in deferring their marriage, and had buried himself in that lofty sarcophagus in Gable Inn, resolved only to claim her, though she was all his own already, when he had reinstated his fortunes by his labour. ”