Richard Dowling

“ Hanbury ceased to walk up and down, and stood in the window leaning against the old-fashioned folding shutters painted the old-fashioned dirty drab.
Leigh sat with his chin sunken deeply on his chest, and his eyes fixed on the floor. Then he spoke in a low tone, a tone half of reverie:
"Nature deals in wonders, and I am one of them. And I in turn deal in wonders, and there are many of them. If I chose I could show you the most wonderful clock in all the world, and I could show you the most wonderful gold in all the world, more wonderful a thousand times than mystery gold. ”

“ John Hanbury suddenly looked down. Leigh was hobbling along laboriously at his side. It all at once struck Hanbury with remorse and pity that he had been walking at a pace in no way calculated for the comfort of his companion. In his absorption he had given no heed to the stunted legs and deformed chest at his side. He slackened his steps and said, with the first touch of consideration or kindness he had yet displayed: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Leigh. I fear I have been going too fast."
"Hah!" said the little man, "most young men go too fast." ”

“ You don't look as if you was up to anything bad. You don't look like one of them swindling girls that they sent to prison for a fortnight last week."
"Oh, my God!" cried Edith piteously, as she stepped out on the platform. She covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
She was one of the last passengers to leave the train and the shallow fringe of alighting passengers had thinned and almost cleared away. She felt completely overwhelmed, as if she should die. She caught with one hand the side of the open carriage door for support, and kept the other hand before her face. ”

“ Oscar Leigh had lowered the window. She caught the sash and raised it very gently but with no trepidation. If the door had that moment opened, she would have simply sprung through the window, without a word. The want of sleep dulls the apprehensions of fear as well as the other faculties of the mind. It sobers the judgment and reduces the susceptibility to extravagance of emotion.
When she had got the sash up to its full height, she stepped resolutely out on the gravelled carriage-sweep. ”

“ I see the end of my labours, the reward of all my study, the fruit of all my life," said the voice of the hunchbacked dwarf.
There was a pause in the speech. "Hah," breathed Leigh, in loud inspiration. Then there was a snuffing sound, and another loud inspiration. "Hah! that is refreshing--most refreshing. Will you have some, mother? Do. You won't? Very well. What was I saying?"
The strong, subtle vapour of eau-de-cologne penetrated through the slits and joints of the folding-doors, and floated past Edith towards the open windows.
"About the clock," said Mrs. Leigh. ”

“ What do these foolish people mean by laughing? The man is hurt? Look, look! They cannot see. They are all in front of him. Look there! What is that oozing under his face? Go, see, help him, Jack. Look under his face on the ground! That is Blood!"
John Hanbury did not move. He too had seen something was wrong. He too saw the swelling pool of bright scarlet blood under the black face of the Negro now lying at full length. Still, he did not move. He had grown deadly pale and cold and limp. His head felt light, the colour faded out of objects, and everything became a white and watery blue. ”

“ John Hanbury's attention was wholly absorbed in Black Sam. Leigh never took his fascinated gaze off the girl at Hanbury's side. Hanbury was an athlete examining the feats of another athlete. Leigh was a man looking at the incredible, seeing the invisible, beholding in full daylight a ghost whom he must not challenge, and whom he cannot leave. Dora was watching with mingled fear, disgust and pity, the dangerous gyrations of a man of pathetically low type, a man who seemed in his own person connecting the race of man with the race of beasts, as put forth in recent theories. ”

“ He was beside himself.
"Dora," said Hanbury, after a little while and much thought, "Will you promise me one thing?" He looked around. They were quite alone. The crowd had followed the bearers of the Negro into the mews, through which there was a short cut to an hospital.
"Yes, if I can do what you ask, Jack."
"Say nothing to a soul about my fainting. You will not tell your father or mother, or my mother? I was able to keep the other occasions quiet. If this got about I should have to clear out of London. I'd be the laughing stock of the clubs. That man need not know more than he has seen." ”

“ Ashton was a tall, thin woman of forty-five with very great vitality and energy. How so frail and slender a body sufficed to restrain so fiery and irrepressible a spirit was a puzzle. It seemed as though the working of the spirit would shake the poor body to pieces. It was impossible to be long near her without catching some of her enthusiasm, and at first John Hanbury, being a young man and quite unused to female propagandists, was almost carried away. ”

“ She sat with her hands folded in her lap, her arms close to her side, her head resting on the back of the chair. She closed her eyes, not from drowsiness, but to shut out as much as possible the memory of the place, the thoughts of her situation. She told herself she was once more back in her unpretending little room in Grimsby Street. She tried to make herself believe the beating of the rain on the trees and glass of the conservatory and gravelled carriage sweep in front of the house was the dull murmur of London heard through some new medium. She should hear her grandmother's voice soon. ”

“ Ashton, "I am a servant of time. I am now engaged in making a clock which will, I think, be the most remarkable in the world."
"Have you been to Strasburg?" asked Hanbury, because he believed Leigh had not been there.
"Bah! Strasburg, no! Why should I go to Strasburg? To see other clocks is only to see how effects have been produced. With a conjuror the great difficulty is not to discover how to perform any trick, but to discover a trick that will be worth performing. If you tell any mediocre mechanist of an effect produced in mechanism, he can tell how it is done or how it could be done." ”

“ It is better to beat the sun than to be beaten by the sun."
"But are not the clocks that go correctly the best of all?"
"When a clock marks twenty-five hours to the day we live twenty-five hours to the day: when it marks twenty-three we live twenty-three. There are thus two hours a day in favour of going fast."
"But," said Hanbury, who suddenly recovered his good humour or semblance of it; for Leigh was not doing or saying anything outrageous, and Dora had risen from her seat by the window and was coming towards them. ”

“ All have six steps descending from the flagged passage to the dark drab, blistered low house-door under the steps. The aspect of dull, respectable mediocrity of the whole monotonous street is heart-breaking. The sun, even of this cloudless June day, did not brighten it. The sun cannot make washed-out drab look pleasant. From end to end is not a tree or shrub or creeper, not even a single red brick to break the depressing uniformity ”

“ You are a young woman. You are a girl, compared with the old women I know in London, who would fly into a rage if you hinted that they were past middle life--if you did not, in fact, say they were young. Why, mother, what is seventy? Nothing! I know dozens of women over eighty, and they keep up their spirits and are blithe and gay, and ready to dance at a wedding, if any man should only ask them. Up to sixty-five, a woman ages faster than a man, but once over sixty-five, women grow young again. ”

“ He then turned into one of the narrow streets leading south out of the main thoroughfare and walked rapidly. Here were large, slow-moving vans and carts and drays in the roadway and a thin stream of men, with now and then a woman of homely aspect and dingy garments, hurrying by. As one walked it was quite possible to take note of every person and no one escaped the dark flashing eyes of Leigh. In the eyes of City men when they walk about through the mazes of their own narrow domain there is always an introspective look. ”

“ He had no thought of serving Hanbury. If the young man had been alone Leigh would have left him where he stood until the convalescent was strong enough to shift for himself. But he was under a double spell, the spell of the extraordinary likeness between this girl, Miss Ashton, and that other girl, Miss Grace, and the spell of Miss Ashton's beauty. As a rule his thought was clear, and sharp, and particular; now it was misty, dim, glorious, vague. Edith Grace had, at first sight, wrought a charm upon him such as he had never known' before ”

“ Hanbury fixed his eyes on the mechanist with threatening deliberateness. Dora grew cold and paler and faint. She felt there was certain to be a scene, a most unpleasant scene. Mrs. Ashton saw nothing, understood nothing.
"Had we not better move aside, Mr. Leigh? I am afraid we are blocking the way." He thought: "This beast has saved up his poison till now. He will strike here."
"No, no," said Mrs. Ashton energetically. "I shall hear of nothing better all day than a goddess--it is not to be expected I can hear of anything better. ”

“ I am quite well now, and you are the dearest Jack in the world, only don't say that dreadful thing any more, it makes me quite ill. It may be silly, but I cannot help myself. What is the Negro going to do now? Look!"
"I don't know. I don't care. I only care for you, about you, and here I have distressed you, shocked you. It is horrible. You feared to stay lest the Nigger should use strong language, and now it is I, your protector, who offends against good manners and good morals, and outrages your ears!" ”

“ Leigh, that you were a wonderful, a most wonderful man." Williams's mind had been plunged by the words of the other into a dense mist. He could see nothing and he was sure there must be a wonderfully profound meaning in the speaker's words because he could make nothing of them.
"And to-day I bought a mummy, the mummy of a great Egyptian prince, for I must have good mummy asphaltum to preserve the faces of my clock from the influence of time. Asphaltum is a bituminous pitch, as you know," said Leigh, getting down off the high stool and preening himself like a bedraggled raven. ”

“ Most of the beggars even are straight-backed and strong-legged. I am not. Hah! How cool and refreshing this rain-water is. I am a novelty and yet people don't care for such a novelty as I am. No; they prefer men cut to pattern. She would rather have a straight-backed beggar than me, and yet I am more interesting, more uncommon. I am more remarkable to look at, and then I have genius. Yes; I have a form of body far out of the common, and a form of mind far out of the common, too. I have a hump and genius. Hah! But no one cares for a hump or genius. She doesn't, for instance. Hah! ”

“ What prevented her staying in the house until ten o'clock, and then going to the railway station, in the ordinary way?
She could not remain in the house to be found there when it was believed she had left it for good. But why had she rushed out of it the previous night in a panic? Surely there had been nothing to alarm her. No doubt Mr. Leigh had tried to kiss her upon her arrival, and she could not stay after that affront. It was intolerable that any man should attempt to kiss her. ”

“ His soliloquy at the window about making her his wife had been only a little more absurd than his share in the dialogue between him and his mother. Presently, in a few days, the whole affair would appear nothing more than an unpleasant dream. In all likelihood she should never see Mrs. Leigh or her son again. The chances were a million to one against her encountering either during the remainder of her life. She would dismiss the whole affair from her mind and think of other matters.
Not a soul to be seen or heard yet. ”

“ Mr. Hanbury, I am afraid it is my duty to send a paragraph to the papers. A paragraph of that kind always tells. Anything unkind and true invariably amuses our own side and injures the other side and sticks like wax."
Hanbury writhed. "The hideous beast," he thought. He would have liked to throw the little monster through the window. He rose and began walking up and down the room hastily. "Mr. Leigh, if you will not, as a party man, let this unfortunate thing lie still, will you oblige me personally and say nothing about it? If you do I will consider myself under a deep obligation to you." ”

“ He had never before spoken to any one who owned a mummy; he knew, by report, that such things were to be seen in the British Museum, but he had never been inside the walls of that crushing-looking fane of history. It was utterly impossible for him to imagine any way in which a mummy could be employed; but this only went to prove how necessary to Leigh a mummy must be. Now that he came to think of the matter he found himself surprised Leigh had not had a mummy long ago. His face relaxed into a smile. "And what are you going to do with his royal highness?" ”