Chambers's journal of popular literature, science, and art, fifth series, no. 122, vol. III, May 1, 1886

However, here I was at last, really and truly, in London—in the great city. It was the consummation of the dreams of my youth, as it is of the dreams of so many hundreds of ambitious, country-bred lads. I had no luggage to detain me, the sole article I had brought with me being a small handbag containing a few necessaries: my portmanteau was to follow in the course of a couple of days. As I was making my way towards the exit, I caught sight of the refreshment room. I had had nothing to eat since morning but a few biscuits, and now the pangs of hunger began to make themselves felt. I pushed open the swing-doors of the restaurant, and going up to the counter, I asked for a cup of coffee and a couple of sandwiches. While I was being served, I counted over again the small amount of money in my purse and asked myself whether I could afford to take a cab to my destination. Why not walk? The night was young, and the street in which my friend lived, being in the heart of London, could not be more than two or, at the most, three miles away. Besides, there seemed a spice of adventure, something that would serve me to talk about in time to come, in finding my way, utter stranger as I was, alone and by night through the streets of London—those streets about which I had read so much, and had so often pictured in my thoughts. I decided that I would walk.

Here it becomes needful to mention that my destination was the lodgings of a certain friend, whose name, for the purposes of this narrative, shall be Gascoigne. I call him my friend, and such he was, although he was four years older than myself. We were both natives of the same small country town; his parents and mine were old friends; and owing to the similarity of our tastes and pursuits, he and I had been much thrown together up to the date of his leaving home to push his fortunes in London. We had kept up an unbroken correspondence after his departure; and now that my father had lighted on evil days, and it became imperative that I should turn out into the world, Gascoigne had at once come to the rescue. I must leave home, he wrote, and take up my quarters with him till he should succeed in finding some situation that would be likely to suit me, which he had little doubt about being able to do in the course of a few weeks at the most. And thus it fell out that here I was in London.

Outside the station, I found a policeman, from whom I inquired my nearest way to the Strand, in a street off which thoroughfare Gascoigne’s rooms were situated. The night was damp and raw, with a sort of thin, wet mist in the atmosphere, which blurred the lamps and the lights in the shops a little way off, and made the pavement greasy and unpleasant to walk on. But little recked I about the weather. I was pacing London streets, and to me, for the time being, that was all-sufficient. The coffee had warmed me; the fatigue I had felt previously was forgotten as I walked on and on in a sort of waking dream. More than once I had to ask my way, and more than once I wandered from the direct road; but at length, after about an hour’s walking, I found the street I was in search of, and two minutes later I knocked at the door of No. 16. My summons was responded to by a middle-aged woman—Gascoigne’s landlady, as I afterwards found—who, in answer to my inquiry, informed me that my friend had been called out of town two days previously on important business, and was not expected home till the morrow. I turned from the door with a sinking heart, feeling more lost and lonely than I had ever felt before. I was in the heart of the great Babylon, and knew not a single soul out of all the teeming thousands around me. Presently, I found myself in the Strand again, and there I came to a halt for a little while, gazing on a scene so fresh and strange to me. The glare, the uproar, the interminable tangle of vehicles, the hundreds of human beings, young and old, rich and poor, passing ceaselessly to and fro, winding in and out without touching each other, like midges dancing in the sun—all these affected my spirits like a tonic, and in a very little while put all morbid fancies to flight. What if I were alone in London without a creature anywhere that I knew—there were thousands of others in a similar plight. Gascoigne would be back on the morrow, and for this one night I must make shift with a bed at some decent coffee-house or inexpensive hotel. It was too early yet to think of turning in; it would be time enough an hour hence to set about finding quarters for the night.

I wandered on, heedless whither my footsteps might lead me, my weariness all but forgotten in the novelty of the scenes which met my country-bred eyes at every turn. As the clocks were striking ten, I found myself on one of the bridges, gazing over the parapet at the black-flowing river as it washed and swirled through the arches under my feet. A thick fog was slowly creeping up, and even while I was gazing at the fringe of lamps on some other bridge, its dark mantle closed round them, and shut them in as completely as though they had never been. A few minutes later, the fog had reached the spot where I was standing, and had caught me in a damp, sickly embrace, which in a very little while sufficed to chill me to the marrow, and blotted out as completely as with a wet sponge all the seething world around me.

When I began to move again after my halt, I realised for the first time how thoroughly weary and dead-beat I was, and that I must no longer delay seeking out a lodging for the night. The fog was thickening fast, and it was impossible to see more than three or four yards in any direction. In my bewilderment, instead of turning back towards the Strand side of the bridge, as my intention was, I seem to have unwittingly crossed to the Surrey side, seeing that, a few minutes later, I found myself in a maze of narrow, tortuous streets, in which gin palaces and fried-fish shops seemed to be the chief places of entertainment.

I wandered on, turning from one thoroughfare into another, feeling in that thick, black fog more utterly lost and bewildered, even in the streets of London, than I should have done if set down at midnight in the heart of Salisbury Plain with nothing but the stars to guide me on my way. In the district in which I now found myself there seemed to be no small hotels where a stranger might find cheap but decent accommodation for the night—nothing but flaring taverns and low coffee-shops. Three or four of these latter I passed which, even dead-beat as I was, I could not summon up courage to enter—they looked too unsavoury and repulsive to a youth of countrified tastes like myself. At length I came to one which seemed more promising than any I had yet seen—cleaner and neater in every way, as far as I could judge by peering through the window. It was merely a coffee-shop, with some cups and saucers and a few muffins, teacakes, and other comestibles in the window; but what had more attraction for me than anything else was the welcome legend, ‘Good Beds,’ painted in black letters on the lamp over the door. I hesitated no longer, but pushed open the swing-doors and entered.

My first glance round showed me that the place was one much frequented by foreigners; and when the _cafetier_ himself came down the room to inquire my pleasure, I saw at once that, whatever else his nationality might be, he was certainly not an Englishman. My wants were simple—a chop and some coffee. I put the question of bed aside for the present, till I should have seen more of the place and its frequenters. The _cafetier_ answered me with much politeness, but in very broken English, that my requirements should be at once attended to, and that, meanwhile—with a comprehensive wave of his hand—the newspapers, English and foreign, were at the service of monsieur. He did not look much like a coffee-house keeper, with his long grizzled hair, his high bald forehead, his dark deep-set eyes, in each of which glowed a spark of vivid fire, and his thin white hands; there seemed about him too much of the air of a man of breeding and education for such an occupation.

He was still addressing himself to me, when there was a sudden irruption into the room of a little black-eyed, short-haired, bullet-headed waiter, French or Swiss most probably, in a black jacket and short white apron, who, dancing up to me, took possession of me at once, divined my wants in a moment, and pirouetted off to fetch me my coffee, pending the cooking of my chop, leaving his master extinguished, so to speak, both morally and physically. ‘Ah, Jean will attend to monsieur,’ said the latter, putting his hands to his sides and straightening his long thin back. ‘Jean, he is a good fellow, and will make monsieur comfortable.’ And with that he lounged slowly away to a small counter at the upper end of the room, behind which he seated himself, and became at once immersed in the perusal of some foreign journal.

I was still looking at him, sitting with my arms folded over the table, when my eyelids closed unconsciously, and I dropped asleep as I sat—but only for a few moments, for Jean was quickly at my side with the coffee and a roll, flicking some imaginary crumbs off the table with his _serviette_ as a polite way of arousing me. A draught of coffee imparted new life to me for a time, and I could afford to look round with some degree of curiosity. In all, there were about a dozen people in the place. Two or three customers got up and went away, while others came in and took their places. Others there were who seemed habitual frequenters of the place, and sat playing draughts or dominoes, smoking their cigarettes, and sipping at their coffee or chocolate between times. Only one here and there was English; the rest of them were unmistakable foreigners, of various types and nationalities, but all readily recognisable as such even to my untutored eyes. Nimble-handed Jean was equal to the requirements of each and all.

Seated at one of the narrow tables on the opposite side of the room, and facing the door, was a man who took my attention more than any one there, the _cafetier_ excepted. He was a full-cheeked, heavy-browed man, not tall, but strongly built, and with something of that added corpulence which so often comes with middle age. He had close-cropped iron-gray hair, which stood out like a stiff stubble in every direction; but his moustache and imperial were jet black, and therefore presumably dyed. He had a rather thick aquiline nose, and he wore a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles; but once or twice I caught a glance from his eyes, which were steel-gray in colour, so keen and piercing, that his assumption of artificial aid for them seemed somewhat of a mockery. He was dressed in a tightly buttoned black frock-coat, and wore a wisp of black ribbon round his neck, tied in a formal little bow under his turn-down collar. His trousers were dark gray in colour, and his feet were incased in a pair of broad-toed varnished boots. His rather large plump hands were white and shapely, and his filbert nails were carefully trimmed. He looked so superior to the general run of the other frequenters of the coffee-shop whom I had hitherto seen, that he had an air of being altogether out of place. He neither spoke to nor was addressed by any one except Jean, who served him with his chocolate, but seemed immersed in the contents first of one foreign newspaper and then of another, several of which were spread on the table in front of him. Still, notwithstanding his seeming indifference to everything that was going on around him, an impression somehow got possession of me that not a man entered or left the place without being keenly scrutinised from behind those gold-rimmed spectacles, while more than once I had an uneasy consciousness that I was the object who was being photographed by that coldly penetrative gaze.

As soon as I had finished my chop, Jean came to clear the table, upon which I took the opportunity of saying to him: ‘I shall require a bed here to-night. I suppose you can find room for me?’

He stared at me for a moment or two in open-eyed astonishment. Then he said: ‘Monsieur is mistaken. We have no beds for strangers here.’

‘Then why have you the announcement of “Good Beds” painted up on the lamp outside?’ I demanded a little hotly.

Jean shrugged his shoulders. ‘Ah, that is a mistake—all at once a mistake,’ he answered with his strong French accent. ‘The Englishman who had this place before Monsieur Karavich, used to let out beds; but Monsieur Karavich, who has been here but two months, does not. No.’

At this juncture M. Karavich himself appeared on the scene. He had come to ascertain what the discussion was about. He put a question to Jean in French, and the latter answered him volubly in the same language.

‘Jean is right, monsieur,’ said the _cafetier_ to me in his broken English, which I had some difficulty in comprehending, and with an air of polite deprecation. ‘We do not let out beds to strangers. The lamp shall be altered to-morrow. I am sorry—truly sorry, monsieur.’

‘So am I sorry,’ I answered stoutly. ‘I am an utter stranger in London, never having set foot in it till three hours ago, and I know no more where I am than the man in the moon. Besides, think of the fog! What am I, a stranger, to do if turned out into the midst of it? You can surely find me a bed somewhere. I don’t care how humble it is—and it’s only for one night. Put your head outside the door, monsieur, and see for yourself whether on such a night you would turn even a dog into the streets.’

The _cafetier_ spoke to Jean in some language with which I had no acquaintance. Jean replied volubly as usual. Then the _cafetier_ spoke again, but this time his voice had an imperative tone in it such as I had not noticed before. Jean turned pale, and replied, not in words, but by turning out the palms of his hands and spreading wide his fingers. It was an answer replete with significance. Turning to me, the _cafetier_ said, in his slow, hesitating tones: ‘I will find monsieur a bed. He is a stranger and an Englishman and claims my hospitality: that is enough for Fedor Karavich.’

I did not fail to thank him. He smiled faintly, made me a little bow, and went slowly back to his counter. When I turned my eyes on Jean, he was scowling at me most unmistakably. What could I possibly have done to annoy the sprightly little man?

The stranger with the gold spectacles pushed away his newspapers and rose to go. Jean helped him on with his fur-lined overcoat, and as he did so, a quick whisper passed between the two. Then Jean left him. The stranger put on his hat, and coming down a pace or two till he stood close by the end of my table, he proceeded to leisurely button up his coat. I happened to look up, and our eyes met. The stranger smiled, and said in a soft, pleasant voice, in which there was the faintest perceptible trace of a foreign accent: ‘Pardon, but I think I heard monsieur say just now that he was a stranger in London. Is that not so?’

‘Quite a stranger,’ I replied. ‘I only arrived here three hours ago, and was never in London before.’

I was glad to have some one to speak to, were it only this pleasant-voiced foreigner; it seemed in some measure to take off the edge of my loneliness.

‘Again pardon,’ said the other; ‘but monsieur would naturally find the fog outside rather bewildering? Ah, your English climate! He would be puzzled, for instance, to find his way from this house to Charing Cross, or even to the nearest bridge; is it not so?’

‘Faith, you’re right there,’ I answered with a laugh. ‘I have not the slightest idea of the locality of this house, nor even on which side the river it is situated. But daylight will solve my difficulties in that respect.’

‘Ah, that daylight is a great tell-tale,’ answered the stranger with the ghost of a shrug. ‘Bon soir, monsieur; I hope you will sleep well, and have pleasant dreams.’

Again the same inscrutable smile flitted across his face. Raising his hat slightly, he pushed open the swing-doors, and passed out into the fog and darkness.

It was growing late by this time. Besides myself, there were only two customers now left in the place, who seemed still as intent on their game of dominoes as they had been when I went in. Summoning Jean, I asked to be shown to my room.

I think the bedroom into which I was presently inducted was the very smallest in which it was ever my lot to sleep, while the bed itself was so short, that a tall lanky fellow such as I was might well wonder how his length of limb was to be packed away in so small a compass. On turning down the bedclothes, the sheets and pillow-cases, to my countrified eyes, accustomed to the snowiest of linen, looked far too dingy to be at all inviting. It seemed to me that they had not been changed for a considerable period; but be that as it may, I had no inclination to trust myself into too close contact with their dubious purity. I was tired enough to sleep anywhere, and had there been anything in the shape of an easy-chair in the room, I would have made that my couch for the night. What I did was to take off my collar, boots, and coat, lie down on the bed, turn up the counterpane over me on both sides, and lay my coat over that. Thousands in London that night had a far worse bed than mine. Leaving the end of candle which Jean had given me to burn itself out, three minutes later I was in a sound dreamless sleep.

FORTUNE.

By a deplorable limitation of the meaning of the word, it has come about that the idea suggested to most minds by the expression ‘fortune’ or ‘a fortunate man’ is the accumulation of wealth. It would seem, therefore, that, in the popular estimation, no man is fortunate who is not in the possession of riches. A little thought, above all a little experience of life, will soon convince us that this is not the case; and so far is it from being true, that wealth will be found to be but a small and solitary factor in those various accidents or providences of our lives from which we derive our happiness. The sordid wooer in the ballad, who asked, ‘What is your fortune, my pretty maid?’ knew of no fortune beside that of riches. The pretty and witty maid knew better. ‘My face is my fortune, sir,’ she said; and let in a flood of unaccustomed light upon the benighted mind of her baffled suitor, to whom it had never occurred that fortune might consist in beauty and the qualities that win love and admiration.

It is doubtful whether a man who, by a stroke or two of the pen, can flutter the innocent dovecots of the Exchange, is, by virtue of that power, any happier than the humble farmer whose year’s income may be straitened by one night’s rain. Far in advance of wealth, in estimating what meed of fortune has fallen to any man’s lot, should be placed health, upon the state of which our welfare so largely depends, and the preservation of which is so nearly contingent upon the method of life we adopt. Riches without health do not bring with them the capacity for their enjoyment; and yet how many of us waste the latter in the pursuit of the former! The merchant who rises early and toils till a late hour at his desk in the sunless city office for the sake of amassing money, has generally advanced far beyond middle age before his object is attained, and finds then that he has lost the faculty of enjoyment. Leisure has become a weariness to him; the pursuits for which he once coveted it have lost their attraction for him; the studies he once desired opportunities to follow up, have lost their interest; he has no longer the robust health and bodily strength demanded for the sports and pastimes which once seemed to him to make life worth living. Without the accustomed occupation, the day is a blank; he must still journey to the office, still add sovereign to sovereign, and take what comfort is possible from the reflection that another may perhaps spend them, and that they may serve to keep in ease and idleness one who never worked for them—a poor and second-hand solace, indeed, for no man yet ever started life with the intention of acquiring wealth for the sole benefit of his successor. The proper image of such a man, wearing out his days in the dull monotonous round of business, is the ass in the great hollow wheel of the water-well in Carisbrooke Castle, which walks for ever up-hill, but which never advances, and never rises, and the end of whose labour is to draw water that others may drink it.