Court Royal/Chapter LV
CHAPTER LV
IN VAIN.
A month had passed. Charles had not been seen by his father, who had fulfilled his undertaking, and had placed him with shipping agents, in a subordinate place. The old man had arranged with Messrs. Newcomen and Bowcher, who were ready to oblige him. Charles was to have plenty of work, and was to receive two pounds per week, of which, no doubt—though he did not know it—his father found a portion.
After the lapse of the month, Mr. Cheek, senior, visited the agents and inquired into the conduct of their new clerk. Messrs. Newcomen and Bowcher were glad to testify that, as far as they could judge, he was steady and attentive to his work. He had been regular in his attendance, careful, obliging, and reliable.
Then Mr. Cheek made an excursion to Ebury Street, Pimlico, where his son lived in a boarding-house, kept by a Miss Jones. He chose a time for his visit when he knew his son would be at the office. Ebury Street, Pimlico, is a long way from Wapping, but Charles went to and fro by steamer from Vauxhall Bridge, and the air did him good.
Mr. Cheek found the dingy lodging-house kept by Miss Jones; he rang the bell, and rapped sharply with the knocker, and the door was opened by Miss Jones herself, a thin lady with curls, a pasty face, and eyes so pale in their colour that they must have been washed and rewashed with soda till all the colour had been washed out of them. Miss Jones was full of amiability when Mr. Cheek introduced himself, and hastened to assure him of the respectabihty of her establishment, the high social standing of her guests, and the comforts they enjoyed. The house was admirably situated, away from the fogs; and the health of the boarders was robust, as she could testify by their appetites. They breakfasted together, and she presided. She furnished them with coffee and tea, whichever they preferred. Some gentlemen were averse to tea in the morning, and they drank coffee. Others liked to change their drink week and week about. Each had an egg and a rasher of bacon, sometimes she substituted bloater for rasher. There was always a rack of toast on the table, as a pleasant change to bread and butter. When the gentlemen returned from their offices they had tea, and in the evening supper off cold meat, bread, and cheese, ‘best American. I had Dutch cheese for some time, but I find the American is preferred by the gentlemen, so I have that now.’
She went on to assure Mr. Cheek that her lodgers were of the most select description. For many years she had among them an old Waterloo officer, but he was dead. The lady lodging on the first floor ought, if everyone had his rights, to be a baronet, but her aunt, from whom she had great expectations, had left everything to a female companion who had exercised great influence over her at the last. It was a pity, Miss Jones thought, that the lady had not gone to law and upset the will, and recovered the title and a real sealskin jacket which had gone to the companion, worth forty pounds. Another of her lodgers was a gentleman of some literary fame who at one time had earned five pounds by writing verses for Christmas cards.
Miss Jones went on to say that she charged for her lodgings a pound per week, exclusive of ale and washing, inclusive of a dinner on Sundays and Christmas Day.
Miss Jones did not provide the gentlemen with toilette soap, for she found them more fastidious in this particular than in their meat and drink. One liked glycerine, another oatmeal, and a third would use nothing but carbolic soap.
Mr. Cheek listened to Miss Jones without interrupting her, looking the faded woman through and through with his piercing eyes, taking stock of her. He was probably satisfied that, with a good deal of affectation, she was a worthy woman at core, for he gave a grunt, stood up, interrupted her flow of information, and begged to be conducted upstairs to his son’s bedroom.
‘Quite Alpine, I have been told,’ said Miss Jones, as she conducted him to the very top of the house. ‘The air at this altitude is keen, salubrious, and invigorating. The gentlemen all like the top storey, where they can see over the roofs. But, between ourselves, your son is my favourite, and I have accommodated him where he can have the finest view and the purest air. Yonder, sir, you can catch Doulton’s Pottery Works; the effect, with the morning’s sun on them, is very fine.’
Mr. Cheek looked round the little bedroom. It was in the roof, with a sloping ceiling. There was a fireplace, but the grate had not been used during Miss Jones’s tenancy. The walls were hung with the cheapest of papers in two dingy colours. The furniture consisted of one chair, a chest of drawers with the mahogany veneering scaling away, a wash-handstand of painted deal suffering from cutaneous disorder, and a bed, above which hung a photograph in a frame. Mr. Cheek knew the picture. A duplicate had been sent to him some time ago. Through the ring of the frame, with its head drooping over the picture, hung a withered lily of the valley.
Mr. Cheek came slowly down-stairs, holding the banisters with one hand and rubbing his nose with the other.
‘Will this last?’ he said to himself. ‘What can be the meaning of it all? As for his taking offence at any words I may have said when annoyed, that’s absurd—a mere excuse. Words are wind, and wind blows away.’
When he reached the parlour again, he said to the landlady, ‘Look here, ma’am. I don’t want you to tell my boy that I have been here to-day. Give him your best bedroom, not an attic broom-and-pail cupboard. Turn out, if need be, the old woman who missed a baronetcy. I’ll pay the difference. Give the boarders kidneys for breakfast now and then, and fowls for supper, or anything else they fancy. Cost, ma’am, is no object to me. I can’t feed Charles differently from the rest, so they must all be well-fed together. No more of your American cheese; Stilton and Cheshire, and, if you will, Gorgonzola, Not a word about me. Take all the credit to yourself.’
Charles was able to get away early on Whitsun-eve. Monday would be a Bank holiday. He had been hard worked, and worked till late at night for some weeks, and Messrs. Newcomen and Bowcher put up their shutters on Friday night, and allowed their clerks holiday from the Saturday to the Tuesday morning. Charles took an early train on Saturday to Plymouth, and arrived at the Barbican the same afternoon. He went to the Golden Balls immediately, without stopping to have anything to eat. His heart was beating fast. His step was light, his eyes full of glad expectation, and he held his head up proudly. He was surprised to see that the house of Lazarus had been repainted. The shop was open. A good deal of business was done on a Saturday, double on the eve of a Bank holiday. People would pawn necessaries to obtain money for a day’s pleasure.
He looked in at the window, and saw Joanna behind the counter talking to a woman who was in the shop with some article she wished to dispose of.
Charles waited till the woman came out, then he caught the door before she closed it, and stepped in.
Joanna, not hearing the door re-opened, did not suppose any one had entered. She did not see him, as she was engaged examining the article—a brooch, which she had taken.
Charles had a few moments in which to observe her. She was well, even handsomely dressed, but pale and worn. She put away the brooch, and seated herself; then she leaned her elbow on the counter, and put her hand to her brow, and drew a deep sigh.
‘Joe!’
She sprang to her feet, and stepped back. He saw her turn deadly pale, and then lean both her hands on the counter to steady herself, as though afraid she would faint. She recovered herself, however, quickly, but her colour did not return as rapidly as her composure.
‘Mr. Charles! You here?’ ‘Yes, dear Joe, I cannot help myself. I could not do otherwise than come. I have not had the chance before, and I have been hungering for the sight of your face, and for a word of encouragement from your lips. I came straight away by the morning train, and have just arrived. Why have you not answered my letters?’
‘I sent you something.’
‘Yes, a lily of the valley, but not a word accompanied it.’
‘I sent you what I most valued, the first flower from the root Lady Grace gave me. I would not have parted with it to anyone else. I would not have picked it for myself, but—you have been kind to me, and—I thought I might never more have the chance of giving you anything.’
‘Why did you not send me a word?’
Joanna made no answer. She looked down, her pallor remained, and she, who was usually so collected, stood trembling before him. She tried to disguise her agitation by shuffling her hands to and fro on the counter.
‘Oh, Joe! you know that all is up between me and Lady Grace. We did not suit each other. We belonged to distinct worlds, she to the world that is passing away, I to the world that is coming on—though, I admit, but a poor specimen of that. Now that is all over, and I am free. I am changed from what I was. You knew me as an idler and a spendthrift, without aim and without energy. Now I am a clerk in a shipping office. I do not live on my father’s bounty. I have refused his allowance. I live on what I earn. I work now for my daily bread.’
She looked up and smiled, but there was intense sadness in her face that showed through her smile like a shower through a rainbow.
‘I get a hundred pounds a year, and I have fifty pounds per annum of my own, left me by my mother, independent of my father. May I take a chair, Joe?’
She nodded, and pointed to one. He drew it beside the counter, and seated himself; but she remained standing with her elbow on the desk, and her hand over her eyes, shading her face.
‘I am lodging with an old lady in Ebury Street,’ he went on, ‘and pay her a pound a week. I do not dine there, but at an eating-house, and that costs me about nine shillings a week, add a shilling for extras, and that comes to twenty-six pounds in the year. I think I can clothe myself on ten pounds, so that leaves just sixty-six pounds clear. I am to have my salary raised if I go on well. Now, Joe! Take away your hand, and let me see your face, let me look into your eyes. Will you give me the hope that you will come and be mine, and let us begin the world anew together? I will—I will work, and you shall never reproach me with idleness again. If I have you, I shall be happy; I shall care for nothing else. I shall do my work with a light heart, and sing over it, knowing that I am going home to you. You have done me a great deal of good already. You will make me do a great deal more hereafter, if you will consent to be with me always, to encourage me.’
He put up his hand to draw aside her arm from shading her face. Then he saw how great was her agitation. She was shaking like an aspen leaf, her face ash white, her eyes dim. She clasped her hands, and they quivered. She unclosed them, and put one to her brow, and put it down again, then laid her hand on her breast, and seemed to gasp for breath. She could not speak.
‘Joe!’ he said, ‘why do you not answer me? It was for you that I refused my father’s help, that I might have the right to choose whom I would, and I will have none but you. You have had a wretched life here. I have led a wasted life. You have taught me to break away from my past, and I would release you, in return, from yours. We shall begin the world together on very little, but love lightens every load and seasons every dish.’
Then she put both her hands outspread before her, and touched his breast, as he leaned forward, and thrust him away. Her eyes were dark in their sockets, and gleamed. ‘I cannot—I cannot,’ she said, quivering in voice, eyes, and lips, and every muscle of her body.
He looked at her in surprise. ‘Why not, Joe? You must, indeed. If you take from me this hope, this ambition, I dare not say what will become of me. It is only my love for you which has lifted me to the threshold of a better life; now that you have led me to it, will you thrust me back into the folly and emptiness from which I have struggled up?’
‘I cannot,’ she said, slowly recovering herself. ‘I signed you away for a hundred pounds. That is why I never answered your letters. That is why—now—now——’ She could not speak. Something rose in her throat and choked her.
‘Is that all?’ exclaimed Charles. ‘That was a joke.’ ‘No,’ she answered, ‘it was no joke to me. Your father was in earnest, so was I. And now it is too late—now’
Then the door burst open, and Lazarus, in a black frock coat, rushed out of the inner part of the house.
‘What! You here again? You dare to enter my premises. You scoundrel, you wastrel! Get out of my doors directly. Is it not enough that your father has snatched the Marquess from my grasp, but must you come here to carry off my wife also?’
‘Stand back,’ said Charles, thrusting the Jew away. ‘I will not be touched by you. Wife! Joanna never shall be that if I can prevent it.’
‘She is! Tell him, Joanna. Let him hear it from your own lips—make the news the sweeter, perhaps.’
Charles stood looking from one to another, petrified.
‘Mr. Charles,’ said the girl without looking at him, but with face averted, and playing a tune with her fingers on the counter to conceal her trembling, ‘I told you it was to be so. This morning we went together before the registrar, and after sundown the cohen will be here to marry us by Jewish rites.’
‘You coward! you vile Jewish coward!’ cried Charles, losing all control over himself, and seizing Lazarus by the collar and shaking him. ‘You have taken a despicable advantage over this poor girl, to make her life ten thousand times more wretched than it was before.’
As he shook the Jew his blood heated, then boiled; and, blind to what he was about, stung by disappointed love, jealousy, disgust, flaring into inconsiderate rage, he took up one of the many sticks that were exposed in the shop for sale, and, holding Lazarus by the collar, swung him from side to side, beating him fast and hard. Lazarus screamed for help. He was not much hurt; he writhed so that the blows fell on his new black frock coat, but now and then a cut caught him across the legs. A woman—Mrs. Thresher—who had been in the kitchen, hearing the shrieks, ran in, and then rushed forth into the street crying ‘Murder!’
Charles was excited to madness at the tossings, and screaming, and dodging of the Jew, at his want of success in hurting him.
His arm relaxed at length; he was exhausted, and he cast the wretched man away.
‘There!’ said he; ‘remember Charles Cheek in connection with your wedding-day.’ Next moment he was in the hands of the police, summoned by Mrs. Thresher.
‘I give him in charge!’ shouted the Jew. ‘He has half-murdered me in my own house! Take him off to the lock-up!’
So it came about that Charles Cheek spent his Whitsun holidays in confinement.