Rogues and Vagabonds. George R. Sims
America for some years, having left his native land in a hurry. He had returned a few weeks since, almost penniless, and tried in vain to drift into some means of gaining a livelihood. Every avenue was closed against him, for his past life was a sealed book, and he had no one to speak a good word for him. So he had hung on to existence till his last copper was spent, and now he was without even a shelter for the night.
He had been turned out of his lodging that morning, and everything he had had been detained for the four weeks’ rent which he had promised again and again, and which he had never been able to pay.
A few papers had been all that he had been allowed to secure from his scanty belongings, and these only because they were of no value to any one but himself.
As he hurried round the corner in search of a convenient gateway in which to spend the night, he drew his hands out of his trousers pockets to shake from the brim of his hat a small pool of water which had begun to trickle down his neck. He drew the lining of his pocket up at the same time, and a piece of folded paper fell on the ground. He picked it up, opened it, and read it.
It was an old acceptance, torn with lying long in folds and dirty with being carried about.
‘Birnie’s acceptance for £500,’ said Marston, as he read it over. ‘Ten years old, and not worth the paper it’s written on. I wonder how that got in my trousers pocket, instead of being with the other papers! I must have put it in in the hurry. I wonder whether Birnie’s alive or dead! If he’s alive, I hope he’s as badly off as I am—curse him!’
He folded the old acceptance carefully, and put it back in his pocket.
‘Birnie owed me more than this when I left England. By Jove, if I had the thousandth part of it now I should be happy. I could get out of this confounded rain and lie quiet a bit. I wonder what’s become of the old set—if they’ve all gone to the dogs, like I have! Egerton was a queer fish, but he had rich relations. Ralph must have left a lot of money behind him, and Gurth Egerton would have some of it by hook or by crook. I wonder what the upshot of that affair was.
Walking along and thinking, with his eyes on the streaming streets, he was suddenly aroused from his reverie by a vigorous ‘Hi, my man!’
A carriage, evidently a doctor’s brougham, was drawn up in the middle of the roadway, and a gentleman was leaning out of the carriage window, and shouting at him to arrest his attention.
‘Hi, my man!’ said the gentleman, peering through the fog, as Marston looked up, ‘can you tell me which is Little Queer Street about here? This fog makes all the streets look alike.’
‘No, I can’t,’ answered Marston; ‘I’m a stranger myself.’
‘Well, Would you mind looking for me? My coachman can’t see the names written up at the corners from the road, and I can’t tramp up and down the neighbourhood in the rain—I should get wet.’
‘What about me?’ asked Marston, with an offended tone in his voice.
The occupant of the carriage gave a short little laugh.
‘My good friend, I don’t think a little more rain will do you much harm; you don’t appear to have been under an umbrella lately.’
Marston remembered that he was a penniless outcast, soaked to the skin; for the moment he had forgotten it, and fancied he was a gentleman walking home.
‘What do you want me to look for?’ he said, altering his tone.
‘Little Queer Street, No. 15; and if you find it I’ll give you a shilling.’
Marston walked up one side street and down another, peering through the fog towards those wonderful arrangements in white and black with which the Board of Works are good enough to label the street corners, and which are so high up and so small that an ordinary-sighted person requires a ladder and a magnifying glass before he can tell what they are, and at night even this would be insufficient unless accompanied by an electric light.
After much wandering up and down, and straining of the eyeballs and cross-examination of a solitary policeman, who was standing up out of the wet, and enjoying a quiet pipe down a particularly deserted side street, Marston discovered where Little Queer Street was, and ascertained which side of the way and which end was honoured by the presence of that No. 15, which was evidently about to be visited by a gentleman who kept his carriage.
He came back with the intelligence, and communicated it to the coachman.
‘Wait a minute, Cook, I haven’t rewarded this poor fellow for his trouble,’ said the doctor, for the coachman was whipping up the horses, without waiting for such a trifle.
The doctor fumbled first in his trousers pockets, then in his waistcoat, and then in his overcoat.
‘Cook,’ he exclaimed, presently, ‘have you got a shilling?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Dear me, how very peculiar! no more have I. My good man I’m very sorry—most extraordinary thing—but I’ve come out without any money. Here, however, is my card. Call to-morrow and I will leave a shilling with the servant for you. Drive on, Cook.’
Cook, the coachman, whipped up his horses and shot off, splashing Marston with mud, and leaving him crestfallen and disappointed in the middle of the road, with a card in his hand.
‘My luck!’ he said, as the light of the carriage vanished in the mist; ‘my infernal luck! That shilling would have been a bed and breakfast. I earned that shilling, and I never wanted it more in my life. What the dickens does a two-horse doctor do here, I wonder! I thought he was sent by Providence to give me a shilling, at first. Bah! Providence turned me up long ago. Let’s look at the card.’
He came out of the roadway, and stood under a lamp-post to read the name of his debtor.
The light flickered and blew to and fro in the night air, and the rain, driven against the glass, made a mist through which the rays fell feebly. But feebly as they fell on the small piece of pasteboard and the face of the man who read it, they showed the sudden gleam of joy that flashed into his white damp face.
For a moment he stood speechless as one dazed; then he read the card aloud, to make sure that he was not dreaming:
‘Dr. Oliver Birnie,
‘The Lodge,
‘Lilac Tree Road,
‘St. John’s Wood.’
‘Oliver Birnie!’ he exclaimed, triumphantly. ‘And keeps a carriage and pair! By Jove! Providence has not deserted me. I’m glad I didn’t recognise him in the dim light of carriage lamps, or I should have cried out and betrayed myself. I can do better by waiting, perhaps. Ah, Mr. Oliver Birnie! it isn’t a shilling I’ve earned to-night—it’s many and many a golden pound. I’ve one bird safe, at any rate. Now I’ve only Gurth Egerton to find. If he’s gone up in the world too, you are all right for a little while, Ned Marston.’
CHAPTER IV. NO. FIFTEEN, LITTLE QUEER STREET.
Little Queer Street, Seven Dials, is not a particularly nice street to live in, but as every house in it is inhabited to the utmost extent of its inhabitable capacity, it is evidently a street in which a great many people are very glad to live.
Squalor and vice and misery, and everything that can make life horrible, find their way into Little Queer Street, but fail to frighten the inhabitants. Dirt they like—it suits them; most of them have been brought up from infancy in close contact with it, and would feel uncomfortable without it. As to vice and misery, they have seen so much of them that any terror such things might once have possessed has long since worn off. They may be real spectres to some people,