George Bernard Shaw - "The Devil's Disciple"

J.M. Stone - "Studies from Court and Cloister"

Jules Verne - "Tour Du Mond 80 Jours"

Edgar Allan Poe - "The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume 2 of the Raven Edition"

The Unclassed

G >> George Gissing >> The Unclassed




"Which you can do with, eh?" said Abraham, with a twinkle of
good-humoured commiseration in his eye.

"Perfectly. What are the details?"

"There are fifty ten-pound shares. Dividend accordingly twenty
pounds."

"By Jingo! How is it to be got at?"

"Do you feel disposed to sell the shares?" asked the old man,
looking up sideways, and still smiling.

"No; on the whole I think not."

"Ho, ho, Osmond, where have you learnt prudence, eh?--Why don't
you sit down?--If you didn't come about the mines, why did you
come, eh?"

"Not to mince matters," said Waymark, taking a chair, and speaking
in an off-hand way which cost him much effort, "I came to ask you to
help me to some way of getting a living."

"Hollo!" exclaimed the old man, chuckling. "Why, I should have
thought you'd made your fortune by this time. Poetry doesn't pay, it
seems?"

"It doesn't. One has to buy experience. It's no good saying that I
ought to have been guided by you five years ago. Of course I wish I
had been, but it wasn't possible. The question is, do you care to
help me now?"

"What's your idea?" asked Abraham, playing with his watch-guard, a
smile as of inward triumph flitting about his lips.

"I have none. I only know that I've been half-starved for years in
the cursed business of teaching, and that I can't stand it any
longer. I want some kind of occupation that will allow me to have
three good meals every day, and leave me my evenings free. That
isn't asking much, I imagine; most men manage to find it. I don't
care what the work is, not a bit. If it's of a kind which gives a
prospect of getting on, all the better; if that's out of the
question, well, three good meals and a roof shall suffice."

"You're turning out a devilish sensible lad, Osmond," said Mr.
Woodstock, still smiling. "Better late than never, as they say. But
I don't see what you can do. You literary chaps get into the way of
thinking that any fool can make a man of business, and that it's
only a matter of condescending to turn your hands to desk work and
the ways clear before you. It's a mistake, and you're not the first
that'll find it out."

"This much I know," replied Waymark, with decision. "Set me to
anything that can be learnt, and I'll be perfect in it in a quarter
the time it would take the average man."

"You want your evenings free?" asked the other, after a short
reflection. "What will you do with them?"

"I shall give them to literary work."

"I thought as much. And you think you can be a man of business and a
poet at the same time? No go, my boy. If you take up business, you
drop poetising. Those two horses never yet pulled at the same shaft,
and never will."

Mr. Woodstock pondered for a few moments. He thrust out his great
legs with feet crossed on the fender, and with his hands jingled
coin in his trouser-pockets.

"I tell you what," he suddenly began. "There's only one thing I know
of at present that you're likely to be able to do. Suppose I gave
you the job of collecting my rents down east."

"Weekly rents?"

"Weekly. It's a rough quarter, and they're a shady lot of customers.
You wouldn't find the job over-pleasant, but you might try, eh?"

"What would it bring me in,--to go at once to the point?"

"The rents average twenty-five pounds. Your commission would be
seven per cent. You might reckon, I dare say, on five-and-thirty
shillings a week."

"What is the day for collecting?"

"Mondays; but there's lots of 'em you'd have to look up several
times in a week. If you like I'll go round myself on Tuesday--
Easter Monday's no good--and you can come with me."

"I will go, by all means," exclaimed Waymark

Talk continued for some half-hour. When Waymark rose at length, he
expressed his gratitude for the assistance promised.

"Well, well," said the other, "wait till we see how things work. I
shouldn't wonder if you throw it up after a week or two. However, be
here on Tuesday at ten. And prompt, mind: I don't wait for any man."

Waymark was punctual enough on the following Tuesday, and the two
drove in a hansom eastward. It was rather a foggy morning, and
things looked their worst. After alighting they had a short walk.
Mr. Woodstock stopped at the end of an alley.

"You see," he said, "that's Litany Lane. There are sixteen houses in
it, and they're all mine. Half way down, on the left, runs off Elm
Court, where there are fourteen houses, and those are all mine,
too."

Waymark looked. Litany Lane was a narrow passage, with houses only
on one side; opposite to them ran a long high wall, apparently the
limit of some manufactory. Two posts set up at the entrance to the
Lane showed that it was no thoroughfare for vehicles. The houses
were of three storeys. There were two or three dirty little shops,
but the rest were ordinary lodging-houses, the front-doors standing
wide open as a matter of course, exhibiting a dusky passage, filthy
stairs, with generally a glimpse right through into the yard in the
rear. In Elm Court the houses were smaller, and had their fronts
whitewashed. Under the archway which led into the Court were
fastened up several written notices of rooms to be let at this or
that number. The paving was in evil repair, forming here and there
considerable pools of water, the stench and the colour whereof led
to the supposition that the inhabitants facilitated domestic
operations by emptying casual vessels out of the windows. The dirty
little casements on the ground floor exhibited without exception a
rag of red or white curtain on the one side, prevailing fashion
evidently requiring no corresponding drapery on the other. The Court
was a _cul de sac_, and at the far end stood a receptacle for ashes,
the odour from which was intolerable. Strangely enough, almost all
the window-sills displayed flower-pots, and, despite the wretched
weather, several little bird-cages hung out from the upper storeys.
In one of them a lark was singing briskly.

They began their progress through the tenements, commencing at the
top of Litany Lane. Many of the rooms were locked, the occupiers
being away at their work, but in such case the rent had generally
been left with some other person in the house, and was forthcoming.
But now and then neither rent nor tenant was to be got at, and dire
were the threats which Abraham bade the neighbours convey to the
defaulters on their return. His way with one and all was curt and
vigorous; to Waymark it seemed needlessly brutal. A woman pleading
inability to make up her total sum would be cut short with a
thunderous oath, and the assurance that, if she did not pay up in a
day or two, every stick would be carried off. Pitiful pleading for
time had absolutely no effect upon Abraham. Here and there e tenant
would complain of high rent, and point out a cracked ceiling, a
rotten piece of stairs, or something else imperatively calling for
renovation. "If you don't like the room, clear out," was the
landlord's sole reply to all such speeches.

In one place they came across an old Irish woman engaged in washing.
The room was hung with reeking clothes from wall to wall. For a time
it was difficult to distinguish objects through the steam, and
Waymark, making his way in, stumbled and almost fell over an open
box. From the box at once proceeded a miserable little wail, broken
by as terrible a cough as a child could be afflicted with; and
Waymark then perceived that the box was being used as a cradle, in
which lay a baby gasping in the agonies of some throat disease,
whilst drops from the wet clothing trickled on to its face.

On leaving this house, they entered Elm Court. Here, sitting on the
doorstep of the first house, was a child of apparently nine or ten,
and seemingly a girl, though the nondescript attire might have
concealed either sex, and the face was absolutely sexless in its
savagery. Her hair was cut short, and round her neck was a bit of
steel chain, fastened with string. On seeing the two approach, she
sprang up, and disappeared with a bound into the house.

"That's the most infernal little devil in all London, I do believe,"
said Mr. Woodstock, as they began to ascend the stairs. "Her mother
owes two weeks, and if she don't pay something to-day, I'll have her
out. She'll be shamming illness, you'll see. The child ran up to
prepare her."

The room in question was at the top of the house. It proved to be
quite bare of furniture. On a bundle of straw in one corner was
lying a woman, to all appearances _in extremis_. She lay looking up
to the ceiling, her face distorted into the most ghastly anguish,
her lips foaming; her whole frame shivered incessantly.

"Ha, I thought so," exclaimed Abraham as he entered. "Are you going
to pay anything this week?"

The woman seemed to be unconscious.

"Have you got the rent?" asked Mr. Woodstock, turning to the child,
who had crouched down in another corner.

"No, we ain't," was the reply, with a terribly fierce glare from
eyes which rather seemed to have looked on ninety years than nine.

"Then out you go! Come, you, get up now; d' you hear? Very well;
come along, Waymark; you take hold of that foot, and I'll take this.
Now, drag her out on to the landing."

They dragged her about half-way to the door, when suddenly Waymark
felt the foot he had hold of withdrawn from his grasp, and at once
the woman sprang upright. Then she fell on him, tooth and nail,
screaming like some evil beast. Had not Abraham forthwith come to
the rescue, he would have been seriously torn about the face, but
just in time the woman's arms were seized in a giant grip, and she
was flung bodily out of the room, falling with a crash upon the
landing. Then from her and the child arose a most terrific uproar of
commination; both together yelled such foulness and blasphemy as can
only be conceived by those who have made a special study of this
vocabulary, and the vituperation of the child was, if anything,
richer in quality than the mother's. The former, moreover, did not
confine herself to words, but all at once sent her clenched fist
through every pain of glass in the window, heedless of the fearful
cuts she inflicted upon herself, and uttering a wild yell of triumph
at each fracture. Mr. Woodstock was too late to save his property,
but he caught up the creature like a doll, and flung her out also on
to the landing, then coolly locked the door behind him, put the key
in his pocket, and, letting Waymark pass on first, descended the
stairs. The yelling and screeching behind them continued as long as
they were in the Court, but it drew no attention from the
neighbours, who were far too accustomed to this kind of thing to
heed it.

In the last house they had to enter they came upon a man asleep on a
bare bedstead. It was difficult to wake him. When at length he was
aroused, he glared at them for a moment with one blood-shot eye (the
other was sightless), looking much like a wild beast which doubts
whether to spring or to shrink back.

"Rent, Slimy," said Mr. Woodstock with more of good humour than
usual.

The man pointed to the mantelpiece, where the pieces of money were
found to be lying. Waymark looked round the room. Besides the
bedstead, a table was the only article of furniture, and on it stood
a dirty jug and a glass. Lying about was a strange collection of
miscellaneous articles, heaps of rags and dirty paper, bottles,
boots, bones. There were one or two chairs in process of being
new-caned; there was a wooden frame for holding glass, such as is
carried about by itinerant glaziers, and, finally, there was a
knife-grinding instrument, adapted for wheeling about the streets.
The walls were all scribbled over with obscene words and drawings.
On the inside of the door had been fitted two enormous bolts, one
above and one below.

"How's trade, Slimy?" inquired Mr. Woodstock.

"Which trade, Mr. Woodstock?" asked the man in return, in a very
husky voice.

"Oh, trade in general."

"There never was sich times since old Scratch died," replied Slimy,
shaking his head. "No chance for a honest man."

"Then you're in luck. This is the new collector, d'you see."

"I've been a-looking at him," said Slimy, whose one eye, for all
that, had seemed busy all the time in quite a different direction.
"I seen him somewheres, but I can't just make out where."

"Not many people you haven't seen, I think," said Abraham, nodding,
as he went out of the room. Waymark followed, and was glad to get
into the open streets again.





CHAPTER XIII

A MAN-TRAP




Julian Casti was successful in his application for the post of
dispenser at the All Saints' Hospital, and shortly after Easter he
left the shop in Oxford Street, taking lodgings in Beaufort Street,
Chelsea. His first evening there was spent in Waymark's company, and
there was much talk of the progress his writing would make, now that
his hours of liberty were so considerably extended. For the first
time in his life he was enjoying the sense of independence. Waymark
talked of moving from Walcot Square, in order to be nearer to his
friend. He, too, was possessed of more freedom than had been the
case for a long time, and his head was full of various fancies. They
would encourage each other in their work, afford by mutual
appreciation that stimulus which is so essential to the young
artist.

But in this world, though man may propose, it is woman who disposes.
And at this moment, Julian's future was being disposed of in a
manner he could not well have foreseen.

Harriet Smales had heard with unconcealed pleasure of his leaving
the shop and taking lodgings of his own. She had been anxious to
come and see the rooms, and, though the following Sunday was
appointed for her visit, she could not wait so long, but, to her
cousin's surprise, presented herself at the house one evening, and
was announced by the landlady, who looked suspicious. Julian, with
some nervousness, hastened to explain that the visitor was a
relative, which did not in the least alter his landlady's
preconceived ideas. Harriet sat down and looked about her with a
sigh of satisfaction. If she could but have such a home! Girls had
no chance of getting on as men did. If only her father could have
lived, things would have been different. Now she was thrown on the
world, and had to depend upon her own hard work. Then she gave way
to an hysterical sob, and Julian--who felt sure that the landlady
was listening at the door--could only beg her nervously not to be
so down-hearted.

"Whatever success I have," he said to her, "you will share it."

"If I thought so!" she sighed, looking down at the floor, and moving
the point of her umbrella up and down. Harriet had saturated her
mind with the fiction of penny weeklies, and owed to this training
all manner of awkward affectations which she took to be the most
becoming manifestations of a susceptible heart. At times she would
express herself in phrases of the most absurdly high-flown kind, and
lately she had got into the habit of heaving profound sighs between
her sentences. Julian was not blind to the meaning of all this. His
active employments during the past week had kept his thoughts from
brooding on the matter, and he had all but dismissed the trouble it
had given him. But this visit, and Harriet's demeanour throughout
it, revived all his anxieties. He came back from accompanying his
cousin part of her way home in a very uneasy frame of mind. What
could he do to disabuse the poor girl of the unhappy hopes she
entertained? The thought of giving pain to any most humble creature
was itself a pain unendurable to Julian. His was one of those
natures to which self-sacrifice is infinitely easier than the idea
of sacrificing another to his own desires or even necessities, a
vice of weakness often more deeply and widely destructive than the
vices of strength.

The visit having been paid, it was arranged that on the following
Sunday Julian should meet his cousin at the end of Gray's Inn Road
as usual. On that day the weather was fine, but Harriet came out in
no mood for a walk. She had been ailing for a day or two, she said,
and felt incapable of exertion; Mrs. Ogle was away from home for the
day, too, and it would be better they should spend the afternoon
together in the house. Julian of course assented, as always, and
they established themselves in the parlour behind the shop. In the
course of talk, the girl made mention of an engraving Julian had
given her a week or two before, and said that she had had it framed
and hung it in her bed-room.

"Do come up and look at it," she exclaimed; "there's no one in the
house. I want to ask you if you can find a better place for it. It
doesn't show so well where it is."

Julian hesitated for a moment, but she was already leading the way,
and he could not refuse to follow. They went up to the top of the
house, and entered a little chamber which might have been more tidy,
but was decently furnished. The bed was made in a slovenly way, the
mantelpiece was dusty, and the pictures on the walls hung askew.
Harriet closed the door behind them, and proceeded to point out the
new picture, and discuss the various positions which had occurred to
her. Julian would have decided the question as speedily as possible,
and once or twice moved to return downstairs, but each time the girl
found something new to detain him. Opening a drawer, she took out
several paltry little ornaments, which she wished him to admire,
and, in showing them, stood very close by his side. All at once the
door of the room was pushed open, and a woman ran in. On seeing the
stranger present, she darted back with an exclamation of surprise.

"Oh, Miss Smales, I didn't know as you wasn't alone! I heard you
moving about, and come just to arst you to lend me--but never
mind, I'm so sorry; why didn't you lock the door?"

And she bustled out again, apparently in much confusion.

Harriet had dropped the thing she held in her hand, and stood
looking at her cousin as if dismayed.

"I never thought any one was in," she said nervously. "It's Miss
Mould, the lodger. She went out before I did, and I never heard her
come back. Whatever will she think!"

"But of course," he stammered, "you will explain everything to her.
She knows who I am, doesn't she?"

"I don't think so, and, even if she did--"

She stopped, and stood with eyes on the ground, doing her best to
display maiden confusion. Then she began to cry.

"But surely, surely there is no need to trouble yourself," exclaimed
Julian, almost distracted, beginning to be dimly conscious of all
manner of threatening possibilities. "I will speak to the woman
myself, and clear you of every--. Oh, but this is all nonsense.
Let us go down at once, Harriet. What a pity you asked me to come up
here!"

It was the nearest to a reproach that he had ever yet addressed to
her. His face showed clearly how distressed he was, and that on his
own account more than hers, for he could not conceive any blame save
on himself for being so regardless of appearances.

"Go as quietly as ever you can," Harriet whispered. "The stairs
creak so. Step very softly."

This was terrible to the poor fellow. To steal down in this guilty
way was as bad as a confession of evil intentions, and he so
entirely innocent of a shadow of evil even in his thought. Yet he
could not but do as she bade him. Even on the stairs she urged him
in a very loud whisper to be yet more cautious. He was out of
himself with mortification; and felt angry with her for bringing him
into such ignominy. In the back parlour once more, he took up his
hat at once.

"You mustn't go yet," whispered Harriet. "I'm sure that woman's
listening on the stairs. You must talk a little. Let's talk so she
can hear us. Suppose she should tell Mrs. Ogle."

"I can't see that it matters," said Julian, with annoyance. "I will
myself see Mrs. Ogle."

"No, no! The idea! I should have to leave at once. Whatever shall I
do if she turns me away, and won't give me a reference or anything!"

Even in a calmer mood, Julian's excessive delicacy would have
presented an affair of this kind in a grave light to him; at present
he was wholly incapable of distinguishing between true and false, or
of gauging these fears at their true value. The mere fact of the
girl making so great a matter out of what should have been so easy
to explain and have done with, caused an exaggeration of the
difficulty in his own mind. He felt that he ought of course to
justify himself before Mrs. Ogle, and would have been capable of
doing so had only Harriet taken the same sensible view; but her
apparent distress seemed--even to him--so much more like
conscious guilt than troubled innocence, that such a task would cost
him the acutest suffering. For nearly an hour he argued with her,
trying to convince her how impossible it was that the woman who had
surprised them should harbour any injurious suspicions.

"But she knows--" began Harriet, and then stopped, her eyes
falling.

"What does she know?" demanded her cousin in surprise; but could get
no reply to his question. However, his arguments seemed at length to
have a calming effect, and, as he took leave, he even affected to
laugh at the whole affair. For all that, he had never suffered such
mental trouble in his life as during this visit and throughout the
evening which followed. The mere thought of having been obliged to
discuss such things with his cousin filled him with inexpressible
shame and misery. Waymark came to spend the evening with him, but
found poor entertainment. Several times Julian was on the point of
relating what had happened, and asking for advice, but he found it
impossible to broach the subject. There was an ever-recurring anger
against Harriet in his mind, too, for which at the same time he
reproached himself. He dreaded the next meeting between them.

Harriet, though herself quite innocent of fine feeling and nice
complexities of conscience, was well aware of the existence of such
properties in her cousin. She neither admired nor despised him for
possessing them; they were of unknown value, indifferent to her,
indeed, until she became aware of the practical use that might be
made of them. Like most narrow-minded girls, she became a shrewd
reader of character, when her affections and interests were
concerned, and could calculate Julian's motives, and the course
wherein they would lead him, with much precision. She knew too well
that he did not care for her in the way she desired, but at the same
time she knew that he was capable of making almost any sacrifice to
spare her humiliation and trouble, especially if he felt that her
unhappiness was in any way caused by himself.

Thus it came about that, on the Tuesday evening of the ensuing week,
Julian was startled by his landlady's announcing another visit from
Miss Smales. Harriet came into the room with a veil over her face,
and sank on a chair, sobbing. What she had feared had come to pass.
The lodger had told Mrs. Ogle of what had taken place in her absence
on the Sunday afternoon, and Harriet had received notice that she
must find another place at once. Mrs. Ogle was a woman of severe
virtue, and would not endure the suspicion of wrong-doing under her
roof. To whom could she come for advice and help, but to Julian?

Julian was overwhelmed. His perfectly sincere nature was incapable
of suspecting a far more palpable fraud. He started up with the
intention of going forthwith to Gray's Inn Road, but Harriet clung
to him and held him back. The idea was vain. The lodger, Miss Mould,
had long entertained a spite against her, Harriet said, and had so
exaggerated this story in relating it to Mrs. Ogle, that the latter,
and her husband, had declared that Casti should not as much as put
foot in their shop again.

"If you only knew what they've been told!" sobbed the girl, still
clinging to Julian. "They wouldn't listen to a word you said. As if
I could have thought of such a thing happening, and that woman to
say all the bad things of us she can turn her tongue to! I sha'n't
never get another place; I'm thrown out on the wide world!"

It was a phrase she had got out of her penny fiction; and very
remarkable indeed was the mixture of acting and real sentiment which
marked her utterances throughout.

Julian's shame and anger began to turn to compassion. A woman in
tears was a sight which always caused him the keenest distress.

"But," he cried, with tears in his own eyes, "it is impossible that
you should suffer all this through me, and I not even make an
attempt to clear you of such vile charges!"

"It was my own fault. I was thoughtless. I ought to have known that
people's always ready to think harm. But I think of nothing when I'm
with you, Julian!"

He had disengaged himself from her hands, and was holding one of
them in his own. But, as she made this last confession, she threw
her arms about his neck and drooped her head against his bosom.

"Oh, if you only felt to me like I do to you!" she sobbed.

No man can hear without some return of emotion a confession from a
woman's lips that she loves him. Harriet was the only girl whom
Julian had ever approached in familiar intercourse; she had no rival
to fear amongst living women; the one rival to be dreaded was
altogether out of the sphere of her conceptions,--the ideal love
of a poet's heart and brain. But the ideal is often least present to
us when most needed. Here was love; offer but love to a poet, and
does he pause to gauge its quality? The sudden whirl of conflicting
emotions left Julian at the mercy of the instant's impulse. She was
weak; she was suffering through him; she loved him.

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