in the year 1860, of which i now write, so much of prejudice against railways still existed among many people of a pious or superstitious turn of mind, that i can quote much immediate precedent in support of my resolve to walk to london rather than further tempt a providence i had already put to so severe a strain. it must be borne in mind of course that we trenders were little more than barbarians of an unusual order, who had been nourished on a scorn of progress and redeemed only by a natural leaning toward picturesqueness of a pagan kind. moreover, the sense of mystery, which was an integral part of our daily experience, had ingrained in us all a general antagonism toward unconstructed agencies. lastly, not one of us had ever as yet been in a train.
still, it was with no feeling of inability to carve a road for myself through the barriers to existence that i drew, on the evening of my third day’s tramp, toward the overlapping pall that was the roof of the “city of dreadful night.”
i had slept, on my road, respectively at farnham and guildford, where, in either case, cheap accommodation was easily procurable, and foresaw a difficulty, only greater in proportion, in finding reasonable lodging in london during the time i was seeking work. indifferently i pictured this city to myself as only an elongated high street, with ramifications more numerous and extended than those of the old burgh that was my native town. i was startled, overwhelmed, dazed with the black, aimless scurrying of those interwoven strings of human ants, that ran by their thronging brick heaps, eager in search for what they never seemed to find, or shot and vanished into tunnels and alleys of darkness, or were attracted to and scorched up by, apparently, the broad sheets of flame that were the shop windows of their vanity fair. moving amid the swarm from vision to vision—always an inconsiderable atom there without meaning or individuality—always stunned and stupefied by the threatening masses of masonry that hemmed me in, and accompanied me, and broke upon me in new dark forms through every vista and gap that the rank growth of ages had failed to block—the inevitable sense grew upon me, as it grows upon all who pace its interminable streets friendless, of walking in a world to which i was by heavenly birthright an alien.
near midnight, i turned into a gaunt and lonely square, where comparative quiet reigned.
i had entered london by way of waterloo bridge, as the wintry dusk was falling over house and river, and all these hours since had i been pacing its crashing thoroughfares, alive only to wonder and the cruel sense of personal insignificance. as to a lodging and bed for my weary limbs—sooner had childe roland dared the dark tower than i the burrows, that night, of the unknown pandemonium around me. i had slept in the open of the fields before now. here, though winter, it hardly seemed that there was an out-of-doors, but that the buildings were only so many sleeping closets in a dark hall.
all round the square inside was a great inclosure encompassed by a frouzy hoarding of wood, and set in the middle of the inclosure was some dim object that looked like a ruined statue. such by day, indeed, i found it to be, and of no less a person than his late majesty, king george the first. when my waking eyes first lighted on him, i saw him to be half-sunk into his horse, as if seeking to shield himself therein from the shafts of his persecutors, who, nothing discomposed, had daubed what remained of the crippled charger himself with blotches of red and white paint.
i walked once or twice round the square, seeking vainly, at first, to still the tumult of my brain. the oppressive night of locked-up london, laden like a thunder cloud with store of slumbering passions, was lowering now and settling down like a fog. the theaters were closed; the streets echoing to the last foot-falls. seeing a hole in the hoarding, i squeezed through it and withdrew into the rank grass and weeds that choked the interior of the inclosure. i had bought and brought some food with me, and this i fell to munching as i sat on a hummock of rubbish, and was presently much comforted thereby, so that nothing but sleep seemed desirable to me in all the world. therefore i lay down where i was and buttoning my coat about me, was, despite the frosty air, soon lost in delicious forgetfulness. at first my slumber was broken by reason of the fitful rumble of wheels, or pierced by voices and dim cries that yet resounded phantomly here and there, as if i lay in some stricken city, where only the dying yet lived and wailed, but gradually these all passed from me.
i awoke with the gray of dawn on my face and sat up. my limbs were cramped and stiff with the cold, and a light rime lay upon my clothes. otherwise no bitterer result had followed my rather untoward experiment.
then i looked about me and saw for the first time that i was not alone. certain haggard and unclean creatures were my bed-fellows in that desolate oasis. they lay huddled here and there, like mere scarecrows blown over by the wind and lying where they fell. there were women among them, and more than one pinched and tattered urchin, with drawn, white face resolved by sleep into nothing but pathos and starvation.
there they lay at intervals, as if on a battlefield where the crows had been busy, and each one seemed to lie flattened into the earth as dead bodies lie.
i could not but be thankful that i had stumbled over no one of them when i had entered—an accident which would very possibly have lost me my little store of money, if it had, indeed, led to nothing worse. as it was, i prepared for a hasty exit, and was about to rise, when i became conscious that my movements were under observation by one who lay not twenty feet from me.
he was so hidden by the rank grass that at first i could make out nothing but a long, large-boned face peering at me above the stems through eyes as black and glinting as boot buttons. a thatch of dark hair fell about his ears and forehead, and his eyebrows, also black, were sleek and pointed like ermine tips.
the face was so full and fine that i was startled when its owner rose, which he did on the instant, to see that he was a thick-set and stunted cripple. he shambled toward me with a winning smile on his lips, and before i could summon resolution to retreat, had come and sat down beside me.
“we seem the cocks of this company,” he said, in a deep musical voice. “among the blind the one-eyed—eh?”
he was warmly and decently clad, and i could only wonder at his choice of bedroom. he read me in a look.
“i’ve a craving for experiences,” he said. “these aren’t my usual quarters.”
“no,” i said; “i suppose not.”
“nor yours?” he went on, with a keen glance at me.
to give my confidence to a stranger was an unwise proceeding, but i was guileless as to the craft of great cities, and in this case my innocence was in a manner my good fortune.
i told him that i was only yesterday from the country, after a three days’ tramp, and how i was benighted.
“ah,” he said. “up after work, i suppose?”
“yes,” i answered.
“well,” said he, “let’s understand your capacities. guess my age first.”
“forty,” said i, at a venture, for indeed he might have been that or anything else.
“i’m 21,” he said. “don’t i look it? we mature early in london here. what do you think’s my business?”
“oh, you’re a gentleman, aren’t you?” i asked, with some stir of shyness.
“i’m a printer’s hand. that means something very different to you, don’t it? maybe you’ll develop in time. where are you from?”
i told him.
“ah,” he said. “you’ve a proverb down your way: ‘manners makeyth man.’ so they may, as they construe it—a fork for the fingers and a pretty trick of speech; but it’s the manners of the soul make the gentleman. do you believe in after-life?”
“of course i do. where do the ghosts come from otherwise?”
he laughed pleasantly, rubbing his chin in a perplexed manner, and then i noticed that his fingers were stunted like a mechanic’s and stained with printer’s ink.
“old ripley would fancy you,” he said.
“who’s he?”
“my governor—printer, binder and pamphleteer, an opponent of all governments but his own. he’s an anarchist, who’d like to transfer himself and his personal belongings to some desert satellite, after laying a train to blow up the earth with nitro-glycerin and then he’d want to overturn the heavenly system.”
“he doesn’t sound hopeful.”
“no, he isn’t, but he’s fairly original for a fanatic. i wonder if he’d give you work?”
“oh, thanks!” i exclaimed.
“nonsense; you needn’t mind him. he’s only gas. unmixed with his native air he wouldn’t be explosive, you know. i can imagine him a very unprogressive angel. it’s notoriety he wants. nothing satisfies his sort in the end like a scaffold outside of newgate with 40,000 eyes looking on and 12 guineas paid for a window in the ‘magpie and stump.’”
“are you——” i began, when he took me up with:
“his kind? not a bit of it. i’m an idealist—a dreamer asking the way to utopia. i look about for the finger-posts in places like this. one must learn and suffer to dream properly.”
“you can do that and yet have ugly enough dreams,” i said, with subdued emphasis.
“that oughtn’t to be so,” he said, looking curiously at me. “nightmare comes from self-indulgence. cosset your grievances and they’ll control you. you must be an ascetic in the art of sensation.”
“and starve on a pillar like that old saint mr. tennyson wrote of,” i answered.
“go and hang yourself,” he cried, pushing at me with a laugh. “hullo! who’s here?”
a couple of the scarecrows, evil-looking men both, had risen, and stood over us to one side, listening.
“toff kenners,” i heard one of them mutter, “and good for jink, by the looks.”
“tap the cady,” the other murmured, and both creatures shuffled round to the front of us.
“good for a midjick, matey?” asked the more ruffianly looking of the two in a menacing tone.
i started, bewildered by their jargon. my companion looked up at them smiling and drumming out a tune on his knee.
“stow it,” said the smaller man to the other; “i’ve tried the griffin and it don’t take.” then he bent his body and whined in a fulsome voice: “overtaken with a drop, good gentlemen? and won’t you pay a trifle for your lodgings, now?”
i was about to rise, but a gesture on the part of both fellows showed me that they intended to keep us at our disadvantage. a blowzed and noisome woman was advancing to join the group.
“be alert,” whispered my companion. “we must get out of this.”
the words were for me, but the men gathered their import and assumed a threatening manner. no doubt, seeing but a boy and a cripple, they valued us beneath our muscular worth.
“come,” said the big man, “we don’t stand on ceremony; we want the price of a drink.”
he advanced upon us, as he spoke, with an ugly look and in a moment my companion had seized him by the ankles and whirled him over against his friend, so that the two crashed down together. the woman set up a screech, as we jumped to our feet, and we saw wild heads start up here and there like snakes from the grass. but before any one could follow us we had gained the rent in the hoarding and slipped through. glancing back, after i had made my exit, i saw one of the men strike the woman full in the face and fell her to the ground. it was his gentle corrective to her for not having stopped us, and the sight made my blood so boil that i was on the point of tearing back, had not my companion seized and fairly carried me off. as in many cripples, his strength of arm was prodigious.
“now,” he said, when he had quieted me, “we’ll go home to breakfast.”
“where?” said i.
“home, my friend. oh, i have one, you know, for all my sleeping out there. that was a test for experience; my first one of the kind, but valuable in its way.”
“but——” i began.
“yes, you will,” he cried. “you’ll be my guest. i’ve taken a bit of a fancy to you. what’s your name?”
when i had told him, “duke straw’s mine,” he said; “though i’m not of strawberry-leaf descent. but it’s a good name for a dreamer, isn’t it? have you ever read ‘feathertop,’ by hawthorne?”
“no,” i said.
“never mind, then. when you do, you’ll recognize my portrait—a poor creature of straw that moves by smoke.”
“what smoke?” i asked, bewildered.
“perhaps you’ll find out some day—if ripley takes a fancy to you.”
“you don’t want me to go to him?”
“certainly i do. i’m going to take you with me when i tramp to work at 9 o’clock.”
he was so cool and masterful that i could only laugh and walk on with him.
