it was broad day when we emerged from the inclosure, and sound was awakening along the wintry streets. london stood before me rosy and refreshed, so that she looked no longer formidably unapproachable as she had in her garb of black and many jewels. i might have entered her yesterday with the proverbial half-crown, so easily was my lot to fall in accommodating places.
duke straw, whom i was henceforth to call my friend, conducted me by a township of intricate streets to the shop of a law stationer, in a petty way of business, which stood close by clare market and abutted on lincoln’s inn fields. here he had a little bedroom, furnished with a cheap, oil-cooking stove, whereon he heated his coffee and grilled his bacon.
simon cringle, the proprietor of the shop, was taking his shutters down as we walked up. he was a little, spare man, with a vanity of insignificance. his iron-gray hair fell in short, well-greased ringlets and his thin beard in a couple more, that hung loose like dangled wood shavings; his coiled mustaches reminded one of watch springs; his very eyebrows, like bees’ legs, were humped in the middle and twisted up into fine claws at the tips. duke, in his search for lodging and experience, had no sooner seen this curiosity than he closed with him.
he gave my companion a grandiloquent “good-morning.”
“up with the lark, mr. straw,” said he, “and i hope, sir, with success in the matter of getting the first worm?” here he looked hard at me.
“he found me too much of a mouthful,” said i; “so he brought me home for breakfast.”
duke laughed.
“come and be grilled,” said he. “anyhow they roast malt-worms in a place spoken of by falstaff.”
we had a good, merry meal. i should not have thought it possible my heart could have lightened so. but there was a fascinating individuality about my companion that, i am afraid, i have but poorly suggested. he gave me glimmerings of life in a higher plane than that which had been habitual to me. no doubt his code of morals was eccentric and here and there faulty. his manner of looking at things was, however, so healthy, his breezy philosophy so infectious, that i could not help but catch some of his complaint—which was, like that of the nightingale, musical.
perhaps, had i met him by chance six months ago, my undeveloped soul would have resented his easy familiarity with a cubbish snarl or two. now my receptives were awakened; my armor of self-sufficiency eaten to rags with rust; my heart plaintive for communion with some larger influence that would recognize and not abhor.
at 8:45 he haled me off to the office, which stood a brief distance away, in a thoroughfare called great queen street. here he left me awhile, bidding me walk up and down and observe life until his chief should arrive, which he was due to do at the half-hour.
i thought it a dull street after some i had seen, but there were many old book and curiosity shops in it that aroused my interest. while i was looking into one of them i heard duke call.
“here,” he said, when i reached him; “answer out and i think ripley will give you work. i’m rather a favorite with him—that’s the truth.”
he led me into a low-browed room, with a counter. great bales of print and paper went up to the ceiling at the back, and the floor rumbled with the clank of subterranean machinery. one or two clerks were about and wedged into a corner of the room was a sort of glazed and wooden crate of comfortable proportions, which was, in fact, the chapel of ease of the minister of the place.
into this den duke conducted me with ceremony, and, retreating himself, left me almost tumbling over a bald-headed man, with a matted black beard, on which a protruding red upper lip lay like a splash of blood, who sat at a desk writing.
“shut the door,” he said, without looking up.
“it is shut, sir.”
he trailed a glance at me, as if in scrutiny, but i soon saw he could only have been balancing some phrase, for he dived again and went on writing.
presently he said, very politely, indeed, and still intent on his paper: “are you a cadet of the noble family of kinsale, sir?”
“no, sir,” i answered, in surprise.
“you haven’t the right to remain covered in the presence of the king?”
“no, sir.”
“well, i’m king here. what the blazes do you mean by standing in a private room with your hat on?”
i plucked it off, tingling.
“i’m sorry,” i said. “mr. straw brought me in so suddenly, i lost my head and my cap went with it, i suppose. but i see it’s not the only thing one may lose here, including tempers!” and with that i turned on my heel and was about to beat a retreat, fuming.
“come back!” shouted mr. ripley. “if you go now, you go for good!”
i hesitated; the memory of my late comrade restored my equilibrium.
“i didn’t mean to be rude, sir,” i said. “i shall be grateful to you if you will give me work.”
he had condescended to turn now, and was looking full at me with frowning eyes, but with no sign of anger on his face.
“well, you can speak out,” he said. “how do you come to know straw?”
“i met him by chance and we got talking together.”
“how long have you been in london?”
“since yesterday evening.”
“why did you leave winton?”
“to get work.”
“have you brought a character with you?”
here was a question to ask a trender! but i answered, “no, i never thought of it,” with perfect truth.
“what can you do?”
“anything i’m told, sir.”
“that’s a compromising statement, my friend. can you read and write?”
“yes, of course.”
“anything else?”
“nothing.”
“nothing? don’t you know anything now about the habits of birds and beasts and fishes?”
“oh, yes! i could tell you a heap about that.”
“could you? very well; i’ll give you a trial. i take you on straw’s recommendation. his opinion, i tell you, i value more than a score of written characters in a case like this. you’ve to make yourself useful in fifty different ways.”
i assented, with a light heart, and he took me at my word and the further bargain was completed. my wages were small at first, of course; but, with what i had in hand, they would keep me going no doubt till i could prove myself worth more to my employer.
in this manner i became one of ripley’s hands and later on myself a pamphleteer in a small way. i wrote to my father that evening and briefly acquainted him of my good fortune.
for some months my work was of a heterogeneous description. ripley was legitimately a job printer, on rather a large scale, and a bookbinder. to these, however, he added a little venturesomeness in publishing on his own account, as also a considerable itch for scribbling. becoming at a hint a virulent partisan in any extremist cause whatsoever, it will be no matter for wonder that his private room was much the resort of levelers, progressives and abolitionists of every creed and complexion. there furious malcontents against systems they were the first to profit by met to talk and never to listen. there fanatical propagandists, eager to fly on the rudimentary wing stumps of first principles, fluttered into print and came flapping to the ground at the third line. there, i verily believe, plots were laid that would presently have leveled powers and potentates to the ground at a nod, had any of the conspirators ever possessed the patience to sit on them till hatched. this, however, they never did. all their fiery periphrastics smoked off into the soot of print and in due course lumbered the office with piles of unmarketable drivel.
mr. ripley had, however, other strings to his bow, or he would not have prospered. he did a good business in bookselling and was even now and again successful in the more conventional publishing line. in this connection i chanced to be of some service to him, to which circumstance i owed a considerable improvement in my position after i had been with him getting on a year. he had long contemplated, and at length begun to work upon, a series of handbooks on british birds and insects, dealt with county by county. in the compilation of these much research was necessary, wherein i proved myself a useful and painstaking coadjutor. in addition, however, my own knowledge of the subject was fairly extensive as regarded hampshire, which county, and especially that part of it about winton, is rich in lepidoptera of a rare order. i may say i fairly earned the praise he bestowed upon me, which was tinged, perhaps, with a trifle of jealousy on his part, due to the fact that the section i touched proved to be undoubtedly the most popular of the series, as judged subsequently by returns.
not to push on too fast, however, i must hark back to the day of my engagement, which was marked by my introduction to one who eventually exercised a considerable influence over my destinies.
during the course of that first morning mr. ripley sent me for some copies of a pamphlet that were in order of sewing down below. by his direction i descended a spiral staircase of iron and found myself in the composing-room. at a heavy iron-sheeted table stood my new-found friend, who was, despite his youth, the valued foreman of this department. he hailed me with glee and asked: “what success?”
“all right, thanks to you,” i said; “and where may the bookbinding place be and dolly mellison?”
“oh, you’re for there, are you?” he said, with i thought a rather curious look at me, and he pointed to a side door.
passing through this i found myself in a long room, flanked to the left with many machines and to the right with a row of girls who were classifying, folding or sewing the sheets of print recent from the press.
“i’m to ask for dolly mellison,” i said, addressing the girl at my end of the row.
“well, you won’t have far to go,” she said. “i’m her.”
she was a pretty, slim lily of a thing, lithe and pale, with large gray eyes and coiled hair like a rope of sun-burned barleystraw, and her fingers petted her task as if that were so much hat-trimming.
“i’m sent by mr. ripley for copies of a pamphlet on ‘the supineness of theologicians,’” i said.
“i’m at work on it,” she answered. “wait a bit till i’ve finished the dozen.”
she glanced at me now and again without pausing in her work.
“you’re from the country, aren’t you?”
“yes. how do you know?”
“a little bird told me. what gave you those red cheeks?”
“the sight of you,” i said. i was growing up.
“i’m nothing to be ashamed of, am i?” she asked, with a pert laugh.
“you ought to be of yourself,” i said, “for taking my heart by storm in that fashion.”
“go along!” she cried, with a jerk of her elbow. “none of your gammon! i’m not to be caught by chaff.”
“it wasn’t chaff, dolly, though i may be a man of straw. is that what you meant?”
“you’re pretty free, upon my word. who told you you might call me by my name?”
“why, you wouldn’t have me call you by any one else’s? it’s pretty enough, even for you.”
“oh, go away with you!” she cried. “i won’t listen.”
at that moment duke put his head in at the door.
“the governor’s calling for you,” he said. “hurry up.”
“well, they’re ready,” said the girl—“here,” and she thrust the packet into my hands, with a little blushing half-impudent look at me.
i forgot all about her in a few minutes. my heart was too full of one only other girlish figure to find room in itself for a rival. what was zyp doing now?—the wonderful fairy child, whose phantom presence haunted all my dreams for good and evil.
as i walked from the office with duke straw that afternoon—for, as it was saturday, we left early—a silence fell between us till we neared cringle’s shop. then, standing outside, he suddenly stayed me and looked in my face.
“shall i hate or love you?” he said, with his mouth set grimly.
he made a gesture toward his deformed lower limbs with his hands, and shrugged his shoulders.
“no,” he said; “what must be, must. i’ll love you!”
there was a curious, defiant sadness in his tone, but it was gone directly. i could only stare at him in wonder.
“you’re to be my house-fellow and chum,” he said. “no, don’t protest; i’ve settled it. we’ll arrange the rest with cringle.”
and so i slept in a bed in london for the first time.
but the noise of a water wheel roared in my ears all night.
