CHAPTER XVIII. DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY

Contention begets contention in a land of the pirate races. Gigs were

at high rival speed along the road from the battle-field to London.

They were the electrical wires of the time for an expectant population

bursting to have report of so thundering an event as the encounter of

two champion light weights, nursed and backed by a pair of gallant young

noblemen, pick of the whole row of coronets above. London panted gaping

and the gigs flew with the meat to fill it.

Chumley Potts offered Ambrose Mallard fair odds that the neat little

trap of the chief sporting journal, which had a reputation to maintain,

would be over one or other of the bridges crossing the Thames first.

Mallard had been struck by the neat little trap of an impudent new

and lower-priced journal, which had a reputation to gain. He took

the proffered odds, on the cry as of a cracker splitting. Enormous

difficulties in regard to the testimony and the verifications were

discussed; they were overcome. Potts was ready for any amount of

trouble; Mallard the same. There was clearly a race. There would

consequently be a record. Visits to the offices of those papers,

perhaps half a day at the south end of London or on Westminster bridge,

examining witnesses, corner shopmen, watermen, and the like, would or

should satisfactorily establish the disputed point.

Fleetwood had his fun; insomuch that he laughed himself into a sentiment

of humaneness toward the couple of donkeys and forgot his contempt of

them. Their gamblings and their bets increased his number of dependents;

and imbeciles were preferable to dolts or the dry gilt figures of

the circle he had to move in. Matter for some astonishment had been

furnished to the latter this day; and would cause an icy Signor stare

and rather an angry Signora flutter. A characteristic of that upper

circle, as he knew it, is, that the good are dull, the vicious very bad.

They had nothing to please him but manners. Elsewhere this land is

a land of no manners. Take it and make the most of it, then, for its

quality of brute honesty: which is found to flourish best in the British

prize-ring.

His irony landed him there. It struck the country a ringing blow. But

it struck an almost effacing one at the life of the young nobleman

of boundless wealth, whose highest renown was the being a patron of

prizefighters. Husband of the daughter of the Old Buccaneer as well!

perchance as a result. That philosopher tramp named her ‘beautiful

Gorgon.’ She has no beauty; and as for Gorgon, the creature has a look

of timid softness in waiting behind her rocky eyes. A barbaric damsel

beginning to nibble at civilization, is nearer the mark; and ought she

to be discouraged?

Fleetwood’s wrath with his position warned him against the dupery of

any such alcove thoughts. For his wrath revenged him, and he feared the

being stripped of it, lest a certain fund of his own softness, that he

knew of; though few did, should pull him to the creature’s feet. She

belonged to him indeed; so he might put her to the trial of whether she

had a heart and personal charm, without the ceremony of wooing--which,

in his case, tempted to the feeling desperately earnest and becoming

enslaved. He speculated upon her eyelids and lips, and her voice, when

melting, as women do in their different ways; here and there with an

execrable--perhaps pardonable--art; one or two divinely. The vision

drew him to a headlong plunge and swim of the amorous mind, occupying

a minute, filling an era. He corrected the feebleness, and at the same

time threw a practical coachman’s glance on peculiarities of the road,

requiring some knowledge of it if traversed backward at a whipping pace

on a moonless night. The drive from Canleys to the Royal Sovereign could

be done by good pacers in an hour and a half, little more--with Ives and

the stables ready, and some astonishment in a certain unseen chamber.

Fleetwood chuckled at a vision of romantic devilry--perfectly legitimate

too. Something, more to inflict than enjoy, was due to him.

He did, not phrase it, that a talk with the fellow Woodseer of his

mountains and his forests, and nature, philosophy, poetry, would have

been particularly healthy for him, almost as good as the good counsel

be needed and solicited none to give him. It swept among his ruminations

while he pricked Potts and Mallard to supply his craving for satanical

fare.

Gower Woodseer; the mention of whom is a dejection to the venerable

source of our story, was then in the act of emerging from the Eastward

into the Southward of the line of Canterbury’s pilgrims when they set

forth to worship, on his homeward course, after a walk of two days

out of Dover. He descended London’s borough, having exactly twopence

halfpenny for refreshment; following a term of prudent starvation, at

the end of the walk. It is not a district seductive to the wayfarer’s

appetite; as, for example, one may find the Jew’s fry of fish in oil,

inspiriting the Shoreditch region, to be. Nourishment is afforded,

according to the laws of England’s genius in the arts of refection, at

uninviting shops, to the necessitated stomach. A penn’orth of crumb of

bread, assisted on its laborious passage by a penn’orth of the rinsings

of beer, left the natural philosopher a ha’penny for dessert at the

stall of an applewoman, where he withstood an inclination toward the

juicy fruit and chose nuts. They extend a meal, as a grimace broadens

the countenance, illusorily; but they help to cheat an emptiness in

time, where it is nearly as offensive to our sensations as within us;

and that prolonged occupation of the jaws goes a length to persuade

us we are filling. All the better when the substance is indigestible.

Tramps of the philosophical order, who are the practically sagacious,

prefer tough grain for the teeth. Woodseer’s munching of his nuts

awakened to fond imagination the picture of his father’s dinner, seen

one day and little envied: a small slice of cold boiled mutton-flesh in

a crescent of white fat, with a lump of dry bread beside the plate.

Thus he returned to the only home he had, not disheartened, and bearing

scenes that outvied London’s print-shops for polychrome splendour, an

exultation to recall. His condition, moreover, threw his father’s life

and work into colour: the lean Whitechapel house of the minister among

the poor; the joy in the saving of souls, if he could persuade himself

that such good labour advanced: and at the fall of light, the pastime

task of bootmaking--a desireable occupation for a thinker. Thought flies

best when the hands are easily busy. Cobblers have excursive minds.

Their occasional rap at the pegs diversifies the stitchings and is often

happily timed to settle an internal argument. Seek in a village for

information concerning the village or the state of mankind, you will be

less disappointed at the cobbler’s than elsewhere, it has been said.

As Gower had anticipated, with lively feelings of pleasure, Mr. Woodseer

was at the wonted corner of his back room, on the stool between two

tallow candleflames, leather scented strongly, when the wanderer stood

before him, in the image of a ball that has done with circling about a

stable point.

‘Back?’ the minister sang out at once, and his wrinkles gleamed:

Their hands grasped.

‘Hungry, sir, rather.’

‘To be sure, you are. One can read it on your boots. Mrs. Jones will

spread you a table. How many miles to-day? Show the soles. They tell a

tale of wear.’

They had worn to resemble the thin-edged layers of still upper cloud

round the peep of coming sky.

‘About forty odd to-day, sir. They’ve done their hundreds of miles and

have now come to dock. I ‘ll ask Mrs. Jones to bring me a plate here.’

Gower went to the housekeeper in the kitchen. His father’s front door

was unfastened by day; she had not set eyes on him yet, and Mr. Woodseer

murmured:

‘Now she’s got the boy. There ‘s clasping and kissing. He’s all wild

Wales to her.’

The plate of meat was brought by Mary Jones with Gower beside her, and

a sniffle of her happiness audible. She would not, although invited to

stay and burning to hear Gower, wait in the room where father and son

had to talk together after a separation, long to love’s counting. She

was a Welshwoman of the pure blood, therefore delicately mannered by

nature.

‘Yes, dear lad, tobacco helps you on to the marrow of your story, and I

too will blow the cloud,’ said Mr. Woodseer, when the plate was pushed

aside and the pipe appeared.

So Gower’s recital of his wanderings began, more puffs than speech at

the commencement. He was alternately picturesque and sententious

until he reached Baden; there he became involved, from thinking of a

revelation of beauty in woman.

Mr. Woodseer rapped the leather on his block.

‘A place where they have started public gambling, I am told.’

‘We must look into all the corners of the world to know it, sir, and the

world has to be riddled or it riddles us.’

‘Ah. Did you ever tell a lie, Gower Woodseer?’

‘I played.’

‘You played. The Lord be thanked you have kept your straight tongue! The

Lord can always enter a heart of truth. Sin cannot dwell with it. But

you played for gain, and that was a licenced thieving; and that was

a backsliding; and there will have to be a climbing up. And what that

means, your hold on truth will learn. Touch sin and you accommodate

yourself to its vileness. Ay, you love nature. Nature is not anchorage

for vessels like men. If you loved the Book you would float in harbour.

You played. I do trust you lost.’

‘You have your wish, sir.’

‘To have won their money, Gower! Rather starve.’

‘I did.’

‘Your reason for playing, poor lad?’

‘The reason eludes reason.’

‘Not in you.’

‘Sight of the tables; an itch to try them--one’s self as well; a notion

that the losers were playing wrong. In fine, a bit of a whirl of a

medley of atoms; I can’t explain it further.’

‘Ah. The tippler’s fumes in his head! Spotty business, Gower Woodseer.

“Lead us not into temptation” is worldly wisdom in addition to

heavenly.’

After listening to an extended homily, with a general assent and

tobacco’s phlegm, Gower replied to his father’s ‘You starved manfully?’

nodding: ‘From Baden to Nancy. An Alsatian cottager at times helped me

along, milk and bread.’

‘Wholesome for body and for soul.’

‘Entering Nancy I subscribed to the dictum of our first fathers, which

dogs would deliver, if they could speak: that there is no driver like

stomach: and I went head on to the College, saw the Principal: plea of

urgency. No engagement possible, to teach either French or English. But

he was inquisitive touching the urgency. That was my chance. The French

are humane when they are not suspicious of you. They are generous, if

you put a light to their minds. As I was dealing with a scholarly one,

I made use of such ornamental literary skill as I possessed, to prove

urgency. He supplied me with bread, fruit, and wine. In the end he

procured me pupils. I lodged over a baker’s shop. I had food walks, and

learnt something of forestry there--a taking study. When I had saved

enough to tramp it home, I said my adieux to that good friend and

tramped away, entering London with about the same amount in small coin

as when I entered Nancy. A manner of exactly hitting the mark, that some

would not find so satisfactory as it is to me.’

The minister sighed. ‘There comes in the “philosophy,” I suppose. When

will you understand, that this “philosophy” is only the passive of a

religious faith? It seems to suit you gentlemen of the road while

you are young. Work among the Whitechapel poor. It would be a way for

discovering the shallows of your “philosophy” earlier.’

Gower asked him: ‘Going badly here, sir?’

‘Murders, robberies, misusage of women, and misconduct of women!--Drink,

in short: about the same amount. Drink is their death’s river, rolling

them on helpless as corpses, on to--may they find mercy! I and a few

stand--it’s in the tide we stand here, to stop them, pluck them out,

make life a bit sweet to them before the poor bodies go beneath. But

come! all’s not dark, we have our gleams. I speak distressed by one

of our girls: a good girl, I believe; and the wilfullest that ever had

command of her legs. A well-favoured girl! You’ll laugh, she has given

her heart to a prize-fighter. Well, you can say, she might have chosen

worse. He drinks, she hates it; she loves the man and hates his vice. He

swears amendment, is hiccupping at night; fights a match on the morrow,

and gets beaten out of formation. No matter: whenever, wherever, that

man goes to his fight, that girl follows to nurse him after it. He’s

her hero. Women will have one, and it’s their lottery. You read of such

things; here we have it alive and walking. I am led to think they ‘re an

honest couple. They come of established families. Her mother was out

of Caermarthen; died under my ministration, saintly, forgiving the

drunkard. You may remember the greengrocer, Tobias Winch? He passed away

in shrieks for one drop. I had to pitch my voice to the top notes to get

hearing for the hymn. He was a reverent man, with the craving by fits.

That should have been a lesson to Madge.’

‘A little girl at the greengrocer’s hard by? She sold me apples; rather

pretty,’ said Gower.

‘A fine grown girl now--Madge Winch; a comely wench she is. It breaks

her sister Sarah’s heart. They both manage the little shop; they make

it prosper in a small way; enough, and what need they more? Then

Christopher Ines has on one of his matches. Madge drives her cart out,

if it ‘s near town. She’s off down into Kent to-day by coach, Sarah

tells me. A great nobleman patronizes Christopher; a Lord Fleetwood,

a lord of wealth. And he must be thoughtful for these people: he sent

Sarah word that Christopher should not touch drink. You may remember

a butcher Ines in the street next to us. Christopher was a wild lad,

always at “best man” with every boy he met: went to sea--ran away. He

returned a pugilist. The girl will be nursing him now. I have spoken to

her of him; and I trust to her; but I mourn her attachment to the man

who drinks.’

‘The lord’s name?’ said Gower.

‘Lord Fleetwood, Sarah named him. And so it pleases him to spend his

money!’

‘He has other tastes. I know something of him, sir. He promises to be a

patron of Literature as well. His mother was a South Wales woman.’

‘Could he be persuaded to publish a grand edition of the Triads?’ Mr.

Woodseer said at once.

‘No man more likely.’

‘If you see him, suggest it.’

‘Very little chance of my meeting him again. But those Triads! They’re

in our blood. They spring to tie knots in the head. They push me to

condense my thoughts to a tight ball. They were good for primitive

times: but they--or the trick of the mind engendered by them--trip

my steps along the lines of composition. I produce pellets instead of

flowing sheets. It’ll come right. At present I ‘m so bent to pick and

perfect, polish my phrase, that I lose my survey. As a consequence, my

vocabulary falters.’

‘Ah,’ Mr. Woodseer breathed and smote. ‘This Literature is to be your

profession for the means of living?’

‘Nothing else. And I’m so low down in the market way of it, that I could

not count on twenty pounds per annum. Fifty would give me standing, an

independent fifty.’

‘To whom are you crying, Gower?’

‘Not to gamble, you may be sure.’

‘You have a home.’

‘Good work of the head wants an easy conscience. I’ve too much of you in

me for a comfortable pensioner.’

‘Or is it not, that you have been living the gentleman out there, with

just a holiday title to it?’

Gower was hit by his father’s thrust. ‘I shall feel myself a pieman’s

chuckpenny as long as I’m unproductive, now I ‘ve come back and have to

own to a home,’ he said.

Tea brought in by Mrs. Mary Jones rather brightened him until he

considered that the enlivenment was due to a purchase by money, of

which he was incapable, and he rejected it, like an honourable man.

Simultaneously, the state of depression threw critic shades on a prized

sentence or two among his recent confections. It was rejected for

the best of reasons and the most discomforting: because it racked our

English; signifying, that he had not yet learnt the right use of his

weapons.

He was in this wrestle, under a placid demeanour, for several days,

hearing the shouts of Whitechapel Kit’s victory, and hearing of Sarah

Winch’s anxiety on account of her sister Madge; unaffected by sounds of

joy or grief, in his effort to produce a supple English, with

Baden’s Madonna for sole illumination of his darkness. To her, to the

illimitable gold-mist of perspective and the innumerable images the

thought of her painted for him, he owed the lift which withdrew him

from contemplation of himself in a very disturbing stagnant pool of the

wastes; wherein often will strenuous youth, grown faint, behold a face

beneath a scroll inscribed Impostor. All whose aim was high have spied

into that pool, and have seen the face. His glorious lady would not let

it haunt him.

The spell she cast had likewise power to raise him clean out of a

neighbourhood hinting Erebus to the young man with thirst for air,

solitudes, and colour. Scarce imaginable as she was, she reigned here,

in the idea of her, more fixedly than where she had been visible; as it

were, by right of her being celestially removed from the dismal place.

He was at the same time not insensible to his father’s contented

ministrations among these homes of squalor; they pricked the curiosity,

which was in the youthful philosopher a form of admiration. For his

father, like all Welshmen, loved the mountains. Yet here he lived,

exhorting, ministering, aiding, supported up to high good cheer by some,

it seemed, superhuman backbone of uprightness;--his religious faith?

Well, if so, the thing might be studied. But things of the frozen

senses, lean and hueless things, were as repellent to Gower’s

imagination as his father’s dishes to an epicure. What he envied was,

the worthy old man’s heart of feeling for others: his feeling at present

for the girl Sarah Winch and her sister Madge, who had not been heard

of since she started for the fight. Mr. Woodseer had written to her

relatives at the Wells, receiving no consolatory answer.

He was relieved at last; and still a little perplexed. Madge had

returned, he informed Gower. She was well, she was well in health; he

had her assurances that she was not excited about herself.

‘She has brought a lady with her, a great lady to lodge with her. She

has brought the Countess of Fleetwood to lodge with her.’

Gower heard those words from his father; and his father repeated them.

To the prostrate worshipper of the Countess of Fleetwood, they were

a blow on the head; madness had set in here, was his first recovering

thought, or else a miracle had come to pass. Or was it a sham Countess

of Fleetwood imposing upon the girl? His father was to go and see the

great lady, at the greengrocer’s shop; at her request, according to

Madge. Conjectures shot their perishing tracks across a darkness that

deepened and made shipwreck of philosophy. Was it the very Countess

of Fleetwood penitent for her dalliance with the gambling passion, in

feminine need of pastor’s aid, having had report from Madge of this good

shepherd? His father expressed a certain surprise; his countenance was

mild. He considered it a merely strange occurrence.

Perhaps, in a crisis, a minister of religion is better armed than

a philosopher. Gower would not own that, but he acknowledged the

evidences, and owned to envy; especially when he accompanied his father

to the greengrocer’s shop, and Mr. Woodseer undisturbedly said:

‘Here is the place.’ The small stuffed shop appeared to grow

portentously cavernous and waveringly illumined.