The Three Clerks by Anthony Trollope

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'Give me the sovereign,' said Charley, 'or I'll drag you in
before them all in the bank and expose you; give me the other
sovereign, I say.'

'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed Mr. M'Ruen; 'I thought you liked a joke,
Mr. Tudor. Well, here it is. And now do be punctual, pray do be
punctual, and I'll do anything I can for you.'

And then they parted, Charley going westward towards his own
haunts, and M'Ruen following his daily pursuits in the city.

Charley had engaged to pull up to Avis's at Putney with Harry
Norman, to dine there, take a country walk, and row back in the
cool of the evening; and he had promised to call at the Weights
and Measures with that object punctually at five.

'You can get away in time for that, I suppose,' said Harry.

'Well, I'll try and manage it,' said Charley, laughing.

Nothing could be kinder, nay, more affectionate, than Norman had
been to his fellow-lodger during the last year and a half. It
seemed as though he had transferred to Alaric's cousin all the
friendship which he had once felt for Alaric; and the deeper were
Charley's sins of idleness and extravagance, the wider grew
Norman's forgiveness, and the more sincere his efforts to
befriend him. As one result of this, Charley was already deep in
his debt. Not that Norman had lent him money, or even paid bills
for him; but the lodgings in which they lived had been taken by
Norman, and when the end of the quarter came he punctually paid
his landlady.

Charley had once, a few weeks before the period of which we are
now writing, told Norman that he had no money to pay his long
arrear, and that he would leave the lodgings and shift for
himself as best he could. He had said the same thing to Mrs.
Richards, the landlady, and had gone so far as to pack up all his
clothes; but his back was no sooner turned than Mrs. Richards,
under Norman's orders, unpacked them all, and hid away the
portmanteau. It was well for him that this was done. He had
bespoken for himself a bedroom at the public-house in Norfolk
Street, and had he once taken up his residence there he would
have been ruined for ever.

He was still living with Norman, and ever increasing his debt. In
his misery at this state of affairs, he had talked over with
Harry all manner of schemes for increasing his income, but he had
never told him a word about Mr. M'Ruen. Why his salary, which was
now L150 per annum, should not be able to support him, Norman
never asked. Charley the while was very miserable, and the more
miserable he was, the less he found himself able to rescue
himself from his dissipation. What moments of ease he had were
nearly all spent in Norfolk Street; and such being the case how
could he abstain from going there?

'Well, Charley, and how do 'Crinoline and Macassar' go on?' said
Norman, as they sauntered away together up the towing-path above
Putney. Now there were those who had found out that Charley
Tudor, in spite of his wretched, idle, vagabond mode of life, was
no fool; indeed, that there was that talent within him which, if
turned to good account, might perhaps redeem him from ruin and
set him on his legs again; at least so thought some of his
friends, among whom Mrs. Woodward was the most prominent. She
insisted that if he would make use of his genius he might employ
his spare time to great profit by writing for magazines or
periodicals; and, inspirited by so flattering a proposition,
Charley had got himself introduced to the editor of a newly-
projected publication. At his instance he was to write a tale for
approval, and 'Crinoline and Macassar' was the name selected for
his first attempt.

The affair had been fully talked over at Hampton, and it had been
arranged that the young author should submit his story, when
completed, to the friendly criticism of the party assembled at
Surbiton Cottage, before he sent it to the editor. He had
undertaken to have 'Crinoline and Macassar' ready for perusal on
the next Saturday, and in spite of Mr. M'Ruen and Norah Geraghty,
he had really been at work.

'Will it be finished by Saturday, Charley?' said Norman.

'Yes--at least I hope so; but if that's not done, I have another
all complete.'

'Another! and what is that called?'

'Oh, that's a very short one,' said Charley, modestly.

'But, short as it is, it must have a name, I suppose. What's the
name of the short one?'

'Why, the name is long enough; it's the longest part about it.
The editor gave me the name, you know, and then I had to write
the story. It's to be called "Sir Anthony Allan-a-dale and the
Baron of Ballyporeen."'

'Oh! two rival knights in love with the same lady, of course,'
and Harry gave a gentle sigh as he thought of his own still
unhealed grief. 'The scene is laid in Ireland, I presume?'

'No, not in Ireland; at least not exactly. I don't think the
scene is laid anywhere in particular; it's up in a mountain, near
a castle. There isn't any lady in it--at least, not alive.'

'Heavens, Charley! I hope you are not dealing with dead women.'

'No--that is, I have to bring them to life again. I'll tell you
how it is. In the first paragraph, Sir Anthony Allan-a-dale is
lying dead, and the Baron of Ballyporeen is standing over him
with a bloody sword. You must always begin with an incident now,
and then hark back for your explanation and description; that's
what the editor says is the great secret of the present day, and
where we beat all the old fellows that wrote twenty years ago.'

'Oh!--yes--I see. They used to begin at the beginning; that was
very humdrum.'

'A devilish bore, you know, for a fellow who takes up a novel
because he's dull. Of course he wants his fun at once. If you
begin with a long history of who's who and all that, why he won't
read three pages; but if you touch him up with a startling
incident or two at the first go off, then give him a chapter of
horrors, then another of fun, then a little love or a little
slang, or something of that sort, why, you know, about the end of
the first volume, you may describe as much as you like, and tell
everything about everybody's father and mother for just as many
pages as you want to fill. At least that's what the editor says.'

'_Meleager ab ovo_ may be introduced with safety when you
get as far as that,' suggested Norman.

'Yes, you may bring him in too, if you like,' said Charley, who
was somewhat oblivious of his classicalities. 'Well, Sir Anthony
is lying dead and the Baron is standing over him, when out come
Sir Anthony's retainers----'

'Out--out of what?'

'Out of the castle: that's all explained afterwards. Out come the
retainers, and pitch into the Baron till they make mincemeat of
him.'

'They don't kill him, too?'

'Don't they though? I rather think they do, and no mistake.'

'And so both your heroes are dead in the first chapter.'

'First chapter! why that's only the second paragraph. I'm only to
be allowed ten paragraphs for each number, and I am expected to
have an incident for every other paragraph for the first four
days.'

'That's twenty incidents.'

'Yes--it's a great bother finding so many.--I'm obliged to make
the retainers come by all manner of accidents; and I should never
have finished the job if I hadn't thought of setting the castle
on fire. 'And now forked tongues of liquid fire, and greedy
lambent flames burst forth from every window of the devoted
edifice. The devouring element----.' That's the best passage in
the whole affair.'

'This is for the _Daily Delight_, isn't it?'

'Yes, for the _Daily Delight_. It is to begin on the 1st of
September with the partridges. We expect a most tremendous sale.
It will be the first halfpenny publication in the market, and as
the retailers will get them for sixpence a score--twenty-four to
the score--they'll go off like wildfire.'

'Well, Charley, and what do you do with the dead bodies of your
two heroes?'

'Of course I needn't tell you that it was not the Baron who
killed Sir Anthony at all.'

'Oh! wasn't it? O dear--that was a dreadful mistake on the part
of the retainers.'

'But as natural as life. You see these two grandees were next-
door neighbours, and there had been a feud between the families
for seven centuries--a sort of Capulet and Montague affair. One
Adelgitha, the daughter of the Thane of Allan-a-dale--there were
Thanes in those days, you know--was betrothed to the eldest son
of Sir Waldemar de Ballyporeen. This gives me an opportunity of
bringing in a succinct little account of the Conquest, which will
be beneficial to the lower classes. The editor peremptorily
insists upon that kind of thing.'

'_Omne tulit punctum_,' said Norman.

'Yes, I dare say,' said Charley, who was now too intent on his
own new profession to attend much to his friend's quotation.
'Well, where was I?--Oh! the eldest son of Sir Waldemar went off
with another lady and so the feud began. There is a very pretty
scene between Adelgitha and her lady's-maid.'

'What, seven centuries before the story begins?'

'Why not? The editor says that the unities are altogether thrown
over now, and that they are regular bosh--our game is to stick in
a good bit whenever we can get it--I got to be so fond of
Adelgitha that I rather think she's the heroine.'

'But doesn't that take off the interest from your dead grandees?'

'Not a bit; I take it chapter and chapter about. Well, you see,
the retainers had no sooner made mincemeat of the Baron--a very
elegant young man was the Baron, just returned from the
Continent, where he had learnt to throw aside all prejudices
about family feuds and everything eke, and he had just come over
in a friendly way, to say as much to Sir Anthony, when, as he
crossed the drawbridge, he stumbled over the corpse of his
ancient enemy--well, the retainers had no sooner made mincemeat
of him, than they perceived that Sir Anthony was lying with an
open bottle in his hand, and that he had taken poison.'

'Having committed suicide?' asked Norman.

'No, not at all. The editor says that we must always have a slap
at some of the iniquities of the times. He gave me three or four
to choose from; there was the adulteration of food, and the want
of education for the poor, and street music, and the miscellaneous
sale of poisons.'

'And so you chose poisons and killed the knight?'

'Exactly; at least I didn't kill him, for he comes all right
again after a bit. He had gone out to get something to do him
good after a hard night, a Seidlitz powder, or something of that
sort, and an apothecary's apprentice had given him prussic acid
in mistake.'

'And how is it possible he should have come to life after taking
prussic acid?'

'Why, there I have a double rap at the trade. The prussic acid is
so bad of its kind, that it only puts him into a kind of torpor
for a week. Then we have the trial of the apothecary's boy; that
is an excellent episode, and gives me a grand hit at the
absurdity of our criminal code.'

'Why, Charley, it seems to me that you are hitting at
everything.'

'Oh! ah! right and left, that's the game for us authors. The
press is the only _censor morum_ going now--and who so fit?
Set a thief to catch a thief, you know. Well, I have my hit at
the criminal code, and then Sir Anthony comes out of his torpor.'

'But how did it come to pass that the Baron's sword was all
bloody?'

'Ah, there was the difficulty; I saw that at once. It was
necessary to bring in something to be killed, you know. I thought
of a stray tiger out of Wombwell's menagerie; but the editor says
that we must not trespass against the probabilities; so I have
introduced a big dog. The Baron had come across a big dog, and
seeing that the brute had a wooden log tied to his throat,
thought he must be mad, and so he killed him.'

'And what's the end of it, Charley?'

'Why, the end is rather melancholy. Sir Anthony reforms, leaves
off drinking, and takes to going to church everyday. He becomes a
Puseyite, puts up a memorial window to the Baron, and reads the
Tracts. At last he goes over to the Pope, walks about in nasty
dirty clothes all full of vermin, and gives over his estate to
Cardinal Wiseman. Then there are the retainers; they all come to
grief, some one way and some another. I do that for the sake of
the Nemesis.'

'I would not have condescended to notice them, I think,' said
Norman.

'Oh! I must; there must be a Nemesis. The editor specially
insists on a Nemesis.'

The conclusion of Charley's novel brought them back to the boat.
Norman, when he started, had intended to employ the evening in
giving good counsel to his friend, and in endeavouring to arrange
some scheme by which he might rescue the brand from the burning;
but he had not the heart to be severe and sententious while
Charley was full of his fun. It was so much pleasanter to talk to
him on the easy terms of equal friendship than turn Mentor and
preach a sermon.

'Well, Charley,' said he, as they were walking up from the boat
wharf--Norman to his club, and Charley towards his lodgings--from
which route, however, he meant to deviate as soon as ever he
might be left alone--'well, Charley, I wish you success with all
my heart; I wish you could do something--I won't say to keep you
out of mischief.'

'I wish I could, Harry,' said Charley, thoroughly abashed; 'I
wish I could--indeed I wish I could--but it is so hard to go
right when one has begun to go wrong.'

'It is hard; I know it is.'

'But you never can know how hard, Harry, for you have never
tried,' and then they went on walking for a while in silence,
side by side.

'You don't know the sort of place that office of mine is,'
continued Charley. 'You don't know the sort of fellows the men
are. I hate the place; I hate the men I live with. It is all so
dirty, so disreputable, so false. I cannot conceive that any
fellow put in there as young as I was should ever do well
afterwards.'

'But at any rate you might try your best, Charley.'

'Yes, I might do that still; and I know I don't; and where should
I have been now, if it hadn't been for you?'

'Never mind about that; I sometimes think we might have done more
for each other if we had been more together. But remember the
motto you said you'd choose, Charley--Excelsior! We can none of
us mount the hill without hard labour. Remember that word,
Charley--Excelsior! Remember it now--now, to-night; remember how
you dream of higher things, and begin to think of them in your
waking moments also;' and so they parted.

CHAPTER XX

A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES.--EVENING

'Excelsior!' said Charley to himself, as he walked on a few
steps towards his lodgings, having left Norman at the door of his
club. 'Remember it now--now, to-night.'

Yes--now is the time to remember it, if it is ever to be
remembered to any advantage. He went on with stoic resolution to
the end of the street, determined to press home and put the last
touch to 'Crinoline and Macassar;' but as he went he thought of
his interview with Mr. M'Ruen and of the five sovereigns still in
his pocket, and altered his course.

Charley had not been so resolute with the usurer, so determined
to get L5 from him on this special day, without a special object
in view. His credit was at stake in a more than ordinary manner;
he had about a week since borrowed money from the woman who kept
the public-house in Norfolk Street, and having borrowed it for a
week only, felt that this was a debt of honour which it was
incumbent on him to pay. Therefore, when he had walked the length
of one street on his road towards his lodgings, he retraced his
steps and made his way back to his old haunts.

The house which he frequented was hardly more like a modern
London gin-palace than was that other house in the city which Mr.
M'Ruen honoured with his custom. It was one of those small
tranquil shrines of Bacchus in which the god is worshipped
perhaps with as constant a devotion, though with less noisy
demonstrations of zeal than in his larger and more public
temples. None absolutely of the lower orders were encouraged to
come thither for oblivion. It had about it nothing inviting to
the general eye. No gas illuminations proclaimed its midnight
grandeur. No huge folding doors, one set here and another there,
gave ingress and egress to a wretched crowd of poverty-stricken
midnight revellers. No reiterated assertions in gaudy letters,
each a foot long, as to the peculiar merits of the old tom or
Hodge's cream of the valley, seduced the thirsty traveller. The
panelling over the window bore the simple announcement, in modest
letters, of the name of the landlady, Mrs. Davis; and the same
name appeared with equal modesty on the one gas lamp opposite the
door.

Mrs. Davis was a widow, and her customers were chiefly people who
knew her and frequented her house regularly. Lawyers' clerks, who
were either unmarried, or whose married homes were perhaps not so
comfortable as the widow's front parlour; tradesmen, not of the
best sort, glad to get away from the noise of their children;
young men who had begun the cares of life in ambiguous positions,
just on the confines of respectability, and who, finding
themselves too weak in flesh to cling on to the round of the
ladder above them, were sinking from year to year to lower steps,
and depths even below the level of Mrs. Davis's public-house. To
these might be added some few of a somewhat higher rank in life,
though perhaps of a lower rank of respectability; young men who,
like Charley Tudor and his comrades, liked their ease and self-
indulgence, and were too indifferent as to the class of
companions against whom they might rub their shoulders while
seeking it.

The 'Cat and Whistle,' for such was the name of Mrs. Davis's
establishment, had been a house of call for the young men of the
Internal Navigation long before Charley's time. What first gave
rise to the connexion it is not now easy to say; but Charley had
found it, and had fostered it into a close alliance, which
greatly exceeded any amount of intimacy which existed previously
to his day.

It must not be presumed that he, in an ordinary way, took his
place among the lawyers' clerks, and general run of customers in
the front parlour; occasionally he condescended to preside there
over the quiet revels, to sing a song for the guests, which was
sure to be applauded to the echo, and to engage in a little
skirmish of politics with a retired lamp-maker and a silversmith's
foreman from the Strand, who always called him 'Sir,' and received
what he said with the greatest respect; but, as a rule, he quaffed
his Falernian in a little secluded parlour behind the bar, in which
sat the widow Davis, auditing her accounts in the morning, and
giving out orders in the evening to Norah Geraghty, her barmaid,
and to an attendant sylph, who ministered to the front parlour,
taking in goes of gin and screws of tobacco, and bringing out
the price thereof with praiseworthy punctuality.

Latterly, indeed, Charley had utterly deserted the front parlour;
for there had come there a pestilent fellow, highly connected
with the Press, as the lamp-maker declared, but employed as an
assistant shorthand-writer somewhere about the Houses of
Parliament, according to the silversmith, who greatly interfered
with our navvy's authority. He would not at all allow that what
Charley said was law, entertained fearfully democratic principles
of his own, and was not at all the gentleman. So Charley drew
himself up, declined to converse any further on politics with a
man who seemed to know more about them than himself, and confined
himself exclusively to the inner room.

On arriving at this elysium, on the night in question, he found
Mrs. Davis usefully engaged in darning a stocking, while
Scatterall sat opposite with a cigar in his mouth, his hat over
his nose, and a glass of gin and water before him.

'I began to think you weren't coming,' said Scatterall, 'and I
was getting so deuced dull that I was positively thinking of
going home.'

'That's very civil of you, Mr. Scatterall,' said the widow.

'Well, you've been sitting there for the last half-hour without
saying a word to me; and it is dull. Looking at a woman mending
stockings is dull, ain't it, Charley?'

'That depends,' said Charley, 'partly on whom the woman may be,
and partly on whom the man may be. Where's Norah, Mrs. Davis?'

'She's not very well to-night; she has got a headache; there
ain't many of them here to-night, so she's lying down.'

'A little seedy, I suppose,' said Scatterall.

Charley felt rather angry with his friend for applying such an
epithet to his lady-love; however, he did not resent it, but
sitting down, lighted his pipe and sipped his gin and water.

And so they sat for the next quarter of an hour, saying very
little to each other. What was the nature of the attraction which
induced two such men as Charley Tudor and Dick Scatterall to give
Mrs. Davis the benefit of their society, while she was mending
her stockings, it might be difficult to explain. They could have
smoked in their own rooms as well, and have drunk gin and water
there, if they had any real predilection for that mixture. Mrs.
Davis was neither young nor beautiful, nor more than ordinarily
witty. Charley, it is true, had an allurement to entice him
thither, but this could not be said of Scatterall, to whom the
lovely Norah was never more than decently civil. Had they been
desired, in their own paternal halls, to sit and see their
mother's housekeeper darn the family stockings, they would,
probably, both of them have rebelled, even though the supply of
tobacco and gin and water should be gratuitous and unlimited.

It must be presumed that the only charm of the pursuit was in its
acknowledged impropriety. They both understood that there was
something fast in frequenting Mrs. Davis's inner parlour,
something slow in remaining at home; and so they both sat there,
and Mrs. Davis went on with her darning-needle, nothing abashed.

'Well, I think I shall go,' said Scatterall, shaking off the last
ash from the end of his third cigar.

'Do,' said Charley; 'you should be careful, you know; late hours
will hurt your complexion.'

'It's so deuced dull,' said Scatterall.

'Why don't you go into the parlour, and have a chat with the
gentlemen?' suggested Mrs. Davis; 'there's Mr. Peppermint there
now, lecturing about the war; upon my word he talks very well.'

'He's so deuced low,' said Scatterall.

'He's a bumptious noisy blackguard too,' said Charley; 'he
doesn't know how to speak to a gentleman, when he meets one.'

Scatterall gave a great yawn. 'I suppose you're not going,
Charley?' said he.

'Oh yes, I am,' said Charley, 'in about two hours.'

'Two hours! well, good night, old fellow, for I'm off. Three
cigars, Mrs. Davis, and two goes of gin and water, the last
cold.' Then, having made this little commercial communication to
the landlady, he gave another yawn, and took himself away. Mrs.
Davis opened her little book, jotted down the items, and then,
having folded up her stockings, and put them into a basket,
prepared herself for conversation.

But, though Mrs. Davis prepared herself for conversation, she did
not immediately commence it. Having something special to say, she
probably thought that she might improve her opportunity of saying
it by allowing Charley to begin. She got up and pottered about
the room, went to a cupboard, and wiped a couple of glasses, and
then out into the bar and arranged the jugs and pots. This done,
she returned to the little room, and again sat herself down in
her chair.

'Here's your five pounds, Mrs. Davis,' said Charley; 'I wish you
knew the trouble I have had to get it for you.'

To give Mrs. Davis her due, this was not the subject on which she
was anxious to speak. She would have been at present well
inclined that Charley should remain her debtor. 'Indeed, Mr.
Tudor, I am very sorry you should have taken any trouble on such
a trifle. If you're short of money, it will do for me just as
well in October.'

Charley looked at the sovereigns, and bethought himself how very
short of cash he was. Then he thought of the fight he had had to
get them, in order that he might pay the money which he had felt
so ashamed of having borrowed, and he determined to resist the
temptation.

'Did you ever know me flush of cash? You had better take them
while you can get them,' and as he pushed them across the table
with his stick, he remembered that all he had left was ninepence.

'I don't want the money at present, Mr. Tudor,' said the widow.
'We're such old friends that there ought not to be a word between
us about such a trifle--now don't leave yourself bare; take what
you want and settle with me at quarter-day.'

'Well, I'll take a sovereign,' said he, 'for to tell you the
truth, I have only the ghost of a shilling in my pocket.' And so
it was settled; Mrs. Davis reluctantly pocketed four of Mr.
M'Ruen's sovereigns, and Charley kept in his own possession the
fifth, as to which he had had so hard a combat in the lobby of
the bank.

He then sat silent for a while and smoked, and Mrs. Davis again
waited for him to begin the subject on which she wished to speak.
'And what's the matter with Norah all this time?' he said at
last.