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London's Heart: A Novel
London's Heart: A Novel
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH MR. PODMORE DECLARES THAT HE IS NOT ACCOUNTABLE
FOR HIMSELF
The scene opens in the locality of Soho-that labyrinth of narrow paths which always wears a depressed and melancholy air, as if it had just gone into mourning. If Soho ever had bright days in the shape of a sunny youth, it must have been very long ago. No trace of them remains; a settled sadness lies upon its queer narrow thoroughfares now and for evermore. The very voices of its residents are more subdued and resigned than other voices are in other places.
No locality in London contains so strange a variety of life's phases as may be found in Soho. And yet it is full of mystery, and its ways are dark and secret. Men and women may live there for years, and their antecedents and present modes of life shall be as little known as if they lived in the most remote corner of the earth. Soho is the molehill of the Great City. You may have a thousand pounds a year and spend it in Soho, and your neighbours not only shall not notice it, but shall be as utterly indifferent to you as if you lived on tenpence a day-as hundreds of poor fellows are doing at this present moment. Hard-working mechanics live there; weary-eyed needlewomen; libertines; ballet-girls, whose salary is twenty shillings a week, and who wear furs and false hair and diamond rings; and man-owls, who sleep by day and prey by night. On the doorstep of some of the houses in which these persons dwell, children in the afternoon play with marbles and broken pieces of crockery. Here is a group composed of half a dozen dirty-stockinged little girls, who look at you shyly as you pause before them, and put their fingers in their mouths and giggle surreptitiously. Speak to this one-a clear gray-eyed girl of some eight summers, with intelligent well-formed face and beautiful light hair. Question her, and bribe her with pence, and you may obtain from her the information that she lives in the next street, at the baker's, on the second-floor back; that mother and father live there, of course; that seven brothers and sisters live there, making a family party of ten in all; that they have only one room, in which mother cooks the meals, and in which they all sleep; and that sometimes Uncle Bob pays them a visit, and eats and sleeps with them for a few days. Wondrous is the inner life of Soho. It is the abode of much seediness and much suffering. Many a poor gentleman eats his bread-and-dripping there, and, if he can afford it, cooks his herring there, and thinks sadly of times, gone by, when his life had its days of sunshine. He looks forward yearningly to the time to come; but rich as is the harvest that grows in the fields of Hope, the chance of its ever being gathered is a dismal one indeed. The poor gentleman, ill-fed, ill-dressed, reads faded letters in his garret, kisses pictures there, and dreams hopefully of the future, which contains for him nothing but a grave.
In one of Soho's quiet streets-belonging to that peculiar family of streets which are invariably round the corner-is a tallow-chandler's shop, ambitiously designated by its proprietor, J. Gribble senior, as an oil and colour warehouse. This designation glares at you from over the blue shopfront in yellow letters-glares at you defiantly, as if it is aware beforehand that doubt of its assertion must necessarily rise in your mind. The window of the shop, in which the stock is displayed, is dusty and dirty, and everything behind it has a faded and second-hand appearance. In a corner of the window is a sheet of note-paper, on which is written-in feeble and uncertain letters-"Down with Cooperation!" There is an exception, however, to the generally dusty aspect of the window. In a centre pane, which is kept clean, is a square of blue cardboard, on which the following announcement is neatly written, in yellow round-hand:
J. GRIBBLE JUNIOR,
PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY
Broken Ribs or Bones
Carefully Re-set or Neatly Mended;
In fact
The Whole Frame speedily Recovered on Moderate Terms
J. G. junior informs the neighbouring Gentry that he has had a most Extensive Practice, and that, although he has had
THOUSANDS OF PATIENTS
under his Treatment, he has never turned out one Incurable.
J. G. junior has had Numerous Patients brought to him Partly Deformed or Weakened through Improper Treatment, and has in a very few Hours invariably restored to them their Original Strength.
Consultations, Examination, and Operations performed Daily
from 8 a.m. till 10 p.m
Patients admitted on application, and without the vexatious delay which is occasioned by references being required
NO CURE, NO PAY. ADVICE TO ALL GRATIS
J. G, junior's Royal Umbrella and Parasol Hospital, Second-floor Front.
The stock has not a very inviting appearance: comprising, for the most part, candles, mouse-traps, balls of twine, bars of yellow soap-so arranged as to be suggestive of prison-windows-and limbs and wings and dead bodies of flies. These latter seem to be the peculiar attribute of shop and parlour windows in Soho. One might almost be pardoned for the supposition that every discontented fly in London makes it a practice to go to Soho and die.
The shop has its public entrance for customers, and its private entrance for the residents of the house-so private indeed, so circumscribed and squeezed up, that scarcely one out of fifty passers-by would know that it was there; and that one, seeing it by merest chance, might well be lost in wonder at the perplexing idea of a stout man struggling through the narrow passage into which the mockery of a door must necessarily open. Three bell-handles display themselves on each side of the door to snare and entrap the uninitiated; a goggle-eyed knocker (with a face so hideous that babies have gone into convulsions at the sight of it) also adds to the entanglement of ideas. For, knowing that the house contains many inhabitants who have no connection with each other, and some of whom may indeed be at variance, the uninitiated brings confusion upon himself by ringing the wrong bell or knocking the wrong knock. A woman, who lodged somewhere in the vicinity of the coal-cellar, was often the occasion of much distress to the knockers and ringers. This woman, who always made her appearance fresh from the washing-tub, and who came up-stairs invariably wiping her wet arms upon her apron, was afflicted with the perpetual conviction that a ring or a knock, whether single, or double, or treble, was certainly intended for her; and as her temper was none of the sweetest, unpleasant scenes occurred. Many a box on the ears did youthful knockers and ringers receive from the damp hands of the disappointed woman, and many an angry mother would make her appearance in the passage a few minutes afterwards and exchange shrill civilities with the bad-tempered castigator. Sometimes these angry mothers would go almost into hysterics because the woman below declined to comply with such invitations as, "Come up, and I'll show yer!" or, "Come up, and I'll scratch yer eyes out for yer!" or, "What d'yer mean by slappin' my boy Billy about on the 'ead, which was weak from a babby? What d'yer mean by it, yer minx? – What d'yer mean?" (This last fortissimo.) "Come up, and I'll tear the 'air out of yer 'ead!" After which challenges and defiances the angry mothers, with very white faces, would issue into the street, and form the centres of little knots of female neighbours only too willing to discuss the matter and express their opinions. A facetious person, who had called several times at the house, and who was never able to solve the mystery of the bells, once hit upon what he conceived to be a happy idea. He gave a postman's knock; but the rush of eager feet from all parts of the house, and the glare of angry faces that met his smiling one when the door was opened, were sufficient warnings to him never to try it again; and he never did.
In the front room of the first floor of this house sits an old man, working in somewhat idle fashion on a few wooden castors or wheels. It is Saturday on a summer evening in June. The window is open; on the sill are two flower-pots. The room, which is a humble one, is very clean and tidy, and there are evidences of comfort, even of refinement about it, humble as it is. Some cheap graceful ornaments are on the mantelshelf: a pair of shells; a shepherd and a shepherdess, condemned by the exigencies of art to live apart from each other, notwithstanding their languishing looks; and, in the centre of the mantelshelf, a vase with two of yesterday's roses in it. These roses, as they are placed in the vase, touch the photograph of a young girl, which hangs in a frame above them. She is pretty and fresh-looking, and there is a smile upon her face which induces gladness in the beholder: as spring flowers and bright skies do. On either side of the portrait, hung on a higher level, is a picture of the same young girl, disguised. On the right-hand side of the mantelshelf she is dressed in a Spanish costume; on her shoulders is a black-lace shawl arranged with the most charming negligence; and as she looks at you from behind a fan, you catch just a glimpse of laughing eyes. On the left-hand side of the mantelshelf she is dressed in the costume of a century ago, in brocaded silk dress, and with black beauty-spots on her cheeks; she wears a white wig, and, in the act of curtseying, looks at you saucily and demurely, coquetting the while with a white handkerchief which she holds in her fingers. The stove is hidden by an ornament of paper flowers, the colours and arrangement of which are more artistic than the majority of those sold in the streets. There is one singular peculiarity about the furniture in the room: everything movable is on wheels. The chairs, the table, a footstool, the very ornaments on the mantelshelf-all on wheels made expressly for them. There is no carpet on the floor; but the chairs make no noise as they are moved, for the wheels (made of box or deal, according to requirement) are covered with leather. Even the flower-pots on the window-sill have wheels, and the old man is at present occupied in making wheels for a work-box, which it is not difficult to guess belongs to the young girl whose portrait hangs above the roses. He works noiselessly and slowly, and with great care. It is evident that he is engaged on a labour of love. He handles the wood as if it were sensitive; he looks at his handiwork fondly, and holds it up to the light and examines it with loving interest. Once he rises and stands before the mantelshelf, and gazes with a tender light in his eyes at the picture of the young girl. Then he returns to his tools, and resumes his work. A slight sound disturbs him, and he pauses in his work to listen. As he listens he raises his hand to his ear, and directs his eyes towards a screen, which makes, as it were, a second apartment of the cosiest corner of the room. Something that the old man loves lies behind this screen, which is so arranged that the pictures on the mantelshelf and the roses and the ornaments of paper flowers can be seen by the person lying there. A pale, thin, bent old man is he: not bent by age, but by constant stooping; with long hair-a fringe of it only round his head-nearly white, and with a thoughtful expression on his face that would well become a student; which this old man is not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Among the decorations on the mantelshelf is the smallest of clocks, in a case of wood, carved most likely by Swiss hands. As the old man sits and works, a click from the Swiss clock warns him that another hour is nearly gone. "Five minutes to nine," he whispers, and he steps softly towards the screen, and moves it so that, when he returns to his seat, he can see what it has before hidden from his sight. With the exception of the click, and presently of the striking of the hour in thin bell-notes, not a sound is heard in the room; for the old man has list slippers on his feet. The shifting of the screen has disclosed a single iron bedstead, on which lies a woman asleep. She is careworn and middle-aged; and when her features are composed, a likeness may be discerned in them to the picture of the girl on the mantelshelf. But at the present moment her lips wreathe distressfully, and an expression of pain rests upon her face.
So, in this quiet room, the sick woman sleeping and the old man working, the minutes pass swiftly, and the click of the little Swiss clock is heard again. Five minutes to ten. The old man, who has been growing restless, and who has several times gone to the bed to see if the woman is awake, grows more restless still as he hears the last click. "Alfred promised to be here by this time," he says, with an anxious look at the door as he lays his work aside. On a little table near the bed are two medicine bottles, one large and one small, which, with their labels tied nattily round their necks, look ridiculously like clergymen with their bands on. The old man takes one of these medicine bottles, and reads the directions: "Two tablespoonfuls to be given immediately she awakes, and after that, the same quantity every four hours."
"And she won't take it from any other hand than mine or Lily's," he muses. "If Alfred doesn't come home, and she doesn't wake, I must get somebody to go for Lily."
As he stands debating with himself what is best to be done, he hears a tap at the door. It heralds the appearance of a young woman, one of the lodgers in the upper part of the house. She has her hat and shawl on, and a basket is on her arm.
"Ah, Mrs. Podmore," he says abstractedly, "will you step inside?"
"No, thank you, Mr. Wheels," she answers; "I'm in a hurry. How's your daughter to-night?"
"Not so well, not so well," he says. "She's wandering a little, I think. The doctor was here in the afternoon, and I could tell by his face that he thought she was worse. And I have to give her her medicine directly she wakes."
"I'm sorry she's not well. We've all got our trials, Mr. Wheels! My sister's little boy's down with the fever too. I'm going to take a run round to see how he is."