Throughout the length and breadth of this London of ours there were few legal firms, no matter of how old standing, doing a better, larger ready-money business than that of Moss and Moss of Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane. Looked down upon? Well, one could hardly say that. Old Mr. Trivett, of the firm of Trivett, Coverdale, and Trivett of Bedford Row, who had the secrets of half the first families in England locked up in his dusty japanned boxes; young Mr. Markham, who, besides being nominally a solicitor, was a high-bailiff somewhere, and had chambers in the Albany, and rode a very maney and taily light chestnut cob in the Row; and a few others,--might shrug their shoulders when the names of Moss and Moss were mentioned; but that did no harm to Moss and Moss, who, on the whole, were very well respected throughout the profession. At Mrs. Edward Moss's Sunday-evening parties in the Regent's Park were to be met many people whose names were pleasantly familiar to the public. Mr. Smee, Q. C., known as "Alibi Smee" from his great success in proving that his clients never had been within fifty miles of the spot where the crime with which they were charged was committed; Mr. Sergeant Orson; Mr. Tocsin, who bullied a witness admirably, but who gave more trouble to Edward Moss than any other man at the bar, wanting perpetual cramming and suggestions, and having the face of brass and the lungs of steel and the head of wool; Mr. Replevin, the most rising junior at the O.B.; and others, amongst them. Gilks, the marine painter, some of whose choicest bits adorned Mrs. Moss's walls; Kreese, the editor of the great sporting, literary, and theatrical Sunday print, The Scourge; O'Meara of the Stock Exchange; and actors, actresses, and singers too numerous to mention. These last were invited through Mr. Marshall Moss, Edward's brother and junior partner, who was a bachelor, and who, though he gave occasional excellent Greenwich and Richmond dinners, yet had no house of his own to entertain in. Marshall Moss attended to the more convivial portion of the clients; the actors who had differed from their managers; the ladies who wanted certain settlements arranged; the sporting publicans who wanted "the screw put upon certain parties;" the fast young gents requiring defence from civil process,--were shown up to Marshall's room on the first-floor, a comfortable room with several armchairs, and a cupboard never without sherry and soda-water; a room where some of the best stories in London were from time to time told, and which was fenced off with thick double doors, to prevent the laughter caused by them penetrating to Edward's sanctum downstairs.
For Edward attended to the real clients of the house--those for whom it was originally established--those by whom its fame had been made. And these were--thieves. Yes, there is no blinking the word. If a burglar were "in trouble," if a forger had been apprehended, if some very heavy turf-robbery had come to light, Edward Moss's busy brain was at work, and Edward Moss's hours of sleep were ruthlessly curtailed. He did not care about the heaviest kind of business, though two or three murderers unquestionably owed their necks to his skill and forethought; and he refused all petty cases of magsmen, skittle-sharps, and card-swindlers. They would have longed to have him; but they knew it was impossible. He did not like their style of business, and, above all things fatal to a chance of their engaging him, he never did anything on spec. When a man was "in trouble" he knew that it was no use sending for Mr. Moss without being able to tell him that at such-and-such a tavern or lodging-house he would find a landlord willing and ready to advance the fee for the prisoner's defence. Then Mr. Moss would step into the first hansom outside the station, and hie away to St. Luke's, Cripplegate, Drury Lane, or any other locality indicated, and returning with the money in his pocket, would hear all that the prisoner had to say, and straightway--determine on the line of defence. A wonderful little man, Edward Moss! wonderful to look at! without the smallest sign of colour in his shrunken, baggy, parchmenty face, with small gray eyes under overhanging bristly brows, with a short stubbly head of gray hair, a restless twitching mouth, thin wiry figure, and dirty hands with close-bitten dubby nails. In these respects a very different man from his brother Marshall, who was a by-no-means bad-looking Hebrew, with a handsome beard and moustache, full scarlet lips, prominent brown eyes, and in face and figure showing a general liking for the flesh-pots and other good things of this life. Where Edward Moss wore dirt, Marshall Moss sported jewelry, and each brother was sufficiently vain of his display. Each knew his business perfectly, and neither interfered with the other. Marshall's clients drove up in broughams or rattled in hansoms to the front-door, went up the broad staircase to the first-floor, and either passed straight into the presence, or beguiled the necessary interval in the perusal of the daily papers handed to them by obsequious clerks. Edward's clients sneaked in through a narrow door up a side-court; had their names and business wrung from them by the most precocious and most truculent of Jew boys; were left to rub their greasy shoulders up and down the whitewashed walls of a ghastly waiting-room until "Mithter Edward" chose to listen to the recital of their distress and wishes.
Occasionally, however, visitors to Mr. Edward Moss came in at the large front-door, and afterwards made the best of their way to his sanctum. They were generally people who would not have been regarded with much favour by the greasy-shouldered clients in the court. This was one of them who entered Cursitor Street on a warm June afternoon, and made straight for the front-door blazing with the door-plate of "Moss and Moss." A middle-sized fattish man, ill-dressed in an ill-fitting blue frock-coat and gray trousers, and a very innocent-looking small hat with a black mourning-band; a sodden-faced sleepy-looking man with mild blue eyes and an undecided mouth; a man like a not very prosperous publican; a man, who, with a fresher complexion, and at another time of year, might have been taken for a visitor to the Cattle Show; who looked, in fact, anything but what he was--chief officer of the City detectives and the terror of all the evil-doers of the East-end. He walked through the hall, and, leaving the staircase leading to Mr. Marshall Moss's rooms on his right, passed to the end of the passage and tapped at a door on which was inscribed the word "Private" in large letters. It must have been a peculiar knock which he gave, for the door was immediately opened merely wide enough to admit him, and closed as he passed through.
"Ah, ah!" said a little man in an enormous pair of spectacles; "ah, ah! 'ith you, inthpector! The governor'th been athkin' after you to-day. Let'th have a look," he continued, lifting a corner of a green-baize curtain; "ah! he'th jutht shakin' off that troublethome perjury. Now I'll give him your name."
This was Mr. Amedroz, Edward Moss's right-hand man, who knew all his master's secrets, and who was so reticent that he never opened his mouth where he could convey as much by writing. So Mr. Amedroz inscribed "Stellfox" in large round-text on a slip of paper, laid it before his principal, and, receiving an affirmative nod, ushered the inspector into the presence.
"Morning, Stellfox," said Mr. Edward, glancing up from a mass of papers in front of him; "report?"
Inspector Stellfox, unbuttoning his blue frock-coat, produced from his breast-pocket a thick notebook, and commenced:
"Sorry to say, nothing new about Captain Congreve, sir. We've tried--"
"Now look here, Stellfox," interrupted Mr. Moss; "you've had that business in hand a fortnight. If you don't report by Wednesday, I'll give that to Scotland Yard. Your men are getting lazy, and I'll try what Sir Richard Mayne's people can do. What next?"
Crestfallen, Inspector Stellfox continued,--"Slimy William, sir."
"Well," said Mr. Moss keenly, "what of him?"
"I think that's all right, sir. We've found out where his mother lives,--Shad's Row, Wapping, No. 3; bill up in the window, 'a room to let.' If you've no objection, one of my men shall take that room, sir, and try and work it that way."
"No," said Mr. Moss; "must put a woman in there. Don't you know a woman up to that sort of thing?"
"There's Hodder's wife, sir, as helped us in Charlton's case; she'd do."
"I recollect; she'll do well. Furnished or unfurnished?"
"Unfurnished room, sir."
"All right; hire some furniture of the broker. Tell Mrs. Hodder to get in at once. Widow; or husband employed on railway in the country. Must keep a gin-bottle always open, and be generous with it. Old lady will talk over her drink; and Mrs. Hodder must find out where Slimy William is, what name he's going under, and must notice what letters old lady receives. Tell her to take a child with her. Has she got a child?"
"Not of her own, sir."
"Never mind; must get one of some one else's. Must see you, or one of your men, every morning. Child will want air--excuse for her taking him out. If Slimy William is coming home on the sudden, child must be taken ill in the middle of the night; she can take it to the doctor, and come down to you."
"Right, sir. Now about Coping Crossman."
"Well?"
"Markham will have him to-night, sir. That girl 'Liza Burdon blew his gaff for him last night. He's a comic singer, he is. Goes by the name of Munmorency, and sings at the Cambridge Music-hall."
"Good! What of Mitford?"
"Well, nothing yet, sir. You're hard upon me, Mr. Moss, and that you are. We've only had that case three days, and you're expecting information already."
"Stellfox," said Mr. Moss rising, and taking a sonorous pinch of snuff, "you detectives are mere shams. You've been spoilt by the penny press, and the shilling books, and all that. You think you're wonderful fellows, and you know nothing--literally nothing. If I didn't do your work as well as my own, where should we be? Don't answer; listen! Mitford has been three times within the last week to the Crown coffee-house in Doctors' Commons. There's very little doubt that he'll go there again; for it's a quiet house, and he seems to like it. You've got his description; be off at once."
Inspector Stellfox had transacted too much business with Mr. Edward Moss to expect any further converse, so he took up the child's hat and quietly bowed and departed.
To say that of all the intensely-quiet and respectable houses in that strange portion of the City of London known as Doctors' Commons the Crown coffee-house is the most quiet and respectable, is making a strong assertion, but one which could yet be borne out by facts. It is a sleepy, dreamy neighbourhood still, although its original intense dulness has been somewhat enlivened by the pedestrians who make Paul's Chain a passage to the steamboats calling at Paul's Wharf; and the hansom cabs which find a short cut down Great St. Andrew's Hill to the South-Western Railway. But it is still the resort of abnormal individuals,--ticket-porters, to wit; plethoric individuals in half-dirty white aprons and big badges like gigantic opera-checks, men whose only use seems to be to warn approaching vehicles of the blocking-up of the narrow streets; and sable-clad mottled-faced proctors and their clerks. There are real green trees in Doctors' Commons; and flies and butterflies--by no means bad imitations of the real country insect--are seen there on the wing in the sultry summer days, buzzing round the heads of the ticket-porters, and of the strong men who load the Bottle Company's heavy carts, and who are always flinging huge fragments of rusty iron into the capacious hold of the Mary Anne of Goole, stuck high and dry in the mud off Paul's Wharf before mentioned. Life is rampant in the immediate vicinity,--in enormous Manchester warehouses, perpetually inhaling the contents of enormous Pickford's vans; in huge blocks of offices where the representatives of vast provincial firms take orders and transact business; in corn-stores and iron-companies; in mansions filled from basement to roof with Dresden china and Bohemian glass in insurance-offices and banks; and in the office of the great journal, where the engines for six days out of the seven, are unceasingly throbbing. But in the Commons life gives way to mere existence and vegetation. The organ-man plays unmolested on Addle Hill, and the children's shuttlecocks flutter in Wardrobe Place; no Pickford's vans disturb the calm serenity of Great Knightrider Street; and instead of warehouses and offices, there are quaint old dumpy congregationless churches, big rambling old halls of City Companies, the forgotten old Heralds' College with its purposeless traditions, a few apparently nothing-doing shops, a number of proctors' offices into which man is never seen to enter, and two or three refreshment-rooms. Of these the Crown is the oldest and the dirtiest. It was established--if you may trust the half-effaced legend over its door--in 1790, and it has ever since been doing the same quiet sleepy trade. It cannot understand what Kammerer's means by it. Kammerer's is the refreshment-house at the corner, which has long since escaped from the chrysalis state of coffee-shop, and now, resplendent with plate-glass and mahogany bar, cooks joints, and draws the celebrated "Crm Grw" Llangollen ale, and is filled with a perpetual stream of clattering junior clerks from the adjacent warehouses. The Crown--according to its proprietor, in whose family its lease has been vested since its establishment--don't do nothin' of this sort, and don't want to. It still regards chops and steaks as the most delicious of human food, and tea and coffee as the only beverages by which their consumption should be accompanied. Across its window still stretches an illuminated blind representing an Italian gentleman putting off in a boat with apparently nothing more serviceable for navigation purposes than a blue banjo; and it still makes a gorgeous display of two large coffee-cups and saucers, with one egg in a blue egg-cup between them. Its interior is still cut up into brown boxes with hard narrow seats, on which you must either sit bolt upright, or fall off at once; its narrow old tables are scarred and notched and worm-eaten; and it holds yet by its sawdusted floor.
About seven o'clock in the evening of the same day on which Inspector Stellfox had consulted Mr. Moss, the green-baize door of the Crown was gently swung open, and a man slinking in dived into the nearest box then vacant. He was a young fellow of not more than three-and-twenty, with well-cut regular features, and who would have been handsome had not his complexion been so sallow and his cheeks so pinched. His gaunt attenuated frame, thin hands, and eyes of unnatural brightness and restlessness, all told of recent illness; and though it was summer time his threadbare coat was tightly buttoned round his throat, and he shivered as he seated himself, and looked hungrily at the cooking-fire burning in the kitchen at the other end of the shop. After furtively glancing round him he beckoned the proprietor, gave him an order for some small refreshment, and then taking down an old volume of the Gentleman's Magazine from a neighbouring shelf, began to turn over its pages in a listless, purposeless manner. While he was thus engaged, the green-baize door swung open again, admitting a portly man with a child's hat perched on the top of his round head, who, walking into the middle of the shop, ordered from that post of vantage "a large cup of coffee and a rasher," then looked round the different boxes, and finally settled himself with his back to the light in that box where the last arrival was seated. The portly man made the other visitor a very polite bow, which was scarcely returned, and the first comer bent more earnestly over his book and shrouded his face with his hand. But the portly man, who was no other than Inspector Stellfox, had been too long in his profession not to know his business thoroughly, and so he hung up the child's hat on a peg immediately over his friend's head, and he took hold of a newspaper which lay directly under his friend's elbow; and taking advantage of each opportunity to look his friend over and over, saw that he was on the right track, and thoroughly made up his mind what to do when the chance arrived. The chance arrived simultaneously with the refreshment ordered by the haggard man: he had to put down his hand to reach the tray, and in so doing his eyes met those of the inspector, who at once winked and laid his finger on his lip.
"Mr. Mitford?" said he in a fat voice; "ah! I thought so. No, you don't, sir," he continued, pushing back the man, who had attempted to start up; "it's all right; that little matter at Canterbury's been squared up long since. I wanted to see you about something else. Look here, sir;" and the inspector took from his pocketbook a printed slip of paper, and handed it across the table to his companion, who read as follows:
"Fatal and Appalling Accident.
"We (Bridgewater Mercury) deeply regret to hear that a telegram has been received from Malta stating that Sir Percy Mitford of Redmoor near this town, and his two sons, aged twelve and nine, were drowned by the upsetting of a little boat in which they were proceeding to Sir Percy's well-known yacht Enchantress, then anchored off Valetta. By this dreadful accident the title and estates pass into another branch of the family; the heir being Sir Percy's nephew, Mr. Charles Wentworth Mitford, now studying abroad."
"There, sir! there's news for you!" said Inspector Stellfox; "we know what studying abroad means, don't we? We knows--" but Inspector Stellfox stopped suddenly; for his companion, after glaring at him vacantly for an instant with the paper outstretched in his rigid hand, fell forward in a fit.
Twenty years ago the Maecenas Club, which is now so immensely popular, and admission to which is so difficult, was a very quiet unpretending little place, rather looked down upon and despised by the denizens of the marble palaces in Pall Mall and the old fogies in St. James's Street. The great gaunt stuccoed mansion, with the bust of Maecenas in the big hall, then was not; the Club was held at a modest little house, only differing from a private residence in the size of its fanlight, in the fact of its having a double flight of steps (delicious steeple-chase ground for the youth of the neighbourhood), and from its hall-door being always open, typical of the hospitality and good-fellowship which reigned within. Ah! a glorious place in those days, the Maecenas! which, as it stated in its prospectus, was established "for the patronage of literature and the drama, and the bringing together of gentlemen eminent in their respective circles;" but which wisely left literature, the drama, and the eminent gentlemen to take care of themselves, and simply brought together the best and most clubbable fellows it could get hold of. There was something in the little M., as the members fondly abbreviated its name, which was indescribably comfortable and unlike any other club. The waiters were small men, which perhaps had something to do with it; there was no billiard-room, with noisy raffish frequenters; no card-room, with solemn one-idea'd fogies; no drawing-room for great hulking men to lounge about, and put up their dirty boots on yellow satin sofas. There was a capital coffee-room, strangers'-room, writing-room, reading-room, and the best smoking-room in London; a smoking-room whence came three-fourths of the best stories which permeated society, and whither was brought every bit of news and scandal so soon as it was hatched. There was a capital chef who was too true an artist to confine himself to made-dishes, but who looked after the joints and toothsome steaks, for which the M. had such a reputation; and there was a capital cellar. Furthermore, the members believed in all this, and believed intensely in one another.
That a dislike to clubs is strongly rooted in the female breast is not a mere aphorism of the comic writer, but is a serious fact. This feeling would be much mitigated, if not entirely eradicated, one would think, if women could only know the real arcana of those much-loathed establishments. Life wants something more than good entrées and wine, easy-chairs, big waiters, and a place to smoke in: it wants companionship and geniality--two qualities which are very rare in the club-world. You scowl at the man at the next table, and he scowls at you in return; the man who wants the magazine retained by your elbow growls out something, and you, raising your arm, growl in reply. In the smoking-room there is indeed an attempt at conversation, which is confined to maligning human nature in general, and the acquaintance of the talkers in particular; and as each man leaves the room his character is wrested from him at the door, and torn to shreds by those who remain.
It was its very difference from all these that made the Maecenas so pleasant. Everybody liked everybody else, and nobody objected to anybody. It was not too pleasant to hear little Mr. Tocsin, Q.C., shrieking some legal question across the coffee-room to a brother barrister; to have your mackerel breathed over by Tom O'Blather, as he narrated to you a Foreign-Office scandal, in which you had not the smallest interest; to have to listen to Dr. M'Gollop's French jokes told in a broad-Scotch accent, or to Tim Dwyer's hunting exploits with his "slash'n meer;" but one bore these things at the M., and bore them patiently. How proud they were of their notable members in those days; not swells, but men who had distinguished themselves by something more than length of whisker and shortness of head--the very "gentlemen eminent in their respective circles" of the prospectus! They were proud, and justly so, of Mr. Justice Ion, whose kindly beaming face, bright eye, and short-cropped gray hair would often be seen amongst them; of Smielding and Follett, the two great novelists of the day, each of whom had his band of sworn retainers and worshippers; of Tatterer, the great tragedian, who would leave King Lear's robes and be the delight of the Maecenas smoke-room; of Gilks the marine-painter; of Clobber, who was so great in cathedral interiors; and Markham, afterwards the great social caricaturist, then just commencing his career as a wood-draughtsman. The very reciprocity of regard was charming for the few swells who at that time cared for membership; they were immensely popular; and amongst them none so popular as Colonel Laurence Alsager, late of the Coldstream Guards.
By the time that Laurence Alsager was gazetted as captain and lieutenant-colonel, he had had quite enough of regimental duty, quite enough of transition from Portman Barracks to Wellington Barracks, from Winchester to Windsor; quite enough of trooping the guard at St. James's and watching over the treasures hidden away in the Bank-cellars; of leaning out of the little window in the old Guards Club in St. James's Street; quite enough of Derby drags and ballet balls, and Ryde pier and Cowes regatta, and Scotch moor and Norway fishery, and Leamington steeple-chase and Limmer's, and all those things which make up the life of a properly-regulated guardsman. The younger men in the Household Brigade could not understand this "having had quite enough." They thought him the most enviable fellow in the world. They dressed at him, they walked like him, they grew their whiskers as nearly like his as they could (mutton-chop whiskers were then the fashion, and beards and moustaches were only worn by foreign fiddlers and cavalry regiments), they bragged of him in every possible way, and one of them having heard him spoken of, from the variety of his accomplishments, as the Admirable Crichton, declared that he was infinitely better than Crichton, or any other admiral that had ever been in the sister service. The deux-temps valse had just been imported in those days, and Alsager danced it with a long, quick, swinging step which no one else could accomplish; he played the cornet almost as well as Koenig; while at Windsor he went into training and beat the Hammersmith Flyer, a professional brought down by the envious to degrade him, in a half-mile race with twelve flights of hurdles; he was a splendid amateur actor; and had covered the rough walls of the barrack-room at Windsor with capital caricatures of all his brother officers. He knew all the mysteries of "battalion drill" too, and had been adjutant of the regiment. When, therefore, he threw up his commission and sold out, everybody was utterly astonished, and all sorts of rumours were at once put into circulation. He had had a quarrel with his governor, old Sir Peregrine Alsager, some said, and left the army to spite him. He was bitten with a theatrical mania, and going to turn actor ("Was he, by G--!" said Ledger, the light comedian, hitherto his warmest admirer; "we want none of your imitation mock-turtle on the boards!"); he had got a religious craze, and was going to become a Trappist monk; he had taken to drinking; he had lost his head, and was with a keeper in a villa in St. John's Wood. All these things were said about him by his kind friends; but it is probable that none of them were so near the mark as honest Jock M'Laren, of the Scots Fusiliers, a great gaunt Scotchman, but the very best ferret in the world in certain matters; who said, "Ye may depen' upon it there's a wummin in it. Awlsager's a deevil among the sax; and there's a wummin in it, I'll bet a croon." This was a heavy stake for Jock, and showed that he was in earnest.
Be this as it may, how that Laurence Alsager sold out from her Majesty's regiment of Coldstream Guards, and that he was succeeded by Peregrine Wilks (whose grandfather, par parenthèse, kept a ham-and-beef shop in St. Martin's Court), is it not written in the chronicles of the London Gazette? Immediately after the business had been settled, Colonel Alsager left England for the Continent. He was heard of at Munich, at Berlin, at Vienna (where he remained for some considerable time), and at Trieste, where all absolute trace of him was lost, though it was believed he had gone off in an Austrian Lloyds' steamer to the Piraeus, and that he intended travelling through Greece, the Holy Land, and Egypt, before he returned home. These were rumours in which only a very few people interested themselves; society has too much to do to take account of the proceedings of its absent members; and after two years had elapsed Laurence Alsager's name was almost forgotten, when, on a dull January morning, two letters from him arrived in Loudon,--one addressed to the steward of the Maecenas ordering a good dinner for two for the next Saturday night at six; the other to the Honourable George Bertram of the Foreign Office, requesting that distinguished public servant to meet his old friend L. A. at the Maecenas, dine with him, and go with him afterwards to the Parthenium Theatre, where a new piece was announced.
Honest Mr. Turquand, the club steward, by nature a reticent man, and one immersed in perpetual calculation as to ways and means, gave his orders to the cook, but said never a word to any one else as to the contents of his letter. George Bertram, known among his colleagues at the Foreign Office as "Blab Bertram," from the fact that he never spoke to anybody unless spoken to, and even then seldom answered, was equally silent; so that Colonel Alsager's arrival at the Maecenas was thoroughly unexpected by the members. The trimly-shaved old gentlemen at the various tables stared with wonder, not unmixed with horror, at the long black beard which Alsager had grown during his absence. They thought he was some stranger who had entered the sacred precincts by mistake; some even had a horrible suspicion that it might be a newly-elected man, whose beard had never been mentioned to the committee; and it was not until they heard Laurence's clear ringing voice, and saw his eye light up with the old fire, that they recognized their long-absent friend. Then they crowded round him, and wanted to hear all his two-years' adventures and wanderings told in a breath; but he laughingly shook them off, promising full particulars at a later period; and went over to a small corner-table, which he had been accustomed to select before he went away, and which Mr. Turquand had retained for him, where he was shortly joined by George Bertram.
It is probable that no man on earth had a greater love for another than had George Bertram for Laurence Alsager. When he saw his old friend seated at the table, his heart leapt within him, and a great knot rose in his throat; but he was a thorough Englishman, so he mastered his feelings, and, as he gripped Laurence's outstretched hand, merely said, "How do?"
"My dear old George," said Laurence heartily, "what an age since we met! How splendidly well you seem to be! A little stouter, perhaps, but not aged a day. Well, I've a thousand questions to ask, and a thousand things to tell you. What the deuce are you staring at?"
"Beard!" said Mr. Bertram, who had never taken his eyes off Laurence's chin since he sat down opposite to him.
"O, ah, yes!" said Laurence. "That's a relic of savage life which I shall get rid of in a few days; but I didn't like to have him off suddenly, on account of the change of climate. I suppose it shocks the old gentlemen here; but I can't help it. Well, now, you've got oceans of news to tell me. It's full a twelvemonth since I had letters from England; not a line since I left Jerusalem; and--ah, by Jove! I've never told you how I happened to come in such a hurry. It's horribly absurd and ridiculous, you know; I hadn't the least idea of returning for at least another year. But one sultry evening, far up the Nile, as I was lying back in my kandjia,--boat, you know,--being towed up by three naked chaps, pulling away like grim death, we met another kandjia coming down. In it were two unmistakable Englishmen; fellows in all-round collars and stiff wideawakes, with puggerees put on all the wrong way. They were chattering to each other; and I thought, under that burning sky and solemn stillness, and surrounded by all the memorials of the past, they would probably be quoting Herodotus, or Gardner Wilkinson, or, better than all, Eothen; but, just as they passed me, what do you think I heard one of them say to the other? 'No, no, Jack,' said he, 'you're wrong there: it was Buckstone that played Box!' He did, by Jove! Under the shadow of the Pyramids, and close by the Sphinx, and the vocal Memnon, and Cheops and Cephrenes, and all the rest of it, to hear of Buckstone and Box and Cox! You can't tell the singular effect it had on me. I began to feel an awful longing for home; what the Germans call Heimweh came upon me at once. I longed to get back once more, and see the clubs and the theatres, and all the old life, which I had fled from so willingly; and I ordered the Arabs to turn the boat round and get me back to Cairo as quickly as possible. When we got to Cairo, I went to Shepherd's, and found the house full of a lot of cadets and fellows going out; and one of them had a Times, and in it I saw the announcement of the new piece at the Parthenium; and, I don't know why,--I fixed upon that as a sort of date-mark, and I said, I'll be back in England to see that first night;' and the next day I started for Alexandria. And on board the P.-and-O. boat I made the acquaintance of the post-office courier in charge of the Indian mail, a very good fellow, who, when he found my anxiety to get on, took me with him in his fourgon, brought me through from Marseilles to Calais without an instant's delay; let me come on board the special boat waiting for him, and landed me at London Bridge last night, having got through my journey wonderfully. And I'm in time for the first night at the Parthenium; and--now tell me all your news."
"Blab" Bertram had been dreading the command, which he knew involved his talking more in twenty minutes than he was in the habit of doing in a month. He had been delighted to hear Laurence rattling on about his own adventures, and fondly hoped that he should avoid any revelations for that night at least. But the dread edict had been issued, and George knew his friend too well not to obey. So he said with a sigh, drawing out a small notebook, "Yes, I knew you'd be naturally anxious to hear about people, and what had happened since you've been away; and so, as I'm not much good at telling things, I got Alick Geddes of our office--you know him, Lord M'Mull's brother--to put down some notes, and I'll read them to you."
"That'll do, George," said Laurence, laughing; "like the police, 'from information you have received,' eh? Never mind, so long as I hear it.--Mr. Turquand, they've not finished that bin of Thompson and Crofts' 20 during my absence? No. Then bring us a bottle, please. --And now, George, fire away!"
For the purposes of this story it would be needless to recount all the bits of scandal and chit-chat, interesting and amusing to those acquainted with the various actors in the drama, but utterly vapid to every one else, which the combined memories of Messrs. Alexander Geddes and George Bertram, clerks in the Foreign Office, and gentlemen going a great deal into all kinds of society, had furbished up and put together for the delectation of Colonel Alsager. It was the old, old story of London life, known to every one, and, mutatis nominibus, narrated of so many people. Tom's marriage, Dick's divorce, and Harry's going to the bad. Jack Considine left the service, and become sheep-farmer in Australia. Little Tim Stratum, of the Treasury, son of old Dr. Stratum the geologist, marrying that big Indian widow woman, and becoming a heavy swell, with a house in Grosvenor Square. Ned Walters dead,--fit of heart disease, or some infernal thing,--dead, by Jove; and that pretty wife of his, and all those nice little children, gone--God knows where! Lady Cecilia married? Oh, yes; and she and Townshend get on very well, they say; but that Italian chap, Di Varese, with the black beard and the tenor voice, always hanging about the house. Gertrude Netherby rapidly becoming an old woman, thin as a whipping-post, by George! and general notion of nose-and-chinniness. Florence Sackville, as lovely and as jolly as ever, was asking after you only last night. These and a hundred other little bits of gossip about men in his old regiment, and women, reputable and disreputable, formerly of his acquaintance, of turf matters and club scandals, interspersed with such anecdotes, seasoned with gros sel, as circulate when the ladies have left the dinner-table, did Laurence Alsager listen to; and when George Bertram stopped speaking and shut up his notebook, he found himself warmly complimented on his capital budget of news by his recently-arrived friend.
"You've done admirably, old fellow," said Laurence. "'Pon my oath I don't think there's hardly any one we know that you haven't had something pleasantly unpleasant to say about. Now," taking out his watch, "we must be off to the theatre, and we've just time to smoke a cigarette as we walk down there. You took the two stalls?"
"Well--no," replied George Bertram, hesitating rather suspiciously; "I only took one for you; I--I'm going-that is--I've got a seat in a box."
"George, you old vagabond, you don't mean to say you're going to desert me the first night I come back?"
"Well, I couldn't help it. You see I was engaged to go with these people before you wrote; and--"
"All right; what people are they?"
"The Mitfords."
"Mitfords? Connais pas."
"Oh, yes; you know them fast enough; Oh, I forgot--all since you left; only just happened."
"Look here, George: I've had quite enough of the Sphinx during the last six months, and I don't want any of the enigma business. What has only just happened?"
"Mitford--and all that. You'll give me no peace till I tell you. You recollect Mitford? with us at Oxford--Brasenose man, not Christ Church."
"Mitford, Mitford! Oh, I recollect; big, fair man, goodish-looking. His father failed and smashed up; didn't he? and our man went into a line regiment. Oh, by Jove, yes! and came to grief about mistaking somebody else's name for his own, and backing a bill with it; didn't he? at Canterbury, or somewhere where he was quartered?"
"Same man. Had to leave service, and came to awful grief. Ran away, and nothing heard of him. His uncle, Sir Percy, and two little boys drowned off Malta, and title came to our man. Couldn't find him anywhere; at last some Jew lawyer was employed, put detectives on, and hunted up Mitford, nearly starved, in some public in Wapping, or somewhere in the East-end. When he heard what a swell he'd become, he had a fit, and they thought he'd die. But he's been all square ever since; acted like a gentleman; went down to the place in Devonshire where his people lived before the smash; married the clergyman's daughter to whom he had been engaged in the old days; and they've just come up to town for the winter."
"Married the clergyman's daughter to whom he had been engaged in the old days, eh? George Bertram, I saw a blush mantle on your ingenuous cheek, sir, when you alluded to the lady. What is she like?"
"Stuff, Laurence! you did nothing of the kind. Lady Mitford is a very delightful woman."
"Caramba, Master George! If I were Sir Mitford, and heard you speak of my lady in that earnest manner, I should keep a sharp eye upon you. So you've not improved in that respect."
George Bertram, whose amourettes were of the most innocent description, but to accuse whom of the wildest profligacy was a favourite joke with his friends, deeper than ever, and only uttered an indignant "Too bad, too bad!"
"Come along, sir," said Laurence: "I'll sit in the silent solitude of the stalls while you are basking in beauty in a box."
"But you'll come up and be introduced, Laurence?"
"Not I. thank you; I'll leave the field clear for you."
"But Sir Charles Mitford would be so glad to renew his old acquaintance with you."
"Would he? Then Sir Charles Mitford must reserve that delight for another occasion. I shall be here after the play, and we can have a further talk if you can descend to mundane matters after your felicity. Now come along." And they strolled out together.
The Parthenium Theatre at the time I write of was a thing by itself. Since then there have been a score of imitations of it, none of them coming up to the great original, but sufficiently like to have dimmed the halo surrounding the first attempt, and to have left the British public undecided as to whom belonged the laurels due to those who first attempted to transform a wretched, dirty, hot building into an elegant, well-ventilated, comfortable salon. It was at the Parthenium that stalls were first introduced. Up to that time they had been only known at the Opera; and it was the triumph of the true British playgoer,--the man who had seen Jack Bannister, sir, and Munden and Dowton, and all those true performers who have never had any successor, sir,--that he always sat in the front row of the pit, the only place in the house whence the performance could be properly seen. When Mr. Frank Likely undertook the lesseeship of the Parthenium, he thought he saw his way to a very excellent improvement founded on this basis. He hated the true British playgoer with all his heart. In the style of entertainment about to be produced at the Parthenium, he had not the smallest intention of pandering to, or even propitiating, the great historic character; but he had perfect readiness to see that the space immediately behind the orchestra was the most valuable in the theatre; and so he set carpenters at once to work, and uprooted the hard black deal pit-benches, and erected in their stead rows of delicious fauteuils in crimson velvet, broad soft padded-backed lounges with seats which turned upon hinges, and left a space underneath for your hat and coat; charming nests where you could loll at your ease, and see and hear to perfection. The true British playgoer was thus relegated to a dark and dismal space underneath the dress-circle, where he could see little save the parting of the back-hair of the swells in the stalls, and the legs, from the knee downward, and feet of the people on the stage; where the ceiling seemed momentarily descending on him, as on the prisoner in the story of the "Iron Shroud;" and where the knees of the orange-sellers dug him in the back, while their baskets banged him in front. It is needless to say that on the Saturday after the opening of the Parthenium under the new regime, the columns of the Curtain, the Thespian Waggoner, and the Scourge were found brimming over with stinging letters from the true British playgoer, all complaining of his treatment, and all commencing, "By what right, sir, I should like to know." But Mr. Frank Likely cared little enough for this, or for anything else indeed, so long as he could keep up his villa at Roehampton, have his Sunday parties, let his wife dress like a duchess, have two or three carriages, and never be compelled to pay anybody anything. Not to pay was a perfect mania with him. Not that he had not the money. Mr. Humphreys, the treasurer, used to come round about half-past ten with bags of gold and silver, which were duly deposited in Mr. Likely's dressing-room, and thence transferred to his carriage by his dresser, a man whose pound-a-week wages had been due for a month; but if ever he were to ask for a settlement Mr. Likely would look at him with a comic surprise, give a short laugh, say, "He, he! you don't mean it, Evans; I haven't a fourpenny-piece;" and step into the brougham to be bowled away through the summer night to lamb-cutlets and peas and Sillery Mousseux at the Rochampton villa, with a prime cigar on the lawn or under the conservatory afterwards. He took the money, though he never paid any one, and no one knew what became of it; but when he went through the Court the Commissioner complimented him publicly, as he gave him his certificate, and told him in his private room that he, the Commissioner, had experienced such pleasure from Mr. and Mrs. Likely's charming talent, that he, the Commissioner, was really glad it lay in his power to make him, Mr. Likely, some little return.
It is, however, only in his position as lessee of the Parthenium Theatre that we have to do with Mr. Frank Likely, and therein he certainly was admirable. A man of common-sense and education, he saw plainly enough that if he wished to amuse the public, he must show them something with which they were perfectly familiar. They yawned over the rage of Lear, and slept through Belvidera's recital of her woes; the mere fact of Captain Absolute's wearing powder and breeches precluded their taking any interest in his love affairs; but as soon as they were shown people such as they were accustomed to see, doing things which they themselves were accustomed to do, ordinarily dressed, and moving amongst ordinary surroundings, they were delighted, and flocked in crowds to the Parthenium. Mr. Likely gave such an entertainment as suited the taste of his special visitors. The performances commenced at eight with some trifle, during the acting of which the box-doors were perpetually banging, and early visitors to the stalls were carefully stamped upon and ground against by the club-diners steadily pushing their way to their seats. The piece of the evening commenced about nine and lasted till half-past ten; and then there came forty minutes of a brilliant burlesque, with crowds of pretty coryphées, volleys of rattling puns and parodies, crackling allusions to popular topics, and resplendent scenery by Mr. Coverflats, the great scenic artist of the day. When it is recollected that though only two or three of the actors were really first-rate, yet that all were far above the average, being dressed under Mr. Likely's eye, and taught every atom of their "business;" that the theatre was thoroughly elegant, and unlike any other London house in its light-blue-and-gold decorations and airy muslin curtains, and that its foyer and lobbies were happy meeting-grounds for wits and men of fashion,-no wonder that "first-nights" at the Parthenium were looked forward to with special delight.
On the occasion on which Colonel Alsager and Mr. Bertram were about to be present, a more than ordinary amount of curiosity prevailed. For some weeks it had been vaguely rumoured that the new comedy, Tried in the Furnace, about to be produced, was written by Spofforth, that marvellous fellow who combined the author with the man of fashion, who was seen everywhere, at the Premieress's receptions, at the first clubs, always associating with the best people, and who flavoured his novels and his plays in the most piquante manner with reproductions of characters and stories well known in the London world. It was rumoured that in Tried in the Furnace the plot strongly resembled the details of a great scandal in high life, which had formed the plat de résistance of the gossips of the previous season; and it was also said that the hero, an officer in the Guards, would be played by Dacre Pontifex, who at that time had turned all women's heads who went regularly into society, and who, to a handsome face and figure and a thoroughly gentlemanly bearing, seemed to add great natural histrionic genius.
All these reports, duly set afloat in the various theatrical journals, and amongst the particular people who think and talk of nothing else but the drama and its professors,--a set permeating every class of society,--had whetted the public appetite to an unparalleled amount of keenness; and long before its representation, all the retainable stalls, boxes, and seats generally, for the first night of Tried in, the Furnace had been secured. The gallery-people were certain to come in, because Mugger, the low comedian, had an exceedingly humorous part, and the gallery worshipped Mugger; and the diminished area of the pit would probably be thronged, as it had been whispered in the columns of the Scourge that the new play was reported to contain several hits at the aristocracy, invariably a sure "draw" with the pittites. It was only of the upper boxes that the manager felt doubtful; and for this region he accordingly sent out several sheaves of orders, which were duly presented on the night by wild weird-looking women, with singular head-dresses of scraps of lace and shells, dresses neither high nor low, grimy gloves too long in the fingers, and bonnets to be left with the custodian.
It was a great night; there could be no doubt of that; Humphreys had said so, and when Humphreys so far committed himself, he was generally right. Humphreys was Mr. Likely's treasurer, confidential man, factotum. He stood at the front of the theatre to receive the important people,--notably the press,--to settle discord, to hint what was the real strength of the forthcoming piece, to beg a little indulgence for Miss Satterthwaite's hoarseness, or for the last scene of the second act, which poor Coverflats, worn off his legs, had scarcely had time to finish. He knew exactly to whom to bow, with whom to shake hands. He knew exactly where to plant the different representatives of the press, keeping up a proper graduation, yet never permitting any critic to think that he was not sufficiently honoured. He knew when to start the applause, when to hush the house into silence. Better than all, he knew where to take Mr. Likely's acceptances to get them discounted; kept an account of the dates, and paid the renewal fees out of the previous night's receipts. An invaluable man Humphreys; a really wonderful fellow!