When first he came here, heroic resolutions followed him. He had thrashed a ruffian who struck a woman, and narrowly escaped with his life for doing so. Henceforth he could but assent to a truce which implied mutual toleration; and yet he understood that his presence was not without its influence even on these irredeemables. Men called him "The Hunter," or in mockery "The Dook." He had done small services for one or two of them—even written a begging letter for a rogue who could not write at all, but posed as an "old public school man," fallen upon evil days. Alban was perfectly well aware that this was a shameless imposition, but his ideas of morality as it affected the relations of rich and poor were ever primitive and unstable. "If this old thief gets half a sovereign, what's it matter?" he would argue; "the other man stole his money, I suppose, and can well afford to pay up." Here was a gospel preached every day in Thrawl Street. He had never stopped to ask its truth.
Alban crossed St. James' Street furtively, and climbed, as an athlete should climb, the boarding which defended the entrance to this amazing habitation. A contented watchman, dozing by a comfortable fire, cared little who came or went and rarely bestirred himself to ask the question. There were two entrances to the caves: one cramped and difficult, the other broad and open; and you took your choice of them according to the position of the policeman on the beat. This night, or rather this morning, of the day following upon the meeting in Union Street, discovered Alban driven to the more hazardous way. His quick eye had detected, on the far side of the enclosure, an amiable flirtation between a man of law and a lady of the dusters; and avoiding both discreetly, he slipped into a trench of the newly made foundations and crawled as swiftly through an aperture which this descent revealed.
Here, laid bare by the picks and shovels of twentieth-century Trade Unionism, was a veritable Gothic arch, bricked up to the height of a tall man's waist, but open at the tympanum. Alban hoisted himself to the aperture and, slipping through, his feet discovered the reeking floor of a dank and dripping subway; and guiding himself now by hands outstretched and fingers touching the fungi of the walls, he went on with confidence until the roof lifted above him and the watch-fires of the confraternity were disclosed. He had come by now into a vast cellar not very far from the Carlton Hotel itself. There were offshoots everywhere, passages more remote, the arches as of crypts, smaller apartments, odd corners which had guarded the casks five hundred years ago. Each of these could show you its little company safe harbored for the night; each had some face from which Master Timidity might well avert his eyes. But Alban went in amongst them as though he had been their friend. They knew his very footstep, the older "lags" would declare.
"All well, Jack?"
"All well, old cove."
"The Panorama come along?"
"Straight art of the coffee shawp, s'help me blind."
"Ship come in?"
"Two tharsand next Toosday—same as usual."
A lanky hawker, lying full length upon a sack, his pipe glowing in the darkness, exchanged these pleasantries with Alban at the entrance. There were fires by here and there in these depths and the smoke was often suffocating. The huddled groups declared all grades of ill-fortune and of crime; from that of the "pauper parson" to the hoariest house-breaker "resting" for a season. Alban's little set, so far as he had a "set" at all, consisted of the sometime curate of a fashionable West End Church, known to the company as the Archbishop of Bloomsbury; the Lady Sarah, a blooming, red-cheeked girl who sold flowers in Regent Street, "the Panorama," an old showman's son who had not a sixpenny piece in his pocket, but whose schemes were invariably about to bring him in "two thousand next Tuesday morning"; and "Betty," a pretty, fair-haired lad, thrown on the streets God knows how or by what callous act of indifferent parentage. Regularly as the clock struck, this quartette would gather in a tiny "chapel" of the cellars and sleep about a fire kindled in a grate which might have baked meats for the Tudors. They spoke of the events of the day with moderation and wise philosophy. It would be different to-morrow. Such was ever their text.
"My lord the Duke is late. Does aught of fortune keep your nobility?"
The ex-parson made way for Alban, grandiloquently offering a niche upon the bare floor and a view of the reddening embers. The boy "Betty" was already asleep, while the Lady Sarah and "the Panorama" divided a fourpenny pie most faithfully between them. A reeking atmosphere of spirit (but not of water) testified to the general conviviality. A hum of conversation was borne in upon them from the greater cellar—at odd times a rough oath of protest or the mad complainings of a drunkard. For the most part, however, the night promised to be uneventful. Alban had never seen the Lady Sarah more gracious, and as for "the Panorama" he had no doubt whatever that his fortune was made.
"My contract for America's going through and I shall be out there with a show in a month," this wild youth said—and added patronizingly, "When I come back, it will be dinner upstairs, old chaps—and some of the best. Do you suppose that I could forget you? I would as soon forget my father's grave."
They heard him with respect—no one differing from him.
"I shall certainly be pleased to accept your kind invitation," said the Archbishop, "that is, should circumstance—and Providence—enable me to redeem the waistcoat, without which—eh—hem—I understand no visitor would be admitted to those noble precincts."
The Lady Sarah expressed her opinion even more decidedly.
"Don't 'e talk," she said pleasantly, "can't you 'ear the thick 'uns a rattlin' in his mouse-trap. Poor little man and 'im a horphin. Stun me mother if I ain't a goin' ter Jay's termerrer ter buy mournin' in honor of him."
"I presume," continued the Archbishop, "that we shall all be admitted to this entertainment as it were—that is—as the colloquial expression goes—on the nod. It will be enough to mention that we are the proprietor's friends."
"You shall have a season-ticket for life, Archbishop. Just you tell me where you want a church built and I'll see that it's done. Of course I don't mind your chaff—I'm dead in earnest and the money will be there."
"A real contract this time?" Alban suggested kindly.
"A real contract. I saw Philips about it to-day, and he knows a man who is Pierpont Morgan's cousin. We are to open in New York in September and be in San Francisco the following week."
"Rather a long journey, isn't it, old chap?"
"Oh, they do those things out there. I'm told you play Hamlet one night and Othello six hours afterwards, which is really the next night because of the long distances and the differences in the latitudes. Ask the Archbishop. I expect he hasn't forgotten all his geography."
"A Cambridge man," said the Archbishop, loftily, "despises geography. Heat, light, electricity, the pure and the impure mathematics—these are his proper study. I rise superior to the occasion and tell you that San Francisco is a long way from New York. The paper in which I wrapped a ham sandwich yesterday—the advertisement of a shipping company, I may inform you—brings that back to my recollection. San Francisco is the thickness of two slices of stale bread from the seaport you mention. And I believe there are Red Indians in between."
The Lady Sarah murmured lightly the refrain of the old song concerning houses which stood in that annoying position; but Alban had already lighted a cigarette and was watching the girl's face critically.
"You've had some luck to-day, Sarah?"
"A bloomin' prophet and that I won't deny. Gar'n, Dowie."
"But you did have some luck?"
"Sure and certain. What d'ye fink? A bit of a boy, same as 'Betty' 'ere, 'e comes up and says, 'What'll ye take fer the whole bloomin' caravan?' he says, 'for ter send ter a lidy?' 'Gentleman,' I says, 'I'm only a poor girl and a widered muver ter keep, and, gentleman, I can't tike less than two pound fer 'em sure and certain as there's a God in 'eaven, I can't.' 'Well,' says he, 'it's a blarsted