Chapter II: ‘o World, Thy Slippery Turns!’

Given a ten-pound note which must be had. Query, where to get it? A problem not over-easy of solution for a man who has exhausted the generosity of those few friends who are generous, and discovered the hollowness of those numerous acquaintances who, not ill-natured in the beaten way of friendship, will do anything for a friend except open their purse-strings.

A sharp December morning. The wind has changed in the night from south-west to due east, and there has been a light fall of snow, which is whitening the various and picturesque roofs of Chelsea, and hangs on the ragged elm branches on Cheyne Walk. The river is dun colour, the sky iron-gray, as if the atmosphere were heavily charged with snow. Butchers’ boys, cabmen, and those denizens of the street who seem to get through their daily round of labour with an ample margin of leisure for gossip and standing about at corners, look up at the darkened vault of heaven and opine that there will be a heavy fall of snow before night.

This is the cold world which Alexis Secretan faces, leaving his wife asleep in the old tent bed at number eleven, Dixon Street. She has fallen into slothful habits of late, pleading as her excuse that there is so little to get up for, now-a-days. Certainly not pleasure or prosperity, not even so much as a new book to read, for does not that ragged old ‘Don Juan,’ whose bitterest verses Alexis gloats over in his gloomiest moods, constitute, with graceless ‘Tom Jones,’ the entire stock of literature in Sibyl Secretan’s reach?

Ten pounds. He faces the bitter blast blowing up the river from Plumstead and Woolwich and all the chilly eastern marshes, and seeming to concentrate its biting power upon innocent Cheyne Walk, he faces the rasping wind moodily, puzzling out this insolvable problem, where to get ten pounds! Where to get it? that is the only question. The how to get it has been settled from the beginning. He must borrow it. He has almost outgrown the sense of degradation which accompanies the earlier stages of the borrower’s piteous career,--he has almost reached the lower depth of the hardy and habitual borrower. He has but to settle with himself upon whom he shall make his demand. For himself he might perchance never have stooped to borrow. He would have emigrated rather, and lived by the sweat of his brow in some new country where men are equal, and poverty less than a crime; or, his heart failing him, he might have flung himself and his difficulties off Waterloo Bridge, and so made an easy end of them; but with a young and beloved wife dependent on him for daily bread he has sacrificed pride and independence, manhood and honesty even, he sometimes thinks, and for the last six months has lived a wretched hand-to-mouth existence, trying to get employment all the time, and occasionally earning a fortuitous five-pound note, but supporting the burden of life for the most part by the aid of loans obtained from the associates of happier days. He is not a man upon whom so pitiful a position sits lightly; though--being gifted by nature with a peculiarly sweet and easy temper--he has a way of taking his troubles placidly, especially in the presence of his wife, and his railings at Fate and Fortune, though frequent, are philosophical rather than angry or vindictive. He is a man who, if Nature’s bounties are to be counted as a heritage, is not undowered. Eminently handsome, of a noble presence, athletic, with a constitution to which illness and disease are unknown--with a voice that can soothe or charm, threaten or command--an eye that dominates man and the lesser animals alike--a quick, bright intellect--a wondrous power of endurance--that noble quality which in a horse we call ‘stay,’ which in man is perhaps the crowning characteristic of manhood,--with such gifts as these, Alexis Secretan should hardly count himself ill furnished for the battle of life. Unhappily, the old fairy story of the Princess’s christening gifts repeats itself more or less in every man’s life. Among the numerous good fairies who were invisible guests at Alexis Secretan’s baptismal feast two evil fairies slipped in unawares. These were Poverty and Unthrift.

‘He shall have little of this world’s goods,’ said the first.

‘And he shall squander that little,’ added the second.

This baptismal curse has been fulfilled. The only son of a disinherited father, Alexis has yet escaped the chastening influence of that sharp schoolmaster, Poverty. His mother’s fortune was enough to support father and son in luxurious idleness, and in a happy-go-lucky, easy kind of life in foreign cities, where life is cheaper, gayer, and brighter than at home. At seventeen his father’s influence was sufficient to obtain him a commission in a crack regiment. Father and mother died within a year of each other, and soon after Alexis had put on his epaulettes. The remnant of his mother’s fortune--the bulk thereof having been anticipated, and made away with from year to year as necessity impelled--served to keep the young man going in an expensive profession for about five years, during which he had the good fortune to see some active service, distinguish himself by various displays of reckless daring, and obtain a captaincy. At the end of the fifth year he had spent the last shilling of his capital, and was in debt. Knowing the impossibility of living on his pay, he sold out, and for some time--about a year and a half--contrived to live upon the proceeds of his commission, having thus sacrificed his military career to the necessities of eighteen months’ idleness, and to that miserable condition of a noble profession which makes it impossible that a gentleman should live by his sword.

Alexis reviews the ranks of his acquaintances as he walks Londonwards. He has exhausted the bounty of his easy-going, and, in some cases, open-handed brother officers. No hope of help there. His foreign education has left him without school friends near at hand. Honest Max, or jovial Fritz of Heidelberg might advance him a thaler--or a handful of groschen--were they within reach, but their normal state is impecuniosity.

There is but one source left undrained. Even in this depth of destitution he has not yet appealed to his mother’s sole surviving sister, his aunt Louisa, co-heiress with his mother of a rich Manchester manufacturer, and more fortunately married than his mother. Aunt Louisa is the wife of Dudley Gorsuch, barrister, in large practice, and member for Glaseford, in the Potteries, a self-made man, self-important, and worshipping rank and mammon, as the Ammonites worshipped Moloch. On this bleak December morning it occurs to Alexis that aunt Louisa, being of his mother’s kin, must have some green spot in her nature, some place in her heart accessible to softer feeling, were it but the size of a pin’s point, and that he, her nephew, destitute and forlorn, ought to be able to find that place.

He has dined at her house when he was a dashing young officer, well dressed, well surrounded; has been entertained bounteously by her, made much of, presented to her friends with some touch of pride, being verily a young man for women to be proud of in his prosperous days. At that happier time aunt Louisa appeared to him worldly, but good-natured, hospitable, benevolent even.

He is at the bottom of Grosvenor Place by this time, and has made up his mind to try aunt Louisa.

Mr. and Mrs. Gorsuch live in a street out of Grosvenor Place, too expensive a street for Mr. Gorsuch’s means, which are larger in appearance than reality; but a fine house in a fine neighbourhood is a standing evidence of wealth, and as such is worth all it costs. There are so many things in which prudent careful people can save money; notably in their meals and the food they give their servants, since these matters appertain to the inner economy of a household, and are secrets to the outer world. Mrs. Gorsuch pinches in all domestic details, even down to scouring-paper. Mr. Gorsuch gives three state dinners in the season, supplied by Gunter, banquets of imposing appearance, but washed down with wines that range from half a crown to four and sixpence per bottle.

Alexis, fully aware of his broken-down appearance, is too wise to put forward his relationship as a claim to be admitted, despite the footman’s suspicious look.

He simply asks to see Mrs. Gorsuch, but he gives his real name, Mr. Secretan.

He is left in the hall while the footman communicates with his mistress, whose voice is heard in the library at the back of the hall.

‘She can hardly deny herself when I can hear her talking,’ thinks Alexis.

She does not deny herself. The man ushers him into the library--a square apartment with a gloomy outlook, and two pompous bookcases, containing law books, and a few of those classic authors whose works are more largely bought than read.

A fire burns frostily and cheerily in the bright steel grate. Mrs. Gorsuch sits at the table, with a row of tradesmen’s books and a ponderous plated inkstand before her. She has been trying to reconcile discrepancies between the butcher’s account of meat delivered and her own idea of the meat that ought to have been consumed. Three pounds of rump-steak sit heavily upon her soul. She cannot see how those three pounds of butcher’s meat can have been honestly eaten, and she is haunted by the image of an all-devouring policeman--or those bloodsuckers, the cook’s relatives.

She is a little dried-up looking woman, with stiff bands of light auburn hair, pepper-castored with gray; a brown merino gown, a pinched-looking lace cap, and a double eye-glass attached to a chain which glitters in the rosy light of the fire, as she turns to look at her visitor, glass in hand.

‘Alex!’ she exclaims, ‘Good heavens, what a change!’

She saw him last as a guest at one of her state dinners, elegant, prosperous-looking, with the easy self-assured air of a man certain of success in life. She sees him now reduced to the lowest ebb in the tide of man’s existence. He comes to her as a beggar. Mendicancy is written on his face.

‘Yes, there’s a marked decadence from the young man about town, is there not?’ he replies. ‘You see the brand which Destitution stamps upon her children. I have fallen very low in the world since I used to come to your swell parties. You were very kind to me in those days, aunt,’--Mrs. Gorsuch winces, knowing so well what is coming,--‘so kind that I have made up my mind to sue for a small kindness to-day. It goes against the grain, but----’

‘Before we talk about kindnesses, Alexis, perhaps you will be good enough to explain how you have sunk to this absolutely disreputable condition?’ asked Mrs. Gorsuch, looking at her nephew’s boots.

‘The easiest thing in the world,’ answers Alexis, with agreeable recklessness. ‘I have spent all my money, and have not yet acquired the knack of earning more.’

He sees, dimly, that there is little to be hoped from this flesh and blood of his, and that placid despair which is his normal condition enables him to take things easily.

‘Earning!’ echoes aunt Louisa, with a bitter sneer. ‘It isn’t in any of your race to earn the bread they eat. My father made his fortune by honest industry, your father thought he honoured our family when he exchanged his landless gentility for my sister’s thirty thousand pounds. Poor Maud! it was a luckless day that brought him across her path.’

‘Reserve your pity, aunt Louisa. My mother’s married life was a happy one. I can bear witness to that.’

‘Happy!’ exclaims Mrs. Gorsuch, contemptuously. ‘Was she in society?’

This question she evidently considers unanswerable. Alexis respects her opinion, and makes no reply.

‘Can you compare her position with mine?’

‘Certainly not. You have a handsome house in a fashionable street, a bishop for your right-hand neighbour, an earl on your left hand. You have the orthodox establishment of a lady, and all the cares that accompany it. My mother lived a roving life in some of the loveliest places of this earth, and had no servant but the maid who waited on her when she was well and nursed her when she was ill, and loved her dearly always. My mother’s society consisted of the few friends who were faithful to her through all changes of fortune. Those do not count, of course. No, she was not in society; but perhaps when you and she compare notes as to your earthly experiences in a wiser world you may find that the balance has been more evenly adjusted than you suppose now.’

Mrs. Gorsuch has hardly heard him. Her mind is troubled by a grave doubt.

‘I hope you did not tell the butler that you are my nephew,’ she says, anxiously.

‘I had too much discretion for that. And now, aunt, not wishing to intrude myself or my boots (he has perceived her uneasy glances at those patched offenders against the decencies of life) upon you longer than is absolutely necessary, I will come to the point. Will you lend me, or give me, ten pounds? If Fate is against me you may call it a gift, but if Fortune favour me it shall be repaid tenfold. I needn’t tell you how badly I want money. My appearance testifies to my necessities, but it is not for myself that I am a beggar. It is for my wife, soon to become a mother.’

‘What?’ almost shrieks Mrs. Gorsuch. ‘Married! Without income or profession, you have linked yourself to some unhappy creature?’

‘Yes, we have taken the liberty to unite our destitution. If the worst comes to the worst the same pan of charcoal that serves for one will accommodate the other.’

‘Your impiety shocks but does not surprise me,’ says Mrs. Gorsuch. ‘Such sinful imprudence could hardly be found in a man of religious principles.’

‘No, prudence and piety generally go in double harness. Well, aunt, I have my answer. You won’t lend or give me the money?’

‘In the first place, I have not such a sum to lend. Mr. Gorsuch’s position demands the expenditure of our income. We are never in debt,’ with a shudder, ‘but we have never anything to spare. I had to strain every nerve in order to pay our annual contribution to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.’

‘And you have nothing left for a starving nephew at home.’

‘Even if I were in a position to advance you this money--which I repeat I am not--I cannot see that your condition would be materially improved by the loan. Where would you be when the money was spent?’

‘Exactly where I am now. The money is not for myself, but for my wife. I should not touch a sixpence of it.’

‘Who was this unfortunate young woman when you married her?’

‘Will you lend me ten pounds?’ asks Alexis, ignoring the question.

‘Sadly to be pitied, poor creature, whoever she was. Some young person of inferior position, I dare say.’

‘Will you lend me ten pounds?’

‘I have already told you that I have no such sum at my disposal, Alexis,’ replies Mrs. Gorsuch. And then, hesitatingly, reluctantly extracting a coin from a plethoric-looking Russia leather purse, she adds, ‘If half a sovereign will be of some small assistance----’

‘It won’t,’ answered her nephew, abruptly. ‘I dare say I could make as much in a day by sweeping a crossing, and I shouldn’t feel myself so degraded as if I took the money from you. Good-bye, aunt.’

He has opened the door before he concludes, and Aunt Louisa endures agonies for the rest of the day, fearful that the butler, or man of all work, heard that last address. Remorse for her treatment of her nephew troubles her not at all.

‘He cannot say that I sent him away empty-handed,’ she reflects. ‘I offered him half a sovereign.’