The Mysteries of London, Vol. II [Unabridged & Illustrated] (Valancourt Classics)

by George W. M. Reynolds

  Greenwood entered the clerks’ office; and, glancing towards the private one at the lower extremity, he caught sight of the speculator’s countenance peering over the blinds of the glass-door which opened between the two rooms.

  The face was instantly withdrawn; and Greenwood, who of course affected not to have observed its appearance at the window, inquired whether the speculator was within.

  “Really I can’t say, sir,” drawled a clerk, who was mending a pen: then, without desisting from his operation, he said, “I’ll see, sir, in a moment.”

  “Be so kind as to see this moment,” exclaimed Greenwood, angrily, “I suppose you know who I am?”

  “Oh! yes—sir—certainly, sir,” returned the clerk; and, having duly nibbed the pen, he dismounted very leisurely from his stool—paused to arrange a piece of blotting-paper on the desk in a very precise manner indeed—brushed the splinters of the quill from his trousers—and then dragged himself in a lazy fashion towards the private office.

  Greenwood bit his quivering lip with rage.

  “Two years ago,” he thought to himself. “I should not have been treated thus!”

  Meantime the clerk entered the inner office, and carefully closed the door behind him.

  Greenwood could hear the murmuring sounds of two voices within.

  At length the clerk reappeared, and said in a careless tone, “The governor isn’t in, Mr. Greenwood: I thought he was—but he isn’t—and, what’s more, I don’t know when he will be. You’d better look in again, if it’s particular; but I know the governor’s uncommon busy to-day.”

  “I shall not trouble you nor your governor any more,” returned Greenwood, his heart ready to break at the cool, deliberate insult thus put upon him. “You think me a fallen man—and you dare to treat me thus. But——”

  “Why, as for that,” interrupted the clerk, with impertinent emphasis, “every one knows you’re broke and done up—and my governor doesn’t want shabby insolvents hanging about his premises.”

  Greenwood’s countenance became scarlet as these bitter taunts met his ears; and for a moment he felt inclined to rush upon the insolent clerk and punish him severely with his cane.

  But, being naturally of a cool and cautious disposition, he perceived with a second thought that he might only become involved in a dilemma from which he had no means to extricate himself: so, conquering his passion, he rushed out of the office.

  He could now no longer remain blind to the cruel conviction that the extremities of his position were well known in the City, and that the hopes with which he had sallied forth three hours previously were mere delusive visions.

  Still he was resolved to leave no stone unturned in the endeavour to retrieve his ruined fortunes; but feeling sick at heart and the prey to a deep depression of spirits, he plunged hastily into a public-house to take some refreshment.

  And now behold the once splendid and fastidious Greenwood,—the man who had purchased the votes of a constituency, and had even created a sensation within the walls of Parliament,—the individual who had discounted bills of large amount for some of the greatest peers of England, and whose luxurious mode of living had once been the envy and wonder of the fashionable world,—behold the ex-member for Rottenborough partaking of a pint of porter and a crust of bread and cheese in the dingy parlour of a public-house!

  There was a painful knitting of the brows, and there was a nervous quivering of the lip, which denoted the acute emotions to which he was a prey, as he partook of his humble fare; and once—once, two large tears trickled down his cheeks, and moistened the bread that he was conveying to his mouth.

  For he thought of the times when money was as dirt in his estimation,—when he rode in splendid vehicles, sate down to sumptuous repasts, was ministered unto by a host of servants in gorgeous liveries, and revelled in the arms of the loveliest women of the metropolis.

  Oh! he thought of all this: he recalled to mind the well-filled wardrobes he had once possessed, and glanced at his present faded attire;—he shook up the remains of the muddy beer at the bottom of the pewter-pot, and remembered the gold he had lavished on champagne: his eyes lingered upon the crumbs of the bread and the rind of the cheese left on the plate, and his imagination became busy with the reminiscences of the turtle and venison that had once smoked upon his board.

  But worse—oh! far worse than this was the dread conviction that all his lavish expenditure—all his ostentatious display—all his princely feasts, had failed to secure him a single friend!

  No wonder, then, that the bitter—bitter tears started from his eyes; and, though he immediately checked that first ebullition of heart-felt anguish yet the effort only caused the storm of emotions to rage the more painfully within his breast.

  For, in imagination, he cast his eyes towards a mansion a few miles distant; and there he beheld one whose condition formed a striking contrast with his own—one who had suddenly burst from obscurity and created for himself as proud a name as might be found in Christendom,—a young man whose indomitable energies and honourable aspirations had enabled him to head armies to conquest,—and who had taken his place amongst the greatest Princes in the universe!

  The comparison which Greenwood drew—despite of himself—between the elevated position of Richard Markham and his own fallen, ruined lot, produced feelings of so painful—so exquisitely agonising a nature, that he could endure them no longer. He felt that they were goading him to madness—the more so because he was alone in that dingy parlour at the time, and was therefore the least likely to struggle against them successfully.

  Hastily quitting the public-house, he rushed into the street, where the fresh air seemed to do him good.

  And then he asked himself whether he should risk farther insult by calling upon other wealthy men with whom he had once been on intimate terms? For a few moments he was inclined to abandon the idea: but a little calm reflection told him not to despair.

  Moreover, he had a reason—a powerful motive for exerting all his energies to repair the past, so far as his worldly fortunes were concerned; and though the idea was almost insane, he hoped—if he had but a chance—to make such good use of the coming few weeks as would reinstate him in the possession of enormous wealth.

  But, alas! It seemed as if no one would listen to the scheme which he felt convinced was calculated to return millions for the risk of a few thousands!

  “Oh! I must retrieve myself—I must make a fortune!” he thought, as he hurried towards Moorgate Street. “One lucky stroke—and four-and-twenty hours shall see me rich again!”

  This idea brought a smile to his lips; and, relaxing his pace, he composed his countenance as well as he could ere he entered the office of a wealthy stockbroker in Moorgate Street.

  The stockbroker was lounging over the clerks’ desk, conversing with a merchant whom Greenwood also knew; and the moment the ex-member for Rottenborough entered, the two City gentlemen treated him to a long, impertinent, and contemptuous stare.

  “Ah!” said Greenwood, affecting a pleasant smile, which, God knows! did not come from the heart; “you do not appear to recollect me! Am I so very much changed as all that?”

  “Well—it is Greenwood, pos-i-tive-ly!” drawled the stockbroker, turning towards his friend the merchant in a manner that was equivalent to saying, “I wonder at his impudence in coming here.”

  “Yes—it is Greenwood,” observed the merchant, putting his glasses up to his eyes: “or rather the shadow of Greenwood, I should take it to be.”

  “Ah! ha! ha!” chuckled the stockbroker.

  “You are disposed to be facetious, gentlemen,” said the object of this intended witticism but really galling insult: “I presume that my long absence from the usual City haunts——”

  “I can assure you, Greenwood,” interrupted the stockbroker, “that the City has got o
n uncommonly well without you. The Bank hasn’t stopped payment—bills are easy of discount—money is plentiful——”

  “And yet,” said Greenwood, determined to receive all this sarcasm as quietly as a poor devil ought to do when about to make a proposal requiring an advance of funds,—“and yet a certain capitalist—a very intimate friend of mine, in Birching Lane—assured me just now that money was very scarce.”

  “Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the stockbroker.

  “He! he! he!” chuckled the merchant.

  “Why, the fact is, Greenwood,” continued the broker, “your very intimate friend the capitalist was here only a quarter of an hour ago; and he delighted us hugely by telling us how you called upon him this morning with a scheme that would make millions, and ended by wanting to borrow fifty pounds of him.”

  “He! he! he!” again chuckled the merchant.

  “Ha! ha! ha!” once more laughed the stockbroker; and, taking his friend’s arm, he led him into his private office, the two continuing to laugh and chuckle until the door closed behind them.

  Greenwood now became aware of the gratifying fact that every clerk in the counting-house was laughing also; and he rushed out into the street, a prey to feelings of the most agonising nature.

  But the ignominy of that day was not yet complete in respect to him.

  As he darted away from the door of the insolent stockbroker’s office, he came in collision with two gentlemen who were walking arm-in-arm towards the Bank.

  “ ’Pon my honour, my good fellow——” began one, rubbing his arm which had been hurt by the encounter.

  “Greenwood!” cried the second, stepping back in surprise.

  The ex-member for Rottenborough raised his eyes at the sounds of those well-known voices, and beheld Mr. Chichester, with his inseparable friend the baronet, both eyeing him in the most insulting manner.

  “Ah! Greenwood, my dear fellow,” exclaimed Sir Rupert; “I am really quite delighted to see you. How get on the free and independent electors of Rottenborough? Egad, though—you are not quite the pink of fashion that you used to be—when you did me the honour of making my wife your mistress.”

  “Greenwood and Berlin-wool gloves—impossible!” cried Chichester. “Such a companionship is quite unnatural!”

  “And an old coat brushed up to look like a new one,” added the baronet, laughing heartily.

  “And bluchers——”

  Greenwood stayed to hear no more: he broke from the hold which the two friends had laid upon him, and darted down an alley into Coleman Street.

  CHAPTER CCLIV.

  FURTHER MISFORTUNES.

  Greenwood had been insulted by those wealthy citizens who once considered themselves honoured by his notice; and this he might have borne, because he was man of the world enough to know that poverty is a crime in the eyes of plodding, money-making persons.

  But to be made the jest of a couple of despicable adventurers—to be jeered at by two knaves for whom he entertained the most sovereign contempt, because their rascalities had been conducted on a scale of mean swindling rather than in the colourable guise of financial enterprise,—to be laughed at and mocked by such men as those, because they happened to have good clothes upon their backs,—Oh! this was a crushing—an intolerable insult!

  The unhappy Greenwood felt it most keenly: he writhed beneath the sharp lash of that bitter sarcasm which had been hurled against his shabby appearance;—he groaned under the scourge of those contemptuous scoffs!

  Sanguine as his disposition naturally was,—confident as he ever felt in his own talents for intrigue and scheming,—he was now suddenly cast down; and hope fled from his soul.

  Not for worlds would he have risked the chance of receiving farther insult that day, by calling at the counting-house of another capitalist!

  And now he fled from the City with a species of loathing,—as much depressed by disappointment as he had been elated by hope when he entered it a few hours previously.

  He crossed Blackfriars’ Bridge, turned into Holland Street, and thence entered John Street, where he knocked timidly at the door of a house of very mean appearance.

  A stout, vulgar-looking woman, with carrotty hair, tangled as a mat, overshadowing a red and bloated face, thrust her head out of the window on the first floor.

  “Well?” she cried, in an impertinent tone.

  “Will you have the kindness to let me in, Mrs. Brown?” said Greenwood, calling to his aid all that blandness of manner which had once served him as a powerful auxiliary in his days of extensive intrigue.

  “That depends,” was the abrupt reply. “Have you brought any money with you?”

  “Mrs. Brown, I cannot explain myself in the street,” said the unhappy man, who saw that a storm was impending. “Please to let me in—and——”

  “Come—none of that gammon!” shouted the landlady of the house, for the behoof of all her neighbours who were lounging at their doors. “Have you brought me one pound seventeen and sixpence—yes or no? ’Cos, if you haven’t, I shall just put up a bill to let my lodgings—and you may go about your business.”

  “But, Mrs. Brown——”

  “Don’t Mrs. Brown me!” interrupted the woman, hanging half way out of the window, and gesticulating violently. “It’s my opinion as you wants to do me brown—and that’s all about it.”

  “What is it, dear Mrs. Brown?” inquired a woman, with a child in her arms, stepping from the door of the adjoining dwelling to the kerb-stone, and looking up at the window.

  “What is it?” vociferated Greenwood’s landlady, who only required such a question as the one just put to her in order to work herself into a towering passion: “what is it? Why, would you believe it, Mrs. Sugden, that this here swindling feller as tries to look so much like the gentleman, but isn’t nothink more than a Swell-Mob’s-man—and that was my rale opinion of him all along—comes here, as you know, Mrs. Sugden, and hires my one-pair back for seven and sixpence a-week——”

  “Shameful!” cried Mrs. Sugden, darting a look of fierce indignation upon the miserable Greenwood.

  “So it were, ma’am,” continued Mrs. Brown, now literally foaming at the mouth: “and though he had his clean pair of calico sheets every fortnight and a linen piller-case which my husband took out o’ pawn on purpose to make him comfortable——”

  “Dis-graceful!” ejaculated Mrs. Sugden, casting up her eyes to heaven, as if she could not have thought the world capable of such an atrocity.

  “And then arter all, that feller there runs up one pound seventeen and six in no time—going tick even for the blacking of his boots and his lucifers——”

  Greenwood stayed to hear no more: he perceived that all hope of obtaining admission to his lodging was useless; and he accordingly stole off, followed by the abuse of Mrs. Brown, the opprobrious epithets of Mrs. Sugden, and the scoffs of half-a-dozen of the neighbours.

  It was now four o’clock in the afternoon: and Greenwood found himself retracing his way over Blackfriars’ Bridge, without knowing whither he was going—or without even having any place to go to.

  He was literally houseless—homeless!

  His few shirts and other necessaries were left behind at the lodging which had just been closed against him; and a few halfpence in his pocket, besides the garments upon his back, were all his worldly possessions.

  “And has it come to this?” he thought within himself, as he hurried over the bridge, not noticing the curiosity excited on the part of the crowd by his strange looks and wildness of manner: “has it come to this at length? Homeless—and a beggar!—a wretched wanderer in this great city where I once rode in my carriage! Oh! my God—I deserve it all!”

  And he hurried franticly along—hell raging in his bosom.

  At length it suddenly struck him that he was gesticulat
ing violently in the open street and in the broad day-light; and he was overwhelmed with a sense of deep shame and profound humiliation.

  He rushed across Bridge Street, with the intention of plunging into one of those lanes leading to-wards Whitefriars; when a cry of alarm resounded in his ears—and in another moment he was knocked down by a cabriolet that was driving furiously along.

  The wheel passed over his right leg; and a groan of agony escaped him.

  The vehicle instantly stopped: the livery servant behind sprang to the ground; and, with the aid of a policeman who came up to the spot the instant the accident occurred, the domestic raised Greenwood from the pavement.

  But an agonising cry, wrung from him by the excruciating pain which he felt in his right leg, showed that he was seriously injured; and the policeman said, “We must take him to the hospital.”

  There were two gentlemen in the cabriolet; and one of them, leaning out, said, “What’s the matter with the fellow—smite him!”

  “Yeth—what ith it all about, poleethman?” demanded the other gentleman, also thrusting forward his head.

  Greenwood recognised their voices, and turned his face towards them in an imploring manner: but he suffered too acutely to speak.

  “My gwathtiouth! Thmilackth,” cried Sir Cherry Bounce, who was one of the inmates of the cab: “may I die if it ithn’t Gweenwood!”

  “So it is, Cherry—strike me!” ejaculated the Honourable Major Dapper. “Here, policeman! see that he’s taken proper care of—in the hospital——”