Gold in the Gutter.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 18, 1 November 1911, Page 55

Gold in the Gutter.

By

EDWARD CECIL.

THE last throb of jthe evening life of the Strand was wellnigh spent. A sudden and unexpected shower had swept the ianious street almost ■ clear of tiallie, and had driven the last loiterers to shelter. An occasional taxieab swished over the wet roadway, the rain-water ran in the gutters, and, overhead, the sky was again becoming elear. I‘olice-eonstabh' X stepped out from the protection of a friendly doorway and walked eastwards. He looked at a tloek and reflected that )th>' Shower of rain had hastened, by at least aipiarter of an hour, the nightly translormation- from that pandemonium of crowded traffic, insistent cab-whistles, i ipatH'nt motor-horns, and noisy inotor--1 -i which the exodus from .the theatres causes, to the few brief hours of ouiet which come while the thoroughfare is empty of traffic before tlfe rail'.- morning market-carts and niotori. iiks, break in upon its short rest. From being an organizer and director of trallie. Police-constable X settled down into being a keen-eyed and methodical guardian of law and order. What an up-to-date journalist might call the psychology of the Strand was w 11 known, in all its little details, to Constable X. He knew the street by

dry. by evening, and by night. And he piided himself on his knowledge. Now, as night began, he knew what sort of people he might expect to meet. After iffachiug the corner of Wellingtonstreet, he turned westwards and began to meet them. they were.,quite ordinary figures of that early hour of the night, and Constable X turned back towards Welling-ton-street, stiltling a yawn. But at the corner of the street he met with a surl»i<e. At first, there semed nothing unusual about the woman who brushed past Imn. Her clothing was miserable, and Hie turned down towards Waterloo l.riilge, The liottoni-.of her dress was in 'rags,, J,er hat wa,s shapeless, her boots were a collection of patches and the sorriest protection to her feet. In all this, however, Constable X found nothing, unusual. The poor creature’s destination was the easiest thing in the Would to guess. Hie Embankment,” he remarked t<» himself without hesitation. He might

have ventured a few yards farther and concluded "The river.” Such was the abject misery of the won«ffl*s clothes. But something quite unusual suddenly arrested his attention. The woman was not walking as she should have walked. Iler body was neither limp nor illshapen. Her step was elastic. She ami her clothes did not tit, for the utter dejection and physical exhaustion which were usual in such a pilgrim of the night to London’s Mecca of misery were quite absent. Instead of her feet dragging in her pitiable boots, her step was businesslike, her walk easy and natural. ‘‘Blow me,” observed Constable X, “if her hair isn't neat and tidy!” Tie was only at fault, however, for a moment. “Going to do the Embankment for her paper, I guess,” he surmised. “A hundred to one there’s a pencil and notebook in her pocket. ‘A Night on the Embankment, by One AVlio Has Been There.’ Wonder that sort of thing hasn't got stale.” She vanished down the steps, arid Constable X turned and walked slowly westwards. “That Embankment.” he reflected, “is one of the regular sights of London.” Scores of journalists have written about the Embankment as it is by night; certain well-known plays have placed a semblance of it behind the footlights, and dozens upon dozens of people have written letters to the papers, published and unpublished, dealing with a blot upon the civilisation of the capital of a Christian Empire. Tt may therefore be presumed that the reader knows what the Thames Embankment is like between the fall of night and the coming of the grey lioht of dawn, without being told now anv of the harrowing details which make up the picture of that Mecca to which turn, sooner or later, the weary footsteps of most of those men and women in London who reach the dregs of misery. Besides, this is not an Embankment story. Its action takes place on the Embankment. But the man and woman who came unexpectedly that night to a crisis in their lives are not Embankment “characters,” neither do they furnish " a story of the dregs.” They ■were on the Embankment that June night; they brushed shoulders with its misery. To all appearances they were part of it. But they were not. The woman whom Constable X had understood quite accurately went down the steps by Somerset House, crossed the roadway, and sat down on the first seat she caine to. She sat down and gazed in front of her. , A passer-by would have summed her up in a glance. “Despair,” he would have said; —“the end of her resources! ' Hunger, disappointment, failure, without a home and without hope? No, not drink. She does not look like that. But, perhaps, some form of crime? About her only resource now—the river.” Such might have been the ready-made conclusions of a passer-by, perhaps supplemented by some relleetions, equally ready-made, as to tlie contrast between the Embankment and the Savoy and the Cecil. But such comments and relleetions in the ease of Margaret Wilmore were wide of the mark. That night she had dined at the Lyceum Club, that day she had earned some five guineas from her paper, and instead of her future being the river, it would be, in all likelihood, the very future, which she had aspired to and built up. There was only one way in which the ready-made idmnieiits of a possible passer by would have touched the truth. The ’ keen,- intellectual face in such surroundings might have suggested erime. Well, Jffargaret Wihubre had been in prison. That June night, however, it semed that she was out of tune with her work. She had come there for copy. “Interviews on the Embankment” was the title of the series of articles she was doing, They ,ivere to be quite the real thing— lifektories, jqst plain, unvarnisHed,. literally itpri life-stories. Well, slie had the night before het.

There was no need to hurry. The figure at the end of the seat would provide the first interview. She moved towards the man at the end of tne seat, and became aware that he had been watching her steadily from beneath the brim of his battered felt hat. What is a coincidence'? Look at it as you will, the word is unsatisfactory. And people use it to cover too much. VV hen a novelist’s plot is improbable, and its erinis is helped out by a seemingly unlikely conjunction of events, the critic smiles and murmurs. “The long arm of coincidence!” Again, when in actual life

truth Jias proved- itself stranger (han fiction in some unlooked-for way, who look on ami cannot explain, brush the incident aside am! label it “a coincidence. ’’ But, after all, what is a coincidence? Is it mere chance when the murderer, lleeing from justice, happens to - step on board that particular ship on which one of the stewards happens to have known him in the life which he is endeavouring to wipe oil* the slate* when perhaps in all the scores of other ships sailing from the country that day not a single person would have known him? When Margaret Wilmore recognised those steady eyes watching her from beneath the brim of that battered felt hat, was it merely a coincidence that that man happened to be her husband., and that both he and she were sitting on the same night and at the same time on the same Embankment seat? Never afterwards did Margaret Wilmore forget that moment of recognition. Not only does she constantly remember it; the incident comes back to her memory, not as somthing more or less dim, but as something vivid and real and actual, even now. ‘'You!*’ she exclaimed.’ shrinking back. "You! What are you doing here?” Her Imsba'nd smiled, ami raised that wreck of a hat he was wearing. L . "It is- a beautifully fine night,” he observed, "now that the shower is oyer. There are worse places for observing life than a seat on the Embankment. Let us put it at that. I am here for amusement.” She smiled in her turn, observing him narrowly, his clothes, his boots, his hat, his face. She could think of nothing to say. And she disliked his steady gaze. They had not seen each other for more than three years. She shrugged her shoulders. •‘Why not?” he asked, lightly and naturally. "You are here for business, I for pleasure! You were always more serious, vou know, than T was, if you

will forgive my alluding to the past..She made a gesture as if to say thaf it did not matter, that it was as well to be quite frank and So ho smiled again, and asked hel permission to smoke, drawing out from his pocket a silver cigarette-ease. “One of the relics, you M*e,” he ob* served, ‘•saved out of the wreck.*’ lie meant to allude to his poverty, plain to anyone; but it happened that it was one of her gifts to him. and thus to her seemed a relic of more than material prosperity. But she had received continuation. if

she needed it, that b\ <ome means or othpr*. this man, her husband and once herj lover, had reached the glitter. "Ilow hav<* v you come t<j this?*’ she asked, point blank. She was shocked, she (old herself. Moreover, his thin aristocratic ’ face, which she had once admired so greatly; his high, clever forehead, from which it deemed to her that hrs - hair; never abundant. had receded since she last saw him: and the crisp little curls on his temples, now, she noticed, a lit’tle grey —all recalled to.her so vividly what had once been her estimate of the man she had been proud of, which Jiad proved so false, After falling in love with him. marrying him, and idealizing him. she had then discovered her- , mistake. That • was the past, the tragedy!,Legal Separation. >Sh6 did not know what to think' now when she was. suddenly confronted with him on a seat on the Embankment. “How do you suppose?” he asked, in answer to her question. "What is the usual route to a .seat op the Embankment at night for a man who started as I did?” "J don't know. Perhaps you are going to blame me. Perhaps \<»u have been speculating. Perhaps— well, perhaps'?, score £f things!” JShc shuddered as she thought of what some of those things might Im*. “Do you want the whole < tori’, stage by stage?” he asked. She re inr inhered th.it he might misunderstand her if she showed too much interest. “No, of course not.” she replied, controlling her voice. “Only it seems strange to find you here.” She was quite sixtisiied that all colour of emotion was absent from her words, and she was emboldened to return his gaze steadily. Alter all. this descent of bis justified her. She feltsuperiority of her position to hii

"Well, let us accept the simple explanation which you hav» suggested—speculation.” Ho said nothing more, and for a few moments there was silence. “I am very sorry,” she said, at last, “I remember you had something to do with the Stock Exchange in the past." “Don’t sympathise.” She looked at him curiously. His hand which lield his cigarette was quite clean, his mouth a firm line beneath his closelyclipped moustache; his attitude was natural and self-possessed, and very far from that of a denizen of the gutter. What ought she to do? “It is curious our meeting like this,” she remarked. “Yes; very curious indeed.” Then he .seemed to realise that some effort at conversation was expected from Idm. “I need not ask what you have been doing,” ho said. “You have gone on with what you once said was your mission in life, to some purpose. Your portrait has been in the picture papers several times and you have been in prison twice. You have helped your ‘Votes for Women’ cause pretty well, I should imagine. Come, tell me. do you think it is making good progress? Different people tell me different stories. You ought to know.” She answered defiantly. “It is winning.” she said. “A cause for which so much is sacrificed must win.” , “I don’t see the logical necessity. But it would be tedious to argue the matter out.” “Yes. You hate the cause. ' “Well. I think I have some reason to dislike it. It took you from me, didn’t it?’ . , . “In some measure.” She joined issue eagerly. “The truth was, however, not quite that.” she urged. “You and I were mutually antipathetic. You did not understand me. The serious things of life were everything io me. You wanted to live on the surface. We couldn’t go on like that. We did quite right to separate My conscience is quite at rest. Besides, your being here proves it!” “You mean, I would have dragged you down with me- ” He paused; then added, with a movement of his hand to emphasise what he meant into the gutter.” “Well, you have made a mess of life. Fortunately for me. I have gone my own way. But I urn sorry you have not prospered. Perhaps you don't believe it, but I’m really sorry. Life isn t easy, is it? It's a hard world to live in—even for women.” There was a touch of malicious amusement in her words. There was also something more which Wilmore saw and understood quite well. “Margaret,” he said, sharply, “do you really believe all this nonsense you are talking?” She started at his tone of authority. “ What nonsense ?" she demanded, weakly. “This about mv being in the gutter.” She gazed at him in astonished silence, and the terrible thought that he had fooled her grow upon her. She felt anger against him rising. But she was puzzled. “What about your alimony?” he asked. “Where do you think it comes from, if I am beggared?'’ . “I thought that was all—well, secured; you could not touch it.” “\'es. secured out of my estate. .But if I have no estate, nothing but a few coppers to get iny breakfast at a coffee-stall, perhaps' not that, what then? Really, Margaret, 1 should not have thought that, with your experience of the world, you would have accepted my appearance at its face value.” His contemptuous amusement stung so that she almost got up to leave him there, as she had already left him out of her life. But not only did her curiosity chain her, but also her sense that he would command her to listen to him. He put his hand in his pocket and showed her ten to twenty pounds in gold. “You see, I’m not a beggar, as you imagi nod.” “I. see I made- a mistake,” she admitted. coldly. A wave of her bitter resentment against him came and again clouded her t houglits. “If you make mistakes so easily your judgments cannot bo very reliable,” ho observed. “Bui still, you can write up some sentimental rubbish about me if you like, though it wouldn't lie true. You might call your first interview ‘A Brok-n-down Gentleman —Eton, the Carlton Club, moneylenders, the Embankment, tl>e pity of it, the waste of flrst•luse material!’ You know how to do it,

don't you? It’s quite easy. Colour it up well, and it’s sure to take.” She sat silent, and silence fell l>etweer» them. On his side there was the old contempt for her emotional, highly-coloured views of life, which were most often essentially false; on her side, the old defensive hostility against, the low opinion of what she had called in the past “her public life.” Then, looking away from her, over the black void in which ran the river which, from that seat, they could not see, to the still deeper blackness of the southern bank, Wilmore began to speak, explaining his being where he was. “As I said,” he remarked, in his quiet, level tones, “I am amusing myself. One must be doing something. I come down her and mix with the dregs. I am one of them, for all they know. I pick up with an old man here, with a boy there, with some wreck of a breadwinner, still in the prime of life so far as years go, at some other time. I hang on to them, keep ’em in sight for weeks. Then one day I help, if it seems worth while. It’s quite simple, only so very few have the time and leisure that I Lave to do it. I’ve got these children of mine scattered about all over the world. I get letters from them at my club, And sometimes I look them up. It’s not charity in the ordinary sense; it’s a sort of occupation I have found myself.” “I suppose you get your disappointments?” “Not many; not ten per cent.” He lighted a cigarette, blew out a cloud of smoke, and watched it.

“You are fortunate, I should think.” “No —merely very careful. I don't set up a carpenter in life again as a bricklayer, as the societies do. I'm severely practical, and I never disclose my power to help—well, till I’m satisfied.” Margaret Wilmore found nothing to say. All she now heard was so utterly new and unexpected. She had never thought of her husband as a philanthropist, even in her wildest dreams. He had always seemed to her a clever, somewhat cynical, easy-going man of the world, and nothing more. “How long have you been doing this?” “Several years,” “Doesn’t it get monotonous?’ “No. If it did perhaps I should drop it. You see, there’s the fascination of taking these men in in the first stages. I’ve got to spin a yarn to them about myself. I've got to take them in and be one of them. Why, I’ve had experiences such as would startle most respectable citizens out of their respectable skins!” He laughed, and the laugh seemed to die into a sigh. Margaret remembered how good he bad been in the old days in amateur theatricals. She understood how it was that few, if any, suspected him. And she began to marvel at the work he was doing. “How many of these children, have you?” she asked, and on the word, despite herself, her voice faltered. “Not far short of a hundred,” he told her, and she knew that in that moment she was challenged to prove that in the time since they had separated she had done as good work for the world as lie had. She made no comment, but he knew

that her silence. itself was just that comment which he hoped for. An hour later Wilmore had done nothing to add to the sum total of his work, and his wife’s notebook was still unopened. The latter was, indeed, forgotten. But what was now the chief thought in Margaret Wilmore's mind was still without expression. It seemed destined to remain so. That clause in the deed of separation which Wilmore had insisted on as a sine qua non, which she had resisted but had been forced finally to accept, came uj> again now in a new light. After all, she had somewhat misjudged her husband. But she was disinclined to tell him that, and very loath to admit that she had not written off the subject of that clause in her mind as she said she would at the time when it was being discussed. Then suddenly he helped her. “I suppose this active public life of yours has been very successful,” -he said, abruptly; “but has it made you happy?” “What do you mean by happy?” she fenced. “Well—contented.” “One does one’s work, one’s life is full, one does not stop to think. If one is interested and held by one’s work as I am, I think, at any rate, one is satisfied.” Then he astonished her. “Exactly,” he exclaimed, turning and facing her. “Just as I thought!” “What?”

“Your life is really empty and miserable.” “Nothing of the sort,” she objected, warmly. “Yes, it is. You drug yourself with a lot of excitement, and work to keep your mind too busy to do its own thinking.” “I don’t think you have any right to say that.” “But I do. Why, to some extent I’m doing the very same thing. And do you think I would toll you that I am doing it if I had not found out that you were doing it also?” She stared at him, and, unaccountably, began to tremble. Something youthful had crept into his face. “And you arc not happy!” she stammered. “No. Reconciled and contented, perhaps, but not happy. And yet, to be candid, there are times when I am. But you, of course, have not that source to draw upon.” Then she leaned towards him, and the great and important thought in her mind found expression. “Will you take me to see Jack?” she asked. It was all the admission he wanted. It covered everything. ■ “He’s at school, you know.” “Of course; but will you take me to see him 1 ?” That had been the clause in the deed on which he had been adamant. His son was to be his entirely. His allowance to her would be generous, other conditions, might he what she pleased, but that one thing, the complete, absolute, and unqualified custody of his son, was essential. - :

“I will npt take you to Bee him yet, Margaret,” he said, slowly. He was speaking now of the gr it treasure of his life. “But it is term time now,” he west on, “and there’s more than a month to the holidays. Perhaps before then you and I can pick up something we have lost.” “Happiness?” “Yes.” At that, womanlike, she surrendered all her defences at once, in one superb gift. ‘ . ‘ “I will try,’* she said, simply, and held out her hand. . He took it and, for a moment, hell it. If lie was saving her, she was also saving him. An instinct of chivalry prompted him. He raised it slowly to his lips. “Then, when we have picked it up, it will be safe to go and see Jack,” he said. “He’s as fine a little fellow as you could well meet.” It savours, perhaps, of a cheap effect to record how, when those two figures of destitution, Richard Wilmore anil his wife, walked eastwards towards the Blackfriars coffee-stall there was dawn in the eastern sky. But the fact remains. Perhaps it was another coincidence. They had walked some two or three hundred yards without speaking, when Wilmore stopped. “I think I ought to tell you," he said, “that I cannot leave off altogether what lam doing here. It’s rather fascinating, picking up these broken men. I think I’ve got a taste for it now. I began it to amuse myself. But it has got deeper.” “Yes?” “So, if you don’t mind, I shall continue to come here sometimes and look out for a likely man or two.” “And shall I also keep in touch with my work?” she asked. “Do you mean the demonstrating and going to prison—'that sort of thing?” She smiled, and then, still smiling, nodded. But she was not serious. She was only curious to hear what he would say. She saw quickly, however, that she had made a mistake. “No, I don’t mean that,” she explained, hastily. “What I mean is that I cannot suddenly become idle. Your work is splendid. Keep on with it, Dick. Onlv, if you come here, I must come too.” He was puzzled. “But that’s impossible,” he objected. “Surely not,” she urged. “While yon are looking out for a likely man, might not I be trying to find a likely woman!” For a full minute he did not speak. Then, realising that, in future, they would be working together seeking each other’s advice (comparing notes and helping each other with their “children,” he understood how it meant making that future of theirs quite, safe. “Why not?” he asked, enthusiastically. “I could show you how to do it and give you some useful hints. For instance, at the present moment your hair is much too neat and tidy. A woman in the gutter never troubles about her hair.”