The Orange Girl. Walter Besant

with Alice on the terrace of Lambeth Palace: or went down into the Marsh and walked about the meadows: we made no friends except among the humble fishermen to whose wives Alice taught cleanliness. Sometimes, after the child came, I would leave Alice for the morning and walk into the City. Perhaps I had a hope that I might meet my father. I never did, however. I looked for him on Change: I walked in Great College Street: but I never met him. I knew beforehand that my reception would be of the coldest – but I wanted to see him and to speak with him. I went down to Billingsgate Stairs and took boat and was rowed about the ships in the Pool. There I recognised our own ships: they might have been my own, but would never be mine, now. All these things I had thrown away – ships, wharf, trade, fortune. It made me proud to think so. Yet I would have spoken to my father had I met him.

      Once I met Matthew in the street and passed him touching shoulders. He looked me full in the face with the pretence of not knowing me. I commanded my temper and let him go without expostulation which would have led to a second fight, for which I had no desire.

      On two other occasions I saw him though he did not see me. The first was on a certain afternoon in October when it grows dark about five. I was strolling down Garlickhithe near Queenhithe. As I passed the Church of St. James's which stands a little back with steps I saw two figures conversing: one was a man whom I knew at once for my cousin by his shoulders and by the shape of his head. The other was a woman with a veil over her face. I knew the man next by his voice. Our Matthew had such a voice – oily and yet harsh. 'If you loved me,' he said, 'you would do this simple thing.'

      'I will never do it,' she declared, passionately. 'You have deceived me.'

      I would not be an eavesdropper, and I passed on. Matthew, therefore, had 'deceived' – the word may mean many things – a woman. Matthew, of all men! However, it was no concern of mine.

      A third time I saw him – or heard him, because I did not see him. It was in one of those taverns where small square pews are provided with high walls so that one cannot be heard. I sat in one with Tom Shirley, taking a pint of wine. All round were the voices of people carrying on business in whispers and in murmurs. Suddenly I distinguished the voice of Matthew.

      'The security is good,' he said. 'There is no finer security in the City. I want the money.'

      'You can have some to-morrow night.' I was destined to hear a great deal more of that grating voice. 'And the rest next week, if I can get the papers signed. It is a confidential business, I suppose.

      'Nothing is to be said. Our House does not like to borrow money, but the occasion is pressing.'

      'Let us go,' I said to Tom. 'We shall learn presently all Matthew's secrets.'

      'Matthew? Your cousin Matthew?'

      'He is in one of the boxes. I have heard his voice. Come, Tom.'

      CHAPTER VI

      A CITY FUNERAL

      Thus we lived – humble folk if you please – far from the world of wealth or of fashion.

      This happiness was too great to last. We were to be stricken down, yet not unto death.

      The troubles began with the death of my father.

      One morning, when he ought to have been at his desk, my old friend Ramage came to see me.

      'Master Will,' he said, the tears running down his cheeks, 'Master Will – 'tis now too late. You will never be reconciled now.'

      'What has happened?' I asked. But his troubled face told me.

      'My master fell down in a fit last night, coming home from the Company's feast. They carried him home and put him to bed. But in the night he died.'

      In such a case as mine one always hopes vaguely for reconciliation, so long as there is life: without taking any steps, one thinks that a reconciliation will come of its own accord. I now believe that if I had gone to my father and put the case plainly: my manifest vocation: my incapacity for business; if I had asked his permission to continue in the musical profession: if I had, further, humbled myself so far as to admit that I deserved at his hands nothing less than to be cut off without a shilling: he might have given way. It is a terrible thing to know that your father has died with bitterness in his heart against his only son. Or, I might have sent Alice, with the child. Surely the sight of that sweet girl, the sight of the helpless child, would have moved him. I reproached myself, in a word, when it was too late.

      'Sir,' said the clerk, 'I do not believe that Mr. Matthew, or his father, will send you word of this event, or of the funeral.'

      'They do not know where I live.'

      'Excuse me, Sir, Mr. Matthew knows where you live and everything that you have done since you left your home. Believe me, Mr. Will, you have no greater enemy than your cousin. He has constantly inflamed your father's mind against you. It was he who told my master that you were playing for sailors at a common tavern with a red blind and a sanded floor. He told him that you were playing in the orchestra at the Dog and Duck for all the 'prentices and the demireps of town: he told him that you had married – a – '

      'Stop, Ramage, lest I do my cousin a mischief. How do you know all this?'

      'I listen,' he replied. 'From my desk, I can hear plainly what is said in the counting-house. I listen. I can do no good. But sometimes it is well to know what goes on.'

      'It may be useful – but to listen – well – Ramage, is there more to tell?'

      'This. They do not intend to invite you to the funeral. Mr. Matthew will assume the place of the heir, and his father will be chief mourner.'

      'Oh! Do you tell me, old friend, when it is to take place, and I will be there.'

      So he promised, though it was worth his situation if he were found out to have held any intercourse with me. In the end it proved useful to have a friend in the enemy's camp. At the time, I laughed at danger. What had I to fear from Matthew's enmity?

      The manner of my father's death is common among Merchants of the City of London. Their very success makes them liable to it: the City customs favour feasting and the drinking of wine: the richer sort ride in a coach when they should be walking for health: it is seldom, indeed, that one may meet a citizen of Quality walking in the fields of which there are so many and of such a wholesome air round London, whether we go East to the fields of Mile End and Bow: or North where, not to speak of Moorfields, there are the fields this side of Islington: or on the West where are the fields of Westminster and Chelsea: or South where the whole country is a verdant meadow with orchards. I say that among the crowds who flock out on a summer evening to take the air (and other refreshments) in these fields, one may look in vain for the substantial merchant. He takes the air lolling in his coach: he feasts every day, drinking quantities of rich and strong wine such as Port or Lisbon: he stays too much indoors: the counting-house is too often but a step from the parlour.

      The consequence is natural: at thirty-five the successful merchant begins to swell and to expand: his figure becomes arched or rounded: perhaps his nose grows red: at forty-five his circumference is great: his neck is swollen; his cheek is red: perhaps his nose has become what is called a Bottle. Soon after fifty, he is seized with an apoplexy. It is whispered on Change that such an one fell down stepping out of his Company's Hall, after a Feast, into the road: that he never recovered consciousness: and that he is dead. The age of fifty, I take it, is the grand Climacteric of the London Merchant.

      On the day of the funeral, then, I presented myself, with Alice, properly habited, to take my place as chief Mourner. The house, within, was all hung with black cloth. The hall and the stairs were thus covered: it was evening at eight o'clock: candles placed in sconces feebly lit up the place: at the door and on the stairs stood the undertaker's men, mutes, bearing black staves with black plumes: within, the undertaker himself was busy serving out black cloaks, tying the weepers on the hats, distributing the gloves and the rosemary, and getting ready the torches.

      Upstairs, the room in which my father's body lay had been prepared for the ceremony. All the furniture – bed, chairs, everything – had been taken out: there was nothing at all in the room but the coffin on trestles: the wainscotted walls had been hung with black velvet, which looked indeed funereal as