By a kind of instinct he wandered down to the river and along the wharves. There he saw men busy unloading the barges and smaller craft. Summoning up courage, he spoke to one of the labourers, who stared, and then burst into a broad grin. Aymer turned away, but was called back. The ganger looked him up and down and offered him half-a-crown a day; the others earned three shillings and sixpence and four shillings, but they were strong, strapping fellows. Aymer accepted it, for indeed he could not help himself and in a few minutes the poet, author, artist, with his coat off, was rolling small casks across the wharf. At first he was awkward, and hurt himself; the rest laughed at him, but good-humouredly. Some offered him beer.
At six o’clock he, with the rest, was called to a small office and received his day’s wages—two shillings and sixpence. He made a meal, the first that day, at a cheap eating-house, and then set out to return to his wretched lodgings, tired, worn out, miserable, yet not despairing, for he had found a means which would enable him to live, and to wait—to wait till the book came out.
For a fortnight Aymer worked at the wharf, and had become a favourite with the men. Noting his handiness and activity, and seeing that he was well educated, he was now put into an office of some little trust, to check the goods as they were landed, and received an advance of eighteen-pence, making a daily wage of four shillings. This seemed an immense improvement; but he was obliged to borrow a week’s extra salary in advance to buy a new pair of boots, and was therefore very little better off.
Strolling slowly one evening up Cannon Street, Aymer met the great stream of city men and merchants, clerks and agents, which at that time pours out of the warehouses and offices, setting across London Bridge towards the suburbs.
He walked slowly, all but despondently. It was already a week since he had written to Violet—that in itself was a strong proof of his condition of mind. It is very easy for those who have got everything, to pray each Sunday against envy, and to repeat with unction the response after the command not to covet thy neighbour’s goods. It is a different matter when one is practically destitute, when the mere value of the chain that hangs so daintily from my lady’s neck—ay, the price of the muff that warms her delicate hands—would be as a fortune, and lift the heart up out of the mire.
He could not help thinking that if he had but the money, the value, of a single much-despised pony that drew a greengrocer’s cart he should be almost a prince.
He passed under Temple Bar, and entered the busy Strand, walking, as it happened—events always happen, and no one can say what that word really means—on the right hand pavement, facing westwards. Painfully and wearily walking, he came to the church where the pavement makes a détour, and hesitated for a moment whether to cross to the other side or go round the church, and decided, as the road was dirty, and his old boots thin and full of holes, to follow the pavement. “Circumstances over which we have no control”—these circumstances generally commence in the smallest, least noticeable trifles. It so happened—there it is again—will anyone explain why it so happened?—that as he reached the entrance to Holywell Street, he glanced up it, and saw for the first time that avenue of old books. The author’s instinct made him first pause, and then go up it—he was tired, but he must go and look. Dingy and dirty, but tempting to a man whose library had been obtained by wiring hares. He thought, with a sigh, how many more books he could have bought with his money had he known of the existence of this cheap mart, or had he had any access to it. Here was Bohn’s Plato—for which he had paid a hardly got thirty shillings—marked up at fifteen shillings, slightly soiled it was true, but what did that matter? Here was old Herodotus—Bohn’s—marked at eighteen-pence, the very book which had cost him three hares, including carriage. The margins were all scribbled over—odd faces and odder animals rudely sketched in pen and ink, evidently some schoolboy’s crib. But what did that matter, so long as the text was complete—he cared for nothing but the text. As he lingered and heard the bells chiming seven o’clock, his eye caught sight of a little book called A Fortune for a Shilling.
It was a catching title; he remembered seeing it lying upon the itinerant bookseller’s stall in front of the Sternhold Hall. He looked at it, weighed it in his hand. He smiled sadly at his own folly. He had but fifteen pence in his pocket, and to think of throwing a whole shilling away upon such a lottery! It was absurd—childish; and yet the book fascinated him. The bookseller’s assistant came out, ostensibly to dust the books—really to see that none were pocketed. Aymer ran his eye down the pages of the book, feeling all the while as if he were cheating the bookseller of his money. The assistant said, “Only one shilling, sir; a chance for everybody, sir, in that book.” Aymer shut his eyes to his own folly, paid the money, and returned into the Strand with threepence left.
VI
He repented his folly very speedily, for the landlady had advanced him half-a-crown two days before for some necessaries, and now asked him for the money.
Not all the hunger and thirst of downright destitution is so hard to bear to a proud spirit as the insults of
