“I am very much obliged to you, madam. My uncle did not mention his landlady’s name, and I myself have yet to make her acquaintance. I had been knocking for some time when I saw you approach, but it appears she is not at home either.”
“Oh, she’ll be at home, right enough, but you can knock till you turn blue for all the good it will do you. Deaf as a post, Mrs. Coombe is, at least when it suits her. Here, he ain’t that copper, is he? Your uncle, I mean?”
“Copper? No, madam. My uncle is a clergyman. Are you acquainted with the Reverend Doctor Herbert Neuilly?”
“Old Nelly?” She pressed the heel of her hand to one smeared eye, a fondness softening her expression. “It never is.”
“What you talking about, old Nelly?” Mr. Townsend said.
“It’s what we call him. Never could say his name the proper way, but he don’t mind. Nice old bird, your uncle is. Always about his good works. And soft in his ways, bless him. Not like some of them vicars.”
Gideon had never witnessed his uncle’s softness for himself, and received this account with a small jolt of resentment. “I am gratified to find that my guardian is so well thought of,” he said. “I must confess, though, that I am rather at a loss. My uncle keeps irregular hours, I know, but he expects my visit. Indeed, he summoned me here on a matter of urgency. It did not occur to me that I might not find him at home.”
“That’s the way with him, my pet. Has to make sure this one has a bed for the night and that one has tuppence for a bowl of soup. Even brings them home sometimes, if they’re in a bad way, though Mrs. Coombe don’t thank him for it. What’s this matter of urgency, then? He’s all right, ain’t he? He ain’t poorly?”
“No, nothing of that kind,” Gideon replied. He was about to say more, but it occurred to him that he had no ready answer. All he could say with certainty was that his uncle had been uneasy in his mind. He feared for those in his care, and spoke in dark terms of others who wished him ill, but he had seemed reluctant, in his letter, to state the case plainly. He meant to unburden himself, Gideon had assumed, only when he and his nephew could converse at their ease, and yet he was not at home to receive him on his arrival.
“It is kind of you to inquire,” he said. “It is a small private matter, nothing more. All the same, it is peculiar that it should have slipped his mind.”
“Well, that’s the way of it,” said Mr. Townsend, whose interest had now dissipated. “It’ll all come out in the wash, as the good book says. You coming, Bella?”
“Look at that now,” said Bella, paying no attention. “I said we’d have snow.”
Gideon turned up his collar, looking about him with quiet apprehension. “Well, then,” he said. “There is nothing to be done, I suppose. I shall have to come back in the morning.”
“Here.” Bella lurched towards him and squeezed his forearm. “You all right, my pet? He’s forgotten, that’s all. He’s full of high notions, bless him, but he’s hardly fit to dress himself in the mornings. Ain’t got the sense of a day-old chick. You’ll see your old uncle in the morning, and all will be well with the world.”
“Yes,” Gideon said weakly. “Yes, I’m sure you’re right.”
“You’ll be all right, won’t you? A proper lost soul, you look like. You got somewhere else you can go? I’d take you in myself, only I ain’t got but a bed and a bucket. You can hardly put your elbows out up there.”
“You can put your knees out all right,” said Mr. Townsend, who had now grown surly. “If you ain’t forgotten how.”
Gideon straightened, collecting himself, and briefly lifted his hat. “You have been most kind, madam. And you, sir. I will make other arrangements and return in the morning, just as you say. It is no great matter. Now, it is indeed coming on to snow, and I must keep you no longer. I bid you both goodnight.”
With that he took his leave, turning once more towards Shaftesbury Avenue. He strode away briskly at first, and for a time he kept up an easy and purposeful appearance. But before long his weariness began to tell, and a despondency settled on him as he contemplated his circumstances. To begin with, there was the question of where he was to spend the night. His uncle made only the most frugal provision for his living expenses, and this unexpected excursion to London had been scarcely within his means. The purchase of his third-class ticket from Cambridge had left him all but penniless, and he doubted that he could pay for his board in the poorest kind of dosshouse.
Perhaps he ought to have made mention of these practical matters when replying to his uncle’s letter. He had heard other young men at Cambridge talk carelessly of sending home for funds, but to Gideon such presumption seemed unthinkable. He had confined himself instead to decorous expressions of duty. He was most concerned, he had written, to learn of the reverend doctor’s difficulties, but delighted nonetheless to have his confidence in the matter. He would come by the earliest possible train, and it was his earnest hope that he might be of some small service.
That much had been truthful enough, but he had not been entirely candid. His eagerness to come had not sprung only from his sense of duty. He looked forward to seeing his uncle, naturally, but on reading the letter his thoughts had turned first to someone else. He was by no means certain that he would encounter her again—indeed, he knew almost nothing of her present circumstances—but that had not hindered his imagination. He had thought of her first, and in the days since then he had thought of little else.
He might, he now reflected, have turned his thoughts to more practical matters. For all his great hopes, he had considered his course of action only to the point of presenting himself at his uncle’s door. Beyond that, he had formed no plan, and as he trudged onwards in the cold, he berated himself for his foolishness. In Cambridge, when the nights were mild, a fellow could shin up a wall in one of the quieter lanes and make a bed for himself in a well-tended boat shed or the camellia house of a dean of studies. But this was London, whose shrouded vastness was almost wholly strange to him, and in these unfamiliar streets he had no notion of where he might find shelter.
It was not only the cold that he contended with. He was stiff and footsore, having spent the better part of the day travelling, and as he crossed what he believed to be Old Compton Street, he was reminded that he was also wretchedly hungry. His last meal—a tepid and gristly pie—had been taken in a railway station tea room at eleven o’clock that morning, and it seemed that one could walk no more than twenty paces in Soho without passing a hostelry or eating house of some description. Gideon kept clear of their windows and signboards when he could, but hawkers busied themselves among the crowds, competing with formidable energy for passing trade. One such fellow, wearing the costume of a circus ringmaster, propelled him forcibly to the doorway of his establishment, refusing to release him until he had recited the bill of fare in its entirety.
“And when you’ve ate your Dover sole, sir, you might find the entertainment to your liking. Look at them girls in there and tell me you ain’t peckish. A nice mannerly specimen like yourself, sir, with a soapy look about him? Why, you may be sure of opening an oyster or two.”