Book: In Luck at Last

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IN LUCK AT LAST.




BY WALTER BESANT.






NEW YORK:
GEORGE MUNRO'S SONS, PUBLISHERS,
17 TO 27 VANDEWATER STREET.






CHAPTER I.

WITHIN THREE WEEKS


If everyone were allowed beforehand to choose and select for himself
the most pleasant method of performing this earthly pilgrimage, there
would be, I have always thought, an immediate run upon that way of
getting to the Delectable Mountains which is known as the Craft and
Mystery of Second-hand Bookselling. If, further, one were allowed to
select and arrange the minor details--such, for instance, as the
"pitch" and the character of the shop, it would seem desirable that,
as regards the latter, the kind of bookselling should be neither too
lofty nor too mean--that is to say, that one's ambition would not
aspire to a great collector's establishment, such as one or two we
might name in Piccadilly, the Haymarket, or New Bond Street; these
should be left to those who greatly dare and are prepared to play the
games of Speculation and of Patience; nor, on the other hand, would
one choose an open cart at the beginning of the Whitechapel Road, or
one of the shops in Seven Dials, whose stock-in-trade consists wholly
of three or four boxes outside the door filled with odd volumes at
twopence apiece. As for "pitch" or situation, one would wish it to be
somewhat retired, but not too much; one would not, for instance,
willingly be thrown away in Hoxton, nor would one languish in the
obscurity of Kentish Town; a second-hand bookseller must not be so far
removed from the haunts of men as to place him practically beyond the
reach of the collector; nor, on the other hand, should he be planted
in a busy thoroughfare--the noise of many vehicles, the hurry of quick
footsteps, the swift current of anxious humanity are out of harmony
with the atmosphere of a second-hand bookshop. Some suggestion of
external repose is absolutely necessary; there must be some stillness
in the air; yet the thing itself belongs essentially to the city--no
one can imagine a second-hand bookshop beside green fields--so that
there should be some murmur and perceptible hum of mankind always
present in the ear. Thus there are half-a-dozen bookshops in King
William Street, Strand, which seem to enjoy every possible advantage
of position, for they are in the very heart of London, but yet are not
exposed to the full noise and tumult of that overflowing tide which
surges round Charing Cross. Again, there are streets north of Holborn
and Oxford Street most pleasantly situated for the second-hand
bookseller, and there are streets where he ought not to be, where he
has no business, and where his presence jars. Could we, for instance,
endure to see the shop of a second-hand bookseller established in
Cheapside?

Perhaps, however, the most delightful spot in all London for a
second-hand bookshop is that occupied by Emblem's in the King's Road,
Chelsea.

It stands at the lower end of the road, where one begins to realize
and thoroughly feel the influences of that ancient and lordly suburb.
At this end of the road there are rows of houses with old-fashioned
balconies; right and left of it there are streets which in the summer
and early autumn are green, yellow, red, and golden with their masses
of creepers; squares which look as if, with the people living in them,
they must belong to the year eighteen hundred; neither a day before
nor a day after; they lie open to the road, with their gardens full of
trees. Cheyne Walk and the old church, with its red-brick tower, and
the new Embankment, are all so close that they seem part and parcel of
the King's Road. The great Hospital is within five minutes' walk, and
sometimes the honest veterans themselves may be seen wandering in the
road. The air is heavy with associations and memories. You can
actually smell the fragrance of the new-made Chelsea buns, fresh from
the oven, just as you would a hundred years ago. You may sit with
dainty damsels, all hoops and furbelows, eating custards at the
Bun-house; you may wander among the rare plants of the Botanic
Gardens. The old great houses rise, shadowy and magnificent, above the
modern terraces; Don Saltero's Coffee-House yet opens its hospitable
doors; Sir Thomas More meditates again on Cheyne Walk; at dead of
night the ghosts of ancient minuet tunes may be heard from the Rotunda
of Ranelagh Gardens, though the new barracks stand upon its site; and
along the modern streets you may fancy that if you saw the ladies with
their hoop petticoats, and the gentlemen with their wigs and their
three-cornered hats and swords, you would not be in the least
astonished.

Emblem's is one of two or three shops which stand together, but it
differs from its neighbors in many important particulars. For it has
no plate-glass, as the others have; nor does it stand like them with
open doors; nor does it flare away gas at night; nor is it bright with
gilding and fresh paint; nor does it seek to attract notice by posters
and bills. On the contrary, it retains the old, small, and
unpretending panes of glass which it has always had; in the evening it
is dimly lighted, and it closes early; its door is always shut, and
although the name over the shop is dingy, one feels that a coat of
paint, while it would certainly freshen up the place, would take
something from its character. For a second-hand bookseller who
respects himself must present an exterior which has something of faded
splendor, of worn paint and shabbiness. Within the shop, books line
the walls and cumber the floor. There are an outer and an inner shop;
in the former a small table stands among the books, at which Mr.
James, the assistant, is always at work cataloguing, when he is not
tying up parcels; sometimes even with gum and paste repairing the
slighter ravages of time--foxed bindings and close-cut margins no man
can repair. In the latter, which is Mr. Emblem's sanctum, there are
chairs and a table, also covered with books, a writing-desk, a small
safe, and a glass case, wherein are secured the more costly books in
stock. Emblem's, as must be confessed, is no longer quite what it was
in former days; twenty, thirty, or forty years ago that glass case was
filled with precious treasures. In those days, if a man wanted a book
of county history, or of genealogy, or of heraldry, he knew where was
his best chance of finding it, for Emblem's, in its prime and heyday,
had its specialty. Other books treating on more frivolous subjects,
such as science, belles lettres, art, or politics, he would consider,
buy, and sell again; but he took little pride in them. Collectors of
county histories, however, and genealogy-hunters and their kind, knew
that at Emblem's, where they would be most likely to get what they
wanted, they would have to pay the market price for it.

There is no patience like the patience of a book-collector; there is
no such industry given to any work comparable with the thoughtful and
anxious industry with which he peruses the latest catalogues; there is
no care like unto that which rends his mind before the day of auction
or while he is still trying to pick up a bargain; there are no eyes so
sharp as those which pry into the contents of a box full of old books,
tumbled together, at sixpence apiece. The bookseller himself partakes
of the noble enthusiasm of the collector, though he sells his
collection; like the amateur, the professional moves heaven and earth
to get a bargain: like him, he rejoices as much over a book which has
been picked up below its price, as over a lost sheep which has
returned into the fold. But Emblem is now old, and Emblem's shop is no
longer what it was to the collector of the last generation.

It was an afternoon in late September, and in this very year of grace,
eighteen hundred and eighty-four. The day was as sunny and warm as any
of the days of its predecessor Augustus the Gorgeous, but yet there
was an autumnal feeling in the air which made itself felt even in
streets where there were no red and yellow Virginia creepers, no
square gardens with long trails of mignonette and banks of flowering
nasturtiums. In fact, you cannot anywhere escape the autumnal feeling,
which begins about the middle of September. It makes old people think
with sadness that the grasshopper is a burden in the land, and that
the almond-tree is about to flourish; but the young it fills with a
vinous and intoxicated rejoicing, as if the time of feasting, fruits,
harvests, and young wine, strong and fruity, was upon the world. It
made Mr. James--his surname has never been ascertained, but man and
boy, Mr. James has been at Emblem's for twenty-five years and
more--leave his table where he was preparing the forthcoming
catalogue, and go to the open door, where he wasted a good minute and
a half in gazing up at the clear sky and down the sunny street. Then
he stretched his arms and returned to his work, impelled by the sense
of duty rather than by the scourge of necessity, because there was no
hurry about the catalogue and most of the books in it were rubbish,
and at that season of the year few customers could be expected, and
there were no parcels to tie up and send out. He went back to his
work, therefore, but he left the door partly open in order to enjoy
the sight of the warm sunshine. Now for Emblem's to have its door
open, was much as if Mr. Emblem himself should so far forget his
self-respect as to sit in his shirt-sleeves. The shop had been rather
dark, the window being full of books, but now through the open door
there poured a little stream of sunshine, reflected from some far off
window. It fell upon a row of old eighteenth century volumes, bound in
dark and rusty leather, and did so light up and glorify the dingy
bindings and faded gold, that they seemed fresh from the binder's
hands, and just ready for the noble purchaser, long since dead and
gone, whose book plate they bore. Some of this golden stream fell also
upon the head of the assistant--it was a red head, with fiery red
eyes, red eyebrows, bristly and thick, and sharp thin features to
match--and it gave him the look of one who is dragged unwillingly into
the sunlight. However, Mr. James took no notice of the sunshine, and
went on with his cataloguing almost as if he liked that kind of work.
There are many people who seem to like dull work, and they would not
be a bit more unhappy if they were made to take the place of Sisyphus,
or transformed into the damsels who are condemned to toil continually
at the weary work of pouring water into a sieve. Perhaps Sisyphus does
not so much mind the continual going up and down hill. "After all," he
might say, "this is better than the lot of poor Ixion. At all events,
I have got my limbs free." Ixion, on the other hand, no doubt, is full
of pity for his poor friend Sisyphus. "I, at least," he says, "have no
work to do. And the rapid motion of the wheel is in sultry weather
sometimes pleasant."

Behind the shop, where had been originally the "back parlor," in the
days when every genteel house in Chelsea had both its front and back
parlor--the latter for sitting and living in, the former for the
reception of company--sat this afternoon the proprietor, the man whose
name had stood above the shop for fifty years, the original and only
Emblem. He was--nay, he is--for you may still find him in his place,
and may make his acquaintance over a county history any day in the
King's Road--he is an old man now, advanced in the seventies, who was
born before the battle of Waterloo was fought, and can remember
Chelsea when it was full of veterans wounded in battles fought long
before the Corsican Attila was let loose upon the world. His face
wears the peaceful and wise expression which belongs peculiarly to his
profession. Other callings make a man look peaceful, but not all other
callings make him look wise. Mr. Emblem was born by nature of a calm
temperament,--otherwise he would not have been happy in his business;
a smile lies generally upon his lips, and his eyes are soft and
benign; his hair is white, and his face, once ruddy, is pale, yet not
shrunk and seamed with furrows as happens to so many old men, but
round and firm; like his chin and lips it is clean shaven; he wears a
black coat extraordinarily shiny in the sleeve, and a black silk stock
just as he used to wear in the thirties when he was young, and
something of a dandy, and would show himself on a Saturday evening in
the pit of Drury Lane; and the stock is fastened behind with a silver
buckle. He is, in fact, a delightful old gentleman to look at and
pleasant to converse with, and on his brow every one who can read may
see, visibly stamped, the seal of a harmless and honest life. At the
contemplation of such a man, one's opinion of humanity is sensibly
raised, and even house-agents, plumbers, and suburban builders, feel
that, after all, virtue may bring with, it some reward.

The quiet and warmth of the afternoon, unbroken to his accustomed ear,
as it would be to a stranger, by the murmurous roll of London, made
him sleepy. In his hand he held a letter which he had been reading for
the hundredth time, and of which he knew by heart every word; and as
his eyes closed he went back in imagination to a passage in the past
which it recalled.

He stood, in imagination, upon the deck of a sailing-ship--an emigrant
ship. The year was eighteen hundred and sixty-four, a year when very
few were tempted to try their fortunes in a country torn by civil war.
With him were his daughter and his son-in-law, and they were come to
bid the latter farewell.

"My dear--my dear," cried the wife, in her husband's arms, "come what
may, I will join you in a year."

Her husband shook his head sadly.

"They do not want me here," he said; "the work goes into stronger and
rougher hands. Perhaps over there we may get on better, and besides,
it seems an opening."

If the kind of work which he wanted was given to stronger and rougher
hands than his in England, far more would it be the case in young and
rough America. It was journalistic work--writing work--that he wanted;
and he was a gentleman, a scholar, and a creature of retired and
refined tastes and manners. There are, perhaps, some still living who
have survived the tempestuous life of the ordinary Fleet Street
"newspaper man" of twenty or thirty years ago; perhaps one or two
among these remember Claude Aglen--but he was so short a time with
them that it is not likely; those who do remember him will understand
that the way to success, rough and thorny for all, for such as Aglen
was impossible.

"But you will think every day of little Iris?" said his wife. "Oh, my
dear, if I were only going with you! And but for me you would be at
home with your father, well and happy."

Then in his dream, which was also a memory, the old man saw how the
young husband kissed and comforted his wife.

"My dear," said Claude, "if it were not for you, what happiness could
I have in the world? Courage, my wife, courage and hope. I shall think
of you and Iris all day and all night until we meet again."

And so they parted and the ship sailed away.

The old man opened his eyes and looked about him. It was a dream.

"It was twenty years ago," he said, "and Iris was a baby in arms.
Twenty years ago, and he never saw his wife again. Never again!
Because she died," he added after a pause; "my Alice died."

He shed no tears, being so old that the time of tears was well-nigh
past--at seventy-five the eyes are drier than at forty, and one is no
longer surprised or disappointed, and seldom even angry, whatever
happens.

But he opened the letter in his hand and read it again mechanically.
It was written on thin foreign paper, and the creases of the folds had
become gaping rents. It was dated September, 1866, just eighteen years
back.

"When you read these lines," the letter said, "I shall be in the
silent land, whither Alice, my wife, has gone before me. It would be a
strange thing only to think upon this journey which lies before me,
and which I must take alone, had I time left for thinking. But I have
not. I may last a week, or I may die in a few hours. Therefore, to the
point.

"In one small thing we deceived you, Alice and I--my name is not Aglen
at all; we took that name for certain reasons. Perhaps we were wrong,
but we thought that as we were quite poor, and likely to remain poor,
it would be well to keep our secret to ourselves. Forgive us both this
suppression of the truth. We were made poor by our own voluntary act
and deed, and because I married the only woman I loved.

"I was engaged to a girl whom I did not love. We had been brought up
like brother and sister together, but I did not love her, though I was
engaged to her. In breaking this engagement I angered my father. In
marrying Alice I angered him still more.

"I now know that he has forgiven me; he forgave me on his death-bed;
he revoked his former will and made me his sole heir--just as if
nothing had happened to destroy his old affection--subject to one
condition--viz., that the girl to whom I was first engaged should
receive the whole income until I, or my heirs, should return to
England in order to claim the inheritance.

"It is strange. I die in a wooden shanty, in a little Western town,
the editor of a miserable little country paper. I have not money
enough even to bury me, and yet, if I were at home, I might be called
a rich man, as men go. My little Iris will be an heiress. At the very
moment when I learn that I am my father's heir, I am struck down by
fever; and now I know that I shall never get up again.

"It is strange. Yet my father sent me his forgiveness, and my wife is
dead, and the wealth that has come is useless to me. Wherefore,
nothing now matters much to me, and I know that you will hold my last
wishes sacred.

"I desire that Iris shall be educated as well and thoroughly as you
can afford; keep her free from rough and rude companions; make her
understand that her father was a gentleman of ancient family; this
knowledge will, perhaps, help to give her self-respect. If any
misfortune should fall upon you, such as the loss of health or wealth,
give the papers inclosed to a trustworthy solicitor, and bid him act
as is best in the interests of Iris. If, as I hope, all will go well
with you, do not open the papers until my child's twenty-first
birthday; do not let her know until then that she is going to be rich;
on her twenty-first birthday, open the papers and bid her claim her
own.

"To the woman I wronged--I know not whether she has married or
not--bid Iris carry my last message of sorrow at what has happened. I
do not regret, and I have never regretted, that I married Alice. But,
I gave her pain, for which I have never ceased to grieve. I have been
punished for this breach of faith. You will find among the papers an
account of all the circumstances connected with this engagement. There
is also in the packet my portrait, taken when I was a lad of sixteen;
give her that as well; there is the certificate of my marriage, my
register of baptism, that of Iris's baptism, my signet ring--" "His
arms"--the old man interrupted his reading--"his arms were: quarterly:
first and fourth, two roses and a boar's head, erect; second and
third, gules and fesse between--between--but I cannot remember what it
was between--" He went on reading: "My father's last letter to me;
Alice's letters, and one or two from yourself. If Iris should
unhappily die before her twenty-first birthday, open these papers,
find out from them the owner's name and address, seek her out, and
tell her that she will never now be disturbed by any claimants to the
estate."

The letter ended here abruptly, as if the writer had designed to add
more, but was prevented by death.

For there was a postscript, in another hand, which stated: "Mr. Aglen
died November 25th, 1866, and is buried in the cemetery of Johnson
City, Ill."

The old man folded the letter carefully, and laid it on the table.
Then he rose and walked across the room to the safe, which stood with
open door in the corner furthest from the fireplace. Among its
contents was a packet sealed and tied up in red tape, endorsed: "For
Iris. To be given to her on her twenty-first birthday. From her
father."

"It will be her twenty-first birthday," he said, "in three weeks. Then
I must give her the packet. So--so--with the portrait of her father,
and his marriage-certificate." He fell into a fit of musing, with the
papers in his hand. "She will be safe, whatever happens to me; and as
for me, if I lose her--of course I shall lose her. Why, what will it
matter? Have I not lost all, except Iris? One must not be selfish. Oh,
Iris, what a surprise--what a surprise I have in store for you!"

He placed the letter he had been reading within the tape which
fastened the bundle, so that it should form a part of the
communication to be made on Iris's birthday.

"There," he said, "now I shall read this letter no more. I wonder how
many times I have read it in the last eighteen years, and how often I
have wondered what the child's fortune would be? In three weeks--in
three short weeks. Oh, Iris, if you only knew!"

He put back the letters and the packet, locked the safe, and resumed
his seat.

The red-eyed assistant, still gumming and pasting his slips with
punctilious regard to duty, had been following his master's movements
with curiosity.

"Counting his investments again as usual," Mr. James murmured. "Ah!
and adding 'em up! Always at it. Oh, what a trade it must have been
once!"

Just then there appeared in the door a gentleman. He was quite shabby,
and even ragged in his dress, but he was clearly a gentleman. He was
no longer young; his shoulders were bent, and he had the unmistakable
stamp and carriage of a student.

"Guv'nor's at home," said the assistant briefly.

The visitor walked into the sanctum. He had under his arm half-a-dozen
volumes, which, without a word, he laid before Mr. Emblem, and untied
the string.

"You ought to know this book," he said without further introduction.

Mr. Emblem looked doubtfully at the visitor.

"You sold it to me twenty-five years ago," he went on, "for five
pounds."

"I did. And I remember now. You are Mr. Frank Farrar. Why, it is
twenty-five years ago!"

"I have bought no more books for twenty years and more," he replied.

"Sad--sad! Dear me--tut, tut!--bought no books? And you, Mr. Farrar,
once my best customer. And now--you do not mean to say that you are
going to sell--that you actually want to sell--this precious book?"

"I am selling, one by one, all my books," replied the other with a
sigh. "I am going down hill, Emblem, fast."

"Oh, dear, dear!" replied the bookseller. "This is very sad. One
cannot bear to think of the libraries being dispersed and sold off.
And now yours, Mr. Farrar? Really, yours? Must it be?"

"'Needs must,'" Mr. Farrar said with a sickly smile, "needs must when
the devil drives. I have parted with half my books already. But I
thought you might like to have this set, because they were once your
own."

"So I should"--Mr. Emblem laid a loving hand upon the volumes--"so I
should, Mr. Farrar, but not from you; not from you, sir. Why, you were
almost my best customer--I think almost my very best--thirty years
ago, when my trade was better than it is now. Yes, you gave me five
pounds--or was it five pounds ten?--for this very work. And it is
worth twelve pounds now--I assure you it is worth twelve pounds, if it
is worth a penny."

"Will you give me ten pounds for it, then?" cried the other eagerly;
"I want the money badly."

"No, I can't; but I will send you to a man who can and will. I do not
speculate now; I never go to auctions. I am old, you see. Besides, I
am poor. I will not buy your book, but I will send you to a man who
will give you ten pounds for it, I am sure, and then he will sell it
for fifteen." He wrote the address on a slip of paper. "Why, Mr.
Farrar, if an old friend, so to speak, can put the question, why in
the world--"

"The most natural thing," replied Mr. Farrar with a cold laugh; "I am
old, as I told you, and the younger men get all the work. That is all.
Nobody wants a genealogist and antiquary."

"Dear me, dear me! Why, Mr. Farrar, I remember now; you used to know
my poor son-in-law, who is dead eighteen years since. I was just
reading the last letter he ever wrote to me, just before he died. You
used to come here and sit with him in the evening. I remember now. So
you did."

"Thank you for your good will," said Mr. Farrar. "Yes, I remember your
son-in-law. I knew him before his marriage."

"Did you? Before his marriage? Then--" He was going to add, "Then you
can tell me his real name," but he paused, because it is a pity ever
to acknowledge ignorance, and especially ignorance in such elementary
matters as your son-in-law's name.

So Mr. Emblem checked himself.

"He ought to have been a rich man," Mr. Farrar continued; "but he
quarreled with his father, who cut him off with a shilling, I
suppose."

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