The Meaning of Night Part 13

'There you are, Mr Glapthorn, 'he would say, in his strange high-pitched voice. 'I thought we might walk back together. A little company and a friendly chat at the end of the day, so pleasant.'

As I entered through the front door on my first morning, Jukes jumped down from his desk and began bowing obsequiously.

'Honoured to make your acquaintance, Mr Glapthorn,' he said, shaking my hand furiously as he spoke, 'honoured. I hope we may see much of each other, in a social as well as a business capacity. Neighbours, you know. New blood always welcome, sir lubrication for the great Tredgold engine, eh? We must move forward, mustn't we, Mr Glapthorn? Yes, indeed. So clever of the SP to bring you to us, but then we expect no less of the SP.'

He went on in this vein until we reached the door of Mr Tredgold's office. He conducted me into the room, giving yet another oily obeisance, and then, with reiterated bobbings of his head, closed the door softly behind him.

The Senior Partner rose from his desk, beaming.

'Welcome, welcome, Mr Glapthorn!' he said, shaking me warmly by the hand. 'Please sit down, sir. Now, is there anything you require? Shall I ring for some tea? It is a little cold this morning, is it not? Would you like to move a little nearer to the fire?'

He continued in this warmly considerate manner for some minutes, until I convinced him at last that I was not in the least bit cold, and that I did not require any warming beverage to fortify me. I then asked him what duties I would be expected to undertake at the firm.

'Duties? Yes, of course. There are certainly duties.' He gave his eye-gla.s.s a little polish, and beamed.

'Might I ask, Mr Tredgold, what those duties might be?'

'Of course you may. But first, Mr Glapthorn, you ought to know something of my colleagues. We are called Tredgold, Tredgold, and Orr, but there is only one Tredgold myself. Mr Donald Orr is the Junior Partner; and then there is Mr Thomas Ingrams. There are six clerks, including Mr Jukes, who is the most senior of their number. It is a varied practice. Criminal work, divorce, bankruptcy and insolvency (the particular interest of Mr Donald Orr), probate, the management of estates and properties, and so on; and of course we represent the interests of a large number of distinguished persons.'

'Such as Lord Tansor?'

'Indeed.'

'And in which particular area of the practice will my duties lie?'

'You are a great one for duty, I see, Mr Glapthorn, and it is apparent you are keen to be at it.'

'At what, Mr Tredgold?'

'Well, now, let me see. I thought, to begin with, you might wish to cast your eye over some papers relating to a bankruptcy case we recently conducted. Would that please you?'

'I am not here to be pleased, Mr Tredgold,' I replied, 'I am here to please you, and to earn a living.'

'But I am pleased,' he cried, 'and will be even more so if you will kindly consent to look over these papers.'

'May I enquire if you require me to do anything other than read the doc.u.ments?'

'Not at this time. Come!'

And with that, he took me by the arm and ushered me down the corridor and into a dark little room, with a large desk in the centre, and a cheerfully crackling fire.

'Wait here, if you please,' he said. A few minutes later he returned with a large bundle of papers and set them down on the desk.

'Will you be comfortable here?'

'Perfectly.'

'Then I shall leave you to your labours. I shall be out of the office today. Leave when you wish. Good-day, Mr Glapthorn.'

I duly applied myself to the doc.u.ments Mr Tredgold had given me. When I had finished reading them, having nothing else to occupy me, I returned to Temple-street. For the remainder of the week, I would come into my little room every morning to find another bundle of papers waiting for me, which I would diligently read through, to no apparent purpose, and then return home. On Friday, as I was about to depart, the door of Mr Tredgold's office opened.

'An excellent week's work, Mr Glapthorn. May I have the pleasure of your company on Sunday, at the usual time?'

Once again, I found myself in Mr Tredgold's private residence, enjoying a most appetising collation. Afterwards, as always, we fell into talking about books. As I was being conducted down the side stairs by the man, Harrigan, he handed me a key.

'Please to use this, sir, at Mr Tredgold's request, when you next come. No need to knock'

Astonished at this sign of my standing with the Senior Partner, I looked at Harrigan for a moment, but his face showed no expression. As I did so I noticed, just behind him, a girl of about twenty or twenty-five, regarding me with a similar impa.s.sivity. These two persons whom I had been told were husband and wife were the only other inhabitants of the building on the Sundays I was entertained by Mr Tredgold. I would catch glimpses of them from time to time, going about their duties silently, and never saying a word to each other.

Another week pa.s.sed. Every day I walked from Temple-street to Paternoster-row, read carefully through whatever papers Mr Tredgold had left on my desk, and then walked home. As I was leaving my room on Friday afternoon, a beaming Mr Tredgold issued another invitation to join him on Sunday in his private residence. This time, I had my key, and let myself in by the side door.

After luncheon was over, and we had settled ourselves on the ottomans in front of the fire, the conversation soon turned towards books. During our bibliographic chats, Mr Tredgold would often get up to pick out some volume from his collection to make a point, or ask my further opinion on some matter of typography or provenance.

On this occasion, Mr Tredgold had been speaking of some of the unusual testamentary provisions the firm had occasionally been asked to prepare, which led me to mention the mock last will and testament drawn up by Aretino1 for Pope Leo X's pet elephant, Hanno, in which the poet solemnly bequeathed the beast's private parts to one of His Holiness's Cardinals.

'Ah, Aretino,' said Mr Tredgold, beaming and polis.h.i.+ng his eye-gla.s.s. 'The infamous Sixteen Postures.'

Now having become something of a connoisseur in the history of warm literature during my time in Heidelberg (and possessing, as I did, good editions of Rochester and Cleland,2 as well as rare examples of the genre from earlier periods), I was instantly familiar with the reference, but taken aback somewhat by my host's unabashed mention of this celebrated masterpiece of the erotic imagination.

'Mr Glapthorn.' He put down his red silk handkerchief and looked steadily at me. 'Would you mind giving me your opinion on this?'

He stood up and walked over to a large walnut-fronted cabinet I had often noticed standing between the two doors that gave access to the room. Taking out a key on a delicate gold chain from his waistcoat pocket, Mr Tredgold unlocked this cabinet to reveal six or eight shelves of tightly packed books, as well as a number of slim, dark-green wooden boxes. Taking down one of the volumes, he relocked the cabinet and returned to his seat.

To my astonishment, it was the exquisitely rare 1798 Paris (P. Didot) edition of Aretino's sonnets, with engravings by Coiny after Carrache, something I had never seen before in all my bibliographic searchings.

'I have presumed, Mr Glapthorn,' he said, 'that such a work is interesting to you as a scholar and collector? I hope I have not offended in any way?'

'By no means,' I replied, turning the volume slowly over in my hands to admire the binding. With the content of the ill.u.s.trations, as well as the accompanying verses, I was naturally familiar: the muscular bodies, fiercely entwined limbs, and tumescent members, the urgent couplings against ta.s.selled cus.h.i.+ons beneath great canopied beds. That my employer should also be familiar with them, however, was wholly unexpected.

The production of the volume led to a more general discussion of the field as a whole, and it soon became clear that, in this department of bibliography at least, Mr Tredgold's knowledge was considerably in advance even of my own. He invited me back over to the cabinet, unlocked the doors again, and we spent a pleasant hour or so admiring together the gems of venereal literature that he had collected over the course of some twenty years.

'These, too, may perhaps interest you,' he said, taking out and opening one of the slim green boxes I had noticed earlier.

It contained a complete collection, laid lovingly on a bed of soft embossed paper, of those prints by Rowlandson in which the artist had depicted various accommodating ladies in the act of revealing their charms to the fervid male gaze. The other boxes held prints and drawings of a similar nature, by some of the finest pract.i.tioners.

My amazement was now complete.

'It appears, sir', I said, smiling, 'that you have hidden depths.'

'Well, well,' he replied, beaming back at me. 'The law, you know, can be a dreary business. A little harmless diversion is certainly required, from time to time. As a corrective.'

The conversation went on pleasantly over tea as we discussed various rarities in the field of voluptuous literature that we were each keen to locate. Mr Tredgold was particularly eager to augment his collection with a copy of The Cabinet of Venus, a partial translation put out in 1658 of the celebrated Geneanthropeia of Sinibaldi. I made a mental note of this, believing I might know where I could lay my hands on a copy, and thinking that its acquisition would ingratiate me even further with my employer. As matters fell out, it was to be several years before a copy was located for me; and when at last I arranged for it to be sent to the Senior Partner well, I must not antic.i.p.ate.

At about five o'clock, much later than my usual hour for departing, I rose to take my leave. But before I could say anything, Mr Tredgold had jumped to his feet and had taken me by the hand.

'May I say, Edward I hope you will not mind if I presume to address you by your first name that I have been extremely satisfied by your work.' One of his hands continued to hold mine tightly, whilst the other he placed gently on my shoulder.

'I am glad to hear it, Mr Tredgold, though I do not know in what way I can possibly have rendered satisfaction.'

'You have done what I asked of you, have you not?' he asked.

'Of course.'

'And you have done it to the best of your ability, diligently, without s.h.i.+rking?'

'I believe so.'

'So do I. And if I were to ask you a question concerning any of the doc.u.ments you have read, do you think you would be able to answer it?'

'Yes if you would allow me to consult my note-book.'

'You took notes! Capital! But perhaps you found the task a little irksome? No need to answer. Of course you did. A man of your talents should not be confined. I wish to liberate your talents, Edward. Will you allow me to do that?'

Not knowing how to reply to this curious question, I said nothing, which Mr Tredgold appeared to take as a.s.sent.

'Well then, Edward, your probationary days are over. Come to my office tomorrow, at ten. I have a little problem I wish to discuss with you.'

So saying, he wished me a pleasant evening, beamed, and retired to his study.

As I made my way down to the side-door, Rebecca appeared again at the foot of the stairs, stepping out from a narrow corridor that led back into the clerks' office. She curtsied, held open the street door for me as I pa.s.sed through, and then gave me such a coolly insolent smile that I almost stopped to reprimand her. But, in the instant of turning back, I saw that, as she was shutting the door quietly behind me, her face had once again a.s.sumed that closed expression of perfect demureness I had previously observed.

II.

Madame Mathilde _*

The next morning, as requested, I presented myself at Mr Tredgold's private office. When I left, an hour later, it was as the Senior Partner's confidential a.s.sistant, a post which, as he was at pains to emphasize, would involve undertaking a variety of duties 'of a discreet and private kind'. These duties, to which only Mr Tredgold and I were privy, I undertook for the next four years, with, I think I may say, some success.

It may be imagined that a distinguished, and successful, solicitor such as Mr Tredgold often needs to lay his hand on information essential for a case that is not shall we say readily obtainable through the usual channels. On such occasions, when it was best that he remain in ignorance of the sources of such information, as well as the means by which it came to him, Mr Tredgold would summon me and suggest a turn or two round the Temple Gardens. A problem of particular concern for the firm would be set out theoretically, of course and discussed (in the abstract).

'I wonder,' he would say, 'if anything might be done about this?'

Nothing further would be said, and we would make our leisurely return to Paternoster-row, discoursing of nothing in particular.

No formal instructions were issued, no records of conversations kept. But when something needed doing of a discreet and private kind it was my task at Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr to ensure that it was done.

The first 'little problem' Mr Tredgold placed on the table, as it were, for abstract consideration, concerned a Mrs Bonner-Childs. It may be taken as typical of the work I subsequently undertook at Tredgolds.

This lady had been a patron of an establishment in Regent-street called the Abode of Beauty, run by a certain Sarah Bunce, alias Madame Mathilde.1 Here, Madame enticed gullible females dedicated to the pursuit of eternal beauty (a not inconsiderable market, one would suppose) into parting with their or more often their husband's money by dispensing ingenious preparations with exotic names (to effect the complete and permanent removal of wrinkles, or to preserve a youthful complexion in perpetuity) at twenty guineas a time. The establishment also offered a room sumptuously fitted out as an Arabian Bath. The unfortunate Mrs Bonner-Childs, having been tempted to partake of this last amenity, had come back to her clothes to find that her diamond ring and earrings had vanished. Upon confronting Madame Mathilde she was informed by the proprietress that if she made a fuss over the loss, then Madame would inform Mrs Bonner-Childs' husband a.s.sistant Secretary at the India Board no less that his wife had been using the bath for immoral a.s.signations.

The success of Madame Mathilde's establishment like Kitty Daley's Academy depended on the fatal spectre of public scandal doing its work on those unfortunates who succ.u.mbed to this and to other similar ruses; but in this case, Mrs Bonner-Childs immediately informed her husband of what had happened, and he, trusting completely in his wife's innocence in the matter, instantly consulted Mr Christopher Tredgold.

My employer and I took a turn in the Temple Gardens one February afternoon. Mr Bonner-Childs was ready to prosecute if it came to it, but had expressed the hope that Mr Tredgold might be able to suggest a way by which this might be avoided, and his wife's jewels returned. Either way, the question of the firm's fee at whatever level it might be set was immaterial.

'I wonder if anything might be done about this?' mused Mr Tredgold aloud, whereupon we returned to Paternoster-row, conversing as usual about nothing in particular.

I duly set about observing the daily round of entrances and exits at the Abode of Beauty. In due course, I saw what I was looking for.

The late-morning drizzle had slowly thickened into rain. All around, the city thundered and roared. At every level of human existence, from the barest subsistence to luxurious indolence, its inhabitants crossed and re-crossed the clogged and dirty arteries of the great unsleeping beast, each according to his station trudging through the murk and mud, insulated in bobbing curtained carriages, swaying knee to knee in crowded omnibuses, or perched precariously on rumbling high-piled carts all engrossed by their own private purposes.

Though not yet midday, the light seemed already to be failing, and lamps were burning in the windows of houses and shops. It is a dark world, as I have often heard preachers say, and today the metaphor was made flesh.

I had been standing in Regent-street for some time, and was somewhat aimlessly glancing into the window of Johnson & Co., thinking perhaps I might make a present to myself of a new hat,2 when I saw a reflected image in the gla.s.s. She was about thirty years of age and, pa.s.sing just behind me, had stopped before the Abode to look up at the luridly painted sign above the door. She hesitated, and then proceeded on her way; but she had only taken a few steps when she stopped again, and then returned to the door of the establishment.

She had an open honest face, and was wearing a fine pair of emerald earrings. I immediately stepped forward to prevent her entering. She looked momentarily shocked, but I quickly persuaded her to step back from the door. This was my first lesson in boldness, and I learned it well. I also found, to my surprise, that I possessed a natural persuasiveness in such situations and quickly gained the confidence of the lady, who agreed, after we had retired a little down the street to discuss the matter, to fall in with my plans.

A few minutes later, she re-entered the establishment and immediately requested a bath, taking off her clothes and jewellery in an adjoining room, as Mrs Bonner-Childs had done. Having observed that Madame Mathilde was the sole person within the premises at that moment, I had entered behind my accomplice and, waiting a few moments for her to enter the bath chamber, had the satisfaction of surprising Madame in the act of helping herself to the lady's emerald earrings.

We exchanged a few words, with the result that Madame appeared to see the error of her ways. She lived exceptionally well from the Abode of Beauty, and could not risk prosecution, which I a.s.sured her would now be a simple matter to accomplish.

'A mistake, sir, a simple mistake,' she said, plaintively. 'I was just on the point of puttin' them away for safety like the girl did with the other lady's, only I wasn't aware at the time that she'd done so . . .'

And so on until, at last, she produced Mrs Bonner-Childs' jewellery, with much self-pitying hand-wringing and fervent promises to send the girl packing who had been so thoughtless as to hide away the items without telling anyone.

Mr Tredgold expressed great satisfaction that the matter had been resolved so quickly and quietly, without recourse to public prosecution, and Mr Bonner-Childs promptly settled a substantial bill from the firm for services rendered, a satisfactory portion of which was remitted to my account at Coutts & Co.

I must also mention, briefly, the matter of Mr Josiah Pluckrose, as being ill.u.s.trative of the kind of work I undertook for Mr Tredgold, and for other reasons, which will later become clear. The case came to my attention a few months after the business with Madame Mathilde. This Pluckrose was a common sort of man, a butcher from a long line of butchers, who had managed to ama.s.s a good deal of capital by means that Mr Tredgold described, in a whisper, as 'dubious'. He had given up the art of butchery at the age of twenty-four, had done a little boxing, had worked as a waterman and as a brush-maker, and had then, miraculously as it seemed, emerged from the mire as a pseudo-gentleman, with a house in Soho the house, indeed, in which the poet Dryden had died and more than a few pennies to his name.

He was a tall, brawny cove, this Josiah Pluckrose, with reptilian eyes and a livid scar across one cheek. He had a wife who had previously been in service at some great house or other, and whom he treated abominably. One day this poor lady was found dead beaten around the head in a most terrible way and Pluckrose was arrested for her murder. He had previously engaged Tredgolds on a number of business matters, and so the firm was naturally retained as the instructing solicitors for his defence. 'An unpleasant necessity,' Mr Tredgold confided, 'which, as he has introduced a number of clients to the firm, I do not think I can avoid. He protests his innocence, of course, but still it is all a little distasteful.' He then asked me if I could possibly see any way round this particular 'little problem'.

To be short, I did find a way and, for the first time since I began such work, it went a little against my conscience. The details need not detain us here, but Pluckrose was duly acquitted of the murder of his wife, and an innocent man later went to the gallows. I am not proud of this, but I did my work so well that no one not even Mr Tredgold ever suspected the truth. Good riddance to the odious Pluckrose, then.

Or so I thought.

With the business of Madame Mathilde began a life of which I could have had no conception only six months earlier, so alien was it to my former pursuits and interests. I soon discovered that I had a distinct talent for the work I was called upon to perform for Mr Tredgold indeed I took to it with a degree of proficiency that surprised even my self-a.s.sured nature. I gathered information, establis.h.i.+ng a network of connexions amongst both high and low in the capital; I uncovered little indiscretions, secured fugitive evidence, watched, followed, warned, cajoled, sometimes threatened. Extortion, embezzlement, crim. con.,3 even murder the nature of the case mattered not. I became adept in seeking out its weak points, and then supplying the means by which the foundations of an action against a client could be fatally undermined. My especial talent, I found, was sniffing out simple human frailty those little seeds of baseness and self-interest which, when brought to the light and well watered, turn into self-destruction. And so the firm would prosper, and Mr Tredgold's seraphic beam would grow all the broader.

London itself became my workshop, my manufactory, my study, to which I devoted all my talents of application and a.s.similation. I sought to master it intellectually, as I had mastered every subject to which I had turned my mind in the past; to tame and throw a leash round the neck of what I came to picture as the Great Leviathan, the never-sleeping monster in whose expanding coils I now existed.

From the heights to the depths, from brilliant civility and refinement to the sinks of barbarity, from Mayfair and Belgravia to Rosemary-lane and Bluegate-fields, I quickly discerned its lineaments, its many intertwining natures, its myriad distinctions and gradations. I watched the toolers and dippers,4 and all the other divisions of the swell mob, do their work in the crowded affluence of the West-end by day, and the rampsmen5 at their brutal work as the shadows closed in. Observed, too, with particular attention, the taxonomy of vice: the silken courtesans brazenly hanging on the arms of their lords and gentlemen; the common tails and judies, and every other cla.s.s of gay6 female. Each day I added to my store of knowledge; each day, too, I extended my own experience of what this place unique on G.o.d's earth could offer a man of pa.s.sion and imagination.

I have no intention of laying before you my many amorous adventures: such things are tedious at best. But one encounter I must mention. The female in question was of that type known as a dress-lodger. It was not long after the affair of Madame Mathilde, and I had returned to Regent-street to look again at the wares of Messrs Johnson & Co. She was about to cross the street when she caught my eye. Well dressed, pet.i.te, with a dimpled chin and delicate little ears. It was a dull, damp morning, and I was close enough to see tiny jewels of moisture clinging to her ringlets. She was about to join a small group of pedestrians on a swept pa.s.sage across the street. On reaching the opposite pavement she stopped, turned half back, fingering an errant lock of hair nervously. It was then I saw an elderly woman crossing the roadway a few yards behind her. This, I knew by now, was her watcher, paid by the girl's bawd to ensure that she did not abscond with the outfits provided for her girls such as she were too poor to deck themselves out in the finery required to hook in custom, like the sharp bobtails of the theatre porticos and the Cafe Royal.

I began to follow her. She walked with quick steps through the crowds, sure of her way. In Long Acre, I drew level with her. The business was swiftly concluded, her watcher retired to a nearby public-house, whilst the girl and I entered a house on the corner of Endell-street.

Her name was Dorrie, short for Dorothy. She did it, she said afterwards, to support her widowed mother, who could find no employment of her own. We talked for some time, and then she took me, with her watcher still a few paces behind us, to a cramped and damp chamber in a dreary court hard by.

Her mother, I guessed, was only some forty years of age herself, but she was bent and frail, with a harsh wheezing cough.

An arrangement was made I felt it was an appropriate gesture, and never regretted it. For several years, until circ.u.mstances intervened, Mrs Grainger came two or three times a week to Temple-street, to sweep my room, take my was.h.i.+ng away, and empty my slops.

As she entered of a morning, I would say: 'Good morning, Mrs Grainger. How is Dorrie?'

'She is well, sir, thank you. A good girl still'

And that is all we would ever say.

III.

Evenwood _____________________________________________________________________.