Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/342

332[March 6, 1869] ocean, lathery with froth; but no effects. At last I ask a group of fishermen smoking stolidly, in a sort of glum parliament, under the black side of a small lugger, drawn up on the beach.

"Have you, my good men, seen anything of this large Indiaman that they say is likely to be driven on shore?"

The men look at me with horny eyes. They make no reply. One ruffian thrusts his tongue into his hideous cheek. The rascals shake their heads, and, as I move on, a disgustingly impertinent boy feeding a donkey by a cabstand couches his forehead with assumed idiocy, and, looking steadily out at sea, dances a double shuffle on the shingle, thrusts his hands in his pockets, and sings something about "Not for Joe." Who's Joe? Then all the other smugglers and villains laugh boisterously, and one lubberly villain, lying flat on the shingle, pretends to swim violently on shore.

I walk away disgusted at the degradation of our lower orders, and sneer mentally at universal or any other sort of suffrage. As I enter the town by Jones-street, I meet the deceiver of the morning in high spirits. He is sold out—nothing left in his baskets, but a smear of red, and half a dozen silver spangles. I stop him and interrogate him bluntly.

"Well, sir," he says, "I confess it was a bit of a stretcher; but there was a Green's Indiaman me and my mates spoke in the night, and, Lor' bless you, the Lonnon gents here do like them yarns about the dangers of the seas, and so we fatten them up with 'em—we make a point of it—and besides (here he winked slowly at me with his blind and leaden eye), don't ye see, it helps to sell the fish."

So passed away my morning's dream at Herringtown; so, too, have passed away many dreams that have lasted men their whole lives. 

  are some of this fry who do not scruple to inhale the scent of the gambling flowers, to walk on the gambling walks, to sit down, as I see they do now, on the gambling seats. A benevolent father, according to the stage phrase, portly, puffed, and placid, enjoying these scandalous blessings, as he sits between his two children, he is, no doubt, quite satisfied with himself and them. "It is really very pleasant, all this sort of thing, and the people here do it very nicely, very nicely indeed—so much good seems to be done." How I remember them—those nice girls, for one of whom I put down her money. It gave me a thrill to see her, for no doubt, good as she was, she had led me into this fatal fit. I turned back to avoid them, but they rose and followed me.

"Come here, Mr. Austen, we want to speak to you," said the portly father.

The young girl, Constance, was beside me.

"O, we have been looking for you everywhere, and, indeed, we were so sorry to hear that you have been unfortunate."

This was free and easy. She would have called the mislaying of her gloves a misfortune.

"Has it been so talked about?" I answered, bitterly; "I thought that losing was the ordinary condition of things here. It is no nine days' wonder, I presume?"

"No, indeed," she said gently; "but we were looking on, and then we heard from Mr. D'Eyncourt——"

"O, he talks of me, does he? What right has he to concern himself with my affairs? He is not my friend—as it is, he has meddled too much already, and I am not going to put up with it, even in this place, where so much can be put up with."

"Then it is true?" she said, looking at me with alarm; "and I reproach myself bitterly, as it was my foolish eagerness that led you on to it."

I did not know what answer to make to her. But her father came up and said,

"Come, Mr. Austen, we are English in a foreign land, and that should draw us together and make us excuse each other. I may be as free surely to you as I would wish you to be to me. Go, dear, and walk a little, I want to ask our friend something."

"I have no secrets. I should not care if the whole collection in this——" I was beginning excitedly when he stopped me.

"Now, let us talk sensibly; first of all, don't imagine any offence is meant to you; and, secondly, don't fancy that I am to be offended. I am a plain, straightforward, English gentleman, and like my own way when I have anything in my head. We have a lord whom all our country bench is in terror of, but I don't care a button on that frock coat for him."

"And how do these private matters of yours concern me?" I asked.

"Just listen; I don't know what you may have lost, whether little or much, that is no affair of ours, nor of the mob gathered here; but really there is something so strange in your appearance, something so full of despair, that every good person must be distressed by it."

"They have surely no business with me, or with my looks——"

"I am really afraid, even as a mere stranger, lest your health, or worse, your