Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/86

 present moment are the names of sixty gentlemen seeking just the employment which you have named, all of whom are not merely members of colleges, but members who have taken rank, prizemen, first-class men, wranglers, senior optimes; they are on our books, and they may remain there for months before we get them off. You may judge, then, what chance you would have. At most agencies they would have taken your money and given you hope. But we don't do that here—it isn't our way—good morning!"

"Then you think I have no chance"

"I'm sure of it—through us at least—good-morning!"

Joyce would have made another effort, but the old gentleman had already turned on his heel, and feigned to be busy with some letters on a desk before him, so Walter turned round too, and silently left the registry office.

Silently, and with an aching heart. The old clerk had said but little, but Walter felt that his dictum was correct, and that all hopes of getting a situation as a tutor were at an end. Oh, if his father had only left him money enough to go to college, he would have had a future before him which—but then, Marian? He would never have known that pure, faithful, earnest love, failing which, life in its brightest and best form would have been dull and distasteful to him. He had that love still, thank Heaven, and in that thought there were the elements of hope, and the promptings to bestir himself yet once more in his hard self-appointed task of bread-winning.

Money running very short, and time running rapidly on. Not the shortest step in advance since he had first set foot in London, and the bottom of his purse growing painfully visible. He had taken to frequenting a small coffee-house in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, where, as he munched the roll and drank the tea, which now too often served him as a dinner, he could read the newspapers and scan the advertisements to see if there were anything likely to suit him among the myriad columns. It was a quiet and secluded little place, where but few strangers entered—he saw the same faces night after night, as he noticed—and where he could have his letters addressed to him under his initials, which was a great comfort, as he had noticed lately that his landlady in his river-side lodging-house had demurred to the receipt of so much initialled correspondence, ascribing it, as Walter afterwards learned from the "slavey" or maid-of-all-work, either to "castin' orryscopes, tellin' charickters by 'andwritin', or rejen'rative bolsum for the 'air!"—things utterly at variance with the respectability of her establishment.

A quiet secluded little place, sand-floored and spittoon-decorated, with a cosy clock and a cosy red-faced fire, singing with steaming kettles, and cooking chops, and frizzling bacon; with a sleepy cat, a pet of the customers, dozing before the hearth, and taking occasional quarter-of-an-hour turns round the room, to be back-rubbed, and whisker-scratched, and tit-bit fed; with tea and coffee and cocoa, in thick blue China half-pint mugs, and with bacon of which the edge was by no means to be cut off and thrown away, but was thick, and crisp, and delicious as the rest of it, on willow-pattern plates; with little yellow pats of country butter, looking as if the cow whose impressed form they bore had only fed upon buttercups, as different from the ordinary petrified cold cream which in London passes current for butter as chalk from cheese. "Bliffkins's"—the house was supposed to have been leased to Bliffkins as the Elephant, and appeared under that title in the Directories; but no one knew it but as "Bliffkins's"—was a Somersetshire house, and kept a neat placard framed and glazed in its front window to the effect that the Somerset County Gazette was taken in. So that among the thin pale London folk who "used" the house you occasionally came upon stalwart giants, big-chested, horny-handed, deep-voiced, with z's sticking out all over their pronunciation, jolly Zummerzetshire men, who brought Bliffkins the latest gossip from his old native place of Bruton and its neighbourhood, and who, during their stay—and notably at cattle-show period—were kings of the house. At ordinary times, however, the frequenters of the house never varied—indeed it was understood that Bliffkins's was a "connexion," and did not in the least depend upon chance custom. Certain people sat in certain places, ordered certain refreshment, and went away at certain hours, never varying in the slightest particular. Mr. Byrne, a wizened old man, who invariably bore on his coat and on his hair traces of fur, and fluff, and wool, who was known to be a bird-stuffer by trade, and who was reputed to be an extreme radical in politics