And we have got a precious one.’
‘There are four of us, with our names painted on a door-post in right of
one black hole called a set of chambers,’ said Eugene; ‘and each of us has
the fourth of a clerk—Cassim Baba, in the robber’s cave—and
Cassim is the only respectable member of the party.’
‘I am one by myself, one,’ said Mortimer, ‘high up an awful staircase
commanding a burial-ground, and I have a whole clerk to myself, and he has
nothing to do but look at the burial-ground, and what he will turn out
when arrived at maturity, I cannot conceive. Whether, in that shabby
rook’s nest, he is always plotting wisdom, or plotting murder; whether he
will grow up, after so much solitary brooding, to enlighten his
fellow-creatures, or to poison them; is the only speck of interest that
presents itself to my professional view. Will you give me a light? Thank
you.’
‘Then idiots talk,’ said Eugene, leaning back, folding his arms, smoking
with his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, ‘of Energy. If
there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I
abominate, it is energy. It is such a conventional superstition, such
parrot gabble! What the deuce! Am I to rush out into the street, collar
the first man of a wealthy appearance that I meet, shake him, and say, “Go
to law upon the spot, you dog, and retain me, or I’ll be the death of
you”? Yet that would be energy.’
‘Precisely my view of the case, Eugene. But show me a good opportunity,
show me something really worth being energetic about, and I’ll show you
energy.’
‘And so will I,’ said Eugene.
And it is likely enough that ten thousand other young men, within the
limits of the London Post-office town delivery, made the same hopeful
remark in the course of the same evening.
The wheels rolled on, and rolled down by the Monument and by the Tower,
and by the Docks; down by Ratcliffe, and by Rotherhithe; down by where
accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed from higher grounds, like
so much moral sewage, and to be pausing until its own weight forced it
over the bank and sunk it in the river. In and out among vessels that
seemed to have got ashore, and houses that seemed to have got afloat—among
bow-splits staring into windows, and windows staring into ships—the
wheels rolled on, until they stopped at a dark corner, river-washed and
otherwise not washed at all, where the boy alighted and opened the door.
‘You must walk the rest, sir; it’s not many yards.’ He spoke in the
singular number, to the express exclusion of Eugene.
‘This is a confoundedly out-of-the-way place,’ said Mortimer, slipping
over the stones and refuse on the shore, as the boy turned the corner
sharp.
‘Here’s my father’s, sir; where the light is.’
The low building had the look of having once been a mill. There was a
rotten wart of wood upon its forehead that seemed to indicate where the
sails had been, but the whole was very indistinctly seen in the obscurity
of the night. The boy lifted the latch of the door, and they passed at
once into a low circular room, where a man stood before a red fire,
looking down into it, and a girl sat engaged in needlework. The fire was
in a rusty brazier, not fitted to the hearth; and a common lamp, shaped
like a hyacinth-root, smoked and flared in the neck of a stone bottle on
the table. There was a wooden bunk or berth in a corner, and in another
corner a wooden stair leading above—so clumsy and steep that it was
little better than a ladder. Two or three old sculls and oars stood
against the wall, and against another part of the wall was a small
dresser, making a spare show of the commonest articles of crockery and
cooking-vessels. The roof of the room was not plastered, but was formed of
the flooring of the room above. This, being very old, knotted, seamed, and
beamed, gave a lowering aspect to the chamber; and roof, and walls, and
floor, alike abounding in old smears of flour, red-lead (or some such
stain which it had probably acquired in warehousing), and damp, alike had
a look of decomposition.
‘The gentleman, father.’
The figure at the red fire turned, raised its ruffled head, and looked
like a bird of prey.
‘You’re Mortimer Lightwood Esquire; are you, sir?’
‘Mortimer Lightwood is my name. What you found,’ said Mortimer, glancing
rather shrinkingly towards the bunk; ‘is it here?’
‘’Tain’t not to say here, but it’s close by. I do everything reg’lar.