After all, even on Charley’s part, it was but
a vision. He never really thought that his young
inamorata would or could be to him a real true heart’s
companion, returning his love with the double love
of a woman, watching his health, curing his vices,
and making the sweet things of the world a living
reality around him. This love of his was but
a vision, but not the less on that account did it
interfere with his cousin Alaric’s proposition,
in reference to Miss Clementina Golightly.
That other love also, that squalid love of his, was
in truth no vision—was a stern, palpable
reality, very difficult to get rid of, and one which
he often thought to himself would very probably swallow
up that other love, and drive his sweet dream far away
into utter darkness and dim chaotic space.
But at any rate it was clear that there was no room
in his heart for the beauteous Clementina, ‘doosed
fine girl’ as she undoubtedly was, and serviceable
as the L20,000 most certainly would have been.
A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES.—MORNING
On the morning after this conversation with Alaric,
Charley left his lodgings with a heavy heart, and
wended his way towards Mecklenburg Square. At
the corner of Davies Street he got an omnibus, which
for fourpence took him to one of the little alleys
near Gray’s Inn, and there he got down, and threading
the well-known locality, through Bedford Place and
across Theobald’s Road, soon found himself at
the door of his generous patron. Oh! how he hated
the house; how he hated the blear-eyed, cross-grained,
dirty, impudent fish-fag of an old woman who opened
the door for him; how he hated Mr. Jabesh M’Ruen,
to whom he now came a supplicant for assistance, and
how, above all, he hated himself for being there.
He was shown into Mr. M’Ruen’s little
front parlour, where he had to wait for fifteen minutes,
while his patron made such a breakfast as generally
falls to the lot of such men. We can imagine
the rancid butter, the stale befingered bread, the
ha’porth of sky-blue milk, the tea innocent of
China’s wrongs, and the soiled cloth. Mr.
M’Ruen always did keep Charley waiting fifteen
minutes, and so he was no whit surprised; the doing
so was a part of the tremendous interest which the
wretched old usurer received for his driblets of money.
There was not a bit of furniture in the room on which
Charley had not speculated till speculation could
go no further; the old escritoire or secretaire which
Mr. M’Ruen always opened the moment he came
into the room; the rickety Pembroke table, covered
with dirty papers which stood in the middle of it;
the horsehair-bottomed chairs, on which Charley declined
to sit down, unless he had on his thickest winter
trousers, so perpendicular had become some atoms on
the surface, which, when new, had no doubt been horizontal;
the ornaments (!) on the chimney, broken bits of filthy
