‘I wish I could, Harry,’ said Charley,
thoroughly abashed; ’I wish I could—indeed
I wish I could—but it is so hard to go
right when one has begun to go wrong.’
‘It is hard; I know it is.’
’But you never can know how hard, Harry, for
you have never tried,’ and then they went on
walking for a while in silence, side by side.
‘You don’t know the sort of place that
office of mine is,’ continued Charley.
’You don’t know the sort of fellows the
men are. I hate the place; I hate the men I live
with. It is all so dirty, so disreputable, so
false. I cannot conceive that any fellow put
in there as young as I was should ever do well afterwards.’
‘But at any rate you might try your best, Charley.’
’Yes, I might do that still; and I know I don’t;
and where should I have been now, if it hadn’t
been for you?’
’Never mind about that; I sometimes think we
might have done more for each other if we had been
more together. But remember the motto you said
you’d choose, Charley—Excelsior!
We can none of us mount the hill without hard labour.
Remember that word, Charley—Excelsior!
Remember it now—now, to-night; remember
how you dream of higher things, and begin to think
of them in your waking moments also;’ and so
they parted.
A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES.—EVENING
‘Excelsior!’ said Charley to himself,
as he walked on a few steps towards his lodgings,
having left Norman at the door of his club. ‘Remember
it now—now, to-night.’
Yes—now is the time to remember it, if
it is ever to be remembered to any advantage.
He went on with stoic resolution to the end of the
street, determined to press home and put the last
touch to ‘Crinoline and Macassar;’ but
as he went he thought of his interview with Mr. M’Ruen
and of the five sovereigns still in his pocket, and
altered his course.
Charley had not been so resolute with the usurer,
so determined to get L5 from him on this special day,
without a special object in view. His credit
was at stake in a more than ordinary manner; he had
about a week since borrowed money from the woman who
kept the public-house in Norfolk Street, and having
borrowed it for a week only, felt that this was a
debt of honour which it was incumbent on him to pay.
Therefore, when he had walked the length of one street
on his road towards his lodgings, he retraced his
steps and made his way back to his old haunts.
The house which he frequented was hardly more like
a modern London gin-palace than was that other house
in the city which Mr. M’Ruen honoured with his
custom. It was one of those small tranquil shrines
of Bacchus in which the god is worshipped perhaps
with as constant a devotion, though with less noisy
demonstrations of zeal than in his larger and more
public temples. None absolutely of the lower
orders were encouraged to come thither for oblivion.
