Mitre Court. A tale of the Great City

Front matter

MITRE COURT. JV ualc of the 6veat £itv>. I.-, MRS. J. H. RIDDELL, AUTHOR OF J^ Si GEITH OF FEN COURT," " SVSAN PKr.MMOKD," ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, tUibltslicrs in (Ovbinarn to ifjcr .'Hajcsty the lijuttn. iSSs. [ . CONTENTS OF VOL. I. CHAPTER PAGE I. MR. AND MRS. JEFFLEY I II. MR. KATZEN'S NEWS - - - 26 III. A PLAINT - - - - - 51 IV. IN THE OLD HOUSE - - - - 74 V. MRS. CHILDS INTERROGATED - - - 95 VI. MISS WEIR - - - - - 113 VII. MR. KATZEN'S LOVE - - - 1 34 VIII. SUNDAY - - - - - - 156 IX. LESS THAN KIN - - - - - 1 70 X. MRS. CHILDS' THEORY - - - - 1 85 XI. G. BRISCO - - - - -212 XII. MOST LONELY - - - - - 236 XIII. IN MITRE COURT- - - - - 258 XIV. "ABOUT AEIGAIL" - - -

Chapter I. Mr

AND MRS. JEFFLEY. ®_£J__5_-'SI Fowkes' Buildings, hard by Great Jg^-| v# Tower Street, the curious reader __r_y*_3§> may still see a large mansion which more than fifteen years ago was " run " as a lodging-house by Mrs. Maria Jeffley. There never existed a woman better fitted for such an undertaking. Strong, energetic, tireless, capable, Mrs. Jeffley made the captains, mates, and various friends those seafaring persons brought to the "snuggest port " in London, perfectly happy. That at the same time she contrived to render Mr. Jeffley almost miserable was in the lady's VOL. I. I judgment a point not worth considering. Had he been differently constituted, his home ought to have seemed an abode of bliss to him — so the brisk Maria felt, and justly. She was not answerable for his constitution.

John — or, as his friends preferred to call him, Jack — -Jeffley filled the position of ware houseman in the great firm of Deedes, Tun stall, Fulmer and Company, wine merchants, who had offices in Dunstan Hill, and huge vaults nearer to the Tower. All their goods in those dim underground cellars were under his hand. The manager himself — who received a large salary and a percentage on the profits of the concern ; lived in his own house (freehold) at Forest Hill, and gave dinner-parties, for which it was stated, by persons behind the scenes, Messrs. Deedes and Co. paid per arrange ment ; kept a phaeton and boy in buttons for his wife's gratification, and, generally speaking, "cut a dash "• — was not really a more important factor in the firm's prosperity than plain Jack Jeffley, who only received a modest weekly wage, and the summit of whose earthly ambition was a small cottage with a "bit of garden " which he might " keep to himself."

He could have realized this aspiration years previously had Mrs. Jeffley been of her husband's mind ; but Mrs. Jeffley, as she not infrequently stated, had a different sort of mind altogether from the individual by a jocose fiction called her lord and master. The quiet of a cottage surrounded by a bit of garden would, so she declared, "kill her." She did not want to sit down and turn her dresses — she liked to buy new ones, and give them out to be made by Mrs. Mountly, who "fit her like a glove, and kept three apprentices, and a beautifully furnished house in Arbour Square (where the drawing-room was good enough for any lady in the land)." Mrs. Jeffley " had no notion of letting her children go about as if they were beggars ; she did not mind slaving and working her finders to the bone " in order to send them on Sunday mornings with their rather abashed papa to their parish church of All Hallows, Barking, clad in I rich apparel — sunny ringlets streaming over their shoulders, and long, white, real ostrich feathers in their hats, which well-nigh drove the mothers of other children, no doubt quite as nice, distracted with envy.

Even had she wished to accompany Mr. Jeffley to church on Sunday mornings — which she certainly never did — Mrs. Jeffley with a " houseful of lodgers " might have found it difficult to gratify her desire. Sometimes, though not often, she repaired in the afternoon of the first day in the week to Hyde Park to see the latest novelty in dress or shame, equipage or beauty ; and occasionally she attended evening service at the Abbey or St. Paul's, squired by one or more of the many respectful admirers who never wearied of singing their landlady's praises. " The cleverest woman you'd meet in the length of a midsummer's day !" was the chorus chanted by all Mrs. Jeffley's lodgers. In his heart Jack Jeffley often wished it had pleased God to make his wife a little less clever, but he was far too loyal to say so.

Silently he resigned himself to this dispensation of Providence, as to several other troubles in his married life. If Mrs. Jeffley did not maintain a like silence concerning the cross of having a husband " without a morsel of push in him," it must be remem bered she was a woman, and might have broken her heart had she not sought and obtained sympathy from the many, concerning the shortcomings of a man who let her do as she pleased, gave her almost all he earned, and only asked to be allowed to keep one little room, where he could sit and smoke and read the paper in peace and quietness. " If you were like anybody else," Mrs. Jeffley frequently observed, " you might be of a lot of use to me." In reply to which genial remark Jack Jeffley said nothing. He had the greatest genius for saying nothing, which was indeed well, since his wife's talent lay in quite another direction.

Though nominally master of the great house in Fowkes' Buildings, Mr. Jeffley was really merely a lodger in it, and a lodger less esteemed and considered than any other under the roof, not excepting Frank Scott who, being a permanent inmate, young, poor, and easy tempered, ranked as one " of the family," and had to put up with being treated accordingly. His bedroom was next the slates, and if honest Jack had not made him free of his own small den, the young fellow must have confined himself to his narrow chamber, or consorted with rum-drinking and beer-swilling old salts, who, though excellent persons, no doubt, spat, swore, and told tough yarns, and whose conversation was rather apt to pall after a not very long period. Thanks to a lawyer's clerk, to whom, when his fortunes were at low water, Mrs. Jeffley had been extremely kind, that lady dis covered, long before the Married Women's Property Act became law, according to the "custom of the City of London" she could trade independent of her husband, sue and be sued, rent a house, carry on a business, "keep what she made for herself," exactly as if she had never seen John Jeffley.

This was before she started her boarding establishment, and, it is not uncharitable to conclude, the idea of having something free from the control of the poor creature she had vowed to obey determined Mrs. Jeffley to persevere in her scheme. Had Mr. Jeffley's consent and co-opera tion been necessary, sea captains and others must have found a suitable anchorage else where. The whole project was abhorrent to him, if for no other reason than that already Mrs. Jeffley had a person occasionally lodging with her whom he hated as much as it was in his nature to hate anybody ; he hated him for three reasons, not one of which will seem to a sensible reader sufficient to account for even a moderate dislike. In the first place, Mr. Karl Katzen was a foreigner, and, like a loyal Englishman, Jack Jeffley distrusted foreigners ; in the next, he was "undersized" and "unwholesome-looking," and Mr. Jeffley had a prejudice in favour of large men whose appearance did "credit to their keep."

" Katzen might be fed on chaff," he said in later years to Frank Scott, and indeed Mr. Katzen might have been fed on sawdust for any good his food seemed to do him. He was lean and sallow ; he had eyes of no colour in particular ; he let his dark lank hair grow long ; he wore no beard or moustache, only a starved imperial ; presumably he some times washed himself, yet he never looked clean. To big, burly Jack Jeffley, with his crisp brown hair, well-kept whiskers, clear complexion, tanned and freckled though it was ; frank mouth full of white good teeth, all of which he showed when he laughed, and heart that, though prejudiced, was full of the milk of human kindness, this inscrutable German was a standing affront. For he had brains, such as they were ; and Jack Jeffley's head might have been cleft open without finding more than just served to enable him to fulfil his duty to his employers.

He did not possess enough mind to make him even think of doino wrong. Fifty millions of money or money's worth might have been left at Jack Jeffley's mercy, and he would never have set him self to consider how easily he could abstract, say, a thousand pounds. He was very stupid indeed, according to modern lights. Two reasons, or non-reasons, have been given why Mr. Jeffley disliked Mr. Katzen ; another remains behind. It is only fair to say Mr. Jeffley fought hard against it. He argued that no better was to be expected "off" (truth compels the con fession that thus Mrs. Jeffley's husband worded his sentence) " a fool of a foreigner," and consequently Jack really did try to for give him, but he could not. Very often he fancied he had not merely forgiven but for gotten, and then suddenly the whole thing would recur to his memory, and at his work or walking along the street he again felt the hot blood rushing into his face, and tingling to his fingers' ends.

And really poor Mr. Katzen's offence ought not to have been regarded as the unpardonable sin. To Jack Jeffley, how ever, it seemed the same sort of crime that poisoning a fox would to a master of hounds. Jack came in his way of well-to-do people. His father and his father's father had farmed their own land since the Conquest or there about. They were yeomen, they were never rich, or great, or grand. Nevertheless they could trace a pedigree calculated to put to shame many a mushroom lord. They had fought for their country, they had poured out their blood for worthless kings they never saw, and died for principles they did not comprehend. Yet not one of them rose above the rank in which he was born ; titles and pensions, orders and bishoprics, are not for those who only perform yeomen's work ; rather as the years went on, and times changed — -and the Jeffleys did not change with the times — matters grew worse with them.

Old acres did not mean the same profit as formerly. Though meat grew dearer, cattle did not return so much money ; labour had to be better paid ; the very earth seemed to yield her increase less willingly than of yore ; — it was thus it came to pass that, finding things drifting from bad to ruin, John Jeffley left home, and sought his for tune in London. But before he did this, he had learned to love the country and all country pursuits, and though he trod the stony streets con tentedly enough, his fancy was for ever roaming along the field-paths of his native county ; and as each spring returned to gladden the earth memory parted once again the interlacing branches which covered some bird's nest, while in the autumn days at heart he strode across his father's stubble once more, and raised his gun and brought down partridge and hare and pheasant on the land which had passed from him and his for ever.

No man knew the points of a horse better than Jack Jeffley ; he could ride well ; when he took the reins, anyone might have felt secure in sitting beside him ; he had the natural vanity a good driver feels ; and yet once when he gave Mr. Katzen a lift in his employers' dogcart, that " blanked, blanked dirty little German,' to modify his more vigorous expression con cerning that gentleman, finding the vehicle between the Charybdis of an omnibus and the Scylla of a lumbering wool-van, actually gave the off-rein a pull which as nearly as possible " landed us in the very mess the fool was afraid, of." Anything else in reason Mr. Jeffley might have looked over, but the united cowardice and unwisdom of Mr. Katzen's act stuck — to quote his own very words — " in his gizzard." " How should you feel," he said to Mr. Frank Scott, " if a fellow — and that fellow a damned foreigner — laid his hands on the reins when you were driving ?

I wonder I did not pitch him neck and crop out of the cart." And Mr. Frank Scott — who indeed knew as little about horses, and driving, and riding, except what he had learned from Mr. Jeffley himself, as a young gentleman could — was nevertheless sufficient of a friend and a Saxon to wonder how his host, smarting under such provocation, had forborne from crippling Mr. Katzen for life. Mrs. Jeffley took a different view of the affair. " Bosh !" she said when her worser half tried to make her understand the full enormity of which "the damned foreigner" had been guilty. " You are nothing but a big baby." And that was all the sympathy Jack Jeffley received from his wife. Years had passed since that little episode, but when this story opens it still rankled in Mr. Jeffley's heart. As has been said, he intuitively hated Mr. Katzen, wherein perhaps his instinct was not altogether wrong ; but he dealt out injustice to Mrs. Jeffley's friend in imagining the German encouraged that estimable woman in her fads and fancies, and fostered those differences which were the plague of poor Jack's life.

Jack was but human, and never having understood his wife, it came natural to him to attribute those faults which rendered his home less comfortable than it might have been, to the influence, of anything or anyone rather than to the nature of the divine Maria. Loyalty plays men and women many a scurvy trick, but never a worse one than that of attributing to external sources the fouling of a spring which contains in itself the elements of impurity. Mr. Jeffley would not see the whole worry of his existence lay in his wife's mental vanity. She thought herself so extremely clever that all her husband's ways seemed utter foolish ness in her eyes. Many women who do nothing, fall into a similar error concerning their husbands' business incompetence ; therefore it is per haps not quite surprising that Mrs. Jeffley, who did a great deal, should regard her lord as a mere cumberer of the ground.

This view of Mr. Jeffley, which had been growing and flourishing for many years, was entirely her own. Mr. Katzen's share in it was absolutely nil. He did not foster any depre ciatory ideas on the subject of Mr. Jeffley's abilities — quite the contrary. He was wont to laugh a dry ungenial laugh and tell the lady she knew nothing about men, and men's work — that she was too well off — that if her husband beat her, or drank, or was unfaithful, she would love the ground on which his shadow fell. " But," Mr. Katzen was wont to continue, " being only a good fellow, and devoted to you and his children, you can't find one pleasant word to say about him." There was indeed nothing Mr. Katzen had much less patience with than to hear Mrs. Jeffley holding forth concerning Mr. Jeffley's shortcomings. His own life was so stormy out of doors he loved peace within.

He had no idea of disturbing his host's conjugal peace. " Bah !" he would declare to Mrs. Jeffley, speaking between jest and earnest, " much as I like you, my friend, deeply grateful to you as I am and ought to be, I would not marry you were you hung with diamonds." " That is because you are so clever your self," Mrs. Jeffley would answer in foolish explanation. Then Mr. Katzen was wont to look in the lady's face with a dubious smile, and remark : " Dear madame, you are not half so clever as you imagine. All those stupid old Nep tunes are leading you quite astray — not of malice prepense perhaps, but they gaze at you through spectacles of self-interest ; you cannot expect your lodgers to tell the truth when you make them so comfortable." " No one, at all events, can accuse you of flattery," Mrs. Jeffley often retorted.

" That is because I have far too great a regard for you," was the plausible explana tion ; and indeed, so far as Mr. Katzen was capable of feeling a regard for anyone, he did entertain some sentiment of the kind for the woman who had always believed in, and stuck fast to him through all sorts of chances and changes — trusted and helped him, and given sympathy as well as many much more tangible proofs of confidence and friendship. Still, it was a bore that she would not con ciliate her husband. How comfortable and friendly they might all have been together in Jack Jeffley's little den, where Mr. Katzen never could flatter himself Jack felt glad to welcome anyone except Frank Scott ! How useful Mr. Jeffley might have been to him in a hundred ways ! How much better a man's help than a woman's !

How far pre ferable the assistance of a rational male creature than any amount of kindness from a lady who needed the most skilful handling, who believed herself a diplomatist, a general, an administrator, and a financier ! " She thinks because she can manaw her house that she could rule a kingdom," thought Mr. Katzen, with a shrug of his lean shoulders ; " but there, she is a good soul, though a vain simpleton. Over and over again, my Karl, you might have known what it was to lack a meal — many meals — but for the amaz ing faith of Maria Jeffley. And she has found no cause to repent her confidence. No, there may be, as report states, people I have not paid, but Mrs. Jeffley is not among the number." Either report must have lied horribly, or else Mr. Katzen in the course of his life had paid very few people indeed.

In many places there was an opinion he discharged no debt he could evade, and as we are often told there is never smoke without fire, it is quite probable that Mr. Katzen's erratic course through this wicked world might have been traced by the smouldering fires of un liquidated liability. Under his rightful name of Karl Katzen stein, he had in his days of comparative innocence involved himself in such pecuniary trouble that he was compelled to leave his Fatherland and seek better fortune in the United States, where both he and those who trusted him fared badly. After all, a man must learn his trade somehow ; and if Mr. Katzenstein found but little gold stick to his fingers while serving his apprenticeship as adventurer, who can judge him harshly on that account ? He gained skill and experi ence ; and finally, thinking he had acquired VOL. I. as much knowledge as America was likely to teach him, he decided to bid that country farewell, and give Great Britain the benefit of his talents.

It was then he made Mrs. Jeffley's acquaintance, and a very useful one he found her. Many a time he must have gone out breakfastless in the morning, and repaired to bed supperless at night, if the lady's faith in him had not been unbounded. And he never cheated her, never once. No, though he often went away for months together, he always came back and discharged his debt. He told her many of his troubles, dis coursed to her concerning some of his plans — a man must have some one to talk to — • and Mrs. Jeffley's sympathy with the German was so complete he found it better to talk to her than anybody else. She thought him the cleverest person in the world. He could speak five languages fluently, and had a smattering of Russian besides; and poor Mrs. Jeffley, who could only utter her thoughts in English, and English often not the most correct, considered the way Mr. Katzen — he deemed it well, for reasons which it is unnecessary here to state, to dock his name of the final "stein " when he took passage for England — was able to discourse with persons of many nationalities little short of miraculous.

It seemed to her simple mind as good as conjuring ; and though she was honest herself as the day, the tricks by which he could get money " where another man would starve " excited her warmest admiration. She knew she found it hard enough to make both ends meet on Jack's regular wages. How Mr. Katzen could go out some days without a sixpence and come back with full pockets struck her as most extraordinary. Here was a person whose acquaintance was indeed something to be proud of. " Ah ! if poor Jack had been like him !" Mrs. Jeffley would probably not have started her lodging-house, of which Mr. Katzen was so honoured an inmate. What did she not get for his benefit ? — a " tasty morsel " for breakfast ; a good juicy steak for dinner, which Mr. Katzen kindly ate, though under protest, "because," as he said, " you do so spoil your excellent beef by your barbarous cookery" — "A fellow, I'll 2 — be bound," grumbled Jack Jeffley, " who never got anything better than sour cabbage and kickshaws in his own country !" — fruit by the bushel, pastry light and flaky, puddings cunningly concocted ; literally it was with Mrs. Jeffley a labour of love, catering for his excellent appetite.

Peas for him were always dressed with sugar ; the salads he affected were smothered in oil, " till they were not fit for a dog," again to quote Mr. Jeffley, while according to the same authority " it was enough to make a man do something desperate" to see trout boiled, and boiled with vinegar. At the time we first meet them, Mr. Jeffley had long ceased to express his opinions to Mrs. Jeffley concerning the d d German, but he held to them very firmly notwithstanding. A person without an ostensible calling, who had no regular employment and no business anybody could comprehend, who was scarcely ever in his office, if a " bit of a box stolen off the landing " in a house close at hand " could be called an office," about which Mr. Jeffley had his doubts, was never likely to do much good for himself or anybody else; and what he, Jack, wanted to know was, why he should be waited upon "hand and foot" as if he were Rothschild or the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Jack was sadly jealous of Mr. Katzen. But he need not have been. Karl's attach ment to Mrs. Jeffley was strictly platonic, and perhaps a little gastronomic, while Mrs. Jeffley's feeling for him entertained no thought of disloyalty to her husband. Naturally she did not care to hear Mr. Katzen sing the praises of any other woman, but that was nothing. As a rule, even men are not fond of hearing their acquaintances extolled, considering commendation of this sort a species of indirect reproach to them selves. In this respect there is not much difference between one sex and another, and for that matter not a great deal to choose between animals and human beings. At heart most persons feel the same sort of pleasure in hearing anyone else extolled that a dog does in seeing a cat stroked, only civilization has taught us to dissemble our feelings, while the dog gives tongue to his in the frankest manner.

Mrs. Jeffley, somewhat after the fashion of an animal, allowed her discontent to evidence itself, and Mr. Katzen often took an unamiable pleasure in stroking her fur the wrong way. He knew his friend thoroughly — knew exactly what would annoy and what gratify her; and more than half his apparently care less utterances had a point and meaning in them unintelligible to outsiders. John Jeffley felt, however, many of the German's remarks held a sting, and though he was not clever enough to perceive exactly where the sting lay, he resented them for his wife's sake. " If she could only see the little wasp as I see him," he thought, "she'd know he is not an insect ought to be buzzing about a respect able house." The years had come, and the years had gone, however, and on Whit Monday, eighteen hundred and sixty odd, Mr. Katzen was still " buzzing about" Fowkes' Buildings in a very persistent manner.

For some time affairs with him had been at very low tide indeed ; but for Mrs. Jeffley's timely help he must have raised money on his watch and ring, massive chain and diamond studs, breastpin, and various other articles by which he set great store, and which, indeed, poor Jack Jeffley's wife believed reflected credit on the establishment. She had heard Mr. Katzen's valuables remarked upon, ap praised, envied, and she often did wish, " that she did," her husband's nature contained a spark of ambition. "We might all be so differently off," she considered, " and John have as fine a ring as Karl Katzen, to say nothing of my seeing some chance of leisure, instead of working my fingers to the bone in Fowkes' Buildings." No one wanted Mrs. Jeffley to work her fingers to the bone anywhere ; but this was one of the many little fictions which enabled the ill-used lady to pose as a martyr before the eyes of admiring friends.

Mr. Jeffley and Frank Scott had employed their rare holiday in visiting a friend who farmed a little land near East Ham, and as twilight was drawing in, they found them selves on their way home once more in Great Tower Street, a trifle tired, perhaps, but in good order and condition. Their playtime was over, but they had enjoyed it thoroughly. Frank Scott carried a huge bunch of flowers that scented the road and filled the hearts of passers-by with envy, while Jack bore a basket containing a precious freight of new-laid eggs and golden butter, which he meant to keep for his own table, and give share to "no captain, or mate, or scrubby foreigner on earth." He had for the sixth time repeated this determination with great energy, when an unexpected sight met his eyes. Coming leisurely along Great Tower Street from the City, he beheld one foreigner he would have felt happy never to see again.

" Why, here's that Katzen fellow," he said, turning to his companion. " I thought we were rid of him for a week or two, at any rate." " What can have brought him back ?" mar velled Frank Scott. " No good, you may be sure." " He told me on Saturday morning he was going to Paris." " I wish he would go there and stay there." " Hush ! — he will hear you," expostulated Frank, for Mr. Jeffley in an access of energy had raised his voice somewhat unduly. " I don't care whether he does or not !" said Jack, lowering his tone, however.

Chapter II Mr

KATZEN'S NEWS, ''._T_W__i__l_. I am, you see, like a bad k 5^£{ % sixpence!" exclaimed Mr. Katzen (HebS1!. gaily, at the same time extending his hand, which Mr. Jeffley felt forced to take, and shake Avith a heartiness he was far from feeling. " We thought you were on the other side of the water," he observed, merely because no other remark occurred to him. " I did not even start," said Mr. Katzen ; " I got a piece of unexpected news after I left you on Saturday, which changed all my plans." " Good news, I hope ?" suggested Mr. Jeffley. "Well, you shall judge of that presently," answered the foreigner ; " let us go into your room for a minute and summon your wife ; you stay too, Scott — I cannot have one friend absent while I tell what I have to tell." " He is going to be married, Frank," said Mr. Jeffley, who had already, with stentorian lungs, shouted for " Maria!"

" Wife!" " Mrs. Jeffley!" till a shrill "What's wanted with Mrs. Jeffley now? Oh! be quiet, do. I'm coming," assured him his better half was on her way from the upper regions. " No; I am not going to be married, that I know of, just yet," said Mr. Katzen, in reply to the remark about matrimony. " I may be, though, for " At that juncture the end of Mr. Katzen's sentence was cut short for ever by a series of wifely expostulations emanating from Mrs. Jeffley as she came along the passage. " John, I wonder at you, screaming the house down, and Captain Hassell gone to bed and all. What do you want ?" she finished, entering Jack's room, which was almost in total darkness, owing to the narrowness of the court called Fowkes' Buildings and the gathering twilight. " What do I want ?" repeated her husband, who was accustomed to such forms of conju gal endearment.