make that my particular branch of
effort, I spent much of my time at the Public Record Office; indeed, a
portion of every working day. The track between R---- Buildings and
Rolls Yard must have been sensibly thinned by my foot-soles; there
can have been few of the frequenters of Chancery Lane, Bedford Row and
the squares of Gray's Inn who were not known to me by sight or
concerning whom I had not imagined (or discerned) circumstances
invisible to their friends or themselves to account for their acts or
appearances. Among these innumerable personages--portly solicitors,
dashing clerks, scriveners, racing tipsters, match-sellers, postmen,
young ladies of business, young ladies of pleasure, clients descending
out of broughams, clients keeping rendezvous in public-houses, and
what not--Quidnunc's may well have been one; but I believe that it was
in Warwick Court (that passage from Holborn into the Inn) that, quite
suddenly, I first saw him, or became aware that I saw him; for being,
as he was, to all appearance an ordinary telegraphic messenger, I may
have passed him daily for a year without any kind of notice. But on a
day in the early spring of 1886--mid-April at a guess--I came upon him
in such a way as to remark him incurably. I saw before me on that
morning of tender leafage, of pale sunlight and blue mist contending
for the day, a strangely assorted pair proceeding slowly toward the
Inn. A telegraph boy was one; by his side walked, vehemently
explaining, a tall, elderly solicitor--white-whiskered, drab-spatted,
frock-coated, eye-glassed, silk-hatted--in every detail the trusted
family lawyer. I knew the man by sight, and I knew him by name and
repute. He was, let me say--for I withhold his real name--George
Lumley Fowkes, of Fowkes, Vizard and Fowkes, respectable head of a
more than respectable firm; and here he was, with his hat pushed back
from his dewy forehead, tip-toeing, protesting, extenuating to a slip
of a lad in uniform. The positions of the odd pair were unaccountably
reversed; Jack was better than his master, the deference was from the
elder to the brat. The stoop of Fowkes's shoulder, the anxious angle
of his head, his care to listen to the little he got--and how little
that was I could not but observe--his frequent ejaculations of "God
bless my soul!" his deep concern--and the boy's unconcern, curtly
expressed, if expressed at all--all this was singular. So much more
than singular was it to myself that i