Rain. Driving, pouring, numbing, tiring rain. Rain that did not freshen the heart of flower or tree, for neither were to be seen amid the cobblestoned thoroughfares of the great city. Rain that could not wash away the unconquerable coal dust that affixed itself to every surface, but rather smeared and shifted its sooty patterns, as a finger would play with pastels. Rain that drummed its ceaseless rhythm onto carriage tops, bonnets, and umbrellas that chose to brave the elements on a cold London morning.
Mr. James Cressingham Esq. was pleased with the rain. It was a welcome addition to his daily constitutional walk from Hyde Park to Westminster Bridge and back. He had watched its progression with satisfaction through the front hall window as his manservant Calhoum helped him into his greatcoat and handed him his top hat to lay over his gray-flecked head. He even gave a slight smile, which pulled oddly at a face used to frowning, as he undid the silken folds of the black umbrella and raised it over his head before starting smartly down Park Lane.
For the rain kept Cressingham sheltered and shielded. Like a grey, translucent curtain hung around on all sides of him, the rain obscured the world he found ill-mannered and distracting. Workmen and house servants who seemed to crowd upon him in fair weather were now lost in the comfortable colors of cloud and fog. Urchins, whose presence especially blighted his stroll, became shadowy figures against a backdrop of sepia and slate buildings. Voices grew dim and muted and did not accost the gentleman’s ears with harsh sounds of porters’ yells and children’s calls.
Cressingham was now safe for the time being from any intrusions. Tucked beneath his large umbrella, he could instantly designate his own private space, to which no one could gain admittance without his approval. If he was fortunate, the rain would continue until he returned home, where his front door would close behind him and again keep all of London’s bothersome inhabitants at bay.
“Times, sir?”
Cressingham stopped. The voice was near. Terribly near. He glanced hastily from left to right but saw nothing but the moving specters of distant passersby. With a sigh of relief he began to walk forwards and was instantly stopped by something or someone directly in front of him. In front, and under his umbrella. He glanced down and realized the misty obstacle was a child, a boy of nine or ten years.
“Times, sir?” the apparition asked once again and held up the dripping remnants of sodden paper.
Cressingham recoiled, disgusted and affronted. Of all the meddlesome young scamps that would confront him on his daily walk, a newsboy was by far the epitome of intrusiveness. He had no patience for the irksome street vendors of paltry or political talk who screeched for customers to come and buy their wares in the early morning hours.
And yet, he thought with a momentary glance down the boy’s figure, the lad didn’t resemble most of the newspaper boys whom Cressingham had on occasion crossed paths with. For one thing, he hadn’t yelled for business into his customer’s ear and continued rattling off names of periodicals with a perplexing rapidity very common to those members of his trade.
“Please sir, wouldn’t you like a Times, or maybe Illustrated London?” the boy urged in an anxious tone, flicking raindrops from his face as he pulled another copy out from between his left arm and side. The paper’s ink, once emblazoned on the front with striking headlines, was bruised and beaten by the rain and was nearly illegible. Dark grey splotches on the boy’s clothes and hands suggested the same substance had secreted itself on the young businessman.
“You wish me to purchase one of these papers?” James Cressingham curled his lip, seeking time to prepare an authoritative, cold dismissal.
“Oh no sir!” the lad exclaimed hastily. “Beggin’ your pardon sir, but I would suggest Punch as the best thing for you!” He followed up his opinion by peeling out a gaudily printed magazine and gazing on it with a wide grin.
“Yes sir,” he declared, “nothin’ does me better than a look through Punch. Just when I’d rather gloom and grump, out pops the most rib-ticklin’ teaser I’ve ever read and what can I do but laugh? Don’t you want a laugh right now when the sky seems to be poutin’ and fussin’?”
Cressingham was flabbergasted. He had expected a reply not exceeding two syllables, but instead had received, had actually started, was in fact in the middle of a conversation with a newsboy! And, most aggravating of all, Cressingham was pondering this boy’s words as though they had some wisdom to impart.
“Then again sir,” the boy added, mistaking Cressingham’s dazed look for indecision, “you’re a grown man who’d most likely want a story or two on real important matters.”
“I read,” Cressingham stated with a start back into his sensible state of mind, “as little of society’s events and incidents as I am able to. I wish to know as little of the world as possible. It gives me indigestion.”
“Does it really sir!” the boy exclaimed with an eager sympathy that almost frightened the gentleman. “I should try some mint tea if that comes on, steeped nice and strong.”
Cressingham blinked, stared, and for want of something more productive to do looked up at his umbrella. The sudden insufferable notion that the ragamuffin was striking up a discourse with him merely to keep under the protection of his umbrella struck Cressingham with displeasure. He resolutely pulled it nearer to his own head and uncovered the boy’s. The newsboy’s hat became his sole cover against the steady downpour. Rivulets ran down its brim, slid off damp locks of hair that stuck out underneath, and coursed down the child’s abundantly freckled face.
“You didn’t dress yourself appropriately for the weather this morning,” Cressingham ventured to say, as if to distract himself from the fact that his own arm was bringing the umbrella over the boy again.
The boy smiled, shook himself a little and replied cheerfully, “Nope, but seein’ I’ve got no more clothes to put on over these ones, I didn’t have to bother.” And he smoothed down a shirt held together with two ancient brown buttons, stuffing the limp ends into trousers several years too old for him. Cressingham felt his own great coat grow hot and heavy, and he tugged at his fur collar.
“And besides, sir,” the boy continued, shifting his damp load of newspapers from one arm to the other, “too many clothes always makes for a large wash day. Me mum always agreed with me that Adam an’ Eve had it easy whiles they was in the garden on wash day. Then of course, mum didn’t really mind havin’ to clean our clothes. She was always sayin’…why bless me if you haven’t got red hair!”
This exclamation came suddenly as Cressingham’s hand, nervously fidgeting with his hat brim, pushed it back to reveal his neatly combed and oiled hair. He rolled his eyes upward and promptly pulled his hat down tightly over his forehead.
“Ah, now don’t worry sir,” the newsboy insisted comfortingly. “I won’t go and call you ‘Carrots’ or ‘Pumpkin Head’ or somethin’ like that. ‘Cause look! I’ve got it too!” With a grand flourish of his cap, the boy presented a flaming crop of curls the same hue as Cressingham’s. “Mum always told me,” he acknowledged in a confiding tone, “that God gave a man red hair as a sorta beacon, tellin’ everyone, ‘Look out, this one will do somethin’ grand one of these days!’ She used to scrub me hair before Sabbath, pretendin’ it was hot as fire and shriekin’ ‘till she doused it with water.”
Cressingham tried to imagine his own late mother, all dressed in the lace and pearls of her rank, scrubbing his own hair for Sabbath, but the picture could not form itself. He then realized that the child had finished speaking and was staring off in the distance. His eyes, wide and blue, seemed to look for someone they knew they couldn’t find. His mouth was parted as if a name hung on his lips. Cressingham recalled the boy’s last words.
“Your…mother…has passed from this world I presume?” Cressingham asked hesitantly, looking intently at his listener. The boy turned quickly to meet his gaze, chin shivering.
“Yes sir,” he faltered, nodding resolutely, “and gone to live in a better one, I know!” He smiled at the end of this and exclaimed, “But she left me with a baby sister who’s the spittin’ image of her! ‘Cept her name’s Harriet, while Mum’s was Helen.”
“And your name is…?” Cressingham hastily put in, realizing he had never asked it before.
“Horace Forbes, sir,” the lad reported with a bow. “Named after me dad sir, and he’s dead too, from a dockyard accident a little after Harriet was born and Mum died.”
“I’m sorry, Horace,” Cressingham murmured. And he indeed felt sorrow, pity for someone other than himself. He couldn’t reason it out, this sudden interest he had in an inferior individual’s existence. It was all so strange and bewildering…
Horace’s eyes shone at Cressingham’s simple words. “Thank you kindly, sir,” he replied shyly and then in a brighter tone added, “And what is your name sir?”
“Mr. James Cressingham Esq.,” Cressingham replied.
“What do you make a living with?” Horace persisted curiously.
“I’m a businessman,” Cressingham admitted slowly, wondering vaguely what he actually meant by it. He had never touched a paper or opened a ledger of business in his fifty-two upholstered, embroidered, engraved years. His money, generated through property and stocks, had been established by his grandfather’s merchant profession nearly a century ago. All Cressingham had to do was spend it. His ponderings were interrupted by Horace, who had sucked in a large mouthful of air and was breathing it out in a large rush.
“Why, Mr. Cressingham, sir,” the boy declared, gazing up at the gentleman with undisguised admiration, “me mum always wished and wanted me to be a businessman! It’s an honor to meet a real honest one who’s pulled himself up in life and made a name for himself!” And the boy pulled off the scrap of hat plastered to his head and ran his fingers excitedly through tangled locks.
“Why, thank you lad,” James Cressingham murmured, wiping his eyes of the raindrops that had somehow found themselves on his face. Shame! Of all the emotions that had ever run through the gentleman’s mind, shame had never lurked even on the outskirts of his intellect. His thoughts were silenced by the deep voice of Big Ben’s bells.
“And now sir, I’d best be off for me dinner. I always trot back home for a bite with me sis around this hour.” The boy nodded in parting and turned to leave. Cressingham watched him step jauntily out from under his umbrella into the drizzly weather. He raised his voice with sudden determination. “Horace!” Cressingham called. “May I accompany you home?”
Horace spun around with a grin of surprise. “Yeah sir!” he hollered and ran back to him. “I’d appreciate the company! It’s a fair ways away though. Not in your part of town.”
But Cressingham assured him he could use the exercise.
The newsboy and businessman set off at a brisk pace, one chattering happily as his bare feet sloshed through gritty puddles, the other wrapped in a fog of contemplation. The fog seemed to deepen around Cressingham as Park Lane changed to Picadilly, Piccadilly to High Holborn, and still onwards and downwards. The streets grew narrow and winding. Houses shrunk and leaned and crowded. As they neared the east of London, the docks lent their own mist and smoke that almost choked the gentleman.
“Harriet might be a little shy at first,” Horace cautioned with a smile, “but she’s a friendly little girl when she gets to know someone.”
He hurried to a door on a shingled shack’s tottering side and pushed it open. Cressingham followed, noting the sparsely furnished room: a cot in a corner and an empty table in the center, a stove and cupboard keeping company to the side. A little girl no more than two years was playing with a rag doll on the floor. She glanced up and gave a shriek of welcome to her returning brother, but hastily toddled over to hide her face in the bed clothes when she caught sight of Cressingham.
“See?” Horace chuckled and called out coaxingly to his sister, “Now Harriet, do be polite and say ‘Good day’ to my friend Mr. Cressingham. He hasn’t come to eat you.” Horace however had to walk over and carry her to where Cressingham stood, while Harriet stared suspiciously over her brother’s shoulder.
“Yes sir, this is my sister!” announced the boy proudly. “Promised Mum I’d take care of her. She can be a handful but sometimes Mrs. Langsley sits a spell with her if I can’t be home until late. Harriet’s a smart little thing. She can even say my name. Say ‘Horace’!” he said to Harriet.
The little girl blinked soberly for a minute, took a deep breath, and screwing up her face pronounced “Howa!” with great effort, before shyly butting her head back onto her brother’s shoulder.
“Good girl Harriet!” Horace praised, hefting her up on his hip. “I’m teaching Harriet her letters in the evenings. Any newspapers I have left I use as her school books. I stayed in school until Dad died, and then dropped out for this job. The newspaper business can teach a chap a lot if he takes it into his head to read in his spare time. And I can earn our keep while I do it!”
Cressingham stood silently and regarded the pair. He reached into his coat and felt for his inside pocket. “May I buy a paper?” he asked slowly.
“Why of course sir!” Horace exclaimed eagerly, putting his sister down so he could grab his stack of papers. “Bless me if I clear forgot I was sellin’ one to you!”
“All of them,” Cressingham corrected, drawing out a ten-pound note from his pocketbook.
“All?” Horace repeated in disbelief. He stared as Cressingham took the entire pile from his hands and substituted them for the money. “But that’s more than what the papers are worth!” protested the boy anxiously fingering the note.
“Nonsense,” Cressingham interrupted. “Ten pounds is just right.” He straightened up and placed his hand on Horace’s shoulder. “I must leave you to your meal now, but you must promise to meet me on Park Lane tomorrow morning, same as today.”
“Of course sir, but why?” Horace stammered. “If you’ll be wanting a daily paper, I can just get you a subscription and take it to your door.”
“No no, it’s something different. Something about…business,” Cressingham insisted. “Just meet me there tomorrow.”
“Of course sir, and thank you sir!” Horace agreed and Harriet loudly added her “bye” to her brother’s.
Cressingham took off his hat and held it to his heart. “It has been an honor to make your acquaintance Mr. Horace Forbes,” he said quietly.
“Oh pshaw sir,” Horace laughed as his face went as red as his hair. “No need to do that. I’m not a gentleman nor a businessman.”
“I wouldn’t agree,” murmured Cressingham and he quickly exited the house and made his way back to the road.
The rain had fled and clouds were parting with delightful rapidity. Cressingham folded up his umbrella and hooked it on one arm. His mind buzzed and spun with each step. He had wanted to say all he was planning for Horace right there and then, but words hadn’t come easily. He could only wait for tomorrow to tell the boy that the newspaper business would have to lose an able-bodied salesman who would be returning to school to complete his education. And Harriet would be waiting at the end of every day for Horace, at home on Park Lane. He could see them both, running upstairs and downstairs, making the stuffy, stiff interior loosen up and fill with laughter.
And yet, amid these half-assembled dreams, Cressingham’s brain resounded with rebukes and regrets. You, who have had everything, why have you never given something away until now? You, who never had a family of your own, why did you never care for someone who needed love until now?
He stopped in the street, casting his eyes about wildly before fixing them up at the skies, as if an answer would present itself in a cloud. Could he really make up for years of selfish, blinded laziness with these two trustful souls? His chest seized with a sharp pain. He could see both Horace and Harriet, gazing up at him with respect and admiration, and he yearned to merit those feelings. His life was more than half over, the gentleman mused bitterly and clenched his fist and jaw. Much time had already been spent with a careless hand and heart. He must strive to make up for it all, with all he had left. With these sad yet hopeful thoughts coursing through his soul, Cressingham remained motionless, until he suddenly remembered the papers he was gripping. He pulled one out and stared at its smudged title page. With a hint of a smile and a gentle lifting of his spirits, Mr. James Cressingham Esq. opened it up and read Punch the rest of the walk home, pleased with the sun.
***
This author will also be featured in the Fantastical Summer anthology!
Ahhh my heart!!! This was such a well written piece. The prose was so beautiful and I loved the transition and emotional change the mc went through. Well done!