When I heard that there was a cricket club in connection with the Apollo Fire Office I was glad, and still more so when I found that the team played other Fire Offices; for the Apollo is by no means the only one in London, though easily the best. Of course I never thought that in an office full of grown men I should be able to play in matches; but Dicky Travers explained to me that I might hope, if I was any good, as only a comparatively small number of the clerks actually played, though a large number patronised the games with their presence and came to the Annual Dinner at the far-famed Holborn Restaurant. This restaurant, I may say, is almost a palace in itself, and the walls are decorated with sumptuous marbles and works of foreign art. The waiters are also foreign. There are fountains and a band to play while you eat; and it shows how accustomed the London mind can get to almost anything in the way of luxury, for I have seen people eating through brilliant masterpieces of music and not in the least put off their food by them, though every instrument in the band was playing simultaneously. But, of course, there were no bands or fountains where I went for my Bath bun and glass of milk. As a matter of fact, this was rather a light meal for me, but I hoped to get accustomed to it. Anyway the result, when dinner-time came at the flat of my Aunt Augusta, was remarkably good, and I used to eat in a way that filled her with fear. And, after eating, I felt that I simply must have exercise of some sort, and I used to go out in the dark to the Regent’s Park and run for miles at my best pace. It worried policemen when I flew past them, because it is very unusual to race about after dark in London if you are honest, and policemen are, unfortunately, a suspicious race and, owing to their work, get into the way of thinking that anything out of the common may be a clew. Once having flown past a policeman and run without stopping to a certain lamp-post, I went back to the man and explained to him that I had to sit on an office stool most of the day, and that at night, after dinner, I felt a frightful need for active exercise, and so took it in this way. I thought he would rather applaud the idea, but he said it was a fool’s game and might lead to trouble if I persisted in it. He advised me to join an athletic club and a gymnasium, and I told him that the advice was good and thanked him. As a matter of fact, I was able to tell the policeman also that a great friend of mine had put me up for the London Athletic Club, and that I hoped soon to hear that I had been elected as a member. I mentioned Dicky Travers and thought the policeman would be a good deal surprised that I actually knew this famous man. However, the surprise was mine, because the policeman had never heard of him. But sport was a sealed book to him, as the saying is.

I only remember one other thing about those runs. I used to put on very little clothes, of course, but even so, naturally worked myself up into a terrific perspiration, which was what I meant to do, it being a most healthful thing for people who have to sit still all day. But my aunt was quite alarmed when I returned to have a bath and a rub down; and then it came out that she had never seen anybody in a real perspiration before! I roared with laughter and explained, and she said that she thought people only had perspirations when they were ill. She had never been in one in her whole life apparently. She was a very nice and kind woman, but I puzzled her fearfully, because she had never known many boys of my age, and though she smoked cigarettes herself, she thought they were bad for me and begged me to be very temperate in the use of them. To be temperate in everything was a mania with her. I must have upset her flat a lot one way and another; but she was very patient and wouldn’t hear of my going into lodgings alone.

“You are much too young,” she said. “You must look upon me as your mother till you are eighteen, at any rate.”

Then it was—after I had been in the City of London six weeks—that I met with my first great misfortune, though it began as a most hopeful and promising affair.

I had heard, of course, from Dicky Travers and Mr. Blades and others, that there were plenty of shady characters in London, and that their shadiness took all sorts of forms; but this did not bother me much, because a clerk such as I was would not, I thought, provoke a shady character, owing to my youth. But a good many of these shady characters mark down young men as their regular and lawful prey, like the tiger marks down the bison in the jungle. And a great feature of the cunning of these people is that they get themselves up in a way to hide their real natures—in fact, such is their ingenuity, that they pretend to go to the other extreme, and appear before their victims dressed just the very opposite of what one would expect in a shady character. They are, in fact, full of deceit.

One day I had eaten my bun and drunk my glass of milk in about a second and a half, and was looking at books in a very interesting bookseller’s window that spread out into the street near that historic building known as the Mansion House, where the Lord Mayor lives. I had found a sixpenny book about Mr. Henry Irving’s art and was just going to purchase it, bringing from my pocket a five-pound note to do so, when an old man of a religious and gentlemanly appearance spoke to me.

But first, to calm the natural excitement of the reader at hearing me mention a five-pound note, I ought to explain that that morning was pay-day at the office—the first in which I had actively participated. The five-pound note was the first that I had ever earned, and it gave me a great deal of satisfaction to feel it in my pocket. This was natural.

“Good literature here, sir,” said the stranger. “I hope you love books?”

“Yes, I do,” I answered, concealing my five pounds instantly.

“I write books,” he told me. “I dare say my name is familiar enough to you, if you are a reader of poetry.”

I looked at him and saw that he had a long grey beard and red rims to his eyes. His clothes were black and had seen better days. He wore rather a low waistcoat which was touched here and there with grease; but his shirt was fairly white, and through his beard I saw a black tie under his chin. He was tall, and carried an umbrella and a black and rather tattered bag of leather. I seemed to feel that his black bag was heavy with great poetry. It was a solemn moment for me.

“I’m afraid I’m not much of a hand at poetry, sir,” I said. “At school one had a lot to learn, and now I’m rather off it—excepting Shakespeare.”

“You City men don’t know what you are missing,” he answered. “I have just come from Paternoster Row, where I have been arranging with a great publisher—one of the greatest, in fact—for my next volume of poems. Strangely enough, I saw you handle a book of mine on this bookstall only a few moments ago, and I felt drawn to you.”

“Then you are Mr. Martin Tupper!” I exclaimed, “for I picked up a book of his just now—though only to see what was under it, I am afraid.”

He felt disappointed at this, but admitted that I was right in my suspicion.

“I am Tupper,” he confessed; “and though perhaps nobody in the world has more unknown friends, yet I allow myself no intimates. It is owing to my terribly sensitive genius. I read men like books. That is why I am talking to you at this moment. My knowledge of human nature is such that I can see at a glance—I can almost feel—whether a fellow-creature is predisposed towards me or not.”

“It is a great honour to speak to you, Mr. Martin Tupper,” I answered. “But I’m afraid a man like me—just a clerk in a noisy and booming hive of industry—wouldn’t be any good to you as a friend. I don’t know much about anything—in fact, I am nobody, really; though I hope some day to be somebody.”

“I felt sure of that,” he answered. “Your reply pleases me very much, young man, because it indicates that you are modest but also plucky. You recognise that you have as yet done nothing, but your heart is high and you look forward to a time when you will do everything. Had you read my Proverbial Philosophy, you would have discovered that—however, you must read it—to please me. You must let me send you a copy from the author.”

I was, of course, greatly surprised at such unexpected kindness, but there was more to come.

“When I find a young and promising man studying the books upon this stall between the hours of one and two o’clock,” said Mr. Tupper, “my custom is to ask him to join me at a modest meal—luncheon, in fact. Now do not say that you have lunched, or you will greatly disappoint me.”

Of course I had lunched, and yet, in a manner of speaking, I hadn’t—not as a man of world-wide fame would understand the word. To tell the truth, I had felt from the first that it was rather sad in a way—having to subsist on a Bath bun and a glass of milk for so many hours; and I knew that I never should get to feel it was a complete meal. So when this good and celebrated man offered me a luncheon, I felt, if not perfectly true, yet it was true enough and not really dishonest to say that I had not lunched. So I said it, and he was evidently very glad.

“We will go to the ‘Cat on Hot Bricks,’” he told me. “It is an eating-house of no pretension, but I prefer the greatest simplicity in all my ways, including my food and drink. At the big restaurants I should be recognised, which is a source of annoyance to me; but I am unknown at the ‘Cat on Hot Bricks,’ and I often take my steak or chop and a pint of light ale there, with other celebrities, and study life. Ah! the study of life, my young friend, is the prince of pursuits! The name that I have made is based entirely upon that study. Long practice has enabled me to see in a moment the constituents of every character and know at a glance with whom I have to deal.”

I told him my name, and he said that he had had the pleasure to meet some of the elder members of my family in the far past. I ventured to tell him about Aunt Augusta and her paintings, and he said that they were well known to him and that he possessed a good example of her genius. He even promised to call upon her when next in that part of London. He was immensely interested in my work and asked me many questions concerning fire insurance. And then I told him that I hoped in course of time to be an actor, and he said that, next to the poet, the actor was often the greatest influence for good. He himself had written a play, but he shrank from submitting it to a theatrical manager for production. It was a highly poetical play and made of the purest poetry, and so delicate that he feared that actors and actresses, unless they were the most famous in London, might go and rub the bloom off it and spoil it.

He let me choose what I liked for luncheon, and I chose steak-and-kidney pie and ginger beer. He then told me that the steak-and-kidney pie was all right, but that the only profits made at the “Cat on Hot Bricks” arose from the liquid refreshment, and that it would not be kind or considerate to drink so cheap a drink as ginger beer. So he ordered two bottles of proper beer, and then he told me about the place and its ways.

“The Bishop of London often comes here—just for quiet,” he said. “Of course I know him, and we have a chat sometimes, about religion and poetry and so on. And the Dean of St. Paul’s will drop in now and then. He has a weakness for ‘lark pudding’—a very famous dish here. They have it on Wednesdays only. Now tell me about your theatrical ambitions, for I may be able to help you in that matter.”

I told him all about my hopes, and he said that one of his few personal friends was Mr. Wilson Barrett, of the Princess’s Theatre in Oxford Street.

“That great genius, Mr. Booth, from America, has been acting Shakespeare there lately,” I said.

“He has,” answered Mr. Tupper; “his ‘Lear’ is stupendous. I know him well, for he often recites my poems at benefit matinees. But Wilson” (in this amazingly familiar way he referred to the great Mr. Wilson Barrett) “is always on the lookout for promising young fellows to join his company, and walk on with the crowds, and so learn the rudiments of stage education and become familiar with the boards. He is anxious to get a superior set of young fellows on to the stage, and he often comes to me, because he knows that in the circles wherein I move the young men are intellectual and have high opinions about the honour of the actor’s calling.”

“It would be a glorious beginning for a young man,” I said, “but, of course, such good things are not for me.”

Mr. Tupper appeared to be buried in his own thoughts for a time. When he spoke again, he had changed the subject.

“Will you have another plate of steak-and-kidney pie?” he asked, and I consented with many thanks.

Then he returned to the great subject of the stage.

“Only yesterday,” he said, “I was spending half an hour in dear old Wilson’s private room at the Princess’s Theatre. He likes me to drop in between the acts. He is a man who would always rather listen than talk; and, if he has to talk, he chooses any subject rather than himself and his histrionic powers. All the greatest actors are the same. They are almost morbid about mentioning their personal talents, or the parts they have played. But the subjects that always interest Wilson are the younger men and the future of the drama. ‘Martin,’ he said to me, ‘I would throw up the lead in my own theatre to-night, if I could by so doing reveal a new and great genius to the world! I would gladly play subordinate parts, if I could find a young man to play my parts better than I do myself.’ I tell you this, Mr. Corkey, to show you that one supreme artist, at least, is always on the lookout for talent, always ready to stretch a helping hand to the tyro.”

“Perhaps some day,” I said, “years hence, of course, when I have learned elocution and stage deportment and got the general hang of the thing, you would be so very generous and kind as to give me a letter of introduction to Mr. Barrett?”

Mr. Tupper filled my glass with more beer and sank his voice to a confidential whisper.

“I couldn’t ‘give’ you an introduction, Mr. Corkey, because Wilson himself would not allow that. I am, of course, enormously rich, but it is always understood between me and the great tragedian that I get some little honorarium for these introductions. Personally, I do not want any such thing; but he feels that a nominal sum of three to five guineas ought to pass before young fellows are lifted to the immense privilege of his personal acquaintance, and enabled actually to tread the boards with him in some of his most impassioned creations. The money I give to the Home for Decayed Gentlewomen at Newington Butts—in which I am deeply interested. Thus, you see, these introductions to Mr. Wilson Barrett serve two great ends: they advance the cause of the Decayed Gentlewomen—the number of whom would much distress you to learn—and they enable the aspirant to theatrical honours to begin his career under the most promising circumstances that it is possible to conceive.”

“But I ought to go through the mill, like Mr. Barrett himself and Mr. Henry Irving and all famous actors have done,” I said; and Mr. Tupper agreed with me.

“Have no fear for that,” he answered. “Wilson will see to that. He is more than strict and, while allowing reasonable freedom for the expansion of individual genius, will take very good care you have severe training and plenty of hard work. But the point is that you must go through his mill and not another’s. It is no good going to Wilson after some lesser man has taught you to speak and walk and act. You would only have to unlearn these things. If you want to flourish in his school of tragedy, which is, of course, the most famous in England at the moment, you must go to him, as it were, empty—a blank sheet—a virgin page whereon he can impress his great principles. Will you have apple tart, plum tart, or tapioca pudding and Surrey cream?”

I took apple tart, but Mr. Tupper said that sweet dishes were fatal to the working of his mind in poetical invention, so he had celery and cheese.

“I see Wilson to-night,” he resumed. “To be quite frank, I have to tell him about a lad who is very anxious to join him, and wishes to give me fifty pounds for the introduction; but such is my strange gift of intuition in these cases, that I would far rather introduce you to the theatre than the youth in question. You are clearly in earnest and I doubt if he is. You have a theatrical personality and he has not. Your voice is well suited for the higher drama; his is a cockney voice and will always place him at a disadvantage save in comedy. Had it been in your power to go before Wilson this week, I should have substituted your name for the other. I wish cordially there were no sordid question of money. I would even advance you five guineas myself. But you are as delicate-minded as I am. You would not like me to do that.”

I assured him that such a thing was out of the question.

“Indeed, Mr. Tupper,” I said, “you are doing far, far more than I should ever have thought anybody would do for a perfect stranger. And unless I could pay the money for the decayed Home, I should not dream of accepting such a great kindness.”

He was quite touched. He blew his nose.

“We artists,” he said, “are emotional. There is a magic power in us to find all that is trusting and good and of sweet savour in human nature. And yet goodness and gratitude and proper feeling in the young always move me, as you see me moved now. They are so rare.”

He brought out a brown leather purse and took from it half a sovereign. He then called the waiter and paid the bill.

“We will go down into the smoking-room,” he said. “No doubt a liqueur will not be amiss.”

I’d forgotten all about the time and, in fact, everything else in the world during this fearfully exciting meeting with Mr. Martin Tupper; and the end of it all was that I fished out my first five-pound note for the introduction to Mr. Barrett and my first step on the stage.

“It should be guineas,” said Mr. Tupper, “but in your case, and because I have taken a very great personal fancy to you, it shall be pounds. And don’t grudge the money. Go on your way happy in the knowledge that it will greatly gladden a life that has a distinctly seamy side. There is a sad but courageous woman whose eyes will brighten when she sees this piece of paper.”

But though he idly threw my note into his pocket as a thing of no account, yet he was a man of the most honourable and sensitive nature.

“I cannot,” he said, “leave you without carrying out my part of the contract. I gather that you are rather pressed for time, or I would drive you to the Princess’s Theatre in my private brougham, which is waiting for me near the Mansion House. No doubt the driver thinks I am lunching with the Lord Mayor, as I often do. But to take you just now to the Princess’s Theatre would interfere with your duties at the Apollo Fire Office, which I should be the last to wish to do; so I will write you a personal introduction to my dear friend, Mr. Barrett, and you can deliver it, either to-night or on the next occasion that you go to see him act.”

“It will be to-night,” I said.

He refused to go until his part was done.

“We must avoid even the appearance of evil,” he told me. “You might feel uneasy and suspicious were I to leave you with nothing but a promise. Martin Tupper’s word is as good as his oath, I believe; but it is a hard, a cold, and a cruel world. At any rate, you shall have the letter.”

He opened his bag, which contained writing materials, and he had soon written a note to Mr. Barrett, warmly commending me to the attention of that great man. He made me read it, and I was surprised how well he had summed up my character. He next gave me his own address, which was No. 96 Grosvenor Square—one of the most fashionable residential neighbourhoods in London—and then, hoping that I would dine with him and Mrs. Tupper two nights later, at 8 o’clock, he shook me warmly by the hand, wished me good luck, and left me.

I saw his dignified figure steal into the street, and though the general public did not seem to recognise him in his modest attire, I fancy that a policeman or two cast understanding glances at him. No doubt they had seen him before—at royal or other functions.

I seemed to be walking on air when I went back to work, for this great man, inspired by nothing but pure goodwill, had, as it were, opened the door of success to me and given me a chance for which thousands and thousands of young professional actors must have sighed in vain. He was hardly the man I should have chosen to know; but now that I did know him, I felt that it must have been a special Providence that had done it. I wished that I could make it up to him and hoped that he would live long enough for me to send him free tickets to see me act. Meantime, I determined to buy all his books, which was the least I could do.

But I was brought down to earth rather rudely from these beautiful thoughts, for when I got back to the office, Mr. Blades told me that Mr. Westonshaugh wished to speak to me; and it then transpired that, instead of taking half an hour for my luncheon, according to the rules and regulations of the Apollo, I had been out for two hours and rather more!

I was terribly sorry, and felt the right and proper thing was to be quite plain with Mr. Westonshaugh.

“I met Mr. Martin Tupper at a bookstall, and he introduced himself and asked me to lunch, sir,” I said. But the Head of the Department did not like this at all, and I was a good deal distressed to find the spirit in which he took it. He seemed pained and startled by what I told him; he even showed a great disinclination to accept my word.

“Go back to your work, sir,” he said, in a very stern voice, “and don’t add buffoonery to your other irregularities. I am much disappointed in you, Mr. Corkey.”

It was a fearful thing to hear this great and good man misunderstand me so completely. In fact, the blood of shame sprang to my forehead—a thing that had never happened before. And then he made another even more terrible speech.

“You look to me very much as if you’d been drinking,” he said. “Have a care, young man; for if there is one thing that will ruin your future more quickly than another, it is that disgusting offense!”

I sneaked away then, in a state of bewildered grief, sorrowful repentance, and mournful exasperation. This was by far the unhappiest event in my life; and things got worse and worse as the day wore on.

Mr. Blades asked me what the deuce I’d been doing, and when I told him, he said “Rats!” This was a word he used to mean scorn. Then he continued, and even used French.

“‘Martin Tupper!’ Why don’t you say it was Martin Luther at once? I believe it’s a case of ‘Sasshay la fam!’”

“Martin Luther died in 1546, so it couldn’t have been him, and I don’t know what ‘Sasshay la fam’ means,” I said, and Mr. Blades replied in a most startling manner:

“So’s Martin Tupper dead—sure to be! Ages ago, no doubt. Anyway, I happen to know that Mr. Westonshaugh thinks the dickens of a lot of him, so when you said he’d been standing you a lunch, you made the worst joke you could have.”

“It wasn’t a joke, but quite the reverse,” I said; and then I told Mr. Blades how I had an introduction to Mr. Wilson Barrett at that moment in my pocket—to prove the truth of what I was saying.

Mr. Blades read it carefully and shook his head.

“You’re such a jug, Corkey,” he said. “This is neither more nor less than a common or garden confidence trick. The beggar saw you had a ‘fiver’ at the bookstall and soon found you were a soft thing. Then he pretended to be friendly and just hammered away till he found the weak spot. If you’d go and have a sensible lunch, like everybody else, instead of wandering about London in the helpless way you do, on a bun and a glass of milk, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“The great point is whether Mr. Tupper is or is not dead,” I told Mr. Blades. “If he is dead, really and truly, then no doubt I have been swindled by a shady character; but if he is not, then there is still hope that it was really him.”

Mr. Blades, with his accustomed great kindness, himself went in to Mr. Westonshaugh with me and explained the painful situation in some well-chosen words.

“I shouldn’t have thought of using the name of such a world-renowned poet, sir,” I said to the Head of the Department; “but he told me so himself, and he was exceedingly serious-looking and solemn and kind; and far above clean clothes—which is a common thing with poets. But, of course, if he’s dead, as Mr. Blades thinks—--”

“He’s not dead,” answered the Chief. “I am glad to say that he is not dead. It is my privilege to correspond with Mr. Tupper occasionally. I heard from him on the subject of a difficult passage in one of his poems only a month ago.”

“Does he live in Grosvenor Square, sir?” I asked; “because this Mr. Tupper said he did—at No. 96.”

“He does not,” answered Mr. Westonshaugh. “He doesn’t live in London at all.”

Then Mr. Blades had a brilliant idea.

“Would you know Mr. Tupper’s handwriting, sir?” he asked, and Mr. Westonshaugh said that he would know it instantly.

He examined the letter of introduction to Mr. Barrett, and pronounced it to be an unquestionable forgery.

“A great crime has been committed,” he said. “A professional thief has used the name and signature of Mr. Tupper in order to rob you of five pounds, and he has succeeded only too well. Let this be a lesson to you, Mr. Corkey, not again to fall into conversation with the first well-dressed—or badly dressed—stranger who may accost you. To think that the insolent scoundrel dared to use that sacred name!”

Mr. Westonshaugh evidently considered it a very much worse thing to forge Martin Tupper’s name than to steal my five-pound note. And I dare say it was. He forgave me, however, and withdrew his dreadful hint about my having had too much to drink.

Then I left him and worked in a very miserable frame of mind until six o’clock—to make up for my wasted time.

It was my earliest great and complete crusher; and, coming just at this critical moment, made it simply beastly sad. Because my very first earnings were completely swallowed up in this nefarious manner by a shady customer. I had hoped to return home and flourish my five-pound note in the face of Aunt Augusta and tell her to help herself liberally out of it; but, instead of that, I had to horrify her with the bad news that my money was gone for ever. If it had happened later, I believe that I should have made less and even felt less of it; but such fearful luck falling on my very first “fiver” made it undoubtedly harder to bear than it otherwise would have been. And then I got a sort of gloomy idea that losing my first honest earnings meant a sort of curse on everything I might make in after life! I felt that a bad start like that might dog me for years, if not for ever. I had a curious and horrid dread that I should never really make up this great loss, but always be five pounds short through the rest of my career to my dying day!

Aunt Augusta tried hard to make light of it. In fact, it is undoubtedly at times like this that a woman is far more comforting than a man. She went to her private store and brought out another crisp and clean five-pound note and made me take it. She insisted, and so reluctantly I took it; but I didn’t spend it in the least with the joy and ease that I should have spent the other. It was, in fact, merely a gift—good enough in its way—but very different from the one I had earned, single-handed, by hard work, in a humming hive of industry.

The whole thing had its funny side—to other people, and I heard a good deal about it at the Apollo Fire Office. In fact, I must have done the real Martin Tupper a good turn in a way, because it was the fashion for everybody to quote from his improving works when I passed by.

It was a great lesson all round; but London is full of interesting things of this sort.