Australian bush or the African desert. It is remarkable how soon interchange of colloquy ensues, how immediately acquaintances are to be made, and all restrictions of form and rank are abolished, amongst vagrants, at say four o’clock in the morning, in the streets of London. Then, even the policeman thaws, and, merging the constable in the man, is quite anxious to inform any one on his beat that it is a fine morning: and upon the lightest encouragement will furnish full particulars o the large fire over night, or the daring burglary in the next street two mornings back. After all, nature is an older institution than civilisation, and occasionally asserts her rights of primogeniture.
For some time after my first arrival in London, the occupation in which I was engaged rendered it necessary for me to rise very early. I may say at once that I was young—little more than a boy in years—and poor. I occupied inexpensive apartments in a street turning out of the Hampstead Road. It was in days when existing ingenious contrivances for boiling kettles rapidly by means of a star of gas-jets or a wheel of resinous firewood were undiscovered, or at any rate, not generally available. Breakfast in my own rooms involved difficulties and delays not to be endured. My toilet completed as well as darkness and drowsiness would permit, I sallied out into the streets, and took refuge for half an hour at a small coffee-shop in the neighbourhood of Holborn. The establishment had few recommendations beyond being both early and cheap, though I am bound to add that it was clean and not uncomfortable. What time it opened or whether it ever shut I could never clearly ascertain. Its frequenters were numerous, and for the most part like myself, influenced as to their early rising rather by necessity than choice; gentlemen of the newspaper press, post-office employés on their way to early duty or returning from night service, travellers just arrived by late or preparing to start by early trains, with occasional visitors whom festivity had kept from bed, and who were constantly trying by means of mild decoctions of tea and coffee to negative the effects of recent more powerful potations.
Frequenters of a public room soon become acquainted with its advantages and deficiencies, and acquire, moreover, a sort of right from custom to certain seats and corners. Hence I knew exactly in the establishment I visited the seat that from its situation near the fire was too hot, and the seat that was exposed to the draught of the door—where the culinary fumes were too abundant, and where the clattering of crockery and the details of the scullery were unpleasantly close—and I learnt to appropriate a comfortable position at some distance from the entrance and by the side of the fire, at a small table in the centre of a hutch or pew fitted into a recess in the wall, where accommodation was afforded to two guests only. Other habitués of the room had apparently their accustomed places. The usual occupant of the seat opposite to mine was a man of above sixty, as I judged, who appeared to have been well known in the room for some time preceding my first visit. Meeting this same man morning after morning, I soon learnt to take an interest in him and his proceedings. It began to be a source of disappointment to me if he ever failed to appear opposite to me during the progress of my meal, while his presence permitted me the pleasure of much and ingenious surmise; we had never spoken, however, and there was little in his abstracted, unconscious air that invited me to address him. He was tall, thin, very erect. In the winter he wore a large military cloak folded round him: in the summer his frock coat was always buttoned close up to his chin. His face was worn and sunburnt. He wore no whiskers, but a thick, projecting, shaggy moustache—at a time when moustaches were seldom to be seen in this country; and his hair, iron-grey in colour, was long and tangled. For some reason he had, unknown to himself, acquired in the room the soubriquet of the Baron. The fancy of bestowing upon him this fictitious rank arose probably from a certain dignified foreign air in his manner and appearance. He invariably raised his hat as he entered or quitted the room, and though he never or rarely spoke to anyone, he always delivered or received the newspapers and magazines with which the place was strewn, and which he and others were sometimes moving about in quest of, with great politeness. He read through gold-framed double eye-glasses which fastened with a spring. He frequently occupied himself with writing in a small note-book. He had been severely wounded in his right arm, but, nevertheless, he wrote with considerable facility and apparent neatness with his left hand; the writing being sloped contrarily to the ordinary method, after the manner peculiar to writers with the left hand. He was in the habit of entering the coffee-room about the same time that I did, and I generally left him there. His breakfast was moderate enough; being seldom more than a cup of coffee, a biscuit, and a cigar. But he had always the appearance of having been up all night, rather than of having risen early. On rainy mornings he would come in dripping wet and splashed with mire, as though he had been walking far, and when it snowed there was quite a thick crust upon his hat and cloak. Still he exhibited no symptom of fatigue or of desire for rest. Although his dress was simple and his fare frugal, there was about him no positive indication of poverty, while his manners and appearance gave no clue as to his ordinary occupation or profession. Altogether the Baron puzzled and interested me. I longed for an opportunity of drawing him into conversation, in the hope of gathering some information, or at least some food for further surmise regarding him. Notwithstanding our frequent meetings, however, I was for some time able to do little more than show him the small civilities and attentions which the facts of our occupation of the same table and the crippled state of his arm fairly permitted. At length I made an excuse for addressing him.
It was a March morning. A bitter east wind was blowing round the corners of the streets as fiercely as though it had been suffering under a pent-up rage and had at length received licence to give the reins to its wrath. Now it furiously whirled about and stung the faces of the passers in the streets with handfuls of sleet; now it made frantic efforts to tear away their hats and cloaks;