CHAPTER XI.

AN ADDRESS.

On Saturday evening I called for Frances. We were going to hear the man she would call the Wonderful Person of Wapping.

‘We shall have to drive right through London,’ I told her. ‘You will see first the trade end of the West; then the lane of the country visitors, called the Strand; then the lane of the printers; then the merchants’ quarters, silent and deserted; and then the place where the people live who do all the work; the city of the thousand industries. And then you will see these people you are going forth to see.’

‘So long as you don’t take me to see the places with associations, I don’t mind. I was looking over a book about London the other day; it was full of associations. Dear me! What does it matter to me where Milton lived? And why should I want to see the place where Shakespeare had a theatre?’

‘You are curiously impatient about the past, Frances.’

‘I like the world just exactly as it is, George; the order of it and the ways of it; and the flow of the stream--I like to feel that I am in the swim. And if ever I marry again, I shall be a great deal more in the swim.’

‘The man you will hear to-night likes the world as it ought to be.’

‘Well, why not? So long as we don’t change anything. Now, Master Craftsman, my gloves are on.’

‘You look very fine to-night, Frances. It will please our friends at Shadwell, seeing a lady among them, that she is a real lady. They resemble your friends in one respect--these men of the gutter, as you kindly called them on a recent occasion--they like to see a woman well dressed.’

It is a long drive from Piccadilly to High Street, Shadwell, which, as everybody knows, is a continuation of Ratcliffe Highway. The whole journey was as unknown to Lady Frances as China or Peru. For the City she cared nothing; memories of Gresham and Whittington moved her not; this evening, of course, the offices and warehouses were closed, and the streets deserted; she only began to take interest when we came out on Tower Hill, and drove past the gray old fortress into the highway sacred to the memory of sailors and to riverside thieves and to crimps, and to Moll and Poll and Doll. Indeed, ghosts of the departed sinners are still allowed regretfully to hover around the swinging doors of these old taverns, and to linger about the pavement where they were wont to roll and sing and dance and fight. Oh, the brave old days! And they acknowledge that the game is still kept up, and with spirit, though, perhaps, with less heart in it than of old. The fighting has gone off sadly; the singing is still good, but that, too, shows signs of deterioration; the dancing, however, shows the old spirit--legs are loose, heel and toe are true to time; and the drinking is still free and generous. As for Moll and her friends, they continue to lend the charm of woman’s society to Mercantile Jack.

‘Men and women!’ said Lady Frances. ‘And by their appearance not among the strictest moralists. Show me men and women, George, and not tall black warehouses, where something once stood, or grimy churches, where something once happened. Give me men and women. Give me the present. Ouf! what a reek from that door!’

The carriage stopped for a moment; a little crowd assembled, seeing that most unaccustomed appearance, a carriage and pair with a coachman and a footman in liveries. The open door belonged to a tavern full of sailors drinking and smoking, so that the air which came forth in waves was charged with the fragrance of rum, gin, beer and tobacco. The carriage moved on slowly. There came another kind of fragrance. The first knocked one down like a club, the second cut one like a knife.

‘It is fried fish,’ I explained. ‘This is the staple food of the women and work-girls. There are differences in the matter of food. For my own