The “labyrinth” beneath the West End of London was rediscovered in our own time when the foundations for the Carlton Hotel and his Majesty’s Theatre were laid.  It is a network of old cellars, subterranean passages and, it may even be, of disused conduits, extended from the corner of Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, away to the confines of St. James’ Park and, as more daring explorers aver, to the river Thames itself.  Here is a very town of tunnels and arches, of odd angled rooms, of veritable caves and depths as dark as Styx.  If, in a common way, it be shut by the circumstance of the buildings above to the riff-raff and night-hawks who would frequent it, there are seasons, nevertheless, when the laying of new foundations, the building of hotels and the demolition of ancient streets in the name of “improvement” fling its gates open to the more cunning of the “destitutes,” and they flock there as rooks to a field newly sown.

Of these welcome opportunities, the building of the Carlton Hotel is the best remembered within recent times; but the erection of new houses off St. James’ Street in the year 1903 brought the ladies and the gentlemen of the road again to its harborage; and they basked there for many weeks in undisputed possession.  Molesting none and by none molested, it was an affair neither for the watchmen (whose glances askance earned them many a handsome supper) or for the police who had sufficient to do in the light of the street lamps that they should busy themselves with supposed irregularities where that light was not.  The orgies thus became a nightly feature of the vagrant’s life.  There was no more popular hotel in London than the “Coal Hole,” as the wits of the company delighted to style their habitation.

A city below a city!  Indeed imagination might call it that.  A replica of famous catacombs with horrid faces for your spectres, ghoulish women and unspeakable men groping in the darkness as though, vampire-like, afraid of the light.  Why Alban Kennedy visited this place, he himself could not have said.  Possibly a certain morbid horror of it attracted him.  He had, admittedly, such a passport to the caves as may be the reward of a shabby appearance and a resolute air.  The criminal company he met with believed that he also was a criminal.  Enjoying their confidence because he had never excited their suspicion, they permitted him to lie his length before reddened embers and hear tales which fire the blood with every passion of anger and of hate.  Here, in these caverns, he had seen men fight as dogs with teeth and claws and resounding yells; he had heard the screams of a woman and the cries of helpless children.A sufficient sense of prudence compelled him to be but an apathetic spectator of these infamies.The one battle he had fought had been impotent to save the object of his chivalry.

When first he came here, heroic resolutions followed him.  He had thrashed a ruffian who struck a woman, and narrowly escaped with his life for doing so.  Henceforth he could but assent to a truce which implied mutual toleration; and yet he understood that his presence was not without its influence even on these irredeemables.  Men called him “The Hunter,” or in mockery “The Dook.”He had done small services for one or two of them even written a begging letter for a rogue who could not write at all, but posed as an “old public school man,” fallen upon evil days.  Alban was perfectly well aware that this was a shameless imposition, but his ideas of morality as it affected the relations of rich and poor were ever primitive and unstable.“If this old thief gets half a sovereign, what’s it matter?” he would argue; “the other man stole his money, I suppose, and can well afford to pay up.”  Here was a gospel preached every day in Thrawl Street.  He had never stopped to ask its truth.

Alban crossed St. James’ Street furtively, and climbed, as an athlete should climb, the boarding which defended the entrance to this amazing habitation.  A contented watchman, dozing by a comfortable fire, cared little who came or went and rarely bestirred himself to ask the question.There were two entrances to the caves:  one cramped and difficult, the other broad and open; and you took your choice of them according to the position of the policeman on the beat.  This night, or rather this morning, of the day following upon the meeting in Union Street, discovered Alban driven to the more hazardous way.  His quick eye had detected, on the far side of the enclosure, an amiable flirtation between a man of law and a lady of the dusters; and avoiding both discreetly, he slipped into a trench of the newly made foundations and crawled as swiftly through an aperture which this descent revealed.

Here, laid bare by the picks and shovels of twentieth-century Trade Unionism, was a veritable Gothic arch, bricked up to the height of a tall man’s waist, but open at the tympanum.  Alban hoisted himself to the aperture and, slipping through, his feet discovered the reeking floor of a dank and dripping subway; and guiding himself now by hands outstretched and fingers touching the fungi of the walls, he went on with confidence until the roof lifted above him and the watch-fires of the confraternity were disclosed.He had come by now into a vast cellar not very far from the Carlton Hotel itself.  There were offshoots everywhere, passages more remote, the arches as of crypts, smaller apartments, odd corners which had guarded the casks five hundred years ago.  Each of these could show you its little company safe harbored for the night; each had some face from which Master Timidity might well avert his eyes.  But Alban went in amongst them as though he had been their friend.They knew his very footstep, the older “lags” would declare.

“All well, Jack?”

“All well, old cove.”

“The Panorama come along?”

“Straight art of the coffee shawp, s’help me blind.”

“Ship come in?”

“Two tharsand next Toosday same as usual.”

A lanky hawker, lying full length upon a sack, his pipe glowing in the darkness, exchanged these pleasantries with Alban at the entrance.There were fires by here and there in these depths and the smoke was often suffocating.  The huddled groups declared all grades of ill-fortune and of crime; from that of the “pauper parson” to the hoariest house-breaker “resting” for a season.  Alban’s little set, so far as he had a “set” at all, consisted of the sometime curate of a fashionable West End Church, known to the company as the Archbishop of Bloomsbury; the Lady Sarah, a blooming, red-cheeked girl who sold flowers in Regent Street, “the Panorama,” an old showman’s son who had not a sixpenny piece in his pocket, but whose schemes were invariably about to bring him in “two thousand next Tuesday morning”; and “Betty,” a pretty, fair-haired lad, thrown on the streets God knows how or by what callous act of indifferent parentage.  Regularly as the clock struck, this quartette would gather in a tiny “chapel” of the cellars and sleep about a fire kindled in a grate which might have baked meats for the Tudors.  They spoke of the events of the day with moderation and wise philosophy.  It would be different to-morrow.  Such was ever their text.

“My lord the Duke is late.  Does aught of fortune keep your nobility?”

The ex-parson made way for Alban, grandiloquently offering a niche upon the bare floor and a view of the reddening embers.  The boy “Betty” was already asleep, while the Lady Sarah and “the Panorama” divided a fourpenny pie most faithfully between them.  A reeking atmosphere of spirit (but not of water) testified to the general conviviality.A hum of conversation was borne in upon them from the greater cellar at odd times a rough oath of protest or the mad complainings of a drunkard.For the most part, however, the night promised to be uneventful.  Alban had never seen the Lady Sarah more gracious, and as for “the Panorama” he had no doubt whatever that his fortune was made.

“My contract for America’s going through and I shall be out there with a show in a month,” this wild youth said and added patronizingly, “When I come back, it will be dinner upstairs, old chaps and some of the best.  Do you suppose that I could forget you?  I would as soon forget my father’s grave.”

They heard him with respect no one differing from him.

“I shall certainly be pleased to accept your kind invitation,” said the Archbishop, “that is, should circumstance and Providence enable me to redeem the waistcoat, without which eh hem I understand no visitor would be admitted to those noble precincts.”

The Lady Sarah expressed her opinion even more decidedly.

“Don’t ’e talk,” she said pleasantly, “can’t you ’ear the thick ’uns a rattlin’ in his mouse-trap.  Poor little man and ’im a horphin.Stun me mother if I ain’t a goin’ ter Jay’s termerrer ter buy mournin’ in honor of him.”

“I presume,” continued the Archbishop, “that we shall all be admitted to this entertainment as it were that is as the colloquial expression goes on the nod.It will be enough to mention that we are the proprietor’s friends.”

“You shall have a season-ticket for life, Archbishop.  Just you tell me where you want a church built and I’ll see that it’s done.  Of course I don’t mind your chaff I’m dead in earnest and the money will be there.”

“A real contract this time?” Alban suggested kindly.

“A real contract.  I saw Philips about it to-day, and he knows a man who is Pierpont Morgan’s cousin.  We are to open in New York in September and be in San Francisco the following week.”

“Rather a long journey, isn’t it, old chap?”

“Oh, they do those things out there.  I’m told you play Hamlet one night and Othello six hours afterwards, which is really the next night because of the long distances and the differences in the latitudes.  Ask the Archbishop.  I expect he hasn’t forgotten all his geography.”

“A Cambridge man,” said the Archbishop, loftily, “despises geography.Heat, light, electricity, the pure and the impure mathematics these are his proper study.  I rise superior to the occasion and tell you that San Francisco is a long way from New York.  The paper in which I wrapped a ham sandwich yesterday the advertisement of a shipping company, I may inform you brings that back to my recollection.  San Francisco is the thickness of two slices of stale bread from the seaport you mention.  And I believe there are Red Indians in between.”

The Lady Sarah murmured lightly the refrain of the old song concerning houses which stood in that annoying position; but Alban had already lighted a cigarette and was watching the girl’s face critically.

“You’ve had some luck to-day, Sarah?”

“A bloomin’ prophet and that I won’t deny.  Gar’n, Dowie.”

“But you did have some luck?”

“Sure and certain.  What d’ye fink?  A bit of a boy, same as ‘Betty’ ’ere, ’e comes up and says, ‘What’ll ye take fer the whole bloomin’ caravan?’ he says, ‘for ter send ter a lidy?’ ‘Gentleman,’ I says, ’I’m only a poor girl and a widered muver ter keep, and, gentleman, I can’t tike less than two pound fer ’em sure and certain as there’s a God in ’eaven, I can’t.’‘Well,’ says he, ’it’s a blarsted swindle but I’ll take ’em and mind you deliver ’em ter the lidy yerself.’’They shall go this very minute,’ says I, ’and, oh, sir, God bless you both and may yer have long life and ‘appiness ter-gether.’Strike me dead, wot d’yer think he said next?Why he arst me fer my bloomin’ name, same as if I wus a Countess a steepin’ art of a moter-kar at the door of Buckingem Peliss.  ‘What’s yer name, girl?’ says ’e.  ’Sarah Geddes, an it please yer capting,’ says I.‘Then send the bally flowers to Sarah Geddes,’ says ’e, ’and take precious good care as she gets ’em.’  Gawd’s truth, yer could ’ave knocked me darn with a ’at pin.  I never was took so suddin in all me life.”

“I wonder you didn’t have your dinner in the Carlton Hotel, Sarah.”

“So I would ‘a’ done if I’d hev bed time ter chinge me dress.You orter know, Dook, as no lidy ever goes inter them plices in wot she’s bin a wearin’ afore she cleaned herself.  I’ad ter go ter Marlborough ’Ouse ter tell the Prince of Wales, and that’s wot kept me.”

“Better luck next time, Sarah.So it only ran to a ‘fourpenny’ between you and ‘the Panorama.’”

“You shall all dine with me next week,” said the young man in question.“On my honor, I’ll give you the best dinner you ever had in your life.  As for Sarah here, I’m going to put her in a flower shop in Bond Street.”

“Gar’n, silly, what ’ud I do in Bond Street?  Much better buy the Archbishop a church.”

The erstwhile clergyman did not take the suggestion, in good part.

“I have always doubted my ability to conduct the affairs of a parish methodically,” he said, “that is a little habit a slight partiality to the drug called morphia is not in my favor.  This, I am aware, is a drawback.The world judges my profession very harshly.  A man in the city who counts the collection indifferently will certainly become Lord Mayor.  The Establishment has no use for him he is de trop, or as we might say, a drop too much.  This I recognize in frankly declining our young friend’s offer with grateful thanks.”

Sarah, the flower girl, seemed particularly amused by this frank admission.  Feeling in the depth of her shawl she produced a capacious flask and a bundle of cigars.

“’Ere, boys,” she said, “let’s talk ’am and heggs.’Ere’s a drop of the best and five bob’s worth of chimney afire, stun me mother if there ain’t.I’m sick of talkin’ and so’s ‘the Panerawma.’  Light up yer sherbooks and think as you’re in Buckingem Peliss.  There ain’t no ’arm thinkin’ anyways.”

“I dreamed last night,” said the Archbishop very sadly, “that this cellar had become a cottage and that the sun was shining in it.”

“I never dream,” said “the Panorama,” stoically; “put my head on the floor and I won’t lift it until the clock strikes ten.”

“Then begin now, my dear,” exclaimed the Lady Sarah with a sudden tenderness, “put it there now and forget what London is ter you and me.”

The words were uttered almost with a womanly tenderness, not without its influence upon the company.  Some phrase spoken of Frivolity’s mouth had touched this group of outcasts and spoken straight to their hearts.  They bandied, pleasantries no more, but lighting the cigars the Lady Sarah boldly charging a small clay pipe they fell to an expressive silence, of introspection, it may be, or even of unutterable despair.  The woman alone amongst them had not been cast down from a comparative altitude to this very abyss of destitution.  For the others life was a vista far behind them; a vista, perchance, of a cottage and the sunshine, as the parson had said; an echo of voices from a forgotten world; the memory of a hand that was cold and of dead faces reproaching them.  Such pauses are not infrequent in the conversation of the very poor.  Men bend their heads to destiny less willingly than we think.The lowest remembers the rungs of the ladder he has descended.

Alban had lighted one of the cigars and he smoked it stoically, wondering again why the caves attracted him and what there was in this company which should not have made him ashamed of such associations.That he was not ashamed admitted of no question.In very truth, the humanities were conquering him in spite of inherited prejudice.  Had the full account of it been written down by a philosopher, such a sage would have said that the girl Sarah stood for a type of womanly pity, of sympathy, and, in its way, of motherhood; qualities which demand no gift of birth for their appeal.  The unhappy parson, too, was there not much of good in him, and might he not yet prove a human field worthy to be tilled by a husbandman of souls?  His humor was kindly; his disposition gentle; his faults punished none but himself.And for what did “the Panorama” stand if not for the whole gospel of human hope without which no life may be lived at all?  Alban had some glimmering of this, but he could not have set down his reasons in so many words.  As for the little lad “Betty” was not the affection they lavished upon him that which manhood ever owes to the weak and helpless.  Search London over and you will not find elemental goodness in a shape more worthy than it was to be found in the caves nor can we forego a moment’s reflection upon the cant which ever preaches the vice of the poor and so rarely stops to preach their virtues.

This was the human argument of Alban’s association, but the romantic must not be forgotten.More imaginative than most youths of his age, his boyish delight in these grim surroundings was less to him than a real and inspiring sense of the power of contrast they typified.  Was he not this very night sleeping beneath some famous London house, it might be below that very temple of the great God Mammon, the Carlton Hotel?  Far above him were the splendid rooms, fair sleepers in robes of lace, tired men who had earned enough that very day perhaps to feed all the hungry children in Thrawl Street for a lifetime and to remain rich men afterwards.  Of what were the dreams of such as those not of sunshine and a cottage as the old parson had dreamed, surely?Not of these nor of the devoted sacrifice of motherhood or of that gentle sympathy which the unfortunate so readily give their fellows.  Not this certainly and yet who should blame them?  Alban, at least, had the candor to admit that he would be much as they were if his conditions of life were the same.He never deceived himself, young as he was, with the false platitudes of boastful altruists.  “I should enjoy myself if I were rich,” he would say and sigh upon it; for what assumption could be more grotesque?

No, indeed, there could be no sunshine for him to-morrow.  Nothing but the shadows of toil; and, in the background, that grim figure of uncertainty which never fails to haunt the lives of the very poor.