THE WANDERER.


The bar was very much crowded last night, and the air was impregnated to
choking point with smoke and evil exhalations. The noisy times on
Saturdays come at 2 p.m., and from ten till closing time. In the
afternoon a few labourers fuddle themselves before they go home to
dinner, and there is a good deal of slavering incoherence to be heard.
From seven to eight in the evening the men drop in, and a vague murmur
begins; the murmur grows louder and more confused as time passes, and by
ten o'clock our company are in full cry, and all the pipes are in full
blast. When I stole quietly in, I thought the scene was hideous enough
in its dull way. The gas flared with drowsy refulgence through the reek,
and the low masks of the roaring crew somehow left on me an impression
that I was gazing on _one_ bestial, distorted face. A man who is a
racecourse thief and "ramper" hailed me affably. A beast of prey he is,
if ever there was one. His hatchet face with its piggish eyes, his thin,
cruel lips, his square jaw, are all murderous, and, indeed, I cannot
help thinking that he will commit a murder some day. When he is in his
affable mood he is very loathsome, but I cannot afford to loathe anyone,
and we smile and smile, though we dislike each other, and though the
Ramper hardly knows what to make of me. When I first made his
acquaintance we were on our way to a race meeting, and he proposed to
give me his company. Like all of his class, he knew many "certainties,"
and he offered, with engaging frankness, to put me in the way of
"gittin' a bit." The racing blackguard never talks of money; indeed, his
obliquity of mind prevents him from calling anything by its right name.
For him the world is divided between those who "have got it"--_it_ being
money--and those who mean to "get a bit" by any means, fair or foul. On