No father, no mother, no any one. 'Like as Tom might have been, miss, if Emma and me had died after father,' said Charley, her round eyes filling with tears.
'And she was getting medicine for him, Charley?'
'She said, miss,' returned Charley, 'how that he had once done as much for her.'
My little maid's face was so eager and her quiet hands were folded so closely in one another as she stood looking at me that I had no great difficulty in reading her thoughts. 'Well, Charley,' said I,
'it appears to me that you and I can do no better than go round to Jenny's and see what's the matter.'
The alacrity with which Charley brought my bonnet and veil, and having dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm shawl and made herself look like a little old woman, sufficiently expressed her readiness. So Charley and I, without saying anything to any one, went out.
It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shuddered in the wind.
The rain had been thick and heavy all day, and with little intermission for many days. None was falling just then, however.
The sky had partly cleared, but was very gloomy-even above us, where a few stars were shining. In the north and north-west, where the sun had set three hours before, there was a pale dead light both beautiful and awful; and into it long sullen lines of cloud waved up like a sea stricken immovable as it was heaving. Towards London a lurid glare overhung the whole dark waste, and the contrast between these two lights, and the fancy which the redder light engendered of an unearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen buildings of the city and on all the faces of its many thousands of wondering inhabitants, was as solemn as might be.
I had no thought that night-none, I am quite sure-of what was soon to happen to me. But I have always remembered since that when we had stopped at the garden-gate to look up at the sky, and when we went upon our way, I had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself as being something different from what I then was. I know it was then and there that I had it. I have ever since connected the feeling with that spot and time and with everything associated with that spot and time, to the distant voices in the town, the barking of a dog, and the sound of wheels coming down the miry hill.
It was Saturday night, and most of the people belonging to the place where we were going were drinking elsewhere. We found it quieter than I had previously seen it, though quite as miserable.
The kilns were burning, and a stifling vapour set towards us with a pale-blue glare.
We came to the cottage, where there was a feeble candle in the patched window. We tapped at the door and went in. The mother of the little child who had died was sitting in a chair on one side of the poor fire by the bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy, supported by the chimney-piece, was cowering on the floor. He held under his arm, like a little bundle, a fragment of a fur cap; and as he tried to warm himself, he shook until the crazy door and window shook. The place was closer than before and had an unhealthy and a very peculiar smell.
I had not lifted my veil when I first spoke to the woman, which was at the moment of our going in. The boy staggered up instantly and stared at me with a remarkable expression of surprise and terror.
His action was so quick and my being the cause of it was so evident that I stood still instead of advancing nearer.
'I won't go no more to the berryin ground,' muttered the boy; 'I ain't a-going there, so I tell you!'
I lifted my veil and spoke to the woman. She said to me in a low voice, 'Don't mind him, ma'am. He'll soon come back to his head,' and said to him, 'Jo, Jo, what's the matter?'
'I know wot she's come for!' cried the boy.
'Who?'
'The lady there. She's come to get me to go along with her to the berryin ground. I won't go to the berryin ground. I don't like the name on it. She might go a-berryin ME.' His shivering came on again, and as he leaned against the wall, he shook the hovel.
'He has been talking off and on about such like all day, ma'am,' said Jenny softly. 'Why, how you stare! This is MY lady, Jo.'
'Is it?' returned the boy doubtfully, and surveying me with his arm held out above his burning eyes. 'She looks to me the t'other one.
It ain't the bonnet, nor yet it ain't the gownd, but she looks to me the t'other one.'
My little Charley, with her premature experience of illness and trouble, had pulled off her bonnet and shawl and now went quietly up to him with a chair and sat him down in it like an old sick nurse. Except that no such attendant could have shown him Charley's youthful face, which seemed to engage his confidence.
'I say!' said the boy. 'YOU tell me. Ain't the lady the t'other lady?'
Charley shook her head as she methodically drew his rags about him and made him as warm as she could.
'Oh!' the boy muttered. 'Then I s'pose she ain't.'
'I came to see if I could do you any good,' said I. 'What is the matter with you?'
'I'm a-being froze,' returned the boy hoarsely, with his haggard gaze wandering about me, 'and then burnt up, and then froze, and then burnt up, ever so many times in a hour. And my head's all sleepy, and all a-going mad- like-and I'm so dry-and my bones isn't half so much bones as pain.'
'When did he come here?' I asked the woman.
'This morning, ma'am, I found him at the corner of the town. I had known him up in London yonder. Hadn't I, Jo?'
'Tom-all-Alone's,' the boy replied.
Whenever he fixed his attention or his eyes, it was only for a very little while. He soon began to droop his head again, and roll it heavily, and speak as if he were half awake.
'When did he come from London?' I asked.
'I come from London yes'day,' said the boy himself, now flushed and hot. 'I'm a-going somewheres.'
'Where is he going?' I asked.
'Somewheres,' repeated the boy in a louder tone. 'I have been moved on, and moved on, more nor ever I was afore, since the t'other one give me the sov'ring. Mrs. Snagsby, she's always awatching, and a-driving of me- what have I done to her?-and they're all a-watching and a-driving of me. Every one of 'em's doing of it, from the time when I don't get up, to the time when I don't go to bed. And I'm a-going somewheres. That's where I'm agoing. She told me, down in Tom-all-Alone's, as she came from Stolbuns, and so I took the Stolbuns Road. It's as good as another.'
He always concluded by addressing Charley.
'What is to be done with him?' said I, taking the woman aside. 'He could not travel in this state even if he had a purpose and knew where he was going!'
'I know no more, ma'am, than the dead,' she replied, glancing compassionately at him. 'Perhaps the dead know better, if they could only tell us. I've kept him here all day for pity's sake, and I've given him broth and physic, and Liz has gone to try if any one will take him in (here's my pretty in the bed-her child, but I call it mine); but I can't keep him long, for if my husband was to come home and find him here, he'd be rough in putting him out and might do him a hurt. Hark! Here comes Liz back!'
The other woman came hurriedly in as she spoke, and the boy got up with a half-obscured sense that he was expected to be going. When the little child awoke, and when and how Charley got at it, took it out of bed, and began to walk about hushing it, I don't know.
There she was, doing all this in a quiet motherly manner as if she were living in Mrs. Blinder's attic with Tom and Emma again.
The friend had been here and there, and had been played about from hand to hand, and had come back as she went. At first it was too early for the boy to be received into the proper refuge, and at last it was too late. One official sent her to another, and the other sent her back again to the first, and so backward and forward, until it appeared to me as if both must have been appointed for their skill in evading their duties instead of performing them. And now, after all, she said, breathing quickly, for she had been running and was frightened too, 'Jenny, your master's on the road home, and mine's not far behind, and the Lord help the boy, for we can do no more for him!' They put a few halfpence together and hurried them into his hand, and so, in an oblivious, half-thankful, half- insensible way, he shuffled out of the house.
'Give me the child, my dear,' said its mother to Charley, 'and thank you kindly too! Jenny, woman dear,
