When I was very small an aunt took me to live with her for a couple or more months in a small town in Gloucestershire, a county in which mother had never been. But she had a dream in which she saw me leaving the house with my uncle’s dinner, and that I had to follow the canal bank to his works. She saw me returning that same way, and, beginning to play near the water, fall in head first, she, in her dream, just reaching the spot in time to save me. Early the following morning, after this dream, mother came by train to this village, walked the canal bank to my aunt’s house, without enquiring its whereabouts, and demanded her son before he was drowned. There was certainly a possibility of this happening, for I was very small at that time, and the canal was deep. She had never before been in this place, but the locality seemed to be well-known to her as it was seen in her sleep.
XVIII
Off Again
Of course at this homecoming I vowed that I would never again leave my native town. True, I found great difficulty in sleeping on a soft bed, and lay awake several hours through the night, tossing and turning from one side to another. The food itself did not seem so palatable coming out of clean pots and shining ovens, as that which was cooked in close contact with the embers, and in the smoke and blaze of a camp fire. The unplucked chicken, covered with a thick crust of mud and baked under a pile of hot ashes, after which the hard crust could be broken to show the chicken inside as clean as a new born babe, with all its feathers and down stuck hard in the mud—this meat to me was far more tasty than that one at home, that was plucked and gutted with care, and roasted or baked to a supposed nicety. This food of civilisation certainly seemed to suffer from a lack of good wholesome dirt, and I should like to have had my own wood fire at the end of the backyard, were it not for shame.
For several weeks I walked the streets, renewing old acquaintance, accosted here and there by my old schoolmates. Most of them were married, but married or single, they all seemed to be poor and unsuccessful. I began to drink immoderately at this time, meeting one and the other, and very soon began to realise that my hundred and twenty pounds were going at the rate of a sovereign a day. Scarcely had I been home one month, when, to escape from so much drink, I made a trip to Bordeaux, on one of the local steamers. But it was of no use: for I saw the time coming when I would again be without prospects. I had not worked at my trade since leaving Bristol, six years before, and had no intention of doing so again. The fever of restlessness that had governed me in the past, broke out afresh, and after two months of this idle life, I suddenly made a pretence of being filled with a desire for business, saying it was my intention to open a bookshop in London, and as soon as possible, which I have often had thoughts of doing. With this end in view, I drew the remainder of my money, which in two months had dwindled by a half, divided a few pounds among the family, and took train for London. “Yes,” I repeated to myself, several times on this journey. “I will open a bookshop and settle down to a quiet life of study, for which there will be ample time during the intervals of business.” In London I saw a number of vacant shops that would have answered the purpose, but unfortunately, I had not the least notion of how or where to obtain books, the greater part of which were to be secondhand. If, when on this quest, I could have bought a bookshop ready fitted and filled, no doubt I would have closed with the offer at once, and settled quietly down. Not seeing any way out of this difficulty, I continued my rambles through the city, day after day, invariably visiting the theatre at night. This happened for over a week, and the money was still going out and none coming in, and poverty never appeared worse to me than at that time.
One afternoon, when passing through Trafalgar Square, I bought an early edition of an evening paper, and the first paragraph that met my eye had this very attractive heading—“A Land of Gold.” It was a description of the Klondyke, and a glowing account of the many good fortunes that daily fell to the lot of hardy adventurers. It would cost me sixty pounds, or more, to travel to that remote part of the world, and forty-four pounds were all I now possessed. This thought did not for long discourage me from making the attempt. I knew that I could beat my way across the Canadian continent, without using a cent for travelling, and I could save these few pounds for food, and cases in which payment would be absolutely necessary, when forced to travel on foot, at the other end of Canada.
That night I exchanged thirty pounds for their equivalent in paper dollars, placing the latter in a belt which I wore next to my skin, determined that this money should not see the light until my journey was nearly done.
It was now the month of March, and the navigation of the St. Lawrence had not yet
