IV.
The two women stood outside the prison doors. At eight o’clock their man would be released; the son of one, the lover of the other. The elder woman looked frail and bowed, her face was full of trouble—the kind of 447 trouble that nothing can remove. The younger woman stood beside her on the pavement; she was thinner, and her cheeks were pale; in her eyes, too, you could read abiding trouble.
“We will take him home between us,” said the girl. “Not a word of reproach. He has sinned and suffered. We must forgive. Oh, we cannot choose but forgive!”
Alas! the noble boy—the clever boy she loved—was further off than ever. He who loses a place and his character with it never gets another berth. This is a rule in the city. We talk of retrieving character and getting back to work. Neither the one nor the other event ever comes off. The wretch who is in this hapless plight begins the weary search for employment in hope. How it ends varies with his temperament or with the position of his friends. All day long he climbs stairs, puts his head into offices, and asks if a clerk is wanted.
No clerk is wanted. Then he comes down the stairs and climbs others, and asks the same question and gets the same reply. If ever a clerk is wanted a character is wanted with him; and when the character includes the qualification of drink, as well as of zeal and ability, the owner is told that he may move on.
I am told there is a never-ending procession of clerks out of work up and down the London stairs. What becomes of them is never known. It is, however, rumored that short commons, long tramps, and hope deferred bring most of them to the hospitals, where it is tenderly called pneumonia.
Charley began his tramp. After a little—a very little while—his money, the money that Lily lent him, was all gone. He was ashamed to borrow more, because he would have to confess how that money was chiefly spent.
Then he pawned his watch.
Then he borrowed another pound of Lily.
Every evening he came home drunk. His mother knew it, and told Lily. They could do nothing. They said nothing. They left off hoping.
Then his mother perceived that things began to disappear. He stole the clock on the mantel-shelf first, and pawned it.
Then he stole other things. At last he took the furniture, bit by bit, and pawned it, until his mother was left with nothing but a mattress and a pair of blankets. He could not take her money, because all she had was an annuity of fifteen shillings a week, otherwise he would have had that too. He then borrowed Lily’s watch and pawned it, and her little trinkets and pawned them; he took from her all the money she would give him.
Both women half starved themselves to find him in drink and to save him from crime. Yes, to save him from crime. They did not use these words—they understood. For now he had become mad for drink. There was no longer any pretence; he even left off lying; he was drunk every day; if he could not get drunk he sat on the bare floor and cried. Neither his mother nor Lily reproached him.
An end—a semicolon, if not a full stop—comes to such a course. Unfortunately not always the end which is most to be desired—the only effectual end.
The end or semicolon which came to this young man was that, having nothing more of his mother’s that he could pawn, one day he slipped into the ground floor lodger’s room and made up quite a valuable little parcel for his friend the pawnbroker. It contained a Waterbury watch, a seven and sixpenny clock, a mug—electro-plate, won at a spelling competition—a bound volume of “Tit Bits,” and a Bible.
When the lodger came home and found out his loss he proved to be of an irascible, suspicious, and revengeful disposition. He immediately, for instance, suspected the drunken young man of the first floor. He caused secret inquiry to be made, and—but why go on? Alas! the conclusion of the affair was eight months’ hard.
“Here he comes,” said Lily. “Look up, mother; we must meet him with a smile. He will come out sober, at any rate.”
He was looking much better for his period of seclusion. He walked home 448 between them, subdued, but ready, on encouragement, for their old confidence.
In fact, it broke out, after an excellent breakfast.
“I have made up my mind,” he said, “while I was thinking—oh! I had plenty to think about and plenty of time to do my thinking in. Well, I have made up my mind. Mother, this is no country for me any longer. After what has happened I must go. You two go on living together, just for company, but I shall go—I shall go to America. There’s always an opening, I am told, in America, for fellows who are not afraid of work. Cleverness tells there. A man isn’t kept down because he’s had a misfortune. What is there against me, after all? Character gone, eh? Well, if you come to that, I don’t deny that appearances were against me. I could explain, however.
“But there nobody cares about character nor what you’ve done here”—(this remarkable belief is widely spread concerning the colonies, as well as the United States)—“it’s what can you do? not, what have you done? Very well. I mean to go to America, mother. I shall polish up the shorthand and pick up the French grammar again. I mean to get rich now. Oh, I’ve sown my wild oats! Then you’ll both come out to me, and then we’ll be married; and, Lily, we’ll have a most splendid time!”