How different the world looked to Frank when he parted with his old companion from what it had seemed some few hours before, as he left the great house in Grosvenor Square. There is an infallible recipe for lowness of spirits, nervousness, causeless misery, and mental irritation, which beats all Dr. Willis’s restorative nostrums, and emancipates the sufferer more rapidly than even the famous “Ha! ha! Cured in an instant!” remedy. When oppressed with ennui, the poet says—
“Throw but a stone, the giant dies!”
and so, when the bright sky above seems leaden to your eyes—when the song of birds, the prattle of children, or the gush of waters, fall dully upon your ear—when the outward world is all vanity of vanities and existence seems a burden, and, as Thackeray says, “Life is a mistake”—go and do a kindly action, no matter how or where or to whom; but, at any sacrifice, at any inconvenience, go and do it—and take an old man’s word for it, you will not repent. Straightway the fairy comes down the kitchen chimney, and touches your whole being with her wand. Straightway the sun bursts out with a brilliant smile, the birds take up a joyous carol, the children’s voices are like the morning hymn of a seraph choir, and the babbling of the stream woos your entranced ear with the silver notes of Nature’s own melody. Those are now steeds from Araby which seemed but rats and mice an hour or two ago. That is a glittering equipage which you had scouted as a huge, unsightly pumpkin. You yourself, no longer crouching in dust and ashes, start upright, with your face to heaven, attired in the only robe that preserves eternal freshness, the only garment you shall take away with you when you have done with all the rest—the web of charity, that cloak which covers a multitude of sins. You have, besides, this advantage over Cinderella—that whereas her glass slippers and corresponding splendour must be laid aside before midnight, your enchantment shall outlast the morrow; your fairy’s wand can reach from earth to heaven; your kindly action is entered in a book from which there is no erasure, whereof the pages shall be read before men and angels, and shall endure from everlasting to everlasting.
[CHAPTER XVI]
FORGERY
OUR HUMBLE ACQUAINTANCES—THE SCRATCH OF A PEN—A SCOUT’S INFORMATION—THE MAJOR’S MEDITATIONS, NOT FANCY-FREE
In the meantime, whilst the higher characters of our drama are fluttering their gaudy hour in the bright sunshine of fashionable life, whilst the General and Blanche and Mary, and Mount Helicon and D’Orville and Lacquers, and all of that class are driving and dining, and dressing and flirting, and otherwise improving their time, grim Want is eating into the very existence of some amongst our humbler friends, and Vice, too often the handmaid of Penury, is shedding her poison even on the scanty morsel they wrest from the very jaws of danger and detection.
Tom Blacke, as we have already seen, has overleapt the narrow boundary which separates dissipation from crime; and poor Gingham knows too well that opportunity alone is wanting to confer on him a notoriety infamous as that which is boasted of by his more daring associates. He is out now at all hours, chiefly, however, during the night, and obtains supplies of money for which she cannot account, and about which she has been taught it is better not to question him. He drinks, too, with more circumspection than was his wont, and has dreadful fits of despondency, during which he trembles like a child, and from which nothing seems to arouse him save the prattle of his infant. He is very diligent, too, in making inquiries as to the sailing of divers ships for the United States; and, being a sharp fellow, has acquainted himself thoroughly with the geography of that country, and the amount of capital requisite to enable a man to set up for himself under the star-spangled banner. He has already hinted to his wife that if he could but get hold of a little money he should certainly emigrate; and by dint of talking the matter over, Gingham, although she has a dreadful horror of the sea, contracted at St. Swithin’s, is not entirely unfavourable to the plan. Poor woman! she has not much to regret in leaving England. Let us take a peep at their establishment in the Mews, as they sit by the light of a solitary tallow candle, the mother stitching as usual, though her eyes often fill with tears, whilst ever and anon she glances cautiously towards the cradle, to see if the child is asleep, and listening to its heavy, regular breathing, applies herself to the needle more diligently than before. This is the hour at which Tom usually goes out; but to-night he shows no signs of departure, sitting moodily with his chair resting against the wall, and his eyes fixed on vacancy. At length he rouses himself with an effort, and bids Rachel make him some tea.
“I’m glad you’re not going out to-night, Tom,” says his wife; “I feel poorly, somehow, and its lonesome when you’re away for long.”