The tears came into Tom’s eyes, and his throat swelled up; but, before he could say anything, his friend had turned off sharp and gone away.
Tom showed the sovereigns to his wife, and said, “There, my lass, look at that! there’s a chance for us to make another start. It’s a bit of good luck, and it’s a good omen; it means what the old proverb says, that when things are at the worst they will mend. Let us both try; we’ve had a rough lesson, and if we’ve learnt it, perhaps it will be all the better for us for the rest of our lives.”
Tom’s wife didn’t say anything, but only turned her head away.
That night he got a bit of a lodging for himself and his wife and his child, and he went to bed full of hope and faith in the future, and he determined the first thing in the morning to get out and look for work.
But when he woke up in the morning his wife was gone. She had got up quietly, while he was fast asleep, and had gone away, and left a bit of a note saying she was sure she should bring him to ruin again, and she didn’t want to do it now he had another chance. For his own sake and the sake of the child it was better he should be rid of her, for she was only a burden and a curse to him. If ever she cured herself, and felt that she could trust herself, she would come back to him; but if she didn’t, it was just as well he should never know what had become of her.
It was an awful letter for poor Tom to find just as everything looked so promising, and it dashed his hopes to the ground and made him very miserable.
He told me that when he read that letter he felt so low that the temptation came to him to go out and drink to drown his trouble and black thoughts that came into his mind. Then he thought of the little girl—the poor little girl, that had suffered so much already—and he made up his mind that he would do his duty by her, and be father and mother to her both, now her mother had gone away and left her; and he knelt down by her bed-side where she was fast asleep, and made a vow that he would never touch a drop of drink again as long as he lived.
He spent the whole of the first day trying to find some trace of his wife, but it was no good. Nobody knew them where they had taken the lodging, and no one had noticed the woman go away. He had a dreadful idea that she would kill herself, and he went to the police-station, and everywhere he could think of for days after that, to find out if anybody had been found in the water; or anything of the sort.
But while he was doing this he looked for work too, and after two days he got taken on for a short time at some works, and, when that job was over, he got another to help in a mews; and then, through somebody that knew him, he got a better place offered him down in the country at a little hotel, but it was one where he would have to sleep on the premises.
By this time he had given up all hope of tracing his wife, for he had been unable to find out anything concerning her, and now he was worried what to do about his little girl. He couldn’t take her into the country, because there would be no home for her, and, besides, there would be nobody to look after her.