Alone in London

by Hesba Stretton

In the new life which had now fairly begun for Oliver, it was partly as he had foreseen; he was apt to forget many things, and he had a fretting consciousness of this forgetfulness. When he was in the house playing with Dolly, or reading to her, the shop altogether slipped away from his memory, and he was only recalled to it by the loud knocking or shouting of some customer in it. On the other hand, when he was sitting behind the counter looking for news from India in the papers, news in which he was already profoundly concerned, though it was impossible that Susan could yet have reached it, he grew so absorbed, that he did not know how the time was passing by, and both he and his little grand-daughter were hungry before he had thought of getting ready any meal. He tried all kinds of devices for strengthening his failing memory; but in vain. He even forgot that he did forget; and when Dolly was laughing and frolicking about him he grew a child again, and felt himself the happiest man in London.

The person who took upon himself the heaviest weight of anxiety and responsibility about Dolly was Tony, who began to make it his daily custom to pass by the house at the hour when old Oliver ought to be going for his morning papers; and if he found no symptom of life about the place, he did not leave off kicking and butting at the shop-door until the owner appeared. It was very much the same thing at night, when the time for shutting up came; though it generally happened now that the boy was paying his friends an evening visit, and was therefore at hand to put up the shutters for Oliver. Tony could not keep away from the place. Though he felt a boy's contemptuous pity for the poor old man's declining faculties as regarded business, he had a very high veneration for his learning. Nothing pleased him better than to sit upon the old box near the door, his elbows on his knees, and his chin upon his hands, while Oliver read aloud, with Dolly upon his knee, her curly hair and small pretty features making a strange contrast to his white head and withered, hollow face. Tony, who had never had anything to love except a stray cur or two, which he had always lost after a few days' friendship, felt as if he could have suffered himself to be put to death for either of these two; while Beppo came in for a large share of his unclaimed affections. The chief subject of their reading was the life of the Master, who was so intimately dear to the heart of old Oliver. Tony was very eager to learn all he could of this great friend who did so much for the old man, and who might perhaps be persuaded some day or other to take a little notice of him, if he should fail to get a crossing for himself. Oliver, in his long, unbroken solitude of six years, had fallen into a notion, amounting to a firm belief, that his Lord was not dead and far off, as most of the world believed, but was a very present, living friend, always ready to listen to the meanest of his words. He had a vague suspicion that his faith had got into a different course from that of most other people; and he bore meekly the rebukes of his sister Charlotte for the unwholesomeness of his visions. But none the less, when he was alone, he talked and prayed to, and spoke to Tony of this Master, as one who was always very near at hand.

"I s'pose he takes a bit o' notice o' the little un," said Tony, "when he comes in now and then of an evening."

"Ay, does he!" answered Oliver, earnestly. "My boy, he loves every child as if it was his very own, and it is his own in one sense. Didn't I read you last night how he said, 'Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not.' Why, he'd love all the young children in the world, if they weren't hindered from coming to him."

"I should very much like to see him some day," pursued Tony, reflectively, "and the rest of them,—Peter, and John, and them. I s'pose they are getting pretty old by now, aren't they?"

"They are dead," said Oliver.

"All of 'em?" asked Tony.

"All of them," he repeated.

"Dear, dear!" cried Tony, his eyes glistening. "Whatever did the Master do when they all died? I'm very sorry for him now. He's had a many troubles, hasn't he?"

"Yes, yes," replied old Oliver, with a faltering voice. "He was called a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Nobody ever bore so many troubles as him."