And then they began to consider where they should go. That was rather a difficult question. Neither of them knew any world except the region surrounding Arden Court. At last Clarissa remembered Beckenham. She had driven through Beckenham once on her way to a garden-party. Why should they not go to Beckenham?—the place was so near London, could be reached with so little expense, and yet was rustic.
"We must get rid of one of the rings, Jane," Clarissa said, looking at it doubtfully.
"I'll manage that, mum—don't you fidget yourself about that. There's a pawnbroker's in the next street. I'll take it round there in the evening, if you like, mum."
Clarissa shuddered. Commerce with a pawnbroker seemed to her inexperience a kind of crime—something like taking stolen property to be melted down.
But Jane Target was a brave damsel, and carried the ring to the pawnbroker with so serene a front, and gave her address with so honest an air, that the man, though at first inclined to be doubtful, believed her story; namely, that the ring belonged to her mistress, a young married lady who had suffered a reverse of fortune.
She went home rejoicing, having raised fifteen pounds upon a ring that was worth ninety. The pawnbroker had a notice that it would never be redeemed—young married ladies who suffer reverse of fortune rarely recover their footing, but generally slide down, down, down to the uttermost deeps of poverty.
They were getting ready for that journey to Beckenham, happy in the idea of escaping from the monotonous unfriendly streets, and the grime and mire and general dinginess of London life, when an unlooked-for calamity befell them, and the prospect of release had, for the time at least, to be given up. Young Lovel fell ill. He was "about his teeth," the woman of the house said, and tried to make light of the evil. These innocents are subject to much suffering in this way. He had a severe cold, with a tiresome hacking cough which rent Clarissa's heart. She sent for a doctor immediately—a neighbouring practitioner recommended by the landlady—and he came and saw the child lying in his mother's lap, and the mother young and beautiful and unhappy, and was melted accordingly, and did all he could to treat the matter lightly. Yet he was fain, after a few visits, and no progress for the better, to confess that these little lives hang by a slender thread.
"The little fellow has a noble frame and an excellent constitution," he said; "I hope we shall save him."
Save him! An icy thrill went through Clarissa's veins. Save him! Was there any fear of losing him? O God, what would her life be without that child? She looked at the doctor, white to the lips and speechless with horror.
"I don't wish to alarm you," he said gently, "but I am compelled to admit that there is danger. If the little one's father is away," he added doubtfully, "and you would like to summon him, I think it would be as well to do so."