‘It do seem a pity,’ agreed the guardian of the night. ‘He don’t look a bad sort, though he’s been in trouble.’
Those who have been ‘in trouble’ come more natural to policemen than to those more prejudiced members of society who have no connection with the criminal classes. They stood round, looking at the unconscious, slumbering face supported against the blackness of the door, and lighted up still with the lingering remains of that conscious, self-ridiculing smile.
Now John’s old lodgings which he had abandoned, as he rose in the world, were near, and he felt a great melting of the heart over this man, whose face was so full of better things, yet who in all the world seemed to have only the wretched vagrant Joe, hoarse and ragged and miserable, to stand his friend. He was somewhat apt to act upon impulse, though his impulses were seldom of this reckless kind.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘a house where he might have a lodging: but how to get him there—for it does not seem possible to rouse him.’
‘Here you are, sir,’ cried the cabman from behind, who was almost as hoarse as Joe. ‘I’ll take the gentl’man. If the bobby will lend us a hand to get him into the cab——’
‘Lor’, I’ll get him on his feet in a moment,’ cried Joe. And presently by the help of John, the policeman affording such assistance as his lantern could supply, the half-smiling, half-sleeping unfortunate was got into the cab and slowly driven away, John following as in a dream. He had responded to Joe’s hoarse entreaty for ‘a bob,’ and he had bestowed another upon the unsoliciting but not unexpectant policeman. He was glad when he shook them all off, and found himself alone again, following the slow movement of the cab, which crept along keeping him within sight. What was this responsibility he was taking upon his shoulders? He laughed to himself after a moment at the curious sense of something new, something of undefined importance to which he was committing himself. What was it, after all, finding a night’s shelter in a decent house for a friendless being who could not concern him after, to whom he was but acting the part of the Samaritan? What more was there to say?
CHAPTER IX.
GOING BACK.
It was with some difficulty that John persuaded his old landlady to take in his unfortunate protégé. But the woman had a great respect for the young man who had done so well, and allowed herself finally to be induced to do a charity, which was what he assured her it would be, at a rate of payment double that which she could have procured in the ordinary way. He went home with a curious commotion in his heart. The incident was quite new in his experience. He had never been deaf to the appeals of charity. When any of the men at the works got hurt, when there was sickness or death among them, John was known to be always ready to contribute what he could for the comfort of the sufferers or the relief of the widow. This was almost the only manner in which it had come in his way to help his fellow-creatures. To enter of his own accord into schemes of beneficence had not occurred to him. He had shrunk even from the undertakings which Percy Spencer, when in London, had told him of, in which young men were working for the poor. John, though he was not at all humble-minded in ordinary ways, had a certain diffidence and modesty in this. He had not been conscious of any capacity in himself to exercise ‘a good influence.’ He knew too much and too little to take it up in good faith as these young men did—too much of himself, too little of the others. What he could do to help an individual who came in his way, or whom he knew, he did quietly, and this chiefly in material ways; paying rent, sending for a doctor, helping to set up a little shop, or buy a mangle. This he could do; but he could not ‘exercise a good influence:’ or, at all events, he was timid and did not try. He paid doubly and beforehand for the hesitations and alarms of his old landlady, who took in with so much doubt this poor gentleman, who was not in a condition to take care of himself, and promised to make up for any damage he might do, should she suffer by her charity; but John did not feel any desire to talk, or to give him good advice.
The man was got not without difficulty to bed. His aspect to the young man seemed quite different from that of the ordinary sinners in the same way, whom he had seen often enough. He had a confused look of kindness and that jovial good-nature which appears in the Bacchanalian literature of the past, not like the sodden misery of drunkenness in the present time. Perhaps this social vice, which is so terrible in its consequences, has changed its characteristics, like other things. The man seemed to have the merry twinkle in his eyes when he opened them now and then, the humorous consciousness as of a bizarre and irresponsible condition which was not culpable, which belonged to an age when indulgence was common and supposed to be a venial fault, and associated with all sorts of fun and good-fellowship. Tipsiness bears no such aspect now: it is dull, sodden, miserable, a shame to see. The victim in the present case was as different as possible from the brutal drunkards, the wretched, pale, self-conscious sinners of a higher sphere, whom John had beheld with scorn from his eminence of youthful virtue. His eyes were not blear and sodden, as the eyes of such offenders are now-a-days, the gleam of mirth in them had no guilty look. ‘If you think I don’t see how ridiculous it all is, you are mistaken,’ they seemed to say.
To think that John should ever have been moved to an almost sympathetic amusement by the looks of a man whom he had picked up in a state of intoxication in the street—to think that he should have been so much touched by his appearance as to pick the man up, to transport him to this familiar place, to exert himself so distinctly on behalf of an ex-convict, a criminal, a drunkard! How was it? he could not tell: and yet, after he had seen the unhappy man lying quietly asleep, John went away with a curious emotion in his heart. For one thing, the being to whom we have been kind, whom we have effectually served, always acquires an interest to the mind; our own consciousness of bounty, of charity, still more of mercy, throwing a favourable light on the recipient of it. And John said to himself that to have left a man who had at least the remains of something better about him, who had come out of prison perhaps with the intention of leading a different life, in the hands of such a coarse ruffian as Joe, was a thing which no one would willingly do. It was found, too, by the curiosity of the landlady, who emptied the poor man’s pockets in order that John might see that all was safe, that he had a considerable sum of money in his possession, which was a very strong reason why he should not be handed over in a helpless condition to the tender mercies of a penniless frequenter of the streets. John would not look over the contents of his protégé’s pocket. He saw and counted the money at the woman’s request, but the other things he folded away in a sealed packet, with that high sense of the sacredness of personal belongings which is peculiarly strong in youth.