“I trust so too, sir.”
The house where Barnes lived was in one of the worst and dirtiest parts of Crossbourne; and as some of the inhabitants, whose temperament inclined to the gloomy, declared Crossbourne to be the dirtiest town in England, the situation of Jim’s dwelling was certainly not likely to be favourable to either health or comfort. There are streets in most towns of any considerable size which persons who are fortunate enough to live in more agreeable localities are quite content with just looking down, and then passing on, marvelling, it may be, to themselves how such processes as washing and cooking can ever be carried on with the slightest prospect of success in the midst of such grimy and unsavoury surroundings. It was in such a street that James Barnes and his family existed, rather than lived; for life is too vigorous a term to be applied to the time dragged on by those who were unfortunate enough to breathe so polluted an atmosphere. There are some places which, in their very decay, remind you of better times now past and gone. It was not so with the houses in these streets; they looked rather as if originally built of poverty-stricken and dilapidated materials. And yet none of them were really old, but the blight of neglect was heavy upon them. Nearly at the bottom of one of these streets was the house inhabited by the dismissed railway porter, and to this Thomas Bradly now made his way.
Outside the front door stood a knot of women with long pipes in their mouths, bemoaning Jim’s dismissal with his wife, and suggesting some of those original grounds of consolation which, to persons in a higher walk of life, would rather aggravate than lessen the trial. Two of the youngest children of the family, divested of all superfluous clothing, were giving full play to their ill-fed limbs in the muddy gutter, dividing their time between personal assaults on each other, and splashings on the by-standers from the liquid soil in which they were revelling, being occasionally startled into a momentary silence by a violent cuff from their mother when they became more than ordinarily uproarious.
The outer door stood half-open, and disclosed a miserable scene of domestic desolation. The absence of everything that could make home really home was the conspicuous feature. There was a table, it is true; but then it was comparatively useless in its disabled state—one of the leaves hanging down, and just held on by one unbroken hinge, reminding you of a man with his arm in a sling. There were chairs also, but none of them perfect; rather suggesting by their appearance the need of caution in the use of them than the prospect of rest to those who might confide their weight to them. A shelf of crockery ware was the least unattractive object; but then every article had suffered more or less in the wars. Nothing was clean or bright, few things were whole, and fewer still in their proper places. The two or three dingy prints on the walls, originally misrepresentations in flaring colours of scriptural or other scenes, hung in various degrees of crookedness; while articles of clothing, old and new, dirtier and less dirty, were scattered about in all directions, or suspended, just where necessity or whim had tossed them. There was on the available portion of the table part of a loaf of bread, a lump of butter still half-wrapped in the dirty piece of newspaper which had left some of its letters impressed on its exposed side, a couple of herrings, a mug half-full of beer, and two or three onions. And in the midst of all this chaos, on one side of the grate, which was one-third full of expiring ashes, and two-thirds full of dust, sat James Barnes in his railway porter’s dress and cap, looking exceedingly crestfallen and unhappy.
“Good evening, Jim,” said Thomas Bradly, making his way to the fire-place, and taking a seat opposite to Barnes; “I was sorry to hear bad news.”
“Yes, bad indeed, Thomas—you’ve heard it, I see. Yes, they’ve given me the sack; and what’s to be done now, I’m sure I don’t know. Some people’s born to luck; ’tain’t my case.”
“Nay, Jim,” cried the other, “you’re out there: there’s no such thing as luck, and no one’s born to good luck. But there’s an old proverb which comes pretty near the truth, and it’s this, ‘Diligence is the mother of good luck.’ I don’t believe in luck or chance myself, but I believe in diligence, with God’s blessing. It says in the Bible, ‘The hand of the diligent maketh rich.’”
“Well, and I have been diligent,” exclaimed Jim: “I’ve never been away from my work a day scarcely. But see what a lot of children I’ve got, and most of them little ’uns; and now they’ve gone and turned me off at a moment’s notice. What do you say to that? Isn’t that hard lines?”
“It ain’t pleasant, certainly, Jim; but come, now, what’s the use of fencing about in this way? Jim Barnes, just you listen to me. There’s not a pleasanter chap in the town than yourself when you’re sober—everybody says so, from the vicar down to Tommy Tracks. Now it’s of no use to lay the blame on the wrong shoulders. You know perfectly well that if you’d have let the drink alone things would never have come to this, and you wouldn’t have been living now in such a dirty hole. But I’m not come down here, Jim, to twit you with what’s done, and can’t be undone now. If you’ve done wrong, well, there’s time to turn over a new leaf and do better; and now’s your time. You see what the drink’s brought you to; and if you was to get another place to-morrow, you wouldn’t keep it long. There’s no business as ever I heard of where the masters advertise in the papers, ‘So many drunkards wanted for such a work.’ No, no, Jim; just you think the matter over, and pray to the Lord to show you the right way. You know my ‘Surgery’ at the back of my house: you come up there to-night and have a talk with me; it’s no use trying to have it here. I think I’ll show you a door as’ll lead to better ways, and better times; and you shan’t want a good friend or two, Jim, to give you a helping hand, if you’ll only try, by God’s help, to deserve them.”
Poor Jim’s head had become bowed down on to his hands during this plain speech, and the tears began to make their way through his fingers. Then he stretched out one hand towards his visitor without lifting up his head, and said, in a half-choked voice, “Thank you, Thomas; I’ll come, that I will,—I’ll come; and thank you kindly for coming to look after me.”