Occupied with the vengeful feeling that was natural after such cruel treatment—though it was but an every-day fact, with drapers' assistants, in London—the youth had arrived in Fleet Street ere he bethought him that he had left his clothes behind him, and had not made up his mind as to where he was going. Faintness began to come over him, and he was compelled to cling to a window for support. Two passengers on the causeway stopped, and began to address him sympathetically; the rest of the living stream swept on, without staying to notice him. A cabman, however, less from sympathy than from the hope of employ, speedily brought his vehicle to the edge of the slabs, and jumping from his seat with the reins in his hand, asked if he could be of any service to the gentleman. Ned felt it was not a time for prolonged consideration, and earnestly, though feebly, desired the cabman to convey him to some decent boarding-house. One of the persons supporting him saw that his state did not permit questioning, and prevented the cabman's asking where he would be driven to, by telling the man to proceed at once to a number he mentioned in Bolt Court. The same individual walked by the side of the cab, for the little way that it was to the entry of the court, and then helped to support Ned to the house. A sick man, however, was not likely to meet with a very hearty welcome in a London boarding-house; and, in spite of the entreaties of the person who accompanied him, the youth would have had the door shut upon him, had he not roused all his remaining vigour, and assured the keeper of the establishment, not only that he would soon be well, but that he was able to pay for what he might need. With such assurances he was reluctantly received, and supported up stairs to a bed-room. Presence of mind served him to give order for fetching his portmanteau from the establishment he had just quitted; and it was well that it was so, for he became insensible almost immediately. A fever ensued of some weeks' continuance; and, at the end of it, when Ned regained his consciousness, he found himself reduced to a state of emaciation, and under medical attendance, with a deeply reduced purse.
These were concomitants of a nature to bring great pain to the mind of one like Ned Wilcom; and it was with a severe struggle that he shut out despair, and encouraged himself to believe that, though so grievously frustrated in his commencing hopes of independence, the prospect of success would again bud, and finally blossom. After ascertaining from his physician that his state would bear a removal to a less expensive lodging, Ned wrote home to his father, and informed him of his unfortunate condition, and of what had led to it. Mr. Wilcom, senior, was a little surprised to receive a second letter from his son so soon, for "he had no notion," as he used to say, "of lads perpetually writing home, like unweaned babies that wanted pap;" and he, therefore, broke the seal of poor Ned's letter with no remarkable degree of good humour. The length of the letter, when opened, caused the money-getting father to throw it aside with an indescribable curl of the lip and nose, and a loud "Pshaw!"—and that was all the attention the poor youth's epistle received for the five next succeeding days, that is to say, until Sunday came, and the merchant thought he had time to look at it. The next morning Ned Wilcom received his father's answer: it was simply—
"Sir,
"Yours came to hand last Monday. If your illness was brought on by want of caution, it ought to teach you prudence. If you have been unlucky, you are only like many more; and, as your grandfather used to say, the best way and the manliest, with troubles, is to grin and abide by them. Wish you better.
"Your humble servant,
"Edward Wilcom, senior.
The letter dropped from Ned's hand like a lump of lead too heavy to hold. With all his knowledge of his father's nature and habits, he had not expected this. Indeed, Ned's uninterrupted good health, through the whole of his brief space of life, had prevented the possibility of his testing his father's tenderness before. For some hours, the youth experienced misery he had never known till then; and was so completely paralysed with the sense of his wretched and deserted state, that the physician, who made his usual call in the afternoon, could obtain no intelligent answer to his questions; and though by no means one whose heart overflowed with the milk of human kindness, felt constrained, in a sympathising tone, to ask if any thing extraordinary had occurred to his patient. Ned pointed to the letter which lay on the floor, and in spite of the hardness of feeling into which he had trained himself, burst into a flood of tears.
Nature was thus sufficiently relieved to enable the youth to answer the physician's inquiries as to his father's wealth, habits, and so on, with a slight but very significant additional query as to the extent of Ned's remaining stock of money. The conclusion was not any promise of help, but cool advice to remove, forthwith, to a cheaper lodging; or which, the physician remarked, would be far more prudent, to an hospital. The latter alternative Ned could not brook then, so he did remove to a cheaper lodging; but his feebleness disappeared so slowly, and the contents of his slender purse so rapidly, that he was compelled to enter an hospital, after discharging his medical attendant's bill, and finding himself possessed but of one sovereign, at the end of another fortnight.
For six dreary months Ned Wilcom's feeble state compelled him to remain an inmate of this charitable establishment; and though his wants were amply provided for, and his complaints and sufferings were met with prompt and sympathising kindness and attention, yet his spirit was greatly soured. He ventured one more letter to his father, but it received no greater welcome than the former one; and, in the bitterness of his soul, Ned cursed the parent who could thus treat his child, and resolved never to write home again, as long as he lived.
At length, he was strong enough to leave his refuge, and without staying to be told that he must go, he went. Once more, he took a cheap lodging, but a much cheaper one, as far as price went, than before, and in one of the purlieus of Lambeth, where he would have scorned almost to set his foot, when he first arrived in London. Though his scanty sovereign would have recommended instant search for a situation, his great weakness, and his looking-glass, told him he must take, at least, one week's further rest. He took it, and then commenced inquiry for a situation, not at the establishment where his misfortunes commenced, neither at any of the first-rate fashionable shops. Sourness of spirit kept him at a distance from the cathedral churchyard; and the somewhat seedy condition, even of his best suit, debarred his admission, he believed, at any of the "tip-top" houses. So he sought to be engaged in some more humble establishment; but, alas! his pallid face and sunken eye, his hollow voice and feeble step, were against him; and a shake of the head, or a hard stare, with a decided negative, was the invariable answer to his applications.
To shorten the melancholy story of his deeper descent into wretchedness—at the end of the tenth week after his departure from the hospital, he was so far restored to strength as to be able to walk upright, to speak in his natural tone of firmness, and would have been competent to have discharged the duties of a draper's assistant in any shop in the metropolis; but every article of clothing he had possessed, except two shirts, two pairs of stockings, and the outer suit he constantly wore, were all in pawn, and he was, now, absolutely—penniless!
It was when the eleventh week began, and the dreaded Monday morning returned, when his weekly lodging-rent should be paid, that Ned stealthily descended from his attic, and passed, unobserved by his landlady, from the front door, to wander he knew not whither—except to avoid shame. By the Marsh Gate he passed, and through the New Cut, and over Blackfriars' Bridge, and, losing the remembrance of where he was, he wandered from street to street, till, suddenly, in Old Street, he was awoke to the sense of delight—a feeling he had long been a stranger to—by seeing a half-crown at the edge of the pavement, as he sauntered along with his head dropped on his chest. He snatched it up with inconceivable eagerness: no one was near to whom he could suppose it belonged, had his necessity permitted him to think of asking for its proper owner; and galled by a complete abstinence of two whole days, he hurried to the very first appearance of food that met his eye—a stall of coarse shell-fish.
"How d'ye sell them?—what d'ye call them?" were the questions he put to the poor ragged man who stood by this stall of strange vendibles that Ned had seen poverty-stricken children and females stand to eat, but had never tasted them himself.