One night, about two years afterwards, my father was brought home on a shutter by two watchmen. He had fallen into the New River on his return from a public-house in the vicinity of Sadler's Wells Theatre, and was dragged out just in time to preserve for the present a worthless and degraded life. A violent cold supervened, which settled upon his lungs; and, in about a month, the doctor informed my mother that her husband was in a rapid decline. The six months that ensued were miserable enough. My mother was out all day, toiling for the means of subsistence for a man who was not only ungrateful for her attentions, but who repelled them with the coarsest abuse.
I was glad when he died, nor am I ashamed to avow it; and I almost felt contempt for my mother when the poor creature threw herself upon the body in a paroxysm of grief, calling it by those endearing names which indicated a love he had neither requited nor deserved. Had I been so blest as to have met with one to love me as that woman loved my father, I had been a different, and a better, and, perhaps, a good man!
"Will you not kiss your poor father, John, and see him for the last time?" said my mother on the morning of the funeral, as she took me by the hand.
No; I would not. I was no hypocrite then. It is true I was terrified at the sight of death, but that was not the cause. The manner in which he had repulsed me nearly three years before, had never for a moment departed from my mind. There was not a day on which I did not brood upon it. I have often since recalled it, and with bitterness. I remember it now.
My mother had but one relation in the world,—an uncle, possessed of considerable property, who resided near Luton, in Bedfordshire. She applied to him for some small assistance to enable her to pay the funeral expenses of her husband. Mr. Adams—for that was her uncle's name—sent her two guineas, accompanied by a request that she would never apply to, or trouble him again. There was, however, one person who stept forward in this extremity,—Mr. Ward, a tradesman, with whom my mother had formerly lived as a servant, but who had now retired from business. He offered my mother an asylum in his house. She was to be his housekeeper; and he promised to take care of, and one day to provide for, me. It was not long before we were comfortably settled in a small private house in Coppice-row, where, for the first time in my life, I was permitted to ascertain that existence was not altogether made up of sorrow.
The old gentleman even conceived a strong liking, it may be called an affection, for me. He had stood godfather to me at my birth; and I believe, had I been his own son, he could not have treated me with more tenderness. He sent me to school, and was delighted at the progress I made, or appeared to make, which he protested was scarcely less than wonderful; a notion which the tutor was, of course, not slow to encourage and confirm. He predicted that I should inevitably make a bright man, and become a worthy member of society; the highest distinction, in the old gentleman's opinion, at which any human being could arrive. Alas! woe to the child of whom favourable predictions are hazarded! There never yet, I think, was an instance in which they were not falsified.
We had been residing with Mr. Ward about three years, when a slight incident occurred which has impressed itself so strongly upon my memory that I cannot forbear relating it. Mr. Ward had sent me with a message into the City, where, in consequence of the person being from home, I was detained several hours. When I returned, it appeared that Mr. Ward had gone out shortly after me, and had not mentioned the circumstance of his having despatched me into the City. I found my mother in a state of violent agitation. She inquired where I had been, and I told her.
"I can hardly believe you, John," she said; "are you sure you are telling me the truth?"
I was silent. She repeated the question. I would not answer; and she bestowed upon me a sound beating.
I bore my punishment with dogged sullenness, and retired into the back kitchen; in a corner of which I sat down, and, with my head between my hands, began to brood over the treatment I had received. Gradually there crept into my heart the same feeling I remembered to have conceived against my father,—a feeling of bitter malignity revived by a fresh object. I endeavoured to quell it, to subdue it, but I could not. I recalled all my mother's former kindness to me, her present affection for me; and I reminded myself that this was the first time she had ever raised her hand against me. This thought only nourished the feeling, till the aching or my brain caused it to subside into moody stupefaction.