The two women stood outside the prison doors. At eight o’clock their man would be released; the son of one, the lover of the other. The elder woman looked frail and bowed, her face was full of trouble—the kind of 447 trouble that nothing can remove. The younger woman stood beside her on the pavement; she was thinner, and her cheeks were pale; in her eyes, too, you could read abiding trouble.
“We will take him home between us,” said the girl. “Not a word of reproach. He has sinned and suffered. We must forgive. Oh, we cannot choose but forgive!”
Alas! the noble boy—the clever boy she loved—was further off than ever. He who loses a place and his character with it never gets another berth. This is a rule in the city. We talk of retrieving character and getting back to work. Neither the one nor the other event ever comes off. The wretch who is in this hapless plight begins the weary search for employment in hope. How it ends varies with his temperament or with the position of his friends. All day long he climbs stairs, puts his head into offices, and asks if a clerk is wanted.
No clerk is wanted. Then he comes down the stairs and climbs others, and asks the same question and gets the same reply. If ever a clerk is wanted a character is wanted with him; and when the character includes the qualification of drink, as well as of zeal and ability, the owner is told that he may move on.
I am told there is a never-ending procession of clerks out of work up and down the London stairs. What becomes of them is never known. It is, however, rumored that short commons, long tramps, and hope deferred bring most of them to the hospitals, where it is tenderly called pneumonia.
Charley began his tramp. After a little—a very little while—his money, the money that Lily lent him, was all gone. He was ashamed to borrow more, because he would have to confess how that money was chiefly spent.
Then he pawned his watch.
Then he borrowed another pound of Lily.
Every evening he came home drunk. His mother knew it, and told Lily. They could do nothing. They said nothing. They left off hoping.
Then his mother perceived that things began to disappear. He stole the clock on the mantel-shelf first, and pawned it.