He reached the bank of the Thames, at the eastward end of the Strand.
Walking straight on, as absently as ever, he crossed Waterloo Bridge, and followed the broad street that lay before him on the other side. He was thinking of the future again: Regina was in his mind now. The one prospect that he could see of a tranquil and happy life—with duties as well as pleasures; duties that might rouse him to find the vocation for which he was fit—was the prospect of his marriage. What was the obstacle that stood in his way? The vile obstacle of money; the contemptible spirit of ostentation which forbade him to live humbly on his own sufficient little income, and insisted that he should purchase domestic happiness at the price of the tawdry splendour of a rich tradesman and his friends. And Regina, who was free to follow her own better impulses—Regina, whose heart acknowledged him as its master—bowed before the golden image which was the tutelary deity of her uncle’s household, and said resignedly, Love must wait!
Still walking blindly on, he was roused on a sudden to a sense of passing events. Crossing a side-street at the moment, a man caught him roughly by the arm, and saved him from being run over. The man had a broom in his hand; he was a crossing-sweeper. “I think I’ve earned my penny, sir!” he said.
Amelius gave him half-a-crown. The man shouldered his broom, and tossed up the money, in a transport of delight. “Here’s something to go home with!” he cried, as he caught the half-crown again.
“Have you got a family at home?” Amelius asked.
“Only one, sir,” said the man. “The others are all dead. She’s as good a girl and as pretty a girl as ever put on a petticoat—though I say it that shouldn’t. Thank you kindly, sir. Good night!”
Amelius looked after the poor fellow, happy at least for that night! “If I had only been lucky enough to fall in love with the crossing-sweeper’s daughter,” he thought bitterly, “she would have married me when I asked her.”
He looked along the street. It curved away in the distance, with no visible limit to it. Arrived at the next side-street on his left, Amelius turned down it, weary of walking longer in the same direction. Whither it might lead him he neither knew nor cared. In his present humour it was a pleasurable sensation to feel himself lost in London.
The short street suddenly widened; a blaze of flaring gaslight dazzled his eyes; he heard all round him the shouting of innumerable voices. For the first time since he had been in London, he found himself in one of the street-markets of the poor.
On either side of the road, the barrows of the costermongers—the wandering tradesmen of the highway—were drawn up in rows; and every man was advertising his wares, by means of the cheap publicity of his own voice. Fish and vegetables; pottery and writing-paper; looking-glasses, saucepans, and coloured prints—all appealed together to the scantily filled purses of the crowds who thronged the pavement. One lusty vagabond stood up in a rickety donkey-cart, knee-deep in apples, selling a great wooden measure full for a penny, and yelling louder than all the rest. “Never was such apples sold in the public streets before! Sweet as flowers, and sound as a bell. Who says the poor ain’t looked after,” cried the fellow, with ferocious irony, “when they can have such apple-sauce as this to their loin of pork? Here’s nobby apples; here’s a penn’orth for your money. Sold again! Hullo, you! you look hungry. Catch! there’s an apple for nothing, just to taste. Be in time, be in time before they’re all sold!” Amelius moved forward a few steps, and was half deafened by rival butchers, shouting, “Buy, buy, buy!” to audiences of ragged women, who fingered the meat doubtfully, with longing eyes. A little farther—and there was a blind man selling staylaces, and singing a Psalm; and, beyond him again, a broken-down soldier playing “God save the Queen” on a tin flageolet. The one silent person in this sordid carnival was a Lascar beggar, with a printed placard round his neck, addressed to “The Charitable Public.” He held a tallow candle to illuminate the copious narrative of his misfortunes; and the one reader he obtained was a fat man, who scratched his head, and remarked to Amelius that he didn’t like foreigners. Starving boys and girls lurked among the costermongers’ barrows, and begged piteously on pretence of selling cigar-lights and comic songs. Furious women stood at the doors of public-houses, and railed on their drunken husbands for spending the house-money in gin. A thicker crowd, towards the middle of the street, poured in and out at the door of a cookshop. Here the people presented a less terrible spectacle—they were even touching to see. These were the patient poor, who bought hot morsels of sheep’s heart and liver at a penny an ounce, with lamentable little mouthfuls of peas-pudding, greens, and potatoes at a halfpenny each. Pale children in corners supped on penny basins of soup, and looked with hungry admiration at their enviable neighbours who could afford to buy stewed eels for twopence. Everywhere there was the same noble resignation to their hard fate, in old and young alike. No impatience, no complaints. In this wretched place, the language of true gratitude was still to be heard, thanking the good-natured cook for a little spoonful of gravy thrown in for nothing—and here, humble mercy that had its one superfluous halfpenny to spare gave that halfpenny to utter destitution, and gave it with right good-will. Amelius spent all his shillings and sixpences, in doubling and trebling the poor little pennyworths of food—and left the place with tears in his eyes.