Zachariah felt that he could safely trust him, and told him what had happened.
“I haven’t got a bit of straw myself on which to put you; but you come along with me.”
They walked together for about half a mile, till they came to a barn. There was a haystack close by, and they dragged some of the dry hay into it.
“You’d better be away from these parts afore it’s light, and, if you take my advice, Liverpool is the best place for you.”
He was right. Liverpool was a large town, and, what was of more consequence, it was not so revolutionary as Manchester, and the search there for the suspected was not so strict. The road was explained, so far as Zachariah’s friend knew it, and they parted.
Zachariah slept but little, and at four o’clock, with a bright moon, he started. He met with no particular adventure, and in the evening found himself once more in a wilderness of strange streets, with no outlook, face to face with the Red Sea. Happy is the man who, if he is to have an experience of this kind, is trained to it when young, and is not suddenly brought to it after a life of security. Zachariah, although he was desponding, could now say he had been in the same straits before, and had survived. That is the consolation of all consolations to us. We have actually touched and handled the skeleton, and after all we have not been struck dead. [132]
“O socii, neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum,
O passi graviora, dabit Deus his quoque finem.
Vos et Scyllæam rabiem penitusque sonantes
Accestis scopulos; vos et Cyclopia saxa
Experti. Revocate animos, moestumque timorem
Mittite; forsan et hæc olim meminisse juvabit.”
He wandered down to the water and saw a ship cleared for some port across the Atlantic. A longing seized him to go with her. Over the sea,—he thought there he would be at rest. So we all think, and as we watch the vessels dropping below the horizon in the sunset cloud, we imagine them bound with a happy crew to islands of the blest, the truth being that the cloud is a storm, and the destined port is as commonplace and full of misery as the one they have left. Zachariah, however, did not suffer himself to dream. He went diligently and systematically to work; but this time all his efforts were fruitless. He called on every printing-office he could find, and there was not one which wanted a hand, or saw any prospect of wanting one. He thought of trying the river-side; but he stood no chance there, as he had never been accustomed to carry heavy weights. His money was running short, and at last, when evening came on the third day, and he was faint with fatigue, his heart sank. He was ill, too, and sickness began to cloud his brain. As the power of internal resistance diminishes, the circumstance of the external world presses on us like the air upon an exhausted glass ball, and finally crushes us. It saddened him, too, to think, as it has saddened thousands before him, that the fight which he fought, and the death which, perhaps, was in front of him, were so mean. Ophelia dies; Juliet dies, and we fancy that their fate, although terrible, is more enviable than that of a pauper who drops undramatically on London stones. He came to his lodging at the close of the third day, wet, tired, hungry, and with a headache. There was nobody to suggest anything to him or offer him anything. He went to bed, and a thousand images, uncontrolled, rushed backwards and forwards before him. He became excited, so that he could not rest, and after walking about his room till nearly daylight, turned into bed again. When morning had fairly arrived he tried to rise, but he was beaten. He lay still till about eleven, and then the woman who kept the lodging-house appeared and asked him if he was going to stay all day where he was. He told her he was very bad; but she went away without a word, and he saw nothing more of her. Towards night he became worse and finally delirious.
CHAPTER XIV
The School of Adversity: the Sixth Form thereof
When Zachariah came to himself he was in a large, long, whitewashed room, with twenty beds or more in it. A woman in a greyish check dress was standing near him.