第 55 页

herself away, and stayed to hear no more.

But, before they had reached the corner of the lane, the man came

running after them, and, pressing her hand, left something in it--two

old, battered, smoke-encrusted penny pieces. Who knows but they shone

as brightly in the eyes of angels, as golden gifts that have been

chronicled on tombs?

And thus they separated; the child to lead her sacred charge farther

from guilt and shame; the labourer to attach a fresh interest to the

spot where his guests had slept, and read new histories in his furnace

fire.

CHAPTER 45

In all their journeying, they had never longed so ardently, they had

never so pined and wearied, for the freedom of pure air and open

country, as now. No, not even on that memorable morning, when,

deserting their old home, they abandoned themselves to the mercies of a

strange world, and left all the dumb and senseless things they had

known and loved, behind--not even then, had they so yearned for the

fresh solitudes of wood, hillside, and field, as now, when the noise

and dirt and vapour, of the great manufacturing town reeking with lean

misery and hungry wretchedness, hemmed them in on every side, and

seemed to shut out hope, and render escape impossible.

'Two days and nights!' thought the child. 'He said two days and nights

we should have to spend among such scenes as these. Oh! if we live to

reach the country once again, if we get clear of these dreadful places,

though it is only to lie down and die, with what a grateful heart I

shall thank God for so much mercy!'

With thoughts like this, and with some vague design of travelling to a

great distance among streams and mountains, where only very poor and

simple people lived, and where they might maintain themselves by very

humble helping work in farms, free from such terrors as that from which

they fled--the child, with no resource but the poor man's gift, and no

encouragement but that which flowed from her own heart, and its sense

of the truth and right of what she did, nerved herself to this last

journey and boldly pursued her task.

'We shall be very slow to-day, dear,' she said, as they toiled

painfully through the streets; 'my feet are sore, and I have pains in

all my limbs from the wet of yesterday. I saw that he looked at us and

thought of that, when he said how long we should be upon the road.'

'It was a dreary way he told us of,' returned her grandfather,

piteously. 'Is there no other road? Will you not let me go some other

way than this?'

'Places lie beyond these,' said the child, firmly, 'where we may live

in peace, and be tempted to do no harm. We will take the road that

promises to have that end, and we would not turn out of it, if it were

a hundred times worse than our fears lead us to expect. We would not,

dear, would we?'

'No,' replied the old man, wavering in his voice, no less than in his

manner. 'No. Let us go on. I am ready. I am quite ready, Nell.'

The child walked with more difficulty than she had led her companion to

expect, for the pains that racked her joints were of no common

severity, and every exertion increased them. But they wrung from her

no complaint, or look of suffering; and, though the two travellers

proceeded very slowly, they did proceed. Clearing the town in course

of time, they began to feel that they were fairly on their way.

A long suburb of red brick houses--some with patches of garden-ground,

where coal-dust and factory smoke darkened the shrinking leaves, and

coarse rank flowers, and where the struggling vegetation sickened and

sank under the hot breath of kiln and furnace, making them by its

presence seem yet more blighting and unwholesome than in the town

itself--a long, flat, straggling suburb passed, they came, by slow

degrees, upon a cheerless region, where not a blade of grass was seen

to grow, where not a bud put forth its promise in the spring, where

nothing green could live but on the surface of the stagnant pools,

which here and there lay idly sweltering by the black road-side.

Advancing more and more into the shadow of this mournful place, its

dark depressing influence stole upon their spirits, and filled them

with a dismal gloom. On every side, and far as the eye could see into

the heavy distance, tall chimneys, crowding on each other, and

presenting that endless repetition of the same dull, ugly form, which

is the horror of oppressive dreams, poured out their plague of smoke,

obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air. On mounds of

ashes by the wayside, sheltered only by a few rough boards, or rotten

pent-house roofs, strange engines spun and writhed like tortured

creatures; clanking their iron chains, shrieking in their rapid whirl

from time to time as though in torment unendurable, and making the

ground tremble with their agonies. Dismantled houses here and there

appeared, tottering to the earth, propped up by fragments of others

that had fallen down, unroofed, windowless, blackened, desolate, but

yet inhabited. Men, women, children, wan in their looks and ragged in

attire, tended the engines, fed their tributary fire, begged upon the

road, or scowled half-naked from the doorless houses. Then came more

of the wrathful monsters, whose like they almost seemed to be in their

wildness and their untamed air, screeching and turning round and round

again; and still, before, behind, and to the right and left, was the

same interminable perspective of brick towers, never ceasing in their

black vomit, blasting all things living or inanimate, shutting out the

face of day, and closing in on all these horrors with a dense dark

cloud.

But night-time in this dreadful spot!--night, when the smoke was

changed to fire; when every chimney spirited up its flame; and places,

that had been dark vaults all day, now shone red-hot, with figures

moving to and fro within their blazing jaws, and calling to one another

with hoarse cries--night, when the noise of every strange machine was

aggravated by the darkness; when the people near them looked wilder and

more savage; when bands of unemployed labourers paraded the roads, or

clustered by torch-light round their leaders, who told them, in stern

language, of their wrongs, and urged them on to frightful cries and

threats; when maddened men, armed with sword and firebrand, spurning

the tears and prayers of women who would restrain them, rushed forth on

errands of terror and destruction, to work no ruin half so surely as

their own--night, when carts came rumbling by, filled with rude

coffins (for contagious disease and death had been busy with the living

crops); when orphans cried, and distracted women shrieked and followed

in their wake--night, when some called for bread, and some for drink to

drown their cares, and some with tears, and some with staggering feet,

and some with bloodshot eyes, went brooding home--night, which, unlike

the night that Heaven sends on earth, brought with it no peace, nor

quiet, nor signs of blessed sleep--who shall tell the terrors of the

night to the young wandering child!

And yet she lay down, with nothing between her and the sky; and, with

no fear for herself, for she was past it now, put up a prayer for the

poor old man. So very weak and spent, she felt, so very calm and

unresisting, that she had no thought of any wants of her own, but

prayed that God would raise up some friend for him. She tried to

recall the way they had come, and to look in the direction where the

fire by which they had slept last night was burning. She had forgotten

to ask the name of the poor man, their friend, and when she had

remembered him in her prayers, it seemed ungrateful not to turn one

look towards the spot where he was watching.

A penny loaf was all they had had that day. It was very little, but

even hunger was forgotten in the strange tranquillity that crept over

her senses. She lay down, very gently, and, with a quiet smile upon

her face, fell into a slumber. It was not like sleep--and yet it must

have been, or why those pleasant dreams of the little scholar all night

long! Morning came. Much weaker, diminished powers even of sight and

hearing, and yet the child made no complaint--perhaps would have made

none, even if she had not had that inducement to be silent, travelling

by her side. She felt a hopelessness of their ever being extricated

together from that forlorn place; a dull conviction that she was very

ill, perhaps dying; but no fear or anxiety.

A loathing of food that she was not conscious of until they expended

their last penny in the purchase of another loaf, prevented her

partaking even of this poor repast. Her grandfather ate greedily,

which she was glad to see.

Their way lay through the same scenes as yesterday, with no variety or

improvement. There was the same thick air, difficult to breathe; the

same blighted ground, the same hopeless prospect, the same misery and

distress. Objects appeared more dim, the noise less, the path more

rugged and uneven, for sometimes she stumbled, and became roused, as it

were, in the effort to prevent herself from falling. Poor child! the

cause was in her tottering feet.

Towards the afternoon, her grandfather complained bitterly of hunger.

She approached one of the wretched hovels by the way-side, and knocked

with her hand upon the door.

'What would you have here?' said a gaunt man, opening it.

'Charity. A morsel of bread.'

'Do you see that?' returned the man hoarsely, pointing to a kind of

bundle on the ground. 'That's a dead child. I and five hundred other

men were thrown out of work, three months ago. That is my third dead

child, and last. Do you think I have charity to bestow, or a morsel of

bread to spare?'

The child recoiled from the door, and it closed upon her. Impelled by

strong necessity, she knocked at another: a neighbouring one, which,

yielding to the slight pressure of her hand, flew open.

It seemed that a couple of poor families lived in this hovel, for two

women, each among children of her own, occupied different portions of

the room. In the centre, stood a grave gentleman in black who appeared

to have just entered, and who held by the arm a boy.

'Here, woman,' he said, 'here's your deaf and dumb son. You may thank

me for restoring him to you. He was brought before me, this morning,

charged with theft; and with any other boy it would have gone hard, I

assure you. But, as I had compassion on his infirmities, and thought

he might have learnt no better, I have managed to bring him back to

you. Take more care of him for the future.'

'And won't you give me back MY son!' said the other woman, hastily

rising and confronting him. 'Won't you give me back MY son, Sir, who

was transported for the same offence!'

'Was he deaf and dumb, woman?' asked the gentleman sternly.

'Was he not, Sir?'

'You know he was not.'

'He was,' cried the woman. 'He was deaf, dumb, and blind, to all that

was good and right, from his cradle. Her boy may have learnt no

better! where did mine learn better? where could he? who was there to

teach him better, or where was it to be learnt?'

'Peace, woman,' said the gentleman, 'your boy was in possession of all

his senses.'

'He was,' cried the mother; 'and he was the more easy to be led astray

because he had them. If you save this boy because he may not know

right from wrong, why did you not save mine who was never taught the

difference? You gentlemen have as good a right to punish her boy, that

God has kept in ignorance of sound and speech, as you have to punish

mine, that you kept in ignorance yourselves. How many of the girls and

boys--ah, men and women too--that are brought before you and you don't

pity, are deaf and dumb in their minds, and go wrong in that state, and

are punished in that state, body and soul, while you gentlemen are

quarrelling among yourselves whether they ought to learn this or

that?--Be a just man, Sir, and give me back my son.'

'You are desperate,' said the gentleman, taking out his snuff-box, 'and

I am sorry for you.'

'I AM desperate,' returned the woman, 'and you have made me so. Give

me back my son, to work for these helpless children. Be a just man,

Sir, and, as you have had mercy upon this boy, give me back my son!'

The child had seen and heard enough to know that this was not a place

at which to ask for alms. She led the old man softly from the door,

and they pursued their journey.

With less and less of hope or strength, as they went on, but with an

undiminished resolution not to betray by any word or sigh her sinking

state, so long as she had energy to move, the child, throughout the

remainder of that hard day, compelled herself to proceed: not even

stopping to rest as frequently as usual, to compensate in some measure

for the tardy pace at which she was obliged to walk. Evening was

drawing on, but had not closed in, when--still travelling among the

same dismal objects--they came to a busy town.

Faint and spiritless as they were, its streets were insupportable.

After humbly asking for relief at some few doors, and being repulsed,

they agreed to make their way out of it as speedily as they could, and

try if the inmates of any lone house beyond, would have more pity on

their exhausted state.

They were dragging themselves along through the last street, and the

child felt that the time was close at hand when her enfeebled powers

would bear no more. There appeared before them, at this juncture,

going in the same direction as themselves, a traveller on foot, who,

with a portmanteau strapped to his back, leaned upon a stout stick as

he walked, and read from a book which he held in his other hand.

It was not an easy matter to come up with him, and beseech his aid, for

he walked fast, and was a little distance in advance. At length, he