Lost in London.
London in a fog is too well known to require description. In an uncommonly thick fog, on a day in December of the following year, Mrs Matterby hurried along Fleet Street in the direction of the city, leading Jack by the hand. Both were very wet, very cold, ravenously hungry, and rather poorly clad. It was evident that things had not prospered with the widow.
“Dear Jack,” she said in a choking voice, as they hurried along the streets towards the wretched abode in the Tower Hamlets to which they had been at length reduced, “dear Jack, my last human hope has failed. Mr Block has told me that I need not go there again; he has no more work for me.”
Jack’s experience of life was too limited to enable him to understand fully the depth of distress to which his mother had fallen—with health broken, money expended, and work not to be had except on terms which rendered life a misery, and prolonged existence almost an impossibility. But Jack’s power of sympathy was strong and his passions were vehement.
“Mother,” he said, with tearful eyes, as he clung closer to her side, “I would kill Mr Block if I could!”
“Hush, dear boy! You know that would be wrong and could do no good. It is sinful even to feel such a desire.”
“How can I help it, mother!” returned Jack indignantly. Then he asked, “What are we going to do now, mother?”
For some time the poor widow did not reply; then she spoke in a low tone, as if murmuring to herself, “The last sixpence gone; the cupboard empty; nothing—nothing left to pawn—”
She stopped short, and glanced hastily at her marriage ring.
“Mother,” said Jack, “have you not often told me that God will not forsake us? Does it not seem as if He had forsaken us now?”
“It only seems like it, darling,” returned the widow hurriedly. “We don’t understand His ways. ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him!’”
It seemed as if God were about to test the faith of His servant, for at that moment a cab drove furiously round the corner of a street and knocked her down. Jack was overturned at the same time. Recovering himself, instantly, he found his mother in a state of unconsciousness, with blood flowing from a deep cut in her forehead. In a state of semi-bewilderment the poor boy followed the stretcher on which Mrs Matterby was carried to the nearest hospital, where he waited while his mother’s injuries were examined.
“My boy,” said a young surgeon, returning to the waiting room, and patting Jack’s head, “your mother has been rather badly hurt. We must keep her here to look after her. I daresay we shall soon make her well. Meanwhile you had better run home, and tell your father—if, that is—your father is at home, I suppose?”
“No, sir; father’s dead.”
“Well then your sister or aunt—I suppose there’s some relative at home older than yourself?”
“No, sir; none but mother an’ me,” whispered Jack.
“No relations of any kind at all in London?”
“None, sir. We know nobody—at least not many, and they’re all strangers.”
“A sad case,” murmured the surgeon. “Your mother is poor, I suppose?”
“Very poor, sir.”
“But of course you have a home of some sort, somewhere?”
“Yes, it’s not far from here.”
“Well, them, you’d better go home just now, for you can’t see your mother to-night. We dare not let her speak, but come back early to-morrow, and you shall hear about her—perhaps see her. Here, put that in your pocket.”
Poor Jack took the shilling which the sympathetic surgeon thrust into his hand, and ran home in a state bordering on distraction; but it was not till he entered the shabby little room which he had begun to consider “home” that he realised the full weight of the calamity that had befallen him. No mother’s voice to welcome him; no bit of fire in the grate to warm; no singing kettle to cheer, or light of candle to dispel the gloom of rapidly approaching night.
It was Christmas Day too. In the morning he had gone forth with his mother—she in the sanguine hope of renewing an engagement in a clothier’s shop, which terminated that day; he in the expectation of getting a few jobs of some sort—messages to run or horses to hold. Such were the circumstances to which they had been reduced in twelve months, Jack had arranged to call for his mother and walk home with her. On the way they were to invest a very small part of the widow’s earnings in “something nice” for their Christmas supper, and spend the evening together, chatting about the old home in Blackby, and father, and Natty Grove, and Nellie, and old Nell, in the happy days gone by.
“And now!” thought Jack, seating himself on his little bed and glancing at that of his mother, which stood empty in the opposite corner—“now!—”
But Jack could think no more. A tremendous agony rent his breast, and a sharp cry escaped from him as he flung himself on his bed and burst into a passion of tears.
Child-like, he sobbed himself to sleep, and did not awake till the sun was high next morning. It was some time before he could recall what had occurred. When he did so he began to weep afresh. Leaping up, he was about to rush out of the house and make for the hospital, when he was checked at the door by the landlord—a hard, grinding, heartless man, who grew rich in oppressing the poor.
“You seem to be in a hurry, youngster,” he said, dragging the boy back by the collar, and looking hurriedly round the room. “I’ve come for the rent. Where’s your mother?”
In a sobbing voice Jack told him about the accident.
“Well, I don’t really believe you,” said the man, with an angry frown; “but I’ll soon find out if you’re telling lies. I’ll go to the hospital and inquire for myself. D’ee know anything about your mother’s affairs?”
“No, sir,” said Jack, meekly, for he began to entertain a vague terror of the man.
“No; I thought not. Well, I’ll enlighten you. Your mother owes me three weeks’ rent of this here room, and has got nothing to pay it with, as far as I knows, except these sticks o’ furniture. Now, if your mother is really in hospital, I’ll come back here and bundle you out, an’ sell the furniture to pay my rent. I ain’t a-goin’ to be done out o’ my money because your mother chooses to git run’d over.”
The landlord did not wait for a reply, but went out and slammed the door.
Jack followed him in silent horror. He watched him while he inquired at the gate of the hospital, and, after he had gone, went up timidly, rang the bell, and asked for his mother.
“Mrs Matterby?” repeated the porter. “Come in; I’ll make inquiry.”
The report which he brought back fell like the blow of a sledge-hammer on the poor boy’s heart. His mother, they told him, was dead. She had died suddenly in the night.
There are times of affliction, when the human soul fails to find relief in tears or cries. Poor Jack Matterby stood for some time motionless, as if paralysed, with glaring eyes and a face not unlike to that of death. They sought to rouse him, but he could not speak. Suddenly, observing the front door open, he darted out into the street and ran straight home, where he flung himself on his mother’s bed, and burst into an uncontrollable flood of tears. By degrees the passion subsided, leaving only a stunned feeling behind, under the influence of which he lay perfectly still.
The first thing that roused him was the sound of a heavy foot on the stair. The memory of the landlord flashed into his mind and filled him with indescribable dread—dread caused partly by the man’s savage aspect and nature, but much more by the brutal way in which he had spoken about his mother. The only way in which to avoid a meeting was to rush past the man on the stair. Fear and loathing made the poor boy forget, for the moment, his crushing sorrow. He leaped up, opened the door, and, dashing downstairs, almost overturned the man who was coming up. Once in the street, he ran straight on without thought, until he felt that he was safe from pursuit. Then he stopped, and sat down on a door-step&m............