Bleak House
him, but Ada loves him as we cannot. I will tell her what you say.
Thank you, and God bless you, in her name!”
Richard came back as we finished exchanging these hurried words and
gave me his arm to take me to the coach.
“Woodcourt,” he said, unconscious with what application, “pray let us
meet in London!”
“Meet?” returned the other. “I have scarcely a friend there now but
you. Where shall I find you?”
“Why, I must get a lodging of some sort,” said Richard, pondering.
“Say at Vholes’s, Symond’s Inn.”
“Good! Without loss of time.”
They shook hands heartily. When I was seated in the coach and Richard
was yet standing in the street, Mr. Woodcourt laid his friendly hand
on Richard’s shoulder and looked at me. I understood him and waved
mine in thanks.
And in his last look as we drove away, I saw that he was very sorry
for me. I was glad to see it. I felt for my old self as the dead may
feel if they ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be tenderly
remembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite forgotten.
CHAPTER XLVI
Stop Him!
Darkness rests upon Tom-All-Alone’s. Dilating and dilating since the
sun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills
every void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon lights
burning, as the lamp of life hums in Tom-all-Alone’s, heavily,
heavily, in the nauseous air, and winking—as that lamp, too, winks
in Tom-all-Alone’s—at many horrible things. But they are blotted
out. The moon has eyed Tom with a dull cold stare, as admitting some
puny emulation of herself in his desert region unfit for life and
blasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on and is gone. The
blackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on Tom-all-Alone’s,
and Tom is fast asleep.
Much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of
Parliament, concerning Tom, and much wrathful disputation how Tom
shall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by
constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of
figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by
low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to splitting
trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind or
whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the midst of
which dust and noise there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit,
that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according
to somebody’s theory but nobody’s practice. And in the hopeful
meantime, Tom goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined
spirit.
But he has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers, and they
serve him in these hours of darkness. There is not a drop of Tom’s
corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere. It
shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream (in which chemists
on analysis would find the genuine nobility) of a Norman house, and
his Grace shall not be able to say nay to the infamous alliance.
There is not an atom of Tom’s slime, not a cubic inch of any
pestilential gas in which he lives, not one obscenity or degradation
about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his
committing, but shall work its retribution through every order of
society up to the proudest of the proud and to the highest of the
high. Verily, what with tainting, plundering, and spoiling, Tom has
his revenge.
It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone’s be uglier by day or by
night, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more
shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination
is at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day carries it.
The day begins to break now; and in truth it might be better for the
national glory even that the sun should sometimes set upon the
British dominions than that it should ever rise upon so vile a wonder
as Tom.
A brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some inaptitude for sleep
to be wandering abroad rather than counting the hours on a restless
pillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. Attracted by
curiosity, he often pauses and looks about him, up and down the
miserable by-ways. Nor is he merely curious, for in his bright dark
eye there is compassionate interest; and as he looks here and there,
he seems to understand such wretchedness and to have studied it
before.
On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street
of Tom-all-Alone’s, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut
up and silent. No waking creature save himself appears except in one
direction, where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting on a
door-step. He walks that way. Approaching, he observes that she has
journeyed a long distance and is footsore and travel-stained. She
sits on the door-step in the manner of one who is waiting, with her
elbow on her knee and her head upon her hand. Beside her is a canvas
bag, or bundle, she has carried. She is dozing probably, for she
gives no heed to his steps as he comes toward her.
The broken footway is so narrow that when Allan Woodcourt comes to
where the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pass her.
Looking down at her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops.
“What is the matter?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Can’t you make them hear? Do you want to be let in?”
“I’m waiting till they get up at another house—a lodging-house—not
here,” the woman patiently returns. “I’m waiting here because there
will be sun here presently to warm me.”
“I am afraid you are tired. I am sorry to see you sitting in the
street.”
“Thank you, sir. It don’t matter.”
A habit in him of speaking to the poor and of avoiding patronage or
condescension or childishness (which is the favourite device, many
people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little
spelling books) has put him on good terms with the woman easily.
“Let me look at your forehead,” he says, bending down. “I am a
doctor. Don’t be afraid. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.”
He knows that by touching her with his skilful and accustomed hand he
can soothe her yet more readily. She makes a slight objection,
saying, “It’s nothing”; but he has scarcely laid his fingers on the
wounded place when she lifts it up to the light.
“Aye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. This must be very
sore.”
“It do ache a little, sir,” returns the woman with a started tear
upon her cheek.
“Let me try to make it more comfortable. My handkerchief won’t hurt
you.”
“Oh, dear no, sir, I’m sure of that!”
He cleanses the injured place and dries it, and having carefully
examined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes a
small case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While he is
thus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a surgery
in the street, “And so your husband is a brickmaker?”
“How do you know that, sir?” asks the woman, astonished.
“Why, I suppose so from the colour of the clay upon your bag and on
your dress. And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework in
different places. And I am sorry to say I have known them cruel to
their wives too.”
The woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she would deny that her
injury is referable to such a cause. But feeling the hand upon her
forehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops
them again.
“Where is he now?” asks the surgeon.
“He got into trouble last night, sir; but he’ll look for me at the
lodging-house.”
“He will get into worse trouble if he often misuses his large and
heavy hand as he has misused it here. But you forgive him, brutal as
he is, and I say no more of him, except that I wish he deserved it.
You have no young child?”
The woman shakes her head. “One as I calls mine, sir, but it’s
Liz’s.”
“Your own is dead. I see! Poor little thing!”
By this time he has finished and is putting up his case. “I suppose
you have some settled home. Is it far from here?” he asks,
good-humouredly making light of what he has done as she gets up and
curtsys.
“It’s a good two or three and twenty mile from here, sir. At Saint
Albans. You know Saint Albans, sir? I thought you gave a start like,
as if you did.”
“Yes, I know something of it. And now I will ask you a question in
return. Have you money for your lodging?”
“Yes, sir,” she says, “really and truly.” And she shows it. He tells
her, in acknowledgment of her many subdued thanks, that she is very
welcome, gives her good day, and walks away. Tom-all-Alone’s is still
asleep, and nothing is astir.
Yes, something is! As he retraces his way to the point from which he
descried the woman at a distance sitting on the step, he sees a
ragged figure coming very cautiously along, crouching close to the
soiled walls—which the wretchedest figure might as well avoid—and
furtively thrusting a hand before it. It is the figure of a youth
whose face is hollow and whose eyes have an emaciated glare. He is so
intent on getting along unseen that even the apparition of a stranger
in whole garments does not tempt him to look back. He shades his face
with his ragged elbow as he passes on the other side of the way, and
goes shrinking and creeping on with his anxious hand before him and
his shapeless clothes hanging in shreds. Clothes made for what
purpose, or of what material, it would be impossible to say. They
look, in colour and in substance, like a bundle of rank leaves of
swampy growth that rotted long ago.
Allan Woodcourt pauses to look after him and note all this, with a
shadowy belief that he has seen the boy before. He cannot recall how
or where, but there is some association in his mind with such a form.
He imagines that he must have seen it in some hospital or refuge,
still, cannot make out why it comes with any special force on his
remembrance.
He is gradually emerging from Tom-all-Alone’s in the morning light,
thinking about it, when he hears running feet behind him, and looking
round, sees the boy scouring towards him at great speed, followed by
the woman.
“Stop him, stop him!” cries the woman, almost breathless. “Stop him,
sir!”
He darts across the road into the boy’s path, but the boy is quicker
than he, makes a curve, ducks, dives under his hands, comes up
half-a-dozen yards beyond him, and scours away again. Still the woman
follows, crying, “Stop him, sir, pray stop him!” Allan, not knowing
but that he has just robbed her of her money, follows in chase and
runs so hard that he runs the boy down a dozen times, but each time
he repeats the curve, the duck, the dive, and scours away again. To
strike at him on any of these occasions would be to fell and disable
him, but the pursuer cannot resolve to do that, and so the grimly
ridiculous pursuit continues. At last the fugitive, hard-pressed,
takes to a narrow passage and a court which has no thoroughfare.
Here, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is brought to bay and
tumbles down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who stands and gasps at
him until the woman comes up.
“Oh, you, Jo!” cries the woman. “What? I have found you at last!”
“Jo,” repeats Allan, looking at him with attention, “Jo! Stay. To be
sure! I recollect this lad some time ago being brought before the
coroner.”
“Yes, I see you once afore at the inkwhich,” whimpers Jo. “What of
that? Can’t you never let such an unfortnet as me alone? An’t I
unfortnet enough for you yet? How unfortnet do you want me fur to be?
I’ve been a-chivied and a-chivied, fust by one on you and nixt by
another on you, till I’m worritted to skins and bones. The inkwhich
warn’t MY fault. I done nothink. He wos wery good to me, he wos; he
wos the only one I knowed to speak to, as ever come across my
crossing. It ain’t wery likely I should want him to be inkwhiched. I