Chapter 31

Nurse And Patient

Ihad not been at home again many days, when one evening I

went upstairs into my own room to take a peep over Charley's

shoulder, and see how she was getting on with her copy-book.

Writing was a trying business to Charley, who seemed to have no

natural power over a pen, but in whose hand every pen appeared

to become perversely animated, and to go wrong and crooked, and

to stop, and splash, and sidle into corners, like a saddle-donkey. It

was very odd, to see what old letters Charley's young hand made;

they, so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and tottering; it, so plump and

round. Yet Charley was uncommonly expert at other things, and

had as nimble little fingers as I ever watched.

"Well, Charley," said I, looking over a copy of the letter O in

which it was represented as square, triangular, pear-shaped, and

collapsed in all kinds of ways, "we are improving. If we only get to

make it round, we shall be perfect, Charley."

Then I made one, and Charley made one, and the pen wouldn't

join Charley's neatly, but twisted it up into a knot.

"Never mind, Charley. We shall do it in time."

Charley laid down her pen, the copy being finished; opened and

shut her cramped little hand; looked gravely at the page, half in

pride and half in doubt; and got up, and dropped me a curtsey.

"Thank you, miss. If you please, miss, did you know a poor

person of the name of Jenny?"

"A brickmaker's wife, Charley? Yes."

"She came and spoke to me when I was out a little while ago,

and said you knew her, miss. She asked me if I wasn't the young

lady's little maid-meaning you for the young lady, miss-and I

said yes, miss."

"I thought she had left this neighbourhood altogether,

Charley."

"So she had, miss, but she's come back again to where she used

to live-she and Liz. Did you know another poor person of the

name of Liz, miss?"

"I think I do, Charley, though not by name."

"That's what she said!" returned Charley. "They have both

come back, miss, and have been tramping high and low."

"Tramping high and low, have they, Charley?"

"Yes, miss." If Charley could only have made the letters in her

copy as round as the eyes with which she looked into my face, they

would have been excellent. "And this poor person came about the

house three or four days, hoping to get a glimpse of you, miss-all

she wanted, she said-but you were away. That was when she saw

me. She saw me a going about, miss," said Charley, with a short

laugh of the greatest delight and pride, "and she thought I looked

like your maid!"

"Did she though, really, Charley?"

"Yes, miss!" said Charley, "really and truly." And Charley, with

another short laugh of the purest glee, made her eyes very round

again, and looked as serious as became my maid. I was never tired

of seeing Charley in the full enjoyment of that great dignity,

standing before me with her youthful face and figure, and her

steady manner, and her childish exultation breaking through it

now and then in the pleasantest way."And where did you see her, Charley?" said I.

My little maid's countenance fell, as she replied, "By the

doctor's shop, miss." For Charley wore her black frock yet.

I asked if the brickmaker's wife were ill, but Charley said No. It

was some one else. Some one in her cottage who had tramped

down to Saint Alban's, and was tramping he didn't know where. A

poor boy, Charley said. No father, no mother, no any one. "Like as

Tom might have been, miss, if Emma and me had died after

father," said Charley, her round eyes filling with tears.

"And she was getting medicine for him, Charley?"

"She said, miss," returned Charley, "how that he had once done

as much for her."

My little maid's face was so eager, and her quiet hands were

folded so closely in one another as she stood looking at me, that I

had no great difficulty in reading her thoughts. "Well, Charley,"

said I, "it appears to me that you and I can do no better than go

round to Jenny's and see what's the matter."

The alacrity with which Charley brought my bonnet and veil,

and, having dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm

shawl and made herself look like a little old woman, sufficiently

expressed her readiness. So Charley and I, without saying

anything to any one, went out.

It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shuddered in the wind.

The rain had been thick and heavy all day, and with little

intermission for many days. None was falling just then, however.

The sky had partly cleared, but was very gloomy-even above us,

where a few stars were shining. In the north and northwest, where

the sun had set three hours before, there was a pale dead light

both beautiful and awful; and into it long sullen lines of cloud waved up, like a sea strickenimmovable as it was heaving.

Towards London, a lurid glare overhung the whole dark waste;

and the contrast between these two lights, and the fancy which the

redder light engendered of an unearthly fire, gleaming on all the

unseen buildings of the city, and on all the faces of its many

thousands of wondering inhabitants, was as solemn as might be.

I had no thought, that night-none, I am quite sure-of what

was soon to happen to me. But I have always remembered since,

that when we had stopped at the garden gate to look up at the sky,

and when we went upon our way, I had for a moment an

undefinable impression of myself as being something different

from what I then was. I know it was then, and there, that I had it. I

have ever since connected the feeling with that spot and time, and

with everything associated with that spot and time, to the distant

voices in the town, the barking of a dog, and the sound of wheels

coming down the miry hill.

It was Saturday night; and most of the people belonging to the

place where we were going, were drinking elsewhere. We found it

quieter than I had previously seen it, though quite as miserable.

The kilns were burning, and a stifling vapour set towards us with a

pale blue glare.

We came to the cottage, where there was a feeble candle in the

patched window. We tapped at the door and went in. The mother

of the little child who had died, was sitting in a chair on one side of

the poor fire by the bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy,

supported by the chimney-piece, was cowering on the floor. He

held under his arm, like a little bundle, a fragment of a fur cap;

and as he tried to warm himself, he shook until the crazy door and

window shook. The place was closer than before, and had an unhealthy, and a very peculiar smell.

I had not lifted my veil when I first spoke to the woman, which

was at the moment of our going in. The boy staggered up instantly,

and stared at me with a remarkable expression of surprise and

terror.

His action was so quick, and my being the cause of it was so

evident, that I stood still, instead of advancing nearer.

"I won't go no more to the berryin ground," muttered the boy;

"I ain't a-going there, so I tell you!"

I lifted my veil and spoke to the woman. She said to me in a low

voice, "Don't mind him, ma'am. He'll soon come back to his head;"

and said to him, "Jo, Jo, what's the matter?"

"I know wot she's come for!" cried the boy.

"Who?"

"The lady there. She's come to get me to go along with her to

the berryin ground. I won't go to the berryin ground. I don't like

the name of it. She might go a-berryin me!" His shivering came on

again, and as he leaned against the wall, he shook the hovel.

"He has been talking off and on about such like, all day,

ma'am," said Jenny, softly. "Why, how you stare! This is my lady,

Jo."

"Is it?" returned the boy, doubtfully, and surveying me with his

arm held out above his burning eyes. "She looks to me the t'other

one. It ain't the bonnet, nor yet it ain't the gownd, but she looks to

me the t'other one."

My little Charley, with her premature experience of illness and

trouble, had pulled off her bonnet and shawl, and now went

quietly up to him with a chair, and sat him down in it, like an old

sick nurse. Except that no such attendant could have shown him Charley's youthful face, which seemed to engage his confidence.

"I say!" said the boy. "You tell me. Ain't the lady the t'other

lady?"

Charley shook her head, as she methodically drew his rags

about him and made him as warm as she could.

"O!" the boy muttered. "Then I 'spose she ain't."

"I came to see if I could do you any good," said I. "What is the

matter with you?"

"I'm a-being froze," returned the boy hoarsely, with his

haggard gaze wandering about me, "and then burnt up, and then

froze, and then burnt up, ever so many times in a hour. And my

head's all sleepy, and all a-going mad-like-and I'm so dry-and

my bones isn't half so much bones as pain."

"When did he come here?" I asked the woman.

"This morning, ma'am, I found him at the corner of the town. I

had known him up in London yonder. Hadn't I, Jo?"

"Tom-all-Alone's," the boy replied.

Whenever he fixed his attention or his eyes, it was only for a

very little while. He soon began to droop his head again, and roll it

heavily, and speak as if he were half awake.

"When did he come from London?" I asked.

"I come from London yes'day," said the boy himself, now

flushed and hot. "I'm a-going somewheres."

"Where is he going?" I asked.

"Somewheres," repeated the boy, in a louder tone. "I have been

moved on, and moved on, more nor ever I was afore, since the

t'other one giv' me the sov'ring. Mrs Snagsby, she's always a-

watching, and a-driving of me-what have I done to her?-and

they're all a-watching and a-driving of me. Every one of 'em's doing of it, from the time when I don't get up, to the time when I

don't go to bed. And I'm a going somewheres. That's where I'm a-

going. She told me, down in Tom-all-Alone's, as she come from

Stolbuns, and so I took the Stolbuns Road. It's as good as

another."

He always concluded by addressing Charley.

"What is to be done with him?" said I, taking the woman aside.

"He could not travel in this state, even if he had a purpose, and

knew where he was going!"

"I know no more, ma'am, than the dead," she replied, glancing

compassionately at him. "Perhaps the dead know better if they

could only tell us. I've kept him here all day for pity's sake, and

I've given him broth and physic, and Liz is gone to try if any one

will take him in (here's my pretty in the bed-her child, but I call it

mine); but I can't keep him long, for if my husband was to come

home and find him here, he'd be rough in putting him out, and

might do him a hurt. Hark! Here comes Liz back!"

The other woman came hurriedly" title="ad.仓促地，忙乱地">hurriedly in as she spoke, and the boy

got up with a half obscured sense that he was expected to be

going. When the little child awoke, and when and how Charley got

at it, took it out of bed, and began to walk about hushing it, I don't

know. There she was, doing all this, in a quiet motherly manner,

as if she were living in Mrs Blinder's attic with Tom and Emma

again.

The friend had been here and there, and had been played about

from hand to hand, and had come back as she went. At first it was

too early for the boy to be received into the proper refuge, and at

least it was too late. One official sent her to another, and the other

sent her back again to the first, and so backward and forward;until it appeared to me as if both must have been appointed for

their skill in evading their duties, instead of performing them. And

now, after all, she said, breathing quickly, for she had been

running, and was frightened too, "Jenny, your master's on the

road home, and mine's not far behind, and the Lord help the boy,

for we can do no more for him!" They put a few half-pence

together, and hurried them into his hand, and so, in an oblivious,

half-thankful, half-insensible way, he shuffled out of the house.

"Give me the child, my dear!" said its mother to Charley, "and

thank you kindly too! Jenny, woman dear, good night! Young lady,

if my master don't fall out with me, I'll look down by the kiln by-

and-bye, where the boy will be most like, and again in the

morning!" She hurried off; and presently we passed her hushing

and singing to her child at her own door, and looking anxiously

along the road for her drunken husband.

I was afraid of staying then to speak to either woman, lest I

should bring her into trouble. But I said to Charley that we must

not leave the boy to die. Charley, who knew what to do much

better than I did, and whose quickness equalled her presence of

mind, glided on before me, and presently we came up with Jo, just

short of the brick-kiln.

I think he must have begun his journey with some small bundle

under his arm, and must have had it stolen or lost it. For he still

carried his wretched fragment of fur cap like a bundle, though he

went bare-headed through the rain, which now fell fast. He

stopped when we called to him, and again showed a dread of me

when I came up; standing with his lustrous eyes fixed upon me,

and even arrested in his shivering fit.

I asked him to come with us, and we would take care that he had some shelter for the night.

"I don't want no shelter," he said; "I can lay amongst the warm

bricks."

"But don't you know that people die there?" returned Charley.

"They dies everywheres," said the boy. "They dies in their

lodgings-she knows where; I showed her-and they dies down in

Tom-all-Alone's in heaps. They dies more than they lives,

according to what I see." Then he hoarsely whispered Charley. "If

she ain't the t'other one, she ain't the forrenner. Is there three of

'em then?"

Charley looked at me a little frightened. I felt half frightened at

myself when the boy glared on me so.

But he turned and followed when I beckoned to him; and

finding that he acknowledged that influence in me, I led the way

straight home. It was not far; only at the summit of the hill. We

passed but one man. I doubted if we should have got home

without assistance; the boy's steps were so uncertain and

tremulous. He made no complaint, however, and was strangely

unconcerned about himself, if I may say so strange a thing.

Leaving him in the hall for a moment, shrunk into a corner of

the window-seat, and staring with an indifference that could

scarcely be called wonder, at the comfort and brightness about

him, I went into the drawing-room to speak to my Guardian. There

I found Mr Skimpole, who had come down by the coach, as he

frequently did without notice, and never bringing any clothes with

him, but always borrowing everything he wanted.

They came out with me directly, to look at the boy. The

servants had gathered in the hall, too; and he shivered in the

window-seat with Charley standing by him, like some wounded animal that had been found in a ditch.

"This is a sorrowful case," said my Guardian, after asking him a

question or two, and touching him, and examining his eyes. "What

do you say, Harold?"

"You had better turn him out," said Mr Skimpole.

"What do you mean?" inquired my Guardian, almost sternly.

"My dear Jarndyce," said Mr Skimpole, "you know what I am: I

am a child. Be cross to me, if I deserve it. But I have a

constitutional objection to this sort of thing. I always had, when I

was a medical man. He's not safe, you know. There's a very bad

sort of fever about him."

Mr Skimpole had retreated from the hall to the drawing-room

again, and said this in his airy way, seated on the music-stool as

we stood by.

"You'll say it's childish," observed Mr Skimpole, looking gaily

at us. "Well, I dare say it may be; but I am a child, and I never

pretend to be anything else. If you put him out in the road, you

only put him where he was before. He will be no worse off than he

was, you know. Even make him better off, if you like. Give him

sixpence, or five shillings, or five pound ten-you are

arithmeticians, and I am not-and get rid of him!"

"And what is he to do then?" asked my Guardian.

"Upon my life," said Mr Skimpole, shrugging his shoulders with

his engaging smile, "I have not the least idea what he is to do then.

But I have no doubt he'll do it."

"Now, is it not a horrible reflection," said my Guardian, to

whom I had hastily explained the unavailing efforts of the two

women, "is it not a horrible reflection," walking up and down and

rumpling his hair, "that if this wretched creature were a convicted prisoner, his hospital would be wide open to him, and he would be

as well taken care of as any sick boy in the kingdom."

"My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr Skimpole, "you'll pardon the

simplicity of the question, coming as it does from a creature who is

perfectly simple in worldly matters-but, why isn't he a prisoner

then?"

My Guardian stopped and looked at him with a whimsical

mixture of amusement and indignation in his face.

"Our young friend is not to be suspected of any delicacy, I

should imagine," said Mr Skimpole, unabashed and candid. "It

seems to me that it would be wiser, as well as in a certain kind of

way more respectable, if he showed some misdirected energy that

got him into prison. There would be more of an adventurous spirit

in it, and consequently more of a certain sort of poetry."

"I believe," returned my Guardian, resuming his uneasy walk,

"that there is not such another child on earth as yourself."

"Do you really?" said Mr Skimpole; "I dare say! But, I confess I

don't see why our young friend, in his degree, should not seek to

invest himself with such poetry as is open to him. He is no doubt

born with an appetite-probably, when he is in a safer state of

health, he has an excellent appetite. Very well. At our young

friend's natural dinner hour, most likely about noon, our young

friend says in effect to society, 'I am hungry; will you have the

goodness to produce your spoon, and feed me?' Society, which has

taken upon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of

spoons, and professes to have a spoon for our young friend, does