The Solitary House (145 page)

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.

“O 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
don 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 Inkwhich’d. I only wish I wos, myself. I don’t know why I don’t go and make a hole in the water, I’m sure I don’t.”

He says it with such a pitiable air, and his grimy tears appear so real, and he lies in the corner up against the hoarding so like a growth of fungus or any unwholesome excrescence produced there in neglect and impurity, that Allan Woodcourt is softened towards him. He says to the woman, “Miserable creature, what has he done?”

To which she only replies, shaking her head at the prostrate figure more amazedly than angrily: “O you Jo, you Jo. I have found you at last!”

“What has he done?” says Allan. “Has he robbed you?”

“No, sir, no. Robbed me? He did nothing but what was kind-hearted by me, and that’s the wonder of it.”

Allan looks from Jo to the woman, and from the woman to Jo, waiting for one of them to unravel the riddle.

“But he was along with me, sir,” says the woman,—“O you Jo!—he was along with me, sir, down at Saint Albans, ill, and a young lady Lord bless her for a good friend to me took pity on him when I durstn’t, and took him home—”

Allan shrank back from him with a sudden horror.

“Yes, sir, yes. Took him home, and made him comfortable, and like a thankless monster he ran away in the night, and never has been seen or heard of since, till I set eyes on him just now. And that young lady that was such a pretty dear, caught his illness, lost her beautiful looks, and wouldn’t hardly be known for the same young lady now, if it wasn’t for her angel temper, and her pretty shape, and her sweet voice. Do you know it? You ungrateful wretch, do you know that this is all along of you and of her goodness to you?” demands the woman, beginning to rage at him as she recalls it, and breaking into passionate tears.

The boy, in rough sort stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing his dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the ground, and to shaking from head to foot until the crazy hoarding against which he leans rattles.

Allan restrains the woman, merely by a quiet gesture, but effectually.

“Richard told me,” he falters, “—I mean I have heard of this—don’t mind me for a moment, I will speak presently.”

He turns away, and stands for a while looking out at the covered passage. When he comes back, he has recovered his composure; except that he contends against an avoidance of the boy, which is so very remarkable, that it absorbs the woman’s attention.

“You hear what she says. But get up, get up!”

Jo, shaking and chattering, slowly rises, and stands, after the manner of his tribe in a difficulty, sideways against the hoarding, resting one of his high shoulders against it, and covertly
rubbing his right hand over his left, and his left foot over his right.

“You hear what she says, and I know it’s true. Have you been here ever since?”

“Wishermaydie if I seen Tom-all-Alone’s till this blessed morning,” replies Jo, hoarsely.

“Why have you come here now?”

Jo looks all round the confined court, looks at his questioner no higher than the knees, and finally answers:

“I don’t know how to do nothink, and I can’t get nothink to do. I’m wery poor and ill, and I thought I’d come back here when there warn’t nobody about, and lay down and hide somewheres as I knows on till arter dark, and then go and beg a trifle of Mr. Snagsby. He wos allus willin fur to give me somethink he wos, though Mrs. Snagsby she was allus a chivying on me—like everybody everywheres.”

“Where have you come from?”

Jo looks all round the court again, looks at his questioner’s knees again, and concludes by laying his profile against the hoarding in a sort of resignation.

“Did you hear me ask you where you have come from?”

“Tramp then,” says Jo.

“Now, tell me,” proceeds Allan, making a strong effort to overcome his repugnance, going very near to him and leaning over him with an expression of confidence, “tell me how it came about that you left that house, when the good young lady had been so unfortunate as to pity you, and take you home.”

Jo suddenly comes out of his resignation, and excitedly declares, addressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady, that he never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, that he would sooner have hurt his own self, that he’d sooner have had his unfortnet ed chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and that she wos wery good to him, she wos. Conducting himself throughout as if in his poor fashion he really meant it, and winding up with some very miserable sobs.

Allan Woodcourt sees that this is not a sham. He constrains himself to touch him. “Come Jo. Tell me.”

“No. I dustn’t,” says Jo, relapsing into the profile state. “I dustn’t, or I would.”

“But I must know,” returns the other, “all the same. Come Jo.”

After two or three such adjurations, Jo lifts up his head again, looks round the court again, and says in a low voice, “Well, I’ll tell you something. I was took away. There!”

“Took away? In the night?”

“Ah!” Very apprehensive of being overheard, Jo looks about him, and even glances up some ten feet at the top of the hoarding, and through the cracks in it, lest the object of his distrust should be looking over, or hidden on the other side.

“Who took you away?”

“I dustn’t name him,” says Jo. “I dustn’t do it, sir.”

“But I want, in the young lady’s name, to know. You may trust me. No one else shall hear.”

“Ah, but I don’t know,” replies Jo, shaking his head fearfully, “as he
don’t
hear.”

“Why, he is not in this place.”

“Oh, ain’t he though?” says Jo. “He’s in all manner of places, all at wunst.”

Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning and good faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He patiently awaits an explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his patience than by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear.

“Aye!” says Allan. “Why, what had you been doing?”

“Nothink, sir. Never done nothink to get myself into no trouble, ’sept in not moving on and the Inkwhich. But I’m a-moving on now. I’m a-moving on to the berryin ground—that’s the move as I’m up to.”

“No, no, we will try to prevent that. But what did he do with you?”

“Put me in a horsepittle,” replied Jo, whispering, “till I was discharged, then giv me a little money—four half-bulls, wot you may call half-crowns—and ses ‘Hook it! Nobody wants you here,’ he ses. ‘You hook it. You go and tramp,’ he ses. ‘You move on,’ he ses. ‘Don’t let me ever see you nowheres within forty mile of London, or you’ll repent it.’ So I shall, if ever he does
see me, and he’ll see me if I’m above ground,” concludes Jo, nervously repeating all his former precautions and investigations.

Allan considers a little; then remarks, turning to the woman, but keeping an encouraging eye on Jo; “He is not so ungrateful as you supposed. He had a reason for going away, though it was an insufficient one.”

“Thankee, sir, thankee!” exclaims Jo. “There now! See how hard you wos upon me. But ony you tell the young lady wot the genlmn ses, and it’s all right. For
you
wos wery good to me too, and I knows it.”

“Now Jo,” says Allan, keeping his eye upon him, “come with me, and I will find you a better place than this to lie down and hide in. If I take one side of the way and you the other to avoid observation, you will not run away, I know very well, if you make me a promise.”

“I won’t, not unless I wos to see
him
a-coming, sir.”

“Very well. I take your word. Half the town is getting up by this time, and the whole town will be broad awake in another hour. Come along. Good day again, my good woman.”

“Good day again, sir, and I thank you kindly many times again.”

She has been sitting on her bag, deeply attentive, and now rises and takes it up. Jo, repeating, “Ony you tell the young lady as I never went fur to hurt her and wot the genlmn ses!” nods and shambles and shivers, and smears and blinks, and half laughs and half cries, a farewell to her, and takes his creeping way along after Allan Woodcourt, close to the houses on the opposite side of the street. In this order, the two come up out of Tom-all-Alone’s into the broad rays of the sunlight and the purer air.

*

CHAPTER 47

JO’S WILL

A
s Allan Woodcourt and Jo proceed along the streets, where the high church spires and the distances are so near and clear in the morning light that the city itself seems renewed by rest, Allan revolves in his mind how and where he shall bestow his companion. “It surely is a strange fact,” he considers, “that in the heart of a civilized world this creature in human form should be more difficult to dispose of than an unowned dog.” But it is none the less a fact because of its strangeness, and the difficulty remains.

At first, he looks behind him often, to assure himself that Jo is still really following. But look where he will, he still beholds him close to the opposite houses, making his way with his wary hand from brick to brick and from door to door, and often, as he creeps along, glancing over at him, watchfully. Soon satisfied that the last thing in his thoughts is to give him the slip, Allan goes on; considering with a less divided attention what he shall do.