NOT as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I will come upon it by
degrees. The natural manner, after all, for God knows that is how it
came upon me.
My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my infant home was
a cellar in Preston. I recollect the sound of father’s Lancashire clogs
on the street pavement above, as being different in my young hearing from
the sound of all other clogs; and I recollect, that, when mother came
down the cellar-steps, I used tremblingly to speculate on her feet having
a good or an ill-tempered look,—on her knees,—on her waist,—until finally
her face came into view, and settled the question. From this it will be
seen that I was timid, and that the cellar-steps were steep, and that the
doorway was very low.
Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon her
figure, and not least of all upon her voice. Her sharp and high-pitched
words were squeezed out of her, as by the compression of bony fingers on
a leathern bag; and she had a way of rolling her eyes about and about the
cellar, as she scolded, that was gaunt and hungry. Father, with his
shoulders rounded, would sit quiet on a three-legged stool, looking at
the empty grate, until she would pluck the stool from under him, and bid
him go bring some money home. Then he would dismally ascend the steps;
and I, holding my ragged shirt and trousers together with a hand (my only
braces), would feint and dodge from mother’s pursuing grasp at my hair.
A worldly little devil was mother’s usual name for me. Whether I cried
for that I was in the dark, or for that it was cold, or for that I was
hungry, or whether I squeezed myself into a warm corner when there was a
fire, or ate voraciously when there was food, she would still say, ‘O,
you worldly little devil!’ And the sting of it was, that I quite well
knew myself to be a worldly little devil. Worldly as to wanting to be
housed and warmed, worldly as to wanting to be fed, worldly as to the
greed with which I inwardly compared how much I got of those good things
with how much father and mother got, when, rarely, those good things were
going.
Sometimes they both went away seeking work; and then I would be locked up
in the cellar for a day or two at a time. I was at my worldliest then.
Left alone, I yielded myself up to a worldly yearning for enough of
anything (except misery), and for the death of mother’s father, who was a
machine-maker at Birmingham, and on whose decease, I had heard mother
say, she would come into a whole courtful of houses ‘if she had her
rights.’ Worldly little devil, I would stand about, musingly fitting my
cold bare feet into cracked bricks and crevices of the damp
cellar-floor,—walking over my grandfather’s body, so to speak, into the
courtful of houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes to
wear.
At last a change came down into our cellar. The universal change came
down even as low as that,—so will it mount to any height on which a human
creature can perch,—and brought other changes with it.
We had a heap of I don’t know what foul litter in the darkest corner,
which we called ‘the bed.’ For three days mother lay upon it without
getting up, and then began at times to laugh. If I had ever heard her
laugh before, it had been so seldom that the strange sound frightened me.
It frightened father too; and we took it by turns to give her water.
Then she began to move her head from side to side, and sing. After that,
she getting no better, father fell a-laughing and a-singing; and then
there was only I to give them both water, and they both died.