HOW THOMAS DID AND FARED.
I flatter myself that my reader is not very much interested in Thomas;
I never meant he should be yet. I confess, however, that I am now
girding up my loins with the express intention of beginning to interest
him if I can. For I have now almost reached the point of his history
which I myself feel to verge on the interesting. When a worthless
fellow begins to meet with his deserts, then we begin to be aware that
after all he is our own flesh and blood. Our human heart begins to feel
just the least possible yearning toward him. We hope he will be well
trounced, but we become capable of hoping that it may not be lost upon
him. At least we are content to hear something more about him.
When Thomas left the gambling-house that dreary morning, he must have
felt very much as the devil must feel. For he had plenty of money
and no home. He had actually on this raw morning, when nature seemed
to be nothing but a drizzle diluted with gray fog, nowhere to go to.
More, indeed; he had a good many places, including the principal
thoroughfares of London, where he must not go. There was one other
place which he did all he could to keep out of, and that was the
place where the little thinking that was considered necessary in his
establishment was carried on. He could not help peeping in at the
window, however, and now and then putting his ear to the keyhole. And
what did he hear? That he, Thomas Worboise, gentlemen, was a thief, a
coward, a sneak. Now, when Thomas heard this, for the first time in
his life, his satisfaction with himself gave way utterly; nor could
all his admiration for Lara or the Corsair--I really forget whether
they are not one and the same phantom--reconcile him to become one
of the fraternity. The Corsair at least would not have sold Medora's
ring to save his life. Up to this point, he had never seen himself
contemptible. Nor even now could he feel it much, for, weary and sick,
all he wanted was some place to lay down his head and go to sleep in.
After he had slept, he would begin to see things as they were, and,
once admitted possible that he could do an ungentlemanly action, fresh
accusations from quarters altogether unsuspected of unfriendliness
would be lodged in that court of which I have already spoken. But for
a time mere animal self-preservation would keep the upper hand. He
was conscious of an inclination to dive into every court that he came
near--of a proclivity toward the darkness. This was the same Thomas
Worboise that used to face the sunshine in gay attire, but never let
the sun farther in than his brain; so the darkness within him had come
at last to the outside, and swathed all in its funereal folds. Till
a man's indwelling darkness is destroyed by the deep-going light of
truth, he walks in darkness, and the sooner this darkness comes out in
action and shows itself to be darkness, the better for the man. The
presence of this darkness, however, is sooner recognized by one man
than by another. To one the darkness within him is made manifest by a
false compliment he has just paid to a pretty girl; to Thomas it could
only be revealed by theft and the actual parting for money with the
jewel given him by a girl whom he loved as much as he could love, which
was not much--yet; to a third--not murder, perjury, hypocrisy, hanging,
will reveal it; he will go into the other world from the end of a rope,
not mistaking darkness for light, but knowing that it is what it is,
and that it is his, and yet denying the possession of the one, and
asserting the possession of the other.
Thomas forgot all about where he was, till suddenly he found himself
far west in the Strand. The light of the world was coming nearer; no
policeman was in sight: and the archway leading down under the Adelphi
yawned like the mouth of hell at his side. He darted into it. But
no sooner was he under the arches than he wished himself out again.
Strange forms of misery and vice were coming to life here and there in
the darkness where they had slept away the night. He was of their sort,
yet he did not like his own kin. Nay, some of them might be worthy
compared to him, yet he shrunk from them. He rushed out. Heaven was
full of lights and hell was full of horrors; where was his own place?
He hurried back toward the city.
But as the light grew his terror increased. There was no ground for
immediate alarm, for no one yet knew what he had done; but with the
light discovery drew nearer. When he reached Farringdon Street he
turned down toward Blackfriars Bridge, then eastward again by Earl
Street into Thames Street. He felt safer where the streets were narrow,
and the houses rose high to shut out the dayspring, which the Lord says
to Job he had "caused to know his place, that it might take hold of the
ends of the earth," like a napkin, "that the wicked might be shaken
out of it." He hurried on, not yet knowing what he was, only seeing
revelation at hand clothed in terror. And the end of it was, that he
buried his head in the public-house where the mischief of the preceding
night had begun, and was glad to lie down in a filthy bed. The ways of
transgressors are always hard in the end. Happy they who find them hard
in the beginning.
Ill at ease as he was, both in body and mind, he was yet so worn
out that he fell fast asleep; and still on the stream of sleep went
drifting toward the vengeance that awaited him--the vengeance of seeing
himself as he was.
When he woke, it was afternoon. He had to make several efforts before
his recollection combined with his observation to tell him where he
was. He felt, however, that a horror was coming, and when it came his
whole being was crushed before it. It must be confessed, however, that
it was the disgrace, and not the sin, that troubled him. But honor,
although a poor substitute for honesty or religion, is yet something;
and the fear of disgrace is a good sword to hang over the heads of
those who need such attendance. Thomas's heart burned like a hot coal
with shame. In vain he tried to persuade himself, in vain he partially
succeeded in persuading himself, that he was not himself when he took
the money. Allowing whatever excuse might lie in the state to which he
had first brought himself, he knew that no defense of that sort would
have any influence in restoring to him the place he had lost. He was an
outcast. He lay in moveless torture. He knew himself, and he knew his
crime; and he knew that himself had committed that crime. Wide awake,
he did not think of rising; for the whole world of activity lay beyond
the impassable barrier of his shame. There was nothing for him to do,
nowhere for him to go. At length he heard voices in the room below
him: they were voices he knew; and he was lying over the scene of last
night's temptation. He sprung from the bed, hurried on his clothes,
crept down the stairs, paid for his lodging at the bar, and went out
into the street. He felt sick at the thought of joining them; he had
had a surfeit of wickedness.
But he was too near his former haunts; and the officers of justice
must be after him. He turned from one narrow street into another, and
wandered on till he came where the bow-sprit of a vessel projected over
a wall across a narrow lane, and he knew by this that he must be near
the Thames. The sun was going down, and the friendly darkness was at
hand. But he could not rest. He knew nothing of the other side, and
it seemed to him therefore that he would be safer there. He would
take a boat and be put across. A passage between two houses led toward
the river. Probably there were stairs at the end. He turned into the
passage. Half a dozen bills were up on the walls. He stopped to look.
They all described bodies found in the river. He turned away, and
started at the sight of a policeman regarding him from a door three or
four yards off. It was a police station. He had all but put his head
into the lion's mouth. He had just presence of mind enough to prevent
him from running, but not enough to keep his legs steady under him.
His very calves seemed to feel the eyes of the policeman burning upon
them, and shrank away with a sense of unprotected misery. He passed
several stairs before he ventured to look round. Then finding no reason
to suppose he was watched, he turned down the next opening, found a
boat, and telling the waterman to put him across to Rotherhithe, of
which district he just knew the name, sat down in the stern. The man
rowed up the river. The sun was going down behind the dome of St.
Paul's, which looked like the round shoulder of a little hill; and
all the brown masts and spars of the vessels shone like a forest of
gold-barked trees in winter. The dark river caught the light, and threw
it shimmering up on the great black hulls, which shone again in the
water below; and the Thames, with all its dirt and all its dead, looked
radiant. But Thomas felt nothing of its beauty. If Nature had ever had
a right of way in his heart, she was now shut out. What was it to him,
despised in his own eyes, that the sun shone? He looked up at the sky
only to wish for the night. What was it to him that the world was for
a moment gay, even into the heart of London? Its smile could not reach
his heart: it needs an atmosphere as well as a sun to make light. The
sun was in the heavens, yea, the central sun of truth shone upon the
universe; but there was no atmosphere of truth in Thomas's world to
be lighted up by it; or if there was, it was so filled with smoke and
vapor that for the time the sun could not make it smile. As they passed
under a towering hull, he envied a monkey that went scrambling out of
one of the port-holes and in at another. And yet the scene around was
as strange as it was beautiful. The wide river, the many vessels, the
multitudinous wilderness of gray houses on every side, all disorder to
the eye, yet blended by the air and the light and the thin fog into a
marvelous whole; the occasional vista of bridge-arches; the line of
London Bridge lying parallel with the lines of green and gray and gold
in the sky--its people, its horses, its carriages creeping like insects
athwart the sunset--one of the arches cut across near the top by the
line of a new railway-bridge, and the segment filled with a moving
train; all this light and life to the eye, while, save for the splash
of the oars, and the general hum like an aroma of sound that filled the
air, all was still to the ear--none of it reached the heart of outcast
Thomas.
Soon, as if by magic, the scene changed. The boatman had been rowing
up the river, keeping in the quiet water as the tide hurried out.
Now he was crossing toward Cherry Garden Stairs. As they drew near
the Surrey-side, all at once Thomas found himself in the midst of a
multitude of boats, flitting about like water-flies on the surface of
a quiet pool. What they were about he could not see. Now they would
gather in dense masses, in every imaginable position to each other, the
air filled with shouting, objurgation, expostulation, and good-humored
chaff, varied with abuse. Again they would part asunder and vanish over
the wide space. Guns were firing, flags were flying, Thames liveries
gleaming here and there. The boats were full of men, women, and
children; some in holiday garments, most of them dark with the darkness
of an English mob. It was an aquatic crowd--a people exclusively living
on and by the river--assembled to see a rowing-match between two of
their own class for a boat, probably given by the publicans of the
neighborhood--who would reap ten times the advantage. But although
there were thousands assembled, the uproar troubled such a small
proportion of the river's surface, that one might have rowed up and
down in the middle space between Rotherhithe and Wapping for hours and
know nothing about it.
But Thomas did not see the race, not because he was in haste to get
ashore, but because something happened. His waterman, anxious to see
the sport, lingered in the crowd lining the whole of that side of the
river. In a boat a little way farther up was a large family party, and
in it a woman who was more taken up with the baby in her arms than with
all that was going on around her. In consequence of her absorption in
the merry child, which was springing with all the newly-discovered
delight of feet and legs, she was so dreadfully startled when the bows
of another boat struck the gunwale just at her back, that she sprung
half up from her seat, and the baby, jerking itself forward, dropped
from her arms into the river. Thomas was gazing listlessly at the
water when he saw the child sweep past him a foot or so below the
surface. His next remembered consciousness was in the water. He was a
fair swimmer, though no rider. He caught the child, and let himself
drift with the tide, till he came upon the cable of a vessel that lay
a hundred yards below. Boats came rushing about him; in a moment the
child was taken from him and handed across half a dozen of them to his
mother; and in another moment he, too, was in a boat. When he came to
himself a gin-faced, elderly woman, in a small threadbare tartan shawl,
was wiping his face with a pocket-handkerchief, and murmuring some
feminine words over him, while a coarse-looking, dough-faced man was
holding a broken cup with some spirit in it to his mouth.
"Go ashore with the gentleman, Jim," said the woman. "There's the India
Arms. That's a respectable place. You must go to bed, my dear, till you
gets your clo'es dried."
"I haven't paid my man," said Tom, feebly. He was now shivering with
cold; for, after the night and day he had spent, he was in no condition
to resist the effects of the water.
"Oh, we'll pay him. Here, Fluke," cried two or three--they seemed all
to know each other.
"Come along, sir," cried twenty shrill voices over his head. He looked
up and saw that they were alongside of a great barge which was crowded
with little dirty creatures, row above row. "Come this way--solid
barges, sir, all the way. Ketch hold of the gen'lm'n's hand, Sammy.
There. Now, Bill."
They hauled and lifted Thomas on to the barge, then led him along
the side and across to the next yawning wooden gulf, and so over
about seven barges to a plank, which led from the last on to a ladder
ascending to the first floor of a public-house, the second floor of
which, supported upon piles, projected over high water. There his
conductors, two ragged little mudlarks, left him.
Through an empty kind of bar-room, he went into the bar, which
communicated with the street. Here first he found that he had been
followed by the same man who had given him the gin. He now passed
before him to the counter, and said to the woman who was pumping a pot
of beer:
"This gen'leman, Mrs. Cook, 's been and just took a child out o' the
water ma'am. He 'ain't got a change in his wescut-pocket, so if you'll
do what ye can for 'im, there's many on us'll be obliged to ye, ma'am."
"Lor', whose child was it, Jim?"
"I don't know as you know her, ma'am. The man's name's Potts. He keeps
a public down about Limehouse, someveres."
Thomas stood shivering--glad, however, that the man should represent
his case for him.
"The gentleman had better go to bed till we get his clo'es dried for
him," said the landlady. "I think that's the best we can do for him."
"Take a drop o' summat, sir," said the man, turning to Thomas. "They
keeps good licker here. Put a name upon it, sir."
"Well, I'll have a small glass of pale brandy," said Thomas--"neat, if
you please. And what'll you have yourself? I'm much obliged to you for
introducing me here, for I must look rather a queer customer."
"It's what _you'll_ have, not what I'll have, sir, if you'll excuse
_me_," returned the man.
"I beg your pardon," said Thomas, who had just received his brandy. He
drank it, and proceeded to put his hand in his pocket--no easy matter
in the state of his garments.
"_I'm_, a goin' to pay for this," interposed the man, in a determined
tone, and Thomas was hardly in a condition to dispute it.
At the same moment the landlady, who had left the bar after she had
helped Thomas, returned, saying, "Will you walk this way, sir?" Thomas
followed, and found himself in a neat enough little room, where he was
only too glad to undress and go to bed. As he pulled off his coat, it
occurred to him to see that his money was safe. He had put it, mostly
in sovereigns, into a pocket-book of elaborate construction, which
he generally carried in the breast-pocket of what the tailors call a
lounging-coat. It was gone. His first conclusion was, that the man
had taken it. He rushed back into the bar, but he was not there. It
must be confessed that, in the midst of his despair, a fresh pang at
the loss of his money shot through Thomas's soul. But he soon came to
the conclusion that the man had not taken it. It was far more likely
that, as he went overboard, the book slipped from his pocket into the
water, and in this loss an immediate reward of almost his first act
of self-forgetfulness had followed. The best thing that can happen
to a man, sometimes, is to lose his money; and, while people are
compassionate over the loss, God may regard it as the first step of the
stair by which the man shall rise above it and many things besides with
which not only his feet, but his hands and his head, are defiled. Then
first he began to feel that he had no ground under his feet--the one
necessity before such a man could find a true foundation. Until he lost
it, he did not know how much, even in his misery, the paltry hundred
pounds had been to him. Now it was gone, things looked black indeed. He
emptied his pockets of two or three sovereigns and some silver, put his
clothes out at the door, and got into bed. There he fell a thinking.
Instead of telling what he thought, however, I will now turn to what my
reader may be, and I have been, thinking about his act of rescue.
What made him, who has been shown all but incapable of originating a
single action, thus at the one right moment do the one right thing?
Here arises another question: Does a man _always_ originate his own
actions? Is it not possible, to say the least of it, that, just to give
him a taste of what well-doing means, some moment, when selfishness is
sick and faint, may be chosen by the power in whom we live and move
and have our being to inspire the man with a true impulse? We must
think what an unspeakable comfort it must have been to Thomas, in these
moments of hopeless degradation of which he felt all the bitterness,
suddenly to find around him, as the result of a noble deed into which
he had been unaccountably driven, a sympathetic, yes, admiring public.
No matter that they were not of his class, nor yet that Thomas was not
the man to do the human brotherhood justice; he could not help feeling
the present power of humanity, the healing medicine of approbation, in
the faces of the _common_ people who had witnessed and applauded his
deed. I say _medicine_ of approbation; for what would have been to him
in ordinary, a poison, was now a medicine. There was no fear of his
thinking himself too much of a hero at present.
It may be objected that the deed originated only in a carelessness
of life resulting from self-contempt. I answer, that no doubt that
had its share in making the deed possible, because it removed for the
time all that was adverse to such a deed; but self-despite, however
true and well-grounded, cannot inspirit to true and noble action. I
think it was the divine, the real self, aroused at the moment by the
breath of that wind which bloweth where it listeth, that sprung thus
into life and deed, shadowing, I say _shadowing_ only, that wonderful
saying of our Lord that he that loseth his life shall find it. It had
come--been given to him--that a touch of light might streak the dark
cloud of his fate, that he might not despise himself utterly, and act
as unredeemable--kill himself or plunge into wickedness to drown his
conscience. It was absolutely necessary that he should be brought to
want; but here was just one little opening--not out of want, but into
the light of a higher region altogether, the region of well-being--by
which a glimmer of the strength of light could enter the chaos of his
being. Any good deed partakes of the life whence it comes, and is a
good to him who has done it. And this act might be a beginning.
Poor weak Thomas, when he got his head down on the pillow, began
to cry. He pitied himself for the helplessness to which he was now
reduced, and a new phase of despair filled his soul. He even said in
his thoughts that his ill-gotten gain had, like all the devil's money,
turned to rubbish in his hands. What he was to do he could not tell. He
was tolerably safe, however, for the night, and, worn and weary, soon
fell into a sleep which not even a dream disturbed.
When he woke all was dark, and he welcomed the darkness as a friend.
It soothed and comforted him a little. If it were only always dark! If
he could find some cave to creep into where he might revel in--feed
upon the friendly gloom! If he could get among the snowy people of
the north, blessed with half a year of gentle sunlessness! Thomas had
plenty of fancy. He leaned on his elbow and looked out. His clothes
had been placed by him while he slept. He rose and put them on, opened
the door of his room, saw light somewhere, approached it softly, and
found himself in a small room, like a large oriel window. The day had
changed from gold to silver; the wide expanse of the great river lay
before him, and up, and down, and across, it gleamed in the thoughtful
radiance of the moon. Never was a picture of lovelier peace. It was
like the reflex of the great city in the mind of a saint--all its
vice, its crime, its oppression, money-loving, and ambition, all its
fearfulness, grief, revenge, and remorse, gently covered with the
silver mantle of faith and hope. But Thomas could not feel this.
Its very repose was a reproach to him. There was no repose for him
henceforth forever. He was degraded to all eternity. And herewith the
thought of Lucy, which had been hovering about his mind all day, like a
bird looking for an open window that it might enter, but which he had
not dared to admit, darted into its own place, and he groaned aloud.
For in her eyes, as well as in his own, he was utterly degraded. Not
a thousand good actions, not the applause of a thousand crowds, could
destroy the fact that he had done as he had done. The dingy, applauding
multitude, with its many voices, its kind faces, its outstretched
hands, had vanished, as if the moon had melted it away from off the
water. Never to all eternity would that praising people, his little
consoling populace, exist again, again be gathered from the four
corners whither they had vanished, to take his part, to speak for him
that he was not all lost in badness, that they at least considered him
fit company for them and their children.
Thoughts like these went to and fro in his mind as he looked out upon
the scene before him. Then it struck him that all was strangely still.
Not only was there no motion on the river, but there was no sound--only
an occasional outcry in the streets behind. The houses across in
Wapping showed rare lights, and looked sepulchral in the killing stare
of the moon, which, high above, had not only the whole heavens but the
earth as well to herself, and seemed to be taking her own way with it
in the consciousness of irresistible power. What that way was, who can
tell? The troubled brain of the maniac and the troubled conscience of
the malefactor know something about it; but neither can tell the way of
the moon with the earth. Fear laid hold upon Thomas. He found himself
all alone with that white thing in the sky; and he turned from the
glorious window to go down to the bar. But all the house was dark, the
household in bed, and he alone awake and wandering "in the dead waste
and middle of the night." A horror seized him when he found that he was
alone. Why should he fear? The night covered him. But there was God.
I do not mean for a moment that he had a conscious fear of the Being
he had been taught to call God. Never had that representation produced
in him yet any sense of the reality, any the least consciousness of
presence--anything like the feeling of the child who placed two chairs
behind the window-curtain, told God that that one was for him, and
sat down to have a talk with him. It was fear of the unknown God,
manifested in the face of a nature which was strange and unfriendly to
the evil-doer. It is to God alone that a man can flee from such terror
of the unknown in the fierceness of the sea, in the ghastly eye of the
moon, in the abysses of the glaciers, in the misty slopes of the awful
mountain-side; but to God Thomas dared not or could not flee. Full of
the horror of wakefulness in the midst of sleeping London, he felt his
way back into the room he had just left, threw himself on a bench, and
closed his eyes to shut out everything. His own room at Highbury, even
that of his mother with Mr. Simon talking in it, rose before him like
a haven of refuge. But between him and that haven lay an impassable
gulf. No more returning thither. He must leave the country. And Lucy?
He must vanish from her eyes, that she might forget him and marry
some one else. Was not that the only justice left him to do her? But
would Lucy forget him? Why should she not? Women could forget honorable
men whom they had loved, let them only be out of their sight long
enough; and why should not Lucy forget a --? He dared not even think
the word that belonged to him now. A fresh billow of shame rushed over
him. In the person of Lucy he condemned himself afresh to utter and
ineffaceable shame, confusion, and hissing. Involuntarily he opened his
eyes. A ghostly whiteness, the sails of a vessel hanging loose from
their yards, gleamed upon him. The whole of the pale region of the
moon, the spectral masts, the dead houses on the opposite shore, the
glitter of the river as from eyes that would close no more, gleamed
in upon him, and a fresh terror of loneliness in the presence of the
incomprehensible and the unsympathetic overcame him. He fell on his
knees, and sought to pray; and doubtless in the ear that is keen with
mercy it sounded as prayer, though to him that prayed it seemed that
no winged thought arose to the infinite from a "heart as dry as dust."
Mechanically, at length, all feeling gone, both of fear and of hope, he
went back to his room and his bed.
When he woke in the morning his landlady's voice was in his ears.
"Well, how do we find ourselves to-day, sir? None the worse, I hope?"
He opened his eyes. She stood by his bedside, with her short arms set
like the handles of an urn. It was a common face that rose from between
them, red, and with eyes that stood out with fatness. Yet Thomas was
glad to see them looking at him, for there was kindness in them.
"I am all right, thank you," he said.
"Where will you have your breakfast?" she asked.
"Where you please," answered Thomas.
"Will you come down to the bar-parlor, then?"
"I shall be down in a few minutes."
"Jim Salter's inquirin' after ye."
"Who?" said Thomas, starting.
"Only Jim Salter, the man that brought you in last night, sir. I told
him to wait till I came up."
"I shall be down in one minute," said Thomas, a hope of his money
darting into his mind.
He had to pass through the bar to the little room at the back. Against
the counter leaned Jim, smoking a short pipe, with his hand upon a pot
of beer. When Thomas entered, he touched his cap to him, saying:
"Glad to see you lookin' middlin', guvnor. Is there anything I can do
for you to-day?"
"Come into the room here," said Thomas, "and have something. I'm rather
late, you see. I haven't had my breakfast yet."
Salter followed him with his pewter in his hand. Thomas disliked his
appearance less than on the preceding evening. What was unpleasant in
his face was chiefly owing to the small-pox. He was dirty and looked
_beery_, but there seemed to be no harm in him. He sat down near the
door which led to the ladder already mentioned, and put his pot on the
window-sill. Thomas asked him if he would have a cup of coffee, but he
preferred his beer and his pipe.
"You wanted to see me?" said Thomas, opening a conversation.
"Oh! nothin' perticlar, guvnor. I only wanted to see if I could do
anything for you," said Jim.
"I was in hopes you had heard of something I lost, but I suppose it's
at the bottom of the river," said Thomas.
"Not your watch?" asked Salter, with some appearance of anxious
interest.
"A great deal worse," answered Thomas; "a pocket-book."
"Much in it?" asked Jim, with a genuine look of sympathetic
discomfiture.
"More than I like to think of. Look," said Thomas, turning out the
contents of his pocket, "that is all I have in the world."
"More than ever I had," returned Salter; "keep me a month."
Thomas relapsed into thought. This man was the only resemblance of a
friend he had left. He did not like to let him go loose in the wilds
of London, without the possibility of finding him again. If this man
vanished, the only link Thomas felt between him and the world of men
would be broken. I do not say Thomas _thought_ this. He only felt that
he would be absolutely alone when this man left him. Why should he not
go away somewhere with him?
"Where do you live?" he asked.
"Stepney way," answered Jim.
"I want to see that part of London. What do you do now? I mean, what do
you work at?"
"Oh! nothin' perticlar, guvnor. Take a day at the docks now and then.
Any job that turns up. I'm not perticlar. Only I never could stick to
one thing. I like to be moving. I had a month in Bermondsey last--in a
tan-yard, you know. I knows a bit of everthing."
"Well, where are you going now?"
"Nowheres--anywhere you like, guvnor. If you want to see them parts, as
you say, there's nobody knows 'em better than I do--Tiger-bay and all."
"Come, then," said Thomas. But here a thought struck him. "Wouldn't it
be better, though," he added--"they're queer places, some of those,
ain't they?--to put on a workman's clothes?"
Jim looked at him. Thomas felt himself wince under his gaze. But he was
relieved when he said, with a laugh:
"You won't look much like a workman, guvnor, put on what you like."
"I can't wear these clothes, anyhow," said Thomas; "they look so
wretchedly shabby after their ducking. Couldn't you take me somewhere
where they'd change them for a suit of fustian? I should like to try
how they feel for a few days. We're about the same size--I could give
them to you when I had done with them."
Jim had been observing him, and had associated this wish of Thomas's
with the pocket-book, and his furtive, troubled looks. But Jim was as
little particular about his company as about anything else, and it was
of no consequence to him whether Thomas had or had not deeper reasons
than curiosity for seeking to disguise himself.
"I tell you what," he said, "if you want to keep quiet for a day or
two, I'm your man. But if you put on a new suit of fustian you'll be
more looked at than in your own clo'es."
Thomas had by this time finished his breakfast; it was not much he
could eat.
"Well," he said, rising, "if you've nothing particular to do, I'll give
you a day's wages to go with me. Only let's go into Stepney, or away
somewhere in that direction, as soon as possible."
He called the landlady, settled his very moderate bill, and then found
that his hat must be somewhere about the Nore by this time. Jim ran to
a neighboring shop, and returned with a cloth cap. They then went out
into a long, narrow street, Rotherhithe Street, I think, very different
in aspect from any he had seen in London before. Indeed it is more
like a street in Cologne. Here we must leave him with his misery and
Jim Salter, both better companions than Molken.