Where the lamps quiver,
So far in the river,
With many a light
From many a casement--
From garret and basement,
She stood with amazement--
Houseless by night!
The bleak wind of March
Made her tremble and shiver;
But not the dark arch--
Or the black flowing river.
Mad from life’s history,
Glad to Death’s mystery
Swift to be hurl’d
Anywhere! anywhere--
Out of the world!
--Hood.
Within a close, narrow, scantily-furnished chamber, upon a miserable
bed, sparely provided with bedclothes, lay a young girl, weak and
wasted, struggling in the deadly grip of a fierce fever.
The room--a back attic--bore evidence of the humble position of the
householder, and, in addition to its native foul atmosphere, was
impregnated with the sickly odour prevalent in chambers in which there
is sickness.
A truckle bed, a table, a chair, comprised the furniture; a soiled and
ragged curtain at the diamond-paned window comprehended all the room
possessed in the shape of drapery or hangings; the walls were bare,
and washed with the odious salmon-hued distemper colour so prevalent in
debtors’ prisons and apartments in poor neighbourhoods; the floor-boards
with wide interstices between them, and large knot-holes here and there,
where mice looked up, and unspareable halfpence sometimes rolled
down, had not even a show of comfort in the way of a small bit of old
stair-carpet by the bedside. All within and around bespoke poverty of
the grimmest school.
The girl, who lay upon the bed moaning in a disturbed slumber, with
flushed cheeks, and pale and transparent lips, was no other than Lotte
Clinton.
Upon the night of the fire, when landed safely by the conductor of the
fire-escape, she found herself in her thin night-dress, exposed to the
cold night air, which struck chill to her unprotected bosom, while
her naked tender feet were upon the hard stones, ankle deep in rushing
water.
The shock she had experienced on being awakened out of a deep slumber
by the startling, horrifying cry of fire, the terror which all but
paralysed her when, half-blinded and nearly suffocated, she discovered
her room filled with smoke, the excitement which followed the rushing
from her chamber, the roaring of the flames, the crackling and
sputtering of the burning wood, the hoarse cries of the mob, the
perilous descent to the ground, the sudden exposure to the eager gaze
of a multitude of faces, red in the glaring, unnatural light, the whirl,
the turmoil, mingled with a species of hysterical joy and gratefulness
at her deliverance, created a combination of emotions beyond her
physical powers of endurance.
It is not wonderful that--affrighted, unknowing where to turn, whither
to go, what to do, chilled to the marrow by the piercing coldness of the
water rushing over her unprotected, delicate feet, utterly overwhelmed
by what had happened, by the incidents surrounding her, and in which
she was yet an actor--she should succumb; and find, that as some person
hastily and roughly seized her about the waist, she should have a dim
consciousness that the whole scene was fading from her as some expiring
terrible vision, and that, when it disappeared from her eyes, she should
be lifeless in the arms of the person who had caught hold of her.
The man who had taken her in his arms was a small tradesman, dealing in
coals and potatoes, and a little--a very little--greengrocery. He lived
in a neighbouring street, in a small house, and was blessed with a wife
and nine children, who were “dragged” up somehow. He was one of the
first on the spot when the alarm of fire was given. He saw Lotte landed
from the fire-escape; he observed the agonized expression upon the poor
girl’s face--heard her low, hysteric sobbing, and saw her totter as
though she would fall upon her face in the muddy, eddying pool in
which, barefooted, she was standing. It was enough for him. He drew off
instantly his heavy coat of “fashionable cable cord,” and, flinging it
over her shoulders, caught her up in his arms, and raced off to his old
’oman with his burden, followed by a small train of women and boys.
His wife was no little astonished at this sudden accession to her
household; but her womanly sympathy was roused immediately she beheld
the condition of the poor girl, and learned that she had been rescued
from the raging fire, which her husband had so short a time previously
run off to see, and she at once busied herself by applying those
restoratives, known to most women, which, though simple, are efficacious
in restoring to consciousness those of the sex who fall into swoons.
Lotte Clinton, being a girl of strong feelings, was not, however, easily
brought to a calm sense of her great affliction; on the contrary, she
recovered from one fainting fit only to fall into another, worse than
its predecessor; and when, by the aid of the parish doctor, who had been
called in, she was relieved from successive swoons and thrown into a
sleep, it was only to awake in a paroxysm of fever and delirium.
Two days she lay thus: on the third, late at night, when the hard-worked
parish doctor made his appearance, in order that he might see his
patient the last thing, he stood with the woman of the house, at the
bed-side of the poor girl.
Two or three anxious questions were put to him, but he shook his head,
as the woman thought, ominously.
“She is rapidly approaching a crisis,” he said. “By the dawn her fate
will be decided. She has in her favour youth and a good constitution;
but it is impossible to tell what may result from the ravages of so
fierce a fever as that under which she is suffering. We must hope for
the best, and leave the rest in the hands of God! I think it would be
proper to make her friends acquainted with her condition, and the sooner
they are here at her bed-side the better will be their chance of taking
their last farewell of her.”
Those were dread words: ill-omened shadows did they cast. The woman
raised her apron to her eyes, and gulped audibly, once or twice.
“I don’t know where to find her friends, if she has any, poor child!” she
said, huskily. “My Jem picked her up, out o’ the fire, and brought her
here; nobody’s been to ax after her; and we don’t know where to go.
She’s never been in her senses since she was here, else I should have
got her to tell me; but, lawk! lawk! it is a sad thing for a poor girl
like this to die away from home, and ne’er a friend or relation to close
her poor dear eyes. I’m a mother myself, sir! an’ God knows, I should be
dreadful wretched if one of my babbies was to die away from me in this
lonesome way.”
The poor woman sobbed unaffectedly as she concluded. The doctor, with a
glittering tear in the corner of his eye, laid his hand gently upon her
shoulder--
“While there is life there is hope, Mrs. Bantom,” he said, kindly. “It
is too early to despair yet. Had the young woman nothing about her when
your husband saved her?--no letter?”
“Lord bless you, nothing on but those night things you see on her; not
a blessed rag else. My Jem has been a trying if he could learn anything
about her, but lor! he goes about such matters in sech a bladderheaded
sort o’ way, that I don’t wonder at his making a bad out on it. He
lurches and prowls about when he goes to ax for his own in sech a way
that people are afear’d on him. It was only the other day he went for
a little bill, which it was a long time a owin’ an’ we wanted the money
badly--when he explained what he’d come for in sech an in and out round
about sort a way that the people sent for a policeman believin’ he’d
come on the sneak to prig the ’ats and mats in the ’all.”
The doctor could hardly forbear a smile. He turned his eyes, however, on
Lotte’s face, and bent his head down closely to listen to her breathing,
he felt her pulse, timing its rapid beats by his watch; then he laid
down the unresisting hand, and addressed himself to Mrs. Ban tom.
“Poor thing!” he said, “she is very, very ill. If she wakes shortly,
give to her a dose of the medicine I have brought with me--she must have
it, especially if she be violent, incoherent, and resists your attempts
to administer it. Should it not have the effect of pacifying her, send
for me at once. Good night, Mrs. Bantom. Pray to God to spare her, for
she is on the threshold of death,” he concluded, with much solemnity
in his tone. He made his way out of the room. She lighted him down the
stairs, and when she heard the street-door close she returned to the
sick room to watch by the side of her friendless patient.
Her husband and her children were in bed; he had his long hard day’s
work to perform on the morrow, and rest was essential to him. The little
colony of children were better where they were than anywhere else; Mrs.
Bantom, too, had her share of hard work cut out for her for the next
day and required sleep, but she did not heed it. She thought only of the
poor young creature who she believed to be rapidly quitting her brief
earthly career for one that would have no limit.
By the feeble rays of the miserable rushlight burning, she watched the
flushed face of Lotte, perceiving it become each minute more crimson
and inflamed-She saw her bosom heave and fall, and she listened with a
beating heart to her stertorous breathing. She saw her head roll
from side to side, her burning hands open and shut, and clutch at the
bed-clothes. She heard with an aching heart the low moan of pain which
oozed as it were with prolonged mournful cadence from the lips of the
poor girl, and she prepared for the sudden and violent awakening to
which the doctor had alluded.
But Lotte became silent and motionless again; the only change in her
was, that her tongue, white and rigid, protruded from her half-opened
mouth. The heart of good Mrs. Bantom smote her as she observed it,
and she feared that the fatal moment was indeed at hand. She, however,
performed her duty as a nurse with watchful perseverance, and with some
grapes which the doctor had brought, she moistened the dry and parched
tongue of poor Lotte.
This gentle attention, persevered in, passed not unrewarded. She could
see it had a grateful influence; though, as it seemed to her, Lotte was
dying in an unconscious state, and would breathe her last without making
any sign.
So, though she knew only the prayers taught to her in childhood, and
seldom now-a-days went to a place of worship, she remembered the words
of the doctor, and she knelt down by the bedside. She was unacquainted
with the subtleties of contending faiths. She had a faith which went
deeper: she believed implicitly in the supreme power of God, in His
ability to give and to take away. In that spirit she appealed to Him.
She prayed to Him, in earnest sincerity, to grant to the motionless,
friendless girl, stretched on the bed before her, a longer term, if
that, by a more extended sojourn on earth, she might know a greater
happiness than had, perhaps, yet been her lot; but that, if it was the
Divine will to remove her hence, she implored Him with earnest heart,
though with all humility and reverence, to take her to His bosom, that
the shadow of sorrow or affliction might fall upon her never more.
When her prayer was ended, she turned her eyes, suffused with tears,
upon her unconscious patient.
She started. The hectic crimson of the girl’s cheek had paled down, and
was fast changing to a pallid hue. It seemed even that on her brow
a moisture had appeared. The heavy breathing had abated, as had the
moaning and uneasy movement of head and hands.
Suddenly, Lotte’s eyes opened, and she gazed feebly around her. She
looked intently at the bare walls, the scanty furniture, and then
earnestly upon Mrs. Bantom, who was watching her every motion with
absorbing eagerness.
At length, in a low voice, she murmured, wonderingly--
“Where--where am I? Who are you? What strange place is this?”
Mrs. Bantom’s own common sense told her that the crisis was over; and,
so far, the girl’s life was saved.
With a burst of gratitude, she exclaimed, clasping her hands together--
“Oh, my God, you have listened to my prayer! you have heard me, a
sinner! you have spared her!”
Tears checked her voice, and she buried her face once more in the
bed-clothes.
Lotte regarded her with surprise--as, indeed, she did the whole
situation. She felt strangely weak and powerless. Had she been ill? What
did it all mean? She repeated the question, in a low voice, and then
Mrs. Bantom jumped up, and hurried to the medicine bottle. She poured
out a dose, and said, as tenderly as if Lotte was her own child--
“There, drink that, like a good girl, and don’t ask a single question
until you are stronger; it will be quite time enough to know all then.”
Lotte would have persisted, but Mrs. Bantom was peremptory, and she
was obliged to succumb. Within ten minutes after the medicine had been
administered, she was asleep.
The battle had been fought. Youth, constitution, and judicious treatment
had won the victory. The abatement of the symptoms was as rapid as had
been the attack of the fever, and in two days more Lotte was able to sit
up in bed, and communing with herself, come to a full knowledge of the
peculiarity and the distressing nature of her situation.
She had, in the interval between the crisis and the present moment,
followed the directions of the doctor, obeyed his instructions, and
swallowed his medicine with the intrepidity of a martyr. The result had
been all that could be desired in her progress to health: fresh air was
only needed to complete the rest.
How was that to be got at? How, at present, could she obtain more than
came in at her window? She had no clothes; all had been destroyed at the
fire, everything had been consumed, including the very little money
she had. Her very first impulse had been, on coming to a sense of her
position, to send for her brother Charley; but, alas! a fellow-clerk had
embezzled upwards of a thousand pounds from the firm to which they
both belonged, and had absconded. Charley had been at once charged to
accompany a detective, engaged to pursue him, to America, and he had
started on the very night of the fire. He was already on the Atlantic,
leaving the shores of England at the rate of three hundred miles per
day. He had despatched a hasty note to Lotte, informing her of the
mission upon which he had been despatched, and directing her, should she
require a little pecuniary assistance during his absence, to apply in
his name to his firm, and it would be readily afforded her.
This letter she never got. Charley had slipped it into the letter-box of
a post-office, on his way to the Euston station, and it was conveyed to
its destination by the postman on the following morning. But as he was
not able to deliver it, he returned to the Dead Letter Office, first
carefully writing upon it, “House burnt down; gone away, not known
where.”
Mr. Bantom was, however, employed by Lotte as a messenger to her
brother, to inform him of her sad misfortune, but he pursued his
inquiries for Charley in a manner so mysterious, that he raised in the
mind, of the Clerk whom he addressed a strong impression that Charley
Clinton was deeply his debtor, for coals and greengrocery. Now,
Charley’s fellow-clerk was never out of debt, and had an intense
loathing for all creditors; they were, he used to say, so offensively
pertinacious even when they had got an answer, therefore he replied to
Mr. Bantom’s questions with curt brevity. All Mr. Bantom could gather
was, that Charles Clinton had sailed for America, and his return was
a question involved in obscurity. And the clerk facetiously added, “It
might not be for years, and it might not be for never.”
This intelligence was a sad blow to Lotte; what to do she could not
tell. The honest people who had taken her in to their humble house lived
too closely from hand to mouth to aid her; indeed, she was already a
burden to them; they could ill--nay, could not--afford to keep her; this
she was at no loss to comprehend by what she heard and saw.
After her passion of bitter, bitter tears on learning that Charley had
gone to another quarter of the globe, had passed away, she consulted
with Mrs. Bantom as to what was to be done.
“I cannot lie here,” she exclaimed; “I shall worry myself to death. If I
could get out, I could get work. I could in some way repay you for your
kindness, Mrs. Bantom, but to be kept thus--oh, I had better died--
better have died.”
She wrung her hands, and sobbed violently.
“It ain’t o’ no use your taking on in this way,” said Mrs. Bantom to
her, ready to mingle her tears with her, for to say truth, the poor
creature was easily moved to weep. “Somethin’ ’ll turn up, I’ll be
bound. My things is too big for you--and too poor--besides, I ain’t got
much more’n I stand upright in, but I dare say I shall hit on a way
to dress you afore long, so don’t worrit yourself. As for the bit you
eats--lor! what’s that among so many on us? there, there, hold your
tongue, gal, and keep your spirits up; I’ll find a way to help you.”
And so she did. She went among her neighbours to make up the different
articles that constitute the dress of a woman, and poor, as nearly all
of whom she begged were, none, when they heard Lotte’s frightful story,
refused her appeal. The poor never refuse to help the poor, if they have
any means.
Her last application, however, should have been her first, for it was
to a young girl about Lotte’s own age and figure. She was an artificial
florist, a worker, too, of eighteen hours out of the twenty-four--a
diligent, unmurmuring, white slave. She was able to sympathise with poor
Lotte, and she generously offered to lend her all the clothes she would
require, until she obtained work, and would be able to return them.
With delight Mrs. Bantom accepted her offer, and conveyed the clothes
to Lotte. With yet greater delight did the poor girl attire herself in
them, and hurry to the house for which she had worked before the fire
had rendered her homeless. She revealed her unhappy position to the
individual who had employed her (there are few like him, thank Heaven!)
He listened coldly to her statement, and finding that six dozen
cap fronts, his property, had been consumed in the fire, instead of
commiserating her, abruptly informed her that she must pay for the
blonde and flowers before she had any more work, and if in two days she
did not bring to him the amount, he would pay her a visit accompanied by
a policeman.
Sickened and affrighted, Lotte hurried from the house, her hopes once
more dashed to the ground, her heart bursting with agony, no one to go
to for counsel or assistance. What was to be done?
Almost frantic, she wandered about without an aim, feeling that she
could not go back to the kind people who had sheltered her, unless she
had some prospect of lifting herself out of her desolate destitution,
and recompensing them, at least, for her board, although she could never
repay the service and the attention they had rendered to her.
She wandered through the streets, growing weak and faint from an
exertion to which she was not equal, and from being many hours without
food, gradually becoming desperate, as hopeless. She thought of the
coming night and the dark waters that swept silently beneath the
frowning arches of the bridges which spanned their breadth, and an
ever-recurring thought kept ringing in her ears--
“Anywhere, anywhere--
Out of the world,”
suddenly her eyes fell upon a printed bill; it said: “One thousand
cap-front hands wanted!” Not a second elapsed between her discovery of
that bill and the resting of her trembling hand upon the knocker of the
door. Her timid summons was responded to, and her application for work
met with success.
She was requested to enter a room and to sit down, and “make a pattern.”
She was furnished with materials, and it was not long before she
produced a “front,” which gave great satisfaction to the employer. The
answers to inquiries put to her being deemed satisfactory, materials for
twelve dozen fronts were given to her, in a box, which she was to return
with her work.
With a light heart and a heavy parcel she returned to Mrs. Bantom.
Constant work was promised to her, provided she was punctual, and her
work was approved of. She had no fears about that. She promised the work
on the following Friday night. The task could only be accomplished by
incessant toil, but she resolved to accomplish it, and she did.
In the little squalid bedroom she sat to her exacting toil; few were the
hours of sleep she obtained during the time between the commencement and
the close of her labours, but she was rewarded by completing the last
front within an hour of the time specified. More fit for bed than for a
journey through the crowded streets, she staggered rather than walked to
the house of her new employer.
Her work was given in, and it was commended. She was told to come the
following evening, at six, the time when the workers were paid, and
bring her book, when she would receive the money due to her, and more
work would be given to her.
Elated, she returned to her poor abode, and slept happily that night at
least. She had in five days and nights--there was not much to be taken
out for sleep--earned ten shillings. She hoped the next week to earn a
like sum, and by self-sacrifices, assisted by the kind forbearance
of the Bantoms, to gradually clear off her debt, and to get herself
clothes, which she should wear with the satisfaction that they were her
own.
Ah! she raised up wonderful and glittering fabrics, but they were based
upon most intangible foundations. However, she slumbered lightly, and
rose refreshed, busying herself the whole of the day in lightening Mrs.
Bantom’s labours by assisting her in attending to her small regiment of
blessings.
At six o’clock the next evening punctually, and with anxious hopes, she
stood before the house of her new employer. She looked up wistfully
at it. It wore a peculiar air of silence and dulness which she had not
before observed. She did not pause to think upon the impression thus
suddenly raised, but knocked at the door. A pang smote her breast as it
occurred to her that a hollow sound echoed through the house on the fall
of the knocker, as though it was empty. She instinctively again cast her
eyes upwards; the windows were all closed; there were no blinds, but all
was dark within the house, and so still--so dreadfully still.
She waited: her summons remained unanswered. She knocked again. The same
hollow sound reverberated through the building, and her heart began to
sink and die within her.
A young girl now came up, stopped at the door, and knocked. She was
bound upon the same errand as Lotte, save that a fortnight’s work
was due to her. She had scrambled and starved over the past week, she
scarcely knew how. Wan and weak, but full of hope, she was here for the
miserable sum for which she had bartered health, exhausted her strength,
and perilled her young life.
There was no answer to her knock at the door, save the same hollow
mocking echo, as before.
Another girl made her appearance; a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth;
all here upon one errand--to claim the scanty sum for which they
had worked, almost from dawn to dawn. They spoke to each other,
questioningly: they looked into each other’s eyes with dread
apprehension, and they conversed in low excited tones. The wages they
had come to receive had been earned with a death-sweat. It was to them
of vital consequence.
One or two had homes and parents upon whom to fall back for assistance;
but the loss of the money to the others left them only a choice between
the streets and the river.
Lotte grasped at a railing near her for support. A throng of sharp
ringing sounds rushed through her brain. She took no part in the
conversation. She could not have uttered a sound, her tongue clave to
the roof of her mouth, her throat swelled and contracted as though it
would stifle her.
She began to lose her perception of what was going on around her.
Everything seemed to be absorbed in a harrowing consciousness that her
beggary, her loneliness, and desolation had assumed proportions of more
terrible magnitude than they had ever yet done--that they surpassed her
power to endure them longer.
She had a dim impression that a person residing next door told them all
that their employer had fled with his goods ere daybreak, no one knew
whither.
Sickened, heart-broken, Lotte quitted her hold of the railing which had
sustained her, and staggered away.
It was not difficult to find her way to the black and murky river,
careering swiftly and noiselessly through the heart of the vast
metropolis down to the sea.
“The river! the river!”
Those were the only words she muttered.
These words of such terrible significance seemed to be shrieked
by demons in her ears She saw them in fiery characters dancing
_ignis-fatuus_ like, before her, leading her on to her doom. She
followed unresistingly.
How she found her way--what route she chose to the river-side--she knew
not, cared not. She reached a bridge that spanned the dark waters,
ere she was conscious of her proximity to that grave which could be
self-made by one desperate plunge.
And now the fearful act she contemplated presented itself in its most
awful guise before her despairing eyes, but not to deter her from her
frantic purpose. No! If she remained on earth, her future was all black
and unshapen. There was rest and immunity from the horrors of want and
destitution in the grave.
She knelt down and prayed.
She compressed her hands tightly together; a wild hysteric groan, forced
from her by the intense anguish created by her unutterable thoughts,
burst from her lips, and she hurried on to the bridge, to end, by one
fearful plunge, her sorrows and her young life.
As she swept on to a recess, blinded by her misery, maddened by a
despair devoid of one glimmering of hope, the glare from one of the
lamps fell upon her ghastly face.
At that instant a strong hand caught her by the wrist, and a friendly
voice exclaimed--
“Miss Clinton! Miss Clinton!”
She fell back against the parapet of the bridge, and the voice changed
its tone for one of horror and surprise, and it said--
“Good heaven! what is the matter with you? how deadly white you are!
What has happened?--where are you going?”
“To die!--to die!”--she murmured, hoarsely, but faintly.
“Hush! hush! my dear friend,” said he who stayed her, in a soft and
slightly reproving tone, and added--“calm yourself, I entreat you; do
not speak for a minute or so; collect your thoughts, and then turn your
eyes on me. I am a friend. I have a right to that title, and you will
acknowledge it presently. I claim to aid you in affliction or trial. You
will not, I am sure, Miss Clinton, refuse consolation or help in need
from Harry Vivian.”
Lotte uttered a faint, hysteric cry; she clutched his arm, and bowed her
head upon his breast. She knew he had the power to help her; she knew
he would. As she clung to him, he felt her frame tremble and quiver as
though she had been smitten with an ague, and her hot tears fell fast
upon the hand which held hers, and pressed it re-assuringly. He let her
weep.
In a few minutes, he whispered--
“We will not stay here, Lotte. It is chill and cold, and we excite
attention from the passers-by.”
He conducted her from the bridge but a few steps only, for she was
nearly powerless, and unable longer to continue the struggle without
fatigue. He quickly perceived it, and had some notion of the cause; so
he said--
“I am so glad I have found you at last. I have made many efforts,
since the night of the fire, to discover you, but in vain. Not alone to
satisfy my own anxiety respecting you, but to allay the apprehensions of
your friend. Miss Wilton, to whom you were so kind in her hour of bitter
trial. Ah, Lotte! her misery is all past, her future life promises to be
one of supreme happiness, if wealth and station can ensure it. Come to
her now: she so wishes to see you again. It is not so far: a cab will
quickly take us to her. You will have, at least, a kindly sympathetic
ear in which to pour your sorrows, and--who knows?--the meeting between
you may be the termination of all your trials and sufferings.”
Lotte tried to reply. An inarticulate murmur was all that escaped her
lips. Her deep emotion did not so easily admit of suppression.
A cab opportunely approached, and Hal engaged it. He lifted Lotte in:
she had not power to help herself. He followed her into the vehicle, and
gave his directions to the driver.
The man whipped his horse, and the cab rattled away from the bridge.
Lotte thought of the sombre river, whirling on grimly, and she shuddered
violently.
Hal pressed her hand.
“The gloomiest lane, Lotte,” he whispered, “sometimes leads us to the
brightest land.”