It was ever so long afterwards, and the time had gone on by years, when
we again fell into the thread of Dorothy Grape's life. The Squire was in
London for a few days upon some law business, and had brought me with
him.
"I should like to see how that poor woman's getting on, Johnny," he said
to me one morning. "Suppose we go down to Gibraltar Terrace?"
It was a dull, damp, misty day at the close of autumn; and when the
Squire turned in at No. 60, after dismissing the cab, he stood still
and stared, instead of knocking. A plate was on the door, "James Noak,
carpenter and joiner."
"Has she left, do you think, Johnny?"
"Well, sir, we can ask. Perhaps the carpenter is only lodging here?"
A tidy young woman, with a baby in her arms, answered the knock. "Does
Mrs. Mapping live here still?" asked the Squire.
"No, sir," she answered. "I don't know the name."
"Not know the name!" retorted he, turning crusty; for he disliked, of
all things, to be puzzled or thwarted. "Mrs. Mapping lived here for ten
or a dozen years, anyhow."
"Oh, stay, sir," she said, "I remember the name now. Mapping; yes, that
was it. She lived here before we came in."
"Is she dead?"
"No, sir. She was sold up."
"Sold up?"
"Yes, sir. Her lodging-letting fell off--this neighbourhood's not what
it was: people like to get further up, Islington way--and she was badly
off for a long while, could not pay her rent, or anything; so at last
the landlord was obliged to sell her up. At least, that's what we heard
after we came here, but the house lay empty for some months between. I
did not hear what became of her."
The people at the next house could not tell anything; they were
fresh-comers also; and the Squire stood in a quandary. I thought of
Pitt the surgeon; he was sure to know; and ran off to his surgery in
the next street.
Changes seemed to be everywhere. Pitt's small surgery had given place to
a chemist's shop. The chemist stood behind his counter in a white apron.
Pitt? Oh, Pitt had taken to a practice further off, and drove his
brougham. "Mrs. Mapping?" added the chemist, in further answer to me.
"Oh yes, she lives still in the same terrace. She came to grief at No.
60, poor woman, and lodges now at No. 32. Same side of the way; this
end."
No. 32 had a plate on the door: "Miss Kester, dressmaker," and Miss
Kester herself--a neat little woman, with a reserved, not to say sour,
face and manner, and a cloud of pins sticking out of her brown
waistband--answered the knock. She sent us up to a small back-room at
the top of the house.
Mrs. Mapping sat sewing near a fireless grate, her bed in one corner;
she looked very ill. I had thought her thin enough before; she was a
shadow now. The blue eyes had a piteous look in them, the cheeks a
hectic.
"Yes," she said, in answer to the Squire, her voice faint and her cough
catching her every other minute, "it was a sad misfortune for me to be
turned out of my house; it nearly broke my heart. The world is full of
trouble, sir."
"How long is it since?"
"Nearly eighteen months, sir. Miss Kester had this room to let, and I
came into it. It is quiet and cheap: only half-a-crown a-week."
"And how do you get the half-crown?" questioned the Squire. "And your
dinner and breakfast--how do you get that?"
Mrs. Mapping passed her trembling fingers across her brow before she
answered--
"I'm sorry to have to tell of these things, sir. I'm sorry you have
found me out in my poverty. When I think of the old days at home,
the happy and plentiful days when poor mother was living, and what a
different life mine might have been but for the dreadful marriage I
made, I--I can hardly bear up against it. I'm sure I beg your pardon,
gentlemen, for giving way."
For the tears were streaming down her thin cheeks. The Squire set up a
cough on his own account; I went to the window and looked down at some
grimy back-gardens.
"When I am a little stronger, and able to do a full day's work again, I
shall get on, sir, but I've been ill lately through going out in the wet
and catching cold," she said, mastering the tears. "Miss Kester is very
good in supplying me with as much as I can do."
"A grand 'getting on,'" cried the Squire. "You'd be all the better for
some fire in that grate."
"I might be worse off than I am," she answered meekly. "If it is but
little that I have, I am thankful for it."
The Squire talked a while longer; then he put a sovereign into her hand,
and came away with a gloomy look.
"She wants a bit of regular help," said he. "A few shillings paid to
her weekly while she gets up her strength might set her going again.
I wonder if we could find any one to undertake it?"
"You would not leave it with herself in a lump, sir?"
"Why, no, I think not; she may have back debts, you see, Johnny, and be
tempted to pay them with it; if so, practically it would be no good to
her. Wish Pitt lived here still! Wonder if that Miss Kester might be
trusted to---- There's a cab, lad! Hail it."
The next morning, when we were at breakfast at the hotel--which was not
the Tavistock this time--the Squire burst into a state of excitement
over his newspaper.
"Goodness me, Johnny! here's the very thing."
I wondered what had taken him, and what he meant; and for some time
did not clearly understand. The Squire's eyes had fallen upon an
advertisement, and also a leading article, treating of some great
philanthropic movement that had recently set itself up in London.
Reading the articles, I gathered that it had for its object the
distribution of alms on an extensive scale and the comprehensive
relieving of the distressed. Some benevolent gentlemen (so far as we
could understand the newspaper) had formed themselves into a band for
taking the general welfare of the needy into their hands, and devoted
their lives to looking after their poverty-stricken brothers and
sisters. A sort of universal, benevolent, set-the-world-to-rights
invention.
The Squire was in raptures. "If we had but a few more such good men in
the world, Johnny! I'll go down at once and shake their hands. If I
lived in London, I'd join them."
I could only laugh. Fancy the Squire going about from house to house
with a bag of silver to relieve the needy!
Taking note of the office occupied by these good men, we made our way to
it. Only two of them were present that morning: a man who looked like a
clerk, for he had books and papers before him; and a thin gentleman in
spectacles.
The Squire shook him by the hand at once, breaking into an ovation at
the good deeds of the benevolent brotherhood, that should have made the
spectacles before us, as belonging to a member of it, blush.
"Yes," he said, his cool, calm tones contrasting with the Squire's hot
ones, "we intend to effect a work that has never yet been attempted.
Why, sir, by our exertions three parts of the complaints of hunger, and
what not, will be done away with."
The Squire folded his hands in an ecstasy of reverence. "That is, you
will relieve it," he remarked. "Bountiful Samaritans!"
"Relieve it, certainly--where the recipients are found to be deserving,"
returned the other. "But non-deserving cases--impostors, ill-doers, and
the like--will get punishment instead of relief, if we can procure it
for them."
"Quite right, too," warmly assented the Squire. "Allow me to shake your
hand again, sir. And you gentlemen are out every day upon this good
work! Visiting from house to house!"
"Some of us are out every day; we devote our time to it."
"And your money, too, of course!" exclaimed the Squire. "Listen, Johnny
Ludlow," he cried, turning to me, his red face glowing more and more
with every word, "I hope you'll take a lesson from this, my lad! Their
time, and their money too!"
The thin gentleman cleared his throat. "Of course we cannot do all in
the way of money ourselves," he said; "some of us, indeed, cannot do
anything in that way. Our operations are very large: a great deal is
needed, and we have to depend upon a generous public for help."
"By their making subscriptions to it?" cried the Squire.
"Undoubtedly."
The Squire tugged at an inner pocket. "Here, Johnny, help me to get out
my cheque-book." And when it was out, he drew a cheque for ten pounds
there and then, and laid it on the table.
"Accept this, sir," he said, "and my praises with it. And now I should
like to recommend to your notice a case myself--a most deserving one.
Will you take it in hand?"
"Certainly."
The Squire gave Mrs. Mapping's address, telling briefly of her present
distress and weakly state, and intimated that the best mode of relief
would be to allow her a few shillings weekly. "You will be sure to see
to her?" was his parting injunction. "She may starve if you do not."
"Have no fear: it is our business to do so," repeated the thin
gentleman. "Good-day."
"Johnny," said the Squire, going up the street sideways in his
excitement, "it is refreshing to hear of these self-denying deeds.
These good men must be going on straight for heaven!"
"Take care, sir! Look where you are going."
The Squire had not been going on straight himself just then, and had
bumped up against a foot-passenger who was hurrying along. It was Pitt,
the surgeon. After a few words of greeting, the Squire excused his
flurry by telling him where he had come from.
"Been _there_!" exclaimed Pitt, bursting into a laugh. "Wish you joy,
sir! We call it Benevolence Hall."
"And a very good name, too," said the Squire. "Such men ought to be
canonized, Pitt."
"Hope they will be?" answered Pitt in a curious kind of tone. "I can't
stop now, Mr. Todhetley; am on my way to a consultation."
"He slips from one like an eel," cried the Squire, looking after the
doctor as he hurried onwards: "I might have spoken to him about Mrs.
Mapping. But my mind is at ease with regard to her, Johnny, now that
these charitable men have the case in hand: and we shall be up again in
a few weeks."