This was a disagreeable way of putting the business;because it imposed upon me, a perfect stranger,the unpleasantness of asking Mr.Dolloby to rob his family on my account.My circumstances being so very pressing, however,I said I would take ninepence for it, if he pleased.Mr. Dolloby, not without some grumbling,gave ninepence. I wished him good night,and walked out of the shop the richer by that sum,and the poorer by a waistcoat.But when I buttoned my jacket, that was not much.Indeed, I foresaw pretty clearly that my jacket would go next,and that I should have to make the best of my way to Dover in a shirt and a pair of trousers, and might deem myself lucky if I got there even in that trim. But my mind did not run so much on this as might be supposed. Beyond a general impression of the distance before me, and of the young man with the donkey-cart having used me cruelly, I think I had no very urgent sense of my difficulties when I once again set off with my ninepence in my pocket.
A plan had occurred to me for passing the night,which I was going to carry into execution. This was,to lie behind the wall at the back of my old school,in a corner where there used to be a haystack.I imagined it would be a kind of company to have the boys,and the bedroom where I used to tell the stories,so near me: although the boys would know nothing of my being there,and the bedroom would yield me no shelter.
I had had a hard day’s work,and was pretty well jaded when I came climbing out,at last, upon the level of Blackheath.It cost me some trouble to find out Salem House;but I found it, and I found a haystack in the corner,and I lay down by it;having first walked round the wall,and looked up at the windows,and seen that all was dark and silent within.Never shall I forget the lonely sensation of first lying down,without a roof above my head!
Sleep came upon me as it came on many other outcasts,against whom house-doors were locked,and house-dogs barked,that night--and I dreamed of lying on my old school-bed,talking to the boys in my room;and found myself sitting upright,with Steerforth’s name upon my lips,looking wildly at the stars that were glistening and glimmering above me.When I remembered where I was at that untimely hour,a feeling stole upon me that made me get up,afraid of I don’t know what, and walk about.But the fainter glimmering of the stars,and the pale light in the sky where the day was coming,reassured me: and my eyes being very heavy,I lay down again and slept--though with a knowledge in my sleep that it was cold--until the warm beams of the sun, and the ringing of the getting-up bell at Salem House, awoke me. If I could have hoped that Steerforth was there, I would have lurked about until he came out alone; but I knew he must have left long since. Traddles still remained, perhaps, but it was very doubtful; and I had not sufficient confidence in his discretion or good luck, however strong my reliance was on his good nature, to wish to trust him with my situation. So I crept away from the wall as Mr. Creakle’s boys were getting up, and struck into the long dusty track which I had first known to be the Dover Road when I was one of them, and when I little expected that any eyes would ever see me the wayfarer I was now, upon it.
What a different Sunday morning from the old Sunday morning at Yarmouth!In due time I heard the church-bells ringing,as I plodded on; and I met people who were going to church;and I passed a church or two where the congregation were inside,and the sound of singing came out into the sunshine,while the beadle sat and cooled himself in the shade of the porch,or stood beneath the yew-tree,with his hand to his forehead,glowering at me going by.But the peace and rest of the old Sunday morning were on everything,except me. That was the difference.I felt quite wicked in my dirt and dust,with my tangled hair.But for the quiet picture I had conjured up,of my mother in her youth and beauty,weeping by the fire, and my aunt relenting to her,I hardly think I should have had the courage to go on until next day.But it always went before me, and I followed.
I got, that Sunday, through three-and-twenty miles on the straight road,though not very easily,for I was new to that kind of toil. I see myself,as evening closes in,coming over the bridge at Rochester,footsore and tired,and eating bread that I had bought for supper.One or two little houses, with the notice,‘Lodgings for Travellers’, hanging out, had tempted me;but I was afraid of spending the few pence I had,and was even more afraid of the vicious looks of the trampers I had met or overtaken. I sought no shelter, therefore, but the sky; and toiling into Chatham,--which, in that night’s aspect, is a mere dream of chalk, and drawbridges, and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed like Noah’s arks,--crept, at last, upon a sort of grass-grown battery overhanging a lane, where a sentry was walking to and fro. Here I lay down, near a cannon; and, happy in the society of the sentry’s footsteps, though he knew no more of my being above him than the boys at Salem House had known of my lying by the wall, slept soundly until morning.
Very stiff and sore of foot I was in the morning,and quite dazed by the beating of drums and marching of troops,which seemed to hem me in on every side when I went down towards the long narrow street. Feeling that I could go but a very little way that day, if I were to reserve any strength for getting to my journey’s end, I resolved to make the sale of my jacket its principal business. Accordingly, I took the jacket off, that I might learn to do without it; and carrying it under my arm, began a tour of inspection of the various slop-shops.
It was a likely place to sell a jacket in;for the dealers in second-hand clothes were numerous,and were, generally speaking,on the look-out for customers at their shop doors.But as most of them had, hanging up among their stock,an officer’s coat or two, epaulettes and all,I was rendered timid by the costly nature of their dealings,and walked about for a long time without offering my merchandise to anyone.
This modesty of mine directed my attention to the marine-store shops,and such shops as Mr. Dolloby’s,in preference to the regular dealers.At last I found one that I thought looked promising,at the corner of a dirty lane,ending in an enclosure full of stinging-nettles,against the palings of which some second-hand sailors’ clothes,that seemed to have overflowed the shop,were fluttering among some cots, and rusty guns,and oilskin hats, and certain trays full of so many old rusty keys of so many sizes that they seemed various enough to open all the doors in the world.
Into this shop, which was low and small,and which was darkened rather than lighted by a little window,overhung with clothes,and was descended into by some steps,I went with a palpitating heart;which was not relieved when an ugly old man,with the lower part of his face all covered with a stubbly grey beard,rushed out of a dirty den behind it,and seized me by the hair of my head.He was a dreadful old man to look at,in a filthy flannel waistcoat,and smelling terribly of rum. His bedstead,covered with a tumbled and ragged piece of patchwork,was in the den he had come from,where another little window showed a prospect of more stinging-nettles, and a lame donkey.
‘Oh, what do you want?’ grinned this old man, in a fierce, monotonous whine.‘Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want?Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want?Oh, goroo, goroo!’
I was so much dismayed by these words,and particularly by the repetition of the last unknown one,which was a kind of rattle in his throat,that I could make no answer; hereupon the old man,still holding me by the hair, repeated: