Johnny Ludlow, First Series. Mrs. Henry Wood
“go on, and show us.”
He went skimming along, Tod keeping him within arm’s-length, lest he should try to escape. Why Tod should have suspected he might, I don’t know; nothing, as it turned out, could have been farther from Dor’s thoughts. The church he spoke of proved to be All Saints’; the boy turned up an entry near to it, and we found ourselves in a regular rookery of dirty, miserable, tumble-down houses. Loose men stood about, pipes in their mouths, women, in tatters, their hair hanging down.
Dor dived into a dark den that seemed to be reached through a hole you had to stoop under. My patience! what a close place it was, with a smell that nearly knocked you backwards. There was not an earthly thing in the room that we could see, except some straw in a corner, and on that Jake was lying. The boy appeared with a piece of lighted candle, which he had been upstairs to borrow.
Jake was thin enough before; he was a skeleton now. His eyes were sunk, the bones of his face stood out, the skin glistened on his shapely nose, his voice was weak and hollow. He knew us, and smiled.
“What’s the matter?” asked Tod, speaking gently. “You look very ill.”
“I be very ill, master; I’ve been getting worse ever since.”
His history was this. The same night that we had seen the tent at Cookhill, some travelling people of Jake’s fraternity happened to encamp close to it for the night. By their help, the dead child was removed as far as Evesham, and there buried. Jake, his wife, and son, went on to Worcester, and there the man was taken worse; they had been in this room since; the wife had found a place to go to twice a week washing, earning her food and a shilling each time. It was all they had to depend upon, these two shillings weekly; and the few bits o’ things they had, to use Jake’s words, had been taken by the landlord for rent. But to see Jake’s resignation was something curious.
“He was very good,” he said, alluding to the landlord and the seizure; “he left me the straw. When he saw how bad I was, he wouldn’t take it. We had been obliged to sell the tent, and there was a’most nothing for him.”
“Have you had no medicine? no advice?” cried Tod, speaking as if he had a lump in his throat.
Yes, he had had medicine; the wife went for it to the free place (he meant the dispensary) twice a week, and a young doctor had been to see him.
Dor opened the paper of meat, and showed it to his father. “The gentleman bought it me,” he said; “and this, and this. Couldn’t you eat some?”
I saw the eager look that arose for a moment to Jake’s face at sight of the meat: three slices of nice cold boiled beef, better than what we got at school. Dor held out one of them; the man broke off a morsel, put it into his mouth, and had a choking fit.
“It’s of no use, Dor.”
“Is his name ‘Dor’?” asked Tod.
“His name is James, sir; same as mine,” answered Jake, panting a little from the exertion of swallowing. “The wife, she has called him ‘Dor’ for ‘dear,’ and I’ve fell into it. She has called me Jake all along.”
Tod felt something ought to be done to help him, but he had no more idea what than the man in the moon. I had less. As Dor piloted us to the open street, we asked him where his mother was. It was one of her working-days out, he answered; she was always kept late.
“Could he drink wine, do you think, Dor?”
“The gentleman said he was to have it,” answered Dor, alluding to the doctor.
“How old are you, Dor?”
“I’m anigh ten.” He did not look it.
“Johnny, I wonder if there’s any place where they sell beef-tea?” cried Tod, as we went up Broad Street. “My goodness! lying there in that state, with no help at hand!”
“I never saw anything so bad before, Tod.”
“Do you know what I kept thinking of all the time? I could not get it out of my head.”
“What?”
“Of Lazarus at the rich man’s gate. Johnny, lad, there seems an awful responsibility lying on some of us.”
To hear Tod say such a thing was stranger than all. He set off running, and burst into our sitting-room in the Star, startling the Pater, who was alone and reading one of the Worcester papers with his spectacles on. Tod sat down and told him all.
“Dear me! dear me!” cried the Pater, growing red as he listened. “Why, Joe, the poor fellow must be dying!”
“He may not have gone too far for recovery, father,” was Tod’s answer. “If we had to lie in that close hole, and had nothing to eat or drink, we should probably soon become skeletons also. He may get well yet with proper care and treatment.”
“It seems to me that the first thing to be done is to get him into the Infirmary,” remarked the Pater.
“And it ought to be done early to-morrow morning, sir; if it’s too late to-night.”
The Pater got up in a bustle, put on his hat, and went out. He was going to his old friend, the famous surgeon, Henry Carden. Tod ran after him up Foregate Street, but was sent back to me. We stood at the door of the hotel, and in a few moments saw them coming along, the Pater arm-in-arm with Mr. Carden. He had come out as readily to visit the poor helpless man as he would to visit a rich one. Perhaps more so. They stopped when they saw us, and Mr. Carden asked Tod some of the particulars.
“You can get him admitted to the Infirmary at once, can you not?” said the Pater, impatiently, who was all on thorns to have something done.
“By what I can gather, it is not a case for the Infirmary,” was the answer of its chief surgeon. “We’ll see.”
Down we went, walking fast: the Pater and Mr. Carden in front, I and Tod at their heels; and found the room again with some difficulty. The wife was in then, and had made a handful of fire in the grate. What with the smoke, and what with the other agreeable accompaniments, we were nearly stifled.
If ever I wished to be a doctor, it was when I saw Mr. Carden with that poor sick man. He was so gentle with him, so cheery and so kind. Had Jake been a duke, I don’t see that he could have been treated differently. There was something superior about the man, too, as though he had seen better days.
“What is your name?” asked Mr. Carden.
“James Winter, sir, a native of Herefordshire. I was on my way there when I was taken ill in this place.”
“What to do there? To get work?”
“No, sir; to die. It don’t much matter, though; God’s here as well as there.”
“You are not a gipsy?”
“Oh dear no, sir. From my dark skin, though, I’ve been taken for one. My wife’s descended from a gipsy tribe.”
“We are thinking of placing you in the Infirmary, Jake,” cried the Pater. “You will have every comfort there, and the best of attendance. This gentleman——”
“We’ll see—we’ll see,” interposed Mr. Carden, breaking in hastily on the promises. “I am not sure that the Infirmary will do for him.”
“It is too late, sir, I think,” said Jake, quietly, to Mr. Carden.
Mr. Carden made no reply. He asked the woman if she had such a thing as a tea-cup or wine-glass. She produced a cracked cup with the handle off and a notch in the rim. Mr. Carden poured something into it that he had brought in his pocket, and stooped over the man. Jake began to speak in his faint voice.
“Sir, I’d not seem ungrateful, but I’d like to stay here with the wife and boy to the last. It can’t be for long now.”
“Drink