Sometimes they both went away seeking work; and then I would be
locked up in the cellar for a day or two at a time. I was at my
worldliest then. Left alone, I yielded myself up to a worldly
yearning for enough of anything (except misery), and for the death
of mother's father, who was a machine-maker at Birmingham, and on
whose decease, I had heard mother say, she would come into a whole
courtful of houses 'if she had her rights.' Worldly little devil,
I would stand about, musingly fitting my cold bare feet into
cracked bricks and crevices of the damp cellar-floor, - walking
over my grandfather's body, so to speak, into the courtful of
houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes to wear.
At last a change came down into our cellar. The universal change
came down even as low as that, - so will it mount to any height on
which a human creature can perch, - and brought other changes with
it.
We had a heap of I don't know what foul litter in the darkest
corner, which we called 'the bed.' For three days mother lay upon
it without getting up, and then began at times to laugh. If I had
ever heard her laugh before, it had been so seldom that the strange
sound frightened me. It frightened father too; and we took it by
turns to give her water. Then she began to move her head from side
to side, and sing. After that, she getting no better, father fell
a-laughing and a-singing; and then there was only I to give them
both water, and they both died.
FOURTH CHAPTER
WHEN I was lifted out of the cellar by two men, of whom one came
peeping down alone first, and ran away and brought the other, I
could hardly bear the light of the street. I was sitting in the
road-way, blinking at it, and at a ring of people collected around
me, but not close to me, when, true to my character of worldly
little devil, I broke silence by saying, 'I am hungry and thirsty!'
'Does he know they are dead?' asked one of another.
'Do you know your father and mother are both dead of fever?' asked
a third of me severely.
'I don't know what it is to be dead. I supposed it meant that,
when the cup rattled against their teeth, and the water spilt over
them. I am hungry and thirsty.' That was all I had to say about
it.
The ring of people widened outward from the inner side as I looked
around me; and I smelt vinegar, and what I know to be camphor,
thrown in towards where I sat. Presently some one put a great
vessel of smoking vinegar on the ground near me; and then they all
looked at me in silent horror as I ate and drank of what was
brought for me. I knew at the time they had a horror of me, but I
couldn't help it.
I was still eating and drinking, and a murmur of discussion had
begun to arise respecting what was to be done with me next, when I
heard a cracked voice somewhere in the ring say, 'My name is
Hawkyard, Mr. Verity Hawkyard, of West Bromwich.' Then the ring
split in one place; and a yellow-faced, peak-nosed gentleman, clad
all in iron-gray to his gaiters, pressed forward with a policeman
and another official of some sort. He came forward close to the
vessel of smoking vinegar; from which he sprinkled himself
carefully, and me copiously.
'He had a grandfather at Birmingham, this young boy, who is just
dead too,' said Mr. Hawkyard.
