"What a blessing it is for you, under your misfortunes," continued the good soul, "to have the generous purse of your aunt for succour!" Generous purse of my aunt, indeed! Where could Mrs.
Hoggarty be? It was evident that she had not written to any of her friends in the country, nor gone thither, as she threatened.
But as my mother had already lost so much money through my unfortunate luck, and as she had enough to do with her little pittance to keep my sisters at home; and as, on hearing of my condition, she would infallibly have sold her last gown to bring me aid, Mary and I agreed that we would not let her know what our real condition was--bad enough! Heaven knows, and sad and cheerless.
Old Lieutenant Smith had likewise nothing but his half-pay and his rheumatism; so we were, in fact, quite friendless.
That period of my life, and that horrible prison, seem to me like recollections of some fever. What an awful place!--not for the sadness, strangely enough, as I thought, but for the gaiety of it;for the long prison galleries were, I remember, full of life and a sort of grave bustle. All day and all night doors were clapping to and fro; and you heard loud voices, oaths, footsteps, and laughter.
Next door to our room was one where a man sold gin, under the name of TAPE; and here, from morning till night, the people kept up a horrible revelry;--and sang--sad songs some of them: but my dear little girl was, thank God! unable to understand the most part of their ribaldry. She never used to go out till nightfall; and all day she sat working at a little store of caps and dresses for the expected stranger--and not, she says to this day, unhappy. But the confinement sickened her, who had been used to happy country air, and she grew daily paler and paler.
The Fives Court was opposite our window; and here I used, very unwillingly at first, but afterwards, I do confess, with much eagerness, to take a couple of hours' daily sport. Ah! it was a strange place. There was an aristocracy there as elsewhere,--amongst other gents, a son of my Lord Deuce-ace; and many of the men in the prison were as eager to walk with him, and talked of his family as knowingly, as if they were Bond Street bucks. Poor Tidd, especially, was one of these. Of all his fortune he had nothing left but a dressing-case and a flowered dressing-gown; and to these possessions he added a fine pair of moustaches, with which the poor creature strutted about; and though cursing his ill fortune, was, Ido believe, as happy whenever his friends brought him a guinea, as he had been during his brief career as a gentleman on town. I have seen sauntering dandies in watering-places ogling the women, watching eagerly for steamboats and stage-coaches as if their lives depended upon them, and strutting all day in jackets up and down the public walks. Well, there are such fellows in prison: quite as dandified and foolish, only a little more shabby--dandies with dirty beards and holes at their elbows.
I did not go near what is called the poor side of the prison--IDARED not, that was the fact. But our little stock of money was running low; and my heart sickened to think what might be my dear wife's fate, and on what sort of a couch our child might be born.
But Heaven spared me that pang,--Heaven, and my dear good friend, Gus Hoskins.
The attorneys to whom Mr. Smithers recommended me, told me that Icould get leave to live in the rules of the Fleet, could I procure sureties to the marshal of the prison for the amount of the detainer lodged against me; but though I looked Mr. Blatherwick hard in the face, he never offered to give the bail for me, and Iknew no housekeeper in London who would procure it. There was, however, one whom I did not know,--and that was old Mr. Hoskins, the leatherseller of Skinner Street, a kind fat gentleman, who brought his fat wife to see Mrs. Titmarsh; and though the lady gave herself rather patronising airs (her husband being free of the Skinners' Company, and bidding fair to be Alderman, nay, Lord Mayor of the first city in the world), she seemed heartily to sympathise with us; and her husband stirred and bustled about until the requisite leave was obtained, and I was allowed comparative liberty.
As for lodgings, they were soon had. My old landlady, Mrs. Stokes, sent her Jemima to say that her first floor was at our service; and when we had taken possession of it, and I offered at the end of the week to pay her bill, the good soul, with tears in her eyes, told me that she did not want for money now, and that she knew I had enough to do with what I had. I did not refuse her kindness; for, indeed, I had but five guineas left, and ought not by rights to have thought of such expensive apartments as hers; but my wife's time was very near, and I could not bear to think that she should want for any comfort in her lying-in.
The admirable woman, with whom the Misses Hoskins came every day to keep company--and very nice, kind ladies they are--recovered her health a good deal, now she was out of the odious prison and was enabled to take exercise. How gaily did we pace up and down Bridge Street and Chatham Place, to be sure! and yet, in truth, I was a beggar, and felt sometimes ashamed of being so happy.
