When I went alone to the Railway to catch my train at night (Specks
had meant to go with me, but was inopportunely called out), I was
in a more charitable mood with Dullborough than I had been all day;
and yet in my heart I had loved it all day too. Ah! who was I that
I should quarrel with the town for being changed to me, when I
myself had come back, so changed, to it! All my early readings and
early imaginations dated from this place, and I took them away so
full of innocent construction and guileless belief, and I brought
them back so worn and torn, so much the wiser and so much the
worse!
CHAPTER XIII – NIGHT WALKS
Some years ago, a temporary inability to sleep, referable to a
distressing impression, caused me to walk about the streets all
night, for a series of several nights. The disorder might have
taken a long time to conquer, if it had been faintly experimented
on in bed; but, it was soon defeated by the brisk treatment of
getting up directly after lying down, and going out, and coming
home tired at sunrise.
In the course of those nights, I finished my education in a fair
amateur experience of houselessness. My principal object being to
get through the night, the pursuit of it brought me into
sympathetic relations with people who have no other object every
night in the year.
The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, and cold. The
sun not rising before half-past five, the night perspective looked
sufficiently long at half-past twelve: which was about my time for
confronting it.
The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it tumbles
and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of the first
entertainments offered to the contemplation of us houseless people.
It lasted about two hours. We lost a great deal of companionship
when the late public-houses turned their lamps out, and when the
potmen thrust the last brawling drunkards into the street; but
stray vehicles and stray people were left us, after that. If we
were very lucky, a policeman’s rattle sprang and a fray turned up;
but, in general, surprisingly little of this diversion was
provided. Except in the Haymarket, which is the worst kept part of
London, and about Kent-street in the Borough, and along a portion
of the line of the Old Kent-road, the peace was seldom violently
broken. But, it was always the case that London, as if in
imitation of individual citizens belonging to it, had expiring fits
and starts of restlessness. After all seemed quiet, if one cab
rattled by, half-a-dozen would surely follow; and Houselessness
even observed that intoxicated people appeared to be magnetically
attracted towards each other; so that we knew when we saw one
drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, that
another drunken object would stagger up before five minutes were
out, to fraternise or fight with it. When we made a divergence
from the regular species of drunkard, the thin-armed, puff-faced,
leaden-lipped gin-drinker, and encountered a rarer specimen of a
more decent appearance, fifty to one but that specimen was dressed
in soiled mourning. As the street experience in the night, so the
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street experience in the day; the common folk who come unexpectedly
into a little property, come unexpectedly into a deal of liquor.
At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn out – the
last veritable sparks of waking life trailed from some late pieman
or hot-potato man – and London would sink to rest. And then the
yearning of the houseless mind would be for any sign of company,
any lighted place, any movement, anything suggestive of any one
being up – nay, even so much as awake, for the houseless eye looked
out for lights in windows.
Walking the streets under the pattering rain, Houselessness would
walk and walk and walk, seeing nothing but the interminable tangle
of streets, save at a corner, here and there, two policemen in
conversation, or the sergeant or inspector looking after his men.
Now and then in the night – but rarely – Houselessness would become