Sentimental Tommy | Page 7

when my hame
was in hell, and we tholed it thegither, you and me."'
This bewildered though it comforted him. He thought his mother might
be speaking about the room in which they had lived until six months
ago, when his father was put into the black box, but when he asked her
if this were so, she told him to sleep, for she was dog-tired. She always
evaded him in this way when he questioned her about his past, but at
times his mind would wander backwards unbidden to those distant days,

and then he saw flitting dimly through them the elusive form of a child.
He knew it was himself, and for moments he could see it clearly, but
when he moved a step nearer it was not there. So does the child we
once were play hide and seek with us among the mists of infancy, until
one day he trips and falls into the daylight. Then we seize him, and
with that touch we two are one. It is the birth of self-consciousness.
Hitherto he had slept at the back of his mother's bed, but to-night she
could not have him there, the place being occupied, and rather sulkily
he consented to lie crosswise at her feet, undressing by the feeble fire
and taking care, as he got into bed, not to look at the usurper. His
mother watched him furtively, and was relieved to read in his face that
he had no recollection of ever having slept at the foot of a bed before.
But soon after he fell asleep he awoke, and was afraid to move lest his
father should kick him. He opened his eyes stealthily, and this was
neither the room nor the bed he had expected to see.
The floor was bare save for a sheepskin beside the bed. Tommy always
stood on the sheepskin while he was dressing because it was warm to
the feet, though risky, as your toes sometimes caught in knots in it.
There was a deal table in the middle of the floor with some dirty
crockery on it and a kettle that would leave a mark, but they had been
left there by Shovel's old girl, for Mrs. Sandys usually kept her house
clean. The chairs were of the commonest, and the press door would not
remain shut unless you stuck a knife between its halves; but there, was
a gay blue wardrobe, spotted white where Tommy's mother had scraped
off the mud that had once bespattered it during a lengthy sojourn at the
door of a shop; and on the mantelpiece was a clock in a little brown and
yellow house, and on the clock a Bible that had been in Thrums. But
what Tommy was proudest of was his mother's kist, to which the chests
of Londoners are not to be compared, though like it in appearance. On
the inside of the lid of this kist was pasted, after a Thrums custom,
something that his mother called her marriage lines, which she forced
Shovel's mother to come up and look at one day, when that lady had
made an innuendo Tommy did not understand, and Shovel's mother had
looked, and though she could not read, was convinced, knowing them
by the shape.

Tommy lay at the foot of the bed looking at this room, which was his
home now, and trying to think of the other one, and by and by the fire
helped him by falling to ashes, when darkness came in, and packing the
furniture in grotesque cloths, removed it piece by piece, all but the
clock. Then the room took a new shape. The fireplace was over there
instead of here, the torn yellow blind gave way to one made of spars of
green wood, that were bunched up at one side, like a lady out for a walk.
On a round table there was a beautiful blue cloth, with very few gravy
marks, and here a man ate beef when a woman and a boy ate bread, and
near the fire was the man's big soft chair, out of which you could pull
hairs, just as if it were Shovel's sister.
Of this man who was his father he could get no hold. He could feel his
presence, but never see him. Yet he had a face. It sometimes pressed
Tommy's face against it in order to hurt him, which it could do, being
all short needles at the chin.
Once in those days Tommy and his mother ran away and hid from
some one. He did not know from whom nor for how long, though it
was but for a week, and it left only two impressions on his mind, the
one that he often asked, "Is this starving now,