The Beetle | Page 3

if you like, you can see me do the other. It
might do your eyesight good.'
Before the grizzled pauper could interfere, he had hurled the stone in
his right hand through another pane. I felt that it was time for me to go.
He was earning a night's rest at a price which, even in my extremity, I
was not disposed to pay.
When I left two or three other persons had appeared upon the scene,
and the man in rags was addressing them with a degree of frankness,
which, in that direction, left little to be desired. I slunk away unnoticed.
But had not gone far before I had almost decided that I might as well
have thrown in my fortune with the bolder wretch, and smashed a
window too. Indeed, more than once my feet faltered, as I all but
returned to do the feat which I had left undone.

A more miserable night for an out-of-door excursion I could hardly
have chosen. The rain was like a mist, and was not only drenching me
to the skin, but it was rendering it difficult to see more than a little
distance in any direction. The neighbourhood was badly lighted. It was
one in which I was a stranger, I had come to Hammersmith as a last
resource. It had seemed to me that I had tried to find some occupation
which would enable me to keep body and soul together in every other
part of London, and that now only Hammersmith was left. And, at
Hammersmith, even the workhouse would have none of me!
Retreating from the inhospitable portal of the casual ward, I had taken
the first turning to the left,--and, at the moment, had been glad to take it.
In the darkness and the rain, the locality which I was entering appeared
unfinished. I seemed to be leaving civilisation behind me. The path was
unpaved; the road rough and uneven, as if it had never been properly
made. Houses were few and far between. Those which I did encounter,
seemed, in the imperfect light, amid the general desolation, to be
cottages which were crumbling to decay.
Exactly where I was I could not tell. I had a faint notion that, if I only
kept on long enough, I should strike some part of Walham Green. How
long I should have to keep on I could only guess. Not a creature seemed
to be about of whom I could make inquiries. It was as if I was in a land
of desolation.
I suppose it was between eleven o'clock and midnight. I had not given
up my quest for work till all the shops were closed,--and in
Hammersmith, that night, at any rate, they were not early closers. Then
I had lounged about dispiritedly, wondering what was the next thing I
could do. It was only because I feared that if I attempted to spend the
night in the open air, without food, when the morning came I should be
broken up, and fit for nothing, that I sought a night's free board and
lodging. It was really hunger which drove me to the workhouse door.
That was Wednesday. Since the Sunday night preceding nothing had
passed my lips save water from the public fountains,--with the
exception of a crust of bread which a man had given me whom I had
found crouching at the root of a tree in Holland Park. For three days I

had been fasting,--practically all the time upon my feet. It seemed to
me that if I had to go hungry till the morning I should collapse,--there
would be an end. Yet, in that strange and inhospitable place, where was
I to get food at that time of night, and how?
I do not know how far I went. Every yard I covered, my feet dragged
more. I was dead beat, inside and out. I had neither strength nor
courage left. And within there was that frightful craving, which was as
though it shrieked aloud. I leant against some palings, dazed and giddy.
If only death had come upon me quickly, painlessly, how true a friend I
should have thought it! It was the agony of dying inch by inch which
was so hard to bear.
It was some minutes before I could collect myself sufficiently to
withdraw from the support of the railings, and to start afresh. I
stumbled blindly over the uneven road. Once, like a drunken man, I
lurched forward, and fell upon my knees. Such was my backboneless
state that for some seconds I remained where I was, half disposed to let
things slide, accept the good the gods had sent me, and make a night of
it just there. A long night, I fancy, it would have been,