Of course, the trouble did not end with Mr. Coleman and his family.
Nobody can suffer alone. When the cause of suffering is most deeply
hidden in the heart, and nobody knows anything about it but the man
himself, he must be a great and a good man indeed, such as few of us
have known, if the pain inside him does not make him behave so as to
cause all about him to be more or less uncomfortable. But when a man
brings money-troubles on himself by making haste to be rich, then
most of the people he has to do with must suffer in the same way with
himself. The elm-tree which North Wind blew down that very night, as
if small and great trials were to be gathered in one heap, crushed Miss
Coleman's pretty summer-house: just so the fall of Mr. Coleman crushed
the little family that lived over his coach-house and stable. Before
Diamond was well enough to be taken home, there was no home for him
to go to. Mr. Coleman--or his creditors, for I do not know the
particulars--had sold house, carriage, horses, furniture, and
everything. He and his wife and daughter and Mrs. Crump had gone to live
in a small house in Hoxton, where he would be unknown, and whence he
could walk to his place of business in the City. For he was not an old
man, and hoped yet to retrieve his fortunes. Let us hope that he lived
to retrieve his honesty, the tail of which had slipped through his
fingers to the very last joint, if not beyond it.
Of course, Diamond's father had nothing to do for a time, but it was
not so hard for him to have nothing to do as it was for Miss Coleman. He
wrote to his wife that, if her sister would keep her there till he got
a place, it would be better for them, and he would be greatly obliged
to her. Meantime, the gentleman who had bought the house had allowed his
furniture to remain where it was for a little while.
Diamond's aunt was quite willing to keep them as long as she could. And
indeed Diamond was not yet well enough to be moved with safety.
When he had recovered so far as to be able to go out, one day his mother
got her sister's husband, who had a little pony-cart, to carry them
down to the sea-shore, and leave them there for a few hours. He had
some business to do further on at Ramsgate, and would pick them up as he
returned. A whiff of the sea-air would do them both good, she said, and
she thought besides she could best tell Diamond what had happened if she
had him quite to herself.
CHAPTER XIII. THE SEASIDE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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