London terrified me after the long silence of the prison; I was afraid
of it. More than that, I discovered that I had forgotten my brief
experience of it; so that I should have been unable, even had it been
necessary, to find my way to the old rooms in the little street off
Holborn, wherein I had dreamed my brief dreams, and wherein the Law had
so suddenly gripped me, and swept me out of the world twenty years
before. But I had this man for guide--this man who had been my guardian,
and was now, as it seemed, my friend; I could only cling to him, with
some measure of gratitude in my heart that he should have remembered me
at all, and have come to my rescue when I was once more flung upon the
world.
I gathered that he was poor; there were no signs about him of that
prosperity that had once been his. Moreover, on reaching London he
hurried me into an omnibus, and took me a long way rattling through an
obscure part of the town to a street of mean houses abutting on the
river; it was a place of houses evidently let out in rooms. He rang a
bell at one house, and after a long time the sound of shuffling feet was
heard, and the door opened a little way, and a face looked out. I was
not sure at first whether it was the face of a child or of an old and
wizened woman. Then, as the door was opened a little wider, I saw that
it was a shabby and forlorn-looking girl of about fifteen or sixteen,
dressed in an old skirt and blouse much too big for her.
"All right, Moggs," said Fanshawe, "you needn't be afraid to let us in."
He thrust her aside as he spoke, and motioned to me with a jerk of the
head to follow him. I went in, and the girl closed the door.
"There's a letter for you upstairs, guv'nor," she said, calling after
Fanshawe, who was mounting the stairs.
He muttered something, and went on his way; I followed obediently. We
came into a forlorn-looking room, with an untidy bed in one corner, and
with some wretched scraps of furniture scattered about it; a ragged
apology for a carpet covered about half the floor. A cupboard, with a
broken hinge to its door, swung open in one corner, and disclosed a few
plates and cups and saucers, and some glasses that did not match. The
place was destitute of fire, and was bitterly cold. Jervis Fanshawe
strode out of the room again, and screamed querulously for the girl.
"Moggs! Moggs!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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