Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/93

81 'You need not trouble about it—' (Looking at her face, I added smiling :) 'Child.' 'Indeed, sir, I am very grateful to you,' she said.

I could not bear to listen to her any more.

'It is nothing,' I said. 'I am very glad to have been of any use to you.—Good-night.'

And left her.

Near the end of the street I passed a man who stopped and stared at me, till I noticed it and stopped also, wondering what was the matter. I had no hat on; that was it. I proceeded a little: then, almost as if recollecting something, turned back and came home. I found my hat up in my room: put it on, and went out again. I felt as if I must go, as if I was going, somewhere.

Wandered out towards the Park and then, up-skirting it, on to Primrose Hill, up which I climbed slowly. It seemed to me that I would not much care whether I lived or died. I would seek for no work. No, not I! It was nothing to me what happened, or to anyone else, or to God. I was glad the girl had not been driven to prostitute herself in these hellish London streets. When the barrier of the first time you do a thing is broken through, the second time is easier, and the third easier still. I am only sorry that this miserable carcase of mine should have so conquered me as to give the tyranny of its thoughts to my soul. These last few days have unmade me.'

I stood by a bench not far from the top, and turned, and looked out over the darkness from which came the cool breeze fanning my feverish face. All at once I cried out passionately:

'I will know, I will know!'

Then my head fell down on to my breast, and I said:

'Oh fool, fool! Dost thou think, then, that thou art the first, and wilt be the last, to cry that cry? They have not known, they will never know!—Ay, they are all wise, and they none of them find out anything! They beat the air with heavy flails, proving each other fools and us slaves and beasts, and then they also die, and rot, and are eaten. Behold, I here, a starving beggar-boy, know all that they know, and that is—