How do you think it would suit you?"
Of course I could only answer that I was willing to
turn my hand to anything. But that interview has left a
mark upon me--a heavy ever-present gloom away at the
back of my soul, which I am conscious of even when the
cause of it has for a moment gone out of my thoughts.
I had enough to make a man serious before, when I had
to face the world without money or interest. But now to
think of the mother and my sisters and little Paul all
leaning upon me when I cannot stand myself--it is a
nightmare. Could there be anything more dreadful in life
than to have those whom you love looking to you for help
and to be unable to give it? But perhaps it won't come
to that. Perhaps my father may hold his own for years.
Come what may, I am bound to think that all things
are ordered for the best; though when the good is a
furlong off, and we with our beetle eyes can only see
three inches, it takes some confidence in general
principles to pull us through.
Well, it was all fixed up; and down I came to
Yorkshire. I wasn't in the best of spirits when I
started, Bertie, but they went down and down as I neared
my destination. How people can dwell in such places
passes my comprehension. What can life offer them to
make up for these mutilations of the face of Nature? No
woods, little grass, spouting chimneys, slate-coloured
streams, sloping mounds of coke and slag, topped by the
great wheels and pumps of the mines.
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