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ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 615
CHAPTER XLI
IN WHICH WE REACH THE LAST STAGE BUT
ONE OF THIS JOURNEY
ALTHOUGH poverty was knocking at Philip's humble door,
little Charlotte in all her trouble never knew how menacing
the grim visitor had been. She did not quite understand
that her husband in his last necessity sent to her mother for his
due, and that the mother turned away and refused him. "Ah,"
thought poor Philip, groaning in his despair, " I wonder whether
the thieves who attacked the man in the parable were robbers of
his own family, who knew that he carried money with him to
Jerusalem, and waylaid him on the journey ?" But again and
again he has thanked God, with grateful heart, for the Samaritans
whom he has met on life's road, and if he has not forgiven, it must
be owned he has never done any wrong to those who robbed him.
Charlotte did not know that her husband was at his last guinea,
and a prey to dreadful anxiety for her dear sake, for after the birth
of her child a fever came upon her; in the delirium consequent
upon which the poor thing was ignorant of all that happened round
her. A fortnight with a wife in extremity, with crying infants,
with hunger menacing at the door, passed for Philip somehow.
The young man became an old man in this time. Indeed, his fair
hair was streaked with white at the temples afterwards. But it
must not be imagined that he had not friends during his affliction,
and he always can gratefully count up the names of many persons
to whom he might have applied had he been in need. He did not
look or ask for these succours from his relatives. Aunt and Uncle
Twysden shrieked and cried out at his extravagance, imprudence,
and folly. Sir John Ringwood said he must really wash his hands
of a young man who menaced the life of his own son. Grenville
Woolcomb, with many oaths, in which brother-in-law Ringwood
joined chorus, cursed Philip, and said he didn't care, and the
beggar ought to be hung, and his father ought to be hung. But I
think I know half-a-dozen good men and true who told a different
tale, and who were ready with their sympathy and succour. Did
not Mrs. Flanagan, the Irish laundress, in a voice broken by sobs