They had crossed Smithfield together, and Clennam was left alone at the
corner of Barbican. He had no intention of presenting himself in his
mother's dismal room that night, and could not have felt more depressed
and cast away if he had been in a wilderness. He turned slowly down
Aldersgate Street, and was pondering his way along towards Saint Paul's,
purposing to come into one of the great thoroughfares for the sake of
their light and life, when a crowd of people flocked towards him on the
same pavement, and he stood aside against a shop to let them pass. As
they came up, he made out that they were gathered around a something
that was carried on men's shoulders. He soon saw that it was a litter,
hastily made of a shutter or some such thing; and a recumbent figure
upon it, and the scraps of conversation in the crowd, and a muddy bundle
carried by one man, and a muddy hat carried by another, informed him
that an accident had occurred.
The litter stopped under a lamp before it
had passed him half-a-dozen paces, for some readjustment of the burden;
and, the crowd stopping too, he found himself in the midst of the array.
'An accident going to the Hospital?' he asked an old man beside him, who
stood shaking his head, inviting conversation.
'Yes,' said the man, 'along of them Mails. They ought to be prosecuted
and fined, them Mails. They come a racing out of Lad Lane and Wood
Street at twelve or fourteen mile a hour, them Mails do. The only wonder
is, that people ain't killed oftener by them Mails.'
'This person is not killed, I hope?' 'I don't know!' said the man, 'it an't for the want of a will in them
Mails, if he an't.' The speaker having folded his arms, and set in
comfortably to address his depreciation of them Mails to any of the
bystanders who would listen, several voices, out of pure sympathy with
the sufferer, confirmed him; one voice saying to Clennam, 'They're a
public nuisance, them Mails, sir;' another, 'I see one on 'em pull up
within half a inch of a boy, last night;' another, 'I see one on 'em
go over a cat, sir--and it might have been your own mother;' and all
representing, by implication, that if he happened to possess any public
influence, he could not use it better than against them Mails.
'Why, a native Englishman is put to it every night of his life, to save
his life from them Mails,' argued the first old man; 'and he knows when
they're a coming round the corner, to tear him limb from limb. What can
you expect from a poor foreigner who don't know nothing about 'em!' 'Is this a foreigner?' said Clennam, leaning forward to look. In the midst of such replies as 'Frenchman, sir,'