The track goes straight to the closing fence at the street end, at a point the youthful marauders of Tallack Street have chosen for inroads into the railway territory beyond. It is passable, for those who can climb a little, and whose clothes do not mind nail-rip or paint-stain. As the three follow one another over this obstacle, Athelstan Taylor and the doctor send back a shouted word or two of reassurance to whoever it is that has opened the house-door and come out with a cry of alarm—woman or child or both. They do not stop to see which, but get on as fast as possible. The track ends for a few yards where the railway arch has made a gap in the snow, but it is soon found on the other side, and then is easy to follow over a desolation of land ripe for building—ripe for the creation of ground-rents—ripe with the deadly ripeness we all know so well, of the land that the hay will never smell sweet upon again, the land that even now awaits interminable streets of dwellings no man or woman of the days to come shall ever think of as a home in childhood. Easy to follow as it lies clear in the thick snow it has had all to itself, and will have till the road is reached that leads to the Refuse Destroyer, with its two hundred feet of chimney-shaft, from which a black cloud is pouring—presumably of refuse that has refused to be destroyed; or has reappeared after destruction in an astral body, or suppose we say disastral—and the canal, and the Breweries, and the Chemical Bottle Stout Works, and the Artificial Food Works the Sewage Appropriation Company, Limited, are building down Snape's Lane this side of the canal-basin.
The track goes straight to the road, but on reaching it swerves aside, baffled by a hedge, or the memory of what was once a hedge, whose function has been reinforced by barbed wire; probably the last expiring effort of a pastoral age to induce sheep to remain on the land and be tempted by the dirty grass. The swerved footsteps follow on to an opening two sad stumps face one another in, and think, perhaps, at times of the days when they were a stile, and real villagers stepped over them, and distant London was unknown. Then the track is lost for a space in a maze of other tracks of men on their way to brew, to bottle stout chemically, to appropriate sewage, that artificial food may be stocked, in tins, for a race with powers of digestion up to date. Then is found again, and followed on to a canal-bank with Platonic locks that sleep sometimes from day's end to day's end, bargeless, and dream of a past when railways were unknown, and they were full of purpose, and the world was young. And then is lost again, at a bridge.
Stragglers are gathering round, anxious to satisfy curiosity about the nature of the search; also anxious to impart information about its object, whether possessed of any or not. Willingness to further the public interest, without any qualifications of data to go upon, is often a serious hindrance to the end in view. In this case several casuals, who have not seen a man in his shirt-sleeves, without ne'er a hat on, go by, are so anxious to mould the particulars of something else they have seen into a plausible substitute for information about the said man, that the necessity for hearing enough of their evidence to reject it becomes an obstacle trying to the patience of the searchers. It seems injudicious to snub a volunteer informant who see a party go along the road in the opposite direction rather better than an hour ago, with a sack over his head and shoulders, who "might have been a dorg-fancier, to look at, in the manner of describing him," and to tell him to shut up if he can't go any nearer than that; not only because this drastic treatment may discourage other informants who have really something to tell, but because, being put on his mettle, he proceeds to adjust his evidence to the facts, so far as he can ascertain them. He removes the sack from the head of his recollection, makes it walk the other way at any acceptable time; won't undertake, now you ask so partic'lar, that it hadn't shirt-sleeves, and surrenders the dog-fancier in favour of any vocation you are inclined to put a leading question about. In like manner, a party sim'lar to you describe come straight—according to other proffered testimony—acrost yarnder open ground to this very self-same spot, and so forrard over the bridge to'ards the Princess Charlotte down the lane, and went in at the bar. But the photographic likeness of this person to any description you choose to give of the man sought for fails to establish the identity of the two, as he was seen on the previous day, maybe about dinner-time. Compromise is impossible; the informant stands committed to yesterday, past recall.
But the track on the snow is lost—that is the one fact clear. Give it up and go back?—is that the only course open to us? Not when the chase ends so close to a canal-lock. True, the footsteps do not go to the edge, but only because a wind-swept skirting of brick pavement is clear of snow. The last one is none so far off the stone curb, above the water. Look down into the empty lock, and think!
The parson and the doctor represent intelligent speculation; the policeman, official reserve ready to listen to information and compare it with his pre-omniscience; the gathering crowd of early workmen, the uselessness of defective reasoning powers brought to bear on insoluble problems.
After a moment the parson speaks to the doctor: "The ice is broken over there—just where the water is running in."
"Are you sure?" asks the doctor. "Isn't it only the wash of the water melting it off? But your eyesight is better than mine, I expect."
"No, there's a broken edge. The water-wash would scoop and leave a curve."
"What do you think?" the doctor asks the policeman, who replies briefly: "Gentleman's right, perhaps. Worth trying, anyhow!... Now then, some of you, idling round, I want that bit of ice broke up—against the lower gate. Look alive now!... Yes!—a couple of planks and a short ladder and a yard or so of scaffold-cord. Get 'em anywhere round! I'm answerable. Never you mind what anyone says—just you take 'em!" And the leading casuals, probably labourers on the building job down the lane, are off at a trot to requisition planks and cords. But not without establishing a slight collateral grievance, in the manner of their kind: "You've only got to name what you want, and we'll get it fast enough. Who's to know what you're askin' for, exceptin' you speak?"
Athelstan Taylor's surmise of course was that Uncle Bob had ended his run by falling into the lock at the upper end, where the ice was thin; and, breaking through it, had passed below the thicker ice, where he remained—probably jammed against the lower gate, which was closed. He noticed that this conjecture was at once accepted, but that no living soul of all those present referred to it in words. Silence is kept about it, but for a word between himself and the doctor, even till after the planks and cords and ladder have come, and the planks are laid athwart the sounder ice at the lower gate. One man can stand on them safely without fear of its giving—perhaps two. But one can break the ice with a pick fast enough, as soon as he can get at it. Hand him down a shovel to clear the snow a bit!
The parson is feeling sick at heart with his long night's vigil, and as though he could hardly face the dreadful end. He shrinks back, not to see more than he need. Then from the depths of the lock comes the crackling sound of the ice that breaks beneath the pick. Then the tension of the growing excitement as those on the brink watch for a result they feel confident of.
"Nothing there?"... "Nothing that side."... "Now you keep steady across with your peck—right you are!—across the middle ... don't go to sleep!... yes, now right up in the corner.... Something there?"... "Ah!—easy a minute till I catch holt ... have that cord ready.... Got him?"
"You are quite certain nothing can be done?"
"Absolutely certain. He was ready for heart-failure, without being an hour under the ice."
"Will you tell the poor woman, from me, that I had no choice but to go? And that poor baby...."
"Is there a baby?"
"Well—little girl of six then! Say I'll come at three to take her to see her father at the Hospital. You're sure it's the same case?"
"Not the least doubt. A blind sailor beggar—there couldn't be two. You know the wards at St. Brides.... Never mind—you'll find out.... What is it, my good woman?"
It is a woman with a tale to tell. Briefly, that she looked out of her bedroom window about an hour and a half since, and saw what must have been the unhappy inebriate running across the field, looking back, time and again, as if he see some party follering of him. Then he come to the lock, and stood close over the edge—back to, as you might say. So standing, he went wild, on the sudden, and threw up his arms, and there!—he was over in the lock, afore you could reckin him up like—clear over! Both her hearers are indignant, or perhaps incredulous about the truth of the story. For if she really saw this, why in Heaven's name did she give no alarm?—the man's life might have been saved! She expresses contrition as for an error of judgment, but no great remorse. She told her master—meaning her husband—who said it was a queer start. But it was that early! The exact bearing of this fact on the matter was far from clear.
"She'll have to tell her tale before the coroner, anyhow," said the doctor, as he showed his companion a short-cut into his road home. "Well!—now keep straight on—you'll be in the main road in five minutes. I hope you'll get a good breakfast and a good sleep before you marry those two sinners. Good-bye! Remember, straight on!"
For the Rev. Athelstan had told this gentleman of the binding engagement that he had to keep that morning as locum tenens at St. Vulgate's. He had with difficulty persuaded a navvy to remedy an omission in his duties towards the mother of his family, whom he had never led to the Altar of Hymen; and the said navvy had consented to do so this morning, and was rather entering into the fun of the thing. But if the parson were to fail in his appointment, was it certain that the delinquent would be brought to the scratch a second time?
However, he had still time for breakfast and rest before this appointment was due. So he walked briskly on through the thick snow, sad at heart, but wonderfully little the worse physically for his terrible experience. And as he walked he shuddered as he thought of the unhappy case of Alcoholism, flying over the spotless, virgin snow from God knows what, to his death. "I suppose Simon Magus had got out, after all, and was sharp on his heels," said the Rev. Athelstan, and then added: "At any rate, I'm glad it was me, not Gus!"
CHAPTER XV
HOW LIZARANN WAS TAKEN TO MISS FOSSETT'S, BUT HAD A STITCH IN HER SIDE, AND WASN'T TO GO TO DADDY TO-DAY. HOW THE RECTOR WENT TO JIM IN THE HOSPITAL, AND JIM WAS DISAPPOINTED ABOUT HIM
If Lizarann had had no grounds for looking forward to a reappearance of the curious New Policeman who had rescued her, she would have been more on the alert about the events of the previous night that concerned Uncle Bob. But she had no doubt her rescuer would come back. And this anticipation, as well as the hopeful tone in which he had spoken of Daddy's prospects at the Hospital, set her mind quite at rest about everything but the thing which presented itself to her merely as exaggerated domesticity. It was Uncle Bob, only rather more so.
Seen from her point of view, the events that had preceded Uncle Bob were that Daddy had been in collision with a Pickford's Van, and had suffered, but not murderously, from the accident; that he had not been able to walk, because of his leg; and that he had been carried away by well-disposed officials to an institution that promoted soundness of wind and limb, and had even been known to make its bénéficiaires musical. A child's mind knows no proportion; and the last item, which was really a gratuitous invention of the boy whose name was not Moses, gained credence with Lizarann slowly, and ended by throwing every other particular into the shade. Further, she knew that Uncle Bob, considered as an infliction, had been worse—for he was to her merely an endemic disease that increased or diminished, like gout—and that he had run out in the snow. Nothing abnormal in that; besides, the police, new and old, had run after him, to say nothing of the doctor-gentleman from the house with "Surgery" wrote up big, where you could get a supply of medicine if you said where you come from, and took back an exhausted bottle with a surprisingly high number on it, considering its pretensions. And these events having passed muster as normal, what followed was only natural.
Her aunt had shown at first dispositions to join the chase, but had desisted in consequence of remonstrance from neighbours, who had begun to be aware that history had been in the making during the night at Steptoe's; he, though chronic the previous evening, having become acute in the small hours of the morning. Mrs. Hicks and Mrs. Hacker, and others, having trooped round the vortex of excitement, had counselled Aunt Stingy to remain where she would be of some use, and not go canterin' over the buildin' land with no object, in the manner of speaking. Wasn't three plenty?
Jimmy 'Acker, told off to follow the trail in the snow and bring back word if he see 'em coming, had come back uneasy and evasive, had told contradictory stories about what he see, and had confirmed the public belief in the untrustworthiness of boys. Questioned, during ostracism, by his sister and Lizarann, his replies had been mysterious, and his refusal to make them less so unintelligible. The expression, "Just you wait and see if what I told you ain't k'rect," laid claim to having said something, sometime; and no effort of his hearers' memory confirmed his having done so. Other emissaries departed to get information, and did not come back.
This state of uncertainty had been ended by the reappearance of the policeman and the doctor, who climbed back over the fence followed by straggling units from among those who had witnessed the scene at the lock. Everyone can read something written about Death on the faces of those who have just seen him.
"Now which of you women was this man's wife?" That was what Lizarann had heard the policeman—the old sort; she looked in vain for her glorious friend—say to wifehood within hearing. Whereupon Aunt Stingy became on a sudden hysterical, and was helped, gasping and crying, into the house. Lizarann wanted to go too, moved by pity for she knew not what—for something folk were speaking under their breath about to one another, not to her; nodding about, pointing about, to something past or present, beyond the railway-arch; drawing morals about and referring to their own foresight about. Then she had heard the voice of the doctor-gentleman:
"Which of you youngsters is his little girl?... Hadn't got a little girl, hadn't he?... Oh ah!—of course he hadn't.... I should say—which is the little girl whose dad's hurt his leg and gone to the Hospital?... Ah, to be sure!—Lizarann. Now, Lizarann, suppose you get your bonnet and wrop yourself up as warm as you can and come along o' me to Teacher at the School, just till Mr. Taylor comes to go to see Daddy with you. The big gentleman?... just him, and nobody else. Come along!" Which Lizarann did, with alacrity. Daddy was in view again.
Then had come a very pleasant phase of what had really seemed more a dream than a reality, all along, to Lizarann. She had found herself being fed and washed and dressed and generally succoured by Miss Fossett, otherwise Teacher, at her private residence next door to the School, after the departure of the doctor-gentleman who left her there. She couldn't for the life of her make out whether it was good news or bad news he had been telling Teacher under his breath. All she knew was that she was somehow appointed to go to Daddy in the Hospital, and that nothing else mattered. Even had she known the tragedy of the morning, it would only have been the fact of Death that would have appalled her—not the loss of the man who died. Practically, the grave was already closing over the remains of Uncle Bob, or the chief part of them. Decision on that point scarcely rests with ignorance though; who shall say that even Alcoholism can efface a soul? Nips won't, however frequently took; a germ always remains. At least, that is our experience, or an inference from it.
It is always pleasant to feel at liberty to over-indulge a child, and Miss Fossett, a good-natured woman that might have married—that describes her—interpreted something the doctor had told her about Daddy as a licence to do so in this case. So Lizarann enjoyed herself thoroughly—may almost be said to have been pampered—in the interval between the doctor's departure and the arrival of the Rev. Athelstan. When the latter came, as promised, Miss Fossett had said something to him with concern, under her breath, and he had replied in a strain as of reassurance, to judge from his tone: "Never you mind the doctor, Addie. Like enough he was mistaken. Besides, he said he thought they might save it." Which, half-heard by Lizarann, only left an impression on her mind of the hospital staff on its knees hunting in the gutter for poor Jim's takings in coppers, spilt from his pocket last night when he met with this accident. Also at the moment Lizarann was doing some arithmetic by herself, hors de concours, and honestly believed she was conferring a real kindness on Teacher by adding up rows of figures for her. She would have done them quicker, only she had to stop to lick and rub out each carried cipher after writing in the next one. Also, when she got the values wrong in an eight, which is difficult, she had to rub it out and do it all over again.
"Lizarann says two and two make four, but fifteen and twelve don't make twenty-seven." Lizarann thought Teacher said this rather maliciously. But she was prompt in self-justification.
"Not of theirselves. Not till you do them in a sum. Like this...." And she did it.
"Quite right, Lizarann! Of course they don't. But two and two will make four if you leave 'em alone ever so. Isn't that it?" Thus the gentleman—a sympathetic soul!
"Yass!" And the little woman felt that justice had been done. But she didn't know why maturity should laugh, as it did.
"They may save it, of course," Miss Fossett continued. "I don't see what's to be gained by taking the child to the Hospital, myself. Only make her miserable! It won't be half as bad if it's a wooden leg and he's up and well, as seeing him in a hospital ward. Besides, Dr. Ferris said he couldn't be certain they'd let you see him."
"I fancy they would. I know a man there who would manage it, regular hours or no!"
"I don't mean that. I mean it might not be safe for the man himself. Just think!—suppose they have had to amputate both." Of course Lizarann heard none of this. They were in the next room, having left her engaged in arithmetic.
"Yes—he may be betwixt life and death. After all, we know nothing. When did Dr. Ferris say he would be at the Hospital? Is that the child coughing?"
"Is that you coughing, Lizarann?" Teacher raised her voice to ask, and Lizarann replied that she had "a stiss" in her side whenever she licked the slite. She licked it to try, and the experiment was crowned with success. She then tried to readjust something out of gear inside her by short coughs and wriggles. This did not seem so successful. Teacher lowered her voice again: "Mucous membrane," said she, "or muscular."
"Very likely. She's had a deal of exposure though, snow and all. Let's keep our eyes on her." But Lizarann didn't cough again, that time.
Nevertheless Miss Fossett seemed not quite easy in her mind about that cough, and when Mr. Taylor remarked that he ought to be thinking about starting, if we were to get to the Hospital by four o'clock, she said—only she pretended it was quite a sudden idea of hers—that if she spoke the truth she would really be much happier to have the child not go out of doors in all this terrible cold and slush. For it was a thaw, and an enthusiastic one; and, you see, Miss Fossett had come by her knowledge of mucous membranes and so forth in a sad curriculum of two courses; one of nursing a sister through phthisis to death; and the other, which was incomplete, of doing the like at intervals for a brother, with only a poor hope that it would end otherwise. So she knew all about it.
"I really should feel easier, Yorick," she repeated. And Lizarann looked up from the slate to see who else was in the room, that Teacher could be speaking to. But seeing no one, and being a sharp little girl, she perceived that it was her friend the gentleman that was addressed. Only, of course, she couldn't guess that it was a sort of nickname, given, years ago, to her brother's schoolfellow by her friend the lady.
"I should, a good deal. It's not the right sort of day at all for little girls with coughs. How shall we console her?"
"You must."
"I suppose I shall have to, Addie. I always have to do all the dirty work." This metaphor distracted Lizarann's attention from two uneven numbers, one of which had to be took off the other and wouldn't come out right. Did the New Police scrub underneath the beds, clear the flues of sut, scour out the sink, and so on? Impossible! He went on: "Look here, Lizarann! You're a good little girl, aren't you?"
"Yass!"
"And you're not going to cry—that's about it, isn't it?"
"Ye-e-e—yass!" She is not quite so confident about this, but will conciliate public opinion to the best of her ability.
"Well, Lizarann, the doctor says we mustn't see Daddy till—till a day or two." The small face clouds over pitifully. The disappointment is bitter. But Lizarann won't cry—well!—not yet, anyhow. Yorick continues: "I shall go to the Sospital to hear about Daddy, and come back and tell. But you mustn't go yet, because it would hurt Daddy." He conceals his consciousness of the background of tears to the child's Spartan resolution.
"You'll see it will come, though," says Miss Fossett, saying good-bye at the street-door. "She'll have a good cry about it when you're gone.... But oh dear!—what a lot of stories you have told that child, Yorick."
"Of course I did. You put it on me, Addie, and then you sneak out! I call it mean. But oh dear!—what a lot of stories one does have to tell children!"
"You never tell them stories about anything you think serious. I know you don't."
"Yes, I do. I tell them as matter of knowledge what I know to be only matter of belief. They wouldn't believe it if I didn't say I knew it."
"But you believe it?"
"I do. But I don't know it. Good-bye, Addie! I shall keep my promise about the Hospital, though, and bring the news back. Cosset over the little woman and console her." Which Teacher really did to the best of her ability, but the fact is that though Lizarann was brave, she was inconsolable. And—what was bitterest of all—she felt that faith had been broken with her; which, coming home too late to Miss Fossett, made her think that it might have been better to tell a child of Lizarann's character the real reason why she wasn't to go to Daddy. It was a doubtful point, though. Besides, it was far from certain, after all, that she could have seen Daddy if she had been taken to the Hospital. It would have been the worst result of all to fail in that, and have all the exposure for nothing.
So the Rev. Athelstan—or Yorick—certainly thought, as he started to walk to St. Brides, meaning to avail himself of a townward-bound hansom if one should overtake him before he got to the tram. Omnibuses were all full, apparently, inside and out; and the opportunity of enjoying a rapid thaw was open to those who had for three weeks been praying for one. Streets overwhelmed with insufferable slush, and what was beautiful clean snow only a few hours since turned to torrents of an inkiness defying explanation. Roads that made even the sufferer by the slides we so enjoyed the making of in the early morning wish that he, too, was on our side, and could benefit by them, and knock double-knocks on them and never tumble. And see them now, turned to mere ill-mixed morass—floating pea-soup ankle-deep! Scavengers' carts that seemed to spill more than they removed, and persons of low ideals of energy losing sight of the objects for whose attainment they had been entrusted with brooms and rakes, and contented to do nothing particular with them, in rows. Malignant persons on roof-tops discharging wicked accumulations on unsuspecting heads, and shouting out "Be-low!" at the moment of impact. Butchers' carts coming as close to you as possible, to splash mud in your mouth and inside your collar, and reaching the horizon long before you become articulate to curse them. And then that saddest of all depressing sights, the skater who has been warned off the ice that won't be dangerous for another hour at least, and is going home swinging his skates and doubting the benevolence of his Maker.
So onward, through abating suburb and increasing town, to the zone of the Effectual. Of impatient carts that won't wait for the snow to thaw, but snap it up and carry it away without offering to account for their conduct; of mowing-machines fitted with Brobdingnag revolving hair-brushes that will have to be washed now to be put to their proper use again, after sweeping up all that equivocal mess parallel with the kerbstone; of turncocks looking happy from human appreciation in great force, and alone able to cope with obstructions or relaxations in the bowels of the earth whose nature we outsiders can only dimly guess at. So travelling onward, on foot and by tram, the Rev. Athelstan arrived at his destination, and slipping the fare he had provided for the cab he had discarded into the contribution-box at the gate, entered St. Brides Hospital.
"I didn't know you were in these parts, Taylor," said his friend, the House Surgeon. "Haven't seen you for a century.... Yes!—I know I am right. It's two years next Lady Day. How's the family? How's Miss Caldecott?... all right, are they? That's well. Now let's have a look at you. Turn round to the light...."
"I'm all right."
"Didn't say you weren't. Let's have a look! Turn well round and show yourself ... h'm!"
"Well!—what's the matter?"
"I thought as much! You've been dissipating, my man. Your sort of dissipation! What was it this time? You've been up all night, my good sir! It's no use your trying to deceive me."
"'I will not deceive you, my sweet!'" Mr. Taylor quoted Mrs. Gamp, and was understood. "I chanced upon a bad case of delirium tremens threatening its lawful wife with a knife, and I stayed to see it out. Poor fellow!"
"H'm—why poor fellow?"
"Because I locked him up and went for the doctor round the corner. He said he knew you. Man of the name of Ferris. Good sort of little chap...."
"I know him. Saw him yesterday—came to see a patient here. Well!—what did he say to your man?"
"He never saw him alive. While I was away the poor fellow escaped out of the room, ran a mile and a half through the snow, and pitched himself into a canal-lock.... Oh yes!—he was fished out dead from under the ice...."
"Rather a good job, I should think.... However, perhaps I oughtn't to say that...."
"Glad to hear you say so, Crumpton! It sounds hopeful."
"I didn't mean that way. I meant he might have been an interesting case. Anyhow, there's an end of him!"
"I wish I could think that. But suppose I tell you what brings me here now: we can quarrel about the human soul after. I want to hear about a man that was brought in yesterday night, a blind sailor-beggar that was run over. Have you seen him?"
"Rather! I helped to get his leg off, just above the knee. A very good case—a very good case!"
"What does that mean!—a very good case?"
"Means that if the limb hadn't been taken off on the nail, septic poisoning might have set in—yes!—already!—By the merest chance Brantock was here when he was brought in—he's our visiting surgeon, you know—and he operated immediately.... Save it? Not a chance—arteries all torn—circulation stopped—nothing for it but the knife! The other leg we may save. He has a splendid constitution. Couldn't have kept him so long under chloroform else."
"The other leg?"
"Compound comminuted fracture of tibia and fibula, with extensive laceration of soft parts. Much extravasation. But vitality retained. Oh yes!—we may save that one. It's in plaster of Paris. He was removed into the surgical ward an hour ago. Do you want to see him?—he can't talk, I fancy, and he'd better not try. He's had a good deal of opium to allay pain, you see."
"May I see him? I should like to say I have to his little girl. Poor child! The delirium tremens case was her uncle, and she has no mother. She's the poor chap's only child."
The House Surgeon put a book he had been looking into as he talked, inside a desk and locked it; wrote with extreme rapidity on half a sheet of note-paper as people write on the stage; handed it to a chubby nurse who seemed to have been indulging optimism while waiting for it; remarked to her, "That's three hundred and forty-nine. I'll see about the other presently;" and said to the Rev. Athelstan, briefly, "Come along!"
Poor Jim was worse now, as far as his own feelings went, than when he spoke to Lizarann off of the hospital-barrer. Then he was, in his own eyes, a chap that had been knocked over and come by some damage to his legs, which a week in hospital would set right. Pain enough!—ah, to be sure!—and what might you expect? Not for to lie up in cotton-wool all the days of your life. As a Spartan, and as against pain, with the normal courage of his healthy hours upon him, Jim was matchless. Add to that, that when he said those few words to his little lass, all the pain was as nothing in itself, measured against the need that she should not know it.
It was that nasty suffocating stuff that knocked all the heart out of a man, getting at his innards and stopping his clock. For when the time came to shift Jim from the couch he was first laid on to the operating-table, and to place him under chloroform as a preliminary, he was conscious enough of much that was going on—had drawn his own inferences from the rapid undertone of consultation ending in a raised voice: "Perfectly useless to try for the left. May save the right!" In that instant he gave no thought to his own share in the matter; all he could think of was the coming of the knowledge to his child that her Daddy was legless as well as eyeless. Three things made up his universe—his little lass, a crushed and spoiled thing on a couch, and that mysterious thing, Jim's Self, independent of both, but mad with anxiety for the former—until the chloroform came and made all three things Nothing.
However, Jim never knew he was Nothing, because he had no sooner swallowed the nasty stuff into his lungs than he was feeling very bad, and sick-like, on a bed he had never been moved to at all, to his very certain knowledge. And he was able to guess, although he could not move his limbs to test it, that he was in the form in which he was to fossilize. Then, as the slow rally of a splendid constitution against the shock began, there grew with it an intense longing to know what manner of figure he was going to cut when reinstated. Would it be one wooden leg or two wooden legs? Would he be able to walk at all? Would he, in short, be in trim to persuade his little lass that he was on the whole rather better off than before his accident? He really thought of nothing else when awake. But he chiefly slept, rousing himself for dexterous doses of nourishment at short intervals. And when he slept, he dreamed, as folk dream whose pain opium has half quenched.
He would have done very well in his dreams if he could only have had them to himself, and been free from an awful something that ran through them all. Whereof the only certainty was that it was always the same, and a curse. Preferably, as to form, it was cubic and immovable, but of hideous weight. But then, it was by no means certain that it was not a continuous sound, a sustained hoot of appalling power and persistency that struck terror to the heart, and jarred the brain. Or was it a wild beast, that kept the ship's crew from going ashore? Or an evil fire Jim was hard at work to crawl away from, but could not, seeing that it could follow him on wheels? Or, hardest to describe of all—when he woke from his dream to recognize a fact he had recognized fifty times uselessly, that it was merely his pain and nothing else—was it a strange concerted action of malignant battalions, always coming nearer, never in sight? It made him sick to know that it was each and all of the others, just the same. Now if he could only have enjoyed his dreams—for, look you, he could see in his dreams, plain—he wouldn't have minded the pain, if he could only have kept it square and intelligible. It was just the confusion that made him so hot and dry, so unable to get properly rangé.
For instance, there was a dream of eight years back with Dolly in it. Dolly was Lizarann's mother, and the reason Lizarann was not called Dolly was that Aunt Stingy had always thought it such a selly name, and it had appeared to Jim that it couldn't much matter what anything so small was called. Its size was all he knew of it, and a milky flavour, and some squeaks. And Jim was in the dark, and Dolly in her grave, and nothing mattered.
Jim was in the dark now, with a vengeance; but he could dream Dolly out of her grave, and did it, in this dream. It was a dream of the day he met her, when he came off his first voyage, a mere boy, and a perfect stranger to her. There was the bar he and his mates off the Pera had trooped into for refreshment, just paid off and feeling good, with money in their pockets. There were the square bottles with names on the glass, and the round ones all over labels, and the pump-handles in a row that Dolly's red-faced cousin Jane, the barmaid, was in the confidence of, but which everyone else would have pulled wrong. There, too, was the girl that came in behind the bar and berthed up alongside the red-faced cousin, just as Murtagh O'Rourke called back to him through the swing-door, "We're lavin' ye behind, James, me boy," and vanished. And the girl was Dolly—Dolly herself. Jim didn't know in his dream that he had married Dolly since, and that she was dead—not he! It was all new and young again, and in a moment he would hear Dolly say what she did then, when after some chat—during which the eyes of each saw the other solely, Dolly's flinchingly, Jim's greedily—the red face was called away and left them. Yes!—he knew what she would say, "You never daren't come across to me," and that he in defiance of all Law and Order would be over that bar like a shot, and then would be driven forth by the righteous rage of the returning barmaid, with the remains of a kiss on his lips, the spoil of war in this audacious enterprise. And all the sequel of the story—how Dolly ran after him to say he might come back, under reserves; and the lightning speed of their unsophisticated courtship, under none—all this he knew in the dream beforehand, but did not wonder why he knew it—took it as a matter of course.
It never came off, though, for the dream never got as far as the kiss, to Jim's bitter disappointment. Jane, the cousin, instead of clearing out and leaving the introduction to nature, swelled and became redder still and very hot, and ended inexplicably by becoming the pain that had passed through so many vicissitudes. Whereupon Jim was awake in the dark, somewhere. And a man's voice, one good to hear, was saying, "I'll sit down by him and wait till he wakes, nurse. I promised little Lizarann I would see him."
"That's my little lass!" said Jim faintly. And the nurse said, "I thought I heard him speak." Then Jim felt that a big man came and sat beside him, who asked him what he had said. So he repeated, "The name of my little lass at home, master," and then had said all he could, and went off again in a drowze, and was far away in a new dream in two seconds. In perhaps five he woke again with a start and said: "Have ye been here long, master?" But his mind must have travelled quick from the dream he was in, and his place in it. For he had to come back to bed No. 146 at St. Brides Hospital from Singapore—from the hold of a ship a Malay sailor had hidden himself in, after running amuck through the decks, wounding right and left. And Jim and Ananias Driscoll, the second mate, were the only men who would dare to ferret him out in the dark, with a horn lantern and loaded revolvers, to use in earnest if need was. And, mind you!—the fugitive might have put fire to the ship, as lief as not, except they caught him. Now the bilge in this ship, or something broke out of a cask in the hold, had a powerful bad smell with it, that had a mortal strange effect on your legs. And when Jim said so to Driscoll, a voice came that was not Driscoll's, and Jim became aware that he was somehow in a trap, and woke just in time to escape it. But the smell of that bilge was the pain of Jim's foot; for the foot was there still, for all it had been cut off and carried away in a pail. And the voice that had seemed Driscoll's, which was quite an unnatural one for a sailor with earrings, and a crucifix tattooed on his chest, was identified half-way by Jim's waking sense, and Singapore had melted.
"Scarcely a minute," said the man who sat beside him, completing Driscoll's speech. Which seemed incredible to Jim, after that affair at Singapore. But he let it pass, the more so that at that moment the nurse brought him something in a cup, which made him feel better.
"You was so good as to mention, master...."
"Your little girl? Yes—I saw her, an hour since.... Look!—I'll put my ear down, close. Needn't try to raise your voice!" For Jim had something he wanted to say badly.
"You'll not be mentioning any matters to my little lass, sir," said he slowly. And then, as though he felt his words were a little obscure: "You might chance to be saying something regarding of the matter of my fut. Ye see, master, a young child don't take these-like things as easy as we do, and my little lass's heart will be just abroke about her Daddy's fut. I'd take it very kind of ye if ye'd make any sart of a bit of contrivance like, only for a short spell o' deception, just till I get the heart in me to make a game of it all. It's the chloroform done it. A fair casuality don't knock all the heart out of a man...."
"Your little girl will have to know about it in the end."
"Ah!—in the end—yes! But then ... a wooden leg! See the difference! Why, I can most hear the lass laughing at it." Jim paused a few seconds to enjoy Lizarann's imagined hilarity, then added: "Ye'll keep it snug about my fut, master? A stump's a stump, ye know."
"She shan't be told any particulars yet, Coupland. Don't try yourself talking too much." For Jim's long speech has made his breath come short, and his last words are almost inaudible. He submits to listening. "The doctor has told me all about the accident. You'll have to have a wooden leg. Let me tell you about Lizarann." The way the speaker, whoever he is, accents the child's name, makes a family friend of him at once. Jim, with a vague picture in his mind of a sort of guardsman with quiet manners, moves his own big right hand, hot and weak now, as it lies on the coverlid. It is taken by another as big and the image of the guardsman is confirmed. Its voice suits the hand, and continues: "We thought it best for her not to come—Miss Fossett and I did. You know Miss Fossett, at the National School."
"Sure!" Jim's intonation acknowledges Miss Fossett, with approval in it. Athelstan Taylor had made up his mind how much it would be safe to tell of last night's work, so he continued:
"Your little maid and I made friends early this morning. I was passing by your house, and she came running out. Her uncle had been drinking, and his behaviour had frightened her.... What's that?" He stoops down again to hear, and Jim tries for clearer speech:
"The Devil he'll take Bob Steptoe one of these odd-come-shortlies, or I'm a liar. Only I wish he'd...."
"Wish he'd what?"
"Be alive about it—look a bit smarter! What was his game this time, master?"
"He was drunk and violent, and I had to control him. He's quiet now. I'll tell you more, Coupland, when you are stronger."
"Very right, sir!"
"I'll tell you now about Lizarann. I carried her off to Miss Fossett's—with her aunt's consent, of course. The poor little woman had had a bad time, you see. She wanted consolation badly after your accident, and not being able to come to you. And her aunt's a good woman, but...."
"She ain't that sort of good woman ... t'other sort!"
"Well, perhaps! Anyhow, I made her wrap Lizarann up, and trotted her off to the School. Miss Fossett's got her there now, and she's in good hands...."
"You mustn't spin it out too long, Taylor." Thus the Doctor's voice, as his footsteps stop by the bed-end. He comes to the other side of the bed, and lays his finger on the near pulse. "Magnificent constitution! Everything in his favour! Splendid case—pity to spoil it! Give you seven minutes more by the clock. Look in to say good-bye as you go." He is gone, and Jim is conscious of the slight rustle of a nurse, on the watch to pounce, hard by.
"I must tell you what I came for, Coupland. Of course I wanted to find how you were, and take back word to Lizarann." Mr. Taylor has to speak quickly. "But I wanted to ask something of you."
"Give it a name, master!"
"I wanted to ask your consent to our keeping her—I should say to Miss Fossett keeping her—at the School till you are about again. She shall be well cared for. I know I am asking you to trust...." He stopped; Jim's lips were moving.
"You're the School-lady's brother, belike?"
"Not quite, but that sort of thing! Her brother and I were at College together. He is doing my work in the country, and I am doing his at St. Vulgate's at Clapham."
"That parson-gentleman—he'd be her brother. Him I heard cough?" For the brother and sister, interested in Lizarann, had visited Tallack Street, and interviewed Jim.
"Him you heard cough. That's it!"
"But he can't do no work, poor chap!—not work in the country."
"My work in the country is the same as his in London. Only not so hard. And the country air does his cough good."
"Oh, master!—ye never mean to say you're a parson!" Jim's voice rises with the poignancy of his disappointment. To him, every cleric is the Rev. Wilkinson Wilkins, the spiritual adviser of Aunt Stingy.
"I'm not a very bad one, Coupland. At least, I hope not." There is humility in the speaker's tone, and recognition of the aggressive and objectionable character of Cures of Souls, but a germ of a good-humoured laugh buried in it. The seven minutes are near their end, and the nurse, considered as a rustle, is increasing. She means action in a moment.
"I'll be your bail for that, master." But Jim cannot quite conceal his disappointment. He had formed such a high ideal of his visitor. Still, he can and does show his faith in him by spending the rest of his available speech-strength on a few words of gratitude to Lizarann's protectors, and assenting without conditions to the proposed arrangement. But when will he be "about again"? The nurse throws eight weeks, somehow, into her expression, without speech, and the forgiven parson interprets for the blind man's hearing.
"Quite a month, Coupland. But I will bring your little girl to see you the moment the doctors will allow me. Now, good-bye!"
Alas, poor Yorick! He had been so enjoying his company—company that had neither respect for his cloth, nor contempt for his cloth, nor indifference to his cloth; that, in fact, knew nothing about his cloth—and rejoicing in Jim's free speech, that would have been cramped here and crimped there had the speaker known he was addressing a parson-gentleman. It was like stepping back into the old days before he took clerk's orders; days when he was still uninsulated, still one with his kind. And yet there was never a man with a more earnest belief in his inherited mission to fight the Devil in any of the half-score of Churches that look askant at one another, and waste good powder and shot over the creeds their congregations shout in unison, knowing all the while that one or more of the chorus may be—must be—uttering a lie. Athelstan Taylor had donned the cloth he wore simply because it was the uniform of his territorial regiment in the army that, as he conceived, was being for ever enrolled in the service of Ormuzd against Ahrimanes. In his enthusiasm to fight beneath the banner of his division of the army, the Cross, he had ridden roughshod over a hundred scruples on petty details; and the consequence was that his most earnest admirers were often fain to shake their heads over his lawless expressions of opinion on sacred subjects, and to lament that Taylor, with so many fine points in his character, should be on vital points of Doctrine so painfully unsound. It was an open secret on the part of both Augustus Fossett and his sister that they prayed for Athelstan; the former with a belief as real as he was capable of that the wanderer would be guided; the latter with a practical misgiving that a very large number of thoughtful persons had not been guided, or so many samples would not be to be found outside the Communions of the English—and Roman—Churches. For too many of her brother's idols had "gone over" for it to be possible to pool the latter in the sum total of orthodox, heterodox, and cacodox dissidents. Of which last, in connection with this brother's and sister's petitions to the Almighty to guide Athelstan into their way of thinking, the one they preferred to call Socinianism was the most poisonous and insidious. A creed baited with mere veracities, to get a bite from the unwary!
As for Athelstan, every time he came to take his friend's burden off his shoulders in London he felt more clearly than before how apt he was to lose sight of even Ormuzd and Ahriman in a blind struggle against the brutalism and debauchery, and filth and disease, of a London outskirt well up to its date. Encouraged at first by the tidiness of the last-built bee-lines of bricks and mortar, he had half hoped a compromise was being found between purchasing a sense of Christianity for the rich at the cost of indefinite multiplication of the poor, and passing sentence of death on those unable to enjoy living on nothing, or to give anything in exchange for something. But as soon as he began to get behind the scenes his poorer parishioners were enacting, he saw and heard every day things that had dashed his hope; and by the time of the story had quite come to the conclusion that the small population whose souls he was supposed to be looking after were as vicious as the Court of Charles the Second, and so idle as to affirm the right of male mankind to sixteen hours out of twenty-four to eat, drink, sleep, and do nothing in—slight exceptions to the last, to nobody's credit, being allowed for. Of course it was an exaggerated feeling on Athelstan's part; one thing was that he could not reconcile himself to the ubiquitous fœtor of the beer in which, speaking broadly, his flock—who didn't acknowledge him as their shepherd at all—lived and moved and had their being. Under exasperation, he thought of them in that way ... and forgave them!
Miss Fossett interrupted a reverie to this effect, by saying to him, as he arrived, after striding five miles in an hour through the slush and drizzle: "I've had to put that child to bed."
"Hullo!—nothing bad, I hope?" What a damper! And he had looked forward so to the small anxious face, and the consolation he was going to give it. All his clients were not so nice as Lizarann.
"Dr. Ferris said he wasn't sure if it was pleurisy. It might be pneumonia."
"Doctor's been, then?"
"Oh yes!—I sent for him. She's been poulticed ever since."
"Hope it's all a fuss about nothing."
"I hope so. Here's a visitor, Lizarann. Now don't you jump up!"
CHAPTER XVI
BREAKFAST IN GROSVENOR SQUARE. STRAINED RELATIONS OF TWO SISTERS. A BATTLE INTERRUPTED. SAMARIA A GOOD-NATURED PLACE. WHO WAS TO PAY?
In a town-house of the Arkroyd order, a certain dramatic interest attaches to the morning meal that is not shared by any later one. Nobody knows who will come down to breakfast, except perhaps some confidential lady's-maid; and she won't tell, as often as not. So that the knights-harbingers of fresh toast and tea and coffee can always enjoy a little sport in the way of wagers as to who will take which, and which of the young ladies will be up—or down, which is the same thing—before ten. The pleasurable excitement which those who play cards feel, before they pick their packs up and know the worst, is akin to theirs, only less. Because the cards may be snapped up the moment it isn't a misdeal; while the tension is prolonged for the watcher who speculates beside a well-laid table as to whether the methylated will last out under the urn till one of the ladies appears to make tea, or will sputter and fizz and have to be taken out and refilled, and very likely the wick too short all the time!
Lunch is different. People make a point of lunch, or else declare off, and don't come home at all. Those who do not comply with this rule are Foolish Virgins—and serve them right! Our own experience, an extended one, points to the impossibility of being too late for breakfast. There may be a case—but!...
Anyhow, the same human interest does not attach to the question of who is, or isn't, coming to lunch. And as for tea, nobody cares a brass farthing; because you can get tea somewhere else. On the other hand, dinner is a serious matter, and you must make your mind up; and either come, or not.
This tedious excursion into the ethics of Breakfast is all owing to everybody coming down so late at 101, Grosvenor Square, on the morning after the last chapter. The story is, as it were, kept waiting, and may as well indulge in a few reflections. Samuel, the young man who brought the chessboard at Royd, had to wait, and seemed able to do so without change of countenance. He very likely reflected, for all that.
It may have struck Samuel, when Miss Arkroyd made her appearance first of those expected by him, that when this young lady said, "Oh, nobody!" on entering, she did not seem sorry, and picked up her share of the morning's post from her plate to read nearer the fire quite resignedly. It was getting colder again, and folk were pledging themselves not to wonder if the wind were to go round to the north.
Judith looked at the outside of her mother's and sister's letters. Sibyl's interested her most; and she looked them all through carefully, numerous though they were. Why does one look at the directions on other people's letters? So Judith thought to herself, as she got disgusted with the monotony of the text on Sibyl's, and her inability to suggest any emendations. She was very honourable, for she read nothing but a signature or two on the numerous postcards. She was, in fact, only acting under the impulse which prompts the least inquisitive of us all, when we have undertaken to post a letter for a friend, to read the address upon it carefully before we insert it into the inexorable box, and feel inside to see that it hasn't stuck. Judith did not answer the question she asked herself; yet her reading of the same address again and again called more for explanation than that of the letter-poster; for the latter may be put on his oath in the end, if a letter fails to reach.
There were so many to "Miss Sybil Arkroyd" that she had become confused over the spelling of the name by the time its owner's footstep was heard on the stairs. However, she wasn't going to pretend she hadn't been reading them. "There's one for you from Betty Inglis," she said incidentally; and picking up her own letters from the table, took them with her to read by the fire. It was a morning to make the hardiest give in to the temptation of a hundred-weight of best Wallsend, blazing. Judith enjoyed it; so much so that a sense of a russet Liberty serge, baking, crept into the atmosphere as she sought in vain for an inlet into an envelope cruelly gummed to its uttermost corner. When will envelope-makers have compassion for their customers' correspondents?
"You're scorching, Ju. Or you will be directly." So spoke Sibyl, reading a letter attentively, and speaking through her absorption as to a world without. "Who was that?... No—don't make the tea yet, Elphinstone. Coffee for me. You're coffee, I suppose, Ju?..."
"Yes, coffee. Who was what?"
"Who was that in your cab last night?... Well, you made noise enough! Of course I could hear! I'm not deaf." The letter is read by now, being short, and Sibyl has come out into the world to hear the answer to her question.
But Judith is deep in half-a-quire of illegibility, after an episode of a fork-point, and some impatience. "It's an old dress," she says, and then ignores Sibyl altogether for a term, in favour of the letter. Her eyebrows had moved in connection with the cab-inquiry, up to the point of detection by a sharp younger sister. "I had no cab, dear," she says at last. "I came in Mr. Challis's cab." This is quite a long time after.
"Has Mr. Challis a cab?"
"You know perfectly well what I mean, Sib."
Sibyl knows, but has become absorbed in a second letter. So she leaves her tongue, as her representative, to say fragmentarily, "Hansom-cab off the rank," and then retires altogether into the letter for a moment. However, she comes out presently to say, "The question is, was it Mr. Challis? I suppose it was, though, or it couldn't have been Mr. Challis's cab ... oh no!—I'm not finding fault. It's all perfectly right as far as I'm concerned."
The respectable domestics have been in momentary abeyance, and the conversation has been more suggestive than it would have been in their presence. The reappearance of Mr. Elphinstone, with the gist of two breakfasts, causes an automatic adjournment of the subject. The day's appointments make up the talk, during his presence.
But so late was the quorum of the total breakfast—in fact, it was doubtful whether two of the constituent cujusses would appear at all—that Sibyl got ample opportunity for resuming the conversation exactly where it left off, at least a quarter-of-an-hour having elapsed.
"It's all perfectly right as far as I'm concerned," she repeated. "As long as Marianne doesn't mind!" The Christian name may have been an intentional impertinence.
"There is nothing for Marianne to mind, Sibyl."
Sibyl changes her ground unscrupulously. "It doesn't matter to me as long as I'm not his wife. But a hansom-cab is a hansom-cab, and you know it as well as I do."
"I know it, dear." Judith speaks serenely. The attack is too puerile to call for resentment. "They try one's nerves and destroy one's skirts, getting in and out."
Sibyl's style has not been worthy of her Square, or Mr. Elphinstone. There was too much of the lowlier air of Seven Dials in the suggestion that a hansom-cab would promote an irregular flirtation to do more than provoke a smile. Charlotte Eldridge, even, would have condemned it as the bald scoff of inexperience.
But there was more maturity and force in Sibyl's next speech. "I want to know, are you going to tell the madre about it or not?" Judith flushed angrily as she answered her with: "I have told you, Sibyl, that as soon as there is something to tell, I will tell it at once to anyone it concerns. Mamma certainly!"
"How far has it gone?—that's what I want to find out."
"How far has what gone?"
"You needn't look so furious, Ju. Do let's talk quietly. You know perfectly well what I mean. This talk about a trial-performance." The imputation that Judith looked furious was a sporting venture. No doubt she felt furious, thought Sibyl; and how was she to know she didn't show it?
"I told you days ago there was no talk of a trial-performance."
Sibyl restrained herself visibly—too visibly for the prospects of peace. After some thirty seconds of self-command, she reworded her question mechanically. "The talk about something that was not to be a trial-performance." The forms of the court were complied with, without admission of previous lack of clearness. This was shown in a parti pris of facial immobility. A licked lip, a scratched nose, an eye-blink, would have marred its dramatic force.
"You needn't look so stony over it, Sib. There's no mystery of any sort, and I can tell you about it in three words. Alfred Challis is anxious ... what?"
"Nothing—go on!"
"Mr. Challis is anxious that I should get up enough of Aminta Torrington's part to give Mr. Magnus an idea.... No!—Sibyl. Mr. Magnus is not vulgar, and I think him picturesque. He smokes too many very large cigars perhaps, and they don't improve his complexion. But what objection there can possibly be to diamond shirt-studs...."
Sibyl interrupted. "You may just as well tell it all out, Ju. What do you mean by 'enough'?"
"What do I mean by enough? Do be intelligible, Dandelion dear!" Judith is patronizing.
"I wish you wouldn't call me by that hatefully foolish name. Yes—what do you mean by 'enough'? Does it mean that what Mr. Magnus has heard of what you can do isn't enough? That doesn't mean that he's heard nothing. And you know he hasn't."
Sibyl is really no match for her sister in the long run, and perhaps this is a sample of it—of a run long enough for her to get ruffled in. Judith's forbearance becomes exemplary. "Listen while tell I you," she says, imputing impatience, "what Mr. Magnus has heard; and then you can talk about it."
"Very well, go on!" snappishly.
"The suggestion came from Mr. Magnus. Alfred Challis ... certainly!—it's his name. Don't be absurd.... Alfred Challis may have talked to him—no doubt has—of my fitness for the part. And yesterday between the acts he asked us into his room, and made us read one of the scenes. Of course I was Aminta, and Alfred Challis was Moorsom. It was where they meet for the first time at the oculist's at Vienna, in the waiting-room...."
"Is that the kissing scene?"
"The kissing scene! Sibyl!—I'm sorry you read that manuscript...."
"You shouldn't have left it lying about."
"It was in my bedroom, child.... Well!—it certainly wasn't what you choose to call the kissing scene ... but it doesn't matter. I don't believe I should ever be able to make you understand how purely professional it all was. Mr. Magnus sat on the arm of a chair smoking, with his thumbs in his waistcoat, and said that sort of thing wouldn't go down with the public." Judith omitted Mr. Magnus's reason, which was that it wasn't half "schick" enough, thick enough; for it wasn't clear which he said, as his tongue interfered with his articulation.
Sibyl listened, chafing. When no more seemed to be coming, she elected to treat the communication as a confession forced from reluctant lips. "You see I was right, after all," she said. "And it was Mr. Challis in the cab." The discontinuity of semi-accusation was bewildering, and refutation hung fire for a moment. She ran on, giving her sister no chance. "I really must say, Judith, that I do not understand you at all. But you must go your own way. Do you suppose—can you suppose—that any member of your family would approve of what is going on, if they knew it?"
At this point the fact that Judith is really much the cooler of the two tells. "I don't know whom you mean, Sib," she says temperately, "by they. No member of my family is plural, that I know of ... well!—it isn't grammar, according to me. However, if you mean the madre, we shall very soon see; that is, if the thing doesn't turn out a flash in the pan. I shall tell her all about it at the proper time...."
"Meanwhile, hold my tongue, you mean? I'm not at all sure, Judith, that any other sister in my place wouldn't at once tell her mother all she knew about such goings on...."
"What are the goings on? I know of no goings on."
"I do. This visit to the back slums of a theatre, alone; I mean unaccompanied by any other lady. The impropriety—yes! impropriety—of the whole thing...."
"Please don't make a scene, with Elphinstone every half-minute, and mamma just coming down. I never said we were alone. If you had asked me, I should have told you that Mrs. Eldridge was with us."
"Who's Mrs. Eldridge?"
"A very nice person, a friend of Marianne Challis. Her husband's in the Post Office. Madame Louise could dress her to look almost pretty, if her complexion were better. And propriety—oh dear!—the very pink! She rather bored me, in fact, because she wouldn't let it alone."
"And was this Mrs. Ostrich—or whatever her name is—satisfied?"
"Perfectly. She has known Alfred Challis since before his first wife died, and has the most absolute confidence in him."
"I don't fancy your Mrs. Ostrich. Where was Mr. Challis's wife all this time?... well!—this deceased wife's sister, anyhow."
"Sibyl! I won't talk to you. Marianne Challis was where we left her, in the stage-box. I don't suppose she left it, but I didn't ask her."
"And then did she and Mrs. Ostrich go home separately?"
"Eldridge. Marianne Challis and she went away together. They were not going home; Wimbledon's too far, where they are. I really don't know where they are staying."
"I'm not curious. But you and Mr. Challis drove home lovingly in a hansom, after acting lovers in a play! There!—you needn't fly out...."
Was it any wonder that Judith then lost her temper? For she had not flown out. The insinuation that she would do so was based on Sibyl's knowledge that she would have been perfectly justified in doing so. But now, she did lose her temper, subject to that disguise of self-command which tells for more than any outburst.
"You are taking too much on yourself, Sibyl. Mamma knows. At least, she knows Alfred Challis and his wife. They have dined here, and we agreed—mamma and I—to know nothing about the deceased wife's sister business. It may even be false from beginning to end.... Ask her, did you say? I should never dream of doing so.... And as for your other disgraceful—yes! disgraceful—speech just now...."
"Well—it's true! You had been, and you know you had."
"Had been what?"
"Acting Moorhouse and Aminta Dorrington."
"That's not the way you put it. But I don't care about that. It's only your silliness and inexperience makes you say these things...."
"What is it you do care about, then?"
"I won't submit to be catechized, Sibyl. But I'll tell you. I do care about what the madre thinks—and papa. And I shall tell her.... I wonder who that can be?"
The "that" in question was a knock at the front door, one that expressed confidence that it was at the right house, and even that it would find someone at home—well-founded confidence in both cases. For the Miss Arkroyds, listening for the identity of the abnormal visitor—at ten o'clock in the morning!—only wait for a barely perceptible instalment of voice and footstep to exclaim jointly: "The Rector ... just fancy—what can he want?... In here, Elphinstone!" And it may be neither is sorry for the interruption. How very frequently a visitor is the resolution of a family discord! Judith, pale with suppressed anger, recovers her colour. Sibyl's flush of excitement dies.
It is the Rector of Royd, no doubt of that! And something equivalent to a breeze of fresh air, or the tide in an estuary, or the new crackle of a clean pine-wood fire—but not exactly any one of the three—comes into the room with him and his laugh. He has an effect that is usual with him. The under-housemaid, who has passed him on to Mr. Elphinstone, hopes she won't have done dusting when he comes out. Mr. Elphinstone is seriously hurt at his having breakfasted three hours ago and now refusing food, which would have promoted their intercourse; and the young ladies are not sorry, on inquiry, to hear that her ladyship is not coming down, but will have her breakfast upstairs, because thereby they will have the Rev. Athelstan all to themselves longer.
However, they chorus sorrow which they don't feel about their mother; and affect an equally hypocritical satisfaction at a probable appearance of their father, which they don't believe in.
"You'll see papa will come in presently and say he never heard the bell." Thus Judith, who shows her pack by adding: "Now do let's talk and be comfortable till he comes." All right—nem. con.!
"I think you the most profligate and dissipated family in London and Westminster.... Come nearer the fire? Not if I know it. Both you girls are scorching.... Well now! What was it last night?"
"They went to 'Ibsen.'" Judith summarizes, abruptly. Sibyl says: "And you went to the Megatherium," rather as a counter-accusation than a contribution of fact. The visitor looks quickly from the one to the other. Whatever he notes, he passes it by.
"I've been to 'Ibsen,'" he says, "and know all about it. The people commit suicide. What was the other play?"
"A stupid thing. I really hardly made out what it was about. But the author's a friend of the people I went with. You remember Mr. Challis, Mr. Taylor? I brought him to tea at the Rectory."
"Of course. I thought him such a shy customer. But I met him after that. We had quite a chat."
"Oh yes—I remember he talked about it to me. I'm afraid you found him a great heathen."
"Absolutely." Mr. Taylor laughs cheerfully over Alfred Challis's heathenism. "But a very good Christian for all that. I shouldn't say so to the Bishop, though. He never came to church, and I wasn't sorry...."
"Do take care, Mr. Taylor. We shall tell the Bishop."
"... Not on his account, you know—on my own. He would have convicted me of plagiarism. I took all his ideas for my sermon."
This was incidental chat, leading to nothing. Then followed inquiry, overdue, about the Rector's establishment, especially his locum tenens at Royd, the reporting of whom brought disquiet to his face. His hearers knew he was making the best of it; he was not a good actor. This led naturally to conversation about his own temporary locus tenendus in his friend's behalf, and so to the miserable tragedy of the drunkard's death in the canal-lock. Now it was well over four months since either young lady had done any slumming in the Tallack Street quarter: indeed, their visits there soon lost the charm of novelty, so neither recollected its inhabitants off-hand. The description failed to identify, until Mr. Taylor mentioned the unhappy Uncle Bob by name, first heard by him at the inquest. Then a recollection struck Judith.
"That must have been the man that said he was 'mine truly, Robert Steptoe,'" said she. "How very shocking!" The horror of the story of course increased tenfold the moment a nexus was established. Reminiscence, at work in Sibyl's mind, caused her to strike in upon Mr. Taylor's continuation of his narrative; on which he arrested it to hear what she was going to say. She said: "Never mind, go on!" till pressed to take her turn first; then said: "Wasn't that the blind beggar and the little girl—the same family, I mean?"
"Exactly. I was just coming to them." And then the Rev. Athelstan proceeded with a full account of poor Jim's sad plight in the Hospital, and of how the little girl had been a great source of anxiety to Addie Fossett. He contrived to assign the whole of the activities on Lizarann's behalf to that lady; having, indeed, a most happy impersonal faculty of narration, which detailed the facts without his own connection with them.
"They are really the reason of my coming here this morning," said he in conclusion. "I dare say you have both been wondering what it was all about. However, it's that. This poor fellow, Jim Coupland, oughtn't to be allowed to sell matches in the streets. And although he makes a good deal by what is really begging in disguise...."