The Prophet's Mantle

CHAPTER IX.

AT SPRAY'S BUILDINGS

IT seemed a very long walk home to Alice Hatfield, after that Sunday evening lecture. She felt almost as though she could never reach her lodging. It was such weary work to keep putting one tired foot before the other. And somehow she was so much more easily tired now than she used to be in her Derbyshire home, where she had been used to breast the steepest hills without even a quickened breath. She wished she had not gone; she had derived no pleasure from the evening, and had only gained a sharper heartache from the sight of a certain face, which had been, and was still for that matter, the dearest face in the world to her. She felt re-awakened too in her a liking for a different life among different surroundings; the life she had given up of her own free will three months ago. She had been much alone in that other life, it is true, and her thoughts had not made solitude sweet; but she had seen him sometimes, and now she was quite alone—always—save for the few slight acquaintances she had made in the house where she lived. In that other life, which now looked brighter than it had ever done when it was hers, she had been racked and tortured by her conscience, which had at last forced her to try and silence it by renouncing what she had sacrificed everything to gain, and by voluntarily adopting this strange, hard way of living. But now that that gloomy monitor was on her side, it failed to give that comfort and support which one is taught to expect from it.

'Be virtuous and you will be happy,' say the copy-books. A somewhat higher authority (Professor Huxley) thinks otherwise. 'Virtue is undoubtedly beneficent,' he says, 'but the man is to be envied to whom her ways seem in any wise playful; and though she may not talk much about suffering and self-denial, her silence on that topic may be accounted for on the principle ça va sans dire. She is an awful goddess, whose ministers are the furies, and whose highest reward is peace.'

Alice Hatfield hadn't read Huxley, but if she had she would have agreed with him in this; and now it seemed as though the furies were driving her along the streets towards that miserable home of hers, where, so far, no dove of peace had folded its wings.

It is given to all of us, at one time or another, to repent—more or less—of the evil; but many of us also know what it is to look back, with something like remorse, on what we believe to have been the good. And good and evil, get so mixed up sometimes, when we have often heard the world's 'right' skilfully controverted and made to seem wrong, by the tongue whose eloquence once made wrong seem to us right.

Alice had to collect all her energies to enable her to climb the steep dark stairs which led to her room, and when she had gained it at last, and had lighted her little benzoline lamp, she sank down on her chair bedstead, exhausted and breathless. What a hateful room it was; how cold, and cheerless, and wretched. The few poor articles of furniture did not relieve its bareness in the least. There was no fire, of course, and her little lamp quite failed to light up the dark corners. There must be something wrong with that lamp—it was going out surely—the room was growing so dark; or was it her eyes from which the power of seeing was going? The room seemed to swim before her sight, and a feeling of deadly faintness came over her, a horrible sensation of going through the floor. She staggered to her feet and drank some water, which gave her strength to go unsteadily down to the floor below, and to knock at the landlady's door.

'Oh, I am so ill—so ill! I think I'm dying,' she said, holding out both hands as the woman appeared; 'help me.'

Then she knew no more. Her troubles, her tiredness, her regrets, her very self, all were swallowed up in the horror of great darkness that overwhelmed her.

'Here's a nice set out,' grumbled Mrs Fludger, as her lodger fell at her feet; 'as if one hadn't enough troubles o' one's own—what with Jenny being out o' work, and the master on the booze since Friday. Jenny!'

'Here I am.'

Miss Jenny Fludger, a muscular young woman, with her hair in a long beaded net, responded to the call, and lent her help in carrying Alice back to her room. Then the unsympathetic hands of the two women undressed the girl and laid her in her bed. Then they looked meaningly at each other.

'If she don't soon come round I'll send Joe for the doctor,' said the mother. 'You never knows what may happen.'

Then Mrs Fludger dashed cold water in the patient's face, slapped her hands with a vigour that would have brought tears to her eyes had she been conscious, and made a horrible smell with the benzoline lamp and a pigeon's feather hastily begged from a lodger who had leanings ornithological. Alice showing no signs of being affected by the application of these generally efficacious remedies, Mrs Fludger decided that this was a case of 'going off' quite beyond her experience, and feeling the responsibility too much to be borne alone, she despatched her third son in quest of a doctor, regardless of Miss Jenny's opinion that the lodger was 'shamming.' Joe Fludger was not particularly pleased at being sent. He was busy just then shaking up a mangy kitten and a recently-acquired guinea-pig in a box, with a view of getting them to fight, which they showed no signs of doing, and he did not care to relinquish this enthralling pastime until he had compassed his end. He put his two 'pets' into one pocket, hoping that that position would urge them to fulfil their destiny and have it out, and as he met several friends, and felt it incumbent on him to exhibit his treasures to each of them, it was some time before he carried out his instructions, and brought medical science, as represented by Dr Moore, to 15 Spray's Buildings. But even when the doctor did at last stand by her bedside, Alice was still insensible.

He raised her eyelids, felt her pulse, asked one or two brief questions, and then stood holding her hand till she sighed, and moved slightly.

'She's coming round,' he said. 'Not married, I see,' he added, glancing at the hand he held, on which shone no golden circle, not even the brass substitute which takes its place occasionally, when times are very hard.

'Not as I ever heard of,' said Miss Jenny with a toss of the net, which drew down upon her a glance of disapproval from the old doctor, and a sharp recommendation from her mother to go downstairs. 'Give the girl air; there's too many of us here a'ready.'

Miss Fludger withdrew with a gesture expressive of a sovereign contempt for faints in general, and this collapse in particular.

'How does this poor thing get her living?' asked the doctor; 'she looks as if she got it honestly.' He, being an observant man, glanced as he spoke at the roughened forefinger of her left hand, and then round the bare, dreary attic.

'Lord! doctor, how should I know? Do you think I puts all my lodgers through their cataclysm before I takes 'em in?' said Mrs Fludger, with some general recollection of the days when she went to Sunday school. Mrs Fludger did not always manage to hit on the right word to express the meaning she intended to convey, but she always found a word something like the right one, and a word which really had a place in the English dictionary; she had a rare dexterity in the finding of such words, and a fine confidence in the use of them, which made them answer her purpose admirably.

'You're better now, aren't you?' said the doctor, as Alice opened her eyes. 'Here's a shilling, ma'am: can you send for some brandy?'

Mrs Fludger would go herself. Such an admirable opportunity for having 'two penn'orth' at the 'Hope' was not to be let slip.

'Don't be frightened,' he said, as the landlady left the room. 'It's only the doctor. You've been overdoing it—working too hard, and eating too little.'

'But I never felt like that before,' said Alice slowly and faintly. 'I thought I was going to die.'

'Haven't you anyone belonging to you? You ought to be with friends just now.'

'No. I'm quite alone, quite alone. Why just now?'

'My dear child, don't you know why?'

She did not answer, but looked at him with large, frightened, questioning eyes; and before Mrs Fludger returned with a shrunken shilling's-worth in a ginger-beer bottle, Alice had learned that that which she had feared, till a sort of hope had grown out of the very intensity of her fear—that which had seemed almost too terrible to be possible—was to be. She now had that certainty which is a spring of secret happiness to so many women, to some only a fresh care and anxiety, and to some, alas! the sign and token of social banishment—the warrant of disgrace and despair.

Doctor Moore spoke kindly, and with no note of censure in his voice. He had a naturally tender heart, and long years of practice in a poor neighbourhood had developed his sympathies, instead of blunting them, as, unfortunately, happens in too many cases. He was an old man now, and this was an old story to him; but his eyes were still sharp enough to see that the girl before him did not belong to that class of patients to whom such an announcement would have meant little more than a temporary inconvenience and a trifling subsequent expense. He thought to himself that he would look in in the morning and see the girl again. There had been a look in her eyes as she listened to him that made him feel that she wanted looking after.

'Give her some hot brandy-and-water, and let her go to sleep—that's the best thing for her,' he said to Mrs Fludger as he came away. The landlady accompanied him downstairs in a halo of apology for having 'such like' in her house, and when she had lighted him out she climbed once more, protesting, to the attic, and having administered the brandy as prescribed, came away, after bidding the girl 'good-night' not unkindly.

But, all the same, she made up her mind that Alice must go. If the girl had come there as 'Mrs' Anybody—and worn a ring, no questions would have been asked by Mrs Fludger. There would then have been the alternative of supposing that the Mr in the case was in the seafaring way, or was enjoying a holiday upon the breezy slopes of Dartmoor. But as she had chosen to neglect the payment of that slight tribute to the proprieties which even this neighbourhood demanded, there was no help for it—she must go. Besides, there might be difficulties about rent, and even a want of money for the necessaries of life—and Mrs Fludger was afraid to trust her tender heart. Even forty years of being pinched and 'druv' had not quite dried up the milk of human kindness in her bosom, and she felt that she would rather not have a lodger who would excite her sympathy and possibly make demands upon her pocket. This habit of 'not trusting our tender hearts' is not confined to the class to which Mrs Fludger belonged. Others who have larger means of meeting probable drafts on their 'tenderness' have also a way of pushing misery out of sight, or handing it over to the emollient remedies of a Royal Commission, which, of course, goes thoroughly into the matter. Does it? The Royal Commissioners do not find their shoulders any easier under the burden we have shifted on to them than we found ours, and not being able to shift the weight again, they skilfully dissolve it, and give it us back in the solution of a wordy report. And for Mrs Fludger, who had to look sharp after every halfpenny, and who knew no higher morality than that taught in the precept, 'Take care of number one,' which to her meant the number nine, of whom Miss Jenny was the eldest, there was more excuse than there is for the theoretical philanthropists who wear purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day.

But the landlady was not required to make the announcement which she had proposed to herself, for when she went up to Alice's room the next morning, to say that she wished to have a few words with her (and when people say that, you may be sure the words are not going to be pleasant ones), she found the girl already dressed—with her little belongings arranged as for an immediate departure. So she changed her mind, and instead of that speech about the few words, she said simply,—

'Good morning. You're better, I see.'

'Yes, thanks,' said Alice, hurriedly; 'and I think I would like to leave this morning—and here is a week's money from last Saturday.'

Mrs Fludger rubbed her hands together in a little embarrassment.

'I don't say but you're in the right to go, and I hope you'll get on all right, and not let your trouble play upon your mind too much; but as for the money, never mind. It's only a couple of days, and I don't grudge that. An' if you'll take my advice you'll go home to your own folk, if you've got any. God-a'mighty knows it's hard lions with most of us.'

Which Alice, listening sadly, interpreted to mean 'hard lines.'

And so it happened that her worldly goods were taken away on a hand-barrow, she herself walking beside it—whither Mrs Fludger was careful not to inquire; and Dr Moore, coming at noon, received the comforting intelligence that the girl had gone home to her people; for Mrs Fludger, like so many others, thought that her advice once given could not fail to be taken.

CHAPTER X.

A SOCIALIST

IT was a bright, perfectly clear, moonlight night, one of those nights in which there seems to be no atmosphere, in which the smallest architectural details of every building show with even a greater distinctness than in mid-sunshine. The great full moon and the vast unfathomable expanse overhead seemed to have cast a spell of their own peace over even London's unpeaceful heart. The streets were empty, for the night had worn itself away to the only hour at which they are really deserted.

The clocks had just expressed their different views on the subject of two A.M. The night was so clear that Alice Hatfield, though her eyes were smarting and aching, thought she could see the hands on the big clock of St Paul's as she came on to Blackfriars' Bridge. She walked slowly, and when she reached the second arch she stopped and leaned her elbows on the parapet. How still the night was! The tide was high, and had just started on its journey seawards; it seemed to flow in one unbroken sheet save for the stir and fret that it made round the supports of the bridge. The lights along the Embankment, with their perfect reflections, might have seemed almost Venetian to anyone inclined to take a more rose-coloured view of things than she. To her they only brought a maddening remembrance of the time when she—not alone then—had first seen them from the windows of the Arundel Hotel. The noise of the water against the bridge was very like the sound of the waters rushing round the stones in the Derbyshire streams—only those waters had always made a song that was to be enjoyed, not understood—and this dark tide, as it broke against the stone, seemed to be whispering constantly some message to her, which she as constantly, but vainly, tried to catch.

It made her shiver. She turned and leaned back against the parapet. The other side of the bridge was in the ruthless hands of the paviors, who had literally left no stone unturned in order to produce that utter chaos in which the heart of the contractor delighteth. The large slabs of paving-stones, standing and lying about in all sorts of positions, made the place look—ugh!—like a graveyard, and the displaced earth and heaps of sand looked like half-made graves, in which the spade and pick of the sexton had ceased to clink. There was a bright red spot of fire about a hundred yards from her—someone was comfortable beside it, she supposed—and somehow she hated that patch of red light more than anything else in the whole picture.

Alice had found a fresh lodging easily enough, and this time she had adopted the badge of marital servitude, and had taken another name. The new room struck her as cheerless and unwelcoming, and her poor possessions looked less friendly than they had done in the old attic at Spray's Buildings. Her bundle of work had been brought with the rest, but she seemed to have no heart to begin it, nor yet to get herself food, and she sat on there, hour after hour, till the sense of complete isolation grew too much for her. At Spray's Buildings she had had no friends, and had valued her few acquaintances but slightly, and she did not realise the amount of comfort that could be got out of a chance meeting with Miss Fludger on the stairs until such meetings were things of the past.

'I will go out,' she had said, rising at last with a feeling that even in strange and unregarding faces there would be companionship of a kind. So she had left her room and had wandered about, passing more than one spot hung thickly round with memories of her short day of sunshine. Then when night fell she felt that she could not go back to that new inhospitable room of hers.

She pictured it dark, cheerless, and cold, shuddered as she thought of the broad streak of moonlight which would come through the uncurtained window, and lie on that bare floor. How dark the corners of the room would be. So she wandered on, and the people grew scarcer and scarcer, and she grew fainter and fainter. She would have been glad of food now, but all the shops were shut, and when she came to Blackfriars' Bridge she was too tired to go any further. And as she stood and looked at the river gleaming in the moonlight, the question came into her mind.

'Need she go further? Was not this the fitting end for such as she?'

A spasm of madness caught her. What an easy way out of all her troubles; what an obvious solution of all her difficulties!

She walked straight before her, stooping to pass under the protecting pole in the middle of the road, falling once over a block of stone and cutting her hands, she thought. She climbed the tomb-like stones, and in a moment was on her hands and knees partly on the parapet and partly on some stones that leaned against it. She looked over without changing her attitude for quite a minute. It made her giddy to look down. She could not stand up, as she had pictured herself doing when that madness first came upon her.

She could drop over, though, and she would. Courage! In another minute it would all be over.

She had made a movement to turn her feet towards the water, when her shoulders were caught by two hands, and she was lifted bodily back on to the bridge.

'You little fool!' said the owner of the hands, which gave her a little shake before they loosened their hold of her. 'What do you want to go drinking of that poison for? It ain't fit to drown a cat in, let alone a human woman female.'

Alice's face was in her hands. She had sunk down against the stones on which she had climbed before. She shivered.

'Oh, I am so cold!' she said, almost in a whisper, without taking her hands away. The madness had died out of her completely.

'You'd have been colder if it hadn't been for me; and oh, the taste in your mouth would have been something dreadful. Come and have a drop of my missus's coffee, by my fire; it's a deal sweeter than wot you was after. The Government ought to take it up,' he said, sententiously, but whether he meant the river, the coffee, or the fire, he did not explain.

He helped her to rise, took her by the elbow in a sort of amateur-constable way, and led her over and round the snares and pitfalls which lay between them and that red eye which had seemed to watch them.

It was a sort of openwork iron pot, full of hot coals, and a species of shelter was contrived round it by means of a judicious arrangement of paving stones and tarpaulin. When he had made her sit down on an inverted basket placed in the warmest corner by the fire, she glanced at him for the first time. He was a big, burly, black-bearded man; he had a kindly expression, and merry eyes, with a sort of cast in one of them which made it difficult to be sure which way he was looking.

'Still cold?' he asked, with one eye on her and the other apparently on the pole star. 'Have this coat; I'm warm enough. I had to hurry up so to catch you, young woman.'

He threw a rough pea-jacket round her as she said, looking down,—

'How did you catch me? Where did you come from?'

'Where did I come from? Why, from here. Directly I saw you cross the road I knew what was up. I never would let anyone go into that ditch if I could help it. It ought to belong to the Commissioners of Sewers,' he ended, having apparently changed his mind concerning the administrative functions of 'Government.'

'The question is,' he went on, 'where did you come from, and what did you come for?'

'I've come from Gray's Inn Road,' she said.

'How lucky, now. I live that way. I shall be able to see you home in an hour or two, when my mate comes to take his turn. You'll just have time to get warm. Here, drink this coffee. Had any tea?'

She shook her head.

'Any dinner?'

'No.'

'Nor any breakfast neither, I'll back. I suppose you're hard up; that's enough to make anyone go anywhere but into that,' with a backward jerk of his thumb towards what seemed to be his pet aversion. He was a man whose occupation caused him to pass a good deal of his time on bridges, and he knew the river and the smells thereof.

'No,' said Alice, 'I'm not very hard up, and I'm in work, too; but I moved into a new place to-day, and I felt too lonely to bother about dinner or anything, and I expect going without made me a bit wild and soft like.'

'Have some of this,' was his answer, and soon Alice began to feel a returning sense of physical comfort steal through her, as she sat resting by the cheering fire, drinking the hot coffee from a tin mug, with a slice of bread and cheese on her knee, while her companion kept up a constant ripple of somewhat inconsequent talk, which was his notion of 'making conversation' for his guest. She took her part in the dialogue with an ease which surprised herself. It seems very strange that people should not be more affected than they generally are by having been face to face with death. The fact is, that it is so impossible to realise subjectively what death is, that people feel less awestruck at having been so near it than they do at having been within an ace of having their leg broken, or of being marked with small-pox. Perhaps this is why so many men sleep sound sleeps and eat hearty breakfasts just before execution.