Demos Part 50

'Miss Mutimer,' he replied, with a stage sigh, 'why do you tempt my weakness? I am on my honour; I am endeavouring to earn your good opinion. Spare me!'

'Oh, I'm sure there's no harm in you, Mr. Keene. I suppose you'd better go and see after your--your business.'

'You are right. I go at once, Princess. I may call you Princess?'

'Well, I don't know about that. Of course only when there's no one else in the room.'

'But I shall think it always.'

'That I can't prevent, you know.'

'Ah, I fear you mean nothing, Miss Mutimer.'

'Nothing at all.'

He took his leave, and Alice enjoyed reflecting upon the dialogue, which certainly had meant nothing for her in any graver sense.

'Now, that's what the books call _flirtation_,' she said to herself. 'I think I can do that.'

And on the whole she could, vastly better than might have been expected of her birth and breeding.

At six o'clock a note was delivered for her. Richard wrote from an hotel in the neighbourhood, asking her to come to him. She found him in a private sitting-room, taking a meal.

'Why didn't you come to the house?' she asked. 'You knew mother never comes down-stairs.'

Richard looked at her with lowered brows.

'You mean to say she's doing that in earnest?'

'That she is She comes down early in the morning and gets all the food she wants for the day. I heard her cooking something in a frying-pan to-day. She hasn't been out of the house yet.'

'Does she know about Jane?'

'No. I know what it would be if I went and told her.'

He ate in silence. Alice waited.

'You must go and see Emma,' was his next remark. 'Tell her there's a grave in Manor Park Cemetery; her father and mother were buried there, you know. Keene 'll look after it all and he'll come and tell you what to do.'

'Why did you come up?'

'Oh, I couldn't talk about these things in letters. You'll have to tell mother; she might want to go to the funeral.'

'I don't see why I should do all your disagreeable work, d.i.c.k!'

'Very well, don't do it,' he replied sullenly, throwing down his knife and fork.

A scene of wrangling followed, without violence, but of the kind which is at once a cause and an effect of demoralisation. The old disagreements between them had been in another tone, at all events on Richard's side, for they had arisen from his earnest disapproval of frivolities and the like. Richard could no longer speak in that way. To lose the power of honest reproof in consequence of a moral lapse is to any man a wide-reaching calamity; to a man of Mutimer's calibre it meant disaster of which the end could not be foreseen.

Of course Alice yielded; her affection and Richard's superior force always made it a foregone result that she should do so.

'And you won't come and see mother?' she asked.

'No. She's behaving foolishly.'

'It's precious dull at home, I can tell you. I can't go on much longer without friends of some kind. I've a good mind to marry Mr. Keene, just for a change.'

Richard started up, with his fist on the table.

'Do you mean to say he's been talking to you in that way?' he cried angrily.

Alice had spoken with thoughtless petulance. She hastened eagerly to correct her error.

'As if I meant it! Don't be stupid, d.i.c.k. Of course he hasn't said a word; I believe he's engaged to somebody; I thought so from something he said a little while ago. The idea of me marrying a man like that!'

He examined her closely, and Alice was not afraid of telltale cheeks.

'Well, I can't think you'd be such a fool. If I thought there was any danger of that, I'd soon stop it.'

'Would you, indeed! Why, that would be just the way to make me say I'd have him. You'd have known that if only you read novels.'

'Novels!' he exclaimed, with profound contempt. 'Don't go playing with that kind of thing; it's dangerous. At least you can wait a week or two longer. I've only let him see so much of you because I felt sure you'd got common sense.'

'Of course I have. But what's to happen in a week or two?'

'I should think you might come to Wanley for a little. We shall see. If mother had only 'Arry in the house, she might come back to her senses.'

'Shall I tell her you've been to London?'

'You can if you like,' he replied, with a show of indifference.

Jane Vine was buried on Sunday afternoon, her sisters alone accompanying her to the grave. Alice had with difficulty obtained admission to her mother's room, and it seemed to her that the news she brought was received with little emotion. The old woman had an air of dogged weariness; she did not look her daughter in the face, and spoke only in monosyllables. Her face was yellow, her cheeks like wrinkled parchment.

Manor Park Cemetery lies in the remote East End, and gives sleeping-places to the inhabitants of a vast district. There Jane's parents lay, not in a grave to themselves, but buried amidst the nameless dead, in that part of the ground reserved for those who can purchase no more than a portion in the foss which is filled when its occupants reach statutable distance from the surface. The regions around were then being built upon for the first time; the familiar streets of pale, damp brick were stretching here and there, continuing London, much like the spreading of a disease. Epping Forest is near at hand, and nearer the dreary expanse of Wanstead Flats.

Not grief, but chill desolation makes this cemetery its abode. A country churchyard touches the tenderest memories, and softens the heart with longing for the eternal rest. The cemeteries of wealthy London abound in dear and great a.s.sociations, or at worst preach homilies which connect themselves with human dignity and pride. Here on the waste limits of that dread East, to wander among tombs is to go hand in hand with the stark and eyeless emblem of mortality; the spirit falls beneath the cold burden of ign.o.ble destiny. Here lie those who were born for toll; who, when toil has worn them to the uttermost, have but to yield their useless breath and pa.s.s into oblivion. For them is no day, only the brief twilight of a winter sky between the former and the latter night For them no aspiration; for them no hope of memory in the dust; their very children are wearied into forgetfulness. Indistinguishable units in the vast throng that labours but to support life, the name of each, father, mother, child, is as a dumb cry for the warmth and love of which Fate so stinted them. The wind wails above their narrow tenements; the sandy soil, soaking in the rain as soon as it has fallen, is a symbol of the great world which absorbs their toil and straightway blots their being.

It being Sunday afternoon the number of funerals was considerable; even to bury their dead the toilers cannot lose a day of the wage week. Around the chapel was a great collection of black vehicles with sham-tailed mortuary horses; several of the families present must have left themselves bare in order to clothe a coffin in the way they deemed seemly. Emma and her sister had made their own funeral garments, and the former, in consenting for the sake of poor Jane to receive the aid which Mutimer offered, had insisted through Alice that there should be no expenditure beyond the strictly needful. The carriage which conveyed her and Kate alone followed the hea.r.s.e from Hoxton; it rattled along at a merry pace, for the way was lengthy, and a bitter wind urged men and horses to speed. The occupants of the box kept up a jesting colloquy.

Impossible to read the burial service over each of the dead separately; time would not allow it. Emma and Kate found themselves crowded among a number of sobbing women, just in time to seat themselves before the service began. Neither of them had moist eyes; the elder looked about the chapel with blank gaze, often shivering with cold; Emma's face was bent downwards, deadly pale, set in unchanging woe. A world had fallen to pieces about her; she did not feel the ground upon which she trod; there seemed no way from amid the ruins. She had no strong religious faith; a wail in the darkness was all the expression her heart could attain to; in the present anguish she could not turn her thoughts to that far vision of a life hereafter. All day she had striven to realise that a box of wood contained all that was left of her sister. The voice of the clergyman struck her ear with meaningless monotony. Not immortality did she ask for, but one more whisper from the lips that could not speak, one throb of the heart she had striven so despairingly to warm against her own.

Kate was plucking at her arm, for the service was over, and unconsciously she was impeding people who wished to pa.s.s from the seats.

With difficulty she rose and walked; the cold seemed to have checked the flow of her blood; she noticed the breath rising from her mouth, and wondered that she could have so much whilst those dear lips were breathless. Then she was being led over hard snow, towards a place where men stood, where there was new-turned earth, where a coffin lay upon the ground. She suffered the sound of more words which she could not follow, then heard the dull falling of clods upon hollow wood. A hand seemed to clutch her throat, she struggled convulsively and cried aloud. But the tears would not come.

No memory of the return home dwelt afterwards in her mind. The white earth, the headstones sprinkled with snow, the vast grey sky over which darkness was already creeping, the wind and the clergyman's voice joining in woful chant, these alone remained with her to mark the day.

Between it and the days which then commenced lay formless void.

On Tuesday morning Alice Mutimer came to the house. Mrs. Clay chanced to be from home; Emma received the visitor and led her down into the kitchen.