Ideala Part 15

CHAPTER XIX.

He let her go, somewhat bewildered, and not understanding herself or him, nor caring to understand, only happy, dangerously happy. The train bore her through an enchanted region of brightness and summer, and, although the power of thought was for the moment suspended, she was conscious of this, and her own delight was like the unreasoning pleasure of earth when the sun is upon it.

There was no carriage to meet her at the station, and she set off to walk home. It was the first time she had been alone on foot in the squalid disorderly streets of that dingy place, and her way, which she was not quite sure of, took her through some of the worst of them. They were filled with loud-laughing uncleanly women, and skulking hang-dog- looking men, and the grime-clogged atmosphere was heavy with foul odours; but she noticed nothing of this. The golden glow the sun made in his efforts to shine through the clouds of smoke might have been a visible expression of her own ecstatic feeling, and she would have thought so at any other time, but now she never saw it.

In a somewhat open and more lonely part of the road she met a tramp, a great rude, hulking, common fellow, with fine blue eyes. He stopped in the middle of the road and stared at Ideala as she came up to him, walking, as usual, with a slight undulating movement that made you think of a yacht in a breeze, her face up-raised and her lips parted.

He took off his cap as she approached. The gesture attracted her attention, and, thinking he wanted to beg or ask some question, she stopped and looked at him inquiringly.

"Well, you _are_ a nice lady!" he exclaimed.

He hadn't the gift of language, but she saw the soul of a man in his eyes, and she understood him.

"Thank you," she answered, and pa.s.sed on, unsurprised.

In the next street a breathless creature came running after her, a tawdry, painted, dishevelled girl. She stopped Ideala and stood panting, with hot dry lips, and eyes full of animal suffering. Her clothes exhaled the smell of some vile scent that was overpowering.

Involuntarily Ideala shrank from her, and all the joy left her face.

"I've run"--the girl gasped--"such a way--they said you'd gone this road. I've waited about all day to catch you. Come, for G.o.d's sake!"

"But where?"

"There's a girl dying"--and she clutched Ideala's arm, trying to drag her along with her--"or she would die and have done with it, but she can't till she's seen you. She've something on her mind--something to tell you. Come, my lady, come, for the love of the Lord and the Blessed Virgin. No harm'll happen to you." Ideala made a gesture. "Show me the way," she said. "But you don't seem able to walk. There's an empty cab coming. Get in and tell the man where to drive to."

They stopped at a row of many-storeyed houses in a low by-street. A stout elderly woman with an evil countenance met them at the door. She began some speech in a cringing tone to Ideala, but the tawdry girl pushed her aside rudely.

"Hold your jaw, and get out of the way," she said. "I'll show the lady up."

The woman muttered something which Ideala fortunately did not hear, and let them pa.s.s. They went upstairs to the very top of the house, and entered a low room, furnished with a broken chair and a small bed only.

On the bed lay a girl, who, in spite of disease and approaching death, looked not more than twenty, and was probably two years younger. She turned her haggard face to the door as it opened, and a gleam of satisfaction caused her eyes to dilate when she saw Ideala. They were large dark eyes, but her face was so distorted with suffering and discoloured by disease, it was impossible to imagine what it once had been.

"Here she is, Polly," said the Tawdry One, triumphantly. "I said I'd bring her, now didn't I?"

Ideala knelt down by the bed.

"My! but you're a game un!" said the Tawdry One, admiringly. "You ain't afraid of catching nothing! Now, I'd have asked what was up before I'd have done that; and I wouldn't touch her with the tongs, nor stay in the room with her was it ever so. You just holler when you want me and I'll come back." And so saying she left them.

"You are not afraid to touch me--you don't mind?" said the dying girl when Ideala had taken off her gloves, and knelt, holding her hands.

"Afraid? Mind?" Ideala whispered, her eyes full of pity. "I only wish you would let me do something for you."

At that moment they were startled by an uproar downstairs. A man and woman were quarrelling at the top of their voices. At first only their tones were audible, but these grew more distinct, and in a few seconds Ideala could hear what was said, and it was evident that the combatants were approaching.

"I tell you the lady's all right," the woman Ideala had seen downstairs was heard to shriek, with sundry vile epithets. "Polly's dying, and she've come to visit her."

"Seein' 's believin'," the man rejoined, doggedly. "Just show me the lady and shut up, you foul-mouthed devil you."

The door was flung open, and there stood the fat harridan, and towering over her was a great red-haired policeman, who seemed both relieved and abashed when he saw Ideala.

"What is the meaning of this?" she said, rising, and drawing herself up indignantly. "Don't you see how ill this girl is? Such an uproar at such a time is indecent."

The woman shrank from her gaze and slunk away. The policeman wiped his hot face with a red handkerchief.

"I saw the girl fetch you here, ma'am," he said, apologetically, "and I thought it was a trap. It ain't safe for a woman, let alone a lady, to come to no such a place. I'll just wait and see you safe out of it."

He shut the door, and Ideala heard him walking up and down on the landing outside.

The dying girl seemed scarcely conscious of what was pa.s.sing. Ideala looked round for something to revive her. There was not even a cup of water in the room. She knelt once more beside the bed, and raised her in her arms, and let her head rest on her shoulder. All the mother in her was throbbing with tenderness for this poor outcast. The girl drew a long deep sigh.

"Could you take anything?" Ideala asked.

"No, lady, not now. The thirst was awful awhile ago, and I cried and cried, although I knew no one would listen to me, or come if they heard. They'd rather we'd die when we get ill. It's a bad thing for the house." She could only speak in gasps.

"And what have you had?" Ideala asked.

"The scarlet fever, ma'am. There's an awful bad kind about, and I caught it. They all die that gets it."

Ideala drew her closer, and laid her own cool cheek on her damp forehead.

"Tell me why you wished to see me," she said. "You are so good," the girl answered--"I thought you'd better know--and get--away from--that low brute." Ideala understood, and would fain have stopped the story, but it seemed a relief to the girl to speak, and so she listened. It was the old story, the old story aggravated by every incident that could make it more repulsive--and her husband was the hero of it.

"Shall I go to h.e.l.l?" the girl asked, shrinking closer.

"For these Christ died," Ideala murmured. The words flashed through her mind, and the meaning of them was new to her. Her heart was wrung for the desolate girl, dying alone in sin and sorrow without a creature to care for her--dying alone in the arms of a strange woman, with a policeman outside guarding her. Ideala cried in her heart with an exceeding bitter cry: "G.o.d do so to him, and more also."

"Pray for me, lady."

But Ideala could not pray with a curse on her lips--and, besides, the power to pray had been taken from her for many a weary day before that.

She thought of the policeman, and called him in.

"See, she is dying," she said, looking up at him helplessly; "and she has asked me to pray, and I can't. Will you?"

And, quite simply and reverently, as if it had been part of his ordinary duty, he took off his helmet and knelt down, a great rough- looking man in a hideous dress, and prayed: "Dear Lord, forgive her!"

They were the last words she heard.

CHAPTER XX.

The people seemed to have deserted the house. Even the Tawdry One had disappeared, and Ideala was obliged to lay out the poor dear girl herself, and make her ready for decent burial. As soon as she could leave the place she went, escorted by the policeman, to the fever hospital to have her things fumigated. The risk of infection had not troubled her till she remembered the likelihood of taking it to others, but as soon as she thought of that she took the necessary precautions to prevent it. She sent a message from the hospital to her maid, telling her to pack up some things and meet her at the station in time for the mail at eleven o'clock that night. She had thought of some friends who lived a nine hours' journey from her home, and had determined to go to them for a time.

She wrote to her husband also from the hospital. "The girl, Mary Morris, died of scarlet fever this afternoon in the house to which you sent her when you were tired of her," she said. "I was with her when she died. I am going to the Trelawneys to-night; but at present I have formed no plans for the future."

During the first few days of her stay with the Trelawneys she just lived from hour to hour, not thinking of anything, past, present, or to come; but out of this apathy a desire grew by degrees. She wanted to see Lorrimer. She could speak to him, and she was sure he would help and advise her. She wrote to him, telling him she particularly wished to see him on a certain day, and asking him to meet her at the station, adding by way of postscript: "I do not think I quite know what you meant when you advised me to go my own way; but if any wrong-doing were part of the programme I should not be able to carry it out. However, I feel sure that you would be the last person in the world to let me do wrong, even if I were inclined to."