The Fallen Leaves Part 28

She opened her poor threadbare little shawl. Over the lovely girlish breast, still only growing to the rounded beauty of womanhood, there was a hideous blue-black bruise. Simple Sally smiled, and said, "That _did_ hurt me, sir. I'd rather have the knife."

Some of the nearest drinkers at the bar looked round and laughed.

Amelius tenderly drew the shawl over the girl's cold bosom. "For G.o.d's sake, let us get away from this place!" he said.

The influence of the cool night air completed Simple Sally's recovery.

She was able to eat now. Amelius proposed retracing his steps to the provision-shop, and giving her the best food that the place afforded.

She preferred the bread-and-b.u.t.ter at the coffee-stall. Those thick slices, piled up on the plate, tempted her as a luxury. On trying the luxury, one slice satisfied her. "I thought I was hungry enough to eat the whole plateful," said the girl, turning away from the stall, in the vacantly submissive manner which it saddened Amelius to see. He bought more of the bread-and-b.u.t.ter, on the chance that her appet.i.te might revive. While he was wrapping it in a morsel of paper, one of her elder companions touched him and whispered, "There he is, sir!" Amelius looked at her. "The brute who calls himself her father," the woman explained impatiently.

Amelius turned, and saw Simple Sally with her arm in the grasp of a half-drunken ruffian; one of the swarming wild beasts of Low London, dirtied down from head to foot to the colour of the street mud--the living danger and disgrace of English civilization. As Amelius eyed him, he drew the girl away a step or two. "You've got a gentleman this time,"

he said to her; "I shall expect gold to-night, or else--!" He finished the sentence by lifting his monstrous fist, and shaking it in her face. Cautiously as he had lowered his tones in speaking, the words had reached the keenly sensitive ears of Amelius. Urged by his hot temper, he sprang forward. In another moment, he would have knocked the brute down--but for the timely interference of the arm of the law, clad in a policeman's great-coat. "Don't get yourself into trouble, sir," said the man good-humouredly. "Now, you h.e.l.l-fire (that's the nice name they know him by, sir, in these parts), be off with you!" The wild beast on two legs cowered at the voice of authority, like the wild beast on four: he was lost to sight, at the dark end of the street, in a moment.

"I saw him threaten her with his fist," said Amelius, his eyes still aflame with indignation. "He has bruised her frightfully on the breast.

Is there no protection for the poor creature?"

"Well, sir," the policeman answered, "you can summon him if you like. I dare say he'd get a month's hard labour. But, don't you see, it would be all the worse for her when he came out of prison."

The policeman's view of the girl's position was beyond dispute. Amelius turned to her gently; she was shivering with cold or terror, perhaps with both. "Tell me," he said, "is that man really your father?"

"Lord bless you, sir!" interposed the policeman, astonished at the gentleman's simplicity, "Simple Sally hasn't got father or mother--have you, my girl?"

She paid no heed to the policeman. The sorrow and sympathy, plainly visible in Amelius, filled her with a childish interest and surprise.

She dimly understood that it was sorrow and sympathy for _her._ The bare idea of distressing this new friend, so unimaginably kind and considerate, seemed to frighten her. "Don't fret about _me,_ sir," she said timidly; "I don't mind having no father nor mother; I don't mind being beaten." She appealed to the nearest of her two women-friends. "We get used to everything, don't we, Jenny?"

Amelius could bear no more. "It's enough to break one's heart to hear you, and see you!" he burst out--and suddenly turned his head aside. His generous nature was touched to the quick; he could only control himself by an effort of resolution that shook him, body and soul. "I can't and won't let that unfortunate creature go back to be beaten and starved!"

he said, pa.s.sionately addressing himself to the policeman. "Oh, look at her! How helpless, and how young!"

The policeman stared. These were strange words to him. But all true emotion carries with it, among all true people, its own t.i.tle to respect. He spoke to Amelius with marked respect.

"It's a hard case, sir, no doubt," he said. "The girl's a quiet, well-disposed creature--and the other two there are the same. They're of the sort that keep to themselves, and don't drink. They all of them do well enough, as long as they don't let the liquor overcome them. Half the time it's the men's fault when they do drink. Perhaps the workhouse might take her in for the night. What's this you've got girl, in your hand? Money?"

Amelius hastened to say that he had given her the money. "The workhouse!" he repeated. "The very sound of it is horrible."

"Make your mind easy, sir," said the policeman; "they won't take her in at the workhouse, with money in her hand."

In sheer despair, Amelius asked helplessly if there was no hotel near.

The policeman pointed to Simple Sally's threadbare and scanty clothes, and left them to answer the question for themselves. "There's a place they call a coffee-house," he said, with the air of a man who thought he had better provoke as little further inquiry on that subject as possible.

Too completely pre-occupied, or too innocent in the ways of London, to understand the man, Amelius decided on trying the coffee-house. A suspicious old woman met them at the door, and spied the policeman in the background. Without waiting for any inquiries, she said, "All full for to-night,"--and shut the door in their faces.

"Is there no other place?" said Amelius.

"There's a lodging-house," the policeman answered, more doubtfully than ever. "It's getting late, sir; and I'm afraid you'll find 'em packed like herrings in a barrel. Come, and see for yourself."

He led the way into a wretchedly lighted by-street, and knocked with his foot on a trap-door in the pavement. The door was pushed open from below, by a st.u.r.dy boy with a dirty night-cap on his head.

"Any of 'em wanted to-night, sir?" asked the st.u.r.dy boy, the moment he saw the policeman.

"What does he mean?" said Amelius.

"There's a sprinkling of thieves among them, sir," the policeman explained. "Stand out of the way, Jacob, and let the gentleman look in."

He produced his lantern, and directed the light downwards, as he spoke.

Amelius looked in. The policeman's figure of speech, likening the lodgers to "herrings in a barrel," accurately described the scene.

On the floor of a kitchen, men, women, and children lay all huddled together in closely packed rows. Ghastly faces rose terrified out of the seething obscurity, when the light of the lantern fell on them. The stench drove Amelius back, sickened and shuddering.

"How's the sore place on your head, Jacob?" the policeman inquired.

"This is a civil boy," he explained to Amelius, "and I like to encourage him."

"I'm getting better, sir, as fast as I can," said the boy.

"Good night, Jacob."

"Good night, sir." The trap-door fell--and the lodging-house disappeared like the vision of a frightful dream.

There was a moment of silence among the little group on the pavement. It was not easy to solve the question of what to do next. "There seems to be some difficulty," the policeman remarked, "about housing this girl for the night."

"Why shouldn't we take her along with us?" one of the women suggested.

"She won't mind sleeping three in a bed, I know."

"What are you thinking of?" the other woman remonstrated. "When he finds she don't come home, our place will be the first place he looks for her in."

Amelius settled the difficulty, in his own headlong way, "I'll take care of her for the night," he said. "Sally, will you trust yourself with me?"

She put her hand in his, with the air of a child who was ready to go home. Her wan face brightened for the first time. "Thank you, sir," she said; "I'll go anywhere along with you."

The policeman smiled. The two women looked thunderstruck. Before they had recovered themselves, Amelius forced them to take some money from him, and cordially shook hands with them. "You're good creatures," he said, in his eager, hearty way; "I'm sincerely sorry for you. Now, Mr.

Policeman, show me where to find a cab--and take that for the trouble I am giving you. You're a humane man, and a credit to the force."

In five minutes more, Amelius was on the way to his lodgings, with Simple Sally by his side. The act of reckless imprudence which he was committing was nothing but an act of Christian duty, to his mind. Not the slightest misgiving troubled him. "I shall provide for her in some way!" he thought to himself cheerfully. He looked at her. The weary outcast was asleep already in her corner of the cab. From time to time she still shivered, even in her sleep. Amelius took off his great-coat, and covered her with it. How some of his friends at the club would have laughed, if they had seen him at that moment!

He was obliged to wake her when the cab stopped. His key admitted them to the house. He lit his candle in the hall, and led her up the stairs.

"You'll soon be asleep again, Sally," he whispered.

She looked round the little sitting-room with drowsy admiration. "What a pretty place to live in!" she said.

"Are you hungry again?" Amelius asked.

She shook her head, and took off her shabby bonnet; her pretty light-brown hair fell about her face and her shoulders. "I think I'm too tired, sir, to be hungry. Might I take the sofa-pillow, and lay down on the hearth-rug?"

Amelius opened the door of his bedroom. "You are to pa.s.s the night more comfortably than that," he answered. "There is a bed for you here."

She followed him in, and looked round the bedroom, with renewed admiration of everything that she saw. At the sight of the hairbrushes and the comb, she clapped her hands in ecstasy. "Oh, how different from mine!" she exclaimed. "Is the comb tortoise-sh.e.l.l, sir, like one sees in the shop-windows?" The bath and the towels attracted her next; she stood, looking at them with longing eyes, completely forgetful of the wonderful comb. "I've often peeped into the ironmongers' shops," she said, "and thought I should be the happiest girl in the world, if I had such a bath as that. A little pitcher is all I have got of my own, and they swear at me when I want it filled more than once. In all my life, I have never had as much water as I should like." She paused, and thought for a moment. The forlorn, vacant look appeared again, and dimmed the beauty of her blue eyes. "It will be hard to go back, after seeing all these pretty things," she said to herself--and sighed, with that inborn submission to her fate so melancholy to see in a creature so young.

"You shall never go back again to that dreadful life," Amelius interposed. "Never speak of it, never think of it any more. Oh, don't look at me like that!"

She was listening with an expression of pain, and with both her hands lifted to her head. There was something so wonderful in the idea which he had suggested to her, that her mind was not able to take it all in at once. "You make my head giddy," she said. "I'm such a poor stupid girl--I feel out of myself, like, when a gentleman like you sets me thinking of new things. Would you mind saying it again, sir?"

"I'll say it to-morrow morning," Amelius rejoined kindly. "You are tired, Sally--go to rest."