"Ah!" chuckled the wizened blue-stocking, as she took off and wiped her spectacles, "I can picture to myself the doctors puzzling over these strange patients. They will shake their heads, mutter 'marasmus,' and be at a total loss to explain such rapid decline. There will be long articles in theLanceton the subject of this new disease—this deadly children's plague. It will be very interesting to read their theories about it."
"The game will soon begin," said Susan Riley, "and then woe to the tyrants!"
"Woe to them!" repeated the sisters in a low chorus, which brought a smile to the beautiful wicked face of the young mother.
After a pause sister Eliza spoke:
"You yourself have no pupils at present, sister Catherine; have you found a new one yet? You told me the other day you were looking for one."
"Not yet," Catherine replied. "I have not come across the sort of girl I want in London. I wish to find a young girl whom I can educate for our work from the very beginning. I am going to the North to-morrow, to my own country, for a week, I have an idea that though I have failed in London I shall succeed there. It may be a foolish fancy, but I think something will come of it. The temper of our Northern peopleis better adapted for this work than that of the flighty Southerners. But now I must show you the results of my last experiment."
She went out and returned with a little dog in her arms. So emaciated was it, so weak that one would have imagined that only a long period of starvation could have reduced it to this condition.
It kept its eyes closed, save for an occasional lack-lustre glimmer through half-shut lids. It was too weak to move a limb, but it was patient, evidently not suffering, and it attempted to lick its mistress's hand as she brought it carefully in.
Said Catherine King, "Three weeks ago I injected oneminimof this," showing a flask of straw-coloured fluid which she held in her hand, "into this animal's leg. Its appetite fell away. It wasted gradually, till it has come to what you see. For three days it has refused all nourishment, and even within a few hours I expect—"
As she spoke the little dog opened its eyes, gave one last affectionate look at its mistress, and with a low whine stretched out its legs and was dead.
"Woe to the oppressors!" whispered the blue-stocking.
"Woe to the oppressors!" again muttered the sisters in chorus.
"Poor Toby!" said Catherine King after a pause. The sudden death of her old pet, for such the dog had been, had startled her into a slight passing emotion.
Two of the sisters observed this emotion—the faithful Eliza, who looked sympathetic, and Susan Riley, on whose face a sneering smile sat for a moment.
The blue-stocking of course noticed nothing, but continued her employment of examining and smelling at the poison bottle with her thin scientific nose.
It was so lovely a summer morning that even the dreary Brixton street looked almost cheerful. So bright a blue sky was overhead, so glorious was the sunlight, that the bushes and flowers in the make-believe gardens in front of each house were fair to the eye as if they had been growing in the pure atmosphere of some far country side.
The smuts that covered them were not apparent under this flood of light, and their foliage waved merrily when the gusts of the fresh breeze passed them. It was the South West wind that was blowing, that most blessed visitant of our isles, spite of its blusterous ways—the sweet wind from over the seas that stirs the blood to the quick flow of joyous youth again, and makes one to dance and laugh for very delight of life. How, when the South Wester sweeps through the skies, even close London feels its spell! it rushes down the innermost slums, drives back the foul vapours, till the air is almost as that over the mid-ocean, and has a taste of the salt in it, bringing colour to the cheeks of pallid children of the alleys, and jollity to all who are still susceptible to it.
"Mary, I expect an important letter to arrive here by next post for me. I must have it as soon as possible. Hurry off with it the moment it comes. Here is your fare. Take train to Ludgate Hill and bring it to me at the office. Don't loiter mind; bring it at once."
It was Mr. Grimm who spoke as he took up his hat and umbrella after breakfast, preparatory to going city-wards.
"All right, father," replied Mary, as she removed the breakfast things, and the next minute the little lawyer was out of the house and the door slammed behind him—off to his pettifogging, lying, and cheating in his offices, which were in a narrow street off the Ludgate Hill end of Fleet Street.
Mary continued to remove the cups, saucers, and plates, in a rather nonchalant manner.
The stout red-faced second wife of Grimm sat in the arm-chair eyeing her not over kindly for a minute or so, and then in a harsh voice addressed the girl:
"You minx! you minx!" working herself up into a passion; "you do it on purpose to aggravate me, I know you do."
"Do what?" asked Mary, calmly.
"I've been watching you these ten minutes—dawdling, dawdling, dawdling, as slow as you can; that's what it is. Hurry up now over those things. What do I give you your food for, and your clothes too, do you think? To work: and work for your living you shall as sure as my name's Grimm. Hurry up; don't stand there like a stuck pig, with your sulky putty face. Do you hear?"
This was a long speech for Mrs. Grimm, and she halted for breath and further inspiration.
Not a muscle of Mary's face moved, but she did hurry up a little; only for a few seconds though, when, altering her mind, she stopped suddenly in her work and said in a deliberate voice:
"I suppose you think I ought to be very grateful to you, don't you?"
"What! grateful, grateful!" ejaculated the angry woman, almost too surprised at this exhibition of spirit to talk distinctly. "What on earth do you mean, you little—you little—"
But before she could find an epithet forcible enough for the occasion, Mary interrupted her in the same cool, unimpassioned voice as before: for she did not fear, and had learned to despise, her low-minded step-mother.
"Yes, grateful! and for what, if you please? I have worked hard here all my life. You daren't make the hired slavey work as you make me; and my father uses me as a clerk: and where will he get a clerk to copy so much a day as I do? Slavey and clerk in one I am, Mrs. Grimm, and for just enough food to keep body and soul together, and your worn-out clothes—you have got a cheap bargain in me I think," and the girl, losing some of her sang-froid in the memory of her wrongs, carried out the tray and banged the door behind her.
It was seldom that Mary bandied words with her stepmother in this way; possibly the glorious weather without had stirred her up to this ebullition, for the South West wind can excite us to honest indignation as well as to jollity.
Mrs. Grimm was what she would herself have described as bursting with rage. When the girl returned in a minute or so, cool and pale as ever, she smiled slightly when she perceived her stepmother's now purple visage. It is pleasant to behold one's enemy apoplectic with vain fury.
Then Mrs. Grimm broke out into the following fine oratorical display, panting at short intervals for breath, "You wretch: to talk tomelike that:—I'll let your father know of this when he comes back—we'll see if a little less food will cool down your hot blood, my girl.... Go out in the streets—go out, and see if with all your working and clerking anyone will take you in, though you are such a good bargain;—go out, and see if you won't starve; go. Why, with that ugly putty face of yours you could not even—"
She was about to be still coarser in her remarks, as was not unusual with her, but Mary, flushing slightly, interrupted her mid-way.
"I know all that, Mrs. Grimm; I know how hard it would be to find work if I went from here. You don't think if it were otherwise that I'd stay another half-minute, do you?"
"Go out this minute and clean up all those breakfast things," shouted Mrs. Grimm, rising from her chair, beside herself with rage.
But Mary stood looking at her with folded arms aware that nothing could be more irritating to this violent woman than her cool behaviour. Whether she would have refused to obey, how much further her mutinous spirit would have carried her is uncertain; for at that moment there came a postman's knock at the door, and the servant brought in a letter and handed it to Mrs. Grimm.
"That's the letter your father wants," she said, throwing it to Mary. "Be off with it; be off with it, you little devil, and no dawdling, mind, no staring about. Don't imagine that anyone will admire that silly face of yours."
Mary did not feel this Parthian shaft as she hurried off, only too glad to escape into the open air, to be free for an hour.
She walked fast down the streets, and then turned to the right towards the Brixton railway station. Her step was elastic, for she was young, and though her youth was ever being crushed down, it but lay latent, ready to spring up when opportunity offered. The sunshine and wind of this June day brought it out. She was happy for the time; there was a sparkle of delight in her eye—delight for this short liberty which was in so strong contrast to her usual drudgery.
In five minutes she was outside the station; then suddenly the joy faded from her face, and she stopped short, as she looked with dismay through the archway into the dark passage by which the railway is approached, appearing so cold and dismal after the outer warmth and light.
She realized that her walk was over now—she must get intothe train. In a few rapid minutes she would be at Ludgate Hill—then in her father's office, to sit perhaps through all the afternoon in the hateful little inner room that she knew so well, and into which clients were never shown, to copy papers till her head ached. Ah, the misery of it!
She hesitated before taking her ticket. Oh, for a half-hour's more freedom! She trembled with the strength of her desire. She yearned, as no one can who has not lived her life, for a respite, for but a little more time, to let her youth be filled with the glory of that summer day.
Her head seemed to turn with the temptations and ideas that crowded one on the other upon her. "Why should she go by train at all? Why not walk all the way to Ludgate Hill? What was to prevent her? Fear of her father—No!" and at the thought her head became defiantly erect, and her expression more obstinate. "Fear, she didn't fear."
Then in a moment her mind was made up; the impulse conquered; she turned her back suddenly on the station and walked off, a gleam of guilty joy in her eyes.
Having gone so far in revolt, she, as is natural, went yet a step further, and loitered quite slowly through the streets, looking into shop windows and amusing herself by studying the people who passed her, all which was very different from her usual behaviour when out of doors.
She felt like a real girl now, and the childish joy and excitement that flushed her cheek and shone in her eyes gave a rare beauty to her face, such as it had perhaps never worn before, so that passers looked with admiration and wonder at the fairy-like girl who, so shabbily and quaintly dressed, yet so graceful and so pretty, tripped lightly by them, the very model for a Cinderella.
She reached Blackfriars Bridge, and in the middle of it she stopped for a few minutes, leaning over the parapet, gazing up the grand sunny river, while the fresh breeze fanned her cheekand ruffled her soft hair. She was prolonging the short sweet spell of liberty: and when she turned at last from that glorious view, it was with very slow steps that she walked towards her father's office.
When she came to Fleet Street, and was at the point where the narrow street in which the office was situated branches from the great thoroughfare, she stood still again, while she put her hand in her pocket to bring out the letter.... It was not there! Her heart beat violently. She felt for it again—she brought out all the pocket's contents: an old thimble and a few other trifles—but no letter.
As is the unreasoning custom of those who have lost anything, she searched over and over again in the same places, hoping against hope.
At last she could deceive herself in this way no longer; she was convinced she had not got it—it was lost, and what was she to do now?
A confused crowd of ideas rushed into the child's mind: what to do—to go to the office and tell her father what had happened? or to walk back the way she had come and see if she could find the letter on the road anywhere? or to run away for good and trust to chance?
Her head swam and her heart beat when this last plan suggested itself to her, this grand and vague temptation—to run away—to have liberty, entire liberty—never to go back to that cruel house in Brixton. Oh, the delight, the mystery of it!
She was a brave girl, and to be cast adrift on the world did not terrify her much. This pluck was not due to childish ignorance; for she knew well how hopeless were the prospects of one in her situation, how cruel were the streets of the great city.
Her brain was in a whirl. Anyhow she would put off the evil moment, she said to herself; she would not decide at once, shewould think the matter over. So she walked away towards the bridge again.
Then in her uncertainty she came back once more, and hardly knowing what she did went up Fleet Street, up the Strand, and reached Trafalgar Square.
In her perplexity she stood for a few seconds gazing at the fountains glittering in the sun. Then all of a sudden, in that great open place, the passion of freedom so filled her soul, that it drove before it all other considerations. Her wavering mind yielded at once, having no more power to hesitate or reason. She stamped her foot on the stone pavement, and cried aloud, "I shall not go back—never—never again—it is all over now."
Thus she decided to try the world, to throw herself on chance, they could not be crueller than home. If all failed was there not the river? She had read in the papers of poor women leaping in it when all hope was over—"No, she would not go home."
Now that her mind was quite made up, so strange and delightful a sense of freedom, of adventure, filled that young soul that she could have shouted for joy. She felt no care for the morrow, not she—this new liberty quenched for the moment all other ideas and fears.
"And where to go to now?" she thought. "Where seek employment?"
She had the sixpence her father had given her for her fare, a small capital to start life upon. Should she buy a broom and sweep a crossing, or go out into the country and pluck flowers to sell in the town, as she knew some poor girls did?
She was well aware that she was far from being so ugly as her stepmother had made out. She knew that many a gentleman would stop to buy a flower from a pretty girl like herself, who would pass a plain woman unnoticed. Oh, yes, she knew that.
But she was so glad, so drunk with freedom, that she could not think steadily of these matters just yet. No, she must run wild for an hour or so, until this fever of delight had moderated. She must go to some great open lonely place, where she could laugh and dance to herself for awhile.
This poor little Mary who had never been a child before! all the pent-up childishness of the long sad years burst out in this her wild, mad, first day of freedom.
She thought she would go out of the crowded streets to be by herself in Hyde Park for an hour or so. She had been there once before on a winter's morning, and she had noticed what a vast lonely region it was. So she went up Piccadilly, passed into the Park, and found herself at the corner of Rotten Row.
Imagine her bewilderment at what she saw. It was no longer the dreary desert of the winter's morning, but a great garden filled with such a crowd in carriage, on horseback, and on foot, as only Hyde Park at one period of the day and in the height of the London season can show.
She felt a new sensation of shame and terror creep over her in the midst of all these grand people who were so different from herself. They were looking at her, questioning her right to be there, she thought, and her confusion increased.
She glanced around with nervous bewilderment, and her face and neck flushed crimson. Some were looking at her, it is true; her rare grace and beauty contrasting with her old-fashioned shabby dress naturally attracted attention. Dowagers deliberately raised their pince-nez and stared at her, and young men of fashion gazed with open admiration.
"Oh, this won't do at all!" she said to herself, and she hurried off through the throng till she reached the comparatively deserted open green space in the centre of the Park.
And now she could give play to her feelings. When no one was by, she went wild for a while and clapped her hands withjoy, and all because she was alone in the world with a fortune of just six pennies.
At last she sobered down, and sitting on a bench began to ponder quietly but no less happily.
Now it happened that a Satyr of the Parks had seen her from afar off.
So presently there came by an elderly gentleman who was dressed in the height of fashion, belaced, bedyed as to whiskers, and with an affectation of youthful suppleness that must have made his old limbs ache again.
He passed her once, glanced at her, then after a few paces returned again and sat down beside her.
She did not notice him, so absorbed was she in her speculations as how best to invest her capital.
After eyeing her askance for a few minutes, the old gentleman, wishing to break the ice, and not being able to evolve on the spur of the moment anything more original in the way of remarks, said in a smooth and conciliatory voice:
"It is a beautiful day, is it not, my dear?"
She started from her reverie, looked straight at him, instinctively read his meaning, and without a word got up, with proud gesture gathered her shawl around her, and walked away.
Her dream was broken, a chill came over her heart, the incident had made her suddenly realise the horror of her position.
She would find no help from any save from such as this man was. Oh! the cruelty—the wicked cruelty of the city! She shuddered at the picture of her future thus vividly presented to her, and tears, the first for years, came to her eyes.
As miserable as she had but just before been glad, she walked on, in an objectless manner, anywhere. This new wild sensation of freedom had turned her head for the while, and her emotions were intense and rapidly changing to their contraries in an hysterical fashion.
Without knowing how she got there, she again recognisedaround her the familiar buildings of Fleet Street. She approached her father's office, attracted there by the same sort of fascination that drags the murderer to the scene of his guilt.
Soon she considered how dangerous it was for her to loiter in that neighbourhood. She was aware that she must have been missed by this time; her father had probably made inquiries, had instructed the police, and there were many persons about Ludgate Hill who knew her well by sight.
Feeling hungry she went up a side street near Fetter Lane, and entering a small baker's shop bought a pennyworth of bread, and asked the woman there to give her a glass of water.
Refreshed by this frugal meal she went down to the Thames Embankment, and sitting on a seat tried to think calmly over her position. She had heard of casual wards where homeless penniless people could get lodging for the night. She thought she would most probably have to seek this shelter at least for this night, for even now it was getting late in the afternoon.
Yes! she would wait till it was dark, and then ask a policeman—she dared not do so in broad daylight—to tell her where there was a casual ward.
And so she sat down on benches, or wandered restlessly up and down the streets until it was dark and the long June day was done, when, dizzy and weary, she was once again treading the pavements of Fleet Street.
The bells of St. Clements had just pealed out ten hours, when the girl of a sudden perceived, hurriedly approaching her, her father.
He had evidently returned from home to find traces of her.
For a moment the shock paralysed her, but only for a moment. To her right was a narrow dark street; she darted in and ran down it with the haste that terror and madness give.
This street, or rather alley, is known as Devereux Passage.
On reaching the bottom of it, the poor hunted creature found herself in a sort of cul-de-sac. It was all over. Therewas no escape. The street ended. On the left were the closed iron gates of the Temple. In front of her was a wall. To the right her flight was also stopped, for there the narrow passage that leads off to Essex Street had wooden barriers placed across it, the pavement being up for repair of drain or water-pipes: so this too seemed to her hurried gaze, and in the dim light, impassable as the dead wall in front.
She was at bay; trembling, faint, and sick with despair, she looked wildly around for any chance of escape.
She heard the man's step coming down the passage—slowly too, with cruel deliberation; her father knew well that there was no way out, that she was a secured prisoner.
There was a doorway by her: she crouched into it, and with her breath bursting out in difficult sobs, and her heart beating as if to break, clung to the door-handle with all her strength. She determined that she would not be torn away. Then her head swam round—the heavy tread approached—she shut her eyes in her agony.
When he was just in front of her the sound of the man's step ceased.
There was a pause before his words came.
A pause of a few seconds only, but seeming long terrible minutes, while she waited for the harsh satirical tones of her father's voice, which she knew so well.
At last the words came.
"You seem to be unwell; can I be of assistance to you in any way?"
She started, opened her eyes wide, and stared in the speaker's face.
It was not her father!
For it happened that the solicitor had not seen her, and had continued his route along Fleet Street, when she darted into Devereux Court. The steps she had heard behind her were not her father's. The person who had spoken was a stranger, young and of pleasing exterior. It was no other than Mr. Thomas Hudson.
On his way to the Devereux Court entrance to the Temple, he had seen this girl crouching in the doorway. With the gallantry and sympathy of an Irishman, and really thinking that she was ill, he came to the rescue. Not that his motives for this were altogether unselfish. He saw that the girl was young and graceful of form, and her face, he imagined, must be agreeable also, to be consistent with the rest. He had nothing to do for the moment, and was only too glad to fall into an adventure with a pretty woman.
She looked at him wildly for a few seconds, then cried:
"Why, you are not—" and she checked herself.
"No I am not," he promptly replied; "are you afraid of someone then. Is any blackguard following you?"
Her eyes wandered round like those of an animal in presence of a great danger. Weariness and the reaction after her excitement had dulled her courage.
"Yes, I am hunted," she said at last, sadly.
"Hunted! by whom?" asked the barrister, becoming rather suspicious that his new friend might prove to be a runaway pickpocket, or something else bad—"by whom?"
She seemed only then to call her faculties together, to realise that she was talking to, nay, confiding in, a stranger. Her cold collected look returned to her, and it must be confessed that she did not appear nearly as pretty as with her late timid expression.
"Why do you wish to know?"
"Well, I saw that you looked ill, or that you were in fear of something, and I wished to be of service if possible."
She laughed bitterly. "Is that all? Well, I'll answer your question. I'm not running away from the police, but from my stepmother and father. I don't mind telling you," she went on in tones of reckless despair, "I don't see what harm it will do me, or what good it will do you."
"Running away from home!"
"Yes! for good."
"But where are you going?"
"Going—I don't know—to the casual ward I suppose—if—if I can get there."
Mary felt a strange faintness stealing over her, and the young man noticed it.
"You are ill—let me put you into a cab."
"No thank you," she replied decidedly.
"I live close here," he went on—"in the Temple. I wishyou would allow me to take you to my rooms—you seem faint—a rest for a little while and a cup of tea will do you good. Now do let me persuade you." He paused and their eyes met. "No, you need not be afraid of me," he said, translating her look.
She was looking at him, earnestly into him, and she read his character. She saw that she need not fear him—that is so long as she took proper care of herself. There was nothing violent or really wicked in the merry, careless, rather weak face. This was not the old man of the Park. She could distinguish that there were generous feelings in this young man as well as self-indulgence.
She smiled as she thought how shrewd she was getting at character-reading, what a lot she had learned of the world in one day.
"Why do you laugh?" he asked.
"At my thoughts?"
"Well I am glad that they are merrier than they were just now."
"I was thinking how well I can read your character. I saw that I need not fear you much. I can trust you."
This was a very dangerous admission for a young girl to make to a young man; but Mary, clever though she was, could hardly be expected to know exactly how to behave under such novel circumstances.
"I am delighted to hear you say so," replied Hudson excitedly. "Now take my arm and we will go to my rooms. You want somebody to take care of you, my poor little girl."
There was a tenderness in his last words that cooled Mary's confidential mood; but she took his arm, and she spoke no word while Hudson rang the bell, and they passed into the Temple through a gate that was opened by invisible hands, like that of some magic castle in the fairy tales she had read, and then crossed the deserted quadrangle, and ascended twoflights of dusty stone stairs, till they came to a solid and ancient oak door with bolts and bars enough to resist the siege of twenty locksmiths for a week, and with Mr. T. Hudson painted over it in white letters.
He opened this with one key, and there was another inner, less formidable door which he opened with another smaller key. It was just like going into a prison, she fancied, and the gloomy deserted passages half frightened her. How easily one could be murdered in this lonely place, she thought, and no one hear one's cries.
She followed him into the dark chambers, then the barrister lit a lamp and proceeded to do the honours of his establishment.
"Here we are at last—a curious looking place is it not? Now you must sit down in this armchair and make yourself comfortable, while I go out and get you something to eat. It will do you good—I can see what you want."
"I really want nothing, sir; indeed I—"
"Now, don't contradict your doctor, Miss—Miss—Miss—what is it you said?"
She smiled at his ruse as she remembered that she had not told him her name as yet, but she replied, "Mary Grimm."
"Miss Grimm, you must excuse my leaving you alone here for a few minutes; I won't be long," and he hurried off to order a nice little supper for his guest from a neighbouring tavern.
Then he thought as he went, "There is nothing but whisky in the rooms—she doesn't look the sort of girl to drink whisky—shall I get her some beer? No, that won't do—champagne? Can't run to that to-night, besides, it would look like dissipation and frighten her. Claret?—that's better; I'll get a bottle of Burgundy—that's the stuff to cheer the girl;" so he ordered a bottle of the generous wine, to be sent over to his chambers with the supper.
The adventure was a curious one and pleased him. This wasno ordinary girl, he saw that. He felt that her story was true, or nearly so. She puzzled him somewhat, but this presumptuous young man flattered himself that he could understand any woman after an hour's conversation, and he intended to understand his new acquaintance.
When a woman is left by herself in a bachelor's home for the first time, she loves to prowl about it and look into every corner like a cat in a strange house, endeavouring to satisfy her natural curiosity as to the secret life of the unmarried man. Residential chambers in the Temple have an especial charm for the inquisitive daughter of Eve. There is an odour of mystery, a suspicion of wickedness about these dens of celibacy which she cannot resist.
So when the barrister was away, Mary, after she had first taken off her shawl and hung it on a chair, and then looked at herself in the glass over the mantelpiece, and arranged her hair a little, began to examine her surroundings with considerable interest. She noticed how different everything in this room was to what she was accustomed to see in other sitting-rooms at home and elsewhere, where a woman's influence—though it were even Mrs. Grimm's—made itself felt.
There was a comfortable sternness about the bachelor's sanctum. There were no frivolous cheap china shepherdesses on the mantelpiece, as in the Brixton parlour, but pipes, tobacco-jars, and two bronze busts of heathen deities.
There hung by the side of the mirror four tin shields with the arms of Hudson's University, College, School, and Inn of Court painted on them. The walls were pannelled with dark oak. There were two carved bookshelves of the same wood, and their contents showed that his erratic and rather superficial mind had coquetted with many branches of human thought.
Some good old engravings hung on the walls, contrasting curiously with coloured photographs by Goupil from well-known pictures of the modern French school, all representing femininebeauty in more or less scanty classic attire, these last in broad flat frames of dead gold that much relieved the sombre effect of the furniture.
There were guns, fishing-rods and riding-whips also hanging on the walls, proving that our barrister was somewhat of a sportsman as well as a student and voluptuary.
In a recess were some silver prize-tankards won by his oar on Cam and Thames. On the round table in the centre of the room were a decanter of whisky, two or three empty glasses, some cigar ends in a saucer, an album chiefly filled with pretty actresses, a French novel, and one brief, the only sign of his profession; for I must explain that Hudson had a room for business purposes on the ground-floor of his staircase.
Mary heard her host coming up the stairs, so had one more look into the glass to see if all was right. Her eye fell on her hat—it was very shabby indeed; so, though she felt how cool and bold she was, she took it off and laid it on the chair with her shawl. Her shame for its appearance, her woman's vanity, were too much for her instinctive feeling that this was far from the right thing to do.
When Hudson came in he was surprised to see what a beautiful creature this little captive of his was. Now that her shawl was off, her tight-fitting black dress revealed the perfect moulding of her form. Her small classical head was set on her shoulders wonderfully as that of the Venus that came from Milo. She was leaning with one arm on the sill of the window, looking across Fountain Court to the gleaming Thames. The lamp shining through a coloured shade cast a delicate pink light upon her figure, and she appeared even as the young Venus, a being born into a happy world only to be loved and to love.
But then no goddess of Love would have had that expression about the mouth, so untender, so devoid of soft emotions.
"I am sorry to have kept you so long," Hudson said. "I have ordered a nice little supper, which will be here directly."
"Oh, but it is too kind of you," she exclaimed. "I should not have come up here if I had thought that you were going to take all this trouble."
"Nonsense, Miss Grimm. You don't know how pleased I am to have met you. What do you mean by trouble? There is nothing unselfish in my behaviour, I assure you. It is a charitable action of yours to relieve my loneliness in this dismal old place. It is not very cheerful to sup here all alone, as you can well imagine."
"It must be very lonely, living here," she said as she looked around.
"Well, it is," he replied, but not without a smile as he thought how much more jovial revelry than quiet loneliness those chambers had seen since he had occupied them.
"It is a pretty room," Mary said, "I like it very much. I have never seen anything like it before. It is very interesting. There are so many curious things in it."
Suddenly her eyes fell on the dusty brief on the table, and she exclaimed, "Ah! you are a barrister, I see."
"How on earth do you know that?" he asked. "Have you ever seen any of these interesting documents before?"
"I should think I have," she replied as she picked it up, and turning over the pages glanced at them with the eye of a connoisseur. "I have drawn up so many of these, so many hundreds of folios of the dreary stuff," and she sighed as she thought over the dismal hours she had spent in that dingy back room off Fleet Street. She continued with vivacity, "Why, after just looking through it for a moment, I could tell you exactly how manyguasought to be scrawled on the outside of a brief like that one. A little assault case I see it is. Your fee would not be much for that. I hope you get better work than that sometimes—but I beg your pardon," she said in a confused way as she remembered herself; "I did not mean to—"
"The devil!" exclaimed the barrister in surprise, "are youa sister lawyer, then? I didn't know that woman's rights had got as far as that yet. As we are fellow chips we ought to get on very well together. Which branch of the profession do you belong to?"
She laughed merrily and said with a mock bow, "To the lower; I have passed the greater portion of my life in a solicitor's office."
"Dear me, how very interesting! I should like to hear about it if I may, if it is not a secret."
"Not at all; I know you are very curious to know who I am, so if you like I'll give you my whole history."
"I shall be very glad to hear it," Hudson said, this time speaking in a serious tone. "I shall be able to know how I can help you when I know more about you. But sit down in that arm-chair; it is more comfortable and you look very tired."
She sat down in the arm-chair by the window, while he took a chair near her.
"Well, to start at the beginning," Mary said; "my father is a solicitor."
"What! not that old rascal, Edmund Grimm!" Hudson exclaimed; "but I beg your pardon, Miss Grimm."
"Not at all, don't apologize; he is an old rascal, and that's putting it very mildly. Do you know him then?"
"I should think so," the barrister answered. "I have done lots of work for him for which he has never paid me. I have long ago given up all hopes of getting my fees out of him."
"I don't think you ever will get them," Mary said quietly.
"And how curious it is that you should be his daughter! It seems almost impossible," and he gazed with admiration at her beautiful figure, contrasting it mentally with the shrivelled anatomy of the ugly little lawyer.
"And how curious to think that the briefs and other papers he sent you were most probably drawn up by my hand!" Mary remarked.
"Is that indeed the case? I should have looked at them with much greater interest had I known that; but there's a knock at the door, it's the supper that's arrived. Excuse me a moment while I go and take it in. You must give me your history afterwards. The first thing is to get everything ready for you; I am sure you must be very hungry."
Though Mary had spoken so frankly, there was still something in her manner that made the young man feel that she was really keeping a sharp watch over herself, and that she was bent on carefully preserving the respectful distance that still lay between them.
Whenever he tried to approach the sentimental and lead the conversation beyond the line she had mentally fixed, she would turn her eyes on him with a calm look that quite disconcerted him. His usual readiness of tongue was strangely absent when talking with this quiet cold beauty. He was ashamed of himself for his stupidity. He had lost all his impudence and pertinacity. He could make no ground here.
The barrister brought the dishes into the rooms, and sported his oak.
Mary insisted on being shown where the laundress kept the cloth, knives, plates and so on, and she laid the table for supper with an accustomed hand.
The girl was amused at the queer careless arrangements of the establishment.
"How funnily you bachelors keep house! Why, you don't seem to know where anything is, what you have got, or what you haven't. Now do you think there is any good in my hunting any more for the salt spoon, Mr. Hudson? Can you tell me if you ever had one?"
"I really can't say."
She laughed merrily. "Oh dear, how you must get robbed by your servants! Have you got servants, by the way?"
Hudson, who had been watching with admiration the unconscioussupple grace of the girl as she bustled about the room replied, "Yes, a dirty old woman, a laundress as we call them in the Temple, who comes for an hour every morning and pretends to clean up the place."
"How curious! but you should get her to clean your plates better; just look at the dust on this one. Now I wonder where I'm going to find a tea-cloth."
At last Mary had arranged the table to her satisfaction, and they sat down to a comfortable little supper.
Mary had but very rarely drunk anything stronger than tea, and the Burgundy was a new and, it must be confessed, not unpleasant sensation to her after the wear of the first day of liberty. But she soon perceived that it was a perilous pleasure and was cautious.
The conversation was still rather constrained. Each was sounding the other. He was trying to find out what was the real disposition of this very incomprehensible girl. She, amazed at this unwonted kindness from a stranger, was reserved, suspicious of his motives; for Mary was a London girl, and was not gifted with that absolute innocence which is sometimes attributed to such heroines—heroines who, living in pitch, are in some miraculous way all undefiled, are even ignorant that the pitch is there.
At eleven o'clock Hudson knew Mary's history, but he was as far as ever from her. He was accustomed to shy, to bold, to coquettish, to silly, to mercenary, women, to almost every sort of girl, and knew how to manage them: but before this girl he was lost.
This was not merely because she was cold—had she beenstupidlyso, he would have known how to act; but she inspired a real respect that kept him at a distance.
There was no enlargement of the intimacy, and after supper matters were worse again: the awkward feeling on either side chilled the conversation.
Mary began to think that it was time for her to be going—to resume her wanderings, to find some shelter for the night, and at the thought a gloom fell on her face.
Hudson read the look and said, "Miss Grimm" (he had got back to this though he had called her Mary earlier in the evening), "if you go out now you will find it very difficult to get a lodging. It is too late. You had better stay here. I will camp out in this room on the sofa, you can have my bed-room. To-morrow we will think together over what you had better do."
Mary looked at his kind face, and was touched; her coldness broke down.
"You are very good," she said gratefully, and she rose and took his hand. "You are the only one who has ever been kind to me. I will never forget you."
When she had retired, the barrister rigged himself up a berth on the sofa, and lay smoking his pipe awhile, as he thought of this strange girl who had awakened his emotions and chilled them again a dozen times in the hour with her inconsistencies, her sympathy one moment, her coldness the next.
He had noticed the different expressions of her features and murmured to himself as he blew out the light: "She has an angel looking out of her eyes and a devil sitting on her mouth, but I believe I should fall really in love this time if I saw much of her."
Mary slept well after her long day of adventure and did not wake until the sun was high.
The laundresses had poured into the Temple, and were pretending to dust their master's chambers and performing the rest of their desultory duties, prior to the bustle of business commencing in those "dusty purlieus of the law."
It was indeed nearly nine o'clock when Mary woke. She heard the plashing of the fountain outside, saw she was in a strange room, and gradually recalled all that had occurred on the previous day.
Like most people, she did not feel quite so brave in the morning as in the evening, and her heart sank as her position, her hopeless future, flashed across her mind. She could distinguish by the noises that her host was up and about in the adjacent room, and she heard him instructing his laundress to lay breakfast for two, an order which that worthy received without exhibiting the slightest surprise.
"If the lady puts her boots outside the door I will clean them before I go," she merely said as she carried out his commands.
Mary overheard this. "Good heavens!" she said to herself, "the servant has divined that there is a woman in her master's bed-room, on being merely told to lay breakfast for two instead of one. Such an event then is not extraordinary in Mr.Hudson's home—what has the horrid old woman mistaken me for, then?" and the blood rushed to her cheeks as she thought of it.
"Out of here I must go at once," she muttered to herself—"at once;" and after dressing rapidly she opened the door of the sitting-room, and not without exhibiting some signs of discomposure, found herself face-to-face with the young barrister.
He came up beaming and asked her politely how she had slept.
"Very well, thanks," she replied, taking his proffered hand, rather mollified by his kind manner, and by the knowledge that the laundress had gone. She had looked quickly round the room and grasped this fact; a great relief to her, as she considerably dreaded the gaze of a woman under the present, to be confessed rather compromising, circumstances.
She had intended to bid the barrister farewell, and hurry off at once; but his honest manner, and the comfortable appearance of the breakfast-table with its eggs, its rolls, its rashers of bacon, and its coffee, prevailed on her. She came to the conclusion that to stay a little longer could do no harm, and it would be well to start this day of unknown work with a good breakfast. So it will be seen that this young lady was practical, one result of her rough education; and her anxiety had not diminished her usually healthy appetite.
So the two sat down and breakfasted merrily enough, their conversation being far more unrestrained than it had been on the previous evening.
"Now, Mary," he no longer called her Miss Grimm, "we won't talk any business till breakfast is over; then we will discuss your plans."
Mary assented to this, and really began to feel so comfortable in her new quarters, that she was getting quite loth to leave them; and who can tell what decision the two counsellors might have come to—a dangerous game, two young people, bothfree, discussing such a matter—had not Mary's good genius, in the shape of the dirty and hideous old charwoman, come in just as the breakfast was over?
The hag performed a sort of awkward curtesy, while she gave Mary a look, half of curiosity, half leer of evident speculation as to whether the girl was likely to be a constant visitor, and so to be won over by politeness to a liberality in the way of tips.
Mary read all this, she realised how near she was to the edge of the precipice, the fear returned to her, she started up and said with fierce decision:
"Mr. Hudson, I must go—at once."
He stared at her, and the laundress raised her eyebrows and smiled as she cleared away the breakfast things.
"But we are going to talk over your plans."
"No! I will go at once. It is better. I must."
Mr. Hudson now began to perceive more or less clearly what was the reason of this sudden haste, but he temporised.
"Now sit down quietly and let us talk things over. Believe me, I really wish you well. Do you mistrust me?"
"No! no!" with her eyes filling with tears—"no, I do not. It is not that."
"You can go, Mrs. Jones," he said to the laundress who still loitered about.
When this woman was outside the chambers Mary continued, half sobbing, and in tones that made the young man's heart feel very queer.
"You are very good to me, but I know our talk will end in nothing; how can it? I amverygrateful to you. Please don't think I am ungrateful, Mr. Hudson; but I feel we had better separate at once."
He looked steadily into the beautiful frank eyes for quite a minute, then said sadly, in a low voice,
"Miss Grimm, Mary, I think you are quite right; a talk willdo little good, it may do harm. Yes, it is sure to do harm."
The young man, though a rake, was far from devoid of generosity, and yet it may be that he would not have given her up like this were it not for certain after thoughts.
The girl, he imagined, poor little thing, would in all probability soon be his, but he would not tempt her. To deliberately ruin her was a crime his conscience rather stuck at. No, he would let her have her chance of being respectable. If she could not find any honest employment, as was most likely, why he would look after her and make her as happy as he could as his mistress. Mr. Hudson was a casuist, as indeed are ninety-nine men out of a hundred in these matters.
So he continued, "Mary, you are right. I respect your motives. I am not a good man and you are better out of my way. But remember you have a friend in me. You must promise to come to me if you are in any distress."
"Promise," he said, taking both her hands in his and looking into her eyes, "promise."
She returned his gaze with one candid and earnest, and after a pause, perhaps knowing exactly what she was undertaking, what this coming back to him in case of failure to find employment meant, she replied in a half-inaudible voice:
"I promise."
"Thank you; remember that I will always help you. Write if you don't like to come here. And now I am going to lend you a little money which will keep you going till something turns up," and he put a sovereign, all he had just then, in her hand.
She took it. For a few moments she could say nothing, then she cried out, "God bless you! you are indeed good to me. I don't deserve such kindness, I shall never forget you. I don't know how I—" and she burst into tears.
She, Mary Grimm, the cold and hardened child, who hadnever cried through long years of cruel treatment, was now softened and wept like a woman.
Hudson felt his blood boiling within him as he looked at the girl. Short as had been the acquaintance, he was filled with a real passion, he was beginning to be vehemently in love with the little waif.
He took her hand and kissed it, and would have covered her face with fiery kisses next, for he had lost all his self-control, when Mary tore herself away from him, rushed through the door, and was gone.
Hudson's was, as has been stated, an impetuous and amorous nature. To be in love with some woman had become a necessity of his existence. Now this weak-minded young gentleman did not happen at this period to have an object for his affections, a condition that made him restless and unhappy. He had been vainly trying to fill up this want of late, so that it is not so very wonderful that he fell, at such short notice, into an infatuated passion for this piquante young girl.
Throughout the day his thoughts were always of her—"Shall I see her again?—Yes, she has promised to come if she fails to find work—She must fail ... but no, I have a presentiment that she will never come."
His restlessness, his changing fits of depression and exultation, were the marvel of all his friends who met him that afternoon; but this love-sick mood did not trouble his volatile mind for long, and subsided rapidly, as might be expected under all the circumstances.
Mary wiped her eyes and hurried down the stairs, blushing deeply, and bitterly feeling her degradation when two young clerks, standing outside a room on the second floor, laughed and made some remark as she passed by.
She knew that appearances were against a young girl coming out of a barrister's chambers at 10 a.m.; and not till she was well out of the Temple, and away from the glances of the lawyers,porters, and laundresses did she collect her wits and walk with due calmness of mien.
She went slowly up the Strand deliberating—she had one pound. This would keep her for some time—until she found something to do; but she must busy herself at once to find this vague something.
She knew where there was a small registry office for domestics in a street in Bloomsbury. Mrs. Grimm had on one occasion procured a servant from it, and Mary, who had always entertained some vague idea of running away at some time or other—the sole hope that buoyed up her youth—had treasured up the address.
So she went to this place and found there a motherly old lady in blue spectacles, who happened not to be one of those grasping hags who keep so many of the inferior class of registry offices, defrauding poor servant girls of their hard-earned wages.
Mary told her wants—she wished a place as housemaid, or even maid-of-all-work if the family was a small one.
The old lady looked kindly at the girl, explained the system on which her business was conducted, and opening a large ledger asked:
"Your name, my dear?"
"Mary Barnes." The answer came out readily enough considering that it had not occurred to her before to choose a new name.
"Your address?" continued the dame, who transcribed the answers in a deliberate round hand in the book before her.
This staggered Mary, and unable to draw on her imagination quickly enough, she blurted out her father's address.
"Ah indeed," said her interlocutor, "Mrs. Grimm; I once provided her with a girl—let me see—three years ago I think; and how long have you been in her service?"
"Two years, ma'am."
"As housemaid?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"That is very good, my dear; and why are you leaving her?"
To this query her reply was a fairly truthful one, though she stammered over it a good deal.
"The work was too hard; my step——Mrs. Grimm was very unkind, indeed cruel."
"Yes," went on the old lady thoughtfully, "yes, I remember her. She appeared a disagreeable woman—very much so indeed; that's how I haven't forgotten all about her, what with the many hundreds of mistresses I see—and let me see, you are still living with her you say?"
"Yes, my month is not up for three days yet," replied Mary, who was now getting into a good glib way of lying—small blame to the poor thing.
"Will she give you a good character?"
"Oh yes."
"Well, I do think I know of a place for you, a very kind lady living alone with only her crippled son; she wants just such a one as you seem to be. She's a friend of mine. I know her well, and if you do well by her, she'll do well by you, my dear. Here is her address; you can go and see her for yourself," and she wrote on a piece of note-paper the address, which was somewhere in the direction of Maida Vale.
Mary thanked her and went out. How vexed she was that she had been such a fool as to be surprised into giving her father's address. It would be no good going to the place after that. Fancy her employer writing to her stepmother for her character, and she laughed aloud at the idea, to the great scandal of an old maid and two pug dogs who were passing her at the moment of this indecent ebullition.
But on second thoughts Mary decided that she would go to the address. If the lady in question was really so kind, mightshe not take her without a character? Why not tell her the whole story and throw herself on her generosity? Anyhow, she would call and see what she could make of it—there could be no harm in that.
Poor Tommy Hudson would have hardly liked to know how little he was in this girl's thoughts this day, genuinely grateful though she was.
He would not have confessed it to himself, but he would have preferred had she been miserable on his account.
How selfish at the bottom this love of a man often is; yet after all, a woman will love him even for the very selfishness of his love; so as all parties are suited there is nothing to complain of.
Mary walked all the way by the splendid shops of Oxford Street, up the long Edgware Road, then to the left along the canal which brought her to the vicinity of the address she sought.
While yet some few hundred yards from it, and uncertain of the way, she found herself in a street of small two-storied houses, somewhat like that in which her father lived.
The street was quite deserted save for a little group in front of one of the houses, the door of which was open.
The group consisted of a cabman on a hansom, a rough-looking man and a tall pale woman on the pavement, seemingly engaged in lively altercation.
Mary determined to ask her way of the woman and crossed the street to do so.
On approaching she perceived that the rough-looking man had placed his foot in the doorway, thus preventing the woman from shutting him out as she evidently wished to do.
"No!" he was shouting in a menacing voice. "Bli' me if I move till you give me a bob! D'ye think I've follered this ere cab at a run all the way from Paddington, and lifted down that 'ere 'eavy box for a blooming tanner? Not I, marm."
Mary, being a London girl, grasped the situation at once.The lady had arrived by train, had driven home with her luggage in this cab, which had been followed by one of those pests of suburban London, the cab-runners—ruffians that are on the look out for unwary travellers, pursue the cabs to help take the baggage down—go away civilly enough with their just pay if they have to deal with men; but, as in the present instance, when they have to deal with women in lonely streets with none to defend them, put on the bully and extort double their due.
The cabman was leaning over the box of his hansom, looking pensively on the fray, waiting to see how it would end, but not interfering, remaining strictly neutral.
Mary arrived at this juncture, and taking all in, was inspired to address the woman with these words, spoken in a confident tone.
"It's all right, ma'am, I've seen the policeman. He's coming on now; he's just round the corner."
The rough on hearing this stared at the girl, and thinking that she was someone belonging to the house who had slipped out for the police unobserved by him, considered it prudent, after an oath and a growl or two, to shuffle off slouchingly but not slowly. The cabman too drove off with alacrity, not being anxious to enter into explanations with his natural enemy, the man in the blue coat.
"Why, child!" exclaimed Catherine King in amazement, for she was the tall pale woman, and had just returned from her expedition to the North in search of a pupil. "Why, child!"
"Well, ma'am, I saw what was up and I knew that tale would move the fellows."
"A sharp girl!" scrutinising her closely, "a clever girl! and you can lie very fairly."
Sister Catherine said this in an appreciative way, as if allotting discriminate praise for some creditable accomplishment.
"It is a good thing to know how to lie now and then," remarked Mary with a hard laugh.
"It is," replied the other woman thoughtfully. It did nottake long for an idea to possess Catherine King. Now, this young girl's face had impressed her. "What, have I undertaken this long journey for nothing?" she thought. "Have I travelled about in a vain search for a pupil of the aim, only on my return to find the very prize I am seeking, on my own door-step? It may be so by some wonderful chance. I have a sort of inspiration that it is so." And this impulsive half-mad woman was just thinking how best to open the question to Mary, when the latter cleared the way by saying:
"Can you direct me, please ma'am, to this address?" and she handed to Mrs. King the paper that had been given her at the servant's registry office.
"It is close here," Catherine replied: then noticing at the head of the paper the lithographed words,Mrs. Anderson's registry for servants, she went on: "You are not looking out for a place are you?"
She asked this doubtfully after glancing at Mary; for the girl, though plainly dressed, had anything but the appearance of a domestic servant.
"Yes, ma'am, I am."
On hearing this the enthusiastic woman felt a joy as if her wildest ambition had been realised. She certainly could read character well, and she distinguished the power that lay in Mary Grimm. She felt almost certain that she had found her pupil at last. Providence had sent her—but I forget, Catherine King did not recognize a Providence, though she, like many wiser sceptics, entertained a sort of sneaking half-belief in its workings at times.
"As it happens, I want a servant; will you come in, and then we can see if we shall do for each other?"
Mary followed her into the house, wondering what this new adventure would lead to.
"I live here by myself," said Catherine, when they were in the little parlour I have before described, "with one servant who has been with me for years. I am in want of another—ayounger one to help her. Now tell me all about yourself—your name, age, character, and so forth."
This women awed Mary. There was something in that flashing thought-reading eye, lofty pale brow, and curt masterful speech, that compelled her to tell the truth. Was it that the head of the Secret Society was possessed of some mesmeric influence that gave her this strange power over other women? Anyhow, by dint of a few carefully chosen questions, she extracted from Mary her whole story, even to the fact of her having passed the previous night in the Temple, though the girl had firmly intended to preserve this secret from all.
Catherine watched her closely as she spoke, and knew that her narrative was correct in every detail. "And you hate," she said, "hate bitterly, your father and stepmother?"
"I cannot help it: I do indeed," and the girl's dilating eye and compressed lips showed how the passion of her youth possessed her as soon as it was suggested.
"Humph! you can hate well and you can lie well; I begin to think you will do for me."
Mary opened her eyes in genuine amazement. Was this woman speaking sarcastically—sneering at her? for she could hardly conceive how lying and hating could seem to any mistress as desirable qualifications for a domestic. But Mrs. King looked perfectly serious, and was evidently wrapped in deep thought; there was no pleasantry about her.
"This is a curious sort of a woman," thought the girl. "I wonder what next she wants in a servant? Will she like me all the better if I tell her I am a thief? or perhaps she'll think me perfect if I say I've murdered all my little half-brothers and sisters?" She little expected how nearly her fancies had hit upon Catherine King's true state of mind.
"Such an education so far!" meditated the strange woman. "Hate and nothing else; clever too—of pleasing face to beguile fools with—why this is the very girl."
Then she said impatiently, for she was apt to be hasty in her plans when they were once well considered, brooking no delay: "Mary, you can stay with me if you like—not exactly as a servant though. I wish to educate you—this is a hobby of mine. I am a lonely woman, you shall be my companion. You shall have your board lodging and thirty shillings a month. What do you say?"
"What can I say to such a generous offer?" cried poor Mary, overjoyed. "You are very good to have pity on me," and tears started to her eyes. It is curious, by-the-way, how much more tearful she found this new liberty and kindness than her old life of slavery and cruelty; but that is an old experience in this world.
Mrs. King looked savage and annoyed when she saw these marks of tenderness. "Now, for goodness sake, don't cry," she exclaimed, "don't be grateful. No gratitude here mind. You won't do for me at all if you have affection or that sort of nonsense in you. It won't do here, no softness for me."
Thus it happened that Mary was engaged in a rather non-descript capacity by this dreamer, who sent her off that very afternoon with a few pounds to buy herself some necessary clothing; for she had, of course, nothing but what she stood in.
The next morning Mr. Hudson found a letter on his breakfast table. It enclosed a post office order for one pound, and the following note, which had no address at the head of it: