"Don't be afraid of speaking out, my dear! I'm not thin-skinned—besides, I take pride in being cruel. I can hate. Itwould be well for you if you could. You will always suffer somewhat. You will have to keep a picture of your duty always before you, between you and the sight of the blood. You will have to work yourself up to blind enthusiasm every time you have work to do. I wouldn't wonder if you have to take to opium. It is not a bad temporary conscience-duller. But look how much more convenient my state of mind is. I don't require winding up. I have no scruples. I enjoy my work."
"And I loathe it," exclaimed the girl. "It is all a matter of temperament I suppose, Susan."
"I suppose it is," Susan continued. "Do you know, I have observed that most voluptuous women are cruel as well. It is a curious fact, Mary. I sometimes think that my nature is chiefly made up of these two noble qualities. My man used to call me Faustina. Now you are all made up of cold duties, and so you will suffer. Hot passions are better for the Nihilists."
Mary with difficulty concealed her feelings of disgust, and spoke again. "And yet I have known what hate is, how I hated my father and step-mother! How cruel I felt I could have been! But now that I am away from their persecution the hate seems to be all going. I even sometimes find myself thinking of my father with pity, wishing I could see him; yet he was always cruel to me."
"That sort of hate's no good. You are as fickle in your hates as I am in my loves. Yours was anartificialhate, such as a saint could acquire if ill-treated as you were. But mine is a good, genuine,naturalhate, Mary, and I'm proud of it."
"Ah! I wish I could be brave, and fearless, and thoughtless like you, Susan."
"Do you?" cried Susan. "Perhaps I, too, have a skeleton hidden away in a cupboard, somewhere, my girl. You always see me jolly. Yes! if it were not for one horrid thing"—shespoke slowly and shivered—"I should be perfectly happy."
"What is that?" asked Mary, wondering what possible secret sorrow could be a constant bugbear to this frivolous being.
"The fear of old age, Mary," was the reply. "The dread of being old, ugly—like withered Sister Jane, for instance. Oh! how I fear that loathsome thing."
The woman's face actually blanched as she spoke these words, and her accents betrayed an emotion that surprised Mary. Yes! this indeed was the one phantom that ever pursued this butterfly creature. This terror that possessed her was ever present to her, as happens sometimes to such natures. To be no longer beautiful, to be no longer sighed after by men, was to her imagination terrible as is the thought of hell to some.
"Let us sit down on this seat and rest a little, Susan," suggested Mary.
"Very well; but it's getting late, and my time will soon be up. Ah! I wish I was like you, Mary, living at home with that amiable old Catherine King, instead of being boxed up with a lot of foolish women in that hospital, with strict discipline about being out at nights and so on. I must say I like my liberty: but luckily this won't be for long."
"I never could make out how they allowed the rules to be broken through in my case," Mary said. "There was another nurse who wanted to live with her mother. But she was told they would not have her in the hospital unless she lived there altogether, as the rest do."
"The King has great influence in all directions. She must be very fond of you, must the King—your aunt as she calls herself now. Ah! I wish she would adopt me and take me out of this hateful place. I would make her a most dutiful niece."
"Yet, most of the nurses seem to be well contented with their home," urged Mary.
"Oh! it's nice enough for those women—innocent creatures—theyhave never known the delights of sin and liberty. I'm not like them—like Miss Anerly for instance. She's fun, isn't she? They have put her to sleep in the same room as I do. She is always at me about saying my prayers. She kneels down for half an hour at least, before getting into bed, and when she gets up, she has a sort of way of looking at me with a superior see-how-much-better-I-am-than-you air, that is sickening. I often feel tempted to bring out some remarks that will make her open her weak, little, grey eyes; but of course that won't do. What do you think; she insists on reading a chapter in the Bible to me every morning before I get up."
Mary replied with a deep sadness in her voice. "Ah! it is well for us to laugh, that know so much, but how happy are these people with their Bible! They cannot know our suffering. They find such comfort in their superstition. They say in the Bible that the tree of knowledge is the tree of evil; we have proved it so."
"Some wise man once said, Wherever truth is, there too is Golgotha," put in Susan.
"That is very true," continued Mary. "Wherever truth is, there too is Golgotha. I feel that. Now that I know so much, now that I know that all this religion that keeps society together is a fable, I feel as if I was no longer as other people, as if I was some other sort of being, standing quite apart from my fellow-creatures, with such different instincts and ideas that we can never understand each other again, that there can never more be pleasant sympathies between us."
Susan again laughed her disagreeable laugh. "Dear me! Why, you are a sort of Miltonic Satan, Mary; but it's too late to rant on in this ignorance-is-bliss style, now, my girl."
"But don't you feel it yourself sometimes, Susan?" asked the girl in wonder. "Don't you feel dreadful, when you pass by all these crowds of happy people, and think that if they only knew what you were they would loathe you, and tear you to pieces?It is horrible to me to be separated from all the world by such a barrier as that of ourAim. Never to approach them, never to know their little joys, and hopes, and affections. They seem only foolish to our eyes, but how detestable would we appear in theirs if they only knew."
Susan turned and looked contemptuously into the girl's face. "Why, Mary, you are talking treason. You'll be going back to your dear Bible next."
"Go back to the Bible—no, never! It would be better if I could ... perhaps. Ah, Susan, I sometimes think that mankind will never get on without religion, thattruthwill bring worse tyrannies and horrors thansuperstitionever did. A fearful outlook—man must have a religion or die; and yet there is no religion to be had."
"Oh, Mary, you are a little fool! When will you be wise and cunning like me? You talk of the horror of being different from other people; I delight in it. It amuses me to look at the happy simpletons, and know that I have secrets that would make their cheeks blanch to hear. You have not got the proper temper for a Nihilist."
Mary thought in silence for a few minutes, then said, "Susan, I have often wondered what motives led you to join the society. You are a zealous member, I know; but yet I can scarcely believe that it was a good motive, that it was a true love of humanity, an unselfish desire to benefit the world, like our Chief's, that induced you to become a conspirator in the first instance."
"Mary, shall I tell you my real reason?"
"Do."
"Because I am a woman—that is a sufficient reason. We women are driven to do strange things, by motives that cannot be put into words, motives that we cannot ourselves analyze. But see, here comes the doctor. He's sweet on me—so he's safe to come and talk with us."
The gentleman who was approaching the two girls was a quietly-dressed man of about thirty-two, but he looked somewhat older. He was tall and broad-shouldered. His clean-shaved face was massive in its make, and indicative of power. His expression was grave, and women would have put him down as plain were it not for his eyes, clear thoughtful brown eyes, with a noble look in them that inspired confidence and respect.
Dr. Duncan had acquired a considerable reputation as a surgeon since we last saw him in the Gaiety with Tommy Hudson. He was still working in the same hospital—that in which Mary and Susan were undergoing their training as nurses.
Taking off his hat, he addressed the girls in a pleasant tone. "I am glad to see that you are making the best of this beautiful afternoon. How lovely the foliage of the trees is, Miss Riley; is it not? I don't think I ever remember seeing such fine autumnal effects in the heart of London."
Susan replied in a sentimental voice: "Yes, doctor; but it means hard work for us I fear. This still dank weather makes nature look like a sort of huge death-bed, the vegetation rotting slowly, and the steam of decay hanging over everything. It's just the weather to breed fevers and rheumatisms. The weakly ill-fed poor will inhale the foul breath of the dying air, and rot off like all these pretty hectic leaves you are admiring so much."
The false voice in which she said this rather jarred on Dr. Duncan. He looked at her curiously, and said:
"Yes! but it is better for them than the cold winds and the snow and the frost after all, Miss Riley. The maladies and deathstheycause are out of the reach of us doctors, though the remedies are simple enough, God knows. Coals and bread, that is all that is wanted to stop nine-tenths of the illness of what is called a good old-fashioned winter."
Susan gave the doctor a soft look out of her voluptuous wicked eyes, and exclaimed in a sort of mellow cooing voice, which she knew how to put on when she wanted to fascinate: and it was well calculated to effect this object:
"Ah, doctor! they say that you give away a great deal of that sort of medicine among the poor of this district sometimes. How gratefully they speak of you! You are idolized in the lowest slums. They would die for you. It must be delicious to be loved by all as you are," and she threw out a sigh and another bewitching glance.
But the flattery was a little too thickly laid on for a man of this stamp, though he liked flattery well enough, as all men do, bad or good.
He turned to Mary and said, "Miss King, I have been concerned to see how pale and ill you have been looking of late. I am afraid the hard work is upsetting you. You should take a holiday. Why don't you run down to the sea-side for a week?"
Mary coloured slightly, and said, coldly: "Indeed, I feel very well, thank you, Dr. Duncan. I generally am rather pale, but I think I am as strong as anyone can be."
Susan felt rather annoyed at the manner with which her remarks had been received. She wanted to monopolize the doctor's conversation. She had been setting her cap at him for some time, for what purpose it is difficult to say, unless it were out of mere malice and vanity; for in her heart she disliked this cold man who would not fall into a violent infatuationabout her, as most others would have done after a quarter of the love-making she had thrown away on him.
And now she remembered her time was up. She must return to the hospital, and perhaps the doctor would walk part of the way home with Mary. It was most provoking; for she felt that Mary's charms were as great as her own, greater perhaps, she suspected, when a wise man was concerned, though that silly child did not know how to employ them.
"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, "I wish I could stay a little longer in this pretty place, and have a pleasant chat with you two, but it is time for me to go home."
"I am going home now, Susan," said Mary, "and I will walk as far as the hospital with you. It is on my way."
"And on mine too," said the doctor. "If you allow me I will accompany you."
Mary made no reply.
"Oh! how nice," gushed Susan. "It is so lonely to walk down all those dingy streets by oneself. It is a treat to have somebody with one, especially—" and the cunning beauty checked herself, and pretended to be embarrassed.
They talked on indifferent matters till they reached the gates of the hospital, through which Susan passed after affectionately kissing the younger woman, and a parting, "Good-bye, Mary, I'll see you to-morrow morning; good-bye, doctor."
"I am going to Praed Street," said the doctor. "That is in your direction I think. I am going to walk. It will do you good to walk too, Miss King, if you are not tired. Shall we go together? It will be a very great pleasure for me."
"Thank you, Dr. Duncan, I shall be very glad. I don't feel inclined to go in a stuffy omnibus on such a fine afternoon."
So they went together through the now gaslit streets, that were filled with that haze of the still November afternoon, which the true Londoner loves for the soft melancholy of it. It is all very well for us to abuse our London fogs; but there are fogsand fogs, and who would exchange that dreamy poetic indistinctness of effect, which Turner so well knew how to express on canvas, for all the hard clear outline of your Southern cities.
I remember once, in Buenos Ayres, seeing tears come to the eyes of an old Bohemian of Fleet Street, who had for years been dwelling in that city of pellucid atmosphere, when one winter evening a genuine English mistiness made its appearance for a while, reminding that home-sick exile of his dear dingy city of the far Northern island.
This was by no means the first time that the doctor had walked home with Mary. A mutual liking had for some time existed between them; but so far the keenest observer could not have detected, in a word or look of either, any signs of serious affection, if such existed. They were not a demonstrative couple, and did not carry their hearts on their sleeves as Sister Susan seemed to do.
The doctor would speak to her in a calm respectful way, paying only those attentions a well-bred man always pays to a young woman.
She, very much on her guard when with him, affected a manner that would have repulsed many less earnest admirers. She would be cold, curt almost to rudeness, and went so far as to assume, at times, a flippant cynicism, which she was far from feeling.
But the soft languor of this November afternoon seemed to have entered into the girl's soul; and during this particular walk her power of putting on such defensive affectations failed her for once.
Said the doctor: "What a strange girl that Miss Riley is; I cannot make her out at all."
"She is a very good nurse," replied Mary.
"Excellent; but she is different from all I have ever seen. She shows none of the nervousness, the more or less concealedrepugnance, all other girls exhibit at the commencement of this unpleasant training."
"She is kind to the patients."
"Oh, yes! She in a way is the kindest of you all. She is never awkward. She sets to work in such a business-like way, and is so quick and deft. She is so free from nervousness that she inflicts a minimum of pain on a patient. She would make a splendid surgeon. But she seems to have no feeling for them, or, at any rate, conceals it as no novice ever did before. I have seen her assisting at a horrible surgical case, and she looked as calm, even absent-minded, over it, as if it had been a case of gardening, trimming and pruning plants, and not poor human flesh."
"I wish I was like her: I am very stupid and nervous sometimes."
"And yet I think I would rather be nursed by you, Miss King."
"I don't think it is very charitable of us to be criticising poor Miss Riley behind her back," said Mary, wishing to turn the conversation.
"Of us! Of me you mean. I am the only culprit. You have been generously taking up the cudgels in her defence. But we will change the subject. I have heard nothing of your aunt for some time. May I ask how she is?"
"My aunt! Oh, Mrs. King! She is very well indeed, thank you, Dr. Duncan; but I did not know you were even aware of her existence."
"I only heard, by accident, the other day, that she was your aunt, and that you lived with her; but I have known of her existence for years."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Mary.
"Oh, yes! She used to speak and lecture on woman's rights, on the abolition of the House of Lords, and such like questions. I heard her several times: very eloquent she was too. I wasrather a Radical myself then, but I have changed my views since.... I trust you do not follow your aunt inallher opinions, Miss King?" and he looked rather anxiously at her.
"I think I do, Dr. Duncan."
There was a silence for a while. The man was evidently troubled, and was carefully pondering his next remark. Mary regarded him furtively, wondering what was coming.
"Some of your aunt's views are rather startling," he said. He was thinking of one of her speeches he had heard, in which she had upheld the unsavoury teachings of Mr. Bradlaugh, and had declared her favourite opinions as to the abominable nature of religion and morality.
"Startling! yes, I suppose they are startling—truth often is so," she replied.
"Is it truth?"
"Is what truth?" and she turned and looked him full in the face.
Finding himself driven into a corner, he spoke out boldly. "Miss King, I hope you will forgive me when I tell you that I feel a deep interest in you. I hope you will look on me as your friend, and that we shall know each other better some day. Do not think I am impertinent if I explain what I meant."
"I do not think so, Dr. Duncan."
"Well, I know what your aunt's opinions on certain matters—religion for instance—are, and I should be very sorry to think that you entertained the same."
"Oh! are they false opinions?"
"I think so; but that is hardly the question. Some false opinions are at any rate harmless, but these I speak of are certainly bad in their effects, whether they be true or false."
"Do you then believe that to know the truth can be bad?" she asked in a sarcastic tone.
"I don't say that; but don't you think that when a theory is put before you, you should be much more careful than usual inyour examination of it, should require much more—indeed, absolute proof—before you accept it, if it is a theory, the belief in which cannot fail to have bad consequences?"
"A theory should stand on its own merits. It is no argument against an opinion to say that it is an unhappy one."
"Certainly not; but, surely, unless we are quite convinced that such a theory is correct—a difficult matter, as a rule—we should be very rash in not only accepting it, but in acting up to it. Take a parallel case, Miss King. In a court of law a far stronger and more indisputable chain of evidence is required to bring about an adverse verdict in the case of a prisoner charged with a capital crime, than in the case of one who is accused of an injury to a fellow that only makes him liable to a civil action. It is in that spirit, I think, we should try opinions on which the whole happiness of mankind depends. Before we condemn religion, and put away the system of morality which follows it, we should surely ask for more convincing evidence against them, than if it were merely a question of the truth or falsehood of some opinion which cannot influence mankind much either way for good or evil."
"Don't you call that an 'argumentum ad hominem?'" Mary said.
"I see I have a logician to deal with in you, Miss King. Mind, I do not wish to discuss religious truths with you. I am not a clergyman. I am merely throwing out suggestions as to the state of mind with which, I believe, one ought to approach speculations of this nature."
"Are you a religious man, Dr. Duncan?—but it is very rude of me to ask such a question."
"I am sorry to say I am not. My work is my religion at present, and fills all my thought."
"Why should not my work be my religion?"
"If it was it would be very well. To alleviate human misery is to act religion. Though I am far from being a religious man,and rarely go inside a church; though I may be a bad man, I do not question the fundamental laws of morality, on which I believe the whole happiness and loveliness of the human race depend. Now, your aunt does this; and though one may—mind,may—get on, and be virtuous, and good, and lovable, without being what people call religious, I doubt whether one can be so if one is constantly trying to prove to oneself thata priorireligious and moral systems are untrue—if one comes to think that no action isper sebad and to be avoided. We must have a dogmatic morality, Miss King. I don't say that we can altogetheract upto it, but we mustbelievein it. The evil-living man, who still admires and respects virtue, is in a happier way, I think, than a man, good in action, who yet has no belief in good. I know Mrs. King is one who has carried Utilitarian ethics to their extreme conclusions. This is a dangerous thing for us poor mortals to attempt. Misery is the result. Utilitarianism may do for angels—it won't do for us."
There were tears in Mary's eyes as he concluded. She had been too long fed on unwholesome doctrine to be in any way influenced by his arguments. He had merely told her what she already knew too well, that such a belief as she professed—that truth—was an apple of Sodom, full of bitterness and sorrow; but, somehow, his kind words brought vividly before her the utterness of her desolation, and she said in mournful tones, "Oh, how wicked you would think me if you knew all my thoughts; how you would loathe me!"
"Pray, don't say such a thing, Miss King," he exclaimed. "Whatever your opinions and doubts may be, you are not wicked. Do you know, I have often watched you in the hospital. I have taken great interest in you. I saw how sad and thoughtful you were, and I saw how kind you were to the sick—how patient, how sympathetic. I observed how you felt with their suffering, not in mere physical revolt at witnessing pain, but with a true woman's pity. No! I know you are not wicked."
He spoke earnestly, with a deep feeling, the meaning of which could hardly be mistaken.
Mary answered not a word. She was overawed by this man. She felt as if she could have sunk into the ground with her sense of shame and degradation. "What, this good man believes thatIam good," she thought. "He has faith in me—affection for me! He loves me for my kindness to the sick—me, that am training to be a murderess—me, a baby-killer! Oh, the horror of the thing—the despair of my position!" She realized bitterly how deep, how irreconcilable must be her estrangement from her race. "She must never know love—she must steel her heart—crush her sympathies, and, oh! she must never again trust herself to talk in confidence with her fellows, especially with this doctor."
She could not speak with that choking sensation in her throat, so she walked on in silence.
Her companion looked at her and perceived the tears glistening in her downcast eyes. The doctor had, of late, found himself constantly thinking tenderly of this lonely, sad-looking girl, whose only companion was the frivolous Susan. He had, to a certain extent, guessed the cause of her sorrow, living as she did with the half-insane atheist and revolutionist he knew Mrs. King to be. He felt a great pity for the beautiful unprotected creature, in whom he saw such sweet possibilities of love and all the graces and good qualities of woman. The love that was coming to him was deep and strong and fierce as was his nature, and the girl was beginning to divine this.
No wonder that she was filled with dread when she knew that she had inspired such a feeling in such a man; for there lay that terrible secret between them, a secret whose nature he had so little suspected, when she warned him that he would loathe her, did he know it. She found that she was on the edge of a precipice, and felt a sick dizziness to see it, but also a painful fascination.
They walked on together through the dreamy November haze—both feeling as in a dream—without speaking, but each in some strange manner vaguely conscious of the spirit of the other's thought, of a close sympathy that was fast drawing them together. It was as if their hearts beat, their souls sung, in unison, to some awful music from another sphere. The streets and the people were no longer with them.
So it was, that when at last he spoke, the words were expected by her. She seemed to have felt their meaning before they came. They had been led up to by the unspoken emotions of either.
"Oh, Miss King, if you could only confide in me, and make me your friend! I would die, to be able to drive away that cloud from your mind, if I could only see you happy and smiling.... All that beautiful youth of yours, with its sweet possibilities, being destroyed by these dark phantoms! Oh, Mary, for God's sake, trust in me! Have you guessed how I love you? You must have done so. You fill all my thoughts. You know that you are everything in the world to me.... Oh, my sweet! my sweet! that I could make you throw yourself on my love. I believe I would make you happy. I would understand you, Mary, and we would make all your sadness go. We would go right away from the streets for a time, and walk through the green fields hand in hand like children again. In the bright, pure country we should drive all these phantoms right away; our human love would drive them right away. Mary! Mary!—" and he stopped and seized her two hands in his, carried away by his emotion.
They were standing by the railings of the garden of a deserted square, and the rays of a lamp fell full on her pale face.
He had raised an image of wonderful joys to her mind—but, oh! so impossible—so impossible!
She trembled in his grasp. She dared not raise her eyes to meet his.
"Mary! O Mary! can it be true? Do you care for me; do you love me a little?"
She could not preserve that outward calm any longer, with all that storm raging within her. She was stifling with it, and for an answer burst into hysterical sobs.
"Oh! my dear! my dear!" He folded her in his arms, and his passionate kisses were on her eyes and on her mouth.
Then, with a strength that surprised him, she suddenly thrust him off, and retreating a few yards back, stared at him with eyes dilated with horror and anguish.
"Oh! Dr. Duncan!" she cried, with a voice full of such tragedy that the strong man felt his veins tingle with terror. "Oh! go away! go away, and leave me.... You do not know what you are saying.... You are mad. Never speak to me again. Forget me, if you do not wish to be more miserable than ever man was before. You don't know what I am—what I must be. If you married me, you would go mad with what you discovered. You would blow your brains out, and mine too.... I am not exaggerating. I am talking sober truth. I mean this.... Yes, more.... Think of all the greatest criminals you have ever heard of. Think of the most hideous, unspeakable crimes ever invented by man, and then look on me as guilty of them all—yes, all of them, and worse. I warn you—remember, I have warned you."
The intense earnestness of her look—of her speech—terrified him. "What could she mean? Was she mad?" And he felt sick and dizzy with the pain of this thought.
"Now, Dr. Duncan, not another word. I won't bring you any further out of your way. Good-night." And she walked rapidly away.
He stood where he was, supporting himself by the railing—for a moment half-dazed at the shock he had received. Then there came a curious reaction to him after the first effects of her wild words. He was seized by a sort of frenzy—by the strongestof all the passions in its very greatest strength: love—love that is insane, and thinks of nothing—reckless of crime and consequence—the strong man's love that can make of him a fiend or an angel.
His blood tingled through his veins like fire. "Mary," he thought to himself, "Mary, you must be mine. Even if youaremad, I will still have you. I do not care what you are. I would be mad too, rather than lose you. Were you a thousand times worse than you say—if youhavecommitted every crime—it can make no difference now to me. If you were a devil, I should have to become devil too, to please you. It must be love between us—love for good or bad. If it cannot be of heaven, it must be of hell; but love it must—shall be...." And the usually self-possessed man hurried through the streets with his brain on fire, his hands clenched, and his eyes glaring, so that people he passed got to one side or other of him in fear to let him go by, for his face was as that of a madman.
The devil had got hold of him for the time; and after the fit was over, he shuddered when he remembered how wild and wicked his fancies had been—how, in a moment, it had seemed as if all the good of years of careful training had run out of him, and left him a fiend without conscience or fear, capable of any deed, if by it he could but compass his desires.
And so it is with all of us at times. The passionate temptations of a man reveal to him, in flashes, what horrible depths of possible sin lurk in his nature—hidden unsuspected, awaiting their opportunity.
But he had clasped that slight, girlish form in his arms—he had kissed that unkissed mouth, and drawn madness from it—he was the slave of his passion for better or for worse.
Even when he thought more calmly over the whole matter on the following day, he still knew that his love for the girl was altogether his master. He still determined to press his suit.
Even were she really bad, he must risk all, and make her his.But he knew that she was not really bad in heart, though she might have been in action. He would gain her confidence, share with her her repentance for her sin, take on himself her burden. Even had she been the most abandoned of creatures, he would take her to his arms now. Go back he could not—would not.
And yet, of all men this was the one whom none would have suspected capable of making a rash marriage. Ah! how little we know how we ourselves would behave when the moment comes! We are all of us mad and weak then—yes, every one of us.
A week or so after the events related in the last chapter.
It is about the hour when the theatres close, and the scene is the interior of the Albion—the well-known tavern near Old Drury, where actors and others of the male sex are wont to sup, after the play and opera are over.
At a table is a man sitting by himself, moodily drinking whisky—which he takes with very little water—and smoking cigar after cigar.
At a glance, you can see that he is a wreck—a gentleman who has become the slave of alcohol. His hand shakes, his eye is fierce and restless, and his three days' beard and unbrushed clothes show that carelessness of appearance which are the early signs of a man's going to the dogs through drink. The recklessness of a man who has lost his self-respect is apparent in his every gesture.
This is Tommy Hudson, but terribly changed. He is not beautiful and refined of features now, but coarse, bloated, spirit-sodden. Not now are the bright, merry eyes, the hopeful buoyancy of manner; but, in their place, sullenness, or the sneers and flippancy born of a gnawing consciousness of degradation and failure.
This man had known a lofty ideal—so was his fall the greater.
The life of the young London barrister is perhaps the mostperilous of all for weak natures such as his. Hundreds of promising young lives have fallen victims to its strong temptations. Living in solitary chambers, waiting for work that never comes, desponding at his want of success, the young man is driven out night after night into dissipation—first, by desire of society; lastly, by a morbid restlessness that makes dissipation a necessity.
As long as the man is strong, the whirl of wild amusements may do little harm. He may, in spite of his rackety youth, become a leader of his profession. The lives of many of our greatest judges have been notorious. But, for these few hard ones that do pass through unscathed or slightly wounded, how many fall and perish! How many, in that apprenticeship to the legal profession, play so fiercely in the frequent leisure, that at last, when the work does come, they cannot do it—it is too late! The giants survive—the pigmies are destroyed. Some of these Old Bailey men, we know, have drank deeply in the old-fashioned way, and have thrown themselves into every form of dissipation for forty years and more, and yet are at the top of their branch of the profession. But, young man, before you set out to emulate their ways, and live their lives, remember that they are as one in a hundred, and consider whether you are stronger than ninety-nine men out of a hundred.
It is so easy for a jolly good fellow to degenerate into the drunkard; then to the disreputable drunkard—cut by all his acquaintance; and then to the wreck.
Thus was it with the unfortunate Tommy Hudson. His youth, his beauty, his wit, were all gone; and people now seeing the abject wretch for the first time would never have guessed what he once had been.
No wonder that men, observing such things, carry their gospel of temperance to fanaticism—indeed, no wonder!
And so this nervous wretch stooped there over his drink, casting fierce, furtive glances around him like some huntedanimal, as is the way of one on the brink of delirium tremens—ever impressed with an idea that those around were watching him, and talking of him.
Dr. Duncan, who had been spending the evening at a neighbouring theatre, came into the Albion to have some supper before going home.
His passion for Mary and her strange behaviour, when he declared his love to her at his last interview, had disturbed him greatly, so that, contrary to his wont, he had been nightly visiting some theatre or other place of amusement, with the vain hope of distracting his mind from the uneasy misery which oppressed it, and almost unfitted him for work.
Since that interview, she had rather avoided him, and he had held no conversation with her, save of the briefest and most matter-of-fact description, in the course of their respective duties in the hospital.
There was a gloom on the doctor's brow, and his usually keen-glancing eye was dull of expression. As he walked to an unoccupied table in the corner of the room, he took no notice of anything that was going on around him.
On the other hand, the barrister—who was nervously watching all that passed, and followed every movement with his eyes—raised his head from his elbows, and stared at the other with a savage, insolent manner. Then his expression changed—suddenly grew softer, and a puzzled look came to his face. He passed his hand across his forehead; shook his head, as if to throw off some painful idea; looked again; then cried, in a surprised voice that sounded half-timid, the tone of one who had fallen, but not beneath all sense of shame—of one doubtful whether his old friend will acknowledge him.
"Why! Duncan! Duncan! Is that you?"
The doctor started—stared at him, evidently puzzled, and not recognizing the man who addressed him.
The drunken man continued, in melancholy tones: "Am Iso altered as all that, then? Why, don'tyoueven remember me?"
The doctor looked at him, and replied, with hesitation: "I do know you. I know your face, but I cannot exactly—."
The barrister interrupted him: "I was once your friend, old man—once—long—long ago." He drawled out these words in a maudlin fashion; then, conscious that he was just on the point of weeping, he pulled himself together, and stretched out his hand to seize his glass, but, in doing so, knocked it off the table, and it broke into pieces.
"Like that glass, sir," he continued, "like that glass, I'm broken—broken altogether."
Then he hung down his head, and laughed to himself in a foolish manner. Suddenly he raised it again, and cried out, in a savage voice: "Duncan! Damn it, man! Don't you know me, or are you going to cut me, like all the rest of them? Eh?"
His friend recognized him at last. "Why, it is Hudson!" he exclaimed much shocked at the fearful change that had come over his once intimate friend. "Hudson! my dear old boy, I am so glad to see you again. What has become of you all this time?"
"How many years is it since you saw me last, Duncan?" asked the barrister in a sulky voice.
"Between three and four years, I think," was the reply.
"Don't you think you might have taken the trouble to look your old friend up all that time? Eh?"
"So I have," replied the doctor, "several times. But I never found you in. I have written to you too, don't you remember? You never replied to my letters though. I began to think you wanted to cut me, old fellow."
"Yes! now I do remember," said his friend sadly. "It's just like me—just like me; and now I turn round and reproach you. I'm an ass, an ungrateful blackguard. Drink,drink—that's what does it, Duncan. It dulls all the good feeling in a man. Look at me! you are my old chum. I get your kind letters and invitations, I never reply to them. I am drunk and chuck them aside. I neglect and quarrel with all my old—my true friends; I have no friends now, a few harpies only around me who drink and laugh with me, as long as my pocket gives out a clinking sound. Forgive me, Duncan."
The doctor took a chair and sat down opposite his friend.
The barrister continued after a pause, "How many years did you say it was since you saw me last, Duncan?"
"About three."
"And I have changed so much in that time that you didn't know me. Pooh! what do I care? It's all over. No good crying over spilt milk. Have a drink, my boy. What will you take?"
"Nothing now, thanks; I am going to sup."
"Nonsense! Waiter, two brandies. If you won't name your poison yourself I must do it for you. Let's look at you, Duncan. You look fit enough—not much older. I've heard of you—got all the best appointments at your hospital—lucky man!"
The brandies came. The doctor observed that Hudson drank his neat this time, and then commenced to become quite sober again—a dangerous symptom.
"Hudson," said the doctor, "excuse me, old man, but what on earth is the meaning of all this? You don't look the man you were. You are twenty years older."
"Well! I am older, old man," Hudson replied, flippantly.
"Yes, but only by three years or so. What a fellow you were then, and now you look as if you were going to the dogs."
"Going! gone, you mean," the barrister exclaimed with a bitter laugh. "But do I look so very much worse then, Duncan?"
"Much worse! Why, man, I should not know you for theold Hudson of Caius, our stroke, our scholar, our rowdy, jolly, clever, healthy Tommy Hudson. Oh, my dear boy, if you could but see what you were and what you are. You must put on the brake. You'll have to come and live with me, and you'll soon be your old self again."
Hudson shook his head. "Never! No! no! It's too late—too late now, old man, you don't know all. I've chucked up the sponge."
"Nonsense, man. It's not too late."
Hudson sat up in his chair and appeared quite sober as he replied:
"It's too late. You don't know what a weak fool I am. It is no good my making resolutions. No, my boy, 'It's all up with poor Tommy now,' as that music-hall man sings—and I don't care. I used to try and reform once. It was no good—Ha! ha! Why it was only three months back, that I made my last attempt. I actually had resolution enough to live one whole week of the most abject virtue; think of that! but it was all the worse afterwards. I've gone a long way further down the hill these last three months."
He paused for some time, resting his head on his hand, as he tried to collect his scattered ideas, then he continued:
"Duncan, I am the most miserable of men—I am the slave of half-a-dozen vices. I have drunk them all to the dregs, yet I am not blasé; I wish to God I were. No, I still love the world, love my vices more than ever, but cannot enjoy them—and in that is the hell of it. I hate respectability; I hate work. I love dissipation, and can't dissipate. I look at steady fellows grinding away for little incomes and I hate them, I hate myself. No one can pity me—it's all my own fault. I feel sick and mad sometimes with regret, almost to killing myself—yes, with regret, and what for? I'll tell you—listen—regret that I cannot fly about, as I used to before health and coin and all had taken wings. Not regret for the wasting of any good theremight have been in me—not a bit of it, I am too far gone to envy and admiregood. Who can pity a man who suffers from so selfish and ignoble a grief? and yet, dear Duncan, I believe that such a suffering is as bitter as any the human soul is capable of—all the bitterer because it can meet no sympathy, no pity. God help me!—The other day I heard a theatre-girl ask of another about me, 'Who is that bloated-looking old masher? Doesn't he look an old beast?' Yes, women have come to talk about me like that; you don't know, old man, you with your steady mind, what a hell I am in. Despised where I loved. I gave up all for pleasure.—She is a hard mistress, not only does she jilt one—chuck one over with a heartless laugh when she has wrung all the good out of one—but she leaves one without the possibility of ever getting another mistress. Ambition will not come to the old rake—Fortune, mind, constitution all gone.—Well, it can't be helped—Damn it! I can still drink anyhow. Bring me a shilling's worth of brandy, waiter. What for you, dear boy?"
"Nothing for me, old man, and don't you have any more just now.—Look here, Hudson, come along with me—to my diggings—we'll have a drink and a chat there. It will remind us of old times. I can give you a shake-down for the night."
The barrister smiled with that knowing and suspicious smile that is peculiar to drunkards. "Not to be caught, doctor," he cried, "none of that gammon for me.—I know your game—but I'm not so drunk as all that. You are right, quite right, old man; I'm going to hell—but I'll go there my own way—damn it! the sooner the better."
"Hush, man!" said his friend. "Those two men at that table are listening to our conversation. We'll clear out of this. We can talk much better in my rooms, or your's if you prefer it as they are nearer."
Hudson glared at the men in question, rose a little from his chair, so that the doctor feared he was about to engage in aquarrel with them, but then altered his mind, drunk some of his brandy—neat again—sobered down, and continued in more subdued tones:
"No! no! doctor; don't think I am as bad as I appear. I'm a flabby idiot, but I'm never as far gone as I am to-night. But I've been upset to-day, Duncan. I saw a girl to-day—for the first time for three years. She passed me in Oxford Street—a girl that I knew when I was a different man. She was beautiful then as I had never seen woman before, and now she is more so. O God! I loved her then; I have often thought of her since; and to-day I saw her again.... I felt mad to see her beauty; and I, shabby, bloated drunkard, dared not speak to her, dared not contaminate her by my companionship. She did not recognize me, I passed by her, and I have been mad ever since.—Oh, mad! to love and know that it is too late—too late—to think what might have been. Oh, dear old friend, pity me, do pity me a little—no one loves, no one pities me now."
There were tears in his eyes and his voice trembled—he was becoming maudlin again.
"Pity you! of course I pity you, old friend. I know poor human nature too well to do otherwise. Who am I to judge other's weakness? Good Heavens! I have been lately on the edge of a precipice myself, and I know how easy it is for a mind to lose its balance. Come with me, old man. I too am a miserable wretch even as you are. We will comfort each other. There is comfort in comforting one's fellows. I will help you and you will help me. Come along, Hudson," and he rose from his seat, anxious to get his friend quietly out of the place.
Hudson looked softened, then he smiled—an inscrutable smile: perhaps it had no meaning. He swallowed his brandy and got up from his chair. He was quite sober now and calm, but with an ominous glitter in his eyes that the doctor understood. He rose and said quietly, "Good night, Duncan; I can't come with you to-night, but I'll look you up in a day or two."
He then paid the waiter, carefully counted the change, and walked out of the Albion with the manner of a perfectly sober man.
But the doctor knew that the poor wretch was on the very verge of delirium tremens, and that a paroxysm might occur at any moment, so followed him close.
Once out of the Albion, the madman—before his friend could seize his arm—leaped back a few yards, laughed a discordant laugh in the doctor's face, and ran like a deer down the street.
Dr. Duncan ran after him; but the barrister's veins were full of fire! his nerves tingled with the poison of alcohol, and he ran as only one in such a state of fearful exaltation of all the faculties can run; not to the right or to the left, but straight on, careless whither he rushed, unconscious of effort—feeling light as the wind, and as if impelled by spirits. The doctor soon lost sight of him, good runner though he was, and returned home with a heart heavier than ever. How dark all life seemed just then to this successful and prosperous man!
Deep was his compassion for his unfortunate friend—for he knew now that it would not have taken so much to have seen himself on the same downward career to destruction.
His passion for Mary had revealed to him how weak his nature too was, how circumstances may overset the balance even of the strongest mind.
Mary had known what wretchedness was during her old life at Brixton; but that was almost happiness to the mental agony she was now experiencing. For the image of one man was ever in her mind; the sound of his voice rang in her ears; and when the remembrance of his burning kisses came to her, as it often did, her cheek flushed and her heart beat with a flood of new emotions that terrified her.
She could not put him out of her thoughts. She hardly knew whether she loved him; but, with the exception of Mrs. King, he was her only friend, the only human being she liked and venerated; and though to be with him raised only thoughts of pain, yet when she was away from him, there came to her a worse misery, a want, that made her wish for that sweet pain again.
But it could not be; she must not love him; she, one of "the Sisters," committed to a Cause that killed its children! No, it could not be! She must suffer and endure in silence, but never know love.
A first, great love filling her being and a fearful consciousness of its hopelessness—so great a delight within her grasp and duty preventing her from seizing it—such was the mental conflict, full of agony, that had now come to her young life.
Her feverish restlessness undermined her health. When alone at night, she would sob through the long hours in broken-hearteddespair. She would go through her duties by day with a listless languor.
Catherine King noticed how pale and thin and sad the girl was becoming; but shrewd as she was, she had no suspicions as to the true cause of this change.
I have said that a great affection had sprung up between the Chief of the Secret Society and her disciple. This affection was ever deepening. The relation between them had long ceased to be that of mistress and servant; it was no longer merely that of teacher and pupil; but they had become to each other as mother and daughter. Catherine represented to the outside world that Mary was her niece; but the girl had of late fallen into the way of calling her protectress, when they were alone together, by the more affectionate name of mother.
One dismal November afternoon, before the lights were lit, Catherine King was sitting in her chair by the fire sewing. Mary was sitting by the window, listless, motionless, looking out to the street with a strange, sad air, as of one that despaired yet was resigned.
The elder woman occasionally cast keen glances towards her, and at last, putting down her work, said, "Mary!"
"Yes, mother!" replied the girl, starting suddenly from her reverie, while a bright flush came to her pale cheeks for a moment.
"You seem ill, Mary."
"Yes, mother; I am not very well," she replied in a low, apathetic voice.
"What is it? There seems to be something on your mind. Is it the idea of the work that has to be done soon that is weighing on you?"
"No, no! I know it is my duty, mother. I am proud to be a helper in the Cause. Oh, no! mother, it is not that.... I don't know what it is; but I fear I am weak and foolish. I am getting nervous.... I am a coward and unfit for so great a mission."
"Strange! that is not like you! I think a little change of air would do you good. We will take a holiday, Mary, and go to the sea-side."
"Thank you, mother; how very kind you are to me! but indeed I do not deserve it."
"You are a good girl, Mary. Happy for me was the day on which I first met you. Your companionship has been very dear to me. I, who thought that I had altogether given up tender emotions, that my whole being was absorbed in my work for Humanity, that I would never again care for any individual—I have come to love you dearly." She continued absently, not intending her words for the girl's ears: "Yes! I half regret sometimes that you should have to be one of the workers, poor girl"—then recollecting herself again, and putting aside her unwonted softness for her usual exalted zeal for Humanity that over-rode all lesser sentiments—"but this is nonsense. How nobler our lives, how happier even, though severing us from mankind and human sympathies, than the weak loves and affections of the ordinary men and women! How glorious to feel we are so far above them!"
She did not suspect how she sent the arrow home to Mary's heart. Tears came to the girl's eyes. The sacrifice of human affections might be a little thing to the enthusiast, but to her, alas! it meant death. But she had determined that she would not waver in her allegiance; for the wild theories were to her great truths. She had such entire faith in her protectress, that she would not have hesitated to tear her heart out for the Chief and the Cause.
"Mother!" she cried out at last. "Oh, mother! youmustlove me! I am so weak, I do not feel fit for the life that is before me. By myself I can do nothing. I shall be stronger if I may lean on you—if I may see you often—if you will let me love you. I cannot explain what I mean—I do not understand it myself." She spoke in a pitiful voice that expressed the great yearning that was in her.
Catherine King looked at the girl in silence for some moments, and the quivering of her lips showed that she was struggling with some strong emotion; then she said:
"I fear we are entering on a dangerous path—but, Mary! Mary! I do love you ... very much indeed—dear"—she hesitated over the last word as if ashamed of using it; she had never used it before—"too well, perhaps ... for it is our duty to look far beyond individual sympathies; we must steel our hearts; we must be of stern stuff; but I do love you, child. Come here, that I may kiss you!"
Mary knew what deep affection it must be to make this woman confess to such weakness. She came up to the chair where Catherine was sitting, and knelt before her. The woman kissed her on her forehead, and gently stroked the soft hair of the girl, feeling a tenderness in her heart that she had not known for many long years.
"There can be no harm in our loving each other, I think, Mary," she said, doubtfully, and with a tremulousness in her one as of consciousness of guilt, as of one hesitating on the brink of some sweet, strong temptation to crime—"no harm—but we must not be too affectionate; we must not fear for each other, or we shall be unnerved when the battle begins. Now, Mary! don't! don't! My dear child, I cannot bear it!" for the girl had seized her hand and was kissing it passionately, while she shook with a paroxysm of sobs.
"Oh, mother! mother! I am so miserable—without your love I should die! It is the only thing that makes life bearable. I cannot be strong and brave like you"—raising her head and looking admiringly at her through her tears—"but your love will make me braver too. Why are you not angry with me for being so silly and so weak?"
The poor child hardly suspected herself what this longing for affection signified. She did not yet know her own heart altogether; she did not confess to herself that it was thestrange, budding love of a maiden for a man that brought on this need for the sympathy of one of her own sex.
"Weak, weak!" replied Catherine, pensively; "no I do not think that you are weak—the reverse in this case. These old moral instincts, or whatever we like to call them—this intense like to adopting means condemned by antique ethics, for the working of righteous ends, are difficult to contend with. You have strong instincts which are in opposition to your sense of duty. Had you been weaker-minded in this conflict, you would have abandoned duty and followed instinct. In you, both the sense of duty and the instinct are very strong. It is because of this—because your nature is strong and not weak—that the conflict for you is a terrible one—that you are a martyr—as such a martyr as Ridley or Latimer, who gave up all that natural instinct makes dear—even life, and things dearer than life, for duty's sake."
Mary felt that what the Chief said was very true. The instinctive horror at the nature of her duties preyed on her mind; but she was ashamed as she considered that she was quite undeserving of these words of praise, knowing as she did that there was now another element that complicated the conflict, the nature of which her kind protectress little guessed.
It has been shown how Mary's Brixton education had made of her a liar; but somehow although her latter training in Maida-Vale, with its Jesuitical teachings as to all means being good if for the advancement of the "Cause," was hardly calculated to cure her of this vice, she could never lie to her benefactress; and now that she had known Dr. Duncan, she had begun to feel a repugnance to deceiving anyone at all. Such is the power of love. The woman looks up to the lord of her heart, and if he be good, she will seek to be good too; she wonders that he can look on her as an angel, and she endeavours to come as near as possible to his ideal.
So it was that Mary felt a great desire to reveal the fact ofher dangerous friendship with Dr. Duncan to her protectress. She could not deceive her any longer, and determined to unburden her mind at once. So she commenced by timidly asking, "Mother, have you ever ... loved? Have you ever loved ... anyone beside me?" Then she paused, in confusion, not knowing how to proceed, a deep blush suffusing her cheeks.
Catherine King stared at her, but evidently did not understand her meaning. No one possessed keener powers of observation than the Chief of the Sisterhood; but when pondering over subjects connected with the Cause she would often become absent-minded, and notice nothing. She had now drifted into this condition, so replied to Mary in a rhapsodical tone: "Oh, love, love! what a deep-rooted instinct of life thou art! But we ill-fated, born into a miserable age, must trample on our instincts for Humanity's sake. Until the old order is altogether changed for the new, such as you and I, Mary, can have nothing to do with love."
The girl's courage melted—she dared not tell her tale just then, whilst Catherine King was in that mood, so she replied, submissively: "So be it ... so long as I have your love, mother ... for oh, I am weak, miserably weak, and love I must have; or I will fail!"
Catherine spoke again: "Love is, indeed, a noble instinct, Mary, but of all loves love of Humanity is the most noble, the most unselfish. We must sacrifice all lesser loves for that one. Future ages will look back to us as the martyrs of Humanity, my child," and as she uttered these words the woman's eyes blazed with enthusiasm, and assumed that far-away look that was usual to them.
The conversation here dropped. "Martyrs! Martyrs, indeed!" thought the poor girl, and she fell again into her miserable brooding, and her soul grew darker and darker, as the early night settled down on the city, and the gas-lights came out one by one in the dismal, rainy street.
But on the other hand, to the woman absorbed in her dream of Humanity, the dingy little room faded away; and to her exalted mind vision after vision, each more glorious than the last, arose—of future peoples, perfect, happy, good; and her brain whirled with the magnificence of her fancies, and her soul wandered in a paradise of beautiful imaginations; so that there came to her expressive features a nobility, such as the face of some saint of old drunk with God, on the point of martyrdom, might have worn.
Catherine King was perplexed—she could perceive that the girl's illness was mental rather than physical. She considered that it was the horror of the nature of her duties working on a young mind; but she could hardly account for the recent rather sudden aggravation of these symptoms in her pupil.
Loving the girl as she did, she was much troubled. Remorse for the agony to which she was dooming this young life tormented her; but her thorough belief in the righteousness of her scheme made her stifle these natural feelings.—"Yes, it must be—the child must be sacrificed."